Irregular Verbs Read online

  “What if there’s a power failure?”

  “We have enough backup power to run this facility for a month,” the man said. “And if worst comes to worst, we can always start over.”

  “But would it be her? The same her, I mean?” Jen asked.

  The man sighed; he had, Kevin now remembered, a walrus moustache that quivered when he breathed out. “Ms. James—every child is a miracle. To expect to repeat a miracle . . .”

  “But I’ll be—will I be—?” Heather’s voice sounded hollow, somehow. He couldn’t blame her.

  “You’ll be you, honey. You’ll be you.” Jen put her arms around her daughter and held her, and held her, and held her, and held nothing at all.

  Kevin walked over to her, put a useless hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have helped.”

  “S’okay,” his wife said. “It’s—better it was just me. Easier.”

  He said nothing at all for a while; then he crouched down so he was pressed against her back, and held her. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I couldn’t—I couldn’t have. I’m glad you could. You’re right; she needed to know.” He kissed her on the top of her head, his tears falling into her hair. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  There was a rush of imploding air, and an absence; just then, he remembered something else he’d never had time to do.

  THE WISE FOOLISH SON

  The flames are almost to the river, now, and on the other bank we can see our brothers’ homes burning. We had thought ourselves safe here in the north, far from the enemies of our people, where only wild men live. Who is it here that can hate us so much?

  An old man is speaking. He is the only one who speaks the language of the men that live in the forests beyond the river: he, perhaps, can tell us what is happening.

  “Once there were three sons,” the old man says. It might be the light of a campfire flickering against his bearded cheeks, and not a city burning. “The oldest was wise, the second foolish, and the third son was wise-foolish.

  “Do you know what that means? We call a man wise-foolish when he has a foolish mind but a wise heart. This boy was like that, and his name was Dasat.”

  The old man pauses, and we bite our tongues. We are not children, we want to say, to be told such stories, but his are the only answers we have. “The three boys’ father was poor, so he had nothing to give but his blessing. The oldest son did not ask for it, for he was wise enough to know he did not need it, nor did the second son ask for it, for he was foolish enough to believe he did not need it. So it was left for Dasat, wise-foolish, to ask his father’s blessing, and this is what his father said:

  “‘Three things I have given you, my son, though you cannot see them. The first is your good heart, the second the good manners I have taught you, the third the earth that belongs to all. With these three things surely you can win everything you seek.’

  “‘Thank you, father,’ Dasat said, and set off to seek his fortune.

  “As he left, though, his mother stopped him, and gave him a piece of bread wrapped in a handkerchief, saying, ‘Take this, and hungry though you be, always leave a few crumbs tied up in the handkerchief; if you do, it will be a piece of bread again the next day.’

  “In those days we Kamanai neither timbered trees nor cleared land for farms, for fear of Mokos whose soil it was. So Dasat followed the crooked path through the woods, and though he went from house to house there was no fortune for him in any of them, nor even shelter; for in those days the men of our land lived apart from one another, and owed one another no obligations. Before long came winter, the time when Birun, the God in the Tree, dies. The time when the Lord of Lightning goes mad.”

  The hairy man shhed loudly and then sat cross-legged on the ground. He began laboriously turning a wooden pole so it dug into the earth, stopping every few seconds to fan smoke from the pile of fragrant leaves over the hole, and humming: “A-hmm-a-HM-ah, forgive us, Mokos, lady of dark soil and dark winters, this wound; A-hmm-a-HM, forgive us, Lord of Lightning, our trespass against your daughter.” Finally the hole was deep enough for the pole to stand upright. The hairy man stood and allowed the others around him to begin raising the tent around it.

  Guessing it was safe to speak again, Dasatan said, “Still a good bell before sunset.”

  Balat stepped hard on the still-smouldering leaves and ground his foot into them. “Door needs to face south,” the hairy man said, in broken Kavatai. “Need the sun to tell east and west; how can you tell south without east and west?”

