Page 24 of The Merciless Ones

“Yes,” she says, walking over to the back of our wagon and opening its wooden door. She peeks in, gives a nod of satisfaction. “Your friend’s wagon is not comfortable. I will ride in this one.”

“But I thought—”

“Fatu assigned me to Britta’s carriage?” she asks, using White Hands’s name from the time of the goddesses. “Of course she did. She’s always known all the things I’ve hated. That is her way.”

Her words niggle at me and I frown. “Melanis, why do you and White Hands—”

But Melanis looks up, all her attention taken by the electricity sparking the air. “The mothers are coming,” she breathes, a reverent expression spreading across her face.

One moment, the courtyard is empty, and the next, they’re there, the Gilded Ones, as bright as sunbeams as they float on the pillowy white clouds wreathing the air above us.

“Today is a momentous day,” they boom as one. “Our beloved daughters Deka, the Nuru, and Melanis, second of our war queens, will travel with some of our most elite warriors on a journey that will bring us one step closer to victory.”

Cheers ring out, but I don’t hear them. My eyes are suddenly drawn to Anok. Even though she, like the other goddesses, is staring straight forward, I have the sudden feeling that she’s looking right at me. I frown. Why do I feel like there’s something important I’m forgetting? I think back to this morning when she—

The thought slides away so quickly, I blink, confused. What was I just thinking?

It must be nerves – all my anxiety about this journey.

The mothers say a few more words, but I barely hear them, too busy repeating the same mental refrain I have for the past few days: Capture Elder Kadiri. Use him to discover who holds the angoro. Do not fail. By the time I look up again, the goddesses have finished speaking and Melanis is entering the back door of the wagon. I can see her through the small window behind me, making herself comfortable in the room inside. I sigh, trying to relax the tension clenching my jaw. Keita notices and grasps my hand.

“It’s all right, Deka,” he says. “We’re in this together. When it gets too much, I’m here. You’re not alone.”

I nod, still startled that he reads me so well. What did I ever do to deserve someone like him?

Keita’s no longer watching me. His eyes are on the mothers, who are now floating closer. “I think they’re ready,” he whispers. “Time to go.”

I follow his gaze just as the goddesses lift their hands. The atmosphere immediately crackles, power building and coalescing until the air in front of the wagon abruptly splits, cleaving down the middle like a knife through parchment paper. As the edges curl apart, a forest glade appears, dappled sunlight falling on mossy green ground. An awed gasp escapes my chest. I’ve only seen the mothers do this a few times before, and only out of great necessity. They’ve been so weak lately, what with the angoro and all, they can only sporadically create this – a door that allows us to step across continents with less than a thought.

For them to be able to do it now means that they conserved their energies for this. Conserved all the prayers their new worshippers fed them during the dedication ceremony just to make this journey easier and safer for us. The magnitude of their sacrifice weighs on me, but I know I mustn’t let it overwhelm me. The mothers would never want that.

“Go with our blessings,” they intone, smiling down on us.

At me.

So I turn to my friends, their wagons lined up behind ours, the deathshrieks standing beside them. “Shall we?” I say.

Reins flick, and then the horses take their first steps forward. I squeeze Keita’s hands as we ride straight through the mothers’ door to the forest in front of us, and whatever dangers lie beyond it.

The Eastern provinces in the summer remind me deeply of the North. They’re so alike, I’m taken aback by the similarities: sun-dappled glades under towering trees. Prickly-winged hedgeflitters and bright green tree-mice darting across slender branches. A sleepy, warm wind rustling through the grass, bringing with it the familiar scent of dried leaves and moisture. The only difference I can detect is the season. In Irfut, it would be crossing into early winter now. The trees would have already begun shedding the last of their red-orange foliage and the first snowfall would be mere days away. Here, however, the trees still have their bright green mantle. Even stranger, most of the ones around me are long and slender, like reeds, and they grow in towering thickets so dense, they look like massive walls of green. These are certainly not the same trees you’d find in Irfut. Aside from them, though, I could be back in the forest just outside the village, gathering wild mushrooms while the man I once considered my father heads deeper into the woods to hunt the shaggy deer whose furs line our beds in winter.

My and Keita’s wagon is the first to stop, and then the others quickly come to a halt next to us, everyone waving goodbye as Katya, Nimita, Chae-Yeong and the rest of the deathshrieks swiftly head deeper into the foliage, where they’ll wait until we send them the signal that the mission is commencing. Even though it was early afternoon in Abeya, it’s nearly evening here – the hour of day is different because we crossed continents in the blink of an eye. Just the thought sends shivers of awe rolling over me.

Britta jumps down, whirls in a wide circle, and, grinning, says, “Look, Deka! It’s almost like we’re home again.” Home. The word slams into me with the force of a thousand boulders.

I can’t breathe.

Home, where they forced me into that cellar, tortured me for months. Home, where they killed me over and over again, bled me for my gold, scattered pieces of my body across the ground, then watched, disgusted, as they crawled back together. Is that where I am, home? Every muscle in my body is taut, blackness edging my vision. There’s so much pressure squeezing my skull. Just squeezing and squeezing…

“Deka! Deka!” Keita’s arms wrap around me, but I’m too far gone to respond. I barely hear as he calls to Britta, “Britta, she’s having one of her spells!”

Everything moves in flashes – light, motion. I’m back here, back in the place where everything went so horribly wrong. How did I get back there? How did I—

Arms, soft and warm, making long, soothing circles on my back. “It’s all right, Deka,” Britta says gently. “This isn’t Irfut; it just looks like it. Look, look at those trees. The thin ones.”

I sluggishly follow Britta’s finger to those trees I noticed earlier. The ones that look like reeds.

“Trees like that don’t grow in the North,” she reminds me, hands still calmly rubbing my back. “Yer safe, my love, safe.”