by Betsy James
“Ooh! Ooh!” he cried, smacking the water. As the next little wave came in, he bent, closed his other hand on the crest, opened his palm, and looked into it. Seemed disappointed. “Eh.”
Queelic stood near him looking irresolute, breeches rolled to the knee. His father tried to catch the next wave. “Eh.”
I said to Nall, “What will happen to Ab Harlan now?”
“Maybe his people will take him.”
I did not think his people would want him. We had a glimpse of his round face, become what it had been all along: a sullen child’s.
“I think he’ll be a beachcomber,” I said. “A crazy old beachcomber who lives on the shore, and we’ll have to warn the kids away from him.”
“Then one day he’ll disappear, and we’ll find him drowned, his bones washed by the tide.”
On the beach above Ab Harlan and Queelic, Hsuu sat watching his children play. I looked from him to Nall and thought, Your father is as far beyond reach as mine is.
He caught my glance. “Maybe I like not knowing who he is. Kat, the world is bigger than the sea.”
He gazed. I dropped my eyes, feeling my heart jump and flutter. His face wore a look I knew: dangerous, alive. I could see him asking himself, What lies beneath the sea? Beyond the Gate? Could I go there and listen?
Aieh had said, That man will wreak upon you what he has upon me, just by being who he is.
How could I bear it?
I took a breath. I thought, If I want a creature to drowse by the hearth, I had better get a cat.
We pulled each other into the waves with our rags on, took them off, scrubbed them, and threw them in lumps on the beach. I was shy of him and did not mind it. The very sand I stood on was new.
In wet clothes we went shivering to Mailin where she sat by the fire in front of the turquoise wagon, wrapped in a long cloak. Nondany held a mug of tea between his knees. Robin was there, and Suni and her children. Ab Hiun and his wife and child were gone, but sitting in the fragrant smoke was Ab Jerash. He seemed nervous, perhaps because Aieh was rubbing his back.
Queelic had left his father on the beach and stood talking with Jerash, weary and relentless. I heard him say, “—with the council, but don’t expect it to be quick. If this world is to build lasting bonds, Jerash—”
“Cherish,” said Aieh, rubbing. “Jerash,” in a Rig accent, sounds like “Cherish.”
The whole party saw us at once and came rushing and talking, all but Jerash, who blushed like a boy. Nondany smiled as though he knew the secret of joy itself. His laddie lay asleep on a blanket at the back of the lean-to—Nondany’s for good, it seemed, for he had no family but a grandmother, who did not want him. “His name is Arem,” said Nondany. “But not what you think. It’s short for Aremyasnanatroy, some Waterfall dialect—it means ‘Ploughs Forty Fields.’ Poor piggie, someday we’ll find out which fields are his.”
Nall touched my hand. “Your sash, the one who made it—”
I nodded. “Nondany, I know a blind man who might teach him to weave.”
“Is that so? We’ll keep that in mind, you may be sure.”
We embraced Queelic. To Jerash I said, “Good morning, Uncle. Is there any news of the delegation?”
For I felt a deep misgiving. The League, the Rig elders, Tansharians and Roadsouls and the Reirig’s men—the world’s thousand narrow-minded and frightened halves—would be together at that council. Whatever could they find in common?
“They have sent a rider,” said Jerash. “They will be here tomorrow. And, Niece, I hope—The League would like—That is, Queelic and I and these good people”—he waved at the crowd around the fire, even Aieh—“would like you and Nall to join us in the council. To lead it, if you will.”
“Lead it?” I said. “Us?”
“You seem to see both sides,” he said. “The many sides. I had not known there were so many.”
I did not look at Nondany. I knew he would look smug. I thought about how it might be for us to listen patiently while Roadsouls lied, Leaguemen plotted, Rigi dreamed, and Tansharians wandered off into beer recipes and love songs while their books sat unbalanced. To do our best not to choose one point of view over another; to know that none was absolute, yet make sure each was heard, so that—if it existed—we might find the place all patterns come from.
I looked at Nall. He nodded. “All right, Uncle,” I said. “We’ll lead it.” And that was how I found the rest of my calling, the part that was not only songs.