  “In your language,” Dasatan said, shaking his head. “My father wants me to get better at it, since none of you know trade signs. Where I come from, we tell north and south by the stars.”

  Balat gestured to the forest canopy above. “If you can see the stars, it’s a bad place for a camp. No shelter from the wind. Nothing to keep snow off your tent.”

  “It’s spring.”

  “It’s never spring,” Balat said. He grinned, an expression with no mirth whatsoever. “Only winter and summer. But summer pays for all.”

  Dasatan said nothing. He had grown up never wearing anything more than a tunic and cloak, and he felt himself slumping under the unfamiliar weight of the jacket Balat insisted he wear. It was a dreadful thing, weighing at least a stone, crudely stitched together from wild sheepskins and still smelling strongly of the piss that had been used to tan it.

  He hated it. He hated this whole country—the endless red birch trees that hid the sun for bells at a time; the nameless winds that crept under his jacket and tunic and froze his blood; the mosquitoes that rose in a humming cloud each time he entered a new stretch of forest, ready to suck the life out of him; the constantly expanding list of rules, against everything from breaking the soil to touching steel; the stinking tents and the stinking men he needed to lead him to the only thing that made coming here worthwhile.

  That last reminded him of something he could get done while waiting for the tent to be raised. He looked around and saw the other ai Kavatai standing together in a knot, their backs to him. No-one was pushing them to learn the language, and they tried their best to avoid the pale, hairy ai Kamanai. He walked over to join them, braced himself to stand tall under their contempt. “Time to earn your keep, Yavan,” he said.

  A short man, clad in a black robe with patchy silver filigree, turned around. The robe failed altogether to hide his stomach, which bulged out of his otherwise thin frame, and he had a head that was nearly bald except for a half-dozen long black hairs. The stone at his staff tip glinted red in the sunlight as he waved it dramatically, drawing his thick eyebrows together in a frown. “Did your father never tell you not to mock a boltforge, boy?” Yavan asked.

  “He did, but I’m sure he wasn’t thinking of you,” Dasatan said. One of the other ai Kavatai laughed. Good: if they had someone else to mock they would find it easier to follow him. “If you were any kind of real boltforge you wouldn’t be out here, with us. Do you think Tivakar spent his nights huddled under a skin tent, cheek-by-jowl with ai Kamanai?”

  Yavan locked eyes with him, gave him a menacing look—Dasatan felt a moment’s anticipation; a snake with only one fang still has venom, after all—then looked away. “Laugh if you will, but I get a finger from each hand of what we bring home. I’ll be spending my nights with more pleasant companions soon enough. Where will you be?”

  He let the question hang, since everyone already knew the answer. His father might have put him in charge of these men, but unlike them he had already risen as far as he could ever go.

  His point won, Yavan drew a broad cloth from nowhere and lay it on the ground. “Pour out today’s goods and I shall, as you say, earn my keep.”

  Dasatan untied the bag at his belt, emptied it onto the black cloth: a dozen stones, ranging from yellow to dark red. Yavan lowered his staff, amber-tipped and twined with copper wire, to hold it near each
of them in turn. This was the reason he was on the trip, the one working he could do well: in his hands the stone at the tip of his staff would glow in sympathy with the stones that were true amber, the blood of the god. If they had even a moderate haul one finger of it would fetch a small fortune from real boltforges, and after that Yavan would indeed have a comfortable life, for a long or a short while according to his tastes. Dasatan, on the other hand, would be here again next spring, or on some other road.

  “Come on,” Dasatan said once the stones had been sorted. He would transfer the true amber to his private pouch, the one worn under his tunic, when he was alone. It was nearly dark, and a cold wind had begun to blow. “Let’s get inside. You, too, Yavan—unless you’d like to stay out here to draw the lightning away from the tent?”

  “So,” the old man goes on, “Dasat knew there was no fortune to be found in the houses of the people, and if he did not find shelter soon he would freeze. Finally he had no choice but to go into the deep forest, though it is a dangerous enough place in the summer and worse in the winter.

