The Burning City (Spirit Binders)

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  Lana was startled into a denial. “But I’m not your equal,” she said.

  “You could be.”

  Lana heard her breathing grow harsh and ragged; sweat clung to her skin like the mist from a fog. Akua’s equal? Master of spirits from every quadrant? And how had Akua become the greatest witch in the islands? She had tricked people into sacrifices—countless others just like Pua, agreeing to a sacrifice they didn’t understand, and often paying for the mistake with their lives. And others, like a cobbler back in Okika, had agreed to Akua’s demands, knowing precisely what that entailed. She had manipulated and murdered and sacrificed her way to an almost unimaginable level of control. Lana thought of Ino, who had collapsed with the agony of stretching his geas enough to give Lana the black book. A geas Akua had laid on him.

  “I won’t,” Lana said, her voice trembling with such righteous anger she almost didn’t recognize herself. “I’ll die before I let myself become as cruel as you. I won’t sacrifice my integrity for power.”

  “But haven’t you already? What about your mother?”

  And it was like she was at the water temple again, Kai confronting her over what she should have known about the linked mandagah jewels. Akua was right. Lana had already crossed that line. She’d already sacrificed a life for her own desires. How was she to know that every sacrifice Akua had manipulated or forced hadn’t been for something she cared about as deeply as Lana cared about her mother? If she could justify her own actions, why couldn’t Akua?

  Or if she had a line, shouldn’t she draw it now?

  “I love my mother,” she said, her voice raw as a fresh wound. “More than you could possibly know. I’ve already become more like you than I’d ever have wanted. I’ve had to make choices no one should have to make. But if it comes to this, if I have to become you to defeat you, I will lose.”

  “Your mother—”

  “I will lose.”

  Akua’s sigh floated through the darkness like the breeze from a lake. “Oh, Lana,” she said. Pride and despair and maybe even hope.

  “Akua,” Lana said, “why are you—”

  “The death!” Akua’s voice was frantic, and then gone. Lana could see again, but the only thing in her vision was the death’s mask, glowing and quivering with the anticipation she now understood.

  No, not for the paltry harvest of souls killed in the most recent rebel skirmish.

  Her geas had run out. No binding held back the death.

  “I’m sorry for the necessity,” it said, and she thought, we are too much alike: the death, the witch, and I.

  The black book

  The spirit sea held its own dangers. Invisible from the humans who pursued us, we were like beacons in a harbor for every creature of the spirit world. Flying fish battered the mast with their tails. A giant blue octopus poked a monstrous eye from the waters and watched us balefully; Parech noticed that in its eye swam a thousand glowing eels that gnawed and snapped at one another. Of us all, Parech was the best versed in the stars, but even he lacked the knowledge to guide us safely across the ocean all the way to Essel. And here in the mirror-world of the spirits, we could not trust the sky. The moon or the sun would rise, but it made no difference to the amount of light. The stars would blink in and out without warning, sometimes careening through the sky like torchlight on the wall of a cave, and sometimes seeming as static and unchanging as a painting. And only occasionally did they resemble the constellations I’d learned in my youth. Parech hunkered among the barkcloth and dried breadfruit in the hold and attempted not to look out much. I think the spirit world disturbed him. It invalidated too much of what he knew, and constantly caught him wrong-footed. I wasn’t terribly happy in the spirit world either—because I realized I did not have a very clear idea of how to get us back—but my fascination with everything we saw made up for my unease.

  And we both had that other, unexpected reason to appreciate the whim that had pushed me to take us here.

  Here in the spirit world, Tulo could see.

  “You’re not so ugly, Aoi,” she said to me and stroked my unraveling braid.

  She bit her lip when she saw Parech, and didn’t say anything at all.

