Shoji and the Field of Memories
CHAPTER 12 - Thisula
(In the mountains outside of Phi Ta Khon)
The jungle that spread the expanse of the mountainside was ringing with the chatter of birds and insects. A monsoon that had drenched the north had left the wildlife feeling restless and energized, well into the night. Sho could hear cicadas and geckos whirring and squeaking in high pitches, and the occasional belt of a gibbon far off in the distance. Moonlight streaked through holes in the canopy and lit small spots, like pixies, resting on the leaves.
Compared to the dark silence in the valley, the jungle was an orchestra of light and sound.
They wove like a snake, upward and deeper into the mountainside. Their pace was slow and careful, all three dedicated to silence while they tried to discern unusual sounds amidst the chatter of nature. Sho kept his scimitars on his back while they trudged through the thicket. He needed his arms free to move away branches and giant fans of ferns that blocked their path. The air was thick and wet with humidity. Sho could smell the musk of wet leather from his gear and felt sweat gathering around the nape of his neck and beading above his brow.
Ahead of him, Arisa was pushing through behind Kevin. She moved more easily than either Sho or Kevin due to her supernatural vampire balance. Even with runes to help them, the parabatai couldn't float over the ground as she could.
Then, all at once, the mad cries of the jungle came to a stunning halt.
As the group slowed to a stop the only sounds came from their feet squelching the soft, wet ground. Then silence, more deafening than the quiet in the valley.
It filled Sho with an internal foreboding from years of Shadowhunter training. He immediately reached for his scimitars and yanked them free with a sharp clang and whispered the names of angels, Kevin doing the same with his broadsword. Arisa simply stood and lowered her head in vigilance.
Even the canopy overhead darkened as the moon was hidden from sight, but Sho saw them before he heard anything.
Like dark statues in the mist, they were scattered around in a wide circle. The three stood surrounded by the closing noose of fledglings, hovering toward them in the stifling stillness. It was impossible to see how many there were and Sho didn't even try. They were clearly outnumbered.
Sho, Arisa, and Kevin arranged themselves in a circle of their own, looking out at the vampires that were edging closer. Sho tightened his grip on his glowing blades and with their blazing blue light, he could begin to make out the fledgling's ashen faces.
Their sunken eyes were hidden by shadows but he could see they were definitely all Thai. As they edged even closer he saw they were dressed in more traditional, simple clothing, which meant they were likely farmers and laborers from the region.
They ranged in ages too, the youngest looking no older than fourteen.
They came to a stop a few yards away and then nothing happened. They didn't speak or move at all. Sho and Kevin continued to shift their weight and sway their weapons in anticipation while Arisa stood as motionless as the fledglings.
"What do you want to do now, Arisa?" Sho asked quietly, his voice carrying far in the humid air. He chanced a glance her way and saw her staring ahead with a furrowed brow.
"I don't think I'll be able to get through to them. Look at their eyes; they're being severely controlled by their sire." She looked at them and took stock of the scene. "They look fed so I doubt they're in bloodlust. They seem to be waiting on orders. I say we wait for the ringleader."
She squared her shoulders again and her face relaxed. She nodded to Sho and Kevin who hesitantly held their weapons at their sides.
They stood in a silent staring battle with the fledglings, who regarded them with foggy, listless eyes.
Ahead of Kevin there was a massive dead tree trunk that lay across a low ridge. The moss-covered wood was pressed into the ground with the weight of years and Sho saw the faces of the surrounding fledglings turn upward toward the plank. The three of them followed their gaze but couldn't see anything.
Sho held his scimitars out wide from his body, expecting an ambush from any direction. He was focused and determined to protect his friends and let himself wonder how the others were faring back in the field.
Then they saw a wild, frizzy mess of hair rise up from behind the decayed trunk. The tight curls bounced ever-so-slightly with each step and they framed a small, delicate face hidden in shadows. The slight figure leaped effortlessly onto the top of the overturned tree and stood with hands on her hips and one leg pointed outward in a cynical posture. She wore a tight, dark tank top and short leather skirt with golden bangles shining from the light of the moon that had finally broken through the trees.
When she lifted her head towards them and Sho finally saw her face he felt the ground give way underneath him. His vision darkened at the edges and he fell hard to his knees, his hands still holding the blades that fell limply on the ground beside him.
