Ossia: A Novel

Folio Three, Page Ten (etràgra mos itzkron)

2011-10-18T18:34:00.000-04:00

Still, after we had called the next school on stage, I pulled him to the backstage storage room where the palace keeps its old, dusty things for ceremonies among centuries of forgotten drama troupe props and costumes. He hardly had enough time to set his drums down before I pressed him up against a trunk and kissed him. His head hit the back of it and sweet-smelling leather dust fell around us like black snow.

He tried to dig his hands into the trunk and turn his face away, but I grabbed him by the neck and finished the kiss before he could protest. His face was ruddy and his breathing had gone heavy.

“You’re insane,” he murmured. “Do you know where we are?”

I shook my head and kissed him again. This time, he relaxed into it and kissed me back. “You’re not leaving me for the High Wilds.”

“I’d never do that.”

“Good.” I stepped back. He grabbed the front of my jacket and pulled me back in for a short kiss.

“Your lips are so cold,” he said.

“The performance hall is freezing.” I shivered.

“You say that about everywhere we perform.” He shook his head. “So, what does this mean? Do you want to go steady with me?”

I nodded. “You’re the only other kid in town who is as weird and contrary as me. What do you think? We can still go climbing and visit temples together like we did when we were kids, but we’re almost adults now.” We’d be older on Attara, of course — the twelve-year-olds there were still just kids. Maybe he wanted to be there because he thought it would make him more independent.

“What will your aunt say?”

“You do know I don’t care, right?” I wondered what my mother would have said. Dating a boy like this would make me notorious, at least if word got out about it. Maybe she had intended me to aim for something else.

He grabbed my hands and brought them to his lips. From the stage, I heard the sounds of clapping and banging from the dancers, but couldn’t identify the school. “If I see any marks on your skin, we’ll call our relationship off. It’d be just like abusing you.”

“My family doesn’t like a lot about me. How would you know it was your fault?”

Sukua let go of my hands. I pulled him closer and looked into his eyes. Once word spread about our relationship, his family would never let him end it without good reason, no matter what my cousin Anumë pushed our relatives to do. Besides, everyone who had problems with the marked kids had left the last time. Aunt Nikis had donated a lot of money to charities that worked with ones whose families had abandoned people like Sukua.

It sounds like a lot of grandstanding, and it was. Only my mother had liked the nahitakhë enough to engage with them as people. The rest of polite society just wanted someone else to take care of the problem.

« Folio Three, Page Nine

Folio Three, Page Nine (etràgra mos tusjga)

2011-10-04T23:24:00.000-04:00

Sukua and I sat apart from each other on the train, and I separated him from me when we reached our station by keeping the dancers between us. None of them paid any attention to him at the back of the pack, but he had more talent and intelligence than any of them.

The palace gave us our own room for changing and practicing. Sukua and I slipped on our plain white jackets and moved quickly to help our dancers assemble their gorgeous, flame-inspired costumes. Sukua helped them lace up the back while I knotted fabric around their wrists and ankles to keep sleeves and pants from the flame bowls and cymbals. The director and his assistant tested the safety extinguisher by setting small strips of cloth on fire and extinguishing them over a small bowl. Both wore the finest clothes they owned.

We painted our faces white with red sweeps beneath our eyes. They pasted jewels and heat-activated holographic phantasms to their bare skin. I started tuning the ksibja while we waited.

At the beginning of large performances, the preceding school welcomes the next one onto the stage with their own instrumentalists. Then, and only then, do the musicians dance together. I had never done it before, but Sukua had come to the palace once before. We waited agonizingly through the main invocation and two of the schools before our moment came.

Sukua and I had hardly looked at each other in hours, and now we had to keep eye contact with each other and not trip.

I let him take me by the hand. It was as cold and sweaty as my own.

We pressed our wrists together at the beginning, arms crossed, and spun around each other. The dance required less flexibility, but all of the patterns blurred together until I hardly knew whether I had stumbled or had fallen into the next pose. We had practiced dozens of times, but not enough for the moves to have stuck in my muscle memory.

The subconscious takes care of so much. In the blink of an eye, it had finished and the dancers had brought our instruments onto the stage. Sukua and I locked hands and bowed to the audience. I tried not to look out into it for faces I recognized.

All too soon, we gave the spotlight to our dancers. I kissed my ksibja near the tuning knobs and started playing.

Playing for dancers takes a lot of skill. The notes need to match the precision of the dancers’ steps, and we never used sheet music while playing for them. It had to ebb when they ebbed and start moving again when they moved. Each step needed a specific series of patterns. We used to send messages back and forth this way in the Canyons — one dancer stepping out the sounds, waving her hands for the vowels and the breaths, while the instrument played behind her for the town’s entertainment. The poses gave us our alphabet, and you can almost see that they used to be cupped hands or a bent body if you squint.

Every school adds embellishments. A long time ago, someone had the brilliant idea to throw torches and set hand cymbals on fire. Thus, our school was born.

Some of the fire stunts made the people in the front half of the audience gasp.

I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have. My hands had gone on autopilot. I glanced at Sukua every few seconds. The decision to kiss him never seemed more desperate and foolish than it did then.

« Folio Three, Page Eight

Folio Three, Page Ten

Folio Three, Page Eight (etràgra mos kot)

2011-09-13T10:50:00.002-04:00

“I don’t know.”

“I’d like to,” I said. “What about you, Sukua?”

He shrugged. “Attara sounds nice at this time of year.”

I caught the joke immediately, but I don’t think Senet did — one of the hemispheres will always be in either spring or summer. “Did you see that photo of the Jewel Desert in Modernity?”

“No,” he said.

“I’ll link you to it when we’re at a terminal.” Most families restrict access to technology because children have difficulties moderating themselves at times, and my communication band could only make ingoing and outgoing voice, video, and text messages. It was like having a phone instead of a communication relay device. Sukua’s much less restricted one had broken, and I don’t think his family wanted to replace it. “It’s so pretty.”

Senet rolled up his sleeve and started typing on his sleek, forearm-long band — an Odyssey series. A magazine appeared above it, and he started gesture-flipping through it to the appropriate page. The Odyssey communication bands alone could produce portable holograms with crystal-clear images. It was like having a personal Dream Garden.

He turned it towards us when he reached the page. The photograph showed white sand interspersed with multicolored rocks. “The rocks’ color comes from oxidation,” he said, “and they were deposited by glacial activity over 10,000 years ago.”

Sukua reached out and flipped through the pages. More nature photos of Attara appeared: rainforests filled with white-tipped trees, exotic animals playing in a water hole in a savannah, and a tundra landscape teeming with high-rise lichen masses. They didn’t have ice flowers like we did, but Attara’s warmer temperatures and closeness to its star didn’t spur evolutionary adaptations to extreme cold like the plants in our arctic.His fascination with Attara frightened me.

“It’s two star systems away,” I said. “If we didn’t rip to it, it would take several hundred years to get there — too far away from home, don’t you think?”

“Not really,” Sukua said.

I reached forward and gestured the magazine closed. Senet smiled at me. I didn’t like feeling this jealous about a boy over some stupid planet, but I couldn’t stop the venomous feeling in my gut. Sukua had gone soft for those pictures like slowly-resolving chordal progressions. The turbulence in his voice and eyes had all but disappeared.

Modernity is the one magazine I never let my manager schedule an interview in.

« Folio Three, Page Seven

Folio Three, Page Nine »

Folio Three, Page Seven (etràgra mos pyes)

2011-08-16T23:21:00.000-04:00

All of the dancers swayed nervously back and forth while we waited to board the train. Sukua and I rested our instruments on the platform and held hands, while Senet stood beside us with his arms folded across his chest.

As a show of non-discrimination, the Regional Academy of Fire Dancing had requested that Sukua not wear his contacts. It was one of the few times I had ever seen him without them, and I loved the ruddy warmth of his eyes despite how irritated they looked from not having the UV blockers.

They say that, when a pregnant woman contracts the muakanua and joins the nuamua, the pigment that turns their eyes red over the centuries collects in the developing fetus. If the fetus has a vulnerability to the muakanua, she miscarries; if not, she bears the child in the usual amount of time, but its eyes are marked. Everyone knows what happened to his or her mother — and everyone fears the child. Most of them once lived as outcasts, doing all of the jobs no one else could bear to do. Iturja even had laws regulating which jobs they could perform, at least until my mother had them overturned.

I wanted to marry him — not out of political obligation, but because I was one of the few people outside his own family who had seen him as more than a malformed abomination. We had enough compatibility for a love marriage to work and enough years ahead of us to convince my parents.

Today, I resolved, I would kiss him.

Of course, I couldn’t have let him know! — what kind of girl do you think I was?

