Racing the Dark (37 page)

"I have come," Lana said to it. "A solitary pilgrim to beg help from the one that broke free."

The dust in the wind's makeshift body seemed to glow. "And why should I grant help to a descendent of the Binders? Dare you think I owe you something?" Though she could barely hear her own voice, the wind's words pierced her ears and made her shivering even more pronounced.

"Spirits never owe," she said, squinting against the dust swirling around her face. "Humans sacrifice, and spirits grant. I only ask that you allow me the chance to sacrifice. Did you not call me here? Do you not know why I come, instead of resigning myself to the death that chases me?"

The wind's laugh was so piercing that her knees nearly buckled. "I do, of course. I know you are Iolana bei'Leilani and you come on behalf of your mother, who knows more than you think of what you have done for her. But perhaps I did not call you here to help you. What if I only called you here to see who this girl was, she who has caused such ripples among the ones that remain bound?"

"I have come," Lana said with a lot more bravery than she felt. "What do you see?"

"A young, naive sapling who understands only a small part of the danger that chases her. You don't see what you are involved in, sapling, do you?"

"I understand that I must save my mother. But I don't know enough, I don't have enough power ... you think I don't understand those things? That's why I came halfway across the world to find you."

The wind laughed again, and this time Lana was forced to sink to one knee. "Ah, desperate, but not entirely stupid. But my time for vengeance has long passed, and I would be a fool to kill a girl that death itself regards as important enough to chase. You might keep it bound just yet, for all your naivete"

Lana could hardly contain her shock. "You mean ... you want the spirits bound, even though ..."

"The binding is hideous. It forced me into to a shape against all my nature. All the spirits rebel against it, but only I broke free. I have existed in the world before death was bound and after ... and I prefer the world after. So, it seems I owe you Binders something, after all. I agree to grant your request."

The wind's pseudo-body suddenly broke apart and dust swirled around her, getting caught in her nose and making her sneeze violently. The sounds of the wind began to increase in force.

"Do you know the sacrifice of the wind?" the dust screamed.

Lana thought back to the days when Kohaku had taught her about the spirit bindings. She could almost hear his voice in her head. "Time ..." she said slowly, "Time and pain."

The wind decreased to a mild breeze. It reformed in its vaguely human shape before her and smiled. "Good," it said. Very slowly, it leaned forward and caressed the back of her head. Then it kissed her lips. Its kiss was smooth and dry-miles away from the hot desperation of Yechtak's mouth two days earlier. This time, however, she didn't dare struggle. She let it kiss her and stayed silent even when it pulled away, wondering why her body felt so charged with power.

"You cannot speak," it whispered, "or open your mouth to scream until the third rising of the sun. If you speak, the death will take you. If you leave this altar, the death will take you. On the third dawn, you will have the gift I grant you: You will become a black angel. So long as you fly, the death will not be able to take you."

Lana stared at the wind spirit, but did not even dare gasp. A black angel? There had only been two in known history, and both had presaged great destruction. In fact, the second black angel had given herself as the sacrifice that allowed the wind spirit to free itself. With another bone-shuddering laugh, the wind faded from the promontory and Lana found herself alone again.

So she had bet, and she had lost.

A pain greater than any she had ever known flared along her back. She dug her palms into the stone, bit her lip, and waited.

The death could not step onto the promontory, but it could circle around it, taunting and tormenting her when it knew that she was powerless to even voice a retort. It would call out to her with Kali's voice, begging Lana to save her and then blaming her for her death. Lana cried, but she did not speak and she did not move.

Slowly, the wings were beginning to burst from her skin. Blood ran down her back, soaking into her pants and shirt. When she realized that part of the agony was being caused by her shirt constricting the growing wings, she roughly tore two holes into the worn fabric. By the time the first sun rose, the baby feathers and growing bone structure stuck out perhaps two feet from her body. Occasionally, she heard the wind, but it was always as a faint whisper, as though it were merely checking on her. The death, on the other hand, was implacable.

The wet blood baked onto her skin in the blistering sun. Flies landed on her back and buzzed around her ears. She barely had the energy to shake them off, and touching her back to brush them away made her want to vomit. About once an hour, she allowed a trickle from her water skin to wet her lips. Even though she desperately wanted more, she knew that she would have to ration the relatively small amount over the next two days. Survival was all that mattered, the only real meaning that could enter her mind as the sun made its way across the sky.

I won't let you die, Mama, she repeated silently to herself as the monstrous black wings ravaged her back. I won't.

The second night, Lana dreamt of water. Everything else she forgot when she awoke, but she was left with a penetrating sense of terror and a conviction that she had, somehow, been drowning. Had her wings dragged her under? That seemed to trigger a memory, but then it vanished under a renewed onslaught of pain. Of course, she thought, how could an angel ever swim?

She felt the urge to scream so strongly that she was forced to stuff her fist into her mouth until she could calm down. It hadn't even occurred to her before, but the undeniable reality made her want to toss herself off the edge of the platform and let the death have its way with her.

She would never be able to dive again. A creature of the water, she had now bound herself permanently to the wind. She was becoming a paradox, a character in tales parents told their children: not an angel, but a waterbird.

Long ago (her father always said, when he had minutes to spare and she begged him for the story) before humans existed and the islands were just the blackened offspring of the union between earth and fire, a strange creature lived beneath the sea. It had no name, for it was merely one of thousands of half-spirits that existed in those days.

What did it look like? (she would ask) The purest, most beautiful mandagah fish (her father said), with eyes like green jewels and skin that flashed and swirled with different colors. And large, larger even than he.

This creature was the least of its kind, yet it longed to be the greatest. And not within the confines of its people and traditions, but in a grander, far more dangerous way. This creature decided that to be the greatest of its kind, it must leave the water.

