text: The gnarled old woman carried a box of bones up the mountain. She bent low under the weight. The winking eye of Oma watched her ascent, ever-present in the rippling cerulean sky. Its sisters – violet Sina and twinkling emerald Tira – burned just beneath its glaring red pupil; patient, waiting.
  
  As she climbed, she cursed Oma. A habit from another life. Another world, before all the worlds began to crash together.
  
  At her hip, she bore her weapon: a yellow bonsa branch as long as her arm, infused with the power of Para. It glowed faintly, though Para was still descendant. If the seers were to be believed, Para would enter the sky again sooner than it had in other cycles. Until then, her powers were… limited. Still substantial, but limited.
  
  The bones were a boon. The sole find of any value from her long, disastrous trek over the Kalai Mountains and into the lawless wilderness of warring states in the Tordinian valley to find a bit of ephemera kept safe for two thousand years by a race of slavering, gold-skinned interlopers. The interlopers were dead, burned out, but their storerooms and altars and thrones and the like had remained intact. Whatever force obliterated them had not returned for a second encounter. Kalinda certainly did not blame them.
  
  She had tumbled through a rent in the fabric between her world and this one the year before, eager to begin again after losing everything. She had been a powerful figure, once. A world had bent at her word. She had promised to save them from the sky.
  
  She had failed.
  
  Now she was the last of her people left alive. And there was some good she could do still. Where she had failed, another might succeed. Hope was a delicious drug; though it, too, could kill, the experience of dying hopeful was far better than the reality of dying in despair. She had seen enough people die of both to know that.
  
  The wind picked up and pushed black thunderheads after her, swathing the satellites in their embrace. She tasted the storm on the air, and moved a little more slowly. The rain would sluice the sweat and dirt from her skin. If it rained long enough and hard enough, she might put down the box and scrub herself with a fistful of sand. It had been some time since she engaged in such civilized routines. It was easy to lose oneself during so much solitary travel.
  
  But the thunderheads brought fine puffs of snow, not rain. The snowflakes clung to her eyelashes. Obscured her vision. Her feet ached. Her own bones protested. Snarls of lavender snowlilies bloomed along the rough path she followed, releasing little white tufts of seed into the drifting snow. The seeds were poisonous if inhaled, so she pulled her scarf over her nose and mouth and picked up her pace again.
  
  The old woman made her way back up over the Kalai Mountains and across the charred fields of what had once been called Dorinah. She had been through here when it was still ruled by fleshy women wearing jaunty ribbons knotted in their hair while they tugged around their skinny, whimpering men, and slaves on short leads. A filthy people, certainly, like most people, but she missed their easy confidence and airy architecture. She passed villages still smoldering in the early morning light, great temples to their goddess, Rhea, smashed to dust; crimson shards of glass scattered about the wreckage.
  
  She kept off the main roads, though they were certainly areas clearest of creeping plant-life, as the country's new masters still burned away the vegetation from the roadsides to keep them clear. She rested during the height of the day, when Tai Mora patrols could be found on the roads and in the otherwise abandoned streets of the small settlements.
  
  One evening she took shelter in an old hair salon, the mirrors shattered, tattered ribbons collecting in the corners with dust and mice droppings. She caught her broken reflection in one of the larger mirror pieces, and recoiled. Surely no one would recognize her, in this disheveled state? But the Tai Mora had been running reconnaissance on her world for years, as she had on theirs. A few would remember Kalinda Lasa the Unmaker, and how her world had crashed around her, tipped into disorder and ruin by the Tai Mora. She could not risk being recognized.
  
  As Kalinda came to the great forked pass that raked a seam between the Liona Mountains that had once separated Dorinah and Dhai, two Tai Mora scouts riding great white bears called her to a halt. They were hale women, though not quite so fat and satisfied as Kalinda had imagined the Tai Mora would be here. Spring was a hungry time.
  
  "Where are your papers?" the elder of the two barked.
  
  Kalinda bent her head, and spoke in Tai Mora. "Here, in this box."
  