Senet had carried my ksibja case to the station along with my bag full of ceremonial adornments, and he waited with us on the platform. I think he had business elsewhere in the city. While the Karatha and the nuamua would have representatives at the dance, he hardly ranked high enough for the upper echelon to add him to their party — at least I imagined not, as we never knew whether he had gone out traveling for several days on official business or had holed himself up in that room. Sometimes, he would leave his dishes outside the door or wash them himself in the sink. It was how the rest of the family knew he was still alive. I always heard his door open and close at night.

“Will you be gone long in Menarka?” I constructed it as formally as possible and squeezed Sukua’s hand when I said it so he wouldn’t feel jealous.

“I’ll spend the next few days in several different Canyon towns, followed by a week on the coast,” he said, but I noticed that he didn’t carry any bags of his own.

Maybe the Karatha just wandered like that from town to town, surviving on the kindness of strangers. He was lucky we had lived for so long in relative security that people had started to genuinely trust the Karatha again.

I knew how Senet wanted me to answer, but I couldn’t do it. “Everyone has been to the coast. I wonder if the coasts of the other worlds look any different—do you think anyone has seen the beach-cliffs and sand on each one?”

« Folio Three, Page Six

Folio Three, Page Eight »

Folio Three, Page Six (etràgra mos pirh)

2011-08-09T22:23:00.002-04:00

Two weeks before Salus compiled the black box, her primary contact went missing.

That was the deceased’s problem.

My problem involved some uncertainty about the amount of time that had elapsed between the recording and her train accident. Perhaps my mother had compiled the box in a panic and had actually accomplished everything herself. But she could have removed — no. She had died in a tragic accident. Besides, considering the outcomes I have heard of what I did, everyone would have seen the fruits of her labor.

The only way to guesstimate the time involved retrieving her journals, and she thankfully provided instructions for that. Everything else remained vague, possibly to prevent me from knowing too much before executing her plan.

All she told me: Rise up as high as you can. Get attention wherever and whenever you can. Make sure people know who you are. And never remain completely alone and open with anyone.

I needed protection.

Thinking about how to obtain it took very little time at all. Namgyatzi would certainly attend the performances at the Deimo’s palace, and he would know how to put me in contact with the nuamua in Equilibrium Nexus. They couldn’t know what I wanted, but a childhood in the Niksubvya household had taught me that anyone could get what they wanted if only they tried hard to obscure all of their desires behind a veneer of civility and concern.

Two years before I died, I wrote lyrics about the hours I spent awake in my bed that night.

Darkness and concern, that’s how it started:
That elevator to the sky, climbing higher and higher
Until the abyss opened up.

We want to think that the world is a good and just place that we have filled it with beneficent spirits that have no weaknesses and monsters that have more banes than stars in the sky. The abyss refers to what I experienced as I struggled to forget the images my mother had poured into my head — like scalding liquid or burning fire, those crimes against humanity entered my head and completely filled me up.

Everything I may have mentioned about resenting my mother for how much people loved her conceals another suite of resentments: she commandeered whatever fate the Great Weaver had spun for me; destroyed my lust for glory in favor of justice; and made me step into the quagmire of intrigue that I had vowed to stay away from.

Granted, she did lead me to do great things. There is always that. But now we must move from this to the dance. As Yilrega’s teachings say, dancing animates the universe. She of the Thousand Million Suns danced the universe into being while she slept.

The ksijba part I played as the School of Fire’s accompanist was sacred. I fasted the entire day before on bread and water (though such a show of devotion is no longer required) and received permission from Aunt Nikis to have myself purified and adorned with henna at the Temple of Yilrega. Together, we went to the Hall of Music and made cake offerings to Sebhu, the Lord of the Flute-Tent, and Gamgyatsahagia, She of the Painted Bowls and Mistress of Dexterous Hands.

On the morning of the dance, I prayed to the ancestors — especially my mother — and the household gods in seclusion. I swept the old ashes from both shrines and peeled the dried henna from my forehead.

« Folio Three, Page Six

Folio Three, Page Seven »

Folio Three, Page Five (etràgra mos sjek)

2011-08-02T21:11:00.001-04:00

The recording went dark for a moment, and when it came back, I no longer saw my mother. Instead, the hologram had panned a view of the solar system and major constellations. The screen panned first to the Galactic Center and then to the edge of one of the adjacent constellations, the Night-Bird’s beak.

It zoomed in. The hologram wavered, and I realized it had switched from a true sky view to a simulation.

My mother’s voice narrated. “An Ameisi woman and her team discovered an ancient burial site from Qamaq’s colonization some time ago — quite by accident. The ruins were dated to about five thousand years ago, during the period when Ameisi civilizations were recovering from a worldwide dark age. Archaeological records indicate that Qamaq (which according to all archeological evidence was space-faring) declined at about the same time. Pockets of advanced technology persisted elsewhere for at least a thousand years after it disappeared from Ameisa.

“The burial site contained coordinates to the system being presented to you now. A team from Ameisa was created in secret and sent there to investigate. Only one person survived, and the project was taken over by an International Congress-appointed top-security group, officially overseen by the Working Group on International Security and Planetary Border Patrols. Top-security documents refer to them as Kada, the Leissi word for ‘sanctuary.’

“What you are seeing now is a reconstruction of the planet’s surface from primary documents. The top secret designation of the documents and access controls in the government’s system make it impossible to show you real documentation.

“I first learned about Kada five years after becoming an adviser when our Deimo tasked me with finding a replacement archaeologist for one who had died somewhat unexpectedly. While looking at the reports, I learned about the value they posed to our civilizations — not just on Ameisa, but on all of the worlds — and greatly respected the International Congress for their wise decision to look into the matter.

“The International Congress disbanded Kada twenty years later, citing personal disagreements among its members as the primary reason. I never found any of these members, not even the man I had appointed, to corroborate this information.

“The documents in this black block include launch data for top secret missions that remained ongoing even after the group disbanded, along with financial information I gleaned from an associate. Two years ago, I discovered 13,000 correspondences between Kada representatives, a member of the Working Group on International Security and Planetary Border Controls, and the shipping manager for WellnessWorlds. Halfway through the correspondence, Kada renamed itself Kadah Esta, or Final Sanctuary. I am assuming the word ‘final’ is significant.

“The photos streaming now come from some of these correspondences.”

Nishet, I believe you know what I saw. The first images sickened me. No girl of twelve should have to see anything so horrible. Every time I closed my eyes for the next few years — when I wasn’t dropping from exhaustion — I would see those eyes staring back at me —— those cold, lifeless eyes. The children. Those poor, silenced children …

« Folio Three, Page Four

Folio Three, Page Six »

Folio Three, Page Four (etràgra mos dros)

2011-07-12T21:19:00.001-04:00

But I would never have described Salus Nitannyi as a sane woman.

She had pulled me in, reaching beyond the grave to grasp my world with those forever-cold hands and shake it until it fell apart, without anyone noticing despite their hardest efforts to keep everything she had done from ever greeting the sun.

Gorged on food and sore from climbing, I was vulnerable to just about anything, including but not limited to the blue light that had started flashing beneath my wardrobe.

I shut the door as quickly as possible after entering the room, not because I knew it was a secret, but because it reminded me of the strange things that had happened after my mother’s funeral. Also, the bottom of the wardrobe looked completely different.

My mother had masked the secret compartment beneath the wardrobe using a hologram-driven illusion. Not even a tesekhaira could have seen through it without inspecting the wardrobe carefully through touch.

When I knelt down beside the wardrobe and put my hand beneath it, the force shield dropped and a large, flat box fell onto my hand. It was heavy enough to leave a bruise where my knuckles hit the floor, and I bit my tongue.

The box was black and reflective, the kind of thing you expected to find someplace slightly more important than an orphan girl’s room. On top, it had a small circle with a little fingerprick node — the kind that takes DNA samples, pulse rates, and temperature ratings so it can tell if the person who wants to open it is actually still alive even if she has been authorized. I had heard of them, but had never seen one before now.

When I put my finger on it, the box pricked my finger and the circle flashed blue. One by one, the locks around the edge retreated back into the casing.

I tore it open as quickly as I could and locked the door without even bothering to look at the contents. When I turned to face it, my back against the door, the gyena slipped from my hair the dreadlocks spilled out from beneath it. The woman who stared up at me had the same face, but hazel eyes. The hair barely contained by her matronly gyena was white.

My face must have gone pale. It felt like seeing a ghost, staring into the eyes of this hologram; when she spoke, I felt tears come to my eyes. I would have given anything to hear my mother address me again.

“Eràsis, please make sure that you’re alone.”

I pushed myself away from the door and checked to make sure the curtains had closed completely. Her voice barely went above a whisper. I looked up at the cameras and a lump rose in my throat.

The hologram said, “System execute program rapidserpent authorization Nitannyi.”

The camera lenses closed. Surely Nikis would have noticed — but she would never say anything to me, and whatever the hologram had done would remain a mystery forever. My mother’s electronic ghost had successfully disabled the room’s entire AI.

