The Veiled Throne, page 23
A sensation that she did not know was called panic seized her. She thrashed and flailed, trying to push herself out of the water by any means necessary. But the yielding, cold medium gave no purchase, and she made no headway. She felt light-headed, as though thought were slowing down, as though her very self were being shut away like the light that from time to time created the universe out of darkness.
One of her flailing hands grabbed something. The thing wriggled in her grasp—one of the long-tailed creatures. She squeezed her fingers tighter. The creatures had given her gifts that had helped her before, and surely they would help her again? The creature in her hand kicked wildly, and then she felt a sharp, piercing pain as its tiny jaws bit into her finger. She opened her mouth to scream and more bitter, cold water flooded in. She refused to let go. Somehow, clutching the creature was the only way to save herself; she was sure of it. She squeezed even harder and felt the tiny, delicate bones snap. The creature stopped struggling.
The world lurched and tilted again, the other way.
As quickly as the wave had overwhelmed her, it now retreated. She found herself on a ledge, with water cascading off her in sheets. She coughed, gagged, gasped. She clung to the ledge with every fiber of her being.
She sat up and uncurled her fingers. She looked at the creature in her hand. It did not move. She tilted her hand, and it flopped softly onto the ledge. She leaned down, placing her cheek at the tiny snout. There was no breath. She picked it up and dropped it into the receding water at her feet, hoping somehow it would revive. It had been swimming earlier, hadn’t it?
But the creature drifted along with the other flotsam in the hold. It was not different from the broken pieces of wood, not different from the bobbing cork plugs, not different from the empty coconut-husk ladle.
Lifeless. The concept came to her in a flash of terror. It was dead.
It would never again experience sweetness and sourness, never again crave water or yearn for food, never again dance across the rough boards on its scrabbling feet, never again know the world’s aromas and flavors through panting breath, never again be enveloped in a universe of delightful, terrifying, mysterious sensations.
She picked the creature up out of the water and stared at it. A pain that she had not known before began to fill her, starting at the thumping in the middle of her chest, moving up until it stabbed her behind the eyes. Her vision blurred, and her breathing became shallow and fast. That was how she learned of sorrow, of regret, of death. She began to sing the only song she knew, the song that had taught her she had a voice. It was mourning; it was memory; it was a defiant affirmation of life. So long as she could sing, she could breathe.
She was unaware that death had been a stranger to her in her previous state of existence, but she understood now that in this life, death would be her constant companion and teacher.
* * *
Théra examined the stowaway.
The girl was about twelve, dark-skinned and long-limbed, with the bright green eyes common among the people of Haan. Instead of looking back at Théra, her eyes scanned the sea, darting from one piece of wreckage to another. Her gaze seemed to linger on the floating dead bodies, and she made terrified mewling noises in her throat.
The way she huddled against the hulking figure of Admiral Roso, who stood protectively behind her, and the manner in which she squinted against the bright sunlight and held her arms up defensively, reminded Théra of a frightened rat.
“We found her in the ship’s hold, in a chilled storage compartment for produce. Good thing she’s dressed for it,” said Admiral Roso, indicating the thick, bulky winter coat wrapped around the girl. “The room was locked and she couldn’t get out, and I guess the cooks didn’t find her the few times they went in for supplies.”
“Does anyone recognize her?” asked Théra.
“No one on Dissolver of Sorrows. I’ve sent skiffs to the other ships with sketches and a description of the girl, but I doubt anyone knows her.”
Théra kept her voice soft and kind as she approached the girl. “Little sister, what’s your name?” The girl was just about Fara’s age.
“We’ve tried,” said Admiral Roso. “She doesn’t speak.”
“Oh, you mean she’s deaf and mute?”
“No. She can hear just fine, and she can sing. In fact, that was how we found her: singing like a whale in the hold. She just doesn’t seem to know human language.”
Théra was taken aback. “How is that possible? Is she an orphan abandoned in the wilderness? What the common people call a child of the gods?”
