by Malinda Lo
When they broke camp, they strapped Tali’s body, shrouded in his woolen blanket, onto his horse. Tali had always ridden in the lead before, but today Shae took his position and his map case. Con followed her, leading Tali’s horse, and Taisin and Kaede came after him. Pol went last as usual, keeping one hand on his sword.
As they rode, Taisin stared at Tali’s body, hanging facedown over his horse’s flanks. Part of her still couldn’t quite grasp it. How could Tali, of all people, have been lured away so easily? He was so solid, so dependable. Why had the Wood—or whatever was in the Wood—chosen to take him? And if it could take him, what would it do to the rest of them? The questions made her increasingly nervous, and the queasiness in her stomach rose until she abruptly pulled her horse to a halt and dismounted, running off the trail to bend over, retching. Nothing came up, but she felt like she was turning inside out, and her throat burned.
A moment later she felt a hand on her back, and Kaede was leaning over her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she gasped.
“Here,” Kaede said, handing her a water skin. Taisin tried to breathe more slowly. She was panicking. She knew she had to calm down. She heard Kaede saying to the others: “Just give us a minute.”
Taisin straightened up, feeling woozy. Her face was flushed, and her hands shook as she raised the water skin to her lips. The liquid trickled into her mouth, and she swallowed carefully. “I’m sorry,” she muttered.
Kaede shook her head. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
“Yes, there is. If I had done the protection ritual, Tali would still be here.” Taisin spoke without thinking, and now that the words were out, she was both ashamed and relieved.
“You don’t know that,” Kaede objected.
Taisin turned to face her. The dull gray daylight carved deep shadows beneath Kaede’s eyes and darkened the hollows in her cheeks. She didn’t look like the same girl who had argued with the King’s Chancellor in the Council room, demanding that she be given a choice. She looked bruised. She looked sad. “What are we going to do, Kaede?” Taisin whispered. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. What if Maire Morighan was wrong? What if I can’t do whatever it is I’m supposed to do? What if I don’t know enough?”
Kaede heard defeat hovering at the edge of Taisin’s words, and it tore at her. “You know enough,” Kaede insisted. “The oracle stones would not have chosen you if you didn’t know enough. And what’s ‘enough,’ anyway? You don’t know everything, but nobody can.” She heard herself repeating what Fin had told her on the beach at the Academy: “All you can do is make your decisions based on what you know now.”
“What I know now,” Taisin repeated. What she knew now was that this journey was much more dangerous than she had anticipated. Perhaps she had not wanted to acknowledge that before. In Ento, she had called that creature out of the baby’s body, but it was Kaede who had faced the consequences. Now Tali’s death had driven home the fact that there was a malignant force out there, and she knew she had to open her eyes and look it in the face. It frightened her, but she had never fled from something because she was afraid. Going to the Academy alone when she was eleven, leaving her family behind, had terrified her. The vision of Kaede on the beach still scared her. But she knew what to do with fear: She fought it.
“You’re right,” Taisin said to Kaede. “Thank you.”
Before she could doubt herself again, Taisin headed back to the trail, ignoring the panic that still churned in her stomach.
Just before noon, they found a roughly rectangular clearing a few feet off the path, with soil that looked like it could be broken with their makeshift tools. Taisin fitted one of their few remaining candles into a lantern and lit it, setting it on the ground where the head of the grave would be. The light was meant to guide Tali’s soul to the land of the dead. Usually sages did not perform funerary rites; that responsibility typically fell to village greenwitches or, in the cities, to specialists. But there were no specialists here. Everyone did their part.
Taisin helped Shae and Kaede dig the grave while Con and Pol wrestled with Tali’s body, dressing him in his cleanest clothes. The mysterious nature of his death was unlucky enough, but it would be even worse for him to be buried in the clothes he was wearing when he died. They lugged water from the river and washed his hands, but they could not remove the dirt from beneath his nails. They sponged off his face and neck, closing his eyes and covering them with a blindfold torn from Tali’s cloak. And then Taisin found a stone on the riverbank that had a particularly peaceful energy, and she handed it to Con.
