1633880583 (F)

by Chris Willrich

  “Of course we did,” snapped Walking Stick. “But one expects to find danger in the form of warriors and monsters, not interior decorations.”

  “I counted on you to protect my son. You swore it.”

  Walking Stick was on his feet then. “I swore I’d put his welfare before the Empire’s, and that is no small thing. But I am no god. I call myself Walking Stick, not Walking Perfection.”

  “You—”

  “Leave him alone!” Joy shouted, and she was on her feet too, and everyone was staring at her. Well, she was making a habit of taking tigers by the tail. She lowered her head, but her words were sharp. “You, Imago Bone . . . my friend’s father . . . my mother’s friend and sometimes her teacher . . . you should not speak thus to Shifu Walking Stick, who has spent almost every waking hour instructing your son and me on how to carry on in the world. If Innocence has a chance of making his way out there, it is because Walking Stick has taught him the many arts.” She sat down, but she folded her arms, pinning Bone with her stare.

  “Student Joy,” Walking Stick said mildly, “it is not your place to chastise your elders.”

  “But it is fair,” Bone said. “You’re right, Joy, and I don’t mind hearing it. I forgot my manners. That ill becomes me, because I may be a guest for some time. My apologies, Walking Stick.”

  Walking Stick nodded.

  A-Girl-Is-A-Joy looked back on that moment with a mixture of embarrassment and exhilaration, much as one who discovers she’s leaped too high. It seemed to her the moment when she began to find her voice.

  Bone had been right about one thing; he was indeed a guest for some time. Once the feeling of lightness ebbed, a long winter settled in. Snow fell until the peaks were white, the trees were miniature mountains, and the monastery was some giant arctic beast. Other exercises fell away as everyone labored to clear paths and unburden roofs. With that work done, Joy would burrow through the snow, creating a maze with many places to peek out and throw snowballs. She had too much fun to feel the cold, until a lack of sensation in her fingertips warned her she’d better get to the kitchen and its fire.

  She’d been sitting thus, staring at the mark on her right hand, when a strange voice called across the chamber.

  “Daughter? My daughter!”

  And Snow Pine her mother was there, and the falling feeling was back, though this time entirely inside her stomach. Joy’s memories of her mother were blurry things, like distant buildings seen through snowfall. She did have paintings, though, just as Innocence once had his. They embraced.

  “Joy . . . how you’ve grown!”

  “I’m told people do that.”

  “You’ve also grown sassy.”

  “My teacher is Walking Stick. You’d be sassy too!”

  All that day and the next was a strange flurry of talk, words like snowflakes, quiet and meandering on their own, but in their aggregate full of tremendous weight. The actual snowfall ended, as the scroll responded to whatever new environment it was in. A feeling of lightness returned, though not to the extent of before.

  “They must have taken the scroll to the balloon,” her mother said.

  “Imago Bone has told us stories of balloon travel. He didn’t like it.”

  “Bone has a tendency to fall off things.”

  “May I see it? The balloon?”

  “I suppose you could. But you must always promise to be careful!”

  “Respected and dignified Mother, I’m the one who’s been safely tucked away in a scroll while you’ve been fighting monsters.”

  Snow Pine had tousled Joy’s hair. “Do not attempt to be logical and reasonable with me, you who are worth ten thousand gold. It does not work.”

  Now, in the present, the falling sensation had returned. Again the Peculiar Peaks were a place of dangerous lightness. Lightning storms flashed in the distance. This time Joy stayed carefully upon the mountain but took advantage of the chance to practice, for all that the heavens boomed and the sky flickered.

  “I think Meteor-Plum may have succeeded!” Liron Flint said as Joy and her mother sparred.

  “When we land,” Snow Pine said, still maintaining a fighting stance, “I will investigate.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Liron Flint. The explorer had been agitated since he’d arrived from the balloon. Joy thought he felt guilty for abandoning his friends.

  “And I,” said Walking Stick, still judging the match.

  “And I!” said Joy, blocking her mother’s sudden attack. “I can at last be useful.”

