Tinder Stricken

by Heidi C. Vlach

  They stopped by the roadside, to sit in a soft-yielding patch of sand and new gumgrass. Down the road, by the mountain's face, other travellers had a smoke-billowing fire burning in a rest site: that was no place for a pair of false-named animism users. That was what Esha was now — an animist. She had spoken with animals on too many occasions to claim accident or innocence.

  Settled back on the wheeled pack, Rooftop preened his feathers like the most commonplace of songbirds.

  “Well?” Atarangi asked.

  Esha rubbed her face up and down. “He's ... He's got a mind of his own. I have to admit that.”

  “Aren't you glad you agreed to try?” Atarangi asked, low-murmured like a secret. “Most humans never get to share company with a phoenix. They're too comfortable in their stone-walled minds.”

  “Yes, walled,” Esha murmured.

  With searching eyes, Atarangi considered her. She rose briefly to dig in a side pocket of the wheeled pack, and produced a pine candle. A few flicks of her iron fire striker later, they sat opposite a pungent candle flame, like a miniature hearth fire to warm their hands by.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” Esha lied. “Well ... The animism just has me thinking about beasts and what their minds are like— And Rooftop is plenty intelligent! It's just that ... I don't know if I'll be able to return to Yam Plateau.”

  Atarangi regarded her for a silent moment, maybe sorting out the mess coming from Esha's mouth. “Why is that?”

  The truth didn't feel any better, spilled out into the open like that. Esha hunched closer to the candle, caging its warmth with her fingers. “I need the Kanakisipt khukuri back for my retirement. That retirement is— Well, I'm ... making bigger changes all the time. Maybe we'll get my khukuri back but even if we don't ... I won't be able to work, soon. I need to retire.”

  Another pause. Atarangi was patching it together but her frown kept getting more forlorn. “Making bigger changes, you say. Already ...? I thought you were just saving for far-off days.”

  Esha's regretted the entirety of this moment. Her beginning of a confession, and her body's continuing betrayal, and the soil and sky of the world all around. But at least she had someone to talk to. Two someones, she supposed, since the phoenix was listening and Esha didn't have the heart to shoo him away.

  “I'll say it, for clarity. My ... inhuman traits. They're taking firmer hold every day. It's why I have these horns, obviously enough, and it's why I limp.”

  “Really?! You aren't nearly old enough.”

  A bitter laugh escaped Esha's throat. “I must be, if it's happening.”

  “How old are you, good fieldwoman?”

  “Forty-eight years.”

  A nervous shell of a smile formed on Atarangi. “Such a jewel to know. I thought you were ... Mm, I'm not sure what I thought.”

  “Can't tell how old a fieldwoman is by looking at her?” Esha smiled a little herself. “We're mysterious sometimes, all sun-worn and hardy.”

  “That must be it,” Atarangi laughed. Another moment rummaging through her pack — nudging Rooftop aside this time — and Atarangi found a waterskin. “Your traits are this prominent already?”

  This was an inevitable question: Esha must have been raising the animist's curiosity with every detail of this cryptic bargain. “They— They started showing too soon. When I was a child.” She rubbed again at her face, before realizing that her headwrap was riding up and yanking it back toward her eyebrows with mortified speed. “Early onset traits, the physician said, and there's no way to treat that. My forty-eighth summer and I'm wearing out already.”

  Atarangi paused, wearing some expression Esha couldn't bring herself to look at. “I thought so. I've never seen a Grewier wearing a headwrap if they weren't trying to cover something ...”

  “Are you the same?” Esha dared to ask. “With your mask?”

  Mad courage let her look at Atarangi now — and she was met with a cockeyed smile and a gleaming of mask-shaded eyes.

  “I've got traits, too. This summer will be my thirty-second, so I've got to be showing some trace of what's hidden in the clouds. It's not nearly the same for my people, though. I'm not wearing this mask to cover up shame.”

  “No?”

  Atarangi took a deep draw from the waterskin, and wiped a sheen of moisture from the corner of her honest mouth.

  “The strangest part of Tselaya's children,” she said, milk-mild, “is how scared you are of your own selves.”

  “Not ourselves — the beasts! The things taking over.”

