“Thank you, my friend, for coming.”
“He is safe? He found his way to you without being hurt?”
“He is unhurt. It is a dangerous world to walk in but he came to no harm.”
“Good. He’s already known too much suffering.”
“What is ‘too much?’ There is not some amount of suffering that one must endure, my friend, there is simply that which fate puts before each of us.”
“I… suppose I would not know. How did it happen? Please say it was not some tragedy.”
“It was not. I have said, I think, how he gets into everything and everywhere. Under the floor, behind the walls, up into the roof. He has a genius for finding ways into things where there ought not to be. Well, now he has found one more way.”
“I cannot help but feel responsible. Perhaps if I had not shown him so much, and told him so much more.”
“You are hardly the only walker he has met, my friend. And even if had never met any of us, the potential would have been in him, and any day could have been the day it bloomed, and then what of him? You know there are many worse places he could have found himself, and with none to turn to for help.”
“You are right, as always. I apologize. Where is he now?”
“Asleep. He was exhausted. He is still very young to walk, let alone twice.”
“I have known younger.”
“Then you must tell me about them, while we wait for him to wake. I will call for tea.”
He had thought it was a dream, at first.
The last thing Nashi could say, for sure, was that he had been curled up on his mat, right in the corner of his room, with sleep on the other side of an invisible wall. He was unsure if he wanted to reach it. Sleep meant dreams, and who knows what horrors dreams might pull out of the past? But Tamiyo would say that horrors did not make him need sleep any less, and Tamiyo was the wisest person that had ever lived. She could walk behind the air, and knew secrets from worlds that he couldn’t even imagine. If she said he needed sleep, then he needed sleep.
If only he could reach it. It was as if it was just behind some corner that he couldn’t see, or across a chasm with no bridge, and he would have to puzzle out a way to get to it. Tamiyo said he was good at that. She said he had a talent for finding the way through things. She was careful not to say he had a nose for it. Tamiyo was always careful with her words.
And she knew he didn’t like being reminded that he was different.
Black fur, instead of pearl-colored skin. Twitching ears, instead of white hair. And where his sisters and brothers and cousins would stampede down the hallways, their feet a few inches from the floor board, shouting and laughing, he stayed quietly in the shadows.
But that was closer than he liked to get to thinking of the things he hoped he wasn’t about to dream about.
Because he thought he could see sleep now. He was getting closer. He just had to come at it from, well, from a direction that he couldn’t quite explain in words, but now in the silence of midnight he could see clearly which way it was, it wasn’t up or down, or forward or backward, but it was sideways to every direction at once, and he just had to reach out and….
And there were trees. There was mist, and cold, and strange, twisted arms of stone. There were the distant cries of, well, of something, he didn’t know what, but the pit of his stomach didn’t like it at all.
And there was the moon. It was too big, and far too bright, and he might not know as much about the moon as his siblings but he knew it looked, well, wrong. Wrong patterns on its face, wrong place in the sky. It was like an enormous mask in the sky, and the more he looked at it--he didn’t seem to be able to look away--the more he thought he didn’t want to find out what kind of face would wear a mask like that.
It was very strange. This was nothing like the nightmares he was used to.
“Nashi?!” came a familiar voice, “What are you doing here? How did you get here?!”
He ran to his mother, squealing in relief.
In the morning he would have said it was all a dream. But waiting outside his room was an enormous white cat in a cloak.
“Nashi,” rumbled Ajani, “Are you well?”
“I… yes thank you.” Nashi bowed awkwardly. “I did not know you had arrived! Are you here to…” he lost track of what he was trying to ask, because the lion man was looking at him as if he was trying to guess which of his limbs were broken. “What is wrong?”
Ajani waved a paw as he got to his feet, and Nashi followed him to the small back garden. “Can you tell me what you did and saw last night?”
“I…” Nashi quickly found out how little of last night he could account for. “Thought it was a dream.”
Ajani looked at him.
“It wasn’t, then.” Nashi said, as if they were discussing a fatal illness.
“It was not. Please, what happened?”
“I… thought I was falling asleep, and I could, I don’t know. It was like when I would play hide and seek, when I was small, I could feel the way to get inside a place. I once hid inside a book case and then Hiroku found me and we couldn’t figure out how I had gotten in or how to get me out again.”
Ajani was watching him with an intensity that made it hard to forget that he was a cat, and Nashi was a rat.
“And it was like that. I thought I was dreaming and I could feel… a way, even if I couldn’t understand what way it was?”
“It felt,” the lion whispered, “As if you were stepping sideways to every other direction?”
“Yes!” Nashi said, whispering himself though he didn’t know why. “And then I was… I thought it was a nightmare but if it wasn’t then… where did I go?”
Ajani leant back against the weeping pine. The green of its branches looked almost black against his fur. “It is called Innistrad. And it is another plane.”
