Iron Dog, part 4.
Mar. 7th, 2003 03:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynI've been writing this out mostly as a way of getting certain things straight in my head. However, I've been considering beating myself repeatedly about the head and shoulders with a metal yardsticktaking up drawing it as some kind of a webcomic. Anyone here think the idea is anything other than insane, stupid, or generally Not Something I Should Do? I figure once I've got the story done, if I can somehow chug several bottles of Manhattan Special and chase them down with Cocoa Puffs sit down and draw about a month's worth of pictures to go along with the stories, I might be able to post it somewhere and keep up a reasonable schedule...
Oh, yeah, and here: part 3, the prior entry in the series.
The trouble with freedom is that you have to do everything yourself.
I didn't think of that when I was planning the escape. I didn't think of a lot of things. I just thought that if I could distract everyone enough and steal a boat, I'd be able to get away and make it back to China somehow. It's the 'somehow' that I'm thinking about now. I should have planned better, and that just keeps coming back to me.
There's not that many ways to not think about it on this island. I don't remember ever hearing the Ainu discuss an island like this, and I guess I can see why. It's like the gods took a big heap of stones and dumped them into the sea, then kept dumping more stones until they finally had some sticking up out of the water. Then they said 'enough', and walked away from it. My old master said once that the Ainu believe a bird thrashed around in the mud that existed before the world began and kept thrashing until piles of land were separated from the water. I could believe that about this place, too. I can see from one end of it to the other without a lot of trouble. There's plants here, scrubby bush things and rough-edged grasses with seed heads ready to break off, but nothing big enough to take shelter under. Even the birds are small here - they're nothing like the seabirds on Sun Bear's raft. There aren't even owls, at least not that I saw. They're tiny little seed-eaters as long as my thumb, and they don't seem to understand that they're supposed to be afraid of people. The lizards don't understand that either, which is bad because I stepped on one - the damn things change color! I would have sworn it was a patch of pebbles and sand, but it moved underfoot. When I fell over it stood up, turned black with two huge spots over its back legs, and scooted away fast as you like. It had a body as long as my forearm, and a great fat tail almost as long again.
I've been looking for more of them since then, because of Konki. These waters are hard to fish in, he says, all caves and reefs and rock spires that catch at his fins. He got a few fish, but they were hardly enough to feed one, let alone two. I haven't got a master any more, so I have to feed myself, and since I can't really swim that means I'd better learn to hunt lizards. I've still got most of the sword I stole - it broke during the storm - so that means I can gut and skin the things. But I have to find them first, and then I have to catch them or spear them. I have no idea how I'm supposed to build a trap, though. They're faster than me, too, so just jumping on them and catching them won't work. That leaves using a spear, and I didn't steal one. I had to take one of the pieces of the boat that washed ashore and fasten one of the broken bits of the sword to it with my belt. I didn't want to, because there's no real wood here, so there's nothing else to make a fire with. . .
I should have thought about this. I should have realized this might happen. Why didn't I think? It's more li to China than I know how to count - what made me think I'd get it exactly right on the first try? So I made Fire Drug without being noticed for three years. So what? That's nothing. That's hiding things, keeping your face still. I learned that from living under my first master. Why didn't I learn anything else? Useful things, like how to hide stores of food or read a map, or keep hold of a mountain-pole in a stormy sea. Important things, like hunting, or planning a long voyage. Anything! Anything that would've helped me get back to China!
As it stands I don't see how I’m ever going to get off this stupid island. There's not enough left of the boat to make even the smallest raft, and my old master's robe has too many holes in it to be a sail anyway. There's not enough woody stuff on this island to build a new raft from, either. I've been up it and down it five times already, looking. I've found fresh water and a few weird plants that I think have edible nuts, but there's no bamboo anywhere as far as I can tell. What am I supposed to do, hunt down the lizards and tie their skins together? I don't even have enough wood to make a frame and stretch them tight! I'm stuck here, just as much as I was stuck on Sun Bear's raft. Only this time there's no Fire Drug, and no way off.
