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edenfallingThis is the Ekanu story that grew. And grew. And grew some more. And still isn't finished growing.
But while I've spun a number of threads and I have a rough feeling of how they'll come together, I'm not yet certain of the details. So I'm posting this as part one. Part two will come whenever I get around to finishing it.
While I have your attention, here are a few quick notes on Hlaenish pronunciation:
A as in father
E as in fee
I as in pick
O as in hole
U as in puma
Y as in why
AE as in sundae
CH as in Bach or loch (back of the throat, not between the teeth)
HR or HL as a softened, wetter version of the consonant that follows the H.
The occasional apostrophes between the letters A and E are not actually pronounced; they just signal that the A and the E are pronounced separately.
Of course, this has no bearing on words and names in Common or Arhadikim. And it probably doesn't really matter to general understanding of the story, but I thought I might as well mention it. Because the name Yfane is pronounced Eye-fah-nee, not Yuh-faen. And if I didn't explain the rules up front, no one would know that.
*innocent smile*
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Harvest
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Ekanu stared through the open door in disbelief. Shelves lined the walls, groaning under the weight of haphazardly stacked papers. Baskets hung from the ceiling and covered the floor in untidy piles. A small blizzard of scraps had exploded across the battered desk.
"As you can see," said Aelifa ka Nyo, waving a hand at the chaos, "Mistress Yfane was somewhat less than organized." She coughed. "Which is why we asked you here. She had been working on a collection of our folksongs, which she wanted to send to Master Sintarris in Estara, but when she died unexpectedly, nobody knew where to find it.
"We'd also like you to catalogue her papers while you're here, since Yfane was the only musician resident at our chapterhouse, and," -- here Aelifa looked down and mumbled, an unexpected action from the Speaker of the Na'eraelu chapterhouse council -- "possibly also take on her students until we can hire a new music Master."
Ekanu nodded. She'd wondered why the Na'eraelu chapterhouse was so eager to host her, and why no Masters from the other University chapterhouses in Gwynorae had been willing to come instead, leaving her -- in Estara -- as the nearest available candidate. Obviously they'd had more information, and hadn't wanted to tangle with this mess.
"I see," she said eventually. "This... this may take a long time. And yes, I'll teach the students. They will be free sometime soon?"
"Oh, yes," Aelifa said. "They'll be in the Great Hall for dinner, along with everyone else. I can send them to your table -- you will be at the Masters' Table?"
"I think so, yes. But I'd prefer to eat then -- send them to me tomorrow, one at a time. For now, I'll see what needs to be done here." Ekanu steeled herself and walked into Yfane's cluttered room, shutting the door on the flustered Aelifa.
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Denifar was waiting at the Masters' Table when Ekanu walked into the Great Hall. He waved her over, and she threaded her way through the heavy oak tables, pausing occasionally to admire the carvings on the vaulted ceiling.
"So how bad is it?" Denifar asked when she sat beside him. "The things I've been hearing from the mechanists are dire."
Ekanu slumped and buried her face in her folded arms. "It's awful. Yfane was the worst packrat I've ever seen, and I think she had an eidetic memory, because she didn't keep any records of what she'd done, where she kept anything, or how she found it -- and she scribbled quotes over everything from books she didn't have. I'll need months."
She raised her head and groped for a nearby bread basket. "They want me to teach her students while I'm here. I've never taught anyone! I can play, but all I've done for three years is organize building, try to hire Masters for Shimat-Mek chapterhouse, and learn more Semrin politics than I ever wanted."
Denifar mopped up some soup with a bread crust. "That's hard," he said sympathetically. "They should have told you up front what the job would be, not waited until we got here. But students can't be as bad as Semrin bureaucrats, right?"
Ekanu shot him a sour look. "You can remember our student years and say that?" Denifar widened his eyes in mock innocence.
"I'm sorry this won't be a true holiday," Ekanu continued, cutting a piece of bread for herself. She looked around. "Where did you get the soup?"
"Serving table," Denifar mumbled through a full mouth, and pointed with his bread crust.
"Swallow first," Ekanu said, from long habit, and walked over to fetch her supper.
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Yfane had, it appeared, been teaching a general class on reading musical notation, and had been guiding three pledged students. Ekanu found the class easy enough to deal with, though she occasionally ran into problems with the thick, lilting Gwynorae accent.
The pledged students were another issue. The first, Soshimu oku Thaelae, an aspiring composer, was arrogant and distrustful to the point of xenophobia. "You Estarians drove my people from our old homeland," he told her at their first private meeting, "and there's nothing you can bring from them to teach me."
"I'm not Estarian," Ekanu told him. "I come from Chupu, the Ice, the land of the midnight sun. And we can always learn from each other -- knowing other people makes us look at ourselves with new eyes and hear ourselves with new ears."
"My ears are fine," Soshimu snapped. "Yours must be worn out from trying to hear so many different ways." He slapped a sheaf of papers down on Ekanu's desk -- a rickety thing she'd set up in a storeroom next to Yfane's old room -- and stormed out.
His music was well-written, deeply immersed in the folk songs of Gwynorae and the Hlaenish story cycle traditions, but Ekanu thought it lacked insight, lacked adventure. He would improve with exposure to foreign styles, but he refused to listen when she played him examples on her guitar.
Eventually she turned him loose with instructions to write an opera based on the story cycle of Inathulo, a Hlaenish woman who supposedly outwitted the Estarin Emperor in the days before the Hlaenor fled to Gwynorae. "But we don't sing operas!" Soshimu protested. "They're Estarian, foreign!"
"So you'll be the first one of your people to write one," Ekanu said mercilessly. "If you want to prove your music is better than Estarian music, you'll have to show you can write in their style as well as your own, and do it better. Besides, I promise to take a copy and have it performed in Estara. Don't you want to show them the stories of the Hlaenor?"
Soshimu stalked out, fuming, but Ekanu learned through careful inquiry that he was, indeed, working on the opera -- or at least requesting scores and librettos of other operas to study. She supposed it was a start.
The second student, Laefa oku Daeluach, was Soshimu's polar opposite -- shy, polite, and eager to please. Laefa was a performer, a violinist who wanted nothing more than to leave Na'eraelu and become famous in Estaria or the city-states of Ohiyesa.
