The Ghosts of Strangers Page 5

  "Lexa-child," said Smudu. "Can you walk us away from here? The magnet's strength diminishes over distance."

  "How do you know?" Kindal asked. "If it gets less, why did it pull Pewet-lady from so far away?"

  Smudu said, "Perhaps she was wandering and came too close to it. Those who leave a thing undone don't go on right away; so say Likushi deadspeakers."

  Kindal looked toward the other ghost.

  The woman nodded. "My child ran away north, and I didn't want to leave until I could be sure she's all right. I died, but I didn't abandon my search for her; I still don't know where she is."

  "The magnet didn't pull me while we were in the village, and I wasn't netted then," Smudu said. "Let the child walk us there so she can let us go. Can't you see we're stretching her too thin?"

  Kindal leaned past his father's shoulder and looked at Elexa's face. She could hardly keep her eyes open. "You're right. Lex, go back to the road right now."

  She groaned. She put her hand on her father's chest and pushed. "I have to go to the road," she muttered, and glanced around. Ghost light from her captives showed her a path she hadn't noticed before, narrow and overgrown, but there. She slipped out of her father's grip and took the path. The ghosts drifted beside her. They were in her nets; they didn't have to walk. She was doing all the work. She resented that, though they had no weight.

  After stumbling through the forest for a while, she reached the pale road and sat on a log beside it to catch her breath.

  "Lexa-child, make my net thinner," Smudu said. "Please don't let me go. But perhaps it doesn't take so much of you to do this job."

  She drank from the water gourd at her waist, then thinned her mental net around Smudu.

  "Stop," he said, when she had lightened it to almost gossamer. "The magnet pulls at me now. I need a little more net, please."

  She added another thin layer, and he nodded. "I am safe."

  She thinned the nets around the other two and felt better, more herself and safe. She had never needed this level of control before; when she was capturing a few animal ghosts at a time, she just wrapped them tight and forgot about them. People were more complicated.

  Her father approached. "Elexa."

  She straightened. "Father, please don't hurt me."

  "Hurt you?"

  "Don't shake me anymore."

  He breathed loudly through his nose, then sighed and sat beside her on the log. He placed the lantern on the ground. "Tell me."

  She rubbed her forehead, then said, "I have been able to speak to the dead half my life. Today I saw a dragon kill a man. Tira and I sounded the alarm. I caught the man's ghost, Father. Have you ever caught a human ghost?"

  He looked toward the village. "I think I did. When I first bonded with my dragon. It felt different from other ghosts, bigger and upset in a different way. It struggled and tried to speak to me, but I netted it small until it couldn't move, and fed it to my dragon mother. I had nightmares after that. I didn't catch any more ghosts for almost a year. Then I only caught small ones. I lost most of my skill."

  She took his hand. "Find it again."

  He gripped her hand and sat with his eyes closed, taking long, deep breaths and letting them out. Presently he opened his eyes and gasped. "Who are these people?"

  "Father." Kindal drifted forward.

  "Kindal!" Father jumped to his feet, held out his arms, lowered them slowly when Kindal didn't step into his embrace. "Kindal," he repeated, his voice hopeless. He covered his face with his hands.

  "He's the second of the dragons' dead today," Elexa whispered.

  "Let him go. You can't hold your brother. It isn't right."

  "Up on the hill there's a ghost magnet, and it trapped him," Elexa said. "It trapped the lady as well. I had to capture them to get them free of it. This is Smudu-sir, the dragon's first dead, from Likushi. Smudu-sir, my father, Horst Herder."

  Smudu bowed. "Thank you for your patience with our interference in your daughter's life," he said.

  Father gave a crazy laugh. "Is there a choice? I would choose the other way if I could."

  "As a father myself, I understand," said Smudu. "As a person wronged, though, I have one more favor to ask of your daughter. I want her to feed me to a dragon who will avenge my death."

  Father and Kindal gasped. Elexa rose. "I think I have to do that before I can sleep," she said. "Kindal, do you know what you want from your death?"

  "What I want?"

  "Do you know which tasks you've left unfinished?"

  "I died before I could fulfill my dragon bond," he said. "Who will take care of Maia and the twins now? They are still infants, with four more years of childhood."

