by D M Wozniak
I spin again to face the child.
“Let’s go,” I say.
Without waiting for a reply, she scampers barefoot out of the temple’s front doors, and down the length of the curved, dirt path. With her white sheet of a dress, she resembles a ghost raising up clouds of brown-red dust, dried by the sun.
I follow her.
The Third Shape in Yisla
I follow a dirt trail as slender and sinuous as the girl that I pursue. She moves far quicker than I do, but she pauses every few-hundred feet until I catch up. Each time I see her around a bend in the foliage, she skirts off, a white flash against the greenery.
Through a forest of bamboo trees, I finally stumble upon a sun-drenched, dirt-covered clearing. The girl waits for me within the shade of her dilapidated home.
From the edge of the trees, I can pick up certain details.
There are no solid walls to her home—only thick wooden posts at the corners and midsections. The structure sits within the center of a barren field which used to be fenced, but even the fence has decayed to gray and fallen down in places. I step over its splintered remains.
A few chickens meander, searching madly for scattered seeds in the dusty ground. Their coop is only slightly smaller than the house.
I pass an outdoor fire pit, full of white ash, and walk into the shade of the home, right through where an exterior wall should have been.
The girl taps her bare foot impatiently. But I am short of breath from my brisk walk here, so I lean against a post.
The inside of the house is sparse. It’s been divided into two rooms: a kitchen that contains nothing more than a wooden table and cleaning trough, and a bedroom, which peaks out from beyond a thin bamboo wall. Through the vertical spaces between the stalks, I see sunlight and white sheets, but no movement.
“Is your sister sleeping?” I ask between breaths, motioning to the other room.
She nods.
“Where is everyone else?”
She looks at me strangely.
“Is your family working in the fields? Your mother and father?”
Her confused expression dissolves into a strange mix of sadness and disappointment, as she shakes her head. “It’s just me and Yisla now.”
“Your parents are dead.”
“Yes.”
I scratch my head, looking back at the coop.
“You raise chickens?”
“We sell the eggs.”
“Is it enough to live by—”
The young girl stamps the ground, as a small dust cloud blooms at her feet.
“Are you here to ask me questions like the effulgent, or are you here to save my sister?” she nearly yells.
I can’t help but smile at her perseverance and irreverence. She’s right, of course.
Standing upright, I motion forwards with my outstretched hand. “Take me to her.”
We round the bamboo wall, and I’m met with a fragile girl even smaller than her sister. Sunlight shines through the vertical spaces in the wall, only highlighting her unnatural pallor. She lies on the bed covered in sweat, her skin like wet gauze stretched over bone. I imagine that this tiny girl is full of spaces too, gaps where the sunlight filters through. She’s almost not of this world.
She must be only ten years old.
I softly sit down upon the edge of the bed. I don’t know why I had assumed she would be older. Perhaps it’s just that the bronzed girl seems so helpless and incapable of running a household on her own. She is a child. But that is exactly what has happened here.
Tragedy never affects one single thing. It is a web that reaches outward, ever expanding with time.
“Her name is Yisla?” I say quietly.
She nods.
“What is yours?”
After a pause, she says, “We’re not supposed to say our names.”
I shake my head at the absurdity of such a rule.
“Well, you can say your name to me. I’m Democryos.”
“I’m Yerla.”
Yerla and Yisla.
Pursing my lips, I think of the dead parents who named these two siblings so similarly, perhaps hoping that the girls’ lives would be linked together in happiness.
“How long has Yisla been like this?” I ask.
Yerla stands on the opposite side of the bed. She raises her gaze to the roof before meeting my eyes. “At least ten days.”
“Are you sure?”
She nods. “Every ten days we go the temple for sacrifice. She missed the last one.”
“How did she feel?”
Yerla kicks the ground again. “I don’t know. She can’t eat anything. Sicks it up. Even water. It’s gotten worse.” After a moment of silence and another kick at the ground, Yerla adds behind tears, “She been sleeping since yesterday. I couldn’t wake her up this morning.”
I nod and settle in close to Yisla’s body.
“This will take me some time,” I say. “Do not interrupt me.”
Looking up at the older sister, I make sure she understands. She nods nervously.
I touch my voidstone.
I move close, inside Yisla’s skin, delicately, not touching a precious indivisible. Her thin veins are now wide rivers and I move along them, as if I am carried by an invisible raft. But the black water around me is not normal blood. It is overcome with an invading army, soldiers coiled, taking her over. A rush of black snakes slithering upon themselves.
It’s revolting.
Submaster Herrophilus’ teachings come back to me in the darkness and choral wind: There are three kinds of shapes to our invaders. The first is spherical, resembling a seed or berry. The second is rod-shaped, like a staff. The third is spiral. A snake. And like the poison snakes of the archipelago, this shape is by far the deadliest.
This girl is being overcome by the third shape.
I fight the urge to let go, away from these grotesque spirals, and instead focus on one of them floating by me. I slice it down the middle, as if cutting through its skin. Instantly, it’s destroyed. Puss pours out, and it loses its spiral shape, fading into the abyss.
