“Well, you and I are change and hidden strength. Abelzowadyo.” Awa slowed down. The seventh-region rhythm eluded her. The sky was smoke gray, no green auroras to guide her. They soared over putrid trees and black riverbeds. Rubble spilled down the hills and into the sea. Behemoths flailed in sand and warhorses rotted on the hoof. A desiccated hive sat among mounds of gossamer bee wings. Awa almost lost the speed of thought. She landed on a barren cliff. On a nearby ledge, spirit slaves with Hezram’s face shuffled over one another getting nowhere, too depleted to be a threat. Ember hearts burned out, and demons who had once been people crumbled into poison dust. No good story to make of this. Awa choked on void-smoke.

“Yari said it was beautiful.” Azizi looked ready to throw up. “What’s happened?”

“Void-spells,” Awa said. “Lost futures, like Hezram’s Nightmare Gates.”

The mountain quaked underneath them and a storm gathered. Azizi glanced around, panicked. “What spells do you offer?”

“I offer a moment or two.” Faint music made Awa smile. “Do you hear? Someone plays a shield-spell.” She pulled Azizi under her Mama Zamba cloak and followed the music trail through the storm to the boat people. They floated on turquoise water under cloudless skies. Colorful sailboats resembled giant birds or lizards with wings. A few jackal-boats had waterwheel butts. Behemoths leapt from the waves adding their voices to the drumming and singing. “Here is Yari’s Jumbajabbaland.” Awa flew low over the decks. Lahesh performers cavorted in carnival attire. People, who might have been Empire citizens, northlanders, or barbarians, waved.

Azizi waved to them. “Who are they?”

“Lahesh, and I don’t know. Their friends who escaped a perilous everyday?” High in the sails of a blackbird boat, lovers with spiderweb hair and cloud-silk robes folded into each other and swayed in the rigging. Treehouse refugees! Awa felt a thrill and then anger. “They’re hunted in Jumbajabbaland, by Hezram’s fiends and other spirit slaves. Nowhere to run and live free.”

“They look free.”

“In hiding? Under siege?” The music swept away void tendrils clinging to Awa’s cloak.

“The voices and talking drums clear the air,” Azizi whispered, fascinated, amazed.

“We are the weather.” Awa quoted The Songs for Living and Dying a second time. She was turning into the boring Elder she swore she’d never be.

“Our thoughts make the world.” Azizi spoke the next line and seemed lighter. He tapped his chest. “I can’t catch their rhythm. Do you know these songs?”