by Avi Silver
At the top, Hei reached to pull Sohmeng up. Thankfully, the cavern had opened back up into a space where they could move comfortably rather than duck and crawl and pray they wouldn’t get trapped. For a while, they walked in silence.
“Things changed when—” Hei hesitated. “When my grandmother died.”
“I’m sorry,” Sohmeng said softly.
Hei let out a few stiff clicks, wordless; Sãonipa had always been the language in which they were most themself. It surprised Sohmeng, how relieving it was to hear the sounds return to their tongue. That was the Hei she knew.
“I waited for her in the caves, in the same alcove I always did. But one day . . . she didn’t come. I was twelve.” Sohmeng remembered that day. Esteona Nor had been found slumped in front of her dinner bowl, peaceful and still. The other Nors prepared her body and carried it to the opening of Sodão Dangde to be laid before the gods. They sang her favourite songs at dinner, playing surrogate family to the one Esteona had lost. The animals took care of the rest, freeing the soul from its weary shell.
“I think maybe she knew it was coming,” Hei said. “She had been behaving strangely in the weeks before. She moved slowly, and stumbled on her words. She said things that scared me: I was getting too big to carry across the Bridge, the caves would not be so kind to me in adulthood, I needed to have my Tengmunji. I needed to become part of the community. She was contradicting every warning she’d ever given me—I didn’t know what to make of it. And then she was gone, and there was no one else to ask.” Hei reached out to touch the wovenstone, an old anchor. “Death is part of the design. I know that now, and I do my best to honour it. But it was difficult, back then.
“I thought I knew what it meant to be alone, back when Grandmother Nor was alive. But I was wrong. As long as there is one single being who loves you, whose life is entwined with your own, there is purpose. But without it, everything is—hollow.” Their voice caved in around the word, mournful and ragged. Sohmeng took their hand, saying nothing. “I do not know how long I was alone for, after that. But one day, I noticed that things were quieter than usual. First Par had come, and the hmun had crossed to Fochão Dangde. All that was left were the batengmun.”
“And you,” Sohmeng said, pained. She remembered the morning of that terrible birthday, the way she had sulked as she held her father’s hand, scowling and kicking pebbles. While she was moping that Viunwei would be her only playmate, Hei was hiding in the caves. Another Minhal, trapped.
“And me.” They nodded, some old ghost of determination flashing in their eyes. “And I thought, I was the right age, wasn’t I? My grandmother had said I couldn’t stay there forever. And I thought I could—I could watch them, gauge their personalities, see who I might want to be friends with. And maybe, if I could be brave, I’d go introduce myself. They were young. Perhaps they would be more flexible than the Grand Ones my grandmother had warned me about. If I just made myself useful and showed I was no danger, they would accept another hand to help them. When our Tengmunji was complete, maybe they would appeal to the Grand Ones to welcome me, argue the virtues of having a Minhal child present.” They shook their head, their voice dropping. “Of course, it took nearly two whole cycles before I came out of the caves, and when the batengmun saw me, I almost ran right back the way I came.”
“They must have thought you were . . .” Sohmeng trailed off, unable to imagine the scene. A group of children huddled around a fire, trying to coordinate their social roles for the next two years, interrupted by a face in the dark. She was amazed that the more tenacious of the batengmun hadn’t tried to kill Hei on the spot. “I don’t even know.”
“Mm.” They looked at her, eyes still shining, eerie against the black of the caves, the black of the charcoal they wore that made them so animal. So invisible. “When they moved past their panic and I found my voice again, I explained my circumstances. Some were sympathetic, others wary. A few were downright hostile—Tansen Se suggested that they throw me from the mountain, and it was probably what rescued me. He had always been so quick to judge, to lash out. No one wanted to side with that and look irresponsible. Maio Chisong and Dimanhli Ker were the ones who made the argument for me to stay, and Maio’s word had weight. Two bright moons to compliment two dark. They thought it could be auspicious. As for Dimanhli . . . well, I think she just felt bad for me. She was the one who held my hands when I started crying.”
