Speaking Bones, page 70
The monks and nuns of Rufizo Mender saw it as part of their duty to heal this wound in the world-mind. They journeyed across the Islands for clues and troves of literary refugees, scoured ruins and midden heaps to rescue silk-and-wax fugitives, redeemed scroll-formed hostages at high ransom from pirates and grave robbers.
* * *
“By the time these books are recovered, most have been heavily damaged,” said the abbot. “Thus, as Abbot Discarded Butcher Knife explained to me, in the Hall of Snowy Feather, we Mendists repair and copy books. Instead of the body or the land, we try to heal the mind.”
Savo watched as the monks and nuns reverently and carefully laid out the damaged books on their work surfaces, unfolding the aged scrolls with gloved hands. Aided by bright beams of light channeled down from the ceiling with mirrored tubes and magnifying lenses, the book healers examined the scrolls column by column, logogram by logogram. When a damaged logogram or hole in the substrate was found, they repaired the flaw with wax and knife, with heated probe and iced spatula, with paint and ink and thread and needle, striving to re-create the original scribe’s hand and calligraphic style. From time to time, the monks and nuns gathered around the desk of one of their fellowship and conversed in low voices like conferring doctors, musing and debating how to reconstruct a missing logogram or section.
“How do you fill in a lost section?” Savo asked one of the nuns, a young woman in her twenties working on a book of poetry. He pointed at a large blank space on the scroll, where dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of logograms had been destroyed by the ravages of wax-eating mice and worms.
“We try to look through our library to see if we have other editions of the same book or if the missing section had been quoted in other books,” said the nun.
“What if you find different editions don’t agree on the missing passage?”
One of the last conversations between Master Nazu Tei and himself, concerning apocrypha, surfaced in his mind. His nose twitched and his eyes stung. Was it a sign?
“That happens more often than you think,” she said. She put down her tools and looked up at him, her voice kind. “You seem to know much about books.”
“I… I’ve picked up a few things here and there.”
“I’m working on the poems of Suzaré,” the nun said. “Are you familiar with her work?”
“The Amu Imagist?” asked Savo, his heart quickening.
The nun nodded. “Her poems survive only in fragments in other books, and sometimes the quotations don’t agree with one another. I’ve been collating these fragments into a collection, in which I hope to preserve the conflicting versions, note their sources, and include any commentary I find. I may not be able to re-create all her poems, but at least I can gather all the known fragments into one place, and in that way, something of her voice is preserved, even if incomplete and non-authoritative.”
“I wish I knew more about her poetry,” said Savo. His cheeks felt hot. “A… friend once quoted a few lines to me.”
“She wrote about love in all its complicated forms: the easy infatuations and difficult devotions; the jealousies, the misunderstandings, and the intrusion of our sublunary, flawed world into the perfect flow of that eternal yearning to merge with another; parting too early and meeting too late; the drive to seek out the mirror of our soul, despite all obstacles erected in our path by gods and mortals.”
Savo read over the lines on the nun’s desk.
…white hempen sleeves…
…aimless willow catkins adrift…
Cruel sweet maid,
You’ve fastened my heart
To the shaft…
…clop clop… the racing chariot…
…tug tug… your proud eyes…
…a scattering of dew,
Little blue birds with arrowed beaks,
The green grasshopper: a jade hairpin
Lost in the dune roses clamoring
For your hand…
… jealous of
Dawn with her coral-hued toes and ruddy ankles
Tiptoeing down the pebble-lined beach…
…blushing, quick!
…your careless breath… your salty-plum lips…
…heart-tickling chin… lung-kneading cheeks…
…lash me again, my huntress…
Savo seemed to hear the fragments being recited in the voice of Fara.
“You’re going to miss out on a lot life has to offer if you focus only on wars and politics.”
The logograms on the page blurred, and he had to swallow the lump in his throat. He put a hand against his breast, where the gift from Fara nestled against his skin.
Resolutely, he forced his hand away.
