Racing the Dark

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  "Do you want to be?" The voice sounded slightly sardonic.

  "Well, I ..." the sight of the flame reminded him painfully of his last sight of Emea, falling in the lava of Nui'ahi. "I wouldn't mind," he said.

  The flames leapt, hot enough to singe the hair on Kohaku's arms.

  It laughed. "Wrong answer."

  Heat seared his closed eyelids. He thought he was going to die. But maybe that would have been a mercy.

  When it was all over, after he had watched the dozens of remaining supplicants burned into pillars of ash by raging flame, they carried him up from the bowels of the shrine on a reed stretcher. At least a hundred people had gathered in the main hall to bow as he was hurried to the surgery. The priest who served as the doctor looked at his arm with an expression of barely contained surprise. Kohaku tensed when he gently examined his blackened hand, but the man did nothing more than grimace with sympathetic pain. Of course, Kohaku thought in some part of his mind that wasn't clouded with agony, no one here could possibly know what had happened.

  "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to cut off your left hand," the man said gently. "It's too badly burned."

  But how will I talk to Emea? Kohaku thought frantically. Then he remembered that Emea was dead.

  With effort, he nodded. The pain in his arm was beginning to make him lose all sense of time or place. "Just ... give it to me afterwards ... please." The man looked surprised, but he nodded. Kohaku closed his eyes-those ashes had seared their way into his hand. He didn't want to just throw them away.

  "Is that really necessary?"

  Kohaku's eyes flew open and he struggled to sit up. She was seated on a chest of supplies in the corner, smiling. And that impossible voice-so dimly remembered, so immediately hateful.

  Hands pressed him down, voices soothed him. It seemed that no one else could see her. Blue flames leapt in the hollows of her irises.

  "Oh, keep whatever grisly tokens you want. Just try not to show it to that sailor. Well, not if you want to marry her, anyway."

  Kohaku shook. In life, she had never been so callous, so biting. "Why are you-"

  She stood. "Just a reminder, dear brother. Take my revenge."

  Someone forced a drink down his throat and he floated gratefully into unconsciousness.

  Three days later, wrapped in sumptuous down blankets edged in fur that hid the heavily bandaged, handless arm that was bound beneath his shirt, he and a much smaller team of sleds made their way back to the docks.

  He was still light-headed with pain. They had wanted him to stay for much longer, but he had felt a sudden urgency to get back to Nahoa and tell her that he hadn't died after all. He had thought about her a lot as he lay in a bed softer than any he had ever felt, suffering a pain that threatened to make him delirious. The image of the tall, foul-mouthed sailor with warm eyes was far more comforting than that of his sister. Emea's voice haunted his unguarded moments. Her demands for revenge made him want to weep and wonder if he had lost his mind. The fire had tainted Emea, but Nahoa was still unsullied. He fell asleep on the ride back, only to be awakened by one of his attendants' exceedingly gentle hand on his right shoulder.

  "We've arrived, my lord," he said softly.

  For a second Kohaku wondered who the man was talking to. He still hadn't come to terms with the fact that he was now Mo'i-he could barely believe that he was alive and that Nahoa was going to marry him.

  Careful arms helped him out of the sleigh and made sure he was steady on the ground before releasing him. He scanned the faces of the crews leaning out over the bows of the ships, but to his disappointment, he didn't see Nahoa anywhere. He followed his attendants silently, wondering where she was and if she was avoiding him because she had rethought her decision. They were about to load him into a bosun's chair before he realized that he was standing in front of a different ship.

  "Wait!" he said, whirling around and staggering a little. "This is the wrong ship."

  The man he was talking to looked confused. "But ... it's the one that will take you to Essel, my lord. Your triumphant return."

  Kohaku finally realized that this must have been the ship that took the richer supplicants to the island. Of course they would use that ship to bring the Mo'i back to Essel. But Nahoa wasn't on it, and he had to find out, one way or another, if she wanted him. For all he knew, maybe word of his disfigurement had already reached her and she was repulsed by it.

