by Jae Waller
The world spun like I’d done a flip underwater. “I . . . think so . . .”
She fumbled with the stopper of a clay vial. “Drink this.”
I caught a sharp scent like unripe berries. I only drank tulanta when I was desperate. The name meant ‘gate water’ for a reason. “I can’t — Nili, if he comes back—”
“Kako, please. Just take it.” She held the vial to my lips. I gave in and swallowed the sour liquid, trying not to throw it back up.
Nili brushed damp hair from my face. “You’ll be fine. I’ll take care of you.”
The last thing I heard before succumbing was the loud, mournful cry of a horn echoing across drenched forest and into the night.
5.
ITHERANS
I curled up on the lake floor, clinging to the soothing dampness. Water caressed my skin. Slippery weeds entwined my limbs. The weight of the lake bore down on me, pressing me into the cool earth. Specks of algae shuddered in murky green light, rising toward the surface as if seeking out the sky.
“Kateiko.”
I clamped my hands over my ears. Something pulled them away. I wanted to stay under, but my body drifted up in a cloud of algae, toward the flickering sun—
“Kateiko. Can you hear me?”
“Shut up,” I tried to say. Water poured into my mouth. My spine arched as I gasped.
I broke the surface. A man filled my vision. The edges of his hair were aflame. Water fell hard and fast on my face, but he burned bright.
“It’s you.” I jerked up. “I saw you in the wasteland. You smiled at me in the forest.”
“You do not know me,” he said, but I saw fire in the corners of his mouth.
“Am I dead?”
“You tell me.”
Suddenly there was pressure under my shoulders and knees. A jolt shot through my leg. I rose into the air and was set on something warm and smooth that snuffled under me. I scrabbled around, latching onto tangled hair — and then I let go, nearly falling off.
“Go south to the creek,” the man said. “Follow it west until you find a house. Tell the woman there Tiernan sent you.”
“I understand,” Nili replied, sounding far away.
Then there was warmth at my back and an arm around my stomach. Smudged lines slid past. The creature moved rhythmically, each thud of its feet reverberating through my body.
I drifted out of awareness and woke on a hard surface. Everything was dark except for a glow next to me. The burning man. He backed away, but I reached out.
“Stay with me,” I said, the words thick as if my mouth were full of cottonwood fluff.
He linked his fingers into mine, his warm skin an anchor as the world spun. I tried to fix my eyes on the wall, but it bowed in and out until it was swallowed by shadows. Seconds, minutes, maybe hours passed — until white light spilled into the room. I turned my head and saw a figure illuminated in a doorway. Silver hair cascaded over billows of pale glowing fabric.
The story of Orebo surfaced through the fog of my mind. Orebo adored the moon and longed to keep some of its beauty for himself, so he turned into a bird and flew into the sky. He broke off a moonbeam, but it shattered into a thousand shards, each one becoming a star. There, wrapped up in the blanket of night, stood a fragment of the moon.
•
I was aware of movement, light that came and went, a throbbing in my head. Cool water was tipped into my mouth, followed by liquid that tasted like evergreen needles. Voices faded away and ruptured back in.
My eyes were glued shut when I woke again. I rubbed them until they opened. The world was sideways. A ceramic pitcher and mug were set atop a table at eye level. I was on my side in a soft bed, a scratchy blanket rubbing against my skin. Log walls, slat floor, empty shelves. Sunlight streamed through a glass window.
A woman sat in a chair under the window. She had pale skin and arched eyebrows. The lightest hair I’d ever seen fell in waves over her shoulders. I was no good at guessing the age of itherans, but I put her at maybe thirty. She was examining a pile of fabric in her lap.
“That’s mine,” I said, recognizing Nili’s leaf embroidery. I sat up. As the room pitched, I realized my belt was gone. Panic gripped me until I saw it hanging from a nail in the wall, my weapons and purse still buckled on.
She handed my cloak over. It was stained with blood and mud. “I was going to wash and mend it, if you’d like.”
“Where’s Nili? Is she okay?” I demanded.