Then again. . . There's seaweed in the waters at the north end of the island. Konki said it was a kind that was good to eat. There's a rock outcropping about halfway down the beach from here that seems to have caves in it above the high tide line, and I haven't seen snakes or anything like that. I could probably stay there. There's fresh water. Sooner or later I'll find one of those stupid lizards, too. Or sea birds - there's a lot of them along the western shore. They might have nests on the island somewhere, although I don't know if there'd be eggs at this time of year. I've got enough of the boat left to make a fire board and drill, and I think I can make a bow to use with it - the grass seems like it'll dry quickly if I rip some of it up and pin it down with a rock, so that's tinder. I just have to dig a pit to keep the fire where it won't blow out - and to keep the burning stuff from getting away and setting fire to the rest of the island.
When I look at it that way, and add in the part where I no longer have a master. . . well, maybe being stuck on this island for the rest of my life isn't such a bad thing after all.
Two of the lizards are dead, and I have my eye on a third. It turns out the seabirds eat more than fish, although they're too small to carry off the larger lizards. I found the city of the lizards when one of the birds dropped out of the sky and grabbed one off a rock, neat as can be. I don't know what else to call it! There are hundreds and hundreds of the beasts, or at least more than I can count, lined up like houses on the rocks along the shore. It takes some looking to find them, but they're there, all right. I guess the one that got caught was careless, because I don't see how the bird could have picked out one so much the same as the rocks around it. I know it flashed black for a heartbeat when the bird dropped out of the sky. The others just sat there, holding onto the rocks and looking just as much like rocks as they possibly could, and the bird flew off with its prize. I think when I have skinned my lizards I will share the guts with the birds. They showed me the way. It's only fair.
Just as it's only fair to share with Konki - I can see him swimming close to the shore. Oh, well, the city of the lizards isn't going anywhere. Time to go skin the lizards and see about starting that fire. I haven't got anything to make a spark with, so it's a bow drill or nothing. I've seen it done often enough.
I'm still working the bow back and forth in a notch I've cut in the biggest piece of boat I could find when the Nyimi finally comes ashore. / That is . . . a very strange thing, / I hear him say, shaking the sea off.
Can't look up. The rock I found for the drill's socket keeps slipping if I'm not careful. / I need a fire, / I tell him. Something flickers briefly in the powdery ash pile I've built up, right against the notch in the board. / I will eat fish raw, but not these. / No idea what the Nyimiin word for 'lizard' is.
Seems he doesn't know, either, because he crouches down and pokes at the corpses like he expects them to jump up and bite. / Don't worry, / I say before looking back to the tinder bundle and the ash, / they are very dead. /
/ Yes, / he says slowly. / But what are you doing, and what does it have to do with these fish? /
I glance up at him, but he hasn't got any fish. He's talking about the lizards. / They're not fish, / I say. / They live on the land here, but I think they swim. They are not very smart. I think I can eat them. /
/ And the thing you do. . . that is for. . . that does not look like making ready to eat. /
Here I have to laugh, and to switch into the eastern dialect they all speak. "It is not exactly making ready. It is making fire. When I have fire I will put sticks in the sand and sticks through the lizards, then hang the lizard stick from the other sticks over the fire, and the meat will cook. /
His voice sounds revolted. "You are going to cook good meat?" he asks in the same dialect. I nod, and he sighs. "Landers are very strange. . ."
I'll give him a smile for that much, but no more. The powder's glowing, it - there! There, now, I've got a coal! Ease it over into the tinder bundle. . . easy. . . and we have smoke - ah, and fire, real fire now! Right, into the pit you go, with the rest of the leaves and twigs. Lovely fire.
Now I can look up and grin over at the narrow-faced Nyimi. "I may be strange, but I can make fire."
He rolls his eyes. "I do not know why you need fire. There is nothing here that can hurt you, and the nights are warm. Fire only makes smoke."
It's harder to ram a stick through a decapitated lizard than you'd think. "So? What's wrong with smoke?"
"People see smoke."
"What people?" The sticks in the sand need a few small rocks to hold them up properly.
"Ainu."
All right, that brings my head up sharply. "What about them?" The ache in my side from the broken rib turns sharp - my whole back just went tense.
Konki shrugs. "They come to these waters, sometimes. Not this island. They cannot bring the big shells into these waters, the rocks would rip their bellies out, but they come fishing here sometimes. If they come, they will see the smoke from your fire."
