“I ... I don't know. Please repeat that?”
More staring. The serpent didn't move, just loomed wetly.
“That fellow human female,” Atarangi tried, “is Precious One. Her lungta plant was taken by the landholder phoenix.”
Betel nut began conversations, but this conversation with a demon-like snake couldn't be flung open so easily. It was an order of magnitude away from a Grewier speaking with a Sherbu, a challenge well beyond the safe confines of human order.
Then the serpent clicked and fluttered. Something phrased as command, Esha grasped that much.
“I—I can't ...” She let out a string of voiced sounds like a baby's round-mouthed, simple cries. They were nothing like tooth clicks but through Atarangi's panic and lungta, she hit pitches and rhythms. “Question with left side frill? Raised swimfin— Keh, how to say ... Circle-sway brow whisker?”
The serpent flicked its largest barbels — dismay, Esha nearly tasted.
Atarangi tried again, another series of pitched notes with her hands flicking wild. And as the serpent wound its body in a retreating circle, Atarangi groaned frustrated and raised a hand, the motion of rubbing under her mask.
The serpent froze. It rotated back toward Atarangi, black eyes searching her face. But as her hand drifted back to her side, the serpent clacked teeth in a harsh song.
“Apologies,” Rooftop cried, “Apologies! Please, water-friends, let me give lungta.” He fetched green stems and shuffle-stepped into the pond's shallows, stretching up toward the monstrous serpent's grasping barbel.
With a ludicrously small herb gift in its grasp, the serpent left. It wound along the mud bottom, fins and fronds rippling down to his fish-like tail fin, until he submerged — next to a second serpent, a quiet pair of fins barely breaking the surface. And they both sank away into the depths.
“Another chance tangled up,” Atarangi sighed.
“You did better than anyone else would,” Esha said. Tale-spinners talked about monstrous serpents, behemoth things that could wrap the mountain's circumference within their coils — but it was more real and more frightening to see that smaller creature and the muscle under its clammy skin.
“It's clear enough I'm saying something wrong. Or doing something wrong, perhaps. Did you see how he hesitated, near the end? Rooftop?”
Bobbing agreement, Rooftop tilted his head. “That water-snake said you could have ... unmade your insult?”
“I came close, then,” Atarangi said, “even if by chance. I'm going walking.”
“What for?”
“To think.” Atarangi paused, eyes darting with thought. “Maybe to see about cutting some bamboo shoots. We haven't eaten any lately.”
She left like a duty dragged her, with Rooftop flapping regretful after her. Their little negotiating party was nearing a breakthrough: they only needed to put words to it.
Chapter 17
Esha stayed by the fire, alone with the dusty wind and the pond's dank scent. She wouldn't have minded walking for bamboo shoots — and wouldn't have minded calming Atarangi, either. Unfortunately, her ankles and knees were as useless as ropes made of porridge, so Esha sat, staring at them. They felt more misshapen every day. More like she had no business putting weight on them — like she had forgotten how to balance on foot and ankle joints. Animal traits took hold of humans in patches and spurts — but still, Esha had always hoped that a nimble cliffside animal wouldn't rob her of mobility in her last human days.
Since no one was around to witness it, Esha removed her sandal, unlaced her sock and peeled free her misshapen foot. The fleshy pads of her heels were shrinking away, refusing to take weight; her blackening toenails capped her entire toetips now, like she had dipped them straight downward into tar. Shoes were soon going to be more challenge than help. In a more fortunate life, Esha would be showing her feet to a nurse. Maybe getting them washed, to perfume the sweat stink out of the fur.
But this wasn't such a life, and Esha looked around in a thorough circle so she wouldn't offend some imperial guard division with her hoof-foot abomination. She saw no red uniforms. Just a fluttering in a pine tree's crown, which she watched until Clamshell's tawny head peered out.
Esha touched her palms together, a sloppy namaste that she didn't expect returned. “Hail, kin.”
“Morning Sky — she chartreuse-gave-up?”
“No,” Esha said. “She's just walking a little. Clearing her head, then she'll try again to speak with the serpents. Am I enough company?”
