Analog SFF, July-August 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “I trust her.” Honesty wasn't their problem anyway. The real problem was this inescapable feeling that he was missing something important, hearing words but only getting part of what they really meant.

  Allayo had said several times that she was on trial, looking for a Great Tale. A Great Tale had to be one of the stories of the canon, but how could she be looking for one? What would she be on trial for? She was always talking about the power of sacred words, but how could he tell which ones were sacred when she was so reverent in everything she said?

  He could only hope they would let him speak—and that when he did, he wouldn't come out sounding like a complete idiot.

  Soon Allayo's patterned arrowhead face poked in. She nodded to him, and—of all things!—gestured to their escorts, who straightened and stamped feet.

  David swore under his breath. Was she a juvenile? But how could that be, when she'd been talking to herself on the ship?

  Monroe said, “Is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing.”

  Father spoke quickly. “It's okay. David's just nervous now that we're going in—aren't you, David?”

  “Yeah,” David said, staring at Allayo. “Sure.”

  A path of flat stones wound by just outside, taking them to the entrance of the House of Leaves. From the shuttle the House had resembled the humped back of some rainforest reptile; up close it was a marvel of natural-materials construction, a huge overturned basket of thick withes roofed with yarin-leaves. The entry was a circular opening—gecko-sized, so David had to stoop low and step high to squeeze through. And the space within was large enough to hold—

  It was hard to tell at first glance. There were so many: Gariniki in groups on the leaf-littered floor, on enormous raised stones, even climbing along the basket walls. Probably over five hundred, more than four villages’ worth. If they ever hoped to be heard, this was the place to be.

  “The High Elder is first to receive the sacred Word,” Allayo said, laying long, delicate, claw-tipped fingers on his arm. “Stay here quiet until the Word comes to you.” She cocked her head and blinked her huge eyes in a gesture of amusement. “Try very hard, David." She disappeared into the murmuring crowd.

  Soon a gong sounded. David sat down where the woven wicker pressed into his back. The House hushed and other sounds became audible: the gurgle of flowing water, a rustling in the sun-struck leaves overhead, and the strange high humming of the Mouth, rising and falling with the winds upon the mountain.

  A dull-scaled male Gariniki stepped onto a high rock at the center of the House, bearing a staff of twisted wood, and made a keening sound that gradually rose in pitch to match the windy hum.

  “O-ohhhhh! Let the sacred Word take me!”

  “High Elder Sarinu-mudi is taken by the sacred Word!” The reply was enormous, a simultaneous chorus from every throat in the hall that thrummed in the wall at David's back. Father looked startled, and Officer Monroe, who had barely settled, almost jumped to her feet.

  The Elder rapped the heel of his staff on the rock. “On the mountainside the Mouth opens,” he cried. “Singing, singing in the winds, and the People bow down at the birthplace of the Word, and not a one but is taken with speech.”

  David suddenly realized that Allayo had said that—exactly that—in the viewing lounge. Maybe it was an invocation? He glanced at Father and found Father looking back.

  Allayo climbed up to a place beside the Elder, and an echo of the Mouth's song swelled amidst the gathering, then ebbed again into silence. The gecko-girl performed a dipping bow that ran from her nose to the tip of her tail, while heads bowed throughout the crowd. Not far from where they sat, a mother Gariniki took a tiny child by the nose and bobbed its head.

  “Young Allayo today returns from Trial,” said the Elder. “She shall be taken by the Word before the gathering and be judged.”

  Allayo raised her whistle-toned voice, and again the eerie hum washed through the gathering. “Let the sacred Word take me! The People gather in the House of Leaves before the Mouth; the Word flows through the gathering, and I speak.”

  The thrumming chorus responded. “Allayo is taken by the sacred Word!”

  “I speak my Trial: It is a tale of strangers.”

  “The feet of Chares-mudi in a foreign land!” replied the gathering at once.

  “No,” said Allayo, “not Chares-mudi these, but strangers from far beyond the Lands: men of skin who swim through the over-dark in pools of air that they carry in shells of fired metal.”

