The Demon of the Air

by Simon Levack

We were entering a little sheltered cove—probably nothing more than a gap between plots of reclaimed land. There was no one else about—nor would there be by now, I thought, with dusk falling—but we did not quite have the cove to ourselves. There was another boat here, tucked away among the sedges, although I caught only the briefest glimpse of it.

  We must be close to our destination, I realized, and if I was going to get away now was the time to do something about it.

  “Is this it? Have we arrived yet?” The only answer I got was a tense silence, broken only by the sound of water lapping against the side of the boat.

  The boy stood up in the stern, with his paddle poised a hand or two above the water, but he did not dip it in. He was staring at something behind my head.

  His lips moved but for a moment no sound came out.

  From somewhere behind me, I heard a voice. It was strangely muffled and I could not make out the words, but it was surely a voice.

  The man behind me turned toward it, unthinking. I felt the knife leave the side of my neck and I moved. I threw myself forward, launching myself at the boy: in the narrow space of the canoe it was the only way to go.

  “Look out!” he shrieked, raising his paddle.

  His father went for my hair again, but this time he was too late, because I was already moving. He seized a lock, bunching it in his fist, but my own weight tore it out by the roots. I heard it rip horribly over my own scream of pain but I was still moving. I hit the youth with my shoulder. He fell over backward and I landed on my knees on top of him, my arms flailing wildly at his face.

  I must have hit the boy three or four times before his father dragged me off him. Yet again he had my hair, using it now to haul me backward onto my haunches as he bared my throat once more for the knife.

  “No! No! No!” I heard Nimble’s urgent cries over my own howl of pain and the sounds from behind me, the loud splashing as of something heavy moving about in the water and that voice, clearer now but still unintelligible.

  “I’ve got to kill him!” The voice behind was almost shrill. “Can’t you see what’s happening? We can’t deal with him as well! Get rid of him now! What else can we do?”

  The youth was on his feet again. His face was bloody from my attack and his eyes were wide and wild and he had the paddle in his hand, raised much too high above the water.

  “We can do this!” he shouted.

  With my hair gripped in Curling Mist’s fist I had no chance of dodging the blow. I could only watch as the flat of the paddle’s blade swung in toward me, to smash into the side of my head.

  After the boy hit me with the paddle I had no idea where I was or how I had got there. I could not hear anything over the roaring in my ears and I could not open my eyes. I tasted blood: it filled my nose and mouth and stopped my breathing. My scalp seemed to be on fire and someone was battering the side of my head with a flint axe and my bowels were churning.

  I panicked. My arms and legs hit out and thrashed madly. One of my knuckles struck the wooden side of the canoe, yielding a jolt of acute agony that I noticed even over the pain in my head and my guts. The flat of my hand found the same surface again and felt its way to the top and clutched it spasmodically.

  Clinging to the canoe’s side and hauling one-handed got me, somehow, onto my knees. My other hand batted at my face and came away wet. It rubbed some of the blood away from my eyes and out of my eyelashes, where it was fast congealing. I coughed and choked. I opened an eye, too briefly to see anything. I thought I heard someone shouting.

  I tried to stand then, too quickly, because the world was rocking from side to side, and when I put an arm out to grab something to steady myself there was nothing there. Without uttering a sound, I toppled out of the violently pitching canoe into the freezing waters of the lake.

  It was like falling through a sheet of ice, so cold I could not feel how cold it was, and as dark as a cave. I could not think. I could not move. My body was trying to swim, seemingly without any impulse from me, but all I could do was twist about, as helpless as a sick fish. For a horrible moment I thought some water monster had got me; then I found my cloak had wrapped itself around me and pinned my arms to my side.

  I had another moment of unthinking panic while my arms strained against the heavy, wet cloth and my legs kicked uselessly. Then the sodden fibers of my cheap cloak finally gave way and I was able to move my arms.

  With the last of my strength, I struck upward. The tattered remains of my cloak caught around my ankles and I kicked them angrily away. I looked up, opening my eyes for the first time in the cold fresh water.

  I could not see the surface. A large dark shape loomed above me. Just as I realized what it was my head hit something hard.

  I had come up under a boat.

  I pushed against the rough, pitted wood with both hands, desperate to be free of it before the dizziness that was starting to come over me became too much and I forgot which way was up. I felt movement through my palms: the whole great mass stirring sluggishly and little tremors shooting through it, as if the vessel above me were full of people running from side to side. I was half drowned, I thought, and must be hallucinating: the canoe had not seemed so large.

  Then the shadow over my head was gone, and I was on the surface, gulping air in great anguished whooping gasps.

  At first I could hear nothing except my own breathing. I trod water, while I looked around me for the shore. I had to make for it as fast as I could, but my strength was almost gone and the cold was creeping deep into my bones, bringing with it a strange lethargy.

  I became dimly aware that there was some sort of commotion going on. I heard shouts of anger or alarm. With my ears still full of water I could not make out any words and I was not listening anyway, but then, for all my growing indifference, came something that made me look up.

  “Yaotl!” The voice was still indistinct but I could not mistake my own name. “Nimble! Where’s Yaotl?”

