Lagoonfire, page 9
“Please,” I begged. “Just wait. Wait until you see her garden.”
“Oh Sweeting, that garden… I haven’t seen it in so long. I have to close my eyes to see it.”
“You’ll see it with your eyes open,” I promised—recklessly. What did I have to work with? Ateni’s hidden knot stones, a bag of jade mussels, and some dried slenderweed. With nothing more than those three items and the memories of the retired gods, I would have to conjure a garden I’d never seen.
“The manager was right. This is a terrible night for moon viewing,” Nakona remarked. The last glimmers of twilight were dying away, and no hint of any stars could be seen through the thick layers of cloud. It was still hours before the moon would rise.
“But a good night for the lights of the city,” observed Malirin, and it was true: the coast was spangled with lights that came together in a great ethereal web if you directed your eyes toward the center of the capital.
I went back to the little boat’s helm. It wasn’t lights but darkness I was looking for, a patch of darker darkness, ink strokes against the bruise-colored sky. And there it was, a thin line of silhouetted trees, their magnificent prop roots arching into the water. As we drew near, I heard a rough sound from underneath the boat. The lanterns strung along the boat’s roof revealed the cause: seagrass, thick and undulating, that the boat was passing over.
“Now?” gasped Laloran-morna suddenly, as if wakened from a dream. “Is it time for me to send my waves?” The brief echo of divinity that had seemed to surround him back at the boat rental was gone—he was as weak or weaker than before.
“Not yet—soon.”
“Can you put these pesky things out?” Kadiuk asked, waving a hand at the lanterns.
“There’s still no moon to see—no stars, either,” Nakona said.
Kadiuk snorted. “It’s not the sky I’m interested in.”
A dial allowed me to dim the lanterns; pressing the button in the center turned them off completely.
“Well now I can’t see my hand even if I wave it in front of my face,” Nakona complained.
Kadiuk twisted around and threw something that hit the water with plop. Faint, pale-blue light flashed on the water’s surface.
“Lagoonfire!” said Anin.
“Lagoonfire,” said Kadiuk, satisfaction in his voice. “All right, Sweeting, you can put the lights back on. I wouldn’t want Nakona to poke herself in the eye.”
Laloran-morna said nothing. His eyes were closed and his breathing labored.
“Lolo?” Anin touched his arm.
“It needs to be soon,” Laloran-morna said at last, taking a breath between each word. “Sweeting? Soon? And you’ll free Goblet? I should never…have kept her here.”
His words were a vice closing on my heart. “Very soon,” I said.
I steered the boat to a break in the mangroves. The wind was picking up—another downpour must have been nearing—and the boat rocked.
“Where are we?” Ms. Bama asked in a small voice.
“This isn’t Cup of the Sea,” said Kadiuk.
“But it will be,” I said. “Everyone, stay on board. And try to remember everything you can about Lotus Estuary—Cup of the Sea.”
I jumped from the boat as far onto shore as I could and managed to hit firm ground. First things first: I wanted to find the knot stones Ateni had hidden here. He had said they were heavy, and he would have been coming from the other side of the spit—the Daybreak Ventures side. But he also wouldn’t have wanted them to be easily visible… I hopped from prop root to prop root in the dim no-light of the overcast night, growing gradually more desperate. How big a thing was I looking for? What if I couldn’t find them? Could I conjure ancient Cup of the Sea without them?
Next leap I stumbled, fell into the mud. Where I broke the water it glowed, and in that glow, I saw a smooth, rounded shape with a hole carved into it near the top, a space through which ropes could pass… This was one of one of Ateni’s knot stones. How had he ever wrestled this thing into a moto-canoe? It was half-sunk in the mud and still reached to my knee. I ran my hand over the top, by the hole. Yes, these indentations, surely if seen in daylight they would form a Laloran-morna knot. No, a Goblet knot. Did she know? Did she mind that her devotees’ custom had been taken over by newcomers? Did Laloran-morna feel sorry for that? Had he ever thought that the increase in his own worshipers might have been at the expense of his beloved? He blamed himself for tethering her to this world, but was he in part responsible for her fading in the first place?
