by Ken Liu
Dalochs dashed around the trench to check on him. As he pushed himself up, his hand closed around the sandy salt, and an image of— of— salt flowers sprang into his mind.
He imagined picking one, blowing seeds of salt, as if from the head of a flower past its bloom—and without warning a wind whipped around the rock and lifted Leehm up, setting him just outside the garden.
Dalochs batted at the windborne salt, lips and eyes tightly closed. It pelted her face until she scrambled away from the trench to fall on the ground near Leehm. She coughed as the hail ceased, staring angrily from her compromised spell to the person responsible.
Leehm ignored her look. He saw only the crystal granules, crumbling in his hand, drifting from his palm on the ebbing breeze.
“What desert were you raised in?” Dalochs paced in front of Leehm, while he was still coming around. “You knew I was planting a spell. Why would you step into that?”
Leehm held his head as he struggled to sit upright, struggled to remember. He’d stepped into the trench? “I don’t know. It was...you were...”
Dalochs stopped pacing. “Sorry, I shouldn’t...do you need anything? Water?”
“Water, yes.” Saying it made him see the water before them. The sea, with its saltwater and...the structures. That’s what he’d been thinking about, trying to protect the weird formations on the beach. And her spell had struck out at him when he tried to do so. And something more, a wind... But already that memory was sifting away from his mind.
What would her spell do to him, if it destroyed plants so thoroughly? “Will I... live?”
“Lucky for you the spell hadn’t reached its final step. You’ll just be sore for a few days, and I’ll have to redo the entire thing. Which means gathering more leaves and fibers. Again. But yes, you’ll survive.” She gave him a look, stern but faintly mocking, as she added, “As long as Wayel doesn’t hear about it, that is.”
He released his breath. One less thing to worry about, at least. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t strike me as a clumsy one, Leehm,” she continued, “but you kicked up a fair cloud back there. Thought I’d be eating salt and sand for a week…”
Details filtered back—with the awareness that Dalochs had not witnessed all she could have. Should he explain what he’d seen, and its seeming effect, or keep it a secret?
“I don’t remember,” he said, and as she helped him up she began to speculate aloud about what effects human exposure to her spell might cause, none of them good, fortunate he decided to get in the way sooner rather than later.
He nodded, half listening. Maybe he could still build some sort of protection later, nearer to the garden beyond the rocks, and no one would have to know about the salt structures at all.
For several days, Leehm pushed aside the pain as well as he could and did whatever light work was asked of him, often cooking for the team. Dalochs dug a new trench, but this close to the ocean, with this saturation of salt in the soil, the components of her spell there to be collected were too few and too feeble to replace what had been lost. She sent Alshen to gather fresh supplies from back along their route, and contented herself with hunting down unfamiliar varieties of local fauna, sketching and preserving them for later study when they returned to Ormenna.
Professor Wayel had, of course, found out about what happened—his was the academy funding the expedition after all, and any unanticipated cost of money or time was a red flag to him. He levied a small fine on Leehm for his misstep, but afterwards it seemed that he spoke to Leehm more often, and seemed almost pleased that Leehm had disturbed Dalochs’s spell.
The porters kept busy keeping the camp and following their errands, but as much time as they could spare, they talked about the coast and the old stories they’d grown up hearing. Leehm wearied of their stories, felt uncomfortable in Wayel’s company and awkward in Dalochs’, so he kept to himself whenever he could.
In the quiet between jobs, the noise of the waves burrowed into his ears, into his mind, until he could hear it even when the sea stilled. He’d never thought of salt as having a sound before, except perhaps the quiet rasp as it poured from a shaker, but the waves were salt turned into sound—granular, crystallized noises that built themselves into aural structures. He felt no need to seek out the physical structures beyond the rocks. They were there, he knew, even when the tide came in, even though he couldn’t see them. Speaking to him, soothing the pain from the botched plant spell.
On the third day, the sound of salt changed, as if it jumped in volume or rose an octave in pitch, though neither quite expressed the sensation. Leehm had been cooking, but dropped the ladle he was using to stir clam soup into the pot and ran toward the beach, still hobbling on his tender leg. When he reached the sand, he could hear the professor’s shouts. From beyond the rocks. Leehm paled.
Dalochs joined him as he rushed toward the rocky sea mount. Leehm tried to outdistance her but failed, so they rounded the far side together.
Wayel was on the beach garden, among the odd formations. He waved his arms at them and cried, “Help!”
Only then did Leehm realize that the professor’s leg was encased in salt. More, he seemed to be sinking down into the salty sand. Dalochs dashed to his aide, not noticing or not caring about the structures.
Leehm went slower, and noticed a shimmer of movement among the more distant salt formations. An animal? He looked harder and saw nothing but was left with the impression that the salt itself had been moving, shifting, leaning toward Wayel’s shouts for help.
Was the salt like a carnivorous plant, luring in prey to seize and devour them? That didn’t seem quite right—he had felt no urge of entrapment from it when he made his discovery—but he couldn’t shake the image either. For now, best to get away as quickly as they could. He hurried to the professor and took one arm, opposite the one Dalochs already held.
