Divine Comedy (34)

Jane

Tsermaa and Ganbold waited until the next nightfall to lead us several miles south. Since this was no race, Leah and Alec kept pace beside me and Seth. The breeze felt cool and smelled of grass crushed underfoot, but not for long. An acrid scent stabbed through my nose, making me tense on Seth's back. Out of the corner of my eye, Alec had the same reaction.

"Something's burning," I remarked.

"Something large," Alec said.

Seth and Leah grunted, but not out of agreement. Instead it was shared high-pitched confusion. How could they not smell it? Their noses were sharper than mine and Alec's.

Soon I learned that the moon wasn't the only thing shedding light here. Before my widened eyes, an entire stretch of trees was stripped of leafy forms and down into blackened branches, like claws reaching upward. Flames surged at the height of a two-story house, sending a dull roar through my ears. I narrowed my eyes against the assault of heated light. The sight of such a monstrous blaze took me back more than a thousand years, to the stake in the middle of my hometown.

Alec and I cringed and hunched lower on the backs of our wolf companions.

Tsermaa and Ganbold stopped at the edge of the burning forest, looking nonplussed by it. Ganbold shifted from horse to man, prompting Seth and Leah to shift back as well after Alec and I dismounted.

I blurted out the terrifying obvious. "The trees are on fire."

Seth frowned. "No, they're not. The trees look fine."

I threw up my hand along the length of the flames. "What are you talking about? It's right there in front of us."

"I don't see it, either," Leah said, defending her brother.

Alec turned to Tsermaa. "What's going on here?"

Amusement at our confusion tugged up the corners of her lips. "Magic plays tricks on the eyes, and on the body. Humans merely see the remains of a forest after a fire. Our kind, however, see a forest that is still burning, and will feel it, too, if they dare enter."

"How is that possible?" I demanded.

"Hundreds of years ago, when our kind openly attacked and feasted on human clans, one shaman found a way to protect his people. He set this very forest ablaze with a fire made holy through prayers. He created a barrier of fire that would harm only our kind. His people could take refuge here. As enemy numbers and attacks dwindled, knowledge of this has been lost to most Mongols today. But the forest still stands, and it still burns. The few who know call it the Fiery Forest." Tsermaa eyed me and Alec. "It is not possible to walk through it unscathed. Not in our bodies, anyway. You will have to rise above the confines of them, and only then you can slip through the magic fire unharmed."

"In other words, this is the perfect testing grounds for spirit-roaming," Alec said.

I nodded in understanding. "We have to make the impossible possible." Then I frowned. "What does that look like?"

"Let me show you." Tsermaa strode toward the trees, and bravely, almost foolishly, extended a hand to the flames. She didn't touch the flames, but being the closest she can possibly be without losing a hand, her face pinched in from pain. Even a stoic warrior like her wasn't immune from our kind's greatest source of undoing. She drew back her hand and returned to where she'd been standing beside us.

Tsermaa lowered herself to a cross-legged sitting position, facing the Fiery Forest. She rested her palms on her lap and shut her eyes. Then something astounding happened. Like an insect shedding its old skin, Tsermaa emerged pale and glowing from her body, which went from a straightened back to a slump over her lap. Beside her, Ganbold sprang from his man's body as a horse, though his coat took on the color of a cloudless sky, no longer rusty red.

"Whoa," Seth breathed.

"Amazing," Alec murmured.

Leah and I couldn't muster a vocal reaction. Awe seemed to grip us by the throats.

Spirit-Tsermaa cracked a grin. "You haven't seen anything yet." She strode with spirit-Ganbold toward the forest again, this time with no pain on her face as she crossed over the boundary between the plains and trees. The flames still burned, as it always would, but Tsermaa didn't fall apart or howl in agony. I could barely make out their ghostly blue silhouettes against the fire, but I heard her call out to us all the same.

"We are perfectly fine over here."

They retreated from the Fiery Forest and returned to our side, but not back into their prone, still bodies. Tsermaa looked down at her own bowed head and slumped shoulders thoughtfully. "It took me many years to master this technique, countless days of deep reflection and rigorous discipline." She lifted her gaze to us, the gold in her eyes intact in her spirit form. "I know, however, that you want to get this down in days. What we've been trying to teach you since you met us has been a sort of shortcut, from what I've learned and discovered over the years."

"Don't expect all four of you to grasp it at the same time," Ganbold said, his deep voice emanating from his horse body. "Seth and Leah, I'm sure that you'll be able to spirit-roam first, and without much of a problem. The power to change forms is in our blood, after all. Spirit-roaming will come more naturally to you. Jane and Alec, it's going to take you some more work and time to ease into another form."

