Wild Hope

by C. M. Estopare

  They led him out of the outskirts. Ava stood with her back against the Wilds, her mouth open in reverent awe. Kato chuckled, still holding himself, staring at her face with amusement before he saw what caused it.

  The entire tribe—his people—the Mesh. The people who had ostracized him because of his blood. The people who had voted to banish his father—an Outsider just like Ava. They bowed their heads into the dirt. A heaving ocean of them. Bowing—to him. All except one.

  The Shamaness stood, arms crossed. Her dark eyes wide, a flicker of fear passing through them before they burned with wicked hatred.

  17

  Kato and Ava were separated. Cleaned and patched up. The Tevran wandered back into the Wilds, leaving them. As the night wore on, tangerine brightening the sky as the sun crept over the horizon, other initiates returned from their Dreaming ceremonies in ones and twos.

  Drifting in and out of sleep, a hand held his tightly. “A promise is a promise.” Ava said, shaking his hand. “I’ll tell you everything about Morgan Black. Everything.”

  His mother peered in through the bead curtain, clearing her throat for their attention. “Scions,” her voice broke. “The Shamaness is here.”

  Ava understood little, but knew the word Shamaness. As she pulled Kato to standing, his mother let herself out. She had been cold and distant ever since he returned no longer bearing the title of Outcast, but Scion. It only made sense, he supposed. He was of higher rank than her now. It would be uncouth for a cultivator to be casual with a scion. Despite the truth, it still choked his heart that he would be so far removed from his mother now. His own mother.

  Sacrifice. Didn’t Alemayu warn him of that?

  Exiting through the bead curtain, Ava and Kato stared at the crowd gathered on the boardwalk a good ways away from the Shamaness and her guardswomen. The Shamaness held out a hand for each of them to grasp. “It is time.” She simply said.

  Leading them across the boardwalk, her nail-guards bit into Kato’s skin. But he didn’t allow the pain to deter him. The Mesh looked at him with awe. The faces that had once scorned him now praised him. Now treated him like one above. Five days ago, he was an outcast unable to look into the eyes of any tribeswoman or man. He had no Purpose and the Shamaness all but promised that he would never have one. That he would never undergo the Dreaming ceremony. But, now—not only had he undergone the Dreaming Anew ceremony, but he had slaughtered a basilisk. His mind spun at the impossibility of it all. He was a Scion now. And the Outsider…the Mesh treated her exactly the same. To them, it did not matter who their Scion was, nor where they came from. All that mattered is if she stayed. All that mattered is if she swore to protect them.

  The Shamaness would make her give up her ties to her people. Kato wondered if Ava would.

  Pulling them down three rungs of stairs, the Shamaness ushered them toward her hut and paused. Tightening her grip on their hands, the Mesh following them stood silently as the Shamaness sighed and whisked Ava and Kato into her hut.

  The Water Scion waited, his grisly arms crossed. Kato had never seen the blue-eyed scion in person. Most of the tribe hadn’t. It was rumored that he was exceedingly introverted. A shut in until forced into action. The Water Scion grunted a sparse greeting, looking the two new scions up and down with a look of pure apathy. When his eyes fell to the Outsider, he nearly choked.

  Kato brought his gaze to the boar hide at his feet. Along the right side of the hut’s wooden walls, pearly tusks jutted and twisted around a mountain of thick tomes. The hut closed in on him, bone-white trinkets hanging from the ceiling kissing the top of his head as bamboo chimes clinked toward his left. The Shamaness left them standing near the Water Scion as she strode farther inside. At the back wall, a moon-sized vial of aqua-blue liquid swam and swirled within itself. Hanging near the fixture were empty scion crystals. With deft fingers, the Shamaness looped threads of frond around two of them.

  “Come.” she called.

  Standing before her, the two offered up their cupped hands as the Shamaness dangled empty crystals above them. “Together, we make four.” She said, dropping them. Facing Kato, she opened her hand toward the aqua-blue moon-vial. “Stand before the souls of our people.”

