“Your Maia,” I ended, lingering on the sound of my name.
Ammi rustled at my side. Sitting up on her elbow, she rubbed her eyes. “Who are you talking to at this hour?”
“My father and brother,” I replied sheepishly. “Sorry if I woke you.”
“Your father and brother?”
“They’re far in the South. Sometimes when I miss them, I pretend to write letters. I want to warn them that war is coming again, but even if I had a brush and ink, it would be too risky to send.”
Ammi didn’t reply. She was so still I thought she’d gone back to sleep, until finally, she said, softly, “I heard your father was a tailor, and your brother was injured in the war. That’s why you lied, isn’t it? To me, to everyone. You were trying to protect them.”
“Yes.” I bit my lip. “I’m sorry, Ammi. Really, I am.”
“I know. I suppose I would have done the same for my family.”
Her family. She’d said she wanted to go home, but she’d never told me where home was. “Where are they?”
“No one’s looking for me,” Ammi said, ignoring my question. “I could do it for you. Post the letter, I mean. I can’t write. Or read.”
Most women couldn’t. I’d been lucky Baba made me learn.
“I’ll teach you,” I offered. Eager to rekindle any spark of our old friendship, I drew a few strokes in the earth. “This means sky.”
Ammi tried to copy it, but she missed a stroke. “Maybe it’d be best if we continue in the morning,” she said, making a face. “It’s too dark to see.”
I’d noticed how every time a shadow moved over our tent, she jolted. After years in the palace, she wasn’t used to such darkness. I’d been the same once, but little frightened me anymore. When Edan and I had camped in the forests, I’d grown used to the symphony of sounds, the dance of shadows bending under the moon, the lurking of the unknown.
“You should go back to sleep. It’ll be morning soon.”
“What about you?” asked Ammi. “You’ve hardly rested. You need to. Ever since you returned from your journey, you haven’t been the same. You look…different.”
I pursed my lips, unable to deny it. “How do I look?”
“Thinner,” she began, “and more melancholy; at least I thought so at first. Then I saw the way your eyes lit up whenever someone talked about the Lord Enchanter.” She gathered her cloak over her shoulders. “Are you sad because he had to leave?”
My throat tightened with emotion. How could I tell her that he had to leave because of me? That I had lied to him—to everyone—about what was happening to me?
“I’d rather not talk about him.”
“Oh,” said Ammi, looking stung. “My apologies, Master Tamarin—”
“Maia. And it’s not your fault.”
Let her believe we’d had a lovers’ quarrel. I didn’t care what she thought. As long as it wasn’t the truth, it didn’t matter.
“You sleep first,” I told her. “It takes me a while…these nights.”
Ammi did the opposite and opened a flap of our tent. A pocket of moonlight spilled inside. “Do you see the stars?” she said, shuffling closer and pointing. “See the seven lights, all the way up north? They’re Shiori and her six brothers.”
“Shiori?” I repeated. “Was she a goddess?”
“No, she was a Kiatan princess who lived hundreds of years ago. It’s just a legend, but there’s a statue of her in my district, a gift from Kiata. It’s always been one of my favorite stories.” Ammi pointed again at the sky. “If you look closely, the stars that make up Shiori and her brothers come together in the shape of a crane.”
I couldn’t quite see the crane. “In Port Kamalan, we call that the water dragon. My brother told me stories about it when I was young.”
“It looks more like a crane than a water dragon! I’ll show you.” She outstretched her hand. “Can I borrow your scissors?”
“My scissors?”
After a moment’s hesitation, I passed them to Ammi. I watched her snip a small square off the inside layer of her tunic, unaware of the power my enchanted scissors possessed.
“These scissors are quite rusty,” she said, folding the scrap of cloth. “You should get a new pair from the—”
“They work fine,” I interrupted. My voice came out harder than I’d meant it to. I softened my tone. “They’ve been in my family a long time.”
“An heirloom?”
“Of sorts,” I replied, taking back the scissors from her.
“Maybe it’s my fault, then. One usually uses paper to fold the crane.”
“I have a few pages left in my sketchbook.”
“Save them for your letters. Paper is expensive.” Ammi held up the cloth bird against the moonlight. Its two wings hung off the edges of her palm, and its soft beak pointed up. “Each point of the crane is in the stars.”
I still didn’t see it, but I nodded anyway.
“An evil enchantress turned Shiori’s brothers into wild cranes, and Shiori folded thousands of birds to bring them back. There are many versions of the tale—maybe your brother told you a different one.”
“Maybe,” I mused, trying to recall Sendo’s many tales. “There was one he started, about a sea dragon who saved a princess—and, come to think of it, her brothers. But he never finished it; not many Kiatans visited Port Kamalan, and Sendo got most of his stories from listening to sailors talk about their voyages.” I stopped there, hoping Ammi didn’t hear the pain in my voice.
“Is he a tailor like you?”
“No, he died a few years ago.” I forced a smile before she could react. “But he loved the sea the way I love to sew. I wish you could have met him. You would have liked him.”
“I’m sure I would have,” Ammi said softly. “I’ve only been on a ship once, when I was a little girl. It frightened me, not being able to see land anywhere. I can’t swim.”
Neither can Edan, I remembered. I clung to that memory, making a note to write it down somewhere. I’d never been one for keeping notes about things, but I’d started sketching again, at night when Ammi was asleep.
They were little drawings in the dirt, of Edan and me climbing Rainmaker’s Peak, riding camels in the Halakmarat Desert, and soaring over Lake Paduan toward the Thief’s Tower. I drew Baba’s smile from the last time I saw him, Keton standing with his cane, dyeing dresses green instead of purple. But much as I tried to draw Mama or Sendo or Finlei, my hand would suddenly cramp, and I could not.