She was walking along the lake front, and the sun was shining, and a small lizard was keeping pace with her, peeping out of the grasses, and then it ran forward and bit her ankle. She was very tall and always hitting her head on lintels, and her wife, who hated her, placed a poison needle in just the spot where she always hit her head. She was sluggish with fever and the heat in the room was tremendous, and the sunlight was like a cleaver, cutting across her body as she lay in the bed. She was at the very top of a tree, and the other young men were calling out to her, urging her on, and she noticed that the leaves up here were very beautiful, like lace. They brushed her cheek and there was a bird’s nest, and she thought that the tree loved her very much. She had just stabbed that merchant from Yenceyan who always cheated her, and he had plucked up a knife and stabbed her back. She had built the boat herself and was very proud of it, and couldn’t believe that it was filling with water. She was mystified by the puffiness of her hands, and how hard it was to move her fingers, but she kept eating the pretty green berries anyway. They were waiting for her in the courtyard and she had a thousand things to do and she was only dimly aware of the puddle of water that her husband had left from his bath.

  They were annoying, these spirits who only thought about the moments of their deaths. She swam past them, the disc glowing before her. The spirits fled from her, as if afraid of her annoyance.

  She was in love, so in love, and amazed by how delicate and round Hananda’s breasts were, and entranced by that particular scent of rose and iron that lingered in Hananda’s hair. She had just bitten into a scallop that Cloedeya had cooked, and he was grinning at her, because he could see the emotion on her face, the way that the taste of butter and citrus and saffron made her whole body seize with delight and something deeper - the way the taste returned her to some place beyond her memory, beyond her life itself, someplace she had never known but had always missed. She had completed the blue dress, and the embroidery was exquisite, the best that she had ever done, the little flowers along the sleeve moving in and out of her vision as she gestured with her arms, meaning that she was aware of her movements in a way that she had never been before, as if the dress had changed her body, made her understand herself in a new way. She had just won the race, and they were carrying her, actually carrying her, up from the beach, and her arms were tired from rowing, her shoulders ached, but they were cheering her, laughing, so ecstatic at her victory, as if they had won, as if she were the summation of every little victory that they’d ever had.

  This was even more dangerous than their deaths. She wanted to stay in these little moments of beauty and joy. Instead she pushed them away, the stroke of her arms through the water clearing a path, as if they were leaves that had fallen onto a calm lake.

  Okra again, and mama always cooked it wrong. It was so slimy and disgusting. All day hammering at the frame of the house, and with each hammer blow the work drew him deeper, so that he felt that he had to finish it, but he was tired, and he would be doing this again tomorrow, and the day after. Why did he always come at her after he had been drinking, so that he was a little flaccid when he tried to enter her, and would be angry if she didn’t pretend to enjoy it? That sycamore tree exhausted all three of them, every autumn. Here they were, having to rake the leaves off the road again. She was so tired of playing this infantile dance music, but no one wanted to listen to the songs she wrote, even though she knew that they were better. Why did she always leave her slippers in the middle of the floor for her to trip over? The clerk always miscalculated the inventory, and always blamed it on the abacus, but she couldn’t dismiss him because he was her third cousin.

  It was amid this flurry of everyday annoyances that Manrie’s hands gripped the edges of the disc. She emerged from the water almost immediately, as if she hadn’t been swimming for ages, as if she hadn’t been resisting the pull of different lives until her mind felt thin and ripped, like too-dry dough that shredded as you rolled it. She broke the surface of the water with a great gasp. She could feel the dead swimming after her as she kicked towards the edge of the cistern. Following the disc, as she intended.

  She rested for a moment on the cistern’s edge, dripping water onto the blue tiles. The dead were chorusing in her ear, asking her to pay attention to their tangled memories. A dissonant chorus, with no beauty in it. She blinked and rubbed the water from her eyes. Her wet hair hung down in strands in front of her face. She pushed it away and stood up, looking around the courtyard.

  Maedreth was just where she’d left her, cowering against a column. Her posture just the same, her expression just the same, as if mere seconds had passed. They probably had. Whole lives, trying to summarize themselves in the briefest of moments. Battering Manrie with memories. She found that she was scowling as she prowled towards Maedreth.