  The phrase put him on edge, but he did what he was told. Holding the crystal out toward the circular vial, he watched as blue swirled toward him like a mist. A hand tore through the blue, reaching and touching until it slithered around the crystal. It plunged in fingers first, filling the crystal up until it was cool to the touch. Behind him, the Shamaness chuckled. “You and I,” she grinned. The smile not quite reaching her eyes, “It is like looking into the surface of a river at night. You are the moon and it is staring back at me. While I? I am the shadow.”

  Her words curled like tendrils around his ears.

  “Ava.” She said, motioning her forward with her hand. “The Unexpected. Later, we must walk. You and I.”

  “Of course.”

  Ava gasped as the souls repeated their dance, clawing into her crystal as if they eagerly wanted to fill it. Once done, the two were led out.

  “Come.” The Shamaness told them. Holding her palm out, she stopped Kato. “Not you. Your assignment is over. You no longer need to be her protector. Ava can protect herself.”

  Though he was a scion, he could not contradict the words of the Shamaness. She was still a step above him. An entire league, even.

  “Yes, Shamaness.”

  “Enjoy yourself!” she laughed, throwing up her arms. “You’ve certainly earned it.”

  He watched them walk in the direction of the cliff.

  18

  An orange haze swallowed the sky as the sun rose high. Kato watched it from his mother’s rooftop as the Mesh celebrated the safe return of its Dreamers below. Resting his elbows on his knees, he played at splashing the children running free on the boardwalk with a flick of his fingertips. An explosion of air rolled across the river below, splashing up onto the screaming children. He shook his head, smiling, I’ll never get used to this.

  He’d been alone for some time, thinking. Musing over what change would come once the celebrations ended and the Mesh got back to their regular routine. He’d be separated from his mother, that much he could count on. Like the other Dreamers who survived the Dreaming, he’d be given his own hut and stipend. But, unlike the others, he wouldn’t be getting a Purpose. His Purpose lied solely at the center of his chest; the Scion Crystal. He still wasn’t sure why scions needed it.

  “You may have noticed,” the Water Scion had talked to him earlier, taking his attention from waiting for Ava to return, “that when you called on your power, things may have died.” When Kato’s face remained stoic, the Water Scion took this as confusion. “Plant life. Animal life. You may have not noticed.” He said, rescinding his earlier statement. “But when you use your power without a crystal, the world around you drains. Think of it in this way: we need water to survive, yes? We take water from the river here and the river takes water from the Great River. Without the Great River, we would drink our river dry trying to keep ourselves hydrated. Power is the same. It does not come from a void—it comes from life. The crystal at your chest isn’t simply beautiful and strange; it is life. It is a subservient soul.”

  Kato touched the crystal again, grasping it in his fist as he remembered their conversation.

  “And if I use the soul to power my…power…”

  “It will require refilling.” The water scion glanced at the river as they leaned over the boardwalk’s railing.

  “So, the subservient soul in the crystal comes from…?”

  He wouldn’t fill in the blank. Instead, he snorted. “The Shamaness refills it every day at sunset. Don’t fret. Don’t worry. Just don’t overdo it to the point where it empties. Do you understand, Air Scion?”

  “With what?” Kato pressed. “What does she refill it with? Where do the souls come from?”

  The water scion walked off. Gliding down the boardwalk toward his
own hut as if Kato had said nothing at all.

  That was something Kato was determined to find out. He wouldn’t unravel things immediately, but he’d continue questioning. Searching for what kind of soul swirled around in his crystal. But, until he knew more about that, he’d question Ava about Morgan Black and hydraulic fracturing. Whatever that meant. It sounded like magic to him. Like some sort of pseudo-intellectual babble that masked what Morgan Black was truly planning to do to their beach, their Northern Shore. With both problems, it seemed he would have to wait to have his answers as Ava and the Shamaness were still gone. Probably on the cliff-top. Probably making an uneasy truce that ended in Ava having to give up her ties to the Outsiders on the beach. Maybe Ava would tell the Shamaness all about what was going on down there. Or, maybe she’d keep it a secret. Use it as leverage if the Shamaness ever thought to turn against her.