Clamshell fluttered to the ground beside Esha; that seemed to be her answer.
“We're trying to speak with them, but it's impossible to know their answers. Everything they tell Ata— Morning Sky is a blue-spilled mess.”
Esha was so busy wondering if blue-spilled was right, she was caught unbalanced when Clamshell snapped.
“You-humans speak bluer messes! Half-plum-shows and taupe-knotting changes! Phoenix words are simple. Move one crest, two crests or all crests to show our feeling, and use one orange-breed of sounds for all-things outside ourselves. It is divided into simple territories. Humans have of sounds, and faces that melt like snow into too many shapes. They won't speak to other humans because of small-signs of colour or place. They claim to honour sky's-blue, but they kill feather-kin whenever they can. Humans should not call other creatures confusing.”
Humans made sense, Esha wanted to snap. But that was an echo, a futile shout from her past. She knew, with a shocked and pained heart, that Clamshell was right.
She hummed a yielding note. “We have no right to accuse. If humans are going to give everyone a fair portion, we'll need more humans like Atarangi.”
Clamshell resettled her wings, satisfied but still simmering.
“Where's your chick?”
“He is hiding. Golden-tucked, secret-safe.” Clamshell strutted closer, to crane her neck at Esha's exposed foot. “Human feet, do they always have cream-yellow-drifting hair?”
“No.”
She studied Esha's foot more intently. If Clamshell got it into her head to tweak the goat hair, Esha promised herself she would tweak some bristly nostril-feathers in return.
“Tell me,” Esha asked, while she was feeling honest and feeling new to the world, “do phoenixes change when you grow old? Do you ... turn into something else?”
“We grey-flame-drift. We join the sky.”
Grey-flame-drifting made a hazy kind of sense. Esha asked anyway, “What does that look like?”
“I have not seen it, but I have heard golden-truth-stories.” Turning her eyes upward, watching that very sky, Clamshell said, “Phoenix-kin, after long lives, fire-change into ashes. First our stringfeather-tips, then slow-ember-burning. In the end, no phoenix. Only flying.”
That sounded like a beautiful way to pass, was Esha's first horrified thought. Simply flying away mote by mote, like turning back into heaven's lungta. She didn't say so; she didn't trust her tongue to say anything.
“I'm glad to know that.” Now she wanted a walk more than ever, to cover distance if she had to crawl to do it. Esha put her sock and sandal back on, and waveringly rose. “I'd like to go walking now, too. Will you tell Morning Sky and Rooftop, if you see them?”
Clamshell bobbed, and strutted away. By the time Esha gathered the wheeled pack and her walking pole, and left, Clamshell was picking through pine needles and thornbush saplings, as thought humans had never bothered her at all.
Esha didn't delude herself: she wasn't going to make it far. But she leaned on the pole, and sank to sit on the wheeled pack when she grew too weak, and by degrees she walked a quarter kilometre through the cedars. By the time she circled back to camp, she was breathless and agonized and feeling very slightly accomplished.
Atarangi was back, sitting fireside with the two phoenixes beside her. “Esha! We thought you had made off with all the supplies. Brought them to market for the blackflags to have.”
She wheezed a laugh, shuffling by degrees into the fire's
warmth. “I wouldn't be stupid enough to come back if I did that. You sound in good spirits.”
Atarangi waved a hand. “It was nothing a little time and sweat couldn't cure. I was just telling our friends about how challenging diplomacy used to be, when I was only used to one variety of animism.”
That sounded like a tale worth hearing. Biting back her groan, Esha sank to sit.
“Do you need herb, Esha?”
“Save it for later,” she muttered.
With a press of her mouth like a shadow of a smile, Atarangi kept telling her story to Clamshell. “I simply had to learn how to read Rooftop's crests, when he was so small that his crests moved like. I had never even been kin with a bird before!”
“You had talked with other intelligent-beings before,” Rooftop said.
“Not birds. The squid use different means, they're ... well, I suppose more like humans. Their changing colours are like our changing faces.”
