Awa kissed her teeth. “Who’d willingly give up life to power a gate?”

“You call power from recent ancestors, trees, bushes, vines, even rocks.” He peered at her, holding something back. Something important, perhaps about the haints he recognized in Kyrie’s gates. Had witch-woman Kyrie used Djola’s children as sacrifice?

“So, teach me what Hezram does,” she pleaded.

“We don’t need more Nightmare Gates. Void-spells consume you and turn the world to poison.”

“Is that what turned you into a monster?”

“Yes. Xhalan Xhala. Take care. Arrogance is strength and weakness.”

“I’m not you.” Elders always thought Sprites would make the same mistakes they had. She’d make her own mistakes. “What of spirit slaves who powered fallen gates?”

“If they haven’t died in the everyday, they might come back to themselves.”

Awa bit her lip. “Snake venom stops the heart here and everywhere. Hard to come back from that.”

“You didn’t kill Yari.”

“I know.” A lie. She’d stabbed Yari’s heart, killing on purpose. It seemed the only choice. She poked her head out of Djola’s cape to blink away tears and spied a blue-and-brown marble just beyond a haze of clouds. “Is that the end?”

Djola poked his head out too. The marble vanished behind an hourglass of golden stars. “That looks like a talking drum.”

“More like a Lahesh timepiece.” Awa frowned. “We’ve seen these same stars twice.”

Djola squinted, closing his right eye completely. “Three times.”

“We’re going in circles.”

“The bridge is a spiral. This journey is a wonder. Someone should do a sky map.”

“Not me.” Awa was impatient with wonder. No matter how dazzling, nothing here would bring Yari and their enclave back.

“I’ll teach you how to weave Anawanama conjure armor. You’ll enjoy puzzling this.”

He was almost right. The outlaw spells were intricate and mysterious. Singing metal-and glass stories, memorizing formulas to trap gasses, and learning the rhythm of rocks left little energy for anger (at herself or anyone). He also explained how to fashion a Lahesh bag like the one he carried, a gift, he said, from his Mama Zamba friend. “A wild woman with dagger teeth.” He smiled. Awa had barely grasped the intricate weave of time and thread that offered limitless space when he started reciting life-and-death herb recipes and explaining the language of wind and stars. Endless, never repeating polyrhythms … Awa was dizzy. She ached for solid ground under her feet. “All my knowledge and spells are in that bag. Vandana’s bag, yours now.”

“Just until you heal.” Awa didn’t want his dead mountains and haints.

“Too heavy for you?” he teased in the middle of running for their lives. “I have talking books from Smokeland and Yari’s stories.”

“What good is the song without the singer?” Nobody conjured a choir of voices like Yari, except maybe Bal …