Neveryona

by Delany, Samuel R.

  Ahead, Ardra’s back, in the rough cloth, became visible as he passed another torch.

  ‘Something in the way you talked about it just made me sure you’d never seen one,’ Lavik repeated. ‘Though I swear, I couldn’t tell you what. I don’t know, but once you have a baby, you feel a lot of things – but you don’t do too much analytical thinking.’

  ‘I know,’ Pryn said, who, in fabled Ellamon, had babysat for many of her cousins’ children and had been, for days at a time, the sole care of her baker cousin’s two-year-old son. ‘When I take care of one for more than three hours at a stretch, I can’t think at all! That’s why I don’t want to have any myself.’ She hugged Petal, sweet and sick as she was, who felt wonderful.

  ‘Oh, that’s not true!’ Lavik protested. ‘I mean, well … after a week or so, you begin to think again. A little bit, at least. You really do. That is, if you take care of it all by yourself. Of course once the slaves begin taking over, then what you spend all your time thinking about is how to get them to take over more. But you really do get back to some … thinking. Eventually – I think.’

  ‘I think,’ Pryn said, ‘that babies are wonderful and beautiful and comforting and rewarding, the solace of the present and the hope – the real hope – of the future.’ She sighed. ‘And I don’t want one. At least not now.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Lavik said.

  Pryn glanced at the young woman beside her and saw her looking ahead at her step-brother.

  ‘Well,’ Lavik said, ‘I feel the same way; and I am glad I have mine. Now. And …’ She looked down at the brick – ‘I’ll die a thousand deaths if she does die. But still, I don’t see how anyone who has taken care of one couldn’t understand what you say.’ When she looked up in the passing flare, her face bore her family’s absolute smile.

  Pryn looked at the stiff-kneed boy marching ahead of them and wished he would come and carry little Petal, who, small as she was, had begun to seem heavy – for now Pryn also felt that, without the baby between them, she might be able to talk about more with Lavik. At the same time, she resolved not to offer Petal back to her mother until they were again inside the house.

  Lavik said: it is nice of you to carry her for me. I appreciate it.’

  Pryn wondered if her great-aunt had felt the same way when she’d been presented with Pryn’s own, wiggling, wheezing self by Pryn’s mother, fifteen – well, a month shy of sixteen, now – years ago.

  ‘We’re almost at the door.’ Lavik touched Pryn’s arm. The path had taken them in a circle through the near night.

  Ahead, Ardra walked up to a vast, mottled nothingness and disappeared into it: the door.

  Then Pryn, Lavik, and Petal went through it too.

  13

  Of Survival, Celebration, and Unlimited Semiosis

  … those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere …

  (BARTHES)

  What does this paradoxical statement imply? First, it implies that a single reading is composed of the already-read, that what we can see in a text the first time is already in us, not in it; in us insofar as we ourselves are a stereotype, an already-read text; and in the text only to the extent that the already-read is that aspect of a text that it must have in common with its reader in order for it to be readable at all. When we read a text once, in other words, we can see in it only what we have already learned to see before.

  BARBARA JOHNSON

  The Critical Difference

  ‘There.’ Tritty pointed to the goblets on the tray the elderly slavewoman carried: their sides were joined slabs of vitric red and blue, framed in cast metal, hugely heavy.

  ‘And here …’ The earl lifted a thin pitcher from a tray of pitchers the red-headed slaveboy brought up. This one’s yours.’ He tilted it – and Pryn quickly brought her goblet, in both hands, beneath the lip. Water-clear and tossing back firelight from the lamps’ flaming and the goblet’s own glistening sides, liquid filled it.

  Because it was so heavy, she lifted it quickly to taste: the coldest water, with a fruity ghost – sharpness interrupted, which made her take a larger swallow in memory of initial cool.

  Greater sharpness made her head reel.

  The earl set the pitcher down, picked up another, and poured dark liquid into the goblet Lavik held.

  ‘Now you must tell us your own story.’ Inige came over with his own goblet, which his father filled from still another pitcher with something opaque and green. ‘Tritty’s right. It always happens when you invite guests that you expect to entertain. All you end up doing is trying to impress them. You must tell a story of your own, because we really want to hear it!’

