Sei woke before dawn. He always did, though never on purpose. Ataia was still asleep beside him, curled up like a wood bug in winter, and the moon that morning was just bright enough to see that she was having a nightmare. He lightly traced the length of her nose.
Her opening eyes were unfocused. "I told you not to wake me."
"Tough," he countered. "I can't get any sleep with you crying next to me."
Hearing him say it made her cackle a little. Her cold feet rootled around for his, seeking warmth. "I dreamt about Kacha again," she said. "She must hate me."
"You're her sister. She'd never hate you."
"She'll be an old woman by now. She'll see us and wish for death."
"She made her own bed, to be fair," he said. "She murdered Jakko and the west hill boys."
Ataia looked pained. "But we could have defended her. Why didn't we?"
He sighed. "Because someone had to take the fall."
"That's just an excuse." She untangled herself and rolled away. Shoulders hunched, she sat on the edge of the bed, back turned. "We would have died that day if it weren't for her," she murmured. "She and Baroona… they frightened me."
"They frightened all of us." Sei moved closer, absently feeling along her spine. That day… a hot wind had screamed across the fields, he remembered. "You can't blame yourself," he said, but his mind was hopelessly elsewhere. "It was unexpected."
"The look on her face, Sei. Like I'd betrayed her. I can't stop thinking about it." As if in the hope of doing just that, Ataia stood and crossed the room. The breakfast pot was simmering there by the fire, fragrant and drooling steam. "I want to see her," she said. "I want to know if she's led a good life."
Sei pointed at the ladle when he noticed her looking for it. "You know the law," he answered. "No one leaves the island but hunters."
Ataia scowled. "I could be a hunter."
"But you're not," he said. "You're the village cook."
She shook the wooden ladle at him. "I'll cook you if you're not careful."
"You sound like your mother." When she gasped, he scoffed, "That's right, I went there."
"You twit." Smiling regardless, she gave the pot a practiced stir. But the smile faded. "I'm serious, Sei," she said. "I'd like to see her."
"I know. I'll meet with Pathos and see if we can work something out."
She sulked. "Pathos doesn't care about anything."
"He just has that kind of a face."
Ataia set down the spoon with a sigh. She stared at it thoughtfully. "He'd gotten much better, I think," she said. "If only he hadn't seen Kooma again."
Sei moved to the foot of the bed. "Let's not talk about it."
Ataia approached, uncertain. "Are you afraid that Alma can hear us?"
"She can," he replied. "She's aware now."
"It's strange, seeing you anxious." Ataia stopped in front of him. She was there to console him, so he let her. It was a comfortable relationship, built on foundations of mutual misery. In time they'd come to know one another better than any two people should. "There, there," she said, rubbing his back. "The doubt will pass. It always has, always will."
Sei looked up at her. "I don't want it to pass."
She studied him, frowning. "What are you talking about?"
"I don't want it to pass, Ataia," he repeated. "We're too old. We're all too old. We shouldn't even be alive anymore." He held her eyes. "Don't you ever get tired?"
She nodded, slowly. "Of course I do."
"Do you hate me for wishing she'd hurry up and destroy us all?"
Ataia was quiet at first. She removed his hand from her arm. "We've watched the mountains rise, you and I," she said. "Do you realize you've never once told me you loved me?"
He hesitated. He hadn't expected that. "I didn't think I had to."
"You don't. That's my point." Ataia scooped up yesterday's shirt from the floor. She sniffed it before putting it on. "What we have, whatever it is— it works," she said, and she faced down the pot, fists on her hips. "Now help me carry this out to the commons. The sun will be up before long."
She didn't want to continue the discussion. Sei could hear it in her voice, see it in her bearing. He resignedly looked around for his pants. "Yeah, okay."
As they'd done countless times in the past, together they donned their clothes and their mitts and hauled the piping 12-gallon pot all forty paces to the tented village commons. The weathered tables were empty now, but soon enough they'd all be filled; Ataia would spend the entire day there, dishing out servings, preparing for supper, breaking now and again to clean up. Her job was more important than hunting. Hunters didn't gather the flock. Hunters didn't make a place home.
Sunlight seared across the horizon. Sei admitted, "A fine dawn."
Ataia glanced up. "Yeah," she agreed. "Fine."
But she was much finer, tenfold, more, and Sei thought she might have seen the sentiment in his eyes. "I love you," he said, and he meant it. "I'll say it every day if it makes you happy."
"Oh, please, don't," she laughed. "The village will think you've lost it."
He smiled, forever charmed. "Want help with the fire?"
"No, it's fine." Flustered, she produced a bowl and spooned out a helping. Against regulation, as always. Such a softie. She forced it on him and said, "For Baroona, since he forgets."
Sei took it, frowning some. "Baroona doesn't get up this early."
"He did today. You can hear him if you listen."
So he did, and she was right. She was always right, damn her. Over the wind, over the crows, the sound of a hammer heralded the sun. Sei nervously cleared his throat. "I'll go check it out."
"Be careful." Ataia was clutching the ladle two-handed. "He's the best of us, Sei."
