Jubi

From the Cosmic Sea, the Divine Father Thalassain raised the world of Pegala. Out of that unformed mass, he fashioned the first land, the Island of Draca. Of his own seed, he created the first king, Iretsa. To Iretsa he said, “Above everyone else, I choose you to be my terrestrial heir. Take this island for your realm. Let the people obey you as they do me, then your son, thereafter his son, till the end of time.’

The Book of Taboos

A bird soaring, that was what the man reminded me of. Arms spread, body arched, he leaped, and fell, a crumpled heap on the roadside. The Silver Carriage raced over the reed basket he had abandoned in his flight. A galloping hoof crushed a dwarf-melon, splattering pinkish innards on gray cobbles.

The scream had turned me into stone. The squelch of the dying fruit returned me to life. I jumped back, with seconds to spare.

The horses trample pedestrians sometimes - the very young or the very old, those who haven’t lived long enough to understand the danger, or those whose instincts have worn thin with too much living.

The carriage reached the dock end and swerved left, towards the Dollz Mountains.

My jump had landed me on a doorstep, my fall cushioned by a braided mat. I picked myself up, checking to see if my purse was still in my pocket. All around me the Pink Blossom Avenue was returning to life. The fruit-seller was back on his feet and gathering the scattered dwarf-melons. Two girls walked past me, holding hands, a skip in every step. A laugh rang out, mirthful and male. Fingers strummed a zeena. The sun was a butter yellow orb, the wind as soft as a lover’s touch, the sound of the sea a melody.

I closed my eyes and muttered a quick prayer to the Sea God. The Silver Carriage had passed me by. It had taken someone else, perhaps a young woman like me, someone who had been full of life, and hope. It might be someone I knew, even a friend. The horror of it, and pity for the lost one would consume me later. Now, like everyone else around me, all I could feel was relief.

I was alive. I had not been Possessed. I was free to return home.

The thought struck me, a bolt of lightning in a clear blue sky. I hadn’t seen the Silver Carriage until the fruit-seller screamed. That could mean only one thing; it didn’t come up the Pink Blossom Avenue, but swerved into it from one of the narrow side lanes…

Familiar landmarks surrounded me. The yellow-brick home of the seamstress who made dresses for King Iretsa’s wives, the bake-house where we bought our bread, the shop that sold the best salt-glazed pottery in the city, including mine... The next lane was mine.

I ran. The moment I turned into the lane I knew.

Neighbors, people I’ve known all twenty years of my life, stared through me. The stare was familiar. I too had used it more times than I cared to remember.

The wooden door with its diagonal crack was ajar. I didn’t have to go inside the house to know it was empty.

The half-carved mask rested on the workbench, the tools next to it. Everything was in its proper place, the table where Papa and I ate our meals, the wooden shelf where I made clay coils for my pottery, the cedar chest with its load of books, the pallet that was his bed, and beyond the painted screen made of driftwood, the pallet that was my bed.

There was just one absence. The house echoed with it.

I sat down on the workbench and picked up a chisel. The handle was still warm.

Papa would have heard the rattling of the wheels on the pockmarked lane. He would have stopped his work and listened, his brows drawn together into a frown not quite a frown, knowing what was coming, wondering whose turn it was; until the sounds ceased in front of our door. They never bothered to be quiet. They didn’t have to. Knowing didn’t save us. There was no point in running. No door would open for the fleeing one. No roof would shelter the pursued.

Hope was a tenacious thing. Some still ran. The soldiers would give the man or the woman a head start, before setting off in pursuit, calling out to each other in a strange language, laughing.

Worms may turn, but what could one worm do against a divinely-ordered world?

I replaced the chisel and picked up the half-finished mask, the light brown wood smooth against my calloused fingers. The clown’s eyes, heavy-lidded and sad, gazed back at me.

There were uncountable theories about the fate of the Possessed, gory tales of enslavement in the marble quarries, blood sacrifices, organs being used to make talismans, grinded bones turned into medicines. Everyone believed something. No one knew anything, other than the one unalterable, unchanging fact. Those taken in the Silver Carriage never returned, alive or dead. There was no body, not even a few bones or a handful of ashes we could have returned to the sea, to the everlasting embrace of the Divine Father.

That was why we called Possession the worse death. Now the worse death had claimed Papa.

I longed for tears, but my eyes were dry.

Would I be able to pick up the pieces and go on with my life, as most people of Draca did? Acceptance was the easy way, the one preached by priests and enforced by soldiers. The few who rejected that route took the one to the Mere of Trees, the haunted forest at the edge of the city, never to return alive.

