Sharrar stood amongst a seethe of Blodestones, chatting amiably with them. She leaned on her cane more crookedly than usual, the expression behind her smile starting to pinch.
No wonder. She’d come nearly twenty miles on the back of a rickety produce wagon. If she weren’t bruised spine to sternum, he’d be surprised.
When Shursta broke through the ranks, Sharrar’s smile wobbled, and she stumbled into his arms.
“I think you need a nap, Nugget,” he suggested.
“You’re not mad?”
“I am very happy to see you.” He kissed the top of her head. “Always.”
“You won’t send me away on the next milknut run?”
“I might if you insist on walking up those stairs.” He looked at his mesh-brothers. His mouth tightened. He’d be drowned twice and hung out to dry before asking them for help.
Hyrryai appeared at his side, meeting his eyes in brief consultation. He nodded. She slung one of Sharrar’s arms about her shoulders while Shursta took the other.
“Oh, hey,” said Sharrar, turning her head to study the newcomer. “You must be the Gleaming One.”
“And you,” said Hyrryai, “must be my sister.”
“I’ve always wanted a sister,” Sharrar said meditatively. “But my mother—may she sleep forever with the sea people—said, so help her, two children were enough for one woman, and that was two more than strictly necessary. She was a schoolteacher,” Sharrar explained. “Awfully smart. But I don’t think she understood things like sisters. She had so many herself.”
For a moment, Shursta thought Hyrryai’s eyes had flooded. But then she smiled, a warmer expression on her face than any Shursta had yet seen. “Perhaps you won’t think so highly of them once I start borrowing your clothes without asking.”
* * *
“Damisel,” Sharrar pronounced, “my rags are your rags. Help yourself.”
There was a feast four days later for the youngest of Hyrryai’s brothers.
“Dumwei,” Sharrar reminded Shursta. “I don’t know why you can’t keep them all straight.”
“I do not have your elasticity of mind,” he retorted. “I haven’t had to memorize all three hundred epics for the entertainment of the Hall of Ages.”
“It’s all about mnemonic tricks. Let’s see. In order of age, there’s Lochlin the Lunkhead, Arishoz the Unenlightened, Menami Meatbrain—then Hyrryai, of course, fourth in the birth order, but we all know what her name means, don’t we, Shursta?—Orssi the Obscene, Plankin Porkhole, and Dumwei the Dimwitted. How could you mix them up?”
By this time Shursta was laughing too hard to answer. When Hyrryai joined them, he flung himself back onto the couch cushions and put a pillow over his face. Now and again, a hiccup emerged from the depths.
“I’ve never seen him laugh before,” Hyrryai observed. “What is the joke?”
“Oh,” Sharrar said blithely, “I was just mentioning how much I like your brothers. Tell me, who is coming to the feast tonight?”
Hyrryai perched at the edge of the couch. “Everybody.”
“Is Laric Spectrox coming?”
“Yes. Why? Do you know him?”
“Shursta mentioned him in a letter.”
Shursta removed his pillow long enough to glare, but Sharrar ignored him.
“I was curious to meet him. Also, I was wondering…what is the protocol to join the Sing at the end of the feast? One of my trades is storyteller—as my brother has just reminded me—and I have recently memorized a brave tale that dearest Dumwei will adore. It is all about, oh, heroic sacrifice, bloody deeds and great feats, despair, rescue, celebration. That sort of thing.”
Observing the mischief dancing in Sharrar’s eyes, a ready spark sprang to Hyrryai’s. “I shall arrange a place of honor for you in the Sing. This is most kind of you.”
Groaning, Shursta swam up from the cushions again. “Don’t trust her! She is up to suh—hic—uhmething. She will tell some wild tale about, about—farts and—and burps and—billy goats that will—hic—will shame your grandmother!”
“My grandmother has no shame.” Hyrryai stood up from the edge of the couch. She never relaxed around any piece of furniture. She had to be up and pacing. Shursta, following her with his eyes, wondered how, and if, she ever slept. “Sharrar is welcome to tell whatever tale she deems fit. Do not be offended if I leave early. Oron Onyssix attends the feast tonight, and I mean to shadow him home.”
