Five Odd Honors

by Jane Lindskold

  Now they walked through a small copse of trees, trees Brenda felt she should recognize, but didn’t. Then Parnell directed her to a particular tree. With hardly a pause, Parnell lifted one hand, placed it against the smooth bark. The tree did not so much open as slide aside. They walked through the gap, into twilight.

  Three steps, four, and then they were in full light. Even had she been so inclined, Brenda would have been unable to deny that they were definitely somewhere else.

  “That easy?” she gasped.

  The sky above was a perfect blue, the winds herding a few scattered clouds that seemed set against the pale firmament for contrast, like a beauty mark on an old-fashioned belle’s face.

  The grass beneath Brenda’s feet was a rich, living green. A green that gave rise to poetry about “green and pleasant lands,” and emerald isles.

  In the distance, Brenda could just glimpse a line of what she recognized as ocean, an indigo hue to challenge the paler blue of the sky above, touched with grey and silver. Sea spray played tag with wheeling gulls.

  Brenda remembered the Orphans’ labors to make their own gate, in a warehouse smelling of cotton candy and animal feed. She remembered the wonder of scribing ornate characters into soft wood and seeing them glow as they took hold.

  It had all seemed marvelous at the time—a wonder, a fantasy come true—but compared to this . . .

  Push aside a tree and walk a step or two into fairyland.

  The Orphans’ magic seemed so clumsy.

  “Perhaps,” Parnell said. “Perhaps. Come see a bit more.”

  Brenda followed eagerly. Their path wended down the curve of the hill on which she now realized they had been standing and came into a vale. Here there were thick stands of greenery, a forest she hadn’t noticed from above. Broad-leafed trees dominated: oaks and elms, maples and ash, even the occasional mitten-leafed sassafras.

  Brightly colored mushrooms dotted the shadiest parts. Red speckled with mustard yellow. Blue splotched with green. Orange dotted with even brighter orange.

  On one of these sat a damselfly, studying them with too-knowing eyes. Had Brenda not made the acquaintance of Wasp, Nettle, and the rest, she might not have recognized the intelligence in those eyes, but now she did, and inclined her head in a polite nod as Parnell led her along.

  The forest was inhabited by more than that damselfly. Brenda glimpsed a cluster of knobby figures that might have been Oak Gall’s cousins peering out from around the trunk of a white oak. They pulled back when they saw her looking, their long, spidery limbs going this way and that.

  Brenda knew laughing would be impolite, and swallowed a chuckle. Next to her, she saw Parnell’s teeth flash in a momentary answering grin.

  By the time they left the forest, Brenda had glimpsed more of the denizens, enough that creatures part-leaf, part-branch, a bit of insect or something small and furry, no longer seemed particularly odd.

  Indeed, had she glimpsed something as normal as a squirrel, Brenda would have taken a second look, the way one does when a mouse scampers across the monkey cage at the zoo.

  Although Brenda didn’t see any animals, there were plenty of birds, their songs point and counterpoint to the sighing of the wind through the leaves and the occasional tittering from one of the many-shaped, many-eyed watchers.

  And then Parnell was guiding her toward the cave. Brenda balked a little, not liking the darkness that waited within a cleft shaped just a little too much like a mouth for her tastes.

  Wasp buzzed up at that moment, her sharp, almost insectlike face just a bit scornful. Hoping to avoid mud balls, Brenda squared her shoulders and let Parnell guide her on. She thought he might summon a light, perhaps a glowing sphere ephemeral as a dandelion clock that would provide just enough glow for them to see by.

  He did nothing so poetic, but bent down and extracted a pair of tin lanterns from where they had been cached behind a rock. Each held three fat beeswax candles. These he lit with a pack of matches bearing the logo of a campus bar.

  “Ready?” he said. “Watch your step. There is a path, but the lanterns will be our only light.”

  They went down into the darkness, Wasp buzzing along beside Parnell’s farther shoulder. It seemed to Brenda that the little wasp woman was whispering something to Parnell, but just walking and making sure the candles didn’t go out was enough to demand Brenda’s full attention.

