“Should I be honored the Ana has dignified me with her presence?” he said.
“You see me all the time.”
“Those witches who wouldn’t bother to help you on your deathbed see you all the time.”
“You can’t blame them, Parech. People die who lose control of geas. Who am I to them that they would risk it?”
“You sound so cold, Ana. Weren’t you afraid to die?”
I turned to him and stopped. “Aren’t you?”
He grimaced. “Ah. I see what this is. You and Tulo want me to lie in bed all day, is that it?”
“No, but you should take care of yourself. She says the death spirits haven’t left you. The fever is clinging.”
And I hadn’t said this to even Tulo, but if the fever lasted much longer, it would never leave him. It might take years, but the death would dog him, making him sick again and again until finally he succumbed. The thought of losing Parech like that made me want to scream.
“I know that, Aoi. It’s been a year now since we met. A year since I escaped a death that should have had me. You might have forgotten what you did then, but I haven’t. Every day I have is a gift you’ve given me. So even if I die tomorrow, what right do I have to complain?”
“And us? What about us?” My voice was hollow as a reed.
“You have each other. That’s more than most. Ana—listen, I don’t want to die. But there’s no sense in me railing against it. I should already be dead. I’m luckier than a hundred men I knew back in Okika. Do you understand?”
I did. But I wouldn’t accept it.
My studies of the death spirit had hit an impassable wall, and its name was the southwest atolls. I’d known of the legends surrounding the natives’ death worship for months, but it had seemed relatively insignificant until all my other leads proved fruitless. No one knew very much about them, despite their proximity to Essel. The atolls were so barren and harsh that Essel had never bothered to do more than set up a few military outposts on the coral. But the natives managed to eke out their living on coconuts and screwpines and a rigorous system of year-round fishing. I decided that I needed to take the two-day trip and learn for myself what they might know about death. I told Tulo and she agreed to go with me. To Parech we lied, using long glances and innuendo to imply we wouldn’t mind some time alone with each other. He barely said anything, just shrugged and went back to building the house. So Tulo and I hired a boat. We promised him we’d be back in a week. He smiled and told us to enjoy ourselves. This made Tulo bite her lip and me look away and we could hardly bear to speak to each other for the rest of the day.
We had booked passage on a supply canoe to the military outposts. I had only the vaguest idea of where to go, so I asked the navigator where I was most likely to find the locals’ religious leader.
“There’s only one island with a bit of soil. Most of the pierced ones live on that when they’re not on the water,” he said. “You two sure you want to go there? The natives aren’t very civilized.”
He gave me and Tulo the sort of look that made me sure I’d rather be among the pierced natives than the men of the Esselan army. He dropped us off on an ominously deserted shoreline and said he’d come back in four days if we wanted to go back to the city.
Tulo held my elbow to guide her even though we were far from any human population. I wondered about this. She’d been surefooted as a deer in the Maaram forest, and even at our house on the shore she rarely needed help to get around.
“Aren’t there spirits here?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. Her lips were drawn and her face flushed.
“Is it morning sickness? Should we sit down?”
Tulo shook her head violently and then said, in a rush, “Oh, just hurry up, you stupid witch!”
I was so astonished that I followed her orders. She seemed to relax once we cleared the immediate shoreline and climbed a shallow ridge that afforded me a clear view of some of the island. I could see the faint outline of a settlement around a lagoon perhaps a mile distant. I said as much to Tulo in a carefully neutral tone and she grimaced.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I remember my mother could be awful when she was pregnant.”
“You have siblings?”
“No,” I said, and wished I hadn’t mentioned it. “The babies both died.”
Tulo put her hand over her slightly swollen belly, as though that could protect her child from the same fate. “That’s not it. The spirits here—they’re all for the death. It sucks in all the light. Everything is so silent. I can’t see anything. It’s worse than Okika.”
I knew how much Tulo hated that final denial of her senses, so I put my arm around her shoulders and waited until she had steadied herself. “I’m here,” I said. “And we’ll be back in a few days.”
She kissed me and we lay back on the rocks. “I know,” she said.
We lingered a little longer and then set out again for the tiny settlement. It consisted of little more than three long houses thatched with grass and pandanus leaves and perhaps a dozen small, traditional sea canoes settled in the waters of the lagoon. A few women were outside doing chores—some pulping long strips of bark and others cleaning basketfuls of sea worms. I didn’t see any children or any men. I saw immediately why the Esselan navigator had called them pierced—on an older woman, it seemed every inch of available skin had been first tattooed and then pierced through with a sliver of whittled bone or coral. Her eyebrows, her nose, her lips, her ears all proudly attested to her status. As she was the only one not actively engaged in work, she noticed the two of us first. She spoke to us sharply in her own language, which sounded like a twisted, high-pitched version of Essela I couldn’t quite understand. The general meaning, however, seemed clear enough: What do you want?
“Do you speak Essela?” I said, carefully spreading my hands to show we meant no harm.
She rolled her eyes and spat, as though to show what she thought of the language, but she didn’t deny it.
“We’re looking for a shaman or an elder. Someone who knows about the death spirit.”
This made half the women—who had been studiously ignoring us—look up in shock. The old woman’s eyes narrowed, drawing together the piercings in her eyebrows. “What does a city girl need with the key bearer? It comes to us all in time.”
“I’m an Ana,” I said, and was grateful that this word also held meaning for them. “I mean to learn everything I can about the great death. I’ve heard that your people call death a friend.”
