Shadowbridge

TWO



She was going to be late, but she didn’t care. She picked an outdoor café and sat down, her legs gone weak. The aftershock had caught up with her—the stupefaction of what had happened on the spire. She tried to dismiss its effect upon her, telling herself that because she hadn’t eaten since morning, this was just hunger making her feeble.

She had ample money to pay for a feast but asked only for a single dish of strongly spiced scallops and vegetables stewed over kelp, with some fermented rice wine to steady her nerves. She sat quietly awhile, watching people pass by, sipping her wine. It tingled in her belly, its sizzle reaching to her fingers. Her awe receded, the way the impact of a dream steadily recedes once one awakens.

Shumyzin had been ready to tell her something important. Maybe she could come back tomorrow…although somehow she suspected he would not manifest again, whether the sun fell upon him or not. The rules of things known and unknown were in play, and though she was incognizant of them, she sensed that what he had been about to say fell into the category of things that could not be known until their time.

Her food arrived, and after two mouthfuls she was sniffling merrily from the bite of the spices and washing the fire down with her wine. Though her face flushed with heat from the seasonings, she kept her hood up and her mask on.

On Vijnagar it was not uncommon for people to go about masked. The wealthy in particular did so, sometimes in order to conduct liaisons with lovers who, for one reason or another, might have been inappropriate. As a result, masks had attained fashionability. Many were intricate, sequined, edged in gold, scales, or feathers. A wide variety of them passed by as she ate; jewels and sequins gleamed in the torchlight. Her mask was far simpler—a tight, shiny black cloth with a diamond pattern in the weave; it covered her from the top of her head to the tip of her nose. The idea was not to draw attention to herself. She might easily have been a rich young man disguised to go slumming, and no doubt it was this impression that attracted the tattered procurer who slid onto the bench across from her, crooked his pinkie to his nose, and asked, “Paidika, young master?”

Leodora looked up coldly. He still held his pinkie to his nostril. She set down her spoon, then bit the tip of her thumb and flicked it at him.

The grubby man affected a look of indignation. He bowed a hasty apology and moved off to find a willing client. She watched him glide from table to table, eventually to an elaborately masked couple being led by a hired torchbearer. They discussed his smiling proposition and, to her surprise and disgust, went off with him, dismissing the torchbearer with a coin. It was risky business—the procurer might have been laying a trap to rob and murder them. She noted that both the man and woman wore khanjarli daggers across their bellies. They weren’t fools, whatever else. However, his skimming the area made it likely that the grubby pimp did in truth represent a paidika—a harem of boys. She shuddered at the thought of what such a place, run by so scabrous a creature, must be like.

With the meal finished, she stood on stronger legs. The wine and food in her belly gave her a compact, integrated feeling—a feeling that she could do anything. After all, she was a favorite of the gods. She was a great storyteller. And she was now most definitely late. Soter would be wringing his hands in worry that something horrible had befallen her. He always expected disaster. He courted it.

She hailed a girl with a torch, who could not have been more than twelve, and said huskily, “Lotus Hall.” The girl led her down Caritas Avenue. They passed a cluster of other unhired torchbearers, all of them the girl’s seniors, and all of them male. They glowered sullenly. Leodora chuckled.

The girl led her to the open doors, there bowing with proper respect. Leodora smiled and handed her three silver coins, where one was sufficient pay. The child’s eyes grew wide. Leodora leaned down and said, in her own voice, “There, and don’t share any of it with those ruffians we passed.” The girl’s amazement doubled as she realized she’d been leading a woman, who now slipped into the dark interior of Lotus Hall.

Some nights statues spoke and women dressed as men.

Inside the hall, torches in wall sconces to each side of the doors had been lit, as had the main chandelier. The oil burned brightly, smoking, above a noisy crowd. She didn’t see Nuberne, the owner, but his wife, Rolend, stood beside the serving bar. Moonlight trickled through the lancet windows, splashing milky radiance upon the tables. Between tables and wall lay deeper pockets of shadow. Leodora skirted the main crowd, trying to keep in the shadows, trying to avoid Rolend’s attention. But it was Rolend’s nature to notice everyone who came into her hall, no matter how crowded it was. Before Leodora was halfway down its length the mistress of the hall had swept out from behind the bar, snaked among tables and revelers, and blocked her path.

“Jax,” Rolend said, taking her hand, “I’d begun to worry that you weren’t going to perform tonight.” She thrust forward her ample bosom as though stabbed from behind, then gave a look of coy embarrassment as both breasts settled on Leodora’s arm.

Leodora drew back but bumped up against a chair. She forced a smile while she tried to maneuver around the mistress without making contact again. She replied with Jax’s deeper voice, “I always perform.”

Rolend’s smile grew sly. “I’ll bet you do, my Jax.”

Leodora’s smile never faltered, but in trying to step around the chair her foot caught behind one of its legs, and it clattered along with her. She couldn’t seem to untangle herself. Rolend gripped her fingers tight with one hand and smoothed the other across her palm. “You have such hard hands, my dear Jax. So rough for someone of such delicate skill—”

“Ro!” From the kitchen Nuberne’s voice cut through the din. “Where’s the damned yarrow, damn you?”

Rolend’s eyes hardened for an instant. She released her hold and smiled as if she hadn’t heard. She said quickly, “After the show I’ll bring you some dinner and we can dally a bit. He’s already in his cups.” Then she called out, “Yarrow’s on the bottom pantry shelf…dearest!” so shrilly that Leodora’s eyes teared.

As the mistress of the house turned away, Leodora sighed, and a voice from the table in front of her said, “She’s taken a real shine to you, lad.”

“Soter!” He had his back to her, his feet up. The bald dome of his head rested below the high back of the chair. She wriggled around the table to sit facing him. “Soter, something strange has happened. I need you to explain—”

Instead of hearing her out, he interrupted, “I’d begun to worry ’bout you. It was my misgivings that top-heavy tart related, not hers. She has none. She merely wants to make certain you’ll accommodate her after.”

Soter had been tanned by every wind that had ever blown across Shadowbridge. He was lean and dark and dry as leather. His was neither a happy nor a sad face, but one that had encountered some version of every possible eventuality. At the moment it was flushed from an extended encounter with a wine bottle.

“What am I going to do?” she asked.

