The Weight of the World on Her Shoulders

torrent pouring from it jostled one of her fingers. Simple enough to bring it back into place. The rest of her body and mind saturated with the evanescent residues of Wild Power, but the piquancy of the sensation never dimmed.

  When Keshnu's last stitch pulled tight, Dora found herself caught completely by surprise. The last ragged streamers of the white sheet of water simply shut off, their flow disappearing into the depths of the Abyss. Keshnu drifted back towards her, his instruction to close off her Gift losing all its urgency in the face of the languid quality of the light.

  Still, he was right. Better not to do more than necessary now. Somewhere back in ordinary logic, she was probably still bleeding, battered from the quake. Bracing for a fight, Dora steadied her hands and shifted them back into alignment.

  No resistance materialised. One moment the Sherim was open, the next it might as well not have been there. The stream of Wild Power fled through her every bit as fast as the water had vanished into the Abyss. Dora just had time to release her grip on her Gift before her consciousness came apart to a riot of black-and-white dots. There was a brief rush of weariness and pain, and then sensation vanished altogether.

  Dora strode up the tunnel towards Rel's cell, easily keeping pace with Taslin. Since waking up, she'd felt... almost back to herself. She still spent most of her time in the caves under the old city, but the rocks around her seemed stabler. She was getting better at riding down the spells of dizziness that came when high emotions set her logic teetering. It felt good to know that when she really needed to, she could control her Gift again, even if she couldn't really remember what she'd done.

  Keshnu thought that was probably because her memory was still working on a human logic which didn't have concepts for some of the features of her power. The Gift-Giver had been little short of worshipful the past couple of days, but she'd had no chance to speak to him in private. Even now, he was out by the Abyss, trying everything he could think of to knit it back together. The ground still occasionally trembled.

  "Why have you started smiling when you think of Keshnu?" Taslin kept her voice soft, her tone high and inquisitive, but Dora still felt a shiver spread itself across her shoulders. The Gift-Giver had borne her up and steadied her through her efforts at the Abyss, but in the process had been a little too close to Dora's expanded mind. Ever since, Taslin had demonstrated a bit too much insight to be comfortable with.

  "What makes you say that?" Dora tried to keep from sounding too sharp, knowing that she couldn't really hide the truth. The thought of telling someone, even someone she trusted as much as Taslin, just felt... Well, it didn't feel like anything. It just didn't want to happen.

  Taslin frowned, her face turning hawkish and implacable. Dora faltered a step and stumbled, but managed to avoid leaning on the Gift-Giver to steady herself. Taslin said, "Dora, you know I can see the shape of your thoughts. That's what you look like to me. Normally I can't make sense of it, but when you're thinking of the Second Realm, or one of us, it's completely clear. And lately, every time you think of Keshnu, your mood shifts for the better."

  "I-" Dora stopped, hating the way her legs suddenly felt like stilts, her head like fluff too light to fall. She was going to have to stop walking, or she'd trip over her own feet and make a fool of herself.

  "It's not a criticism. If anything, I think it's a positive sign." As ever, Taslin mistook her confusion for weakness. "I'd just like to know why. Or how, perhaps. Anything that helps me understand how your kind form attachments and find pleasure in them."

  Dora clenched her fists, stopping and turning to put her back to the Gift-Giver. Why was she so afraid? There was no shame in what had happened. She took a deep breath, but her voice still came out ragged and mousey as she said, "Keshnu and I have a child together." The world came apart as she finished the sentence, her emotions surging hot into her cheeks while her hold on First-Realm logic slipped. The rough stone in front of her dropped out of focus and came back as a patch of clay set with a thousand shards of glass, glinting in the distant light.

  Sightless awareness of Taslin flooded in, which at least gave Dora the satisfaction of seeing the Gift-Giver's near-perfect performance of humanity falter in shock. If she turned round to look, Taslin's features would seem blurred, maybe even completely blank. Well, the news was beyond what anyone had thought might be possible.

  A tingle ran across Dora's skin, and for a moment she fought to keep from twitching at it. But why bother? Taslin would be too shocked to see. She let it come, shuddered as it passed. Then she turned to face the Gift-Giver.

  It took a moment for the Wilder to pull her face back to its normal elegance. "A child? You're pregnant?" Dora couldn't tell if the thinness in Taslin's voice was her attempt at sounding shocked or just her still struggling to regain control.