Such a wonderful, wonderful smell the slowly dripping lizard has. "But. . . I don't see any. . . I could see them from. . ."
He shrugs again. "I am not the one who wants to get away from the Ainu."
"It's such a little fire. . ."
Konki stands up. It's like watching a bird stretch its wings. "I do not care. You are the one who wants to be free. No one is hunting me with spears and guns."
Somewhere over that dark blue horizon, somewhere on the other side of the ocean I can see, there is a raft. A third of Sun Bear Clan lives there. A shaman lives there, who finds lost things, and a physician lives there, a kindly man until someone does him wrong. Right now they might be licking their wounds and patching their holes, but that cannot last forever. They'll finish repairing the cistern. They'll talk to the boat guard. They'll find the bits of hair the physician took when he bought me from the bushi and shaved an infant's haircut into my scalp. They'll get out the drums and the potions; there'll be chanting, and rice wine for the spirits. The shaman will look up and point this way. . .
But I haven't eaten anything but raw fish for two days, and it wasn't even enough fish, and lizard fat sizzles really nicely when it hits the hot rocks!
"Konki-san" I say very quietly, "they will find me anyway. If . . . if the Ainu are looking for me. . . they will find me." He casts a doubtful look at me. I can't keep up the eye contact. "At least I can have a good meal before the hunters come."
He shakes his head slowly and looks out to sea again. Doesn't say anything, though. I wish- I don't know. I don't know what to say any more. I had a plan and I guess it worked all right, but it wasn't enough. I don't know what I’m supposed to do or say now. I feel like I haven't got any plans left in me, not for running, nor hiding, nor going home, nor anything else at all. I've got a roasting lizard on a stick. That's about as far as I can think right now - as far into the future as it takes my fire to roast that lizard. Maybe something will happen first, or not. I don't know. If someone would just tell me-
No. No, not that. No one is going to tell me what to plan. No one is going to tell me what to do. That's slave thinking. I can't let that go on. "Konki-san?"
He looks up from where he's been quietly drumming his fingers on the rocks.
"Is there a way off this island? Have I missed something?"
"What do you mean?"
"Something I can make a boat with." The lizard gets turned a little. It'll be some time before it cooks through and I don't want it to burn. "Something hard and strong that floats."
He turns then, looking down the beach towards the sea-birds and the city of the lizards. "I do not think so," he says slowly. "Things you would use to make rafts?"
"That would work, yes."
"Ah. No, there is nothing like that here. I have been to this island before. No wood. Only if the sea brings it to the shore."
Blast. Well, driftwood's better than nothing. Maybe if I'm patient I can gather enough over time. For now, back to the lizard on the fire. Oh, wait, I forgot the guts. I should've thrown them to the birds-
"What will you do if you leave this island?" he asks suddenly.
Huh? "Why, go home. What kind of a question is that?"
"Where is home?" Konki settles himself down again, cross-legged, on the other side of the fire. I'm pretty sure he shouldn't be able to fold up quite so tightly as that. Humans don't fit into so little space when they're his size.
"It's. . . my village, I guess. It was a little fishing village outside of Tong'an. My father was the blacksmith."
He nods, but there's no recognition in his face. No surprise there. Nyimi who came into our waters usually wound up on rich men's tables. I wonder if they still do that? "It is a long way from here," he says tentatively, not quite making it a question.
"Yes, it is." The lizard needs turning again. "But there are other islands. I do not have to go to my home. I can find other Chinese and work my way home from there."
"You have been with the Ainu a long time."
"Eight years, yes." The fire needs some prodding. There's a twig from one of the bushes. "So?"
"No one's death song takes that long to sing," he points out, and I stop.
I'm not really sure what the death songs mean to the Nyimi, exactly, but I've seen them done. They came to my old master once or twice to perform them. It's all the deeds a Nyimi's done in their lifetime, start to finish. They take forever to sing. My old master wasn't clear about them, either, but he seemed to think that they couldn't send the dead to their ancestors until they'd sung the song.
"I'm a lander, Konki-san," I say slowly as the fire flares up a bit. "We don't have death-songs."