“But,” Esha said, “you still learned to read phoenix crests and grasp what they meant. Without ever having done it before.”
She had wedged a silence into this conversation. But somehow, it was a good silence: Atarangi and Rooftop looked to her with bright-wondering eyes. “What are you thinking, Esha Of The Fields?”
She was committed now, bound by a will to share. “It's a long enough story. Would you fill a water cup for me, Atarangi?”
Atarangi did, unhesitating. Esha didn't even know what was inside her own mind — just a sense that the many languages of people and creatures could fit together in strange ways. And that all the emotions she had grappled with as a new bride might suffice for this moment, in the same way a rock could be used to hammer a nail.
“I was ... just thinking about my yak,” she said quiet, winding her hands around the water cup. “I— Rather, my former husband had a yak. I had drained a few cups of beer and I got scared enough one day to speak to it. The yak was a gentle beast, she didn't mind speaking with me. Didn't understand much of what I said but I didn't much care. She just ... asked me why my ears didn't move.”
Esha swallowed, the past feelings of shame welling up her throat.
“She meant my human ears. But I wondered if my other ears—“ and she waved a loose hand toward her wrapped head, “—could move. They didn't have any hair on them when I was that age but they were still shaped a little like the yak's ears. I didn't want to think about that at the time so I pretended I didn't know what the yak was talking about. But ... what if I had showed the yak my other ears? What if I had tried harder to understand her? I've been thinking about that day. And now, however shameful it might be ... I don't know, I'm speaking nonsense.”
“No, not at all,” Atarangi said in silk-soft voice. “It's true — we have these traits we don't show, because it's the human way to pretend they aren't here. Mm ...”
Esha she mustered the will to look at the others. The phoenixes stared at her, considering — and Atarangi drifted in thought, her eyes wide as Empire-dug wells.
“Humans using our traits, instead of trying to pretend they don't exist,” Atarangi murmured. “Maybe we could. It would be another challenge but— One we might not have to undertake! Because—“ She stopped and sat straighter, smoothing her composure. “Well, diplomacy has four rules. The most important is that your message is only half of what you're saying. The other half is the way you say your message. Customs and expectations are just as important as the actual words. And Esha, you and I ... We're humans. What are we saying when we arrive wearing these?” She waved harsh at herself, her mask and wraps and layers.
“We're ... we're covering ourselves.”
“We're hiding ourselves! We're guilt-ridden before we've even begun negotiating! And the serpents,” she said, hands spreading as her voice rose, “speak with their fins even when they're not speaking with their fins, you see?”
Esha blinked. “...No?”
“They gesture with their fins, and also talk about fin position. That must be their— One of their strong social premises! Like how important it is that humans show our feelings with our faces. Gods, how didn't I see that? Humans cover our bodies as much as possible and I'm still given a side-eye for wearing this mask! How awful would a mask seem to a people who don't wear any coverings at all, and speak largely with their facial features?”
“The serr-fent said you could unmake your insult,” Rooftop added, the enthusiasm kindling him, too.
“And what was I doing, before he said that? Was I touching under my mask?”
“Yes, yes!”
Turning to Esha, Clamshell asked an incredulous question with her crests.
“It .... sounds like we might make a bargain after all,” Esha told her.
Atarangi produced another herbal bribe from her cloak and asked Rooftop to deliver a message. “Tell the serpents ... that we apologize for any offense given. We humans will show our real selves to better express our wish for kinship.”
Rooftop took it and swooped away to the pond's edge, to stand there fidgeting excited.
“Should we leave?” Esha asked. “In case the sight of us is offensive?”
“That stone's already been thrown. I think we should ...” Atarangi gathered herself, and said, “We should just show our faces.”
Esha wasn't the one hiding her face and she never had been: that was a long throw away from the point. She nodded, and waited to see if Atarangi would go first.
She was proud of her beak, she had said. Its welling up out of her face was cause for celebration. But as honest as Atarangi had seemed then, her slightly-ragged-nailed hands moved hesitant toward the strap of her mask — and Esha could have sworn she looked afraid.
