We waited an hour, and I spent the time thinking about Kevlar gloves, the kind used by veterinarians to deal with feral cats. Not that they’d actually protect my arms from something like a blynx’s claws. Unless maybe they were stitched with small sections of iron? Like brigandine, but smaller? No, that’d make them too heavy. Bone might work, though. Or lacquered wood, like the samurai used.
The other thing I considered was the blynx’s ability to… well, blink. While merged with the uekisheile, I’d gotten a glimpse at the ability in action, but no matter how much I tried to recollect the magics involved, the patterns were jumbled. The only hope for deconstructing and reconstructing the ability was to study the body.
Maybe I can exchange my share of the blynx’s bounty for the skull and sternum? That was where I’d felt the flow of qi—and to a lesser degree, mana—the strongest.
Keeping an eye on the forest below, waiting for the blynx to die, I signed to my teammates my idea.
We were on our way back to Voorhei when we ran into the hunters from Albei again. Teila and I carried the blynx’s remains split between us, but our kill was completely outshone by a wolverine the size of a small car on a travois dragged behind Agath and Moon.
The fur was midnight black, except for a streak of white fur across the head. The claws were a foot long each and wickedly sharp. Alive, the animal must’ve been death incarnate, and yet, it had met its match in the team from Albei.
The dolbecs looked worn, their armors clawed, and I saw evidence of bandages underneath. Meanwhile, the others strode through the forest untouched, proud of their kill.
“Don’t be too upset,” Banan said after greeting us, his gaze lingering on the blynx. “It’s not the size that matters. Any animal, no matter how small, has the potential to grow into a deadly killer.” His smile seemed sincere, but I caught sight of Kuros smirking behind him.
Mumu was out scouting ahead, so Tegen took it upon himself to respond: “The hunter who follows the path will never be led astray.”
Banan quirked his head. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Aren’t we trading truths?” Tegen asked. “Would you like more? I have many. My favorite is this: imperfect stones line the Path to Perfection.”
Banan shook his head. “I wasn’t trading. I just wanted to comfort you. Your kill is smaller—”
“Yes, I know,” Tegen said. “And I was just trying to comfort you in return.”
“But I don’t need comforting,” Banan said, his confusion seemingly growing.
“Ah,” Tegen said, looking embarrassed on Banan’s behalf, as if there was scat in Banan’s hair and he hadn’t realized it. “Then never mind.”
Tegen turned toward Voorhei and gestured for us to follow along. When he was out of view of the Albei team, he signed, “One thing you should never do is to play the games of imbeciles. Follow your own path. Always.”
Inleio was outside the village gate to welcome the hunters and record the day’s events. There were more injuries than yesterday; the worst of today was a bad fracture of the femur. The injured hunter was an older woman.
They’d given her a potato-based liquor to help with the pain, but even so her teammates had to hold her down to keep her still. There were tears in her eyes and a wooden dowel in her mouth to keep her from screaming. I rushed over to cast Anesthetic, and her body slumped with relief. Her breathing was still ragged, but at least she’d stopped writhing.
An older man worked quickly to arrange the bones before binding them. He smelled faintly of qi, and I recognized the scent of Nature’s Spring.
“How long will the spell last?” someone asked.
The question was directed toward me, so they were probably wondering about Anesthetic. I didn’t catch who’d asked it, though. I looked up and noticed that the whole team was sprinkled with gray hair. Their faces were stoic, but there was concern in their eyes.
“A minute for each cast,” I said.
“And how many casts can you do?” The woman asking was lithe as a whip, and the others seemed to defer to her.
“Five, but it’d be better to save a couple for my healing spell.”
She nodded. “You heard,” she said to the man arranging the bones. “Three minutes, Ben.”
The modern-sounding name threw me, but a quick look with my Status camera showed that his name was actually Benseisu. Ben was his nickname, and the team leader was—click—Kesalei.
Ben nodded, sweat rolling down his face, but his hands never stopped. After a minute, the injured woman started to groan, so I recast Anesthetic.
“The bone’s in three pieces,” Ben said, “but the breaks feel clean. I’ve put them together as best I can.”
