Chapter 35

  As the light through the window waned to a dim sliver, Hitasa ran out of paper.

  Her arm ached. Her fingers felt as if they would fall off. A good portion of her body was covered in paper cuts. Ten of the twelve pens lay scattered on the floor, empty and useless. They had felt strange to write with, but had created a consistent and satisfying mark.

  And now, a stack of five hundred one-page leaflets folded in half rested comfortably on Dava’s bedside table.

  Hitasa sat back on Dava’s bed and stared at the stack. Her back, so stiff that her spine felt fused, screamed at her as it stretched for the first time since she had closed the door. She didn’t remember the last ten hours. The only thing on her mind had been printing her words and the words of her brother and giving the entire collection an eagle-eyed review to make sure there were no glaring errors.

  But the text of the manifesto no longer plagued her thoughts. It had finally ceased running through her mind at a thousand lines a second. For a blessed few minutes, she thought only of her aches, pains, and blistered fingers.

  And then she saw Sitoa’s face in her memory as he looked over that first copy they had written together. His eyes had run back and forth along the page, carefully reading each exquisite sentence and paragraph. A smile had touched his lips. Tears had formed under his eyelids.

  Hitasa leaned forward again, touching the top leaflet with the tips of her fingers. After a moment, she pressed it open so the words inside could be free. She bowed her head until it was almost between her legs and felt her brother reading over her shoulder.

  Oh, that’s good, he said. Great choice. Is the punctuation right here? What if we replaced nobility with virtue? You’re right, that doesn’t quite fit.

  Hitasa’s own tears quietly splashed on the wooden boards of the floor. She and Sitoa had talked for hours about the perfect wording. In recording the manifesto now, she had made no changes. She lifted her head again to stare at the page.

  “What do I now, brother?” Her voice broke. “Wh— Where do I take it? Who do I show it to?”

  The tears did not stop. She wanted to hear his voice. She wanted him to say something new; to speak some suggestion or proposal instead of just repeating the same memorized phrases in her head over and over. The more she remembered those moments, the more the tears flowed. She didn’t want just to remember him; she wanted him to be alive. She wanted him to praise her recall of the manifesto and to admire her careful handwriting.

  She wanted so much, and the tears became sobs. They wracked her entire body. Every wail came with a shuddering breath that threatened to break her in half. Why hadn’t completing the manifesto brought him back? Why was she left with only his writing?

  They should have been brother and sister for a thousand years.

  Ten thousand.

  He had given her twenty years and then left her behind. Her mother and father had given her ten. Her uncle had given her a few hours. The rest of her family had died long before she might ever have known them. What was she left with now?

  One page repeated five hundred times.

  Dava’s house was empty. There was no one to hear Hitasa weep herself hoarse. She let go of everything and found the reservoir of her sadness ran far too deep. She felt she would cry for a millennium.

  ***

  Somewhere in the endless deluge of tears, she grabbed up the five hundred pages and ran out into the night, her eyes still wet.

  ***

  Hitasa found herself in the city square with the dragon statue of Drako. She handed out the leaflets to any elf who passed by. There were not many. It was late, and most of Batulan-bar had gone to bed hours ago. Those who were unfortunate enough to be away from home at this hour did not want to see a weeping elf, let alone be accosted by her attempt to give away illegal literature.

  But she had to try. She had to manifest Sitoa as more than just her memory and ink on a stack of paper. Others had to know he had existed; to know what he had died for. She shied away from any beastkin and hounded every elf, begging them to take a leaflet.

  None did. They were too afraid of reprisals for reading a publication unauthorized by the humans. Some probably even planned to report her to the local Office of Elven Compliance.

  Hitasa persisted anyway.

  A group of six elven servants with the well-manicured appearance of house laborers entered the square, loudly discussing what seemed to be the recent termination of their employment. Hitasa did not care about the content of their conversation. She managed to stifle her crying to a persistent sniffle and walked up to them, holding out a spread of leaflets.

  “Fight for your right to age,” she said. “Fight to walk in your forests again.”

  At first, the group of elves did not understand.

  One of them—a she-elf wearing a maid’s uniform—saw her clear distress and asked, “Are you well, sister?”

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  But then, they collectively realized what she was holding out to them and backed away as a group. Two of them even turned away.

  One of the maid’s companions said, “You must not show this to us, sister.” He gently extended his hand as if to push the leaflets away.

  “We can’t—” Hitasa said, and her voice cracked. “We can’t live in fear. We have our dignity. I will take back my freedom to live under leaf-filtered starlight.”

  One of elves that wouldn’t look at her said, “Join the hunters if want to see a forest. Keep us out of it.”

  Hitasa walked closer, approaching the she-elf dressed as a maid. Her elven sister did not retreat, but gave her a pity-filled look. Hitasa pressed one of the leaflets into her hands.

  “Please, they are only words. There is no spell here. Read. If you read, I know you will want to help me.”

  “Let me help you,” the maid said. “Where do you live? I can take you home.” She dropped the leaflet, letting it flutter to the cobblestone street. “Just promise me you will destroy these before anyone sees. You’re lucky the watch is preoccupied right now.”

  Hitasa reflexively pulled back from her, clutching the remaining stack of leaflets to her chest. “I will not destroy them.”

  The maid’s expression became determined. She gestured to her companions. “Give me a hand with her. We need to burn this stuff and get her off the street before the wrong person notices. Someone might already have tried to tip off the Wolf Brigade.”

  The two of the group who had turned away chose that moment to keep walking and leave their friends behind without further comment. One of the others shook his head and stood back farther, saying, “That human just set me for the next twenty years. I’m not risking that to help a waif like her.”

