Go forth, little wild creature, and dance in the light of Mother Moon without trepidation. Matreus made you to be free; this is the heart of nature, and comprises all souls.
-The Twenty-Nine Mysteries, Book 1
Island of Ka’Anui, Grand Archipelago
“Hurry, sister,” said Akona. “They aren’t far behind!”
Akona led her sister by the hand through the steamy tropical jungle of Ka’Anui. Running through the humid heat made her sweat, and her footfalls awakened old pains from her injuries fleeing Grackenwell into the Zan desert. Somehow, it all still hurt deep down. She carried the weight of their whole journey in her legs. It was almost too much to bear—almost. The threat of what would happen if they stopped gave her bottomless stores of energy. If their Grackenwelsh pursuers caught up to them, death would be a coveted mercy.
“Do you have it?” Styri asked.
“Only one. I don’t want to get close enough... to be able to use it, either.” She cast a glance over her shoulder—there they were. But the twins were putting some distance between them. “Have to make it count, if I do.” At these speeds, sprinting through the uneven terrain choked with tropical plants and bare tree roots, fleeing the fate at their heels, she was already out of breath. Akona yearned for home. She yearned for rest. She was too young to feel this weary of the world and all she’d seen of it.
“Come back!” a man shouted through the palms. He sounded half-entertained, half-enraged. “...just want to talk with you!” She couldn’t make out all his words in the dense jungle, but there was no need.
“Can we set sail in time?” Styri asked. “Before they catch up, I mean?” Akona didn’t answer right away. “...We are headed back to the boat... aren’t we?”
“Eventually.”
Styri grumbled. “Lost your way? Again?! Akona, now is not the time—”
“I got you out of there! You were frozen! Remember? There was no time to find my way, all right? We’d just seen a man killed, and they were going to...” Akona had half a mind to break down crying, overwhelmed by their escape and the perils of their journey and now her sister berating her, of all people. But there wasn’t time. Instead, she just scoffed. “We’ll make our way back to the boat. First we follow the river. We lose them. The sound will confuse them, make us harder to track. Then we make our way back to the boat.” She thought about their bags full of fruit that they left behind. “And just pray that we can survive the voyage at sea. Maybe we could fish?”
Akona could make out the sound of the waterfall growing steadily louder. Before it had been a whisper of sound in the background, but now the rushing water dampened many of the noises around them. It would be the perfect cover to slip away in another direction. The slavers would never be able to catch up—not until it was too late, when they were both long gone.
“This is foolish,” Styri whined. “Why are we wasting our breath? This is the gods’ punishment on us! Everywhere we go, the whole known world, someone’s chasing us. First it was the spies. Now the slavers. Will Myrenthos even be safe for us? If those spies got word back to Qarda about Hessandra’s betrayal, how much longer until they invade our land again? Will we even have a home waiting for us after all this?”
“Stop. You mustn’t think like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not true!”
Styri yanked her hand free of Akona’s grasp. She reached to grab it again, to keep pulling her along, but Styri evaded her. “I’m done running!”
“No, you’re not.”
“I am! Whatever awaits us, can it be so much worse than—”
“Yes! Yes, Styri, it can!” Akona was deadly serious now. She had to be, as their lives literally depended on their escape. “Don’t you trust me anymore?” Now it was Styri who didn’t answer, folding her arms and averting her gaze. “After all we’ve been through? We promised Mother we’d make it back home safe and sound. Qarda’s in shambles—as it should be. There won’t be another invasion. Our journey isn’t over, but we’re closer than we’ve ever been!”
“The Great Unknown is still out there.” Styri cocked her head, listening for any sign of their pursuers. “We won’t make it. There’s no way. And with no food?”
“Do you think coming from that castle in Qarda to this island was an easy feat?” Styri shook her head, and Akona smirked. “Do you think toppling the greatest empire in the world was easy? No. But we did it. And we’ll do this, too.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Akona held out her arm. “As long as there’s breath in us, we have a chance. We can keep fighting to return home. Promise me that you won’t give up on me now. Not after how far we’ve come. The things we’ve had to do. Promise me you won’t stop fighting to survive, no matter what happens.” She brandished her arm impatiently for Styri to complete their secret handshake. “I need you to promise me!”
Finally, Styri hooked her arm around hers. They squeezed to seal their word. “Promise.”
***
“We begin with our forms,” said the glademother. She was tall and bottom-heavy, streaks of red dye in her chestnut hair. “First through third. Go.” The woman was in her late twenties, Akona knew, but at Akona’s age, anything past twenty was old. The glademother wasn’t quite very old yet, but she was still old. “First... Then into second... Good. Styri, mind your stance. And finally, into third. Well done.”
