by Patty Jansen
Along the walls hung quilts and knotted tapestries of intricate detail and beauty. There were ornate glass-stone plates with carvings and panels of wood with fine lettering across them. She couldn't imagine that these small children had made these things. The tubes in the ceiling were made from glass-stone and throughout the part of the tube that protruded from the ceiling, there were intricate carving in the surface. Light glowed at the end of the tube and in the carved grooves. These were true works of art.
On the other hand, she could see no books or other teaching material. Maybe this was a school for craft?
"Do they sell any of this produce?" she asked. Mikandra remembered walking past stalls with glass-stone eating bowls and other products for domestic use, all very plain and none as elegant as the tubes. There should be much better markets for this craft.
Bakimay answered the question herself. "We sell at markets. Only some things. Is not for selling. Glass-stone come from here." She held her fist to her chest. "Stay here. Not selling."
"You teach the children to make these things?"
Bakimay gave her a strange look. "Not understand. You want history. I give history. You not see. You think writing is on bits of paper or screens. That's not real writing. Real writing is on things that don't disappear when you turn off."
Now Mikandra saw. The tapestries and the carved glass-stone were not pretty artefacts to decorate the classroom. They were class materials. The quilts and tubes were the Pengali children's books.
"I see. This is the history of the Pengali," she said, nodding at the closest quilt. I consisted of a couple panels of finely embroidered figures with tails.
"Yes, history of Pengali," Bakimay sounded satisfied, as if she had well and truly won the round of the debate. "You come because you want to learn history. So. Learn history. You want hear about Pengali? You listen. Pengali are not like you. You listen to story. You be patient."
She spoke to the teacher, who told all the students to sit in a circle.
Mikandra's stomach made a growling noise. A couple of children giggled. They clearly had sharp ears. She wondered if these children had to go to dinner or something. It was late afternoon and she was getting very hungry herself. But there was no sign that class was about to end.
The teacher asked the pupils to come forward one by one and read off the collection of quilts, tapestries and panels on the walls. Bakimay translated while each child spoke.
The Pengali history began with the tribe living in a village at the bottom of the escarpment until one day, people fell from the sky in a silver machine. They were hungry and lost and the Pengali offered them food and shelter, which they accepted gratefully.
Each night, the visitors would look at a new bright star in the sky and cried until the light faded and the star went back to being its wandering self.
Their silver flying machine wouldn't work again and the people settled on one of the islands in the marsh. The Pengali called these people Akkar. They learned to grow their own food. They built big houses. They taught the Pengali lots of good things. How to cut glass-stone. How to make better boats. How to hunt better. But they had few children. Pengali had lots of children so a few Pengali females went to offer themselves. The next year, there were a few children born with no spots or stripes and very short tails. The children of those children had no tails at all. Some of them came back to the Pengali. There was a brief time when the people interbred freely, then the Pengali went back to being Pengali, the hybrids went to live on the island and the Akkar refugees slowly disappeared.
That was until a year ago.
Bakimay translated the teacher's words. "We knew Anmi was Akkar when she walked out of the forest into Pengali village. Like Akkar, she crashed in a flying machine only her machine land in forest. Like Akkar, she has name written on arm. I saw it. Like Akkar, she has avya. I saw what she could do when Ikay—the tribe's female elder, Bakimay added—taught her. Pengali found Akkar man for her. The Mirani wanted to take her away. Pengali fought them. Mirani are gone now. Akkar is not gone. Akkar lives in all of us. We can put all of us—keihu, Pengali—together and we bring Akkar back because is in our blood. We give Anmi and Daya family." She stuck her chin out as if daring Mikandra to challenge. "Anmi have children. They belong to all of us."
Mikandra had to bite her tongue not to mention who was the father of the young boy. On the other hand, there was no way that these smart people didn't know that already. They just chose to ignore that blot on their favourite queen.
"Where did you learn all these stories?"
"They are written on the walls of the Akkar homes which they dug into the rocks."
"Old paintings?" She thought of the mural in the council building, which was obviously much more recent than the time of the meteorite strike on Asto.
"Carvings in stone. On walls. We copy for children to learn."
"These original carvings are still there? Can I see these caves?"
"No, can't. Pengali and Akkar only. Is sacred."
"Are there any images of the carvings?"
"Paper rubbings only."
* * *
By the time Bakimay and Mikandra came out of the building, a glimmer of blue light hung over the eastern horizon. Mikandra asked if she hadn't disturbed the children's dinners and sleep.
Bakimay snorted. "You strange and stupid. Pengali live at night. Better see in the forest. Too much light hurts eyes."
Damn, like the maramarang, they were nocturnal. Well, that explained a lot.
"How do you manage to work all day and all night?"
"We manage. We work."
She was beginning to build up a healthy respect for these people. Never mind the rich keihu families, these people were the driving force of Barresh.
She went back to the guesthouse for a quick rest and bath.
