But Awa hovered close, gaping at mottled goat strands connecting the drumheads and Aido cloth decorations. She knew only one person with such an instrument. The fiend caught Djola’s right foot, bit through thick boot leather, and sucked greedily. Djola howled and kicked the fiend in the face to no avail. As they spun away from Awa, the drum hit her cheek and twanged a familiar tone.
What did it matter who this spirit slave had once been?
Awa snapped the viper’s head from her neck. She thrust her hand through the fiend’s back and stabbed the sparking heart. Pain shot up her arm and she almost fainted. Venom burst into indigo sparks that spread through chest, abdomen, legs, and arms. When sparks flared from dark eye sockets, Awa pulled the fangs out. The fiend unclamped granite jaws from Djola’s shredded boot and swooned. Awa clutched an almost unconscious Djola. Her hand hovered over the Vévés sealing his heart.
“Don’t abandon me,” she pleaded with him.
Djola pressed her hand close. The Vévés glowed—a cool light. “I’m here.” His cape fluttered as he tucked the mangled right foot against the back of his left knee.
Thrashing in indigo sparks, the fiend drifted toward the aurora. Hezram’s visage faded, and color blossomed on the smooth cheeks of a veson, a Green Elder whose heartbeat was silver lightning bolts. Bloodshot eyes were outlined in black kohl. Thick gray hair was knotted with Lahesh flame-cloth, seeds, and carapaces. Red mica glittered on broad palms as vie played the talking drum.
Awa fought tears. “Yari!”
“The griot of griots?” Djola’s voice cracked. “Kyrie said you’d been captured. I didn’t want to believe her.”
“Awa, my last gift, come to me again.” Yari smiled. “And Djola, Master of Weeds and Wild Things. I’d hoped to find you both.”
“Come with us.” Awa flew toward Yari. “We’ll meet Djola’s friend and then—”
“Abelzowadyo.” Yari floated just out of reach. “Sacred shapeshifter. Say it.”
“Abelzowadyo,” Awa repeated.
“The one who is changing into all things, but is never just one thing. Find Bal and offer this ancient Zamanzi word.”
“Zamanzi?” Awa sputtered.
“For your crossover, your Elder ceremony. I wanted to tell you and Bal when we three were together again.” Yari’s eyes blazed. “Bal lives still. Tell—”
“Bal is alive?” Djola hugged a quaking chest. “Impossible.”
“I don’t want to be anybody’s messenger,” Awa said. “Tell Bal yourself.”
“I must pay a spirit debt.” Yari snatched the viper’s head. “I’m dead in the everyday, but you’ve saved me, saved the other Elders too. Our family.” Yari tapped and squeezed the drum, playing ancestor words, a Lahesh call to death and new life.
Djola relaxed, chest tremors subsiding. “A crossover rhythm.” The beats were a tonic for him, yet the fiends shrieked.
“I went to Holy City, thinking to seduce a demon,” Yari said, “and I failed. Hezram captured me with a kiss. I was arrogant. Bal didn’t want me to go. Even the dog tried to stop me.” Yari turned to the fiend tower, playing furiously. “We make the void and we can unmake it.” Vie could drum a child into the world or a body into the death lands. “Sing my songs, tell my stories. Basawili!”
Djola grabbed Awa as Yari dropped low, just above the tower. Fiends snapped, snarled, and flailed yet could not reach vie. “Let me be one of your good stories. Promise me.”
Awa should have said yes—but her tongue refused.
“We will,” Djola spoke for them both. “I promise. Basawili! Not your last breath.”
“Hezram will come for you, in the everyday, in dreams.” Yari contemplated the tower of fiends. “They’ll all come, a stampede. Take good measure of yourselves. Fly in your own rhythm and outwit them. Xhalan Xhala—see the future you want.”
“How?” Awa said as her heart cracked.
“Abelzowadyo.” Yari tossed the drum to her. She caught it as vie descended into the tower singing harmony with many, many selves. Tree carcasses exploded and fiends howled and hissed. Djola clutched Awa’s waist so tightly she could barely breathe. The fiends mobbed Yari, clawing, biting, and sucking. Awa almost looked away, yet here was the hero she had longed for, saving her and Djola. Yari stabbed ember hearts with the viper’s fangs. Color blossomed across the smooth faces of Green Elders from Awa’s enclave. Free the heart, free the spirit.
