Flight

by Jae Waller

  I shrugged, but caught Tiernan looking at me before he turned away.

  Marijka gave us herbal tea in chipped mugs. She’d brought seeds from Nyhemur, the plains beyond the eastern mountains, and grown them here in her garden. I drank slowly, taking what comfort I could from the heat. Getting stuck in the wilderness with two itherans wasn’t the life we left home for.

  Nili and I weren’t abandoning our families. If Behadul and the Okorebai-Iyo sorted their problems out, we’d go home to visit. Otherwise, in a few years Yironem would be old enough to follow us to the Iyo. Maybe even Hiyua and Isu would remarry if it meant being with us again. But that day, if it ever came, wouldn’t be soon enough.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said. “How would you get into the north from here?”

  Nili set her mug down too fast, knocking it against the table, and looked at me strangely.

  Tiernan pulled a square of paper from between two books and unfolded it on the table. It was covered with strange ink markings, but as he ran his finger over the creased paper, the lines began to form recognizable shapes in my mind. It was an old map. Oberu Iren was still marked.

  “We are here, near Tømmbrind Creek.” He pointed. “This river up here is the Holmgar canyon. How far north do you want to go?”

  I pointed at a river near Aeti Ginu, since the mountain itself wasn’t marked. “There. We crossed the wasteland beyond the sky bridge. I wouldn’t go back that way, but I don’t know a way through the eastern range.”

  “The nearest pass through the Turquoise Mountains had some trouble two years ago. No one uses it now.” Tiernan scratched his jaw. “The easiest way is to buy passage on a ferry—”

  “We’ve been over that,” I said quickly. I didn’t want to admit we didn’t have the money. “Itheran ships don’t make port anywhere near there.”

  Tiernan exchanged a glance with Marijka. “Or you could take the tunnels.”

  “There’s a network through the mountains,” she explained. “People use them to cross to the province of Nyhemur.”

  I’d never heard of any tunnels. “Where do they come out?”

  “Here, here . . .” Tiernan pointed at several places. One was north of the wasteland. From there it’d only be a few days back through the forest to Aeti Ginu.

  “Is it safe?” I asked. “No floods or avalanches?”

  Marijka studied me over her mug. “It should be safe now. But you’d have to hurry before the snow hits.”

  •

  “What was that about?” Nili said in our tent. “Are we going home?”

  “I’m not.” I rolled onto my side to look at her. “Nili . . . I know something’s wrong.”

  She stared back, the lantern casting odd shadows on her face. “I’m fine.”

  “Nei. You’re not. Neither am I.” My dam crumbled. Tears streamed down my cheeks. “I don’t think we can take care of each other anymore. You should be with your family.”

  “I’m not going without you.”

  “I can barely walk to the creek. My leg won’t heal before winter.” I brushed my fingers over her hair. “Maybe I’ll come get you next year, or if you decide to stay with the Rin . . .”

  Nili gave a choking laugh. “That’d be a fun conversation with Ore. ‘Sorry about bleeding your heart. I changed my mind. Wanna get back together?’”

  “Orelein still loves you. He should just be happy to have you home.”

  “He loves who I was before.” She fingered the tangle of woolen blankets. “I don’t . . . feel like me anymore.”

  “Well, you don’t need him. Hiyua and Yironem love you no matter what.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  Briefly, I thought of Tiernan’s books. “I don’t know. If I’m stuck in the south all winter anyway, I can wait for the right time to approach Dunehein. Like when I’m sure the Iyo won’t shoot me full of arrows.”

  “I’m afraid to go alone,” she said quietly.

  “Maika will take you to the end of the tunnel. I asked while you were busy. That’s where you’ve been going, isn’t it? To see her.”

  “Sometimes.” There was a long pause, then Nili pulled a bundle out of her carryframe. “I started this over summer and just finished. It’s a bit late for the autumn equinox, sorry.”

