The evening light painted the mirrored waters of Lake Natoro in calming pinks and soft oranges. Beyond the lake, a dense forest of rubber trees, scattered towerwoods, and palms spread to distant mountains, and above it all Dur Tolo jutted into the clouds. Broad, domed towers and squat huts huddled together to form Amaranza’s distinctive silhouette.
Even from afar, Amaranza was unlike anything I’d grown up with in Eiden. I knew the city had been erected on the water, but to see firsthand so many buildings perched atop the placid lake, some as tall as trees, was impossible to prepare for.
The structures were different than Eiden’s grass-topped, stone-and-timber, Enling-style longhouses. Instead, Amaranza’s tallest buildings looked as though they had been sculpted from clay, pockmarked throughout with small, oval windows and decorated with repetitive patterns in white, teal, and sapphire paints— the homes of Durim. Scattered among these were squashed, round, wicker-like huts and gazebos that marked the presence of Elani’s Keléri tribe. The city was big enough to boast Var’ra structures, too, and Isvir and —
“I thought you were in a hurry,” Elani called out.
I hadn’t realized I’d stopped walking; Elani was a dozen strides ahead of me, eager and impatient in anticipation of our trade.
“How does the city hold so much weight without sinking?” I asked, catching up.
“It’s not floating. It’s held up by pylons that go under the water.”
“But the lake is so deep. There’s no way —”
“Cities like Amaranza are not built by a single Tribe. Durim engineers probably worked alongside Var’ra for the underwater sections.”
Someone said something to Elani, causing me to notice we were not the only people on the road. For the first time in hours, there were smiles to return and pleasantries to exchange as people passed us, came up beside us, slowed in front of us. The road wasn’t busy, not compared to what awaited us in the press of the city, but compared to the empty countryside it felt crowded.
“Elani, wait.” I stopped.
Her head tilted back and she heaved a sigh into a sky that was increasingly becoming a reflection of her vivid hair. “Ren. Why don’t you save the questions for someone who actually lives here?”
“What? No, I –” I faltered, surprised by the sudden irritability. “Is everything okay?
“Fine. Why are we waiting?”
I looked at her for a moment, but her eyes divulged nothing of whatever was going on behind them, so I dropped it. “Well, I still don’t know how to, um…” I held my hands close, out of sight. I don’t know how to hide my kavi.
“Right. That.”
“It hasn’t shown up at all for a while,” I said. “If I just don’t think about it, will it stay dormant?”
“Maybe, but… wouldn’t you rather just put it in a spirit bottle? I can empty one of mine, and –”
“Okay.”
“Wow, really? You were so hesitant the other day. I won’t run off with it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“No, it’s not that,” I said. I spoke slowly, trying to articulate something I didn’t understand even for myself. “It’s just… I know how important this spirit is to the future of Kol Viri. I mean, even if it has nothing to do with the Stranger, this spirit’s magic – whatever that turns out to be – could change the world. Will change the world.
“But… despite how badly I want to be a part of those changes, how badly I want to have more than a minor part in whatever happens next… Well, I messed up. I did something stupid, and selfish, and I just want to fix it. I need that medicine, and if I have to give up this kavi to do it, then… well, I guess I’ve earned that.”
Elani smiled. It was the first time I’d seen her do that without her usual derision or private amusement. “If we’re lucky – and I think you just might be despite everything – we can get your medicine without sacrificing the spirit.”
Elani set her pack at my feet and pulled the blue kavi from it. In one fluid motion she unstopped the bottle, withdrew the water spirit into her waiting hand, and lobbed it into the water of a nearby rice paddy.
“No magic before saying goodbye?” I asked, watching the released water spirit vanish into the still water at the base of the rice shoots.
“Nah. No spellplague this way. Besides, maybe it’ll help with the crop. Here.” She handed me the bottle.
“I don’t suppose this is any easier than making it come or go?”
“It’s the exact same. Better hurry, though. Not many apothecaries are going to want to stay open once the Festival starts.”
