Ia pushed his glass things up. “Godlings raise themselves, Fahno-enulai. I’m simply providing… guidance. And attempting to minimize the damage.”
“That sounds like raising children, to me.” She tilted her head and looked at the narrow mortal. “Arolu? Men know more of these things.”
The narrow mortal, Arolu, had the laughing look, too, although he put a hand inside his sleeve and covered his mouth while he did it. “I would say no, Fahno. A child is both joy and pain, and I see only pain in Lord Ia’s face.”
“Yes, well.” Ia turned back to the wide woman. “An expert concurs.”
The wide woman shook her head. (Was she FahnodausheMiutaiwerTellomikannaEnulai, or was she Fahno-enulai? I had not known that mortals had lots of names the way gods did. How did they decide which to use when?) “Enough with your chattering, both of you. You’ve interrupted us, Lord Ia, but since I hadn’t felt like discussing the household accounts anyway, I don’t mind so much.” She waved, and the narrow man sighed and straightened, tucking the scroll into his arm. Then she focused on me, and I got scared again, because I had not realized mortals could feel like gods but this one really really did. She had a big, strong presence, and I was suddenly aware that she was trying to decide if I was worth her time. I straightened up, hoping she would think so.
“Please introduce your sibling, Lord Ia,” she said. “We must teach her good manners, after all.”
Ia pushed up his round eye-things. “That might be difficult, Fahno—the name, that is, and not the manners. She has no name as yet.”
“No name?” Fahnosomething frowned.
“We create those for ourselves, too, or choose a name from what others call us. Generally later, once we’re more certain of who we are—but that is why this sibling of mine has come, in fact. She seeks to learn her nature, and thinks she might find it here among your kind.”
“Fascinating.” To me, Fahnosomething said, “What do your parents call you, little one?”
I jumped. “They call me You, FahnoIDon’tKnowWhichOtherNamesToCallYou. I don’t mind if you call me that, too!” Even though the mortal word for you was so thin and flat. It contained nothing of my essence or experiences, nothing of what Fahnosomething thought of me. It was just a syllable.
Fahno twitched, which was a funny sort of thing for her to do. “You may call me Fahno-enulai. And—I’m sorry, but we’ll need something more than You to work with. Can you just choose a temporary name for now?”
I looked at Ia, frowning and trying to understand why this was so important. “Mortals cannot perceive one another’s souls,” he explained. “They need names, and sight and other things, to tell one another apart.”
“That is so sad!” I looked at Fahno and put a hand to my mouth, because that was one of the worst things I’d ever heard. “You poor things.”
“We get by,” said Fahno in a wry tone. “But names are one of the, ah, coping mechanisms we use.”
“Oh. OK, then.” I thought really hard for a minute. Well, I was in a mortal shell, so I would start with that word. “Shell? Ssss. Ssss… shhh. Sh.” I liked the roundness of the sh sound, and the languor of the ll. “Shrill?” No, but—“Shill?” It had… weight. And even meaning: in their language it was decoy. I was pretending to be mortal, wasn’t I? “Shill.” I looked at Ia, who ignored me. I looked at Fahno. “Shill? I like Shill.”
“Shill it is, then.” She looked me up and down. “Interesting.”
“Huh?”
“Well, you appear to be a healthy Darren girl of perhaps six or seven years old. Except for your eyes—oh!” I had just made my eyes brown instead of gold, like Fahno’s; she chuckled. “Ah, yes. Now you could pass for some niece or granddaughter of mine. Did you do that on purpose?”
I shrugged, because I hadn’t, except the eyes, which I had, and I didn’t know how to answer. “It’s what other mortals on this continent look like. Also, it just felt right.”
“Ah. And why did you choose that name?”
“I just picked things that sounded pretty and put them together.”
“Why those syllables, though?” I blinked, and Fahno sat forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “Even for gods, a name encapsulates some proportion of who you are. There’s a reason those syllables sounded pleasant to your ear. There’s a reason you combined them in that particular manner, and a reason the whole appealed to you. Perhaps you should think about that.”