“Daughter, if you are viewing this message, it means that something has happened to me and that enough time has passed that I will likely not return.” She paused and pulled the gyena back from her hair. “Quite honestly, I would rather not be in your debt. The risks of doing as I say are high. During my service in the government, I made many enemies, and I could never have kept you as close to me as I wanted.

“I made every effort to make you as happy as possible. It’s the least I could do for a child, let alone one who I brought into the world without the family’s consent. But they say that we live on through our children, so I consider you well worth the risk.” My mother cleared her throat and paused, presumably to check the recording status. “Please do not share the information I am about to give you with anyone, no matter who asks. Provide your verbal consent here.”

The video paused. My hands had started shaking, and I felt numb. This woman who had given me everything, yet told me nothing — the one who had left on that train, the one who had died — my mother wanted something from me. Every orphan, hearing such a celebrated woman speak, would have jumped at the chance to prove themselves to even her shade.

And yet, I understood completely the implications: I was not an accident. She had conspired to have me in secrecy. Doubtless, she had completely relied on the mother-daughter bond to sway me.

Now, I held the power in our relationship. I had the ability to say yes or no depending on my whims. Whatever she wanted, I could turn to my advantage — or at least try.

“Yes,” I said.

« Folio Three, Page Three

Folio Three, Page Five »

Folio Three, Page Three (etràgra mos biet)

2011-07-05T21:21:00.001-04:00

Sukua waited with me outside the dance studio, drumming a rhythm into the bench that sounded like a funeral march. “Do the Karatha actually eat?”

“Senet has eaten everything our family has put on the table or brought up to his room — never leaves a bite on the plate.” I thought about leaving my ksibja in the rehearsal locker overnight and decided it should stay with me. “They must need food, otherwise how could they move and regenerate dead tissue and everything?”

“Are you scared?”

“I don’t get scared.”

And that was right. I usually didn’t get scared. The botched depression treatment had narrowed my emotional range, although sometimes I think it intensified anger and full-blown panic. Panic was that twisting, churning sensation in my gut. Anger caused a series of uncontrollable violent impulses, and I often struggled to control it.

Sukua, on the other hand, did get scared. Walking down the street in Kobsarka had turned into a ritual of self-humiliation. Some of the temples wouldn’t let him in because his condition carried ritual impurity in some traditions, so he worshipped in Menarka where fewer people knew about his family’s shame. When we walked down the street together, people noticed me more than they noticed him.

He stopped drumming and looked up at me. “They are so alien. All of them. I mean, couldn’t one of the Karatha live forever? Could you even call something like that a person?”

“They can think and reason.”

“But that’s the definition the textbooks and the media have spoon-fed us. It should apply to sentient creatures on other planets. I — I just think I would trust you with one of them a bit more. At least we would have common ideas about mortality. The Taritit — they were bad and all, but at least we could kill them and make jerky.”

“You think too much.” I couldn’t get the image of skinning and cooking a Taritsi out of my head. No one had done that during the war, but Sukua must have gotten the image from somewhere. Even the dead have basic rights. “We should go into Menarka tomorrow to ask for blessings. Playing for the Deimo makes me more nervous than climbing with someone who has been like a brother to me the past few years.”

We both saw Senet walking down the street towards our studio. I squeezed Sukua’s hand and smiled. “Meet me at the train station tomorrow afternoon.”

Sukua nodded and left. Lately, he had seemed jealous whenever I talked about interacting with Senet, although I don’t know why. Sukua and I — barring Anumë’s interference — stood a high chance of having a match, and having intimate relations with a tesekhaira was taboo.

But hurting them isn’t, I thought. The image of the roasting Taritit flashed through my head. It made me feel sick, but it prompted a question: If you wanted to kill or disable a tesekhaira, how would you go about doing it?

Senet stopped to greet me a few feet from where I stood. I picked up my heavy ksibja case and stumbled over a raised tile in the sidewalk. “You’re late,” I said.

“Something happened in Menarka. I shouldn’t talk about it.” His hands dropped to his sides. “Walk with me.”

“I don’t understand why everything must be so secretive when it comes to you lot.”

We started walking towards one of the better roast places in town. Senet took some time to formulate a response. “Families in Narahji society like to keep everything cleanly behind closed doors so they can affect unity and strength in the world outside. It … it is similar for the Karatha. We might be a collective, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have disagreements with one another. If you want one of my faction’s stronger opinions, Namgyatzi manages his collective better than we manage ours. I think it could be that he tries to distance himself from affiliation with any one of that collective’s factions. Our … our foci pick sides.”

“When you talk about factions within the nuamua, do you mean Equilibrium Nexus?”

“They’re the one most people know about.” He paused. “Did you hear about them from your mother?”

I shook my head. “History class.”

“Your mother had strong ties to Equilibrium Nexus, but also to Namgyatzi. They worked together to advance many different issues, although I hear she had a fallout with one or two people in the Equilibrium Nexus that she was closest to. I’m surprised she never told you anything about her life.”

“I was seven.” I shifted the ksibja case to my other shoulder. “Namgyatzi’s entourage was the only group of nuamua at the funeral.”

“Your mother knew how to burn bridges.” He paused and winced. It amazes me how often people did that after realizing what they said referred to one or more conditions surrounding my mother’s death. “Sorry — sorry about that. But she never told you anything?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Probably for the best,” he said. “She had a lot of enemies.”

As a young child, I had never thought of my mother as a politician, but now I realized just how entwined in court politics she had been. Senet told me about some of her rivals — obviously omitting the Karatha — and the power that they had struggled with one another to exert over the country.

Of course no sane woman would have pulled her only child into that mess.

« Folio Three, Page Two

Folio Three, Page Four »

Folio Three, Page Two (etràgra mos roh)

2011-06-28T19:26:00.001-04:00

Two days before I accompanied the dancers at the Deimo’s palace, I made a plate of fruit, nuts, and stale bread and went to the courtyard to finish some of my homework. Several birds had flown in through the gap in the ceiling. I heard them cooing in the tree overhead. Small, spiny feathers drifted down onto the equation I had started—a proof for the trigonometry course that I had just started.

Music and mathematics are linked at a fundamental level. Playing the ksibja, as soon as I had attained the appropriate scientific understanding, became a ritual of ratio and frequency patterns. It astounded me every time it resolved into perfectly-tuned notes. In music and mathematics, there is always a right and a wrong answer. Notes are either in tune or they are not in tune. A proof either works or does not work. Scales either incorporate microtones or they do not. The specific methods you take to arrive at an answer, however, must be defined by the constraints of the problem or the piece.

I stopped working and resorted to doodling in the margins. Nothing fancy, just strings of musical notes, eyes, and maybe a few triangles.

A cool breeze ran up the back of my neck. I twisted my head to the side and saw Senet standing on the path, hands in his pockets and young as ever. He looked like a businessman from the city, and he wore a bright blue tunic with red and gold trim and embroidered pants. I resisted the urge to look for a briefcase or an industrial tablet.

“Fætzù,” I said. Hey. “Are you trying to impress anyone?”

“I went to a morning reception in Menarka,” he replied. “May I sit?”

I studied his face for any sign of individuality. It had become a game, teasing it out. The stories got better when he came out of that shell. “Yes, but I have rehearsal soon.”

Senet sat down on the ivy beside me and studied the doodles I had made on my assignment paper. He put his hands on his knees. They had reddened from too much sun exposure. “May I inquire about something personal?”

I turned onto my side and looked up at him. His shoulders tensed, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Whatever you like.”

“I heard that your family has levied financial pressure on you to turn towards a more helpful profession, and you have seemed a bit off lately. Do you need any help?” He sounded breathless, and it must have taken a lot for him to mention it. “Your affairs are none of my concern, but I have always admired your music, and I think—I think it would be a shame to leave your talent to rot in the sun.”

“I have no intention of being intimidated,” I said. My voice remained steady, but a lump had risen in my throat. I could have used a haircut, for one, and I had eaten hardly anything outside of the communal meal for over a month. At the beginning, it had left me dizzy like my insides were clawing at the inside of my ribcage, but now I felt hollow. Given the choice between food and sheet music or an instrument tuning, I always chose the latter. “The family could shit seeds for all I care.”

He chuckled. “You are very dedicated.”

“I know. They say I take after my mother.”

“Still, everyone deserves a break. After practice, I’ll take you out for roast and the wall-climbing simulator down by the train station. Have you ever been?”

My mouth watered at the thought of fire-roasted vegetables, fish, and dip. It would make me hungry for the entirety of rehearsal. “No, I didn’t know we had one.” Instead of the fancy virtual reality climbing systems, I had paid about 5 lh. per week to access the large climbing facilities and complimentary classes at the community center.

Senet patted my shoulder twice. Until I started dreading my hair at about ten, he had ruffled it to show affection. Now I observed ritual purity and wore the gyena, no man could touch it, but some online forums claimed that male tesekhairač didn’t count.

