Jala's Mask

by Mike Grinti

  “Azi?” she said, her voice quivering, so quiet he almost hadn’t heard.

  Fill your sails with hope and see where that gets you.

  “I love you,” he said. And he took off the mask.

  Jala looked at the figure standing before her and knew that it wasn’t Marjani behind the mask. The shape wasn’t quite right, the way the figure stood, everything was off. She felt something different. Something familiar, something she hadn’t dared to hope for.

  It had to be a spy, or an assassin. One of Lord Stone’s devoted still fighting for a lost cause, or one of Lord Fire’s fanatics. Had he hurt Marjani? Lord Water’s mask hung on a belt around her waist. She would make him tell her, and then she would make him pay. She reached for the mask . . . and then she saw the eyes behind the mask.

  She knew those eyes. Not even Lord Water could drive the memory of them out completely.

  Her voice was barely a whisper. “Azi?”

  “I love you,” he said. His voice, his words, his breath. He took off the mask, and it was him, it was Azi. He loved her. He’d come for her.

  “I love you too,” she said. “But you can’t be here. You’re just a dream.”

  Since she’d put on Lord Water’s mask, her dreams were filled with beautiful, horrible things she could never remember when she woke. Dreams that seemed to last for years, dreams of water and stone and changing seasons. Nothing like this. Nothing so human.

  If this was a dream, it was all her own.

  There were tears in his eyes. “Jala, I’m real. I’m here. I crossed the Great Ocean not even knowing if you were alive, and you are, and we’re going home.”

  She had to shut her eyes to hold back her own tears. She couldn’t cry, not now. If she let herself go, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop. Then Lord Water’s dreams would fill her mind again. Or maybe this time it would be the other one. The Hashon called him Lord Fire, but his true fire was the fire of the mind, the fires of madness.

  How long had she been sleepwalking through her days? Weeks? Months? How long had her mind been adrift on the thoughts of Lord Water? Even if Azi was a dream, a figment, she felt the bright, sharp ache of hope inside her. For the first time she felt awake. She felt alive. Painfully, wonderfully alive.

  A small ember of her old strength stirred within her. If she could still dream her own dreams, if she could still hope for things like this, maybe she wasn’t completely gone.

  Azi reached for her, but she held up her hands, palms out. He stopped.

  “Wait,” she said. Her voice quivered, but it sounded stronger to her than it had for a long time. At least, when she wasn’t wearing the mask. “I have to say this first. If it turns out you aren’t real . . . I’m still leaving. Not just for you. For Marjani, because I can’t let her stay here with me. For my mother, who I want to see again even if she hates me. For—” Her voice caught in her throat for a moment, but she hadn’t let fear stop her yet, and she wouldn’t now. “For Mosi-No-Name, who still lives somewhere on the islands. For my cousins and my captains and what’s left of the Gana. For the Bardo and Kayet and Nongo and even the Rafa, because I’m still their queen, and maybe I can still do good.”

  Azi started to speak but then shook his head. He took her hands and held them tightly in his own. Real hands. His hands. “If I turn out to just be a dream, you should go,” he said, and his breath was warm on her cheek as he leaned closer. “Find your way back to the First Isle and break my nose for leaving you here.”

  She laughed at this, and some of the tears did come. But there were no dreams, and there was no fire.

  “If you’re not a dream, kiss me,” Jala said. And then, not bothering to wait anymore, she turned her head slightly and pressed her lips to his.

  The lips, and the man attached them, turned out to be completely real.

  For a long, still moment there was no need for words. She lost herself in the kiss, in the heat of his body, in the touch of his hands holding her tight and in the feel of his skin and his muscles under her touch in turn.

  Finally they pulled away, breathless and teary-eyed and trying not to laugh or cry and alert the palace—maybe all of the city, all of the Hashon—that they were here.

  “There really are friends waiting for us,” Azi said. “So we should go now, while we’re still supposed to be eating dinner. How long do you usually take to eat?”

  “Not that long. Not really long at all.”

  “Then we have to leave. Do you think the guards will try to stop us?”

