The Sweet Far Thing - Page 207/257

“Asha! Asha, who has done this?” I sputter.

She collapses, coughing. Her scorched orange sari settles around her like the singed plumage of a magnificent bird.

“Asha!” I shout. “Tell me.”

She looks into my eyes. Her face is streaked with black. “It…it was the forest folk.”

Gorgon calls from the river below. Ann and I take Asha to the ship and bring her water, which she drinks like a woman whose thirst will never be slaked. I shake with anger. I cannot believe that Philon and the forest folk would do such a thing. I thought them to be peaceful. Perhaps the Order was right after all and the magic cannot be shared.

“Tell me what happened,” I say.

“They came as we slept. They swarmed the mountain. There was no way out. One of them held a torch to the Temple. ‘This is for Creostus,’ it said. And the Temple burned.”

“This was retaliation?”

She nods, wiping her face with the moistened edge of her sari. “I told them we had no part in the slaughter of the centaur. But they did not believe me. The decision was in their eyes already. They came for war, and they would not be stopped.”

She puts her trembling fingers to her lips as the Temple burns. Where the flames fall on the poppy fields, beautiful curls of red smoke rise. “We have never questioned. It is not our way.”

I put my arm around her shoulders. “Your way needs to change, Asha. It is time to question everything.”

We form several lines with the Hajin, passing buckets of water till we douse what we can of the flames.

“Why do you not cure this malady with magic?” a Hajin boy asks.

“It isn’t a good course just now, I’m afraid,” I say, looking at the ruined, smoldering Temple.

“But the magic will fix everything, won’t it?” He presses, and I can see how desperately he wants to believe, how much he wants me to sweep my hand over his broken home and make it whole. I wish I could.

I shake my head and pass the water down the line. “It can only do so much. The rest is up to us.”

Gorgon ferries us through the golden veil to the island home of the forest folk. They flank the shore in an ominous line, their newly fashioned spears and crossbows at the ready. Gorgon keeps us a safe distance from the shore—close enough that I can be heard but far enough that we can retreat. Philon glides to the water’s edge. The creature’s leaf coat has taken on tinges of orange, gold, and red. The high collar blazes about Philon’s slender neck.

“You are not welcome here, Priestess,” Philon shouts.

“I have just come from the Temple. You burned it!”

Philon stands imperiously. “So it is.”

“Why?” I ask, because I can think of no truer question.

“They took one of our own! Would you deny us justice?”

“And so you took twenty of theirs? How is this justice?”

Asha stands feebly. She clutches the ship’s railing. “We did not kill the centaur.”

“So you say,” Philon thunders. “Then who did?”

“Look within for the answer,” Asha replies cryptically.

Neela throws a rock at us. It lands in the water, spraying the side of the ship. “We’ll have no more of your lies! Be gone!”

She throws another and it narrowly misses me, landing on the deck. On impulse, I grab the rock, feeling its weight in my hand.

Asha stays my arm. “Retaliation is a dog chasing its tail.”

There is wisdom in what she says, but I want to throw the rock, and it takes every bit of strength to hold it firmly in my palm.

“Philon, did you stop to consider this: How will we join hands in an alliance now that you have burned the Temple?”

A ripple passes through the assembled folk. And for a moment, I see a hint of doubt in Philon’s cool eyes. “The time for alliances is past. Let the magic take its own course now. We shall see who stands in the end.”

“But I need your help! The Winterlands creatures are plotting against us! Circe has gone to them—”

“More lies!” Neela shouts, and the forest folk turn away.

“Come, Most High,” Gorgon says. “We have done all there is to do here.” She steers us away from the shore, but it is not until we are well past the golden veil that I am able to loosen my grip on the rock. I drop it into the river, where it makes not a single sound.

Ann takes my arm. Her face is grim. “We must find Felicity.”

We find Pippa and the girls in the castle, drinking wine and playing. Dusky light coats the chapel in a pretty gloom. Bessie pulls the wings from a dragonfly, and she and Mae laugh as it hops about on the floor, desperate to fly away. Pippa sits on the throne, eating berries from a golden chalice till her lips are a deep shade of blue. Platters and goblets are stacked high with the fruit.