8

A few people paused to look at her as she followed Kel through town, but no one bothered them. The washerwoman had reclaimed her stool and was now sitting on it while she peeled potatoes, her white eyebrows drawn into a scowl of disapproval as she watched Lyra walk by. Lyra scowled back at her, then jumped guiltily when Kel spoke.

“Your arrival frightened people a great deal. Can we expect others to arrive in the same way?”

“No,” she said. “Well, I don’t think so.” She thought of more people from her world showing up in this little village and couldn’t quite imagine it. “I don’t know how I got here, so I guess I can’t promise no one else will show up, but if they do, they’ll be confused. They’ll be scared if you walk toward them with a sword. They’ll probably freak out like I did.”

Now that she could talk to him and he had revealed himself to be a relatively sane-seeming person, she was no longer terrified of him like she had been at first, but he was still intimidating enough that when she glared pointedly at him, she kept her eyes on his shirt instead of his face.

“My apologies, priestess. We do not involve ourselves with the dealings of the powerful gods here in Kyokami. I hope you understand why we were wary. Why I remain wary, when you will not give me a straight answer on why you are here.”

“I don’t know why I’m here.” She took a deep breath. If she paused to look at the whole fiasco from his point of view and that of the locals, she could see why they were cautious of her. She would probably be cautious of someone who just appeared out of nowhere, and doubly so if she thought their presence was linked to a being like the grey woman only, from the sound of it, more powerful.

“Turn here,” he said, indicating a narrow path between two buildings to her left. She followed it, and found that beyond the row of buildings were neat farm plots, divided into about an acre each. Golden grain grew in rows that rippled like liquid in the faint, warm breeze. The footpath led between two fields, a narrow red dirt path that vanished into the dark shadows between the trees that the fields backed up to.

“We’re going in there?” she asked, giving the forest a wary look. It wasn’t quite as dark as it had looked yesterday evening, but the thick foliage didn’t let in much light. The leaves on the trees were dark green, with paler undersides that fluttered as the wind teased the higher boughs.

“The river is down the path a short distance. This is the route the people who live here take every day. It is safe.”

Sure enough, as she watched, a young man became visible further down the path, walking out of the shadow of the trees with two full buckets of water hanging from either side of a pole that was balanced across his shoulders. He kicked idly at rocks as he walked, and looked every bit the bored teenager and not at all worried that something was going to jump out of the trees and eat him.

Kel started walking again, and she followed him hesitantly. Maybe it was a bad idea to come out here with him alone. What sort of woman followed a strange man into a forest?

One driven by the thirst for both water and answers to her questions. Lyra had to remind herself she had no other options. It was follow Kel or head back to the temple, and he was still less intimidating than the grey woman was after that scene last night.

As they passed the young man, he gave Kel a respectful nod, then stared at her with naked curiosity until Kel grunted something at him and he dipped his head in respect before continuing on. The motion made some of the water splash out of the buckets and he cursed as he struggled to stop them from swinging.

At least he didn’t make that weird sign the old lady had made the day before, though. She wanted to know what that was about, but before she could ask Kel, he spoke.

“Are those with the holy blood not protected where you come from, priestess? I have rarely known your kind to be so… jumpy.”

“I don’t have ‘holy blood,’” she said, doing air quotes around the words. “I’m jumpy because I have no idea what the hell is going on, and I don’t know why everyone keeps calling me priestess.” Well, him and the grey woman. She hadn’t spoken to anyone else unless she counted Marid, and all they had gotten across was their names and the word for ‘cat.’

This time, Kel was the one who paused, stopping so abruptly she actually went on a couple of steps before she realized he had vanished from her peripheral vision.

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“You claim not to be a priestess?” he looked her up and down again, his brow furrowed as his eyes lingered on her tunic. “It is a sin to wear a priest or priestess’ tunic if you do not have the holy blood flowing through your veins. Towr is not yet faded enough to allow such blasphemy in her temple. You must be lying, but I fail to see why. Why wear the tunic if you wish to deny what you are?”

“I’m not lying,” she insisted. “I don’t even know what a priestess is! I’m not religious. She was the only one I could understand when I got here. She told me to put this clothing on. She called it the holy garb, and she said it would protect me when I left the temple.”

“You can see her?”

“Yes.” She paused. “Well, not right now, but when she’s around I can. Can’t you?”