  “You can be useful staying safe,” said Snow Pine, tapping Joy’s shoulder with her gently curved sword.

  Joy ducked, ran up a tree, vaulted off, and gave her startled mother a solid kick in the shoulder. “I can be safe out there!” Joy called panting as she sprawled onto the ground.

  Snow Pine regained her balance, her expression veering from scowling to thoughtful like a change of the seasons. “I can’t abide the thought of losing you again,” she said, rubbing her shoulder.

  “I was never lost. I was always at home. It was you who were lost. I have never once been away. Let me see the world.”

  Snow Pine nodded. “All right. Though you may find the world no improvement on your home.”

  It was not. But it was still wondrous.

  Joy emerged upon a snow-covered coastal plain. There were jagged mountains near at hand, but here the terrain had a gentle slope from pale grassland down to a region of splintered dark rock fringed with gray sand. Beyond surged a sea that seemed an extension of the horizon’s gray clouds. Seabirds shrieked at Joy, Snow Pine, Flint, and Walking Stick, but other life was not evident.

  The Peculiar Peaks of the scroll were of late just as snowy, but there the terrain was spindly, full of precarious rises, twisting trees, and meandering paths. Both this plain and the nearby peaks were novelties. The first was the widest expanse she’d ever seen from the ground. The second was a much more imposing sort of mountain than the whimsical ones of home.

  And the ocean! She had not imagined such a shore before, such a feeling of lifeless presence, foaming against the coast like an exhalation. It was a calm sea, and on such a gray day it had no sparkle or reflection, yet its vast blankness kept drawing her eye.

  “What do you think of this land, Shifu Walking Stick?”

  Walking Stick grunted. “No obvious threats.”

  “An empty, foreboding place,” Flint said.

  “Like the edge of the world,” Snow Pine said.

  “I suspect that would be more interesting,” Walking Stick said.

  “Really?” Joy piped up, surprised at the adults. “You all don’t think this is beautiful?”

  “I admit it has a certain harsh attractiveness,” her mentor mused, “which under other circumstances I might wish to depict in landscape painting.”

  “No,” her mother said.

  Flint scratched his chin and smiled. “I can concede that empty and foreboding can be beautiful in its own way.” The smile faded. “Yet I hope that Al-Saqr found a more hospitable place to land.”

  And that it landed at all, Joy thought but decided not to say.

  They searched for shelter, so that the scroll could be kept safe and a few of its occupants emerge for a while. A cold wind moaned over the white grassland. “Hey,” Joy said, “how about that cave?”

  “I think you’ve indeed found a suitable spot,” Flint said. “Well done.”

  As they entered the cave, which bored into an escarpment with an enormous vertical opening like a keep-sized, irregular keyhole, Joy wondered if she liked Flint’s attempts to be friendly with her. She understood why he did it: He was captivated by Joy’s mother. Now, she liked Liron Flint, found him thoughtful and amusing. But she was not sure how her mother really felt, and sensed she should not take any side. She had no memory of her father, only paintings made by Meteor-Plum, showing a wild-eyed, friendly-looking, boyish man. Yet she felt a certain loyalty to the father she’d never known.

&n
bsp; “This should serve as a campsite,” Walking Stick said, returning from the shadows at the cave’s far end. “I see no sign of animal habitation.”

  “That’s because they know this place is too cold,” Snow Pine said, stamping her feet and shaking her arms.

  “Maybe you should warm up in the scroll for a bit?” Flint asked.

  “I’d be teased. No, what we need is a fire.”

  “Hm.” Walking Stick surveyed the ground beyond the cave mouth. “Yes, I think we can risk it. Wood looks to be scarce, however. I will go forage.”

  “I’ll go as well,” Snow Pine said. “I want to keep moving.”

  “Me too,” said Joy.

  “Someone should stay with the scroll,” Flint said, though he sounded sad.

  “Scream if there’s a troll,” Snow Pine said.

  “That is truly unfunny,” Flint said, studying the walls of the cave.

