by Avi Silver
“You don’t need to be a jerk, Pamai. All I’m saying is that their business is their own.”
“I think she can decide for herself what to share,” Ahn interjected, a firm but polite smile on his face. He took Sohmeng’s hand in his, lacing their fingers together. He didn’t seem to notice the way Eakang and Pamai gawked.
Sohmeng swallowed, squeezing his hand, unsure what to make of the fact that Ahnschen Qøngemzhir understood this better than anyone. “I think I’d like to go dance now.”
“Dancing sounds wonderful,” he agreed, rising with a poise that was, for once, actually pretty princely. It was odd to see it now, knowing Ahn as she did—but the oddness didn’t stop her body from tingling when he rested a hand on her lower back and steered her away.
Leaving the Minhals behind made her feel like she could breathe again. She focused on the rhythm of the music vibrating through the soles of her feet. Was Hei feeling it now, on the other side of Nona Fahang’s walls? Were the sãoni scratching in the dirt, searching for the source of the rumbling?
This dance featured partners, one masculine and one feminine, symbolizing each of the moons. In the center, Chisong children danced in a circle, with a group of Minhals encircling them in turn.
“Shall we?” Ahn asked, looking down at Sohmeng, the reflection of the bonfire in his eyes. That’s when she realized he was serious.
“No way, handsome,” she laughed.
He flushed at the name, but waved it off. “I don’t understand. I thought you said you wanted to dance?”
“Uh, yeah, because I was trying to bail from a weird conversation? In case you forgot, I’m kind of new here, I don’t know this dance. And unless this is some elaborate prank and you’re actually from Nona Fahang—in which case, I’m feeding you to Green Bites—you don’t know it either.”
Ahn scanned the crowd briefly, shrugging. “It doesn’t look too difficult.”
Sohmeng put her hands on her hips, giving him her most disbelieving look. “What, you expect me to believe that you can figure out a Chisong dance after a few minutes of watching?”
Ahn gasped in mock-offense, pretending to be wounded. “Does the lady doubt me?”
“The lady totally doubts.”
“Then let me show you.” He held out a hand, and the air seemed to part around it for all his eagerness.
Sohmeng laughed again, giving him a moment to squirm as she sized him up. Watching Ahn come out of his shell had been the only part of tonight she’d really enjoyed so far. After practically bullying him into joining her at all, his offering a dance was an unexpected turn of events—even if he was bluffing and about to make them look ridiculous. But if the confident grin, so different from his usual wilting apologies, was any indicator, the guy might actually have an idea of what he was doing.
She took his hand. Considering the past few phases, she figured she had earned a dance with a prince.
To her relief and delight, Ahn hadn’t been lying about his capabilities. He broke the dance into simple steps for her to follow, showed her where to place her feet, glancing over at other partners for cues. While some of the other dancers seemed surprised that Ahn had joined in, no one made any move to stop the two of them.
The drums picked up, the people sang, and soon Sohmeng felt like one of them, clapping on beat and laughing when Ahn spun with her. Her voice was lost in the swell of the crowd; her body felt free of its adult burdens in the swirl of red and white. Illuminated by the fires below and the wide-eyed moons up above, Sohmeng felt, for the first time in weeks, that maybe the gods were still looking out for her.
Ahn pulled her close as the music changed. “I think they’re forming bigger groups,” he said, leaning down so she could hear him. A strand of his hair had come loose, black and silver glinting in the firelight. “Want to try?”
Before Sohmeng could answer, someone was already pulling them both into a small circle, shouting encouragement. She followed along clumsily, laughing when she made a mistake, cheering when she got it right. From across the circle, someone whistled at Ahn, who had picked up the footwork without any trouble. She grinned at him, allowing herself to sing along, her mouth forming words she did not understand. Together, they all swirled like the lunations of the moons, and the chaos was so controlled, so perfect, that all she could think of was—
Hei.
Hei, who walked the danger of Eiji and called it home. Hei, who showed her the magic of the sãoni, of life within the perfect system. Hei, who understood her and saw her for exactly who she was. Hei, whom she loved every wild and peaceful moment with. Hei, whom she loved.
