The water is freezing. It feels like a million needles pricking at my skin at the same time, cruel and relentless. Only after the initial shock of the temperature has passed do I realize I don't know how to swim. All the contact I've ever had with water in Marakahala has been hot baths and rachitic rivers. I clamp my mouth shut and pinch my nose with my fingers. Do not freak out, Rabyah. You can't die yet. I repeat this words over and over in my head. They are not working. The current tosses me around mercilessly, and all I can see are shadows and unknown moving beings. My lungs burn. I kick against the current but it only seems to make me sink deeper. Something grabs my ankle and I scream. Nothing but bubbles come out, but the water rushes inside my mouth immediately. I try to twist and only then I realize I'm not holding the dagger anymore. Either I left it at the shore or I released it when I jumped into the river. I guess it doesn't matter: my lungs hurt like nothing in my life has ever hurt before, and my vision is coming in and out of focus. The thing that grabbed my ankle ascends my leg and tugs harder.
Then the water around me shifts, and the thing is not holding me anymore. Something else seizes my wrist, but this time I'm not scared because through my blurring vision I can see Iara's face and feel her fingers on my skin.
She swims up towards the light, but instead of feeling like I'm being pulled, it's like something is pushing me. I look back but there's nothing except the darkness of the water. My lungs still hurt, but instead of the unrelenting burn that I felt before, it's like they're being pricked with a thousand tiny needles.
Then the world comes rushing back in. The trees outline is so defined they look like a painting, and the light is white and too bright. I'm lying on the floor on my side, and Iara is kneeling beside me, soaked and breathing hard. She rolls me to my back, pinches my nose and starts leaning in towards my face.
"Stop it," I say. My voice scraps against my throat. "Let me breathe."
She jumps back, startled, and looks at me with wide, brown eyes.
"What?" I rasp.
"You— you are okay?" says Iara, a little breathless.
I breathe in as much as I can. It hurts a bit, but I ignore it and try to calm my thumping heart. "No, I'm not," I say.
"I mean, you've been more than five minutes inside the water," she says. "There should be water in your lungs, and you should be unconscious."
I look at her, because I'm not really understanding what she's saying.
"You could breathe?" she asks.
"No, no, I— it hurt."
"But you could breathe."
"I didn't feel like I was breathing."
"Not like you do outside the water, but you were clearly breathing," repeats Iara. "You were there for a long time."
I look away and blink the water in my eyes away.
"Do you think...?" I start, but she pipes in before I can finish even formulating the thought in my mind.
"Yes."
I sigh and try to sit up. It might be true. I honestly don't know how much time I was underwater —it felt like hours to me— but I've learnt to trust Iara when it comes to time issues.
"What was that, anyway?" I ask, eyeing the river. "We should get away from here."
Iara nods and stands up, then stretches her hand to me and helps me to my feet. "It was the river snake."
I whirl around. My head hurts.
"The river snake?"
"Yes, it was larger than you said."
I frown. "I guess the Hunt wouldn't make it too easy."
Iara snorts. "Anyways, we should think of a strategy now that we have a general idea of what we're fighting against."
"Yeah," I say. Then, "How are the others doing?"
Iara closes her eyes and tips her head backwards. I sit next one of the trees that are far away from the riverbank but from which I still have a vision of it, and wait for her to do whatever it is she does to communicate with the wind. I'm drenched to my bones: there are pools of water in my boots, and my clothes cling to my skin and my hair is a knotted mess of limp curls.
"The middle-aged man and the two women are almost here," says Iara, coming to stand next to me. Her wet clothes cling to her body, but she pays them no attention as she narrows her eyes towards the riverbank. "And so is one of those other boys your age. Not the guards, though."
I take off my boots and empty the water on the ground. Wet clothes are annoying and can cause skin rashes, but wet shoes can literally bring you down on your knees. Iara is wearing flat-soled sandals, similar to those I've seen Sora Kurokawa wearing, so they will probably dry a lot sooner than my boots.
"Are those even comfortable?" I ask, eyeing her feet.