That was where mama went after my brother was Possessed.

Papa wept for mama.

I didn’t.

I had just turned eight when she left. Going away showed who she loved more and it wasn’t me.

Papa placed me in the care of a neighbor and went to bring mama back. I clung to his hand. He prised open my fingers gently, one by one. When he spoke, his voice was a lullaby. “Jubi-girl, if I don’t give her back to the Sea, to the Divine Father, her spirit will be earthbound until the end of times. I must keep faith with her. Someday, you’ll do the same for me.” He kissed my forehead and my cheeks. “I’ll be back, Jubi-girl. I’ll be back.”

He did return a few hours later with something stiff and cold. It was wearing mama’s festive suit, blue gathered pants, blue blouse with puff sleeves and blue and yellow kerchief. But it looked or felt nothing like her.

Even the face was a monstrosity, mottled and swollen.

That evening Papa wrapped the body in a blue winding sheet, the color of the sea at its kindest, and hired a burial boat. The priest muttered the prayers of death without which a body couldn’t be committed to the sea. Money and Sacred Stones changed hands. Much later I discovered that those four stones cost Papa a months’ earnings.

The boat took us far away – or so it seemed to me. Papa and the boatman lowered mama’s body to the waves.

That was the day I caught my first sight of the Castle of Eternity. It was not visible from the city. The Dollz Mountains covered it. But from the part of the sea known as Kshema, the place where we returned our dead to the merciful embrace of the Father, it was clearly visible.

The Castle gleamed like a mammoth pearl against the whirling reds of the evening sky.

**

All afternoon, the neighbors trickled in with their offerings. They avoided my eyes and mumbled something indistinct as they handed over the earthenware dishes. I avoided their eyes and mumbled something indistinct as I accepted the food, even though the thought of eating made me sick.

I knew the ritual; I had taken part in it many times.

Once the last neighbor had come and gone, I locked the door and sat down on the sagging cane chair where Papa relaxed after a hard day’s work.

Had Papa died, I could have returned his body to the sea and continued living. But he had been Possessed. He was lost not just to me, but to himself.

Perhaps that was why mama couldn’t live after my brother was Possessed.

Grief possessed me, burning red-hot inside my head, tearing my heart with clawed hands. I doubled up and fell down, writhing on the mud floor, crying for Papa, and for mama.

When the last tear had fallen, I crouched by Papa’s workbench, panting. He, who had been my anchor all my life, was gone. I was alone.

But I had a duty to perform.

I had to find him, alive or dead. If he was alive, I will rescue him. If he was dead, I will return him to the sea, if not his body, at least a bone or a fistful of ashes.

To do that, I had to go to the Castle of Eternity. The only way someone from Draca could enter the Castle was in the Silver Carriage.

I had to find another way. I had no idea how. I just knew I must.

**

The next few days passed in silent raging and fruitless thinking.

Working was impossible; pottery was an act of creation and my mind was filled with visions of destruction. Since I needed to eat, I got myself some work on the docks, loading and unloading wares from outlands brought in by outland-ships. People from outlands were not allowed to come off the ships. Dockhands from Draca went in and did the unloading, with priests purifying each crate. The work paid well, and it was mindless. Only women of childbearing women were employed as dockhands as they were in a state of semi-contamination.

One afternoon, I was waiting for the priest to come and sanctify my load of crates. Two sailors, one an Archipelagan like me going by his blue skin, the other an outlander with brown skin and red hair, leaned against the railing of the ship, chatting in a strange tongue. The wind brought a scattering of words to my ear, incomprehensible, except for one.

Mayakari, meaning witch.

The priest strode to where I was, and started his chanting.

That evening, I locked my door and rummaged in the cedar chest until I found what I was looking for. An old book, its pages much thumbed.

The Mechanics of Witchcraft by Miiya of Sammalore.

I knew where to go to find the help I needed.

One

Miiya opened the window and leaned out. The three moons were long gone. Black clouds reigned, bulbous with moisture. The lintel was broad enough to keep out the lashing rain, but the wind pulled at her hair. She smelled River Akash in it and the flower-fields and forests beyond.

She returned to her writing desk, and tried again to focus on the treatise on birth defects. But the words continued to elude her. After writing a few sentences that made no sense, she pushed the paper away and leaned back in her chair, massaging her aching temples.

