Speaking Bones, page 83
“Admiral, I must remind you that our mission is to seek out and engage the rebels, defeating them swiftly,” said the military monitor, a note of warning creeping into her tone. “The Throne does not tolerate vacillating loyalties.”
“I’m well aware of that,” said the admiral. “However, let me remind you that our orders also included the admonition not to harm the emperor, who may be deceived by or under the control of rebels.”
“But we can’t just sit here and do nothing!”
“I didn’t say we’ll do nothing. We will… sing.”
“Sing?” The military monitor, as well as the entirety of the bridge staff, stared at her in disbelief.
“We will all sing,” said Temururi, her voice resolute.
Is it snow that I see falling in the valley?
Is it rain that flows over the faces of the children?
Oh my sorrow, my sorrow is great.
One by one, the command staff joined in. And as the order was passed via speaking tubes to the rest of the crew and through signaling lights to the rest of the fleet, the singing voices swelled.
The military monitor looked around at her comrades, hesitated, and finally added her voice to theirs.
It is not snow that covers the floor of the valley.
It is not rain that washes the faces of the children.
Oh my sorrow, my sorrow is great.
Chrysanthemum petals have filled the floor of the valley.
Tears have soaked the faces of the children.
Oh my sorrow, my sorrow is great.
The warriors, they have died like falling chrysanthemum blossoms.
My son, O my son, he is not coming home from battle.
Everyone in Dara knew that once, sung by the women auxiliaries who accompanied Kuni Garu’s army, this old folk song from Cocru had shattered the resolve of Mata Zyndu’s army at his last stand on the hill near Rana Kida.
Very few in Dara knew that once, sung by a single sailor on Emperor Monadétu’s flagship, this song had reminded Phyro Garu of his mother’s wisdom and stayed his hand from launching an invasion that would have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Unredeemed Dara.
The singing voices of the Imperial fleet swelled into a raging torrent that crossed the stormy air to assault the shifting, twisting, shape-shifting rebel airships.
Temururi prayed that the song would once more save lives. The emperor’s rebels and the empress’s soldiers were brothers and sisters. How could a son take up arms against his aunt-mother, or a regent go to war against the young sovereign she was charged to guide and protect? It was wrong whether viewed through the eyes of Kon Fiji or an illiterate peasant child. It was a deed that would comfort Dara’s enemies and dishearten the spirits of departed Emperor Ragin and Marshal Mazoti.
But the rebel ships continued to maneuver through the air as though they weren’t crewed by flesh-and-blood daughters and sons of Dara, as though the emperor, unlike the Hegemon, had plugged up with wax the ears of the rebels who followed his cause.
Disappointment. A psychic oppression more aphotic than the starless night. Blood would be spilled uselessly, like the senseless wars among the Tiro kings.
Temururi heard a buzzing… no, more like a fluttering.
This must be the noise the navigator heard earlier.
A realization, at once terrifying and hopeful.
“Bow archers, launch a volley at the nearest enemy ship.”
Bells and clappers passed her orders to those on the battle decks. Leaning forward tensely, Temururi watched as fiery trails crossed the space between Rana Kida and the strange, roiling, shimmering mass off the port bow. She squeezed her fists, uncertain whether she hoped for the arrows to bounce off harmlessly or for the hulls to erupt into flames.
The shooting stars sank into the liquid metal skin and instantly disappeared as though they had never existed.
“Primary crossbow stations, fire!” she barked.
The four crossbow teams near the front of the lower floor of the gondola had already winched the strings as far back as they’d go. Long bolts with thick bamboo shafts and thousand-hammered steel tips were loaded into the flight grooves, and with loud twangs, shot off toward the strange ship.
The bolts were swallowed by the silver skin of the airship without effect. There was no hissing scream from torn gasbags, no blinding flash from a silkmotic-force-triggered firework explosion. The bolts simply disappeared as though they had sunk into water.
The rebel airship continued to deform and soar, oblivious to the stings.