He shook his head. His expression was less accusatory, but he still looked puzzled. “If you can see her, then you cannot deny that you are a priestess.”

“I’m not,” she insisted. “She keeps calling me that too, but I’m not. I never took any vows, or agreed to join any religion. I haven’t even gone to church in years!”

“Being a priest or a priestess is not about what you do, but what you are,” he said. “You are born to it, or you are not. And you were. Perhaps it is different where you come from, but here, your holy blood gives you all the rights and protections of your station, regardless of which tunic you wear. All paladins, including myself, are sworn to protect your kind above all else, and it is a sin for any man, woman, or child to knowingly harm you in any way. You have no need to fear anyone in this village, and little need to fear anyone outside of it.”

She held his gaze for a moment. He looked surprised, more than anything, as if he thought this was information everyone knew. She didn’t think he was lying, and she couldn’t see why he would make up a lie like that anyway. It was similar to what they grey woman had said, about the holy garb protecting her. Though she no longer trusted her, the fact that they seemed to agree on this matter was somewhat reassuring.

“I didn’t know,” she said quietly. “Thank you for telling me.”

He gestured, and they continued on, finally slipping into the cool shade under the trees. It was dark in the forest but, once her eyes adjusted, not as dark as she had feared. The sunlight that made it through the leaves far above created a dappled pattern on the forest floor. The trees looked old, with wide, gnarled trunks and roots that snaked through the fallen leaves and other debris.

“The river is not far,” he said. “Can you hear it?”

She wondered if he was as stumped about what to do with her as she was about what to do with herself. She knew she should rip the bandage off and tell him she was from another world, not just another country in his world, but it was a hard topic to broach.

Instead, she paused to listen. Past the sounds of insects and birds, she thought she could hear the whisper of flowing water. She hurried forward, practically jogging by the time the path started to slope down. At the bottom of the decline was a fast-flowing river, maybe six feet across. She hurried down the slope and onto the pebbled bank, pausing with her sandaled feet in the cold water.

“Is it safe to drink?” she asked, not sure what she would do if he said no.

“Safe enough,” was his response from where he trailed behind her.

Safe enough was good enough to her. She fell to her knees and started scooping water to her mouth, not even caring how desperate and crazy she probably looked. It must have been almost twenty hours since she last had something to drink by this point. She didn’t know if she had ever been so thirsty in her life.

When she rose to her feet a few minutes later, the knees of her trousers were soaking wet, but her mind felt much clearer. She hadn’t realized how much her thirst had been clouding her thoughts. Kel, who hadn’t come all the way down to the bank, was leaning against a tree with his arms crossed, watching her.

“You don’t know why you’re here or how you got here,” he said evenly. It wasn’t a question, but she answered anyway.

“I don’t. I just want to get home.”

“Where is your home? I have traveled extensively. I may know of it.”

“You won’t,” she said. “It’s—” She closed her eyes briefly in frustration as the words refused to come. “It’s in another world. That woman, the g-god, she took everything. I can’t remember the words for anything at home. I can’t remember what my country was called. But I know it’s further away from here than you could ever imagine.”

His eyes narrowed. “You claim to be from one of the other worlds that circles our sun?”

“No.” She gritted her teeth. She knew she had once had words for the concept she was struggling to explain, but for whatever reason, they hadn’t translated into Moldaran. “My world circled its own sun. Not this one. I don’t know how to get back. One second I was there, then I was here. Please. I don’t know anything about this place. We don’t have gods at home, at least not ones I could see. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I already messed up really badly once. I need your help.”

His expression remained inscrutable as he gazed at her. He didn’t have any reason to believe her, except she had appeared out of nowhere. While he hadn’t witnessed it himself, he didn’t seem to doubt what the others had told him.

“I will help you,” he said after a long moment. “As long as you swear you harbor no ill wishes for anyone in Kyokami.”

“Of course I don’t,” she said. “I promise, I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

He sighed. “Very well. I will take you to meet my sister and her husband. Mark my words, though; holy blood or not, if you bring harm to my family, I will kill you.”

Her skin prickled at the threat, but she scrambled to follow him up the bank as he turned back toward the village. At least she wasn’t thirsty anymore. She just hoped that whatever help he could give her was less of a double-edged sword than what the grey woman had offered.