Lin of Ba Sing Se
Ba Sing Se, 93 AG
Routine starts to set in.
Work.
Dream.
Get the blessings renewed.
"Seta's late," I interrupt Kore in the middle of the sentence he's reading to me from one of his books.
"He's going to be doing a ceremony tonight," Kore says.
"Oh," I say, sitting up straight. "So you're going to-"
Shhhhh . . .
I pause. I remember that sound.
I remember Kore and Seta's eye meeting. I remember my confusion, remember-
My drum is there when I reach out.
Shhhhh . . .
The rattle sounds again.
And again.
And drums start to join as it goes on and then-
"Guardian, my guardian, star fallen in snow."
Seta.
"Guardian, my guardian, scales shimmer aglow." [8]
Calling for me?
"Come on," Kore says. He's standing next to me. He offers me his hand.
"What?"
He pulls me to my feet and points - but I can already see the road spread out before us somehow, built of and upon Seta's voice, the images he calls up, the titles he's given us. A star glittering against the snow. Iridescent fish scales like my name, reflecting the light.
"We need to go together."
"But-"
"He named both of his guardians this time, yeah?"
"He did, but- me?"
"Are you ready?"
"No."
But I step out with Kore anyways, hand in hand, the road solid beneath my feet-
I catch a brief glimpse of the familiar sod brick walls-
I breath, gasping as I collapse into the arms that were there, ready and waiting behind me to catch me. The drum clatters against the floor.
"I'm here," I say, "I'm here, I'm here-"
I laugh at the world fuzzy around me like a half-missing dream.
"What am I- the ritual." I remember. Then I frown. The words come out wrong in my mouth, the shapes odd. "The ritual," I repeat. "The ritual, the ritual." I try to force the shapes of the words to bend, but they just fly off into an entirely different direction.
"The ritual," someone repeats at me.
I try to copy them, but my tongue feels clumsy in my mouth.
The ritual, Seta says. Then urgently, the child-
The child-
"The child," I say, noting in the back of my mind that the words were shaped correctly as I twist in Apto's arms to look at her, the child with the spirit.
The child with a spirit curled smugly around her shoulders, watching me, secure in the thought that I can do nothing to it.
"I've seen your kind before, star spirit," the mantle of light whispers, a half-real beak preening half-real feathers. "And you're so young. It's cute. I bet you'll be dim when you fall. I bet you'll flicher out like a candle."
So smug and secure.
And incorrect.
I remember the blue sky, the white houses, the green string of the charm against skin, the milky green jade.
I remember gentle hands darker than mine pointing out constellations patiently after streaks of light have rained across the sky.
Stars don't fall-
Stars don't fall, Seta repeats.
I remember conceptualizing the layers of reality as the vast sky, consciousnesses like clouds floating at different levels/the layers of reality as a still pond with pond scum at the top and mud settled on the bottom, ready to come flying up in big, messy clouds when disturbed.
The thought helps.
Stars don't fall despite the stories, and I couldn't if I would anyways.
You can be a fallen star if you are seen and found and understood, cradled carefully in loving hands.
You cannot be a star that falls/that will fall, only one that burns out bright/dims/fades away and I am young/young/too young for that.
My mouth is dry when I open it, and I have to breathe carefully so I don't go into a coughing fit. And now that I'm thinking about it, my mouth tastes like something dead and rotten.
I carefully breathe in.
There's supposed to be-
I pat blindly around me, not taking my eyes away from the child, looking for the - until it's held before me and careful hands wrap my fingers around it and help me drink.
The taste of blood fills my mouth, metallic and salty - it tastes wrong. Cold. There's no hint of the life-giving warmth that should be there.
"This is old," I growl, the ritual framework falling into place around me as I rip it away from my mouth/away from my mask/away from my skin.
Lips pulled back, teeth bared, I snap, eyes ever on the child, but attention on the structure I can feel bearing down upon me, guiding my words - words flying like stones from my mouth, skipping across the surface of comprehension, skimming it once, twice before the sink down, down. "Give it to me."
I am given a bowl of hot soup, broth rich in meat and salt and fat, warm, and filling and tender enough that it must have been sitting over the fire all day.
I'm wearing a mask. I'm wearing a mask and the mask is my face and my face is beneath the mask and I'm wearing only my face and no mask at all, and in the plane of reality where it matters, where I am being seen, where those around me usually cannot see at all, in a very real way I do not need to move anything or take it off, just eat, red-dry-blood stained wood moving impossibly, though only ever in the way that makes you question if it actually moved at all, or if what you are seeing is only the illusion of movement created by the flickering of the fire.
