Shadowbridge (4 page)

When her cooking stone was so hot that it smoked, but the fillets had still not arrived, Lupeka went looking for her husband. He had been gone much too long. And where were the fish?

When she arrived at the gutting stone, she was amazed to find her husband nowhere in sight. A row of pale fillets lay there, all in a straight line, but one of the fish had jumped out of the creel and lay on the ground, barely breathing. Lupeka picked up the fish and dropped it back in. Let Chilingana finish up with these last two when he returned. She told herself that he must have gone back down the steps. His absence disturbed her more than we can imagine, for in those days there was nowhere to hide, nothing but the great house on stilts and the empty sea all around it. No other people but these two.

After looking over the edge for him and seeing nothing but the sea, his wife took the prepared fillets back inside. Wherever he was, he would smell the cooking. Surely that must bring him out of hiding.

Chilingana came to his senses to find himself swimming. Beside him a vast blue island protruded from the dark water, and he supposed that he must have fallen from the house into the ocean, miraculously surviving, and floated away. He must have floated far, for there were no islands visible from his stilt house, and the sky was a peculiar dark brown. Despite this, the island looked oddly familiar. It seemed to rise and fall in the water.

All at once he realized it was no island at all. It was the snout of the storyfish. Beside him. And the sky was no sky, but the wicker of the creel. He began to struggle to pull himself out, but he had no
arms.
What had happened to him?

The fish laughed. The sound made the water bubble and roil.

Then the fish spoke to him. “This is how it is for us. We don’t have the luxuries of you who’ve been dreamed into being by greater forces.”

It was the first Chilingana had heard about this. “Dreamed?” he asked, and although he didn’t think he’d said this out loud, the fish replied, “Yes, dreamed into being. You in turn are capable of dreaming a reply to the creators. Where your dreams meet theirs the world takes shape. Today your fisherman dream met my dream of being a fish, and mine prevailed. So here you are, having fished yourself into my story.”

“Is that what happened to me?”

“I put you in my tale before you could take hold of mine.” The fish chuckled.

“Am I a fish forever, then?” The storyfish did not answer, and Chilingana grew nervous. The silence likely meant there was no good news for him. His terror broke loose. “I don’t want to be a fish!” he cried.

The fish said, “Is that right? Too good to be a fish? Very well, then. But before I’ll help you, you must grant me three wishes.” The island swam nearer.

“What?”

“First, whenever you catch a fish of my kind, you must throw it back.”

“Of course. How could I eat you after we’ve spoken?”

“Second, you must show respect for those fish you do catch, and return to the sea the ones too small to make a meal.”

“I would return you to the sea right away. All right, I agree. What else would you have of me?”

“That you tell all other people my rules and make them abide by them.”

“All other people? What other people? There is only me and my wife.”

“And if I tell you there will be more?”

“Who? Who else is coming?”

“That I cannot see. But they teem like a red tide.”

“Where are they?”

“Ah. That’s a puzzle, isn’t it? Tell me, how did you begin your life?” the fish asked.

“Well, I—” Chilingana stopped, bewildered. He didn’t know. He had never thought about it before. He had always simply been. His wife and the world had always been. So, too, the storyfish must always have been.

“You know little of the world,” said the fish.

“All right, you’re so clever, you tell me how I was begun.”

The fish’s tail flicked impatiently. “I’ve said already all I’m going to say until you honor my wishes. I do hope you’re a social animal.”

The fish’s snout loomed over him. Its laughter shook the waters, and Chilingana floundered helplessly.

He awoke with a start to find himself slouched beside the creel. His stung hand was red and swollen. The storyfish floated just below the water level, its huge eyes following him. “Why,” he said, “I must have dreamed this.”

“You think so?” said the fish. Although it remained beneath the water, its voice rang clearly in his head. “Honor your promises tonight. Then come and talk to me in the morning before you throw me back into the ocean, and I will tell you the most important thing of all—a thing you will not want to hear. But you must.”

“What’s that?”

The fish said nothing more.

Chilingana got up. He grabbed a clay pot and hurried down the steps to the water. The smell of frying fish made his stomach grumble, but he ran on. At the bottom he filled the pot, then hauled it much more slowly back up.

