10
Wild Child
Isra led the Elders and Sprites deeper into the forests, deeper into Anawanama territory. Nobody tracked them, and Yari sang, eerie melodies in Lahesh. Awa stumbled along, edgy. Good Empire citizens told horror tales on thieving, murdering savages who sold their own children—or anybody’s—to slavers. Mother had rolled her eyes and sucked her teeth at nonsense. Kenu said Mother’s family was part Anawanama. In a good mood, Father teased Mother about being a wild woman; if he was mad, he cursed her savage heritage and Awa, her wild child. Kenu said farmers were suspicious of savages who roamed the forests and never settled down. “Rootless demons living at the edge.” The edge of what? Kenu never said.
Elders ferried the Sprites across a swamp on a barge made from tupelo tree trunks. Hungry eyes looked up at Awa from water thick as mud. She jumped from the barge onto springy ground. A sour decay smell stung her nose as they hiked through cypress, tupelo, and other swamp trees. Yari sang to shy birds and bold bugs. Awa walked close to vie where the bugs were too enchanted to bite.
They came upon soot gray fields, farmland devastated by poison dust storms. Even wrapped in turbans and veils and wearing barbarian boots, the poison seeped in. Lungs burned and skin blistered. Isra cursed foolish farmers. Yari grew quiet and charged ahead, leading them up into a cloud forest. The misty air was a relief on scalded skin, but the climb was rough. Downhill in the gathering dark was worse.
Awa was ready to fall over and not get up when smoke from cook fires made her stomach howl. The smell of nut bread, yams, and fish brought water to her mouth. A clearing surrounded by houses on wooden platforms was a welcome sight. Palm-leaf roofs dripped water from a recent downpour. Brawny men in clown masks brandished rattles and spears. Warriors.
“Greetings!” Yari spoke—she recognized vie’s voice if not the shadow-warrior face. “Anawanama are never lost. They find each other in the dark, in a storm. They feel a heart beating in a prison cell and reach out with comfort. I need a story to guide me.” Yari hugged the warrior-clowns.
“I was in Arkhys City yesterday. Council sits.” One clown took off his mask, a gray-haired man with a blade chin and a deep voice like a djembe drum. He wore luxurious mudcloth robes, a chief perhaps. “A sad spectacle.” He looked from Yari to Awa. “You bring new Sprites into an enclave. Djola wastes himself at Council, wrangling thugs and cowards, and every day more poison dust blows through our lands.”
“We do what we can, Nuar,” Yari countered.
“We must do more.” A woman spoke. She wore mudcloth and a beaded headdress decked with feathers. “Azizi has no women at his stone-wood table. How can you chew your food with only one tooth? How can you speak truth with half a tongue?”
“No vesons since you walked away, Yari,” Nuar added. “Azizi says you abandoned them.”
“Azizi could follow me,” Yari replied. “Why should I decorate his Empire table?”
“You could persuade Djola,” Nuar insisted. “He’d listen to the griot of griots.”
“Perhaps. But who would listen to him? Too much fear in the air.”
Awa looked around, fascinated more than afraid. Village dwellings were tucked into a hillside. Naked children and old people came out with the stars. Women dropped from branches. Men stepped from under bulging tree roots. Brown people with sculpted features and black waterfalls of hair. They did Empire talk at first then switched to Anawanama. The Elders used savage talk too—words that never stopped rolling into one another.
Awa was dazzled by the musical language and carnival clothes, by parrot and orchid people and a moon girl with a star headdress. A boy in a hawk mask gave Awa mushrooms stuffed with something that tasted like fishy bird meat. Cooks must have roasted a big lizard from the swamps. Mother said swamps were disappearing and big lizards too, so northlanders starved. People in this village looked well-fed and they shared a feast with the Elders and new Sprites. Mother worried about everything before it happened.
Awa sat in a house for wanderers, a refuge on stilts for anybody on the way to somewhere. If you knew how to find this clearing, you were welcome. Dense palm-leaf roofs kept the downpour out. Awa ate until she couldn’t swallow another bite. Young Anawanama sat around her giggling and teasing each other. They smelled funny—unfamiliar spices on their breath and strange oil in their hair. They looked at her sideways. She wrapped herself in their rippling words and a mudcloth blanket. The former acolyte sat behind her wrapped in a blanket too. They could have climbed down the stilts and run away. Shadow warriors might have been anywhere, yet Awa suspected, nobody would stop them.
Yari gave Father sacks of jewels, but Awa wasn’t a prisoner or a slave.
Yari’s voice rustled with the leaves. “These people will take you in if you don’t want to travel on with us. They have a good life.” In the stilt house next to hers, young women sang softly and twisted sweetgrass into ropes. Yari played a talking drum, squeezing the leather strands that connected the heads and tapping just so to mimic Anawanama words. “Whatever you want,” Yari whispered.
“I don’t know what I want, besides—” going home. Awa couldn’t imagine staying with savages, even friendly, beautiful ones, her mother’s tribe.
Were Green Elders any better than savages?
“Don’t worry. When you know what you want, you’ll do it.”
“I draw a map every night in the dirt, to remind myself where I’ve come from.”
“Good. You aren’t lost.”
Awa fell asleep to the talking drum and bees buzzing in her ear. In the morning she thanked the villagers, touching their hands to her forehead. They were puzzled by the gesture of respect a daughter made to relatives, but touched their cheeks to her palms. Yari and the other Elders slipped into a cave passage through the mountains without looking back. Awa followed, going the direction she wanted to go.
11
Djola’s Map
The Master of Grain persuades northern tribes to share desert conjure: bunchgrass seeds that grow with little water; black aromatic rice and tough red beans that can survive a flood; midnight berry bushes that hold a hillside, bring light to the eyes, and turn sand back to soil.
Emperor Azizi closes mines that poison rivers. Tainted metals are illusion treasures. Azizi opens the dams and frees lakes and rivers. The Master of Water lifts the ban on mud and silt masquerade. He takes charge of waterwheels and oversees wind-and fire-works. He uses ancient Lahesh tinkering to reclaim deserts.
The Master of Arms makes sure no children go hungry. Food is rationed as during the last war—everybody lives on the same portions. Back taxes are forgiven. Arms runs the market. Who doubts his fair-mindedness? On market days, griots sing his praises and recall sacrifices of old.
High priest Ernold reminds people that tree oil is sacred and bans clear cutting for the glory of the forest and mountain gods. Kyrie and other mountain Iyalawos join Council and organize tree planting ceremonies under Ernold’s guidance. Trees hold the mountains and the rivers. Tree song soothes us all.
The Master of Money works with weavers, planting basket trees and fields of sweetgrass. Revenue from sweetgrass baskets, rugs, boats, and bridges will fill the Empire’s war chests.