Authors: Alaya Dawn Johnson
"What do you want?" Lana asked warily. She rarely saw the water sprites, and with Kai gone she wasn't inclined to trust them.
The sprite just giggled and gestured toward the water again.
"Did you know her?" Lana asked. "The woman who lived in these rooms? Did she actually ... in the pool..."
"Did she drown herself, you mean?" The sprite's voice was hideously bright. "Oh yes. Just after she wrote that, in fact. She jumped, but she might have changed her mind, at the end ... I'm not sure. I helped her stay down, after all."
Lana felt nauseous. "What about her son?" she asked.
"Ah, he's dead too. His son is the guardian now. It's been so long since I last had any visitors!" Her voice grated at Lana's ears like a screeching cat. That poor woman had been Kai's grandmother? But why would the guardian's wife ever be imprisoned?
"Come, won't you look in the water? I'm sure you'll see something you like."
Against all of her better judgment, Lana snuck a peek inside the pond.
She forgot to breathe. The pool was filled with mandagah fish. It had been so long since she had last seen one that she had almost forgotten their peculiar sedate pace, their squashed, sand-colored faces that looked disturbingly human. One of them looked up at her and opened its mouth. Inside were two exquisite blue mandagah jewels, bigger than almost any she had ever seen. She lost track of time as she stared at them, overcome with an unexpected joy. She had to dive and play with them. They wanted to give her their jewels-look, they were practically tossing them at her now. If only she could go in, if only she hadn't promised Kai not to ...
"Go dive with them. Can't you see how they want it? Haven't you missed it?" The sprite's voice now sounded melodious and inviting, yet some small part of Lana still told her to resist it.
"But ... the wings," Lana said, barely able to articulate the words. "Kai says ... I'll drown."
"Don't worry about what Kai says. I see how much you want this, and I can give it to you. I promise, I'll help you so you won't drown. Don't you see? They've all missed you so much."
The mandagah fish had all moved to the edge of the pond and were staring up like they desperately wanted to see her. Some far distant part of her was aware that this wasn't normal mandagah behavior, but she couldn't control herself any longer. Without a conscious decision, she took off her shoes and soaked socks.
"Yes, that's it. Come inside. Come inside."
Lana jumped.
At first the feeling of the water against her skin was like ecstasy. She spread her arms looked for the mandagah fish that were sure to come running to greet her. Then, as horror gripped her stomach like a vise, she realized two things.
First, there were no mandagah fish. Second, she was about to drown.
The weight of her wings began dragging her closer to the bottom of the impossibly deep pond, and it was all she could do to pressurize her ears and struggle to stay above a certain depth. The sprite had told her how she had drowned Kai's grandmother, and still Lana had looked in the lake? Was she so desperate to dive again? Above her she saw the sprite's graceful shape and she reached out in the vain hope that the creature would help her.
It smiled sadistically and flitted away, leaving Lana deep in a lightless night.
What would Kai do, she wondered, when he found her body lying at the bottom of a pond in a deserted part of the shrine? Would he be angry? Would he rage or grieve and then slowly let her image fade to a pleasant memory, sometimes dusted off for reuse? She knew one thing he wouldn't do, though: cry.
As the air in her lungs dwindled to a pittance and she felt black encroaching on the edges of her world, she decided to make one last, desperate bid to save herself. Before she ran out of all of her air, she would try to call for him. Afterwards, she wouldn't be able to stop herself from sucking in water, but there was the vaguest possibility that he would have heard her.
"Kai!" she screamed into the water. "Sweet Kai ..."
The water burned as it flooded her lungs, but she thought of him as she slipped into darkness.
