فصل 32

32.

In Which Luna Finds a Paper Bird. Several of Them, Actually.

By the time Luna regained consciousness, the sun was already high in the sky. She was lying on something very soft—so soft that she thought at first she was in her own bed. She opened her eyes and saw the sky, cut by the branches of the trees. She squinted, shivered, and pulled herself up. Took her bearings.

“Caw,” breathed the crow. “Thank goodness.”

First she assessed her own body. She had a scratch across her cheek, but it didn’t seem particularly deep, and a lump on her head that hurt to touch. There was dried blood in her hair. Her dress was torn at the bottom and at both of her elbows. Other than that, nothing seemed particularly broken, which itself was fairly remarkable.

Even more remarkable, she lay atop a bloom of mushrooms that had grown to enormous size at the edge of a creek bed. Luna had never seen mushrooms so large. Or comfortable. Not only had they broken her fall, but they had prevented her from rolling directly into the creek and possibly drowning.

“Caw,” said the crow. “Let’s go home.”

“Give us a minute,” Luna said crossly. She reached into her satchel and pulled out her notebook, opening it to the map. Her home was marked. Streams and knolls and rocky slopes were marked. Dangerous places. Old towns that were now in ruins. Cliffs. Vents. Waterfalls. Geysers. Places where she could not cross. And here, at the bottom corner.

“Mushrooms,” the map said.

“Mushrooms?” Luna said out loud.

“Caw,” said the crow. “What are you talking about?”

The mushrooms on her map were next to a creek. It didn’t lead to her route, but it lead to a place where she could safely traverse across mostly stable ground. Maybe.

“Caw,” the crow whined. “Please let’s go home.”

Luna shook her head. “No,” she said. “My grandmother needs me. I can feel it in my bones. And we are not leaving this wood without her.”

Wincing, she staggered to her feet, replaced her notebook in her satchel, and tried her best to hike without limping.

With each step her wounds hurt a little less and her mind cleared a little more. With each step her bones felt stronger and less bruised, and even the dried blood in her hair felt less heavy and crusty and sticky. Soon, she ran her hand through her hair, and the blood was gone. The lump was gone, too. Even the scratch on her face and the tears in her dress seemed to have healed themselves.

Odd, thought Luna. She didn’t turn around, so she didn’t notice her footsteps behind her, each one now a garden blooming with flowers, each flower bobbing in the breeze, the large, lurid blooms turning their faces toward the disappearing girl.

A swallow in flight is graceful, agile, and precise. It hooks, swoops, dives, twists, and beats. It is a dancer, a musician, an arrow.

Usually.

This swallow stumbled from tree to tree. No arabesques. No gathering speed. Its spotted breast lost feathers by the fistful. Its eyes were dull. It hit the trunk of an alder tree and tumbled into the arms of a pine. It lay there for a moment, catching its breath, wings spread open to the sky.

There was something it was supposed to be doing. What was it?

The swallow pulled itself to its feet and clutched the green tips of the pine bough. It puffed its feathers into a ball and did its best to scan the forest.

The world was fuzzy. Had it always been fuzzy? The swallow looked down at its wrinkled talons, narrowing its eyes.

Have these always been my feet? They must have been. Still, the swallow couldn’t shake the vague notion that perhaps they were not. It also felt that there was somewhere it should be. Something it should be doing. Something important. It could feel its heart beating rapidly, then slowing dangerously, then speeding up again, like an earthquake.

I’m dying, the swallow thought, knowing for certain that it was true. Not right this second, of course, but I do appear to be dying. It could feel the stores of its own life force deep within itself. And those stores were starting to dwindle. Well. No matter. I feel confident that I’ve had a good life. I just wish I could remember it.

It pressed its beak tightly shut and rubbed its head with its wings, trying to force a memory. It shouldn’t be this difficult to remember who one is, it thought. Even a fool should be able to do it. And as the swallow racked its brain, it heard a voice coming down the trail.

“My dear Fyrian,” the voice said. “You have, by my last count, spent well over an hour speaking without ceasing. Indeed, I am shocked that you haven’t felt the need even to draw a breath.”

“I can hold my breath a long time, you know,” the other voice said. “It is part of being Simply Enormous.”

The first voice was silent for a moment. “Are you sure?” Another silence. “Because such skills are never enumerated in any of the texts on dragon physiology. It is possible that someone told you so to trick you.”

“Who could possibly trick me?” the second voice said, all wide eyes and breathless wonder. “No one has ever told me anything but the truth. In my whole life. Isn’t that right?”

The first voice let loose a brief grumble, and silence reigned again.

The swallow knew those voices. It fluttered closer to get a better look.