He looks skeptical. "How do your people know when someone is dead, then?"
"They - they just do, that's all. If someone is dead, there's a body-"
"I mean when they are far away, sai. You have not been in the waters of your people in many years. Will they not say you are dead?"
Oh. "Well, maybe," I admit. "But I'll be there in front of them. They might think I'm a ghost for a while, but when they see a priest can't send me away, they'll know I'm not really a ghost."
He still doesn't look convinced, but he changes the subject anyway. "And your family? Are they still in your home waters?"
He's got no way of knowing I've asked myself that question more often than any other. There are nights when I can still smell the school burning as I drop off to sleep, and nightmares where I can still see the flames leaping from every window of every building along the harbor as they shove me onto the boat. There were other buildings there, and a clear road to Tong'an, but- "I don't know," I murmur, and even for my voice it sounds like a little boy's.
"What will you do if they are not there?" he asks.
"Look for them, I guess." It's such a stupid answer. The fire needs poking again. Right now.
"And if they are dead?"
"Can you stop asking these questions?" It comes out like a puppy's yip instead of the bark I wanted, but Gods - if he doesn't shut up -
But he does. His eyes are wide, but I'm not looking at him, I'm not. I've got a lizard to finish tending and I don't want any more questions out of him.
For a while it's quiet. The lizard is still sizzling, the birds screeling overhead; the waves are still sliding up and down the shore, although the tide's going out. The fire's behaving itself pretty well, considering that it's only got grass to feed on. But the questions are still there, even if they're silent now, chasing each other around the inside of my head.
It's almost a relief when he speaks. "I am sorry, sai."
Damn him, why did he have to say it at all to begin with?
"It is only. . . if your people say you are dead, you will need another school."
If I could fold up as tightly as he does, I'd be doing it. "I'm not dead yet."
"Your school may think otherwise, sai. Where will you go if they say that?"
"I don't know. Stop asking me."
He looks out to sea again. "If they tell you so-"
"Please." I'm whispering now. "Just stop."
He doesn't. "- then come to the shore and look for us. You are not dead to us. We will help you." With that, he gets up, brushes the sand off his legs, and bows to me.
Did he just say that? Did I actually hear him say that?
"Please enjoy the rest of your life. I am going now. "
I can't even speak. He's just knocked the wind out of me without even trying. I can just about manage "What?" He's already gone, though. I can't even find him in the waves.
But I can find a boat on the horizon.
Oh, yeah, and here: part 3, the prior entry in the series.
The trouble with freedom is that you have to do everything yourself.
I didn't think of that when I was planning the escape. I didn't think of a lot of things. I just thought that if I could distract everyone enough and steal a boat, I'd be able to get away and make it back to China somehow. It's the 'somehow' that I'm thinking about now. I should have planned better, and that just keeps coming back to me.
There's not that many ways to not think about it on this island. I don't remember ever hearing the Ainu discuss an island like this, and I guess I can see why. It's like the gods took a big heap of stones and dumped them into the sea, then kept dumping more stones until they finally had some sticking up out of the water. Then they said 'enough', and walked away from it. My old master said once that the Ainu believe a bird thrashed around in the mud that existed before the world began and kept thrashing until piles of land were separated from the water. I could believe that about this place, too. I can see from one end of it to the other without a lot of trouble. There's plants here, scrubby bush things and rough-edged grasses with seed heads ready to break off, but nothing big enough to take shelter under. Even the birds are small here - they're nothing like the seabirds on Sun Bear's raft. There aren't even owls, at least not that I saw. They're tiny little seed-eaters as long as my thumb, and they don't seem to understand that they're supposed to be afraid of people. The lizards don't understand that either, which is bad because I stepped on one - the damn things change color! I would have sworn it was a patch of pebbles and sand, but it moved underfoot. When I fell over it stood up, turned black with two huge spots over its back legs, and scooted away fast as you like. It had a body as long as my forearm, and a great fat tail almost as long again.
