Chapter VII

  The Boy in Black

  Vito watched as Thing paddled with its massive hand, contributing the lion’s share of effort towards their escape from the city’s guards. He noted that the spirit could likely have sped up their journey across the Westward Strait significantly, had it wished.

  The boy in black smoothed his clothes out, sitting up in the rowboat.

  “Okay, alright. Cool. Cool. Thing the friendly spirit. And you?”

  It took Vito an awkward second to realize that the boy was asking his name.

  “I’m Vito.” He put his hand out before realizing that a person in such nice clothing, with buttons inlaid with little green dragons, was probably a noble, and might take offense to him suggesting that they should greet one another as equals. He had only begun to pull his hand away before the boy caught it and brought it back, saying, as though addressing his hand,

  “Where’re ya going? I’m Cor.” They shook hands, and Cor smiled a big, wide smile with his eyes closed. Vito didn’t know anyone really smiled like that.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know if I was supposed to do that,” Vito explained.

  Cor shook his head. “For the man who saved me, you can shake my hand any time you like!”

  No one had ever called Vito “man” before, only “young man” or “boy”, and he didn’t know how to respond. Cor didn’t look that much older than he, which made it all the more unusual to him. Vito suddenly realized that both his hands were empty, and looked around for what he’d done with his oar. Amazingly, he saw that Thing had taken it, and was rowing them away all by itself using its massive hand, wielding it like a spoon. Vito raised an eyebrow: it was clear that Thing’s hand was far more effective. Still, the spirit used the oar, with a blank, passive sort of content expression on its face. It seemed the spirit had forgotten to be outraged.

  Vito cast his gaze aft of the boat, and saw that under Thing’s stamina, the city was shrinking behind them. Ahead of them, the silhouettes of the great bones began to appear against the afternoon sun.

  Cor also saw the bones, and bobbed his head apprehensively.

  “Great Whale Grave, huh?… You guys bone collectors or something?”

  Vito shook his head, but didn’t immediately reply, trying to think of a way to quickly and effectively explain why they were here, and everything that had happened to bring a spirit and a boy together on a rowboat bound for a beach of bones.

  “No. So… you see… I was almost killed by a spirit—”

  “Who was pretending to be me!” added Thing, with a swish of its hair.

  “—But this spirit, Thing, saved me. But, its memories, you see… someone… someone stole them, maybe…”

  He was struggling to explain how it had all happened.

  Thing interjected once again, “he agreed to help me get them back ‘cause we’re friends, so we’re gonna talk to the Ashi’man to figure out what they’re up to!”

  Vito translated: “whatever happened, Thing lost its memories and I agreed to help it get them back, so we’re going to speak with the Ashi’man to see if they can help us.”

  Cor was silent a moment. “Okay,” he concluded with a shrug.

  Vito was surprised at his nonchalance, given the situation he had just been presented with.

  “Can you understand what that thing is saying?” Cor asked.

  Vito nodded, “Yeah.”

  “Wow, that’s incredible,” Cor said, in a conversational tone.

  It wasn’t quite the response Vito had anticipated. He was certain that if most people heard that the person next to them could actually talk to spirits, they’d freak out and likely give a far more significant reaction than a bemused, “wow”. Vito, however, curbed his expectations before he said something he’d regret. He might be letting his ego get to him, he reasoned, expecting others to be impressed by his talent. Instead of asking Cor why he wasn’t more fazed, he decided to ask a more useful question.

  “Are you okay Cor? What was going on back there?”

  Cor blew a long breath from his mouth.

  “It was… insanity. Basically, my brother, the king, is trying to marry me off to some woman I’ve never met before— halfway across the world. He didn’t ask me for my consent, and he wouldn’t even tell me exactly where I was going. I mean have you ever heard of anyone doing anything like that in your whole life?”

  Vito had actually heard of many, many historical arranged marriages amongst the upper class, which from Cor’s clothing, he appeared to be part of. Mr. Quaglione had taught him that nobles often arranged marriages for other members of their family without consulting them first. He had been told that marriages amongst royalty were usually made to promote alliances, not for love.

  “That’s terrible… was it in order to ally your family with another?” he asked.

  Cor looked confused.

  “What? I have no idea why. I’ve never heard of anyone arranging a marriage like this.”

  Vito blinked. “But I thought it was common for royals to have arranged marriages?”

  Cor scoffed, “yeah, maybe like three hundred years ago. I mean an arranged marriage, sure, that happens, but to tell me about it the day before, to someone I’ve never met? That’s insane!”

  Vito considered that the information he had received about noble marriages might be outdated.