“A child of the gods,” the girl said suddenly, a perfect copy of Théra. She had lowered her arms and regarded Théra with a look of intense curiosity.
Théra was startled, and then chuckled.
“Why, you lying tadpole!” Admiral Roso roared. “You broken barnacle! Slippery eel! Trying to fool me into thinking you can’t talk, do you? How dare—”
“We’ve tried! Fool me into?! Lying tadpole! What’s your name? Deaf and mute. How is that possible?” the girl said, imitating Théra and Mitu Roso by turns. Her voice was crisp and musical, reminding the listener of an unsullied brook.
Admiral Roso’s face turned red as a ripe monkeyberry, but before he could explode, Théra waved him off. “I don’t think she’s playing a trick on you.”
“How do you know, Your Highness?” asked Roso.
Théra turned to Takval, who was standing by, watching quietly. “Can you say a tongue twister in Agon?”
“A tongue twister?”
“Something that is hard to say without tripping your tongue over it,” said Théra, “even if you were born speaking Agon.”
“Ah.” Takval thought for a second. “Dia dia diaara culek, ally ally allyuri rupé.”
The girl, who was watching Takval and Théra intently, waited a few moments before speaking. “Even if you were born speaking Agon. Ah. Dia dia diaara culek, ally ally allyuri rupé.”
Théra tried to do the same. “Dia dia dia a a—dia-a-ra-ra—forget it. You’ll have to say that again, slower.”
Takval went on speaking Agon to the girl excitedly. The girl responded and the two seemed to be carrying on a conversation, but Théra could tell that she was only repeating certain phrases from what Takval had said. Gradually, the excitement faded from Takval’s face, replaced by bewilderment.
“Does she pronounce the words strangely?” asked Théra.
“Not at all. She speaks like someone from my home tribe. I’ve spoken to some of the old enslaved Dara captives in Gondé who have learned the language of the scrublands, and they always speak it with a strange tilt in the shapes of the sounds, much like you. But this girl… she sounds like she was born in Gondé.”
Théra turned to Admiral Roso. “If she was only pretending and playing a trick on you, she couldn’t have done the same for Takval. There’s no native of Dara on this expedition who knows the language of the scrublands, much less anyone who can speak it with no accent. I think she truly doesn’t know human speech, and is only imitating the sounds with perfection.”
Somewhat mollified, Admiral Roso said, “I suggest we shackle her and keep her in the brig under constant watch. We don’t know who she is, and we can’t tell what kind of mischief she’s up to. Is she a spy? Is she a sabo—”
Théra shook her head to stop him. “I can sense no threat from her. Sometimes the gods test us by sending us unexpected guests.”
* * *
Light. There was so much light. So much open space. She could not believe how bright the world was, how big it was, or how many colors and shapes there were. She was overwhelmed.
Then she noticed the elongated objects floating in the water. She looked closer. They were shaped just like her, and so she knew they experienced the world the same way. But they weren’t moving. They were just like the broken spars and wrecked casks, just like the bobbing jars and frothy foam at the tips of the waves, just like the long-tailed creature that had drifted in the cold water in the bottom of the hold.
They were dead.
She mourned them. She was revolted by the scene of destruction. There was no greater terror than death, and no greater evil in the world than to cause death.
And then, other creatures shaped like her. But not corpses. Alive.
They sang at her, and it was a different kind of song from the one she knew. She could hear the beauty in the songs—love, longing, understanding of the inside of things, beneath surfaces. The sounds tickled her heart, caressed her heart, made her lungs and throat and tongue tingle in sympathy. She understood then that as long as the sounds stirred her in this way, as long as she could stir others with such sounds, death would be kept at bay.
She wanted to learn to sing like that. More than anything else.
* * *
Once Dissolver of Sorrows was fully repaired, the fleet left behind the watery graveyard and went on its way.
As the Dara expedition sailed first to the west and then south, always going with the belt current, the language lessons for the young girl continued.
