Greensands, Kitesang Confederation – 342 A.Q.
Hina had attended the River Beast Festival before, of course, but always a little on the fringes. She didn’t often venture down to the water even without crowds. She’d grab food from parties spilling out of courts and down streets, play music in some park, maybe climb onto parapets and get a glimpse of the throngs at the banks and the churning water. One year, when the band was big, they played the Kittiwake amphitheater in something more protest than celebration. Last year, it had rained the whole day and she’d stayed home with her toddler and made strawberry tarts.
This time, she left Yu with Jora and set out before the morning fog broke, her echotang case across her back and, in her bag, the Crown of Spines wrapped in paper. She felt the unease of a looming performance, a feeling she’d once trained to submission, alongside the fog’s chill creeping through her dress and leggings. The earthbound clouds dampened the clamor of the courts and softened the city’s edges, a little touch of mystery. The trolleys lit the mist with steady cream lamps, easily distinguished from the flash and heartbeat of spirits’ glows. She took a creaky, nearly empty trolley down the hill and got off at the turnaround. She could already hear the bustle on the promenade.
The festival set-up was proceeding with a lot of arguing and scrambling among volunteer organizer factions. The main bridge after Fluke was already closed for crossings, causing chaos in the normal flow of traffic. Paths and informative messages were being chalked on damp stones, a few people shoring up the barricades around the construction materials designated for the winter’s heavy storm damage. A group of mostly adolescents were shucking mussels around a barrel fire, swearing as they got the juice on their skirts. Attempts to string garlands between the promenade trees were going badly, clearly not the responsibility of whoever did it for full moon celebrations.
Hina looked for her place in the mess and picked her way towards an older woman, Oysha Tyn-Gable, who’d come up to talk logistics after the crowning ceremony. She was wearing pants, no time for formal wear, with three separate writing utensils stuck in her bun. She explained the short order of ceremonies, the audio equipment (Hina held her tongue), the importance of Hina’s role, the evacuation routes (the same as normal), the weather forecast, and the locations of the medicine tents (very well marked on their own).
Hina waited through it, and eventually, Oysha called over one of the people lurking taskless by the salt-stained railing, who had a spirit negotiator’s green ribbons tied to their glasses and woven into long braids. “They’ll help you not get eaten,” Oysha said, and left to yell at the food cart coordinators.
The new person waved at Oysha’s back, then at Hina. They wore a practical dark dress cut like a vest over a floofy-sleeved top. Hina guessed they were also about thirty, but carefree in a way she couldn’t afford to be. “I’m Firth Neta,” they said. “I’m a negotiator. You’re not going to get eaten.”
“Hina Creek.”
Firth nodded. “I recognize you, though I don’t believe we’re acquainted. It’s a pleasure.”
“I did win the Crown of Spines,” Hina said, which was her new favorite response to this scourge on her life. It almost always worked.
“You won with music, and I’d heard you play before that. One of the big twilight bands.”
“I was in Quiver of Fate for a while,” she said, begrudging but surrendering to the script. “I went by Osprey. Purple hair.”
“It’s a nice name, and you wore it well,” Firth said. “An acquaintance of mine called their child Osprey after you.”
“I don’t like that,” Hina replied. She’d heard it for her once before, but for Jora (Comet) and Kiani Sky (Torrent), a couple times. One of the older kids in a local pack was named Comet, and Hina had done her best never to encounter the parents. Osprey was a more common name, at least, among Greensands fashions.
Firth shrugged at her critique. “And after the bird, but with some honor. You do have excellent energy, quite starry.”
Hina considered this for misguided flirting and decided they had a perpendicular, unfazed single-mindedness typical of people saturated in magic. Fay cobwebs in the brain and all that. Not dissimilar to people intoxicated on music, she supposed. She didn’t like their approach either way, and decided to cut to practicalities.
“How do I not get eaten?”
“You’re only going to really be interacting with the elders — probably Shishito or Brittlestar — and they’re both quite wise and polite. It’s been decades since any of the crowns lost fingers.”
“I need my fingers, thank you very much.”