I couldn’t think about that now. I fumbled in my bag, pushed aside the jade mussels and the packet of slenderweed until my fingers found a bead of divine resin. My hand closed in a fist around it. I spoke the names of the Sweet Harbor gods—not just Malirin, Laloran-morna, Anin, Nakona, and Kadiuk, but the ones who had already passed away, and then, as the bead grew warm in my hand, the names of the Abstractions most relevant for this decommissioning: Memory, Justice, Devotion, Love, Duty, History, Divinity. Just as the bead began to smoke, I placed it on the knot stone. Then I shook a couple of jade mussels out onto the stone, ripped open the package of dried slenderweed, pulled out a few brittle strands, and placed them underneath the jade mussels so they wouldn’t blow away.
Now to find the other two knot stones. Surely Ateni wouldn’t have wasted time and effort trying to hide them at a distance, I thought to myself, but it was so dark!
“Goddess—Goblet. I could use your help,” I whispered.
Nothing.
Fortunately, I stumbled across the other two after not too much longer, repeated the process, and tripped and stumbled my way back to the boat.
“Ms. Sweeting—is that you?” called Ms. Bama.
“Yes—it’s time to disembark.”
Remarkably, Nakona and Kadiuk had no problem jumping over the soft mud, just as I had. Ms. Bama I had had no doubts would manage it. But Malirin and Anin were carrying Laloran-morna and had to step right into its grasp. Down they sank—but Kaduik and I grabbed Malirin’s free arm, and Ms. Bama and Nakona grabbed Anin’s, and soon all of us were standing on more or less firm ground.
No one spoke, but it wasn’t quiet. A shimmer of insect song hung in the air, and tree frogs chirping and whistling to one another like birds. And quite near, the familiar whine of mosquitoes.
I had two more divine resin beads in my hands, and as I murmured the Sweet Harbor gods’ names, they grew hot, and when smoke was rising from them, I put them on the ground several paces away from us, then repeated the process until we were standing in a bounded, sanctified space. I placed the remaining jade mussels and slenderweed on the edge of the space closest to the direction in which the knot stones lay.
“This is the Cup of the Sea,” I intoned. “Jade mussels and slenderweed are burgeoning on the ropes secured to the great stones. Crabs flourish among the mangroves, and clams sleep in the silt.”
The heavy scent of the divine resin hung in the humid air.
“The tide is coming in; it’s nearly high,” I continued. “Grandfather, call your warm waves now. Fill the cup with lagoonfire, so all the little creatures can feast.”
Laloran-morna, who had been clinging so tenuously to consciousness, stood up. Seawater shimmered on his skin and vanished, shimmered and vanished, glowing eerie blue—lagoonfire. Waves broke on the shore, broke closer. Water streamed in under our feet, then over our feet.
In the distance there was a hum and a rhythmic chug, familiar somehow.
“Kadiuk-grandfather,” I said, “Tell us what we see.”
The hum and chug grew louder.
“Not many gardeners are working now,” Kadiuk said, voice dreamy. “They’ll wait for low tide. Just children splashing in the shallows and budding young men, practicing swimming into the current. At night they’ll dive under, seek lagoonfire blessing on their manhood. Slenderweed is drying on lines strung in the trees. There’s a pile of seagrass hay, and three men are tying it into bundles, getting ready to build a new house. A woman’s singing…”
It was coming into being, ancient thousand-year-old daylight, waters glinting in the sun, whoops and laughter from the children. The gusts of wind, the sudden shower of rain in our own reality didn’t disturb the vision, even as our clothes soaked through, even as the waves Laloran-morna summoned brought water to our knees.
Then in our own reality, the hum and chug I’d been dimly aware of abruptly stopped.
“Thirty-Seven, in the name of all that’s holy, what do you think you’re doing? Are you attempting a redeification of Laloran-morna?”
Another Fairest Moonlight electraboat had pulled in alongside ours. On it were Five and Tailin. Everyone turned when Five spoke, and the vision of Cup of the Sea melted away. The two disembarked, stepping directly into the gulping mud. Nakona and Ms. Bama pulled first one, then the other free. Five strode up to within a hair’s breadth of my face—we stood nose to nose.
“What is this insanity?” she demanded.
