Smoke and Stone

by Michael R. Fletcher

  Then she began painting.

  The spider changed. The body glistened black, caught the shivering light of the candles and took on a life of its own. The eyes, bloody and red, saw everything.

  Chisulo turned away, saying he could watch no more. It hurt, but she couldn’t stop.

  The nahualli would find them, would open their veins or throw them from the wall. They needed this.

  When he thought her asleep, she heard Chisulo talk to Happy in hushed tones. “I’m failing her. Now, after all these years, I’m letting her down because I’m afraid.”

  But Happy was lost in his own misery worrying for Omari.

  She hated herself, hated that she couldn’t stop for her friend. She hated that she didn’t want to.

  Through slitted eyes she watched as Chisulo sat staring at the floor, drowning in helpless rage. Efra dropped down to sit beside him. She leaned against him, her head on his shoulder.

  “You have something I don’t,” she said.

  “And that is?”

  “It’s the thing that tells you something is right or wrong.”

  Chisulo darted a guilty glance at Nuru.

  “I know when things are right and wrong for me,” continued Efra. “But you know when things are right and wrong. It’s funny, because they’re just ideas. Right and wrong aren’t real. They don’t exist without someone to decide which is which.”

  Efra leaned away so she could look him in the eye. The contrast of her beauty, her smooth skin, intense eyes, and that ragged scar, fascinated Nuru. Everything about the girl was a juxtaposition of opposites.

  “They aren’t real,” she said, “but because everyone pretends they are, they become real.

  “We aren’t pretending.”

  “You are, you just don’t know it.”

  “So this thing I have, is it good or bad?”

  “I think it might be good for those around you, but bad for you.”

  “Fantastic. You’re worried it can be used against me? You think that, because I have a code, I can be manipulated.”

  “You’re not quite dumb enough for that.”

  Nuru stifled a laugh. Not quite.

  Chisulo said nothing.

  She probably thinks that was a compliment.

  “I worry it will get you killed. When you should be saving yourself, you’ll save someone else instead.”

  “You worry about me?” He grinned, a momentary crack in the days of misery. “That’s you thinking about someone else. There’s hope for you yet.”

  “I worry about losing you because of what it will mean for me.”

  “Oh.” He looked thoughtful. “So losing me would be inconvenient?”

  She gave him a long look. “Yes,” she said. “Inconvenient.”

  “I can never tell if you’re joking.”

  “I know.”

  “Chisulo,” said Happy. He knelt at Omari’s side, hunched over the Finger.

  Leaving Efra, Chisulo joined his friend, kneeling beside him. She followed, standing with one hand on his shoulder.

  “He’s dying,” said Happy, voice cracking. “We’re going to lose him.”

  Nuru sat up.

  “No,” said Chisulo. He punched the floor in frustration, tearing the skin of his knuckles.

  Happy stared at him, eyes like wounds, needing hope and seeing none. “Maybe we can take him to a priest.”

  “A priest did this to him,” said Efra, from behind Chisulo.

  Happy glared at her. “A different priest. Lots of churches to choose from.”

  “Might as well hand yourselves over.”

  “If that’s what we have to do to save him.”

  “So the nahual can bleed him on the altar?”

  Happy growled, low and threatening.

  “I have an idea,” said Efra. If she noticed the big man’s rage, she paid it no mind. “The Artist. He knows things. He…” She searched for the word. “He crafts. He’s not what he seems.”

  “What can he do?”

  “Drugs. Medicine.” Efra shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing.”

  Rising, Nuru staggered over to her friends. “I’m finished.” She held up the carving.

  “We’re going to go get the Artist,” said Efra. “We’ll bring him back here.”

  “Is that safe?” asked Happy.

  “Safer than trying to carry Omari there,” she snapped.

  “Is it night?” asked Nuru. She hadn’t left the basement in days, and they’d hung heavy curtains, layers of grey cotton, over the entrance to muffle any sounds they made.

  “Day,” said Chisulo.

  “Shit.”

  Chisulo ground his teeth in helpless anger. “We can’t do nothing!” He stood. “I will go fetch the Artist.” He stared down at the sunken husk of a friend he’d known his entire life. “First Bomani, and now Omari. I won’t let it happen.”

