12

WATERFALL LUNCHEON

🙜

When Ember lay down to rest, he wished for dreams to overtake him. But none did, and what little slumber he’d gotten passed like the blinking of an eye: he fell asleep to Ky’s restful humming and the creatures of the night skittering around them, and woke to morning birdcalls and sunlight glowing on the backs of his eyelids.

Can’t go back, was his first grim thought.

The fishing spear was still clenched in his hand, and when he let go his fingers cramped. He lay there for a moment, massaging some circulation back into his hand.

I might never see Isabel again, he realized, a sudden sense of loss overtaking him again. Nor any of the other farmers, and their wives, and children…

In that moment, he noticed he was wrapped very snugly in a blanket. It had (at some point in the night) been fastidiously tucked underneath him, all the edges poked under his legs and torso and bundled around his feet in a sort of cocoon.

He opened his eyes.

The sideways vision smeared slightly, and then brightened enough for him to see where he was. Not safe and snug at home in his cabin, but in the woods in the middle of a sunlit clearing.

A clearing which smelled of crushed flower petals.

Ember sat up, scrubbing at his face. His eyes were swollen and crusty, and his hair was all askew and full of tree needles. A faint rustle drew his attention to the edge of the clearing and he saw Ky Veli sitting with her back to him, delicately picking items out of his basket and placing them in the dried summer grass.

“What are you doing?”

Her head snapped around.

The jar of honey fell to the ground with a dull thud and she simply stared at him with her fathomless black eyes. Then she lifted the basket, turned it upside down, and shook it slightly as if to ensure there was nothing else inside.

“You make this?” she asked, her voice a balm to his raw nerves.

Grunting, Ember stood and shook out the blanket, flinging bits of grass and dirt every which way. “Yes… it’s time-consuming, but not difficult.”

“Ah!” Ky traced a finger over the woven reeds. “You are very clever.”

Ember gave her a weary glance before returning his focus to the blanket; he folded it in squares, rolled it up neatly, then knelt and began to gather into a little pile all the items she had discarded.

She regarded him for a moment, and then ducked her gaze, tracing the woven handle with a finger.

“Very clever,” she murmured, as if reassuring herself of it.

Wordless, he extended a hand.

Ky blinked down at the basket, and then set it gently on the ground without looking up. She was, he thought, disappointed that her compliment had failed to elicit any response.

Ember tugged the basket a bit closer, tossing the blanket into it. Then he began to replace all the items which Ky had plucked out. He paused when he got to the bread; his stomach gurgled. Sighing, he flicked away a greedy ant, tore off a little piece, and offered it to her.

“Are you hungry?”

A pair of bulbous eyes flickered up to his, and she delicately pinched the piece of bread in two fingers. Her stare was piercing and suspicious—a question with no words.

Then she crammed the bread into her mouth and stood suddenly.

“We must leave now.”

Ember took two large bites, slinging the basket over his arm and stumbling to his feet. “Right… your door in the mountain…”

“It is not my door,” she corrected him. “It is the mountain’s door.”

He paused, thinking. “Is it a door that leads into the mountain?”

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“You will see.”

“You keep saying that,” Ember muttered, snatching up his fishing spear. “What kind of door is it, and why do you need to open it?”

She was already trotting off toward the road.

“I think,” she called over her shoulder, “that is a song best left for walking, and not standing.”

Ember sighed and hurried after her.

As they stepped onto the overgrown wagon ruts, he couldn't help glancing up at the two craggy peaks, which appeared far closer than they had the previous night. They glared down at him in the morning sunlight, patterns of melting snow forming strange shapes on their faces. A wispy cloud rolled below the mountain, weaving in and out of the foothills and obscuring any paths that might be seen from this distance. He wondered what it would be like to be walking there instead of wandering along the flat stretch of the road—up in the heights, where the trees were sparse and the cliffs very sheer.

He resisted the temptation to glance back over his shoulder to see if any smoke still lingered above the trees. If he kept his gaze straight ahead, he could almost forget what had happened.

"The door," he prompted. "Where does it lead?"

Ky responded to his question with a question of her own. "What songs do you sing among yourselves about the mountain with two heads?"

He shrugged, yawning so hard his eyes watered. "You heard what I said before, didn’t you? People get lost up there and never return. The ones who do say it's a cursed mountain, teeming with ghosts and goblins and the like."

"Goblins?"

"Nasty things. Never seen one, but some of the villagers swear they pilfer their crops…" He trailed off, thinking of some of the stories he'd heard in the tavern and feeling a pang in his chest. The memory caught under his ribs, pained him for a moment, and then faded as he let out a deep sigh. "They're like river-folk, I suppose, but not nearly so beautiful, and I've never heard a story where they sing."

"They do not sound at all like river folk," she said primly, plucking an unfortunate beetle that had landed on her shoulder and popping it into her mouth. She crunched on it for a few seconds, swallowed, then added, "And they do not exist."

"They don't?"

Ky shrugged. "If such a creature lives, I will be seeing it."

That caught his attention. "What makes you say that?"

"I live many summers." The siren held up all ten fingers, then closed her hands into fists and opened them up again. She did this ten times, and then held up two fingers.

Ember stared at her in disbelief. "One hundred and two?"

"I am young."

That stumped him for a few minutes. Then he ventured, "That's old. I heard of a woman who lived to be one hundred and eighty-five, but she died blind and toothless. Most of us don't live past one hundred."

Ky tilted her head. "How old are you?"

He hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck. It made him feel suddenly vulnerable in light of her own age. "Twenty-one…"

"Hmm."

"If I'm lucky I'll live a hundred years—supposing this venture doesn't kill me first." He squinted down at her. "How long will you live?"

"I do not know," she said. "Would you like to hear my story about the mountain now?"

He was under the impression that she was eager to change the subject, but he found the mountain of equal interest, and did not press her. "Yes, of course."

"Very good!" She clapped her hands once, grinning at him, and hopped a step. "The Sisters are hollow."

Ember stifled another yawn. "Hollow?"

"Yes!" She pointed at both peaks, singling out the taller one first. "Men live in that mountain long ago."

He smirked a little, slinging the spear across his back. "Goblins, you mean."

"No! Men like you!"

Of all the rumors he had heard about the Sisters, that surprised Ember the most. The farmers he had spoken with made no mention of anyone dwelling there aside from mischievous sprites and goblins—which were, according to them, as plentiful there as rabbits were in the lowlands.

"Men lived there," Ember repeated, struck cold by the idea. "How can you be sure?"

"These tales pass out of your reckoning, but my people remember, and we tell stories about it."

Hunter's words returned to him: They're obsessed with mankind, you know.

"You do?"

"Yes. Men are familiar with magic, once.”

"We were!" Ember exclaimed, thoroughly interested.

"Now you are simple creatures," she sniffed, "but once men hear the music in the earth as I do, and understand it. And the ones who live before you capture it and fashion it into many wonderful things."

Ember could hardly even imagine this to be true, but if the sirens lived to be older than one hundred, they would naturally remember more than men about centuries past. So he asked, "What sort of things?"

"You will not understand them," she said loftily, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye and lifting her chin. He felt rather offended, but also wondered if the remark was a front for her own ignorance. "There is no magic left in your people, but there is magic in the mountain. Beautiful things are hidden there."

"And what do you want with these 'beautiful things'?" he challenged. "What right to them do you have? If this… mountain really belongs to men, shouldn't men decide what to do with it?"

She snuck a few wilted leaves out of his basket and munched on them, savoring each bite. "That is why you are here," she explained around a cheekful of greens.

"But you've tried to get in before," Ember surmised, peering hard at her. "On your own."

She hummed evasively.