He puzzled for a moment. “Feign death?”

“What did my father do?”

“Well, generally, he was about the most accommodating man there ever was.” With the two fingers of his that were missing their last joints he scratched his stubbled chin, then winced at what he’d said. “That is to say, until your mother performed his reconstruction. I don’t believe he’s the paradigm you’re looking for at the moment. ’Course, he wasn’t pretending to be somethin’ other than what he was.” She glared at him, and he waved his hands in defense. “I didn’t say you had a choice, dear heart. Prejudice is the way of the world. A few more spans up the line here, you’ll have gathered yourself a reputation to bank on, and you can come out of your headgear like a turtle out of her shell—make a big production of it, a spectacle, if that’s what you want to do. Not that I’d advise it. And there’ll still be some stretches—Malprado, for instance—where you might be prohibited…where women have no business doing business ’less it’s illicit. The mask they’d make you wear there would cover your mouth, too. Be very anonymous there. I doubt we’ll go that way. No, somewhere like old Colemaigne’d be better for you. They won’t care at all, except about the performance. Most places’ll be swayed by the wonder of you, the mysterious masked wonder called Jax. Make you an exhibit, a treasure. ’Course, if you want to remove the mask, I can’t stop you.” He poked his finger into his chest. “Not me.”

Someone in the crowd shouted out, “Jax!” but at the booth, not at her.

“Yes, but what do I do about tonight?”

Smiling crookedly, Soter sank back. “Perform, m’girl, perform. Get that idiot musician to play decently for more than five minutes at a time and we’ll do all right.” He got up, seeking his balance. The small bronze libation bowl in the center of the table rocked, splashing out liquid dark as blood. It was nearly full. How many drinks did it take to fill a libation bowl when the offering from each drink was but a drop or two?

That lush, the god had called him. It was amusing on a puppet: When Meersh drank himself stupid, people all laughed. Leodora’s jaw clenched. She needed advice and he dismissed her with a line he thought amusing: “Perform.”

“So, anyway,” Soter said, “where in the Great Spiral were you?”

“Talking to a statue,” she snapped, then marched off, leaving him staring after her in his befuddlement.

At the far end of the hall from the doors stood her booth. Twice her height, it was three panels of black drapery making up three sides of a tall box, open at the top. The ends of the upright poles protruded above the drapery. In the center of the front panel, she lifted a smaller flap of material that acted as a curtain covering a flat, featureless white silk screen. As she pinned the curtain up, some of the patrons began whistling and clapping. Without acknowledging them she circled to the side of the booth, parted the drapes near the rear corner, and stepped into darkness.

Inside, the booth’s framework of stout wooden poles, tenoned and pinned into each other, was more obvious, and all the secrets of her skill were revealed.

Behind and above the silk screen—covered on this side by a small curtain of fabric identical to the one she’d pinned up—stood a stanchion on which her lantern hung. Unlike most other lanterns, one side of it was solid brass, dull with age, another had been cut with tiny holes and two crescent moons, and a third had been fitted with a plate of blue glass. Only one side—the one facing the screen—contained anything like a lens, as a normal lantern might.

In the back right-hand corner were stacked two coffin-sized trunks in which the entire show was transported—the bottom one for the poles and drapes, the top for her puppets—and on top of the trunks, on his back and making a noise somewhere between a snore and a gargle, lay the accompanist. He was a small dark-haired man, unshaven and in clothes that were better suited to mop buckets. The unwashed smell of him wouldn’t have posed a problem on the boulevard, but in the small booth it could bring tears to her eyes.

Nevertheless, she had to wake him now; she held her breath as she tapped him on the shoulder. His head rolled. Then he jerked awake. His eyes shifted, found her, and he sat up, drawing back on the case, knees up, almost fearful in his pose.

She had no time to be concerned about his confusion or fears. He wasn’t a particularly good musician to begin with, but he was all that they’d been able to find. Soter complained that they needed a good accompanist, that they weren’t a troupe without one, but thus far they’d had no luck acquiring anyone else whose playing warranted keeping him on. Authoritatively Leodora said, “Come now, you, we have to begin. Go help Soter, set up your things beside the screen. They’re already getting sour out there.”

The musician jumped down, then slouched out of the booth. She quickly secured the ribbons that tied it closed so he couldn’t get back in.

She unfolded and set up two low trestles, one on each side of the silk screen, then lifted the top from the upper trunk and placed it squarely over the right-hand trestle, forming a table.

Then she set to work. She knew what stories she needed to tell tonight. The necessary pieces for Shumyzin’s tale were scattered in different compartments inside the trunk. She would have to root around for those during an intermission. Soter ought to know where most of them lay. Right now she was late, and the audience was hooting.

With the first box prepared she took off her tunic and mask, and stood wearing only trousers and the wide elastic band that pressed her breasts nearly flat against her ribs. She would have been happier if her chest had been smaller and easier to conceal. The band was giving her a rash. She peeled it off, then quickly took a towel and patted the perspiration from beneath both breasts. For the show she could be free of the harness, her sex hidden entirely from outside view. The beautiful thing about being a puppeteer was that she remained anonymous. She disappeared into her stories.

Dry, she wrapped herself in the loose, comfortable black shirt that she always wore to perform. She took a deep, calming breath, stood for a moment longer, then undid the ribbons on the booth flap.

From a punt she lit the lantern, rotating it so that the blue-glass side faced front. Then she knelt on the padded stool beside her box of puppets and lifted the inner curtain covering the screen. As the curtain came away, the stretched silk glowed a deep, submarine blue. Outside, the musician’s flute sounded and the crowd cheered. There were cries of “Shut up!” and “Sit down!” and “Quick, bring me another nabidh!”

From the box she took the first piece: the image of a single stick-legged house. She deftly hooked it upon the silk. Then she lifted by its rods the first puppet, a magnificent construction. She waited.

The audience muttered, settling in. The flute played an introductory trill, slipped a note, but finished, held fairly steady, then faded.

The room fell silent.

Soter’s voice filled the quiet. “We bid you welcome all. Tonight, if you’ve never witnessed it, you will see a rare thing. If you’ve been here before, then you’ve come back because you now know that I did not lie when I promised you this the first time.

“Many years ago I traveled these spans. There was a master puppeteer in those days, to whom people flocked from sometimes two cityspans distant.”

