The Burning City (Spirit Binders) (42 page)
Read The Burning City (Spirit Binders) Online
Authors: Alaya Dawn Johnson
Parech related these developments in absurdist pantomime, mimicking Taak’s affected aristocratic accent when he wanted to portray the Maaram and a ruthless nasal drawl when portraying the Esselans. I never mentioned it but was grateful that he never evinced the slightest temptation to rejoin the army on this side. They would have taken him—questions that might otherwise have been asked were overlooked during wartime. Unlike in Okika, the Esselans paid their soldiers very well. But I don’t know how Tulo or I could have lived with that constant stress, and I suppose he must have known. Instead, he spent most of his days out back, fortifying the rows of deep ponds he had dug for the fish, as his first too-shallow attempt had been destroyed in the earthquake. I had my doubts about this plan, but he swore he’d seen such fish farms before and I held my peace.
I spent the days braiding sennit from the raw strands of bark that Tulo would bring home from the market, and when my fingers cramped and turned orange from the staining, I would read the precious letters the other napulo disciples circulated among themselves, all with the goal of gaining the knowledge needed to harness the power of the spirits. Some merely wanted the wisdom, and argued against using these postulates to bind spirits, but they were by far in the minority. I considered their arguments more than most, I imagine. I was unusual in having actually spoken to minor sprites and one major spirit. I understood that while not by any means human, these creatures were capable of thought and rational action and emotion. To then bind them to our will must be a form of slavery. But on the other hand, perhaps it was wrong in the same way killing a fish for food might be. Unfortunate for the other living creature, but inevitable and in some natural way correct, because we had to do so to survive.
Humans had been binding spirits long before we had any idea what we did. Every knelt prayer to the ancestors, every jungle fowl sacrificed at the full moon to the gods both invoked something and bound it to that request. That we understood the process far better than those ancient tribes didn’t negate its ultimately natural provenance. Who was I to gainsay millennia of human history? I didn’t have the hubris to claim that bindings were morally wrong when the sweep of human civilization would hardly be possible without them. No. I sympathized with those fringe napulo, but I didn’t agree with them.
I wrote circumspectly to my fellow disciples about my experiences with death. I focused on what I saw as the trivial details—the shape of the little death sprites, the precise dimensions of its mask—and glossed over the critical moment. Knowledge, and the lack of knowledge. I still didn’t quite know what the death was so afraid of, but I knew that once I found out I would have access to more power than perhaps anyone else on the islands. But I needn’t have bothered. The disciples were mostly afraid of the death spirit and evinced only the mildest curiosity about my report. Here on Essel, with the constant smoking reminder of Nui’ahi, it was fire that consumed most attention. Water as well was the subject of some mutterings, though those seemed centered elsewhere in the islands.
I was poring over some of these reports late one evening when I heard Tulo and Parech talking and laughing outside, near the fish ponds. I tried to concentrate again on the words, but it was no good. I suddenly felt as though I’d been trapped inside this house for years, not just a little over a month. Surely by now I was well enough to walk around outside! So I wrapped one of the blankets tightly around my shoulders and made my slow, careful way down the stairs and around the back. I had to pause several times to catch my breath, but it worked out well enough. I didn’t even mind the cold. Water from a diverted irrigation ditch was filling the first pond. Tulo and Parech ran around it, laughing and screaming like five-year-olds. I smiled and watched them, too out of breath to even let them know I was there. Eventually, Tulo leapt over the pond and tackled Parech to the ground. They rolled over into the pile of upturned dirt. He rubbed some into her hair while she grabbed whatever object he’d stolen from her. Their laughter gave way to something quieter. I wanted to say something, but it was too late. I could only watch.
He kissed her. My own lips parted, as though it were me on the ground beneath him. She put her hand around the back of his head and pulled him in closer. Oh, I could imagine that first moment, the shock and happiness when his lips finally touched hers. I sat on the ground and closed my eyes.
