Tinder Stricken

by Heidi C. Vlach

  Bitterness rose in Esha's throat. “All thieves have reasons.”

  Rising at dawn was miserable as any hangover, but the thought of breakfast spurred the three of them to work. They grabbed up dry pine twigs, and dry-rotten hunks of fallen logs, and cones long since picked clean of their seeds. The fire cracklingly devoured all the pine resin, sending up sparks like lungta returning to heaven.

  “I never thought I'd be putting tree wood onto a fire,” Esha said. “Smells good, though.”

  “It's like a natural-grown stick of incense, in a way.” After pouring their remaining water supply into a pot of dry millet and lentils, Atarangi put the pot in the flames and sat, staring daggers at its lack of boiling.

  Then a voice rang from the trees — a phoenix's accusing shrill.

  “Kin?” Rooftop took flight toward it. Esha had no lungta to translate with but he cried patterns that meant yellow and red and friend, she could tell that much.

  The other bird had nothing so kind to say. It sat hackled, rust-orange feathers standing like spines, eyes as hot as hate. Esha knew those eyes — and as this bird scraped accusations at Rooftop, Esha was sure this was her thief.

  Rooftop shrank before her, but he protested – azure and mistake and night-time.

  Atarangi was digging through the pockets lining her cloak, chewing hurried. She put betel shavings in Esha's hand — belated but appreciated — and went to the phoenixes with her face turned skyward. “Acquaintance-kin, dawn yellow to you. Please take our apologies.”

  The thief whipped her stare onto Atarangi, head tilting by a slightest degree.

  “We three group-kin have black-withered regret. All sun-white yesterday, we ascended without wings and walked bamboo-green-striving. searched for phoenix-orange-lines and saw beige here.?”

  Emotions flickered in her three crests. “You speak with truth hues.”

  With a smile like catching flame, Atarangi signed, “I can, yes. I speak with human kin and phoenix kin, to help both live at peace.”

  “Phoenix-kin,” Rooftop said, “it would aid you to take my humble-green request. Speak with my ally, this human. She is my kin; we are one flock.”

  The thief phoenix stretched to full height, feathers bristling like an old brush. “Humans are not my kin: none contain the true-blaze-orange of phoenix-kind.” She placed her glare brief on Esha. “And this human, the stupid-minded one with a tall head — I will not rescind the trade to her. You tall-monkeys are not welcome in my territory. Time is flying away; don't white-vex me.”

  Atarangi was speechless, mouth working. “Please, kin—“

  “Leave this territory! I brown-rumble-warning: I will set fire to it! Truth free me!”

  She exploded into the air on beating wings, and was gone.

  This was what Esha had always imagined, when she thought of human diplomats offering reason to phoenixes. She imagined spite as hot as stricken sparks, spat from a creature too small-minded to see reason. It was a stale and familiar bitterness, as Esha looked to Rooftop: he only creaked his unease, and shifted his crests like a frown.

  Heaving a sigh, Atarangi pushed herself off the ground. “Set fire to this ground if necessary ... Graces forbid.”

  “Is she bluffing?” Much as Esha had learned about phoenixes, they did still strike fires and let them burn: Esha had seen smoke at field edges and run toward it, she had seen elder fieldworkers with burn scars like bunched yarn on their hands.

  “Phoenixes don't just set their whole territory alight, that would be sinking their own boat. When territory lines shift or when a patch of earth isn't growing productive plants anymore, phoenixes start controlled burns to enrich their land with ashes. Or sometimes to intimidate a predatory animal — rare times.” Head shaking, eyes distant, Atarangi said, “This isn't just a failed deal. This would be like if you offered me Gita's property token and I didn't like your terms, so I set all of Yam Plateau afire.”

  “I would be ... crazy?”

  “Desperate. Our dealmaker isn't telling us something. But,” and Atarangi glanced soft to Rooftop, “we already know that.”

  Still sitting in a low-towering pine tree, still meek all over, Rooftop fidgeted.

  “Regardless, our negotiation partner is unsettled by our presence here. We need to move.”

  “Right now? Can't we eat first?”

  “A small and bitter seed can grow vast roots. Help me pack, Esha.”

