Path of Possession

by Harmon Cooper

  “Relax, relax,” I told her, a lump in my throat as I looked her over, as I felt her pain.

  “Please, please, no,” she mumbled, her voice just above a whisper. A centipede easily the size of a hot dog crawled down the back of her neck, dropping onto her breasts.

  Roger flew forward and picked the centipede off with his beak. He landed in a branch near the woman and smashed the centipede against the tree trunk, killing it instantly.

  “We have to get this cage off,” I said once the woman was healed.

  “Please…” she whispered again.

  I looked at how it was bolted to the tree, trying to figure out where it was locked. It was almost as if the cage had been welded shut.

  An idea came to me.

  “I want you to hold still,” I told her. “This is going to hurt, but I’ll be able to heal you after.”

  I motioned Saruul to the ropes pinning the woman to the tree trunk; she quickly stripped them away. As she did so, I checked the head cage once again to see if there was any locking mechanism on it.

  When I couldn’t find it, I drew my Flaming Thunderbolt of Wisdom, separating the cage from the tree trunk, the smell of hot metal and burning wood meeting my nose.

  The woman stumbled down onto her knees, bowing her caged head before me.

  Now looking at the cage from the back, I saw that it was locked in a place where a person wouldn’t be able to fiddle with it even if they tried.

  I brought my blade against it, and as I did the woman cried out, the heat reaching the back of her head, the smell of burning hair reaching my nostrils.

  The cage fell open and I immediately sheathed my blade, dropping to the woman and healing her again.

  “You’re okay,” I told her as I helped her stand.

  “My whole family…” she said, looking at the people pinned to the trees with terror-filled eyes. “I’ve brought them dishonor by living!”

  “Don’t start that up,” I told her. “Tell me exactly what happened, how your family ended up here.”

  “My father was on the board of governors for the city of Anand. He disagreed with…” She stopped speaking and looked at me. “Who are you?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “And you have a lion woman with you, a bird…”

  “And a sand spirit,” Roger said, the woman looking up at him with confusion on her face.

  “You can’t understand him?” I asked her.

  She shook her head.

  “It doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter who we are. Who did your father disagree with?”

  “Emperor Hugo,” she said, her throat quivering. “My father disagreed with the way that he was handling those who spoke ill of him.”

  Roger landed on my shoulder. “Damn, Nick, this guy sounds like a real piece of work.”

  “Do you have somewhere to go?” I asked her.

  “I…” The woman started to cry. “If they see me, they will capture me and kill me for good this time. They will also kill whoever I go to. I have been marked. They know who I am. Everyone around here knows who I am. I…”

  A bewildered look came over her face. The woman looked to the cage I’d just melted open, noticing that a portion of it was sharp enough to cut through flesh.

  Before I could react, she dropped down to a crouch, grabbed it, and slit her own throat.

  “What the hell!?” Roger shouted, flapping over to her.

  I kneeled down beside her, hoping to be able to heal the woman, only realizing once nothing happened that my power had left me for the day.

  “Kill me…” she whimpered, blood bubbling out of her neck. “Please…”

  I look to Saruul, and then to Roger.

  “One minute she asks you to save her, the next minute she asks you to kill her. I don’t want anything to do with this karma,” he said, rising back into the air.

  “I believe it is best if we let her die,” Nyima said firmly. The sand spirit had been quiet in all of this, but now it appeared as if she was ready to act. “I’ll take care of it.”

  The nude woman began to sink into the soil, the ground quaking as Nyima completely buried her.

  “What just happened?” I asked Saruul, my heart beating in my chest now, confusion making me feel panic.

  The snow lioness shook her head, a disturbed look on her face. “I do not like it here, Nick.”

  “It’s an honor thing, isn’t it?” Roger asked, the bird landing on the ground again. “Shit, that’s right!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Of course, I remember learning about it in…”

  “Bird school?” I asked him.

