They reached the northern edge of the Smokestacks just after lunch, a month after leaving the guide’s outpost.

  Mara hadn’t known what to expect of the transition. While the rest of the Provinces had been explored sufficiently to produce maps and illustrations, the Smokestacks and the Ripshaws were mapped only vaguely. Mountains to the north, forest to the south–hundreds of millions of acres of myth and mystery in between.

  Whatever she’d expected of the mysterious stretch of land, she knew it wasn’t this.

  When they finally reached the boundary of the Smokestacks, the dark, impenetrable forest did not thin out or evolve. The trees simply stopped. All at once, all in a row like they’d been planted, the last of the fat trunked behemoths loomed like skulking sentinels over the land beyond.

  Mara stood in the shade of the last trees, squinting in the sunlight–stark and painful after so many days in heavy shadow. Before her lay a stretch of land that extended to the horizon as far as she could see, the terrain flat but the ground itself a lumpy mess of deep red rock. Like a turbulent river of blood, frozen in time. She looked down to double check the compass, which pointed cheerfully across the nightmare landscape.

  “I suppose this is the red stone the note was referring to?” she asked, turning as Eli drew up beside her, Nick on his shoulders. “I was hoping we’d manage to skip it.”

  “The Sanguine Sea. But it’s not quite as ominous as it sounds,” Eli said, but his face was grim. He turned as the others joined them and said something in Trellish, likely repeating what he’d just told her. They looked about as convinced as she felt, Lev’s eyes wide, Farin’s carefully blank.

  “So now that we’re here, can you tell us what this is?” Mara toed at the edge of the red stone, which tangled and cracked beneath their feet where it meet the tree roots.

  “An ankle-twisting hazard.”

  “Eli…”

  He sighed. “We’ll stop here for the day. Make camp and start out in the morning.” He spoke to Lev and Farin, and they nodded and headed back into the woods. He swung Nick off his shoulders and tapped him on the back, urging him to follow them. “Go walk with Carissa, Nicky.”

  Nick toddled off after the others, and Mara walked beside Eli, following more slowly.

  “I’ve talked to Farin already,” he said, once Nick was up ahead with Carissa, no longer in earshot. “It’ll be best if we have the kids sleep while we cross. I can use persuasion or healing, whichever you’re more comfortable with. But it’s…it wouldn’t be good for a child.”

  Mara gave him a moment to elaborate, and when he didn’t smacked his arm with the back of her hand. “You already know I’m going to ask you to say more.”

  “I know. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Does it have to do with the voices the note mentioned?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anything more you can tell me?”

  “Only what the note already did. We have to cross without stopping. As you can see, it’s not a short walk. We’re going to rest today so we can start early tomorrow morning. When we’re crossing, there will be voices. Don’t listen to them. Don’t respond. Don’t engage with them in any way.”

  Mara forced a laugh. “You’d think that would go without saying–not engaging with disembodied voices while one crosses a landscape named the Ocean of Blood.”

  “One would think.”

  When he didn’t elaborate any further, she shivered and hugged her arms across her chest. “And you expect us to actually get rest tonight?”

  He snorted. “We can at least get off our feet. It’s going to be a long walk.”

  “How long?”

  He turned to glance over his shoulder as they strode deeper into the forest.

  “Long.”

  ***

  They set out just before dawn the next morning. In the dim light, the rock was more rusty brown than red, and the thin fog hid the vast distance they had to travel. The children were unconscious–both by healing means, as it required less energy from Eli to maintain–and slung like sacks of grain over the adults’ shoulders, Nick with Eli and Carissa with Lev. Farin led the group with the compass, and they proceeded in a single column with Eli in the rear. At Eli’s insistence, they kept close together, no more than an arm’s length between them.

  Needless to say, the whole arrangement and the humorless command with which Eli ordered them about all morning, did not put Mara’s mind at ease.

  As the morning progressed, though, she relaxed in increments despite herself. She heard no mysterious disembodied voices. The sky–a sky she hadn’t seen properly since entering the Smokestacks–arced overhead in a dome of brilliant, unbroken blue. Even the blood red rock lost its menace as the sun rose higher, slanting light betraying flecks that caught the light and made it dance, the entire landscape glittering like water.

  True to their instructions they took only brief breaks to eat and drink. Eli let them remove their packs and set the sleeping children down, but the adults took their meals on their feet. By the time the sun reached midpoint overhead, the whole thing was starting to feel theatrical and unnecessary.

  And then the sun began to fall.

