Rasia stayed.
In the haze of Kai’s exhaustion last night, the entire scene had felt surreal. Kai didn’t question the memory of Rasia boarding her ship and preparing to set sail, but in what reality does Rasia offer anyone a second chance? An unreliable sense of hope began to return in vague and formless fragments.
No. Hope had betrayed him before. It had stabbed him in the stomach and left him barely alive. If Kai ever deigned to forget those painful lessons, it would no doubt rip him apart all over again.
Thankfully, Rasia didn’t give him time to dwell on the shadows of his hopes as she dragged him out of cave and shoved him toward the windship. She had dismantled most of the windship’s contraptions, all the jerry-rigging Rasia used to steer the ship by herself.
“What happened?” Kai asked.
“I made space,” Rasia said triumphantly. “It’s no longer a one-person ship. It is now a kulani!”
Kai eyes widened as he felt the creep of a blush. “Kulani” can literally mean “a kull of two,” but the word was never used to describe the size of a kull. Instead, it was colloquially used to describe two people in a deeply committed relationship, like how “kulo” can mean a kull of one but was more often than not used as a slur for someone who was extremely selfish.
Rasia rolled her eyes. “You know what I meant.”
Kai nodded his head quickly. Of course, he did. That’s not a word anyone would ever use to address him.
Rasia clapped her hands and paced a circle around the windship deck. “Okay, we’ll start with the different parts of the ship . . . or maybe we should start with what everything does? I think that’s what the teachers do. No, maybe we should . . .” Rasia spun toward Kai. “This is my first time teaching anyone anything before. I’m not sure where to start.”
Kai asked, patient and curious, “How did you learn about windships?”
“Shamai-ta dropped me and jih off in the middle of the Desert and told us to figure out how to get home.”
“Oh,” Kai said, blinking. That probably wouldn’t work for him.
“But you know, I’ve grown up on a windship my entire life,” Rasia said. She wobbled her fingers, baby steps, across the railing. She walked the stiff wood away from him and lingered on the scruffs and scars, soothing the wounds with a thumb.
“Apparently, I was a nightmare of a baby. Can you believe that?” Rasia’s back was turned to Kai, but he could tell she was laughing by the way her shoulders rose. “The way tah told it, I refused to sleep. I was a terror, until one night, tah strapped me to his back and took me out to make repairs to a kull ship. He set the ship to sail, and suddenly . . . there was silence. Ever since that night, a ship rocked me to sleep.”
“That’s where it started. I learned how to walk on a windship deck. I played on it while tah drilled his hunting kull. Ysai-ji and I helped with repairs, learned how to construct the wheels and strengthen the hull. During downtime between hunts, he’d take me and jih out to chase wind currents or to the oases to swim. But at night . . .” Her voice softened. Her back still turned, she whispered to the mast, “the night was our time. That never changed. We sailed a sea of stars together . . .”
Her voice cracked. “. . . and now he’s gone. All because of a stupid fucking rock.”
That’s . . . not exactly how Kai understood what happened. Two years ago, gonda had attacked the Grankull. Shamaijen Windbreaker had been helping with the evacuations, when an entire adobe spire had collapsed on top of him. They say an injury to the head from a piece of debris was what ultimately killed him, even though he died days later. Kai certainly wasn’t about to correct her version of events. Grief did weird and illogical things.
Kai had lost Ava-ta in that same incident, when she had died saving him. Even two years later, when you thought you’d climbed the mountain of grief, sometimes you slipped, and it all came rolling back on top of you. Kai didn’t think Rasia was the type of person to welcome condolences or comfort, and Kai knew all too well that empty sentiments, and sometimes even sincere ones, did little to catch your fall. Still, he felt compelled to respond in some way.
Kai took a step forward, creaking the deck of the windship and the sound reminded Rasia her and her memories weren’t alone. Rasia spun on her heel as if nothing had happened.
“Anyway,” Rasia said, forcing the conversation forward. “Before the day tah abandoned me and jih in the Desert, I already knew what parts did what. I knew how to fix them. I knew how a kull functioned. I never really had to learn, so I’m not exactly sure where to start.”