  Cor put his hands together in a plea.

  “Please, they’re gonna send me all the way to Alakon, don’t let them find me!”

  Vito was struck by the sincerity in the boy’s voice, and answered immediately: “Of course! You can come with us. Do you want something to eat? Are you hurt?”

  Cor looked himself over, and began unbuttoning his coat.

  “No, I’m not hurt, but I am a little hungry if you have anything to share.”

  Vito nodded, “Thing?”

  Thing put one of the oars down briefly, reaching into the ring and drawing out a ration of salted meat.

  “On it,” it said, handing Vito the meat, who, in turn, handed it to Cor.

  “Thanks a million— oh this is great, I love this kind of food!” he said. He proved his point at once by scarfing down the jerky, which surprised Vito, since he had always imagined a noble disdaining such a simple meal.

  Vito had a look at Cor as he handed him a few slices of cheese to go with his jerky. After all, he still looked hungry.

  “Thanks!” he said.

  He was perhaps a year or two older than Vito, but he looked much more developed, more mature. He wore his hair neatly combed so that it fell all to one side, with a gold headband tied at the back with two diamond-shaped tails. He wore snakeskin shoes with points at the end, and his pants were white canvas, so smooth and fine, that Vito felt the urge to touch them, just to see if they measured up to their looks. He did not do this, of course.

  When Cor had undone all of the silver buttons inlaid with the green dragons, he opened his long coat, but instead of working each of his arms out of it, as Vito did whenever he removed a jacket or a shirt that buttoned at the front, Cor whipped it off himself, removing it in one swoop. In the same motion he cast it across his right shoulder, remaking it into a dramatic cape, like what Vito imagined an adventurer or mercenary might wear. Underneath, he wore a shirt made of a material that Vito had no name for. It shone like metal, and had intricate patterns which seemed neither stitched nor patched in. It was black just like his coat, decorated with beautiful geometric designs and cervid animals grazing on flowers rendered so magnificently that their petals resembled gemstones. The shirt was thin-strapped, and revealed Cor’s arms, as well as a necklace wrought of silver.

  The pendant that hung against his collar bore the likeness of a single-fanged dragon, which Vito recognized marked him as a follower of the Dragon Gods, a pantheon of various Man’a and Ashi’man associated with power and ambition. On each of his biceps was wound a golden band, and when he bent his arm Vito could see why they were there. The bands were flexible, and Cor’s muscles made them expand and warp, drawing his eye to them. Cor’s shirt was tight and thin around his body, and Vito was struck by his general physique.

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  Vito had never seen anyone on his island who looked like this. There were muscular people on Bangye-Rua, but they were huge, bulky, and imposing. They were covered with scars from hard days in the field wrangling crops, beasts, and the elements. Cor had none of these markers of hard work. He had no scars at all. He was lean, angular, and his skin was as smooth as his shirt.

  Vito had never seen a person with no scars before. Not everyone had copious scars on Bangye-Rua, but everyone back home had at least one, from where you’d tripped on a tool, failed to listen to your father or mother around aggressive livestock, cut your hand on a fish hook, or some other equally mundane misadventure. Even Vito, who was a self-confessed bookworm, had a scar over his left eye and on his collar from his father, and one on his leg from where a ram had gored him. It was almost eerie to see that Cor had none. It was as if he had no history, like nothing had ever happened to him in his whole life. If the skin was a history, then this tome was blank.

  Cor’s skin was a little darker than the people of Bangye-Rua, but much lighter than Vito’s own. This was the common shade of the people of Remex, he knew. Cor had dark brown hair which was perfectly styled, and light brown eyes the color of cinnamon.

  When he’d finished his cheese, Vito asked him:

  “Are you still hungry?”

  Cor shook his head.

  “I am a bit thirsty, if you have anything to spare.”

  Thing stretched his arm past Vito, handing Cor a canteen. He drank only a little, then gave it back to Thing.

  “So you guys are really going to see the Ashi’man? That sounds like an adventure.”

  “It could be dangerous,” Vito warned.

  Cor looked off into the distance, his eyes level with the horizon. With the sun glinting off his shirt and his eyes, he looked like a statue of some mythological hero.

  “I understand. I’d like to go anyway. I can handle it.”

  Vito was struck by his confidence.

  “Okay,” he said. Cor laughed.

  “Meeting the most powerful spirits in the world certainly beats sitting in some classroom, am I right?”

  Vito certainly did not agree. He wasn’t going to say anything, but Cor seemed like he wanted an answer. When Vito was silent for a moment too long, Cor reached over and patted him on the side. His touch felt forceful to Vito, but he supposed that, for Cor and his muscular arms, it was probably light.

