Sentinel bees clustered around Awa’s mouth. She was afraid they might sting her. Was she the danger? They spit honey and venom on her tongue, a bittersweet concoction. Night fell like a dark curtain. A cold scar moon hung overhead, a desperate lantern in deep dark. Sentinels wagged their butts and buzzed away from the giant hive. Awa flew among a thousand thousand bees toward Smokeland’s border, where flowers dissolved and cathedral trees crumbled into poison sand.

The slash of moon dripped blood. Confused bees flew into the ground. They ate their own wings and stung rocks. Faceted eyes clouded over and sparking hearts burned out. A thousand thousand wings flew ahead of Awa and turned to smoke. She choked. Confronted with the famed horror of the border realm, Awa tried to slow down, tried to turn back for bee paradise, but she no longer had the speed of thought. Her mind was sluggish terror and then blank as void-smoke enveloped her. A taste of the sentinels lingered in her mouth. A stinger caught in a tooth pricked her tongue. Venom flowed to her heart and she swooned.

Father and other good Empire citizens claimed there was no realm of imagination, no true land of visions and spirits. Smokeland was sleepwalking sickness, drunken dreams, or Green Elder nonsense. That explained tattoos, burnt hair, and the treasures folks brought back from their adventures. Smoke-walkers knowing what they shouldn’t or couldn’t was another matter. Father couldn’t explain that away. He just insisted Mother’s exotic herbs and concoctions were family secrets.

Southern thief-lords sold or burned any woman who knew too much. Northern savages sliced smoke-walkers from navel to chin to expel demons. Priests and witchdoctors poisoned their breath bodies and stole spirit-blood to power gate-spells or do other conjure. This was a living death. Good Empire citizens locked up smoke-walkers to train for priesthood if they were men or drain as transgressors if they were women. And a veson—what Anawanama northlanders called someone who was neither man nor woman—had to declare for one or another horrible fate: living as a man or dying as a woman. So …

Awa returned from her first Smokeland trip to Mother’s garden and let the Smokeland-knowledge taste sweet on her tongue then swallowed it quickly unspoken. That made her muscles lumpy and her joints wobbly. She snorted wisps of border-void and felt dizzy.

Father was still yelling at Mother about an unruly daughter who’d end up like witch-woman Kyrie: wandering a cold mountain, bloody and bitter, childless and without love. Mother distracted him with a sack of jewels and coins while Awa struggled back to her everyday self.