Unravel the Dusk

by Elizabeth Lim

  “But it’ll take us far enough,” I murmured. “Someplace the emperor and the shansen won’t be able to find us.”

  I pursed my lips. I couldn’t tell her I was bound to the demon guardian of Lapzur, that his call tugged at me more violently than Edan’s to the Tura Mountains.

  We made our way south, making camp far from the Road, usually in the woods. For Ammi’s sake, I wished I had found Edan’s feast blanket in his chambers, the one we’d used in the Halakmarat Desert to conjure a twenty-course meal out of thin air.

  We subsisted on what she had taken from the palace kitchens, and our tent was the carpet pitched up with a flimsy rod of bamboo. Once it grew colder, we’d have to find shelter in a village and pray His Majesty’s soldiers did not recognize us.

  Ever since I’d woken, something had changed. Even when the winds were biting, I never felt cold. Or hot, when I tended our fire. Ammi had to remind me to eat, or I’d forget. The burns from my dress left only the memory of pain, not pain itself. All of me was numb.

  If Ammi noticed, she never asked what was happening to me, never asked why my eyes would suddenly glow red, or why, in spite of the cold, I never needed a cloak, or why sometimes, when she called me Maia or Master Tamarin, it took me an extra beat to respond.

  At night, the voices grew stronger. I whispered to myself sometimes, when Ammi was asleep, to try and drown out the noise. I’d tell myself the stories Sendo used to regale me with or pretend I was writing a letter to Baba and Keton. Sometimes, when the moon was bright, I tried to draw in my sketchbook, but I hadn’t brought a brush or ink, and sticks with dirt could only get me so far.

  “Dear Baba and Keton,” I murmured to myself one night. “You must leave A’landi. War is coming again, and I fear you will not be safe. Please don’t look for me. I am going far away, and I do not know if I can return.

  “Your Maia,” I ended, lingering on the sound of my name.

  Ammi rustled at my side. Sitting up on her elbow, she rubbed her eyes. “Who are you talking to at this hour?”

  “My father and brother,” I replied sheepishly. “Sorry if I woke you.”

  “Your father and brother?”

  “They’re far in the South. Sometimes when I miss them, I pretend to write letters. I want to warn them that war is coming again, but even if I had a brush and ink, it would be too risky to send.”

  Ammi didn’t reply. She was so still I thought she’d gone back to sleep, until finally, she said, softly, “I heard your father was a tailor, and your brother was injured in the war. That’s why you lied, isn’t it? To me, to everyone. You were trying to protect them.”

  “Yes.” I bit my lip. “I’m sorry, Ammi. Really, I am.”

  “I know. I suppose I would have done the same for my family.”

  Her family. She’d said she wanted to go home, but she’d never told me where home was. “Where are they?”

  “No one’s looking for me,” Ammi said, ignoring my question. “I could do it for you. Post the letter, I mean. I can’t write. Or read.”

  Most women couldn’t. I’d been lucky Baba made me learn.

  “I’ll teach you,” I offered. Eager to rekindle any spark of our old friendship, I drew a few strokes in the earth. “This means sky.”

  Ammi tried to copy it, but she missed a stroke. “Maybe it’d be best if we continue in the morning,” she said, making a face. “It’s too dark to see.”

  I’d noticed how every time a shadow moved over our tent, she jolted. After years in the palace, she wasn’t used to such darkness. I’d been the same once, but little frightened me anymore. When Edan and I had camped in the forests, I’d grown used to the symphony of sounds, the dance of shadows bending under the moon, the lurking of the unknown.

  “You should go back to sleep. It’ll be morning soon.”

  “What about you?” asked Ammi. “You’ve hardly rested. You need to. Ever since you returned from your journey, you haven’t been the same. You look…different.”

  I pursed my lips, unable to deny it. “How do I look?”

  “Thinner,” she began, “and more melancholy; at least I thought so at first. Then I saw the way your eyes lit up whenever someone talked about the Lord Enchanter.” She gathered her cloak over her shoulders. “Are you sad because he had to leave?”