The air on the bridge of Rana Kida chilled. Panic began to crawl onto each face. Were the emperor’s ships armored by Fithowéo himself, impermeable to mortal weapons?
But the admiral showed no fear. Her expression was enigmatic, suspended halfway between madness and faith.
“Engage all oars,” ordered Temururi. “Collision course.”
For a moment, the military monitor looked as if she wanted to object, but in the end, she pressed her lips together and nodded. The executive officer shouted into the speaking tubes. The navigator and rowers carried the order out. Slowly, Rana Kida began to move, accelerating toward the enemy.
“Brace for impact,” yelled the military monitor, and everyone on the bridge grabbed a handhold or dangling harness—except for Temururi, who stood with her legs apart, her one arm casually at her side, her face preternaturally calm.
Rana Kida rammed into the hulking rebel ship, still twisting and turning like a living storm. Like a pond’s placid surface yielding before the sharp prow of a racing scull, the shimmering skin parted around the Imperial airship’s round bow.
A loud series of cracks resounded throughout Rana Kida’s hull, as though the ship was sailing through hailstones, or pearls were being dropped onto a sandalwood tray.
Temururi stared through the windshield. Dozens, hundreds of tiny silvery wings slammed against the glass, blocking out all sight.
Relief. Joy. Understanding.
“That’s… that’s not a ship!” cried the military monitor.
Temururi laughed. Her guess had been right.
Spidery cracks appeared in the windshield. “Duck,” shouted Temururi, falling to the floor herself.
The glass shattered, and silvery shadows, each no bigger than a bird, poured in. They fluttered through the bridge like bats through a cave, and the bridge staff scampered out of their way. The military monitor, recovering first, gingerly knelt up and caught one of the “bats.” She brought it to Temururi.
It was a tiny machine constructed from bamboo and silk, covered in silver paint and trailing silk ribbons and flexible thin reeds. There was no razor-sharp beak, no acid-spewing spigot, no firework-powder bomb. The mechanical bird was entirely unarmed.
As the bridge officers picked up disabled ornithopters from the floor and admired them, the tiny wings continued to flutter without cease.
“Launch the signal fireworks,” Temururi ordered. She held up her arm, both to shield her face from the still-fluttering mechanical birds darting about the bridge as well as to hide her wide grin. “The emperor isn’t here.”
TIRO COZO: MORE THAN A YEAR EARLIER.
“What good is teaching ornithopters to fly like a flock of birds?” demanded Phyro impatiently.
A cloud of ornithopters swarmed over the courtyard at the center of the workshop complex. The swarm changed its shape as it drifted from one side of the open space to the other and then back again, sometimes resembling a loose, flat disk; sometimes a tight sphere; sometimes a long, sinuous belt. It reminded Phyro of a flock of real starlings at dusk.
“Aren’t you even a little bit curious how it’s done?” asked Rati, grinning mysteriously. “What if I told you that I did not instruct all these ornithopters to fly the same course? In fact, the cork instruction cylinders inside each only try to keep the artificial bird aloft, essentially holding its position.”
Phyro relented. “You’ve aroused my interest. Lecture away.”
“I’ve always been interested in bird flocks and the intelligence they show. How can thousands of individual creatures, amassed so close together, coordinate their flight as though they’re a single organism? Can you imagine guiding hundreds of airships clustered as closely as the birds in a flock?”
Phyro grimaced as he tried to imagine the accidents that would no doubt follow if he were to attempt such a thing.
“Yet birds, far less intelligent than airship captains, perform such feats with no trouble.”
“So what is their secret?” asked Phyro.
“I don’t really know how birds do it, but I suspect they’re like soldiers marching in formation. The individual soldier inside a formation doesn’t think about the big picture, the path to be taken by the group as a whole; rather, his concerns are limited to keeping pace with the man before him, neither too fast nor too slow, and not bumping into those on his left and right. All that the individual soldier or bird needs to do is to react to its neighbors.”
“And that’s what you’ve done here?”
