The crane waded in the lake shallows now, its muttering carrying in the open air. “Food? Food? No plant food here. Water food?”
She rewrapped her knife in its cotton rag, ignoring the crane's muttering and letting lungta settle in her body. She kept watching the crane, though. It plucked some round morsel and tossed it down his throat. Water food, the crane said. Maybe snails, or the clams she found sometimes in Janjuman's winter stews. Esha had never cared for clams; foreigners said it was because Grewiers didn't eat enough ocean food to develop a taste for it.
But if she remembered correctly, Manyori people did eat ocean food. It wouldn't hail from any great sea but Tselaya's shellfish might be a welcome apology offering — an offering Esha did need to make.
She rolled up her pant legs and sari hem, and the crane fluttered peevishly away as Esha waded out into the water.
It was an oddly warm bath to walk in, warmer than the spring night's air. She gathered a handful of glistening, blue-streaked snails when movement caught her eye — something swimming in the deepest of the lake basin. Something long-bodied, and fluid as a scarf in the wind.
Old farmers' warnings wafted into Esha's mind: the deeps had water serpents in them. Deep air, earth or water, might rob sons and daughters. She forgot that sometimes, since she farmed the surface and only risked contact with the mountain's depths when she cut bamboo. She shuffled back toward shore, stumbling on algae-greased stones. And as Esha continued turning rocks in the ankle-deep shallows, she watched the crane, which cackled uneasily at her and at the lake depths, too.
With a damp pouch full of shellfish, Esha walked between homes, a gut-remembered pattern of turns to Atarangi's home. Esha stood at the door, choked by unease, until she told herself that she hadn't wasted a night and drenched herself and risked serpent attack for nothing. She dropped seven pebbles down the open pipe. Then she waited.
Long moments passed. If Atarangi was out — maybe conducting business under her Birdnose guise — then Esha had wasted her time and heartache and she would have to eat the slimy, gritty peace offering herself. She was considering turning away when she saw eyes through the slit window — dark eyes on a bristly, beaked face. A tame phoenix was better than nothing.
“Atarangi,” Esha told it. “I want to see Atarangi.”
She lifted the shellfish pouch, however stupid it was to think that the phoenix understood. It trilled, though, and fluttered away. Esha recalled the tin trays of lungta foods, left offered for the phoenixes to eat. Maybe the bird did understand food offerings.
A quick moment later, the phoenix appeared on the roof, hunched at the edge. It peered down at Esha, croaked at her, and hopped away toward the house's back corner. Trying to tell her some crude message, maybe. She followed — until the back door and its hugely-knotted string latch came into shadowed sight.
And Esha barely had time to wonder if it was right to open those knots herself, when the phoenix darted down to it on flickering wings and applied beak and feet to the task. The strings unlaced faster than Esha could have managed. Clever creature, Esha grudgingly thought as the phoenix finished and landed on the ground.
She kept thinking that while the phoenix stared at her. It looked to the dangling door ties, and back to her. Then it chirruped and stretched its neck — pointing with its beak. Directing Esha inside, she numbly realized.
What a bizarre way to welcome a guest, or permit a visitor, or whatever tier of politeness Esha was being afforded. She opened the door. And in the strangeness, she had the presence of mind to hold the door from swinging, so the phoenix could enter, too.
The bird led her the obvious few steps to the living area. There sat Atarangi, a bent shape under a bristle-fibered cloak, filmed with light from a candle. Wrinkled pages of handwriting laid before her, and Atarangi wrote her own, utterly unsimilar handwriting onto new sheets — translating, maybe, since that was a diplomat's duty.
Esha's sandals rang like cannon shots in the quiet. The tannic awkwardness of their previous day was back, suddenly, bitter as regret.
“Well?” Atarangi asked. “Did you catch anything in your traps?”
No, it would have been easy to say. But the lying wasn't easy anymore; honesty tasted better in the pit of Esha mostly-human stomach.
