The archery they handled easily - they had to shoot ten arrows, and a bullseye meant that they could run down to the beach and swim across the bay to the cliffs. Machim succeeded before she did. The swimming was hard work, for she was trying to catch up with her brother and narrow his head start. She gained ground on the cliffs, but by now the ache in their bodies was evident, and their muscles were trembling. Machim was flagging badly, and he barely made it over the top before collapsing in a panting heap. Kaiku could have given up then and claimed the victory; but it was not enough for her. She began to run back along the cliff top to Mishani’s house, where they had set up a makeshift rifle range. Her body burned, her vision blurred, she wanted to be sick, but she would not let herself stop. She reached the house, but the effort of picking up the rifle was too much for her, and she fainted.
She was put to bed then, and until now she had never felt anything like the exhaustion she had experienced on that day. The challenge had taken everything out of her, and it seemed like there was barely enough left to go on surviving. Mishani chided her for her stubbornness. Her brother sneaked in and congratulated her on her victory when nobody else was around.
But however bad that had been, this was worse. Her very soul felt exhausted, used up in the effort to expel the grief of her family’s death. She found that thinking of her brother now brought no tears, only a dull ache. Well, she could endure that, if she must.
It was not only the loss of her family that troubled her, however. It was the power… the terrible force that had claimed Asara’s life in the forest. Something had come from within her, something agonising and evil, a thing of raw destruction and flame.
Was
she a demon? Or had she one inside her? Could she even let herself be around other people, after what she had done to—
‘No,’ she said aloud, to add authority to her denial. It was useless to think that way. She had fled from the horror once already; now she had to face it. Whatever was the cause of Asara’s death, it would not be exorcised by hiding herself away from the world. Besides, it had shown no sign of reoccurring in the time since that first cataclysmic event. She felt a hard coil of determination growing inside her. Suddenly she resented the presence of this side of herself that she had never known before. She would understand it, learn about it, and destroy it if necessary. She would not carry around this unnamed evil for the rest of her life. She refused to.
Asara. She had been the key. She had spoke of a cause. They had been watching her father, hoping to persuade him to join them. And they had been watching her, for two whole years.
Mostly it was because of you, Kaiku. Your condition.
Condition? Could she have meant the cruel flame that took her life? How long had it slumbered inside her, then, since Asara had come to her two years before this
condition
ever manifested itself? She thought back to the circumstances that might have attended her arrival. One of her previous handmaidens had disappeared without word or warning, that was true. Was there anything suspicious in that? Not at the time - after all, she was only a servant - but in retrospect it made her uneasy. No, she had to think before that. She had heard the tales of the spirits of the forest turning bad. She knew the stories of the achicita, the demon vapours that came in the swelter of summer and stole in through the nostrils of sleeping men and women, making them sick on the inside. She knew about the baum-ki, who bit ankles like snakes and left their poison dormant in the body, to be passed on through saliva or other, more personal fluids, hopping from person to person and becoming lethal only when it came across a baby in a womb, killing mother and child in one terrible haemorrhage.
It was the only sense she could make. There was something within, something unknown, something that had lashed out and killed. Had the shin-shin been after her, to claim whatever was inside her? What was she carrying? What was the
condition
Asara had spoken of?
But Asara was gone, and all she had left behind were questions. What manner of thing was she, who could suck the breath from one person and give it to another? Another demon, sent to look after her own? Who were her masters, the ones who had sent her? And what had her father been involved in, that such a tragedy should be visited on their house?
She slept, and her dreams were full of a face of black and red, a cackling spirit that haunted her in the darkness with the voice of her father.
The priests allowed her to use their sacred glade to make an offering to Omecha, the silent harvester, god of death and the afterlife. It lay along a narrow, winding trail that wove up the hill to the rear of the temple. Tane led the way, taking her hand when she
stumbled. Having spent so long in convalescence, her muscles were shockingly weak, and the incline was almost too much for her to take. But Tane was there, keeping a respectful silence, and with his help she made it.
The glade was a spot of preternatural beauty, scattered with low, smooth white stones that peeped from the undergrowth, upon which complex pictograms were carved and painted red. There appeared to be no man-made boundary or border to separate it from the surrounding forest - in fact, were it not for the stones and the shrine, Kaiku would have not recognised it as a sacred place at all. There was a thin stream running through the glade, with the far bank rising higher than the near side, and a great old kamaka tree surmounting it, its thick roots knotted through the soil and its pendulous leaf-tendrils hanging mournfully over the water in flowery ropes. On the near side of the stream was the shrine, little bigger than the one that sat in front of the temple. It had been carved from the bole of a young tree, and the interior was hung with wind-chimes and tiny prayer scrolls; fresh flowers had been laid inside it, and incense sticks smouldered in little clay pots to either side.
She gave Tane a nod and a wan smile, and he bowed, murmured a swift prayer to Enyu to excuse himself from the glade, and retreated down the trail.
Alone, Kaiku took a breath and assembled her thoughts. There was no emotion involved in this; she had spent that entirely by now. This was ritual. Her sorrow had eaten her from the inside and then turned and devoured itself into emptiness. All that was left was what was inevitable, what honour and tradition demanded she do. She acceded without complaint. Everything had fallen apart around her, but this at least was inviolable, and there was some comfort in that.
She knelt among the incense in the grey votive robe the priests had given her, for she had no formal wear and it was necessary to be respectful here. She prayed to her ancestors to guide her family through the Gate, past laughing Yoru into the golden Fields. She named each of them aloud to Omecha, so that his wife Noctu might write them in her great book, and record their deeds in life. And finally she prayed to Ocha, Emperor of the gods and also god of war, revenge, exploration and endeavour. She begged for strength to aid her purpose, asking for his blessing in finding the one that
struck down her family. If he would aid her, she swore to avenge them, no matter the cost.
