Tinder Stricken
Page 30
She knelt at the cliff's edge beside a markhor doe — stroking its mane, speaking soundless words to it. She ran her dark fingers over the goat's fur, and untied the scrap of gold-stitched fabric that passed for a collar. Then she stepped back. And she waited.
The goat stood there, warily frozen. It turned its spiral-horned head and gazed up at the green-tufted crevices lining the mountain's face. It kept standing there until some urge seized it: it put one hoof in front of the other and left. Left the animist, left to climb the cliffsides as goats naturally did.
The animist stood there, still as a temple pond, watching the cliffside air where the goat had long since ceased to be. Whoever the goat had been, it was someone precious to Atarangi: Bhuwan didn't need to be told as much.
“Hail, animist,” he stammered. With arms lopsided around the phoenix, he formed namaste. “I've come at a bad time ... I'm sorry for your loss.”
She turned — and her face was a horrifying wedge shape, a bird's yellow beak sprawled across her human features.
But that wasn't her actual flesh, Bhuwan realized. It was a beak-shaped mask covering the diplomat's nose and cheekbones, its black, bold outlines mimicked by the Manyori tattoos on her chin.
Young-looking skin showed around it. She was either cursed with early-onset traits, or as free-spirited as everyone said.
“Hail,” she told Bhuwan, returning namaste, “and thank you. But this isn't a mourning day. I give thanks because my sister is free.”
Bhuwan had felt like that before. He nodded, mute.
“And I think this friend would like to be free,” she said, looking at the phoenix like it was some lap pet with mange. She approached, speaking with a rush of lungta like wind through a garden's leaves:
“Please, orange-kin, be calm. I will arrange your freedom.”
Inexplicably, the phoenix's struggling stopped. It became just a warm bundle under Bhuwan's arm.
“Yaah ... It must like you,” he breathed.
She didn't answer: she only smiled. There was something peculiar about this Atarangi, some mystery hidden piecemeal under her tongue and in her crinkle-edged eyes.
“You collect phoenixes,” Bhuwan said, “that is correct? I would like to make a bargain.”
“We can certainly try.”
About the author
Heidi C. Vlach is a resident of northern Ontario, Canada. She is a chef training graduate and an overqualified waitress. Video games were her gateway to the fantasy genre — since her first Nintendo console at age 6 — and she still enjoys a story-rich video game as much as a good book.
For more information about Heidi and her books, visit www.heidicvlach.com.