At that, even Sharrar looked startled. “Why?”
Hyrryai grinned. It was not a look her enemies would wish to meet by moonlight.
“Of late the rumors are running that his appetite for hedonism has begun to extend to girls too young to be mesh-fit. I go tonight to confirm or invalidate these.”
“Oh,” said Sharrar, “you’re hunting.”
“I am hunting.”
Shursta bit his lip. He did not say, “Be careful.” He did not say, “I will not sleep until you return.” He did not say, “If the rumors are true, then bring him to justice. Let the Astrion Council sort him out, trial and judgment. Even if he proves a monster, he may not be your monster, and don’t you see, Hyrryai, whatever happens tonight, it will not be the end? That grief like yours does not end in something so simple as a knife in the dark?”
As if she heard all that he did not speak, Hyrryai turned her grin on him. All the teeth around her throat grinned, too.
“It is a nice necklace,” Sharrar observed. “I told Shursta it was a poem.”
The edges of Hyrryai’s grin softened. “Your brother has the heart of a poet. And you the voice of one. We Blodestones are wealthy in our new kin.” She turned to go, paused, then added over her shoulder, “Husband, if you drink a bowl of water upside down, your hiccups may go away.”
When she was gone, Sharrar nudged him. “Oohee, brother mine. I like her.”
“Ayup, Nugs,” he sighed. “Me too.”
* * *
It was with trepidation that Shursta introduced his sister to Laric Spectrox that night at the feast. He need not have worried. Hearing Laric’s name, Sharrar laughed with delight and raised her brown eyes to his.
“Why, hey there! Domo Spectrox! You’re not nearly as tall as Shursta made you out to be.”
Laric straightened his shoulders. “Am I not?”
“Nope. The way he writes it, I thought to mistake you for a milknut tree. Shursta, you said skinny. It’s probably all muscle, right? Wiry, right? Like me?” Sharrar flexed her free arm for him. Laric shivered a wink at Shursta and gravely admired her bicep. “Anyway, you’re not too proud to bend down, are you?”
“I’m not!”
“Good! I have a secret I must tell you.”
When Laric brought his face to her level, she seized him by both big ears and planted an enormous kiss on his mouth. Menami and Orssi Blodestone, who stood nearby, started whooping. Dumwei sidled close.
“Don’t I get one? It’s my birthday, you know.”
Sharrar gave him a sleepy-eyed look that made Shursta want to hide under the table. “Just you wait till after dinner, Dumwei, my darling. I have a special surprise for you.” She shooed him along and bent all her attention back to Laric.
“You,” she said.
He pointed to his chest a bit nervously. “Me?”
“You, Laric Spectrox. You are going to be my friend for the rest of my life. I decided that ages ago, so I’m very glad we finally got to meet. No arguments.”
Laric’s shining black face broke into a radiance of dimple creases and crooked white teeth. “Do you see me arguing? I’m not arguing.”
“I’m Sharrar, by the way. Sit beside me tonight and let me whisper into your ear.”
When Laric glanced at Shursta, Shursta shrugged. “She’s going to try and talk you into doing something you won’t want to do. I don’t know what. Just keep saying no and refilling her plate.”
“Does that really work?”
Shursta gave him a pained glance and did not answer.
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Hyrryai came late to the feast and took a silent seat beside Shursta. He filled a plate and shoved it at her as if she had been Sharrar, but when she only picked at it, he shrugged and went back to listening to Laric and Orssi arguing.
Orssi said, “The Nine Islands drowned and the Nine Cities with them. There are no other islands. There is no other land. We are alone on this world, and we must do our part to repeople it.”
“No, no, see”—Laric gestured with the remnants of a lobster claw—“that lacks imagination. That lacks gumption. What do we know for sure? We know that something terrible happened in our great-great-grandparents’ day. What was it really? How can we know? We weren’t born then. All we have are stories, stories the grayheads tell us in the Hall of Ages. I value these stories, but I will not build my life on them, as a house upon sand. We call ourselves the Glennemgarra, the Unchosen. Unchosen by what? By death? By the wave? By the magic of the gods that protected the Nine Holy Cities even as they drowned, so that they live still, at the bottom of the sea? Let there be a hundred cities beneath the waves. What do we care? We can’t go there.”
