Saia stopped talking; Aili already knew the rest of the story and Zeles had witnessed most of it.

“I’m sorry,” Aili murmured. “Now I understand why you didn't want to wait.”

Saia hugged her knees, looking at Zeles. His light was rotating slowly and he had yet to say a word.

“This is why I was asking all of those questions, back when I arrived,” she said. “But I couldn't find a way forward. You gave me hope again when you asked me for help and answered my questions about the gods. After joining the monks I felt like I could actually do something. It's my responsibility.”

“I see. Why didn’t you tell me any of that?”

“I didn't know what you thought of Vizena. And you were dying, I didn't want to give you another burden.”

“I would have helped you.”

“And wasted too much energy. I probably would have got us caught by the monks, because I just wasn't ready for something like what I'm about to do. But now I am. Are you going to help me?”

“Yes. At least I won't die like a coward.”

“You won't have to die. I told you I have a plan for that.”

“And what is it, exactly?” Aili asked.

“You'll just have to trust me.”

“You said that you needed my opinion about your plan. Maybe if you tell us what you mean to do, I could warn you about potential mistakes.”

Saia smiled.

“I’m pretty sure you would consider the whole thing a mistake.”

“That isn't reassuring.”

“There's no need for this,” Zeles said. “I don't want to get my hopes up. Me being afraid to die is the cause of all of our problems. It's time I accept with dignity that it will eventually happen.”

Saia shook her head.

“You didn't cause my problems. If anything, you gave me hope.”

He kept rotating in silence.

“Dan and Morìc are up,” Aili said. “They're waiting for you.”

Saia nodded. She reached out with both hands toward Zeles, stopping short of touching him.

“Can I put you in my bag?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?” She carefully picked him up. “It's full of snakes in there.”

He sighed.

“They're asking whether they’ll have to come here,” Aili said.

Saia put Zeles in her bag and stood.

“No, I'm going there.”

“Are they going to be part of the plan?” Zeles asked.

“Yes. They're going to help me get to Suimer.”

She kept quiet about what they'd have to do later. She'd have told them that part of the plan on the way, when Aili and Zeles couldn’t hear her.

She glanced at the street outside before leaving the house.

“Don't reveal too much,” Zeles said.

“Why?”

“They're not from here.”

She locked the door and started walking down the street.

“I know, they're from Izgos’s orphanage.”

“That's a cover-up story. They're not from the villages. They were brought here from the outside.”

Saia stopped in the middle of the empty road.

“So they're…”

“They're from outside the mountain. They were brought here from across the sea.”

Saia heard a sound coming from one of the houses around her and resumed walking.

“And the monks didn't notice?”

“No. It was during a violent storm. A man brought them here, asked me to take care of them and left. Morìc was about ten, Dan four.”

Saia thought of how they never talked about their past, how she'd never asked because she didn't ask about that sort of stuff.

“So that's why you don't trust them? Just because they're from the outside it doesn't mean they'll betray us.”

“I’m not worried about them, but I fear that one day whoever brought them here will come to take them back, and who knows what they could do with the information about the mountain.”

Saia nodded, trying to picture the mysterious people that lived beyond the sea.

“So I shouldn't tell them about you, right? And magic, monks and deities in general.”

“Exactly. Only the bare minimum for what they have to do. And don’t put them in danger.”

Saia mentally retraced the steps of her plan while she approached the house, the only one with light coming out of the windows. She felt uneasy asking for their help while keeping so many secrets to herself, but she’d have kept quiet anyway.

She knocked on the door, already smiling.

“Saia!” Dan greeted her, running past the open door to hug her.

Morìc appeared behind him, leaning with a shoulder against the doorframe, and greeted her with a wave and a lazy smile. She couldn't help but wonder how much he remembered of the world outside the mountain.

Dan let her go and pointed at the house.

“Come inside, we want to know everything.”

Saia followed him into the living room, or as she called it, the carpet room. Dan led her to a chair that had just been freed by the clutter, judging by the small pile of rolled carpets at its feet.