Hei, who would not dance in this place, with these people. Who would not, could not, join Sohmeng in all parts of her life.
Sohmeng spun with the crowd, squeezing the hand of a stranger and wishing it came with claws and callouses. With the other hand she held tight to Ahnschen, the second unexpected thing she had come to care for in the jungle. Giddy off the energy of the party, lost in the complexity of her desires, Sohmeng humbled herself long enough to send up a prayer:
Par Go Hiwei Fua Tang Sol Jão Pel Dongi Se Won Nor Chisong Heng Li Ginhãe Mi Ker Hiun Ãofe Soon Nai Tos Jeji Minhal—
Help us, she pleaded until it ached in her heart. Help us find our place in this together. Help us figure it out.
She danced beneath the godseye until her feet hurt. Par and Minhal and simply Sohmeng, she dared, as always, to ask for more.
As the hours passed and the moons swelled higher in the sky, the citizens of Nona Fahang made it clear that they were intent on honouring the Chisong phase all the way through to morning. The music rose and fell, the buffet proved itself endless, and the wine flowed freely. Ahn danced with Sohmeng until he was breathless, only retreating back to the food table when Sohmeng claimed her feet might actually fall off. Even the rumble of thunder above did not stop the festivities, instead prompting some of the organizers to carry out decorative canopies for whoever might need them.
Ahn was helping assemble the musician’s tent when he first saw the instrument: a fan-shaped frame of carved wood with twenty-five strings, laid flat on the lap. The sound of it being strummed made him fumble the pole he was carrying.
The musician was fiddling with it in the brief lapse between songs, laughing with her fellows in the band. Ahn watched her, felt his fingers flutter in sympathetic yearning. Despite the thrill of dancing more freely than he had since university, he was more restless than ever.
“Isn’t it pretty?” The Dulpongpa pulled Ahn from his thoughts, and he turned to see Eakang Minhal standing beside him. The moon on their left cheek was slightly smeared.
“It is,” he agreed. “What is it called?”
“The jeibu,” they said. “Each of the strings symbolize one of the different phases, so every song is about how they interact. You can learn a lot about peoples’ phasal compatibility from music, actually! Wedding songs are really, really beautiful.”
“I can imagine.” Ahn smiled. Despite Sohmeng’s dislike for them, Eakang had a remarkable amount in common with her. Perhaps it was just a sense of solidarity with younger siblings, but he wished she would offer them just a little more patience. “Have you seen Sohmeng? We got separated when I offered to help.”
“I can look for them if you want! Last I saw, they were talking to my Damdão,” Eakang said, peering back at the crowd.
Thinking of Sohmeng’s expression earlier, Ahn replied with a mild: “Was she?”
“Oh. Yeah. She—she was.” Eakang bit their lip. “Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize to me,” Ahn said, watching the musician pluck a simple melody on the jeibu. “You have been very kind to me, and helpful. I know you want to get to know Sohmeng better, so you should know that it is important to her that you use the feminine.”
Eakang nodded rapidly, fidgeting. “You’re right. It’s just a little different from what I’m used to, so I guess I’m still learning.”
“I understand.” I
t was true; there was so much about this place that he was struggling to learn and keep up with. “Learning new things can be challenging. But I trust that you care about Sohmeng enough to find a way.”
Eakang hummed in agreement, a look of determination on their face. Ahn appreciated their compassion.
The musician plucked a chord that rang straight into Ahn’s heart, and his fingers twitched once more. He felt young again, hiding near the courtesan’s quarters and listening in on their recitals. He felt like a boy made a man too early, begging Master Hvu to take on a new student so he might reinvent himself as a novice, an innocent.
The strength of his longing must have made itself tangible, because Eakang caught his eye. “Do you have instruments like this back home?” they asked, looking up at him curiously.
“Not quite like this. But similar, yes.” The lap harp he had first learned on had twenty-five strings, just the same as the jeibu—though of course it was played upright. “I play one of them. At least, I used to.”
