Jaele ate—something warm and sweet this time—and again noticed the blue within the clay. She did not wake Dorin, But after a few moments he stirred and sat up. There were the marks of tiny stones on one side of his face, and creases made by his own skin. “We slept?” he mumbled, and she reached over to touch his hair.
“So it seems.”
He groaned. “We sleep and sleep, then sleep and sleep, and sleep and sleep some more. . . .”
“And we’ve had visitors,” Jaele said.
He looked at the food and shook his head. “Will we ever be able to talk to these people? Are they drugging us so we won’t bother them?”
Jaele stood and stretched her arms. “I don’t know, but I’m enjoying myself. And now I want to walk.”
They did not go into the village; instead they walked south, over the hill where their hut stood. At first they followed a stream that branched off the river, but it soon wound into moist sand, and then they were once again in the openness of desert. Jaele shook Dorin’s hand away and ran, shouting and spinning until he caught her and pulled her down to him.
They returned along the path of their own footprints when the west was red. “Look—we’re home!” she cried when the rounded shape of their hut appeared on its hill. He gripped her wrist and drew her against him, and he held her there tightly and silently and she did not breathe.
The shonyn had risen and were again clustered by the flatboats. Jaele and Dorin watched from the hill as some of them climbed aboard and pushed off with the poles and others waved them away. They still did not look up at the hill; even the children’s eyes were on the boats. “We’ll wait, I suppose,” Dorin sighed. “They must speak to us eventually. Until then, we’ll eat their food and become intimately acquainted with their sleeping and boating.”
“Mmm,” Jaele said, and rubbed her eyes. “It’s amazing, but I think I’m tired again.”
They ducked into their hut and slept. When they woke, it was night and there was food, and they ate. River and trees shone with stars. The air outside was cold, and they huddled beneath their blanket and watched the shadows on shore and water through a mist of breath. They did not speak. Jaele slipped in and out of sleep with her head against Dorin’s shoulder. Each time she opened her eyes the scene was the same except for the sky, which was black then grey then coral.
He kissed her awake as the boats returned. “Another day?” she asked.
There was food, of course, and the shonyn below laughed and whistled until their morning’s fruit had been delivered and prepared. Then they disappeared into their huts and all was still. Jaele and Dorin slept again. They ran into the desert as the sunlight darkened to bronze and walked back to watch the boats whispering toward the other bank.
It may have been the third day when they woke at dawn to the sounds of footsteps and wheezing. They dressed quickly and went to the curtain. The wheezing gave way to a loud and gusty coughing. They glanced at each other. “At last,” mouthed Dorin, and drew the cloth aside.
A very old man was sitting on the ground a few steps from their door. When he did not turn to them, they sat as well. For a few moments there was silence, except for his breathing. He was small and delicate, his skin furrowed with dark blue creases. His hands and fingers were rounded, jutting bone; his body made angles beneath his tunic. He was moving slightly, swaying forward and back. When at last he looked at them, it was so slowly that they hardly noticed.
“Do you,” he said in a deep, steady voice, “speak the Queenstongue?”
His accent was strange, but the words were clear and precise. Jaele answered, “Yes,” without hesitation, then halted in surprise. “So,” she continued after she had blinked at him a few times, “why did you not speak to us when we first came to you by the river?”
“Ah,” he replied, “my old comrades and I heard only your names. We decided that you had the Queenstongue accents, from what we could remember, but we were sitting too far away from you. We did not have the will to rise. Do I speak sufficiently? Good, then. Also we expected that you would come to us, which you have not done, forcing me to labour to you myself.” He smiled and turned his gaze back to the village.
“I will answer questions,” he said, and Dorin spoke immediately.
“How is it that you know this language but do not use it? What are the silver trees and the fruit and the boats? When—”
The old man held up a gnarled hand. “Gently now. I will speak, although it tires me, and perhaps I will answer. And you will eat.” He indicated the customary bowls, and they reached for them as he began.
