Tytiana

by Marc Secchia

  “Thank you.”

  Her helping someone else walk? Novel.

  A snippet of song played in her mind. To her surprise, she realised that for the first time in a year, the darkness which had lain over her spirit, had begun to lift. She was doing something right. At last.

  * * * *

  “Jakani, stop mooning over that egg and come eat your dinner,” ordered his mother.

  “Just turning it, Mom. Twice a day.”

  Isimi giggled in that surprisingly girlish, carefree way she had, a sound that unfailingly elicited smiles from her family. “You never listened to my instructions so diligently.”

  “It’s called superior motivation,” Sokadan put in.

  He felt bereft. Staring moodily into the fire, he said quietly, “Please, Sokadan. Not tonight, alright? Sorry if I’m being a … walking mud puddle over here.” He touched the special pouch he had sewn for an egg that had never hatched, and turned it over for well over the seven hundredth time. How sad. Such a pretty bauble, and so very dead.

  “What’s not tonight?” Mayoko inquired.

  “It’s been a year without word, hasn’t it?” said his father. “You’ve every right to be worried.”

  “Worried about what?” Mayoko said irritably.

  His mother urged, “Come sit down, Jakani. I’ve made a special meat stew tonight.”

  Rain pattered briefly upon their rush roof before being whisked away upon the night’s querulous breeze. The weather was uninspiring, but inside their hut with the hearth fire frugally tended and the doors and shutters firmly closed, the temperature was bearable. Gloomy season. Soaking rains, sludgy paths, stinking mud everywhere, and the withering, seemingly unending series of Dragon attacks that led to almost weekly funerals in their small community.

  How did a man shake depression when it clung to his soul like mists overshadowing an Island?

  “Mmm, meat stew!” Sokadan enthused. “We don’t eat meat stew very often.” Almost never, to be exact. Jakani scratched his stubbly chin thoughtfully. “Must be someone’s birthingday.”

  “Whose?” he puzzled. “Who’ve I forgotten? I can’t have …” He counted quickly on his fingers. “No, it’s Airi’s birthingday next week, right? Five! Wow, big girl. I mean, I know I haven’t been all myself lately, but …”

  Apparently obeying some unseen signal, his family fell about with hoots of laughter.

  He felt his face turn bright, bright red. “Oh. Oh! Mine, of course!”

  “Seventeen. Happy birthingday, son!” yelled his father.

  “We’ve spent all day wondering when you’d wake up,” Sokadan said. “Even Airi kept it secret – aren’t you impressed?”

  “Aye! She’s top-silk.”

  He rushed over to hug his mother and Sokadan, remembering at the last second to temper his strength lest he squeeze too hard, and then the rest of the family crowded around, slapping him upon the back and yelling their congratulations with the traditional lack of decorum. Birthingdays were for silliness. Laughter. Togetherness. And he had been mooching about like a misplaced rain cloud for as long as he could remember. Jakani’s vision blurred. He loved his family with an affection that was so wild and deep and fierce, he felt like a Dragon spreading his wings about his treasure. Mine. MMMM-INNNEE!

  And then in the middle of all that kafuffle, he sensed something he had not felt in a very long time. It was as if an invisible hammer had tapped his heart and soul to create a special resonance that thrilled every iota of his being, seething at the advent of a tall, cloaked figure that materialised just outside a door that now stood ajar; a wild roaring and foaming of magic that pummelled his insides into the molten rock-froth of a blazing volcano. He gaped! Bare toes and a wooden appendage peeked beneath the edge of a deep grey, sodden cloak. Dark jalkwood cane. So pale. Whisper-slim form. Face only quarter-lit by the lamplight, but he knew. Where were her shoes?

  He must be seeing a ghost.

  ‘Father,’ he tried to say, but his throat would not work. He tapped his father on the arm and indicated the doorway.

  “A visitor for you, honoured Sakazi household,” said old man Takodo. “Have fun, kids. She come for a birthingday?”

  “Mine,” Jakani managed to croak at last.

  How? Why? What was wrong – when – and here – staggered by the melody of her beauty – her magic as unattainable as if he grasped for the stars … he could neither think, nor speak, nor move a muscle. Her! It was her. Here! Impossibly.

