He nodded. Unar felt his magic gently touching her bones where the spines had been set. For a moment, he stood back, appraising her, and then he closed the space between them and folded his arms around her. Dependable as living wood. As pricked by the pain of Unar’s spines as the tallowwood had been, and as forgiving.
Unar couldn’t speak. Her face flushed and she dared not move. She must still be sleeping inside the tree. It couldn’t be real. Aoun did not hold people. He stood apart, as aloof as a god.
“Audblayin would grow love,” he whispered into her hair. “Grow a house up around us, Unar.”
She cooled her heat and urgency by melding with the tree, drawing on water seven hundred body lengths below, in the darkness of Floor. The bodies of Servant Eilif, Kirrik, Frog, and fifty unknown soldiers were part of the soil that sated the great tree’s hunger. River, sky, and sun all came together to form the wooden shelter that sprang up around them, shutting away the light.
Aoun let go of her. She staggered. He was laughing softly, relighting the lantern.
“Is this much like the place where you’ve lived?” he asked, the lantern light revealing a room not so very different from the hearth room of the three hunters’ home.
Issi came in through the open door and beamed at them.
“My father will be happy,” she said at once.
“But not you?” Unar asked, silently cursing her for intruding.
“I am not staying here.” She lifted her chin, a proud huntress, daunted by nothing. “I am going to Odelland. There is a warrior there, called Aurilon, who has never lost a duel. If she will teach me, I will learn from her.”
The fool whisked away and was gone. Bernreb and Leaper replaced her. The boy immediately began to howl.
“This is just like home. What did I even climb up here for?”
“You won’t live here, Leaper,” Audblayin said, passing through the doorway behind him. She was robed in cloth that seemed made of dewdrops, her spines covered and her feet booted. Unar realised the robe was covered in cut diamonds. The goddess’s gaze went from Unar’s face to Aoun’s. When it returned to Leaper, her expression firmed. “You will live with the Godfinder in Airakland, far away, at the other end of Canopy.”
Unar felt as though she had been slapped.
“You don’t trust me to stay close to the Garden,” she said.
“I’m trying to make it easier for you, Unar,” Audblayin answered. “It will be easier for you if there is no temptation.”
Unar looked at Aoun. She looked back at Audblayin. Her heart felt heavier than stone, and for a moment some of the old self-loathing, the old anger, swept through her. It would be easier if she did let herself fall. For Aoun. For Audblayin. For everyone.
“The god of lightning,” Leaper said with awe, already seeing through the sister he hadn’t known was a goddess, but whose power over new life clearly failed to capture his imagination. “Yes. Airakland. Yes! Have you been there before, Godfinder?”
Godfinder. There it was again. A little piece of a less glorious destiny. A clue to why she had been born with such a powerful gift and sent to the Garden.
Unar forced herself to take Leaper’s hand. Moving away from Aoun was more difficult than making tallowwood walk. For an instant, she could hardly breathe. There he was, in the corner of her eye.
No, she wouldn’t look at him. She would look at Leaper. His face shone with eagerness. There was plenty of light still left in the day. Plenty of time to cross the border.
“No,” she said, feeling the lives, bright with power, behind her. Bernreb, wry. Audblayin, decisive. Aoun, obedient. “I’ve never been there.” Not to the Canopian part of it, anyway. “But I hear tales of towering floodgums, black from being struck by lightning, and houses that blaze at night like moonlight poured through the veins of a giant leaf.”
“And what about Airak? Is he as tall as one of the great trees? Does lightning shoot out of his eyes?”
“I never met Airak,” she said, “but I met one of his Servants. A brave man, and strong. Let’s find out together.”
Outside the house, there was a patch of sunlight. It wasn’t as wide as the glorious sunlit spaces of the high heart of the Garden, but it would have to do from now on. The boy pulled free of her, put his arms into it, and shouted with joy.