“Two weeks.” Lissie’s voice squeaked as she raised it to answer their question.
The Dust Women knew how long she’d been training. They knew she’d spent two weeks without shoes, with no sleep. Chasing the Wind was like learning to dream while awake.
They knew how little it meant. They asked her anyway.
Two weeks talking to goats. Brushing, milking, mucking and singing to goats. She liked the goats. She sometimes loved the Dust Woman. Dahla.
It isn’t long enough, and they know it. Not for them, and not for me.
Dahla’s face had been unreadable on the ride here. Dahla had gotten saddle sores because Lissie could not ride the Wind. Dahla said she hadn’t touched a horse in a hundred years. All because of Lissie.
She had hung off of Peach’s back and wondered what the other Dust Women would be like. Wondered how many of them there would be. The answer horrified her.
Three.
So few.
She didn’t recognize their destination as a building when they rode up to it. She could barely see it against the horizon. But from inside, she could see it was a dome. A dome made of woven swords. Remnants from the fallen Easterners after the War of Coalescence. She sat under those blades and looked up against starlight severed with steel.
She sat with three Dust Women and another apprentice. This conference held all the Dust Women extant.
Lissie kept missing words, blown away by the wind. It didn’t help that the oldest woman said nothing. She knew the others could hear her, because Dahla was translating. All Lissie could hear was the wind whistling through the swords.
Dahla said, “She asks ‘Would more time convince you to leave your body?’”
Lissie did not know what to say to that, except, “More time would let me learn your ways.” She had to pause and translate it into the language of the Wind.
“The time is now, and you must ———— as you will. There is no more time for you here.” Saminka did not slow for Lissie to catch every word. She would not speak Kaldenian, although she had earlier.
Lissie cursed her limited knowledge and the wind blowing away sound and spinning sand in her eyes. She cursed many things.
Dahla turned to the woman they called Mother. “No, I don’t think so. Why would she?”
She paused, listening to words Lissie could not hear.
Dahla replied, “No, what would you care?”
Lissie sat, waiting for an explanation. None came. She leaned back and felt the flat of the swords pressing into her. She jerked forward.
The young girl whispered to her, “I kept doing that too. For the first year.”
Lissie remembered the last time she had tried to ride the Wind. Her head spun to think of how she was going to have to try again today. In front of these doubting eyes.
The swords rang out, reverberating together. Riley’s voice shouted from outside, “How much longer will this take?”
Lissie cringed.
She knocked. On a dome of swords.
Dahla laughed and put her hand up to still the vibration next to her head. She replied, “It takes as long as it takes. Go count the stars, sparky.”
Saminka was glaring. “The soldier’s right. This should have been on the Wind. It would have been on the Wind, if not for this green sprout.”
All three heads turned to Mother.
Lissie looked as well, trying to scry the ancient woman’s face, though she could hear nothing.
The face did not twitch.
Saminka said, “It did not take me two years!” She paused, listening. “Seven seasons at the most. Who can remember two hundred and thirteen years ago?”
Dahla laughed. “Mother remembers everything. It only took me a month. But it’s not a contest. Until it is, right, Saminka?”
Neither of them looks older than sixty.
Mother must have spoken for a long time. Everyone sat silent, staring at her.
Lissie strained her mind to hear past the wind, and one word got through. “TRY.”
Six eyes were on her now. Mother stared at the fire.
Dahla said, “You did it once. You can do it again. The way is the same.”
Lissie glanced to her side and said, “You were holding my hands then.”
“I was following you.” Dahla looked like she had when Lissie first saw her. Wry, confident, stalwart. Lissie closed her eyes.
“It’s easier with your eyes open.” The apprentice girl laid a hand on Lissie’s knee. “I always look at the fire.” She took her hand back and raised her eyebrows, nodding with encouragement.
Lissie stared at the flame. She tried to meld herself into the fire. Grow, dance with the heat. Lissie started to sway, feeling herself spark and flicker. She felt herself growing larger than her body, stretching outside of herself. Lissie felt the fire shrink as she grew.
It exploded.
The flames reached out and Lissie closed her eyes against flaring sparks. She took a breath of smoke and realized, with shame, that she was still embodied.
Saminka spoke first. “It was ten years before I learned to do that. But it’s still not riding. The whirlwind’s —— doesn’t matter if she can’t control it.” The language of the Wind fell like a pronouncement against Lissie’s heart.
Lissie’s teacher rose, wiping soot off her face. Dahla reached into her robe and took out a closed fist and said, “Watch this, though.” She threw a pile of bones in front of Lissie on the sand.
Lissie stared at the bones. She saw Ariland, wrapped in a cage. The capital, Kalden, was being eaten by a vulture. There was Terndowns, shining like a beacon. She could see every duchy. She could see everyone. In the far north, a man waved at her from a mountain. Her heart clenched. It was the same man from the tea leaves.
“Scrying doesn’t prove anything!” Saminka waved a derisive hand. “Half the girls we see can scry. It won’t save her.”
Mother spoke aloud. Her voice croaked from disuse. “Necessity is our best teacher.”