The Boundary

 There was no such admission for the two she traveled with. She was caught in a trap whose jaws are 'too soon' and 'too late' – it wasn't the right time and never could be. Unable to make a choice, she could only wait for one to be imposed by some external force with the power to break this terrible deadlock, something for which the responsibility so incurred would be light as a feather. The others sensed her disease and thought of their own explanations, that it was because she'd killed another, which she thought of frequently during that last day at sea. She shouldn't have, she knew, yet noted with surprise that she felt no guilt for the act. It had simply been necessary.

That last day was a quiet one, concluded with little fanfare when they went ashore in the cove Guozi had mentioned, a natural harbor hemmed in on three sides by steep cliffs. A column of chalk stood at the entrance and was well matched by the brilliant white sand of the beach. The rowers left them on that thin, beautiful margin and returned to the ship, leaving the travelers with enough to survive the trek inland but not so much as to overly burden them. A journey of a couple days to the southwest would take them to Migdol, the first settlement across the border in Nar. It would be a significant milestone, yet this also failed to stir any feelings in Asphodel save a quiet but insistent foreboding.

The three of them walked together over crags and dark terraces of cooled volcanic stone birthed ages ago in some chthonic furnace and upon which life was a recent and not wholly welcome visitor. Stands of juniper and cypress were rooted to the naked rock and waved in the harsh winds of that altitude, black flames against a dead gray sky as though the same hand that sculpted those peaks had also bled all color from its creation. Old, wind-carved formations stood on the slopes, smooth-edged sculptures, rocks into which pinholes had been bored over eons that wailed when the wind passed through them, arches that supported nothing and tunnels that led nowhere. It was a tired land, bowed beneath the weight of its own antiquity. In places along the narrow switchback trails they saw freestanding columns modified by the wild tribes of the mountains, rough-hewn notches by the shadows of which pagan shamans kept record of their festival days.

Further ascent took them to a high pass bounded on each side by the immense walls of an ice sheet that squatted atop the range's spine, spilling down the escarpment to that invisible boundary where glacial cold joined with warm air rising from below and faded into a series of clear, pure springs. The travelers halted at a bend in the path from which one could see the frontier, not as a solid line graven in a map or boundary stone but a subtle gradation from one mode of life to another made manifest in the collective soul of the nation, a soul made of the laws and language and history and cherished dreams of a people held in communion from which one may be estranged but never wholly excised. The very threshold that in its openness seemed to welcome Asphodel only hollowed her of the desire to return. And so she stood in the rift between two worlds, unable to choose.

“It's a nice view and all, but we should keep moving,” said Tex.

“I don't know if I can.”

“You're not hurt, are you?”

“No, I just... don't know if I belong here anymore,” she said. “You should go home.”

“Come on, we're not abandoning you. We made it this far.”

“And it was a mistake. I thought that if we reached Nar it would free me from this dilemma. But now I'm even less sure than when we started.”

“Sure of what? Do you know what she's talking about?” Tex asked and looked at Neteth, who smoldered with private suspicions and said nothing.

And what could be said? That he had wasted his mercy as the farmer who sows among brambles and weeds? What would it mean to turn back now, having made it halfway and quit?

“Where'll you go, then?”

“I can make my own way home,” Asphodel said. Even she didn't seem convinced by her words.

“Alone?”

“I know this country. I went to Migdol once, just before I went north. All I have to do is make it that far.”

“And if you're still being followed?” Neteth asked.

“They're gone,” she replied, wondering what he thought was really happening, how much he'd inferred. He had to know she had been lying about the strength of her magic, but that was the easiest lie to dismiss: what would she have gained by making herself out to be dangerous? Why look more suspicious than she already did? The lie, like the death, had been necessary.

“Where will you go next? After Migdol. If you don't belong in your home, then where can you go?”

“I'll figure that out.”

“That's not the most reassuring answer,” Tex said.

“I'm welcome here. No matter what else happens, I'll be safe, so don't worry on my account.”

“We could all go back together,” Neteth offered. “This time, my father will know I won't allow anything to happen to you. He'll be forced to issue an acquittal. I can make him.”

“Don't promise me that.”

“Last time, he was not aware of my resolve. I can make him.”

“You know you can't,” she said and wanted to believe it was as simple as the prince insisted. But the king was right and if she returned both he and his son would die. She could only stop that eventuality by making it impossible for the plotters to use her, to vanish to some place they could not find.

Stubbornly, Neteth refused to accept a logic of which he could only perceive the edges, for all else had been concealed from him and by ignorance of strength of will he turned away from the questions that would have led to a complete image. As he continued his attempts at persuasion Asphodel realized that he simply didn't want to part ways. The choice of one destination over another was trivial to him so long as it was the one she chose. At last, frustrated and weary of argument, she sighed heavily.

“How far would you follow me?”

“However far I must,” he said.

“Would you?” she asked coldly. “Would you really? To the ends of the world? To the abode of the dead? Not long ago you were calling this a cursed land. You boasted of your hatred.”

“It's because of you that I can no longer feel that way.”

There was a long interval in which only the wind was heard between them, two wills caught on the horns of a contradiction neither had seen coming until it was already upon them, a thing at once strong and savage and subtle in its ways. Neither knew what to say or if there was anything that could be said. Then a new sound intruded, harsh and guttural against the wailing chorus of the mountain air, a sound of footsteps crunching the barren scree, and they knew the hunters had found them.