N. Jemisin - The Obelisk Gate

The other children fascinate Nassun. Two are Westcoasters, small and brown and black-haired and angle-eyed. Sisters, and they look it, named Oegin and Ynegen. Nassun has never seen Westcoasters before, and she stares until she realizes they are staring at her in turn. They ask to touch her hair and she asks to touch theirs back. This makes them all realize how strange and silly a request that is, and they giggle and become instant friends without a head petted between them. Then there is Paido, another Somidlatter, who looks like he’s got more than a little Antarctic in him because his hair is bright yellow and his skin is so white that it nearly glows. The others tease him about it, but Nassun tells him that sometimes she burns in the sun, too—though she carefully doesn’t mention that this takes the better part of a day rather than minutes—and his face alights.

The other children are all from lower Somidlats comms, and all have visible Sanzed in them. Deshati was in training to become a stoneknapper before the Guardians found her, and she asks Nassun all sorts of questions about her father. (Nassun warns her off talking to Jija directly. Deshati understands at once, though she is sad about it.) Wudeh gets sick when he eats certain kinds of grain and is very small and frail because he doesn’t get enough good food, though his orogeny is the strongest of the bunch. Lashar looks at Nassun coldly and sneers at her accent, though Nassun can’t tell the difference between how she speaks and how Lashar does. The others tell her it’s because Lashar’s grandfather was an Equatorial and her mother is a local comm Leader. Alas, Lashar is an orogene, so none of that matters anymore… but her upbringing tells.

Shirk is not Shirk’s name, but she won’t tell anyone what that really is, so they started calling her that after she tried to duck out of chores one afternoon. (She doesn’t anymore, but the name stuck.) Peek is similarly nicknamed, because she is tremendously shy and spends most of her time hiding behind someone else. She has only one eye, and a terrible scar down the side of her face—where her grandmother tried to stab her, the others whisper when Peek is not around. Her real name is Xif.

Nassun makes ten, and they want to know everything about her: where she came from, what kinds of foods she likes to eat, what life was like in Tirimo, has she ever held a baby kirkhusa because they are so soft. And in whispers they ask about other things, once it becomes clear that Schaffa favors her. What did she do on the day of the Rifting? How did she learn such skill with orogeny? This is how Nassun discovers that it is rare for their kind to be born to orogene parents. Wudeh comes the closest, because his aunt realized what he was and taught him what she could in secret, but this amounted to little more than how not to ice people by accident. Some of the others only learned that lesson the hard way—and Oegin grows very quiet during this conversation. Deshati actually didn’t know she was an orogene until the Rifting, which Nassun finds incomprehensible. She is the one who asks the most questions, but quietly, when the others are not around, and in a tone of shame.

Another thing Nassun discovers is that she is much, much, much better than any of them. It is not simply a matter of training. Eitz has had years more training than her, and yet his orogeny is as thin and frail as Wudeh’s body. Eitz is in control of it, enough to do no harm, but he can’t do much good with it, either, like find diamonds or make a cool spot to stand in on a hot day or slice a harpoon in half. The others stare when Nassun tries to explain the lattermost, and then Schaffa comes away from the wall of a nearby building (one of the Guardians is always watching while they gather and train and play) to take her for a walk.

“What you do not understand,” Schaffa says, resting a hand on her shoulder as they walk, “is that an orogene’s skill is not just a matter of practice, but of innate ability. So much has been done to breed the gift out of the world.” He sighs a little, sounding almost disappointed. “There are few left who are born with a high level of ability.”

“My father killed my brother because of it,” Nassun says. “Uche had more orogeny than me. All he ever did was listen with it, though, and say weird things sometimes. He made me laugh.”

She keeps the words soft because they still hurt to say, and because she’s said them so rarely. Jija never wanted to hear it, so she has had no one with whom she could discuss her grief until now. They’re over by the southern terraces of Jekity, successive platforms high above the floor of a lava-plain valley. The terraces are still heavily planted with grains, greens, and beans. Some of the plants are beginning to look sickly from the thinning sunlight. This will probably be the last harvest before the ash clouds get too thick.

“Yes. And that is a tragedy, little one; I’m sorry.” Schaffa sighs. “My brethren have done their job too well, I think, in warning the populace about the dangers of untrained orogenes. Not that any of those warnings were false. Just… exaggerated, perhaps.” He shrugs. She feels a flash of anger that this exaggeration is why her father looks at her with such hate sometimes. But the anger is nebulous, directionless; she hates the world, not anyone in particular. That’s a lot to hate.

“He thinks I’m evil,” she finds herself saying.

Schaffa looks at her for a long moment. There is something confused in his gaze for a moment, a wondering sort of frown that he gets from time to time. Not quite intentionally, Nassun sesses him in a fleeting pass, and yes—those strange silvery threads are flaring within him again, lacing through his flesh and tugging on his mind from somewhere near the back of his head. She stops as soon as his expression clears, because he is fiendishly sensitive to her uses of orogeny, and he does not like her doing anything without his permission. But when he is being tugged by the bright threads, he notices less.

“You aren’t evil,” he says firmly. “You are exactly as nature made you. And that is special , Nassun—special and powerful in ways that are atypical even for one of your kind. In the Fulcrum, you would have rings by now. Perhaps four, or even five. For one your age, that’s amazing.”

This makes Nassun happy, even though she doesn’t fully understand. “Wudeh says the Fulcrum rings go up to ten?” Wudeh has the most talkative of the three Guardians, agate-eyed Nida. Nida sometimes says things that don’t make sense, but the rest of the time she shares useful wisdom, so all the kids have learned to simply tune out the gibbering.

“Yes, ten.” For some reason, Schaffa seems displeased by this. “But this is not the Fulcrum, Nassun. Here, you must train yourself, since we have no senior orogenes to train you. And that’s good, because there are… things you can do.” His face twitches. Flicker of silver through him again, then quiescence. “Things you are needed to do, which… things that Fulcrum training cannot do.”

Nassun considers this, for the moment ignoring the silver. “Things like making my orogeny go away?” She knows her father has asked this of Schaffa.

“That would be possible, when you reach a certain point of development. But to reach that point, it is best that you learn to use your powers with no preconceptions.” He glances at her. His expression is noncommittal, but somehow she knows: He does not want her changing into a still, even if it does become possible. “You’re lucky to have been born to an orogene who was skilled enough to manage you as a child. You must have been very dangerous in your infancy and early years.”

It’s Nassun’s turn to shrug at this. She lowers her gaze and scuffs at a weed that has worked its way up between two basalt columns. “I guess.”