I inhaled and stared at her. “You know a lot about gods!”
She chuckled. “Thank you for noticing. That was just observation, though. I’ve never met a godling child before.” She took a deep breath and turned to Ia again, her smile fading. “Which is why, old friend… I’m going to turn you down.”
Ia frowned. “You are the best of the enulai, Fahno. If anyone can manage a newborn godling—”
“I am also the oldest of the enulai, Ia. I’ve retired! All the godlings I once looked after have been assigned to others. I haven’t the energy to keep an eye on a mortal child, let alone one who can gallivant about the universe at will. I’m sorry, old friend, but I just can’t.”
Ia looked surprised and sad and sort of… scared? I didn’t know why. It was weird that somebody so scary could be scared too! I would ask him about it later. To Fahno I said, “What’s all that mean?”
I don’t think Ia heard me. Fahno had a weird sad look on her face while she looked at Ia, but she said to me, “We call it the Compact, little one. An agreement made some three hundred years ago, when mortalkind finally grew weary of being caught in the gods’ cross fire, and the Three left us to manage our own affairs. If you mean to do more than just visit this world now and again, if you would live among us, you must have a minder to see that you wreak a minimum of havoc. An enulai.” She touched her own breast. “But I cannot be your enulai; I am too old.” She paused for a moment, her gaze flicking back to Ia again. “I think my dear friend forgot that even we demons eventually grow old, and die.”
And that is when I screamed and ran away to another galaxy.
OK that was not my fault. Naha told me all about demons! She said they were full of POISON and they can make me die and they are as bad as NOTHINGNESS and MAELSTROM except they have killed way more gods and that is why I ran away!
But Ia came and got me and told me I was being stupid and rude and I should stop. He told me how enulai are, yes, demons who have agreed to keep an eye on godlings so they don’t do bad things, and how that is only fair because it is the mortals’ planet, after all, even if we have earned the right to be on it by fighting for it and dying on it and making children there. (Demon children!) And he said the demons will not kill me unless I do bad things to mortals, so don’t do bad things and everything will be fine.
I was still scared until Ia finally got mad and made himself scarier and so finally I went back to Fahno and said I was sorry. Ia is mean and I do not like him at all, and it’s not fair that he’s so strong because I don’t think he should be, I don’t care how old he is.
Anyway. Fahno accepted my apology and told me I could stay with her and her family while she tried to find another enulai for me. I was happy then because I would see what it was like to live like a mortal! And that is when I realized Fahno had said it to distract me so I wouldn’t be so scared anymore, but she meant it, too, so that is OK. It worked and I was happy again.
“You really are just a child,” she said after all this, shaking her head.
“Well, of course I am,” I said. Mortals were very strange.
After that Ia said he was tired of dealing with me and went away. Arolu took me to another part of the house and showed me a room that had things for me to use while I was staying there. One of them was called a BED and it was for lying on during sleep! But godlings do not sleep so I asked Arolu what I should do instead.
“I’m sure you can find some way to occupy yourself,” he said. “But do it quietly, please, because the mortals of the house will be sleeping.”
Then he told me about the house’s library, and I was really happy because I had heard of books! I sat down to teach myself to read and promised to be very quiet all night. I was, too, once Arolu left. OK, I got bored and made up a song to sing but I sang it in sounds mortals can’t hear. The song went Hey hey hey hello hello hello how are you I am fine I have a name it is Shill. But nobody heard me.
(I liked Arolu. He was big and his voice was always warm and he had lots and lots of long black hair, which reminded me a little of Naha. I asked him if anybody ever got lost in his hair, and he sort of blushed and said that was a question only a wife should ask. I didn’t know what that meant.)
Some time passed. It was not even a year, but it felt much longer. Time in the mortal realm is very strange! All the mortals went to bed and got very quiet, so I dissipated my body and went to go look at them. Mortal sleep is not very interesting to watch. They just lie there and fart and dream. One of the bedrooms in the house was empty, but there was a familiar smell all over it. I wasn’t sure what made it familiar, so I went back to wandering through the house.