  "I have to find someone in the other ship. Then we can leave." Kohaku said it calmly, because he realized that no matter how much his arm hurt, it would be an inauspicious way to start his reign as Mo'i if his own attendants thought he was insane.

  The man nodded slowly and called a few others to follow him as Kohaku walked back over the rocky ground to the other ship. The crew was now talking loudly among themselves, probably speculating as to why he hadn't boarded.

  "I'm looking for a sailor," Kohaku called up, ignoring the immediate snickers. "Her name is Nahoa. Is she here?"

  "Yeah, she's here, but she won't leave her hammock. Says she's sick. What do you want with her?" The man who spoke looked weathered and important enough to be a captain.

  "What business of it is yours?" said Kohaku's attendant angrily. "If the Mo'i wants the girl, then you'd damn well better get her!"

  The captain hesitated and then shrugged and pointed to a young boy nearby. "You. Go get Nahoa."

  The boy scurried off and Kohaku waited, suddenly nervous. He wished that he didn't have to do this in front of all these eyes, but he supposed that he didn't have a choice. A few minutes later, the boy came back dragging Nahoa, who was yelling out her objections to all who would listen.

  "I don't see why I have to get dragged out here just to have my face shoved in the dirt! All right, I know he's dead! It doesn't mean I want to see whatever small-dicked asshole the fire spirit picked in his place." Kohaku couldn't see her face very clearly, but it sounded like she was sniffling.

  "Nahoa, dear," the captain said, smiling down wryly at Kohaku's attendant, who was looking apoplectic with shock. "Perhaps you should restrain that tongue of yours in front of the Mo'i."

  "I don't give a goddamn about any moy," she said as the other sailors let her through to the front of the bow. Then she looked down. "Oh," she said, softly, covering her hands with her mouth. "Is it really you? Am I ..." Kohaku suddenly worried that she would faint, but a nearby sailor seemed to notice it too and put a hand on her back.

  "I didn't die," he said. "I think that was our deal."

  Her eyes opened even wider and she nodded. "Yes. I mean ... I can't believe ..."

  "Will you ..." Kohaku coughed uncomfortably, suddenly aware of the anticipatory silence around him. "Will you come back with me? You don't have to-"

  "What happened to your arm?" she said suddenly, finally having noticed the empty left sleeve of his elaborately woven shirt.

  "I burned it," he said. She had a right to know, and everyone would find out eventually, but he just couldn't bring himself to say what had happened in front of all these people.

  She has such a transparent face, Kohaku thought, smiling. Concern seemed to ooze from every little nuance of her expression.

  "Are you okay?" she asked.

  "I will be. Will you come?"

  She ran to the rope ladder and climbed down. The sound of the whispering crew grew to a roar when she ran forward and hugged him. He could tell that she was trying to be gentle, so he didn't show that it hurt. She started crying, which somehow surprised him.

  "I really thought you were dead, you idiot," she said. "And now you've gone and made yourself Mo'i. What about going back to Okua and having kids? What about sailing? You've ruined everything!"

  Kohaku felt suddenly worried. "You don't want to come back?" he whispered into her hair.

  She broke away from him a little and smiled. "Of course I'll come back with you," she said. "I'm going to be a moy's first wife."

  They held hands awkwardly as they walked together to t
he first ship.

  "Good luck," one of the sailors yelled to them as they boarded. But even though Nahoa's presence beside him made Kohaku feel far happier than he had since Emea died, the throbbing of his arm and missing hand reminded him of what he could never truly escape.

  10

  ANA PULLED THE ROPES MERCILESSLY TAUT before she knotted them around herself. A week ago she had woken up halfway out of the tree just before the knot had completely unwound, which would have sent her plunging into the outstretched arms of the death below. After spending nearly a week without sleeping at all, she had dared to make up a geas that would let her rest in trees until sunup, but she had quickly learned that sleeping in trees wasn't really feasible without a rope. She had bought a good one in Ialo before booking a passage on a ship that would take her far away from human civilization. People, she had realized, had a habit of having unfortunate accidents-sometimes fatal-whenever she was around. She had asked the death about it, but it had responded cryptically-saying merely that it was not directly responsible. Still, when she saw a seven-year-old boy's legs get crushed under the wheels of a burro cart that she herself had narrowly avoided, she knew that she had to get as far away from other people as she could.