  Joy blinked as they returned to the light and shivered as the wind hit them anew. The only fuel to be found was brittle scrub, but there looked to be driftwood on the beaches and dwarf trees higher up. Snow Pine suggested they divide forces; Walking Stick frowned, but studied Snow Pine and Joy and nodded. He proceeded to the beach.

  “Are you going to criticize me about something?” Joy demanded as they hiked upslope.

  “You must be my daughter,” Snow Pine said. “You’re angry with me even before I open my mouth! We simply get little time to talk. I still know you so little.”

  “I apologize, Mother,” Joy said, her training in politeness returning. “My whole existence has been grownups instructing, correcting, criticizing. Except for Innocence.”

  “You miss him.”

  “I hope he’s all right.”

  “From what I have heard, he has the power to survive out in the world.”

  “And I do not?” Joy slowed her pace and studied her Runemarked hand.

  “I did not say that! Though if you do have power, I confess I’m worried about that too.”

  “Mother . . . this land feels familiar to me. As though I’ve dreamed about it. As though it’s always been calling to me. And . . . I’m afraid.”

  Snow Pine hugged her. “Come on. Let’s snap some branches. Destruction can be very satisfying.”

  It was. They pretended to be monsters, then swordfighters, then ancient ladies with canes, then swordfighters who were also ancient ladies with canes. Who fought monsters. It was like playing with Innocence again. The thought made her wistful, and she noticed the sun. “Maybe we should be going back?”

  Snow Pine said, “We haven’t gotten much wood. There’s a stand of trees over there . . .”

  “I’ll go get some. I’m fast. You can finish up here. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Joy—”

  “I’ll be fine!”

  Truth was, it was a delight to run a little on her own. And she would stay in sight of her mother the whole time.

  However, they’d misjudged the distance, and Joy found herself approaching the dead trees for longer than expected. Walking Stick had warned her this was a normal error for novice travelers. Knowing she’d made an error only made her more determined to wrest some good from the mistake. She forced herself forward just another five minutes, ten, fifteen. The longer the interval, the more foolish she felt, and the more determined to accomplish something to make up for the embarrassment.

  The sun was distressingly high when she arrived at the copse of dead trees. The ground was covered in caked mud. A scree of boulders had fallen all around. It was a desolate place, but at last she’d found her firewood. She looked over her shoulder and saw the distant figure of Snow Pine starting to walk toward her. Expecting a scolding, she began breaking off branches.

  Steel-gray clouds covered the sun, and a false twilight covered the land.

  There came a great rumbling, and she feared a rockslide. The boulders were unmoving, however, as far as the eye could see . . . no. There was a collection or rocks to the north that appeared to be forming themselves into a larger shape, blocking the way back to Snow Pine.

  It was like watching a collection of moths tumble toward a candle flame, only instead of singeing themselves they congealed into a larger mass, and instead of flying off they remained in that position.

  Big as a barn, the humanoid figure thus formed looked this way and that.

  Joy stood very still, a clutch of branches in her hand.

  A long nose of granite peered from a face pale and moss-spotted, beneath hair of gray-white lichen. Mismatched slabs of obsidian might have been fist-sized eyes. The musculature of the entity would have driven Persimmon Gaunt, the amateur geologist, or Liron Flint, the armchair anatomist, to distraction. The left arm had ten smaller rocks in it, the right arm five larger ones. The left arm thus bent more smoothly, but the right arm looked to have a stronger punch. A similar mismatch prevailed with the limbs, with the left leg looking ready to stomp tall men flat, and the right looking spindly as an over-piled cairn.

  Joy tiptoed behind a tree.

  Nowhere on this assemblage did Joy see living tissue connecting the stones. But there was indeed living material, for a short, stubby evergreen tree twisted out of the stone-thing’s back, or what she took for a back.

  She did not know what manner of creature this was, but she knew she didn’t want to attract its attention. Unfortunately, it lay between her and help. She would have to circle around. Carefully she set down her branches and crept away, before bursting into a run.

