When we finished the whole shack smelled like meat and you could hardly walk from one side to the other on account of all the slivers of caribou dangling in the way.
“How long’s it gonna take?” I asked. “Till it’s all dried out?”
“A few weeks.” Naji glanced at me. He was over at the hearth, messing with the fire. “There’s a cave not far from here. We should start moving our things.”
“The cave!” I said. “The rain’ll get in.”
“Exactly. It’s why we had to hang the caribou up in here.” Smoke trickled up from the fire, gray and thick. It made my nose run.
“I know that.” I scowled. “Just don’t know why we have to live in the cave is all.”
Naji stepped away from the hearth. “Would you rather move into Eirnin’s house?” He glanced at me. “Spend the next few weeks living side by side with ghosts and magic-homunculi?”
I glared at him. He looked like he wanted to laugh. I knew he had me.
CHAPTER THREE
Living in a cave wasn’t so bad, despite the way the dampness flooded in every time the skies opened up with rain. This soft, thick moss grew over the rocks and made for a bed more comfortable than my big pile of ferns back in the shack. We kept a fire burning near the entrance and ate half-cured caribou and berries and the occasional fish to mix it up.
After a few days, the manticore sniffed us out.
“Girl-human,” she said. “Did you and the Jadorr’a think you could flee from me?”
It was nighttime, the sky starless from the rainclouds, and Naji was sleeping down deeper in the cave, his tattoos lighting up the darkness. I didn’t know if he was dreaming or casting magic in his sleep. He’d told me once he talked to the Order sometimes, though he never told me what about. They would’ve rescued him weeks ago, when we first landed, but they wouldn’t have rescued me. That’s why he was still here.
And no one else is crazy enough to sail to the Isles of the Sky. Hadn’t seen so much as a sail on the horizon the entire time we’d been on the island.
I popped my head out of the cave’s entrance. The manticore sniffed at me and flicked her tail back and forth.
“The shack’s filled up with meat,” I said.
“Caribou is not meat,” she told me. “Too gristly, too tough. Like tree bark.”
I couldn’t imagine the manticore having ever actually tried tree bark, but I didn’t say nothing, just shuffled out into the woods. The air was damp and cold like always, and I pulled my coat tight around me.
“Do you need something?”
“May I see your new rock-nest?”
I sighed. “It’s just a cave.”
“It is larger than your old nest.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
The manticore trotted past the fire and into the cave’s main room, her footsteps silent on the moss. Naji’s tattoos turned everything pale blue.
For a minute the manticore stared at him, tongue running over the edges of her teeth. I edged toward the sword.
But the manticore didn’t lunge for him or shoot a spine. Instead, she turned around on the moss a few times, like a dog, and then settled in.
Well. Looked like she found a new home.
“Brush my mane, girl-human,” the manticore said. “In exchange for catching the caribou.”
“I thought the caribou was in exchange for pulling out the pine cone.”
She shook her head and I didn’t feel much like arguing with her.
“What do you want me to use?” I asked. “My fingers?”
“Don’t be silly. A brush will suffice.”
“A brush?” I laughed. “I don’t have no brush.” I pointed at my own hair, which was a tangled, knotted mess from the rainwater and the woods and the wind – even if Naji had been halfway interested in me at some point, he sure as curses wouldn’t be now. I’d hacked some of it off with Naji’s knife, but it was hair. It grew back. “You think I’d look like this if I owned a brush?”
The manticore frowned. “I thought that was merely the humans’ way. You will not tend to your grooming unless commanded by a manticore.”
“The hell did you get that idea from?”
The manticore looked genuinely confused.
“You know what?” I said. “Forget it. I don’t have a brush, but I’ll work it through my fingers, alright? Best I can do.”
The manticore heaved a sigh like this was the biggest burden to her, worse than getting trapped on a deserted island in the north, worse than having to eat animals instead of people. Not that she shut up about either of those things.
I sat down beside her and started working through her mane, a few pieces at a time. It was pretty tangled – not as bad as my hair, but bad enough that I could see how someone as prissy as her would want it fixed.
It was boring work, but calming. Once I got the tangles out her mane was soft as spun silk, and it reminded me of the scarfs and dresses we’d pull from Empire trading ships, the ones I used to sleep on as a little girl.
And there, in the darkness of that cave, in the cold damp of that island, I started missing Papa’s ship real bad. I combed through the manticore’s mane and I thought about the open ocean, the hot breezes blowing across the water and the warmth of the sun. I didn’t think I’d ever feel warm again.
I moved to the other side of the manticore’s head. I could see Naji, curled up on his side. Seeing him made me sadder still, remembering how miserable he’d been on the Ayel’s Revenge, how comfortable he’d been in the desert.
Even if he loved me back, we were tied to different parts of the world.
“You should kiss him, girl-human.”
I yelped in surprise at the sound of her voice, and my fingers caught on a snag in the manticore’s mane. She hissed and yanked her head back.
“What?” I said. “Kiss who?”
“Who else is here?” she said. She rubbed against her scalp with the back of her paw. “The Jadorr’a.”
“What would I do that for?”
The manticore giggled. It sounded like a wind chime. “To complete the first impossible task, of course.”
I froze, my hand hovering near her mane. Ain’t no way she could know that I was in love with him. Did manticores even know what love was? I doubted it.
“I ain’t his true love,” I said gruffly, shoving my fingers back into her fur.
“Aye, but he’s yours,” she said. “I can feel it when you’re close to him, like a lightning storm.”
My face turned hot. “That’s the island talking,” I muttered. “Don’t mean nothing.”
“Go on,” she said. “While he’s sleeping. Don’t you want to help him? Your friend?” She smiled, teeth sparkling in the firelight. “Your true love?”
“Course I want to help… my friend.” I pushed away from her and crossed my arms over my chest. “But you’re just telling me to do it so as you can eat him.”
“In time,” she said. “All tasks must still be completed.” Her eyes glimmered. “Just one little kiss. He won’t even know it was you.”
I looked at her and then I looked at Naji, handsome and disfigured all at once. Maybe she was right. If I kissed him softly enough, maybe he wouldn’t even know it was me: it had never, in the past month, occurred to me to kiss him while he was asleep. In the soft, velvety haze of the open air, this seemed like the most perfect idea I’d ever heard.
One kiss, just enough to help him on his way. To give him hope again.
“Go on,” she said, speaking into my ear, close enough I could smell the carrion on her breath.
I pushed away from her. Naji kept on sleeping. He lay on his side, one arm slung across the pallet of moss. His hair curled around his neck. The lines of his scar looked like the paths a lover’s hand would take as she ran her fingers down his face. They were beautiful.
I knelt down beside him. His breath was slow and even. I could feel the manticore staring at us, waiting.
I leaned forward, holding my breath. He didn’t move.