I don’t know when they finally saw me. But eventually Parech tapped my shoulder, obviously concerned in a way I knew was not strictly for my health. I looked between the two of them; they were holding hands. Everything seemed to glow again. I felt so happy, yet I thought I might cry. What was so wrong with me that Parech never did more than peck my forehead? Tulo said I was beautiful, but then Tulo spent her days staring at creatures with feet for ears.
“I brought a scarf back for you,” Tulo said.
Parech just looked at me, his gaze unreadable yet almost piercing me through.
I staggered to my feet and hugged them both. It was the only thing I could do.
The day Yaela bound the great water spirit, the wind turned a human into an angel. I suppose no one but the spirits knew this on the actual day. But slowly, as the astonishing news filtered through the city (first as rumor, then as fact), we pieced the events together. Yaela, a napulo disciple who had discovered the teachings in Okika but lived primarily on an obscure outer island as a diver of some sort, had made the ultimate self-sacrifice on one of the three icebound inner islands, dedicating it forever to the service of the great binding. At the moment of her sacrifice, she had turned another man into a creature the napulo were calling a guardian—a half-spirit, half-human creature connected to the binding and capable of reining in the worst depredations of the water spirit. Now there would be no more tidal waves that could suck entire villages into the ocean without a trace, no more great floods. I thought of my parents and almost wept.
The wind spirit—sensing, perhaps that its time was not long behind—created its own peculiar hybrid creature. Not as much of a spirit as Yaela’s guardian, but still more than human, wind’s black angel was a girl who swept through the skies like a great crow. She had no power aside from her wings, but she marked the wind spirit’s stance against what was happening. Her very presence prophesied conflict. No one paid much attention—the war was far more interesting than what must have seemed to the jaded populace of Essel like an endless parade of spirit-creatures. Having recovered from the fever, the Esselan army took advantage of the dry weather and launched a sneak attack on Maaram soil. They conquered several outlying islands and Okika City itself before calling most of the troops back for the planting season.
The council of chiefs sponsored an official celebration near the fire temple and the Kulanui, and the three of us went for the dancing and free-flowing palm wine. We lasted until the sun came up, getting drunker and giddier and more exhausted until we finally collapsed inside one of the more decrepit pagodas behind the fire temple. Tulo twined her hand in my hair while Parech seemed to fall immediately asleep.
“Do you think he’s dead?” I said, staring at the war canoes still silhouetted in the hundreds against the rising sun.
“Who?”
“Taak, of course.”
“Oh, the Maaram pig?” She shrugged. “How would I know? He was stupid enough.”
This didn’t seem adequate, but I knew better than to press Tulo on the subject of her most hated enemy. No one had cheered harder at the news that the Esselans had conquered Okika, despite the fact that Essel was hardly likely to be any kinder to her tribe than the Maaram were. An occupying force is an occupying force, no matter what language it speaks.
We fell asleep and were only roused when an officiant from the fire temple hit us lightly with her broom and told us to be on our way. Tulo and I stood, but Parech stayed on the floor, moving so slowly you’d think he’d just now gotten drunk.
“Pick him up if you have to,” said the officiant, now truly annoyed.
I bent down to shake his shoulders and gasped aloud. His skin was burning to the touch. The officiant, having finally understood the situation, set off at a dead sprint back to the main hall. Tulo and I managed to lift Parech between us, but we had to hire someone to carry him back to the house. He regained consciousness somewhere along the way and looked hazily up at me.
“Maybe the death is angry you slipped from its grasp, Ana,” he said.
“You’re not going to die,” said Tulo, with such morbid determination that it surprised a laugh from both of us.
“Well, in that case,” said Parech.
It seemed to me that nothing could be worse than his illness, but Tulo gave me her word it was not half so bad as my own. The little death sprites settled for crowding the door, she said, and none seemed inclined to open the gate. We ventured into the city infrequently, though we were fairly sure that his was a relapse of the old fever, not evidence of a new contagion. While Parech slowly recovered, I took charge of his fish ponds. He told me the name of the dealer from whom he’d arranged to buy the stocks of baby fish and I purchased them myself.
