“But you understand them?”
“Often, but not always. My mother spoke their language best.”
Eda saw her own mother, dead between white sheets, and shuddered.
Morin’s brow creased. “What’s wrong?”
“The gods take. They take and take, and give nothing in return.”
He studied her, his dark eyes seeing deep. “Nothing at all?”
His question hung in the air between them as Tainir appeared with a brace of rabbits hanging from her belt. She greeted Eda and Morin, then skinned the rabbits with neat efficiency. Morin turned his head away, looking more than a little green, but he was the one to dump the meat into their little cooking pot.
Eda was relieved when the ayrrah returned, anxious to get back into the air, to reach Tuer’s Mountain before Rudion found her again. She brushed one hand against the side of Filah’s head. “Let’s chase the wind, swift one. I think we could catch it.”
She flushed when she realized Morin was standing close enough to hear her.
They flew on, west and a little north, on the heels of the falling sun. Eda found herself glancing over at Morin, and tried to parcel out the reasons why. He confounded her, this boy who drew maps and talked to eagles, whose grief was as large as her own and yet had not made him turn away from the gods.
She was glad when the ayrrah set them down for the night on a flat rock ledge bare of trees or brush, then took to the sky again to find nests for themselves. Tainir scrambled down the cliff, like the mountain goat Eda began to suspect she actually was, in search of dinner, leaving Eda and Morin alone once more.
The last rays of the sun vanished and the stars came out, gleaming and bold in the vast inky sky. Morin let Eda build the fire, and she was pleased to have absorbed his instructions from earlier well enough to get a good blaze going. She helped him lay out the trio of bedrolls, and then crouched on her heels to watch him finish the map he’d been working on in the mingled light of the flames and the stars.
“Not nothing,” she said after a while.
He looked up from the map, a question on his face.
“What you said before,” she explained. “You were right. The gods don’t always give nothing in return.”
His eyes were dark pools of memory, of grief. They seared through her, down to her soul. “It is our choices that make us, Eda. What we choose to do with the things the gods give us.”
A gaping discomfort opened inside of her. “What have you chosen?”
He answered without hesitation. “To take you on this journey. What have you chosen?”
She couldn’t answer that. She looked away.
“Eda.”
She glanced back. He put down his brush, paint staining his hands. He leaned toward her, grazed hesitant fingers across her chin. Wet spots of paint clung to her skin in the places he touched.
“What have you chosen?” he repeated, his face mere inches from hers.
“Death. I have chosen death.” Niren’s, first. Tuer’s, soon. She jerked up and paced away from him, hugging her arms around herself in the freezing wind. He didn’t follow.
Lightning crackled on the distant horizon, and for a moment the wind smelled like rot and worms. Fear cut through her.
But the next moment the sky was dark again, and the scents faded to nothing more than smoke from the fire and the icy mountain air.
Tainir appeared with two squirrels, stepping past Eda with a brief glance at her chin and a raised eyebrow. Eda flushed hot, rubbing her hand against the place Morin had touched her over and over until she felt sure the paint was gone.
Then there was dinner to make and eat, and the moon was halfway up by the time they’d finished. Just like last night, no one seemed in any hurry to crawl into their bedrolls, so Morin made more tea, and they all sat around the fire.
Tainir began to sing, a quiet thread of melody that was almost more like a sigh than a song. Glints of gold danced around her lips, and when she raised her hands more appeared, echoes of the fire glimmering on her fingers.
Morin noticed Eda’s stare. “There has always been magic in the mountains. Tainirfeelsit, in a way I’ve only ever felt when I’m speaking with the ayrrah. Our mother was like that, too. She never came to harm, until now.”
“You want to bring her back, don’t you?” said Eda.
