Firebirds Soaring (29 page)

“Wait here.” Elexa walked between the trees toward a small, moonlit clearing.

“I can’t,” said Smudu. “Either I cling to you or it pulls me to it. Catch me, Elexa.”

She felt the tugging on him. She sent out a mental net and wrapped it around him. He steadied, then stood upright again. When she had webbed him to her, he relaxed. “It has lost its pull.”

They approached the thing together. Two people stood above it, their backs to Elexa and Smudu. They were not conversing—at least, not aloud. One, a woman, was naked except for her long, heavy hair. Another stood beyond her.

They glowed with ghost light, and she could see moon-touched trees through them.

They turned. One was her brother, wearing the clothes he had left the house in that morning. “Lexa!” he cried.

“Kindal!” She ran to him, Smudu at her heels. Her brother’s features blurred as she ran. Ghost light, she would not let herself realize. “What are you doing here?”

“I can’t seem to get loose,” he said. “Neither of us can.”

She stopped an arm’s length from him and let herself see that she was speaking to a ghost. She felt cold clear through. “What happened?” she whispered, her voice choked.

“I killed a deer,” he said. “I was thinking I would whistle up Maia to carry it back to the cave so I wouldn’t have to take it to the village. I looked up, and there was a dragon in the sky already. I thought maybe she’d followed me. But it came closer, and I saw it wasn’t one I knew. It dropped on me, Lexa, and it snapped my neck. I was so surprised I didn’t understand at first. How could it do that to me?”

He looked away and went on, “It took my body and the deer and flew off. I watched—I saw paths open—I could have clung to my dead self, or I could have gone another way that meant leaving everything behind, or there was a light that led me here, a promising light. It said it would give me satisfaction before I left this world for the next.”

“When did it happen?” She hugged herself because she couldn’t hug him. Smudu lurked at her shoulder. She put her hands to her cheeks, felt tears she hadn’t noticed shedding.

“Late afternoon. I spent all day tracking that deer.”

“What were the dragon’s wing colors?”

“Red and black.”

“Not the same one who killed Smudu-sir. Oh, Kindal.” A sob surprised her, and then a cascade of them. Sobs shook her; she dropped to the ground.

Kindal’s ghost squatted beside her. His glowing hand reached out to stroke her. All she felt was a faint chill.

She didn’t have time to fall apart. She dragged herself from the precipice of grief, wrapped her feelings up, and stored them inside an egg of mental nets. She could unfold them later. She rubbed her nose on the sleeve of her tunic and scrubbed her eyes with her fists. She looked at her brother, saw his sad smile. He glanced over his shoulder at the woman behind him, then looked into her face again, his eyes serious.

“The light that led me here,” he said. “It made promises. It made promises to Pewet-lady, too, and she’s been here for months. Is it a liar? We can’t get loose of it.”

Elexa put her hands on the earth. Waves pulsed up through them, tingling, tugging. She felt something pulling from her palms and jumped up, to see thin strands of ghost light stretch between her and the earth. “No!” She sent out a net to enclose the escaped parts and pulled herself together.

“It pulls you, too, and you’re not even dead,” Kindal said, angry. “What
is
it?”

Elexa used her ghost senses and her gem senses and saw there was something old, something precious, something that had been worked with lines and words, buried under the soil. It reminded her of the relic in the temple of the mountain god, the one that she addressed when she prayed: something made of wood, but alive in a way that said it was listening and doing in the world.

The buried thing almost spoke to her.

“It trapped us,” Kindal said. “Pewet-lady isn’t even from around here.” He gestured to the naked woman. “She’s been here since last fall, she says. She remembers leaves blazing in the hillsides. It was the first time she saw such a season—she’s from Oceanside, far to the south. Can you see us both?”

“Of course.”

“Even though we’re dead?”

“I use my ghost senses. I see you.”

“I could see animal ghosts, but I never saw a human one until I died. Who’s that with you?”

“This is Smudu Kush, also taken and killed by a strange dragon.”

“What’s he wrapped up in?”

“Those are my nets, Brother. I’ve been capturing human ghosts as long as I’ve captured animal ghosts.” She wondered if he would turn away from her now, the way Tira had.

