A Telling of Stars

by A Telling of Stars (v5. 0) (epub)

  She reread the words, then put the page face-down on the floor. She could feel tears. Quickly, on a new sheet, “I rage when I think of you. I do not know where you are now” and then she wept, jagged and unfinished.

  Ilario struggled to stand. “I am going mad. I must leave, I must get out.” He tottered for a moment. Jaele and Annial wound their arms around him and he sagged between them. Jaele’s fingers slipped into the spaces between his ribs. “Get my cloak—open the door. I need the wind.”

  They led him slowly out and onto the wharf. “It is icy—please be careful,” Annial said. “Hania will be so distressed, if she finds you out here—and your mother. . . .”

  “Hush,” Ilario said, not too roughly. “Please.” They stood together, and Jaele heard and felt his breathing—saw it, even, as white and filmy as her own. "The icemounts are retreating,” he said. “You may not be able to see it. But it’s happening. Their song will change now, too. A farewell. Sad, I think, because of spring.”

  That night Jaele woke from a featureless dream to find Ilario sitting beneath her window. “Again?” she mumbled, and he chuckled, then coughed.

  “Again. It is difficult to sleep. Nights are terrible now. And I remember our last such meeting . . . with great fondness.”

  She was fully awake now. “Ilario. I don’t have to leave here in the spring.” She felt the unexpected truth of this like a blossoming, a flame.

  He spluttered—she thought with laughter. “Ridiculous girl! You must. You absolutely must.”

  She leaned forward and spoke rapidly. “I will stay, and Annial and I will take care of you. I can continue my journey when you’re well again. I’m sure you’d be well by summer.”

  He coughed and coughed, curling into himself until he seemed very small. When he finally lifted his head, he said, “No. Dying, I said. Not just sick. You don’t need to be here . . . for that. Go. It is what you must do.”

  After a moment Jaele said, “I’ll help you—you should lie down,” and she half carried him to her bed. He lay on his side, and she sat on the map-carpet, holding one of his brittle hands between both her own.

  They did not speak again. Near morning, he slept. She listened to the rattling in his throat and wished that she could take him gently down where bones were light and breath was bubbled silver.

  Jaele walked out more as Ilario dozed and the icemounts began their creaking journey away. The streets dripped and cracked with falling ice, and there was a smell of unburied earth and stone. She sat and stared at the river—shapes in the foam disappearing, borne away to the sea at which she could not bear to look.

  It was a bit like my last days in the shonyn village. My eyes caught at details and held them in fear and wonder—fear, now, because I knew that this was an ending. With the shonyn I had only dreamed it.

  Shards of ice shrinking to runnels around her sodden shoes. The dried blood of Ilario’s sores—on his neck, his forehead, his lower lip. The grooves in Annial’s biggest wooden spoon. Three books stacked on the floor; the words “of Air” on the one turned toward her. The dark names of her family, looming up until she was surrounded by a forest of wool and weaving. The hollows of Ilario’s cheeks. The way his teeth and nose protruded from his drum-skin. His eyes, gazing at her from the bed they had made for him in the reading-room. His eyes hot fevered grasping blue.

  Once he lay reading alou;- he still insisted on doing so, said that he only had to learn how to breathe differently, to get the words out. “There was lace . . . at her throat and he . . . drank long of its white against . . . her darkness. She. . . .” He was wheezing, his shrunken chest fluttering with effort.

  Annial rose and went to his pallet. She took the book slowly from his fingers and sat beside him. “She too gazed at him—a Queensfighter, tall and slender, with coils of green silk around his arms and neck. They stood alone by the tower, where the banners sang in night wind.”

  Annial fell silent. She was looking out the window at the moonless harbor. She was so still that Jaele thought, She is remembering. Ilario gazed at her, then at Jaele. She felt lashed by his breathing, and by the smile that shone untarnished grief from the wreckage of his face.