  “I don’t know,” Jala said truthfully. “I hardly went anywhere without the mask. I hardly wanted to.”

  “If you put the mask back on, they’d let us through?”

  “No. I can’t. Not ever again.” He nodded, though it looked as though he wanted to argue. “Azi, if I put that mask on again . . . if I let Lord Water back in . . . I think I’ll lose myself forever. I’d rather take my chances with the guards. And before you suggest it, you’re not putting it on either. You’d be just as lost, and I’m not letting that happen.”

  “All right. Then we have to leave as is. I’ll at least keep wearing Marjani’s mask.” He knelt and picked the reef-and-sand mask off the ground. He lifted it to his face, but a pang made Jala reach and put a hand on his arm. She kissed him again, quickly, once on the lips and once on the cheek.

  “I’m glad you turned out to be real,” she whispered. Then she let go of his arm and let him put the mask back on his face. “Try not to kill anyone if you can help it. This isn’t their fault.”

  “Not until they try to stop us and there’s nowhere to run,” Azi said, his voice muffled slightly by the mask. “I didn’t come here for a fight. There’s more of them than there are of us, and I don’t even have a proper sword, just one of their knives.”

  Jala nodded, and in spite of her request she grabbed one of the knives off the table and slid it up the sleeve of her dress. It was better than nothing, probably, though she wasn’t sure she could actually kill any of the Hashon. Not just because she couldn’t shake the feeling that these were her people still, even if they’d become the enemy. That was part of it. But those were Lord Water’s thoughts, and Lord Water wouldn’t hesitate to kill any one of them. Hundreds had died as part of his plan. Individual lives meant little to the Hashon lords.

  But she didn’t want to be Lord Water anymore. She was tired of blood and fire.

  There was one last thing she had to do. She steeled herself and pulled Lord Water’s mask off her belt. She held it for just a moment, repeating to herself all the same reasons she’d given Azi why she couldn’t wear it. Then she tossed it onto the dinner table and sighed.

  “Now I can leave,” she said.

  They stepped through the door into a circular room with walls covered in elaborate etchings. More stories, this time cut into marble instead of written down in a book. The part of the wall that told Lord Stone’s story had been removed.

  “Where are the guards?” Azi whispered.

  “Nearby somewhere, waiting to be called. Throwing bones in some side room, probably. We’re not exactly prisoners, you know. Marjani has nowhere to go, and I’m . . . their job was to take me where I wanted to go.”

  “Would they take you to Marjani, then?” Azi asked.

  Jala shrugged. “I never asked. I’m not even sure how to ask. Their words get all jumbled in my head without the mask. Ordering them around might work, but it might only work once. I don’t suppose you know how to get to Marjani?” Jala asked.

  “She had me memorize the way,” Azi said. He didn’t seem surprised that she didn’t know, though it was hard to tell when he was wearing the mask. “I think I can do it.”

  “Then let’s go,” she said.

  Jala closed the door behind her. It blended into the design etched into the wall, so that it was impossible to tell a door was even there if you didn’t know already. The palace was filled with nooks like this, and she’d only seen a few.

  Azi started walkin
g.

  “Don’t walk so fast. I shouldn’t look like I’m following you,” Jala said. “We need to look like we belong. Not too fast, and not too quiet, either. I’ll keep talking, as if we’re having an important conversation. They can’t understand our language anyway.”

  Azi counted off turns under his breath. They turned once, passed several corridors, turned again.

  “As if? Our lives are important, aren’t they?”

  “I talk. You stay quiet,” Jala said. “You don’t sound anything like Marjani.” Though he did kiss like Marjani. Like he loved her. “It seems so long ago that we stood on the beach on the Second Isle.” Years. Decades. Did he feel the same way, or was that Lord Water’s influence on her? He stayed quiet this time. “All the things that kept us apart, they don’t really seem important anymore. I can barely remember what they are.”

  He touched her hand briefly, squeezed it, then hid his large hands from sight again.

  “Maybe when we get back we can—”

  But Jala didn’t get to finish her thought. From behind them they heard shouts and the pounding of many running feet. Azi swore under his breath and drew his knife, and Jala did the same. They ran.

