Speaking Bones Read online

  “She isn’t Agon, and she’s too proud to accept our wisdom,” said Adyulek. “Perhaps because it’s rare among her people to lose children, she lacks the inborn strength to recover from such a blow. Leave her to her deserved suffering—she is, after all, responsible for our plight with her obduracy.”

  Takval didn’t agree with this assessment, but he could hardly compel the old shaman to put aside her suspicion and prejudice. In the end, he asked Thoryo to become Théra’s caretaker, hoping that the originless young woman with a gift for speech could offer some comfort to Théra in the accents of Dara.

  So Thoryo spent all her time with the princess. She fed her, bathed her, sang to her quietly, and strapped her into the netting on the garinafin, next to herself, when the band needed to take flight again.

  She also talked to Théra. She didn’t speak to her of strategies and plots, of plans and grand ideals. She simply took her to quiet clearings in the mountainside forests, where spring alpine flowers bloomed in all their finery, or to cliffside overlooks at sunset, when birds swooped through crimson and gold clouds like colorful fish in a painted sea. She spoke to the princess softly of the beauty around them.

  One day, after a spring shower, Thoryo took Théra to a high point in the valley the band was bivouacking in. They sat down on a rock. Everything—the trees, the grass, the glistening red berries in the bushes, the eggshell-yellow mushrooms peeking out from under the rock they sat on—shone with a vivid, wet light. A rainbow arched across the sky opposite from the sun.

  “This is my favorite moment, climbing onto a high spot right after rain,” exclaimed Thoryo. “The world has been reborn!”

  As always, Théra said nothing. But Thoryo heard a scratching noise that made her glance to the side. To her surprise, she saw that Théra’s hands were fluttering in her lap like frightened birds, searching for something that didn’t exist. Gingerly, she placed a hand over Théra’s, stilling those restless fingers. For the first time in a long while, she saw that the princess’s lips were moving, as though trying to speak.

  She leaned in. Théra’s voice was so soft that she could barely make out the words.

  “… climbing onto a high place… after a spring rain…”

  “Princess! Are you all right?” she called out, frightened.

  Théra blinked, as though awakening from a long dream. Tension and color returned to the slack muscles in her cheeks as she focused her gaze on Thoryo. She cleared her throat, and spoke in a voice raspy from disuse. “A great lady I met years ago told me that gazing upon the rejuvenated world after rain was one of the greatest of pleasures in the world.”

  Thoryo nodded. “I agree.”

  Tears spilled from Théra’s eyes as her body convulsed. Thoryo pulled her into an embrace and cradled the princess’s head against her shoulder, the same way Théra used to hold her in Lurodia Tanta, when Thoryo was certain that they would never make it out of the desert alive.

  “Zomi… Takval… Dara… my family… my sons… all the dead… everyone I touch is hurt, lost, gone, ruined… my heart is bitter.”

  Thoryo gently caressed her back, saying nothing. It was a long time before Théra’s lamentation abated.

  “When you first found me,” said Thoryo, “when I saw the bodies of all those people from the Lyucu city-ship and the Dara marines adrift at sea, I was inconsolable. I couldn’t understand how the gods could be so cruel as to give the gift of life only to snatch it away.”

  Théra sat up and wiped her eyes, listening intently.

  “I wondered why we should even believe in the existence of the gods. The Ano sages speak of the River-on-Which-Nothing-Floats, and the Agon speak of riding beyond the World’s Edge Mountains on cloud-garinafins. But who has ever returned from the country of death to verify these claims? There seems to be nothing but the terror of death in this world; death is the one single truth against which all courage and struggle is vanity. Why doesn’t everyone just give up?”

  Théra shuddered, hearing her own fears echoed in the words of Thoryo.

  “I’ve found no answers in the words of the Ano sages or the stories of the Agon shamans. But I have experienced the world through my senses. Death does come to everything: flowers wilt, trees wither and shed leaves, the sun sets, the strongest ewe or cow weakens with old age, voices fade, sweet fragrances dissipate, the light in the brightest eyes winks out. Yet, beauty never dies. Beauty always refreshes itself.”

