As the sun set, she whispered her hopes to Fannie, then limped unnoticed through twilight gloom to the mango grove for lookout duty. Her horses would wander back to the corrals on their own. Fannie would nose the latch shut. Awa scrambled into a squat tree, barging through waxy leaves and pendulous green fruit. One arm was useless for climbing, the other worn out, and she almost fell. Flailing, she squished a banana rotting in the crotch of the tree. Pulp spurted into her nose and eyes. With no time for an antidote, she was flying toward Smokeland for the first time since barbarians brought her to Holy City forever ago.

The border-void was endless, longer and denser than she remembered. Even holding to fear was hard. Finally, the cathedral tree forests of her first trip appeared. Smoke-walkers, with dull hair and empty eyes, stumbled about, bashing into each other. Their breath smelled of rotten eggs; their hearts were feeble embers, barely beating. They left a trail of rot and ruin in their wake. Awa almost choked. Her home region was crawling with spirit slaves in the thrall of a witchdoctor or priest.

Cathedral trees yanked up roots and raced away from creeping rot. Awa followed them, sliding into another region, then another and another. Devastation greeted her. Ashes clogged every wind, and the seas were putrid swamps, choked with rubble. Worst of all, spirit slaves overran the six regions of her heartbeat. Awa returned to her home territory and huddled behind a giant elder tree that sheltered a beehive the size of an elephant. Her first Smokeland hive, it buzzed with life. Tiny bee hearts made a cloud of sparks around Awa’s face. The banana smell of alarm almost suffocated her.

“What can I do but run back to the everyday,” Awa told the bees. “No escape there.”

Spirit slaves grabbed any sentinel who flew too close and sucked down the tiny spark. Void-smoke drifted from vacant eyes as the fiends fed feverishly. Awa swallowed a shriek. This was how the border-void increased! Yari never told her that. She called the bees close. Spirit slaves shuffled toward her, nightmarishly slow, yet tracking the bees somehow. She tried to squash panic. Too much fear or fascination and she’d lose the speed of thought. Bal was not there to save her, but—

A conjure woman with purple dawn eyes and sandy skin tinged green, marched through Awa like a cold shiver, a strange sensation even for Smokeland. The woman’s silver hair was streaked with red mica. Intricate tattoos snaked around her eyes. She smelled of buttery raintree blossoms. Her heartbeat was silver lightning bolts. Awa trusted that over embers. “Greetings…” Awa’s tongue knotted up on words she’d rehearsed for Mother.