Flight

by Jae Waller

  Isu reeled as if I’d slapped her. “How can I make you understand the sacrifice we—”

  “You can’t. Ever. So stop trying.”

  “Kateiko—” She seized my wrist.

  “Let go!” I tried to twist away. Nili wedged herself between us and forced Isu back.

  Isu staggered away, hands dangling at her sides as if she wanted to forget they existed. I picked up my carryframe and gestured for Nili to follow.

  “When will you be back?” Isu asked.

  I paused with my hand on the door. “I don’t know.” And with that, I stepped into the glare of sunlight.

  •

  Nili and I left the plateau and made our way back down the mountain steps to the wide creek that curved around Aeti Ginu. A decaying hemlock log dyed the water red like tea. I dragged my feet over the shifting stones, mostly to fill the silence. Nili held back her usual chatter and hummed instead, twirling an arrow. The creek led to a dirt path that was slippery with moss. It wound past familiar landmarks — a waterfall pouring out cool spray, a hollow rioden tall enough to stand inside, the lake where Fendul fell through the ice when we were kids.

  “I wish I could push him back in,” I muttered.

  The day was already warm. Our clothing was designed for humidity, spun from the fluff of cottonwood catkins. Nili had dyed hers reddish-pink and mine charcoal grey. We both wore open-backed shirts that knotted around our necks and waists, our leggings cut as far up the thigh as we could get away with. The one thing we didn’t change was our leather boots, waterproofed with resin and tall enough to protect from itchbine.

  We hiked more or less southeast, winding through steep valleys. Mounds of fluffy white clouds clung to the eastern peaks, but the sky was vivid blue, as if summer had never left. By late afternoon, the path faded to a rut, and we moved into single file. Stringy curtains of grey-green witch’s hair brushed against our shoulders. Ferns snagged on our carryframes.

  No one else had been here recently. There were no footprints or ashes to be seen. After a few more hours of unchanging forest, the path began to slope down. Bitaiya Iren, a wide, listless river, glittered through the trees ahead.

  “We have a small problem,” Nili called.

  I’d lagged behind, trying to scrape a clod of mud off my boot. “What?”

  She pointed at the river. “The bridge is gone.”

  I groaned. The fishing weir was still there, a lattice fence staked into the riverbed from bank to bank, used to trap salmon swimming upriver. But the bridge that once crossed the water alongside the weir was now just two sections of sagging wood, one on each bank, with a long gap in between.

  Nili treaded cautiously onto the near end of the bridge. She examined its edge. “Looks like axe marks. The splinters have worn smooth. It’s been gone awhile.”

  “Kaid.” I put my hands behind my head. “Rin warriors must’ve destroyed it to slow down the Dona-jouyen.”

  The Dona war had been in spring six years ago, a month before lightning burned our sacred rioden and storms damaged the route south. Bitaiya Iren would’ve been bursting with snowmelt. Even a river flood hadn’t stopped the Dona. I’d seen the body of a scout who made it to the top of Aeti Ginu.

  A crumbling smokehouse nestled among a stand of cottonwood. I set down my carryframe and wandered over. The roof had caved in on one side. Lichen covered stone firepits among the rubble. As a child I spent weeks here at a time, smoking salmon in autumn and rendering smelt oil in winter. The smell of smoke and oil was long gone, replaced by rot and animal droppings.

  I peered at the symbols on the doorframe. The Rin kinaru, three fish to indicate a smokehouse, and crests of families who fished this spot. One stood out. Tall, proud fireweed — the flower of warriors. My father and I both had it around our kinaru tattoo. He’d helped build the smokehouse. I hadn’t been allowed to return here after that disastrous year. The Storm Year, we called it. Very inventive.

  Nili pulled off her boots and sat on the bridge remains, dangling her feet in the water. It looked tempting. My hair stuck to the small of my back, and my feet already felt damp. I was halfway to the riverbank when the ground gave out.

  “Ow! Aeldu curse it!” A splintered trapdoor held my thigh fast in the earth. I pushed against the ground. Rotten wood crumbled under my hands.

  “Kako!” Nili dashed up the bank. She flung her body down by the hole and seized me under the arms. I scrambled out, clods of dirt falling away behind me.

