Crossroads of Canopy

by Thoraiya Dyer

  You called me strong, Unar thought, not realising she’d spoken aloud until Kirrik answered her impatiently.

  “Your magic is strong. Your body is pathetic. A weak body cannot sustain even the strongest magic for very long.”

  Kirrik’s expression changed then. Unar was so tired she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Was it lust? Was it the hunger with which Oos had looked on Unar’s bare breasts, all those endless hours and days and years ago in the Garden when Unar had expected to become a Servant of Audblayin?

  Before she could be sure, Kirrik’s face closed over again. She opened a brown earthen pot and took out some speckled, grainy bread. Another jar held a bright blue jam that Unar didn’t recognise; at some point she found the jam-smeared slice in a bowl before her and tasted it, sour and strong.

  “You will sleep by the fire for now,” Kirrik said. “The Master will not be pleased if you become ill.”

  “Frog,” Unar said. She meant to say, Frog can heal me, if I become ill, but then she remembered that it was her own power that Frog used, and perhaps if she became ill, Frog would not be able to use it. Frog said love was needed for healing. And Frog’s advice was never to love.

  Frog’s lying. She’s good at it. She’s cunning.

  Yet Unar actually had no idea what Frog’s magic was capable of; for all she knew, Frog had shown her a lie when she had shown her by magic that they shared a blood mother and a blood father.

  “Yes, yes. You will see Frog the Outer again soon.”

  Kirrik stripped away Unar’s clothes. She hung them on the fire screens to dry. Unar, who had no way of knowing if more strangers would come out of the corridors, did not resist. Couldn’t resist. The strange expression on Kirrik’s face returned. Perhaps it was envy. Perhaps the pale woman wished her skin were darker, sun-warmed; perhaps she wished for Unar’s youth.

  No, she had called Unar’s body pathetic. It couldn’t be that.

  “Go to sleep, Nameless,” Kirrik said.

  * * *

  WHEN UNAR woke, she couldn’t be sure how much time had passed. The great dovecote, sheathed in the sound of rain, was quiet but for the flutters, pecks, and toenail clicks of birds. The fire had been banked, and there was no sign of Core Kirrik.

  Unar went to the side table where the brown earthen pot rested and was disappointed to discover there was no more bread. A scroll on the writing desk caught her eye, and she unrolled it.

  Her parents had rarely allowed her to go to the school, and she’d never learned letters, but the page had some ink drawings on it, not just the tooth marks she knew were words. A black human silhouette with a silver-blue halo around her head was linked by fine lines to three more silhouettes. One had a silver-blue orb hovering above his palm. One had silver-blue tears tracked down his cheeks.

  The third figure had owl feet and was linked by another tenuous ink line to a recently drawn figure with a green leaf growing out of her mouth. Tooth-mark letters covered both sides of the line, still powdery with paperbark residue from being blotted.

  “Can you read, Nameless?” Kirrik asked from right behind Unar, and she jumped, letting the scroll roll up of its own accord.

  “No, Core Kirrik.”

  Kirrik’s lip curled.

  “Pity. You could have helped with the correspondence. You are too old to learn letters.”

  “I’m not too old to learn anything.”

  “You appear too old to learn to hold your tongue. I have had enough of your whining, Nameless. It will not do. From now on, you will speak when spoken to, is that understood?”

  “Yes, Core Kirrik.” Unar gave the scroll a last, regretful look. The Master, the apparent leader of these One Forest people, must be writing letters to Canopy to try and set up a meeting of gods such as Kirrik had described. Probably demanding to know why Canopians could pass freely through the barrier and return while Understorians could not.

  Servant Eilif surely would have answered thus: that Understorians were monsters, violent and simple, fit only for slavery. That they must be kept out of Canopy for the same reason that demons were kept out, to protect the civilised people of the city. Unar knew this to be untrue, and if she knew it, then the gods must know it, too. Perhaps Servant Eilif would also say, as Unar had once believed, that Understorians had their own supernatural protectors. But that was also wrong—the dark parts of the forest held no gods, only their old bones. There must be another reason.

