Her name was Dumai, from an ancient word for a dream that ends too soon. She was born in the last glow of the Sunset Years, when every day poured soft as honey in the city of Antuma.
One spring, a young woman stepped through its gate, brought there by a forbidden wish.
She claimed to remember nothing of her past - only that she was called Unora. No one could have guessed, from her dusty clothes and callused hands, that her father had once held the power to set the whole court fluttering in his wake.
No one could have guessed what she was in the capital to do.
In those years, it was hard to farm the dry interior of Seiiki. Since the gods' retiral, long droughts had afflicted the island. Away from its shrivelled rivers, the ground thirsted.
Had the Governor of Afa been like other men, he would have lamented his post in a dust province. Instead, he laboured every day to channel water to its fields. Each time he returned to court, Empress Manai deemed him more inventive and hardworking. She gave him a mansion in the capital, where he placed his daughter, Unora, under the care of a nursemaid.
But Empress Manai had long been unwell, and her ailment did not ease. She renounced the throne before her time and retired to Mount Ipyeda, leaving her only child to be enthroned.
Though Prince Jorodu was still young, he had learned from his mother. In his first act, he summoned the Governor of Afa and made him River Lord of Seiiki, overlooking all others in his favour. For a year, he was the most trusted and beloved of the boy emperor.
So it shocked no one when he was suddenly banished, accused of having roused a
god to make his province thrive. One family surrounded the emperor, and they
allowed no one else close. Not for long.
Their servants found Unora and flung her into the dark street. At nine, she was left a destitute orphan. Her nursemaid stole her back to Afa, and for ten long years the world forgot them.
Unora worked the fields once more. She learned to bear the sun. Without her
father, water no longer flowed. She planted millet and barley and wheat, folding
seed into dry earth. She lived with a burning throat and a dull ache in her bones. Each night, she walked to the shrine on the hill, the shrine for the dragon Pajati, and clapped. One day, Pajati would wake. One day, he would hear their prayers and bring rain to the province.
Over time, she forgot her days in the capital. She forgot what it was like to hear a river, or to bathe in a cool pond - but she never forgot her father. And she never forgot who had destroyed them both.
The Kuposa, she thought. The Kuposa undid us. In her twentieth year, death came to the settlement.
The drought lasted for months that year. The fieldworkers pinned their hopes on their well, but something had tainted the water. As her old nursemaid vomited, Unora stayed at her side, telling her stories - stories of Pajati, the god they all willed to return.
The villagers took the body away. They were next to die. By the sixth day, only Unora was left. She lay in the stubble of the crop, too thirsty to fight, and waited for the end.
And then the sky opened. Rain touched the ground that had long been a deathbed
- a patter that became a downpour, turning the dry earth dark and sweet. Unora blinked away droplets. She sat up and cupped the rain in her hands, and as she drank, she laughed for joy.
The storm left as suddenly as it had come. Unora stumbled towards the Creaking Forest, soaked in mud from head to foot. For days, she sipped from leaves and puddles, finding little she could eat. Though her legs shook and an old bear stalked her, she kept on following the stars.
At last, she came to the right place. Behind the trickling remains of a waterfall, the white dragon Pajati slumbered - Pajati, guardian of Afa, who had once granted wishes to those who paid a price. Unora sought the bell that would wake him, faint with hunger and thirst.
Now she would leave her fate to the gods.
Deep was their slumber in those years. Most had withdrawn into undersea caverns, beyond human reach, but some had gone to sleep on land. Though Seiiki grieved their absence, disturbing them was the highest of crimes. Only the imperial family had that right.
Unora found she had no fear, for she had nothing left to lose.
The bell was taller than she was - the bell that would wake the guardian, not to be touched on pain of death, green staining the bronze. Unora approached it.