Kesa turned to me. “I saw your healing spell yesterday. It needs bare skin, right?”
I nodded. “The water has to touch the body.”
“Go ahead. We’ll bind the leg after and then cast Nature’s Spring too.” She looked around to count the hunters nearby. “Not everyone has returned, so you should save your mana, just in case there’s an emergency.”
My water skin was out of water, so I had to borrow Teila’s. She’d come up behind me to watch. The mana rose within me, the Healing Water runes transforming it from neutral and tasteless to cool and refreshing.
I poured the water on the broken leg, and almost immediately the swelling started to go down. I couldn’t tell what was happening inside, but I’d experienced the spell healing my severest injuries in three casts. Because of that, I believed two casts would be enough to see the leg out of danger. Plus, there’d be Nature’s Spring for aftercare.
I stopped after one, though, as instructed, and stepped away to find a quiet place. Kesa made good sense when cautioning me to save mana in case there was another medical emergency, so I spent the next couple of hours meditating. Working together with the uekisheile, we could recover four points worth of mana every hour. Each of those four points was worth a cast of Healing Water.
Once all the hunters had returned, they did an assessment of all the injuries, and I had to cast Healing Water three more times: one on the femur I’d treated earlier, one on a bad gash on a hunter’s arm, and one on a puncture. The last two injuries were on separate hunters on the same team, which had arrived at the end of the day.
“Is this typical?” I asked Tegen afterward. I couldn’t imagine that the hunt days were sustainable, given the rate of injury.
He shook his head. “It’s not usually this bad. We were unlucky today. And with Woldec and Grunthen gone, the animals are getting bolder. They’re coming closer to the village than they used to. But don’t worry, apprentice, our spears are sharp and our wits sharper. We will manage, as we always have.”
That evening, the family’s meal was interrupted. This time, though, it was Kesa and Ben stopping by to deliver a chicken as a thank you for the help earlier. They exchanged a few words with Bihei, but refused to join us for the rest of the meal. The colorful bird was added to Bihei’s flock, and we were just sitting down to eat again when we heard another clap outside.
It was Inleio and Mumu, both wearing serious expressions.
They asked about the Healing Water spell, and I explained the situation—that I’d learned the spell from Ikfael and wasn’t sure it was appropriate to submit it to the Hunter’s Lodge without her permission.
They nodded in understanding, and talked about how if they were able to get her permission, then it would be a huge boon for hunters everywhere. Nature’s Spring was powerful, but the spell had a fatal flaw: an inability to address severe injuries quickly. Hunters sometimes died faster than the spell could heal.
We were discussing possible trades with Ikfael when Sheedi showed up to also talk about the spirit of the land’s preferences for tribute. She wanted to make sure Ikfael saw the village in the best light possible and would thus be amenable to building a shrine in the Glen.
Poor Bihei and the kids scrambled to prepare food for the sudden guests. Inleio and the rest originally refused to join the meal, but the discussion dragged on and soon they were helping themselves to the tomato stew and roasted potatoes.
And that was when Banan and Otwei showed up. It wasn’t entirely clear why they came to visit, but I did catch an awkward glance between them when they saw Inleio and Mumu present. My guess was that they were interested in the Healing Water spell too. Fortunately, they didn’t stay long.
Once all the discussions were done, only Mumu lingered behind.
“You asked me to look into the family of the ghost boy in the pyramid,” she said. “I found them, and I told them we’d visit tonight or tomorrow.”
“Then let’s make it tonight,” I said.
My preference was to leave for the Glen early in the morning. I had to stop by the lodge to help with butchering the blynx, but there was nothing else keeping me. The kids had done my shopping while I was out hunting, and I was now the proud owner of four waxed burlap bags. They were normally used when picking crops, but they’d work fine to hold the remains of Woldec and his family.
“We won’t be long,” Mumu said to Bihei and the kids.
I followed her out into the warm evening. It must’ve been windy high up, because the clouds raced against the backdrop of the starry night. The breeze felt good and carried with it the scents of cooking from the other longhouses. Not every house could afford candlestones, and those that didn’t had windows flickering with the light of non-magical fires.
