Voyage of the Basilisk : A Memoir by Lady Trent (9781429956369)

by Marie Brennan

  Being who I am, when the graceful way failed, I decided to be more direct.

  If this seems unwise, you must understand the circumstances I found myself in. Even though I had curtailed my questions about dragons, turning my eyes from the high peak where the fire-lizards flew, I found myself hedged about with growing hostility. Suhail had attempted to discover whether I had somehow violated tapu, but with no real success. “They all say no,” he reported to me. “But it is the sort of no that means, ‘you are asking the wrong question.’ And yet no one will tell me what I should ask.”

  On the theory that perhaps it was not the question but the questioner that was wrong, I tried asking them myself. I say “tried” because no one even allowed me to finish, let alone answered. They all backed away, making signs I presumed were wards against evil. My frustration began to take on the cast of fear. I had once earned the hostility of Vystrani peasants by trespassing in ignorance, and it had almost resulted in us being chased out of town. Here we had no means of fleeing. If the current shunning turned to violence, I could destroy much more than simply my hopes of conducting research.

  In all of this, Heali’i stood out as an exception. She did not approach me or speak to me, but where others turned their eyes away and abandoned my presence at the first opportunity, she was constantly there, watching. “I know it is not on your list of tasks to be performed,” I told Aekinitos, “but I should like to try and talk to her.”

  He knew as well as I how the local mood was turning. “Go,” he said. “Try not to get yourself killed.” (I told you his mood was foul.)

  I did take some precautions before approaching her. Tapu, you see, extends not only to certain subjects, but also to people and how one interacts with them. And while the common people observe a few forms of tapu—men and women, for example, may not eat together, which fortunately we discovered before we appalled the locals with our degenerate ways—individuals of importance observe many more. Thus far I had not been able to determine Heali’i’s exact position in society, but I did inquire as to whether I would commit any unforgivable offense by trying to speak with her. (In a place where standing on the king’s shadow is a crime punishable by death, this is no trivial consideration.)

  I expected grudging permission at best, stony refusal at worst. For once I was shown to be a pessimist: the reaction from the woman I questioned appeared to be nothing less than sheer relief. From this I could only surmise that I had confirmed some hidden suspicion, but in a fashion that said the problem would soon be mended.

  And so one day, with Jake in tow—leaving Abby to enjoy a well-earned rest—I hiked up the path to Heali’i’s hut.

  The track that led there was well maintained, relatively clear of vegetation and graveled with chips of stone where a dip made it muddy. Paths like this were to be found all around the islands; larger ones circled the perimeters, while smaller ones marked the boundaries between the districts and penetrated the interior to various locations of note. All around us was forest, as the ground here was too steep for much cultivation, but outcroppings of basalt occasionally served to remind me that we stood on the slope of a volcano—one that was most certainly not dormant. The wisps of steam continually drifting up from its caldera made that quite clear.

  Heali’i was there, braiding cord into some kind of small shape. She paused in this work as we approached, studying us with unabashed curiosity. I wondered how we appeared to her: a pale woman covered in close-fitting fabric, and a nut-brown boy whose arms and legs were shooting out of his clothing. (Jake had grown nearly ten centimeters since our voyage began.) We certainly did not look Puian, but neither did we look much like the crew of the Basilisk.

  I gave her a Keongan greeting, then said, “Please pardon my ignorance. I should like to be polite, but I do not know how I ought to address you.”

  Her eyebrows did a brief dance, from which I interpreted surprise, confusion, and amusement. (Heali’i often seemed to be laughing at me when we spoke, but I never did determine how much of that was her natural demeanor and how much was a reaction to my follies.)

  She considered my words for a moment, but not with the wary hostility I had received from so many others. “Who are you?”

  “I am Isabella Camherst,” I said, and nudged my son forward with one hand. “This is Jake.”

  Heali’i shook her head. “No. Who are you?”

  “We came on the Basilisk,” I said. “The ship out in the bay.” My words came slowly, because it was inconceivable that she could have forgotten that—and yet I could not think what else she might mean.