Mikandra sat in the water thinking about all she had learned. It was a story very different from the one she had expected. The keihu were an artificial race. Like the Coldi, they had been made by the old people from Asto.
Back in the library, she found Bakimay and asked to see these rubbings of the ancient writing.
"You no give up, hah?" A few days ago, that remark would have sounded angry, but no longer.
"I like to study history."
"Come at midday. I show you something better."
Mikandra wondered what "something better" was and when she was going to run into questions from the council about why she wanted to know all this. How about Iztho found out something in Barresh that he wasn't supposed to know, and I want to know what it is? Or I'm looking for data to use against Barresh in the court?
For most of the day, she kept looking over her shoulder, nerves raging in her each time someone came up from behind her.
But nothing happened and at the appointed time, Mikandra arrived at Bakimay's desk.
Bakimay rose without a word and took Mikandra further into the building, down the corridors Mikandra had wandered once or twice, where all the doors were open and rooms empty, the restoration activity already finished but where no one had yet moved in.
Bakimay stopped at a door to the left to hold her hand up to a panel next to a metal sliding door. Lights blinked, the panel showed Bakimay's large-eyed face and the door slid aside. Lights blinked on. Mikandra followed her into a room with an arched entrance which opened into a bare pentagonal space. Pink granite covered the floor, walls and ceilings.
It was rather dark here, with just two lights on the walls. Bakimay's and Mikandra's footsteps echoed in the empty space. No, the walls weren't empty. They were covered in carvings. There were shapes of people and trees and various objects she didn't recognise. Some panels were small, others large, and others again contained only text.
"What is this place?" Even Mikandra's whisper sounded too loud.
"Cannot go to caves, because sacred. Also, far away and not easy to get to. So build caves here."
A replica.
The place smelled of dry stone
and although it wasn't ancient, it smelled ancient.
She stopped in the middle of the room, studying the carved panels on each of the five walls. Damn, she felt like she had been here before.
Of course that was impossible, but she had seen a very similar room.
In Miran, there was a tunnel that ran from the library to a chamber directly underneath the Foundation monument. This chamber had five black marble walls with ancient glyphs, lit with flapping oil lights. It the middle of the room stood a table with a glass-stone panel in which were carved the names and family trees of the Mirani Endri who had first come from the highlands.
After the Foundation monument had been built, there had been a long period of neglect and disrepair, during which the tunnel had fallen in and the citizens of Miran had forgotten about the chamber. It had been rediscovered in her grandfather's lifetime and painfully restored until it was re-opened when Mikandra was little. Important Mirani historians were still working out the meaning of the characters.
These days, every Mirani Endri child went into that chamber once. Mikandra remembered the chill that crept over her in there, the way the teacher's voice echoed. She remembered the flowing look of the glyphs on the walls. She and Liseyo had tried to copy them from memory and had played "old people" for weeks.
The symbols, the style and the characters in this chamber were identical.
"This is the day Akkar arrived." Bakimay pointed at a carving that showed a curious shape half-hidden by marsh reeds and bushes. It was an aircraft of some description, but not one she recognised. Its curious position confirmed the story as told by the children that it had crashed.
In another panel, a number of tall people faced a group of Pengali on the beach. A Pengali man held a bowl which he offered to a tall woman. She was thin, with untidy long hair. Her shoulders were bent. The people behind her were men and women of all ages, some children, some injured with bandages or crutches. The artwork was so detailed that it showed pain in their expressions. In comparison, the Pengali looked magnificent and proud.
The two suns were low on the horizon, and above in the sky blazed a bright star.
Underneath the image was a panel with the elegant curled script.
"You can read what it says?" Mikandra asked, almost whispering in this sacred place.
Bakimay ran her finger along the lines of characters.
"They came because their world was a wasteland. They were hungry and tired. We gave them a home."
The point of view surprised her. "A Pengali wrote this? You used this writing for the Pengali language?" She would have thought that the visitors had written this.
"We change some characters. Pengali has sound that Akkar does not. Our people write this after Akkar came. Wanted to write which people belong in this place." Her eyes met Mikandra's. "So that when other people come, we prove the islands and the coast are ours."
Creating some sort of legal record, even back then.
Mikandra stepped back and studied the carvings.
The panels were better-made and had more pictures than the ones in Miran. Maybe the type of stone lent itself better to carving, or maybe the people here had more peace for craft. Or the forefathers of the Pengali had more skill and cared more about their history.
But the characters they used were the same. In the Mirani version of the carvings, there were no images to help the translation of the ancient language.
Historians assumed that the cave dwellers who were the ancestors of the Endri had always lived on the highlands because there was no indication that it had been otherwise, and no one had ever questioned why this civilisation had started up there.
