“Where shall we take you?” they asked.

“To my parent, if you can . . . I do not know where Sibeli is now . . .”

They whispered between themselves. All three had serpentshapes, not nearly as powerful as Laufkariar’s, but between them they carried Ulín through the dreaming sea while she dangled between them, breathless and terrified and nauseous, all the way until their dreaming powers were spent. Then they emerged in the regular, waking lands, and they swam, carrying Ulín through the cold waves of autumn toward the far shore, underneath the shade of a mountain.

This was North Coast. The mountain was Priadét—this Ulín recognized from her childhood trips with her parent.

The serpent women led her out of the water and to a secluded, small beach, where shells crunched underfoot. “Please take all my treasures,” she begged. She had very little with her—a string of pearls, her bag with the useless soaked notebook. “Take what I have left in the rooms.” But they shook their heads no.

“Travel far from here, for a while,” the librarian said. “The agreements are signed, and nobody wants any more violence between your people and ours, but it would not be wise for you to defy him with your presence.”

“We will deal with Laufkariar,” said the gardener’s daughter. She was putting a brave face on it, but Ulín was grateful.

They embraced her before they left, and Ulín wondered what would have happened if she’d fallen in love with one of those women instead. The gardener’s daughter was fierce and proud, and her serpentshape was handsome and strong, and perhaps in a different time she would be the First Dreamer, if women could formally learn dreamcraft and inherit among the people of the serpents, if Ulín’s mind hadn’t been so set on the stranger she met on the shore. If Ulín had been smarter, faster, older.

“Will I see you again?” Ulín asked the gardener’s daughter.

“Maybe one day, when the dreaming sea dreams a storm to my aid, wave by wave she will dream me true.”

Ulín did not quite understand, but she remembered, and later, she wrote these words down in a new notebook.

But first she bid farewell to her friends. Then she went east toward the mountain, hoping to find Sibeli.

Sibeli was building a house at the foot of Mount Priadét. It was not yet finished, though the magical structure had been planted and the stonework laid, and Sibeli’s people were working now on the house’s chiseled wooden trim. It was evening when Ulín found the place, and she could barely distinguish the shape of the house. She was cold and wet and bone-tired, but the wide-open sky and the wind had revived Ulín.

Sibeli ran forward to greet her. They were a tall person, with a stern and somewhat cold demeanor, and they were a welcome sight. They gathered Ulín in their arms, pressed her tight to their chest for a while. This touch was out of character for them, but Ulín clung, reassured by their coolness and their closeness.

Sibeli led her into the house. Even unfinished and undecorated, the sizeable greeting room was warm. Light spilled from magical candlebulbs that floated under the grand wooden beams of the ceiling. Live fire burned in a stone hearth, and for the first time in months, Ulín felt warmer. Her parent’s people clustered around them with clothing and drinks, but Ulín begged them to give her and Sibeli privacy.

“Mother,” Ulín began.

“Mother?” I echoed. “I thought you used parent for in-betweeners?”

“Ah—Coastal speech is not like in the language of the desert. I, too, am translating.” Ulín explains, and I think I understand; this word in her own Coastal tongue does not mean that Sibeli was a woman—they weren’t—but that the two of them had a relationship closer than any other, and that Ulín was birthed from their body. Only rarely would this word be used, but it was the hour for it.

Ulín said, “Mother, I think I am with child.”

“May I?” her parent said. They put their hand on Ulín’s belly, and the warmth of their touch told her that Sibeli was using their magic. Then they nodded. “Three weeks.”

Ulín swallowed tears, saying nothing.

“He was violent,” Sibeli guessed. “I see the bruises on you.”

“He never hurt me when we slept together,” Ulín said, defensive. “He always asked for my consent.”

Sibeli's face held no judgment. “And the bruises?”

Only on other days. Ulín did not know how to say that. I loved him—was that even true? He loved me—then why did he imprison her, why did he turn violent?

“I am so, so sorry, my child—but it is your decision whether to give birth, and if you would keep it, I will support you.”

Ulín looked away. This was the moment of truth. Of her truth. She had loved Laufkariar, but he did not give her a choice to be free. He wanted things his way, only his way. He wanted her pliant, compliant, at his mercy. He told Ulín that he loved her, even after he hit her.

She would be only a womb.

She was more than her womb, and would be now and forever, no matter what her decision would be.

Her parent waited.

Everybody on the Coast understands that children are precious. They are the fragile future of a land that had sheltered her people a thousand years ago, when Ranra brought her ships here, escaping the fire that destroyed the Sinking Lands. Children are an obligation—but lovingly made, raised by parents and partners, and friends and their partners, and kin. Children are also a duty, but nobody can force anyone to give birth. Ulín never wanted a child. She was barely twenty now.

She did not want to make this decision.

Ulín’s face is drawn, but her eyes are dry. “I never told this story before. Not even my father knows.”

“What would he say,” I ask, “if he knew?”

“I have no idea.” She is in pain and trying not to show it. “Perhaps he would say to give birth; he wanted a grandchild. Perhaps not to give birth. He hated Laufkariar.” She sighs. “Whatever he told me, it would be political.”

“Or he would come to his senses, and be your father again?”

A sudden flare of hope in Ulín’s eyes is hard to witness. “He never did. He won’t. I am not a person for him anymore, at least not most of the time.”

“Do you want to stop?” I ask her.

Sadness sits like exhaustion in her limbs, but she says, “There’s not much left of it. I will finish.”