She sat down, while Dan occupied the sofa and Morìc the bench in front of the loom.

“So,” Dan began, hunching forward until his elbows were on his thighs. “What do you need help with?”

Saia knew they didn’t have enough time for a complete summary of the situation, so she repeated a more heartfelt version of the speech she’d made when she’d told the monks about Vizena. She mentioned what the goddess had done to the people she knew, how dangerous she was, and ended with her mistake and its consequences. The boys' serious expressions told her they understood just how bad the situation was.

“…and tonight I'll get rid of her. Any questions?”

“Yes," Dan said. “How can we help?”

She looked at his brother and waited for him to nod before answering.

“First of all, we'll need a boat…”

The water slid pleasantly around the hull as Saia rowed forward. Lausune’s people had begun to trust Koidan again after Aili had told them that everything would have gone back to normal and the monks had left. It hadn’t been difficult for her to convince a fisher to lend them his boat.

She glanced back at the two boys behind her. Dan was sitting in the center, on a tall heap of coiled rope, while Morìc rowed behind him, following her lead. He wasn't good at it, Dan wasn't strong enough, and that was why they had brought the rope. But it wasn't yet the moment to think about that.

In place of the border, four white rocks were surfacing from the water, perfectly aligned with the line of white stones that was traced on the beach. As soon as they were past them, Saia started explaining the second part of her plan, whispering over the gentle splashing of the waves.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Short after she had finished, they approached Tilau’s four rocks, which meant they were about to enter Dore's territory. If for any reason the monks still investigating there had awakened him, he would have stopped them immediately. Saia slowed down the boat as much as she could, holding her breath, thinking that if she was the only one being captured, Dan and Morìc could at least escape.

They crossed completely without hearing anyone's voice. Saia let her breath go in a sigh and resumed rowing, faster now, to get the boat as far from the beach as she could before it gave way to the village. They saw the lanterns of the monks from afar, their silhouettes pacing back and forth on the streets.

“What happened?” Dan whispered.

“Tilau’s situation is similar to ours a few weeks ago. Their god can’t tend to them properly right now."

She rowed closer to the southern docks and slowed down. The light of the lanterns was thick in that area, it was impossible to get closer without the monks that were holding them noticing the boat.

“Fallback plan,” she said, and started rowing forward and away from the docks.

The village’s southern shore was mostly straight, but it made a wide curve at the end, where the external forest started. The dark shapes of its trees were all Saia could see at the horizon. It kept going toward the open sea for nobody knew how many towerlengths and disappeared in the distance.

She approached the dark shape of the forest, straining her eyes to see a place in which they could dock. She saw a thin strip of land weakly glinting in the moonlight, so she steered in its direction, hoping it was a beach.

“I’m asking one last time: are you sure you're okay with this? We'll keep close to the border, but nobody knows what's out there.”

“Heck yeah!”

“What he said,” Morìc added, clearly trying to hide the heavy breathing that came with all that rowing.

Saia nodded and kept going until the water seemed shallow enough. She jumped down and gestured for Morìc to help her push the boat to shore. Their boots splashed in the water, protecting them from potential snakes. Saia expected the boat to slide smoothly onto the sand, but she heard the hull scrape against something instead. They stopped, eyes wide in the dark. Saia moved her feet and felt small pebbles underneath her boots.

“We need to carry it,” she whispered.

Morìc nodded and nudged his brother.

“Take the rope and get down.”

He obeyed, heaving the rope over his shoulder. They both looked at Saia.

“How do we get it up?”

She showed them. It took them three tries, but in the end Saia and Morìc were holding it over their shoulders and Dan was stabilizing it with his hands. They stepped forward until they were surrounded by vegetation, then Saia took out the torch from her bag and let Dan light it. The trees became alive with shadows.

“We'll go left until we see the border, then decide whether to enter the village from there or cross to the northern docks.”

They both agreed. Saia started walking, slightly inclined to balance the boat on her shoulder. The hull bumped and scraped everywhere as they went. She held back the swearing.

