D’Argen watched Mayan sleep on the other side of their camp fire. He could not help but stare at the mortal. Three years. They had been travelling the lands of Oltria together for three years already and D’Argen was still not used to the mortal. He hated how he had to slow down, could not run or even test his new speed, without abandoning Mayan completely. And though Mayan could more than take care of himself, as he had proven multiple times, his lack of hearing made D’Argen extra sensitive to the mortal.
Was that him being ableist? Was his discriminating Mayan based on a lack of sense? When D’Argen had lost his sight those years ago on Sky Mountain, none of his companions had made a big deal of it. They made fun of him, joked around, helped out – but no more than they would have if the wound was any other than one that blinded him.
Or maybe it was just D’Argen’s annoyance. Travelling with Mayan was calming and relaxing because the man never spoke. But then again. The mortal never spoke. It meant that D’Argen could not consume from him. The sounds of the forest around them were barely enough to whet his palette.
Tomorrow. There was a village not that far from them. Mayan would be the one to urge D’Argen to go there, knowing it was easier to find missing people by asking others, but D’Argen usually argued against it. Not that it was much of an argument. D’Argen knew it was horrible, but he could ignore Mayan by just simply looking away. Then again, none of his pettiness had helped him in any way learning more of the sign language Mayan was used to communicating with. The mortal’s sentences, when he gestured them, were broken up to the complete basics so that D’Argen could understand them. It meant that D’Argen usually won the arguments, feigning ignorance.
The annoyance had gotten worse over the past few months. D’Argen bit into an apple and crunched loudly. The juices filled his mouth and flowed down his throat. He felt like he could choke on it. It was not as bad as it was in that other realm, in the dream world, but he still hated it. He crunched away though, his stomach rumbling in protest.
Tomorrow.
The village was small, but they would make enough noise. And since Mayan did not speak, D’Argen would be the one asking around. Mayan shifted in his spot and then D’Argen saw the whites of his eyes. The mortal was glaring at him.
“What?” D’Argen asked, his mouth full of chunks of apple and distorting his lips.
Mayan tapped the ground with the flat of his palm in answer.
D’Argen furrowed his brow. He watched the man’s hand for a moment and then… he stopped bouncing both his legs from where he was sitting on a log. Mayan was sensitive, even if he could not hear. D’Argen swallowed his bite, swallowed back the bile that tried to rise, and then cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he said quickly, clearly, and then made the motion for it with one hand.
Mayan shook his head and sat up. He was awake.
Good. Maybe they could go to the village today. D’Argen threw what was left of his apple into the fire. It sparked and smoked, causing Mayan’s frown to deepen.
“We go?” D’Argen asked, speaking and making the two motions to represent his question at the same time.
Mayan responded with, Go what?
No. Not what. Where. The two were very similar. Or maybe they were the same and it only mattered in context. D’Argen could not recall the gesture for village or town, but house was easy. He put the tips of his fingers together and spread out his palms, tilting them to create an arrow pointing up.
Mayan’s anger faded into confusion. “There is a village, at the edge of the forest.” D’Argen hesitated, skipping the words he didn’t know with his hands, but making sure he spoke slower so Mayan could read his lips. How that worked, D’Argen did not understand. He found it strange every time Mayan focused so intently on his lips.
Now? Mayan gestured.
D’Argen nodded. Then Mayan started gesturing quickly. It was slow, D’Argen had seen him and Lisa communicate faster, yet D’Argen could not keep up at all. He caught a few words here and there, but they were all in agreement, which didn’t match Mayan’s annoyed expression. When Mayan finished and D’Argen only shrugged, the mortal let out a heavy sigh and his lips moved as if in a prayer. Probably to Darania. Probably for patience. D’Argen was sorely lacking. Then Mayan resorted to the one method of communication he hated. He took out a pad of ripped papers from his bag, a quill, and an inkpot. It stained his fingers black before he even opened it and then it took forever for him to write out a message.
D'Argen was not a fan of this method of communication either. His legs started bouncing again as he waited. When Mayan finally handed him the scrap of paper, other phrases already crossed out or at different angles, D’Argen was careful not to smudge the still wet ink.
We should go back. There has been no news for too long.
“I told you, I sent Darania a message not that long ago. She said—”
Mayan shoved another piece of paper at him, Stop lying to me. The ink was dried and old, almost faded. It was one of the first messages Mayan had written him when they started their journey.
