Chapter One
“—and that was how we got the moon back up the mountain and into the sky, and no one was ever the wiser. You can tell it was us because when you see the moon’s face turned out fully, the dark marks are where the youngest sister kissed her before she said goodbye.”
The woman steering the cart winked and tapped her lips, painted a dark and shiny green-black, and Chih made another note in their book, both the end of the story and that the woman’s lip paint hid darker marks underneath, visible only when one was close enough to see.
Tattoos, maybe, or very fine scarification? Is there a good way to ask without being rude?
Chih was still pondering the question when the woman nodded, pulling her team of oxen to a halt.
“And here we are, cleric. This is where I turn north, and you shift for yourself.”
“Oh, thank you! I’m sorry, I was listening to your story, and I missed the signs.”
Chih climbed down from the wagon, dragging their pack with them and settling it on their shoulders. They turned to bow their thanks formally, but the woman peered over their shoulder towards the path behind them, less a road than a foot-track into the sparse woods.
“I would have missed it myself if the road hadn’t widened to a turnaround. This is some desolate country you all have here in the west. Where did you say you were headed again?”
Chih couldn’t help smiling, not when they were so close, when the earth smelled right and the cicadas filled the air with a thunderous buzz. In another few weeks, the cicadas would all be dead, and the novices would sweep up drifts of golden husks to be crushed and added to the compost bins.
I made it back in time for the cicadas, they thought.
“I’m going home to the Singing Hills abbey,” they said.
* * *
From the Red Road, it was another day’s walk to the abbey gates. Properly, it was closer to a day and a half, but Chih knew that there was a warm bed, food, and family waiting for them at the end, and they pushed on through the thinning light. They knew these woods, and while there was no such thing as a safe wilderness, they knew its dangers: candle ghosts and echo spirits that would lead them in circles, shy wolves that could grow hungry.
Cleric Pan would say that this is exactly how you get led into the woods and eaten by a wolf, but Cleric Pan also told us that the castle at Keph-Valee can lift from its foundations and fly. It probably can’t, and I probably won’t be eaten by a wolf either.
Still, it had been four years since they had last made this trip. Once they almost mistook a deer track for the path, and once they heard the voice of the Divine calling to them for help. Home was still home, they thought as they walked, and it was a mistake to let nostalgia convince them that it was completely safe.
The deer track had cost them some time, however, and the sun was below the horizon when they broke the treeline to the plains. Across the rolling green, they could see the walls of the Singing Hills abbey, ancient and scarred with the marks of old conflicts, and so beloved that it made Chih’s heart hurt.
They sniffled a little, and then they blinked when they saw a pair of dark shapes before the twin timber gates.
Are they … did they build sheds on the green? Did a traveling show or a weapons dealer arrive with their covered wagons for some reason?
Then one of the dark shapes moved, its lumbering gait and the round shape of its head unmistakable. It turned so it stood fully in the dying light of the day and uncurled its short trunk to arch back like a snake against its head before it bellowed, a shrill trumpeting sound that carried to where Chih stood and beyond, likely all the way back to the Red Road.
Mammoth, Chih thought, frozen. Mammoths at the gates.
Chapter Two
From the treeline, Chih paced and thought about what they should do, what they could do. They could turn around and try to find out what was going on from the town up the river. They could try the postern gate, which was less a secret than it was simply inaccessible, hidden along the ridge, a relic of the time when the abbey actually had been a real military fortification.
I heard there was the cave-in a few years ago, they meant to dig it out, but did they ever? I could try it—
Chih’s head jerked up at a low hooting: two slurred hollow notes, the second higher and softer. It was as familiar as their own face, and they turned with relief and no small amount of joy.
The hoopoe in the tree behind them was male by his bright coloration and larger than most of the neixin that lived in the Singing Hills aviary, almost the size of a crow or a young chicken. He gazed down at Chih curiously from his perch in the tree, twisting his head back and forth.
“Well, well,” he said. “What a time for you to make your way home.”
“Cleverness Himself! Yes, I seem to have chosen a bad time, haven’t I?”
“Never a bad time to come home. I’m happy to see you. You need a haircut.”
Chih passed a hand over the two inches of hair on their head, grinning in spite of themselves.
“The barber in the last town I was in ran off with the circus. I did try.”
“Try harder!” the bird barked in a perfect imitation of Cleric Hahn, who had once been a drill instructor in Wen, and Chih laughed.
“I can ask someone to take care of it for me when I get inside the walls—that is, if I can get inside the walls?”
Cleverness Himself whistled, a disdainful sound.
“Oh, you want to get in? There’s nothing easier. Will you stand me a ride?”
“Oh, of course.”
Chih lifted their left shoulder slightly in invitation, and Cleverness Himself glided down to secure his perch, his sharp nails knitting through the fabric of their indigo robe. He was heavier than Almost Brilliant, and his bulk actually blocked their vision on one side, but then they both got the balance.
“Tsk, all this and you’ve lost weight too,” Cleverness Himself said disapprovingly, flexing his feet on their shoulder. “Let’s get you inside so we can start feeding you up again.”
“Rice porridge and rice porridge and rice porridge, and maybe a slice of toasted tofu if we’ve all been good,” said Chih with a sigh. “Where am I going?”