  I’d completely forgotten about the festival. I unfolded the bundle and gasped. A cottonspun shawl, black outside and white inside, embroidered around the hem. “Nili, I can’t wear this — I’m not a dancer—”

  “No one’s around to stop you. You deserve to fly, too.”

  “Wait. Hold out your hand.” I took something from my purse and dropped it on her palm.

  Nili held up a chain with a silver pendant. I’d twisted snare wire into the shape of a leaf, framing three water droplets that shimmered in the firelight. She spun it, mouth half-open with wonder. “I didn’t know you could do this.”

  “I had a lot of spare time this summer in Vunfjel. I traded my furs faster than Isu, and I could only spend so long chasing goats with Leifar.” I draped it around her neck, did up the clasp, and gently pulled her hair out from under.

  Nili brushed away tears of her own. “We were supposed to fly together, Kako.”

  “We’ll see each other again. I promise.”

  That night, a charcoal grey fox and a silver-blue wolf slept curled around each other in a tent as the forest slept outside.

  6.

  FIRE & WATER

  Nili and Marijka left with Tiernan’s horse, our tent, and the Rin horn. I lay in the clearing that night searching for stars, but clouds blocked them from view. Tiernan stopped next to me on his way into the cabin.

  “Come inside,” he said. “It is too cold to sleep in the open.”

  I limped in after him and eased onto a chair, leaning my crutches in the corner. I didn’t know what to do without Nili to fill the silence.

  “Would you like to take a bath?” Tiernan asked, avoiding my eyes. “I can set up the wash basin and go to the workshop.”

  Heat flooded into my face. I’d been bathing in the creek, but I wound up covered in mud within hours anyway. “Nei. Thank you, but — I’m tired now.”

  “Ah.” He scratched his jaw. “Well. You are welcome to take the bedroom.”

  “I’ll be more comfortable out here. Please. I’m used to sleeping on the ground.”

  “If you prefer.” He gave me a stilted nod. “Goodnight.”

  I waited until the bedroom door closed, then curled up by the hot coals and pulled the blankets over my head, wondering if a person could die of embarrassment.

  When I looked outside the next morning, frost coated the grass with glittering crystal. Rivers keep flowing, even under ice. My first task was making a net before the autumn salmon run ended. I peeled fibres off brittle, frozen ropeweed stems and knotted them into cord. After Tiernan offered to come fishing with me, I decided my next task should be getting to know him.

  “How old are you?” I asked on the way to the creek, stumping along on my crutches.

  “Thirty-two. And yourself?”

  “Eighteen after the winter solstice. How long have you lived here?”

  “A year. The cabin used to be a fur trapper’s lodge.”

  “Where did you live before?” When he didn’t answer, I said, “I’ve never met itherans from this region. Only in Vunfjel, far north in the mountains.”

  “‘Itheran’ is not an accurate term,” he corrected. “You would have met Sverbians. Nowadays most people in this province are Ferish.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Some came from Sverba and some from Ferland.” He looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Our mother countries are not so far apart, but we have very different cultures. For example, the Ferish believe a single god reigns over everything.”

  “Oh, those itherans
. They don’t come to Anwen Bel anymore. We drove them off in the First Elken War.” Distracted, I stumbled over a rock. Pain shot through my leg. “Are you Sverbian?”

  “Yes. But it is impolite to ask.”

  “How else am I supposed to know? People say Ferish are darker, but you have dark hair.”

  “Most Sverbians look like Maika. Not all.” Tiernan stepped aside to let me pass through a gap between trees. “You can also tell us apart by our accents.”

  “But you sound different from Maika.”

  “She was born near here, in Nyhemur. I immigrated from Sverba just twelve years ago.”

  My jaw fell. “You crossed the ocean? I’ve never met someone actually born in Sverba.”

  “I have never lived with a viirelei, so we are on equal ground.”

  “‘Viirelei’ isn’t accurate either,” I countered. “It literally means ‘they of the west.’ The Rin-jouyen is part of the Aikoto Confederacy. The Nuthalha Confederacy to the north and the Kowichelk to the south don’t even speak the same language as us.”

