Racing the Dark

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  Before she was really prepared, Nahe's speech ended. He caught her eye just before he left and signaled discreetly for her to find him outside. Emea looked frantically at Kohaku, but thankfully he was adjusting his headband and hadn't noticed.

  "I have to ... ah, use the facilities. Wait here, I'll be right back," she said.

  Kohaku nodded absently, already focused on chatting with a high-ranking professor two rows away. Outside the lecture hall, she felt the jarring impact of her wooden heels on the hard inlaid marble of the corridor. Covered lamps in sconces on the walls wavered as she ran past, making her shadow dance. She dashed up a rounded flight of stairs and then through another smaller corridor that ended in two closed doors. One, however, was open very slightly, letting in a thread of the chill night breeze. Emea forced herself to approach it slowly. She brushed back her hair and closed her eyes briefly before pulling the knob with shaking hands. Nahe was sitting on the edge of their hidden balcony, his graying hair pulled back into a short ponytail save for three loose braids around his temples. A fashion for a younger man, but the brashness suited him. The harsh planes of his face were not softened in the moonlight, but Emea had always found him beautiful. He turned to face her when she stepped onto the balcony and closed the door behind her. A smile played around his lips.

  "I couldn't stand to see you sitting there with him, pretending that you didn't even know me," he signaled. His hands were clumsier than Kohaku's, but he could sign well enough for her to understand him.

  Emea shrugged. "What else could I do? It's so hard to see you sometimes. Your wife can't know about us, and neither can my brother."

  "Ah, my wife. She knows more than I give her credit for, I think. But still, in my position, it wouldn't do for us to be found out."

  Emea hated when Nahe spoke like this-so ... callously. Times like these she wondered if he could possibly understand how much she loved him. To dispel her doubts she shook her head and hugged him fiercely. He returned the gesture after a moment and then lowered his head to kiss her.

  His passion was enough to eradicate any niggling doubts, and she gave herself up to it for a few heady moments before she gasped and broke away.

  "I must go back," she said. "Kohaku is waiting for me."

  He stared at her for a long moment, and Emea wished for the thousandth time that she could be with him openly. She had halfhoped that he would beg her to stay, or at least make some show of regret, but he merely shrugged.

  "Go back to your sycophant of a brother then," he said, and then turned back toward the moonlit sky.

  Emea tried very hard not to cry when she closed the door behind her, but she wasn't entirely successful.

  Dear Lana,

  You'll be pleased to hear that your father's shop is getting some recognition from people in very high places. A council member on the musician's guild who is training a young bow-harp virtuoso to play before the Mo'i on her birthday next month came by today to test some of your father's instruments. As you can imagine, Kapa was nearly delirious. Instruments made with his own hands played before the Mo'i! After two years in Essel, his dreams are beginning to come true.

  As for me, I still help out in the shop most of the time, but I have recently found another small occupation. This will probably sound as strange to you as it did to me at first, but I have begun to teach swimming lessons to rich families' children. Can you believe that most people in this city die without ever touching the water for any purpose besides bathing? We, of course, learned for necessity, but as my students will probably never have to dive for their livelihoods, they are learning it for their own amusement. I also seem to have a certain exotic cachet, since I was once a mandagah diver. Their skin is all so pale here, and no wonder-I remember complaining about the weather on Okika, but it is a hundred times colder in Essel. Sometimes I almost wish that volcano would erupt, just so I could be truly warm once before I die. No, I'm kidding, Lana, don't worry-it may be cold here, but I'm not that desperate yet. Lucky for me, though the air is cold, the water is mostly warm. I train the kids in a lake heated by underground vents-sometimes it's so hot I have to get out and cool down!

  As always, I miss you and I wish you could be here with us, so that we could be a proper family again. It was so wonderful seeingyou during the holidays-I couldn't believe how much older you looked. I guess that's what happens in a year. And I love the mirror you gave me, although Kapa has threatened to take it away if I keep looking at myself so often. I guess I just can't get over the novelty of seeing my face in something other than water. I never knew that I had a mole below my right eye! For some reason that keeps astounding me, although I'm sure you're now laughing over what a country bumpkin you have for a mother! Oh, and needless to say, Kapa loved the tortoiseshells. He's working on them right now, in fact. I have to stop writing or I'll be late for my swimming class. Please write back when you can.

  With all my love,

  Mama

  Lana smiled and carefully put the letter in the box where she kept all her correspondence with her parents. She wished that she could have heard her mother when she noticed that mole under her eye, or her father when he threatened to take away the mirror. Her mother wrote as often as she could, but letters were no substitute for their companionship. Lana's life usually stayed busy enough that her homesickness was limited to times like these, when she was alone in her room reading her mother's letters. Though her mother had been kind in saying how mature she looked, Lana knew she had grown less than an inch since they left Okika. Her shoes still fit her perfectly, and the pants of the outfit her mother had bought just before they left were only marginally shorter. Akua said it was possible that the illness had stunted her growth. In any case, she was beginning to accept that she would never get much taller.