Akona stood with twenty-eight other girls about her age, as well as the glademother, out in the training meadow. There were only a few white wisps of clouds along the horizon. The early summer sun was warm. Butterflies kept their distance from the girls, flitting from flower to flower in search of nectar. A fat bumblebee dove headfirst between the petals of one flower, its hairy little legs scrambling to pull itself out, and Akona tried not to let it distract her. She focused on obeying the glademother.
Chrysephone was her name. Akona and the other girls knew it, but in her presence, it was tantamount to a curse. She was only to be called “Glademother,” or “Mother” in a less formal exchange. Chrysephone was charged with teaching combat forms to this class of twenty-nine girls. Akona and her big sister were among them. Even though Styri was older by less than a day—their birth mother told them so—she needed help all the time, as if she were the little sister. Akona was happy to provide it, even when Styri got on her nerves. This is what a sister does, she remembered her mother telling her.
“Once more,” said Chrysephone. “First through third again. Remember that stance, Styri. You should need no reminders this time. For all of you, these forms should flow like water.”
Akona rehearsed the combat forms she knew well. Weak arm forward, knuckles out. Heel of the palm. Strong arm forward, knuckles down. Crescent moon with the strong leg, weak leg keeping balance. Weak arm backward slash. Strong arm hit down center, knuckles up. Her limbs moved in the carefully choreographed dance in unison with all her classmates—all except one.
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Chrysephone walked down an aisle between the girls—Akona’s aisle. The glademother said nothing. When an adult approached without saying anything, it was cause for great terror, but Akona hid it well. That was until she saw what Chrysephone was doing.
“Ah!” Styri yelped. In one sweep of the leg, a crescent-moon motion, the glademother kicked Styri’s own legs out from under her. Akona’s twin fell on her back into the grass.
“What did I tell you about your stance, Styri?” said Chrysephone placidly. “Your legs are your roots. If you don’t plant them, your forms mean nothing.” The glademother was walking away when Styri, still on her back, started to cry. At this, Chrysephone turned around, approaching gently this time, with the sort of tenderness adults used whenever children cried. “Are you hurt? Or upset? Stand up and I can show you again how to plant your feet.”
But before Chrysephone could reach her, Akona broke rank from her spot in the formation. She helped Styri to her feet, and then she stood in the glademother’s path, Styri behind her back. She planted her feet just as she’d been taught, bending at the knees. She tried to appear as threatening as possible.
Chrysephone let out a small chuckle. “What’s this?” Undeterred, she squatted down next to them, coming face to face with the girl guarding her sister.
“I...” Akona glanced at her fellow pupils, who were no longer drilling their forms. They all either stared at her or picked at blades of grass while their instructor was distracted. “I won’t let you hurt Styri anymore!”
Chrysephone laughed again. “You precious thing—both of you. Akona, are you your sister’s keeper?”
Akona arched an eyebrow. “What’s a keeper?”
“Well, a keeper means someone who watches out for someone or something else. A protector. It means you protect her no matter what.”
“Oh.”
“Are you her keeper?”
Akona’s face went hot, and she suddenly felt foolish. Was it a good idea to challenge a glademother like this? It didn’t matter—she didn’t want to see Styri be made to cry again. “Yes. I’m her keeper.” She tried to stand taller, holding her arms out and puffing out her chest. “So, if you have to hurt her again, you need to hurt me instead!”
Chrysephone stood, and this time she tried to conceal her next bout of laughter. “Oh, Akona, this isn’t meant to hurt you girls. You know that, right? It’s meant to make you strong. Now, please, stand aside so I can teach Styri her proper stance again.” Still, Akona didn’t budge. “You really are your sister’s keeper, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Glademother.”
“And you’ll be her keeper always, won’t you?”
***
Akona held Styri tightly by the wrist. So tight that she could feel the shapes of her bones—so tight that she worried she’d break them. She couldn’t let them be separated at a moment like this. She wanted to lead Styri to the ocean, back around the shoreline to their boat, where they could push it back into the water and set sail for the Great Unknown. That was their plan. But like every step of their journey that came before it, their plan had to change.
Now there was nowhere else to run.
“Quite the chase that was!” said a Grackenwelsh soldier. He had to shout over the sound of rushing water to be heard. His horse reared up, neighing fearfully. “I’m afraid we were just letting you tire yourselves out, though. You can outrun a man in armor. Not much you can do against a horse, though, is there?”
Styri shot a look at Akona, speaking in that secret tongue they shared. What do we do?
I’m thinking, Akona answered silently.
You still have it, right? The soldier dismounted his horse, leisurely tying it to a tree. He was no longer in any hurry. Akona!
