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“And?”

I did not speak at first. My hand found my water cup and I drained it. I ate another nut.

She chuckled, quite deliberately.

I looked at her in surprise, then grinned. She grinned back. Her face lost years.

I took a deep breath. There was no clear reason why I should trust his fire-tressed woman. But I did.

“My brother is below,” I told her. “A witch has him.”

“Vohanna,” she said.

“You know her?”

The years came back to her face. “I know her. You named her witch but she is far worse. If she has your brother then...I am sorry. It is unlikely you will be able to save him.”

She glanced down into her bowl, then pushed it away as if her appetite had fled. “I was never able to,” she whispered.

Again her words were personal but this time I did ask. “Never able to what?”

She glanced up. Her lips had thinned, lost their lushness. Her eyes grew even more haunted. She said, very clearly: “I was never able to save my brother after Vohanna took him. Or any member of my family.”

I made no murmur of sympathy. Though she deserved it, I did not think she would take it well at that moment. Instead, I asked her: “How is it that you remain?”

The tiny flicker of a humorless smile played over her lips.

“Vohanna leaves me alone,” she said. “The jungle hides her from the prying eyes of the world, and without me the jungle would die.”

She said this so matter-of-factly that I knew it was true.

“Are you efrinore?” I asked.

She seemed surprised that I knew that word—which in English might translate as something like druid-shaman—but after a moment she nodded.

“That won’t matter when Vohanna reaches her full strength, though,” she added. “Then she’ll not need the jungle and there will be no place for me or any other who does not serve her.”

I was no longer hungry. I pushed away my own bowl and rose. Time was precious. I had to go.

“But you Vohanna fears,” Ahrethane said, watching as her words caught and held me.

I felt my eyebrows arch. “That seems unlikely.”

“She has tried to discredit you. Frighten you. She tried to kill you more than once. Her failures gall her.”

I didn’t ask her how she knew these things that she should not know. The efrinore have their ways.

Thinking of the parchment note that had sent me fleeing from Timmuzz, and of all the things that had happened since, I said: “She discredited me with those I care most about. Killed some of them. She’s hacked years off my life in worry. Failure seems a poor choice of words for what Vohanna has done to me.”

Ahrethane shook her head. “That’s not enough for her. She’s underestimated you at each step. She won’t again. She’ll have an army waiting to stop you. Monsters that make the red-eyed howlers look like children’s pets. Men that are worse.”

“Then I’ll have to hope that I continue to be lucky.”

She nodded at my need for luck, rather vigorously, I thought. “You’ll need all the fortune you can muster. But also, I must help you. I cannot...go below. There is nothing but death there for an efrinore. Where no natural life can thrive.”

“Then how will you help?” I asked, showing a faint irritation that I knew was unreasonable.

She did not notice it. Or chose to ignore it.

“I can give you cover,” she said. “The worst of Vohanna’s creatures will be in the forest. She will not want you to reach the underworld. But if you can. Undetected. You might have a chance.”

Moving quickly then, she rose and pushed aside the honeywhisper that curtained the exit I had found earlier.

“Come,” she called, as she slipped through the split in the trunk and I lost sight of her.

I followed, more angry now, and angry with myself for feeling that way. I wanted to tell her that, lucky or not, I had done pretty well before without her help. But that would have been both cruel and foolish. Cruel because, if anything, she had suffered worse from Vohanna than I had. And foolish because, I did need her help. I might very well be dead now without it. Certainly I could have been crippled.

Trying to swallow my pride and finding it hard, I joined Ahrethane outside her tree house