Guardian of Heaven and Earth
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Rota
Part 1 - Searching for Chagum
Chapter 6 - Premonition
Tanda woke up when he heard Balsa's voice.
The door to his hut was open, so the red light of sunset streamed through it unimpeded. He heard a sound like a bird call from far away; when he strained his ears to listen, he lost the sound.
The hut was quiet. There was no one else here.
Tanda stayed still with his arm on his pillow and glanced out of his open door. He was sleepy, yet also very awake; it was a strange feeling. His limbs felt heavy, but his mind was alert.
This wasn't the first time Tanda had awakened at sunset lately. It didn't happen every night, but he often woke when he heard Balsa's voice. Waking up and seeing that she wasn't next to him filled him with an indescribable loneliness.
The peaceful life wasn't for Balsa; she wasn't the sort of person who could settle down. Whenever she stayed too long in one place, even a place she liked, she started getting a restless urge to travel.
But Tanda liked putting down roots. He liked staying in one place and having each day be similar to the one before it. In this one area, he and Balsa were completely different. When he'd asked Balsa if they should try to raise Asra and Chikisa in his hut, she'd shaken her head at him and said, "I can't simply live for those children. There are more people I have to save."
Nothing Tanda had said managed to change her mind.
It took a long time for Asra to wake up after her struggle with Talhamaya, and an even longer time to recover her health and strength. But even after she was able to do much of what she could before--walk, run, and play--she never recovered her voice. Balsa remained with her and protected her like a mother hen would her hatchling, but when it was clear that Asra could not recover more than she had, Balsa had taken both Asra and Chikisa to Shirogai to stay at the Samada store with Martha.
Tanda knew that Balsa had known Martha since her own childhood and that she was a very capable woman. He was certain she'd be able to take good care of Chikisa and Asra. But parting with them after so long in their company made Tanda feel lonely. Even Balsa seemed lonely these days.
Tanda rested his too-warm cheek against the cool floor. It's been quite a while since that messenger came. Tanda wondered if Balsa had been able to find Chagum or if she was still desperately searching for him. He sighed. He couldn't help but worry about them both. Even if Balsa had managed to find Chagum, there was no guarantee that the two of them were safe.
Tanda had heard through Torogai, who had heard it from Shuga, that Chagum had spent most of his final years in the palace being shunned by the Mikado. The Mikado would doubtless try to keep the fact that Chagum was alive quiet if it became widely known. He'd already had a funeral for Chagum and proclaimed him as a god that would protect New Yogo from war.
But Balsa would do absolutely anything to save Chagum. Tanda was sure that he would come back from Rota alive. The consequences of that were anyone's guess. Balsa was getting herself sucked into events that would have repercussions far beyond her own actions or responsibilities; he hoped she knew what she was getting into. It wasn't the first time she'd risked everything for Chagum's sake.
Tanda covered his face with his arms. The situation was too complex for him to understand fully. He had no idea what Balsa and Chagum should do next.
Tanda could do nothing but worry: for Balsa, for Chagum, for himself. No one knew what the future would bring. He comforted himself with the idea that he had choices.
Everyone has something that only they can do--look at me, and look at you. The most important thing for you to do now now is to survive. If you don't, you'll never see them again.
He remembered Torogai saying something similar to him long ago. He believed she was right, like she always was, but he didn't feel like survival was sufficient, somehow. He closed his eyes and went to sleep.
When Tanda awoke, dawn light played over the mountains to the northeast. When he sat up, he felt slightly dizzy. He scolded himself internally: You've got to do better than this. You shouldn't let worry make you this weak and tired.
Nayugu's spring had awakened something in the earth. Cut-beetles had appeared in huge numbers and swarmed over tree roots to eat them, but that was just one minor sign of a much deeper problem. Whenever Tanda stood under a tall tree or at the base of a mountain, he felt as if the earth was crying out to him in some way. Torogai had ordered him to map the unusually warm current in the river of Nayugu that he'd been feeling since the start of Nayugu's spring, so he'd gone all over New Yogo to speak with magic weavers in other villages and ask questions about what they'd observed.