  Besides, eavesdropping was rude, wasn’t it?

  So’s whispering, said a snide voice in her head.

  The path down was steep enough to make Brenda’s calves ache, but after the first hundred yards or so, she got enough of a sense of the footing that she could look around. Stalagmites and stalactites, muted grey and muddy brown, reached for heaven, pointed accusation toward the ground. Stone formations that looked like draped cloth or leering faces moved in the flickering candlelight.

  Brenda had toured a couple of “tame” caves on family holidays, and was immediately struck by how different everything looked without artificial lighting set artistically about. Her three candles shed sufficient light that she could see well enough to navigate, but beyond the circle of their flames, everything was pure, absolute darkness.

  Once Wasp landed on Parnell’s shoulder and stilled her buzzing wings thereshould have been silence, too, but as Brenda’s ears adjusted to the quiet, she could hear the erratic dripping of water, and something else. . . .

  Voices. Soft, high-pitched, softer, low and grumbling. Mutters, whispers, what sounded much like sardonic laughter. Then Brenda knew that this cave was as full of living creatures as the forest had been. As in the forest, the residents were taking a look at her.

  She didn’t see them, though, not by the faint candlelight, or rather she thought she did not until a rock formation that looked remarkably like a face with two asymmetrical eyes set above a bulbous nose winked at her.

  But it was the nose, not the eyes, that winked, putting the face into a whole new, rather horrific perspective.

  Brenda had read somewhere that the human mind has a remarkable ability to see human forms and features where there are none. Now, as she made her careful way along the twisting path that led deeper and deeper into the cave—when did a cave become a cavern? She wished she could look it up somewhere—Brenda began to understand why Parnell had brought her here.

  He was showing her how the human mind created human forms, then gave those forms names like pixie or bogle or leprechaun, so thought the creatures understood, classified, and tamed.

  But noses winked, and wasps gossiped, and the dark was very deep and seemed to go on forever.

  Brenda knew she was under inspection, even as she was doing her own inspecting, and it would be rude to chatter to Parnell as if no one—or no one other than Wasp—was there.

  Despite her resolution, Brenda couldn’t keep back a little cry of pleasure when she saw a glint of light in front of them, light that resolved with satisfying quickness into an exit from the cave.

  She, Parnell, and Wasp emerged into another forest, or maybe just a different patch of the same one. A lthough Brend a felt as if they had been underground for hours, the sun didn’t seem to have moved much.

  Parnell smiled at Brenda and took the candle lantern from her. There was praise in those green eyes and Brenda felt very pleased.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “A bit thirsty,” Brenda admitted. Then she frowned. “But isn’t it unsafe to eat fairy food? Doesn’t it make you lose track of time or something?”

  “Pure water is safe,” Parnell said, leading her to where a stream broke from a rock face, “and this water is about as pure as you’ll find anywhere. You can drink it safely.”

  “Swear?”

  “I swear.”

  Brenda thought about asking him to swear by something he held sacred, then shrugged. She didn’t know enough about Parnell to know what he did or didn’t hold holy. She’d just have to trust his actions, which had been, she was forced to admit, completely honora
ble.

  The water was icy, and it refreshed Brenda so that she looked about her with new interest. They’d seated themselves on the grass next to the spring, and she amused herself by trying to see who might be watching.

  “What’s next?” she asked. “Is anyone going to come out and say ‘hello’?”

  “Not yet,” Parnell said. Suddenly Brenda realized he looked more than a little sad. “You see, acushla, while my auntie Leaf and I both think you’re the one we’ve been hoping to find, your, shall I say, ‘rather judgmental’ nature has raised some doubts.”

  “Doubts?”

  “As to whether you’ll be of any use to any—except possibly the Orphans—when the trouble comes.”

  Brenda felt indignant, but more than that, she was soundly embarrassed. She had been rude, repeatedly pressing Parnell about the nature of his kind, saying without quite saying that she thought those she’d seen weird—even ugly.

