Chapter V

  Setting Off

  Thing slept on Vito’s floor that night using a spare blanket his mother had given it. The spirit didn’t seem to get tired, but still kept quiet, which Vito appreciated. It entertained itself by becoming tiny and exploring the blanket’s many textures and patterns. His mother used blanket-making as a timewaster, and had made all sorts of strange, disconnected shapes in the wool. Vito was also not asleep, even though the sun had set hours ago. He had given his clothes to his mother to wash. He would’ve done it himself, but she had told him to rest. Now he looked out the window above his head, thinking about something his father had said to him near the end: “the moon is hungry”.

  Vito looked out at the black canvas that was the night. The lion’s share of the sky was absent of stars. On his native islands of Bangye-Rua, and indeed, as he had learned, the continent of Remex and every land beyond, a prospective stargazer would look not overhead, but to the horizon, where almost all the lights congregated. There, stars were as numerous as grains of sand, giving every night sky the semblance of a lake of dark water rimmed by a shore of light. Vito did not know why the center of the sky was starless, why they huddled on the horizon. The empty space in the heavens made him feel at peace, but for one feature which was held within.

  The Bad Moon hung in the umbral centerfold, its angry face as resolute and motionless as ever. Vito might have thought it a nightmare— every citizen of Bangye-Rua and Remex might have thought so, were they not witness to it every day and night, suspended in the heavens. Vito knew much of it, and the other moons of the world. Over each land there hung a different one: in Alakon: the Green Moon, in Serrai-Rua: the moon known as Aurora. Each had a different face, and a different temperament attributed thereto. The Green Moon was pensive and serene, Aurora, maniacal and playful. Remex and Bangye-Rua beheld the Bad Moon, a grey sphere inset with two, craterous, beady eyes, and a mouth which hung open in an expression of anger or disgust, or as he now began to envision— hunger.

  The moon’s teeth were cut jagged and chipped, and where once he saw a passive revilement for the people of the surface, now he saw perhaps more. It was bad luck to look directly at the Bad Moon, so most people ignored it. Now, Vito couldn’t take his eyes off it. His father’s words had affected him, and he imagined that he saw it twitch or move every couple seconds, open its jaw wider, look down more intently. He had been born under this moon, and he had grown accustomed to it throughout his life. Now, it was made fresh and new to him again, and the fact that he had never paid it much mind until now only made it all the more frightening. What might it have been doing when his eyes were elsewhere? What threats might it be whispering while less visible during the day?

  When sleep finally took him, Vito’s dreams were animated by roving moons, whose jaws snapped with gnashing teeth as huge as mountains and as sharp as diamonds. The moons had eaten all the stars, and made the heavens black. The survivors of their feast fled to the farthest reaches of the midnight sky, and huddled close to protect their kin. The blood which rained down from this slaughter collected in a pool, and the star-flesh struck the pool and became rooted in it, and thus were made the land and seas— in the dream that Vito had. Vito was at his school desk, and Mr. Quaglione turned to ask another student a question, but when he saw that Vito had survived the Spiritwood, he said:

  “Throw him back in, quickly! The sacrificial goat escaped! It must be returned! The spirits are not to be trifled with!”

  The other students’ faces had been replaced with the Bad Moon’s, and they descended on him, biting and screaming. He felt one grab him, and shake him.

  “Are you okay?” the creature said.

  Vito was awoken. When he opened his eyes, he saw that Thing had a hold of his shoulder, and the sight of its teeth triggered him.

  “Get away!”

  He regretted saying it the instant after it was said. Thing darted back, and its eyes changed for a brief second.

  “You looked like you were in trouble!” it shouted.

  “Just a nightmare…” Vito explained, exhaling his fear. He saw how he had startled Thing, and said, “sorry to yell, you spooked me.”

  “Oh, okay,” said Thing, rubbing its shoulder. “I was waiting for you to wake up, but you kept wiggling around and making weird noises!”

  Vito chuckled.

  “I’m okay,” he said, more automatically than out of a genuine assessment of his status. “Why were you waiting for me to wake up?”

  Thing seemed to regain his humor with this question,

  “I remembered more!”