  I peered up the boat’s side, listening to the shouting and the sounds of running feet.

  A face appeared above me.

  The youth and I stared at each other, both too astounded to speak or move. I saw streaks of blood on his cheeks and neck. It had not had time to dry since I had hit him.

  “Yaotl!” the voice cried again.

  The face vanished without a sound.

  I swam for my life.

  5

  The shore here was man-made, the edge of a chinampa plot held together with stakes and willows. There was no easy, shallow beach for me to flop onto like a stranded fish and crawl up. On the other hand there were plenty of tangled willow roots for my numb, slippery fingers to cling to as I hauled my protesting body onto relatively dry land.

  I had no idea whether anyone had followed me from the boat. I had not heard anyone, but I did not care. I was too exhausted to do anything except collapse, face upward, in the middle of a muddy field.

  The Sun had set. The sky was darkening, turning a deep blue, and the willow branches overhead were dark jagged shadows, shot through with stars that were steady bright points in the thin, clear winter air.

  If I stayed here I might freeze to death, I thought dreamily, but I could just lie still for a moment, listening to the faint rustling of the bare branches as they swayed gently above me.

  I closed my eyes.

  They snapped open again.

  Something was moving through the branches.

  I peered straight up, looking for the movement again, wondering whether I had fancied it. Then I both saw and heard it: a large bird, its wings beating madly as it took off from a bough just above me, seemed to dither in midair and dropped heavily onto a lower limb. A little shower of broken twigs fell around me, followed by a couple of large feathers drifting downward.

  The bird perched, swaying uncertainly back and forth. Something about its brief, awkward flight made me think it was unused to being airborne.

  I tried to get up for a closer look. I slipped in the mud
under me, landing hard on my backside, and swore.

  The bird took flight. It exploded into the air, showering me again with debris from the trees as it crashed through the branches around it, and streaked off into the night, cawing loudly, and then there was nothing left but a few scattered feathers and the sound of its raucous voice over the water.

  I do not know how long I stood there, staring after it. It was long enough for the Moon to come up because, when I picked up one of the long, stiff feathers and examined it, I noted how it glistened in the silver light, and how deep was its red color.

  I was trembling by then, but not from the cold. It was a natural reaction, I told myself, even for one who had been a priest, when confronted with a message from the gods: for the bird had to have been an omen.

  I had not mistaken its cries as it had flown away. I had heard them before, in the moments before the boy had hit me with the paddle. Now I knew them for words. But what kind of bird could utter human speech?

  “Save us!” it had cawed, over and over again. “Save us! Save us! Save us!”

  I had a long walk home from the chinampa plot. I staggered and sloshed my way across one waterlogged field after another, scrambling in and out of the icy ditches between them where they were too wide to jump, unsure whether I was heading the right way or just going around in circles.

  When I reached my master’s house I was exhausted, cold, wet, hungry, filthy, in pain and furious. I had had long enough to think about what had happened to me to ask myself what it meant, and to come up with the only possible answer. I stamped up the steps toward my master’s private apartments, intending, if I had to, to burst in on him there, because by now I was too enraged to care what he might say or do to me.

  I found old Black Feathers at the top of the stairway, sitting under his magnolia tree, enjoying a quiet smoke under the stars before turning in for the night. He had his eyes closed, but opened them at the sound of my footsteps.

  He sat upright. His eyes started from their sockets, his hands flew out in front of him as if to ward off an attack, and the pipe fell from his mouth and struck the floor with a clatter. He made a faint noise far down in the back of his throat.

  “You seem surprised to see me,” I said, pausing significantly before adding, “my Lord.”

  A thin streak of smoke rose from the dropped pipe into the air between us. Neither of us made any move to pick it up. I would normally have retrieved it as a matter of course, but I was in no mood to tonight. My master seemed to have forgotten about it.

  “You didn’t think I’d be back today, did you? Were you expecting to see me again, ever? What did Curling Mist want with me, anyway?”

  His hands dropped onto his knees. He relaxed a little against the back of his chair. A puzzled frown took the place of his stupefied stare, deepening the lines permanently etched in his forehead.

  “Curling Mist?” he echoed.

  “Yes, my Lord. We both know what sort of dealings you have with him and why his son comes here. You sent me to Pochtlan and they knew exactly where to find me. That’s what you wanted Handy for yesterday, isn’t it—to deliver the message? What happened—did the team from Huexotla let you down? Was he collecting his winnings? And why me?” I added, my voice rising with bitterness. “It’s not as if you couldn’t spare the money. Am I that useless?”

  Ordinarily I would never have got away with such insolence, and if repeated it would have given my master a lawful reason to put a wooden collar round my neck and send me to the market, where the only likely buyers would be priests looking for sacrificial victims. This time, however, all he could find to say, over and over again, was: “Curling Mist?”

  “You can’t pretend you didn’t know he’d be there.” As I told him what had happened to me I watched his frown deepen. When I finished there was a long, thoughtful silence.

  “Curling Mist,” my master murmured to himself, for the last time. “But that doesn’t make sense …”

  Then he seemed to pull himself together. The frown lifted and he coughed once to clear his throat.

