Racing the Dark

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  She only had to wait.

  Her mother was unusually agitated that evening, and no amount of prodding could get her to say why. Lana worried that she'd had another bad experience with one of her ... clients, again, but nothing in her demeanor suggested physical violence. In an effort to cheer her, Lana gave Leilani the latest letter from Kapa, which had arrived while she was out. Although reading Kapa's letters usually calmed her mother, Leilani seemed, if anything, even more agitated after she read it.

  "Why not just join the storyteller's guild!" she shouted. She stalked to the stove, looking almost as though she wanted to toss it in.

  "But Mama, he said that he should be able to send for us soon. Isn't that what we've been waiting for?"

  Leilani looked at her and then, inexplicably, began to cry.

  Lana crawled over to where her mother had sunk to the floor. "What's wrong?"

  Leilani merely shook her head and sat down at the end of Lana's sleeping mat. She began to cry in earnest, deep choking sobs that made Lana want to cry too without really knowing why. What on earth was going on? She sat up and crawled over to her mother and put a careful hand on her shaking shoulders. She was terrified, for she had never seen her mother weep like this before. Only the direst circumstances would make her release herself like this in front of Lana.

  After an uncertain moment Lana stood up and walked to the kitchen to get a handkerchief. She put her head between her knees to catch her breath while her mother wiped her face and blew her nose. The worst of it seemed to be subsiding.

  "Lana," her mother said, dabbing her puffy eyes with the cloth. "How are you feeling?"

  "Better," she said truthfully. "My jaw only hurts when I eat now.

  Leilani closed her eyes. "No, I mean, how do you feel about this city? Does it ... I mean, do you feel that you can't ... get better here?"

  Lana tried to choose her words judiciously. "Well, I'm sure I'll get better when Papa sends for us. He says he's found a really nice place for us to stay, so I bet it's warmer, and that it doesn't always stink of dead fish."

  To her confusion, Lana's answer seemed to make Leilani even more upset. "Oh great Kai, help me," she said softly. She turned to Lana. "What if I told you that maybe you wouldn't come back to live with me and your father? What if you went to a different place, to be apprenticed, to learn a trade that will ... that will make you sought after by the highest in society? We would still see each other sometimes, once a year ..." Leilani started sobbing again, and Lana found tears on her own cheeks as well. "How would that be, Lana?" she said, her voice an octave higher than normal. Lana hugged her mother tightly.

  "I would miss you."

  "I would ... I would miss you too."

  "Would this be like what you did with those men ... something we don't want to do, that we do anyway to survive?"

  Leilani was silent for a long time. "Yes, Lana," she said finally. "It would be just like that."

  "Then I think I could do it, Mama. For you. I think I'm strong enough."

  Leilani raised her head slowly and looked at Lana. "I knew the moment I first looked in your eyes that I had given birth to the strongest daughter of the islands."

  It took a long time for Leilani to write the letter to Kapa. She didn't know how to explain what had happened without telling him things that she never wanted to remember again. Eventually, she resigned herself to confessing everything. She just hoped that he forgave her when she arrived. Lana had spent the past two days painstakingly packing their meager belongings. She had to rest every few minutes, but she attacked it like a duty and refused to stop. Leilani left her dozing against the wall and went to the docks to post her letter. She took her time, for she knew that she would have to visit the one-armed woman again today, and the very thought shot dread through her heart. She knew that she had sold her daughter-perhaps for Lana's own good, but she had sold her nonetheless-and they would never truly be a family again. As slowly as she could she meandered from the docks to the Alley. She stopped to look at the wares of nearly every vendor, even things she would normally have been revolted by-pickled loon's legs, for example. Sooner than she hoped, however, she found herself at the fortune-teller's stall. The books were gone, as well as the sign, but the dark curtains still hung over the entrance to the back room. Had the woman left?

  "I see you came back."

  The woman's grating voice behind her made Leilani jump and she turned around slowly, trembling. "Have you reconsidered, then?" Akua asked. No, Leilani thought, but she nodded her head. The woman smiled broadly. "I'm glad. Come back here with me and we will finish the bargain."