  So she swallowed her immediate protest, and looked squarely at Parnell.

  “What do I need to do to allay those doubts?” she asked.

  Parnell rose to his feet, a single, smooth motion that made him seem more like a reed bending than a man.

  “Get yourself home,” he said. Without another word, he turned and walked into the nearest tree.

  Brenda saw a glimpse of the USC campus behind him, heard a faint, mocking giggle that had to be Wasp, and then she was alone.

  The eight scouts crossed through the final pass in the mountains of metal with emotions that mingled relief and apprehension.

  Scouting ahead had proven to be counterproductive. The footing was too uncertain, the labor needed too demanding for anyone to be asked to cover the same ground twice.

  Flying Claw took his kite aloft once or twice a day, but there simply was not sufficient ch’i to keep it up for long—not without additional loft from the heat of the sea of fire.

  As they began the descent, what attention that could be spared from watching every step sought to gauge what new challenge awaited them.

  “It looks like a forest,” Des Lee said. “A normal forest with normal trees, maybe a little overgrown, but just a forest.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Riprap said, putting binoculars to his eyes. After intently studying the area below, he let them drop. “It sure looks like a forest.”

  A little later, when they were below the mist, Loyal Wind took an opportunity to raise his own binoculars—marvelous devices he would have found a reason to use with less excuse—and surveyed what certainly looked like a vast and spreading forest.

  “There are gaps there,” he said, “and I think I see smoke, not a forest fire or cook fires. I wonder if there might be villages.”

  “Maybe,” Gentle Smoke said, voicing what they all were hoping, “this is the end of it. Maybe the element of wood simply provides the beginning of human habitation.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Copper Gong said. “We might be able to scout out a village, then go in, ask some questions.”

  “The villages,” Flying Claw warned, “might not be inhabited by humans. Remember how Li of the Iron Crutch told us the hsien had been forced out—squeezed out—of the central region. Perhaps some of the hsien were put here. There have been no monsters or armies for us to combat thus far, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be any.”

  Despite this warning, Loyal Wind couldn’t help but feel cheered. Even if Flying Claw was correct, monsters seemed almost welcome compared to what they’d faced to this point. One could swing a blade at a monster.

  He checked his armor, which he had let hang fairly slack, tightening buckles and straightening seams. He saw Flying Claw doing the same, Riprap adjusting the hang of his wolf’s-tooth staff where he could get to it more easily.

  Others imitated these martial preparations, but even so the mood as the final mountain flowed out into undulating hills was happy, even cheerful. Bent Bamboo twirled his staff and whistled a few lines from a military march. Nine Ducks grinned at him affectionately.

  “Stay out of trouble, Monkey.”

  “Absolutely,” Bent Bamboo replied with a mischievous grin that seemed to say the exact opposite. “I have learned my lesson about causing trouble.”

  As with the other areas they had crossed, the border between metal and wood was absolute. One step clanged on the surface below, the next sunk ever so slightly into soft earth, grass, and traces of duff .

  “Let me turn back into my Ox form,” Nine Ducks said, dropping her pack from her shoulders. “I’d rather carry all my gear and most of the rest of yours than have those straps digging into my shoulders for another minute.”

  “Let’s all rest,” Copper Gong suggested. “After, I can retake my Ram form and share some of the burden. Loyal Wind, I think you’d better stay human, though. We may need your weapons skills.”

  The Horse did not protest, and was glad to be relieved of making the same suggestion himself. He’d been worried that if he did, someone might think he was trying to get out of carrying his share. He had been speculating what they might encounter ever since they had spotted what might be the smoke of village fires. Flying Claw might be worried about encountering monsters, but Loyal Wind was old enough to know that human enemies were danger enough.

  Gladly they unshouldered their packs and shared around water and small snacks. Loyal Wind was aware of muscles aching and felt a small regret for his life as a ghost. Flying Claw, however, seemed immune to such little pains. He rapidly grew restless, and finally leapt to his feet.

  “Let me scout, just a little. I see what I think is the beginning of a trail. I’ve seen no game, so the trail might have been made by humans—or what ever lives here.”

