The Wall of Storms, page 20
She sensed from Luan’s breathing that he was getting tired, and as they were at a relatively flat section of the trail that widened into a small ledge, she pointed to a small bush growing at the side of the path. “What’s that?”
“Hmm . . . I’m not sure.” Luan pulled on the rope again to ask the guides to stop. “Let me examine it more closely.”
“Put me down first so you can climb up to it,” said Zomi. Luan gently let her down and made sure she lodged her good foot securely between two rocks and grabbed onto secure handholds.
While Luan studied the plant, Képulu and Séji untied themselves from the safety rope—having made sure to secure it first to the cliff for Luan’s protection—and climbed up the dangling vines to reach otherwise inaccessible spots on the cliff face, where they gathered bird eggs, dug out tubers, and sniffed at the succulent leaves of various plants before stuffing handfuls into their baskets. Zomi admired the way they moved about the cliff face as securely as spiders traversing a web. For a moment she was jealous of their perfect, balanced limbs, their powerful muscles and limber sinews—then she pushed the thoughts away. That way lay madness. The choices of the gods could not be questioned.
“This is fascinating,” muttered Luan Zya. He took out a knife and started cutting branches from the small bush.
Zomi couldn’t see what was so fascinating about it at all. It looked just like the common clinging birch that grew on steep slopes back home in Dasu. She had asked the question only in the hope of eliciting some botanical lecture about a plant she was already familiar with so that Luan would get a longer break from having to carry her, but her teacher treated it like some exotic species that had never been seen.
“What is so special about it?”
“Look at how strong and flexible these are.”
Luan now had in his hands a bundle of cut branches, each of which was about a foot long and about the thickness of a finger. He flexed them to gauge their resilience and test for weak spots. Satisfied, he shortened the safety rope and tied it to a rocky outcrop, braced his feet in two depressions in the cliff face, took out some lengths of rope and ox sinew from the sack attached to his waist, and tied the branches together into a framework.
“What are you building?” asked Zomi, curious.
“I’ve come up with an idea that will help you, but you have to trust me. Can you sit over here, hold on to the vines, and give me your leg?”
Zomi looked at him suspiciously. She did not like it when people paid attention to her weak leg, much less when another person touch it.
“Are you scared?” Luan said, a teasing smile at the corners of his mouth as he held up the strange contraption he had built.
That settled it. Zomi crawled near him, wrapped the vines around her own arms, and held out her left leg with some effort so that it rested in Luan’s lap. “I’m afraid of nothing.”
“Of course not,” said Luan, and he wrapped the framework around Zomi’s leg. Once the branches were braced around her calf, he tightened the ox sinew so that the branches dug into Zomi’s skin.
“Ouch!” Zomi cried out. But then she immediately bit her lip to stifle the cries.
Luan slowed down so that his movements were more deliberate and gentler. Zomi closed her eyes and gritted her teeth as he flexed and bent her leg in ways that caused her skin and nerves to tingle as though a thousand ants were crawling up her leg.
“While your body is getting used to this, I might as well teach you about the third and fourth schools of philosophy, Fluxism and Moralism.”
“You can’t even let a single idle moment slide by?” Though her tone was petulant, Zomi was grateful for the distraction.
“Life is short, but knowledge grows ever more abundant. The founding sage of the Fluxists is Ra Oji, the ancient Ano epigrammatist. ‘Dothathiloro ma dinca ça noco phia ki inganoa lothu ingroa wi igiéré néfithu miro né othu, pigin wi copofidalo,’ he once said, or ‘A Moralist is someone who can tell you how everyone ought to behave except himself.’ ”
Zomi laughed. “I like him.”
Luan took off Zomi’s left shoe, placed another set of branches right under Zomi’s foot, going from the ball to the heel, and wrapped lengths of sinew around her ankle and foot to hold them in place. He tightened the sinew by twisting another short branch and locked it into the framework wrapped around Zomi’s calf.
“Yes, Ra Oji was quite a character. We don’t know much about his life except that he was about a generation younger than Kon Fiji. He must have come from a very learned family, as his knowledge of ancient Ano traditions from before their coming to the Islands of Dara was extensive. Many Ano books lost during the Diaspora Wars are known to us now only as fragments that have survived in his poems and parables, and he wrote a lively, moving biography of Aruano, the great lawgiver who created the Tiro states.
“But those accomplishments came later. As a young man, Ra Oji made his name by debating Kon Fiji.”
“He debated the One True Sage? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Oh, I think the Moralists don’t like to be reminded of how their great teacher could also be challenged.”
Luan bent the branches in the brace this way and that, notching some of them with a knife. Then he started to carve two thicker branches, peeling off the bark to reveal the smooth wood below.
“What was the debate about?”
“Kon Fiji came to the court of the King of Cocru to advocate a return to the funeral rites of the ancient past, as practiced on the sunken continent in the west that was the ancestral homeland for the Ano. The rites were rigidly defined for different classes, and involved lengthy mourning periods for the deceased. For instance, a king’s death mandated mourning by all subjects in the realm for three years; a duke, one year; a count or marquess, six months; an earl, three months; a viscount, a month; and a baron, fifteen days. The commoners had a different set of rules based on their professions—merchants were at the bottom, and farmers were at the top because Kon Fiji viewed merchants as exploiters who produced nothing. There were also rules about the sizes of the mausoleums, the types of clothing to be worn at the funerals, the number of pallbearers, and so on and so forth.”