  Vito’s eyes opened wider, and he felt his body rising to alertness. He recounted the details he knew so far about Thing’s situation in his head so that when he heard the new material, he could contextualize it with the old:

  Thing had had a vision of something terrible happening to either a single person or a group, then he had talked with someone, was given a scarf, and woke up in the faucet of a bathtub. At the time the faucet detail had seemed strange and impossible, but now that Vito knew Thing could shrink, it made more sense. Perhaps he had decided, or been made, to become small, and then was stuffed in.

  Vito sat up, winding his covers around him like a monk to cover his body. He looked out the window, and saw that the rain had finally subsided, and the sun had nearly reached its zenith. Nubye second had come. High time to get to work. He reached underneath his bed and retrieved one of his notebooks. It was made entirely of bamboo, the soft wood serving to bind the many pages woven of its own fiber held within. He opened it, and reflexively arranged his hand to begin writing, before remembering that he had broken his pen against the branches of Grandfather Oak.

  Thing saw the issue, and snapped its fingers.

  “Leave it to me, Little Goat!” Its gold ring flew off its horn and into its hand. Thing tossed it into the air, where once again the violet portal opened. It stuck its hand through, and Vito heard it rooting around outside the house. Thing snapped his fingers again, and Vito heard clinking in the kitchen. Then Thing retracted its hand through the ring. It now had the family’s bottle of ink, as well as a small twig from outside.

  Vito had a little knife in his room for defense that his mother had given him after his father had been taken away, and he went and got it now. He quickly shaved the end of the tiny stick until it looked usable as a pen. It was still a little awkward, but it would do. He turned the page from his history notes, and wrote at the top of the new margin, “Lost Memory Clues”

  “Okay, Thing, start at the beginning,” he said.

  “Ehh… I’m so excited!” Thing said, shaking its hands slightly. It took a deep breath. “Here goes! One day, at least three days ago, I had the vision— I still don’t remember it exactly, but I think some people are in great danger! I remember being really worried, so I went to talk to someone. They gave me this scarf, and the same person stole my other ring! I used to have two. Then I went to visit the Ashi’man to ask them what to do about it. I don’t know what happened after that, but I woke up in the faucet.”

  Vito wrote down the events in the order they were described to him, linking each to the next with arcing, thin lines.

  “You know, I bet they were involved with this somehow! Probably jealous of my reputation and fame!”

  Vito finished writing. “You really think the spirit-gods could do that?”

  “When it comes to me, there’s no telling what people will do. They just can’t help themselves. If there’s a spirit that could make them jealous, it’d be me…” Thing shook its head, indicating that it truly believed that the Ashi’man, gods of the spirits, and the most powerful beings in the world, would really have been envious of it.

  Vito found Thing’s assertion spurious at best, but if its account of events could be trusted, then the Ashi’man would still have been the last ones to have seen it before it had lost its memories. Even if they hadn’t been the culprits, they might know something. This would, of course, entail finding and speaking with the most powerful spirits in the world, an undertaking Vito did not feel he was up to, especially given his experience with the spirits yesterday.

  “Do you… have a way to contact them?” he asked Thing.

  Thing answered resolutely: “We have to go to the Great Whale Grave.”

  Vito knew the place Thing meant immediately, even though he had never heard that name. He saw it whenever he went with his mother to Onagio to sell their goods. There was a section of shoreline on the coast of Onagio strewn with titanic bones— Vito had always speculated that they belonged to whales or sea monsters. He had inquired with a few of the locals, though both answers were equally as common. Half claimed them to be the remains of beached whales, the other half, that they were indeed sea serpents, giant aquatic men, or dead oceanic gods. The name “Great Whale Grave” had to refer to that place. Vito knew just where that was too, on the mainland, merely a few hours away by rowboat.

  Vito created a new column off to the side of his notes: “Investigation”. Here he created a list of things to do, as his father had taught him— “go to the Great Whale Grave”, “look for red scarves”, and “find the faucet”. Before shutting the book, he added “keep an eye out for magic gold rings”.

  Both of them jumped when they heard the front door to the house slam. Thing flew out of the bedroom to see who it was, and a moment later Vito heard his mother’s footsteps, loud and organized.

