The Breath of the Sun

by Rachel Fellman

  “Why did you deserve it?”

  My anger had spent itself by now. It always does, when the person is angrier at themselves than I could ever be at them. Bottom line, I just wasn’t built for anger. Arrogance, spite, and all kinds of things — yes, but when it comes to anger I feel that people hurt themselves so much that I would never want to hurt them more. And Disaine seemed bent on proving my case.

  “I mean her hate, I deserved that.” She flexed her fingers again, sitting there on her pack. I was reminded of a cat, their dry little motions of tail and claw that only mean anything to them. “And these nuns took me in, first to heal my burns, and then I just stayed there. Finally they got this big bequest. And they were going to give it to the poor, but they kept passing the idea back and forth, struggling to decide how to use the money, and delighting, I think, in the struggle. They never had any money, it was the point of them, and they loved having some, even if it was only to pass on. So after it had been there almost a year, I took it for myself and left in the night. Like Asam.” She coughed, and I heard bile in her voice. “Maybe they would’ve given it to me, if I’d asked. But I think maybe they wouldn’t have given it to anyone.”

  “And now it’s gone?” I had abandoned my work with the ice screw, and now I came over to her and sat on my own pack, looking at the smoke from the village rising up the slope, mixing with the blowing steam of snow that came up in the wind. That was how the mountain worked: everything slinky, loose, intermingled.

  “Yeah,” she said. “The suits were damned hard. And I had to build a new balloon to test them.”

  “Can’t you sell it?”

  “Nobody buys other people’s balloons. It’s not in the culture.”

  “Fine, then,” I said, through a gritted mouthful of scarf. “We’ll talk to Daila.”

  “Daila!”

  “Who else do I know who has money?”

  “I wasn’t expecting a solution. My goodness.” With a rough, shaky hand, she touched her forehead. “But he’s a gangster.”

  “You figured that out? He’s not a dangerous one. Not to me.”

  “But,” she said again, “he killed Courer, didn’t he?”

  A pause, a breath of juicy downmountain air. “No,” I said. “Not with his hands.”

  “But you let on —” Pause and stare. “You let on, in the book.”

  “We argued,” I said. “She lost.”

  “You let on that he killed her.”

  I felt that my body was shaking, that my body was hot. It was the wind in my hair, the flush on my cheeks. I stared down at the rich smoke of the village and said, “Disaine, I am done.”

  “Fine,” she said, taking full advantage of her fresh high ground. “Let’s go down.”

  So it was that I dragged into home in a foul mood, exhausted, and looking around me with shock at the smallness of the village — not just its narrow boundaries, but the buildings themselves, which seemed doll-versions of what I remembered. There was a beautiful air that evening, a pink sunset delicate in color but forceful in execution, and it drifted around on the smoke from fireplaces. The bar was open but empty. I pushed open the door and was filled with relief: at last, these uneven stones, flat and familiar as pillows; at last, the big four-sided fireplace with Dracani by it, smoking his pipe, which he only brought out at times when he was guaranteed a long quiet, because people made fun of him for it.

  He glanced back at us over the top of his leather chair and immediately looked haggard, dry-skinned, the expression overtaking the remains of a sleepy calm. It was the outsider-look. How is it that every Holoh in the nation can switch it on at will?

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Don’t say it. Don’t tell me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and addressed me by the honorific for people who are not Holoh, which I am no longer allowed to speak or write.

  Chapter 8

  Asam said, “I love God and so I hate myself, for I cannot divine his purpose nor understand his ways, and so I must hate him or me.” His followers told him in some perturbation that he had told them that to hate man is to hate God, and thus blasphemy, and he said, “I lied, when I spoke to you before.”

  —The Gospel of the Stave

  Dracani followed me around the bar’s upper rooms, as I dropped things off and picked them up, and packed for the mainland, and refused to listen to him, though I told him that he’d better store it all without charging me anything, that he owed his customers that much hospitality.

  “You didn’t see the time we’ve had,” he said. “You were up there climbing; you didn’t see any of it. A black storm, a landslide. We’ve never known Them to fall apart so fast.”

  “I’m glad,” I said, and dabbed tears from my eyes with my sleeve; I felt like Disaine, throwing her robe at Alused, and for a frightening moment I understood exactly how she felt.

  “You may well be glad. It was awful.”

  “I mean I’m glad I did it, Dracani.”

  “You’re happy that you made us suffer?”

  “Yes, dammit, I’m happy. Right now I’m happy.”

  “What did you expect would happen?”

  “You never excommunicated me the first time,” I said.

  “You didn’t bring the wrath of God down on us the first time.”

  “Bullshit. You just didn’t think God would bother to punish a mealy little girl like me. And I didn’t have any property worth seizing, either.”

  “Lamat, enough of this,” said Disaine, from the head of the stairs. She was framed by the light of the downstairs fire; I saw that her eyes were leaking, and I saw the fragility of her, how much she wanted to sit down. “This shit is beneath you.”

  “I’m not beneath anything,” began Dracani, and she said, “There’s obviously not much you’re above, either.”

  There was a long silence, a vacuum.

