I shut my eyes, fighting to stay awake while I searched my Spirit sea for the greasy, nasty mess. Not a hard find. It was floating on the top like oil on water.
“Okay,” I said.
“Now use your Miasma like a purifying flame.”
I looked at him. “Um...”
“Yeah, sorry, I don’t really know how to tell you to do that,” Rali admitted with a grimace. “It’s sort of like cultivating, it’s going to be unique to you. It might help to start with the idea that whatever you come up with needs to burn this contamination off, then go from there.”
I closed my eyes again, focusing on the contamination. On Earth, they sometimes burnt the excess gasses off where they drilled for oil, didn’t they? And places like swamps had smaller versions of the same thing, tiny ghost candles that popped up when escaping swamp gasses ignited.
I took a little of the Miasma from my Spirit sea and concentrated it down into a smaller surface, sort of like adjusting the flame on a blowtorch. Then I aimed it at the greasy brown pollution. Immediately, eerie turquoise flames spread across the surface of the soul contamination, burning it away.
Corpse Fire, the words rang in my head.
“Huh,” Rali said, “I didn’t expect you to get the hang of it that fast. Given how late in life you started cultivating, you’re really progressing.”
I shrugged. “It helps to have a sage for a teacher.”
“Or it’s a Mortal affinity’s natural instinct to cleanse their Spirit sea of soul contamination,” he said. “You guys are pretty much the only ones who have to deal with this sort of pollutant, so it would make sense that your Spirit comes with an inborn housekeeping ability.”
I kept my eyes shut, working on the contamination. I had a lot of the greasy gunk to burn off. When I ran low on Spirit, Rali hit me with a Warm Heart Spirit boost, replacing what I’d spent.
I opened my eyes. “Hey, man, maybe you shouldn’t waste all your Spirit on me. I want to get this trash out of my system, but I don’t want to use up all of your Spirit to do it.” Unlike the rest of us, Rali wasn’t getting any restoration from the AlgaeFrize.
“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of Warm Heart to throw around, and I can always cultivate more wherever I’m content...”
“Which is anywhere,” I finished for him. “Always with the Buddha stuff. Thanks for the boost, but there’s a ton of Miasma in the air here.” With Ki-sight, I could see clouds of the turquoise smoke rolling along the surface of the water. “When I need more, I’ll just cultivate it.”
Rali pretended to wipe away a tear. “Our little Death cultivator’s growing up.”
“Whatever, dude.” I gave him a joking shove.
He caught the armrest branch, laughing.
“Oi!” Warcry yelled. “Stop shaking the bleedin’ tree! Some of us’re trying to sleep, yeah?”
“Yeah, Rali,” I said. “Your little Burning Hatred cultivator needs to be put down for a nap. He’s cranky.”
Warcry broke off a stick and threw it at me, calling me something that was half alien curse I didn’t understand, half anatomical impossibility. At least on Earth.
For the next half hour, I cultivated and used Corpse Fire to burn away the soul contamination. The nausea burned off with the oily film. When I was finished, I felt even healthier than I’d been before I absorbed the bog ferals’ life points.
The exhaustion, however, had only gotten stronger from all the cycling and burning. Everybody else had retreated to their own branches and fallen asleep or gone into meditation, so I leaned back against the trunk and zonked out.
Midnight Encounter
IN THE DREAM, I WAS looking down at the swamp water below, but instead of darkness or a reflection, I saw Gramps sitting on a bed in a hospital room, staring up at the TV on the wall. Onscreen, one of those wavy-finned fighting fish swam around.
One of Gramps’s gnarled hands gripped the plastic bedrail, and the other held that weird remote-plus-speaker that was always plugged into hospital beds. There was an IV taped to his arm. Liver-colored bruising had come up around the tape. The age spots and bulging veins made him look older and more fragile than I remembered. Gramps didn’t act interested in the fish program, just like he was staring to have something to stare at.
Westerns. He wanted the Western channel, but probably no one here had taken the time to show him how the remote worked.
I leaned down, pressing my chest and stomach to the rough bark of the branch, and reached for the remote. I was so close. I hooked my feet under the branch and held on with my left arm while I stretched my right farther down. Almost...
My fingertips grazed Gramps’s knotted knuckles, and for a second, I felt their bumps and the thin, leathery skin covering them.
Gramps flinched, and his blue eyes snapped up to meet mine.
“Grady?” he croaked in that old man voice.
Then there was this huge splash. I sucked water up my nose and down my throat. I woke up choking and spluttering, freaking out and thrashing my arms. My hand bumped roots. I grabbed on, pulling myself up.
“Geez,” I sputtered, pushing wet hair out of my eyes and swiping water off my face.
“Late for a swim, ain’t it, grav?” Warcry called down from his branch. From the sound of his voice, he was grinning.
“Would a middle finger mean anything to you?” I shot back.
“What’s it off of?”
“Never mind.”
A heavy log chain clinked, then splashed into the water beside me.
“Here,” Kest said, yawning. “Climb back up.”
“Thanks.” I grabbed onto the chain ladder.
Then I heard it. Gurgling in the water. A lot of gurgling.
“Bog ferals!” I hit the Ki-speed and strength enhancements and hauled butt up the ladder.
I made it onto Kest’s branch and started to pull the ladder up, but she grabbed it from me,