  “Where’d you go?” he heard Thing ask his mother. A second later, Vito heard its palm strike its forehead. Thing had just remembered that Cione could not understand a word it was saying.

  Vito laid his notebook and his new pen down on the bed, and stretched his leg out, closing the door to his bedroom with his foot.

  “Vito, can you translate!” his mother shouted. Vito flipped his legs over the side of the bed and stood.

  “Mom, do you have my clothes!?” he answered back through the door.

  “I’ll get them from outside!”

  Vito nodded absentmindedly in acknowledgement.

  “Thing wants to know where you were!” he said.

  “I just went to give that Mr. Quaglione a piece of my mind,” he heard his mother say, her voice getting farther away as she went outside to fetch his clothes. She said to Thing, “can you believe, he was just going to leave him there, let him die! A mother should be able to expect her son’s teacher to look out for her boy’s safety! What kind of goblin— I told him exactly what I thought of him.”

  “Lucky I was there!” Thing replied.

  Cione came back in, knocked on Vito’s bedroom door, and then cracked it open, laying his clothes on the floor. Everything but his shoes lay in a pile. Vito was not allowed to wear his shoes in the house except under special circumstances: if they were moving heavy objects and he needed more traction than his socks or the pads of his feet would provide, for example.

  “They’re still a little wet, it rained this morning,” said Cione.

  “Thanks mom!”

  Vito looked at himself in the mirror. His wrist bruise had gotten a little better, but his middle still looked bad. It ached besides. He got his clothes on, including the holster which held his textbook. Vito knew he had a particular task ahead of him that might be hard to follow through on. He had promised (under duress) to help Thing. That now seemed certain to lead him to the Great Whale Grave. To Onagio. To places perhaps even farther from home than that. He was going to have to inform his mother of the deal he’d made with Thing, and figure out what was to be done.

  “I want to go with Thing and make good on my oath” was what he thought of the situation at first, but it didn’t sound right in his head, so he tried again: “I want to go with Thing because he needs help and I want to do the right thing”.

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  That wasn’t right either. He did want to go, but he knew that both these explanations were just his mind making up fake reasons that sounded more noble than his real one. He didn’t really want to honor his promise to Thing— he felt that Thing had taken advantage of him by asking him for a favor while he was inches from death. He did want to do the right thing and help with the lost memories, but not so much that he’d seek out the Ashi’man, who were surely incredibly dangerous. They were the most powerful spirits in the world, no doubt capable of magic which could make the earth itself shudder. He had learned by now a paramount lesson: the spirits are not to be trifled with.

  He didn’t want to go because of his promise, and he didn’t want to go out of righteousness.

  Vito knew the true reason he wanted to go, but it seemed so ridiculous that he had to say it out loud to be sure it made logical sense:

  “I want to go because I’m curious,” he muttered.

  That was it— that was the real reason. He had many questions about the spirits, and the answers could not be found here. No school on Bangye-Rua could teach him about Thing and its kind. He knew there was more to them, and this journey might be his only chance to learn. The secrets of the moons, the inability of the spirits to speak human language, and even the enigma of the Dance of Death might lie along the path to discover what had become of Thing’s memories. If nothing else, this would probably be his only chance in his lifetime to meet or even witness the Ashi’man. They scared him, yes, but just like when he had fibbed to get his mother to tell him about the non-festival Dance of Death, he had to take the risk. The chance to meet the gods themselves was too tempting. He had to know, despite the peril.

  He didn’t know what his mother would think of this. He knew she wouldn’t give much attention to him missing school, as she had never been as passionate about education as he. Still, a trip away from home for who knows how long, to meet the gods of the spirits… it had the potential for danger, to say the least. His mother’s dispassion for education might also work to hinder him, as she might see his curiosity into the nature of the spirits as frivolous or without purpose. She might see it as selfish, using his small amount of newfound knowledge of the spirits as an excuse to leave her, just as Mr. Quaglione used his own knowledge on various subjects to enrich himself.

  Vito spent a long while in his room, just looking at himself in the mirror, working out how he’d tell her.

  He heard knocking at the door, and opening it, found Thing’s smiling face.