« Folio Three, Page One

Folio Three, Page Three »

Folio Three, Page One (etràgra mos itz)

2011-06-07T10:04:00.001-04:00

My dearest friend,

Thank you for your kind words and the telegram at the reception of my letter. News travels so slowly without well-developed infrastructure, and I am grateful that we at least have that comfort down here. The raft hunt went well; I only lost one of the crew, and that was due to his own stupidity when faced with one of those canyon beasts you people in the shallows have so many nightmares about.

Now to reply to your points. I apologize for how rushed the end of the last letter seemed; that period of my life makes my heart race, and I cannot think about the circumstances surrounding my treatment without more than an acceptable amount of contempt for those involved, especially Senet. And I agree that perhaps I glamorize my life a bit too much, especially in that preposterous scene with the animals—except, according to my memory, things did happen this way. Gods know it was probably just a few strays that got blown up into a slightly more extravagant story by my fever-addled brain.

But I think the rest is just uncalled for. How dare you say that I am making my seven-year-old self seem too old! I will have you know that my memory, while far from perfect, is capable of recalling sensitive details about my own childhood.

I may not have used the same words, but I certainly did know my wildflowers from my vines at that age. Failing Tveshi does not translate to being an ignoramus. As you well know, that language is very difficult for non-native speakers to understand, what with their stupid clicks where everyone else would put proper k’s and s’s — or sh’s, I forget, is that what they use? Swear it sounds the same — and those difficult-to-the-point-of-indecency verb moods and tenses. Who the hell needs a verb mood that indicates a statement’s logical necessity? Can’t they just use indicative for that?

Point: I placed forward a level in mathematics when I was nine.

Regardless, we should move forward.

1908 was the year my family decided that my interest in the arts had gone too far. If I were common, it wouldn’t have mattered so much; as one of the Narahji elite, I needed to make something of myself. Nobody wants their family’s twelve-year-old girl seen alone at the opera, especially one who has just wrapped her hair in a gyena. It was indecent.

To solve this, Aunt Nikis reduced my living allowance from 50 to 25 lh./month. It was a great blow, as I had counted on the larger amount of money in my scramble for an appropriate traditional outfit for a performance at the Deimo’s often-vacant palace in Menarka.

To make ends meet, I took several of my mother’s older garments from storage and sold them to one of the theaters. Aunt Nikis would have hated me for selling a part of the family’s assets; even though my mother had left her belongings to me, the family could rightfully have taken a 25% cut. The sale netted me about 200 lh., enough to cover clothes for the dance with about 50 lh. left over to use at my discretion. I could not add the money to my bank account without the family noticing, so I sewed the marbles into an older dress.

« Folio Three, Page Zero

Folio Three, Page Two »

Folio Three, Page Zero (etràgra mos nagi)

2011-05-24T23:07:00.002-04:00

These notes were written on the blank page between the daraiga hide cover and the first page of Eràsis.1908 in my father's handwriting. – Nàsis

Query — Does Likua tal Bisum still exist? Discover where local nuamua congregate and ask. ~~Meeting with him would be most illuminating.~~ Too risky. Providing him with sealed letter instead. Should meet in an out-of-the-way place. Temple of Hatkranar on the outskirts probably most suitable.

Retrieved early music files of Eràsis's work. Loaded onto solid state non-networked media to avoid contamination and detection. List of works include:

“Light” – ksibja and voice, duet with unidentified masculine tenor
“Falling Down” – ksibja, voice, and taksnà drum, alternating vocals with unidentified masculine tenor fom previous song
“Heartbeat” – Eràsis on ksibja, same male voice singing. Probably recorded prior to other ones. Begins with dialogue:

Erà: Just as a warning, I don’t know what I'm doing.
?: You know what the key is. You’ll think of something.
Erà: I haven’t done improv since I was a child.
?: Just five minutes. Five minutes and I’ll prove to you that all of this is worth it. I think you could really go far if you just stopped getting so anxious.
Erà: Sorry. [plays a few chords] How is this?
?: Just keep doing that. I'll count to three, okay?
Erà: Good.
?: One, two ... three.
“Questionable Intentions” – ksibja, Eràsis singing alone. Sounds of crowd in the background. Closes with clapping. Difficult to distinguish individual voices.
“Pink” – ksibja and voice. Lyrics for this are actually quite amazing. Eràsis has obviously had some philosophy training.

These are the most notable. Others do not connect to narrative points. Saryukh likely candidate for unidentified male.

1908 letter raises several questions. Amkzí presents Eràsis as a bit of a flirt — what is her intention with communicating this? A bit disgusting considering social taboo against relationships with tesekhaira, but one has to admire Senet’s restraint. Also: significance of time lapse? Just over five years ...

kqxV1-12-1289 – Call this number

standing stones — significant?????

Folio Three, Page One »

The Structure of Folio Three

2011-05-24T22:28:00.001-04:00

Dearest readers,

My father kept five folios containing letters from Amkzí, all of them hand-bound using soft daraiga hide covers. I remember watching him peruse them as a child. He remained obsessed with Amkzí long after she ceased contacting him; I owe the majority of the supplemental research to him. We have now completed the first two, and it falls to me to provide some more information about the texts now that you have familiarized yourself with their structure.

The first two folios, as we have seen, each contain one letter and very few annotations. The media coverage of Eràsis increased as she aged, so he could not compare as much of the earlier material to the available media records.

The third folio contains a unique structure. It is the thickest of my father's volumes and contains three long letters from Amkzí. My father annotated this volume heavily, and it shows more wear than the others. I imagine he bound these letters together for convenience.

The first letter, which I call Eràsis.1908 in my notes, dicsusses events happening in the singer's life at the age of twelve. The second, Eràsis.1910, jumps forward two years. The final letter in Folio 3, Eràsis.1913, combines some description of her higher education with the founding of the band Tapestry.

The early folios puzzled me when I first read them. Many of the events seem insignificant and, quite frankly, they read like Amkzí does not understand proper narrative flow or comprehend that things can be omitted.

All of these misgivings changed at the end of Folio 2.

I suspect that she wanted to set things up so we could identify the antagonists and the allies in her life. It all comes down to that little bottle of ukarsevei. I will leave the rest to your analysis.

Solidarity, friends,

Nàsis kul Leksones

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Five (svegra mos pirhvan tal-sjek)

2011-05-14T12:43:00.002-04:00

Senet brought me the ukarsevei after everyone had gone to bed for the next several nights. He would come up to my room and sit on the bed beside me, pour a glass, and bypass the bedtime security code on my wall monitor so we could watch whatever I wanted. It wouldn’t take long for me to fall asleep. I always awoke beneath a layer of blankets to the morning alarms.

We should have reported the nausea and shaking to someone at the experimental treatment center. Perhaps they could have reversed the process before the nanos had completely adjusted to my system or before the founder — and the sole person who really understood the technique — died from unknown causes, leaving notebooks of enigmatic drawings and medical fragments that never resolved into a removal procedure.

The real problem came when I next sat down to play the ksibja. Some kind of balance had thrown itself off in my head. I tried to reach for the sorrow and the pain present in so many Narahji songs, but it just didn’t come. Instead, I felt that sick lightheadedness again. The notes swam on the page.

But I wasn’t sad. I was just … empty.

All right, slightly giddy.

I threw the ksibja to the floor and stared at it. Someone had taken the music from me. And — and I knew Anumë must have been responsible somehow.

Anumë had corralled the other adults into punishing me for kissing a boy on the cheeks (or the mouth, as she said) simply because he was a nahitakhë and hadn’t bothered to tell me.

Thinking about that brought back all the anger and pain I needed to pick up the instrument again. It wasn’t just or fair for them to legislate my behavior when they didn’t even think I truly belonged to the Niksubvya family.

So, on that afternoon just after the end the monsoons, I decided four things:

I would not let anyone regulate my behavior again;
I would not become a politician like the rest of my family;
I would find some way to wipe that self-satisfied smirk from Anumë’s face;

and

I would join the dancers and become the best ksibja player the Canyons had ever seen.

They were fairly lofty goals, I admit, a fusion of childlike stubbornness and that certain almost-adult thinking most smart kids have — the kind of mind that doesn’t understand consequences, merely results.

And what do you know? I failed Tveshi that year.

Ŋuskzei,
Amkzí

« Folio Two, Page Sixty-Four

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Four (svegra mos pirhvan tal-dros)

2011-04-19T23:51:00.001-04:00

The surgery they put me through probably resembles what they do now, so I won’t bother discussing it. Coming out of that blackness and back into normal life felt fantastic.

I ate a full meal that evening, or so I remember. It may have been pureed. Everyone was astonished, including Anumë. I must have looked like some dead thing desperately climbing back into the world of the living.

The vomiting and shaking didn’t begin until late in the night, and I was too terrified to tell anyone because that medical clinic smelled like ammonia and machines and I didn’t want them to take me into one of the sterile, white rooms they reserved for “long-term guests,” the ones I had seen for the first time on our way out of the complex. Instead, I quietly made my way down to the toilets once, then twice. The third time, the convulsions brought me to my knees and I had to grip the wall to remain standing.

