Tears pricked his eyes, and he wanted to give up. This was just one more difficult thing thrown at him. He felt like he might never make it in his condition. And he was so tired of fighting. Always, always fighting against the elements. Fighting for food. Fighting for shelter. Fighting dragons and fighting sleep and fighting images in his mind, just to have one good, decent thing in his life. And now here he was, on the wrong side of a river, freezing and weak and not sure if he could fight the current.

The image of the river and the branch came back to him. That scene had happened in real life. To him. Had it been a gift from his ancestors? It made him feel encouraged, though only slightly. Maybe he really was meant to be alive.

He hugged himself, then slapped his arms and chest, trying to garner some warmth but only making his skin sting. Bolstered, he let out an aggravated sigh and sloshed into the water. He used his anger at the disparity in life to propel him forward, slogging across the river one hard step at a time. In the middle he had to swim. The current swept his feet from under him, and he swirled once and went down. But then his feet found the bottom again, and he bobbed back up and pressed onward. Finally he made it out the other side.

He wanted to shout in frustration, but he couldn’t. He wanted to scream at the sky, at the ground. At the river. At the distance he’d have to walk and the flights of stairs he’d have to climb and at everything else that stood in his way of his being dry and comfortable. At the castle and the king and Princess Shanti. At the Revinir for making his already miserable life even worse than he’d ever thought possible. At the red dragon for not choosing a different place to stop and fish.

And at Thisbe for abandoning him. “How could you do that?” he cried, clutching his sodden shirt and plodding onward, his expression filled with agony. She’d left him for her own safety. And she hadn’t come back. Dev remembered what the Revinir had said. Not one person in this world cares about you.

Dev pressed forward between bushes and trees, looking through tears and a blinding sunrise for anything that seemed familiar, knowing this was the right direction. Looking for onion bulbs against the sky. And finally, through the brush, he saw them.

Somehow he made it there. Barefoot, for apparently he’d lost his ragged shoes in the river. He entered the center tower and scared off the foxes. Then he crawled up the spiral staircase, six flights to the top. He threw himself onto the floor and slid over to the fireplace on torn, bloody hands and knees. Every movement made him cry out in pain. He grunted as he tossed a log into the fireplace, clutched his side as he took a deep breath, and blew fire at the kindling until it caught and he collapsed. After a moment he got back up, took off his wet clothes, ripped the fabric off one of the rotting sofas, and wrapped himself in it. He lay down by the fire and stayed there for hours. Maybe days, he wasn’t sure.