Tinder Stricken (30 page)

As she approached the camp's smoke plume,
Atarangi came to meet her, with worry creased all around her gold
eyes.

There was a problem, she said. Clamshell had
given some trove goods to the serpents — a good faith gesture, a
minimum payment on her fees outstanding.

One of those trove goods was the Kanakisipt
khukuri.

Chapter 19

“
I did not give your iron-tool away with
cloud-grey eyes,”
Clamshell said.

The assurance in her voice was worse than
any screeching she could have done. Esha said nothing; she kept
digging the heels of her hands into the flattened arch of her right
foot. The pain there was probably the goat's doing, a pain she
could do nothing to sway, but applying pressure there was a trick
worth testing.

“
The serpents speak a rainwater tongue
now, black threats turned to beige words. They wish for
speaking-plant; they green-think about forgiving my sins! I had to
give a song-gift. Yours was the royal-deepest song.”

“It had to be
my
khukuri? You've got
a farm's worth of foods tucked away in those tree gardens of yours.
Why can't I have my chance to retire?”

Esha's voice simmered, rising above a
whisper. She looked across the radiant hearth coals to Atarangi's
tent, where no one inside moved.

Beside her, Clamshell heard plenty well. She
turned away, crests a stiff parody of pride, to preen her chick
with the scissor-sharp points of her beak. After a long day of
hearing lungta-wrapped words, the chick slept on his mother's back;
the preening got no response but to nestle his face deeper into
Clamshell's feathers.

“
You have no young, Precious
One?”

“No,” Esha sighed. “I don't have young. Even
if I did, I wouldn't rob others in their name.”

Another silence, stiff with crest movement.
Clamshell let out a whistling keen, a fanfare to shame as she
watched Esha's working hands.

“
Life flies on teal-broken wings. This
was one choice-path, only one; I red-guard my decision.”
She
paused.
“If you sharply-need help, Precious One, I owe you my
wings. Our trust is white-broken but still, we are kin
now.”

“I'll remember that,” Esha said flat.

In the curtain-thick quiet of night, with
her back-biting well explained Clamshell should have left. She
didn't.

“
My chick is yellow-growing, by
claw-measures each day. His speaking-feathers comes in. Did
Rooftop-kin tell you?”

“No ...”

Clamshell turned, showing her own back with
the chick's curled back on top.
“In-the-middle of a phoenix's
tail, there are two round-tip feathers. Tight together, for
orange-holding the fast-rushing wind. Chicks? They have no fire,
therefore no speaking-feathers. Grown phoenixes have the strength
to fly and to bear words. When speaking-feathers are greening, a
chick begins to speak.”

Much as she wanted to resent every feather
on Clamshell's body, Esha squinted in the dying firelight. In the
centre of Clamshell's forked tail there were two perfect quills,
straight and round-tipped and grown as if from the same pore. The
chick had a matching pair, budding in the tufted mess on its rump.
Two orange nubs of oncoming adulthood.

“
He will speak well. He will
build-rosy-golden and fly true.”

“Well, at least some good came of it.”

That was enough, a granule of forgiveness
for Clamshell to hold in her craw. She croaked resigned and left,
walking away into the shadows and then fluttering out of sight.

As for Esha, she bore harder into her seized
arch. Her khukuri had been within her grasp; now, it was gone. The
options had changed and yet turned more the same than they had ever
been.

In the marshy pre-dawn light; Rooftop's
tapping beak woke Esha.

“Serr-fents are here,” he rasped.

“Nngh,” Esha replied. “Let me join you. I
want to talk to them.”

He trilled, crests bouncing up pleased. They
left Esha's tent and hurried to share greens — as Esha realized
that she and Rooftop were speaking without one whisper of lungta
between them. Maybe there was hope for her animism yet.

Atarangi stood straight-backed in the
creeping dawn, her gooseflesh a stark pattern well before Esha
arrived beside her. She spoke greenly with two serpents — the huge
one Sureness, and a serpent half his size with a blue-dappled snout
that looked familiar.

Esha's arrival was a snapped wax seal, an
interrupted moment as the serpents regarded her.