That made sense. Alec and I had been stuck in these frozen, unchanging bodies for centuries. Immortality and eternity was our reality. We had a hard time conceptualizing anything else. To acknowledge the existence of our spirits, our remnants of humanity, was one thing, but to embrace it was another.

Seth glanced up at the night sky, where the stars twinkled as more flames even hotter than the ones among the trees. "I've always wondered why Luka—the kresnik, I mean—shows up as a spirit only at night. We were brought out here at night, too."

"That has to do with night being the ripe time for sleep, when the mind needs to rest and can sometimes wander free in dreams," Tsermaa replied. "It so follows that night is also the ripe time for spirit-roaming. Ganbold and I can wander in daylight as well, though it takes more effort to hold our spirit forms under the sun."

Leah blinked. "Huh. I didn't know you could do that."

"As with weapons training and learning to ride, spirit-roaming can involve many tricks you can hide up your sleeve."

Seth slapped a fist into his open palm. "Oh, I just remembered that when we last fought Luka, he could split himself into a bunch of other horses. Could you do something like that too, Ganbold? Is that something we can pick up?"

Tsermaa chuckled and held up a blue, glowing hand. "Hold your horses. That's the saying in English, right? Let's take this one step at a time. Start with the basics first, then we can talk about more advanced techniques." She stepped into her body, lowering herself to imitate its slumped, sitting position. In the next moment, her body stirred and her golden eyes fluttered open—a sign that body and spirit merged once more.

Ganbold's ghost-like horse form made a graceful dive into his man's body. His spirit disappeared into his body, and he too stirred and rose from his sitting position. He spread his hand in an inviting gesture. "Go on, give it a try. Just know that you won't fully grasp it at first, and that's all right. We didn't get it down the first time, either. Keep trying and you'll get it eventually."

I appreciated that he tried to balance realism with gentle encouragement. The four of us sat down on the ground, facing the Fiery Forest and trying to copy the poses Tsermaa and Ganbold had before.

"Remember that the power to make your spirit wander is all in the mind," Tsermaa added with a tap of her fingers to her temple. "The memories and sensations of being free, unbound, weightless, and most of all human, are the keys to unlock the door you thought could never be opened."

I didn't hear anymore from her or Ganbold after that, and I assumed that they fell silent to let us attempt reminiscing. I shut my eyes, but I couldn't shut my ears. It was hard to salvage those flighty memories and sensations with the immortal fire roaring before me. That fire reminded me too much of that fateful night, and all the pain and rage that came with it.

I opened my eyes and blew out a frustrated sigh. A pale blue shape flickered at the corner of my eye. I slid a sideways glance over at Seth, whose spirit peeked out as the head and neck of his wolf form. His sand-colored fur had gone pale blue, and glowed softly like moonlight.

"Whoa, this feels weird," came his trembling voice. His body started to slump over, but not as much as when Tsermaa and Ganbold had completely left theirs. His pointed wolf ears swiveled in all directions, and his eyes roved around just as much, as if to process the senses in his new form. When his gaze fell upon me, his ears pulled back and he lowered his muzzle. "Sorry, did I distract you?"

"No, you didn't." I tried and failed to keep jealousy restrained as I went on, "Looks like you're a natural at it, just as Ganbold said."

His wolf's head wavered, like disturbing one's reflection in the water, and it ducked back into his human head, which he lifted and peered back from. He cracked a one-sided smile at me. "It's not that easy."

I looked over at Alec, who had his eyes shut and face tense with concentration. I thought I saw a flicker of pale blue around him, like a faint halo, but it was hard to tell before all the light from the Fiery Forest.

I glanced at Leah next, and was taken aback to see her wolf's head and neck emerge even farther from her human body than Seth's, enough so that wolf forelegs extended past her arms to plant paws on the ground before her. Her spirit was straining to emerge, trying to push itself up and away from her body. She grit her fangs from the effort. Then her wolf form wavered and buckled in, leaving her merged spirit and body to straighten from the slump, looking wide-eyed and slightly out of breath.

"Whew, that was something," she remarked.

"You've made the best progress so far," I told her.

She blinked at me. "I did?"

I wasn't surprised, considering how much she enjoyed running so swiftly not just in the race, but any chance she had to use her speed.

"It's okay, guys, it's not a contest," Seth said. "We're on the same side, right? We can help each other get where we need to be."

