Goda glided across the desert and Kanna followed her strides much less gracefully. She didn’t know where they were going at first, but when her eyes adjusted to the darkness outside, she saw that Goda had turned straight in the direction of the caverns.
Kanna knew that in the morning, they would be heading out of the desert and into the Middleland. To be able to set out on such a journey in the first place, they would of course need fuel—but she couldn’t imagine that Goda was planning to steal from the priestesses. Even though the fuel in those caves technically belonged to Jaya, Kanna had a feeling that this would hardly make a difference to someone like Priestess Rem.
As usual, Goda was unhelpful. She explained nothing, her eyes trained on the cliffs, and she barely glanced over her shoulder when Kanna fell a little behind. As they passed by one of the military trucks—the one that had been parked close to the garden—a soldier peeked her head out the door. It was the same woman Kanna had seen the evening before, when they had been coming back to the storage room from Parama’s shack. She had a cigar stuffed in her mouth again, and the glow of her match as she lit the tip of it was the only thing that allowed Kanna to see her face.
Perhaps it had only been the dim light, but Kanna thought she saw a dark circle under the woman’s eye that hadn’t been there before.
The soldier took one look at Goda and recoiled into the truck, slamming the door behind her. Kanna raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. By then, she had grown used to all the negative reactions that people had towards her master; she herself had them still.
Nonetheless, Kanna kept close to Goda as they walked through another patch of trucks. “Are you sure this is a smart thing to do?” she asked. “What if we get caught? Priestess Rem already knows that we’ve been in there.”
“If we get caught, then we get caught. The caverns are our best option now.”
Kanna glanced around at the machines that surrounded them, some of which were rumbling conspicuously, wasting their precious fuel. “What if you steal from the soldiers?”
She was a little surprised at her own suggestion, but it was true that she didn’t think much of the military, perhaps because they had been the ones who had driven her family out of their own lands. She wasn’t a thief herself, but if she had been, stealing from other thieves seemed to be the most reasonable strategy.
Goda shook her head without turning around. “No, I tried that already,” she said. “Earlier this evening, when you were hiding from me, I went into the back of that nearby truck and rummaged around for some spare fuel. The soldier inside the cabin heard me and confronted me. It was then I learned that only one truck is carrying extra fuel, and it’s heavily guarded. They plan to refuel in the Upperland where all the product is, so the fuel they have now is rationed and tightly locked, even for the soldiers. It would be unlikely that I would be able to siphon anything without breaking the tanks open and causing a scene.”
Kanna glanced back towards the truck that stood near the garden, and she watched it grow smaller in the distance. She could just barely see the small point of orange cigar light through the dark windows of the cabin.
Then something connected in Kanna’s mind.
“You hit that woman, didn’t you?” she asked. “The soldier. You punched her in the face. She had a bruise on her eye.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“But why?”
“She didn’t like that I was looking through her things. That’s understandable—but I was in a hurry and I didn’t have time to deal with her emotions. She swung at me and she missed.”
“Then what?”
“I swung back at her and I didn’t miss.”
Kanna’s heart raced a little harder, so she crossed her arms over her chest. It was that mix of fear and curiosity together again, a response that her body had when it became aware of any edge of Goda’s power. It was the conflict between her reflex to run away…and her burning desire to witness what the woman actually looked like in a wild fury, naked of her usual restraint, charging hard with her hands clasped into fists.
The image made Kanna tense up. Her eyes shut tightly and she followed Goda only by the sound of the footfalls in front of her.
When she opened her eyes again, they were much closer to the crag where the caverns lived. Goda led her up the winding trail of the cliff and Kanna watched where she stepped to avoid slipping on the gravel. Just as before, she could only see where Goda’s lamplight shined, so she stayed close and she held her hands out so that she could catch herself on Goda if she stumbled.
“I thought that lamp had run out of batteries,” Kanna began to say—but then she remembered that Goda had found two lanterns in Jaya’s storage room that first afternoon.
“This is the other one,” Goda replied. “Hopefully it will stay alive until we’re done. There are no spare lanterns or batteries, so it’s our last resort.”