  “You’re useless,” the maid said to him, and then repeated, raising her voice so the two walking away could hear her. “Useless!” She lowered her voice again and spoke directly to Hitasa, “We have to help each other.”

  Hitasa nodded vigorously. “Yes, exactly. We have to help each other. I can show you how.”

  But the maid closed in on her with those pity-filled eyes. Her two remaining companions, apparently as concerned as she was, followed her, hands stretched out to grab Hitasa. One of her fellow elves stepped on the fallen leaflet, turning the brilliant white paper brown with the mud on his shoe.

  “If you just read,” Hitasa said, backing away from them. “Read his words.”

  “It is well, sister,” the maid said. “We only want you to be safe.” She raised a finger. “Kindela means a little flare.”

  A small flame blossomed at the tip of her finger, barely more than what a candle might produce. It was the kind of publicized magic that anyone could accomplish with a few friends as believers. The humans didn’t fear a candle’s worth of fire, and whoever the maid worked for might even encourage her to develop such tricks.

  The maid’s two friends lunged for Hitasa. Hitasa turned her back to them, protecting the leaflets. The maid tried to grab them out of Hitasa’s hands, but Hitasa fell to the ground, smothering the paper with her body so they couldn’t reach it.

  “Get her up!” one of them shouted.

  “Don’t hurt her,” the maid said.

  They grabbed at her arms and legs and pulled. She tried to resist, but they were too strong. Her elven strength didn’t matter when her own people were the ones accosting her.

  “Stay away!” Hitasa wailed. “Leave me alone!”

  It didn’t matter. They dragged her to her feet and stole the leaflets from her arms. The paper scattered across the street, fluttering in the wind.

  “Help me gather it up,” the maid said. “We can’t leave a single page for someone to find.”

  The maid ran back with one of her friends, snatching up every leaflet. The strongest of her companions held Hitasa in place, forcing her to watch while they gathered up Sitoa’s life’s work to burn. She pleaded with them to stop; to let her go. They ignored her, and the first sentence entered her mind again.

  There is shame in our history.

  Hitasa would have to begin repeating it again, lest she forget her brother’s words.

  “What is happening here?” a strong feminine voice demanded from the ether.

  The scampering elves froze in fear. They all looked to the source of the voice, expecting to see a patrol of beastkin guards. Instead, a pair of elves Hitasa recognized came walking into the light of the lone lamp still watching over their section of the street. Metsa and her son stopped a few yards shy of Hitasa and her assailants. They each wore their hunter uniform.

  “What are you doing to her?” Metsa asked. She pointed at the man holding Hitasa. “Let her go.”

  Hitasa’s captor obliged, not wanting to go against a hunter. Hitasa immediately set to collecting the discarded leaflets, sweeping them into her arms as quickly as she could, lest an errant page blow away where it might be drenched in a puddle and never be read.

  “She is unwell,” the maid elf explained. “She is passing out handbills in the dead of night.”

  “And this is how you treat an unwell sister? You accost her as a gang?” Metsa shook her head. “I know her. Begone, all of you. I will see to her safety.”

  The group of elven servants needed no more convincing. They dropped what papers they had gathered and chased after their already departed friends. Hitasa did not stop gathering the copies of her brother’s manifesto. She felt Metsa’s eyes on her, judging her as Hitasa ran here and there, grabbing up every last page.

  “I knew you were desperate,” Metsa said, “but this is beyond what I expected. Have you gone mad?”

  Hitasa stood still just long enough to say, her voice shaking, “It must be read, otherwise what is the point?”

  She reached down and snatched a page just before the wind caught it. The breeze blew another six sheets against the statue of Drako, and she ran to grab them before they could slip away and fly to another street.

  Metsa followed her closely. “It is as if you want to be caught. Why do you—”

  “Mother,” her son said, interrupting her. Staja stepped between her and Hitasa. “Are you blind?”

  The elf matron looked mildly stunned. “What?”

  “Do you not see her tears? There is something else happening here. Wait to berate her until we are off the street.”

  He jogged to join Hitasa and began helping her pick up the leaflets. Metsa watched quietly while they worked. Thanks to Staja’s help, it only took a few minutes find and retrieve every page. Staja handed Hitasa his stack and she put them together to begin counting. She flipped through the pages as quickly as she could without losing count.

  Both Metsa and Staja waited patiently for her to finish, watching up and down the street for any guards that might happen upon the scene. They knew it was important to account for every page, though they didn’t know exactly why Hitasa was being so careful.

  Finally, Hitasa came to an accurate count. Four hundred and ninety-nine. She was one short. And then she looked up to see the final leaflet open in Metsa hands. It was the copy the elf servant had stepped on. Hitasa watched her carefully, clutching the rest of the leaflets close to her chest.

  When Metsa was done, she closed the leaflet and looked at its author. “You wrote this?”

  “My brother and I.”

  “And where is your brother?”

  “Sitoa is dead.” Hitasa approached the elf matriarch. “You read it. What did you think?”

  Metsa ignored the question. “Where did you get the paper? I’ve never seen any like this before.”

  “Dalex gave it to me. What. Did. You. Think?”

  “That man,” Metsa said. “What will he do next?” She folded the leaflet twice and slipped it into a pocket. “I think it’s brilliant. It’s everything that our people need to read.”

  Hitasa stared at her. After a few seconds, her legs became weak, and she fell to her knees. She made little hiccupping noises, and Staja rested a hand on her shoulder.

  “Which is why,” Metsa continued, “I am so dismayed you would be so careless with this message. This is not the method to spread it, and you know it. Staja, help her up. We need to get her home before the watch decides it’s time to do their jobs.”

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