The Unfinished Land

A Return

NEXT MORNING, a steady, hollow sound of hooves echoed from the pass behind the wagon, and Valdis reappeared on foot, leading her horse, head down and feet plodding. She walked by the warriors and the strong-armed Sophia to the wagon, where Yuchil poked out her head, as if expecting her, and handed her down a bundle of dark green branches tied with red ribbon.

Valdis laid the bundle before her horse, which acknowledged it with a shake of the head and a stamp of one foot, and then set to eating. Reynard could barely look into her face, she seemed so different now…

“What didst thou see?” Nikolias asked her, putting blanket and saddle on his own horse, as if they all must ride soon.

“The Eaters are convened at the next working quarry of souls,” she replied. “Not for this krater, which is dead, but the next.”

“All the Eaters? Pacted and unpacted?”

“All,” Valdis affirmed.

“They have not departed?”

“No,” Valdis said. “They tried, but it is now clear—we have no existence beyond the islands. Calybo says we have difficult duties before we retire to dust and shadows.”

“Duties to whom?” Widsith asked.

“I know not. But the Sister Queens have combined to drive a great horde and move on the last of the krater cities. Travelers resist, but mostly, they die.”

Nikolias stalked off and waved his arm for the wagon to prepare.

“Other news that is bad,” Valdis said. “The Spanish general has instructed the armies of the Sister Queens how to construct snares that trap and kill drakes. Many have died. I do not know if any of them were yours to command.”

This struck home. Reynard fingered the vial that Anutha had given to him, now empty.

Calafi had bent to observe the Eater horse’s meal. “Snakebane!” she said. “Such would kill our animals.”

“That is why I do not feed them snakebane,” Yuchil said. “But one must accommodate guests and their needs.”

“Even if they bring unwelcome tales,” Andalo said.

“We will stay another night,” Nikolias said, “and make sure none of our people are late in arriving.”

“Foolish hope!” Yuchil said.

Bela came up to her, held out a sloshing skin bag, and told her the scouts had found a spring. “Then there will be tea,” Yuchil said. She instructed him to pass it to the rear of the wagon and bring more, then sat back on the wagon seat and lit up a cobb pipe with a reed stem, not unlike the smoking flute Reynard had seen being sucked on by the unfortunate keeper of the fold. She puffed, blew smoke, passed it to Nikolias, and looked away, toward the great basket city and the fields and ruins below.

In its descent, the sun cut around the northern ridge, illuminating the land in a soft golden light that made it look even more desolate, yet strangely beautiful. A steady dusk wind blew grit from the fields. The upper reaches of the city, they all observed, were now crowding with birds—gulls, cormorants, puffins, and even a few hawks and sea eagles, who seemed to cause no stir amongst the others. All were silent.

“They have finally returned,” Yuchil said, as she and Sophia handed the warriors and guests steaming bowls of gruel. “And no one to listen!”

Reynard looked to Widsith for an explanation.

“Humans are not the only ones who report the ways of this world,” Widsith said, bowing his head over the gruel.

“This city always welcomed birds,” Yuchil said. “Others, inland, took tales and histories from insects, and still others…” Her words trailed off, as if even she did not understand what else might carry reports to the Crafters.

“Was that why Troy came here?” Widsith mused.

Yuchil said, “He of all I know might understand the songs of birds.”

Their bowls empty, Kaiholo scrubbed them with sand and carried them to the wagon. The young warriors and Sophia gathered wood and dried vines from the margins of the ruined village and made two bonfires to drive back the dark that would soon arrive. The Travelers gathered around the fires and stretched out their hands.

Yuchil said, “This be the same fire that warmed Hel when she arrived from the outer spheres and first thought of us. It attracted her to our world—the warmth and the light. And so she unveiled the stars, and then the sun, and life grew.”

Nikolias said, “I have heard that Hel kindled these first fires to drive away the formless dream.”

“I have heard that as well,” Yuchil said. “The fire that burneth inside a woman, and warmeth a man.”