  My throat tightened with emotion. How could I tell her that he had to leave because of me? That I had lied to him—to everyone—about what was happening to me?

  “I’d rather not talk about him.”

  “Oh,” said Ammi, looking stung. “My apologies, Master Tamarin—”

  “Maia. And it’s not your fault.”

  Let her believe we’d had a lovers’ quarrel. I didn’t care what she thought. As long as it wasn’t the truth, it didn’t matter.

  “You sleep first,” I told her. “It takes me a while…these nights.”

  Ammi did the opposite and opened a flap of our tent. A pocket of moonlight spilled inside. “Do you see the stars?” she said, shuffling closer and pointing. “See the seven lights, all the way up north? They’re Shiori and her six brothers.”

  “Shiori?” I repeated. “Was she a goddess?”

  “No, she was a Kiatan princess who lived hundreds of years ago. It’s just a legend, but there’s a statue of her in my district, a gift from Kiata. It’s always been one of my favorite stories.” Ammi pointed again at the sky. “If you look closely, the stars that make up Shiori and her brothers come together in the shape of a crane.”

  I couldn’t quite see the crane. “In Port Kamalan, we call that the water dragon. My brother told me stories about it when I was young.”

  “It looks more like a crane than a water dragon! I’ll show you.” She outstretched her hand. “Can I borrow your scissors?”

  “My scissors?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, I passed them to Ammi. I watched her snip a small square off the inside layer of her tunic, unaware of the power my enchanted scissors possessed.

  “These scissors are quite rusty,” she said, folding the scrap of cloth. “You should get a new pair from the—”

  “They work fine,” I interrupted. My voice came out harder than I’d meant it to. I softened my tone. “They’ve been in my family a long time.”

  “An heirloom?”

  “Of sorts,” I replied, taking back the scissors from her.

  “Maybe it’s my fault, then. One usually uses paper to fold the crane.”

  “I have a few pages left in my sketchbook.”

  “Save them for your letters. Paper is expensive.” Ammi held up the cloth bird against the moonlight. Its two wings hung off the edges of her palm, and its soft beak pointed up. “Each point of the crane is in the stars.”

  I still didn’t see it, but I nodded anyway.

  “An evil enchantress turned Shiori’s brothers into wild cranes, and Shiori folded thousands of birds to bring them back. There are many versions of the tale—maybe your brother told you a different one.”

  “Maybe,” I mused, trying to recall Sendo’s many tales. “There was one he started, about a sea dragon who saved a princess—and, come to think of it, her brothers. But he never finished it; not many Kiatans visited Port Kamalan, and Sendo got most of his stories from listening to sailors talk about their voyages.” I stopped there, hoping Ammi didn’t hear the pain in my voice.

  “Is he a tailor like you?”

  “No, he died a few years ago.” I forced a smile before she could react. “But he loved the sea the way I love to sew. I wish you could have met him. You would have liked him.”

  “I’m sure I would have,” Ammi said softly. “I’ve only been on a ship once, when I was a little girl. It frightened me, not being able to see land anywhere. I can’t swim.”

  Neither can Edan, I remembered. I clung to that memory, making a note
to write it down somewhere. I’d never been one for keeping notes about things, but I’d started sketching again, at night when Ammi was asleep.

  They were little drawings in the dirt, of Edan and me climbing Rainmaker’s Peak, riding camels in the Halakmarat Desert, and soaring over Lake Paduan toward the Thief’s Tower. I drew Baba’s smile from the last time I saw him, Keton standing with his cane, dyeing dresses green instead of purple. But much as I tried to draw Mama or Sendo or Finlei, my hand would suddenly cramp, and I could not.

  That night, I decided, I would draw Ammi. She was happiest when she had a cup of steaming tea in her hand and a plate of cookies at her side. A few crumbs clung to one corner of her lips, and she wiped them off with the back of her hand.

  “You said you wanted to go home. Where is your family?” I said again. She hadn’t responded the first time.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know?”

