Tinder Stricken

by Heidi C. Vlach

  Still, Esha shook her head.

  “It's only an idea. Something to turn over and look at.” She turned to Rooftop. “I know you're bound by flame's honour, my dear friend. But can you tell us what kind of creature is demanding pay?”

  Feathers rising, he jerked his head — like a tight-snapped imitation of a human's head shake. “No, no. Acquaintance-kin said no speaking about her life-knotting.”

  “Mm, it's fine,” Atarangi decided, with a heaviness like clay in her voice. All we've got to walk on is what the dealmaker phoenix is telling us. We'll need to talk more with her.”

  “To unravel her troubles? Why get tied into another negotiation? Just get my khukuri back.”

  “I hope it'll be that simple. How do you manage it, Esha Of The Fields? Selling yams to someone not interested in buying them.”

  Esha waved the question away. “Selling them isn't my duty, you know that. But— Wait, is that what you're saying Atarangi? That this is a trouble beyond my expertise, and I should just shut my mouth and have faith?”

  “Actually, I was hoping you knew how to make a difficult sale. It seemed more likely than you having advanced negotiation training.”

  Esha fell into her memory again, into the white drifts of time.

  “I apologize,” Atarangi said low. “That was an unkind thing to say.”

  With a time-weighted shrug, Esha said, “It's true, though. I don't have any advanced training. Just two years of tutoring. Began in my fifth summer. Basic ideas, simple phrasing patterns to use when asking for things we wanted. What it means to have respect, and show that respect in polite speech. And we began learning to see another's viewpoint in my eighth summer. The scholar said it was like looking at another mountaintop away in the mist and thinking about if we were standing on that mountaintop, how cold the wind might feel. Or perhaps that mountain would be warm instead. I thought about that a lot, for a while.”

  “That day the scholar spoke to you: was just before you changed castes?”

  Esha gave a shard of a gone smile. “The day before. That was the last aphorism I was given, the last coin in my hand. Think about how warm the wind might be if I were somewhere else.”

  “Think on this,” Atarangi told her. “The dealmaker phoenix has cold winds of her own to endure. You're right: we should try not to be dragged into someone else's debate. But I don't snatch and run, Esha. That's a fine way to make enemies.”

  Sighing, Esha nodded. “I'll cut fuel for you. I can do that without needing to walk overmuch, and without opening my mouth. Just have to watch out for hollowheart bamboo ... “

  Atarangi hummed her agreement. With a last glance run over Esha, a glimpsing of the things buried in a sun-worn woman, Atarangi slipped into her bedroll and faced the dark wall of her tent.

  Rooftop shifted on his bony feet, looking more alone than he had all day. He tipped his head at Esha. In the firelight, his gleaming eyes nearly seemed to understand.

  “Rooftop,” Esha said, soft as shadow. “Come here.”

  He obliged, stringfeathers a dragging murmur on the grass, warmly relief in his fanning crests.

  “When I pulled that tick off my leg and gave it to you ... Is that what made you decide that we were friends?”

  He chirped, crests low to his head. “Food tastes good when human hands are feeding me. But it is more flushed-yellow than that: kin share.”

  “What if ... What if I share a meal with her? We gave her a phoenix meal but ... we've got a Grewier meal ready to be made.”

  Rooftop reached out ginger, to take Esha's sleeve and tug it with a gentle beak. “That would be a warm-light beginning.”

  Chapter 14

  When they next boiled a pot of breakfast millet, they boiled extra and laid it out to cool, and topped it with curried cabbage left out of the reheating pan. Wild phoenixes hated to burn their mouths, Atarangi said: even Rooftop liked his food better lukewarm.

  Once the millet's white steam dwindled to nothing, Rooftop flew away to find the dealmaker. Breakfast passed unspoken between the two women, interrupted by their only spoon scooping more radish pickles into one bowl or another — and as Esha and Atarangi put last pinches of grain into their mouths, two bright phoenixes returned.

  The anticipation might have been too strong, so that even a human-hating forest bird knew the cloying feel of it. With a jab of a look to Rooftop, the dealmaker phoenix paced over to the camp site as awkward as if she had never walked before and aimed a glare into her bowl.

