by Jae Waller
Behadul forbid Rin from going to them. We cannot afford to lose anyone else, he said, like we’d keel over as soon as we neared the border. When traders came from the Tamu-jouyen, our neighbours to the west, I asked if they’d had contact with the Iyo. They cast wary looks at Behadul and said our politics weren’t their business. It took three years of passing messages just to find out Dunehein had survived his illness.
Until now, it’d been unspoken knowledge the Iyo were angry at us. Fendul admitting it meant acknowledging we did something wrong. No one had any idea how long they planned to stay away. Isu sent me to Fendul whenever I asked, Fendul sent me to his father, and Behadul was always busy. The eldest elder pretended she couldn’t hear me. Hiyua was the only adult who agreed with Nili and me that after six years, the Iyo must at least be willing to talk to us.
I didn’t expect to fix anything. Whatever was going on between Behadul and the Okorebai-Iyo was far beyond me. I just wanted to live somewhere that didn’t feel like slow isolated death. As I huddled in my tent next to Nili, I resolved I’d talk to Fendul. Explain it properly. Not yell.
I stepped out into a grey drizzle, facing a limp sunrise over the mountains. I pulled up my hood, wondering why our campsite looked so empty. Then it clicked. Fendul’s tent was missing.
“Nili. Nili, wake up.”
She stumbled outside, pulling her other boot on. “What—” a yawn split her question in half. “What’s going on?”
“Fendul’s gone.”
Nili turned in a circle, squelching in the mud. “He’s probably just hunting.”
“With all his belongings?” But what I’d mistaken for a rock was actually a satchel sheltered by bushes. Nili crouched next to me as I pulled out spare waterskins and enough dried meat-and-berry slabs to last for days. “He knew we’d need food to cross the wasteland . . .”
She stopped bouncing on her heels. “Then why leave now? Do you think he heard us last night?”
“We insult him all the time.” I rummaged around again and pulled out a curved ram’s horn engraved with a kinaru. I sucked in a breath. “Shit.”
I’d only ever seen the Rin horn in two places — mounted over the hearth in our plank house or at Behadul’s side. I didn’t know who made it, but I hoped the horn had done them more good than it did the ram.
“What in Aeldu-yan does that mean?” Nili said. “If Fendul’s going home to Aeti, he’d never hear it.”
I pressed my lips to the opening at the horn’s tip. “It means we have to hope there’s someone else out there.”
4.
WASTELAND
I grew up in a rainforest. The Rin had a word for people who can call water but not one for “desert.” Running out of water was not a problem I expected to have, yet we passed rock after rock scrubbed clean even of lichen. We climbed over lava flows solidified into black streams, scratching our hands on burst bubbles of rock. I stood in Oberu Iren’s cracked riverbed and imagined fish swimming around my shoulders.
My first impression had been wrong. The region wasn’t dead. Things grow from death. Scavengers feed on carrion, seeds take root on fallen logs. Here there was an absence of life. No birds circled overhead to thieve away our scraps. Nothing wriggled in the dirt.
With midday sun beating down it was hard to resist taking long swigs from my waterskin. My tongue felt stiff and I struggled to swallow our dried food. Sweat evaporated from my skin. The heat faded at night, but we gave up travelling in the dark after Nili stumbled over the edge of a rift. We tried lashing our tent to a tree. Its limbs crumbled into dust at the touch of a rope.
“Kako,” Nili said on the second day as we rested in the shade of a boulder. She sat with her chin in one hand and just looked at me. Nili, who made it everyone else’s business when she was hungry or tired or sore, hesitated to complain.
“There has to be something here.” I laid our waterskins in front of me, crossed my legs, and closed my eyes. My mother taught me how to seek water. Eventually, calling it became as natural as picking up a stick. That’s easy when the stick is visible.
I spread my mind out like flowing sap. I focused on pebbles pressing into my legs. Still air against my skin. Nili’s shallow breathing. I slipped back to the inlet, searching for the break of waves and the tang of salt.