  Instead of sleeping mats, Akua's house had strange raised beds that were much harder than what she was used to, but she appreciated them in winter. She stretched out on hers and sighed, grateful for the unusual respite in the middle of the day. Akua was out gathering herbs and other ingredients for a medicinal potion she planned to teach Lana this evening. She had told Lana to sweep out the cabin while she was away, but that had not been very time consuming, and she had taken the opportunity to read her mother's letter in private.

  Akua's house was old, made of rough pink stone that held in the heat during the cold winters. It was the only residence on this side of the huge lake, and the villagers on the other side never ventured here. Akua said that they were superstitious about her powers and so kept a wide berth. It sometimes made Lana feel strange to go weeks on end without seeing a soul other than the one-armed witch, but usually she enjoyed the solitude. Unlike any of the villagers' homes, Akua's house, old as it was, did have real glass windows. They were thick and warped, however, so you couldn't see through them like those in Okika's wealthiest houses. The old pink house was nestled in a curve of the lake, so that the glassy silver water surrounded it on three sides. In the mornings the mist was sometimes so thick you could hardly see your hand in front of your face, so Akua had tied a rope from the door of the house to the woodpile out back so Lana wouldn't get lost bringing in fuel for the morning fire. By now, however, the morning mist had long since cleared, and it was warm enough that she might be able to go for a quick afternoon swim.

  That, by far, was what she loved most about living with Akua. She had missed diving with a nearly physical ache since leaving her island. The water around the docks in Okika, and in all the major towns, in fact, was too murky to see in, let alone swim. But this lake was a treasure: as the big-city merchants had not yet deemed it worthy of commercial purpose, it was still pristine and beautiful. It wasn't quite as nice as diving on her island before the disasters, but she knew it was probably the closest she would ever get again.

  Lana didn't bother to put on her sandals before she walked outside. Akua knew she dived, of course, but Lana preferred to do so slightly farther away from the house, when she was hidden by the reeds and could
pretend that she was all alone in some magical marshland hidden from any human encroachment. She walked to a more distant part of the lake than usual, since the sun was so warm and the air smelled so dense and heady. The sun, nearly directly overhead, glinted on the glassy surface of the lake and was reflected in muted, mottled green and gray on the water plants. Eventually, she came to a small lagoon, almost entirely enclosed by large, broad-leaved trees. Here, the surface of the water was dotted with late-blooming purple lotuses. Smiling, Lana shed her clothes and stepped into the water. She pulled a half-opened flower from its leaf and braided it into her hair right behind her ear. She caught a glimpse of her reflection on the rippled surface of the water and laughed. Her mother was right, she did look a little more mature-her face had filled out to the point where she thought she almost looked pretty.

  Lana took a deep, practiced breath and dove under the water. At first, it had been strange to dive with no need to look for mandagah, but she had learned to simply enjoy how beautiful and different the world looked underwater. A blue-scaled fish bigger than her arm looked at her curiously and then wriggled behind some nearby lotus roots. Lana moved languidly through the water, peeking under stones and periodically clearing her ears. As she moved to a part of the lake much deeper than anywhere she had ventured before, she caught a glimpse of something-a flash of silver, a sudden spray of light-in the corner of her eye. The lake's water sprite. She had seen it before when she dove in the deeper water. The other times it had merely observed her, but for some reason today it decided to approach. As it headed toward her, she could make out a strange face, so pale that she could see every pulsing vein beneath it. The sprite was no more than three feet tall and clothed in a strange green cloth that looked like seaweed. Its hair was white and hung around its head like a nimbus. Lana had never seen a water sprite before; they rarely showed themselves to humans. She panicked when she remembered the lotus flower that she had twined in her hair. Was it angry with her for taking it without permission? The creature stopped a few feet away from her and narrowed its silver, opaque, iris-less eyes at her. It reached with an impossibly narrow hand for the flower in her hair before pausing, hand poised.

  "I know you," it said, the words curiously audible below the water. The sprite had the voice of a boy.

  Lana was rapidly running out of air and she tried to signal this to the creature. After a brief moment he nodded and grabbed her hand. With a speed so great that she was afraid her arm might be ripped from its socket, the sprite drew her above water and onto a grassy bank beside a part of the lake she didn't recognize. She gulped air for a few moments until her vision stabilized. The sprite was seated a few feet away from her, on what looked like a lotus made of silvery water that rippled in the breeze. She had never seen anything like it before-it was beautiful, but on another level profoundly disturbing. Water shouldn't be able to form shapes like that, but clearly this sprite didn't follow the same laws as humans. Between his pale fingers he was twirling the purple lotus flower that had been in her hair. After a moment, he looked at her again. The strange effect of his opaque silver eyes was even stronger above the water and she couldn't control the sudden thumping of her heart.

  "I know you," he repeated. Even his voice sounded like water, slow and drippy.

  Lana took a deep breath. "How ... do you know me?" she asked.

  He tossed the flower into the air. It glowed brightly and then melted, pouring in a steady purple stream back in the lake. "The witch took you to the island. She needed a stronger geas, that time ... I didn't think she should bring you. You are marked by a sacred creature of the water-you should have had no part in it. Ah ... but she is too powerful, that woman. Even I can't see her mind."