  When we were happy, the spirits would crowd around and watch. I could never see the slightest twitch of an expression on their alien faces. But their eyes (those that had them) would follow our movements. They would drift in the wake of our laughter like a child trying to catch blowflower seeds. At the second notmoonrise of our journey, Tulo started banging on one of the baskets of breadfruit and Parech sang and I found myself on my feet, clumsily going through a dance for a good harvest I remembered my mother teaching me when I could barely walk. Oh, the spirits glowed then, throwing multicolored light on our mundane skins like the sun filtering down to a reef.

  At some point, they began to join in the music. Some hummed along with Parech in voices that rumbled like the sea, like a volcano’s sleepy belching. Others pounded the rhythm against the waves and each other: tat, tat tat, tat. And still others floated around me as I danced, coming so close that I could breathe the resin and seaweed and tar of their skins, but never touching. I grew tired eventually and sprawled beside Parech. After I caught my breath, I added my voice as a counterpoint to his, and Tulo abandoned the breadfruit casks. She danced to the beat of the spirits and all of our mingled voices. It was like that time on the beach in Okika, but more primal, less human. Tulo could see them, but then, she’d always been able to see them. This was a foreign maze to us, a catalog of frightening wonders, but to her it was as familiar as a worn floor mat.

  The spirits touched her. For a few moments, one and then another appeared to dance with her, mimicking her movements as best they could. A giant dragonfly lifted her into the air and she rose, shrieking and laughing until another one brought her back down again. Parech stood up, afraid that she would fall, but I stayed sitting. I knew by now that the spirits would do nothing to hurt her. She had no need of geas or binding for this. I was beginning to understand that there were other ways for humans to engage spirits.

  The spirit sun of black and violet rose again, and most of the spirits departed. The three of us slept in the hold of the canoe, propped up against one another like flour sacks. After a few hours, I awoke to find Parech sitting beside me, soaking wet and naked except for a loosely draped loincloth.

  “You went swimming?” I asked, my voice rough.

  He grinned like he’d just won a fight. “Turns out it’s mostly a real ocean. Just some strange things in it. To think, Ana, that Tulo sees this all the time! I don’t know if I could. I think it’d drive me mad.”

  I didn’t find it as disturbing as Parech did, but I silently agreed with him. The sooner I could devise a way for us to leave, the better. “I think we must be far past Maaram by now,” I said to him. “It should be safe to take us back.”

  Parech turned his head and regarded me. He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me the great Ana doesn’t know how?”

  I sighed. “Or how to navigate back to Essel even if I could. I can barely walk north on a clear night. I can’t get us there. Tulo can’t. And you might have, if we were starting from Maaram.”

  He touched my hair, made into a frizzy halo by the constant saltwater spray. “Then we’ll land someplace safe and hire someone to navigate. We’ll be okay, Ana. You’ll see.”

  But I remembered how, just before I found a way to save us, Parech had been planning to give himself up to save Tulo and me. Parech said “we,” but he meant “you.” I wondered when that had happened. Why it seemed almost gauche to remark upon it. Part of me didn’t want to find a way out of the spirit world because I was terrified of that split.

  “It’s so dangerous,” I heard myself saying. “But I don’t think we can stay here. Maybe that isn’t safe either.”

  “Everything’s dangerous, Ana.”

  “You’re a soldier. You would think that.”

  “Almost dying every day just makes it clearer. We’r
e all of us inches from the gate. And every day, a few stumble through. We’ll all have our turn. No sense in living otherwise.”

  He meant it as sort of pragmatic comfort, but I shivered and wrapped my arms tight around my sides. I didn’t like to think of death. Not my own, much less his. I didn’t understand why Tulo said the death spirits liked to be near me—I hated make’lai more than anything.

  “I wish death would die,” I said.

  He laughed, like I’d hoped. That finally roused Tulo, who flopped onto her side and opened her eyes like she was unwrapping a piece of candy.

  “You’re both so beautiful,” she said.

  “You’re not the first woman to tell me so, Princess.”

  He reclined against a sack of barkcloth with such a bright-eyed, smug expression that Tulo elbowed him in the ribs.

