by Avi Silver
The music seemed to have reached the people around him in a way that every other attempt at reconciliation had not. For once, the gaze upon him was less hostile, more inquisitive. The jeibu player was positioning the instrument on her knee, trying to figure out how he had balanced it. A child peered at him from behind their parent’s legs, and when he smiled at them, they giggled before hiding once more.
Sohmeng pulled him up from the seat, holding his hands. “Oh man, we should have gotten you an instrument sooner. Why didn’t you tell me you were a musician?”
“I didn’t think it mattered,” Ahn confessed. It ached unexpectedly to admit.
“Éongrir Ahnschen What’s-His-Phase, what am I going to do with you?” Sohmeng looked at him then with something he could not quite comprehend, a teasing fondness that made his heart flip over itself. Sometimes, when she stared at him like that, Ahn thought she just might understand him better than he understood himself.
He was still holding Sohmeng’s hands—squeezing them, even. He let go, not wanting his touch to claim or impose. But perhaps his expression gave something away, because uncertainty flashed across Sohmeng’s face. They pulled away from each other, and Ahn searched for something else to look at before things could go any further.
The people in the tent were talking about him, that much was clear. Even with the friendlier energy, it made Ahn anxious to be kept out of a conversation about him. He strained to catch the few Fahangpa words he could recognize: good, jeibu, festival, a few pronouns—
Tsongkar.
The word snagged his ear like a bramble. He tried to brush it off, to pull out the spines and ignore the sting, but then it came again. Tsongkar. Unwanted. Against his better judgment, he tried to listen to the rest, but it sounded like nonsense to him, unlike any Fahangpa he had heard before. Laughter followed, laughter that did not seem kind.
Eakang turned sharply in that direction, snapping something in Fahangpa. The voices in the crowd changed, the eyes on him grew uneasy. The child who had looked at him was quickly ushered away.
Sohmeng took his arm. “Ahn, let’s go...”
“What are they—” He stopped, hearing the not-Fahangpa ring out once more despite Eakang’s arguing. Hurt blossomed in his chest as he caught the rise and fall of the sounds, the exaggerated vowels—
Of course. They were mocking his language.
The rain broke overhead, coming down in sheets that battered Ahn’s skin. If the gods of Eiji were truly looking down upon them, they had certainly sent their message. His whole body felt oversensitive, and before he could catch himself, the high of performing came crashing down in a wave of shame.
How had he ever tricked himself into thinking his trial could end with anything but death? There was no forgiveness for him here, no future, no real opportunity for reconciliation. Qiao Sidh had done too much, and there was no reason for Nona Fahang to trust him. He was going to die in this place, and he was going to deserve it. He was already so many years overdue.
Ahn felt scraped up within, dug out like blood spattered into sand—and at the thought of those sands, the crystalline pink beaches he might never see again, his feet moved of their own volition.
The crowd parted for him with haste, the tang of fear returning to their murmurings. This time, he did not try to catch their meaning. Sohmeng was calling something, following him, but he did not slow down. Not for her, not for the startled guards as he made for the walls, not for anything.
Maybe for Schenn. But Schenn hadn’t said a damn word.
Ahn choked down a sob, clenching his fists as he walked; his fingers felt raw from the jeibu. He had been so sure that Schenn had guided him to this place for a reason, that he hadn’t just been run into a jungle to die. But all he’d gotten were a list of ways that he was bad and wrong, and he had no idea how to make it right. He wanted to go home. He wanted to go back. Back to Qiao Sidh. Back to Asgørindad—no, to Kørno Wan, back to Schenn. Back to a time in his life that had never really existed, where he knew how to do something good.
Ahn thought he could use tonight to shed the parts of himself he couldn’t stand, to rebuild a future. But it was impossible. He had no future. Ahn pushed through the wall of banyan, listening to nothing. Wanting everything. Grieving and raging against the wanting itself.
Hei and Ahn were already fighting by the time Sohmeng reached them. The sound was muted by the roar of the rain and the celebration within Nona Fahang, but Sohmeng didn’t need to hear the words to understand what was happening. The sãoni had fallen back in response to the noise of the Chisong festival; Sohmeng could see the greens and purples of their glowing throats in the trees. Lightning flashed, and she caught glimpses of suspicious reptilian eyes.
