If she kept busy, Sosa couldn`t hear the voice that whispered. She dragged the blade across the banefruit stem and caught the cluster. They bruised easily if allowed to drop.

　　The climb down was easier than the climb up, but only because this tree had been awkward to thread the ropes over. Pulling one fruit free and stashing the rest away, Sosa wandered to the stream, peeling the skin back and slowly chewing. When she made it to the stream she unwrapped her skirt and waded into the waters, enjoying the cool flow. The water offered her solace in many ways. She dunked her head beneath the water and enjoyed the loss of sensation as bubbles scrambled what she could hear and see.

　　She stood, flicking her long hair back in an arc of spray and gently squeezed the water from it, then waded to a small boat and climbed in, laying back to dry in the sun. The humidity made it a slow way to dry, but it was pleasant to sit in the gentle rocking motion of the boat.

　　It was one of Korassi`s, retrieved from her old village some months ago. She kept it tied in the centre of the stream and swam out regularly to sit in the sun and fish. The fishing out here was more successful, but it was the swaying lull of the boat she enjoyed. Out here was one of the few places she still smiled.

　　The months or more alone had made her talkative, but she mostly got into arguments with herself or with imagined ghosts. She fell out often with Eleris, even with members of her family, with Gris, Orolo, all of whom had left her. Then she would weep in silent guilt. The ki caused her no trouble, she was amply able to provide her own torture. The rocking of the boat prevented dark moods from settling and often she would sit out here without even baiting a hook.

　　When she was done she stood up without toppling from the boat, a skill only recently mastered, and answered her urge to dive, enjoying once more the way the water obliterated everything, her sight, her hearing. Her breath.

　　Crawling from the stream, she used a cloth instead of waiting for the sun and breeze to dry her, fetched a fresh skirt and went to work on the roof damaged in a recent storm.

　　The work was good, but it didn`t stem all the black thoughts, it just distracted her from listening to them.

　　#

　　Talon slid the sword into his stomach and Sosa winced, feeling the pain as if it bit into her own flesh. Orelo clawed at her eyes, the nail dragging over her pupil and, and& Kala reached for her husband with one arm bent in too many places and her legs so broken. Halo fell from the dark trees, bleeding from a gaping slash wound& Arella tumbled from the sky in a heap of steaming insides& Ego, just, just came apart, he just came apart& Korassi screaming, Rem screaming, Jode`s bulging eyes as Sosa`s spear stuck& Dorrel blind and her blade just slipping, oh Ale-ki, just slipping between& and& and Sosa was screaming, the bodaki, the last bodaki in the pack was screaming, screaming with her blade in whatever passed for its heart and when it was done, when it was done with its screaming, she would be free of the monsters. The day-terrors, the nightmares, always, always triggered by the screaming of the bodaki, but this, this scream would end them, end them all. She twisted the sword and the bodaki died in an explosion of darkness.

　　Sosa walked back to the village.

　　The other bodaki would stay away. Eventually one would stray close and she would destroy it but for now the only sounds were the beautiful birds, the insects, the forest creatures who called, not screamed, just called to each other. No more packs of bodaki were left near the village. She had hunted them all.

　　The forest was beautiful, and it was free of the screams that made it all come back, made it all& she would be okay now. The images would haunt her no longer.

　　She practised with the light. It took concentration to anchor it in larger and larger areas to the bronze spikes she had found in Gris` boxes. She staked them to the ground and spread the light between them, repeating it with wider and wider distances. If she kept working, maybe one day she could cast the light wide enough to protect the whole of Ale, maybe one day her people might come home. Maybe. Maybe. If it was safe to go back to Rala and be sure nothing would follow her there. She worked hard to stretch her control of the light, expanding her influence every time she tried.

　　The images were gone now that the bodaki were too afraid of her to come within screaming distance of the village. The images were gone. Still the work was good.

　　Sosa stood in the village, the building fully repaired, the crops sewn, tended, harvested and stored. The light, cast over as large an area as she could manage, was holding well. She removed and polished each piece of armour, wrapping and storing it in Gris` boxes. The pendant was all she needed to maintain a connection with the light now.

　　Free from the noise of the awful bodaki for the first time, Sosa heard the forest as it should be heard. It was full of beauty. Full of life. Nothing screamed. None of the noises triggered the awful day-terrors. Nothing forced her to see the sword in her father`s hands, the blade that slipped into& into& Ale-ki, no please& into Dorrel`s great heart and the steaming bowels that fell from&

　　Sosa grabbed a sweeping brush and made war on every fragment of the outside that had invaded Gris` house. She contemplated everything she had lost, all the mistakes that had led to this time, to this place. She blamed Eleris. She blamed Gris. She blamed herself. On some days she blamed Talon. Those days were her darkest and she hated them.