We walked toward the southern wall, and I saw the longhouses weren’t as well built there. The wind carried fewer animal sounds—some chickens and a goat or two. An elderly ox had been left outside, and when we passed by I realized why. She was a flatulent old girl, the smell raising the hairs all along my arms.
Mumu grimaced at the smell. “We’re here.”
I clapped my hands outside their door. “It is Eight. I come with news of a family member who died long ago.”
“And I am Mulallamu. I accompany Eight on this errand.”
Well, there wasn’t much more to say about what happened. The longhouse was in rougher shape than Bihei’s, and the family’s clothes weren’t as nice. The food was good, although I only had a bite for the sake of politeness.
The family listened to my story, and they explained that it was a great grand uncle who had died during a particularly bad Long Dark. Then, I told them about how he still cared for his family and wanted them to be well. The family present had only heard of him, but they seemed comforted to know he’d moved on. They tried to offer me a reward—half a dozen eggs—but I refused. Looking at the family’s kids, I could see they needed all the protein they could get.
One of the tykes came up to me and asked about ghosts. He wanted to know if there were any in their longhouse. His sister said there were, and that they would bite his toes if he didn’t do his chores. The adults all hid their smiles.
“Let me look,” I said. And why not? I became one with the land and looked around the longhouse.
A gray-feathered, red-eyed chicken stood by the food, fruitlessly pecking at the corn, but there were no other ghosts. I caught motion out of the corner of our eye, though, and stepped outside fast enough to see Bindeise’s ghost duck inside another longhouse. I nearly tripped, the world tilting sideways, but the uekisheile caught me. Our consciousnesses quickly merged, spinning up a low-level Dog’s Agility to handle the additional sensory inputs that came with my spirit eyes.
The boy chased after us. “What’d you see? Was it a ghost?”
We nodded solemnly. “Yes, but not a scary one. This ghost rewards hard work. Also, there’s a ghost chicken, but she doesn’t seem to harbor any ill intentions.”
We stood out in the open. Mumu was with us, just outside the neighbor’s longhouse where Bindeise had fled.
“You might as well come out,” we said. The words were meaningless to the ghost, but we believed the intent would carry.
Bindeise poked their head through the wall, their normally stubborn face looking sheepish. The portion of us that was the uekisheile felt the urge to play with the word sheepish—a wonderful metaphor!—but a firm intention arose from Ollie/Eight to focus and not be distracted.
The last time we’d seen Bindeise, they’d come too close and we’d pushed them away. Our intention hadn’t been to hurt them. They’d merely startled us, but thankfully they were unharmed.
A thought arose from Ollie/Eight to clarify a misunderstanding. ‘He’ surprised us. Not ‘they.’ The consciousness of a human being is unified under a singular I. The pronouns differ depending on the person and their gender.
It was a curious concept and worth considering. But not now—not when there was a ghost before us.
Bindeise—their… his treasure was no longer necessary now that we could farm the eilesheile. The mystery of his murder was a puzzle we continued to ponder, however, and both Ollie/Eight and the uekisheile found puzzles fascinating. They were an itch that needed to be scratched.
Pleased with the metaphor, we asked, “Do you still want us to find your killer?”
When Bindeise saw that we meant to communicate, he stepped out from the wall, but the meaning of our words didn’t appear to register. He merely stared at us intently.
“Did he answer?” Mumu asked.
We shook our head. “No, Tenna’s Gift keeps him from hearing us.”
“That’s too bad,” Mumu said. The disappointment wafting from her looked like a haze to our spirit eyes. “I was hoping to ask him for proof of his treasure. An early payment would be a gesture of good faith.”
“All is not lost,” we said. “There may be something we can yet do.”
When we had found her ghost, Biaka was lost in her memories, despair, and regret—the emanations of which we were able to sense through our spirit eyes. Even though we weren’t able to communicate through speech or sign language, we had still been able to understand what had happened to her: the context around her death, her feelings about her family, and her reluctance to die.