  “This pale-mash is lungta-food?”

  To her credit, the churlish beast was easier to understand today; she was either extending her own lungta or choosing her rude words carefully.

  “It is food,” Atarangi said, wearing calm and speaking with abundant leaf-rustling. “This is millet, one of the grass-grains humans grow. It doesn't look like green-nourishing food, but we eat it often. The lungta is good for holding water inside a red-living body.”

  Crests working, the dealmaker stared more at the millet and harder at Atarangi. Esha, as well. Esha got a generous portion of the bird's accusation.

  Esha rose with a huff. “I didn't poison it, if that's what you're thinking.” Hobbling around the campfire — more crippled than ever after her bamboo-climbing foolishness — she took Atarangi's empty bowl on her way.

  “Esha— No one poisoned it. This is our gift we give to you.”

  A pause hung. Esha took a handful of sand and started scrubbing.

  “My kin ...?”

  Rooftop trilled agreement. Imagination painted the sight of him bobbing to the wild bird's side, tossing a bite of her millet down his throat and then beaming at her, utterly benign.

  Quietly, the dealmaker creaked to Rooftop, sounds that nearly whisked away in the wind before Esha could glean meaning from them. Discussion of seed-food and grass ripe-tops, and the question of what phoenixes might call this foodstuff other than Rooftop's throat-rolled mih-rr-et.

  It was pleasing, Esha had to admit, hearing confirmation that millet was a worthwhile food. It wasn't as esteem-wreathed as rice but Esha would have had many weary, dry-mouthed days without it.

  The wild phoenix tilted her head, considering the millet offering with dark eyes. She bent, and selected a morsel between the tweezer points of her beak. And when she swallowed that and felt no death stealing over her, she took a more generous clump and gulped it down.

  “Yielding-soft but substance-brown.” She tried another mouthful, testing it between tongue and palate before she gulped. “This, I will say: you have skilled control of fire.”

  Esha and Atarangi stole glances at each other, and both stifled hopeful smiles.

  “Will you join us for another meal tomorrow?,” Atarangi asked when the last grain left the bowl. “We fire-cook every early morning and every late afternoon.

  The phoenix hesitated, crests shifting in a wordless din of emotions. She stood one-legged with a lump of millet caged in her raised foot — a bite for her chick to sample.

  “Maybe I will. Time will rise and set.” And she turned toward the forest, hesitating before she took to her fanned wings. The mouthy thief phoenix flew away from them but this time, Esha was nearly sad to see her go.

  It had to be because no one fed this phoenix. She worked and hunted and feared for her future; no one had proffered fuel for her own fire until now. Esha couldn't grudge that.

  “We are making progress, I think,” Atarangi said. “Betel is starting the conversation and millet is carrying it onward.”

  The next day's breakfast was much the same. Esha and Atarangi portioned millet and lentils into four bowls, with one portioned first and left to go cold. Rooftop left and returned with their wild guest. The dealmaker didn't have any insults this time, just the same gait like her feet were glued.

  “These are lentils,” Atarangi explained. “They're filling, a red-strong food despite their green looks. Good lungta for running, or flying I'd imagine.”

  The birds discussed lentils quietl
y amongst themselves; Esha and Atarangi pretended not to listen. The dealmaker untied Atarangi's cloth square from her stringfeathers and bundled two beakfuls inside — “For my chick,” she actually admitted this time.

  While she pulled a new knot tight, Rooftop trilled for her attention. He drew a gift from his stringfeather and offered it — a sliver of bamboo. Just like the one he had offered Esha such vast days ago. Of course Rooftop would be the one to offer a clear statement of friendship, with his infectious joy and his uncomplicated heart.

  The dealmaker bird stared at it, catching her crests before they flared. She stared, and couldn't even answer Rooftop; she simply left again.

  Her red-brown wings were flags of cowardice, disappearing over the cedar tops.

  Esha sighed and dropped her handful of scrubbing sand. “Gods' tits, why do we bother?”