  “Who leaves a cache unmarked?” I grumbled. I rinsed blood off long gashes on my leg and picked out the largest splinters.

  I gave the trapdoor two solid blows with my flail. It crumbled into fragments. I flopped onto my stomach and rummaged around until my fingertips grazed coarse fabric. I pulled up a heavy sack and dumped it out, expecting fishing gear.

  I found weapons. Rusted daggers, decayed arrows, a machete with rotten leather wrapped around the blade. “Weird,” I muttered, pulling off the leather to examine the iron.

  Nili poked through them. “You’re lucky you didn’t get a blade in the foot.”

  “These must be from the Dona war. No one ever came back to claim them.”

  “Which side left them here?”

  The fine hairs on my neck rose. “I don’t know.” I stuffed the weapons back in the sack and dropped it into the cache. It fell with several metallic clanks.

  Nili sat back on her heels and looked at me. “You okay?”

  I rubbed my foot through my boot. “Nei. I twisted my ankle.”

  She wrinkled her nose, but didn’t say anything.

  I lay back on the ground and covered my eyes to block out the sun. “We may as well stay here for the night.”

  “Then I’m gonna hunt some dinner.” Nili stood and wiped dirt off her hands. “If you fall into anything else, make it the river. You could use a bath.”

  •

  I woke at sunrise and stared at the tent walls glowing with light. Shifting patterns played over the canvas. Nili sprawled next to me, one leg uncovered by the blankets. Her slow breathing filled the tent. I ran my fingers over the embroidered threads on my blanket, knowing the fir branches of my mother’s crest better than I remembered the touch of her hand.

  As I got used to our utter solitude, I began to register other sounds. The bridge remains creaked. Dew dripped onto the tent. Anwen Bel insulated itself in a sleepy cocoon. Plants and animals grew, died, turned back into earth. At times like this I heard voices on the wind, in the rustle of evergreen needles or the chatter of running water. Today, I heard murmurs like people talking through solid wood, but no matter how hard I listened, I couldn’t make out the words.

  Our ancestors were buried all throughout these woods. The Rin were the oldest jouyen in the Aikoto Confederacy. All Aikoto had been Rin once, thousands of years ago, until people left to settle other stretches of coastal rainforest. New jouyen rose and fell. Borders and allegiances shifted. We lost and regained parts of Anwen Bel, but always the Rin held the central region around Aeti Ginu.

  A few itheran races tried to settle in Anwen Bel’s edges. Only one kind lasted. They sunburned easily, so they liked the rainy climate. They lived and died by mountain goats — milked and ate them, spun and dyed their wool, carved their horns into tools and jewellery. The herders I traded with wintered on the plains beyond the eastern mountains. In summer, we met at Vunfjel, a seasonal village where their goats grazed the cooler alpine pastures.

  Ninety years ago, all seven jouyen in the Aikoto Confederacy allied with the goatherds to fight a newly-arrived race of itherans. People called it the First Elken War. Two great forces locking antlers. The war was about trade routes — nothing that even mattered. In the north, the Rin fought alongside the Tamu-jouyen, who lived on two peninsulas of Anwen Bel. In the south, we fought alongside the Iyo-jouyen, our historic allies.

  Not everyone agreed wi
th the war. Some Rin and Iyo wanted to make treaties instead of fighting. They split off and formed an eighth jouyen, the Dona. They left their families, homes, sacred dead, and wandered the rainforest. No other jouyen would give them land. The Second Elken War passed, then the Third, and still the Dona-jouyen wandered.

  Six years ago, the Dona tried to settle near Aeti Ginu. Behadul declared war on them instead. They’d abandoned our confederacy, he said, and their return offended the spirits of Rin who died in the Elken Wars. So we killed the Dona. Our own blood relatives. No prisoners. They put even more of our blood in the ground. Then, like we hadn’t suffered enough, the storms hit.

  “Can you stop making it so wet?” Nili mumbled.

  “Huh?” I looked around the tent. Fog hung in the air. Nili’s hair stuck to her forehead in dark brown clumps. “Oh. Sorry.”