  “I think we should go back today,” I said, and told her of my discussion with Parech. Tulo’s face grew still as I spoke, and when I finally prompted her for a response, she just shrugged and stood up. “Do whatever you like. You’re the Ana. I’m going swimming.”

  She approached the railing at a dead run and leapt into the waves. The ocean here resembled dense, rippling clouds of impossible shades. But it splashed like water, and when I peered over the edge it seemed that Tulo wouldn’t come to any harm. She mostly treaded, looking back at the spirits who had congregated to watch. She evinced no surprise at their macabre shapes. But though she could see the spirit world, she’d never been in it before. She could never interact with them the way she did now. Her spirit sight was only useful inasmuch as the spirit world mirrored the human one. I imagined having to reconcile the sight of the spirit ocean with the touch and feel and taste of our own.

  “She doesn’t want to go back,” Parech said, coming up behind me.

  I brushed his weapon-callused palm with my fingers. “Yes.” Tulo took a deep breath and dove beneath the waves. “Would you?”

  By the time the spirit sun had set, I’d devised a geas I thought might get us back home safely. I’d been raised believing in gods, I suppose, like most everyone else. My family had a household god—small and impotent though it seemed to me at the time—and my father would lead the rites at the start of each harvest and planting season. But that had been a small part of my life when the flood killed my parents. When my priest took me in, he taught me all the precepts of napulo, the spirits, and the great unknowing. In this age of bindings, the napulo philosophy has grown in popularity. I imagine it will only continue to do so in the future. But at the time, my priest belonged to a fringe sect that was regarded warily at best, and feared and reviled at worst.

  Because what he taught disempowered all priests, all gods, all supplications without sacrifice. There are no gods, only spirits. All the gods we perceive are but sprites and avatars—manifestations of the great forces of nature: earth, fire, wind, water, and death. The only supplications one may make are through sacrifice. The only possible interaction is through binding. Some peoples, like Tulo’s, could make geas with their “gods” through sacrifice, though this was largely unintentional. Others, like the Maaram Anas, had immediately embraced the napulo philosophy and done all they could to learn the methods of spirit binding. But what the napulo gained in power, they lost in certainty. The key tenet was unknowing: no one knows what lies beyond the gate. There were no ancestors, no afterlife, no ghosts. Just spirits and humans and nature imperfectly understood. I realized that if I wanted to become a true Ana—with that kind of power and reach—I needed to embrace everything my priest had ever taught me. I needed to understand the napulo philosophy that formed the root of geas techniques. Up until now, I’d been flying blind. When we reached Essel, I promised myself I would learn everything I could. I would become a force to reckon with, and then I’d be able to protect Tulo and Parech from anything. We’d finally be safe.

  But for now, I knew enough to be careful. I planned to cast a reverse of the very same geas I had used to take us here. Parech offered himself for the sacrifice this time, but I refused. The cut on my arm was healing, but I thought it would simpler to reopen it.

  Tulo seemed alarmed by the idea, though. “There’s other things that bind them,” she said, as I readied the knife on the deck.

  “Just sacrifice,” I said.

  “Yes, but there’s other sacrifices than blood. You think it means nothing when someone offers palm wine or a fish? Or when people spend the night in prayer?”

  I sighed. “There are no gods, Tulo. Or ancestors. Just spirits. And the cleanest way to a spirit is—”

  She smacked the knife out of my hand. It skittered nearly to the edge of the deck. “You think I don’t know that?” she said. “You think I of all people don’t know full well what sacrifice means? You don’t have to cut yourself. It’s dangerous, Aoi. Rot could set in. I’ve seen it happen. The poison snakes through your body until it reaches your heart. Parech, tell her!”

  Her outburst had made Parech uncharacteristically serious. “I’ve seen dozens of soldiers die from shallow wounds. She’s right.”

  I started to retrieve the knife, but looked at her face and relented. “Then what should I do? Get on my knees and pray until morning? Give them our breadfruit?”

  Tulo smiled slowly. “Well, why not?”

