by Sarah Zettel
“I don’t know,” said Eric before Iron Keeper came back within earshot. “I really don’t.”
They didn’t say another word as they clambered aboard the raft.
Iron Keeper was a good hand with the pole, if a little slow. Aria let the boy keep charge. It was his raft, after all, and the last thing she needed to do right now was tread on anybody’s pride, even if it was only her half-grown nephew. His assurances of the tone of her welcome were very nice to have, and she was sure Reed had a place at the hearth for her and a loaf to spare, fairly sure anyway. Although Reed might be out in the city, since it was late summer. Well, Reed’s husband, Iron Keeper’s father, would do in her place. And Mother should still acknowledge her as long as Aria still had the stones in her hands.
But there were other people in the clan, and who knew what the Skymen and the Teachers had done before the clan had moved out here?
Who knew what they’d done to her children. To her hus…to Nail in the Beam. Iron Keeper didn’t seem sad or upset, which meant…she laid her hand across her pouch. It meant no one might know yet about Trail.
She stopped herself from asking him to hurry it along.
Iron Keeper kept stealing glances at Eric, who stood in the middle of the raft with his hands shoved firmly into his pockets.
“Stop staring, Nephew,” Aria said lightly. “He’s not going to fly away with you watching him.”
Iron Keeper blushed. “Iron didn’t mean…he meant, I, umm…No disrespect, Sar Born.”
Eric nodded gravely. “None seen, Young Man. None seen.”
Garismit’s Eyes, he’s remembered two or three of his manners anyway.
They drifted through groves of Crookers and Droopers and straight-backed evergreens until finally they came out into a channel that had been chopped clear of reeds and saplings. Cabins on supports of bamboo poles squatted above the channel, and everywhere were faces she knew.
“Oy-ai!” called Iron Keeper. “Father!”
Iron Shaper, the smith and clay-baker and the most important man in the clan looked up from his makeshift hearth. Aria raised her hands so he could see her marks. Here was the test. If Iron Shaper didn’t even welcome her…
“Sister!” he bellowed, dropping his tongs into the coals and leaping to his feet.
Aria was on the shore almost before Keeper brought the raft to a halt. Her brother-in-law gathered her up into his ropy smith’s arms and swung her around. “Knew you’d be back! Told the wife, I did. Knew it!”
The world was full of voices, friendly slaps, and her name. Stone in the Wall. Stone in the Wall! Aria. Auntie. Little sister. Hands to clasp, and faces, and laughter. Home, all of it home.
She barely even noticed the ones who stayed in the shadows and the doorways and just watched her.
Then came the special name.
“Mother!”
Aria spun and all at once her arms were full of children. Storm Water, big and burly as an ox for his age, like his father. Roof Beam, wiry little bundle, and tough Hill Shadow and beautiful, beautiful Aienai-Arla. Little Eye. The daughter she’d been afraid she’d never bear, stood strong and solid on her little round legs.
“My own!” She kissed them and hugged them over and over. “Oh, my own! My own!”
“Stone in the Wall.”
Aria looked up and knew what she’d see.
Nail in the Beam. Nameless Powers preserve me. Aria swallowed. So many memories came with seeing his square face and thick, work-toughened body. They’d grown up side by side. There’d been no surprise at all when her parents had marched her to the Temple to meet him and his parents there. He’d built their house, she’d built their stove and laid out their mats. They’d fought over this thing and that, when she’d been home. They’d even blackened each other’s eyes, but he’d cradled her head through seven births and listened in silence when she told him what truth she knew about the namestones. He’d had other women, and she’d had other men, but the children had all been his, no matter what the Teacher had said.
“You said you might not be back.” His voice hadn’t changed. It grumbled like thunder in the distance.
“I was wrong. Nothing new in that, you’d say, I know.”
“If you weren’t always speaking for me, I would.”
They stared at each other. Aria found her throat had closed up tight.
Her silence made Nail shift his weight. “Your place is elsewhere than my home. Your blood will be no more part of mine.”
The words of divorce and disinheritance.