  Jala focused on the feeling of her feet hitting the marble floor as she ran. What would they do when they found her? Kill her? Or put the mask back on her face? A part of her still felt like it wouldn’t be so bad. She ignored it. That wasn’t what she wanted; it was what Lord Water told her to want.

  “There,” Azi hissed, pointing toward an open door. “Marjani. Come on, we have to go.”

  As they reached the door, a guard stepped out, dragging Marjani by the arm.

  “What are you still doing here?” the guard was saying. “You were summoned.”

  “Let me go,” Marjani said in his language, though she sounded more scared than commanding. “I wasn’t feeling well and she sent me back. Let go.”

  “Marjani,” Jala shouted.

  Marjani and the guard both stopped and looked at them. At Jala without her mask, at Azi still wearing his. She could see the confusion on the guard’s face as he tried to figure out who was in Marjani’s mask if Marjani had been in her room the whole time.

  Then everything happened quickly. The guard’s hand had loosened on Marjani’s arm for just a moment, and she yanked her arm away and ran toward them. The guard sprang after her. Jala tried to stop him, but Azi was faster. He barreled into the guard from the side and slammed him into the wall. Azi tried to pull away, but in the struggle his mask had come loose, sliding down so he couldn’t see.

  The guard hit Azi once in the gut. Azi’s knife clattered to the marble floor. With one motion the guard ripped the mask off Azi’s face and drew his own knife, pressing the steel against Azi’s throat.

  “Stop!” Jala commanded.

  The guard looked up at her and hesitated. “He’s an intruder. He was trying to kidnap you. The little queen must have been working with him. I will kill them both for you.”

  Jala grasped at the Hashon tongue. It had been so easy when Lord Water was with her, but now she had to struggle for the simplest commands. “No. Leave him to me. He is mine.” Mine. My love. My friend. My king.

  The guard glanced from Jala to Marjani and back. “I will give him to Lord Water, not his wearer,” he said at last.

  There were footsteps down the hallway. No more shouting now, just terse orders.

  “Here,” the guard called out, loosening his grip.

  Jala felt her own hand, tight and clammy, on her knife. She moved her weight to her back leg, ready to attack. Azi met her eyes. He looked scared. His shoulders tensed, ready for her attack.

  But Jala hesitated. She’d never killed anyone before. She wasn’t sure now was the time to start trying. Azi had said it himself. People got hurt when knives came out, and you couldn’t depend on it not being you. Or in this case, Azi.

  She heard the thudding of footsteps. They were out of time. Either they were going to surrender and be captured, or she had to try to kill this man. There was no other choice. If she had the mask, she could make this right. If she could speak with Lord Water’s voice, if she could just remember the words, the way it felt.

  It was so close, a word on the tip of her tongue, a memory she could almost grasp.

  Jala’s throat burned, and her nose tingled with the half-remembered smell of sorcery. Her mind roiled, and she clung to the thoughts she knew were her own: her love for her friends, her family, her home.

  She shut her eyes, breathed in deep, and spoke.

  “KNEEL.”

  The sound burned her throat and tongue and lips as it left her mouth. She tasted sand and mud and river-water. Her vision blurred, and she barely saw the guard kneel down, his head pressed to the floor. What happened? Where had that voice come from? Azi was kneeling too, but she couldn’t remember why it mattered. The room spun about her and she wondered if she should kneel as well.

  “Jala!” Someone grabbed her, shook her. Marjani. A sudden sharp pain across her cheek like a splash of cold water.

  Jala shook her head, and her vision cleared. “What?”

  But Marjani was already pulling Azi up off the floor. “Come on, we have to go.”

  “Right, of course,” Azi said. He glanced at Jala. “What was that?”

  “You sounded just like Lord Water again,” Marjani said. “How is that possible if you’re not wearing the mask?”

  “I don’t know,” Jala said. “Probably just the last of his power leaving me.” Her throat was sore. It hurt to talk. “Does it matter now? I want to go home.”