“I had a crane trapped,” Esha said, slowly. “It was alive and vigorous, though — I released it. It was well enough to fly off right away, it went straight back to looking for food. And I took down the other traps. They won't catch anything else.”
Atarangi was turning toward her, drawn like a pulled thread: the shelled food clicked wet every time Esha shifted the bag in her grasp.
“What do you have?” Atarangi asked hard.
“Aah, well. I've brought you an apology.” Esha lifted the bag toward the candlelight. “Your people eat shellfish, is that right?” She rolled opened the sack to reveal its contents, the wet-stone shine of dozens of shells.
Atarangi’s mouth pressed thinner.
“A-And I've heard that these are more valuable to you than to Grewier folk,” Esha ventured, “We cook them tough.”
With cautious hands, reaching as though into a snake's burrow, Atarangi took the gathered edges of the jute pouch.
“These are clams.”
“Mostly,” Esha blurted. “There are a few snails as well, they're all safe to eat by the best of my knowledge.”
A thinking weight hung in the air as Atarangi reached inside, lifting each shelled thing into the candlelight to examine. How gentle she was, turning each one in her fingers like a glass treasure. One oblong-shelled snail received more of her attention, and a tighter press of her mouth under the mask; Esha felt dread again.
“What is this kind of snail called?” Atarangi asked, entirely too calm.
“I— I don't know. I've never paid attention.”
“It can't be the same breed of snail that we see in my homeland. Your water isn't salty enough.” Between her fine-nailed fingers, Atarangi scrutinized the patterned curve of the shell, and the jagged-opened underside with a phlegm-textured creature inside.
“But ... it reminds me of a cowrie.”
Esha said nothing. She had no inkling of what a cowrie looked like.
“Gita of the Fields,” Atarangi said low, “listen well. Cowrie shells aren’t trade goods. They’re not some grimy coin to be passed around. These are a gift from the Sea-Many. They're a gift from one ally to another. You didn't know that, did you?”
“No! I only meant these as a gift. To ... to apologize for my offending you, with the traps.”
Atarangi held silent, with the pouch clutched in hard-knuckled hands. She glanced to the phoenix perched across the room, the one flexing its head crests.
“You said that you released the crane,” Atarangi finally said, “and dismantled all your traps? You're here with an unclouded heart?”
“I suppose so? Please, I can't hunt down a phoenix myself, you're the only animist I've ever met and if a different animist insists on coin money, I—I can't—“
“Enough.” Atarangi's voice was soft now, a tired rush like dropped cloth. She turned away, bringing the shellfish pouch to her water pail. “I will make these my breakfast. I accept your business deal, Gita. And I will consider whether we can be allies.”
“Allies, partners in business, any similar thing is fine,” Esha said. “I just need that khukuri. And I won’t lodge it in your back: I will give you my promise.”
However strange a foreigner could be, and whatever the differences life had assigned to them, no ally was bad to have. Esha was sure of that as Atarangi filled a bowl with water for the shellfish.
With a smile-touched face, Atarangi said, “This must be a late hour for you. Get some sleep, Gita. We'll discuss the bargain further when we've got sun to see by.”
Chapter 6
Esha accepted more tea from Atarangi and shared every detail she could remember. The phoenix's lungta-garbled words; her own panicked thoughts; the direction it seeme
d to fly through the ragged-glimpsed treetops; the condition of its feathers.
“It looked healthy enough, it had no trouble taking flight. That's strange, isn't it? I've heard of sick or crippled creatures desperate enough to attack humans — but this bird? It chose to do it.”
“What colour were the feathers?”
“Orange.” That was the obvious answer and Esha said it anyway.
“As bright as the worldedge flags? More of a dead leaf colour? Something else?”
Mouth twisting, Esha asked, “Does it matter?”
“It does. It helps if I know who I'm speaking with, and what their motivations might be.”
“Ah,” Esha said small. “I ... think it was more dull-coloured. Like unfired red clay.”
“Duller orange phoenixes are mostly female. But size is the simplest part of the difference. Kin? Come here, please.”