The noise disturbed Senet next door. When I came back from the toilets down the hall, he took my temperature and looked me over. “I think your system is in shock from the sudden change,” he said quietly. “But we’ll not tell anyone — come, let me get you something for relief.”

He took me into his room. It looked nothing like the rest of the house, although I had played in there before when no one was looking and knew what it looked like underneath the additions. He had installed a three-tiered window garden with herbs, all lit by ambient full-spectrum light. An open file folder rested on the desk. In ordinary circumstances, I would have tried to read it, but the thought of moving that far across the floor made me feel even more nauseous.

Senet poured a glass of water from a decanter and opened a small refrigeration unit. He pulled out a dark blue bottle covered in Tveshi writing.

“Is that a mood drug?”

He looked at the bottle. “No, it’s a remedy for nausea. I think the mood companies discovered it while working on some new sensation or other … I keep it just in case. Please sit.”

I watched him mix the water and the drug. “Does it have a name?”

“Ukarsevei.”

I took it from him. A few minutes after drinking, the nausea began to subside. I felt a bit lightheaded. “Could you tell me a story, Senet? The one about Siha and the Jaiska, if you will.”

Senet smiled. “Anything you like.”

« Folio Two, Page Sixty-Three

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Five »

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Three (svegra mos pirhvan tal-biet)

2011-04-05T23:55:00.001-04:00

The screenings happened while everyone else was away at work.

It didn’t matter that I had no willpower, and although the doctors and technicians tried to be nice to a young girl, I saw more than a few stares. Early-onset depression was bad genetic luck that usually resulted in a lifetime of diet regulation, supplements, and medicines. That’s probably why Aunt Nikis had gone for the experimental treatment. Our family wouldn’t survive that kind of scandal.

The doctors had sworn themselves to complete confidence, but one of the staff must have said something to everyone else. My condition ended up in the news. When I looked back at the news stories as an adult, it made a pit drop in my stomach to see how the condition was exploited.

Everyone weighed in, from my mother’s new cult to life force doctors who accused my mother’s ghost of leeching energy from me. Akmarha, they called it — a restless ghost.

Sometimes I wonder, Nishet, if the presence of the nuamua and the Karatha and all of those other tesekhaira has conditioned us to believe in things that, in all likelihood, are not there — like the restless ghosts sucking life energy or those monsters from the deep ocean that drag down ships —— like those kids people claim can move things just by thinking or set things on fire with no more than a gesture ——— because we don’t want to confront our own ignorance about the way the universe has constructed itself. Although … maybe something uses these stories, I sometimes think, to convolute things and go unnoticed. I’m sure that those of you back in civilization may have a slightly better assessment of the situation by now.

Of course, this may not make sense if you haven’t seen any media commentary about my childhood illness. Let me know if you would like names of prominent period newscasters; I will send them as quickly as possible to the address I have on file for you.

My apologies for interrupting the story. It seems that I have only hours until the next Canyon boat leaves; afterward, I must interview a new crew for the Smoke and hopefully leave for another run, so you won’t hear from me for the next few weeks in any capacity. I hope one of them actually knows how to navigate a SmartRaft in shallow water. We must have lost half of our catch with the last incompetent idiot.

Speaking of which, please take precautions with these letters. I don’t want our conversation intercepted by anyone who could compromise my situation here.

« Folio Two, Page Sixty-Two

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Four »

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Two (svegra mos pirhvan tal-roh)

2011-03-30T00:15:00.001-04:00

The first child psychologist found no solution. The second diagnosed me with severe depression, likely something in my genetics caused by a traumatic environmental trigger. Only two or three other cases like mine existed in the medical record, all with children at least three years older than I was.

“In the other cases, the result was fatality. I ... have hope for this one. A research lab has recently made some experimental treatments available using nanotechnology. The nanos regulate brain chemicals and help the emotions maintain equilibrium. They will ... normalize her, if all goes well.”

“But do they work?”

He cleared his throat. “You may have heard of them. The Amber Moon Research Group applied the same technique to Maràsis, the child theater actress. One of my friends who works there says it has been successful.” He looked from Aunt Nikis to me.

“And treatment is ... noninvasive? Will it impact her ability to have extension implants later in life?” Aunt Nikis was always so practical. “Not that our family uses them much, but I read a recent technology report saying that human augmentative technologies will be more mainstream in a few years.”

The psychologist shook his head. “No. Augmentative technologies are capable of adapting — they won’t even notice the nanotechnology.”

“How early can you do it?”

“Midweek next week. I will need to take her in for some screenings at the facility.” He took out an input pad and started typing. “Yes, they do have an opening. 56 Poràkol at maybe Fifth Hour?”

“I will put it on my schedule.”

As soon as he left, she turned to me and said, “You won’t let anyone know about this. I don’t trust anyone in the house. Not the kids. Not those conniving, shitty adults.”

I nodded.

That day, I sat up in bed on my own and even helped the attendant wash myself — an accomplishment, according to the primary physician. Things were bound to get better.

« Folio Two, Page Sixty-One

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Three »

Folio Two, Page Sixty-One (svegra mos pirhvan tal-itz)

2011-03-15T19:30:00.002-04:00

By the time Thassannyi finished cleaning me, I had a fever. The average body temperature is about 220 Kumari, and mine was dangerous, something like 224 if I remember correctly.

That morning, Anumë brought medicine and soup to my room, but I wouldn’t let her feed me and I was too shaky and delirious to feed myself. I may have screamed when she touched me. Hiret relieved her. The soup tasted heavy and horrible in my mouth. She had salted it too much to be palatable, but he forced it down my throat.

The fever lessened as the day wore on, but I still couldn’t bring myself to leave the bed. My body had gone cold and a severe lethargy had crept over my limbs and into my head. I’m probably going to die, I thought. It’s just as well.

I had fitful dreams that night of going deep into the canyons where a tree had nestled itself between two boulders larger than two people put together, dripping with nectar and fruit, only something was chasing me that I couldn’t quite see and when I awoke I had wet the bed. I lay there for hours in my own urine before someone came because I couldn't lift myself up.

The next day saw no improvement, nor the next, but I had no sense of time because the delirium had come back. Aunt Nikis canceled two events that she had scheduled.

Sometimes I saw Anumë lurking just beyond the door with a suspicious amount of concern written in her gestures.

On the third day of my sickness, Aunt Nikis left for a business meeting in the steppes. Nikis Taltsuya tried to drag me from bed while she was gone, and when I couldn’t stand, she beat me. I was too weak to even flinch. Aunt Nikis called the doctor when she got back. I think the beating had sent me into severe shock, but I don’t have much of a memory of what happened, who the doctor was, or what he said. I just know that I felt so completely horrible that I almost couldn’t do what he said. He didn’t even bother to take Aunt Nikis aside for the diagnosis because I seemed so non-responsive.

The rest of the family would have just left me there to die.

“The problem is not physiological, although it looks like she’s taken some physical harassment. I’d say the real thing tying her to this bed is psychological. I know someone — a child psychologist from Menarka, very good at cases like these.”

After he left, I think I heard screams from elsewhere in the house. I never saw Nikis Taltsuya, her husband, or their son Leiset again.

« Folio Two, Page Sixty

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Two »

Folio Two, Page Sixty (svegra mos pirhvan)

2011-03-01T21:32:00.002-05:00

Nikis Taltsuya dragged me down the stairs by my hair while Anumë ran to her room for rope. The other children stood with open mouths on the landing. I still didn’t know what I had done wrong or why they thought Sukua was a nahitakhë. He didn’t even have the eyes.

They took me into the central courtyard. Most of the ceiling there was vaulted with glass ceilings, the monsoon water being channeled into a waterfall along one side for the household purification system. It also filled the underground irrigation system that watered the garden’s plants while leaving the ground barely moist. Nikis Taltsuya shoved me into the middle while the others ran the ropes from my wrists and ankles to the pillars so I couldn’t move. I remember looking up at the sky and thinking what a perfect day they had chosen to do it. What had Nikis Taltsuya’s family done to her between rainstorms?

On the walkway above, I saw Hiret limping towards the shrine door. Someone told me several months later that he spent the entire night praying and missed two article deadlines for the political journal he wrote for, but I didn’t smell the incense from where I hung. I’m surprised no one violated his supplicant’s rights.

Deimoa cut the clothes from my upper body and rubbed a sensitizing cream on my back and shoulders before they went on me with the whip. I had no idea where it had even come from — Anumë or Nikis Taltsuya, perhaps — but I screamed when they hit me until my throat had gone raw. That’s about the time the rain started.

It smeared against the glass until it had dusted the courtyard roof with little droplets, and then larger droplets, and then they tilted down in rivulets. The first stream hit the crown of my head, but the second hit my sensitized shoulders. It felt like ice. The water went into my eyes and over my mouth and I couldn’t look up because I felt like it would drown me. And then it started pouring and I couldn’t breathe and there was water everywhere.

