Pathka’s voice sputtered and his eye cones rolled. He was out cold.
Tess’s mind raced: he needed care. She’d take him back to the tents, bind his wounds, explain him to Boss Gen somehow. The odds of the road crew accepting Pathka’s presence were dismally small, though, and she couldn’t even vouch for Gen with certainty.
And frankly, she wasn’t sure he’d make it.
Anathuthia could heal him right now, if Tess could get the ritual to work aboveground. She didn’t know if it was possible, only that she had to try.
She gently took the scales from Pathka’s unresisting arms. The wounds in his side still oozed sluggishly. Tess caught the trickle as best she could, shared drops between the bowls, and hoped it was enough.
Hoped she was enough. Pathka had been a more active participant last time.
She squatted in the wheat, elbows on her knees, holding the two bowls like offerings.
Nothing glowed.
Could he be too deeply unconscious to dream? Tess didn’t dare sprinkle the blood around him if it wasn’t glowing.
She’d never been good at prayer, and Anathuthia was surely more monster than goddess, and yet. She could think of nothing else to try.
“Anathuthia,” she said to the empty air, “I am nest to Pathka, insofar as a human can be. Nest and not-nest. I call upon you, since Pathka cannot.”
There was no sound but the thunking and flapping of the mill.
Nothing was happening. She didn’t know what to do. Last time Pathka had said to listen to herself, but that was surely useless. She wasn’t a quigutl. She didn’t have the kind of connection that—
A terrible idea struck Tess. She blinked, as if the thought were dust in her eye and her vision might clear, but it was still there.
Pathka wasn’t conscious enough to dream, let alone vouch to Anathuthia that Tess was his nest. The only way she could think of to show the serpent she was serious involved ingesting poison.
Tess swirled the blood, took a deep breath, and put the scale-bowl to her lips.
She took a single drop into her mouth and was overwhelmed by astringent bitterness, like earwax and green persimmons. It numbed her tongue and seized her throat so she couldn’t swallow. Her whole being seemed to shrivel and pucker, except for her stomach, which lurched violently. Tears streamed down her cheeks; she couldn’t do this, she’d failed.
She retched into the wheat. A thin stream of drool hung from her lips.
It began to glow.
“Never,” she whispered, and the wind whispered back through the wheat, as if in answer.
She took another tiny dram—less terrible because her mouth was already numb—and she spit it out messily, all over Pathka. The droplets glowed like fireflies, and then the blood he’d spilled crawling through the wheat began to glow as well, like the long blue tail of a comet.
“Anathuthia, I call you,” Tess cried hoarsely, feeling it. “Most Alone, who is not alone. Singular-utl. Pathka needs you. Find him and soothe him and let him come home.”
The wind picked up; the wheat rolled in waves like the ocean. Tess was too logical to believe it was an acknowledgment, and yet…
Pathka’s limbs twitched as he finally began to dream; his wounds began to close.
Tess crawled a little ways and vomited in the wheat. Then she lay beside him and slept.
* * *
Her mouth still tasted terrible when she awoke, but she seemed to have suffered no other ill effects. She was going to have to take this up with Seraphina, if she ever saw her again.
On the other side of the ridge, muffled shouts told her the crew had begun to stir.
Tess looked down at Pathka, who was still sleeping like the dead. It was time for their roads to be reunited, there was no question about that, but first she had some loose ends to tie up. Her pack was back at camp, and she didn’t like leaving with no explanation. She owed Gen that, at least.
If she went quickly, Pathka would never know she’d been gone. She dashed back across the fields toward camp, steeling herself to say goodbye.
Tess retrieved her pack from an empty tent; Mico, Felix, and Aster must’ve been at breakfast already. She had absentmindedly carried the scale-bowls back with her, so she shoved those inside her bag, along with her savings, her dirty laundry, and the rest of her gear. She crossed camp to the mess tent and entered, scanning the crowded trestle tables for Boss Gen.
“Where’d you sneak off to, ’Puco?” called Felix.