  There was a pause; the crowd moved uncertainly, an absence of speech like a lack of breath.

  “Beautiful golden-scaled Geya-mudi plying the River Oss?” a voice asked.

  “No,” said another. “The shield of Saramin-mudi, forged over an entire year!”

  “Both, I tell you,” said Allayo. “When you hear what I have seen, you will understand these stranger-people. They know of things beyond the reach of the Great Tales, before which even the singing crystal of the Mouth falls silent in wonder.”

  “Blasphemy!”

  Allayo cocked her head toward that voice. “I heard much blasphemy during my Trial. My journey took me to a place so strange, the words of the Great Tales fell away from my tongue and left me silent, without means to judge.”

  “That's it.” Father gasped, a long, tearful sigh. “Oh, David, that's it. God, it's been eluding me for so long....”

  David whispered, “You mean...?”

  “She's telling a tale—a new one she's created about her time with us. The rest of them are judging what she says in terms of the preexisting canon, deciding what to think about what she's been through. It's no wonder we never heard any Tales—I had no idea there might be a single place where both adults and juveniles could talk normally. I bet every community has something like it, though the Mouth itself is probably unique.”

  “What?” Officer Monroe whispered. “You mean they can only speak in here? Why?”

  Father hesitated. “Well—”

  “Because the language is sacred,” said David, swept up as the pattern came clear. “Not just some words; all of them. That's why the adults limit themselves to the canonical images outside the House. And the children—well, they would have to learn it in here, wouldn't they? There's no way to learn it solely from context.” Then he saw Officer Monroe's face pale and realized what he'd just said.

  “You never learned it.” Her voice was indignant. “That's what you're telling me, isn't it?”

  “No, no, we have," said Father, but too late.

  “You haven't!” said Monroe. “If you've never been here before, then you can't have heard these stories before, and that means you haven't learned the language at all. You're nowhere near opening relations!”

  “That's not true,” Father retorted. “You don't have to hear the stories to speak the language—David speaks well enough to please any of these people!”

  “You're lying!”

  Heads were turning toward them, double-lidded eyes blinking. “Quiet!” said David. “You'll get us in tr—”

  He was drowned out by a sudden roar:

  “The Venomous Snake within our walls, and vile Toryx-mudi at the door!”

  Monroe leapt to her feet, fumbling in a pouch at her belt. What was she looking for? A communicator, to call the evacuation? A weapon, God forbid?

  “Monroe!” David shouted. He leapt for her left hand; Father grabbed for her right.

  Allayo's voice shrieked across the surging mob of reptiles. “No! Wait!”

  Then came the rap of the staff and the Elder's voice. “No! There is no venomous snake. The Elders sent young Allayo into the wilderness for Trial, and when she returned with companions, brought her to the House of Leaves, to give herself to the Word before the people.”

  The wave of chaos froze at its breaking-point. They managed to catch Monroe's hands, to pull her back down as silence returned to the gathering.

  A voice asked, “Young Reomus returns from Trial with c
ompanions, and expands the Lands?”

  “Perhaps,” the Elder said. “You shall judge as Allayo speaks.”

  The gathering returned to unison. “Allayo is taken by the Word, and the people bear witness.”

  David shook with relief as the scale-armored bodies all around settled into rest. Monroe looked angry and terrified; Father was sickly pale in the green-filtered light. Fools, all of them, to let themselves get in this deep. Okay, so it looked better for their coming out alive, now that the gathering had apparently judged them allies—or subjects—or at least, individuals not to be harmed. But the secret was out. He'd really gained nothing in stopping Monroe but a slight delay.

  None of their discoveries would be enough to save the colony. If Gariniya was so sacred that it was forbidden even to the children of the People, then how could a human ever be accepted as a legitimate speaker?

  Really, Allayo was the only reason they'd been allowed in here at all.