The only way to fight these invaders is to cut their skin. Like an army, each soldier must be cut individually. But also, like an army, once you cut through enough of them, the rest will fall back, for each soldier knows that success is a numbers game.
In the beginning, it is painstakingly precise work. I focus on each coil surrounding me, I cut it open, and I watch it drown.
It gets easier with time. I am able to focus on entire fields of soldiers, since I realize that they all look and move the same. I time my slices just so. They all float above the black blood every so often and that is when I strike, a cut across the horizon.
I sever hundreds of thousands of them.
Eventually the black waters become smooth. I ride the rivers of her body and the soldiers become fewer and fewer. Some I see far off on the horizon and they sink under the weight of their own fear. They must see me coming. Like Herrophilus said, a soldier knows when to flee the battlefield.
When all is done, I let go. The chorus goes silent, and one kind of darkness replaces another.
In the midst of my exhaustion, I understand.
It is night.
I hear the crackle of a campfire. I smell cooked meat. The moon is out, just above the trees. It’s cut into slivers through the bamboo wall, shadows cutting across the girl’s body and white sheets.
Yisla’s wide eyes stare directly at me.
“Who are you?”
I collapse to the floor.
Voidreaming
The front doorbell echoes throughout the Royal House’s main hall.
“Excuse me, your grace,” says Elrich. He sets the silver tray of nuts and cheeses down on one of the walnut buffet tables lining the wall.
As he leaves the room, I look past all the guests in formal attire to the far side. The massive clock says it’s a quarter past elevenbell.
“I hope that’s your odd submaster,�
� booms Bartholu, the master voider of Xiland. He takes a sip of tawnywine and gently slaps me on the back. “For his sake, not yours.”
I smile. I, too, hope it is him, on this eve of my wedding. But if it is not, worry will not fill me. I am full of drink and high hopes, eager for a different life. I have not been this unburdened since before I became master voider. Possibly even before I was a student.
I raise the drink in my hands. “Come, let’s see.”
Among the hundreds of invitees, there is a tidy group of us four speaking at the moment. A party within the party. My submaster Herrophilus and the Xian master voider Bartholu are both large men—the former is mostly overweight while the latter is built solidly of muscle. To round out this group is a very petite and elderly woman named Aphelime, the master voider from the archipelago. A brilliant woman, she is known for discovering medicines derived from the essence of moonspit-an incredibly toxic poison indigenous to the area.
Through an elaborate, wooden archway, we all look on as Elrich opens up the front door.
The air sings in a high-pitched wail. And even though we’re in the next room over, the icy wind cuts through and hits us.
In the darkness, Mander appears.
He looks ridiculous bundled up in hooded furs, looking twice his size, and the four of us cannot help laughing. We are all drunk, so our inhibitions have long past eroded. His wild, curly hair looks like it is part of the brown fringe beneath his hood. His round glasses immediately become clouded with the moisture of the hall. He pushes them up his nose, looking around blindly, as he steps in from the ice and snow.
“Democryos?” He asks, turning his hooded head in all directions.
I turn to my laughing friends. “Pardon me. I should greet him after his long travels.”
Walking into the entrance hall, I hand a passing servant my glass, and embrace Mander.
“You made it.”
“Barely,” he answers. “It’s, um, amazing how much the temperature, um, changes across six hundred king miles.”
I laugh. “You mean that it’s not snowing down in Winter’s Baiou?”
He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose again and begins to slowly remove his hood, patting and scratching his curly hair. “No. Certainly not.”
Elrich closes the door, shutting out the winter winds. “I have your room all made up, submaster. I can have Anna draw you a hot bath. The hearth is still going strong this late at night.”
“Yes,” he says, straightening his shoulders. “Yes, soon. Very soon. I will have a drink here with my, um, the master voider first. And then I will retire. I am exhausted from the road.”
Elrich nods and takes off his coat as I wave my three friends near. I being making introductions.
“Oh, I know Mander,” Bartholu booms. “He’s stationed in Winter’s Baiou. He’s always out to sea, searching for the Unnamed knows what.”
“Ah, the, um, master voider from Xiland. Somehow you beat me here. A southerner besting a northerner at his, um, own game.”
A sudden thought comes to me. Something the king had mentioned in our last private meeting. So, even though it’s the eve of my wedding, I cannot help from speaking briefly about work.
I put a hand on both Mander and Bartholu’s shoulders, who stand on each side of me. “That reminds me. His Majesty and the Xian emperor have just agreed to build a new hospital together.” I nod in the direction of Herrophilus. “Herro here has built three of them already, to the north. We’re thinking Winter’s Baiou is the perfect place for our next build. The city is right on the border.”
“Excellent!” Bartholu booms. “I know this is very important to the emperor. I will ensure that my voiders are at your disposal.”
I take my hands off their shoulders. “Herro, when I am back from honeymoon, I’d like you to travel south with Mander and begin scouting out a location.” I turn to Mander. “This will be your top priority. The king will instruct you in my absence.”
Mander presses his eyebrows with this thumb and forefinger. “A hospital, Dem. Very unexpected.”
