Copyright © 2019 by Suanne Laqueur
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or trans-mitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Suanne Laqueur/Cathedral Rock Press Somers, New York www.suannelaqueurwrites.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to busi-nesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover Design Art by Tracy Kopsachilis
Book Design by Ampersand Book Interiors LLC
The Voyages of Trueblood Cay/ Suanne Laqueur. — 1st ed.
Table of Contents
Map
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraphs
Prologue
Part One: Solos
The Story
Nye
Top of the World
Memory
Ones Who Were There
The Kepten And The Kheiron
Rafil
Fly For No Man
The Sisters
Part Two: Lunos, Goddess of the Moon
Down...There
Gelang
Everything Good In The World
Monster
Ĝemelos
The Truth
The Ancient Scent of Nye
Where A Hard Man Could Go
Waking Up
Murder
Part Three: Wrevos, God of Wisdom
The Charm of Finches
Nine-Day Vigil
My Brave One
Facing the Same Way
My Soul's Teeth
Good To Be Home
The Finches
The Little Wharf Rat
This For That
Part Four: Velos, Fertility and Harvest
Showing Off
Naria
The Corner of My Eye
While I'm Gone
As My Father Taught Me
Belmiro
Herd Mentality
Someone's Gelangos
The Truviad
Part Five: Meros, God of War
An Indiscreet Question
I Promised A Child
Honor
The Rest of His Days
Willing
The Boundary
In My Bed By Choice
Fatherless Son
Between Two Columns
Part Six: Nyos, Goddess of Love
Aboard
The Motion That Bothers You
Filled With Silver in the Dark
His Brother's Heart
Where I Can't Find You
One Word and Its Sequel
Me's Just Saying
A Young Leader
His Story Read Aloud
Alive Somewhere
Anything Between Us
Part Seven: Truvos, The Sea God
Among the Stars and Skies
Worthy of Love
Coming Off the Kheiron
Strap Over the Spoon
Future Horsefolk
All My Best Men
Pies in the Oven
Our Favorite Bedtime Story
Old Enough to Know
Speak Your Name
A Whisper Apart
Later
Part Eight: Helos, Birth & Death
Bring Her Down
Dead Calm
Something You Hold Dear
In Her Lee
Xeromi
In Any Language
The Kindest Thing
Right Now
Valentos. Gelangos.
When you Look For Me
I Know Who I Am
Part Nine: Os, Who is One
For the World
The Greatest Love Story
The Wrong Man for the Job
The Rakontistos
Arguing With A God
Estelos
One of My One
One of My Own
Tehvan's Price
Consolation Prize
The Most Giant of Giant Words
Home
Epilogue
Appendices
Character Pronunciation Guide
Glossary
Author Notes
About the Author
About the Other Author
The Last Word
Thank You
Also By Suanne Laqueur
For Naroba, my sister and queen, who started the story.
For Rafael, my father, who said I told a good story.
For Mr. Durante, my English teacher, who made me submit the story.
For Philip Trueblood, my friend, who gave the story a face and a name.
But mostly for Stef.
My man, my finch, my kepten, my gelangos and my love story.
“In those days, we finally chose to walk like giants
& hold the world in arms grown strong with love
& there may be many things we forget in the days
to come, but this will not be one of them.”
—Brian Andreas, Awakening
“Yo no soy marinero. Soy capitán.”
—La Bamba, Mexican folk song
“So I’m sailing for tomorrow my dreams are a-dyin’
And my love is an anchor tied to you,
Tied with a silver chain.”
—Crosby, Stills & Nash
The kheiron flew west across the desert with a human boy on his back.
Kheirons, dear reader, are half man, half horse. But don’t equate them with centaurs. Kheirons fly. Centaurs do not. Furthermore, centaurs are eternally hybrid while kheirons can shift between equos—pure horse—and humos—pure man. Or they can rest as kheiros—the half-and-half form which appears like a centaur.
The kheiron in the sky above the desert was in humos, his human form. He’d lost the magic stone that allowed him to shift between horse and man. Locked into the latter, he’d been abducted from his homeland and sold into captivity.
But he was free now.
Almost, he thought as his wings sliced through the night sky, moving in a gentle cadence on either side of the boy strapped to his back. The boy was dressed in the rough clothes of a slave. The mark of his master was branded into his neck, the seared flesh not yet healed.
The kheiron had known two masters, so he bore two different brand marks on his neck. Both had long turned to raised, pink scars in his tanned skin. The years in captivity had stripped him down to wiry, lean muscle over bone. The stress of planning this escape had shredded his nerves to a trembling fringe. Carrying the boy’s extra weight cut miles off the distance the kheiron wanted to cover. The sun would rise soon and it would be too dangerous to travel in the heat of daytime. They’d need to find shelter. And a well. They fled the slave compound with just one waterskin between them and a third of it was gone already.