Colourful spots danced across my sight. My fingers cramped. I forced them to stay open. Pain throbbed from my head to my feet — then it was gone and I was floating. Green washed over the world. Lush woods shimmered around me, bending like weeds in a lake. Soft ferns kissed my skin.
Faces laughed as if in mid-joke. One turned to me and smiled.
I coughed. Thorns stabbed my lungs as I spat up water. Someone rolled me onto my side and pulled wet hair out of my face. I flinched — was one of those people touching my hair? When I opened my eyes, I saw Nili crouching over me.
“What happened?” I croaked.
“You passed out.” She sat back and tapped her foot against a rock. “You okay?”
“Sure.” I wiped my mouth and lay still until the pain subsided.
Nili nudged me back into the shade. “Here.” She handed me a waterskin.
The unexpected weight nearly caused me to drop it. Even the outside was damp. Fat drops rolled down the smooth hide. “Where—” I shook my head and just drank. Cool, clean water slid down my throat. “I was afraid it’d be salty.”
“It’s not seawater. I dunno where you pulled it from.”
“Forest, I think. It felt like the whole place was underwater.” I tried to recall the faces, but they blurred like a dream in the moment after waking. “And I saw people.”
“Who?” She paused halfway through retying the ribbon around her hair.
“Never seen them before. I think they were . . . itherans.”
In all the summers I spent trading with the itherans in Vunfjel, I’d never asked where their aeldu lived. I knew they had a sacred stavehall in their town on the plains. Maybe spirits drifted over the mountains sometimes and got lost in the wasteland where even dead things didn’t belong.
•
I awoke the next morning to warm slobber on my hand.
“Euhhh.” I wiped my hand on my cloak and opened my eyes to see a charcoal grey fox, its white-tipped tail twitching. “That’s disgusting.”
The fox shifted, limbs rearranging, fur melding into tanned skin and Nili’s reddish clothes. A grin split her round face. After the first few times attuning, people learned how to shift with clothing and weapons intact. However, complex items like our carryframes, with all our supplies, took too much effort. Fendul must’ve shifted into a crow just long enough to track our route and then followed us on foot. I pushed aside the pang of thinking about him.
Nili jabbed me. “Wake up. I have something to show you.”
I pulled the blankets over my head to block out the morning sun. “Tell me instead.”
“Nei.” She pulled me up. Years of archery made her stronger than she looked. She prodded me up a slope of rubble and pointed south.
I squinted at a smudge of dark green on the horizon. We must’ve missed it in the twilight when we made camp. I rested my forehead on her hair. “Thank the aeldu.”
We kept our course fixed on that smudge. I smiled at the first dusty sapling I saw, baked greyish-yellow but pushing up from the dirt with all the determination of youth. Before long, we stood on the border of two areas — blackened trunks where a forest fire swept through behind us and a line of healthy conifers in front.
I stepped into the green shelter and breathed in the scents of wood and sap. The familiar tingle of water thrummed against my skin. I raised my hand and let a narrow stream fall from my palm. Nili captured a mouthful, droplets splashing over her chin.
As we made our way through a pass between two hills, a low rumble began to build. We emerged on the edge of a steep canyon, the walls erode
d into uneven rectangles as if carved by a jagged knife. The whole fleet of Rin canoes laid end to end would barely bridge the gorge. Far below, rapids pounded over boulders, sending up sheets of white spray.
“The bad news,” Nili called, “is we’ll die crossing. Good news is we won’t die thirsty.”
If the river had a name, no one ever used it. It was just the border between the rainforests Anwen Bel and Iyun Bel that also served as the border between Rin and Iyo territory. I only knew of one bridge over it, and I had no idea which direction it was in. Our view up and down the canyon was blocked by dense foliage. I hoped desperately the bridge had survived the storms.
“I’m never hoping for water again,” I said. “What do you think? East or west?”
Nili pointed east. As we trekked, I wondered what would’ve happened if the wasteland spread as far as the canyon. Surely nothing could disrupt such a huge river. I could barely hear Nili over the roar echoing up the cliffs.