It amazes me that the shock didn’t kill me.

The ropes held me up for hours. Darkness overtook the garden, and everything around me swam. I thought — I still think — I saw things in the blackness. Little, black flitting things like shards of obsidian chittered and shredded through the trees, and something round and sticky rolled through the red vine cover on the ground. I could almost feel it reaching up to lick the tips of my toes. When I felt something sharp against the pad of my foot, I screamed and kicked and bit at the shadows like some rabid animal. The obsidian shards looked up from where they hid and roared. A light blotted out the rain. I fainted.

Everyone says Thassannyi turned on the lights and pulled me down. Maybe they’re right because she had scars after that night that I had never seen before — a slice that went all the way down her cheek, some criss-crossing on her arms like something sharp and serrated had fought with her in the vines. But whoever it was, they ran a tepid shower to clean the blood off. I awoke and started screaming and biting. I think something in my head had broken just a little.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Nine

Folio Two, Page Sixty-One »

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Nine (svegra mos sjekron tal-tusjga)

2011-02-23T13:29:00.001-05:00

A hand reached out and grabbed me at the base of my skull. I was sure the warm fingernails would break through my skin and rip out my spine, but it pulled me into the house and shoved me onto the floor before I could scream. Someone bound my hands and my feet and heaved me up. I tried to hit them in the chest with my knees.

“Fuck, is it loud.” That was Deimoa. I kicked harder and screamed a few times.

He didn’t respond to the squirming or the yells. I wondered where everyone else had gone — Senet, perhaps, or Aunt Nikis — but when Deimoa set me at the top of the stairs and my aunt’s office door opened, I knew something horrible had happened.

Deimoa shoved me down onto the floor, and I bumped the side of my head. My vision swirled and no one moved to help me up. Anumë did not even notice me. She stood in front of Aunt Nikis’s desk whispering like an angry ghost, and Nikis had steepled her hands over her face, leaning her elbows against the table. Hiret stood against one of the bookshelves, reading something on a clear touchpad that looked like the news. Nikis Taltsuya competed with Anumë for Aunt Nikis’s time, only she let her voice bellow in the old woman’s face.

“All I'm saying, Matriarch, is that it’s horrible luck for the family.” Nikis Taltsuya pounded her fist on the table. Aunt Nikis’s bottle of setai rattled. “What if she carries that disease into the house and spreads it to my son? I don’t want him to have a foreshortened life just because you can’t control that gutter shit Salus left behind.”

Anumë stood up straight and put her hands on her hips. She turned to Nikis Taltsuya like an animal smelling blood. “She’s right, you know. You can’t control that brat. Do you know what she did yesterday with that tasteless —”

Hiret cleared his throat. He didn’t look up from the touchpad. “She’s right here, you know. Talk about tastelessness.”

He used the word dosrìsja for tastelessness, not ìsjamsa — we only used the former word as an insult, generally to adult women who couldn’t socialize or put on their best face. Anumë whirled around and slapped him hard in the face. “Don’t you ever talk about your own sister that way again.”

Nikis Taltsuya looked down at me. “Thank you, Deimoa. I, for one, don’t think that filthy thing should be left in the house now, at least not until we know she doesn’t have the muakanua or ... something worse.”

“Eràsis does not have the muakanua.” Aunt Nikis stood. Her hands shook, but she gripped them together so it didn’t look like she was so afraid. “That’s all just canyon superstition. Nahitakhë kids don’t carry it. Besides, why would I punish her? It will make us look better in the public eye if they are seen together on the streets. I’ve known about it for some time.”

“And yet you never thought of notifying us how unclean she was? We let her into the household shrines!” Nikis Taltsuya was furious.

“She kissed him.” Anumë sneered and looked down at me. “Right on the mouth. I saw it through the window. Is that the kind of public performance you want? Marriage with a charity case?”

Hiret glowered at Anumë. “What century do you think this is, sis? It’s not any worse than running off with some explorer from the High Wilds. I hear Attara is a great planet for a wedding.”

“Will you shut up? I’m tired of hearing you defend her!” Anumë’s voice had gone shrill. She waved her arms around. My gut tightened. “If you want to know, I have gathered all of the adults. The majority of us think something should be done. Hiret and Thassannyi can shove it. And if you don’t agree, you fucking senile piece of shit, I will take that chair from you and turn you out onto the street where you belong. Allowing that trollop of a sister to stay in the family after what she did!”

I tried to make myself really small so no one would see me working at the bindings, but Deimoa lifted me up by the throat and pressed me against the wall. “You won’t be going anywhere.”

Nikis Taltsuya poured herself some water from a decanter on Aunt Nikis’s desk. “She’s a favorite of yours, I know, but nothing ever came from going easy on kids. When I was a girl, if I even thought of something that disgraceful, my parents tied me up outside during the monsoon rains and whipped me. Wouldn’t take me down until the night had passed.”

“Uncivilized trash,” Hiret murmured.

“Keep quiet or I’ll lift you up with her,” Anumë said.

“You can take that disgraceful woman back into the Canyon dark where she belongs,” Hiret said. “I’m leaving. Might call the police if I feel so inclined.”

He tried to make it to the door, but Deimoa was quicker and stronger. He pulled back his fist and punched Hiret in the face, then shoved him to the ground and started kicking him. The tablet went flying and shattered beside Nikis’s desk. I wanted Hiret to come up — I wanted him to hit Deimoa as hard as he could and make teeth go flyign — but he was no match for someone stronger and more athletic. But he didn’t scream, no matter how hard Deimoa hit him. He didn’t say anything at all.

When Deimoa pulled back from him, I heard someone gasp. It wasn’t Aunt Nikis, but even she looked more afraid than she had before.

“Our family has a reputation,” our Matriarch — Matriarch in name only! — murmured.

“Do you want to join Hiret on the floor?”

Aunt Nikis collapsed into her chair. She looked like she could cry. “I will not sanction it, but I cannot stop you.”

Those were the most terrifying words my aunt ever spoke.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Eight

Folio Two, Page Sixty »

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Eight (svegra mos sjekron tal-kot)

2011-02-15T23:32:00.001-05:00

When the final teacher dismissed us that day, I gathered my things quickly and walked alone through the halls. Some of the older kids spoke to each other in the halls. From the sounds of it, someone had played a prank on one of the instructors who taught Fourth Year because he was new and from one of the Menashi neighborhoods of Galasu. Nikashannyi, the only Menashi girl I knew of in school, had started yelling at them.

“But it’s funny,” one of them said. “He can’t get the handcuffs off if he slips the consonant!”

They saw me watching, and I darted through an exit. The cobblestone circle outside was alive with color and light from the Grouping Ceremony earlier that week. Due to the wind from the oncoming storm, some teenagers had taken out kites to fly. Several younger kids, most of whom I knew, sat at the edges eating some sweets from a vendor stationed just beyond the school perimeter. I wanted some, but the line looked too long.

Kobeis and the other Niksubvya kids met me at the main gate to walk home. Khatein and a girl I did not know had already crossed the perimeter. I saw them kiss. He came back with a crown of ivy and flowers in his hair, some petal-nectar smeared on his face.

“What are you looking at?” He wiped the nectar off with the back of his hand and smeared it on his pants. Khatein’s face had gone red, and he tried to hide it by popping up his uniform’s collar. I didn’t understand why he felt so ashamed by a kiss.

We dropped the subject and started the walk home. My favorite part of living in town was glancing this way and that as things changed through the seasons and years. It seemed magical when I was a child that everyone knew exactly how to approach the order of the days. The shaved ice vendors always knew which flavors to stock at the end of monsoon season or at the beginning of the second flowering, and the Sehubvya family at the corner of Weeping Tree and Hospital Road knew when we needed gifts for birthdays or shrine days.

I sensed something had gone wrong the moment I set foot on my street. The rhythm of nature here had lagged since my mother’s death. The sweet alahara trees at the edge of the road should have sagged with fruit by now, and the vine-flowers should have withered weeks earlier. Today, even the air in my lungs didn’t feel right. It lingered in my lungs like bonfire smoke, although the air had no smell.

The school couldn’t have known I spent most of the lunch break scaling the roof. I hadn’t let any tiles fall this time. So — what was it?

The sky above, weighed down by rain clouds, had stifled any breeze. The flowering vines knew about the coming storm; they had closed all of their petals. Unconsciously, I reached for Kobeis’s hand and clutched it tightly. Khatein and Meihannyi walked ahead of us, giggling about something that only mattered to people slightly older and more experienced than me. I suspect it was about the girl. Leiset behind us had knelt down to pick up stones.

“We should get home,” I said. My throat felt tight. “Come on, I’ll race you.”

