by Mel Dunay
The little girl looked up at Vipin with big, frightened eyes.
“The monster scared me,” She said. “You scared the monster. You must be scary, too.”
“Only to monsters, honey.” Vipin said gently. “I don’t scare little girls.”
Rina noticed that the girl didn’t scream or fight him when he picked her up, so maybe he had convinced her.
The three of them went back to the house. There were a few guests who had turned in early, mostly older people, and also a couple of servants in the house, who called the girl Delna, and brought salves and bandages for her injuries.
These were a mix of long, shallow scratches-which looked as if she had tangled with a large housecat-and bruises, including one on her head. Rina sat the girl down on the edge of one of the beds to check her for a concussion.
“How many fingers do you see?” Rina asked.
“Two,” The girl answered, which was correct.
“Okay, I’m going to move my finger around. Try to follow it with your eyes without moving your head.” The girl managed this.
“Well I think she’ll be okay for now,” Rina said to the old housekeeper. “But hopefully we can get the doctor to look at her.”
“I’ve already sent someone to fetch him, ma’am,” said the housekeeper. “Along with the little one’s parents.”
The doctor and the parents arrived shortly after that. The doctor confirmed that Delna would be all right physically, and the parents wanted to hear what had happened in private.
The doctor left quickly, and Rina and Vipin were about to step outside the house when Delna said: “I don’t want to talk unless they are there.”
Delna’s mother frowned, but the girl said: “It’s scary to talk about it. I want them here.”
Delna’s father gestured for them to come back. Rina obeyed, and Vipin followed close behind.
“I went to the house to bring some more food, like you told me,” The girl began, “But when I got close to the house, there was something watching me beside the neighbor’s house.” She shivered, and her mother hugged her closer. “It jumped out at me and I ran.”
“You should have run back towards the other people,” Delna’s father fussed. “You would have been safe there.”
“I didn’t think of that,” The little girl’s eyes were as huge as an owl’s. “I ran, and then I tripped, and it was right there. It started slapping me and scratching me. I think it was laughing. I knew it was going to eat me.”
Vipin crouched down and put himself at Delna’s eye level. “No, honey,” Vipin said. “It probably didn’t want to eat you. It did want to scare you, but mostly so it could scare the grownups as well.”
“Why?” Delna asked.
“What was this...thing? Why would it do a thing like that?” The girl's father demanded.
Vipin sighed. “I don’t know for certain. That’s what I’m here to find out.”
Rina blinked. Had he just said what she thought he’d said? It made sense, given his fighting skills and how calmly and neutrally he had discussed the old stories earlier, and the possibility that there might be something to them. But even so, what he’d said had startled her.
“Are you some kind of government investigator?” Delna’s mother asked.
Vipin put his hand gently on the little girl’s head before standing back up. “Sort of, but not any kind you’ve heard of. I investigate things that don’t make sense.”
A number of things about him that hadn’t really made sense to Rina began to fall into place.
“I thought you were a folklore expert, sent to study our quaint mountain ways,” Delna’s father said sourly.
“Our country includes a dozen major languages and hundreds of dialects, thousands of local festivals and millions of local customs,” Vipin said.
He went on. “I am required to study and understand them, not to assess their quaintness or lack thereof.” He showed his teeth in a grim smile.
“But how does that tie in with investigating...whatever this is?” The mother asked.
"The Empire that conquered us, about two hundred and fifty years ago, introduced us to many forms of technology, and to the scientific method,” Vipin said.
“Actually we improved on what they taught us,” Rina quipped. “Now they’re dependent on us for their computers, for instance.”
Vipin nodded. “But there was much knowledge lost under the Empire, and many things in this world that we cannot account for with modern science. Sometimes the old folk stories, the old customs, offer clues about...things like this.”
“Shaipinob Bhana,” Delna’s mother murmured.
The father’s eyes widened. “The Mountain King’s sister? Is that what attacked my daughter?”
“It didn’t look like a woman to me,” Rina volunteered. “Something very thin and very strong. It reminded me a little of a spider, a little bit of a big cat.”
“The Sister of the Mountain is not a woman anymore than the Mountain King is a man,” Delna’s father said. “At least if you believe the old stories. They are elemental spirits in solid form.”
Rina suppressed a shiver. Dim echoes of far more horrible stories, that had been told to her as a child, echoed in her mind.
“But if the Sister is back, then that means the Mountain King...the brides...oh no!” Delna’s mother said.
“You must talk to the council of elders as soon as possible,” She said to her husband. “The brides may be in danger. We must try to keep them safe.”
Her husband looked somber. “In the old stories, any attempt to withhold the Mountain King’s brides from him meant that the price was taken in another way...from the innocent ones.”
He looked as his daughter as he spoke. “Barleyfields may end up having to pay the price one way or another.”
“Could Rina and I have a word with the two of you in private?” Vipin asked, with his heavy-handed courtesy.