  ‘Ardra,’ Tritty said, ‘come here and have your drink. It’s tradition, darling.’

  ‘I don’t like the blue,’ Ardra said, ‘I think the red tastes better.’ He stood up from the stone steps, strode forward, picked up a goblet from the proffered tray, a pitcher from the other, and poured himself a goblet of blue liquid, set the pitcher back on the tray, went to the steps, and, taking a noisy sip, sat.

  ‘Ardra … !’ Tritty said.

  ‘The trouble with stories – ’Pryn laughed – ‘is that when I write them in my head, they’re fun because I can write them slowly, make changes, correct them if they’re wrong, make sure all the names have the right initial signs. But if I tell them, then they come out any-old-how or however. I don’t think I’ll ever be a tale-teller. I suppose I could tell about my trip from Ellamon to Kolhari, the men who captured me, or the women, or what happened to me later in the city – only …’ She blinked about the room and, in momentary embarrassment, took a long, throat-burning draught. The strange sharpness struck. She coughed. ‘Only … I don’t really understand all that happened, myself. And besides – ’ She coughed again – ‘you’re not very interested in the people I met, which is all I could talk about anyway …’

  Pryn thought she saw their hand-waving protests, but heat blurred her eyes and made her unsteady. Somebody put a hand on her shoulder – she fell, or sat (she’d thought she was going to fall … ) on the couch behind her.

  She still held the goblet.

  ‘Are they going to bring the baby back down again … ? I suppose it’s too late. I could tell about when I came south from Kolhari. This man I came with; and his friend. Smugglers – only I’d be embarrassed to; besides, I’m not interested in those people anymore … though they taught me enough. A story?’ She took another long sip from the metal rim, because the drink’s effect seemed the less the more of it she swallowed – this one didn’t burn so. Was her mouth numbing? ‘A story. Well. There was an ordinary, fifteen-year-old girl who looked like a beautiful young queen … or was there a queen who looked like an ordinary, bushy-headed girl?’

  ‘This sounds like a real story!’ she heard Inige say.

  Pryn smiled.

  Her goblet was vast as the torchlit sea, its clear waves sloshing pink and blue slopes.

  ‘… only I can’t remember what version I’m supposed to … I could tell them all. Now … after the girl had done all sorts of terrible things and learned all sorts of magical things, in their proper sequence, her maternal father …’ Pryn frowned into the drink, which seemed to have cloudy streaks through it, perhaps from her own spittle, in one version, it’s her dead father, I think. In another its her maternal … uncle – he took her up into a stone chamber, on a hill, or in a tower, just like yours I guess, where she saw a … city!’ Pryn looked up and narrowed her eyes in the lamplight’s dazzle. Tears banked her lower lids, obscuring the backlit listeners reclining about the chamber. ‘At a great dinner for her – really, this has been a wonderful dinner! I’ve never eaten food like this before in my life or drunk such … at a great dinner, her absent father, or her maternal uncle did something terrible …’

  The silence broke in lingering waves; after lots of it, Ardra said, swinging his fists between his knees: ‘It’s a good story. We all know it. And that’s a good place to pause. But it doesn�
�t end there. You have to go on.’

  Pryn took another drink that was so cold yet made her so warm. She blinked. ‘… He did something terrible. Only I don’t remember … his family name. There’s good reason to remember it, only I don’t know if I ever knew what it was.’ One of them had moved …

  Pryn looked up on red. Her eyes moved up over red. It was Tritty’s dress, because Tritty’s face was at the top, smiling down.

  Tritty touched her shoulder. That’s a marvelous story – one I’ve loved for years. We all have. Old stories are the best, I think. That’s one of the most beautifully crafted parts of the engine to raise Neveryóna. But you cant sit here and tell me you’ve forgotten the family name of the queen’s maternal uncle! That’s the whole point – at least it is if you’re telling it to us!’