  Nili stretched. Her knuckles grazed the tent, disturbing the dew. She rolled over and snuggled into the blankets. “Kako . . . why did you light the lantern during the star rain?”

  “Ai. It’s stupid.” I sat up and put my arms around my knees. “Fendul said something about proving if Aeldu-yan was real.”

  “So you wanted to call the aeldu to the shrine.”

  I nodded, looking at the dancing shadows. “But if they’re trying to communicate, why not show themselves? And why now, after so many years?”

  “Maybe it’s all they can do. Maybe you weren’t ready before.”

  “I didn’t think you believed in them.”

  She shrugged. “Just because they haven’t spoken to me doesn’t mean they won’t to you.”

  “Nei. It’s just a myth. I gave them a chance and they didn’t come.” I pulled aside a tent panel and looked out at the forest. “Spirits don’t need to haunt us. Memories are enough.”

  I stepped outside, wincing at my ankle. The crisp air bit my skin, and I was about to reach back into the tent for my cloak when movement caught my eye. I snapped my head around and saw a figure disappear into the cottonwood thicket behind the smokehouse.

  “Nili,” I whispered. “There’s someone else out here.”

  Nili seized her bow and shoved past me. I grabbed my throwing dagger and limped to the smokehouse, but nothing moved in the trees. I stood still, listening. When that failed, I called out. No response.

  Nili returned, shaking her head. “The only tracks are ours from yesterday. You sure you saw someone?”

  I stared into the forest. Branches stirred in a cool breeze, giving nothing away. “I’m not sure of anything these days.”

  •

  We gave in and swam across Bitaiya Iren, balancing our carryframes on our heads and using the fishing weir to keep from getting swept downriver. We might’ve walked the riverbank all the way to its headwaters or its mouth and not found a single intact bridge. I wasn’t strong enough to hold back a whole river so that we could cross on foot.

  On the far bank, the vegetation grew so thick that we couldn’t find the path. We aimed southeast as best we could. Rain filled our footprints with muddy water. Pushing through the overgrowth, we made slow progress. I wished I’d brought the machete. Not long after crossing the river, I clambered over a fallen fir and my ankle gave out again.

  “You can’t go on like this,” Nili said, clearing the tree with ease.

  “I’m not going to sit around in the rain all day.” I pushed myself out of the muck and sat on a boulder. Silvery-green fir needles stuck to the mud on my cloak.

  Nili rolled her eyes. “Bludgehead. At least ice it.”

  I pulled off my boot, revealing a swollen and bruised ankle. I froze raindrops into a chunk of ice, wrapped it up in my cloak and held it to the bruise.

  “Maybe you could attune,” Nili said. “You could walk on three legs and not use the injured one. I can strap your carryframe on your back.”

  “You know how I feel about attuning.” I didn’t look up, focusing my attention on the shock against my skin. Cold was real. This body was real. Not my other form.

  “Kako, you can’t avoid it forever.”

  “Watch me.”

  Isu said attuning was a gift from the aeldu. Every Rin connected with an animal and from then on we could take its shape at will. Some gift. I liked having hands.

  “There’s no reason you—” Nili sighed and paced in a circle. “Would you prefer I make you a walking stick?”

  “Nei.”

  Nili groaned. She tipped her head back and stared skyward, ignoring the rain that fell on her face. “Are you being intentionally difficult?”

  “Nei.” I glanced up from under the damp hair that fell into my eyes. “Maybe.”

  Nili strode off into the trees, disappearing behind a cluster of bushes.

  A hot wave of guilt rolled over me. “I’m sorry, Nili,” I called.

  “Glad to hear that.”

  I heard sawing and then a snap. Nili emerged from the bushes, carrying a cottonwood branch almost as long as she was tall, covered with shivering leaves just starting to yellow. She began stripping away twigs with smooth strokes of her knife.

  “You’re seriously making me a walking stick.”

  “I seriously am.” Leaves accumulated around Nili’s feet, followed by curling tendrils of bark. The smell of cut wood filled the air. Finally, she sheathed her knife and held out the staff. “There. If you’re gonna act like a stubborn old woman, I’m gonna treat you like one.”