  Her path took her into a rocky hollow that she hadn’t spotted before. Sliding down a slope of sand, she faced a collection of small boulders, set in a surprisingly regular matrix. She expected she would clamber over them, using the back row to launch herself up the far slope.

  She had not counted upon several piles of rock and earth behind her rising and advancing. One, composed mainly of thin granite spars, was spindly enough to make the first one seem squat. Another looked like a humanoid pile of gray dust. A third entity much resembled the first, except that pale lichen wreathed it like a sash. A fourth was a rough-looking humanoid mass of clay, with agates for eyes. And a fifth seemed an agglomeration of scores of smooth river-stones, impossibly balanced; its rockfall of a head had empty spaces for “eyes” and a “frown.”

  She had the impression they were all frowning as they approached her.

  “Um,” she said in thin hope of conversation, “hello!” She repeated herself in Kantening. “Morn?”

  “Nei!” said one, and “Slem!” said another, their voices like stones falling into a stream.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, her heart feeling as though a rock pounded her chest. Kantentongue phrases babbled and echoed through her thoughts, but she’d never imagined first using them on monsters. She couldn’t think clearly enough to use them.

  “Jente! Dra!” intoned another of the entities.

  She thought they were commanding her to leave, and she devoutly wanted to. But she saw no path except through the garden of stones, or else back through the creatures of earth and rock.

  Fear made her mind struggle for a solution. She remembered standing at a porthole of Al-Saqr, looking down at an expanse of red desert dappled with evening shadows. Beside her Walking Stick had been saying, “Enliven the chi within you, and you can float to the clouds, even as does this balloon.”

  “Can you do such a thing?” she’d challenged. “I have never seen you.”

  “Were I the stern disciplinarian you believe me to be, you would be smarting at your smart remark. No, I cannot truly fly, as the legendary immortals could . . . or perhaps can. Nonetheless you have seen me kick myself into the air and walk along treetops. That is the limit of my skill—but perhaps you have a small chance of surpassing me. If you work at it.”

  That was to goad me, she’d thought. Never a word of praise, only a grunt if I get something right, never letting me be proud, always another level to attain. But if I attain enough, I can escape him forever, find another teach
er. Or learn on my own. And Snow Pine, my mother? She can join me if she wants.

  The exchange, and her silent response, flickered through her mind in a moment, and a set of exercises uncoiled in memory like a gossamer stairway leading over the boulders. She ran and leapt.

  Whereas before, the warm expression of vital breath always faded as she jumped, this time something changed. The palm of her right hand felt as though it had pressed against hot metal. Energy pulsed from the mark upon her hand and through her body. Pain wracked her, as though a series of muscles were simultaneously wrenched in the wrong direction. It was a dreadful sensation—

  But she experienced it high in the air.

  She landed on the slope of the hollow’s far side. From there she spun, forcing herself not to yelp from the aches within her. She’d done it! She could handle anything. Even facing down five (and now she guessed their nature) trolls!

  It was surprisingly easy to glean the trolls’ reactions. Their stony or dusty or clay faces proved unnervingly malleable, as they all stared slack-jawed—if they could be said to have jaws—at Joy. She resisted the urge to mock. Some of her language lessons came back to her. Perhaps one of her basic phrases could help.

  She raised her hands, but she was careful to keep them clenched. Something told her not to reveal the Runemark upon her right hand.

  “Excuse me! I am a traveler! I do not speak Kantentongue! Do you speak Roil?” She almost said, My friends are nearby but thought better of it. Best to give nothing away. Was Mother walking into danger even now?

  The trolls grumbled among themselves, and the one with the tree growing out of its back reappeared waving an arm and bellowing orders she couldn’t follow.

  And scores more trolls appeared, approaching the hollow on all sides. Joy was surrounded by these walking hunks of the Bladed Isles. She shivered but refused to show fear. The trolls did not advance farther than a few yards, but the nearest pointed at her, and then inland. Clearly, she was meant to follow.

  She considered leaping out of there. Yet having tried that trick once, it seemed her body rebelled against any further esoteric uses of chi.