For Tanda as well as other magic weavers, peering into Nayugu was becoming increasingly more difficult--and exhausting. When Tanda tried to map the course of Nayugu's river, he saw a large body of water moving northeast toward Kanbal, building up in quantity and intensity like a tidal wave, like it was caught up against a cliff and was waiting for a trigger to release it. Kanbal's southern mountains seemed relatively unaffected; the water gathered over New Yogo's forests and mountain ranges, thinning out and disappearing as it flowed further north. He couldn't see more without stepping entirely into Nayugu, and then he'd have to leave his body behind in Sagu.
He and Torogai had just returned from their long journey to all the villages when he'd seen the messenger at their door. A single night of fitful sleep had done little to restore his energy; he didn't feel up to doing any magic weaving at all. He ate an early lunch and lay back down for a nap afterwards; he was still so tired that he fell asleep almost immediately.
Every magic weaver had their limits. The power of the soul could easily be exhausted by spending too much time in Nayugu. He'd been a magic weaver for a long time, but this was the first time he'd ever felt that he'd run completely out of energy.
Chagum was able too see Nayugu easily while he was incubating the water spirit. It seemed so easy, too, but maybe it really wasn't. There's a cost to all of this.
Asra had also been able to see Nayugu at will, with no preparation or active work on her part. Maybe some people just had the talent for it and others didn't. He suddenly remembered something Torogai had said: “Sometimes fish from Nayugu are visible on this side, too, though I’m not entirely sure why. Some of our birds and fish can see the ones that glow in the dark in Nayugu, which is why you saw so many of those lights being eaten, I think.”
Why are Nayugu and Sagu two separate worlds in the first place? Are they even separate?
The water spirit had used Chagum to mature, but it had needed shigu salua flowers to hatch. And there must be more people like him and Asra; more people who could see both worlds at once or one at a time at will. Tanda's forehead creased in concentration.
Even if there were more people like Chagum and Asra, they had to be exceedingly rare. The water spirit had chosen Chagum and no other--maybe Chagum had been the only appropriate choice. But why was he chosen? Tanda still wasn't sure.
The sound of footsteps made Tanda lose his focus. He turned toward the sound and saw someone climbing up the mountain path toward the hut--and they weren't alone.
"Mr. Tanda!" a slightly hesitant voice called out to him.
Tanda quickly stood up from the dirt floor and leaned out the doorway to take a closer look. "Chikisa?"
Chikisa and Asra stood next to one another on the mountain path with the setting sun behind them.
"What a wonderful surprise!" Tanda said brightly. "I was just thinking about you both. I'm so happy you're here. Come in, come in!"
Chikisa looked openly relieved. He pushed Asra's back a little to encourage her to go forward, then walked behind her into Tanda's house. Asra appeared frightened and looked down.
"Just sit down there," Tanda said, "right by the fire. I'll make us all something to eat. Rest your legs a little. If you want to wash up a little, you can use the water in that pot over there." He made a fire in the center of the room, which wasn't too difficult; he'd banked it before he'd fallen asleep. The grass and small twigs caught in a flash; he was soon feeding firewood into the fire pit in preparation for cooking a meal.
The fire crackled and popped in the center of the room, making the hut brighter. Chikisa and Asra sat down right in front of it and extended their hands over the flames. "I'm sorry for coming without sending word," Chikisa said.
Tanda laughed. "You're free to come here whenever you like. There's no need to announce yourselves. But it must have been a long way to come on your own."
"We didn't," Chikisa said. "We came with Martha all the way to the capital. We visited Toya's Everything Store yesterday morning; he was the one who told us where to find you. I got a little worried when the sun started setting and we still hadn't made it."
Tanda put some water in a pot, then hung it over the fire to boil. "I'm glad you made it here today, too. I would have been away tomorrow. I've been traveling myself, so I don't have as much fresh food as usual... I guess we'll have to make do with what will go in the pot."
