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one side to the other on account of all the slivers of caribou dangling in the way.
    “How long’s it gonna take?” I asked. “Till it’s all dried out?”
    “A few weeks.” Naji glanced at me. He was over at the hearth, messing with the fire. “There’s a cave not far from here. We should start moving our things.”
    “The cave!” I said. “The rain’ll get in.”
    “Exactly. It’s why we had to hang the caribou up in here.” Smoke trickled up from the fire, gray and thick. It made my nose run.
    “I know that.” I scowled. “Just don’t know why we have to live in the cave is all.”
    Naji stepped away from the hearth. “Would you rather move into Eirnin’s house?” He glanced at me. “Spend the next few weeks living side by side with ghosts and magic-homunculi?”
    I glared at him. He looked like he wanted to laugh. I knew he had me.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    Living in a cave wasn’t so bad, despite the way the dampness flooded in every time the skies opened up with rain. This soft, thick moss grew over the rocks and made for a bed more comfortable than my big pile of ferns back in the shack. We kept a fire burning near the entrance and ate half-cured caribou and berries and the occasional fish to mix it up.
    After a few days, the manticore sniffed us out.
    “Girl-human,” she said. “Did you and the Jadorr’a think you could flee from me?”
    It was nighttime, the sky starless from the rainclouds, and Naji was sleeping down deeper in the cave, his tattoos lighting up the darkness. I didn’t know if he was dreaming or casting magic in his sleep. He’d told me once he talked to the Order sometimes, though he never told me what about. They would’ve rescued him weeks ago, when we first landed, but they wouldn’t have rescued me. That’s why he was still here.
    And no one else is crazy enough to sail to the Isles of the Sky. Hadn’t seen so much as a sail on the horizon the entire time we’d been on the island.
    I popped my head out of the cave’s entrance. The manticore sniffed at me and flicked her tail back and forth.
    “The shack’s filled up with meat,” I said.
    “Caribou is not meat ,” she told me. “Too gristly, too tough. Like tree bark.”
    I couldn’t imagine the manticore having ever actually tried tree bark, but I didn’t say nothing, just shuffled out into the woods. The air was damp and cold like always, and I pulled my coat tight around me.
    “Do you need something?”
    “May I see your new rock-nest?”
    I sighed. “It’s just a cave.”
    “It is larger than your old nest.”
    “Yeah, I guess.”
    The manticore trotted past the fire and into the cave’s main room, her footsteps silent on the moss. Naji’s tattoos turned everything pale blue.
    For a minute the manticore stared at him, tongue running over the edges of her teeth. I edged toward the sword.
    But the manticore didn’t lunge for him or shoot a spine. Instead, she turned around on the moss a few times, like a dog, and then settled in.
    Well. Looked like she found a new home.
    “Brush my mane, girl-human,” the manticore said. “In exchange for catching the caribou.”
    “I thought the caribou was in exchange for pulling out the pine cone.”
    She shook her head and I didn’t feel much like arguing with her.
    “What do you want me to use?” I asked. “My fingers?”
    “Don’t be silly. A brush will suffice.”
    “A brush?” I laughed. “I don’t have no brush.” I pointed at my own hair, which was a tangled, knotted mess from the rainwater and the woods and the wind – even if Naji had been halfway interested in me at some point, he sure as curses wouldn’t be now. I’d hacked some of it off with Naji’s knife, but it was hair. It grew back. “You think I’d look like this if I owned a brush?”
    The manticore frowned. “I thought that was merely the humans’ way. You will not tend to your grooming unless commanded by a manticore.”
    “The hell did you get that idea from?”
    The