No one had come for me. I am still hidden. I am still safe.
The days pass. They come and go mostly without trouble, except for Lumi. I don't know why.
Ever since the sand baths, Lumi's fixation for me has been stoked into something like a passion. She's been trying to get me alone, at the training fields after lessons, or in the classrooms after meditations. She makes an effort of sitting beside me in the mess hall, or in the baths, or by the gardens as we're crouched in the earth.
She says hello, and asks me to stay, and I never do.
The days pass. We train and meditate, and the air trills with quiet anticipation. We sleep lightly. We eat lightly. Then, at long last, the end of the week arrives.
#
The Joining celebrations are a spectacle of tents and sails, vibrant on red. It is a market of delights, full of stalls selling stinky tofu or red bean pastries, or treats like blown sugar and powdered mochi. Canvas sails like entire rivers – lipstick red and marigold yellow – soar above the crowds for shade. Banners and ribbons in the shapes of stars snap in the wind. They are hoisted high up on poles, and like the tails of kites, their stardust tails stream.
I see parents with their children holding colourful masks in their hands, masks of smiling sirens and scowling titans. I see a path full of festival games – goldfish fishing and balloon popping and streetside mahjong. Another path is full of dancers. They twirl in their ao-dais – tight-fitting silk dresses that flutter about the legs – to the tune of bamboo flutes and chimes and drums. Their sleeves have been sown on special, and their dancing in them is like looking at long drawn brushstrokes. It is mesmerizing.
Here, there, begging by the sides of the paths, are Omens.
I see a man with one milky eye, blind, because his stain had spilled over it. I see another with a crumpled hand, the way a hand crumples up after a stroke, because his stain had clustered tight over it.
My scab hasn't deformed me yet, but I imagine it will one day.
I know Esp can't hear out of her right ear because her scab has grown over it, and if her stain continues to spread up into her hair and over her head, she might begin to lose her memories, or her mind.
We've all seen Omens like that, ones that hear things and see things that are not there at all. You catch them sometimes, ambling from alleyway to alleyway, cackling at the face of the moon.
People say it's what we deserve, for having done the things we have done.
I wish I could remember what it is I had done that first time, my first immoral act, the one that made my mother and father believe I was no longer worth keeping.
I pass under a vast shadow, and look up.
We are outside the white walls of the Temple of Celestial Ichor, at the base of it, where the Joining festivities are hosted every decade. The walls loom the way ancient things do. They cut arrogant into the center of the festival.
I don't know if anyone else notices. I don't see why they would – the colours and smells and music of the festival is arresting. But I look up at the wall and there, up that impossible height and impossible white, is a break in the stones from where the temple garden, walled inside, decided it did not want to be inside anymore. It peeks through with its roots and branches, staining the stones green. Its vines droop like ropes.
My stain itches. It's bizarre to me, seeing that gap marring the holy walls, like seeing a mimic of my own disfigured body.
Far beneath that hole in the wall is the House of Stars. The Joining will take place there.
The House of Stars is a sprawling tent the encompassing size of a temple, one easily housing hundreds, and its white canvas is lined by gold. Its posts are lacquer blue pillars, tall enough to dwarf a grown man. Hung over the open mouth of the entrance is the ivory figurehead of a siren, a beautiful siren. Her eyes are closed, and her mouth is full of stars. Her arms are unfurled like her hair, hair the swirling denseness of nebulae, hair that drips down and around the entranceway.
The tent is manned by four guardians in black and red. Their temple robes are layered with pauldrons and breastplates of steel and wood, and their hands are bound in leather. Their heads are bared and shaved like all temple folk are, even their women, and wound over their shoulder is their whistle-sling.
If an Omen was to walk up to them and try to enter the tent, they would unwind their whistle-slings and beat the Omen back. We are unholy things. We are forbidden in the tent.
But right now I am not an Omen. I am only one of the many hundreds of children come to try their hands at the Joining. We come in our stark white robes, led by our masters and teachers holding their staffs. They shake the chimes hooked to the head of their staffs, the many chimes shaped like stars.