　　Sosa`s deliberation always reached the same conclusion; there would be no reconciliation with Eleris and not just because the guardian had threatened to kill her. Her hatred of Eleris came and went like the clouds, but on some days she imagined storming back to Rala and killing the woman, or more likely, dying in the attempt. The latter thought didn`t frighten her.

　　And Gris? If she saw him again? She didn`t know. She should feel the same, but somehow her pity for him, rightly or wrongly, changed things. She was furious with him, after all it was he who had abandoned them, left an entire village to die. The voices whispered that her people had earned their fate, first through their actions and later through their ignorance.

　　Sosa had won her freedom. She could travel anywhere - to Rala to face Eleris, to see Grammawe. She could wait here for Gris tor return one day and then cut him down with her sword. His sword.

　　Or not. She was free to choose such things.

　　This freedom was far from what she had imagined when she sat up whispering with Halo about people and places that only existed in stories.

　　At least there was no room for any of this on her boat. None of the arguments, none of the hate, none of the blame; none of that followed her onto the boat. The boat was safe.

　　Wiping a glaze of sweat from her forehead, Sosa grabbed the hook, line and bait and made for the stream. She plunged into the water, deep down, where the bubbles dissolved everything, where the dark could not call to her. Here was bliss. If only she could stay under the water forever. If only she didn`t need to come for air.

　　The cool water and the bubbles never failed to protect her and the boat`s gentle sway would rock her like a babe. This was her one haven, the one place where the dark could not find her. The one place&Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

　　Something nudged the water.

　　Sosa erupted from the surface with a crash of limbs and spray, splashing wildly as she scrambled for the bank. She lay panting on the land beside the stream, staring out at the water as her waves died away, looking for what horror she had sensed, waiting for it to break the surface and come for her.

　　There was nothing. Nothing had come. It had been nothing.

　　She dropped the line back in the box she kept on the bank and returned to Gris` house. She dug out one of his vats of fermented fruit juice. It worked, almost as well as the water and the boat. After a few large sips all her nagging thoughts started to slip away. It didn`t dissolve them, but made them very hard to hold onto. It made it hard to hold onto anything much. It did not lull her like the boat. It flattened her mind out into a single, simple line of process, rather than the dark maze of tangled memories and fears and condemnation. It was tempting to become lost in it, she suspected Gris had, and there were fewer and fewer reasons to resist.

　　It was possible to see why someone might decide to lead away a terrible monster in order save a village he would never see again, to save a woman he would never hold again. To lead a monster away until he could go no further and it would eventually kill him. It was a decision she had made herself, yes, but hers had been made in naivety. Gris had full knowledge when he set out. Presumably it was a better end than the slow death of the fermented juice.

　　The more she drank, the more easily she slept, but the worse the dreams. In some she was in a pit while unseen monsters dug dirt onto her, burying her alive. She watched something hideous peel and eat her mother like a banefruit. She watched her brother stumble into the trees, always out of reach. She watched her father slide a sword into his own chest while she tried to catch all the blood that ran from him as if she could hold his life in with her hands. Always it ran hopelessly between her fingers and faded into the soil.

　　Sosa woke. The bodaki had returned, she could hear them screaming once more in the night. Furious she flew from the cot, her legs slipping from beneath her, refusing to be controlled and dumping her heavily onto the floor.

　　When she had done swearing, she climbed up and grabbed the spear, listening for the bodaki, but they had fallen silent. Cold dread hit her. Only one thing ever silenced the bodaki&

　　She could sense no bodaki. They were not back. That thing was not back. The scream that had awoken her had been her own. She thrust the spear into the corner and grabbed the vat of fermented juice, dragged it to the door and through the village to the stream. With an effortful growl, she put her foot against it, tipping the stinking liquid and its jar into the water.

　　Sosa closed her eyes, rubbed one palm across her eyes and fetched her line, hook and bait from the box. It was too early for fish to bite, but that didn`t matter. She had all day.

　　#

　　The line pulled.

　　Sosa jerked it to secure the hook and gently teased it back with her fingers until she lifted her prize from the water.

　　It was not a fish.

　　What was skewered on the end of her line was a hand.

　　She dropped it into her lap, staring at the severed wrist with its splintered bone protruding from bloated flesh. Her fingers shook as she fumbled to free her hook and line form the thing, but to touch it made her want to throw up. Her hands shook so much she could only throw it in frustration over the side, hook, line and all.

　　The splash of water looked pink. Shapes drifted past beneath the surface. They were not fish.

　　Sosa clamped her eyes shut, but too late, she had seen them. She held them tightly closed and ignored the sounds of small, heavy objects bouncing from the underside of the boat, ignoring the pink water that stunk of blood, and waiting, waiting for it to stop.

　　When the noises were done, she dared open her eyes. The stream was clear once more. Nothing bad floated by or bumped.

