Chapter 36

Fortunately, the city gate stood open. There were no guards to be seen anywhere as the two women fled the city. They ran as long as they could, until Siena bent over, gasping for breath.

Netra bent over, breathing hard. “What have I done?” she moaned. “What have I done?”

Siena’s hand rested on her back. “I saw it. You had no choice.”

“Of course I had a choice!” Netra said brokenly, pushing Siena’s hand away and standing up. “I chose my life over hers.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Yes it was! I killed her. I killed Tara.” She held her hands up, staring at them in horror. “I pushed her in front of that black thing and she died.”

“You’re not being fair to yourself.”

Netra turned away and began walking. Siena hurried after her.

“I won’t let you do this to yourself. I saw it all. Tara was going to stab you. Even if the Voice hadn’t attacked you, she would have. And she denounced you. The crowd would have torn us apart. You did what anyone would have done.”

Netra looked at her. “I’m not anyone. I’m a Tender. I broke our most sacred vow.”

“I know it’s hard, Netra, but—”

“No. You don’t know. You’ve never killed anyone. Is this all I am? A Guardian appears and I hide while my sister is killed. Then that thing in there appears and I kill another sister to save myself. What’s next? Why don’t I just go into the Krin and open Melekath’s prison right now?”

“I’m your sister and I would have died if you’d done nothing. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

Netra had no reply. She kept walking. The road behind them was empty. No one emerged from the city to chase them. It was as if no one cared that she had killed a woman. It was as if nothing had happened. But Netra knew she would never be the same. What she had done could never be forgiven.

They walked for some time in silence. Then Siena said, “I still can’t believe what happened in that plaza. It was like I became someone else. I forgot everything I believe, just threw it away. If it wasn’t for you…” She trailed off and was silent for a while. “I wanted what that thing was offering. The Mother help me, I wanted it more than anything.”

“I did too,” Netra admitted.

“Those poor people. If it wasn’t for you, Netra, I’d be like them now.” Siena shuddered. “How did you know? How did you resist?”

“It was my sonkrill. It felt so heavy. When I took hold of it to take it off, I slipped beyond and then I saw through the illusion.”

Siena stopped her and turned Netra to face her. She took both her hands. “But this is wonderful, don’t you see?” she breathed. “Clearly Xochitl is watching over you, protecting you. Twice your sonkrill has saved you.”

Netra pulled her hands away and resumed walking. She could feel Tara clinging to her as the life left her.

Siena followed. “What did you see?”

“The Voice is gaunt and withered, little more than a skeleton. There are open sores on its face.”

“What about the golden flakes?”

“They are black. Where they touch, they stain the akirma.”

“Good Mother,” Siena said. “That’s horrible.”

“That’s not all, either. Those people…they’re changing. They’re becoming something else.”

“What?”

Netra shrugged, the gesture lost in the darkness.

          

Netra was quiet the next day as they walked. She seemed to be in shock. She kept her eyes down, not seeing any of the land they moved through, not responding to Siena’s periodic attempts to draw her into conversation. Siena became worried about her. She had been through a great deal lately. She shouldn’t have let Netra accompany her to Nelton. There was only so much one person could take.

In the afternoon they came up on the dead town of Critnell. Rather than walk through it, they left the road and began to circle around the town. As they did so, Netra kept looking at the town. Siena saw the pain that was written on her face and her heart ached in response.

“Do you want to stop and offer a prayer for them?” Siena asked, slowing down and catching hold of Netra’s arm.

Netra kept her head down. “Why? It won’t make any difference to them.” She pulled away and continued on.

Oh, Netra. “But it might to you and me.”

Netra stopped, though she did not turn around. “Go ahead if you want to.” Her voice was dull and distant.

She stood there, facing away from Siena, away from the town, as Siena voiced a prayer to Xochitl to receive the spirits of those who had died.

Then they continued on. Desperate to do something, Siena started talking, hoping somehow to pull Netra out of herself.

“You look so much like her, your mother. You have her eyes.”

Netra gave no indication that she had heard.

“I think that’s what I see most clearly when I close my eyes and picture your mother: her eyes. They were so intent. She didn’t seem to miss anything. She saw things that I never even noticed. She’d say to me, ‘Did you notice the way Yrva kept touching her cheek when she was arguing with Lendl? I think she’s afraid of her.’ She was always noticing details like that, observing people, seeing what was really happening in any situation.” Siena shifted her pack to a more comfortable position and was quiet for a minute, waiting to see if Netra would respond. When she didn’t, Siena continued.