  "Open it then."
  
  "Alas, my fingers are stiff with cold."
  
  With a huff, the elder ranger slid off her bear and took hold of the box of bones. Shook it. The bones shuddered, making the box tremble. "That doesn't sound like papers."
  
  "I have been collecting this and that." Kalinda murmured the Litany of Breath, seeking the power of distant Para. Her sensitivity to the blue star was unmatched, but the effort it took to find a trickle of its power required the utmost concentration.
  
  The ranger pulled open the box.
  
  Kalinda mimed the Litany of the Spectral Snake and wrapped both rangers in skeins of air. The dark wounds on the women's wrists bloomed with everpine weapons, snapping toward her, but they were too late. Kalinda crushed them both, pinning the weapons to their bodies. Their faces ballooned. Legs kicked. The old woman squeezed the vital juices from their bodies. They burst like spent melons.
  
  The lifeless sacs of the rangers keeled over, spent.
  
  Kalinda grew dizzy. Vomited. Her hands shook with the effort of summoning and directing all that power from a descendant star. For one less skilled than she, holding Para would have been impossible.
  
  Hungry and shivering, she rooted through the rangers' saddlebags and ate everything that appeared edible. The bears, their forked tongues wagging at her and paws churning up the soil, she sent on their way. Traveling by bear would be too conspicuous. She had only made it this far unmolested because few thought to question a poor old woman laboring around with a battered leather box. More fool the rangers, for being the first to tangle with her.
  
  She slept for two days in a blackberry bramble, recovering her strength. When Oma blinked at her the third day, she continued her trek, winding through the ruins of the pass where once a great stronghold called Liona had sealed one country from another. The Tai Mora had carted off much of the building material to serve some other purpose. The Tai Mora were good at that, building their little hives atop the detritus of conquered civilizations. Even the timber here had been cut and loaded into wagons. She passed the corpse of a great bonsa tree lying on its side, the trunk so broad it would take three people standing fingertip to fingertip to span its diameter. The road here was well-trod, much busier than Dorinah, and smelled of tangy sap and moist, thawing soil. Great wagons pulled by mangy dogs and matted bears rolled over the hastily graveled road, moving to and from staging areas for troops and enslaved farmers. Kalinda suspected the Tai Mora were already regretting not bringing more farmers with them.
  
  Kalinda kept her hood up and trudged across the country that was once called Dhai. Those around her called it Novoso Mora now: "Our People Reborn." She passed newly tilled fields and charred groves being cut down by Dhai slaves and their Tai Mora masters, and she wondered how many of them would survive to harvest, let alone survive what the sky had in store for them. The air changed as she traveled through the toxic churn of wooded areas between old clan holds. Warmer, wetter, and yes, she smelled a hint of rot, still, as if the soil were so thick with the moldering dead that it could not help but stink of them.
  
  Up and up she went, finding it more difficult to avoid the press of people: Tai Mora rangers on their white bears; retinues of jistas in purple and red, green and blue robes; Dhai slaves wearing leather collars as they cleared fields of toxic plant life; traveling merchants calling out their offerings, mostly baubles, not enough food; high, garish laughter and jokes about cannibals from mercenaries getting their rotten feet tended by tirajistas – a bustle of humanity far too large for the area to ever support. Where the forests and toxic woods had been, thousands of makeshift tents stood in neat rows along the roadsides, like grave markers.
  
  Kalinda spent evenings sleeping outside the old wayhouses, eavesdropping on the travelers. Hunger was on their minds, and fear of the free Dhai who had taken up in the Woodland. She smiled to hear of that, because any people who could unsettle the Tai Mora were surely her allies. Her allegiance was not misplaced.
  
  To avoid the crush of people near Oma's Temple, she approached it from behind, up through the woodlands, hacking at poisonous balloon flowers with her machete, arms already prickled with a red rash caused by some terrible weed or other. After several hours, she reached a field of dead poppies overlooking the temple proper. The seams between the worlds were soft here; she had learned to sense it. She listened for other travelers in the woods, perhaps those she waited for, but heard nothing but the rustle of treegliders newly woken from their winter slumber.
  
