‘Kisaiya,’ I said. Only Mamă used our full names, and her eyes focused on me. ‘Look at me.’
I held up my hand to her, palm out, fingers splayed. It was a gesture we had always made to swear on, or calm each other, something so natural that I wondered if we had lain inside Mamă like that, our fingertips touching. Unable to bring her own hand to meet it, she leant her forehead into my palm. I leant down and kissed her head. She tasted of the sickening, sweet smoke.
She started to moan. The other children, even Fen, shrank back, but I wrapped my arms around her.
She was heavy against me, and I looked down at her bound hands. Her fingers, her beautiful, careful fingers, were burned and raw, the neat crescents of her nails now blood moons.
‘Why?’ she keened. ‘Why?’
The camp was still behind us. Nothing stirred except the flames still licking the trees, the terrible heat of our homes making my arms slick with sweat. But I did not let go of Kizzy.
The men climbed atop our best horses, and I saw Erha’s beloved old mule still twitching as he died in the dirt.
‘Where are they taking us?’ said Morsh, eyes bright with panic. ‘Where are we going?’
‘They’re boyar’s men,’ said Fen. ‘See the sashes?’
I remembered Old Charani, wearing a sash of her own blood, and closed my eyes against the sight. My throat was sore with smoke and screaming.
‘Soldiers?’ I asked.
‘Or slave gatherers.’
‘Where will they take us now?’
Fen closed his brown eyes, and a tear licked a line through his sooted face, polishing the bruise, which I realised now was in the shape of the flat of a sword. ‘Wherever they want.’
The cart began to move. Within moments, the forest closed over our camp, over everything we’d ever known, like a mighty hand closing a book.
As the smoke receded into the distance, I drew the fiddleheads out of my pocket, shared them around. Uncooked they were more bitter than ever, but no one refused one except Kizzy.
The death cap was still in my pocket. I thought of slipping it into my mouth, swallowing it down. It made you sweat, then see bright colours, then it closed your throat and stopped your heart. Kizzy was still in my lap, and I pushed the thought away.
We watched the forest pass us by, as though it was the thing that moved, its great trunks of protection, its wise whorls like eyes, turning away from us. Even at this distance, I could smell the smoke that killed our mother, on the air and my skin and in my sister’s hair.
I thought of Albu, and my brother caught like a seed in his fur, and prayed for the trees to cradle them safely, and carry them far, far away.
The way was rough and overshadowed by inscrutable canopies of oak and beech, thin boughs of larch scraping the sides of the cart and showering us with needles. I picked them from Kizzy’s hair as she lay in my lap, staring up and through me, through even the thick trees. Staring, it seemed, further than any star. I wanted to follow her there, to this other place. Anywhere was better than here.
Two men rode behind the cart, their crimson sashes pulled down now, so their faces were revealed. They were pale in the growing darkness, gleaming like ghosts, but I could see the black-hearted smiles on their faces when I was stupid enough to make eye contact. I pressed my back to the bars, and their stares bore into my nape.
As soon as darkness had fully encased us, I felt for the sash that bound Kizzy’s hands. When I began to untie it, I realised it was not a soldier’s sash, but the purple cloth that Old Charani used to keep her long grey curls back from her forehead. It was mottled with red blood.
I held it in my hands until Kizzy took it, and bound up her own hair with it, wincing as her burnt hands chafed. Then she lay down again in my lap, silent as dirt.
I kept myself hunched over Kizzy, letting my smoke-soaked curls hang forward over her face, hoping to shield her from view. Settled men liked her better even than our own boys did, but it was always edged with something darker. There was something glinting and hard to their desire.
Fen sensed the threat too. He kept his broad back turned beside mine, his face half slanted so he could watch them through the corner of his eye. The bruise on his cheek was deepening, purple and red as Old Charani’s scarf.
We had long given up trying to speak to each other. Every time we tried to talk, the men would jab the scabbards of their swords through the bars. As they did so they called us names, names I’d heard before in the Settled villages. Gypsy, tinker, and worse.
A miserable silence weighed down on us like a shroud. Even Morsh had stopped crying. He was curled up like a snail winkled from its shell, and Erha’s eldest daughter, Girtie, had her arm across him. It made me ache for Kem, though I was certain he would be safer with Albu than in this cage. Safe from whatever lay at the end of our journey.
I didn’t know the path. It was not the way we had approached the forest, nor the route we were to have taken next. We were going lower, into a different valley, not up into the mountains. Without a view of the sky I couldn’t tell the direction.
Acid rose suddenly in my stomach, and I swallowed it down. The camp should have been on its way that morning. Were it not for Kizzy and me, our divining day, and mushroom stew. Because of us, our homes were ash, our family scattered to the four winds.
I wiped the heel of my hand across my eyes, and Fen touched me lightly on the inside of my wrist. His warmth was shocking on my night-chilled skin, almost unbearably tender.
‘You should sleep,’ he said, his lips barely moving.
‘You should sleep,’ I replied.
Neither of us slept, though the men behind us did, snoring as their stolen horses followed behind, and the miles unspooled. In my lap, Kizzy’s eyes were two dark pits, hollow and yawning.
The forest was full of night sounds, biting flies buzzing at my earlobes, and bright eyes watched from the shadows. I prayed for bears to come and knock the men from their horses. I prayed for wolves to give chase, and for the men to abandon us. I called on the Iele to avenge our families’ murders. It would be better to be at the mercy of beasts and spirits than these pale-eyed watchers.
Fen’s head drooped onto my shoulder, and Kizzy’s faraway gaze sharpened, shifted to his face. It felt wrong to see her looking at him that way, so intently. I looked up instead, but unlike Kizzy I could see no further than the branches passing overhead.
The deepest part of night was past before the trees started to thin, and as the sun began to rise, it sliced whips of light over our tear-stained faces. I rolled my shoulders and neck, wincing as they clicked. Fen jerked awake, and Kizzy looked fast away from him, finally sitting up as the daylight called to the sleeping bodies, and our friends began to stir.
Behind us, the men were still snoring, and Kizzy didn’t bother to keep her voice down as she looked around.
‘Where are we?’
Fen shrugged. ‘We never came down the hills this far.’
‘I think we’ve come north,’ said Girtie. ‘See the sun?’
To the Settled, this knowledge would mean something different: perhaps they would know a village this way, which boyar’s land we had passed into. To me, to us, the land mattered only as elemental: forests, rivers, mountains, sea. Here, tin mines. There, gold. Wolves, bears, boars. North was more mountainous, more treacherous for our kind. There were slavers, and the Voievod who liked talented girls. All our stories of the north were tinged with fear, with warnings.