Chapter Twenty-Six
Twenty-six
Boats crossed to the islet half an hour later.
Aunt Tirtzah leaped from the first, running across the slick black rocks with an agility I hadn’t expected.
I wondered distractedly if she’d played knockball as well as admiring it, and if so, why she’d never said anything.
She cut quite the figure, dashing across the rock, leading a pack of dignitaries as though the most important people of Talum always made their morning rounds jogging across islets in the dawn light.
“There you are.” She sank to her knees and threw her arms around me, then extended an arm to include Daziel too, a motion that made me want to cry. “What a foolish thing to do—whyever did you not wake me—”
“We’re all right,” I said, meeting Daziel’s gaze before looking back at her. “Did you see it? The Ziz.”
“We saw the birds.” She looked wryly impressed. “They were impossible not to see.”
“It is an infant,” Daziel’s father said.
He strolled through the chaos in a blue silk suit.
Where had he come from? I didn’t think he’d been with the other adults clustering around our friends.
“I hardly think it will direct the winds as efficiently as an adult. But I suspect it will get better with each year.”
“So evacuation is no longer your suggestion?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I hope not.”
“How will it know what to do?” Would it be able to learn without a parent to teach it?
“How does the Maestril know to dry the soil, or the birds to migrate south?” he returned irritably. “You ask ridiculous questions.”
I didn’t think it’d been ridiculous, but I was glad he had—he understood natural magic better than me. If he thought the Ziz would be able to make its way in the world, I was happy.
~ ~ ~
We were bundled back home. I didn’t mind; I was in shock, and all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball with Daziel.
Luckily, everyone seemed agreeable on this front. Aunt Tirtzah chased off the Sanhedrin members who wished to hear our story, putting me and Daziel and the other four in a room at her house. She only let in Leah and Birra and Jelan and Gilli. “Did the city flood?” élodie asked.
“Very little,” Leah said. “A few caves spouted water, but we haven’t heard of bad damage anywhere.”
Daziel curled up around me. I hadn’t realized how comforting it could be lying tangled up with another person, feeling the rise and fall of their chest, the warmth of their body.
I listened to the others talk but felt no need to contribute.
I didn’t want to do anything but listen to Daziel’s heartbeat, to tuck my hand beneath him and hold on tight.
For the morning and afternoon, we slept. I woke once, ravenous, and devoured the hearty bread and lemony pesto beans my aunt had sent. Then I curled back up and kept napping.
In the evening, my friends returned to their own homes, and Daziel and I went upstairs. “Come here,” I said to Daziel, crawling into bed. He slid in, and I pulled the blanket over our heads because it felt safer that way. The light through the duvet turned our world a warm yellow. “Now what?”
Daziel’s eyes found mine. Our legs were tangled together, and he took my hands, drawing them into the small space between our chests.
Our faces were so close our noses almost bumped.
“My father still wants me to go home,” he said, his voice a whisper against my cheek.
“I still want you to come with me. I love you. I want us to be together. I want you to see my world.”
I bit my lip. I wanted to be with him too. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to be with him in the wilderness, the only human, where I didn’t belong or know how to behave.
“I’m not saying it will be easy,” he admitted.
“My parents will probably be a nightmare and the court will be—difficult—but my friends will love you, and my siblings will love you, and there’s a beauty there I think you’ll love.
There are mysteries even shedim don’t know, and you love a puzzle.
It’ll be an adventure. A different kind of adventure than this but a good one. ”
I could. I could do all that. But also…“You could stay here,” I said softly, because that was an option too. “Keep living with me. Go to class, play knockball. We could have a life here.”
“We could,” he agreed just as softly. I imagined how it would be—cozy breakfasts, laughing over coffee, studying together, exploring Talum, cheering him on at knockball. It would be a good life.
But when I met his eyes, I knew he wouldn’t stay.
“You once told me I could be a bridge between our two people,” he said.
“If I wanted. I didn’t, then. I wanted to address the immediate problem, save the Ziz.
But now—I know you. I know your friends, and my friends.
I know your aunt. And I know how much our two people don’t trust each other.
We don’t work together. You’re right—we need a bridge. ”
I nodded. I couldn’t disagree.
He squeezed my hand. “You should be part of it. We need both of us, to span both our people.”
