Defiance. That’s what the gods of this miscreated land had to put back into their people.
The gods take unlikely shapes, and so do their champions. This one’s name was Fi. He was a straight-backed young man, whose skin tanned slowly and burned quickly, and he was allowed to keep his hair short as a sign of seniority among his fellow servants. Not that he was actually the eldest. At fifteenish, he was almost the youngest of his mistress’s four humans.
He gangled over the rolling mounds of pink and purple brain coral that thrived in the rain shadow of the mountain. The rains had been kind to the coral pickers this season. The fruitbuds of these corals were the staple crop of the region, and with so much water pouring down from the saturated afternoon skies, the buds were swollen and sweet with a fragrance like honeyed wine. One had to know how to pick them—that’s what a coral picker was good for. You couldn’t just pluck the fruitbuds out, as they would burst and stain your fingertips lavender for five days and no less. The sign of the lowest foundling. They needed a twist, a wiggle, often a rocking back and forth, and occasionally just to be left there in the coral. A stubborn fruitbud was a sour fruitbud. You left them for the birds, who used the acids in them to stay aloft. The birds of Defia had no feet: they lived and died in the air, flapping from one feeding ground to another, ever searching for spider fibers to build net-nests with. The net-nests, once vacated of their lighter-than-air eggs, were a source of high-quality silk, and so it was best for everyone to leave the stubborn fruitbuds where they were. This is what experienced coral pickers knew.
What the mistress knew were colors and names. Seasons and regions. Weather and rumors and scents on the breeze. The mistress’s kind knew everything there was to know about the corals on the hillsides and on the lows, and when they imagined that there was something they did not know, they were always quick to make it up, to hum that missing line into the verse. That was how songs were sung and knowledge was spun, and humans didn’t question it, because humans didn’t want to starve. Fi’s mistress supplied her servants with direction, impetus, purpose, livelihood. Her servants, in return, leant her their fingers. Because the mistress had no fingers. Because the mistress was a sanedeer.
Sanedeer are distinguished from regular deer by two immediately apparent attributes.
First, their command of spoken language is unmatched in all of Defia. Every Sanedeer knows six languages: one for morning, one for midday, one for evening, one for nighttime, one spoken only with close friends and relatives, and one for inner monologue. This last language each individual develops themself as they mature, and it is taboo to speak it aloud. (Though of course, it is every sanedeer’s guiltiest and most exciting pleasure to listen to the secret personal language of another.)
Second, they obsessively cultivate flower vines on their antlers. A sanedeer’s antler garden is thought to be the physical embodiment of their soul; sanedeer have been known to walk alone into the century caves when the vines on their antlers unexpectedly whither. Now, it is a tedious task indeed to tend to flower vines on one’s head without a set of arms and fingers of one’s own, so in this regard, too, humans come in quite handy. (Sanedeer never seem to tire of that pun.)
Like all adult sanedeer, Fi’s mistress had six names—one in each language—and Fi had the rare honor of knowing five of them. Because the fifth of these was the most significant to Fi, we will refer to his mistress only by this name: Weylan. Let it be duly noted that Fi only addressed his mistress this way when others were out of earshot.
Fi found Weylan right where they’d left her that morning: lounging in the shade of her sedan chair’s canopy on top of a rise of titian coral that was currently out of season, mumbling her way through a half-finished song with her eyes closed. The wisteria on her antlers always made it look like she had her head up in purple clouds. Fi set down his six stackable baskets and waited sitting on his heels for Weylan to get to the end of the song. It was dreadfully bad luck to interrupt a song, even a half-finished one.
Finally, Weylan opened her beady black eyes and noticed Fi. “Back already? What’s transpired, pray tell?”
Fi unstacked his baskets and presented the contents of each one as he spoke. “It’s a good harvest, as predicted. I’ve never seen roseate buds so big before.” Per protocol, each basket of buds also came with a piece of the hard coral that the buds had come from, chipped off with a hammer and chisel. It wasn’t enough to examine a bud—two identical scarlet and vermilion-speckled buds could come from completely different corals, and one might be a fine appetizer and the other a fatally powerful blood coagulant. Before Fi was born, his uncle had eaten a pink bud straight from the coral, thinking it was a stimulant. The poor man had then gone blind and forgotten how to breathe. It behooved one to cut corals, not corners.
