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Mama. I wished she were here now, her and her magic, the magic of the sea, of water–
The river.
I crawled down to the river's edge. Everything was silver and light, cold and beautiful. The horse had wandered off, blending into the shadows. I'd never been able to talk to the water. But Mama had told me you got to want it, and maybe before I never wanted it enough, maybe before I never needed it.
I crawled into the water. The cold cut right through me, made all my bones rattle. Silt drifted up around my bare legs. I closed my eyes, concentrated hard as I could.
"River," I said. My voice ran up and down the walls of the canyon. It became a million voices at once. "River, I ask to speak with you."
Those were the words Mama had told me a long time ago. And I waited, but the water just kept pushing past my waist, tugging on my dress.
Then I remembered. Mama casting gifts into the ocean. I had to give a gift.
The camel had run off with my money, so all I had left that belonged to me was the protection charm Naji made me and the knife I used to save his life. I threw the knife into the water. Mama always said the water knows the true value of things. And this was a trade, one way of saving his life for another.
I said my request again, louder this time, filling my voice with meaning and purpose, with pain and sorrow. If I let Naji die, my voice said, not in words but in tone, I as good as killed him.
The way I killed Tarrin of the Hariri.
This time, the babble of the river fell quiet. The river kept moving, swirling past me, but I couldn't hear nothing. And I knew I had permission to ask my request.
"Naji's dying," I said. "I need to know how I can fix him." I thought about it for a few seconds and then I added, "If there's anything in the river that can help him, please. I would appreciate it." Mama always told me to be polite when you're dealing with the spirits.
A heaviness descended over the canyon, a stillness that made me feel like the last human in the whole world. Then the river began to rise, inching up above my waist to my chest, flooding over the bed, washing over Naji, then under him, buoying him up. From somewhere in the darkness, the horse whi
Then, quick as it flooded, the river retreated to normal.
River nettle. The name came to me like I'd known it all along, even though there ain't no way I'd ever heard it before. I splashed toward the shore, slipping over the stones to get to the riverbed. Naji gasped and wheezed, droplets of water sparkling on his skin. I walked past him, stumbling out into the grasses, feeling around in the dark for something that grew low to the ground, in places where the river flooded during that time of heavy run-off from the mountains. It would be covered in stiff, spiny leaves, like a thistle–
My hand closed around a thick stem, and my palm burned like it had been bitten by ants. This was it.
I yanked the nettle out of the ground, flinging clods of damp dirt across the front of my dress. Then I stumbled back over to Naji, who was panting there in the mud. The sound wrapped guilt around my heart and squeezed so hard it hurt.
"Hold on," I whispered to Naji, smoothing his hair back away from his face, wiping off the water that dripped into his eyes. "I got something to help you."
He gasped and shuddered and I knew he was dying and I knew I had to do this fast.
I used Naji's knife to cut his robes away from the wound. It wasn't like any wound I ever saw – it wasn't a cut or a burn, but a hole about the size of a fist in the center of his chest, like a well, a place of darkness and sorrow going all the way down to the center of the earth. I stared at it for a few seconds, and it seemed to get bigger and bigger, big enough to swallow me whole.
And that part of me that knew what to do, that knowledge that came from the river, told me the wound was hypnotizing me, that it wasn't no hole at all, and I had to concentrate.
I closed my eyes and shook my head and that dizzy feeling went away. When I opened my eyes again I made sure not to look directly at Naji's chest.
I stripped the leaves off the stem, going partially by moonlight and mostly by feel. I didn't fumble or hesitate – it was like I'd known how to do this all along. Then I stuck the leaves in my mouth and chewed on 'em till they got soft and mushy. They tasted like river water, steely and clean, and I spat 'em out in the palm of my hand and pressed the mush to Naji's chest. For a few seconds I was sure that my hand would plunge into the darkness, that I'd fall through that hole and wake up surrounded by evil.
Naji's chest felt all wrong, spongy and decayed and hotter even than if he had a fever, but it was there, it wasn't no doorway to someplace else. I spread the river nettle over the wound. As I worked, I sang in a language I didn't know; the words sounded like the babble of water over stones, like rainfall pattering across the surface of a pond, like rapids rushing through a canyon.
When I finished, all that knowledge evaporated out of my head. I fell backward on the mud and looked up at the stars. They blurred in and out of focus. I wanted to stay up, to watch over Naji to make sure the magic held fast, but I couldn't. I was so exhausted I slipped over into sleep, where I dreamed of water.
CHAPTER NINE
The sun woke me up the next day. It was as hot out there by the water as it had been in the desert, and when I sat up my skin hurt. Face, neck, legs: anything that hadn't been covered up was burned. At least the air felt clean. No threat of magic-sickness.
Naji was gone.
That got me to my feet fast, sunburn or not. There were a few faint footprints headed in the direction of the river. The water threw off flashes of white sunlight, nearly blinding me. But Naji was there, floating out in the middle of the river without no clothes.
Now, I ain't normally a prude about things like that – most pirates are men so it wasn't nothing I hadn't seen before. And I'd had an encounter behind a saloon on a pirates' island in the west, with this boy Taj who sailed aboard the Uloi. But because this was Naji, my whole face flushed hot beneath the sunburn and I looked down at my feet. I wanted to go hide in the grasses until he came out and got dressed, but I was worried about him too, so I called out, "You alright?" without looking up.
"You're awake," he called back, which didn't answer my question. I heard him splashing around in the water, and I kept my eyes trained down until he padded up to me barefoot, at which point I had no choice but to look at him.