Those Who Walk the Flame Road
A taramu wound around Hugo’s neck. Ryuan stiffened and turned to look at him.
Whenever he spoke to Ryuan through the taramu, Hugo felt a strange warmth permeating his body. He felt it now, unchanged, and was reminded of happier times. He looked between Ryuan and the simple house, lost in memories. He remembered the boy he’d been, running all the way here with Shigan’s stew carried carefully in his arms.
Ryuan shook out her wet hands and wiped them on a crude apron tied around her waist. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why are you here?”
Hugo faced her squarely, let out one long, slow breath, and then said, “I quit my job at Tomuran’s.”
“What?”
“I gave my notice yesterday, and they’ve agreed to let me go. I wish that quitting being a gang leader was as easy as that, but it’s not. A lot of people are counting on me to protect them, and it’s harder than I thought it would be to find and train replacements.”
“But why? Why did you quit? What will you do now?” Ryuan asked.
“I’m going to join the Talsh army.”
Ryuan’s eyes widened. She went very pale. Hugo could hear a confused jumble of her thoughts through the taramu. She was the one who’d found him on that terrible night when the Talsh had burned the city. She knew better than anyone just how much Hugo despised the Talsh.
“How is Yoar doing?” Hugo asked.
Ryuan bit her lip and looked away. “You know he’s sick.”
“Yeah.” He smiled sadly. “I tried to give him money for a doctor, but he scolded me.”
“He can be stubborn,” Ryuan said. “Did you talk to him about anything else?”
“No,” Hugo said. “And I’m kind of glad that he’s stubborn. He still has his pride. I don’t think he’ll die without it.” He smiled again. “And he should be proud. I can’t even imagine the useless wretch I would have become without his help.”
Hugo wanted to explain why he’d chosen to join the Talsh army, but the words stuck in his throat. Every time he opened his mouth to say it, he wound up talking about something else.
“I’m not getting into fights anymore,” Hugo said. “I quit that, too. It was just an endless string of big, tough guys who thought they knew how to fight. I guess I got bored of it.”
Ryuan blinked sunlight out of her eyes. He could feel a genuine sense of relief from her, as well as a sudden pang of loneliness. She understood without being told outright that he wasn’t going to stay.
Ryuan came closer to Hugo and took his hands in both of hers. “I’m glad, Hugo. Really. I worried that if you kept fighting like that, someone would kill you eventually. Anything you do now would be better than that.”
Hugo nodded. Then he removed his wallet from his breast pocket and passed it to Ryuan. “Use this to buy medicine for your dad, okay?”
“I, uh…”
“I’m not his son, so I can’t enlist on the family’s behalf and ease his tax burden. This the best I can do. Buy medicine, and use the rest to pay the taxes.”
Ryuan looked like she wanted to refuse. She was Yoar’s daughter, after all. But then she clutched Hugo’s wallet firmly and gave him a decisive nod. “Thank you,” she said. “Please don’t think you owe us anything. We never thought of you like that. I know you’re giving this to us to help--and it will help--so I’ll accept it. Thank you.”
She smiled genuinely, then added, “Dad will be happy that you’ve stopped fighting, too. I’m sure of it.”
Ryuan’s smile transformed her face. Hugo blushed, a little embarrassed at the force and sincerity of her reaction. “I never thanked you properly for saving my life,” he said. “I bought you a gift.” He produced a blue-and-gold bracelet from his pocket, and Ryuan stayed still while he fastened it to her narrow wrist. Ryuan stared at the bracelet in fascination, touching its fine details with the tip of her index finger as if she was afraid of breaking her gift.
A flock of white birds flew through the sky and perched on the roof of the house. Their shadows passed briefly over Hugo and Ryuan as they landed. Ryuan looked up at them with a start, and Hugo noticed that she was looking at the blank air near the birds, not the birds themselves.
“Is there something else there?” Hugo asked.
She nodded. “It’s a school of fish. The scales on their back shine like silver coins. I thought they were shooting stars for a moment.” Her voice sounded a little shaky and breathless through the taramu. “They’re being lured here--there’s a lake, though I can’t see it. I see the river that leads to the lake, just there. It’s narrow here, but it opens out and gets wider a little further north. It’s not just fish that I see. Insects, birds, animals... everything is migrating north, but I don’t know why.”
Hugo couldn’t see all of that. The taramu wrapped around Ryuan’s neck and his own were visible, but he could also see himself and Ryuan more clearly than he could see those otherworldly creatures. He could feel a little of what Ryuan felt through their connection, though, and there was a light in her eyes that brightened the longer he looked at her.
More than any other sensation, Hugo felt that Ryuan desperately wanted to follow the creatures she saw. Wherever they were going, Ryuan wanted to be with them. She didn’t want them to leave her. The edges of her shape distorted, and her body appeared semi-transparent; like the taramu around her neck, she was fading into the other world.
“Ryuan!” Hugo seized her arm, and she became solid again. The light in her eyes dimmed as she faced him with an expression of disappointed loneliness. She looked irritated, like he’d awakened her from from a pleasant dream.
Hugo let Ryuan go, not without some reluctance. Having felt her loneliness and her longing to be elsewhere, all he felt was pity for her, but he didn’t want to say that. She would be able to tell what he was thinking and feeling without him saying a word, so he said nothing.
Ryuan didn’t start fading again. She sat near the canal with her new bracelet shining on her wrist, pale-skinned and tired. “This place is changing,” she said. “Bit by bit, a little at a time, so most people don’t notice.”
Hugo frowned. “How is it changing?”
“Beyond the lake where the fish are going is an ocean,” Ryuan said. She gave Hugo a smile, but there was no joy in it. “So vast, it might as well be endless. The change comes from that ocean. The tides there have been changing for a long time, shifting slowly--but a small change there produces big changes elsewhere. Like ripples spreading out.”
“Where is this ocean?” Hugo asked. Not for the first time, he was astonished by just how clearly Ryuan could perceive the other world.
Ryuan pointed to the harbor, and then beyond to the ships that traded with Sangal and the northern continent. “North,” she said. “How far, I don’t know.” She kept pointing to the endless north for what felt like a long time. Then she knelt down next to the canal and resumed her washing.
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