  “Yes, and not just any bird school, one of the…” He shook his head. “I guess those details don’t matter right now. My point is: honor is a big thing here in the Island Kingdom. I was forgetting about that. I mean they have entire rituals based around it.”

  “He’s right,” Nyima said, her body slowly reforming. “Anyone in this position would want to be saved, but once you helped her, she realized that she was the only member of her family who would be left alive. Then she realized that anyone she went to for help would also be killed. So she killed herself. It was the only honorable thing to do.”

  I ran my hand through my hair, still trying to process all this.

  “Let’s continue,” Nyima said. “There should be one more beach ahead, and from there you will reach Anand.”

  Chapter Four: The Golden Jewel

  Just as Nyima had said, it took us from sunrise to sunset to reach Anand.

  The glistening waves and a sandy beach to our left, Saruul, Roger, and I headed up a large set of sandstone stairs. I looked over my shoulder once again to see Nyima waving goodbye to us. She promised that she would remain in the same spot over the next several days, giving us plenty of time to take care of her request at the crypt.

  I didn’t quite know when the Cooling Fan of Broken Whispers would come in handy, but I wasn’t one to give up the offer of a mystical item, and getting it sounded relatively straightforward.

  After witnessing people pinned to trees, and the woman killing herself, I wanted to make sure that we did not overlook any advantage we could possibly acquire. Being able to conjure wind was definitely worth a little side quest, even if we needed to get to Lhandon.

  “So, the crypt first?” I asked as we made our way up the steps. They were recently swept, the corners soft and round from years of being walked upon and blasted by the ocean winds.

  “Do ghost stories exist in your world?” Roger asked, who was perched on Saruul’s shoulder for once.

  “Yes, why?”

  “Think about it, Nick.”

  Saruul nodded. “I see the bird’s point. It would be unwise to visit a crypt at night. There are spirits there, you know, and many of them prefer coming out at night.”

  “Why is that exactly?”

  “I think they just like taking naps,” Roger said, flapping over to my shoulder. “Because honestly, who doesn’t like taking a nap? You and your kind are convinced that you’re supposed to work all day, so who wouldn’t want to sleep during the day and hang out at night if they were given the option?”

  “I thought that people just died and went straight to the Overworld or the Underworld,” I said.

  “They can be rebirthed here too,” Roger reminded me. “And traditionally, ghosts haven’t figured out that they have died yet. I’m the wrong person to ask about this stuff though, birds don’t really have to deal with ghosts. You kill a bird, it dies. Plain and simple. Although I’m not certain if this applies to seagulls.”

  “Or you,” I reminded him. “I seem to remember you coming back from the dead…”

  He cackled. “Oldest trick in the book. I faked my death. Did I ever tell you about that, Saruul?”

  “I feel like you told me about it a couple times now,” she said as we came to the top of the steps.

  While it wasn’t visible from the beach below, our new pers
pective offered us a stunning view of the city of Anand, which appeared to be cut into sandstone and accented by tall palms and lush gardens. There was the squawk of seagulls in the air, monkeys moving about through some of the tropical foliage, and as the city moved up the hillside, waterfalls and fountains became increasingly present.

  “Damn,” Roger said, running his wing over his head. “The sand spirit failed to tell me that this is one happening spot. Crap, we don’t have any money, do we?”

  “Why do you need money?” Saruul asked.

  “My fur vest seemed to work in Dornod; I figured I would get myself a new look while I was here. Maybe something a little more tropical. I mean, it’s worth a shot.” Roger took a quick look around, nodding to a man pushing a cart into an alley. He wore ragged shorts and a shirt that reminded me of a kurta. “Something like that. Have you seen anyone with a straw hat, yet? I feel like a straw hat would be appropriate on an island. I wonder what kind of chung they have here. Sorry, thinking out loud.”

  “We don’t have any money, and if we did, we would need to use that money for food,” Saruul said.

