The Moons of Barsk

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  The Prairie Dog nodded. “Until soon.”

  With a mental twitch, Jorl let the scene in Welv’s office dissolve. The nefshon constructs of both person and place unraveled, faded, dispersed.

  * * *

  HE stood in his kitchen, the doors to several cupboards flung wide. Bins half full of several different kinds of leaves—some fresh and supple, others dry and crisp—lay before him. Holding a large wooden bowl in one hand, he scooped and sampled with his other hand and trunk, adding an assortment of grasses as well. Next, from the pantry, he acquired three different varieties of plels, transferred them to a cutting board, and with a paring knife neatly sliced them into thin wedges before placing them in his bowl. To these he added an assortment of chopped nuts common to the islands of his archipelago, as well as a much smaller sampling of spiced nahlet nuts, imported at considerable expense from Sworrub, a mixed world with a predominantly Marmo population. Satisfied at last with the variety and proportions of ingredients, Jorl took up a pair of broad forks and gave the mixture a vigorous tossing. His lunch prepared, he carried the bowl into his study, settled into his favorite chair, and opened a book he’d been reading earlier. His trunk moved from the bowl to his mouth.

  He’d barely begun eating when a trio of swift knocks at his front door made him set his bowl aside. He finished chewing what was in his mouth as he crossed to the door, and swallowed as he flung it wide. On his doorstep stood a young girl, barely five years old, dressed in a simple shift of bright yellow, a crudely fashioned crown of flowers sitting between her ears. With a swift motion he bent, scooped her up, and twirled her around into the air. The little girl squealed with delight and proclaimed, “Daddy!”

  “Hello, little twig. I wasn’t expecting you today.” He did a slow, spinning dance, swinging her by her outstretched arms until he’d spiraled back into the kitchen, and plopped her onto the counter. “Did you come to join me for lunch?”

  Rina’s laughter filled the kitchen and she whipped her trunk side to side in answer. “Mommy said I was reading too much and needed to get out.” She pouted to show her displeasure with the judgment.

  A love of the written word was hardly the thing most parents lost sleep over, but in fairness to the child’s mother, Rina’s knack for literacy had emerged early. And because Dabni lived with Tolta and lacked access to a traditional family home with the attendant playmates and child minders, she’d perforce taken her daughter to her bookshop most days. At an age when Jorl had been playing tag, and seek-me, and capture-the-melon with as many as twenty other youths and running wild throughout his boyhood home, Rina had a tiny table in a corner of the bookshop where she held tea parties for her rag doll, Kokab, and read to it, initially from picture books but more recently from texts that would have challenged someone twice her age. Now that she was old enough, she took classes and had playdates with other children in the neighborhood, but even so each day would see her in her spot in the shop, a stack of books close at hand.

  Jorl snatched a mouthful of salad with his trunk, chewed thoughtfully, and said, “Did you come to see me thinking I would overrule your mother?”

  Her eyes widened and then Rina looked away, perhaps startled that her father had seen through her clever plan so quickly. He bit back a smile at the attempted manipulation, confident and dreading that her skill would improve with age and more compelling issues.

  “That’s not going to happen. Your mother has say when it comes to how you spend your time. No, don’t give me that look, we’re not ganging up on you. You won’t find two people in all of Keslo who are as happy as we are that you like reading so much. But balance is important, too. Your books will be waiting for you when you get back. Okay?”

  A mumbled “okay” reached him as he helped himself to more of his lunch. If she wanted to stew, he’d let her. He’d nearly finished the salad when she finally lifted her head and asked, “Daddy? Can you help me find a book?”

  “Of course, but your mother has better access. Did you ask her?”

  Rina shook her head. “I was going to, but she sent me away before I could. And … it’s not for me.”

  “One of your friends from school?”

  She shook her head again, exaggerating the gesture so that her ears flapped wildly. “No, it’s for Kokab.”