People cheer for us as we pass. They toss flowers and rice in our path. They watch us enter under the looming figurehead of the siren, and into the dark of the tent.
My eyes adjust. The dark is lit by tall braziers of ivory. We've entered into a curved hallway of canvas that leads only to our left and right, and the tapestry before us covers the entire length – thick and midnight blue, and intricately woven, full of the impossible colours of nebulae, the golden rising and falling of stars, and of the silver cuts of anchors whistling through it all. Here, there, are the slender figures of sirens.
We turn left, while some of the other schools go right, though it does not really matter which route we take. The hallway is a circle. It wraps around the inner sanctum where the Joining will take place, to connect at the waiting rooms in the far back. That is where we are going.
The din of the festival mutes through the tent. Inside, all of us are wide-eyed, giddy and smiling, or hushed and reverent. We pass by one of the two openings to the inner sanctum, and many of us stop to peer, clogging the hallway and slowing the crowds. No one complains. We all want a peek inside.
The inner sanctum is unadorned, but full of smoke and incense. To the left of the circle are stands for sitting, and a generous stretch of ground before the stands for when the seats run out. To the right of the circle is a ring of white pillars. Placed in its heart is an ivory altar in the shape of an eye. It glows. A shaft of light from the smoke hole above has settled on it perfectly.
There's something on the altar, but I can't quite see. The crowds are pushing on, and I am pushed along with them.
We make it to the back of the tent, to the waiting rooms.
There are five waiting rooms – four for the four flying schools in the city of Tall Titan, and one for the acolytes of the temple. Ours is the one furthest south, and like all the other waiting rooms, it is sectioned off by thick canvas curtains, white like the rest of the tent.
We settle in. We settle in to wait. Our school is going last, and so we will be waiting for a long while.
Lumi is here, dressed like the rest of us – white robes with bronze hems and sashes. She's worn her veil in something like a wimple, today, thick against her hair but sheer over her mask. In her hands is a letter, the letter she talked about at the baths.
The paper is crinkled and well-creased. She must've read it and reread it again and again.
Her head turns toward me, and I tick my eyes away.
She beelines for me anyways. So I twist away and make for the exit. There are many bodies in the way – near a hundred of us are cramped here – so I push and shove my way through. People glare and grunt, and I push on.
I have no time or space to be dealing with Lumi, not now, not on this day of days. I have to keep my omen in check. I have to keep it small and tucked away.
Ever since the sand bath, my stain has been harder to control. A simple twinge of annoyance, and I can feel my stain scabbing down my side nearly to my hip. A sly glance my way, and my stain thickens over my arm nearly to the wrist.
So I refuse to let Lumi speak to me, to upset me and anger me. I refuse to let her ruin everything we've worked for.
#
The Joining has begun. I am hidden in the crowd of the inner sanctum by the edge of the southern entrance. The crowd is thick, and it is hard to see. I am only fourteen years old high, while the others around me are grown adults, some with children perched on their shoulders.
But the altar is higher. On the altar in its beam of light, is an anchor and its star.
The anchor is four times the size of a normal one, and so four times as heavy, and its body is gilded gold. The Nine Ahs have been cut into the gold, with strokes curling one into the other like vines. There is no protective cage around its engine lock. Its star is bared and asleep.
This Joining anchor, according to the myth-story, is what the first ever anchor looked like.
In the beginning, when the stars fell and turned into people, a great golden star gave itself up in the form of an anchor, and carried the people out of the cosmic storm and onto the shores of this world. So this is why we Join – to remember our beginnings, to honour the sacrifice of the first star, and to recall the strength and power we had when we were free, so free.
A boy climbs the steps of the altar. His hems and sash green like the rest of his school, who wait behind the altar in the shadows and the smoke.
This is the second school to go. The temple acolytes were first, and they've long since finished and left. This boy, being the youngest at his school, is first in the order to Join.
He stands before the anchor, and it is laughable how very small he looks in comparison, like a teaspoon in a bowl. He reaches out. He lays his hand upon the star, and waits.
