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She told him that her mother used to tease her for singing to her homework. She told him that she didn’t sing well, which he already knew, and that she didn’t care, which he liked.

He listened to all of it. Every so often he said a word back to her, and every so often he said it wrong on purpose, just to hear her laugh and correct him.

“Window,” she said, drawing a square in the air with her finger.

“Wind-oh,” he said.

“Close. Window.”

“Wind-oh,” he repeated firmly.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re doing that on purpose.”

He blinked at her innocently, and she laughed and shook her head. The sound of it echoed softly off the walls, and he would have mispronounced every word in both their languages to hear it again.

The passage grew rougher as the day went on. The stream ran louder and faster, tumbling down a series of short, noisy falls, and the path along it turned steep and broken. He slowed his pace and kept one ear on her breathing. It was getting worse, and he could hear it clearly now, even over the rush of the water. Each breath rasped a little harder through the mask. Every time the path rose, she had to stop and lean against the wall and wait before she could go on. Her face had gone pale beneath the dirt. When she thought he wasn’t looking, she pressed her hand hard against her side.

He hated it bitterly. He hated that he couldn’t breathe for her, and that the air that filled his chest so easily was so thin and useless to her. He thought of the gardens again, and their rich, green air, and he wanted to pick her up and run all the way there.

At the end of the passage, the stream plunged into a narrow chute of rock and vanished beneath an old fall of stone that blocked the way from wall to wall. The path went up and over it, if it could be called a path. It was a steep, crumbling slope of loose stone and wet ledges, twice as tall as he was. At the top of it, the passage opened out again into the dark.

She stopped at the bottom and looked up at it, and he heard her swallow nervously.

“Is it safe?” she asked.

He looked at the slope, although he already knew every stone on it. He had gone up it and down it many times, and he knew which holds would take his weight and which would slide.

“For me,” he said.

She turned to look at him. “That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” he agreed.

She looked doubtfully back up at the slope. He watched her measure it with her eyes the way she measured everything, testing it and weighing it and finding it wanting. Her breath was still rasping from the last climb. Her hand was still pressed to her side. He stepped closer to her.

“I carry,” he said.

Her head snapped around immediately. “Oh, no. No way. You’re not carrying me.”

He tilted his head at her and waited.

“I mean it,” she said. “I can climb. I’ve climbed worse than this. I just need a minute to catch my breath, and then I’ll be fine.”

He looked at her pale face, and her hand on her side, and the fine tremor in her fingers where they clutched the strap of her bag. And he thought about her halfway up that first slope, pressed against the rock with her eyes closed. He’d held his breath in the water below and waited helplessly for her to move.

“Frrankie,” he said gently.

“Don’t say my name like that. It’s not going to work.”

He bent, slid one arm behind her back and the other beneath her knees, and lifted her off her feet.

She made a small, outraged sound and grabbed hold of his shoulders. “Korrak! Put me down!”

“No,” he said.

“I told you I could climb!”

“Yes,” he agreed, and started up the slope.