More from the Iron Dog.
Feb. 26th, 2003 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynMore of the story from yesterday. I hope it at least meets with some interest, and would much appreciate comments. Thanks!
I'm nodding as I say it. "I will not bother you again."
I can't stay in the house. I can't. It's the door. The fuses are lit, they're out there burning, the door's right there, if I stay in the house I'll look at the door, he'll find out he'll ask he'll get out the chains he hasn't used them since the first year it'll all go to Hell it'll never work
IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK I'M GOING TO DIE HERE-
I can't stay in the house.
He's praying to the mountain-pole. Every Ainu house has one in the north window. When Amaterasu broke the back of the beast that held up the Dragon Land, the Ainu took what they could of the mountain stones with them and fled to the sea. The pole has a piece of the stone in it, so it always points towards the land they came from, no matter how far they are or how bad the waters. It's their most sacred thing. There are scars down my right leg from the beating I got when I touched my first master's mountain-pole by mistake. This master's different, he's only hit me once or twice and he hasn't done it in a long time, but tonight of all nights -
Kouri and Oki. They're not in the house.
This is a big raft. Maybe a third of Sun Bear Clan lives here. There's only a few bushi living here. Most of the people here do work - tanners and fishers in the outer ring of houses, ordinary warriors and smiths in the next, weavers and plant-tenders in the middle. My master's house is in among the plant-tenders, at the end of an open path that leads right out to the edge. Anyone can reach it without having to remember all the twists and turns that get you from Shinrit the leatherman's to Eoripak the whale-hunter's. It has a big open space behind it, walled with bamboo from the plant-tenders, with booths covered in wet-proof leather for the sick to take the good air and dip
their toes in the sea. He's the only one in the clan I know of to have a hole in his raft territory, and that's because of the Nyimi. When they're sick, when they're hurt, the sea people come to him. In my village the fishermen used to spear them and sell them for food, but here the people honor them and call them good spirits. They're as mortal as anyone else, but no one listens.
Kouri and Oki came to the raft the last time the moon was full. They'd met a ship - probably Chinese - and had been shot at. Master had me dig the bullets out of Oki's back while he worked on Kouri. I've done it before. I can't treat Ainu by myself, they don't trust a slave to do that, but my master lets me tend the Nyimi alone. Kouri's probably asleep - he took most of the
bullets, and my master's been feeding him things to help him sleep and regain his strength. Oki's awake, though. I can see her from here. The hole in the raft isn't much, it's about three times as long as my master is tall, but it's enough for her to swim in without being far from Kouri. She's staying close enough to the surface that the long, long spines on the dorsal fins poke up
out of the water every so often. The sun's going down and the clouds are coming up, so there's not really enough light to see her stripes from here. . .
I like the Nyimi. They might look like Ainu, or eta, but they don't care that I'm a slave or an Islander. They talk to me, enough for me to learn Nyiimin. They don't order me around. They don't even hate me for being Chinese. They just ask why my people kill them and eat them. I don't. . . I don't know, so I can't answer, but. . . at least they don't hate me.
It's quiet here. The only sound is the water slapping the hole's edges, and the rustling of the bamboo - my master keeps pots of young bamboo here, to give the sick something green to look at. It hardly smells at all here, either, now that it's been cleaned out. As long as my master is praying, it's almost like being free, to sit here and watch Oki swim.
Almost.
The house behind me is walled in bamboo and leather. It smells of incense, the kind they make from plants that only grow on one of the little barren islands a day's sail from here. Inside and out, it's hung with blue and white weavings, dyed with the stuff women use to tattoo their lips and men use on their faces. The ground beneath my feet rocks with every wave. There's salt on my skin all the time, and scars up and down my back as thick as a Nyimi's stripes. The charms and prayers for healing that hang on the walls are in the weird characters of the Ainu, the ones they say an eta man stole from China long ago and changed to suit their needs. There are little hooting sea-owls tucked up in nests under the eaves, staring open-eyed at me when I turn to look at them, and if I listen carefully I can hear the sound of prayers to the mountain god. . . I am not free, no, no matter how pleasant it is. I have a little space to breathe while the hidden fuses burn, that's all.
Just enough to admit that I’m afraid - not that this won't work, but that it will. Eight years is a long time not to speak a language. I don't even know if they'll understand me in China any more. I don't know if I'll even understand them. I barely remember Hokkien, let alone Cantonese. I don't - I hardly remember what my parents look like. I don't know where to find them, or if they're even alive. The village is gone, I'm sure of it, and that was our family home for ever and ever. We don't have family anywhere else. There's ten thousand islands in the Empire. They could be anywhere - and that's if I even find the Empire! I think I can steal one of the hunting boats. I've slept in the open enough to know which stars rise over the Dragon Land's part of the sky. I know China is south of there, so if I keep those stars to my back I'll go the right way, but I've never had to do it. If the charges go off. If the Fire Drug explodes instead of just burning. If the warriors and the others all go running that way. If I can sneak past the boatmen. If I can steal the boat. If the storm doesn't -
- the storm -
- oh, dear Gods, no, the thunderclouds are spreading over the
sky. I can't see the stars!