Then Esha would have to share a handful of initiative; sisters did that for one another. She took the edge of her own headwrap and, with only a nudging of terror, pulled it off. Up and over her markhor horns.
The terror bloomed like ink into paper, as Atarangi's eyes bolted wide under the mask. Then she smiled. Wry and uneven, like she was too surprised to shape the gesture properly.
“Ears! And those fine horns ... You're a cow?”
“No, gods, no! Do I spend like I'm an empress? I've got markhor goat. Started when I was a small child, I had horn buds hard under my skin when I was only six summers old.”
She got her first headwrap that summer. A burgundy silk headwrap, too fine-textured for a child to possibly appreciate. A headwrap she hated because it mashed her hair under lumpy folds of fabric and she didn't want to wear it, but her family and her tutors all hissed to keep it on, and the one time she threw it onto the new-powdered snow the world cracked loud and her cheek was ablaze from Mother's palm. Esha hadn't understood. She soon did.
But right now, there was no one but Atarangi and some birds to see her. Maybe a ranger would patrol past and catch an eyeful. Esha resisted the urge to throw her yellow-orange headwrap gleeful onto the dirt; instead, she pretended to care about her patchwork hair while Atarangi freed her own head.
The mask came away like lifting a stone out of farm soil, a weighty peeling. But Atarangi wasn't the darker depths of hidden soil: she was, if anything, a slightly paler shade of sienna where she had fended the sun away from her face for so long. Her broad nose was human, almost entirely so — except for the hard, pearly hook at the tip, definitely the face of a hunting bird.
“Your beak isn't so large as I expected,” Esha said. “I was thinking of something like my horns. A full face of beak, maybe some feathers.”
“No,” Atarangi said. “It's just this much of my eagle, for now.”
Esha hummed answer. Then she laughed because she had to; it bubbled inside her like beer downed too fast. “It is rare to be free, isn't it?”
“If the serpents deem it necessary for diplomacy, we'll need to become used to it.” Now, when Atarangi smiled back, her crinkling eyes were part of an entire face, a perfectly human one. “If we're afraid of storms, the best cure is to stand in the rain.”
Esha
shrugged. “Rain does good for any crop worth eating.”
At the pondside, Rooftop still stood vigilant, his fire-bright back set to them. Esha would have to tease him about yams later, possibly while feeding him some. For the moment, she and Atarangi had strategy to discuss between their honest faces.
They discussed the serpents' fins and barbels a little more, over popped maize and kudzu.
“Barbels seems like the closest word Grewian has got,” she hazarded. “Or any other mountain tongue. Water serpents' barbels have a flexing and grasping quality to them, more like a tentacle. Mm, but you've never seen those, either, have you?”
“Not unless they're on a clam or a snail.”
They were not, apparently. So Atarangi described other extravagant ocean animals she had known. Things with tentacles that snatched and strangled, or else picked up beach glass with an unwavering curiosity.
“I was always good at speaking with the squid,” Atarangi said. “My tribe lives on the sea's edge, and I swam with the squid whenever I could. They speak with coloured spots on their skin, so as long as I ate enough gourd beforehand I could understand them. Sometimes I'd stay out all day and my lungta would fade, so I'd eat seaweed. After some years, I knew where the best lungta kelp grew, nearly every leaf in the northern sea.”
“Sounds as though you were born to diplomacy.”
“You might say that. I had a skill Tselaya Mountain coveted, so my family applied for a caste designation for me. That was in my tenth summer — actually, we received word back just before my sixteenth solstice.”
She stopped to take a mouthful of millet, rolling the hot grain careful on her tongue. Esha waited, trying to imagine the child Atarangi floating joyful in a vast sea. It was an image too far away for a mountain woman to truly know.
“My beak-touched nose was a thing of joy among my people. My family couldn't believe it when the Tselayan Empire rejected my application to diplomat caste.” She glowed with the memory. “I didn't think about it among the squid. But now ... I've stopped noticing how much I cover myself. It's something my bones have accepted even while my tongue speaks protests.”
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