  "The village will provide," said Father.

  Elexa remembered other times when someone who had bonded to a dragon mother died before the dragon children reached adolescence. Everyone gave some of their catch to the abandoned dragon family. The dragon children grew up strange, though, and often went wild.

  "Let's go and talk with your dragon," Elexa said. "Do you want to join her, the way other village dead have joined their dragons?"

  "What?" Kindal and Father spoke at the same time.

  Elexa explained her secret life as a ghost courier.

  Kindal said, "I can be part of her? Please, Lex. Take me there to talk with her."

  "All right." She had to blink to stay awake; the day had been long. She set off on the road back to the village, her father following her, the ghosts gliding along beside them.

  The third time she stumbled, her father set down the lantern and stooped. "Climb on my back," he said. "You've had a longer day than I have; I spent most of it napping in a cave with the herd."

  She did it, relieved and a little ashamed. His tunic was soft and worn and he smelled of smoke, sweat, and goats. He was warm beneath her, his gait smooth. She laid her head on his shoulder and fell into a light sleep. The ghost nets tugged at the edges of her awareness even as she slept.

  When they reached the village, Father stopped at their house and added two water gourds to his belt. He replaced the guttering candle in the lamp with a fresh one. He gave Elexa some jerked meat to chew on, and tucked some oatcakes into his wallet. Outside again, he stooped and took her on his back.

  "Where are you going? What are you doing?" Yan's acid voice asked them from the darkness as they left the house.

  "We're going up the mountain, headman," said Father. Then he said, in a voice that cracked, "My daughter takes my son's ghost to his dragon mother."

  "Horst," Yan said, his voice softer. "I share your sorrow. He was a fine boy. How did he die?"

  "The wild dragons killed him," Elexa said.

  Yan let out a low, grating cry, the growl of stone grinding on stone. "They've broken their vows. They will be gone, one way or another, tomorrow. I'll come with you. I have to talk with old Peder's dragon mother."

  Father turned onto the path that led up the mountain, and Yan followed. Halfway through the climb to First Terrace, Yan grunted and pulled Father to a stop. "Let me take the child. You've carried her long enough." Her father set her down, and Elexa went to Yan, then hesitated. She didn't want this closeness with him, but her legs were wobbly even from the few steps it took her to walk from her father to Yan. She would never make it up the mountain on her own, not without sleep and more food.

  Yan rose easily once she had clasped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. She felt the power of his muscles.

  Elexa was surprised that Yan smelled so much like Father, smoke, leather, and male, though his hair was much bushier. As they neared the lip of First Terrace, Yan turned toward her. His breath smelled of onions. "Do you still have the other ghost, the Likushi man?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "And you hold your brother, too? You understand their speech?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "What a selfish child you are," he muttered, "not sharing this skill with the rest of us. Well, that's going to stop. From now on, y
ou will tell me whenever you encounter a ghost, and ask it the questions I instruct you in."

  "There's a prize man," said Pewet-lady, drifting along at Elexa's right shoulder. "What is he lord of?"

  "He's the village headman," Elexa said.

  "Something less than a god," said the woman. "Therefore, you can ignore him most of the time."

  Father laughed.

  "What are you laughing at, Horst?" Yan growled. "You've just lost your son, and I amuse you?"

  Father's face lost its smile. His head hung.

  "Do like Pewet-lady said, Father," Kindal said. "Ignore him. I'm not lost, just different."

  Father smiled toward Kindal, who was gliding along by Yan's left shoulder.

  Yan stopped, stared at Father. "Why do you grimace? Has your grief made you mad?"

  Elexa unlocked her ankles and kicked Yan's thighs as she would a horse. "Don't stop now, Headman. We have a lot to do before we can sleep."

  "What!" he roared, and wrenched her arms from around his neck, dropped her behind him. "I am not your beast!"

  A crunching of small rocks, the shift and slide of something heavy over ground, a sudden rush of heat, a smell of sulfur and hot metal. Something roared above them, a jet of flame out over their heads, dazzling against the dark sky, temporarily blinding them. Heat poured down from the flame. The gush of light ceased, leaving a drift of feathery smoke rising toward the stars.