“Hail to you both,” she said, and gestured
namaste. She couldn't say if the idea of divinity greeting divinity
would translate, and the serpents' rank was beyond guessing, but
Esha was in no mind for stumbling niceties.

Both serpents flicked their head-fins — the
smaller one more vigorous, with his mouth open a cotton-white
sliver. Yes, Esha grew sure she knew this serpent, and she said,
“I'm pleased to see you again, Xi-shi-klak.”

Trying to pronounce the sounds didn't work
and it made her teeth hurt besides — but Atarangi beamed with a
golden-held
I knew you could
. And before them both, Nimble
chattered an ecstatic stream of words that Esha's wolfed-down
lungta couldn't keep up with.
Precedent
and
ally
were
in it somewhere.

Sureness, the most hulking creature Esha had
ever seen, was beginning to look familiar. Mostly in the way he
bent, listening to the entire world of beings smaller than him; he
shifted like a half-opened fan when Nimble began to chatter, into a
stooped angle made for listening.

When Nimble finished, Sureness kept
listening. Possibly to something in his own head, because he soon
flicked head-fins — in agreement, said the lungta — and stretched
back into a cobra-sure posture.

“
Statement:“
he clicked,
“after
these ones received lungta-goods fourteen pulses ago, they sought
amnesty for the landholder phoenix of this region. Proposal: in the
shadow of recent events, there are more important matters to be
dealt with. Query: are those ones prepared to provide bolstering
food?”

“We are,” Atarangi said. And she lifted the
jute pouch that held their popped maize supply.

And Sureness left the water, to slither
closer and reach a barbel into the bag and lift one popped kernel
with fingers' precision. In an even more surreal sight, he put the
kernel between white spade teeth and, experimentally, munched.

Amnesty
still lodged in Esha's head,
though. This hadn't been the first time the serpents described
Clamshell as an offender, a breaker of some serpent law. Esha
picked her memory for Clamshell's hot words.

“This is maize,” Atarangi said. “It is the
seeds of a light-loving grass, cooked on a fire. You may take more,
if you wish.”

Staring, scraping that trace of maize over
all his teeth, Sureness stared for an inward moment. Then he
clicked,
“Query: is maize plentiful and easily
replaced?”

“Yes,” Atarangi said. “Many humans grow
maize. There is enough to share it regularly with others.”

“
Request: I want one ( )-flask filled
with maize, for our further consideration.”

Warm as wool, Atarangi said, “Yes, of
course, we can give you that.”

Esha's first concern was how large a
blank-flask was; she couldn't get any meaning from the serpent
word, like it was too slippery for lungta to hold. But Sureness
produced an object from the rag-looking fronds on the back of his
neck — a fluted flask as tall as Esha's hand, made from something
that shone like metal or glass or both. From slender neck barbels
to the ropy main barbels on his snout, Sureness passed the flask
down to set in the fleshy breadth of Atarangi's offered hand.

“
Suggestion:“
Nimble clacked, sudden
and excited,
“give trade goods! Reciprocity!”

With the blank-flask out of his figurative
hands, Sureness turned waving fins to the other serpent. It was
another flickering that slid past Esha's lungta, some pattern of
meanings like accountant's records she couldn't match actual yams
to.

“You may consider this maize a gift,”
Atarangi offered.

Nimble already dove, tail fin swishing
against the pond's surface.

Still standing enormous before them,
Sureness waited, looking around the camp clearing like he hadn't
seen it before. He bent then — putting his chest barbels against
the ground, Esha figured out. Feeling the earth or touching or
tasting it; she couldn't have said.

But with Sureness's crocodile snout bent
down to her eye level, Esha had a better look at his face. Within
the blue dapples of his frog-smooth skin was a line — a slashed
scar. Not unlike the one Esha wore on her own face.

The thought of Clamshell as a known
rule-spurner made a handful more sense.

Nimble was back, splashing up and out of the
water, flowing around Sureness to present a grey lump to Atarangi
in an outstretched barbel. Smiling graceful, she accepted it. The
lump looked more like caulking pitch than any food Esha had ever
seen — but, she chided herself, maybe it just contained an expertly
hidden secret.