  “Education is really… important,” Vito said at last. He didn’t look directly at Cor when he said it, since he didn’t want him to think that he wished to confront him on the issue.

  Cor laughed again, and shrugged, a grin on his face. His smile was asymmetrical, the right side higher than the left.

  “Now is that you talking, or your pops?”

  Thing snorted.

  Vito didn’t smile. His brow hardened.

  Cor could see that Vito had been made upset.

  “Oh hey, sorry man, I was just kidding around. It’s cool that you like school.”

  Vito didn’t say anything. Cor tried again.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you, I mean you saved me!”

  The boy had a winning smile, and Vito felt himself swayed to forgive him just by it alone.

  “Yeah. It’s fine,” he said. Vito didn’t want Cor to ask him why he had been upset, or to bring up education again, so he asked him a question before he had the chance.

  “Why do you want to see the Ashi’man? You must be brave, at least.”

  Vito had said that Cor was brave for two reasons. The first: he wanted to amend the atmosphere on the boat from the tension that he had created. The second: he believed it to be true.

  Cor put his hands out, upturned to the side for a moment, to indicate that he felt it was a good question.

  “Well, I can’t say that I have any special interest in the spirits, but this is quite the adventure! Mystery, magic, the gods themselves…” He leaned his arm over the side, letting his finger glide along the top of the water. “I’ll tell you what, I’m glad I’m here and not back there— at home, the best adventure you can hope for is the Battle against Ennui. Ennui? I probably shouldn’t use words I don’t know the meaning of.” He smiled, and blew a breath out of his nose.

  “Trapped. That’s the word,” he said. He seemed to consider something for a second. “Yes, I think I’m going to tell you this.” He turned away from the water and back to Vito, stretching his arms out and talking with his hands, “It was more than that… ‘trapped’. When I rode my horse in the street, and somebody dropped something, I could bring the horse to a stop before it’d step on it. When I fenced against my master, I knew every strategy he’d use. That’s not to say I always won, but I knew what I had to do. Sometimes I wasn’t fast enough, or strong enough, but I always understood my mistake. When I was with my tutor, I could anticipate exam questions— not because I knew everything,” he rolled his eyes, “the Dragons know I can’t finish a book, but I understood how the tutor thought. I knew what he’d ask, how he’d ask it, and how he’d format the correct answer from amongst the choices.”

  Cor threw his hands up, “to be honest, I thought this marriage would be the final nail in the coffin there. My life’d be a sure thing till the day I died.”

  He looked into Vito’s eyes with intensity.

  “I want the world to confuse me again.”

  Cor put his hand out, gesturing to Vito.

  “What about you guys? I know you’re here to investigate, but are you gonna try to bargain with them, maybe try to get them to grant a wish?”

  “I’m gonna tell them to get a life and stop being so jealous!” Thing replied at once.

  Vito translated what Thing had said for Cor. He then explained Thing’s theory to him, that the Ashi’man had, in their jealousy for Thing’s fame and power, taken its memories out of spite.

  Cor cast a suspicious eye Thing’s way, and looked like he was about to offer a rebuttal, but Vito prevented him by motioning for him to stop. Cor did so, and moved on, only raising an eyebrow briefly at the situation.

  “How about you, Vito? You’ve got your asks ready?” said Cor.

  Vito nodded vigorously.

  “I do! I’ve been wondering why spirits can understand humans but not speak to them, and the nature of the spirits as they are! Where do the spirits come from? Who gave them their power? Are the divisions between the Man’a and the Ashi’man actually real?” Cor’s eyes began to wander and glaze over, which Vito found a little disappointing, seeing as he had listened attentively to his own story. A little less enthused, he added, “They might even know about the Dance of Death.”

  At this, Cor’s attention was renewed.

  “The Dance of Death? Ya know, my brother got into that… He’s mastered the Dance of Death. That’s what he said. What is it?”

  Vito heard this as an opportunity, a suggestion that he should go and speak with Cor’s brother if he wanted to learn more, and felt his heart skip a beat. However, he had to reign in his excitement, since he still needed to clarify which Dance of Death Cor meant:

  “Do you mean the festival, or the other one?” he asked.

  Cor looked confused. “There’s a festival?”

  Vito couldn’t believe his luck in getting this lead, “can we talk to him?”

  “I don’t think so. If I go back there now, my brother will just try to ship me to Alakon again.”

  “Maybe we could get you a disguise…” Vito posed, dedicated to finding a way to allow the meeting to happen.

  Cor moved his head back, then forth.