I. Am. Dead. I'm nothing but a breathing hungry ghost.
And just like that, just as the thought slices through my head like a stroke of lightning, Kayanu's smithy on the other side of the raft explodes. The owls burst from their nests, streaking across what's left of the moon's light. Oki's head pops up out of the water, her spines bristling out of the water behind her. // What was that? // she cries, wide-eyed. Kouri stirs from his sleep as I stammer some kind of a reply, I don't know in what language. No, gods, no, it's happening too fast, stop it!
The master's voice. "Gods above! What just-"
Footfalls everywhere, people running into the house, crying for the doctor, crying for help. The smithy, they're saying, something's wrong, there's been -
BOOM. That sounded worse, that sounded like spray - that's the one at the cistern -
"INU!" roars the master, bursting out of the house as he struggles with the pack that holds most of his medicines. "Get my sword! We're under attack!"
He didn't.
"SWORD, you lazy dog! Now!"
He did.
I don't know what he's thinking but I don't really care. That's my sword now. There are people running everywhere, I can hear them outside the house, but they're not quite loud enough to drown it out - he's sending the Nyimi away, he thinks there's a Chinese ship firing on the raft. So he won't see it when I run into his sleeping room and grab the sword from under his wooden pillow, and he won't know I've stolen his spare robe, and he won't know he'll never see me again for as long as I draw breath if I have to gut myself with that sword to keep them from bringing me back!
Robe on belt on sword on door open into crowd and run!
Left at the tanner's. Down five houses, then right in the narrow space between two of the fishermen's homes, onto one of the open paths where people aren't stampeding yet. Down through the houses as fast as I can - BOOM, there goes the next charge, I don't even know which - up the path to the outer ring but not quite yet, not there, past the-
past the empty houses -
the ones with mountain-poles in the windows-
Some poor son of a bitch is going to have a lot of trouble talking to his mountain bear-god tomorrow. Whereas I am going to be running before the storm with my back to the damn Dragon Land and my prow pointed towards China. I might just believe in the bear-god myself, right now!
Almost there. Almost at the docking slips. There's another muffled BOOM, closer this time, and this time the sky joins in as well. Maybe it's the lightning blinding him, or maybe it's just that he's too startled to look at my face, but the gunman on guard duty sees the robe and the sword and waves me through. He's too busy jumping from one foot to the other and staring at the wind-fueled fires as they start to spread to ask my name. At least, not until the sword that used to be my master's slices through the fastest hunter-canoe in place and I shove off with all my might. But I've got the painted sails up now, I'm scudding away like a water-bug on the breath of the storm. Go on, you bastard! Go on, see if that rifle's any good to you now!
All right, maybe I should keep my head down, he's a pretty good shot even at this distance.
It keeps growing, though, that distance. It just keeps growing. The charges are still exploding, but I can't hear them any more over the thunder. I can see the fires, though, that's good enough. Maybe the gods are finally listening. I don't care if they never do anything for me again, just as long as they keep this wind up. It's all I need, I can't believe how quick this boat is-
The sky flashes purple light as a jagged streak of lightning tears through the air. It must've ripped the clouds open; the rain starts falling, huge splattering waves of it. We get storms like this at this time of year. They last an hour or two and then they pass, but they're pretty bad while they last. Bad enough to. . .
whip the waves into a frenzy, and sink little boats, and leave whale-hunters bobbing as dead as their quarry. . .
oh no.
Oh, yes, there are gods. They exist, all right. They're watching me right now and they are LAUGHING, the bastards! All of them! Ainu, Chinese, all of them! I've wrapped myself around the damn boat's tiller like a monkey on a nut. The storm's got the waters roiling like a nest of - holy GODS they ARE sea dragons! I can see them sliding up the waves.
You know, I've never actually piloted a boat before - DAMN! I can't see the raft but I can't really see my sail either - the wind gusted so hard it ripped right where the guard's bullet went through. It's flapping around like an eel in the splattering rain. The waves've gotten as tall as me
now. They're ramming into the boat from below so hard my knees feel like they should be up around my ears. They're slopping over the sides, too, there's water everywhere -
The mountain-pole! Where-
Another wave -
The boat's breaking, right in-
Something flashing through the waves -
Lightning white enough to blind -
It broke, the boat broke -
Sword's digging into my leg -
sinking -
Oh, I believe in gods, all right, and I believe in ancestors, and I've got just enough breath to scream. "Yat-zeu! Hum ka chan! Yat-zeu!"