Jerash nodded. Coughed. “Although, if you will pardon me—you may need more formal attire.”
Mailin laughed. “We’ll dress her.”
Jerash thanked her and excused himself to other tasks. The instant he was gone, there was a scurrying under the cart, but I scarcely noticed it. I was thinking, first, that the Rigi’s land was part of this land now; the way was open, we could go back and forth to Selí. To the Gate. Next I thought of those I wished could be here, around Mailin’s breakfast fire.
My father was one. And Nall’s ama. And Raím, and Jekka, and Bian, and Tadde, whom I had never met. And Jake the turkey man; I would go to Golden, and find out who in the world, besides me, had respected him.
I said, “Mailin, have you seen my aunt and the girls?”
“Around and about. Lali Nicane gave them a bed, but they were up at dawn. Your aunt is making the girls work at cleaning, nursing, whatever. She’s a good woman—guilty and terrible. I wish I could get the girls away from her, but so far I’ve captured only one.”
She pointed. In a tumble of children under the turquoise cart Missa groveled, her skirts hitched sideways.
“Oh, Mailin!”
“A deathly stomachache, skillfully feigned.”
“If Auntie sees her like that, it’ll be the end of any council!”
“I have placed my spies, and the sickbed is prepared.”
So was breakfast. There was fish stew, hot corn bread with butter and honey, bacon and apricots and little withered figs. Dai appeared leading Moss, and we had milk from the pail; then Lilliena showed up with the ugly dog Sotis, half a cheese, and a bucket of eggs—oh, and a quart of raspberries. We fell to again, we ate everything but the dog and the dog ate anything we didn’t. Where did that little being stow it all? A neighbor of Mailin’s brought a lobster, very lively, but by then we were groaning so we put it in damp burlap to wait for dinner. An old man came lugging a tub of onions. Ab Harlan had fallen asleep on the sand under a tattered blanket. The sun burned through the mist.
People came and went. It was Mailin’s veranda without the veranda. They brought gifts of roses and pickled eggplant and clams and young basil and beer, and they asked for stories.
They wanted The Story. We began to tell it, in bits and pieces—I told some, and so did Queelic and Aieh. Hsuu came up from the beach, and Mailin asked him a question in Rig; he pursed his lips, grinned with his strong teeth, and never answered.
Nall listened. Sometimes he spoke, briefly, but after a spell of this friendly chaos he moved away a little and sat looking out to sea. Now and then a group of Rigi came looking for us, wanting to hear again about paddling to Stillness through the tide race or fighting the Reirig to the death—the exciting parts.
Mailin lured them off with food. “They want heroes,” said Nondany. “I don’t hold with heroes. This world, of which we are all a part, uses us to heal itself; willy-nilly, we are obedient to it, down to the last chimney sweep. Let us have fewer heroes and more songs! But no more songs for you, my love.”
It was the broken dindarion he spoke to. He rubbed it with his sleeve. Sotis put both paws on his thigh, the way dogs do when they know you are grieving. “I never mourned my father so much,” said Nondany.
I held out my hands. He gave it to me. It was so light—like nothing. I looked at Nall where he sat apart and quiet. Nondany followed my glance. “Yes,” he said. “Oh, yes.”
I took the dindarion to Nall. When he turned it in his hands it raised a whisper of its old d
eep hum.
I did not say anything but went to help Robin wash plates in a bucket. When they were clean, I went back to lean on Nall’s shoulder.
“It’s a boat,” he said, working a loose strake. “A wooden drum. But I can’t fix it, it’s too hurt.” He blew into the sound hole and listened as though at the mouth of a shell. “I could make a new one. Maybe.”
As he tinkered, he hummed to himself, the Rigi’s song. “New words?” I said, then wished I had not.
“It will not be I who hears them.” He raised his head. That dangerous look. It said, We are equals, we risk as we must. “Maybe you will,” he said.
Mailin chased the crowds away for a little. Queelic took a nap with his head in Aieh’s lap. Under the cart Missa played hand slaps with three other little girls, and Nondany was eavesdropping. I bent to look in on them.
