They dragged strength out through the pain and fatigue and gave a warcry as they spread down across the grass toward Kayuya Village. The Guardian went with them, wings spread wide as she moved at their head, a wave of raw Unseen Flow crushing halja as she passed over them.
Colibrí’s heart leaped when she saw Tessouat already fighting. He tore through the halja, his face twisted with something dark and a little frightening. Beside him fought the other spiritseers and what looked to be novices. She saw Ixchel fighting among them, as well as wardens, but saw neither Sanemoro, Kisari, or her son.
She came to a stop slowly as the other warriors carried their wrath forward and crashed into the halja. Ixchel paused, looking around in surprise as if they might phantasms, and then fell to her knees. Her Blade guttered out, drowning her in the storm’s darkness once again. When Colibrí drew near, Ixchel’s right arm was trembling badly.
“Ixchel,” she said, bending to place a hand on the girl’s shoulder.
The young spiritseer jumped, then looked up at her. Guilt thundered through Ixchel’s face and she looked away, a scowl taking over the tiredness around her eyes. “He’s with the cacica at the village center.”
Questions filled her mind, but she nodded. It took all her willpower to keep from sprinting toward the center. “Are you alright?” she asked Ixchel.
“I’m… I’m fine,” Ixchel said, her voice barely a whisper. “Alive, anyway. Narune needs you more than I do.”
Narune needs you more than I do.
She turned and ran toward the village’s center. Along the way she saw the story of the past few days written deep and hard. Bodies clustered around last stands, and some of the fighters seemed to have been cut down while panicking or fleeing.
She found Sanemoro and Kisari with Yabisi some distance away, near where it seemed they were bringing the wounded. Battered sentinels stood to either side of her son, some of them grievously wounded, but they remained straight-backed.
Another group of sentinels had their hands on Kisari’s shoulders, and her mother Ayo, a narrow-faced woman with short hair, was yelling at her. It took less than half a heartbeat to take in Kisari’s desperate, panicked gaze. The fact that Kisari stood with her muscles all tensed hinted that Ayo had compelled her.
Tears flowed from the girl’s face. “Please, let me try to help him,” she muttered, but she said the words so tiredly that they blended together.
Everyone was ignoring Kisari.
Colibrí came to a slow stop as she neared and Yabisi turned. Their eyes met, then the cacica moved aside. Sanemoro went to her and pressed a hand on her chest to slow her a she saw what had happened to Narune.
Her son lay with his eyes closed, convulsing, and his flesh was riddled with lines, some a burning white, and some the gray of Stillness. Tracks of blood from Stillness that had already crumbled littered his body, some fresh, others left raw from the rain.
“An elder halja came,” Sanemoro said quickly. “Narune used the Jurakán to defeat it.”
When Colibrí paused, her face tightening, he grabbed her shoulders and whirled her around to face him. Her spear dropped from her grip, surprising both of them, and they watched it clatter to the broken tiles.
“Colibrí,” Sanemoro said after a careful moment. “He had few other choices. He waited. You hear me? Our people were dying all around him and he still chose to believe in them first. He only drew on the Jurakán when it was either that, or leave the halja to massacre the wardens.”
“He’s not wild?” she asked, pushing through him.
It was Yabisi that answered. “Not yet. He seems to be fighting back this time.” The cacica glanced over her shoulder for a moment. “And losing.”
Calm. “Why aren’t you letting Kisari help?” she asked no one in particular.
“We asked her if it was safe for her to try,” Sanemoro replied, then he paused, looking uncomfortable. “But, when it became obvious she was lying, we had her mother force the truth out of her…”
Colibrí already knew what he would say. “She would be trapped in the storm too.”
“That is what we fear, so we have been wary about letting her get too close.”
Colibrí glanced at Yabisi. “You haven’t killed him.”
Yabisi made a face. “A lot has happened since you left.” She turned away from Colibrí and stared at Narune. “He asked for a chance to prove the Halfborn could be counted on. I’m giving it to him.”