I've been looking for more of them since then, because of Konki. These waters are hard to fish in, he says, all caves and reefs and rock spires that catch at his fins. He got a few fish, but they were hardly enough to feed one, let alone two. I haven't got a master any more, so I have to feed myself, and since I can't really swim that means I'd better learn to hunt lizards. I've still got most of the sword I stole - it broke during the storm - so that means I can gut and skin the things. But I have to find them first, and then I have to catch them or spear them. I have no idea how I'm supposed to build a trap, though. They're faster than me, too, so just jumping on them and catching them won't work. That leaves using a spear, and I didn't steal one. I had to take one of the pieces of the boat that washed ashore and fasten one of the broken bits of the sword to it with my belt. I didn't want to, because there's no real wood here, so there's nothing else to make a fire with. . .
I should have thought about this. I should have realized this might happen. Why didn't I think? It's more li to China than I know how to count - what made me think I'd get it exactly right on the first try? So I made Fire Drug without being noticed for three years. So what? That's nothing. That's hiding things, keeping your face still. I learned that from living under my first master. Why didn't I learn anything else? Useful things, like how to hide stores of food or read a map, or keep hold of a mountain-pole in a stormy sea. Important things, like hunting, or planning a long voyage. Anything! Anything that would've helped me get back to China!
As it stands I don't see how I’m ever going to get off this stupid island. There's not enough left of the boat to make even the smallest raft, and my old master's robe has too many holes in it to be a sail anyway. There's not enough woody stuff on this island to build a new raft from, either. I've been up it and down it five times already, looking. I've found fresh water and a few weird plants that I think have edible nuts, but there's no bamboo anywhere as far as I can tell. What am I supposed to do, hunt down the lizards and tie their skins together? I don't even have enough wood to make a frame and stretch them tight! I'm stuck here, just as much as I was stuck on Sun Bear's raft. Only this time there's no Fire Drug, and no way off.
Then again. . . There's seaweed in the waters at the north end of the island. Konki said it was a kind that was good to eat. There's a rock outcropping about halfway down the beach from here that seems to have caves in it above the high tide line, and I haven't seen snakes or anything like that. I could probably stay there. There's fresh water. Sooner or later I'll find one of those stupid lizards, too. Or sea birds - there's a lot of them along the western shore. They might have nests on the island somewhere, although I don't know if there'd be eggs at this time of year. I've got enough of the boat left to make a fire board and drill, and I think I can make a bow to use with it - the grass seems like it'll dry quickly if I rip some of it up and pin it down with a rock, so that's tinder. I just have to dig a pit to keep the fire where it won't blow out - and to keep the burning stuff from getting away and setting fire to the rest of the island.
When I look at it that way, and add in the part where I no longer have a master. . . well, maybe being stuck on this island for the rest of my life isn't such a bad thing after all.
Two of the lizards are dead, and I have my eye on a third. It turns out the seabirds eat more than fish, although they're too small to carry off the larger lizards. I found the city of the lizards when one of the birds dropped out of the sky and grabbed one off a rock, neat as can be. I don't know what else to call it! There are hundreds and hundreds of the beasts, or at least more than I can count, lined up like houses on the rocks along the shore. It takes some looking to find them, but they're there, all right. I guess the one that got caught was careless, because I don't see how the bird could have picked out one so much the same as the rocks around it. I know it flashed black for a heartbeat when the bird dropped out of the sky. The others just sat there, holding onto the rocks and looking just as much like rocks as they possibly could, and the bird flew off with its prize. I think when I have skinned my lizards I will share the guts with the birds. They showed me the way. It's only fair.
Just as it's only fair to share with Konki - I can see him swimming close to the shore. Oh, well, the city of the lizards isn't going anywhere. Time to go skin the lizards and see about starting that fire. I haven't got anything to make a spark with, so it's a bow drill or nothing. I've seen it done often enough.
I'm still working the bow back and forth in a notch I've cut in the biggest piece of boat I could find when the Nyimi finally comes ashore. / That is . . . a very strange thing, / I hear him say, shaking the sea off.
Can't look up. The rock I found for the drill's socket keeps slipping if I'm not careful. / I need a fire, / I tell him. Something flickers briefly in the powdery ash pile I've built up, right against the notch in the board. / I will eat fish raw, but not these. / No idea what the Nyimiin word for 'lizard' is.
