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“I want to bury him here,” Tasheem says. “Onthisside of the fucking Boulder Gate.”

So they do.

They take the shovels offered to them by other mourners and they find a place by the tree line where Rivdan can sleep in the shade. They dig and dig without relenting, letting blisters form on their fingers. They do not stop until Rivdan lies in its base, until Ryon’s knees crumble beside his grave. The only pause comes from the sounds of his apology, as he tries and fails to explain a lifetime’s worth of gratitude.

But words have never been enough to slake that particular need. Dawsyn knows this much. She kneels beside Ryon and takes his head in her lap. She cradles him until the breaking slows.

Around them, the same scene repeats, again and again. The dead are laid to rest by those that loved them, or they rot alone. Dawsyn supposes all one can hope for in this realm is that they can collect enough mourners before they pass on.

There is no glory in war. There is only this, the pieces that remain.

At some point, Esra, Salem, Hector and Abertha find their way back to them, there in the battlefield.

Hector takes her hand, Esra takes Tasheem’s. Salem sits beside Ryon and puts a hand to his back.

“What now?” Abertha asks. It is unclear of who she asks.

But Dawsyn answers.

“Now, we live,” she says. It comes on a whisper, travelling on the wind, all the way throughout the valley.

EPILOGUE

They carved a statue of Dawsyn Sabar.

She was placed beside her grandmother, the crown princess of Terrsaw, though Dawsyn, like Valma, never did sit on the throne.

In fact, Dawsyn never even saw how perfectly her likeness was captured in that marble. She never stood at its base and marvelled at the way the sunlight glanced off the stone ax. There is very little left in the histories to suggest what transpired after the destruction of the Pool of Iskra and so Dawsyn Sabar’s disappearance remains a great mystery to the people of Terrsaw, even centuries after the Ledge people returned.

According to Queen Ruby’s journals, Sabar attended the new monarch’s coronation, which gave way to a new era. It is the very last known proof that Dawsyn Sabar ever stepped foot on Terrsaw land again.

Some believe she returned to the Ledge, where she had been born.

Some believe the great Glacian warrior, Ryon Mesrich, finally took her to the other side of that mountain, where she found the paradise that alluded her.

Some believe she died. She had suffered through too much.

But if the chaotic writings of Esra, the infamous Solstice Braggard, are to be counted, the remainder of Dawsyn Sabar’s life was spent somewhere else.

It is said that an inn was built in the forgotten parts of the Terrsaw forest, beyond the river, where nary a single traveller would wander. The musings describe a band of mixed-blooded Glacians and humans alike, cutting trees to resurrect an establishment that was never recorded in Terrsaw’s enterprise accounts. A place Esra and his husband, Hector, called “Salem’s Inn.”

The scribblings mention other names otherwise unknown: Tasheem, Abertha, Brennick. And then more names of presumed children that were dated later: Tizz, River, Gerrot, Briar and Farra. It is unclear to whom these children were born.

If Esra is to be believed (and other evidence suggests he clearly shouldn’t be), then Dawsyn Sabar lived with her husband, Mesrich, the very being who succeeded in bringing the downfall of the last Glacian King.

They lived their remaining days in presumed peace, for the borders between Glacia and Terrsaw were abolished by Queen Ruby, and all were allowed passage beyond the Boulder Gate.

Within a couple of centuries, there were no children born with wings or talons.

Esra’s entries detail the last remaining days of Dawsyn Sabar, who lived until the effects of age wore on her, as it does to all who are fortunate.

According to his writings, Dawsyn’s last words to those who lived in Salem’s Inn were, “I am not cold now. They are waiting for me.”

Ryon Mesrich, possessed of wings, flew Dawsyn Sabar over the ocean and disappeared into the horizon. Neither ever returned.

Esra’s last journal entry was dated soon after this account, and it read:

Mother, take us all now, if you wish.

We have lived.