  “Don’t see me, don’t see me!” the little woman said.

  “I do see you, and you see me. Look into my eyes, Maedreth. Do you see much pity there?”

  “Don’t see me!”

  “I’m being hounded by ghosts. They’re right behind me. You see them. I want to know where the witch has gone.” The frightened eyes flicked towards a dark shadow under one of the balconies. “What’s through there?” Manrie demanded.

  “Stairs.”

  “Lead me.”

  “Don’t see me!”

  She grabbed the little woman and shook her. “Lead me, Maedreth! I’m not without pity. Only it’s being stretched between all of your ancestors. There isn’t much left for you.”

  Darting, hesitating, veering left and right as if she were nothing more than a vapor, Maedreth led Manrie to the shadow beneath the balcony. There was a door there. A rather wide door, wide enough for a wheel barrow. It was unlocked. Manrie swung it open, then reached out and grabbed Maedreth, who was trying to make her escape. “Lead me!” she insisted.

  Down a twisting ramp. No stairs here, but a groove in the center of the floor for a wheel to jolt along. Lamps in sconces along the walls, flickering weakly. The passageway flattened. A stairway led off to the right. Maedreth made to continue down the ramp, but Manrie reached out with her free hand and grabbed her collar. “What’s down there?” she asked.

  “Salt,” the other woman said. “Don’t see me!”

  They stood still, and Manrie listened. The booming sound of water wasn’t coming from the base of the ramp far below them. It was coming up the stairs. And Manrie saw that there was a shaft dug beside the stairs, with a winch and pulley, and a large bucket hanging idly on a chain. “Why does it sound like the ocean?” she asked.

  But Maedreth made a flickering movement and escaped from Manrie’s grasp. She went running down the ramp. Manrie hesitated, feeling the ghosts build up behind her. Then she followed the little woman down.

  The ramp ended in an open cavern and came out onto a strand of sand. There were boats pulled up on the sand, the Jahnajeel’s private fishing fleet. One boat stood on the water, bobbing gently. An old boat, carved, not planked. The witch was standing in the stern, facing Manrie from beneath the heavy overhang of the cave opening. Maedreth had flattened herself in the shadows beside one of the beached boats.

  Manrie suddenly felt afraid. She could sense the spirits behind her, as if they were a great wave, pushing her forward. The witch stood like a rock in the middle of a rushing river. All of these spirits would break against her. The tatters of her strange robes seemed to writhe, as if they were the tendrils of memory that wanted to ensnare Manrie. The witch ignored them. Manrie stepped to the edge of the water and held the disc out with both hands, pushing it forward. The witch was indifferent to it. Her head didn’t move and her veils protected her expression.

  “Why doesn’t it affect you?” Manrie called. The witch said nothing. “I know you can speak!” Manrie insisted. “You spoke in the courtyard.”

  “I came to speak to the dead,” the witch answered. “Are you dead?”

  “You know I’m not. Why speak to the dead? What good does it do? What good does it do to curse people, generation after generation?”

  “They are all afraid,” the witch said. Her tone was flat. She wasn’t gloating. She wasn’t defensive.

  “But you curse them even when they’re good people. It doesn’t matter to you if they’re good or bad.”

  “No.”

  “No? What did Maedreth ever do to you?”

  “She isn’t cursed. Not by me. By her husband, perhaps. By her children.”

  “They’re cursed. What did they ever do to you?”

  “Not to me. To her. To others.”

  “And Cloedeya? You cursed his banquet.”

  “No.”

  “I saw it! You changed the taste. You made people sit at different tables.”

  “A blessing.”

  “But now Cloedeya is the judge. He’s worried he might be the judge. That his food will judge people.”

  “It always does.”

  “Food judges people?”

  The witch made no answer. Manrie wanted to throw the disc at her. Then she sighed, and some of the energy went out of her body. She felt very tired. She sat on the edge of an upturned boat and looked at the witch. “And now? Do you return to your island? Must you be lonely forever?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could rest with the other dead.”

  “No.”

  She felt the hard energy of despair rise inside of her. “Can’t I help you in any way?”

  “No. See Maedreth.”

  “I do see her.”

  “See her.”

  “I do!”