And under that, in an equally real sense, those around me blind to it for once in their shifted awareness of the word (mud-dust drifting up like a layer of mist at the movement of the water/clouds sinking over a cold draft), I most certainly do have to lift the mask up, the sense memory of the spoon on my lips and outside awareness of how it disappears into the shadows under the mask.
The others eat as well, the child picking at her bowl as the light around her shoulders whispers into her ear.
The bowl is taken when I am done.
"We have shared a meal," I say, and the words are right-wrong, wrong for me and right for the child because the sacred language is almost always your own and I am Seta's and Seta is of a different tribe and speaks a different language and normally this is what his second would be for, would be here to interpret the sacred to the sacred, the sacred to the understandable.
I almost want to speak like the Earth of Ba Sing Se, but Apto doesn't know that language, Apto has never been, was never taught, Apto has never even seen Kyoshi Island for any Northern Cousins she has are too distant for her to visit.
Apto doesn't know it, but it's Seta's language all the same.
I'll have to fix that, Seta murmurs. The language, the sight of land not locked in ice eternal to its bones. I can't take them to Ba Sing Se, day by day the journey would be too far (I don't know if we'll ever see each other in person), and even Kyoshi Island will be a stretch. But I need Apto and Hurekina to know.
Behind the child her parents sigh in relief for the hospitality, for the work of the meal, for the time to time to time folding itself, pouring itself into the circling attention of the power of the ritual of the focus-
(I ignore the spirit's snicker of "You and your rituals" because yes, me and my rituals.
We don't have the central authority of kings down here in the South Pole, don't have a king to interface with the Great Spirits and distribute their authority. But we thrive well enough with our lesser spirits and our rituals and our sacrifices, grabbing the power we do have and making use of it, folding it back and back and back upon itself until it's strong enough.
I, myself, am already a greater spirit than most shamans have to work with. I, myself have been noted world over, been written into star charts and named and named and named. Kore is only one name, is only one anchor, is only one way the wide world sees me even so soon; hero, omen, soldier, scholar.
I, myself, have the power of a beating heart, the power of strong arms. I, myself, know how to make myself small and unnoticed in the corner of the room, how to slip between and around shadows. Lin is a name, Lin is an anchor to the layer of existence where humans hold sway, impressing itself up and up and down and down and human power is not something to be underestimated for all that it is very unlike what spirits are used to.
Yes, me and my rituals, yes, us and our rituals.)
(The old man the old shaman the old misunderstanding watches watches watches my words down the slip and slide like penguin seals on ice.)
"Tell me," I tell them, "what you are here for," like I don't already know, like I can't see the spirit-shawl-mantle glowing seen-unseen they-can't-see, weighing down the child. Maybe they know something different, maybe I will be solving two problems known unknown.
Snow blindness, they say. Snow blindness that lasts and lasts and lasts-
She's been wandering off, they say. Like she can't hear the camp, though she hears and speaks to us perfectly fine-
Not eating, they say, and I remember her practically untouched bowl. You need to eat to keep up your energy to keep yourself warm here to keep yourself alive. Not eating, not taking her parka before she steps outside-
The spirit only laughs and laughs, the child sinking bit by bit under its weight under the weight of the words.
I already know the answers to these questions - or rather, Seta does, whispering the answers to me in time. He'd already asked all of them and more before the ceremony, but the ritual is important.
I can fix this, I tell them.
Desperate eyes, desperate hands, scornful doubtful wary light drawing in and drawing closer as I kneel down.
"Hello," I say.
"-can't have her, she's mine-"
She looks at me and she sees me.
Red-blind eyes wide and wider as I dip down into the mud/climb up a layer of clouds.
"I can see you." A whisper, a murmur, a gasp. Wonder. Her words are all the wrong shapes too; the desperate crunch of snow under paws, the roar and hush of ocean waves, the taste of warm blood and the feeling of it smeared across your muzzle and the sight of it unnatural red across the snow. Her words are all wrong but she's learned them well, halfway to the spirit realm without the ritual or my help and not a hint of mantle-light-and-snow-bright. "And you're so bright - but it doesn't hurt!"
"Yes," I say, shaping the same sounds - a temple drum, the hiss of snow. "I am very bright sometimes, even when you aren't so blind, so I had to learn how not to hurt people. Do you know what's happening?"
"They want to take him away," she says, a hand coming up protectively to rest on and in and through the light.