His wife met him at the top. “So there you are, you foolish man. I looked all over for you, I called to you. Where had you got to?”

“I was right here.”

“No, you weren’t. I came out and found your fillets but not you,” said Lupeka. The discussion would surely have blossomed into an argument, except that she noticed her husband’s swollen hand. “How did this happen?”

He first scuttled over to the creel and emptied the pot into it while he spoke. “There, fish. There’s some more water for you.” Setting down the pot, he said to his wife, “The fish stung me. It’s nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Nonsense, that needs tending to. It’ll have poison in it.”

She led him inside. His wife had cooked the fillets beautifully. He stared at them, his mouth flooding with desire, while she bandaged his hand. Finally she let him sit on the floor and handed him his portion.

He was about to take his first bite when he hesitated. The food dangled from his spoon. Lupeka asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” replied Chilingana. “I just—” He lowered the spoon. “I just want to give thanks to these fish for letting me catch them. For giving their lives to sustain ours.”

“That’s an odd thing to say. And why are you bellowing?”

He said, “No, it isn’t odd at all. From now on we’re going to honor them whenever we eat. We’re going to thank them just like this.” Then he ate the food.

His wife decided that the poison from his hand had affected his brain, and so she refrained from argument.

After dinner Chilingana was exhausted. His wife insisted that he go to bed and rest. He complied. She covered him with her body to keep him warm. Into her ear, as he drifted to sleep, he muttered, “Tomorrow I’ll know everything.”

In the morning he awoke to his wife’s scream. He sat straight up on his mat and looked around the hut. She wasn’t there. He bounded outside, to find her beside the door. She had been carrying a huge fillet, which lay now at her feet. Its skin was blue. It was the storyfish.

“Fish!” cried Chilingana, and he knelt beside it. “Fish, oh no, fish, forgive me. Please forgive me. I would have put you back! Tell me the secret thing. The important thing.”

The headless fillet did not answer.

“Where is his head?” he demanded, finally paying attention to his wife. “What have you done with his head?”

She did not seem to see him. Her gaze lay beyond him on a more fearful thing. In a tiny voice she asked, “Husband, how did you create all of this?”

Chilingana turned where he knelt to see what she meant.

Beyond their small house now a great curving road stretched out across the sea. Where it curved he could see arch upon arch supporting it and immense towers reaching into the sky. The far end vanished into the morning fog. It was an impossible development. He could have worked for years erecting it all and never built anything so grand. He rose to his feet in wonderment. Where had it come from?

He knew the answer. He held the answer in his hand. “The fish wants me to go exploring.” He said it low, almost to himself.

“What?” asked his wife.

“I said I wish to go exploring. To see the world.”

“You—you’ve never mentioned it before.”

“Well, I don’t tell you everything,” he replied. And that was the very first wedge ever driven between two people.

“But how was this done? How did you build it?”

Chilingana, holding the glistening meat of the storyfish, could only answer, “I’ll never know.”

They ate the storyfish. Chilingana said the small prayer over its delectable carcass that the people of Vijnagar repeat to this day before eating a fish. He and his wife eventually set out to journey along the new spans. Every night when the fisherman slept, new ones formed, so that each morning was the first morning of a new world. It is a process that may still be occurring somewhere, for who of us can view the world all at once and know what develops everywhere? Some spans are old, and some are young. On some, the gods of Edgeworld light the Dragon Bowls and send down their gifts; on others the light no longer falls. Chilingana never learned its secrets, nor has anyone since. Without the storyfish to explain, no one knows the secret ways of Shadowbridge, or whether Chilingana travels and dreams among us still.

“…travels and dreams among us still.” The words of her epilogue reverberated in the rafters.

With one hand Leodora balanced the puppet figures of Chilingana and his wife on the screen. With her other, she reached up and rotated the lantern so that tiny stars and moons spread across the silk. The two dark figures sank slowly from sight. She unpinned the curtain and let it drop over the screen. The musician played a final note on his flute and thumped a small drum once.

For a moment there was utter silence. Then the applause exploded. Pottery banged against tables. The audience, depending upon their background, cheered, whistled, or belched approval. Her name—the name
Jax—
resounded from all around the hall.