“His death was not… natural,” she said awkwardly. “It would be best to place this in his mouth.”
He looked sick to his stomach, but he nodded. Tali’s body had stiffened by now, and it was difficult to pry his jaw open. Con feared for one awful moment that he might have to break it, but then, at last, Tali’s mouth opened just enough, and Con slid the stone between his cold lips.
Afterward, Con had to sit still, holding his head in his hands, trying not to throw up.
It was late afternoon by the time the pit was deep enough, and the light was becoming dim. Dirt smudged all of their faces where they had wiped away sweat that had risen while they dug. Tali’s body had been wrapped into his blanket again—the closest they could come to a shroud—and Con and Pol rolled it as gently as they could into the grave. The candle flickered within the lantern as if a breath had blown against it.
Con sat back on his heels and looked at the rest of them. “It’s time.”
They each scraped up a handful of dirt and, beginning with Con, sprinkled it into the grave. The sound of dirt pattering onto Tali’s body reminded Con of rain on the roofs of Cathair: hard and cold. A wave of loss threatened to engulf him; he curled his fingers into fists, feeling his nails pressing into his palms. The others began to push the loose soil back into the grave. In the background, he heard Taisin murmuring. The words were familiar; he had heard them before, at funerals. As she repeated them, Kaede echoed her, and then Pol and Shae. Their voices, low and sorrowful, lifted the words of the lament into the heavy stillness of dusk in the Great Wood.
This fleeting world:
Life passes as quickly as the morning star,
As a rumble of thunder,
A gust of wind over the grasslands.
This fleeting life:
Brief as a spark,
Ephemeral as a dream.
Soon enough we are ghosts upon the cloud.
Chapter XIX
They left the lantern burning at Tali’s grave while they set up camp. Taisin walked in a circle around the perimeter, marking it with stones or branches. “Bring everything we’ll need into this circle,” she told them, “because after I set it up, no one will be able to leave without breaking the boundary.”
“What about Tali?” Con said. “I want to sit vigil with him tonight.”
Taisin had taken out her small brassbound trunk and opened it, but now she paused with her hand on a glass vial. “It’s not safe, Con.”
“Tali was like a father to me,” he said. “I owe him that respect.”
Taisin saw the sadness that dragged at his shoulders; his ashen face, drawn with grief. She knew that he would do it whether or not she agreed with him, so she said, “Then I will sit with you.”
“Will you extend the circle of protection to the grave?” Con asked.
“I can’t. The space around it must be open, so that Tali’s soul can travel freely.” She didn’t tell him that she suspected that Tali’s soul had departed long before any of their burial rituals.
Con eyed her closely, as if he guessed that she was holding something back, but he didn’t question her further. “All right. We’ll sit vigil together. Let me know when you’re ready.” He went to help Pol set up their tent, leaving Taisin kneeling on the ground.
Her fingers shook slightly as she took out the herbs that she would need for the ritual. Sister Ailan had given her t
hese supplies for this very reason, but Taisin had never actually believed she would need them. Milk-vetch root, dried and ground up in yellowish-brown crystals, for strength. Fox nut, pounded into a pale powder, for life energy. The barest sprinkle of dragon bone scrapings, like minuscule white petals, for power. Taisin combined them all in an iron bowl, stirring them together with her index finger. The powders seemed to glitter a bit, just as Sister Ailan had told her they would. The mixture was ready.
She asked Con to stand just outside the perimeter, and she placed Shae, Pol, and Kaede at three places along the interior of the circle. It would have been better if there were a fourth person, so she could create a full compass, but they would just have to make do with three points tonight. Holding the iron bowl in her hand, Taisin walked to the northernmost edge of the circle and closed her eyes, standing still. She had performed smaller protection rituals before, but never one this major, or as important. Sister Ailan had explained it to her and assured her that she could do it, but this was no Academy examination, where she might be forgiven for making a mistake or two. Taisin’s heart raced as her nerves nearly got the better of her, making her hands clammy. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself.