The star snaps into light. The boy howls.
The cord of the star is winding around his arm and pulling tight like it did with the other boy, with Naqi. Light is flooding into his skin and overtaking him, and I don't know if I am imagining it, but I smell the singe of burning flesh.
The boy does not let go. He crawls onto the anchor. With a grunt, and a great shout, he tugs. Ichor throbs over him and through him in waves, to the rhythm of a heartbeat I do not hear. And then the anchor lifts off.
Silently, silently, the anchor peels away from the altar to hover a meter in the air, then two, then three.
The boy has passed. He has Joined with the star and flown it.
The crowd bursts into cheers. My chest thrums with it. The ground shakes with it.
Out of the hundreds of children that try to Join every decade, only ever a handful or so pass. Some years it is fifty, others a mere dozen. No one is sure how exactly a star chooses its flier – maybe they choose based on purity, or talent, or strength. Whatever it is, our school would be lucky to have even five pass through.
The boy touches back down and wrenches free of the star, and stumbles. He very nearly falls off the altar, but crouches and catches himself. His smile for the crowd is timid. He holds up his hand in a wave – the skin of his palm is peeled raw.
I imagine myself up there on the altar, with my hand pressed against the star. Ichor floods into me, and then golden fire spews from my mouth, my eyes, my ears. Maybe I would choke to death before I burned alive.
Someone bumps into me, hard. I twist around. It is Esp.
Her hair is long and black. She is wearing a white leather face mask, one that covers her mouth, scar, nose. I did not think she would come, being an Omen. But Esp does not look like an Omen right now, the ones begging by the streets. She never has.
Right now in her red ao-dai, Esp only looks delicate, romantic. She points with her head toward the hall, and I move to follow.
Another child has climbed the altar and is trying her hand at the Joining. She settles her hand on the star, and the star snaps into light almost immediately. The crowd again bursts into cheers.
The hallway we walk is empty. Still we keep our voices low.
"Your school is going last?"
I nod. "After this school is the third, and then us."
"I'll be watching in the crowds."
"I didn't think you would come," I say, abrupt. "They're broadcasting the Joinings everywhere."
Something like hope sparks in me, then.
Esp does not do tenderness. I know this. When she taught me to cut purses, and to slide the shiv down my sleeve to hide it, and when the shiv sliced my arm red, she only handed me a roll of bandage and told me to try again. She watched as I bandaged my own arm, and did not help, and did not console me.
When I managed to cut my first purse, and I showed Esp the gleaming leather of the wallet, she did not smile. She said only, like that first time in the dead end, good.
Esp does not do tenderness. Still – I imagine her now, saying, I came because I wanted to see you. I wanted to make sure you'd be alright.
She says instead, "Some things you need to see with your own eyes."
I fall silent. The sting of my disappointment itches over my stain, and then jolts it. I gasp, and look away.
Esp looks at me. "What is it."
My stain is crawling over my back and over my other shoulder blade, all pins and needles. The scabs are heavy. I never thought a pair of wings would feel like shackles.
"Nothing."
"Should I be worried?"
"No," I say, too fast, and so Esp stares on. She does not believe me. Her stare bores.
We're moving past the curtain dividing the front of the hallway and the back, the back that leads to the waiting rooms. It is quiet, here. Most of the curtained rooms are empty – everyone is in the inner sanctum, watching like I was watching, or waiting behind the altar for their turns.
"Once you pass," Esp says, because there's no room for ifs, "it'll be much more difficult for us to meet. The temple-folk like to keep their birds in their cages."
"I'll find ways to sneak out."
"Don't. You won't be doing anything that'll jeopardize our chances."
"But what if," I need help.
I don't say it, because I know what Esp's answer will be. She will look at me with the weight of her gaze like water, drowning me, pulling me under, and she will say nothing. Her silence will mean: you shouldn't need help.
I never taught you to be weak.
Esp goes on.
"Everything will continue as planned. Pass the Joining. Win the race. Get us our wish. Nothing else matters. Do you understand?"
