The Floating Islands

by Rachel Neumeier

  “Come here, boy,” the man said to her, brief and decisive. “Take this.” He held out to Araenè a sphere of polished volcanic glass, large enough that he had to hold it with both hands.

  Araenè opened her mouth, closed it again, walked forward, and took the sphere. It was heavy and cool, translucent as light slid across it. It tasted of cool anise and smoky cumin, with sparkly undertones of ginger and lemon. Araenè blinked and stared down at the glass sphere, but the tastes didn’t fade or seem to be her imagination: anise and cumin, ginger and lemon. She looked wonderingly up at the face of the Yngulin man.

  “Vision is always a useful gift,” the man said to all the boys. His voice was smoky and mysterious as the sphere, his eyes hard to read. “Particularly in these tense times—but I believe you will find that all times are tense.” He turned his attention to Araenè. “So, now, boy—shift the Dannè sphere toward a more open configuration.”

  A more open configuration? Araenè stared down at the sphere, turning it over in her hands and wondering what “more open” could possibly mean. The ginger undertone became more prominent, tingling across her fingers as well as her tongue—a strange sensation.

  “Good,” said the man, and took back the sphere. “You see,” he said to the boys, holding it up. They returned an appreciative murmur, and he smiled. He said to Araenè, “And what would you expect to see within this particular sphere, given such a shift in orientation?”

  Araenè stared at him. Spheres and spicy colors and a strange room that seemed suddenly far smaller, pressing in on her—she took a step back and stammered, “I have to, I—I have to go home—”

  “If you must,” said the Yngulin man. “But I shall assuredly see you again.”

  The statement had the force of a command, and Araenè found herself nodding.

  “Bring this back to me,” the man added, and handed her the sphere again. Araenè took it automatically and tucked it under her arm. She took another step back, then another, and found herself back in the hallway. Without thinking—she did not seem able to keep her mind focused on anything—she turned, walked back to the door, opened it, and stepped through.

  She found herself not in the narrow alleyways of the Third City maze but in the infinitely more familiar and welcome alley behind her own home, looking up at her own window. When she turned, bewildered, to stare back the way she had come, there was no carved door behind her: only the other side of her own alley. It was just dusk: though the sun was below sight, faint glimmers of violet and peach still traced the banks of clouds in the west.

  Araenè let out a breath she had not been aware of holding. Cimè and Ti might be back, though maybe not, but neither Mother nor Father should have returned. Not quite yet— but soon. She took a step toward the house and then stopped, staring down at the sphere she still carried under her arm. Her brows drew together: the thing seemed even more strange and unsettling now, and her own response to it stranger still. The smoky taste of cumin tickled the back of her throat, and the sharper accents of lemon and ginger. The anise seemed almost missing, just a faint tickle on her tongue and across her palms.

  Almost, Araenè dropped the sphere in the street and left it for the neighborhood children to find. But in the end she put it down her shirt so she would have her hands free, checked quickly for any unwelcome eyes that might be watching, and made the climb back to her window with extra care that she should not accidentally let the sphere strike the stones of the wall.

  She had entirely forgotten that it was not, at the moment, her room.

  Her cousin was sitting on her bed, reading some heavy, dull book from, Araenè presumed, one of his library classes. Araenè didn’t see him until she was already halfway through the window, and then it was too late to retreat. Taken thoroughly aback, Trei stared. Since she could hardly pretend that she wasn’t climbing through the window dressed in boys’ clothing, Araenè raised her chin and stared back, daring him to say anything.

  Her cousin’s gaze shifted from Araenè’s face to her hands, lingered for a moment on her masculine bracelets, lifted to take in her boy’s hat, and moved back to her face. No fool, he let the book fall and spread his hands placatingly. “It’s not my concern,” he assured her. He asked after a moment, as though unable to help himself, “Do all Island girls, um …?”

