Tinder Stricken (23 page)

Once the millet's white steam dwindled to
nothing, Rooftop flew away to find the dealmaker. Breakfast passed
unspoken between the two women, interrupted by their only spoon
scooping more radish pickles into one bowl or another — and as Esha
and Atarangi put last pinches of grain into their mouths, two
bright phoenixes returned.

The anticipation might have been too strong,
so that even a human-hating forest bird knew the cloying feel of
it. With a jab of a look to Rooftop, the dealmaker phoenix paced
over to the camp site as awkward as if she had never walked before
and aimed a glare into her bowl.

“
This pale-mash is lungta-food?”

To her credit, the churlish beast was easier
to understand today; she was either extending her own lungta or
choosing her rude words carefully.

“It is food,” Atarangi said, wearing calm
and speaking with abundant leaf-rustling. “This is millet, one of
the grass-grains humans grow. It doesn't look like green-nourishing
food, but we eat it often. The lungta is good for holding water
inside a red-living body.”

Crests working, the dealmaker stared more at
the millet and harder at Atarangi. Esha, as well. Esha got a
generous portion of the bird's accusation.

Esha rose with a huff. “I didn't poison it,
if that's what you're thinking.” Hobbling around the campfire —
more crippled than ever after her bamboo-climbing foolishness — she
took Atarangi's empty bowl on her way.

“Esha— No one
poisoned
it. This is
our gift we give to you.”

A pause hung. Esha took a handful of sand
and started scrubbing.

“My kin ...?”

Rooftop trilled agreement. Imagination
painted the sight of him bobbing to the wild bird's side, tossing a
bite of her millet down his throat and then beaming at her, utterly
benign.

Quietly, the dealmaker creaked to Rooftop,
sounds that nearly whisked away in the wind before Esha could glean
meaning from them. Discussion of
seed-food
and
grass
ripe-tops
, and the question of what phoenixes might call this
foodstuff other than Rooftop's throat-rolled
mih-rr-et
.

It was pleasing, Esha had to admit, hearing
confirmation that millet was a worthwhile food. It wasn't as
esteem-wreathed as rice but Esha would have had many weary,
dry-mouthed days without it.

The wild phoenix tilted her head,
considering the millet offering with dark eyes. She bent, and
selected a morsel between the tweezer points of her beak. And when
she swallowed that and felt no death stealing over her, she took a
more generous clump and gulped it down.

“
Yielding-soft but substance-brown.”
She tried another mouthful, testing it between tongue and palate
before she gulped.
“This, I will say: you have skilled control
of fire.”

Esha and Atarangi stole glances at each
other, and both stifled hopeful smiles.

“Will you join us for another meal
tomorrow?,” Atarangi asked when the last grain left the bowl. “We
fire-cook every early morning and every late afternoon.

The phoenix hesitated, crests shifting in a
wordless din of emotions. She stood one-legged with a lump of
millet caged in her raised foot — a bite for her chick to
sample.

“
Maybe I will. Time will rise and
set.”
And she turned toward the forest, hesitating before she
took to her fanned wings. The mouthy thief phoenix flew away from
them but this time, Esha was nearly sad to see her go.

It had to be because no one fed this
phoenix. She worked and hunted and feared for her future; no one
had proffered fuel for her own fire until now. Esha couldn't grudge
that.

“We are making progress, I think,” Atarangi
said. “Betel is starting the conversation and millet is carrying it
onward.”

The next day's breakfast was much the same.
Esha and Atarangi portioned millet and lentils into four bowls,
with one portioned first and left to go cold. Rooftop left and
returned with their wild guest. The dealmaker didn't have any
insults this time, just the same gait like her feet were glued.

“These are lentils,” Atarangi explained.
“They're filling, a red-strong food despite their green looks. Good
lungta for running, or flying I'd imagine.”

The birds discussed lentils quietly amongst
themselves; Esha and Atarangi pretended not to listen. The
dealmaker untied Atarangi's cloth square from her stringfeathers
and bundled two beakfuls inside —
“For my chick,”
she
actually admitted this time.