Ekanu wasn't much of a violinist, but she put aside two hours every other day to listen to Laefa's playing, and help him adjust to various styles of accompaniment. She also began to teach him Vinaean, which would be a useful language in Ohiyesa; and though she knew nothing about making a living in the higher circles of performance, she wrote to Masters in various chapterhouses, asking if they would help the young man establish himself in their cities.
The third student, Lya-Lya, was Ekanu's favorite. The girl rushed into Ekanu's office for their first meeting, breathless and flushed from running. "Sorry, Mistress Thousandbirds, but I was out helping Nashe with the bees and I only just now looked up and saw the sun and it was almost gone noon already and I hope I'm not too late?"
Ekanu smiled, amused by the flood of words. "You're not too late. But perhaps you should acquire a pocket-clock -- I dread to think how late you might have been on a cloudy day."
The girl blinked, and then laughed. "Very late! But I broke the last clock they lent me, and now I have to watch the sun or ask people for the time." She pressed her hands together, touched her fingertips to her forehead and bowed from the waist -- the traditional greeting of the Hlaenor. "I'm Ka'eshu ka Nosinhre, but call me Lya-Lya. I'm not very responsible."
Ekanu was intrigued. "Responsible? That relates to your name?"
Lya-Lya smiled. "Ka'eshu means 'responsibility' in our old language. We mostly use it for ceremonies these days, though a few people are trying to bring it back as our daily speech. But they call me Lya-Lya, after the songbird."
Lya-Lya was very much like a songbird, Ekanu thought -- always twittering and darting to and fro. She sang well, though her form wasn't polished enough for the great opera houses -- but her ambition was to learn musical theory and eventually teach.
"We're losing the old songs," she told Ekanu, "losing them like we're losing the old language. That's why Mistress Yfane was collecting them. What I want to do is travel and teach them to the children, so we keep our culture alive. That's why we came here to the islands, after all, to keep our ways instead of giving in to the old Empire. But now the enemy isn't so obvious, just trade and new ideas sliding in by pieces."
She saw Ekanu's frown and added, "There's nothing wrong with trade and new ideas, of course! Your friend Master Rollesdun is going to be a big help, with his pumps. We'll be able to water the leeward sides of the islands. But we have to remember who we are, remember our own ways, so the new ones don't sweep us all away."
Ekanu thought about that as she sorted through Yfane's papers, labeling, copying, and binding them in sheaves. She was of a people as proud and old as the Hlaenor -- no, older! -- but she hadn't clung to her own ways. She'd dived into Estara and Vinaeo and Shimat-Mek, learning everything she could about them. All she'd kept from her own people were her tattoos, the half-woman's braid she wove her hair into unless she consciously paid attention to her appearance, and her language -- and she thought as much in Common as Arhadikim these days.
Was Lya-Lya right? Was she losing herself in a flood of other ways?
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"I never see you anymore," Denifar said, sneaking up behind Ekanu and draping himself over her shoulders as she sat at the Masters' Table. She set her latest sheaf of Yfane's papers beside her soup bowl and twisted her head to smile up at him.
"I'm busy, yes, but so are you. Where were you last week?"
Denifar waved a hand in a vague circle. "Around. They had me inspecting some of the waterworks and irrigation channels so we can start planning the new pumps. They don't have mines here -- no ready coal for a steam pump -- so we'll have to make do with a series of waterwheels and belts, and maybe a few mules, to run the pumps."
Ekanu shook her head. "I'll never understand your mechanics -- I still don't see how steam can work a pump. Are you sure it isn't just pump-masters' magic?" She felt Denifar inhale to start his habitual, irritated explanations, and forestalled him. "In any case, they must want this irrigation system very badly, to ask for new designs all the way from Estara."
"Oh, you have no idea how much they want it!" Irritation forgotten, Denifar undraped himself and sat beside her, stealing the bread from her plate. "Omaril and Gwitha -- they run the waterworks at Ikuthula'ech, where we're testing the prototype wheels -- tell me they've been working to reclaim the deserts for generations. But it's hard to send water over the ridges between the streams, and the ridges get higher the closer you get to the central mountains."
"Like rolling stones uphill," Ekanu said, snatching her bread out of Denifar's hand. "Get your own, lazybones." She dunked the bread in her soup. "Will you be gone again soon?"
"No, we'll be drawing up plans for a few sixdays. Then I'll be gone for a while, out talking to the farmers and the builders, to see if the plans will work in the field. If we can get a system working here, they plan to copy and adapt it on the other islands. Of course, that many waterworks will need more mechanists to keep the pumps running, and lots of new ideas to improve efficiency -- maybe new building techniques or ways to clear stone as well. I'll have to keep in touch, see what they come up with out here."
As he spoke, Denifar eased his hand toward Ekanu, trying to steal the bread again, but she spotted him and playfully smacked his fingers. He sighed, and reached down the table for a loaf and a knife.
"Can't you ever take pity on a poor, starving young man?" he asked plaintively.
"If I saw one, I might," Ekanu said, grinning.
"I'm hurt. Wounded. Stabbed through the heart." Denifar pointed the knife accusingly at his friend. "My tormented shade will stalk you along your path for all of your days, and even Nesta's embrace won't shield you from my wrath."
"I don't think Nesta embraces an unbeliever," Ekanu said, "but I'll take my chances. I will walk spirit paths into Winter, and lose your shade in blizzards on the Ice."
"Ah, but your spirit shines like the Star itself, and I'll follow it like a beacon through the snow and darkness," Denifar said, sawing a slice off the loaf. "More bread?"
"No, I'm almost done. And I have to meet Laeva shortly." Ekanu sighed and stood, grabbing her papers and bowl. "Will you have time free this evening?"
"I'll find some," Denifar said. "After supper?"
Ekanu nodded. "Good. Come to my room -- it's cleaner than yours."
Denifar rolled his eyes, but mumbled agreement through a full mouth.
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Ekanu strummed her guitar, singing softly to herself. "We all come from the Goddess, and to Her we shall return -- like a drop of water flowing to the ocean. We come from the Goddess, and to Her we shall return -- like a drop of rain flowing to the ocean."
"Is that new?" Denifar asked, leaning against the doorframe.
Ekanu blinked. "I can't believe you can still do that. How do you do that?"