Seems he doesn't know, either, because he crouches down and pokes at the corpses like he expects them to jump up and bite. / Don't worry, / I say before looking back to the tinder bundle and the ash, / they are very dead. /
/ Yes, / he says slowly. / But what are you doing, and what does it have to do with these fish? /
I glance up at him, but he hasn't got any fish. He's talking about the lizards. / They're not fish, / I say. / They live on the land here, but I think they swim. They are not very smart. I think I can eat them. /
/ And the thing you do. . . that is for. . . that does not look like making ready to eat. /
Here I have to laugh, and to switch into the eastern dialect they all speak. "It is not exactly making ready. It is making fire. When I have fire I will put sticks in the sand and sticks through the lizards, then hang the lizard stick from the other sticks over the fire, and the meat will cook. /
His voice sounds revolted. "You are going to cook good meat?" he asks in the same dialect. I nod, and he sighs. "Landers are very strange. . ."
I'll give him a smile for that much, but no more. The powder's glowing, it - there! There, now, I've got a coal! Ease it over into the tinder bundle. . . easy. . . and we have smoke - ah, and fire, real fire now! Right, into the pit you go, with the rest of the leaves and twigs. Lovely fire.
Now I can look up and grin over at the narrow-faced Nyimi. "I may be strange, but I can make fire."
He rolls his eyes. "I do not know why you need fire. There is nothing here that can hurt you, and the nights are warm. Fire only makes smoke."
It's harder to ram a stick through a decapitated lizard than you'd think. "So? What's wrong with smoke?"
"People see smoke."
"What people?" The sticks in the sand need a few small rocks to hold them up properly.
"Ainu."
All right, that brings my head up sharply. "What about them?" The ache in my side from the broken rib turns sharp - my whole back just went tense.
Konki shrugs. "They come to these waters, sometimes. Not this island. They cannot bring the big shells into these waters, the rocks would rip their bellies out, but they come fishing here sometimes. If they come, they will see the smoke from your fire."
Such a wonderful, wonderful smell the slowly dripping lizard has. "But. . . I don't see any. . . I could see them from. . ."
He shrugs again. "I am not the one who wants to get away from the Ainu."
"It's such a little fire. . ."
Konki stands up. It's like watching a bird stretch its wings. "I do not care. You are the one who wants to be free. No one is hunting me with spears and guns."
Somewhere over that dark blue horizon, somewhere on the other side of the ocean I can see, there is a raft. A third of Sun Bear Clan lives there. A shaman lives there, who finds lost things, and a physician lives there, a kindly man until someone does him wrong. Right now they might be licking their wounds and patching their holes, but that cannot last forever. They'll finish repairing the cistern. They'll talk to the boat guard. They'll find the bits of hair the physician took when he bought me from the bushi and shaved an infant's haircut into my scalp. They'll get out the drums and the potions; there'll be chanting, and rice wine for the spirits. The shaman will look up and point this way. . .
But I haven't eaten anything but raw fish for two days, and it wasn't even enough fish, and lizard fat sizzles really nicely when it hits the hot rocks!
"Konki-san" I say very quietly, "they will find me anyway. If . . . if the Ainu are looking for me. . . they will find me." He casts a doubtful look at me. I can't keep up the eye contact. "At least I can have a good meal before the hunters come."
He shakes his head slowly and looks out to sea again. Doesn't say anything, though. I wish- I don't know. I don't know what to say any more. I had a plan and I guess it worked all right, but it wasn't enough. I don't know what I’m supposed to do or say now. I feel like I haven't got any plans left in me, not for running, nor hiding, nor going home, nor anything else at all. I've got a roasting lizard on a stick. That's about as far as I can think right now - as far into the future as it takes my fire to roast that lizard. Maybe something will happen first, or not. I don't know. If someone would just tell me-
No. No, not that. No one is going to tell me what to plan. No one is going to tell me what to do. That's slave thinking. I can't let that go on. "Konki-san?"
He looks up from where he's been quietly drumming his fingers on the rocks.
"Is there a way off this island? Have I missed something?"
"What do you mean?"
"Something I can make a boat with." The lizard gets turned a little. It'll be some time before it cooks through and I don't want it to burn. "Something hard and strong that floats."
He turns then, looking down the beach towards the sea-birds and the city of the lizards. "I do not think so," he says slowly. "Things you would use to make rafts?"