  Annial, Ilario—she knew that she should be with them, that she should read them asleep and tender, but she was aghast. Aghast at the snow that now fell as rain, at the groaning farewell of the icemounts, at the waves rough and hollow against the boards. She stared at the edge of carpet where the map vanished. She clung to memories of the man who had drawn his knife across her mother’s throat, the webbed hand she had sent arching into the sea—but they were not enough. Blood, ash, nails against rock were not enough. The Alilan, Serani and Bienta, Luhr—the shonyn village above all—she could have stayed in the round red hut with Dorin’s arm heavy on her breast.

  At last, when mud caked the paths and the harbour was empty except for the three pitiful boats, Jaele looked again at the sea. She examined it from her bedroom window, from the reading-room window, from the wharf. As she looked, she knew that she would not wait to see him again here, that she would not wait for the sailors’ return. She crossed another wooden bridge and stood before the empty harbour houses. She walked past them along the road, following it until the coast lay stretched before her. The road here was empty, grey and brown, wind-bent. She turned away from it. I will find the way from here, somehow, she thought. Another time, when all will be clear.

  She and Ilario and Annial were very jolly during their last few nights together. Annial told stories of Ilario’s boyhood, then meandered—as ever—to tales of her own youth. The words, the images, so sad—but they sat and laughed. Giddy without desperation. They drank wine as well, even Ilario, who said it usually sickened him. He was flushed and breathlessly loud; Jaele imagined that he was speaking more easily. Annial’s hair slipped out of its pins. She tossed them into the air, and they watched the silver glinting in candlelight and carpet. They all slept in the big front room. Jaele fell asleep to Annial’s voice, stories and songs covering her so that she did not dream.

  One night she woke when the sky was still dark—a deep blue, perhaps close to dawn. She did not move, but Ilario whispered, “Tomorrow, my girl. For you, I think, tomorrow.” She felt ill from the wine and half-sleep. She said nothing.

  When she was certain that Ilario was asleep, she rose and wrapped a cloak around her shoulders. She eased the front door open and stepped outside. There was a moon and a dense ring of stars, and the water lay sparkling smooth. She had brought her pouch and bundle. The dock was slick with dew or rain. She walked slowly and wadded her cloak beneath her when she sat. There was no end to the water—no line or crest or wave to indicate distance. Distance—or depth. She shuddered, remembering the murky black she had never dared to enter. Her lungs not strong enough—and it had been safer diving in her bay, where the seagreen stretched toward watered sunlight.

  Jaele opened her pouch and bundle: fishfolk stone, shell necklace, Murtha’s green rock, twisted black neckring, Bienta’s map, her dagger and brooch. She thought of her almost-companions and looked at their tokens, small and still before her on the glistening wood. The wind was blowing fresh from the east; it stirred in her hair and lifted the corners of her cloak. The smell of it ached in her nostrils, on her skin. “Now. Alone.” Her whispered words echoed with fear and regret.

  Later, the front room was soaked in light. “Ah—Fane in . . . the morning,” Ilario said. Annial held a cup of herb water to his mouth; his lips and tongue could not seem to find it, slithered and sought like a baby’s. Jaele looked away.

  “Almost market time again,” Annial said, “and time to see young Serdic. Perhaps you will want to greet him, Jaele, when he returns?”

  Jaele shifted and felt something thicken in her throat. “No, Annial. I do not think I will. I must leave, today. Ilario knows it—I must go now.” She glanced at him; he was smiling (ghastly lovely skeleton smile).

  Annial said, slowly,
“As you wish, of course—but everyone leaves us, and it is so sad sometimes. We used to sit at the window, Hania and I, and he would walk by and put his fingers against the glass, just lightly.”

  Jaele put her arms around the old woman. Bread and wood and skin like folded paper. Annial held her very tightly. As she let her go, she whispered, “Be safe, child. I am afraid for you.”

  Jaele laughed shakily. “I will be back. I am sure.” Words spaces of wind between her teeth.

  She bent over Ilario and kissed the top of his head. His hair was thin and tasted of salt. “Here,” he hissed, and she felt him pressing her hand. “You may . . . yet need one. A better one.” She looked at the new black writing stick, at his fingers. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Now,” he continued, “be off. About time . . . lingering girl!”

  She laughed—heard it clear around them, a current or a pulse.

