The Ghosts of Strangers

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  Yan shook Elexa's shoulder. "What is he saying?"

  "The Likushi don't know much about dragons. They have only found one way to kill dragons, an arrow through the throat." Elexa swallowed, put a hand to her throat, imagined the point of an arrow punching through and letting all her blood out. "He doesn't know the dragon who took him."

  Yan cursed, gripped her shoulder hard and shook her, then walked toward the fire.

  "It's true, then?" Tira whispered beside her. "You can talk to ghosts?"

  Elexa rubbed her shoulder. She would have bruises in the shape of Yan's fingers. She sighed. "I told you."

  "Not so I'd believe you," Tira said.

  "I didn't want anyone to know." She took Tira's hand, meshed her fingers with her friend's. "If you knew we could talk to ghosts, what would you think about feeding them to dragons? Isn't it like giving them people to eat?"

  "Can you talk to the ghosts of animals, too?"

  "No. I hear them. I can sense their feelings a little. They make some of the same sounds they made in life, but I don't converse with them."

  "Animals are different. We eat them, and dragons eat them too."

  "The dragons eat human ghosts when I catch them and give them to Kindal."

  "Elexa!" Tira jerked her hand away.

  "But it's not like eating meat," Elexa said. She heard what she had said, thought about it, gave herself this comfort. "It isn't as though they swallow the ghosts and digest them. The ghosts live in the dragons. They become part of the dragon mind. Have you spoken with Old Peder's dragon since he died? He's there inside her. He went willingly. He was my first ghost."

  "Old Peder?" Tira said, her voice almost silent. "You've been doing this since you were six, and you never told me. You sent human ghosts to our dragons to eat?"

  "Only those who asked for it, or the ghosts of strangers."

  "The ghosts of strangers? That's horrible!" Tira said. She jumped up and left Elexa alone in the darkness with the ghost.

  "Your friend has gone?" asked the ghost.

  "She'll be back," Elexa said. She wasn't sure, though; if Tira was truly horrified, she might stay away. Tira had more strength of will than other people.

  Elexa lay on her mattress, curled into a bean shape, knees up and arms hugging her front. She felt cold and alone. There were blankets somewhere in the cave, thin ones, the ones the weavers had made mistakes in, or machine-loomed ones made from cheap flax in the southern countries, but she didn't have the energy to find a blanket.

  The ghost crouched beside her.

  "I release you," she whispered to him. She opened the strands of her ghost net and let him go. "I'm sorry you died in such a horrible way."

  "I wish I had seen my wife and daughter safe." He stared at distance. "There's not much money left in our hidden hole, and I'd only bought half the grain we need for summer. I was wearing most of our wealth — " he touched his armbands — "and carrying the rest of the grain price for after the meeting." He felt the wallet at his belt. It still looked full, but it was as misty as the rest of him. "The real money, where will it be? It was most of our savings."

  "Probably in the dragons' cave. They don't eat gold, but they hide it where it's hard to get. Never mind, now." Most of the ghosts Elexa had spoken with had left a few things undone. None of them had figured out how to work in the world to finish the tasks. "There's nothing you can do about it. You should look for your god now."

  "I don't want my gods," he said. "I want to get inside a dragon and kill the one who killed me. I don't want her going back to Likushi and hunting my people."

  "Dragons don't often fight each other, especially female dragons. Most of the ones who live here are big with eggs or busy with young right now and wouldn't fight even if they normally do. I don't know if there's any on the mountain who can do what you want."

  "There are no males?"

  "We don't feed the males. We don't bond with them. They travel. Most are gone now."

  "Feed me to one of the big males who can fight," he said.

  "Smudu-sir," she said, then covered her eyes with her hands. She had released him. She didn't want to see him anymore.

  He tugged at the ghost net at her waist— she felt a strange stretching in her nerves, and opened her eyes — and unraveled part of the weave until he had a loose string. He tied it around his wrist, sat down on the mattress beside her. "Rest, if you must. I will wait."