  "Who comes in the night?" a dragon asked, her speech full of gravel and almost void of voice.

  "Forgive us for disturbing you, Guardian Birta," said Yan. "The child brings ghosts."

  "Elexa," said the dragon.

  "Grandmother!" It was old Peder's dragon. Elexa struggled to her feet.

  "You bring ghosts, child? Who else has died, aside from the stranger?"

  "Kindal," she said, and burst into tears.

  "Oh, child," said the dragon, almost in old Peder's voice. "Oh, child. I am so sorry."

  "The wild ones killed him, Old Mother," Yan said.

  She raised her snaky head and blasted fire into the air again. A gravelly growl rumbled through her stomach. "They gave their promise not to do such a thing. We cannot let them live here with a broken promise between us."

  Elexa pulled herself together. "Grandmother, I need to take Kindal to his own dragon. I have also the ghost of the stranger who died, and another stranger who doesn't yet know what she wants."

  "Another ghost?" Yan yelled. He cuffed Elexa's shoulder and knocked her down. "Another ghost? Why didn't you tell me?"

  "Headman!" Father stood over her, facing Yan, his fists raised.

  "Yan!" said the dragon. "Don't you dare strike that child again!"

  "She is keeping valuable secrets, Guardian Birta, secrets the village needs to know! Who is this other ghost? How can she capture ghosts at will? She threatens our afterlives! She must learn to obey!"

  "You are not the one to teach her," said the dragon.

  "Who, then? I must keep my villagers safe from threats, no matter where they come from."

  The dragon's tail shifted across the scree, restless, then stilled. "You have a concern, headman, and I recognize it. We will think on it. Don't strike the child again."

  Yan bobbed his head, his frown ferocious.

  "Child," said the dragon, "tell me about your ghosts."

  "Kindal and the lady were caught by a ghost magnet south of the village."

  "A ghost magnet? A ghost magnet. It seems to me I've heard of this before. Wait." She lowered her head and rested her chin on the ground, her jeweled, glowing eyes half shut. "Mirrana, dragon spirit from five generations ago who bides with me, remembers this thing; it was set up in the southern hills by the priest Nakshli, who first started feeding us ghosts of the village dead. There were only three dragons living here then. Nakshli was the one who taught us to live with humans." She raised her head. "That was an age ago, and we thought the magnet died with him. Has it been catching and holding ghosts all this while?"

  Elexa turned to Kindal and Pewet.

  Pewet said, "There's a time limit. When the magnet caught me, there were two other ghosts on it. When the year turned to the anniversary of their deaths, they went on somewhere else. They said they had known ones who were there before they were, and it was the same for everyone down the chain of time; a year there in the hills, trapped by the magnet, and then the journey began again."

  "Oh," said Elexa.

  "What do they say?" asked the dragon.

  "It holds them a year," said Father, "then releases them."

  "Horst!" said Yan. "Are you a deadspeaker, too?"

  "I only remembered how tonight," he said.

  "You can see your son."

  Father smiled sadly. "Yes."

  "Good. Two deadspeakers are better than one. One can say when the other is lying."

  "Yan," Father said, nearly growling.

  "Someone has to be practical. Your child is not known for her obedience."

  "Yan, enough. Elexa, tell me more about these dead," said the dragon.

  "The first ghost I caught this morning after the dragon flew over. He is Smudu-sir, from Likushi. He wants to be eaten by one of the dragon mothers so he can be revenged against the wild dragon who killed him."

  "Does he understand what it means?" asked the dragon.

  "I don't think so, Grandmother. I don't know enough to tell him."

  "We will welcome any who agree to be eaten. Take Kindal to join Maia, and let the others watch and learn. Yan, stay with me. We need to discuss strategy."

  Elexa bowed, then stood, hesitating.

  "This way, Sister." Kindal walked to the right, to the limit of her net. Elexa followed him, her father beside her, the other ghosts trailing after.

  Kindal stopped at a cave almost at the end of the terrace, near the trickle of a small stream. He waited at the cave mouth, peering inside. "They're all asleep," he whispered.

  Elexa sighed. "Greetings, o great one," she called.

  Rumbles, slides, chirps, wings flapping, a brief flare of fire. A long pale neck and head emerged from the cave. "Who disturbs my sleep?"