One more mile, he thought, looking back between wing beats to check the streak of pink at the eastern horizon. Solos, the sun god, hadn’t ridden his steed above the edge of the world yet. They had a little more time.
The kheiron flew west while the boy slept on his back, arms wound tight around the kheiron’s chest, their fingers entwined. Below them undulated the desert floor, sapped of her daytime heat and rolling like an endless field of snow under the moon’s waning light. The kheiron followed the old caravan route through the desert, straining his eyes for any sign of scrub or vegetation where there might be water. Any crumbling caravanserai remains where they could take shelter from the unforgiving sun. Most of all, his ga
ze squinted ahead, toward the faint bulge of the Altyn Mountains. Not until he put that range between himself and slavery would he even consider the idea of relief.
One more mile, he kept thinking. One more behind us is one closer to freedom.
His back and abdomen ached with the effort to hold his body parallel to the earth, stay tight and streamlined and let the wind carry him like an arrow. Flying long distances in human form was impractical. His four equine legs would’ve provided additional power and thrust, letting him literally gallop across the sky. If he hadn’t lost his moonstone—You fucking gave it away, remember?—he and the boy would be over the mountains by now. But the stone was gone, along with its power to let him shift. The bell couldn’t be un-rung and at least he had his wings.
One more mile, he thought. Put one more behind you.
“Can I give myself a new name?” the boy asked.
“Good idea,” the kheiron said. “New names for our new life.”
The boy rubbed his brow along the back of his steed’s neck. “What will you call me?”
“Why am I picking?”
“Because I want you to.”
“All right,” the kheiron said. “Your name is Alon. Do you know what it means?”
“It’s a giantword. It’s what they call a lark.”
“Yes. Larks bring souls to newborns. And you, my friend, are newly born. You are the lark bringing your own soul to yourself. It’s never been done before. You’re the first.”
Alon’s cold hands squeezed the kheiron’s fingers. “I like it,” he said. “What’s your new name?”
“You pick.”
A long silence, save for the wind whistling through the kheiron’s feathers.
“Fen,” Alon said. “Your name is Fen.”
It was the giantword for finch. Finches returned the souls of the dead.
“I see,” Fen said slowly. “Am I a goldfinch, who returns the souls of the righteous?”
“No,” Alon said. “You’re a redfinch.”
“They return the souls of the damned.”
“Yes.” The boy tightened his arms around Fen. “They’ll tell stories about you forever. Any slaver who crosses your path is damned and doomed. You’ll get them all, Fen. You’ll never let anyone do this again. Not to anyone.”
Fen ate and drank the prophetic words. Damned crunched between his teeth, splintering like bone. Doomed burst on his tongue, liver-rich with a rusty edge, like biting a sword still hot from battle. Get them slid deliciously down his throat. Never again warmed his belly and numbed the pain in his back and shoulders. Stories stirred up his strength and forever shone ahead, pointing the way. At his temples pulsed Fen, Fen, Fen like a bell that could never be un-rung. As he chewed on Finch and let the juice run down his chin, he imagined his old name was a shell encasing the past two years. He cracked it, felt the broken husk fall away beneath him. A delicate puff of sand rising as the name Tehvan il-Kheir was swallowed by the desert, dead and buried and forgotten.
I am Fen, he thought, putting the miles behind him. I am The Finch. Cross my path and you are damned. None will escape. Never again.
They found shelter in the remains of a caravanserai whose well, thank Gods, was full. A tenacious fig tree gave them a bit of breakfast before they lay down in the shadow of a broken wall and slept the day away. When the sun god began his descent to the west and the sand began to shiver, Fen filled the waterskin, lifted the boy on his back and took to the skies once more.
They flew west, the finch and the lark. Through the hot days and cold nights, Alon seemed to grow quieter and weaker while Fen, fed on a diet of revenge and legacy, filled with a greater resolve.
“There,” he cried on the third evening, when the Altyn range began to take over the sky. “We’re nearly there, Alon. Through those peaks.”
Alon sighed against Fen’s back. His body was icy deadweight. The only active part of him was the hand curled around Fen’s thumb.
“We’re almost there,” Fen said. “Hold on just a little longer.”
“Will they want me back?” the boy said.
The cadence of Fen’s wings stuttered. “Who?”
“My family. Will they even want me back, knowing what I was doing?”
“You weren’t doing anything,” Fen said between gritted teeth. “Things were being done to you.”
“I know. But…”
“Don’t talk anymore, I need to think.”
The updrafts grew colder and sharper as they began to cross the peaks. Gusts knocked Fen sideways and his body howled as he righted their course again and again.
“Hold tight,” he kept saying, an ugly panic boiling up from his stomach. “Alon, you hold on. Don’t you fucking let go now.”
“What if they don’t want me back?”
“They want nothing more than to have you back,” Fen said, gasping. “They’ll tell stories about it forever.”