  She didn't like it that he could use her ghost net to trap himself. She supposed if she worked at it, she could dissolve this net, leave him adrift. But if he wanted to stay — she was too tired to deal with him now.

  She let sleep claim her and drown her worries about Father, Kindal, and Tira.

  #

  Someone shook her shoulder. "Lexa?" Tira's voice said.

  "Tira." She clutched Tira's wrist, didn't let go. She sat up. "Has Kindal — Father — ?"

  "They haven't come yet, but Yan talked to Plesta again, and she said we can go outside now. The stranger dragons have taken dragon oath not to harm anybody in the valley so long as we give them goats. Anyway, it's night now." Tira wrenched her wrist free of Elexa's grip.

  Elexa sighed and sat up. She would have to work to make Tira like her again, and she was already tired. She straightened her tunic and her belt. The pouch of jewels had been half under her while she slept, and left a dent in her side. Her shoulder throbbed from where Yan had shaken her, and her chest ached from Sanric's punch.

  Smudu was still beside her; if he had been solid, he would have been touching her. She wasn't sure how she felt about that. Ghosts could be intimate with you in strange ways, and you wouldn't even notice.

  She got to her feet. Tira handed her another gourd of water, and Elexa drank. "Thank you," she said. Maybe it wasn't such a long way back to their friendship.

  The fire had died down; there was no longer much light in the cavern, and the din of people, sheep, and goats had faded, too. Only a few people were left.

  "Thanks for waking me," Elexa said. She picked up her mattress and dropped it off in the alcove where they stored the cave supplies. Smudu followed a few feet from her; since he had chosen the line he'd bound himself with, he had room to range. Tira shrugged and walked away, plainly not wanting Elexa's company.

  Outside, the night air smelled fresh and full of plants instead of smoke and people. It was much warmer than the cave had been. Stars shimmered in the rising leftover heat of day.

  Elexa ran home to find out whether her father or brother had come there while she was underground.

  One of the lamps was lit in the house; it shone through the thin, tanned skin over the window, a flickering yellow warmth. Elexa opened the door. "Kindal? Father?"

  Her father rose from his chair. "Lexa!" He rushed to hug her. "I heard the alarms. I hid in the eastern cave with the flocks until nightfall. Is Kindal all right?"

  "I don't know," she wailed. "He didn't come to the cavern."

  Her father's bushy eyebrows lowered, shadowing his eyes. He looked toward the door. Elexa unhooked her loot pouch and laid it on the table, grabbed another water gourd and her cloak.

  "Did you see which direction he went this morning?" Father asked.

  "South," said Elexa.

  Father put a fat candle in the cut tin lantern they used for outdoors and took his herder's crook. They went out.

  In the center ground, Fonsee Weaver sat beside the bell, talking to other people with questions about missing relatives. When she saw Elexa's father, she said, "Oh, Horst! Thank goodness! We thought you were lost," and she made a note.

  "We're going to look for Kindal," Elexa told her.

  "Wait." Fonsee lowered the list into her lantern's light and read over it. "Mishta says he saw Kindal hunting near Starfall Lake this morning."

  "Starfall Lake!" said Elexa's father.

  "His dragon mother and children must be very hungry," Elexa said. Starfall Lake was far to the south, nearly to the pass. People could usually find game the
re because it was so far they didn't hunt there often. It would be hard to find in the dark. One had to leave the road at just the right place and climb up through trees, over a field of jagged boulders.

  Father fingered the whistle he wore around his neck. With it, he could summon his dragon mother, but she would be bedded down for the night now, and even if he rode her, there wasn't much he would be able to see from her back in the dark.

  "Let's walk the south road," Elexa said. "Maybe we'll meet him coming home."

  Father nodded. They left the center ground and followed the road, the tin lantern casting flowing cut-outs of candlelight and shadow on the pale dust. Night was cool and damp and full of the scents of plants waking from winter and the sounds of courting frogs and insects. Little Moon had risen, casting faint blue light over the land.