Laric glanced around at the few people who still listened to him.
“Do you know where we can go, though? Everywhere else. Anywhere. There is no law binding us to Droon—or to Sif”—he nodded at Sharrar, whose face was rapt with attention—“or anywhere on this wretched oasis. We know the wind. We know the stars. We have our boats and our nets and our water casks. There is no reason not to set out in search of something better.”
“Well, cousin,” said Orssi, “no one could accuse you of lacking imagination.”
“Yes, Spectrox,” cried Arishoz, “and how is your big boat project coming along?”
Laric’s round eyes narrowed. “It would go more quickly if I had more hands to help me.”
The Blodestone brothers laughed, though not ill-naturedly. “Find a wife, cousin,” Lochlin advised him. “Breed her well. People the world with tiny Spectroxes—as if the world needed more Spectroxes, eh? Convince them to build your boat. What else are children for?”
Laric threw up his hands. He was smiling, too, but all the creases in his forehead bespoke a sadness. “Don’t you see? When my boat is finished, I will sail away from words like that and thoughts like yours. As if women were only good for wives, and children were only made for labor.”
Hyrryai raised her glass to him. Shursta reached over to fill it from the pitcher and watched as she drank deeply.
“I will help you, Laric Spectrox!” Sharrar declared, banging her fists on the table. “I am good with my hands. I never went to sea with the men of Sif, but I can swim like a seal—and I’d trade my good leg for an adventure. Tell me all about your big boat.”
He turned to her and smiled, rue twining with gratitude and defiance. “It is the biggest boat ever built. Or it will be.”
“And what will you name her?”
“The Grimgramal. After the wave that changed the world.”
Sharrar nodded, as if this were the most natural thing. Then she swung her legs off the bench, took up her cane, and pushed herself to her feet. Leaning against the table for support, she used her cane to pound the floor. When this did not noticeably diminish the noise in the hall, she set her forefinger and pinkie to her lips and whistled. Everyone, from the crones’ table where the elders were wine-deep in gossip and politics, to the children’s table where little cakes were being served, hushed.
Sharrar smiled at them. Shursta held his breath. But she merely invoked the Sing, bracing against a bench for support, then raising both fists above her head to indicate the audience should respond to her call.
“Grimgramal the Endless was the wave that changed the world.”
Obediently, the hall repeated, “Grimgramal the Endless was the wave that changed the world.”
Sharrar began the litany that preceded all stories. Shursta relaxed again, smiling to himself to see Hyrryai absently chewing a piece of flatbread as she listened. His sister’s tales, unlike Grimgramal, were not endless; they were mainly intended to please grayheads, who fell asleep after fifteen minutes or so. Sharrar’s habit had been to practice her stories on her brother when he came in from a day out at sea and was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open. When he asked why she could not wait until morning when he could pay proper attention, she had replied that his exhaustion in the evening best simulated her average audience member in the Hall of Ages.
But Shursta had never yet fallen asleep while Sharrar told a story.
“The first city was Hanah and it fell beneath the sea
“The second city was Lahatiel, and it fell beneath the sea
“The third city was Ekesh, and it fell beneath the sea
“The fourth city was Var, and it fell beneath the sea
“The fifth city was Thungol, and it fell beneath the sea
“The sixth city was Yassam, and it fell beneath the sea
“The seventh city was Saheer, and it fell beneath the sea
“The eighth city was Gelph, and it fell beneath the sea
“The ninth city was Niniam, and it fell beneath the sea…”
Sharrar ended the litany with a sweep of her hands, like a wave washing everything away. “But one city,” she said, “did not fall beneath the sea.” Again, her fists lifted. “That city was Droon!”
“That city was Droon!” the room agreed.