So it approached the great Kai in its coral palace.

"Kai," it asked, "can you grant my desire? Can you give me wings to escape the water?"

The Kai shook its great head. "I have not the power to change your nature, water creature. Return home, accept your fate."

But the creature refused to give up. It approached the earth spirit, just now entering its half-slumber.

"I also have not the power, water creature," it answered. "Return home, accept your fate."

So the creature, stubborn and determined, approached the wind. "Oh master of air," it asked, "please, do you have the power to release me from this water?"

"Only one power can change your nature, water creature, and I have it not."

"Which power is this, great wind? How have I never heard of it?"

The wind laughed. `Ah, you have heard of it. The power that transforms movement to stillness, presence to absence, something to nothing. Have you never felt it?"

The creature understood. "Death?"

"If you have the courage to face it."

So the creature searched for death, but it was harder to find in those days of spirits great and small.

After many years of searching, the creature found the death by its side.

"Death," he said, "you alone have the power to change my nature. Can you give me wings to leave the water?"

"Why not step through the gate? That is the truest change."

The creature was afraid. "I do not long to die, Death."

So Death decided to grant the creature's sincerest wish. Its body transformed from that of a great fish into something between two states-a waterbird.

At first the waterbird was happy. But it discovered that it could no longer swim.

Why not, Papa?

Because its body had too much bird for the water (he said).

It called for the death, but it did not return. So it crawled, so slowly the journey lasted years, to the surface. Here, it thought, finally I'll be great. But on the surface, it could fly, but it couldn't breathe.

Why not, Papa?

Because fish can't breathe out of water, Lana, like you can't breathe underwater.

"Death," it gasped as it died. "Come here, take it back. I don't want to be this half-thing anymore."

"But I gave you exactly what you desired, waterbird."

"Please save me!"

At the sight of the creature's distress, Death relented. "I cannot change you back," it said, "but I can give you a halfway place for your halfway body."

And so the death took the waterbird to the netherworld between death and life, where it guards and lives to this very day.

Why was the waterbird so stupid, Papa?

We all long for things we shouldn't have, Lana. Thankfully, most of us never get them.

The third night, Lana began vomiting. She didn't know how much blood she had lost by now, but the slickness on her back and her persistent dizziness did not reassure her. All she had to do was make it through one more dawn. Yet the hours had never stretched so long before, and the pain had reached a pitch that was almost unendurable in this enforced silence. Her throat itched with the need to scream, to weep. She could feel new muscles forming in her back, strong enough to move the huge black wings that had now grown as tall as she.

"Lana ... I'm dying," said the death to her, using her mother's voice. "Please come. Please come and save me."

Lana grabbed a handful of rocks and hurled them at the death. They sailed through its body and landed on the ruins below. She longed to scream at it, but instead she bit on her already bloody lip and closed her eyes. She was stronger than all this-they would see how strong she could be. Her strength would be equal to what she had lost. The light from the half moon shone harshly tonight, illuminating nearly the entire mesa. She heard the rough scratching of something scrambling over the rocks to her left, but she ignored it, assuming that it was one of the small rodents that lived in the ruins. When she heard a gasp, however, she turned her head.

It was Yechtak. He had climbed to the top of one of the mounds of rocks near the burro. His eyes were wide, but he had clamped his hands over his mouth as though he did not dare speak. Perhaps he knew she was bound to silence. The wind briefly swirled around him and then faded away again. They stared at each other for a long moment before something like resolution settled on his face.

In the last few hours before dawn, Yechtak sang the wind in his rough untrained voice, giving her a measure of peace through the beauty of his own sorrow.

The first light of dawn hit the mesa, turning the sky a clean pink instead of the blood red sunrise she remembered from all those years ago, when she had completed an entirely different sort of ordeal. The pain in her back subsided to a dull throbbing-the wings had finished growing. She had given the sacrifice of the wind. For all the good it had done her.

Her joints screaming in protest, she forced herself to stand up. The new muscles in her back seemed to know how to fold the wings so their tips merely brushed the ground. The stones around her were littered with night-black feathers. Wind ruffled her hair gently, and the spirit gradually emerged before her in its semicorporeal form.

"You have succeeded, pilgrim. You have become my black angel." Its voice was gentle, almost respectful. "I can no longer protect you here. You must go."

Lana wondered if the itching in her throat was a scream or a swear. She had wanted help, but not this. It was too much sacrifice, too much pain.

"These wings ... are a curse." Her voice was rough, barely audible.

The wind didn't deny it. "A necessary one. They will keep you alive that much longer."

Lana nodded slowly and picked up her bag, containing only a blanket, an empty water skin, and her now-useless leibo. As she straightened, she heard Yechtak's warning shout and was then suddenly overcome with the death's invasive presence. This was worse than the time in the forest-she was much weaker, and it was far more determined. She started to slip away and then, just as abruptly, found herself kneeling on the floor of the altar, panting and alive. Wind screeched and pounded in her ears.

"You must fly, Lana. Take my gift and leave!" Desperation was palpable in its voice, and when she turned around, she understood why: it was fighting the death spirit. She had no time left.

Stretching out her wings experimentally, she let off a wild, defiant yell and threw herself from the top of the promontory. At first she fell, but then a gust of wind buoyed her up and she pumped her wings-tentatively at first, and then desperately. And then she was rising, floating up and manipulating gusts of wind with an instinct she barely understood. She turned around and saw Yechtak, singing as he scrambled higher on the rocks, and she realized that the favorable winds were his doing.

"Goodbye, Yechtak," she shouted. Moments later, both he and the mesa vanished out of sight.

Yechtak waited for a long time on the rock pile, until the curious howling wind on the sacred altar had stopped and he sensed the wild spirit itself coming closer to him. He held his breath and waited as it formed itself out of the wind.