“Seems to be some sort of quicksand under me,” Wayel said through gritted teeth. “Pull hard.”
Dalochs counted three, and they pulled together. The sand held for a moment, then released him, and they stumbled away to sprawl on the ground at the foot of the rocky outcropping.
As they caught their breath, the professor and gardener looked around with suspicion and interest respectively. So much for Leehm’s hope to keep the place a secret. Finally Dalochs said, “So what is it? Are there survivors here somewhere, avoiding us?”
Wayel squinted at the beach. “Must be, something like that.”
Yes, Leehm thought, let them think it was something people had made. Then they might leave it all alone. Or at most, keep a watch for people to visit. Surely they wouldn’t want to disturb the beach, if they thought someone would be back.
He closed his eyes and felt the pulsing of the salt structures in his veins. But then the professor added, “Except...”
“Except what?” Dalochs’s voice was sharp, curious.
“It felt, well…I think you should check it out, Dalochs. There’s a feel of your kind of magic down there.”
Leehm opened his eyes. “Won’t it be dangerous?” It was spoken out of turn, for a mere porter, but they didn’t react to that. “I don’t know if we can pull her out, too, if we had to.”
Dalochs got to her feet anyway. “I’ll just get a little closer.” She was back almost immediately. “Definitely magic, of some kind. I don’t like it.” She put her hand under Wayel’s arm. “Let’s get away for now. Can you walk?”
“What does it mean?” The question hung in the air.
If he’d have dared speak to the two leaders at that moment, Leehm would have answered, We need to leave the garden alone, that’s what it means. There’s something growing here. I don’t know what it is, or even if it’s exactly a plant, but it’s a plant spell, just like the ones you grow.
Instead, he played the porter role, standing with the other porters, while Dalochs and Wayel debated. Even his history of assisting the gardener with the spells and helping rescue the professor gav
e him no voice in a vital matter like this.
Both fell silent. Dalochs ran her fingers over her last collection of root fibers, as if getting it ready for one final spell that would cleanse the entire beach. Wayel gazed back toward the rocks and the sea, toward where the salt structures were hidden. His leg was propped up on a driftwood log and grossly swollen.
“It means this beach warrants study,” he said. “The entire region does, and I can’t do it all myself. We should call for a team from Ormenna, a whole squad of professors and trustworthy students. It might take years, even then, to study the salt out there. Get samples, dissect the crystallized formations. Try to understand what process creates them. Sedimental deposits from the sea, erosion by the wind—”
“Was it wind erosion that trapped you, deposits dragging you down? Are you forgetting the magic we both noticed?” Dalochs laid down her bundle of roots and stretched her back, gearing up to fight. “Science and studies might be your expertise, Wayel, but magic is mine. Best to destroy it, before it can invade other gardens.”
Leehm lowered his head. He couldn’t bear to have the salt destroyed, but what was left for him to do? Her words sounded certain, but her face looked much more doubtful. Was she remembering what she had said before, about learning from the magic of the coast? Knowing that the professor’s seniority would ultimately overrule her, anyway? Or was it simply that she didn’t like the idea of destroying something before studying it, any more than the professor did?
“Even magic can be studied.”
“Do you imagine I don’t know that? My entire career is the study of plant magic! And we are here to begin to recover the full potential of this land, the historic processes and forms—”
“Using techniques that would destroy this unknown form, dangerous though it might be, before we can assess its value—that may be the way of gardening, but it is not the way of science and research. And we are here on my penny, Dalochs, from the academy’s purse.” He didn’t make eye contact as he murmured, “It will be my decision.”
Dalochs didn’t answer the professor for a minute, and then only nodded and turned away. Over her shoulder she said, “But note in your reports that it’s against my advice.”
The next day Wayel ordered the porters to help set up a preliminary study. Leehm cringed with every new task he was assigned, but the salt appeared unharmed by the samples and scrapings they took—and better this than its utter destruction.
As he was helping to stake down a drop cloth where the samples might stay uncontaminated, Alshen pulled him aside for a moment. “Be careful, Leehm. You’re getting awfully close to involving yourself. I’ve seen how you’ve worked with those two, saw how you watched them last night. Remember your place, our place.”
Of course he would. When had he ever done otherwise? But rather than argue, he simply nodded.
“Just remember, any problems might mean that next time they avoid taking our people as porters. Maybe bring in more strangers like themselves, who don’t understand a thing. People born without salt.”
Though they worked near each other other times that day, Alshen said nothing more about it. But his words stayed in Leehm’s mind. Strangers who understand nothing. People without salt.
Late in the day, Leehm carefully peeled back a sliver of crystallized salt from one structure, under Wayel’s close watch. As he did so, the ground under him shifted. The knife flew from his hand, and as he flung his arm out for balance it came down along the structure’s opened edge, slicing the flesh from elbow to wrist.
Surprise blocked the pain for a moment. He lifted his arm and saw a flap of skin hanging loose, the sliver buried deep. Only then did the pain arrive, an agony that bent him double. He fell into the sand and lay there, twisting, the pain only growing worse as more salt ground its way into the wound, adding its terrible sting. He clung to consciousness, only barely.