See, I remembered some Cantonese after all.
I'm nodding as I say it. "I will not bother you again."
I can't stay in the house. I can't. It's the door. The fuses are lit, they're out there burning, the door's right there, if I stay in the house I'll look at the door, he'll find out he'll ask he'll get out the chains he hasn't used them since the first year it'll all go to Hell it'll never work
IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK I'M GOING TO DIE HERE-
I can't stay in the house.
He's praying to the mountain-pole. Every Ainu house has one in the north window. When Amaterasu broke the back of the beast that held up the Dragon Land, the Ainu took what they could of the mountain stones with them and fled to the sea. The pole has a piece of the stone in it, so it always points towards the land they came from, no matter how far they are or how bad the waters. It's their most sacred thing. There are scars down my right leg from the beating I got when I touched my first master's mountain-pole by mistake. This master's different, he's only hit me once or twice and he hasn't done it in a long time, but tonight of all nights -
Kouri and Oki. They're not in the house.
This is a big raft. Maybe a third of Sun Bear Clan lives here. There's only a few bushi living here. Most of the people here do work - tanners and fishers in the outer ring of houses, ordinary warriors and smiths in the next, weavers and plant-tenders in the middle. My master's house is in among the plant-tenders, at the end of an open path that leads right out to the edge. Anyone can reach it without having to remember all the twists and turns that get you from Shinrit the leatherman's to Eoripak the whale-hunter's. It has a big open space behind it, walled with bamboo from the plant-tenders, with booths covered in wet-proof leather for the sick to take the good air and dip
their toes in the sea. He's the only one in the clan I know of to have a hole in his raft territory, and that's because of the Nyimi. When they're sick, when they're hurt, the sea people come to him. In my village the fishermen used to spear them and sell them for food, but here the people honor them and call them good spirits. They're as mortal as anyone else, but no one listens.
Kouri and Oki came to the raft the last time the moon was full. They'd met a ship - probably Chinese - and had been shot at. Master had me dig the bullets out of Oki's back while he worked on Kouri. I've done it before. I can't treat Ainu by myself, they don't trust a slave to do that, but my master lets me tend the Nyimi alone. Kouri's probably asleep - he took most of the
bullets, and my master's been feeding him things to help him sleep and regain his strength. Oki's awake, though. I can see her from here. The hole in the raft isn't much, it's about three times as long as my master is tall, but it's enough for her to swim in without being far from Kouri. She's staying close enough to the surface that the long, long spines on the dorsal fins poke up
out of the water every so often. The sun's going down and the clouds are coming up, so there's not really enough light to see her stripes from here. . .
I like the Nyimi. They might look like Ainu, or eta, but they don't care that I'm a slave or an Islander. They talk to me, enough for me to learn Nyiimin. They don't order me around. They don't even hate me for being Chinese. They just ask why my people kill them and eat them. I don't. . . I don't know, so I can't answer, but. . . at least they don't hate me.
It's quiet here. The only sound is the water slapping the hole's edges, and the rustling of the bamboo - my master keeps pots of young bamboo here, to give the sick something green to look at. It hardly smells at all here, either, now that it's been cleaned out. As long as my master is praying, it's almost like being free, to sit here and watch Oki swim.
Almost.
The house behind me is walled in bamboo and leather. It smells of incense, the kind they make from plants that only grow on one of the little barren islands a day's sail from here. Inside and out, it's hung with blue and white weavings, dyed with the stuff women use to tattoo their lips and men use on their faces. The ground beneath my feet rocks with every wave. There's salt on my skin all the time, and scars up and down my back as thick as a Nyimi's stripes. The charms and prayers for healing that hang on the walls are in the weird characters of the Ainu, the ones they say an eta man stole from China long ago and changed to suit their needs. There are little hooting sea-owls tucked up in nests under the eaves, staring open-eyed at me when I turn to look at them, and if I listen carefully I can hear the sound of prayers to the mountain god. . . I am not free, no, no matter how pleasant it is. I have a little space to breathe while the hidden fuses burn, that's all.
Just enough to admit that I’m afraid - not that this won't work, but that it will. Eight years is a long time not to speak a language. I don't even know if they'll understand me in China any more. I don't know if I'll even understand them. I barely remember Hokkien, let alone Cantonese. I don't - I hardly remember what my parents look like. I don't know where to find them, or if they're even alive. The village is gone, I'm sure of it, and that was our family home for ever and ever. We don't have family anywhere else. There's ten thousand islands in the Empire. They could be anywhere - and that's if I even find the Empire! I think I can steal one of the hunting boats. I've slept in the open enough to know which stars rise over the Dragon Land's part of the sky. I know China is south of there, so if I keep those stars to my back I'll go the right way, but I've never had to do it. If the charges go off. If the Fire Drug explodes instead of just burning. If the warriors and the others all go running that way. If I can sneak past the boatmen. If I can steal the boat. If the storm doesn't -
- the storm -
- oh, dear Gods, no, the thunderclouds are spreading over the
sky. I can't see the stars!
