Yuchil said, “We have heard of such, seldom seen it. That is the burning of incomplete worlds. In this land, Crafters draw or write out drafts and enact them like plays, and not just plays for players but for nature as well. Thou know’st this, Pilgrim. It is why thou sail’st and return, to make report on those drafts that are set and finished and can be freed. No fault of ours or the Crafters, blessed be their ways, blessed be their successes… and no failures.”
“How do drafts not set and fixed, how do those get burned?” Reynard asked.
“Like kindling rolled up and set alight,” Nikolias said, “be they people or cities, animals or plants. This burned forest may be some draft or other, some fledgling of history unmade, burned through, and an ember, seeking to live, got loose—a burning man or woman or eagle or raven. Dost smell burned flesh?”
Reynard shook his head.
“Then perhaps it is merely a draft, a Crafter manuscript, and not people that today smoketh the sky,” Nikolias said.
Reynard thought to ask for another cloth to cover his mouth and nose, but the others did not seem to need it, and soon the air cleared and they passed into a desert of brown sand, shaping wide dunes where nothing grew and nothing more could burn. The wagon seemed to have no problem crossing the sand—perhaps the trod was still active, though hidden. But after a mile of desert, they came upon a hardpan where the ground was marked by patterns, streets and buildings in outline, as if an entire city had been laid out by architects, and walls erected to form buildings, and people had lived in those buildings, and somehow had all been pressed down like flowers between weighted boards—pressed into the flatness, leaving only charcoal impressions shot through with silvery gray. The horses’ hooves did not raise any dust.
Nikolias halted the wagon. The horses shivered, then drooped their heads to whuff at the flat gray and black ground. “Here, the trod ends and the krater lands begin. We use other landmarks to guide us,” he said.
Calafi appeared as if by magic near Reynard’s horse, looked up at him, and tossed her red hair. “I did so dream it. This flat land was once an entire long tale,” she said, as the others walked or rode forward to listen. “Of a place, a people, a time. They grew and fed and loved and birthed, and their children were hearty, and they were on their way to being made real and fixed, but a high Crafter scuffed them down with pumice and black chalk.”
“Was this thy land, Calafi?” Sany asked, smiling at the others. “Didst thou dream of a home and mother and father?”
Calafi frowned hard. Nikolias listened but did not chide or defend. Instead, he said, “A fine dream,” then looked around with narrowed gaze and pointed an arm. “There be a few still in trace.”
Calafi ran to where he pointed and stood on what might have been shadows—now part of the stony surface. “They fell flat!” she exclaimed. “What stamped them down? I know! A Crafter lost a contest with his fellows!”
“Crafters be neither male nor female,” Bela said resentfully, touching his ribbon.
She ignored him. “Soon after, other Crafters burned that one in his krater, then set his ashes into a jar. This flat land be all that stays of it, methinks.”
Nikolias said, “Whatever the truth of it, the lands here are uneasy, so be on guard.”
“Against what?” Sany asked.
Calafi said, with another twirl, “Spirits and waves of lost creation!”
“No surprise,” Widsith said. “What with Spaniards and war in the air, something hath decided to bring creation full circle, and might make Crafters front their own art.”
Calafi now ran to Widsith with her fingers shaping claws, but Nikolias called for her to stop and she grimaced, then backed away. A fierce scowl darkened her features, and Reynard could not help thinking she was a creature possessed, for her voice was now that of a harridan or a harpy.
“Think’st ye not this land be devoted to human story,” she churled. “Once all creatures were drawn and assigned here, and rose and fell according to the wizarding of the Crafters, who used them on fields of battle, and won or lost according to how they rose or how they fell. And outside this land, the mists rose and fell like great cloaks on the plays thus played, and humans came to think themselves supreme, and arrived to claim their privilege… and their gods were made here, and also rose and fell, but in the end, all were made low. And now there is a great field of pots. And who or what will rise again—be that known to any?” The girl, transformed, tried to twirl again, but her eyes vibrated, and she collapsed to one knee and lowered her head. Her breath came in quick, shallow drafts, and a pale dribble of foam appeared on her lips. Her limbs shivered, and she uttered little moans.
Reynard had seen this before—the falling sickness.
Nikolias descended from his horse and draped a crimson cape over the girl’s shoulders. “Done now, are we?” he murmured into her ear. “Now get thee back to being a girl, and leave godly things to the dead gods.”
As if by instinct, Reynard looked to Valdis, stiff on her mount, cold and steady—and saw a gleam in her eyes as of distant hunger or yearning, not for the girl, poor thing so grabbed and made to speak—
But for the force that had possessed her.
They rode on. After a few miles on the shadowy flats, they saw another burned forest ahead, backed by the ever-distant pale mountain ridge, and Widsith asked Reynard, “Any women in thy family like unto that one?”
Reynard had been lost in thought, but when Widsith spoke, he looked up and said, “A little like that.” He startled himself by announcing this, and he had been thinking of his grandmother, not his mother.
“Would that woman have shared insight with this child?” Nikolias asked from his horse.
Reynard shook his head. He did not know. To his surprise, he did not remember ever knowing. This place was tricking both mind and memory!
Nikolias looked back and down at Calafi, who paced behind his horse, staring in alternation blankly at the sky, then at the flat, hard ground and the shadows that seemed to swim there. “Blessed be those with such connections, for they live long, and are never happy.” The girl saw his attention and smiled shyly. He nodded in return and handed down a cake wrapped in paper.
Valdis noticed all this, but did not reveal her interest. Instead, she stared at the small of Reynard’s back, which made his muscles curl until he had to reach back and scratch.
“Evening comes early today,” Yuchil announced from the wagon. “We camp soon.”
The girl eagerly ran ahead and again danced a pretty dance on the hardpan, then smiled on them all, sunshine and sweetness and joy at their company.
“She doth find relief,” Yuchil said from the seat of the wagon. “Visions, like a storm, clear the air.”
Plain of Jars
WITH THE TRAVELERS VIGILANT—all of them serving watch, including Calafi—and the wagon at the center of their camp, another peculiar dawn arrived, and Reynard was able to see the new terrain by what passed for daylight. He could make little sense of what he saw, but it still seemed gloomy enough to dry his tongue and make it cling to the breakfast of dried fish and porridge seasoned with red pepper powder. Widsith ate as if he had eaten such foods before, or even spicier fare. And likely he had. Reynard had not.
The girl brought a leather bag with water and they sipped from it, no more. Widsith pulled it down when Reynard tried to quench the heat of the breakfast.
“There is little water here,” Nikolias explained, taking his quick turn at the bag and handing it to the young warriors. “And none more until we cross the pass.”