by Avi Silver
“Oh, get over yourself,” Sohmeng laughed. “It’s not silvertongue, it’s a mushroom. And it’s not for you.”
The hatchling, undeterred, was about to go in for another sniff when its attention turned to the sound Hei was making at Mama. Sohmeng would know that sound anywhere—it was the first Sãonipa word she’d ever formed her mouth around completely: alarm. All around her the family mimicked it, more inquisitive than upset, as Mama nudged her face into Hei’s belly, trying to calm her anxious child. While Sohmeng understood where Hei’s panic was coming from, she could also see how confusing it must have been to the sãoni—everything around them was fine. She stood up, shaking off the clingy hatchlings, and went over to Hei, hoping that she could be helpful.
“What are you telling her?” she asked, giving Mama’s nose a stroke.
“I’m trying to warn her,” Hei replied, exasperated. “But she doesn’t see any danger and I don’t know if she can smell it from here and there aren’t, Sãonipa doesn’t work like human language does. We’d have to get closer to the danger in order for her to understand it, and that’s the last thing we want right now. I need to move everyone further away!”
“How many humans are you expecting?” She tucked the cooking pot and blanket into the bag on Mama’s head spines, trying to remember how big the fire looked from above. Given the scale of the world around her, she wasn’t terribly confident she could make an accurate guess.
“Not . . . not many?” Hei admitted, chewing their lip. “But I don’t want to risk anything, not when Mama’s eggs are so close to hatching. Even if we could win a fight with them, it doesn’t mean it would be—”
Suddenly, Mama raised her nose to the air, eyes narrowing to slits as she let out a series of low, rolling clicks. The other sãoni froze, chins lowered to the ground, eyeing their alpha as they awaited an order. Hei sighed audibly in relief, folding in half like they were ready to kiss the ground. Mama began her alarm cry properly, and the colony echoed it, sending shivers up Sohmeng’s spine. She grinned at Hei, getting ready to attempt joining in on the freak-out chorus, when Mama’s tone suddenly changed—and she was off running, the other sãoni following close behind.
“No!” Hei shouted, snarling out another curse. “No, no, no, that’s not—Sohmeng, come here!”
Hei grabbed Sohmeng’s arm, yanking her toward Green Bites and Singing Violet. Green Bites took off, apparently deciding that he’d had enough of indulging Hei’s weight on his back for the day, but Singing Violet stopped, flattening herself enough for the two of them to hop on. Sohmeng gave her a happy trill, grasping onto her head spines as Hei mounted behind her and uttered a cry for the sãoni to go.
“Alright,” Sohmeng said, bracing herself as Singing Violet propelled through the jungle, “so why are we going toward the danger?”
“Because,” Hei replied through gritted teeth, “today is apparently the day my entire family reminds me that a shared method of communication does not guarantee agreement.”
The smell of the smoke hit them first, sour and metallic.
The site of the damage was smaller than Sohmeng had anticipated, dry heat shimmering in sheets over plants that had smouldered to crumbling stumps, chalky with ash. She wrinkled her nose against the almost aggressive crackle in the air. The tops of the trees were all but incinerated, leaving a hole in the canopy like the puncture of Hei’s needle through sãoni skin; against the singed remains of surrounding trees, the burnished orange of the evening sky seemed poisonous.
The near-constant noise of Eiji had disappeared, monkeys and insects and frogs gone silent in the face of the destruction. Even the sãoni were quiet. The only sound that came was the soft padding of their many feet, the clink of their claws against rogue stones in the underbrush. Suddenly, Sohmeng could hear the pounding of her heart. She did her best to ignore it.
Hei hopped down from Singing Violet, stalking around the site cautiously. With the extent of the burning, it was hard to tell what had been there before. Sohmeng wanted to ask questions, but she was wary of breaking the jungle’s sudden hush. She glanced to Mama, who was investigating one particularly charred tree. She’d take her cues from the alpha. How natural it was, to become a part of the pack.
