Naondel

by Maria Turtschaninoff

  Kabira stood motionless.

  “I shall permit the Sovereign entrance at times. To partake of the spring’s water. Sometimes when it is good. When I need him to be healthier, for a while. And sometimes when it is bad, if I need a weak ruler to steer as I wish.”

  My master did not guard his words in the slightest. Not even admission of high treason was dangerous when only disclosed in the presence of women. We were nobody at all. As unimportant as grass on the ground. As interchangeable.

  “You cannot imprison Anji like this!” Kabira clutched desperately at his arm. “It is not right!”

  Never had I seen her so dismayed. Never seen her willingly touch her husband.

  My master shook her off his arm. He continued to smile. Her anger did not bother him in the slightest. He gave no response. Just walked away through the zismil trees and disappeared.

  I had to help Kabira back to Beauty’s House. The guards followed us a few steps behind. The sun was already hot, and it smelt strongly of soil and zismil resin.

  Now I know that Kabira also knows. I have tried to coax her into talking about it today, but she refuses. Turns away, retires to her private quarters, or changes the topic of conversation. But I know that she knows more than she will admit. Maybe we could gain access if we worked together! Because she is right: a source of power cannot be imprisoned and kept to oneself. That is what Iskan has done. That is where his power originates from. I see that now. I see whence the darkness in him comes. I see how he is able to look inside me and touch my many selves. It is a relief to know. It is a power I understand, that I am schooled in. I can protect myself from him better now that I know.

  I pull the new Garai over me, and now she is a disguise, nothing more. Inside me, in my true self, hums the power that I cannot yet reach. But one day. One day.

  Garai the artful

  Garai of the cunning tongue

  Garai, concealing

  Garai, waiting

  Garai, awakening

  I am continuing from where I had to stop yesterday, because that evening I discovered that we are not alone in Beauty’s House. Izani has the whole upper floor at her disposal, and lives there with her master’s sons. Bottommost live the servant folk. In the dairahesi there is only me in my little room, and the wife in her large, opulent quarters. There are sunrooms and shaderooms and several bedrooms, but they are empty. Or so I believed. When I came out of my room I was confronted with a girl sitting cross-legged on one of the cushions by the fountain in the great hall. I stopped. She was clearly no servant. She did not look like anybody I had ever seen before, and I was reminded of my master’s words about exotic things he had brought back with him from Terasu. The girl was tall and dark-skinned and she sat with a very straight back. She turned her face to me and I saw that she was very beautiful, and younger than I was when I became slave-sold. In her curly hair was a single comb. A slave, then. Like me.

  “Who are you?” I asked, without etiquette or protocol. Kabira was not there and could not chastise me.

  She looked up at me with large black eyes. She seemed to understand my question.

  “Orseola,” she answered in a deep voice. She was dressed in some sort of exotic golden fabric drawn tightly over her breasts, and I realized that she is my master’s new concubine. At last I am free! All day I have been rejoicing internally. I am free!

  “My name is Garai,” I said and smiled. And then, as if the palace and garden and everything in them were mine: “Welcome to Ohaddin.”

  Orseola

  E LIVED IN TREES. IT WAS BY THE delta. We could not build houses on the soft, wet earth, so we built them high in the treetops. In Karenokoi they could never dream of such trees as grow in Terasu.

  I know, for I have seen their dreams. I tried to weave my trees into their dreams—trees with trunks as great as houses, with canopies that embrace the sky. But it never worked. The people there cannot imagine anything so big. So mighty and eternal, yet living.

  In those trees there was space for several houses. Between the trees were bridges. Our fathers wove them from rushes and reeds. The long bridges were woven with ornate patterns. The patterns told you where the bridge spanned to and from, and bore the sign of the weaver. My father’s signature pattern was dark-brown waves.