Colibrí could see pain rippling through Narune and, after a moment, thought back to her conversation with Peacemaker. Would Narune end up like them? What would she do if he did? Terrified, she moved toward Narune and paused when spears were leveled at her.
But Yabisi waved them down. “Do you think you can save him?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But kill me now if you won’t let me try.”
Yabisi stared at her for a moment, then waved her over. To the sentinels, she said, “If either turns, kill them both.”
Colibrí ignored the words and rushed to her son’s side, then sat him up. Pain lanced through her the moment she touched him and she could feel an echo of the Jurakán in her skull. Even though it was just an echo, it was louder and fiercer than hers had ever been. But just as horrible was the Stillness, which she sensed as a clotting within his spirit.
The storm had cut him off from his body. It was besieging his mind and eroding his spirit. He was a bird adrift within the furious, merciless motion of a storm while the Stillness watched like an apathetic, frozen shadow.
Colibrí embraced him tightly, her cheek against his, and closed her eyes. Pain lanced through her as the Jurakán lashed out indiscriminately, whipping against her own spirit, stirring her own bond to the screams into a frenzy, then lines of Stillness ran across her as she resisted the shrieking vortex.
She didn’t care.
Colibrí thought back to when she had gone to return her son to the forest. She had stood silent then, spear in one hand and her child in the other. There, surrounded by the chorus of coquí, she had stared at Narune as he giggled and tried to grasp a fly, and had instead replaced the oath she had made to abandon him with her own. She had promised Narune that she would never leave him.
She knew it was the most foolish oath she could ever make, because their stories were always tales of loss—the storms, forest, and war took and took and took from them, but she vowed it anyway.
And yet, the bitter truth was that Colibrí had been just as terrified of being alone again.
So she held her son against a heart that was more furious than any storm and reached for him with all her strength.
Please don’t leave me, Naru.
* * *
Narune gasped while on his hands and knees, glowing gashes opened along his what he could only assume was a spiritual reflection of himself. He continued to Channel out of desperation, which in turn kept the Jurakán spinning at its heightened power, but all that did was delay the inevitable. Whenever he was unable to endure the pain of its white-hot rage and forced it to slow, Stillness instead rooted in its place.
His senses painted a featureless white expanse that was textured by motion. Narune walked, but didn’t know if the steps carried him anywhere because it all looked the same. The spirit-winds shrieking around him continued to open gashes in his arms and legs that bled light.
He couldn’t tell if his spirit was simply battered or on the verge of shattering.
Narune had expected everything—all this thoughts and feelings and hopes—to vanish, he admitted. Why hadn’t they killed him yet? Or maybe they had, and this was just the torment his spirit had to suffer forever, a scrap eternally fought over by the two great powers of the cosmos.
Narune hurriedly dropped the thought.
Shuddering, he continued forward, walking deeper into the Jurakán and further from the Stillness. He would lose his identity either way, probably, but this was probably better than letting
the Stillness have its way with his spirit.
A voice cut through the screaming storm and Narune paused, glancing up into the bright white sky.
Please don’t leave me, Naru.
It was his mother’s voice, and with it came a powerful tether. He turned in its direction, frowned, and continued walking. His mother’s voice rained down from the sky, a helpless jumble of mismatched memories and words. He fixated on these, walking faster, faster, and before long, he was sprinting in spite of his exhaustion and pain.
A voice in the back of his mind told him that it wouldn’t matter, but maybe he could speak to her—and ask for forgiveness.
He ran, following her voice and the tether binding them that hadn’t broken at his birth—
—and stumbled onto an empty space where the shrieks dimmed and the Stillness felt distant.
Confused, Narune looked around and glanced upward. His mother’s voice was louder here. The Jurakán remained, but it was weaker and the rage less scathing within his head.
The heart of the storm, Narune realized, slowly spinning around. My spirit’s center.