  “So about going to the Great Whale Grave…” Thing said coyly, twirling the end of its scarf around its left index finger.

  Vito nodded. “Yeah, just give me a bit.”

  Thing grimaced.

  Vito walked past it, and saw his mother standing outside, shaking his shoes, which expelled shreds of dead leaves, pine needles, blades of grass, a chunk of pinecone, and other detritus. Vito took off his socks and stepped barefoot onto the ground. He felt the bright sun warming his clothes, they were drying on his body.

  “Your shoes are still pretty wet,” his mother said without looking at him. Vito waited for her to be done with the shoes. When she laid them down before him, he slipped each sock back on in turn, stepping back into his shoes, which he could feel were damp. They were not cold however, he could feel the sunlight warming them too. It was a strange feeling, as if he was being buoyed up on two little warm ponds. His mother looked at him standing there. Neither of them said anything for a second.

  “Did you have something to say to me, Vito?” Cione asked her son.

  Vito inhaled noticeably.

  “I made a promise to Thing, mom. It’s lost its memories, and it needs my help to get them back.”

  His mother looked only a little concerned, “alright, okay,” she said.

  Vito continued, “We’ll have to go to Onagio, Thing thinks the Ashi’man might know what happened.”

  Cione shook her head.

  “Well Vito, I was going to go into market today, but I decided to wait another few days in order to have a full stock of—”

  Vito spoke up before she had finished, timidly correcting his mother’s misconception, “I meant just me and Thing.”

  She stood straighter at that, remarking “Hm!”

  “I didn’t mean it like that— !” Vito added quickly.

  His mother laughed.

  “Oh, I know. I was just surprised! You’ll be on your own then, I mean the two of you… and the Ashi’man…”

  Vito nodded, with a gulp.

  “You don’t think I should go,” he said with downcast eyes.

  “I think you should absolutely go.”

  Vito blinked.

  “You have a one-in-a-million talent, Vito. You can talk to spirits! I’ve never even heard of someone being able to do that. You have to develop this skill. When you came home yesterday, and I said that you’d become a sorcerer, I wasn’t just referring to that ring Thing put above your head, but speaking to the spirits too. Who knows what powers you might be able to learn if you advance your understanding of them? You might be able to learn magic spells, become a wizard or a sage. It’s clear that you’re meant for something great.”

  Vito felt that his mother was being self-effacing, and said,

  “I think your business is great too, mom.”

  She snorted.

  “That makes two of us, but I developed the skill for business over many years. Nowadays I think I’m quite good at it, but I started out poor. You, Vito, are starting beyond what I have ever seen a person be able to achieve with spirits. If you put in the same work I did, you could reach even greater heights than I have, due to your talent. You have an incredible gift, and you should use it. By the time you’re my age, you could be a world-renowned mage, or even a saint if you’re recognized by one of the cults.”

  “Do you really think that could happen?” Vito asked, his heart soaring for a moment at the thought of it.

  “If you can see it through,” said his mother. The comment might have sounded condescending from another person’s mouth, but Vito’s mother said it with such confidence that he knew she believed that this was the future meant for him. It made him feel weightless to have such expectations placed upon him. It was both exciting, and scary. He knew that his mother was sincere in her belief in him, but he also knew that she couldn’t possibly predict everything that might lie along the path to this power. Neither of them yet knew if there was a price to this knowledge. Despite this, Vito wanted to succeed, and so he had to try.

  Cione hugged her son,

  “You’re old enough to go out on your own, I think, and Thing did us a great favor. Go.”

  Vito felt a strange sense of finality to the interaction, and hugged his mother very tightly. When they parted, Cione looked her son up and down.

  “I can see it— my son, Vito the Magister, Sorcerer-Supreme of Remex.” The way that she said it was only slightly ironic.

  Vito chuckled.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Then it’s settled?” she asked, to confirm.

  “Yeah, I’ll go with Thing and learn about the spirits.”

  Cione heard his words, but she didn’t react to them at first. She merely stood there for a few seconds, silent. Vito wondered if she had heard him. She looked him up and down again, her eyes seemingly etching his details onto her memory. When their eyes met, she suddenly turned her head away so that Vito couldn’t see her face.