Denifar looked puzzled.
"How do you always open my door so I don't notice?" she clarified.
"Talent." Denifar smirked at her groan, and slouched further. "So, is the song new?"
Ekanu idly plucked the tune again, adding a running, thrumming harmony underneath. "It's new to me, but it's old here. I found it in Yfane's papers, along with this translation -- I think it's one of a collection of sacred chants, maybe for funerals. I'll have to ask Lya-Lya."
"Lya-Lya..." Denifar tilted his hand, brows furrowed. "That short, bubbly girl who's always rushing from place to place?"
That was as apt a description of Lya-Lya as Ekanu had yet heard. "Yes, that's Lya-Lya. She's studying to be a teacher and she knows the old Hlaenish culture. She says they're losing their ways on the large islands, like Ynaes Gwylach, Lylaeo, and here on Na'eraelu, but she's from one of the smaller islands -- A'elo Sochaeb, I think -- so she knows the old language and songs."
"Interesting," Denifar said, stepping out of the doorway and closing the door behind himself. He dragged the chair away from the tiny writing-table -- somehow, Ekanu wasn't sure why, she always seemed to acquire one in every room she inhabited for more than a sixday or two -- and straddled it, folding his arms over the chair back.
"But I didn't come here to talk about your students."
"Then, my music?" Ekanu asked lightly, not certain she wanted to follow his lead into more serious topics. "The Hlaenor rely on a Dorian modal scale -- their shorter chants strongly resemble Estaran children's songs, the ones that accompany games. I suspect Eastern influence, going back to the region around Moshylle."
"Interesting," Denifar said flatly. "But that's not what I want to talk about either, and you know it." He sighed and raked his hands through his hair.
"Listen, Ekanu, you know we were thinking about moving deeper before you went to Vinaeo. And now we're together again. Who knows where they'll send you next? And I thought..."
Denifar trailed into uncharacteristic silence.
If he insisted on this conversation, Ekanu thought, she might as well keep it moving. "You thought we should have sex," she said, fingers dancing into a Semrin tune, a wordless dance used on festival nights when the Sun was blind and the people, free from their bounds, let lust and hatred and every other forbidden desire reign free.
Denifar blinked. "Well, I wouldn't put it like that, but yes, that's more or less what I was trying to say. I really do think a lot of you, I respect you and your talent, I think you're beautiful, and I'd like to try something more than just friendship."
Ekanu swallowed, shifting unconsciously into a Vinaean lament. "Beautiful?" Her? She was so unlike the Estarian women -- hair too dark and coarse, skin too ruddy under the bronze, face too round, nose too wide -- how could he think she was beautiful?
"Yes. Your eyes, the way they shine when you're excited, and the way your smile lights up your face. And you have amazing fingers." Denifar reached out, hitching the chair forward, to still her hands on the guitar. "You see?" he asked, holding her right hand between them, fingers spread. "I love your hands."
Then he grinned. "You also have nice breasts."
Ekanu snatched her hand away and swatted him, smiling despite herself. Now there was the Denifar she knew, and, yes, loved. She simply wasn't certain how she loved him. Not to marry, she thought -- not that she could marry anyway, not until she had her woman-making -- but maybe enough to take him for a lover.
"I have decided," she told him, "that it's unfair for you to have an opinion on my breasts while I don't have an opinion on your penis. Here's a bed. Strip, and if I think you're worth having sex, we can get right to it."
"Ekanu!" Denifar sputtered, waving his hands. "What, now?"
She shrugged, standing and carrying her guitar over to its canvas and leather case. "Why not? You want to, I want to, and the door has a lock."
"But just like that? What about romance? Seduction?"
Ekanu smiled to herself. "What mean 'seduction,' Denifar? I do not understand word. My people, when we want sex, we find lover, make sex. You not ask woman, be my lover?"
Denifar gaped. "What? Ekanu, are you all right?"
Oh, it was so fun to tease him! "Don't worry," she said, walking over and pulling him up from the chair. "I know what you mean. I just don't see why we should bother, not when we already know each other so well. But if you want to wait, I'll wait."
"No waiting." Denifar grinned ruefully. "You caught me by surprise, that's all -- sometimes I forget you aren't from Estara, so I don't need to convince you that Nesta still watches over those who wander off the path to enjoy the Serpent's garden."
"You have a stupid religion," Ekanu muttered. "Even more stupid than the Semrin, and theirs is deeply stupid. Be glad I'm an unbeliever."
"Eh, holy is holy. This is about us."
Denifar leaned in for a kiss, and Ekanu reached for the laces of his shirt.
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"I have a question," Soshimu said abruptly, walking into Ekanu's makeshift office as she picked her way through an unfamiliar tune from Yfane's collection. "I need someone to write the words for my songs. What language should I use?"
"Answer my question and I'll answer yours," Ekanu said, fingers still moving quietly over the strings of her guitar. "This song, 'Shaelin and the Rainbow' -- you know where it comes from, how old it is?"
Soshimu sniffed. "It's from the early days of exile, when we were still learning the spirits of the islands. They're different from the old spirits of the eastern mountains -- lighter, more capricious. I don't know who wrote it."
"Thank you." Ekanu nodded, setting her guitar aside and giving Soshimu her full attention. "As to language, there are operas in Estaria in many languages -- Meruan, Fiarin, Common, Rhenish, Sinakha -- so it may not matter as much as you think. You should provide a translation if your librettist uses old Hlaenish, but people will listen anyway. However, you'll probably draw a larger audience if you use Common."
"I see. I'll get Lya-Lya to write in the old language." Soshimu touched his fingertips to his forehead, bowed stiffly from the waist, and left as abruptly as he'd entered.
"Strange boy," Ekanu muttered, returning to Yfane's papers. But she was unable to concentrate.
Lya-Lya. Denifar. They tumbled over and around in her thoughts, drawing her down twisting roads, until even the music couldn't bring her back.
Sex with Denifar was good -- more than good, in Ekanu's opinion. But somewhere in their joining, they'd lost the easy banter and understanding of their differences. Denifar was looking at her strangely these days, speaking as though it was a foregone conclusion that she'd return to Estara with him. She liked Estara -- it had given her shelter for five years, taught her much about the land to which the wind had sent her -- but the wind had sent her to explore and learn, not to squat in one camp and close her eyes to the world.
