CAST OUT: Chapter Eleven

When I woke, I was upside down.

The blood rushed to my head, making my face throb. But only parts of it. My cheek pressed into the weave of a net, which left numb squares across my skin. I tried to lift my head, but my weight twisted my neck and jammed my skull against my shoulder. I couldn't move, not even to free the pinched hair that pulled at my scalp. From the way I swayed when I attempted to wriggle, and the breeze that stirred against my skin, I guessed that Amaz had strung me from a tree.

All I could see was a patch of cracked earth below me and a beetle crawling on a single dead plant stem. It was speckled blue, except for its long black legs.

My vision blurred, all wet with tears. I closed my eyes and let them run down my forehead.

The air smelled faintly like smoke and somebody's dinner – something sweet, probably full of dried fruit. If that was the pilgrim's cookfire, I must be far from it. I should be hungry, but dangling upside just made me want to vomit. I could taste acid at the back of my throat, sour and sweet.

Had they done this to Thesil, too? Was this Amaz's way of killing us without touching us and risking palsy? My back and sides ached with scrapes and bruises, like someone had shoved my limp body around with sticks.

He'd probably burned the sticks, too. I just hoped he hadn't burned Sefi.

I tried to turn myself in the net. If I could find what it was tied to, get my hands through the weave and reach the knots, perhaps I stood a chance at freeing myself.

I could no more do it than fly.

How long I hung there, I do not know. I watched the shadow of the dead plant beneath me move and eventually fade as everything went dark. The beetle had left long ago. I envied it its freedom. I was so thirsty, and I needed to pee. I couldn't bear to do it, not now. Not upside down.

I couldn't, however, hold it forever.

#

If I slept, I did not know it. But eventually morning came, bringing a wash of color to the dirt beneath me. I'd lost feeling in much of my skin. My limbs tingled now and then. That was the only reason I knew I still had them.

I hung and prayed to the Unknowns. To Holy Efra, even if it was her fault I was here. I didn't want to die. I was so young, and I had so many paintings left to paint. I wanted to survive. I wanted to meet the grandmother who was deaf like me. I wanted to see my parents again. I couldn't die here. Not like this.

Below me, an ass's front hooves stepped into my view. I blinked. A woman's shoes followed. They were slippers, but hard-soled, and green embroidery swirled over them in no pattern I could discern.

I stared at the shoes. They didn't move. I forced my mouth open, scraping my chin against the weave of the net and said, "Hello?"

Nothing.

Frustration welled in me. Was she trying to speak with me? I couldn't see her face. Or was she just here to watch me die?

Something shook the net above me, sending me swaying in my prison. I gasped and said, "Please help me."

The net kept trembling. Something was happening. My heart rate picked up. Hope felt like an unfamiliar sensation after last night.

When the rope above me gave, I hit the ground hard, bruising my head and shoulder. But I was alive. I was free.

I tried to roll to my feet. My limbs revolted, tingling and burning like someone had set fire to me. I only managed to make it to my seat and sat blinking back tears as the blood came back to my extremities.

The woman standing over me held a handsaw. She withdrew from the rope as I watched, and one of her small hands settled on the shoulder of the ass standing next to her. It was a small donkey, the kind people used to carry loads, not ride. It stared down at me through thick black lashes. The woman did not look at me at all. She didn't have eyes.

This was enough to distract me from the pain in my limbs.

Her face was delicate, with a chin slightly too firm and a nose like a down-turned rose-thorn. Her eyelids were closed and sunken. Clearly nothing lay behind them.

Writing and sign wouldn't be an option here. I said, "Hello?"

Her head pointed away from me, towards the tree, but her mouth moved. "Hello."

I took a relieved breath. Her lips were not difficult to read. "Thank you for helping me." I glanced around, half-afraid Amaz would be lurking, ready to finish me off. But we were alone. I couldn't even see the camp.

"You are welcome," she said. "Can you not stand?"

I started. "My limbs are asleep. But how could you know?"

Her nose wrinkled. "Obviously, I can hear you move."

"I can't hear at all."

She paused. Some of the disdain left her face. "Then this may be awkward."

"I can read lips."

"Good. Your friend is strung up over there. Pull yourself onto my donkey, and we will go to free her."

I wanted to ask how she knew that, but it seemed rude. I crawled towards the hooves in front of me, hoping they wouldn't lift to kick in my face. But they stood steady as tree trunks, even as I hauled myself up them. The animal's hide was warm under my hands, covered with soft gray-tan fur that prickled against my palms. Stabbing pains struck my arms and legs as I dragged myself upright, but I managed to hang onto the animal in spite of it.

I inhaled its scent, musky animal and a hint of manure, and said, "What is its name?" Then I realized I couldn't see her face around the animal's shoulder. "Never mind. Let's go save Thesil."

The ass took a step forward. Haltingly, I managed to limp along beside it. The woman must have led us. Or perhaps it led her.

