“Name the parts of a windship.”
“Huh?” Kai asked, confused as to how the interviewer’s request related to his Forging story. He had been careful in choosing his words, and he hoped that the plot holes paved over for Nico’s decisions hadn’t been discovered. The interviewer, the council member elected from the belly of market street, gave no hint of expression or emotion.
Despite the non sequitur, Kai attempted to answer.
“The hull, the ropes, the . . .” he paused, frowning, and tried to remember. Rasia never really taught him the name of things. He said slowly, unsure, “the black hook thingy?”
“Do you think me a fool to believe a story so preposterous?” the interviewer asked. “If you can’t name the parts of a windship, how am I to believe you can steer one? Not only that, but to steer one so well as to evade a dragon?”
Kai’s stomach dropped. This wasn’t about jih’s story. This was about his story.
“I knew something didn’t add up right while reading Nicolai’s interview. You’re not capable of killing a dragon. You couldn’t have been truly there, and you all are telling one big lie to cover it up because your jih believes she can cheat the system. She’s so like her parents—foolishly believing themselves higher than the power of the Elder. For your jih to blatantly lie, and involve so many others in that lie, so that the Grankull’s greatest shame can become one of us? I will not have it. Now, tell me the truth.”
“It is the truth,” Kai insisted. “I hunted a dragon with Rasia. I steered the windship.”
The interviewer picked up their cup of tea and sipped at it, waiting. The scritch-scratch of the scribe recording the interview in the corner of the room had stopped.
Kai gritted his teeth as all his hopes and dreams slipped through his fingers. When he finally gained control over his magic, he had promised himself he wouldn’t be defined by it, but he bit out a story the Councilor could more readily believe, betraying himself so easily, “I used my magic to help steer the windship.”
“You mean the magic the Council has tried to get out of you for the past five years? How convenient. Where is this magic now? Show me then.”
Worry gnawed at Kai’s stomach. He hadn’t attempted any magic since returning to the Grankull. He hadn’t had the need to. He inhaled and focused on channeling his willpower, but the interviewer scowled at him as if his existence deeply offended her, and he found it difficult to concentrate. They had scowled like that too when the Council had him pinned to the floor and whipped him bloody. Phantom fire burned up his back, and his flesh cracked in his ears.
Panic and anxiety choked him as he willed the bone curtains to shake, sand to sweep from the floor, the tea to spill hot over the interviewer’s lap, something.
“Do you think this a joke? You can’t fool me. I know how your magic works.”
“You don’t!”
Kai’s neck snapped at the force of the teacup slamming across his face. He scrambled to wipe away the worst of the burning tea, and his hands scalded. His shroud had shielded him from a permanent facial injury. Even the scribe had jumped, but had done nothing to help.
“You will watch your tone,” the Councilor snapped. “You are only alive by the grace of the Council. You owe every moment of your wretched life to us. Now, tell me the truth or everyone involved in this lie will go down with you. No one will show their face tonight. Not even your jih.”
Kai squeezed his eyes shut, shaking. He should have known. He should have tempered his expectations, battered back his hopes, stuffed his dreams deep down never to see the light of day. Maybe then he wouldn’t have to feel the pain of everything crumbling around him. Because how could he possibly ruin the lives of so many kids for the truth? If they stripped Nico of her face, how would he and jih survive the coming year without rations for them both? It was a death sentence.
“If I—If I tell the truth, then Nico-ji and Rasia and the others won’t get in trouble for lying?” he asked, needing to confirm.
The Councilor’s eyes drilled into his chest. “If you tell the truth.”
Kai thought of Rasia—about her certainty if you fought for something hard enough, wanted it badly enough, that you had the power to make it come true. How in Rasia’s world, life boiled down to grit and determination and not birth and circumstances.
Life wasn’t fair. And it wasn’t fair to Kai most of all.
He straightened and studied this face who despised him, who had already made up their mind about his story before he ever walked into the room. No amount of magic, or words, or grit and fucking determination would ever change their mind.
“You’re right. I never managed to leave the oasis. I never joined Rasia at all . . .” Kai gave them the story that they wanted to hear—the story where he would only ever be the runt of the Grankull.
The world fogged at the edges of Kai’s periphery as he fought to place one foot in front of the other. Like moving through water. Like drowning. It was only a matter of time before his strength failed him. His surroundings flickered and shifted, and a jolt shot through his left foot when he hit the familiar step in front of his home.