One of their colony cried out from up ahead, and the family followed the signal. Sohmeng trotted behind Hei, nearly banging into them when they stopped abruptly with a hiss of anger. They had found an adolescent sãoni in the cinders, dead from multiple deep, blackened wounds to the neck and belly.
“That’s not . . . ?” Sohmeng asked, her stomach squeezing.
“No,” Hei confirmed. “Not one of ours.” Their expression was dark all the same.
Sohmeng turned to face the worst of the damage. She could see what Hei had meant about the power of these flames—it was as though all the moisture in the grove had been steamed out before it was set alight. “How does anything burn so—”
A series of loud squawks rang through the rainforest, high and urgent. The hatchlings.
Hei’s eyes widened; before Sohmeng could think, they were barrelling through the forest on their own two feet, doing their best to keep up with the line of sãoni that were rushing ahead. Sohmeng cursed, leaping back onto the nearby Singing Violet for the sake of speed. She squeezed the sãoni’s head spines, panic fluttering in her chest as if it were her own children crying out, her own siblings.
She didn’t need to panic for long. By the time she made it to the scene, Green Bites was nearly upon the aggressor: a human who shone like a god against the beams of light spearing through the canopy. The animal they were riding resembled nothing Sohmeng had seen before, tall and birdlike with wicked talons and a thin, beaked face.
Sohmeng stumbled off Singing Violet, trying to understand what she was seeing. The human’s body was plated in glimmering armour that protected them from the bites of the hatchlings, who they were trying to shake off their legs. One bellow out of Mama scattered the hatchlings away from the front lines. Green Bites let loose a snarl that displayed every last one of his teeth, dropping into a menacing crouch; the human’s mount screamed back, an ugly, grating sound.
“W-wait,” Sohmeng said, entirely unheard. Wasn’t there supposed to be a whole party? This was just one human—
Green Bites lunged, and though the human was quick, the sãoni was quicker. He smashed into the human’s mount, knocking off the rider and falling into a mess of claws and feathers and scales. The human rolled away, pulling out a sword and charging at Green Bites—but they were too late. With one bite, the sãoni tore the throat from the bird creature, which gave one last gurgling cry before it went limp.
The human let out a wail of their own, raw and mournful, just as Hei stumbled breathless into the clearing. Sohmeng turned to them, grabbing their arm. “We have to stop this,” she said, ignoring their baffled look. “There’s only one of them, they’re alone—we can’t just watch them die! We could, we could talk to them! Find out what’s going on with the route, why they—”
A horrible noise scraped across the clearing as Green Bites attempted to take a bite out of the human’s armour. Sohmeng raised her hands to her face, cringing away from what was sure to be the sight of someone being eaten alive—but the metal did not yield. The human held steady with their forearm between the sãoni’s jaws.
Sohmeng took the opportunity to try again. “Hei!” she barked. “Listen to me, listen, this is wrong, we have to—”
“They’re in our territory!” Hei snarled, turning on Sohmeng with battle-dark eyes, terrified and uncompromising. Something panged in her chest, a question she had not thought to ask before: How many humans had Hei watched get devoured?
The thought was interrupted by a teeth-rattling clang as Green Bites’ foreclaws came down heavy on the human, sending their helmet flying into the rainforest. Sohmeng tore her gaze away from Hei, struggling desperately against her wordless horror. Without their helmet, the human had no chance of survival, no chance at all. It w
as done. She braced herself for the carnage.
But Green Bites stopped.
The sãoni reeled back, hissing and gnashing his teeth, snarling with disgust like the hatchlings had with Sohmeng’s mushrooms. Beside her, Hei growled softly in confusion.
The human pulled themself up, disoriented and determined. They reached for their fallen blade, their armour bearing the fresh dents of sãoni teeth. Their face was gentle in its anguish; their hair had come loose from its braid. It was striking silver shot through with black, looking every bit as poisonous as the silvertongue plant itself.
And they come with sãoni-repellant, Sohmeng thought. Fantastic.
It only took the human a moment to gather themself. They reached into a satchel and tossed a handful of something grainy and blue onto their sword; it sent flames roiling up the blade with a sound like tearing fabric. The serenity on their face was enough to make Sohmeng stumble back—never had she imagined someone who would face death with such unshakeable calm.