Tsermaa nodded at him with approval. "He has the right idea. Perhaps if we alternate between our exercises here at Fiery Forest and other aspects of training, you can make bigger strides."

With his pinched brow and set frown, Alec looked as dissatisfied as I felt. As Ganbold had expected, the two of us were having a more difficult time with this feat. I suspected that the magic fire engulfing the trees nearby, and how it triggered our darkest memories, presented the biggest obstacle.

We headed back to the ger and Ganbold's grazing family of horses by sunrise. I spent the hours of daylight under Ganbold's tutelage, as he tried to teach me the art of throat singing. The vast majority of people sing in one pitch. Throat singing requires emitting two pitches at once, which is not only unnatural and counterintuitive, but also takes substantial effort and practice to achieve.

"I had us sit outside so you can hear the wind," Ganbold said. "Listen to it whistling around us. That's the inspiration to our throat songs."

I listened, and tried to imitate it, only to still sound like a dying frog. I wanted to crawl under the rock I was perched on.

Thankfully, Ganbold didn't poke fun at me. "It takes at least a few tries to get the hang of it."

"Like spirit-roaming."

"Yes. Spirit-roaming and throat singing aren't so different, if you think about it. Singing in two pitches at the same time is a lot like letting your spirit roam while your body is still on earth. Most people are used to one or the other, not both at once."

"No wonder Tsermaa said that learning to sing from you would be helpful."

He reached over to touch my shoulder, the one with the remaining arm still attached. "Don't give up, Jane. I can tell that for all your struggles, you're still very determined, and determination can take you a long way."

I supposed that tenacity was crucial to digging up the human spirit deep within me. Humans were indeed quite stubborn creatures, moreso than vampires. We valued self-preservation above all else, so in a losing battle, we preferred retreat to standing our ground. Unless the ties were strong, we would rather save ourselves than stick out our necks to save the coven. Humans tended to face the odds, even overwhelming ones stacked up against them, with a foolish brazenness. At least, I used to think it was foolish. Now I thought of that courage and bravery with admiration.

I had managed to find the courage I didn't know I had when I fought Kurojaki. Against such a powerful jinrō, any other vampire would have bolted away to live another day. But I had loved ones to protect, and I valued them more than my own life. I needed to find that dauntless feeling again, what it was like to meet a challenge head-on.

The ringing strikes of blades drifted into my ears from several hundred feet away. Alec too was hard at work, learning dual sword-fighting from Tsermaa.

I turned back to Ganbold, ready to hear another song from him.

Seth

While Jane and Alec had their special one-on-one training sessions outside, Leah and I hung out with Tsermaa and Ganbold's kid in the ger. Enkh was a fountain of questions, pouring out one after the other. He asked us what it was like living so close to the water, and where it rained almost all the time. Born and raised in a land-locked country, he had never seen the ocean before. What Leah and I had known all our lives, and taken for granted, fascinated him to no end.

"I want to see the sea," he said. English homophones seemed to really amuse the kid, because he'd smile and say to himself, "See, sea. See, sea."

Talking about home reminded me to check up on the Cullens. Good thing there was signal here. I called Edward, and he picked up a few moments later.

"Good evening, Seth. Or should I say afternoon? How's it going in Mongolia?"

"It's going," I replied. I gave him a quick summary of what we'd been up to since we had landed in the capital. The only thing I left out was my night with Jane. I bet he'll find out eventually with his mind-reading, but best to leave it unsaid for now. "How about you? How are things back home?"

"Nice and quiet for now. We told the Denali coven to come down and stay at our place—safety in numbers, you know. Goro has been teaching us plenty of knife skills that I'm certain will come in handy. You would think that Jasper and Emmett would be the best at it, but Renesmee's picking it up pretty quickly. Goro and Bella are very impressed with her."

I chuckled at that. I tried to imagine that girl one-upping her older, bigger family members.

"Goro is also working together with Alice to keep an eye out for Luka."

I raised my eyebrows. "Oh, how are they doing that?"

"Well, Alice reasoned that she can't see Luka and predict his arrival, but she'd see anyone among our kind who'd be able to spot him from afar. Goro volunteered for lookout duty when he isn't busy teaching us. He'd go for a dive in the coast every few hours, and if he spotted Luka coming, Alice would be able to see him swimming back and sounding the alarm."

"Gotcha. That's a pretty solid plan." I let out a sigh of relief. "I'm glad that Luka hasn't shown up yet. We're hoping to wrap up training with Tsermaa and her husband before that happens."