Mico hollered after: “Sleeping with the boss again?” Laughter went up all around.
Tess thumbed her nose at them. A gust of wind shook the tarps of the dining tent, and then an eerie, inhuman scream and a very human shout of alarm sounded from the road.
Everyone leaped to their feet and rushed out to see what had happened.
One of the cart horses was screaming, eyes reeling white, bucking against the traces. Its drovers tried to calm it as it reared, overturning its wagon and scattering gravel everywhere.
The drovers cursed, scrambling to right the cart again.
The crew wouldn’t be able to move on until the road was cleared. They ran for shovels while Boss Gen barked orders.
This was not the time to approach her about quitting.
Someone pressed a shovel into Tess’s hands, and then she was rushing to the roadward side of the gravel pile, ready to do her job one last time. The wind grew wilder and whipped her short hair around.
She’d reached the far side of the gravel when a flood of animals surged across the road in front of her: field mice, frogs, rats, chipmunks, badgers, snakes, crickets, a flock of starlings, and finally a small battalion of deer surged out of the wheat. The animals swarmed east, reaping a swath through the fields on both sides of the road. The crew gaped in dumbfoundment. It was like a story or a dream, these animals united in direction and purpose.
The mill was east, Tess suddenly realized. Were they running toward Pathka, or away from something else?
That was when the earth began to shake.
The tremor snatched Tess’s feet from under her, and she belly-flopped hard on the paving stones. Men fell like timber behind her, crawled on elbows and knees, cried out in terror. Tess’s brains seemed to slosh in her head; she clung to the stones, feeling upside down, as if someone had grabbed the world like a big ball and was trying to shake the ants off it. She hung on with everything she had.
The shouts around her took on a new meaning. She heard her name—“Tes’puco!”—over and over. She raised her cheek from the stones and saw her comrades wildly waving from the gravel pile. Tess blinked uncomprehendingly. Felix shouted through cupped hands, and she could discern his shrill words through the cacophony: “Stupid-head! Get your stupid body over—”
She didn’t hear the rest. A thunderous rumble, like the earth’s intestinal tract, jerked her up and down and side to side, and then the solid ground disappeared from under her, stone and earth turned into empty space. A deafening roar, darkness and dust; she couldn’t orient herself in space. She flopped like a rag doll, bouncing around, like falling down stairs, sliding, scraping.
She hit her head and saw stars. When she finally realized she’d stopped moving, and the dust began to clear, she saw the hole, maybe fifteen feet above her. She was on top of a shifting pile of loose stone, not underneath it. That was lucky.
Her hearing slowly cleared. She heard Nicolas enjoining others to avoid the edge: “—it’s not that you might fall in and break your necks—as if I cared!—but you might send more rocks precipitating down to crush Tes’puco.”
Tess felt like one big bruise. Her eyes were crusty with dust. Her limbs seemed intact and uncrushed, but something had happened to her left side. Maybe a cracked rib. It gripped her lung like a vise and sent a shock of agony up her side when she tried to breathe.
“ ’Puco!” It was Felix screaming. “Answer me, damn you! If you’re alive, answer!”
She couldn’t get enough breath to scream. “I’m here,” she wheezed. “Not dead.” It struck her as funny, even though it manifestly wasn’t. Still not dead, in spite of everything.
They couldn’t hear her; they kept shouting. A light rain of gravel drummed on her head; she dragged herself out of range, down the side of the mound, deeper into darkness. They’d never see her unless they came to the edge and shone a light.
Gen’s brassy voice sounded over everyone else’s. “No closer, you idiots. Have we already forgotten Daniele’s bad example? Will you follow each other over the edge, one by one, like lemmings? We will find her, but we’ll do it systematically.”
There was absolute silence for a heartbeat, and then someone said, “Her?”
Tess wanted to laugh at Gen’s misstep under pressure, but the laugh turned into a cough, which was agony. Tears rushed down her cheeks, mixing with the dirt to form muddy streaks.