  Yet Audblayin would not meet, or correspond, with someone like Core Kirrik. The Servants would not allow it. Maybe that was why Unar was important to One Forest. She would be the link between those above and those below the barrier. Core Sikakis, though he had been a prince of Airakland, clearly had no wish to return to Canopy. That had to be why they were willing to teach her what they knew.

  “Why do you think you are here, Nameless?” Kirrik asked, catching the glance at the scroll, seeming to read Unar’s thoughts a second time.

  “To be used, Core Kirrik.”

  Kirrik’s laughter, this time, was so wild, beautiful, and powerful that it was all Unar could do not to grasp it and weave it into something, anything. Yet at the same time, she recognised that nothing of Audblayin could be fashioned from Kirrik’s voice. Branches could not be brought to life. Seeds could not grow. Unar could gain no inkling from the sensation of it of what Kirrik’s magic was good for.

  “Perfect,” Kirrik said. “How perfect you are. And gifted, as Frog promised you would be. Even considering the bone, you travelled here quickly. I will use you, Nameless. It has been a long time since I had a Canopian adept of my own to use. Greatly preferable to lurking by the border and snatching whatever song or speech I could.”

  “A long time, Core Kirrik? May I ask what happened to the Servant of Airak who made these lamps?” Unar hoped she wouldn’t be chastened for speaking out of turn. Kirrik only smirked.

  “Oh, yes. He was the last, before you. Not a full Servant of Airak, only a Skywatcher. Just as you are only a Gardener, but he was weaker. The Master had to use him up, all at once, and it killed him. That is what happened to the maker of the lamps and why we could not replace the fifth one when it failed.”

  Two birds quarrelled over a spray of seeds. Unar concealed her shock. How much worse could these people be? A great deal worse, as it turned out. She had foolishly offered herself for use, only to now discover that she could be used up, like a gourd full of monkey oil or a knife sharpened into nothingness.

  It wasn’t too late. She could leave. It was only Kirrik, here and now, and Unar thought she could overpower her. From what Frog had said, Kirrik would not be able to kill using Unar’s power, and seeing the future or feeling the approach of adepts would surely be no protection against Unar’s fists and teeth, not to mention a club or two of living wood. There were even five kinds of tree for Unar to choose from.

  They will not take my magic from me again.

  But how would she learn if she left the dovecote? Kirrik had asked her, How do you find the barrier from this side, girl? Without the secret, despite her confidence, Unar had to confront the possibility that she could bang her head against the barrier for a hundred years and not get through, since the magic of Canopy had faded from her skin. The Master might be her only way back. And she couldn’t leave Frog. Not again.

  “I see,” she said. “Thank you for explaining, Core Kirrik.”

  Kirrik turned away. Took a few paces towards the table. Her fingers traced the surface grain contemplatively.

  “If the Master used you up all at once,” she said, “he could grow an entire great tree, I think. Grow it through the centre of the Garden and break open Audblayin’s egg. The goddess would fall into our waiting arms, Bodyguard or no. What do you think of that?”

  Was this the test? Kirrik must know that Audblayin was dead.

  “The egg is empty,” Unar said. “Besides, Audblayin is only one deity. Your Master needs to speak with all thirteen.”

  Kirrik laughed again.


  “He does need all thirteen,” she said, “and he’ll have them, Nameless the Outer. You will be allowed to help us, once we can be sure of you.”

  So. Unar had guessed right. Help them to gather all the gods and goddesses of Canopy together? Perhaps to murder them if they proved argumentative or incapable. Bring the barrier down. It remained as impossible today as it had been yesterday. It was ludicrous.

  “I owe a debt to you. For my sister. I’ll help you. I’ll pay the debt.”

  I’ll stay until I’ve learned as much as I can learn. But Frog can’t have realised that the Master’s path leads nowhere; I’ll convince her of the truth.

  “Not enough. You must come to know, as we here know, that the city of Canopy is a defilement that must be torn down.”

  “How shall I come to know that, Core Kirrik? I’ve heard of the Old Gods. They may be brought back to the forest, but how do you know they’d have greater care for Floor and Understorey than the new ones do?”

  “Do the gods and goddesses of Canopy have a care for Understorians and Floorians, then? I have not noticed them! I have not seen the flowers of Irof or tasted the bounty of Ukak’s bees! After you have lived with us for long enough, you will wonder why you ever wished to crawl and kiss Audblayin’s hand.”