“It’s better this way.” She said it. She knew it was true, but for a long, aching moment, she wished it wasn’t.
“These are my wife’s children,” he said.
Oh, no. It’s only been six months…"Who?” she croaked.
“Branch in the River.”
Of course. She bowed her head. After her family and the smith’s, Branch was the loudest voice in the village. Nail wasn’t one to give up rank if he could help it.
“No!” howled Little Eye, clutching Aria’s pant leg. “Mother!”
No! Aria wanted to howl, too. These are mine! But Nail had stayed while she had gone. She had broken the law, been cursed by the Teachers, committed heresy, oh, her list of crimes was a long one. She had lost the right to her children before she had even gone over the World’s Wall.
Better this way. There was still so much to do. She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t be their mother. Couldn’t ever be. She’d known that when she left. Known that for a long time.
“Come home, children,” said Nail. His voice didn’t change. It was level and grumbling, like nothing was ever quite good enough. Nameless Powers, how that endless discontented note had driven her so crazy, even after she’d learned to read it like the signs in the weather.
She could read it now. What he really meant to say was that he also wished it wasn’t better this way.
“No!” wailed Little Eye.
“Shush.” Aria laid a hand on her daughter’s…Branch’s daughter’s shoulder. “Your father is right,” she said. “Go home now, all of you, or do you want to look like a bunch of disobedient oxen in front of everybody? Go on.”
One by one, they left her side, and the comfort of coming home left with them. Storm Water kept his steady gaze on her the whole time while he scooped Little Eye into his arms easily. Nail put his back to her and marshaled them all through the houses and the weeds until she couldn’t see them anymore.
“Everyone knows whose children they are,” said Shaper at her side.
“They are Nail in the Beam’s and Branch in the River’s,” she answered him. “Which house is my mother’s, Shaper? She’s sure to have heard the ruckus.”
“She’s with Cups and Torch.” He pointed toward one of the cabins farther up the rise.
“You’ll want to see her alone.” Eric’s voice almost jumped her out of her skin. She’d forgotten he was there at all.
“Shaper, this is Eric Born. Eric to you. He’s a Skyman and I’m vouchsafing him. Give him a spot by the fire, will you?” She spread her hands and her voice wobbled. “I’ve got nowhere to welcome him to.”
“You’re welcome, Skyman, in my sister’s name, my wife’s, and mine.” Shaper held out his hand. Eric stared at the scars for a moment and then shook it. Shaper glanced at Eric’s gloves, and then at Aria.
“He’s embarrassed, Shaper. Skymen have no hand marks, and he think’s it’ll wound his dignity if everyone sees him naked as a baby.” She was tired, something inside her ached horribly, and she still had to face Mother. “Just take care of him, will you?”
She pressed through the bamboo until the cabin came into sight. It was no different from the others with its wicker walls, thatch roof, clay chinking, and bamboo legs. In the doorway hunched her mother, Eyes Above the Walls. She was wrinkled, mostly blind, and bent in as many different ways as a Crooker tree. She could barely walk without help. The joke among the clan was that the Nameless Powers had forgotten her
name and couldn’t call her away to die, so she just lived on.
“Hello, Mother.” Aria crouched down beside the stoop.
“Thought I heard your voice,” Eyes Above said. Her own voice creaked like tree branches in the wind. “Well?”
“I…well, what, Mother?”
“Are they still with you?” she said impatiently.
“Yes.” I should have known.
Eyes Above leaned forward eagerly. “And still answer you? Still alive in your hands, are they?”
“Yes.”
She let out a long sigh. “Then welcome home, Daughter.”
Relief washed over Aria. She gripped her mother’s wrinkled hands and felt the strength that was still in them as Eyes Above squeezed her in greeting. “I wasn’t sure…”
“Well, you should have been.” Eyes Above let go of her hand. “As long as the stones stay alive for you, then you are working the will of the Nameless, no matter what the Teachers say. The stones would not permit themselves to be used for the Aunorante Sangh. And as long as you serve the Nameless, you are my daughter.”