“Hush!” cried Arnando’s echoing basso. “I hear something.”
Could they hear her blubbering? Tess’s heart leaped, but then she realized she wasn’t the loudest thing down here. Something was scraping, like rocks down a rough incline.
The ground shook again. Chunks of ceiling fell around her; she skittered down the incline as fast as her ribs allowed, into a deeper part of the cave where the floor was solid and the ceiling wasn’t shedding chunks of rock. The light from the distant hole barely illuminated the cavern around her, but her eyes were growing used to dimness.
Something moved. She couldn’t understand what she was seeing: one wall of the chamber shifted—and was it glowing, or was that her imagination? It was more regularly shingled than any pile of detritus should be.
Her breath caught as the “wall” slid past, tapered to a dull point, and then disappeared around a curve in the tunnel, leaving nothing but darkness behind.
Anathuthia. That had been the mere tip of her tail.
Above Tess, voices became audible again, though it was harder at this distance to distinguish words. She caught snatches of a debate on whether to risk sending someone down on a rope, or whether they should wait to be sure the aftershocks were over.
Tess felt like she’d died indeed, and was hearing all this from a terrific distance, dispassionately detached. A curious pity stirred her heart. They were going to miss her.
Her thnik chirped. Tess scrabbled for it and switched it on. “Pathka?” she rasped breathlessly. Heaven’s dustbin, it hurt to talk.
“I saw you fall in,” said Pathka tinnily. “I’ll be right there.”
He was up and about. That was good news, at least. Tess inventoried her pack while she waited. She’d acquired flint and steel while on the work crew, and a small lantern. The lantern was slippery with oil, but she managed to light it without catching herself on fire. She muscled herself to standing, clutching her throbbing side, and looked ahead, after the serpent. The tunnel seemed to extend forever.
Shouts rang, and then a shape hurtled down the hole and rolled down the pile of broken rocks. It was Pathka, none the worse for his tumble. He frolicked around her, making grotesque shadows in the lamplight.
“The crew is trying to make a harness Felix can’t fall out of,” Pathka reported, “but I suspect he has untapped talents. They’re going to waste a lot of time looking for you, you know.”
Tess looked up regretfully but had no illusions about wasted time. Boss Gen would give them a day to search, and then they’d be back on track, sending word to the engineers that there was another bridge to be built, saying farewell to her imagined corpse if not her memory.
They still talked about Daniele; they’d be discussing her eccentricities for a long time.
The last thing she heard before staggering up the passage after Pathka was Felix shouting into the chasm: “Hang on, friend, whoever you are! We’re going to find you. Don’t be frightened.” His voice broke a little. “I hope you’ve never been frightened of us.”
“Never,” Tess whispered, her heart unexpectedly full.
Then she turned and followed Pathka along another road.
They followed the cavern around the bend and down a steep grade, toward the center of the earth. Small side passages branched off at irregular intervals, and Tess noticed Pathka pausing to sniff these, even though the serpent could never have squeezed into them.
“Is Kikiu down here?” asked Tess, guessing what he was sniffing for.
“Not anymore,” said Pathka, although he took one last, lingering sniff. “I hope you see that I tried to reach out, Teth. I made a good-faith effort and was nearly killed for it.”
Tess’s cracked rib made it hurt to talk, so she merely nodded.
“Kikiu is broken,” Pathka pronounced as he reached the ceiling above Tess’s head. “Ko is becoming more unnatural, deliberately. You saw those metal teeth. Now ko has made iron horns. If ko chooses to be monstrous, I don’t see what else I can do. I tried.”
Tess found it hard to catch her breath, as if she were tightly corseted, but she couldn’t let that pass without comment: “Not at…the right time, Pathka—not back when…she needed you.”
Pathka’s tail gave a sharp, serpentine twitch of rebuke; he flounced ahead, across the ceiling, without another word.
* * *
Tess’s lantern ran out of oil after another hour, and then they traveled by the wavering light of Pathka’s tongue. Tess’s ribs throbbed and constricted her air; she required frequent rest. Pathka waited with her, though every angle of his spines betrayed irritation and impatience. He could have navigated the caverns without any light.