  On the water it was easier to bind the death because it was out of its element, but sea voyages cost money and she couldn't stay there forever. So she had paid for passage aboard a small trade ship bound for the remote Kalakoa islands. She claimed that she wanted to pilgrimage to the ancient wind temple at their center, which made the crew look at her a bit strangely, but they probably assumed she was an unusually devout member of some fringe religious sect and didn't ask any more questions. She bound the death over the water, but sometimes when it seemed likely to break her binding with a counter-geas, usually at night, she would play the flute softly for hours at a time. She played slow, melancholy songs that reminded her of her mother and their time on Okika. The more personally relevant the song, she had realized, the more powerful it was-the very intensity of her emotion made it like a self-sacrifice. The sailors sometimes listened wistfully themselves, and they were more forgiving of her misplaced notes than was the death, which would lean closer, its white robes flickering with scenes of destruction. As long as she played the flute, the death could not touch her-and so, over the past few months, she had often resorted to playing when she could think of no other geas to bind it. She had become a fairly competent player, in fact, though before this ordeal she had practiced the flute only a few times with her father.

  Lana touched the flute now, reassuring herself that the light, smooth instrument was still in her pocket. Each night, sleep seemed a little more elusive, despite the fact that she felt more exhausted than she had ever imagined possible. It was at night that the dreams attacked her-dreams of death and pain that she could not stop. She dreamed of Kali often, sometimes as though her friend were struggling to tell her something through a barrier of water through which no sound could pass. Sometimes she just dreamed of the day Kali died, the sunlight hitting her hair as it floated on the water. Sometimes she cried, out of exhaustion and self-pity, but mostly she felt desperate and numb.

  The tree she had climbed into this day had red bark and wide limbs with huge leaves. The trunk was too wide for her to tie a rope around it, so she had tied it off to the limb beneath her. She pulled her bag out from underneath her back and took out several strips of smoked and salted catfish that she had bought in the trading outpost on the edge of the island. That had been nearly a week ago. The fish pieces were beginning to smell a bit like bilge water, but she ate voraciously, barely noticing the sour aftertaste. The death was sitting on a branch below and to the right of her. She could see the tree through its translucent body, but the bark beneath it seemed to be crawling with odd, malformed insects that periodically devoured each other after vicious fights. Images were always distorted through the death's body, but she could never be sure whether she was witnessing illusion or actual destruction. Its mask-face swiveled toward her, staring with empty eyeholes as she pulled an oblong piece of bruised yellow and green fruit from her bag. She had seen some blue-furred monkeys fighting over a piece of this fruit earlier that day, which had made her decide that it probably wasn't poisonous. This was a real danger in this lush forest-nearly everywhere she looked something was bursting with multicolored fruits that she had never seen before, but she had heard too many tales of the dangers of the Kalakoa forests not to be wary. The fruit had thin skin and green, juicy pulp that made her lips pucker. She took out the large brown seed and tossed it at the death just to see what would happen. It flew straight through its body, making it ripple like water. The deformed insects beneath it scurried down the tree.

  "You shouldn't do things like that," it said, suddenly a foot away from her elbow.

  She stared back at it with almost perfect calm. It couldn't scare her like it once had. "Why not? You're a spirit. You're noncorporeal. It shouldn't have bothered you."

  A bright red centipede nearly as wide as her thumb began crawling across her stomach. Two scaled, segmented fingers emerged from under the spirit's robe to pick it up by one end. The spirit rippled and Lana saw that the centipede now had a pair of bright blue butterfly wings by its head. The death released the creature, which flew awkwardly, tail dangling, for a few moments before a spider twice as large as her hand leapt from its web and devoured it in three economical bites.