“I-I . . .” Kai stammered. “I liked Shamaijen Windbreaker. He was kind to me.”
Kai didn’t know why he needed to tell her this, but it was important. Kai always remembered those few who had shown him kindness. “He always acknowledged my existence. And I know that I can never miss him as much as you do, but I do . . . miss him. He was an amazing person.”
Rasia smiled to herself, smug. “He was.”
Kai stepped to her carefully, slowly, but finally certain of the words he needed to say. “This ship has so much of his memory, and I know teaching me about all of this can’t be easy, but thank you, for sharing him with me.”
“This ship is all I have of him . . . and, you know . . .” Rasia touched her forehead. “What’s in here.”
She moved her legs where she sat atop the railing and curled them against her chest, to make room for him. Kai occupied the space she left behind. He almost felt as if he were stepping inside of her, how close they were, and Kai made sure to treat the open wounds with care.
“Isn’t it customary to write the names of lost kull members onto the mast?” Kai asked. It was a common gesture when a kull member retired or, more often than not, met the face of Death.
“We did.” Rasia frowned, her face scrunching in displeasure. “I had a run-in with that skink of a dragon a year ago. Almost completely wrecked the ship, and I couldn’t recover the mast. The one I have now is new, but I haven’t been able to replace tah’s name because Ysai-ji is always so rutting busy with Ji-lah. And I can’t read. Or write. Whatever.”
Rasia shrugged, pretending to be unfazed even though Kai could tell by her defensive posture that it bothered her immensely.
“I can teach you,” Kai suggested after a moment. Rasia laughed in the next beat, and Kai hunched his shoulders. Many didn’t think him capable of reading.
“And here I thought I’m supposed to be teaching you,” Rasia said. Her laughter melted away the previous melancholy. “Don’t bother. What do I need to know how to read for?”
“Don’t kulls exchange messages from one to the other?”
From her crouch, Rasia stretched to a standing position and balanced her heels atop the railing with ease. Rasia might have been shorter than average, but she was built solid, and Kai never worried she might fall. She regarded him with a raised brow. “I thought you didn’t know anything about windships.”
“I’ve read stories,” Kai said defensively. “I know some things. I know that there are five roles in a kull.”
“Oh, really?” Kai whipped around when Rasia hopped from the railing. She looped her arm around the mast to circle herself around to face him again. “And what are each of these roles for?”
Kai gave the answer written in the temple library. “The five positions in a kull are the Scout, the Han, the Windeka, and the two Oars. The Oars row the ship when the wind is adverse, they use their weight to turn the outriggers, and they are the primary offensive arms in a hunt. The Scout watches for terrain obstacles and predators and is proficient with long-distance weapons. The Han is the leader and typically your most experienced kull member. The Han knows the terrain, the animals, and the Desert. The Han determines the course of the hunt. The Windeka steers the ship.”
“Boring. Boring. And wrong.”
“What?”
“I’ve been on a windship deck when the horseshit hits the hull, and it’s the kulls that assign themselves clear-cut roles that struggle the most. When my tah trains a kull, he trains every member to do everything. Fuck the scrolls. If you think it takes five people to operate a windship, that’s all you’ll ever know how to do.”
Rasia pointed to the slim opening of the canyon and all the sharp and treacherous rocks in between.
“When you can make it out of this canyon, you’re ready. I can talk at you all you want, you can read about it all you want,” Rasia mocked, “but you’re never going to learn until you do it.”
Kai eyed the terrifying distance he would have to overcome. Back at the Grankull, children went to school and learned about windships for years before anyone allowed them to steer one. Figuring out how to steer a windship by himself seemed insurmountable. He felt overwhelmed and in over his head, already resigned to failure.
“Hey, don’t get your shroud in a twist. I’m going to show you how to do it . . . once.”
“What if I can’t?” Kai asked. “What if I crash the ship? What if I can’t figure it out in time?
Rasia inclined an eyebrow so sharply, repugnance hiked across her face. “You know what I hate about you? You don’t believe in yourself. Nico, for all her faults, at least believes in every one of her stupid decisions. You’re never going to be able to steer a windship if you don’t think you can. Now where is that kid from the oasis brave enough to join my kull and take on a dragon? Where is that kid that faced a skinko without hesitation? Where is your hunger, Kai?”