She snorted. “A friend? Only a city girl would say that. What would you sacrifice for this knowledge, so-called Ana?”
“Whatever I need to.”
“Do you mean that?”
“So long as it’s mine to sacrifice.”
She stood up, a wary amusement in her eyes, and I saw that in the folds of her comfortably flabby belly, a crude bone key had been pierced through the skin. Despite the rough edges, I recognized it immediately as a replica of the key the death wore around its waist. If I had doubted their familiarity with the death before, this would have satisfied me.
“There’s an island just a little ways from here. Any who wish to know the death can sit vigil in the sacred caves. And if you survive it? You might know what you wish to.”
I wondered if she thought I would back down at her casual reference to the danger, but I handed her a long coil of sennit braid and asked if someone could show me the way.
“I’ll go as well,” said Tulo, surprising me, because she’d been so silent.
The woman looked at her and then again, and I saw her take in Tulo’s directionless gaze and bulging stomach. “I don’t think you’d want to risk it, fair one,” she said gently. “You may stay with us while your Ana has her vigil.”
“She’s right,” I said. “Something might happen to me.”
“Then I could face the death spirit.”
“The death knows me, Tulo. It’s dangerous, but at least I know some of its ways. You’d stand no chance.”
“I see the spirits every day! How dare you tell me I don’t know them? I could probably do this a thousand times better than you.”
“And if you fail?”
“What about you?”
I could have slapped her. “At least,” I bit out, “I’m not pregnant.”
This made her pause and turn away from me. I could tell the only thing preventing her from entering one of her rages was the watchful presence of the other women. Tulo didn’t like to be left out of anything, let alone something so dangerous and vital to our future. But finally she shrugged and walked several steps away, toward the lagoon.
“Fine. Do what you will. I’ll tell Parech if it kills you.”
Tulo didn’t give me any more of a goodbye than a sullen stare, and even turned her back on the canoe when I tried to wave. I bit my lip. I would see her again. I had to. The old woman herself took me out on the water, maneuvering the one-masted boat with calm efficiency.
“She’s blind,” I said, as though that hadn’t been perfectly obvious. “If I don’t come back, she’ll need to go to Essel. Could you make sure someone takes her?”
She nodded. “I could arrange that. Though we don’t often venture to the big island.”
“She can give you barkcloth and more sennit braid once she gets there.”
The woman waved her hand and turned back to the water, as though a payment hardly mattered. I would have thought these people would be grateful for whatever luxuries they could get from the “big island,” but then, what did I know of such a remote, hardscrabble life?
The sacred caves were located on what looked to me more like a sharply jutting hunk of oversized rock than anything that could reasonably be called an island. There were worn steps carved into one side. She told me to climb them and follow the path into the caves. I didn’t imagine I could easily get lost. I thanked her again and grabbed one of the handholds.
“That baby she has,” the woman said, as I swung my weight from the boat and onto the rock. I looked back at her. “You’re not jealous of the father?”
I felt as confused as if she had asked me if I were jealous of the air. “He’s the reason why I’m here.”
She smiled. “Some advice, Ana: don’t leave the caves before the death. No matter what. I’ll return here in three days.”
I climbed the steep rock face and watched her nimble little boat vanish in the ocean haze. The path here wound around the other side of the tiny rock and then dipped into a narrow, damp cave. I peered inside and took a deep breath. I couldn’t stop this once I started. The lightless passage wound around for what felt like an impossibly long time, given the size of the island. Finally, it emerged into a much wider space, lit with sunlight that streamed through high gaps in the ceiling. The walls were decorated in ancient, deceptively simple paintings. A crude, spindly death with its mask and key and a star on its chest. Hunters spearing a great fish as it tried to swim away. A wooden mask hanging high on the wall, shadowed in such a way that for a horrified moment I thought the death had arrived even before I invoked it.
I started to tremble and forced myself to stillness. The old woman had led me through the formal preparations for the ritual on the way here. Carefully, I removed my clothes and shoes and stepped into the spring bubbling beneath the death’s mask. It smelled like tree resin with just a hint of something thin and astringent, like blood. I bathed myself thoroughly and then took the plain earthenware bowl waiting on the edge of the pool. I filled it to the brim and then carefully drank half. My skin prickled. The light in the room began to change in a way that was by now quite familiar. Naked and shivering, I walked again to the center of the room and knelt. To my surprise, no blood sacrifice was involved in this summoning. There would be no binding in any of the ways in which I was familiar. This ritual was more ancient, more primal, and therefore more dangerous. I had entered the death’s space an uninvited guest. I would offer my truest self to it, and in return it would share with me as spirits so rarely shared with humans. We would acknowledge each other as equals, not as powers warring for dominance.
I looked up at the death’s mask and said, in a voice too loud to shake, “Mask, heart, and key. Won’t you share my drink?”
I said this in the language of the pierced woman, though she’d assured me that any language would do. And it appeared, stepping out of the wall as though from another room, the cold key swinging at its waist. It acknowledged me with just a nod and, to my surprise, knelt and lifted my half-drunk bowl of spring water with scaly, spindly fingers that unrolled like a lizard’s tongue.
“So you wish to cheat death after all,” it said, when the water from the bowl had somehow vanished beyond its mask.
“He’s too young to die.”
“And when has that ever mattered to death?”
“Then what
does
matter to it?”
“You truly want to know?”
“Why else have I come?”
It acknowledged this with a shrug. “Remember,” it said. “You have invited me inside.” It touched my forehead and I fell, dazed, upon the rock.