Alma Alexander - The Embers of Heaven

All of this connected, somehow, and the answer to their difficulties became blindingly obvious to Amais.

‘We don’t belong here, Mother. That’s why you won’t even think about leaving baya- Dan here. We aren’t from Chirinaa. We are…we are from Linh-an. We aren’t home after all, Mother. We aren’t home yet.’

On such small things do fates turn.

There were three sons on the small farm in the fertile hills of the province of Syai known as Hian. Tradition said that one would be educated to take care of the ledgers and the accounting, one would work the land, and one would be responsible for the household and his aging parents, when the time came for them to be taken care of.

Tradition sent the eldest of the three sons, Iloh, into the tiny school in the village below, trudging down the hillside and joining a handful of other small boys in a classroom barely big enough to hold their growing bodies and way too small to confine their boisterous spirits. Every boy, inevitably, had his own interests and concerns – and in some of the pupils the enthusiasm was simply for doing the minimum expected of them and then escaping back into the glories of the real world, hiking into the hills to pick the sweet berries or trap small animals out in the woods. Iloh was one of the few whose passions were kindled for a different thing – for the power of the word.

The boys were taught simple, basic things – how to count, and enough of the hacha-ashu script to be able to produce a coherent sentence in clumsy calligraphy and to read at the very least the simple folk renditions of tales and songs that had been copied out onto scrolls and parchments and notebooks. But Iloh saw more, wanted more, and he was one of the few to whom the teacher showed the school’s real treasures – a couple of scrolls of parchment with classical poetry inscribed on them, works of art in themselves, the calligraphy flowing and perfect and the ink unfaded over the years. Those, and a handful of books, mostly novels, printed on cheap paper with ink that sometimes smudged if you ran your finger over the page too fast. But to Iloh, both the magnificent scrolls and the cheap paperback books were equally valuable. Perhaps the latter even more so than the former, because the novels were written in a language closer to the contemporary vernacular than the poems, and were thus easier to understand.

‘You might want to continue your education,’ Iloh’s teacher had told him when he was eight years old. ‘There are other schools, better schools, bigger schools.’

‘Perhaps Father might allow me,’ Iloh said, but without conviction. His father was a patriarch of the ancient kind, autocratic, indifferent to all except his own will. Iloh had quickly got the idea that the education he received was not for his own sake, but the farm’s, the family’s, and that there would be no indulgences.

But even that small hope had vanished absolutely in the year that Iloh turned nine. A widowed sister of his father’s had returned to her family home from a neighbouring province in the spring of that year with her own small son after the death of her husband. Iloh’s father had taken them in, no questions asked – they were family, and there was nothing more to be said on the matter. But the three-year-old boy, Iloh’s little cousin, arrived sallow, sickly, and coughing a lot. Before his fourth birthday came around, he was dead. Less than six months after that, so was his mother. And before her body was cold in its grave, it became obvious that she had left a deadly legacy behind. She and her son had not died of a broken heart, mourning her lost husband. They had died of a disease.

The disease, however, had not died with them.

In the autumn of that year, Iloh’s middle brother, Guan, began to cough and then to waste away. His mother removed him from the rest of the family and stuffed up the gaps in the windows and doors of his room with rags, so that the evil disease could not come out and claim anybody else. Guan fought valiantly for months, isolated and lonely in his convalescent cell, but even his mother’s devoted nursing did not save him. He was just over six years old when the final stages of the illness set in, starting to cough blood into the handkerchiefs his mother left by his bed.

The convalescent’s father had initially vetoed the doctor being summoned to the house, because such visits cost a lot of money. He had suggested to his wife that they pack up Guan and take him to the doctor’s rooms in the village themselves.

‘He will not live through it,’ Guan’s mother had said, and had begged, pleaded, for the doctor to be allowed to come. The patriarch finally succumbed, and sent his oldest son to fetch the doctor from the village. Iloh had gone, his mother’s desperate pleading voice echoing in his ears – but it had been a different voice, a sort of strange premonition, that made him pause beside the corner of his schoolhouse, three houses away from the doctor’s home, and stand with his hand on the dirty wall, palm flat against it, oddly convinced that he was somehow saying farewell to the place.

It had seemed to be only an instant, a stolen moment in time, but it might have made all the difference in the world if Iloh had not stopped by the schoolhouse. By the time he got to the doctor’s he was told that the healer had just gone out. Desperately asking for his destination so that he could follow him, Iloh was told curtly that the doctor was not an errant goat to be fetched from pasture, and to sit outside the house and wait for his return.

The doctor had taken an hour and a half to come back – from, as it turned out, a birthing in the aftermath of which the new father, a wealthy landlord who already had four daughters but whose first son this had been, had kept him aside for a small celebration. He was not drunk – precisely – but there was definitely a brightness in his eye and a looseness to his step that showed that he was not wholly sober either. Iloh had jumped up from his seat on the bench outside the back door and had waylaid the doctor as he approached his house – and had been rewarded with a small, almost disinterested frown.

‘I don’t really have time to do a house call,’ the doctor said.

‘But you just came from one,’ Iloh replied.

‘That’s different. They promised me a suckling pig to be delivered in time for the festival days.’

Iloh thought quickly. ‘My father has none to spare. But he could give a chicken…’

The doctor shook his head imperceptibly, and made as if to pass.

‘Two chickens!’ Iloh said desperately, heedless of promising such largesse in his father’s name. ‘Three, if you make him well!’

‘Chickens,’ the doctor said with an edge of annoyance. ‘Everyone gives chickens. What am I to do with more chickens, boy? You can’t afford to pay my fee.’

‘Please, sir,’ Iloh whispered, ‘it’s my brother.’

‘I’m sorry, lad, but I need to get some sleep…’ the doctor began.

Iloh drew himself up to his full height – which was not much at nine, but he was certainly tall for his age and had promise of more height to come. In any event, the expression on his face made it seem as though he had several extra inches on him.

‘My brother is dying!’ he said. ‘And if I have to drag you all the way, you are coming to see him, tonight. My father sent me to fetch you, and I am not going back without you!’

For a moment, the doctor – taller and wider than his diminutive opponent – actually seemed to shrink in Iloh’s presence, but then he reminded himself that this small person that threatened him was a nine-year-old child and had no real power over him.

‘Sorry, lad,’ he said. ‘Bring coin, tomorrow. No chickens. Better still, bring the patient and we can see what can be done for him. But not tonight. Out of my way.’