The spirit cackles, beak nuzzling her hand. She doesn't flinch when it nips her.
"Do you know why?"
She looks down, away from me. "They think he's hurting me. But I don't mind! It hurts less when he's here. At least he'll play with me."
I nod softly, stepping back.
This tribe.
They're very isolated, this tribe. Even among themselves, they isolate. Families traveling on their own take up fewer resources they say.
I know this? Of course I know this-
Mom always wondered how anyone met anyone, Seta murmurs. There were five families at the gathering of the tribes - that's barely anything - and yet Mom said that was the most of them she'd ever seen in one place.
Right. And the child - she has no siblings. Seta told me this. She had no one else her age, and then something came along and acted like it was her friend and not a parent?
I need . . .
For Seta, I need proof that I was here.
For the child - I need to know why. Why her? The light will not tell me - it doesn't care. Its greed is enough for it, it was called in to feed.
Seta reach out, I coax, pulling away slightly, still keeping him close where I can protect him as I drag perceptions deeper into the disturbed mud/higher still past the clouds so there are voices around us.
Seta is the one to reach out because Seta is the shaman here, asking, Why are you here? Why draw away this child? Why separate this family?
He killed my daughter, someone growls. A child for a child.
She was lonely, someone else says. And it was dark. I was all alone in the dark when I died.
I can take care of her, comes a third voice. They don't appreciate the gift they have. If they truly loved and cared for her, she wouldn't be lonely like this.
I need . . .
Seta asks, Are you her family? What can they give?
The doll I gave him. He wanted a knife so he could pretend to be a warrior, but he's kept it with him. His younger siblings got all of my things when I died, it's all he has left of me.
I carved those beads for my niece myself. Her mother was never the best at it, but I had traveled north to learn the technique before I decided it got too hot to stay. She has more of my things of course, but I made them for her and her alone. I certainly didn't put that much effort into my own knife.
Their hair. It's dead but it's there and growing.
A parent's love; the companionship of siblings like a light in the dark; a gift of one's own self, small seeming but there are many ways to hurt someone with even that little.
"I need the doll your parents made for you," I say to one parent.
"I need the beads you're wearing - the ones your aunt carved for you," I tell the other.
"And I need four strands of hair," I tell them both. "Do you understand?"
The shapes of the words are all wrong in my mouth again, mangled by the relative freedom I'd had talking to the child. I'm hyper aware of Apto repeating my words to them.
The parents nod together.
On my signal, the rumble of Apto's drum halts, and I slump like a wet paper doll.
There's a long moment of limbo - Apto's drum stick clattering to the ground as she comes to prop me up again - as neither Seta, nor- nor I are in control of the body, my attention still more on Seta, and Seta still lingering out, listening to the spirits around us. Then Seta raises, buoyant from the haze of the mud/sinking down out of the cloud.
"Shaman?" Apto asks under the sound of the parents moving, going to get what I have asked of them.
"Yes," Seta says, sitting up straighter. It is true in that Seta is in control. But I am not gone, lingering close and ready to return. "I need to - I need to speak with the kid before her parents come back."
"Qaigyaq," Apto calls without turning, and I wince as the knowledge of her name settles.
When I cut a glance over to the old man, he nods. He'll talk to her about that.
I take a moment, under the weight of Seta's attention, to assess us, to assess what we're wearing. There's the hoof rattles at our ankles. There's the mask on our face - though Seta tilts that up now to show that he's in control. (I remember that night right now. I remember catching the lemming vole and strangling it, feeling its heart give out in my hands before I used my teeth to tear out its throat. Stars don't know how to catch vermin, but I've had to stop rat-mice from trying to eat our rice.) And - I can feel Seta's fingers trailing across it absently - his belt. I can feel the scales that he must have sewn onto it.
The girl comes over.
"I didn't like that," she tells me, frowning. "Mom and Dad keep saying I'm sick and this will make me better, but you just want to take away my friend. I don't like you."
"He's hurting you," Seta repeats her own words to her.
"Not that much!"
I nudge Seta slightly. I know how to deal with this. Seta hadn't had a choice, but if he had -
"And what about your parents?" This close to Seta, the words come out how they're supposed to.
"What?"
"It's hurting them. It hurts your parents to see you hurt."
"Oh . . ."
"And what will happen when it takes you away? You won't be able to see your parents anymore. Only it. Won't you be more lonely then?"
The child frowns.
"But what am I supposed to do then," she asks, sounding frustrated. Her hand comes up to pet it, sitting on her shoulders.