More than anything else, he wanted to be Thasé-teki to Dandelion, but that was an impossible dream.
He didn’t want to be Savo Ryoto, thane-taasa of the Lyucu, destined to slaughter his father’s people to preserve his mother’s conquest; he didn’t want to be Kinri Rito, brother to Zomi Kidosu, destined to aid his father’s people to overthrow and ruin his mother’s.
He wanted to be here, needed to be away from the world, needed to discard the past, to start anew.
“Please.” He turned to the abbot. “I hear the call of Rufizo Mender. Let me join you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE NOT ONE OF US
THE BONEYARD, UKYU-GONDÉ: THE SIXTH MONTH IN THE ELEVENTH YEAR AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF PRINCESS THÉRA FROM DARA FOR UKYU-GONDÉ (SIX MONTHS AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE BONEYARD).
A new year had arrived in the scrublands.
As the defeated Lyucu scattered to every corner of Ukyu-Gondé, news of the fall of the Roatan clan traveled with them. Years of centralization in Taten had deprived most Lyucu tribes of their traditional company of war garinafins, and the demoralized Lyucu were no match for the newly invigorated Agon tribes. The empire that Pékyu Tenryo had built up over decades collapsed in a matter of months.
Meanwhile, from her new Taten in the Boneyard, Théra dispatched messengers to every corner of the land to gather the Agon thanes for a grand council. Pékyu Takval’s death should be properly mourned and the triumph over the Lyucu properly celebrated.
Besides passing on the orders of the pékyu, the messengers were also charged with looking for the children of Kiri Valley. Toof had told her that he and Radia had last seen Tanto, Rokiri, and the others near the Sea of Tears, and Théra hoped that the young pékyus-taasa had been taken in by kindhearted Agon herders or perhaps even a wandering band of tanto-lyu-naro.
* * *
One cloudless summer night, Théra left her brand-new Great Tent, dismissed her guards, and summoned Ga-al.
She rode until the lights from the tent city were below the horizon before landing. Leaving Ga-al to graze by himself, she sat down on a rock and looked up at the stars.
The flatness of the scrublands made the stars seem both closer and farther away than they had in her childhood in Dara. She immersed herself in that solitude, in conversation with distant, brilliant lights that seemed to pierce her with their merciless gaze.
Gently, she took out a package from inside her vest and laid out the contents on the ground: a few wisps of silk that had once been a mask; a bone dagger that had drunk her husband’s blood; a few baked clay Ano logograms….
How much I miss you, Kunilu-tika and Jian-tika! I swear I’ll never make you learn any logograms or eat lotus paste if I can have you back.…
How much I miss you, Takval… your gentle hands on me, your strong arms around me, your warm body next to mine, skin to skin, your steady voice in my ears.… I’ve tried to fulfill your dream, but I don’t know if I’m walking the right path. There are so many unknowns.…
How much I miss you, Zomi… if I can but feel your lips on mine again, your hand holding my hand, staying in bed with you all night but not asleep.…
How much I miss you, Father and Mother… your counsel, your lessons, your strength and love… and what a terrible daughter I am, to not even have anything of yours to remember you by.…
How much I miss you, my sister, my brothers. If I haven’t miscalculated, the Wall of Storms should have already reopened to show that there will be no Lyucu reinforcements, and preparations for an invasion of Dasu and Rui should be well underway. Will you finally liberate Unredeemed Dara? Will you bring peace to the Islands?
Two shooting stars crossed the sky, like brilliant dyrans passing each other in the deep. An omen.
She strained to make sense of it. Was it a revelation of the future of two peoples, Lyucu and Agon, so closely bound by shared history and yet so far apart, divided by that same re-remembering?
Was it a foretelling of the health of the flocks and herds, the bounty of the hunt?
Was it a concluding statement about the alliance between the Agon and Dara, an affirmation of their victory?