I understand. Of course I do. Getting the wish for Esp is all I've worked for for the past four years.
But then I remember the pain I felt in the baths. How much more pain would I be in inside the temple, working day after day with a star? Would I be able to fly faster than everyone else? Would I even survive the Joining?
I don't mean to say it. I don't. My question slips out without my permission.
"What if it doesn't work?"
Esp says nothing. I pull tight, and look over at her to gauge her silence. I can't read it. I imagine then, her telling me it's not too late to back out.
You've worked hard enough, she'd say. We'll come up with another plan, she'd say.
She says instead, "I'm disappointed, Sozo."
Another sting jolts through my stain, and the stain spasms at it and claws its way down my back. It feels like the layers of my skin are being peeled with wax, like gravel is being pushed through my pores. The scabs bubble thick, and burn, and itch.
I fist my hands. I grit my teeth. Esp is still looking at me, so I look up at her and lie through the fog of pain, "Don't be. You've nothing to worry about."
Esp looks at me, and I lock my gaze on her. I need her to see the fierceness there. I need her to believe me, to believe that I can do this, that I will. For me, for her.
The flap of a waiting room opens. It is Lumi. I startle. The stain over my back ripples with it. Why is she here? Why isn't she with the others in the inner sanctum?
"Sozo." Her head tilts between me and Esp. Her tone is polite when she says, "I'm sorry, but other people aren't allowed back here."
Esp smiles with her eyes, then dips her head at Lumi. The lines of her posture has curved soft and sweet; she's always been a convincing actor.
"A Veil," she greets. "It's an honour. I only came to wish Sozo good luck."
Lumi mirrors the dip, though it's slow. "You know her?"
"Yes." Esp nods. That is all she supplies. She turns back to me, and grips my shoulder, and it hurts. I say nothing about the hurt. It's always hurt with Esp.
She tells me, "I know you'll do well. I'll be watching."
That is all the comfort I receive. Esp pulls away, and leaves. I watch the tail of her dress flutter around the hall and out of sight. I hear the dividing curtain pull open, then fall shut.
I am left outside the waiting room with Lumi.
"Who was she?"
"None of your business."
"Someone you knew from the streets?"
I don't bother to answer. I turn the other way to leave through the other exit, and Lumi follows after.
"Sozo," she calls. "I've been looking for you."
That's why she was in the waiting room, because she couldn't find me in the crowds. How long has she been looking for?
"Leave me alone."
"I need to talk to you."
"What you need is to stop talking."
I push past the curtain and step back into the main hallway, and then Lumi says, "I know what you are."
I jolt to a stop.
Lumi says, "I saw your stain that night, at the sand baths. It was growing past your towel and up the back of your neck. The others would've seen, but I stayed behind you."
Blood is pounding, pounding, behind my eyes and through my ears. I can't think. Lumi saw. Lumi knows. Is she going to tell? No. She hasn't. Not yet. She's been trying to tell me that she knows all this time, but why? What does she want from me?
Pain jars through me, abrupt. I cry out and stumble forward and give to my knees. My omen stain is surging down my arms and thighs, and my vision blurs from the pain that comes in convulsions, a pain that burns like holding my breath for too long. My control is a thin string. I do not know when it will snap.
Lumi's arms are around me again like that time at the baths, and she's tugging us back behind the curtain, toward our waiting room. I thrash against her, and shove her off.
"Sozo, please!"
My throat is tight. It is hard to breathe.
"You have to calm down, Sozo. It's spilling onto your hands, and your neck. The others will see."
I shake out my head. Lumi's voice is burbled, like we're submerged underwater.
I'm angry, so angry. I'm bloated on it. My anger flashes at Esp. The Joining could kill me, and yet she had come and gone like some doctor with their many patients. Her words toward me were clinical, cold. Maybe she doesn't know. If she knew, maybe she would be scared for me, scared that she might never see me again.
"Sozo!"
"Go on, then," I snarl. I slap her hands away. "Tell everyone what I am."
Lumi is shaking her head. "I'm not going to tell anyone."
"Liar."
"I don't lie."