But they weren’t facing death, not anymore. Green Bites had retreated, still shrieking and hissing but with no intention of attacking this potentially poisonous foe. The human didn’t know that, or else didn’t care, and advanced on the sãoni anyway. Their body was precise in its movements; their eyes were locked on their target with bone-chilling resolve. Just before they lunged, a blur of spirit and silver, Sohmeng saw them reach up to tap their right earlobe.
Then Hei was in the human’s path, hood pulled overhead, screaming out their own menace.
“Hei, NO!”
The warrior hesitated, seemingly unsure of what they were looking at, and Hei took a swipe with their claws. They didn’t last long on the offensive—the warrior’s sword might as well have been an extension of their arm for how they wielded it. Hei dodged once, twice, ducking away from the arc of the flaming blade. Sohmeng could see the caution on the warrior’s face, the measured footsteps as they blew the hair from their eyes—godless night, she thought numbly, they’re holding back. The stranger was effortlessly side-stepping each of Hei’s blows even with one eye on Green Bites, who sat snarling from a distance. Sohmeng thought she might be sick. The dead sãoni in the clearing had been this human’s work, no doubt about it.
If Hei kept provoking them like this, they would fall just as fast.
Sohmeng ran into the melee, praying that the warrior would hesitate a second time. “Stop!” she cried, raising her hands. “Please, stop, we—”
Hei jumped in front of her, pushing her out of the way with the same protective noise Mama had used to call back the hatchlings. Mama responded with a roar of her own, loud enough to shake the trees, and the warrior spooked, their blade tearing through the side of Hei’s arm. All at once the smell of burning flesh seared the air. Hei grunted in pain but pressed on, apparently unwilling to leave their mate unprotected even as she yelled for them to stop.
Sohmeng’s voice didn’t go entirely unnoticed—the warrior’s gaze caught hers, snagged it like a thorn. For a breathless moment, time warped as they stared at each other and found a lack of enmity, a shared will to survive. We’re both just trying to stay alive here, she realized.
As if they’d heard her, the warrior sheathed their blade. They raised their fists instead—it only took two blows to bring Hei down. Mama crawled forward, another roar rising from her belly, but Hei lifted themself again, blood pooling at their lip. Sohmeng grabbed them, pulling them back against her and holding on as tightly as she could.
“Stop it,” she hissed, her eyes locked on the warrior’s. “Hei, stop. Stop. They don’t want to kill you. Look at them, they’re not trying to hurt you—”
“They went for my brother,” Hei snarled, struggling weakly against her. “They went after you, after my family—”
The warrior stepped back, hand on the hilt of their sword, watching the two of them warily before turning to the sãoni. Hesitantly, they stepped forward, narrowing their eyes. Though the colony went wild with furious sound, none dared approach the poison human. The warrior tested their attackers a second time, then a third. When nothing came, they abandoned their stance altogether. They ran to their mount, a pile of feathers and sinew upon the ground, calling something that might have been a name in a voice that sounded to Sohmeng like song. An enemy incarnate. A warrior alone. Haunted, hunted, far from home.
“Let me go, Sohmeng—!”
Hei was writhing in Sohmeng’s arms, their fear overriding all of their better instincts. She pressed her cheek to theirs, looking down at their injured arm with a sympathetic cringe. The blade had cauterized the wound on contact, scorching hot as it was from the blue powder—fire-sand?—so at least there was no bleeding.
Amazingly, the warrior had actually turned their back to the colony. Was it in arrogance, or defeat? Either way, the sãoni did not dare to move closer, and the human made no move to attack, instead kneeling beside their fallen beast with a soft, hurt sound. They were hunched over in grief as they stroked their mount’s beak; from where Sohmeng was sitting, it sounded as though they were weeping. It was hard to believe this was the same human who had unflinchingly held their arm between sãoni jaws, who had sent Hei to the ground with such brutal efficiency.