Bindeise was more contained than Biaka, his spirit more tightly guarded, but what would happen if we applied our will and opened our spirit eyes wider? There was a curious sensation—the feeling of tipping over, of falling toward him. We became overwhelmed by a smoldering anger. There was anguish too, suffused with loss, as well as rage at the world and the monsters within it.
The world was suffering, and the only way to survive was through stubbornness: living in spite of everything in order to spite everything. That was gone now, though, taken away by murder. His murder. And it was for no reason other than he’d awoken in the midst of a storm and heard two men arguing in his yard. The lightning flashed, the thunder roared, and Bindeise had gone to peek outside—
We felt ourselves being held upright. A strong sense of concern, so very different than the ghost’s emotions flowed through the points of connection. “Little Eight, are you well?” Mumu asked. “What exactly are you doing?”
“A test,” we managed to say. “An experiment.” But that last word had been in English. For understanding, Mumu needed the words in Diaksh: “A trial.”
“And was this trial successful?”
We nodded. “Bindeise awoke one night to an argument between two people in his yard. There was lightning—”
The ghost’s emotions swirled suddenly, like a whirlpool sucking us in. There’d been lightning in the sky from the storm, but also in the yard because of… Grunthen; he was threatening someone in a dark, hooded cloak.
Dismay—Bindeise had been filled with it. Alarm and shock too. The point of living away from people had been to avoid the trouble that came with them. And Grunthen was the worst kind of people—someone who thought that because he had a bit of power, he was immune to despair.
Ah! Grunthen learned to despair that night. He’d turned away from the argument and was stabbed in the back. The hooded person fled, and Bindeise had too—in alarm, in terror—running for where he’d hidden his savings and intending to retreat to Voorhei.
As much as the villagers disgusted him, they needed to know tha—pain. There’d been a sharp pain in his back, and then everything had gone dark. Death. It was his death, and only his anguish, smoldering anger, and desire for vengeance remained.
Bindeise ridiculed himself. He had hated the world, but now he wanted to be a part of it again, if only to get revenge. His anger would be satiated. His hunger for revenge… he reached toward me, but Tenna’s Gift lit up; the barrier was thin, so thin, but it held.
We—I pulled away and crashed back into myself. If Mumu hadn’t been holding onto me, I would’ve fallen.
“You’re starting to concern me,” she said.
“I’m concerning myself.” I rubbed my face and did my best to clear away the remnants of Bindeise’s thoughts and feelings. My feet weren’t entirely steady, so I leaned against the nearby longhouse wall.
The hunger is getting to him; he seems to be close to losing control. Not quite yet, although that was definitely a lapse at the end. I’m going to have to be careful with him. I took a deep breath. Or I could also just drop this investigation. Not every problem has to be mine to solve. Except, I was uniquely suited to solve this one. As far as I knew, no one else in the village could communicate with ghosts like I was able to.
There was also Tenna’s Gift to protect me, not to mention the spiritual defenses my family had helped me set up. Maybe if I don’t delve so deeply next time? If I have to, I can also push him away, or worst case banish him. I nodded to myself. Let’s keep going. It’ll be good to help the dead, and I won’t turn away any treasure found along the way.
It also looks like Tenna’s Gift and my ability to sense the thoughts and emotions of the dead can coexist, after all. I quickly merged with the uekisheile—we joined for the briefest moment and looked at the gift’s barrier. It was steadily thickening now that we weren’t actively trying to sense past it. We split, and I thought, That’s confirmation, then. Or at least a first pass at evidence that the Deer God and Tenna’s gifts are somehow accommodating each other. That’s a relief.
Mumu had been watching me intently. “So? You’ve discovered something.”
“Grunthen,” I said. “He was in Bindeise’s yard arguing with someone in a cloak. I don’t know who—the ghost didn’t see his face.”
“Grunthen!” Mumu’s face turned excited. “He’s alive!”
I shook my head grimly. “He was stabbed in the back by the person he’d been arguing with. And then when Bindeise fled the scene, the murderer either ambushed him or followed after him, because they stabbed him too.”
Mumu’s face fell. “Dead for sure, then. Grunthen is gone.”
