Opaque mist with the scent of evergreen and anise is receding to reveal sandstone walls. To lead the visitors to the high dry place that whispering people are using for gatherings. To be simple is the walking, but Arrivi guests are picking their steps and wiping their brows and talking together. Returning softly are their sighs, echoing among the obelisks. The stone forest is hoarding echoes of heroes from seasons past. Never fading are these returning sounds.
To be asking what? Orissa’s lies! To use your Cochin words well enough. The subject before the verb. And to correct your words is my right too, are you thinking?
Sure, to make myself understood. Glad to.
To be arriving together … they arrive together … returning from a khalif’s funeral, the guests are disembarking from one fixed-wing plane, alright?
Uninvited guests attracted by the torture of Bybiis the beastmaster, to be spying our goods at the bazaar table. What? They … they are spying … browsing our goods, asking for matrix opal.
To know what is matrix opal. Oh, fine. Matrix opal be’s known to me: good enough?
I know about matrix opal.
There, in five words or less. To keep this up, I can go all day, your love of pronouns. He, she, shit, they, and I – always with the I. Me, me, shit, me. Never looking past your noses.
To be making an effort to learn my language, which of you be’s stepping up?
So… uninvited guests arrive here to enjoy the torture of Bybiis and approach the worktable in Dianko’s bazaar where my cousins trade for Stroenuk slate. The female commander Omiibuk of high acclaim, Osal the sailor with his own ship, and Baleb the silk merchant who be’s known to us. Bringing with them a pregnant woman, a real worrier by the name of Kelly, a poet and the wife of Rufus el Arrivi.
Being a wrong term is Stroenuk, but you are not caring. Men who can shiver slate from the towers in our stone forest are Stroenuk, only them, but using the term in hard tones is your choice. Not even knowing the word’s value. And blame is settling on me.
Enough Cochin for you that is being?
Kelly has coppery hair braided down her back. A roomy leather vest with a long rear panel is hers, and tying her skirt into pantaloons over wide sandals that mostly are not sinking into the molasse. “The path is uncertain in this mist,” Kelly says between ragged breaths. “What signposts to guide us?” She is touching the sandstone wall for balance, tangent to a ward of direction and nearly making it flare.
I choose to pick the new leaves of a striisnia succulent. I gesture to Kelly. “Under your tongue for easier breathing.” Kelly is turning the leaf over in her palm, and rubbing it clean of any grit. “And for my companions?”
Omiibuk is staying in the town, not counting our task as important. Osal the sailor is seeming steady, glancing around as if counting the towers. Baleb el Yahya is sweating and sighing like city folk. Store-bought slip-on shoes with an eel skin vest over linens. To be well supplied is Baleb’s rucksack as though my cousins are helping him to plan this journey.
To offer Kelly … I offer Kelly two more new leaves and, turning away, I am hearing them debate the relative risks and benefits.
In a long tube with a strap, Kelly is carrying a map and several images of the summits of our stone towers. Yesterday, she is rolling out the map on the merchant’s table and wanting me to admire the features, claiming that her tribe is living on the savannah beyond the Striiduc ridges, calling our sacred forest a rift valley of thin towers in regular rows that are shaped when the plateau is shivered by con-ti-nen-tal drift. She is wanting me to nod at her use of the big words.
Honor she is expecting for her few Cochin words mixed with Arrivi? No attempt is made before today to know the whispering people. No attempts by Arrivi to rescue us from the torturer.
Only because payment is made am I leading them on the path. I wait for them to catch up with their stumbling steps. Kelly is wiping sweat from her brow. “So easy to get turned around. How do you find the path?”
I lick two fingers and touch the tower wall, then lick them again. “Sandstone,” I say with a jerky gesture to show alternating ridges beyond. “Next is limestone.” I flail the air with my hand to show more distant ridges. “Next is slate and nickel. After that is only basalt.”
“And the opal is in the basalt?”
“Opal all around. Os-si-fied in cracks. Easy to dislodge.”
“And the matrix opal?”
Like that word is unknown. Matrix opal I am seeing many times, the tendrils of black basalt obvious against the milky gemstone. To walk ahead and consider choosing a longer path that is boggy. To take the high path, not for Kelly and her friends, but to honor the whispering people who are waiting.
Yeah, yeah. To use my pronouns, to posit the self in front of events that must follow in my wake. Events all around, not waiting for Arrivi guests to sort them.
The dry place is a squat plateau rising from the molasse, surrounded on three sides by totems that are seeming to gather in council. Behind them, the many towers of our stone forest are emerging from the morning mist as if to spy the intruders, reflecting sunlight with the warm flavors of pine and tamarind.
Elder Aremore waits, a bundle of bones wrapped in linen decorated with leather strands beaded with opals. Behind her are Froon and Faulk. I bow with fingertips touching my collarbone before stepping back, ignoring Kelly’s demand for greeting. Faulk is grabbing my arm. “To be bringing them here?”
I jerk away from him. “Payment be’s made in the bazaar.”
Aremore is circling the fingers of a bony hand, and Faulk is falling silent. She is gesturing that the three intruders may sit cross-legged on the ground. They are spending time in greeting, and Kelly is rolling out her aerial map of which she be’s so proud.