“Feed fish?” I repeated to Parech in disbelief, when he’d recovered enough to give me instructions. “You eat fish, you don’t feed them.”
This made him smile. “Well, you do if you want to eat them later.”
“Technicalities. You
hunt
fish. This farming business is decadent and newfangled.”
hunt
fish. This farming business is decadent and newfangled.”
“Oh-ho, the great Ana is now lecturing me about my modern ideas?”
“Spirit binding is as old as the moon.”
“Not your kind of spirit binding.”
“Ah, you’ve defeated me. I’ll feed your fish.”
A month after the celebrations, when the weather had finally turned warm enough for long evenings on the beach, Parech declared himself better. Tulo and I didn’t believe him—he was still uncomfortably thin and his skin seemed somehow ashen beneath its natural brown-red hue. But he could walk around, and there wasn’t much either of us could do but watch him carefully.
The fish in his ponds, quite improbably, grew fat and healthy. He made tentative arrangements with a fishmonger in the village to sell the first harvest. Tulo, relieved of the necessity to perform her fake fortune-telling, spent many hours helping Parech and decorating our house. I let them be. Neither my happiness nor my grief was anything I felt I could burden them with.
We spent a great deal of time on the beach in the evenings, sometimes by ourselves and sometimes with the other residents of the nearby village. A few weeks after Parech recovered, one such evening had turned positively balmy. Tulo and I discarded our bulky barkcloth shirts and danced together by the cookfire, much to the amusement of Parech and the other village residents. After we had dined on a feast of our very own farmed eels, roasted over the fire, Parech left the two of us to discuss supplies with the fishmonger. Tulo followed his easy movements with a frown that made me reach for her hand.
“They haven’t left, you know,” she said softly. “The little death creatures with those horrible bobble heads.”
I had to force myself to suck in a breath. “You mean. . .”
“I don’t know. I think he’s still sick. I think it hasn’t left him.”
He hid it well, but I could believe that. But I didn’t know what either of us could do. He’d get better eventually. He had to. There couldn’t be a worse time for this to happen. I’d been meaning to mention a certain issue to Tulo for a week now, but I’d found reasons to put it off. I didn’t think I could any longer.
“Tulo, you know that you’re pregnant, right? You haven’t had your period in two months.”
She didn’t look at me. “Of course I know.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
She shrugged. “Parech was sick. . .and you, I didn’t know what you would think. I thought about finding hea berry.”
“But you haven’t, have you?”
“No.” She sighed. “What sort of mother would I be, Aoi?”
“A princess,” I said.
She told Parech. He was overjoyed, swinging her around the house until I grew dizzy. He immediately started working on building the second room, in a dedicated frenzy that belied his continued pallor and the worried looks Tulo gave him. Tulo took over caring for the fishes. I spent more time away from home, studying with the napulo and learning every scrap I could about the death spirit. Parech was about to become a father. I couldn’t just let this illness eat him alive. Yet nothing I found seemed to fit.
In the meantime, a student I had known from Essel attempted to bind the earth spirit and died when he couldn’t control the geas. No one attempted in his place—the earth spirit was very ill-understood and not nearly so important as the fire or wind spirits. There were rumors that a napulo from my own Kukicha was about to attempt a wind-spirit binding. He had different ideas from Yaela—wind would have no guardian, and he would establish the physical location of the prison deep in the outer rim, among the fringes of the Akane tribes. It sounded like a fool’s dream to me, but I was curious to see if it worked.
Tulo’s waist thickened, though she didn’t look pregnant to anyone but us. Parech relapsed, with a fever not so high as the second time he fell ill. We made him rest for a week and he recovered enough to flaunt our concern. I did not ask Tulo if she still saw the death sprites. Just a look at her face was enough to tell me that. Finally, frustrated and terrified, I made up an excuse and accompanied him on the long walk into the city.
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