Toof, Radia, and Takval taught the girl the tongue of the scrublands. Since the girl was going to live in Ukyu and Gondé, it only made sense for her to learn to speak the topolects that would be useful there. Théra also assigned a group of learned tutors to teach her the vernacular of Dara. Among them was Razutana Pon the Cultivationist, whose reputation among the other scholars had soared after tales spread of his brave and clever plot to unleash a garinafin to rampage through the city-ship during the boarding.
“Once she learns how to speak,” said Théra, “perhaps she will be able to tell us how she came to be here and what she wants.”
Though Théra was curious about the girl’s origins, she had far more pressing issues to attend to. The girl’s presence, however, did give her an unexpected solution for a problem that had been plaguing her.
The main reason that members of the expedition had been so slow to learn the language of the scrublands was that they were already such accomplished men and women. Weighed down by the respect they thought of as their due, it was difficult for them to relieve themselves of these burdens, to risk being seen once again as silly and incompetent, to learn the names of simple, everyday things, to struggle to express themselves, to be vulnerable—in other words, to be like children.
Even Théra herself, despite her best efforts, felt the same impulse to avoid embarrassment. But without embarrassment, it was impossible to learn.
The stowaway girl, on the other hand, had none of these obstacles in her way, and as members of Théra’s expedition monitored the language lessons, ostensibly meant for the girl, they could learn alongside her.
So much of learning, decided Théra, consisted of forgetting how much you already knew.
There were arguments among the teachers, of course. Takval and the Lyucu garinafin riders disagreed over which topolect of the scrublands was most proper, and the scholars assigned by Théra, being from different regions of Dara, fought over the best accent. The girl seemed to take it all in stride, learning multiple ways of saying the same thing with equanimity, imitating the vocalizations perfectly.
One of the biggest arguments occurred over her name.
“We can’t always just call her ‘the girl,’ ” said Razutana. “As Poti Maji once said, ‘Réfigéruca cadaé pha thicruü co mapidathinélo,’ that is, ‘A proper name is the beginning of understanding.’ ”
“The right to name her belongs to the people of the scrublands,” said Takval, “for her condition was only understood when she first spoke our tongue. Let’s call her Ryoana, after Toryoana, the merciful god of healing hands. She shall be a sign of the healing wind that will come to the scrublands.”
Toof and Radia immediately voiced their support. The two Lyucu naros had come to like the Agon prince on the city-ship, and they were able to walk about Dissolver of Sorrows in relative freedom only because Takval had insisted that they be allowed to teach the girl to speak their (largely) shared language.
Moreover, Takval’s suggestion was auspicious. Rather than making some reference to strife and warfare, which they knew were in the future of the Lyucu and the Agon as surely as the belt current pulled them toward their destination, Takval had chosen to commemorate this moment of relative peace.
But Razutana objected. “Why should we give her a barba—a name that isn’t found in the Ano Classics? She is a girl of Dara. Let’s name her after Lutho, the god of wisdom, and call her Yemilutho. She shall be a prefiguration of the enlightenment that will come to the people of the scrublands.”
“What makes you think she’s a girl of Dara?” asked Takval. A hint of anger crept into his tone in response to the barely disguised insult in Razutana’s speech.
“She’s… she’s found on this ship,” said Razutana. “Where else would she be from?”
“We are also found on this ship,” said Radia, “at least as of now. By your logic, are we also from Dara then?” Toof and Radia resented Razutana for what he had done to Tana. Anything he suggested, they were sure to oppose.
“Are you telling me that she rode all the way here from Ukyu and Gondé?” asked Razutana in disbelief.
“That’s no less likely than your theory,” countered Radia. “We don’t know where she’s from, and she speaks perfect Lyucu.”
“Thoryo.”
Everyone turned to the young girl, who was pointing at herself. “Thoryo,” she repeated.
“That’s not a Dara name at all,” scoffed Razutana. “I don’t even know how to write it in logograms.”
“That’s not a Lyucu name either,” said Radia. “It sounds barbaric.”