  But the boat was moving away, the witch still standing in the prow. It moved of its own accord over the still water, slipping from under the overhang and out onto the moonlit lake. The gleam of light on the water was like the shards of something that had broken when it fell to earth.

  Manrie watched, then became aware that the sound of waves hadn’t changed, that somewhere a great tide was beating against the caves. She frowned. She went to Maedreth and knelt beside her. The dead came and stood around them, silent and expectant. “Maedreth,” Manrie said gently, “I’m going to take you away from here. But first, I need you to show me the other water. The salt water.”

  Maedreth looked up, afraid. “He’ll beat me.”

  “Who?”

  “Odril.”

  “Odril?” She remembered Koenbahki saying the name. Hours ago, seemingly days ago. Before the banquet. “Your husband. But Maedreth, he’s dead.”

  Her eyes flicked to the spirits, and Manrie looked and saw a tall man. Whatever he had been in life, he was dulled by death, his face was as blank and indifferent as the other ghosts. Of all the ghosts she’d seen since she’d left Libreigia, only Aizdha’s had been lively with expression. Maybe because she loved him, and had known him so well. Perhaps when Maedreth looked at her husband’s face she saw anger, or arrogance, or gloating.

  “Maedreth,” Manrie said softly, “I’m going to the lay them to rest. In a place where your children cannot reach them. If I can. Show me the salt water.”

  She had to help the little woman to her feet. She made Maedreth walk in front of her, holding her close with one hand, as if she were a frightened child. With the other hand she held the disc, glowing blue and green, casting a porous light into the darkness in front of them. They stepped across the strand and back to the ramp, and the dead followed. To the foot of the ramp and up it, the light washing over the walls of the tunnel as if it were moonlight chiming off of the surface of an ocean. She thought of the Man on the Mountain, and his upside down river. Maybe she had reached the other side of it, but it wasn’t what he wanted it to be. It wasn’t a place of sunlight and peace. It was a sad collection of spirits, refusing to be truly dead, caught forever in what they had been when they were alive.

  They came to the landing and Manrie turned Maedreth towards the stairs. The little woman shivered but descended. The stairs twisted downward. The booming of the ocean rose in their ears. It gathered specificity, becoming the lap of wave against rock, the skitter of petals caught by the tide, the rearrangement of a beach beneath the ocean’s violence.

  They came out onto a large platform, built of struts and wood. There were holes in the platform, and buckets. There were large cauldrons with cloth stretched over their mouths. The moon rose over the ocean and threw its light down onto the waves, which took the light and fractured it, as if to churn it into some unknown substance.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Manrie walked to the very edge of the platform. The dead were following her. She could feel their eager attention. She held the disc by the edge, and then sent it spinning out over the water, as if she were skipping a stone. She felt the ghosts rush past her, felt their memories strike against her skin like pebbles. She hardened her mind against their rush so that she could watch as they threw themselves into the waves. She imagined that the disc would be pulled away from this shore with the tide, that the dead would forever pursue it across the waves.

  She stood there, Maedreth shivering beside her, and thought of Ahlo Enriegho. Of his brother. If only they had known that there was a lace hole here, in Raesidae. A stable one. A cave that never closed off the past, but opened, always, to the sea. She imagined them as children, walking with Macbrau along the road, past Jahnajeel House. If their story had been known, the triplets might have looked out at them, might have seen them and known that they had a way to send the two lost boys home. But the triplets wouldn’t have acted. They’d have kept their secret, their method of salting fish, their banal source of wealth.

  They were waiting for her in the courtyard. Their mother did not have to tell them not to see her. They looked past her as if she wasn’t there. Nuhrmer’s reek swung out at Manrie, as if it was a fist that he was aiming at her head. Braedsmi grinned at her with idiotic happiness. Only Haelahza seemed truly angry.

  “You have taken our disc!” she spat.

  “You have taken our disc?” Braedsmi asked, as if coming to a sudden realization.

  “It’s not your disc,” Manrie said. “I brought it here. It was meant to be the town’s disc.”

  “She brought it to us,” Haelahza hissed.

  “But it was given to us,” Braedsmi objected, and Nuhrmer said, “it was a gift from the witch.”