The branches of the blue-cicada tree writhed, like a nest of snakes. She had planted it the day Terryc moved in with her, five decades ago. She had been in her eighty-ninth year then, and he barely twenty-three. But he was human and she not all-human. Time, marked by years, didn’t have the same meaning for them. Her eighty-nine hadn’t been much older than his twenty-three.

The years raced, and before she noticed, he was sixty-eight, and stricken with a malady that mocked her fabled capacity at healing. In the end, all she could do was to give him potions to ease the pain, to bring sleep.

She unclenched her hands. If only she could see those green eyes one more time, see his smile.

The wind rose. The cicada tree groaned. The air-clock chimed half-hour past midnight.

Miiya’s witch-ear caught a new sound, barely audible against the keening of the wind and the splatter of a million raindrops.

Footsteps; Terryc walking about the house, waiting for the soporific to claim him….

Her heart swooped and crashed. Terryc was gone, had been gone for one year and thirteen months. And the footsteps were not on braided jute and terracotta but on cobbles.

The knocker on the street-door rang, first with temerity, then with impatience.

She waited, slumped in her chair.

The knocker rang again, this time with desperation.

She dragged herself up, out of the room, down the stairway, through the entrance hall to the street door. The porch light fell on a man in a drenched green robe, tall and bulky, and on the bird perched on his shoulder. The dragonfly-buzzard regarded her with the measured look of a judge. He had been found in a city-park some years ago, and she had fixed the broken blue-green wing.

The man bowed. “Pardon me, Mistress, for this untimely intrusion.”

She couldn’t help the smile. “Another waif, Master Cillius? What is it this time? Four legged or winged?”

“Two-legged, Mistress.” Cillius, scholar, and Sammalore’s preeminent protector of waifs and strays, turned around and beckoned at the darkness.

A shadow detached itself from other shadows and stepped on to the porch. A young woman with blue skin, a Thalassian.

What was a descendent of the people of the sea doing in a place where the sea was just a rumor?

“She came searching for you, Mistress.” Cillius spoke in Sammalorian. “I met her outside the city gates.”

Miiya peered at the young woman. Her short stature and extreme thinness gave her the appearance of a child. But her face, gaunt and weary, had an aged look. Her ochre hair was scraggly, as if it had not seen a comb since forever. The expression in her purple eyes was blank.

“Is she injured?”

“Jubi, her name is Jubi,” Cillius replied, still in Sammalorian. “Her physical injuries have healed. But she still needs help. I know the hour is late, but I beg you to let us come in so that she can tell you her story.”

Weariness lashed at her. She clutched the breamwood frame, gathered herself together and opened the door wide.

The entrance hall was lit by two small illuminator mounted on a wall sconce. Jubi’s eyes opened wide at the sight of it.

“You have never seen these before?” Cillius asked, with an indulgent smile. “That is called an illuminator; an invention of our witches. They also invented the mechanical birds and…”

Miiya cut in. “I don’t think this is the time for such conversations. Please sit.”

Cillius apologized. Jubi said nothing. She sat in the chair Miiya indicated, her hands clasped on her lap, staring at the little pool of water collecting round her feet.

Miiya’s eyes fell on those hands, crisscrossed with scars. She turned her gaze elsewhere, asking, in Common Speech, “Can I get you something to drink?”

Jubi shook her head.

“I know you are from the Thalassian Archipelago. Which island?”

“Draca.”

Miiya scanned her memory: Thalassian archipelago, a collection of four large islands and many small ones; Draca, the largest of the islands, an ancient kingdom. That was the extent of her knowledge.

“Why did you come in search of me?”

“My father was taken away.” Jubi spoke a version of Common Speech, used in the northern reaches of Pegala, and she spoke as if she was unused to speaking. “We call it Possession. The Silver Carriage comes and takes people away to the Castle of Eternity. That is where our king lives. There’s no warning. It just happens. Nobody ever returns. We don’t know what happens to them. I went to the market.” The gaunt face tightened, making it look skeletal. “The Carriage passed me by. He wouldn’t have seen me. There are no windows.” The voice wavered and steadied. “I don’t know if...if he’s still alive. I’ve been on the road for almost sixteen moons. Even if he is dead, I must find his remains and give them back to the sea. Or his spirit will not know any rest.” The dead eyes stared at Miiya. “But no one’s allowed to go to the Castle of Eternity. That’s why I came seeking you.”

Miiya turned to Cillius with a frown.