  "Kindal's little sister," said Elexa in human speech.

  The head lowered so that the dragon could look her in the eye. "What message do you bring me?" she said in a softer voice. Her words were slurred and hissy.

  "My brother is dead," Elexa said.

  The neck rose again, the head a dark silhouette against the stars, and the dragon screamed a mourning cry. Noise came from other caves nearby as other dragons woke and poked their heads out. Questions whispered in the hisses and crunches of dragonspeech.

  "I've lost my human," Maia cried to the others in dragonspeech. Muted cries went up, not the full-scale jangling of their mourning for old Peder, but sympathy pains for someone they had all liked. Maia's three-year-old fledglings huddled beside their mother and uttered small, pained cries and threads of smoke.

  "I brought his ghost to you, Mother," Elexa said.

  "He wishes to nourish me a last time? Truly wishes it?"

  Elexa turned to Kindal. "It's a different kind of death," she told him. She had talked to Birta about it after she had taken other ghosts to their dragons. "You choose your rebirth, and you aren't alone. You will be part of a person instead of the whole person; but that person is your dragon mother. Do you want this, Brother?"

  "I do."

  She sighed. "Come with me." The other ghosts followed her as she approached Maia, whose head lowered until her chin whiskers brushed the ground. She stared at Elexa from one yellow-orange eye. Elexa held out her arms, hands at shoulder height, and said, "Stand here, Kindal."

  He came and stood between her outstretched hands.

  "He is here, Mother. He gives himself freely." Elexa stepped back, thinning her net around Kindal.

  "Thank you, bondling," said Maia. She dropped her jaw, showing her twin-tipped tongue and dagger teeth, with light from internal fires climbing from her throat. "Come in," she whis
pered.

  Kindal shook his shoulders and stepped onto Maia's tongue. Elexa removed her net from him. Maia closed her mouth slowly, and Kindal crouched down, glancing up at the roof of her mouth. The teeth of the lower jaw fitted with the teeth of the upper jaw like puzzle pieces, and then Kindal was gone.

  Maia lifted her head high and swallowed. She kept her head high as the children crept along her sides. Elexa gripped one hand in the other and twisted.

  At last Maia shook her head and lowered it until she was staring at Elexa again, her yellow-orange eye flecked with green now. "Oh," she said, her human speech clearer, her tone higher. "Lex! There's light all around you, and some of it's purple!"

  "What?" Elexa laughed, half breathless.

  Maia cocked her head. "You look different from here. Everything does." Her head swung as she surveyed the valley from her perch. Then her nose dropped to touch each of the babies at her sides. "Hey! Peep! Seek! Hi! Hey!" They chirped. She glanced toward Elexa again. "The others are still here, yes? I don't see them anymore."

  "They're still here."

  "Kindal?" said Father.

  The dragon's head wavered, as though she shook off drops of water. "Maintain dignity," Maia muttered to herself, in a deeper voice. "Man, I am not your son, but he is here, a part of me now. I have many other parts, dragon, human, animal. They do not stay separate for long, but you may still speak with them. Sometimes one can answer out of the midst of them." She turned to Elexa, her mouth open a fraction in a dragon smile. "I love my bondling, Lexa, but I didn't know how funny he was until now. Thank you."

  "You're welcome," said Elexa. She looked to her other ghosts.

  "Who would eat us?" asked Pewet.

  "I don't know," Elexa said. "The only dragon mother I've spent much time with is Guardian Birta. I catch all the ghosts I can, though, and I've been giving them to Kindal to feed to Maia. Everyone gives their dragons ghosts if they can."

  "Ghosts of people?" asked Smudu.

  "No. Usually animal ghosts. I am the only one who captures people." She had given Kindal human ghosts to feed to Maia before: mineworkers who had died young, orphans who had never found a home in life, a peddler's daughter who fell from her wagon on a steep mountain path; human ghosts adrift above the village. Not as fresh as the animal ghosts, but clinging more tightly to the world; she had talked to each of them before she gave them up to Kindal. A few of them she had not passed on; the killer, and a woman who did nothing but berate Elexa and scream that her life would have been better if only she had not been surrounded by idiots and selfish fools.