  They moved half a kilometre to a stream bank, a clear, rock-bottomed flow that sprang from the mountain's face instead of from any skythread. They were placing stones for a fire pot when a handful of labourers arrived with washing pails; with no hesitation, Atarangi insisted on moving a third time, to put a screen of trees and scalebushes between them and any prying eyes.

  By the time they got the millet and lentils boiled enough to eat, the sun had climbed high and Esha was considering grazing on gumgrass instead. She got her human meal but here was no time to savour its taste. There was fuel to be gathered, if Esha wanted to save any bamboo to sell.

  There were few young bamboo stalks on this plateau, however: Esha saw mostly old growth as thick around as her leg. Excellent for burning, although she didn't look forward to blistering her hands with so much chopping. Esha kept on — and she hadn't walked more than twenty metres from the camp site before a strange-shaped bulk in the treetop caught her eye.

  “Atarangi, is that another phoenix trove?”

  “It is,” Atarangi confirmed, once she joined Esha and stared upward. “We haven't entered another phoenix's territory, have we, Rooftop?”

  “No, no. This trove has the same knot-tying owner.”

  “You can tell?” Esha asked.

  “It's a clear distinction if you look at enough knots, yes.”

  Curious though she was, Esha didn't ask. She only wondered how birds tied knots that could possibly be distinct, and whether her own knots looked like they were tied by a fieldwoman's hands.

  “Strange to see two troves spread out like this,” Atarangi went on. “A single wild bird doesn't typically scatter their things so far. She is a flock of one, isn't she?”

  Arriving on foot beside her, Rooftop shrank, his feathers tightening close even as his middle crest lifted determined. “Maybe I can quiet-blue share with my human kin. Just one truth-ember.”

  “Any direction you can give me, friend. I know this is violating your rules.”

  “She ... My acquaintance-kin ( )—“

  He made the circling neck gesture again, some description that didn't match a phoenix's looks at all.

  “—needs to forage-gather and provide. She is a flock of two.”

  Odd phrasing even for Rooftop, Esha wondered. But as she watched Atarangi's illuminating expression, Esha soon understood.

  Phoenixes, Atarangi went on to explain, laid one egg at a time. Occasionally two, but nearly always one. When the world was kind to them, the parent birds lived together in a territory, taking turns minding the chick and minding the food plants around them.

  They didn't have nests. That was why Janjuman workers never found phoenix nests in the fallows or in their chopped bamboo. If Esha ever stumbled upon a phoenix nest, it would be merely a parent bird posturing over a pile of sticks — to distract from the flightless chick secreted somewhere nearby.

  The chick didn't get a nest, Esha asked? Phoenixes didn't give them homes?

  What did they need built homes for, Atarangi replied? They had the sky and the earth around them, layered feathers for warmth and the love of their kin.

  That still sounded like a lack of walls to Esha, but she minded her tongue.

  The trouble came, Atarangi went on, when the parents grew too bold in their food-gathering. Sometimes, Atarangi was called to fields for a troublemaking phoenix, and what she found was a phoenix with eggs, or chicks, or wing-broken kin to care for. Sometimes, the farm didn't call an animist but an archer.

  And that might well have left a lone phoenix raising her chick, spitting s
pite at humans. This wasn't a known fact but it was a possibility among all else. Maybe the thieving dealmaker was an opportunist even in plentiful times — but they needed to consider that this phoenix was primarily interested in feeding her child. No one could be blamed for that.

  “Weigh all this carefully, Esha,” Atarangi said. She rubbed her face under the mask's edge, her voice roughening with use. “All of these customs still don't fully account for our dealmaker's behaviour. She's stealing from humans, and storing troves within her territory, and burning hot at my requests to talk. That's the behaviour of a phoenix straining to feed five or six kin, not one.”

  Toward the end, among all her uncertain feelings, Esha noticed that Atarangi had explained everything. Rooftop sat listening to the lesson on phoenix parenting customs: he didn't say one confident word.

  They adjusted their food-buying plans, while following the orange flags and brick-paved road that led to Millworks's market.

  “I'll see about wild foods,” Atarangi said. “You may use the pack. Would you indulge me and buy some rice, Esha? We'll be beside a river until this negotiation is settled: there's no need to gird yourself with millet lungta.”

