Iron Heart

by Nina Varela

  The girl had opened her eyes.

  “Yora,” Siena breathed.

  12

  Ayla woke when the sky began to lighten, deep blue shifting to lavender. Crier, who had played sentinel all night, now watched as wakefulness spread like the dawn over Ayla’s body—first her fingers twitched, then her brow furrowed, then her lips parted, revealing a glimpse of her front teeth, then her eyelashes fluttered. Without opening her eyes, she took a long breath through her nose, a prolonged sniff that dropped into a hum at the end, a tiny throaty noise.

  Ayla opened her eyes and blinked at Crier in the soft light. “We were s’posed to take turns,” she said, voice scratchy with sleep. “You were s’posed to wake me up.”

  “You needed the rest,” Crier said, and got to her feet. She brushed ineffectually at the mud on her clothes, succeeding only in smearing it further. “You can keep watch tonight, if you choose.”

  “Mm.” Ayla tried to stand up and stumbled, one knee buckling. Crier grabbed her shoulder, alarmed. She was more than a little stunned when Ayla didn’t shake her off.

  “’M fine,” Ayla said, eyes squeezed shut. “I’m fine. Just—light-headed.”

  “You need to eat,” Crier said.

  “Yeah. I’m not sure how that’s going to happen, though.” Ayla breathed in slowly, then stretched, body a curve. Crier let go of her shoulder. “I could try to catch a fish again.”

  Crier shook her head. “Our best bet is the woods. Even if we can’t hunt, I can find—mushrooms, winterberries, seeds, something.”

  “How do you know how to forage in the wilderness?” Ayla asked. For once she didn’t sound accusatory, just curious.

  “My father has a lot of books on herbology and botany,” Crier said. “I read about edible mushrooms and flowers and bark and—lots of things. I know what will be growing in this region at this time of year. It’s difficult, because warm days and overnight frosts kill off a lot of seeds before they get a chance to grow, but I think I’ll be able to find something.”

  Ayla opened her mouth and then shut it again. “I see,” she said. “Foraging it is.”

  They crept through the forest, Crier listening for bandits, hunters, any footfalls that did not belong to her or Ayla. But after an hour of nothing but birdsong and rustling leaves and the trill of river frogs, Crier let herself relax just a fraction. The ground was soft and spongy with moss, eventually giving way to a carpet of dead leaves as they wandered farther from the river. Crier breathed in and the air smelled of sap, wet soil, the earthiness of moss and the rain-smell of rotting wood. It was strange, the absence of salt. Back home—back at the sovereign’s palace—the sea was inescapable. The air was tinged with it. The rushing tide sounded like the world itself was breathing, in and out, in and out. Filling and emptying those gargantuan lungs.

  “There,” said Crier, pointing to a cluster of white mushrooms at the base of a tree. “Those are safe to eat.”

  Ayla gave them a doubtful look. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Crier expected an argument, but Ayla just nodded. She picked and ate the mushrooms right there, crouched over the tree roots, first in tiny hesitant bites and then in mouthfuls, hunger taking over. Crier tried not to think of her own hunger. She hadn’t had any heartstone for . . . two days now? She had finally run out. Right now the hunger was a faint ache, a restlessness, an itch, but soon it would become far more serious. Already she was feeling the side effects: the wounds in her back still ached, and staying awake all night had been unexpectedly difficult. She’d nearly nodded off a couple times.

  They kept going once Ayla had finished off the mushrooms. It took a while to find more sustenance, the frostbitten forest having little to offer, but there were more mushrooms and a handful of pale green winterberries. Enough to fill Ayla’s belly for now. They began the long walk back to their riverbank shelter, and as the morning went on without any sign of bandits, the stretches of uncomfortable silence between them grew shorter—and less uncomfortable. Crier pointed out the gathering clouds and Ayla said, “I hope it doesn’t rain, that’s the last thing we need,” and Crier said yes and Ayla said, “Maybe we could find a better shelter. These woods are surrounded by farmland, maybe we could hide in someone’s barn.” And Crier said, Oh, that’s a good idea, and Ayla looked pleased. At one point Ayla started humming, absentminded, and Crier recognized the tune. Hadn’t Ayla sung this for her once? Listen for my voice across the wide, storm-dark waters. Listen for my voice, let it guide your way home. It had sounded melancholy then as it did now, even accompanied by sunlight and birdsong and the tumbling river. A sad, lilting song. A yearning song.