She looks at them and says, "Yeah. They don't look like it, but they're not normal sandals."
I lean in to take a closer look. "How so?"
"They're made of leather and a special flame-retardant resin that forms in a variant of atil trees in the North," she says. "They are flexible and the sole has a great grip."
"I see..."
"We'll get you one of these once we're in the Hunt."
I smile and nod, because even if I'm actively trying not to doubt that I will pass this exam, for some reason, hearing Iara say it makes me feel surer of myself.
"How are we getting those scales, then?" I ask.
Iara turns to the river and slants her eyes. The rustle of the leaves is loud inside my head, but I ignore it and keep my eyes on the river too. I don't know how much time passes, but I finally notice that, from time to time, the sun glints differently on the wavy surface: it curls and undulates and blinds me momentarily.
"I got it. It's there, now there, there it is again," I say to Iara. "Now it's gone ―now it's there."
She follows my finger as I point, and after a while, nods.
"The reflection of the sun, huh?"
I nod, and she smiles.
"Okay, we have a way of locating it," she says. "Now we just need a way of trapping it."
I finger my wet clothes and say, "I could try―"
"No," says Iara, shaking her head. "You just discovered you might have an alignment to water. But you don't even know how to swim. It's too much of a risk."
"Then?"
"I should go."
I'm about to protest, but she quickly sets a finger over her lips and cocks her head to the side slightly. I follow her line of vision. The middle-aged man and the two women with the veils appear through the trees just some meters away from us, but the angle is just right so that they don't notice us. They approach the riverbed, their stride confident and sure-footed.
"It looks like they know what they're doing," I whisper to Iara.
She nods and gets closer to me. "I know one of them," she whispers. "I hadn't recognized her before, but I'm sure now. The woman in the right: she's Samira Chaib."
I frown. Her name sounds familiar, but I can't quite place it.
"The Chaib family has traditionally been linked to the Hunt as armorers. She owns the armory near the marketplace. It used to be her cousins' but they all joined the Hunt about eight years ago, in the last call," continues Iara. "Xolani says their weapons feel like they are alive; like you don't even need to make an effort: they fight on their own."
I look at the woman, Samira, who is crouching so close to the river that her boots are getting wet, her eyes trained on the clear water, a short axe twirling on her fingers as if it was made of weightless cotton. She picks up something from the shore, and when the sun makes it shine, I realize it's the dagger I chose at the beginning of the exam.
"She'll probably get in," says Iara.
"Who'll take care of the armory?" I ask.
Iara shrugs. "The Chaibs are a big family."
The man and the other woman stand a bit back, both holding similar middle-length swords, their eyes following the flow of the river too. Someone gasps, I'm not sure exactly who, and then Samira springs from her crouch and swings her axe. I don't even have time to see it: just like when it appeared out of nowhere to drag Iara into the river, the snake is now emerging from the water. Its figure is a mass of glinting scales that reflect the light of the high sun and make my eyes sting. Samira swings her axe again, lightning-fast, and the river snake opens its fauces in a silent cry. I can feel its rage in the snap of its jaw. Then it's falling, half of its scaled body still submerged in the water, its slimy head heating the riverbed with a loud thump. Only then I see the blood, bright and red before it gets washed away by the lapping water of the river. It raises its head, but Samira is quicker. She jumps away from it, and then the man sprints forwards and lifts his sword over his head. The snake doesn't have time to look at him. Before it can change the direction of its furious snarl, the man brings the sword down, piercing through its skull with a sickening crack and impaling the snake to the soft mud of the riverbed. The snake twitches a couple of times before finally going limp. Samira comes beside the man and wields her axe, severing the snake's head from the rest of its body, which is rapidly claimed by the river current.
The other woman, the one who's been standing back for the whole time, says something to Samira, but I can't make out what it is. Samira nods and the woman comes forwards and crouches next to the snake's head, taking out a short blade and pushing its tip between the wet scales. She dislodges three of them and then, without exchanging a single word, they all start running back into the forest where they came from.
