The Road Home

The path down was not the path they’d come up on.

Not by choice. The Shake had moved enough rock in the night that the line of least resistance had shifted; when Thuse led them back down the east face at first light, the way was half-blocked at two points, loose stone covering the packed-earth track in fans of grey debris that hadn’t been there three days ago. He picked his way around the first without comment. The second required them to cross a section of bare slope, forty feet of steep scree with nothing to hold but each other.

Thuse crossed first, slow and deliberate. Ace second. Then Mary, who crossed without looking down and said nothing when she reached the other side.

Kai crossed last.

She didn’t look down either. She looked out, at the long view north, that whole climbing distance now behind and below, and put her feet where Ace had put his, and moved.

Halfway across she felt the scree shift under her right boot. Just a small movement. A handful of stones sliding six inches and then stopping. She paused, waited, and the slope held.

She kept moving.

On the other side, Ace looked at her and she shook her head. Nothing. He nodded and they kept walking.

By midmorning they were below the frost line and the path widened back into something recognizable. The thorn grove where they’d camped on the first night was ahead somewhere, maybe another hour. Thuse walked in the middle now, not at the front. He hadn’t explained the change.

Kai walked beside her father.

They went for a long time without talking. That was normal. Ace had never been a man who filled silence because it was there.

“She kept them inside,” Ace said eventually. “The cuttings. Through every cold season. She said they did better by the window.”

Kai didn’t have to ask who.

“The south window,” he said. “Always the south window. I moved them once when I was cleaning and she moved them back before I’d even put the rag down.”

He said it watching the path, his mouth doing something between fond and tired.

“She never told you why,” Kai said.

“She never told me much about any of it. I figured she just liked them.” He was quiet for a moment. “She knew what she was doing. I know that now.”

Kai watched the path ahead. A crow landed on a branch above the track, looked at them, left.

“Were you angry?” she said.

Ace thought about that. “No,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the right word for it.” He shifted his pack. “I didn’t understand it. I understood less than I thought I did, about a lot of things. About her.” He paused. “There’s a difference between not understanding and being angry about not understanding.”

Kai let that sit.

“She’d have been glad,” Ace said. “What Thuse told you up there. She’d have wanted you to know.” He looked at the track ahead. “I should have found a way to tell you sooner, but I didn’t have the words for it. I barely had the words for any of it.”

“You didn’t know.”

“Some of it I knew.” He left it there. Kai walked beside him and let the track carry them forward, because there would be more of this. Her father opened things slowly. You waited. You let the ground warm.

They stopped at midday where the track widened into a flat section of open grass, the first flat ground they’d had since leaving the Southlands. Ace found water in a rocky channel and they filled the skins. Thuse sat on a stone and ate without saying anything. Mary sat close to Kai.

For a while they were all just tired people eating.

Then Mary said: “Are you going to keep doing it?”

Kai looked at her.

“The listening,” Mary said. “Or whatever it is. Is that what this is now?”

“Yes,” Kai said.

Mary pulled at a thread on her wrap. “Is it going to be dangerous?”

Kai thought about the scree slope that morning. The Shake on the ridge. The way the ground had moved under her before she knew why. She thought about what Thuse had said about Rallah. Close, getting closer, and then she died. He hadn’t said the two things were connected. He also hadn’t said they weren’t.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Mary nodded slowly. She was still pulling at the thread. “Okay,” she said.

“That’s it?” Kai said.

“What else is there to say?” Mary looked up. “You were going to do it anyway. I could tell. You’ve been gone since the first night, even when you were right there.”

Kai opened her mouth and closed it.

“I’m not upset,” Mary said. “I just wanted to know if you knew.” She dropped the thread. “You should probably eat.”

Kai looked at the food in her hand and realized she’d forgotten it was there. She ate.

Thuse had been watching this exchange from his stone. Now he looked away, out toward the south, and said nothing.

They made the Southlands before the greater light turned. The thorn grove was behind them, the high ground behind that, and when the track flattened out into the last long stretch of the valley floor Kai could see the river again. The dark thread she’d barely noticed on the way north, now familiar and significant.

Donath was another day. Tonight they’d camp in the open, no shelter.

Mary walked ahead with Ace. Kai fell back until she was level with Thuse.

“She didn’t ask what I can do,” Kai said. “She asked if I was going to keep doing it.”

“Yes,” Thuse said.

“That’s the right question.”

“She’s known you longer than I have,” he said. “Ask the right questions of the right people.”

Kai thought about that. Behind them, the ridge was still visible against the sky. A dark line above the tree cover, fading in the late light.

It was what you did about it when you got home.