Kai stared wide-eyed at Rasia, trembling at the rawness and sharpness of her words. Rasia thought him brave, but in truth, all the actions she praised him for, he did because he had nothing to lose. But staring out at that great chasm, it felt as if he could lose everything. Because this was finally his chance to be something, to have skills that were valued, to prove to himself he was capable of more than the death and destruction that follows him. But how could he not fail when he had failed at so much already?
Either reading his thoughts or reading his face, Rasia declared, “You will fail, but then you try again. And if you can’t figure it out by the time I heal? We go our separate ways, you survive this Forging, then meet me after it’s all done and try again. You fight for it, and don’t stop fighting till you’re dead. Never give up. Or do you want to be a worthless piece of shit for the rest of your life?”
Kai shook his head.
“Words, Kai. I know you can use them.”
“. . . no?”
“Say. It. Like. You. Fucking. Mean. It.”
Kai blinked at her, unable to force the words from his mouth because he didn’t believe, and he knew Rasia was too perceptive not to hear his lack of conviction. Kai would work hard and put his all into the task, but he didn’t have the courage to imagine himself capable of anything more.
He was Kai. The runt. Worthless.
“I won’t give up,” he said, because that, at least, he could promise. All he had in him to give was day by day, one rock at a time. Kai saw the moment Rasia’s understanding of him shifted, how it wobbled from solid ground to uncertainty. He wasn’t the person she thought he was, and he hated himself for disappointing her.
“Fine,” Rasia yielded. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Rasia shoved Kai toward the stairs of the ship. “I’m hungry. Fix me breakfast.”
“But what about the windship?” Even though they were barely second drum into the morning, Kai felt he needed as much time as possible to learn how to steer the ship. Kai hesitated on the edge of the stairs.
“I can push you down or you can climb down. Take your pick. But one of those options will break your neck and you can kiss this whole windship thing goodbye.”
Kai chose breakfast.
Back at the Grankull, Kai cooked with dried fruit, jams, grains, and salted meat. The Grankull often reserved fresh fruit after the harvest, so Kai found himself pleased by the opportunity to pluck ripe figs from the trees sprawled along the canyon rocks. He searched through the kull supplies for other ingredients he could use and found himself surprised by the sizable stash of items ranging from soaps to oils and twine to liquor. Kai reached for one of the skillets overhead and stumbled over a bag of salt. A sharp clang struck the cave.
Kai picked up the ilhan that had fallen to the ground and paused when he saw the carved symbol under his thumb. He angled the palmwood neck of the instrument toward the firelight and stared at the swooping symbols of Kenji’s name.
Kai imagined the ilhan sitting vertically between Kenji’s legs. Kenji plucked at the goat strings with his forefingers while the remaining fingers curled around the two handposts drilled at the top of the resonating gourd. Kenji played the strings inward, toward his chest, and the melodious music swelled in Kai’s memories.
Kai shook his head, fleeing the memories as quickly as he scurried along the walls of his home. Kai heaved up the ilhan to tip the skillet into his hand, stuffed the instrument back where he found it, and returned to the campfire to begin cooking.
Kai liked cooking. It made him feel useful, and it settled his nerves. Kai cooked a fig porridge using water from the spring and the sacks of millet, which were definitely not part of the Grankull’s initial Forging supplies, that he’d found in Rasia’s windship hatch.
As Kai cooked, he went over everything he knew about windships, every story he’d read and overheard, and every lesson Nico had recounted from school. As he finished, Rasia entered the wide-mouthed entrance of the cave, sweaty from a round of early morning katas.
“I thought you broke a rib.”
“I’m going slow,” Rasia huffed. She took a deep swig of water.
Kai handed breakfast over in one of the calabash bowls he’d found in the kull supplies. Rasia theatrically eased down onto the ground.
“Here’s the schedule,” Rasia said as Kai sat across from her. “First thing in the morning, we’ll put you through light exercises, nothing too extensive like the hunting kull’s regimen, but for this to work, you’ve got to at least be able to run the length of a windship deck. We’ll run through some drills, then I’ll show you how to steer the windship out of the gorge. We’ll break at high noon, and the rest of the day you’re on your own.”