“Innistrad,” Nashi said, trying the word experimentally, because it didn’t seem to fit together the way a word ought to. And then he thought about the rest of what Ajani had said. “Does that mean I walked behind the air?”
Ajani nodded. “And you were lucky. One of the things that we can do,” and the fact that he said ‘we’ was both exciting and frightening, “is seek out other Walkers, ones that we know. I do not know how, exactly, we do this, but it is like...” he waved a paw in the air. “When I was young, before I was a Walker, we would hunt in the grasslands and the jungles. We would follow the scent of the beasts. Tamiyo, your mother, she would know more. But it is something like that. You followed Tamiyo’s trail, and you were lucky enough to find her. Innistrad is not always a welcoming place.”
“I didn’t mean to go into danger!” Nashi blurted, “I didn’t even realize I was going anywhere at all! Is… is Tamiyo angry? Is that why you are explaining this, and not her?”
“She is not angry,” Ajani laid his paw on Nashi’s shoulder. It felt like it weighed more than Nashi himself. “I think she is somewhere between surprised, concerned, and proud. And I am the one explaining this,” he said, “because she has asked me to teach you.”
-----
“How is he?”
“Nervous. Bashful, I think. He feels as if he has done something wrong, and cannot think what it might be, so he does not know what to feel guilty for. I think he needs to talk to you, and Genku as well.”
“Of course. Do you know where you will start?”
“I do not even know yet if I will start! If I can! I do not know how to be a teacher, Tamiyo.”
“They call you ‘Mentor of Heroes’ on half a dozen worlds!”
“I never asked them to call me that!”
“And you never asked for the spark. Neither did he. But he has it, and he must learn what to do with it, and here you are.”
“I do not know where to begin.”
“Perhaps you could begin with the first thing you learned? What were you first taught, when you walked?”
“When I first walked? The men I met mocked my bereavement and told me to throw myself into a pit of lava!”
“Well, then at least he will he get a better first lesson than you did.”
The south hall was full of paper screens. It looked like they had brought down every screen in the entire house. Nashi walked from one end to the other, but he couldn’t see around them. Yet they weren’t all lined up, they were at angles to eachother, with gaps in between, and the thought that there was a path through tickled the back of his mind.
“Nashi,” said Ajani as he came around the corner, “You are ready to begin?”
“I hope so,” he wasn’t sure what he was beginning but he couldn’t say that. “You have agreed to teach me, then?”
“Tamiyo said I was unsure?”
“She said many things.” Tamiyo had spent an hour with him in the library, talking about things like Blind Eternities and Aether Cycles and how there was an invisible power everywhere that came in different colors even though it was invisible, and he’d done his best to understand and had understood very little. “But she said she hoped I’d be attentive and clever when you taught me.”
The lion looked at the roof and sighed through his nose. “Well. We will see.” He shifted his weight, stood with his feet wider and his hands folded behind his back, as if he had to stand a certain way to be a teacher. “So. You are a Walker. There are places, among the planes, where they make a study of walkers and walking, and you could learn much there, but they are not on this plane. To get there-”
“-we’re going to walk behind the air?” Nashi squeaked excitedly.
“Eventually.” Ajani said. “Until you have practice, it is almost impossible to walk to a plane on purpose, all the more when it is one you do not know. So you must practice.”
“So… we’re going to walk behind the air.”
“Eventually!” Ajani held up a paw, “When we walk,” he said, patience trickling through a frustrated growl, “you cannot be sure that the plane where you arrive will be safe. Many are very dangerous. All have some dangers. So before you walk? We must be sure that you can take care of yourself, should you find yourself alone.”
He had to admit that made sense. “How do we do that, Ajani-sensei?” And what did a great crowd of paper screens have to do with it?
Ajani gave him a puzzled look, then shrugged it away. “Well. We must start by finding what your kind of magic is. Every planeswalker is one kind of mage or another. Your mother knows the magic of bringing history to life in new forms, and others of us can bring forth flame, or make trees grow and flowers bloom, or play games with time.”
“What is it you do?”
“I… heal. I can make others stronger, both in their bodies and their souls. I can bring forth the true form of someone’s soul,” he said as if that were something to regret. “But that is not what matters, what matters is what kind of magic you do.”
Nashi frowned and felt a flush of shame creep up his ears. “I don’t, though. I’ve never done any magic.”
“I assure you,” said Ajani, “you have. You cannot Walk if you have no magic. This only means that you have done it without knowing what it was you did. And that is not unheard of.” He turned to the screens. “Are you hungry?”
Nashi blinked. “Yes?” He hadn’t eaten at all today, he realized.
“So am I. When they set all this here,” he waved at the screens, “They left our breakfast in the middle. I’d like you to fetch it, please.”
“What?” Nashi objected, “but how do I know where it is?”