“It’s definitely not Agon,” said Takval. “But it does… have a ring to it.”
“Well, since we don’t know her parentage or lineage, I think the only one who can name Thoryo is Thoryo,” said Théra. “After all, she’s not Lyucu, nor Agon, nor Dara. She must discover for herself who she is.”
* * *
My name is Thoryo. I am aboard a ship called Dissolver of Sorrows. I am alive.
She said this to herself, first in both varieties of the language of the scrublands, then in the many varieties of the vernacular of Dara, and finally in a mixture of words and grammars from all of them, testing the syllables out on her tongue like she had run her hands over the textures she had found in the hold: the soft fur of the dead rat, the stinging liquid chill of seawater, the rough splinters in the unfinished wood.
What powerful magic it was, Thoryo thought, to map the world of things to names, to build ethereal structures out of names, to reason and to feel with these structures, to translate light and shadows and noises and smells and tastes and feelings into thought.
And then, to speak—to shape breath with lips and tongue, to articulate, to modulate sound into syllables, to accumulate syllables into words, to arrange words into sentences, to craft sentences into the song of speech, to play that thought-scored music with the living instrument that was her whole body.
And, even more marvelously, to listen—to have her music be understood by another, to have a different body vibrate in sympathy, to have a disparate mind see, hear, touch, taste, and smell the same things she saw, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled.
Speech was how she understood the interior of another mind, how she incorporated the world into her self, how she held on to memories—through silent recitations of the present until the present had turned into the past, had lost its vividness and color, until only the words remained; but as soon as she spoke the words again, the memory also came back to life.
The magic of speech was ephemeral, gone the very moment it was heard. Every utterance died as soon as it was born. To live was to breathe, and to be human was to think. Therefore speech, being thinking-breath, was as mortal as the speaker. No matter how hard one tried, one could not hold on to speech.
For that, she loved it all the more.
* * *
The fleet retraced the voyage taken by Luan Zya all those decades ago as it followed the great belt current around the ocean, heading for the distant shores of Ukyu and Gondé.
Each day, the scholars studied the stars, took measurements and observations, and recorded the marvels they saw around them. Çami climbed to the crow’s nest to sketch spouting whales. The crew pulled up new kinds of fish, shrimp, jellyfish, sea stars, and even an occasional small whale or shark in their nets, many of which were unknown in both Dara and Ukyu-Gondé. Painters, potters, ceramicists, and carvers, searching for some way to exercise their hands, took to sketching anatomies and fashioning models. Razutana devised fanciful names for the new species in formal Ano logograms, replete with colorful classical allusions: oné gi ofégo Ginpen zahugara (“the drifting belt of Ginpen”—a type of jellyfish with very long tentacles), crupa cowin (“glaucous glare”—a rather frightening-looking fish with disproportionately large eyes), jijimoru wi tutho ré wizétha (“creaking loom of the wizened god”—perhaps a heretofore unknown species of seaweed, though no one was quite sure), and so on.
Most of the crew, on the other hand, preferred to admire these new fruits of the sea via gustatory means. In this endeavor, Captain Nméji Gon and Commander Tipo Tho provided ample leadership by example. They explored all sorts of ways to cook and enjoy these unfamiliar creatures, and named them by taste: stinkfish, tongue-tingling jelly, salty plum clams, and so forth.
Naturally, the gluttons’ names were far more popular, causing Razutana Pon to shake his head and lament the lack of refinement among his comrades.
Thoryo’s studies were progressing quickly, and by now she could converse with everyone on the ship, whether Lyucu, Dara, or Agon, with equal facility. The rest of the crew had made uneven progress as well, but none could match her skill with language acquisition, especially the uncanny way she could replicate any accent with native accuracy.
She amazed the crew with stories of her time in the hold, when she had survived on the food brought to her by rats and the occasional fish that lived in bilgewater, when she had stayed warm with a coat brought her by the furry vermin. Not everyone believed her, but sailors were used to fishing tales. Yet, she could not remember how she had come to be on the ship, her parentage, origin, or indeed, anything about her life before she had appeared in that hold, seemingly out of nowhere.