  “Mara.”

  Mara glanced over her shoulder at Eli. “Yeah?”

  Instead of answering her, Eli stopped, reaching out to take hold of her arm, and called out over her head. “Lev. Farin.” When they stopped, he dropped his attention back to her, hand dropping to his side. “Whatever you just heard, it wasn’t me.”

  Her body went cold. Now that he told her, of course she knew it wasn’t him. She must have just thought it was because the voice had come from so close behind her. But of course it wasn’t him. She knew his voice, and she knew this one as well.

  “Mara, love. You have to come with me.”

  Her mind scrabbled to maintain control of the narrative–false voice, not real, do not follow, do not respond. But it came from right behind her, like Davy stood at her right shoulder, and her body spun on instinct to face it, a sort of vertigo overtaking her when there was nothing behind her but air.

  “Mara.” A hand settled on her shoulder, gently tugging her back around. “Look at me.”

  She turned to face not empty air but Eli, Nick draped over his pack, one hand clasping the boy’s wrist and ankle to hold him in place, the other still resting heavily on her shoulder.

  “It’s not real,” she said before he could tell her.

  He shook his head. “Not real.”

  “I may not have a body, but I’m real. You’ll see soon enough.”

  “Do you hear them too?”

  Eli swallowed and nodded. When he asked Lev and Farin, their answers made him shake his head. “They haven’t yet.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “What do we do?”

  His hand tightened. “Keep walking. Don’t respond. It’ll be okay.”

  “Mara, love, don’t listen to him. Talk to me, please.”

  At Eli’s word, Lev continued on, Farin with Carissa behind him. Mara forced her feet to move, forced her eyes to the ground at Farin’s heels. Forced herself not to react when Davy’s disembodied voice followed behind her.

  “Where are you going? You need to come with me.”

  There was nothing to mark the voice as illusory. No mysterious, dreamlike quality. It neither roared nor whispered. It did not drown out the other sounds, or clamor for attention. It was simply Davy’s voice, as clear and real as if he walked behind her, close enough her mind could not compute how his hand wasn’t knocking into hers, his toes weren’t clipping her heels as she walked.

  “I need your help, love.”

  She could hear Eli, too. His boots scuffed over the rock, footsteps less gracefully noiseless than usual.

  “We don’t have to go anywhere. Let’s just sit and talk. I’ll explain everything.”

  Ahead of her, Farin’s steps stuttered. He slammed to a halt and spun around, his eyes frantically tracking past Mara’s face, no doubt searching for the source of his own haunting. Ahead of him, Lev stopped as well. Eli said something, and Farin’s eyes caught on his friend. He jerked his head in a nod and turned, and they continued.

  “I know you don’t believe me, but I promise I can explain.”

  Again, their line drew to an abrupt halt when Lev stumbled and nearly fell, staggering to the left and throwing up an arm as if to protect himself from something to his right. Farin caught him by the strap of his pack and drew him into a one-armed embrace, whispering in his ear. They stood that way for a moment before Lev nodded and, with a gentle kiss to his temple, Farin pushed him away and they resumed walking.

  “Mara, love, this is ridiculous. I’m not trying to hurt you. I just want to talk.”

  With time, it got easier to ignore. The voice sounded real, sounded like Davy, but it never said much of consequence. It just asked her stop, to sit, to talk. But when Eli called a halt, Mara didn’t want to. She felt safe as long as she was moving. To stop felt perilous.

  They ate and drank without removing their packs or setting the children down, standing in a tight circle with their backs to the world, all of them needing the same thing–to have something real in front of them. Voices speaking they could match to tangible bodies.

  Lev and Farin spoke to each other in low tones, eyes locked. Mara found Eli’s as she chewed on a strip of jerky. “You lied.”

  He tipped back his flask for a drink without breaking her gaze. “About what?” he asked between swallows.

  “You said it wasn’t as ominous as it sounded.”

  He lowered the flask and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, one still occupied keeping Nick in place. “It’s not.”

  “You’re right about him. He’s a liar.”

  She almost responded despite herself, not to the words but to the sharp edge to them, the vehemence.

  “I… um…” Mara closed her eyes and gave her head a shake, trying to rattle loose the impulse to answer.

  “He’s lying to you. I know you see it.”

  She pried her eyes open, neck stiff from fighting the urge to look over her shoulder. Eli watched her, brows drawn down. “Okay?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded, lifting her own flask for a drink. Her hand shook, a trickle of water cascading over her chin and down her neck. “It’s just….”

