He interrupted. “No. You love me.”
That, too, is a preference, she thought. Aloud she said, “I only and always love you.”
Laufkariar’s eyes glinted in the dark of the nighttime chamber. “Your little brother is jealous. He spies on the two of us when we visit your land. Perhaps he wants to inherit. Perhaps he wants me.” His lips twisted in anger.
“He’s a child.”
“No. You despise him. And fear him, perhaps?” he asked.
Ulín wanted to deny that word, despise, but for some reason she did not. “Why should I fear him? He only has a single deepname. He is strange, but he never did anything bad that I know of.” It was an odd thing to say, as if she thought he did bad things that she did not know of, this sibling who was no longer a child, with his burning gaze and a single two-syllable deepname, a child-not-child who wanted to hover when Ulín was around, and that was not what she wanted. She was an adult now, soon to be married. She wanted to be with other adults.
Ulín felt odd, defensive. “I don’t talk to him much because he is young and has no interest in language.”
Laufkariar kissed her on the lips, as if she’d said too much, and perhaps she had. For long hours, all was forgotten.
I stare at Ulín, holding myself back from speaking. Her sibling scared her—but he did not do anything. Was that enough to despise a child?
I say, “In the Shoal, one must not ever be different from others. Not even feel different. That is something to correct.”
Ulín goes still under my gaze. “I understand.”
“Is difference punished on your Coast?”
“No, we . . .” She gulps and shudders. “No, we welcome all.”
“I see.” I do not see. Not clearly, and not yet. All I know is that greatest despair finds its way to this court. I am here, and so is she.
“Were you—” Ulín says, “were you corrected, when you returned from the Shoal of the dead?”
“Of course I was.”
The judgment of many
When I awoke in the cave—I am still not sure if it was mine—there were other people with me. People of the Song storyline, and a few familiar Stones, and some people of Moss whom I did not know. Nobody ever comes to a sleeping cave if they do not want to share bodies. But these people pressed around, suffocating me in the body, like that feeling I had when I was deep in the Shoal. I tried to edge away, but there was no room; I was still in the pool, and other people were everywhere. Even in the pool.
Someone of the Moss storyline bent over me. In their hands was a braid of moss, a strong, thin woven rope, and they bound my wrists. I struggled instinctively, shocked. Remembering how the ancestors of red were bound. I tried to speak, to ask, but breath deserted me. My gills opened and closed, but I was out of water, and my land-breath refused to switch over.
“Don’t struggle,” an elder of Stone said.
Ulín gasps. “Struggle—did they use a verb?”
I snap, “No, of course they did not use a verb. They said, Not-from-you-at-us-force-away.” What in Bird’s name is wrong with her, to interrupt at this moment to ask about a word?
Ulín whispers, “Sorry . . .”
“I am translating, always.” But when I think of it now, I remember the Stone elder’s lips move, and in my mind, the nameway words Don’t struggle echo in my mind. An angry, dizzying feeling floods me. I do not want to think about who I have become, how even my thoughts are in nameway now. “Do you even want me to continue?” I ask her.