  “That wasn't a refusal,” Atarangi said — in a faltering tone. “Not completely. She's still allowing us in her territory, and approaching for food and discussion. She's even putting human-prepared food in her chick's mouth . If she was truly rejecting Rooftop's offer, she'd have voiced her offense. Seems like such is her way ...”

  “Then what else can we do?”

  “Leaf-food makes a better apology,” Rooftop said.

  If Esha were offended, she supposed an expensive gift would quell her, too. “Well, shall I cook some leaf food, then?”

  Atarangi smiled like the gift was really for her.

  Esha asked Atarangi to go to market for minor things, kitchen things. Rice vinegar and salt; cabbage and mustard greens; an array of tuberous vegetables. A proper meal — whatever that fragile phrase really meant — needed more pickles. Medleys of flavourings and spices. There wouldn't be enough time for them to ferment but Esha knew some wiles to make meals ready faster.

  “She'll have questions about what's in this food, I'm sure,” Atarangi said. “I'll try to answer them. She'll appreciate all the lungta foods, I'm sure.”

  “She should.” A smirk pulled Esha's mouth. “I've used as many kinds of spices as the peace talks on Accord Plateau. Did you hear of those?”

  “I did, even before I had my sigil! We heard news of the peace talks on the Manyori islands, although the rumours had been travelling long enough to grow stale.”

  “We heard about it in the fields just two days later. The arbiters corrected some of the rumours, but it was still a feast we all envied.”

  “When I was trusted enough to enter the Kathumishru Library,” Atarangi said, “the first precedent I searched out was a copy of the Accord Plateau peace talk summaries. One scribe wrote that those negotiation feasts were the most sumptuous ever seen below heaven's clouds. It sounded like a fine way to make allies.” Atarangi paused. “You might say that right now, Esha, you're offering this phoenix such a peace talk.”

  She watched her own black-nailed hands mixing pickles. Under her softening fieldwork calluses, the carrot coins and the sesame oil felt like old times. “I suppose you're right.”

  “I'm proud of you, Esha. You're a different woman than the one I met

  She squirmed and tossed the pickles. “It hasn't been so long.”

  “No, truly.” Honesty lumped in Atarangi's throat, before she confessed. “I considered turning you in.”

  “What? To guards ...?!”

  “To the Yam Plateau rangers' guild. Maybe to your farm's overseer.” She looked weakened by this truth, drained of colour under her tattooed stripes. “After the things you had done, I considered whether more good would be done turning you in and using the reward to expand my efforts, maybe move a plateau higher. But I made the right decision, Esha.”

  It was a sobering thought, here while Esha looked at the deep-bent shapes of her strange knees under her clothing, while she felt the backward counterweight her horns made against her neck's motion. She wondered if anyone ever considered turning Gita in for her sins — likely not.

  “I'll take your high praise, friend,” Esha said. “I can try to do some good while I'm here to do it, I suppose. I can go to my mind's end holding onto that.”

  Atarangi wrapped a deeper-hued hand around Esha's wrist, only obstructing the pickling process a little. “Fine rope to cling to. Now, what can I slice up for you?”

  Pickles couldn't be rushed, but sometimes the impossible had to be done. They shared breakfast millet with the dealmaker phoenix and asked her to return for dinner.

  Rooftop left camp while Esha wasn't watching him; she heard a clamour of wings while she was bent over the sizzling pan. The two phoenixes returned before everything was ready; their portioned rice and lentils still fountained steam.

  “Welcome back,” Atarangi called. “Please forgive us: the meal is almost fit to eat.”

  The phoenix gave her patience this time. She watched Esha nearly the same way Rooftop did, just holding still and from a more prudent distance away. When her bowl was set out, she approached.

  “This is the meal of my people,” Esha began, pouring the last flavour of chutney into a side-bowl barely large enough. “My, ah. Bloodline of humans. Our long-time flock, I suppose. We're called Grewiers. And ... this is the best meal we know. Not the most expensive, not the most stuffed full of potent herbs — just the best.”

  With a considering tilt of her head, the dealmaker creaked a thin thinking sound. “These foods, they show such rainbow-gathering. What lungta-foods are here?”