The girls found themselves at the terminus of the raging river that snaked across Ka’Anui. It was not a waterfall like Akona had initially thought—close. It was a tidefall. The river threw itself off the edge of a steep cliff, far down into a cluster of jagged rocks and the foaming ocean below. They were cornered. Their options were certain death and certain death—but the latter would be much more prolonged, brutal, and would entail years of suffering.
Give me the pipe, said Styri. I’m the better shot. And you said we only have one. Now’s our chance!
“I believe there may have been a misunderstanding when we first met,” said the soldier. “Let’s make each other’s acquaintance on better terms, shall we? My name is Garwhyle. I’m going to take you back home with me, and soon you’ll be living with one of the most powerful men in Grackenwell. Where I’m from, the polite thing to do would be to thank me. What are your names?” He walked as he talked, approaching them with a hand on the hilt of his sword.
Akona reluctantly obliged. She reached into her dress, pulling out the pipe with the only poison-tipped dart they had on them. Wait until he gets close enough, she told her sister. You’ll have to aim for the face. The tiny weapon changed hands.
“Oh, what’s that you’ve got there?” asked Garwhyle. He grinned, his pace unchanged. He trudged straight toward them along the bank of the rushing river. “What is that, a whistle? Or a little girl’s knife? If you want to hurt a man as big and strong as me, wearing all this armor, you’re going to need to bring—” Thwick. The dart stuck him in the lower lip. In an instant, his whole demeanor changed, his face contorting in sudden anger. “Ah! You little...” He yanked the dart out of his flesh, throwing it into the ferns. A small dot of blood bloomed where he’d been hit. “Is that your little trick? Making me bleed? Well, allow me to return the favor!” Garwhyle drew his sword.
“Garwhyle, no!” barked another soldier. There were more of them now on horseback, waiting farther up the river. “The silver!”
“Blood for blood!” he snarled back.
“Let it go! You—”
“No!” Garwhyle snapped.
“Well, at least spare the other one,” another voice hollered. “Willful little whelps...”
Someone else was shouting something, but Akona couldn’t make it out. Her focus was trained on the armored man with the foam forming at his lips, the eyes growing more bloodshot with each beat of his heart. He’d collapse in mere moments. His death would be agonizing, just as he deserved.
But it wouldn’t come soon enough.
He raised his sword at Styri. Rammed it forward. There was a horrid ripping sound as the blade pierced fabric and muscle and bone. Styri let out a little gasp that broke Akona’s heart. It’s going to be all right, she wanted to tell her in their secret language, but she couldn’t.
“Akona!” Styri shrieked.
Akona looked down to see the blade sticking through her midsection. Good—she’d stepped in the way just in time. The soldier yanked his blade free, and then blood came spilling down her dress like a waterfall. Garwhyle lost his footing, collapsed, twitching. The poison was starting to work on him. Someone shouted again. It was all a blur.
Styri said something, but Akona couldn’t make it out. All she heard was the sound of liquid falling, something small rushing headlong into something much larger. Life flows into death and back again. The Eidomene called to her.
“Akona!” Styri called out again. She caught her before she fell. For just a moment, the dull, bleary world took on a razor-sharp focus. Akona tasted blood. Smelled the salt of the sea.
More Grackenwelsh were approaching. Some had dismounted their horses again, trotting toward them. Others rode their horses toward the cliff’s edge with urgency. “Garwhyle!” one of them yelled. “By the Bogman, what’s this about? Are you hit?”
There wasn’t much time. Akona’s eyes widened, and she hooked her right arm around her sister’s, and when she couldn’t summon the words from her breathless throat, she said in their secret language, Survive this. Promise me. Promise.
Styri met her gaze without blinking. “I promise.”
One of the soldiers grabbed Styri by her other wrist, but by then it was too late. Over the tidefall they went, all three of them, and Akona put all the strength of her last breaths into a forceful jump. The soldier’s weight weakened their jump—he tumbled end-over-end, bound for the jagged rocks.
They fell in slow motion. The intensity of it all, and the onset of death, stretched out every moment like a drop of honey oozing from the end of a dipper. Honey. She would never taste honey again.
I’m sorry, Mother. I broke a promise. They, too, were headed for the frothy waves that lapped at the rocks. Come what may, Akona knew she was not long for this world—even if she survived the fall. But Styri can still come home.
A prayer to the Myrenthian god of the dead. Thanmor—
But there was a great, calamitous crash, an impossible force against her skull. It was all over in a flash of dark and a clap of thunder. Even then, in this last instant, there was one final thought that passed through her mind. Styri. The shape of her. The impression of her presence in the air next to her. Styri. The wordless, formless thought that she knew from the moment she entered the world, before she could speak or even knew her mother’s face. Styri.
Then Akona rested.