She heard the name of Bardsham carried on murmurs as upon waves. “Bastard,” she whispered. He’d never done this to her before: However sober he sounded, he was indeed drunk, and she was helpless to shut him up if he went too far. She held the rod puppet at the ready, beneath the screen where the light couldn’t throw its shadow onto anything.

“Yes, that’s right—Bardsham, a magical name. The greatest of all entertainers, so great that, although he’s been gone for near twenty years, we still speak of him in whispers, in awe. Well, I make you a promise that anyone who can recall his skill as I do will be bedazzled by what they see here tonight, for this is as near as…no, no, I won’t say that. Rather, judge for yourselves. Ladies, gentlemen, princes and paupers, foolish virgins and wicked libertines, lovers of story one and all, please dedicate your attention to the entertainments…of Jax!”

Applause followed, some cheering, a few whistles that might have been in mockery of the old man. She heard him walk past her on the far side of the drapes, sensed his entry behind her. He stumbled in the constricted darkness, chuckled to himself, then found his seat. By then the crowd had fallen silent and the light filtering in over the top of the booth dimmed—Nuberne had doused the central chandelier.

Leodora went to work.

THE TALE OF CREATION



There is a story that explains Shadowbridge to itself.

At the beginning of the world the first fisherman, Chilingana, caught the first storyfish. No bridges existed then. Even the first dragon beam had yet to appear. Chilingana lived in a stilt house built on rough pillars that climbed straight out of the sea. From Phylos Bar, looking south, you can see the ruin of them still. Chilingana was down among the pilings around one of these pillars when he caught the storyfish. He had never seen one before, because they swim so deep, and Chilingana did as he would with any fish on his line—he dropped it into his creel along with the others he’d caught already and went on fishing.

At the end of the day he hooked a line to the creel, then climbed home on the steps that curled up around one of the pillars. When he reached the top and had gathered his breath, he drew up the line to raise his catch. He could smell the fire his wife was preparing.

Behind his house Chilingana had a huge stone on which to clean the fish. From there he could throw their entrails back into the sea, a ritual to feed the kraken that dwelled below the pillars, in this way keeping it appeased as they still do off Phylos Bar, lest it surface and pull down the pylons of their span.

Chilingana reached down into the creel. Its weave was so tight that water would remain in it for a day and a half. His fingers clutched one of the fish. Holding it by its tail, he slapped its head against the stone to stun it.

He split the fish down the middle.

He cleaned it and threw the guts into the sea.

He made ready the first fillets.

He killed and cleaned each one thereafter until only the big storyfish with its dark blue head and golden eyes remained. He dipped his hand into the creel and hooked his fingers into the fish’s gills; this caused a hidden barb inside the gill to pierce the crease of his palm. Chilingana cursed and yanked back his hand.

He stared suspiciously at the trickle of blood veining his wrist, then at the fish watching him from just beneath the surface, only the tip of its snout protruding. He could see its tiny mouth and harmless knobby teeth. He couldn’t see the barb and thought maybe he’d foolishly impaled his hand on one of its spines.

With much greater care he started to reach into the container again, but before he could touch the fish, the world began to tip over. Chilingana grabbed the big gutting stone, sure that he was about to tumble right over the edge and into the sea. He tried to cry out, but poison in the barb had numbed his lips. His legs trembled and gave, and he fell like the moon rolling across the sky.

When her cooking stone was so hot that it smoked, but the fillets had still not arrived, Lupeka went looking for her husband. He had been gone much too long. And where were the fish?

When she arrived at the gutting stone, she was amazed to find her husband nowhere in sight. A row of pale fillets lay there, all in a straight line, but one of the fish had jumped out of the creel and lay on the ground, barely breathing. Lupeka picked up the fish and dropped it back in. Let Chilingana finish up with these last two when he returned. She told herself that he must have gone back down the steps. His absence disturbed her more than we can imagine, for in those days there was nowhere to hide, nothing but the great house on stilts and the empty sea all around it. No other people but these two.

After looking over the edge for him and seeing nothing but the sea, his wife took the prepared fillets back inside. Wherever he was, he would smell the cooking. Surely that must bring him out of hiding.

Chilingana came to his senses to find himself swimming. Beside him a vast blue island protruded from the dark water, and he supposed that he must have fallen from the house into the ocean, miraculously surviving, and floated away. He must have floated far, for there were no islands visible from his stilt house, and the sky was a peculiar dark brown. Despite this, the island looked oddly familiar. It seemed to rise and fall in the water.

All at once he realized it was no island at all. It was the snout of the storyfish. Beside him. And the sky was no sky, but the wicker of the creel. He began to struggle to pull himself out, but he had no arms. What had happened to him?

The fish laughed. The sound made the water bubble and roil.

Then the fish spoke to him. “This is how it is for us. We don’t have the luxuries of you who’ve been dreamed into being by greater forces.”

It was the first Chilingana had heard about this. “Dreamed?” he asked, and although he didn’t think he’d said this out loud, the fish replied, “Yes, dreamed into being. You in turn are capable of dreaming a reply to the creators. Where your dreams meet theirs the world takes shape. Today your fisherman dream met my dream of being a fish, and mine prevailed. So here you are, having fished yourself into my story.”

“Is that what happened to me?”

“I put you in my tale before you could take hold of mine.” The fish chuckled.

“Am I a fish forever, then?” The storyfish did not answer, and Chilingana grew nervous. The silence likely meant there was no good news for him. His terror broke loose. “I don’t want to be a fish!” he cried.

The fish said, “Is that right? Too good to be a fish? Very well, then. But before I’ll help you, you must grant me three wishes.” The island swam nearer.

“What?”

“First, whenever you catch a fish of my kind, you must throw it back.”

“Of course. How could I eat you after we’ve spoken?”

“Second, you must show respect for those fish you do catch, and return to the sea the ones too small to make a meal.”

“I would return you to the sea right away. All right, I agree. What else would you have of me?”

“That you tell all other people my rules and make them abide by them.”

“All other people? What other people? There is only me and my wife.”

“And if I tell you there will be more?”

“Who? Who else is coming?”

“That I cannot see. But they teem like a red tide.”

“Where are they?”

“Ah. That’s a puzzle, isn’t it? Tell me, how did you begin your life?” the fish asked.