She glanced back at Soter. He grinned in reply, then broke into a yawn. Had he dozed off during the performance? Possibly. It was a story that had required no participation from him. She had narrated where necessary, doing the three voices. It was a story known to everyone in the hall, and they could have followed it even if she’d said nothing at all.

Soter stood, stretching. He picked up his hammered brass bowl and went out through the drapes. He would make the rounds, visit every table, answer questions, accept drinks, tell lies about the background of the mysterious Jax, and collect what she hoped would be a sizable compensation. She had plenty of time to prepare for the next tale. She would perform three stories tonight: the demigod Shumyzin’s last of all. People loved to go out on tales of heroes.

As she thought of him, she perceived shared features between her encounter and the story she’d just played out. What had happened to Chilingana in the tale had happened to her on the bridge: The most important thing had not been spoken.

She sat back, stretching awhile. Her gaze finally fixed upon the second trunk, and the sounds of the crowd outside began to fade away.

She closed the top case and stood it on end at the back of the booth so that it blocked the access slit in the drapery. She pulled the lid off the bottom case and lifted out the three inner compartments full of puppets and props. It now appeared to be empty. She slid her fingers along the inner edge of the bottom piece until she touched the loop of black cord. Carefully she pulled up the false bottom, then knelt, holding it up with one hand, ready to drop it if interrupted. Only Soter knew about the false bottom and its contents. He didn’t know, however, about the dreams. No one did, except for a statue.

The sounds and smells of the hall faded entirely. A dim glow surrounded her, and a crackling charge tickled her brows and stood the hairs on her arms on end.

There lay her secret companion. Her treasure. The Coral Man.

She reached into the box to touch him. Fearful, awed, excited all at once. Her fingers traced the roughness of him. She could have shredded the tips if she’d pushed hard enough. The shadows cast by the lantern made his face seem more defined than it really was. She withdrew her hand, fingertips now coated with fine and vaguely luminous powder. There was powder in the box, too, a light dusting of it. She sniffed at her fingers, then put her tongue to them and tasted sea salt. Within that flavor lay her whole life before the spans: the cavern called Fishkill, the lagoon where she swam, the tales of her mother, the smell of the breeze entering her tiny garret.

Memories of the backwater island life she had abandoned.

I
BOUYAN

ONE

She was five years old the first time they let her go to Ningle. Ningle-in-the-Clouds, as Soter properly called it.

They carried their baskets of fish—her uncle and grandfather—on the path that wound beneath the canopy of trees, with the ever-visible span looming ever closer. Before then she’d only seen it from across the island, a great black stripe of cloud showing through the trees, which never moved, never broke apart, but hung in the sky like an omen. At night it transformed into a band of fairy lights coruscating in the sky. She wasn’t prepared for its true size. Almost an hour’s walk from her home, one massive leg of the span anchored somewhere deep in the bedrock of Bouyan beneath them. Steps had been carved into the side of it, each block so big that she had to clamber up with her hands—or would have if her grandfather hadn’t hefted her along with his baskets.

Soon he’d carried her so high that she closed her eyes and buried her face against his neck, smelling sawdust and varnish, the scents of his workshop, which clung to him even more tightly than she.

At the top he set down his basket and unwound her from his neck and back. Between them they had an old game where he swung her and swung her, and she laughed, screamed, giggled. This time, though, he only swung her once, then held her up, her feet resting upon stone. He said, “Now open your eyes, Lea.” She did, and was so awed by the view that she forgot to be terrified right away.

The island of Bouyan lay so far below her that wisps of cloud gauzed the treetops, and she could see clear across to a hint of their rooftops and even all the way to where a chimney of smoke signaled the location of the fishing village of Tenikemac, and farther still—to the sea itself, like a great sheet of glass upon which the whole world was set. She could see that the Adamantine Ocean stretched forever just like the stories said.

That day, standing upon the rail, with her grandfather’s hands enclosing her waist, she heard the call for the first time. It was not a voice exactly, not words, not something anyone else could hear. It whispered her name, spoke to her in the silences, invited her to find it, join it, embrace it. All without words. She thought then it was the ocean calling her. There was nothing else to see.

“Isn’t it fine?” her grandfather asked.