  If Ava was smart, she’d keep the hydraulic fracturing bit between them. The Shamaness would find it hard to believe and even harder to act out against. Though the Mesh came first and foremost in her mind, the thought of any type of change made her uneasy. It made the entire tribe uneasy. Having to give up their home in exchange for safety from the Outsiders was unthinkable. Destroying them—going back on their deal to allow the Outsiders the beach—even more so. It seemed impossible. Everything seemed damn near impossible.

  But, not to new blood like him. Maybe the tribe’s leadership needed some new blood.

  The hut trembled beneath him. The boardwalk moaned and the celebration momentarily went silent. Tremors were somewhat common for the Mesh, but still all-together unsettling. Once the tremor died, the children went back to screaming. Kato went back to worrying over his thoughts.

  He heard his mother coming up. “You’re still here?” she asked, her tone one of disbelief. “Why am I not surprised?”

  She nestled near him, pulling her knees up into her chest as she watched the sun soar. “I want you to know that I was never unhappy.” She told him, her chin rising as she stared at the sun. “I have always been proud of you—even if your heroics got you into trouble. I only worried for your life…Kato.”

  Kato winced—she almost called him Scion. “I love you too, Ma.”

  “You’re my hero.” Her voice broke as she smiled, grinning from ear to ear. “You hear that? You’re my hero, child.”

  Kato brought her into a hug.

  Parrots squawked, rainbow wings spreading out in a flurry of shimmering feathers as the outskirts came alive in the morning heat. Kato counted one hour before his mother ventured back down into the hut. The celebration was dying, the sun screaming late morning.

  Just as a monstrous cry shook the sky, scattering the flying birds. The ground trembled, quaking as a gut-wrenching explosion boomed from the direction of the shore. A dying beast sang, its noxious melody unharmonious as with every strike of its falling body, the sky thundered. The sky cried.

  The entire tribe turned their heads toward the shore almost in unison, a sinking feeling impaling every tribe member’s chest. Kato slipped from the hut’s roof and sprinted along the planks of the boardwalk as fast as his broken body would take him.

  19

  No. No. No.

  They stood on the Northern Shore trail. An overgrown path that mingled high grass with white sand. From here, they could see everything. Right now, Kato wished he could not.

  A massive corpse lay sprawled in the sand, taking up a huge chunk of the shore. Bulbous eyes popped from its head as Behemoth let out a final shriek for help. The monstrous sea creature’s slimy skin baking in the overbearing sunlight as a horde of Outsiders surrounded the beast’s gargantuan head. The men resembled ants next to Behemoth. Further along the shoreline, Kato caught sight of Behemoth’s guardian, a four-armed woman with a tail instead of legs. Three watery forms circled her, keeping the Outsiders out. They resembled horses. Niln.

  “Where is the Shamaness?” the Water Scion hissed, “We need to do something. Taking care of Behemoth is our boon.”

  Behemoth is dead. Kato brought his gaze to the ground. “She’s gone.” Her and Ava.

  “Then we must take her place.” The Water Scion said. “You must.”

  Why would they even attack Behemoth? The beast was a peaceful sea monster—much less aggressive than any of the creatures in the Wilds. He never attacks unless provoked…

  Ava’s explanation came to the forefront of his mind. You see that beach? All the work they’re doing on it, yes? They are building a giant drill—a thing that can dig deep, deep, down into the earth. You following me? He cast his gaze to the left and found that the wooden skeleton was no more. In its place was a black thing of sharp metal and steel. A tower attached to a fat pipe speared its way into the sand. The drilling had already started.

  How could they move so fast?

  Contraptions surrounded the black tower. Monstrous things on black rubber wheels. Outsiders surrounded it while carrying those things—the guns the guardswoman had shown to them just days before. Was it already too late?

  “Why me?” he asked, shaking his head.

  “Because air is stronger than water.”

  It made no sense. But as he turned, scanning the crowd before him, he realized that to these people it did. He was new blood. New meat. The mirror image of the Shamaness had she been born in his predicament. She saw him as the moon that created her shadow. The exact opposite of her, but still—an exact.

  The Mesh looked to him in her absence. Where-ever she was.