“I’m not. I swear. Not this time,” D’Argen corrected quickly. Then repeated it slower. He was not sure if Mayan’s squint was because he could not read D’Argen’s lips or because he did not believe him. The second was more likely. “If she has asked for us to go back, I do not know it. I have sent her messages, letting her know where we are, but we usually move on before she could send one back.”
Where you go back?
The questions were the hardest to decipher. They all looked the same, but D’Argen got the gist of it. “If you want to go back, nothing is stopping you. I want to remain.”
Mayan leafed through his booklet and found another ripped paper that had an old message. He handed it over more gently than the previous one.
What if they are already back?
How do you know?
They have been missing for too long, they would be impossible to find.
The three messages were written months ago during one of their non-arguments and D’Argen had the exact same answers this time as he did before. “We would have heard. It may be impossible for a mortal, but I am not one.”
Mayan snatched his papers back before D’Argen could be tempted to throw them in the fire. Especially the one calling him a liar. He started writing something new, this time much longer. D’Argen waited, bouncing his legs. When the paper was handed to him, a new scrap with only wet ink in a neat block of text, he stopped shaking to read it.
The last village we went to also said they had people missing. They dismissed it as moving on to find more work. What if the case is the same here? What if they are not in Oltria at all anymore?
D’Argen had no idea how to answer those questions. He had thought the same thing. What he had not told Mayan though was that the last village was not the only one to say so. Every village they stopped at, even the town a few weeks back, had people missing. People went missing all the time. Very often they went in search for work, sometimes they ran away, and sometimes it was the crimes within the area. Accidents happened regularly too. It was normal.
What was not normal was that the deeper they went into Oltrian land, the more the people missing were. The eastern coast, where the harbours were that led to either the north or the Rube Islands, were least affected. The open plains of the land did not have many habitats to begin with and the distances were long enough for one to not only get lost, but attacked by the wildlife. But the southern edges, near the forest and the northern towns that were growing large enough to become cities – the number of empty houses in those places did not make sense.
“Where would they be going?” D’Argen muttered the question. Mayan threw a pebble at him from across their small fire. When D’Argen looked up, Mayan motioned around his mouth with furrowed brows. “I asked, where would they go? More work? Spring is starting, the snows are melting, the fields need to be prepared for food. Oltria has rich soil and many farmlands. There is enough work here.”
Mayan was nodding along with him, focused intently on his lips. D’Argen shoved down the urge to lift his hand to hide his mouth. Instead, he said, “And trade work is considered less tolling on the body. Why would trade merchants start looking for farm work?”
Mayan shrugged in answer, then gestured something that made no sense at all, even when he repeated it twice with a few gestures replaced with ones that D’Argen recognized. After three years, D’Argen should have been much better at reading the mortal’s gestures, but it was not his fault that it bothered him how familiar some of those gestures and hand positions were to the ones D’Argen sometimes used to pull the mahee into a foreign spell.
“Rock. Run. Rockrun. You want us to go to Rockrun? Why?”
D’Argen knew the gesture for god. He hated that it included Mayan bearing his throat.
“There is no point, I’ve told you before. Kenin may be one of the gods of this land, but he is a master of coin. He would not care about—” D’Argen cut himself off when Mayan suddenly pointed at him, then wound a finger through the air. “He is a master of coin?” D’Argen repeated. Mayan nodded vigorously then made the motion for and. “And? And…” D’Argen searched the air as if it had the answers he needed, then he remembered. “He is a master of coin and trade.” It sounded like a good idea, but also… “He would not notice a few trades from the Rube Islands missing.”
Mayan held up a finger, a sign for him to wait, and started leafing through his papers again. He threw a few aside before he found one piece of paper that had no rips in it and was folded down to the size of his palm. When he opened it, it was six times as large. Instead of handing it over, Mayan rose and circled their small fire, then sat beside D’Argen to show it to him, without letting go.
D’Argen leaned into the paper confused, then read… names. What? Names and numbers. He was even more confused as he scanned the paper quickly. One of the names caught his eye. Milban. That was the name of one of the towns they visited. Beside it was the number fifty-six. Three other names were written, smaller, and then a symbol. D’Argen had seen those symbols, Mayan sometimes marked his papers with them in the corner.