  “What's the difference? We grow old, we stop being the people we were. Everyone does it. I suppose we Manyori just don't see the use in being afraid.”

  She held out the waterskin in one hand — one unblemished hand accustomed to paper and quill, although it had dirt under the perfect nails now. Esha accepted it.

  “I've got sea eagle traits,” Atarangi said. “The same breed of sea eagles from the same place I was born, the northmost shores of the Vast Shark's waters. I started shifting at the end of my sixteenth year. Showed first on the tip of my nose, same as my father.”

  “What did you do?” Esha asked small.

  Atarangi turned her face to the sky, seeing something not there. “I welcomed it. Even though I would someday cease being myself and start being the eagle, she still felt like a cousin I had never met before, or ... like knowing who I was for the first time. When the tip of my nose hardened enough to be called a beak, my family feasted. And I got this.” She drew fond fingertips down her ink-patterned chin. “It let my heart skip on waves, for a while.”

  Esha couldn't speak. It was a fable too sweet to tell a child, that the animal within was a friend.

  “It wasn't such a joy once I came to Tselaya. My request for caste placement was turned down. Rejecting someone for their trait would be absurd among my people. But I applied again, with a more substantial payment the second time. And I don't imagine I need to explain this part: I agreed to wear the mask in public at all times.”

  “You ... gave up what you had, for a life like this?”

  “Gave it up for the time being,” Atarangi said. She raised “If my efforts all crumble to sand, I've got somewhere to return to. But I've already made allies on this mountain who are worth the heartache. I've already gathered a few assets and learned a few tricks. There's nowhere to climb but upward.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do.”

  Esha couldn't speak. Atarangi had grown up in a golden fortune of circumstances and she threw it all aside, for the stifling caste rules of a society not hers. She covered her face and bore the weight of whispers every day because she chose to.

  And Esha wanted to ask more — ask what Atarangi's gathered assets were, ask what she planned to do with Gita Of The Fields's property token, ask why all of it was worthwhile. But Atarangi licked her fingers and pinched the candle flame out, before rising and stroking Rooftop's feathers.

  “Are your knees able, Esha? We should keep on.”

  Chapter 10

  They reached the next spire pass in the full breadth of afternoon. After waiting for a dust-streaked merchant to unload his wares from the pulley rig and forge away toward the Maize market, Esha and Atarangi began climbing, themselves. The lowest end of Rice Plateau hung above their heads — part of the tiered waterfall of rice paddies that kept Tselaya fed.

  With thrown selfropes, they climbed into increments into the cliffside wind. Esha's joints were failing after the long days of walking, her ankles tender and reluctant to flex; she thought she was imagining it but no, Atarangi was stepping slower, too. Rooftop fluttered anxious between the spires, present alongside them but too slight-bodied to be of any help.

  After a few barren toehold plateaus and more crawling hours of climbing, Atarangi hauled herself over Rice Plateau's edge. Her hand locked with Esha's and help bear her weight over, and when the straining was over they both sank to the ground to remember how to breathe.
/>   “Are you well?” Esha asked.

  “Fine, just sap-spent,” Atarangi wheezed. “I'm not used to the climbing.”

  “Messengers make these climbs every day. Some boast twice a day.” After another gulped breath, Esha added, “I'd hate to be one.”

  Nodding — and grimacing at the thought — Atarangi waved Rooftop nearer. “Kindly check for guards.”

  He trilled, a note Esha remembered as a dutiful yes. With a few effortless-looking wingbeats, he sailed off over the bamboo stands and pine saplings, his tail tag flashing in sunset's light.

  Esha and Atarangi dragged the wheeled pack up onto sure land. And then they sat waiting, at a path junction leading into the plateau.

  Anticipation gathered in Esha's gut. If she chose a direction and walked, she might find a sight from her leatherworking life — some levee or stairway she knew the contours of, or a face that creased displeased at her.

  “No campsite that I can see,” Atarangi mused.

  “This high up, it'll be deeper in the wildgrowth. Protection from the wind. And keeping it out of sight from anyone too high-caste to think of it; they don't like seeing stray labourers.”

  Atarangi hummed, a gradual consideration. “Well, they'll have me to file a complaint with if they don't like the sight of you. You've travelled this high, friend?”