One of her flailing hands grabbed something. The thing wriggled in her grasp—one of the long-tailed creatures. She squeezed her fingers tighter. The creatures had given her gifts that had helped her before, and surely they would help her again? The creature in her hand kicked wildly, and then she felt a sharp, piercing pain as its tiny jaws bit into her finger. She opened her mouth to scream and more bitter, cold water flooded in. She refused to let go. Somehow, clutching the creature was the only way to save herself; she was sure of it. She squeezed even harder and felt the tiny, delicate bones snap. The creature stopped struggling.
The world lurched and tilted again, the other way.
As quickly as the wave had overwhelmed her, it now retreated. She found herself on a ledge, with water cascading off her in sheets. She coughed, gagged, gasped. She clung to the ledge with every fiber of her being.
She sat up and uncurled her fingers. She looked at the creature in her hand. It did not move. She tilted her hand, and it flopped softly onto the ledge. She leaned down, placing her cheek at the tiny snout. There was no breath. She picked it up and dropped it into the receding water at her feet, hoping somehow it would revive. It had been swimming earlier, hadn’t it?
But the creature drifted along with the other flotsam in the hold. It was not different from the broken pieces of wood, not different from the bobbing cork plugs, not different from the empty coconut-husk ladle.
Lifeless. The concept came to her in a flash of terror. It was dead.
It would never again experience sweetness and sourness, never again crave water or yearn for food, never again dance across the rough boards on its scrabbling feet, never again know the world’s aromas and flavors through panting breath, never again be enveloped in a universe of delightful, terrifying, mysterious sensations.
She picked the creature up out of the water and stared at it. A pain that she had not known before began to fill her, starting at the thumping in the middle of her chest, moving up until it stabbed her behind the eyes. Her vision blurred, and her breathing became shallow and fast. That was how she learned of sorrow, of regret, of death. She began to sing the only song she knew, the song that had taught her she had a voice. It was mourning; it was memory; it was a defiant affirmation of life. So long as she could sing, she could breathe.
She was unaware that death had been a stranger to her in her previous state of existence, but she understood now that in this life, death would be her constant companion and teacher.
* * *
Théra examined the stowaway.
The girl was about twelve, dark-skinned and long-limbed, with the bright green eyes common among the people of Haan. Instead of looking back at Théra, her eyes scanned the sea, darting from one piece of wreckage to another. Her gaze seemed to linger on the floating dead bodies, and she made terrified mewling noises in her throat.
The way she huddled against the hulking figure of Admiral Roso, who stood protectively behind her, and the manner in which she squinted against the bright sunlight and held her arms up defensively, reminded Théra of a frightened rat.
“We found her in the ship’s hold, in a chilled storage compartment for produce. Good thing she’s dressed for it,” said Admiral Roso, indicating the thick, bulky winter coat wrapped around the girl. “The room was locked and she couldn’t get out, and I guess the cooks didn’t find her the few times they went in for supplies.”
“Does anyone recognize her?” asked Théra.
“No one on Dissolver of Sorrows. I’ve sent skiffs to the other ships with sketches and a description of the girl, but I doubt anyone knows her.”
Théra kept her voice soft and kind as she approached the girl. “Little sister, what’s your name?” The girl was just about Fara’s age.
“We’ve tried,” said Admiral Roso. “She doesn’t speak.”
“Oh, you mean she’s deaf and mute?”
“No. She can hear just fine, and she can sing. In fact, that was how we found her: singing like a whale in the hold. She just doesn’t seem to know human language.”
Théra was taken aback. “How is that possible? Is she an orphan abandoned in the wilderness? What the common people call a child of the gods?”
“A child of the gods,” the girl said suddenly, a perfect copy of Théra. She had lowered her arms and regarded Théra with a look of intense curiosity.
Théra was startled, and then chuckled.