  The creature's alien eyes had a kind of wistfulness. Something in his words sounded oddly familiar. She concentrated on that familiarity like an itch that needed to be scratched, and suddenly a jumble of forgotten memories forced their way through her consciousness. She had been sick and dead tired on her first evening in Akua's house, and the witch had given her more of the draught than normal. Lana hadn't even questioned what was in the tea, but it made her feel unusually sleepy and lethargic, so she had drunk less than she should have. What followed was hazy-and as she had woken up the next morning in her bed with her sleeping clothes on, she had dismissed it as a dream. She remembered seeing a look of pure avarice on Akua's face just before she hefted Lana's slight frame over her shoulder and walked out to the lake. Lana must have passed out sometime after that, because her next memory was one of being in the water, encased in a shimmering bubble of air being pulled like a chariot by the water sprite.

  `You shouldn't take her there," she remembered his slow, drippy voice saying through her haze. They were above the water again, floating without getting wet right before an ancient stone staircase that ascended from the water onto a tiny island. The island was almost entirely covered by a shrine of the old style-like the pictures she saw in school of the difficult days before the spirit bindings. It had a sloped roof made with red-painted shells and a series of rounded arches around the sides. On the large wooden door (which looked much older than the rest of the structure) was an embossed carving of the three-toothed key-the ancient symbol of the death spirit.

  "She belongs to the water, not to that," the creature had said again, as Akua mounted the stairs with Lana on her back.

  Akua turned around to face the spirit. "She belongs to many things. And she will soon learn its power."

  Then she remembered Akua opening that ancient wooden door and being overcome with a sudden terror. Of what happened after that, she had no memory at all.

  Lana looked back at the sprite.

  "Ah, so you remember a little. I had wondered how thoroughly she had drugged you. I tried to stop her, but I see it's too late now. The years have left their mark."

  Lana's hands were shaking. "What are you talking about?" She felt like shouting. "What was that island? What was she doing?"

  "Your master is in the service of the death spirit, little diver." Suddenly, the air before him started to shimmer and his water-lotus began to collapse back into the lake. He looked around in panic. Lana felt the presence of Akua's power and trembled. The shimmering air was doing something strange to the sprite's skin-he looked almost like he was bleeding water. He shouted something that sounded like the roar of a swollen river, but the strange thing attacking him didn't stop.

  Why was Akua hurting this water sprite? The power Lana sensed felt like a geas; she remembered reading something in one of Akua's books about how it is occasionally possible to disperse their milder effects. Before she could think better of it, she bit sharply into her forearm, sucked and then spat her own blood onto the crouched figure of the sprite.

  "A sacrifice from my body as recompense for his transgression," she gasped, heart pounding. She sensed a curious note of surprise, and then amusement from the power behind the geas. Lana stood there defiantly until the air stopped shimmering and the geas dissipated. The bite in her arm was still bleeding, but she hardly noticed. The sprite was sitting on its half-ruined flower, staring at her.

  "Perhaps you are more than we all thought," he said, voice trembling.

  "I never meant to be marked," she said.

  The sprite began to sink back into the water. "Do you not wish to lay your own geas on me, for this?" He gestured toward her bloody spit, which was dripping down his cheek but somehow caught up in a tiny bubble of water.

  She shook her head. How horrible, she thought, to have your entire life bound up in someone else's sacrifices. "Just ... speak to me sometimes. And maybe one day I'll find out what you're forbidden to tell me."

  "Be careful, little diver. You should know better than anyone the dangers of swimming too far under the surface."

  She watched as the water closed over his head, without even a ripple betraying that he had ever been there at all.

  "I see you found Ino," Akua said when Lana walked into the house later, her hair sti
ll dripping.

  "Who?" Lana asked, torn between fear and anger.

  "The little water sprite. I had wondered if he would find you, but I hadn't expected him to approach you." Akua was sitting by the table, cutting vegetables for dinner, a task that usually fell to Lana.

  "Well, why would you bind him with such a geas, then?" Lana asked. The bite on her arm was aching, and her success that afternoon made her feel a little reckless.

  Akua glanced up, an appraising look in her eyes. "Caution has always served me well, Lana."

  "What don't you want him to tell me? What are you hiding?"

  "I'm not hiding anything, my dear. I'm merely sheltering you from knowledge that you are not quite ready for, like any good parent."

  Lana thought of her mother and their hardships in Okika. Akua's motives for hiding this information from her were almost certainly quite different. But Akua couldn't know that Lana remembered some of what had happened to her that first evening. She sensed that the two of them were entering a game together, but Lana knew she was at a distinct disadvantage-not only did she not know all the rules, she also didn't know the stakes. But from the way the firelight glinted in Akua's dark eyes, Lana guessed that they were very, very high.

  One evening a week later, Lana was hanging herbs on the ceiling to dry when she was startled by three loud raps on the door. Akua looked up from the book she was reading.