Atarangi beckoned to the phoenix sitting nearest: Esha was moderately sure this was the bird that had unknotted the door for her. It landed on Atarangi's outstretched arm and sat tall — as though posing for Esha to admire.
“This friend of mine is a male,” Atarangi said. “Is he smaller than the phoenix you saw?”
There was no way to be sure of anything that happened that nightmarish morning — but Esha still felt a gathering agreement, a visceral thought that the Kanakisipt khukuri would look larger in this particular phoenix's claws. Esha nodded. “He's got handsomer colours than the thief bird, too.”
“Yes, he is handsome phoenix.” Atarangi grinned, her teeth shiningly white against her skin, while the bird fluffed his feathers larger. Maybe he did understand the words of the compliment — but he wasn't a person capable of wielding lungta. But he had eaten handfuls of lungta foods from the tray.
This was a bizarre conversation, Esha's sensibilities said.
Her merriment subsiding, Atarangi shooed the phoenix off her arm; her visible face returned to calm business. “Very well. We know which plants the phoenix is familiar with, and that she'll likely have claimed a nesting territory. I still can't be sure why she acted that way in negotiations with you — my eyes can't see those depths yet. But my birds will aid us with their wings and, once we find the wild phoenix responsible, they will aid in negotiations.”
“How many do you have?” Esha asked.
“Three phoenixes who have my trust, and have strong enough wings to search the higher winds. Also two more birds who are newer to me, or weak of body, but still my kin.”
“So, they can find my knife and bring it back?”
With a rueful smile, Atarangi said, “We can hope for that. But animism is still diplomacy, Gita. You're from Tselaya: you must be aware that negotiation doesn't always go as planned.”
Esha thought as much, from her knowledge pieced together out of history and gossip and criers' messages. There had been civil war when she was too small to know it; it lasted long enough for children to grow into men. But the diplomats eventually brought peace, and guards instead of soldiers, and well water and poorly-made fences for all the children of Tselaya. Negotiation did solve problems, and solve them mostly.
All Esha could say was, “I hope it goes as smoothly as telling a phoenix to leave a yam field.”
It took a moment for Esha to notice the way Atarangi was looking at her — coolly, like across a chasm.
“There's no telling phoenixes to do anything. They're not human beings, bound by shackles.”
What an unusual thing to say, Esha thought, her eyes widening. Atarangi had a powerful love for heaven's lesser beings — like some of the goatherds and yak breeders did. Esha held onto that thought, considering Atarangi sitting peaceful here with phoenixes in her home; she had thought plenty about society's shackles, herself and there was plenty she didn't like.
“Tselaya animists,” Atarangi asked mild. “They never begin a task without ending it, is that right? They either intimidate the phoenix into leaving, or kill it like a flea?”
“That's how it's done. You don't work that way, clearly enough.”
Atarangi only smiled. “It will take me some time to make contact with the phoenix who has your knife. You may go about your business, Gita. You work for which farm? Janjuman?”
“That's right.”
“And you live in the fieldworkers' allocation?”
“Yes.”
“Then let your mind rest. I will seek you out when I have news worth sharing.”
It was in the animist's hands now. Esha left Atarangi's home with a lighter yet heavier heart, and found herself she looking forward to the dust-caked simplicity of a field full of yams.
The plants broke soil that week, reaching sprouts toward the light like green fingers. Rain was sparse, though. Farmwomen discussed the colour of the sunsets and the size of the lungta particles whipping past, and everyone agreed that it would be a slightly dry year. Esha and the others filled uncountable carts full of water and spread it into the grasping soil.
Women were pulled from the fields, assigned to tearing up sod and yankvines to take back the fallow ground — all the way to the worldedge. Esha wasn't chosen. She thanked each god by name for that.
After three days of relative peace, it was jarring to see Atarangi again. Her bristly cloak and artfully twisted hair grabbed Esha's attention by the throat — because Atarangi waited at the door of Gita's former home.
“Ah, I was early,” she told Esha. “But still, I hope I find you well, Gita.”
