The Silences of Home

by The Silences of Home (v5. 0) (epub)

  There were only a few Queensfighters beneath the far tees now; the rest were digging at the hills, as she had. She followed Aldron to another one, though he did not allow her to work with him once he saw her arm and its darkening bandage. She stood and watched him and the others as, one by one, the tall hill houses were opened to sky and metal. A tangle of flying creatures burst out each time—not coloured any more, in the sun, but dun-brown. They were moths, Lanara saw, with broad, furred wings and fat bodies. They plummeted within seconds, to die among the torn vines and petals. She batted at them and pushed her way into another house, and another. She watched Aldron kill two Raiders by a pool and three more in the river. She managed to catch one in the back with her dagger; two others leapt into their pool before she could retrieve the dagger. She had thrown down her bow and arrows somewhere, sometime. She did not remember this, or indeed anything except running into darkness and out of it, and cheering with the other Queensfighters when another Raider died.

  The shadows of trees and hills were lengthening. Lanara looked for the sun and found it, low and red, caught among the highest branches. She shook her head, tried to swallow over the taste of rot she had not noticed until now. Queensfighters moved nearby—but not Aldron; she could not see him by the river or among the gaping houses. She had no voice to call his name, so she walked, as quickly as she could, her left arm hanging heavily at her side. When she came to the grove from which the Raiders had attacked, she heard someone say, “It’s over. The Queen is waiting for us.” The Queen, Lanara thought. Ladhra, Luhr: how could I forget all this? She staggered after the person who had spoken—just a shadow among all the other shadows—until the trees ended and red-gold light stopped her and flooded her eyes with tears.

  It was a wide space, she soon saw, ringed with trees but flat and open. A large pool lay in its centre, reflecting the edges of the forest and the colours of the sky. Like the Throne Room fountain, Lanara thought, grasping at details that would anchor her here; but the fountain was not like this at all. This pool could never have shone beneath a desert sky, not even through the magic of a hundred queens. It had been born here, sprung from a river that also fed green things and flowers. Lanara shivered with longing and hatred. In the middle of the pool was a tall stone, light green and grey except for a darker patch halfway up. At first Lanara could make no sense of this darker patch—but then she saw that it was Leish, bound once more, even around his forehead. Above him was Queen Galha, standing very straight atop the stone. Malhan—Lanara remembered this name too, and glimpsed the man on a bench by the pool; one of a series of benches, she saw, and she went to join the Queensfighters who were already sitting or standing there. Some of them were laughing; most were bloody on clothes and skin. They have no idea what will come now, she thought, but I do, and I am ready.

  “People of the Queen!” Galha cried, and they quieted, gazing up at her. “Our victory is nearly complete. My daughter is almost avenged. There is but one punishment remaining.”

  Lanara saw something move, beneath where the Queen was standing. Aldron. Lanara squinted at him, and he shimmered in her eyes before she forced them to focus. He was not looking at the Queen but around at the trees, down at the water, into the glow of the sun. Lanara did not recognize the expression on his face. Just as she thought, I’ll go to him, he disappeared behind the tall stone. She could not have risen in any case; her wound was throbbing from arm to shoulder to ears. It was so loud that she heard only its pulse and ache—but then Queen Galha lifted her hands and face to the crimson sky and opened her mouth. Sounds blazed at last from the months and months of silence, and Lanara cried out, hearing them, and knew that she had not been ready after all.

  “Leish!” His father’s voice is faint, but Leish knows this is because Nasranesh’s song is so vivid today. It has not sparkled so since he was a boy, picking out all the strands for the first time: the ocean against the land, the river through the land, the living colours above and beneath, stretching all the way to the peaks that whispered snow. He hears these strands effortlessly now, together and separately, all of them as beloved as the voice that calls his name from the shore. Leish calls back to his father as he steps into the water, then onto the moss. He cannot recall ever having felt such welcome from the water before. Perhaps at birth, slipping from his mother’s body into his hearth pool—but of course he does not remember this.

  He hears splashing: probably Mallesh coming out behind him, letting him be first to shore as always. As if Leish could ever really be faster than Mallesh, whose limbs are so much longer. Leish sometimes does best him beneath the water, when his boy’s body passes through smaller arches in the Old City and Mallesh is forced to take a different way—but that is all. And whenever he asks Mallesh not to let him win, his brother sputters and blusters and embarrasses them both—so Leish does not turn and speak to him about it. Not this time, when the water on his skin and the songs in his head are so sweet.

  The trees welcome him too, wrapping him in green shade and gold. Vines brush his hair and the backs of his hands, and he smells moist petals, hears roots stretching beneath his feet. He follows a dazzle of notes to the gathering pool, where he stands and dozes a bit, until someone picks him up. His father, maybe (not his mother: Leish is too big for her to lift, except in water)—but he soon feels stone against his back and knows that it is Mallesh who has carried him. Leish will wait here at the bottom of the stone while Mallesh climbs it. Leish hears his feet scuffing and settling at the top. He will talk and talk—afterward as well, asking Leish what he thought of the speech, scanning his face for a lie. Leish presses his head and neck against the stone and prepares to listen, even though Mallesh’s words cannot possibly be as strong and clear as the song of Nasranesh today.