  She led the way through the curtains and Leilani followed, wishing that she had the strength to refuse this offer. What strange use did this woman have for Lana? I should leave, she thought, but she stayed where she was.

  "First," the woman said, "the necklace." She took the key charm from its place on the table-had she actually laid it there in anticipation?-and held it out. "If you ever take it off, I will know-and your daughter's safety is forfeit. This is the only thing I ask of you."

  With trembling hands, Leilani pulled the necklace over her head and tucked it under her shirt. It felt cold and harmless on her skin, but she knew that it now bound her to the witch-woman irrevocably. She wondered, too late probably, exactly how much power that woman had gained when she sacrificed her arm.

  "Well, then, the money." She reached into her pocket and pulled out the leather purse. Leilani snatched it and let its weight fall into her pocket.

  "You don't want to count it?" she asked, with mocking humor. Leilani merely shook her head. She itched to get out of here.

  "And finally, the small matter of your daughter. Is she able to travel? My house is by a lake in the countryside some two days away from here by river. We would travel by river boat, of course, to make it easier for her."

  Leilani nodded reluctantly. "She's getting better, but there's a medicine she needs ... leaves, boiled into tea at least twice a day. Will you do that?"

  "Of course. I'll always have my apprentice's best interests at heart-never worry about that. As you can see, I'm packing up shop." She smiled suddenly. "This has been quite a successful trip. Could your daughter leave with me tomorrow?"

  Leilani made her eyes hard. She would show this woman whatever small reserves of strength she had left. "If that's what you want."

  Akua's expression softened slightly in a way that would have seemed on anyone else like a moment of regret. "It is," she said. "Could you meet me at the northern gates tomorrow at midday? We'll take a carriage from there to the river port."

  She had less than a day left with Lana, then. Leilani nodded curtly. "We will be there," she said. Much as she had a few days earlier, she left the stall before the other woman could say anything else.

  Lana stood before the dilapidated pink stone walls of the northern gate in a new outfit of marbleized blue pants and a kneelength buttoned top with two slits up the sides. In her bag were a new pair of shoes, a head scarf, a heavy coat, and a sheaf of expensive paper with sealing wax-all gifts from her mother. Leilani gripped her hand tightly, but otherwise displayed no outward emotion.

  It was a clear, chilly, windy day, and passersby did not pause to look at them as they hurried about their business. Only one green-clad official stood near the open gate, itemizing the contents of merchant carts. After a cursory glance at the two of them he ignored them entirely.

  Lana wondered what this witch-woman looked like. It was strange knowing that she was to be apprenticed to a witch-buried under the pain of being separated from her mother was a certain kind of excitement. Maybe now she would learn to control the powers that she had merely touched before. This would be different from Okilani's power, of course. The wild earth spirit alone gave that power to those it chose as elders. Witches, on the other hand, used sacrifice to bind power to them that would otherwise not be given. Perhaps if she had stayed on the island and shown Okilani the red mandagah jewel, she would
have been chosen anyway. But it was too late now to regret that decision.

  At almost precisely the point when the sun reached its zenith, Lana heard the clatter of carriage wheels over the seashelllined main road. She turned around, heart in her throat. The male driver pulled the sober gray carriage to a halt right before the gate. The door opened and a plainly dressed woman, brown hair pulled into a bun that highlighted her strangely pale face, stepped lightly onto the street. Lana knew without looking that her right arm would be missing. It was the one-armed midwife from that night nearly two months ago. Lana's hands trembled, excitement warring with terror. Far more than she had on that night, this strange woman emanated power and knowledge. Lana glanced up at her mother, but though Leilani's face was set in hard, determined lines, she seemed unaware of the strength Lana felt rolling off this woman in waves.

  The woman caught her eye and smiled very slowly. It was friendly, conspiratorial, and Lana could not help but smile back, even though she felt inexplicably guilty about it.