Tanda looked at Asra and said, "I know you both came all this way, but Balsa isn't here. She's traveling herself; I'm not sure when she'll be back."
Asra kept staring at the floor. She hadn't looked up once since coming inside. Chikisa glanced at her, then looked up at Tanda. "We wanted to see Balsa too, of course, but we really came to see you, Mr. Tanda."
Tanda's eyebrows went up. "Me? Well, that's nice of you to say, but...why?"
Chikisa looked at Asra as if he were waiting for some kind of signal. When she simply sat and looked scared, Chikisa returned his gaze to Tanda. Tanda shook his head.
Tanda added rinsed rice to a bamboo steamer and set it over the fire. "Well, there's no rush, is there?" he said when he sat down. "I can't offer you much better than rice and wild vegetables, though."
Chikisa nodded, then seemed to remember something. He stood up to retrieve something from his pack, which he then passed to Tanda; it was something wrapped neatly in oiled paper. "This is from Ms. Martha," he said.
Tanda wiped his hands on his clothes to dry them, then accepted the package and unwrapped it. There were candies inside shaped like birds and flowers made of white rice and pure sugar. "Wow! Aren't these pretty."
Chikisa laughed. "Miss Martha wouldn't allow us to visit without bringing a gift. She said it wouldn't be right, not after all you'd done for us."
Tanda remembered Martha's sharp features and kind eyes and felt something that was hard to identify. She was clearly raising Asra and Chikisa to have proper manners; he was sure that he should send a message of thanks to her for taking such good care of the children. He realized he was experiencing something a little like jealousy, but Martha didn't deserve that. He accepted the candy with a posture of sincere gratitude.
"Please give Martha my thanks," he said.
"We will," Chikisa said. He looked down for a moment, then extended another package wrapped in oiled paper. "And, uh, this is something that I bought for you in the capital. I used most of my money to buy it, so, uh, Miss Martha covered the rest. Please accept it."
Tanda unwrapped this package as well and saw houro inside. Houro was a type of meat that was aged in a salty, spicy paste made from fermented beans. It would be delicious in any stew.
"This is perfect! It will make dinner so much better." He bowed and thanked Chikisa, smiling the entire time. "Thank you. Let's get this roasting, shall we?"
Chikisa and Asra were still apprentices at Martha's store. Houro was quite expensive; Chikisa had just said that he'd used his savings to buy it, but the fact that he had that amount to spend made Tanda feel even better about their living situation. It also made him incredibly grateful, even more so than for the candy; Chikisa could have spent that money on anything, yet he'd chosen to spend it on him.
After the rice and vegetables were done cooking, he removed them from the fire and placed the meat inside a cooking net, which he could open and close with his foot and pull over and off the fire using a long chain. The appetizing smell of the roasting houro filled the air as the meat sizzled. When it was juicy and tender, he removed it from the fire, cut it in pieces and added it to the rice, then added in the wild vegetables.
Chikisa ate like he'd never had anything so good in his entire life. Asra licked the meat tentatively at first, but then reached out her hand for more and started eating just as eagerly as her brother.
Asra looked a little sleepy after eating. Tanda brought each of the children a cup of some sweet tea that he’d brewed himself. Asra glanced over at her brother, then held his gaze. He nodded at her.
“Um, Mr. Tanda, the real reason we came to see you so soon on this trip is that Asra had a dream. It was so frightening that I thought I heard her cry out in her sleep. She couldn’t settle down after that; nothing could calm her; she’s been antsy like this for three days. She told me that she wanted to go see you and that it couldn’t wait. She said she needed to talk to you.”
Tanda looked to Asra, expecting her to speak. Asra removed a piece of paper from her pocket and passed it to Tanda. It was an oiled paper wrapper for something; there was writing on the back of it, but Tanda couldn’t read it. He blinked down at the unfamiliar letters and said, “Oh, uh...I’m sorry, Asra. I can’t read the Tal language.”
