by Heidi Heilig
To his credit, he barely makes a face; he only nods and turns back to the roulotte as I follow Maman inside. It is warmer in the hut, almost cozy, and for a moment, my heart aches for our little cottage back in the valley. But this is not home, nor is Lak Na. Not anymore. I take a breath, trying to figure out what to say to Maman about the passage—how to phrase the request. But as she shuts the door behind me, I see a scrap of paper in her hand. It’s the wanted poster, dry now, and stiff from being near the fire. But the back is covered with markings—dark lines made with a charred stick. “I spoke with your father,” she says softly. “Leo was right.”
“About what?”
“The soldiers are looking for you. And if they find you . . .” She sighs, leaving the rest unsaid; my imagination is worse than her words. “Papa and I will travel through the gates, but you and Leo . . .” She shakes her head. “I can’t go back there, but you have to.”
Gingerly, I take the paper from her hand; it is a map, crudely drawn—a winding tunnel, a cavern, a stairway. “Back where, Maman?”
She takes a breath. She wets her lips. She lowers her voice. “To Hell.”
“Maman—”
“There is a path,” she says, her voice no louder than a whisper. “From the temple grounds to the middens. Outside the city. Where the dung carts haul the trash.”
I chew my lip. Her words are innocuous, but her voice . . . her face. “The path comes up inside?”
“To the gardens between the temple and the Ruby Palace,” she says, her voice shaking. “At least, it did sixteen years ago. You’ll have to be careful. The temple is a prison now, remember? There will be guards nearby, and maybe worse, depending.”
“Worse?”
“Fallen monks. Restless souls. His disciples.”
“Disciples?” The question is on the tip of my tongue—about the woman we met in the temple. Had Maman known that monks still brought offerings to the gods? “I thought Le . . . I thought all the monks in Nokhor Khat were killed.”
“They were,” she says, but the fact doesn’t seem to soothe her fear. I look down at the map, then up into her eyes.
“How do you know about this passage, Maman?”
She opens her mouth, but it takes her a long time to let the words past her teeth. “I lived there, Jetta. When I was only a little older than you.”
“You lived in Hell’s Court?” I blink at her. “You were there before Le Trépas was imprisoned?”
“Don’t!” She raises her hand to my lips; I press them together, but my eyes are wide. She must have seen him, known him. A monster, out of legend, when he was still roaming free with death at the tips of his fingers. No wonder she hated his name.
Then my brow furrows—Maman has no tattoos. “You weren’t a monk. What were you doing there?”
“I told you, Jetta. I’m not going back. Not even in my memory.” She turns away, slipping back into her room, but I am already putting things together. The only people who lived in the temple were the monks and the brides.
For Le Trépas kept a court, like any man who styled himself a king. Another break with what was holy: he had wives in his temple—though he never kept his children. People say he killed them for their souls.
My hands are shaking. Sixteen years ago, she’d said. She left the temple just around the time I was born. But Akra is three years older than I am. He has Papa’s eyes, his chin, his nose. And Papa was never a monk.
Alone in the room, I sink down by the remains of the fire. The soul of the kitten climbs into my lap, and we both watch the embers for a while. My mind is its own shifting hellscape. So many questions, but so much more makes sense. The souls . . . the magic . . . the malheur. But what of the shadow plays? The work and the art? The joy of the stage, the things Papa taught me—were they ever mine to share in?
Behind me, the floor creaks. Papa comes to sit beside me, as though I have summoned him. A thousand questions flit through my head, but at heart they are all the same—the one I asked Maman. What am I? But Papa has never been at a loss for words. “Blood may matter to the spirits. But what we share is even better.”
My words come slowly. “And what is that?”
“We share history,” he says. “We share tradition. We share years and memories and everything that makes a family.”
“But not blood.”
“What is blood?” he says with a gentle smile. “We share a heart.”
I can hear it—my heartbeat, and the blood rushing in my ears. The blood that draws the spirits near. The blood that brings them back to life, the blood that sang in my veins when I considered killing a man. Who else shares it?
