Chapter 8
On the west coast of Talin, where the kingdom’s fawn sand meets the calm sea, Gaiyu Province is ofttimes quiet.
Ask any of the inhabitants, and they will say that it has something to do with the paltry population.
It’s hard to stir madness when the houses are miles apart, the markets tangled up in the trees.
To find an entrance, one must look for the telltale signs of infrastructure: the rungs grown into bark, the circle of flowers disguising a metal hinge.
Every day, the sunrise sprawls wide on the surface of the water, casts a golden sheen into the jungle lands, and wakes the birds for their sequestered symphony.
The rural dwellers rise too, stepping out into the dense vegetation, leaving behind no mark that won’t wash away with sea-foam.
Since the rain started, though, Gaiyu has been a mess.
The people blame the provinces to the east for blowing the trouble over.
It’s always the eastern provinces… Kelitu, most of all.
In the early days of the kingdom, the stories said the god of the eastern clouds was more spiteful than his western sister.
The eastern waters are harsh. Birds and fronds that uncurl with teeth the moment their prey look away.
Storms blowing up onto land, threatening to level straw houses the rural dwellers put up knowing they will only last three seasons before they must be built again.
Hard to believe that anyone could have fled Gaiyu for Kelitu during this climate, but timing has never been his strong suit.
The man from Gaiyu picks out a small pear from the stall.
He adopted the name Tenzen—it is the name that the man before him held.
He was not born with a name, and as the years pass, he is able to recall less and less about himself and how he ended up in Gaiyu.
He chose this life. That, he shouldn’t forget.
There was enough time to peruse the kingdom below, even when rot was setting in.
“Are you ready?”
Tenzen jolts. The air reeks of salt today. Craters opening in the sand, water seeping up to fill the space.
“No,” Tenzen says. “I’m still looking.”
“Shop’s closing early.” The merchant pushes his crates underneath the table. They’re filled with soft fruit that he has painted with edible coloring, an attempt to hide the damage from complaining customers. “There’s a demonstration happening in the village center.”
Tenzen should already be gone. He planned this brief trip to see a friend, but he has not managed his exit because every driver has taken off work, and he cannot find anyone that will take him farther than Leysa.
“People need to be careful,” Tenzen grumbles. “It doesn’t matter what’s happening down in San-Er. The palace soldiers are still going to maintain order.”
“The palace soldiers have nothing on our new god!”
There are many believers in the east. There are even more believers in the north—he avoided going anywhere above the Jinzi River, just in case.
San-Er is the only place where the royals succeeded in redirecting worship for the pantheon, distracting their disciples amid factories and gambling tables and blinking computer lights.
It’s different in the provinces. Faith is frequently misplaced, but it is rarely frightened away.
Without telephone-line whirrs and cigarette dispensers, the royals turned to violence to suppress Talin’s old gods.
But the threat of harm will only fuel rural dwellers to hold hope closer to their chests, feeding the pieces bit by bit to their children until there is another generation sketched by the very same palette.
Tenzen is still holding the pear in his hand when the shop merchant lowers the tarp on his stall and walks off.
There was a time where rural dwellers in Kelitu would be afraid of calling anyone a god.
But since the takeover in the capital, the provinces have gotten bold.
Since King Kasa passed and the children beneath him started grappling for the throne, the provinces have received their cue that the capital’s power is not all-encompassing.
Tenzen steps out from underneath the stall cover, rain immediately pattering onto his shoulders.
Despite his better judgment, he does follow the path toward the village center, climbing the steps uphill.
A bite of the pear. Then another. He has finished it by the time the stone fountain comes into view.
The village center is the nicest part of Kelitu.
Its fountain is built into a marble circle, surrounded by red and yellow tiles to depict a king’s crowning.
These grounds near the yamen are well-kept, beautiful and warm when the sun is out and reflecting against the tiles.
The sun hasn’t been out in some time, so the tiles are slippery instead.
Tenzen finds a place to watch, making an effort not to step on any of the renderings underfoot.
He doesn’t recognize whose face has been depicted.
When he counts back the years, he’s never quite sure if he’s recalling the cycle of Talin’s history in the correct order.
These palaces have always been fighting each other.
On every turn of the wheel, once those alive forget what happened in the last generation, it begins again: three children, wanting to hold court.
Two against one. The wretched, the wicked, and the beloved.
A sweet breeze wafts under his nose. Reanne’s nearby. She must have come too, sick of being cooped up in that house. It has been nice staying with her, even if she’s a poor host. He turns, following the smell of peaches, and there—she’s off to the other side.
The crowd has grown significantly. He’s muttering his apologies as he pushes through, keeping his cold hands tucked closely to his chest. Reanne does not acknowledge his presence when he arrives beside her, staring at the fountain.
A smatter of clapping from the back. Then, cheering.
The water inside the fountain bursts skyward, creating a funnel into the clouds, and the crowd gasps in awe.
Tenzen would write it off as a mere parlor trick if it weren’t for the sudden appearance of the young man on the fountain ledge when the water splashes back down.
The man hops to the ground, waving cheerily to the crowd.
“Is he real?” Reanne asks. Tenzen can barely hear her over the applause.
“I think so,” he replies. “Only one of us would be capable of something like that.”
“Hmm.” Reanne is silent a moment. “Who is he?”
“I don’t know. I met the god of water a few decades ago. It’s not her.”
“Could have jumped.”
“Wrong eye color. It’s not her.”
Tenzen traveled across the very kingdom to see the only friend he trusted. The only friend he kept from his time in the heavens. And when he arrived, he confirmed what he’d hoped was only a fluke. Just as Tenzen could suddenly wield his qi again, so could Reanne.
So could every other member of their pantheon who fled the rot and came down to earth to accept an everlasting mortal life.
The gods who determined the elements. The godlings who determined the dispositions.
Their elevated qi. Their specialties. The pantheon has been recast on a new plane, and now the whispers travel far and wide, village to village, spreading fervor.
The old gods have returned. They walk the earth again.
They do not understand what has happened.
“I think it is becoming very hard to deny,” Reanne says. “Heavenly qi has returned to the kingdom.”
Tenzen sighs. He’d been enjoying his time in the trees.
He didn’t want it to change. But that is the opinion of a minority, given this young man before them.
A cluster of his audience has gone as far as to fall onto their knees, prostrating themselves before him.
And he’s loving it. The wind whips fiercely, streaming through the young man’s hair to give him a theatric pose, and Tenzen will not step in to steer it the other way, because then he would be exposing himself.
“It wasn’t on purpose, I gather,” he says.
“Of course not,” Reanne mutters. “Could have given us a warning first.”
Another cheer erupts. The young man is speaking about freeing their province from palace control. He will lead the charge. He will pull apart their barracks, and he only asks for the people’s support. The pantheon has always craved worship. In their bygone days, there was separation.
“This is absurd,” Reanne mutters. “We cannot go back.”
Her age does not show in her face. The years have passed with no change. It is only when she angers that her disposition shifts, and then the whites of her eyes take on an anachronistic stillness.
“No.” Tenzen pulls her elbow, hurrying them away from the crowd.
They do not want to be spotted. They do not want anything to do with this.
“I suppose this was the inevitable outcome. She decided to play the fool when she broke the heavens. Now she’s brought the heavens down to earth—and she doesn’t even remember who she is. ”