  Manrie decided that she was speaking to Haelahza. “Your curse doesn’t affect me,” she said to the other woman. “I don’t need your brothers parroting your words back to me.”

  This caused Haelahza to blink in surprise. “They won’t stop. Everything I say they take as their own idea.”

  “Then you should find someone else to talk to.”

  “I am cursed. It isn’t only my brothers. No one hears me. Why do you?”

  Manrie didn’t know. She shrugged. “I have been talking with the witch. I didn’t know that ghosts could talk.”

  All three siblings reared back at this. “A ghost?” Haelahza said.

  “A spirit?”” Nuhrmer gasped.

  “I believe I heard somewhere that she is a ghost,” Braedsmi opined. “Yes, I believe that’s right.”

  “But you speak for them!” Manrie said. “Surely you must have known that she was a ghost.”

  “We remember nothing,” Nuhrmer told her.

  “After they ride us, they leave no trace. Others must tell us what they said,” Haelahza said. She was still looking at Manrie with a sense of surprise that verged between repulsion and yearning.

  “We have no sense of them when they’re riding us,” Braedsmi said. “Someone told me that it’s as if we’re asleep, and that they’re a dream we forget upon waking.”

  “I told you that,” Haelahza said with annoyance.

  “But I remember,” Manrie said. “I went into the pool to retrieve the disc, and I swam through their lives. I remember all of it.”

  “That’s not possible,” Haelahza said, and Braedsmi repeated her, “Impossible!”

  “What makes you so special?” Nurhmer asked with disdain.

  “Maybe it’s just that I’m not cursed. Or that I’m interested in who they were, when they were alive.”

  All three triplets seemed offended by this, but they didn’t speak their offense. Instead, Haelahza said, “Where is the disc?”

  “This is all beside the point,” Braedsmi said. “The important question is, where is the disc?”

  “I have discovered your secret,” Manrie told them. “I went through the lace hole. I flung it into the sea.”

  “The lace hole?” Braedsmi asked in confusion.

  “Whatever you call it. The tunnel that leads to the ocean.”

  “You must never speak of it!” Nurhmer breathed.

  “I don’t know if we should let you live,” Braedsmi said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Haelahza snapped. “We can’t kill her, and besides, many of our clients know, and our slaves.”

  “Although I suppose it’s an open secret,” Braedsmi said, “known by many of our slaves and clients. And besides, we’re not murderers.”

  “But they all fear us,” Nurhmer said, “because we can channel the spirits.”

  “They feared father,” Haelahza reminded him, “and he wasn’t ridden by ghosts. And they’ve kept the salt secret since his death, even if they don’t cringe before us like they cringed before him.”

  “They have always kept our secrets, even before the ghosts,” Braedsmi said reasonably. “They fear us like they feared father. And besides, they all benefit from it. We all get rich together.”

  “Probably not the slaves,” Manrie said. She was suddenly very tired. She wanted to return to the bridge and creep into the sleeping car and sleep forever. Only Tafaemi and Uku were in there. Tears sprang to her eyes as she remembered. She didn’t know why it hurt her so much.

  “If the disc was thrown into the ocean, I suppose it might wash up again,” Haelahza said.

  “That disc is never coming back to us,” Nuhrmer spat, as if he were responding to Braedsmi. “The tide will take it, and if it ever comes to shore again, it will be somewhere else. I suppose that all of the dead followed it,” this addressed to Manrie.

  “Yes.”

  “Then all of our ghosts will be haunting the coast.”

  “Where is the coast?” Manrie asked, alarmed that she might have sent the spirits of Raesidae to plague some innocent fishing village. The three stared back at her. They didn’t know. Perhaps they’d never thought to wonder. “I’m leaving,” Manrie said, after a moment.

  “It won’t change, you know,” Haelahza said with bitter smugness. “More people will die. The dead will walk through Raesidae again.”

  “I don’t think that you were very successful,” Braedsmi said regretfully. “People always die. We’ll have plenty of ghosts again soon.”

  “They’ll be drawn here,” Manrie said, with a confidence she didn’t feel. “They’ll walk past you on their way to the lace hole. You might be able to snare them, but only for a passing moment.”

  “We really should kill her,” Haelahza said, but her tone held no heat in it.

  “You could be the first,” Braedsmi suggested. “Test your theory.”