  Tiernan inclined his head to me. “Fair point.”

  After that we only spoke out of necessity. I spent most days at the creek, determined to intrude on his privacy as little as possible. I built a fish smoker out of stones and whittled a long-handled rake to dig duck potatoes from the creek bed. We shared a few meals, but usually Tiernan was in his workshop from morning to night.

  Thoughts lingered at the back of my mind. When I swept the cabin, I pretended to push them out the door. I finally pulled a book from the shelf, a wood-covered tome carved with a leafless tree with nine branches and nine roots, only to see lines of meaningless symbols inside. I wanted to ask Tiernan about them, but my tongue remained stuck in place.

  Most nights, I lay awake listening to water drip into buckets under leaky spots in the roof. Voices murmured quiet as a heartbeat. I felt rain freeze into gentle sleet, a slow change like watching clouds cross the sky. I wondered if it was snowing in Anwen Bel.

  Tiernan showed up one day leading a horse by the reins. Its saddle was askew, mud up to its knees, leaves tangled in its black tail. “I found her wandering the woods with a limp,” he said. “The other must have fled.”

  I recognized the nut-brown coat and white patch between its eyes. The archer’s horse. I leaned against the paddock fence and watched Tiernan clean its hoof with a metal pick. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Take care of her until someone comes back to claim her.”

  “Do you think someone will come back?”

  “No. If the survivor told the truth, he would be punished for abandoning his comrades. And shamed for fleeing from two young girls.” Tiernan glanced up at me. “He likely claimed the others deserted.”

  I ignored the comment about my age. “You seem to know a lot about those soldiers.”

  “I know where they came from,” was all he said.

  Half a month after Nili and Marijka left, I heard a woman’s voice outside. Marijka was grooming Tiernan’s silver horse. She said they made good time and parted at the bank of Bitaiya Iren. That night, I dreamt Nili and I sailed across the sky as great birds.

  •

  Alder and cottonwood shed their autumn foliage, showering the field with yellow leaves that drowned in the damp. Marijka stopped by with apples and squash from her garden. Flocks of geese passed overhead in v-formations like honking arrows shot across the sky. The first snow fell, only to be washed away by rain.

  I stopped one afternoon by the paddock, leaning on the fence to rest my leg. Tiernan was chopping a hemlock and stacking it by the cabin. The thud of his axe echoed across the clearing. I spun water in lazy spirals, then formed it into a bird and let it flutter through the fence posts.

  “You should be careful,” Tiernan said.

  I hadn’t noticed him watching. “What about?”

  He came closer, resting the axe on his shoulder. He’d taken off his jerkin. His tunic, damp with sweat, clung to his chest. “Magic is not looked on kindly in this province.”

  My bird dissipated. “It’s not magic.”

  “It is to those who do not understand it.”

  “What’s not to understand? It’s a tool.” I pointed at the axe. “It’s no different from that.”

  Tiernan spun the axe forward and stopped the blade a finger-width from my neck. “Do you not fear a tool in the wrong hands?”

  I stayed still, barely breathing, until he pulled the blade away. “I’m not going to stop just because other people don’t like it.”

  “That is the attitude which cost the lives of two men.”

  “They were going to kill us first!” I snapped. “You keep saying I shouldn’t do this or that. What would you know about it?”

  Tiernan’s grey eyes searched mine. Then abruptly, he walked off. “Come.”

  “What—” I grabbed my crutches and hurried after him.

  He stopped at his workshop, leaned the axe against the wall, and unlocked the door. I shuffled inside. Sunlight filtered through high, soot-stained glass panes. Cluttered tables ringed the room. Carpentry tools hung on the walls. There was a hole in the roof above an iron brazier. It seemed perfectly normal—

  —until flames erupted from the brazier.

  Blazing heat washed over me. I squinted in the light. And as suddenly as it appeared, the fire vanished, leaving the scent of smoke.

  I whirled on Tiernan. “How did you do that?”