  Unar forced herself to gaze patiently at Core Kirrik, who’d worked herself into something of a frenzy.

  “And until then?”

  “You will require supervision. Tiresome as that may be. You have chores to do, Nameless. The Master breaks his fast this evening. You can be trusted to make a meal for him, I think. Follow me.”

  Kirrik led her away from the wide room with its round table and writing materials, along a dim corridor. Open doors lay to left and right. Each room contained a blue-white lamp, four bunks to each wall, with each bunk bearing a bundle of bedding, and a washstand. Here, where there was neither magic nor wood smoke to deter uninvited guests, the tiny, high windows had insectivorous plants smothering the sills. The last room on the right was a kitchen of sorts, with four hearths, clay chimneys, and pots dangling from hooks on the ceiling. To the left, another open door showed a primitive privy: two holes in the floor and two water barrels.

  At the very end of the corridor, a spiral staircase led upwards. Unar had put her hand out to point at it, to ask what was at the top of it, when her fingers rebounded from an invisible surface.

  Like the barrier. A smaller version. What can be created can be destroyed. They practice replicating it so that they can determine its weaknesses and tear it down. Or perhaps they plan to help the gods and goddesses, to make a better, stronger barrier. One that can protect everyone. One Forest.

  The Master’s quarters must be at the top of this staircase.

  “Here,” Kirrik ordered, marching into the kitchen. All the hearths but one were cold. Beside the lit one, enough cut wood to last the whole of the monsoon and then some made a wide stack from floor to ceiling. On a wooden bench top, a single white egg rested in the bottom of a deep basin of water. Kirrik looked at it, then looked at Unar. “The Master will have four eggs. And three birds. You have permission to use magic for this. Begin.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  UNAR BLINKED. She swallowed.

  She thought she understood what Core Kirrik expected her to do, but she’d never tried anything like it before. As Frog had shown her, Unar began singing the godsong, using it, tentatively at first, then with greater confidence as she located the spark of life within the egg and it broke open to reveal a hatchling of a type of bird she’d never seen. Long-legged and with splayed toes, it stood belly-deep in the basin, regarding Unar with a startled brown eye ringed by bright orange down. The rest of its fluffy body was yellow and grey.

  When Unar pressed it with her magic again, it made a soft, grunting sound. Then it was abruptly taller, with sleek black feathers on its body and a bald, colourful head and neck.

  The level of water in the basin had gone down. Unar stopped singing, startled that she’d somehow incorporated it as a raw material without even knowing. But why should she be surprised? She’d grown crops in the Garden and fruit for herself and Frog, as late as the day before yesterday.

  “Go on, Nameless,” Kirrik snapped.

  The bird began panting, beak distressed and open, as Unar pressed it again. It laid two white eggs in quick succession, one of which hatched almost immediately into a second, identical bird. Core Kirrik had said that life came from eggs and semen, but Unar had already learned from Issi’s healing that any part of the body could act as a seed. The new bird laid two eggs, one of which hatched and grew into a third bird, whose pair of eggs brought the total to four.

  Unar fell silent, again, astounded and confused at once.

  “What is it?” Kirrik demanded. “Why do you look like a poleaxed tree-bear?”

  “It’s just … Core Kirrik, when I was in the Garden, women came for increased fertility. They went away again. Sometimes they got with child. Other times they didn’t. If this is Audblayin’s power, then why can’t her Servants do this? Why don’t women leave the Garden with babes already in their arms?”

  Core Kirrik’s expression turned smug.

  “You could make people. If you wanted their corpses for food. These birds are blank, mindless; it is life and learning that shapes brains, not quickened growth, and you have made them from air and water, as plants are made. But that is not how animals are made. Minerals are required, from Floor. Look at them.”

  Unar did look at them, really look. The birds lay helplessly on their breasts or on their sides in the empty basin. They could barely coordinate their breaths, much less stand, peck, or fly. Their feathers flaked and flew away, turning to dust. The very first one that Unar had made stopped breathing and turned blue. The shells of the eggs trembled, jelly-like.