Where the Jurakán burned toward and where the Stillness sought to reach. He sat slowly, frowning. Could I…?
His mother continued speaking to him. It was comforting, soothed his nerves, and gave him something to focus on other than the fury that was still trying to take control. Narune pushed back against the storm like he always did, shoving it away, fighting for a space at its center like the calm at the middle of the swirling storms that formed above the sea.
It was difficult, but he forced a little space around him. It wouldn’t be enough. It probably wouldn’t be enough even if he dug out more space. Think. He licked his lips, frowning and glancing up at the featureless sky from where his mother’s voice echoed. She hasn’t given up on you; don’t give up on yourself.
But what could he do? He had made the same mistake as his predecessors by letting the Jurakán ignite all of his Blackflow and tear free of his control, and now he Channeled Creation itself, which was the problem. Slowing the most furious and eternally moving form of existence would only replace it with equally deep Stillness.
If only—Narune straightened. Please. Oh, skies and seas aflame, please. He tentatively reached out and sensed the Blackflow. His heart skipped a beat. There it was, swirling and splashing like sloshing water.
He closed his eyes-that-weren’t, took a breath-that-wasn’t, and focused with all his might. He took hold of his rampant, wild Channeling, and then poured the Blackflow within the Gourd his mother had carved into himself.
Narune let it move in the swirling pattern of the storm, then shifted to Channeling it instead of Creation. He let go of the Jurakán and it went wild, but Narune pushed it out at the same time. A great weight lifted from him as the Stillness was consumed in the unleashed rage and power.
Just like how he would become if he allowed it to replace his own spirit.
Narune spun Blackflow into the storm, filling the space between them. Some of it was ignited by Creation and blazed white, but it was his. Flow that had coursed through his spirit and blood. A storm obeyed nothing, but Narune’s Blackflow obeyed only him. His own little sludgy power fought back, and it refused to be awakened into Creation. Like a spear, Narune used it to prod at the Jurakán.
Whenever a streak of Creation died, it was swallowed by his spear, empowering his efforts; just as the Carrion Flow could again become Creation, Creation would always eventually become the Carrion Flow, and in this way they shared a cycle that was nothing like Stillness.
He felt the shrieks lashing back, but he continued to fight for his own spirit, screaming back at the Jurakán like a maddened warrior as he repeated the process.
Again, and again, and again.
His senses began to return and Narune immediately regretted it. He could feel his voice growing hoarse, revealing that he had been screaming outside his spirit as well, and he could feel the muscles of his body spasming, but he also felt someone holding him tighter and tighter. He knew who it was. Her voice hadn’t stopped. She was rambling about moments from their life together—
A time when he had tried to lift her spear as a sprouting and had only fallen over.
Another when she had nipped him, compelling him to act like a carabaz, and had laughed so hard that Narune kept pretending even after her command faded from his body.
The figurines she had carved for him, each a glimpse of the world his mother faced in his place.
Other random memories and thoughts fell like stormwater around him. His mother’s feelings for Sanemoro, her adoration of Kisari, her guilty thoughts about what it was like to have a family.
Narune’s jaw clenched and he turned away from the memories, focusing on his Channeling, desperate to keep his balance perfect, the movements utterly nuanced and under his control. He pulled from his Gourd constantly, forcing the Blackflow around him to replace what the Jurakán stole. The pain and exhaustion only worsened as his senses continued to sharpen, but he didn’t care.
And then, after what seemed like an eternity, Narune slumped, utterly expended.
The Jurakán continued to rage and scream, but it didn’t close in on him. It didn’t crash to a halt and drown him in Stillness, either. The heart of the storm remained.
The Jurakán was still there, but distant now, the tendrils of Blackflow between them dissipating slowly like parting clouds. He hadn’t broken the storm or tried to force it away from its nature—in a way, he had simply weathered it until it passed, just as the Islandborn did with true storms.