“Thank you,” Atarangi said. “And please,
tell your kind that we are willing to lend aid in more and greater
ways. That maize is only one food crop we can obtain.”

It was a large promise. But not an untrue
one.

By the fireside, Atarangi turned the grey
lump between her fingers.

“
Looks like rock-plant,”
Rooftop
said, blinking intent at it.

Esha grimaced; a distant memory told her
that lichen was grainy and she had once swallowed some just to be
rid of it. “Do you know what it is? Because I don't.”

“I think I've eaten this before,” Atarangi
said. After a little more staring consideration, she put the lump's
edge between her teeth and bit off a speck. “It was dried and
salted, but they said it was a cave plant from the high reaches of
Tselaya.” Her eyes bolted open. “Language lungta. Best for ... for
matching suiting lyrics to a song's melody, I think.” Atarangi
hummed a thumping beat like free-galloping feet, and inspiration
lit her face. “Yes, this is the very same plant.”

“Song lungta? That sounds expensive.”

Pinching off a larger speck — to put in
Rooftop's beak and stop his eager nudging — Atarangi hummed
agreement. “This is what they gave us in exchange for a rupee's
worth of maize. They're either generous with their trade offers, or
serpents have access to plants we call luxuries.”

“
Clamshell-kin said the serpents want to
water-cover her land to make more cave-space. Or more
river-space.”

“Are,” Esha asked, “you saying they can grow
crops
?”

“Why not?” Atarangi turned a smiling look to
her. “Phoenixes cultivate.”

“They grow small garden plots, at best.” To
Rooftop, Esha added, “No offense meant.”

He ruffled a little — probably more for
Clamshell's honour than his. She had been a present ghost in the
trees today, not that Esha had any plans to bite down on her
words.

“Still,” Atarangi said, “If serpents
cultivate any amount of lungta plants, I'd be glad to establish
moderate-scale trade with them. It'd make negotiations of all kinds
easier if I have more to work with than Clamshell's troves and my
own pockets.”

Shaking her head, Esha said, “Yaah, you want
to talk to every creature on legs, don't you?”

“Not at all — squid don't have legs.”
Rising, Atarangi said, “I'm going to fill the water pail. If
serpents return with news, do let me know.”

Chapter 20

The next time Sureness and Nimble surfaced,
they clicked about
permissions
and
protocols
and a
context of
circles
that Esha couldn't get grip on. Atarangi
and Rooftop took care of the rest of the negotiations; that was why
Esha hired them.

They approached a temporary exemption,
Atarangi explained over dinner lentils. An invitation to deal with
serpent society, despite the indiscretion of being humans.

“They aren't typically so forthcoming with
our kind,” Atarangi said, weighted sad. “Serpents deal with
phoenixes, where the two encounter each other. Allowing trade with
us seems to involve the bending of phoenix trade rules.”

“To get my khukuri back?”

It was a pitiful request and Esha knew it;
Atarangi tightened her mouth around bad news.

“
Kin,”
Rooftop told her,
“your
knife has just one song-flower, yes?”

“A flower worth more than I can pay. But
yes.”

“
Flowers wither-die in cold wind. That
always happens, every four seasons.”
He shuffled to Esha's
side, plucking at her shirt sleeve with a gentle beak.
“Maybe
new flowers will grow; you can pick those.”

It was true, he was right and Esha hated it
with a coolness like a round stone.

“I haven't made a habit of giving up,” was
all she said.

“We'll try,” Atarangi assured her. “Once we
know what circumstances we're even trading under.”

Word would come within eight pulses,
Sureness told them. They were advised to stay in the vicinity of
the serpents' pond and wait for word.

The thought made Esha's imagination take
hold. Thoughts of serpents proceeding like nobles, in groups
armoured by guards and by authority. If Sureness was any typical
serpent size, Esha didn't want to see that; it made her stale old
fears glow like hot iron.

She passed the time helping Atarangi study
the serpents' fin language. They sat with heads uncovered, the wind
a treat on Esha's skin while she scratched in the dirt, etching out
evocations of Sureness and Nimble's piscine movements. Atarangi dug
in her cart to produced slightly creased bamboo paper and pine ink,
and they wrote their gathered ideas more permanently.