Folding the Sky

-13-

"Material?" Kalindi cut in, the tone in her voice nearly accusatory. "What was it? Wool? Yarn?"

Chike shook his head gently. "He didn't give them a name for it, just said it was a very fine, white thread and he'd know it when he saw it. My parents let him have a look through all their stock, but whatever it is, they didn't have it. He left frustrated and irritable."

Zuri's mind was working, struggling to decipher what this thread was, and what Schmitt would want with it. Did his power depend on the materials he used, somehow? She pondered and pondered until her head began to ache, and then she realized.

"Chike," she said, and he raised an eyebrow at her, silently beckoning her to go on. "Can you take me there? Back to your family home."

"I—sure, I guess. Why?"

"Because I can see exactly what they saw," Zuri explained, tapping her temple, right where the star-shaped scar rested. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a proud smile creep across Jem's face. "If it's alright with you, Chike, I'd like to take a look at your parents' memories."

They spent the night at the same inn whose fire escape they had climbed earlier in their search for Chike. It was a small, homely place, more like a bed and breakfast than a hotel, the beds small and iron and the sheets so tight Zuri had to yank them back with considerable force. She shared a room with Kalindi and Jem, the boys further down the hall.

Zuri slept fitfully, as if both her mind and body were uneasy at being forced to rest in a foreign place, so far away from everything she'd ever known.

When sleep finally did come to her, she dreamt of home.

She dreamt of her father, of the machine oil worked into the creases of his hands, and she dreamt of her mother—her gentle, diligent fingers tying silken ribbons into Zuri's hair.

A single tear slipped from her eyes, down her cheek, and left a dark blot on the bedsheet beneath her. In the darkness, Zuri hugged her pillow closer.

She rose early the next morning, when dawn was just beginning to tint the sky orange and Jem and Kalindi were still motionless in their beds—Jem's arms tossed wide across her mattress, Kalindi rolled into a tight ball. She dressed in a shorter, lightweight gown in a pale cream color, securing her leather bodice snugly against her waist. She hesitated in front of the inn's mold-speckled window, examining the frizzed curls that fell down her shoulders, the two round, wide-set eyes staring back at her.

Often, Zuri was told that she resembled her mother most, whether the resemblance be in the narrow shoulders and wide hips, or the natural pout to her mouth. It was a strangely weighty observation now, like Zuri was the last relic of her mother here on this earth, like her mother and everything she'd ever stood for would vanish the second Zuri passed on.

She blinked, not sure where such a dark thought had come from, and twirled the matching ribbons deftly into her hair, just like she did every morning.

Just as she was finishing up, a soft knock sounded on the door, so quiet she thought for a moment that she'd imagined it. The noise came again, however, so Zuri crossed the room and pulled it open just a crack.

Chike stood in the hall. Zuri smiled at him and stepped outside, bumping the door shut behind her, every move stifled. "Morning," she whispered. "How's Aldric doing?"

"Sleeping like the dead," Chike said, and frowned. "No, really. I had to check that he was still breathing."

"I don't understand why he ordered a drink if he knew it was going to put him out like that," Zuri said, a laugh on the edge of her breath. Though Aldric's little episode had been slightly concerning, there was also something endearing about it—watching one of Kiro's most feared assassins slur his words together and rest on someone else's shoulder.