His parents’ blood was a crisp across his face. His own, still dripping from the cut, had dried over it.

Sometime during the night he had also soiled himself.

Crying, trying to shout but far too tired to do so, mumbling about his dead village and inviting curious stares from the waking population of Pavisse, Rafe entered the town to find his uncle.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

ALISHIA HAD NEVER heard a dead man sing. She had read accounts of many wonders: shades calling from the depths of a bottomless cave in the mountains of Kang Kang; holes in the ground, swallowing rock and soil and anyone foolish enough to venture too close; a woman stumbling into a cloud of mimics and breathing them in, watching in terrified wonder as they fluttered from her mouth in the shape of a golden butterfly. She had read of skull ravens feasting on living cattle, two rivers flowing in different directions in the same valley, and a place where ancient machines had once gone to die. Indeed, for a librarian she had imagined a very colorful life, and dreamed of much that was wrong in the land. But Alishia had always thought that imagination was better than experience, because it was so pure.

Still, she had never heard a dead man sing.

He stood in one of the aisles far, far back in the library, a place barely frequented, rich with the dust of ages. Some of the books there were so old that Alishia did not know of anyone who could read them. This man had been browsing beyond her sight for hours. His song echoed mournfully in the still air. His voice was low and weak—what more could be expected of a dead man?—but filled with emotion. Alishia did not recognize the language, though that was not unusual in Noreela’s capital city. But she sensed something of what the song was about nonetheless, and heard the undertones of longing, the cadences of sorrow hidden in the folds and twists of his throaty warbles.

When he had come to the desk hours before, Alishia stepped back in shock. He was the oldest man she had ever seen, certainly the most frail-looking, and she could not conceive how someone in such a state could still be alive. But alive he was, a breathing fossil, his organs barely contained within skin so thin it was almost translucent. He said a few words in a tongue Alishia had never heard before and then wandered off, shaking his head and mumbling quietly under his breath.

Ever since then the singing, and the echoing sound of pages being turned. Alishia knew he was in the farthest, oldest corner of the library because she had looked everywhere else for him, using the arranging of shelves as an excuse to wander the tall aisles, brushing aside cobwebs and lifting dust that had slowly spread to fill the air with a haze of dead skin.