Tinder Stricken by Heidi C. Vlach Page A

to top himself, he figured out why
one of the plough yaks was limping. Esha couldn't grudge anyone as
useful as that.
    Animists could speak to animals. They could
persuade a meddlesome phoenix to leave and never return. Listening
to the bird cries all around, Esha formed a new hope: maybe she
could make her plea heard even if no people could hear it.
    Carefully, gripping the fabric tight against
more clumsiness, she opened her satchel. She chewed and swallowed a
scant half of the kudzu's leaves and strained her murky vision
toward the shapes flitting in the trees — chirping birds, maybe
wagtails.
    Esha had performed animism before. She
remembered little about it since she was shambling drunk at the
time, on rice beer and grief equally — so speaking to a beast
couldn't be difficult . It was simply wrong.
    Esha threw more of her shame into the wind,
and strained to bend herself upright, and called out with a
rustling of undergrowth lungta in her voice.
    “Hail? Hail, birds.”
    The chirping stopped. Shining little eyes
turned to her.
    “Hey, ah. Hello.” There was a stilted way
animists needed to speak for animals to understand: Esha suddenly
couldn't remember it. “I am a friend. Help me?”
    The wagtails' chittering resumed. They
weren't intelligent enough to use speaking lungta themselves — but
as Esha pushed her own energy toward her ears and outward, the
cries began forming sense.
    “ Help?”
    “ Friend?”
    “ No! Largebig!”
    “ Assist friend?”
    “ No! Enemy.”
    “ Enemy trick?”
    “ Trick?! Danger!”
    They took wing, all shouting, danger,
danger! Flapping faded into the distance.
    “Ugh,” Esha growled, “no!” Not that she had
expected much of birds, the brazen little seed thieves. She dangled
because she had to, but her senses were strained toward the trees
now.
    She waited — for another hour, as near as
she could tell. Something small and brown came crackling through
the needles but it fled when Esha called out to it. Prey creatures
couldn't overcome their base natures. She needed something more
cunning, something crafty enough to solve problems for its next
meal — a monkey, or a bush pig, or a magpie. Maybe a wild cat would
even listen to her, if it didn’t decide instead that Esha was a
trussed piece of prey.
    Her bladder ached and her muscles all
hummed; her headache was a blunted sword against her temple,
pushing hard enough to pierce. Esha couldn't wait for a person any
longer. There were animals around that she hadn't noticed but none
of them were noticing her back.
    A few more kudzu leaves went into Esha's
mouth, laboriously swallowed upward. Then with all the air in her
stifled chest, with all the life-movement she could shove into her
words, she called out to the wilds.
    “Hey! Hail! I need help. I'll— I'll give you
food if you help me!”
    The sky's silence answered her. Wind and
clouds, and not one living thing.
    “Help? I'll feed you, just— Help me!”
    She closed her eyes and could barely open
them again, the pressure in her head growing. Esha was mustering
herself to heave upright again when she heard it — wings fluttering
above her. Her hopes lapped high and she twisted to look at the
creature.
    It was an orange mass with long plumes of
tail feathers, and bright eyes above a scruffy-looking throat. A
phoenix. Staring down at her like judgement itself, and Esha wanted
to glare right back but she was spinning with the wind again.
    The phoenix creaked in a rusty-door voice:
in Esha's seeking ears, the kudzu's green lungta sieved out
words.
    “ Stop shouting.”
    Even with lungta wasted on it, the beast
couldn't see sense. Esha huffed and waved an arm up at her dilemma.
“I’m trapped . I can’t get my leg free. And my knife is down
there, so I need help .”
    “ A human is trapped in a red-food ( )?
How the lake-blue ( )!”
    Some of the croaking didn't make sense: it
sidestepped the lungta in Esha's thoughts, too slick to grab
meaning from. She hurried more