Esha offered namaste, hurried and distracted; in the corner of her eye, neighbours stared at the masked foreign noble standing in the middle of a sand-poor district. “Hail to you, too. Let us talk inside — ah, not this home. I don't actually live here.”
Atarangi was tactful enough not to comment on Esha's actual home. She looked curious at the shelf full of bamboo dolls, and accepted the plain cup full of low-grade tea.
“My bird made contact with the phoenix who holds your khukuri,” was her report. “First of all, we guessed correctly: our mysterious phoenix is female, and living on Millworks Plateau.”
“That high?” Millworks was a mid-caste plateau, an order of magnitude up the mountain from Yam. Getting there would take a week of travel on the spiral road — or a single kilometre climbed directly skyward. “She couldn't find anything to steal from her own plateau?”
“I can't explain that,” Atarangi said, “and the dealmaker hasn't offered any reasons for her travel. The meat of our nut is this: she feels that the Kanakisipt khukuri is rightfully hers.”
“What?! Where did she get that idea?!”
Grimacing, Atarangi turned her teacup between her smooth fingers. “You promised the wild phoenix anything in exchange for her help, Gita. She said that despite the difficulty speaking with you, it was made very clear that she could have anything she wanted. You didn't tell me that. Didn't you think that was an important part of the bargain?”
“She's a bird — I didn't think anything I told her would be more important than whether I can afford to retire.”
“You must understand: phoenixes take verbal arrangements very seriously. We have explained the problem more than once, and the dealmaker is not interested in changing the terms.”
“Your phoenix explained,” Esha corrected.
Beneath the mask, Atarangi's eyes rolled frustrated. “Fine. I accept the blame for my partner's failings. But still, the dealmaker has planted her feet firm. We asked her what she would trade in exchange for your khukuri, and she said she would only accept more of what she calls purple-wordsmithing-song flower — that means orchids, or any flower with potent speaking lungta.”
“That's not an option,” Esha blurted. Her voice was weaker than she would have liked. “I can't— I can't get more of the Kanakisipt orchid, I don't think even you would be able to get it for a price I can pay. Keep negotiating. Please.”
Her mouth twitching with held protests, Atarangi nodded.
Two more days passed. It was nearly long enough for the yam fields
to calm Esha, for the grinding of her digging spade to sand away her rough edges. Sprouts spread their heart-shaped leaves toward the holy sky. Even the evening meal was a minor joy: the cook made chapatti bread flecked with onion greens and it was a treat everyone savoured.
Esha was feeling nearly ordinary when Atarangi came calling. She cast a sunset-long shadow on Esha's doorstep, and returned namaste with an unsettling sharpness in her hidden eyes.
“I'm sorry to say,” she said once inside. “That the discussion is over.”
“What?”
“Your dealmaker said she will not give the khukuri back, nor trade it back for less than it's worth. My phoenix is not welcome in her territory if he speaks any more about it. That's all there is.”
Esha stopped over the tea kettle, leaves clutched in unmovable fingers. “That can't be all. It can't.” Her life had only begun climbing back upward toward something hopeful.
“I'm afraid it is.”
“Good diplomat, that's only what the thief bird told your messenger,” Esha said, with rising fear hot in her chest. “You have to go deal with the phoenix yourself. Catch it, strike it with a rock—“
“No,” Atarangi snapped.
“I'll do it! Tell me which end of Millworks to start from!”
“No.”
Esha had more passion roaring through her but no more words, no more illusion that she was making sense because time for her own foolishness to sink in, to feel her shifting leg joints throbbing with her pulse and know that she could never manage such a trip alone. Even if she could travel to Millworks, she had no business trapping creatures there and the soldiers would handle her accordingly. “I—“ She shook her head. “I'm sorry. I just ... don't know what to do.”
She stole a glance at Atarangi. The large woman sat like a temple statue at Esha's rough-hewn table, smiling sadly. “However much the sky thunders, an unmoving stone still knows peace. Please be calm, Gita Of The Fields.” She hesitated, rolling her hands into neat fists. “There is ... one last option we can try.”
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