  “It might be easier if we don’t–” He broke off for a moment, eyes slipping shut, jaw going firm. His nostrils flared before he opened his eyes, meeting hers with a tight smile. “Might be best if we don’t talk.”

  “He doesn’t want to talk because he knows I can tell you when he’s lying.”

  Mara nodded to Eli, forcing her own pitiful smile. “Okay.”

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  She nodded again. “I know it will.”

  They walked from the afternoon into the evening. Mara’s head and body both ached with exhaustion, but Davy’s voice showed no signs of fatigue. Having picked up a new thread from her brief conversation with Eli, the voice goaded her in a new direction.

  “He isn’t telling you the truth, Mara.”

  I know, she wanted to scream. He can’t. Leave it alone.

  “There are things you don’t know.”

  What are they?

  “Mara, love, please just talk to me. I’d never lie to you.”

  She pressed her lips together and fought her curiosity. She still knew it wasn’t real, but that was all she knew. She didn’t know the mechanism of this magic. Was it just an echo of her own need, or was there some sentience to it? What did it know? What could it tell her?

  “Just sit down for a moment. Let’s talk.”

  The urge to sit was more enticing than it had been before. Her feet burned. Cramps knotted in the back of her legs, starting near her ankles and twisting steadily upward as the sun drifted steadily down toward the horizon to their left.

  Eli called another halt.

  “He’s a bit arrogant, isn’t he? Did you decide he should be charge or did he just assume?”

  She ignored the voice as they took turns removing food from each other’s packs. This time, nobody spoke. They merely stood in their little circle, eating without tasting and holding each other’s gazes just long enough to trade weak smiles of haggard understanding as they listened to their own individualized hauntings. Mara didn’t dare ask what or who the others heard. Every word they spoke was fuel on the fire.

  Mara wanted to weep with gratitude when Eli offered a silent hand to her when he finished eating. Without thinking of the consequences, she took it and closed her eyes with a sigh of relief when cool mending trickled into her veins, submerging her feet in an icy bath and untangling the knots in her muscles.

  “That felt good, did it?”

  Mara jerked her hand from Eli’s, a reflexive response to the bite, the note of accusation in the voice. When he frowned at her, she shook her head, dropping her gaze. In her periphery, she saw him offer the same to Lev and Farin and saw them both accept. She wanted to ask if it was wise to expend that much energy, but she didn’t dare open her mouth.

  The sun kissed the western horizon as they set back off, their shadows walking beside them on skeletal legs, eerie long forms stretched out and curving over the uneven stone.

  “You really seemed to like that, Mara.”

  Mara squeezed her hands into fists and watched her footing, navigation more difficult with the sun so low.

  “You can’t trust him, even if you want to.”

  On and on. The voice grew sharper, and she realized it was reacting to her responses, even if she didn’t speak. It saw her clenched fists, her tight jaw. It saw every time she forced a deep, calming breath.

  “Why do you sigh when he touches you, Mara?”

  All that remained of the sun was a sliver of red. And then that too was gone, leaving only a dull red haze and a creeping darkness that swept up from the east and stretched greedy fingers toward the apex of the sky.

  “Let’s tighten up,” Eli said from behind her. “Mara, hold onto Farin’s pack.” He spoke over her head in Trellish, no doubt repeating the instruction.

  “He’s leading all of you astray.”

  Mara reached out and hooked her fingers into the closure strap of Farin’s pack. Ahead, he reached out and held onto Lev’s. She felt a slight tug as Eli must have taken hold of hers.

  “He just wants to be close to you. But you don’t mind that, do you?”

  Depths, but she wanted to bite back. The more the light faded, the harder it became to remind herself the voice wasn’t real. Without her sight to ground her, her attention shifted naturally to what she could hear.

  “You’re too intelligent to fall for this, Mara. He’s obviously a liar.”

  Sight and sound weren’t her only senses. Perhaps she could ground herself through the others. But when she focused on the scent of the air, all she could register was the metallic warmth of sun-heated stone. Whens he focused on the ground beneath her feet, it made her dizzy. Her mouth tasted of nothing but sour fear.

  “Why do you do everything he says? Why don’t you question him?”

  She knew it was a mistake before she’d finished doing it. But it had become routine, to connect with the world first with her physical body and then to reach out with her sensing. The second she unfurled her energy, it snagged on something sharp, and when she tried to withdraw it, the fabric of her sensing ripped but held fast.

  “Oh, Mara. That was a mistake, my love.”