“She’s in better shape than you.” Her face crinkled with a smile. She rose, poured water from the pitcher, and pressed the mug into my hand. “I’ll fetch Nisali. Stay put.”
I set the mug down as soon as the door shut. I pulled off the blanket, went to stand — and stopped in shock. My left leg was held straight with a splint, bandaged from knee to toes and stiffened with what smelled like cottonwood resin. I was still staring when the door burst open.
“Kako!” Nili swept me into a hug. “You look like death. Not in the good aeldu way.”
“Thanks.” I held up a handful of my hair. The brown strands were matted with dried blood. “Ugh. What in Aeldu-yan happened?”
Nili shut the door, dragged the chair next to the bed, and sat down sideways. A long gash crossed her forearm near her feather tattoo. Her hair hung loose, not tied back with its usual ribbon. “What do you remember?”
“Drinking tulanta and seeing a lot of weird stuff.”
“I blew the Rin horn. You were bleeding everywhere, and . . . I was scared, Kako. A man came on horseback and sent me to get a healer.” She gestured at her arm. “That’s how I got this. Running in the dark. Stupid way to get injured.”
“Where are we now?”
“In the man’s house.” Nili made a face. “I can’t pronounce itheran names.”
“Was that his wife?”
“Nei. His neighbour. She’s the healer.”
I fiddled with the filthy hem of my cloak. “What happened to the riders?”
“Well, one fled.” Nili seemed intent on examining her fingernails.
“And the others?”
She hesitated too long. “Kako, maybe you should go back to sleep.”
“Nili—” I grabbed her wrist, but she pulled away. “Nili. I killed someone, didn’t I.”
Nili strode to the window. She rested her elbows on the sill and stared out, sunlight glowing on her dark hair. “So did I, if it makes you feel better.”
“Aeldu save us.” I pressed my hands against my face. “The itherans know?”
“Yeah. The man’s burying the bodies.”
“Yan kaid. Fuck.” My voice was too loud in the cramped room. I needed to get outside. I prodded my bandages. Nothing. “Nili. Nili!”
“What.”
“I can’t feel my leg.”
She finally looked back at me. “The healer gave you a strong dose of some herb. You probably can’t feel much of anything.”
“That’s comforting.” I poked my other leg. She was right. I grabbed my right knee and swung my leg off the bed, followed by the left. I tried to stand and promptly fell over.
“Bludgehead.” Nili heaved me off the ground and back onto the bed. “I thought not walking was implied.”
I groaned and flopped backward. “So I’m supposed to just stay here? For how long?”
“I don’t know.” She fiddled with a lock of hair. “A month. Maybe more.”
“A month?” Out of nowhere, I felt exhausted. Colourful dots of light danced in front of my eyes. I took Nili’s suggestion and went back to sleep.
•
It was dark when I woke again. I swung my legs off the bed and knocked over something soft. My boots. I pulled on the right one, pushed myself onto one foot — and toppled into the far wall, landing on my wounded arm. I cursed and fumbled open the door latch.
&nbs
p; A man sat in the next room, legs stretched out, a book open on his lap. A tallow candle on the table dripped into a metal holder. It bathed the room in a warm glow that didn’t pierce the shadows. The man didn’t notice me, giving me a chance to study him. Unkempt, shoulder-length brown hair. Stubble on his jaw. Tanned, scarred skin. He wore muddy boots and a leather jerkin over a frayed tunic and trousers.
As ragged as he looked, I was far worse. My hair was tangled like a bird’s nest. The grey cottonspun of my clothes looked brown. Dirt coated my arms, legs, stomach, every bit of exposed skin. I crunched when I moved. At least he couldn’t smell me over the oily stench of tallow.
“Hello,” I said.
He snapped the book shut. “Good evening.”
I hopped forward, using the wall for balance, and collapsed into a chair. Every step sent fire through my shin — though not as much as I expected, given how it’d looked before bandaging. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Nisali is sleeping in my yard. Marijka has gone home.” His accent was thicker than the woman’s. He dipped his head. “My name is Tiernan Heilind.”