  She pointed, and Théra followed her finger, taking in the promise of the rainbow.

  “After every winter comes the spring, and every death is accompanied by the promise for more life. With his dying breath, Admiral Mitu Roso tried to save the children of Kiri Valley from wolves. On the night of the Lyucu assault, Souliyan Aragoz and Nméji Gon chose to buy more time for us with their own lives. It isn’t that they weren’t afraid of death. But they also saw themselves as part of something grander, a greater Life that never dies so long as each individual life refuses to yield to despair.”

  “You speak of the Flow,” muttered Théra, “as did that great lady who once shared some lotus seeds with me. She spoke of the infinite potential in a heart of emptiness, of the ever-renewing pleasure of simply being. But my errors—”

  “I am not wise enough to know the will of the gods or the right course in life,” said Thoryo. “I only know that the world is too large, too beautiful, too interesting to let one act define us. Death only triumphs when we stop learning and growing. So long as our lungs sing with the gift of life, we cannot cease to give back to Life.”

  Théra said nothing. She stilled her heart and opened her senses, to the intense carmine glow of the berries, to the woodsy fragrance of the mushrooms, to the distant song of an answer-me-now, to the warm caress of the spring breeze. She let herself sink into the Flow as though diving into the eternal sea.

  CHAPTER TWO CITY OF GHOSTS

  TATEN-RYO-ALVOVO: THE FIFTH MONTH IN THE NINTH YEAR AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF PRINCESS THÉRA FROM DARA FOR UKYU-GONDÉ (TWELVE MONTHS UNTIL THE LYUCU MUST LAUNCH THEIR NEW INVASION FLEET TO DARA).

  With the coming of the spring, the hilly region on the eastern shore of the Sea of Tears, known as Taten-ryo-alvovo, the City of Ghosts, came back to life.

  As it neared the Sea of Tears, the Ghost River gave up the urgency of its youthful source back in the snowmelt mountains, slowed down, and spread itself to embrace the land with the mellow kindness that came with age. Long before it reached the vast lake at the end of its journey, most of its waters had seeped into the ground, turning the land around the eastern shore into a giant swamp.

  The mounds that made up the City of Ghosts, called barrows, rose out of this wetland-dotted terrain. Covered with a thick layer of lush grass, the mounds resembled furry, massive beasts at rest. Between the mounds, where marsh alternated with dry land, one could see bushes and even copses of trees, bedecked with flowers in every hue of the rainbow, promising berries and fruits in fall. Flitting shadows of birds and animals could be glimpsed between the dappled shadows.

  It had been a hard winter for the small band of refugees. Water had to be obtained by melting ice chipped from the frozen salt lake—luckily, the edge of the barrows provided plenty of dried grass and firewood for fuel. At first, Razutana was afraid of drawing pursuers with smoke, but Sataari told him there was no need to worry. No one ever approached the City of Ghosts, not Lyucu, not Agon, not tanto-lyu-naro, not even the gods.

  Although neither Sataari nor Razutana were great hunters, the Agon children, led by the redoubtable Nalu, Tanto and Rokiri’s close friend, took up the burden of the band’s sustenance. In this endeavor they were aided by the fact that the barrows were never visited by hunting parties, and prey had not yet learned to fear humans. Even through the worst part of the winter, Nalu and his band caught hares, voles, hibernating lizards, brumating snakes, and Razutana and Sataari dug for tubers and roots and caches of nuts hidden by moonfur rats near the mounds. They succeeded in keeping starvation at b
ay. Mostly.

  Five small bodies lay at the edge of the barrows, almost hidden by the rejuvenated vegetation. Now that insects and larger animals were active again, the dead children would soon begin pédiato savaga, a journey that would end with reunion with their parents on the backs of cloud-garinafins.

  Grief, like snow, had to yield before the quickening demands of life, the compulsion to go on.

