The brothers had made many children over the years. Saraal would guess there were over fifty of them. Maybe more. But none was very strong. Not like Kuluun, Suk, and Odval had been. And the brothers were growing weaker. Saraal could sense it. Like water sapping from a leaky skin, every time one of the brothers sired another child, their strength depleted. She wondered what their own sire would think of it, but then she never saw him. He was only a rumor, like the sun.
As if reading her mind, Aday came to sit across from her.
“Who is their master?”
“Kuluun and his brothers?”
“Yes.”
“They call him Jun. I never see him. Only once, when he made me.”
“What do you remember of him?”
She thought back to that night, but the memory had become more and more hazy as the years passed.
“He was frightening.”
Aday glanced around at the human women, who were staring at Saraal. She hissed like a snake, but the humans paid no attention.
Then she asked, “Do you think Jun keeps women, too?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many other children does he have? Many? Like Kuluun and his brothers?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know much.”
Saraal shrugged, oddly hurt by the insult from the laughing creature. “I don’t ask questions.”
The women stood and walked away from her, moving downstream, though they kept their eyes on Saraal. She bared her fangs and they sneered. They also walked faster.
“You should ask questions,” Aday said. “You never know what they might answer if you do.”
“Why does it matter?”
Aday floated to her, curling around so that she could whisper in Saraal’s ear.
“If you don’t know how many there are, you don’t know how many you’ll have to kill…”
“I can’t.”
“You can.” Aday floated above her as Saraal washed her clothes in the creek. She was wearing Suk’s cast-offs, which were huge on her, but not as bad as Kuluun’s or Odval’s. “Why couldn’t you?”
“I’m not strong enough.”
“Not yet.” Aday swooped down and hovered over the running stream, her long hair floating in the breeze, lifted by unseen currents. Saraal stared at her longingly. What would it be like to fly? To soar over the earth and feel the wind holding her body as a mother carried a child?
For a moment, she hated Aday. Then the moment passed and she thought about what the other woman had said.
“I’m not strong enough because I only drink pony blood. The others drink from the humans they capture.”
“And why do you drink what they give you, Saraal?” Aday’s grey eyes were playful. “You took from the vein once. Don’t you remember?” The woman’s seductive voice whispered, “How sweet was the blood on your tongue? Do you remember how it made you strong? You could join me, you know…” Aday did a slow flip in the moonlight. “You’re older than most of them now. And you could be stronger. If you drank enough from the humans, you would fly, too.”
A chill wrapped itself around her heart. “And if Kuluun saw it. He would break me.”
Until I become nothing again.
“You’re not nothing,” Aday hissed.
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
“I’m—”
“Not!” Aday sang out, swinging her body up over the water, dipping a hand in the current. “Not, not, not!” she sang some more. “You are mighty, my girl. A warrior in slave’s clothing. A wolf hiding in the brush.”
She hummed an old song Saraal thought she remembered her grandmother singing when she was a child. How the laughing girl knew it, she had no idea. They were many mountains away from her tribe. So many seasons had passed that her son would be grown.
If he’d lived.
“Go away, Aday.” The thought of her green-eyed boy pulled forgotten sorrow from her chest. “I’m tired of you tonight.”
Without a whisper, the flying woman disappeared, and Saraal looked up to see two human women watching her, their eyes wide and frightened. She bared her fangs. It was easy to frighten the humans, and she didn’t like their company anyway. They were more fearful than sheep.
She plunged her hands back into the freezing water. It was spring. Thin shoots of grass fought their way up from the earth, only to be ripped up as the animals fed. The water ran clear and ice-cold from the mountains.
It would take many hours for her clothes to dry. They might not even be done by the next night. No matter. She didn’t feel the cold. Often, Saraal wondered why she wore clothes at all.
Then she would catch a glimpse of one of the human captives, who were tossed naked into piles as they were drained. Like stacks of wood. Jumbled pottery shards. Waste. Their clothes were gone. Wool was not wasted on the dead. Then Saraal would wrap her torn clothing around her more tightly and shove the image from her mind.
She bent over, and her braid dipped in the water. There was a flash of memory, as the stream gripped her hair, pulling it.
“No! Let me go!”
Kuluun grabbing her hair, yanking it as he captured her, dragging her into the darkness.
The water swirled around the long braid. A stick caught in it as she stared.
A new leaf.
Saraal could see quicksilver fish dart to the surface, cautiously testing the black threads that hung in the water like some alien weed, then darting back into the shadows.