She ran over to Hei and Ahn, soaked and out of breath. The lantern she had brought with her flickered against the rain. They had moved dangerously far from Nona Fahang, far enough to get Ahn in trouble. “What are you doing? This is not the time to get in each others’ faces!”
Hei’s hood was up, their claws over their knuckles. They circled Ahn like Green Bites, snarling out a challenge in Sãonipa. Ahn was still, fists clenched and shaking. His expression was darker than Sohmeng had ever seen.
“I said you weren’t welcome here,” Hei spat in Atengpa. Their voice was shaky, their eyes wild with panic that Sohmeng suspected had little to do with Ahn. “Go back in the hmun.”
“He doesn’t understand you, Hei,” Sohmeng said in Dulpongpa, trying to level the linguistic playing field. “Ahn—”
“I understand them fine,” Ahn said coldly. “They are the one who does not listen.”
Hei snapped a Sãonipa threat that he ignored. He abruptly moved to step around them, and they lunged with a hiss, pushing at his chest. To Sohmeng’s dismay, he shoved their hands aside, paying no mind to the way their sharp claws tore at his clothing. In the dim lantern light, she saw three thin red lines blossom on his chest.
Sohmeng flinched—if Ahn couldn’t keep his cool, there was no stopping whatever fight was threatening to break out. She couldn’t breathe. The past few weeks had been spent vouching for him and Hei and the sãoni, insisting there wouldn’t be a problem, all for them to explode in the middle of the Chisong festival. “Ahn, please don’t—”
“Back in hmun!” Hei shouted at Ahn with another growl. The words came out in Dulpongpa this time, and their eyes flashed to Sohmeng with anxiety. She thought of the story they had told back in the winding tunnels of Sodão Dangde, the image of a child wailing as their body was pelted with rain. “Not out here. No Ahn with sãoni.”
“We can talk about this,” Sohmeng insisted, looking between them. The trial was so close. Why was this happening now? “We can be reasonable. I know things were tense last time you two talked, but you don’t need to blow up at each other. Let’s just get back to the walls, before we get in trouble.”
Ahn shook his head, tugging harshly at his ear with a comment in Qiao Sidhur. Strands of his silver hair stuck to his face, and the flowing white dress he’d been leant now hung from him, limp and heavy with water. They had just been dancing together, he’d been fitting in so well. Sohmeng touched his shoulder, trying to bring back what she had seen when he was playing the jeibu. “I know people were being jerks back there, and I know that must have sucked, but it’s nothing you haven’t dealt with before. Now isn’t the time to lose it, Ahn. We can still fix this. You and I can go to my dad’s place, he won’t mind...”
A pained chirp rang out from Hei, sending guilt stabbing into Sohmeng. She had left them alone outside the walls of Nona Fahang here, overwhelmed by the noise in the hmun, probably obsessing over the fight the two of them had last parted on. Soothing as the sãoni were to Hei, they couldn’t offer the same kind of reassurances Sohmeng could.
“Or we could all stay here together,” Sohmeng said. “Find someplace dry. Try to, try to talk this out—”
“Not here,” Hei said again, tearful and furious. “Not with sãoni. Ahnschen not being good
, no stay with sãoni. No stay with me.”
“Hei, please,” Sohmeng begged, reaching out to touch them with her other hand. She was so unused to hearing her voice like this, small and uncertain. She was being tugged in both directions, and neither of the people she cared about were willing to budge. “Just one night, we take a breath and calm down and stay together and—”
“I don’t want to stay here!” Ahn shouted, yanking back from Sohmeng’s touch with a force that made her jump. Hei squawked in protest, but he paid no mind. “Or in Nona Fahang, or, or anywhere.”
Sohmeng’s chest hurt. “Ahn, your trial—”
“Is doomed, Sohmeng. I’ve ruined it, I’ve ruined everything and it—” His voice broke, dissolved into trembling laughter. “It’s never going to be okay. Everyone here hates me, and I deserve to be hated, so I’m—I’m leaving. I can’t fix it, I’m leaving.”