Kai nodded as he aimlessly stirred the spoon in his porridge. Rasia’s gaze narrowed sharply.
“You’re starving.”
“What?” Kai asked, confused by the non sequitur. “Everyone is starving.”
“Not what I meant. When Aurum broke my mast, my ship was so wrecked it left me stranded in the deadlands. When they say that place is dead, they aren’t kidding. There’s nothing to eat. By the time it took me to intercept a kull ship, I had eaten, at the most, a single mouse. When I got back to the Grankull, I was hungry as fuck but could barely keep food down. Without food, your body gets accustomed to going without. That’s why you’re struggling to eat. That’s probably why you’re so rutting sick all the time.”
Kai didn’t feel like talking anymore. He hunched his shoulders and stared blankly. Kai thought he was over it, that it had cooled, but apparently, it had been sitting on him until it could catch flames again.
“Ava-ta didn’t know what was wrong with me, nor do the healers.” The words fell from his mouth, hard and heavy, like burnt and bitter charcoals. “All my life, there has never been an explanation to why I am the way I am, and you suggest the reason I’m so messed up is because I need to eat?”
“Well, yeah,” Rasia said, doubling down. “Obviously, the healers don’t know everything. How would they know what it’s like to starve for a prolonged period of time? They get rations. And maybe you’re right. It’s not that simple. There could be a million different things wrong with you. But I know for certain whatever is wrong, it will never get fixed until you eat.” Rasia slapped her hands on her knees and leaned forward to stab him with her gaze. “When is the last time you’ve actually had an appetite? The last time you’ve eaten a full meal? How many times do you shit?”
Kai leaned away from both the intensity and intimacy of her questions. To be honest, Kai couldn’t remember the last time he ate a full meal, but certainly that couldn’t be the answer to a medical mystery that had stumped the Grankull for years.
“I’m just sick,” Kai insisted.
“And you’re starving. I don’t see why it can’t be both.” Rasia rolled forward from her crouched position to poke a finger into his shoulder. Kai stared at that finger, affronted, but did nothing to stop it. “Operating a windship is about more than figuring out how things work. It requires all your attention and energy. You need to feed your body. You need to take care of it. Scratch everything I said before. As your first official lesson, I demand you eat.”
It was so at odds with his life in the Grankull, where no one cared if he ate little. Kai looked at the insurmountable food in his bowl, and his stomach lurched in violent protest. It was hard to commit yourself to doing something you didn’t think was very important. “I don’t see the point. So what if I don’t eat much? That’s more rations for you, and they’ll last longer.”
“Uh, no, Kai. You don’t eat anything at all. Crumbs isn’t a meal and honestly, I’m shocked you’re still alive. Look, if we are going to be a kull, I need to know you’ve got my back. I need to not constantly be worried you’re going to faint on me . . . oh, like you did yesterday.”
“I’m sick!”
“People are stupid, Kai. They look at you and see what they want to see and automatically assume that’s the problem without seeing the obvious. Take your shirt off, Kai. I bet I can count your ribs.”
Kai hugged his chest defensively. She was wrong. It wasn’t hunger that had hollowed out his body. It was this disease that had no name, that burned his lungs and ate him from the inside out, that had twisted him into something monstrous.
“There’s no point, like you don’t see a point in learning to read. It’s better this way. This way, I’m less of a burden to the Grankull.”
“But it makes you more a burden to me.” Rasia jolted to her feet in her anger. Kai didn’t understand why she was so frustrated and angry on his behalf. “A kull isn’t a place where one person starves for everyone else. When there is food, we eat our bellies full. When there is none, we starve together. That’s what it means to be a kull. If you don’t eat, you’re going to end up dead.”
Rasia paced after her thoughts as though they were shadows on the cave wall, then walked over and sat down so close, her knees touched his. “Teach me how to read, and in exchange, promise me you’ll eat. One pointless task for another.”
That seemed reasonable enough.
“Deal,” Kai agreed.