Either way, we made a slow passage across a few yards of desert until we reached another tree. I felt its cool shadow before I saw it dapple the donkey's hide. Thesil hung from its outstretched branches like a moth caught in a spider's web.

She was not moving.

My heart jumped. I started forward, forgetting my legs were still numb. I tripped on a rock and split my lip against the dirt.

I rolled onto my back. The blind woman frowned towards me.

"You fell," she said.

I didn't bother to respond. I pushed myself to my feet and limped towards Thesil.

I reached her this time. She hung like a bundle of herbs from a rafter, her long hair trailing down through the ropes of the net and brushing the hard ground. The breeze stirred it, hiding her face. Her arms were wrapped around her chest, her feet caught at the top of the net. She was jammed into less of a ball than I had been, but she was just as tangled.

I reached out tentative fingers and brushed her face.

Her skin was warm and supple. After a moment, the moist heat of her breath warmed my fingertips. She was still alive.

The blind woman and her donkey joined me at Thesil's side. The woman had a hand on the donkey's shoulder. Her other held the handsaw. She stopped when the donkey stopped, and put the hand that had touched the donkey out to brush the net. She followed it until she found Thesil's feet, then lifted the saw.

"I can do that," I offered, afraid she would miss and take off Thesil's toes.

"No," the woman said, and she swung the saw in slow circles until it met the rope. She drew it back and forth, fraying strands and sending tiny fragments of hemp into the air, where I breathed it in. The net below bounced and fell a bit with each broken strand.

"Catch her, please," the blind woman said, a moment before the last strand snapped.

I did, if cushioning Thesil's fall with my own body counted. I peeled the ropes off and checked again that she was breathing. Yes, air puffed out of both her lips and the tube in her throat. She was limp in my arms, heavier than her thin limbs looked.

I looked up at the blind woman. "What now?"

"She is well?"

"She's alive."

She nodded, unperturbed. "Then lift her onto my donkey."

I rose to my knees. "Are you giving it to us?"

"No. You need to escape. I will come with you."

I stared at her. "You will?"

"I want your eyes," she said.

"You need our eyes?" I echoed, and pushed down the uneasy feeling it gave me. She clearly didn't mean she intended to pluck them out.

She shook her head. "If you will not come with me, I will make do. But it would be easier."

She said nothing else, but I'd read enough to make a decision. Even if I couldn't see the rest of the pilgrims – and this woman was clearly a pilgrim – that didn't mean they weren't there. We needed to get out of here. I couldn't afford to wait until Thesil woke up.

"I can't lift Thesil alone," I said.

The blind woman stepped forward until her foot bumped my side. Then she crouched and seized Thesil's limp arm. Together, we laid my friend over the ass's back.

#

The woman led us away from the trees and the ruins of the nets. She kept her hand on the donkey's neck but walked with perfect confidence, as if it never occurred to her that a boulder or bush or tree could get in her way.

I watched her with concern at first, thinking perhaps I would have to stop her from intersecting something sharp and thorny. But after the first time I watched the ass side-step a boulder – and her go with it – I realized she was as adapted to life out here as any imperfecta. She'd told me the truth. She might want my eyes. She didn't need them.

"Where are we going?" I asked the woman.

"To the road. Defan knows where it is. We have traveled this way many times."

"Defan is the donkey?"

"Yes. I am Lira." Her lips shaped the name clearly. I was, again, glad for my parent's lip-reading lessons. Without them, how could we have communicated at all?

"I'm Zisha. This is Thesil."

She nodded, and we walked on.

Another dozen yards and we found the road. It wound into the distance, a dirt rut in the ground. We were farther north than where the troupe had left Thesil and me. I realized with a sudden sharp dread that I had no possessions except my clothes and Grandfather's amulet around my neck. My blankets, my painting things, even Sefi... Gone.

My eyes filled with tears. I let them stream down my face and drip from my chin, glad there was no one to watch me. Let my nose run and my hands shake and my teeth dig into my lip until I tasted copper blood. I'd had Sefi for years. She was the last living thing I had from home. She was gone.

I took a shuddering breath.

Something touched my shoulder. I jerked and lifted watery eyes. Lira had leaned across the ass towards me. Her hand rested against my shirt. "We will escape," she said. "You do not need to be afraid."

I sucked another breath in. "I'm not."

"Your tears suggest otherwise."

"You can't even see," I said.

"I can hear."

"I can't." I'd told her the same thing earlier. But this time it hurt.

She lowered her hand and took mine and led me north and crying on the road to the Starred City.

#

Thesil woke hours later, after the sun had slid towards its zenith. I might not have noticed, except she fell off the donkey.

I let go of Lira's hand and went to help Thesil up. She had landed softly, catching herself with her hands and feet. I didn't think the fall had injured her, but I hugged her anyway.

Her hair smelled like sweat and vanilla. Her lips moved against my collarbone, and I let her go and sat back so I could see her face.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"On the road," I said, aloud for Lira's benefit. "We're free. What do you remember?"

Thesil shuddered. "They hung me in a net. Like onions. I screamed for hours. None of them cared enough to come back."