  “I meant,” said Dracani, “don’t talk down to me. What we did wasn’t shit. It was to save us all from someone who’s hurt God, no matter how much we may happen to love her. It was to save you, too. And it wasn’t the end of the fucking world. Nobody had to die. You have some fucked-up priorities if you weigh one excommunication against a landslide. Like, if you weigh it at all, much less decide that it wins.”

  “Lamat,” said Disaine, “do you imagine that you deserved this?”

  “Don’t,” I said. “Let’s not talk about imagination.”

  “Why not? He is. You and I both know that we haven’t offended anyone by climbing.”

  “No,” I said, “we have. Or I have. Or I had.”

  “You’re orthodox when you want to be, and you’re a rebel when you want to be.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” I snapped. And I was glad to. I’m a woman who doesn’t snap until I snap, and right then I was ready to let my rage hiss out the break. “I don’t want to talk about the points of Holoh theology with you. I might be wrong in my beliefs, might be confused, but I do believe, and it’s awful that you’re saying we can’t really think it’s true because you don’t.”

  “It’s not awful,” said Disaine. “I’m not awful. Asam!”

  She turned and stalked downstairs with a broad swish of rotting silk. I looked at Dracani and he looked at me, and for a moment we were both hot with embarrassment at the whole conversation. I said, “It’s just what has to happen.”

  “Lamat, if anyone’s Holoh, it’s you.”

  “Fuck off,” I said and followed Disaine down the stairs. I had seen now that he was angry at himself, and so of course that was that.

  I demanded and got a tram ride down the mountain, although they are not accustomed to run at night, and I had to pull the operator from his dinner. He had to be hospitable because I was no longer Holoh. We sat down in the wooden sphere and rattled down the mountain like ants in a gourd, alone in the freezing compartment, the ground balloon-low below us.

  “I don’t understand,” said Disaine. “You’re right. I don’t understand why an otherwise intelligent pe
rson would submit to a religion of fear.”

  “Yours is the same,” I said. “They’re all the same. There’s hope in it, too — you know that. I was one of the people God looks at, one of the insects They feel on Their body. Do you have any fucking idea what that meant to me?”

  “To know that God sees you,” she murmured, grudgingly. “Well.”

  “To be an insect on God’s body, and

  to do as They desire, and

  to decorate Them with your pattern, and

  to run cloth over Their flesh, with your flesh, lest They turn you into a red jewel, and

  to climb when you must, and

  to descend when you must, and

  not to step on Their face to go higher,” I said. “That’s the whole poem.”

  “What does that mean, to climb and descend when you must?”

  “Pattern of the days. Every fifteenth day the women ascend and every thirteenth day the men. You get married on the three hundredth day after the last weddings. And you don’t add up your days, don’t claim credit for them, like Southerners do.”

  “Age, you mean.”

  “Of course age. Disaine, there was a time when this whole land was under God’s eye, but now Their only believers ride on Their shoulders, and the rest of you worship a God who’s invisible, intangible, inaudible, whose prophet is renowned because he is said to have seen him once. I saw my god every day, I trod on Them.”

  “Then, I ask you again, why did you defy him, in the end?”

  “For the same reason you defied yours,” I said. “Because climbing is what I need, it’s what I do, and I believed, I still believe, I may as well say it out loud now — I know God wants us to climb. God wants to be known, as we all do, even if it hurts, even if They break down and hurt people. I don’t know what else to say. I didn’t think they’d really do it.” My eyes were hot with unfallen tears; I was realizing how little this all applied to me now.

  “You mean they or They?” she thrust at me.

  “My friends,” I said, focusing my eyes on the hard hands in my lap.

  “And would you have done the same? If it were Dracani?”

  “I would have tried not to,” I said. “That was what they did when Saon and Courer and Daila and I climbed. They tried to wait it out. See if They would loosen up again, forgive Their children, even if it meant putting the snow over our heads to caress us. That’s what people are supposed to do.”

  “So it was just a grab for your property,” she said. “I guess he figured out the tourists would come with or without you.”

  “They only need the book,” I said. I wanted to cry, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to; my face was too tight with sorrow and the desire to be alone. I saw Disaine’s hand stretch out, saw it grip my arm. Once again I was reminded of a little animal, fingers stiff, claws out, but all clumsiness and no guile. She said, “My dear Lamat. I don’t feel that I need the book at all. I only need you.”10

  * * *

  10 She’s lying!

  * * *

  The flow of water started, but only in my nose and somewhere behind the eyes, in the labyrinth of ragged bone back there. I took hold of her dirty white sleeve and pressed it to my eyes anyway, in the creak of the tram, in the dampness. Then I said, “I want to be quiet right now.”11

  * * *

  11 Oh, my heart. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

  * * *

  “Of course,” she said, and leaned forward to hug me, and I held her and let her go. She took up her book and ignored me as completely as I have ever been ignored. Disaine could turn that on like a switch, like the outsider-look, although when I glanced up at her face I saw that it was still soft and concerned, as if she were reading her book with deep forgiveness for each character. I turned to my own reading.