Chikisa extended his hand; Tanda gave him the paper. “Oh yeah,” Chikisa said. “Sorry; I forgot that she can only write in Tal letters.”
Chikisa read over what his sister had written and frowned severely. “Hm. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me...I should have guessed that.”
“It’s all right,” Tanda said. “Just read it out. Maybe we can make sense of it together.”
Chikisa nodded and started to translate Asra’s words into Yogoese.
“Mr. Tanda, thank you so much for saving me. There’s something I wanted to tell you about today, so I wrote this letter. I’ve been having the same dream since spring of last year. I don’t really understand what it means; whenever I open my eyes, I forget what happened in it. What pieces I can remember make my chest feel like it’s being crushed by a stone. I want to run away and flee--I hear my heartbeat loud in my ears--it’s like something is chasing me.
“It feels a little like it did when I was trying to fight off Talhamaya, but it’s different.”
Asra was staring straight at Tanda. The desperation in her eyes filled Tanda with a sense of unease.
Chikisa was still speaking: “I thought about for a really long time, and finally realized that it reminded me of another dream I had a long time ago, about something swimming in the bright blue waters of Noyook, far away. Something holy and sacred, like a god, but not like Talhamaya at all. It was very, very far away from me but I still felt it. Whatever is happening in Noyook right now scares me.
“When I crossed the bridge leading into Kosenkyo, I got goosebumps and felt the same way I always do after waking up from my dream. I wanted to run and cry out. I couldn’t sleep inside the city without being constantly afraid. I feel like I have to do something, warn someone--but I don’t know what I have to do, or what I should warn people about.
“Tell me, Mr. Tanda, what should I do? What am I supposed to do?”
Tanda felt cold all over. “What is this thing you feel?” he asked. “Do you know anything else about it? Where it comes from?”
Asra wrinkled her forehead, then seized her brother’s hand and started spelling out letters with her finger. Chikisa translated what his sister was writing, word by slow word.
“It comes from the south,” Chikisa said. “But I don’t know what it is. I know that it’s like a god, but not like the god.”
Tanda hmmed. “So it’s swimming in Nayugu. Getting closer, going from the south to the north. Is it here now, Asra?”
Chikisa waited for his sister’s answer. “No,” she spelled out on his palm. “It’s still coming, going that way.” She pointed.
Tanda sighed in relief. Asra was pointing directly north, toward the Misty Blue Mountains and Kanbal.
Hm. That’s the same direction as Nayugu’s river, isn’t it? The one that felt unusually warm near that village.
Tanda was about to mention this when he heard a sudden knock on his door. Tanda frowned and stood up. “It seems I have a lot of guests today,” he said with an apologetic smile. “Excuse me.”
He crossed the room, feet moving over the bare earth floor, and opened the door to a man carrying a lantern. His features were scarcely visible in the growing darkness, but Tanda recognized him. “Noshir,” he said. Noshir was his older brother.
Noshir stepped a little to the side and avoided meeting Tanda’s gaze. Standing this close, Tanda could tell that he was very pale.
“What’s wrong, Noshir? Is someone sick? Do you need help?”
Noshir wiped sweat from his deeply tanned forehead with one thick palm and said, “No, not this time. I have something to ask you--well, not just me. The request comes from our younger brother and our whole family.”
Tanda knew exactly why Noshir was at his doorstep. He also knew that he wouldn’t be able to refuse him. A black shadow fell over his heart as he waited for his brother to put his request into words.
Noshir made no attempt to come inside the hut. He stood at the doorway and said, “Kaiza has been drafted into the imperial army.”
Kaiza was Tanda’s youngest brother. He’d gotten married the previous year; his wife had given birth to a girl just this past spring. Noshir had gathered the family together to discuss what was to be done. Tanda understood clearly what their decision had been. He stood frozen to the spot as if he’d changed to ice and looked his brother directly in the eyes.
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