  Rope ladders hung between the branches of the trees. During festivities the children would decorate them with flowers. We could do most everything from the treetops, even fish. But to make fire and pick flowers we had to touch the ground. We children used to venture to the edge of the city and then down onto the water. We paddled in bulrush boats until we came to the grassy islands where the flowers grew. Pink flowers, and white, like the ones on the lemon trees here. Big as a child’s face.

  We loved those flowers, and loved to pick them and make garlands. Our mothers were happy when we returned in boats filled with blossoms, and we loved our mothers then too.

  With the rope ladders dressed in flowers the trees themselves appeared as though in bloom.

  Goveli was a vaster city than Areko, all high up in the treetops. There was the market tree, and a tree with houses for all the work posts. There were trees for the rich, each with one house on many levels, and trees for the poor with many small shacks crowded among the branches. There were pleasure trees and mourning trees. In the pleasure trees lived the orphaned girls and boys who offered their bodies in exchange for food and clothing. In the mourning trees flower garlands were hung up for the dead, and fruits laid out with their names etched into the rinds. They remained there until they rotted away or disappeared into the bellies of animals and insects. The mourning trees had a sickly smell. They stood on the eastern edge of Goveli.

  The hometrees were sacred. They must not be harmed—neither with intent nor by accident. The most sacred of all was the Queen’s tree in the heart of the city, where the Queen lived with her entourage. The tree was the oldest in Goveli—so old that nobody knew its age.

  In the city were jesters and beggars, musicians and witch doctors, seers and sayers. Stargazers and singers, sluggards and fishermen, lawmen and junk-dealers, weavers and tailors, carpenters and whittlers, boat-builders and seafarers, healers and jewellery-makers, bird-tamers and insect-gatherers.

  There were no smiths. There were no warriors.

  My grandfather was a net-maker. My father made lutes and harps from hazel wood.

  My mother was a dreamweaver.

  I remember—

  The trees only ever died of old age, and suddenly. One day the leaves would begin to fall. Then we knew the trunk was rotten through and it was not safe to remain. The tree-dwellers had to gather their houses, plank by plank, and carry them away along the bridges. Lawmen allotted them new trees, and after ceremonies of thanks and naming, the people reassembled their homes. They were never exactly the same as before, for the trees’ branches determined the shape. A room shrank here, a floor raised there, an extra veranda was formed.

  When a tree died, three days of mourning were declared. Words of thanks were carved into the bark of the deceased tree. That was the only time a blade might touch a hometree. They engraved the names of all who had ever dwelt within its branches, back to the very first. The lawmen had it all written down on their long scrolls. We wore necklaces of dried leaves and could not swim or sing until the three days of mourning were honoured. The necklaces were rough and itchy. Crumbs of dead leaves found their way into our clothing. The bridges creaked under the weight of the house parts being carried away.

  When the days of mourning were over the next hometree was celebrated with poetry and dancing. My father was a fine poet. I remember the gleam of his white teeth in darkness while he recited his verse. He sat topmost in the canopy, swinging his feet and mead jug, his poems floating out across city and sea.

  I remember our breakfasts. Soured goat’s milk with nuts, seeds and honey. Our bowls were empty saorse shells that Father painted with his special pattern of waves in red and white. On the nights when Mother was dreamw
eaving she came home late and slept until midday. Father had a workshop farther down the tree trunk, where the sawdust produced by his work would not bother anyone, and he worked there from early morning. It was often up to me to give my little siblings their breakfast. We usually sat on the veranda to eat while the city was awaking around us. We could hear conversations in the hometrees, babies crying and goats bleating from where they grazed on the roofs. Birds of every colour flew around, or sat singing on the railing of our veranda or tree branches. In summer the drone of the insects was nearly deafening. We children smothered ourselves in clay to avoid being eaten alive. The feeling of the planks beneath my bare feet, cooled by the night air. The crunch of nuts between my teeth.