Lya-Lya disturbed Ekanu. The girl had persuaded her to join a teaching party to the villages of Na'eraelu, and while she enjoyed watching Lya-Lya interact with the children, and eagerly gathered scraps of old Hlaenish, she was uncomfortable watching these people preserve their ways. They knew who they were. They had others to remind them.
Who was she away from her people? Who was she when she thought in a new language? Who was she when she wore her hair loose for Denifar?
Ekanu stared blankly at the music on her desk.
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"The mechanists at Ikuthula'ech have some interesting songs -- I think you'd call them work shanties. Come along while we're building the new pumps and wheels."
Ekanu sighed. "What would I do with my students while I'm gone?"
"Bring them along! Everyone should know a little about mechanics, especially here since the waterworks keep them fed." Denifar grinned. "I get my own house since I'm the visiting expert."
Hmm. "I think I could leave the class for a sixday, and it would be good for Soshimu to get out of the chapterhouse..."
"Great! I'll go tell Ylimae to add four people to the caravan." Denifar kissed Ekanu on the forehead, stuffed his last piece of bread into his mouth, and left her sitting at the Masters' Table, slightly bemused.
"I don't remember actually agreeing," she murmured.
Aelifa, who was sitting across from her, smiled. "That's always the way with men. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile and never notice they've left you falling behind. Some of them can be trained out of it, but I don't think your Master Rollesdun is one of them."
Ekanu sighed. "No, he isn't; he always does what he wants. I never really noticed that before."
"He wasn't yours before -- you didn't need to notice." Aelifa patted Ekanu's hand. "You have two choices: either you let him take the miles and learn to live with it, or you stop giving him the inches. You're a capable woman, and you've done far more with Yfane's students and papers than we'd ever hoped. I think you'll do well with whatever choice you make."
"Oh. Thank you." Ekanu toyed with her spoon, and set it aside; suddenly she didn't particularly want more soup, not even today's fish with sticky rice-noodles, which she'd become inordinately fond of during her time here on Na'eraelu.
"I have to go."
Aelifa nodded sympathetically. "The Goddess grant you luck. And don't choose too quickly."
"Right."
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Ikuthula'ech -- which, Lya-Lya said, while etymologically related to the words for 'child' and 'water,' didn't actually mean anything -- was a tiny village high in one of the numerous erosion-channel valleys of Na'eraelu, deep into the central mountains. The local irrigation systems were quite simple, depending solely on water flowing downhill. The farmers dug a channel from a high point in the stream, shunted water through a series of flooded rice fields, and let it drain back into the stream.
"Nice, simple, and efficient," Denifar said. Ekanu agreed.
This valley -- Gohril Wyefuelo -- was one of the last well-watered areas before the drier highlands and the true desert. The highlands were fine as they were, according to the Hlaenor, since they could be planted with wheat and other cereal grains, or used to support herds. But the deserts were useless -- they were nothing but broken rock, volcanic glass, pockets of sand, and occasional bits of scrub clinging to life in a fragile layer of soil.
Traditional Hlaenish irrigation systems depended on a convenient source of water. Some work had been done to divert streams high up in the central mountains, rerouting them toward the desert areas, but eventually these efforts ran afoul of the bones of the earth -- the ridges that caught the rain and channeled the streams away from the deserts in the first place.
"Basically, you either have to carve through the mountains or pump water over the ridges," Denifar explained to Ekanu and her students. "Your people have been working to cut passes through the ridges, but it's slow going. I'm here to help build some new pumps and waterwheels that we hope will get water over the ridges to where it's needed. They won't be very efficient -- that is, we'll lose a lot of water since we'll need it to run the wheels at various levels -- but at the moment, no water is crossing, so if we can make this work at all, it won't really matter how efficient the system is."
He grinned. "At least, it won't matter for a few years. Then people will start setting up farms over in the desert and they'll complain that they want more water. And all the mechanists around here will have to figure out ways to improve the system. That's progress for you -- nobody's ever happy, no matter how much better things get!"
Soshimu snorted disdainfully. "We've done just fine on our own for generations. We don't need your Estarian ideas."
Lya-Lya smacked him on the shoulder. "Don't say that, idiot! It doesn't matter where an idea comes from as long as it works. This will let us have more food, which means the good years will be better and the bad years won't be so bad."
"The Estarians will take it all," Soshimu muttered.
Denifar and Ekanu exchanged suffering glances. 'Is he always like this?' Denifar's raised eyebrow asked. 'Yes, unfortunately,' Ekanu's drooping shoulders answered.
"I assure you, we have no interest in your rice," Denifar said. "We prefer our own wheat and corn, and think your rice is rather tasteless. In any case," he continued, before Soshimu could interrupt with questions about what could possibly be wrong with Hlaenish rice, or a reminder that the Hlaenor also cultivated wheat, "this project is run by your own people; I'm just here to give advice.
"Now, go get settled in your rooms. Ekanu will come around to talk with you later." Denifar waved the three students off, and wrapped his arm around Ekanu's shoulders.
"That boy is something else," he murmured. "What did we ever do to him?"
"We did nothing. Your ancestors, however, chased his ancestors out of Estaria. For some reason he takes that personally." Ekanu narrowed her eyes. "Thank you for getting rid of them, but next time, I'll deal with my students myself."
Denifar ducked his head, a half-guilty, half-pleased look on his face. "Sorry. But you have to admit, if I didn't do something, that Soshimu would never have stopped arguing."
"He does listen to reason, eventually," Ekanu said. "Though that may be because I'm not really Estarian. But let's not argue."
"There are definitely things I'd rather do than argue," Denifar said, grinning. "Shall we?"
Ekanu lifted her guitar case and bag, and followed Denifar to the guest house set aside for their use. Two whole rooms and their own pump! They could stay inside for the rest of the day if they wanted. She shivered with anticipation, remembering the touch of Denifar's hands, deft from years of working with fine clockwork mechanisms and gears, and the feel of his skin under her own fingers.
Yes, there were definitely better things to do than argue.
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The catering job went well. I'm going back Saturday morning for another round. Yay income! (But oww, my aching feet...)