  Elexa listened to the night, glanced around with the edges of her eyes, alert for ghosts. Smudu walked silently beside her, glowing in the night with the light of vanished day. She saw an owl swoop down on a mouse, but she let the mouse's ghost fly. She already had one mouse ghost on her belt, and no longer knew if she would ever be able to give it to Kindal.

  They had missed the turnoff for the lake and almost reached the pass when Elexa sensed something strange a little way off the road. "Wait," she said. She left the circle of light scraps her father was casting and went into the woods, searching by the pale light Smudu's ghost cast as he walked with her. He was like a small, local moon.

  "Oh," Smudu said, surprised, as they got closer to the thing that was like a giant gem and tickled her ghost senses at the same time. "What is it?" He grabbed the thread that tied him to Elexa and clung as his feet pulled out from under him; he hung sideways on the line like a tied fish in a river current. "It's pulling me!"

  "Wait here." Elexa walked between the trees toward a small, moonlit clearing.

  "I can't," said Smudu. "Either I cling to you or it pulls me to it. Catch me, Elexa."

  She felt the tugging on him. She sent out a mental net and wrapped it around him. He steadied, then stood upright again. When she had webbed him to her, he relaxed. "It has lost its pull."

  They approached the thing together. Two people stood above it, their backs to Elexa and Smudu. They were not conversing — at least, not aloud. One, a woman, was naked except for her long, heavy hair. Another stood beyond her.

  They glowed with ghost light, and she could see moontouched trees through them.

  They turned. One was her brother, wearing the clothes he had left the house in that morning. "Lexa!" he cried.

  "Kindal!" She ran to him, Smudu at her heels. Her brother's features blurred as she ran. Ghost light, she would not let herself realize. "What are you doing here?"

  "I can't seem to get loose," he said. "Neither of us can."

  She stopped an armslength from him and let herself see that she was speaking to a ghost. She felt cold clear through. "What happened?" she whispered, her voice choked.

  "I killed a deer," he said. "I was thinking I would whistle up Maia to carry it back to the cave so I wouldn't have to pack it back to the village. I looked up, and there was a dragon in the sky already. I thought maybe she'd followed me. But it came closer, and I saw it wasn't anyone I knew. It dropped on me, Lexa, and it snapped my neck. I was so surprised I didn't understand at first. How could it do that to me?"

  He looked away, and went on, "It took my body and the deer and flew off. I watched — I saw paths open — I could have clung to my dead self, or I could have gone another way that meant leaving everything behind, or there was a light that led me here, a promising light. It said it would give me satisfaction before I left this world for the next."

  "When did it happen?" She hugged herself because she couldn't hug him. Smudu lurked at her shoulder. She put her hands to her cheeks, felt tears she hadn't noticed crying.

  "Late afternoon. I spent all day tracking that deer."

  "What were the dragon's wing colors?"

  "Red and black."

  "Not the same one who killed Smudu-sir. Oh, Kindal." A sob surprised her, and then a cascade of them. Sobs shook her; she dropped to the ground.

  Kindal's ghost squatted beside her. His glowing hand reached out to stroke her. All she felt was a faint chill.

  She didn't have time to fall apart. She dragged herself from the precipice of grief, wrapped her feelings up, and stored them inside an egg of mental nets. She could unfold them later. She rubbed her nose on the sleeve of her tunic and scrubbed her eyes with her fists. She looked at her brother, saw his sad smile. He glanced over his shoulder at the woman behind him, then looked into her face again, his eyes serious.

  "The light that led me here," he said. "It made promises. It made promises to Pewet-lady, too, and she's been here for months. Is it a liar? We can't get loose of it."

  Elexa put her hands on the earth. Waves pulsed up through them, tingling, tugging. She felt something pulling from her palms and jumped up, to see thin strands of ghost light stretch between her and the earth. "No!" She sent out a net to enclose the escaped parts and pulled herself together.

  "It pulls you, too, and you're not even dead," Kindal said, angry. "What is it?"