Maybe he was right. Bridges needed support on both sides. Maybe going to the wilderness, being Daziel’s betrothed, would be an incredible, empowering leap. Interspecies relations like no one had ever seen.
But it wasn’t what I wanted.
What I wanted was in a small room in a tower with light streaming in, filled with dust and ancient scrolls.
I wanted to finish uncovering the secrets of Language X.
We were so much closer now to being able to solve it, the phonetics uncovered, and so many words known from the rutter.
The work fascinated me, made me feel alive.
It might take months, years, to decipher the language, but we were on the right path.
I wanted to be part of it, part of uncovering a forgotten language and all its secrets. I’d wanted it for years.
“I’m not ready,” I whispered. “I want to finish working on the scrolls. I’m not ready to just—be your betrothed.”
He was quiet a moment, thinking, and I waited in tense silence.
Then he brushed the lightest kiss across my lips.
“I understand,” he said, and his eyes glinted with gold.
“I don’t want you to leave your life behind because of me, or your passion.
I want us to make a new life together. We might both have to compromise on some things—but not who we are.
Why don’t I come back in two months? At the graduation festival.
Over your summer break, we can visit your family, and mine, and you can see what you think of my world.
But I’m not asking you to leave yours behind for it. ”
Relief blossomed in my chest. This, I could do. Still, some of my trepidation lingered. His father alarmed me, and what did I know about a royal court? Let alone being the first human in who knew how long to enter the wilderness? “I’m scared,” I admitted. “I don’t know what it’ll be like.”
“I’ll help you.” He brought my hand to his mouth and kissed it. The sweetness of the gesture made tears spring to my eyes.
He leaned his forehead against mine. “And I want you to know…I know my lies, my trickery, hurt you. But what you did…Your support lifted a world of weight away from me. I thought I was going to have to figure out everything on my own. Having your help, your drive, your determination—it was incredible. You are incredible.”
Emotions welled up in me, complex and tangled and fierce. They made my chest expand so much it hurt, and tears weighed heavy behind my eyes. My words came out through a scratchy throat. “Now it sounds like you’re saying goodbye forever.”
“I’m not,” he vowed. “Only for two months.”
Before Daziel, I’d been so determined to stand on my own all the time.
To be the oldest daughter, to be strong and independent.
I hadn’t realized you could be those things and rely on someone else.
I hadn’t realized how much joy a single other person could give you, how much laughter and comfort. I kissed him. “I’ll be here.”
When I fell asleep, I dreamed of the strangest hesitant cheep, like a newborn baby bird learning to sing.
~ ~ ~
In the morning, we went downstairs to a lavish breakfast. Chopped fruits and yogurt layered with honeyed granola, fried cheese and eggs, sesame bread, lavender muffins.
Croissants and coffee, of course. We fell upon them like starving animals, no matter that we’d done absolutely nothing yesterday, save rest and eat.
Aunt Tirtzah, Daziel’s father, and the Chief Judge of the Sanhedrin were there. Just a normal breakfast crew.
“Do we know anything about the—the hatchling?” I asked as we sat. It felt strange to call it “the Ziz” when it had just been an awkward baby, and when we had called its late predecessor the Ziz for so long.
“It was last sighted being carried by the mixed flock off the western coast,” Aunt Tirtzah said. “Since then, birds have returned to Ena-Cinnai. It’s being theorized they were on a death watch of sorts—for the old Ziz, but now they’re returning to their normal routines.”
“We’re leaving this evening,” Daziel’s father said. “Make sure you’re ready.”
I spent the rest of the day with Daziel, trying to be in the present and not feel like I was about to be abandoned.
I even managed to shoo him off to say goodbye to his knockball friends for an hour.
Only then did I let my shoulders slump. I stepped into the garden, hugging my arms around my waist and blinking back tears.
And I found Daziel’s father standing beneath a cherry tree.
Almost like he’d been waiting for this opportunity.
I told myself to be polite. I might not like him, but that was beside the point. If Daziel and I were going to have any kind of future, it would be best to get along with his dad. “Hello.”
He tilted his head. He was so like Daziel in his mannerisms, but I didn’t think they were anything alike in spirit. “So, Daziel wants you to come home with him.”