Tavi picked up the molted snakeskin, his insides hollow. He’d known it. He’d known, and he wanted to hit himself with something hard for not listening to his own mind from the very first.
“Don’t touch it,” Bachi said, quailing an arm’s length away. “What if it’s poison or something?”
Tavi tossed the skin at him, and he screeched, dancing aside. “He wouldn’t poison his own skin,” he told Bachi, who was staring at the discarded scrap of scales and skin as if it were an actual snake. “He was inside it, after all.”
Zulimaya squatted over the artifact, frowning at it. “So the old one did not die. You were right.”
“I’m always right,” Tavi sighed. “The second we found Tarek missing I knew what it had to be. This is just the proof, so you’ll all actually listen to me.” They’d hiked back to the waterfall and pool where they’d fought Xochil, because none of the others wanted to believe him.
Kanga, unsurprisingly, was still having difficulty. “Maybe snakes decay like that.”
Tavi stopped himself from saying the first thing that came to mind, which was that this was the dumbest sentence he’d ever heard come out of anyone’s mouth. He wasn’t Tarek, and Kanga might break all his fingers if he wasn’t careful. He wished the big man had just gone on northward like he’d said he wanted to, but when Tavi led the others back to the waterfall, he had followed. “You were a hunter, Kanga. You have to have seen dead snakes before. Did any of them wither away to an empty skin?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean they can’t.” He crossed his stupid, muscular arms as if he’d just landed a telling point.
“It kind of does,” Tavi replied. “Snakes leave their skins behind when they grow, not when they die.”
“But he’s not really a snake,” Kanga said, totally sure of himself. “So who knows?”
Pahtl, who had been sniffing at the ground all around, thumped Kanga gently with his powerful tail. “Nothing died here. I smell slick-skin and I smell legless, but death leaves a stench.”
“It could have rained,” Kanga said stubbornly.
“It did not. Stop talking, tall one.”
“Xochil’s the only one that could have taken him,” Tavi said with a patience he didn’t feel at all. “You said you feel him to the north. Explain to me any other way he could have gotten so far away while we were sleeping.”
Kanga just spat through his bleached teeth and walked away, suddenly very interested in the waterfall. He was not a man who liked to be wrong, and Tavi wondered how he had managed to maintain the trait when he was wrong so very often.
“I have seen what I need to see,” Zulimaya said. “We go north. Kanga and the Great One can guide us.”
Pahtl preened, as he always did when she called him that. “You may be slick-skins, but I will help you. You will die otherwise.”
“I don’t want to go north,” Bachi said in a small voice. “We don’t know what we’ll find.”
“It’s what we were going to do anyway,” Zuli said.
“Yes, but we had Tarek with us!” he said, twisting his fingers together. “A little prick of the knife and a taste on the tongue, and no one could stop him.”
Zuli scowled at him. “I know you have more courage than this. Find it before I prick you with a knife.”
Bachi sputtered and tugged at his mustaches but argued no further.
“I’m so glad to see everyone’s decided on what I wanted to do from the start,” Kanga drawled. “There’s a lesson to be learned there.”
Tavi thought of a dozen different lessons he could take from Kanga, and none was the one the big man meant. Once again, he kept it to himself. Kanga might think a moment’s help was enough to wash away all the ill he’d done, but that was only because he wasn’t bright enough to think through the consequences of his own actions. Tavi, on the other hand, never stopped tracing the world to its logical conclusions, whether in reference to himself, his brother, or even Xochil.
And in that moment, like a trap springing closed, his mind rearranged the pieces before him. The empty snakeskin, Tarek in the far north, and the unnatural mist-shrouded waters leading back to the Land all settled into place like one of Locotl’s wooden ring puzzles. He knew what he had to do. It was obvious.
“I’m going back to the Land,” he announced to the others.
This pronouncement was met with slack jaws and blank faces. Once, just once in his life, Tavi wanted to figure something out, turn to the person next to them, and not have to laboriously reconstruct his train of thought. The conclusion that had taken him three heartbeats would require a fingerspan of explanation and argument, and it exhausted him.
“Tarek is the one with stupid ideas, cub,” Pahtl said gently. “You do not need to take his place in this.”
“I hate to agree with a walking rain-skin, but when an otter knows you’re wrong, it’s time to rethink things,” Kanga said.
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Bachi just pointed at Tavi’s leg. Tavi gritted his teeth, knowing it to be an eloquent argument. Whatever had lived in that hole in the sand within the mists at the edge of the Land had left his skin waxen with scars and pitted with deep holes. His whole leg felt like it was wearing a tight glove, and if he wasn’t careful when he squatted, the weakened skin tore open again. Going back into the mists was a terrible idea on the face of things.
He lifted one finger. “Xochil’s not dead.” He lifted the next. “Tarek has been spirited away by some kind of magic. Who have we encountered that can move impossible distances?” A third finger. “If we want to be any help at all to Tarek when we find him, we have to find some way to defeat Xochil, actually defeat him. Apparently blood magic won’t cut it.” A fourth finger. “The only reasonable explanation is that Xochil has taken Tarek to the north. I have no idea why, but it’s probably something about him being this ancient a’hau. He won’t give up.” He extended his thumb. “If Xochil’s in the north, you know where he’s not? At home in the Yura lands. Where his books of learning and magic are.” He’d been dreaming about those books for moons, ever since he’d first seen them. “I’m going to go break into the old man’s house, learn his magic, and kill him with it.”
The others chewed on that, and Zuli spoke first. “A bold move. I like it.”
Pahtl smoothed the fur on his face with his front paws. “It is less stupid than I thought. Still very stupid, but better than your brother.”