  “Good,” she said, strained.

  Vito didn’t know what to do. He thought it best not to say anything.

  “Let’s have your cake before you go, alright?” she added.

  Vito nodded.

  The two of them went inside, and Cione got the cake out from under a sealed cover. She cut it into slices, and Vito set the table. He took a large piece, and his mother, a smaller one. Thing flew through the air, grabbing a piece for itself the moment the treat had been divided. It came to the table and ate over its placemat where Cione told it to, though it would often get distracted and begin drifting someplace else, only to be brought back by Vito’s mother’s command. Despite Thing’s levity, a malaise hung over the celebration that Vito could not quite put his finger on. He had never seen his mother act this way before. She seemed both satisfied and sad. The two of them ate in silence, while Thing babbled to himself. Vito felt uncomfortable, and could not say that he enjoyed his party. He didn’t blame his mother.

  Afterwards, Cione went around the house, gathering things into a pack. Vito watched her, trying to penetrate her feelings, but he could not. She packed him plenty of rations, medicine, and a few of her candles and greases.

  “You can sell these when you arrive and get some money if you need,” she explained.

  Thing took notice of what she was doing, and looked at the backpack that she had put the items in.

  “We don’t need that!” it said, and snapped. The ring came into its hand, and it tossed it into the air. The portal opened.

  “I can store as much stuff as you need on a different world that nothing lives on! It can be like your… what would be the right word… ‘inventory’!”

  Cione nodded and handed Thing the pack, and many more rations beside. Thing deposited them into the ring.

  “Where are they going?” Vito and Cione said at the same moment. Vito laughed at the coincidence, and his mother winked at him. He was glad to see it.

  “Like mother, like son, I guess!” Thing said. “Anyway, they’re just in some field somewhere, I don’t know. Nobody lives there, it’s a pretty boring world, not worth visiting. I just use it to store my stuff.”

  Vito told his mother what Thing had said.

  “Wow,” was her response. Vito was reminded by this statement how really quite powerful Thing was.

  “And you’re certain no one will steal the things?” Vito asked the spirit.

  “Yeah, course,” said Thing, “plus if they did, I’d just beat ‘em up, Little Goat.”

  “I have a few more things for you,” Cione said, going into her own room. She came out with a yard or so of leather in one hand, and a trabiet in the other. Vito recognized the trabiet, with its two prongs connected by a fiber rope, as a tool for harvesting rice, which was odd to him, since neither he nor his mother had ever grown rice, and he wasn’t expecting to start now. Cione could see his apprehension. She worked the yard of hard leather over his right arm— a sleeve of armor. A belt hung from the section closest to his armpit, and she fastened it around his chest, keeping it firmly in place. She then took up the trabiet with both hands, holding one of the prongs in each.

  “Throw your hand towards me. Quickly. Your left hand.”

  Thing shrank down and sat in the crook of a fork, treating the interaction as a spectacle for its amusement. It shoveled crumbs of cake into its mouth as it watched.

  Vito was confused by his mother’s request, but did as he was told, keeping his fist open but moving his hand towards her quickly. To his amazement, his mother reacted instantly, pulling one of the prongs around his wrist, tying it with the rope and stopping him fast. Vito couldn’t move his left hand at all. She held his hand there for a second before unwrapping it.

  “Now you try.” She handed the trabiet to him.

  Vito’s right hand was still a little sore from Grandfather Oak, but he managed to catch his mother’s hand before it reached him.

  “There you go,” she said with a smile. “Keep that on you.”

  Vito realized then that his mother had told him to throw his left hand so that she wouldn’t be tying his bruised right wrist. He looked down at the spot. “Thanks for that,” he said to her.

  Cione gave him a kiss on the forehead. Thing looked confused, as if he’d missed a beat, and dropped one of his crumbs.

  “Don’t want to hurt you.” She pointed to the trabiet, “with this you won’t have to harm anyone, and it’s also a good weapon since most people underestimate it. Use it whenever you can, but you should also take this.” She went into his room and brought him his knife. “The world is very dangerous these days,” she said, as Vito took the handle. He tied the trabiet to his elbow, and gave the dagger to Thing, who stored it.

