Jala's Mask

by Mike Grinti

  Jala looked down at her hand. Her finger was still missing. In her dreams, her hand was still whole. But though the wound was still a bright, ugly red, it didn’t bleed.

  “This isn’t a dream,” Jala said. “But this isn’t real, either. I’m still drowning in the river. Or am I already dead?”

  Her father stood behind her, dressed in clean white robes, a half-smile curling one corner of his mouth. “Not yet, my little queen. Time will pass slowly here, and we have so much to talk about.”

  “And when we finish talking, am I going to drown?” Jala asked.

  “You may,” her father said. “You may not.”

  Jala looked away from him. Far out over the water, where the bay flowed into the Great Ocean, a storm was brewing. “I know you’re Lord Water,” she said. “Pretending to be my father won’t help you trick me.”

  “You have no father,” he said.

  Jala winced. “I know what I said, but he’s still my father, even if he can’t be Bardo. I can’t just forget him and everything he’s done for me, good and bad.” She ran her fingers through the sand, let it fall through her fingers. It felt real, but the way it glinted in the moonlight was too beautiful, too perfect.

  “I could be a father to you. My adopted daughter. My adopted people.”

  Jala tossed the sand away. “No. I’m done with you. I’m done with the Hashon. You have to leave the Five-and-One alone, that was our deal.”

  “Yet you chose to stay.”

  “Because you tricked me,” Jala said. “Azi still loved me. He came for me.”

  “You didn’t believe in him,” her father said. “You wanted to be tricked. It was easier than going home and facing what you did to me, facing an uncertain future with your boy king.”

  “Maybe at first,” Jala said softly. “But I’m ready to face it now, without you.”

  “Yet you called on my power, used my voice. You want me to leave your people alone, yet you reach for me constantly.”

  “I’m done,” Jala said again.

  “It’s too late,” her father whispered close to her ear. “You’ve worn Lord Water’s mask too long, spoken with his voice too often. It’s changed you. If you go back to your islands now, you will take me with you, and your people will be changed. I promised I would leave them alone, but you will unmake our deal if you return to them.”

  “That’s not fair,” Jala said.

  “Isn’t it? When you call on my power for the greater good once more, will it seem unfair that I answer?”

  “Then I won’t use the voice again. Ever.”

  “You will,” her father whispered. “There will always be some reason. And your people will hear me, and I will be a part of them.”

  “Why wear my father’s face?” Jala demanded. “I’ve already rejected him once, just as I rejected you. Do you want me to say no? To drown in the river?”

  “I’m offering you a choice,” her father said. He reached up and put his hand on his face. When he pulled his hand away, his face came off with it. A moment ago, Jala couldn’t have told her real father’s face from this one, but now it looked like a plain wooden mask. Where her father had been a moment before stood her mother. Lady Zuri dropped the mask of Lord Mosi on the sand.

  “Perhaps a mother, then, instead of a father?” Jala’s mother asked. “The water that nourishes and feeds. That washes away the wound, that listens to you in the middle of the night. I would be a better mother than your uncaring fire mountain, don’t you think?”

  It hurt so much to see her mother again. It felt like it had been years, and maybe it had. They’d fought so often. But while her father wanted to be great through Jala, her mother had always just wanted Jala to be great.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Jala asked, her voice hoarse. This place, whatever it was, might have been outside breath and time, but it wasn’t outside tears. They stung her face and she had to blink them back.

  “Because you have a choice to make, Jala,” her mother said softly. She’d never called Jala “my little queen” the way her father had. “You think I am Lord Water, and so you think you know me. But Lord Water is a mask and a name. He is not all of me. I am the rivers and the streams, the springs and the creeks, the seas and the lakes. All the children of the Great Ocean. The Hashon think of me as one great river, but I have other names, other faces. There are other stories told about me. Stories must change to fit those who tell them. Isn’t that what your people say? So choose what our story will be. Choose what my mask will look like when you wear it.”