  “Indeed?” Jorl grinned. “And is Kokab taking a more active interest in reading? I thought he was content to be the audience.”

  “Daddy!”

  Jorl raised both hands and trunk, protesting his innocence. “Sorry, I’ve never seen him hold up a book, let alone read one.”

  “You’re being silly. Kokab’s a doll. He can’t read.”

  “Of course, I’d forgotten.

  “So when he wants something specific, he asks me, and I get it, and read it to him.”

  “Riiiight. And what does Kokab want now?”

  Rina scrunched up her mouth and eyes. It was a face she tended to make when she was concentrating or trying to remember something. Jorl hoped she’d outgrow it. “I don’t know the word. It’s a science-y word. Something about alleys and eels. Does that sound right?”

  “Alley eels?”

  “Yeah? Maybe?”

  Jorl rolled the sounds around in his mouth for something that came close and might be glossed as “science-y” by his daughter. “Did you mean: alleles?”

  “Uh huh. That’s it. I need a book about al-eels. Alleles.”

  He frowned. “You’re very smart, honey, but that’s still a bit out of your reach. Who’s been talking to you about genetics?”

  “Kokab.”

  “Right. Anyone else?”

  “No, Daddy. Just Kokab. He says it’s important stuff that I’ll want to know all about someday.”

  He turned away, pretending to busy himself with cleaning his salad bowl to hide his frown. Many children had imaginary friends at that age; he himself had enjoyed long chats with a magical creature named Frilbo who had generously taken the blame for any number of broken bits of crockery, before he’d met Arlo and the pair took turns blaming each other for their misdeeds. But Arlo had long since died and his son, Pizlo, heard voices that, while perhaps imaginary were nonetheless prescient. And Rina’s imaginary friend asking for books on genetics was a bit different than her reporting that he liked his tea without sugar.

  “Well … Kokab may well be right, but that’s a long way off. And I’m sure he didn’t just volunteer that opinion out of nowhere. Do you know what prompted it?”

  “We heard Mommy talking to a customer about it. He said his brother works at a fish farm, and they’re taking some of the kinds of fish that everyone likes and making changes to some of their … alleles? Yes, those things, and getting bigger fish that way.”

  Jorl sighed with relief. His daughter’s clever imagination had simply taken something she’d overheard and run away with it, and much like he might have done with Frilbo, she’d made sure to stick Kokab with the blame, should there be any blame to stick. He paused, flashing back on Welv’s words about his own idle fancy. For a moment he was tempted to ask his daughter to ask her doll for a solution. The moment passed, leaving behind a wry smile. Rina sat looking at him, waiting for him to speak.

  “Do you think you might like a career at a fishery when you grow?”

  “No. We had a field trip to a fish farm two seasons ago. I liked it and had fun, but Kokab says I’ll study other things.”

  “That’s very very true, your teachers will introduce you to a wide world of topics. And you have plenty of time, don’t you?”

  “Uh huh!”

  “Good. I’m glad you see that. Because we’re going to put that book on alleles and all that kind of stuff off for a while.” Rina’s face began to cloud over with disappointment, and he hurried on. “But … your mother’s advice about getting out more applies to me, too. I’ve been cooped up working too much. Why don’t we have an outing together?”

  “Really?! Where?”

  “Well … if we hurry, I bet we c
an get to Suliv’s before they run out of toffee. If you think it’ll be okay with your mother for you to have some sweets before dinner.”

  Rina’s head bobbled with agreement. “Oh, sure. That’s fine. She said I needed air. Suliv’s has air, so that’s fine.”

  “Then that’s the plan.” He scooped her up from the counter, tucking her under one arm like a sack of leaves, which set her to giggling again. He crossed to his apartment’s rear door which led more directly to a stair that would in turn take them to Suliv’s grocery and sundry shop, setting her on her feet as they stepped outside.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, little twig?”

  “Can we get an extra sweet? For Kokab?”