Kai heard the sound, impossibly faint, as he was hauling stones to support a crumbling outer wall. It could have been a thousand other things, but his brain shivered when he heard it and he knew it was Lana. He dove back under the water, straining his senses until he could feel practically every part of the shrine. After several long, nerve-wracking moments, he found her. She was barely there-a fast-dimming spark in an abandoned part of the shrine. She was about to die. Barely aware of what he was doing, he allowed his entire physical form to dissolve into the water and then he rushed along, in every tiny rivulet and stream that permeated the water shrine, gradually coming closer to where she was. He had no heart to pound, but fear sped his noncorporeal parts until he felt as though he were falling through air instead of gliding through water. This was an ability he had never had before he became guardian, and one he had never used even since. It was dangerous-even within the water shrine itself-because dissolved like this, his disparate parts could get separated with disastrous results.
He found her a minute later, floating unconscious at the bottom of a pool that he had thought was sealed off forever. He reformed and picked her up, speeding out of the water like a geyser. She didn't gasp or breathe when he broke the surface, and he wondered, desperately, how long ago she had drowned. Why had she waited so long to call him? When he hauled her onto the cold, dusty stones, he wasn't even sure if her heart was still beating. There was still one thing he could do. He gripped the black waterbird feather and recited a geas, softly, as though he was reciting a prayer.
A jolt of light seemed to pass through her body and water erupted from her mouth as he forced it from her lungs. Kai held her hand, but it still hung limply in his. Even that hadn't revived her.
He called her name frantically, but she didn't respond.
Is this my father's hell?
No, he couldn't give up now, not yet. He touched the black feather and recited the geas again, this time giving it more power even though he knew it could hurt her. The light passed through her body and her legs jerked. One long second later her whole body shook and she began coughing violently in his lap.
He thought that he had never heard a more beautiful sound.
She actually saw the death at the gate.
"So, you came even without my help," it said.
Lana shook her head. Where was Kai? Could he have abandoned her, or did he just come too late?
"He can't save you now. You're in my domain."
"Will you take my mother, too?" she asked.
It nodded. "You didn't have a natural death."
"Mama, I'm so sorry," she whispered. She looked back up at the death. "Tell me, what's beyond the gate?"
It paused and its mask returned to neutral. "You'll see soon enough," it said.
"But you're about to take me there. What's the harm?"
It shook its head and beckoned her to come forward. Against her will, she did so. Did she have wings here, as well? She looked. Yes, even in death, she was still a black angel. The death picked the key up off the chain around his waist and inserted it into the lock.
"Your key," she said suddenly.
It paused and turned to face her. "What?"
"It's made of lead."
The death looked startled. She felt a strange charge flow through her body, like a bolt of lightning, and she suddenly stood several feet further away from the gate.
"You have a clever lover, Lana," it said. "But not clever enough." It started to drag her forward again.
"Lana ... Lana please ..."
It was Kai. She latched onto his image in her mind and resisted the death's relentless pull.
"The death's key is made of lead," she said, frantically searching for a corollary. Of course, a geas without a sacrifice was generally useless, but she refused to just give up. "Made of lead ... the earth!
The death is tied to the earth by that lodestone. It can never fully escape it. For all its power, it is still a creature bound to the grief that it creates. Like all creatures of the earth, it can feel grief, love, anger ... even pity. So long as it wields the key, death is bound to petty human emotion."
The death paused. "Pity, you say?" Its voice was filled with disbelieving laughter. "Ah, you are brave. Ignorant, but brave. I never expected this to be such a challenge. So let the guardian call you back-it will be a far greater pleasure to take you myself."
Another, greater, bolt of light rocked her.
The death bowed. "Till next time, brave one."
And then she was coughing on Kai's lap-wet, cold, and alive.
He held her until the coughing subsided, brushing back her hair and murmuring things she couldn't quite understand but which felt very comforting nonetheless. Her body ached all over in a formless kind of way, and she wondered if it had anything to do with the strange light she had felt before. Still trembling, she pulled him down until his face was level with hers. For now, at least, she knew exactly what she wanted.
"Kiss me," she said, teeth chattering.