Cillius gave a deprecating smile. “I tried to explain to her about the Thula, Mistress. I don’t think I was successful. I thought perhaps you might be able to advice her…”

Miiya turned to Jubi and spoke slowly. “I do have powers, what humans call magic. But the exercise of those powers is governed by a Code, a set of rules called the Thula. That means balance in an ancient language. According to that Code, witches and mages can’t interfere in human affairs, just as humans can’t interfere in ours.”

Jubi was silent as if she was trying to decipher Miiya’s words. Then she said, “I’m not asking you to interfere. Just help me.”

Miiya shrugged. “I don’t want to debate over semantics, Jubi. I can’t go into this Castle of yours unless your king invites me.”

The purple eyes stared at her, unfathomable pools of nothingness.

Miiya hurried on with her speech. “Even if I come with you, Jubi, I won’t be of much use to you. You see, witches can’t harm even a fly or an ant, let alone humans. When we cut a branch from a tree, we must first seek the tree’s consent. That taboo was born the day magic was. I can’t break it for whatever reason. If I try to go into this Castle, and your king’s soldiers attack me, I can’t defend you or myself.”

Jubi cracked lips moved, though no sound emerged.

Miiya continued, words tripping over each other. “Once I saw a witch driven out of her land for killing a human. The woman was living at the edge of a village, in a dilapidated cottage, allowed to stay there out of pity. Her eyes were vacant. Her mouth was slack. She was constantly muttering words none but she heard. Though she lived in a pleasant wood, her eyes looked as if they were forever gazing at an indescribable horror.” She leaned forward, staring into Jubi’s dead eyes. “The taboo is part of our very being. We can’t break it and be normal.”

Jubi asked, “No?”

Miiya shook her head. “No. I’m sorry, Jubi. I wish I could have helped you. But…”

Insighting was a gift only a few witches possessed. Its first rule was that reading another’s memories must be done only with that person’s or animal’s willing consent. But for a split second, Jubi’s eyes were an open door to her memories, and Miiya saw: a branding iron, a three-tailed whip; hands; more hands.

It took every ounce of self-control at her command to prevent a cry from escaping her suddenly dry throat.

Jubi was speaking. She forced herself to listen, trying to erase the memory scraps she had unwittingly glimpsed.

“I don’t know what to do now. I managed the journey from Draca because I was determined to find you. That was what I lived for though things got better after Sabha.”

Miiya asked, in a voice with barely a tremor in it, “Who or what is Sabha?”

Jubi smiled; it transformed her face and made her look young, almost pretty. “A mauve-wolf cub; well not quite a cub because he grew fast. I saved him from a trap.” Her voice softened. “Hunters must have killed his mother. After I got him out of the trap, he started to follow me. I was scared at first, because how can you trust a wild animal? But then I realized that wild animals are not as dangerous as some of the people I’ve...encountered. And he made me feel safe. So I decided to adopt him the same way he adopted me.”

“Why Sabha?” Miiya asked. “Why name a wolf after the brightest star in the Northern sky?”

Again the smile appeared. “There was this little white spot on his forehead. It was like a star.” Jubi paused for a moment and said in a voice which was almost a whisper, “He was my star… He didn’t want to leave me, but I couldn’t allow him to follow me to Sammalore. He wouldn’t have been safe. He is old enough to survive on his own in the wild.”

Miiya saw and wished she didn’t. “What is your age?”

Jubi frowned, as if she was counting the years. “Nineteen, no I think twenty. Yes, twenty.” She got up, and bowed, a strangely dignified figure, in her torn and muddied kit. “I’m sorry for troubling you.”

Miiya unclenched her fingers. “Where will you go now?”

“Back.”

Miiya asked, “When did you eat last?” and was surprised by her own question.

Jubi stared, as if eating was an alien occupation.

Miiya stood up. “Come with me. You will eat something before you leave.” She didn’t wait for an answer but opened the door leading into the house. “Master Cillius, please bring her.”

A few minutes later, Jubi sat at the oval table in the bay-windowed room overlooking the garden. Miiya placed a plate of onion bread and pickled mushrooms before her. “It’s all vegetables, I’m afraid. Witches don’t eat flesh or fish,” she said, mostly to break the silence.

Cillius nodded. “I too am that way.”

Miiya arched an eyebrow.

Cillius said, simply, “One doesn’t eat one’s friends.” He turned to Jubi who was eating with slow-deliberation. “What about you?”

The eyes remained blank. “I eat whatever I find.”

Cillius gave Jubi a smile, warm with approbation. “Very sensible.”