Now that he knew one name though, he looked at the others. They all sounded familiar. D’Argen was horrible at remembering names, but he could have sworn at least five others on the left were other towns and villages they had visited. Each one of the names had a number beside it.
“Is this… is this how many people are missing?” D’Argen asked.
Mayan nodded. He pointed to one line where the number was two then to the two names to the right of it. Not only had Mayan counted, but he also recorded the names. D’Argen had rarely bothered to go beyond asking if the villagers had seen people from the Rube Islands. Mayan, it seemed, had been doing full investigations right under his nose. The thought stung. D’Argen wanted to snap at the mortal for doing this without his knowledge and not sharing it. But, then again, D’Argen definitely did not act like he cared during their time travelling together.
Then D’Argen made the mistake of adding up all the numbers. Three-hundred-and-five. And this did not include the people from the Rube Islands that had given this task to D’Argen. He had accepted it out of boredom.
Three-hundred-and-five. There were barely twenty locations on Mayan’s paper. They had visited many more. When had Mayan started recording? Did he have other pages? Did that marker beside the town of Milban led to a paper that had fifty-six names on it for the people missing? Did any of those lists include people that nobody noticed were missing, that nobody cared about?
D’Argen knew they needed help. That did not mean he could admit it. He let go of the paper and Mayan carefully folded it back up and put it away.
“Not Kenin,” D’Argen said once Mayan was looking at him again. “Cana.” Then he made the gesture for god, without tilting his chin, and followed it up with a gesture of smoking. “She likes to mingle among the people. But she is much farther west – almost at the still waters. And, as far as I’m aware, the spring reaping should be happening soon and she’d be looking to employ. If any of these people have gone looking for work, she would offer them the most competitive pay.”
Mayan furrowed his brow. Then, the mortal slapped D’Argen’s bicep with the back of his hand. The following gestures were crude and mean, and D’Argen chose to ignore them. Mayan was angry with him again, though the mortal’s lips were turned slightly up in a smile. Annoyance then, not anger. Well, D’Argen was feeling the same. He should have been doing this alone. If he was alone, he would have gone all over Trace multiple times by that point.
And then the reason why D’Argen appreciated Mayan being with him came over him. A sudden chill came from nowhere, filling him from the inside and making all his hair stand on end. His skin broke into goosebumps, his teeth started chattering, and his entire body started trembling.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Mayan, even when annoyed with him, still helped. He was slow about it, making sure D’Argen saw him, before he wrapped D’Argen up in a hug and then pulled a blanket around them both. The cocoon he created was warm and D’Argen’s breath misted it. He felt like his eyeballs were freezing over. He ducked his head into Mayan’s chest, seeking the mortal’s warmth.
Mayan rubbed the same bicep he had slapped earlier. The heat of the friction slowly seeped into his blood, but not fast enough. Mayan kicked a piece of wood at the edge of the fire, making the flames dance and crackle. It took hours before D’Argen felt like was warm again.
#
Jiya was a bustling city and it had grown even more since the last time D’Argen had visited. With the spring reaping starting soon, the streets were filled. Mortals knew how to capitalize on such events. Vendors were set up at every corner and at the mouth of every alley. They were not allowed on the streets proper, but their wares sometimes spilled out. Adding to that was the foot traffic, increased by visitors from all over Oltria.
D'Argen suspected that the number of new people in the city would far surpass Mayan’s papers, but he also knew they would not match the names. Not all, at least. The spring reaping happened every year. The scholars from the Rube Islands had told D’Argen of their missing family members over three years ago. It made no sense for traders to abandon their families for so long. Not all of them.
As crowded as it was though, D’Argen appreciated how loud the city was. The call from a vendor down the street echoed through him and bounced around, as if the sound was trying to find a way into him. Consuming the sounds from mortals was not as pleasant as that from the other Never Born or even the sounds from nature, but it was better than nothing.
Yet another person bumped into him and Mayan put a heavy hand on his back to steady him. D’Argen thanked the mortal with a simple gesture and remained walking close enough to him for them to brush arms regularly. The contact had his skin itching, but he fought the urge to run away.