Rasia shoved the bowl of food into Kai’s chest, like a shroud thrown down in challenge. Kai took a spoonful of the porridge and stared down at that miniscule portion. Suddenly, the chasm he needed to conquer with the windship seemed easier.
This shouldn’t be so hard.
Why was this so hard?
Kai forced a huge chunk into his mouth before he could think more about it. Every swallow was a battle—an exertion of determination, sweat, and a little bit of vomit. Kai hardly thought this task worth so much effort and trouble, but Rasia sat there urging him on.
He gasped at the end, feeling wrung out and exhausted by the time he consumed the last bite. He stared down at the bowl, at this simple task of eating that most people did three times a day and felt ashamed of how arduous it had been. This shouldn’t have been one of the hardest things he’d ever done in his entire life.
Kai curled around himself, feeling ill and taxed of all the strength he had allotted for the windship. He breathed for a while, then opened his eyes when Rasia pressed a cool gourd to his forehead. He didn’t understand why she wanted to be around him after witnessing such a pathetic display.
Rasia pushed at his shoulder.
“Enough lying about. Come on, let’s go. Time for those laps.”
Kai groaned, took a drink of water from the gourd she gave him, and crawled after her. He followed her out into the sun, farther down the canyon path, and out onto the endless stretch of sand and red rocks.
“All right, for this first time, I want to see what you’ve got. Give it your all. Run as far and as fast as you can. It’ll give me a good sense of where we need to start.”
Kai stared down at the endless expanse of Desert and realized he had never run before, at least not until the skinko. Even as a child, he had always been confined to the sidelines under Ava-ta’s protective shadow. In the Grankull, there were too many alleyways and too many animals and people out on the street to break out into a headlong run. You would have to go to the training fields or the school for the space to really gather your wind, and those destinations had always been far from his home, especially if you had no purpose being there.
All these thoughts weighed on him as Rasia began to count down. Then, she shouted: “Go!”
Kai ran and immediately found himself annoyed by the inconvenience of his caftan. It restricted his movements and threatened to tangle up around his legs, and in one particular instance, a gust of wind blew it up too high. Kai caught the billowing cloth, hiking the hem above his thighs to give his legs full range of motion. Kai slid to a stop when he felt the oncoming burn in his chest. He glanced back at the distance he covered and thinks he had made it farther than when he had run away from the skinko.
Kai looked at Rasia, somewhat confident.
Rasia burst into a towering, tumbling laughter. She folded over her knees and grasped at her right side as she crumbled, and then curled over into the sand. She didn’t stop laughing until she was out of breath, and even then, it slowly petered out of her in random chuckles. “That was the worst thing I have ever seen in my entire life!”
She rocked into a sitting position and looked at him. Kai tensed defensively, knowing he had messed up. This was the moment where Rasia would decide to leave him behind.
“Okay . . . where to even begin? First, the wind is working against you with all that flopping around you’re doing. Form, Kai, form. Second, the fuck you stop for? You don’t run until it hurts. You run until you’ve got nothing left. Third, you’re thinking too much. Fourth, go change into some pants, for fuck’s sake.”
Kai blinked at her. “I didn’t bring any.”
“What?”
For Kai’s first Forging, Nico had gone through so much effort to personally tailor an old pair of Ava-ta’s pants for him just for them to be ripped and destroyed by the first kull who had abandoned him. This Forging, he hadn’t even bothered.
Rasia studied his face, her eyes and nose scrunched, and clicked her tongue. “You come out here to die, Kai?”
Kai honestly didn’t know the answer to that.
“A basic pair of pants isn’t that expensive. The only person who comes into the Forging without at least one pair is the person who doesn’t expect to come out of it.”
Rasia stood up and left, leaving Kai to wallow alone in his murky emotions. He wiped at the tears drying sticky on his face, feeling more adrift than he ever had in his entire life. He rubbed at the mild burning in his chest, then flinched as an item hurtled toward him. It hit him at the heart and flopped to the ground. Kai stared at the fallen linen pants.
“Put them on,” Rasia said, exasperated.
Kai quickly picked them up to, if anything, save them from the sandy ground. He clutched the fabric to his chest. He appreciated Rasia’s thoughtfulness, but he had nothing to wear them with. “I didn’t bring a shirt.”