“Why, you lying tadpole!” Admiral Roso roared. “You broken barnacle! Slippery eel! Trying to fool me into thinking you can’t talk, do you? How dare—”
“We’ve tried! Fool me into?! Lying tadpole! What’s your name? Deaf and mute. How is that possible?” the girl said, imitating Théra and Mitu Roso by turns. Her voice was crisp and musical, reminding the listener of an unsullied brook.
Admiral Roso’s face turned red as a ripe monkeyberry, but before he could explode, Théra waved him off. “I don’t think she’s playing a trick on you.”
“How do you know, Your Highness?” asked Roso.
Théra turned to Takval, who was standing by, watching quietly. “Can you say a tongue twister in Agon?”
“A tongue twister?”
“Something that is hard to say without tripping your tongue over it,” said Théra, “even if you were born speaking Agon.”
“Ah.” Takval thought for a second. “Dia dia diaara culek, ally ally allyuri rupé.”
The girl, who was watching Takval and Théra intently, waited a few moments before speaking. “Even if you were born speaking Agon. Ah. Dia dia diaara culek, ally ally allyuri rupé.”
Théra tried to do the same. “Dia dia dia a a—dia-a-ra-ra—forget it. You’ll have to say that again, slower.”
Takval went on speaking Agon to the girl excitedly. The girl responded and the two seemed to be carrying on a conversation, but Théra could tell that she was only repeating certain phrases from what Takval had said. Gradually, the excitement faded from Takval’s face, replaced by bewilderment.
“Does she pronounce the words strangely?” asked Théra.
“Not at all. She speaks like someone from my home tribe. I’ve spoken to some of the old enslaved Dara captives in Gondé who have learned the language of the scrublands, and they always speak it with a strange tilt in the shapes of the sounds, much like you. But this girl… she sounds like she was born in Gondé.”
Théra turned to Admiral Roso. “If she was only pretending and playing a trick on you, she couldn’t have done the same for Takval. There’s no native of Dara on this expedition who knows the language of the scrublands, much less anyone who can speak it with no accent. I think she truly doesn’t know human speech, and is only imitating the sounds with perfection.”
Somewhat mollified, Admiral Roso said, “I suggest we shackle her and keep her in the brig under constant watch. We don’t know who she is, and we can’t tell what kind of mischief she’s up to. Is she a spy? Is she a sabo—”
Théra shook her head to stop him. “I can sense no threat from her. Sometimes the gods test us by sending us unexpected guests.”
* * *
Light. There was so much light. So much open space. She could not believe how bright the world was, how big it was, or how many colors and shapes there were. She was overwhelmed.
Then she noticed the elongated objects floating in the water. She looked closer. They were shaped just like her, and so she knew they experienced the world the same way. But they weren’t moving. They were just like the broken spars and wrecked casks, just like the bobbing jars and frothy foam at the tips of the waves, just like the long-tailed creature that had drifted in the cold water in the bottom of the hold.
They were dead.
She mourned them. She was revolted by the scene of destruction. There was no greater terror than death, and no greater evil in the world than to cause death.
And then, other creatures shaped like her. But not corpses. Alive.
They sang at her, and it was a different kind of song from the one she knew. She could hear the beauty in the songs—love, longing, understanding of the inside of things, beneath surfaces. The sounds tickled her heart, caressed her heart, made her lungs and throat and tongue tingle in sympathy. She understood then that as long as the sounds stirred her in this way, as long as she could stir others with such sounds, death would be kept at bay.
She wanted to learn to sing like that. More than anything else.
* * *
Once Dissolver of Sorrows was fully repaired, the fleet left behind the watery graveyard and went on its way.
As the Dara expedition sailed first to the west and then south, always going with the belt current, the language lessons for the young girl continued.
