Speaking Bones, page 36
The sounds of argument; a shout of outrage.
She was passing by a dilapidated warehouse. Having constructed the oversized structure in a bout of optimism, the owner, a Wolf’s Paw trading clan, had then failed to find the anticipated tide of trade that was supposed to lift its fortunes. Unwilling to throw good money after bad, the clan decided to abandon ship, leaving the warehouse empty and stranded. As the years passed by, the roof leaked, rats moved in, and scavengers had long since picked the inside clean. It became the abode of vagabonds and a meeting house for street gangs.
Muffled running steps; a loud crack as something—or someone—smashed into a wall, about two stories up from where she stood.
She backed away, looking up in alarm.
Another loud crack as rotted wooden planks splintered overhead, and a man tumbled out of the fresh hole in the side of the warehouse. He managed to land on his feet and rolled along the packed earth to absorb the force of the impact.
With great difficulty, he staggered back up. The crash through the warehouse wall had bruised and bloodied his shoulder, visible through his torn tunic. One leg was clearly having trouble supporting his weight. Zen-Kara and he locked eyes.
Despite this shocking entrance into her life, she found a natural charm in his eyes. Though he winced from the pain in his leg, his posture was confident as he brought up his arms in a defensive stance.
“Impressive,” he said. “Uluhara had this trap all planned out.” There was neither arrogance nor fear in his voice, only determination. “Come get me then, but I won’t make it easy for you.”
“I’m not with them,” she blurted out, “whoever they are.”
His eyebrows lifted skeptically as he examined her tattoo-covered face.
More noises as feet pounded up stairs within the warehouse; wooden treads snapping under strain; loud curses; bodies crashing; groans; more shouting.
She frowned. The shouts were in Adüan.
He turned and tried to run, and groaned as his knee buckled. He turned back to her. She tensed.
“Help me out of here,” he said, gritting his teeth.
“Why?” she asked. “I don’t know you; I don’t know—”
“Because if they catch me, terrible things will happen to Tan Adü, though I don’t want them to.”
She looked into his eyes and saw that it wasn’t a threat, simply a statement of fact.
She stripped off her eye-catching white robe and dropped it carelessly to the ground. She walked up to him, crouched, and waited until he had climbed onto her back.
More pounding steps inside the warehouse; shouts. “Hurry!” “Get the ladder!” “Go out the back door!”
Straining, she straightened up, his weight on her back. She began to run, at first stumbling, and then with more confidence as he trusted her with his weight and relaxed.
By the time the pursuers emerged from the warehouse, their prey had melded into the darkness.
* * *
They staggered into her shack, one like many others lining the anonymous alley in the old Artists’ Quarter. These were now mostly rented out as dormitories for workers at the grand casinos. The transient population tended to keep to themselves and asked few questions.
She helped him sit down on the lone bed. He looked exhausted, but nonetheless smiled assuredly as he took in his surroundings.
“I never got a chance to ask your name,” he said.
“Zen-Kara,” she said, “of Tan Adü.”
“I’m Phyro,” he said, “… of Zudi. Thank you, Zen-Kara, for saving my life.”
She wasn’t surprised that he withheld his clan name. After all, many in Dimushi came to the city because they wanted nothing to do with their families. She was relieved that upon confirming her Adüan origin, he didn’t respond with “Nomi, nomi.” She hated that. So many people in Dara did that to her, either as a joke or because they thought it made them sound worldly.
She found herself liking the way he said her name. Over the years, she had grown used to the way the people of Dara butchered her name, and even introduced herself sometimes with those twisted phonemes to make it easier for the others. Phyro, however, didn’t pronounce the syllables the way most in Dara did, forcing them into the patterns of Dara, but melded Adüan tones into the Dara-inflected syllables, a kind of compromise that she herself had adopted.
“What were you doing with an Adüan gang?” she asked.
“I had certain goods that I couldn’t transport with officially stamped manifests and customs receipts,” he said.