No one spoke, until Kindal said, “What will you do with him? ”

“I already let him go, but he refused to leave. That thing you’re standing on tried to pull him in, too. My nets save him from it.”

“Your nets—” Kindal began.

“They’re standing on a ghost magnet,” said Smudu. “Wizards in Likush use those to capture ghosts when they need them for sorcery. We used to use them only for the ghosts of criminals. This one is different. It feels ancient. It pulls on us all. I am not a criminal.”

“How do my nets protect you from it?”

“I never knew of these nets before I met you, but I imagine there is some way a wizard detaches a ghost from the magnet to use it in a spell.”

“Lex? Can you capture us, too?” Kindal asked.

“Lexa!”

Elexa glanced behind her. Father wandered toward her through the wood, carrying shadowed light.

“Father,” she called.

He picked his way between trees and came to her. “What are you doing alone out here in the dark?”

“I’m not alone.” Her voice wobbled. “I found Kindal, Father. He’s dead.”

“What? ”

“A dragon killed him, too.”

“Killed him, too? What do you mean, Daughter?”

“When you brought the herds back, didn’t you speak to anyone in the village? We sounded the alarm because a wild dragon brought a Likushi man here and killed him.”

“I didn’t speak to—I rushed home to try to find you.” His voice was heavy. “You say Kindal—”

“Capture me, Lexa,” said Kindal.

She flung a mental net around her brother, wove it heavy, and pulled him toward her. He popped loose of the thing in the ground and snapped to her, rolled into a tight ball. “Ow!” he squeaked.

“Oh! Sorry!” She loosened her threads and let him take his own form inside her net.

“Oof!” He stretched. The net moved with him. He shuddered and said, “Thanks.”

“Please, Mistress, can you take me, too? ” asked the naked woman.

Elexa had never held more than one human ghost at a time until now. How heavy did the nets need to be to detach someone from a ghost magnet? One thread wasn’t enough—it hadn’t protected Smudu from the magnet—but the Kindal net had worked easily. She sent a normal net to the woman. As soon as the net closed around her, the woman came loose of the ground. The magnet didn’t fight to hold her.

“Lexa! What are you doing?” her father demanded.

She felt crowded in the midst of her three captured ghosts. Her mind was fuzzy; part of her was in the nets, and the ghosts, though they didn’t struggle, were moving inside the nets in a way that confused her.

Her father reached right through nets and ghosts and shook her shoulder. His grip hurt the bruises Yan had left. “Elexa! Answer me!”

“They were stuck and I pulled them free,” she muttered.

“Father,” said Kindal, going to him. “Can you see me?”

Father waved a hand in front of his face, as one might chase away a fly.

“Tira’s that way, too,” Elexa told them. “There are some ghosts she just can’t see. She only gets little ones.”

“What are you talking about?” Father shook her again.

“Please stop that, Father.” A short nap in the cave hadn’t been enough. She wanted to lie on the ground and sleep. “I’m too tired to fight you.”

Father groaned and pulled her into a hug, held her tight before he set her on her feet again. He supported her shoulders and peered into her face.

“Lexa-child,” said Smudu. “Can you walk us away from here? The magnet’s strength diminishes over distance.”

“How do you know?” Kindal asked. “If it gets less, why did it pull Pewet-lady from so far away?”

Smudu said, “Perhaps she was wandering and came too close to it. Those who leave a thing undone don’t go on right away; so say Likushi deadspeakers.”

Kindal looked toward the other ghost.

The woman nodded. “My child ran away north, and I didn’t want to leave until I could be sure she’s all right. I died, but I didn’t abandon my search for her; I still don’t know where she is.”

“The magnet didn’t pull me while we were in the village, and I wasn’t netted then,” Smudu said. “Let the child walk us there so she can let us go. Can’t you see we’re stretching her too thin?”

Kindal leaned past his father’s shoulder and looked at Elexa’s face. She could hardly keep her eyes open. “You’re right. Lex, go back to the road right now.”