  Elexa used her ghost senses and her gem senses and saw there was something old, something precious, something that had been worked with lines and words buried under the soil. It reminded her of the relic in the temple of the mountain god, the one that she addressed when she prayed: something made of wood, but alive in a way that said it was listening and doing in the world.

  The buried thing almost spoke to her.

  "It trapped us," Kindal said. "Pewet-lady isn't even from around here." He gestured to the naked woman. "She's been here since last fall, she says. She remembers leaves blazing in the hillsides. It was the first time she saw such a season — she's from Oceanside, far to the south. Can you see us both?"

  "Of course."

  "Even though we're dead?"

  "I use my ghost senses. I see you."

  "I could see animal ghosts, but I never saw a human one until I died. Who's that with you?"

  "This is Smudu Kush, also taken and killed by a strange dragon."

  "What's he wrapped up in?"

  "Those are my nets, Brother. I've been capturing human ghosts as long as I've captured animal ghosts." She wondered if he would turn away from her now, the way Tira had.

  No one spoke, until Kindal said, "What will you do with him?"

  "I already let him go, but he refused to leave. That thing you're standing on tried to pull him in, too. My nets save him from it."

  "Your nets — ” Kindal began.

  "They're standing on a ghost magnet," said Smudu. "Wizards in Likush use those to capture ghosts when they need them for sorcery. We used to use them only for the ghosts of criminals. This one is different. It feels ancient. It pulls on us all. I am not a criminal."

  "How do my nets protect you from it?"

  "I never knew of these nets before I met you, but I imagine there is some way a wizard detaches a ghost from the magnet to use it in a spell."

  "Lex? Can you capture us, too?" Kindal asked.

  "Lexa!"

  Elexa glanced behind her. Father wandered toward her through the wood, carrying shadowed light.

  "Father," she called.

  He picked his way between trees and came to her. "What are you doing alone out here in the dark?"

  "I'm not alone." Her voice wobbled. "I found Kindal, Father. He's dead."

  "What?"

  "A dragon killed him, too."

  "Killed him, too? What do you mean, Daughter?"

  "When you brought the herds back, didn't you speak to anyone in the village? We sounded the alarm because a wild dragon brought a Likushi man here and killed him."

  "I didn't speak to — I rushed home to try to find you." His voice was heavy. "You say Kindal — ”

  "Capture me, Lexa," said Kindal.

  She flung a mental net around her brother, wove it heavy, and pulled
him toward her. He popped loose of the thing in the ground and snapped to her, rolled into a tight ball. "Ow!" he squeaked.

  "Oh! Sorry!" She loosened her threads and let him take his own form inside her net.

  "Oof!" He stretched. The net moved with him. He shuddered and said, "Thanks."

  "Please, Mistress, can you take me, too?" asked the naked woman.

  Elexa had never held more than one human ghost at a time until now. How heavy did the nets need to be to detach someone from a ghost magnet? One thread wasn't enough — it hadn't protected Smudu from the magnet — but the Kindal net had worked easily. She sent a normal net to the woman. As soon as the net closed around her, the woman came loose of the ground. The magnet didn't fight to hold her.

  "Lexa! What are you doing?" her father demanded.

  She felt crowded in the midst of her three captured ghosts. Her mind was fuzzy; part of her was in the nets, and the ghosts, though they didn't struggle, were moving inside the nets in a way that confused her.

  Her father reached right through nets and ghosts and shook her shoulder. His grip hurt the bruises Yan had left. "Elexa! Answer me!"

  "They were stuck and I pulled them free," she muttered.

  "Father," said Kindal, going to him. "Can you see me?"

  Father waved a hand in front of his face, as one might chase away a fly.

  "Tira's that way, too," Elexa told them. "There are some ghosts she just can't see. She only gets little ones."

  "What are you talking about?" Father shook her again.

  "Please stop that, Father." A short nap in the cave hadn't been enough. She wanted to lie on the ground and sleep. "I'm too tired to fight you."

  Father groaned and pulled her into a hug, held her tight before he set her on her feet again. He supported her shoulders and peered into her face.