There was a woman, and then there was shouting, and then there was no woman. Snow began to drift down. He was wrapped in blankets and looked out of a tent flap, and the snowflakes were large and uneven. Snow covered the rucksacks and the traps and the pelts hanging on the line. Only the little fire outside the tent kept the quality of autumn. It crackled and spit, and the ground around it was like it had been before the shouting. Then a voice said, “What about the boy?” and another voice mumbled something in return, and a pair of legs blocked his view of the fire.
His hands were delving into the insides of a kuehnopaht, and a voice was saying, “Careful with the heart. Snip it off right there. Hand it to me. Good. Now move onto the guts.” The animal was still warm, and he enjoyed the slippery heat on his fingers. There was a line for pelts and a line for guts, and the hearts were set out on a flat piece of bark. They would take everything, and as soon as he was done skinning the minx he would set to making cords from the intestines. He and the man would sit together on a fallen log that was swollen with spring rain and the man would scrape the pelts. The man didn’t speak much, except to offer instructions. But he liked to whistle, even though he couldn’t carry a tune.
There was a girl in the woods. He only saw her fleetingly, a shape disappearing into the bramble. He chased her. She ran along a stream bed, leaving deep footprints. He knew he could catch her when the stream narrowed between limestone embankments. He saw them rise up ahead of him, the gray stone shining above the tree line. Then a guardsman in a dented helmet stepped onto the riverbank and struck him hard across the face.
Winter again. He was in the far north. His body was young, lithe and strong. He carried it with great pride, and that woman in Bahlraena had been as delighted with it as he was. Manrie turned away from that memory, even though the scout wanted to insist on it. It was what the scout had chosen to remember as he wandered and starved, in the company of three tribesmen who he didn’t like but who he stuck by because they could find food. They were as young and lithe as he was, and unimpressed by him. They said things to each other in their weird speak that was close enough to the way everyone else talked that he felt he should understand it. He didn’t like the way they would look at him after they said something inscrutable. They never laughed, but there was humor in their eyes. One day they passed a little boy who was perched high in a tree, and the tribesman became very serious and cooked a feast at the base of the tree and left half of their food for the boy. The scout protested, but they ignored him. In the springtime, he went south again, having trapped very little and even poorer than he had been before.
He was in Sahnazigia, and he had made an x on the piece of paper that the man in the sheepskin hat had given him. Just an x. And now the king’s agent was telling him that he had signed away his claim to trap west of the Ulahmauwa River. The very claim that he had purchased in Yenceyan with the gold that he’d looted from the woodcutter’s guest. He had been out on the plain for days, and had returned with his cart laden with pelts. The king’s agent was taking pity on him. He was letting him keep two of the pelts. The mangiest two. And the man in the sheepskin hat was standing outside in the sunlight beside his cart.
The girl again. She was out on the plains, running with a herd of agorabehn, the little deer flashing around her legs. Sunlight caught in her onyx hair. She was very quick but his legs were long and he needed to catch her. His hand was reaching out to her. He could almost grasp the collar of her robe. A blow knocked him to the ground. The guardsman in the dented helmet stood over him.
He had just come into Hiraherra and was standing in the tavern, and sand was dribbling down from his robes onto the floor. The alchemist was sitting at a table, and a line of people were waiting to speak to him. The scout stood still, regarding the alchemist, and people pushed past him, telling him to get out of the doorway. He went to the bar. What was the quality of the alchemist, that drew people to him? They wanted his unguents, but there was something more. They wanted him to look at them, to see the ailments that other people couldn’t see, the aches and pains that other people ignored or got sick of hearing about. He followed the alchemist out of town and brought two hares to his campfire that night, and sat with the alchemist to eat. They didn’t talk much. He hadn’t talked much, since his encounter with the man in the sheepskin hat. But in the days that followed the alchemist asked him questions. Asked him if he knew where to trap sugeajahdo, which of course he did, asked him if knew about the healing properties of the cherahn boar’s tusks.
They were fleeing Yenceyan. One of Retoebaeni’s potions had killed the king’s fifth cousin, and the Seneschal Mueslahvin had put a bounty on their heads. But the Sand Hills went on and on, and it was easy to hide in them. The sun beat down. They had to sneak up to the watering holes, where they often found hoof prints, beaten earth, signs of the king’s patrols. The binchackee were especially bad that year, and he had already been stung on both heels. It was because his boots were worn. Sand crept in, and he had blisters between his toes.