I retreat, giving control back to Seta.
"I know you don't have any reason to trust me," Seta says, making me start. "But would you be willing to try? Just for a little while?"
"Why?" the child asks suspiciously.
"Because I can't help you if you don't want help."
That's not entirely true. But it's close enough.
". . . Alright."
"Good!" Seta says. "Can I have two hairs then? Like I need from your parents?"
The girl carefully pulls two long strands of hair out of her braids to offer to me.
"Thank you," Seta tells her, taking them. "Now watch this."
He reaches up now to pluck a strand of hair from our head. When he presents it to her, even in the glow of the blubber lamps, you can see the slow change from black to silver.
"Oh!" The girl reaches out to touch it, and Seta has to lift it away.
"Sorry, you can't touch it right now."
The light shawl around the child's shoulders hisses at us, reaching at the tips of the child's fingers, claws glowing.
"Why not?"
"Because, if you touch it right now while it's new, it might break and we might get hurt."
The child's parents come back in then, and they sweep her away, back to the other side of the fire.
"Here," one says, presenting Seta with a well worn doll made of old leather scraps. It must have been recently re-stuffed with fresh, dry pine needles by the smell and stiffness of it.
The other parent, holding the child close, passes Seta a leather bag, and I can hear the clink of the stone beads within.
And both of them pluck two hairs for Seta - giving me a total of seven hairs. Lucky seven for the seven Great Spirits.
Seta reaches down to the pouch at our side - and I flinch, making him pause.
I know what he's doing. He's got goose-duck feathers, white as Tui's face, from Apto and Hurekina's coming of age hunt. If we used them it would help - power from a safe, successful ritual, and a fourth item. Lucky four for the four elements. But half of me is screaming that four is the number of deaths and not luck as all.
Seta's hand drops from the pouch and he takes a deep breath. He doesn't have anything that might make the contributions five.
"It's time," Seta nods to Apto.
The drum starts up again.
Seta bends his head and starts braiding. I hesitate, not entirely sure what to do - I've never actually done this before. Last time Seta called me, there'd been no period where the offerings were fetched, just the negotiations. There's not the rush of the initial call either, to pull me in without thinking.
I could take over again. I gave Seta control, but right now the balance is tipped towards me, I could have taken the control back at any point. But I don't think that's enough - we're in the wrong layer of the world, and we need to pull everyone back-
What do I-
The herbs, Seta murmurs back to me, his hand going down to another of the pouches at his side, the other hand keeping his place in the braid. He brings a handful of something up for us to smell - it smells wild, like the forest, like the ocean, like the snow. I should finish this first probably though. Unless?
No go ahead, I say quickly, looking at the fragile strands of hair as Seta starts to braid again.
Eventually he finishes it, and I can feel him reach out for me, swinging me back into control. I throw a handful of herbs into the fire, sending up smoke.
The rattle of hoofs on my wrists stops. Then I start moving again.
Half teaching myself, half remembering, I start up the pattern I heard the last time Seta called upon me.
Behind me, Apto's drum starts to echo me the way she had towards the end of that session. And there's another sound - like ice cracking, like a body plunging into water - only it's in time with us, a third voice, a different rhythm.
The call for me gets more sure and confident each time, and I find myself returning it gentler.
I'm so proud of her, so happy she remembered me, happy she remembers her song, happy she paid close enough attention to come to us even though I can't dance.
Star in snow! Star in snow! Star in snow!
Hello, I'm here, you're here!
Happy! Remembered!
Remembered me. Remembered you. Lonely still?
Yes. She droops enough to miss a beat. Ice and ice and ice and ice and ice.
"What are you doing?" the light-shawl hisses at us, breaking its own gap into the song.
Not him, she says quickly, making our nose wrinkle.
"Do you really think that she can get rid of me?" the light-shawl asks derisively. "She's just a lost little girl - she has even less power than you do."
Not him, I agree. Human.
Oooh, here?
Gathering, pooling on my lap and around me like a misty blanket of starlight, for me who named her, Hyoushigi flows out of Seta's body. [9]
"Yes, here," I say, gently cradling what I can of her. I pick up the doll and show it to Hyoshigi, to her starlight gathering, vaguely human, and let her touch it. "Watch this."
And I toss the doll to the child sitting across the fire from me. She startles when it hits her chest, hands coming up to catch it as it falls to her lap.
Hyoushigi tracks the path of the doll visually, turning her head, then she follows it, stepping through the fire to crouch in front of the child.
