“I go to lose myself,” Kindred whispered to the Marchess, who reached and reached, nodding to Kindred, ready to take her out into the Sea, out into wonders and worlds unknown.
Yllstra’s blades cut the air, flaring an even brighter red, flinging back the darkness, revealing a forest floor that wasn’t, that fell away to nothing, an abyss of starless black that dropped far below, tree trunks reaching down like bones, trees that were not trees at all but the splintering fingers of a beast beyond the world, beyond time, a beast that the world had become. Kindred stood on the path, a bridge suspended over the abyss, and before her, floating on nothing, was the Marchess.
The blades bit into the Marchess’s arm, leaving two long, fiery slashes that leapt and roared with devouring flame.
The Marchess pulled her arm back, but she did not scream and she did not transform. She merely looked at Kindred, eyes sad, so sad, cradling her arm, now burning, to herself, and amid Yllstra’s cursing and raging, Kindred heard her grandmother’s voice once more.
“It gets easier,” she said, and then she was gone, devoured by the darkness, which was only the darkness of a forest again, and the trees were only trees again, sprouting from the Forest floor.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Kindred muttered, letting herself be pulled forward by Yllstra, who continued to curse Kindred’s stupidity as the two of them walked forward, Yllstra moving quickly and keeping her hold on Kindred, her blade free in the other hand.
The glade appeared before them in an instant. Kindred did not see the lighted space, the openness, until she arrived. She dropped to the ground, exhausted, rolling over thick grass.
She lay there, breathing slowly and letting her body calm down even as her mind continued to run.
“The first time is the hardest,” Yllstra said finally, her voice no longer hard. “Most don’t even come to visit when they have friends or family getting healed; they know the perils of the path. Usually, it’s just us guiding the healers or carting the sick along the pathway.”
She gazed back at the Forest, where her own lantern bearer dominated much of the darkness. It was a man, bigger than any man ought to be, and though he rose and fell in the darkness, tentacles and flames surrounding him, his eyes were human, distinctly so, and they never left Yllstra’s face. Kindred could see an entire history between Yllstra and this lantern bearer, all in those eyes that seemed to contain the world. Yllstra stared back, her expression unreadable.
Next to Yllstra’s lantern bearer stood the first one Kindred had seen—the vision of herself, though the bearer’s face had begun to split apart, halves of skull and flesh and hair falling away from one another and giving way to the unholy light still burning inside her.
Her song, too, had changed. Dissonant melodies collided together percussively, words in a thousand languages running into and across one another, shreds and frames of songs—now The Crow Prince’s Lament, now Once A La, Two A Lee, now a song Kindred had never heard but that spoke of giants crawling over the night sky. It was enough to drive her mad.
But Yllstra was standing up and her voice was in Kindred’s ear telling her to move further in, and it was enough to get her up and walking again, each step away from the Forest’s edge another toward silence and sanity.
After the suffocating closeness of the path, the grove was a cool wind on a hot day. The trees receded as they walked across the lush, thick grass, and Kindred, in a fit of joy at the openness of it, removed her boots and let her feet sink into the grass, which webbed between her toes and tickled her heels and rejuvenated her more than any amount of sleep or food ever had.
“Your friends are just ahead,” Yllstra said. “Once you’re done with your visit, one of the healers will find you an escort to return.”
Yllstra began to walk back toward the path.
“Is this what you do, day in and out?” Kindred asked, seeing the woman in a new light. To be forced to walk that Forest path every day, to deal with the ghosts of your past and present and future, to defend the path and the city against whatever stalked that blackness—it was a cruelty.
But Yllstra only nodded, shouldering her burden without fanfare or self-pity.
Kindred watched Yllstra walk back into the Forest, her blades out, her lantern bearer smiling as the darkness took her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cool grass beneath her feet and the shadow of the Forest gone for the moment, Kindred turned toward the center of the grove and walked toward the enormous structure there.
At first, she thought it to be a building, strangely shaped like a squat vase, rounded, wide at the bottom and curving up to a point at the top. But the nearer she walked, the more she realized it was not a building at all.
It was a great thornbush, its branches angling out and then up, curving high toward the ceiling, which, like that of Breach, was covered in shields reflecting light down into the grove. Kindred noticed that the shields were arranged in a loose circle only above the grove—out where the Forest reigned, the ceiling was dark and unadorned.
As Kindred approached, she began to recognize this bush—smooth, rust-brown branches playing host to leaves, thin and long like fingers, and bright red berries dotted with yellow, clustered along the branches. It was a shepherd shrub. She had seen them hundreds of times on Arcadia, plants that the Sea seeded inland and that had to be cut back by Arcadians, who had no use for them.
But none of the shepherd shrubs she had seen on Arcadia were anything like this—they grew up to a person’s knees, not high above their head. This bush could fit twenty, thirty Cruel Houses in it, Kindred thought, and still have room to spare.
She walked forward to where an archway led through the rising wall of branches.
Inside, the world became a calming sway of thorns and leaves, light filtering through the skyward branches curling up and up, cut back and thinned out to serve as walls. The inside resembled a great sphere, comfortable and comforting.
Rows of beds littered the sheltered grove, although many of them were empty. People Kindred assumed to be healers moved up and down the rows, consulting one another or leaning down to aid the sick and unwell.
A low hum filled the great space, echoing around and redoubling on itself, and it took Kindred a few moments to realize where it was coming from.
The base of the shepherd scrub’s trunk, itself nearly as wide around as the great central column and staircase, had a tunnel cored through it; natural or not, Kindred couldn’t tell.
But in that empty space at the very center of this enormous plant sat a boy who was humming without cease. Kindred watched him draw in deep breaths through his nose, nostrils flaring, so as not to break his chant. Cut into the grass before him was a fire pit filled with flicking flames from which he drew power. Though he was some distance away, the steady buzz of his humming filled the space, and Kindred felt as though she were standing next to him, her ear pressed to his chest, his voice inside her heart, calming and slowing.