Ghost Connections

Requiem of the Moth Interlude (S02 C06.2)

Content warnings¹

You cannot disappoint me.

Yun sits and stares into the fire while the tea cools in his hands.

You cannot disappoint me. Those words imply familiarity, some knowledge of what he would and would not do. The way she strode into his sleeping chamber, the way she looked at his face... Most people, upon witnessing his visage for the first time, cannot help but flinch at least a little. The reddened and thickly scarred skin—how horrible, what pain, at least his eye is fine (they assume).

She, however, did not move a single muscle. As if she'd gazed at him for many a stalactite drip, intimately familiar with his every line and wrinkle. That disturbs Yun more than anything else.

As if she knew… He turns and looks at the puppet lying prone on the worktop. The puppet he has been working on for many a fortnight, that has been in his thoughts for years. Ever since Zakiva came to him with her greedy request, its far-reaching consequences.

Now there is Ulan, who acts as if she knew exactly what that request cost him, how it has shaped him, even though he is sure he has never seen her face before. You cannot disappoint me.

Who, by the Deep, is Ulan?

---

Before he becomes Noe Yun, Silmo is a quiet boy. His shoulders are always hunched, his gaze on the ground. He walks fast to escape the bigger, meaner children in his cohort, leaving the temple school as soon as class is out. Most of the time, he is invisible.

To everyone but Shishiyyin Liha whose favourite pastime it is to observe what no one else notices. Liha, who is sent to dance and martial arts lessons as a child to develop her talent for bending and twisting her body in ways that should have been impossible, who keeps practicing even after her parents quit her lessons. The clans' disdain for commoner activities does not deter her and besides, she likes the temple dances and the priests better than her peers. To her, invisibility is a skill that she cultivates with care.

She starts following Silmo around. Liha can never resist a good challenge: How long can she keep it up before some self-important relative takes note of her after all, assigning her to serve the clan in more significant ways than by simply existing?

Usually, the other children ridicule, beat or kick him around, clever enough to avoid his face. His impeccable lesson notes they alternately destroy or claim as their own.

One day, they drag him through back alleys and shortcuts to a lake deep under the city. Used for fishing in the past, it now lies deserted due to an infestation of bitter-tasting carnivores. Liha climbs up to a narrow ledge and watches as they give instructions, then throw him into the frigid water. Likely some sort of dare.

In her mind, Liha cheers him on as the small white silhouette makes his way through the lake towards the island in its center. She sighs in relief as she sees him reach the shore and disappear among the jagged rocks—then holds her breath again when he labours back.

The water is turbulent, the fish gathering, herding him.

She wishes her gaze could pierce the lacquer-black surface. Have they taken a piece out of him yet? Is he flinching in pain? No cries echo through the deep cavern but the silence has its own iron grip on Silmo's hidden observer.

When he clambers out of the lake, robes torn and black with dirt—blood?—, mere stalagmite drips might have passed. An eternity might have passed. He staggers, clutching something to his chest. Predictably, the bullies are long gone.

Liha climbs down and is at his side before she can have second thoughts. "Who..." he rasps before his throat constricts and he coughs up brackish water. His eyes are half-closed, his skin feverish, when she takes his arm and supports him all the way up the cliff. Before anyone can see them together, she slips away. It is enough—he makes his way back to his clan mansion, still clutching that sun-blasted prize.

When she gets back to her own quarters, there is a letter waiting for her—her first riddle. Over the coming years, she will receive and solve many more.

---

Silmo is punished for intruding on the ancestor shrine of clan Lerythis and stealing one of their most valuable relics. The incident is discussed at gatherings and festivals for some time, the scandal all the more salacious because the culprit has always been a good boy.

When Silmo returns to the temple school after prolonged absence, he is different. Indescribable as it is, Liha cannot shake the feeling. His bullies, perhaps beset by guilty conscience after all, leave him in peace. He has stopped cowering and scurrying about, instead holding his head high and ignoring everyone around him. Acrobat that she is, Liha recognizes the new spark in his step. Over the next years, his movements will become those of a martial artist.

Liha herself strains against the role her clan nudges, then thrusts her into: She is to be the pretty, quicksilver-tongued socialite, the representative at ceremonies and festivities. She is to serve her clan with her appealing visage and graceful trailing sleeves, rather than with her wit or physical skill.

"There is some leeway for your preference," her father says, "but do keep in mind your unique opportunity to make a match that will elevate our clan. Choose wisely but do not dally."

Play the game, the anonymous sender of riddles, now a trusted confidante, writes in one letter. If they see you play it, they will falsely assume you consent to what they want. It will buy you some time.

Time for what? she writes back but does not receive an answer.

---

When they graduate, Noe Silmo dies and Noe Yun is born. Liha starts keeping an eye out for him at the gatherings she attends, telling herself he might be a worthy ally. A candidate for partnership, even. However, he disappoints by shutting himself away in his puppetry workshop. So the days pass, with daydreams and riddles and social events.

When she does hear talk of him for the first time in three years, it is wonder and anxiety at the pair of puppets he has started employing as servants. "Designed like the loveliest children you could imagine," she overhears a Noe cousin say, "and the eye for detail! You half expect them to walk up to you and engage in learned discourse about the metaphysics of the Deep."

"They cannot follow natural conversation, can they?"

"They certainly act like it!" The Noe is enthusiastic. "A true marvel, I tell you."

The puppet twins might have endeared Yun to society for a time, as novelty does, but he remains as elusive as ever. Liha only catches sight of him and his creations once, from afar. Her best efforts to catch up to him are fruitless.