  “I’m coming,” said Efra.

  “I’m coming too,” said Nuru. “I need to see the sun again.” Glancing at the carving, she flinched. “And I want to see if he knows what this is.”

  “What if he won’t come?” asked Happy. “Everyone knows the Birds are looking for us. He might decide it’s too dangerous”

  “He’ll come,” said Nuru, glancing at Efra.

  AKACHI – THE SMOKE IS THE SOULS

  As is the gods’ will, the central ring shall remain forever closed to humanity. Only Heart’s Mirror, the voice of the head of the pantheon, may enter into that ring to converse directly with the gods.

  —The Book of Bastion

  Akachi woke with a start. He was still dressed, and sweat soaked both his robes and the sheets. His heart felt like a hummingbird trapped in his chest. The sun sat high in the sky. He’d slept through the morning.

  A Hummingbird has my heart. He laughed at the thought, a dry choked cough.

  Not bothering to change his robes, he went to his desk. Selecting a mixture of foku seeds, jainkoei, and bihurtu, he prepared the previous evening, he filled the bowl of his pipe. This particular combination wasn’t taught in the schools. He’d realized he needed something more if he was to best this scarred Grower and her street sorcerer. Specially if the Loa were on their side. It could not have been coincidence that the day he planned on going door-to-door searching for her, the Loa assassin attacked.

  The feel of that cold stone, a raw shard of violet amethyst, still haunted him.

  It barely touched me. Little more than a caress.

  “I’m fine,” he said, eyeing the narcotics littered about his desk.

  He needed deadly focus, to open himself to the will of Cloud Serpent, and the ability to reach through the veil of worlds and channel the power of his spirit animals. He couldn’t remember if he’d mixed in some pizgarri as well to help keep him awake. Should he do that now?

  Smoke it. See how you feel. Decide after.

  On his desk a candle burned, though only a thumb’s length remained. He had no recollection of Jumoke entering his chambers to light the candles. The rest had long since burned out. His hand shook, splashing hot wax on his arm, as he used the candle to light the pipe. The pain was dull and distant, a small penance. The wax dried fast, tightening the skin beneath. The first inhalation, drawn deep into his lungs, filled him with the light of the gods. Exhaustion, weariness, doubt, meant nothing. His blood no longer slouched through his body. It roared in a torrential swirl of life.

  Akachi felt real, more real than he’d ever been. Every colour shone with an intensity and lustre that welled tears of joy in his eyes. The stone of Bastion, ancient and wise, sang songs of eternity. This ringed bowl of life held everything. Crying, he hunted through his narcotics until he found the ameslari and jainkoei. Cloud Serpent loved him, trusted him. His god gave him purpose and reason. Cloud Serpent gave him everything his father never did. Acceptance. Understanding.

  Akachi wanted more.

  Wolfing down several mushrooms, he refilled the bowl of his pipe.

  Bastion is a b
owl funnelling blood to its centre. Bowl of life. Bowl of blood. Bowl of my pipe. Beautiful symmetry.

  Amethyst, the stone of self-destruction.

  No, I do this because I must.

  Today they would go to the Artist. He would tell Akachi where to find the scarred girl. Today it would all end. The Loa want me to doubt.

  He smoked the mix to ash, tasted the sour bile of his own spit. Should have cleaned it first. He’d forgot.

  The veil between realities stretched so thin he could tear it with a careless thought.

  Remember your training.

  His training said it was dangerous to smoke without thoroughly cleaning the pipe between sessions.

  Akachi locked his thoughts down. He visualized a sturdy ebony box with a close-fitting lid. His imagination went in there. He would be stone until he needed to be otherwise.

  Hunting about the floor, he found a set of robes that wasn’t too stained and ripe. He put them on. Banded in blood red, pure white, and night sky black, he felt better.

  He found the sacrificial dagger, still bundled in a set of his robes at the back of the closet. Uncrumpling the clothes, he displayed the knife.

  The smoke is the souls.

