I HEAR SONGS ABOUT A BLUE AND WHITE AND GOLD AND GREEN WORLD.
A WORLD THAT BUZZED AND BLEETED WITH THE MAGIC OF LIFE. TOWERING FORESTS, ROILING STEPPE, SHIMMERING SEAS, AND FROM A PALACE OF ICE INSIDE THE BELLY OF A GLACIER, HER VOICE SANG TO ME. AN OLD VOICE, A VOICE AS CLEAR AS THE ICE, AS DEEP AS THE SHEETS OF WHITE THAT SWALLOWED CONTINENTS, THAT SWALLOWED EIGHT THOUSAND CENTURIES AND MORE.Â
HER CALL WAS NOT TO BECKON, FOR THE PATH THAT I FLY IS FIXED. FATED. MOVABLE BY NEITHER WIND NOR WILL. HERS WAS A CALL TO WELCOME, TO PRELUDE MY EXPECTED ARRIVAL, A CALL OF RECOGNITION. ITS MELODY WAS HERALDIC AND GRAND. ITS TONE WAS EERIE AND INTIMATE.
SHE SANG TO ME, THROUGH THAT UNMEASUREDÂ SPAN OF DARKNESS SHE SANG, FROM BEHIND THE PALE GRAIN OF THE SUN, FROM BENEATH LONG LONESOME EONS SHE SANG.
AND ONLY NOW DO I HEAR. HURTLING TOWARD THAT GLITTERING GRAIN AND THE TINY JEWEL OF A WORLD THAT TWISTED AROUND IT. FIXED, FATED, INEVITABLE, IT IS MY DESTINATION AND MY DESTINY. WHEN THE CURVE COMES TO A CLOSE, WHEN THE LAND BEARS MY BRUNT HEADLONG, WHEN THE CRATON CRACKS AND SPLINTERS APART, WHEN THE MOTTLED COLORS OF THAT WORLD ARE MADE PALE, ITS LIVING MAGIC STILLED, CHILLED, COLD, AND BURIED-
ELYMUS SPOKE TO HIMSELF ABOUT THE STARS. His tongue clicked out the one hundred fourty-four syllables that ordered the major branches of the sky. Even children of the Riverine could recite the sky to at least the third or fourth syllable. His people’s was an elegant system, he thought. And now, alone, as he was, crossing the prairie by moonlight. it was far more practical than the ornate drawings the Bosmen used. Elymus of course had needed to master that dull art of drawing, to be initiated into the Mysteries Guild. But he cared less for the abstract and the esoteric, and preferred pragmatic-even practical- magics.Â
Restless, impatient and frankly opportunistic as he was, he could not suffer the burden of lugging around scrolls and plates and exotic trinkets. During his monastic training, he frequently absconded from the long, wordy demonstrations of the Smokefathers, he instead would frequent the Seedtender’s caves and offered his manual labor in exchange for long walks with the older witches, who often were more crafty than they let on. From them he had learned the songs of birds and serpents, the generosity and patience of grandmothers, and many filthy jokes.Â
To the Riverine peoples, to Elymus, the night sky was a glassy sparkling river in winter, the stars, pearls and flecks of silver on the riverbed suspended in clear ice. Implied between the stars was a branching network of currents and rivulets, each forking path defined by the sequence of sounds that gave the star at the end its name. Laurentia’s song, named each star in order, and following the formula, subsequent syllables could be added, specifying smaller, dimmer and more obscure stars. In principle, any star could be named- though some stars may have prohibitively long and complex names.
To the Bos, that sprawling confederacy that had burnt and herded its way through the steppe, into the wet east and now gave their laws in the Riverine’s ancestral lands, to them the stars were so many campfires burning in the night. The largest stars corresponded to terrestrial Bos settlements. Trading posts, and monuments. Thus their map of the sky was also the map of their land. On Bos star maps, they drew extant the paths between settlements and learned the stars as points along one of various trade routes.
The Bos had, only a lifetime ago, overran the Riverine, captured and converted them. Much was lost quickly, as his small and scattered culture was consumed piecemeal. But the Riv’s tongue remained, and so the Riverine still lived.Â
Elymus kept fragments of his people’s world with him. Two or three songs which he knew very well, a good short bow, and an affinity for the silver ribbons of water that dissected the dark, brooding country that lay unending before him.Â