“Well, I—” Chilingana stopped, bewildered. He didn’t know. He had never thought about it before. He had always simply been. His wife and the world had always been. So, too, the storyfish must always have been.

“You know little of the world,” said the fish.

“All right, you’re so clever, you tell me how I was begun.”

The fish’s tail flicked impatiently. “I’ve said already all I’m going to say until you honor my wishes. I do hope you’re a social animal.”

The fish’s snout loomed over him. Its laughter shook the waters, and Chilingana floundered helplessly.

He awoke with a start to find himself slouched beside the creel. His stung hand was red and swollen. The storyfish floated just below the water level, its huge eyes following him. “Why,” he said, “I must have dreamed this.”

“You think so?” said the fish. Although it remained beneath the water, its voice rang clearly in his head. “Honor your promises tonight. Then come and talk to me in the morning before you throw me back into the ocean, and I will tell you the most important thing of all—a thing you will not want to hear. But you must.”

“What’s that?”

The fish said nothing more.

Chilingana got up. He grabbed a clay pot and hurried down the steps to the water. The smell of frying fish made his stomach grumble, but he ran on. At the bottom he filled the pot, then hauled it much more slowly back up.

His wife met him at the top. “So there you are, you foolish man. I looked all over for you, I called to you. Where had you got to?”

“I was right here.”

“No, you weren’t. I came out and found your fillets but not you,” said Lupeka. The discussion would surely have blossomed into an argument, except that she noticed her husband’s swollen hand. “How did this happen?”

He first scuttled over to the creel and emptied the pot into it while he spoke. “There, fish. There’s some more water for you.” Setting down the pot, he said to his wife, “The fish stung me. It’s nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Nonsense, that needs tending to. It’ll have poison in it.”

She led him inside. His wife had cooked the fillets beautifully. He stared at them, his mouth flooding with desire, while she bandaged his hand. Finally she let him sit on the floor and handed him his portion.

He was about to take his first bite when he hesitated. The food dangled from his spoon. Lupeka asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” replied Chilingana. “I just—” He lowered the spoon. “I just want to give thanks to these fish for letting me catch them. For giving their lives to sustain ours.”

“That’s an odd thing to say. And why are you bellowing?”

He said, “No, it isn’t odd at all. From now on we’re going to honor them whenever we eat. We’re going to thank them just like this.” Then he ate the food.

His wife decided that the poison from his hand had affected his brain, and so she refrained from argument.

After dinner Chilingana was exhausted. His wife insisted that he go to bed and rest. He complied. She covered him with her body to keep him warm. Into her ear, as he drifted to sleep, he muttered, “Tomorrow I’ll know everything.”

In the morning he awoke to his wife’s scream. He sat straight up on his mat and looked around the hut. She wasn’t there. He bounded outside, to find her beside the door. She had been carrying a huge fillet, which lay now at her feet. Its skin was blue. It was the storyfish.

“Fish!” cried Chilingana, and he knelt beside it. “Fish, oh no, fish, forgive me. Please forgive me. I would have put you back! Tell me the secret thing. The important thing.”

The headless fillet did not answer.

“Where is his head?” he demanded, finally paying attention to his wife. “What have you done with his head?”

She did not seem to see him. Her gaze lay beyond him on a more fearful thing. In a tiny voice she asked, “Husband, how did you create all of this?”

Chilingana turned where he knelt to see what she meant.

Beyond their small house now a great curving road stretched out across the sea. Where it curved he could see arch upon arch supporting it and immense towers reaching into the sky. The far end vanished into the morning fog. It was an impossible development. He could have worked for years erecting it all and never built anything so grand. He rose to his feet in wonderment. Where had it come from?

He knew the answer. He held the answer in his hand. “The fish wants me to go exploring.” He said it low, almost to himself.

“What?” asked his wife.

“I said I wish to go exploring. To see the world.”

“You—you’ve never mentioned it before.”

“Well, I don’t tell you everything,” he replied. And that was the very first wedge ever driven between two people.

“But how was this done? How did you build it?”

Chilingana, holding the glistening meat of the storyfish, could only answer, “I’ll never know.”

They ate the storyfish. Chilingana said the small prayer over its delectable carcass that the people of Vijnagar repeat to this day before eating a fish. He and his wife eventually set out to journey along the new spans. Every night when the fisherman slept, new ones formed, so that each morning was the first morning of a new world. It is a process that may still be occurring somewhere, for who of us can view the world all at once and know what develops everywhere? Some spans are old, and some are young. On some, the gods of Edgeworld light the Dragon Bowls and send down their gifts; on others the light no longer falls. Chilingana never learned its secrets, nor has anyone since. Without the storyfish to explain, no one knows the secret ways of Shadowbridge, or whether Chilingana travels and dreams among us still.

“…travels and dreams among us still.” The words of her epilogue reverberated in the rafters.

With one hand Leodora balanced the puppet figures of Chilingana and his wife on the screen. With her other, she reached up and rotated the lantern so that tiny stars and moons spread across the silk. The two dark figures sank slowly from sight. She unpinned the curtain and let it drop over the screen. The musician played a final note on his flute and thumped a small drum once.

For a moment there was utter silence. Then the applause exploded. Pottery banged against tables. The audience, depending upon their background, cheered, whistled, or belched approval. Her name—the name Jax—resounded from all around the hall.

She glanced back at Soter. He grinned in reply, then broke into a yawn. Had he dozed off during the performance? Possibly. It was a story that had required no participation from him. She had narrated where necessary, doing the three voices. It was a story known to everyone in the hall, and they could have followed it even if she’d said nothing at all.

Soter stood, stretching. He picked up his hammered brass bowl and went out through the drapes. He would make the rounds, visit every table, answer questions, accept drinks, tell lies about the background of the mysterious Jax, and collect what she hoped would be a sizable compensation. She had plenty of time to prepare for the next tale. She would perform three stories tonight: the demigod Shumyzin’s last of all. People loved to go out on tales of heroes.

As she thought of him, she perceived shared features between her encounter and the story she’d just played out. What had happened to Chilingana in the tale had happened to her on the bridge: The most important thing had not been spoken.

She sat back, stretching awhile. Her gaze finally fixed upon the second trunk, and the sounds of the crowd outside began to fade away.

