Vessel

Chapter Seventeen

“Sandstorm coming,” Korbyn said.

Liyana scanned the horizon and saw—oh yes, there it was, a smudge of tan that blotted out a patch of blue sky. All of them dismounted. Liyana and Raan pitched the tent while Korbyn unsaddled the horses. He tossed the supply packs into the tent. Without guidance Pia crawled inside and pushed the packs so they’d brace the walls. Fennik hammered stakes into the ground around the tent and secured the horses’ reins to them. He wrapped cloth around the horses’ heads to protect their eyes from the sand. It couldn’t protect the horses from the sand wolves, but it would at least prevent the horses from panicking and drawing the wolves. All was completed with practiced ease well before the sandstorm arrived.

As Fennik and Raan joined Pia inside the tent, Korbyn plopped down cross-legged in the sand. Pausing at the tent flap, Liyana asked, “Aren’t you coming in?”

“You need another magic lesson.” He patted the sand next to him.

Liyana checked the sandstorm. The wall of sand advanced across the desert, blackening the sky above it. The wind had already picked up, tossing grains of sand and debris into the air. Behind them, the horses stomped their hooves and sniffed the air.

She sat and waited for him to explain.

“You are going to push the wind,” Korbyn said. “It’s already moving, so this is far easier than starting a sandstorm from scratch. You are simply going to encourage it to blow around us.”

“And you?”

“I’ll keep the sand wolves from eating you when you fail.”

She scowled at him. “I won’t fail.”

“Good for you, goat girl.” He grinned at her. “Go on and impress me.”

Liyana regarded the mass of writhing black clouds. “It’s said that once, the god of the Tortoise Clan spent an entire century inside a sandstorm. The weathering of the sand and wind is what gave the tortoise its distinctive shell pattern.”

“Oh yes, we teased him about that for days.”

She studied him, trying to determine if he was serious or not. “If I make a mistake, will we be stuck in a sandstorm for a century?”

“I hope not,” he said cheerfully.

She drew her sky serpent knife out of her sash. “This seems to work on the wolves. It sliced through the one that attacked me before I met you.” She handed him the blade.

Korbyn examined it. “Beautifully made.” She watched his fingers caress the carved handle. The bone had been worn down to fit smoothly in one’s hand. The blade was lashed to the handle with goat sinew in an elaborate array of knots.

“It’s been in my family for generations,” Liyana said. “Don’t lose it.”

“Your lack of trust wounds me.” He slashed the air with it. “I assume there’s a story about how a sky serpent scale came to be the blade in your knife?”

“It’s a family story,” Liyana said. She watched him cut designs in the air, and her fingers itched to take the knife back. She didn’t know what had possessed her to share it with him. It had never been wielded by anyone outside the family before. She felt as if he were holding a piece of herself.

“You can tell me. I’m like family.”

She snorted like Raan. “You are nothing like family.”

He mimed a stab to the heart with the hand that did not hold the knife. “After all we have been through together . . . you wound my heart.”

“Tell me one of your family secrets, and I’ll tell you mine.” She didn’t know what possessed her to offer that bargain. She simply . . . wanted him to share something of his as he held her knife.

“I don’t have a family,” Korbyn said. “Gods were never born. We simply . . . are.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Tell me a secret of the gods.”

He leaned close to her. She felt his breath on her neck, warm and soft. She shivered as if his breath touched all of her skin. In a mock whisper he said, “Sendar has horribly bad breath.”

She heard Pia giggle from within the tent.

Also in a mock whisper Liyana said, “Tell me one of your secrets.”

“You want to play confession?” Korbyn’s eyes glittered, and a smile played over his lips. She felt as if she were playing with a flame. She didn’t back away.

“One thing,” Liyana said, “and I’ll tell you about the knife.”

Korbyn was quiet for a while. Liyana watched the sandstorm build in front of them, a wall of blackness. Not far away now, it obliterated the line between land and sky. “I can’t dance,” Korbyn said at last.

Liyana laughed.

“Bayla doesn’t know,” he said mournfully. “So far I have hid my inadequacy by always serving as audience. But she loves to dance. One day she’ll discover my secret and flee from me in horror.”

Liyana patted his knee. “I’ll teach you. Before you’re reunited with Bayla, you’ll be a master of dance. She’ll never need to know about this horrible flaw in your character.”

“I accept your offer,” Korbyn said solemnly. “Now, the knife?”

“My great-great-great-great-grandmother was in love with the chief’s son. But he said that he would only marry her if she was the bravest woman in the clan. She asked how she could prove her bravery, and he said that she had to walk into the forbidden mountains and return with proof that she had been there.”

Liyana heard a gasp, and then Pia stuck her head out of the tent to hear better. “She did that? But no one has ever entered the forbidden mountains!”