What am I?
I do not ask—Papa doesn’t know, not truly. The fire crackles before us, the charred wood collapses inward on itself, the coals glow and fade. Finally he pushes himself to his feet with a groan. “Come,” he says. “Let’s go unpack the roulotte.”
I follow him outside, and we spend the rest of the day sorting through our possessions. I throw myself into the hard choices—what to leave, what to take—and ignore the part of me that says that none of it is truly mine. It is easier to run my hands over silk and leather, paint and paper, than it is to wrap my mind around this new truth. So I pore over each item, savoring each memory as a past I never knew casts shadows in my head.
My third-best costume is a given—or my best, now that the first is torn and ashen and the second stained with blood. Maman had bought the fabric for it toward the end of our first season using souls in fantouches, just as our fame had begun to spread. We’d spent hours sewing together—unused to working with so much fine silk. And here—the little lighter my brother left me, to light the fires for our shadow plays. The letters he sent us, all seven of them. My makeup: bone black and lucky red. Our money, so hard earned.
Papa makes Leo a gift of a shirt and a pair of trousers. Maman packs the instruments and the old linen scrim; our silk one is still back at La Perl. The fantouches are more difficult—we have nearly fifty, and though they are light, many are bulky. We can’t bring them all. But which ones?
I dither for a long time—packing is delicious distraction—but the wisest choice is to start with the ones that would cost the most to replace, the biggest puppets, the most colorful. The Tiger, the Peacock, the King of Death, the Flame. And of course my dragon. It may be untested, unfinished, but it is beautiful, and too expensive to burn.
So I take up my hammer and the copper casings and set to work piecing it together. When I am through, I wrap it along with half a dozen other fantouches, making lumpy parcels topped with canvas to keep out the rain. At first, they writhe, protesting being packed so tightly, but I whisper as I load them onto Lani’s back. Be still, be still.
I could bring more with me if I wasn’t going to carry the rifles. But I keep my parents talking in the hut while Leo makes up our packs, with clothes and bedding wrapped around the weapons.
Everything else, we leave in the back of the roulotte, which is where we build the pyre.
Papa sings as he works, dragging old branches from the jungle, pulling bark into kindling, but though his voice is strong and brash, his smile wouldn’t fool a discerning audience. Still, Maman and I pretend along with him, and since the instruments are packed, we sing too. My voice is rough, untrained. Between the two of us, Akra was always the better singer. Still, I know the harmonies, and for a moment . . . sefondre. We have come together.
But Leo is standing a bit apart, and he does not pretend. After all, he has the least to lose. “Why?” he says. “Why not just leave it all here for someone else to find?”
“It’s tradition,” I say, and it’s not truly a lie: in our village, we burn the dead. “These fantouches belong to my family—to my ancestors. If we can’t use them, no one else should.”
He grits his teeth, but he doesn’t argue. I am grateful. It pains me far more than it does him—but I know the story of the third brother. It would be so much worse to condemn these souls to rot in
their skins. Then, as I toy with the lighter, I remember how I’d tucked the soul of the kitten into the page for safekeeping. Do I truly have to leave them all behind?
There, under the branches and the dry leaves: the rest of the flyers—the ones we were going to use in Luda. I pull out the stack and set it beside me as Papa lights the kindling. The fire starts slow, tentative, but soon enough the paint of the roulotte starts to bubble, and the carvings to char. All the work—months, years—all that’s left of our touring, all that’s left of my uncle. Papa has stopped singing, but his lips still move in a silent prayer before he turns to go back into the cottage.
Maman and Leo follow, but I can’t go—not yet. Through the open door, I watch for the fantouches to burn.
As the souls drift free with the bright embers, I draw each of them into a slip of paper. A pangolin freed from the leather puppet of the Swine, my hummingbirds from the two lovers, the old dog from the roulotte itself. The sweet scent of sandalwood weaves through the char of burning leather as it all falls to coal and ash. And as the pages fill with souls, I bind them with a ribbon—a collection to carry with me across the sea. The pages stir gently; anyone watching might think it was only the hot wind of the blaze. It wraps around me, smoky warmth, and dries the tears as they fall.