We moved out of sight of the gate and the trickle of people entering the city until we were safely hidden between some boulders and a scattering of palm trees. I reached into my thoughts and felt for the purple spirit. I held the bottle in one hand and tried to summon the spirit into the other, but after a minute of no success I felt as foolish as if I were trying to push wings out of my shoulders.
“Maybe you’re trying too hard?” Elani suggested. “Remember, they’re not sentient, really, but it’s still a separate entity from you. Maybe try talking to it?”
“What, aloud?”
Elani shrugged. “Maybe.”
Before I could try again, she continued in a soft voice. “Spirits are not something we fully understand. If you try to force it to behave according to your will, you’ll only find it slipping from you.
“We can’t catch spirits with bottles alone. We need the contract, that giving of something we value, before they allow themselves to be tames. Spellcasting is still a collaboration between the caster’s desires and the spirit’s powers.”
I nodded. The relationship between people and spirits was common knowledge, but in practice it felt so much more intangible. “Spirits don’t give us magic; they show us magic.”
I took a breath, closed my eyes, and repeated the phrase to myself. Spirits don’t give us magic; they show us magic. Before, I’d tried to force the spirit into action as though it were an invisible limb or an extension of my own mind. Yet this was not a relationship of power, but of cooperation.
In that moment, I surrendered something of myself. I did not yet have words for the piece of me I let go, or how I did it. I simply let go. I let go of expectation, and of control, and even what I considered “mine” in the space my mind occupied.
I shifted aside my ego to make room for the spirit’s presence. I… I trusted it.
“Please,” I whispered. I had my palm open flat, but I did not imagine the spirit appearing there. I wanted it to appear, but I trusted it would find its own way to do so.
“Yes! Ren, yes! There you go!”
I opened my eyes with a smile of rushing accomplishment. My palm was empty. Yet, at my shoulder orbited the small violet spirit. I jumped, punching at the sky and whooping with glee.
“I figured it out! You were right! I was forcing it too hard. I was too stiff with what I wanted it to do and how I wanted it to do it. I didn’t give it any room to breathe!”
Elani smiled with calm encouragement. “Just don’t go and cast its spell on accident. We want it in the bottle.”
“Right, yes. Got it.” I held the bottle with both hands now and felt for the spirit’s connection. I found the glow of it, tethered to my soul or wherever it was a kavi bound itself, and prodded it with another request.
“Do what you did before, only now you want to ease it into the bottle. I think of it like tipping a baby bird out of my palm and into its nest. No shoving, no pushing. Again, just feel for it.”
“It’s… not working,” I muttered, deflated.
“Try calling it into you again. Maybe you just got lucky the first time.”
“It wasn’t luck. I felt it.”
Elani signed go on, though it was more of a flapping of her hands than any words.
The sun eased itself below the horizon as we practiced. Elani leaned against the boulders, growing impatient with my repeated attempts to bottle the violet spirit. I proved I could withdraw it and resummon it, repeating the process several more times, but it did not respond to any of my other attempts to direct it.
Its connection to me – the tether, I thought– seemed to glow in that freed-up corner of my mind as if to tell me, “here I am.” A nudge would send the kavi out of hiding, and a gentle tug brought it back, as though we were connected by a string.
“I thought I figured it out, but it’s like the spirit doesn’t want to go,” I said at last, rubbing my brows. A headache had started to throb in my skull.
“You whispered something to it the first time you made it appear. Try that again?”
The kavi waited out of sight. Dormant. I held the bottle up and, because it felt right, my other palm open. Again, I closed my eyes and took a steadying breath, causing the blight to crack painfully like dried mud inside my chest, an ugly counterpoint to the calm of the kavi occupying my mind.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
I whispered again my quiet plea to the spirit. I didn’t so much push it from me as let go of it, like letting water pour from between my fingers.
Nothing.
I forced myself to relax my jaw. “What if the bottle doesn’t work? You already used it once.”
“I doubt that. I re-use them all the time.”