How strange it was, for Sohmeng to hear her childhood playmates named aloud. The hmun didn’t speak of them much during their Tengmunji—it was custom to allow them to reside on the opposite mountain without physical or spiritual interruption—and after the Bridge fell, and the Lantern went out, they were referred to as one great entity, the lost batengmun. Going name by name was too intimate, too painful. And yet Hei spoke of them with familiarity, bringing back every memory Sohmeng thought she had forgotten.
“That sounds like Dimanhli,” she said, thinking of the girl who invited everyone into her games, who refused to eat armour bugs because she thought they were cute. Her throat felt tight, and though she wanted to say more, she couldn’t. She took a shaking breath, reminding herself that there was a chance they were still alive. What would she say if they were? She, who had stayed back in the hmun while they were trapped in isolation?
“It took time, but when the vote came, it was in my favour. So I stayed. I made friends, my first friends, and I lived with them for six more cycles, following the practices Maio Chisong suggested. They were a leader, through and through. Noble. When Tansen Se called me unlucky, they would scold him and tell stories about magic shadows. That’s what I was to them, I think. A shadow behind their double light.” There was not a touch of bitterness in their voice. If anything, they sounded tender. “It was easy, being a shadow. I got bolder. I showed my hmun where the best foraging was, and where the spring water sprouted from wells in the mountain. And they taught me their songs, and speculated about who I would be allowed to marry when the hmun took me in. Dimanhli Ker said I’d be the first Minhal Grand One that Ateng had ever known, even though I would only be fourteen.” Sohmeng heard their voice waver. She blinked quickly, clearing her eyes, holding their hand as they walked, straight-backed, through the passageway. “For six cycles, I belonged.”
“And then?”
“You tell me, Sohmeng Minhal.” They stopped at another steep climb, turning to face Sohmeng under the light of the wovenstone. Now, she could see the hurt in their eyes, the confusion. Not directed at her, but at a time long past, and everything that had followed as a result. “The first day of Par came upon us, and no one arrived. Then the next, and the next. Then Par was complete, and entered into Go. And Go into Hiwei. Hiwei into Fua. Fua into Tang. At first we figured there had been an accident. Then, we considered that it could be a test. Come First Won, we started thinking it was a punishment.”
“A punishment?” Sohmeng asked, bewildered. “But Hei, no, it was the Sky Bridge, the link to the First Finger—”
“How were we supposed to see that?” Hei retorted. “With a line of mountains in front of us? With no word from the hmun? We knew nothing of the Sky Bridge except for the fact that on our end, it was still rolled up in full view. No one came for us. And that had never happened before.” They turned back to the wall, searching for a way to climb. “Just as a Minhal had never been initiated.”
Sohmeng grabbed their arm, turning them around, refusing to let them bear this story alone as they had borne everything else over the years. She didn’t care if it gave them the distance they needed, if it helped to mask their shame. She was selfish, and she could not handle the idea of a child spending one more night alone in these caves. “That wasn’t what happened.”
“I know,” Hei said, their voice gone hoarse. “But we didn’t know then. All they could do was search for what was different, and I—there I was. But again, Maio argued for their shadow. They said I was as much a part of the hmun as anyone else. And I was useful—no
one knew more about the mountain than me. So again, they cast a vote. I was even allowed to participate this time. Despite Tansen’s venom, which some of the others had begun to share, the majority decided for a second time that I would stay. A second act of generosity for the year and a half we had spent together.” They made a sound that was more a sob than a laugh. “It protected me for a cycle more before a fight broke out. A bad one. Maio Chisong was cut down where they stood with a hunting knife, in the middle of a shouting match with a group of the others. Tansen started it, but I don’t know who it was that took out the blade. And Dimanhli just screamed and screamed, she said Maio’s death had doomed them all, they’d held all the wisdom of the moons and now—”
Their voice broke in full, words dissolving into tears and heaving breaths. The noise echoed throughout the caves, ricocheting off every surface until the world positively rattled with the sound of their despair. Sohmeng took Hei’s arms, trying to steady them as they sank to the floor, trying to swallow her own horror at the thought of the children she had grown up with turning into the greatest tragedies of Tengmunji. It was no use. She thought of Dimanhli Ker’s sensitivity, Tansen Se’s loud jokes over dinner, the charm in Maio Chisong’s haughtiness, Edmer Heng’s hair that curled only on one side, Foão Mi’s skill with her dice. Thirteen batengmun left behind that crossing, left to their possible deaths. At the very least, to the death of their best selves.
