Nimh is quiet for a moment before she answers, her voice thin. “I promise I will be honest with you, North. I will tell you what you wish to know, I just …” She falters, and I fold my arms over my chest to stop myself reaching out to offer to steady her. “It is a long story, and it is full of things for which you have little patience. Magic and destiny and divine callings.”
My chest constricts and I force a slow breath. It’s been a long night, but for Nimh far more so than for me. “Why don’t we talk about it tomorrow?” I suggest. She nods, features flickering with gratitude.
The world slips by us in the moonlight, the trees getting thicker the farther we go from the city. Great mossy blocks of stone are strewn in among the brush, as though the jungle is taking back what was once the edge of the cultivation. The ruins have been visible on the banks for some time now, and I think the temple and its surroundings used to be much bigger—that they’ve contracted over the centuries to huddle where they do now at the place where the rivers meet.
I’m still afraid.
Afraid of the murderers we left behind us at the temple, afraid of the animals that are out there prowling the banks, afraid of what we might have to do next—but I also see a beauty here that escaped me when I landed.
Was it really just twenty-four hours ago? Neither Nimh nor I have slept since then, and that, I definitely feel. When I look over at her, I see her statue-like silhouette wobble. She’s like a part of the landscape, half-hidden in shadow like the trees along the bank. I rise to my feet to make my way toward her end of the deck.
“Nimh,” I say softly as I approach her—and even so, she startles. “I think we should stop the boat for a little.”
“No,” she says automatically, without taking her eyes off the moonlit ripples ahead of us.
“Nobody knows how we left the city, and we’ve come a long way,” I point out. “We need to rest, even if it’s just for a few hours.”
Now she glances over her shoulder, as if she might see pursuers rounding the bend. The cat makes a soft chirping noise.
“See?” I try. “Even our fearless leader is tired.”
That draws just the faintest smile from her, and she concedes, turning the wheel to ease us in closer to the shore. “We need to find a place to tie up,” she says.
I’m a clumsy deckhand, but I do my best, and she shows me how to sling ropes around the trees and then let them out a little, so we’re firmly secured, but far enough from the bank that nothing with big teeth can make the jump to us.
Watching Nimh work gives me a little glimpse into what she might have been like, had she not been singled out by the high priest as a child. She’d have been a riverstrider like her mother, working on the water like this all her life. It’s a nice thought—and a sad one.
“I saw clothes down below,” she says, as the river draws us out into its current, and we come up short, the ropes taut between us and the trees. “I will borrow some from Orrun’s wife. Hers will be more practical than mine.”
The cat and I stay up on deck as she heads down the companionway, and when I take a seat on a crate full of cargo a minute later, he hops up next to me. “Well, Fuzz,” I murmur to him. “We’re what she’s got now. I hope you know what you’re doing, because I don’t.”
He headbutts me, which I decide to consider a positive development in our relationship. Then he headbutts me again, ramming against my forearm.
“He is suggesting that you pet him.” Nimh’s voice comes from behind me as the cat goes in for a third attempt. This time I lift my hand, and he walks along underneath it, encouraging me to stroke the length of his back, then he spins around for the return journey. It feels pretty good against my hand, and I’m about to tell him so when Nimh moves around into sight.
She wears a pair of loose trousers that could almost be a skirt, and though the moonlight wants to bleed her of all color, I can tell they’re a deep russet. A dark blue shirt crosses over at the front and wraps around her torso to tie at the back, and her hair falls loose around her shoulders.
Of all the versions of Nimh I’ve seen so far, I know instantly that this is the one I like the most.
This is Nimh the girl. Nimh as she might have been, if she’d never become Nimhara the goddess. I sensed it for a moment when we stood behind the carved screen, watching the party unfold so close to us, but still separate.
I’m different from the other people she knows. I don’t mind if she’s scared, or sad. I want her to be human. I want her to feel. And if I can manage it, I want her to hope.
“Do you think Elkisa is alive?” she asks quietly, and my heart cracks a little.
“Inshara had no reason to kill her,” I say quickly. “In fact, if I were her, I’d absolutely leave her alive, as a symbol of how powerful my magic was.”
Nimh considers this, nodding slowly. “You sound like a prince,” she says, but I only half hear her. I’m too busy trying to block out what I just said—speaking as if Inshara’s magic were real, as if everything that happened didn’t have some sort of logical explanation… .
I change the subject. “Who are the people wearing gray? I saw them when we came into the city, and I think I saw a couple of them at the party as well.”
“Opponents of the temple,” she says, walking across to the edge of the deck to rest her hands on the railing and gaze out at the river. “The Graycloaks. They believe the age of the divine has ended. They see the mist-storms growing stronger and more dangerous, so they wish to create Haven cities, places no mist could penetrate, but no magic either.”
“Would that be so bad?” I ask, thinking of home.
She shakes her head, lifting one hand to run it through her loose hair. “We would lose so much,” she says. “Everything we have built and learned over the last thousand years and more. We use magic to power everything from our boats to our lamps. But what is much worse is that the Havens could only ever be home to a few people. They would dismantle the guardian stones that protect our villages in order to build their Havens, leaving the rest of my people alone against the mist with barely any protection. They would be left to die.”
“That’s …” I’m momentarily speechless. “Barbaric. How could anyone agree to such a thing?”
“They believe that unless they act soon it will be too late to save anyone at all,” she replies quietly. “They think that a storm unlike any we have seen before is coming. And when it does, our civilization will cease to exist. We will be extinct. But I am my people’s goddess. I must give myself completely to the task of saving all of them.”
Her voice threatens to break on those last words.
Skies, I am doing the world’s worst job of comforting her. I’ve brought her straight back to the memory of the one she couldn’t save tonight.
“I’m sorry about Daoman,” I say quietly.
“We were family,” she replies, soft and simple. “We were often at odds—as my power rose, his had to decline. It might even have come to a confrontation eventually. But neither of us had anyone else. He helped raise me. He cared for me.”
“Skyfall, Nimh,” I murmur. “I didn’t know.”