The trees were different from the ones of the internal forest that grew on the flanks of the mountain. They were taller, with larger leaves and branches that were sparse at the base and crowded at the top. She saw the scaffolding of flat mushrooms on the side of some of the trunks. She had expected the trees to be closer to each other, but there was a lot of space, mostly covered on the ground by bushes that kept making her stumble. But she maintained her gaze fixed toward Tilau, ready to hide the torch as soon as she saw the lights of the monks in the distance.

She didn't expect to see a whole line of them, glinting among the trees. She quickly passed the torch to Dan, who let go of the boat to extinguish it.

“What's that?” someone said in a whispered shout.

“What?”

“Too late, it went away. You weren't paying attention.”

Saia stopped advancing: there was a whole line of monks just a step behind the white stones. Half of them were looking toward the forest, the others toward the village. There were four arms of space between one sentinel and the other, and the line kept going as far as Saia could see. It was impossible to slip past them unnoticed.

“They can't wake up Dore soon enough,” another voice said.

Now they were talking with a normal tone that seemed excessively loud in the middle of the night, probably to give each other courage and scare whatever creature might approach from the trees. Saia looked around, wondering whether the external forest had boars.

“What was that thing that you saw?” the second monk asked.

“A light? It was moving between the trees, so I'm not sure.”

Saia started to walk back, gesturing for Morìc to do the same. They managed to retreat without bumping into anything.

“Yeah, I'm not going out there to check,” another one said.

She slowly turned, paying attention to the stern of the boat, and resumed walking. She bumped against two trees on her way forward before finding a path between them, and both times she heard the monks' voices, even if she couldn't understand the words anymore. She guided the group some steps deeper into the forest, until the lights of the monks weren't visible anymore, then asked Dan to light the torch again.

“What now?” he whispered as he handed it back.

Saia raised the light over her head, careful not to get it too close to either the trees or the boat. She could hear some insects making a sound similar to the call of a frog and a cicada together.

“We’ll cross the forest,” she said. “Look for a beach on the other side and then row toward the northern docks.”

She could tell by their silence that they didn't like the idea. She didn't want to force them to go forward: Morìc was barely an adult and Dan still a teen, and even if they had agreed to help her, she didn't want to risk something happening to them.

“If you want to go back, I'll find another…”

A long wail in the forest at their right made her freeze.

“Let's keep going,” Morìc said, a sudden urgency in his voice.

Saia felt the boat push against her shoulder as he started walking, and she had to move not to lose her balance. She remembered Koidan's warning about the two brothers.

“Do you know what that is?” she asked, trying to sound casual instead of scared to death.

“I’ve read about it. Shouldn't be a problem if it doesn't find us.”

“Don't be evasive. What is it, Morìc?”

There was a bit of silence, then the beginning of a wail.

“A plant,” he said, a bit too loud.

Saia frowned, navigating her way around another trunk.

“They eat cows and sheep,” Morìc added, panting a bit. “And people, sometimes.”

Saia nodded, looking up at the trees.

“What do they look like?”

“I’ve only read about them, never seen one. They can take a lot of different shapes, but they are similar to animals.”

“Which animals? Pigs, donkeys?”

“I don't know.”

Another, closer wail made them accelerate, the boat bumping and scraping against every trunk and branch. Saia feared that the light could make them easily detectable, but the fire could also be a good weapon against that particular enemy. The wail was terrifying, but she didn't feel particularly scared of facing a fangless, slow-moving plant, as creepy as it might look like.

That feeling changed when she felt a rustling at her right and raised the torch to see: a mass of leaves as big as a goat was slithering towards them, fast like a merchant ship with sails unfurled.

There was a portion of the shapeless mass of leaves that protruded forward, away from the body. It opened, showing insides of pointy branches jutting out like broken bones, oozing amber liquid. She knew enough of snake venom to imagine that touching it might cause a painful death.

The creature was moving faster than they could run with a boat on their shoulders. The shadows running on its surface revealed at least three legs made of multiple branches spiraling around each other.

