RAE. ALBA.

“Like this. This is your name; this is mine.”

Drip.

Rae, leaning, ran her fingers over the marks. Alba said the names of the letters as she traced them.

“Arre. Aeee. Eeee,” Rae repeated softly.

“Tell me one of your father’s songs,” Alba said. “I’ll write it for you.”

Drip.

Slowly, Rae recited the words. Alba scraped them onto the bowl, their little insect legs skittering first over the underside, then the interior:

All the water now is still for you

And all the windy murmuring has ceased,

Though all the fields and trees are bursting,

And all the wood in leaf.

Drip.

When Rae grew silent, Alba handed her the bowl. Rae held it gingerly, as though even her breath might brush the marks away.

“Mop once said he did not know if words held enough magic in them to make things real… but these words—these written words—do, don’t they?” Her chin quivered as she spoke. “Even if language never returns to him, these are his words—always. Always and always. They’ll carry Mop forward, let him keep speaking… no matter what happens to him… or Ness. Or me.”

Alba, reaching to take her hand, saw the hillside grow gray again. Was it even a hillside? Perhaps she was wrong. Now that Rae had stopped singing, it seemed more a hole in the earth.

Drip.

“I felt that, too,” Alba said. In the shadows, Rae’s fingers were cold in her hand. She squeezed them, trying to warm them. “To me, letters, words—when I was learning to write, when I marked them on parchment, they seemed… almost…” She hesitated, thinking of Maurus guiding her markings in the flickering lantern light. “They seemed almost alive. Like creatures. Insects scurrying out to others I might never know or see. When I was alone, or mostly alone, it was… comforting to think my words might find others.”

Drip.

Rae was silent for a long moment. “Alba,” she said quietly at last. “They do not feed the wolf.”

Alba looked at the wolf. Still lying beside Rae, he seemed suddenly bony and desperate, all the luster gone out of his coat. Rae, too, seemed suddenly much too thin, her hair matted, her skin dull. Alba said aloud the truth she had known but did not want to admit. “They mean for him to eat you.”

“I know,” Rae whispered. She placed her hand between the wolf’s ears, and he leaned into her palm. “I’m not sure whether I… whether… he…” She shook her head. She could not bring herself to say it. “We might not go home,” she said instead. She turned to Alba, her face drawn, pleading. “Will you write about us? Will you write about me, and the brother I never knew, and the wolf, and Mop and Ness?”

Drip.

“I have,” Alba said. “I have! Whole parchments of my vision of you being abandoned, of the king trying to end you. But I will write more.”

“I am not air,” Rae said. Though her voice was unsteady, Alba could hear how certain she was of this truth. “Air… airmonger, maybe… like my father. But not air. Not to the king. To his realm. I wouldn’t want it—even if it were mine to take. How could I? I know about the land, about plants for medicine and food; I know about animals—sheep and those in the wilderness.… I think this must be different than what a king does. Not ruling. Tending, maybe. Tending to the land, caring for its creatures… as my parents do.” She paused, then added ardently, “The wolf is more my brother than the king.”