  “He made his way slowly into the forest, for the paths were few and overgrown. When the sun was high he stopped and ate nearly all the piece of bread his mother had given him, being sure to save the last few crumbs. Just as he was folding up the handkerchief, though, he heard a cheep-cheep-cheep, and saw above him a tiny bird resting wearily on a bare branch. It was all red but for a single black feather on each wing.

  “Remembering the good manners his father had taught him Dasat took off his hat and said, ‘Good day, gentle bird; is there any service I can give you?’

  “The bird raised its wings, and Dasat could see it was thin and weak under its feathers. ‘I am one of the Day Birds,’ the bird said, ‘who help to pull the sun across the sky from east to west. I fell from my yoke, and have been chasing after my flock ever since. I am now very close, as they are right overhead, but I am so desperately hungry I fear I will never catch them without something to eat.’

  “Dasat, of course, had only those few crumbs left in the handkerchief, and if his mind had been wise he would have kept them; but his heart made him say ‘Noble bird, I would be glad to share with you the little I have.’ He opened the handkerchief, and the bird hopped into his palm and ate up all the crumbs that were left.

  “‘Thank you,’ the bird said, ‘for such is all the meal I need.’ With that, he leapt up into the air and shot off away, so that soon he was only a spot on the sun. Dasat continued on into the forest, wondering what he was to eat now that the last crumbs of bread were gone.

  “Further into the woods he saw the lights of a house.”

  The worst of it, Dasatan thought, was that your feet were always wet. For whatever reason the amber was always found in damp places—swamps, riverbeds, and so on. There were even tales of places, much farther north and west than any Kavatai had ever been, where it was trawled right out of the sea in nets. It would be easier if the ai Kamanai would collect it themselves, so he could just buy it from them, but to them that was sacrilege: they would lead him and his men to where the amber was likely to be, but no more. That meant bells of wading through water and mud, looking for the telltale blue soil in which the stones always sat—just as the Lord of Lightning, whose spilled blood the stones were, made his home within the Blue Sky Lord’s domain.

  The memory of the previous day’s exchange with Yavan was still sour, and Dasatan had allowed himself to stray out of sight of the others. He followed a stream, shallow but cold, similar to places he’d made good finds in the past. Looking down at the water he did not at first notice the sudden darkening, but could not miss the thunder that broke the air. He turned—they had all been instructed by Balat to return to camp if they heard thunder—but though it was just past midday it was nearly too dark to see. He felt a cold, wet kiss on the back of his neck, then another. Snow: within a moment it had filled his eyes and mouth, blinding and choking him. Before ten heartbeats had passed the world around him was gone, replaced by a solid white wall. He cursed that he should die here, not at sea like a true Kavatai: killed not by the Wind of Ill Fortune or even the Wind of Roasting Hazelnuts but by a cold, nameless wind—a wind as dirtborn as he was.

  Dasatan tried to shout, but the snow held his voice close. He stumbled forward, thinking only to get up and out of the riverbed before his feet froze in the water. Never mind finding the others: he needed to get to shelter before this wind and snow killed him. He ran for the distant outline of a group of trees, hoping there would be some protection from the storm beneath them.

  He leaned back against the thin, papery bark of one of the trees, closed his eyes. There was no use even trying to start a fire while the wind was blowing. Far above, thunderbolts cracked as the Lord of Lightning took his strides across the sky. There would be good amber to be found here next year, if he lived that long.

  Long heartbeats later the keening in the air faded and then stopped. Opening his eyes Dasatan saw that the storm had passed, only little orphan-winds remaining to blow the fallen snow along the ground. He looked around and saw nothing but tree after tree. The blowing snow had obliterated his footprints, so that he could not tell which way he had come. The sky was still grey, the sun hidden: he fished in his pouch for his skystone before realizing that knowing south, east, north and west would do him little good in finding his way back to the others. All he could do was keep moving, call out often in case he was near them, and hope. Picking a direction at random he set off, making sure to stay in the shelter of the tall birches in case of another storm.