“No more do I,” answered Ajani, “but you must find it, nonetheless.”
Nashi had every intention of saying that this was utterly unfair, but something about the gap between the screens--not the one nearest him, the one just past that--was oddly fascinating. It was if he could feel himself, or the himself from a few seconds in the future, moving toward it. As if he could feel a whole set of bewildering twists and turns ahead of him straightening themselves out, like paper being unfolded, and the featureless sameness of the corridors of screens were moving out of his way, or no, his way was moving out of their way around them like a snake through crowded stems in the garden and the next thing he was sure of was feeling his hand on the top of a wicker basket.
Inside he could smell sweet buns, and pickled bean curd, and egg dumplings… and what had just happened?!
The screen just behind him creaked as Ajani folded it and stepped through. “Magic. I suppose that means I will teach you. Well done, by the way.”
He had walked the maze three times when Tamiyo came to see how he was getting on. By the time he’d walked it twice more, she had called for some of her assistants to take notes and to change the position of the screens every time he went through. Nashi felt guilty for interrupting their work--he didn’t understand precisely what work it was they did in the many libraries, but he knew they came from all across the land to do it, it took a long time, they needed quiet, and that only the very smartest scholars could do it. But they all seemed fascinated, talking to eachother in hushed tones and writing very fast in their little journals each time he did… whatever it was he did, he still wasn’t sure.
And Tamiyo looked very proud of him.
“And what variation have you observed?” she was saying to one of the scholars.
“Very little, lady,” she answered, “The actual layout of the path seems to have no correlation to the time it takes him to traverse it. It is not a matter of him learning the maze, he solves a maze he has never seen before just as promptly as one he has done five times in a row.”
Tamiyo beamed approvingly at her son. “And Nashi, you say you cannot remember the path after you take it?”
“Only a little. It’s like…” Nashi said “It’s like when you try to remember the middle of a song, and you can’t do it unless you sing the whole thing from the beginning again?”
“Fascinating!” said Tamiyo, as if being fascinating was the most wonderful thing anyone could ever be.
There were raised voices from the other side of the hall. Tamiyo looked up and stepped up into the air to cross the forest of screens. Nashi supposed that he could let her handle it, but… the argument would have to be about him, whatever it was. And Ajani-sensei had said that he needed to rely on himself. Why not see what it was about?
He stepped into the screens again, and it was getting easier each time. It was as if the path was rolled up like a carpet just in front of his feet, and was unrolling with each step. He turned right and left and left and right again without turning, it was as if the world was turning right and left around him.
“It does not matter why,” one of Tamiyo’s scholars was saying as Nashi stepped around the last screen, “what matters is that you deviated from the specified configuration!”
“But you are not listening,” said the other scholar, “because of the mistake, the maze is not solvable!”
“Of course it is!” said the first.
“What is this disturbance?” Tamiyo asked, icily. Both scholars bowed hastily.
“Your forgiveness, lady,” said the first scholar, “I was merely attempting to admonish this one. He was negligent, and for the last test he placed four screens in incorrect positions. These results are now deviant, and I fear we must ask your,” he hesitated, “...son to repeat the test, if he would be so kind.”
“That is not the point!” the second scholar snapped at him, “Yes, lady,” he turned to Tamiyo and contrition crept into his voice, “I did place some screens in the wrong position. But look,” he held out a sketch, “that means that no actual path through the maze exists!”
“Which is why those positions were incorrect!” interjected the first scholar, cheeks flushing iridescent with pique.
“But the point is that he still solved the unsolvable maze!”
“Impossible!”
Tamiyo held up a hand and they both fell silent so fast that their voices might have been heavy weights they had dropped. She met Nashi’s eyes, tilted her head curiously, and stepped back into the air to look over the top of the screens. Nashi watched her eyes tracing the routes through them.
“Is something wrong?” Ajani said softly. Nashi jumped. How did someone so big move so quietly?
“I don’t know,” Nashi said. “I think they said the maze was blocked? But it isn’t though, I just went through it.”
“It is blocked.” Tamiyo said, a little bit of a scholar’s lecture in her voice. “And yet he walked it anyway. Without noticing that whatever path he took did not even exist!”
Ajani frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Proof that it is indeed some form of magic, for one thing,” Tamiyo announced. “Proof that further study is needed, for another!”
Nashi had never heard her sound more excited.
-----
“He has far to go. But he has sufficient mastery to perform the feat whenever he likes.”
“That does not mean he is ready. Do you know of a plane made only of paper screens? I do not. I will need to see how this magic works in more wild circumstances before my mind will be easy about him walking again.”
“I have a few other things I would like to see him try as well. Either he needs to use this way-magic to defend himself, or he must prove capable of learning other spells, or I must teach him to fight.”
“I will see what my libraries have to say. His people’s magic has not been studied as much as it should, but there must be something to learn.”