  “Nonsense, just go to the monastery. You’re planning on going there anyway, right?”

  “After the crypt,” I told Roger.

  “Nick, you seriously aren’t thinking straight. How many times do Saruul and I have to tell you that there are ghosts there, and neither of us wants to fuck around with ghosts? This should be a no-brainer. We aren’t going to the crypt at night.”

  “Tomorrow,” Saruul told me as we approached the entrance of the city. She wrapped her hand in mine, her tail lightly tapping against my arm.

  I glanced around to see homes with balconies facing the ocean, many of them with small yards filled with flora. The buildings had a burnt orange color to them, reminding me of the styling in New Mexico.

  Gone was the hustle that I had grown used to in Dornod; the city had an eerie calm to it. No city guards either, and the only thing to indicate that there were even soldiers in the vicinity was a watchtower in a far corner of the city.

  As we stepped onto a road made of a material that had the consistency of asphalt, I started to understand more about the layout of the city.

  We were in a residential area, clear by the way the homes were built, no businesses in the vicinity aside from a vegetable stand set up in an alleyway. The woman running the stand resembled a lady I had seen back in Sarpang, with long feathers instead of actual human hair.

  She made eye contact with us and bowed her head slightly.

  “Let’s just keep going,” Saruul said as we started to make our way up the hill. We reached the top, many of the homes now decorated in flowering vines twisting around bamboo trellises. I could smell the flowers, a sweet almost berry-like scent.

  Anand began to open up at this point, moving down a hill, the ocean visible on the other side and large ships in the distance sitting on a haze of pale blue. It was becoming increasingly clearer to me that we were on a peninsula, and that we had come to it from the backside. There were more people in the streets now, a mixture of men in beachwear and women with feathered hair.

  A monkey ran across the street, its baby clutched under its arm. Saruul nearly collided with it and hissed, the monkey hissing back.

  “I’m not going to rule that out as dinner,” Roger said, smirking over at Saruul. “Especially if we aren’t able to get some charity at the monastery. And that right there was definitely a two-for-one special, if you get my drift.”

  “We aren’t eating the monkeys,” Saruul said.

  “Why not? If we find a fat one…”

  “We really should have some money, shouldn’t we?” she said as we passed a man selling grilled shrimp, which instantly had me licking my lips.

  “If it’s money we need, I’ve got a plan for that.” Roger flew over to my shoulder and moved closer to my ear. “Find me a market; I’ll get us some cash.”

  “No, we’re not doing it that way,” I told him. “At least not yet.”

  “It will be my karma, not yours, Nick, so if you’re trying to keep yours squeaky clean, I got you.”

  Saruul, who had been listening to us the entire time, stopped in the middle of the street and crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you seriously talking about stealing from a market?”

  “Roger is just trying to find a solution, that’s all.”

  “What he said.”

  “We will find the monastery, and we can go from there,” the lioness informed us. “They will provide shelter like they always do. We can offer to help out around the place too, if they need something.”

  “Are you good with a hammer, Nick?” Roger asked me.

  “Actually, I have been known to do some construction in the past…”

  Roger laughed, nearly falling off my shoulder. “You sound like a real pro when you say it like that. Okay, let’s speed this up. It’s getting late, and we don’t want to be out on the street at night. We don’t know what this place is like. Hell, there could be a team of Champas rolling around.”

  “Let’s see…” Saruul turned to a woman who was just about to step into a shop selling flowers. “Excuse me,” she called to the woman.

  The woman stopped, fixed her posture, and turned to Saruul. Like the other women we had seen, she had feathers for hair.

  “Yes?” she asked, not quite making eye contact with the lioness. She was petite and a little bowlegged, yet she was still taller than Saruul.

  “Would you be able to point us in the direction of the nearest temple? We don’t really know what there is in Anand, to be honest with you.”

  “Are you tourists?” the woman asked Saruul, still not making eye contact. It was like she was watching something a few feet behind us. “Because if so, I am willing to help.”