“Pretty much. I equipped the mechanical birds with reed feelers and connected them together with short bits of string. They were then instructed to stay aloft and maintain position. As they bump into and pull against their neighbors, the gyro stabilizers adjust their positions automatically. Yet, though the motion of each mechanical bird is essentially random, the flock as a whole moves as though it has a collective will.”
“But what can we do with this?” asked Phyro. “It looks impressive, but the feelers and ribbons reduce the amount of weapons they can carry. A tethered flock like this is not nearly as useful against the Lyucu as ornithopters individually instructed to attack a target. At most it’s a curiosity.”
Rati shrugged. “Not everything has to be useful, Rénga. Sometimes it’s enough to build something just because it’s fun.”
For a long time after, the two gazed up as the flock overhead changed direction and shape, moving about as a single, shimmering, shape-shifting creature in the bright sun.
“Shark!”
“Jellyfish!”
“Elephant!”
“Airship!”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE REUNION
TATEN-RYO-ALVOVO: THE ELEVENTH MONTH IN THE ELEVENTH YEAR AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF PRINCESS THÉRA FROM DARA FOR UKYU-GONDÉ.
The last of the viridian barley had been harvested, threshed, and winnowed. The cereal would be turned into beer as well as flour. The flour, roasted and mixed with a buttery soup made from the milk of the small mouflon flock, would be hearty and filling over the long winter. Added to the ample store of pemmican and game jerky, the settlement on the edge of the Barrows was well prepared for the winter.
Even the garinafins would be well cared for. Viridian barley stalks made good bedding as well as feed. Supplemented with hay harvested from the rich, thick vegetation in the valleys between the mounds, dried berries and fruits, viridian barley grains, and wild tolyusa from the edge of the salt flats, the new winged members of the nameless tribe would winter as well as the humans.
“Sometimes, I still can’t believe that I’m not living in a dream,” said Théra, wiping her brow as she rested against the bone pestle, almost as tall as she was, which she had been wielding to pound the barley into flour. Around her, everyone—Lyucu, Agon, Dara, ice tribes—was laboring at agricultural chores without complaint.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said to her sons, laboring next to her. The pride in her voice was laced with a tinge of sorrow—the failed settlement at Kiri Valley would never be forgotten. “You’ve achieved what I couldn’t.”
Tanto understood the complicated feelings behind her simple declaration. “Parents begin by dreaming their children, Mama,” he said, “and in time, children dream their parents.”
The attempt at quoting a Dara aphorism was sincere, even if Tanto’s limited knowledge of the tongue of Dara led to several errors. These days, he tried to speak the language to his mother as often as possible. Next to him, Rokiri, whose knowledge of Dara was even more inadequate, lifted up one of the charms he wore around his neck in mute support of his brother.
The charm was the logogram for mutagé, made from bone fragments cemented together with ochre-gum glue. Both Tanto and Rokiri wore several charms like this one, as did the other children in the settlement. The two pékyus-taasa had begun to make them as a way to comfort themselves when they missed their mother, the same way they wrestled and practiced with small war clubs when they missed Takval. But over time, the game took on its own significance, a craft through which they expressed their fears and hopes. After they had exhausted the logograms they knew, they invented new ones: “heart” plus “hole” to mean I miss you; “cruben” enclosed in “wind” and “fire” to mean garinafin; four “hair” sublogograms supporting “dog” to mean horrid wolf; “bone” stacked on “air” stacked on “mouth” to mean arucuro tocua, the living breath animating a creation of bone.
Though constructed using principles derived from Classical Ano, the new bone logograms belonged to a new language, native to the scrublands and consonant with its rhythms. The other children, who learned the art from Tanto and Rokiri, called the bone logograms arucuro sana, or “talking bones.”
Théra knelt and wrapped both her sons in a fierce and tearful embrace, heedless of the angled, dangling arucuro sana pressing into her face.