She turned her head to look at him, and now she was afraid. The wordless, communicating voice was frightening, and she didn’t know whether her grandfather was referring to it or to the view. He saw her fear and took her off the rail, assuring her softly, “It’s all right, child, it’s all right. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, you know.” She knew this to be true, but she wasn’t paying attention to him.

The moment he’d touched her, the ocean call had ceased. She listened hard, but it didn’t reappear.

She would not hear it again for years, but on that day—she was certain of this now—the caller had located her. It had sought her, knowing she was somewhere. Now it would be able to find her again.

 . . . . . 

Throughout the next year Leodora spent nearly every day on the span. It teemed and surged with life, with the noises of excitement, the smells of otherness, newness. Bright costumes and plumed caps dazzled her, and facial adornments from rapier-sharp beards to spiky stiffened eyebrows, beauty spots to shaved scalps drifted past to amaze her. One day she saw a man with wide and tightly waxed mustachios, the tips of which burned with blue fire that didn’t consume them. And on another evening a raggedy fellow walked the thoroughfare with a box dangling from a lanyard around his neck while he cranked handles on either side of it, which in turn caused two metal hooks facing each other through the top of the box to spark and burn and glow in the space where they didn’t quite touch. The ragged man looked lost as he went by, and she heard someone say, “From a Dragon Bowl, that. Ruined him.” But when she asked her grandfather about the man, he replied, “Nothing to do with us, Lea, so never you mind it.”

Her grandfather did not always accompany them. As often he stayed below, on Bouyan, in his workshop, crafting or mending their furniture. Like her uncle Gousier, he was a big man, barrel-chested and powerful.

The buildings on Ningle, all made of stone, were nothing like the structures she knew on the island. Her own house and those of the fishing village were mostly made of wood and woven thatch. Houses on Ningle were dark and roughly finished, and not quite true. Their angles, as her grandfather showed her, were all slightly off the square. He took her to one street not far from the market where the buildings were so crooked that she couldn’t understand how they didn’t fall over.

The market comprised a stretch of mismatched awnings, boxes, carts, and poles. In comparison with many of the others nearby, their own stall was clean and orderly. On three sides of the center, whole fish and cleaned fillets lay in ceramic boxes, atop ice chipped from the depths of Fishkill Cavern. Deep blue awnings kept the stall in shadow and cool.

Gousier usually had someone working for him, someone on Ningle who set up the stall before they arrived and took it down at night, as well as someone to help haul the fish and watch that the clientele didn’t steal. She could remember none of these men—for they were always men—during that year. None of them remained for long. The work was too hard. And—she would later learn—descending to the island for work was considered beneath the dignity of most of Ningle’s denizens; but there were much more reprehensible acts that were not.

Her uncle seemed to enjoy her company. While they walked and climbed to market each morning, he taught her the names of the fish in his baskets and described how they were caught, what they could be used for. Once the stall was set up he put her right up front, and when someone came by and inquired about one of the fish, Leodora would proudly repeat what she knew about it. Most of the time after listening to her recitation, a customer would buy the fish, and Gousier would tell her, “Why, you’re a fishmonger, child. Look at what you
sold.
” He would give her a coin and let her buy something for herself. Eventually he let her parade up and down the boulevard, calling out the names of the fish they were selling, and this led more people to their stand. Her uncle and grandfather treated her like a princess out of a story—like the girl Reneleka who emerged from an oyster, coiled around a pearl, and who had created the sea dragons. It was a story they told in Tenikemac. She felt as if she, too, had been magically created.

Then one afternoon when she was sitting to the side of the stand, a woman came over and spoke to her. It seemed the most natural of events, one more person asking her questions. The woman was fidgety and furtive, but Leodora didn’t appreciate the meaning of this. She had only known kindness.

The woman invited her for a walk, with a promise of an undisclosed surprise at the end of it. Leodora would have told her grandfather, but he was with a customer on the other side of the stall. She might have told Gousier, but he was haggling with still another person over the price of a halibut. The current assistant had wandered off.

She strolled along beside her new acquaintance for only a few moments before the woman took her hand and drew her suddenly into the nearest crooked little alley, with the promise, “Your treat’s up here.”