  He took it in his hand, felt its foul weight. This dagger had taken a great many lives since last it made the journey to the Gods’ Ring to be emptied. So much violence. Death permeated Akachi, strangled his thoughts like ropes of dust-clogged spider webs in Bastion’s deepest basements.

  That Grower I sacrificed, his soul is in here, awaiting purification and rebirth. What was it like to be a soul in stone? Were they aware?

  “Don’t worry,” he told the souls within the dagger, “when this is all over I’ll make sure the knife returns to the Gods’ Ring. You’ll all be reborn.”

  Akachi strode from his chambers and walked the halls of the church. Windows, perfectly shaped gaps in the endless stone, let in plenty of natural light. How long had it been since Talimba’s death? A week? Akachi wasn’t sure, the narcotics skewed his sense of time. He ran his fingertips along the wall as he walked, feeling the texture of the stone. Shivers of pleasure tingled up his arm and climbed his spine into the centre of his skull. Such a simple thing, to touch the stone that gave them all life, and yet so few bothered.

  We are blind. Eternity dulls us.

  What of the gods?

  Could they forget? Could gods go mad? How long would it take?

  In the main hall he found Nafari waiting with Captain Yejide and the remaining Hummingbirds.

  Gyasi stood near Akachi’s friend. She looked pale and still walked with a slight hunch like it pained her to move. And yet here she was, ready to do her duty. She might be bent, but never broken. Ibrahim, the huge Hummingbird, stood silent, arms crossed, tight-bound rage. He is obsidian. Something changed in him after Lutalo’s death was confirmed; Ibrahim was brittle now. Akachi tasted it in the fabric of the worlds.

  Only Njau, huge beard hanging down his chest like a black curtain, seemed unchanged, unbent by his time in the Wheat District. Whatever he felt, it was locked so deep Akachi saw no trace of it. The Hummingbird ideal.

  Even Yejide, strong as she was, looked worried. The last week frayed her hard edges. Not softening her, but rather leaving her jagged and sharp. She’s tired. Akachi realized she probably hadn’t slept any more than he.

  Jumoke puttered about the hall, dusting and cleaning.

  “I gathered everyone like you asked,” said Nafari.

  I did? Akachi had no memory of the request. Still, it made sense.

  Nafari examined him with worried eyes.

  I’m okay, my friend.

  “I’m fine,” said Akachi. “I needed to prepare in case there is trouble. Last night. My dreams.” He hadn’t actually slept, but had hallucinated the entire night. The streets ran with blood. “We’re going to visit the Artist. I will question him and he will tell us where this street sorcerer is, where the scarred Dirt is.”

  A sliver of Akachi’s imagination escaped its box. The narcotics in his blood thinned the veil of realities to transparent. A smoke-twisted shadow of Gau Ehiza, his puma spirit animal, prowled around Akachi, shoulders rolling with muscle, eyes green diamonds of hunger.

  Eyes wide, Yejide retreated before the vision.

  Akachi locked his control tight. She worries about me.

  The stone of self-destruction.

  “How much?” she asked.

  “Enough,” he said.

  “What have you taken?”

  Unable to remember, he evaded the question. “Only that which I need.” He wasn’t sure if he lied.

  “You have to stop,” said Yejide, her eyes deep wells of fear and concern. And maybe love. “It’s too much. The cost—”

  “Will be worth it. Today we will finish this. Today I will have answers.” He felt it in his blood.

  “Talimba mentioned this Artist in one of his early reports,” said Yejide. “The man is much respected in the district. We must tread carefully or risk angering the Growers.”

  “Fuck the Dirts,” said Akachi and her eyes widened. “Tattoos are forbidden. Art is forbidden. This man has sinned and must pay.” Foku roaring in his veins, the pieces snapped together, tight fitting like the wood puzzles his father used to bring back from the Crafters’ Ring. “The scarred girl bears a tattoo marking her as a worshipper of Smoking Mirror.”

  Those who didn’t already know, gasped in shock.

  “Who,” asked Akachi, “do you think gave her that tattoo?”

  “We must question the Artist,” agreed Nafari. “But Captain Yejide is right. The man is loved. The Growers outnumber us, thousands to one.”

  “They beat Lutalo to death,” said Ibrahim.

