Fic a Week 16 - Groom Price
Jul. 5th, 2009 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pauraque_bkSet in my and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_hannelore's conworld. We're gunning for Cutest Geek Couple next year.
++
Groom Price
It is said that the islands form the rim of a grand volcano, one which went up in deep antiquity. Looking at a map this seems possible, but academic; sailing into the interior of the broken circle, towards the port, is a different matter. I am amazed by the vastness of the caldera, filled with bright still water, like the teacup of a whole world. If an eruption caused this circle, it must have been the greatest the Lord ever made.
The port has enough land for its function, for the docks and the lighthouse and the little huts of those weatherbeaten fishermen who stay there. And then just behind it the land rises nearly sheer, and so high that it makes my feet tingle to look up at it. It seems impossible when looking up at it that way, but there is a road that switches back and forth by hairpins to reach the top. This is how everything comes to and from the main island, by the labor of mules drawing carts up and down this twisting and narrow road.
One of the carters sees my clothes and asks for a blessing in heavily accented but passable Norea, and after blessing him I hire him to take me to my destination. I regret it almost immediately, as he is all too happy to practice his second language on me, his captive audience, and as we go up it's all I can do not to shout at him to shut up and watch where he's driving, clinging to my seat and trying not to look down at the growing distance between us and sea level.
I plaintively ask him why not put the port on the other side of the island where it is not steep, and he explains that the rocks make it too hazardous to approach that way.
"Rocks keep each person away, good or bad," he says, gesturing elaborately with the reins lying slack in his lap. "Boat hit rocks. PASH!" He throws up his arms.
"Yes, I understand," I say hurriedly, eyeing the placid mule and hoping it doesn't take any of its master's movements as commands to leave the path.
The capitol is perched inexplicably on the brink of the caldera; we pass outlying houses clinging to the side of the cliff, their foundations bizarrely diagonal. The interior of the city is all at strange angles, the streets zig-zagging among brightly painted stucco buildings, all perched one above another like sea birds in a crowded rookery. There are people about, but it is getting on to evening; the merchants are packing up and going home. Women are taking in their laundry from lines that go from house to house as though spun by drunken spiders. By the time we have passed through the city entirely, the lamplighters are at their work behind us.
We have crested the highest point of the island, and the rest of the land slopes down gradually towards the sea, blessedly ordinary. The road is no longer paved and the land is scrubby, nothing growing higher than a few stunted feral fruit trees. Even in the dusk I can see the orchards at the ends of the roads that branch from this one, not so different from the countryside at home.
But that is not where we are going. We drive down, down to the other shore, where no boat can approach lest they go pash upon the rocks, where little villages line the coast and they live on the blessings of the sea.
*
Despite the presence of their peculiar city, they are abidingly country people, and prefer to keep to themselves. They are all believers. But they are secretive, as though their souls, too, are islands, surrounded by deafening sea. The family I have come to see seems well, but with a son too many, that's all.
The master is named Galt, and he is as stern as the great king Akaelit with whom he is cognate. Inside the bare and humble house, he sits in his careworn armchair like a throne, firelight flickering upon him.
"The boy is too weak for the army, Father," he says, stuffing his pipe with a broad brown thumb. "I have been blessed, but not too much."
I sense an idiom, and I hope I understand. I am now the one who fumbles for words and speaks in an accent.
"Is he intelligent?" I am not confident enough in this language to be indirect.
Galt shrugs, sucking smoke. "Yes," he says concessively, as though unsure if he puts any stock by such things.
I nod neutrally. "I am eager to meet him. Though surely he is sleeping." I'm thinking I'd like to do the same, very weary from the sea and the road, and when I lie down in the empty bedroom I am given, I fall quickly asleep.
*
When I awaken it is mid-morning, and of course everyone is at work, too polite to rouse the city-dwelling stranger. There is no use dawdling; I go about and ask after Galt's youngest son.
The men are pulling in the crab traps, walking easily in bare feet among the sharp rocks. The men's legs are sun-brown sticks poking out from the short trousers they wear, and it is obvious why they dress this way, for their work is all shin-deep in the water. They call to one another and it is strange to hear; I think the sounds of their words are less debased than our own speech, yet they put them in strange orders. It is like listening to Classical words dragged out of their mouths backwards, dragged like crab traps out of the sea.
The boys who are too young to pull the lines work the tide pools, and it is there that I find Franse, Galt's son, a bit away by himself.
I introduce myself politely. There is never any way to guess how a boy will react. I have seen boys whose fathers didn't even tell them what they planned -- who didn't know until they saw me coming that they were for the Lord.
Franse shakes my hand, grim but unsurprised.