“I do not ever look to hear you say that anything has been studied enough.”
Ajani-sensei finally stopped in a grove of camphor trees, by the ruins of an old Temple. The kind of place that Tamiyo would spend months carefully exploring and making sketches of in one of her journals. She probably had. He should ask her about this one, it was the kind of thing she enjoyed talking about.
“So,” Oh, he should pay attention to Ajani, “We know what you can do. But there is more to magic than what it does, there is how it reacts to what is around it. You understand?”
Nashi had to shake his head.
“My magic, for example.” Ajani raised his hand, and it glowed, like the surface of a golden lantern. “I can make a warrior stronger, faster. I can heal their wounds. I can even make other walkers’ magic more powerful. But when I am by myself,” the light went out, “It does nothing. So we might know what you can do, but that is not the same as knowing how to use it.”
“I understand. But what are we to do about that?”
“I will hunt you. Think of me as one of the dangers you might face, out among the worlds. If your magic can escape from me, then perhaps it can escape from the dangers.”
“Uh,” the bottom of his stomach seemed to be suddenly missing, “What do you mean when you say- YOWP!”
Ajani held Nashi up upside down, both his feet in one enormous paw. “You’re going to have to be faster than that.”
Obviously Ajani was going to put him back down. Obviously he wasn’t going to hurt him. But Nashi couldn’t figure out a way to tell his fear that, and if he didn’t get free right now he was going to scream, he felt himself reaching but he couldn’t reach anything… and his hand closed on a branch of a tree across the grove. He pulled, and he was loose.
On the other side of the clearing, Ajani staggered upright and looked in astonishment at his empty hand.
“Alright Nashi,” he rumbled, and sank into a worryingly aggressive stance, “I’m impressed.”
Nashi ran.
Tamiyo had often spoken about being aware of time. How when she observed some phenomena, it was important to have a sense of how much time it took to happen.
So Nashi found himself noticing that it was less than minute before his fear faded and he realized how much fun he was having.
Ajani was behind him, and astonishingly fast for how big he was and how little noise he made, even in the thick forest. But this wasn’t a hunt… this was tag! He had played this with his… with Rumiko and Umeyo and Hiroku.
And now for the first time ever, he had a way to be really really good at it!
He reached a canyon and didn’t slow down, he simply stepped from the rocky edge to the other side fifty feet away.
Ajani skidded to a halt on the edge, looking puzzled. Nashi was about to laugh, but then he saw the big cat crouch slightly, shuffle his feet… and that was all it took for him to come sailing through the air at him like a paper kite.
Nashi ducked through brambles as if they were silk curtains, and Ajani crashed through them after him. Was there nowhere he could go that his teacher couldn’t follow?
As soon as he had thought that question, he was running up the side of an enormous sugi tree.
He looked down from one of the lower branches. Ajani was standing at the base, one hand on the trunk, looking baffled. Only a for a moment, though, then he began to climb.
Just before he would have been within arm’s reach of the branch, Nashi stepped off it, and onto another tree fifty paces away.
He had no idea how long the game had been going on. He didn’t care. Whatever magic this was, he loved it, he never wanted to stop.
‘How must this look to Ajani-sensei?’ he found himself wondering. To him it looked like bits of the forest around him was all rushing back and forth to reorganize itself to get out of his way, but to Ajani...? Perhaps like Nashi was the tip of an badly-inked brush, being pulled across a sheet of paper, leaving a trial of smudged colors behind?
At the swaying upper spray of a grove of a bamboo, he looked up and could just see the palace in the clouds. Strange how seldom he had seen it from the outside. One of those windows was his bedroom. He thought he could see Rumi sitting, a book in her hands, on the roof over the front gate, which Genku had given up telling her she was not supposed to do.
The bamboo stalk quivered, and he supposed that meant Ajani had brushed past it, or taken hold of it, or something.
Tamiyo or Genku or any of his… or Rumi or the like, they would have been able to walk straight to the palace from here. Just step into the air as if it were stairs, where he would have to take the long winding paths down the cliffs.
Or would he?
It wasn’t easy. His head swam and his body felt light as if he were half asleep, and he would certainly have lost his grip and fallen but the path had already changed which way gravity wanted him to fall and was pulling him along it, and he could smell brackish water and mushrooms and rotting pine branches as if they were all stuck in his back teeth and there was dark wind rushing around him and it felt like he was being pulled in half and suddenly he was more tired than he could remember but he couldn’t stop and even if he could he couldn’t tell where he was and then he collapsed to his knees on the front gate, gasping desperately for breath, and somewhere above him he heard Rumi shout in surprise and felt something like a burst of sunshine on his back, and then he could barely see Ajani bending over him.
‘Oh,’ he tried to say, and only thought, ‘Does that mean I lost the game?’ And then he slept.