She remembered Viunwei’s hard eyes when he returned from his own Tengmunji, his insistence that she would only understand when she, too, became an adult. She thought the ritual was meant to grow people stronger, to help them understand what they could offer to the community. She had never considered what it would do to those who, when left alone to look at themselves, found that they hated what they saw. How fortunate she was, that her own isolation had only galvanized her will to live. She held Hei close, chirping into their hair, until they were soothed enough to speak.
“They did not vote again, after that,” they said, breaking the silence with great pain. “I was sent down the trade route we entered from, out onto the side of Sodão Dangde. I didn’t dare return to the caves. I had already showed them my best hiding spots, and I was so afraid to be found. I had watched the way Maio crumpled, the way the blood pulsed from them, and I . . . I could not shadow them into death. I didn’t want to shadow anyone, anymore. I didn’t want to know anyone ever again.” They closed their eyes, resting their head against Sohmeng’s, holding her hands like Sohmeng had gripped the ropes on Fochão Dangde. A lifeline. “I walked down and down and down, and I was scared. I had made excursions outside before, but I had never tried to live there. I didn’t understand what food was safe, and the sun was so bright, and the rain—the first time it rained, all I could do was wail at the feeling all over my skin. I thought it would never stop, that I would melt away into nothing. The sãoni must have heard me crying. Or smelled me. I still don’t know.”
Sohmeng’s heart squeezed in vicarious terror. She had gotten so used to the idea of Hei as a part of the sãoni that she had never stopped to imagine what it must have been like to be found as a child. The closest thing she could imagine was her own experience: all those teeth, the unsettling clicking, the certainty of death.
“Mama came then. Blacktooth, too. Back when they were still in the same colony. They cornered me in a cave to eat me, and I knew I was going to die and I just—screamed.” Hei smiled at the word, laughing with a strange and powerful pride. “I screamed, as loud as I could. Not in terror, but in—in anger. And then Mama screamed back. And I screamed again. Back and forth until I spat pink. And then she came over to me, and I readied myself to die and—her cheek, she pressed her cheek against my belly. Her face on mine, nearly knocking me over. She, she chose me, Sohmeng.” The tears returned to their eyes, but they were still smiling. They ran their thumb over a sãoni claw, a comforting motion, and made the noise that Sohmeng had come to know as their name. Hatchling Food. Baby Dinner. Heipua Minhal. Strange Human. My Child. “When Blacktooth moved on me, Mama fought. She scooped me into her cheek, and I yelled and cried until I realized she wasn’t eating me. And then I was at the bottom of the mountain, slimy and bruised and surrounded by sãoni that answered to Mama, now.”
Quietly, Sohmeng called their name in Sãonipa. She was no Mama, but Hei pressed their cheek to hers just the same.
“They raised me,” Hei said softly. “And soon, it wasn’t so hard to be out of the mountains. How could it be, when I had the entirety of Eiji? There are other mountains, and waterfalls, and rivers, and trees so thick you could live inside, if you spent a life hollowing them out. I missed Grandmother Nor, but I had an entire family, and all of the beauty in the world, and there was no name to hurt me with, no rules to kill me but the laws of nature. And I could abide dying by those. One day, I will.”
Sohmeng hooked a finger around their claw. “The perfect system.”
“The perfect system.”
Sohmeng wasn’t sure how long it was that they sat on the floor of the cavern together. At first the silence was daunting after the overwhelming power of Hei’s story. Then, it was soothing. And then, Sohmeng realized that it wasn’t silence at all. Far away, she could hear water running, and the rustling of bat wings, and the skittering legs of some crawling creature, and the last breath of the wind reaching and reaching into the lungs of the mountain. Life was everywhere. And death, too. Though she could not put a word to it, Sohmeng had become aware of something greater than herself, but that also was herself. Her and Hei and the entire world.