  “Mother of Water,” Jala said, as if she was tasting the words. And they did have a taste, warm and comforting, familiar and old. But . . . “No. You’re not my mother, or my people’s mother. You would drown us.” In some ways, her mother’s expectations for her had been as smothering and controlling as her father’s ambitions.

  “Only a child thinks they can ever be free of someone else’s influence,” her mother said with a laugh. Then she reached up and took off Lady Zuri’s face, dropping that mask on the sand as well. Now it was Askel who stood before her, eyes burning with fever in his gaunt, gnarled face.

  “There are other kinds of sorcery in the world, my queen,” he said in his scratchy voice. “The power of your fire mountain burns away your life. But you could use the magic of water to heal. You could live beyond your years as a great sorcerer-queen. You could rule the islands with wisdom and sorcery and fear, and they would all bow to you and your daughters.”

  “I won’t make anyone bow through sorcery,” Jala said, though she knew she’d done just that only a short while before. “And to live longer, someone else would have to live shorter. There’s always a cost for these things, no matter where the magic comes from. I’ve learned that much at least.”

  Askel smiled his toothless, hungry smile. “Small lives are often cut short in service of greater ones. You risked many such lives to get here, and your king risked more to bring you back.”

  “I don’t want any of this,” Jala said. “Any mask you give me would swallow me up again. There’d be nothing left of me.”

  The sorcerer took off his mask. Marjani looked back at her, her mouth turned down in worry. “And who are you?” her friend asked. “Queen Jala of the Bardo? Another mask. Jala, daughter of Mosi? Another mask, and one you’ve broken. Jala, love of Azi? Love is a mask, too, and it can swallow you up as certainly as any power or sorcery. You humans die a thousand times across your little lifetimes, and what’s left of the people you once were?” She reached down and scooped up the glittering white and yellow sand, let it run through her fingers just as Jala had. “A scattering of memories. A lesson learned, perhaps, though not as often you’d have yourselves believe. Is this so different?”

  “Stop it,” Jala said. She forced herself to stand. “This is just another trick. You twist everything around, just like you twisted Azi’s words to make me think he wouldn’t come for me. You have no right to use her face or her voice.”

  “But these are your masks,” Marjani said. “Every title, every loved one, every duty, every hope, and every dream is another mask. You can’t be free of them.”

  Jala hesitated, looking back at the distant storm. It didn’t look like a storm at all, now. Just a great roiling darkness swallowing up the moonlight and giving nothing back. “I could let myself drown.”

  “Even the dead sometimes wear masks,” Marjani whispered. “And they can’t ever take them off.”

  Jala shuddered. For a moment she could almost feel the weight of cold river-water pressing in around her, feel the tightness in her lungs. “Let me go,” she said. She felt so small, so lost. “Let Azi and Marjani go. We don’t matter to you.”

  Marjani took a step toward her, reached out, and took Jala’s hand in hers. Jala flinched at the touch, but didn’t pull away. Marjani bent forward and kissed Jala on the forehead. “You know so little of what does and doesn’t matter. Can’t you tell how much I love you?”

  “What could yo
u possibly know of love?” Jala demanded.

  “I’ve loved since the beginning of time. I’ve loved stone and sky, animals and humans, gods and demons. I’m more full of love than you could ever know Love is all there is—and it, too, wears many masks.”

  Then Marjani’s mask fell to the sand. Jala didn’t look up. She knew who would speak next, and she didn’t want to see him like this. She stared at the mask on the sand, Marjani’s face carved and painted on the dark wood.

  Azi whispered in her ear. “I love you. My queen, my Jala. That’s why you get to choose. Choose my name, choose the mask you’ll wear to be my lover. Choose what form your goddess will take. You can’t be free of me any more than you can be free of any of the other masks you wear—those you love, those you hate, all the years you’ve lived and the memories you’ve made. But those masks were made slowly over time. My mask, the mask you’ll wear to hear my voice, the mask that will shape my thoughts and my power, that mask you can make now. Choose the way your people will know me. Choose the way you’ll love me.”