He said to the children, “Keep going, I almost know it.” And to me, “This old brain! Apprentice, here’s a task. Help me remember this.”
I crawled in with them and sat down, saying, “Good day!” because two of the slappers were the little Rig twins in their beads. The third was a Roadsoul child, fair as a lily, and Missa was the fourth. Rosie was there too, in a red rage because they would not let her play.
“You’re too little,” said Missa. “This is a fancy one.”
“Pig babies!” Rosie screeched, and stormed away.
The girls nudged their knees together, dusted their hands, slapped, and sang, “Beginning it—”
“Deeli!” cried a woman’s voice. “Eresha!”
The twins stopped slapping with their mouths still open, rose, and were gone like juncos from a winter bush.
Missa was cross. “We can’t do it, then. It takes four.” Nondany knew better than to argue with the rules of childhood, but he looked downcast.
“I’ll play,” I said. “Nall! Come be fourth, Nondany can’t slap.”
He brought the dindarion and laid it in the sand against the cart wheel as if it were a violet, a skylark’s egg. I took his hand and drew him down, and he snugged his knees in with ours.
“All right,” said the Roadsoul child, raising her hands. “Here’s how it goes.”
Beginning it,
Nothing.
Ending it,
Nothing.
In the middle, all of us
Dancing in a ring-o—
Fish, fiddle, grannie, griddle,
Bird upon the wing-o,
Cat, cow, piggie, plough,
Every mortal thing-o,
Out of nothing, into nothing.
Take my hand and sing-o:
Rise up!
Sigh back!
The sea is at the gate—
Dance!
“Mister Nall,” said Missa, “you have to slap.” For he had stopped slapping, his hands in midair.
“Ah—”
“You have to rise up,” she said, rising with her arms out, sighing back like a cut flower. “You have to do that, or you can’t play.”
“Ah—,” he said again. With a blind, listening face he rose as instructed, whacked his skull on the wagon bed where he had whacked it in the shelter on the Isle of Bones. He sat down clutching the back of his head, then slapped along a half beat behind the rest of us, saying, “Kat—Kat—”
“You’re messing it up,” said Missa.
He covered his face with his hands. “He banged his head,” said the fair one.
“Twice in the same place,” I said.
Weeping, he tried to slap and wipe his nose at the same time, but the Roadsoul girl said, “Don’t get your snot on me,” and he had to go off and blow his nose into the sand, because he had no handkerchief.
“He’s no good at it,” Missa told Nondany.
Nondany said, “Keep teaching him.”
I scrambled after Nall. He reached his hand back upside down, as he had in the manat. I said, “Don’t get your snot on me, either.”
He took my hand anyway and wiped his eyes on his wrist. “Songs change nothing,” he said.
This made me laugh. But he said, “I mean the kind of world this is. That those children may die next winter, some of them, and those who don’t will have their hearts broken, see their life’s work fail, go blind, grow old. Our children, too—and it means nothing. Which is the same as everything. And so we sing.”
I took his hand and spoke into the palm of it. “Mystery.”
Under the cart Nondany and the Roadsoul girl were teaching Missa a new song.
The sun is on the sea,
And the leaf is on the tree,
And the lark is on the thorn,
And the babe’s born—
Once again!
Missa’s voice was reedy and new. The lobster had gotten out of its burlap and came rowing over the sand, bent on escape. We watched it. As the crabs had eaten Tadde, we would eat the lobster and, in turn, someday, be eaten by worms, or else be ash to grow onions.
“That lobster doesn’t know it’s going to die. But we know we will,” I said. For a moment I wanted my girlhood back, to sing my daydream out of the sea and be happy forever.
He put his arms around me. I felt the distance between us, always there. I thought, When death comes to him, he will go simply, like dissolving foam. But I shall go weeping, arguing, looking back.
He gave me a sweet, frustrated look that meant, Can’t you feel how easy it is?
“It’s not easy,” I said. But as I spoke it got easier. I was looking at his mouth and thinking I would love him forever only for the way his lips tucked back at the corners, when those lips opened on a yell—the lobster had blundered into his toe and grabbed it. He danced about, cursing in Rig. I laughed so hard, I sat down with a bump and began to cry.