“Why don’t we just light a candle, then?”
Goda paused for a long moment, but since she was facing forward, Kanna couldn’t see her expression. “Why don’t we smoke some cigars while we carry the fuel out, too?”
It was only a few paces later that it finally dawned on Kanna, but still she huffed with irritation. “I can’t imagine that engine fuel is so flammable that we can’t even have a tiny light,” she argued, even though she actually agreed with Goda and wasn’t too keen on testing her own argument. It was just that she still couldn’t tolerate having anything in common with the woman—even a meaningless opinion.
They reached the mouth of the cavern a few minutes later, and Kanna looked down towards the plain one last time. The desert was bathed mostly in the bluish glow of the moon, but she could still see the points of a few white and orange lights among the military trucks. Small, tarp-covered huts peppered their camp here and there, and a bonfire flickered in the middle of it all. Countless soldiers crouched around the flames, laughing and shouting to one another, shadows dancing and pushing against each other in the sand. Though their human voices easily carried over the expanse, they looked more like a distant swarm of locusts from where Kanna was standing.
“How does a country with such a small homeland have such a huge military?” Kanna murmured. “I heard that a hundred years ago, you people had barely enough to even eat, and now you’re bursting out of the seams of your original borders to the point that you have to conquer everyone else.” Kanna turned to see that Goda was standing at the entrance of the cave, looking at her with a strangely amused expression.
“What we’ll find in here is the answer to your question.”
Kanna shook her head. “Engine fuel? But any of the kingdoms can use that.”
“And yet none of them use it the way we do. On its own, any technology just sits there and does nothing. It’s human intention that drives the motors more than the fuel.” Goda stepped into the cave’s mouth. The glowing lamp swung by her side, lighting the first edges of the colorful snakes on the walls.
Kanna didn’t want to go inside. The snakes unnerved her almost as much as Goda did—but she knew that wherever Goda went, she had to follow. “Human intention,” Kanna echoed as the walls of the cavern began to swallow her up. “You mean the intention of the Middlelanders? What intention is that?”
“To be evil,” Goda said. “To be selfish, like you and your father.” She turned back around to face the void and Kanna stared after her.
Distracted for a moment by the growing tangle of serpents above her and the garbled script on the walls that glowed in response to Goda’s light, Kanna did not protest at first. She felt that pressure in her head returning, and that whining pulse from the last time she had seen the snakes growing louder in her ears.
Kanna let out a breath, pressing her hands against her eyes. The snakes had become too bright. “No. I’m nothing like you people,” she said finally.
“What are you babbling about, Kanna Rava? You’re exactly like us. In fact, you may as well be one of us. It is you and your family who fed us, and now you complain that we’ve grown strong and fat and insatiable along with you. How silly.”
“You’re full of nonsense. All you ever say is nonsense.” Kanna gritted her teeth against the vibration in the air that seemed to grow only higher in pitch. It made her feel like her brains were buzzing inside of her skull. Once she felt that she could hardly take another step, a nauseating sensation came over the whole of her: She could sense an inner ghost floating in her body, one that was separate from her bones and muscle and physical frame, one that hovered loosely just underneath her skin.
“What…? What is this?”
Her body was resisting it, resisting everything—the pulse inside her, the air outside her, even just the way the wind played against her flesh as she moved. She couldn’t stand any of it. She tensed every muscle.
Suddenly, with a surge of blood through every limb, it felt like her veins were about to tear open. The ghost inside fought to burst through her skin. It could not be contained. It was ready to spill into the cavern and swell into the floor and the walls like a gushing fountain that she could barely hold back.
Astonished, she resisted even more, clenching hard to keep herself together. She stumbled as an insistent throb rushed up her spine and through her head, as if to crack it open.
Kanna’s panicked steps echoed loudly. “What’s happening? What is this, Goda? Is it the serpents?”
A hand clasped against hers. Some force pulled her forward into the darkness—and with every ounce of effort that she had left, she refused to give in to the serpents, and she allowed the hand to lead her quickly down the cavern until they had reached a fork in the path.