“Queenspeople were the first visitors to this place. They came in their boats—great twisted things, unlike our own. Cloth that flew in the wind and the loud splashing of many sticks. The first time they came, they stopped these boats and trampled along our banks and pointed fingers at our dwellings. Only when they had eaten our lynanyn did they become polite. The Queen herself walked down to the river to taste one, and it impressed her so greatly that she proposed through signs an agreement of trade. We exchanged our lynanyn for clothing material and jars of metal. Some of it remains, in the homes of the oldest shonyn.
“A few of them stayed with us, and it was from them that we learned the Queenstongue. It was a harsh language, and puzzling in its time-describing, but it was necessary for good trading, and children were instructed, and on it went until the time of my own childhood.” He paused and his eyes slid from the huts, up and along the river’s curving length. “I can call back that first time of my own Queensboat seeing with such clearness. It came downriver during the rains. The day was dark, noisy with thunder. All shonyn were within their houses, yet I was awake and heard another noise above the rain, and I looked out at the river. I saw the strange boat amidst the lightning and water sheets, and for a moment I imagined that I was still sleeping, caught in a nightmare of strangeness. Then I saw the Queensfighters who lived with us running through the rain toward the river. They were shouting and laughing, greeting the boat. Even their laughter frightened me. But I was very small and overly sensitive, as all shonyn are during the rains.” He sighed, looking back at the village and the empty river by the trees. “I only ever saw smaller boats, however—none of the great ones of before. Certainly none like those that swept down the river when Queen Galha and her army came.”
Jaele felt her breath still for a moment. This is the Ladhra River, she thought numbly. She stared down at the dark water. I am here. Without an army. With Dorin only, who had said (she remembered now, in a rush she could not quell) that he would not journey with her to the sea. Dorin, whom she needed so fiercely.
“It was a vast army—we had never seen such a thing. We discovered that this army was sailing to the ocean to wage a war of revenge upon sea people.” Jaele could not turn to Dorin. She took his hand in hers and felt the quick warm pressure of his fingers. The shonyn man fell silent then, and did not speak again for so long that they thought he was sleeping. But his eyes were open, and finally he sighed and smiled and touched an age-bent finger to his forehead.
“We shonyn live for a long time—much longer than most who walk on two legs. But our memories are deep and clear, and each day we return to them. We have so many memories, and they are so vivid, that we are sometimes unsure whether they are ours or others’. But that is not important. Memory is our language—and that is why the boats stopped their sweeping up the river. They did not understand us, those people from the tall white city. They traded with us through many queens, but always they chortled, and perhaps they imagined that the desire to trade and teach had been a whim and was best forgotten. So long a trip through the desert for some big fruit—this I heard one man say. So when I was a boy, it stopped. Our Queensfighter teachers departed. One of them, a kind one, came to us alone on her horse and told us that the Queen could no longer spare people or boats. This one stayed with us, and then she too went away. Myself and the other children were the l
ast to use the Queenstongue. We still speak it to each other now and then—because it is memory and real, for us. This is why my speaking is so fine. But we have not taught it to the youngsters. If they know words or phrases, it is through clever listening only.” He paused, then said, “And that is the story of language, as I know it.”
He turned to them and saw Dorin’s smile. “Am I now also amusing to you, Queensboy?” he asked, and Dorin said quickly, “No, no—it’s only that for days no one has approached us, and we imagined that speaking would be difficult. But your speech is fine and . . . copious, and wonderful,” he added.
The man nodded slowly. “It is difficult to know what we will find in strangeness. But there must be an attempt. Also, I am old and soft and, although they tire me, I enjoy my words—a shonyn trait, you will see. And now, youngsters, your names.”
They told him, and he nodded again. “And yours?” Dorin inquired. “If that is not an impertinent question.”