But while I've spun a number of threads and I have a rough feeling of how they'll come together, I'm not yet certain of the details. So I'm posting this as part one. Part two will come whenever I get around to finishing it.
While I have your attention, here are a few quick notes on Hlaenish pronunciation:
A as in father
E as in fee
I as in pick
O as in hole
U as in puma
Y as in why
AE as in sundae
CH as in Bach or loch (back of the throat, not between the teeth)
HR or HL as a softened, wetter version of the consonant that follows the H.
The occasional apostrophes between the letters A and E are not actually pronounced; they just signal that the A and the E are pronounced separately.
Of course, this has no bearing on words and names in Common or Arhadikim. And it probably doesn't really matter to general understanding of the story, but I thought I might as well mention it. Because the name Yfane is pronounced Eye-fah-nee, not Yuh-faen. And if I didn't explain the rules up front, no one would know that.
*innocent smile*
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Harvest
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Ekanu stared through the open door in disbelief. Shelves lined the walls, groaning under the weight of haphazardly stacked papers. Baskets hung from the ceiling and covered the floor in untidy piles. A small blizzard of scraps had exploded across the battered desk.
"As you can see," said Aelifa ka Nyo, waving a hand at the chaos, "Mistress Yfane was somewhat less than organized." She coughed. "Which is why we asked you here. She had been working on a collection of our folksongs, which she wanted to send to Master Sintarris in Estara, but when she died unexpectedly, nobody knew where to find it.
"We'd also like you to catalogue her papers while you're here, since Yfane was the only musician resident at our chapterhouse, and," -- here Aelifa looked down and mumbled, an unexpected action from the Speaker of the Na'eraelu chapterhouse council -- "possibly also take on her students until we can hire a new music Master."
Ekanu nodded. She'd wondered why the Na'eraelu chapterhouse was so eager to host her, and why no Masters from the other University chapterhouses in Gwynorae had been willing to come instead, leaving her -- in Estara -- as the nearest available candidate. Obviously they'd had more information, and hadn't wanted to tangle with this mess.
"I see," she said eventually. "This... this may take a long time. And yes, I'll teach the students. They will be free sometime soon?"
"Oh, yes," Aelifa said. "They'll be in the Great Hall for dinner, along with everyone else. I can send them to your table -- you will be at the Masters' Table?"
"I think so, yes. But I'd prefer to eat then -- send them to me tomorrow, one at a time. For now, I'll see what needs to be done here." Ekanu steeled herself and walked into Yfane's cluttered room, shutting the door on the flustered Aelifa.
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Denifar was waiting at the Masters' Table when Ekanu walked into the Great Hall. He waved her over, and she threaded her way through the heavy oak tables, pausing occasionally to admire the carvings on the vaulted ceiling.
"So how bad is it?" Denifar asked when she sat beside him. "The things I've been hearing from the mechanists are dire."
Ekanu slumped and buried her face in her folded arms. "It's awful. Yfane was the worst packrat I've ever seen, and I think she had an eidetic memory, because she didn't keep any records of what she'd done, where she kept anything, or how she found it -- and she scribbled quotes over everything from books she didn't have. I'll need months."
She raised her head and groped for a nearby bread basket. "They want me to teach her students while I'm here. I've never taught anyone! I can play, but all I've done for three years is organize building, try to hire Masters for Shimat-Mek chapterhouse, and learn more Semrin politics than I ever wanted."
Denifar mopped up some soup with a bread crust. "That's hard," he said sympathetically. "They should have told you up front what the job would be, not waited until we got here. But students can't be as bad as Semrin bureaucrats, right?"
Ekanu shot him a sour look. "You can remember our student years and say that?" Denifar widened his eyes in mock innocence.
"I'm sorry this won't be a true holiday," Ekanu continued, cutting a piece of bread for herself. She looked around. "Where did you get the soup?"
"Serving table," Denifar mumbled through a full mouth, and pointed with his bread crust.
"Swallow first," Ekanu said, from long habit, and walked over to fetch her supper.
---------------------------------------------
Yfane had, it appeared, been teaching a general class on reading musical notation, and had been guiding three pledged students. Ekanu found the class easy enough to deal with, though she occasionally ran into problems with the thick, lilting Gwynorae accent.
The pledged students were another issue. The first, Soshimu oku Thaelae, an aspiring composer, was arrogant and distrustful to the point of xenophobia. "You Estarians drove my people from our old homeland," he told her at their first private meeting, "and there's nothing you can bring from them to teach me."
"I'm not Estarian," Ekanu told him. "I come from Chupu, the Ice, the land of the midnight sun. And we can always learn from each other -- knowing other people makes us look at ourselves with new eyes and hear ourselves with new ears."
"My ears are fine," Soshimu snapped. "Yours must be worn out from trying to hear so many different ways." He slapped a sheaf of papers down on Ekanu's desk -- a rickety thing she'd set up in a storeroom next to Yfane's old room -- and stormed out.
His music was well-written, deeply immersed in the folk songs of Gwynorae and the Hlaenish story cycle traditions, but Ekanu thought it lacked insight, lacked adventure. He would improve with exposure to foreign styles, but he refused to listen when she played him examples on her guitar.
Eventually she turned him loose with instructions to write an opera based on the story cycle of Inathulo, a Hlaenish woman who supposedly outwitted the Estarin Emperor in the days before the Hlaenor fled to Gwynorae. "But we don't sing operas!" Soshimu protested. "They're Estarian, foreign!"
"So you'll be the first one of your people to write one," Ekanu said mercilessly. "If you want to prove your music is better than Estarian music, you'll have to show you can write in their style as well as your own, and do it better. Besides, I promise to take a copy and have it performed in Estara. Don't you want to show them the stories of the Hlaenor?"
Soshimu stalked out, fuming, but Ekanu learned through careful inquiry that he was, indeed, working on the opera -- or at least requesting scores and librettos of other operas to study. She supposed it was a start.
The second student, Laefa oku Daeluach, was Soshimu's polar opposite -- shy, polite, and eager to please. Laefa was a performer, a violinist who wanted nothing more than to leave Na'eraelu and become famous in Estaria or the city-states of Ohiyesa.