Though many Adüans came to Dara to study, many more signed up to be crew on the trading ships. Over time, some Adüans settled in coastal cities and took up other work, including criminal enterprises—especially after Chief Kyzen had called for all Adüans in Dara to return home. There were still chiefs and shamans in Tan Adü who resisted the intrusion of Dara medicines, figurines of the gods, and various luxuries such as lacquerware and silk, though their tribes craved these things. Neither could Dara’s demand for Adüan crafts such as scrimshaw, feather accoutrements, and shell carvings be satisfied through the officially sanctioned trading fleets. Smuggling was lucrative, and every big port city in the south had Adüan gangs specializing in the trade.
“So you were trying to take advantage of the Adüan gangs for your own profit?” Zen-Kara asked. She couldn’t keep the disappointment and incipient anger out of her voice.
Because the Adüans had aided Emperor Ragin in his rise to be the “All-Chief,” officials of the Dandelion Court had always enforced the rules more laxly when Adüan shippers were involved—their way of respecting the special bond between Tan Adü and Pan.
“As I told you,” Phyro said, “I swear on the grave of my mother that I intended no harm to the people of Tan Adü. There are things proscribed by the Dandelion Court that are nonetheless beneficial to all the Islands, and I needed the help of the gangs.”
His expression was so earnest that she wanted to believe him, and the fact that he said “the people of Tan Adü” instead of “your people” endeared him to her. It was almost as if he sensed instinctively the confusion in her heart, the doubt that surrounded her like a fog.
Noticing his drooping eyelids and the way he struggled to support himself on the bed, she said, “Rest. We’ll talk more in the morning.”
He cooperated as she stripped off his leggings and helped him take off his tunic and undershirt, grinning to reassure her that it was all right even as she blushed at his mostly nude state. She cleaned his shoulder wound, bandaged and wrapped his ankle, and then left to empty out the washbasin with the bloodstained water. By the time she returned, he was already snoring. He seemed to feel at home no matter where he was.
Zen-Kara stared, amazed at his deep and untroubled sleep, alone in a stranger’s house and having just escaped from a vicious gang.
How she wished she could act that way.
She knelt down next to the bed and gazed at his placid expression, finding the smooth, young face, though unadorned with tattoos, not unattractive.
* * *
One day, while Zen-Kara was a little girl of eight on Tan Adü, a merchant from the Big Island showed her a wooden carving of Tututika, a goddess his people worshipped. It looked exactly like a miniature human, with eyes that seemed about to blink and lips that seemed about to part.
She was fascinated by the way the carver had taken advantage of the grain in the wood to represent the folds and pleats of her flowing dress, as though the goddess had been hidden within the aspen and only waited for the artist’s chisel to be revealed. The wood had then been varnished and painted, with decorative bits of gold added.
The Adüans did not make figurines of the gods like that, since divinity couldn’t reside in something so small. But Zen-Kara also knew that in old times, many generations ago, her ancestors had made large idols to which they prayed. She wondered if those had looked anything like this statue.
The merchant also showed her a silk handkerchief covered in lumps of painted wax, each carved into a different shape like the burls found on the staffs of shamans and chieftains. She caressed them gingerly, afraid to damage the miniature sculptures.
She was not unfamiliar with goods from the Big Island. As the chief’s youngest daughter, she had grown up surrounded by luxuries like porcelain and silk, lacquerware and metal weapons. Merchants bearing such goods came to the village regularly to trade for cruben scales and dyran fins, whale scrimshaw and shark jaws. But never had she seen anything like the objects this merchant showed her.
“These contain the wisdom of Kon Fiji,” said the merchant, “the greatest way-finder in history.”
She had never heard a man of Dara speak without the aid of an interpreter. His speech sounded strange, as though he had something in his mouth, making the words come out all gnarled and misshapen.
