Among the Fallen

by NS Dolkart

  Hunter found his new God’s activity confusing. Salemis had once claimed that the Gods never slept, least of all God Most High; and yet, if He had not been asleep before, why was He only now asserting His presence in the world? Why had He not protected them from the earthquake when they returned to Tarphae, or from the rough seas on the way back to the continent? Or had He been protecting them then too, but more subtly? If so, why was He being so unsubtle now? What had changed?

  It must have had something to do with Salemis’ return to the world. Although Hunter couldn’t understand why this might be so, it stood to reason. The event that had cast Psander’s fortress into the world of the fairies, in exchange for rescuing Salemis and giving the Yarek a foothold here… it must have somehow prompted God Most High to take a more active role. That was a relief, certainly, but Hunter still wished he knew why.

  Three abnormally sunny, breezy days later, they reached Mur’s Island. Hunter hadn’t known quite what to expect of it: on Tarphae, Mur’s Island had been known as a backwater. From a distance, it looked beautiful. Ivory beaches stretched all along the shoreline, and the waters were a perfect clear blue. Some cormorants sunned themselves on a rock. Past the dunes, a fishing village was nestled into the edge of a wood. A number of skiffs bobbed cheerfully across the water, their owners waving as the merchant ship approached. It took Hunter a few minutes to realize what was missing: a dock.

  The helmsman steered the ship around the island until they came to a small town – or a somewhat larger village, really – with something resembling a pier. Even so, the waters were too shallow for the ship to approach. Instead, they filled a small boat with jugs of oil and lowered it into the water. Hunter and Phaedra climbed down after the captain and two of his crewmen, and they rowed their way to the shallow dock.

  They stepped onto the sand, thanking the captain, and walked toward the village while the sailors were still unloading their cargo. Or perhaps walking was the wrong word. After their time at sea, the ground beneath Hunter’s feet was too solid, almost brutal, and he fell to his knees in the sand when it refused to move under him. Phaedra managed to keep upright, albeit barely. She tried to stop and steady herself for a moment, then changed her mind and limped along the beach much faster than Hunter could follow. She seemed to have decided that her forward motion could not be controlled and had to be fully embraced instead.

  Hunter stayed there on his hands and knees, feeling the sand between his fingers. When he rose, Phaedra was well ahead of him, approaching a young man of about their age. The man smiled, a reaction Hunter hadn’t seen since they’d left Tarphae a year ago. It was good to be among islanders again.

  “I am looking for an auntie who makes charms,” Phaedra said. “Out of cormorant bones?”

  “Auntie Gava,” the teen said. “She lives by Perrinye. I take you?”

  It was a request for coin, and Phaedra obliged. They followed him across the beach, past the village – perhaps it was the capital? – and into the woods. The boy’s name was Tamur, and he was a pearl diver. His Atunaean was weak but passable, and he told them a bit about his work as they walked – how long he had taught himself to hold his breath underwater, and which sand was best for seeding. This last was difficult to understand, both because of Tamur’s accent and because Hunter hadn’t even realized there were different kinds of sand.

  He found his mind wandering. What would it be like to live here, on an island so far away from the major cities and ports that made up civilization? If Hunter decided to stay, how long could he bear it?

  They forded a shallow stream and turned vaguely leftward, bound to meet the shore sooner or later. Phaedra was doing remarkably well despite her limp; she even seemed to be enjoying their walk. The ground was getting rockier, though, and they were traveling uphill. When they passed the tree line, they found that the hill turned into craggy cliffs up ahead, sloping down to the sea on the left. At the bottom was another fishing village, which must have been Perrinye. Perched on the rocks above was a small hut, built out of what honestly looked like driftwood.

  “She lives up there,” Tamur said, “but you better take her a gift. Nobody doesn’t go without something for her.”

  Hunter and Phaedra looked at each other. “Like what?”

  “Like food.”

