El runs. The agonized cries of the dying stab like claws trying to get their hooks into her. She’s done this to them. She’s killed them. But it is only the horses she regrets.

By the time El reaches her sister, Ao has scrambled up the embankment. From the road, she beckons to El. “Come on! We’ll follow it across the sea.”

El climbs the embankment but hesitates before setting foot on the roadbed. “It doesn’t sting you?”

“No. You don’t believe that story, do you?” Ao scoffs. “About the white-haired god building the road for the masters and so it stings anyone else? The masters didn’t build the road.”

“They didn’t?”

“Well, it doesn’t sting me.” Ao grabs El’s arm and pulls her onto the roadbed.

Bees sting through the bare soles of El’s feet, and she skips and hops and says, “Ouch, ouch, ouch. It stings me.”

Ao loves El. She does. But she has a mean streak that emerges at odd moments.

“I guess you’re a blasphemer after all! Come on. Let’s get out of sight before sentries or guardsmen come looking down the road.”

They run south. It isn’t so bad as long as El’s feet don’t press against the roadbed for long, but they won’t be able to keep up the pace forever. Desperation pushes them on into the night. The gravel-strewn shoreline recedes behind them. The road has night behind and night ahead and the White Sea to either side. They can’t go back, so they must go forward.

The screams fade. A horn shrieks. Eventually, even that sound is lost. All they hear are the slaps of their own feet as their running slows to a jog, and then to a walk, and finally Ao staggers to a halt and bends over and says, “I … have … to … rest.”

El hops from foot to foot. The White Sea does not touch the embankment itself, so she slides off the roadbed and sits on the stone revetment.

Ao sinks down beside her. “I’m thirsty,” she says, almost a whine.

They share a few swallows from one of the flasks. It’s cider, biting and alcoholic. There’s a loaf of bread at the top of one sack. They eat half of it.

“I have an idea to help your feet,” says Ao.

By moonlight, Ao uses the knife, fabric cut from El’s tunic, and a bit of leather cord to bind cloth around El’s feet, so the too-big boots will stay on. The touch of the roadbed still stings but El can handle this level of pain. It’s still better than what they’re running from.

“You’re so clever,” El says.

Ao shrugs, then leans close, suddenly serious and deadly solemn. “We can’t go back. Promise me, El. I’d rather die than go back.”

“I promise,” says El.