“I’m afraid so. Sorry.”
“The world is the world,” Mumu said. “We can only bear our own portion of it. Grunthen’s death is not yours to carry.”
“Still, I know how much he and Woldec meant to the village.”
“For there to have been an argument, Grunthen must’ve known his killer,” Mumu said.
“And why meet at Bindeise’s place?” I couldn’t help but think it was a strange place to arrange a rendezvous.
“Ah, I can explain,” Mumu said. “Bindeise’s was one of the few safe places outside the village. Our teams have sometimes used it as a fallback if something goes wrong with a hunt.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “After all, we know Woldec and Grunthen’s expedition met with disaster. He must’ve gone there, encountered the hooded person, and they argued.”
Mumu frowned. “This hooded person must’ve been the one to use the cleansing fire, probably hoping the lodge would assume Grunthen died along with Woldec and the rest.”
“All plausible,” I said.
“Who do you think did it?” Mumu asked.
“I should ask you that. You know the people in the village much better than I do.”
“That’s the problem,” she said. “I can’t believe anyone of Voorhei would kill Grunthen.”
“Well,” I said, “given the argument between him and his killer, the motive was likely fear, greed, hate, or rage. Those are usually the reasons people lash out against others. Hmm… love too, if a person thinks they’re protecting someone.”
“Grunthen bragged more than he threatened,” Mumu said. “He was disliked, but not hated—he was too important to the village’s safety for that.”
“It bothers me that Grunthen survived when Woldec and the others didn’t. What if he ran away from the fight?” I asked. “Or maybe he made a deal with someone to betray Woldec in order to claim the… the thing they were searching for, for himself. And then Grunthen was in turn betrayed.”
“Grunthen would never betray the lodge.” Mumu closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “But I can see him running away. He had power but was not brave-hearted. And if he truly did run away, then Ghitha would’ve been furious with him. Ghitha would’ve struck out if he could, but he is no hunter. He wouldn’t have been able to kill Grunthen.”
“Even if it was by surprise?” I asked.
“Grunthen would’ve heard him approach.” Mumu shook her head. “You don’t know this, but Ghitha was barred from joining the Hunter’s Lodge—not by the lodge but by his parents. They were incensed that he didn’t inherit the Lightning-Touched talent like his brother, and so they forced him into the Way of the Merchant. They bragged that if he couldn’t hunt, he’d at least be of use to the family. Ghitha’s skills are all related to trade.”
“And now there are no hunters left in their family,” I said.
“That’s right. Only Ghitha’s left. It’s a tragedy for both him and the village.”
“And so financially—”
“Ghitha is wealthy, or he should be. How else can he afford to sponsor the hunters from Albei? The team couldn’t have been cheap.” Mumu sighed. “Each must be getting several antaak for the hunt of the kalihchi bear.”
“Can he afford that?” I asked.
“He must be able to,” Mumu said. “Whatever Ghitha is, he’s not stupid. He wouldn’t spend taak he couldn’t afford.”
“Not unless he expected to gain something of even more value,” I said.
“You can’t eat vengeance,” Mumu said, frowning.
That was true, but what if he thought he could get vengeance and a room full of eilesheile? Wouldn’t that tempt the man?
“Supposedly, Kiertie had a knack for finding treasure,” I said. That was the sense I’d gotten from her daughter’s ghost. “It was the inspiration for Woldec’s expedition.”
“I’d heard that about Kiertie,” Mumu said, “but Borba would know for certain. His family was originally Voorhoos, where she came from.”
“Then I’ll seek him out tomorrow before I leave for the Glen.”
“You’re really leaving again?” Mumu asked.
“Ikfael’s Glen has become my home,” I said.
“And this,” Mumu said, gesturing to the quiet village around us. “Can’t it become your home?”
I thought about the question, giving it the consideration it was due. “Maybe. I expect there’ll come a day when both the Glen and Voorhei are home.”
“That’s well, then.” Mumu smiled and clapped me on the shoulder. “Come, Little Pot. Let’s go. The day’s been long, and we’re both due a rest.”
Well, that was a truth if I’d ever heard one.