  Araenè had never considered this question before. For all she knew, dressing up as a boy and slipping out of the confinement of the home was a universal stage through which all girls passed. When you were five, you loved to help the servants in the kitchens; when you were eight, you cried because your father wouldn’t let you have a marmoset; when you were ten, you fretted desperately after some handsome young master of ephemera and thought you would die if he never noticed you; and when you were twelve, you dressed up in boys’ clothing and ventured out into the world. But … “I doubt it,” she concluded. It was impossible to imagine the girls she knew engaging in such a dramatic, dangerous rebellion. Though she wondered now if they would think the same about her, if anybody asked them.

  “Umm …” Trei swallowed whatever he’d been about to say, picked up his book again, and pretended to be fascinated by whatever he’d been reading.

  Araenè pulled the wardrobe doors open so that they would offer her privacy. Without really paying attention to what she was doing, she put the black sphere behind a false back she’d made to fit one of her drawers, checked to make sure her cousin was still looking at his book, and rapidly changed out of her boys’ things back into a proper dress. A simple one that fastened up the front so she could reach the hooks without help. She asked around the edges of the doors, “Is Cimè back from the market? Ti?” She hesitated after asking after the servants, afraid to extend the query to include Mother and Father: what if they’d come back early?

  “The servants were here when I got back from the library. Cimè asked me if I knew where you’d gone. She seemed a little worried,” Trei told her, and added with unexpected perceptiveness, “But your parents are still away.”

  Araenè came around the doors and stared at her cousin, wondering what to tell him, how she could persuade him to say nothing about what he’d seen.

  “You might have gone up to the attic and fallen asleep,” Trei suggested. “I don’t think Cimè or Ti have gone up there—not since I’ve been home. Maybe before, though,” he added, ducking his head doubtfully.

  “It’s a good idea,” Araenè admitted aloud. “It will work no matter what. If Cimè went up to the attic earlier, I’ll pretend I hadn’t gone up yet and she just happened to miss me.” She hesitated. “You won’t—that is, you’d be willing—”

  “I won’t contradict you,” Trei promised.

  Araenè felt driven to ask, though she was almost afraid of the answer she would get, “Why are you … I mean, why would you …?” And what would he want from her in return?

  Her cousin met her eyes, a level, honest look. He said in a low voice, “You’re so … You remind me so much of my … of Marrè. My sister. You aren’t … you aren’t like her, really. But if she’d lived here, I think she might have been like you.”

  “Oh.” Araenè had somehow not really thought of what her cousin might feel, losing his sister. His mother and father, yes, she’d been sorry for his loss, although she’d also found herself thinking how amazing it would be to travel all the tremendous distance from northern Tolounn to the Floating Islands by yourself. Though of course that journey wouldn’t seem amazing at all if your whole family had just died.

  But, truthfully, she hadn’t spent much effort imagining how Trei actually felt. She’d been too busy resenting the disruption he’d brought to her family. Araenè felt heat creeping up her face. She crossed the room slowly, settling at the foot of the bed. “Would you tell me about her? Marrè?”

  Her cousin sat up, laying the book aside. His eyes searched her face … not sure she was really interested, Araenè thought, not confident of kindness from her. Wondering, probably, whether she was trying to
purchase his silence with a show of sympathy. She blushed again, ashamed he might think so.

  But Trei must have decided she was sincere, because he got up and went to her desk. There was a large book she didn’t recognize lying there, an expensive one, with gold letters on its dark leather binding. Trei took several loose pages from this book—oh, not pages from the actual book, Araenè saw, but sheets of heavy, cream-colored paper, expensive paper, too costly to be used even in a nice book like that one.

  Her cousin held these for a moment, looking down at them, facing away from Araenè—she thought he was trying to make sure he’d be composed when he turned around, and didn’t say a word to hurry him.

  Coming back to the bed at last, Trei carefully laid one of these papers down on the bedspread so that Araenè could see it. The paper wavered a little as he put it down, but Trei’s expression was calm. The calm broke a little when he said, “This was Marrè.”

  The drawing, a deceptively simple ink sketch, showed the upper body and face of a girl, not quite a woman, in quarter profile. The girl was elegant, serene, dignified; her hair was up on the side of her head in a young woman’s figure-eight braid. Her hand rested gracefully on a delicate little table before her; a sheet of paper and a quill lay on the table next to her hand, and you could just see that the paper held the very sketch at which you were actually looking.