The second voice flew away and returned, skidding on the back of the owner of the first voice. The first voice had many arms and a long tail and a great, broad head. It had a slow bearing to it, like an enormous sycamore tree. A tree that moved. The swallow moved closer. The great many-­armed and tailed tree-­creature paused. Looked around. Wrinkled its brow.

“Xan?” it said.

The swallow held very still. It knew that name. It knew that voice. But how? It couldn’t remember.

The second voice returned.

“There are things in the woods, Glerk. I found a chimney. And a wall. And a small house. Or it was a house, but now it has a tree in it.”

The first voice didn’t answer right away. It swung its head very slowly from side to side. The swallow was behind a thicket of leaves. It hardly breathed.

Finally the first voice sighed. “You were perhaps seeing one of the abandoned villages. There are many on this side of the woods. After the last eruption, the people fled, and were welcomed into the Protectorate. That’s where the magicians gathered them. Those who were left, anyway. I never knew what happened to them after that. They couldn’t come back into the woods, of course. Too dangerous.”

The creature swung its great head from side to side.

“Xan has been here,” it said. “Very recently.”

“Is Luna with her?” the second voice said. “That would be safer. Luna can’t fly, you know. And she is not impervious to flames like Simply Enormous Dragons. That is well-­known.”

The first voice groaned.

And, all at once, Xan knew herself.

Glerk, she thought. In the woods. Away from the swamp.

Luna. All on her own.

And there was a baby. About to be left in the forest. And I have to save it, and what on earth am I doing, dilly-­dallying here?

Great heavens. What have I done?

And Xan, the swallow, burst from the thicket and soared over the trees, beating her ancient wings as best she could.

The crow was beside himself with worry. Luna could tell.

“Caw,” the crow said, and meant, “I think we should turn back.”

“Caw,” he said again, which Luna took to mean, “Be careful. Also, are you aware that rock is on fire?” And so it was. Indeed, there was an entire seam of rock, curving into the damp and deeply green forest, glowing like a river of embers. Or perhaps it was a river of embers. Luna checked her map. “River of Embers,” the map said.

“Ah,” Luna said. And she tried to find a way around.

This side of the forest was far more rageful than the section that she usually traveled.

“Caw,” the crow said. But Luna didn’t know what it meant.

“Speak more clearly,” she said.

But the crow did not. He spiraled upward, perched briefly at the topmost branch of an enormous pine. Cawed. Spiraled down. Up and down and up and down. Luna felt dizzy.

“What do you see?” she said. But the crow wouldn’t say.

“Caw,” the crow said, swooping back over the tops of the trees.

“What has gotten into you?” Luna asked. The crow didn’t say.

The map said “Village,” which should have been visible just over the next ridge. How could anyone actually live in this forest?

Luna traversed the slope, watching her footing, as the map advised.

Her map.

She had made it.

How?

She had no idea.

“Caw,” the crow said. “Something coming,” it meant. What could possibly be coming? Luna peered into the green.

She could see the village, nestled in the valley. It was a ruin. The remains of a central building and a well and the jagged foundations of several houses, like broken teeth in neat, tidy squares. Trees grew where people had once lived, and low plants.

Luna curved around the mud pot and followed the rocks into where the village used to be. The central building was a round, low tower with curved windows looking outward, like eyes. The back portion had fallen off, and the roof had caved in. But there were carvings in the rock. Luna approached it and laid her hand on the nearest panel.

Dragons. There were dragons in the rock. Big dragons, small dragons, dragons of middling size. There were people with quills in their hands and people with stars in their hands and people with birthmarks on their foreheads that looked like crescent moons. Luna pressed her fingers to her own forehead. She had the same birthmark.

There was a carving of a mountain, and a carving of a mountain with its top removed and smoke billowing outward like a cloud, and a carving of a mountain with a dragon plunging itself into the crater.

What did it mean?

“Caw,” said the crow. “It’s nearly here,” he meant.

“Give me a minute,” Luna said.

She heard a sound like rustling paper.

And a high, thin keen.

She looked up. The crow sped toward her, flying in a tight, fast twist, all black feathers and black beak and panicked cawing. It reared, flipped backward, and fluttered into her arms, nestling its head deeply into the crook of her elbow.

The sky was suddenly thick with birds of all sizes and descriptions. They massed in great murmurations, expanding and contracting and curving this way and that. They called and squawked and swirled in great clouds before descending on the ruined village, chirping and fussing and circling near.

But they weren’t birds at all. They were made of paper. They pointed their eyeless faces toward the girl on the ground.

“Magic,” Luna whispered. “This is what magic does.”

And, for the first time, she understood.