Ekanu wasn't much of a violinist, but she put aside two hours every other day to listen to Laefa's playing, and help him adjust to various styles of accompaniment. She also began to teach him Vinaean, which would be a useful language in Ohiyesa; and though she knew nothing about making a living in the higher circles of performance, she wrote to Masters in various chapterhouses, asking if they would help the young man establish himself in their cities.
The third student, Lya-Lya, was Ekanu's favorite. The girl rushed into Ekanu's office for their first meeting, breathless and flushed from running. "Sorry, Mistress Thousandbirds, but I was out helping Nashe with the bees and I only just now looked up and saw the sun and it was almost gone noon already and I hope I'm not too late?"
Ekanu smiled, amused by the flood of words. "You're not too late. But perhaps you should acquire a pocket-clock -- I dread to think how late you might have been on a cloudy day."
The girl blinked, and then laughed. "Very late! But I broke the last clock they lent me, and now I have to watch the sun or ask people for the time." She pressed her hands together, touched her fingertips to her forehead and bowed from the waist -- the traditional greeting of the Hlaenor. "I'm Ka'eshu ka Nosinhre, but call me Lya-Lya. I'm not very responsible."
Ekanu was intrigued. "Responsible? That relates to your name?"
Lya-Lya smiled. "Ka'eshu means 'responsibility' in our old language. We mostly use it for ceremonies these days, though a few people are trying to bring it back as our daily speech. But they call me Lya-Lya, after the songbird."
Lya-Lya was very much like a songbird, Ekanu thought -- always twittering and darting to and fro. She sang well, though her form wasn't polished enough for the great opera houses -- but her ambition was to learn musical theory and eventually teach.
"We're losing the old songs," she told Ekanu, "losing them like we're losing the old language. That's why Mistress Yfane was collecting them. What I want to do is travel and teach them to the children, so we keep our culture alive. That's why we came here to the islands, after all, to keep our ways instead of giving in to the old Empire. But now the enemy isn't so obvious, just trade and new ideas sliding in by pieces."
She saw Ekanu's frown and added, "There's nothing wrong with trade and new ideas, of course! Your friend Master Rollesdun is going to be a big help, with his pumps. We'll be able to water the leeward sides of the islands. But we have to remember who we are, remember our own ways, so the new ones don't sweep us all away."
Ekanu thought about that as she sorted through Yfane's papers, labeling, copying, and binding them in sheaves. She was of a people as proud and old as the Hlaenor -- no, older! -- but she hadn't clung to her own ways. She'd dived into Estara and Vinaeo and Shimat-Mek, learning everything she could about them. All she'd kept from her own people were her tattoos, the half-woman's braid she wove her hair into unless she consciously paid attention to her appearance, and her language -- and she thought as much in Common as Arhadikim these days.
Was Lya-Lya right? Was she losing herself in a flood of other ways?
---------------------------------------------
"I never see you anymore," Denifar said, sneaking up behind Ekanu and draping himself over her shoulders as she sat at the Masters' Table. She set her latest sheaf of Yfane's papers beside her soup bowl and twisted her head to smile up at him.
"I'm busy, yes, but so are you. Where were you last week?"
Denifar waved a hand in a vague circle. "Around. They had me inspecting some of the waterworks and irrigation channels so we can start planning the new pumps. They don't have mines here -- no ready coal for a steam pump -- so we'll have to make do with a series of waterwheels and belts, and maybe a few mules, to run the pumps."
Ekanu shook her head. "I'll never understand your mechanics -- I still don't see how steam can work a pump. Are you sure it isn't just pump-masters' magic?" She felt Denifar inhale to start his habitual, irritated explanations, and forestalled him. "In any case, they must want this irrigation system very badly, to ask for new designs all the way from Estara."
"Oh, you have no idea how much they want it!" Irritation forgotten, Denifar undraped himself and sat beside her, stealing the bread from her plate. "Omaril and Gwitha -- they run the waterworks at Ikuthula'ech, where we're testing the prototype wheels -- tell me they've been working to reclaim the deserts for generations. But it's hard to send water over the ridges between the streams, and the ridges get higher the closer you get to the central mountains."
"Like rolling stones uphill," Ekanu said, snatching her bread out of Denifar's hand. "Get your own, lazybones." She dunked the bread in her soup. "Will you be gone again soon?"
"No, we'll be drawing up plans for a few sixdays. Then I'll be gone for a while, out talking to the farmers and the builders, to see if the plans will work in the field. If we can get a system working here, they plan to copy and adapt it on the other islands. Of course, that many waterworks will need more mechanists to keep the pumps running, and lots of new ideas to improve efficiency -- maybe new building techniques or ways to clear stone as well. I'll have to keep in touch, see what they come up with out here."
As he spoke, Denifar eased his hand toward Ekanu, trying to steal the bread again, but she spotted him and playfully smacked his fingers. He sighed, and reached down the table for a loaf and a knife.
"Can't you ever take pity on a poor, starving young man?" he asked plaintively.
"If I saw one, I might," Ekanu said, grinning.
"I'm hurt. Wounded. Stabbed through the heart." Denifar pointed the knife accusingly at his friend. "My tormented shade will stalk you along your path for all of your days, and even Nesta's embrace won't shield you from my wrath."
"I don't think Nesta embraces an unbeliever," Ekanu said, "but I'll take my chances. I will walk spirit paths into Winter, and lose your shade in blizzards on the Ice."
"Ah, but your spirit shines like the Star itself, and I'll follow it like a beacon through the snow and darkness," Denifar said, sawing a slice off the loaf. "More bread?"
"No, I'm almost done. And I have to meet Laeva shortly." Ekanu sighed and stood, grabbing her papers and bowl. "Will you have time free this evening?"
"I'll find some," Denifar said. "After supper?"
Ekanu nodded. "Good. Come to my room -- it's cleaner than yours."
Denifar rolled his eyes, but mumbled agreement through a full mouth.
---------------------------------------------
Ekanu strummed her guitar, singing softly to herself. "We all come from the Goddess, and to Her we shall return -- like a drop of water flowing to the ocean. We come from the Goddess, and to Her we shall return -- like a drop of rain flowing to the ocean."
"Is that new?" Denifar asked, leaning against the doorframe.
Ekanu blinked. "I can't believe you can still do that. How do you do that?"
Denifar looked puzzled.
