The Totem-Maker (part fifty-four)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Six

A First Road

(part fifty-four)

I could not swear this was true. I’d had nothing in my life to do with butchery, or with physic, and I wondered for the first time, what is that threshold? What proof life has flown?

In my own speech, then, but aloud for the benefit of my comrades, I begged Zablenen to forgive me. First, that I did not know his proper name, nor whether I erred in addressing him at all; again, that he forgive our mixed party of neighbors to his worshipers, our clumsiness in sacrifice, our ignorance of his will; at last, that he withhold not from us his mercy, in calming the waters of our crossing.

The waters showed no sign of calming. I was led to my ship.

I will tell you its construction. Two masts, the bow quite long and thin, upcurving to a carven shape like a snail’s shell. But meant for one I doubt, as men and beasts in pursuit of great enterprise decorated both sides, drowned at the waterline. The sleeping deck sat highest, tented by hides, closed by a few measures of planking. It was the place I must live for some weeks.

On the deck below were our many pots of provisions, their weight made perfect, no more on the left than on the right. Lowest, and always airing freely, for the center was laid across with the split trunks of great trees, was the horse deck. The sides of this were raised and floored for the rowers, and also cargo was distributed here, the heavy engines of war.

Asea, our berth sat a terrifying height above the oars, and the men accustomed to sailing engaged in acrobatics without a care, skipping from one side to the other.

For company I had Jute and Egdoah.

I worked daily on learning his language, while he learned mine. We took lessons as well in the lay of creation, together from a map. A map must be no marvel to my worldly readers, who have bent and plotted over scrolls of cloth, painted with shapes of nations and names of seas, islands known inhabited, others barren, where no fresh water may be had. And coves where ships may anchor safe, cities of trading peoples giving welcome…

But I had never used a map. I had seen shrines pointed in symbol on crossroad stones. And ways, by landmark; but here was math again, a small measure by grid or arc, by formula, that could grow to a god’s-eye view.

The sea beyond ken was not marked by lettering, but by signs like the symbols of my tiles. Egdoah shrugged, and said he did not read these runes. Princes and wise men used them, and could tell their meaning.

“But you, Jute?”

“No, why would they have taught me?”

I pressed this near-admission. “Our written signs are not thought too high for even a slave. You have been helping me set down Egdoah’s words.”

She muttered, and with my ear tuned to the northern speech, I felt she had called ours a pig’s tongue. Perhaps not. I turned to Egdoah, and said, “So?”

The syllable meant why. I traced a finger straight across the Zablenen, a long, narrow body of water between island-studded coasts. There were monsters, and in these depths they would reign. But Egdoah, understanding, said another thing.

“Pirates,” Jute told me.

58

A First Road

The Totem-Maker (part fifty-five)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)