Chapter Seventeen
Sailors’ Stories
Trinka longed for a way to go back to Apostrophe and help her mother, but with the vial from Annelise gone, she had no choice but to stay with the ship. Bram still stubbornly refused to listen to her pleas, but he tried to teach her to navigate by the color of the seawater, the types of plants and fish that the sailors caught, and the sounds in the wind. She still couldn’t see or hear any difference in their surroundings (was there really a discernible contrast between navy-aquamarine and cobalt-turquoise?), but she had an unmistakable feeling that wherever they were going, they were getting nearer and nearer.
The days passed quickly as Trinka spent her time trying to control her talismans, learning to read, and listening to the sailors’ stories.
“Well, I’m fresh out of ideas,” Thork declared one evening as soup-time approached. “Hey, Trinka!” he called, “After the way you got here, I’m sure you’ve got a few stories to tell.”
“Eh, if she’s anything like Bram, she won’t tell ‘em,” Yerik grumbled.
“Still, I’ll bet she could tide us over in an emergency.”
“Emergency?” Butwhat darted out from behind Trinka, shooting sparks and running in circles. On his way past, he caught the edge of Trinka’s genie purse and sent it spilling out onto the deck, scattering talismans once again.
Trinka calmed Butwhat down and began picking up the talismans.
“Here,” Gudlaug called, holding up a small flat circle that had fallen by his feet.
“Let me see that,” Matros reached for the object. “Know what this is?”
“No,” Trinka admitted.
“An astrolabe,” his brother Vann interrupted.
“And alidade,” Matros added, twirling the small stick suspended from its center. “Must be from Apostrophe. Very old.”
“What’s it for?”
“For? Nothing,” Yerik scoffed. “Those sand-loving, red-sailed vulgarians used to try to use them for navigating, but no real sailor uses one. We can tell where we are just by the smell of the wind.”
“Speaking of wind, we’d better call some more if we’re ever going to get moving,” Knop piped up from where he sat, repairing a bundle of seaweed ropes.
Yerik suggested, “Why don’t you tell the one about the nereid who met a sailor and…”
“I don’t think you should tell that one with certain people present,” Knop nodded toward Trinka and winked.
“Hey,” Matros held up the astrolabe and alidade again. “How about Amir Fustafa’s folly?”
A few of the sailors groaned, but Vann said, “Well, Trinka hasn’t heard it before, and a new audience makes an old story seem new!”
The sailors grumbled their assent, and Trinka sat down on the deck, cross-legged like the sailors did. Spout, Spigot, and Alfredo settled themselves and front of her, and Grble even ventured out of her genie purse to sit beside her. Although his cup-shaped feet gripped the deck effortlessly, the rocking motion of the ship turned Grble an even more chartreuse shade than usual, making him strongly prefer the safety of his ornament form. It felt good to have him beside her for a change as Thork began to tell the story.
“The water near the shores of Apostrophe has always been undrinkable, thick with dust from the red rock that reaches into the sea, poisoning the water with land. One season, when the supply caravans that brought fresh, inland water to the parched throats of the shoreline’s children became broken with drought, Amir Fustafa’s father, Alfuying, begged the sailors of Brace for aid—he would give anything, anything, for just enough water for his people to drink. The sailors from Brace took pity on them, and, out of kindness, brought them ships full of clean, fresh water. Far more, even, than Alfuying had asked. But with the children’s thirst quenched, Alfuying only thirsted for more.”
Trinka felt a slight breeze start to stir, brushing against her cheeks, and wondered if it was just a coincidence.
“He ordered his soldiers to build huge ships. They spanned hundreds of feet long, with enormous sails made from fiery red cloth, emblazoned with the emblem of Alfuying’s house, the aeluroscelis. Great creatures with four powerful legs, and enormous jewel-encrusted metallic wings.
“Soon the ships began sailing near the coast, just far enough from Apostrophe’s shores to reach fresh water. Then Alfuying’s sailors began to sail further, driving away the ships from Brace, forcing them from their ancestral fishing waters. But still, Alfuying thirsted for more.
“His ships began to penetrate further and further into the world of Brace, using instruments like the astrolabe and alidade to guide them. But instead of gathering the water and returning with it themselves, they attacked the ships of Brace, putting sharp-edged swords to the innocent, and taking the survivors as slaves. Soon the sight of those blood-red sails on the horizon instilled as much terror into the peaceful people of Brace as the pointed tips of the swords themselves.”
Trinka could definitely feel the wind gusting against the sail now, moving them along as if it was, indeed, listening to the story and joining in the spirit of it.
“When Alufying’s son, Amir Fustafa, came to power,” Thork continued, “he decided to conquer Brace entirely. He knew he couldn’t win against the sailors using ships, because the sailors from Brace were more skillful, speedful, and cunning than any so-called sailor who grew up on dry sand.”
“Hear!” the other sailors called out in agreement.