The Elders joined Yari’s song-conjure before plunging into the screaming fiends. The tower collapsed on itself. Yari let go of the spent viper’s head and disappeared.
Awa clutched the talking drum and trembled. A blast of indigo sparks ripped from the ground to the stars and blew Awa and Djola far across the sky. Their ears rang with Yari’s last words: Abelzowadyo. Death is a doorway.
3
Star Bridge
The air was clear of void-smoke. Under bright blue sky, grassy savannas stretched to ice-capped mountains. Awa and Djola flew easily toward the peaks.
“We’ve left the void behind.” Djola shuddered. “This is the Smokeland I remember.”
“How will we return to the everyday?” Bleary, her good arm throbbing, Awa glanced back the way they came. “Hezram’s fiends patrol the borderlands and—”
Yari’s drum thudded against her back. Awa longed to kill Hezram slowly, to slice his tongue, hammer his bones, and drive him mad. Sounds of torture kept transgressors awake all night. Awa wanted Hezram, his priests, and acolytes to know this same torture, even Tembe. What had she done except offer Awa and Meera crumbs?
Hezram, Tembe, Father—they murdered Yari.
“Grief often masquerades as bloodlust,” Djola said as cold winds buffeted them. “A vengeful spirit makes navigating Smokeland dangerous.”
“You would know.” She pointed at his mangled foot. “How is it?”
“Fine.”
“You lie.”
Bloody pus left a brown streak in the green below. With gentle urging, bees crawled in the wound and spit cleansing venom where it festered. Only a hundred hundred bees still flew with them. They buzzed along fearlessly. Survive.
“We should rest.” Awa veered toward a sweetgrass and wildflower meadow.
“No.” Djola tugged her up a warm updraft. She was heavy now. “Hezram will send a new horde to follow our blood.” He charged up to the speed of thought.
“Yari and the Elders were my family. This is the second time I’ve lost them.”
“You saved them.”
“Where are they if I’ve saved them? And don’t say in the crack in my heart.”
“Look!” Djola spun her around. The scar moon hung low on the horizon. Sails on a mountain lake reflected green and red aurora rippling in the sky. Distant cook fires twinkled like stars. Drums and voices carried Yari’s crossover rhythm.
Awa jolted, every sense alert. “Boat people. I haven’t seen them in years. They’ve taken refuge underneath the star bridge.”
“Lahesh rhythms shield them and us.” Whispering thanks to the boat people, he flew them through the aurora into a black velvet sky. Beyond the moon, a crossroads lattice of stars arched into darkness. “The light bridge.” He slipped his trembling arm through Awa’s. Agitated bees made a crown in her hair and a boot for his wounded foot as they headed down the bridge.
“It goes on forever.” Awa peered a thousand thousand leagues. The far end was invisible. How did the conjure woman travel to the winter region so quickly? “We’re too slow. Even at the speed of thought.” Awa shivered in thin, cold air.
“Everyone takes their own time on the bridge of stars.” Djola flew them past a swirl of rainbow spirits to the bridge. “I was a fool to stay away. She’ll help us get back to the everyday.”
Rocks colliding near the bridge exploded. “Then what?”
“I sat at Council,” he grinned ruefully, “more powerful than almost anyone, and—”
“Zst!” Awa was not eager for the saga of a monster.
Djola told his
tale anyhow as they drifted through a blur of constellations and huddled close for warmth. He talked too fast, like a desperate Sprite defying the fates. Awa scoffed at his fatal errors. Of course greedy, foolish Council masters denied truth. They were no different than anybody. She rolled her eyes as masters betrayed Djola and Azizi exiled him. “It took you that long to realize we’re all thief-lords bringing disaster on ourselves?” Unfazed, Djola spoke of pirate cunning and treachery, of whore-spies and warrior women from beyond the maps, of behemoths dancing on their tails in a river of ice. He said little about the deaths of his wife, Samina, and Tessa, Bal, and Quint. Awa was hungry for these details. “You don’t know what happened to your children?” she asked.
“I know they are dead and I have nowhere to mourn them.”
“Did anybody see the bodies?”