  “What the hell is wrong with her?” Roger asked.

  The woman looked to the bird and giggled. “You have a tropical bird?”

  “Can you understand him?” I asked.

  She shook her head, and bowed again, avoiding eye contact with me. “But he is a cute bird.”

  “Is the human calling me cute?” Roger asked. “Because if that is the case, and she clearly is somehow related to a bird with her bird hair and her big nose… Do you think she has a big nose? Or is it just me? Anyway, how do you think I should play this, Nick?”

  “Don’t mind him,” Saruul told the woman.

  “You can just point us in the right direction, and we’ll be on our way,” I said.

  “Absolutely not. It won’t be a very far walk, just about twenty minutes from here.”

  “Really, you don’t have to,” Saruul said.

  The woman took a step back, shuffling her feet some. “It would be an honor,” she told us with a bow. “Please allow me to honor you as visitors to my hometown.”

  “Hey, don’t argue with the lady. Let her honor us,” Roger told Saruul. He cleared his throat, and offered her what resembled a curtsy. “By all means, madame, please honor us.”

  “Sure,” I translated for the woman. “If it isn’t too much to ask. And thank you.”

  We came to a fairly large monastery with gleaming gold pagodas and a beautiful courtyard; the buildings surrounding it were white rather than the sandy orange color of the other buildings in Anand.

  The courtyard was open, and as we stepped inside, I noticed that all the plants had been perfectly manicured, the space exceptionally tidy. The two fountains holding down the corners of the courtyard had mats before them, and there were a series of bells at the entrance, surrounded by flowerbeds filled with seashells and discarded oyster shells.

  The monks wore saffron robes, and as one of them saw us, he quickly slipped into the monastery, presumably to get the head monk.

  “Really, thank you,” I told the feather-haired woman who had led us here.

  “I can stay if you would like,” she offered.

  “No, that’s fine,” Saruul told her, Roger groaning from his perch on my shoulder.
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  “Every time I meet someone new, you guys make them leave.”

  “When did that ever happen?” I asked him.

  “The white birds in Dornod. Ring a bell?”

  As if he had conjured it, a breeze coming from the ocean swept over the monastery, ringing a series of bells in the courtyard. The suddenness of the zephyr created a cacophonous sound that eventually settled into something that more resembled wind chimes, the breeze gone as quickly as it had started.

  “I thought you didn’t like the white birds,” I told him as our guide bowed to us and slipped away.

  “I had plenty of thinking time during our epic journey over the ocean.”

  “It wasn’t that epic of a journey,” Saruul reminded him. “We were mostly stuck in the hold of a ship.”

  “As I was saying, plenty of time to think, and I’ve decided not to kink shame those white birds. They seemed happy. No, I’ve changed my mind again. I think I will kink shame them. I don’t miss them at all.”

  The door of the monastery slid open and the monk who had run inside stepped out. He was joined by a boy no older than ten years old, the younger monk in golden robes with a ring on each of his fingers. The boy monk wore several gold necklaces and his ears and nose were pierced, white and red lines painted across his forehead.

  “Welcome,” he said with a smile.

  “Hi,” I said as I approached.

  I felt Saruul reach out for my hand; I looked over my shoulder at her to see that she was bowing her head.

  I quickly did the same.

  “Allow me to introduce Migmar the Golden Jewel,” the monk next to the boy said, bowing his head as he waved his palm in the boy monk’s direction.

  “Why have you come here?” Migmar asked, a curious look on his face. “You do not look like the people from this island. You wear the robes of…”

  The monk next to them bent forward and whispered something into the boy’s ear.

  He nodded.

  “You wear the clothing of someone who practices the Path of the Divine.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “And you are a lioness, are you not?” Migmar asked Saruul.

  She nodded. “A snow lioness from the Darkhan Mountains in the Kingdom of Lhasa.”