“Miiya, Miiya.”

The voice was eons away, and within touching distance. Miiya didn’t want to respond to it. She didn’t want to give up the clouds and return to earth.

Not with this burden.

“Miiya! Please. What am I to do?”

The desperation in that voice was a noose. It caught her and yanked her back to earth, away from the sun and the wind, away from a world of freedom where she was responsible for nothing and cared for no one.

She opened her eyes.

Cillo crouched over her, his face curdled with fear. His lips moved, mumbling something indistinct.

She said, “I’m fine, Cillo,” but no words came out of her mouth; only a guttural sound.

Cillo cried, a sound with no word.

Miiya tried to smile, but her lips wouldn’t obey her. So she lifted her arm and touched the face bent over her, feeling the wetness on the cadaverous cheek. Cillo caught her hand in his. She closed her eyes, a part of her still trying to resist the pull of the earth.

Fingers, calloused but gentle, were chafing her hands, rubbing her cheeks. The concern in that touch was a beacon, showing her the way back. She opened her eyes and tried to turn her head, but her neck was too stiff. “Jubi? Seedevii”

“Both are fine, Jubi’s still sleeping.” Cillo’s voice had regained its usual cheerful timbre. He helped her to sit up. “What can I get you, Miiya? Food? I’ve made some…”

“Water.”

He hurried stumbling in his eagerness. Cillo being Cillo. A deep wave of affection washed over her.

Cillo had to hold the cup for Miiya; her hands still felt like wings and her fingers claws. She drank the water and sat back, trying to accustom her mind to life on the ground.

“I thought you were gone, Miiya.”

Miiya shook her head and managed a smile. “Cillo. I need to talk to you.”

He held out the dish to her. “First you must eat.”

The vision filled her mind, meat, raw, dripping with blood.

You are doing this to me. Her voice was acidic with anger.

The bird’s laughter was like a million pins inside her head. No, you see with my eyes. Are grains nice?

The food looked like sand, like mud. She resisted the urge to throw it away.

The first mouthful was a struggle; the taste of grains and fruit was unfamiliar and unpleasant; it made her gag. She wanted to spit it out, to fly away from this dark hole, roam the skies, feed her hunger with flesh, succulent and meaty, tearing it with her beak...

The final thought was like a bucket of icy water. She took deep breaths, focusing her mind on the inhaling and the exhaling. Breath by conscious breath, the need to kill and the mental visions of bloody flesh faded away. She began to feel less like a predatory bird, more like herself. The grains were nice. So were the fruits. She ate them all, scraping the bowl clean with a finger and then licking it. The earth ceased feeling unfamiliar; she was no longer a creature of the sky and the wind.

Cillo was sitting across her, watching her with fascination. “Is it hard, coming down to earth?”

“Strange.” Her eyes moved to Jubi’s still form.

Cillo flashed a reassuring smile. “She’s still sleeping. But we will continue to speak in Sammalorian.”

Miiya nodded, bracing herself. “Jubi’s father is alive.”

A spark of joy lit up Cillo’s face from within. Then the spark died, slowly. “Jubi’s father being alive is not a good thing, is it, Miiya, going by your manner?”

She shook her head. Words were hard to find.

“But I don’t see how-”

“The Tailosii.”

“that could be…” Cillo stopped, wrinkling his brow. “What?”

“The Tailosii, spiritless bodies that do whatever they are told to do, endure whatever they are ordered to endure.”

Cillo’s looked as if she was talking in a language he knew nothing about.

Miiya clicked her tongue. “Haven’t you ever heard or read of the Spiritless Ones?”

“The Human Husks? Of course, I’ve heard the stories. There’s even a song parents sing to children at bedtime. Mine did to me, you know, warning me that if I’m bad, the Human Husks will come and get me and suck my spirit out...” Cillo stopped as if words were choking him. He tried to speak but only a rattling sound came out of his wide open mouth.

“You would have come across the story in your studies, Cillo, that more than a millennium ago, King Alikana of the Empire of the Rising Moon tried to create an army of Tailosii?”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Cillo opened his mouth, but no words came out. Only a guttural sound.

Miiya continued, needing to fill the void around her with sound. “According to legend, the first Tailosii was a horse made of bronze, by a mage who was also a mechanist. Rather like our mechanical birds, but with more power. Imagine such an animal. He would be able to do bear great loads, move much faster, travel great distances, be invaluable in any war. He wouldn’t be tired. He’d be immune to weather, climatic changes and weapons. He wouldn’t need food or water or sleep. Alikana got the idea from that. Fortunately he was defeated before he could go far down that road. The knife used for the ritual was hidden in the ice-wastelands of the North by Witch Koomari.”

Cillo was shivering so much, she could hear the sound of his teeth rattling.

“Iretsa must have found the knife. Anyway, the people taken from Draca are turned into Human Husks.”

Cillo groaned.

“Remember Jubi told us that only the young and the well-formed are taken in the Silver Carriage and the old and the ill are generally spared?” Cillo nodded; or perhaps the nod was really a shudder. “Iretsa turns those young people into Tailosii. He absorbs the years remaining to them and their strength.”

Cillo gulped again and managed to find his voice, a frog’s croak. “How can such things be possible?”

“With human beings, anything is possible, both the bad and the good,” Miiya’s voice was arid. “He wants to prolong his life, yes, at least until he can sire an heir. Jubi mentioned that Draca was afflicted by a great sickness but couldn’t give any details, because it had happened long before she was born. I have since discovered that this sickness devastated parts of the archipelago and affected even the coastal cities, though to a much lesser degree. In the popular parlance it was called the child-killer. It didn’t kill children, but it destroyed the ability to beget them.” She unclenched her hands. “Iretsa obviously afflicted and lost the ability to sire a living child.”