Elrich hands him a glass of tawnywine, and he takes it, delicately bringing it to his lips.
“Did I miss His Majesty tonight?” he asks.
I nod.
Aphelime steps forward. “King Andrej IX and his lovely queen made a showing,” she says, and then looks at me, winking. “I thought it was a very gracious visit. It shows how much your king respects the master voider.” As it always does, her voice trembles, as if she’s running out of air to breathe. I used to think it was because she was scared, but have since discovered otherwise.
“Nonsense,” I say, waving the compliment away.
“So, did you find the confounded thing?” Bartholu asks Mander.
We all turn to Mander.
“Find what, um, Bartholu?”
“Your little Pygmy Seahorse.” He laughs as he spits out the words.
“Ah, um, yes. We have brought back a few specimens, but they have all, um, died, and the indivisibles of their skin decay. Losing the, um, fantastical properties. So I must continue to search and somehow, um, capture them alive.”
“I hear from my men that you’re following along Blackscar into our waters. You should know that they all think you’re crazy.” Even though the words are harsh, Bartholu clearly means them in jest. His chest rises and falls in soft laughter.
I point to my submaster with my glass. “Mander says that the mysterious creature is invisible to voidance.”
He clears his throat. “Yes, um, very nearly correct, Dem. It is my belief that a substance on their skin reflects voidance, much like a mirror reflects light.”
“You mean scales,” Herro says.
“No. Seahorses are unlike other fish, as they, um, don't have scales. They have a thin skin.”
I turn back to the other three. “Mander wrote an impressive thesis on the subject. A membrane that reflects voidance. Cancels it out, in a way. The implications are profound.”
“Absolutely,” Aphelime says.
I turn back to Mander. “Sorry to be a wet blanket, my friend, but the hospital will have to take precedence. You’ll have to assist Herro and work your dives in when you can.”
Mander fingers his bushy eyebrows. “Yes, um, certainly Dem. The seahorses can wait.”
He lifts his glass, and I clink it with mine.
“Who knows. Maybe Marine or I will catch one,” I say.
“That’s right,” Bartholu says, inhaling sharply. “You’re going to Xi Bay tomorrow.”
I nod.
“So exciting,” Aphelime says. “A respite from this horrible weather.”
“Is she here?” Mander asks, looking around as his glasses catch the candlelight. “Your lovely, um, Lady Marine?”
“No. She didn’t want me to see her the night before the wedding.”
“Very wise,” Aphelime says, as she places a hand on my arm. “That reminds me, I have a gift for you two.”
“A gift?”
She finds the red-headed Elrich standing nearby. “Elrich. Please be a dear and fetch my handbag.”
Herro, Mander, and Bartholu are already speaking about the hospital, so the master voider from the archipelago and I step aside to relative privacy. Elrich retrieves her handbag, and she rifles through it for a moment before finding something.
“Here it is,” she says, taking out a sealed, glass vase about the size of a pear, along with a small book. She hands the bag and her empty tawnywine glass back to Elrich.
She raises the vase up to the candlelight tenderly, and then gives it to me.
“What is this, Aphelime?”
She smiles knowingly. Her expressions are magnified, probably because she is a little drunk. Her eyes become glossy, and the smile fades a bit, as if her emotions are getting the better of her.
“We’ve known each other a long time, Dem. Haven’t we?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And you know that I care for you deeply,
my dear.”
I nod. “The feeling is mutual.” I hold the vase up in front of me like she did, more curious now than ever.
It seems to be full of granules. Different layers, each a finger’s thick and a different color and coarseness. Black, white, pink, coral, beige.
“My gift to you is the eleven kinds of love. One for each kind of sand from my homeland.”
“Eleven kinds of love? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“I wrote all about it in here.” She hands me the small book. “Don’t read it now. Read it when you have time. It goes into detail on where each sand is from, its uses, and what it symbolizes in terms of love.”
I rifle through the pages with my thumb. Her handwriting is beautiful and precise.
“This must have taken days to scribe,” I say, looking up at her.
She waves her hand at me. “The older I get, the more I need to write. A sharp quill makes for a sharp mind.”
I smile. “Well, tell me one of the eleven then. I’m intrigued.”
She purses her lips in thought, blinking rapidly, and then nods hesitantly. “Alright, dear. I’ll tell you about the black one.”
I point to the lowest layer in the vase.
“Yes. That. We call it tephra, the love of destruction.”
I raise my eyebrow. “Destruction?”
“It comes from volcanic eruptions.”
“Ah, that makes sense.”
“It is also the most immature sand. It has not been weathered by time. So while it is youthful, beautiful, and exotic, it is not good for much else. It is the product of burning passions that have spread out of control before suddenly flaming out.”
Within the span of a breath, my smile fades.
Aphelime is very much like the namesake of her homeland—Scorpiontail. A very small and subtle woman, she can also strike hard when she wants to. Brutal honesty layered with a salve of charm. A combination that usually only the elderly get away with.
“We usually say that someone is consumed by tephra—by the love of destruction—when they are enraptured in new love. They are overcome with emotions so powerful it is like lava cracking through the crust of their world. It tears them apart.”