When they arrived at the central complex of the city of Jiya, there was a huge crowd. The open square in front of the palace gates was filled with even more people than the streets. The vendors did not care for any laws and peddled their wares to anyone who passed. There were few carts though. Instead, most were there with thick cloths to lay out their supplies on that they quickly tied off and moved on to spread to another place if the guards came by.
The guards seemed to be less focused on chasing the vendors away and preoccupied with keeping the crowd from entering Cana’s palace. They were not angry, not a mob yet, but the pushing wave of bodies did not look good. Only a handful were let through the gates at a time and only when others exited.
Mayan tapped his shoulder then made that questioning gesture that D’Argen always confused. It was a question though. D’Argen leaned closer to yell over the din before remembering that it did not matter. His hands stuttered on some of the gestures as he said in a low voice, “Employment records and spiritual checks. Not just anyone can enter the Rainbow Forest.”
Mayan did the questioning gesture again. This time, D’Argen shrugged in answer. The crowd got thicker the closer they got to the gates where the guards stood. Most did not realize who D’Argen was, not until he had already shoved his way through the bodies. Only, when he stood in front of the guards, they did nothing to let him through.
“The Goddess is not here,” one of them said. Goddess. That was a new one for D’Argen. Not only that, but he felt Cana’s mahee past the soldiers and the rough sandstone walls behind them.
“I will wait for her inside,” D’Argen said. The guards did not look happy. They glanced at one another. Finally, one of them nodded and they opened the gate for him. D’Argen had to grab Mayan’s wrist to drag him in after him before the guards closed the gates.
As soon as the stone closed behind him, D’Argen let out a heavy breath. The sound was still there, though muffled, but the press of bodies was gone and D’Argen felt like he could finally breathe. He stopped an attendant, rushing through the main hall with scrolls, to ask for directions. The woman dropped a few things, stuttered, then pointed behind her.
“This is a busy time for Cana and her staff,” D’Argen muttered. Mayan must not have seen his lips, the mortal’s eyes straying to the tall ceilings of the hall.
Out of all the cities in Trace, Jiya was the most similar to the complex at the Rube Islands. They used a similar structure, squat and square buildings with rough sandstone and sheer curtains hanging everywhere, even over the wooden doors. Where the two differed most were the open spaces. Where the complex at the Rube Islands had multiple courtyards with vines and flowers, some with wooden lattice work for shade, the palace at Jiya had a roof even over those areas. The ceiling was far above them, at least four levels, and served as the floor for the highest floor of the palace where Cana’s rooms were. The rest of the palace was similar in design with small rooms and large windows.
D'Argen let Mayan admire the paintings on the ceiling as he stopped another attendant to ask them to prepare a room for him and Mayan. The man scowled, but nodded. He led them down a hall, his steps hurried and with a slight stomp in them. The attendant barely threw the wooden door open before he was gone again. Past it was a small room, an unmade bed, and a window so large that it almost matched the door.
“Stay here,” D’Argen said and gestured at the same time toward Mayan.
Mayan responded with the question again.
“I told you, not just anybody can go in the Rainbow Forest. If Cana is there, you can’t come with me.” Half the gestures turned into lazy waves when D’Argen could not recall the word.
Mayan scowled, crossed his arms over his chest, and then nodded.
D’Argen ran off before the mortal could change his mind. For one who did not speak, Mayan made sure his opinion was heard.
Where the Life Crops belonging to Olov’s lands and near the city of Tormdale were a field of flowers that spanned from coast to coast, and those on Darania’s lands were reefs sunken under the waves, those on Cana’s lands were a forest that grew in the foothills and around the still water that split the mainland in two.
Darania had named them Life Crops when she created the first set in Olov’s lands those thousands of years ago. Her goal had been to prevent mortals from dying – a contradiction to their name. And while the Life Crops themselves were unable to do so, the Rainbow Forest itself bore fruits that were able to extend mortal lives to a full century and sometimes even cure disease and sickness. Those fruits were invaluable to the mortals, even if they did nothing at all for the Never Born.
D’Argen stopped in a small cave near the foothills where the forest started and stared up at the trees. The colours were really that of a rainbow with fruit constantly growing and leaves always changing, regardless of the season. He spotted greens and yellows which were common in other forests, but among them were blues and purples, reds so bright they looked like jewels, yellows that shone in sparkling gold that matched Acela’s robes, the crystal clear white of ice, and all shades in between.
