Free Tinder Stricken by Heidi C. Vlach Page B

bamboo wall. Up the chimneys,
barely audible past the wind, a tin bell rang — and a phoenix
swooped down through an unused chimney, to land on another metal
perch.
    “Farmwoman don't typically call upon
animists,” Birdnose said, with tight-strung calm. “I wouldn't have
met you this way if I had known.”
    “That's fair,” Esha said. She should have
said clear that animism services were what she wanted — but she was
unworthy as a wordsmith, life had long since taught her. “I'm sure
I don't seem like a patron of animism but if you'll take my
payment, I need help from you. Or someone like you. I'm in no
position to refuse anyone.”
    Birdnose twisted her broad mouth,
considering. She pushed the lockbox deep under a table, as though
Esha might try to peek at the illicit things she had just been
offered. “You said there's a phoenix causing you trouble?”
    “I did.”
    “That's why you're offering the property
token ...?”
    “That's right.” Esha shook inside but she
held her chin high.
    Squinting, Birdnose asked, “That's much too
high a price for a bird bothering a patch of yams. Dare I ask what
you want?”
    “The phoenix took something precious from
me, and I want it back. I don't know where the bird went, or if
it'll covet your valuables, too. I ... I just need what's mine. If
that's too far different from telling a phoenix to leave a field,
that's fine — we can take a rock to its skull, or poison it.”
    Birdnose raised a hand toward her face, to
the peeling skin on her cheek — and she recoiled as though memory
slapped her hand away.
    “Or we can leave it alive,” Esha hurried out
of her mouth, “If you deem that proper.”
    “Wait. This isn't right.”
    “What? I— Please forgive my—“
    Birdnose hesitated again, her hand twitching
toward her face on a taut string of habit. “ Quiet. Just ...
Know a little peace, Gita Of The Fields. I will return in a moment
— I need to change.” She strode from the room, closing a side door
firm behind her. A lock scraped.
    And with that, Esha was alone, but not
forgotten as long as the three phoenixes stared at her. Two on
perches, one sitting in the corner. She kept as still as a new deer
fawn for the first long moment. The phoenixes were trained but Esha
wouldn't know how to command them if they took a liking to the
hearth fire's embers.
    She had to move eventually. Breathing
normally, and shifting her stiffening legs. If they noticed, they
didn't react. A few times, she made and broke eye contact with the
beasts — dreading that such staring would offend the phoenixes,
like it did vicious dogs — until after long moments, the phoenixes
all turned away from her. They hopped away with explosively quiet
flutters of wings and clicking of claws, to a dish on a sitting
table where they ate whatever morsels Birdnose had left them. Esha
was left to memorize the bamboo stalks patterning the walls.
    The lock scraped again, and the door
revealed the animist — wearing her carved mask, the firelight
letting amber hints of her eye colour through. Amber just like
Birdnose's eyes were, and set in the same tall-framed body, too.
The pointedly ordinary Tselayan clothing was gone, replaced with
tiers of rough plant fibre. Her diplomat caste sigil hung from a
ladder of bone beads. She was tall and curvaceous and layered with
stories: this was the foreigner that Esha had been expecting.
    “I greeted you under the wrong name,” the
animist said, her delicate-nailed hand trailing off the door
handle. “With greatest respect, I would like to correct it.”
    This was too familiar a voice. Like a
puppet, Esha nodded, while she began to understand.
    “If you came seeking tar or weeds, I would
be Birdnose. But to you? No. As long as I practice animism on this
mountain, call me by my truer name: Atarangi.”
    “Your sister ... Isn't a sister at all? Just
your other name?”
    “Another name and another face. I trust you
won't speak of my dishonesty to any passing