  “They will pay,” swore Akachi.

  He’d been distracted. Captain Yejide. The Dirt mob who attacked them on the way out. The damned Loa assassin with her bright eyes and pathetic stones. Too long he allowed others to carry the burden that was, in truth, his to bear.

  “The Artist will answer my questions,” said Akachi.

  Jumoke remained silent.

  Out in the street, the sun scorched everything to bone and ash. Akachi stood, arms raised to its purifying fire.

  Burn me clean.

  “Let’s get moving,” said Yejide. She squinted in the light, sweat pouring off her.

  Glancing around, Akachi saw all the Hummingbirds sweat profusely. Nafari’s robes stuck to him. Akachi felt nothing. He was dust riding a beam of purest light, floating wherever the will of the gods took him.

  The Growers remained indoors, hiding from the sun’s rage. Eyes like shards of obsidian glinted in the dark, followed his group’s progress.

  “I’ll bring you the sun,” he told them.

  “I’ve never felt it so hot,” said Nafari, wiping sweat from his brow. His hair was plastered to his skull. “There are so many Growers here. They must have been let out of the fields. It’s too hot to work.”

  His friend was right. The Growers might not be out on the streets, walking the alleys where they so carelessly threw their garbage, but the homes were packed. A filthy, sweating Dirt lounged in every entrance, peered from every window.

  “Akachi.” Nafari stood staring out toward the distant fields. The Sand Wall was out there, though too far away to be seen. He pointed.

  Akachi saw a colossal pillar of smoke rising into sky. There was, he realized, more than one. Ash stained the horizon. The dream. The spider, legs of smoke touching down in each ring, with the Growers’ first.

  The fields are burning.

  Akachi, Nafari, and the Hummingbird Guard, stood staring.

  “Should we…” Yejide didn’t finish her sentence.

  “Others will deal with that,” said Akachi, though he couldn’t imagine who, or how.

  He turned his back on the smoke. His prey wasn’t out there.

  I am a nahualli of Cloud Serpent, a priest of the hunt.

  “Lead on,” he commanded Yejide.

&nbs
p; “Ibrahim,” she barked, “out front. Njau, in the back. Gyasi, with me.”

  The Artist lived a few blocks from the Grey Wall and the gate. They walked, Akachi aware of the eyes following him. His sharpened senses saw every grain of sand, every granule of blood red. No shadow spoiled the world. Noon, the sun shone directly above them.

  In the Last War, the final battle where man and god fought beside and against each other, humanity was brought to the very brink of extinction. Today it felt like the sun might finally burn clean this dead world.

  Why is there no god of the sun?

  Every god ruled over several aspects of the world. Each god had so many names, most had been forgotten by all but the most devout historian.

  Smoking Mirror was the night sky and wind, storms and jaguars, obsidian, discord, beauty, and a thousand other things. Father Discord. Father Night. His names went on and on. Even Cloud Serpent, god of the hunt, ruled over dozens of aspects of life in Bastion, from debtors to several types of justice and stalking cats.

  But no god claimed the sun. No one ever spoke of it. Suddenly, that seemed very strange.

  Had the god of the sun died in the Last War?

  That would explain the orb’s relentless fury, its daily attempt to bake the world. What other aspects of this reality lost their controlling gods? Feathered Serpent was god of the daytime wind and sandstorms, but there was no god of sand, no god of the Bloody Desert. Was this why it seemed like Bastion was caught in an eternal war with the blood-stained sands?

  Could gods be reborn like mortal souls? Were the gods of Bastion merely biding their time until new gods were born? What of the Heart’s Mirror, worshipped by all as the Voice of the Gods? Were they trying to make her into a new god, just as the girl with the bright eyes had, worshipped by the dead, ascended to become Face Painted with Bells?

  That wasn’t real!

  If that’s what they were trying to do, what did that mean for all the previous Heart’s Mirrors? Were they failures?

  The gods are at war, my Heart, Cloud Serpent said. Hunt the girl. The god spoke in sand and scales.

  My Heart. What did that mean? It sounded formalized, like part of a ritual. Had Cloud Serpent chosen him for something more than hunting the girl?