"That would work, yes."
"Ah. No, there is nothing like that here. I have been to this island before. No wood. Only if the sea brings it to the shore."
Blast. Well, driftwood's better than nothing. Maybe if I'm patient I can gather enough over time. For now, back to the lizard on the fire. Oh, wait, I forgot the guts. I should've thrown them to the birds-
"What will you do if you leave this island?" he asks suddenly.
Huh? "Why, go home. What kind of a question is that?"
"Where is home?" Konki settles himself down again, cross-legged, on the other side of the fire. I'm pretty sure he shouldn't be able to fold up quite so tightly as that. Humans don't fit into so little space when they're his size.
"It's. . . my village, I guess. It was a little fishing village outside of Tong'an. My father was the blacksmith."
He nods, but there's no recognition in his face. No surprise there. Nyimi who came into our waters usually wound up on rich men's tables. I wonder if they still do that? "It is a long way from here," he says tentatively, not quite making it a question.
"Yes, it is." The lizard needs turning again. "But there are other islands. I do not have to go to my home. I can find other Chinese and work my way home from there."
"You have been with the Ainu a long time."
"Eight years, yes." The fire needs some prodding. There's a twig from one of the bushes. "So?"
"No one's death song takes that long to sing," he points out, and I stop.
I'm not really sure what the death songs mean to the Nyimi, exactly, but I've seen them done. They came to my old master once or twice to perform them. It's all the deeds a Nyimi's done in their lifetime, start to finish. They take forever to sing. My old master wasn't clear about them, either, but he seemed to think that they couldn't send the dead to their ancestors until they'd sung the song.
"I'm a lander, Konki-san," I say slowly as the fire flares up a bit. "We don't have death-songs."
He looks skeptical. "How do your people know when someone is dead, then?"
"They - they just do, that's all. If someone is dead, there's a body-"
"I mean when they are far away, sai. You have not been in the waters of your people in many years. Will they not say you are dead?"
Oh. "Well, maybe," I admit. "But I'll be there in front of them. They might think I'm a ghost for a while, but when they see a priest can't send me away, they'll know I'm not really a ghost."
He still doesn't look convinced, but he changes the subject anyway. "And your family? Are they still in your home waters?"
He's got no way of knowing I've asked myself that question more often than any other. There are nights when I can still smell the school burning as I drop off to sleep, and nightmares where I can still see the flames leaping from every window of every building along the harbor as they shove me onto the boat. There were other buildings there, and a clear road to Tong'an, but- "I don't know," I murmur, and even for my voice it sounds like a little boy's.
"What will you do if they are not there?" he asks.
"Look for them, I guess." It's such a stupid answer. The fire needs poking again. Right now.
"And if they are dead?"
"Can you stop asking these questions?" It comes out like a puppy's yip instead of the bark I wanted, but Gods - if he doesn't shut up -
But he does. His eyes are wide, but I'm not looking at him, I'm not. I've got a lizard to finish tending and I don't want any more questions out of him.
For a while it's quiet. The lizard is still sizzling, the birds screeling overhead; the waves are still sliding up and down the shore, although the tide's going out. The fire's behaving itself pretty well, considering that it's only got grass to feed on. But the questions are still there, even if they're silent now, chasing each other around the inside of my head.
It's almost a relief when he speaks. "I am sorry, sai."
Damn him, why did he have to say it at all to begin with?
"It is only. . . if your people say you are dead, you will need another school."
If I could fold up as tightly as he does, I'd be doing it. "I'm not dead yet."
"Your school may think otherwise, sai. Where will you go if they say that?"
"I don't know. Stop asking me."
He looks out to sea again. "If they tell you so-"
"Please." I'm whispering now. "Just stop."
He doesn't. "- then come to the shore and look for us. You are not dead to us. We will help you." With that, he gets up, brushes the sand off his legs, and bows to me.
Did he just say that? Did I actually hear him say that?
"Please enjoy the rest of your life. I am going now. "
I can't even speak. He's just knocked the wind out of me without even trying. I can just about manage "What?" He's already gone, though. I can't even find him in the waves.
But I can find a boat on the horizon.
