Page 114

The highest branches are filled with birdsong, the nearby creek adding its lazy tinkling to the ensemble, completely at odds with the reckoning occurring inside her as she passes through.

She walks in carefully measured steps – not so fast as to cause alarm. She fastens her thoughts to the sounds and smells around her, rather than the sensations within – impending collapse, looming catastrophe. Panic-driven desperation. Dawsyn has felt her fair share of existential dread, but now she must squash it. She must temper it, and then mould it into something softer, lest it provoke theseentitiesthat seem to awaken when she is most disquieted.

She thinks of them as monsters she ought not disturb.

Dawsyn screws her eyes tightly shut.Breathe,she bids her lungs.Be calm,she bids her blood.

She walks despite her fatigue – it may even make it easier. The tiredness seems to keep the magic at bay. Her body is too spent now to host that battle. She sorts through her musings with care, trying not to let them dictate her emotions, her reactions.

She tries and fails to reconcile with the idea that she is… contaminated. Taken hostage by opposing powers that will try to extinguish each other, and her along with them.

But though this thought tumbles to the forefront again and again, it does not take precedence over one matter that concerns her more:

She cannot use these powers to liberate the Ledge.

And lastly, she may not live long enough to liberate it at all.

Dawsyn stumbles her way back to camp when darkness threatens her sense of direction. She finds the site blissfully filled with sleeping bodies. She sets herself down in the space between Hector and Salem. Hector tosses fretfully, pulling his tunic away from his neck and chest as it tries to cling to his sweat-slick skin. Salem snores ceaselessly, one arm thrown across his eyes.

Between them, Dawsyn takes an age to settle. She has surpassed her body’s tolerance for wakefulness. Adrenaline keeps her conscious now. Her muscles ache at the memory of the pain, twisting and squeezing and crushing her. Is that truly the way she will die? Strangled from within?

With these thoughts tumbling together and self-destruction simmering under the surface, she eventually falls into the gap between awareness and dreams. Her mind turns to things of comfort, rather than pain.

In the years she spent alone on the Ledge, her consciousness could stave off the madness born from fear with pleasant things. In sleep, her mind would replay the sounds and smells of food, of family, of games and songs and embraces. While awake, she sought safety in solitude, but in her dreams, she was never alone. Sleep would bring her what she lacked: comfort, companionship. It reached into the crevices of her memory until it found a sanctuary in which she could rest.

This is why, though she isn’t aware of doing so, she rises, her eyes blinking drowsily, and stumbles to the far side of the camp, where the bulk of a thin blanket covers a person beneath. Dawsyn’s body finds the ground beside his, her eyes already shut. Somewhere outside of herself, she feels the weight of scratchy wool settle over her. Her hand reaches forward of its own accord, searching along the dirt. Searching until her fingers are taken, cradled with gentle devotion.

Dawsyn sleeps soundly, and when she wakes the next morning, watching Ryon’s back as he slinks away, she notes her change in setting. Notes it, but allows it no further thought.

It does not take long for Ryon to seek her out. It is likely too much to ask that he forget all that Baltisse had revealed, condemning her to probable death, though she could ask that he not spread the news to the rest of their party. The thought of tolerating their looks of pity makes her cringe.

“Dawsyn, we should speak,” he says in an aside. Dawsyn is carving wood, trying her hand at etching a mountain cat out of a broken branch – albeit, not particularly well. It is a previous pastime of hers from the Ledge. It seems a placid enough activity, tedious enough to temper the magic within, until she makes the mistake of glancing up at Ryon, where he hovers over her.

He wears the face of a tortured man. It is clear that sleep eluded him. The beard on his jaw is thickening, growing scraggly and unkempt. Coupled with the deep shadows beneath his eyes, the creases that line his forehead, one might guess that it was Ryon himself nearing his demise.

Dawsyn nods reluctantly. She watches him be seated on the ground beside her, both of them looking out at the campsite, where the others mill.

He speaks lowly. “I know you will tell me you are not afraid–”

“Iamafraid,” she says immediately. There is little point in lying. She digs the tip of a knife into the hind leg of the wooden figurine.

Ryon looks up from the ground, contemplating her. “As am I.”

Dawsyn resists the temptation to lean into him, let her side rest against his.

“I will speak with Baltisse again,” Ryon says now. He nods to himself, his hands pressing tightly together. The muscles along his arms strain in response. “We will think of a plan.”

Dawsyn’s hands pause. She takes a steadying breath and looks out at the others, oblivious to their conversation. “Can I ask that this…business,does not reach the rest?”

Ryon simply nods, gets to his feet, and breathes rather heavily through his nose. “Of course.”

She smiles wanly at him, by way of thanks, and resumes her attentions to the carving.

“Is there something… some way I can…” Ryon stammers. Dawsyn sees his eyes sweep to the heavens and back. “Give mesomethingto do,” he begs. “Please.”

Dawsyn regards him, notes how tightly wound he is.

Love,he’d call it. Perhaps it is true.