First, she had to find the way in. That was how her teachers always described it: being sensitive to all the currents of energy around her until she discovered the one that called to her—the one that was her own special path into the unseen world. Meridians of energy ran through every human being and animal and plant; they lay in limitless lines in the earth and the air like a vast web. Every living thing had its place in this field of energies. The protection ritual would reshape portions of that field, reweaving the net into a barrier around their camp.
If only she could do it. Every time she thought she had found the way in, it slid away from her. She was like a fisherman trying to reel in his catch, but it leapt away from him time and time again, splashing back into the sea.
And the wind that had whispered in Tali’s ear was everywhere, distracting her. It slipped beneath her collar, tickled her earlobes, caressed her skin in cool, lingering breaths. It took every effort to ignore it, to focus instead on the elusive thread of energy that had come so easily to her when she had seen that purple flower. The thought of the flower helped, and she envisioned it in her mind’s eye; she could feel the life of it, pulsing. And then she had it. She felt the humming threads of life all around her, and they were different here, deep in the Wood. There was still something not quite right about them, but they were a thousand times more vibrant than they had been in Jilin. She plucked one strand out—easy as tucking a lock of hair behind her ear—and began to weave it around their camp as she walked, eyes closed, for she didn’t need to see the ordinary world when she could see, instead, the extraordinary one.
At the north, south, east, and west points of the circle, she sprinkled some of the powder on the ground. She said, “Peace within, darkness without.” The powder burned into the ground like fox fire. Taisin walked around the perimeter of the camp three times, and each time she felt the web of protection tightening. It was exhilarating. She felt all of the energies she controlled at her fingertips: such incredible power. She was connected to the heartbeats of every living creature in the Great Wood; everything wanted so fiercely to live, even the trees that seemed half dead.
On her third circle, Taisin stopped before each person. She opened her eyes, looking directly at them, touching her fingers to their hearts, murmuring, “Peace within, darkness without.” Pol’s heartbeat was strong within him. Shae was worried; her breathing was quick and anxious. Kaede was tense as well, and when Taisin reached out to touch her, she felt a jolt pass between them. Taisin was so startled she almost faltered in the ritual.
To her surprise, Kaede reached up and covered Taisin’s hand with hers. Taisin pressed her palm against Kaede’s heart. She felt it speeding up until it matched the pace of her own. She was breathless. Kaede’s eyes were light brown; Taisin saw her pupils dilating as they looked at each other, dusk spinning out around them, cloaking them in shadow. She wished she could stay there forever, the space between them freighted with possibility.
But she had to complete the ritual. She whispered, “Peace within, darkness without.”
And then, reluctantly, she closed her eyes again. She saw Kaede, Pol, and Shae bound within a circle of energies like creatures caught in a spider’s web. She pulled herself away from Kaede, feeling the link between them stretching like a gossamer thread. She made her way back to the place where she had begun, and she set down the iron bowl, pressing it into the ground.
When she straightened, she folded her hands before her lips and bowed first to the circle, then to the dark Wood beyond. It was done.
At the head of the grave mound, the candle still burned. Taisin sat on one side of it with her hands folded in her lap, and Con sat across from her. She had never kept overnight vigil at a grave before, and she knew she was not in the best condition for it. She was drained from the protection ritual and from the day itself. The hard, cold ground pressed sharply into her shins, and the dreadful wind was worrying at her hair.
Con shifted in the dark, uncrossing his legs and trying to find a more comfortable position. As time passed, he began to nod, weariness overcoming him. “Con,” Taisin whispered, and he jerked himself awake.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His tongue felt heavy and thick; his senses dulled.