They fell asleep at a watering hole, both knowing that this was surrender. They were too hungry. There had been nothing to trap. As if all of the animals had gone deep into their burrows to wait out the heat. But the water in the little pool under the trees was clear and cool. He could feel it on his tongue as he drowsed. Let the patrol come. They would be fed in the king’s dungeons. It would be cool there. As he drifted, he was sure that Retoebaeni felt the same. When the shadow fell across them he half smiled, accepting his fate. But a deep, sonorous voice said, “There is a place where no one starves. Would you like to see it?”
He was on the east cliff, and the farm spread out in the valley below, the circles of fields around each building like the buried jaws of a trap. Some would find that threatening, but traps meant food. They meant pelts to sell. If you placed them correctly and built a path to them with sticks, you would smile when you heard them snap shut.
The girl was there. She was running away from him again. Running along the cliff edge. She disturbed the gorpsarra, who rose into the air like shards of sky and flew off, leaving the carcasses that had been laid out for them. She had found the path, but he knew it better than she did, knew every inch of these cliffs. He could drive her towards a snare.
But then the guardsman was there. He punched the scout with a disciplining fist, and the scout was falling over the cliff. Sky flashed, and stone, and he felt his robes billowing out around him. The tapestried robes that Baenlaez had given him.
Manrie opened her eyes. She was back in her cage in the cave. The phosphorescent smears on the walls revealed that the curator was asleep. But the man in the far cage was awake. He was sitting with his back against the bars so that she couldn’t see his face, and he was singing loudly enough to be heard above the waterfall. A sad, meandering tune. His voice was rough, hoarse with disuse.
Manrie stood. Her body ached from the hard stone. There was a plate of food just inside the door of the cage. She was ravenous. The food was cold, the meat greasy and the grain clumped together, but she ate it quickly. It could be poisoned like the apple in the refectory, but she was too hungry to care.
A flash of memory. Not her own, but the scout’s. Baenlaez saying, “It benefited me very little. The old man has let a girl take over most of his work, and her notes and drawings are quite poor.”
Retoebaeni’s voice: “Yes, but was there an entry about the gorpsarra, as you hoped there would be?”
“No entry. The old man refused to categorize them as monsters. But I turned the conversation, and he sent his slave to the first tower where she gained access to the Jara Floriary. She found an entry on the daveinosum, the famine moss. It seems that the people of Ispilu collected it and let it ferment. It had destroyed their crops, and when they ate it they had strange dreams. But they survived. And the next year, their fields were more abundant than ever.”
“And it came from the gorpsarra? They vomited it out?”
“Oh yes. There’s no doubt about that.”
“The same as the Calm, then.”
“Similar to the Calm. But there was no clue as to what the gorpsarra had been eating.”
Retoebaeni was turning to her, his little eyes darting with hope. “You know Ispilu. What could they have been feasting on there?”
The voice that answered wasn’t her own, but the scout’s. “Many things. They might have flown from somewhere else. They fly far. They might have been eating something in the mountains.”
“Or far to the west,” Baenlaez said. “We will have to go west. We need a tortoise.”
She summoned the guardsman. She felt him step up beside her and strike the scout, and watched with satisfaction as he collapsed within her consciousness.
The man in the far cage had turned, and he was watching her. She nodded at him, her mouth full. There was a little chipped cup, but it was empty. Picking it up, she stalked across the wet cave and held it at the very edge of the cataract. The force of the waterfall almost tore it from her hands. But she kept hold of it and wrestled it away from the clutching water and drank deeply. She turned. The man was still looking at her.
“You must be Zaelin, then.”
Another flash of memory. Slohrta crying. The scout held her. She smelled of cut wood, sharp and sweet. He kissed the top of her head and wood dust caught in his beard. He sensed Karkriesha’s jealousy. He didn’t have to turn his head to see the expression on her face, the sour look beneath the wings of her headdress. Retoebaeni was trying to reassure the carpentry mistress. “We will find a cure. I promise. We will return him to the way he was.”
“But he was always like this, before we came here,” Slohrta wept.
The little alchemist caught the scout’s eye. His expression was insistent. It said, *We need to try harder. We need to go out again. We need to find the ingredient.*
The scout felt despair. Hunger had been returning to him, even though he ate well. And he hadn’t been sleeping much. He had been lying awake, thinking of the man in the sheepskin cap. Perhaps he would find that man, if they went west to search for the ingredient. He imagined the man with his head caught in a snare.
This time Manrie didn’t need to summon the guardsman. She shook her head to quell Taeslahbin’s memories and took another sip of water.
The curator was awake. He came up on one elbow and looked at her. “You have returned,” he called, and she stepped to the bars so that they could converse.
“How long have I been asleep.”
“Two days. They were very unhappy when they brought you back.”
“No wonder I’m so hungry. Did they bring you food?”