I nodded back, glad to have learned itheran customs from a young age. “Kateiko Rin. Um, I think I was in your bed. Sorry — if you wanted to sleep—”
“Do not apologize. I put you there. I mean—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
The corners of my mouth twitched. “Thank you.”
“Thank Marijka. Without her you would not be walking.” He gave me a grave look. I felt suddenly embarrassed for smiling. “Nisali told me what happened.”
I looked down at my dirt-encrusted nails.
Tiernan rose and slid the book into a slot on a shelf. “Those are not the first bodies I have buried in these woods,” he said with his back to me.
“We didn’t do anything wrong.” My words tumbled out in a rush. “I’d never seen those men before—”
“By law, soldiers have the right to kill poachers. It is not a right often exercised.”
“Whose law? This is Iyo territory.”
He turned and raised an eyebrow. “That is a matter of contention.”
“So what are we supposed to do? Let the next itheran we meet slit our throats for some invented crime?” I stood up and immediately regretted it.
“I recommend not provoking any more soldiers. And not putting weight on that leg.”
I glared at him, then limped toward another door and outside onto a porch. I stumbled through the gap in the railing — and fell down a set of steps. Pain stabbed through my shin. I crawled with my two good limbs until I collapsed in the grass.
Charcoal black blanketed the sky, speckled with white needlepoints. I traced constellations with my fingertip. Orebo, curled around the one star he managed to keep. A kinaru in the northern sky. The sword of the tel-saidu, which was silly, because why would air spirits need weapons?
If only no one invented weapons.
Every time I irritated Isu, she sent me to practise combat with Fendul. We spent countless hours throwing knives until we could sink them into the fissures of cottonwood bark. After I took out a duck in flight, Fendul said he’d better not piss me off anymore.
My first throw had been perfect. I could blame my second throw on the balance of my hunting knife, the arrow that sliced my arm, the moving target — but maybe I was afraid to strike true again. I’d taken a man’s life. One moment he could feel the breeze on his skin and taste rain in the air. The next moment it was gone.
Fendul had told me to practise with my flail more. You won’t always have distance on your side, he said. But I was afraid of what it’d be like. The sound of an iron ball shattering bone. The tug of spikes tearing through flesh. I’d hesitated, and it nearly cost me my life.
•
“Did you sleep out here?”
I looked up at Nili’s face against the grey sky. “I didn’t sleep.”
“Me neither.” She lay down next to me. Rain formed puddles in the grass.
We couldn’t be more than a few days’ hike from Toel Ginu. Dunehein and the Iyo would be arriving there soon from their autumn fishing trips and settling in for winter. We were so close to the place we might someday call home and to people we might one day marry — but we couldn’t get there.
“What are we going to do?” I said, and felt Nili shrug.
When the puddles submerged my arms, I finally sat up. We were in a wide clearing. The tiny log cabin and a stable nestled against the trees. A silver horse with a black mane and tail grazed in a paddock. A rough plank building rose almost twice the height of the cabin, its windows set high in the walls.
Tiernan emerged from the cabin and disappeared into the plank building. I’d forgotten about him by the time he came over and laid a pair of crutches in the grass.
“Marijka suggested them.” He walked off before I could thank him.
I inhaled the smell of alder, recognizable by its bright red wood. “He’s better at carving than you,” I said, expecting Nili to protest, but she said nothing.
We moved our tent further into the woods that night. Tiernan lent us goat-wool blankets and a glass lantern. I practised with my crutches until I could hobble over tree roots. Evergreen needles and yellow leaves stuck to the resin on my bandages. Marijka laughed at the sight when she came to check on me.
Tiernan said that we could hunt on his property, but Nili seemed reluctant to touch her bow, and most days my snares came up empty. Instead, we foraged mushrooms, crabapples, and milk-white ghostblossom. Nili waded in the creek, using her toes to dig up duck potatoes that floated to the surface. I unwrapped the bloody rawhide from my dagger grip and burned it in the forest. Rin custom dictated a dead person’s blood had to return to the earth so their spirit could pass into Aeldu-yan.