"Hello," Hyoushigi says, but the child doesn't respond, staring blindly through her in my direction.
"Hello," Hyoushigi repeats, her fingers through and overlapping with the child's, touching both her and the doll.
The child jerks, eyes refocusing abruptly as she tries to pull her hand away.
Then she goes still. "You're warm!"
"You're cold,," Hyoushigi says, giggling a little as she sits down properly, not letting go of the doll.
The spirit draped over the child's shoulders growls at her and tries to snap at her, but it can't get a good angle.
I watch the two talk, the drums dropping back to a low background rumble.
When they've talked enough, I stand and move over to crouch next to the pair of children. "Alright. Two more things."
The child droops now. "You have to go now, don't you," she says to Hyoushigi.
"Do you have to go?" I ask Hyoushigi teasingly.
She giggles as she shakes her head, reaching out to brush her fingers along the child's cheek, not stopped by the way the child flinches back momentarily, then leans into the touch. She leaves an after image of her light imprinted on the child's skin.
"Don't listen to them, you don't need them, they're just going to abandon you like everyone else," the light-mantle cries. "Stick with me, you know I'm not like that, you know I'll be here for you."
The child doesn't notice it though, distracted and protected by the glow of a new relationship, at least for the moment.
"The first thing is this," I tell the child, offering her the braided strand of hair and the bag of beads. When you wake up tomorrow, have your mother braid these into your hair. And the day after that, have your father do it. I want you to always have someone else do this braid for you. Do you understand?"
She takes the string and the beads, looking uncertainty at them. "Alright?" the child says, looking back to her parents, and they both smile and nod at her.
She doesn't understand why I want her to do this, I can tell.
It's a reminder that she's not alone, a reminder that she is cared for.
"And second . . ." I reach out for the doll that she's holding, Hyoushigi's fingers still wrapped around and through her hand. "I need you to promise me something very important. Can you do that?"
"Yes," the child says immediately, so much more trusting than she was earlier. She sounds happy. She sounds anxious, and her hand is tight on the doll.
"For as long as you want to keep playing with her, you can," I say, nodding to Hyoushigi. But when you get older and you stop wanting to play with her, I want you to give this doll to your shaman, alright?"
"I'll never want to stop playing with her!"
I smile at her. "That's alright. Like I said, as long as you want to play with her, as long as you want her around, you can keep the doll. But I still need you to promise me this."
Truly, beyond this ceremony and the love of her parents who gave it up, it isn't the doll itself that matters. Hyoushigi was looking for her own doll when Shaman Iraluq introduced us those weeks ago, and while the symbolism on this one allowed me to call her closer, she is not bound to the doll in our hands. But the symbolism matters here. On a certain level, it is her doll right now, because she is willing for me to allow it to be her doll.
When the relationship ends, the shaman will be able to ensure that any lingering attachment doesn't hurt either of them, especially with how deep the light-mantle has sunk its claws into the child.
"Okay," the child says quickly, against the desperate cries of the spirit wrapped around her shoulders, and it shrieks as it drops through her, entirely losing its hold.
"You!" It swipes at Hyoushigi, rebounds off the layers of protection I've lain and the overlap of her and the child before it turn to rush at me-
My knife flashes down, the barely used prong of a caribou bear drawn from the sheath at my hip, pinning the spirit to the floor in a tangle of sleek feather and fur and the crunch of bones.
The parents jump, going pale, but the child doesn't notice.
The spirit wheezes under my fist as I start to hum lightly to the steady beat of the drum, sending it off.
This is something I could have done from the beginning of this.
It's not hard.
I could have torn it away from the child and gutted it -
But that would have only been a short term solution, and moreover it would have hurt the child all the more for the scrabbling tearing of claws as they came out. And the child would have still been the kind of lonely that led her to follow spirit whispers out onto the unprotected tundra.
Hyoushigi glances over to me and nods, the movement only a flash before her attention is back on the child before her, chattering away.
I'm proud of her, proud of her far she's come in the days since we met. Her features are redefining themselves, blue eyes growing out of the magic, starlight settling more and more behind paper-thin skin and hair. She could have died like this spirit had, beneath my blade. She could have died cold and lonely and nameless and confused.
I step back, sheathing my knife after the spirit has breathed its last.
Then I pause.
I turn to the old man sitting against the wall.
"Old man," I say. "You're going to kill Seta. You are not allowed to kill Seta. Do you understand? You're doing something wrong. I am here wrong."