He felt Arisa's hand on his shoulder and Kevin came into his line of sight, blocking his view of the woman above. He was speaking to him but Sho couldn't make out any words.
His face felt hot and numb at the same time. His parabatai was aching with concern, shaking Sho's head between his hands. Sho felt the rough skin of Kevin's thumbs on his cheeks, rubbing streaks of sweat away.
Slowly he could hear Kevin's voice return, like a train nearing in a tunnel. Kevin stood and whipped around to yell at the woman on the ledge, holding his broadsword out in front of him.
Kevin's voice was muffled and low, like an engine running underwater. Sho was pulled to his feet by Arisa's strong grip, his eyes just high enough to look over Kevin's shoulder towards the woman.
She looked exactly the same as the worn and faded portrait his father had kept in his wallet. The same wild, curly brown hair and small round face, with high cheekbones and a narrow nose like his own. Her eyes were round with long black lashes sweeping outward. The innermost corners of her eyes were dark and it gave her an indignant look.
If he hadn't felt hot blood flushing his face or the vice grip of Arisa's cold hands on his shoulder, he would be certain he was dreaming that his mother was standing before them. But it was unmistakably her, untouched by age and almost glowing under the moonlight streaking down from above.
She had a small smirk tightening the corner of her mouth and was staring at Sho over Kevin's shoulder in a knowing gaze. As life-changing and devastating as this moment felt to Sho, his mother seemed entirely unsurprised to see him.
Thisula, Sho recalled from the deep recesses of his mind. My mother's name was Thisula.
"Answer me!" Kevin was shouting, "How can you be here? You're dead! You've been dead for decades!" Sho could hear him clearly now, his head still ringing but Kevin's voice commanding his attention. He sounded desperate and angrier than Sho had ever heard him before.
"Kevin…" Arisa spoke in a warning tone.
"Well, you aren't entirely wrong, I suppose. I have been dead for over twenty years." Thisula folded her arms lazily across her chest and stared at Kevin in amused contempt, "but I am not concerned with answering any of your questions white knight."
"I will, however, address my son."
She looked back at Sho who felt his mother's stare bore straight through his core. He swallowed and his throat ached and burned from holding back tears. His mouth felt dry and his hands throbbed from their tight grip on his blades.
"Oh, how I've missed you, my darling boy. Won't you come to me? You should embrace your mother." She spoke in a sardonic tone that seemed on the verge of mocking him in her heavy Thai accent.
Sho flinched and dropped one shoulder back. He couldn't stand to hear her voice. It was like sandpaper rubbing over his mind, defacing everything he had spent a lifetime dreaming about. The image he had carried not even a day ago, of a strong, spritely Shadowhunter running along the shore of the Tha Chin, had fallen in crumpling ashes into the pallid calamity of a woman that stood before him.
Kevin and Arisa were exchanging glances and didn't seem to know if they should let events unfold or start wreaking havoc. Through the fog of his disbelief, Sho had a glimmer of clarity and remembered what Filly had said about family. The two standing there were counting on him.
He turned back to his mother who was staring at him expectantly.
"It's not good to keep your mother waiting, " she said as she placed her hands on her hips and tilted her chin at him.
"You're one to talk, you wicked bitc-" Kevin spat.
"Kev, stop. It's alright."
Sho pushed passed his friend and stepped up the slope to face Thisula. He steeled his nerve and tried to ignore his pounding heart ringing in his ears.
"What are you doing here? What's your role in all this?" he asked coldly.
Thisula flipped her hair over one shoulder and patted the long strands thoughtfully, inspecting the ends. "I was hoping to have this conversation with my son alone, but it looks like I'll be forced to put up with your little friends as well. That's fine," she tossed her hair back over her shoulder and looked at them all.
"I see you've met some of my flock. The ones you haven't managed to murder anyway. Do you know how hard it is to build a family like this? Your meddling has cost me some time. Yet, this clan is far more loyal to their creator than you, my darling boy."
There was a soft hissing that trickled in from the circle of the undead. Sho looked around and widened his stance, becoming more aware of their current predicament; being surrounded and outnumbered. He knew he was going to have to talk his way out of this. He wouldn't risk Arisa and Kevin at the expense of whatever it was his mother was trying to accomplish.
"Hard to be a dutiful son when you were orphaned at ten years old," he said carefully.
