Orson Card - Ruins

“ ‘Come and wear this land-companion,’ Vadesh invited us, but when we asked him, ‘What does it do that our Companions cannot do?’ his answer was full of things we did not care to do, and lacked the one thing most needed: The Companions he had made could not easily swim, and breathing underwater was quite impossible.

“ ‘Then we will have none of them!’ our motherfolk declared, and our fatherkin turned their backs on him and mantled themselves and plunged back under the waves, and Vadesh left us, sorrowing, while the Landsman laughed at him and said, ‘I told you they were content with what they have, and will not trade it for something less.’

“ ‘It is not less,’ old Vadesh said, ‘it is more.’ But still he walked away, and in this wallfold he has not been seen or talked with since.”

And that was the end of Auntie Wind’s story.

“Is that all?” asked Rigg quietly. “It doesn’t feel like much of a story.”

“But it’s not a story,” said Knosso. “I assure you, when they make up stories here, they know how to make an ending, one that would leave you gasping or laughing, I can promise you! But this was simply an answer to your question. No one authored it, Auntie Wind just made it up as she went along.”

“But it was poetry,” said Param.

“So it was,” said Knosso. “But that’s the way of speech among the Larfolk. What is the point of coming up onto land, if the speech is not beautiful as well as clear and loud and spoken to many at once? This is their library, their orchestra, and their dance. Watch now, and listen, as they sing it back to her and dance the story to make it true.”

To Rigg’s surprise, the gathered Larfolders really did sing what she had said to them, word for word the same, only now with many beautiful melodic lines. And when they were done with that, they sang it again, only this time without the words. Yet such was the power of the music that when Rigg heard each tune, he knew the words that went along with it. And with the singing, in many harmonies, the people also danced, and in their movements the slimeworm made their skin slough off, and the mothers birthed their young, and the men explored and fought the mighty beasts of the deep, and Vadeshex came as a comic supplicant, carrying pantomimed facemasks as if they were made of especially noxious dung. Loaf laughed the loudest at this.

When the buffoonish Vadeshex left, the people swam their dance and cheered the tale, its teller, and the singers and dancers.

“Now that song is part of their lives for at least this generation,” said Knosso. “And if they forget it, some later Auntie Wind will echo it in other words, and it will be sung to other tunes. Nothing is lost. This is their library, the poetry of their life on land.”

“No wonder you love this place,” said Olivenko. “If only you could have sent a message to us.”

“But I did,” said Knosso. “I told the Landsman to tell the Gardener to tell you I was safe. I wouldn’t be coming back, of course, since I had left only in time to save my life, and those who wanted me dead would make short work of me if I returned.”

“Who wanted you dead?” asked Olivenko.

“My wife,” said Knosso. “Hagia told me herself that she had no choice but to have me killed, so that if my researches didn’t take me out of the wallfold, then someone’s knife or a bit of poison would do the job before too long. I thought it was kind of her to warn me.”

“Kind!” cried Param. “She tried to kill me, too!”

“That was wrong of her,” said Knosso.

“That’s all? Wrong of her?”

“Kings- and queens-in-the-tent have been killing their mates and children for a good many generations, and parents and siblings, too. That’s what royalty’s about among the Sessamids. Didn’t they teach you history?”

“They didn’t teach me anything,” said Param.

“We got the People’s History,” said Rigg.

“We always thought that it was lies, made up by the People’s Revolutionary Council to discredit the royal family,” said Umbo.

“It would be hard to invent stories of worse atrocities than those the royal family inflicted on each other,” said Knosso. “But no matter. She failed to kill you, and here you are, and I am happier than I ever thought I’d be.”

“So you left your daughter to save your own life,” said Rigg, “knowing that her life was also in danger.”

“I was rarely allowed to see my daughter,” said Knosso, “and I had no reason to think that Hagia would harm her heir. Killing children is common but not universal among the royals, or there’d be no royals left. Usually it’s done upon remarriage, so that only the children of the new mate will be left alive to inherit. I had no way of knowing that your mother would remarry after I left. But it makes sense to me now. I well knew Haddamander Citizen, an ambitious man. I thought that when your mother died, it would likely be at his hand; it never occurred to me that they would mate, until the Landsman told it to me as a bit of gossip from my old life.”

“He couldn’t have protected her if he had stayed,” said Olivenko. “He couldn’t have protected himself.”

“I knew that,” said Param. To Rigg she added, “But it’s sweet of you to be outraged on my behalf.”

I don’t like the way these people think, thought Rigg. When I saved Param, I didn’t understand that she was as utterly arrogant and self-obsessed as Mother; and now I find that Knosso is the same. A nice man, a good scholar, but unable to see past his own needs and desires. Now, though, I understand Param’s behavior since we left Aressa Sessamo. She’s a child of her family.

“Thank you for giving me to the Gardener, sir,” said Rigg, “to raise me outside of court.”

“It was the only way to keep a pathfinder like you alive,” said Knosso. “In the royal house, as soon as word of your gift seeped out, those who believed in the female line would have had you killed, for fear you’d use your powers to displace the queens from the Tent of Light and take it back for the male line.”

“You knew I was a pathfinder?” asked Rigg.

“You were tracing the paths as soon as you could crawl.”

“But how would you know?” asked Rigg.

“Because I’m a pathfinder too, of course,” said Knosso. “But nothing like you are, according to the Landsman. He says you can see paths a hundred years old.”

“Ten thousand years,” said Umbo. “And older.”

Knosso beamed. “I knew you would be something, my son!”

“What paths do you see, sir?” asked Rigg.

“I can barely make out paths ten years gone. And those are blurred and hard to trace. Easier to track yesterday’s path, or last month’s. But it did mean none could sneak up on me—don’t you find it convenient to be able to sense paths behind you as easily as those in front?” Knosso squeezed Rigg’s shoulder. “I’ve been out of the water a long time now, and Mother Monk and the Aunties even longer. We also spread our gills to show you, and now the gills are dry. So we’ll return to the water for the night, I think. Will you stay here on land, so we can talk tomorrow?”

“Of course,” said Param.

“We have so many questions,” said Olivenko.

“I never thought I’d meet a king,” said Umbo.

“Well, technically you have,” said Knosso, indicating Rigg. “Though I’m not dead, I think I can be considered to have abdicated my right to the Tent of Light. So Rigg is king, if you believe in kings. And if you don’t, then Param’s next in line to be the queen. Or neither of them is anything, if you’re republican.”

“More to the point,” said Loaf, “we’re not in Ramfold, so we really don’t care anymore, and won’t care in the future, either, unless we decide to go back to Ramfold.”