“You’ll have them. I’ve got mine.” Firth held out their hands for proof. They had a nasty scar, a couple years faded but deep, across the heel of one thumb. “Also, some spirits might be curious. Let them pass.”
“Of course.”
Firth went off to coordinate with the other negotiators, which was probably like wrangling cats. As the mist burnt off, Hina took a few minutes to braid her hair into a crown, which was the only way she’d found for the Crown of Spines to stay balanced on her head -– it was heavy and cast without knowledge of its future wearer. She took a moment holding it, hanging on that edge, and then put it on. A frazzled organizer approached with a heavy ceremonial cloak, a brighter green still evoking the cast of the local stones. Hina had to surrender her echotang case to wear it, which she did with a heartfelt threat to secure its well-being. It had been her main instrument since she was seventeen, and she did not intend to lose it now. As the organizer departed, Hina clasped the musty cloak over her shoulders, resolved to air out her dress later, and steeled herself for the performance.
High tide fell around midday, and people were already starting to trickle in — vendors, musicians, those bored or on a mission to get a good spot. Hina found a food cart to buy combbean buns and was absolutely not allowed to pay. She thanked the vendor too many times around her treat. People kept coming up to say hello and make the strange small talk of strangers. They gave their names and didn’t ask for hers, although some remembered from the anniversary festival. She exchanged bows and forgot too many faces and swirled a gentle dance with an old man who’d worn the crown one spring many years ago. The energy grew with the gathering, anticipation winding as the tide rose. The spirits were thick, too, for daylight, although that was partly the phase of the nearly full lily moon and the tide and the pulse of the crossroad ley lines. They charted their own paths and settled where they pleased to observe. Hina knew them by people clearing space and sudden hushed pockets, but there were glimmers and shadows at the center of the deference. Some of the puffball spirits floated over the wide river channel, skipping on the surface like shells and bumping into each other. On a parapet across the water, Hina spotted a chimeric sort of goose-elk, a physical body for the spirit of the Tide Gardens.
It had been a bad year so far, between the storm season, the jam fever, and the trouble around Kitesang’s inner sea. Right now, the epidemic had slowed, the confederation was not yet at war, and the sun shone on the brackish water and Greensands’ inhabitants, all of them, as the river beasts started to surface.
At this point, Firth came to retrieve Hina and led her through the bridge barricades. There was a small convening of negotiators, musicians, negotiators doubling as musicians, and the most stubborn member of the city council — Hina knew her, actually, as a representative from her childhood district in the northern outskirts. The river churned in all directions, water chopped with tail fins and sharp heads and bodies weaving. Hina had seen the river beasts, of course, their shadows in the channels, a back splitting above the water. Never like this.
They assembled in the center of the bridge, where Hina’s echotang and a bowl of fresh mussels were waiting. From her new perch, Hina spotted Jora near the front of the crowd, his plaid festival dress and malachite-green hair (vivid dyes were less common in those days), and Yu balanced on his hip. She waved to them both and opened her echotang case.
The council member gave a brief speech, a welcome and a joke about the auspicious sunlight. Then Hina had to thank everyone and everything for coming, and the people cheered. As that settled down, the musicians and negotiators fell back to each side. Hina moved to follow, and Firth stopped her. “Front and center,” they said, and backed up a bit, too, leaving Hina alone on the bridge edge.
The groups started the summoning song, instruments and voice around the traditional composition, stirring and deceptively simple. The crowd joined in immediately, and other musicians scattered on both sides of the river. There was no real requirement for the Crown of Spines to lead, but she’d won it by playing and it felt right. Hina didn’t know the song that well, but she picked a simpler refrain and grew volume in pace with her confidence. She started to sing along with the zest tone of her instrument, and then immediately fumbled on the strings.
It didn’t matter among hundreds of players, thousands of voices, as the beasts began to rear up around her. First a few, arched necks trailing tendrils and seaweed, and then a mass of curved bodies more seal than snake and far from either. There was fierce debate on whether they were spirits or beasts first, and Hina watched them huff the air and felt the ambiguity. She stopped counting at fifteen — there was an official count, which had the total population pretty stable at around sixty in the Greensands estuary over the last century, and it felt like they were all here. Someone from the Institute would be keeping track.