Thisula was suddenly livid, the veins in her temple pressing outward in a dark hue.
"And who is to blame for that?! The Shadowhunters and their ridiculous, ancient ways are to blame for separating you from me! They all thought they could get rid of me, that I would go silently into banishment and wouldn't enact my revenge upon them all. They are going to be so, so disappointed with that decision," she said, with her small hands clenched into fists at her side.
Sho could see the points of her fangs more clearly with the ferocity of her words and it was like seeing a vampire for the first time. He was struggling endlessly to reconcile his memories with his reality.
"What do you mean you were banished? No one ever told me what happened to you! I thought you had been killed in the line of duty. Father never talked about you; I thought he was just too grief-stricken to bring it up." The words came more easily to Sho now. He was drawn forward and selfishly craved to know the answers to all his questions. He had forgotten about the mission and isolating the fledglings from their sire.
Thisula was pacing now across the tree trunk and waving her arms about in frantic movements. "The Clave and their rules! They would tear the world down to their feet if the angels demanded it of them! Shoji, listen. Your mother was sent away, literally torn from you, and banished from Alicante and the only home I had ever known; all because I refused to fight for them and give up what was most important to me," she declared.
Then, realizing she was losing composure she stopped pacing and rubbed her hands together at her waist. If she had needed to breathe, Sho thought she would have sighed in exasperation.
"I don't understand…" Nothing she said had explained anything. "How did you become...like this?"
"Oh, this?" she gestured to herself. "This is the best thing that ever happened to me. Don't cry for mother, my boy. I wanted this and everything I have managed to do has all been due to my...abilities." She smiled a wicked grin and Sho recoiled, feeling a cold rush go through him as she continued.
"I have found my end, my opportune moment to teach the Clave that they cannot destroy people's hearts without consequences. Together with my new family," she held out an arm and swept it around the jungle, "I will show them."
Arisa stepped forward then, looking up at Thisula with contempt.
"You have no right to call the Night's Children your family. You are no mother to vampires. You can sire as many as you like, but that does not make you one of us. The Praetor will save these fledglings and bring them into our fold. They don't have to follow whatever sick plan you have for them," she spoke out to the circle around her, entreating them to hear her words even though they couldn't understand.
"On the contrary, sister, we are all damned. That makes us exactly alike in the eyes of the Clave, no matter how much they may preach peace," Thisula spat the word like a bitter seed then suddenly rushed down from the trunk in a flash, halting a foot away from Arisa. Kevin and Sho started forward but Arisa held out a hand to stop them.
She didn't draw back at Thisula's advancement but stared her directly in the eyes. Arisa stood a little taller than his mother, but Sho felt Thisula's brazen confidence made her seem much larger than she was.
"You can join us if you'd like. You are quite the pretty one, little pet. You could be an acceptable match for my son." Thisula looked from Arisa to Sho with an audacious smile on her face. Sho swallowed the bitter taste growing in his mouth.
A small laugh escaped Arisa. "You have no idea with whom you are speaking, child. I am older than you can possibly comprehend and more powerful than you or any of your infantile subjugates." Sho felt empowered by Arisa's words and swelled with a kind of pride. Kevin also looked pleased by what she said and smiled playfully, looking more like himself.
Sho's mother shrugged and rolled her eyes. "No matter. The oldest vampire in the world is no match for hellspawn…"
She turned her back and leaped in a blur back up onto the fallen tree. She shouted something in Thai that Sho couldn't understand and then the mass of fledglings was up on the ledge beside her. There looked to be more than fifty lined up behind and beside her. They were all facing away with shoulders dropped, and for a moment Sho thought how incredibly sad a sight they were. Like a pack of undead slaves intended for his mother's whims.
If she had indeed sired all of them, then they were in her debt and her power over their minds was strong, especially at this young stage. Feeling defeated, he realized that neither the Clave nor the Downworld would be able to reach out and win them over with the promises of what the Praetor Lupus could offer. They would have no willpower to make their own choices as long as his mother was bonded to them.
Thisula looked back and fixed her eyes on Sho. Her fangs showed through her thin lips and he watched the moonlight gleam in her narrowed eyes. With another flash of shadows they were gone behind the slope and Kevin, Arisa and himself were left standing in the brush, as the chatter of the jungle slowly rose up around them.