  “A long time ago.” Esha had no answer more worthwhile than that. “If we search out the campsite, will Rooftop be able to find us?”

  “He should manage.” Hefting to her feet, Atarangi said, “Please — lead the way.”

  They headed inward, through the gale-bent bamboo and pines and into taller, grander forests. Deodar cedars stood like gathered gods, stretching meters upward and spreading their lacy teal needles against the shining sky. The air was as crisp as fresh incense: Esha took a homespun joy in watching Atarangi savour her every breath.

  “I'm sure Rooftop will find guards,” Atarangi murmured. “Such beautiful trees.”

  “Not as many guards here as past the snowline. Plenty of rangers, though, and they've got cat's feet. Don't harvest any branches.”

  “Oh, I won't risk my sigil for cedar oil. If I keep anything here,” Atarangi said, her voice falling to a conspirator's murmur, “it'll be a mushroom.”

  Through the towering cedars, Rooftop called out clear — and he came soaring, rushing past the two of them and whirling back around on finger-flared wings.

  “Welcome back, my kin!” Atarangi raised a bent arm, offering her elbow like a comfortable stool, and Rooftop landed so short that he wobbled, fluttering. His crests undulated — friendly and relieved, Esha's lungta traces said — as Atarangi stroked his ruffed neck. And then to Esha's bright surprise he turned gaze to her and repeated the friendly crest gesture.

  Active guards were all headed away from them, Rooftop reported and Atarangi helped translate. They were free to seek a handful of the trees' mushrooms.

  They considered making hurried camp among the cedars, and said as much aloud several times. But a campsite appeared in a bamboo grove at the cedars' edge, a newly minted site with only a trace of ashes in the hearth pit and a market-new clay statue of Parvati.

  Dusk veiled the sky by the time Esha was setting a cookpot into burning bamboo. “No mushroom hunting tonight, I suppose,” she said, dry. She was privately grateful for it; the day had already demanded too much of her bones and Atarangi's provided pain herb wasn't hurrying to get to work.

  “There's gathering I can do without leaving, at least.” With her dagger point, Atarangi gestured to the white-filmed bamboo stick she was fiddling with in her lap. “These have more mushroom on them than I've seen anywhere.”

  “Yaah,” Esha said, “that's a mushroom?”

  “A colony of them, yes.”

  Atarangi held up her dagger, showing the harvest scraped onto the tip. Even gathered up, it looked more like the residue on a rice pot than any mushroom Esha had ever seen.

  “It's a wholesome enough food to bother with, I've found,” Atarangi said. “Seems as though it draws lungta from the bamboo and refines it further: there's plenty of thought-sharpening essence in this mushroom and yet Tselayan folk don't seem to know it's here.”

  “We call it gwara spit,” Esha said. “I've always heard tell that it's poisonous.”

  “Mm, everything is poisonous if you eat too much.”

  “No one's ever reported a death due to excess yams.”

  From around the fuel shed, Rooftop's tufted head appeared. “Ee-am-zz?”

  “Ah,” Atarangi beamed, “you've summoned him. For another deliberation on the merits of yams.”

  Bringing some bamboo sticks with him — wound loose into his stringfeathers and dragging a path through shrivelled-dry bamboo leaves — Rooftop strutted around the fire to sit by Esha. He croaked something Esha didn't have enough speaking lungta to sort out, something ending with a permission question.

  “One moment.” She dug into her satchel for more of Atarangi's green snack foods: the arrival of bitter lungta herbs in her diet had turned out to be a boon, improving her energy without any of the stomach upset Esha would have expected from a less human gut. “Alright, Rooftop, what is it?”

  He fidgeted his wings, crests flared eager. “I want to ask: you green-grow yams?”

  “Yes, I work on a farm. Atarangi has told you what castes are, hasn't she?”

  Across the fire and the simmering lentils, Atarangi smiled and held her peace.

  But Rooftop bobbed agreement. “Humans on Tselaya Mountain are born to their work.”

  “That's right.” It sounded simple, phrased like that.

  Rooftop trilled, and fidgeted more. “Kin Precious One? You dig in the ground, yes? With a metal-foot?”

  “A what?”

  “Shovel,” Atarangi corrected.