  After breakfast I rinsed out the bowls and put them on their shelf in the main room. Our house had three rooms. One for food and gathering. One where Mother and Father slept and one for us children. We had two verandas, one to the west and one to the north. Our goat Bark grazed on the roof and provided us with milk, cheese and souring. When Father had the time, he played for us on the lute and mandolin, and Mother sang songs of myth and mirth and dreams. As the eldest I was responsible for the little ones. But as soon as Mother was awake I would sneak away, out onto the roof, up through the branches. I had friends whom I played with wherever we found an interesting place, and we sang stories of our own, and made playthings from empty nut shells and cones. When the heat of day became too intense we went swimming in the sea or the channels, quick like eels, and then climbed up high where there was most breeze.

  One of my friends was called Aurelo. He had a wide, smiling face and black hair that he tied up tight in the centre of his crown. We used to compete to see who could get around the city the fastest. And who could steal a piece of fruit from the market tree in the midst of all the trade. And who dared jump down into the water from the highest branch. We competed over everything, but when we were tired and hungry we would share the stolen fruits fairly, and if anyone bigger ever challenged us we always fought together, as a single beast with four raging paws and two biting mouths. Uncle and his wife called us the flying terrors of Goveli, because we hurtled headlong through the trees as if we were flying.

  Of course we fell sometimes. There were wounds and scratches and sore ribs. One time Aurelo broke his arm and could not climb for several moons. I went and played with others, because such is the cruelty of children. But when he was better we were the flying terrors of Goveli once more, and nothing could keep us apart.

  Nothing but his dreams.

  * * *

  I remember the first time I entered someone else’s dream. It was a hot night. Summer. Everything was clinging to my skin; the very air was dense and intrusive. I was lying between hot little bodies on my sleeping mat and trying to sleep. Not a single breath of wind moved in the hometree to give respite. My brother Obare sighed in his sleep. All of a sudden I knew I could fly. I kicked off the floor, hard, and up I rose. I made swimming-like strokes through the air and I flew. Out through the window. I was above our house. Soon I was above Uncle’s house, higher up in our hometree. I swam higher, while below me people were running along the tree branches and bridges—earthbound, treebound. I was high among the treetops, flying unhindered between the branches, leaves falling around me; I was a fish-bird. I looked at my hands swimming through the air and saw that they were not my own; they were smaller and darker-skinned. It was easy to land when I wanted to, and I did so among the little children who were all filled with wonder and awe.

  “Orseola,” said Mother, shaking me gently. I looked at her. The name she was saying was not mine. I was too hot. I wanted to fly again. When I got up my limbs felt so heavy. I wanted to be free. To leave everything behind. I did a few strokes and leapt out through the window.

  I fell.

  I hit the ground badly that time. The healer had to stay with us to take care of me through the worst of it. My left arm has never been the same since; I still cannot straighten it fully. Mother said that I had been delirious with fever and seen visions that led me to jump out of the window. For a long time she wove me cooling, calming dreams, free from pain, and I slept well. Mostly because I knew that she was sitting there, on her stool by my pillow, watching over me. Never have I felt so safe. Never had Mother given me so much attention. Father stayed with me often when Mother had matters to attend to or food to prepare; he told stories and sang and played for me.

  Aurelo visited sometimes. He was more loyal than I had been when he was bedridden. He brought me stolen fruits, which tasted so much better than the ones given to me by well-meaning relatives, as well as gossip and news from the city. His skin smelt of adventure and sun and salt water, and the room felt less stifling and airless with him by my mat. One time he asked me why I had jumped. I repeated what Mother had told me. That I had a fever and was dreaming.

  But deep down I knew it was something else. Only I did not know what. It had been so vivid. So real. Like a waking dream.

  The next time it happened was during my convalescence. I was sitting outside one evening on the western veranda. The worst of the heat had passed and the westerly winds were cool. I was alone—the little ones were already asleep, Mother was preparing a new batch of soured goat’s milk in the main room and Father was visiting someone who had commissioned a mandolin.

