“This happens all the time anyway,” Fern said, her voice quiet but severe. She flicked her eyes down at her suffering partner. “Perhaps not to those of you who live in castles on Calla. But I have seen it all before. I have not before—not in a thousand falls of sailing the sea—seen a giant talking raven who can transform himself into a man and hold forth with authority on the Before Times. To be called into such doings is a gift that has never been given to me before and will not come again. I have seen wonders already that no one to my knowledge—and I have lived long and journeyed far—has ever seen or spoken of. Young as you are and living on a veiled island where magical beings are apparently of little note, you do not understand this. You must think,” Fern said, rising to her feet, “of the arrow that Swab took for us, and how, having taken it, and understanding its barbed nature, she agreed that it was better to shove it all the way through than to reverse its direction. That is where we are all poised now in respect of this Quest. To surrender is to pull out the arrow backward: no better and probably worse than to push through.”

Fern bent close, cocking her ear toward the lips of Swab, and listened to words that no one else could hear. After some time she nodded her head, then turned her face to Swab, brushed back her hair, and kissed her. Fern then got up on one knee and pulled Swab’s good arm up across her shoulders. With a great effort she stood up. As Swab felt herself being lifted, her legs stirred and she got her feet on the ground, taking some small portion of her weight. On the side that had been struck by the arrow, the entirety of the shoulder and the arm attached to it had dissolved into chaos, and most of that no longer clung to her body, nor did it make any pretense of hewing to the form of a normal soul, but was dispersing like smoke.