By dawn, I am exhausted, and the fire is too. The lingering wisps of smoke will not stand out, not now. As sunlight shines over the trees and raises the steam from the greenery, the little kitten approaches. My surprise is a distant emotion beneath the bone-deep weariness, but I smile when she makes a half-hearted attempt to bat at the pages.
She is as pale and wan as I feel—is it already three days since I freed her from the flyer? “Why haven’t you gone to a temple?” I say to her, but she only paces around the book.
I look for more pages, but I’ve burned the ones I haven’t used. Suddenly, fresh tears spring to my eyes. I dash them away. Ridiculous, isn’t it? After all I’ve let go? But when she puts a paw on my knee, I know I can’t just let her fade away.
Where to put her? A leaf? A scrap of cloth? Somehow I can’t bring myself to offer her such a crude skin. But I have one fantouche left unsouled, don’t I?
It is the matter of a moment to find my dragon in the packs—it is so large, it is hard to miss. A drop of blood, and the kitten has her claws in the leather. In a flash of light, the whole pack rustles with new life, but I rest my hand on the leather, and whisper to her. Be still.
She does—but now I am uneasy. The largest, most expensive fantouche I have ever made now houses the soul of a kitten. What is wrong with me?
But I already know that, don’t I?
And then Maman’s voice drifts to me from the cottage, along with the smell of breakfast cooking. I go inside and throw myself down beside the fire to sleep. But too soon, the food is ready, and after we eat, we grab our packs and leave the rest behind, taking the winding jungle track to the main road.
We move slowly south toward Nokhor Khat, past twisted falls of strangler figs where parrotlets scream at lemurs over ripe fruit, and stands of wild taro where raindrops pool like diamonds on the bright blue leaves. The road is never empty. There are always people traveling—farmers to market, performers to shows, armée soldiers on the march, or horsemen carrying messages. But passing from the jungle into the valley, where fields of cane whisper in the wind, we fall in with a different sort of traveler. Wagons loaded not with eggs or fruit, but with possessions, furniture, family. Grandmothers and grandfathers, riding in vegetable carts, children in their laps, nestled among their effects.
My family has traveled every year for as long as I remember; when we left home for good, we knew what we’d need to take, and what we’d have to leave behind. But these people—they have brought everything they could carry. Not just the everyday necessities like cooking pots and changes of clothes, but the fine things they couldn’t bear to let go. Fancy porcelain tea sets tucked into bamboo boxes, a copper washtub large enough to sit in, an Aquitan sewing machine on a wrought-iron base. Beautiful things, heavy things—like all reminders of home.
The first few groups we see, Papa stops to ask them why they’re on the move, but none of them agree. Many mention Dar Som, but some of them speak of rebels too. They give reports of blue-eyed demons—but do they mean n’akela, or foreign soldiers? They say they know of people who disappeared into the jungle and never came back—certainly the Tiger. Or perhaps the armée. No one knows anything, but everyone is sure of something, and they’re getting out before it’s too late. And though fear is invisible, there is a weight and size to it; it wraps round our necks, it drags at our feet, it sits on our backs like a sin, making every step a journey.
But all we can do is carry on. Toward the walls of the capital, the fort at Nokhor Khat, the docks at the edge of our country. Toward the certainty that what lies ahead cannot be worse than what we’ve left behind.
Chapter Eighteen
I can smell the midden long before I see it. At first it is just a hint of rot, the touch of decay—though still far too familiar after Dar Som. But as we trudge on and the afternoon lengthens, the scent swells like a poisonous mushroom, like a tumor. By the time we reach the fork in the road, where refuse wagons from the capital turn off the main route and trundle into the jungle, the taste of putrescence is sticking to the back of my throat.