And then I got annoyed. Everything was boring! The mortal realm was supposed to be fun! I decided I just wasn’t seeing enough of it, and jumped out the window to go exploring.
The city we were in was called ARREBAIA. It told me its name with the wind and the mortals’ thoughts. It was really old! Way older than me, but everything was older than me so that didn’t matter. It had big stone walls all over the place, holding dirt in terraces for the mortals’ gardens and streets and markets, and it was full of heavy old cubes and pyramids that the mortals lived in. It was a perfect city for playing in.
So I ran down a pyramid! I ran up a cube! I jumped into a penned-in place and there was an animal called an ALPACA! I petted it; it liked me. I ran down the street with my arms out, which made the mortals turn and stare, but I did not care because it was nighttime and I missed Naha. (I was really fast, anyway, so the mortals did not have to look at me for very long.) There was bright shiny moonlight on my skin and nice cool air and I think I ate a bug. It tasted awful! There were all sorts of things everywhere, and they were amazing! I loved them all.
But then! I heard something!
Something jumpy and beaty and steady and off-steady. I did not know what it was! It was way over on the other side of town, not too far from Fahno’s house, so I ran back as fast as I could (and maybe I folded spacetime a little, but just a little, so that is not cheating). The beaty sound was coming from the forest outside town, right where its edge stopped against the city’s outermost terrace-wall. I hopped over the wall and went into the trees, which was hard because the trees were big and tangly and wet and I was making so much noise that I worried I would scare the beaty sound. I turned into a lizard, and that made it easier. The smell of humans got thick, and then I saw a campfire through the trees, and the beaty sound was a feeling too now, all heavy and pounding down in my lizard-guts.
Then I got through the trees and gasped—because it was another city! A little bitty city, just a few buildings and they were empty, just a few streets and they were made of dirt, just two terraces and they grew wild, not planted or lived on at all. But it was a real city, because it was fierce and angry and it said who are you so I said who I was and then I asked who it was. It had a little bitty name, too: YUKUR. Arrebaia means “the city of the conquerors,” but Yukur is just “the men’s place.” Still, I told the city that Yukur was a very pretty name, because I wanted to be nice.
Yukur sort of huffed and told me I was not supposed to be there because I was not really a boy, but it was maybe OK because I was shaped like a lizard, and anyway I was a godling so it could not stop me. I could tell that it did not like me being there, though, so I made my lizard body into a boy lizard body, and promised I would only wear a boy body, or no body at all, while I was in the city’s limits. Then it was happy, and I was glad, because I had done the hello thing right again.
I skittered down a wall and up some steps and then jumped into some bushes when people went by: two boys, all aflutter in their pretty robes and long hair, rushing up the steps like they were late for something. I could hear one of them whisper to the other, “It’s Eino tonight!” I didn’t know what that meant.
(I know you know, but I am telling the story! Shut up! Interrupting is rude.)
The other boy giggled and then they both were gone up the steps. I followed them but it was slow because I was only a little lizard. I decided to be human instead, but since I had said I would be a boy, I made a boy body. Every boy I had seen since coming to the mortal realm—except Ia, but he was weird—wore heavy drapey robes and long hair, so I made myself like that, too, and ran after the two I had seen. It is hard to run when you are covered from neck to toe in robes, though, and when your hair is four feet long, and also when you have stuff between your legs that dangles and flops around! I did not like any of it, but I had made a promise. Eventually I figured out that I had to hold my head really high and gather up my robes, and run in this weird very straight way or I would hurt the dangly bits—but if I did all this, I could run like those other boys.
And I wanted to run! There was another sound over the beats that had drawn me to Yukur: deep and rough and rhythmic mortal voices. I did not know what it was, but it made me bouncy; I wanted to make the sounds, too, and move with the beats. I could have just dissipated and gone to see as a godling, but this was a mortal thing, all body-stuff, pounding blood and tingly skin and heavy breath. I needed mortalness to know what it all meant.