But the import of his words was even more shocking. How could lumps of wax contain wisdom? Were they, perhaps, similar to the cocoons of moths, and when sliced open would reveal their winged magic? What sort of name was “Kon Fiji”? And way-finders were people of great skill who led hunting bands across trackless waves and through dense woods, but she had always been told that the people living on other islands did not know how to do these things at all.
Before she could ask more questions, her father, Chief Kyzen, appeared with his warriors and drove the merchant away.
“These goods are forbidden!” her father shouted at the merchant. “You must obey our laws!”
Later, she begged him to explain. He was reluctant, telling her only that the objects brought by that particular merchant contained a toxin that poisoned the mind.
But the memory of those wax lumps and that lifelike statue stayed with her, and she worried that her mind had already been poisoned somehow.
As she grew up, the village and Tan Adü changed with her.
After a trading mission to another village some days away, venturing villagers returned home with porcelain and wood figurines. They set these up in cubby-shrines at home and made offerings to them. When Kyzen objected, the villagers explained that the gods of Dara could bring about good harvests and heal diseases—statues of Rufizo, in particular, came with little hollow recesses at the bottom filled with powdered herbal medicine in various colors, efficacious against many diseases. The shamans in other villages said these were the same gods as the ones the Adüans already prayed to, just given new names and armed with more powerful magic. What was the harm?
Though Chief Kyzen, as a result of the treaty he had negotiated with Kuni Garu, held the title of All-Chief of Tan Adü, he could not command the hundreds of chiefs and chieftains of the smaller tribes, only advise.
“Better to welcome the gods home than to force the people to pray to them in secret,” one of Chief Kyzen’s shamans said. “As the tide alters the patterns of the waves, so we must change how we surf.”
Kyzen sighed and stopped objecting. A feast was held to celebrate the “homecoming” of gods who had never left. The figurines were set up in a hut of their own, and shamans pledged to make regular offerings.
After that, scrolls with wax logograms began to dangle at hut doors for good luck, and traders came regularly with new figurines and packets of medicines to refill Rufizo as he emptied out. Rather than relying on scribes hired from Dara, some of the village’s youngsters left to study with way-finders on the Big Island. When they returned, they brought back idols constructed from driftwood, coral, bone, shell, coconut, or grass, objects of veneration made by their ancestors, which had been seized by invading armies from the Big Island long ago, before All-Chief Kuni Garu put a stop to them.
The idols that had truly returned home sat next to the shiny, colorful statues carved by the hands of the people of Dara, and it was unclear which was more at home.
* * *
Zen-Kara knelt on the cold paving stones of the alley as she prepared breakfast. Huts for the poor like hers had no room for a kitchen. Everyone cooked outside, in the street.
“Good morning.”
She turned around from fanning the stove and saw him leaning against the doorpost, a bright smile on his wan face. He had struggled back into his clothes, muddy and tattered from last night’s struggles.
“What are you doing up?” she chided. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. I’m making you monkeyberry porridge.”
“Perfect. I’m as restless as a monkey. Let me help?” He approached, but winced as the injured leg took his weight.
She dropped the fan and rushed to him, supporting his weight as she eased him onto the little stool before the stove. The inhabitants of the other shacks along the lane, many also cooking breakfast in the open, paid little attention to them. But she blushed nonetheless from their intimate pose.
“Do you know how to cook porridge?” she asked, looking at him skeptically. She didn’t know anything about Phyro, but judging by his elegant courtly accent, she doubted he made his own breakfast much.
“I know how to use a soldier’s field kit. Does that count?”
“Sort of.” She handed him the fan and showed him how to keep the flame in the stove at the right temperature while she busied herself with stirring and flavoring. “So you come from a soldiering family?”
“You sound surprised,” he said, still smiling. “What did you think I did?”
“I would have pegged you as a merchant’s son… or maybe the scion of an official trying to make some money after frustration at the Imperial examinations.”
He chuckled at this. “You’re likely far more knowledgeable about the classics than I am.”