We left my parents at the crossroad; they continued toward the long lines and the shantytowns outside the city gates while Leo and I waited for a dung cart to pass us on the track. Now we’re trudging after it. My feet ache, and my shoulders are red under the weight of the guns. Another early rain has left the road muddy and the air thick with steam. I hope for a cool breath as the green tunnel closes in above us, but it only traps the putrid humidity.
The cart moves slowly, pulled by a Chakran man under a wide-brimmed hat. His shovel and broom are thrown over the detritus piled high on the wagon—horse dung and rotting vegetables and the fly-specked carcass of a dead dog. It was a fine animal once, with a wide jaw and muscular shoulders, the sort the Aquitan aristocracy use for hunting. Now just another bit of trash.
“Walk slower,” Leo says. “The smell of that dog is about to knock me off my feet.”
“But the slower we walk, the longer we’re here,” I say, and he makes a face.
“Good point.”
So we plod after the cart, but when we pass a rumdal tree, I pluck a handful of blossoms, tucking one beside my ear and holding another up to my nose. Leo takes one and does the same, but it does little good. The smell only intensifies as we walk, until at last, we emerge again into the hot sun and a swarm of flies, both living and dead.
The midden is in a massive clearing at the base of the caldera—a swampy, stony field where instead of rice or sugar, the refuse of the city has been sown. Broken things, dead animals, waste, and detritus. And more souls than I expected. Things die here. Rats by the dozens; I might have guessed about those. But other things too—a handful of kittens, playing with the ties of the bag they were discarded in. Gulls and vultures, picking over the heaps just like their living comrades. Even a n’akela—cold fire—walking round the edge of the clearing. I try and fail to suppress a shudder. What must its death have been, here in the middens?
The street sweeper doesn’t stop to watch them, of course. He only trundles along a path that skirts the trees—the heaps near the main road are piled too high to climb. But when he peels off toward a collapsing mass midway along the glade, Leo and I continue on the little road.
We are not the only others here. People roam through the hazy air, through the clouds of insects, picking over the piles. Scavengers dressed in rags, some with long sleeves that make me wonder what’s beneath. I reach up to adjust my own shawl over the scar on my shoulder. These people are thin, desperate, but not dangerous. They keep their heads down as we pass, never meeting my eyes.
As we walk, the piles get smaller and older—bones instead of bodies, dirt more than decay. At last the clea
ring ends in a scattering of gray trunks and green vines climbing steeply up the side of the caldera that borders the city. As we step through the scraggly jungle, I see the rocky outcrop Maman told me to look for: a black pile of stone streaked with guano and sewn with thick roots.
The passage is there somewhere—a slender crack in the slab, leading beneath the city. I scan the stone, looking for the entrance, then stumble over a rounded rock. Unbalanced by the heavy pack, I fall to my knees with a grunt.
“Are you all right?” Leo takes my arm, helping me up. My stubbed toe stings, but I nod, glaring at the earth. Then my frown softens. There, in the grass, the stone that tripped me. Not a worn chunk of lava rock, but something smooth, the size of a cat. Carefully I lean down to look closer. Brushing back the leaves, I reveal a familiar sign carved into the rock—the stroke and the dot, like the sun rising: life.
A chill takes me; I step back. Leo furrows his brow. “What is this?” he asks.
“It looks like a grave.” Now that I’m looking for them, I can see stones dotting the earth—tucked between roots, peeking from under fallen leaves.
He follows my gaze. “So many.”
“And so small.” I turn back to look at the middens—the trash heaps, the refuse of the city. Beside it, the tiny graves, just outside the tunnel that leads to the temple. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I realize why Maman knew about the path. Swallowing bile, I try to keep my voice steady. “Leo . . . what do you know about Le Trépas?”
His face twists. “Enough.”
“Did you ever hear the stories about his brides?”
“That’s a nice word for it,” he mutters. “I heard they were girls from the street. He’d give them food and shelter and money. In return all he wanted was the souls of their children.” Leo’s voice falters; he glances around the clearing again. “Though maybe they weren’t just stories.”
His words settle like ashes around my head. “Do you think they knew?”
“The girls? No.” His voice is firm. “How could they?”