Then the concussion passes. The pond slaps back into place, spraying them with muddy snow. The trees that haven’t shattered snap back upright, some of them nearly bending all the way in the other direction in reactive momentum and breaking there. In the distance—beyond Nassun’s torus—people and animals and boulders and trees that have been flung into the air come crashing down. There are screams, human and inhuman. Cracking wood, crumbling stone, the distant screech of something man-made and metallic rending apart. Behind them, at the far end of the valley they have just left, a rock face shatters and comes down in an avalanche roar, releasing a large steaming chalcedony geode.
Then there is silence. In it, finally, Nassun pulls her face up from her father’s shoulder to look around. She does not know what to think. Her father’s arms ease around her—shock—and she wriggles until he lets her go so that she can get to her feet. He does, too. For long moments they simply stare around at the wreckage of the world they once knew.
Then Daddy turns to look at her, slowly, and she sees in his face what Uche must have seen in those last moments. “Did you do this?” he asks.
The orogeny has cleared Nassun’s head, of necessity. It is a survival mechanism; intense stimulation of the sessapinae is usually accompanied by a surge of adrenaline and other physical changes that prepare the body for flight—or sustained orogeny, if that is needed. In this case it brings an increased clarity of thought, which is how Nassun finally realizes that her father was not hysterical over her fall purely for her sake. And that what she sees in his eyes right now is something entirely different from love.
Her heart breaks in this moment. Another small, quiet tragedy, amid so many others. But she speaks, because in the end she is her mother’s daughter, and if Essun has done nothing else, she has trained her little girl to survive.
“That was too big to be me,” Nassun says. Her voice is calm, detached. “What I did is this—” She gestures around them, at the circle of safe ground that surrounds them, distinct from the chaos just beyond. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop all of it, Daddy. I tried.”
The Daddy is what works, just as her tears saved her before. The murder in his expression flickers, fades, twists. “I can’t kill you,” he whispers, to himself.
Nassun sees the waver of him. It is also instinct that she steps forward and takes his hand. He flinches, perhaps thinking of knocking her away again, but this time she holds on. “Daddy,” she says again, this time putting more of a needy whine into her voice. It is the thing that has swayed him, these times when he has come near to turning on her: remembering that she is his little girl. Reminding him that he has been, up to today, a good father.
It is a manipulation. Something of her is warped out of true by this moment, and from now on all her acts of affection toward her father will be calculated, performative. Her childhood dies, for all intents and purposes. But that is better than all of her dying, she knows.
And it works. Jija blinks rapidly, then murmurs something unintelligible to himself. His hand tightens on hers. “Let’s get back up to the road,” he says.
(He is “Jija,” now, in her head. He will be Jija hereafter, forever, and never Daddy again except out loud, when Nassun needs reins to steer him.)
So they go back up, Nassun limping a little because her backside is sore where she landed too hard on the asphalt and rocks. The road has been cracked all down its length, though it is not so bad in the immediate vicinity of their wagon. The horses are still hitched, though one of them has fallen to her knees and half entangled herself in the tack. Hopefully she hasn’t broken a leg. The other is still with shock. Nassun starts working on calming the horses, coaxing the downed one back up and talking the other out of near-catatonia, while her father goes to the other travelers whom they can see sprawled around the road. The ones who were within the wide circumference of Nassun’s torus are okay. The ones who were not… well.
Once the horses are shaky but functional, Nassun goes after Jija and finds him trying to lift a man who has been flung into a tree. It’s broken the man’s back; he’s conscious and cursing, but Nassun can see the flop of his now-useless legs. It’s bad to move him, but obviously Jija thinks it’s worse to leave him here like this. “Nassun,” Jija says, panting as he tries for a better grip on the man, “clear the wagon bed. There’s a real hospital at Pleasant Water, a day away. I think we can make it if we—”
“Daddy,” she says softly. “Pleasant Water isn’t there anymore.”
He stops. (The injured man groans.) Turns to her, frowning. “What?”
“Sume is gone, too,” she says. She does not add, but Tirimo is fine because Mama was there. She doesn’t want to go back, not even for the end of the world. Jija darts a glance back down the road they have walked, but of course all they can see are shattered trees and a few overturned chunks of asphalt along the road… and bodies. Lots of bodies. All the way to Tirimo, or so the eye suggests.
“What the rust,” he breathes.
“There’s a big hole in the ground up north,” Nassun continues. “Really big. That’s what caused this. It’s going to cause more shakes and things, too. I can sess ash and gas coming this way. Daddy… I think it’s a Season.”
The injured man gasps, not entirely from pain. Jija’s eyes go wide and horrified. But he asks, and this is important: “Are you sure?”
It’s important because it means he’s listening to her. It is a measure of trust. Nassun feels a surge of triumph at this, though she does not really know why.
“Yes.” She bites her lip. “It’s going to be really bad, Daddy.”
Jija’s eyes drift toward Tirimo again. That is conditioned response: During a Season, comm members know that the only place they can be sure of welcome is there. Anything else is a risk.
But Nassun will not go back, now that she is away. Not when Jija loves her—however strangely—and has taken her away and is listening to her, understanding her, even though he knows she is an orogene. Mama was wrong about that part. She’d said Jija wouldn’t understand.
He didn’t understand Uche.
Nassun sets her teeth against this thought. Uche was too little. Nassun will be smarter. And Mama was still only half-right. Nassun will be smarter than her, too.
So she says softly, “Mama knows, Daddy.”
Nassun’s not even sure what she means by this. Knows that Uche is dead? Knows who has beaten him to death? Would Mama even believe that Jija could do such a thing to his own child? Nassun can hardly believe it herself. But Jija flinches as if the words are an accusation. He stares at her for a long moment, his expression shifting from fear through horror through despair… and slowly, to resignation.
He looks down at the injured man. He’s no one Nassun knows—not from Tirimo, wearing the practical clothes and good shoes of a message runner. He won’t be running again, certainly not back to his home comm, wherever that is.
“I’m sorry,” Jija says. He bends and snaps the man’s neck even as he’s drawing breath to ask, For what?
Then Jija rises. His hands are shaking again, but he turns and extends one of them. Nassun takes it. They walk back to the wagon then, and resume their journey south.
The Season will always return.
6
you commit to the cause
A WHAT?” ASKS TONKEE, SQUINTING AT you through a curtain of hair. You’ve just come into the apartment after spending part of the day helping one of the work shifts fletch and repair crossbow bolts for the Hunters’ use. Since you’re not part of any particular use-caste, you’ve been helping out with each of them in turn, a little every day. This was on Ykka’s advice, though Ykka’s skeptical about your newfound determination to try to fit into the comm. She likes that you’re trying, at least.