“Well, something was preventing me from putting the spirit into it. It’s like the spirit didn’t even consider that an option.”
Elani’s eyebrows knit together for a moment before she shook her head. “You can keep it hidden now, at least.”
I handed her the empty spirit bottle. “But what if I can’t trade it to you later? Maybe it, I don’t know, stayed bound to me for too long or something?”
Elani hefted her pack onto her shoulders and strapped the empty bottle to its place beside the others. “We’ll figure something out. To be honest, I’ve never heard of someone struggling to bottle a spirit.”
~*~
The broad, simple bridge connecting the distant city to the shore threw its shadow far enough into the lake that it almost seemed there were two bridges spanning the water. An open gate – little more than two stone pillars capped with a decorative lintel – stood on the sandy shore before the bridge, welcoming travelers to the city. A group of local fisherfolk were chatting near it as they repaired their nets, in no apparent rush to partake of the festival within the city proper.
The water reflected the sky above, turning Sapphire Lake orange and pink and grey. Lights beneath the city’s walkways and platforms revealed some of the dwellings of the amphibious Var’ra folk.
Before long, the scatter Durim towers and platforms lifted far above the water level blocked even the great volcano from peeking into Amaranza. Pylons, bridges, catwalks, and the main thoroughfare connected to the bridge transformed the lake into a network of channels through which small barges of goods floated alongside personal canoes or swimming Var’ra. The damp smell of the lake remained, though, like a background upon which the rest of the city’s aromas were painted.
As we made our way from the outer platforms and into the central plazas, I marveled at the diversity and bustle of the city. Nearby, a group of Keléri hung banners and streamers across their round huts, their children bouncing with eagerness to help. The amphibious merfolk of the Var’ra tribe used the canals like watery footpaths, skimming along the surface and occasionally interrupting the progress of a canoe to chat.
Everywhere my eyes fell, they found something new. The people here adorned themselves for decoration, not for utility, so unlike my rural farmers’ town. Adults and children alike wore skirts that opened in the front or split down the side. Draping wraps of cloth I had no words for flowed and fluttered as the city-dwellers moved. Tattoos decorated the bare skin of arms, legs, and midriffs while face paint brought color to eyes, lips, cheeks, and brows.
I slowed when we reached Amaranza’s market circle, taking in the city’s heart. Someone bumped into me from behind, and I signed a quick apology without checking to see who I’d inconvenienced.
The center of the city was formed around a huge courtyard of open lake, the city’s water-level platforms organized in a ring around it with canals radiating outward. Both in the water and along the ring of wooden piers, merchants hawked their wares, pedestrians chatted with acquaintances, and various carts, drays, and wheelbarrows clattered along the narrow perimeter in crowds thicker than Eiden’s busiest market days. Ropes weighed down with lanterns and multicolored banners announced the coming Festival of Light.
“—can find the apothecary, the sooner we can get out of here,” Elani was saying. She stopped just inside the plaza and turned, waiting with arms crossed.
I didn’t bother pulling my gaze away from a nearby stall, where a Durim was tending a grill covered in strips of purple-red fruit. The savory-sweet smoke of their stall was intoxicating. “Will it be very expensive?” I mumbled as the Durim deftly flipped the sizzling fruit with their lower arms.
“The good ones are. You can check the one on Ko’ene Street, I’ll go find the one over on – Hey.” She stepped up to me and waved a hand in my face. “Hey! Are you not in a hurry anymore?”
I tore my gaze away from the stall. “I don’t have any money. I didn’t pack any when I, um, left home.”
“So you’ve said. You can pay me back later. Here.” She grabbed my hand and pressed a few shells into my palm. “Part of the deal, remember?”
We moved along the rim of the market plaza. Elani moved deftly through the crowd, thanks in part to her small size, while I was slowed by my unfamiliarity with thick crowds. A handful of merchants advertised textiles, perfumes, even wand-like sparklers, and I sighed as the busy aromas of the perfume cart overpowered the smell of cooking foods.