Sanedeer, who delighted in inventing new words for concepts like the type of line that is 75% closer to being dotted than dashed, or the type of breeze that brings up feelings of nostalgia for one’s mother, had an innate genius for mentally cataloging the myriad forms of fruit-bearing corals and their uses. Most humans never got much farther than the first basic lesson about coral fruitbuds: most of them were poisonous. Thus, though humans could gather fruitbuds with enviable efficiency, they relied on the sanedeer to tell them which ones to pick.
This is why Fi wore a collar around his neck, and not Weylan. Weylan had purchased Fi when he was eight years old, from a cousin of hers who owned a mated pair of humans. Fi got to visit his parents twice a year (at least, when relations between Weylan and her extended family were amiable). But now there was a secret between Weylan and Fi—the reason Fi had the privilege of keeping his hair trimmed as short as a sanedeer’s fur coat. The reason the coral hammer he wore on his belt was a real stael one that had been carried along on the trade winds all the way from Old Decam. The reason Weylan had casually revealed her fifth name to Fi, and then later insisted that Fi use it.
The reason that Fi had dared come back with his baskets at noon this day, well before his day’s work should have been done.
Weylan observed, “Your baskets are half-empty. What has obstructed you?”
Fi bowed his head. His sweating wasn’t only from the sun. “I need your help,”—the intimate fifth name was still awkward on his tongue—“Weylan.” He forced his chin up, his bright eyes to the sanedeer’s dark beads. “Will you sing a song for me?”
“He asks for a song!” Weylan stamped a hoof. “Ah, but I wish there were more mystery to this. Alas, there is only one reason young humans ever ask for songs. You endeavor to impress a potential mate, to let my cantos do the courting for you, as it were.”
Fi nodded. “I am at your mercy.”
Weylan huffed. “Of course you are, slave. A request, nay, a plee, nay, a challenge brought to me when you should be out reaping the fruits of the earth! Normally I welcome a lyrical challenge, but this, this impossibility you set before me, I’m am at a loss as whether to be awed or insulted by it.”
Fi listened and listened. It was all you could do with sanedeer.
Weylan finally found her way toward her point. “You see, my faithful little Fi, I would like nothing more than to craft a splendid song for you. But you are bereft of singable qualities, destitute of song-worthy deeds and doings to endow you with dramatic depth. What valor have you? What voice? What fame to your name? And though I have never been an avid judge of human beauty, I am fairly certain that you are not a particularly handsome male specimen. Am I wrong?”
Fi’s legs were becoming sore from kneeling on the coral. “No, madam.”
Weyland took a moment to stretch on her sedan chair. “Your sole redeeming quality is that you are a most excellent coral picker.” Weyland paused a moment, and Fi stared at her in that unnerving way that humans could, with their two forward facing-eyes. She continued more softly. “Truly, I wish I could do you this favor, Fi. Nay, this honor. A deserved one, I think. But simply being a most excellent coral picker just isn’t song worthy.”
Fi bowed his head again. “I understand.” He moved to stack his baskets again, a little too quickly. Some of his fruitbuds flew free, fleeing down the slope. One was batted left and then right, pursued by a witten. Fi noted this in the back of his mind. The invisible little creatures were always trying to sneak into his baskets, and he didn’t want their sandy little paws all over his fruitbuds.
“Halt yourself,” Weylan commanded. “While you’re here, I happen to require your judgement.” She tilted her head to indicate a basket set beside her haunch. “Please talk me out of eating one of these.”
Fi raised his eyebrows at the phrasing of this task, picked up the basket, and then withdrew back to a respectful distance. He examined the dozen fruitbuds and the chip of coral in the basket: night-blue buds with white spots picked from what looked to be a flaxen pillar coral. Fi searched the songs he knew for a moment, then dropped the basket, laughing nervously. “These are deathheads! A half-minute head poison with no known antidote. Why would you eat one of these?”
Weylan clicked her teeth. “That’s exactly what I said to Wella when she brought them to me, skipping with exuberant glee that she’d discovered a fruited coral that she’d never seen before. Naturally I reprimanded her for picking so many before inquiring with me as to exactly what they were, and then I commanded her to wash her hands with the utmost thoroughness. However…” She tilted her head toward the basket, the wisteria swinging about her. “Now I am remembering another song about a very rare coral fruit called wishstars.”
Fi blinked. “Isn’t that from a nursery rhyme?”
“A song is a song is a song!” Weylan retorted. “Observe the buds closely: deathheads are said to have three spots for the three all-seeing eyes of the Cold, while wishstars, so the legend goes, have a ‘star for each singing tongue.’ And the buds we have here have six spots.”