He stares at me, silent. I've seen him talk to Seta. He hasn't talked to me before.
He nods slowly.
I turn to Apto, the drum beat soft, but still there.
"I will go now. I would thank you for your accompaniment once more."
She nods to me as well.
We nod together, one, two-
And she plays for me.
I dance.
Seta leans forwards in the back of my mind, the mental equivalent of plastering himself to my back, and I lean backwards into him until suddenly we're passing through each other like water and we're stumbling backwards out of his body as Seta keeps dancing and I'm stumbling backwards into the dream and backwards off Kore's porch to land in a heap on my own bed.
For a moment, I'm not sure if I'm awake or dreaming still, I'm not sure if I'd fallen asleep in my dreams to dream a dream like normal people have.
Then Kore pokes his head into the room.
"So," he says, sheepish and uncertain and confident all at once.
"So," I repeat, unamused as I close my eyes.
"I didn't think it would happen that way," he says carefully.
"No, really?"
I can still remember my moment of confusion when I registered myself and my knowledge. Let's not even mention any of the three-fold gender issues.
"I'll warn you next time?"
"You'd better," I say darkly.
I feel exhausted. A good exhausted, sure (the back of my mind whispering something about shamans and healing and transformation and renewal for all), but exhausted nonetheless. I'm not entirely certain I'll be able to get up when I wake up.
Fuck.
I'm supposed to start working today. Not really working truly yet, half days only, shadowing a fully trained Ju Di because I'm trained enough that they can get some use out of me, if not trained enough to be left alone. The other half of the day is more of the endless training of course.
I take a deep breath.
I was already terrified of how bady I would fail. I'd been scared I would succeed before now, but I hadn't really thought about how this could feel so much worse.
It's been early to rise and late to leave every day for the past month, watching the stars overhead as the other girls and I pass between the training center and our homes. Working long enough that some of us have been talking about maybe trying to pool our money to rent a couple rooms, or maybe an attic in a boarding house close to the training center so we might have more time to sleep.
I take another deep breath.
I didn't even truly properly finish the ceremony with Seta.
Kore and I didn't finish it properly.
Seta can do it - better than we might be able to even because he's the one who called for the spirits. But if this is going to screw me over I should at least do it right.
Another deep breath.
I also hate that I even know that I didn't finish the ceremony. I hadn't before. But I can feel my thoughts racing, the exhaustion only spurring them on as they throw themselves onwards, passing through a mystery box and leaving me faltering with conclusions that I don't have the knowledge to support.
I have opinions on Dawn and Dusk's arguments over identity and a distinct urge to just start manufacturing more titles for myself, just to be safe.
I listen to Kore's footsteps as he comes into the room.
I shiver at the wash of cold air when he pulls up the covers to slide under them, and I turn to him as he settles down, tucking myself up against him, his head under my chin.
It's awkward.
The dreams have always been odd. I know Seta. I trust Seta, always my younger brother. And with the different cultural standards, and then his illness, pretty much all of my boundaries had dropped and my sense of propriety had gone out the window. There had been weeks while he was ill where I could do nothing but hold him close and pray.
Kore isn't Seta.
Kore is a stranger with a familiar face.
I don't know Kore. I don't trust him like I trust Seta.
If this were the waking world, I wouldn't do this with him.
But the dreams are odd. Seta is no longer sick, but our habits are set after a year. We spend most of our time just laying together in bed, and I spare a thought to be thankful that he's able to talk most of the time now.
And Kore had joined us.
And I wouldn't do this with Kore if this were the waking world, but . . .
I'm not used to sleeping alone.
I wouldn't say I'm particularly close with any of my siblings - they're all older than I am and married off. But we'd shared a bed like kids always do.
I've heard that some of the rich people on the upper rings have houses large enough for every kid to have their own room, never mind their own bed, and while it had sometimes been a very appealing idea to have some space for myself, I'd always come back to the thought that it sounds terribly wasteful.
There are people sleeping in the streets.
And sure, "there is no war in Ba Sing Se", but everyone has seen the refugees coming, more and more of them every day, always pouring into the lower rings where there's so little to go around. The lower rings are crowded, more so by the day, and people in the upper rings have empty rooms, just sitting around for guests they might have.
It sounds lonely too. My brothers might have annoyed me, and my sisters kept me awake giggling, and there were elbows and cold feet and sometimes fighting, but there was always the warm presence, the assurance of them at my back, the ability to reach out in the dark and know there's someone else in the world who's alive.
