“… better…,” the man responded scornfully. Then, “… dead.”
Rosa’s eyes drifted closed. When she was aware again, the man was gone, and Hou Yi’s iron arms dragged her up. Rosa fell across shoulders that were as strong as an ox, and the night became blessedly cool and quiet.
* * *
Rosa woke because she was choking.
Her breath clenched in her. Her lungs seized. She woke trying to cough so hard she couldn’t, and panic clawed at her—air, she needed air—
“Relax,” said a voice. A strong hand on her back. Rosa gained control of her body, barely, and managed half a gasp before the coughs wracked her.
When they subsided, it was no better. Her lungs still throbbed. Her throat and eyes screamed.
Her joints ached. Her body ached. She was too old for this. “It’s the smoke,” Hou Yi said, entirely unnecessarily.
Rosa didn’t grace that with a response. “Where are we?” she rasped instead. She was on the ground, on her cloak, the bright fabric spread like dark blood beneath her. It was still night. Late, by the deep stillness of it.
Hou Yi had started a fire. A minimal crackle of kindling, its tiny thread of smoke trailing upward harmlessly, but Rosa still wanted to wince away from it.
“We are somewhere to the southeast,” Hou Yi said. Her voice had an odd quality, one Rosa couldn’t pinpoint. “I am uncertain exactly where.”
Rosa was too tired and sick to play this game, with Hou Yi being mysterious and Rosa refusing to ask the expected questions. “Why?”
“Because it got away.”
At first Rosa didn’t know what she meant. The man? In Hou Yi’s language she needed give the statement no subject. Got away, she had said. Something or someone had gotten away—
“The bird,” Rosa said. “You mean the other sunbird.” She’d spoken in her own tongue by accident. She repeated it, the words coming with difficulty. Her brain was addled with smoke.
“Yes. It got away,” Hou Yi repeated.
And Hou Yi was tracking it.
Rosa wanted to ask why, wanted to demand whether they were in any shape for such a quest, but her scratching throat revolted at the thought of trying to form the questions.
Hou Yi, for once, elaborated without being pressed. “I have to find it. It will return and wreak more damage. It’s been called, and…” She paused. “It is my responsibility.”
“It’s not,” Rosa said. “You don’t have to.” She said it more out of form than anything. Hou Yi was running from something the same way Rosa was, only Hou Yi ran by hunting the sunbirds and water monsters and other creatures that threatened the people, extending herself beyond call, beyond reason. Rosa, on the other hand …
Rosa had run halfway around the world and joined a mad quest that wasn’t even her own. She had no space to tell Hou Yi to stop.
Death will catch us sometime anyway. Would this be such a bad way to go?
“This is my responsibility,” Hou Yi repeated. She sounded strangely remote. “But not yours. You’re injured. You should return home.”
Rosa pushed herself up so she was leaning on an elbow. She’d meant to get all the way to sitting, but after the effort it took to get this far, it seemed good enough. “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You need me.”
Hou Yi barked a laugh. “In my youth … but never mind. This isn’t your journey. Leave. Go home. Live in my house or return to your own country; it’s your decision. But this is not your path to take.”
“Bull.” Rosa said the word in her own language, but she was quite sure the meaning was clear. “If you’re going to get yourself killed, you can at least let me do it alongside you.”
Hou Yi turned her face away and touched something beneath her shirt. “You would quail away before the journey’s end anyway. Go, Flower. Go find your wife.”
The words, the image they brought up of Mei’s face—they stabbed. As they were meant to. Not to mention that Hou Yi had never in their time together known Rosa to quail.
Hou Yi was not usually cruel.
No. Hou Yi was never cruel.
Rosa’s mind spiraled back and rebuilt what she had heard and not understood. You called them, Hou Yi had said to the man, and he had confirmed it.
I killed you. Rosa had thought she had misheard.
Hou Yi was not usually cruel …
“That man is someone you knew,” Rosa said. “He called the sunbirds. As … an act against you. Yes?”
And now Hou Yi didn’t want Rosa along, was pushing her away, not because she didn’t need or want aid, but because this journey would bare Hou Yi’s soul. And Rosa would see.
Rosa wouldn’t want herself, her past, so forcefully displayed either. A deep kinship thrummed through her for the violation Hou Yi must be feeling. The shame. They were meant to be able to hide from each other, together.
Hou Yi had not moved, nor responded to Rosa’s query. Rosa swallowed against her swollen throat. She did not mean to do this, to know Hou Yi’s secrets without having them granted to her.
But neither could she let a friend go off alone to die. Of all Rosa’s faults—and she had many, so many—she had never been that person, and would never be.
“I had a friend,” Rosa said. Her voice cracked, and she wasn’t sure whether it was from the smoke or not. “I had a friend, and … she broke me. Then I betrayed the one who saved me from her.”
Her eyes and nose burned. But if Hou Yi would be forced to reveal herself, the only thing Rosa could do was … the same.
If she could maintain the courage.
Hou Yi moved, finally, turning her head slightly to Rosa. “What was your friend’s name?”
“Goldie. ‘Little Gold,’” Rosa translated. “For her hair. Golden curls—have you seen it before?”
“I have,” Hou Yi said.
“The first thing I saw was her yellow hair,” Rosa said. “Through the window of a cottage. I was so cold, and so hungry. And so very lonely. My grandmother had just died, and I … I had been on my own.” Her icy fingers had clenched the rifle, there in the tree, outside the house where she had heard Goldie scream …
“You’ve spoken of your grandmother before,” Hou Yi said. “She taught you to hunt.”
“Yes,” Rosa said. “She taught me…”
* * *
“Still now,” Abuelita’s voice said at her shoulder. “Relaxed. Breathe in, breathe out, as even as you can. Like the wind caressing the petal of a flower.”
Abuelita smelled of gunpowder and warm bread. Rosa wriggled her belly against the ground and tried to relax. Inhale, exhale. Inhale …
“Let the rifle move with you,” Abuelita said. “Up, and down. Up, and down. The same distance each time, yes? With each breath. At the bottom, your front sight kisses the target. Up, and down—kiss. Inhale, and exhale—kiss.”
Rosa breathed. It was even, just as her grandmother said—she breathed, and the sight grazed the shingle that was her target. Breathe, and it happened again.
“Now, at the very bottom of your breath, squeeze your finger back. Just the tip, and so gently. Just so.”