  Satisfied, she dumped the box at her feet and lay in the broken grass and withered flowers and slept another half a day. When did calling on the power of the satellites become so exhausting? Old age was ridiculous. This was a ridiculous time to be alive.
  
  She woke to the sound of soft footsteps. Bird song. The smell of acrid bonsa sap. Crackle of crunching poppies.
  
  "So you came," Kalinda said, and turned to find the girl there, flanked by two very young jistas with dark mops of messy hair. Kalinda had a mind to wipe their mouths and smooth their hair for them. The whole lot of them needed a wash, as did she, which made her appreciate their company all the more.
  
  "I know your face," the girl said.
  
  "It's a time for familiar faces. I know yours as well."
  
  "Is your name Kalinda?"
  
  "It is. And you are Lilia."
  
  This Lilia was in a terrible state, far worse than the one Kalinda had known on her world. The girl before her held a stout walking stick and leaned heavily to one side, favoring her twisted foot. Shiny roundish scars peppered her face, and one of her hands was new and soft, clearly a replacement for one long gone. The other, which clutched the staff, lacked tension in the little finger. She wore an absurdly large bearskin coat, and beneath it a too-big tunic and trousers hung from her slight, gaunt frame. Her eyes were sharp in her sallow face, and dark bruises beneath her eyes made her gaze appear larger, more weary, than that of a woman thrice her age.
  
  Poor child, this.
  
  Behind the girl and her jistas, something rattled in the bushes. Kalinda expected a dog, or a small bear, but it was another girl, hunched over, eyes smooth pools of flesh, twisting her blind face this way and that, sniffing and tasting the wind. She settled next to Lilia as if they were close companions.
  
  Lilia patted the girl's shoulder with her soft hand. "Did you help me, on your world?" Lilia asked, gazing not at Kalinda, but at the disfigured girl pressed against her.
  
  "No. I ruled that world, before I lost it."
  
  Lilia did not look convinced. "You tried to help me, here," she said. "Was there someone like me over there?"
  
  "No," Kalinda lied, because the truth was always far more complicated. "But I understand your need. And I've brought a gift, as I said in my letter."
  
  "I wondered what sort of Kalinda you were," Lilia said. "I assure you, there are more jistas nearby, should you attempt anything deceptive."
  
  Kalinda cackled. "Oh, child, I could crush the breath from your body in a wink."
  
  One of the jistas stepped forward. The air thickened.
  
  "No, no," Kalinda said, waving her hand. "I'm not here for that. I wanted to meet you personally, to gauge how serious your little rebellion truly is. They complain about you burning their wagons, down in the valley."
  
  "We will do worse than that," Lilia said, "but for now we prefer to be but biting flies. In the days after we fled Kuallina, I promised my people we would take back Dhai. A year later, I'm nearly prepared to make good on that promise."
  
  "Oh child," Kalinda said, "don't you know that now is the time for coming together? Not breaking apart. That's why I've brought you this gift. You will need it, for where you're going. The Tai Mora have found the fifth temple, the People's Temple, long buried beneath the sea. But it's missing a very vital piece."
  
  "How do you know that?"
  
  "Because I'm the one who took the piece." Kalinda nodded to the box. "There is a great warrior in there, and within them, a vital piece the Tai Mora, or some other, would need in order to call on the full power of the satellites from the People's Temple."
  
  "We've been watching their progress," Lilia said, "off the western coast, near Fasia's Point. Is that what they've been dredging up? A whole temple?" She shook her head. "Mad."
  
  "Not too difficult, with so many stars in the sky."
  
  "You're giving me this… vital piece? Why? I want to take back the country. I care nothing for closing the ways between the worlds."
  
  "Don't you? The time for worldbreakers is not over, Lilia. It's just beginning. But you can't do this alone."
  