  Part of her wanted to press Ayla for more details about her stay in Thalen. Only a few months ago, anything to do with Queen Junn would have fascinated her. But now Junn’s name filled Crier with revulsion. She couldn’t forget the letter she’d received, her last correspondence with the Bone Eater. Don’t worry about the missing red hen. I took care of her.

  Councilmember Reyka—the only member of the Red Council who had ever shown kindness to Crier, who had ever taken her seriously—was dead, and Junn had killed her. Even if she hadn’t raised the blade herself, she’d given the order. Why? Reyka was on their side. Reyka had been working against Kinok. Who killed their own ally?

  How could you? she’d thought so many times, lying awake at night, brimming with a hot, prickling emotion she had finally identified as anger.

  “You know what I feel like doing?” said Ayla, snapping Crier out of her thoughts.

  The familiar gleam of the river was once again visible through the trees up ahead.

  “What?” said Crier.

  “Taking a bath.”

  Ayla ran for the river without looking back. By the time Crier gathered herself enough to follow after, picking her way down the slippery bank, Ayla was already at the edge of the water. She was fully clothed but barefoot, wading in slowly. It was a warm day, but the water would be freezing. Mountain runoff. Crier made her way to a little shelter and sat down, pressing her spine to the curving dirt wall, keeping her eyes firmly on her own feet. Automae were not modest about nudity, but she knew it was often different for humans.

  “It’s not too cold,” Ayla called, and Crier glanced up automatically before forcing her eyes back down. “You coming?”

  “I . . . I don’t want to—intrude,” Crier said, raising her voice to be heard over the rushing water.

  “It’s a river,” Ayla called back. “It doesn’t belong to anyone. Come on, don’t you want to clean off all the blood?”

  “I . . . ,” Crier said weakly, but couldn’t think of an excuse that wasn’t I can’t see any part of you without wanting to see more, so instead she just closed her mouth and got to her feet. Ayla was waist-deep in the water now, her pants discarded on the pebbly shore. She was still wearing her shirt. Thank the gods. Crier toed out of her own shoes and waded into the water, focusing on the bite of cold, the shock to her system. She took slow, careful steps, the river bottom slick beneath her feet. Mud and clay and smooth, flat stones, tiny black oyster shells. Each footstep stirred up a cloud of silt in the clear water. She looked up. Ayla had reached the center of the river and was pulling her shirt off over her head. Her back was arched, muscles flexing in her shoulders, and—oh—the tops of her shoulders were dusted with freckles just like her nose. Her spine was a curve Crier wanted to—run her fingers along, fit her palm to; she wanted to press her hand to that soft sun-warm skin, wanted to trace the faint, pockmarked scars scattered across Ayla’s back like points on a map, the remnants of some human illness. Some pox. Where Crier was long and lean, Ayla was smaller, solid, compact, carved from bronze. An illustration from a faerie book, standing there in the sunlit water, tawny brown skin and dark tangled curls.

  Ayla balled up her shirt and tossed it back onto the shore, then dived beneath the surface. While Ayla was underwater, Crier scrambled out of her pants and waded in up to her waist, cold punching t
he breath from her lungs. But it felt good, refreshing, after the days spent caked in dirt and her own dried, flaking blood. She longed for soap—not even the floral bath oils she’d grown up with—but did her best to scrub the grime off her skin and out of her clothes without it. She half walked, half swam to the center of the river, water up to her collarbone, and took off her shirt, scraping at the bloodstains with her fingernails. She was terribly aware of Ayla, only a few feet away, splashing around.

  “I should make you wash my hair,” Ayla said after a while. Crier glanced up to see Ayla watching her, water lapping at her chin, and was reminded of the night they’d slipped into the deep, sunken tide pools off the shores of the Steorran. The water had been freezing then, too. “And dress me.”

  “I would,” said Crier.

  Ayla’s eyes widened. She ducked beneath the water again, surfacing only a moment later. “I was joking,” she said, and shivered.

  “Are you getting too cold?” Crier asked. Her own body had acclimated to the chill, but human bodies weren’t like that. Humans fell ill so easily. “We should get out.”

  “I was going to wash my clothes. So they have time to dry before the sun goes down.”