Iara and I stay here, hiding in the bushes, until the sound of their footsteps gets swallowed by the forest bed and we can't hear anything but the rush of the river and the wind shuffling the treetops.
"I think this is our opportunity," I say.
Iara frowns. "Do you think it will be valid?"
"Why not? Master Abelardo said we should bring back a scale," I say, standing up. "Plus, Sora told me to be smart. I don't think trying to find another river snake is smarter than taking the scales from one we got right here."
"Sora Kurokawa?"
Iara's dark eyes are wide in wonder. When I nod, she says, "You know her?"
I shrug. "Not really, I just met her by accident and today, when we were crossing the gates, she told me: 'Be smart'."
Iara raises her eyebrows, but doesn't comment any further, but I can tell there's something she wants to say.
"Let's go then."
We come out of our hiding place and approach the snake's head. Its eyes are two wells void of life that make a shiver run down my spine. Iara takes her thin dagger and introduces the tip in the slit between two scales, twisting it slowly until one of them falls to the ground. She hands it to me and does the same with another one. The scale is more or less the same size than the dragon scales Iara showed me earlier, but it feels completely different: cold and slimy and dead.
"We should start heading back," says Iara. "Some six hours have passed, and we still have time, but we don't have any food and we don't know what may happen on our way back."
My clothes are still wet and clinging to my body, but I know Iara is right, so after drinking from the river and shoving both scales inside my boot, where I know I won't lose them, we start walking back the way we came from. We advance quickly, though not as much as when we were looking for the snake. Now that the most difficult part of the exam has passed, we just need to make sure we don't get lost.
From time to time, Iara closes her eyes and listens to the wind. I wonder what it feels like: if it's words she hears in the rustling of the leaves, or images that pop into her mind when the breeze caresses her skin. It gets me thinking about the river, and about how Iara said that I had been more than five minutes submerged in its cold waters. I didn't feel anything apart from a sharp pain in my lungs and an irrational fear making everything blurry, but somehow the water didn't drown me.
We walk in silence, watching everything around us with attentive eyes. When I look at her, Iara is wide-eyes, taking in every single detail that surrounds us: the feel of the barks against her fingertips, the sound of our footsteps crunching the fallen leaves, the dizzying dance of the light that sips between the treetops. Iara seemed so professional, so sure as she ran through the forest, that I only realize now that this is the first time she has ever been outside of Marakahala too. This is a new world for both of us.
We stop to rest two or three times, and we watch lines of creatures, which I know to be ants from the biology books I've read in the palace library, crawling up the trees in perfect tight lines. We can't see the birds, but we can hear their chirped conversations and the ruffle of their wings as they hop from branch to branch.
After another hour or so, I think, Iara stops suddenly, her eyes squinted and her back straight.
"What's wrong?" I ask her.
"We're close," she says. Then, "Someone's here."
I look around, but I can't see anything more than what we've been seeing for hours now: endless lines of slim, tall trees.
"Are you sure? I can't see anything."
She nods. "The wind doesn't lie."
"Nice."
My heart jumps. The voice that has talked is not Iara's voice. It's deep and grave and coming from above. We both look up to the treetops. There's someone sitting on one of the lowest branches, which is still too high for me too reach in any humanly way. It takes me a couple of seconds to realize it's Soma Kurokawa, astride the branch as if he was a weightless bird, his right hand raised over his head, gripping the odachi hanging from his back.
I feel Iara taking a slow step backwards, and when I look at her from the corner of my eyes, I see she's adopted a defense stance, the thin dagger she chose gripped tightly on her right hand. I hurry and imitate her as best as possible, trying to remember the details from all those books about fighting I have read throughout my life. I don't have my dagger, and I wish I had something to hold to stop the nervous twitch of my fingers.
Soma doesn't move, doesn't even blink, and his eyes feel like a searing iron against my skin, so I ask: "What do you mean 'nice'?"