Finally I got to the top of the terrace. And! I saw!
Fires and smoke! And lots of boys all gathered in a circle! Some of them were to the side of the group, hitting things made of wood and leather which is what made the beaty noise—drums; Itempas had told me all about them. The rest of the boys were trotting about for a better position in the circle, or already in the circle, moving all together and making sounds in time with the beats, some high and some low and all of it together beautiful. Exciting! So this was MUSIC! It is not like the music in the gods’ realm, which is why I did not recognize it at first. Only two beats overlapping, no harmonies or clicks or static or interweaving thoughts, and the beats were not even as fast as pulsar-beats. The boys’ singing was not especially interesting, either, just words chanted over and over, a couple of tones harmonizing. It was catchy, though, and I liked it even if it was very simple. I moved forward a few feet behind the boys I had seen before, who were still whispering as they edged into the circle of other boys. Most of the boys around us were bigger, older, with heavy jaws and deep voices and big shoulders beneath their robes. They moved aside as us younger ones came through, though, grinning down at us in welcome, and I could not help smiling shyly back. One of the big boys patted me on the back. “It’s all right,” he said. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. Just do what feels right.”
“OK,” I said, not really knowing what else to say. It must have been right, because the big one pushed me forward, closer to the circle’s center, so I could see.
And then it was WOW I had never seen COOL I really liked WHEE there was stuff going SWISH and legs going KICK and IT WAS AMAZING.
What? Oh, fine, I will say it better. OK. The boys in the circle were fighting.
It did not look like fighting, not at first, because everything was swirling robes and looping rivers of hair. It looked like dancing, or what Papa Tempa had said dancing looked like. It was harder than dancing, though, faster, and the feel of it was not about the music. The boys rode the music, but they were focused on each other, and everything in them was all fierce! And wanting to win! One boy’s foot came out from a swirl of robe and swept the other’s ankle and that one fell back but caught himself to turn the fall into a flip. He swirled away, always swirling, everything a circle. Suddenly I understood: it was supposed to look like a dance, even if it was really a fight!
And I wanted to fight-dance, too, watching them! I did dance a little, b
ecause the drums were so nice, and because the boys’ song pulled me along like the Maelstrom when It is hungry. But I wanted to do the other dance, too!
Then somebody called out, and the drums stopped, and the boys at the center ended their swirls and faced each other. I could feel how much they wanted to keep fighting, but instead each one of them crossed a big wide sleeve over his face and dipped down on one leg for a minute, which said respect in the language without words. Then they went back into the circle, and all the boys around us cheered and stamped and the air got hot with joy!
But then everybody got quiet, shushing and elbowing each other, more excited for some reason. I turned to look where everyone else was looking, and gasped when they gasped as another boy stepped through the crowd. I don’t know why they gasped. I gasped because even though this boy was just a mortal like all the rest, he wasn’t wearing any of the robey things boys in Darr liked to wear. He had on loose pants, and the slipper-shoes boys wear, but above the pants he didn’t have on anything except brown skin! The boy had a lot of hair like all the others, too, but his was all clipped up on top of his head in big loopy knots. The starkness of him was like a slap in the eyeballs.
I also gasped because I recognized him! It was the boy from the market. His was the scent I had detected in the empty room of Fahno’s house; there had been echoes of Fahno in it because they were related somehow. And now I knew why he hadn’t been there, even though all the mortals in Fahno’s house were supposed to be asleep. He looked different from that day in the market in other ways: darker, somehow. More vibrant, more fierce, with more of his true self showing through the skin—like Naha when the wildness comes. When the boy stepped forward, holding up his arms to get everyone’s attention, all the other boys breathed together, ensnared. Of course they were! In that moment, I was, too. He felt like another god.
“Eino,” said one of the boys I’d followed. He said it the same way I said, the Three.
The Inheritance Trilogy Page 116