We left the market circle behind and came to one of the narrow bridges that connected large sections of the city. The stone catwalk was narrow, barely wide enough for two rickshaws to pass abreast. An Isvir woman approached us from the opposite direction, keeping as close to the edge of the bridge as she could. The giant was half-again my height, and the curling horns jutting from her forehead made her appear even taller. She took up enough space that the other Amaranzans on the bridge had to squeeze around her, or stand aside and wait for her to pass.
I realized Amaranza wasn’t built with Isvir in mind. Yet, the people adapted to it even when the city did not, and accommodated her without complaint as though that were simply the culture of the city. Though, I mused, it didn’t seem like it would be too difficult to simply build larger walkways.
I copied the other pedestrians and stepped aside to let the woman pass. Elani flinched, then moved stiffly to the side of the bridge herself. When we stepped off the bridge, I saw Elani’s shoulders drop as she let out a small breath.
“Are you okay?” I asked. It was the second time this evening she had become abruptly agitated
“Fine.”
I moved to walk beside her, trying to guess at what had upset her. She kept her gaze level, avoiding eye contact with the other Islanders. A gang of children barreled past us, waving sparklers that cracked and spat as light spewed from their tips.
“Let’s just get your medicine and leave. I think the apothecary is that way,” she said, pointing down a wide avenue. “Wait for me there. I’ll go find the other apothecary.”
She continued down a different path, head tilted back to study the second-level shops, paying no mind to whether I was still following. I watched her fire-red hair recede from sight and wondered about her change of mood.
That was a problem for later, I decided. I turned to regard the street she’d pointed me toward. Many of the cabana-like storefronts were empty, their tenants apparently preparing for the Festival or looking for business in the central market.
Though the avenue was less crowded here, I still walked alongside the edge of the canal. Watching my reflection in the waterway, I thought about the Eiva River back home. In my youth, I could wade safely to my waist through the reeds and mud, the riverbed visible so long as I did not kick up too much silt. Here, the canal dropped immediately into deep water. I couldn’t see deeper than a foot in the dim light, the lake’s depth as unfathomable as the World Sea.
I wondered suddenly if Elani was afraid of water. She had bathed only in the shallows of the River Elen, and had grown tense at the prospect of moving across the lake into the city. When we had crossed the narrow pedestrian bridge later, she had stayed as near to the middle of the walkway as she could, but the Isvir woman had forced her to move to the side.
Closer to the water.
Entering the city at all spoke volumes about how badly she wanted to study the spirit if that were true. Though, she did seem familiar with the place, so it couldn’t have been her first time visiting. I tucked the information away, unsure of what to do with it for now.
A squat Durim structure ahead of me displayed a hanging sign decorated with a simple illustration of a leaf and teardrop-shaped vial. Bands of white paint wrapping around the building were its only other decoration. The apothecary.
I entered, then stepped aside just beyond the door so I could look around. Herbs and fruits dangled from hooks in the ceiling, and the concave walls were pockmarked with dozens and dozens of recessions holding hundreds of bottles and implements. The room smelled of trees I had no names for, and flowers I’d only seen illustrated in books. A few clusters of candles provided soft light and made the nooks in the walls jump with shadows.
The shopkeeper, an Enling man, called to me from the other end of the building. “Good timing,” he said, “I was about to close up for the light show.”
“Oh, sorry. I’ll be quick.”
“It’s no trouble. Unless you need something fresh. Ha, kidding, it’s no trouble. What can I get for you?” he asked, turning away to replace a narrow box in one of the inset shelves. He was a middle-aged man, clean-shaven, with straight, white-blonde hair that fell between his shoulders in a narrow ponytail. He wore an odd pair of glass lenses bound by wire on the bridge of his nose.
“I, um,” I hesitated, approaching the man. Would my blightlung alarm him? I didn’t remember it being contagious when my mother had been sick. Was he used to such afflictions?
To the abyss with it, I decided. “I have blightlung. I haven’t had it for very long. I heard there’s a medicine that can cure it, now.”