She closed the top case and stood it on end at the back of the booth so that it blocked the access slit in the drapery. She pulled the lid off the bottom case and lifted out the three inner compartments full of puppets and props. It now appeared to be empty. She slid her fingers along the inner edge of the bottom piece until she touched the loop of black cord. Carefully she pulled up the false bottom, then knelt, holding it up with one hand, ready to drop it if interrupted. Only Soter knew about the false bottom and its contents. He didn’t know, however, about the dreams. No one did, except for a statue.

The sounds and smells of the hall faded entirely. A dim glow surrounded her, and a crackling charge tickled her brows and stood the hairs on her arms on end.

There lay her secret companion. Her treasure. The Coral Man.

She reached into the box to touch him. Fearful, awed, excited all at once. Her fingers traced the roughness of him. She could have shredded the tips if she’d pushed hard enough. The shadows cast by the lantern made his face seem more defined than it really was. She withdrew her hand, fingertips now coated with fine and vaguely luminous powder. There was powder in the box, too, a light dusting of it. She sniffed at her fingers, then put her tongue to them and tasted sea salt. Within that flavor lay her whole life before the spans: the cavern called Fishkill, the lagoon where she swam, the tales of her mother, the smell of the breeze entering her tiny garret.

Memories of the backwater island life she had abandoned.

I

BOUYAN



ONE



She was five years old the first time they let her go to Ningle. Ningle-in-the-Clouds, as Soter properly called it.

They carried their baskets of fish—her uncle and grandfather—on the path that wound beneath the canopy of trees, with the ever-visible span looming ever closer. Before then she’d only seen it from across the island, a great black stripe of cloud showing through the trees, which never moved, never broke apart, but hung in the sky like an omen. At night it transformed into a band of fairy lights coruscating in the sky. She wasn’t prepared for its true size. Almost an hour’s walk from her home, one massive leg of the span anchored somewhere deep in the bedrock of Bouyan beneath them. Steps had been carved into the side of it, each block so big that she had to clamber up with her hands—or would have if her grandfather hadn’t hefted her along with his baskets.

Soon he’d carried her so high that she closed her eyes and buried her face against his neck, smelling sawdust and varnish, the scents of his workshop, which clung to him even more tightly than she.

At the top he set down his basket and unwound her from his neck and back. Between them they had an old game where he swung her and swung her, and she laughed, screamed, giggled. This time, though, he only swung her once, then held her up, her feet resting upon stone. He said, “Now open your eyes, Lea.” She did, and was so awed by the view that she forgot to be terrified right away.

The island of Bouyan lay so far below her that wisps of cloud gauzed the treetops, and she could see clear across to a hint of their rooftops and even all the way to where a chimney of smoke signaled the location of the fishing village of Tenikemac, and farther still—to the sea itself, like a great sheet of glass upon which the whole world was set. She could see that the Adamantine Ocean stretched forever just like the stories said.

That day, standing upon the rail, with her grandfather’s hands enclosing her waist, she heard the call for the first time. It was not a voice exactly, not words, not something anyone else could hear. It whispered her name, spoke to her in the silences, invited her to find it, join it, embrace it. All without words. She thought then it was the ocean calling her. There was nothing else to see.

“Isn’t it fine?” her grandfather asked.

She turned her head to look at him, and now she was afraid. The wordless, communicating voice was frightening, and she didn’t know whether her grandfather was referring to it or to the view. He saw her fear and took her off the rail, assuring her softly, “It’s all right, child, it’s all right. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, you know.” She knew this to be true, but she wasn’t paying attention to him.

The moment he’d touched her, the ocean call had ceased. She listened hard, but it didn’t reappear.

She would not hear it again for years, but on that day—she was certain of this now—the caller had located her. It had sought her, knowing she was somewhere. Now it would be able to find her again.

Throughout the next year Leodora spent nearly every day on the span. It teemed and surged with life, with the noises of excitement, the smells of otherness, newness. Bright costumes and plumed caps dazzled her, and facial adornments from rapier-sharp beards to spiky stiffened eyebrows, beauty spots to shaved scalps drifted past to amaze her. One day she saw a man with wide and tightly waxed mustachios, the tips of which burned with blue fire that didn’t consume them. And on another evening a raggedy fellow walked the thoroughfare with a box dangling from a lanyard around his neck while he cranked handles on either side of it, which in turn caused two metal hooks facing each other through the top of the box to spark and burn and glow in the space where they didn’t quite touch. The ragged man looked lost as he went by, and she heard someone say, “From a Dragon Bowl, that. Ruined him.” But when she asked her grandfather about the man, he replied, “Nothing to do with us, Lea, so never you mind it.”

Her grandfather did not always accompany them. As often he stayed below, on Bouyan, in his workshop, crafting or mending their furniture. Like her uncle Gousier, he was a big man, barrel-chested and powerful.

The buildings on Ningle, all made of stone, were nothing like the structures she knew on the island. Her own house and those of the fishing village were mostly made of wood and woven thatch. Houses on Ningle were dark and roughly finished, and not quite true. Their angles, as her grandfather showed her, were all slightly off the square. He took her to one street not far from the market where the buildings were so crooked that she couldn’t understand how they didn’t fall over.

The market comprised a stretch of mismatched awnings, boxes, carts, and poles. In comparison with many of the others nearby, their own stall was clean and orderly. On three sides of the center, whole fish and cleaned fillets lay in ceramic boxes, atop ice chipped from the depths of Fishkill Cavern. Deep blue awnings kept the stall in shadow and cool.

Gousier usually had someone working for him, someone on Ningle who set up the stall before they arrived and took it down at night, as well as someone to help haul the fish and watch that the clientele didn’t steal. She could remember none of these men—for they were always men—during that year. None of them remained for long. The work was too hard. And—she would later learn—descending to the island for work was considered beneath the dignity of most of Ningle’s denizens; but there were much more reprehensible acts that were not.