  "No, a Child of the Wild. Or, I suppose, half of the Wild." It was a pitiful attempt at levity, but Dora was sure she wouldn’t have even managed that two days ago.

  "That should be impossible." Despite the long echoes furnished by the tunnel, Taslin's words hung dead in the air.

  "It happened at the Sherim." Dora glanced up and down the tunnel, keeping her voice low. The nearest corners in both directions were a good distance away, but sound travelled well down here, and Rel's cell wasn't all that far. Heaven alone knew what he'd think when he found out. She wasn't ready to face that just yet. "Or... I had my Sherim open, anyway, and my logic was breaking down. I don't pretend to understand it, in either of our logics."

  "The child?" Again, Taslin's face drew back into focus, her skin pale, eyes that were normally so incisive held wide open. Even by Taslin's standards, it was a quick recovery.

  Dora swallowed. She hadn't seen the tiny, fragile neonate - my child, she admonished herself - since entrusting it to Keshnu. "He took it to the crèche at the Court. We judged it would be safer there."

  Taslin lifted a hand to squeeze Dora's shoulder. "You... long for it?"

  "I feel like I'm neglecting it." Dora looked down at her hands, managing not to fiddle with the bandage on her injured finger. "It's so different to how I was expecting parenthood to be."

  "You were expecting a different kind of parenthood." Taslin smiled, even remembering that a wide, friendly smile made her look demonic and moderating accordingly. Dora wished she could steady her nerves so quickly. The Gift-Giver let her hand trail down Dora's arm, lifting her wrist. "I am happy for you, and very proud."

  It was nice, Dora realised, to have a lump in her throat from something other than Second-Gift-induced frailty. She met Taslin's eyes. "Thank you." Her voice wavered, but she pulled herself back together with a grin, taking her hand back from Taslin's grip. "And well done. Pride is a good response, and you showed it well."

  Taslin nodded. "I could offer no less than my best, if you are reaching so far as to consider pairing yourself with Keshnu."

  Was that what she'd been doing? Dora supposed it had to be, though her head swum a little at the thought. Wildren parental pairings were far more dignified and stately than the chaos of human romance, but it was still a lot to take on board. Would Keshnu even be willing? Or, worse, would he go along with it in spite of some other preference, because it would be good for relations between the Realms?

  Well, she'd been wanting a chance to speak to him. Maybe when the Abyss was a bit safer, they'd have the chance to discuss it in detail. Once Rel was dealt with. And she'd been back to make sure Federas was still safe. Pevan and the Sherriff should have been able to keep things under control, but Notia was a new and badly under-trained Four Knot.

  Taslin said something. Dora flinched as the edge of caution in the Gift-Giver's emotion went through her. She'd let her mind wander again, despite Keshnu's repeated warnings.

  She pulled herself up straight. "Sorry?"

  "Are you alright?" Taslin frowned. "The idea didn't offend you?"

  "What? No." Dora said, with a breathless laugh. "No, why would it?"

  The Gift-Giver looked away, her face pinched
in what Dora thought must have been a show of emotional pain. "Rel found the idea revolting. You remember our arrival in Vessit."

  Dora rolled her eyes at the memory. Rel sometimes had no sense of humour. She hadn't teased him since, but he still hadn't forgiven her. "That was different. He was thinking of a human relationship with..." Perhaps it was better not to pick out Taslin by name. "He was thinking about human sex, I think, not a Wildren pairing. And not all of us are as close-minded and stubborn as Rel. Even he might soften with time, once this whole mess with his trial is over."

  "Are you sure?" When Taslin brought her face back around to Dora, it was blank, almost artificially so.

  "I don't find Keshnu revolting, certainly." It felt good to smile, even if it meant admitting that thinking of Keshnu did indeed make her smile. She treated herself to an inward sigh of exasperation. "He's nice. I admire him. I will be pleased to raise our child together."

  A voice echoed down the tunnel from somewhere ahead of them, echoes mangling the words to little more than a high-pitched call of alarm. The accent seemed oddly familiar, though. Dora glanced at Taslin, but the Gift-Giver broke into a headlong run before she could speak.

  Dora hitched up her skirt and managed a creditable turn of speed despite the rough tunnel floor and her thin boot-soles.