  Nuhrmer took a step forward, and Manrie was suddenly aware of her vulnerability. They could kill her, very easily. And who would know that she had been here? Surely Cloedeya and Taeyaho would come looking for her. But perhaps not. A vision of her spirit, floating out on the lonely waves, flashed in her mind.

  She was backing away. Moving between the columns. The triplets seemed indecisive, Braedsmi uncertain, Haelahza indifferent. Only Nuhrmer seemed ready to make good on the threat. He paced after her, his fists clenched, his stench assaulting her. He couldn’t beat her to death with his hands, could he? She wondered if she should cry out. But that might summons slaves, servants, people who could be convinced to join in the murder. The cistern sent the reflection of moving water swaying about the courtyard, and Nurhmer’s stink seemed to grow stronger as he gathered himself to spring at her.

  Then Maedreth slipped from the shadows and stood in front of him, and he slammed into her, stumbling and falling to the ground. Manrie turned to run. She heard him gasping, “What was that?” and Haelahza saying “you tripped over your own feet,” and Braedsmi repeating “you seem to have tripped.” She imagined Maedreth laying on the ground, struck down by her unseeing son.

  But she was free, running down the entrance tunnel and through the portico and out onto the road, the lake lying placid to her left. She ran past the monoliths, their ancient symbols casting thin shadows against their sides. The wandering people, she remembered. They seemed to breathe an aura of benevolence into the air, and she slowed down. No one was chasing her. The bridge was ahead. She came out onto it and found that the wagons were gone, as were the tables and chairs. The one remainder of the banquet was a faint scent of curry that lingered on the air.

  Taeyaho was waiting for her halfway down, sitting on the bridge wall. He smiled at her as she came up to him and jumped down from the wall, and the moonlight struck against his beauty as she fell into the halo of his protection. He held her, and she could feel her heart beating against him. He smelled of onions and fish, and his own distinct aroma, which was clean as sand and warm like wheat growing in a field. “Where are the others?” she asked into his shirt.

  “They’ve gone to Nahrm House,” he said. “Cloedeya is friends with the wagonwright. No one wanted to go back to the Zairiset.”

  “Thank goodness,” Manrie said.

  They walked together across the bridge and then turned with the road to pass by Zairiset House. There was a grove of trees to their left, lining the river, and an owl hooted plaintively from a high branch, its voice barely heard over the roar of the waterfall. The road turned and Manrie looked out at the lake, wondering if she could see the witch’s skiff moving across the still water. But the witch was long gone. Somewhere out there was her island, and her lonely afterlife. *I know now that some of the dead will never be laid to rest,* she thought to herself, and it made her sad. It made her feel like her life in Libreigia would always be with her, that one part of her would always be subject to the snide superiority of clerks and archivists, would always be wary of the unwanted touch of the scholar masters.

  Nahrm House was smaller than either Jahnajeel House or Zairiset House. The wagons were parked in the courtyard, and their sides were warmed by the light of a few lanterns that had been kept burning. Cloedeya was waiting for her. He was sitting on the edge of a cistern. It was untiled, made of rough field stones. Their edges had been worn away by generations of people who had sat on them, a human erosion that somehow made Manrie feel safe.

  “The others are asleep?” she asked, coming to sit beside him.

  “Melsa and Big Praeda are in the pantry wagon with Little Praeda. I don’t know if they’re asleep, but she wanted them to lay down with her.” He glanced at the sleeping wagon and grimaced. “I am sorry, Manrie. I hurt you, and I don’t know why.”

  She sighed and sat beside him. Taeyaho had been hanging back, and he took this moment to slip away, going to find some bed in the shadows. “I thought better of Uku, that’s all.”

  “He is very sad. He is mourning. Perhaps he is looking for comfort where he can.”

  “He could have sought it with me.”

  “Perhaps,” Cloedeya said. “But you spent the day with Koenbahki. I offer no blame. I think for you, people might be what food is for me. A delight. A fascination.”

  Manrie didn’t think that could be true. She hesitated, then whispered, “I think we might be monstrous. Us. Human beings. I’ve started drawing us into the bestiary.”