I walk with him along the tide pools (staying on the dry sand myself), and I ask him questions about what he is doing. He's amused that he knows things an adult doesn't, and takes quickly to showing me how he picks the creatures at low tide this way, how he avoids that which is of no use, but takes the choicest of the pincushions and the stars.
He picks up a fat, soft cucumber and shows it to me, hiding a smile at my green reaction; the slimy creature is like a waterlogged, gangrenous penis. The boy puts it back in its place, and I am relieved that they don't eat them; it will not go in the bucket with the other tide pool animals that lie slowly drowning in the air.
"How long are you our guest?" he asks as he picks his way along to another pool, holding his arms out to balance. Of course the question is really how long he has left to stay.
"There is no hurry," I tell him, though this is a bit of a lie.
He nods and picks another star. "They've got you sleeping in Nani's room."
"Who is that?"
"My sister," he says. "May she rest."
"May she rest," I answer after a moment, and make the sign.
"Is it true that you-all can heal sick people?" He asks it nonchalantly, examining a star's underside, pulling a face, and putting it back.
"If it is the Lord's will, one can wield great miracles."
He looks at me frankly. "Then why do believers get sick?"
"I don't know."
Franse looks taken aback at first, then perhaps a flicker of disappointment crosses his face, annoyance that I have not played this game... At age eleven, he cannot know how many times I have been asked to play it. Then he just nods and turns back to his pools.
*
I do not like paying Galt the gift, even though it is the Church's money to pay. I am an abolitionist myself, and though I know I am not buying a slave, it grates on me that I feel like I am when Galt weighs out the silver, and nods.
It is only a few days until we reverse my trip, driving up the slope to the city. Franse's older brother Petre is driving their cart for us; he is a severe young man who looks like his father. In truth they both do, but only Petre resembles him. He keeps his eyes on the road and his mouth a closed line. Perhaps he is thinking of his blind luck to be born earlier, to be a burden his father could afford. Franse watches the orchards to the side, and must be thinking that it may be the last time he sees them.
At the edge of the city, Petre lets us off, and says to his brother curtly, "Bless." Franse only nods.
And I am thinking: truly this must be the Lord's will, that this child should come to us. The islands seem tall, the caldera seems wide as we sail slowly to its broken edge, but there is so much more he can come to know. There is a world. There is learning. He will be as I was once, a child who had no place at home yet found one among strangers. No more will he wade barefoot among tide pools and listen to the sea, but he will put on shoes and long trousers, and he will sit in blessed study, as silent as the grave.
.
_hannelore's conworld. We're gunning for Cutest Geek Couple next year.++
Groom Price
It is said that the islands form the rim of a grand volcano, one which went up in deep antiquity. Looking at a map this seems possible, but academic; sailing into the interior of the broken circle, towards the port, is a different matter. I am amazed by the vastness of the caldera, filled with bright still water, like the teacup of a whole world. If an eruption caused this circle, it must have been the greatest the Lord ever made.
The port has enough land for its function, for the docks and the lighthouse and the little huts of those weatherbeaten fishermen who stay there. And then just behind it the land rises nearly sheer, and so high that it makes my feet tingle to look up at it. It seems impossible when looking up at it that way, but there is a road that switches back and forth by hairpins to reach the top. This is how everything comes to and from the main island, by the labor of mules drawing carts up and down this twisting and narrow road.
One of the carters sees my clothes and asks for a blessing in heavily accented but passable Norea, and after blessing him I hire him to take me to my destination. I regret it almost immediately, as he is all too happy to practice his second language on me, his captive audience, and as we go up it's all I can do not to shout at him to shut up and watch where he's driving, clinging to my seat and trying not to look down at the growing distance between us and sea level.
I plaintively ask him why not put the port on the other side of the island where it is not steep, and he explains that the rocks make it too hazardous to approach that way.
"Rocks keep each person away, good or bad," he says, gesturing elaborately with the reins lying slack in his lap. "Boat hit rocks. PASH!" He throws up his arms.
"Yes, I understand," I say hurriedly, eyeing the placid mule and hoping it doesn't take any of its master's movements as commands to leave the path.
The capitol is perched inexplicably on the brink of the caldera; we pass outlying houses clinging to the side of the cliff, their foundations bizarrely diagonal. The interior of the city is all at strange angles, the streets zig-zagging among brightly painted stucco buildings, all perched one above another like sea birds in a crowded rookery. There are people about, but it is getting on to evening; the merchants are packing up and going home. Women are taking in their laundry from lines that go from house to house as though spun by drunken spiders. By the time we have passed through the city entirely, the lamplighters are at their work behind us.
We have crested the highest point of the island, and the rest of the land slopes down gradually towards the sea, blessedly ordinary. The road is no longer paved and the land is scrubby, nothing growing higher than a few stunted feral fruit trees. Even in the dusk I can see the orchards at the ends of the roads that branch from this one, not so different from the countryside at home.