  After some time he saw a light in the forest, and began to walk towards it.

  “As he got closer, Dasat saw that it was no ordinary house. The walls were made not of wood but of bones, the roof not thatch but hair. There were no windows: what he had thought were firelights were the glowing eyes of the skulls that sat at each corner of the house. A garden lay in front of it, but the plants that grew those were such as Dasat had never seen, and the grass moaned as it waved in the wind. At the foot of the path sat a strange little man, with dark blue skin, a white beard, and a peaked red hat, and so still that Dasat was not even sure he was alive until he spoke.

  “‘Who are you, Kamanai?’ the little man said. ‘Do you not know where you tread? Turn back, now, before it is too late.’

  “Dasat was surprised to hear the little man speaking, but he remembered his manners. ‘Beg pardon, Little Father,’ he said. ‘My name is Dasat. I am come seeking my fortune, but tonight I hope only for shelter and a fire.’

  ““You speak properly,’ the little man said, ‘so I will give you a warning: this is a terrible house. Flee now and you may be safe; stay any longer and death is sure to take you.’

  “‘If I leave here tonight she will take me no matter what, for I am out of food, and winter is coming,’ Dasat said. ‘If you could spare anything, even the tiniest crumb of bread, I would be on my way.’

  “‘I am bound to give nothing away for free,’ the little man said. ‘But here is a bargain for you: if you will gather wood for me you may stay here, and I will bring you some food each day. But you must never, ever go into the house.’”

  It was no more than a gathering of tents, each smaller than the one Balat had erected the night before; still there was a fire-glow from them, a draw Dasatan could not ignore. His hand hovered over his sword hilt as he neared the tents, then drew away as he remembered Balat’s warning against drawing steel—an insult to the Lord of Lightning, he had said. Though Dasatan did not put much stock in these superstitions, he needed to make a good impression. The ai Kamanai were wild men, living not in towns but in camps scattered through the forests, and few were even as hospitable as Balat and his followers.

  A squat, red-haired man emerged when Dasatan was a pole from the nearest tent. Dasatan could not understand him when he spoke, hearing only the man’s sharp tone: the dialect was different from the one he knew, and he realized
now just how slowly Balat had been speaking for his benefit.

  “I am Dasatan, of the ai Daneyanim,” Dasatan said as carefully as he could. “Have you seen or heard any others like me, or some of your people, moving in a group?”

  “No,” the man said, keeping his broad bulk between Dasatan and the tents.

  “Well, might I warm myself by your fire?” Dasatan asked.

  “No.”

  Dasatan took a breath. “I need only to warm myself so I can go and find my companions. I can pay you if you wish.”

  The man’s thick eyebrows rose. “Pay?”

  Smiling, Dasatan unhooked from his belt the sack of trade goods he used to pay Balat and the other ai Kamanai he had hired. Trinkets, really: coral necklaces from Kadain Kisak, silk scarves from Sherez. “I have jewellery that would please any woman. Ribbons, and thread—”

  “Pff,” the man said, and spat into the bushes off to his right. “Do you think me a bachelor, to have to buy a woman’s kisses?” He waved the pouch away. “There is nothing here I want. Go.”

  “If I go now I will freeze to death,” Dasatan said, forcing the words past his teeth.

  The man shrugged. “So what is that to me? Who are you to me? No kin of mine.”

  “I could be warm by now,” Dasatan said, unable to keep his voice calm any longer. “It would cost you no more to let me stand by your fire than to stand here and argue with me.”

  The man leaned in towards Dasatan, his eyes narrowing. “You are no kin to me. I owe you nothing. You have nothing I want. Go.”

  Without even thinking of it Dasatan felt his hand fly to his sword hilt. Flame all these primitive superstitions, he was past worrying about offending the locals. The man’s eyes widened for a moment as the short steel blade cut the air.

  A heartbeat later—or two, or more; he was sure his heart had stopped—Dasatan lay on the ground. His sword had fallen a rod away from his numb, twitching fingers.