"The Bamboo People" by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law

The Bamboo People
             
            The spell called for the heartwood of one of the redwoods found in the forests far to the east, cut upon a springtide day when the sun shone warm upon the skin. Sui-la had no great wealth for to buy such rare wood from the traders. Nor had she such youth anymore that she could make a journey to the outlands on her own.
            Sui-la lived upon the edge of town. People labeled her an eccentric, but she did not care. She dabbled in simple spells from time to time. She liked the peace of living a little ways from the village and being able to immerse her mind in meditations. She did not understand how anyone could enjoy living with constant bustle and the hum of noise in the villages, where one could hardly hear one's own thoughts.
            It was not until she lost the bloom of youth, when the suitors no longer came panting to her doorstep, when she had lived in solitude for nearly twenty years and become accustomed to the sound of the dust sprites and the river songs with only the occasional calls into the village when her skills as a midwife were needed -- it was not until then that she felt a curious hole in the existence that had seemed so complete up until now.
            She sat upon the river's edge, watching the distant group of villagers set out with their boats and fishing gear and the weavers at the edge of the wooden dock singing and laughing companionably while their fingers moved as quick as darting fish amongst the rushes of the baskets they wove. She sat alone and thought, searched to try to understand why she had not smiled as much in recent years.
            Several days later, as she helped a girl from the village to deliver a child, she knew what it was.
            She held the wailing bundle, still damp from its passage into the world. The child's cry was deafening in the small chamber, and hurriedly, she whispered a simple spell that would sing endless lullabies and little songs to the child until after it had fed and fallen asleep. It was a useful little spell that she had always rather liked. She hated to see a child or anyone in anguish, and always did her best to dispell it. She would take their conscience upon herself if she had to. That had always been her weakness.
            As she handed the now-quiet baby over to the pale faced girl who lay upon the pallet, she felt a twinge of envy. It was not that she wanted to exchange lives or positions with the girl, nor did she exactly want the child. But as she watched mother and babe, the realization hit her: I have helped so many with this passage...I have held so many newborn children in my arms.... But the child who lay in Mistress Shai-toh's arms...such a creature was as alien to her as the concept of wings would be for a fish.
            The child's father, nothing more than a red-faced boy who looked more anxious than Shai-toh herself bowed and blubbered a thousand thanks to the great Sui-la. She recognized him as the magistrate's son. Certainly he was not Shai-toh's husband. They were both too young to be married by law and custom.
            They were gone by morning, without a word to Sui-la, and only an offering of two precious white candles and a loaf of bread left at the bedside as payment. Her clients often left in such a fashion, needing her and yet fearing her reputation as a witching-woman. There were many who did not like such folk. The magistrate was well known for his fear and hatred of the fae.
            Her revelation of the day before was not so easy to dismiss. She spent the day tending her herb garden and digging up some bamboo shoots to eat that night, but her mind kept wandering to the feel of another woman's child in her arms. "So many times I have done that. It is nothing special! You are old, Sui-la...far too old to bear children anymore," she scoffed to herself. "Besides, I have no wish for a crying infant to spoil my suppers and my peace."
            Besides that, she would have to find a willing father. Although she was sure that would have been no great task in her youth, she had felt the breath of Age now. Sui-la had been beautiful in her day -- perhaps the most beautiful in all of the Ytar Valley. She had not been ignorant to the fact either, but vain child she had been, flaunted her charm with a skill that would have made other women hate her had they not fallen under her spell as well. Her mother had despaired of her daughter's propriety, but her father never said a word. He had been a quite man. She suspected he would have been satisfied to live a life as Sui-la herself had lived for the past several decades. Why he had settled in the center of the village and taken the mantle of the dozens of duties as the village's clan chief was beyond her....
            When she had discovered her powers, albeit minimal as they were, she had gone immediately to the witch-woman who promised to teach her everything she wanted to learn. And so she had learned...and with the knowledge, turned more to herself, spurning the company of others. Dependence on any others was weakness, she told herself.
            Proud scion of the Ytar Valley.