* * *
What words could be adequate to describe the reunion of long-parted friends and fate-sundered kin? What poetry could be up to the task of capturing the laughter as Théra embraced her sons, or the tears of Kunilu-tika and Jian-tika as they kissed their mother and learned of the death of their father? What song could catalog the expressions and sentiments as Sataari mourned Adyulek, Tongue-of-the-Every-Mother, but also grandmother-who-could-never-be-acknowledged? What dance could do justice to the manner in which Gozofin and Nalu clung to each other, refusing to let go? What word-scars could record the incoherent noises that emerged from throats and the tumultuous emotions that drowned hearts as Razutana, Toof, Çami, Tipo, and others gazed upon one another in wonder?
Better to leap ahead in the stream of time, to the aftermath, when passions had subsided and coherence had been restored.
After screams of disbelief and prayers of thanks came feasts and stories.
It took many nights for Théra to recount the deeds of the departed, the sacrifices, the triumphs, the mistakes, the betrayals, the discoveries, and mysteries.
“I knew it!” exclaimed Tanto. “Mama, you brought back the weapons at the end of the Fifth Age. I was looking for them!”
“You are indeed my son,” said Théra, smiling and bringing out the sketches of the walking arucuro tocua to show her boy.
It took many days for Sataari and Razutana Pon to familiarize the newcomers with the patterns and routines of the settlement.
After Tanto’s exploration into the heart of the Barrows, Razutana had experimented with the recovered seeds and discovered several varieties that were well-suited to cultivation. There was a hard tuber that became palatable only after much pounding and cooking, which Razutana called stone taro. There was a cereal, barley-like, with a blue-green husk, which Razutana named viridian barley. There was a vegetable, its leaves curled tightly like a cocoon dress, holding its freshness indefinitely when buried in frost, which Razutana designated Rapa lettuce. Along with these names derived by analogy with crops from Dara, Sataari gave them Agon names as well, though she wished she had known what Kikisavo and Afir had called them.
The paintings in the tomb had shown Sataari that the legendary heroes of the scrublands had also been farmers, and her prayers to the gods had not yielded a contradictory answer. She supported Razutana’s attempts at enlarging the fields of the settlement, and the children, their prejudices against farming not nearly as deep-seated as their elders’, had taken to the agricultural work with curiosity and ease.
“Supplemented by hunting and gathering, the fields have yielded more than enough nourishment for these growing children,” Razutana declared with conspicuous satisfaction to the band gathered around the bright fire. “In fact, the harvest this year is so good that even with all of you to feed, we shouldn’t have a shortage.”
Since their first trip, Sataari and Razutana had entered the Barrows several more times to gather seeds and to study the farming implements of the original inhabitants. With each trip, the taboo around the area had grown weaker for Sataari, and she had also been motivated by an intense curiosity over the lives of the people who had once lived there.
“If Kikisavo and Afir and their people had been farmers, how and why did they become the Agon and the Lyucu of the scrublands?” Sataari asked. She shook her head in frustration. “I’ve studied the paintings many times, but cannot make sense of them. If only the voices of our ancestors could speak again!”
Setting aside such abstract unsolved mysteries, Théra’s band of refugees drifted off to sleep on the warm ground around the fire. Here, in this forbidden land, they were safe from the elements as well as their pursuers. Souliyan’s wish had come true. The warring Agon and Lyucu tribes were very far away, their violent obsessions unable to penetrate this bubble of secure tranquility that was in, but not of, the scrublands.
* * *
At Théra’s insistence, the settlement began to send small bands of warriors to the edges of the vast salt flats. Their mission wasn’t to raid, but to collect the small groups of refugees who came to the salt flats to die.
With war raging everywhere among rival Agon thanes and the remnants of the Lyucu empire, those who wished to fight no more sometimes thought it was better to expire in the lifeless wasteland while they still had a choice rather than waiting to be enslaved or murdered. Whether the refugees were Lyucu, Agon, or tanto-lyu-naro, Théra promised them protection and sustenance from the imminent hard winter.