  She thought about Azi, about the way she’d been afraid he had forgotten her as soon as she was gone. Would he still love her if she became . . . whatever it was that wearing a god’s mask made you? But to her surprise, she found that she wasn’t afraid to find out. Either he would love her no matter what she became, or he wouldn’t. Just as she might love him or not. They still knew too little of each other, and they’d both changed so much already.

  She looked at the other Azi standing before her, wearing his I’m really just a simple sailor smile, warm and secretive and just a little humble. She looked at his eyes and his lips, at the ugly scar on his forehead and the slightly weathered lines the ocean and the wind had left on his face. The Five-and-One were scarred now too. All of them had changed and would have to keep changing, and she had no idea where they would end up in the end.

  “I don’t know what kind of goddess we’ll need, or want,” Jala said. “So I choose the not knowing. I choose all the possibilities at once. I choose the newly broken spring, the creek that hasn’t yet cut its path, the river that suddenly changes its course. I choose to wear an unpainted mask, and I’ll draw on it with chalk and erase it and draw on it again. The Hashon chose a book that can never change, but I choose the story that’s told in a hundred different ways, the story that can change from day to day depending on what the listener and the teller need it to be.”

  She smiled, and she was full of fear and sadness and hope. She felt free. “Who knows what kind of goddess the people of the islands will want? We’ll find out together.”

  For just a moment, Jala looked into her own face, and the other Jala smiled at her, and her eyes were filled with stars. “It’s done, my queen,” the other Jala said, and kissed Jala once on each cheek and her forehead.

  Then Jala was alone, and all the masks were gone but one. The other masks had been polished, lacquered, and painted. This mask was unpainted and roughly carved. The masks of the Hashon lords all had small slits for eyes and no opening for the mouth at all. This mask had large slits for both. Wearing Lord Water’s mask had felt like she was being swallowed up, but this was a mask she was meant to see clearly out of. A mask she could wear and still speak with her own voice.

  She reached down and lifted the mask up to her face. Though it had looked rough, the inside felt smooth and warm, and it tickled her skin like hot springwater.

  Something tugged on her. Something far away. She hesitated, because it was easier to stay still than to move, but the pull was strong, dragging her toward the water, into the water. Into the cold dark. Into that place of pain and fear again.

  Only this time the cold and pain didn’t go away.

  She was dragged through it and out of it. She tried to cry out, but instead she choked and sputtered, heaving up river-water.

  Jala opened her eyes to see the stars. For a moment she thought she was still in that other place, the place between . . . but then she tried to breathe and ended up on her side, coughing into muddy ground. Someone else was doing the same nearby. She forced herself to look.

  She saw Marjani first, then Azi, lying in the mud only an arm’s reach away. They were on the bank of the Hashana River. Five Hashon dressed in white robes stood away from them, watching her. Behind them the city loomed like a shadow against the star-filled sky.

  The river had carried them out of the palace and the city. It seemed impossible that they hadn’t drowned. But then she remembered the choice she’d been given, and the choice she’d made, and it seemed less impossible to her. She glanced back at the Hashon and realized one of them wore Lord Water’s mask.

  Well, if these five wanted to kill them, they could have by now. She tried to stand, then thought better of it and crawled over to Azi and Marjani.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Are you?” Azi asked as he sat back and met her gaze. He and Marjani wore identical expressions of worry.

  “You mean am I myself,” Jala said.

  Azi nodded.

  “One of the Hashon over there is wearing that cursed mask,” Marjani said hopefully. “Does that mean they’ll let us go? That you’re free of it?”

  “I . . .” Jala hesitated. Would they understand? Everything she’d said in that other place had felt right, but now that Azi was in front of her it was a lot harder to think about him rejecting her. “I’m free of Lord Water and his mask. And I’m definitely myself. For good this time.”