“They did, after they brought you back. I catch the snails, sometimes. I survive.”
She glanced at the walls. “Do you eat them raw?”
“There is no fire here.”
“Will it be cold in winter?”
“Oh yes. Very cold. But I imagine that I’ll be dead by then.”
“They’re looking for your friend. For Lokeyn.”
He blinked, and seemed to become nothing more than a bloom of dark hair. Then his eyes came open, giving his face definition. “Lokeyn is dead.”
“Yes, but they want his ghost.”
“His ghost? Does he have a ghost?”
“I suppose he does. Most people do, I think. They’ve only just started rising. Although I suppose there must have been occasional ghosts before now.”
Taeslahbin seized her mind again. Karkriesha was clinging to him as they stared out at the fields. There were shapes at the head of each field row. The spirits of the compost. Someone had begun ringing the bell. The entire farm was coming awake. But he was the scout. It was his lot to move ahead of the rest, to discover danger. He turned and kissed Karkriesha, letting the wings of her headdress come around his face. They smelled clean, of bleach and sunlight. He wished that he could stay there within the white folds. But he turned and walked towards the fields.
“There are ghosts in the fields,” Manrie said, pushing the scout away again. “They surprised the farmers when they rose. That was in late spring. I don’t suppose the farmers thought they’d ever have to look at the people they murdered again.”
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“Murdered?”
“Yes,” Manrie said. The scout wanted to show her, but she resisted. Her mind skimmed the top of his memories. She did not dive into them. “The ones who are too old, or too sick. Or have broken minds. The ones who resist the cradle. They believe that our dead bodies tame the land.”
The curator considered. Then he sighed. “We curators of the Sangrahalaya are often accused of keeping our secrets too close. It is why Lady Katemzan is angry with us. But I ask you, is humanity worthy of knowledge? We, who murder innocents, who horde wealth, who abuse knowledge so that we might feel safe?”
Manrie considered. She shook her head. “Cloedeya said that I love people.”
“Me too,” the curator said, almost with regret. “I cannot help myself.” Then he lifted his face to her, as if he were hoping for a blessing. “Lokeyn’s ghost is in the fields?”
“No. They cannot find it.”
A shifting of expression beneath the hair. “I suppose it wouldn’t matter if they could. As far as I know, the dead cannot speak to the living.”
“There are…” Manrie hesitated. “In Raesidae, there were three siblings who claimed that the dead could speak through them.”
He looked at her. “Can they speak through you?”
She wondered how she had given herself away. She said, quickly, “It’s why they want me. They think that Lokeyn’s ghost will talk to me. Will tell me about the third ingredient. So that I can make the Calm.”
“Yes,” the curator said. “Yes, that makes sense. Very clever of them. But why do they think he would talk to you?”
“I have…” she paused. She studied what she could see of his face. “You could be one of them.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I could. We’ve already discussed this.”
“Then I won’t say anything for now.”
He nodded. “I won’t insist. But if you can speak to him, will you tell him I’m here? Will you tell him that I came looking for him?”
“I will,” she assured him. Then she thought for a moment. “But I don’t know your name.”
“My name is Slaeterin Moesebai.” Then he was silent. He looked away, towards the wall of falling water that comprised one side of the cave. “If I were to die,” he said, “would I be able to speak to him, I wonder? Do ghosts speak to each other?”
“I know that they punch each other,” she said, and then regretted that this had slipped out. But it made her laugh. Then she couldn’t stop laughing. The sound of her laughter reverberated off of the cave walls. She felt the three spirits inside of her align with her laughter. Their voices seemed to join hers. A strange, discordant choir that rushed from her body and made the curator scoot back from her. For a moment she thought that she couldn’t control it. Then she remembered that she had stalked monsters, that she had stood silently in the mouths of their dens, that she had been motionless while observing them in a woods. She felt the guardsman sharpen his attention, as if he had just sighted an enemy. She felt the scout go quiet and listen, as if he heard a footfall in the forest. She felt the starving girl raise her face and look around, thinking that she had heard Praevid’s voice.
She flopped down onto the stone floor. “I’m sorry,” she said to the curator.
His eyes were very wide. “Something strange just happened to your face.”
She was suddenly shy. “What did I look like?”
But he wouldn’t say. They sat in silence, listening to the roar of water. The man in the third cage began to sing. Manrie concentrated on keeping the spirits at bay. When her thoughts wandered through her fears or memories, she felt the scout’s attention. She tried to empty her mind. She felt the cold stone beneath her legs. She listened to tiny changes in the water’s roar. She traced the patterns of snail luminescence on the walls.
