Odds Are Good

by Bruce Coville

  “I’ll clean it up,” she said hastily. “Just don’t die. Promise?”

  The brownie coughed and seemed to flicker, as if he was going to vanish altogether. “A-hoo,” he said again.

  “Watch!” said Jamie. Placing his tiny form gently on the bed, she began a whirlwind cleaning campaign, moving almost as fast as the brownie himself when he was in a cleaning frenzy. Along the way she found her clay-working tools, the pendant her nice grandmother had sent her, two dollars and forty-seven cents in change, and the missing homework that had cost her an F the day before. She kept glancing at the brownie while she worked and was encouraged to see that he seemed to be getting a little more solid. When she was entirely done she turned around and said, “There! See?”

  To her enormous annoyance, the brownie had turned the shoe box over and was sitting on the end of it, looking as solid as a brick and smiling broadly. “Well done!” he said.

  “I thought you were dying!” she said angrily.

  “I wasn’t dying, I was fading. And if you wanted me to live, why are you so angry that I’m alive?”

  “Because you were faking!” she snarled.

  “I never!” cried the brownie, sounding genuinely offended. “Another few minutes and I would have been gone for good, faded away like a summer breeze, like the last coals in the fire, like dew in the morning sun, like—”

  “All right, all right,” said Jamie. “I get the picture.” She paused. Though she still wasn’t sure she believed him, she asked, “What happens when you fade?”

  The brownie shivered, and the look of terror on his face was so convincing that she began to suspect that he was telling the truth. “I’m just gone,” he said.

  Jamie shivered too. “Do you really have nowhere else to go?” she asked.

  The brownie shook his head. “’Tis you to whom I’m bound, and you with whom I must stay until the day I fade away—or the day you become the oldest female in the family and assign me to someone else of your line.”

  Jamie sighed. She looked at the pendant, the tools, the change lying on her desk. “If I let you stay will you behave?”

  The brownie wrapped his tail around his knees. “I am what I am,” he said.

  “So am I,” she replied.

  The brownie looked startled, as if this had not occurred to him before. “Can you help a little?” he asked plaintively.

  “If I do, will you stop nagging me?”

  The brownie considered this for a moment, “Will you let me keep the closet as neat as I want?”

  “Can I have my desk as messy as I want?” replied Jamie.

  The brownie glanced at the desk, shivered, then nodded.

  “It’s a deal,” said Jamie.

  And so it was. They did not, it should be noted, exactly live happily ever after. The truth is, they annoyed each other a great deal over the years. However, they also learned to laugh together, and had enormous good times when they weren’t fighting.

  That’s the way it goes with family things.

  The Language of Blood

  Greetings, young one. I understand it is your turn, and they have sent you to me to learn how it is. They want me to tell you how I, Banang, came to be the one who speaks the language of blood. They want me to tell you what it cost me, and why I did it.

  All right, that’s fair. If you are to take my place, these are things you need to know. Take a cushion—one only!—and sit here.

  I will tell you the story.

  I was born outside the Glorious City. However, my parents moved within its walls before I was a year old. My mother was the ambitious one, always looking for something better. My father was a scribe. From what the elders later told me, the village missed him greatly when he came here. There, he had been the only scribe; here, he was but one among many. But as I said, my mother was ambitious.

  I grew up running through the streets of the Glorious City. The neighbors all knew me, and liked me. “There goes Banang,” they would say, laughing as I went racing by. “Always running! I’ll wager he is the fastest boy in the city.” Perhaps I was. But as I found—as you will find, my young friend—you cannot run forever. Sooner or later the world catches up with you.

  For me it happened shortly after I turned seven. It was at First Night Ceremony. Oh, how excited I was to be going. The food, the singing, the fireworks—especially the food. It never occurred to me that my world would shift beneath me, that my life . . . But then, you know all that, or else you would not be here. In fact, you know much more, my young friend, than I did when I was in your place. It has taken me most of my life to convince the Pyong Myar that there was no point in keeping you as ignorant as they kept me.

  Still, it is sweet to remember, even now—sweet and terrible to think of how we put on our robes of yellow and crimson and made our way through the streets with all the others. My family went with our neighbors. Their daughter Shula was my best friend, and she held my hand as we wound through the streets.

  We laughed together at the bloody clowns along the way.

  We were that innocent.

  I still remember standing with the crowd at the foot of the temple, looking up at each level. The first seemed so much higher to me then—twice man height, it was nearly four times my size. How I loved to see the guards standing on it all in a row, their weapons at the ready. Then, ten feet behind it and twelve feet higher, the second level with the costumed maidens in their robes and, scarlet feathers. Then the third level with the priests, the fourth with the watchers, the fifth where the Pyong Myar stood waiting.

  The Pyong Myar. I see the cloud that passes over your face. He is frightening, is he not? Do the children still tell each other stories of what he will do to them in the night if they are bad? I feared him with that delicious fear of childhood that made me want to hide when his name was mentioned at the same time that I wanted, hungered, to hear more about him.

  This was the first time I had ever seen him. I shivered happily at the sight, since I was clinging to my mother’s skirts and therefore believed myself to be safe.