"No," I said. I hadn't thought to scream.

Thesil's head turned. "Who is that?"

Had Lira spoken? I looked too, and found her standing at the donkey's side with her arms crossed under her bosom. Her mouth moved. "The two of you can talk later."

I hauled Thesil to her feet. I told her, "This is Lira. She's helped us escape. We had better move on."

Thesil's brows lifted. "Where are her eyes?"

"Later," I signed to her. Lira was right. This wasn't the time. I didn't want Amaz to discover we'd escaped. Not until we were too far away to find.

#

As the sun set, I asked, "Will we not stop for the night?" Did she even know it was night?

"When it begins to get cold," she said. Her lips were getting hard to read in the twilight. "When Defan can no longer see well enough, he will lead us to a camp. Do not worry."

Thesil looked incredulous. I believed her, though.

"Who trained him?" I asked her. "He seems so docile and wise."

She paused. "Amaz."

We walked on.

#

Eventually the ass did lead us off the road, into a copse of trees that looked like skeletons in the light of the rising moon. He led us right to a campsite with a well and everything. In spite of myself, I was impressed. I thought Thesil was, too.

I couldn't see Lira's face in any detail when she and the donkey stopped walking, but her mouth moved.

"What did she say?" I asked Thesil. But Thesil's words, too, were lost to the darkness.

We'd come with nothing, all our things lost, but Lira pulled from the donkey's saddlebags blankets that she distributed among us. I curled on the cold ground beside Thesil, who made not even a token protest, and shared my warmth with her. I was exhausted. I didn't even remember falling asleep.

#

My dreams were of home. I woke wet eyed.

The dawn had spread thin light across the horizon. Thesil had wrapped herself around me, her wiry limbs a warm cage I was reluctant to escape. Besides, I thought I would wake her if I did, and exhaustion weighed so heavy on her face. Surely both of us deserved a little sleep.

I must have drifted off again, because when I woke the sky was lighter, and Lira had built a fire that washed the bottom of an iron cook pot. The air smelled like fried roots, and Thesil was awake and watching her. But she hadn't relinquished her embrace around me.

I moved, and Thesil looked down at me. She let go all of a sudden, coming to her knees like a child's spring-toy. I felt the absence of her body as though I'd lost a blanket. "You're awake," she signed.

I drew the real blanket around me, leaving my hands free to reply. "I'm hungry."

"She's cooking something. Some pilgrim food." Thesil grimaced. "Do you trust her? Why did she help us?"

"I don't know. Let's go find out."

I folded the blankets, and we walked together to meet our savior.

She didn't turn towards us as we approached. The donkey stood at her side. She said, "The food is not yet done."

I sat by the fire. "What is it?"

"Stiffroot. A tuber. Nutritious, but poisonous uncooked. You understand I prefer to wait until I am sure it is done."

I looked into the pot at the starchy white chunks that fried there. They were browned on one side, but still pasty on the other. "How can you tell?"

"The smell changes. And when I break one open, it is hot in the center."

My face flushed. "Of course."

She went back to prodding at the pot.

Thesil prodded me, in the ribs.

"You must have questions," Lira said.

"Yes. I mean, we do. Why did you help us?"

"So that you would help me," the pilgrim woman said. Her smile was faint. "It sounds mercenary, doesn't it? But I find people are more willing to assist you when you have done them some favor."

"Weren't you afraid of death-palsy?"

"I have heard all the old stories. If you had it, you should already be crippled or dead."

I'd thought the same, but to see someone else say it was a comfort. "We're in your debt. What can we help you with?"

She turned her face towards us. I found myself staring at her sunken eyelids. "Keep me free from Amaz, and you will have paid every debt between us."

I said, "What has he done to you?"

"Nothing. He is a good man."

"But you're fleeing him."

"Because I know what he will do. His conscience will drive him to it." She frowned. "I cannot say he is wrong. But I will not abide by it. Perhaps that makes me as impure as the imperfectas have always been accused of being. I do not care. Not anymore."

"I don't understand."

Her scowl was disdainful. "Do you, too, think purity will cause me to grow eyes?"

"I meant, what will he do? In response to what?"

"Ah." Her expression smoothed. "I'm pregnant."

I stared at her flat belly, remembering Frisa and her child, and the pursuit Amaz had made of someone not even of his troupe. What would he do with a pilgrim? "I understand."

Thesil moved forward and asked, "Will your baby not have eyes, either?"

"Repeat that," Lira said. "Your voice is faint."

Thesil stiffened.

"My voice isn't wonderful, either," I said.

"No. But yours is loud and clear, even if your words are high pitched. I cannot hear her."

"She hurt her throat," I said. The situation started to seem ludicrous to me. "I can translate, if you like."

"Do," Lira said. From the corner of my eye, I saw Thesil fume.

"Will your baby not have eyes?" I repeated, feeling far more embarrassed by the question than Thesil apparently was.

Lira's expression went flat. "I don't care."

She said nothing more.

#

We kept on north. There was nothing else to do.