            She moved away to the edge of the village, content with herself. But pride was a lonely draught that one drank alone.
            She touched her face. Still the strong and angular planes, no longer beautiful, but handsome still. It was like the scent of dried jasmine -- filled with the memory of what it once was so that anyone who breathed of it could not help but see that vision as well. Her hair was still black, for she had lived with few worries, never having to tend decrepit parents or heed wailing children, nor loose sleep over bad trade, or worry about duties to the magistrates or the Emperor, unlike the poor souls of the others who lived with these and a thousand other anxieties day after day. Her ebony eyes stared back intently from the reflection in the river's surface. A proud old woman. Proud and inhuman in the way that the face did not hold age and all that came with age as others did.
            "But I am not like the others!" she said to herself as she picked herself up from the riverbank. Nay...not at all. "What good are all my magicks if I cannot do this for myself...?"
            She returned home, and took out all her tomes, her books, searched her memory. At last she found what she wanted.
            Thus, she came to gather the materials for her spell. Heartwood of redwood cut on a springtide morn. A breath of the wind, aged seven-day. A white candle, burned for an hour upon the full moon and blessed by the ancestors' spirits, and a single drop of freely given human blood.
            Easy...laughably easy for her to obtain, except the wood. Where was wood to be found in the Ytar Valley?! Wood was precious in this silken land. Only the traders from the east sold it at ostentatious prices. Else one would have to brave Emperor's garden to steal redwood.
            Bamboo would have to do...black bamboo that was precious and rare, and the singing rushes from the riverbank.
            She wove these into a little doll, the size of a human babe. To its little mouth, she blew the wind, and sat upon the bedside with her bamboo child while the blessed candle burned out. And with hope burning in her breast, she pricked her finger with a sewing needle and let the drop fall upon the doll's chest, above the heart.
            And then she fell asleep, clutching the doll as if it were a real child and with the possessiveness and protection of a girl with her first porcelain toy, whispering lullabies to it in a low croon.
            She awoke to a suckling upon her bare breast. The sun shone through the open windows, but its warmth was nothing compared to the warmth of the living, breathing, baby girl that she held in her arm.
            She could not breathe at first for wonder. It had worked! The child stopped its quest for milk and stared up at her with eyes that were startling in their clarity. She did not cry. As the wonder made Sui-la's heart burn, she thought the child smiled. "Ah, my precious May-lea!" Sui-la gasped in delight, the name meaning "heaven's gift". She laughed, and the child gurgled in content.
            * * *
             
            Indeed, May-lea proved to be all that a mother could wish for. She was a beautiful child. Her skin was ebony like that of the black bamboo. Dark hair was a match for her features. When she lay in shadow, only the clear blue eyes marked where she was. Even with her infant face, the delicate bone structure gave the rounded baby's face a promise of sophistication. But those eyes -- Sui-la could have sworn that May-lea understood her every word when she was no more than a day old. They were a blue that seemed to have captured part of the sky in their crystal depths, as if she could comprehend its eternity. Those blue eyes, along with the black skin marked her as different even on the surface from the community of black-haired, black-eyed, pale skinned folk of Ytar Valley.
            May-lea never cried; not from the first moment Sui-la held her in her arms. She never fussed in the night. When Sui-la read her books or tended her garden, May-lea never whispered a sound, except to coo with delight at a butterfly or giggle when Sui-la hummed songs under her breath. She loved that the most. When Sui-la sang, she seemed to come alive. Sui-la always sang them herself, not using the song-spell she used to quiet other children, because it made her feel alive each time she notes whispered past her lip for her daughter. At other times though, May-lea was inert and almost indifferent to everything around her.
            Sui-la administered an herb to herself that allowed her body to produce milk, and never cared when the nursing left her tender. It was for May-lea. That was all that mattered. May-lea -- a child that was all hers.
            That spring, Sui-la was disturbed from sleep by the sound of a tiny wail from just outside her window. Her first thought was May-lea, but May-lea did not cry.
