Jala's Mask (40 page)

“Stop it,” Jala said. She forced herself to stand. “This is just another trick. You twist everything around, just like you twisted Azi's words to make me think he wouldn't come for me. You have no right to use her face or her voice.”

“But these are your masks,” Marjani said. “Every title, every loved one, every duty, every hope, and every dream is another mask. You can't be free of them.”

Jala hesitated, looking back at the distant storm. It didn't look like a storm at all, now. Just a great roiling darkness swallowing up the moonlight and giving nothing back. “I could let myself drown.”

“Even the dead sometimes wear masks,” Marjani whispered. “And they can't ever take them off.”

Jala shuddered. For a moment she could almost feel the weight of cold river-water pressing in around her, feel the tightness in her lungs. “Let me go,” she said. She felt so small, so lost. “Let Azi and Marjani go. We don't matter to you.”

Marjani took a step toward her, reached out, and took Jala's hand in hers. Jala flinched at the touch, but didn't pull away. Marjani bent forward and kissed Jala on the forehead. “You know so little of what does and doesn't matter. Can't you tell how much I love you?”

“What could you possibly know of love?” Jala demanded.

“I've loved since the beginning of time. I've loved stone and sky, animals and humans, gods and demons. I'm more full of love than you could ever know Love is all there is—and it, too, wears many masks.”

Then Marjani's mask fell to the sand. Jala didn't look up. She knew who would speak next, and she didn't want to see him like this. She stared at the mask on the sand, Marjani's face carved and painted on the dark wood.

Azi whispered in her ear. “I love you. My queen, my Jala. That's why you get to choose. Choose my name, choose the mask you'll wear to be my lover. Choose what form your goddess will take. You can't be free of me any more than you can be free of any of the other masks you wear—those you love, those you hate, all the years you've lived and the memories you've made. But those masks were made slowly over time. My mask, the mask you'll wear to hear my voice, the mask that will shape my thoughts and my power, that mask you can make now. Choose the way your people will know me. Choose the way you'll love me.”

She thought about Azi, about the way she'd been afraid he had forgotten her as soon as she was gone. Would he still love her if she became . . . whatever it was that wearing a god's mask made you? But to her surprise, she found that she wasn't afraid to find out. Either he would love her no matter what she became, or he wouldn't. Just as she might love him or not. They still knew too little of each other, and they'd both changed so much already.

She looked at the other Azi standing before her, wearing his
I'm really just a simple sailor
smile, warm and secretive and just a little humble. She looked at his eyes and his lips, at the ugly scar on his forehead and the slightly weathered lines the ocean and the wind had left on his face. The Five-and-One were scarred now too. All of them had changed and would have to keep changing, and she had no idea where they would end up in the end.

“I don't know what kind of goddess we'll need, or want,” Jala said. “So I choose the not knowing. I choose all the possibilities at once. I choose the newly broken spring, the creek that hasn't yet cut its path, the river that suddenly changes its course. I choose to wear an unpainted mask, and I'll draw on it with chalk and erase it and draw on it again. The Hashon chose a book that can never change, but I choose the story that's told in a hundred different ways, the story that can change from day to day depending on what the listener and the teller need it to be.”

She smiled, and she was full of fear and sadness and hope. She felt free. “Who knows what kind of goddess the people of the islands will want? We'll find out together.”

For just a moment, Jala looked into her own face, and the other Jala smiled at her, and her eyes were filled with stars. “It's done, my queen,” the other Jala said, and kissed Jala once on each cheek and her forehead.

Then Jala was alone, and all the masks were gone but one. The other masks had been polished, lacquered, and painted. This mask was unpainted and roughly carved. The masks of the Hashon lords all had small slits for eyes and no opening for the mouth at all. This mask had large slits for both. Wearing Lord Water's mask had felt like she was being swallowed up, but this was a mask she was meant to see clearly out of. A mask she could wear and still speak with her own voice.

She reached down and lifted the mask up to her face. Though it had looked rough, the inside felt smooth and warm, and it tickled her skin like hot springwater.

Something tugged on her. Something far away. She hesitated, because it was easier to stay still than to move, but the pull was strong, dragging her toward the water, into the water. Into the cold dark. Into that place of pain and fear again.

Only this time the cold and pain didn't go away.

She was dragged through it and out of it. She tried to cry out, but instead she choked and sputtered, heaving up river-water.

Jala opened her eyes to see the stars. For a moment she thought she was still in that other place, the place between . . . but then she tried to breathe and ended up on her side, coughing into muddy ground. Someone else was doing the same nearby. She forced herself to look.

She saw Marjani first, then Azi, lying in the mud only an arm's reach away. They were on the bank of the Hashana River. Five Hashon dressed in white robes stood away from them, watching her. Behind them the city loomed like a shadow against the star-filled sky.

The river had carried them out of the palace and the city. It seemed impossible that they hadn't drowned. But then she remembered the choice she'd been given, and the choice she'd made, and it seemed less impossible to her. She glanced back at the Hashon and realized one of them wore Lord Water's mask.

