Sofia Samatar - A Stranger in Olondria

“You don’t believe in what you’ve just said—Angels of Persecution.”

Her eyes held mine, steady and clear. “No, Jevick.”

“Then how can you explain it? And don’t say madness. Don’t .”

A tiny sigh escaped her, slight as a memory of breathing.

I shifted away from her, facing upward toward my plaster sky. But she sat so still, for so long, that at last I turned back again. She was gazing at the foot of my cot, intent. “It would be too easy,” she murmured. “Angels. For the gods do not speak as we speak.”

And how did the gods speak?

In patterns; in writing.

But sometimes it seemed she could not hear them. Her manner was sharp and nervous; she banged the door behind her. She pressed her pen hard above my eye, scowling into my skin, locked in a fruitless effort to prove Ura’s Conclusion. She thought there should have been some change, an increased heat in my bloodstream, an expansion of the brow, however slight.

“Do you listen when I read? Do you, Jevick?”

Once a tear dropped from her eye and landed on one of my cuts. It stung.

The Gray Houses are not cruel. They are kind. Each day begins with an outing for those not too distraught to stand and walk. Down the wide hall, where the lamps are always lit, each in its netting of wire, then out the big double doors into the garden. The garden is rough, a mere slope of grass surrounded by a wall. The sea is invisible but seems to be reflected in the sky. The air lively with iodine, strong. Once, at the bottom of the slope, the woman with bandaged hands found a gull with a broken wing.

Tialon came to see me there one morning. I sat against the wall with a book, and her long shadow darkened the page.

“Jevick,” she said. “How are you?”

I squinted up at her. “As you see.”

She sat beside me and laid her box in the sparkling grass.

“You’re early,” I said.

“It was so lovely outside, I couldn’t stay in.” She was in a blithe, expansive mood, leaning back to look up at the sky. “Everything is starting to smell of autumn, though it’s still warm. It smells like stone, like in the old song. Do you know it?

She gasped with laughter: “At this point the song grows mawkish, really terrible! I only like the first lines, autumn, whispering, smelling of stone… What are you reading?”

I held up my copy of Olondrian Lyrics .

She gazed at it for a moment without speaking. Then she advised me in a taut voice: “That’s a rare copy. Old. You must take good care of it.”

She sat with her back to the wall, suddenly subdued. I was not used to seeing her in such brilliant light. Her eternal dark wool appeared dusted with radiant powder; the chain of her spectacles dazzled me. I could not tell whether her lips were trembling or whether it was a trick of the sun.

All at once she said: “Tell me about your island.”

“My island.” The question was so unexpected, I stammered.

“Yes. What do you eat. What are your houses like.” She counted on her fingers, not looking at me. “Who are your lords. What are the names of your seasons. How do you dance. Anything. Tell me anything.”

“My island is called Tinimavet.”

“Go on.”

“We are farmers and fishermen, for the most part. Some of us grow tea. To be a tea-picker, you must first prove that your hands are as tender as flowers. For this reason it is usually work for young girls…”

I faltered into silence. She had put her face in her hands; her shoulders were shaking.

After a moment she bent to her writing box. She took out a handkerchief, wiped her eyes, then crumpled the handkerchief back among her books and papers.

Still she did not look at me. Her profile looked peeled and wet. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“No—It is—”

She held up a hand, cutting off my words. “Inexcusable,” she said. “It is inexcusable, and I have no excuse. Let me ask—how old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two.” She looked at me, her eyes wet and green as celadon. “You are very young. I think that you have not built anything yet?”

I thought of my life: lessons, a journey, an angel. I shook my head.

“No,” she murmured. “I thought not. It is dangerous to build. Once you have built something—something that takes all your passion and will—it becomes more precious to you than your own happiness.You don’t realize that, while you are building it. That you are creating a martyrdom—something which, later, will make you suffer.”

She shifted position on the grass, yanking her skirt into place. “Some would say it was built for me,” she muttered. “And it is true, or partially true. I have never had a silk dress. Since I was eleven I’ve made all my clothes myself. Not even my nurse was allowed to help me. You should have seen some of my clothes—the skirts crooked, the armpits sagging or too tight… And no one laughed. They did not laugh, because they were afraid. Afraid of my father and the Telkan. That made it worse for me. I was more alone…”

She twisted a finger in the chain at her neck. “I don’t know anything about it,” she whispered. “All that I reject. Those things forbidden by the Stone. Fine clothes, dances, wine, the season of bonfires. I’ve never been to a ball. I’ve never been anywhere but the Library of Bain. Or yes—I went to the Valley once. Once! To the city of Elueth, where my grandfather had died. I was thirteen years old, and so frightened! So frightened I hardly remember the ride in the wagon, the look of the country. We had to relieve ourselves in the grass—it terrified me! And since then, never. I have no jewels but a necklace my mother left me. And I have never worn it, Jevick—not ever. Now you will ask: what does it mean? What have I built? If I’ve never decided—if I’ve only agreed with what was decided for me—”

I shook my head, but she seized my wrist and squeezed it fiercely, twice. “ Don’t pretend .”

Then she released me. The blood flowed into my wrist; it throbbed.

“Ura’s Conclusion!” she said with a harsh laugh. Tears filled her eyes again. “My father was right. It’s nonsense. I only thought if I had something of my own… I’ve never been to sea. I’ve never been to a foreign country. I’ve only read about it. I’ll never go now. Do you hear me? I’ll never go. But I have built something. You—you—”

She pointed at me, trembling. Her anger shocked me. “Where did you learn Olondrian?” she snapped.

“Olondrian? At home. I had a tutor.”

It was as if I had dashed her with water. For a moment she froze; then she seized her writing box and got up.

“Tialon!”

She walked away swiftly over the dewy grass. She did not come to see me the next day, or the next.

Time unrolled in the Houses, monotonous as a skein of wool. I was known as the Islander and was almost a model patient. I ate my food. I took the required walks. The nurses liked me, and so did the patients: once the man with the scarred head gave me an autumn crocus.

So much for the days—but the nights, the nights. Sleep, we are often told, is the sister of death; for my ghost, it was more like a doorway hung with a silken curtain. She twitched the veil aside with her finger; I jerked like a fish on the line. Then lightning, screams, the swift feet of nurses in the hall.

I fell out of bed so often they pulled the mattress onto the floor and I slept there as if on one of the pallets of the islands. A nurse sat on a chair outside my door, the same reddish, blunt-nosed man who had come to my aid on my first night in the Houses. When I asked his name, he said I might call him Ordu, which means “Acorn.” Once, when I lay exhausted, watching him clean my vomit from the floor, I asked if he believed in angels. He dropped his rag in his bucket, not looking at me. “I’ll bring you some ginger tea,” he said.