That night, I decided, I would draw Ammi. She was happiest when she had a cup of steaming tea in her hand and a plate of cookies at her side. A few crumbs clung to one corner of her lips, and she wiped them off with the back of her hand.
“You said you wanted to go home. Where is your family?” I said again. She hadn’t responded the first time.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know?”
She hugged her knees to her chest. “My parents sold me to the palace when I was five years old. I was the youngest daughter, and they couldn’t afford to feed me. They were so poor we used to bathe in the water we used to wash our rice.” She swallowed visibly. “One day, they put me on a ship with half a dozen other girls, and it sailed to Jappor. I don’t even know where they live.”
“Oh, Ammi…” I wanted to help her find them, but I wouldn’t make any promises I couldn’t keep. That much of the real Maia was still intact.
“The only times I’ve left the palace were to travel to the next one when the seasons changed,” she continued. “I’ve never even been to the city outside the Summer Palace.”
I fell silent. A few short months ago, I’d been the same. Before I’d left home for the Summer Palace, to compete in the emperor’s trial, I too had felt trapped.
“This is all I have left of my family.” Ammi held the bird up, but its head drooped in her fingers, flagging in the wind that drifted through the open slits of our tent. “My sisters used to make them for me when I was small. Back home, they were charms for good luck.”
During the Five Winters’ War, I too had made paper charms for luck. They hadn’t been anything like Ammi’s crane, but this small reminder of my past warmed me.
I wrapped my arms around my knees, the flap of my carpet beating against my back from the wind. “Tell me what you remember about them.”
“My parents were rice farmers. They worked on a paddy with a dozen other people and grew fish in the ponds. My sisters and I would try to catch the fish with our hands, but we were never quick enough. Back then I was so small the water reached up to my waist, and my fingers would get caught in the nets we used to catch fish.” She tilted her head, looking wistful. “My family was very poor.
“For years I was angry at them for selling me, but now, if I could just see them again, I’d forgive everything in a heartbeat. After the emperor imprisoned you, I realized I might never see you again either.” She held out the bird to me, as if it were a peace offering. “That’s why I forgive you, Maia Tamarin. I might need some time before I trust you again, but you’re my friend, and I forgive you.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, balancing the bird on my palm. I didn’t tell Ammi it was better that she didn’t trust me, but somehow, I could tell she knew.
She offered me a smile. “You should rest, Maia. Maybe a story will help. The story about the Kiatan princess, perhaps?”
I leaned back against the ground, the grass and dirt soft against my elbows. “Yes.”
“Shiori was the youngest child of the emperor,” she began, “and his only daughter. She had six brothers, and she loved them more than anything in the world.”
I listened to Ammi’s story, her words tugging at my heartstrings. Edan loved me. Edan was searching for a way to break my curse.
Everything that was still right and true inside me wanted to go to the Tura Mountains and reunite with him. Yet everything that was still right and true inside me compelled me not to. Every morning, I woke a little colder, a little less Maia. My eyes burned red longer every day, and Ammi was too kind to point it out—or too frightened. I’d caught her staring, but when I looked at her, she quickly averted her gaze.
No, I couldn’t go to him. I would find a safe place to leave Ammi, and I would return to Lapzur alone. Before I lost myself.
Before I lost everything.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I dreamed of Lapzur, of its ghosts waiting for me back at the haunted islands. Their voices were like scratches against my skin, cutting deeper with every word.
Sentur’na, they called.
Again with that name. Even in my dreams, I did not know what it meant.
Sentur’na, you grow weak. Come back to us. We will make you strong again.
Every night since I’d left the Winter Palace, it had been the same promise, over and over, until the voices grew so loud I couldn’t bear it anymore. Only then did flames scorch the sky of my dreamscape, and a bird with demon-red eyes lit the ghosts afire.
Their screams still echoed in my ears as I shot up, awake. My heart raced, sweat dribbling down my temples.
Ammi was still asleep, her feet poking out of our tent. Gently, I folded my cloak over her legs. I wouldn’t need it. The wind raised goose bumps on my arms, and the hairs on the back of my neck bristled, but I wasn’t cold.
I headed for the nearby creek. A frosty morning dew laced the foliage, and the soft crunch of fallen leaves under my feet reminded me that a new season was beginning. Fall was changing into winter.
But for the changing colors of the autumn leaves, I had never experienced much of the four seasons in Port Kamalan. What brilliant oranges the cypress trees would wear! It’d been my favorite thing to paint in my sketchbook, the challenge of re-creating the fire of the leaves enough to engage me for hours.
“Why do the trees change color?” I had asked my brothers.
Sendo had paused, no doubt trying to think of a poetic answer for me. But the ever-blunt Finlei beat him to answering, “Because they’re dying.”
“He means,” said Sendo, seeing my stricken expression, “that as the green fades, the leaves die and fall off the trees.”
Their answers had quieted me. I’d studied the vibrant smears of paint on my fingers, then looked to the trees by the sea. “If dying is this beautiful, then I wish I were a tree too. I’d be happy to die and be reborn in the spring.”
How they’d laughed at me. I laughed now too, bitterly. I’d been so innocent back then, believing in past and future lives. Most A’landans did, including Mama and Baba and Sendo, so I hadn’t thought to question it—until now.
If I became a demon, a part of me would die. But it wouldn’t be a beautiful death, and there would be no spring, no rebirth, for me.
What would happen to the Maia that died? Where would she go? Had she had a life before this one?
I wrapped my arms around my chest, knowing there was no answer.
Leaves crunched under my heels, the brisk cold seeping deep into my lungs. We’d only been gone a few days, flying south toward the Tura Mountains and Lake Paduan, but winter had followed us. By the creek, the edges of the bank were already beginning to freeze, an early sheet of ice lacing the moist dirt.