  What was it about Allayo? If she was adult, why had she used signs with the escorts? But if she was juvenile, why had she spoken in his presence before seeing the Mouth? The more he understood, the more confusing it all became. He sank back to the wicker wall as she began to speak.

  “I left the Lands of Leaves and broached the great Desert, intending to seek the Path of Ice in the mountains beyond,” she said. “But beyond the salt-line break I discovered a strange glinting thing, open at one end like a spent sonamo pod, yet large enough to enter. My blood already sun-simmering, I took shelter there, but the pod fell shut and from behind a wall emerged a strange, simian man.”

  “The bearded wanderer from beyond the Lands importunes with his tongue,” said several voices.

  Which had to mean Father. David flushed in embarrassment.

  “Yes,” said Allayo. “I fell back, drawing my Trial-knife with little hope, but he did not attack. He waited, strange skin like soft leather slickened with mist. I invoked Krios-mudi and Poryfas-mudi, in vain. When I called upon him to show the courage of young Bedorel, he opened his mouth and trespassed on the Word, so I turned my back. I thought he had gone, but he returned with worse.

  “'I must ask you to come with me,’ he said—as if he believed himself a child in the House of Leaves, or as if the Mouth had opened at his back.”

  The gathering shifted with breaths of shock.

  “I bowed down on the knife-metal floor and made signs of holy cleansing. It was then that the pod shook and rose into the air, a wind vessel bearing me away.”

  The entire chorus had an answer for that, which resonated into David's back. “The wife of Samior-mudi the Elder, stolen by enemies!”

  “No,” said Allayo, “though so I believed then. Further in, the vessel was rich with pillowed seats and shining lights. It rose and rose until the over-dark seeped in amidst the emerald air, and there, in the well of deepest black, lay a House of Metal to which they brought me. There I endured a cell like beaten shields, leafless and without free-flowing water. In my dreams, I found the Mouth stopped. In my waking hours, my captors showed me vile instruments of blasphemy.”

  David shook his head at that. No wonder her reaction, then. Was that how she interpreted a machine that could speak?

  “I mourned,” she said, “until a day when a young one came, silent as an obedient child: no sociable words and yet no blasphemy, only a beckoning hand. We walked the House of Metal to its great windows, and before me the over-dark flowed, sparkling with its stars like the River Oss in sunlight. Then this one pointed, and I fell prostrate, for in the darkness I saw a Great Mouth, made of air and light.”

  The crowd gasped as one, a sound underlayered with the rustle of scales and wicker and the continuous hum of the mountain's Mouth beyond the walls.

  “Nezumas-mudi felt fear before the multitude!” said a voice.

  Allayo waved a hand. “No, this is no lie, for you yourselves may see the Mouth: It is the Flower of the Over-dark, which these men call the Maken-li nebula. And as from afar the Mouth of Singing Crystal appears a bright speck on the mountainside, so from afar the Mouth of the Heavens appears a bud of pink, like iriyas before it unfurls. This, our home, is our House of Leaves, standing before the Mouth of the Heavens.”

  Amidst the murmurs of the gathering, David heaved a sigh. Somehow the saddest thing about this was how much they had learned. Here in this place Gariniya was no longer a puzzle to be solved, something to be recorded, watched on a screen, then transcribed and analyzed in bits and pieces. In these voices it lived, every last name and obscure reference a part of the whole. While speaking, Allayo stood rapt, creating her tale like reverent poetry. Taken by the Word, there she stood, in the center of it, while humans could never hope to be anywhere but outside.

  Allayo turned to look at him. “And then I understood these men, these humans. From the Mouth they emerged, and therefore they speak—like young Torias the Speaker, so possessed by the Word that only death could stop his tongue.”

  “Possessed!” David whispered, fascinated.

  “Maybe that's what they mean by ‘taken by the Word,'” said Father. “Maybe we could turn this to our advantage. I'll go up and speak with them, and—”

  Despite his own temptation, David interrupted. “And what, Father? We don't know enough to be sure. They could well decide you're insane!”

  “But surely...” Father's voice trailed off.