To the right was the tunnel where the snakes flowed—the tunnel where she and Goda and Parama had hidden themselves that first night—and to the left was the cavern where the assistants had carted off the fuel. Goda pulled her to the left, further into the void, into the path that was free from serpents.
Within moments, the feeling of conflict inside of Kanna’s body dissolved. She felt her spirit collapse within her, so that they became the same again, so that she could no longer sense any separation between herself and her other self.
And then she wondered—but only for a split second, because it brought up another wave of nausea—that perhaps the resistance between the two was always there, but she could not always feel it. She had never experienced that kind of discomfort so directly before. It had been a pain without a source, like every atom of air that surrounded her had been a threat.
She pressed herself against a wall of the cave and gasped and tried to fight the tears, but the water was already falling in thick streams from her eyes. “Goda, what was that?” she asked between heaving breaths. “What on Earth…?”
Goda was staring at her intensely. The light from the lamp made her black eyes glow. It was terrifying enough that Kanna had to fight not to look away.
“A wave of death passed through here. You were able to sense that?” There was fascination in Goda’s tone. “The cave is aroused by our presence tonight, so it agitated our snakes to try to kill us.”
Kanna stared back at her with bewilderment. “That was real? It happened to you, too?” But she couldn’t comprehend how Goda had felt the same thing and continued to walk seemingly as if nothing had occurred at all.
Goda stared back down towards the main part of the cave, where some of the lamplight still reached, where the outline of a few of the snakes was still visible. “Whether it is real or not is hard to say,” she replied, “but yes, it happened. It seems to have passed mostly through you instead of me, so maybe you were the one meant to receive it this time.”
“You act like you’re not even surprised by all of this,” Kanna huffed. Her senses felt like they were returning to normal, even if her mind could not let go of that feeling of dread and hollowness that had emerged with the snakes.
Goda released Kanna’s hand and began advancing again down the path. “That’s because it’s not too surprising. I’ve seen it before, in other old shrines that I’ve explored, though most people don’t notice it because the shrine is picky about who it will kill, and it has its favorites. This is just a feature of these kinds of places. The first time a part of you dies, it’s unexpected, but after awhile you grow more and more used to it, so you just let it happen.”
“But I didn’t die!” Kanna pressed her hands against her own body, as if to feel whether her flesh was still there, even as she began to follow Goda once again.
“No, you didn’t. You resisted, so you survived.”
Though they appeared to agree, Kanna had no idea what the woman was talking about. Goda had made it sound as if she herself had died many times, and that it was no big deal, just a minor inconvenience when taking a stroll through a cave. Of course, that was complete nonsense, Kanna thought, just like everything else that came out of Goda’s mouth. After all, if Goda had died, then naturally she would be dead and not leading Kanna deeper into some pitch black hole.
“Is this what Death Flower does?” Kanna asked suddenly, as soon as the thought bolted through her mind.
Goda laughed. At first, Kanna thought it was a laugh of derision, a dismissive gesture—but then she heard the edge of pleasure in it. “Yes!” Goda told her, glancing behind her, a smile spread on her face. “That is exactly what it does. It works differently—it’s much more potent than any shrine—but this is essentially what it does. It kills you.”
Kanna’s eyes widened. “You’re telling me this is why people eat Flower? Why would anyone ever want to do that?” she cried. “That was the worst thing I have ever felt in my entire life! I’d rather be shocked a hundred times by the cuff than feel my soul dissolving into infinity like that for even a minute!”
“Of course. Death is many things; pleasant is not always one of them.” Goda’s strides grew longer as the cave stretched further in front of them. “But there’s more to life than pleasure.”
Kanna stared into the darkness. She shivered as she felt herself getting sucked in, but she willingly continued to follow because she had no choice, and because she had grown exhausted of resisting.
When they reached a dead end—a pit, a belly—Kanna only noticed because the echoes of their footsteps bounced back towards them quicker, and so she could tell that the walls were closing in around them. The chamber was large enough that the tiny lantern could not light up every side at once, but from what Kanna could see, there were no etchings in the stone.
“Thank goodness,” she muttered, pressing her fingers against the pores of the rock. “No snakes.”
