by Paula Guran
He looked at me with unrevealing eyes. “Strangers often do.”
Not exactly encouraging, but he hadn’t told me that I couldn’t ask. “Why are there so many scribe booths by the shrine?”
“Saves the rest of us from having to learn,” he said. “Myself, anytime I need any of that done, I get my daughter to do it. My late wife was from” – he named the nearest city of any size – “and she insisted on teaching the girl. I put up with it just to get some peace.”
I blinked at the foreignness of this attitude, but just then my stomach complained. Dealing with provincial backwardness was not my affair. I indicated my desire to retire to my room, and the guesthouse keeper gave me the key after reiterating that dinner would be brought up to me.
The food was more than satisfactory. Despite having grown up listening to Ulowen complaints about the native cuisine, I liked it. Even here the rice was not poorly cooked – Kheneirans have an unspeakable contempt for people who cannot produce a decent bowl of rice – and the marinated anchovies, combined with the seasoned sautéed spinach, provided enough counterpoint to satisfy the tongue.
I placed the tray just outside my room when I was done and closed the door. The hour was too late to visit the guesthouse’s bath, so I would attend to that in the morning. Instead, I unfolded the sleeping mat, changed, and lay down.
Sleep came quickly, yet I awoke in the middle of the night gripped by a frantic exhilaration. I paced to the window and opened it. The moon was not visible from this angle, although I knew it would be a waning crescent. Parts of the sky were scarved with cirrus.
Against that dark-light sky, I saw a vast migration: gliders whose size I had trouble gauging, gliders that seemed to silhouette the moon-crescent, soaring to some unguessable destination. I could not tell whether any of them had eyes.
The local migration contests would not begin until the end of the week. But I had to know what was going on. I pulled on my shoes and flung my coat on over my sleeping clothes, then hurried outside. The chill hit me immediately, and I shivered, huffing steam into the air.
A single lantern guttered out, like a stabbed eye, as I made it past the wisteria trees. Moonlight silvered the peaked roofs, the rough stones of the street. I regretted not taking the time to dress more warmly.
I hurried after the gliders. The formation flew in an eerily constant direction. I navigated by them as though they were a sailor’s true-stars. They could have led me into the cavern mouth of a tiger and I wouldn’t have paid heed until it was too late.
The gliders took no notice of me. I might as well have been chasing seed puffs. For all that I hurried, they were soon out of sight. With the cold wind at my back, I continued to run after them, heart hammering, panting from the unaccustomed exertion. My calf cramped. I went down.
I landed badly despite flinging my hands out to catch myself. For a moment I could scarcely breathe. Then, as my palms began to throb, I staggered back to my feet.
I could keep going after the gliders. Not that I expected to catch up to them – it had been ridiculous to think I might. Now that I considered it, the chase might be hopeless, but I could trace their path backwards and figure out where they had come from.
This time I walked. Maybe people with paper cuts on their hands awaited me, people discussing omens and staring into the far haze of night for signs of – what?
I heard the piercing cries of a night-bird, which fell silent as I approached. The insects’ shrill song was almost as tangible as the bite in the air. The towns’ lanterns flickered unnervingly as I passed them.
Perhaps I should have anticipated this, but the path led me to the shrine. Its sharp angles and jutting beams intimidated me even more than they had when there had been a trace of sunlight. I pulled up short despite the twinge in my knees.
Even in the uncertain light, I saw what had changed, where the gliders had come from. None of the eyeless gliders that had been tied to the shrine remained. All the beams were barren, and the cords floated freely in the wind.
I’d never heard of this variant of the ritual. At all the other shrines I’d encountered, you let the elements dissolve the slips of paper to carry the prayers to the small gods of rock and rill and rain. But then, it was naive of me to believe that religious practice was the same throughout the peninsula. In a town where people didn’t even take interest in their own language’s writing, who knew?