  “If it's on your coin, I'll eat anything.”

  “That's a fine attitude,” Atarangi beamed, counting rupees out of her purse.

  The rice merchant was easy to find here, his wares mounded gleaming in the light of brass lanterns. At the sight of his square, Ghyeer-blooded jawline, Esha took a sliver of betel from a guard-watched hospitality table. Then, with lungta-wrapped Grewian, asked the rice merchant if he would trade for fuel.

  “For a traveller, I will,” he replied in Grewian, warped by his accent but intelligible. “Whole rice or polished?”

  Whole nearly came from Esha's lips on force of habit. The rare time she indulged in rice, she wanted every mote of bran left on it, the better to keep her stomach fill. But she caught herself: rice hull was more useful to a field worker than to a noble. Atarangi likely wanted a whole meal of tongue-loosening polished rice — and gods only knew which one a phoenix preferred.

  Esha decided, “Half of each, please.”

  The merchant scaled rice, and bagged it in kilogram portions.

  Past the liquid rattling of pouring grain, Esha heard a female voice intoning earthquake — from the incense stall nearby, stood out from them.

  “It's only that,” she went on, “if I can't make an offering tonight...”

  “I have no more juniper,” the merchant blurted. “My apologies.”

  “None at all?”

  “I can't keep juniper on my table. All these earthquakes ...” A rueful pause. “Arbiters say the earthreaders are working on a new timetable formula whatsit.”

  “The priests told us to burn juniper and pray. I'll keep to that. Do any of the other merchants have juniper — even one branch?”

  While unloading bamboo sticks for the rice merchant to claim, Esha recalled seeing juniper near the river's shore, its steel-green branches hiding in the lee of a rock outcropping. She gave silent thanks to the stranger for such a suggestion: invoking the gods might do her good.

  She didn't have her clay-brick prayer stand and there was no sense making one for a single use, so Esha arranged river stones into a flat-topped pile. She tucked a sprig of juniper into the top, and wound bamboo leaves and gumgrass into a doll. It wasn't like Esha's home — with high-borne winds overhead and Rooftop beside her, staring fascinated — but the motions still soothed.

  “The juniper stick and the toy-green-person,” he asked, “these are needed? Gifts for your gh-odds?”

  “The juniper is a gift. The doll ... That's, ah. Just my addition.”

  “My kin,” Atarangi said mild, “don't bother her. This is a human's truth.”

  As though truth was a solid thing they had carried back from the market. Rooftop gestured silent apologies; he kept watching as Esha brought a burning bamboo twig to light the juniper, and knelt, and sang the hymn of invitation.

  Gods to be present here, she asked with her heart and her voice. Grant her forgiveness for everything, and safeguard the people of the mountain from the earth's violent forces. It was a lot to ask — but while she sang this melody, Esha mustered some faith.

  When it was done, she stayed where she was, kneeling with eyes closed and her breathing flowing steady as a wheel on glass. Peace felt good.

  “Esha. Esha!”

  She shot a questioning look to Atarangi — who pointed, face urgent.

  “Your dealmaker is here.”

  In the thin-growing saplings some fifty metres away, Rooftop stood with the drabber-coloured thief phoenix, speaking to her with croaking sounds and undulating crests. Song, Esha recognized among his rhythmic throat-words. They were talking about Esha's song.

  Atarangi hurried to her side and held out a containing fist; Esha took stumbling moments to understand and then held out her hand for the contents, a dense round of fibrous green.

  “It's huang qi. Chew quickly,” Atarangi said.

  Obediently, Esha bit into the cake — and winced at the bitterness Atarangi was entirely right about. It had a green flavour sharp as sewing needles, and Esha wondered about it while watching Atarangi walk measured away from her.

  She stared through him, and started sideways as Atarangi approached, wings poised half-open like she might need to flee.

  “Dawn yellow,” Atarangi said, with lush lungta like rain pattering on leaves. “I am grateful you came to speak with me.”

  “I have no words for you,” snapped the thief.

  “Mm,” Atarangi said mild. Kneeling, her cloak overtaking her shape, she laid something on the ground.

  “I give you a peace-orange-gift: kudzu-plant that a human violet-grey-took from your territory. I give it back to you.”