  “Magic.”

  I resisted the urge to whack him with a crutch. “So you’re a . . . jinrayul? A fire-caller?”

  “Among less interesting things.”

  The burning man. I recalled how Tiernan looked the first night I met him. In hindsight, I knew I’d only seen the campfire behind him, perhaps a candle on the table as I lay on his kitchen floor, but a fitting delusion it had been.

  I wandered around the workshop. Books and papers were strewn everywhere. A map as wide as my arm span was nailed to the wall. Symbols on the dirt floor flared with light as I stepped on them. “What are people so worried about? Getting blinded?”

  “I am what is considered to be the wrong hands.”

  As I turned, something caught my eye. A sheathed sword tossed on a table. My stomach felt like it dropped out from under me. “You’re a soldier.”

  He hung the scabbard on the wall. “I was a mercenary. There is a difference.”

  “Yeah, soldiers kill because they’re told to. You kill because you’re paid to.”

  “Do not condemn me so easily. A soldier would have turned you in for murder.”

  I tried to back away and stumbled on my crutches. “Why show me all this?”

  “One day you will have to choose between who you are and who you want to be known as. Both options have consequences.” Tiernan gestured around. “These are mine. Isolation, distrust, and fear.”

  “Maybe people are afraid because you threaten them with axes.”

  That prompted a smile from him. “Are you afraid of me, Kateiko?”

  “Nei,” I lied.

  “Good. There are too many other things to fear in the world.”

  •

  Tiernan’s words echoed in my head as I washed duck potatoes on the porch. I was scared of a lot of things. That the living — or the dead — would come for me. That Nili was broken beyond repair. That my leg wouldn’t heal. Maybe I wasn’t afraid of Tiernan, just confused.

  “Perhaps you can help me,” Tiernan interrupted my thoughts.

  I fumbled my grip on a potato. “With?”

  He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I want to dig a well before winter, but I do not know where.”

  “Why do you want a well? You have a rain barrel.”

  “Wells freeze less.”

  “You can just melt—” I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.�
�

  I brushed my hair from my eyes and glanced around. The clearing was full of water, in every blade of grass, in the horse trough, in the air. I pointed at a spot. “There’s your water.”

  He turned. A torrent exploded higher than the workshop roof and crashed back to the ground. The brown horse whinnied and reared. Water flooded across the grass and pooled by our feet.

  “That’s for singeing my eyebrows off,” I said.

  Tiernan laughed. It was the first time I heard him laugh outright — a rich, deep sound that shook his shoulders. “You are a goose among the pigeons, Kateiko.”

  “Is that an insult?”

  “Only if you dislike geese.” He leaned against the porch railing. “Scholars with years of practice do not have that kind of strength.”

  “I have years of practice. I’m trying to get better than my aunt. She can hold up a river just by glaring at it.”

  “Can all your people control water?”

  “Nei. Maybe a quarter. I mean, the rest could learn, but it’s too much work for everyone to bother.” I flipped the duck potato between my fingers, then pointed it at the workshop. “What do you do in there all day?”

  “Research.”

  “Can I see?”

  Tiernan raised an eyebrow. “It is dangerous. You might be bored to death.”

  I threw the potato at his chest.

  Once the well was dug, we settled into a rhythm. Chores in the morning. Afternoons in the workshop. The books in there were full of illustrations — cities surrounded by stone walls, hills terraced like steps, plains covered with sand. In one tome, I found a sea creature that looked like one from Rin legend, but Tiernan said the book was of Sverbian myths.

  He began to ask for my help. Draw this rune in the dirt. Judge whether that line was straight. He preferred to burn wood rather than call fire, so I dried logs whenever rain gusted into the woodpile. He measured everything from the height of flames to the composition of ash. When I asked why he just said, “To make it burn better.”

  I watched his scarred hands glide across sheets of paper, sketching diagrams in black ink. Sometimes crumpled diagrams went into the brazier. Sometimes they became patterns on the floor that flickered into life. He smiled more those days.