“I’m going to decommission Laloran-morna’s lover, the way I promised I would,” I said doggedly.
“This doesn’t look like a decommissioning,” Five retorted, arm extended, offering in evidence Laloran-morna, standing unaided but trancelike, an otherworldly glow around him that pulsed with each bloom and lifting of seawater from his skin. “Tailin told me Laloran-morna was on death’s door—this man is not on death’s door. This man doesn’t seem mortal at all.”
“This—this is how he is,” I stuttered. “You remember the problems with his decommissioning—how I didn’t quite—how there were aftereffects.”
“Yes, the seawater when his emotions run high. But this isn’t that—is it. He’s summoning waves. Mortals don’t summon waves.”
The light around Laloran-morna was dimming, the trance lifting. I thought of how weak he’d been on the boat. He might not survive another descent from whatever this state was.
“Yes, but you have to believe me: I’m not recommissioning him, and his calling the waves—it’s necessary for decommissioning this other goddess. The waves are how she finds him—maybe how she finds herself. She was a tutelary goddess of Cup of…of Lotus Estuary, but the estuary’s gone now, so we’re creating it here. If you try to stop us, then Laloran-morna’s just going to die, and the goddess is going to be left behind. We’ll have no way of reaching her or decommissioning her.
“The goddess you thought might be making trouble for Daybreak Ventures,” said Five slowly.
“That’s right.” I wasn’t about to let on that Laloran-morna was likely the culprit after all—not if Five herself hadn’t reached that conclusion, seeing waves rise and vanish from his body.
“Ms. Sweeting!” Ms. Bama’s voice shook. “The holy one…” She was struggling to support Laloran-morna, who was slumped against her.
“Go to him. Help him,” Five ordered. “Thirty-Three and I will reestablish—what’s the name again?”
“Lotus Estuary,” I repeated. And to Tailin, “There’s slenderweed and jade mussels at each of the bounding points. All the Sweet Harbor gods remember the place, but Kadiuk in particular.” Tailin set about reinforcing the sacred space while Five enjoined the Sweet Harbor gods to envision the estuary.
I knelt in the water, and between us, Ms. Bama and I carefully lowered Laloran-morna into my receiving lap. I put a hand on his chest but couldn’t feel a rise or fall.
“Don’t leave now,” I begged.
It was so dark. The lights from the electraboats had disappeared, lost in the vision of Cup of the Sea the retired gods were summoning, guided by Five and Tailin: this time the estuary at night, its waters glowing where they lapped the shore and whenever a fish broke the surface.
“Please open your eyes,” I pleaded. “The Cup of the Sea—the Goblet—is brimming with lagoonfire. Don’t you want to see her? Don’t you have something to tell her?”
“I’m too tired, Sweeting. You’ll have tell her. You know what I want to say.” His lips weren’t moving; he was speaking as gods often do, mind to mind, heart to heart.
Then we heard a new voice, speaking in the same manner.
“What games you play, Lagoonfire, sending me these fruitful waves, and then, when I awake and come to you, you’re in the arms of a rival. And isn’t it the very one who thrust you into mortality?”
Goblet rose from the water—she was the water, and the silt below the water—in the form of a woman, dark and beautiful, naked save for garlands of jade mussels about her neck and girdling her waist. Pale ripples of light swept over her skin and receded like breaking waves.
“I needed her,” Laloran-morna replied. “I couldn’t come to you by myself—I have no strength, no breath. My time in mortality is ending.”
He still lay inert, his head resting in the crook of my neck, but a vision-figure of him in the prime of life rose up, dressed not in the cloak and wrap I remembered from childhood representations, but in a pandanus-leaf skirt—the ancient clothing of the islanders of the Coral Archipelagos. He went to Goblet, who smiled in welcome, and made to gather her hands in his, but the vision-figure had no substance and couldn’t grasp them. Goblet’s smile faded.
“And so you’ll close your eyes and sleep, and never wake again?” she cried. “No, no. Come back into immortality, and let’s go share stories and other things, the way we always have. You were foolish ever to leave.”
“I can’t, dearest love. My divinity was falling away even before Sweeting put the mortal verdict on me. There’s nothing for me to go back to—no prayers, no offerings, no fear, no awe.”