Djola complained that Kyrie conjured gates to save her mountain but did nothing for his family, then he spoke of conjure studies and vengeance barely held in check. “Poison desert is how Hezram powers his Dream Gates. Azizi would build such gates around Arkhys City and give Hezram a chair at Council. This illusion solution is disaster that could swallow all the children.”
Awa sighed. “After this journey, I’ll find my Bal. I can’t do anything about the rest.”
He clamped his mouth on a retort.
A blast of light from under their feet made her jump. A star exploded, too far for heat to touch them. She hugged herself, glad for the furry mountain attire from Vandana.
“Do you know Dream Gate spells?”
“I could teach one such as you in a snap.”
She stared down the endless star bridge. “Will you teach me now?”
“You would learn this? A perverted spell really.” He eyed her. “Why?”
“I’d learn anything you wanted to teach. Ignorance won’t save us.”
“My words to you…” He pointed to a violet disk surrounded by blue and silver dust, a giant eye in the dark. “The sky is empty, but full of wonder.”
Her lips trembled. “Yari.”
“Yes.” His voice cracked. “Have you learned the order of things?”
“Zamanzi raided our enclave the day I was to cross over. I know more than you think.” More than she would tell him. “Yari taught me ceremonies for trees, water, animal-people, and rocks. I sing to the land, to ancestors long dead and those to come. The order is a circle, encompassing all.”
“Ahh, an Elder then.”
“I don’t know what I am.”
“Abelzowadyo,” Djola declared.
“I’m a griot, not a shapeshifter.” Awa squirmed. “Why a savage word?”
“The Empire stole our stories and turned us into savage, barbarian, citizen; they turned Iyalawos and Babalawos into witch women and witchdoctors.”
“Why not call on Lahesh, Sorit, or Anawanama ancestors? Zamanzi stole me, Yari, and Bal from our lives.” And Yari died by her hand. She didn’t want to forgive herself or the Zamanzi. “They think vesons are men-women abominations. Why embrace tainted wisdom?”
“You are prelude to another world. Zamanzi understand change better than anyone. Yari recognized your true nature.” A star disappeared into blackness, and Djola looked ready to weep. “I’ll teach you what I know. For Yari.”
Who could argue with that?
Djola talked and sang himself hoarse teaching her spells for what felt like weeks. He claimed it was only hours. Her mouth was dry, her stomach rumbled, but she wasn’t sleepy. Weeks of no sleep would have dulled her thoughts. Time on the bridge isn’t time in the everyday. Now and then trickster stars flashed blue and green, as if the end of the bridge was near. She bristled at illusions, yet learning Djola’s wealth of conjure distracted her, even from the crack in her heart.
“We’ve come halfway.” He put a gloved hand into a comet’s tail. “Don’t you remember these balls of ice? A belt of them…” He sucked a chunk.
“No.” The bridge had been less than a blink on her first journey. “No.”
“I do. Star ice in my mustache the last time.” He handed her a chip.
“It’s bitter.” She swallowed nonetheless.
His heart was fainter than hers, his right eye wept blood, and his foot leaked rot. The bees gobbled this away, sparking brighter and exuding an intoxicating wildflower scent. “Tell me about yourself. What did you choose for your crossover ceremony?”
“I told you. Griot.” Awa didn’t want to talk about lapsed Elders and Zamanzi raiders. Instead, she spoke of her good life with Bal. She raced through Hezram and Holy City, talking mostly of Meera and Rokiat. “Acolytes were tormenting a warhorse foal with a crooked foot. Meera, red face and yellow hair like an angry sun, charged them, brandishing a rusty rake. I joined her, shrieking and throwing dung. The cowards ran. Fannie, Bibi, and a wild dog chased them out the back gate. Rokiat locked it, laughing so hard, he couldn’t stand up. We danced and sang with him, feasted on duck and coconut wine, and counted stars till dawn.”
Awa omitted the cowards’ revenge behind the temple, which Tembe and her drummers interrupted. Instead she told more good-time tales of Meera and Rokiat—stealing coins from tribute plates, pulling Bibi’s foal from a bog, sneaking Tembe’s cook pots off to the huts and sharing feast scraps with everyone. “A transgressor told Tembe what we did. She had him bled to death for quick salvation. Nobody told on us again. Tembe left pots for us regularly and listened to our sorrows. Meera insisted we weren’t her spies. Maybe we were, but Meera and Rokiat are clever and brave.” Surely Bibi and her foal, a half-grown stallion now, had galloped fast and far, carrying her friends to safety. “If anybody escaped deluge and poison dust…”
“Crossroads gods are indifferent,” Djola remarked.