  “Could you buy us some and bring it here?” Phaedra asked. “I can’t walk much farther.”

  She paid him again and he scurried eagerly down the hill toward Perrinye. Then Phaedra sat down on a rock to wait. “Thanks for coming with me,” she said to Hunter. “I don’t know what this is going to be like, but I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Of course,” Hunter answered, and after that there didn’t seem to be anything left to say.

  Tamur returned some time later with a bucket of assorted mollusks, covered over with seaweed. Hunter took the bucket while Phaedra thanked the boy and gave him a tip, and they turned back to the driftwood hut.

  Hunter’s knuckles barely made a sound on the spongy wood of the door, but the old woman who lived there must have had sharp ears. The door opened soon afterwards, and they stood face to face with Auntie Gava.

  She was a tall woman, slightly hunched though she was, and her dress was covered in beads, bones, and other small objects that clacked together as it swayed. Her long gray hair was bound only loosely in the back by what might have been dried woven seaweed. She was bulky too, with a formidable heft that told of strength despite her years. Hunter was not sure what exactly he had expected, but this Auntie was far more imposing than anything he had imagined.

  She spoke to them first in some of the languages of the eastern archipelago, and switched to Atunaean only when it became clear that they didn’t understand a word. She clearly hated that – she spat out the Atunaean words like they were each a bad bite of fruit or a seed half-eaten by insects. At least she spoke it, though.

  “I don’t know you,” she said bluntly. “What do you want with me?”

  Hunter looked to Phaedra, who said meekly, “I was hoping you could show me magic.”

  Auntie Gava began to shut the door again, but Phaedra put her hand in the way. “Please,” she said.

  “I’ve got no use for you,” the woman said. “Move your hand or I break it.”

  “Go ahead,” Phaedra answered, finding her voice. “If I can’t study magic, I may as well lose my hand too.”

  That stopped her. Hunter could see Auntie Gava reassessing them through her cold dark eyes. She looked extremely skeptical. She was going to ask what was in it for her, Hunter was sure, and he doubted that a bucket of oysters would be enough. But then she surprised him and said, “Come in then.”

  She stepped back and they entered her hut, which was small enough to seem crowded with just the three of them inside. There was no furniture whatsoever – the nearest thing to a bed was the single blanket rolled up in a corner. The floor was littered with junk: bones and mollusk shells, pebbles and sticks and seaweed. Gava took the bucket from Hunter and sat down on the floor, clearing a space for herself with a thoughtless sweep of her arm. Hunter and Phaedra sat gingerly across from her, or beside her – it was practically the same thing in here.

  Auntie Gava took up a flint knife and began shucking oysters, popping them open with an expert twist and sucking out the contents. She did not offer any to them.

  “You want to learn magic,” she said after a time. “Where are you from? You look all right, but you only speak Atunaean?” She said the last word as if it disgusted her.

  “We were from Tarphae,” Phaedra said. “And we’ve been on the continent for the last year, ever since the plague that killed our people.”

  Gava slurped another oyster. “That would do it. Atunaean is all you know, I’ll bet. Not even a word of Estric or Lago, and definitely no Tigra. You’re rich too. Fancy words. Tarphaeans always wished they didn’t live on an island. The richer they are, the more they talk like it.”

  It was an undeniable truth, put forward in the ugliest
way possible. For all that they worshipped Karassa and looked like the other islanders, the people of Tarphae had always looked to the continent for their culture and learning. Tarphae was the westernmost island in the archipelago, and aspired to the kind of power that the great cities of the continent were known for.

  “Our wealth is gone,” Phaedra answered. “What we have now are our skills and our wits.”

  “And you want to learn magic.”

  “And we want to learn magic. Or, I do.”

  “And you?” Gava asked Hunter. “You’re along for her, yes?”

  “Yes,” Hunter admitted, though he didn’t like her implication.

  “And what makes you think you can learn from me?” she said to Phaedra, and again her implication bothered Hunter. She was questioning Phaedra’s aptitude as a student, not her own skill as a teacher. Blunt. Rude.

