CHAPTER TWO
I was sick to hell of eating fish. Even onboard Papa’s ship we never ate this much fish. There’d be dried salted meats, and fresh seabird, if we were close to land. But here on the Isles of the Sky it was nothing but fish, flaking like paper and just as tasteless.
“Then go hunting,” Naji told me one evening when I complained. “I’m sure your pet manticore will be happy to accompany you.”
“She ain’t my pet.” I flung a piece of fish down to the strip of tree bark we used as plates. In truth I’d thought about hunting before, cause I’d seen flashes of these graceful horsy animals through the dappled light of the trees, but I didn’t know the first damn thing about hunting game. If I had a pistol, maybe I could do it.
I didn’t tell Naji none of that, though, cause I knew he’d make fun of me. He was still sore about me bringing the manticore around.
“Finish your meal,” he said, like I was some little kid.
I glared at him and shoved the food away, sending the fish splattering across the floor.
“Finish it for me,” I said, and stomped out of the shack.
I walked down to the shore edge to calm down. I made sure not to get too close to the signal fire, but I could see it glimmering off in the distance, golden swirls twisting up toward the sky. And the smell of it was strong, too, on account of either the breeze or the island shifting us downwind: it wasn’t so much like wood burning at all, but like blood.
“Girl-human, I am in need of your assistance.” The manticore came ambling down the beach, flicking her tail left and right. That tail still gave me the shivers.
“What do you want?”
“There’s a burr in my mane.” The manticore shook her head. “A great tangle. Would you remove it for me?”
I stared at her.
“The hell would you do if you were on the Island of the Sun?” I asked. “Take it out yourself.”
The manticore growled. Growls I didn’t mind, but you best believe I had my eyes fixed firmly on the poisoned tip of her tail.
“I would command one of my servant-humans to remove it for me,” she said. “And she would remove it without complaint, singing all the while.”
“Servant-humans.”
“Yes. We fill our palace with your kind and they do our bidding and offer themselves as food whenever we are hungry.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her. She had a lot of stories about the Island of the Sun, and its great red-sand desert and the great wealth of her family and what an honor I’d give them, one they would certainly thank with a boon, if only I delivered an uncursed Jadorr’a to their eating table.
She trotted over and sat down beside me, tucking her massive paws underneath her body, sticking her head close to my lap. There was a snarl in her mane, a big knot where something’d gotten stuck.
“Fine,” I said. “But I ain’t singing.”
She sniffed like she wasn’t too happy, but then she stuck her chin on my knee. The weight of her head was a lot more than I expected.
I combed my fingers through her mane, which was surprisingly soft, plucking out around the tangle. I moved slow and steady cause the last thing I wanted was to pull too hard and have those big white teeth of hers slice through my leg. Ain’t no way it was a burr in that huge mass of fur – a burr’s too small – but I felt around with my fingers and I realized she had a pine cone stuck in there.
“This may take a while,” I said.
The manticore didn’t answer save for that trumpeting sound she made whenever she was content. Everything about her voice sounded like a musical instrument. Even her full name – Ongraygeeomryn – kinda sounded like a bell chiming when she said it. I couldn’t say it, which was why I just called her the manticore and left it at that.
When I had the pine cone about halfway untangled from her mane, my stomach growled, and I thought about the fish I’d flung at Naji.
“Hey,” I said, plucking at her fur like it was a guitar string. “Would you go hunting with me?”
The manticore lifted her head a little, enough that I got a face full of her mane.
“Hunting?”
“Yeah.” I leaned back, wiping her fur from my mouth. “I’m sick of eating fish.”
“Fish is not food.”
“It is for people. Look, could you help me or not? I just want to bring down one of those horse-animals I’ve seen in the woods.”
“Caribou. That is what the wizard-human called them.”
“Fine, the caribou. Could you bring one down for me? Don’t use your stinger,” I added. “I want to eat it, remember.”
The manticore laughed. “To bring down such a clumsy creature will be easy. Tis a shame there are no more humans on this island.”
I didn’t say nothing to that, just tugged at the pine cone, hoping it’d come free. It didn’t.
“If I bring you a caribou,” the manticore said, “will you groom me whenever I ask?”
I stopped. “Groom?” There I went, making deals with a manticore again.
“Aye. Brush my mane and coat, and pull the thorns from my feet.”
“That all? You want me to wipe your ass, too?”
“Don’t be crude, girl-human.”
“I’m just checking on the particulars before I agree to anything.”
“No, that service I will not require of you. Manticores bathe themselves.”
Well, that was something, at least. In truth plucking the pine cone from her mane wasn’t that terrible – kind of relaxing, actually. Took my mind off Naji.
“Sure, I’ll groom you. But not for one caribou – for any you catch. And you’ll catch ’em anytime I ask.”
She made a hmmm noise of displeasure.
“Look, it’ll take me and Naji awhile to get through a whole one of the things.”
The manticore sighed. “Yes, I suppose that is true.”
“Plus you said it was easy hunting.”
I had her there. She got this squished-up look on her face that meant I’d just called her manticore-ness into question.