            She pulled a shawl over her head and hurriedly stepped outside with only the light of the moon to guide the way. The sound led her to the edge of the bamboo forest behind her house, and there she found a little blind ball of fur and hunger. She paused, wondering where the mother of the little mewling was. The full grown felines were rather fearsome creatures. But the mewling's cries went unanswered. Gently, the woman bent down and scooped the kit up in her hands. It silenced as the warmth of her skin soothed it, and soon the creature was asleep. Sui-la brought it inside.
            May-lea grew faster than other children. Sui-la noticed that after a month. She had never cared for a child for such a period of time, but even she knew that no child could walk and speak occasional coherent sentences at such an early stage.
            Within a few months, May-lea could run, and her thoughts were already sharp and questioning, always asking about everything she saw -- the plants, the river, the women weaving on the riverbanks, the fisherfolk in the mornings, the wind, the sun.... The mewling had grown too, though still a kitten. It followed May-lea everywhere, and it was clear the child loved her erstwhile companion. May-lea's mind was an endless question, the crystal eyes never pausing in their flitting search from one object of interest to another.
            Proud as she was of her daughter-of-will, Sui-la was afraid to bring her into the village. While the girl was growing at such a rate, there would be no way to explain her to the other villagers. They would at worse stone them both to death.... At the best become even more fearful of Sui-la, the witching-medicine woman. Sui-la protected the child with the vigilance of ten mothers. She let no harm touch her girl. She let no hurt break May-lea's childhood idyll, and if May-lea did anything wrong, Sui-la smoothed it for the girl so that the child need never worry.
            The village would never accept Sui-la. Though in the days before May-lea she would not have minded such an attitude, she suddenly found herself wanting to join the weavers as they wove the river reeds and sang to each other every day. Upon the river dock. It was a nostalgic wish. She had left that all behind when she had left home decades ago. She stared down at her hands, worn and lined in contrast to her smooth face. She realized that her mouth did not have laugh lines. Those weavers must have lined hands too, full of calluses from pulling at the reeds and weaving all the time. And lined faces as well.
            "Why do you not join them and sing with them?" May-lea asked once as she watched her mother staring off with a curious glaze in her eyes at the singing women. The child always spoke the most when she was out upon the riverbank, listening to the riverwomen's songs. Other times, she was strangely silent. Sui-la had noticed that more and more -- those silences May-lea had. They worried her sometimes, but May-lea only looked at her in confusion when she mentioned them. She turned to the girl. Her black skin seemed the essence of the night, but the eyes were clearer than the waters of the river.
            She shrugged. "Perhaps someday," she lied. She knew she could never join them. Her way had split far too long ago. She had chosen a different path from theirs, and that was the way things were. Maybe she could gain the lines their faces had, but they knew things that she would never know. It hurt to know that, in an odd way. How many other things would she never know of? But she knew one of them now...she had her own May-lea. She smiled, a smile of sadness and a secret joy.
            May-lea was already the height of a seven year old child, and Sui-la was certain the mind behind those eyes was far quicker. "You want to join them now," she commented with an acuity that astonished even Sui-la at times. "So why don't you? You always tell me that if you want something enough you can have it. That's how you made me," she finished with a succinct nod.
            "Ah, but then there are the things that must be gifted, that you can't make. Wanting them...I suppose is what I forgot about along the way. Having you has made me remember them again," she said, and smiled to her daughter. May-lea frowned in confusion, then tumbled to the ground beside Sui-la, rolling down the grassy slope with a shrill of delight.
            * * *
             
            But as May-lea grew, such moments became more and more rare.
            Hardly a month from that day upon the riverbank, May-lea was off in the bamboo forest with the mewling, which was the size of a household cat by now. The mewling raced up one of the bamboo stalks the thickness of May-lea's leg, and when the girl called to it, the creature did not come immediately.
            Angry, the child stomped and demanded the kit return to her. It had gone quite high now. "Come!" she demanded.
            The mewling leaped.
            It was a tearful child that Sui-la found that evening, after hours of fear eating at her heart as she searched and searched and could not find her ebony girl. At last she came upon May-lea, crouched over the limp form of the mewling. It had been young, and not quite good yet at judging distances. The fall had killed it.