  The Pyong Myar stood at the top of the temple, surrounded by a ring of fire and holding two huge knives above his head as if he planned to carve a hole in the sky. The trumpets blared, the people shouted, and to my utter horror, the Pyong Myar began to walk down the great line of steps that runs up the center of the temple.

  What was he doing?

  A silence fell over the crowd. The watchers, the priests, the maidens, the guards became motionless.

  The Pyong Myar continued his slow progress down the steps, ritually crossing and uncrossing his knives as he walked.

  Shula whimpered next to me, and received a sharp rap on the head from her father’s knuckles for the transgression.

  The Pyong Myar was the tallest man I had ever seen, an effect that was heightened by his fantastic headgear. His crimson robe flowed behind him. Though he was well over a hundred and seventy-five years old, the muscles that shifted beneath the leather straps of his chest harness were those of a young man.

  “What is he doing?” I whispered to my mother. “Why is he coming down here?”

  This earned me the same treatment that Shula’s whimpers had earned her.

  The guards dropped to one knee when the Pyong Myar reached their level. My own knees began to buckle, and I must actually have started to drop, for my mother grabbed my shoulder.

  The crowd was stiff and silent, and young as I was I could feel the tension among them. As the Pyong Myar began the descent from the first level of the temple to the ground a murmur of astonishment rose, then quickly died. The only sound in the entire city was the metallic hiss of the Pyong Myar’s knives as the blades slid back and forth, back and forth, across each other’s surface.

  We were standing some fifteen feet from the front of the crowd. The Pyong Myar placed his knives together, upright, then spread them apart. At this gesture the crowd separated as smoothly as if some invisible blade had thrust among us, slicing us into two g
roups. We jostled back in eerie silence, leaving a path about five feet wide through which the Pyong Myar could pass. I stared across that space at Shula, who stood shivering next to her father.

  The Pyong Myar began to walk down the aisle he had created, glancing from side to side. To my horror I realized that his eyes were blue, and glowing. I clung still closer to my mother as he approached, my fear so great I could hardly breathe. Once he had passed us by I nearly collapsed with relief.

  But he had not gone more than eight paces past us when he turned and walked back to where we stood.

  He stopped directly in front of me. I tried to back away, but there was no hole in the solid wall of flesh behind me, no nook or cranny into which I could escape.

  He stared down at me. Awe-stricken, I gazed up at him.

  He extended the knives, placing one on either side of my neck. “You!” he said. Then he drew the knives forward, slicing two lines—See? I have the scars still—along my jaw.

  My mother shouted in triumph.

  My father began to weep.

  The Pyong Myar reached down and took my hand. His grip was utterly unlike anything I had ever felt before, and I did not even know the word for it until my third year in the temple when I was given some ice from the top of the mountain. His grip was cold.

  My mother pushed me forward. The crowd was silent, save for Shula, who whispered, “Good-bye, Banang!” as the Pyong Myar led me away from my parents and my childhood, up the stairs of the temple.

  I was hard put to keep up with the Pyong Myar, for the steps were too large for my childish legs. It was a terrifying climb. With no warning I had been pulled from the crowd by this fearsome stranger and taken from my family, who I was quite sure I would never see again. Something dark and mysterious had reached out and chosen me to be part of it; something that was only whispered about in the city. Yet such was the awe in which we held the temple ceremonies, and the power that emanated from the Pyong Myar, that I did not cry out, did not resist, only did as I was expected. I tried to do this with some dignity, but it was not easy when I could barely negotiate the steps, and I was crying out inside with loss and terror, as well as the pain of the cuts on my jaw.

  The guards, already on their knees, bowed their heads to the ground as we crossed the broad terrace on which they stood. Despite my terror, part of me wondered if this display of respect was for the Pyong Myar, or for me. For little as I knew what was in store, I knew that children chosen in this fashion were considered rare and precious.

  As we mounted the next level of steps, I turned to glance behind me. I could still see my parents in the crowd below. A fierce tug from the Pyong Myar brought me face forward again.

  The maidens bowed in the same way the guards had, though I noticed at least one of them secretly glancing up to get a better look at me. The priests, too, touched their heads to the ground as we passed. Only the watchers in their blue robes did not move but stared intently, as if burning my image into their brains.

  At the top level of the temple, the level where the Pyong Myar had stood alone, he turned me to face the mob below. Carefully, almost tenderly, he set the huge knives on a stone table. Then he put his hands around my waist, which was wet with my own blood, and lifted me above his head.

  The crowd roared its approval.

  The Pyong Myar turned and carried me through a dark door.

  As you know, it is ten strides from that door to the Pyong Myar’s private apartments. Were you as astonished as I at the luxury of them? I had not known what to expect, but the lavish tapestries, pillows, rugs, fountains, polished woods, and silky curtains were a surprise.

  My new master placed me upon a table, and though he did not tell me to stay, I knew better than to attempt to move.

  It was a relief when he removed that terrifying headdress and I saw that beneath it he was only a man after all. A remarkable man, but a man nonetheless.

  “Do you know why I have brought you here?” he asked.

  I shook my head. I had some vague idea, but no certainty, and no voice with which to say so.