  “I don’t understand your story, Yaotl, and frankly I don’t believe it.”

  “But you know it’s the truth!”

  “Silence!” he roared, his hands gripping his knees and his knuckles suddenly turning white with fury. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Have you forgotten who I am, slave?” He was trembling with rage, and in spite of myself I took a step away from him. “I tell you to go and find the merchant and what happens? Not only do you fail to do what I told you, but you come barging into my presence, unbidden, looking and smelling as if you’ve been sleeping in a ditch, and have the temerity to tell me what I know or don’t know! I could set you to work in the quarries for this—that would teach you some manners!”

  “But my Lord, I …” I spluttered, but then fell silent, my indignation failing in the face of his anger. In a few words old Black Feathers had reestablished our relationship of master and slave, reminding me that I was his man and not my own.

  “I’m sorry, my Lord,” I mumbled.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The trembling subsided.

  “I don’t pretend to know what you’ve been up to,” he said at last, “but from the look of you, you’ve obviously been through a lot.” I had lost my cloak, my breechcloth was torn and sodden, dried blood caked my face and neck, my legs and feet were black with mud, and a small puddle had formed on the stuccoed floor around me. “In fact,” he went on, “I wonder if you haven’t been overexerting yourself. Perhaps you ought to rest. After all, it’s not as if you’ve got anywhere nearer to finding Shining Light, or the sorcerers, for that matter. Yes, that’s it. You can spend tomorrow resting, and see if you get any fresh ideas.”

  It was my turn to stare as I realized that I was being dismissed from his sight, and that as far as my master was concerned our discussion was over.

  I crept away down the steps. It was hopeless to argue. If my master knew I was telling the truth but was denying it for some reason then nothing I could say would make him change his mind. In any event, what was I going to suggest—that he take my kidnapping up with Curling Mist, when I was convinced the two of them had connived to bring it about in the first place?

  As I headed back to my room, however, I was left with the uneasy impression that he had ordered me to rest because he wanted to keep me in his house, within easy reach, while he made up his mind what to do with me.

  6

  I crawled onto my sleeping mat, grabbing a rough old blanket with numb fingers and pulling it over my painfully cold limbs, and lay down, too exhausted to care that I was still caked in mud and blood.

  “Where have you been all day?”

  I groaned. “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “How can I?” Costly grumbled. “I threw my blanket off during the day, when it was too hot, and now I can’t reach it. I’m freezing! Also, no one’s been around to give me my medicine, and I haven’t been able to go all day.”

  Swearing under my breath, I got up and found the old slave’s blanket for him. It was too late for him to have the revolting infusion he took to open his bowels, but I found the gourd anyway so that I could give it to him first thing in the morning. I swirled the liquid inside it around and judged that he had enough to last him a couple of days.

  “That’s better. Now you can lull me to sleep, telling me what you’ve been up to.”

  I told him. I wanted nothing better than to slip into unconsciousness myself, but I was too uncomfortable. A violent shivering had come over me and my head was throbbing. At the same time the numbness that had come over my toes and fingers from being immersed in icy water and exposed to the evening’s chill was wearing off and they felt as if they were on fire.

  My companion’s only response was: “So you fancy your chances with the widow, then?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I growled between teeth clamped together to stop them chattering. “Apart from the fact that she’s fr
om a merchant family and I’m a commoner and a slave, she’s got no reason to like me. She thinks I’m part of the reason her son ran away.”

  “And she’s not your type anyway,” he added mockingly. When I ignored him he went on: “Still, I’d be more worried about this man Curling Mist. You really think our master gave you to him to settle a bet? It seems a roundabout way to go about it, though.”

  “That was my first thought. Even he might not get away with handing me over openly. I thought staging a kidnapping might be the easiest way of doing it without risking exposing himself.” The explanation sounded plausible, but I had already worked out that it was nonsense. It was simply too much trouble to go to for the sake of a trifling debt. “Besides, he seemed remarkably eager to kill me. I’d not have been worth much to him if he had!”

  But what was I worth to Curling Mist and his boy? They had wanted something from me, and me in particular. No, I corrected myself: the man would have killed me immediately, but the boy had expected me to tell him something. What information could I have that he might need so badly he and his father were prepared to kidnap me to get it?

  “Why did he let me go?” I wondered aloud, remembering that blood-streaked face peering at me over the side of the boat. I could not make sense of any of it. The boy had played his part in my abduction, and he had hit me with the paddle, although he had plainly done that so that his father would refrain from taking the knife to me. But why had he not called out when he was watching me treading water and his father was shouting for me?

  “What about this bird, then?” Costly interrupted my thoughts. “You say it talked—that could be an omen, couldn’t it? Either that or it was a sorcerer who’d turned himself into a bird. Say, you don’t suppose … ?”

  “It wasn’t one of the men I’m looking for. I’m sure they’re just charlatans. I don’t think real sorcerers would have let themselves get shut in the prison in the first place, and anyway the bird I saw looked too big to get between the bars of one of those cages. A sorcerer would have turned himself into something tiny, like a hummingbird or a swift. An omen, though …”