            "Come dear, there is nothing you can do," Sui-la said gently. The girl refused to budge. She wailed, a high, hiccuping sound that Sui-la had never heard emerge from May-lea's lips. "Come now. It's dead."
            "It's sleeping!" insisted May-lea. "Mewling, Mewling! Wake up! Wake up!" The mewling did not even twitch.
            "It will not wake up, dearling."
            And then May-lea's wailing turned to uncontrollable sobs. "I killed it! I asked Mewling to come to me. I killed it...."
            At last Sui-la took May-lea in her arms. Weary and sobbing, the child fell asleep at last.
            Sui-la watched over the sleeping girl until long after darkness had settled across Ytar Valley. She sat long after the moon had risen and set. She hated the pain she had seen in May-lea's face. She hated the agony that she had seen ripping through the child, and so she did the only thing she could. Tenderly, she reached into the child that she had made from her own will and desire, and she took away the hurt and the pain the death of the mewling had left, as she always did when pain threatened the girl. She took away the guilt and recrimination of a child from May-lea's heart. May-lea slept.
            When a year had gone by, May-lea was of the mentality and physical maturity of a woman. She seemed gifted by the gods in every way. She grew to such beauty that Sui-la knew that not even she could have been a match in her youth. Fine bones and hair that gleamed like the sheen of silk. She moved with an impossible grace, like a wind spirit dancing along the treetops.
            She excelled in most things she put her hand to. From afar, she would watch the village youths in their sword dances, and she taught the dances to herself after Sui-la managed to obtain a decorative blade as payment for an ointment. The herbs in Sui-la's garden grew under the girl's touch as if by magic, flourishing to burst like a green frenzy from the ground. The fish in the river seemed to come to her when she called. And she took to reading and writing as easily as a prodigy.
            All of this she did with a cool demeanor. Her accomplishments meant little to her -- just something she could do. It did not matter to her if she could do them well or that she was brilliant.... And she rarely, if ever, showed even the slightest glimmer of emotion; except sometimes when they sat on the riverbank listening to the women on the docks.
            Sui-la did everything she could to coax smiles or something from those blue eyes other than crystal ice, but nothing worked. It was as if with the death of the mewling, things had ceased to matter. But how could the mewling have brought that about?! The girl had loved it, but did she not love Sui-la even more? The girl was just like the bamboo she had sprung from...hard and beautiful upon the outside...but bereft of anything within. Bamboo was hollow. "The heartwood of redwood" the spell had called for. "But poor wretch that I am, unable to afford even a stick of something so precious...using bamboo instead," Sui-la said to herself bitterly.
            She stared across the river at the weavers. They were silent now, not singing. Or else she was upwind of them. "You chose what path you would and you cannot even be good at what you chose, fool woman!"
            She felt hot tears on her cheeks, rubbed angrily at them. May-lea did not understand about tears. Or anger. As if Mewling had taken all that from her. As if Mewling had been May-lea's soul. Sui-la hated the mewling.
            Sui-la started humming the riverwomen's songs under her breath, furiously trying to force her thoughts from depression. What happened to the proud, strong Sui-la? she asked herself. She found the hopes she had mislaid somehow in the past twenty-so years, was the answer. She did not notice May-lea swaying to the sound of her voice in the shadow of the doorway, a black shadow herself. Her eyes were squinted tight, anguished as she watched her mother with incomprehension and tried to understand.... But she was a child of bamboo. How could she? Hollow creature. Music could only fill that hollow bamboo momentarily.
            * * *
             
            Sui-la tried everything. She looked through her books for spells. She tried uncounted incantations. She implored the ancestors. Make the girl feel. That was her sole goal. May-lea was a statue through it all. She noted the rites with a little curiosity, filing it away in her wonderful mind. She never lost that thirst to know more.
            Sui-la tried to be a good mother. Truly, she tried. May-lea had little need of her though, except for when she hurt. Then Sui-la would carefully draw away the wounds from the girl's heart. Or whatever passed for a heart within the beautiful creature of bamboo.