  “Sounds risky. What makes you want to talk with him about the Dance of Death so much anyway? Is it powerful?” he asked, somewhat mournfully.

  Vito was only too happy to have been asked this question, “Well, I just don’t know. I’ve been trying to learn about the Dance of Death, but I think that somebody is trying to cover up the facts… There’s a holiday with the same name in my hometown, which no one under nineteen is allowed to go to or know anything about. Also, I’m pretty sure that my school’s history book has had most of the information about it edited out. For some reason, no one wants me to learn more, so I just have to!”

  “Hmm…” said Cor.

  Vito could tell that his words had not sparked interest in the topic.

  “Don’t you think they might be keeping that stuff away from you for a reason? It might be for your own good,” said Cor.

  “Do you know about it?” Vito asked.

  “No, but my brother said it wasn’t for me.”

  Vito related to this experience, since he had received a similar response from his mother. This seemed to be the general attitude of those who knew about the Dance of Death towards those who did not. Vito disagreed with Cor’s analysis that he was being protected by being left ignorant of what it was.

  “If it is dangerous, then I’m better off being aware of it. That way, I’ll know how to avoid it. If I don’t know, I might do it by mistake, or come into contact with it totally unprepared to defend myself.” Vito thought that it was a good point, and he could tell by how Cor bowed his head, that he thought so too.

  “You make a good point,” he said, “maybe you should learn about it then.”

  Vito clapped his hands together.

  “Alright!”

  “But still!” Cor put his finger up, “I’d have to risk going back to town to talk with my brother, and getting sent away. I’d be taking a huge risk.”

  Vito thought for a second about that, and suddenly Cor’s own words came to him.

  “It would be quite the adventure, wouldn’t you say?”

  Cor smiled. “Hmm… I think what I specifically said was that I wanted the world to confuse me again. I already know my brother.”

  “Well! You, a person you just met, and a spirit, all sneaking into the city so we can the King of Onagio and ask him about some omitted pages of a history textbook— that sounds pretty confusing to me!”

  Cor laughed.

  “Once again, you make a good point!”

  The two boys turned forwards at the same time, Vito’s pen jostling slightly against his ear. They saw that the gray-pebbled beach had become clear, and close. The skeletons of giant creatures marked every quarter of this coast. They had arrived.

  “You’ve really delivered on this adventure!” Cor said with his close-eyed smile. “Meeting the Ashi’man on this spooky beach, sneaking into the city to meet my bro. This is gonna be crazy!”

  Vito nodded. The enormity of what he had just convinced Cor to do dawned on him. What was he doing? He shouldn’t even be here, much less Cor. There was no doubt in his mind, he was toying with powers beyond his comprehension. Did Cor even realize this? He had reacted so nonchalantly to him declaring their task, to learning that Vito could speak with the spirits. Did he really understand the kind of danger he had agreed to take on? Even as he considered this in his mind, Vito knew in his heart that he wanted Cor to go nonetheless, to subscribe to this journey whether or not he understood. He wanted to know about the Dance of Death. He thought this even as he said,

  “You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to. I don’t know if the Ashi’man like humans…”

  Cor inhaled deeply.

  “Maybe so, but I have to continue.”

  Vito was once again struck by his confidence.

  Cor continued, “if I don’t go and take this chance, I left for nothing.” He looked into Vito’s eyes. “It’s got to be fate, right? For me to find you and Thing in a little boat right off the harbor of my home? If my chance at real life is in this adventure, then I have to give it my all, no matter what.”

  Cor stared into him, and Vito could tell that he wanted a response. Vito didn’t feel that the sentiment needed any additions from him, but Cor seemed to expect him to speak up.

  “I’m glad,” Vito said, unsure of what Cor wanted to hear. This seemed to satisfy him, and he turned his gaze from Vito to the setting sun ahead.

  As Thing brought them effortlessly to the grey, stony shore, Vito surveyed each skeleton, stained purple by the fading light. Most were immersed in gravel, with only ribs jutting out like spears to evidence their presence. Now that they were so close, the scale of them was revealed. Each rib stood taller than Vito, and in the strange atmosphere of that evening, fraught with adventure and with danger, they took on an arachnid quality in his imagination. Each rib was the curled up leg of a long-dead spider, hailing from primeval eons. Some were scorpions instead of spiders, with spinal chords winding out like barbed tails from beneath the pebbles.

  Cor stood, swinging his foot out of the boat and onto the petrified shore in a manner as though he were landing before ten thousand followers awaiting him. The way that the tails of his golden headband caught in the wind inspired Vito to disembark the boat in just the same way.