  Riprap hauled himself to his feet with a great deal less grace than had the other man. Loyal Wind immediately liked him for this.

  “I’ll come along,” the big man said. “No, don’t argue. I’ll stay back and let you be as stealthy as you want, but if you get into trouble, someone should be along to back you up.”

  Other than his initial look of protest, Flying Claw did not complain. He might have a Tiger’s essentially solitary attitude toward fighting, but he was not a fool.

  “We won’t stay away more than a quarter of an hour,” Riprap said, synchronizing one of their mechanical timepieces with the one Des now strapped onto his own wrist. “And I promise to holler if we run into trouble.”

  “Good,” Bent Bamboo said. “You’re not the only ones spoiling for a fight.”

  But no cry for help came, and within the allotted fifteen minutes, Riprap and Flying Claw could be seen returning.

  “We found a trail,” Flying Claw reported, “and a small pool where we can refresh our water. There were tracks on the trail, but I couldn’t make out the details—at least not in human form. They were quite old and might have been human.”

  “Looked human to me,” Riprap concurred, “but if there are ogres or trolls here, I guess those could have made them as easily.”

  “Or bear,” Copper Gong said sourly, her voice reshaped by her Ram’s nose and throat. “Those leave very human tracks. Nine Ducks and I will be able to check the scent when we are closer.”

  The woman (now water buffalo) snorted, “So shall we load the gear and be off?”

  The luxury of walking without a pack on his shoulders was enough to make Loyal Wind contemplate taking up the song Bent Bamboo had been whistling, but caution overruled the impulse.

  The green boughs overhead were shady and welcoming, a wondrous change from the uninterrupted sky that had been their companion since they had left the wall of water. When they came to the area where Flying Claw and Riprap had found tracks, the Ox and Ram lowered their heads and snuffled.

  “Human, I think,” Nine Ducks said.

  “Yes,” Copper Gong agreed, “and so old as for the scent to be almost unreadable. Let’s get to that pond you mentioned.”

  The pond was spring-fed and large enough to invite fantasies of bathing. But althou
gh the Ox and Ram waded in deeply enough to wet their bellies, no one suggested stopping for a swim. After faces had been washed, and water bottles filled (from a location well away from the sodden animals), they returned to the trail.

  Scouting duties were taken over by Gentle Smoke, who slithered out of her shenyi with a certain smugness, since, unlike the other shape-shifters, she didn’t need to disrobe to avoid becoming entangled in her clothing. However, although she coursed up the tallest trees, often making forward progress without the need to touch the ground, she saw nothing—or rather nothing human.

  There were numerous birds, who either fled at the sight of a snake or scolded according to their nature. Occasionally, they glimpsed smaller fur-bearing creatures. Once Loyal Wind was certain he’d seen a fox. There were plenty of insects as well, an annoyance they’d been spared elsewhere: biting things that harassed and annoyed, but didn’t do much harm.

  After a time, Nine Ducks raised her heavy head and sniffed the air.

  “I smell smoke: smoke with a tinge of rice to it, as if the pot boiled over and foamed into the fire.”

  Copper Gong snuffled audibly. “I smell it, too.”

  None of the humans could smell the trace of rice, but when the wind shifted slightly, each of them caught the inviting scent of wood smoke.

  “It’s coming from the direction of that village we thought we’d seen,” Riprap said. “Do we head that direction or away?”

  “Away—” Flying Claw was beginning when a strong resonant voice interrupted.

  “Neither, I think.”

  Turning as one, they saw Thundering Heaven emerging from a thick stand of trees a few paces farther down the path.

  He was clad in armor very similar to that worn by Flying Claw, but the tiger’s face that adorned the breastplate gave the impression of bloodthirsty wrath, whereas Flying Claw’s tiger was merely fierce.

  In his right hand, Thundering Heaven held the sword Soul Slicer, the blade angled to guard rather than attack. Loyal Wind did not doubt for a moment that the hold could be shifted faster than thought.