Their companion tipped his head to one side and peered at the trees, which were gradually edging into light. “It is a challenging thing, for our names are not one or two as yours are, but many and varied, encompassing all of our line and the colours of our thinkings. We attempted to simplify for the Queenspeople and other travellers—thusly the words shonyn and lynanyn—and as I recall, my name was Saalless. Much is lost, of course. But for your grasping, this is the only way: Saalless.”
He stood up carefully, waving a hand at them when they rose to help. “Tomorrow,” he said, “is a strange word. Nonetheless—tomorrow there will be time for more questions. Yes, and you must come to me on that day, for I am too old for all this climbing of rough terrain and losing of sleep. And you must come only at dusk; until then I am rarely wakeful.”
He began to step sideways down the sandscrub hill, and Dorin called out, “Tomorrow, then!”
Saalless paused and turned back briefly. “These words-after of yours,” he called back, “are perhaps the oddest.” Then he resumed his descent. They watched him in silence until he had disappeared among the others waiting for the flatboats’ return.
“I think he likes us,” Dorin said. Jaele did not reply. They looked at each other, long and silently, as the river flowed like singing below them.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jaele and Dorin walked down to the village the next day when the sun was red on the leaves. As they wound among the houses, shonyn nodded to them from doorways, and a few lifted their hands. The two moved quietly through a deep and steady hum of words that were not for them.
Saalless was sitting on the clay bench by the river, talking to several men and women as bony and seamed as himself. Dorin and Jaele stood behind them. After a few moments Jaele cleared her throat loudly. The old shonyn turned to them very slowly, and Saalless said, in the Queensongue, “See, now—my young comrades have indeed journeyed down to speak with me. Greetings, children. Come, sit by me—my ancient fellows will move aside, I am sure, though it may take some time, as you say . . . good, good . . . now settle here, and we shall enjoy the vista.”
They sat on either side of him and gazed across at the trees and the boats that seemed to hang light-struck below them. “This is the time of surpassing beauty,” Saalless said. “Some say the dawn is loveliest, but I do not agree.”
“That is because you are aging,” said an old woman, “and what once thrilled at dawn now seems hollow beside the fulsomeness of dusk.”
“I think,” another pointed out, “that it is because we now sleep at dawn. It is only at sundown that we truly see our world.”
Saalless grunted. “As usual, friends, your speaking is lengthy and intrusive. Allow Jaele and this Dorin to talk, and learn from their own fine speaking.”
There was an expectant silence. “Well,” Jaele began awkwardly, “I’m wondering why you live here on this dry bank when the other is so lush.”
Saalless and his friends sighed together. “The most difficult of our memories,” he said, touching a finger to his forehead. “There was a time when we did live there, beneath the silver trees. There was much greenery, and the lynanyn hung heavily from branches; the fruit was more plentiful than it is now. I say fruit because there is no other word in your language that approaches its reality. We were few then, and we built small houses from the black wood that fell from the trees—at first only the wood that fell. But soon our numbers grew and the houses were not enough to hold us, and we began to cut and chop the wood that lived. We constructed larger dwellings and consumed fruit which had not dropped ripe to the ground. We cut it, like the bark, before its finished time.”
Jaele noticed that the others were murmuring, low, strange words that were quiet singing beneath Saalless’ voice. “We destroyed the bounty,” he continued, “and for this we suffered. Lynanyn lay on the moss, shrivelled as old skin and oozing rank liquid. It was inedible, even cooked, and the juice was sour and caused us illness and loss of strength. The silver leaves grew dry. At night we lay in our houses and listened to the leaves knocking against the trunks and branches. Then they too fell, and there was only a twisted black emptiness above the green plants that were dying.”
The murmuring was louder now, and it wove among Saalless’ words until Jaele felt sleepy. She heard fruit and tangled silver—and then desert fires, a man speaking, and she shook herself away. She looked at Dorin’s hands, lying still on his thighs.