“According to the chief’s son, she did it, and he married the bravest woman in the clan. But according to my mother and my mother’s mother and my mother’s mother’s mother . . . she stole it off a sky serpent only a few miles from home while the serpent was distracted with . . . um, mating.”

Korbyn roared with laughter.

“I think that still qualifies as the bravest,” Pia said, after consideration.

After he wiped the tears from his eyes, Korbyn pointed at the storm. “Almost here. Concentrate on the feel of your body. Think of the lake.” Behind them, Pia retreated into the tent, and the flap was sealed shut.

Liyana rested her palms on her knees and straightened her back. She tried not to think about how exposed they were outside the tent. Around them, the horses snorted and stamped their feet as the wind tossed sand. Liyana breathed. In and out. In and out. Keeping herself firmly tethered to her body, she imagined her lake.

In her mind, she saw her lake. But the surface bubbled and frothed as if the wind stirred it, too. The cliffs roared with the sound of the sandstorm. She plunged into the churning waters, and she felt the magic fill her.

“You are the desert,” Korbyn said in her ear. The piece of her still in her body heard his words and felt his breath on her neck. “You are the wind.”

She poured herself into the air around their tent and felt her soul overflow. She rushed over the sands to meet the oncoming storm, and she slammed into it.

Wind crashed into her, and she felt as if she were splintering. Sand swirled around her and into her, and she was caught and twisted. The world spun with her, blackening as the sand blotted out the sun. She heard howls within the wind.

“Liyana!”

She heard her name from far away, as if the speaker were at the base of a well. She tried to draw closer to it, but she was whipped in circles. She felt herself rip from the center and shred within the storm.

“Do not lose yourself! Remember you!”

She was wind. She was desert.

She ran with the wolves.

She felt her own jaws made of rock and her own flesh made of sand. Her wolf body shed sand, dissolving and reforming as the storm spiraled. She howled and felt sand pour down her throat. She swallowed the sand as if it were air. She breathed sand.

“Liyana!”

The name sounded like mere syllables. She was more than a name. Releasing her wolf form, she spun into a cyclone of wind and sand. Faster and faster. She felt herself race over the desert floor.

She felt hands on her shoulders, her human shoulders, and for an instant she was yanked back fully into her body. She lost the feel of the wind inside her, and instead she felt the sand pelt her skin, stinging where it hit, but then her spirit stretched. She was more than a body! She was pure spirit merged with the storm—

Liyana felt warmth, a soft pressure, on her lips. She was aware of hands on the nape of her neck and fingers entwined in her hair. She breathed in and tasted Korbyn’s sweet breath. She kissed Korbyn as he kissed her.

He released her. “Change of plans!” he shouted over the storm. He pressed the handle of the sky serpent blade into her hands. “I’ll turn the storm. You watch for wolves.”

Lips tingling, Liyana clutched the knife. Beside her, Korbyn faced the storm. After a moment, she felt the wind spin faster and faster. It’s working! she thought. Korbyn’s cyclone tightened around their tent, and the wind stilled within it—their tent was in the eye of Korbyn’s storm. The true storm raged around them, but within Korbyn’s wall of wind and sand, the air did not move. She lowered the knife.

Through the furious circle of wind, Liyana saw shapes move, blurs at first but then more distinct. She caught a glimpse of a muzzle and then a thigh. She stared hard at the dark swirl of sand. The silhouette of a wolf appeared. It vanished into the storm.

Suddenly a wolf burst through the wall of wind and sand. It leaped at Korbyn. Springing toward it, Liyana sliced with the sky serpent blade. It hit the wolf’s torso, and the wolf dissolved into a spray of sand that spattered her and Korbyn.

His concentration broke, and his cyclone collapsed.

Wind and sand knocked Liyana backward against the tent. She clung to the tarp and to her knife. Wolves howled around her. She saw their shapes as shadows rushing in circles around them. Sand stung her eyes.

She tried to yell, “Korbyn!” but sand poured into her mouth. She coughed and gasped for air. She felt arms wrap around her and yank her down. Her cheek was pressed against Korbyn’s chest. Sand pounded at her back, and the howls shook her bones. One of the horses screamed.

He needed to drive the wind away. But to do that, he had to quit protecting her and let her protect him. Into his ear she shouted, “Forget me! Stop the storm!” She broke away from him.

Eyes shut against the blinding sand, she held her knife ready and listened.

She heard a howl, and she sliced at the sand. She felt the blade hit. She struck again. And again. And again, as the wolves lunged for them.

An eternity later, she felt wind, clear wind, push from behind her, pushing the sand away. Korbyn’s wind intensified, blowing harder and faster. The howls receded.

Slowly, eventually the wind stilled.