  The girl recoiled. "Don't use that word!" she snapped. "There's no such thing. I've been pushed and pulled by others using that word for me, and it was all a lie. There's no grim purpose, no chosen one, nothing to save us but ourselves and the plans I have put together–"
  
  Kalinda bent and pulled the top off the box. She presented the bones to the girl, triumphant. "What do you say to that, then?"
  
  Lilia stared into the box. The bones were bound tightly in a throbbing, tangled root mass that oozed sticky green sap. Mixed in with it were dried leaves, bits of dead ivy, and a single node of intricate silver-green metal shaped like a trefoil with a tail.
  
  "What… What is this?" Lilia said.
  
  "A box of bones."
  
  "I can see that. But this?" She pointed to the silver-green shape.
  
  "It's the symbol for the People's Temple. You recognize it, don't you? I spent weeks digging through old rooms and tunnels, but it was part of the throne, of all things, that gooey silvery throne room packed with bones, and…" She trailed off. Certainly the girl didn't need to know the details.
  
  Lilia rubbed at her wrist. Peered at Kalinda anew. "Are you a… blood witch? Is that why you think you can bring a body back that's this far gone?"
  
  "On my world, yes. But it's not my skill alone. I found this among the detritus of another race, one that can twist a soul's memory into the shape of a root and let it rest for an age – a thousand years, or more – before awakening it again. It was simply very lucky for us that so many died trying to murder them, and I was able to retrieve these bones. Two thousand years of creeping star-magic in that wood, magic foreign even to me, but it has given us a safe place to put this silver piece of the People's Temple. Only you will know it's here."
  
  But Lilia did not seem to hear her. She was staring past Kalinda, across the field of poppies. "When I saw you here, or, my Kalinda here," Lilia said, "so long ago, I thought you were a blood witch. Do you know what that is?"
  
  "I do. The closer a world is to yours, the more alike it is. Your world and mine were even closer than yours and this one."
  
  Lilia came back to herself and staggered forward, the color draining from her face. Her jistas made to follow, but she waved them back. She bent close to Kalinda, and spoke just above a whisper, her breath tickling Kalinda's ear. "Don't talk about what world I'm from."
  
  Ah, of course her little followers wouldn't know where Lilia was from, would not know her mother had bundled her up and stowed her here, slicing a hole between two worlds to do it.
  
  "I know what you are," Kalinda said softly. "I know your mother brought you here from the Tai Mora's world, to save you. And she did more than that. She made it possible for this to end some other way. But you haven't chosen which way, yet. There are many possible futures, most terrible. Some good. You must decide if you truly hate yourself so much that you will murder the people from your own world, or if you will find some other way. I don't envy you that choice."
  
  Lilia pulled away. "What if I don't want this… piece? What if I don't want to go to the People's Temple at all? It's crawling with Tai Mora. I have plans for a different assault, one that will hurt them far more easily."
  
  "You clearly needed aid," Kalinda said, "and I've brought what I could. As I have for you always, haven't I? Some version of me."
  
  Lilia squeezed her eyes shut. Inhaled deeply through her nose. "Stop invoking the name of someone else. You aren't her."
  
  "But I am," Kalinda said. "We all are. Don't you understand that yet?"
  
  "Don't twist my head," Lilia said. "Tell me about who this is, then. The soul of a great warrior?"
  
  "Oh, it is. I chose the soul very carefully. Of course, for a body this far gone… it does require a bit of sacrifice on your part. It's nigh impossible to bring a body back that's this dead, without some… blood witchery, you understand?"
  
  "Very well," Lilia said. "What do you want for it?"
  
  "It's what you need to give it." Kalinda had already used up a great deal of energy fighting the rangers two weeks before. This last bit of binding would be tricky. Kalinda muttered an intricate litany, one she had not used since she was a girl, and cast a purl of breathy power across the bones. "Now I need you to spit into the box," Kalinda said.
  
  "And… what happens then?"
  
  "That will begin the process of binding."
  
