Sofia Samatar - A Stranger in Olondria

And then, suddenly, she was there. She did not appear, as a person would, but at once the world became aware of her presence. With a violence, a blinding rupture, she was there at the foot of the stairs, and the air opened, trembling, to receive her. The city wept. I cried out from the intense pain in my head, throwing up my arms to protect my face… But she was there, I could still see her, just as she had been on the ship, with her childlike shape, her long red hair, and her face, unclear in the brilliance. The air shuddered, flashing with the strain of having to hold her, humming like sheets of steel, like sheets of lightning. There was the chaos in the hall of a disturbed geography, of a world constrained to rearrange itself.

She raised her small hand. There was the shock of opening vistas, of landscapes over which I hurtled, helpless; and she said, in a voice as intimate as if she were pressing her fingers on my brain: “Rise! Rise, Jevick of Tyom!”

Our islands are full of ghosts.

I wrote those words. I scribbled them down after I had found my way back to the Hotel Urloma, after waking on the steps of a brothel in the city of Bain, a haunted man. Three words in Olondrian. In Kideti, they are five.

I wrote in a paperbound record book, a book I have with me still. Soft leather covers, a string to wrap around the whole and keep it shut. I had purchased the book to keep track of my transactions in the market, and I used it for this purpose for several weeks. So there are pages with lines of Kideti numbers, bold compartments, rows of accounts. And then on the last few sheets this eruption, this disorder. Newspaper clippings stuffed inside, hurried copies from the books in Yedov’s library. A true mirror of my life in Bain.

Our islands are full of ghosts. They come from the flowers and from the water. They are those who are always waiting, outside on the paths. There are the Sea Dead and the Rotted Dead whose bodies have never been burned, the Poisoned Dead, and the Animal Dead—the ghosts of the sacred beasts. They are the reason we walk under trees, avoid the shapes made by the moonlight, never toss seeds carelessly over our shoulders in the darkness. They haunt the hills and crossroads and are implacable on the beaches where the Sea Dead hold their ragged, ungraceful dances at festival time. If you see one you must kiss your fingers and pray, you must back away slowly, and above all you must never ask its name. Your house must be purified with smoke, and you must have smoke in your hair, wear strips of charmed leather about your ribs, underneath your clothes, rub your chest and neck with peppermint oil, avoid the ocean, keep fires burning close to you, and chew dried pumpkin-flower. If you are pursued, then you must consult the doctors, who will treat you with hot needles, purges, the constant rattling of gourds. I have heard them chanting from a nearby house: “Take back your beads, Ghost, take back your fan, take back your sandals.”

I have seen her three times—perhaps four.

First, on the steps. Then in the warren of streets where I wandered, asking strangers the way to the canal. She bloomed into life in a nearby wall, like a cancer of the stone. I threw myself backward, screaming, and collapsed in a gutter.

I must have lost consciousness for a time. The stealthy hands of a beggar woke me. He abandoned my pockets when I sat up, and showed me his broken teeth. His eyes were crushed dried figs. “Tobacco,” he hissed, tugging the hem of my shirt. “Tobacco for the beloved of the gods.”

In the Street of Owls I saw her again: the ghost of the Kiemish girl. She looked at me with the eyes of one born into the country of herons. With a lift of her hand she dispelled my reason; I gibbered into the sunlight; I ran, shrieked, struck my head against walls, seeking the merciful dark. My terror was stronger than shame. When I awoke again, a couple were passing me, and the woman twitched her skirt away from my prone body. Her dress was pale pink, her hair secured with pins. “Shocking,” she said, and her companion replied: “It is to be expected, after the Feast.”

Is there some connection between the Feast of Birds and this apparition? I wish I could find one of my companions from that night—one of the Wings. Are they all haunted like me? I cannot believe it. There were so many of them. Even here in the hotel I would hear their screams.

I said I had seen her “perhaps four times.” Now I must call them five.

I was not sure, at first; I thought it was only a nightmare caused by the horrible events of the Feast. Now I know she pursues me when I sleep.

I have seen her again. There is no escape. I pace the room, boil coffee, drink glass after scalding glass. I speak to myself in the mirror. I say: “Wake up. Open your eyes. Look at me. My curse on you if you bow your head.”

Sten has told Yedov that I am suffering from a fever.

Sten knows all. I told him at once. I said: “It is a jeptow.”

He kissed his fingertips at the word. Jeptow — a wild spirit, a ghost, a citizen of the ghost country, jepnatow-het. But he is not superstitious. He keeps to the quiet and ordered religion of his forefathers who have served my family since the War of the Crows. As I write he is tending a fire in a clay bowl, burning fenugreek against ghosts, and rosemary, “the salt herb,” a prayer to the winds.

What is she?

She arrives in chimes. The air tolls and bellows. Now I understand that light has a sound. She is an absolute stranger to me: she is stranger than the effulgent sea, more alien than the pale coast, the foreign city. In vain I sob: “Ghost, begone, your hair is under the mountain”—the chant of frightened children under far trees.

“Help,” I scream. To no one.

And the ghost answers: “No. You help me.”

Her voice metallic, a harp of light.

“You help me.” What does she want?

I have asked her. I cried: “How? Tell me how.”But I cannot bear her voice and presence for very long. Her small mouth opens and closes, a cave of light. And night falls down around me like a temple of broken glass.

What does she want? I think—

I write left-handed. The right is bandaged: last night I put it through the window. I woke to find Sten bending over me, winding strips of a torn sheet around my hand, two tears on the burnt leather of his cheek. He told me he had tried to turn me before I reached the window, but I moved suddenly and he was too late. I told him not to blame himself. He has guarded me well on my dream walks, kept me from falling into the brazier or the fire.

He says we are going home today.

He is too weary to smile fully, his face a mask. Poor Sten—

I have not opened this book for three days. I have not had the strength. But I must think. I must act, or perish. I am alone. Sten and the others have gone back to the islands without me.

Some buried part of me suspected the truth. A hidden intuition whispered: “She will not let you get away.” I ignored it. I concentrated on the coming voyage, on our plans for keeping my ailment secret until we arrived in Tyom. I was to board the ship wrapped in a cloak—for I know that my face reflects my suffering, and I appear to have aged ten years in as many days. Sten would take me quickly into the hold. We did not reveal my condition to the other servants, for fear that the tale of my haunting would reach the captain.

It was when Sten asked me what Olondrians think of ghosts, and how they manage in such cases, that I realized I did not know. Indeed, to my knowledge there is no word in Olondrian for “ghost.” There is only the word nea, which means “angel.”