“Maybe you could try the jeibu!” they exclaimed.
Ahn wanted to protest, he knew how rude it was to try and get your hands on someone else’s instrument, but Eakang had already approached the player. He felt himself trying to shrink as they spoke rapidly in Fahangpa, brushing off what were undoubtedly protests from the musician. There was that common ground with Sohmeng again.
“She says it’s okay!” Eakang beamed. The musician looked thoroughly beaten down, but she waved Ahn over nonetheless.
With as much of an apology as Eakang would tolerate, he sat down, crossing his legs as directed. The musician rested the wooden frame on his knees; he looked down at the earth cut through by the strings. She introduced his hands to them, demonstrating finger placement and plucking patterns. Despite the fact that he could not speak Fahangpa, the woman’s instructions were clear enough: touch here, not here. Gently. Don’t you dare drop it.
No matter the master, the first lesson was always the same. Gingerly, Ahn pulled a string, and that first note made his throat feel tight. He pulled another, and one more.
“That’s Jão, Pel, Dongi...” Eakang listed the phases as he plucked their associated strings. Though the phases meant little to him, he thought that with each note he knew them better.
He searched for chords on the jeibu, adjusting to the way it sat on his knees, the way his back tugged against the foreign sensation of a new posture. After he’d proven he wasn’t about to go on a string-breaking rampage, the musician indulged Ahn further, allowing him to explore at his own pace. Though he could hear the other musicians murmuring in Fahangpa, he didn’t dare face them. Being met with judgment might make him give the jeibu back, and the thought was, absurdly, unbearable.
His fingers trailed along the strings, searching for the elementary tasks they had been given in the early days of training on the harp. The motions tumbled him into old memories: the pale coral walls of Master Hvu’s living room, the breeze coming in through the window, the floral astringency of their shared pots of tea. Her voice, kind and chastising in equal measure as he disrupted their lessons to talk theory between their practice.
“But the paths of Art and Conquest are the same, Master! Didn’t Janhong Sølshendtot-Qøngemtot say that “the pen is not unlike the blade which is not unlike the cellist’s bow”?”
“If I remember correctly, Jan also bled out in a field on Hvallánzhou, singing ballads to his wounds.”
“It was martyrdom in the name of beauty, Master.”
“Mm. Well, unless you plan on performing some sort of sacrificial glissando, which would put me in the embarrassing position of commissioning your Royal Parents for a new throw rug, I would kindly suggest you disregard the warrior poets, young Ahnschen. At least until you have your arpeggios down.”
He played one then, biting back a smile. His finger snagged on one of the notes, unfamiliar with the horizontal playing, and he swore he could hear his master’s quiet tut, the signal to start again.
For all she had encouraged him to separate Art and Conquest, the trials were the same, weren’t they? The ongoing flirtation, the inevitable errors of amateurs, the attempt to reach understanding and improvement. His masters of Conquest, adjusting his hold on the blade; Master Hvu, coaxing grace into his warrior’s wrists, tenderness into his trembling fingers.
Break! Reset for next match.
Once more, little one. With feeling, if you please.
Adjustments were a part of the long walk towards comprehension. Ahn rested his hands on the jeibu, making to turn it vertically. He looked at the musician with a question that might have also been a plea, wanting desperately for her to see that he meant no harm.
“May I...?” he asked in Dulpongpa. Despite their lack of shared language, she seemed to understand. With a cautious look, she nodded.
Ahn turned the jeibu, resting its frame on one thigh, adjusting the balance until it felt almost familiar. The grooves were all wrong, the weight distributed in nonsensical places; it was like the dream of a harp, the idea of it more than the thing itself. The musician’s fists opened and closed, and he wouldn’t have blamed her for yanking it right out of his hands then and there.
Then he plucked the first chord, and it no longer mattered.
A laugh escaped him, a breathless thing. He plucked another, then one more, shifting his posture to accommodate the differences in the instrument’s structure. His arpeggios came more naturally now, up and down, and he played his scales with frantic longing, like a sailor too long away from the sea.