  But that was not the only echo contained within the sketch: it also showed a mirror that stood beside the girl. In this mirror, you could see her reflected, this time in three-quarters profile. In the mirror, you could see that strands of hair had come loose from the braid to curl around her ear and down the back of her neck. Somehow, there was a different look in her eye in the mirror. Though her expression in the mirror seemed at first glance the same, this angle of view did not give an impression of serenity. In the mirror, there was a hint of mischief in the girl’s eye, a wryness to her mouth, which suggested that her hair would never really be perfect—even that a casual imperfection was something she enjoyed and wanted you to enjoy. That she might be ready to step into womanhood, but not into any staid, demure womanhood. You could imagine this girl dressing up in boys’ clothing and climbing out of windows: it was almost hard to imagine that she never had.

  Araenè looked up, shaking her head. “Your sister drew this? This was her? This is amazing—”

  Trei’s mouth trembled, then tightened. He said after a moment, “Marrè would never have stayed here. In the Floating Islands, I mean. Or at least not in Canpra. Girls … girls stay at home here, don’t they? Girls don’t study or go out or … or anything. Do they?”

  “Girls visit other girls. And then they sit around and gossip about young men and do needlework, and go home and write letters to one another about young men and do more needlework.” Araenè couldn’t help her disdainful tone. “Is it really different in Tolounn?”

  Trei offered a diffident shrug. “Marrè studied drawing and things with the best tutors, and she didn’t have to dress up like a boy to do it. Her tutors—” Trei stopped, and then went on in a low voice, “Her tutors said she should do a showing. Mother was going to arrange it for next spring. Father said she should wait until after she got married, so her fame wouldn’t drive her dowry up too high. But really he was so proud. He said once—he said she would be as famous someday as Kekuonn Terataan—” He stopped again.

  Araenè said nothing. She had a terrible image in her mind of the girl in this drawing, sitting at the table pictured in this sketch, quill in hand and that mischievous look in her eyes, when the poisonous gas and hot ash poured out of the fire-mountain and came down upon Rounn. She didn’t know what to say.

  She was saved from needing to say anything, because at that moment her mother called.

  Trei flinched and gathered up the sketch, taking it and the others back to the desk and putting them again into the large book.

  Araenè got up and prepared to go down the stairs to Mother. But, lingering, she said to Trei, “May I see the other drawings sometime? Would you … You wouldn’t mind showing them to me?”

  Her cousin gave a small nod.

  “And maybe you could tell me about her? Sometime? If you, I mean … if you wouldn’t mind?”

  “I’d like to,” Trei said in a low voice.

  Araenè nodded, and ran out as her mother called once more. The strange detour she’d taken to get home already seemed like a dream, and she refused to think about the glass sphere hidden in the back of her drawer.

  3

  As the kajurai auditions approached, Trei felt, to his surprise, almost at home in Canpra. Not like a true Islander. More as though there was a possibility that someday he might be able to feel that he was. He hadn’t expected this. Nor had he expected Araenè to be responsible for the change. He hadn’t guessed that his cousin would be so … so … interesting.

  Of course his cousin knew all the respectable places to go in the First and Second Cities—Trei had expected that. “It’s wonderful, Father wanting you to be familiar with Canpra,” Araenè assured him, “or I’d never be permitted to explore like this. How splendid you are, cousin!” Her sarcasm didn’t worry Trei; he understood perfectly well it wasn’t directed at him.

  She’d shown him the white towers of the First City and taught him how to walk on the airy bridges and floating stairways that linked them together. The people of Canpra loved to build between sea and sky. One hot afternoon, they’d bought a terribly expensive lunch from a restaurant on a wide balcony that overhung the waves. Araenè muttered comments about the food and tossed tidbits that displeased her over the railing to the gulls swooping below, but Trei spent the afternoon staring longingly out toward the men who soared above the sea on crimson or golden wings.