Someone tried to pull him up off the ground, someone else stopped them, had Leehm stay lying there but helped him into a more comfortable position. As if he cared about a comfortable position when his whole arm burned with agony. Someone—it was Wayel, calling—went to fetch other porters to help him off the beach.
In the moments they were gone, Leehm opened his eyes to see new shapes forming in the salt around him. No beings came to build them, and yet it had none of the vegetal slowness of growing things. It was something else, some tideline thing that had no name yet, no word to explain it—like the stirring of wind across a field of high grass, a movement imposed by an unseen participant but which could only exist in the coming together of the two. Leehm found himself mesmerized by the motion. The salt in his open wound moved in time with the growing structures.
He passed out with a pounding in his ears like the returning tide. When help returned, trampling feet erased all sign of the patterns before they could be noticed.
“Surely you see that it is dangerous, now. Science is not more important than our lives.”
Leehm lay on his back, nearer the old human settlement but still on the beach. The sand crunched beneath him as he shifted to get a better view of the expedition’s leaders talking.
“Science embraces risk, and lives have been lost in its pursuit. Even when it has nothing to do with magic.” The professor looked toward Leehm, met his eyes, then looked away. “But this time I think you’re right. Perhaps enough will survive your spell to study. Safely.”
Dalochs gave a curt, satisfied nod and went to retrieve her plant spell supplies.
No. They were both wrong. Leehm was done staying silent and letting these two decide things for his parents’ land. What did they know of the seashore? The structures didn’t need sterile study, and they certainly didn’t need to be destroyed. They needed to be learned. Both professor and gardener acted as if there was no difference between knowing and studying something, but surely there was. It had never occurred to him before, but now he knew it.
How to convince them, though? He was only a porter, not someone they would listen to. Only one thing might shock them into listening.
As Dalochs prepared, Leehm pushed himself to his feet. He swayed a moment, but then found his balance. In fact, a better sense of balance than he’d ever had.
The other porters noticed him first. “What are you doing?” Alshen said. “You should still rest.” He ignored them.
Leehm walked back up the beach to the strand of salt structures. Wayel noticed Leehm, shook himself from his thoughts on the structure of crystals and the nature of his truncated study. “Here, where are you going?” Leehm ignored him too.
The air shimmered and wavered before him. The questions behind him turned to shouts—he somehow knew Dalochs was running after him, but she was too far away, encumbered with root fiber and other bits of plants. She would not stop him.
Leehm rounded the outcropping and faced the strange beach.
A low growth of salt crystals twined toward his feet—but something in his blood told him it would be right. He broke off a small piece of crystal…and popped it in his mouth.
“What are you doing?” Dalochs cried, somewhere.
At first it tasted like the luck plants, but a far richer, more complex form, one that tasted also of the sea and hurricanes and a people who have fled. Then the saltiness struck, a shock like a monster wave. It sent him falling to his knees, so hard a cloud of salt rose into the air.
A shimmering uncertainty grew in his vision, until he couldn’t be certain of anything—but see things he did. The voices from the beach were just as wavy and impossible to identify. He climbed to his feet, swayed in place until the first of the porters reached him. It was Mishnar. At her touch, he came back to his normal senses. She let go, and once more Leehm found he had no trouble keeping his balance.
Before anyone could say anything, Leehm addressed Wayel and Dalochs, both masters watching him with fascinated indecision. “You’re right.”
Wayel shook himself out of his stasis. “What have you done, porter? Don’t you s
ee how dangerous it is there, even for those like us who have studied and learned things you can’t imagine. Far more for you.” When Leehm didn’t answer right away, he gestured to the other porters. “Get back. We don’t know what might happen next.”
Mishnar and the others drew away, some quickly, others reluctantly.
Leehm clenched a fist and lifted his chin. He’d been so close to explaining, only to be dismissed as uneducated. “Dangerous? Yes, but not like you think. I’m not going to explode, and I don’t need your learning to—”
“No.” it was Dalochs who interrupted this time. “Learning is exactly what you lack. Understanding of what you’ve got yourself into. But I don’t think you’re a danger to us, yet.”
She looked like she was about to send the other porters after him, to tackle him and take him away. When she added, “But we need to stop you before you are,” he was sure of it and shifted his focus to them, trying to be ready for any of them to come charging his way.
Instead Dalochs rushed at him. She lifted her hands and opened the web of root fibers into a net and threw it. All the power of plants seemed to lie in that throw, the magic of roots and seeds and spell-growers, of tradition and the unstoppable momentum of years of new discoveries. It rose and grew in his sight, seemed to blot out all other things.
But then he saw how its flight followed crystalline lines, vectors and planes that were just as ancient as any plant, or even older.
Leehm lifted his hands, and new vectors rose into the path of the net. Salt leapt from the sand, intercepted the roots, snared and halted their flight. More salt sprang up, not from the beach but from the soil all around, as if it had only been waiting for him. Delicate-looking lattices wrapped around Dalochs, then Wayel and the porters as well.
The beach created a vortex of salt that lifted Leehm into the air before them, building beneath his feet. He wanted to shout and cry out with the swelling strength inside him, but he kept his voice calm and spoke the words he’d been meaning to say.