  She hugged her knees to her chest. “My parents sold me to the palace when I was five years old. I was the youngest daughter, and they couldn’t afford to feed me. They were so poor we used to bathe in the water we used to wash our rice.” She swallowed visibly. “One day, they put me on a ship with half a dozen other girls, and it sailed to Jappor. I don’t even know where they live.”

  “Oh, Ammi…” I wanted to help her find them, but I wouldn’t make any promises I couldn’t keep. That much of the real Maia was still intact.

  “The only times I’ve left the palace were to travel to the next one when the seasons changed,” she continued. “I’ve never even been to the city outside the Summer Palace.”

  I fell silent. A few short months ago, I’d been the same. Before I’d left home for the Summer Palace, to compete in the emperor’s trial, I too had felt trapped.

  “This is all I have left of my family.” Ammi held the bird up, but its head drooped in her fingers, flagging in the wind that drifted through the open slits of our tent. “My sisters used to make them for me when I was small. Back home, they were charms for good luck.”

  During the Five Winters’ War, I too had made paper charms for luck. They hadn’t been anything like Ammi’s crane, but this small reminder of my past warmed me.

  I wrapped my arms around my knees, the flap of my carpet beating against my back from the wind. “Tell me what you remember about them.”

  “My parents were rice farmers. They worked on a paddy with a dozen other people and grew fish in the ponds. My sisters and I would try to catch the fish with our hands, but we were never quick enough. Back then I was so small the water reached up to my waist, and my fingers would get caught in the nets we used to catch fish.” She tilted her head, looking wistful. “My family was very poor.

  “For years I was angry at them for selling me, but now, if I could just see them again, I’d forgive everything in a heartbeat. After the emperor imprisoned you, I realized I might never see you again either.” She held out the bird to me, as if it were a peace offering. “That’s why I forgive you, Maia Tamarin. I might need some time before I trust you again, but you’re my friend, and I forgive you.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, balancing the bird on my palm. I didn’t tell Ammi it was better that she didn’t trust me, but somehow, I could tell she knew.

  She offered me a smile. “You should rest, Maia. Maybe a story will help. The story about the Kiatan princess, perhaps?”

  I leaned back against the ground, the grass and dirt soft against my elbows. “Yes.”

  “Shiori was the youngest child of the emperor,” she began, “and his only daughter. She had six brothers, and she loved them more than anything in the world.”

  I listened to Ammi’s story, her words tugging at my heartstrings. Edan loved me. Edan was searching for a way to break my curse.

  Everything that was still right and true inside me wanted to go to the Tura Mountains and reunite with him. Yet everything that was still right and true inside me compelled me not to. Every morning, I woke a little colder, a little less Maia. My eyes burned red longer every day, and Ammi was too kind to point it out—or too frightened. I’d caught her staring, but when I looked at her, she quickly averted her gaze.

  No, I couldn’t go to him. I would find a safe place to leave Ammi, and I would return to Lapzur alone. Before I lost myself.

  Before I lost everything.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I dreamed of Lapzur, of its ghosts waiting for me back at the haunted islands. Their voices were like scratches against my skin, cutting deeper with every word.

  Sentur’na, they called.

  Again with that name. Even in my dreams, I did not know what it meant.

  Sentur’na, you grow weak. Come back to us. We will make you strong again.

  Every night since I’d left the Winter Palace, it had been the same promise, over and over, until the voices grew so loud I couldn’t bear it anymore. Only then did flames scorch the sky of my dreamscape, and a bird with demon-red eyes lit the ghosts afire.

  Their screams still echoed in my ears as I shot up, awake. My heart raced, sweat dribbling down my temples.

  Ammi was still asleep, her feet poking out of our tent. Gently, I folded my cloak over her legs. I wouldn’t need it. The wind raised goose bumps on my arms, and the hairs on the back of my neck bristled, but I wasn’t cold.

  I headed for the nearby creek. A frosty morning dew laced the foliage, and the soft crunch of fallen leaves under my feet reminded me that a new season was beginning. Fall was changing into winter.