It was the same alley her uncle had shown her, full of tilting buildings, and she marched along bravely into the not unfamiliar gloom. Then a man unfolded from the deeper shadows, and she stopped. Leodora remembered him—he had passed by their stall two or three times and then asked her about the cod, listened with a wolfish grin to what she told him, and thanked her for her recitation. He hadn’t bought anything. He grinned at her again now. He had very good teeth.

The woman shoved ahead of her and said, “Give me my money.” But the man shook his head. “When I’ve made the delivery, when they’re happy with their new arrival.” Both of them glanced down at her, and that was the moment she knew something was wrong, but the woman still gripped her wrist. The two began to argue. Leodora pulled with ever-increasing urgency to get away. The woman was too busy squabbling to notice. Abruptly Leodora broke the hold, but it was so sudden and she’d pulled so hard that she spun against the wall. The man was on her before she could get up. “All right, darlin’,” he said. The stink of him smothered her. “You come along with me now to get your surprise. No more working in a fish stall for you, not a lovely girl like you. They’ll like you where we’re going. You’ll be the most popular girl they have.” Smiling though he was all the while, his sweet words were more ominous than anything she’d ever heard. She twisted, but his grip was much harder than the woman’s, and the wall was at her back, offering no way to put distance between them. She started to scream. The man clamped his hand around her face and hissed at her. He ordered the woman to do something to silence her, and they both closed in where there was hardly enough room for one of them alone, and the acrid sweaty stink poured over her like the stench from rotting meat. The woman crouched, cooing, trying to sound tender beneath her jagged, hungry sharpness. Leodora fought for breath beneath a mask of filthy fingers. She grew dizzy.

The grip abruptly lifted from her face; the stench and the man swept away as if by magic. The woman bit back a shriek, grabbed Leodora again, and tugged her down the alley and back out onto the boulevard.

A crowd was collecting. They blocked the woman’s retreat, so that she cried out, “Someone, someone stop him!” and then, almost as an afterthought, “My child, my baby!” She wrapped herself protectively around Leodora, and the crowd obligingly opened a space for the two of them. Even as they moved into it, the crowd moved with them, stepped back as if to accompany them; but they weren’t following the woman. They were fleeing something else. Leodora twisted her head around to see.

Her grandfather.

He caught the woman before she could get past the last of the people choking the boulevard. He tore Leodora from her grasp, then wedged himself in between them. Dreamily she looked back and saw her uncle in the alley. He was bent over and seemed to be gesturing fiercely. His fist raised high and held, hovered. It clutched a mallet. The hand and mallet were wet and dark. She had seen her grandfather holding a mallet that way as he drove pegs into holes he’d cut, but Gousier brought it down harder than Grandfather ever had.

People began shouting “Kuseks!” and she looked up at their mouths, their fearful eyes. Then the woman toppled beside her, knocking someone aside, skidding on her face upon the paving stones. Their eyes locked, just for a moment, before the woman’s expression went slack and the eyes fluttered shut. The crowd turned, roaring, and split in two directions. The space filled almost instantly with a swarm of police—the Kuseks, so named for the striped sashes they wore. They grabbed her grandfather immediately. She saw him struck with a stick, and she screamed.

Her uncle charged from the alley. Blood drenched his face and clothes. He bellowed at the Kuseks to release her grandfather. She watched it all as if from the rail of Ningle, as if it were all transpiring far below, far away from her—the mallet striking once, the police beating her uncle senseless, and beating him even after that. Her grandfather swaying on his knees, blood from his scalp covering his face like a membrane, as he tried in vain to stop them.

Everyone was taken into custody, including the woman. She wasn’t dead after all. She portrayed herself as the victim, and the wounds to her face lent her credibility. She claimed the six-year-old girl was her daughter, and kept touching Leodora, running trembling fingers through her hair. Of course she was not Leodora’s mother, nor looked anything like her, but the bold assertion smothered her denial with the warped aroma of hope, a possibility that was impossible. It surely would have tripped up no one other than a girl who had no mother, generating an internal conflict that terrified and silenced her when she most needed to speak. Finally the authorities had to send for her auntie Dymphana, hauling her up from Bouyan to prove that this hadn’t been something else, a lovers’ quarrel, a domestic dispute. The moment she saw her aunt she began to wail and flung her arms about Dymphana’s waist, and then the Kuseks knew absolutely. They set her grandfather and Gousier free.