I ran as fast as my feet would carry me, but Kobeis at two years younger was my height, so we were fairly evenly-matched — and climbing legs aren’t necessarily the best for races — what am I saying? She beat me to the door.

Instead of peeking out and gloating over her win, I heard no sound from inside. My hand paused at the doorknob. Maybe something had gone wrong.

If something had, I had to see. I opened it.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Seven

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Nine »

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Seven (svegra mos sjekron tal-pyes)

2011-02-08T22:58:00.002-05:00

And now we come to the moment you have been waiting for. The moment when I, the daughter of Salus Nitannyi, temporarily lost my mind and a bit of my soul. You could say it runs in the family.

It seems odd to think about this happening to one so young, yet I cannot think of myself as a complete child. I was a hybrid, the mind of an adult in the body and emotional mess of a young girl, brain firing with new ideas faster than I could conceive of consequences.

It began the following day, shortly after breakfast, after I had prayed to the ancestors and made offerings to my mother. I had no doubt that she would forgive me for the transgression I had made against her person — the world recycles dead souls, anyway, so I doubted she would remember her complaints — if only to save us from the mob gathered at our door. Sukua stood there.

I didn’t let him in. Instead, I ran to my room for the lucky charm he had given me so I could press it into his warm hand. It seemed like an eternity since we had seen each other.

“Did you enjoy the second half from where you were?”

“Yes, Domìntar hid me down beneath the stage.” He smiled sheepishly and put his hands behind his back. “You would probably get the dancer melodies easy. You know, we have an opening.”

“I don’t think my family —”

“Tomis, she died in the same train your mom was in. Her family wanted to send her to Regent’s Academy of Music and the Theatrical Arts for post-nat, so she had to audition …”

I thought about the girl Tomis must have been. Fourteen, excited to leave the city — Gods, I was so restless — clutching that cold ksibja case between her knees as she watched the train maneuver over canyons and flit between foothills. She wore a gyena like all Canyon women before marriage, and I thought she might have self-consciously looked in a pocket mirror before flirting with a boy several seats away — unless, of course, her family had already arranged a marriage for her. Then she would have entwined and knotted it with a golden string. No boy in his right mind would have looked at her.

Not only that, but an audition at the Regent’s Academy!

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Let me think about it.” I already knew I would accept, and maybe my family would if they knew people who played there could get into post-national — “post-nat” — music schools, or at least make it to the audition pull. But maybe that would have made them say no.

Everyone, with the exception of Hiret, had gone to MeDaSi, the Menarka mu Dafæsnàyal Simu. It had trained the most famous Narahji and Menashi politicians in rhetoric, political systems, ethics, and law since the Occupation ended — and they had built it on the grounds of the famous Simu mu Menarkal, which had served much the same function before it burned to the ground during the Invasion. My mother had taken me for a tour of the grounds on her last visit.

Hiret had studied journalism in Galasu. I don’t know how that happened.

“You won’t say yes,” Sukua said suspiciously. “Why?”

I leaned forward and kissed him once on each cheek. “My cousin Anumë is evil,” I said. “She would find some way to stop me.”

When I left him, I went back inside and finished gathering things for school. More than once, I glanced inside my mother’s wardrobe for the one senatorial gown she owned and wondered if I could ever live up to the dust in her wake.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Six

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Eight »

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Six (svegra mos sjekron tal-pirh)

2011-02-02T12:02:00.002-05:00

The following morning, everyone observing the communal meal waited for me before sitting at the table. Hiret sat me down, hands resting lightly on my shoulders, as though I were more important than an illegitimate young girl. Nikis Taltsuya set a bowl of porridge in front of me, along with a tray overflowing with every topping imaginable — even spicy-sweet petals, which were out-of-season. I chose the best petals and juiciest pieces of fruit, but no nuts. No one stopped me from taking my share first.

Today, we would observe the final day of my mother’s rest. The ashes had gone on tour to the Deimo for approval, but also to other places of importance to Salus. I wanted the ashes here. I wanted to pray to them at our ancestral shrine. It was, after all, the best thing I could do after an evening of my own success. For me, people had not kowtowed when I entered the room, but everyone must start somewhere and I would catch up to my mother someday. They already respected me for my musical talent. It could open doors that Salus’s death had closed.

I finished everything and stood to leave while the rest of the family ate quietly. We didn’t have school. The ashes would not arrive for hours, and I wanted to find Sukua.

When I opened the front door, though, I saw a crowd of roughly a hundred people parading up the street. It seemed strange, and I wondered if they wanted to protest something downtown. If Sukua and I found anything in the ravine to sell, a huge crowd of people would have ruined it.

I shut the door and started walking down the road, confident that I would hear the people murmuring behind me. I had nearly reached the bottom of the hill before they stopped in front of my house. What kind of awful thing had my family done to merit a mob?

Running up the hill gave me some time to think about what I would do. The mob had made a semi-circle around the house; no one could get in or out. As soon as they saw me, though, I heard whispering. They knew who I was. Someone rushed forward to grab my ankles and suddenly the mob had formed around me and air just wouldn’t come. As I squirmed and squeezed towards my own door, I saw a woman fall.

I didn’t know what to do. This is what I had wanted for myself, but I shakily helped her to her feet and pushed her back into the crowd. In the resulting confusion, I ran up the house steps. Behind me, they chanted, “Maigyenezhai. Maigyenezhai. Maigyenezhai. Maigyenezhai.” The new god-name for Salus.

I stepped back against the threshold and prayed to the household gods and ancestors (of which my mother was now a member) that nothing horrible would happen. This kind of hubristic behavior would have consequences. My mother wasn’t this important.

Something needed to happen, and because no one else had noticed the crowd, I would have to do it. I rushed up the stairs to Aunt Nikis’s office and burst in. A pile of accounts rested on the table in front of her, and the wall screen danced with shifting charts and figures.

“There are people outside. I think they want to come in.”

“There are people to receive them.”

“There are a hundred of them, and they are the ones who think my mother is a deity.”

She dropped her keyboard and looked up at me. The morning sunlight caught wisps of her hair and the little cracks at the corner of each eye. She sighed and said, “I’ll be a moment downstairs, just a moment.”

The more time passed, the more the crowd surged until many more than a hundred people blocked traffic on the street. Accounts differ. Several media crews had decided to come.

The people wanted my mother’s ashes because she had become their god and they needed some way of proving their legitimacy — of creating their own mystery. Everyone knows that arguing with devotees ends in tears and hurt feelings.

Whenever Nikis mentioned the family’s ancestral rights to the crowd, they hissed at her. One of them even spat in her face. She retreated inside to think.

“Thinking” was not done in her office. She went up into the room where we keep the gods and barricaded herself in there. I heard her crying, and this is the first time I had seen her so weak. Thank Fortune that Anumë had gone into town (although for what I don’t know); she would have jumped on Nikis’s weakness like a wild animal.

Everything had nearly fallen apart, but as I waited for Nikis to return, I thought of something that could work. The idea seemed so doable that I banged on the door and yelled her name repeatedly, waiting for her to answer. As soon as she opened it, I said, “What if we just give them a small portion of ashes? What if we mix a small amount with incense ash for the deities? That would be all right, wouldn’t it?”

She looked at me, and for the first time I thought I saw respect. “Yes. We will do exactly that when the emissary comes. You should make the announcement now. We must bring the ashes inside and do this in secret.”

She deferred to me, but only because I would likely have more luck. I walked outside and walked up to a silent woman with a megaphone. Doubtless she thought of coordinating the crowd once the ashes came. “Ma’am, I would like to announce something, if you would.”

The woman had cold, clammy hands, but I squeezed them when I grabbed the megaphone. She bowed. At least my status in the cult had some tangible influence.

“Thank you for gathering here today. The Niksubvya House would like to acknowledge your rights as devotees of the new goddess. However, our house must also perform its ancestral devotions, so we must compromise. I am the daughter of Salus Nitannyi, your beloved adviser to the Deimo — and I have something to tell you. Through my pleading, my Matriarch has decreed that we will split the ashes between us so we all may do our rites in peace. Obviously, each of our parties wants the ashes intact, but this is the only course of action that will satisfy us all.”

A few individuals began clapping, and suddenly a noise rose from the crowd. I handed the megaphone back to the woman. My heart felt like a drum in my chest, and I needed air — but there was none to be found. The emissary had come, and the crowd pressed to the sides, carrying me with it. I could barely push through.

We split the ashes inside and mixed the ones for the crowd from incense ash that belonged to great Gods and lesser gods. They suspected nothing.

It was a spiteful, horrible thing to do, but we had no other option — or at least I tell myself that. Everyone always has a choice. The Gods must have groaned in Heaven; our ancestors must have gnashed their teeth beneath our feet.

