That seemed to have shocked him out of his stillness. Now, he was all movement, and it was explosive. He snatched me up into his arms, clutching me close and spreading his wings with a vicious crack. He didn’t even bother walking out the door. He jerked his head upwards, and the entire ceiling cracked before blowing outwards off the house entirely. Sun blinded me, and I screwed my eyes shut as he took off into the air.

I huddled against him, fighting the urge to vomit again. I couldn’t even be bothered wondering what he was doing or where he was taking me. I was too ill to feel afraid of how high we flew.

In the last dregs of consciousness, it occurred to me that we’d left my boots behind.

Then it occurred to me that I probably wouldn’t need them anymore.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Skallagrim

Icould not remember ever being so afraid. I flew like something terrible pursued me, like I would die if I stopped.

I would not die if I stopped.

But Suvi might.

I did not know what to do or how to help her. Concepts danced at the edge of my consciousness before fading like mist. Words exploded, sparks that lit up the surface of the river in my head – fever disease medicine amputate – but I couldn’t string them together in any way that seemed to do me any good. That last word, “amputate,” started to pound through me like an illness of my own and I flew faster, harder, so that I would not have to wonder if the knife at her hip would be sharp enough to do it.

There was.... someone. Somewhere. Who could help. I was certain of it in the maddening, contextless way I seemed certain of so many things these days. There had been a place, a person. People?

I chased the memory with my body, beating my wings hard while keeping Suvi safely nestled against my chest. I leaned into instinct, dove into the barely-there feeling that plagued me, the feeling that told me someone could help her, could fix this, if I could only find them.

I flew all day.  I did not stop. Suvi drifted in and out of consciousness, and as the sun began to descend on the horizon, I feared that maybe I’d been wrong. That my memory had failed her, failed us both.

But then I saw it.

The bend in the river that I instantly recognized. Another tumult of words – temple healer cotton goddess – filled my head as I dove to the shore. I landed, twisting my head ’round, chest heaving, wings burning, feeling like I was in the right place but that the place was not what it had once been. There was supposed to be something here. Something... Someone...

I wanted to roar. I wanted to smash something. I wanted to crack this planet down the middle until even the ancient core felt my rage. I wanted to apologize and run away and cut out my other eye in recompense. Because everything had gone wrong and I was the source of it all.

I did none of those things, because Suvi was shaking and burning in my arms, and river help me, I did not know what to do. I collapsed onto the sand, wings drooping to the sides, and cradled her close as I fought through my own dooming sense of helplessness.

Stone sky god. Bohnebregg prince.

Once, I had been powerful. Once, I had not been helpless.

I tried to reach back through my own mind, tried to reach for who I’d been before.

Maybe he was gone.

Fury overtook me. Fury at the fact that I couldn’t remember a single cursed thing to help us. I could not take her to another world, because I could not even picture one. I could not return her to her people, because I’d seen them in their machine, leaving the planet when we did. There was nowhere left to go and no one left to turn to.

You promised her. You promised you’d protect her.

If she... stone skies curse me, if she died, and the darkness came back, I’d welcome it this time. I’d give myself over completely without a care for what happened after.

What point was there in trying to claw my way back to myself if she was gone?

What point was there in light, in lucidity, if it only illuminated what I’d lost?

Suvi whimpered, and the sound sent me shooting to my feet, as if by standing I could somehow help her. Hateful, wretched fool. I began to pace the river’s shore, speaking softly to her even though I was certain she could not hear me and doubly certain she would not understand. My starmap vibrated, the golden points growing brighter. My power was responding to my emotional state, surging inside me as if preparing me for battle. But there was nowhere for all that power to go. I couldn’t use it to help Suvi. It rose and fell, rose and fell, creating a relentless churn of shuddering noise inside my head.

The noise got louder and louder, bearing down on me until I stopped my pacing and whirled towards the river.

The sound was coming from the water.

The sun had fully set at some point during my frantic pacing, and a sudden blast of light from the surface of the water made me bare my fangs. Suvi moaned at the bright light aimed on us, and I swiftly covered her with my wings.

“Who goes there?” I hissed, backing up slightly. That putrid, cursed light. It kept me blind to whoever wielded it. With a snap of my jaws and an outward whip of my power, I crushed the source of the light. I blinked, getting used to the spill of the moons and stars as the only source of light once more, my eyes slowly focusing on a... a vessel.

A small boat was heading for the shore. The sound I’d heard was some sort of machine, a paddling propeller, built into the back of it. A lone hooded figure stood in the boat, and they appeared to be simultaneously steering the boat with a rounded lever while poking with their other hand at a smoking contraption that had to have been the light.

The vessel slowed. The boat touched the shore. The hooded figure prepared to jump to the sand.

Proclamations like the ones that I’d remembered at the abandoned house came to me unbidden. I spoke them into the air like a spell.

“You stand before a stone sky god and prince of this land. I compel you to state your name and purpose, as I have stated mine.”

The figure jumped from the boat, landing gracefully in the sand. They did not get closer.

“But you have not stated your name. Nor your purpose,” countered a voice from within the hood.

Impatience snagged in my throat. I almost entered a rage I would not have been able to easily drag myself back from. There was something wrong, something deeply offensive, about the way this person had answered me. Like they were breaking a code embedded in my bones.

I choked it all down, the anger, the feeling of being affronted. Pride and protocol that I could not even remember did not matter now.

Only Suvi mattered.

“My purpose... My purpose is to seek a medic... A healer... Someone.” I grunted in exasperation. “I cannot remember... I came here because I thought there was something. Someone who could help. I have an injured...”

An injured what? What should I call her? Female? Friend? Star that reached out and split the black ooze that drowned me for so long?

“An injured person in my care,” I finally ground out.

The hooded figure drew nearer, going slowly as if not to alarm me, dark red cottony robes rippling with the movement. They stopped a few paces short of me and pulled back their hood.

A snouted face startlingly similar to my own looked back, though the hair was worn very short. When the person spoke again, I instantly realized she was female. A Bohnebregg female.

“You remember correctly. You have come to the right place. It is here. You merely cannot see it.”