The scents of the forest were almost as overwhelming as the colours. How was it that D’Argen knew of this place, of the fields of flowers and the reefs, but never connected the dots that these were places of magic. It was not only the gods of Trace that had magic. They had given it to the land and it made sense for the land to take more. Even if the cheetahs D’Argen had encountered were nowhere close to any of the Life Crops. Even if Sky Mountain was not near them either.
Even if the north was too far.
Darania’s logic made no sense, but at least D’Argen could think of it. At least he could find the differences and question the magic of the world, not like before. Darania’s spell on him when he fell was completely gone.
D’Argen stepped deeper into the forest and breathed in. The scents were not of fruit and trees. It was the mahee. It was Darania’s earth and Cana’s drugs, it was Kiri’s wine and D’Argen’s ocean. It was every single scent in one, even those that did not belong in such a land. How D’Argen had never questioned it before still annoyed him. The scents were so strong that quite often the mortals could not survive in the area. They would get high on just the edges of the forest. The only time those scents waned were in the Spring and Autumn reaping, when Cana and her staff led the mortals into the forest to pick the fruits and trim the trees so they would not overgrow and break.
It was Cana’s scent that protected them.
D’Argen breathed in those scents now and suddenly felt a panic. They were not the same as the last time he was here. He could not say what exactly it was, but it felt like there was an additional layer over all the others and muted them more than ever before.
The sound of voices surprised D’Argen, but it was far enough away that he did not have to use his mahee to hide. They were too far for him to figure out what they were saying, but the fact that there was even someone close to him was enough to catch him off guard.
He had just thought that mortals would not be there. Or had Cana started the reaping earlier? The more he concentrated, the more D’Argen realized that he could feel the mahee all around him. It was in the forest, it was behind him back in Jiya, it was in the air. Where was Cana?
D’Argen walked closer to the voices, hiding behind the trees and shrubs around him, until he could see their source. There were four women, all of them barely dressed and sitting around a small natural pool of water. Two more were inside it and completely nude, but it was not their beauty or how much skin they showed that froze D’Argen in his steps.
They were doing magic.
D’Argen stared with wide eyes as one of the women inside the pool formed a sphere of water over the surface and tried to float it over to the other one. The sphere broke apart and the water fell before it could reach its target, but that only made all the women laugh.
“Not like that,” one of them said. “Move your hands like so.” D’Argen watched her demonstrate and felt his jaw relax as his mouth opened in wonder.
The shapes she was making with her fingers were not unknown to him. While he may not have picked up Mayan’s sign language so quickly, he could easily recognize the forms of it as so many were similar to the spells that he used on a regular basis. The same spells the mortals in front of him were using.
As the woman repeated the hand movements, another sphere rose from the pool and gently bobbed its way across the surface until it came to float right over her hands. Nocipel had taught that spell to every Never Born. Cana had been one of the few that got it working on the first try. D’Argen panicked.
He focused on each of their bodies, the few folds of wet fabric he saw, the collection of discarded clothes in a puddle, but he could not find any indication of the strange ore they had found in the north that allowed mortals to use magic. He closed his eyes and felt for each of the women, but they did not have a mahee inside them. He opened his eyes and searched them again, but there was nothing to indicate how exactly they were doing the magic. Nothing other than the elegant hand movements as they started passing the sphere of water back and forth between them all. It broke multiple times. They were not good enough at controlling it yet.
D’Argen closed his eyes and opened his mahee. He opened it as wide as he felt comfortable, releasing the scent of the ocean around himself and the women, as if he was getting ready to run. But he told his body to stay still.
When the first woman noticed the different scent, she tensed and quickly sat up from her lazy sprawl. Then so did the second and third. By the time his scent surrounded them all, the two women had scrambled out of the pool and collected their clothes to cover themselves. But not one of them seemed dizzy or overwhelmed by the scent. Not one of them seemed like they would enter that magical high that brought them closer to the skies.
“Who is there?” one of them called.
D’Argen opened his mahee wider and made his scent thicker.
“Salt? It reminds me of the ocean,” another one put a name to his mahee’s scent.
“Which one had that scent?” a third one reached for their pile of clothes and unearthed a bag. D’Argen opened his eyes just in time to see her pull out a small sheaf of papers bound together roughly with twine. He opened his mahee wider, but it made no difference.