  Overextended, like the branches of the trees. Dead because of her inexperience.

  Unar released a long, drawn-out breath.

  “I see.”

  “Skin them and cook them, Nameless. Grow some mushrooms to go with the eggs. Grow them on the living wood at your feet. They derive their minerals from the tree. Make sure they are more nutritious than these birds. After that, your next chore is to make bread.”

  Kirrik took something from a shelf; it was a single grain. She placed it on the bench before Unar.

  “Grow the grain in the flooring, too. Make as much as you can. Make enough for a hundred men, and then a hundred more. There is salt in the pantry. You will find yeast in the air you breathe. Choose wisely, or the bread will not rise. Fuel for the ovens is in the box behind the door. Do you have any questions? Speak up. I am busy.”

  Unar didn’t have any questions about the bread making. After her failure with the birds, she would use more caution. Focus her awareness. Yet she hadn’t forgotten the fact that she and Kirrik had been on watch together. Kirrik had brushed it off, but she must be afraid of the Master, too. The source of her malice is fear.

  “I have a question. Not about the bread.”

  “Willful wretch! What is it?”

  “Who is your patron, Core Kirrik? From which goddess or god do you derive your power? Is it Ulellin? Is that why you can see the future? Aren’t you afraid that the Master will use you up, too?”

  Kirrik stared at Unar again in the odd way Unar couldn’t read.

  “I have no patron,” she said at last. “Only those born above the barrier can forge a link with a Canopian goddess or god. You said it yourself. People born in Canopy are under the gods’ protection. But there are other alliances we can forge. I fear no one. My skill is that I cannot be killed.”

  Unar’s jaw dropped.

  Frog came into the kitchen then. Unar almost didn’t recognise her; she wore a fresher, finer black tunic and trousers, and her hair, oiled and combed back, gleamed.

  “Core Kirrik,” Frog said.

  “You have come to supervise Nameless the Outer,” Kirrik said to Frog, “while she prepares the Master’s supper.”
>
  “What? Oh. Yes, Core Kirrik. The Master’s supper.”

  “Do not let her waste the salt.” With that, Kirrik swept away, leaving Frog and Unar alone.

  They stared at each other for a moment.

  “Where have you been—” Unar started to say, at the same time as Frog said with astonishment, “You ’ave not refused any orders? You ’ave not attacked Core Kirrik?”

  “No. I haven’t attacked Core Kirrik. Why would I do that?”

  “The Master wants to destroy Canopy. You care about Canopy.”

  “I care about you.”

  Frog scowled. “Well, stop it. I told you not to.”

  “There’s something odd about the wood for the oven.” Unar picked up a piece from the stack beside the fire. “Have you noticed? All these pieces are identical. Down to the wavy splinters where there was a knot in the branch. I used to watch our father cut wood sometimes. It never looked like this.”

  Frog looked uncomfortable. She took the piece from Unar’s hands and threw it onto the banked coals.

  “They are from Eshland. The wood god takes payment of human blood, and ’e multiplies piles of firewood in return. Just as givin’ blood weakens people, givin’ wood weakens the great trees. Fair exchange.”

  “How have you traded with people of Eshland? How is it that your Master breaks through the barrier, Frog?”

  Unar took up the poker and prodded the fuel into position.

  “Always the same questions from you! There is no breakin’ through! I toss pebbles up to a boy I know in Eshland. Pebbles from Floor, you understand? These messed-up birds you made are wild flowerfowl, kin to the eatin’ kind in Eshland. Flowerfowl need stones in their stomachs. I toss up the stones, the boy tosses down the wood. No livin’ thing passes through the barrier.”

  “But how did you meet him?”

  “I heard ’im cryin’ one night. ’E was cold. I told ’im if ’e came down, I would give ’im a blanket.”

  “Why were you there, beneath Eshland?”

  “Watchin’ our father.” Frog gripped both sides of her face as if her skull ached. “Do you not know anythin’, Unar? Our father crawls between Airakland and Eshland now. ’E lost the strength to cut wood with ’is arms. ’E drains himself of blood to get enough wood to sell to stay alive. ’E should throw ’imself off the edge. It would be kinder. I should roll ’im off while ’e is sleepin’.”