Ulín interrupts me to speak. “I myself used to live underwater.”

I ask, “How would you, a nameway, live underwater? You do not have a siltway body—and I have not heard—”

She whispers, “Among the dreamway.”

I am not sure I understand, and I am confused, but she shakes her head. “I will tell you my story when yours is done.”

I say, “All right . . . Where was I? Yes—the Stone storyline.”

Long ago, the purpose of people within our storyline was to fashion dwellings out of the body of stone. But that purpose was exhausted long ago. It existed for one generation only.

What, then, was the purpose of Stone? What was our labor, beyond helping the other storylines and being diminished with each generation? I worried about it as I lay in the shallow stone cavern fashioned by my ancestors, generations ago. I lay in darkness, breathing the tide, my body sinking deeper into the watery pool of the bed. My eyes closed. I called on the magic of my two deepnames, and with their power extended, I saw a glittering web. The bonds spooled out of me like moss-yarn in water, showing me how I was tied to my people. Among the living I was bonded to Old Song, an elder of the Song storyline, who was at that time on an island quite a distance away from my dwelling. And among the dead I was bonded to the one who birthed me. My mother, a nameway would say, but we do not mark these genders, and so we do not have these words like the nameway do.

Through the one that birthed me, who also had two deepnames, I was connected to many generations deepening into the Shoal. Through my bond with Old Song, who had three deepnames, I was connected to the living and dead souls of Song, Moss, Stone, and Weaver storylines, and through these souls to every one of us, making up a star.

The Star of the Shoal flared in my sleepy vision, shining gently underwater—ancestor souls like slim, silvery fish waving in a gentle current, whole undulating woven sheets of them, and above them a slim shining layer of us, of the living.

This is how I would fall asleep every night. But this time, through my connection to Old Song that led me back to the oldest of Stone, I perceived a glimmer of red.

Ulín asks, “What happens to those without deepnames, if they cannot bond?” Her voice is curious, a bit broken. I was taught to listen to such things.

I say, “Oh, they bond. Those without magic are held by the others. They are mortar.” As I speak, I watch Ulín’s face, the minute changes in it—pain, regret. Resignation. How did I not notice this before? I speak again. “You, yourself, have no deepnames.” It is not a question.

Ulín’s face goes pale, and I notice things, just as the Headmaster taught me; I notice what should have been obvious if I paid better attention. “I should have noticed before—you are magicless—and yet, you are not mortar. Your deepnames have been torn from you by violence!”

She turns her face away from me. This, this is why she is here. This is a great crime, a terrible misfortune. Someone must pay, and I will gladly collect. “So you’re here to purchase a contract on your assailant.”

“Please,” she says. “Please stop.”

I, too, am too curious for my own good. It was silly of me to think that part of me ended. “Forgive me, Ulín. I just wanted to understand.”

She does not answer. I have pried too much, and she has pried too much, but I do not want her to be silent. I want her to ask me questions and I want to ask her, too.

The silence weighs me down until I blurt out, “You’re different from other clients. You do not call me a fish under your breath, you do not look away from my face.”

She frowns. “Why would I?”

“Even Ladder thought I was strange, before he trained me and steeled himself to my appearance.”

She speaks quietly. “I think you’re wonderful, Stone Orphan.”

Her words grate on me. This word, wonderful, it does not belong here. “You want something,” I say. “I already said I’ll consider your contract. No need to flatter me.”

“I’m probably here to purchase a contract. But mostly, I am trying to understand.” Ulín closes her eyes and begins to speak smoothly and slowly in the language of the desert. She speaks as if she is singing. “This is something I always want—something that brings me to ruin and yet this something is mine—not simple curiosity, but a thirst for deep knowledge, a joy in the shape and branching of it. I want to know how language is formed between people, how language precedes and survives us. I think—I believe—I know that language is a living creature that changes and writhes between us, that ascends from the ancestors and rises through us toward all the future people who wait, yet unborn, to speak it . . .”

I say, “Your words are beautiful. I do not fully grasp them.” She reminds me so much of Old Song that I feel my eyes stinging. “Let me tell you about Old Song.”

That deep melody bothered and beckoned me every night. In my language, it was an undulation of wave, moonless and restless, a scrape of odd weather from strange and unbonded corners. I was disturbed. In the isles, one does not pay that much attention to oneself. But a single person’s unease can disrupt the whole Shoal. We can commit crimes by yearning, I think. Yearning for a different way, for knowledge perhaps, but really for danger.

When a soul darts aside, like a bright and terrified fish, it can drag the whole shoal with it toward danger. Straying endangers all—and so we must give any bad feelings away to a wise one from the Song storyline. A Song person will first understand it, then sing it, then diffuse it in water and weather. After that, again we become calm.

Old Song was my bonded through my strongest deepname, the one with a single syllable. Before we were bonded, Old Song sought me out. They were old and large, the silver-gray of their face darkened with age into a color of the evening sea. Faded scales, almost white and pearlescent, covered the sides of their face, and their fin-hair was limp. Their eyes were faded, too, into a very pale blue. I later learned that they had a different name once, but I was never told what it was.

“In myself,” Old Song said, “there is a deepname that once was a two-syllable. It has recently been shortened. It is now stronger and has one syllable. The bond which attached to my two-syllable is no more. You are young and have an unattached deepname, also with one syllable. Will you bond with me?”

It was strange to hear about Old Song’s destroyed bond. Such things do not happen among us. We are all bonded forever.

“Your bonded person died?” I asked, but it could not be right. We remain bonded after we die. Once the body dies, the deepname structure that contains our souls simply sinks undersea. The bonds do not break once we become ancestors.

“Not died,” Old Song said. “The bond itself was destroyed.”

I was terrified, and flattered to be asked to bond with an elder, but I could not stop asking questions. “So what happened to the person you were bonded to, when the bond was destroyed?”

Old Song’s light-blue eyes deepened to storm. “They are gone.”

This conversation felt like a sliver of ice in my mouth. Strange and exhilarating and blood-in-my-cheeks sharp. “Why do you want my bond?”

“Because you are strong,” Old Song said. “I need you to anchor to the pain I carry. To keep me in place. This is, after all, the forgotten purpose of Stones. Before the Star of the Shoal was carried on Bird’s tail, Stones were warriors.”

“Warriors?” I tasted that unfamiliar word in my mouth. Kahren. In our language, it sounded almost like kahir. Stone.

“Those strong in the body, those who protect the Shoal,” said Old Song. “Strong and curious are Stone and Song, and so we are matched. We are the foundational storylines. You will anchor me here, in the isles.”

But I am curious too, I wanted to say. Instead I bit my tongue bloody, attuning me further to the world’s presence, the rock upon which I perched, the woven garment of moss on my body, at times chafing and comforting. I felt the tiny drops of seawater hitting my skin as the wave crashed ceaselessly against Stone Isle, the salt on my tongue, the smell of seaweed and some unfamiliar spice wafting from Old Song’s moss-woven garment. It was centering, calming; I could close my eyes tightly and drift into sleep until Old Song flickered away.

But my eyes remained open.

After a while I noticed that Old Song waded in water, their feet not quite touching Stone Isle. How did they come here? Did they flicker to me, or to someone else among the Stones? Or did they, perhaps, cover the distance in some other, different, more laborious way? I wondered if they would tell me anything at all if I simply waited. It would be good to wait, to stay suspended between the sea and the sky, to wait for an understanding.