Two hours later they found more scales, similar to the ones in her pack but many times larger. Big enough to use for a sledge in wintertime. Tess, who’d grown too sore and exhausted to go on, curled up and slept in one. Pathka kept watch.
When she awoke, however, Pathka wasn’t there.
She hoped he’d simply decided to scout ahead. Surely he’d be back. She sat up carefully in the pitch darkness and called softly, “Pathka?” Her voice echoed, an acoustical map she couldn’t interpret. She whistled, listening to the vastness, and experienced an unexpected frisson, a goose-bumpy thrill.
Not fear. Excitement.
She felt for the smooth edge of the scale she’d been sleeping in, moving calmly, trying to orient herself. She sat with her legs dangling off, breathing (painfully) and reasoning. She didn’t have to worry about hitting her head on the arching ceiling. Assuming she hadn’t rotated in her sleep—and in fact, she wasn’t prone to flopping about—she would have arrived from her right.
Forward, toward the serpent, must be to her left.
In her satchel she found raisins and her water skin, nearly empty—the limits of her survival. She sipped and nibbled, put everything back, and got to her feet. Walk or crawl? Her rib cage made the choice for her, objecting vehemently to any weight on her arms. She stood cautiously and began to walk like a dancer in a promenade, patting the ground with her toe before committing to each step.
Fear still hadn’t found her, but then this wasn’t so different from how she’d been living since she ran away from home. If she couldn’t see where she was going in this cave, well, she couldn’t see the end of the Road, either. In fact, this was part of the Road, she decided. The Serpent’s Road. The most useful virtues, for one who walked on, were flexibility and a willingness to improvise.
She’d just thought this—just decided she liked it—when the darkness ahead began to change. She paused and stared, her eyes ecstatically informing her that there was light ahead, the faintest glow. She could discern the shape of the passage. Maybe. Unless she was imagining it.
Another hundred yards along, it became unmistakable. Black was transitioning slowly to dark gray, like the moment bef
ore sunrise when the sky begins thinking about day, when the outlines of trees become visible, black upon somewhat-less-black. Tess could make out the silhouette of her hand. She quickened her pace. Anathuthia had glowed; she hadn’t imagined it. Pathka must have reached her, which was why he wasn’t back yet.
The ground quaked. Tess dropped and braced herself against a boulder. Sand rained into her hair, and there was a sound so low she didn’t hear it so much as feel it in her chest. Her heart and lungs vibrated in concert. Her ribs, a delicate barometer of agony, left her gasping, her forehead beaded with sweat.
When the earth stilled, she walked clutching her side, breathing raggedly. Anathuthia must be ahead. Surely nothing else could sound like that, not even the earth itself.
The passage wound left and right, the eerie glow strengthening with each turn. Light prefers straight lines, so only half-light made it around the curves, the memory of illumination, a daydream of daytime. The tunnel finally opened into a chamber so vast she couldn’t see the far side. In fact, she couldn’t see much besides the light.
The floor was a great crater, and at the center a sphere glowed coolly blue, a now familiar color. Nothing gave a sense of scale; the ball might have been as big as a house.
No serpent. She hesitated at the lip of the bowl, then took a tentative step.
“Teth!” cried a stone at her feet. She’d almost trodden upon Pathka, who’d been perfectly still but was now dancing around her, his earlier irritation apparently dispelled.
“This is Anathuthia’s nest!” he cried. “That’s her egg. Isn’t it astonishing?”
It was. Tess tried to say so, but Pathka was bounding so comically that she had to put all her effort toward not laughing. Laughing was excruciating. She lowered herself gingerly and Pathka rubbed against her. “She laid it before my eyes. This must be her ancient birthplace.”
“Where is she now?” Tess whispered, glancing around. Was it dangerous to invade a serpent’s nest? Maternal instinct could make even placid creatures fierce.