Irked at the thought that he was probably just trying to be polite, the kind of condescending friendliness so many people of Dara put on in her presence because she was a well-spoken Adüan, she pressed. “How do you know that?”
“I saw the scroll on your desk this morning. I didn’t recognize all the logograms, but the calligraphic style reminded me of Lurusén. My old master used to berate me for never infusing the logograms with any kind of spirit—though I was! He just didn’t like my monkey nature. Anyway, you write with a beauty and strength he would have admired.”
He had seen a half-finished scroll in the novel script Zen-Kara was developing: a hybrid of modified Classical Ano logograms and zyndari Adüan transcriptions. She basked in the pleasure of the sincerity of his praise—she had always admired Lurusén, the great Cocru poet-official, and she felt closer to him already for recognizing her model.
Mollified, she returned to the porridge, slowly pouring in the monkeyberries that were said to be good for replenishing blood. Thick steam rose out of the pot, mixing with the fragrant smoke from the stove into a mouthwatering brew. “If you weren’t much of a scholar, what did you devote your time to?”
“Tales of adventure and heroism,” he said, “and lots of pranks on my master.”
“What? Nothing productive then?”
With a mischievous glint in his eyes, Phyro began to wield the fan like a sculpting knife. A swipe here, a tuck there, and soon he had corralled the smoke into a straight column. As he continued to tend to the smoke with gentle flutters from the fan, he puckered his lips and blew at the smoke as he oscillated his head from side to side. The column of smoke curved into a spiral, dancing in the morning air like a charmed snake, like a staircase to the cloud palaces of the immortals, like the turbulent wake of a dyran’s tail.
“Oh!” exclaimed Zen-Kara. “That’s… lovely. I’ve heard of smokecraft but haven’t seen it much.”
“My mother was a master of the art,” said Phyro with pride. But the glow in his eyes soon faded. “I never was a dedicated student, not even with her. This is as much as I can do.”
The melancholy and regret was unmistakable. The young man, who had seemed so confident and self-possessed, appeared for the first time vulnerable. Zen-Kara had to suppress the impulse to wrap her arms around him in comfort. A line of classical poetry came to her mind, perfectly capturing the beauty of the smoke. She recited, “ ‘A nimbus in the wake of a stride, a moonbow the aftermath of strife—’ ”
“ ‘You and I, both fate misunderstood, need no shared history for this duet,’ ” he finished for her.
They locked eyes, the bubbling porridge forgotten for the moment. Both felt their hearts connected by a link as insubstantial as smoke but also as real as the empathy that transfixed the lonely in company.
* * *
When Zen-Kara was thirteen, she left Tan Adü for the Big Island.
“Why do you wish to go away, my youngest daughter, the comfort of my old age, as beloved as the taste of the sea against the tip of my tongue?” asked Chief Kyzen. “All who have gone to Dara to study have been much older than you.”
She didn’t know how to answer him. The adventures recounted by older children who had studied abroad stirred her heart; the way they giggled and spoke to each other in Dara, thinking that no one else could follow their conversation, aroused her envy. If she were completely honest, she knew it was because she couldn’t stop dreaming of the painted wax logograms, couldn’t forget their soft and cool touch against her fingertips. But that wasn’t a reason that she thought her father could understand.
So she told him what she thought he wanted to hear: “Every fledgling tern must learn to make her own way across the sea.”
Chief Kyzen sighed and nodded.
Accompanied by several other older Adüan youths, she began her studies in Canfin, the Cocru trading hub closest to Tan Adü. She learned to speak Dara, to read and write, to unravel the Ano logograms like the silk makers who unwound the tight moth cocoons into ethereal strands of meaning. The other students her age, none of them Adüan, laughed at her halting attempts at speaking and clumsy logograms. At night she cried herself to sleep, missing the tastes and smells of home, the comforting sound of evening breezes whispering through the banana leaves and the sensation of a smooth, cool woven-grass sleeping mat against her cheek.