“These sound about as useful as his rules for how many eating sticks should be used to eat noodles.”
“I can tell you’ll get along fabulously with the Moralists at the emperor’s court.”
“Let me guess, Kon Fiji probably also had different rules for men and women.”
“Ah, you’re thinking like a Patternist—and you’d be right.”
“It figures.”
Luan fitted the two longer, thicker sticks into the notches in the branches sticking out beyond Zomi’s heel, and then connected the other ends to the brace around her calf with strong hoops of sinew.
“The King of Cocru was as skeptical as you. Kon Fiji argued that the rites were important because they enacted and embodied the respect due to each rank. Ranks are made real—the technical term in Moralism is reified—through practice. Abstract principles are given life through performance. Just as applying the same rules to friends and foes alike gives meaning to honor, giving away possessions supplies content to charity, and reducing punishments and taxes provides significance to mercy, the adherence to seemingly arbitrary codes of behavior can reify a structure for society that leads to stability.”
Zomi pondered this. “But there is no soul to such performances. All that everyone would be doing is acting out roles dictated by Kon Fiji. It wouldn’t be real honor or mercy or charity if all the king is doing is following rules.”
“The One True Sage would say that just as intent drives action, action can also drive intent. By acting morally, one becomes moral.”
“This all sounds terribly stiff and inflexible.”
“That is why the element of the Moralists is the earth, the stable foundation for statecraft.”
“What did Ra Oji say?”
“Well, he began his debate by saying nothing.”
“What?”
“You have to realize that Ra Oji was a very striking young man, and it was said that when he came into the court of the King of Cocru on that day, all the men and women just gawked.”
“Because he was very handsome?” asked Zomi, slightly disappointed. She had been thinking of this Ra Oji, who debated the stuffy old Kon Fiji, as a hero of sorts. That he was handsome seemed to . . . detract from the vision. “Wait, there were women at the court too?”
“Ah, this was in the early days of the Tiro states, when noblewomen were often in formal court to give their opinions. It wasn’t until later that the scholars convinced most of the kings that women shouldn’t meddle in politics. But to answer your first question: No, it was because he came in riding on the back of a water buffalo.”
“A . . . buffalo?”
“That’s right, a water buffalo that you’d find wallowing in the rice paddies of a Cocru peasant next to the Liru. In fact, its legs were still caked with mud. Ra Oji sat on its back in géüpa, happy as you please.”
Zomi laughed out loud at this, wholly forgetting the Moralist prescription to cover her mouth. Luan smiled and did not correct her. He continued to make adjustments to the harness around her leg, and Zomi was growing so used to it that she no longer paid much attention to it.
“The King of Cocru asked in consternation, ‘How can you come into the palace on the back of a muddy water buffalo, Ra Oji? Have you no respect for your king?’
“ ‘I am not in control of the buffalo, Your Majesty,’ said Ra Oji. ‘When our ancestors came to these islands, they let the flow of the ocean’s currents carry them wherever the ocean pleased, and likewise, I let the buffalo wander wherever he will. Life is much more enjoyable when I ride the Flow instead of worrying about how many times to brush the ground with my sleeves or how deeply to bow.’
“At this, the King of Cocru realized that Ra Oji was challenging Kon Fiji. So he stroked his beard and asked, ‘Then how do you answer Master Kon Fiji’s advocacy for a return to ancient rites to achieve a more moral society where each knows his duty?’
“ ‘Simple: Our ancestors came from a continent where the earth dominated everything, and stability of life in small villages was paramount. But we now live in these islands, where the shifting currents of the ocean determine all. Our people must contend with migrating shoals of fish, unpredictable typhoons and tsunamis, and volcanoes that erupt and release rivers of fire—and even the ground trembles at these moments. We’ve had to invent new logograms to describe new sights, and the only certainty of life is that it’s uncertain. With new circumstances come new philosophies, and it is flexibility and resilience, not rigid adherence to tradition, that will serve us well.’
“ ‘How can you say such things?!’ demanded Kon Fiji. ‘Our lives may have changed, but death has not. Respect for the elderly and honor given for a life well lived connect us to the accumulated wisdom of the past. When you die, do you wish to be buried as a common peasant instead of as a great scholar worthy of admiration?’
“ ‘In a hundred years, Master Kon Fiji, you and I will both be dust, and even the worms and birds who feast on our flesh will also have traveled through multiple revolutions of the wheel of life. Our lives are finite, but the universe is infinite. We are but flashes of lightning bugs on a summer night against the eternal stars. When I die, I wish to be laid out in the open so that the Big Island will act as my coffin, and the River of Heavenly Pearls my shroud; the cicadas will play my funeral procession, and the blooming flowers will be my incense burners; my flesh will feed ten thousand lives, and my bones will enrich the soil. I will return to the great Flow of the universe. Such honor can never be matched by mortal rites enacted by those obeying dead words copied out of a book.’ ”
Zomi cheered and stood up, shaking a fist.
