( I Receive an Unfathomably Complicated List of Instructions)

I don't know how I knew, but I did. They felt like my brothers. An egret, a raven, a swan, and a dove. My skin pricked, and the air thickened in the tower, and I struggled to draw breath. One breath, and then another. My spirit quailed and I stopped breathing altogether––one puff of wind might blow them away like dust.

"She's cursed their Marione," said Father. "I haven't much time to explain."

"Who's she?" I said. "How does she know where they are, to curse them? We don't even know."

"Doesn't matter," said Father. "It's already done. You must work to undo it."

He cried out and hacked blood on his shirt. I pulled away.

"I know where they are," he said. "They're growing at the crest of the hill with the standing-stone, just north of here. The red staring out from the green."

I knew the place. A strange place, where the wind breathed down the back of your neck. We stayed well clear of it. Mother must have known, seen the hill in her mind––sometimes new mothers could. We'd been raised here for a reason. "They're growing behind the towers?" I said.

"Yes," Father said. "You must pull them from the ground."

I stared at him, and the tower darkened around me. Pulling someone's Marione flower was more terrible than murder. Pulling your own was inconceivable.

"Why––" I swallowed. "Why should I want to do that?"

He shook in giant jerks. "The Cam Belnech. If you break the spirits, the curse will no longer take effect."

"What?" I shook my head and wrung my wet skirts.

"Reyna," he said, "Reyna, you must listen to me. They're dying––you see?" He nodded at the birds––my brothers. "All smoke and dust. Because they touched the red flowers, they say. I can hear them. I've heard of these red flowers––Cam Belnech, they're called. They kill Gralde. I don't know how to explain, you're much too young." He was silent for a moment, thinking. He said, finally, "The flowers cause suicidal thoughts in Gralde. If you touch the flowers, you desire death. You want to die."

"They want to die?"

"Yes. Something is holding them here." He shook his head. "I don't know what. Something has changed their shape, made them birds."

Had I done that? I thought of the black-eyed girl, the albatross.

"I don't understand it," he said. "And it's not enough. They're still fading. You can see right through them. You must weaken them so they do themselves no more damage. You must pull the plants. All of them. A broken spirit can't destroy itself." **The author would like to point out that this is the most convoluted bit of pseudo-philosophy she has ever made up.**

I understood very little of this. And I understood even less why it had to involve me. "I didn't touch the red flowers, why should I pull my own––?"

"You must pull all of them," he said sharply. "Yours, too. After you pull them, after you break the spirits, you will have to mend them at some point, and for the mending you need all the plants. So. Pull them all. When you do this, your brothers will stop fading, I think."

"You think?" My fists were clenched; I might have stamped my foot.

"Be quiet and listen. I haven't much time."

"No." His every word was absurd. "You've lost too much blood." He shook his head, and I sat on the stones, arms around my knees, crying.

He reached out and took my hand. "After you break the spirits, when your brothers are safe––"

I wiped my sleeve across my nose. "What about Foy?"

He moved his head impatiently. "Floy is Rielde, doesn't have a Marionin. The Cam Belnech affected her differently–-see?" He pointed to the sparrow. "She's a real bird, safe for now, and as I was saying, after your brothers' spirits are broken, you will have to find the cure. The cure for the red flowers, the Cam Belnech."

"I thought the broken spirits were the cure––"

"No, they're not. They'll just give you more time to find it." He shifted his weight under him, and blood bubbled on his lip. "So you must look for the cure, and at the same time you must mend the spirits you broke." His voice was terrible, rasping, jumping octaves. "To mend them––" His head fell forward, and his eyes moved back and forth, and he muttered to himself.

He looked up. "I know this from an old story. About the Oredh Brothers. I have no time to tell it; you'll have to follow my instructions blindly. To mend your Marione, you must sow the seeds––so keep the flower heads after you have pulled the plants. Grow a crop of the Marione seeds, and another and another, until you have harvested enough of the plants to weave with. When you have enough, you must weave tunics out of the plants, sleeveless tunics, like surcoats. Five surcoats of the combined plants, each tunic must be a mixture of the five different plants. When you complete these tunics, throw them over yourself and your brothers all at once, and your spirits will be mended."

He pulled me closer to him and said: "You must mend them before five years are up. After you pull the plants from the ground, you have five years to grow them and weave with them, five years to find the cure; if you go longer than five years with a broken spirit, you will go mad. Do you understand?"

He had forgotten I was ten.

But for all his blindness, bungling, and bad luck, my father wasn't stupid. He'd studied across the sea before Tem was born, and it wasn't his fault his encyclopedic memory squashed the common sense right out of him.

"Do you understand how to do this?" he said again.

I nodded, only to mollify him.

"Good. You and your brothers will be able to live five years with your broken Marione, a time enough that you may find the cure for the Cam Belnech. Ice asters." He spoke between gulps of air. "Reinenea Corliogra. They'll heal the wound done by the red flowers. They cure everything.

"The boys and Floy must each have an aster, a whole flower, pistil and stamen, ground into a palm. After you've finished the tunics, after you've cast the tunics over yourself and the boys, right after you've mended your spirits, the boys will only fade, crumble again, and so they must have the asters ready.

"But more immediately," he said, squeezing my hand, "after you pull your Marionin, you will have to be careful, very careful, when you are dealing with normal people. You absolutely cannot speak about yourself to whole people. You cannot talk about what you are doing. You cannot take responsibility for your actions. You cannot defend yourself. And you'd be better off not expressing your opinions. Do any of these things and you risk going mad."

He scrunched his face up. "You're too young to understand. You aren't allowed certain things."

He squeezed my hand again, so hard he shook. "But perhaps it's something else that make us people––" His ring fell through my fingers and chimed on the stone. His hand went limp.

"Don't leave." My temples burned and my stomach sickened.

"Be brave."

"Don't leave."

Stillness crept through the stones, cold, blue, and painful, a bruise stealing into every nook of me.