THE SPARK
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
It is good to drink.
THE VAST bronzewood Palace glowed like a dollop of bloody honey in the last hour before dawn. Jo did not look back at Rope and Brook as she walked toward it through grass dry and tangled as human hair. She crossed a band of tiny, sharp stones at the bottom of a desiccated moat. She whispered to herself, trying to drown out the world’s thirsty voices.
Jo! I hear you, said the cracking earth. I smell the red water in you.
Not for you! My blood is my own.
She is ours, the wind said. It is not water you hear, parched mother. Tonight her veins crawl with creeping fire.
Jo shivered, feet barely feeling the dry earth, the wind blowing through her. What do you mean? she asked.
No more than usual, the stars remarked. The wind is a great liar. Pay attention at your peril.
But I am the wind’s daughter.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Loveless bitches! the moon cackled in her old crone’s voice. Don’t trust them, Jo. They pretend indifference to blunt the pain of their daily death. Already the sun is waking. Soon his eye will open and shrivel them like moths.
The stars replied with voices hard and cold as bells. It happens every day. Why get upset? And, we point out, it will happen to you.
Ha! You know as well as I the pleasure of his brand. The world longs for death; he has taught us to beg for it. I admit it! I pull death to my wrinkled dugs. Already the flames have licked me hollow, thrown all my self under their host of shadows.
Poor dear, the wind said. Pay no heed, small one. It’s that time of the month, you know.
But the moon said, Jo knows me better.
it is good . . .
. . . to drink.
I must walk, thought Jo. She lifted clay-heavy feet and moved under the dying trees, under the Palace, to stand in the purple gloom beneath tangled bronzewood boughs. Her skin was slick and dry as scale. Her heart was a knot of blood. The fevered night had not sweated out one drop of dew. In the east the sky flinched at the sun’s first touch, going grey with pain.
Drip.
Drip.
She stared at the hooked moon, gleaming like a splinter of bone above the West Tower.
You feel me.
Yes.
The moon cackled. What is your errand to the Emperor? What is your mission of mercy?
Jo grinned back. I go to pluck his sting, to take his Spark.
But why?
Because . . . Because I desire it.
You are not too meek to slay the sun, the ancient moon laughed. You are not too proud to drink his bright red rain.
Jo’s nailed hands flexed into pinions, her feet hardened into talons and she scratched the baked dirt. She blinked at the burning moon with enormous eyes; left a whisper of red dust behind her and floated into the air, owl-formed, a flake of ash armored in moonlight.
A bat wheeled too close, tricked by the unkind wind. It jerked as her talons slid into its squeaking black body. Its black wings fluttered like dead leaves. Resting on a balcony of bronzewood to eat, she crushed its flesh in her beak, squeezing out its moisture, regretting every drop that fell into darkness.
I thirst! the old earth cried through cracking lips.
It was a small bat, and tough. Jo was not satisfied. In the distance, the wind whispered suave apologies to its next-of-kin.
Drip.
Jo sailed off the balcony, pressing the wind beneath her wings. She left the bat’s corpse on the matted railing and circled up, flying at the moon. Far to the east, the sun burned away the darkness, leaving empty grey nothing in its place. Dawn fled before him, and the world cowered like a battered woman. The eastern stars shrieked thinly and went out.
A lone waver of birdsong, a lark’s maimed hymn to the dawn:
Evil nests
In the green-gold branches;
He held murder to a candle, and it
Burned.
Declare yourself! the living Palace said. Are you fuel or flame? Only the Singer knows, Jo answered. Are you light or shadow? Evil throws the only light within my halls, the Palace said. Evil is sticky; it crusts my leaves. It is good, the earth sighed,
. . . to drink.
Jo landed on the parapet of the South Tower, hooking her claws through twigs like brittle bones. She felt the sap crawling beneath her toes. She flapped her wings and shrugged her shoulders, thrice. Her blood was thin and hot. She clacked her beak and hissed at the night. Do you hear that sound?
Drip.
Sound? the wind said politely. What sound?
The dripping. Drip. Drip. Drip. That sound.