  “Zz-ohh-vel. Can I look at your shovel?”

  “When it's this small, it's called a spade. But very well.” She produced it from the bottom of her satchel, and set it on the leaves for Rooftop to pick up tentative in his beak. Esha had never considered how metalwork must look and feel to a phoenix — but if she had only ever wielded raw pebbles of iron ore, she would be impressed by a shovel blade, too. Or impressed by a khukuri blade.

  “How does one use a shovel?” Rooftop asked, breaking Esha's thoughts. “The same as a digging foot? Dig for me to see, please!”

  Esha smiled crooked; miracles came in simple forms, sometimes. So for this bird's education, she drove the spade into the earth like she did on any common day.

  They ate dinner while Esha dug holes, just like she would during Janjuman's workday. She even cut up a spring-harvest yellowmeat and buried the slices near the bamboo coppice, for Rooftop to see how to his beloved yams were cultivated.

  Once the last piece was buried, a whim bade Esha to leave it there. That one yam would grow plenty more. Maybe make a meal for some hungry traveller.

  Esha was giving — because now, in these irregular days, she was suddenly able to give. She wasn't a faceless servant in Janjuman's roster, nor a failure to be erased from history. She was a person, and she had lived and loved and cried, and now, she could share. It was a feeling warmer than any hearth coals. She even asked Rooftop if there was anything else he'd like to know.

  “It's fine to see you two getting along,” Atarangi said, scraping gwara spit from the last bamboo stick. “Please, Esha, answer all his questions so I won't need to.”

  “Yaah, I'm no tutor.”

  “You say that after teaching a fine lesson. Hypocrisy!” Turning her dancing eyes toward them, Atarangi said, “In seriousness, though — Rooftop, you should stop speaking Grewian words. She needs to grow accustomed to the true nature of Tselayan phoenix tongue.”

  It felt like a door thrown open to winter wind. Rooftop was speaking a mixed-breed pidgin language for her — and the thief phoenix wasn't going to offer so much courtesy. Esha turned her wide-open eyes to Rooftop: he shrank with disappointment, too, and that was a pinch
of solace.

  But still, they talked. Talked well into the depth of night, after Atarangi crawled into her tent and went silently still, Esha and Rooftop kept talking. They shared more thistle and kudzu and all the other indeterminate green bits the good diplomat was feeding them.

  Rooftop's phoenix cries still came through the lungta as rainbow-coloured riddles, but with practice and with Rooftop's cheerful patience, Esha began sorting them. All of his colour words made sense except when they didn't. Lighter shades of yellow stood for joy, warmth and new beginnings, or else child-hearted whimsy. Green meant wholesome food or a constructed object — unless it meant the uneasy mysteries of blue-green water. Red was usually something good; white represented heat or light; and every shade of brown under the sky seemed to mean something starkly different. Phoenixes, Esha determined, spoke a thousand colours of house flags.

  Eventually, the late hour weighed insistent on her eyelids. Esha had stretched her mind more today than in the last decade of harvesting: that was ample to start with. She crept into her tarpaulin tent and enjoyed collapsing into her blankets, particularly the motion of her freed hair spilling as far as the spiral goat horns would allow.

  “Precious One?” came Rooftop's voice at the tarpaulin's opening.

  Panic bound Esha, the shame of her weak humanity exposed for all to see— but the feeling had no teeth this time because Rooftop was a bird, for gods' sake.

  “Yes?” she answered soft. “I'm awake.”

  Rooftop's head snaked around the tent's edge, silhouetted by the dying embers. His crests were fluid shapes that matched worry-flat human mouths in Esha's mind. Step by step, he crept to Esha's bedside. “Can we-two share more cream-yellow-conversation?”

  She stifled her groan. “Aren't you tired?”

  “Sand-small. Kreh ... stone-moderate.” he admitted. His feet shuffled on leaves. “Kin, I give you a fog-blue question. Maybe you will give me a sight of white truth. You slime-green-hate us, we phoenix-kin? Yes, or no?”

  She pooled full of answers, there in the dark. Esha wasn't sure she hated anything as much as the squelching green mold that ruined food — but she had called phoenixes vermin, and wished them death. Sometimes over a petty handful of rupees.