“Put it down,” she shouted, not caring anymore whether the monks could hear her.

They slammed down the boat on one side and knelt behind it, using it as a shield. Saia put the arm holding the torch on top of the curving flank of the hull and moved it from side to side, hoping to scare the creature before it got too close.

"What do we do?" Dan yelled.

There was a slam against the boat and a scraping sound. The creature wailed again, startling Saia. The scratching continued, approaching the stern where she was crouching. She opened the bag with the hand that wasn’t holding the torch. The only thing she saw were snakes, carefully tangled in an apparently casual way. She didn't want to destroy Aili's work, but she didn't see another solution that would take less than two seconds.

She chose one of the most external snakes and extracted it with her bare fingers. She awakened it, keeping its head closed, and waited for the scratching sound to approach the end of the hull. As soon as she saw the protruding head of the creature, she tossed the snake toward it. It bit into a wooden leg, hitting the leaves with the rest of its body. The creature was eerily still, devoid of any reaction a normal animal might have. It wailed again, and Saia instinctively stepped back, bumping into Dan. She glanced at the terrified boys behind her and raised the torch in front of herself.

“If it attacks, run.”

But the creature's head snapped down, and if it had eyes it would be looking at the snake. The mouth of pointy branches and amber resin opened and closed around its body. It tore it away from the wood and engulfed it, ignoring the furious bites against twigs and leaves until the head disappeared inside the creature’s body.

Saia retracted some more, realizing she was the next victim. But the three branches retreated under the leaves of the main body, the head lowered again and the whole creature stood motionless on the ground. Saia kept staring at it, knowing that if she adverted her eyes for a moment and looked at it again, it would have just seemed like a regular bush.

She suddenly became aware of just how many trees were surrounding them.

“Is it dead?” Dan asked.

“No,” Saia said. “Let's go, before something else finds us.”

They carefully heaved the boat over their shoulders, almost dropping it twice because everyone's eyes were on the carnivore plant hidden in plain sight. The creature didn't move for the whole time, so they left as quickly as they could, expecting a wail from behind them at every step.

“That didn’t look like any animal I know,” Saia commented once they were close to the end of the forest, but Morìc didn’t answer.

They left the trees and stopped on top of a heap of big rocks. Dan explored the area, looking for a place that was close enough to the water. Meanwhile, Saia and Morìc tried to gauge how many guards were near the northern docks. Judging by the lights, only three. Probably because Vizena's territory hadn't been implied in Zeles's disappearance, so they didn't fear any trespassing from that side. Still, they were a problem if they wanted to dock the boat.

“Give me your tunic,” Morìc said. “I’ll distract them.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded.

“The torch, also.”

Saia shrugged and took off the tunic, remaining in a shirt and loose knee-length pants.

“I’ll need it later.”

“I’ll bring it back,” Morìc said, putting it on.

Saia helped him with the laces, then watched him disappear beyond the rocky shore, wading through the water so that the monks along the border couldn't see him enter the village, one hand keeping the tunic from being submerged.

“I found it,” Dan whispered, startling her.

They pushed the boat down toward a short beach, making it slide on grass and rocks, uncaring of the sound as long as the whole operation went by quickly. They rowed toward the docks, looking at the three lights of the sentinels. A fourth one reached them. Saia held her breath until they left together toward the left side of the village.

She rowed as fast as she could, only marginally helped by Dan's efforts to keep up. They managed to stop the boat at one of the docks, next to another fishing boat. Saia tied one side of the rope to a pole, the other to the stern, making several loops around both. She assessed her work with some tugs, hoping the boys remembered how to untie the knots in case something didn't go as expected. She took a deep breath and looked at Dan, sitting in the boat and hidden by the dark.

“I’m leaving. Please take care of yourselves.”

“Go kick her ass,” Dan whispered.

She smiled and started walking away. She climbed the stairs that connected the docks to the village. There was a folded gray tunic at the top. She looked around, but the street was desert. She put it on with a shrug, checked one last time that everything inside the bag was more or less in the right place, then walked toward the line of white stones.