“My parents both bore some dajian blood, from very far back,” Isoail said. “But my mother was free. She claimed me, even after my father tried to call me some terrible Dhai name, Navarra or Nava.” She shrugged. “So I am free. It’s very easy to pass, especially here. All they see is a jista.”

“So it wasn’t your face that steered you away from children.”

“No,” Isoail said. “I had a child once. After a difficult pregnancy. The midwives told me to flush it, but I was stubborn. Then the last few months, it started to kill me. Poisoned my blood. So they cut me open.” She made a cutting motion across her belly. “Pulled out a deformed mass of twisted limbs. That might have been all right, but they botched the surgery. I didn’t realize how badly until I tried to conceive again. No luck.”

“Midwives often have very sound advice,” Zezili said. “Surgeons’ skill is less.”

“I was young,” Isoail said. “I thought I knew better. If I’d chosen to end it before it went bad, perhaps I’d have had other children. But I did not. So here we are.”

“Yet you have strange little dajian girls calling you mother,” Zezili said.

“I’m not her mother,” Isoail said softly. “Most likely she mistook me for someone else.”

Zezili picked up her brandy and drank too much of it. It warmed her stomach and softened her doubts. “When girls like this pass through these… tears in the lake… Could people here travel through them? Go after them?”

“If they were in the same area, yes. Ah, yes. You’re thinking of your husband.”

“He meant to meet me here.”

“Many things can happen to a man on the road.”

“My husband is loyal. He meant to meet me here. If he’s not here, it’s possible he’s on the other side, isn’t it?”

“Many things are possible. But why would you think that?”

“He… there was an incident at our house. I thought it meant nothing at the time. Thought it was some trick. But maybe, with all these people showing these gifts now… maybe he opened a door by accident.”

“Ah,” Isoail said. “That is… something.”

“Have you ever tried to go to the other side, through one of these doors?”

“I’m more than a double channeler,” Isoail said. “I thought for a good long time that’s all I was, until I saw the disturbances here. I could see them – the red breath of Oma. I shouldn’t have been able to.”

“Triple? Ha. End times, indeed. I can fairly feel the fiery eye of Rhea.”

“Who can say what will be rare in a year’s time? Maybe all jistas will be able to call on Oma in addition to their ascendant star. We don’t know. Oma hasn’t risen in two thousand years. Everything is strange now.”