He was so tired, he felt outside himself. Here and not here. The cold lulled him to the edge of sleep, then it shocked him awake. Somehow, his wings kept moving and the mental fatigue began to work to his advantage. His body zigged when the wind zagged. He mastered the dance of the updrafts and let the gusts partner him instead of pummel him. Nearly there. One last ridge. He could see the Old Forest now. A swath of dead trees like a hundred witches’ hands reaching upward. The skeleton branches magnificent against the gray skies.
“Look,” he said between heaving breaths. “These were the tallest Nye trees that ever grew. See the platforms built in the upper canopies? The ancient ones built houses in the branches. They’d live up there weeks at a time, picking the spice flowers. Lowering them down in big baskets on pulleys. Did you ever think you’d see something like this?”
“You won’t forget,” Alon said, barely audible above the wind.
“See those birds circling the treetops? They’re called caracaros. They’re a kind of falcon and they won’t nest anywhere but Nye trees. They’re the best messenger birds in the world but they only live up here in Altynai. When you get home, tell all your friends you saw caracaros. They’ll drop dead of jealousy.”
“You’ll tell this story.” The fist tightened, white-knuckled around Fen’s thumb. “Won’t you?”
“Forever,” Fen said. “They’ll write songs about us. Epic poems. How the lark and the finch escaped from—”
The boy slid from his back.
“No,” Fen cried over the empty tree tops. As the straps holding the boy to his back fell apart, he pulled up short, life and death separated by one small fist clinging to his thumb. His wings pounded the air to a fury as his legs reached long, trying to snag Alon between his calves and haul him in close.
“Hold on. Alon…”
But the boy’s eyes were closed and his little fist was sliding, wrenching Fen’s knuckle in its socket until, with a smooth tug, the silver band on his thumb slipped free.
The scream of the caracaros tore the sky open and echoed off the mountain peaks.
Absolute power doesn’t exist, dear reader. All creatures of the gods have their frailties and limitations. A kheiron’s wings are bound to the nine silver rings he wears on his fingers. All nine must be present for flight. One left off, lost or stolen, and his wings will not extend.
Fen’s master knew this, and took the rings away the day he bought Fen at the slave market. It took two years for Fen to buy eight of them back.
On my face, he thought in a split second that stretched into infinity. On my knees. I bought them back with my mouth and my body. Two years as a whore to buy back what was mine.
The ninth ring he stole from the master. Or rather, Alon stole it, earning himself a ride to freedom on Fen’s back.
What if they don’t want me, knowing what I was doing?
In that elastic moment, Fen hovered over the dead forest, watching with
incredulous detachment as Alon fell away from him like a forgotten name, Fen’s ring still in a fist. A hot, liquid rush down his back as his wings began to retract beneath the skin. Instinctively he threw his human arms out, as if they could take over the job.
We were nearly there…
Tehvan il-Kheir, now renamed Fen, was not yet fully grown. His wingspan was nowhere near the epic proportion of his father’s. Still, it took time for nine feet of tiered feathers to shrink, fold down and pull within. Time enough for him to glide a small, silent distance, reflect on how close he’d come and wonder who would tell the story now.
Then the wind filled his ears as his body plummeted through a wheeling cauldron of falcons and into the upraised hands of dead spice trees.
May I call you legantos?
It’s an old giantword. It means “beloved reader” and it allows me, the storyteller, to address you throughout the tale-telling.
Shall we begin?
The story of Pelippé Trueblood starts and ends on a ship.
His life at sea was shaped by his decisions and the choices made by those who came before him. His voyage was shaped by legends that began centuries before his birth and the tales he left in his wake.
His life is written and his is a love story.
So listen, legantos.
Listen to learn it. Learn it to tell it. Tell it to teach it.
Once, on a ship called the Cay, a boy called Pelippé Trueblood sailed with his father.
Trueblood once asked a sailor called Rafil, “Why do most stories begin with once?”
“Because once can mean something that happened one time and never again,” Rafil said. “Or once can be the same thing happening for a long time and gradually, never again. Once can be a precise moment in time. Or a way of saying a long time ago.”
“Once is just a place to start,” Trueblood’s father said.
Rafil nodded gravely. “Once,” he said, “a ship called the Cay sailed the high seas. The kepten of the Cay was called Ikharus-Lippé True, and every evening he invited the crew into his quarters to hear stories. His only son was among the crew.”
“But that’s happening now,” Trueblood said, looking around the large sitting room.
The Cay was built by giants and Kepten True’s quarters in the aftercastle had room for all. The crew lounged in the big chairs and long couches, or sprawled on the floor. During the long weeks at sea, everyone could take a turn at being rakontistos, or storyteller. Some read from books. Others told from memory. A few could make up tales as they went along and of course, there were those who preferred to be aŭskultantos—beloved listeners.
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