"How do you always open my door so I don't notice?" she clarified.
"Talent." Denifar smirked at her groan, and slouched further. "So, is the song new?"
Ekanu idly plucked the tune again, adding a running, thrumming harmony underneath. "It's new to me, but it's old here. I found it in Yfane's papers, along with this translation -- I think it's one of a collection of sacred chants, maybe for funerals. I'll have to ask Lya-Lya."
"Lya-Lya..." Denifar tilted his hand, brows furrowed. "That short, bubbly girl who's always rushing from place to place?"
That was as apt a description of Lya-Lya as Ekanu had yet heard. "Yes, that's Lya-Lya. She's studying to be a teacher and she knows the old Hlaenish culture. She says they're losing their ways on the large islands, like Ynaes Gwylach, Lylaeo, and here on Na'eraelu, but she's from one of the smaller islands -- A'elo Sochaeb, I think -- so she knows the old language and songs."
"Interesting," Denifar said, stepping out of the doorway and closing the door behind himself. He dragged the chair away from the tiny writing-table -- somehow, Ekanu wasn't sure why, she always seemed to acquire one in every room she inhabited for more than a sixday or two -- and straddled it, folding his arms over the chair back.
"But I didn't come here to talk about your students."
"Then, my music?" Ekanu asked lightly, not certain she wanted to follow his lead into more serious topics. "The Hlaenor rely on a Dorian modal scale -- their shorter chants strongly resemble Estaran children's songs, the ones that accompany games. I suspect Eastern influence, going back to the region around Moshylle."
"Interesting," Denifar said flatly. "But that's not what I want to talk about either, and you know it." He sighed and raked his hands through his hair.
"Listen, Ekanu, you know we were thinking about moving deeper before you went to Vinaeo. And now we're together again. Who knows where they'll send you next? And I thought..."
Denifar trailed into uncharacteristic silence.
If he insisted on this conversation, Ekanu thought, she might as well keep it moving. "You thought we should have sex," she said, fingers dancing into a Semrin tune, a wordless dance used on festival nights when the Sun was blind and the people, free from their bounds, let lust and hatred and every other forbidden desire reign free.
Denifar blinked. "Well, I wouldn't put it like that, but yes, that's more or less what I was trying to say. I really do think a lot of you, I respect you and your talent, I think you're beautiful, and I'd like to try something more than just friendship."
Ekanu swallowed, shifting unconsciously into a Vinaean lament. "Beautiful?" Her? She was so unlike the Estarian women -- hair too dark and coarse, skin too ruddy under the bronze, face too round, nose too wide -- how could he think she was beautiful?
"Yes. Your eyes, the way they shine when you're excited, and the way your smile lights up your face. And you have amazing fingers." Denifar reached out, hitching the chair forward, to still her hands on the guitar. "You see?" he asked, holding her right hand between them, fingers spread. "I love your hands."
Then he grinned. "You also have nice breasts."
Ekanu snatched her hand away and swatted him, smiling despite herself. Now there was the Denifar she knew, and, yes, loved. She simply wasn't certain how she loved him. Not to marry, she thought -- not that she could marry anyway, not until she had her woman-making -- but maybe enough to take him for a lover.
"I have decided," she told him, "that it's unfair for you to have an opinion on my breasts while I don't have an opinion on your penis. Here's a bed. Strip, and if I think you're worth having sex, we can get right to it."
"Ekanu!" Denifar sputtered, waving his hands. "What, now?"
She shrugged, standing and carrying her guitar over to its canvas and leather case. "Why not? You want to, I want to, and the door has a lock."
"But just like that? What about romance? Seduction?"
Ekanu smiled to herself. "What mean 'seduction,' Denifar? I do not understand word. My people, when we want sex, we find lover, make sex. You not ask woman, be my lover?"
Denifar gaped. "What? Ekanu, are you all right?"
Oh, it was so fun to tease him! "Don't worry," she said, walking over and pulling him up from the chair. "I know what you mean. I just don't see why we should bother, not when we already know each other so well. But if you want to wait, I'll wait."
"No waiting." Denifar grinned ruefully. "You caught me by surprise, that's all -- sometimes I forget you aren't from Estara, so I don't need to convince you that Nesta still watches over those who wander off the path to enjoy the Serpent's garden."
"You have a stupid religion," Ekanu muttered. "Even more stupid than the Semrin, and theirs is deeply stupid. Be glad I'm an unbeliever."
"Eh, holy is holy. This is about us."
Denifar leaned in for a kiss, and Ekanu reached for the laces of his shirt.
---------------------------------------------
"I have a question," Soshimu said abruptly, walking into Ekanu's makeshift office as she picked her way through an unfamiliar tune from Yfane's collection. "I need someone to write the words for my songs. What language should I use?"
"Answer my question and I'll answer yours," Ekanu said, fingers still moving quietly over the strings of her guitar. "This song, 'Shaelin and the Rainbow' -- you know where it comes from, how old it is?"
Soshimu sniffed. "It's from the early days of exile, when we were still learning the spirits of the islands. They're different from the old spirits of the eastern mountains -- lighter, more capricious. I don't know who wrote it."
"Thank you." Ekanu nodded, setting her guitar aside and giving Soshimu her full attention. "As to language, there are operas in Estaria in many languages -- Meruan, Fiarin, Common, Rhenish, Sinakha -- so it may not matter as much as you think. You should provide a translation if your librettist uses old Hlaenish, but people will listen anyway. However, you'll probably draw a larger audience if you use Common."
"I see. I'll get Lya-Lya to write in the old language." Soshimu touched his fingertips to his forehead, bowed stiffly from the waist, and left as abruptly as he'd entered.
"Strange boy," Ekanu muttered, returning to Yfane's papers. But she was unable to concentrate.
Lya-Lya. Denifar. They tumbled over and around in her thoughts, drawing her down twisting roads, until even the music couldn't bring her back.
Sex with Denifar was good -- more than good, in Ekanu's opinion. But somewhere in their joining, they'd lost the easy banter and understanding of their differences. Denifar was looking at her strangely these days, speaking as though it was a foregone conclusion that she'd return to Estara with him. She liked Estara -- it had given her shelter for five years, taught her much about the land to which the wind had sent her -- but the wind had sent her to explore and learn, not to squat in one camp and close her eyes to the world.