Toof, Radia, and Takval taught the girl the tongue of the scrublands. Since the girl was going to live in Ukyu and Gondé, it only made sense for her to learn to speak the topolects that would be useful there. Théra also assigned a group of learned tutors to teach her the vernacular of Dara. Among them was Razutana Pon the Cultivationist, whose reputation among the other scholars had soared after tales spread of his brave and clever plot to unleash a garinafin to rampage through the city-ship during the boarding.
“Once she learns how to speak,” said Théra, “perhaps she will be able to tell us how she came to be here and what she wants.”
Though Théra was curious about the girl’s origins, she had far more pressing issues to attend to. The girl’s presence, however, did give her an unexpected solution for a problem that had been plaguing her.
The main reason that members of the expedition had been so slow to learn the language of the scrublands was that they were already such accomplished men and women. Weighed down by the respect they thought of as their due, it was difficult for them to relieve themselves of these burdens, to risk being seen once again as silly and incompetent, to learn the names of simple, everyday things, to struggle to express themselves, to be vulnerable—in other words, to be like children.
Even Théra herself, despite her best efforts, felt the same impulse to avoid embarrassment. But without embarrassment, it was impossible to learn.
The stowaway girl, on the other hand, had none of these obstacles in her way, and as members of Théra’s expedition monitored the language lessons, ostensibly meant for the girl, they could learn alongside her.
So much of learning, decided Théra, consisted of forgetting how much you already knew.
There were arguments among the teachers, of course. Takval and the Lyucu garinafin riders disagreed over which topolect of the scrublands was most proper, and the scholars assigned by Théra, being from different regions of Dara, fought over the best accent. The girl seemed to take it all in stride, learning multiple ways of saying the same thing with equanimity, imitating the vocalizations perfectly.
One of the biggest arguments occurred over her name.
“We can’t always just call her ‘the girl,’ ” said Razutana. “As Poti Maji once said, ‘Réfigéruca cadaé pha thicruü co mapidathinélo,’ that is, ‘A proper name is the beginning of understanding.’ ”
“The right to name her belongs to the people of the scrublands,” said Takval, “for her condition was only understood when she first spoke our tongue. Let’s call her Ryoana, after Toryoana, the merciful god of healing hands. She shall be a sign of the healing wind that will come to the scrublands.”
Toof and Radia immediately voiced their support. The two Lyucu naros had come to like the Agon prince on the city-ship, and they were able to walk about Dissolver of Sorrows in relative freedom only because Takval had insisted that they be allowed to teach the girl to speak their (largely) shared language.
Moreover, Takval’s suggestion was auspicious. Rather than making some reference to strife and warfare, which they knew were in the future of the Lyucu and the Agon as surely as the belt current pulled them toward their destination, Takval had chosen to commemorate this moment of relative peace.
But Razutana objected. “Why should we give her a barba—a name that isn’t found in the Ano Classics? She is a girl of Dara. Let’s name her after Lutho, the god of wisdom, and call her Yemilutho. She shall be a prefiguration of the enlightenment that will come to the people of the scrublands.”
“What makes you think she’s a girl of Dara?” asked Takval. A hint of anger crept into his tone in response to the barely disguised insult in Razutana’s speech.
“She’s… she’s found on this ship,” said Razutana. “Where else would she be from?”
“We are also found on this ship,” said Radia, “at least as of now. By your logic, are we also from Dara then?” Toof and Radia resented Razutana for what he had done to Tana. Anything he suggested, they were sure to oppose.
“Are you telling me that she rode all the way here from Ukyu and Gondé?” asked Razutana in disbelief.
“That’s no less likely than your theory,” countered Radia. “We don’t know where she’s from, and she speaks perfect Lyucu.”
“Thoryo.”
Everyone turned to the young girl, who was pointing at herself. “Thoryo,” she repeated.
“That’s not a Dara name at all,” scoffed Razutana. “I don’t even know how to write it in logograms.”
“That’s not a Lyucu name either,” said Radia. “It sounds barbaric.”
“It’s definitely not Agon,” said Takval. “But it does… have a ring to it.”