“Actually, the snakes are here, too,” Goda told her. “They’re everywhere—even outside the caverns. It’s just that you normally can’t see them. If you see them, then you start to die.”
“Again, your riddles are tiresome.”
“Then go back to sleep.”
As they moved deeper into the chamber, a familiar smell began to fill Kanna’s nostrils. “There’s…fuel in here,” she whispered. The smell triggered a vague memory again—one from ages before, one from her childhood—but she could not piece it together into a stable image. “Why does the smell seem familiar to me? The temple assistants spilled it in front of me the other night, but there was a time even before that. There was a time that I spilled a lot of fuel on the ground, but I can’t remember why or when. It makes no sense. I’ve never even driven a truck before.”
“Did you ever spend time near your father’s work?”
Kanna sighed. “No. Not really. My mother always thought that brewing spirits was unwholesome and she kept me away from all drugs—including the liquor my father produced. She never even let me visit the factories. It seemed like everyone in the world had tasted my father’s product except for me.” Kanna kept her eyes on the spotlight, but only saw an endless gravel floor below it. The source of the smell was still not apparent. “Even after she died about a year ago, and I was alone in the house and old enough to drink, I didn’t seek it out for some reason. Maybe I would have felt too guilty.” She paused, a bit bothered by Goda’s question. “Why do you ask?”
“Because what you’re smelling is the blood of your father’s victims.”
Kanna reached out and struck her open palm hard against Goda’s back. “You know nothing of victimhood!” she yelled, her ire rising hotly up into her head. “You’ve never had to live what I’ve lived through!” A metallic clanking rung through the space as she shuffled forward and her foot scraped against something in the dark. She nearly tripped over whatever it was, and it felt like she had knocked it over.
The smell grew instantly stronger.
Goda stopped walking then. “Look to your left. I think you’ve found them.”
“Found what?”
“Your spirits.”
But the light didn’t reach. As Goda placed the lantern on the ground nearby, Kanna could see a bit better, and she noticed that there was a crowd of large steel canisters in the middle of the space. One of them had spilled over, and as the liquid—and the smell—of pure fuel came rushing out of the spout, she crouched down quickly to stand the container upright.
There were words written on the side. At first, she was pleased to see that the script was in her native tongue, and it gave her a rush of comfort in its familiarity—but then she noticed what it said:
Rava Spirits
Kanna blinked. She turned her head slightly towards Goda in confusion, but the woman was conspicuously quiet, as if she were waiting. Kanna could no longer see Goda’s face. All the light was spent shining on the two words that made up the seal of her father’s company name on the side of the fuel canister.
Rava Spirits
Curiously, Kanna ventured to dip her fingers in the puddle of fuel close to her knees, and she brought the liquid up to her nose. She recoiled at first, because the smell was strong, but it triggered her memory again, and this time the image was a bit more solid: This time, she remembered her grandfather’s breath on the one day he had come to visit her mother’s house.
Rava Spirits
“This…this is grain alcohol,” Kanna whispered in realization. Her hand shook in front of her face. “This is a canister of distilled spirits.” She looked up at Goda again, even though she could not see her. “But why?”
“Why indeed.” Goda’s voice emerged from the dark, and it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. “It’s fuel, Kanna. Ethyl alcohol. Ethanol. Our trucks, our factories, our soldiers—this is like blood for them, and your father was the only producer. You should already know.”
“I don’t know anything…” Kanna pressed her hand into the puddle of alcohol again. She felt the substance seeping into the tiny cuts and scratches on her palm and making them sting. “I don’t…”
But very suddenly, she knew. Exactly because she knew, she shook her head and backed away, as if the canister of fuel had been on fire after all. She stumbled back against the dirty floor, sending gravel shooting in every direction.
“No…,” she said. “No! That can’t be true! Stop toying with me, Goda! We didn’t—!” She pulled back far enough that the light no longer touched her, and she ran straight into one of the walls of the cavern. “No, we didn’t make fuel for you wretched people! That isn’t even possible. If we did, then that means we’re the reason that you…!”