“None of the gods care for us.” Awa sighed. “If they exist at all.”
“A skeptic.” Djola touched her cheek. “We bring love to the world.”
Another star exploded and Awa felt hollowed out. “We who?”
“We who want to get anywhere.”
Djola probably blamed her for stalling on the light bridge. None of this was her fault. Awa bit her tongue on a lie—a Holy City survival tactic. Lies got you sucked into the void; truth did too. Best to keep your mouth shut sometimes.
4
Bee Dreams
The emptiness and chill on the light bridge are terrible. Gone are familiar magnetic ripples and steady gravity. The stars are too distant to feel the comfort of their heat or to waggle with their beams. The Bees try not to worry. No sentinels left to scent the air with banana fear. Instead, a hundred hundred Bees dance with Awa’s and Djola’s heart lights—a polyrhythmic pulse promising a bountiful future. The Bees are happy that Djola regurgitates power-food from his foot for them.
Even though this meal is sour sweet, like fermented nectar, it means the Bees won’t die on such a long, cold journey back to the hive. They take turns swarming Djola’s foot, careful not to sting tender flesh. Flapping their wings so furiously (for warmth) without such rich nutrients, they would wear out their hearts and expire. Nobody wants to die before they reach the hive. Nobody wants to waste wings or venom or bodies on darkness.
Time passes quickly. Cavorting in Awa’s hair, they cover themselves in her queen-scent. Djola’s queen-scent is weaker, but after fighting off fiends with him, after eating from his foot, the Bees know his smell. Djola belongs to the hive. He is as ready to die for the queen as they are. Anyone who loves Awa is a friend to Bees. Djola loves flowers and cathedral tree elders who offer their trunks as shelter. Awa has chosen wisely.
The Bees swarm together, full of power food and comforted by the queen-scent. They revel in this moment, glowing. The end of the bridge is near. Awa and Djola will find the hive soon—just a few more light beams to navigate. The Bees keel over, clutching each other’s legs, asleep. They dream of pools of nectar, clouds of pollen, and evening dew heavy with flower scent. Why dream of anything else?
5
Spells
Darkne
ss crept under Awa’s skin and itched from the inside. Her bowels twisted around nothing; her bladder was empty. The back of each breath hurt. Toes, fingers, and the tip of her nose were numb. She and Djola huddled with the bees under his cape as they flew along the light bridge past a smear of faint stars. The cape’s outlaw conjure shielded a bit against the deep chill. Furious wings and volcano hearts kept everybody from freezing. Spirit slaves with faint hearts would have faded away. That was strange comfort as Awa tried not to worry about Djola or weep over Yari or imagine revenge on Hezram. Sprite discipline held her together just barely.
“How many more leagues?” she asked for the tenth time.
“The bridge is a circle, a spiral. The end is a beginning.”
Awa groaned. “You don’t know—just say that.”
“You repeat yourself too.” Djola chortled like a fool at carnival. “The order of things.”
“Will you teach me Hezram’s Gate conjure or not?”
“Not Hezram’s conjure. He perverted wisdom from the floating cities, from Lahesh and Anawanama ancestors actually.” Vévés on Djola’s skull glowed in the dark, an eerie light under the cape. “You need good smoke sense, which you already possess, and silver lattice craft.”
“Like the bandages and your mesh gloves?”
“And blindfold. Insulation to keep rogue forces in or out.” That was the first thing he’d taught her. Tricky, yet not impossible. “Snare a smoke-walker in his own despair and poison his breath body in the everyday. Channel his despair into the gate—a simple void-spell. The first captive ensnares other smoke-walkers.”
“Yari tried to warn me…” Awa never got to tell Yari how much vie meant to her.
“Stolen hearts burn out quickly.” Djola stroked his chest. “If fed blood and tree oil, spirit slaves linger and power the gate, channeling void-smoke into the everyday.”
Awa flinched at the memory of blades cutting skin and slicing cathedral tree roots. “We call them Nightmare Gates. How do you stop such conjure?”
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