From the room beneath her feet she heard the candles laugh. It is tallow, they said, nothing more. It is our white fat you hear dropping to the thirsty ground. It is our mighty labor to burn away the darkness; you hear our sweat.
Drip.
Drip.
I do not trust your laughter. I do not trust your fierce voices.
All things that move are cruel, the moon said. Jo, remember! Did I not tell you the sound of the flame is the sound of wind, the sound of wind that of water? If you want honest answers, speak to the stones and the stars!
What is good? Jo cried to the thirsting earth. What drips down to your parched throat?
What right has she to ask? the bats screamed. Is not murder its own reward?
I know nothing
of guilt
or innocence, the earth replied.
Everything
draws its substance
from me,
Daughter of Air.
You were born of me.
Your cord was cut and tied:
you are a knot of
red water
in a fine leather bag.
Drip.
It drips from me, said the corpse of the Emperor’s son. My father solved the cunning puzzle of my life. With a single stroke below the jaw he cut through all my intricacies.
I am sorry.
Day is near, the moon said. Madness burns within the Palace, Jo. Will you flutter to that flame?
I made promises. I swore oaths. Help me!
Who is this I? A shape you took from an island girl.
Jo trembled, torn by twin desires. But at last she began to shift, small and smaller, a spider to walk between veined walls. I promised Brook, she said.
What burns in you? the moon sadly asked. Are you trying once more to be of the water? You will give back everything you have taken. Everything.
I promised, Jo whispered.
But the moon said only, When you are tired, Jo, come to me.
* * *
It was all Jo could do to spiderwalk through the Emperor’s walls. The play of fear and desire and confusion was so strong within the Palace that no creeping thing could long hold to any purpose but to hide and madly sting when cornered.
Once inside, she took her human shape again.
Golden light, thick and dull as honey, welled from the bronzewoods into the Emperor’s room. Certain stripped branches showed naked as beating veins in the walls and ceiling. Gulping candles in gold sockets projected from each of six walls. The Emperor’s swing hung in the center of the room; each move sent a shudder through his six shadows. His dry fingers rustled in a bowl of roasted locusts. “I have been expecting you,” he said.
His bony cheeks were hollow and his eyes were points of golden flame socketed in shadow. Where the light touched his skirts the satin glowed rich green, elsewhere midnight-black. He reached out with one foot and set himself softly rocking. The creaking swing was inexpressibly sad. With long bronze fingernails the Emperor shelled another locust, cracking the roasted carapace. “I knew they would send a woman as my death.”
“I come at no one’s sending but my own.” Believe that if you will, the moon said from outside. What of your island girl?
“Do you not! Do you not indeed!” The Emperor crushed the locust shell between his fingers and dropped it into the bowl. “I believe Sere burns within me, and you are the shadow of that burning.”
“You are fevered with madness.”
The Emperor shook his head, swinging gently forth and back in the weak yellow candlelight. “The puppets themselves are sacred and unknowable. We are shadows cast by a little golden candle, White Lady. Shadows thrown upon a paper screen.”
“Whose shadow am I, then?”
“Mine. You are the shadow I cast upon the world. It is men who serve a single master, and women who serve men. The habit of subservience runs strong within your sex. You are a play of shadows without shape.” The swing creaked; ropes bit into the branches above. “Would you like something to eat?”
Jo shook her head. A bee tumbled from behind her ear and fell scrabbling to her shoulder.
The Emperor picked up another locust by its brittle wings. “But are men happier? No. Only in a position of greater certitude. It is Sere whose shadow I am—his light and his substance conjoin to create me. I too am caught up by inexorable forces. I too am a shadow on the screen we call The World As It Is.”
The Emperor stilled his swing, and his gaunt face was as a mask of beaten bronze, chiselled in shapes of care, lit from behind by a leaping flame.
Jo! Jo, the candles called. Laughing, laughing. Will you fan the Fire, daughter of air? All flesh is wax—the wick and the burning are all that matters.
She forced her dry lips open. “Your puppet-play is illusion. I am not bound by its lines. The moon is in you, old man. You are longing for death.”
The Emperor stirred his fingers slowly in the locust bowl; husks clicked and rustled. “You are only my shadow and a woman. The man who seizes his chance can twist his shadow to his own purpose. I must bend you to my will, as the sea must become the shadow of the wood.”