Goda laughed. It was the most horrifying sound that Kanna had ever heard. It made her feel hollow again, as if the laugh were coming from inside of her own self instead, as if it were echoing against the very core of her.
“So now you know,” Goda said.
“I don’t know anything!” Kanna shouted—but it wasn’t true. This time, for the first time, she knew. She pressed her hands hard against her face. “This can’t be real! I’m not going to help you drag cans of fuel out of this place—fuel that was made by the hand of my own father! What, so that you can use that same fuel to drive me to the place of my slavery, so that I can work in a factory powered by this poison? No! That’s too perverse for me to even comprehend!”
“Oh, you will do it.” Goda stepped into the light and stooped down to grip the handles of two of the containers. “You will do it because you’re my slave and you have no choice.”
“No! I won’t even touch that! You can’t force me!”
“I don’t need to force you. Life itself has forced you already.” Goda turned to look at her. Her eyes were smoldering with fire reflected from the light, but otherwise they were empty. “Just as your father and his father and his father greedily deprived your countrymen from the grain that would have fed them, you too will help me greedily steal this poison from the people who actually paid for it in blood. Just as your father was too blinded by money to notice that he had helped us grow strong enough to finally take him over—that he had been digging his own grave out in those fields—you too will blind yourself to what all of this means, and you will become an accomplice in your own slavery.” Goda approached her, stretching her arm out to offer one of the canisters. “Take it. Take it. This is what you must face. It is your own doing. You must live the life you’ve created.”
“No! I didn’t create any of this! It isn’t my fault! How could I have known? How could I have possibly known?”
Goda shook her head. “It’s not what you knew. It’s what you didn’t know. No one would ever do this consciously. You and your family have done this out of ignorance. But your father has yet to awaken, and probably never will. It is up to you to awaken in his place.” She offered Kanna the fuel again, more insistently this time. “Now take it. You have no choice. This fuel is yours—you’re the rightful heir to it—and you will use it to drive yourself into slavery. That is your fate.”
Kanna shuddered, a screaming breath emerging from deep inside of her. It shook the very center of every bone in her body. The presence of the snakes returned in that instant, as if her cries had been a call meant for them. Though Kanna could not see them, she sensed them pouring into the room in droves and surrounding her, their scales scraping against the walls and letting off sparks.
They set the spirit inside of her alight. Raw awareness gushed through her veins like a searing fire, until her skin was about to rip open, every particle of her flesh bursting into infinite flames. They burned from her ancestors’ fuel, the fuel that had been reaped from the grain fields, the fuel that had spilled on her feet and stung every cut on her soles.
A specter of death loomed over Kanna’s head. The reaper of the grain had come, and she realized then that it was the shadow of Goda Brahm.
Kanna ran. Rather than face it, she ran.
She didn’t know where she was or where she was going, but she only knew that she needed to run away from Goda. Her footfalls echoed loudly in the void and it only reminded her of the hollowness within. Every hole on her face oozed with warm water and made it hard to breathe and made her cough the faster she ran.
When she reached the main cavern, she thought she felt the snakes following her. She looked up to see that some of them had started to light up, even where the moonlight could not have possibly struck.
“No!” she cried out, and she pushed forward to the exit, where the first electric wave pulsed through her body.
Perhaps the cuff had been shocking her the whole time, and she had only noticed just then. It felt stronger than ever before, like the throbbing pain reached into her marrow. She fell to the ground just outside the cavern, writhing in the pain of the shock and of the emptiness that was washing over her. She writhed like the snake that Goda had crushed to death in the desert.
“No!” she cried out as her face smashed into the dirt. It was all that emerged from her mouth, but in her mind, a hundred thousand thoughts had raced to the surface. I am Kanna Rava! It’s not my fault! It’s not my father’s fault! The Middlelanders, they made us do it! I am Kanna Rava! I am—
A cold, dry hand pressed suddenly to her face. It covered her mouth, as if to silence her gently. It reeked of the tanned hide of a dead animal.
“Quiet now,” a voice whispered in Kanna’s native tongue. “The time has come for me to free you from her.”