“You can’t leave,” Sohmeng insisted. “Where will you go?”
“Home. I give up, I’m going home. To the camp, to Qiao Sidh.”
“You don’t know the way—”
“I don’t care.”
“Ahn, they’ll kill you,” she said desperately.
Ahn’s response was a furious cry in Qiao Sidhur. Sohmeng could only stare as he yelled it once more, gesturing to where the scouts were supposed to be stationed in the trees. She didn’t need to speak the language to know what he meant: let them.
Lightning slammed above them, highlighting the clearing in a shock of brightness that was there and gone. The sãoni squawked and snarled all around her, but she could not see them. Her father was just on the other side of the wall, but he could not help her. Hei was pushed beyond their limits, driven to collapse from all she had asked of them. Ahnschen, her key to negotiating with the invaders—no, her friend, was ready to go die in the land that had already swallowed her mother.
It was too big. It was too much. Too much to process when she just barely understood what it meant to be an adult, too much to translate between upwards of three languages.
Sohmeng gave up on making sense to anyone around her, gave up on being peacekeeper. With all the boldness of the first red shard of Ama, she closed her eyes and screamed.
It was loud. It was unreasonable. It felt good. She screamed wordlessly, screamed until it hurt her throat. Screamed until it felt like some of the pressure began to release from her chest.
When she opened her eyes, struggling to catch her breath, she looked up to see that the storm clouds had overtaken the eyes of the gods. Chisong turned Minhal; clairvoyant wisdom fallen into unpredictable chaos. Of course she had again been left to her own devices. But before she could open her mouth to continue, Hei’s voice broke in.
It was louder even than hers. They roared ragged and raw, a feral howl to match the turbulence of the storm above. Sohmeng accepted it with relish. She opened her mouth to catch the rain, to soothe her throat, and then she kept going, wailing all her frustration to the sky.
Eventually she found her words, a stumbling stream of unfiltered Atengpa: “I hate this! I hate this! This is all too much and I feel so alone and I can’t keep doing this! I’m supposed to be selfish but everyone’s asking me for so much and I keep on failing, I’m failing both of you, and Ateng, and the gods themselves and I’m so sick of it, I’m so sick of it—”
Beside her, Ahn’s voice suddenly joined in, the sharp cry of his own despair adding a new harmony to her and Hei’s pain. It didn’t take long for his own screams to tumble into heaving sobs, like an exhausted child. Cries in Qiao Sidhur joined her own Atengpa, curses she could not decipher and did not feel the need to understand.With the intensity that shook him, Sohmeng wondered if he had ever fallen apart like this in his life.
“This SUCKS!” Sohmeng screamed, tilting her head back to the sky.
Hei howled in agreement, stomping their feet, letting their emotions escape their entire body. Ahn joined in, shaking his fists like a madman, and Sohmeng jumped into gathering puddles, splashing and yelling until she thought she might burst into laughter at the sheer absurdity of it all.
The three of them screamed out their separate rages as one, threatening to crack the sky with all of the things they could not bear to carry alone. Eventually, their hands found their way into one another’s, holding tight against the intensity. It was the sight of Ahn and Hei’s fingers linked that finally brought Sohmeng to join them in crying. It was easier to do when she wasn’t the only one, when she was not expected to keep it together for the sake of everyone else.
As the collective yelling subsided into tearful whimpering, Sohmeng yanked on Hei and Ahn’s hands, pulling them into a group hug. Ahn accepted it with a new round of weeping, his face hidden in her hair. Hei gripped her tightly, tolerating Ahn’s arm across their back as they nuzzled her, chirping Sãonipa into her shoulder.
The Qiao Sidhur Empire was still advancing down Gãepongwei. The Sky Bridge was still broken. They still had no plan for fixing these problems that were so much bigger than the three of them. As much responsibility as each of them had been given, they were all just barely out of childhood.
It felt like a good start, to behave like children. To kick and scream and, for once, abandon solutions in favour of feeling boldly and unashamed.