Well, if these five wanted to kill them, they could have by now. She tried to stand, then thought better of it and crawled over to Azi and Marjani.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Are you?” Azi asked as he sat back and met her gaze. He and Marjani wore identical expressions of worry.

“You mean am I myself,” Jala said.

Azi nodded.

“One of the Hashon over there is wearing that cursed mask,” Marjani said hopefully. “Does that mean they'll let us go? That you're free of it?”

“I . . .” Jala hesitated. Would they understand? Everything she'd said in that other place had felt right, but now that Azi was in front of her it was a lot harder to think about him rejecting her. “I'm free of Lord Water and his mask. And I'm definitely myself. For good this time.”

Azi breathed a sigh of relief. “We just need to find my friends who helped me here and then we can go home together.” He touched her cheek with his hand and leaned in to kiss her.

Jala put her hand on his but pulled back from the kiss. He stopped. “But I'm not the same Jala I was before I left.”

“What do you mean?” Marjani asked.

What could she tell them? That there was a water-god in her head that wasn't Lord Water anymore, but something new, and that she had to help choose what kind of god it would be? That she had to choose what she would be? That all the Five-and-One would be affected by the choices she made?

Well, maybe that last one wasn't so new. She was still the queen, after all.

“I'll try to explain,” Jala said. “Later. When we're on our way home. But I'm still me. I'll always be me, even if I change.”

“Are you sure?” Marjani asked softly.

“I'm sure,” Jala said, and she hugged her friend tightly.

She turned to face Azi. “More sorcery?” he asked.

“Something like that,” she whispered. “Just not the same as before. It'll be all right, I promise.” Then she added, “I hope.”

He sighed, and for a moment she was afraid of what he'd say next. But he just smiled at her. “Then let's go home.”

As the First Isle came into view, Jala wished she could fling herself onto the sparkling white sand of the beach and lie there for hours. Or for weeks. Small sprays of saltwater touched Jala's face as the ship rocked over the waves, and somehow even the water felt like home.

“We're finally home,” Azi said.

“Are you afraid of what we'll find when we get there?” She touched his ear, where the King's Earring usually hung.

Azi shook his head. “No. This is home. Even if we're not king and queen anymore, there will be a place for us. And if there isn't, we'll just become mad sorcerers on the Lone Isle. That wouldn't be so bad, would it? But you'll have to promise not to cut off any more of your fingers. I like your fingers. And you can't start talking to the fire mountain. One god inside your head is plenty.”

“I'll try,” Jala laughed. The laugh turned into a burbling cough. She gripped the bulwark and leaned out over the side to spit up a mouthful of brackish river-water. Azi rubbed her back with concern while she spat, then stood to find her something to drink. The water seemed to build up in her lungs like a small spring, and for a while on their journey back to the ocean she'd wake in the night thinking she was drowning.

She'd gotten used to it now, mostly. It was a reminder of the bargain she'd made, of the power she carried within her. Not that she thought it was at all necessary, but the water god didn't respond to her complaints. And the water was better than the whispers she heard in the quiet hours of the night when she closed her eyes, better than the strange, disjointed dreams she could never quite remember. Whatever the future held, it wouldn't be easy.

Azi returned a minute later, followed by Marjani. He had a mug of honeyed tea that he gave to Jala. He'd bought it for her in the markets of the Constant City, and she sipped it gratefully. It soothed her throat, raw from the water and still burning from speaking with Lord Water's voice back in the palace.

“Will you stay with us on the First Isle?” Azi asked Marjani. “Assuming Jala and I still have a place there.”

“I think so,” Marjani said, looking out over the water at their destination. “At least for a while, when I'm not visiting the other islands. They seem so small now, don't they? I know it's only because they're far, and yet . . .”

“They probably shrunk,” Jala said as she leaned into Azi and let him wrap his arms around her. “That happens sometimes. It's a good thing you came with me, or you'd have shrunk too.”

They laughed. It felt good to laugh, even if it hurt her throat and almost made her spill her tea. Azi held her closer. She could feel his worry, but he said nothing. She'd told him everything already, and there was nothing left to say for now. So he joked sometimes, and watched her with concern at other times, and he held her and brought her tea, and when they could sneak time alone together they kissed and touched and forgot everything else.

There wasn't much kissing to be had aboard the grayship, unfortunately. Another reason she couldn't wait to get home, and another reason she hoped they still had rooms of their own on the First Isle.

She tried not to think of what would be happening outside those rooms. About whether she'd still be queen. She told Azi it was all right either way, but there was still so much she wanted to do. She wanted to help the Gana rebuild their razed island, if she could. Azi had told her about the clay wine, and she could only hope the reefs hadn't been poisoned yet. She wanted to travel to the Lone Isle and talk to the people. Maybe it was time for the Five-and-One to become the Six? Askel had told her there was power in the fire mountain. Could she speak to it, the way she'd spoken to the water god? Did she dare?

And whether they had sorcery or not, the islands couldn't keep raiding the mainland to survive. Not anymore. She and Azi had talked it over in hushed whispers late into the night as they sailed. It might take a lifetime to change things, but they had to change.