“Home, of course. Start walking.”
Chapter Three
To Chih’s uneasy surprise, Cleverness Himself marched them down to the plain, over the footbridge that crossed the creek, and then straight among the cluster of small blue-and-white-striped pavilions that they had missed when they were staring at the mammoths in surprise. Planted at the center of the pavilions was a pole bearing an embroidered flag, that of a hound with a broad chest and a tiny curly tail facing right, one paw up.
“That’s the flag of Northern Bell Pass, isn’t it?” asked Chih, and Cleverness Himself whistled disdainfully.
“It surely is. More precisely, with its little paw up like that, it’s the insignia of the Coh clan. Cute little dog, don’t you think? Who’s got a cute little face? Who’s got the most adorable little paws?”
The last was uttered more loudly, pitched to carry, and suddenly there was a tall woman striding towards them out of the dim early evening. Her long robes looked too light for the evening chill and too long for the outdoors, dragging in the grass. Despite that, she moved with an easy and menacing athleticism. Her head was half-shaved, one side as clean as a cleric’s, the other side braided back to fall in long tails over her shoulder. By her side there was a long and slender sword of the ceremonial sort often used as a pointer, though Chih had the sinking sensation that for this woman, a stabbing weapon was a stabbing weapon.
“Keep a civil tongue in that beast’s head, cleric, or I will cut it out,” she snapped, and Chih hurriedly bowed. What a welcome home.
“Forgive us,” they began, but Cleverness Himself shifted to the top of Chih’s head, puffing up indignantly.
“A beast, really! You know better than that, that I am no beast. I am a neixin of Singing Hills, upon whose lands you are currently trespassing.”
The woman’s sharp eyes shifted to Cleverness Himself, which would have been more of a relief if the hoopoe wasn’t actually standing on Chih’s head.
“I am an advocate of the empire, escorted by a detachment of the southern regiment and traveling on legal business. There is no land on this continent where I am a trespasser.”
“Wrong again,” Cleverness Himself trilled. “Singing Hills stands on old promises made by greater than any you have ever spoken with, and it will stand long after you are gone.”
Something about that pricked the woman’s anger—Chih could almost feel it shift, and they spread their hands out placatingly even as they shifted one foot back to dodge or to run.
“I am Cleric Chih of Singing Hills,” they started hurriedly. “I’ve been traveling, and I am only trying to return—”
“Then return,” the woman said shortly. “And take your bird from this place before it says something you both have cause to regret.”
Chih could actually feel Cleverness Himself getting ready to make some potentially fatal response to that, and before he could do so, they reached up to grab him off their head and hug him to their chest. Despite his size, he still felt delicate in their grasp, his heart buzzing like a thousand flies, and they were careful not to crush him even as they bowed again.
“Impolite!” Cleverness Himself growled, pecking hard at Chih’s hands, and it was, as rude as grabbing another cleric and covering their mouth.
“Still alive,” Chih hissed in response. “Now I’m getting out of here before—”
“You can come this way,” said another voice, and Chih squeaked in surprise, letting go of Cleverness Himself who exploded out of their grasp and flapped hard in shock at the person who had gotten too close without either of them noticing.
The other person fell back, letting Cleverness Himself make a tight circle before landing on Chih’s shoulder again.
“Now who in the world are you?” he asked sternly.
The newcomer was a woman perhaps five or so years younger than Chih themself, dressed more simply than the other, but with the same hooded eyes and sharp features. Where the former had been stern, however, this woman was cheerful, with a wide mouth that seemed inclined to smile and a patch of skin on her chin and her throat that was paler by far than the rest, ragged at the edges and leading up to her cheeks with island-specks of white.
“Vi In Yee,” she said by way of introduction. “I was introduced when we first showed up, but there was a lot going on that morning.”
“Corporal Vi In Yee?” asked Chih, who had noticed the beaded braid of red mammoth fur coiled into a circle and pinned to her shoulder.
“Ha, yes, corporal, that’s correct. You’ve had some dealings with the mammoth corps, then?”
“Some,” Chih allowed, falling into step. “Though I have to say that I have never seen you so far south.”
“Oh, we don’t like it much. It makes everyone cranky and tired, riders and mammoths both. Still, we get on all right. This time of year is better for it than some.”
Chih almost missed a step when they realized that Vi In Yee was leading them to the two mammoths that stood by the tall gate. Neither was saddled, and they were not tethered either, which Chih knew would allow them to come at a call or a whistle from the woman by their side.
“Come here,” Vi In Yee said, walking forward. “Come meet them. That is, unless you are afraid.”
Cleverness Himself whistled mistrustfully, but he hopped down to Chih’s shoulder again. His nails were sharp, and Chih had the idea that he wanted to spread a sheltering wing over them both, for all the good that would do.
“It would be an honor,” Chih said firmly, and it was the truth. They had met mammoths before in their travels in the north, and they knew very well that the only harm in a well-trained mammoth came at the command of their rider.
Even knowing that, there was something more than a little intimidating about walking up to such large animals, one the classic russet red and the other red with four showy white socks and a large white patch over her face that spread down to cover her trunk. They swung their trunks in a companionable way as Vi In Yee walked ahead, her hands open to pet first one and then the other.
Copyright © 2023 by Nghi Vo
