The Water Spinner by Jessie Chang

Author:Jessie Chang [Chang, Jessie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

22

Ladasa

Language: Wandering Tribes, native tongue

Meaning: To be adrift

I couldn’t speak or move, and I couldn’t see.

I heard many things as I drifted in this strange space between life and death.

“How could you let her do this, Faylen!” Greylock shouted. “She’s but one woman—why didn’t you stop her!” He coughed violently.

Faylen yelled back in frustration, “But one woman? Are you a complete idiot? She conjured an entire wall of water around me and my men! I couldn’t penetrate it! No one could! Now sit down and rest before you cough out your only good lung.”

“Look at her!” Greylock continued to shout, his voice hoarse. “Drained to near death! Has she not done enough? Has she not been through enough?”

“Keep your voice down, Altaros. She knew the Imperial Guards were going to break through my defenses. It was over two thousand against barely four hundred, and your men were too overrun to help us. She must have known she’d be recaptured.” Then in a softer voice, “I think she was ready to die fighting.”

“She’s the Water Spinner, not a warrior or a martyr,” Greylock muttered.

“No,” Faylen said, a steel edge in her voice. “Don’t simplify her like that, as if she’s a mere faucet! Don’t ignore what you saw. She nearly killed hundreds of King Ulrath’s men—”

“But she didn’t kill them,” Greylock interrupted. “She stopped herself.”

“You stopped her,” Faylen retorted.

There was silence before Greylock said, almost to himself, “This was never what I wished for her.”

I drifted off again. I didn’t know for how long.

“How is she now?” Greylock’s voice again, still rough. He sounded close, as if he were standing over me.

“The same, though she is bleeding a little less. She did far too much too soon” came Shalendra’s gravelly speech.

Greylock swore bitterly, “Myendi.”

Shalendra swept something cool over my forehead. “You are not to blame.”

“I am.”

“You are not.”

“I am! I was the one who allowed her to stay in the spire with Daggon instead of sending her into the mountain with you and the others. I should have realized seeing King Ulrath again would enrage her. I should have realized she would do nearly anything to avoid recapture—”

“It was her decision to do what she did. This is no time for blame or guilt. You need to help her through this. I believe she trusts you, despite what you might think. She can either become a beacon of hope or lose herself in the terrifying consequences of such incredible power.”

“If she survives,” Greylock said harshly.

He sounded so grim, so bleak.

“You have never doubted my healing abilities before. I will take care of her. Now, stop with this moping and rest.”

I drifted away again. I shifted in and out of troubling dreams, forsaken memories. I relived the death of my parents and my capture by King Ulrath, again and again.

More voices.

“It’s been two days,” said Faylen worriedly. “And still nothing.”

“At least the bleeding has stopped” came another voice. Taevin Renwith.

“Thank the gods for that.” Faylen sighed. “I thought she was lost to us when I saw all that blood soaking through her clothes.

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