The tunnel bent around a corner. When he cleared it, Flick was nowhere in sight. “Hey!” he yelled. “Where’d you get to?”
Her laugh emerged from an opening several feet away. He followed the sound and saw Flick well ahead. “Wait!”
“Briar’s gettin’ slo-ow, Briar’s gettin’ slo-ow,” she taunted. He sighed. She had done this just before the Longnight holiday, when he’d followed her through a warren of streets in the worst part of the Mire. She’d almost given him the slip then, just as now. He wasn’t about to lose her, not down here.
The pipe shrank, forcing him to walk hunched over. With every step he took, she seemed to take three. “You got to slow down!” he cried.
“You got to speed up,” she retorted, and giggled.
“Will you just wait?” he demanded. The filthy water rose, eddying around his calves, then his knees. It dragged on the habit, pulling him back.
“I can’t, Briar,” she said, voice somber. “I can’t wait, even if it is your birthday.”
“Flick!” he cried, battling water and habit to close with her. “Stop!”
The girl shrugged and ran off down the pipe. Briar watched in panic as she got farther and farther away. Something bad lay ahead. If he lost sight of her, it would be the end. He shucked the habit impatiently and pumped his suddenly weak legs, fighting to gain speed. He was too slow; she was too quick. She grew smaller and smaller.
“Flick!” he screamed, and she was gone. He was awake.
If his bed hadn’t been a mattress on the floor, he might have fallen out. Instead Briar thrashed his way out of the covers that tangled around him. Little Bear whined and licked sweat off the boy’s face. Panting, Briar sat out the shakes, clenching his hands as he remembered how he couldn’t hold Flick, not in a dream, not in Urda’s House. How could he have let her die, with all this magic to serve him? He didn’t try hard enough—if he had, Flick would be alive. He’d as good as killed her himself by not doing more.
Sandry came in, which was only to be expected. Her bedroom was across from his. In one open palm she carried her night lamp, the round, dirty stone that Briar, Tris, and Daja had spelled a year before to hold light for her. Sandry was afraid of the dark. On nights like this, Briar didn’t blame her in the least.
She sat next to him on the mattress, her white nightdress billowing. Her stone lamp went on the floor in front of them.
After a moment Briar whispered, “Maybe I should pick yesterday for a birthday. The day Flick—died.”
“Whatever for?” asked Sandry quietly. “Birthdays are supposed to be happy days.”
“But then I’d be remembering her, right? She wouldn’t be dead, if I remembered her on my birthday. It wouldn’t be so bad that—that I let her go.”
“That isn’t the way to remember her, Briar,” Sandry told him gravely, sounding as kind and wise as Lark. “She wouldn’t like it.”
Briar shook his head. “How would you know what she’d like and what she wouldn’t?”
Sandry rubbed her hand over his hair. “Because no one who’s truly your friend would want you to feel bad for knowing them.”
That struck home. He would need to think it over, of course, but he had the sense that she was in the right of it.
Daja arrived next, a lit incense stick in her fingers. It gave off fragrant, rose-scented smoke as she waved it in each corner, chasing out bad air as Traders did for nightmares. Once finished, she sat crosslegged on the floor, putting the incense in a little holder beside the lamp.
Last of all came Tris, a black crocheted shawl over her nightgown. On one forefinger she carried a ruffled bird that blinked sleepily. The other three stared at the bird in wonder. The summer before they had helped Tris raise a young starling named Shriek. In the autumn, after their return from a trip to northern Emelan, Shriek had taken wing with a flock of other starlings, headed south. Since no other birds of his kind came near humans, they had to believe this was Shriek, back after months away.
Tris held the starling out to Briar. He took the bird gently as Tris sat, fussing with her nightgown and shawl until they were arranged to her satisfaction. When Briar returned her starling, Shriek trundled up her arm and into her unruly curls, where he promptly went back to sleep. Little Bear settled too, warming Briar’s back. The four remained silent, thinking their own thoughts, as the night slowly wound down.
If Rosethorn had any thoughts when she entered Briar’s room before dawn and found all four of her charges sleeping there, she kept them to herself. Instead she woke the boy without disturbing the others and signaled that he’d better get ready to go.
Air Temple services were held at dawn. Soon after the hymns of greeting to the sun ended, Crane and a company of young men and women in Air yellow, Water blue, or novice white came to the greenhouse door where Rosethorn and Briar waited. Briar squinted at Crane’s following. Every one of them sported a large crimson dot on the forehead, to tell the world they didn’t have blue pox. He was also curious. Didn’t Crane say he had no help just the day before? Who were these people, then?
“Rosethorn,” Crane said. He looked at Briar and sniffed, then unlocked the door. It opened into a third of the greenhouse Briar had never seen, hidden behind drapes on its glass walls. “Osprey, show the boy our clean-up procedures. Make sure he is thorough. Then take him around.” To the Water dedicate and Rosethorn, Crane said, “It will be some time before the cleansing and robing rooms are clear. I have tea waiting in my office.”