  “Then I’ll get out,” said Crier. “Wash your clothes. I won’t look.”

  “You’re modest,” Ayla said, as if realizing something.

  “I’m not. You are.” Crier frowned. “Are you not?”

  Something flickered across Ayla’s face, too quick for Crier to tell what it was. Ayla’s wet hair was pushed back off her forehead, revealing her strong, dark eyebrows, and it made her look older. “Turn around,” she said.

  Crier nodded and obeyed, heading back to the shore. “Tell me when you’re done,” she said, sunlight sliding over her shoulders, her arms, her whole self, as she made her way out of the water, wet clothes clutched in one hand. She laid them to dry on the riverbank and straightened up, stretching her limbs, wringing the water out of her hair. Letting the sun dry her skin as it was drying her clothes. She found a flat, sunbaked rock and sat down, tipping her head back, eyes closed. All around her, the forest made its forest noises. Frogs, birds, the buzz of bees or cicadas. The tok-tok-tok of woodpeckers. Wind in the leaves. The forest breathed just as the sea did.

  Lost in sensation, Crier didn’t know how much time passed before Ayla said, “You can look now.” She came back to herself in increments, limbs and body and finally mind, and turned around. Ayla was clothed in green again, squeezing the water from her curls. The sun had reached the ceiling of the sky and hung there, a white lantern. Crier had lost at least an hour. Maybe two.

  Ayla coughed. “You can, um. I think your clothes are dry.”

  “Right,” said Crier. She stood, swayed, and fell, ground lurching up to meet her. She landed hard on her side.

  “Hey!” Ayla yelped, and Crier heard footsteps. A hand on her shoulder, a tight grip. “What—are you sick? Can you get sick? Is it your injuries? I thought they were healing, you said they were—”

  “Heartstone,” Crier mumbled, blinking hard. The world swam, refocused. “Haven’t had . . . heartstone. Two days now.” She pushed herself upright. “It’s fine. Still a few days before the need becomes dire.”

  Ayla gave her a doubtful look. “You just collapsed.”

  “I didn’t collapse. I lost my balance. Like you said this morning—lightheadedness. It’s fine.” She took a deep, steadying breath, trying to clear away the fog behind her eyes.

  “Does human food help?” Ayla asked. “You should’ve told me.” An odd note in her voice. “I wouldn’t have just eaten everything myself.”

  “Human food doesn’t help. It would alleviate the empty feeling, but only for a few minutes. I cannot absorb energy from it.”

  “Oh.”

  Crier nodded, pressing the backs of her hands to her cheeks. “It’s fine,” she said again. “I just feel weaker than usual. I apologize for concerning you.” No, too much. She winced, waiting for the inevitable I wasn’t concerned!, but it didn’t come.

  “Okay,” Ayla said instead. “Before anything else, we need to get you more heartstone.” She caught Crier’s expression and huffed. “Don’t look so shocked! We can’t do anything if you’re going to fall over every time you stand up. Today we filled my belly, tomorrow we’ll fill yours.”

  “Buying heartstone is more dangerous than foraging for mushrooms,” Crier said. “We’ll have to find a village or town, we’ll have to disguise ourselves, we’ll have to find a way to pay for it. . . .”

  “Or,” said Ayla.

  Crier raised her eyebrows. Ayla’s face was doing something decidedly shifty. Fox-like. It felt like the kind of expression that could only preclude a terrible idea. “Or . . . ?” she prompted.

  “Or . . . A lot of this farmland belongs to Varnian nobles, right? Like the southern estates up in Rabu. Lots of rich Automae around here. Lots of estates. It’s better for us to stay out of the open anyway, right? I don’t know if there are any Shades around here, but I don’t want to risk it.”

  “True,” Crier said slowly.

  “Bet we could trick some nobleman into feeding us for a night.”

  She was still crouched in front of Crier, though she’d long since let go of Crier’s shoulder. A tiny pathetic thought: the warmth of Ayla’s touch rivaled the afternoon sun. Crier imagined her skin turning gold, a patch of gold in the shape of Ayla’s hand, gold sinking beneath her skin, into her bones. How ridiculous: needing heartstone after a touch like that.

  “Do you—?” Ayla started, then made a face. The concern had faded from her features; now she was looking skyward, lips pressed into a thin line. “Do you think . . . maybe . . . you want to put some clothes on?”