  “Come in out of the cold! My home is your home, stranger,” Hanzaki said, bowing formally. “I apologise for our raucous … behaviour? Who are …”

  Her fingers rose to that cowl. By skin colour alone, if not by the perfection of her unbroken, faultlessly clean fingernails, the family must have realised she was no lamko. That was what had confused his father.

  Flame threatened to lift his head off his shoulders in a pyre of emotions. Buzzing. Shocked. Afraid … “Shut the door!” Jakani heard himself splutter.

  “Aye. Aye, of course,” she whispered, pushing the wooden door closed behind her – a creak, a groan and a metallic click of the inner door clasp. Then Tytiana slipped the knot at her neck to free her heavy cloak, so sodden with rain it had already created a puddle on their floor, and the wealth of her hair sprang free as if gladdened by the sudden warmth and company, gleaming like flaxen gold shot through with fire in the sallow lamplight.

  The family inhaled as one.

  “You should not – why …” he continued to gasp. Breathe, idiot! If he could only remember how. Then, he recovered himself with a deep and dare he say, gallant bow. “Family, may I present to you the most honourable Tytiana, Chief Assayer and Choice of the House Cyraxana?”

  The silence was brutal: a thick, ravenous beast.

  More roughly, he cried, “Why are you here? Why? You’ve brought great danger upon us! It isn’t safe – not anymore. Not here, most especially not for you.”

  Her throat worked.

  “O Tytiana, where have you been?”

  * * * *

  Tytiana rued the depth of her naïveté. Jakani spoke true. Her mere presence here would see this family hanged, if her father ever found out, but this adventure had just felt so right, so necessary … she could not articulate why, and now that she was present in a place she had imagined so often yet understood in no measure whatsoever, all these dark eyes were wide with shock and terror, and the little girl’s lower lip trembled. What could she say to make up for her thoughtlessness?

  Tytiana whispered, “No-one else knows I’m here. Please. Relax. I’m – I just had to – I just had to see …” That was it! “Jakani, is this your family?”

  Oh! His eyes! They were nothing if not more pellucid than before … she could not look! Myriad golden motes sang to her like the chiming notes of a mighty, unspeakable soul magic! Flustered, she folded her cloak about her arms, and pressed it firmly against her torso as if somehow, she might deny the mesmeric power of his gaze.

  She had been meaning to say something about the state of the arboretum, which she had rushed to the moment she had disembarked from the Dragonship that brought her down from Gemalka. He had kept her plants and worktables in faultless order during her sojourn – bar a few minor mistakes on the pruning and the glaring absence of her lathi-lahrai fenturi variants. She was not meant to be stuttering like a frightened parakeet! Yet here she stood in the wholly unfamiliar environment of a lamko hut, the implications of which hammered reason and rationality into a splintered mess.

  Pull yourself together, you blithering simpleton!

  “Aye. I forget my manners. Sit.” Jakani seemed to lose track of thought as her lips soundlessly formed the word, ‘woof?’ Their old joke. “Uh, would you, o Choice – it’s not quite what you’re accustomed to, I’m sure – but, would you?”

  “Gratefully,” said she. She was exhausted, and had lost her shoes in the morass out there. That would be a strange discovery for someone, one day.

  “B
ut you can’t –”

  “Can’t what? Sup from the same cup as lamko? I am not that same girl who left a year ago.”

  “No.”

  She must, must, must control her temper! Tytiana used a deep bow in turn to try to compose herself and recover some modicum of reason. She had to think her way out of this. Deflect any danger from this family. She must express why, by the very rainbows that graced the skies above, she had trampled every taboo upon Helyon to his door, knowing what the consequences must surely be.

  Did she even know her own reasons?

  “Jaki. The egg.” The tiny girl standing to his right tapped his leg.

  “Not now, sweet pea,” he said. He bowed again. “O Choice Tytiana, I would like to introduce my family. This is my honourable father Hanzaki –”

  “Hai!” The father bowed rigidly. So like Jakani, noble of brow, and prouder of bearing than she had expected.