A figure appeared beside Zaelin’s cage. A small figure, carrying plates of food. Zaelin stopped singing. The figure squatted beside his cage and pushed a plate through the bars. Then she moved on to Slaeterin’s cage, and did the same. She came up to Manrie’s, and Manrie recognized her. “Pumpkin,” she said.
“You failed the grounding practice,” Pumpkin said. “You weren’t a very good root.”
“No. I suppose I would have been killed. You know about that, don’t you?”
The girl looked away. “Tell me a story.”
“What story? Why don’t you tell *me *a story?”
“I want to hear another monster story.”
“What will you give me in exchange?”
“Exchange?”
“Yes, Pumpkin. I don’t owe you anything, you know. If you want a story, I want information.”
Pumpkin pretended innocence. “They only told me to bring the food.”
“You know more than you pretend to know. They let you go wandering about the farm.”
She shrugged. “The other children are boring. I have to do something.”
“Are you the oldest child here?”
Another shrug. “Someone has to be.”
The scout stirred in Manrie. She knew that she could delve into him, pull everything he knew about the farm into her consciousness. But the raising of children seemed like a small thing, and something that the scout didn’t particularly care about. And she had the sense that it was dangerous to summon him too often. Besides, he couldn’t know the thing that she really wanted to find out.
“Have you seen Taeyaho?”
“Who’s Taeyaho?”
“He was with me in the cradle. He sings.”
“Oh, him. He’s been set to work in the chicken coops, because he’s like a bird.”
“But he’s all right? No one has hurt him?”
“He was a good little root. Now he’s a sprouting leaf.”
“Is Taeslahbin still alive? The scout? Is he still in the infirmary?”
“He’s out of bed. They’re feeding him broth and allowing him to walk up and down the ramp.”
“Is he himself? Does he act like he used to act?”
“How would I know? He never talked to me. He never talked much to anyone. He doesn’t have a *personality.*” A shrewd expression flitted across the little face. “His ghost is gone.”
“How do you know that? Do you go creeping about at night?”
She didn’t answer Manrie directly. “Graecelle’s ghost is still there. And the grown-ups are whispering that you took Taeslahbin’s.”
The curator stirred in his cage. Pumpkin didn’t seem to notice. Manrie sat back on her heels. She examined the plate of food, picked up a piece of limp cabbage with her fingers. “I suppose that’s good enough,” she said. The girl looked at her. “I suppose I owe you a story.
“We were in the Feathered Forest, north of Bahslahgana. We were trying to catch an epenohdo that had been seizing small children from the villages. An epenohdo, Pumpkin, is a great fanged bird with feathers that resemble the flowers of a mimosa tree. It wraps its long body around the tree trunk and you have to look hard to see it there. But it mostly likes to fly, high up in the sky, so that it looks like the top of a tree that has gone to live among the clouds. It eats animals and human children. There are very few of them, but it’s said that the epenohdo is what keeps human beings from being able to fly. In the Previous World we could, fly you know.” She glanced at Slaeterin Moesebai. “The curator here will tell you that this is true.”
“It is a belief I have heard,” the curator demurred.
Manrie paused. There was something wrong with her story. It made her uneasy, but she didn’t know why. She ate another piece of cabbage.
“Did you catch it?” Pumpkin asked. “Did you catch the bird with fangs?”
“It was elusive, but the captain had a good idea. We spread nets across the tops of the trees, and we lay in them.” A memory. Her body stretched along the taut net. If she turned her head, she could see Gossip Jode looking up at the sky with his lips pressed together, like he needed to clamp down on the words that wanted to spill out of him. The bird was above them, circling. Maybe it had seen them, but they had covered themselves in mimosa flowers and leaves, and the mild, tangy sweet smell of the blossoms was in the air around them.
“Go on,” Pumpkin said, and Manrie blinked. Her face flushed, as if she were embarrassed. It hadn’t been her memory. It belonged to the old guardsman. He had slipped into her consciousness without her knowing it. She found that her pulse was racing, and she needed to stand, and walk back and forth beside the wall of falling water.
She heard the curator say, “Let me tell you about flying humans,” but she paid him no mind. She had thought that the scout was dangerous. He had wanted to track her memories, to snap shut around them like the jaws of a trap. She had thought that the guardsman was protecting her. But he had slipped into her mind in such a way that she had forgotten, for a moment, that his memories were not her own. She felt him shift inside of her, felt his anger and embarrassment, like that time when the captain had reamed him out in front of the whole company. *No,* she thought. *That emotion isn’t mine!* She felt angry. The scout had rushed into her. So had the starved girl. She hadn’t invited them. They had no right to her mind. But she had given the guardsman permission. She had bidden him to come close when she was in the cradle. Her mind flashed with a sudden image of him holding a door open inside of her. Was he beckoning to other spirits to enter? Because he was lonely, because he missed the members of his company?