“It’s all right,” Taisin whispered. “Just—don’t fall asleep.” She spoke as much for her own benefit as for his, for the air here was ripe with magic. Some of it was residue from the circle of protection she had woven, but some of it was darker, more malevolent. She was not certain, but she thought she recognized a thread or two of this other magic. It had a very distinct, unusual scent: like winter. It was the smell of that fortress of ice.
The visions had come more often since she entered the Wood, and sometimes they came at particularly inopportune moments. When she was riding, sometimes she would suddenly glimpse dark brown skin, mottled like lichen. Or when she was gathering firewood, she would catch sight of that winged creature again, flying high against icicles hanging like teeth from a cavernous ceiling. It would only be the briefest glimpse, and then she would snap back into reality, knocked slightly off balance, and Pol or Kaede or Tali would ask her if she was all right. Her heart sank at that memory. Tali would never speak again.
She looked across the grave at Con; his body was rigid, and his wide-open eyes reflected the flicker of the candlelight. He no longer seemed in danger of falling asleep. He shivered as if someone had run a finger down his back, and for a moment, he cocked his head to the right, listening. “Con,” Taisin said, her voice a whip crack in the stillness.
He jerked. “What?” he said hoarsely.
“Look at me.” Taisin was almost certain that something was trying to lure him away, just as it had done to Tali. “Are you hearing something?”
“I don’t know.” He felt a caress on his cheek; he wanted to turn his face into it. It was as seductive as the sleep that had dragged at him earlier. But he struggled against it, trying to fix his eyes on Taisin. The tiny light of the candle only served to make the Wood beyond seem blacker, a spill of ink on black paper. How could it possibly be enough light to guide Tali’s soul to the other side?
Taisin could sense the energy around Con; it was charged with frustrated desire. She felt it gathering in strength, like massing thunderclouds, and then it turned its attention, abruptly, to her.
She was nearly knocked over by the power of it: a gale-force wind, ice-cold, biting into her face and pulling at her clothes. Long, wordless screams buffeted at her, and she clapped her hands over her ears to protect herself from the sounds. She stared in horror across the grave, trying to anchor herself to Con, who was gaping at her. He said something, but she could not hear him. She wanted to run, but she did not dare leave the light of the candle, and she would not leave Con.
She remembered
, suddenly, what had been so familiar about the wind that had come teasing at her hair earlier. Now she had only a younger sister, but there had been a time when she also had a younger brother named Sota. He was Suri’s twin, and when Taisin was ten years old, Suri and Sota fell sick. Suri recovered, but Sota did not, and died. After his death, her father and mother sat vigil beside his still little body all night. Four-year-old Suri hadn’t understood what was going on, and Taisin had been charged with taking care of her. She crawled into bed with her, listening while Suri mumbled the name of her brother in her sleep: Sota, Sota, Sota. The word was a hypnotic rhythm. It lulled Taisin into an uneasy sleep of her own, cuddled next to her little sister.
She woke later that night to hear voices—despairing, yearning voices. She felt fingers running along her arm, touching her. If the wind could form itself into hands, that was what it felt like. She went rigid with fear, goose bumps rising all over her body. Suri was still asleep, but sweat dampened her brow as if she had broken into a fever. Suri’s hair was being lifted as though someone were running their fingers through it, smoothing it back from her face. Taisin was terrified. She muttered her sister’s name; she gripped Suri’s shoulder and shook it.
Suri opened her eyes, and the wind ceased. Warmth flooded into the room, and Taisin realized that it had been freezing before—how could Suri be sweating?
“Sota?” Suri whispered.
Taisin put her arms around her sister, trying to rock her back to sleep. “Shh,” she murmured.
“Ghosts,” Suri said. “Ghosts.”
Those ghosts, frightening though they were, were nothing compared to what circled Taisin now. These were different. These were much more powerful. They had been wronged.
But now that she understood what they were, she felt calmer. She knew what to do.