Or was it something far more intimate? Was it a message from Kunilu-tika and Jian-tika? In which direction did the stars point? Was it a prophecy that she and Zomi would never see each other again, like two parallel celestial trails destined to never meet? Was it a celebration of the love between Takval and herself, as brilliant as the immortal stars? Or was it in fact an eye-catching sign from her parents, reminding her of the family motto: Do the most interesting thing? Like a shooting star.
Just because we’re apart doesn’t mean our love ends.
We’re defined by the web woven from all our loves, not one grand romance.
She meditated in the cold light of the stars, her hands caressing the objects laid out on the deerskin on the rock, like a scholar reading ancient logograms, like a shaman deciphering spirit portraits, like a woman trying to assure herself that the past was real in order to step into the future.
* * *
As the days passed, none of the search parties returned with the information Théra craved: the whereabouts of her children.
They did, however, bring news of a far less welcome nature. A new kind of wildfire, the fire of vengeance, was burning out of control. Agon victors tossed entire Lyucu tribes, from great-grandmothers nearing ninety to babes nine days old, into water bubbles in the grass seas and forced the captives to swim until they drowned from exhaustion. Defeated thanes and naros-votan had been pierced through the soft flesh under the clavicles and then strung together like grasshoppers, after which they were made to dance for the amusement of the Agon raiders before being roasted alive by garinafin fire. Mass slaughter, castrations, and rapes were ordered in the name of wiping out Lyucu bloodlines.
“The killing will end… when the Agon are free.”
“Will it?”
Théra was horrified. The Agon had achieved Takval’s dream, but like a receding winter wave that promised an even greater crest to come, she could already see a bloodier future being written.
“The ice flowers… the sea… the endless waves… colliding to shatter… one after another…”
The pékyu’s messengers now demanded restraint and mercy from the victors. But her words seemed to have little effect.
As well, many Agon chiefs, after unleashing their fury upon the Lyucu, had begun to turn against one another. In the name of reclaiming the dream of Pékyu Nobo Aragoz, the chiefs jostled for status, grazing rights, captured garinafins, cattle, sheep, and slaves. The disputes often turned violent; raids and counter-raids threatened to escalate into civil war.
The upcoming grand council of mourning and celebration would also have to decide the future of the Agon people.
Ten dyudyu cupéruna?
Agon kyo!
Ten dyudyu cupéruna?
Gondé kyo!
From the rich grasslands near Aluro’s Basin, from the oases in the arid expanse of Lurodia Tanta, from the snow-fed streams in the foothills of the World’s Edge Mountains, from the harsh salt plains near the Sea of Tears, from the icebound tundra near Nalyufin’s Pastures… the proud chiefs and haughty war thanes of the Agon people, several hundred strong, gathered in Taten.
They were all curious about this new Pékyu Théra, by marriage a member of the Aragoz clan, though not by birth. She was a foreigner from Dara, and it was said that her witchcraft had been instrumental in the victory over the Lyucu. Though there were many stories of the heroic deeds of her warriors, she herself was not known for prowess in battle.
* * *
The moon was almost full.
The silver light spilled across the Boneyard, filling the canyons and gulches like mercury poured into ancient river channels. Piles of bone glowed peacefully in the shadows, an approximation of the stars far above.
The western edge of the badlands was a towering cliff hundreds of feet in height. Above and beyond it lay the endless scrublands, all the way to the sea. Perched on the lip of the cliff was a city of tents, stretching for miles to the north and south. The white structures, differing in size and shape, glinted under the moon like an island of mushrooms in the grass sea. Here and there, giant mounds of bones, remnants of the arucuro tocua creations that had awed the Lyucu host, sat mutely among the tents like the ruins of an ancient civilization or the petrified remains of prehistoric monsters.
Although Théra’s rebellion had found refuge in the canyons and caves of the Boneyard, the need for concealment had vanished with their complete victory. Besides, new arrivals didn’t like the idea of living in the badlands, where flash floods and mudslides were common in summer. Thus, the field on which the final, bloody battle against the Lyucu had been won, just beyond the edge of the Boneyard, also became the site of the new Taten.