  But for the changing colors of the autumn leaves, I had never experienced much of the four seasons in Port Kamalan. What brilliant oranges the cypress trees would wear! It’d been my favorite thing to paint in my sketchbook, the challenge of re-creating the fire of the leaves enough to engage me for hours.

  “Why do the trees change color?” I had asked my brothers.

  Sendo had paused, no doubt trying to think of a poetic answer for me. But the ever-blunt Finlei beat him to answering, “Because they’re dying.”

  “He means,” said Sendo, seeing my stricken expression, “that as the green fades, the leaves die and fall off the trees.”

  Their answers had quieted me. I’d studied the vibrant smears of paint on my fingers, then looked to the trees by the sea. “If dying is this beautiful, then I wish I were a tree too. I’d be happy to die and be reborn in the spring.”

  How they’d laughed at me. I laughed now too, bitterly. I’d been so innocent back then, believing in past and future lives. Most A’landans did, including Mama and Baba and Sendo, so I hadn’t thought to question it—until now.

  If I became a demon, a part of me would die. But it wouldn’t be a beautiful death, and there would be no spring, no rebirth, for me.

  What would happen to the Maia that died? Where would she go? Had she had a life before this one?

  I wrapped my arms around my chest, knowing there was no answer.

  Leaves crunched under my heels, the brisk cold seeping deep into my lungs. We’d only been gone a few days, flying south toward the Tura Mountains and Lake Paduan, but winter had followed us. By the creek, the edges of the bank were already beginning to freeze, an early sheet of ice lacing the moist dirt.

  At this rate, we wouldn’t be able to camp much longer. The cold wouldn’t kill me, but Ammi…she would do better with a roof over her head and a proper fire.

  Crouching beside the creek, I cracked the ice with a branch and washed my face, trying to shock some life into my tired eyes. Once I’d filled our canteens, my freezing fingers fumbled into my pouch for the mirror of truth. My reflection glimpsed me wearily, and I set the mirror against the bank’s damp soil.

  “Edan?” I called. The glass rippled with the sound of my voice. “Edan?”

  Nothing.

  My heart sank. Every morning, I’d tried to reach him. Alway
s unsuccessfully.

  “If you can hear me,” I whispered, “I’m not coming to the Temple of Nandun. I’m…I’m going to Lapzur instead.” My throat ached, and I forced my next words to sound firm. “Don’t follow me, Edan. Stay where you are.”

  I echoed myself, “Stay where you are.”

  Fresh ice glittered across the mirror glass. My shoulders slumping, I wiped it clean with my knuckles, then slipped the mirror back into my pouch. For days, I’d heard nothing from Edan. I only hoped he wasn’t still waiting for me, and that I’d have a chance to tell him—even if only in the mirror—that I was returning to Lapzur alone.

  Back at our camp, Ammi huddled beside the remains of our fire, shivering. How thin she’d grown in these last few days.

  “Out for water again?”

  I felt a flicker of guilt as I passed her a water canteen, my daily excuse for my disappearances every morning.

  Seeing her teeth chatter as she drank, I made up my mind. “We’ll stay in an inn tonight.”

  “But the shansen is looking for you. And so are the emperor’s men.”

  “If we stay out here, you’ll freeze.”

  I’d meant to say we’d freeze, but the words came out wrong. Far too honest. Luckily, Ammi didn’t catch it.

  “But what if they—”

  “We’ll be careful,” I rushed to add. I couldn’t say what truly worried me about staying in the villages. Not that someone might recognize me as Maia Tamarin, but that my demon eyes might reappear and give me away for what I was becoming.

  A monster.

  * * *

  • • •

  Disguised as traveling brothers, we found a suitable inn along a forgotten spur off the Road. Centuries ago, the town might have been a bustling oasis for weary travelers, but if so, it’d shrunk into a small village since then. Inside, several men were slurping noodles with hot oil, and others drank and gambled with tiles. Business was healthy enough that the innkeeper barely glanced at us when we paid for our lodging.