“Well, since we don’t know her parentage or lineage, I think the only one who can name Thoryo is Thoryo,” said Théra. “After all, she’s not Lyucu, nor Agon, nor Dara. She must discover for herself who she is.”
* * *
My name is Thoryo. I am aboard a ship called Dissolver of Sorrows. I am alive.
She said this to herself, first in both varieties of the language of the scrublands, then in the many varieties of the vernacular of Dara, and finally in a mixture of words and grammars from all of them, testing the syllables out on her tongue like she had run her hands over the textures she had found in the hold: the soft fur of the dead rat, the stinging liquid chill of seawater, the rough splinters in the unfinished wood.
What powerful magic it was, Thoryo thought, to map the world of things to names, to build ethereal structures out of names, to reason and to feel with these structures, to translate light and shadows and noises and smells and tastes and feelings into thought.
And then, to speak—to shape breath with lips and tongue, to articulate, to modulate sound into syllables, to accumulate syllables into words, to arrange words into sentences, to craft sentences into the song of speech, to play that thought-scored music with the living instrument that was her whole body.
And, even more marvelously, to listen—to have her music be understood by another, to have a different body vibrate in sympathy, to have a disparate mind see, hear, touch, taste, and smell the same things she saw, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled.
Speech was how she understood the interior of another mind, how she incorporated the world into her self, how she held on to memories—through silent recitations of the present until the present had turned into the past, had lost its vividness and color, until only the words remained; but as soon as she spoke the words again, the memory also came back to life.
The magic of speech was ephemeral, gone the very moment it was heard. Every utterance died as soon as it was born. To live was to breathe, and to be human was to think. Therefore speech, being thinking-breath, was as mortal as the speaker. No matter how hard one tried, one could not hold on to speech.
For that, she loved it all the more.
* * *
The fleet retraced the voyage taken by Luan Zya all those decades ago as it followed the great belt current around the ocean, heading for the distant shores of Ukyu and Gondé.
Each day, the scholars studied the stars, took measurements and observations, and recorded the marvels they saw around them. Çami climbed to the crow’s nest to sketch spouting whales. The crew pulled up new kinds of fish, shrimp, jellyfish, sea stars, and even an occasional small whale or shark in their nets, many of which were unknown in both Dara and Ukyu-Gondé. Painters, potters, ceramicists, and carvers, searching for some way to exercise their hands, took to sketching anatomies and fashioning models. Razutana devised fanciful names for the new species in formal Ano logograms, replete with colorful classical allusions: oné gi ofégo Ginpen zahugara (“the drifting belt of Ginpen”—a type of jellyfish with very long tentacles), crupa cowin (“glaucous glare”—a rather frightening-looking fish with disproportionately large eyes), jijimoru wi tutho ré wizétha (“creaking loom of the wizened god”—perhaps a heretofore unknown species of seaweed, though no one was quite sure), and so on.
Most of the crew, on the other hand, preferred to admire these new fruits of the sea via gustatory means. In this endeavor, Captain Nméji Gon and Commander Tipo Tho provided ample leadership by example. They explored all sorts of ways to cook and enjoy these unfamiliar creatures, and named them by taste: stinkfish, tongue-tingling jelly, salty plum clams, and so forth.
Naturally, the gluttons’ names were far more popular, causing Razutana Pon to shake his head and lament the lack of refinement among his comrades.
Thoryo’s studies were progressing quickly, and by now she could converse with everyone on the ship, whether Lyucu, Dara, or Agon, with equal facility. The rest of the crew had made uneven progress as well, but none could match her skill with language acquisition, especially the uncanny way she could replicate any accent with native accuracy.
She amazed the crew with stories of her time in the hold, when she had survived on the food brought to her by rats and the occasional fish that lived in bilgewater, when she had stayed warm with a coat brought her by the furry vermin. Not everyone believed her, but sailors were used to fishing tales. Yet, she could not remember how she had come to be on the ship, her parentage, origin, or indeed, anything about her life before she had appeared in that hold, seemingly out of nowhere.
