"You've walked my spine all night," the woman said. Her voice was the same as the path's. "Most fall by now. They try to run. Or they bargain. Or they weep. You only tied a thread."

But when she stepped onto Bilara Toro again, she did not walk. She stood still. And the path moved beneath her—sliding, flowing like a river of earth, carrying her downhill faster than she could have run. The thorns parted. The salt flats turned to solid ground. The mirage of her brother waved once and dissolved into a shower of flower petals.

"There is one thing," Mama Illari said. Her fingers smelled of muña mint and decay. "On the high mesa of K'isi, there is a spring that never fails. The first people sealed it with a stone carved with the sign of the Unwoven Knot. If someone were to reach that spring, break the seal, and bring back one gourd of its water, the rains would return. But the path is Bilara Toro, and no one may walk it in a group. The spirit tolerates only a single pair of feet at a time."

The woman on the ledge gasped. Her shoulders straightened. The cracks in her feet began to close.

Mama Illari looked at her with eyes like two dark wells. "Then you may not return. But your brother will live."