More than a few of Théra’s followers objected to this plan. “We are doing just fine by ourselves,” said Gozofin. “But our stores are not inexhaustible. Why should we be concerned with the welfare of these people, who are neither kin nor friend, who never fought for you?”
“I’m well aware of that,” said the admiral. “However, let me remind you that our orders also included the admonition not to harm the emperor, who may be deceived by or under the control of rebels.”
“But we can’t just sit here and do nothing!”
“I didn’t say we’ll do nothing. We will… sing.”
“Sing?” The military monitor, as well as the entirety of the bridge staff, stared at her in disbelief.
“We will all sing,” said Temururi, her voice resolute.
Is it snow that I see falling in the valley?
Is it rain that flows over the faces of the children?
Oh my sorrow, my sorrow is great.
One by one, the command staff joined in. And as the order was passed via speaking tubes to the rest of the crew and through signaling lights to the rest of the fleet, the singing voices swelled.
The military monitor looked around at her comrades, hesitated, and finally added her voice to theirs.
It is not snow that covers the floor of the valley.
It is not rain that washes the faces of the children.
Oh my sorrow, my sorrow is great.
Chrysanthemum petals have filled the floor of the valley.
Tears have soaked the faces of the children.
Oh my sorrow, my sorrow is great.
The warriors, they have died like falling chrysanthemum blossoms.
My son, O my son, he is not coming home from battle.
Everyone in Dara knew that once, sung by the women auxiliaries who accompanied Kuni Garu’s army, this old folk song from Cocru had shattered the resolve of Mata Zyndu’s army at his last stand on the hill near Rana Kida.
Very few in Dara knew that once, sung by a single sailor on Emperor Monadétu’s flagship, this song had reminded Phyro Garu of his mother’s wisdom and stayed his hand from launching an invasion that would have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Unredeemed Dara.
The singing voices of the Imperial fleet swelled into a raging torrent that crossed the stormy air to assault the shifting, twisting, shape-shifting rebel airships.
Temururi prayed that the song would once more save lives. The emperor’s rebels and the empress’s soldiers were brothers and sisters. How could a son take up arms against his aunt-mother, or a regent go to war against the young sovereign she was charged to guide and protect? It was wrong whether viewed through the eyes of Kon Fiji or an illiterate peasant child. It was a deed that would comfort Dara’s enemies and dishearten the spirits of departed Emperor Ragin and Marshal Mazoti.
But the rebel ships continued to maneuver through the air as though they weren’t crewed by flesh-and-blood daughters and sons of Dara, as though the emperor, unlike the Hegemon, had plugged up with wax the ears of the rebels who followed his cause.
Disappointment. A psychic oppression more aphotic than the starless night. Blood would be spilled uselessly, like the senseless wars among the Tiro kings.
Temururi heard a buzzing… no, more like a fluttering.
This must be the noise the navigator heard earlier.
A realization, at once terrifying and hopeful.
“Bow archers, launch a volley at the nearest enemy ship.”
Bells and clappers passed her orders to those on the battle decks. Leaning forward tensely, Temururi watched as fiery trails crossed the space between Rana Kida and the strange, roiling, shimmering mass off the port bow. She squeezed her fists, uncertain whether she hoped for the arrows to bounce off harmlessly or for the hulls to erupt into flames.
The shooting stars sank into the liquid metal skin and instantly disappeared as though they had never existed.
“Primary crossbow stations, fire!” she barked.
The four crossbow teams near the front of the lower floor of the gondola had already winched the strings as far back as they’d go. Long bolts with thick bamboo shafts and thousand-hammered steel tips were loaded into the flight grooves, and with loud twangs, shot off toward the strange ship.
The bolts were swallowed by the silver skin of the airship without effect. There was no hissing scream from torn gasbags, no blinding flash from a silkmotic-force-triggered firework explosion. The bolts simply disappeared as though they had sunk into water.
The rebel airship continued to deform and soar, oblivious to the stings.
The air on the bridge of Rana Kida chilled. Panic began to crawl onto each face. Were the emperor’s ships armored by Fithowéo himself, impermeable to mortal weapons?