So boring is their talk, like the public torture happens never before. In Dianko while the first tattoos are added to the shoulder of Bybiis, grackles are flocking with harsh cries, and the erriv are aborting twins. An infestation of spiders, not uncommon in this season, seems to be called forward by her suffering. More tattoos are added to the skin of Bybiis and the beasts are settling, thus showing the suppression of her talent by applying the skin wards.
Aremore is signaling for me to step forward. “Advising these ones in Dianko is your duty now. Spend the day with them tomorrow.”
I know Aremore and her ways. She is sending me out because I am having no value to them. “What benefit is coming to me?”
“To be named to the council of the whispering people is your mother in her turn.”
“No appeal in a future benefit.”
We are hearing the insects buzz while Aremore considers what to offer. Her leadership is extending past her prime. Dislodging her is sacrificing little in my view. “To attend the college on Moorea, a sister is wanting. We are not refusing.”
“Both sisters, leaving before I agree. Travel costs and tuition are for you.” Aremore grudgingly nods. “And what for me who is risking all?”
Aremore smirks; her turn for securing a favor. “These foreign men are wondering why you must be the advisor. Show them.”
“Only describe.”
“To show is more convincing.”
“My word is my bond.”
Aremore is removing a chain over her head that is holding a platinum brooch. Nestled within the scrollwork is the matrix opal of Orissa, the famous opal of seeing. “For your journey tomorrow.”
“A day trip?”
“For as long as you advise. But … these ones must have proof of the testing.”
“What proof are they offer–”
Froon and Faulk are grabbing my arms and forcing me to my knees with my back toward the intruders. Ignoring my struggles, Froon loosens my belt and is pulling the tunic to reveal a colorful tattoo between my shoulder blades and extending to my waist. Two newts, one with feathery gills raised, are circling in a courting dance. The marbled backs of the tattooed newts are covering inert wards. To be bottom feeders in our ponds are newts, the choice of image an insult to the whispering people. I am showing no tears, though, and no sobbing. I raise my chin, and my back is straight. Let the intruders have their fun.
Aremore is handing the chain to Froon who is slipping it over my head so the brooch rests against the tattoo, against the larger newt’s head. I feel the chain’s weight and the cool platinum. “Ariseng is having the talent to create wards and making others flare,” Aremore is telling the intruders. “The warden in Dianko is believing that Ariseng’s talent is suppressed by tattoos, that her skill is tainted. The same is possible for your Bybiis. Show them.”
I struggle against the strong grip of the men. My talent is my own.
“A Dianko warden before,” Aremore tells Kelly, “is having a skill, but many seasons ago. This current torturer is adding a wrong structure. Against the black skin of Bybiis the lines of tattoo are not showing, so adding color becomes his new business for appeal.”
With my back turned, I am hearing Kelly sigh. She is making no objection to the display of my flesh, I notice, allowing them to shame me. “The talent of Ariseng is not suppressed?” Kelly whispers.
“Show them,” Aremore insists to me. I only shake my head, and she sighs with exasperation. “The brooch you may keep for the women of your family for as long as echoes are sounding in the stone forest.”
I turn my head to consider her bargain. “And the matrix opal of Orissa belongs to me only.” Aremore is nodding and looks away. “Say it,” I insist.
“Ariseng be’s the one true holder of the matrix opal of Orissa.”
I shrug off the restraining arms. I straighten my back and square my shoulders so the brooch is resting on the center of the tattoo design, in a space between the newt bodies. I place my left hand on the right hand and my doubled palms on the dry place, feeling the gritty warmth of my home. A slight buzzing is sounding in my ears. My touch is revealing the blue glow of wards etched into the sandstone. Foreign guests are sitting on a circling blue pattern of Orissa’s wards that is extending into the long pathways of the molasse.
Sweat is showing on my forehead. I feel the sting of salt in my eyes. I slowly release my breath, tasting anise. On the closest obelisks, the connecting wards for direction and stamina are coming alive in the sunlight, flaring in a rush before fading when I remove my hands from the sacred ground. The caw of a murmurey bird is resounding in echoes, and she launches from the high branch so that her shadow is passing over our gathering. Whispering together are these intruders, impressed with the bird’s leaving.
“Not curtailed is Ariseng’s talent,” Aremore tells the visitors. “To be making Ore’s torture stop, Bybiis must agree that repression is successful.”
“We value your advice,” Kelly says to her. “We are doing as you suggest.”
I only straighten the tunic and stand, looking down at Aremore. I double the chain so the brooch is resting on my breastbone. “My sisters leave for college before I am leaving with these ones.”
She nods and looks away.
Kelly and the two men are closely watching. The shoulders of Osal are moving like he sways to some music. His leathers are laced with wards for protection, but not for him. Grabbed up from the original owner this vest is being. How can Osal believe the wards are helping him when they are made for a man who is dead?
“Serving is not my duty,” I tell Kelly. “Running errands and to follow orders are not for Ariseng. Advice is offered when I am having some, but demanding is not the good choice.”
Kelly is holding a palm high and horizontal as if to receive alms. “We are honored that one of talent deigns to walk the path with us. We agree to your terms.”