  “Was it less dangerous when you were young?” he asked his mother.

  Cione began to say one thing, but then stopped:

  “Traders back then were…”

  She smiled, and revised her reply:

  “No, not really.”

  She patted Vito’s leather-armored arm, and cast a glance out the window.

  “It’ll probably rain again tomorrow, if you want to get to Onagio dry and before dusk, you’d better go now.”

  Vito was surprised. He had imagined setting out tomorrow, though he knew this was unwise. There was a rare break in the rain right now, and another might not come in a week. Rowing to Onagio would never be easier during the season than right now. The lashing rain, crackling lightning bolts over the sea— now was the time to go. The sense of finality he had experienced earlier became more acute. He found that his holster had enough extra room, and he stowed his notebook, the ink vial, and his new pen within alongside his textbook. The pen and bottle were slotted into the space between the covers of his textbook.

  He realized that his pen was on his leg, where it would surely explode, and took it out, tucking it behind his long, sharp ear instead.

  As he, his mother, and Thing went outside to fetch their rowboat, he couldn’t help but assure himself that it wasn’t all over.

  “I’ll come back,” he told his mother as Thing made its hand giant and carried the boat to the shore.

  She smiled to him, but did not reply. When they reached Quldir’s house, Thing laid the little watercraft on the edge of the beach and the sea, then became minuscule and sat on the bottom of the boat where it wouldn’t be seen.

  Quldir, once again fishing alone at his dock, saw them, and waved.

  Cione waved back.

  “Off to Onagio harbor?” he shouted in his growl of a voice.

  Cione shook her head.

  “It’s just my boy who’s off.”

  Quldir pulled off his wide-brimmed hat and did a little bow.

  “I understand. I’ve seen this story many times.” He turned to Vito. “Good luck to you then.”

  Vito nodded to the man, but was disconcerted by him. He looked both younger and happier than Vito remembered him being. He seemed perfectly content, jovial even, and while in Vito’s imagination he was a man in his late forties, straight on, he couldn’t recognize him as a day over thirty. The fisherman did not behave like a hermit who had jumped at this chance for human interaction. He acted… normal. He was well-spoken and friendly. He didn’t give Vito the impression that he was missing company, rather that he kept some other company, though with whom Vito could not guess. He wondered what other path the man might have found. He wanted to ask him “why aren’t you lonely?” But he knew it wasn’t the time for such a question. He was sure he could get the answer if he were to stay with Quldir, observe him for a time, but the spirits commanded his utmost attention, and so instead of scrutinizing the fisherman, he turned his gaze to the little wooden rowboat. Thing, within, gave him a wave with his tiny hand.

  His mother handed him the oars, and he stepped into the boat. She began to push.

  Quldir turned away to return to his line, saying with a big, earnest grin, “the world is waiting for you.”

  Vito used one of the oars to push against the beach, and with his mother’s strength and his, they entered into the sea. It was calm since there was no storm. Thing couldn’t grow back to his normal size yet since Quldir would see him, so Vito began to slowly row with both oars, which was slightly difficult for him. He looked back, watching his mother watch him row into the Westward Strait, which bridged Remex and the western islands of the Bangye-Ruan archipelago. Vito imagined himself travelling along the yellowed parchment of a map of the world, with his little boat crossing from a blue colored section labeled “Bangye-Rua”, into the vast, red-shaded area which bore the title “Remex”.

  The way that his mother looked at him called him back down from these grand images. He could see her lip twitching, and her left foot twisted back and forth, as though she were preparing to turn and walk away, but couldn’t quite manage it. Already she was getting smaller behind him as he rowed. Vito wanted to say something to her, anything at all to break the silence.

  “Goodbye!” He called back, waving to her.

  She hid her face from him, and turned away. Vito did not know if she had heard him.

  His mother left footprints on the sand as she returned to the field where his home lay. She never looked back to him.

  “Goodbye!!” He called out again, feeling a rising sense of dread that she hadn’t heard his parting words. She put up one arm and waved at him with the back of her hand.

  He watched and waited as he slowly rowed, but she never turned back to look at him.