Lya-Lya disturbed Ekanu. The girl had persuaded her to join a teaching party to the villages of Na'eraelu, and while she enjoyed watching Lya-Lya interact with the children, and eagerly gathered scraps of old Hlaenish, she was uncomfortable watching these people preserve their ways. They knew who they were. They had others to remind them.
Who was she away from her people? Who was she when she thought in a new language? Who was she when she wore her hair loose for Denifar?
Ekanu stared blankly at the music on her desk.
---------------------------------------------
"The mechanists at Ikuthula'ech have some interesting songs -- I think you'd call them work shanties. Come along while we're building the new pumps and wheels."
Ekanu sighed. "What would I do with my students while I'm gone?"
"Bring them along! Everyone should know a little about mechanics, especially here since the waterworks keep them fed." Denifar grinned. "I get my own house since I'm the visiting expert."
Hmm. "I think I could leave the class for a sixday, and it would be good for Soshimu to get out of the chapterhouse..."
"Great! I'll go tell Ylimae to add four people to the caravan." Denifar kissed Ekanu on the forehead, stuffed his last piece of bread into his mouth, and left her sitting at the Masters' Table, slightly bemused.
"I don't remember actually agreeing," she murmured.
Aelifa, who was sitting across from her, smiled. "That's always the way with men. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile and never notice they've left you falling behind. Some of them can be trained out of it, but I don't think your Master Rollesdun is one of them."
Ekanu sighed. "No, he isn't; he always does what he wants. I never really noticed that before."
"He wasn't yours before -- you didn't need to notice." Aelifa patted Ekanu's hand. "You have two choices: either you let him take the miles and learn to live with it, or you stop giving him the inches. You're a capable woman, and you've done far more with Yfane's students and papers than we'd ever hoped. I think you'll do well with whatever choice you make."
"Oh. Thank you." Ekanu toyed with her spoon, and set it aside; suddenly she didn't particularly want more soup, not even today's fish with sticky rice-noodles, which she'd become inordinately fond of during her time here on Na'eraelu.
"I have to go."
Aelifa nodded sympathetically. "The Goddess grant you luck. And don't choose too quickly."
"Right."
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Ikuthula'ech -- which, Lya-Lya said, while etymologically related to the words for 'child' and 'water,' didn't actually mean anything -- was a tiny village high in one of the numerous erosion-channel valleys of Na'eraelu, deep into the central mountains. The local irrigation systems were quite simple, depending solely on water flowing downhill. The farmers dug a channel from a high point in the stream, shunted water through a series of flooded rice fields, and let it drain back into the stream.
"Nice, simple, and efficient," Denifar said. Ekanu agreed.
This valley -- Gohril Wyefuelo -- was one of the last well-watered areas before the drier highlands and the true desert. The highlands were fine as they were, according to the Hlaenor, since they could be planted with wheat and other cereal grains, or used to support herds. But the deserts were useless -- they were nothing but broken rock, volcanic glass, pockets of sand, and occasional bits of scrub clinging to life in a fragile layer of soil.
Traditional Hlaenish irrigation systems depended on a convenient source of water. Some work had been done to divert streams high up in the central mountains, rerouting them toward the desert areas, but eventually these efforts ran afoul of the bones of the earth -- the ridges that caught the rain and channeled the streams away from the deserts in the first place.
"Basically, you either have to carve through the mountains or pump water over the ridges," Denifar explained to Ekanu and her students. "Your people have been working to cut passes through the ridges, but it's slow going. I'm here to help build some new pumps and waterwheels that we hope will get water over the ridges to where it's needed. They won't be very efficient -- that is, we'll lose a lot of water since we'll need it to run the wheels at various levels -- but at the moment, no water is crossing, so if we can make this work at all, it won't really matter how efficient the system is."
He grinned. "At least, it won't matter for a few years. Then people will start setting up farms over in the desert and they'll complain that they want more water. And all the mechanists around here will have to figure out ways to improve the system. That's progress for you -- nobody's ever happy, no matter how much better things get!"
Soshimu snorted disdainfully. "We've done just fine on our own for generations. We don't need your Estarian ideas."
Lya-Lya smacked him on the shoulder. "Don't say that, idiot! It doesn't matter where an idea comes from as long as it works. This will let us have more food, which means the good years will be better and the bad years won't be so bad."
"The Estarians will take it all," Soshimu muttered.
Denifar and Ekanu exchanged suffering glances. 'Is he always like this?' Denifar's raised eyebrow asked. 'Yes, unfortunately,' Ekanu's drooping shoulders answered.
"I assure you, we have no interest in your rice," Denifar said. "We prefer our own wheat and corn, and think your rice is rather tasteless. In any case," he continued, before Soshimu could interrupt with questions about what could possibly be wrong with Hlaenish rice, or a reminder that the Hlaenor also cultivated wheat, "this project is run by your own people; I'm just here to give advice.
"Now, go get settled in your rooms. Ekanu will come around to talk with you later." Denifar waved the three students off, and wrapped his arm around Ekanu's shoulders.
"That boy is something else," he murmured. "What did we ever do to him?"
"We did nothing. Your ancestors, however, chased his ancestors out of Estaria. For some reason he takes that personally." Ekanu narrowed her eyes. "Thank you for getting rid of them, but next time, I'll deal with my students myself."
Denifar ducked his head, a half-guilty, half-pleased look on his face. "Sorry. But you have to admit, if I didn't do something, that Soshimu would never have stopped arguing."
"He does listen to reason, eventually," Ekanu said. "Though that may be because I'm not really Estarian. But let's not argue."
"There are definitely things I'd rather do than argue," Denifar said, grinning. "Shall we?"
Ekanu lifted her guitar case and bag, and followed Denifar to the guest house set aside for their use. Two whole rooms and their own pump! They could stay inside for the rest of the day if they wanted. She shivered with anticipation, remembering the touch of Denifar's hands, deft from years of working with fine clockwork mechanisms and gears, and the feel of his skin under her own fingers.
Yes, there were definitely better things to do than argue.
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The catering job went well. I'm going back Saturday morning for another round. Yay income! (But oww, my aching feet...)
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Date: 2004-10-15 04:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-15 08:55 pm (UTC)