(content note: some brief mentions of drowning in here, for those who want to avoid it)

*

Fjord sank like a stone in his dreams. He was numb and the light of the moon was gone, it was all gone, and soon he would run out of breath. The panic was dreary and familiar and as cold as ice. The ship had already vanished from sight. He would not find it again.

He woke up sweating. He didn’t make a sound, because he had a lot of practice not making a sound or in fact indicating in any way that something was wrong. Anyway, it was fine, as dreams went. There hadn’t even been a writhing oceanic godbeast coaxing him toward dread promises of power. Just your garden-variety terrible memory. He dragged a hand over his face, felt the stubble coming up, was momentarily shocked by the jut of his tusks over his lower lip. His heart wasn’t even beating that fast. It was fine.

“Rough night?” someone said.

“Now why would you ask that,” he said.

“Aw,” Caduceus said mildly, leaning out of the shadow of the trees, “no reason.”

He was standing a little way up the rise on the windward side of camp, face lit by the amber cast of the dome Caleb had popped up around them. The others were sacked out in various attitudes of chaos and exhaustion all around Fjord, and he got to his feet carefully. He went to Caduceus before he could let himself think too much about it. The film of the dome tickled his face and hands as he passed through.

“What are you doing up, anyway?” he asked. Caduceus gestured toward the place where he’d been sitting. His incense burner smoked gently amid a ring of flesh-pink mushrooms, which hadn’t been there when they’d gone to sleep. The wind reversed; the smell of camphor hit Fjord’s nose. With it came—not a smell, but a sudden sense of green-growing life, rushing water, turned earth, the fizz of residual magic. The Wildmother's calling card, there and then gone. He let out a shaky breath.

“Wayfinding,” Caduceus said, while Fjord bit back a number of responses including but not limited to:

Could anyone learn to do that

Can you put in a good word for me, you know, if your goddess happens to have some spare time on her hands

Does it help

“Learn anything useful?” he said.

Caduceus thought about it. This took him the better part of a minute. “It all finds its place eventually,” he said. “Even if the signs don’t make sense in the moment. I’ve got to trust in her, as she trusts in me.”

“Not so much, then, eh,” Fjord said.

Cad deflated a bit. It was odd, seeing him stoop from his excessive height in the dimness, eyes a faint glimmer under thick, bovine lashes. “I have the trust. I just need to think,” he said quietly.

It came back to Fjord, then, that Caduceus had spent years alone among the dead before this journey. Years alone with his trust, and presumably his thoughts also. Fjord was not sure what it had gotten him.

“It’ll come to you,” he said bracingly, because if he knew one thing it was how to be bracing. He didn’t clap Caduceus on the shoulder. He wasn’t that sleep-deprived. “Hey—it’s more or less morning, how about you make us some tea?”

“Ah,” Caduceus’ face lifted into a slow smile—he always did it that way, with his whole face, the long lashes and the furred ears and the corners of his mouth all rising, and the eyes warm. “You know, that’s an excellent idea. You’re not against something sweet, yeah?”

“Sure,” said Fjord, who drank what he could get for cheap, whenever he could get it.

“What about musicians? Several generations of lute players, specifically.” Caduceus said.

“I want to say I don’t know what you mean, but I’m afraid I do. Please don’t elaborate,” Fjord said. But Caduceus was already fishing a tiny canister from his belt. He unscrewed the top and held it under Fjord’s nose. The smell that drifted from it was crisp and vegetal. Fjord had smelled a lot of dry leaves, and it was definitely dry leaves.

“The Sternbrights,” Caduceus said dreamily. “Old family from somewhere south of the Grove. They played at the funerals, all of them. Their plot’s shaded in the height of summer. The yield is consistently lovely.”

“Is all your tea made from dead people,” Fjord said.

“...Is that a trick question?” Caduceus said.

“You know what, forget I asked,” Fjord said. “Sternbrights. Sure. Let’s.” He smiled at Caduceus to disguise the fact that he was having an emotion about it. Not about dead people tea, as such—he was getting over that. About things that came from somewhere, and belonged somewhere, and were treasured because of it.

Caduceus smiled back at him in a way that communicated both his approval of Fjord’s approval and the fact that he found Fjord as see-through as a tide pool. That was the problem with him, his attention moved at speeds too glacial to be deflected. “A moment,” he said. “Would you stoke up the fire?”

Fjord went to stoke up the fire. Caduceus passed back into the dome, moving still silently among the others. In a few moments he came back out with his tea set and a piece of woven cloth. He laid the cloth out beside the fire, filled and hung the kettle, arrayed the pot and cups as gravely as though they were mourner’s tokens.

Fjord watched him push leaves into the pot with a wooden scoop. In darkness his vision was nearly monochrome, but knew from daylight memory that the ceramic was sea green, ticked with paler color like the pelt of a woodland animal. The water rumbled gently on the waking fire.

Fjord shut his eyes for a second, two seconds—it was all right, it was too dark for anyone to see. It was all right, if it was Caduceus who saw. The seawater of his dream bled off him. The heat of the fire warmed his face. He opened his eyes.

Caduceus was looking into the kettle. He was either checking on the water or peering into shrouded mysteries Fjord knew not of. He did both with equal regularity and exactly the same expression, so it was no use guessing.

“Is it ready?” Fjord said, because he had a fatal inability to not say things. Cad’s gaze slid over toward him.

“Nearly,” he said. “The bubbles get bigger, when it’s hot enough.” He replaced the kettle on the fire.

The next time he removed it, he poured water into both cups, let it sit and send its curls of steam skyward for a few moments. Then he emptied both cups into the pot and topped it off with a last slosh from the kettle. Minutes passed. They were minutes in which Fjord was not drowning, reliving drowning, or having his dreams accosted by a many-eyed sea serpent who couldn’t take no for an answer, so he was good with it. He was almost disappointed when Caduceus poured the tea.

The first sip surprised him. It was sweet without sweetness, drying, bizarrely juicy. The second sip: more drying, more fruit, sunshine and the mild pucker of green grape-skins. He smacked his lips. “Lute players?” he said.

“Yeah,” Caduceus said, with all affection, probably remembering how he and his family had buried them. The Clays were strangers to Fjord but he knew they had done it with tenderness, because they were the people Cad had come from. And Cad was—himself, relentlessly.

Caduceus sipped his own tea slowly. “The leaves are sun-dried and crushed by hand,” he said. “Then baked for a little bit after that, to fix the decay. Actually,” a minute hesitation. A sag to his shoulders. “Clarabelle did most of this batch. It was her first time helping out.”

“Your sister,” Fjord said.

“The littlest,” Cad confirmed.

“Well,” Fjord said, “she should be proud. You can tell her I said so, when you’re all home again.”

However long that would be. If she and the rest of the Clays were still out there, somewhere, under the sun and the eye of their Mother, walking some road that they all trusted would make sense eventually. Fjord gulped the last of his tea; it burned a little. No icy water forcing its way down his throat this time. “No—scratch that,” he said. “I’ll tell her myself, when I meet her.”

His reward for this gross optimism: Cad’s smile again, broad and dry and sweet. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said.

“What, you don’t trust me?” Fjord said.

“I do,” Caduceus told him, with mountainlike calm. There was nothing he could say to that certainty. He held out his cup again, and Cad filled it. He would fill it as many times as Fjord asked.