I. Am. Dead. I'm nothing but a breathing hungry ghost.
And just like that, just as the thought slices through my head like a stroke of lightning, Kayanu's smithy on the other side of the raft explodes. The owls burst from their nests, streaking across what's left of the moon's light. Oki's head pops up out of the water, her spines bristling out of the water behind her. // What was that? // she cries, wide-eyed. Kouri stirs from his sleep as I stammer some kind of a reply, I don't know in what language. No, gods, no, it's happening too fast, stop it!
The master's voice. "Gods above! What just-"
Footfalls everywhere, people running into the house, crying for the doctor, crying for help. The smithy, they're saying, something's wrong, there's been -
BOOM. That sounded worse, that sounded like spray - that's the one at the cistern -
"INU!" roars the master, bursting out of the house as he struggles with the pack that holds most of his medicines. "Get my sword! We're under attack!"
He didn't.
"SWORD, you lazy dog! Now!"
He did.
I don't know what he's thinking but I don't really care. That's my sword now. There are people running everywhere, I can hear them outside the house, but they're not quite loud enough to drown it out - he's sending the Nyimi away, he thinks there's a Chinese ship firing on the raft. So he won't see it when I run into his sleeping room and grab the sword from under his wooden pillow, and he won't know I've stolen his spare robe, and he won't know he'll never see me again for as long as I draw breath if I have to gut myself with that sword to keep them from bringing me back!
Robe on belt on sword on door open into crowd and run!
Left at the tanner's. Down five houses, then right in the narrow space between two of the fishermen's homes, onto one of the open paths where people aren't stampeding yet. Down through the houses as fast as I can - BOOM, there goes the next charge, I don't even know which - up the path to the outer ring but not quite yet, not there, past the-
past the empty houses -
the ones with mountain-poles in the windows-
Some poor son of a bitch is going to have a lot of trouble talking to his mountain bear-god tomorrow. Whereas I am going to be running before the storm with my back to the damn Dragon Land and my prow pointed towards China. I might just believe in the bear-god myself, right now!
Almost there. Almost at the docking slips. There's another muffled BOOM, closer this time, and this time the sky joins in as well. Maybe it's the lightning blinding him, or maybe it's just that he's too startled to look at my face, but the gunman on guard duty sees the robe and the sword and waves me through. He's too busy jumping from one foot to the other and staring at the wind-fueled fires as they start to spread to ask my name. At least, not until the sword that used to be my master's slices through the fastest hunter-canoe in place and I shove off with all my might. But I've got the painted sails up now, I'm scudding away like a water-bug on the breath of the storm. Go on, you bastard! Go on, see if that rifle's any good to you now!
All right, maybe I should keep my head down, he's a pretty good shot even at this distance.
It keeps growing, though, that distance. It just keeps growing. The charges are still exploding, but I can't hear them any more over the thunder. I can see the fires, though, that's good enough. Maybe the gods are finally listening. I don't care if they never do anything for me again, just as long as they keep this wind up. It's all I need, I can't believe how quick this boat is-
The sky flashes purple light as a jagged streak of lightning tears through the air. It must've ripped the clouds open; the rain starts falling, huge splattering waves of it. We get storms like this at this time of year. They last an hour or two and then they pass, but they're pretty bad while they last. Bad enough to. . .
whip the waves into a frenzy, and sink little boats, and leave whale-hunters bobbing as dead as their quarry. . .
oh no.
Oh, yes, there are gods. They exist, all right. They're watching me right now and they are LAUGHING, the bastards! All of them! Ainu, Chinese, all of them! I've wrapped myself around the damn boat's tiller like a monkey on a nut. The storm's got the waters roiling like a nest of - holy GODS they ARE sea dragons! I can see them sliding up the waves.
You know, I've never actually piloted a boat before - DAMN! I can't see the raft but I can't really see my sail either - the wind gusted so hard it ripped right where the guard's bullet went through. It's flapping around like an eel in the splattering rain. The waves've gotten as tall as me
now. They're ramming into the boat from below so hard my knees feel like they should be up around my ears. They're slopping over the sides, too, there's water everywhere -
The mountain-pole! Where-
Another wave -
The boat's breaking, right in-
Something flashing through the waves -
Lightning white enough to blind -
It broke, the boat broke -
Sword's digging into my leg -
sinking -
Oh, I believe in gods, all right, and I believe in ancestors, and I've got just enough breath to scream. "Yat-zeu! Hum ka chan! Yat-zeu!"
See, I remembered some Cantonese after all.