  “– and my honourable mother Isimi –”

  “Hai!” She bowed from her chair. “I apologise, Choice, if I cannot –”

  “That’s fine. I understand.” Horrible lie. She did not understand, but she ached to. “Please don’t try to get up – oh. I’m sorry, I meant no slight. I’ve just … never …”

  Never seen a cripple like her. Everything within her wanted to weep. Helyon had no beggars, not like Gemalka, because of the stigma associated with their affliction. All the lame and crippled and mentally limited were put to work by the overseers far, far from the House – she knew that. How could she possibly have forgotten? Or was that the convenience of mental elision? She had seen the secret reports in the archives. These were the accursed, the hidden, the despised …

  Tytiana whispered, “I am honoured to meet you, Isimi Sakazi.” If only words could turn a heart inside-out to bare its innards. That would be easier. “Jakani told me you are an amazing woman. Now that I’ve met you at last, I can see why.”

  Did he approve? Please, let Jakani understand!

  He had grown taller and broader in the beam. His bronzed arms, bare to the shoulder, were veined and muscled in a way that bespoke a lifetime of hard labour – but also, they were toned and limber in a manner that suggested he must practice his dancing – cough, cough – daily. He had the looseness of an acrobat and the suppleness of a reticulated python she had seen beside the famous lakes of Gemalka. But the most astonishing aspect of him, which she had not remembered well at all, was his presence. There was his patent physical strength, but she sensed more. Far more. In that small room, he seemed immense, almost overpowering, and every flashing glance of his eyes poured rivers of molten fire up and down her legs, until she knew that sitting immediately was a very good and necessary step.

  “Jaki, eggy …”

  Her eyes flickered to the tiny, dark-haired girl tugging at her brother’s trousers leg. Jakani did not appear to notice.

  “Would you share life with us?” he asked.

  “Uh …”

  His father said, “He means, would you dine with us? If you would, o Choice … if …”

  “I’d be honoured to join your table.” Tytiana smiled thinly. “I doubt I’ll catch anything here save a savour of family life and love I have never enjoyed myself; not since my late mother passed on. Please don’t be afraid, especially you children – I’ve not come for any sinister purpose. I just – I grew up very differently. All I wanted to do was to see, and understand … who you are …”

  Why could she not speak a cogent word?

  As Hanzaki took her cloak and hung it on a wooden peg beside the doorway, and propped her cane next to a similar but plainer trio of canes behind the door, Tytiana tracked Jakani’s introductions around the room. She saw in herself a girl who was so eager to please, it frightened her, yet an unspoken hunger drove her on. She must learn. Understand. Grow.

  Sokadan was nineteen and perched on his knees in a chair similar to their mother’s. Arzan was his younger brother of thirteen summers, and he completed a trio of boyish scamps with their shocks of black hair which had evidently seen neither soap nor brush for a few years. Now Jakani introduced Mayoko and Airi, both of whom were tiny like their mother; dark-haired sparrows with shy smiles and very long, straight black hair. Not one of the family wore shoes. Red dirt encrusted their feet. Their clothing had seen much hard wear and more than a few attempts at stitching and patching. Mayoko was trying to hide a hole beneath her right armpit, and Sokadan’s shirt was threadbare in the sense that there was more bare than thread.

  She did not know whether to take a seat or be offered one, so she hovered, and smiled at the little girls, thinking how dearly she loved her own sisters.

  Mayoko asked suspiciously, “Is your hair real, lady?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “Like real fire?” Mayoko pressed.

  “I’m not sure where it comes from,” Tytiana smiled, “but this is my real colour, aye. Red and gold mixed.”

  Airi breathed, “It’s so booty – um, buttiful?”

  “Beautiful,” Isimi corrected.

  Tytiana thought she had better not chuckle at that exchange.

  There was a sudden rush of seat assignments. Hanzaki insisted she take his chair, the very best chair, to Isimi’s right, and there was some swapping of wooden plates and spoons, and Jakani offered Airi his lap so that she would not be left out, which earned him a slobbery smacker of a kiss on his left ear – he made a face and a big show of wiping it clean – and then plates were passed back to Isimi, who served up with a bent ladle from the battered iron pot on the table. Tytiana realised she had never seen so few dishes on a table in her life. More space than dishes? Wow. She accepted a hunk of dark, flat bread with a gracious nod, and realised that she was probably supposed to eat with just a spoon and use the bread to mop her plate clean. There was no array of silver tines and knives with which to attack different courses.