Perhaps what happened next was retribution.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Five

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Seven »

Niksubvya Family Prodigy Plays at Midnight Garden

2011-01-27T11:43:00.001-05:00

Categories: Entertainment Reviews, Up-and-Coming Stars, Quick Reports

Menarka Music Review • 4 Kaiakhin of Poràkol 1903 (34 Poràkol)

Khadein tal Tasya, Music Editor

Everyone knows about mythical ksibja players who could calm storms, overthrow tyrants, and restore the dead to life simply through their command of the instrument. In these stories, such talented players usually come from humble beginnings before their talent raises them. They are orphans, beggars, and thieves; it is the ksibja that transforms them.

Seven-year-old Aneti of the Niksubva family is well on her way to becoming a real-life version of these stories. An illegitimate daughter of the late Adviser Salus (also known as Nitannyi for you Tveshi readers), whose tragic death shook millions earlier this monsoon season, Aneti’s identity was kept unconfirmed by the family — presumably to avoid scandal.

The child’s extraordinary command of the ksibja was put on display last night at Midnight Garden, where hundreds of upper-class men and women from all over the region gathered to hear her play.

Aneti of the Niksubvya family selected a heartwarming rendition of traditional Narahji pieces, including several opera solos for the ksibja. Menarka Music Review was issued two complimentary tickets to the event.

The evening began with a technical rendition of “By the Ivis at Midnight,” a ballad written in the 14th century by a soldier’s Narahji paramour. While this piece is commonly vocal with accompaniment on the bowed sama, Aneti’s ksibja expertise conveyed the heart-wrenching emotions without leaving one wondering why she didn’t hire a vocalist. The true jewel of the evening, however, was her performance of the ksibja solo from A Night, Winged, which eludes many musicians with much more experience. “Tribute to the Dawn,” while not as demanding as Aneti’s best pieces, seemed rushed by comparison.

Unfortunately, I cannot say that many of the others there enjoyed it. Sabiyyi ital Maiya in The People commented last week on the decadence of the leisured classes, what with their gross excesses in the mood bars and excessive human interface modifications that lack all taste and decency. She writes,

What is our society coming to when the best among us sink into drug use and hyper-augment their bodies to the point of absurdity? Synthetic mood drugs originated as an alternative to the more damaging intoxicants, hallucinogens, and narcotics on the market, but their supposed safety has increased substance abuse and made the new drug lords richer than the monarchy. Personal augmentation should not serve aristocratic whims for wings or tails, but the far more pertinent issue of human-technology integration that will smooth our relationship with present-day augmented reality and computing. Automaton bodies should find their use in mine shafts and the vacuum of the High Wilds, not in the bedroom where the sympathetic connection between a machine drone and the individual leads to self-fornication without any sense of the sanctity of the natural sexual experience.

Her statement accurately describes the atmosphere of the room. Most individuals in attendance took so many drugs that I doubt they remember the titles of Aneti’s pieces, let alone how her musical skill exceeds most musicians three times her age. Only myself, Namgyatzi (the nuamë nuaf iča), and a handful of other individuals remained sober enough to contemplate the true meaning of the performance. Just thinking about this child’s potential after she is old enough for augmentation gives me chills.

I only hope that Aneti’s family displays her in a much more appropriate venue for someone of such brilliance next time.

Khadein tal Tasya

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Five (svegra mos sjekron tal-sjek)

2011-01-26T00:19:00.001-05:00

Senet stood beside Anumë. They spoke in hushed tones, foreheads nearly pressed together, and Senet had rested a hand on her shoulder. I wanted to rip it from her. Anumë had called it my duty to befriend the Karatha’s representative. Perhaps drink had convinced her to impose on him, but that didn’t keep a small piece of me from dying when I saw them. As I walked back to the auditorium, my fingers shook. To think he had touched that conniving bitch.

“What have I gotten myself into?”

I saw the ksibja sitting on stage where I had left it. I saw people having a good time, not knowing or caring that I stood just offstage studying them. Namgyatzi whispered at his table with a few people. I couldn’t stand it — the whispering, I mean. Everyone kept things from me. My mother had done it on her communication band sometimes when she thought I was asleep. It didn’t matter if the conversations had nothing to do with me. Someone could have at least asked. (What a self-important little brat I was!)

Shaking wouldn’t do, though. I needed to remain calm. I needed to pretend that none of it existed.

The ksibja absorbed me almost as soon as I took it into my lap. At least the Gods had given me one gift.

People would mention my name in the days to follow and the exemplary performance I had given, although they would never remember the particulars when a thousand chemicals smoothed the edges of their memory. They would never, ever remember the way my hands shook or the note I missed in “Tribute to the Dawn.”

I covered for myself, as I had always done. I knew how to hide in the cracks between places, even the notes between notes, and I could make myself into whatever I wanted to be.

It wasn’t a superpower, but a quirk of personality, and I doubt most people noticed at all. They had so many expectations of what an illegitimate protégé should be that they ignored every other part of me.

You see, Nishet, the story about the flowering plant and the gardener has always been about me. Read on. He waters it every day hoping to see it bloom, and the buds grow and grow — they’re quite giant — until the flowers open. They have the most powerful and quintessentially floral scent possible, more petals than even an ivis tree. But he has forgotten one thing: while he focused so much on getting the flowers to bloom, the rest of the plant developed as well. It has grown so high that it blocks out the sky and everything else in his garden has died.

When I saw Anumë, I knew that she hated me even with all of the drugs in her system. She alone did not congratulate me, but I felt her eyes on my back as high society congratulated me. It was overwhelming.

As soon as the crowd dispersed and I could see clearly again, Namgyatzi blew a kiss at me with his right hand. I knew that he felt proud, and for some reason that mattered.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Four

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Six »

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Four (svegra mos sjekron tal-dros)

2011-01-17T23:14:00.004-05:00

Once the doors opened, I saw many individuals I had only heard of. Already, most had thoroughly buzzed themselves on chemicals; by the time I started my third piece, I could have played scales without anyone realizing a thing.

Namgyatzi had retreated to the third row, where several companions had joined him. Senet stood at the back of the auditorium with his hands across his chest, flinching whenever anyone touched him. Neither partook of any of the food or drink, and the weight of their gazes far exceeded the nervousness fidgeting of Aunt Nikis or Anumë in the front. They called me Aneti publicly (after the Tveshi etiquette, as always), and more than once I wished I were beloved enough for people to call me by my familiar name.

Everywhere my mother had walked, people called her Salus. She never raised her voice at anyone or fought to maintain composure at people who smelled horrible or the people from the drug dens who sought her forgiveness. They called her domha, savior, instead of Adviser. Such a thing would have seemed shameful to the Tveshi, but in the Canyons it meant everything. In my mother’s case, it represented the difference between a public official and a candidate for akačehennyi (Narahji term: tikadeisva), or divine ascension. Akačehennyi could come from phenomenally humanistic endeavors over the course of a lifetime, or from religious devotion and the love of a God, but most often from how people remembered you after your death. To a lesser extent, it represents any cathartic experience. If my mother had become a God, that should have made me a living embodiment of deity.

I keep trying to bend the narrative to make myself seem less narcissistic. Truth be told, I wanted the glory for myself, but I always took care to think about in terms of her. Family makes a difference. Remember that.

At intermission, I left the stage with Domìntar and went to the backstage cast balcony to get fresh air. My fingers ached from playing, and the anxiety had made me sick. Domìntar squeezed my shoulders and kissed my forehead. “You shouldn’t worry so much. Half of those well-to-dos are high, anyway.”

I smiled and looked out at the rain-hazed houselights of an offshore island. We had such a beautiful view of the sea that I almost forgot to look down — and then I did. A thin sheet of floor-grade glass separated us from a plunge into the water below. The surf crashed against the rocks like it wanted to pull Midnight Garden into the sea.

Soft fingertips pattered at the door in rhythm. When I turned to look, I saw Sukua standing just inside the doorway, looking over his shoulder to see if the adults had spotted him.

Domìntar pushed me aside and stared at him. “What are you doing here?”

I touched her waist. “We’re friends,” I said. “He lives down the street.”

I went to Sukua and pulled him by his arms farther onto the balcony. He looked down first; suddenly his hands dug into my elbows and his breathing came short. “How did you get in, Sukua?”

He shook his head. “I took the train and then came in through the staff entrance.”

“Why?”

“Because I forgot to give you something.” He let go of me and reached down into his pocket without looking down. “It’s a necklace. I wear it during performances. My dad had it blessed.”

I took it from him and slipped it over my head, then tipped it beneath my dress. “Thanks. I — I’m happy that you came, Sukua. Will you stay?”

Domìntar breathed in through her teeth. “I’m not sure an event like this would be appropriate for him.”

“He could go behind the stage. No one would know.”

She bit her lower lip and looked from him to me. I don’t think she recognized him; if she had, she probably would have thrown him out. “I had a sweetheart when I was your age, too. Let me take him into the back. You’re on stage in five minutes, so I suggest you go.”

Just inside, I saw Anumë. I don’t think she saw Sukua — otherwise, she’d have yelled — and she’d had enough chemicals to make her mellow.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Three

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