“Then why didn’t you stay?” Mia asked.
Nell didn’t answer. She gestured toward a haze of orange light in the distance.
“By my estimation, that lovely little beacon is an inn.”
Chapter 6
Unclenched
PILAR DIDN’T BELIEVE IN the Four Great Goddesses. But she did believe in a hot meal and a nip of rai rouj. All those times she’d goaded Nell to find a harbor, she’d assumed “harbor” meant food and drink, not an endless march through the desert. It was also freezing. Weren’t deserts supposed to be warm?
As they approached the inn, Pilar shot a prayer of thanks up to the sky, just to be safe.
“Kaara akutha!” Nell said as they stepped onto the inn’s stoop. She knocked the sand off her boots, motioning them to do the same. “Welcome to Pembuk. You’re about to get your first real taste of Pembuka hospitality.”
“As long as they feed us,” Pilar said.
Nell laughed. “I assure you, you will never go hungry in Pembuk. We are a people who like to eat.”
She conversed with the innkeeper in Pembuka, who led them to a long table. Plates of food began appearing from the kitchen. Roasted chicken. Squares of salty grilled cheese. Goop of beans and eggplant.
“Jomos,” Nell said, pointing to the goop. “Ah, and you went straight for the piglum!” She nodded toward the greasy meat clutched in Pilar’s fist that she’d mistaken for chicken. “I don’t eat meat anymore, only fish. But I remember the taste of piglum, I used to dream about it after I left Pembuk. Isn’t it delicious?”
Pilar didn’t answer. She was too busy shoveling it all in.
“Glad you’re taking time to savor it,” Mia muttered.
Rose picked at her food. Birdlike. At first she’d bitten into the piglum with relish, and Pilar knew why: she wanted desperately to taste it. But from the way she was chewing on the meat, it was clear she might as well be eating rubber.
Mia stopped abruptly. Her mouth fell open, full of half-chewed piglum.
“Pepper!” she cried. “I taste pepper!” She looked up at Nell, her eyes so full of hope it nearly broke Pilar’s heart.
On the beach, when Nell had touched Mia’s wrist—and again when Rose practically made love to the sand—Pilar couldn’t explain what had come over her. She hadn’t meant to be mean. Mia had looked happier than she’d ever seen her. Their conversation under the snow palace came rushing back: Mia confessing she was desperate to feel things, and terrified she never would.
I’m not a fighter like you are, she’d said.
Pilar’s own words echoed. Then I’ll fight for you. Until you’re strong enough to fight again.
But now that the sensations were coming back, she wouldn’t need Pilar to fight for her. Mia wouldn’t need her at all.
So Pilar did what she always did with fear.
Choked it.
The next hour played out like a bad joke. The water in the bath bucket had no temperature, until the moment Mia yelped that warmth had enveloped her feet in silken heat. Those were her actual words: “I feel warmth enveloping my feet in silken heat!”
Maybe Mia really was destined to be a princess. She was as bad as Quin. Like any good royal, she seemed constitutionally unable to say, “The water is hot.”
And then Mia’s face fell.
“It’s gone,” she said, all her joy flushed down the drain.
Pilar hated that a part of her felt relieved.
Nell installed them in a room with three hay beds: a welcome relief after weeks on a wooden boat. On each bed sat a white towel twisted into the shape of a miniature elephant. Pilar promptly untwisted her elephant and collapsed on the bed.
Not Mia. She babbled on and on about a large rock near her cottage in Ilwysion—“Angie thought it looked like an elephant, but I never agreed!”—and then, just as Pilar started to drift off to sleep, Rose waxed lyrical about the hay against the down pillow.
“Soft and scratchy! So beautifully juxtaposed!” she moaned, her voice muffled in goose down.
And the fear grew.
At breakfast the next morning—more bean goop with a side of fresh melon—Mia was distraught that she couldn’t taste the food.
“It’s all right, Mia,” Nell insisted. “Even if the sensations are coming back in bits and pieces, they’re coming back. Once we get to the House of Shadows, there will be so many people who want to help you, you can’t even imagine.”
Nell pushed aside her half-eaten soup.
“Now, on to practicalities. I’ve booked us on a caravan to Shabeeka, the first of the glass cities. Took me long enough to haggle—so many tourists this time of year! The Pearl Moon Festival is in full swing, and more people than ever are making the pilgrimage to the Isle of Forgetting, which seems especially tragic during such a lovely festival, who in their right mind would want to forget that? The House of Shadows sits smack in the center of Shabeeka, so once we’ve—”
“Are you going to finish that?” Pilar jerked a thumb toward the soup.
Nell shrugged. “Have at it. Just don’t eat too much, because the caravan can be very . . .”
Pil had already wolfed it down.
Bumpy. That was Pilar’s guess for how Nell would have finished her sentence. The ride to Shabeeka had more bumps than a pox victim.
“Not too much longer,” Nell promised.
Pilar grunted. The back of her neck was sweaty, her armpits damp. The cold desert from the night before had thawed into a sweltering desert day.
“You said that hours ago.”
“Yes, but now I actually mean it.”
Pilar folded her arms. “How are you paying for all this, Nell? Were you hiding gold coins in those banana leaves?”
“The glass kingdom has a strong system of credit. My family’s name is well respected.”
“They’ll know you’re here once they get the bill.”
“Oh, they’ll probably know long before then. That’s the problem with family, really: their love becomes a kind of leash.”
She shut her eyes, resting the back of her head on the flimsy canvas wall.
Pilar frowned. If love were a kind of leash, her mother had been all too happy to strangle her with it.
She could feel Mia staring at her. Why was Mia always staring? On the boat there weren’t many places to fix your gaze. Ocean. Ocean. Ocean. And so on. But here they were, bouncing along in a caravan, Rose giving her that same look. Oozing sympathy. Ready to tell her how she should or shouldn’t be healing. Eager to propose a scientific formula to get her back on track.
She knew Mia meant well. That was the story of Mia Rose’s life, wasn’t it? Trying to do everything right, then doing everything wrong. But Pilar couldn’t take Mia looking at her like a piece of broken glass, one that had to be handled gently. She glared back. Ferocious.
“What?” she growled.
Mia shifted on the bench. Opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, then shut it. Turned away.
Pilar felt a stab of guilt. Why was she being heartless? Mia was the only family she had left. The other half of the leash.
But maybe that was why it hurt. In their Reflections, they had understood each other. They’d stood side by side, stronger together than apart. Ready to reclaim their lives. They’d been equals, partners. Sisters.