  Azi breathed a sigh of relief. “We just need to find my friends who helped me here and then we can go home together.” He touched her cheek with his hand and leaned in to kiss her.

  Jala put her hand on his but pulled back from the kiss. He stopped. “But I’m not the same Jala I was before I left.”

  “What do you mean?” Marjani asked.

  What could she tell them? That there was a water-god in her head that wasn’t Lord Water anymore, but something new, and that she had to help choose what kind of god it would be? That she had to choose what she would be? That all the Five-and-One would be affected by the choices she made?

  Well, maybe that last one wasn’t so new. She was still the queen, after all.

  “I’ll try to explain,” Jala said. “Later. When we’re on our way home. But I’m still me. I’ll always be me, even if I change.”

  “Are you sure?” Marjani asked softly.

  “I’m sure,” Jala said, and she hugged her friend tightly.

  She turned to face Azi. “More sorcery?” he asked.

  “Something like that,” she whispered. “Just not the same as before. It’ll be all right, I promise.” Then she added, “I hope.”

  He sighed, and for a moment she was afraid of what he’d say next. But he just smiled at her. “Then let’s go home.”

  As the First Isle came into view, Jala wished she could fling herself onto the sparkling white sand of the beach and lie there for hours. Or for weeks. Small sprays of saltwater touched Jala’s face as the ship rocked over the waves, and somehow even the water felt like home.

  “We’re finally home,” Azi said.

  “Are you afraid of what we’ll find when we get there?” She touched his ear, where the King’s Earring usually hung.

  Azi shook his head. “No. This is home. Even if we’re not king and queen anymore, there will be a place for us. And if there isn’t, we’ll just become mad sorcerers on the Lone Isle. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? But you’ll have to promise not to cut off any more of your fingers. I like your fingers. And you can’t start talking to the fire mountain. One god inside your head is plenty.”

  “I’ll try,” Jala laughed. The laugh turned into a burbling cough. She gripped the bulwark and leaned out over the side to spit up a mouthful of brackish river-water. Azi rubbed her back with concern while she spat, then stood to find her something to drink. The water seemed to build up in her lungs like a small spring, and for a while on their journey back to the ocean she’d wake in the night think
ing she was drowning.

  She’d gotten used to it now, mostly. It was a reminder of the bargain she’d made, of the power she carried within her. Not that she thought it was at all necessary, but the water god didn’t respond to her complaints. And the water was better than the whispers she heard in the quiet hours of the night when she closed her eyes, better than the strange, disjointed dreams she could never quite remember. Whatever the future held, it wouldn’t be easy.

  Azi returned a minute later, followed by Marjani. He had a mug of honeyed tea that he gave to Jala. He’d bought it for her in the markets of the Constant City, and she sipped it gratefully. It soothed her throat, raw from the water and still burning from speaking with Lord Water’s voice back in the palace.

  “Will you stay with us on the First Isle?” Azi asked Marjani. “Assuming Jala and I still have a place there.”

  “I think so,” Marjani said, looking out over the water at their destination. “At least for a while, when I’m not visiting the other islands. They seem so small now, don’t they? I know it’s only because they’re far, and yet . . .”

  “They probably shrunk,” Jala said as she leaned into Azi and let him wrap his arms around her. “That happens sometimes. It’s a good thing you came with me, or you’d have shrunk too.”

  They laughed. It felt good to laugh, even if it hurt her throat and almost made her spill her tea. Azi held her closer. She could feel his worry, but he said nothing. She’d told him everything already, and there was nothing left to say for now. So he joked sometimes, and watched her with concern at other times, and he held her and brought her tea, and when they could sneak time alone together they kissed and touched and forgot everything else.

  There wasn’t much kissing to be had aboard the grayship, unfortunately. Another reason she couldn’t wait to get home, and another reason she hoped they still had rooms of their own on the First Isle.