  A few times during the winter, Razutana had urged that the band move their encampment deeper into the barrows, where he believed more and better food would be available than at their site on the border of the salt flats. But Sataari would not hear of it, and none of the Agon children—not even levelheaded Nalu—treated this suggestion as sensible either. Eventually, Razutana dropped the idea.

  But with the arrival of spring, Razutana renewed his pleas. His hunch during the winter had proven right. The vibrancy and fecundity of the barrows was plain to anyone. To avoid a repeat of the tragedy of the past winter, it seemed obvious that they should move deep into the barrows proper, build shelters and storage pits, and spend much of the summer and autumn gathering a food store against the next winter.

  Sataari shook her head, explaining that the blood price she had paid to the All-Mother gave them the right only to skim from the very edge of the mounds, but not to penetrate into the interior. To set foot within the City of Ghosts was to bring ruin on the whole band.

  Most of the Agon children nodded at this explanation, but Tanto and Rokiri were bewildered. They still didn’t understand the nature of this place.

  “Why do you act as though the place is filled with boiling lava or poisonous miasma?” asked an exasperated Razutana. “Why have the Lyucu and the Agon never settled here, even though it’s a perfect oasis?”

  “Because we are not allowed to.”

  “That explains nothing! Is the City of Ghosts… sacred?”

  Sataari shook her head, and then nodded, and then shook her head again.

  Baffled, Razutana tried again. “Is it… cursed?”

  Sataari nodded her head, and then shook it, and then nodded again.

  “I’m afraid that I’m completely at a loss.”

  “This place is why we live in the Sixth Age,” said Sataari. In her voice was awe and revulsion, reverence as well as terror.

  “I know about the Ages of Mankind,” said Razutana, “but never have I heard of the barrows of Taten-ryo-alvovo.”

  “That’s because it’s a sad story, not often told,” said Sataari.

  A small bonfire was built, and a set of tiny drums, made from the vertebrae of snakes and the pelts of voles, had to serve in place of true cactus drums. As the children gathered around the grass-fed fire, thick with smoke, Sataari began to chant and dance.

  * * *

  The people of the scrublands believed that the world had been born out of primordial chaos with the coupling of the All-Father and the Every-Mother, but just as parents on the scrublands could not count on every child surviving into adulthood, the pair of Prime Deities could not count on their creations’ permanence.

  The world was as mortal as its inhabitants.

  (Razutana, Tanto, and Rokiri leaned in, rapt.)

  The Lyucu and Agon were not the first people. The gods had remade the world again and again. Before Afir and Kikisavo, there had been other peoples.

  During the First Age of Mankind, the world was as flat as a freshly scraped piece of voice-painting vellum and as dry as Lurodia Tanta. People—they were not shaped like the humans of the present age—stood rooted in the ground like cactus lobes. The only water they could drink was dew and the only breath they drew in and let out was the result of the action of the wind. Sunlight was all they needed to sustain themselves, and they offered lethargic praise to the gods with their slow-swaying, vegetal poses.

  The gods found this world too lacking in motion, too complacent in demeanor. Thus, they sent forth an eagle with a burning stick in its beak, who started fires all over the world until it was consumed in a fiery tide.

  (As Sataari danced and chanted, she sketched figures in the ground with the tips of her pointed feet. Startled, Razutana and the pékyus-taasa recognized the figures: smaller versions of those fantastical, immense designs they had seen in the salt flats from the air on the way here.)

  During the Second Age of Mankind, the gods took another approach. They flooded Ukyu-Gondé, and a great ocean covered the entire world. This time, humans were remade to be as sleek as fish, and they swam the world-ocean in pursuit of smaller fish and shrimp, crunching their jaws on crabs and oysters. The humans could not speak—for with water in their lungs, how could they produce thinking-breath?—nor could their finned appendages grasp instruments capable of making voice paintings.

  The gods found this world too silent, too close to a living death. Thus, they sent forth a whale with icicle teeth, who left crystalline trails and hail-foam wakes that refused to dissolve wherever it swam until the whole world became a solid block of ice.

