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"Alone!" Telhami snorted, and the sound cut Akashia's spirit like a honed knife. "Of course you're alone, silly bug. You've turned your back to everyone. Life didn't end in House Escrissar, not yours nor anyone else's. Walls won't keep out the past or the future. You're alive, so live. You've been pleading for my advice—yes, I've heard you; everything hears you—well, that's it. That, and let them go, Kashi. Let Pavek go, let Ruari go. Let them go with your blessing, or go with them yourself—"
"No," Akashia interrupted, chafing her arms against a sudden chill. "I can't. They can't. Pavek's the Hero of Quraite. The village believes in him. They'll lose heart if he goes—especially if he goes to stinking Urik—and doesn't come back. I had to judge that woman. If I could make her reveal what she truly was, he wouldn't follow her. He'd stay here, where he belongs. They'd all stay here."
The sleeping platform creaked as Telhami sat down beside Akashia. She had neither pulse nor breath, but her hands were warm enough to drive away the chill.
"At last we get down to the root: Pavek. Pavek and Ruari. They do know what happened. You can scarcely bear the sight of either of them—or the thought that they might leave you. It would be so much easier, wouldn't it, if all the heroes of Quraite were dead: Yohan, Pavek, Ruari, and Telhami— all of us buried deep in the ground where we could be remembered, but not seen."
She swiped tears with back of her hand, but more followed.
"Pity?" The bloodless hands were warm, but the voice was still cold and ruthlessly honest. "What pity? None was asked for, none was given. Outside this hut, I've seen life go on. I've seen compassion. I've seen love and friendship grow where nothing grew before. But I see no pity, no clinging to a past that's best forgotten."
"I don't want to forget. I want my life back. I wish life to be as it was before."
It was a foolish wish—life didn't go backward—but an honest one, and Akashia hoped Telhami would say something. She hoped Grandmother would reveal the words that would prevent Pavek and Ruari from leaving Quraite.
"Let them go, Kashi," Grandmother said instead. "Tear down the wall."
"It won't ever be the same as it was."
"It won't ever be different, either, unless you let go of what happened."
"I can't."
"Have you tried?"
She shook her head and released a stream of tears, not because she'd tried and failed but because it was so easy to forget, to live and laugh as if nothing had changed—until a word or gesture or a half-glimpsed shadow jarred her memory and she was staring at Escrissar's mask again.
"Laugh at him," Grandmother advised after the old spirit unwound her thoughts. "Run through your fields and flowers and if he appears—laugh at him. Show him that he has no more power over you. He'll go away, too."
More tears. Kashi took a deep breath and asked the most painful question of all: "Why, Grandmother—why did you give your grove to him?"
"It was not mine to give," Telhami's spirit confessed. "Quraite chose its hero. And a wise choice it was, in the end. I'd made a mess of it, Kashi. Can you imagine the two of us grappling with all those toppled trees? We'd be at it forever—but Pavek! The man was born to move wood and rock through mud. You should see him!"
And for a moment, Kashi did, hip-deep in muck, cursing, swearing and earnestly setting the grove to rights again. She had to laugh, and the tears stopped.
"You're not alone," Grandmother said suddenly, which Akashia mistook for philosophy, then she heard footsteps outside the hut.
Telhami disappeared before Akashia could tell her midnight visitor to go away. Feeling betrayed and abandoned once again, Akashia plodded to her door where two of Quraite's farmers greeted her. One held a pottery lamp, the other, Mahtra's hand.
"She had a dream," the lampbearer said. "A nightmare. It scared us, too. Pavek said he'd be in the bachelor hut, but we thought..."
Some folk needed neither spellcraft nor mind-bending to convey their notions silently. The farmer's hollow-eyed, slack-jawed expression said everything that needed to be said.
"Yes, I understand." She made space in the doorway for Mahtra to pass. With her strange coloring and wide-set eyes—not to mention whatever the mask concealed—the white-skinned woman's face was almost unreadable. When Mahtra squeezed herself against the door jamb rather than brush against her, Akashia had the sense that they were equally uncomfortable with the situation. "She can stay here with me for the rest of the night. Pavek shouldn't have troubled you in the first place."
" 'Tweren't no trouble," the farmer insisted, though he was already retreating with his wife and his face belied every word.
Akashia stood in the doorway, watching them walk back to their hut, and all the while conscious of the stranger at her back. As soon as was polite, she shut the door and braced it with her body. She didn't know what to say. Mahtra solved her problem by speaking first.
"It was only a dream. I didn't know my dreams could frighten someone else. That has never happened before. You said I should go to the grove. What is a grove? Would my dreams frighten anyone there?"
"No." Akashia pushed herself away from the door with a sigh. "Not tonight. It's too late."
It was too late for the grove under any circumstance. Mahtra's voice wasn't natural. Her ja
w scarcely moved as she formed the words and the tone was too deep and deliberate to come from her slender throat; yet listening to her now, Akashia believed Mahtra had lived in the world for only seven years. As much as she craved justice, Akashia couldn't send a seven-year-old to the grove.
"No, nothing, thank you."