Miiya poured cinnamon-infused cocolade into two glasses, pushed one towards Jubi. “What is the name of your king?” The silence was beginning to make her head whirl.

“Iretsa… All our kings are called that.”

As if taking a cue from Miiya, Cillius asked, “Is he young or old?”

Jubi looked up, her eyes widening with surprise. “I’ve never seen him. He doesn’t come to the city. No one comes to the city from the Castle. Only the soldiers; they come with the Silver Carriage. But they are not from Draca. They are from other islands.”

Miiya frowned. “So how is the city governed?”

“The priests look after everything. They get their orders from the King.”

Miiya unclenched her hands. “How do the priests get their orders?”

“They go to the Halfway House.”

“Where is the Halfway House?”

Jubi wiped the last of the pickled mushrooms with a piece of onion bread. “It’s at the foot of the Dollz Mountains. I know a woman who makes clothes for some of the king’s wives. She goes there to get sizes and designs. She said it’s like a fortress.”

Miiya got up to fetch some banana toffees from the sideboard. She disliked them, but kept a fresh supply. They were Terryc’s favorites. “Draca is an ancient kingdom. If these abductions, Possessions as you call them, had been happening for centuries, the word would have got out. So they must have started fairly recently.”

Jubi nibbled at a toffee. “It’s been happening all my life. And before that... My neighbor is very old. She once said that when she was young such things didn’t happen.”

Miiya realized, to her shock, that the rhythmic sound she’d been hearing was her finger tapping the table. “Was there some event which could have led to this practice?”

The purple eyes turned blank.

“Do you know of any unusual events in the history of your city, Jubi?” Cillius asked. “Now for example, about a decade ago, there was an earth-heaving in Sammalore. We normally don’t experience earth-heavings, so it was highly unusual. It was a small one, and didn’t do much harm. But for months, no one spoke of anything else.”

Jubi shook her head. “There had been a great wind that destroyed a lot of Draca. Red-worms destroyed harvests for three years running. There was a plague, but that was long before I was born.”

Miiya picked up a toffee, and started munching it. “You have no other family apart from your father?”

Jubi answered in a low voice, as if she was speaking to herself. “My mother killed herself when my brother was Possessed. He was fourteen years older than me. And very handsome. He was in love you see, and was going to get married.” She looked up, her eyes no longer empty. “Mama was a weaver. After she...she died, we gave away her loom. She was such a happy person. I used to wake up to the sound of her singing. When she went away that was what I missed most, her singing. For months afterwards, I’d wake up and listen for the sound of her voice. But the only thing I’d hear was the sound of the sea. Then I’d remember that she was gone, returned to the sea.”

Cillius said, “So she’s at peace, your mother.”

Jubi continued to speak, almost as if she was alone. “When my brother was taken, Mama didn’t cry. Papa cried a lot, when he thought no one was looking. I was very small then, and was happy because the neighbors came with all this food. I remember eating it all, because Mama and Papa wouldn’t, eat anything. And it was such nice food, like a wedding feast.”

There was a slash of shame in her voice. Cillius said, in a reminiscent voice, “I did something similar when my mother died. I was small too, and gorged myself on all the food everyone brought, because according to our traditions we don’t cook in our house until nine days after a death.” He chuckled. “I do feel a bit ashamed when I think about my gluttony. But I’ve never seen so much food in my life, so many varieties and in such quantities.”

Miiya smiled to herself. How did he know just the right thing to say?

Jubi said, “Mama left a few days later. She went to the Mere of Trees. That is a forest. People go there, only when they want to die. She didn’t say goodbye. Maybe she left a letter for Papa. He went to bring her back. I didn’t want him to go. I was scared he too would abandon me. He hugged me and told me he’ll never ever leave me. He said that he had to give Mama back to the Sea. He told me I will do the same for him some day.” She paused and said, “And I will.” She got up from her chair, and bowed. “Thank you for your kindness, Mistress.”

“Where are you going to stay the night?”

It was Cillius answered. “I thought perhaps I’ll take her to one of the inns, see if they have a room-”

Miiya got up, saying briskly, “I have an empty room. She can stay here. You can come for her in the morning.”

**

Miiya moved from a dreamless sleep to full wakefulness in one fluid moment.

The keening sound that intruded into her sleep and yanked her away from it continued, low moans, like a mortally injured creature.

Miiya hurried to the next room. She knocked, called out. The moans continued, rising and falling.