  When she pulled the door closed, she did not hear it above the waves. The sunlight had disappeared into seeping cloud; gusts of wind peaked the water and turned it grey. Grey water and air, a smell of brine. Jaele stood and looked at the harbour, just for a moment. She saw the jagged towers and the river’s mouth. The failing boats, the hunched cliffs, missing planks and ooze-slicked stone. Then she began to walk.

  She turned back once and saw the house, which now seemed small and threatened by the sky. She was not sure if there were figures in the window. She lifted her arm, then moved on, slipping among the silent, peeling buildings of Fane.

  THE EASTERN SEA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  There was no one on the coastal road. Jaele followed it until the last houses were winks of colour, bent behind her. After a time she left the road and went down the scrubby slope to the sea; down, the road lost, to waves that roared spray against her body, so cold it clung to her like ice. She sat at the water’s edge, shivering in her cloak. She waited. Annial had given her a speckled sourfruit and an end of bread. She ate, wondering when she might eat again, and what, and thinking that she had not wondered this since she stumbled down to Fane in the autumn.

  She stood once and paced the strip of tumbled rock and dark, clotted sand. A child searching for the marks of Queen Galha’s boats, the print of some other foot. She gazed into the slate distance, thinking, I should be remembering all that has brought me here, but I am empty . . . Ilario, alone in the emptiness, and Annial rocking him like a little boy.

  The massed clouds began to break apart, and there was a flood of burnished evening light. The wind had died as well, and the ocean lay calm. Jaele squinted into the blaze at a place where the water seemed lifted and broken; it smoothed again, but her eyes flickered to another spot. Closer. The sea was rising and falling, splintered by gold. Glint of water and scales, and a long, low hissing, and suddenly a head, rising and rising.

  Jaele resisted the urge to fall to her knees on the sand. She thought, I will not run from this, and held her hands out, trembling. The sea snake uncoiled itself from the waves like a pillar of golden smoke and hovered, huge head angled toward her. She looked up she saw the hard green of its eyes and the scarlet of its three-pronged tongue; then she closed her own eyes. Dorin was right, she thought, the memory swift and vivid, almost calming. He stood beside the Giant’s Club—a little boy—and told me what he would see someday. She waited.

  The sea snake shifted; water churned and foamed onto the sand by Jaele’s feet. She heard the hissing again, high above her. She opened her eyes and saw the shadow of its head as it swept toward her. She felt its breath, hot, moist wind in her hair and on her neck. It lowered its head until it was touching the pouch at her belt. She looked into one small green eye; it blinked as the great nose nudged her twice, gently. She carefully lifted a hand to the pouch and quickly drew it back again. The leather was warm; it was also, she noticed, glowing red. She remembered the fishfolk lake in winter, and the oceanweed-firm hands that had led her down; she remembered her fishfolk stone, trickling light into the murky water.

  The sea snake’s eye widened as she drew out the stone. It blazed in her palm and the light glanced like flame from the golden-scaled head beside her. The sea snake blinked again and rumbled deep in its throat. Its tongue jabbed quickly in and out, just above her head. It rose to its full height and held itself briefly still, stretched against the crimson sky. Then it folded slowly down, so that it lay flat on the sand with its wedge-shaped head at Jaele’s feet.

  A gust of wind twisted her hair across her face. “The fishfolk gave me this stone,” she said, wincing as her voice scraped and leapt. “Do you know them? Will you . . . are you going to take me to them?” The sea snake regarded her steadily, its tongue flickering.

  She returned the shining stone to her pouch and tied her bundle to her belt so that the shape of the dagger rested against her thigh. “I will go with you,” she said, and took a hesitant step. The snake lay still. It did not even move when she grasped one of its upright scales and pulled herself to sit on the flat place behind its head. She watched the darting of its tongue and felt dizzy. When she shifted her gaze, sunset leapt from the golden scales, and she covered her eyes with one hand.

  The sea snake turned slowly, slipping from sand to ocean so smoothly that she hardly felt it. Water parted silently around them. She craned back and saw the rocks of the shore, smaller, smaller, shadows. Everything shrinking except the sea—the sea alight for another breath, and then one soundless crushing plunge away.