“So he came up with this plan?” Cillo sounded as if he was beset by an army of monsters. “But how could he? What kind of mind can conceive something so horrendous?”

Miiya shrugged. “Power does strange things to people, Cillo.”

“What happened to Jubi’s father? You said he’s alive. So he can’t be a Tailosii?”

Miiya nodded. “He has met with a worse fate. He is now a minister to the king. And he is helping the king to turn other humans into Tailosii.”

The silence carried the weight of hills. So did Cillo’s despairing voice.

“I want to ask you whether you are certain. I want to convince myself you have made a mistake, that something so horrible cannot possibly happen.” His eyes clung to hers, his gaze pleading. When she said nothing, he sighed. “But I won’t.”

“I’ve seen him in her memories, Cillo, when I was taking her nightmares away. In the memories he is lean, his face creased with worry lines. Now the worry lines are gone, his face is plump, like the rest of him. He is dressed in rich clothes, like the minister he has become. But it is the same man, right down to the limp.”

Cillo groaned. Sweat poured down his face in rivulets, even though the cave was cold.

“I suppose Jubi’s father was told that Jubi would be brought to the castle and turned into a Tailosii, if he didn’t cooperate. That seems to be the way they operate when they want to recruit a new human servant. He would have gone through hell at first, but now he seems resigned to what he has become.”

The bird’s voice was brittle. Don’t be a sentimental fool. He is more than resigned. He is enjoying the power he has. He might have been a victim once. But now he is a monster. If you ask me, he’ll sacrifice his daughter to keep what he has gained.

Miiya resisted the urge to scream at the bird. He was probably right.

“Your bird says Jubi’s father likes being in a position of power.”

Cillo’s gaze moved from Miiya to the bird and back, with wide-eyed amazement. “Seedevii is still inside your head?”

“The mental affinity between him and me will continue for a while more. And his judgment is correct. His mind is not clogged with sentiment, as mine seemed to have become.”

Cillo winced. “So Jubi’s father is one of the monsters?”

She sighed. “I’d better tell you what I saw and heard. Then perhaps you will understand better. We need to decide what to do, Cillo. I must do the right thing as a witch, but I don’t want to do the wrong thing by Jubi.”

Cillo nodded, his face ashen. As she spoke, he sat with his back to the cave wall, as if he was carved out of the same rock. Only his face mirrored the agony he was experiencing.

“I think we need to get out of here, Miiya.”

She nodded. She needed to warn, seek counsel, consult; the world must know what was happening in Draca. Iretsa must be stopped, the way Alikana was. “I think at first all Iretsa wanted was to stay alive and young until he had an heir. But at some point things changed, or so I surmise. The king, and perhaps even his courtiers, became addicted to the idea of deathlessness. Longevity stopped being the means to an end and became an end in itself. Likewise the creation of the Tailosii. At first they were merely a by-product. Then they became a convenience. Now they are a necessity. I believe that…”

The dragonfly-buzzard flew at her shrieking. The words tore into Miiya’s mind. She’s listening.

Miiya didn’t realize she had echoed the bird’s warning shriek out loud, until her voice died down.

“I was listening.” Jubi spoke haltingly in Sammalorian, her grammar not quite correct, her pronunciation a bit awry. Her voice was deadly calm. “So Papa is alive. Tell me more about him.”

Miiya ignored the anguished look in Cillo’s eyes. Truth and nothing but the truth was her best option. It was her only option.

She repeated the story she told Cillo, in Common Speech. Jubi sat as still as Cillo had done, her face a mask of polite interest. Occasionally she shivered, as if chilled by a wind that blew only for her.

Miiya’s words were followed by a silence as oppressive as the Mere outside.

“I’d like to talk to Papa.”

Miiya had expected this request.

“I understand your desire to talk to your father, Jubi. And I’ll make sure you have the chance to do so, though not immediately. First let me make another visit to that place, early tomorrow morning. I’ll find out more details, including about how best you can get into the Castle.”

“Why must you wait till tomorrow morning?”

“The bird is weary and so am I. In any case, he’s not a nocturnal bird.”

“There is no point in you going there again, Miiya. I must talk to Papa. He’ll listen to me.”

Stupid girl.

Miiya looked at the dragonfly-buzzard. The bird was glaring at Jubi.

Cillo spoke before Miiya could. “Listen to me, Jubi-girl. You can’t just walk into that place, have a long conversation with your father and walk out with him. Let Miiya go again and find out more about this place.”

A flash of rebellious anger swept across Jubi’s face. It was gone in a second replaced by emptiness. Miiya waited for tears or even a temper tantrum. There was nothing.

Cillo moved towards Jubi, and stopped as if confronted by a barrier. Miiya studied the young woman. There was something different about her, an air of remoteness. Miiya could have dealt with screams and tears, not this seemingly calm acceptance of the unbearable.

Cillo said, “Everything will work out in the end, Jubi-girl.” But his voice lacked its usual ebullience.

Jubi didn’t look at him. Her eyes were on the rock wall of the cave, her expression mirroring the wall, blank and hard.

The evening was a silent one. Jubi busied about, cleaning the cave, getting a meal together. Miiya ventured out into the Forest, to fetch water from a nearby stream and to check the spell cover over the cave. It held for now.

They ate early. When the meal was over, Jubi asked Miiya for some nidra, the first words she had spoken all evening.