The variant should have thrilled me. The idea of prayers flying into the sky had a certain elegance. Yet I remembered the eerie flock of gliders, sailing distances that should have been inconceivable without the guidance of some otherworldly force.
By that point I had finally realized how inadequate my coat was against the cold. I stared up at the shrine and wondered how I could find out more about what was going on.
Perhaps I could insinuate myself into the proceedings. Moved by phantasms of superstition rather than logic, I searched the scribes’ booths. They had left none of their supplies, and it felt sacrilegious to tear a strip from one of the banners.
Then I remembered the letter tucked into my coat. It wasn’t that this was the last memento I had of my mother. I had the silver bracelet, and a butterfly hairpin she had liked. But there’s always something personal about letters, about the vagaries of an individual’s handwriting, the way they write in neat or drifting columns.
I didn’t know how long I stood there, hesitating. But eventually I drew the letter out. The folded sheet was crinkled from the journey it had made with me. I smoothed the paper as best I could, then unfolded it.
It was difficult to read the letter by the scarce moonlight. Still, I knew its contents by heart. A few barren lines: The date and address. Trivialities about the weather, the price of barley, a quick sketch of a cat. Then, the unexpected stab of the pen’s nib into the paper, the splayed streak of ink. I could feel the hole in the paper with my fingertips.
What sudden emotion had overtaken my mother? Had she drafted a new letter and sent that instead? Or had she set this one aside to complete later, pretending the hole didn’t exist?
I punched through the hole with my index finger, enlarging it. I almost expected to feel something as I did so, as though paper had an anatomy of blood and muscle and skin. But no, it was only paper.
Long practice made it easy for me to fold the glider after that. I devised a design that placed the hole at the glider’s “eye,” although I had to jab again so it went all the way through. Silently, I asked my mother’s forgiveness.
It’s only paper, I told myself. It’s only paper.
That was little consolation as I made my way to the shrine and, with trembling hands, knotted a cord through the glider’s eye: my offering.
After that, I returned to the guesthouse. I thought someone might stop me – but no one did.
There’s a game played in Kheneira, the game of falcon-and-sparrows. The Ulowen call it tag. The Kheneiran version involves the following chant (loosely translated):
Falcon, falcon, can’t catch me
Falcon, falcon, one two three
Falcon, falcon, don’t touch my hand
Falcon, falcon, nowhere to land.
In Falcons Crossing, the falcon is blindfolded; and yet the children run fast, run faster, as if the blindfolded child’s outflung arms are tipped with talons.
In ordinary games of falcon-and-sparrows, the children being chased sometimes dart close to the falcon, shouting taunts.
Children in Falcons Crossing learn from the time they can stand that they must run from the falcon, even if the falcon is nowhere near them, even if the falcon shows no interest in them.
I woke early the next day, nerves thrumming. The first thing I did was go to the window and peer outside. The sky had cleared, and the faintest of gray light pearled the horizon.
After folding up the sleeping mat and blankets, and putting them away, I took my bath. No one else occupied the bathhouse, to my relief. Then I ventured to the common room, wondering if anyone
would be up yet. There was one other guest, an older woman, who pointedly ignored me, so I sat away from her.
The guesthouse keeper served me rice porridge with chicken and vegetables. I gulped it down without even seasoning it with soy sauce, and only realized it when I caught the guesthouse keeper studying me with pursed lips.
There was no reason to linger, so I ventured into town. Its people paid little heed to me. Others looked like they, too, must be in Falcons Crossing for the migration, wearing clothes with elaborate knotwork embellishments or embroidered patches, fashions from other parts of the country. A few times I asked about the migrations, but answers were curt, factual. No one took the pride in the event that I had expected. The other outsiders, listening in, seemed just as puzzled, but as a half-Kheneiran I was wary of approaching them for further information. I doubted they knew more than I did, anyway.