While she pulled a new knot tight, Rooftop
trilled for her attention. He drew a gift from his stringfeather
and offered it — a sliver of bamboo. Just like the one he had
offered Esha such vast days ago. Of course Rooftop would be the one
to offer a clear statement of friendship, with his infectious joy
and his uncomplicated heart.

The dealmaker bird stared at it, catching
her crests before they flared. She stared, and couldn't even answer
Rooftop; she simply left again.

Her red-brown wings were flags of cowardice,
disappearing over the cedar tops.

Esha sighed and dropped her handful of
scrubbing sand. “Gods' tits, why do we bother?”

“That wasn't a refusal,” Atarangi said — in
a faltering tone. “Not completely. She's still allowing us in her
territory, and approaching for food and discussion. She's even
putting human-prepared food in her chick's mouth . If she was truly
rejecting Rooftop's offer, she'd have voiced her offense. Seems
like such is her way ...”

“Then what else can we do?”

“Leaf-food makes a better apology,” Rooftop
said.

If Esha were offended, she supposed an
expensive gift would quell her, too. “Well, shall I cook some leaf
food, then?”

Atarangi smiled like the gift was really for
her.

Esha asked Atarangi to go to market for
minor things, kitchen things. Rice vinegar and salt; cabbage and
mustard greens; an array of tuberous vegetables. A proper meal —
whatever that fragile phrase really meant — needed more pickles.
Medleys of flavourings and spices. There wouldn't be enough time
for them to ferment but Esha knew some wiles to make meals ready
faster.

“She'll have questions about what's in this
food, I'm sure,” Atarangi said. “I'll try to answer them. She'll
appreciate all the lungta foods, I'm sure.”

“She should.” A smirk pulled Esha's mouth.
“I've used as many kinds of spices as the peace talks on Accord
Plateau. Did you hear of those?”

“I did, even before I had my sigil! We heard
news of the peace talks on the Manyori islands, although the
rumours had been travelling long enough to grow stale.”

“We heard about it in the fields just two
days later. The arbiters corrected some of the rumours, but it was
still a feast we all envied.”

“When I was trusted enough to enter the
Kathumishru Library,” Atarangi said, “the first precedent I
searched out was a copy of the Accord Plateau peace talk summaries.
One scribe wrote that those negotiation feasts were the most
sumptuous ever seen below heaven's clouds. It sounded like a fine
way to make allies.” Atarangi paused. “You might say that right
now, Esha, you're offering this phoenix such a peace talk.”

She watched her own black-nailed hands
mixing pickles. Under her softening fieldwork calluses, the carrot
coins and the sesame oil felt like old times. “I suppose you're
right.”

“I'm proud of you, Esha. You're a different
woman than the one I met

She squirmed and tossed the pickles. “It
hasn't been so long.”

“No, truly.” Honesty lumped in Atarangi's
throat, before she confessed. “I considered turning you in.”

“What? To guards ...?!”

“To the Yam Plateau rangers' guild. Maybe to
your farm's overseer.” She looked weakened by this truth, drained
of colour under her tattooed stripes. “After the things you had
done, I considered whether more good would be done turning you in
and using the reward to expand my efforts, maybe move a plateau
higher. But I made the right decision, Esha.”

It was a sobering thought, here while Esha
looked at the deep-bent shapes of her strange knees under her
clothing, while she felt the backward counterweight her horns made
against her neck's motion. She wondered if anyone ever considered
turning Gita in for her sins — likely not.

“I'll take your high praise, friend,” Esha
said. “I can try to do some good while I'm here to do it, I
suppose. I can go to my mind's end holding onto that.”

Atarangi wrapped a deeper-hued hand around
Esha's wrist, only obstructing the pickling process a little. “Fine
rope to cling to. Now, what can I slice up for you?”

Pickles couldn't be rushed, but sometimes
the impossible had to be done. They shared breakfast millet with
the dealmaker phoenix and asked her to return for dinner.

Rooftop left camp while Esha wasn't watching
him; she heard a clamour of wings while she was bent over the
sizzling pan. The two phoenixes returned before everything was
ready; their portioned rice and lentils still fountained steam.

“Welcome back,” Atarangi called. “Please
forgive us: the meal is almost fit to eat.”