Her uncle seemed to enjoy her company. While they walked and climbed to market each morning, he taught her the names of the fish in his baskets and described how they were caught, what they could be used for. Once the stall was set up he put her right up front, and when someone came by and inquired about one of the fish, Leodora would proudly repeat what she knew about it. Most of the time after listening to her recitation, a customer would buy the fish, and Gousier would tell her, “Why, you’re a fishmonger, child. Look at what you sold.” He would give her a coin and let her buy something for herself. Eventually he let her parade up and down the boulevard, calling out the names of the fish they were selling, and this led more people to their stand. Her uncle and grandfather treated her like a princess out of a story—like the girl Reneleka who emerged from an oyster, coiled around a pearl, and who had created the sea dragons. It was a story they told in Tenikemac. She felt as if she, too, had been magically created.

Then one afternoon when she was sitting to the side of the stand, a woman came over and spoke to her. It seemed the most natural of events, one more person asking her questions. The woman was fidgety and furtive, but Leodora didn’t appreciate the meaning of this. She had only known kindness.

The woman invited her for a walk, with a promise of an undisclosed surprise at the end of it. Leodora would have told her grandfather, but he was with a customer on the other side of the stall. She might have told Gousier, but he was haggling with still another person over the price of a halibut. The current assistant had wandered off.

She strolled along beside her new acquaintance for only a few moments before the woman took her hand and drew her suddenly into the nearest crooked little alley, with the promise, “Your treat’s up here.”

It was the same alley her uncle had shown her, full of tilting buildings, and she marched along bravely into the not unfamiliar gloom. Then a man unfolded from the deeper shadows, and she stopped. Leodora remembered him—he had passed by their stall two or three times and then asked her about the cod, listened with a wolfish grin to what she told him, and thanked her for her recitation. He hadn’t bought anything. He grinned at her again now. He had very good teeth.

The woman shoved ahead of her and said, “Give me my money.” But the man shook his head. “When I’ve made the delivery, when they’re happy with their new arrival.” Both of them glanced down at her, and that was the moment she knew something was wrong, but the woman still gripped her wrist. The two began to argue. Leodora pulled with ever-increasing urgency to get away. The woman was too busy squabbling to notice. Abruptly Leodora broke the hold, but it was so sudden and she’d pulled so hard that she spun against the wall. The man was on her before she could get up. “All right, darlin’,” he said. The stink of him smothered her. “You come along with me now to get your surprise. No more working in a fish stall for you, not a lovely girl like you. They’ll like you where we’re going. You’ll be the most popular girl they have.” Smiling though he was all the while, his sweet words were more ominous than anything she’d ever heard. She twisted, but his grip was much harder than the woman’s, and the wall was at her back, offering no way to put distance between them. She started to scream. The man clamped his hand around her face and hissed at her. He ordered the woman to do something to silence her, and they both closed in where there was hardly enough room for one of them alone, and the acrid sweaty stink poured over her like the stench from rotting meat. The woman crouched, cooing, trying to sound tender beneath her jagged, hungry sharpness. Leodora fought for breath beneath a mask of filthy fingers. She grew dizzy.

The grip abruptly lifted from her face; the stench and the man swept away as if by magic. The woman bit back a shriek, grabbed Leodora again, and tugged her down the alley and back out onto the boulevard.

A crowd was collecting. They blocked the woman’s retreat, so that she cried out, “Someone, someone stop him!” and then, almost as an afterthought, “My child, my baby!” She wrapped herself protectively around Leodora, and the crowd obligingly opened a space for the two of them. Even as they moved into it, the crowd moved with them, stepped back as if to accompany them; but they weren’t following the woman. They were fleeing something else. Leodora twisted her head around to see.

Her grandfather.

He caught the woman before she could get past the last of the people choking the boulevard. He tore Leodora from her grasp, then wedged himself in between them. Dreamily she looked back and saw her uncle in the alley. He was bent over and seemed to be gesturing fiercely. His fist raised high and held, hovered. It clutched a mallet. The hand and mallet were wet and dark. She had seen her grandfather holding a mallet that way as he drove pegs into holes he’d cut, but Gousier brought it down harder than Grandfather ever had.

People began shouting “Kuseks!” and she looked up at their mouths, their fearful eyes. Then the woman toppled beside her, knocking someone aside, skidding on her face upon the paving stones. Their eyes locked, just for a moment, before the woman’s expression went slack and the eyes fluttered shut. The crowd turned, roaring, and split in two directions. The space filled almost instantly with a swarm of police—the Kuseks, so named for the striped sashes they wore. They grabbed her grandfather immediately. She saw him struck with a stick, and she screamed.

Her uncle charged from the alley. Blood drenched his face and clothes. He bellowed at the Kuseks to release her grandfather. She watched it all as if from the rail of Ningle, as if it were all transpiring far below, far away from her—the mallet striking once, the police beating her uncle senseless, and beating him even after that. Her grandfather swaying on his knees, blood from his scalp covering his face like a membrane, as he tried in vain to stop them.

Everyone was taken into custody, including the woman. She wasn’t dead after all. She portrayed herself as the victim, and the wounds to her face lent her credibility. She claimed the six-year-old girl was her daughter, and kept touching Leodora, running trembling fingers through her hair. Of course she was not Leodora’s mother, nor looked anything like her, but the bold assertion smothered her denial with the warped aroma of hope, a possibility that was impossible. It surely would have tripped up no one other than a girl who had no mother, generating an internal conflict that terrified and silenced her when she most needed to speak. Finally the authorities had to send for her auntie Dymphana, hauling her up from Bouyan to prove that this hadn’t been something else, a lovers’ quarrel, a domestic dispute. The moment she saw her aunt she began to wail and flung her arms about Dymphana’s waist, and then the Kuseks knew absolutely. They set her grandfather and Gousier free.

The family were escorted back to the market to find their stall a shambles. The fish had been stolen; some of the ceramics were smashed. Apologies from the nearby vendors, who might have intervened but more likely had participated in the plunder, did nothing to mitigate the damage or curb Gousier’s anger. His ribs were broken, his face was bruised and swollen, and he’d lost a tooth. The police pointed out that he had been caught in the act of murder and should be thankful he was alive to complain.

For weeks afterward he could hardly walk along beside the laborers he had to hire to cart the fish up the steps. The workers were hardly better than beggars, but no one else wanted the work. Once his bones had knit, he visited the Kuseks and paid them to see that the pathetic kidnapper was banished to a prison isle called Palipon. It was a bare chunk of rock so far out in the ocean that it could not be seen from any of the great spirals of bridges. No one sent to Palipon was ever heard from again. When he announced this over dinner, the whole family stopped moving as if upon a signal. They stared; they paled. Gousier retorted, “It’s where all her kind should go.” Then he lowered his head and ate as if no one else shared the table with him and his heart was as light as a cloud.

