Page 26 of Red Demon
The empire didn’t even try to pretend it could control the magic of the Oria bionetwork, even as it tried to keep us safe from everything else. That fungus covered the whole world over, and the Asri believed the souls of their dead will still merge with it when they die, and it would preserve their soul and memories. At Harvest Festival, they’d sit in the shining glade, chatting with the glowing ground, even though some of them—like me—heard nothing in return.
I believed my parents’ warnings. They said Oria can kill you if it feels threatened, and the long dead Attiq-ka and Asri that compose it might mark any Chaeten a threat. But Ash and Galen and the rest didn’t fear it at all, and they didn’t expect me to fear it either. “No murderers dwell in Oria,” Galen explained. A soul has to be accepted as righteous to return there, where they may rest until reincarnation. The wicked become demons, their ghosts fragmenting as ruren-sa, roaming the wilds until they fade to dust.
In my sixteen years, I had seen no evidence of either ancestors or ghosts reaching out to me. No Chaeten expected anything beyond their death. Yet I couldn’t get through any major Asri ceremony without thinking of the family I lost. That year, I endeavored to do a better job hiding unease for the sake of the people around me.
Laughter floated in the air, mingling with the hum of the bionetwork thrumming beneath our feet. At Harvest, Oria’s low drone is more discernible, like a distant waterfall. Families clustered in the forest muttering to the dirt, their faces reflecting joy, claiming they heard whispers, laughter in the wind.
“Thank you Mona Terana, I am happy to see you too,” Asher said, as a burst of wind rustled the glowing branches. The crackle of the leaves stopped as he paused to listen, his closed eyes reflecting the lights.
“My grandfather is just here to complain, I think. He says they’ve been waiting for me all night,” Meragc said to me, laughing.
I forced a smile. Something in his tone and the cool weather made me think of Iden, of the voices he heard on his last night alive. Didn’t he say the same, that they were waiting for him all night? Maybe the whispers in the trees were just the wind. But my stomach tightened all the same.
Meragc pointed to something in the trees, then spun around. “I can hear you clearly. Glad you’re well, old man.”
“Well, there’s a whole crowd keeping tabs on me,” Asher said, laughing, “Hello, family!” he waved.
I started shutting down, unable to really listen. Iden had seen a crowd too. Maybe these same spirits, so kind to my friends, were the ones that drove Iden mad.
“One at a time please, you’re all too loud,” Meragc said.
“Maybe how loud they get is proportional to how much whiskey is in your cider, Meragc,” I said, grateful for the dark. I was closing my eyes tight, keeping the dark memory at arm’s length.
“You really can’t see anything at all?” Asher asked. “Or hear them?”
I heard the rustle of falling leaves in the dark, the distant waterfall sound. Imagination would run wild with that if I let it, but I knew better. My brother survived SBO only to open a door to voices in the wind, and something, probably Oria, drove him insane on a whispering night like this. I couldn’t save him. I could only keep my own doors locked.
“No, but I’m fine with that.” I winced, realizing I let a little more bitterness in my tone than I intended.
Asher’s smile faded among the dancing lights.
I patted him on the shoulder. “Sorry Ash. I’ll meet you back home, okay?” I saluted back to Meragc, his tall frame hunched in the dark. “See you at dawn.”
He waved his glass. “Nope, I’m sleeping in!”
Walking the streets back, the lantern lights bobbed bright against the inky blackness. A pang of sadness tightened my throat. My new family welcomed me into their world, but I wasn’t sure that world could ever fully be mine.
I sank onto a bench outside the forge with my thoughts, not quite ready to make my way inside.
Footsteps. Asher’s familiar gait broke the quiet, his boots clicking in a steady rhythm against the stones. He landed beside me on the stone bench, and I watched the sky until his stare felt too heavy.
“What’s wrong, Brother?”
I shrugged, the gesture small and ineffective.
He nudged me with his shoulder. “Your ancestors staying silent?” The reflection of the lanterns lit the gold at the center of his brown eyes. “The fact that mine were so bent on killing yours for a while?”
When I didn’t smile with him, he whispered, “Iden.”
“Yeah.” I stared up at the star-dusted void, flickering with the chill of fall.
He sighed, looking up at the stars with me, his leg warm against mine.
“I’m just being a shit,” I said. “All of you are so happy on nights like this, and I try to be happy too, and that’s what gets to me. I feel bad for being happy when, well—” I gave a vague gesture off to the south, thinking about my Chaeten mother and siblings, and all the dead.
“Wouldn’t your Chaeten family want you to be happy?”
I ran my hands through my hair, a little longer now. “At what point am I slacking off by not avenging them? I have no idea what’s happening in the Bend, or if Mahakal did anything at all.”