  Jorl’s grin brought to mind treats he’d wheedled for Frilbo so many years ago. “Of course we can.”

  THIRTEEN

  INSCRIBED IN PAIN

  EIGHT hundred years ago, Margda had tattooed the first aleph on her forehead. Next she created a council to travel from the far end of the eastern archipelago all the way to the most distant end of the western one. Although they never took anything like a direct path, they visited each and every island along the way. The number of councilors changed from time to time, never fewer than three nor more than eight. They were always welcomed when they entered the harbor of any island, always housed in luxury guest quarters in every Civilized Wood. The precise timing of their arrival was likewise always secret, but once they docked word of their presence quickly spread. How could it not? Still, the residents prided themselves on not letting the news leave their shores until the council themselves did, and in this way people only knew where they’d been, and never where they were or where they were going.

  The pattern of such a visit remained unchanged since the first. The councilors met with each island’s leaders, scholars, scientists, and artists, usually over a huge feast that moved from home to home and featured local dishes and local intoxicants. The following day, the councilors split up and went to speak and drink with the three oldest male Lox and three oldest male Eleph on each island. Next they went in two groups to the oldest female household and the largest. The topic of conversation was always the same: was there someone worthy of the aleph among them?

  Every Fant knew what the council sought, not the best or most skilled, but the combination of three unusual abilities, talents, and experiences. Rarity defined such individuals. Only fifty-seven other Fant had been marked, two in Pizlo’s own meager lifetime, Jorl soon after he’d returned to assist in burying Pizlo’s father, and three seasons ago a fishwife from nearby Gumti. She had been ranked as a grandmaster in seventeen different boardgames since childhood, had improved on what had been universally acknowledged as the perfect recipe for cribble wine, and could recognize the prophetic dreams of others when they occurred.

  Common sense decried the likelihood of another choice so soon, but the leaders of each Civilized Wood took the council’s visit with optimistic sincerity. History indicated and every iteration of the council confirmed that if potential existed it would emerge by consensus of the island’s populace. A mayor might point out a promising gymnast. An aged Lox would identify an amazing chef. Some aunt in the island’s largest house would grudgingly mention a new mother who had given birth to healthy and beautiful triplets. A renowned limner would mention a mathematical prodigy. And so on. The council members would then come together and validate the claims, eliminating any individual who lacked endorsements in at least three areas. Next, via a series of ever more probing interviews, they separated out the merely special from the truly exceptional.

  The council could manage two islands in a tenday. They were picky. They were fastidious. They were jaded. The most recent pair of recipients notwithstanding, decades usually passed without a council identifying a new Bearer. But as with each of those fifty-seven that followed Margda, when the council agreed on a candidate they marked them with the aleph. The proud moment took place in the largest community space that Civilized Wood possessed. Local poets would write songs of the event. Wordsmiths would compose novels and plays, penning ever more absurd fictions about the new Bearer’s history. Historians would craft detailed monographs describing every facet of the marking ceremony. And even though all in attendance could tell you every step of what was about to occur, they all nonetheless held their breaths as it happened in the flesh before their eyes. The candidate would step forward, dressed in their finest garb, approach a raised dais upon which stood the island’s leaders and a single member of the council. The candidate knelt and the council member would write the mark of passage onto the forehead, a permanent tattoo inscribed using a proprietary, glowing ink of Margda’s own invention.

  Pizlo wanted that ink.

  He didn’t want an aleph. The council wasn’t ever going to give him one, no matter what astonishing things he’d already accomplished, like being an abomination and still alive after fourteen years, or making his way alone up to the planet’s space station, or swiping the ring of office from a senior senator only one other person in the entire galaxy could remember, or hearing the voices of clouds and trees and waves. Pizlo lacked sufficient advocates who might offer up his name, and it was a certainty that the council themselves were never going to interview him. No, he’d never get an aleph, but that was fine. He possessed moons.