  ‘I’m not a good tale-teller,’ Pryn apologized, ‘I’d much rather write it down, where I could think about what I’m supposed to be saying.’ She felt unsteady, unhappy, and out of place, if there weren’t the pressure of having to tell it, I could find out the real story, all of it. I could write why it means something special to me, too, as well as you –’

  ‘Jue-Grutn,’ Tritty prompted. ‘Go on, now. We all know it, so it doesn’t matter how well you tell it. Jue-Grutn was the family name of the queen’s maternal uncle. The name of my husband – and his father; and his father’s father. With very old stories, such distinctions cease to matter. But that’s the part we love to hear most – here. Whenever we can, we get a guest to … But it’s part of the engine – my husband said he was explaining it upstairs? We have a vested interest, of course. I’m sure you can understand …’

  Pryn’s gaze lost itself in her shimmering drink. ‘The Earl Jue-Grutn gave her …’

  Then, at once, what shimmered was terror. Whether it was inside her or outside her, she didn’t know. She didn’t move.

  Under flamelight, liquid flashed.

  Did she hurl the heavy goblet?

  Did she scream?

  Did she throw out an arm, upsetting some small table?

  Did she overturn her couch as she stood, so that the bolsters flopped on the carpet?

  Did she lurch across the floor, shoving aside first Inige and then Lavik, who moved to stop her?

  Later she was able to reason that she had done at least three and had definitely not done one. But which three and which one, though she would list them and list them on wax, clay, and parchment in every conceivable order, she was never sure. Was it the Wild Ini’s blade she waved above her head? Was it a carving knife snatched from the side-table that made Jenta spread his arms and fall back, while the earl came up behind him, then turn to grab Ardra, who’d rushed forward? She remembered the earl’s cloak, flung up and out, tenacious of its blues in lamplight. Did he try to stop her? Did she run into it? Or through it? Someone yelled, ‘Stop her!’ Certainly it was the earl and not she who bellowed, The astrolabe, no – !’ Certainly someone yelled, ‘No, don’t let her – !’ But she was out one arch or another.

  And nothing, really, was certain.

  Did she run through myriad halls, searching through corridors and chambers for an exit? Did slaves in white collar-covers run out and, confused at her career, step back? Did she plunge through the low stone passage to burst into the black garden, starred with lamps –

  She pushed through hangings, half-opened doors, bushes, branches, into dark. She remembered grasping a branch to come to an unsteady halt – torch-bearing men passed below the rock she swayed on, Inige at their head, iron and white cloth about the other necks, talking: ‘This way … gone in this direction … you said you heard …’ mixed with the barbarian tongue. Later she hesitated on a muddy stretch before a stubbly field, out on which she could see a leafless tree – so there must have been moonlight … ? She had no memory of a moon. Were there voices? She dashed across the stubble, hearing her feet slap in the ground below the grass, wetter than she’d thought. She plunged into dappled dark that cut her and tickled her and beat her hips and shoulders, catching in the chain about her neck as if the twigs were trying to snatch away the clinking astrolabe, which she would have gladly torn off her neck and given up. She’d said she didn’t want it …

  … blinking, trying to push herself up, with pebbles under her hands. She blinked again, at something huge and pale. She tried to turn her face away from it before she realized it was the moon, bigger than she had ever seen a moon in the mountains, just above the horizon – which rippled.

  Pryn pushed back, pebbles under her hip, dragging her feet beneath her. Pebbles rolled down the slope. She looked up at a tall rock, with trees beyond it. She looked behind her. Another rocky finger prodded crookedly at the night, but shorter.

  Both rocks were chalky white.

  Pryn pushed to sitting, dragging her heels back, and locked her arms about her knees, resting her chin on them, in a lucidity that seemed near sickness, though if she didn’t move, she might be all right. She bit her inner lip and looked across rippling fog.

  At the moon …

  Cawing, and she looked up – to see leaves fall and what seemed a flurry of leaves; only it was the bird itself, momentarily at the proper angle for her to catch the wing’s green before ivory light leached all color. In a chatter of little stones and leaves, Pryn suddenly pushed to her feet. She stepped to the ledge.