  "Hello, Lana. I trust you know who I am."

  Her rough voice made Lana feel wary and hopeful at once. Her mother, however, stood rigidly beside her.

  "I'm to be your apprentice," Lana said, feeling awkwardly polite.

  "You may call me Akua. Does that suit you?" When Lana nodded she turned to her mother. "Say your goodbyes, then. We don't want to miss the boat."

  Leilani knelt down beside Lana, and held her shoulders tightly. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying last night, but no tears escaped them now. "You know I love you, Lana. This may be painful now, but soon you'll be used to your new life and it won't be so bad. I just hope that you'll always remember me and your father-"

  "Of course I will, Mama!" Lana found herself crying again.

  "Shh, let me finish. You have to leave soon. I'm going to tell you something that my mother once told me: listen to what they have to say, learn what makes sense, but never ever accept anything without thinking it through first. You understand, Lana? This woman will have a lot to teach you, but never lose yourself. The Lana I raised knows right from wrong."

  Lana threw her arms around her mother's shoulders and hugged her tightly, heedless of people watching.

  "I'll see you in a year," she whispered in Lana's hair, and then slowly let her go. "Now leave," she said, her voice husky with unshed tears. "Before I start crying again."

  Before she lost her nerve entirely, Lana clutched her bag and climbed inside the carriage.

  Leilani handed a medicine bag to the one-armed woman. "Promise me you'll take care of her," she said.

  Akua took the bag. "I promise," she said. Then she climbed back into the carriage and slid the door shut.

  The image of her mother standing alone by that gate, rigid as a statue, stayed with Lana for the rest of her life.

  There were no cabins to speak of on the riverboat. The ten or so passengers either purchased hammocks or rolled out their own sleeping mats on the narrow deck. Either way, they all slept under the stars. Lana was leaning against the rail near their hammocks, looking with dry, sad eyes at the reflected silver moonlight on the water. The boat had anchored for the night and was swaying gently in the current.

  "Have you ever been on a river at night?" Akua asked, suddenly beside her.

  Her grating voice no longer startled Lana. "I've never been on a river. There were none on my island. Just ocean and sand."

  "It's been very long since I've been near the outer islands, but that sounds familiar."

  Akua's voice was openly friendly-not demanding that Lana participate, but welcoming if she wanted to. Despite herself, she found that she liked the witch-woman.

  "You'll be in for a treat, then, if you've never seen the liha'wai dance."

  "Liha'wai? What's that?" Lana asked, turning her attention away from the water.

  "River nits. Strange creatures that come out at night ... entirely for their own purposes, whatever those might be. But they make a beautiful display for humans anyway."

  Akua fell silent and Lana turned back to the water. She could imagine swimming in it, darting back and forth like a fish with moonlight glinting off her skin. Gradually she realized that river water was indeed shimmering more than could be accounted for by the moon. Then in a sudden rush like the sound of thousands of tiny splashes, the moonlight itself seemed to fly up from the water and hover above the boat. Around her sailors and passengers alike stopped what they were doing to look. Strange, tiny silver-scaled creatures that looked a little like fish with membranous wings and long skinny webbed legs danced in the silvery light. They arched and plummeted, spun and zipped around each other so quickly they looked like blurs of illumination. A smile lit Lana's face and she stared, transfixed. How had she never known that something like this existed? She wondered if she would see miracles like this wherever she traveled, or if such wonders were far fewer than the pain she had become accustomed to. Did moments like this simply exist to convince humans to continue their largely painful lives? Or, was there was no design to it at all and it still served, unwittingly, the same purpose?

  "This is their mating dance," Akua said. "All autumn long the river lights like this, and then these creatures will give birth and die. Come summer, every beautiful spark you see here will be dead."

  The very imminence of their deaths, Lana realized, made their dance that much more poignant. "But next year their children will dance the same dance ... that's a kind of immortality, isn't it?"

  Akua looked at her curiously, and then shrugged her shoulder. "For some, perhaps, that's sufficient."