She stopped when we reached a hemlock hanging off the bank, its roots knotted into the dirt. “Maybe if I climb out there to get a better view—”
“I . . . don’t think that’s necessary.” I grabbed her shoulders and turned her sideways.
A pair of immense rioden stood by the bank like gateposts. Even if we linked hands we couldn’t reach halfway around one. Wooden steps spiralled up the nearest trunk. Our gazes moved up and up to the underside of a bridge high in the trees. My neck hurt from looking at it.
“Yan taku,” Nili said.
“I’ll try not to take you out if I fall.” I took a deep breath and put my foot on the first step. A chain of carved symbols wrapped around the tree, parallel with the stairs. I tried to read as I climbed, but they were mostly archaic crests obscured by moss. Once my legs started burning, I gave up and focused on keeping my balance.
By the time I reached the top, I must’ve climbed fifty times my height. I stumbled onto a platform of thick timbers and out to the bridge. Nili kept up and was right behind me. Wind whipped past and cooled the sweat on my brow. The whole world was laid out around us. Rolling green forest and white-capped mountains with teal slopes before us, cracked brown earth behind us. The gorge was a seam carrying glacial water into a viridian mist. I felt like my spirit was free of the earth itself.
An osprey whistled and I finally stirred. “Is this how you feel when you dance?”
Nili nodded. “But this is better.”
Among crests on the ornate railing was a symbol of a kinaru with outstretched wings, its head turned to the side. The symbol of tel-saidu, an old name for air spirits. The Rin believed in two types of spirits — our aeldu in the dead world, and saidu, which inhabited the living world but had little to do with humans. Saidu were the elemental beings that controlled the forces of nature. They made the weather and turned the seasons.
When I was nine, just after Dunehein’s wedding, I plied his new wife with questions about the route to her home at Toel Ginu. She said the sky bridge over the border was once a shrine where we asked tel-saidu for mild winters or strong tailwinds while canoeing. That was all she knew about it. These days, it was just a bridge.
When I had asked Fendul about it later, he explained that the Rin had once revered air spirits. Our crest, a kinaru with its head and neck straight, was a modified tel-saidu symbol. That crest and the shawl dance were all that remained of the old ways. The saidu went dormant hundreds of years ago, around when we began building shrines for the aeldu instead. Fendul didn’t know which happened first.
All I’d really wanted to know was how we built a bridge so high in the trees. He didn’t know that either. After the Storm Year, I’d asked him how saidu could make such powerful storms if they were asleep. He didn’t know that either, but suspected the saidu didn’t mean to cause them. That the storms happened precisely because they’d been dormant so long.
Nili rapped the solid timber railing. “Why isn’t this rotten? Or covered in lichen?”
“We just walked through volcanic ruins and you’re worried about lichen?” I wandered along the bridge. Most symbols were older than memory. Past the midpoint they turned to Iyo crests. “Once we step off this bridge, we’re in Iyo territory.”
Iren kohal. Rivers keep flowing. I knew what a future in Anwen Bel looked like. It was as barren as the dry riverbed of Oberu Iren, cut off from life and death alike.
“Sure you want to do this?” I called back.
Nili spread her arms. For a second she glided on the wind with invisible wings. “Today we fly.”
•
Mountains faded into hills as we curved southwest through the Iyun Bel rainforest. A day in, the auburn rioden and brown-barked hemlock grew thicker. I saw fewer needled fir and more leafy alder. Fewer mammals, more slugs. Water dripped from puffy mushrooms. On the second day, the forest ended.
“What in Aeldu-yan . . .” I stepped into an open valley. Wind whistled past.
A swath of trees had been reduced to rotting stumps, scattered alder saplings, and a layer of vibrant purple fireweed. A lazy creek flowed at the bottom, almost wide enough to be a river. We made our way down the slope toward a cluster of buildings on the bank. Woodchips crunched in the dirt. I circled the buildings and checked each doorframe.