Her eye twitched. She clawed at her back, ripped her shirt over her head, and threw it at his face. He caught it this time before it reached the ground.
The shirt’s absence revealed the dirty bandages wrapped around Rasia’s waist and a frayed wrap, common for females of the hunting kulls, tapered around her breasts. Kai hadn’t seen her shroud since they met. Even after the Forging, most people continued to carry it around, either in the event of a sandstorm or for simple tasks like wiping at sweat, but Rasia had completely discarded it. Or maybe it was that yellowed piece of cloth holding her ribs together.
Rasia flung out her hands impatiently.
He peeped out, “Can you turn around?”
“You are rutting ridiculous. I do know you don’t have a tail or some such shit. I saw that pretty fucking clearly when your robe flew up,” Rasia said, spinning on her heel and huffing.
Kai blushed and turned his back to her back, self-conscious. A part of him wondered what would happen if he disrobed completely in front of her. Would it be like years ago when Rasia snatched off his shroud and spat out, utterly baffled and disappointed, “Where’s your horns? What the fuck?” before proceeding to throw his shroud back at him and stomping off.
Would she finally glimpse the monster she hadn’t seen that day?
His hands trembled as he peeled off the dirty robe; he cringed at the sun-warmth and open air on his skin. He pulled on the shirt first, then the pants over his loincloth, and secured the pants’ leather waistband. Expensive pants were often crafted with gonda leather around the waist and ankles to prevent sand from creeping into unwanted places. Kai had never worn it before, and immediately he understood why everyone claimed gonda leather was more durable, flexible, and cooler than most animal skins. It barely heated in the sun.
“Looking better already,” Rasia said over her shoulder, peeking.
“I can’t wear this. I’ve never worn anything this expensive in my entire life.”
“It’s fine. Kiba-ta bought them for me for the Forging, so these are pretty much new.” Rasia skipped over and didn’t hesitate to adjust the clothes. She tucked the loaned shirt into the pants, then tightened the leather cords of the belt waist. She grumbled under her breath, “You’re so fucking tiny.”
Kai jumped when she drummed her fingers up his rib bones, counting them out loud. Rasia laughed at the reaction, then skipped back and looked him over with an approving nod. “You can keep them.”
“Rasia, I can’t.”
“I still have a good set that the favorite tah secretly gifted me for my birthday a few years ago.” Rasia indicated the obviously well-tended, patched, lengthened, and restitched pants she currently wore. “Also, Ysai-ji has pants he constantly grows out of. The stuff he doesn’t give to our cousins he retailors for me, so I have a lot.”
“Yeah, but how many outfits did you bring for the Forging?” Most kids only brought a set of two outfits to switch out when the other pair got dirty.
“Initially two, but I have another set in my windship. I learned to always bring spares . . . especially since I bleed on everything once a blink.”
Kai couldn’t help but to look down at the pants.
“They’re washed.”
“Okay!”
“Now that we got that out of the way, let’s get back to running and proper form.”
“Wait, Rasia.” Kai clutched the hem of the shirt, the fabric soft and lived-in. “Thank you, for everything, but . . . why? Why the food? Why the pants?”
Why me?
Rasia pursed her lips. “Because I think you and I could form a pretty solid kull . . . once we straighten out the knots and all,” she said as if it should have been obvious. “A kull is more than roles to operate a windship. It’s a family. It’s the people you hunt with, sometimes blinks on end, and while you are utterly pathetic, at least you’re hilariously pathetic. So, you’re tolerable. I’m willing to see what you can do, but it’s impossible to gauge the possibilities if you’re constantly limiting yourself. Eat like you’re fucking worth something. Dress like you’re fucking worth something. Run like you’re fucking worth something. You’ll never fly if you’re clipping your own wings. Understand?”
Kai nodded.
“Words. I’m tired of fucking talking at air.”
“I understand.”
“Good.” Rasia looped an arm around Kai’s shoulder and pulled him close, unflinching and unapologetic. “You may not believe it yet, but one day soon, you and I are going to slay a dragon.”
Kai was feeling that hope thing again.