Behind her, Korbyn collapsed.

Liyana was coated in sand. Her eyelids were caked with grit, and her eyes burned. She tried to wipe her eyes with her sleeve, but she only smeared more sand onto her face. With shaking hands she tucked the knife back into her sash, and then she collapsed beside Korbyn.

After the sandstorm, no one objected to Liyana’s magic lessons. The wolves had come too close for anyone’s comfort, and everyone knew it was sheer luck that the horses had survived. At every stop, Liyana practiced.

Occasionally Raan joined her, though she lacked the concentration to picture the lake for more than a few minutes. She wasn’t able to pull magic from it at all. Liyana, on the other hand, continued to improve. When at last she caused a desert bush to burst into bloom, all of them, including Pia, cheered. Liyana bowed before she collapsed in the sand.

An hour later she opened her eyes. “Ready for lesson two?” Korbyn asked.

Shaking the sand out of her hair, she sat up. “Your turn. I promised you dance lessons.” She got to her feet and held out her hand toward him.

He shot a look toward Fennik, Pia, and Raan, who were watching from the other side of the fire. “With an audience? How will I continue to impress with my omnipotent divinity once everyone has seen my feet fumble?”

“Think of them as musicians, not an audience,” Liyana said. “And no one is all that impressed anyway. Fennik, I’ll need a steady drumbeat.”

Unable to suppress his grin, Fennik fetched a pot and hit it with the heel of his hand.

“Keep it even. Like a heartbeat.” Liyana hauled Korbyn to his feet. “First step is to feel the music inside as if it’s your heartbeat. Bum-ba, bum-ba, bum-ba.” She placed her hand over his heart, and she put his hand on her heart. For an instant she couldn’t move, feeling the warmth of his hand.

His eyes were fixed on hers. “I feel it.” She wondered if he meant the drums, her heartbeat, or her.

“Good.” She looked away and was able to breathe again. “Step with the beat. Shift your weight. Little movements for now, just your heels, until you have the rhythm.” Her hand on his heart, she shifted from side to side. His hand on her heart, he swayed with her.

Stepping back, she dropped her hand. He did the same.

She swallowed, and her throat felt dry. She told herself this was no different than teaching Jidali to dance. “Raan, can you keep this beat?” Liyana clapped out a staccato rhythm. Raan mimicked it. It was syncopated with Fennik’s drum. “Pia?”

Pia sang a melody as light as air. It danced over the tent and up toward the sky. Liyana felt her feet itch. She wanted to twirl and leap. She hadn’t danced in so long!

“This will be a disaster,” Korbyn warned.

“Listen only to the drum,” she said. “That’s your center, your source, your . . . Think of it as your lake. You’re connected to it. Everything else is simply layers on top of it.”

“Bum-ba, bum-ba, bum-ba,” he said. “Got it.”

She smiled. “Not yet you don’t. Run with me.” Grabbing his hand, she pulled him after her. Her feet hit the sand in rhythm with the drum. He fell into step beside her, and she ran with him until the beat faded under the sound of the night wind. Pivoting, she ran back toward the camp. The wind was cool in her face. It caressed her neck and tossed her hair. His footfalls matched hers.

By the fire, Liyana caught Korbyn’s free hand. She swung in a circle with him. “Feel the beat! Bum-ba, bum-ba, bum-ba.” She released him. He continued to move with the beat. She raised her arms to match Pia’s soaring melody, and she let the music take her. Her feet danced to Raan’s syncopated rhythm while Korbyn stamped out the central heartbeat. Letting go of her thoughts, she spun around him.

Korbyn turned with her, and she felt his eyes on her. She orbited around him, the moon to his sun. As the melody dipped, she twirled closer. She lifted her hands, palms forward. He lifted his, and they pressed their hands together. Palm to palm they danced.

As the song rose above the desert, Liyana felt as if the wind were dancing with them. Sand churned under their feet. She tilted her head backward as Korbyn cradled her back in his hands. He spun her in a circle, and she saw the stars spin above them. He raised her up, and their faces were only inches apart. Slowing, they swayed to the heartbeat-like drum. His eyes were like the night sky, deep and endless and full of stars.

He slowed, still swaying. So did she.

The melody ceased.

She realized that the drums had stopped as well, though she didn’t know when. She and Korbyn were swaying to their own rhythm. Liyana stopped. She couldn’t read his expression, but his eyes were fixed on hers as if nothing else in the world existed. Both of them breathed fast.

Releasing him, she broke away. His hand reached toward her and then fell back. “You’re ready for Bayla,” she said. Her voice sounded thin to her ears.

She didn’t look at any of the others as she ducked into the tent. Curling up in her sleeping roll, she pretended to be asleep when they all came in for the night.