Narune sobbed as the numbness in his spirit gradually became pinpricks, then aching pain like that of a fresh burn. It wreathed him, terrible, but welcomed all the same. Narune felt awareness sweep across his mind, and his thoughts once again strove to become the root-bridge between the soil of his body and the sea of his spirit.
With a shudder that was like suddenly waking up, Narune’s already opened eyes snapped open a second time.
His mother stared down at him, eyes wide. Narune frowned by her face, looking up at the cloudy sky, then turned trued to get a better look at those standing around him before a jolt of pain stopped him. Words filled the silence, but they were muffled and distorted for a moment. He blinked and tried again.
Kisari’s face look worriedly over him. Sanemoro looked like he was about to cry. The Guardian focused one massive eye down on him, her head high above, her wings spread and limp.
And then Cacica Yabisi came into view, looking like… well, he didn’t know. Her face was turbulent, too many feelings seemingly in conflict.
“Did… we win?” Narune croaked, shifting to look back toward his mother. “Could you let me go? This is embarrassing.”
Colibrí laughed and embraced him fiercely, tail wrapping around his waist, heedless of his complaints. “Yes, Naru—we survived.”
Epilogue
Kayuya Yabisi, cacica of all the Islandborn, stood in the ruins of Kayuya Village. She faced those who unconsciously left space for loved ones no longer there, and told them the victory of their people had been absolute. As usual, she talked about the more pleasant half of a whole. The good food that went in one end instead of the shit that came out the other. Moments between storms, instead of the thunder and rain. The length of life, instead of the eternity of death.
What they had gained instead of what it had cost.
Yabisi picked her truths carefully and delivered them with the confidence her station demanded, soothing her people with her dazzling new headdress and the ornate sarong that had been salvaged from the ruins of her caney. She wore the necklaces and trinkets her warriors had all but drowned her in, some simpler than others, but all worn as if each were a treasure worthy of the Guardian herself.
Her people rewarded the spectacle with smiles. Sproutlings pointed, promising to follow in her footsteps, and young would-be warriors dreamed of the day they would give her oaths. Parents who ha
d lost too much nodded at her, and scarred warriors were brought close to tears. If the very heart of the Islandborn still pumped so vigorously and passionately, then surely life would also surge back through the veins to the rest of them.
Cacica Yabisi smiled back.
Her mask was so beautiful that it banished every shadow with sunlight; they couldn’t see any signs of the sleepless nights spent staring at a map Yabisi struggled to understand, one that showed gigantic landmasses to the north and east that were arrogantly called the Heartworld by its denizens.
Or her frustration, lingering still from the challenge of teaching herself a dozen foreign tongues. Or the countless letters offering her political mates that awaited her response, or how her genuine pleas for help were being seen as signs of weakness all too often.
Or that her seamaster was probably dead, but hopefully still engaged with his search beyond the remains of Vanadyl, to the far west and south, for allies.
Or that they were still losing against the halja, and that this last battle proved it, and that she was a terrible cacica because she had no idea what she was doing and didn’t know how to solve any of their problems, so she should probably just go drown herself, or maybe—
Yabisi took a deep breath and smiled down at the two kneeling before her. Colibrí and her son Narune. Champions in every way, but oh no—Yabisi would name them ever so slightly redeemed abominations.
Colibrí eyed her with concern as Yabisi mulled over her thoughts. For some reason that infuriated her.
“And so, I have come to several decisions,” she said without pause, finishing her ongoing speech. “Colibrí and Narune, you are exiled no longer. I have also decided to allow the Spiritseer Circle to adopt Narune so that he may continue to grow as a spiritseer.” She glanced over to the side where the Circle’s elders and sages stood in the evening warmth, smiling tiredly. “Sanemoro will officially be appointed the task of unraveling the mysteries of this ‘Jurakán’ and how we might best approach it.”
Sanemoro bowed. Yabisi knew he disliked her, or rather disliked how she treated Narune and Colibrí. Which was good, and if he really had trained Narune, then he was even more of a gift in her eyes.
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