“It’s a nice idea, but do you want to take another look out there?” Kanga asked, pointing out to the mist-shrouded sea. “I don’t see any big magic turtles waiting to ferry you back, little man.”
Tavi wanted to gouge his eyes out at the diminutive term, but he held his peace.
“What’s more,” the rangy hunter continued, “if you think I’m setting a single foot back on that cursed shore, I’ll go ahead and pound you flat right now. I am never going back through those mists. Have you forgotten the frog-people already? You could put a thousand naked, willing girls on the far side and I’d still say the same.”
Tavi caught Bachi’s eye as the Wobanu boy’s mouth twisted, and he knew they were thinking the same thought. As if Kanga has ever seen a willing girl in his life. They both grinned and then tried to hide it before the bigger man caught on.
“He makes sense,” Zuli admitted unwillingly.
“Yes,” said Bachi, relieved. “He does. Going back is impossible.”
Tavi scowled at him. “I thought it was going north you were scared of.”
“That too,” said the plump boy, unashamed. “The beach is nice. We could stay here a while.”
“I’ll build a raft,” Tavi countered. “A dugout canoe. I don’t know! We have to find something to fight Xochil with, and I can’t think of any other way.”
Pahtl sighed. “The seas between here and the Land are not rough, and the distance is hardly greater than the width of the great river we crossed. I will swim you back over.”
Tavi dropped to a knee and put a hand to his pelt. “Are you sure? You nearly died on the river.”
“I am bigger now,” the otter said proudly.
It was true. He’d been a man’s length from nose to tail when Tavi had first met him, and now he was a good three or four hands longer, despite the fact that only a handful of moons had passed. It had to be because he’d tasted Tarek’s blood and been touched by his magic.
“Still,” Tavi insisted, “I know you want to go north. Taking me puts you even further from Tarek.”
Pahtl nibbled on the hairy cleft between two blunt talons, a sure sign of distress. “Tarek needs me, it is true, and being this far away is hurting my mind. Stretching it. But helping you helps him, even if it takes longer.”
Tavi scratched behind his ear. He wasn’t just getting bigger, the otter was getting smarter, too – thinking more like a human. “If the rest of you want to go north, you can,” he told them. “Somebody needs to find Tarek, and sooner is better than later. I don’t know if any of the rest of you could understand Xochil’s books anyway.”
“I will read these books,” Pahtl said. “I will be the first water person with moon magic.”
“It’s a bad idea and you’re going to die,” Kanga said. “Enough stupid talk: let’s go find the woodgrub so I can take his skin off.”
Kanga could no more harm Tarek than Pahtl could read Xochil’s books – another byproduct of exposure to Tarek’s blood magic – but Tavi let the bluster pass uncontested. He didn’t know why Kanga kept following after his brother when he so obviously hated him, but somebody needed to find him, and Kanga could do it. He hated the thought of his friends finding Tarek and not being there with them, but he knew he was right. He needed to do this. The math of it made sense.
“You should go with Kanga,” he told Zuli and Bachi. “The more of you there are together, the safer it will be, and the more good you can do when you find him.”
“The same is true for you,” Zuli said gravely. “You will not be safe.”
“I’ll have Pahtl,” he said with more stoutness than he felt. “That’s as good as three people.”
“Five,” Pahtl corrected him. “Or maybe a thousand.”
“See?” Tavi said, grinning. “I’ll be fine.”
“Crazy is what you are,” Kanga said. “This is your brother we’re talking about.”
“Take good care of him when you find him, then,” Tavi said.
The big man spat casually in the dirt. “I’ll do whatever I please.”
Tavi ignored him and turned to Bachi. “Will you be all right?”
“Yes,” the fat boy said unhappily. “I don’t like this, though. Xochil can move fast. What if he goes back home and is there waiting for you?”
Tavi had thought of this but had hoped that they wouldn’t. “I’m not just going to barge in when I get there. I’ll be careful. If he’s around, I’ll hide and wait until he leaves again. It will work.”
“He’s Xochil. He’ll figure you out.”
Tavi shook his head, once again trying to project a confidence he didn’t really feel. “He’s obsessed with Tarek. He does everything he can to ignore me; always has. He’s jealous that I’m actually Tarek’s brother instead of him, and he’d rather forget I even exist. I can exploit that.”
Bachi chewed on the end of one of his mustaches. “Maybe.”
He clapped the doubting boy on the shoulder. “Not maybe – for certain. We’ll meet again, and you’ll have to tell me how your quest turned out.”
Bachi kicked the sand. “I don’t have a quest. You know that. I made it up.”
“Well, you have one now. It’s your job to find Tarek and keep him safe. They’ll need a Singer, and you know it.”
“I suppose,” he said, his eyes downcast. Then he reached out and wrapped Tavi in a hug. “Don’t die. You’re the one who knows what to do.”
“That’s Tarek,” Tavi said, laughing and patting him on the back.
“Maybe, but with him gone, you’re the next best thing. I think we’ll end up needing you as much as a Singer. More, even.”
“You’ll be all right,” he assured Bachi. Whispering in his ear, he said, “You’ll need to protect Zuli.”
His eyes widened, his round jaw firmed, and he nodded.
To Zulimaya, he simply said, “Take care of them.”
She nodded crisply. She wasn’t one to waste words. She’d die to protect Bachi, though perhaps not Kanga. More importantly, she’d kill to do the same. If they survived and found his brother, it would be because of her.
He felt a pang of doubt and hid it by slinging one of the bags of journey meal over his shoulder and turning toward the beach. “All right, Pahtl – no point in waiting. Let’s go get wet and get ourselves back to the Land.”