No engravings. It was like speaking to someone only to be stared at in silence. Itherans didn’t label their homes, but the smooth boards were closer to plank houses than the log cabins of Vunfjel.
Nili kicked a hemlock cone. “This place is creepy.”
We put as much distance behind us as possible, pulling up our hoods against the heavy rain when we set up camp. Nili returned with a plump grey-feathered grouse, muttering about hunting in the dark. I struck my flint against my dagger until the sparks ignited a handful of dry lichen. I’d just dropped it on a pile of kindling when I heard a clop-clop-clop from the west.
We looked up as three riders came down the path, faces hidden by black hoods. I didn’t know of a single jouyen that kept horses. The rider on the left carried a longbow and the others wore swords. The archer called out, but I couldn’t understand the words.
“Hanekei,” I called and raised my hand.
“Who goes there?” he said, switching into Coast Trader.
We only used the trade language with itherans. Every jouyen in our confederacy spoke dialects of Aikoto. Trader had some Aikoto words, some from the goatherds’ language, and some I didn’t know the origin of. The archer’s accent was unfamiliar, but I could make out two rearing elk emblazoned on his leather armour.
The swordsman on the right scoffed. “Just a couple’a wood witches,” he said gruffly.
“A couple of what?” Nili said, bemused.
“Young women should not be out alone at night,” the archer said.
“We’re fine.” A prickle of irritation rose along my neck. “What are you doing here?”
“Poachers,” the swordsman said suddenly, turning his horse and trotting past me. He seized the limp bird from Nili’s hands and held it up by the neck.
“Ai, that’s our dinner!” Nili grabbed at it, but he lifted it out of reach.
“We received reports that viirelei were poaching near the abandoned logging camp,” the archer said. “Hunting is restricted in these lands to those with a permit.”
I raised a hand to shelter my eyes from the rain. “Our jouyen has a historic agreement with the Iyo. We’re allowed to hunt on their lands.”
“Permits must be granted by the province. It is within our rights to remove poachers from said land how we see fit—”
“Are you threatening us?” My other hand strayed toward my dagger.
The third rider, a gloved man, finally spoke. “Only if you force our hand.”
“We’ll leave in the morning,” Nili said. “Just give us back our food.”
“Can’t do that, missy.” The gruff man placed his swor
d in front of Nili’s neck, pulling her against the horse’s shoulder. “Shoulda thought of that before you killed something that don’t belong to you.”
I went still. Nili stared at me with wide eyes.
“Let her go.”
“You are in violation of—” the archer began.
“Shut up!” I yelled.
The swordsman dropped the grouse into the mud. “Nobody will miss some law-breakin’ wood witches. Let’s just be done with ’em.”
“I’m not fucking around! I said let her go!” I pulled my dagger from its sheath.
In an instant, the archer nocked an arrow and aimed it at my chest. “Sir, your command.”
Rain beat down, running down my sleeve in cold rivulets. The fire hissed. Light flickered off our blades. The gloved man’s horse tossed its head. My arm trembled as my pulse beat through it.
Nili shoved the swordsman’s hand away and ducked. I threw my dagger. It whipped through the air and thudded into his heart. His body slid from the saddle.
Pain exploded through my throwing arm. I whirled toward the archer just as Nili’s arrow pierced his chest. He toppled back and fell hard.
The gloved man drew his sword. “Ai!” I shouted. He turned. My hunting knife struck him below the collarbone and ricocheted away.
I drew my flail as he bore down on me — but his horse pulled aside at the last second. The man slammed his hilt into my head. I crumpled. Something cracked against my leg as hooves thundered past.
“Leave.” Nili’s voice rang through the rain-soaked trees.
I struggled to see through blood sticking my eyelashes together. Nili had an arrow set on the gloved man. He cast a swift glance at his companions and spurred his horse into the woods.
Bloody bone shards jutted from my shin. My lower leg bent like I had a second knee. I lay back in the mud and let pain wash over me.
“Kako.” Nili cradled my head in her lap. “Kako, are you okay?”