I wound up, where else, at the shrine. Even from some distance it dominated the square. Even sitting in a noodle shop several streets away eating lunch, I couldn’t help thinking of its silhouette, the swaying ropes, the punctured eyes. I don’t think I finished the bowl before I stumbled out, drawn to the shrine in spite of myself.
Three of the four scribe booths were occupied, with lines at each. The expressions of the people in line, from a woman with two children pulling at her coat to a stooped older man, bothered me. They didn’t want to be here. I couldn’t identify the emotion I saw on their faces. Fear? Resignation? Stupor? Even the children, while not precisely well behaved, scuffled quietly, without looking directly at the shrine.
The shrine’s beams were already festooned with prayer offerings. I spotted mine with its ragged hole. I selected the least hostile-looking scribe, a tidy woman wearing a shawl of magenta and lilac, and got in line.
By listening in on the scribe’s transactions, I learned what she charged for her services. My mother had left me everything and money wasn’t a concern, but I wondered about the people in front of me.
I noticed something more curious when I peered at the booth: the paper. There was a whole stack of it, weighted with a carnelian seal stone in the shape of a plunging falcon pierced through where its eyes should have been. It wasn’t the quality of the paper that bothered me. Rather, it was that the top sheet appeared as though it had been trimmed out of a book. I wasn’t great at reading upside-down text, but it seemed to describe a stillbirth. (The relevant word vanished beneath the falcon seal.) The upper part of the pile seemed to be the same. Below that the pile became ragged, sheets of different proportions and sizes, not even neatly aligned.
I had expected the scribe to go through the pile in order, but she liked to flick through it and pull out a sheet at random. Each piece of paper had something on it. I caught sight of a poster with a lopsided representation of the East Kheneiran seal, and a doodle of a train in the margin; a letter in hasty script; a shopping list. And more pages out of books.
A horrible suspicion rooted in my mind, and would not be dislodged.
Soon enough my turn came. The scribe’s ledger caught my attention. I knew something of accounting and was surprised that she used the simplest of tally marks. I told myself not to be narrow-minded. If the tally marks worked for her, what was wrong with that?
I had been hoping to glean some clue from the scribe’s handwriting. But as far as I could tell, she didn’t write anything on the paper at all, even though she had an inkstone and water and a brush. The brush’s bristles were unstained, as though they had never seen use. Were they merely for show?
I opened my mouth to ask about the procedure.
The scribe frowned quellingly. She set her brush aside – I approved of the gesture’s fussiness – and lifted her arm to point unerringly at my glider where it dangled from the shrine. “Sunset,” she said. That was all.
I reached for my purse anyway, intending next to ask her about the bird banners, but she was already gesturing toward the next person in line, a man with a broken nose. She caught my eye and said, more emphatically, “Sunset.”
Despite the lack of animus in her voice, I flushed. Still, I couldn’t help asking, “What happens next?”
“The migration,” the man said with distinct impatience. Then he began telling the scribe about his sick younger sister.
I took the hint. I walked a little way from the line and squinted up at the shrine. A child of indeterminate sex was being held up by a broadbacked man so it could tie up a prayer. The knot looked like it wouldn’t last long against a wind of any strength. The man lowered the child but didn’t do anything to secure the knot. The two of them walked away side by side but not hand in hand. Before they turned away, I saw their faces: each held the deadened resignation I was becoming familiar with.
Next I visited the town hall so I could inquire after the fate of the national archives. According to tradition, even the queens and kings of the old realm were not permitted to read the Royal Historians’ chronicles, so that the historians’ objectivity would not be compromised. I doubted the historians had been able to enforce this, but the myth meant something.
After dealing with two older clerks whose lack of interest was palpable, I tracked down an assistant, a woman perhaps a few years younger than I was. She seemed genuinely distressed that she couldn’t answer my questions. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m told there was a lot of confusion during the civil war. The person you would have wanted to ask was—” The name she gave meant nothing to me. There was no reason why it should have, yet I felt a pang of disappointment. “She was in charge of the archives and, as far as anyone knew, she wasn’t terribly interested in the job, but no one else was either. After she passed away, people let them slide into neglect. That’s all I know.”