Nall held me tight, the lobster scrabbled toward freedom, Nondany’s ugly dog caught it, and so it was eaten anyway, but not by us.
The Rigi’s Song: Last Verses
Rake the ashes from the fire,
Cut the sash from off the loom,
Lock the gate and shut the byre,
Lay the body in the tomb.
Scarcely has the mourner’s scream
Faded, and the drum is dumb,
When through the womb’s gate to a new dream
The closed eyes of the infant come.
Year Altar Song. By Kat. Downshore.
From Nondany’s New Papers: Some Notes on the Rigi’s Tongue
Some Notes on the Rigi’s Tongue
Phrases
Aash ♦ Hush
Alele! Ai alele! ♦ Welcome! Be welcome!
Aremoi Lasai ♦ The Gate warrenhouses
Dua ‘eam? ♦ Who are you?
Hom meshai ♦ My people
Huss ♦ Sleep
Ki nibo—♦ But the dance—
Nibo kashoé ♦ The dance is ready
Shu-shu! ♦ Comfort sound, made when someone is grieving or hurts her/himself; sometimes drawn out to shuu
Word List
ama ♦ maternal great-grandmother
arem ♦ a warrenhouse; an underground Rig dwelling which houses a whole clan, many-roomed like a rabbit warren
hásjele ♦ rushing
heo ♦ too much
hsuu ♦ sea
im ♦ in
hun ♦ depth, deep
kas ♦ tidal wave
la ♦ a way through
las ♦ door or gate
Las ♦ the Gate
lassa ♦ threshold
manat ♦ small Rig boat made of whale, orca, or seal skin, with a closed deck like a kayak
mimo ♦ cousin
na’ ♦ that
nall ♦ long wave
nani ♦ grandchild, great-grandchild
ne ♦ no
ni’ ♦ this
ni’na’ ♦ Rig slang for “changes”; literally, “this-that”
O he! ♦ Alas!
ovai ♦ or
rig (pl. rigoi) ♦ seal
sásjele ♦ splashing, bursting
&nb
sp; uhui ♦ ghost
voi ♦ Rig boat made of orca skin, open like a dory
Old Town Names Chant
Many settlements in the coastal area were originally Rig bore names in the Rigi’s tongue. In time these were altere fit the Plain tongue, but the old names are preserved in children’s rhyme.
Tanshari, night starry
Alore, surf roar
Parvats, muddy flats
Edraves, wet caves
Shanever, little river
Lelaido, otter slide-o
Coraveech, whale beach
The towns in that rhyme are now known as:
Downshore
Lore
Beervats
Drays
Neverly
Lydo
Coretown
Roadsoul Rhyme for Counting Out
The Roadsouls are thought to be descended from the first Rig settlers. Among the many clues to this connection is their language, which is closely related to the Rigi’s tongue. Here is a counting-out rhyme that preserves, as nonsense syllables, fragments of an ancient and famous Rig song:
Oisey hoikey, out of the sea,
Neecy nosy, shed your skin,
Jeecy leecy, in again—
Nosh!
Mosh!
Marry!
oisey hoikey; Old Rig ose hokiel: beautiful girl
neecy nosy; Old Rig nacei noshai: she emerges [from water] onto stone
jeecy leecy; Old Rig chisi, lisi: he steals, he grips
nosh; Old Rig ne: no
mosh; Old Rig baby talk for mahosh: mine
In some old stories the Roadsouls are called the Rigsouls and are described as Rigi who wander now on earth as seals do in the sea. One Roadsoul chief, asked whether his people were descended from the Rigi, nodded and said, “We left. Those people were too serious.”
Acknowledgements
I would like to give special thanks to Lucia Monfried, my first midwife; Ginee Seo, who dared me to write “a big book”; and Susan Burke, who handled the results of that dare with clarity and grace. Also to Jan Priddy and Shannon Guinn-Collins, brilliant readers; Ken Hause, who can start a fire with a bow drill; and George Hersh, friend and visionary and wise heart.