And with that oath, her course was set.
When she left the glade, she felt exorcised somehow. She had left a part of herself behind there, the part that was confused and frightened and heavy with grief. She had a new path now. It was what her family’s honour demanded. She would not let them die forgotten; she would right the injustice. There was no other course open to her.
After she had walked back to the temple with Tane, she reclaimed the mask from the priests and looked at it often, turning it about in her hands. Asara said her father had been killed for this mask. What was it, and what did it mean? Sometimes she toyed with the idea of putting it on, but she knew better. Even if Asara had not warned her, she had heard enough tales of the Weavers to learn caution.
Masks are the most dangerous weapons in the world.
The next morning, Tane brought her clothes with her breakfast.
‘You’ve been lying about too long,’ he said. ‘Come outside. You should see this.’
Kaiku nodded muzzily. She had no particularly strong inclination to do anything, but it seemed easier to go along with his suggestion than to refuse it. When he had gone, she stood up and stretched her limbs, then clambered into her travel clothes that the priests had washed and mended. Someone - presumably Tane -had added a purple silk sash to the bundle, a splash of colour amid the beige and brown. She tied it loosely round her waist, letting it hang down her thigh. It made her attire a little more feminine, at least. She laced up the open-throated shirt and gave herself a perfunctory examination. A smile touched her lips, more wry than humorous. The sash made her look like some flamboyant bandit.
She joined Tane outside in the bright glare of the sun. It was a good time to be out, before the ascending heat became uncomfortable. She appreciated the warmth of Nuki’s gaze on some dim and distant level, but it did not seem to penetrate as it had done in the days when her family were still alive. Rinji birds were drifting down the Kerryn, their long, white necks twisting down to snap at fish and beetles that strayed too close. Tane was watching them distractedly.
‘They’re early this year,’ he observed. ‘It’s going to be a long, hot summer.’
Kaiku shaded her eyes and followed the languid procession with her gaze. Several of the priests had paused in their work and were studying the birds with contemplative expressions. As children, she and Machim used to head out to the riverbank every morning in early summer, to wait for the rinji to come down from their nesting sites in the mountains, down to the plains where the better feeding was. With their long, gangly legs tucked beneath them and their massive wings folded, they glided with effortless grace, riding the currents of the Kerryn towards the lowlands.
When the first rinji had drifted out of sight - there were only a dozen or so, the vanguard of the impending exodus - Tane led Kaiku down to the bank; but at her request, they crossed over the bridge and sat on the south side instead, looking over the shimmering deep-blue expanse towards the unassuming temple.
‘This is way we always watched them,’ she said by way of explanation. ‘Machim and I.’ Watching the birds going from left to right instead of the opposite had jarred with her memories and made her unaccountably uncomfortable.
Tane nodded. Whether it was simple preference, or if she was consciously trying to recapture the fond moments she shared with her dead sibling, he was prepared to indulge her.
‘It seems there are fewer and fewer each year,’ Tane said. ‘Word comes down from the mountains that their nesting grounds aren’t so safe any more.’
Kaiku raised an eyebrow. ‘Why not?’
‘Fewer of the eggs hatch, that’s one thing,’ he replied, rubbing his bald scalp, rasping his palm against the stubble. ‘But they say there are things in the mountains now that can climb up to where they lay. And those things are multiplying. It wasn’t like that ten years ago.’
Kaiku found herself wondering suddenly why Tane had troubled to bring her out here at all, why they were sitting together and talking about birds.
‘I have watched them every year since I can remember,’ she said. ‘And I used to stay up in the autumn and look out for them flying back.’
It was an aimless comment, a lazy observation thrown out into the conversation, but Tane took it as a cue to continue his train of thought.
‘The beautiful things are dying,’ he said gravely, looking upstream to where the Kerryn bent into the trees and was lost to sight. ‘More and more, faster and faster. The priests can sense it; / can sense it. It’s in the forest, in the soil. The trees know.’
Kaiku was not quite sure how to respond to that, so she kept her silence.
‘Why can’t we
do
anything about it?’ he said, but the question was rhetorical, an expression of impotent frustration.
They watched the birds come down the river all that day, and it did seem that there were fewer than Kaiku remembered.
She stayed another week at the temple while she regained her strength. The waiting was chafing her, but the priests insisted, and she believed they were right. She was too weak to leave, and she needed time to formulate a plan, to decide where to travel to and how to get there.
There was never really any doubt as to her destination, however. There was only one person who might be able to help her learn the circumstances that surrounded her father’s death, and only one person who she felt she could trust utterly. Mishani, her friend since childhood and daughter of Barak Avun tu Koli. She was part of the Imperial Court at Axekami, and she was privy to the machinations that went on there. Kaiku had not seen her much since they both passed their eighteenth harvest, for Mishani had been enmeshed in the politics of Blood Koli; yet despite everything, she found herself growing excited at the thought of seeing her friend again.
She walked with Tane often during that week, traipsing through the forest or along the river. Tane was interested in her past, in who she was and how she had come to be under that tree where he had found her. She talked freely about her family; it made her feel good to recall their triumphs, their habits, their petty foibles. But she never spoke of what happened at her house that night, and she made no mention of Asara’s fate again. He was light-hearted company, and she liked him, though he tended to swing into unfathom-ably dark moods from time to time, and then she found him unpleasant and left him alone.
‘You’re leaving soon,’ Tane said as they walked side by side in the trees behind the temple. It was the hour between morning oblations and study, and the young acolyte had asked her to join
him. Birds chirruped all around and the forest rustled with hidden animals.
Kaiku fiddled with a strand of her hair. It was a childhood habit that her mother used to chide her for. She had thought she had grown out of it, but it seemed to have returned of late. ‘Soon,’ she agreed.