A good storm-sense didn’t mean older brother was right about everything.
2
Awa
When Awa was a twelve-year-old Garden Sprite, Green Elders declared Smokeland a true realm of vision and spirits. Awa and the other Sprites were not to fear or make fun of sacred space as most people did. Smokeland was a vast territory of possibilities and maybe-nots, but never very far from what was happening right now. Smoke-walkers were intrepid adventurers exploring the unknown, dream tinkerers who shifted the shape of the everyday.
Awa never told the Green Elders or anybody, but she’d become a Smokeland-believer at six. Whenever Mother’s spirit faded away like smoke on the wind, Awa held tight to Mother’s breath body, sometimes for hours. Awa sang, told herself stories, or talked to bees and wild dogs until Mother returned from Smokeland with herbs from nowhere in this world. Awa hugged cold from Mother’s thoughts, shook dead weight from Mother’s bones, and combed fearful snarls from her wiry hair. Watching over Mother’s breath body was a lot to ask of a young daughter who had snarls and sorrows of her own.
Awa’s older brothers would have felt duty-bound to report a smoke-walking witch woman to Father. Being a good Empire citizen, Father would have turned Mother in to the high priest in Holy City or killed her to avoid shame, so guarding her breath body during illicit adventures fell to Awa.
Mother and other smoke-walkers reported slogging through a border realm of enchanting freaks and monsters. Before entering Smokeland proper, they were harassed by lightning bolts and spears of fire. Jellyfish explosions and poison dust cyclones were also common. Worst was a cold, dark emptiness that seeped through skin, erasing thought, desire, and fear. To survive the border-void, smoke-walkers often drank a cathedral seed and cloud-silk potion to lift their minds above despair. This Lahesh potion eased the journey, but did not cause it. Even drugged, many people never made it through Smokeland’s border realms. Their spirit bodies got lost in the emptiness or stolen by high priest Hezram for his conjure. Their breath bodies withered to bone and then dust. Awa thought of it as poison desert in the mind.
The first time she wandered to Smokeland was in the company of bees. It was the day before her twelfth birthday. She and oldest brother Kenu had opened an elephant corral left behind by thief-lord raiders and let the beasts run free. Angry villagers who wanted to sell the elephants chased after them, but the elephants escaped. Father was outraged. Awa ran away from him and Mother arguing over true love and some other man’s child.
Awa followed friend honeybees as they flew sideways into the woods. Which woods, she could never say. The forest surrounding Father’s lands was ancient cathedral trees whispering to one another up in the clouds. Bronze-colored bark was dappled with purple moss. Feathery needle-leaves started out red and turned green with age. Cathedral roots were as thick as Awa and oozed an oily scent that made her dizzy. In her childish memory, Smokeland-terrain got tangled with the everyday. This first time, Awa was disappointed not to find a border of fiends, exploding jellyfish, and void-smoke. She landed in a field of wildflowers by a cathedral tree grove. She moved at the speed of thought, spinning endlessly around a drop of water as it slid down a leaf. In a blink she raced from riverbank to valley to rocky peak.
A beehive the size of an elephant rested inside a tree trunk cavern. Swarms of workers buzzed about, stingers hot with venom. Dancing distress, they smelled like ripe bananas. Awa saw no reason for alarm. Trees and bushes were heavy with flowers. The ground was a mosaic of petals. Deep-throated blossoms bulged with fragrant nectar. Inside the hive, the queen pushed an egg from her abdomen into a cell every minute. Workers spit nectar into the queen’s mouth. A thousand nurses buzzed over a developing brood. Drones were fat and frisky. Bee paradise.
Sentinel bees clustered around Awa’s mouth. She was afraid they might sting her. Was she the danger? They spit honey and venom on her tongue, a bittersweet concoction. Night fell like a dark curtain. A cold scar moon hung overhead, a desperate lantern in deep dark. Sentinels wagged their butts and buzzed away from the giant hive. Awa flew among a thousand thousand bees toward Smokeland’s border, where flowers dissolved and cathedral trees crumbled into poison sand.
The slash of moon dripped blood. Confused bees flew into the ground. They ate their own wings and stung rocks. Faceted eyes clouded over and sparking hearts burned out. A thousand thousand wings flew ahead of Awa and turned to smoke. She choked. Confronted with the famed horror of the border realm, Awa tried to slow down, tried to turn back for bee paradise, but she no longer had the speed of thought. Her mind was sluggish terror and then blank as void-smoke enveloped her. A taste of the sentinels lingered in her mouth. A stinger caught in a tooth pricked her tongue. Venom flowed to her heart and she swooned.
Father and other good Empire citizens claimed there was no realm of imagination, no true land of visions and spirits. Smokeland was sleepwalking sickness, drunken dreams, or Green Elder nonsense. That explained tattoos, burnt hair, and the treasures folks brought back from their adventures. Smoke-walkers knowing what they shouldn’t or couldn’t was another matter. Father couldn’t explain that away. He just insisted Mother’s exotic herbs and concoctions were family secrets.
Southern thief-lords sold or burned any woman who knew too much. Northern savages sliced smoke-walkers from navel to chin to expel demons. Priests and witchdoctors poisoned their breath bodies and stole spirit-blood to power gate-spells or do other conjure. This was a living death. Good Empire citizens locked up smoke-walkers to train for priesthood if they were men or drain as transgressors if they were women. And a veson—what Anawanama northlanders called someone who was neither man nor woman—had to declare for one or another horrible fate: living as a man or dying as a woman. So …
Awa returned from her first Smokeland trip to Mother’s garden and let the Smokeland-knowledge taste sweet on her tongue then swallowed it quickly unspoken. That made her muscles lumpy and her joints wobbly. She snorted wisps of border-void and felt dizzy.
Father was still yelling at Mother about an unruly daughter who’d end up like witch-woman Kyrie: wandering a cold mountain, bloody and bitter, childless and without love. Mother distracted him with a sack of jewels and coins while Awa struggled back to her everyday self.
The scar moon was low and the sun about to rise over Mother’s garden. Silver-leafed herbs brooded around the well and spicebushes scented the air. Awa focused on cinnamony aromas. The everyday was as compelling as Smokeland. Mother must have carried Awa’s breath body back from the forest.
“Forget the elephants.” Mother pleaded with Father. Her willful hair was braided down in thick plaits. Her brown cheeks sagged. “This unruly child has brought in a treasure.” Counting the money, Father didn’t notice the wild pup licking Awa’s face. Mother chased him off before Father put a bolt in his furry hide. Dogs harassed the goats who had no fat to worry away. “Selling Awa has saved your farm,” Mother said.
Father looked up from his money bag at the tumble-down corn crumbling in the fields. Fruit trees were covered in a fuzzy scale. Goats bleated at kids sucking their dry teats. Father had stolen all the milk. “We’ll see if the farm can be saved,” he said. His eyes were flicks of flame, his trim beard patchy. “We’ll see.”