  Below rolled fog; below that, water. Pryn blinked. Wave rolled over wave. Taking a great breath, which made her stomach ill and her balance shaky, she shouted as loud as she could: ‘I am Pryn, and I have come to warn the Worm of the Sea of the Blue Heron’s … !’ She did not know where the words came from, nor their proper conclusion. But a sudden gout, breaking silver above the mist, made her push the heel of her hand up hard against her mouth and step back.

  Through the ripplings at the slope’s foot something else … rippled. Now catching light and glimmering, it looked like water. Dark and heaving, it seemed a solider fog.

  Out there … ?

  Something splashed and she looked off at it.

  Somewhere else, a splash – Pryn looked over there. There was another, below her. She looked down: water broke like a metallic flower, falling open and dropping shattered petals into mist, beautiful and burning in the chill.

  The ground’s shaking was almost too slight to feel. Then a whisper only as loud as the slightest breeze by her ear grew to a tremble, a roar.

  She thought to sit again, lest she be thrown. But she saw, at three places, fog break from something solid and dark as power.

  Not fog.

  Stone.

  Dripping and streaming, stone poured water into fog. The towers rose, two taller, one smaller, a bridge between the three, spurting out windows, spilling through newels.

  Sea foamed. Buildings shrugged water into it. There and there were other roofs, a broken wall, more walls standing, two buildings: one nearly whole supported one nearly collapsed.

  Driven from the sea, fog hung above her, before her, about her. She stood in an emptiness she knew was permeated with mist she could not see. Frothing, the water mixed jade and ivory. Enough buildings had risen to see streets. Where two crossed, water whirled, swirled, rushed out by the walls.

  A wall fell … ?

  No, a mud bank broke from stone, to slosh off between the ruins.

  Pryn saw them first as a row of regular eruptions in the rush.

  Six, seven, eight, nine carvings cleared the flood, which, as the water lowered, were the capitals of nine columns, one of the line – the sixth or seventh – missing.

  The columns rose. Weeds strung away. Water lowered more. Weeds dropped on algae-filmed stone. The column fallen across its base rose above the ripples. Some of the muddy streets were paved with patterned blue flags. Other buildings had broken columns before them …

  That was when she saw it, glittering.

  The earth rumbled; the water raged. Muddied and weed-streaked, it still gleamed, so much of it as had washed free of mud and refuse. Whatever desire
s she’d pushed away to give it up surged back, like foam, like wind. She didn’t want to take any – only to see it from closer … only perhaps a few coins.

  There was so much of it!

  It filled alleys. Glimmering, it spilled into wider avenues. There, that must have been a whole house, or even several small houses, piled over with it.

  Half running, half falling down the embankment, Pryn only managed to get her feet under her when they plunged shin-deep in mud. She staggered on, arms wheeling, till she reached the first pavement. Weeds in windows hung on wet stone. Mud clung to the wall beside her. Fallen masonry, broken shells, and soaked branches made her progress by the dripping pillars as slow as it had been in the silt. Dirty-footed, wet-handed, scratches on her shoul-ders and legs, Pryn edged between cold rocks, pushed away a cool branch of driftwood, moved close along a broken wall, its carvings veiled in moss.

  She could see gold at that alley’s end!

  But the tiny street was too blocked and clotted with some half-fallen building to get through. Did it move …? In the heaps of nuggets, trinkets, coins, did some tremor in the risen seafloor cause that momentary cascade of wet metal?

  That’s when she remembered the dragon.

  Pryn looked up. Beyond the broken cornice, yellow fogs drifted, luminous before a moon she could no longer see. But I only want to see it … Pryn took hold of her astrolabe, as cold as if it, too, had lain in the waters. She moved to the building corner, looked around it …

  Six wagon-loads … ? Only six? More like six hundred … ! Heaping the far side of the yard, most of it was yellow, but a lot was iron dark with tarnish or silver-green with algae. What part of the ruins were under that sloping glimmer?

  The heaped treasure was mountainous!

  Pryn looked the other way at the half-crumbled cistern, beyond which were more free-standing columns – and started! But the gleaming head, demonic, half on its side, was also gold …