“So he decided to conquer Brace the same way Apostrophe had conquered its desert lands: with an army of golden chariots, pulled by the aeluroscelis.”
Trinka thought of the creature she had seen with the Amir she knew, who had taken her mother up into the sky. Could at least parts of this story be true?
“Amir Fustafa rallied dozens of them…”
“Hundreds!” Vann called out.
“Thousands!” Yerik yelled.
“Tens of thousands!” Raido’s deep voice rumbled.
”…and they swept over the skies of Brace like a glowing storm cloud. Their golden wings flashed like lighting, the sound of them shook the seas like thunder, and the beating of their wings brought the waves to their peaks.”
Trinka felt an involuntary shiver trickle down her spine.
“As they caught sight of the first ships, the aeluroscelis began to circle, spiraling round and round like a whirlpool of golden fire. The first battalion broke upon the ships of Brace like a violent storm, tearing the green, cross-hatched sails from top to bottom with their jagged wings. The sailors of Brace knew that even their most skillful, speedful sailors couldn’t sail away faster than the aeluroscelis could fly. They panicked, but they wouldn’t fight. So they sent their most skillful, speedful sailors west, to draw the war away from their life ships, loaded with children. The aeluroscelis and their chariots pursued the sailors, ready to strike them down into the waves, never to rise again. And then, without warning, all the aeluroscelis began to fall into the sea.”
“Why?” Trinka asked aloud, then quickly bit her lip.
“They needed the heat in Apostrophe to warm their wings and carry them through the air. Amir Fustafa didn’t know they couldn’t fly once they became chilled by the cold, wet winds of Brace.”
Trinka could kind of understand this feeling.
“All the army that was sent that day was lost. Even the fleets of red-sailed ships were sunk by the weight of the chariots falling on them, or were chased away after the destruction. The people of Apostrophe never sailed the seas again.”
The wind whistled sadly as the sailors lapsed into silence.
“Well, go on, tell the one about how the Plassoplano was created, seeing as she’s from there,” Knop suggested finally.
“The what?” Trinka asked.
“Plassoplano. Isn’t that what you call the city in Ellipsis?”
“You mean the City of Mirrors?”
“Right. Don’t you want to hear how it got started?”
Although Trinka had
grown up in Ellipsis, she had never thought about how it came to be there. She had assumed it had just always existed.
“Even before Amir Fustafa’s folly,” Thork took a long drink of water and began again, “there were people in Apostrophe who opposed war. They spent their entire lives in huge libraries, in the very tops of enormous buildings, where they could sit, and study, lost in their lofty thoughts.”
Trinka thought of the library she had visited with Jamilah, that had once belonged to their grandfather.
“Some say they even liked to think and study so much that they invented entire meals that could be consumed in one bite, so they wouldn’t even have to take time to eat.”
“Not me,” Yerik interrupted. “That’s part of living, eating.”
“We know!” Snorri teased him.
Yerik set up the soup pot on its triangular stand and filled it with water, Vann readied the dish of pale blue fire beneath, and Matros produced a seaweed basket full of fish and other creatures their nets had caught that day—some long and slimy, some slippery, some spiky, some with many tentacles and some that just looked like amorphous globs. The cook began cutting off strips of sea plants and tossing them into the pot, and Trinka wondered how such different looking specimens—some bright green, some so dark they were almost black, some flat and thin, some thick and globular–could taste so very much the same.
“Hey, Trinka, catch the salt pig!”
Startled, Trinka noticed the seasoning jar dashing toward her, emitting little frantic squealing noises. Spigot, Spout, and Alfredo rose up in their usual panic, getting several of the sailors wet and setting Knop’s favorite hat on fire briefly, but Grble calmly reached out, grabbed the errant container with his long fingers, and handed it to Trinka.
The little jar squealed and shivered for a moment before quieting in her hands. Its body began by going upright like a normal jar, but then bent over completely to one side before ending in a wide, circular opening that looked like a snout. Snorri took it and cradled it gently over the soup pot, letting a few shakes of salt fly from it before tucking it back in the supply basket.
“You can’t blame the salt pig. It’s had a hard life. An old cook used to keep pepper in it,” the cook explained. A mournful sneeze echoed from the depths of basket.
“When Apostrophe set out to become an empire,” Thork continued as if there had been no interruption, “the elitists who liked to study couldn’t find enough quiet space to sit and think, with all the wars, and talk of wars. They had read of a place on the edge of the world of Brace where new worlds could be created.”
Although this story wasn’t as dramatic as the last one, and the wind had quieted somewhat, Trinka’s heart beat faster. Was there really such a place?
“A few of them set out…”
“A dozen!”
“A hundred!”
“A thousand,” Matros declared firmly.
“Yes, definitely a thousand of them set out, hiring ships to take them there. They left everything behind, bringing with them only the knowledge they had stored in their minds, and a load of glass. And unlike the marauders, these people knew where they were going. They never stole anything, or tried to make slaves of the people of Brace. They even knew how to call the wind a bit, whistling to it using some little talismans they had made.”