She groaned. She put her hand on her father’s chest and pushed. “I have to go to the road,” she muttered, and glanced around. Ghost light from her captives showed her a path she hadn’t noticed before, narrow and overgrown, but there. She slipped out of her father’s grip and took the path. The ghosts drifted beside her. They were in her nets; they didn’t have to walk. She was doing all the work. She resented that, though they had no weight.

After stumbling through the forest for a while, she reached the pale road and sat on a log beside it to catch her breath.

“Lexa-child, make my net thinner,” Smudu said. “Please don’t let me go. But perhaps it doesn’t take so much of you to do this job.”

She drank from the water gourd at her waist, then thinned her mental net around Smudu.

“Stop,” he said, when she had lightened it to almost gossamer. “The magnet pulls at me now. I need a little more net, please.”

She added another thin layer, and he nodded. “I am safe.”

She thinned the nets around the other two and felt better, more herself and safe. She had never needed this level of control before; when she was capturing a few animal ghosts at a time, she just wrapped them tight and forgot about them. People were more complicated.

Her father approached. “Elexa.”

She straightened. “Father, please don’t hurt me.”

“Hurt you?”

“Don’t shake me anymore.”

He breathed loudly through his nose, then sighed and sat beside her on the log. He placed the lantern on the ground. “Tell me.”

She rubbed her forehead, then said, “I have been able to speak to the dead half my life. Today I saw a dragon kill a man. Tira and I sounded the alarm. I caught the man’s ghost, Father. Have you ever caught a human ghost?”

He looked toward the village. “I think I did. When I first bonded with my dragon. It felt different from other ghosts, bigger and upset in a different way. It struggled and tried to speak to me, but I netted it small until it couldn’t move, and fed it to my dragon mother. I had nightmares after that. I didn’t catch any more ghosts for almost a year. Then I only caught small ones. I lost most of my skill.”

She took his hand. “Find it again.”

He gripped her hand and sat with his eyes closed, taking long, deep breaths and letting them out. Presently he opened his eyes and gasped. “Who are these people?”

“Father.” Kindal drifted forward.

“Kindal!” Father jumped to his feet, held out his arms, lowered them slowly when Kindal didn’t step into his embrace. “Kindal,” he repeated, his voice hopeless. He covered his face with his hands.

“He’s the second of the dragons’ dead today,” Elexa whispered.

“Let him go. You can’t hold your brother. It isn’t right.”

“Up on the hill there’s a ghost magnet, and it trapped him,” Elexa said. “It trapped the lady as well. I had to capture them to get them free of it. This is Smudu-sir, the dragons’ first dead, from Likush. Smudu-sir, my father, Horst Herder.”

Smudu bowed. “Thank you for your patience with our interference in your daughter’s life,” he said.

Father gave a crazy laugh. “Is there a choice? I would choose the other way if I could.”

“As a father myself, I understand,” said Smudu. “As a person wronged, though, I have one more favor to ask of your daughter. I want her to feed me to a dragon who will avenge my death.”

Father and Kindal gasped. Elexa rose. “I think I have to do that before I can sleep,” she said. “Kindal, do you know what you want from your death?”

“What I want?”

“Do you know which tasks you’ve left unfinished?”

“I died before I could fulfill my dragon bond,” he said. “Who will take care of Maia and the twins now? They are still infants, with four more years of childhood.”

“The village will provide,” said Father.

Elexa remembered other times when someone bonded to a dragon mother had died before the dragon children reached adolescence. Everyone gave some of their catch to the abandoned dragon family. The dragon children grew up strange, though, and often went wild.

“Let’s go and talk with your dragon,” Elexa said. “Do you want to join her, the way other village dead have joined their dragons? ”

“What?” Kindal and Father spoke at the same time.

Elexa explained her secret life as a ghost courier to them.

Kindal said, “I can be part of her? Please, Lex. Take me there to talk with her.”

“All right.” She had to blink to stay awake; the day had been long. She set off on the road back to the village, her father following her, the ghosts gliding along beside them.

The third time she stumbled, her father set down the lantern and stooped. “Climb on my back,” he said. “You’ve had a longer day than I have; I spent most of it napping in a cave with the herd.”