            One of Sui-la's visitors finally saw May-lea one day. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Now that the girl had stopped growing at her impossible rate, there was no harm though. Soon, when she went to the village marketplace, she began to hear whispers of the beautiful black ghost who lived with the medicine woman. Who was she? they all wondered. No one knew. But soon enough, the young men began to drop by. With imaginary ailments they implored her to help, but she noticed that their eyes never left the dark shadow with ice eyes.
            She was angry at first. The mindless flock was a nuisance more than anything else, and May-lea showed no more interest than she would in a new specimen of herb lore. She looked on everything in such a way. It was chilling. Sui-la wondered if the girl even distinguished between a fly she might kill or a human being that she could just as easily slay with the sword dances she was an expert at by now. It frightened Sui-la, and she wished she had never given the blade to the girl. It was the dispassionate way May-lea took in everything, as if it were all equal in her eyes and nothing truly mattered to her.
            But an idea came to her. Perhaps it was the foolish fancies of the young men taking root in her own mind in her desperation, or her own memories of when she had been young and full of potential for anything, when the world had offered her anything -- but that she had turned away from that in favor of herself....
            Fool romantics, knocking every day. "Love conquers all!" was written in their faces. So perhaps they might be right. Perhaps the songs of the riverwomen were right....
            She let them come, and when one of them ventured to ask May-lea to go for a walk with him upon the shores of the river, she nodded to the girl, indicating that she should accept. After all, she knew May-lea was no frail thing -- the girl was more than able to protect herself. As the door opened, the sound of the riverwomen's songs wafted in.
            Thereafter, Kotar visited many times. He no longer pretended reasons to come to visit the witch-woman on the edge of the village, for everyone knew what his reasons were. The black ghost who lived with the medicine woman had enchanted him with her eyes that promised a never-ending blue sky.
            Always he would come, bow before May-lea with a reverence normally reserved for those of high rank, or for one who was very respected. "My lady, if you will deign to walk with a poor fisherboy as myself...."
            She would nod each time -- from a sense of duty, pity, or whatever moved Sui-la's child of bamboo and magic.
            Sui-la wondered at the boy's persistence, at what would keep him coming time and again to visit a girl who was as unperturbed by declarations of love as she was by scientific study. Nevertheless, Kotar never did relent, and she felt a kind of half-pity, half-admiration for him. That did not interfere with her assessment of him as a fool though.
            For a while, Sui-la thought the wild romantic notion had worked when one night she heard May-lea's musical laughter spill out over the sound of the riverwomen's chants, like a bolt of bright silk floating out across the water. When Kotar left that night and she sat with May-lea at the table, drinking their tea, she could not help the anticipatory laughter pour from her own lips as she said, "What of this boy then?"
            "What of him?"
            "Do you...love him?"
            "He is intelligent. His family is rather wealthy. He is no 'mere fisherboy' as he says. He's the second son of the magistrate. His brother eloped with a girl last year. I'm sure if I marry him, it will provide good opportunities."
            Sui-la looked away. "And so you feel nothing for him?"
            May-lea finished her rice and shrugged. "You were the one that told me never to depend on anyone, mother. Be strong, you said. Strong as bamboo." She paused and stared up at Sui-la.
            It chilled Sui-la, the way May-lea could say all that...and yet say it without the slightest trace of greed or malice. It was simple fact, her knowledge, the weighing of matters as if human hearts did not exist. She would give all that she was, all that she could give to this Kotar if she married him, but it would not mean to her what it meant to him. You have not found something worth dying for, my dear. Or living for.
            "Why does he love you?" she demanded. "How could he, when you do not love your mother even? Or yourself." Her voice was sharper than she meant, and bitterness tinged it.
            May-lea shrugged. "I do not know such things. You created me. You wanted to be a god. I thank you, as my god." She smiled. "Don't you know the stories, the myths? The gods are the ones who create, that is their power. For giving me life, there is no way to ever repay you."