D’Argen closed off his mahee and remained still. All of the women were getting dressed except for the one with the notebook. She leafed through it quickly as the others started searching around them.
“Ocean, ocean, ocean,” she kept repeating.
“Nocipel,” another one said. “This is his spell, to control water.”
“Ah!” suddenly all of them relaxed except one. She kept looking around the small clearing and for a moment too long she focused on where D’Argen was hiding, but her eyes moved on to a different spot and he let out a sigh of relief.
“Maybe because we were all using it?”
“It could be.”
“We would have to ask. Maybe the spell itself took on his scent to do so?”
“It makes sense… does it not?”
D’Argen walked away as quietly as he could, letting the conversation fade in the background. When he could no longer hear any voices, he dropped to sit on the ground and stared at it in wonder. Mortals. Using magic. It was unheard of.
Or at least it had been until that ore in the north had been discovered. But D’Argen easily recognized the spell they were using, he knew those hand movements and gestures, he knew that Cana loved her people, and he knew exactly what connections Acela would make. Cana had, somehow, figured out how to give the mortals access to magic.
D’Argen had to learn more.
He got up slowly and tried one of the concealment spells Tradiel had taught them. It made his cheekbones sharper, his lips fuller, his brow less pronounced, and hid the unnatural blue of his eyes. D’Argen untied and retied his hair in the same style he had seen one of the women have and then adjusted his robes to make it look like he had a cleavage. The spell could make his face appear more feminine, but it took too much concentration to change his entire figure.
By the time he made it back to the natural pool where the women had been, he looked as close to a mortal woman as he could. But by then, the women were gone. He searched the area and found impressions in the grass going away from where he had come from and decided to follow them.
Half a day to observe, he had told himself. He would not leave after barely an hour and without any more specific details. He followed the impressions until he lost them then continued in that same general direction until he found yet another surprise.
Deep in the Rainbow Forest and close to the still water that split in their continent in two, he found a small village. Not even a village, really. There were five huts, though all of them looked more like caves made of leaves and sticks with no doors or even curtains at their entrances. He recognized each of the women from the pool milling about, but there were also others with them. And all of them were using magic for simple tasks. They drew water from the river with the same spell he had seen earlier, started a fire with another spell, carried multiple baskets in the air with a third, and even used Abbot’s magic to give them bright light.
It was when a cool breeze was used to clean the dead leaves in front of one of the huts that something inside D’Argen snapped. He had never seen such simple magic performed for such pointless tasks.
He dropped the concealment spell and opened his mahee to run. As he ran, he spotted three more such small groupings and in each of them there was at least one person doing magic and none of the others made note of it. He finally stopped when he was standing knee-deep in the still water. There were a total of twelve groupings of small huts on the eastern bank that had mortals using magic. From where he stood, he could see at least two more on the western bank.
That made up more mortals that could use magic than there were Never Born alive. And although the spells they all used were simple and clumsy to perform, they were still using magic!
He started wondering how to report this without starting a war. Clearly, the mortals were hiding even from their own, though the groupings of huts were close to one another. It could have been a trial run for Cana, to see who could handle the magic, before introducing it on a larger scale. But this all meant that there was the possibility of there being more magic users in the future. And if Acela knew of this, at this time, she would most likely want to contain the experiment and ensure no mortal Queens or Kings knew of it.
On the other hand, it could be a solution to their problem. Cana may have found a way to share her mahee without actually sharing it, which was something D’Argen would have to check for himself. And if it worked both ways, it may give Acela the chance she wanted to create her own offspring and slowly replenish the ranks of the Never Born. Though they would no longer be called that if they had offspring of their own.
D’Argen felt hysterical laughter bubble up and had to cover his mouth with his hand. He was within sight of two of the villages and though he doubted they would notice him standing there in the water, he knew that any sound he made could draw unwanted attention. The laughter, however, kept building and building until he had to drop to his knees in the water and then plunge his head under the stream. The laughter came out as a scream. He cleared his head.
Once he resurfaced, he knew that he had to see Cana, even if she were not to see him. He had to feel her mahee and see what was happening, if she had broken a piece of herself to give to each of these mortals or if it was something else. He opened his mahee and pushed off, creating a tunnel in the stream of water and disturbing the fish before he ran through the forest and then outside of it towards Cana’s home.