“He has laid my doubts to rest, at least. I don’t think I know of anything that could catch hold of him, if he didn’t want it to.”
“I must admit he has raised some doubts for me. He sought the limits of what he could do, and he discovered the limits of his own body before he found the limits of his magic. How if he had not been able to stop?”
“You are more concerned than I expected. If I have failed your trust, I am sorry, but-”
“It is not that. I have discovered troubling things about Nezumi magic.”
“And that is more close minded than I would expect from you.”
“Records speak of curses driving victims mad, of uncontrollable undead, of symbiotic relations with insects and parasites… given what he experienced today, are not all the signs of a magic that will know no limits, turn on its master, and devour him!?”
“Tamiyo!”
“...I apologize, I do not know what came over me…”
“I do. What mother can blind herself entirely to fears for her children? But if you fear what he will find at the limits of his magic, I can think of a solution.”
“Hm. And are you going to tell me what that is, my friend, or must I disgrace myself with another outburst?”
“Find his limits yourself.”
“Now Nashi, Ajani-sensei is satisfied that you can use your magic to protect yourself,” Tamiyo said, “But there is also the concern of your magic escaping from your control and hurting you, or another.”
Nashi didn’t know how walking through a maze could get so out of control that it hurt someone, but saying so would be rude.
“I know it may be hard to see how wayfinding could get so out of control that it could hurt you,” Tamiyo continued “but magic can be dangerous and unpredictable, and we still know very little about what you can do. Therefore, I have designed some exercises to test your limits in safe ways.”
Nashi looked over at Ajani. “I can hardly argue against your safety, or that you should know less about your power,” he said, “What kind of teacher would do that?”
That made enough sense, Nashi supposed. Though he wondered why Tamiyo hadn’t brought any of her scholars to witness these tests.
So Nashi did his best to follow as Tamiyo began talking about ancient ratfolk from thousands of years ago. Nothing they did sounded anything like what he had done, but then, nothing about them sounded anything like him, or like anyone he could dimly remember from his lost village.
It turned out there were two kinds of exercise. The first was simple enough: could he do such and such with his waymaking? Could he get through this? Could he get around that?
Could he take someone else along? Yes.
Could he send someone else without going himself? No.
Could he get out of a circle of flour without disturbing any of it? No.
Could he get across the room without disturbing a line of flour on the floor? Yes, he walked up one wall, across the ceiling, and down the other side.
“And how did it appear to you?” Tamiyo would ask each time he succeeded.
“Like… I was standing still and the room is moving around me,” he would answer, or “like instead of my foot moving to where I’m going to step, where I’m going to step is stretching to move under my foot,” or “like where I am and where I’m going to be aren’t sure which is which.”
“That sounds like what I saw,” Ajani said, “When he did the long steps, yesterday, it did not look like he was moving, more like he was simply at all the points between him and his destination at the same time.”
“I will theorize, then, that what he is doing is not teleportation. Rather he is changing the way that directions work, relative only to himself.” For every word she spoke, Tamiyo wrote three. “It bears a very strong analogical relation to planeswalking, only without leaving the plane. Which perhaps might explain why he sparked so young?”
The other kind of exercise was strange, and Nashi didn’t see the point of it. Tamiyo would take a scroll from a shelf beside her, and describe some effect, often trailing off into long pauses as if she were trying to decide how to word something.
Nashi almost would have said that she was talking about things she was reading out of a story.
But once she had described such a thing, he would try to do it. Could he make Ajani forget a word that he was thinking of? No.
Could he make him afraid, so that he would flee? So that he would get out of Nashi’s way? No to both, the very idea of Ajani-sensei being afraid was ridiculous, much less of someone like him.
Could he make a flower in a vase wither, despite how much asking that made Tamiyo look as there were a foul odor about? Could he make himself stronger by doing so? No, again, to both.
Could he call someone who had died a long time ago?
And he did not expect to be able to, but when he tried… he felt something. It was not unlike feeling a path unwind before him, but one that went somewhere he couldn’t see, and if he was travelling along it then it was one that was going to where he already was. He wasn’t moving, but something was getting closer, and for a moment he thought he saw a shape, barely an outline, look around the room in surprise and fear. It had no color, it was made of the shadow of mist, and it was gone in less than a heartbeat, but it had ratlike ears and tail such as none of his family had save for him.
The only thing he was sure was that it didn’t want to be here. But Nashi could feel a way on the other side of it. He couldn’t have said how he did it, but he turned it and gave it… some kind of nudge. And it vanished down the path like water down the gutter.
“Nothing?” said Tamiyo. She sounded like she was trying not to sound pleased.
“Nothing,” Ajani shook his head.
Nashi was silently relieved. That had felt too much like… the fires, and the village, and the shaman making him watch. Best if nobody knew he could do whatever that had been.
Best if he never thought of doing it again.