“You woodlanders are all alike, using poetry to dignify your desires. There is no mystery in evil. You are no race of monsters.”
“My duty is to my people!” the Emperor snapped. “Can you imagine I have not been tempted by compassion? Now, even now, with my clans succumbing to the Fire, I grieve for those islanders who must die . . . Yes. Death calls for me. I ache for dissolution. All things weary of life. All things long to surrender to the freedom of the clouds and stones.”
“Silence waits at the end of every speech,” Jo whispered. “Come. Come to me. I will teach you the secret that waits beneath the pines. I will show you what the Smoke knows in its circling.”
He stood upright, angry hands clenched around the cables of his swing, staring at Jo. “You are evil,” he said. “I should have known they would send me a beautiful death.”
Bees crawled on Jo’s moon-white flesh. Softly she said, “I spoke this hour with your son.”
The Emperor shuddered. “What did he say?”
His grief was real. Not a flicker from behind the Smoke, but a father’s anguish, and she took pity on him. “He knew only what the dead know. Red dust and silence.”
“He will see his pyre today.” The Emperor’s voice was thin as paper, as flame. “Would you do me the honor of joining the ceremony? I would have my Death attend on his.”
Jo stepped forward and laid a gentle hand on the Emperor’s hard shoulder. Her touch was cool and soft as flowers. She knew then she would have to draw out the Spark that ate the Emperor hollow, the Spark that had cast a host of shadows over him and his son and his people. She must pluck it from him like a bee’s sting that festered in his flesh. She winced, letting his heat surge into her body.
The hard candles blinked.
Stammering, the Emperor said, “My son had that arrogance that goes with being young. Knowing the portents as well as I, he sensed his danger, but still he gave his heart to Bronze Cut.” The Emperor looked with wonder at his strong right hand. “Hilt did not know the terrible things old men can do.” His fingers closed around the haft of his knife.
Jo’s touch passed through him like ice water. He hissed and flinched beneath her hand. “Avoid introductions to Death! So fascinating an acquaintance must soon become a friend.”
“Your shadow-play is over. I will show you winter’s heart. I will teach you what the cold moon knows.”
“But why?” the Emperor muttered, rocking back and forth with nervous energy. “Why do I not call the guards?” His shoulder beneath her fingers was taut as a straining hawser. Pride and despair were tearing him apart.
Jo fought back her fear, knowing she had to take his fire, dreading the terrible pain. “You called women formless, old man. The shadows of shadows. But it is you who are weak, to think that any human can be only one thing. I choose not to hold a single shape and I am strong, as strong as the wind that carves every mountain. As strong as the sea that drowns every fire.”
The Emperor straightened and slapped her hand away. “Do not presume!”
Jo shook out her white mane, and a host of bees whirred into the air. “Shall I show you your shadow?” Hidden behind a veil of floating hair, her features blurred. When she looked up again she wore Hilt’s face, blood leaking from his dead neck. “Is this what you desired?”
“Monster!” Gasping, he pulled out a long-handled dagger with a ruby hilt. Its point was sharp and flecked with fresh blood. Leaping to his feet, he jerked her head back with one hand in her hair. The dagger’s bitter point slid against her stomach.
Jo heard the candles’ hot voices, felt the shivering strength of the Emperor’s arms, was surrounded by his scent: grief and withered leaves. His dry hands were spider-fingered. She listened, as a heart-drum drove pulses of burning pitch through his veins. She drew his Spark into herself, as a wind draws upon a flame.
He screamed and drove the knife home.
And she was shifting, shifting, wearing his mask, plucking his sting. She was him, two forks of one flame, two Emperors now, staring down as the knife slid in and out of her shifting flesh. They blazed up together into one great burning.
She twinned him then, from the grieving mask outside to the charred hollow place in his heart where the Spark raged. She sucked out that burning thing—call it madness? Genius? Destiny? Desire? She drew out the twist of flame that drove him to his enormities and swallowed it into herself through his knife and his rage and his burning eyes.
He would live on with his fires banked. But Jo screamed, covered in dying bees, as the Spark passed into her like desire: like freedom: like death.