  Some carried spears. Bows. The men down there carried rifles and guns. Bullets with the ability to rip flesh and bone apart. “Behemoth is dead.” He told the people. “And his murderers clamber around his body like vultures.” He clenched his fist. “Behemoth is dead!” he repeated, shouting above the silence. “The Way states that we must act when called to. Moira has called us,” and he pointed back toward the corpse, “through him.”

  Spears rose in silent reverence. Beside him, the Water Scion grunted and turned his back to them. Contorting his fingers, he brought his hands up as if his arms were a part of a crashing wave. The ocean roared like a cornered puma, rising and rising as the men turned from Behemoth’s guardian and spotted them on the shore path. Bows were loaded, in the distance, a tribesman screamed.

  Chaos descended like nightfall.

  20

  Kato knew it would be a losing battle.

  The Mesh stormed the beach, scattering the Outsiders with a flutter of magicked arrows and erratically thrown spears. But they couldn’t hold the element of surprise forever.

  Gunshots ripped through naked torsos. Crimson bled through the white sand, crawling along the beach like fingers. Throwing crashing wave after wave, the Water Scion held a group of five heavily armored men at bay as tribeswomen threw their spearheads at them. The sharpened bone and bronze grazed off of the Outsiders’ cloth armor like hastily thrown pebbles. As the water scion pounded them with rivulets of pipe-shaped seawater blasts, Kato was having problems of his own.

  Behemoth’s guardian called out to him. The four armed fish-woman grabbing at him from miles away as he dug his heels into the sand and whipped blasts of air across the Outsiders leather-bound feet. He’d hoped to push the Outsiders away from Behemoth’s corpse—not start an all out war. But as rifles blasted bullets and Mesh rained a hail of arrows over the burgundy stained sand, he realized that if they wanted to keep the Outsiders away from Behemoth they would need to give everything. They would need to fight.

  “Here, Scion!” Behemoth’s guardian sang, her voice a watery melody. “Please—you must hear me before I die!”

  He fought his way to her, cutting through Outsiders in an attempt to protect his people. Mesh were falling to the left and right of him. For every Outsider they took down, five Mesh would fall victim to gaping bullet wounds. Slipping past the Niln surrounding Behemoth’s guardian, Kato kept his gaze trained on the battle. His thoughts at war with each other as he wondered when the Shamaness and Ava would ret
urn. They could turn the tide.

  “I am Nuru.” The fish-woman told him, using two of her four hands to touch his shoulders. “Nesh is dead because of Nakato’s negligence!” she screamed, her voice sour and low.

  He had no idea who Nakato was.

  “Your Shamaness!” Nuru told him. “She can no longer hear the voice of Moira. That will be her downfall. I tell you this, young scion, that will be the downfall of the entire island! Even if you protect Behemoth’s corpse—do you think you will have won? The Invaders will be back with more. They are like coral and they will continue to grow—destroying everything. Nesh came from the ocean to stop that thing!” and she flung her webbed fingers toward the black tower. “It is pure evil. Destruction and decay. But to destroy it and save your Island—you must unite the Scions. Do you understand? All of them.”

  She let him go. Throwing him through the Nilns’ transparent bodies and back into the fray.

  The Mesh were dying.

  Bodies sprinkled the sand like a multitude of hail stones, bloodied and ripped to pieces. Spears dug into the beach as bows fell near their owners. Moving into a square formation, the remaining tribe members followed the Water Scion as he pulled crashing wave after wave onto the detail of Outsiders still fighting them.

  “I hate this fucking island!” shouted one before sprinting away from the roar of a wave. It came crashing down, taking two of his men. “You fucking savages think you can mess with Morgan Black? With progress?—”

  Kato sent a blast of air his way, silencing the man with a miniature maelstrom. “We need to retreat.”

  “And leave Behemoth to these monsters?” the Water Scion spat. “I’d rather—”

  “They aren’t even dying. They’re just going back to their tower! We’ve lost enough people—we need to go home.”

  “The Outsiders will follow.” The Water Scion told him. “But, perhaps you are right.” He grunted before turning and shooting a straight arm toward the north shore path. “Retreat.” The call was low. Tinged with regret.