  During the Third Age of Mankind, the gods remade the world by bringing the clouds down, and humans were remade as birds. Each tribe sang in a different style, and the chittering, twittering, chirping music pleased the immortal ears very much. But then some of the bird-humans grew bold and decided that they would prefer to fly ever higher instead of remaining in the sublunary realm, and their cacophony shook the stars loose in the firmament.

  The gods, unable to put up with the disturbance, decided to destroy this world by sending forth a thousand-thousand bolts of lightning, incinerating the clouds and the winged humans in one brilliant flash.

  During the Fourth Age of Mankind, the gods decided to punish their mortal kin for daring to reach for the stars. They remade the world with bone and dung, and humans were reborn as insect-like creatures forever mired in death and corruption. Driven by hunger, they consumed everything they touched, regardless of the stench and filth, and yet their hunger remained unsatiated.

  The gods did not have to do much to end this age, for the humans soon ended the world by themselves. After devouring everything, they were trapped in empty darkness, the absence that outlasted all substance.

  Having learned from their previous attempts, the gods created the Fifth Age of Mankind as a paradise. There was a balance of rich soil and fresh water, of sweet wind and mild sunlight. Milk bubbled from springs in the ground, and honey pooled into fragrant, indulgent lakes. Lambs and calves willingly lay down next to the people to be slaughtered, and fruits and nuts that were so nourishing that you were full after just three bites sprouted everywhere. Horrid wolves and tusked tigers stayed far away from the people, subsisting only on the dead. Humans lived lives of leisure and abundance, and they gave birth to more children with every passing year. No grandparent ever had to walk into the winter storm, nor did fathers and mothers have to strangle newborn babes so that other children could have enough to eat.

  The gods hoped that humans would be able to live in this world where everything was good and offer pious praise to their makers.

  And at first, the humans did exactly that. But as the population swelled, their hearts became restless. Bored with praising the divine, in their idleness they invented fantastical contraptions that imitated the power of the gods, built grand storytelling mind-scars out of piles of bones and logs and stones that sought to surpass the grandeur of the All-Father—

  (Are the gigantic stone paintings we saw mind-scars? asked Razutana. Are they remnants of a past age?

  Sataari ignored him and went on.)

  —and entertained themselves with songs and poems and never-ending tales that sought to exceed the wisdom of the Every-Mother. They believed that by their own efforts, they were close to achieving godhood for themselves, forgetting that they were but another iteration in the gods’ endless attempts at perfecting their own creation.

  Humans grew ambitious and greedy. Rather than living off the bounty of the land, as the gods had intended, they began to enslave it. With no predators, no dr
oughts, no storms to plague them, they decided that they should stop roaming around so that they could accumulate possessions. They gathered into large tribes and divided the land into separate parcels with stone fences at the borders so that the fruits and nuts and tubers that came out of each parcel would belong only to the tribe staking a claim to that parcel. They settled into tent-cities rooted to one place and penned up sheep and cattle so that they could no longer graze freely and wander about. They clogged and shackled the rivers with weirs so that the fish had nowhere to go except into their cooking pots. They built ever more elaborate edifices and apparatuses that celebrated the power of humankind but turned their faces away from the gods.

  As the tribes continued to multiply and stopped roaming to new pastures, they gave the land no time to recover. The teeming clans tried to extract every bit of nourishment from the world with their clever inventions, devices that enslaved the land, the water, and the air. As the people clamored for More! More! More! they began to war among themselves, and they turned their cleverness to devising fearful weapons and dark magic that could slaughter thousands at a single blow.

  They became so wicked that, instead of offering up their own bodies after death to the vultures and wolves who were also gods’ creatures, they decided to bury their dead in the ground, as though hoarding themselves in storage pits, and heaped their corpses with treasures and magical weapons, as if they could take such things with them into the afterlife.

  Then they covered these selfish vaults with mounds of earth, to deny the carrion eaters their rightful claim and to erect monuments to their own greed. The land was littered with with many such barrows, as though mindless moles had tunneled under the earth, pushing up earthen bumps in their ignorance and blindness.