But the admiral showed no fear. Her expression was enigmatic, suspended halfway between madness and faith.
“Engage all oars,” ordered Temururi. “Collision course.”
For a moment, the military monitor looked as if she wanted to object, but in the end, she pressed her lips together and nodded. The executive officer shouted into the speaking tubes. The navigator and rowers carried the order out. Slowly, Rana Kida began to move, accelerating toward the enemy.
“Brace for impact,” yelled the military monitor, and everyone on the bridge grabbed a handhold or dangling harness—except for Temururi, who stood with her legs apart, her one arm casually at her side, her face preternaturally calm.
Rana Kida rammed into the hulking rebel ship, still twisting and turning like a living storm. Like a pond’s placid surface yielding before the sharp prow of a racing scull, the shimmering skin parted around the Imperial airship’s round bow.
A loud series of cracks resounded throughout Rana Kida’s hull, as though the ship was sailing through hailstones, or pearls were being dropped onto a sandalwood tray.
Temururi stared through the windshield. Dozens, hundreds of tiny silvery wings slammed against the glass, blocking out all sight.
Relief. Joy. Understanding.
“That’s… that’s not a ship!” cried the military monitor.
Temururi laughed. Her guess had been right.
Spidery cracks appeared in the windshield. “Duck,” shouted Temururi, falling to the floor herself.
The glass shattered, and silvery shadows, each no bigger than a bird, poured in. They fluttered through the bridge like bats through a cave, and the bridge staff scampered out of their way. The military monitor, recovering first, gingerly knelt up and caught one of the “bats.” She brought it to Temururi.
It was a tiny machine constructed from bamboo and silk, covered in silver paint and trailing silk ribbons and flexible thin reeds. There was no razor-sharp beak, no acid-spewing spigot, no firework-powder bomb. The mechanical bird was entirely unarmed.
As the bridge officers picked up disabled ornithopters from the floor and admired them, the tiny wings continued to flutter without cease.
“Launch the signal fireworks,” Temururi ordered. She held up her arm, both to shield her face from the still-fluttering mechanical birds darting about the bridge as well as to hide her wide grin. “The emperor isn’t here.”
TIRO COZO: MORE THAN A YEAR EARLIER.
“What good is teaching ornithopters to fly like a flock of birds?” demanded Phyro impatiently.
A cloud of ornithopters swarmed over the courtyard at the center of the workshop complex. The swarm changed its shape as it drifted from one side of the open space to the other and then back again, sometimes resembling a loose, flat disk; sometimes a tight sphere; sometimes a long, sinuous belt. It reminded Phyro of a flock of real starlings at dusk.
“Aren’t you even a little bit curious how it’s done?” asked Rati, grinning mysteriously. “What if I told you that I did not instruct all these ornithopters to fly the same course? In fact, the cork instruction cylinders inside each only try to keep the artificial bird aloft, essentially holding its position.”
Phyro relented. “You’ve aroused my interest. Lecture away.”
“I’ve always been interested in bird flocks and the intelligence they show. How can thousands of individual creatures, amassed so close together, coordinate their flight as though they’re a single organism? Can you imagine guiding hundreds of airships clustered as closely as the birds in a flock?”
Phyro grimaced as he tried to imagine the accidents that would no doubt follow if he were to attempt such a thing.
“Yet birds, far less intelligent than airship captains, perform such feats with no trouble.”
“So what is their secret?” asked Phyro.
“I don’t really know how birds do it, but I suspect they’re like soldiers marching in formation. The individual soldier inside a formation doesn’t think about the big picture, the path to be taken by the group as a whole; rather, his concerns are limited to keeping pace with the man before him, neither too fast nor too slow, and not bumping into those on his left and right. All that the individual soldier or bird needs to do is to react to its neighbors.”
“And that’s what you’ve done here?”