Later, from her bed, she heard the family arguing. Gousier snarled, “Well, what sort of a woman would sell a child into perdition? Or maybe she’s an Edgeworld goddess, do you think? It was a better life she was going to give the girl, in a tiny cell, chained in filth to a bed frame, waiting for her next customer? Because that’s what was going to happen. These people are worse than anything you know, Dymphana, I don’t care if you grew up in the same house with them!” Her aunt said something too quiet for her to hear, but Gousier drowned out the last of it: “Then maybe you’d rather have stayed up there! Maybe the street has more to offer you!” After that it seemed no one spoke again until after she’d fallen asleep.

Her grandfather, although he’d only been struck the once, seemed unable to recover. He suffered spasms, numbness, and headaches that rendered him helpless. A few months later he was dead. Her grandmother died of grief less than a month after that. Leodora was no less devastated than anyone by their combined loss. Her world was shrinking, closing in on her. She dreamed of the two of them with her in an alley where the buildings were sliding together to crush them, and both her grandparents were pushing her, trying to get her out before the walls met, but she could see the space narrowing ahead, and she knew she would never reach the avenue in time, never reach it at all, and then the walls did slam together behind her, so loud that it woke her up. The dream proved portentous.

Gousier forbid her ever to set foot on Ningle again.

Over time she would learn that he blamed her for everything that had happened that day, including the deaths of his parents, which became the foundation for unlimited blame thereafter. Gousier remained as bitter as patchroot wine. His retribution was bottomless.

It was during one of his tirades that he inadvertently called her “Leandra.” He caught himself, but the realization of what he’d said only fueled his anger, as if she had cleverly diverted him. Provoked him. After that, almost her every error or act of defiance was equated with something Leandra had done, although he never spoke the name except in anger, because he refused to acknowledge that he had ever had a sister except when too angry to help himself.

Leandra. Her mother.

TWO



A name was almost the only thing she knew of her mother—but the lacuna hadn’t been apparent before her kidnapper had tried to assume the role. And while that was impossible because Leandra was dead, the impersonation lifted the pall on her knowledge and she saw that nothing lay beneath it, nothing of her mother beyond that name, spoken only in anger.

She was to learn nothing more of her parents until she ran away from home at the age of ten.

Running away had become something of a routine by then. Initially it was herself she fled from—part of her believed her uncle’s accusations, believed that she had been responsible for her grandparents’ deaths, and she tried to escape her guilt to no avail. Dymphana was sensitive to her pain, however, and comforted her when Gousier wasn’t around, telling her, “You are not to blame for this misery, and you mustn’t think that you are. You’re a little girl. You had no experience with such people as tried to hurt you, and those who are older than you ought to have been looking out for you. They should have protected you. Your grandfather knew this, and I think it wore him down. He blamed himself. Your uncle…his way of adjusting is to cast the blame on everyone else. And you are everyone else this time. It is not your fault, child. It never was.” The more times she heard this, the more she accepted it. For a while this was enough to compel her not to hate him for the things he said. But her compliance seemed only to anger Gousier more. When another worker quit and he condemned her to the odious job of cleaning the day’s catch in Fishkill Cavern, she ran away from him. The problem was, there was no place for her to run to. She didn’t dare run to Ningle again, and she knew only a little of the island. She’d long ago been scared off exploring its mysteries, too, with ominous warnings about things that lurked in trees, in bushes, in the dark. Her knowledge of the world was so small as to be nonexistent, and Gousier had only to wait for her certain return in order to effect retribution for her misconduct.

In the past when she’d run away, she had escaped to Tenikemac, where Gousier could always hunt her down. The village in general considered her tainted, contaminated by her association with Ningle and with a family that did business there daily; but most of the villagers overlooked this censure, since most of them did business with Gousier, too. She was, after all, a mere child. They always gave her up when he came looking.

She had two playmates in the village—a girl, Kusahema, and a boy named Tastion, neither of whom at that age would have understood the proscriptions against fraternizing with her. That would come later, or perhaps they were expected to discover it on their own. Within a few years Tastion would prove to be her only friend in that village.

However, on that particular day, she broke the pattern and didn’t flee to the village. Instead she ran to Soter, never imagining that this one element of change would alter the rest of her life.

Soter had taken up residence in an old smokehouse back in the woods, where he lived in relative seclusion. The family—her grandparents—had offered it to him as a reward for having brought Leodora home to them, and thank the ocean they had been alive back then. Her uncle surely would not have let Soter remain on the island.

Soter kept two vats brewing most of the time: His concoctions were always either cooking or fermenting. The main ingredients were fruits he picked himself. She knew that he sometimes went off by himself to the far side of Bouyan and returned days later, dragging bags of fruits behind him. Other items he purchased on Ningle. The product—those quantities he didn’t consume himself, for even then he was prone to imbibe—he sold to Tenikemac. Although they held him in no higher regard than her uncle, somehow Soter managed to be more tolerated. It may simply have been that he wasn’t related to the family—and that he was careful not to mention that what they were drinking included ingredients lugged down from the spans.

Before she even saw the gray hut through the wall of brambles, she smelled his cooking brew. The furious tang of fermentation clogged the air.

She crept around the brambles, listening for any sound of him. He was often irritable when sober, and had chased her away more than once when she’d interrupted him doing seemingly nothing. At first she thought to hide behind his hut, only to find that the accumulated sediment from one of the vats had been dumped out where she would have secreted herself, creating a noisome bog. Beneath the tiny rear window of the hut stood a line of small kegs he called barriks—half a dozen hogsheads of his wine. It was the first time she’d seen them all lined up—one entire vat’s worth. The window was unshuttered.

She climbed up on two of the barriks and poked her head in the window. The interior was dim and smoky. Maybe Soter was gone. She backed out and looked around.

The woods were empty of people. Overhead, leaves sizzled in a breeze. She heard no other sounds.