  Phaedra took a breath and recited a speech that she must have prepared beforehand. It was far too formal for their surroundings, but at least she didn’t falter once she’d committed to reciting it. She said, “I have seen a continental wizard conjure fire in her hand, and summon books from her shelves with no more than a gesture. But she’s gone elsewhere, to the world of the fairies. I have seen more amazing things than could fit in a thousand stories. I want to learn, and I am willing to learn from you or from anyone. Only time will tell if I shall succeed.”

  Auntie Gava put her knife down and met Phaedra’s eyes. “You talk too fancy,” she said. “You say the right things, mind, but too fancy. My magic isn’t fancy, not like your words. I doubt it’ll suit you. But we’ll see. You want to try to learn from me, I’ll show you what I do here.”

  10

  Phaedra

  The first thing Auntie Gava did was to finish her oysters, maintaining her unhurried manner. When she was down to the last one, she reached into a fold in her dress and pulled out a thin coin.

  “See here,” she said.

  She slid her knife in beside the hinge and began to pry the oyster open, stopping as soon as there was a gap between the two halves of the shell. Then she slipped the coin inside and pressed the oyster back together with her fingers. It was imperfect, but good enough to keep the coin from falling out again.

  She said a word in her language three times. Then she marched out of the hut and climbed partway down the rocks. Phaedra and Hunter followed dutifully. “Now we bury it,” Gava explained. “Here, boy, move this rock for me.”

  Hunter did as she said, and when he had cleared a space, the old woman dropped her oyster in and told him to cover it up again. It wasn’t even a proper burial – they hadn’t dug into the ground – but when the oyster was no longer visible, Gava began to climb back up to her house.

  “What now?” Phaedra asked when they got there.

  “Nothing,” Auntie Gava said. “That’s it.”

  “What did that word you said mean?”

  “Prosperity.”

  “Is it supposed to bring prosperity to you, or to the whole island?”

  Gava shrugged. “Doesn’t really make a difference. When things go well, people share.”

  “Is there some way you can tell when it’s working?”

  This time, Gava laughed. “Sure. People do well, they come and bring me things.”

  “And if they don’t do well?”

  “Then you try again. You just need more oysters and more coins, that’s all. If they’ve got ’em, I’ve got time to bury ’em.”

  “Then how do you know when it’s magic and not luck?”

  Gava looked at her sternly. “This is luck magic, girl. If it works, it works; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. The luck and the magic are the same thing.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t know what notions you’ve got,” Gava said, “but you can’t separate magic from the world and say, ‘this part’s magic, this part’s normal.’ Magic is part of the whole thing. It is normal. The Gods are all magic, and They made this place.”

  Phaedra nodded, but she knew her disappointment was showing. It was all well and good for Auntie Gava to say that magic was normal, but she hadn’t seen what Phaedra had seen.

  “The Gods put this place together on purpose,” Auntie Gava went on. “Some places They made it pretty, some places They made it ugly. They make it how They like it. If you want to do magic, you take a look at what They made, you try to get some of the pieces so they fit together better than before, and that’s it. You’ve got magic. It’s not fancy.”

  It took all Phaedra’s self-control not to argue with the old woman. Whatever one might say about magic, it was definitely fancy. Psander’s library, Criton’s fire, even Bandu’s connection with plants and animals – they were all miraculous, all aesthetic. How could anyone be so prosaic about magic?

  But then, maybe she wasn’t being fair. Auntie Gava and Psander did seem to share a general attitude toward life. They might have more in common than met the eye.

  “Can you show me how you make the sailors’ charms? The ones that point back here?”

  “What, I’m your private teacher now? Just because I let you watch doesn’t mean I’ll go out of my way just to show you things. You gave me some oysters, not a fortune in gold. I only make charms for people who need them.”

