“Not just that.” Bal shook her head. “Thanks for bringing me here, for—”

“Smokeland’s no trash heap. Nobody throws things away. Smoke-walkers take what they find back to the everyday and leave wonders for others to share.” Rubble floated in the scummy bay. “Something happened to the boat people.” Something bad.

“Ask them when you come back.” Bal held up a gray marble eye and a slim golden wheel. Grinning, she put these treasures in a medicine bag made from Aido cloth that disappeared in the shadows. “I’m sure we could conjure iron horses in the everyday.”

Awa marveled at the possibility. “Perhaps, but— Whayoa!”

A mob of empty-eyed spirit slaves tumbled out of a cave below them. They had translucent lungs and faint ember hearts. A rotten fruit smell gusted from cavernous mouths full of granite teeth. Seaweed decayed in their hair. Who had these smoke-walkers been before?

“Fatazz!” Bal drew her sword. “Yari said to avoid ember hearts.” The spirit slaves jerked toward the sound of Bal’s voice. She shook Awa. “Fly us away from here.”

Awa gazed into empty eyes. Her mind was smoke, her feet heavy weights. Flight was impossible. She’d lost the speed of thought. The spirit slaves climbed up through brush, slow but steady.

“Let’s go.” Bal tugged Awa’s arm.

“Maybe they are the missing boat people.” Awa tumbled to her knees. Jagged shells pierced her skin and blood trickled into the sand.

The spirit slaves scrambled faster right toward them.

Using a chorus of voices, Bal sang harmony with herself. She tapped her feet and beat the hilt of her sword on volcanic rocks, creating dense polyrhythms that echoed around the bay. Thunderous reverberations assaulted the spirit slaves. Going every direction at once, they got tangled up in each other on a narrow ledge. Several fell down the cliffs into the bay.

Bal wrenched Awa back to standing and danced her away from the edge, a favorite routine from the everyday. Blocking Awa’s field of vision, she hissed softly in her ears. “We must leave this region.” Her breath was hot and her volcano heart pumped too fast. “You promised Yari. We must warn vie.”

That jolted Awa’s mind clear. “Spirit slaves are usually so much slower.”

“They have a hungry look.”

“Yes.” Awa whisked Bal through the remaining regions of her heart, pausing only for brief glimpses. Swamps, grasslands, and deserts blurred together. They encountered few smoke-walkers and had to avoid spirit slaves in each region.

“Are there always so many with ember hearts?” Bal asked.

“Usually just one or two.” They stood in Awa’s home region under the giant beehive in the elder cathedral tree. Awa spied no spirit slaves nearby and sighed. Calm sentinel bees crawled across her shoulder. One got tangled in her hair and buzzed. “Never a spirit-slave horde before.”