  Atop the rock, Allayo bowed to her knees; the Elder put a hand on her head and rapped his staff. “I call the gathering to judge,” he said. “Young Allayo went forth silent from our Lands, a child untouched by the full force of the Word, fresh, untaken.”

  The gathering almost sighed. “Ah, the innocence of the child Allayo!”

  “Her Trial took her to places unknown, forcing her to rest among blasphemous strangers and to bear witness to strange wonders. And see! The seed of the Word drinks in the new, as a plant drinks water and grows strong.”

  “Soon, the Word shall burst forth in its full flower,” said the voices.

  “And now you have heard her Tale. Shall she henceforth bear the Word forward into the ranks of the mudi? If any among the mudi believe nay, speak now—or, bow to the flower of the Word that has opened before you.”

  The ensuing silence of the gathering felt like an explosion in David's head. That was the missing social component: what exactly it was that made an adult, bringing about the change from silence to speech. The Trial. A voyage of discovery for a child not yet restrained by sacred responsibility, giving her a single chance to do something totally unprecedented, to prove herself worthy to speak. That was the treasure he had found—and it was his chance.

  Before he knew it he was on his feet, pulling free of Father's restraining hands. He half danced across a dirt floor packed with Gariniki who flicked feet and tails away from his footsteps, climbing the rock just as the Elder declared:

  “I say young Allayo is no more; the Trial ended, she is Allayo-mudi before the gathering.”

  “Honor to Allayo-mudi!” The response washed over the central rock.

  The Elder blinked at David. “Possessed One, say what it is that you bring before me.”

  “I am David, son of Arthur Linden, who importuned with his tongue.” A thrill of fear and anticipation nearly unbalanced the deep bow he offered to the tiny Elder. “I bring a Tale, if you will hear it.” He held his breath.

  The Elder considered for a long moment, but at last he stamped his staff on the rock. “Young David today stands before us in the proper place,” he called out. “He shall be taken by the Word before the gathering and be judged.”

  David looked around at the House of Leaves teeming with the People. Here he stood, finally at the center of everything Garini. These people already understood that their lives balanced on the Word, on the Tale that stood at the intersection of youth and maturity; surely they could understand that the lives of dedicated colonists and the safety of this beautiful world could balance on a legal deadline that now stood at the conjun
ction of Word and word. They would understand, if he could tell his own Tale truly.

  “Let the sacred Word take me,” he said.

  He had forgotten the low, insinuating sound of the Mouth, but at once it arose in hundreds of keening voices, singing in his body and penetrating his head. He waited for it to recede.

  It continued.

  This wasn't right—before, with the others, it had disappeared immediately. Did he have to say something? His ears were ringing; his heart began to hammer in panic. There was something—he'd remembered it a moment ago—God, what did he have to say to make it stop?

  Allayo was looking at him, all golden eyes and emerald scales, beautiful and alien. She had said the words—but she would not prompt him now. She was whistling along with the others.

  Through the waves of sound he fought to find his way back in, to put himself in her place, standing on the rock. But then a different vision slipped into his mind. He stood amidst a gathering of Gariniki with all the leaf-green planet beneath his feet, while before him the throat of the nebula opened on a river of light that filled him, poured forth from his mouth and illuminated all of them.

  He opened his eyes and found the words:

  “The People gather in the House of Leaves before the Mouth; the Word flows through the gathering, and I can speak.”

  Copyright (c) 2008 Juliette Wade

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  * * *

  Special Feature: HOOK, LURE, AND NARRATIVE: THE ART OF WRITING STORY LEADS

  by Richard A. Lovett

  The most difficult part of any writing project is the opening. That's hard enough for articles like this, but it's vastly worse in fiction.

  Beginners are often taught that the opening's job is to hook readers and draw them into the story. The reality is it's more like advertising. Yes, you'd like to catch the undecided, but you also need to let them know what you're selling. To push the metaphor, if it's used cars you're selling, there's no sense trying to hook computer shoppers.