Eventually they collapsed together against a tree, curled up like a heap of hatchlings, seeking comfort in one another’s warmth. Sohmeng closed her eyes, swallowing the rawness in her throat and softening around the space that had opened in her chest. She could not fix the world tonight, but she could breathe easier. And if the tentative tenderness of the people on either side of her was any indication, she was not the only one.
In the dream, they were lying together on a pile of pillows, sprawled out beneath the lilac tent they had put up on the beach. The summer storms were rolling in, breaking the humidity that had been suffocating everyone for weeks on end. Schenn was smiling, his eyes on something down by the water. It sounded like the clash of metal on metal, the wailing of someone else’s children, the mindless chatter of their classmates. Ahn couldn’t see it. He was busy looking at Schenn.
“Share the joke, would you?” He moved to prod Schenn’s side with his foot, but his muscles felt lax, out of his control. Every time he tried to make contact, his skin slipped from Schenn’s like oil off water. The boy looked at Ahn sympathetically, passing him a piece of fruit from the basket they had brought. Saka. Best to peel it first.
Ahn was about to say so when he felt a throbbing in his ear, hot and wet, like someone had punched a hole straight through the lobe. He cried out, reaching up to cup it, to catch the blood, but Schenn caught his wrist in a firm grip. The boy leaned in close to him, his dark eyes focused, serious.
“What if we didn’t do it?” Schenn asked, and Ahn was startled to hear how much his friend’s voice sounded like his own.
“What?” Ahn groaned. The pain in his ear was spreading, inexplicably, to his chest. A stripe burned right across. How had that happened? “Do what, Schenn? Our Six-ing?”
“What if we didn’t do it?” the boy repeated.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ahn tried to look away—the sounds from the beach were getting louder, closer. They were violent sounds now, he could tell. It scared him. Schenn was scaring him.
The boy hushed him, pressing their foreheads together. He released Ahn’s wrist, instead playing with the end of Ahn’s braid, rolling the strands of black and silver together as though they might catch and spark. He smiled another one of those private, tender smiles, and Ahn wished more than anything to be let in on what his friend was thinking.
“Schenn,” Ahn said, his voice so young and small. “I don’t know what to do. I made a mistake, and I need help fixing it, but I just want to go home. I want to forget all of this ever happened. It hurts too much and I want to go home—”
“Ahnschen,” the boy said once more, and the sound of his name made the pain in Ahn’s ear throb deeper. “What if we didn’t do i
t?”
“Do what?” Ahn pleaded.
The sounds from the beach were louder now. The clash of swords, the shouting in languages he could only partially understand. His Conquest masters’ voices too, barking instruction. The prayer of the priests as they pulled someone’s body through the sand. His sister Ólawen, with her easy laughter and firm orders, telling their parents what they should get Ahn for his birthday.
Ahn squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block it out, but the sounds replaced themselves with images. He saw himself older, apologizing to Master Hvu as he broke yet another string. He saw himself running back to his sister’s war tent, stumbling out half a plea for the Untilled and then leaving the rest in her hands; she was the real general, she was the elder, he could let it be her burden. He saw himself back in the palace, married, putting a play sword in the hand of a young child, telling the story of the years he spent on the lower continent, offering it to the holy expansion of Qiao Sidh.
He saw himself standing over a slaughtered sãoni too slow to pick up on the cues of domestication. He saw himself bring its body home as a prize. He saw himself knock a screaming human that was not a human into the dirt, hardening his heart to all its rage. He saw himself kneeling once to Sohmeng Minhal, and then leaving her to enjoy Qiao Sidh’s new road. Not being good, but being better. The best.
He saw himself behaving as a true son of the Empire, perhaps one day its father. Accepted, beloved. Making the easy choices, the ones that freed him from all shame and complication.
“What if we didn’t do it, Ahnschen?”
In the dream, Ahn opened his eyes. He took Schenn’s face in his hands, cradled the curve of his jaw with fondness and longing. His ear no longer throbbed but rang clear as silver: a reminder through the realms of the first time he made the mistake of choosing what he’d been promised was easy. “I could live with that.”