  Body language is not the same in every culture, but I thought the tilt of her head was the equivalent of rolling her eyes heavenward, asking her gods for patience in dealing with so ignorant a visitor. “I cannot say how we should speak unless I know who you are. Your place, your ancestors, your mana.”

  That final term was one I had encountered a few times already—enough to have a tenuous grasp of what it meant—but I lacked the first notion of how to evaluate it in terms she might find useful. Her first two questions I could answer, though, at least in part. “You might call my father a retainer to a chief. My late husband was the younger son of a very minor chief.” (These were the best comparisons I could find for “knight” and “second son of a baronet,” respectively.) “For my own part, I am not a sailor on the Basilisk—I am not a servant of the captain, though of course we respect his authority when on board his ship. My companions and I voyage with him to carry out our work, which is to study and understand many things in the world.”

  “Your companions,” Heali’i said, after a moment’s thought. “Who leads you? The red man, or the other?”

  In Mouleen Tom’s nickname had been Epou, which means “red.” The lesser heat of the Broken Sea had not flushed him as badly, but it was still enough for the epithet to return. “The other,” then, would be Suhail, whose warm brown skin was much less worthy of remark among the Keongans. “It is not that simple,” I said. “I work together with Tom—the red one. He and I are…” I used my hands to indicate equal status. (As usual, I am representing our conversations as rather more fluent than they were in reality, eliding most circumlocutions and gaps in my vocabulary—not to mention abject failures of grammar.) “Suhail has recently joined us, but he is pursuing his own goals.”

  My statement regarding Tom caused her tattooed mouth to purse. I had clearly posed her something of a conundrum, without intending to. Nor were we any closer to answering the question with which we had begun: to wit, how I should address her. We had conversed quite a bit for two individuals between whom such a basic question of etiquette had not yet been settled.

  Jake had been listening. I am both embarrassed and proud to admit that his grasp of the language was likely better than mine; children’s minds often absorb such things with more ease, and his father had always been better than I with Vystrani. But there were other things of which he had less comprehension, and so he said, “What’s mana?”

  Heali’i regarded him rather as I might regard a child who said, “What’s a dragon?” I opened my mouth to explain it to him, but was stopped by a variety of obstacles. I scarcely knew how to describe it myself, having only a partial grasp of the concept, and certainly could not do so in Keongan; yet to explain it in Scirling struck me as deeply rude to our present company (although it would allow any errors on my part to go unremarked for the time being). Furthermore, Jake had addressed his question to Heali’i, who could certainly explain it better than I.

  She did not precisely explain. Instead she looked at me and said, “Tell me of your deeds.”

  I wrote a moment ago that I had at least a preliminary grasp of the concept. I cannot fully explain mana to you, though, for I do not fully understand it myself. Heinrich von Kleist has written extensively on the subject, but I have not read the bulk of his work, as I have not had occasion to return to Keonga or any other part of the Puian islands since my time aboard the Basilisk.

&n
bsp; What I came to understand in Keonga is that it combines aspects of rank, lineage, age, esteem, and spiritual power to create a hierarchy among that people, which must be respected lest one not only give offense but do supernatural harm to another. A direct lineage from the gods bestows a steady flow of mana, which raises kings above commoners; elder birth within a family does much the same. But mana is no static thing. It may be lost through carelessness and bad behaviour, or the malicious action of others (this being why tapu restricts certain aspects of life). It may also be earned—or perhaps it would be better to say demonstrated—through great deeds. A second son who is a mighty war-leader shows greater mana than his elder brother who lazes about doing nothing of note.

  This, then, was the reason for the entire conversation up until this point: Heali’i did not know where to fit me into that scheme. As a non-Puian, my default position is to be entirely lacking in mana, for I am even less connected to the Puian gods than the most degenerate commoner of their people. But they do not write foreigners out of their system entirely: Aekinitos, for example, was assumed to possess a degree of mana, by virtue of being the captain of his ship, and his officers followed in lesser degree.