  A gust of wind came rustling through the leaves. I heard its movements long before it reached me. As it glided over me I found myself standing in the market tree in front of the fruit and sweets stand, and I was allowed to taste everything. Nobody was stopping me; they were all just smiling and nodding. Yet, at the same time, I was still sitting on the bench on our veranda with the westerly wind in my hair. My mouth was stuffed with sweet flavours until I felt like gagging, but still I ate and ate while also sitting entirely motionless on my bench. I could not move, I was about to choke, and eventually I vomited, straight onto my own lap.

  Mother rushed to my side; she did not scold me. She carried me inside, cleaned me up and gave me pungent herbs to rub inside my mouth. Yet the sickly taste remained. When she laid me back down on my sleeping mat next to my little siblings, my sister Oera smacked her lips in her sleep.

  I was afraid that I was losing my mind. I did not understand what was happening at all. I did not speak about it to anyone. Not until Aurelo’s dream.

  I was well again, and Aurelo and I were playing in one of our favourite trees. It was a kaora tree by the water’s edge, a small one with a canopy so dense that in it you could be completely hidden from sight. We had been swimming all morning—I was relishing having control over my body again—and then ate mussels and kaora fruit. Finally, we each lay in the fork of a bough, full-bellied and sleepy, letting the wind cool our hot bodies. Aurelo peered at me from under his thick eyelashes.

  “You have grown weak during your sickness. Your arms are no longer strong like mine.” He pointed. “Look. They are completely round.” He ran his eyes over my body. “All your parts are beginning to become round.”

  I threw a kaora core at him, and it hit him straight in the middle of his forehead. “I still throw better than you.” I turned onto my side and closed my eyes. The sounds around me were comforting, it was warm and I was drowsy. I was thinking about how we were soon going to visit Grandmother. Her white island was one of my favourite places. The scent of her pipe was in my nostrils.

  Then I could smell the scent of sun-warmed skin. A body lay before me, stretched out in the fork of a bough. A girl’s body with round hips and young breasts. I reached out a hand and stroked her soft belly. Orseola smiled at me. She took my hand and brought it to her breast. I was excited. I leant forward to take it in my mouth.

  I forced myself awake at that moment, which required great effort. My heart was racing and I sat up with the world spinning around me so intensely I had to hold onto the tree trunk to keep from falling. Aurelo was asleep in his bough fork and I knew that it was his dream I had seen. His gaze and his hands had been on my body. It was extr
emely distressing to see myself in the dream of another, through the eyes of another. I did not know what was real and what was not, everything was blurred, like the fog that covers Goveli for several days, sometimes weeks, in the winter. I sank my teeth into a branch. The bark tasted like dust, the green wood inside was acrid and bitter. This was reality. This was truth.

  Careful not to wake Aurelo, I climbed into a larger tree, and from there back into the city and to our hometree. Mother was there, sitting in the main room and feeding Oera with mashed mango. Obare was playing with his bark boat. Sunlight filtered in through the window. The room smelt of sour milk and overripe fruit. I was on my guard against everything. Anything might be a delusion, someone else’s dream. I tried to think of things that only Orseola could know, such as where her first tooth was hidden, and where she stole her first ever fruit, and the last person she had fought with. But how could I know that these memories were real?

  “Mother. When did you begin to weave dreams?”

  Mother licked the spoon before hanging it up on the wall, and put Oera down on the floor. She crawled over to Obare and made a grab for his boat.

  “I had just become a woman,” Mother replied in a pleasant tone, and stretched until her back cracked. She had been working at the Queen’s court for most of the night. “A little older than you. My mother tested me, as our kinswomen have always been tested. She had me sit by the bed of a sleeper, and asked me what I saw.” As she gazed out of the window I knew it was not the swaying branches she was looking at, but a far-off memory. “It was a great ocean and a small boat. I could not see who was in the boat. My skills were very weak, to begin with.”