When you thought about it, those people who lived in caves and grew their food in underground chambers were not suited to the climate, especially compared with the hunters and forefathers of the Nikala who lived in the canyons and had hands with claws that helped them climb to catch food. They lived off fish from the rivers, moss and fungi off the cliffs and maramarang. Some of those tribes still lived there. They were hardened, strong and tough. They were, like the Pengali, an ancient people. The cave-dwellers were far too refined and weak for living like that. Like the refugees depicted on the carving, they were sickly and hungry. Like the visitors who had come to the Pengali, they had used the local people to create a hybrid race. Mirani Nikala had hands with long thumbs and little fingers. They were exceptionally strong in their shoulders. On rare occasions, a child was born with a claw on the pinky.
She asked, "It may be a strange question, but are there ever any keihu babies born with tails?"
Bakimay smiled, showing her carnivorous teeth. "You understand. Yes. That happens. Parents don't like. They cut off before anyone can see."
In Barresh, the hybrid race that was the keihu had won the stakes in wealth and power. The Pengali had reverted to their original form and the visitors had died out or merged completely with the keihu.
In Miran, the hybrid race had become a type of people by themselves, had fought with the visitors, who had responded by closing themselves off and grabbing onto all wealth, power and land they could get, only to find themselves too isolated to survive.
The teacher at the school had said Akkar live in all of us. That was true in Barresh where Aghyrian traits, like the telepathic ability they called avya was equally spread across the population.
In Miran, it hadn't happened that way. The Aghyrian traits had inbred and become stronger. This was why the Endri now had such bad fertility problems. This was why so many people were going mad and were hearing voices, not because they were mad, but because they actually could hear other people. She bet that the menisha fungus had something to do with it, too. She bet it stimulated that ability. Was it a contamination that had ridden on the refugee ship from Asto?
Miran's Endri were pure-blood Aghyrians. This was why they didn't interbreed with anyone else. And this was the secret of the little boy who shouldn't exist. The oldest son of the oldest son was a resurrection of an ancient race.
Bakimay touched her arm. "You all right?" There was genuine concern in her eyes.
"I think so," Mikandra said. But her head pounded and she fought a feeling of dizziness.
At the time of the disaster on Asto, at least two ships must have left in time. One of those ships had come to Barresh. The other had come to Miran. The Mirani Endri were direct descendants of them.
So, if the Barresh council scoured the streets and guesthouses for people with mental abilities, it would be much better for them to use Endri. This was what Iztho had discovered and the Barresh council didn't want anyone else to know.
Bakimay stared at her, and at that moment, Mikandra knew that Daya Ezmi knew, because Bakimay was one of those gifted mindreading Pengali—she could hit herself in the head for not seeing this earlier.
At that moment she knew that her life was forfeit and there was nothing she could do about it.
* * *
Mikandra was still dazed by the time she came back to her work. The book she had been working on lay open on her desk. She sat down and stared at the pages without seeing anything. The columns and figures of the Mirani accounts danced before her eyes. Wherever she turned, there was danger.
She had to get out of here or meet the same fate as Iztho, wherever he was—and the unspeakable answer to that loomed large in her thoughts. Who said he was still alive? Those thugs could easily have killed him. If you wanted to hide a body in Barresh, you only needed to dump it in the marshlands and the fishes would do the rest.
It was simple: Barresh had been sending thugs to guesthouses to round up people with this ability to use them as defence for the Asto-funded stronghold in the city. Think of it: people with telepathic abilities made the best spies. Sharp shooters with the ability to mentally guide their shot never missed. That was how they had defeated the Mirani army.
Weapons of blue fire.
She had seen the "fire" flash across the face of a Pengali woman. Now she understood the position of
the Mirani army and she understood why Nemedor Satarin wanted to ban all foreigners and she understood what Iztho had discovered.
On the Mirani side of the border, what would Nemedor Satarin do when he found out that these scary foreigners also lived in Miran, and worse, occupied most positions in his own government? He was already waging a war against the Traders.
She had to warn Rehan.
What about herself?
It was a couple of weeks before the Academy year started. She needed to keep working until then to have enough money to go—and have the whole thing fall through if the Andrahar court case dragged out. She couldn't go home because she had nowhere to live.
She would be trapped in Barresh under the eyes of people who imprisoned people like her.
What could she do to get herself out of this situation?
* * *
After a night of almost no sleep, Mikandra should have been tired, but at night, the worries exploded in her mind. She also realised with horror that because of her nightly escapades, she had forgotten to go to the Exchange to talk to Rehan that morning. She lay in bed, sweating, cursing herself and staring at the dark ceiling. By the sound of things, there was a party going in the courtyard.
She sat up on the edge of the bed several times thinking to go and join them, but each time she lay back down because she couldn't afford to get involved in trouble. If she went down, she would have to drink. If she drank, the thugs might come, and then next time she found out in which of the old and abandoned buildings the Barresh council hid these people.
She wanted to go to the Exchange to speak to Rehan and couldn't believe that she'd been so stupid to forget him, but she was too scared to go out into the dark streets and it would be the wrong time of day. Rehan wouldn't expect her yet.
When the sky started to turn blue, she had enough. She got up, bathed and dressed and made her way through the near-deserted streets to the Exchange.