“. . . for we were desperate and starving. We used the wood from our houses to craft flatboats, and these we steered to the opposite bank, which for so long had been a spectre of grim dryness. We settled there and turned in grief to the naked trees and the ribs of our old homes, and wept in repentance. We had brought seeds with us, rescued before the widespread withering, and we planted them in the dampness by the water. At first many grew small and brown and died, but slowly there were plants and grains, and while we waited for them to mature, we searched for fish. It was a dark and difficult thing, this searching. Such pursuits are not natural to us. Now we do not eat fish until the rains, that terrible time of change. During this time the water pushes the fish over the banks and we can lift them out with our hands. But when first we came to this shore, we hunted and attempted survival, though many died and were buried beneath the sand.
“We could not bear to build houses in the form of those we had inhabited before. Instead, we moulded river clay and dried grasses into mounds which hardened in the sun. And so we lived and harvested our humble crops, and one day someone cried out that she saw a leaf growing on the deserted bank, and it was true. As we watched, the leaves returned, as silver and lustrous as before, and new trees grew and spread among our forgotten planks. And then we glimpsed the first lynanyn, and the second, hanging round and dark above the river.
“Although we were sorely tempted to return, we watched only, and waited until the lynanyn were so plentiful that they began to drop into the water. We rowed our boats across at dusk and pulled these out, glistening and ripe, and that dawn we tasted them again after all our depriving.”
He turned first to Dorin, then to Jaele. “You cannot imagine the rejoicing that took place after the lynanyn meat and juice had been consumed. We are usually a quiet and calm people, but that morning we lifted our voices high and perhaps even danced. That same day we decided that, though we would not live again on that shore, we would ferry across each night to harvest lynanyn. We vowed that we would never again touch the wooden hearts of the trees. Thusly we have continued. We have not scarred the bark, and in return the trees produce such a quantity of fruit that we are well satisfied. We cook it, drink it, use its juice for dyes and its dried tough fibres for cloth. We are content on this dry bank.”
The lilting sounds faded. “Superior,” said one of the other shonyn. “Unrivalled,” commented another. “Not enough!” cried a third. Someone grumbled, “I do not remember that there was dancing,” but no one appeared to hear him.
Saalless smiled, and his head b
obbed from side to side. “My thanks, companions,” he said, and turned to Jaele and Dorin. “I have answered your question,” he stated rather than asked.
“Oh yes,” Dorin said.
“Excellent.” He spoke briefly in his own language, which seemed rounded and light. “Now we watch, once more in quiet, and soon we sleep.”
Jaele rubbed a hand across her eyes. “I’m sleepy all the time in this place, but you seem to sleep more than anyone else.”
Saalless nodded slowly. “Surely. As I told you, we shonyn live longer than most, but near the end of this time our bodies grow thin and reluctant, and we begin to sleep more, then more, until our sleeping is sun-up to dusk. We have a quiet finishing: we do not wake.”
“And then?” asked Jaele.
“And then we are laid on flatboats and returned over the water to the place of our first living. There we are buried in the ground beneath the roots of the black trees, and we rest again below the leaves.” The old shonyn stirred again, rustling and sighing. “Now,” Saalless said, “no more speaking, for we are all tired.”
Jaele said quickly, “Please explain one more thing to me.” He turned to her and nodded, and she continued, “You have mentioned the rains several times. Why are they so unpleasant to you?”
Saalless gazed up into the cloudless sky. “This too will be strange to you, since you cannot know the terrible strength of change in shonyn life. There is no sun during these rains, and our bodies lose their usual patterns of sleep and waking. We are unable to use our boats; indeed, even venturing out of our houses is treacherous, for our dry, familiar sand turns to sliding mud. Nothing is the same. The rains themselves, which come always in the same season, are different each time. We fear their changing darkness and noise. It is perhaps our only fear.”
The leaves across the river were not shining, now: no sun, and still no moon. Saalless’ words seemed to echo in this clear, quiet darkness. Jaele shivered and longed for daylight.
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