Soma keeps on looking at us, still and silent as a statue, and then, after what feels like hours, he raises one leg over the branch and jumps, landing on an easy crouch. His feet make no sound when they hit the ground. The branch he was straddling wavers almost imperceptibly.
"It's nice that you noticed I was here," he says. "It's more than most are able to do in this exam."
Iara nods, but keeps her mouth shut, her eyes watching every swift move Soma makes.
He points his chin and Iara and says, "You've got an alignment to wind." It's obviously not a question, so Iara just tightens the grip on her dagger. "And you know how to use it."
"What are you doing here?" says Iara.
Soma tugs at the fingerless black gloves covering his hands, and then asks: "What your name?"
"Iara," she says. "Iara Mbayi."
Soma stops tugging at his gloves and squints his eyes at her. "I see," he says.
I know I should feel grateful that all his attention is centered on Iara, but being this blatantly ignored provokes a wave of indignation deep in the pit of my stomach.
"She asked you a question," I say, raising my chin.
Soma's eyes slide to me, and even though every nerve ending in my body is screaming at me to look away, I hold his gaze.
"And you are?"
I glare at him, but answer either way. "Rabyah Daivari."
"Oh," he says. "The Queen's maid."
Never in my life would I have thought that such a title would cause me shame. I have always carried it with pride: The Queen's Maid. Her Majesty's greatest confidant, almost like a mother to me. But now, as Soma says it, plain and indifferent, I feel a mix of discomfort and embarrassment warming my cheeks. I try to fight against it, but the more I think about it, the more the feeling intensifies. The Queen's maid, trying to get into the Hunt. Ridiculous — I can almost hear Soma saying it.
However, the only thing that comes out of his lips is: "Sora has told me about you."
And just like that, the shame is gone.
"She has?" I ask, without thinking.
Soma doesn't answer me anymore, though. "You wanted to know why I'm here, "he says. "You were coming back to the initial meeting point, so my guess is you got the scales."
I nod, and in a swift movement, he unsheathes his odachi. I can hear the sharp blade cutting the space between us as it comes out in a smooth arc. The sun glints against its curved length: it's beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
"I'm here because the meeting point is just a couple of kilometers away," he says, gripping the handle with both hands. "And to get there, you must go by me."
I stiffen and look at Iara, but her eyes are set on Soma. It seems like this is not a joke.
"You can use weapons, magic, anything at your reach," he says. "I will only use my body and this blade."
"Wow," I mutter. "Thank you for your consideration."
"Whenever you're ready," he says.
I'm really not understanding what is happening, so I turn to Iara, because turning to Iara when I'm confused or lost is something my body has become used to in the last few hours. It's almost an automatic reaction, as if it was something I've been doing my whole life. However, before I get to say anything —though I have no idea what I was planning to tell her— she's darting towards Soma, light and fast and gracile like an unstoppable gush of wind. She reaches Soma in a few soundless steps, but when she swings the hand with which she's holding the dagger, Soma is no longer there.
I blink.
And he's there again, only behind her. I don't know what just happened, if he vanished or if it was trick of my brain, but the thing is that before Iara has time to assimilate that he is no longer in front of her, Soma's hand is shooting for her. I want to shout, to warn her to turn around or duck or simply throw herself to the ground, but he's faster than my voice, faster than my brain trying to send panicked signals to my vocal chords, and when finally a chocked shriek managed to escape my throat, Soma has already grabbed Iara's wrist and bent it backwards in a sick twist. I don't hear the crack of her bones, but I know it's there because of the unnatural angle of her wrist and the painful edge to her scream. The dagger she was holding lies pitiful at Soma's feet. Iara's face is pale, and she's biting her lower lip so hard that it's almost devoid of color.
"This will be easier than I thought," says Soma, and he sheathes his odachi again. "I won't even need a weapon."