　　Trembling, she stood poised to swim back to shore, but her legs refused to ditch her over the side and into the beautiful void of the water. She simply stared at it, unwilling to break the surface, afraid of what she might feel. Sosa sat back down, and with shaking hands undid the rope that moored the boat. It drifted and she used a single oar to guide it to bank where she climbed out and tried to find something to tie it to. The water happily burbled past and her eyes were drawn back to it. Clear now. No body parts. No pink tinge. She shivered and let her fingers slip off the mooring rope.

　　She turned away so she did not have to watch the boat slip away downstream.

　　#

　　There were many things in her village she could not return to, did not wish to see. What had become of Ale-ki? In her head it lived on, resplendent. She did not want to see if the bodaki had torn it down, shredded the leaves and broken the branches. She could not see that.

　　Another was her old hut, but this was where she had to go now. There was something she needed. She found it well hidden among their things, things which tried hard to make her cry, things she tried hard not to think about as she touched. It was too easy, she found, to make herself into a stone and feel nothing. Once she found what she`d come for she returned to her new home above Highstream and laid out the rolled sheets of paper on Gris` spotless floor.

　　With a sharpened, fire-blackened stick, Sosa began to make marks that left off where her mother`s beautiful writing had ceased. It was so perfect and neat it made Sosa sad. Her own ugly smudges were an insult to the beauty her mother had left and the stone she had become was unable to keep the tears inside. She kept her tears from the paper and worked on it until the light left her, and pulled it out when it returned the following day. When she was done, she rolled it tightly, emptied one of Gris boxes so it could be stored on its own, safe.

　　And no one would ever read it.

　　#

　　Sosa sat beside the stream. The water bobbed melodiously. Her eyes were open, dry, unblinking. She`d been like this for hours, oblivious to the water`s happy motion, staring at nothing, at a very specific spot of nothing, six inches above the surface of the water.

　　Across her lap, she cradled the sword. The sword that had slain a hundred bodaki, probably more in its lifetime. The sword had slipped into her father once and countless more times in her dreams. The sword that had slipped into Dorrel`s heart.

　　A few months ago, there had been a new dream. She had sat under the tree, beside the dying figures of her mother and her father and had watched, the dreams always made her watch, as her father slid the blade between his own ribs.

　　Then she`d looked at the face and it had not been that of Talon, her father and brother-at-arms. It had been her own.

　　After that, the dream remained the same. Night after night she watched the blade sliding into her own body and then the slow relief that dawned on her face. At first it had been horrific, clearly the ki were truly in her head, torturing her, but after another hundred nights, she began to realise what they were really showing her.

　　The image became an obsession.

　　So here she sat, on the bank of the river, the sword in her lap and one thought in her mind&

　　When the figure in the dream, the one that was not Talon but herself, looked up it was never the same as when her father had done it. She`d seen the pain with him. But when she did it, when the Sosa in her dream did it, the look on her face was different.

　　It was serene. There was no pain. That Sosa always looked so&

　　&happy.

　　That Sosa looked as if the burdens this world had dropped onto her were washed away in the little trickle of her own blood.

　　That Sosa looked free. Actually free, not this lonely awful freedom to which she had chained herself.

　　And here she sat, with the blade in her lap.

　　Thinking.

　　She picked up the sword and ran a finger along the sharp length. A bead of blood welled up on her skin despite touching it so lightly, barely even touching it at all.

　　She wondered what it would feel like. Dream-Sosa didn`t feel the pain and she knew there would be pain, but would it last long? Would it last longer than the relief? Would the pain outweigh the relief? It must hurt regardless? She wondered what that pain would feel like.

　　And it was only a dream&

　　But here she was, with the sword in her lap.

　　Thinking.

　　The pain would be excruciating, how good must the relief be to make that so insignificant?

　　The sword glinted, its edge and point steady in her hands.

　　How good would the relief feel?

　　The sword point rested against her belly, a tiny prick of pain as it nicked her skin. But that was nothing.

　　For a very long time, she sat like that. Just her and a sharp point pressed gently against her belly.

　　Footsteps sounded softly behind and someone with gentle, light footing paused beside her. There had been no one in the ruins for longer than she could remember but Sosa didn`t look up.

　　The person sat beside her.

　　There`s something wrong with Ale-ki,` said the voice. I think it`s dead. Someone killed it. Something ate it. Something bad. It isn`t safe here any more. But I know there`s somewhere else, somewhere very safe. There`s another village hidden in the trees. But I can`t find it, not on my own.`

　　Sosa shivered with cold as Halo reached over, his fingers gently resting on the hand that held the sword. He pulled it away from her, lowering the point and took it from her shaking numb fingers. She could not turn her head to look at her brother. She could not even turn her eyes which filled and clouded with tears.

　　I wonder,` said Halo, placing the sword on the ground beside him as tears spilled down Sosa`s cheeks, maybe you could help? Maybe we could find it together?`