“There is one last test I have thought of,” Ajani said, as dinnertime neared.
“Will that be alright, Nashi?” Tamiyo asked.
“Yes, Tamiyo,” Nashi said, “I’m not tired.”
“Then I want to see if he can get out of a cage. I have been thinking of the dangers that have…” The sides of his mouth tightened, “...that I have seen threaten Walkers. All of them, I think, I can see a way that he could elude. Except one. Trapped on all sides, solid walls, no gaps. Can he pass through solid objects?”
Nashi didn’t know. But he was willing to try.
They found a small closet in the hallway, just the sort of place where Nashi would have hidden when he was younger. He was already doing… this, back then, wasn’t he? He needed a name for it. Something that ended with Mancy, all the respectable magics ended with Mancy.
“We will shut you in,” Tamiyo explained. “You simply see whether your magic allows you to get out without opening the door. Take as long as you feel you need to be sure, and if the answer is no, simply open the door and step out. Do you understand?”
Nashi nodded. It didn’t sound like there was anything there to understand. He closed his eyes as the closet door slide shut, and concentrated on the hallway just outside.
He could feel the way there, but he couldn’t touch it. It was buzzing like an insect in a bottle. It felt different than it should, strange and hollow.
“I think I could do it, but,” he said, “there’s something missing. It wants to work, but I don’t know how to push it enough to make it go.”
“That is promising,” Tamiyo’s voice came muffled through an inch of polished wood. “Try different approaches.”
Whatever that was supposed to mean. Nashi tried changing, in his mind, the imaginary line between him and the hallway. He could feel the way bend and shift, but it still felt too light to work, like a leaf from which all the water had dried up.
“Perhaps,” came Ajani’s voice, “he needs more power.”
“Don’t you have to able to touch to use your soul magic?” asked Tamiyo.
“No, but that is not what I meant.” There was a soft thud that was presumably Ajani bending down and resting on the door. “Nashi. I want you to think of places you have been, in the past, where you felt safe. Places where you felt you belonged.”
There had been few enough of those. “Uh, yes, I will try.” Did he mean the palace? But as nice as it was, he never really felt that he belonged there. Perhaps something longer ago? His village, in the wetlands, before the man with the metal arm came? The forest edge, with the wild plum thicket? The rice fields, just after harvest, when they were drained for winter…
“Now,” said Ajani, apparently confident that he’d managed this, “think of those places. Remember what it felt like to be in them. Remember the land. Breathe in those memories… and then put them into what you are trying to do.”
Nashi tried… whatever it was Ajani had just said. He felt the hollow unusable way before him, and poured in the memories of the land--only a little, only to see what it would be like to do it.
And everything happened at once.
For a moment he could see, even in the dark, even with his eyes shut, the path in front of him. Right through the walls, looped and twisted around itself from all the times he’d tried steering it a different way. It was made of light and darkness and life and it couldn’t be stopped, because it was made of the space that everything was in, the room that everything took up, whatever that meant. And he was moving down it, without walking, without taking a step, just rolling like a marble down a hill. And there was a noise like trees twisting in a high wind, and loud crashes, and…
...and he was in the kitchen, lying on his back. The Akki undercook was shouting excitedly in his own language, and Nashi was covered in splinters.
Because above him an entire panel of the wall was warped and bent. The boards were not broken, rather they had been twisted like fried noodles. The ones that held together were curved into bizarre, unearthly angles. The ones that were not warped were gone, they had simply burst.
Ajani and Tamiyo both peered down at him through the gap. Nashi assumed that much the same thing had happened to the door. “I did it,” was all he could think to say.
Ajani smiled.
-----
“You think he is ready.”
“I think he is as ready as he can become while he stays here.”
“If I had known how much I would worry, I would have been less eager to ask you to teach him.”
“Consider it this way. He is more ready to begin walking than I was. Than you were. No other walker in a hundred years was better prepared.”
“I would be easier in my mind if I knew he would be safe. He has already suffered too much.”
“As someone once told me: There is not some amount of suffering that is too much. There is simply that which fate puts before each of us.”
“I suppose you are correct. Where will you go?”
“Dominaria, at first. If any place will have made a study of walking, it is the academies there, and the Gatewatch have allies that can help protect him. It may take some time to get there, I do not know how many walks it will take before he learns to find his way.”
“Perhaps it will be best if I go with…”
“Tamiyo. You must learn too, how to let go. He is a Walker, he must walk, and we both know that those who walk must do so alone.”
“He is still almost a child.”
“No one who walks can ever fully be a child.”
Nashi was curled up on his mat, right in the corner of his room, with sleep on the other side of an invisible wall.
Tomorrow, Ajani had said, they would set out. They would walk behind the air, and they would try to reach a place--no that was the wrong way to think of it, he corrected himself, a whole world--called Dominaria, because there were people there who could teach him.