She stalked back to the bars of her cage and interrupted Slaeterin’s story. “Go tell them,” she said to Pumpkin. “Go tell them that I’m awake, that I’m ready to look for their ghost again.”
An hour later she was pacing across the haunted fields. This time Baenlaez was with her, and Karkriesha was nowhere to be seen. Off being punished, perhaps, for having distracted Manrie with Taeslahbin’s ghost. If it was a ghost. Half ghost, perhaps. A broken off shard of a person. Naiklora was stalking beside her, too, and Retoebaeni, of course. They said very little. They didn’t look at the spirits in the fields as they stalked past.
Manrie had picked up a rock from the path that ran between the wheelhouse and the bridge. They had watched her do it. It wasn’t a big rock, but it was sharp. She pressed it into her palm as she walked. It threatened to pierce her flesh. She concentrated on it. That red pain. If she could feel her own body, then she was in her own mind. The pain was like a wall inside her, sealing her off from the spirits.
Even so, the scout’s memories drifted in as they approached the winding path that led up to the ridge. The path went further than the tortoise shell throne. It went up and up, to the top of the ridge, where the farmers laid out poisoned meat for the gorpsarra. They laced it with venom from the tortoise in the wheel house. The scout had tracked gorpsarra across many miles, and collected their moss-like vomit into little clay jars. It had stung his hands. And still, the land was not calm.
She dug the stone into her palm. It pushed the scout away. They had arrived at the tortoise-shell throne. Baenlaez stopped before it.
The inside of the shell was smooth but ridged, baring the imprint of the tortoise’s backbone, with a rib-like pattern spreading out to either side. Baenlaez grunted softly. He reached out and ran a finger across the smooth inner carapace. Manrie thought that she could see spores being released with his breath, the strange, frill-like impression of his face fanning in and out. If anyone was a monster, it was him. He seemed reluctant to allow her to approach the throne, but the little alchemist darted forward and put himself between the mushroom man and his seat of power, as if he were clearing a path for Manrie.
“Can you see it?” he asked. “Can you see a ghost here?”
“Of course she can’t,” Baenlaez said. “We could, if she could.”
“But it is hidden, perhaps. Haunting the shell. You will need to sit.” He gestured her forward, and she sat on the edge of the shell. It was not a comfortable seat. She glanced at Baenlaez, wondering why he had chosen it as his throne. He glowered at her. *Does he think I’m trying to supplant him?*
“Settle back, settle back,” Retoebaeni said. “You might feel him there.”
“She won’t,” Baenlaez said, “I have never felt Lokeyn’s presence.”
Manrie scooted backwards. She sat for a long moment. She felt nothing. Lokeyn wasn’t there. But she sat and considered. A drum owl hooted somewhere along the cliff above them. The roar of the waterfall was a constant drone. She could see across the fields below, where the spirits stood, facing the earth, seemingly captured by the grounding practice and unable to leave the place of their deaths. She could pretend. She could pretend that Lokeyn had entered her, and still get what she needed. Only they would ask her questions. She didn’t know enough about him not to give herself away. She looked up at Retoebaeni and shook her head.
The little alchemist deflated. Baenlaez was angry. Naiklora had turned to look out over the fields. She seemed indifferent to their quest.
But then, as Manrie was standing, the shell rocked a little as her weight left it. She felt something. For just a moment. A presence. She turned and regarded the throne. Then she walked around it. The moonlight could not penetrate the darkness between the shell and the cliffside. She reached out a hand and touched the carapace. She could feel the hard, whorled pattern of the plates. She ran her fingertips into the grooves between them, and suddenly he was there. Lokeyn. It was as if his face slid together, like a mosaic made from the shell’s pattern. She looked at him and he looked at her. She let the sharp stone fall from her hand. Then she stood aside for him, and fell to the ground as he entered her.
When she awoke she wasn’t in the cage behind the cataract. She was in the wheelhouse, and she was laid out on the table. Ropes held her tight against it, as if they had stringed her like an instrument. She heard the rustle of creatures in their cages all around her.
Baenlaez’s face loomed above her. Sunlight was streaming in from the open window. The mushroom man regarded her with wet, pursed lips. “Well?” he asked.
“I know what it is. The third ingredient.”
“What is it?” Retoebaeni asked from off to one side, his voice urgent and exultant.
“We must go to Haerahiz,” she said. “We must go see the Man on the Mountain.”