  Hanzaki pronounced a formal blessing upon the meal, whereupon the younger children fell to with silent savagery that, again, Tytiana had never witnessed around food. She was used to picking from a variety of tastefully prepared delicacies. This mush was some kind of meat and vegetables she didn’t even recognise, but it smelled amazing, and she realised that she was starving, too, after her long walk. Her stump ached. Plenty chafe to deal with on the morrow.

  Just look at Jakani opposite, surreptitiously sneaking extra mouthfuls into Airi’s eager mouth from his own plate! What a good man.

  And she was staring. Tytiana was not used to feeling gauche and ignorant, but she felt that way now. She bent to her bowl, and spooned away hungrily. “It’s good!”

  Isimi brightened. “Really? You must be used to much finer – uh, o Choice of –”

  “You can call me –” A lusty belch from Sokadan across the table caused her to drop her spoon and gasp, “Oh my!”

  The young man blushed furiously. “Ah, sorry o Choice, that’s – it’s a cultural – I forgot, Dad! Sorry! Suffering spiders, I do apologise most profusely.”

  All the nervousness and discomfort inside of her bubbled up in merriment as Tytiana burst into peals of laughter, and then very nearly choked on her food. She wiped her eyes, received a firm thump on the back from Jakani’s mother who was seated to her left, and then spluttered her way through a few more giggles. “Oh dear,” she said. “I hope I’m not supposed to produce one of those.”

  “I dare you,” said Jakani.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Wasn’t the food any good?” he needled.

  “Did you attempt to start growing an actual beard while I was away?” she shot back.

  Even poor Hanzaki, who until this point had still been looking as if he hosted a Dragoness at his table, cracked a broad smile at this sally, and suddenly he looked like a boyishly handsome Jakani. That was disconcerting. Sokadan nearly fell off his chair laughing, while the two younger girls finally stopped staring at her with huge eyes and began to wriggle, giggle and demand attention.

  Jakani, his eyes fully a-twin
kle now, said, “I fully blame my parents for this scraggly goat scruff. We Easterners struggle to grow decent facial hair at the best of times.”

  “Keep trying. Mind you, we do keep many types of fertiliser in the arboretum’s storeroom. Or I could graft in a Sylakian full beard. That’s the bush, the double bush, or –”

  “Ew, no thanks.”

  “Jaki, Jaki, Jaki!” Airi bounded off his knee like a spring released. “The egg! I seen it done big wriggly, I did!”

  “Darling bean, it’s been sitting on the hearth doing nothing for a year.”

  “Oh no, not doing nothing,” Hanzaki advised, daring a broad wink at nobody in particular. “Jakani has been looking after it with great fervour.”

  “Have not!”

  “He polishes it hourly,” Mayoko put in in her serious way.

  “Kisses it every bedtime,” Sokadan added.

  “Jakani very kissy-kissy,” Airi clarified, in case anyone had missed the point.

  “Excuse me! Order in the family, please.”

  * * * *

  Jakani was mildly appalled that his usually decorous family had just fallen apart – well, from the perspective of he whose ears were burning at all the jokes at his expense. Did they not realise the implications of familiarity with the Choice of the House? She was disarmingly … well, amusing, with her aristocratic guard finally breached and her violet eyes dancing at him across the table. Did his mother – oh aye, she did. She knew exactly what was going on inside of him, and deep beneath the merriment, he knew profound shame. How was this in any way honourable behaviour?

  Only, if they denied all. Forever. Hide it deeper than the very depths of the Cloudlands. For she could not possibly feel the same way – could she? He would be the Island-World’s greatest idiot to think so.

  Then why take this fearful risk? Just one brief reference to having changed in a year. Well, even he could see that. She had grown taller. Tytiana stood at least three or four inches taller than he did, now, and if anything she was even more striking and vivacious and beyond any dream of his … he should be furious at her! Yet he could not be.