  Had I named myself as the leader of our expedition, Heali’i would have written a small amount of mana for me into her mental ledger. But I could not do that to Tom; I knew too well the struggles he had endured as a man of plebeian birth. After our years of partnership, I was resolved never to claim any sort of authority over him, and certainly not on account of my more prestigious ancestry.

  Deeds, however … those, I could claim.

  “Ah,” I said. “I have travelled the world to study dragons.”

  I meant that only to be my opening volley, the first line of the saga of my life. (Insofar as my limited command of Keongan would permit me anything like a saga.) But upon my words, Heali’i straightened, her tattoo-lined eyes going wide. “It’s true, then,” she said. “You are ke’anaka’i.”

  I repeated the word silently, my lips shaping the syllables. Naka’i was the word I had known as nataki elsewhere in the Puian islands. It referred to different creatures depending on where I was, ranging from the sea-serpents to mere lizards, but in my head I had glossed its core meaning as “dragon.” As for the rest … “Dragon-spirited?” I murmured in Scirling.

  Heali’i could not understand me, but she came forward anyway, three quick steps that brought her close enough to lay one hand over my heart. I only barely controlled the urge to shy back. “In here,” she said. “I did not think one could be born in a foreigner.”

  My first instinct had been to assume that “dragon-spirited” was her way of saying that I had a strong interest in the creatures. This, however, sounded rather more literal. “Do you think I am,” I began, and then foundered on my lack of vocabulary. I could not think of a way to say “possessed.”

  Heali’i nodded, grinning from ear to ear. Because I had not finished my sentence, however, what she was agreeing to was not what I had meant. She took my head in her hands and brought us together so that our foreheads and noses touched, then inhaled deeply, as if taking in my scent. “I felt it in you,” she said, still with her head against mine. “I, too, am not human.”

  “I beg your pardon,” I said, recoiling at last.

  The island woman was not bothered by my reaction. “I have heard that foreigners do not know the true stories. Your spirit comes from Rahuahane. That is why you are fascinated by the fire-lizards and the sea-serpents.”

  Jake was staring at us both, eyes wide. I looked at my son as if he could somehow explain the strange turn this conversation had taken, but he shook his head. I said, “What, or who, is Rahuahane?”

  Heali’i did not answer me immediately. “I am a bad host,” she said. “Come and sit in the shade. I will bring cocoanuts to drink and eat.”

  I was less than entirely minded to accept her hospitality until I knew whether she was a madwoman. I could not quite bring myself to walk back down the mountain, though, not without unraveling the rest of this mystery, and so I sat down where she indicated, with Jake close by my side.

  Her answer took quite a while to work through, owing to my imperfect grasp of the language. Often she would get only half a dozen words into her sentence before I had to ask for a word to be explained; the explanation would contain another word I did not know; and by the time we had arrived at a phrase I could understand in its entirety, we had quite lost track of the original sentence. Jake assisted where he could, and often saw Heali’i’s meaning before I did, but I could not risk miscommunication on a topic of such apparent import, and so had to confirm his assumptions with her before we could continue. But this, in much more efficient form, is what I learned.

  I said before that there are eleven inhabited islands in the Keongan archipelago. That is not the same as eleven habitable islands. There is a twelfth, of acceptable size and well capable of supporting life; but a Keongan will throw himself to the mercies of the sea-serpents and the sharks rather than set foot upon it. This twelfth island is Rahuahane.

  Heali’i’s explanation began with the recounting of a myth. In the early days of the world, Wali, god of the sea, and Apoa, goddess of the land, lay together, and from them were born human beings. Keongans trace their lineages back to these two gods; indeed their entire society, from the lowliest farm laborer up to the king himself, is divided into two great clans (which ethnologists call moieties), one considering itself the heirs to Wali, the other to Apoa. Although Heali’i did not say this at the time, I later learned that each moiety is required to marry out; a man of the sea may not marry a woman of the sea, or land to land. Children, upon reaching the age of majority, choose the moiety to which they will thereafter belong, allying themselves with either their father’s people or their mother’s.