“I agree to your terms, girl-human. A lifetime of caribou for a lifetime of grooming.”
I hope not a lifetime, I thought, but I picked up her paw and shook on it.
The manticore stayed true to her word. I pulled the pine cone from her hair and the next morning I woke to the sound of claws scratching across the shack’s door. Naji stirred over in the corner, still asleep. The fire in the hearth had burned down to ash. I stumbled over to the door and opened it.
The manticore sat with a dead caribou at her feet, her face smeared with blood.
“Here is your caribou, girl-human,” she said.
A jagged tear ripped across the caribou’s throat, and its head hung at an angle. “You didn’t sting it, did you?”
“On the spirits of my mothers, no, I did not.” The manticore gave me this solemn look. “Enjoy your meat, girl-human.” Then she trotted off, wings bouncing, toward the shadow of the forest.
When I turned around, Naji was lurking behind me, sword and knife drawn.
“Kaol!” I shouted. “How long you been standing there?”
“I was in the shadows,” he said. “I didn’t want the manticore to see me.” He walked up to the caribou and poked it with the toe of his boot. “Why did she bring you this?”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest and didn’t answer.
Naji turned around. “Ananna, you have no idea how dangerous that creature is–”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “She can’t eat either of us.”
“She won’t eat either of us,” Naji said. “There is a difference.”
I scowled at him cause I knew he was right.
“Now answer my question,” he said. “Why did she bring this to you?”
I sighed. Naji kept his eyes on me, waiting. And so I told him what happened the night before, with the pine cone and all. His face didn’t move while I spoke, though his eyes got darker and darker.
&nb
sp; “That was a mistake,” he said. “Making a deal with a manticore.”
“Well, it got us meat, didn’t it? Something that ain’t fish.” I yanked his sword away from him. “You don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it.”
He didn’t say nothing, and I stomped outside and pushed the caribou to its side and stuck the knife into the skin of its belly. I’d cleaned fish before – big fish, too, sharks and monster eels – so I figured a land creature couldn’t be much different.
Naji came out and watched me. I could feel him standing there, the weight of his presence. It made my skin prickle up sometimes, having him watch me. Not in a bad way.
“I would still check for spines,” he said. “You shouldn’t take a manticore on its word.”
“Planning on it.” I had been, too. I ain’t stupid.
It took me close to an hour to skin the caribou and gut it and slice the meat from the bones. I didn’t find any spines, and I checked everywhere I could think of – in the stomach and mouth, in case she tried to hide one. Nothing. By then Naji had the hearth fire going, and he roasted some of the meat and we had a right proper meal.
The caribou didn’t taste like any meat I’d had before – it was a bit like sheep meat, only wilder and leaner – but it was sure better than another round of fish. Naji ate it without saying nothing, and I figured he was sick of fish too but wasn’t gonna admit it.
When we finished eating, Naji told me to start cutting the raw meat into strips.
“Why?” I asked him.
“Because otherwise we’re going to wind up with a mountain of rotting caribou carcass,” he said. “Which is something I’m guessing you didn’t think about when you asked the manticore to hunt for you.”
I hadn’t, mostly cause I didn’t realize how much meat was on ’em, nor how dense it was. So I went outside and started hacking at the caribou with his sword. I laid the strips out on some flat stones, figuring Naji planned on drying ’em out but not sure of the procedure for it.
He disappeared with the water bucket into the tree shadows and returned a few minutes later, the bucket full of seawater. He went into the house, then came back out and started gathering up the meat strips.
“What did you get all that seawater for?”
“We need the salt.” Naji draped the meat strips over his forearms. “Keep cutting. We’ll probably have to sleep outside while the meat is processing.”
I frowned at that, thinking about the rainstorms that stirred up the woods without warning.
By the time I finished cutting up the caribou my arms ached something fierce and the whole front of my coat was stained with blood. And I couldn’t run over to Eirnin’s house and get a spare, neither.
I carted the sword back into the shack and dumped it next to the hearth for cleaning. Naji was scraping salt out of the bucket, this big pile of it glittering on a piece of tree bark like sand. Another kettle boiled and rattled over the fire, and the air smelled like his magic. He’d already hung up some of the meat strips, hooking ’em to the rafters with little bits of vine from the woods. They swayed a little from the breeze blowing through the open door, looking like dancing snakes.
“How’d you know to do all this?” I asked.
“I learned when I was a child,” he said. “Did you finish slicing up the carcass?”
I nodded, wanting to ask him about his childhood, wanting to know everything I could about him. But I figured he’d snap at me if I said anything.
“Good. Start hanging the rest of the meat from the ceiling.”
I did what he asked. It was satisfying work – we’d pack the strips in sea salt, let ’em sit, and then lash ’em to the ceiling. Plus, I liked working with Naji, being close to him without having to find anything to say or without having to worry about the stupid curse. It reminded me of the way Mama and Papa used to work together on the rigging, in the early parts of the dawn, clambering over the ropes and shouting instructions at one another. I used to watch ’em from the crow’s nest and think about how that must be what it’s like to love someone.
When we finished the whole shack smelled like meat and you could hardly walk from one side to the other on account of all the slivers of caribou dangling in the way.