  He’d been drawing them on his chest ever since his trip up the beanstalk to the edge of space, a series of seven circles, one for each of the planet’s moons. And one by one he had filled in each circle after gazing upon and communing with each particular moon. Given Barsk’s near constant rain and clouds, and because most Fant spent their time deep in the tree cover of their island’s Civilized Wood, a Fant could go his entire life without seeing any moons at all. Experiencing even one was rare, and carried bragging rights at most drinking establishments.

  Pizlo had spoken with all seven. And as he had learned from the Archetype of Man, if he was the hero of his own life it followed that he needed a quest, something fresh and important that was his alone to accomplish. That morning he’d retrieved the recording amulet Druz had given him and fastened it about his neck. He stood now, on a small platform high up in the canopy, the same research station where years before Arlo had set himself aflame and jumped to his death. Pizlo gazed down into the shaft that defined the last journey his father had taken. He activated the amulet and spoke into the darkness.

  “I have decided. It is time, no, it’s past time, that I stopped inking the moons on my chest. I suppose I could tattoo them myself with traditional dyes, but then there’d be no quest. So, instead, I vow to seek out the council that awards the Aleph and whether by persuasion, trickery, or theft—all celebrated practices of heroes throughout the ages—to obtain the very same ink they use to mark someone as an Aleph-Bearer. This recording is the proof of my decision. Let those who eventually tell my story take note. This was the day I began my quest.”

  Being resolved to a course of action both thrilled and frightened him. His quest would produce an imram, sailing from island to island, like no other abomination on Barsk had ever done in pursuit of the council. That was the trick. Though they visited every island in both archipelagos, they did so without concern for convenience or pragmatism. Within any pair of seasons they usually stayed within either the western or eastern island chains, but they might visit adjacent islands in rapid succession or just as likely pass by ten before opting to go to shore at the eleventh. Currently they were still near, in the western chain. It was common knowledge that they’d been to both Telba and Kelpry this season, going to one and then the other, though a third of the archipelago lay between them.

  He knew where they were now. The sky had told him the council was nearing the end of their visit on the island of Senjo, far to the south. But they’d move on to another island before he could reach Senjo and that destination was hidden from him. If the council hadn’t yet decided themselves, the future was not fixed. They hadn’t made a choice. That fit Pizlo’s new understand
ing of the ongoing battle between determinism and agency. Though it put an added burden on him, he found comfort in it as well.

  He planned to start by sailing south, until such time as the world revealed where the council had landed. Then he’d adjust his course for that new island. If they left before he arrived, he’d repeat the process however many times was required. Eventually he would catch them, walk ashore where no one but that island’s residents knew them to be, and acquire their ink to create his moons. It was a quest that only he had the ability to pursue, and one that would only benefit him. The quest for moons.

  * * *

  YEARS before, Pizlo had walked into a shop and “acquired” an inflatable boat which he’d rowed all the way to Zlorka. That had been his first time off Keslo and while his gifts kept him on course and helped him to learn how to handle the boat, in hindsight he’d come close to permanently ruining his hands. This time he needed to travel smarter, and Jorl’s boat waited in the harbor. One could, in theory, consider that an invitation of sorts. And it wasn’t as though Jorl would mind, he hardly ever used the boat, mostly just to sail out to meet with Druz when she visited. He’d make a point of asking the boat, but couldn’t imagine it wouldn’t want to set off on a trip. That’s what boats were for, right?

  Avoiding the attention of dock workers and harbor staff was a familiar game, and it took only a short while for Pizlo to secret himself aboard Jorl’s boat. Freeing its mooring lines without anyone seeing him do so required a bit longer. Then he fired up the engine, eased the boat from its slip, and set a course for Senjo. Fewer vessels moved through the harbor during flood, and fewer still sailed to and from nearby islands, but that presented no problems. The limited visibility imposed by the constant rain and the shadows cast within the wheelhouse ensured that all anyone saw of him was the outline of a Fant and not the pale skin of Keslo’s resident abomination.