I bark a laugh. Of course she doesn't lie. Perfect, pure Lumi beneath her perfect, pure veil. I hate her. I hate her for it.
"Leave the Joining."
"What?" My hands are cold. I'm cold all over. Even as I burn. It's getting harder to see Lumi, now. She's a messy smudge of white crouched before me, as I am crouched.
"Don't participate in the Joining," she says, begs. "You could die, Sozo. And if you go out looking like this, you really will. They'll kill you."
"That's got nothing to do with you."
"Sozo, please."
"Don't talk down to me."
"I'm not."
"You think we're a charity case, is that it?" I don't know my own voice. It is full of glass, broken glass. "All the poor little Omens, needing the high and mighty Veil to save them out of their pits?"
Lumi is shaking her head again. She reaches for me and touches my hand, my hand that barely looks like a hand. My fingers are craggy and dark. My nails are long and sharp.
"Why are you doing this, Sozo? Why do you need to?" She pauses, and understands. "Is it the wish? There's a wish you're willing to risk your life for?"
I can't speak. My throat is all jagged edges, and my head is full of stones. I can feel my robes tearing. My scab is thickening and swelling enough to break through the fabrics and seams.
"Let me make your wish for you."
I look up at Lumi.
"Tell me what your wish is, and I'll make it for you."
She squeezes my not-hand and promises, vows, "I'll join the Decade-Races and beat everyone, everyone, and then I'll make your wish for you. The star I catch, will be used for you."
I see red.
Who does Lumi think she is? Make my wish for me? Do it for me because I'm not good enough, because I'm an Omen, because I will never be good enough. Esp already thinks that of me – she watches me in silence and brews in her disappointment.
But someone like Lumi?
Esp would be scared of losing someone like Lumi.
Pain cracks through me, winds me, blinds me. I double over and scream, maybe. I don't know. I don't know my body anymore. I don't know what it is I'm seeing and hearing and feeling. All I know is that my bones are distending against my skin, and it hurts. All I know is that I'm angry, so angry, and it hurts. The world around me is a blur.
I'm running, and then falling, and then my string of control snaps.
All is dark.
#
(Someone is shouting a name and shouting please, no.
Sozo, please. No.
I don't know who they are. I don't know who Sozo is.)
#
Waking is a heavy thing. I don't know where I am.
I register two things:
Scabs are sloughing off of me like mud in rain, leaving behind the tatters of my robes. Esp is here in her red and black, and she is crouched over something a little ways from me, crumpled by the curtain.
It is Lumi.
My body is numb. My mouth and eyes are dry. I stagger to my feet, and then Esp says, "She's dead."
She says, "You killed her."
I don't know what to say. I don't know what to think, or feel. I am still numb.
Esp rises. She turns to me.
"All these years of sacrifice on my part," she says. "Wasted, because of you, because you couldn't get one thing right. Destroyed in a single moment, all of it. Because of you."
Esp doesn't do tenderness, and she doesn't do rage – not the kind of rage that rails and roars. Hers is a keen edge, a surgical cut. Right now, with her lines held high and still, she is what I imagine a guillotine is like. Her gaze is being strapped beneath the blade. Her words are the fall.
"You're on your own, now." Esp is leaving. "You clean up your own messes."
Everything crashes back to me. I am buffeted.
I want to throw up because I've killed Lumi. Of all the sins I have committed, I don't know if murder has ever been one of them. (Lie. That's a lie. The girl with the blue eyes by that white white wall was my fault, too.)
I want to scream because I don't know what happened. I had lost control. The world had gone dark. I think, maybe, I had transformed into a monster. I think, maybe, my stain had overtaken me.
I want to fall to my knees and cling to the tail of Esp's dress, because she is leaving, and that want disgusts me.
I do not throw up. I do not scream. I do not fall to my knees and grovel.
My eyes sting – tears, I realize, but I do not allow them to fall. There is no time for tears, for screaming, for falling. There is no space for weakness.
"Wait," I croak, and Esp stops. She waits.
I say nothing else.
I know what I have to do.