The best of us. It was just another way of calling Baroona the worst of them. Long ago, before the war, they'd been like him. Gifted. Keepers of the tono fire. They'd sacrificed it to raise Wyndemere into the clouds. They'd rendered themselves nearly powerless.
But not Baroona. Baroona had defied the flock. He'd dishonored the tono custom of solidarity and chosen not to participate in their time of need. He'd branded himself a traitor. As had Kacha.
None of it mattered to Sei, of course. Not anymore. Forgiveness meant something different after so many years. Baroona had never explained why he'd forsaken them all those lifetimes ago, but he'd done plenty repenting since; it was evidenced in his work, how loathe he was to have nothing to do, to have a moment's peace. It was like he didn't think he deserved it. And as Sei embarked on the sanctuary's hundred steps, he wondered if maybe Baroona was right. Maybe he'd erred more than Sei knew. Maybe he didn't deserve to rest.
The sight of the standing grimstones was fearsome. Two had collapsed on their sides. A third had split down the middle. The Cage itself was smaller in size than it should have been, surrounded by crumbs of its own accursed bedrock. Baroona was there, working as always, cramming his chisel into a massive rut he'd created. Another hour at it and he'd cleave it to pieces.
Sei must have called out to him, because he turned. There were deep circles beneath his eyes, lines of restlessness, sleeplessness. His expression was mostly blank with exhaustion. "She keeps weathering the script," he explained, unprompted. "She's teasing me."
Someone was laughing— a woman. Sei said, "I brought soup."
"You can have it." Baroona tilted his head, eyes moving. "Hear that?"
"You look like you're on your way out, Baroo. Maybe you ought to sit down."
Baroona suddenly smiled. It was unsettling, because smiling wasn't something he did. "She keeps telling these awful jokes," he said. "The long sleep must've addled her mind."
Sei started in. Cautious. Steady. It was like walking into the wind. "Let's swap out for a while today," he suggested. "We could both use a change of pace."
"But you have watch duty today. I hate watch duty. It's boring."
"You're just mad at him."
Baroona's smile slowly dissolved. He turned away. "Ethos is unreliable," he said. "I'd have killed him myself if I'd known that he'd run headlong at Sutter Bonesteel."
"The resemblance would've stopped you."
"Or motivated me." Baroona stared at the dismal Cage, tools loose in his hands. "Sutter has what he needs now," he sighed. "It's only a matter of time."
"So you're sulking. Is this the part where we forfeit, then?"
Baroona stooped to retrieve a canister of water. He shook it at his ear. "No," he said. "No, I'll stay here and play my role until the bitter end. It's what I'm meant to do. It's my way."
"Give me that chisel." When Baroona just blinked at him, Sei gestured impatiently. "The hammer, too. And take this soup or I'll fling it down the hundred."
Baroona complied. "I'm sick of squash."
"Everyone's sick of the squash."
Having stripped Baroona of his tools, Sei dared a glance at the Cage. It was misshapen now, all but a formless statue. Time would tell if the damage was reversible. "Maybe we should assign pairs up here, going forward," he thought, aloud. "Seems like she's getting hard to handle alone."
Baroona nodded. "It's like last time. He got too close, stirred her up."
"You think Ethos has something to do with this?"
"He must. He's always been behind the anomalies." Baroona sat heavily against the nearest fallen megalith. "What's worse is he's older."
"So what if he's older?"
"He's more of a threat to her now."
"But that's a good thing, right? For us, I mean."
"Yes and no." Baroona's expression went dark. When he noticed Sei staring, he sipped at the soup and winced at the taste. "It's the resemblance, like you said," he muttered. "It makes me nervous. Seeing him grown could make her go savage again."
Sei joined him on the ground. "It makes me nervous, too."
"Far as I know, those ashes are still under lockdown in Oldden," Baroona said. "But I don't think it matters, really. Whoever he is, she's responding."
Silence breathed through the sanctuary. It felt like there were eyes on them. "Ataia says you're the one who found him," Sei ventured. "I know I'm not supposed to ask details."
"You can ask. But it was Kacha who found him, not me." Baroona settled in and pointed out at the sleepy village. "It was about forty years ago now. We were headed to group, around noon, I think, and she stopped. Wouldn't even talk to me at first, like she was listening to something distant. But then she took me by the arm and dragged me up the hundred here. She found him around the back of the Cage, sitting in the shade. He looked the same as the day he died." He smiled that strange smile again. "A hot day, I remember. He was probably trying to cool off."
Sei asked, "What'd you say to him?"
"What anyone would, I guess. We asked how he got there, if he was okay." Baroona glanced over, one eye squinting in the rising sun. "He said he was supposed to be doing something. Didn't know what, of course. He just looked up at us, real wide-eyed, and asked why he couldn't remember." To that, he shook his head. "Kacha answered for me, said not to worry. Said we'd figure it out. So I carried him back toward the village, and I think… I think she'd planned to have off with him."
Sei turned the hammer in his hands, eyes low. "Why have off?"