Aria shook her head. Eyes Above’s faith was as solid as the World’s Wall and as all encompassing. There was no shaking it or getting around it. Even if Aria had the words to explain all the new things she had learned about the nature of the Realm and the Nameless, Mother would just become selectively idiotic. She might hear, she might even comprehend, but it would all roll off her like water off oiled skin.
“The Aunorante Sangh have come, Daughter,” Eyes Above said. “They are masquerading as the Nameless and the fools in the upper ranks and the Temples are falling at their feet.”
Aria listened with growing horror as her mother described the arrival of the Rhudolant Vitae.
“Nameless Powers preserve me,” Aria whispered. “I didn’t think they’d come down like that. I thought they’d be taken for the Aunorante Sangh.” Her tired shoulders slumped. “I didn’t think we’d have to take on the Temples and First City with them!”
Eyes Above patted her hand. “Now then, Daughter, it’s never too late. We only need to wait for the Nameless to send their Servant to us, as they did to our ancestress.”
Aria bit her lip and debated about whether to speak the thought she’d kept from Eric. It wouldn’t actually be lying. Mother saw everything in terms of the Words anyway, and it was absurdly appropriate.
Besides, in the bizarre twisted logic of this time, when the Words were turning into reality, it might even be true.
But may the Servant forbid he ever find out that I said it.
“Mother, your daughter thinks they already have.” As best she could, she explained about Eric Born.
Mother drank it all in, rearranged it to suit, and nodded. “Yes. Yes. It is so. Well then, you must be guided by him.”
Well, I don’t know if I’ll go that far.
Then Aria bowed her head and rubbed the backs of her hands.
“Mother,” she said. “What…where’s Trail?”
“I sent her to the Skymen,” Mother told her. “We were hoping she could find you.” Her blind eyes gazed across the marsh. “She will not be pleased that you came home before she did.”
Aria fumbled with the mouth of her pouch and, trembling, pressed Trail’s namestone into her mother’s hand. Eyes Above ran her fingers around the edges and, with each motion, the lines in her face deepened a little farther.
In halting phrases, Aria told her how they had found it.
“Stone in the Wall dena Aria Born of the Black Wall,” said Mother. “I lay on you this charge. You will find out how your sister lost her name.”
“Mother…I don’t know if I can…”
“You will,” Eyes Above said firmly. “I must know whether I can still call Broken Trail dena Rift in the Clouds my daughter.”
“Mother!” cried Aria. “Trail is probably dead! Our home is being invaded by Skymen who want to use our children, our CHILDREN, as experiments or livestock and all you care about is did Trail hold to the Words when they killed her!”
“You speak as if this was a small thing. Does my daughter doubt her place?”
Yes! Yes, I doubt! I’ve seen beyond the World’s Wall! I’ve heard the words of the Skymen! There’s so much else out there! It can’t matter that much how Trail died! It can’t!
“No, Mother.” Aria stood up and climbed down the ladder. “Your daughter does not doubt.”
“My daughter should get some rest for herself,” said Mother. “She is weary from her service, and more will be required of her.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Aria turned away and shouldered her way through the bamboo, so lost in thought, she didn’t even see the form that blocked her path.
“Stone in the Wall.”
She looked up automatically. Branch in the River stood foursquare on the path in front of her, folding her skinny arms across her bosom and glowering.
“Good greeting, Cousin,” said Aria wearily. Please get out of my way, woman. I don’t have any patience left.
“I have no greeting for you,” Branch said darkly. “How dare you try to claim my children? And in front of the clan? I should have your namestones and your head for this insult!”
Aria turned her face away. “I have tried to claim nothing. Ask anyone.”
“Then why do my children cry that their real mother has returned?” Branch shouted. “You are not their mother! You are childless and without husband! You are nothing! I am the wife of Nail in the Beam and the mother of four living children! You would be thief of mine! You will give me apology! You will do it now, in daylight!”
Aria’s hand cracked across Branch’s cheek before she could even think to stop it.