  Leish was choking. Water poured down his throat and he had no breath. There were fingers on his nose, pinching and gouging, and in his hair, pulling so viciously that his head snapped up and his streaming eyes opened. Even before they did and he saw the person beside him on the stone’s base, he remembered. He remembered the pain of his body; he remembered every note of sea and jungle and city and river and tower and ship. He gagged and hacked, looked into the eyes of one of the Queensmen who had been with him since the day Dashran had died, on palace stones. Since the day Leish had first seen Ladhra, as his own people starved and stank beneath them.

  He heard truth now, not dream or memory. The song of his land was splintering, its sounds rising and sharp with empty spaces. And above the changing song were other sounds: screams and breaking boughs, whoops and the pounding of feet. He listened as the Queensman bound rope around his forehead and tugged it taut. Leish felt the skin there crack open as the rest of his skin already had. They had carried him here—the Queensman had probably stepped on the flat rocks that lay just below the pool—so that he would have no relief from the water, and now he cracked and bled, and he did not care. Malhan was sitting on the first bench, and Queensfolk were milling around the others. Leish saw the blood on these Queensfolk and knew it was mostly not their own. This he did care about—this made him struggle against the ropes and moan, though he longed to shout so loudly that his people would hear his shame and sorrow, and his love. So that his mother and father and Dallia and even Mallesh would hear him.

  The Queen spoke, from the top of the stone. “Queen” and “daughter” was all he understood, though Wollshenyllosh had taught him so many words. Galha was silent for a moment afterward. Leish looked at the last of the sunlight, among the highest leaves—not at the Queensfolk who sat on the benches, with their carvings of Nasran and the land she had found. He and Mallesh and the other children had carved some of these. Leish had chipped out a fallen drylander because Mallesh had laughed at the fish he had begun first.

  Blood dripped and beaded on Leish’s eyelashes and he blinked it away. He heard the Queen say, “Now,” her voice low and harsh and very close, as if she were directing this word downward to him. He heard his breat
h, in and out—and then he heard the sounds of a dream he had had long ago. Dallia had woken him, held him and steadied him afterward. He whispered her name once before this waking horror took him.

  The roots are the first to scream. They tear from the earth and strangle in air, too high for the touch of water or burrowing creatures. The trees fall one by one, until there is no forest, no dome above the river. The cries of the bark are long and deep; the leaves chatter and flutter and slow, crushed against the ground. They turn from green to brown and brown to yellow—not autumn, which they have never known, but a separate season that withers them to dust in a moment. The vines among them rot to threads. The flowers crumble and scatter before the wind of words and dying. Moss curls into earth that cannot hold it. Hill houses split and flatten. The wind boils over the shore and into the sea, where coral bleeds to smooth white and plant stems keen and sliver away. Fish spin and struggle toward the water beyond the wind. Animals crawl and fly and slither among the toppled trees—but there is fire now. The flames hiss over the wood and through it; they roar into the sea. The Old City burns. The moss blackens on the shore and by the hearth pools, which cry out in shrinking foam. The river courses with flame, from the sea to the vanishing pools and past them all, up and on to where the peaks weep snow. The fire thunders close around the gathering pool, against a sky livid with colours that no longer live below.

  All the waters of Nasranesh sing as they die. They sing beneath the flames, softer and broken, until only a whisper remains. Selkesh walk into this whisper, long lines of selkesh, their skin pale and dry, their bodies transparent, so that rock and blowing ash show through them. They crouch or lie still or stagger; they bend over black puddles and tear at the flesh of unrecognizeable beasts. Some of these selkesh stand by the shore and look out across the wide salt water. They are motionless and stooped. Such pale, diseased skin and such twisted bodies—but their song is familiar. Weak and warped with change and distance, yet still selkesh. They shimmer in the light of the lowering fire, and then they tremble into air. Their song lingers on the cooling wind, but is soon lost, dissolved by louder noises. Hissing ash and drumming stone; slow faint water; and silence, vast and empty. The end is silence.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Alea was quiet by the time Nellyn reached the kitchen. She was standing, leaning on the table with her arms straight and her head bent, so that he could not see her face.

  “What is it?” he said when he was beside her. She was breathing very quickly, and her eyes were half closed.

  “My legs,” she said, “ look”—and he did, and saw that her yellow leggings were dark, darkening as he watched. “Is it blood?” she asked, her voice climbing higher again, with each word. “Is it blood or is it water? And if it’s just water, what colour is it? My mother told me that clear birthing water’s good, but yellow’s bad and brown worse—what can you—”

  “Alea.” He put his hand on the curve of her spine, pressed down when he felt her trembling. “It is water, not blood. And it has no colour in it.”