  But human beings were not the only children this divine pair bore. One night Apoa lay atop Wali instead, and what she gave birth to after that were naka’i. Again I mentally translated this as dragon, but by Heali’i’s account monster might be the more appropriate word. The naka’i were not kindly creatures. They lived on Rahuahane, terrorizing the men and women of the other islands, until a great hero named Lo’alama’oiri went there and turned them to stone. Ever since then, Rahuahane has been seen as cursed: an island of death.

  “I was born on an island,” I said, “but it lies many days’ sail from here—more days than I can count. I do not know this Rahuahane of yours.”

  “You are ke’anaka’i,” Heali’i insisted. “Even though you are foreign. Everything about you proclaims it. I have asked questions. You dress like a man of your people; you do a man’s work. You stand between land and sea. Just as I do.”

  This time I understood all her words; her point, however, escaped me. “I thought it was my interest in fire-lizards and sea-serpents that made me ke’anaka’i, not my habits of dress. And you claim to be the same sort of person—yet you do not dress or act like a man.”

  “Of course not,” Heali’i said, staring at me as if I were the slowest child in the village. “I dress and act like a woman.”

  I do not know how long I sat there with my mouth hanging ajar. The tall, strong body. The facial tattoos, exaggerating eyes and mouth like cosmetics. The clothing—bulky by Keongan standards—padding out the bosom, augmenting the hips.

  Jake blurted, “You’re a man!”

  “No,” Heali’i said. “I am ke’anaka’i.”

  Had the Keongan language been different, I might have seen it sooner. But in all the Puian tongues, they make no distinction between the masculine and feminine pronouns—only between animate things of the third person, such as people and animals, and inanimate ones such as cocoanuts. Like all those from the Basilisk, I had been calling Heali’i “she” … simply on the basis of assumption.

  It had seemed a perfectly safe assumption. Heali’i had a husband, after all, and Mokoane was unquestionably male. (Keongans swim without clothing.) I knew from one of the participants in
the Flying University that the ancient Nichaeans and various other societies valorized the love and intimacy of men, but I had never yet heard of one where they married each other.

  But of course, as Heali’i said, she—I shall go on using the Scirling pronoun, for lack of a better—was not a man. Not as Keongans reckoned such things. Despite what lay beneath her barkcloth skirt, she was something else: a third gender, standing between male and female, between the moiety of the land and the moiety of the sea.

  They are not common, the ke’anaka’i. Keongans identify them in their youth, sometimes by physical appearance (as there are infants born with genitalia that do not quite conform to the expected standards of male or female), but more often by their behaviour, which refuses to fit the patterned rituals and tapu of Keongan life. Such people are believed to be spirits from dead Rahuahane, born into human flesh … and they are dangerous.

  “You’re scaring people,” Heali’i said. “You aren’t married. It’s necessary, to bind you into human society.” She laughed, a hearty sound that carried through the trees. “A foreign ke’anaka’i, running around with nothing to restrain her—who would believe it? No wonder your ship wrecked. A Keongan would have thrown you over the side when the storm began, to appease the gods.”

  She might find it funny, but I did not agree. “I used to be married,” I said, and gestured to Jake as proof. “My husband died.”

  “Husband?” Heali’i repeated, appalled. She recoiled from me, staring at Jake. “Tell me he is not your son.” Then she waved this away, before I could even comply. “No. No, he cannot be your son. The others have not heard this, or they would have called for the priests. You must say he is someone else’s son. The red man, or the woman from the ship.”

  Jake gave me a frightened look. We both read the same meaning into Heali’i’s reference to the priests: their visit would not be a friendly one. Ke’anaka’i, it seemed, were not allowed to bear children. “Miss Abby,” Jake said, and I nodded. She was already his governess, and therefore spent a great deal of time looking after him; it would be easy to let the islanders believe he was her son. (Half the sailors tended to forget he was not.)