“That city was Droon, capital of the Last Isle. Now, on this island, there are many villages, though none that match the great city Droon. In one of these villages—in Sif, my own village—was born the hero of this tale. A young man, like the young men gathered here tonight. Like Dumwei whom we celebrate.”
She did not need to coax a response this time. Cups and bowls and pitchers clashed.
“Dumwei whom we celebrate!”
“If our hero stood before you in this hall, humble as a Man of Sif might be before the Men of Droon, you would not say to your neighbor, your brother, your cousin, ‘That young man is a hero.’ But a hero he was born, a hero he became, a hero he’ll remain, and I will tell you how, here and now.”
Sharrar took her cane, moving it through the air like a paddle through water.
“The fisherfolk of Sif catch many kinds of fish. Octopus and squid, shrimp and crab. But the largest catch and tastiest, the feast to end all feasts, the catch that feeds a village—this is the bone shark.”
“The bone shark.”
“It is the most cunning, the most frightening, the most beautiful of all the sharks. A long shark, a white shark, with a towering dorsal fin and a great jaw glistening with terrible teeth. This is the shark that concerns our hero. This is the shark that brought him fame.”
“This is the shark that brought him fame.”
By this time, Sharrar barely needed to twitch a finger to elicit a response. The audience leaned in. All except Shursta, whose shoulders hunched, and Hyrryai, who drew her legs up onto the bench to wrap her arms around her knees.
“To catch a shark, you must first feed it. You must bloody the waters. You must send a slick of chum as sacrifice. For five days you must do this, until the sharks come tame to your boat. Then noose and net, you must grab it. Noose and net, you must drag it to the shore where it will die upon the sand. This is how you catch a shark.”
“This is how you catch a shark.”
“One day, our hero was at sea. Many other men were with him, for the fishermen of Sif do not hunt alone. A man—let us call him Ghoul, for his sense of humor was necrotic—had brought along his young son for the first time. Now, Ghoul, he did not like our hero. Ghoul was a proud man. A strong man. A handsome man too, if you like that sort of man. He thought Sif had room for only one hero and that was Ghoul.”
“Ghoul!”
“Ghoul said to his son, ‘Son, why do we waste all this good chum to bait the bone shark? In the next boat over sits a lonesome feast. An unmeshed man whom no one will miss. Let us rock his boat a little, eh? Let us rock h
is boat and watch him fall in.’
“Father and son took turns rocking our hero’s boat. Soon the other men of Sif joined in. Not all men are good men. Not all good men are good all the time. Not even in Droon. The waters grew choppy. The wind grew restless. The bone shark grew tired of waiting for his chum.”
“The bone shark grew tired of waiting—”
“Who can say what happened then? A wave too vigorous? The blow of a careless elbow as Ghoul bent to rock our hero’s boat? A nudge from the muzzle of the bone shark? An act of the gods from the depths below? Who can know? But our hero saw the child. He saw Ghoul’s young son fall into the sea. Like Gelph and Saheer, he fell into the sea. Like Ekesh and Var and Niniam, he fell into the sea. Like Hanah and Lahatiel, Thungol and Yassam. Like the Nine Islands and all Nine Cities, the child fell.”
“The child fell.”
“The bone shark moved as only sharks can move, lightning through the water, opening its maw for the sacrifice. But then our hero was there. There in the sea. Between shark and child. Between death and the child. Our hero was there, treading water. There with his noose and his net. He had jumped from his boat. Jumped—where no man of Sif could push him, however hard they rocked his boat. Jumped to save this child. And he tangled the shark in his net. He lassoed the shark with his noose and lashed himself to that dreadful dorsal fin! Ghoul had just enough time to haul his son back into his boat. The shark began to thrash.”
“The shark began to thrash.”
“The shark began to swim.”
“The shark began to swim.”
“Our hero clung fast. Our hero held firm. Our hero herded that shark as some men herd horses. He brought that shark to land. He brought that shark onto the sand, where the shark could not breathe, and so it died. Thus our hero slew the bone shark. Thus our hero fed his village. Thus our hero rescued the child. He rescued the child.”
“He rescued the child.”
Bone Swans: Stories Page 15