“How long’s it gonna take?” I asked. “Till it’s all dried out?”
“A few weeks.” Naji glanced at me. He was over at the hearth, messing with the fire. “There’s a cave not far from here. We should start moving our things.”
“The cave!” I said. “The rain’ll get in.”
“Exactly. It’s why we had to hang the caribou up in here.” Smoke trickled up from the fire, gray and thick. It made my nose run.
“I know that.” I scowled. “Just don’t know why we have to live in the cave is all.”
Naji stepped away from the hearth. “Would you rather move into Eirnin’s house?” He glanced at me. “Spend the next few weeks living side by side with ghosts and magic-homunculi?”
I glared at him. He looked like he wanted to laugh. I knew he had me.
CHAPTER THREE
Living in a cave wasn’t so bad, despite the way the dampness flooded in every time the skies opened up with rain. This soft, thick moss grew over the rocks and made for a bed more comfortable than my big pile of ferns back in the shack. We kept a fire burning near the entrance and ate half-cured caribou and berries and the occasional fish to mix it up.
After a few days, the manticore sniffed us out.
“Girl-human,” she said. “Did you and the Jadorr’a think you could flee from me?”
It was nighttime, the sky starless from the rainclouds, and Naji was sleeping down deeper in the cave, his tattoos lighting up the darkness. I didn’t know if he was dreaming or casting magic in his sleep. He’d told me once he talked to the Order sometimes, though he never told me what about. They would’ve rescued him weeks ago, when we first landed, but they wouldn’t have rescued me. That’s why he was still here.
And no one else is crazy enough to sail to the Isles of the Sky. Hadn’t seen so much as a sail on the horizon the entire time we’d been on the island.
I popped my head out of the cave’s entrance. The manticore sniffed at me and flicked her tail back and forth.
“The shack’s filled up with meat,” I said.
“Caribou is not meat,” she told me. “Too gristly, too tough. Like tree bark.”
I couldn’t imagine the manticore having ever actually tried tree bark, but I didn’t say nothing, just shuffled out into the woods. The air was damp and cold like always, and I pulled my coat tight around me.
“Do you need something?”
“May I see your new rock-nest?”
I sighed. “It’s just a cave.”
“It is larger than your old nest.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
The manticore trotted past the fire and into the cave’s main room, her footsteps silent on the moss. Naji’s tattoos turned everything pale blue.
For a minute the manticore stared at him, tongue running over the edges of her teeth. I edged toward the sword.
But the manticore didn’t lunge for him or shoot a spine. Instead, she turned around on the moss a few times, like a dog, and then settled in.
Well. Looked like she found a new home.
“Brush my mane, girl-human,” the manticore said. “In exchange for catching the caribou.”
“I thought the caribou was in exchange for pulling out the pine cone.”
She shook her head and I didn’t feel much like arguing with her.
“What do you want me to use?” I asked. “My fingers?”
“Don’t be silly. A brush will suffice.”
“A brush?” I laughed. “I don’t have no brush.” I pointed at my own hair, which was a tangled, knotted mess from the rainwater and the woods and the wind – even if Naji had been halfway interested in me at some point, he sure as curses wouldn’t be now. I’d hacked some of it off with Naji’s knife, but it was hair. It grew back. ?
??You think I’d look like this if I owned a brush?”
The manticore frowned. “I thought that was merely the humans’ way. You will not tend to your grooming unless commanded by a manticore.”
“The hell did you get that idea from?”
The manticore looked genuinely confused.
“You know what?” I said. “Forget it. I don’t have a brush, but I’ll work it through my fingers, alright? Best I can do.”
The manticore heaved a sigh like this was the biggest burden to her, worse than getting trapped on a deserted island in the north, worse than having to eat animals instead of people. Not that she shut up about either of those things.
I sat down beside her and started working through her mane, a few pieces at a time. It was pretty tangled – not as bad as my hair, but bad enough that I could see how someone as prissy as her would want it fixed.
It was boring work, but calming. Once I got the tangles out her mane was soft as spun silk, and it reminded me of the scarfs and dresses we’d pull from Empire trading ships, the ones I used to sleep on as a little girl.
And there, in the darkness of that cave, in the cold damp of that island, I started missing Papa’s ship real bad. I combed through the manticore’s mane and I thought about the open ocean, the hot breezes blowing across the water and the warmth of the sun. I didn’t think I’d ever feel warm again.
I moved to the other side of the manticore’s head. I could see Naji, curled up on his side. Seeing him made me sadder still, remembering how miserable he’d been on the Ayel’s Revenge, how comfortable he’d been in the desert.
Even if he loved me back, we were tied to different parts of the world.
“You should kiss him, girl-human.”
I yelped in surprise at the sound of her voice, and my fingers caught on a snag in the manticore’s mane. She hissed and yanked her head back.
“What?” I said. “Kiss who?”
“Who else is here?” she said. She rubbed against her scalp with the back of her paw. “The Jadorr’a.”
“What would I do that for?”
The manticore giggled. It sounded like a wind chime. “To complete the first impossible task, of course.”