  Despite herself, Lana's heart started pounding.

  "Take care," it said softly. "I could tire of this game."

  "I still have the flute," she said, gripping it so tightly her palm started to sweat.

  The death drifted downwards, back toward the other branch. "That's true," it said.

  Lana stared at it for another moment and then began to eat the fruit.

  She didn't quite know why, but over the next few days she began collecting the seeds from all the fruit she ate. It weighed down her bag considerably, and she felt the death's stare every time she did so, but she felt just a little safer with them there. The seed she'd thrown at it was the only thing she had ever known to disturb the death's equanimity.

  For lack of any other destination, she had been picking her way across the barely recognizable path to the wind temple. She occasionally came across the signs of another recent human presencethe remains of a campfire, or a brief warning carved in bark of a tree about a particular fruit-but she walked alone. She bound the death with silly little geas-nursery rhymes, really-that it took its time breaking, mocking her with every word. She filled the forest with her melancholy tunes that sometimes even edged into happiness. Every so often she talked to the death, just so the sound of her own voice could cover the often vicious natural cacophony in the forest. Occasionally, it responded. When she thought about it, it frightened her how comfortable she felt-alone this way with the death.

  She had stopped to pick some fruit for lunch when the death suddenly appeared before her, the corners of its mask-mouth turned up.

  "A ship," it said. "A dead thing that carries the living is a ship."

  Lana felt the geas dissolve around her. She groped frantically for the flute even as she stumbled away from the death. It wasn't in her pocket. She tripped on an upraised root and landed on her butt in the loamy earth. The death's empty eye sockets seemed to be glowing from some inner depth, and for a brief moment Lana thought she saw within them the image of a ship slowly sinking into a pool of flames. She couldn't breathe.

  "You've run out," it said. "You lost the game."

  Where the hell was the flute? Then she remembered that she had dropped it with her bag on the other side of the path before she went to climb the fruit tree. How could she have been so careless? Lana cursed herself silently and scrambled away, crawling on her back like a crab toward her pack. The death watched her progress silently for a moment and then flew forward.

  It entered her.

  She felt immovably cold, like fine old ash iced inside one of the glaciers that spread a
cross the inner islands. Her very thoughts seemed crystallized, jagged, as though they had frozen in place. And the spot they had frozen allowed her only three words. The most important words.

  Find the flute.

  With whatever small part of her mind she had left, she fought the death. Though she couldn't see or hear or smell anything, she could touch, and so she inched her hands along the dirt, fighting to remember where her pack must be and where the flute must be resting on it.

  She felt her breath grow so shallow in her lungs she knew she was barely breathing, but she forced herself to move. She thought of her mother.

  "You can't save her," the death said, its androgynous voice crackling like fire in her head. "You can't save yourself. Give up."

  She must be within reaching distance of the pack now. She bit her lip hard, taking reassurance from the pain and the metallic taste of blood. So long as she was alive, there was hope. But the cold was seeping into her bones and she knew that if she didn't move now she wouldn't be able to move at all. With a desperate lunge and a prayer to whoever saw fit to listen, she groped for her pack. She felt the worn canvas, but no flute. Had it rolled off? Panic set her lungs on fire, but she reached further.

  Instead of meeting wet, vine-covered soil, her hand found the familiar shaft of whittled bone. She brought it to her lips and played a single note-one that she couldn't even hear-with as much force as she could muster. She felt the death struggle to stay inside her body before she forced it out with the terrified strength of her sound.

  The first sense that returned to her was her hearing, and she had never thought such a high-pitched, scratchy sound could be so beautiful. A few monkeys in the tree above her were screeching down, as though with indignation, and she relished in that sound as well. She was alive.

  When her vision cleared, she saw the death a few yards away from her, sitting cross-legged. The ground beneath its translucent body was a veritable battleground of maimed and malformed insects. Lana tried not to look. Instead she forced her shaky fingers into a song while she tried to think of yet another way to bind the death.