“This is why I tried to keep you,” Goblet said, pain in her voice. “Why didn’t I succeed? How did it come to pass that I should be weaker than a creature like her, as insubstantial as morning dew?”
“You tried to keep me? No, love: I tried to keep you—to my shame. But I was lonely. That’s my excuse. I couldn’t bear to see you go.”
“Why do you say that, when I’m always here? Look!” She spread her arms, and light shimmered in the water of the vision-estuary, an inverse shadow. “Is it not so?”
“Not so,” echoed Laloran-morna, the words heavy. “The waters, yes, the shore…but not the garden, not the people, not the you whom I could talk to, the way we’re talking now. The you whom I could—”
The force of Laloran-morna’s desire rushed through me, and for a moment I saw Goblet the way he did—her lips, her skin, each inward bend, each outward curve. Ms. Bama gasped. I think she felt it too. I suspect we all did.
Goblet’s gaze grew distant.
“You’re right,” she said, after a moment. “The people have all gone to sleep. They, and their children, and their children’s children, and on and on.” She met Laloran-morna’s eyes. “How is it that I haven’t known this?” A pause. “Have I been asleep, Lagoonfire? We meet, we laugh, I breathe in your stories and you mine…and then what, lover? I have no memory.”
“I prayed to you,” Laloran-morna said. “I set out dried fingerlings for you and poured palm wine into your waters. I sang the songs your people used to sing of you, and doing that, I kept you from leaving me entirely. But you only ever come to me in lagoonfire season. You only awaken when I send these potent waves to you.”
Goblet frowned, and a gust of wind moved over the face of the vision-estuary—and also set the leaves of the mangroves outside the sacred space rustling.
“How’s that happening?” I heard Tailin ask. “She’s not connected with the weather, and neither is Laloran-morna.”
“One time only I awoke without those waves,” Goblet recalled. “It was because I felt life rushing from me. That was you, lover. You were leaving me—following her. I tried to hold you, but I couldn’t. So I bade my waters to stay with you and to lead you back to me. I couldn’t leave you wholly mortal.”
So it wasn’t my faulty decommissioning that had caused Laloran-morna’s irregularities. That had been Goblet’s doing: she had endowed Laloran-morna with some portion of the godhead he had preserved in her—right as I was trying to separate him from it. I ought to have felt vindicated, but instead I felt bereft.
The god of warm waves and the estuary goddess stared at each other, twin expressions on their faces.
“I asked her to bring me here because I couldn’t come on my own,” Laloran-morna repeated, “but also because she can do for you as she did for me—save you from being trapped as a wraith with a forgotten name, after I’m gone.”
Goblet turned her head sharply, a gesture of refusal, and the garlands of green-tipped shells about her neck clacked together.
“Accept frailty, illness, and pain—why would you offer this?”
Laloran-morna looked crestfallen. “Those parts are drawbacks, yes, but there’s more to it than that. Much more.” He looked to the other Sweet Harbor gods for support.
“The mortals have diverting games of strategy you can play to pass the time,” Anin said.
“And they crush fruits to make extraordinary drinks,” said Nakona. “Experiencing juice as a mortal is different from receiving a libation. Much more, mmm, sensual.”
“The little ones are fun to watch. It’s not like how we used to watch them—it’s like watching from the inside,” said Kadiuk.
Goblet’s eyes widened when he spoke. “Kadiuk—little crab, I remember you.”
“I remember you too, Cup of the Sea,” Kadiuk replied, smiling, then dropping his gaze, shy as a child.
“And you make friends with them,” put in Laloran-morna. “That’s also different, once you’re mortal yourself.” His spirit-form gazed back at me and Ms. Bama. This was possibly a mistake, as Goblet crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.
“I am the Cup of the Sea.” she declared. “If this must fade”—she indicated the form she had adopted—“still I survive.” Then, coaxingly, “come join me. Be the waters with me, the silt, the rocks.”
“Ah, dear love,” Laloran-morna said, each word sorrow laden, “no. It’s gone. Cup of the Sea is gone.” He turned to me for confirmation.
I swallowed, nodded. “He’s right. There is no estuary now. The river’s been diverted and the delta land drained and filled.”