  "Binding… what?"
  
  "This was a very complicated spell, child. I was not alone when I began this journey. I had two powerful sinajistas and six tirajistas with me. All gone now, but all necessary to make this possible. When you spit into the box, the warrior contained within will begin to be reborn, and will be bound to you. But you must spit into the box."
  
  "This is mad," Lilia muttered.
  
  "Let's leave it, Lilia," said the shorter tirajista. "She's just another old woman made addled by all this."
  
  "A moment, Salifa," Lilia said, raising her voice to be heard by those behind her. She lowered it again and said, "Kalinda, I want the truth. About the Lilia you knew in your world."
  
  "I told you, there wasn't–"
  
  "That's a lie. You said your world and mine were closer than this one and mine."
  
  Kalinda hummed a bit, an old lullaby, but Lilia did not react to it. A shame, really. She must not have raised this Lilia as long, here. "I trained you to be a great warrior," Kalinda said, "to fight at my side. To come with me to this world and storm the People's Temple and take control of the transference engine at the center of it and remake the world. I trained you to be a worldbreaker there. You were a powerful omajista, more powerful than any we encountered. You could have seared every one of these Tai Mora in an instant. We had so much more knowledge of what was to come that we could train you from the time you were very small."
  
  "…But?"
  
  "But, yes… there's that, isn't it?" Kalinda's throat ached. She coughed. "But, well…"
  
  "I failed," Lilia said, darkly.
  
  "You did."
  
  "All the knowledge, all the training, and I failed."
  
  "That was a different Lilia. You have made different choices."
  
  "I don't think they're better ones," Lilia said.
  
  "You don't know that! None of us does, you arrogant little spithead."
  
  The bones rattled in the box.
  
  Lilia started. "What…?"
  
  Kalinda hefted up the box. Proffered it to Lilia. "I agree with you," Kalinda said. "There is no chosen one, no absolute singular person who can turn the tide. But there are people who choose."
  
  Lilia worked her mouth, gaze set on Kalinda, and spit into the box. "Is that enough?"
  
  Kalinda nodded. She put the lid back on the box. "That's good." The box lay inert at her feet again.
  
  "Nothing is happening," Lilia said.
  
  "Patience," Kalinda said. "The warrior will awaken."
  
  "I don't have time to wait."
  
  "Tira's tears, child, resurrection takes time. Pack this box into a trunk – three paces long, two paces high – and throw in two handfuls of fertile soil. Leave it in a cool, dry room for… at least seven days."
  
  "And then?"
  
  "Then the warrior will awaken, and will be bound to you. You only become unbound in death, understand?
  
  "Wait, does that mean… if they die, I die? I didn't agree to that!"
  
  "No, no," Kalinda said. "But if you feel pain, they will feel pain. If you are in need, they are compelled to aid you. Come, what do you have to lose, Lilia Sona? Do you already have so many allies that you can turn down a gift from an old woman with a fond memory for who you might have been?"
  
  Lilia stared at the box. She chewed at her thumbnail, the feathery one on her soft, still-forming new hand. "You know what drives me, Kalinda Lasa, what has driven me from the time your shadow found me here, cast out from my world into a field of poppies?"
  
  "I do."
  
  "Do you?"
  
  "Of course." Kalinda raised a hand to brush Lilia's cheek, but the girl recoiled. Kalinda would have wept, but she had spent those tears some time ago.
  
  "You continue in the face of the impossible," Kalinda said, "because you are willing to destroy the world – and even yourself – to get your revenge. I know what the Tai Mora did to you, Lilia, because they did it to my Lilia, too."
  
  Lilia's grip on her walking stick tightened. The little blind girl at her feet whimpered. "It's all right, Namia," Lilia said. "I promise you we will destroy every one of them."
  
  Kalinda held out the box one last time.
  
  At a gesture from Lilia, Salifa took the box from Kalinda's hands. In that moment, a great weight lifted from Kalinda's shoulders. She had done all she could. For this Lilia, and the last.