The others laughed, and Nikolias afforded her a wry grin.

Calafi spun slowly before the flames and faced Reynard, eyes turned up to show their whites. All the Travelers sighed a deep sigh.

“Calafi hath snared a tenebrion,” Sophia said.

“Is it a spirit of one of the dead around here?” Bela asked, and Yuchil hushed him.

“Ignore the girl. She will speak truth when it is time. Until then, she merely dreameth.”

Calafi rotated two more times, and then stopped. She touched her arm with one spread hand, and shaped letters on her pale skin with splayed and folded fingers. Reynard tried to figure what words she might be signing. Then he saw that they were some of the age-old questions that gave poetic cues to tinkers and Rom who understood. His grandmother had once conversed with his mother in this way.

The girl’s questions, he saw, were addressed to him, and she made that clear by looking straight into his face.

She settled beside him, knees drawn up, and used her stick to draw birds and snakes in the dirt. “I have died four times,” she said. “Yet I am not an Eater. Who are they, and who am I?”

“A child,” Reynard said, having no other answer.

“In this fire, I see Hel plain as day,” she said. “She is not done with us, nor with thee.”

“Good to know,” Reynard said, and cringed as he bit the inside of a cheek. “Maybe that is my reason.”

“Oh, no,” Calafi said. “It be not so simple, methinks.”

He tongued the brief flow of blood, then said, words a little mushy, “Is Hel another name for Mary, mother of God?” His stomach churned even to ask the question.

“Hel is Hel,” the girl said. “When thou diest, thou wilt see. I hope to be there, to watch thy waking.”

Reynard shook his head. “I’ll be honored,” he said sarcastically.

“Yes, that thou wilt.”

He saw the boldness in the dancing girl, but also the fragility. “What visions have you now?” he asked.

“Oh, many. Some more dim than others. Clear enough, armies approach from the other side of the waste, the other kraters. The Queens are greedy. Very dim: they might kill us but save thee, I know not why. Then thou canst ask them who will replace the dead, and who will stare at the rocky walls, and find us in their designs.”

“What doth that mean?” Reynard asked.

“These, mine own Travelers, value life,” the girl said, ignoring his question. “We are brave enough to stay and defend, but none knoweth what is expected of us. Still, I am ready. I have died often enough.”

“You see your past lives?” Reynard asked. His grandmother had spoken of such things, upsetting the churchgoers around her, in her weaving and threshing circles.

“Many, many,” Calafi said. “The old ones in the quarries keep seeing me in their stone and sending me back. It is my eyes, I think.” She blinked and brought parted fingers to her face, framing one eye.

Reynard shook his head, not understanding anything she said. “I, too, value life,” he insisted.

“Oh, but being born is another way of dying. Thou didst die before thou camest here, didst thou not?”

He stared at her, irritated, even angry—but they were interrupted. Sophia brought the girl a blanket, wrapped her shoulders, and looked his way, but her expression told him nothing.

Reynard leaned over to Calafi and insisted, as if claiming some firm ground, “I have yet to die!”

“Oh, good!” the girl said, curling up to sleep. “Then it will be an adventure.”

“Look,” Kern said, standing on the other side of the second fire. “They leave!”

The birds had stopped wheeling and now rose high in the last of the sun, like sparks or bits of molten gold, and flew away from the city and the great blade of stone—south, as if fleeing a looming storm. The upper works of the basket city were again deserted and lifeless.

Yuchil called for tea to be made, and soon all but the girl drank of the warm liquid from flat steel kettles, and others arranged pots for boiling more gruel. The night seemed to surround them like a fog.

They ate and drank, and some wandered to the edge of the firelight to relieve themselves, women squatting and hiding their efforts with long skirts, men turning away as if this were the height of modesty, but none daring find cover in the fields in the dark.

Reynard took his turn, as did Widsith. “I piss less often now, and that is a blessing,” the Pilgrim said to Reynard. “I would die another death before age creeps on me again.”