But there were no signposts to follow. No paths. The only thing you could do, Tamiyo said, was follow the idea of a person or a place you knew, and Nashi didn’t know anyone or anywhere in the Dominaria place. And so, Ajani had said, they would trust to luck and practice, and by the time he gotten good enough at walking behind the air that he could walk to a destination, they would be at their destination.
Hopefully.
The idea of what was going to happen tomorrow was too big even to be afraid of. He would step out of not just his home, not just his land, but of his whole world. If he expected to die tomorrow, that would be a smaller thing than this. He knew there were so many worlds, from the people who came to Tamiyo’s story circle, and they were so strange, but tomorrow was going to make them real.
Worlds with two suns, or too many moons. Worlds with strange stone shapes hovering in the air and wastelands of metallic crystal. Worlds with no ground, just floating islands in a sky that went on forever. Worlds where the mountains were upside down. Worlds where the stars were alive and climbed down out of the sky. Worlds where the sky was made of lightning and the ground flowed like wax and turned into evil shapes. Worlds that were all ocean. Worlds where the sunset and sunrise were places that you could take a boat to. Worlds that were nothing but a single tree, larger than mountains, floating in the night sky.
He was going to be in them.
Starting tomorrow, he was going to be one of the people that brought those worlds to the Story Circle.
Ajani was sitting by the window in the hall, looking out over the nighttime landscape below. “I did not think you’d be able to sleep,” he rumbled softly, “but do not wake your siblings.”
Nashi padded silently to Ajani’s side.
“Your world is very beautiful, you know,” Ajani said.
Nashi looked down, and there were the outlines of moonlit forests, with the tiny lights of villages visible among them, with little halos around each projected on the night mist, and beyond the blue mountains. He supposed it was. “It never would have occurred to me to ask whether it was beautiful. Not until I was…”
“About to leave.” Ajani leaned heavily on the windowsill. “That is always the way.”
“Is your world beautiful?”
“I think so. It is very different from this one, and it is no longer the same as it was when I was your age… but yes. You can see it for yourself, if you wish.”
“I could meet your family?”
Ajani puffed through his cheeks. “You could meet my pride, I suppose. I would not say I have a family to meet.” His hand drifted to his side as if it had forgotten that his axe was in his room.
“You have no-" Nashi began. Would mate be the right word? Wife? Did his people even have marriages? Oh, whether or not the people he met had even heard of normal things like ‘families’ was something he was going to have to worry about from now on, wasn't it. “-children?” he managed to finish.
Ajani shook his head. “When I was young, no huntress who had any respect for herself would have looked at me. It would have been an insult to ask her to. I was very much an outcast.”
“Why?”
“My fur.” Ajani looked down, amused. “You thought all my people had white fur, didn't you.”
Nashi didn’t see much point in denying that. “They don't, then.”
“They do not. My brother was the color of honey, and he had five or six wives. I was the only white leonin anyone had ever heard of, and I was content enough in the arms of some other young male who had nobody but me. At least until he could do better”
If he had a brother, if that brother had so many wives, then Ajani should have had a family. That meant… “What happened to your brother?”
“He died.” Ajani’s eye was fixed on the night sky. “They… he was murdered. I couldn't save him. Avenging him was what drove me to Walk, for the first time. When I was done I used all the magic I had, I made my pride as strong as I could, I told them to protect those weaker than themselves, and I have been walking ever since. I have had many… friends, in many worlds, over the years. But no family.”
That seemed sad. But then, most things about Ajani’s past seemed sad. “Are we always outcasts?”
“No no, I have seen Walkers gain power and prestige-"
“No, I mean…” Nashi fumbled for words, “when the walking chooses us. Does it always choose the outsiders? The ones who don't belong?”
“I don't know,” Ajani said. “Tamiyo, and the people in the Academy we are trying to reach, would say it is not something that chooses at all. That it is only chance. But Tamiyo says she is the only Walker she knows of who was no outsider, and I say she is wrong about that, her knowledge makes her an outsider just as much as any of us. Let me see…” he began counting on his fingers, “exploited and abused, his very mind violated. Persecuted for her magic. A criminal outlaw betrayed by his gods. Exiled out of fear of her power. Last of a fallen house. Trapped inside a frozen disaster for a century. And… refugee, from darkness, looking for a home she never found.” He let his hand drop to brush his white cloak. “I am no scholar, but that looks like a pattern. But why there is such a pattern, I couldn't say.”
Nashi didn't want to go back to bed, but he couldn't think of anything to say.
“I could tell you about the world we are going to,” Ajani offered. Nashi nodded and sat down. “Very well. Centuries ago, two brothers were searching for ancient treasures in the desert, when they found a cave…”
-----
The goodbyes were said.