  Her arms bent as she let out her breath. “Good. But it’s still too early. Nellyn, it’s much too soon—the baby can’t be ready. I’m not ready. . . .”

  “You are. We are. Now tell me: where do you want to be? The fire here is already high, but I can stoke the one upstairs.”

  She pushed herself away from the table and turned to him, stepping back to make space between them for her enormous belly. “Upstairs,” she said—and so Alea did see her walls, after all, before Nellyn had finished painting them. It took them many minutes to climb there. She managed the first eleven steps holding onto the railing, with Nellyn close beside her—but at the twelfth she gave a cry and twisted herself against him, and did not move again until half a minute had passed. He supported her after that, and although she did not have another pain on the staircase, she moved more slowly and clung to him with white-tipped fingers.

  When they stepped at last into the room, her fingers tightened even more sharply on his forearm before she lifted them to her mouth. She looked at the stone—at the earth and ivy and wood and flames that were painted upon it—and when she said his name it was wobbly with tears.

  “I’m not done,” he said in a rush. “The fire isn’t complete there, and I wanted to add some stars above the flames, all the way around. I wanted you to see—”

  “Hush,” she said, moving her fingertips from her own lips to his. “It’s beautiful—it’s perfect—” and then she moaned as another pain gripped her.

  At first she stayed on her pallet, lying on one side, and watched Nellyn bring towels and blankets, extra wood and water in a deep basin. She draped a sheet over herself and he pulled off her sodden leggings. He ran to her when she cried out, and knelt beside her until the pain had gone. Thirty minutes went by, and three pains, and she struggled to sit up.

  “I can’t lie down any more,” she said, “I have to sit”—and he brought her pillows from his sleeping floor to put behind her back. “Talk to me, distract me. Tell me about your home, again.” He did, slowly, stopping whenever her hands rose to her belly to press and stroke a pain away. She asked him questions and laughed sometimes when he wanted her to. He watched her smile at him and at her painted room, saw her muscles relax, between pains, and he felt his own body loosen with relief. I have never seen a woman—not even a shonyn woman—birth a baby, but Alea has, and she is strong and cheerful again. All will be well.

  “Look,” she said, pointing to her window, “it’s dark—you should go light the candles.” He hesitated for a moment, but she said, “Go on—I’m fine. And bring me some food when you come back. I’m hungry. . . .”

  They ate fruit and nuts and bread after he had lit the candles and scribbled an entry in the log (No wind, clear sky, smooth water: “Modest even for me,” he said afterward, and she laughed again). She talked to him now about her girlhood and her people. She often spoke during the pains; some letters became very long or very short: “My si—sters would da—nce and I—’d—hoooo—” He checked on the lightroom twice, amazed that these hours had already passed; her breathing and movements were his measurements now, and they seemed so slow.

  And then, around midnight, she could no longer speak through the pains, which came more closely together and lasted a bit longer every time. Waves, he thought as she whimpered and ground her heels against the floor, waves taller and faster against the riverbank during the first of the rains when shonyn scurried to hide indoors. She clutched his hand while she moaned. In between, he loosened her fingers and rubbed her palms and she smiled, though from further away than before.

  “I need to walk,” she said after he returned from trimming the wicks yet again. She pushed herself onto her hands and knees.

  “Alea, you should rest, surely—”

  “Get me up.”

  They walked around the room once, twice; she leaned against him when the pains came. He imagined that she would tire and sit, or maybe lie down—for the baby must be close to coming now: it had been half a day since the pains began. But she shuffled on, stopping in the same places with each circuit, and he came to know each brushstroke of these places, and every bump or pit in the stone—and still she walked and leaned. He breathed with her: deep and quickening as the pain began, and lengthening, softer as it ended. He held her hips as she hung from him with her arms around his neck; he felt her breathing and her cool dry skin. The circles they walked were shonyn, for him—shonyn nights, each one the same, blurring into the last and the one to come. A rhythm he knew with his blood.

  The pains began to come even more closely together, so that she hardly took three steps before another was upon her. She cried, “Lie down, lie down” and kept crying out, even after she was on her pallet. She wailed without pause and seemingly without breath, and he knelt beside her, all his certainty dissolving. She no longer looked at him, and although she still clutched his hands, when he wrapped them around hers, she did not truly
seem to notice them or him. Be with her, he told himself to quell his fear. Follow her in every moment—that is all. He felt his calm returning—but then her parted lips shaped words.

  Fire beats against sky and skin, outside, where there are stars—but there only because of this other fire, deep deep within. A body like a brand, a body tight and hard as metal; not a body. The flames twist and climb and burrow, and they will always be here, scalding breath black—but not always: a break, smoke billowing in wind. The body returned. A surge and a heavy thrusting weight, another, another, and then the space of wind again, for breathing and looking at the sky of desert, lake, woods. Pressure like falling or floating underwater, too long but no other choice—and the weight moving down and through. The body filled and open, tearing with a different fire—another body, easing slow and vast, then rushing slithering weightless free.