“Catherine, are you paying attention? Don’t grab there. Up a little… with your right hand… there.”

Often we rested on ledges no wider than my feet, leaning against the rock wall, and I was grateful for each respite because my forearms were beginning to burn and my fingers to get as dry as if they were being sandpapered. But we could not fully relax until we reached what I saw as a polished clamshell of a platform tucked along the curve of an ebony tower. After he smashed the rungs of what looked to me like a glass ladder that led up from below, we sat huddled against the wall and shared half of the water in the second flask. He dozed off, slumped against me. I could not sleep; my hands were smarting and my arms felt numb.

Were the courts still feasting? No movement troubled the bridges and spans and balconies whose complex patterns haunted me. I stared at the beautiful city and I hated it for lying to me. I hated myself for seeing it as beautiful, for believing it must be so because all the tales said it was.

People told so many stories whose fractured truths hid as much as they revealed. What we did not know could hurt us. What we chose to ignore could cause harm, maybe to ourselves and maybe to others.

Vai sighed in his sleep. I rested my head against his. We had come by twists and turns more than halfway to the outer wall. I thought surely I could let him rest for a few more breaths, but then I heard a scuffling and scratching below and above. The rasp of tongues tickled the cut on my arm, and my blood oozed. The cursed creatures were tracking us again.

Vai stiffened, going so tense that I thought he had woken, but he was still asleep. He murmured words in the village dialect he had spoken as a child. Most of the words slipped past, too thickly patois for me to understand. Then he spoke almost desperately. “Don’t touch me!”

He jolted awake and shoved me away so roughly that he almost pushed me off the edge.

I grabbed his arms, dragging myself to a stop with his weight. “Vai! It’s me. It’s Catherine.”

He sucked in air. For an instant I was frighteningly certain he did not recognize me. Then all the air went out of him. He pulled an arm out of my grasp and rubbed his eyes.

“What were you dreaming?”

He looked away, jaw clenched. “Nothing.”

I pressed a hand on his chest. He flinched.