  But the day before the kajurai auditions, when she saw Trei was fretting himself into a dither, Araenè finally insisted on taking him into the Third City and showing him the University. His cousin’s boldness made Trei terribly nervous, but Araenè would change her gown and bangles for trousers and shirt and wide bracelets, pin her hair up under a wide-brimmed hat, and become a boy. She made a convincing boy. She even walked like a boy. Almost like a boy.

  “Too feminine?” Araenè sounded skeptical when Trei ventured to suggest alterations to her manner. “Not likely! Mother always says I need to walk more softly and slowly. She says men like a woman to walk gracefully, speak gently, and show neither brains nor temper.”

  The sarcasm in her tone probably wasn’t very correct for an Island girl, either. Trei grinned. But he also tried to explain, “It was something about how you turned. On your toe or something. Too graceful, you know. Maybe Aunt Edona thinks you’re too boyish when you’re a girl, but you still make a girlish boy. Don’t look at me like that! You do!”

  “Huh.” Araenè didn’t seem persuaded. “It’s only because you know, that’s all. Come on! If we hurry, we’ll be right on time for Master Petrei’s lecture. It’s his fifth and last this season, and I’ve only made it to one other.”

  Probably she was right, Trei allowed. He gave up the point and said only, “A lecture? What an adventure!”

  “You can say that. You’re allowed to attend whatever lectures you like, go where you like, do anything you want to,” Araenè snapped, and turned on her toe—it was a girl’s move, too graceful by half for a boy—but she strode off at a pace that made Trei stretch to match. He didn’t answer her sharp comment, and after a moment his cousin gave him an apologetic glance. “You’re good to escort me.”

  “I don’t mind. I want to. I—are you serious? We climb over this building?”

  “It’s the quickest way. Everybody does it. We can walk around Third City after the lecture, if it doesn’t finish too late,” Araenè offered. “Third City is wonderful—I’ll show you my favorite places.”

  Trei shrugged and nodded. He didn’t much care for what little he’d seen of Canpra’s Third City so far. It seemed dangerous: crowded and disorganized and dirty. But Araenè seemed so … so …
she seemed more alive, more expansive, even somehow more herself, dashing through Third City alleys dressed as a boy.

  Later, waiting for the crowd of students to clear out of the lecture hall, he gave Araenè a sidelong look and said, keeping his tone bland, “Well, that was fascinating. No wonder you’re willing to risk, um, to find out all about the subtle differences between rice from eastern Yngul, western Yngul, northern Yngul, northeastern Yngul, the southern half of the western third of some island off the coast of Yngul.…”

  Araenè punched him on the shoulder, a good copy of the masculine gesture. But then she gave Trei an uncertain sidelong glance and asked seriously, “Are you scared about tomorrow?”

  “No!” But then he met his cousin’s eyes and felt his mouth tug reluctantly into a smile. “Maybe a little.”

  “You’re an Islander now,” Araenè assured him. “You’ll do all right.”

  They had by this time passed back into the wider, quieter streets of the Second City, and Trei privately thought he’d seen enough of Third City squalor and crowding to last him. He said only, “Of course I will.”

  But he didn’t really believe this. He didn’t sleep well that night, only repeatedly dozed and jerked awake, sometimes with the feeling he was falling. He dreamed he needed desperately to see the wind, but there was no wind, only ash settling endlessly out of an empty sky, and Mount Ghaonnè with the huge jagged hole in its side where the fire had come out.

  “You’ll do splendidly, dear,” Aunt Edona assured Trei over an early breakfast. Trei looked steadfastly at the uneaten slice of bread he held in one hand, and nodded.

  “You will,” Araenè said, but anxiously.

  “You really will,” Uncle Serfei told him one more time as they walked briskly through the Second City, heading for the First City tower where the kajurai auditions were held. It was a long way. They’d had to get up before dawn to make sure they had time for the walk. Uncle Serfei looked tired; he coughed once or twice and smiled apologetically at Trei. “Summer coughs! Let’s hope you don’t catch it, Trei. I’m sure you’ll need proper rest after you pass your audition: apprentices always run hard.”