The phoenix gave her patience this time. She
watched Esha nearly the same way Rooftop did, just holding still
and from a more prudent distance away. When her bowl was set out,
she approached.

“This is the meal of my people,” Esha began,
pouring the last flavour of chutney into a side-bowl barely large
enough. “My, ah. Bloodline of humans. Our long-time flock, I
suppose. We're called Grewiers. And ... this is the best meal we
know. Not the most expensive, not the most stuffed full of potent
herbs — just the best.”

With a considering tilt of her head, the
dealmaker creaked a thin thinking sound.
“These foods, they show
such rainbow-gathering. What lungta-foods are here?”

It made for cold rice, having to explain
every pickle and side dish. But good food could stand to wait — and
Rooftop dove enthusiastic into explanations, and the dealmaker
seemed to like the chile peppers Esha had apprehensively decided to
use.

“Those hurt the mouth, but the body-heat
lungta is worth a little suffering. I think so, anyway.”

She wiped sesame oil from her lips, caught
Atarangi's encouraging nod, and forged ahead.

“I've been thinking, acquaintance-bird. It
doesn't do a lick of good for us to be enemies. I don't want your
territory, or your growing food. You've got a knife I'd like back,
and that's all. We should settle that.”

“
I filled with blood-red-despair. Made a
reckless dive,”
the dealmaker said — freely as poured wine,
while studying the glazed shine on her bowl.
“Time lifts
dark-fog from all things' eyes and yes, yes, I need kin for tying
away blue-green pond troubles. If you-three are willing to lend
claws, tomorrow and days-after ... We might rescind the
trade.”

“
The tree-wood,”
Rooftop trilled.
“His wings unfurled like waving flags, like freed joy.
“Give our
kin the tree-wood!”

“
Patience,”
the dealmaker snapped,
“more night-blue-calm!”

She fluttered away over a copse of pines. A
breath-held moment later, she returned, flapping rapid under the
weight of an arm-sized branch. Landing with a thump, she stepped
off of her apparent wood offering and tugged her stringfeathers to
order.

“
This, a gift for kin,”
she said.

“I'll take this gladly,” Atarangi replied,
in the cadence of a song. “And I'll be ready to sun-yellow give
back to you.”

She must have had said this at least five
times before, so it did feel like a song to her. This had to be the
formal bargain she spoke in neat-rowed fields, to any phoenix who
would listen.

The dealmaker bird paused for another
moment, still as canny as ever. Then with a tightening of her
crests — a feeling of acceptance, said Esha's lungta, a sighed
resignation — she opened a newly mysterious knot in her
stringfeather.

It contained a curled pine branch, fresh
enough for the needles to spring immediately open — and allow an
oval object to roll out onto the fireside earth.

The dealmaker took that object in her beak.
She held it out to Atarangi — a shell, rough and stony on one side,
sheening pearlescent on the other.

A moment later, the bird gave the shell to
Esha, too. Here was another strange un-gift from a phoenix. This
time, Esha knew to return the shell: for all her stormy doubts, she
at least knew that Clamshell would want her name back.

Chapter 15

After another breakfast — and another
explanation of the human names
Precious One
and
Morning
Sky
— Clamshell began showing them more secrets. Kin watched
over each other's belongings, after all.

She landed in a dense-boughed pine a
moment's walk from the camp site — and returned to earth with a
miniature ginseng sprout in her beak, its snapped stem still
oozing. A stone's throw away from that, them to one
ordinary-looking cedar among a hundred others — to toss her head
toward the kudzu stretching leafy out of a dirt-packed crevice.
They hadn't noticed any of these while wandering and fuel-cutting;
Esha wondered how many sky-gardens Rooftop had regretfully
distracted them from.

As their secret-steeped team kept on into
the forest, Esha turned momentarily back for the wheeled pack: her
legs were afire with pain already today but if she had a cart to
sit on, she might still listen to the proceedings.

And after seeing a dozen elusive little
garden plots in the trees, Atarangi looked at two cupped handfuls
of plant samples and shook her head thoughtful. “I've never seen
such clever use of tall-plant tops.... All of your tended-pea-green
plants are grown this way, my kin?”