Fi examined them, confirming the count, but then countered, “They could be double-segmented deathheads. It’s not unusual after such wet weather.
Weylan’s voice rose. “But look at the leaves! Deathheads aren’t supposed to have leaves!”
The fruitbuds had little grey frills around their stems. Fi picked one off and mashed it between his fingers, feeling the consistency. “Not leaves, madam. A type of coral mold, I think. Also not unusual after wet weather.”
Weylan stamped a hoof. “I should think I know a leaf when I see one!”
Fi gave her an even look. “With respect, Weylan, this is mold. And besides, I don’t believe wishstars are supposed to have leaves either.”
Weylan whipped the wisteria around her head, irritated. “You’re right, of course. You’re always right.” And there it was. Only ever implied, but really no secret at all. Weylan hadn’t chosen which brain corals to pick that day, nor had Weylan predicted that harvest. The mistress hadn’t even decided where to set down her own sedan chair that morning. Fi knew what the sanedeer knew. Fi knew the coral fields even better than some of them, as a matter of fact. He had the gifts of memory and discernment, thought to be rare in humans during this epoch.
An idea occurred to Fi. “We could look at the color of the juice.”
Weylan snorted happily. “Oh, let’s!”
Fi carefully threw one of the unidentified fruitbuds against a nearby outcrop of broken coral, making sure that none of the potentially poisonous juice splashed them. They called out the color of the splattered juice as they saw it.
“Burgundy!”
“Crimson.”
Weylan turned to Fi, declaring with finality, “That is the burgundy juice of the fabled wishstar fruitbud.”
Fi suppressed a sigh and replied, “I believe that is the crimson juice of a deathhead. And given the consequences of being wrong in this, I highly recommend not eating one of these fruitbuds.”
“Very well, you’ve talked me out of it!” Weylan snapped, whipping the wisteria around again. “Oh, but just think of the fortune that we would come into if…” She was silent for a long moment—pensive—which Fi had learned to interpret as an ill omen. Then Weylan called out, “Morul!”
Morul came galumphing up to them soon enough. He was the oldest of Weylan’s humans and had the longest arms and most callused knuckles. In answering the mistress’s call, he’d thoughtlessly left his baskets beside whatever coral he’d been picking, and his fingers and lips were stained lavender. He had the longest mane of hair, falling down his bare back in tangled gray dreads.
Weylan gave him the one command that she could always rely on him to carry out. “Morul, dear, try one of these delicious fruitbuds.”
Fi’s breath caught behind his tongue as Morul grabbed one of the maybe-deathheads/maybe-wishstars out of the basket. He crushed it in his greedy mitt and tossed the pulp into his mouth, then nodded vigorously, making pleased sounds as he licked his crimson/burgundy palm clean. He didn’t seem to notice the way that Weylan and Fi were staring at him as half a minute went by.
When he didn’t fall down dead, Weylan said, “Thank you, Morul. Return to your picking now.”
Morul nodded and thumped himself away on his toes and knuckles.
Weylan clicked her teeth as she watched him go. “There really do need to be stronger regulations on inbreeding. However…” She leaped up and did a four-legged little jig on her sedan chair. “We’ve discovered a wishstar coral! Onward to wealth, health, and glamor!” But she stopped when she saw the unprecedented expression on Fi’s face, half disbelief and half contempt. “Well what are you so glum about? Yes, this means that Wella will be my favorite servant for a little while, but you’ll work your way back to the top in no time, I’m sure.”
Fi slowly shook his head, keeping close control over his temper. “Morul might have been killed just now.”
Weylan cocked her head to the side. “Worried about Morul? But you don’t even like that brute! He crashes around like a drunken tornado and then snores worse than a hungover thunderstorm.”
Fi took a breath, wanting to speak as clearly as possible. “He doesn’t deserve to be poisoned for that.”
Weylan regarded him for a moment—a silent, pensive moment. “My dear little Fi, are you presuming to instruct me on what I shall and shall not do with my two-legged chattel?”
Fi said nothing in reply, the only sign of defiance he had ever allowed himself up to that day.
Weylan watched him for another moment, and then mused, “Now that may be worthy of a song. How interesting. Something for me to play with. But in the meantime, you must round up all the others and direct the wishstar harvest, posthaste. Off you go, Fi.”