Indeed the entire palace had come down to the front gates. Rumiko had hugged him with tears in her eyes. Genku had told him to make him proud. Ume and all the cousins and had bowed and told him to come back safely. Even Sofuyo and Soboyo, Tamiyo’s parents, who as far as Nashi was aware actually owned the palace and whom Nashi saw only on formal holidays, walked down, arm in arm, from their upper tower rooms in long formal robes that were much too long for them to step down from the air onto the floor. They had laid their hands on his shoulders and said something he couldn’t quite hear. They were very old, even by moonfolk standards, but they were both smiling so he assumed it was some sort of blessing and he’d thanked them as politely as he knew how.
And now that was all done. There was nothing left but to turn to Tamiyo and Ajani.
“Here,” Tamiyo handed him a small journal. “So that whatever worlds and stories you discover, you may record. The journal of a planeswalker would be a precious addition to any library, so you must promise to come back safely. I will have a special place on the shelves ready for it.”
“I promise.”
“And if you find yourself in danger, ever, you walk. Come find Ajani-sensei, or find me. There will be nothing more important than protecting you.”
“I understand, mama.”
She hugged him tight, and said over his shoulder, “My friend, promise to keep him safe!”
“I promise,” rumbled Ajani, “No harm shall come to him if I have any power to prevent it.”
“Well then.” Tamiyo dabbed at her eyes as she stood and practicality reasserted itself in her face. “You had best be going. You have a long journey ahead of you.”
“Remember, Nashi,” Ajani place a hand on his shoulder as they stood side by side at the edge of the platform. “I will walk. You count to three, then try to follow me. If you cannot, and you turn up in a plane you do not know, stay there if you can. If it is dangerous, get to safety. Protect yourself however you must, and try again to walk to me. If an hour passes and you cannot reach me, I will come to you. You understand?”
Nashi swallowed. “I understand.”
Ajani nodded. “Then follow.”
It looked as if a drop of molten sunlight had fallen on the world and was seeping into it. The world around Ajani was shaped like long sheaves of grass that were parting for him. Nashi could feel the heat of the sun and the cool breeze moving the grass… and then it was gone, and so was Ajani.
Nashi counted to three.
And Tamiyo was alone on the platform outside the palace gates.
When Nashi opened his eyes, it was on a dead world.
Not frightening, just… dead. Empty and worn out. The sky was starless black, the sun was a dim brown featureless speck. There were no plants, the water was gone, and not even the sand looked like it had moved in centuries.
Ajani was nowhere to be seen.
“Hello?” Nashi finally made himself call. “Is anyone there? Is this… Dominaria?”
“It’s called Equilor,” said a voice behind him. Nashi jumped and almost tumbled down the strangely smooth stone hillside. “I come here sometimes. All the futures are so loud, nice to come somewhere where there isn’t any future so I can think.”
Behind him was a little girl. She had to be younger even than he was. He’d never seen someone who looked like her before. Was she one of the races he’d heard of from the story circle? Was this what an ‘elf’ looked like? Or a ‘vedal-kin?’
“You don’ know me yet, but you’re Nashi. I’m Aminatou.”
“How did you know I’d be here?” Nashi said, very puzzled. Whatever she was, she was looking right through him and hadn’t once blinked and it made him very unsettled.
“I brought you here,” she said absently smacking the stone with a long thin stick. “I bent your fate so when you walked you came here instead of Ulgrotha. You wouldn’t like it there. And anyway it’s gon’ be so long till we actually meet and get to be friends, and I missed you.”
“I… don’t understand.”
She giggled. “That’s what I missed! Would you like to see a ghost moth? They’re not as big as the ghost rats you learn to call, but they’re prettier.”
“I…” he supposed he should be polite, especially to a mad child, and that is what she seemed to be. “I suppose so. But I cannot stay long, my teacher is waiting for me.”
“He’ll be fine.” She waved a hand and a moth appeared… from somewhere, pale gold on black. Aminatou watched it carefully, and when it fluttered over Nashi’s head before disappearing she said “You find him alright. Your next walk will take you to Dominaria.” She made a face. “It’s a dumb plane. I never go there.”
“You… said I’ll go to Dominaria next?” Nashi repeated the one thing she’d said that had made sense.
“Yes. Better go, Ajani is a worrier. Bye!”
Nashi waved, and walked again before he had time to realise that he’d never told her what his teacher’s name was.
Aminatou looked up at where the stars would have been, if Equilor had still had stars. And maybe she read there that Nashi arrived safely in Dominaria, that Ajani found him there, and that he learned to be, if not the most powerful planeswalker, one of the more annoying to his enemies, and that they called him ‘The Waymaker’ on a dozen worlds. Maybe she didn’t. What mattered was that she did not read that he walked directly into the clutches of one of the multiverse’s worst monsters, who tortured and enslaved him. Not anymore.
“You’re welcome,” she said to no one, and walked away herself.