The shopkeeper peered at me from over the top of his lenses, his gaze jumping around my face before taking in the rest of my appearance. I shuffled uneasily; I’d been wearing the same clothes since I left Eiden, and, but for a quick wash in the river, I’d not changed out of them.
“Well, I have some bad news,” the apothecary said at last, putting away a box of clinking bottles. “I don’t have anything for blightlung. The source ran dry this past month.”
My heart sank. “Oh,” was all I could manage. I hadn’t considered the medicine wouldn’t be available. “Well, do I have any other options?”
“Healing magic from green kavi won’t work, unfortunately, so I’m afraid Lorelai may be your only option. The medicine is produced there, though I have no information on why it stopped shipping out.”
“There’s none left in Eletha at all?” A shiver of cold fear dripped down my spine.
“None that I know of. The Elethan Plains are depleted. I believe the Tribal Council has been issuing warnings about the dangers of blight in hopes of reducing the number of people being exposed to it while the medicine is in such limited supply.” He glanced at the sword strapped to the small of my back. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“Well, um, can I sit outside your shop?” I heard myself say. My voice sounded distant. “I’m waiting for a friend. Sorry to bother you.”
The apothecary gestured toward the door and signed no problem with a quick shrug.
I hunkered down outside the shop and hugged my knees to my chest. Above me, Tesamet had blanketed the cloudless sky in darkness at last. In Eiden, the stars would be coming out now, but here the ambient light of the city blotted out hundreds of the celestial bodies. Even the nebula was smudged and difficult to find, though the Red Moon was as present as ever.
Across the canal, a Var’ra tribeswoman stepped out from a storefront opposite mine. Her glistening blue-green skin was still damp from the lake, the scaled sections of her skin reflecting the light from a nearby torch like sunset on a river. A belt with a shallow pouch and a pair of skin-tight shorts served as her only clothing. She secured a small item in the waterskin-like satchel, glanced at me, then dove into the water. I realized I thought her pretty as a blush from her brief attention warmed my cheeks.
I watched her cut through the canal, faster than I’d ever be. She moved perpendicular through the waterway, reaching my side of the street in little more than a second. Then she continued underneath me, swimming beneath the street to some place accessible only to the aquatically proficient.
My thoughts moved slowly, as though trying to swim after her. Now I had two weights in the back of my mind – one a spirit of unimaginable importance, the other a deep and unnerving worry that I would never see home again.
I ignored both. There was nothing to do about either just yet. Instead, I wondered whether I should get Elani a water-breather after everything. Then she wouldn’t have to be afraid of the water. Maybe she could show me around Amaranza, and we could investigate the underwater parts as well.
A keen whistling turned my attention to the sky as a streak of golden light soared into the night high above Amaranza’s skyline. It burst, and a shower of silver sparks shot from it in all directions, twinkling like the night’s missing stars before vanishing.
The Festival of Light.
Several more banners of golden light flew into the sky from some distant part of the city, each one bursting in new patterns. Some of them had the same silver glow as the first, bursting in sudden flashes of metallic light, or hanging in the air with a radiance like the moon. Others exploded in sudden, concussive bangs that thumped through my body and into the timbers below me, sending showers of chittering embers to burn against clouds of dirty smoke.
Behind me, I heard the apothecary leaving his shop. I caught his eye, and he waved.
Good luck, he signed. One corner of his lips dimpled in an apologetic smile.
I dipped my head in thanks and turned my attention skyward once more as a column of light careened toward the stars. It was a good distraction. I contemplated how the light show would reflect in the glassy water of Gol Natoro and wondered whether it was possible to climb higher in the city to see more of the show. If Elani took much longer, this would be the best view I’d get. Though, maybe she stopped to watch as well. That would be good, I decided. She’d wanted to see it.
“Ren?" called a familiar voice.
I started, my attention snapping from the lights to the speaker. A weight like a stone dropped into the pit of my stomach.
“Torth.”