“What’s going on—” There came a voice, Sohmeng’s voice, and he looked up briefly to see her there, staring at him. Beside her, Eakang was grinning from ear to ear.
His mastery of Conquest earned him no favours in this place. His novice rank in Philosophy kept him tripping over his words, making errors upon errors. But in the Arts, in music, he could speak without pretense.
I can be good, he thought, meeting the eyes of the woman he owed his life. This is how I am good.
He played a glissando, reveling in the way the sound bubbled beneath his fingers and sang out for the fellow musicians. The texture of the strings was peculiar beneath his fingers, but everything was peculiar in Nona Fahang. There was no reason he could not make one more small adjustment.
With pleasure, with wonder, he began to pluck out a tune. A simple thing, one of the first songs he had ever learned. The mechanics began intentionally simple, an exercise in the foundations of the instrument that became more complicated as the song progressed. The Fields of Knowing, it was called; an old folk ballad about the ineffability of love—or art, depending on the interpretation. Ahn could feel his hands reawakening as he picked out the opening, warming back up to sensations he had long feared were lost. His eyes closed, and he fell into the story:
A man falls in love with a woman, and it is both his beginning and his end. She meets him in this tumbling fondness, this ever-churning passion, and they build a home in one another in a great wide field. In all of creation, none live in a more blessed partnership. The years pass, and the man begins to wonder how he will ever fully express the depths of his love for her.
Ahn’s hands worked faster. The world around him was quiet, until another band member came in with her drum, cautiously offering him a tempo. He accepted it, gracious and grateful.
He studies the philosophy of love itself, meeting with counselors and courtesans and spiritual guides. It is impossible, he thinks, to feel something so deeply. Each morning he wakes in wonder to discover the space within him has expanded yet again to hold this ever-growing fondness. How can he comprehend it, when it changes every moment?
Though he was no seasoned vocalist, Ahn began to sing along to the ballad in Qiao Sidhur. For a moment he was surprised that no one joined in, and then he remembered where he was. Swallowing back his fears, he continued. The drum continued beside him, urging him on. He imagined a low pulse in his ear.
The man stays up late into the night
with her, pondering his love aloud. She tells him to stop trying to capture the feeling with words, that perhaps there are no words for such an immense thing. He loves her enough to try and prove her wrong. Years pass, love grows, years pass, love grows. She dies.
As he buries her in their great wide field, the man thinks to himself—
“I am nearer now to knowing,” Ahn sang softly, his fingers coming to a rest. “Nearer now, my love, than I have ever been.”
The song ended. For a long moment, Ahn was very still, his hands absorbing the fading vibrations of the jeibu-made-harp. Time seemed to stop around him, leaving nothing but the space between breaths. Then came the rumble of thunder, the soft patter of raindrops on the tarp, and Ahn returned to himself.
The tent was packed tight with people, apparently gathered for his playing. His neck went hot at the realization that they had all heard him singing; the song had felt so personal, so private, that it was disorienting to reimagine it as a performance. Self-consciousness came over him in waves, and he wanted very suddenly for a place to hide.
Not that Sohmeng would ever have allowed it. She ran over to him with a shout, shaking him by the shoulders. “Ahn! Ahn, what? What in two dark moons was that?!”
“Music?” he said weakly. He handed the jeibu back to its master, thanking and apologizing in one. Her wariness seemed to have been traded out for something akin to respect, however grudging.
“Music!” Sohmeng scoffed, bopping him on the forehead with the heel of her palm. “Music, he says! Ahn, that was beautiful!”
He shook his head, heart fluttering at the praise. “I’m out of practice, it was hardly anything—”
Eakang jumped in then, looking around at the small crowd that had formed. “I’ve never heard a jeibu played like that before. It was so different—but really nice!”
Sohmeng nodded along vehemently, thumping them on the shoulder. Though she didn’t seem to notice it, Ahn saw the way the gesture made Eakang light up. It lifted his own heart to know that his playing might have offered them a second chance with their new sister.