Something inside me seethes. I lunge towards him without thinking, and the forest blurs around him and the world turns silent and the only thing I can see is Soma Kurokawa's raised eyebrow and Iara holding her wrist and the wetness in her eyes. Then, again, Soma disappears from before my eyes. My heart is a wild thing thrashing inside my chest. Be smart, said Sora. There's no way I can win Soma Kurokawa in anything related to fighting, not yet. Be smart. Iara is looking somewhere behind me, brown eyes wide with warning. Be smart, be smart, be smart. I throw myself to the floor, just where Soma was standing some seconds before, and my hip hits a hidden rock, but I ignore the pain and scramble until my fingers find the dagger that had fallen from Iara's hand when Soma broke her wrist. I grab it and swing my arm back, not even looking, my eyes closed shut, waiting for a pain of some kind. It never comes. There is a soft grunt, and then someone's grabbing my arm and pulling, pulling, pulling and then I'm on my feet and running faster than I thought I was able too. There's a lightness in my feet I have never felt before, and it feels as if someone is pushing me from my back, but when I look there is nothing but the green forest and Soma Kurokawa's crouched figure. He raises his head and meets my eyes at the same time that he dislodges the dagger from where I plunged it in his thigh. I turn back around and try to run faster. Iara is just a few meters in front of me, her right arm close to her body.
"Iara," I gasp. "Iara, are you okay?"
"I will be once we get to the meeting point," she says.
It doesn't take me long to figure out she's the reason why running suddenly feels like such a light task.
"How did you get him?" she asks, after a while.
I take my time to answer, because I'm actually not sure. "He's fast," I say, finally. "And he was underestimating us."
Iara raises an eyebrow, still not comprehending. I guess I'm not being that good at explaining either.
"I figured that, if I ran at him like you did, he would try to do the same thing to me. Also, I saw you looking behind me," I say. "He went for your wrist before, and I had seen your dagger falling to the ground, so I thought that if I lunged at him and then dove to the ground, I would be able to avoid him and acquire a weapon in the process." Iara nods slowly. "Then... honestly, it was just pure instinct, but I had the vague idea that because of his speed, if I stabbed at the air behind me where he was supposed to be coming from, he wouldn't be able to dodge in time."
A small smile twists the corner of Iara's smile. "That's smart."
I don't know why, but I feel my face heating up.
The forest is opening before us now, and after a couple of minutes, the pressure pushing me forwards stops, my body feels heavy again, and the space before us is a treeless, dry expanse of hard sand. The sky is no longer bright blue, but a faded mix of blue and yellow and deep orange.
I can't take my eyes off it.
Master Abelardo stands just where he was when we left him, his right hand grabbing his wooden cane, and his robes moving about him with the soft breeze. Behind him, Samira Chaib and the middle-aged man are sitting cross-legged, but there's no trace of the other woman who had been with them at the river. There's another boy with wild black curls and sun-kissed skin and legs as thin as twigs that's walking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth... He's barefoot, and his linen shirt is ragged and torn. I can see red-tinted bandages under it, covering his chest.
Iara and I come to stand before Master Abelardo, who just looks at us from head to toe once, and the extends his left hand. I look at it, the callouses and burn marks and scars expanse of loitering the wrinkled skin. I wonder how many stories this man could tell.
Then Iara nudges me with her elbow and whispers something that I can't understand until after a couple of beats. When I do, I hurry and crouch to take the scales from where I placed them inside my boot, and for a moment I panic when I can't find them, but the I take off my boot and shake it and there they come, no longer wet but still looking slimy under the orange sky. I give one to Iara, because even if it seems stupid, I feel like it's important that we each present our own scale as the first of our accomplishments as members of the Hunt.
Members of the Hunt. This is the moment that I realize that this is it: I got the scales and managed to escape from one of the best Hunters in the history of the Hunt and I'm back at the meeting point and I'm a member of the Hunt and I'm going to see everything that's out there far, far away from Marakahala and I'm probably not seeing Queen Fatimah again and I'm probably not hugging Karim again either and I'm so happy but I also feel a hot, tight knot in my throat that's not letting me breathe properly.
It's in a daze that I drop my scale on Master Abelardo's worn hand and I watch him examine it. And it's through a thick blanket of clouds that I see him nod and say: "Welcome to the Hunt."