She squared her shoulders, opened the door and peered. The room was in darkness, but with her witch-eyes she could see.

Jubi slept on Terryc’s bed, eyes shut tight, legs drawn up, clenched hands wedged between the knees. She was bathed in sweat even though the night was cold. She moaned again, a single word: No. Her body started flailing, as if she was straining against invisible bonds.

Miiya forced herself to walk up to the bed, to sit on the edge. She placed her hand on Jubi’s brow – and recoiled, as if struck by a bolt of lightning.

The urge was physical, get away, back to her room, away from the horror she sensed within Jubi. She fought the urge, kept her hand on Jubi’s brow and absorbed the memories.

A shadowy room only a fraction warmer than the cold night outside; a bunch of women huddling together, a much younger Jubi amidst them.

Jubi carrying a pail of water, stopping every now and then to change the pail from one hand to the other, but in reality checking the perimeter wall for a point of weakness. A lash falling on her back. Jubi, falling, the pail falling with her, the water spilling out. Jubi on the ground, face buried in the newly muddied earth, the lash falling, almost rhythmically.

Jubi ten or eleven, sitting on the lap of a middle-aged man, his arm cradling her. Jubi saying, eyes wide, “You mean there are places where people are not taken away in the Silver Carriage, Papa?”

Jubi, thin once again, staring out of a window, her face blank. A door opening, someone calling her, except she has no name, only a number…

Miiya sat motionless, hand on Jubi’s brow, eyes closed, until Jubi stopped moaning and flailing. When Jubi had fallen into a peaceful sleep, Miiya dragged herself to her feet and tottered to her room, her body alternating between a burning heat and a freezing cold.

What she just saw was a sliver of what Jubi had experienced. How did that slip of a young woman survive so much horror?

She lay on her bed, chose some memories of her first years of Terryc, a time of healing and slow regaining of happiness, and gave Backvision full rein. Reliving her time with Terryc had been her unfailing antidote to every darkness. It didn’t work this time. Jubi’s haunted eyes blotted out Terryc’s laughing ones. They were a noose, circling her throat, tightening, until breathing turned into the hardest chore in the world.

**

Miiya had expected Cillius at the crack of dawn. What she didn’t expect was the bags he was carrying.

He bowed. “I’ve brought some food and provisions for Jubi. I hope she had a good rest. We have a long way ahead of us.”

“We?”

“She and I,” Cillius sounded almost apologetic. “I thought I’d go with her, at least part of the way, see if she’s all right.” He tried to peer in. “Is she up?”

“Having breakfast. Come in.”

Jubi stood up when Cillius entered, her eyes widening.

“I thought I’ll come with you, Jubi, see the world a little-”

Jubi smiled. It lit her face from within, making it glow.

Miiya cut in. “Have you had breakfast, Master Cillius?”

“No, but…”

“Then sit down and eat something.” She moved to her own chair but remained standing. “I was telling Jubi that I will accompany her to Draca, subject to certain conditions.” When she told Jubi of her decision, Jubi had smiled politely, thanked her politely. “A witch’s power is rooted in her native land. The farther we move from our birthplace, the weaker our powers become. So the help I can render you is likely to be minimal. I also need to remind you, Jubi, that I can’t harm a human to save your life or my own. So if you expect me to stride into this castle-fortress, battle your king and his armies and save your father, I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.”

Jubi’s young-old eyes, eyes which seemed to have seen more horrors in just twenty summers than Miiya had in one and a half centuries, looked back at her. Long, too long. “I understand that, Mistress. I just want to try.” A tremulous smile played on the cracked and discolored lips for a few seconds. “Thank you.”

Miiya nodded. “Your father is fortunate to have such a daughter.”

“He would have done the same for me.”

Cillius said, “Now that you are coming, Mistress, I’m certain our quest will be successful.”

Miiya shrugged. The old codger seemed to regard this as a kind of adventure, probably an antidote to his humdrum existence. “If we are going to be companions on the road, I beg that you drop this very oppressive form of address and call me by my name, both of you.”

Jubi looked from one to the other, as if trying to make sense of what she just heard, and nodded.

Cillius smiled. “My friends, when I have human friends, which is not often I’m happy to say, call me Cillo.”

“Cillo it is,” Miiya said, fighting a sudden sense of disconsolation. “I’ve hired a carriage to take us as far as the road is manageable. Since Jubi doesn’t know how to ride, we’ll probably have a lot of walking ahead of us. I will need a day to arrange my affairs. We can start early tomorrow morning.”