“Did she worship often at the shrine?” I asked.
She blinked. “I—I think so, yes. She was known for being very devout.”
I told her where I was staying and asked her to send word if she found anything more.
But I already knew I would not hear from her.
I returned to the guesthouse early, stopping at a stationery store on the way to buy some paper just in case. No clues here: just ordinary blank paper. In my frustration, it was tempting to poke holes into one of the sheets, or wad it up, or tear it to shreds. My mother had taught me frugality, however, so I resisted the urge.
The hours until sunset passed half as a blur, half as a crawl. If the guesthouse keeper hadn’t called me to the common room, I would have forgotten to eat. His daughter, whom he introduced perfunctorily, asked several times if I wanted anything specific. I was picking at my food, too jittery to down most of it, and had to keep reassuring her that no, I didn’t want anything else.
After dinner I hurried to the shrine, noting the way people lifted their heads to stare at me. It was a marked difference from the way they had ignored me earlier. Moths flitted around the lanterns, and their shadows danced across my path.
I might as well have taken my time, despite my prickling awareness of the sun’s arc. After a childhood of taunts and ambushes, I had come prepared to fight if I had to. I had imagined that shamans of the high places would await me, or the scribes with their unstained brushes, or a tumult of followers barring me from the shrine.
Instead, the shrine was abandoned, the scribes’ stalls empty, just as before. The banners stirred weakly as the wind gusted around them; that was all.
I had been counting on finding someone here to ask questions of. Even walking the perimeter revealed nothing useful. The buildings in the vicinity were shuttered and showed no sign of occupation, and I would have felt ridiculous pestering the locals by knocking on doors.
I returned my attention to the shrine – specifically, to my own offering. It was no mystery to me. But what of the other offerings? Just what was on all those sheets? Had any of them been written on?
Maybe the fact that nobody was here – nobody I had spotted, anyway – worked in my favor.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I strode
up to the shrine’s lowest beam and snatched at one of the gliders. It floated out of my reach in response to a sudden gust, as if it was shying from my hand.
The lines from that children’s game whispered in my mind:
Falcon, falcon, don’t touch my hand
Falcon, falcon, nowhere to land.
Then I understood. The glider wasn’t a falcon. It was fleeing the falcon.
On the second try I ripped the glider free, destroying its eye. My hands shook as I unfolded it, eager to discover its secrets. For a moment I thought I heard the distant cry of a night bird. Then I laughed at myself: it was the train’s whistle as it approached Falcons Crossing, nothing more.
The train whistled again as I righted the paper and read it. It looked like a recipe for pickled cabbage. Who would ask for a prayer about pickled cabbage? I let the mutilated paper fall. It almost seemed to twitch limply as it did so.
The next glider I harvested was more interesting. Whoever had folded it must have had long experience coaxing old paper into shape, for it was brittle with age. In better light I imagined it would have a yellow tint.
This one was a letter from some soldier to his wife. It spoke of his sergeant’s callous sense of humor, of pranks involving mismatched socks; it asked about their children. It said without saying it outright, I am afraid I will never make it home.
I folded it back up and flung it into the night. It soared onward, finally disappearing from sight. It would fly far, I thought. The letter was full of fear. People run fastest when full of fear. I doubted a sparrow would do any differently, and Falcons Crossing was the falcon’s home.
I pulled my coat more tightly about myself as the wind picked up. The sun was sinking beneath the horizon, like an eye being blotted. I reached for another glider, then another, reading them, then folding them up again and launching them.
When I examined the first – twelve? twenty? – my hunch was right. The scribes hadn’t bothered writing anything at all, despite the trappings of their profession. After that I stopped examining the gliders. I had already figured out that people in Falcons Crossing didn’t trust writing; that they preferred to parasitize documents already in existence.