For once, Hei spoke first. “Once we climb this wall,” they said, “we’ll have only one short passage before we enter the main cavern. If any of the batengmun still live, they’ll be inside.”
“We don’t have to go,” Sohmeng said.
Hei frowned, clearly confused. “But—”
“We don’t,” she repeated. “Not if you don’t want to.”
“We’ve come all this way,” Hei began, straightening up, but Sohmeng shook her head, feeling the same passion building in her chest that had gotten her scolded so many times back on Fochão Dangde. Too bold, too arrogant, too willing to cause disturbance for the sake of addressing unchecked needs. “If we turned back now, you wouldn’t know—”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care, Hei.”
“The, the Sky Bridge. You wanted to see if—”
“Later,” Sohmeng insisted. “Or I’ll find another way. I’m smart.”
“But you said you’re my mate and—”
“That means neither of us gets to force each other into situations they don’t like.”
Hei stared at Sohmeng, scanning her face as they tried to compose their thoughts. Sohmeng met those eyes head-on, gathering herself to do what she did best: say what she meant, no matter what. “It doesn’t matter how far we’ve travelled, or what the plan was, or how badly I thought I wanted this. What the batengmun did to you was wrong. And you know, I don’t care that they were scared, I don’t care that it was a difficult situation, I don’t care that they were my friends. All of that can come later. Right now, I care about how you feel, because no one else seems to have ever taken that into consideration.” She turned to Hei, cradling their jaw in her hands. “If you don’t want to do this, we can turn back right now, and I won’t be angry. I won’t even be annoyed. Okay?”
As always, Hei did not respond immediately. It usually bothered Sohmeng, how long it took to get a reply out of them. But she was thankful to know they were not rushing thoughtlessly into this decision. They tapped their sãoni claws, clicking nervously, their racing thoughts apparent on their face, until at last they found their answer:
“I want to go,” they said slowly.
“Yeah?”
“I want to go,” they repeated, more certainly this time. “I don’t know why, maybe I shouldn’t, but I—I want to. Is that bad?”
Sohmeng let out a long sigh, leaning her forehead against Hei’s.
For a moment, she just rolled it back and forth, grateful for the soothing pressure as she pondered their question. It didn’t take long, and when she spoke, the words came without shame or guilt or uncertainty. A victory for any being, human or not.
“Honestly?” she began with a laugh, “call me selfish, but I’ve always thought that wanting to is the only actual good reason to do anything.”
“You’re selfish,” said Hei, a smile on their face.
“You too.” Sohmeng bonked their foreheads together, running a hand through Hei’s hair in one last gentle gesture. “Let’s do this.”
All was still in the main hall of Sodão Dangde. The fires were long dead, and cobwebs were draped like lacework between the small stone homes. No sounds played against the cavern walls; no smells of supper cooking permeated the air. It was dreamlike, uncanny.
From the moment she entered the cavern, Sohmeng knew that nothing had been alive in there for a very long time. In some ways, it was a relief to finally release any hope that still lingered. It didn’t make it any easier when they found the bodies.
Four of them, curled atop thick dark stains, reduced to heaps of tattered skin gone slack over bone. Their hearth was ash and their dinner bowls were unwashed. Sohmeng was able to look at them for about a minute before she turned and was sick on the ground, her own insides rattling in response to having seen what they look like on another person. Hei crouched beside her, holding back the hair that had come loose from her bun, rubbing her back.
“G-godless night,” she cursed, closing her eyes against the image of what—who—lay behind her. “They’re—I mean, I knew they were, but . . . you can’t even tell who they are.”
Hei looked over their shoulder at the bodies. “Dimanhli’s here,” they said after a pause, strange pity underlying their sorrow. “Furthest left. That’s her bracelet. Her older sister gave it to her for her Tengmunji, she wouldn’t have lent it to anyone.”