The four grownups stepped into the other room.
“That thing certainly wants you and the others to think that the price must be paid one way or another,” Vipin said.
“Doesn’t it?” Delna’s father asked.
“But we are not our ancestors, who lived in fear of spirits and our fellow man, and were conquered. We are a free, civilized country struggling to better ourself.”
“And that is supposed to make me less frightened?” The girl's father demanded.
“It is supposed to make you the right kind of frightened,” Vipin replied. “This thing might be some kind of wild animal, in which case you’d try to kill it in self-defense the next time it attacks...”
Emphasis on try, Rina thought.
“...Or it might be a thinking being, in which case it has no more right to take our children from us than a dacoit or a serial killer. We hunt those down with extreme prejudice.”
“Brave words,” The father said. “If you know how to kill such a creature.”
But his wife looked at Vipin and Rina with a wild hope dawning in her eyes. Rina felt a little uncomfortable at being included in that look.
“I believe I do,” Vipin said calmly, “And if I’m wrong, I plan to find out how.”
“So why didn’t you kill it this evening, Mr. Hotshot Government Agent?” The girl's father demanded.
“Because there were people in danger, sir,” Vipin answered severely.
“I could not leave Miss Rina and your daughter to go chasing after the thing in the dark. Especially since the stories claim that more than one creature haunts this mountain.”
Rina thought back to that moment where she had seen him tense, poised to plunge into the darkness after the creature and yet holding back.
There was a silence, and then Delna’s father spoke.
“I’m sorry sir.” He said. “We do owe you a debt of gratitude. If you like, I can help you plead your case before the council of elders.”
“Are they meeting tonight?” Rina asked.
“I’ve sent messages ar
ound, and they will probably be meeting later in the evening to discuss what happened to my daughter and what to do about it. They don’t know the details yet.”
“I will certainly do what I can,” Vipin said.
“I’m game,” Rina said. “But I need to call my parents and warn them that there is something running loose on the mountain.”
She spent the next hour or so trying her parents’ phone numbers, but kept getting a message telling her that the number she had dialed was “not available.”
This did not surprise her. The reception up in Thundermouth was a bit shaky. A person could have signal one minute and lose it the next without moving away from the spot you were at, or the weather changing, or anything like that happening that might account for the change.
This was why her mother had texted her about the Royal Summerton Tea instead of calling-she were less likely to get cut off, and the phone could always send the text message the next time it had any coverage.
Finally, Rina sent a text message to her father saying: “Urgent, call me” and was just about to put her phone into power saver mode when Vipin texted her saying: "Council is meeting. Am at front door of your friend’s house, where do I go?”
Rina smiled at his confusion, texted “Stay put, wait for me” and went to collect him.
When Rina and Vipin arrived at the town hall, they found only Delna’s father plus a private session of the council, with the five elders themselves in attendance along with one very old woman, not normally part of the council, whom Rina knew slightly.
The lady was called Raki, and Rina had heard that she was over a hundred years old, perhaps as much as a hundred and five. A full session of the council would have been public, with any adult in Barleyfields allowed to offer their opinion or advice, even though only the five elders would be making the decision.
Even teenagers could make their voices heard at a full session, if an adult relative vouched for them and asked permission for them to speak.
Rina felt a slight chill; it would have been more tedious to talk about this before a full council session, but it would have been public, and the whole town would have known what she and Vipin saw attacking the little girl.
A private session could mean that this was all the people who could be brought together on short notice, or it might mean that the council was planning to sweep this under the rug.
Which would have been bad enough if the harassment of the little girl had been done by a human or a wild animal, but if it was something else altogether... Rina suddenly realized that her hands were clenched into fists, and she took a deep breath and spread them flat.
The advantage to the private session was that it moved quickly. The eldest man on the council stated that there had allegedly been an attack on the little girl, and called on her father to tell the story.
He started off by giving a rather full version of his family’s pedigree; which at least helped Rina make sense of the ties between his family and her friend’s family: the man was from Skymarket, and a distant cousin of Kajjal’s mother, but he had married a Barleyfields woman. Then he described what his daughter had been through.
Nothing he reported contradicted Rina’s memories of what happened in any major way. Then the man summarized Vipin’s and Rina’s rescue of the girl, and the council asked Rina to speak.
She gave her account as simply and calmly as she could. She noticed that Raki was watching her intently.
“Is there any reason we should hear the other outsider’s version?” The leader of the elders asked Delna’s father.
“It will probably be the same as Miss Rina’s,” The man said. “But he claims to be a government investigator who deals with this kind of thing.”
Another elder looked over at Vipin.
“You may present your credentials now,” the elder said in a tone that implied that he he didn’t think Vipin had any.
“The Ministry of Culture does does not issue credentials of the kind you mean,” Vipin said.
“Not for people like me. If I gave you the phone number of my superior, and you called him, he would tell you that I am a ‘cultural investigator,’ which is true, and that my job is to observe local customs all over the country of Jaiya, which is only partially true.”