So, I wouldn't do this to Kore in the waking world, haven't done this to him here before, but I'm tired and I'm confused and I'm lonely.
Kore freezes for a moment, then cautiously wraps an arm around me in return.
We lay there in the sudden and convenient darkness of the dream.
I try to focus on Kore's breathing. My heart slowly starts to beat faster though, and instead of drifting off to the dream within a dream like I expected to, I start to fidget, and I have a hard time keeping my eyes closed, like it's early morning and I'm waiting for my siblings to wake up.
It . . . it almost feels like I've drunk one of An's abomination super-concentrated black teas. I can't stop moving, trying to keep the movements small, trying to figure out where this energy came from.
"There," Kore sighs eventually. He sounds even more tired. "You should be alright when you wake up now."
"What?"
"You can," I feel his hand move behind me, waving vaguely before there's the sound of it smacking the blankets, "do stuff. When you wake up."
"What are you talking about?" I ask sharply, sitting up to look down at him.
His eyes are closed, and they've got dark bags under them.
"Energy drain. Seta's ceremony." He slurs a little. "'S what I was worried about. Why I gave you the amulets."
I blink as I remember what he'd said before he disappeared that one time
"Wait, so you're right? Seta's drawing me in?"
"Mhm. Not so bad though. Amulets are working." He frowns. He opens one eye. "I thought I'd gotten you enough. Wear all of them tomorrow, alright?"
"All of them?" That's . . . a lot. Kore blessed a lot of my things. After that first round he's just kept doing one of two more every night.
"One of each at least. As many as you can. Can't do this again. 'S dangerous. For all of us."
". . . Alright. I'll do that."
And I guess I should probably figure out how to wear one of them to bed too. I might have to get Kore to bless more of my inner robes. Most of what he'd had his way with wasn't exactly bed-appropriate.
For now . . .
"Sleep," I tell Kore gently.
When we return to the training center after lunch, some people are bubbly, talking about the Ju Di they followed and what they were allowed to do. Others are dismissive, complaining that they wanted to do real work, not just sitting there in the corner.
And besides that, everyone's admiring each others' clothes. We'd been given leave to wear our own dresses once again, and looking around, I can see that those who came from wealthier families had taken advantage of it. Few had anything that was truly on par with the uniform dress in quality of both dye and cloth, but the change was a good one for some - allowing them to pick shades of green that better matched their complexions.
Guo - the girl who'd helped me that time Seta tried to Call me during class - had chosen to wear her own clothes. She'd gone for good quality cloth over a good quality dye by the way it drapes. In fact, looking at the cloth, I think I recognize the natural green of the cotton which would have eliminated dye costs entirely.
I'm among those who'd chosen to continue wearing the uniform - though I might see what my mentor thinks of my own clothes. I'll only bring them for her to look at, but I figure it's better to stay safe until I have her approval for a set of clothes.
My assignment hadn't been particularly interesting or boring, just . . . I'm almost entirely certain that I was placed as I was because the teacher noticed me grabbing that book on the first day.
"Settle down!" the instructor calls calmly.
The room quiets, everyone turning and settling back in their seats, even the people who look like they're bursting to keep talking.
"First things first," the instructor says. "I received the report from your assigned mentors. We will be going over them together today on on one, and then the class will go over any major mistakes. Any questions."
The room is silent.
"Good. First up . . ."
I wait until I'm called up, listening to the others talk about their experiences some more. Guo settles in beside me - and it's interesting to hear her talk because the contrast between her mentor and mine only makes my suspicions about my placement worse.
Eventually I'm called in though.
"Lin," the teacher repeats when I'm settled on the chair. "Daughter of Wenzi the rickshaw driver and Xu the spa attendant."
I nod, and he sets the paper down. My eyes flicker to it before they return to his face. He's watching me carefully.
"Tell me, Lin. What happened?"
I start slowly.
I was assigned to a Ju Di on ambassador duty. She was there to provide tea while the ambassador for one of the Ba Sing Se's nominally dependent city-states talked with a Ba Sing Se official. Nothing major, of course, but we were allowed into the official's house, and there were documents on his desk that I could see from my position standing in the corner.
"And what did those documents say?" the teacher asks.
"I wouldn't know. I can't read."
"Oh?"
I feel like a gopher-mouse under the scrutiny.
"But you took one of the rulebooks."
"I hoped that one of my neighbors who can read might be willing to help me study," I say. "She's helped others out with city law in the past as well."