“Her eyes were so expressive. There was never anything hidden in them like there is with so many people. When you looked into her eyes you knew exactly what she was feeling. She never had any use for pretense and got so disgusted with people who did.

“Like you, she was strong willed.” Siena gave a little laugh. “That’s an understatement. No one could tell your mother anything. She had to find out for herself. If you said the stove was hot she had to touch it first before she would agree with you. She never just accepted what someone else told her about something without thinking it through on her own, arguing with it, holding it up to her own inner light and seeing if it made sense. Oh, she used to make Greta, our teacher, so mad. Greta would be teaching us something from the Book and Shakre would stop her and question her on some point she just made. ‘Why do you say it’s like that?’ she’d say. ‘That doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t it be like this?’ Greta would get so frustrated. She was a good teacher, she knew the Book inside and out, but she didn’t have much imagination and she couldn’t understand your mother’s need to question, especially when she was handing down wisdom that had been accepted for thousands of years. I honestly think she thought your mother asked her that stuff just to get to her, but she didn’t. Shakre just wanted to know the how, and the why behind everything. She didn’t have much use for book learning or sitting quietly and letting someone else spoon feed her. She wanted to experience it herself, to touch the fire and know for herself it was hot, instead of just taking someone else’s word for it.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes. They got back on the road and the walking was easier.

“She was always wandering through the hills like you too, dragging me with her whenever I’d go, even Brelisha sometimes, though they didn’t get along all that well. She had your affinity with animals, even wild ones. Squirrels, coyotes, birds, whatever, they’d let her get right up close to them, sometimes take food from her hand. They seemed to sense that she meant them no harm. She had a way of finding sick or wounded creatures and she’d bring them back to the Haven and nurse them back to health, usually in our room.

“One time she found where a coyote had killed and eaten a rabbit and she backtracked the rabbit to its hole.” Siena shook her head. It was still hard for her to believe. “I don’t know how she did it. She would take me out and show me tracks in the dirt and say, ‘Look, can you see where the mouse stopped here to eat a seed?’ But I never could. I couldn’t see anything but dirt, but to her it was as plain as writing on a page.

“Anyway, she backtracked this rabbit to its hole and sure enough there was a whole litter of baby rabbits in there, only a couple days old and still blind. Now, everyone knows you can’t raise a wild rabbit by hand. They won’t eat. They die of fright or something. Lendl tried to tell her it was no use when she showed up with them in her robe. It was a waste of time. Everyone said so. Everyone but Ivorie that is. She just watched and waited.

“Not a single one of those rabbits died. They all grew up healthy and strong. They wouldn’t let anyone else touch them but they followed Shakre all over the place.” There was wonder in Siena’s voice and for a moment she was a girl again, in awe of the friend she could never quite imagine living up to.

“Then there was the time she brought the javelina back to the Haven. The thing was full grown, a boar I think, and you know how heavy they are. Almost as big as a pig. She’d built a travois out of sticks and tied it up with strips torn from her robe, then dragged the thing all the way back to the Haven. You should have seen the fuss when she brought the thing into the yard. Even Ivorie wasn’t about to let her bring that thing inside. You know how mean those things can be, and they smell when you get up close. But your mother didn’t care. She nursed the thing back to health. None of the rest of us could even go near it. Not that we wanted to. But for her it was as docile as a lamb.”

And so Siena went on as the afternoon waned and evening came on and they finally stopped for the night. She told Netra every story she could remember. She spoke of childhood secrets she and Shakre had shared as girls, things they’d whispered about deep into the night when they were supposed to be asleep. She spoke of her feelings for her closest friend, still undiminished after all these years. As she talked she realized gradually that the things she was saying were for herself as much as for Netra. Ever since Shakre had left the Haven in disgrace Siena had been forbidden to speak of her, to even say her name aloud. For so many years these memories and feelings had lain inside her and suddenly all of them wanted to come out at once. There were times she cried as she talked, so badly did she miss her childhood friend, and times when she laughed out loud when she recounted one of Shakre’s antics. It felt good, it felt cleansing and when, at last, she stopped, she felt she had finally put something to rest. As if she had finally, after all these years, paid her friend the tribute she deserved and could now let her go.

She stared into the flames of the small campfire they had built while she was talking and she said, “I loved your mother, Netra. I loved her more than I’ve ever loved anyone else. She was my best friend, my closest companion. So many times I’ve wished I’d gone with her, and maybe I would have if she had not handed you over to me. I’ve missed her every day and I’ll never stop missing her.”

Still Netra said nothing, but Siena saw that her shoulders were shaking. She wrapped Netra in a hug and held her as she cried.

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