“If they wanted to kill us, I think they would have done it already,” she said quietly. She ran through the little she had to work with: dangerous as this human was, they seemed not to want to fight. Plus, they were cornered by an entire colony of sãoni; all the fancy fire displays in the world wouldn’t get them out of that alive, even with their hair deterring said sãoni from attacking. “I think we have the upper hand here, Hei.”
“I don’t trust them,” Hei said, out of breath as they gave up on struggling. When she felt confident that they wouldn’t lunge biting and shrieking at the stranger the second they were given the chance, she released them.
“Neither do I,” Sohmeng agreed. “You’ve warned me that groups of them are dangerous, and I believe you. I’ve . . . I’ve never seen fighting like that. But this is just one of them. And that’s a good opportunity for us.”
“They attacked us! And that other sãoni, you know they killed him, you saw the marks.”
“Hei, I have to be honest here,” Sohmeng began cautiously. “Can you really blame them?”
Hei growled in disbelief, gesturing violently at the human. “You’re siding with—”
“Shut up,” Sohmeng said firmly, planting a kiss on their head. “I agree with you, Hei. I love the family. I know sãoni aren’t mindless killers.” Though she did see the irony in her words as the sãoni’s threatening noises increased in volume. “But I only know that because they spared my life, and Green Bites certainly wasn’t about to do that just now. Neither were you.” She broke eye contact, unprepared to grapple with this dilemma after everything else they had worked through today.
Hei ran their hands through their hair with another loud noise of frustration, scowling when the motion tugged at their arm. They went to touch the injury and Sohmeng abruptly swatted their hand away.
“Don’t,” she said, prompting a grumble from them. For once in her life, Sohmeng took the sulking as a victory. Better that than outright violence. “You know as well as I do that we have to get that cleaned before you start poking at it. But first, I’m going to go talk to them.”
Hei let out the Sãonipa alarm, scrambling up after Sohmeng as she stood and brushed herself off. “It’s not safe to go alone—”
“Then come with me.” Sohmeng shrugged, keeping her eyes on the warrior. “But you have to be nice, which means don’t try to murder them. I’ve had enough death for one day, you know?” The words came out with more bitterness than she intended. “They’ve probably never seen humans living with sãoni, so let’s just do our best to act normal and not scare them off.”
Hei clicked in response, confirming to Sohmeng that normal had never even been an option. Better to admit that one head-on. She took a deep breath, nodding as though it could clear her head, a
nd cautiously approached the warrior with Hei trailing close behind. All around her, the sãoni raised their voices in protest.
Sohmeng was still several paces back when the warrior turned. Their dark eyes were red-rimmed from crying, their chest rising and falling heavily beneath their shining armour. Though she knew it wasn’t actually poisonous, she couldn’t help but stare at their hair, the way the silver caught in the sunlight, bright against the black.
The land across the Great River made an entirely different style of human, even beyond the hair. Where Hei was stocky and she was perfectly pear-shaped, the warrior was lean, and taller even than Viunwei. Where her and Hei’s skin was the pale amber typical of Ateng, the warrior’s narrow face was remarkably sun-bronzed. It made Sohmeng’s heart skip to imagine someone who spent so much time directly beneath the godseye. Did their entire hmun live that way? It would explain their power to make the world burn so hot.
She shook herself, swallowing the dryness in her throat and trying to muster up some authority. “Who are you?”
At first the warrior said nothing, their brow furrowing as they stood, their fingers twitching on their sword. Mama let out a low, suspicious rumble, her tail whapping the ground in warning. Sohmeng raised her hands, trying to figure out how to communicate to all parties that no harm was meant. “It’s okay. I just want to talk.”
“Talk,” the warrior echoed, with an expression that might have been hopeful. They tugged at their earlobe nervously, fidgeting with a thick piercing that was partially obscured by their hair.
“Yeah,” Sohmeng replied slowly. “Just talk. Who are you? What are you doing this far south?”
She waited as the warrior struggled with what she had asked. Eventually, they caught on a word. “South,” they repeated, reaching into their pocket and pulling out a small damaged box. They opened it, revealing a smashed piece of glass with four ticks in the wood around it. “South, North, East, West.”