  "What other options do we have?" she asked, gazing at the liha'wai.

  "Ah, Lana. There are always other options. It just depends how much you are willing to sacrifice for them."

  Lana looked at Akua's empty right sleeve and wondered what option she had chosen. Then she looked back up at the dancing nits and wished her mother were here to share it with her.

  5

  MEA SAT WITH KOHAK u in the back of the lecture hall, watch ing his hands translate what Professor Nahe was forcefully declaiming on the podium. As part of the citywide celebrations of the spirit solstice, the Kulanui was giving a series of decently well-attended lectures on the history of the spirit bindings. The room this evening was packed with studious-looking students clad in orange or green robes and a smattering of civilians drawn by Professor Nahe's reputation as a popular speaker. Kohaku wore green robes and the woven purple headband of an adjunct professor, which he had just been awarded the week before. Emea was, of course, incredibly happy for him-she would never tell him that the main reason he had finally been promoted was because Nahe had spoken for him on her behalf.

  Though she had spent most of her life in a silent world after the fever that stole her hearing, Emea found it amusing to try to imagine what Nahe's voice sounded like, up there on the podium. His mouth was firm, but she knew that it could be achingly soft and pliable under her lips. His eyes raked the crowd, and for the briefest of moments they rested on her, leaving her breathless. She turned back to Kohaku, terrified that he had noticed, but he was still signing, seemingly unaware of Emea's wandering attention.

  Ever since Kohaku had returned from the outer islands two years ago, she had lived in terror that he would discover her relationship with Nahe. Kohaku would never understand how much she loved Nahe. He would demand that she never see him again, and she couldn't bear to have to pick between them. It wasn't that her brother would begrudge giving her to any man; the problem was that Nahe was already married. Kohaku would never let her become a lowly second wife. To be perfectly honest, Emea herself knew she would be unhappy in such a situation, much as she loved Nahe. So she kept her relationship a secret and never thought too far into the future-for now, it was enough just being with him, and having her brother back.

  She refocused her attention on Kohaku's hands, since he would find it suspicious if she didn't pay attention to what was being said when she had practically begged him to att
end the lecture. Nahe was speaking of the great fire spirit, Essel's ancient patron. Nui'ahi, the great volcano, was held in check because of the fire spirit's binding, and in return the spirit held ultimate control over the greatest nation-state of the islands. Every fifteen years, any who dared could undertake the great pilgrimage to the inner fire shrine, where the fire spirit itself would pick the next Mo'i, Essel's supreme ruler. The time of the next trial was looming-in three years Ehae, the current Mo'i, would step down and a new one would be chosen. With the recent rumors of possibly spirit-caused disasters on the outer islands, people were anticipating this pilgrimage more than any in recent memory. Ehae's son, now fifteen years old, was expected to be a supplicant, but history had taught them all that there was no telling who the fire spirit would pick. And those it didn't pick, of course, served as freely given sacrifices. It was a common adage of the great pilgrimage: many venture, but only one returns. The power and the prestige that went with becoming Mo'i were such that many were willing to take the risk, although Emea herself could never understand it.

  She preferred less drastic measures of honoring-or at least propitiating-the great fire spirit. Before her fever, her father had always taken both of them to the local temple at sundown on the last day of the solar month. They, along with a diminishing but determined few from their city, would burn thick candles and beg the fire spirit for forgiveness and temperance in the face of its thousandyear imprisonment. According to Nahe, worship of the fire spirit had been drastically different before the binding. Now, priests were mainly concerned about the strength of the bonds and worked to reduce anything that might weaken them. Fear-not respect, and certainly not love-motivated modern religious observance. Yet, in the remote and shadowy days before the bindings, respect and love for the spirits had apparently been normal. Without any clear knowledge of sacrifice, or of the great geas, the primitive people worshipped and honored and prayed to be spared. Nui'ahi, Nahe said, erupted no less than five times in one century, an image that made Emea shudder with a mix of horror and guilty pleasure. To see the sentinel in full rage ... it would have been a truly awesome sight.