"Hmmm." The teacher's finger taps, slow and hypnotizing on the desk. "See me at the end of class. And-" He pulls out a slip of scrap paper and writes something to hand to me. "Take this to the secretary at the front office. Dismissed."
I stand to bow, then take my leave. I hear him call for the next girl.
I breathe slowly as I walk out to the front office. The secretary takes the slip of paper without much interest and instructs me to return to the classroom.
Everyone's still gossiping, and listening to them, I wonder when they even had time to hear any of it.
"Alright," the teacher says, his voice loud in the quiet room. "Now that we've gone over what not to do, with such lovely examples, we will be going over the next exercise you will be participating in as a part of the class. Because Ju Di are the face of our government in many ways, you need to learn how to properly flatter someone. You will be practicing on each other, and there will be an exam at the end of the month.
"The exercise is: every time you see one of your classmates, a Ju Di, or one of the staff or faculty associated with this program, you are to stop and give them a genuine compliment. It doesn't matter how you feel about them, find something to compliment, and if you are offered a compliment, thank the other person. Do you understand?"
There's a murmur of assent through the classroom as the teacher scans us. Then he nods.
"Good. Now, we will be taking the rest of the class period to practice this. Please stand up and divide yourselves into two groups on either side of the classroom."
Once we're in two approximately even groups, he has one group form a circle with their backs facing the wall, and the other group spread out to face them all, matching up so everyone has a partner. Then the exercise starts. We wait until the teacher rings the bell to find a compliment for our partner and thank them for the compliment we receive, then we move on, around the circle. The teacher calls out advice and comments on specific compliments as we go.
He's near enough to hear it when the girl before me compliments me for my height - and he frowns at her.
"Remember!" he calls out. "You want to compliment a person for something that they have control over. Complimenting their height, for example, means nothing in the context of this exercise because it's not something they choose and it's not something they can change."
When the circle's gone all the way around, we're reshuffled, and we go again. The teacher tells us to find something different to compliment about a person when we see them a second time. We go around, reshuffle. Go around, reshuffle. Go around reshuffle.
I feel sort of dizzy when the class ends, emotionally worn out from trying to process all of the compliments I'd been given and the effort it had taken to keep finding new things to compliment about the people around me.
"Lin!" Guo calls, pulling away from a small group of other students. "Come on! We were going to check out that boarding house that the teacher recommended tonight, remember?"
"Sorry, I can't. The teacher said he wanted to talk to me after class was over."
Guo frowns. "Are you . . ."
"I'll be fine," I say, fingering the jade charm I keep tucked inside my sleeve, feeling for Kore's blessing.
"We could wait?" Guo offers.
I shake my head. "Don't worry about me, it's already fairly late. You guys go look at the place, I trust you."
"Alright," Guo says softly. She gives me a slight smile that doesn't really hide the worry in her eyes as she holds out her hands. "See you tomorrow?"
"Of course," I reply, grabbing her hands and squeezing them.
The teacher is looking over some papers when I knock at his door frame.
"Lin, daughter of Wenzi and Xu." He looks me over. "Your accessories coordinate nicely with your uniform."
I stare at him blankly, my hand rising to touch my hair sticks. He raises an eyebrow.
"Oh! Uh, thank you for the compliment." I look at him frantically, scrambling to find something. "Uh, your beard looks well groomed?"
"Thank you. Try for less of a questioning tone next time," he tells me. "It invalidates the words and can make them sound like an insult rather than a compliment. There's a time and a place for doing that, but the current exercise is to teach you to give genuine, or at least genuine sounding compliments. Now, the reason I delayed you . . ."
He nudges forwards one of the pieces of paper lying on his desk.
I frown a little lookin at the stamp. I think I recognize it, or at least something similar from the plays that are sometimes put on near my home. Isn't that-
"The Earth King has invited you to Lake Laogai."
8. One meaning for Lin in Chinese is fish scales.
9. The name Hyoushigi comes from Japanese mythology and ritual. It's the striking together of two wooden blocks in religious ceremonies or entertainment.
. . . :)
Also, a note on Hyoushigi. My beta said that I shouldn't out this in the footnote, but that it might be nice to make a note here,; you've seen her before! Hyoushigi was mentioned in passing last chapter in the lines:
"Seta called on his guardian today," Kore says slowly. "There was a minor haunting - a little girl looking for her doll. Shaman Iraluq talked with her yesterday and decided it would be a good first attempt for Seta to try, even if he didn't manage to help her."
It's not important, but I thought it might a bit of a nice touch to see Seta already learning and helping people.