            "Repaying...repaying...you talk to me of repayment!" As May-lea left to fetch water, Sui-la stared at the closed door. A god could create, but the true life was a magic that only humans could be and make....
            * * *
             
            She spoke to Kotar after that. "She does not love you. She cannot. It is beyond her. Go home, and forget my black ghost."
            His face was anguish incarnate. He was a master at melodrama -- a foolish boy, and yet she still admired him. Somehow, he made her think of everything she had tried to forget when she had left home twenty years ago and gone to live alone. He was the foolish youthfulness that she had never been able to stand, and yet missed so desperately. "She needs me though!" he cried.
            Sui-la laughed. May-lea was the last person who ever needed anyone. Even more so that Sui-la. In fact...the girl was all that Sui-la had been...before she had took it to her heart to create May-lea. "She doesn't need anyone but her pride."
            "She hurts because she is empty," he said with a little pout. "I could change that!"
            "Ah yes, the prince with his power of love. You have read too many tales, young man," Sui-la mocked.
            "No...I'm serious. She told me about her...birth...."
            Sui-la arched one brow, but inwardly she held her breath. The boy knew? How many others knew? There were those fearful of anything that smelled of witchery.... The bile of fear rose in her throat. "What do you mean...?"
            "About...how you...used bamboo..." he said.
            "Do any others know of this?" she demanded.
            He bit his lip. "A few of my servants. Don't worry!" he continued hastily, seeing the terrible fear in her eyes. "They would not tell anyone else. But I can make her full!" There was a feverish light in his eyes.
            "How?"
            "Don't you know? Music fills her. It always has...ever since your lullabies to her when she was small.... She knows it, but not consciously. But I can see it. When she hears the riverwomen sing, she comes to life. I'll fill her with music night and day, and it won't matter that she came from bamboo." There was such yearning in his voice, in his eyes. He really does love her, she thought. How odd.
            And: the music...how had I ever not noticed? Of course.... What else to fill a creature born of bamboo and the singing reeds of the riverbank? "She is still bamboo," she said. "No matter what illusion of life you think to fill her with. May-lea is not human. She is and always will be a thing." She did not know what pulled those terrible words from her lips. As soon as she had said them, she hated herself. How had she become such a bitter, jealous old crone?
            Kotar stiffened. "And no wonder. Her mother is not human either. Like comes from like."
            Sui-la jerked back as if he had physically rebuked her, stunned.
            That night, after Kotar had left and when May-lea had fallen asleep, Sui-la crept over to the pallet where the girl lay. She stared down at the slender figure. Her daughter. Ebony dark. Beautiful. She started to whisper something in a low chant, but her words were interrupted abruptly.
            An angry knocking sounded at the door and May-lea shot bolt-upright. Sui-la's head jerked to the door. "Who is it?" she whispered furtively. This late at night, no one should be coming around! May-lea had stood, grasping her blade, her body already swaying with the sword dances the lay coiled in her body.
            "It's me, Kotar!" The words were whispered.
            "What are you---?"
            "Just open the door! Please. There is little time!"
            Sui-la met May-lea's eyes and when the girl shrugged, she opened the door. "Grab what you need," Kotar said, wasting no time. His hair was bound back in the style of the poor fisherfolk, and his garb was of rough material. "You must leave. Both of you!"
            "What are you talking about?" Sui-la demanded.
            "It's my father. The magistrate." The poor boy was white, a marked contrast to May-lea.
            "What about him?" Sui-la prompted, still not moving.
            "Just hurry, will you?! You must leave! He has sent men to burn down your house. He...knows about May-lea...."
            "He hates magickers...." Sui-la muttered. "I should have guessed. Quick, girl, grab your belongings." She herself only dumped several satchels of her rarer herbs and the old flute that had once been her father's. Clothes. Books. Some food.
            "No. I have food. Don't worry about that. Just leave!"
            "Where?!"
            "Just the hills for tonight. They won't search far. But you cannot be found here." May-lea had a small pack on her back. The sword dancing blade was at her side. In the distant, there was a faint commotion. "They're coming," Kotar whispered. "This way." The river mumered its echo of the riverwomen songs.