  He smiled, which did nothing to make his face any less frightening. “Carna and Sangua spoke to me. ‘We have sent the next Speaker,’ they whispered in my mind. ‘Go and find him, and train him, so that he may serve the people.’” He paused, and for an instant—I will never forget it, for I never saw it again—a look of weariness passed over his features, and they seemed to sag with age. “It has been too long since a Speaker appeared,” he said. “I have been worried for the people. It is good that you are here.”

  I nodded, feeling a little bit better. I wanted to be good.

  He looked at me, and I saw the second thing that I have never seen in him again. It was pity, and it terrified me.

  “Do you know what the Speaker does?” he asked.

  It took me a moment to answer, for my tongue seemed to be sealed to the roof of my mouth. “He has visions,” I said at last. “Visions that guide the people.”

  “And do you know how he does it?” asked the Pyong Myar.

  I shook my head, relieved to be able to answer without words.

  He closed his eyes and sighed. But he said nothing more on the matter. A moment later two women came to the door, and I sensed that it was with some relief that he gave me into their care. They washed my wounds and smeared them with an ointment that burned like fire. Then they tucked me into a strange bed, and sang me to sleep with songs I had never heard before.

  This was my entrance into the Red Temple.

  My life in the temple soon fell into a pattern. The women who had taken me from the Pyong Myar’s rooms, Lala and Ariki, became my guardians, and—more important—my teachers. They began by teaching me the history of our city, the stories of our wars and our victories, and the tales of our enemies, the terrible enemies that are always waiting, lurking, ready to overwhelm us. They told me stories of those who speak the language of blood, and how their words have ever and again saved us from surprise, helped us avert disaster, led us to salvation.

  They told me that I was to be the next Speaker. But they did not tell me what that meant, nor how I was to make this transition. That knowledge was kept from me for the time being.

  My only dissatisfaction was that I was kept within the temple walls, a prisoner in a golden cage. I did have other children to play with, children of the guards and the temple women. One, especially, became a friend. His name was Mam, and he was Ariki’s nephew, an arrogant scamp who somehow managed to sneak out of the temple and roam the city on a regular basis. Mam loved to tell me what was going on outside our walls, and after a time I begged him to look in on my family, and on my friend Shula.

  He, in turn, tried to convince me to sneak out with him. The night I agreed to try we were caught, of course. He was severely beaten. I was not, and while my escape from punishment was a great relief, it also left me feeling extremely guilty.

  Mam was far too much the scapegrace to hold this against me, but he no longer suggested that I accompany him on his adventures. It was clear to me that whoever ruled our lives did not care if Mam entered the city, and cared a great deal whether I even attempted such a thing.

  The night before my eleventh birthday Lala took me aside and said, “Tomorrow you will be initiated into the next level of the temple. A man will come to take you away. Go bravely, and do not shame your second mothers, Lala and Ariki.” She closed her eyes and drew me to her. “It is possible we will not see you again, my little one, my Banang,” she whispered. The tremor in her voice frightened me, and I threw my arms around her and wept.

  The next day the two women dressed me in my finest clothes. The rest of my things were packed in a wooden chest. Late in the afternoon the chest and my trembling self were set outside the doors of our apartments. Lala and Ariki each embraced me and told me to be good, wise, and brave. Then they closed the door. I could hear two things. The snick of the metal as they slipped the bolt and locked me out, and their cry of lamentation as they mour
ned my loss.

  I stood and waited, trying to be brave.

  It was not easy.

  After a long time, or at least what seemed like a long time, the Pyong Myar came to me. I had not seen him since the night he delivered me to Lala and Ariki. He was naked, save for a black cloth tied around his waist and a red cape that flowed from his shoulders.

  “Are you ready, Banang?” he asked. His terrible voice was gentle, almost worried.

  When I nodded he reached down and took my hand. “Someone will come later to get your things,” he said. Side by side we walked along the corridor. Because I had a feeling it might be a long time before I came here again, I stared hard at the images carved on the walls, the pictures of gods and heroes, trying to burn them into my mind.

  We stopped before a carving of a tree. The Pyong Myar reached out with his free hand and pressed one of the fruits. To my surprise, a large section of the wall slid open, revealing another corridor beyond. I had walked past this hidden door hundreds of times without ever knowing it was there.

  “You will learn many, secrets before this day is over,” said the Pyong Myar. “This is but the least of them.”

  The corridor was lit by oil lamps. Between them hung tapestries woven with pictures from the stories I had been taught by Lala and Ariki.

  The Pyong Myar led me to a room that was as large and comfortable as his own. Yet it felt close and still. It took me a moment to realize that this was because it had no windows.

  In the center of the room stood a table made of stone. The Pyong Myar told me to lie down upon it.

  A moment later a slender, dark-eyed man entered the room. He was nearly as tall as the Pyong Myar. He looked young, except for his eyes, which seemed very, very old.

  “This is Banang,” said the Pyong Myar, gesturing to me. “Your successor.”

  The man smiled and nodded to me. “I have been waiting for you for a very long time,” he said. He sounded weary, a little sad. I felt guilty, though I had no idea what I could have done to hurry things along.