Blindly, unquestioning, he did so. It was the most gentle, tender thing that she had ever experienced. His fingers glided in delicate, feather-like strokes, even though his arms were shaking with tension. He moved from her mouth and began kissing her nose, eyes, forehead, temple, the hollow of her neck. She felt like her whole existence was being held in those gentle hands. How was it possible to love someone this much? Part of her wanted to tell him so, but she was so afraid of destroying the moment that she held her silence, saying as much as she could without words. He lay with his back on the floor and pulled her on top of him, kissing her gently as he undid her shirt. But when she tried to pull off his, he suddenly stopped and held her wrists, pulling away from her with a tormented expression.
"What ... what's wrong?" They had never gone this far before, but she had thought he was enjoying it.
"Lana, I can't. I want to ... you don't know how much I want to, but I would never forgive myself. You don't know what you would be sacrificing."
Lana froze. That word choice had to be deliberate, and Kai was half sprite. "What kind of sacrifice?" Her voice was steady.
He looked away. "Do you know where we are? These may look like rooms, but they're just a well-furnished prison. My grandmother lived here a hundred years ago. For the last ten years of her life she never saw any family or friends. She never saw a wall that wasn't contained in her cell. The only two people she was ever allowed to see were her husband and her son-and after he reached a certain age, not even her son. Do you know why she was forced to live like a slave-this woman who was the wife of one of the most powerful men in the islands?"
"Why?" she asked, a little alarmed now at his intensity.
He leaned over her and gripped her shoulder so hard that it hurt. "Because the water guardians are not like normal men. We demand far too much for our love and then, even when love is given freely in return, we never trust it. Understand me, Lana: a water guardian can only give himself to one woman, and when he does, it must be for life. If that woman gives herself to anyone afterwards, the guardian will die in slow and painful agony, unable to pass his abilities on to his son. There is no stronger bond in nature. Do you understand? My grandmother, and dozens of women before her, spent their lives imprisoned because their husbands lived in dread of the day their wives would betray them-and in doing so, destroy them."
"Are you saying ... are you saying that you would have to imprison me here if I gave myself to you?"
"What if I was?"
Her wings shivered at the thought. "I would leave you and wait until you returned to your senses."
He traced her cheekbones with his cool, smooth fingertips. For a moment, they stared at each other, and then she buried her head in his chest and breathed his scent until she thought her heart would burst. "Oh, keika," he whispered, "of course I would never do that to you. I would die and leave the shrine unguarded before I made you live like that. But ... but you would still have to bear my son. Do you really want to do this? I can give you more time to decide-"
"Shh," she said gently, putting her finger to his mouth.
He smiled-joyously, like a child-and closed his eyes. This time, he made no objection when she began to remove his clothes. She leaned into him and breathed his musk of seawater and sweat.
"Great Kai," she said, and then laughed. "How many women can invoke the spirit and their lover at the same time?"
Kai opened his eyes and moved, ever so delicately, directly beneath her. She gasped and bit her lip.
He froze. "Are you okay?" he asked, horrified.
"I've wanted this for so long ..."
"So have I."
"Then whatever you do," she said, hugging him so she could hear the reassuring beat of his heart, "don't stop."
Afterwards, looking back at those months, Lana would marvel at how she had managed to reach such an oasis of happiness when everything she had previously loved about her life had been destroyed. She had lost her home, her family, her faith in Akua, her ability to dive, and any pretension to normalcy. She was chased by the manifestation of death itself and the wild wind had turned her into a black angel. And yet, she was happy. She supposed, later, that some of the heady joy of those days with Kai was derived from her never-articulated conviction that it must all end. That the game she had been playing-and losing-with Akua would not end here. The death had said as much to her that day on the roof. She and Kai spent nearly every minute of each day with each other, and Lana made her dogged way through the geas tome. It pleased Kai to see her study it, and that was more than enough motivation. After two months she had memorized all of wind and half of fire (naturally a much longer section). She was aware of a certain perversity in the fact that she hadn't even glanced at the death postulates, but that always brought her thoughts back to Akua. And Kai needed no help from her on that score. If there was any worm in the orange of her happiness, it was their repeated arguments about her former mentor. They began two months after she nearly drowned. Kai came to her room in the early morning, visibly exhausted from spending all night in the library.