"You know why. After all, you and Ataia happened by not long after Jakko did, and all of us saw how he reacted. And who's to blame him?" His gaze drifted for a time. "Four hundred years. Four fifty, almost. Ethos was dead. And then suddenly there he was."
"That's why Jakko rallied the boys?"
"That'd be my guess. I'd never had trouble with him in the past." Baroona took another sip of the soup. His legs fell akimbo before the bowl returned to his lap. He stared down at it. "You saw the rest," he said. "It was all I could do to protect the kid. Kacha took measures."
"I don't think I've ever heard you talk this much."
Baroona smirked. "With this, we've finally run out of things to discuss."
"What about the night he disappeared? I remember you being called in by the elders."
"That was over a decade later," he answered. "They'd forgiven me by then. They called me in for my expertise, thought I'd be able to offer some insight."
"And did you? Did you know what caused Alma's rampage?"
Baroona purposefully met his eyes. "Ethos caused it," he said. "Leemai saw him leave the granary that morning, said he climbed right up the hundred as if someone had told him to."
"Do you think it was Alma?"
"That'd be my guess."
"So how'd he end up in Harken?"
Baroona shrugged again. "Hell if I know," he said. "Could be he ran into open air. Fell. Could be somebody pushed him. I doubt we'll learn the truth of it."
Sei took a breath and rummaged around for his trusty pipe. "Ataia wants to see her, you know," he remarked. "Kacha, I mean. She asked if we could make it work, maybe talk to Pathos or something."
"Leave Kacha alone, Sei." Baroona finished the last of his soup. He ran a finger beneath the lip of the bowl to catch any runaway drippings. "She'll look nearly eighty by now," he said. "Appearing at her door unannounced would be needlessly cruel. We're living reminders of what she lost."
"But she could help. Ataia's been having nightmares."
"We've all been having the nightmares."
Somewhat taken aback, Sei said, "I haven't."
"Then you're the minority. Consider yourself lucky."
"That's fresh, being called the minority by the best of us."
"It's not hard to be a minority in a community of eighty-six people."
Sei hadn't set out to insult him. He apologized, backtracking to the subject at hand. "It never sat right with me, what happened with her," he said. "Ataia thinks the same."
"Kacha knew what she was doing. She's a good person."
"I've often wondered why the two of you didn't leave together," Sei said. "Ethos could've been raised in relative normalcy if you'd taken him to the mainland."
Baroona laughed outright. "Oh, sure," he scoffed. "Me, a father. I pity the child."
"You haven't always thought like that." Sei stuffed a wad of tobacco into the chamber of his pipe, using it as an excuse to adhere his eyes elsewhere. "Now that we're talking about it, mind if I ask why the two of you did what you did in the Clash?"
Baroona didn't respond. Sei glanced and found him staring at the Cage. "I loved Alma more than anything," he murmured. "More than Syan, truth be told. I couldn't raise a hand against her, not with her screaming and crying like that. It was hard enough to just stand there and watch it."
"You think she regretted killing him in the end?"
"Yeah. I think so."
"What was Kacha's reason?"
"I doubt I'll ever know. I don't deserve to." Baroona fell silent, but then he groaned and rubbed at his face as if to scour the thoughts away. "I should have asked Ethos how she was," he said. "I was too busy worrying about myself to think about it."
"You can ask him about her next time he's by."
"Next time he's by it'll be to wipe us out of creation."
Sei lit his pipe and returned to his feet. "We still don't know for sure if he's marked."
"He is. You remember how Sutter was in those final days. The man is sick."
"Yeah, well, maybe the years have mellowed him out."
Baroona glared. "He buried Falco alive."
"You hated Falco."
"That doesn't make it okay."
"No, but I think you should tread carefully here." Sei matched his glare until he looked away. "We were all pretty sick in that life, Baroo. It was a dirty war."
It was true. Baroona knew it. "Shut up, Sei."
Something on the ground caught the early morning light. Water, seeping. But as Sei stepped aside to avoid getting his feet wet, he saw that it was much too thick, much too bright, and that what he'd just mistaken for water was in fact a run of molten gold, creeping toward them, silent. The only sound was that of it dripping.
Dripping from a crack in the Cage.
Baroona was standing beside him. Together they watched the crack crumble wider, as gold flooded out from somewhere within, as it streamed down the side where it pooled and it gleamed and peppered the thirsty earth underneath.
Sei backed away. "What do we do?"
"We fight." Baroona was grimly expressioned. He carefully met Sei's eyes. "This is worse than the last time, Sei," he said. "I don't think we can keep her down."
A fissure split the soil. Sei unwittingly dropped his pipe. "I'll warn the village."
One by one, the surviving standing stones fell. The earth trembled underfoot. Croaky laughter cut in. Madness, manifest. Crows circled above. "Hunger and thirst," she said. "Hunger and thirst."
Sei started for the hundred steps, tripping in his haste to flee. A second fissure fled past him, and he watched from his knees as it tore like a lance through the miserable hundred and into the sleeping village beyond. The morning sun reddened to a deep, bloody crimson.
Sei couldn't move. The air was heavy, pressing down.
"We in this land are equally cursed."