In time, Noe Yun is hailed as rare genius by all and sundry, the best puppeteer in the history of his clan of puppeteers. Liha has given up on approaching him but keeps observing, listening, sneaking out of habit.

One evening, she wanders the Noe mansion, having been invited to a poetry reading by treasurer Vylira, when there is a distant but unmistakable BANG.

Could it be… She has strayed into a wing not used for entertaining visitors. When she follows the noise, she finds a commotion, a knot of panicked servants and—his twin puppets. People are yelling: "Get a doctor! Get Zakiva!" Water is carried into a cluttered room. Between the sooty flickering of small flames, Liha glimpses dismembered limbs on the worktop, hands and feet spilling out of crates—puppets in pieces. Someone lies prone on the floor. There is dark blood.

Liha flees before anyone notices her presence.

---

Later, she berates herself for her weakness. It was just blood, she tells herself, nothing you haven't seen before. The mess of fire, ash, and blood, however, remains stitched into her memory like fine embroidery along the hems of her sleeves.

When Noe Yun remains conspicuously absent from ceremonies attended by all clans, Liha knows whose workshop she saw that night. There is no gossip, not a whisper of the accident but she knows.

Liha being Liha, she bends all her efforts towards unearthing the truth. She ingratiates herself to Vylira and other Noe to be able to spend as much time in their mansion as she can. She listens to servants chatting in the hallways, the kitchen. It takes her longer than it would with other clans because Noe puppets do not gossip. In time, however, the pieces come together.

The story is this: Yun's success with his twins has caught the attention of his clan head. Greedy Zakiva commanded him to construct a puppet far beyond anyone's skills, even his: a moving, talking replica of herself. For his clan head, Yun attempted the project anyway—with explosive consequences.

Liha learns his face and upper torso has been severely burned. He is scarred for life.

To her own surprise, she is angry. Who drives their relative to destroy themselves? she asks her confidante in her next letter.

Sadly, it is the system we live in, the confidante answers. It breeds selfish lust for power, greed for wealth.

Can we change the system? Liha asks.

The next letter does not include a riddle but directions to a secluded spot behind the Shishiyyin mansion, a spot Liha is already familiar with. As a child, she used the abandoned pavilion for dance practice.

When she visits it late the next night, a familiar face is waiting for her there.

---

"Aunt Elis?"

"Well done," her aunt says, smiling. She sits on the stone bench, wrapped in an ivory night robe, her hair only lightly braided—out for a late stroll through the mansion, the prerogative of the sleepless. "You've exceeded the expectations I had when I sent that first riddle. When you asked about changing the system, I knew it was time to tell you."

"What have you been grooming me for?" She desperately hopes it isn't yet another potential partner. Liha has so much more to give than her face and her connections.

Elis pats the bench but Liha is too worked up to sit. When she continues pacing, her aunt concedes. "You have been discreet all these years but this is different: Do not speak of what I am going to say, to no one."

"I promise." Liha kneads her hands but Elis knows she can rarely sit still, has not been able to since she was a child.

"I have seen your unhappiness, your desire to change the system for better. You are serious about it so I will give you the means to do so, a way to work towards it with others who think like us." Elis lowers her voice. Finally, Liha sits to hear the rest. "We are many. There is an organization, founded and maintained in secret by our clan and other sponsors. Most of our members only appear masked, clothed in shadow. If you join, you will for all intents and purposes disappear from the public. The woman known as Shishiyyin Liha will die a quiet death."

Liha knows what Elis is asking. There is little to deliberate. For Yun, who sacrifices his health and more for the game of the clans, but also for herself, diminished by her parents and her clan, denied her own opinion and happiness, she will do it. She does not know where her limits are but she has an inkling the organization will help her find out.

"I will join," she says.

Her aunt gazes at her with unspeakable emotion. "You do not have to decide tonight. Sleep on it."

Liha scoots closer. "No, I am sure. Tell me how."

Eventually, Elis sighs. "Very well. We will need a few days to prepare... your death and rebirth, as it were. When everything is ready, I will send for you again."

"I will be waiting." She makes to rise but her aunt holds her back.

"Let me be the first to say: Welcome to Ithreyesh."

Author Notes

It's not what I set out to do with Requiem but the more I keep writing about puppets and puppetry as secret (magic) technique of just one clan, the more I am reminded of the current debate around AI. Yun's puppets are said to be more lifelike and intelligent than any created by his ancestors or contemporaries. If it looks, walks and converses like a sentient being, who are we to say it is not a sentient being? Can we define what 'sentient' or 'intelligent' really is? I am definitely not expert enough to have my own opinion but among the various different takes I have been reading, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel Escher Bach and Erik Hoel's The World Behind the World are especially thought-provoking.

Coincidentally, the chapter title was inspired by the latter book: Hoel uses the term ghost connections to refer to an artificial system that is always silent, i.e. that keeps itself in a state that does not influence the brain it is connected to. Despite this silence, it can still influence the neurons it is connected to in major ways. Similarly, Liha keeps watching Silmo for several years but only approaches him when he really needs it and she can be reasonably sure he won't remember the details.

This is not the first time that a major theme reveals itself to me halfway through writing the story. In fact, it happens more often than not, and to me, this is one of the joys of writing: seeing what gets dredged up from the deep recesses of my mind via the vehicle of characters and setting and plot. It's like an elaborate and time-intensive form of self-hypnosis. I love that I still surprise myself, even after nearly twenty years of doing this thing!

Has your writing ever surprised you in a major way, taught you something new and unexpected about yourself? I'd love to know!

1. Bullying, fire, blood, burn injury