“Pretty much. I equipped the mechanical birds with reed feelers and connected them together with short bits of string. They were then instructed to stay aloft and maintain position. As they bump into and pull against their neighbors, the gyro stabilizers adjust their positions automatically. Yet, though the motion of each mechanical bird is essentially random, the flock as a whole moves as though it has a collective will.”
“But what can we do with this?” asked Phyro. “It looks impressive, but the feelers and ribbons reduce the amount of weapons they can carry. A tethered flock like this is not nearly as useful against the Lyucu as ornithopters individually instructed to attack a target. At most it’s a curiosity.”
Rati shrugged. “Not everything has to be useful, Rénga. Sometimes it’s enough to build something just because it’s fun.”
For a long time after, the two gazed up as the flock overhead changed direction and shape, moving about as a single, shimmering, shape-shifting creature in the bright sun.
“Shark!”
“Jellyfish!”
“Elephant!”
“Airship!”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE REUNION
TATEN-RYO-ALVOVO: THE ELEVENTH MONTH IN THE ELEVENTH YEAR AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF PRINCESS THÉRA FROM DARA FOR UKYU-GONDÉ.
The last of the viridian barley had been harvested, threshed, and winnowed. The cereal would be turned into beer as well as flour. The flour, roasted and mixed with a buttery soup made from the milk of the small mouflon flock, would be hearty and filling over the long winter. Added to the ample store of pemmican and game jerky, the settlement on the edge of the Barrows was well prepared for the winter.
Even the garinafins would be well cared for. Viridian barley stalks made good bedding as well as feed. Supplemented with hay harvested from the rich, thick vegetation in the valleys between the mounds, dried berries and fruits, viridian barley grains, and wild tolyusa from the edge of the salt flats, the new winged members of the nameless tribe would winter as well as the humans.
“Sometimes, I still can’t believe that I’m not living in a dream,” said Théra, wiping her brow as she rested against the bone pestle, almost as tall as she was, which she had been wielding to pound the barley into flour. Around her, everyone—Lyucu, Agon, Dara, ice tribes—was laboring at agricultural chores without complaint.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said to her sons, laboring next to her. The pride in her voice was laced with a tinge of sorrow—the failed settlement at Kiri Valley would never be forgotten. “You’ve achieved what I couldn’t.”
Tanto understood the complicated feelings behind her simple declaration. “Parents begin by dreaming their children, Mama,” he said, “and in time, children dream their parents.”
The attempt at quoting a Dara aphorism was sincere, even if Tanto’s limited knowledge of the tongue of Dara led to several errors. These days, he tried to speak the language to his mother as often as possible. Next to him, Rokiri, whose knowledge of Dara was even more inadequate, lifted up one of the charms he wore around his neck in mute support of his brother.
The charm was the logogram for mutagé, made from bone fragments cemented together with ochre-gum glue. Both Tanto and Rokiri wore several charms like this one, as did the other children in the settlement. The two pékyus-taasa had begun to make them as a way to comfort themselves when they missed their mother, the same way they wrestled and practiced with small war clubs when they missed Takval. But over time, the game took on its own significance, a craft through which they expressed their fears and hopes. After they had exhausted the logograms they knew, they invented new ones: “heart” plus “hole” to mean I miss you; “cruben” enclosed in “wind” and “fire” to mean garinafin; four “hair” sublogograms supporting “dog” to mean horrid wolf; “bone” stacked on “air” stacked on “mouth” to mean arucuro tocua, the living breath animating a creation of bone.
Though constructed using principles derived from Classical Ano, the new bone logograms belonged to a new language, native to the scrublands and consonant with its rhythms. The other children, who learned the art from Tanto and Rokiri, called the bone logograms arucuro sana, or “talking bones.”
Théra knelt and wrapped both her sons in a fierce and tearful embrace, heedless of the angled, dangling arucuro sana pressing into her face.