  “I’m sorry,” Phaedra said. “That’s fair. I’ll just watch whatever you’re doing.”

  She spent the rest of the day watching and listening without interruption as Gava went about her work. She watched the old woman coax her fire back to life, listened carefully to the songs Gava sang as she prepared her meals – it could all be important. Auntie Gava might not pulse with power the way Bandu, Criton, and Psander all did, but she had been doing this for years, and she sang her songs and performed her rituals with all the confidence that Psander had shown in her own domain.

  Her attempt to reconstruct magic theory wasn’t off to such a bad start, Phaedra decided. Gava’s perspective was useful, especially since Phaedra could compare it to what little the wizard Psander had told her. Psander had spoken of magic as a series of rules that existed above and alongside the “ordinary” rules of reality. She had never revealed what these rules might be, but one did begin to taste their flavor, the longer one watched her. Phaedra thought back to the time a few months ago, when the islanders had tried to open a route to the fairies’ world. The Goddess Eramia had given Hunter a flower to help them find their way through to Salemis, and Narky had suggested that Criton bleed on it: “It seems like the kind of weird thing Psander might have you do.”

  It had worked, too. Once Bandu had added her fairy magic, the gate to Salemis’ prison in the elves’ world had opened. There had been a kind of poetry to their method, and it had worked.

  Phaedra’s new theory was that this poetry was essential to magic, that magic itself might be a kind of poetry. She doubted that Psander would have put it that way, and Gava would probably have objected too, but it was a theory that resonated for her. So much of the magic she had seen in the last year was, for lack of a better term, appropriate. Even Gava’s prosperity magic, unrigorous though it was, had that same underlying appropriateness to it. Whatever the details, Phaedra thought that this must be the basis of Psander’s “magic theory.”

  Right or wrong, at least Phaedra had a solid hypothesis now, and a framework with which to test it. If magic was truly a kind of universal poetics, then somehow or other, she ought to be able to manipulate the world through thoughtful composition. For now, she’d observe Auntie Gava in the hopes of witnessing a piece of demonstrably effective magic – something she could practice on. After that, she would have to proceed through trial and error.

  Auntie Gava’s lack of rigor was excruciating, though. She treated every mundane task as if it were magical and every magical task as if it were mundane. The worst part was that she did it that way on purpose – as she had said, she didn’t believe there was a dividing line between the two.

  In the late afternoon, when Phaedra was already starting to wonde
r about where they were going to sleep that night, a man with Atunaean coloration came running up from the village to tell the old witch that his wife had gone into labor. Gava made him stay while she cut off a lock of her own tangled hairs and braided a charm for the baby out of it. Phaedra watched, fascinated, as the old woman washed the charm with a few drops of blood taken from her thumb, and presented the man with a necklace just big enough to fit over a baby’s head.

  “Never let the babe take this off,” she warned, “and if it comes apart before six years have passed, you come back to me. My old blood will protect your child from the demons.”

  The man took the charm gratefully and paid her in gold. Atunaeans were the ruling class here, and Phaedra suspected that this was a massive overpayment compared to what a native islander would have given her, but Auntie Gava did not even thank him. She just took the money and watched him run off, leaving Phaedra to ask what all that had been about.

  “Your parents never told you about demons?” Gava asked disgustedly. “It’s a wonder you people survive at all.”

  Phaedra did know about demons, at least from the perspective of continental religion, but none of what she knew explained what Auntie Gava had just done with her hair and blood.

  “Please,” she said, “tell me about them.”

  “Demons like to steal babes and children and take them off to their demon halls. My old blood keeps our young ones from being found.”

  “Have demons stolen children here before?”

  “Not in generations, girl, but they used to, before we aunties started warding them away.”

  “What do they look like?”

  Auntie Gava sucked on her bloodied thumb and rolled her eyes. “How do I know? I keep them away; I don’t invite them in.”

  Phaedra nodded. She thought she knew exactly what demons looked like. She thought they looked like fairies.