  Azi started to speak, but Jala didn’t wait for him. She ran, and Azi and Marjani had to follow. She wanted to run from all of it, from the guards and Lord Water and the sound of the river lingering in her ears. But she couldn’t. There was only one way out, the same way she’d left before. Down through the river-ways beneath the palace.

  “Jala, wait!” Azi said. “Do you know where you’re going?”

  Jala nodded. Everything about that night when Lord Water’s people came for her was a haze of blood and fire. But she didn’t need to remember the way. She knew. She could hear it, feel it, even from here.

  She led them quickly through the palace, through unmarked doors and winding stairways.

  The river’s whisper grew louder as they descended, until finally they were back in the tunnels beneath the palace. The river had become a roar, an almost physical thing pressing against Jala’s ears. Or was it only in her own ears that the sound was so overwhelming? Jala didn’t want to know. The effect of being surrounded by the river was made that much worse because they hadn’t brought any light with them.

  “Which way?” Azi’s voice echoed for just a moment before the river swallowed it.

  “Turn right,” Jala said. “We just have to follow the river.”

  They waited for a little while, hoping their eyes might adjust to the darkness. Water sprayed up in a thin mist on Jala’s face. She shivered.

  “Are you all right?” Marjani asked her. Jala thought she could just make out the silhouette of her face now, a shadow in the shadows.

  “I think I should have eaten before letting him try to rescue me,” she said, and Marjani laughed. She’d wanted Marjani to laugh, because that meant she knew Jala really was all right.

  Even if she wasn’t. Even if she didn’t know what was happening to her.

  I just have to leave this place and then I’ll be fine. I’ll feel normal again, she told herself.

  “I think I can see a little now,” Azi said.

  “Be careful,” Jala said. “The stone’s worn smooth. It’s slippery.”

  She saw him nod. He splayed his arms out, pressing himself back into the wall. She did the same, giving his hand a quick squeeze. He shuffled forward carefully, and she shuffled after. The walls and floor were as slimy and slippery as she remembered. The river churned beneath them, fast and angry. It made it hard to think. It made it hard to make herself move.

/>   Jala slid her right foot forward, shifted her weight, then slid her left foot up. Again and again.

  Water sprayed in her face and lapped her feet. She could feel the current tugging at her, trying to pull her in. It called to her.

  The tunnel and the darkness spun around her.

  “Jala?” Marjani yelled into her ear. “What’s wrong? We have to keep moving.”

  Marjani was right. Jala knew she was right. But the strength seemed to have left her muscles. She felt cold and weak, and the water was still rising. It couldn’t be high tide.

  The water sloshed against her legs, her waist, and her chest. Waves where there was no wind. It was no use running. The river meant to have them all.

  She tried to slide her foot along the walkway but instead found only water. Then she was falling, the river pulling at her dress, pulling her down into the cold dark.

  The water closed over her face, and it felt just like putting on a mask.

  Wake up. Wake up, little queen.

  Jala hadn’t thought she was asleep. The last thing she remembered was falling into the river. She tried to breathe but couldn’t. She panicked and kicked her arms and legs, trying to swim, but there was no water. No air. Nothing.

  Jala. My little queen. Open your eyes.

  It was her father’s voice. But that didn’t make any sense; he was back on the Five-and-One. He’d called her “my little queen,” the way he used to. Maybe he’d forgiven her for what she’d done . . . but that seemed impossible. This was a dream, and if she opened her eyes, he would be gone.

  You don’t need to breathe here. You don’t need to be afraid. This is a quiet place, a place outside.

  “Outside of what?” she asked. She spoke without drawing breath, but her voice still echoed around her.

  Outside, her father repeated.

  It was just as he said. There was no pressure on her lungs or pain in her chest. She didn’t need to breathe. Even in her dreams she’d always needed to breathe.

  Jala opened her eyes and looked around. There were stars above her, the same stars she’d seen all her life. Palm trees grew around her, leaves swaying gently in a breeze she couldn’t feel. She was on the Second Isle again, lying on the shore of the bay where she and Marjani had gone swimming the night before her wedding.