  Herb sellers in the market must have thought this diplomat odd for demanding Millworks-grown greens. Esha had to agree, in her vinegared thoughts, that returning stolen goods might do a lot to right wrongs.

  “Also,” Atarangi said. “the tool-sliced betel nut is my orange-gift to you. It is lungta-rich and useful for green-warm speaking. By human rules, betel nut is a gift given in yellow moments, and a first step toward becoming kin.”

  The bird eyed the offering with a tilted head, and put her skewering gaze back on Atarangi.

  “The thread-woven cloth is a yellow-gift for you, too. Use it for carrying, if you wish.”

  “I sand-brown accept this. You can't unspeak the tall-headed human's insults.”

  “No. I would like to offer apology, though. We are kin: my tongue is her tongue.”

  “She truth-speaks,” Rooftop chirped. “Take the food, fire-kin.”

  The female spared a glance to Rooftop, her feathers settling marginally. Then she stooped to consider some morsel, maybe a fibre-streaked disc of betel. “An orange light in the dark, I'll give. This, it is good food?”

  “Yes, yes! Bitter in the mouth, but a valuable green-tool.”

  “These are my gift to you, regardless of what we hue-speak,” Atarangi said, easing to sit. “But my human kin slime-green-dislikes the deal made between you-two.”

  The thief's crests flared indignant. “It was a deal, green-made and iron-agreed-to. This, why do humans not understand this?”

  Rooftop passed between Atarangi and the other phoenix, stretching to take a morsel of betel. It was a silent wheedling that didn't go unnoticed by the thief bird; she considered him in the moment he tossed food down his throat, and she eyed the offered betel again.

  “My partner was black-rushing afraid for her life, and she misspoke,” Atarangi said. “But let yellow morning wash away night. She apologizes for her untruth.”

  Esha did no such thing, but she held her tongue. The lungta unfurled in her now, adding more scaffolds of understanding to the phoenixes' calls, more expressions among their unfurling head feathers.

  “If your kin speaks untruth, yesterday and this-day, why do you hold flame-bright-kinship wit
h her?”

  “Humans make more mistakes than phoenixes. I fix mistakes. This makes me red-valued by other humans.”

  The thief stretched her neck upward like growing bamboo, a considering gesture in the silver light of lungta. And then she said, “Warming in light. But I have few moments to discuss this. My kin need me. Your partner wants her iron-tool back?”

  “She does. That iron tool is a precious gift from my partner's family. They put its purple-wordsmithing-song flower into a piece of tree-amber, as an eye-pleaser and a treasure to safe-keep. This type of sharp-tool is very valuable to humans, and my partner cannot go to a peaceful death without it.”

  “Death-bound orange,” the bird muttered. “Krehhh. It is treasure-emerald-valuable to me, as well. Your partner should not offer things she is unwilling to give.”

  Atarangi hesitated. Esha could imagine her face, the shifting of her canny eyes.

  “I don't want to take it back for no-trade,” Atarangi finally said. “Will you trade for green lungta-plants? Maybe seeds, or grass-grain?”

  “All of these. Crest-tall piles.”

  This was progress: Esha's heart leaped, imagining how many phoenix-high piles of yams she made every day of harvest season.

  “Very well,” Atarangi said, “We will gather for you. May we enter your territory? Only for brief-times.”

  The thief shrilled, a high note as uneasy as her eyes. “In divine-fire's truth, I can't white-stop anything from entering my territory. One demand I make: don't eat my lungta-food.”

  “We won't. I honour-bind myself to that.”

  “Kin ( ),” she creaked severe, gesturing a line with her beak that Esha dimly understood as a bamboo piece, “Keep fire-light in your head. Mind my territory lines.”

  “Am your kin,” he murmured.

  Then the thief bird turned her gaze on Esha, seeming like she might deign to speak — but then the moment broke like porcelain and without another word, the thief bird flew away.

  After a slow-drawn breath, Atarangi turned to Esha, her mouth banded tight. “How much of that negotiation did you catch hold of?”

  “Most of it, I think. When the ... the dealmaker phoenix said to keep away from her lungta food, what did she mean? Everything with roots in earth? I was hoping for some bamboo shoots, but if it'd cause another grudge ...”