As the song slid into its second repetition, maybe the largest of the beasts, speckled and grown with little barnacles, sauntered right up to the bridge. Reared out of the high water, their head was level with Hina, who stumbled back. A smaller, thinner one breached over the big one’s body, causing waves to smash against the bridge’s underside, and got thwacked with a fin for their troubles. The big one loomed back close, and Hina hurried to set her echotang aside (it was having a rough day, poor thing). She had to do something.
“Gentle,” Firth said, a warning to them both, and the beast slowed. Hina breathed and ran over Oysha’s instructions. An offering, that was it. Simple.
Hina took a mussel from the bowl, almost bisected by the knife that had cut it from the shell, and approached. The great head of the speckled one moved in with strangely delicate movements. They looked soft up close, flicking eyelids and the delicate mass, like a mountain on puppet strings. Questing whiskers trailing from their jaws found Hina’s outstretched hand, tickled across her skin cool and a little stiff. When Hina would tell her grandchildren about this, many years later, this would be the moment: when delicate tendrils swept up the treat and she heard the slurp of the obscured mouth. An eye lingered on her, swirling dark like Yu’s. And it didn’t matter how many people were watching or singing or caring. She bowed a little and felt the crown wobble on her head, catching it with fishy fingers. “Thank you for this city,” she said, and meant it.
Hina fed them a few more mussels, and, on impulse, kissed the wide bridge of their muzzle. The skin was thick, cool but warmer than the water, and not quite slick. The texture was more leathery than slime. They nudged against her in a way that made her stumble but felt playful, and then they fell back a little bit, opening up for the others to mob close.
Hina picked up the bowl and tossed mussels to the assembled river beasts. Her aim was mostly better than she had expected, smacking into their faces, but the targets were too small for them to catch. The beasts followed them down into the water, white froth and slosh and spray up the channel walls as they dove. The crowds yelled as they were splashed, and the song dissolved into inelegant gasps, laughter, and chatter. Hina crossed to the other side of the bridge, and some opportunist river beasts followed beneath her. She felt them scrape against the underside of the bridge, shivers through the stone.
“Make sure Shishito gets a few,” Firth said, indicating a large beast with a rippled scar across their forehead, who’d hung back a bit.
People were starting to bring out other offerings, and as the attention let up, Hina stepped down the bridge and laid a few mussels on the wide railing. The scarred beast moved in to take them.
The festival continued in songs, in blessings. People tossed food into the water — mollusks, small fish, fish-shaped breads — and scattered flower petals, and leaves scratched with prayers or stray thoughts. It all sloshed in the turning tide and the movement of the beasts, some of them rearing right up to the stone channel banks, throats to the railings to eat out of baskets or brave hands (the negotiators stepped in to stop that). The bridges were reopened, and people packed in. Most were there for the view, but there was the rare person trying to go about some errand just caught in the festivities. Jora had left by that point, probably to get Yu proper lunch and naptime.
Everyone wanted to talk to Hina, of course. It was even more symbolic than her time as Osprey. It was nothing about her but all the crown, the role she’d stepped into. And next year, there would be someone else here, a new name written in the ledgers in Urchin Court. A few times, she had the crackling attention of spirits. The most forward one loomed up around her, all frostbite intensity, and its coalescing form reached down to investigate her crown. As quickly as it took her, it was ushered off by a presence softer and salty, one that tasted a lot more like home. Hina just stood through it, fingers tight and spine straight as everyone else backed right up. Greensands spirits defended their own, the position, the ritual. She offered her thanks, useless as that was, and the humans returned before her heartbeat had time to settle.
As the water retreated on the ebb tide, some of the river beasts did too, and a lot of the crowd dispersed up the hills to parties and feasts of their own. Hina got a turn with the prayer leaves, and kept it simple: health for her child and parents, joy along whatever path Jora turned to next, and a good summer for peaches. And at the end, one for herself: to be forgotten.
And that was kind of what it meant to belong to something — not as small as a fractured band, but an entire city.
She leaned out over the water, dropped the leaves, and soon lost track of them.