Fi nodded, collected up his baskets, and returned to his duty. He kept his thoughts inside his head, where they would only do harm to him slowly, like frost collecting on an ever more fragile tree. Even in such moments, he was a good slave. And perhaps he would have remained that way his whole life, his body wearing out before his self-control did, if he hadn’t sighted someone unfamiliar coming over a purple rise of coral in the distance.
Fi raised his hand in greeting, and she did as well. He went toward her, scanning around for other strangers. It was a courtesy among coral pickers to make introductions whenever two groups encountered one another for the first time—and their sanedeer owners always expected a prompt report of who else was in the area.
But this woman seemed to be alone. Hers was dark skin that would neither tan nor burn easily, and she seemed to advance over the terrain more swiftly than her small frame and bare feet should have allowed. As they neared one another, Fi suddenly felt very exposed, defenseless, which was an odd feeling, he told himself, as this young woman was surely as exposed and defenseless as he. But something in the way she looked at him, something in the sharpness of her eyes, seemed to suggest a spirit that bore its own shadowed fortress within itself.
Fi found himself gulping as they stopped in front of each other, close enough to speak. “Are you lost?” he asked.
She replied with words he did not understand. When he showed no comprehension, she spoke a little louder. The slow, blended sounds of this language sounded similar to the one the sanedeer reserved for personal conversations, and Fi only knew overheard bits and pieces of this language, hardly more than a handful of words and expressions. The woman kept repeating something, and pointing in every direction at the horizon.
“You’re trying to get somewhere,” Fi said. He gave her an exaggerated shrug to convey his meaning. “But I have no idea where you want to go.”
The woman blew out a breath and muttered something to herself, looking around. Her eyes tracked over the rolling corals, up and across the mountain, and back to Fi, chancing upon the hammer on his belt. Her eyes grew wide, and she pointed to it, speaking excitedly.
Fi drew back a step. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had made a grab for his prized possession of stael.
But it turned out to be the first time that someone succeeded. The woman lunged, grappled, turned, twisted, and somehow Fi wound up doubled over, almost kissing the coral beneath him as the woman locked his arm behind his back with one hand and relieved him of his stael hammer with the other. She let him go and he stumbled gracelessly back up to his feet, trying to roar in fury but really only mewling a bit in frustration, like a trapped witten.
He prepared for a fight, but she was still talking excitedly, pointing to the bottom of the hammer’s handle. She held it out to him, and he snatched it back, and only then, after retreating several steps, did he look at what she was pointing at.
The ten-pointed star on the five-petaled flower. The same mark that every stael relic from Decam bore. Fi looked back to her. “Are you looking for Decam?”
“Decam!” she repeated, nodding. She spoke a long sentence with “Decam” in it several times, and again pointed at different directions around the horizon.
Fi looked at the mountain peak to orient himself and then pointed in the direction opposite it, where Old Decam was said to sit far away, at the lowest of the lows.
The woman smiled at him for a moment with a bright white row of teeth, and nodded her gratitude. She started toward the horizon, just her little self out into the nothing and everything of the world unknown to Fi, and then she paused, and glanced back over her shoulder. She gestured for Fi to follow her.
Fi let out a nervous laugh, as was his habit when something expected and potentially life-ending was presented to him. When she waited for his response, he shook his head a little too quickly, the fingers of his free hand moving without him realizing it to the collar around his neck.
A glimmer of anger passed through the woman’s eyes, hot and quick enough to make Fi flinch. She used that moment to pounce on him, her hands already around his neck as they tumbled to the ground. Fi tried to direct his panicked flailing up at her like a shaped explosion, but the struggle was over as instantly as it had begun. She hadn’t been trying to strangle him; she had just wanted to wrest his collar off.
The woman stood up and cast the collar as hard as she could toward the mountain. Then she winked at Fi, the whites of her eyes flashing, and started off toward Old Decam once more.
Defiance is what the gods had to offer. Not happiness, nor stability, nor even any sense of solace in a careless and capricious world. When asked about what the future promised, they could speak only of Defia being crushed between realms of evil, the foretold formation of a supercontinent of strife and suffering. Fate was written in the fault lines of the planet, spelling the geological inexorability of Defia’s destruction.
Fi knew nothing of any of this on the day he met the one called the Mutineer. The one not shaken by wind nor wave; the one who knew the names of the stars; the one who saw ghosts but never admitted it. To Fi, she was nothing more than a barefoot young woman who had bid him leave his life, and torn off his collar when she saw how it bound him.
But that had been enough for Fi.
This blog is long overdue for a proper entry.
King in Colombia 