Akua was staring at the walls again. “You know you can tell her nothing of what I say to you, right? If you break the binding now, everything is lost.”
“I know,” Leilani said impatiently. “You’ve said so enough. Though my daughter is a genius to have learned as much as she has.”
Now Akua smiled, though she did not look at her. “That’s certainly true. I’d never have picked her if she wasn’t.”
“I think Lana would call that a compliment she could do without.”
“She would, at that. If I can’t unravel the binding, she may die before she finishes, and you with her. A geas like that only plays to the death’s strengths in this fight.”
Carefully, Leilani voiced the option that she knew Akua must have considered. “You could kill me,” she said. “It would solve the problem.”
Akua turned to her slowly. “It would solve the problem.”
“But you won’t do it. Why? You tried to once before.”
“I didn’t know you then.”
“That makes it okay?”
Akua smiled. After these many months, Leilani knew it meant she was thinking about the past. And her past, as Akua had gradually revealed, spanned a great many more years anyone else’s. “No,” she said. “It just makes it acceptable to me.”
“Were Parech and Tulo the other ones who lived in this house?”
“Ever perceptive, Lei.”
“How else would I get through the day?”
They smiled at each other, wearied and knowing. “Parech stole Tulo’s spirit sight,” Akua said. “Or thought he did. And after, when she asked him how he could have done such a cruel thing, he told her he’d never do it now. It’s just that she was a stranger, and there was too much suffering in the world for him to care for those he didn’t know.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have believed him.”
Akua shook her head. “You don’t understand the way the world was, then. He was right. I’ve lived too long to care about everyone I meet. Eventually, you all start to seem like the river nits on Okika—too beautiful to look upon, and then rotting on the shores.”
“Except for me?”
“You and Lana.”
Leilani leaned back against the mat. Spirits shimmered above her; delicate, ghostly stalks of switch grass to hobble her feet if she tried to leave. Akua was nothing if not conscientious.
“How long does she have left?”
“Not long. I haven’t been back there in many years…”
“Back where?”
“The death shrine. One way or another, that’s where this ends, Leilani. The rock at the heart of my binding, the column of smoke.” Akua touched her hand.
“We leave tomorrow. In fifteen days, we’ll know if the death breaks free.”
END
Note on Pronunciation
T
HE LANGUAGE OF THE ISLANDS IN
THE SPIRIT BINDERS
trilogy is based mainly on Hawaiian, with some Japanese and a dash of invention. The use of an apostrophe ( ’ ) in a proper noun (for anything besides a possessive) denotes a glottal stop—the sound one makes between the first and second syllables of “uh-oh,” for example. Otherwise, names generally sound the way they look, with each syllable pronounced and no “silent e,” as in English. For example, “kale” would
not
rhyme with “quail” but with “ballet.” The letter combination of “ei” rhymes with “hay.” The combination of “ai” rhymes with “sky.” Below is a list of the pronunciations a few representative names and places.
Iolana – “EE-oh-LAH-nah”
Leilani – “lay-LAH-knee”
Mandagah – “mahn-DAH-gah”
Nui’ahi – “new-ee ’ AH-hee”
Emea – “eh-MAY-ah”
Ino – “EE-no”
Pua – “POO-ah”
Malie – “MAH-lee-eh”
Kalakoa – “KAH-lah-coe-ah”
Ali’ikai – “AH-lee ’ EE-kah-ee”
Kaleakai – “kah-LEH-ah-kah-ee”
Acknowledgments
I
THANK MY FAMILY, AS ALWAYS, FOR BEING MY BIGGEST fans and best supporters. My writing group, Altered Fluid, for letting me moan about this novel and then helping me whip it into shape. My other pre-readers: Tamar Bihari, Rachel Lenz, Lauren Johnson, Fleur Beckwith, and Bill Steinmetz. T. S. Abe, for giving me such beautiful illustrations to help promote it. Scott, for everything. My literary manager, Ken Atchity, and my publisher extraordinaire, Doug Seibold. And finally, I thank everyone who has read
Racing the Dark
and emailed me or talked to me or just commented online about how you enjoyed it. I promise, this book wouldn’t be here if not for you.
About the Author
A
LAYA DAWN JOHNSON WAS BORN IN 1982 IN WASHINGTON, DC and graduated from Columbia University, where she studied East Asian languages and cultures. She has published short fiction in several magazines, and two of her stories were republished in the anthologies
Year’s Best SF 11
and
Year’s Best Fantasy 6.
She is also the author of the novels
Moonshine
(2010) and
Racing the Dark,
the first book in the trilogy
The Spirit Binders,
published by Agate Bolden in 2007.
Copyright © 2010 by Alaya Dawn Johnson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the publisher.
“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” By Dylan Thomas, from
The Poems Of Dylan Thomas
, copyright ©1952 by Dylan Thomas.
eISBN : 978-1-572-84668-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnson, Alaya Dawn, 1982-T
he burning city / Alaya Dawn Johnson. p. cm. -- (Spirit binders; bk. 2)
eISBN : 978-1-572-84668-5
1. Young women--Fiction. 2. Islands--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3610.O315B87 2010
813’.6--dc22
2009054036
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