But that is not where we are going. We drive down, down to the other shore, where no boat can approach lest they go pash upon the rocks, where little villages line the coast and they live on the blessings of the sea.
*
Despite the presence of their peculiar city, they are abidingly country people, and prefer to keep to themselves. They are all believers. But they are secretive, as though their souls, too, are islands, surrounded by deafening sea. The family I have come to see seems well, but with a son too many, that's all.
The master is named Galt, and he is as stern as the great king Akaelit with whom he is cognate. Inside the bare and humble house, he sits in his careworn armchair like a throne, firelight flickering upon him.
"The boy is too weak for the army, Father," he says, stuffing his pipe with a broad brown thumb. "I have been blessed, but not too much."
I sense an idiom, and I hope I understand. I am now the one who fumbles for words and speaks in an accent.
"Is he intelligent?" I am not confident enough in this language to be indirect.
Galt shrugs, sucking smoke. "Yes," he says concessively, as though unsure if he puts any stock by such things.
I nod neutrally. "I am eager to meet him. Though surely he is sleeping." I'm thinking I'd like to do the same, very weary from the sea and the road, and when I lie down in the empty bedroom I am given, I fall quickly asleep.
*
When I awaken it is mid-morning, and of course everyone is at work, too polite to rouse the city-dwelling stranger. There is no use dawdling; I go about and ask after Galt's youngest son.
The men are pulling in the crab traps, walking easily in bare feet among the sharp rocks. The men's legs are sun-brown sticks poking out from the short trousers they wear, and it is obvious why they dress this way, for their work is all shin-deep in the water. They call to one another and it is strange to hear; I think the sounds of their words are less debased than our own speech, yet they put them in strange orders. It is like listening to Classical words dragged out of their mouths backwards, dragged like crab traps out of the sea.
The boys who are too young to pull the lines work the tide pools, and it is there that I find Franse, Galt's son, a bit away by himself.
I introduce myself politely. There is never any way to guess how a boy will react. I have seen boys whose fathers didn't even tell them what they planned -- who didn't know until they saw me coming that they were for the Lord.
Franse shakes my hand, grim but unsurprised.
I walk with him along the tide pools (staying on the dry sand myself), and I ask him questions about what he is doing. He's amused that he knows things an adult doesn't, and takes quickly to showing me how he picks the creatures at low tide this way, how he avoids that which is of no use, but takes the choicest of the pincushions and the stars.
He picks up a fat, soft cucumber and shows it to me, hiding a smile at my green reaction; the slimy creature is like a waterlogged, gangrenous penis. The boy puts it back in its place, and I am relieved that they don't eat them; it will not go in the bucket with the other tide pool animals that lie slowly drowning in the air.
"How long are you our guest?" he asks as he picks his way along to another pool, holding his arms out to balance. Of course the question is really how long he has left to stay.
"There is no hurry," I tell him, though this is a bit of a lie.
He nods and picks another star. "They've got you sleeping in Nani's room."
"Who is that?"
"My sister," he says. "May she rest."
"May she rest," I answer after a moment, and make the sign.
"Is it true that you-all can heal sick people?" He asks it nonchalantly, examining a star's underside, pulling a face, and putting it back.
"If it is the Lord's will, one can wield great miracles."
He looks at me frankly. "Then why do believers get sick?"
"I don't know."
Franse looks taken aback at first, then perhaps a flicker of disappointment crosses his face, annoyance that I have not played this game... At age eleven, he cannot know how many times I have been asked to play it. Then he just nods and turns back to his pools.
*
I do not like paying Galt the gift, even though it is the Church's money to pay. I am an abolitionist myself, and though I know I am not buying a slave, it grates on me that I feel like I am when Galt weighs out the silver, and nods.
It is only a few days until we reverse my trip, driving up the slope to the city. Franse's older brother Petre is driving their cart for us; he is a severe young man who looks like his father. In truth they both do, but only Petre resembles him. He keeps his eyes on the road and his mouth a closed line. Perhaps he is thinking of his blind luck to be born earlier, to be a burden his father could afford. Franse watches the orchards to the side, and must be thinking that it may be the last time he sees them.
At the edge of the city, Petre lets us off, and says to his brother curtly, "Bless." Franse only nods.
And I am thinking: truly this must be the Lord's will, that this child should come to us. The islands seem tall, the caldera seems wide as we sail slowly to its broken edge, but there is so much more he can come to know. There is a world. There is learning. He will be as I was once, a child who had no place at home yet found one among strangers. No more will he wade barefoot among tide pools and listen to the sea, but he will put on shoes and long trousers, and he will sit in blessed study, as silent as the grave.
.
