Something shuffled on the ground, just outside his room. Daven gasped softly. He couldn't make any other sound. The door budged open, creaking. A face peered around the corner of the wood, a pair of eyes caught on whatever whisper of moonlight filtered past the tree canopy and through the bedroom window.
"Daven," a voice whispered. He could barely hear it over his own heavy breathing, over the sound of his blood pounding in his ears. It was Shleaema.
"I thought you were a monster," Daven said. His shoulders relaxed a little, but his voice still sounded small in the empty room.
Shleaema edged the door open a little wider and slipped into the room. Her hair was the same black as the dark walls surrounding them. She was like the other shadows, sliding across the floor with barely a noise.
His bed frame creaked, the mattress shifted. She must have climbed onto the edge of his bed.
"Why are you awake?" Daven whispered. Not that he minded. This was too strange of a time to be alone.
Shleaema blinked—he could just catch the sparkle of her eyes changing. "Daven," she whispered, poking him in the shoulder.
Daven giggled. "That's me."
The mattress moved again as Shleaema scooted back to sit somewhere against the wall. Then she began to hum.
The sound was barely louder than her whispers had been. Daven could not make out the song. He did not interrupt to ask. Shleaema only hummed when she thought no one was there to listen, but must know Daven was listening now.
Daven unclenched his hand. He could not remember how long he had been holding tight to the bedsheets. Shleaema's tune was minor and haunting, but it was grounding in a way. The voice was hers, breathy and quiet. He could not hear it without remembering that he was in his bed sitting under the trees of the forest that he loved. The outline of the man with the glowing, pointed staff was still pressed against the backs of his eyelids, but Daven knew it was not real. He was here now, in his room with his sister.
"Bee ah she, drai ah oosh," Shleaema sang. It was the same tune. Daven could not tell what language the words were. It could have been his own—Shleaema was singing under her breath, blurring the consonants together. No one could have made out the words.
"Bee ah mol drai ah kay," she sang.
It did not sound like the songs his mother sang to him, the ones about the kinds of weddings the field mice hosted in early Elden, or the way the trees spoke quietly in the breeze. But it felt right for this moment. The moon was low on the horizon, and the highlights it cast around were silver instead of golden like the dawn.
"Mol koh thah shayph komo shoo."
It was disquieting. Daven did not feel that this was a moment he was meant to be awake for. The song was not written for him. It was a dark riddle, like the pond when the mud stirred all around and hid the guppies swimming in the shallows, or the deer that skipped away the moment after he noticed them.
"Too oh too ay."
This was a secret, a good secret, one that he could not understand, though it was being told to him now. It slipped through the sieves of his mind, washing out the memory of his nightmare and leaving him with a strange feeling—empty and full all at once.
Shleaema had stopped singing. She shifted on the bed, then dropped down to the floor. Daven heard the patter of her feet as she slipped back into the hall, sliding the door shut behind her.
He yawned, rubbing his eyes. It was still the middle of the night. Now that his heart was not racing so quickly, he could feel exhaustion settling down on his shoulders, heavy like the thick blanket that sat in the oak chest during Fayim. He laid back down on his pillow and pulled his quilt back around his shoulders. The next thing he knew was the sun, shining soft and red behind his eyelids. It was morning.