Trinka rummaged in her bag, and pulled out a small whistle she had noticed earlier. Shaped like a spiral shell, it seemed made to be blown through, yet it made no sound.
“That’s it!” Thork exclaimed. “Or one of them, anyway. You’d need a thousand of them, all blowing at once, to get the wind to hear it.”
Vann borrowed it and blew into it, but it made no sound that any of them could hear. “Eh. Better to call the wind with stories any day.”
Thork nodded. “But the wind did come to the elitists from Apostrophe. It listened to the thousand of them all calling to it together. It pushed them and carried them, helping them along, until finally they reached the elaphromyria, the place where a new world could be created.”
Trinka waited quietly, expecting him to say more, but he seemed to have finished.
“And then what happened?” she finally prompted him.
“What do you mean what happened? The thousand of them created the Plassoplano, uh, City of Mirrors of course.”
“But how?”
“From the elaphromyria,” Thork’s brow furrowed, as if he were not understanding what she was not understanding.
“But how did they create Ellipsis from the elaphromyria?”
“I don’t know. I guess they called to it somehow, like we call the wind.”
“You know more about these things than we do, my girl,” Knop added. “You’re from there.”
“And when someone has a mind to do something, and a whole lot of people work on it together, amazing things can happen,” Raido said sternly.
“Especially when those people are airheads!” Yerik grinned. The sailors laughed.
“Come! Enough of these serious stories. A rousing tale to raise the wind is what we need now,” Raido commanded.
Trinka tried to think about what she had just heard, but Knop told a ridiculously funny story about a sailor who accidentally wove his clothes right into the sail cloth he was mending that captivated not just the wind, but Trinka’s attention as well. Although Trinka quickly caught on that the sailors cared more about their style of storytelling than the substance of the story, she couldn’t help but wonder if some of them were more true than they knew.
“Well, that’s it, I’m done!” Knop concluded.
“Good thing we’re stopping soon to get more stories for the soup!” Snorri chortled.
“Stories, for soup?” Trinka laughed.
All the sailors’ raucous camaraderie immediately died into silence, and Trinka realized they were, for a change, speaking seriously.
“Well, you ought to know all about that, being from Ellipsis,” Matros chided her.
Trinka was baffled.
“On Ellipsis, the dream merchants call it the perisseia,” Bram, who had slipped in among them unnoticed, explained quietly.
The perisseia! The dream dross, that ashy residue from the oneiric energy? They actually put that cloudy gray glop into their soup and ate it? Trinka’s stomach, which had acquiesced somewhat to a life of being rocked back and forth and subjected to meals of fish and seaweed, started turning over once more.
“What does it do when you…” Trinka gulped, “um, add it to soup?”
“Gives it flavor,” Snorri answered.
“Your stories, or the soup?” Trinka questioned.
“Both,” Gudlaug uttered. A chorus of agreement arose, and the sailors’ buoyant spirits returned.
“What do people use it for on Ellipsis?” Thork asked, and Trinka wondered if she should reveal that the dream merchants were trading them what, in their world, was essentially garbage.
“On Ellipsis…” Trinka began slowly. “Everyone wants to dream. They seed the clouds of their thoughts every night to try to direct their dreams, then they try to interpret the dreams they do have. They give dreams as gifts, they even buy glass and crystals from the dream merchants in exchange for dreams. In dreams, you can experience anything, be anything… or anyone.”
She looked down at her hands. Even when she was small, and Annelise had given her dream seed clouds to stave off the nightmares, she had never been great… even in her dreams.
“Eh, stories are better than dreams,” Thork told her, and Trinka lifted her head. “Dreams are passive. Even if you can control them, even if you remember them, you only experience them yourself. Stories are alive. They’re made to be shared.”
His gaze took in Trinka and Bram, standing with arms folded a distance away.
“The problem with being able to dream anything,” Bram finally answered, and his blue-gray eyes held Trinka’s for a moment, “is that people try to make those dreams come true.”
He turned and stalked off
to the other end of the ship.
Trinka slipped the astrolabe and alidade into her genie purse, and noticed something inside that glinted in the twilight. She lifted it up, and saw two clear, glass bulbs held together by a delicate stem An empty vial, the esperaliss. If she had found it earlier she might have gone running to her father, hoping this would finally be the proof he needed, but now even that hope seemed empty.
The sailors began passing out the low, curved-handled bowls of storyless soup. Trinka tried to force herself to eat, but only managed to imbibe a little broth.
As darkness enfolded the ship for another night, and the sailors’ talk gave way to the voices of the waves and the wind, Trinka lay down on the always damp planks of the deck. She huddled under her thick blanket and its waterproof seaweed covering, tasting the lingering tang of salty soup… and a few tears.
Trinka and the Thousand Talismans Page 20