  Darkness, they moan, no more darkness, we beg you, and she says, I know how you long for light—but there was darkness, then, and airlessness. I remembered the fishfolk lake and did not struggle. I gripped the sea snake’s scales with my hands and its sides with my legs, and I did not close my eyes, even when fear began to rise like breath in my throat. Perhaps I had been wrong, I thought; perhaps this beast was taking me nowhere, taking me to a place of death—but as I thought this, I saw a light blossoming below us, a glow such as I had never seen, streaming into my eyes and my lungs. I thought again of the winter lake, and it seemed that everything there had been dimmer, smaller—that it had not prepared me for this joy.

  Fishfolk circled and darted and sketched welcome in the water with their long webbed hands. She bubbled at them, attempting to respond with her own heavy fingers, trying to show them her stone at the same time. The sea snake slipped out from under her and surged away; other fish scattered, some changing direction together in a solid silver wall. Fish glowed in gigantic sprays of purple fern, curling tendrils of orange and pink that looked like fur; living rock soared in arches that dripped dark blue moss. She could not see a bottom to anything. Fish and plants and rock suspended in currents of light that were not from any sun.

  Two of the fishfolk beckoned to her and she followed them. She laughed into the water-air, spinning like a child, so quickly that colours blurred.

  The gleaming green largest fishperson was floating in a forest of twisted coral. Jaele swam under an arm of it—vivid yellow—and held herself straight before the creature. Her two fishfolk companions were behind, just visible. They spoke to their leader, who regarded her steadily. A moment of waiting—silence, if there had been clouds and grassy hill—and the she tried to speak as they did, as she had beneath the lake.

  She outlined the spires of Luhr, clumsily, too quickly—but they drew closer to her, held out their hands in understanding, and she continued. The lake country in winter, the fingers of ice, darkness, the fishperson who had gripped her until the light. The fishfolk motioned to each other; she could not follow but knew somehow that they were excited, happy, remembering. When they had finished, she went on more slowly. She did not attempt to describe or repeat the words she had sketched to those others. She did not ask if they had seen a man swimming. She was ashamed of the way she had left the ones under the lake, lashing their hands away in anger; and she knew now that she was alone. She drew the sun, the east, herself swimming, hauling herself up on a shore.

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nbsp; The fishfolk were very still. She cupped her hands so that the water was heavy in her palms. Light eddied over the large fishperson’s body, and its scales pulsed colours she had not seen before. At last it spoke, sketching hands like its own, steel, a queen’s curse. Perhaps a question. She nodded, suddenly afraid. “No—do not,” it said.

  “Yes,” she motioned, and yearned to tell it mother father brother ashes in the words of her own language. After a moment she slashed at her throat, fluttered her hands in a slow spreading of blood, lowered her head. She unwrapped the dagger from the bundle at her belt and held it steady, east.

  There was another silence. At last the large fishperson nodded. “We understand,” it said. “But rest, now, before you go on.”

  The two fishfolk led her back under coral loops to a moss-covered rock screened by violet creepers. She started when she saw eyes, tiny and green, blinking from the vines. But she lay down somehow, the moss so soft that she sighed wreaths of bubbles. The fishfolk were gone. The light dimmed to reddish gold. She thought, Only this morning with Ilario and Annial. She reached for them. He wrinkled his face in pretended reproach as the water spun him gently. Annial’s eyes lit with delight, her grey hair soft as a girl’s around her face and shoulders.

  The tiny eyes were turned to her when she woke. They blinked, stretched, retreated, blinked again. She smiled at them, digging her fingers and toes into the moss. “Farewell,” she motioned as she slipped among them. The purple whispered on her back and legs.

  There was a stand of seagreen below the rock. She picked an armful of strands and wound them around her belt. Not since her bay—she closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the seagreen rising, twining in her hair.

  She had intended to seek out the large fishperson and the sea snake, but they were waiting for her by the coral. She remembered Serani and Bienta, their eyes tender before she could speak. Looking at the sea snake’s slow coiling and the sheen of the fishperson’s scales, the ache returned. Layers of sorrow, rage, fear, parting.