“So what would be the full truth?” The elder asked snidely.
“I am a deniable asset; I have to be. The Empire and all its peers would mock our country as backward and superstitious if it knew we had agents whose main task is to deal with Zatas and Oldbloods.”
Raki sat up a little bit straighter and watched Vipin more intently. The elders looked frankly skeptical.
One of them burst out laughing. “So this is what they spend our tax dollars on, down in Rivertown?”
“This and many less useful things,” Vipin retorted. “I should warn you that if you make a fuss about my claims, you will be quietly fined for obstructing a government agent in the course of his duties.”
There was a silence at that, because he was threatening them exactly in the place that would hurt them the worst, in Rina’s opinion: their wallets.
“Then why are you telling us this much?” Another elder asked.
“Because a girl was threatened tonight,” Vipin said. “And unless the creature or creatures is stopped, there may be more than threats.”
“You think this is the Mountain King’s Sister, harassing us until her brother gets his brides?” One elder scoffed.
“I think it is the creature those stories come from,” Vipin replied. “A Zata, an Old One, the kind of thing sometimes called a guardian spirit, although this one doesn’t seem interested in guarding humans.”
“So now we are splitting a fairy tale as thin as a hair into two fairy tales,” Another of the elders said.
“And you, young man-aren’t you are ashamed of yourself? You’re a strong, healthy educated man-a brave one too, if what the young lady from Thundermouth says is true-and yet you’re parroting old wives’ tales.”
The elder very pointedly did not look at Raki when he said this, but the woman stamped her cane and turned her face towards him.
“It is not a tale. I saw what I saw. And I remember what came before it.”
“What did come before it, Ma’am?” Vipin asked.
Rina almost broke out into a fit of the nervous giggles because he did not sound like the monster hunter that he had claimed to be a moment ago; he sounded like a little boy-or an overly eager anthropologist-asking for a story.
“Before everything else, young man, you should know that the smokeflowers bloom every nine years, altogether, and never the years in between. We call this mass blooming a masting.”
Rina was pretty sure that Vipin knew this already, but he stood patiently facing towards the woman, his head tilted to one side as if that was the only way he could be sure of catching her every word.
“But every eleventh masting, the masting that falls every ninety-nine years, is different. Even more flowers bloom. Their scent is stronger.” The woman smiled a little, then her face turned sad again. “We used to call that the greater masting. Used to, when we knew what we were dealing with.”
“You mean back when we were a bunch of hicks who sent their children with pails up the slope to the nearest spring, so that we would have water to wash in and cook with,” One council member scoffed.
He was the youngest of the elders; Rina guess that he was only in his late fifties or early sixties. And yet, in relation to this old, old woman who could remember the events of ninety-nine years ago, the council member saw himself as a rebellious enlightened youngster, putting an old fool in her place.
“That part was not fun,” Raki said. “I was one of those children.”
She sighed, and stared off into the distance.
“Many things have changed,” She said, “And I am glad of them. We have heated houses and running water now. We have toys the size of a jewelry box that let you talk to anyone in the world. But with all that we have lear
ned, we have also forgotten much.”
There was a long pause, and one of the elders cleared his throat. The old woman lowered her head.
“It was ninety-nine years ago, and ten years before Independence,” She said. “The Empire ruled from Rivertown and from Summerton in those days, not the Republic of Jaiya. It was the greater masting. Everyone was excited, whispering about the festival.”
“About the Mountain King,” The youngest elder sneered.
“The Mountain King and his Sister had faded into legend. My grandfather’s eldest uncle had once spoken to an old man from Stayout,” She named the town in between Barleyfields and Thundermouth, “Who could remember the last time a greater masting had happened.”
She smiled grimly and thumped her cane for emphasis.
“You young people are luckier; all this medicine and decent food has kept me alive long enough to tell you face to face what I saw.”
“My grandfather thought the greater masting was a bad omen, and his son, who was my father, agreed. But there were many who thought that something new and exciting, something lucky, was about to happen.”
The old woman paused again. “The children of course knew better. They were telling ghost stories for weeks before the festival.”
“Then it started. Children would disappear for a few hours and then come back with bruises on their faces and long festering scratches that scarred.”
Rina glanced over at Delna’s father. He stared at the old woman with a look of horror on his face.
“The children spoke of an ugly, purple skinned lady, skinny as a spider and wearing nothing but a loincloth at her waist and a wrap around her chest, who tormented them, and sent them back with a message. Brides.”
“Did you see her yourself?” Rina asked.
“I did not, because my parents kept me close at hand all the time,” The old woman answered.
“I heard about her from my friends, and from listening to the grownups when they thought I was asleep. No, what I saw for myself was much worse.”
“The grownups talked back and forth, trading old stories. I will tell you what I can remember of them in a minute, but let me tell you the difficult part first.”