More than once Nili woke screaming, her face damp with sweat and tears. I kissed her hair and wrapped my arms around her shaking body until she drifted off. I couldn’t sleep. Wind and rain whispered to me in the shelter of the trees. During the day, Nili disappeared for hours, most of which I spent at the creek spinning shapes out of water and disturbing the fish.
“Where do you keep going?” I asked finally.
“Away.” She didn’t say another word. Sometimes I thought the silence was worse than her screams.
One afternoon, Nili turned up at the creek. “Marijka invited us to have dinner with them,” she said, tying sinew cord to her bow and the other end to an arrow. “She asked us to bring fish.”
“I can ask Tiernan if he has a net.”
Nili shook her head. She stood knee-deep in the creek and loosed an arrow into a squirming salmon. The cord kept it from escaping. The set of her mouth betrayed how hard she had to concentrate.
Rin and Iyo had such close ties that travellers were granted automatic permission to hunt or fish on each other’s land. I wasn’t sure how sharing game with itherans who lived here fit into the agreement. Few of the old laws seemed to work anymore.
Marijka was on Tiernan’s porch peeling apples when we arrived with the gutted fish. Her hair was pinned up in a bun and she wore a pale blue bodice and apron over a simple white dress. She smiled and waved us over.
“Hello, Marij— Mar—” I couldn’t get the syllables right.
“Ma-rye-kah,” she said with a laugh. “Like the grain. Call me Maika if it’s easier.”
“What should I call Tiernan?” I asked, settling on the porch steps.
She crinkled her nose and smiled. “Ah . . . I’d stick with his full name.”
When the apples were done, we went inside, carrying the porch bench in with us for extra seating. Marijka seemed to know her way around, taking pots from hooks on the wall and tins of foreign herbs from the cupboards. Tiernan put the salmon on a grate over the fire, and the cabin filled with the familiar smell of roasting fish.
I hadn’t paid much attention
to the room before. The rough table and stone fireplace took up most of it. A few nails were hammered into the wall for cloak hooks, but there were no ornaments on the mantel. A ladder near the bedroom door led to a loft I couldn’t see into. I paused by the bookshelf, wondering what Tiernan had been reading. The Rin didn’t have books. I only knew of them because a goatherd’s daughter used to read me folk tales while our parents bartered.
“Interested in theology?” Tiernan asked.
I wondered if he was making fun of me. “I don’t know what that is.”
“The study of religion. Or religions, as it may be.”
“Like spirits and the dead and stuff?” I fiddled with a piece of hair behind my back. “You could say I’m interested.”
“Nei, let me get it,” Nili’s voice interrupted our conversation. She reached for a tin on the top shelf. “I’m taller. I have to be. I’m tired of being the shortest in our jouyen.”
“You’re most certainly not taller.” Marijka wiped floury hands on her apron. “Come here and we’ll see.”
They stood back-to-back, Nili stretching up on her toes. Tiernan set a wooden spoon on their heads and pushed Nili back down. It was ever so slightly higher on Marijka’s side.
“Sorry, Maika. Nisali’s got this one.” Tiernan winked at me as Nili puffed out her chest.
I watched Nili chatter with Marijka as we prepared dinner. It was the first time she’d smiled since we got here. It reminded me of how she acted with Hiyua back home. Maybe Fendul was right — maybe I had dragged Nili along with me.
By the time we sat down, my stomach was eating itself. After days of muddy roots, dinner looked incredible and smelled better. Flaky salmon, rye flatbread with fruit preserves, steamed vegetables and herbs, spiced apple cake, even creamy goat cheese. Nili and I were hard pressed to stop thanking them.
“Tiernan, would you get some water from the rain barrel?” Marijka said as we cleaned away the dishes.
“I can do that.” I put out my hand and filled the bucket she held.
She tilted it so water splashed against the sides. “Thank you,” she stuttered.