  •

  Dunehein and Emehein were the closest I had to siblings. We lived in the same plank house, shared fishing grounds and traplines, traded in Vunfjel together. Emehein was fourteen years older than me, already an initiated antayul by the time I was born. He taught my water-calling lessons whenever I got too impatient to listen to my mother. We’d sit in the snow and he’d talk me through seeing the flakes with my eyes closed. I remembered his deep, steady voice better than his face.

  Dunehein, eleven years older than me, took me wandering deep into the rainforest. He showed me wolves lounging outside their dens, ospreys soaring in the sky, bears fishing in river shallows. With him around, I was never afraid. Sometimes he even let me tag along when he spent time with an Iyo girl, a trader who came to our settlement every summer before we left for Vunfjel.

  Isu didn’t come to Dunehein’s wedding. She considered marrying into another jouyen to be abandoning the Rin. She reminded him how loyal his brother Emehein was, training with their father’s battle axe since he was strong enough to lift it. After the Dona war when we buried Emehein the first time, Isu stored the axe in a rioden chest instead of taking it south to Dunehein.

  Sometimes, during those first years of Isu raising me, she slumped forward at the fire as if a spirit was pulling her into the earth. At second glance she stood straight as ever, her long braid snapping back and forth as she tossed kindling onto the flames. Once I asked if the aeldu were invisible. She spilled the broth pot and sent me out to spar with Fendul. That night I heard her insisting to her husband’s spirit that if Dunehein wanted the axe, he would’ve come for it.

  As Nili and I got further from home, I couldn’t shake the sense we were being followed. I kept seeing motion in the corner of my eye or hearing stones rattle. Once we turned to see a massive grizzly bear watching us, but the rest of the time I wasn’t so sure it was animals.

  “No one’s come this way in years,” Nili reassured me.

  “How can we know that when we haven’t been here?” I pointed out.

  The only thing definitely following us was a grey deluge. I held creeks back so we could cross, water swirling at the edge of a chasm around our legs. At night I dried scaly sprays of rioden needles to pile under our woven bark mat. We sealed the tent panels with sap, but water leaked through every corner we missed.

  Southeast was simpler in theory. We’d go left around one mountain and right around the next, but valleys and creeks and cliffs kep
t sending us off-course. All we had to go by was the position of the sun. We climbed slopes to get a better view, but the snowy eastern range never seemed to get closer or further.

  Late the fourth day, rainclouds broke to reveal a thin blue sky. Only then did we notice the change in the air. “Can you smell that?” Nili said, sniffing random trees.

  I could. It was like nothing I’d ever smelled. The trees looked different too. As soon as I noticed the blue-green needles of salt spruce looming over twisted pines, I knew what was coming. I felt the weight.

  We made our way through the thinning forest and stopped on a bluff. Beneath us was a strip of rocky beach. Beyond that lay more water than I ever imagined. It stretched out as far as I could see to either side, sparkling orange under the setting sun. Hazy mountains were just visible across the water.

  Nili put her hands on her hips and looked up and down the shore. “You said we’d go around the inlet.”

  I navigated down the bluff, grabbing fistfuls of shrubbery and digging my staff into the ground. Rocks rattled under my feet as I crossed to the water. I dipped my hand in, took a sip, and spat it back out. I stuck my tongue out repeatedly, trying to get rid of the salt taste. “It’s definitely ocean,” I called.

  She followed my route down. “How far west d’ya think we strayed?”

  “No idea.” I ran a hand through my hair. “If we follow the shore east, we’ll find the end eventually. I think.”

  “May as well make the most of it, ai?” She dropped her carryframe, peeled off her boots, and waded into the water. “Aeldu save me, that’s cold!”

  I sighed with half exasperation, half amusement and followed her in. The cold soothed my throbbing ankle. My hair floated around my hips, brushing against clumps of seaweed that drifted back and forth with the tide. “I just dried your clothes from all that rain.”

  “Better dry yours too.” Nili stuck her hands in the water and flipped them up.

  I gasped as freezing water hit me. “You did not!” I whipped my arm through the air. A wave erupted from the surface and collided with Nili. I ducked when I saw her about to splash me again, but the splash didn’t come. She stared open-mouthed at something behind me.