  It made for cold rice, having to explain every pickle and side dish. But good food could stand to wait — and Rooftop dove enthusiastic into explanations, and the dealmaker seemed to like the chile peppers Esha had apprehensively decided to use.

  “Those hurt the mouth, but the body-heat lungta is worth a little suffering. I think so, anyway.”

  She wiped sesame oil from her lips, caught Atarangi's encouraging nod, and forged ahead.

  “I've been thinking, acquaintance-bird. It doesn't do a lick of good for us to be enemies. I don't want your territory, or your growing food. You've got a knife I'd like back, and that's all. We should settle that.”

  “I filled with blood-red-despair. Made a reckless dive,” the dealmaker said — freely as poured wine, while studying the glazed shine on her bowl. “Time lifts dark-fog from all things' eyes and yes, yes, I need kin for tying away blue-green pond troubles. If you-three are willing to lend claws, tomorrow and days-after ... We might rescind the trade.”

  “The tree-wood,” Rooftop trilled. “His wings unfurled like waving flags, like freed joy. “Give our kin the tree-wood!”

  “Patience,” the dealmaker snapped, “more night-blue-calm!”

  She fluttered away over a copse of pines. A breath-held moment later, she returned, flapping rapid under the weight of an arm-sized branch. Landing with a thump, she stepped off of her apparent wood offering and tugged her stringfeathers to order.

  “This, a gift for kin,” she said.

  “I'll take this gladly,” Atarangi replied, in the cadence of a song. “And I'll be ready to sun-yellow give back to you.”

  She must have had said this at least five times before, so it did feel like a song to her. This had to be the formal bargain she spoke in neat-rowed fields, to any phoenix who would listen.

  The dealmaker bird paused for another moment, still as canny as ever. Then with a tightening of her crests — a feeling of acceptance, said Esha's lungta, a sighed resignation — she opened a newly mysterious knot in her stringfeather.

  It contained a curled pine branch, fresh enough for the needles to spring immediately open — and allow an oval object to roll out onto the fireside earth.

  The dealmaker took that object in her beak. She held it out to Atarangi — a shell, rough and stony on one side, sheening pearlescent on the other.

  A moment later, the bird gave the shell to Esha, too. Here was another strange un-gift from a phoenix. This time, Esha knew to return the shell: for all her stormy doubts, she at least knew that Clamshell would want her name back.

  Chapter 15
>
  After another breakfast — and another explanation of the human names Precious One and Morning Sky — Clamshell began showing them more secrets. Kin watched over each other's belongings, after all.

  She landed in a dense-boughed pine a moment's walk from the camp site — and returned to earth with a miniature ginseng sprout in her beak, its snapped stem still oozing. A stone's throw away from that, them to one ordinary-looking cedar among a hundred others — to toss her head toward the kudzu stretching leafy out of a dirt-packed crevice. They hadn't noticed any of these while wandering and fuel-cutting; Esha wondered how many sky-gardens Rooftop had regretfully distracted them from.

  As their secret-steeped team kept on into the forest, Esha turned momentarily back for the wheeled pack: her legs were afire with pain already today but if she had a cart to sit on, she might still listen to the proceedings.

  And after seeing a dozen elusive little garden plots in the trees, Atarangi looked at two cupped handfuls of plant samples and shook her head thoughtful. “I've never seen such clever use of tall-plant tops.... All of your tended-pea-green plants are grown this way, my kin?”

  Perching beside a garlic garden inside a half-rotten cedar branch, Clamshell frowned with her crests. “This is the only way to keep food territories away from enemy theft. Sky protects, cloud-blue is refuge.”

  “Is that why you're planting in trees?” Atarangi tried. “Someone is stealing your plants?”

  Clamshell stared at the garlic's green spears like into a mug of rice beer. “Why! Before my egg movement-spark-lived, I readied growing-ground. Burned the unfood plants, waited for the ( )-lungta to rain-blue-drift down into the earth. I earth-planted seeds. This is custom! Care for divine fire, and as yellow deepens to red, divine fire will feed body and being.”