"We look forward to you four coming back home. We're all rooting for you."

"Thanks, Edward. You take care." I hung up with warmth in my heart from his show of support. I made sure to call Mom and Jake too, so they wouldn't be out of the loop. The calls were a valuable reminder of why we had come to Mongolia in the first place. We were doing all this for the people we love and care for.

Laughter and quick claps filled the ger as Leah was teaching Enkh an elaborate hand shake, the kind we used to know back in elementary and middle school. The kid might have his mom's eyes and pale skin, but he definitely had his dad's smile.

Looking at him made me even more sure of how wrong Luka was about vampires. People like Tsermaa and Jane could have families, real families, that aren't made up by some wishful thinking to pretend being human, or whatever warped reasoning Luka had. I thought of how fiercely Jane had fought to protect Kimi, and how hard she had cried over Koji, both her own flesh and blood. Vampires could love and be loved. They weren't soulless monsters. I would help them prove that to Luka and the whole world.

Alec

Jane had insisted that she practice singing with Ganbold far enough so that I wouldn't hear her. I really could care less about whatever came out of her mouth—it wasn't like I, with no talent for singing whatsoever, could do any better—but for her peace of mind, I agreed to keep my distance.

My sister had changed in many ways, and in some she hadn't changed at all. She would always have her pride, no matter how much we'd been humbled by wise mentors. That made me smile a bit.

Tsermaa led me back to the Fiery Forest, where she would forge my second sword. As we walked side by side, she glanced down at me. "You're doing this for your sister, aren't you? To protect her?"

I was taken aback. "How did you know that?"

"You didn't have to say anything for me to figure it out. The bond you have with Jane is the strongest I've ever seen between siblings. I lived in a time when the Mongol Empire was in decline, all because of feuds among brothers in Genghis Khan's dynasty. They bickered over who would have control of this land and that land, and in the end, none of them held it for long. There was certainly no love among them." Her voice softened. "You and Jane, on the other hand, have a bond that seems unbreakable. I'm a bit envious, to be honest. I was born an only child, and for many years, all I could rely on was myself until I found Ganbold."

I was wondering where Tsermaa was going with this, then she said, "Your dedication to your sister is admirable, but sometimes I wonder what you'd want for yourself."

"For myself?"

"You haven't stopped to think about it before?" Almost as if to punctuate her point, she stopped before the Fiery Forest, where its heat simmered in steady waves on our cold skin. "What is the future you see for yourself? Suppose you beat the kresnik...what will you do from there?"

I pursed my lips in a thoughtful frown. "I would like to form a coven with Jane and travel with her. She and I intend to roam the world as protectors and peacekeepers, intervening to keep our kind in line whenever we need to. That's why we had taken up weapons training with Goro."

"Would you commit to that mission even without her? What if she decides later to settle down? Or she leaves this world before you do?"

The second question wasn't unexpected, since I knew her relationship with Seth was at the point they considered marriage, but the last question was like a punch in the gut. It wasn't something I wanted to think about, but I had to nonetheless.

When I closed my eyes, the Fiery Forest turned the insides of my eyelids red. I took longer this time to muster an answer. "I think...I think that I will carry on with the mission. Jane and I have been together since birth, and that's all we've ever known, but..." I swallowed hard. "If I'm the last one standing, then Jane wouldn't have wanted me to join her by throwing my life away. There are people who'd still need me." I thought of Jane's descendants in Japan when I said, "I have family." And I thought of Goro, Seth, Leah, the Cullens, even Tsermaa and Ganbold, when I said, "I have friends." I opened my eyes to give Tsermaa a steady, unwavering look. "Jane has been my rock, anchor, and source of purpose, yes, but there are others beside her who would motivate me to keep living and do some good in this world."

She nodded. "I like your answer, and your dedication. To carry one sword is enough of a burden, and to carry another is even more on your shoulders. I believe, however, that you're worthy of a second sword."

She accepted the rest of the teeth and claws I had won from my trial in China. Using the tools she had brought with her, and the immortal fire before us, she hammered the blade into shape. It had to sit out for twice the amount of time before Tsermaa could safely slide it into a scabbard.

As she handed it to me, she said, "The tradition with two swords is giving them the first and last name of the wolf you had defeated. So, Alec, what will it be?"

Goro had given me Timur's full name before I headed for Mongolia. I accepted the blade from her and strapped it to my back, where it joined its older twin. "Timur Khan...the second sword will be named Khan."