She put one leg in through the window, then had to double nearly all the way, head to knees, to ease herself over the sill. She felt with her toe for the floor, stretching so much that she slid off-balance. Almost immediately her foot touched the floor, which left her balanced on one foot with the other leg out the window and raised halfway to her ear. She couldn’t get her other foot inside until she had placed her hands on the floor as if about to perform a handstand. Then she folded her leg in through the window, crouched down noiselessly, and looked about.

She was inside Soter’s makeshift pantry. She had never seen inside the pantry before: It was larger than its narrow doorway implied. To her left hung a heavy tarp, which hinted at even more space. She stepped into the doorway, parted the curtain, and stuck her head into the main room. Almost at once she drew back.

Soter was there. His silhouette perched on a low stool, knees up high, his arms splayed, like some spider creature. He was muttering softly as if to a companion—whispery words that she was unable to catch. She didn’t see anyone else. He was not looking in her direction, so she stuck her head farther out. He gave a loud, abrupt curse, and she thought he must have seen her. She stepped back behind the curtain and glanced at the tiny window, certain that she would never get through it fast enough. She scrambled instead behind the tarp and, turning to pull it tight, backed into two black cases. As she stumbled, she twisted about and caught herself on the top case, but her weight made it slide. Something from a shelf farther back fell with an alarming crash.

Soter yelled, “Damn you louse-ridden rodents! How did you get in this time?” He marched into the pantry and flung back the tarp. He had a cleaver in one hand, poised to cut her in half.

She screeched and slid as far back on the cases as she could go. Half a dozen more items bounced and rolled and crashed onto the floor.

Soter closed his eyes and clutched his ears, nearly burying the cleaver in his own head in the process. “Oh, don’t squeal, Lea! Don’t shift about!” he hissed. He groaned and backed away, dropping the tarp. “Oh, I’ve got a Glauber’s head this morning,” she heard him say.

A minute later he returned without the cleaver. “What are you doing in there, anyway? Out, come out here now.” He gestured her from the room with one hand and pinched his temples with the other.

She told him about her fight with her uncle over the amount of fish she had cut up, valiantly trying not to cry while she did, and he nodded with care, rubbing his eyes, pulling at his nose. He offered her some biscuits.

“I’m surprised,” he said, “that he hasn’t come bellowing down upon me like the wind, hammering at my door. Then I might find a place for that cleaver. He doesn’t know you’re here, does he? Doesn’t know, doesn’t care. Just chased you off and gathered up his fish and went off to sell them to people who wouldn’t have anything to do with him otherwise on behalf of some other people who wouldn’t have anything to do with him otherwise.” He patted her head and told her, quietly, that she could stay as long as she liked, provided she made no more noise. He retreated to the outer room. She followed, and found him pouring a cup of his latest brew. After a few sips, he sighed. “Rejuvenation.”

Leodora nibbled at her biscuit awhile. Then she asked him about the long cases behind the tarp.

“The undaya cases, ah-ha, yes,” he answered, very conspiratorially. “Those are a secret kept from your uncle. He doesn’t know I have them, or he’d probably want to burn them, and me along with them.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he replied, and she thought that was all he would tell her. Then he added, “They belonged to your father.”

It was a revelation that tore the breath out of her. She set down her biscuit. She had always known that she’d had a mother, but no one, not even her aunt, had ever mentioned her father.

Soter, wincing against his headache, shifted his gaze, as if wondering whether he’d revealed too much.

“But you said—” she began, much more loudly than he would have liked.

Hissing violently, he raised a hand as if to ward her off. “I know what I said,” he whispered. “I know.” His gaze held her steady. “I promised your uncle, you see. He can be very insistent when he threatens. Which you know better than I. He did not want you growing up with a lot of dreams and ideas in your head about your father. Did not…want you to know.

“I gave in because I wanted to stay here, too, where your grandfather had permitted me. Gousier does have the power to remove me. He could banish me from this island if he didn’t find it more satisfying to be able to tell me that he can do it. All of this is his property, this dung heap amid the thorns, and so long as I keep to his path I get to remain.” He grinned unevenly, which made him press his palm to the side of his head and close that eye. “I seem to have stepped off today. Wonder how we should handle this? Discretion will be key, I think. No reason he has to know anything about anything—which anyway I’ve maintained for years.”

“But what’s in the cases?” she demanded.

“Oh, well, lend me a hand with them and we shall find out together, hmm?” He held up the curtain to let her enter the pantry again.

The two cases were as long as Soter was tall, and brown with dust, spattered darkly where wine or something else had slopped over them. The nub of the leather was worn off in places, too. One case was decidedly heavier than the other. Kneeling, one eye still squeezed shut, Soter fumbled at the hasp on the smaller one. He slipped the pin free, then pushed and prodded the top up. He didn’t remove the lid, but peered secretively underneath.

Then suddenly as if he wanted to drive her back, he shoved a clicking, clattering thing at her. She leaned away but refused to be startled. She stared at what he was holding.

It was a shadow puppet, the first she’d ever seen. The body was articulated: the wrists, elbows, shoulders, and knees all revolved on pins, and each segment was fitted with a hinged rod. She pinched one of the loose ones and the puppet’s jaws opened in a great leer. She pushed on another, and from behind his legs his penis emerged. It was almost as big as his thigh, and the tip was cut with small swirls that made it seem to have a face of its own. Despite the monstrousness of his anatomy, Leodora had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

“His name is Meersh,” said Soter.

“Meersh,” she repeated. She moved his arms and legs, flexed his wrists, marveled at the green tissue-thin skin stretched over his form. She held him up admiringly, and with an ease that surprised her circled the rods so that the puppet appeared to give a gesture of welcome to Soter. Something stirred within her. She forgot her uncle, the cavern, the hatefulness of the rest of her life. Some shape that had possessed no shape until that moment collected and formed deep inside her, and drew its first breath. She leaned around the lid to look into the case. There in three compartments lay stacks of puppets as deep as her arm, and each unique. She looked up past Meersh to Soter; tears were already forming in her eyes.

Soter gaped in awe or terror at her fingers twirling the rods of the puppet, as if staggered by what he saw. She wanted to speak but only a croak emerged, and she sobbed. Soter looked her in the face and recoiled. He dropped the tarp, escaping the sobs, escaping her, escaping the future that in his drunken cleverness he had just cast. He did not in that moment understand that what he had pried open was her life.

Her life incarnate: the puppets of Bardsham.