  So I returned Parech’s knife to him and he used it to hack open two of the tight baskets of breadfruit. The aroma was heady and rich, so the three of us stole a few handfuls before depositing the rest at the prow of the canoe. At this point, the spirits were obviously curious, hovering around us in a dense cloud. Parech shivered and looked over his shoulder too frequently. He didn’t complain, but I knew he’d be kissing the ocean when we finally returned to the human world. He hacked open a green coconut and we each drank from it. I hoped that would be enough to last us through the night, since I didn’t think it would be politic to take a food break while we prayed. Later, I learned that disciples of the napulo called this sort of arrangement a sacrifice of time. Some spirits are more receptive to it than others—wind, especially. The three of us got down on our knees—“a sacrifice of our comfort, at least,” Parech muttered—and when I was sure all was ready, I invoked the geas.

  “I call on the death spirit,” I said. A hush seemed to come over the menagerie of alien creatures hovering before us. They stilled, and then as one, parted. They gave the thing that came through a wide berth. Everything, I thought, comes down to respect and fear. Even for them.

  It looked just as I had last seen it, when it first took me here. White robes, a key on a rope, and an impassive mask. Like, but unlike, any god-statue I’d ever seen. “And this time?” it said. “How would you bind me?”

  I took a deep breath and hardened my gaze. “We offer our food, vital stores for our survival. And we offer our prayers until the stars set and the sun rises.”

  It sailed close, over the railing and inches from my face. “You can’t bind us with that,” it said, harsh but cruelly amused. “What do you think death is? One of your niche gods?”

  My mouth went dry. I felt Tulo and Parech tense beside me, but all I could do was croak out a helpless, “I. . .”

  “You’re very young, Ana,” it said. “Try one of these others.” It turned its cruel mask to the still crowd of spirits and I understood what it meant. And then I realized what power I must have, in my ignorance, invoked.

  “The death?” I whispered. “The godhead?”

  “It’s never so simple as you humans like to pretend. But, certainly, yes, more than I think you’d planned to call. A word of advice, Ana. Pay more attention to detail.”

  And then it was gone. No flashy exit, just vanished like a foam bubble atop a wave. I looked down at Tulo and Parech. They were staring up at me with wide eyes that caught the witchy light from the gathered spirits. But I could still feel power gathering around me, the bindings I could cast. Only now I needed a spirit I could hold.

  “Wind,” I said, pointing to a bird with silver wings and a beak li
ke a polished mandagah jewel. And from my finger I could see, like ink on paper, a line sprouting from it to yoke the hapless wind sprite around its dainty neck.

  “We give you all this,” I said, “and in return you take us back aross the border into our own land, where you may see us, but we may not see you.”

  It glared at me and made one frantic attempt to fly away. But the glowing line from my finger was getting fatter by the second and the sprite was caught. It squawked, as though strangled, and then settled on the mast to watch us balefully.

  Halfway through the night, it started to devour the breadfruit. By the time the morning came, I could feel the power we’d generated like the air before a storm.

  “Take us home,” I told the sprite.

  The passage, this time, was frightening and rocky. The ship groaned as it was buffeted by winds from nowhere. The sea and sky dropped away, leaving the ship alone in an inky black. But I felt the binding hold, and knew we’d be safe. Soon enough, the real sun pressed against my eyelids and the real ocean lapped fiercely against the canoe. Above us, the sprite squawked and tore through the remainder of the binding.

  “Good riddance,” I thought I heard it say, though my spirit sight was fading.

  Parech scrambled to his knees and kissed my forehead. I looked at Tulo, an expectant grin on my face, but she was staring straight ahead, right past my shoulder. I said her name, tentatively. She looked at me, but her eyes roamed and I realized with a shock so sudden it made me choke.

  I’d taken her home and made her blind again.

  We reached Essel three weeks later, after plying a navigator from a lonesome atoll with all of the reed mats we had on the ship. He didn’t seem concerned about his return trip, and I certainly didn’t pressure him. I’d want to get off of that island myself, had I the misfortune of being born there.