  He considered her. He was very tired, and one of his mismatched eyes was wandering freely. It gazed past her, as if looking at something that she couldn’t see. “Then perhaps you need to stop thinking of it as a bestiary.”

  “But it’s full of monsters.”

  “Or simply the beings of this world. Who are we to say what is monstrous?”

  “Some of them are.” She shivered. “A zaizectu killed Praeda’s mother.”

  “But perhaps to a zaizectu we are the monsters. Or we are the meal. Perhaps it is a connoisseur of our breath, as I am a connoisseur of mountain honey. What gives us the right to go about the world, categorizing creatures and plants and stones that were here long before us, and have their own lives?”

  Manrie thought about this. She wondered what Aizdha would say. After a moment she said, “Cloedeya, did you cook a scallop and give it to someone?”

  He was confused. “A scallop?”

  “Maybe a long time ago. When you were a boy here.”

  His eyes widened. “I’d forgotten that. There was an old woman who was dying, and she loved scallops. A client of the Zairiset, who always made rye biscuits for me, and still had a beautiful singing voice, even though she was very old. I wanted to please her. I wanted her to be happy when she died.”

  “You cooked it in butter sauce, with saffron.”

  “I traded with a merchant from across the mountains. I gave him a strange stone that I had found in the hills. Manrie, how do you know this?”

  She smiled. “I went into the cistern at Jahnajeel House. I took the disc and I led the dead to a new home. The old woman told me. Her spirit did.”

  He stared at her. His wandering eye had come back to her face. “It is as I said. You love people. You want to know them.”

  She looked down. “I didn’t think that I did.”

  He smiled and laid a hand on her head, as if he were blessing her. “It starts with small things. I made the scallops for my friend, and then she died, and I knew that I had to leave Raesidae. She was one of the few people who had ever been kind to me. I went to Yenceyan, and I was glad to be rid of this place, and I told myself that I hated all of the people here. And because of that I believed that I hated most people. But I was traveling with a caravan, and the cook saw my interest in the food he was making, and I assisted him. And when I got to Yenceyan I stayed with him, and he cooked in the caravansary, where he had a wife and three children. And then after a while he became restless again, and joined another caravan, and I went with him. I met other cooks. I learned to make many dishes, and then I made dishes of my own, and climbed mountains, and went down into gorges, and traded with all sorts of people, and discovered tastes and flavors that I didn’t know existed. But when I made them only for myself, the flavor was different. Not as good. So I cooked for the people I had come to love. And then one day some bandits attacked a caravan I was traveling with. They captured me, and I cooked for them. The whole time I plotted my escape, but I was also happy that they ate with such appetite and always demanded more. They would have kept me with them forever, but there was a leadership dispute, and the bandit leader was killed, and in the commotion I slipped away. I wandered through the cities east of the mountains and cooked everywhere I went, and always it was the same. I couldn’t help loving the food, and found that people understood my cooking as an expression of love for them. And after a while I had to admit that they were right.”

  “And then you came back to Raesidae.”

  “It wasn’t easy the first time. I came on my own, and all of my old enemies were here. The people who had hurt me. The Zairiset still insisted that I was their client. But I held a banquet. I cooked for everyone. And after that I couldn’t belong to any one house. I didn’t stay long. But I returned a few years later. And I have kept returning. I don’t hate anyone here, anymore, although they oppress me. I don’t know if I love them. But I pity them, and pity is a form of love.”

  “What will you do now?” Manrie asked softly.

  “Now?”

  “The witch has cursed you.”

  “Maybe. I’ve been sitting here thinking about it, as I’ve been waiting for you. Maybe she has cursed me. Or maybe she’s given me what I’ve always wanted. A way to bring low the arrogant and raise up the lowly. I don’t like the idea that I can judge people in that way. But is it my judgement? If it comes from my food, then it is derived from the ingredients. Maybe it is the land that is judging them.” He shrugged, then shook his shoulders as if shaking off a thought. “I am not content with it. I will try to make a dish that judges no one, and maybe I will succeed. But I don’t feel cursed.” He smiled, and kissed her forehead. “And now, Manrie, we should go to bed. I will sleep on top of the pantry wagon, and you should go in with the other women.”

  She opened the side of the wagon and slipped in, and went to sleep among the scent of herbs and onions.