  When I am in pain, I struggle to read. I feel as if the words of a book are printed on a mirror; I can only see my own wavering face, my own breath, my own smudges of the finger. So for that whole tram ride, I only stared at the page — through an air of ice shards and steamy breath, bits of water like tiny lenses. Then Disaine said, “Lamat, I’m still your climbing partner, though, right? We’re still going to see Daila? I’m so sorry.”

  “Are you sorry you said those things? Or are you just sorry that they hurt me?”

  “I’m sorry I hurt you.” This awkward woman, her chewed lips, her fine hems scattered around her, in a nest of packages and papers, surrounded by the halo of the round tram car. A woman who resented tonight for the both of us. I could still feel her warmth on my shoulder, smell the sleeve and its scent of still water.

  “You’re my climbing partner,” I said. “That hasn’t changed.”

  Daila lived in Catchknot. I am trying to remember my first glimpse of that great city. Was it a blur of light as the last train came round a curve? Was it a heap of white and yellow stones in the far morning distance? Or was it really the first low buildings, those cheap brick houses at the outskirts of town, the train seeming to brush their sides? Whatever it was, I wasn’t ready for it. I was tired, and I had a headache, and the brand of excommunication was still hot upon my ruined face. I felt ready for death. I even felt ready for Daila. But I could never be ready for Catchknot.

  I would rather think of you, and what you were doing as I came into the city. Surely you were there; you never leave it. The train went through the dirty new buildings and then, more slowly, through the clean old ones. As we arrived, it was morning, and we could actually see their marble sides being hosed off, so that it looked like the city were being washed for us specially, as we got closer to stepping out into the dripping sunshine.

  The path before me seemed very thin and narrow. A rind of dirt and pavement that led to Daila and back. If I walked along it just right, I would not have to look up until I was on the mountain again. I know that not far from my path, you were finishing your night shift at the clinic desk before getting ready for bed. You always wait for the morning train to pass, so you can lie down in silence. Somewhere nearby, then, you were making a vigorous mark of the time with your bone pen (it’s human bone, though you don’t tell most people that). And your watch was on the table, hot from your wrist. But even as I sit in the very room where you must have lain down, I cannot imagine you coexisting with me on that journey. My whole first trip to Catchknot I was alone.

  Catchknot is the humming center of the world. The queen of our little country does not live here because, having accidentally inherited it in the breakup of the old empire, she fears being thought ambitious. But we all live here, even the Holoh on their mountain. Our books are set here. Our paintings are backgrounded by its squares and arcades. Our cheap prints depict revelers and churchgoers in its cold understreets. The only thing in our land that isn’t from Catchknot is the Southern clergy, in their isolated labs and monasteries and hermitages, but the Holoh are not much in the habit of paying attention to the clergy, and so it was Catchknot that I thought I knew.

  So I was awed, but I was not surprised. I knew the order in which the great landmarks would pop up as we rode the train and the trams. I knew the quality of the light. I knew the way people ate, the way they talked, the words they reached for and avoided. The city was an imagined place, and in that way it had always been a place of safety for me. But there was also so much that I hadn’t imagined. The stirring of the city, its weight. The force of its bad air, the span of its broad shallow manmade lakes, from which gray birds emerged from gray water. The detail of the city, from which books protect us. The grease on the red flowers, the dimming of coal dust, the wet contagion in the air, the loose cords of the message wires strung between the buildings, the way the fountains left ghosts of water.

  I had seen the faces of too many dead friends this year, and somehow I felt the same about Catchknot, which I knew and didn’t know. That queasy jar deep in the body. Recognizing something enough to see its crevasses, its cliffs, the prospect of falling.

  It was in this mood that I rode the tram up
to the Black Garden that evening. It felt like riding the tram to the village, like I was coming home. When we stepped out of the car, it was into a blast of perfume that made my eyes water. Then the view resolved itself. Women were spraying that perfume everywhere, their bright smiles glistening with its ambient oils, and I saw a sunset through my stinging eyes, and a waxy blue hut for changing clothes.

  The Black Garden was built as part of a great imperial fair. You can still see parts of the fair in Catchknot, white buildings of stucco, designed to be temporary. They filled the garden with plants from all over the empire, and most of them died for want of their natural sun and soil, and that’s how it got its name. Nowadays the gardeners are better, and it’s supposed to be called that because it has a feeling of being in silhouette when you see it in sunset.

  You were supposed to wear your traditional clothing when you came to the fair. It was like a parade of imperial animals, the two giraffes marching side by side, and the two horses, and the two big cats. Some towns and provinces had to reach back pretty far to find any traditional clothing. Others, who could not afford to come to the garden, wore their traditional stuff to the fair because they owned nothing else. There aren’t any records of the Holoh coming to the fair originally — those were bad times for us. But you can rent Holoh clothes in the shop now. I reached for them at once when we went inside, felt their weakened fur trim, but then withdrew. I could be anything I wanted here. I could rent clothes from lands far outside the kingdom, clothes I couldn’t even recognize: what was this frizzy mass of fur that cut off just below the hip? And how were you supposed to wear this pleated cloak, which had no armholes and no opening?