Singing, carousing, laughing, speechmaking filled the air, along with an occasional snort, bleat, or moan from the sleeping flocks and herds. The grand celebratory banquet would take place tomorrow night, and everyone was busy with last-minute preparations.
Beyond the northern border of Taten, separated from the tents by a band of empty space about five hundred paces wide, glowed numerous bonfires, as though the stars had descended to join the revelry. They burned brightly, fed by dry dung and old bone, and fanned by the ever-present winds.
A group of Agon warriors approached the bonfires from the direction of the tents, dragging bone sleds piled high with meat. The woman in the lead stepped cautiously and slowly, clearly unaccustomed to her tall garinafin skull helmet. An old woman kept pace with her, aided by a staff taller than herself.
“Do I have to wear this every moment?” asked Théra, adjusting the clumsy helmet once more to prevent it from falling. “Everyone knows I’m no warrior.”
Adyulek sighed. “We’ve gone through this many times, votan. You can do as you like in front of me and others who know your heart, but for most of the thanes, you’re a stranger. You must act like the pékyu for them to treat you as the pékyu; you must look like the pékyu for them to believe you are the pékyu. Until these habits of the mind have grown as natural for them as breathing, you cannot set aside these symbols, uncomfortable as they may be.”
“Theater,” muttered Théra.
“What?” asked Adyulek, as Théra had spoken just now in the language of Dara.
“Nothing,” said Théra, a wry smile turning up the corners of her mouth. “I was just thinking my parents would have liked you.”
They arrived at the bonfires.
“Come, share in the feast!” Théra called out. Gaunt figures stood up in the shadows of the fires, their furs tattered. But none approached.
Théra tried again. “The gods demand that we share our good fortune!” Still, the figures in the shadows hesitated.
Théra turned to Adyulek. The old shaman took a deep breath and raised her voice. “Normally, I speak for the Every-Mother, but today I speak for Théra Garu Aragoz, wife of Takval Aragoz, son of Souliyan Aragoz, who serves the Agon as Pékyu. Come and share in the bounty of peace.”
At last, the hesitating figures emerged from the shadows and approached. The naros, led by Tipo Tho, who had taken over as Théra’s captain of the guards, began to distribute the meat on the sleds to the gathering families.
“It’s my accent,” said Théra to Adyulek in a low voice. “Even the tribeless find it too jarring and hard to understand.”
As part of the celebration, Théra had asked that bands of roaming tanto-lyu-naro also be invited. She hoped that the gesture would find favor in the eyes of the gods, and specifically, Toryoana Pacific. Considering the arduous task of persuasion ahead of her, she could certainly use some divine aid.
“You speak well and clearly,” said Adyulek. “But it takes time for those not used to your speech to adjust to the unexpected cadences and bent syllables. I remember straining to parse your words when I first met you, but that passed in time. Besides, there are tribes from all over Gondé gathered here, and as many topolects are spoken as there are stars wheeling above us. Even I have trouble understanding some of the thanes from tribes from corners of the scrublands I’m unfamiliar with. It will be no more difficult for them to accept your speech than to accept one another. It just takes time.”
Théra shook her head, her brow furrowed. “Time is what I don’t have. The accent of the First Family, of the Aragoz clan, is what they’ll be expecting. How can I sway the haughty thanes with a first impression when I cannot speak like Takval? You said yourself that what is needed is a perfect performance.”
During the last week, as Théra greeted the visiting Agon chiefs and war thanes, more than a few had had trouble understanding her (and some had openly mocked her). She wondered if there wasn’t a measure of pretense in some of these misunderstandings.
“No, not perfection,” said Adyulek, “conviction. If you believe you’re the one and only pékyu, others will follow your lead.”
“If it were only that easy,” muttered Théra. “I wish I had Thoryo’s gift.” Recalling the death of the young woman so adept at languages and accents made her even more morose.