            Sui-la paused. Agony of indecision tore through her. "I cannot leave."
            "What?" Kotar exclaimed.
            May-lea was silent.
            "I cannot!" Sui-la said. "This is my place. I built it. I made my choice long ago to take myself away from the valley and live here. I have hated it. But I have loved it too. Death coming here someday was the consequence of this life. I will stay and face that." Yes, she hated the constant riversongs that reminded her of what she had left, and loved the raised voices each morn. There was the aching pride that was always a part of her being, and that would not let her simply run now. She would face the terror to come. She would --
            May-lea cried out, and Sui-la looked down in surprise to see a blade sprouted from her stomach. She half turned her head and saw the soldier who had speared her from behind.
            The man yanked out his blade with satisfaction and turned to Kotar and May-lea. "Step aside, lord Kotar. We shall protect you from these witch-brethen." Sui-la slumped to the ground, unable to stand. Pain. Pain...so much hurt. Was it herself or May-lea's hurt? She could no longer tell. For too long, she had taken all of May-lea's hurt unto herself to protect the child. Who would protect her now?
            "I need no protection," Kotar said with a little lift of his chin.
            May-lea leaped forward with an anguish tearing from her throat. Something about her fearsome black skin and the blazing blue eyes sent the soldier stumbling backwards, unable to even hold on to his sword. He was frozen with fear. Kotar was frozen with amazement.
            Faintly, Sui-la thought to herself, this was the second time only she had ever heard May-lea cry. The younger woman was crouched beside her mother now, cradling Sui-la's head in her arms, just as she had cradled a mewling long ago. "Mother...mother...mother," she whispered over and over again through her tears.
            "I'm here, dearling," Sui-la managed to gasp.
            "Have I killed you mother? Have I?" Her voice was plaintive, as if she were truly uncertain whether Sui-la's condition were a result of her own doing or not.
            "No my dear. Not you. Never you."
            "Then why are you falling asleep?"
            And Sui-la understood then. Her child of bamboo was not cursed to be hollow forever. All Sui-la's years of taking May-lea's pain and hurts had been what made the child so unfeeling. She had taken the consequences out of May-lea's actions in trying to protect her. Actions meant nothing without the consequences. And now...now that she was in too much of her own pain to assauge May-lea's, the girl finally felt for herself. Pain was as much of a soul as joy. The mewling was not to blame for Sui-la's bamboo child. Sui-la's own actions had done that. "I'm sorry I stole Mewling from you," she said with a heart-wrenching chuckle. What a silly thing to think of now.
            Sui-la died. May-lea rose from her crouch, vengeful through her tear-blurred eyes as she advanced upon the soldier. He was still frozen by her icy gaze, unable to move or even to call for help from the milling torches that searched for the which and her ebony ghost not far away.
            With a fierce scream that was like a deadly bird of prey, she snatched the man's sword from his hand and before Kotar could stop her, she had impaled him. She shuddered then, as the locked muscles of the man were finally released and he tumbled to the ground.
            "He's dead," she said dully to Kotar. "I killed him." And this time, she knew, and felt the acid bite of hate and conscience mingled together with loss.
            "I know," Kotar said softly, letting her bury her head upon his shoulder. He stroked her ebony hair gently. "Come. We need to leave before others get here." Slowly, her hand released its grip of the sword, and the weapon dropped to the ground.
            She felt numb. She ached. Kotar was beside her. "Mother..." she said, trying to go back to the still figure on the floor.
            "We can't stay," Kotar said. "They'll catch us both if we do. She would want to protect you from them if she were alive."
            May-lea laughed, a sad little laugh. "Yes, she always did." She took a deep breath, and it was she who was in command now. "Come on, Kotar." He thought for a moment she had become the unfeeling bamboo again, but when he stood at her side and gazed into the eyes with their piece of captured sky, he saw she grieved. With that grief as their beacon, the two of them walked away from the Valley and the mother who had died to give birth to her little bamboo child.