“You dare call me thief!” Aria cried. “You are the one who stole from me! Stole my husband, stole my children! You barren, useless, bloodless…” She couldn’t see. She couldn’t think. Anger roared through her mind blocking out everything else. Let the whole clan hear, she didn’t care. “You are unfit to have even a Notouch’s scars on your cold hands!”
Aria marched past Branch, blundering through the Crookers, blind as her mother. She fell against the corner of a house and slid into the mud.
A man’s hands caught her. She still couldn’t see, but with a shock, she recognized the touch. Eric Born raised her to her feet. “Come on, Aria,” he said in the Skymen’s own language. “You’ve gone too far today.”
No, her mind whispered. I haven’t gone anywhere near far enough.
Branch watched the Skyman and Iron Shaper lead Stone in the Wall away. Her cheek stung painfully from the blow.
There was no end to the woman’s heresy. Her family held a set of shiny baubles to which they had no right, and so all the clan bowed and scraped to them as if they were Kings. Branch had married Nail in the Beam in front of the Teachers and the Nameless, and all four of the children had become her own blood, but still people whispered behind her back and gave ground grudgingly when she spoke. She was the mother of four children! Four healthy children! But because she didn’t hold those pretty stones, because she was not Aria Born of the Black Wall with her heresies and her idiocies, she was not heeded.
Now the Skymen had taken over Narroways and the Nameless only knew what they would do next. Surely they’d come to claim their own. Who knew what damage this woman, this heretic, could do if she were allowed to remain here, ruling over her bamboo and clay city? Who knew what it would mean to the children?
But if she were returned to her masters, they might be grateful. They might even be lenient. They were the power now, until the Nameless came. Branch touched the backs of her hands. There was less risk with Stone in the Wall in their hands than there was with her among the clan. Less risk to the children, certainly.
Branch drew the laces on her poncho closed and sighted along the Walls toward Narroways.
The Skymen will take Stone in the Wall away again, and this time they will not give her back. This time my children will remain my chi
ldren.
15—Section five, Division one, The Home Ground, Hour 09:15:25, Planet Time
“It may be that we do not live to see the end of this, and it may be we should pity our children who do.”
—Fragment from “The Beginning of the Flight,” from the Rhudolant Vitae private history Archives
“Coming up on Division One,” said Security Chief Panair from his station at the transport’s controls.
Avir felt an unexpected surge of relief at the announcement. They could not be more than twenty minutes from the base. When they arrived, she would be able to report what they had found under the Unifier dome to the Assembly and get orders on what to do with their prisoner. She’d also be able to get out of her pressure suit. Her helmet and gloves lay on the seat beside her, but the suit itself had been designed more for protection and efficiency than comfort. She had to remind herself that she could not squirm in front of even Ivale, let alone the Unifier. The Security Beholden all remained sealed and helmeted. She had no idea how they stood it. Probably professional discipline combined with the fact that Chief Panair was there to watch them. She could imagine the three Beholden left behind to guard the Unifier base stripping off their helmets and rubbing their necks vigorously.
Bio-tech Nal did not show any sign of having heard Panair. Avir suspected that, like her, he was fighting unaccustomed fatigue. It had been fifteen hours since either of them had slept, but Nal would not leave the artifact in the transport’s emergency support capsule without his trained supervision. Avir herself would not be seen to have less diligence or endurance than one of her Beholden.
“Act at all times as if there were a Witness with you,” her Assembly representative had told her. “There are not enough to cover all the landing sites, but new ones are being assigned as we speak.”
So Avir sat bolt upright in the rear set of seats watching Nal transfer the readings from the artifact’s capsule into a portable terminal. Broken Trail struggled randomly against the restraints. Nal had decided against sedating it. Its delusional state was obviously so deep, he said, that it could not be further panicked by confinement to the capsule. He appeared to be correct. Every few minutes its head would twitch to one side, as if it had just seen a glimpse of something, and sometimes its hand would strain to reach out, but it made no concentrated effort to remove the oxygen mask or to dislodge the needles pressing into its arms. Consequently, the Bio-tech spent the journey gathering valuable baseline data on the artifact’s physiological attributes.