Luan looked at her, his face breaking into a smile.
Zomi looked down and realized that her left leg was supporting her weight. Incredulous, she gingerly shifted her weight and tested her leg by flexing it. The complicated framework of supple branches and tough sinew flexed as well, lending her strength and support as though magnifying the movement of her atrophied muscles.
“How did you do this?” Zomi asked, awe and wonder in her voice.
“When I used to work with Marshal Gin Mazoti in the emperor’s army, we had many veterans who had lost limbs in battle or from working on Emperor Mapidéré’s projects. The marshal and I devised artificial limbs to help these soldiers recover some of their lost abilities. I was inspired to adapt one of them for your condition.” Luan leaned down and showed Zomi how the sinews and supple branches cleverly stored and magnified the energy from her muscles. “It’s acting a bit like a skeleton, but on the outside of your legs instead of inside, giving you both support and mobility.”
“You’re a magician!” Zomi was getting the hang of it, and she moved around in delight. She felt as though she was swimming in air; she had not been able to move about so effortlessly since the night she was struck by lightning. Though she would still need some help to make her way up the mountain, she should be able to move around on flat ground as though her leg were almost perfect.
She looked back at the kind face of Luan and remembered the secret contraption he had been working on in the balloon. This was clearly not something invented at a moment’s notice. How long had he been thinking and working on a prototype in secret? He knew how sensitive she was about her leg, and he hadn’t wanted to embarrass her by drawing attention to it until he had figured out a solution.
Spontaneously, she ran up to Luan and gave him a great big hug.
Luan hugged her back.
The guides, who had been quietly observing the construction and testing of the brace, cheered and clapped.
Zomi didn’t dare to speak because something seemed to be stuck in her throat and she didn’t want to croak like a frog.
Finally, the four of them climbed through the sea of mist and emerged at the top of the cliff. A great, dense forest spread around them, though most of the trees crawled along the ground and were no more than the height of a person due to strong winds at the top of the peak.
They picked their way through this forest. As the guides stopped from time to time to add to the collections in their baskets, Luan hurried over to ask them for explanations of the uses of the plants and fungi, the three conversing by carving logograms in the soil and humus.
Zomi took advantage of her new freedom by wandering around on her own. She particularly loved the birds flitting about on the branches, half-hidden behind the leaves and singing a hundred different songs.
“What’s that bird called?” asked Zomi, pointing at a mottled green-blue bird.
“The fluted thrush.”
“And that one?”
“Scarlet siskin.”
“And that one there with the bright yellow tail?”
“Sun-through-clouds.”
As he told her each name, he sketched for her the logograms.
“Some of these birds seemed similar to the birds the Ano knew in their homeland, and so they gave them the same names; others were new, and new words and logograms had to be invented. But see, all the names of the birds have the bird semantic root, and so even if you didn’t know what the logogram meant, you could guess that it was the name of a bird. This is one of the ways that the Ano logograms can give you hints about knowledge of the world. They are machines that transform the book of nature into models in our minds.”
Zomi thought about this, and then asked for the names of various flowers and mushrooms. Luan patiently told her the names and sketched out the logograms on the ground. He loved how curious she was. It made him feel young again.
“Why is the flower semantic root in the logogram for this mushroom?” asked Zomi.
“A matter of history. Back when the earliest logograms were devised, the ancient Ano thought of mushrooms as a kind of plant. It was only much later that scholars and herbalists decided that the fungi were distinct from the vegetable kingdom.”
“Yet the error in classification persists in the logograms.”
“Knowledge is a vehicle that progresses through errors and blind alleys. It is the nature of history that the ruts left by earlier events persist down the centuries. The wide paved roads in Kriphi follow the course of earlier dirt paths when it was but an Ano fortress, and those roads, in turn, followed the trails of the wandering sheep flocks when it was but a hamlet. The Ano logograms are a record of our climb up the mountain of knowledge.”
“But why study the record of errors? Why force generations of students to make the same mistakes?”
Luan was taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“When the Ano came to these islands, they saw new animals and new plants, and yet they persisted in naming and classifying them using outdated machinery, with a system of logograms that was full of accumulated mistakes. They learned that the seat of thought is in the head, yet ‘mind’ is still written as air-over-heart. Why not start something entirely new?”
“You ask a very good question, Mimi-tika. But I would caution that the desire for perfection, for a fresh start, is very close to a philosophical tyranny that disregards the wisdom of the past.
“In the debate between Kon Fiji and Ra Oji, it is not clear-cut that Kon Fiji had the worse argument. True, things are different in the Islands from the Ano homeland, but the hearts of people—with all their ideals, passions, greedy covetousness displayed side by side with high honor, selfish interest driving noble sacrifice—are not. Kon Fiji was not wrong to say that respect for the wisdom of the past, for paths carved out by generations of lived experience, should not be disregarded overnight.”
“Hmmm.”
“I’ve never seen you at a loss for words before,” said a grinning Luan.
“You’re actually making Kon Fiji sound like . . . a true sage.”