* * *
What words could be adequate to describe the reunion of long-parted friends and fate-sundered kin? What poetry could be up to the task of capturing the laughter as Théra embraced her sons, or the tears of Kunilu-tika and Jian-tika as they kissed their mother and learned of the death of their father? What song could catalog the expressions and sentiments as Sataari mourned Adyulek, Tongue-of-the-Every-Mother, but also grandmother-who-could-never-be-acknowledged? What dance could do justice to the manner in which Gozofin and Nalu clung to each other, refusing to let go? What word-scars could record the incoherent noises that emerged from throats and the tumultuous emotions that drowned hearts as Razutana, Toof, Çami, Tipo, and others gazed upon one another in wonder?
Better to leap ahead in the stream of time, to the aftermath, when passions had subsided and coherence had been restored.
After screams of disbelief and prayers of thanks came feasts and stories.
It took many nights for Théra to recount the deeds of the departed, the sacrifices, the triumphs, the mistakes, the betrayals, the discoveries, and mysteries.
“I knew it!” exclaimed Tanto. “Mama, you brought back the weapons at the end of the Fifth Age. I was looking for them!”
“You are indeed my son,” said Théra, smiling and bringing out the sketches of the walking arucuro tocua to show her boy.
It took many days for Sataari and Razutana Pon to familiarize the newcomers with the patterns and routines of the settlement.
After Tanto’s exploration into the heart of the Barrows, Razutana had experimented with the recovered seeds and discovered several varieties that were well-suited to cultivation. There was a hard tuber that became palatable only after much pounding and cooking, which Razutana called stone taro. There was a cereal, barley-like, with a blue-green husk, which Razutana named viridian barley. There was a vegetable, its leaves curled tightly like a cocoon dress, holding its freshness indefinitely when buried in frost, which Razutana designated Rapa lettuce. Along with these names derived by analogy with crops from Dara, Sataari gave them Agon names as well, though she wished she had known what Kikisavo and Afir had called them.
The paintings in the tomb had shown Sataari that the legendary heroes of the scrublands had also been farmers, and her prayers to the gods had not yielded a contradictory answer. She supported Razutana’s attempts at enlarging the fields of the settlement, and the children, their prejudices against farming not nearly as deep-seated as their elders’, had taken to the agricultural work with curiosity and ease.
“Supplemented by hunting and gathering, the fields have yielded more than enough nourishment for these growing children,” Razutana declared with conspicuous satisfaction to the band gathered around the bright fire. “In fact, the harvest this year is so good that even with all of you to feed, we shouldn’t have a shortage.”
Since their first trip, Sataari and Razutana had entered the Barrows several more times to gather seeds and to study the farming implements of the original inhabitants. With each trip, the taboo around the area had grown weaker for Sataari, and she had also been motivated by an intense curiosity over the lives of the people who had once lived there.
“If Kikisavo and Afir and their people had been farmers, how and why did they become the Agon and the Lyucu of the scrublands?” Sataari asked. She shook her head in frustration. “I’ve studied the paintings many times, but cannot make sense of them. If only the voices of our ancestors could speak again!”
Setting aside such abstract unsolved mysteries, Théra’s band of refugees drifted off to sleep on the warm ground around the fire. Here, in this forbidden land, they were safe from the elements as well as their pursuers. Souliyan’s wish had come true. The warring Agon and Lyucu tribes were very far away, their violent obsessions unable to penetrate this bubble of secure tranquility that was in, but not of, the scrublands.
* * *
At Théra’s insistence, the settlement began to send small bands of warriors to the edges of the vast salt flats. Their mission wasn’t to raid, but to collect the small groups of refugees who came to the salt flats to die.
With war raging everywhere among rival Agon thanes and the remnants of the Lyucu empire, those who wished to fight no more sometimes thought it was better to expire in the lifeless wasteland while they still had a choice rather than waiting to be enslaved or murdered. Whether the refugees were Lyucu, Agon, or tanto-lyu-naro, Théra promised them protection and sustenance from the imminent hard winter.
More than a few of Théra’s followers objected to this plan. “We are doing just fine by ourselves,” said Gozofin. “But our stores are not inexhaustible. Why should we be concerned with the welfare of these people, who are neither kin nor friend, who never fought for you?”