  “Oh,” said Crier, glancing down at herself. “Yes. I forgot.”

  “Makes one of us,” said Ayla. Crier stared at her. “Come on, talk to me as you dress. It’ll keep you awake. It’s what my brother always made me do when I had nightmares and was afraid to sleep.”

  Ayla began to help her dress, eyes averted, and for a moment, Crier was brought back to the days—less than a month ago—when Ayla had been her handmaiden. Had laced her into fine dresses, poured scented oils in her bathwater, braided her hair.

  “What would you like me to talk about?” Crier asked, shaky.

  “Tell me one of your stories,” Ayla said. “Tell me one that ends right.”

  “What does it mean? To end right?”

  “I don’t know. Just—happy. Or something close.”

  Crier made a soft, considering noise. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Once, a very long time ago, when the mountains had just begun to sprout from the earth and the whole world was white with newborn snow, there was a girl called Hana who lived in a little wooden cottage with her mama and papa. Hana was a good and clever girl. She helped her mama chop wood for the hearth fire and sow the fields with barley, and her papa make bread and sweet jam. But the nearest village sat beyond a snow-choked mountain pass, and so Hana did not have any friends to play with. She was very lonely. She tried to play with Mama and Papa, but they were grown-ups and thus did not remember how.

  One day, after Hana finished her morning work, she was overcome with a rush of such loneliness that it felt like an ice-prick in her heart. She sat below a white birch and let her tears fall to the snow, and quietly she sang:

  “Sister Winter, Sister Winter,

  Will you let me sing for you?

  Will you join me with your reed pipes?

  Can we play like children do?”

  Hana didn’t know it, but Winter was watching from nearby. She could hear the soft little pulse at Hana’s throat, taste the salt of Hana’s tears. Winter was not softhearted, but something about the girl’s song burrowed its way inside her snowbank chest and stayed there. Winter closed her eyes and made the Northern Wind sing alongside Hana. A cold, howling duet.

  Hana laughed. The Northern Wind laughed with her.

  And Winter, who
could take any form, turned herself into a little girl, and she crept out of the woods and sat with Hana under the white birch, and that was that.

  Years passed.

  Winter was a monstrous friend.

  Oh, sometimes she was good. Sometimes she was a girl who played and laughed and would dance all night to amuse Hana and Mama and Papa. Sometimes she kept their fields unfrozen, their garden green till solstice. But sometimes Winter stumbled through the doorway, clutching a ragged cloak in both hands, shaking fresh snow all over the floor. Sometimes she stretched gracelessly before the hearth fire, bony limbs akimbo, and sneered at the fire, and the yawning hearth, and the snow-damp firewood heaped in a corner. The chimney, cobbled together from bricks of black mud. The ax. Sometimes Winter made herself at home and stayed for months. Those were bad times for Hana’s family. Winter never let the snow melt, not even in summer. There was so much ice caked onto the ground, so much permafrost, no lukewarm summer could touch it. For months, the sun was nothing but light: pale, watery light, refracted by the frost-bowed trees, flung in strange patterns, scattered glass-like across the snow. Winter was beautiful and terrible, always both at once.

  Years collected like tree rings. Still Hana called Winter her friend, and still she opened the door when Winter showed up shrieking. Slowly, Winter began to soften her sharp edges. How could she not? Being cruel to Hana was like trying to stave off daybreak by shouting at the sun. Cruelty was wasted on the kind.

  Winter stirred up snowstorms, painted the sky gray for weeks, and still Hana sang:

  “Sister Winter, Sister Winter,

  Let me wash your aching back.

  I have watched you work from dawnbreak

  Till the gloaming fell to black.”

  And Winter sighed her windy sigh and let Hana wash her, and she didn’t even turn the bathwater to ice.

  Hana grew into a strong young woman. Her hair was black and plaited; her eyes were rich dark earth. Her heart was a snow-bright star behind her ribs. But there must be a balance in all things, so as Hana burned brighter, Mama and Papa began to fade. Mama got very, very sick. Papa summoned healers from a dozen villages, but no mountain teas or tisanes could save Mama. She needed a medicine made only by the fishing villages on the banks of the Steorran Sea, all the way across the tundra. Papa was too old to make the journey. Mama begged Hana not to go, but for all the girl’s kindness she was still stubborn as a goat. She left the very next day.