“Watch out, tah! The dragon is coming!”
Rae roared. Soft and chubby hands imitated claws. The budchild jumped off the serving table, flying. Booming laughter and eyes crinkled at the corners tucked shoulders under Rae and gave the child wings. Rae glided through the air on Kenji’s back.
An ugly poison of jealousy slithered up Kai’s veins, then bitter fear, then hot fury, then all of it over again, in a never-ending spiral that reeled Kai dizzy in a torrent of his own emotions. All his life, he had been a shadow watching, existing on the edges, tiptoeing boundaries, and never daring to cross the line. It felt an eternity standing in that doorway, watching Kenji and jih play.
It was Nico, coming through with a basket of freshly plucked clothes, who noticed him.
“Kai? You didn’t . . .” she paused, then glanced at her tah rolling on the floor, sailing a toy windship away from Rae’s stomping feet. Kenji looked up at Nico’s entry. Rae hopped atop the ship, shouting in glee, made all the louder in the sudden quiet of the room. Rae clutched the reclaimed windship to their chest, eyes wide, shriveling in uncertainty at the sudden tension. Nico asked, “How was your interview?”
Kai opened his mouth to respond, but the only air he could force from his lips was a creaking dying gasp.
Kenji said, jaw locked and eyes intense. “I heard you killed a dragon.”
This was it. This was supposed to be the moment Kai had waited his entire life for—the moment when he could finally face Kenji and not feel like a fucking disappointment. Blood pounded in his head. He feared if he moved, he’d faint.
Nico glanced between Kai and her tah, understanding the momentousness of the occasion but unable to fully comprehend Kai’s non-response.
“Here,” she said, approaching Kai and throwing an arm around his shoulder. “Rasia delivered a pair of pants for you earlier this morning. I’ve put them on your bed. How about we make sure they fit for the ceremony?”
Nico got him out of there. She took him all the way to his room where the new pants Rasia had commissioned for him lay on his bed. His first pair of pants tailored specifically for him.
Kai’s world had just imploded, the ground itself come undone, and it was unfair that for everyone else, the rupture of his being was barely a vibration underfoot. He wished to force sound from his throat and give the destruction voice. He waited for the eruption of sobs, or downpour of tears, but it all sat on his chest and strangled his lungs. In the end, his world shattered in silence.
“Kai?” Nico’s voice floated around his ears. He blacked out, he thought, for he didn’t remember her coming to stand in front of him. She shook him about the shoulders. He wondered if she could see all the anger and all the fury unable to heat hot enough to boil showing on his face. She saw something, for she grew more and more concerned. “Kai, what’s wrong? What happened?”
He didn’t want her to worry. He didn’t want to ruin her world too. So, he forced himself to face her. He forced all the destruction, all the upended tectonic plates, all the dust and debris back down into the far reaches of his being. He gave her a blank slate.
“It’s nothing.”
Nico jolted back. “This isn’t nothing.”
He licked his lips and lingered over the sour taste of the lie falling out of them. “I’ve been thinking about Ava-ta.”
The worry smoothed from her face and she softened. “Me too. She would have wanted to be here today. She’s proud of you. I know it.”
Jih didn’t know a thing.
“There are still a few drums until the Naming Ceremony. Get some rest. I’m sure you didn’t get much last night, considering you didn’t come home,” she said, trying to lighten the air. She squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll scold you about that later, but for right now, try on those pants.”
He forced a nod, and Nico left him to the silence of his cacophonous thoughts.
He sat alone in his room. The emotions deflated out of him, and in that moment, he didn’t feel much, other than exhaustion. He was so tired of beating himself against obstacles and never gaining a vibration. He felt ragged and worn and heavy. He had pains in his bones that ached, and wounds in his lungs that bled. He didn’t know if he had the strength for tomorrow much less another year. Would his life always be adversity and closed doors and an uphill battle? Is the top of this impossible mountain even worth it?
Oddly enough, he had been here before. He had asked these questions of himself before. This wasn’t the first time Kai’s world had been completely torn asunder, and ironically this ravaged state of being felt far safer than the hopefulness that twisted him up since his return from the Forging.
This despair almost felt . . . comfortable and familiar the longer he stewed in it. He laughed hollowly as he dragged the pants into his hands. Then he tore them. Because it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore.