Wherein the old ways are expounded upon (Ch. 25)

 “Trust not the old to be wise, nor the young to be pure. Do not heed the whispers in the wind, but do not scorn them either. Trust that tomorrow will be as today, until it is not. Respect the stars, for they are ancient, and respect the beasts for they are vigorous. Trust the word of your father, listen to the word of a shaman, and never trust a brown cloak”

Excerpt from “The tragedies of the toll”, Jennept’s archive of northern stories

Chy was out cold.

A friend would’ve been worried. A companion concerned. A passerby compassionate, or perhaps merely curious.

Opal was overjoyed. She found herself overjoyed at most everything that happened to her. So powerful was this joy that she found it necessary to explain it to the unconscious Chy. After all, had he been awake, he’d surely have had some suitably dampening reply.

“I’m like a long-lived yellow tail, aren’t I Chy? Look at me! I radiate glory in the summer sun! I bring joy, I pique fascination, I entice, I taunt. I’m the ideal heathen, the ideal foreigner, strange and exotic and different in all the right ways to make you surer in yourself! I’m maddening and mad!”

The manner in which she twirled as she lectured to the trees would’ve been called worse than mad, had there been anything saner than her in that cursed wood. “But I’m the sanest thing from Mophell to Lake Bolay!” – This was almost surely wrong, for she’d forgotten about the Flix Wetlands between Bolay and the Cinch river.

At this point, a battle may have raged inside Opal. Had such a thing occurred, it’d have opened with some reflection – had she always been this way? She had always been positive, yes, but insanely, abnormally so? This question asked, she’d have realized she didn’t remember. This very realization would set in motion a cascade of self-reflection that would end in Opal either disintegrating into the conceptual ether, or… something else. Maybe she’d even stop to consider how she’d gotten to Tellyphill.

But Opal remained standing, so one must assume she remained blissfully unaware of even her own existence.

Chy was out cold.

“Oh Chy, you know what I’m like? I’m like a passing star; they bring madness, and they bring joy, and always they shape the world. That’s just like me, isn’t it? Of course, the most famous such star is found in ‘The princes of the West Wood’, fifth chant, third verse. Kayatta and Douban have just left the fortress city of Gull and are recounting their exploits to each other. Just as Douban recounts his slaying of the Moonkite, a star passes and whispers just the right words into Kayatta’s ear. The two men are still great rivals at this point, do you remember? Kayatta wants nothing more than to poke holes in Douban’s retelling. And with the stars’ aid, he does. As Douban recounts the forging of the spear, Kayatta prods and asks from where he got the metal. Of course, the metal was stolen from Douban’s brother, second chant twenty ninth verse. Next, as Douban describes the gathering of allies, Kayatta knows to ask about the fishmonger that stole Douban’s ancestral ring. This goes on and on, Douban recounting the story, Kayatta’s prodding interspersed. The problem is that Douban doesn’t react to anything Kayatta’s saying. I think that’s strange, don’t you?” Opal waxed on and on, as Chy failed to say anything. “Would Douban wax on and on whilst his audience practically heckled him? Maybe it’s just that I wouldn’t have stood for such blatant disrespect. You know Chy, if we had the leisure the Ponticate had to train thousands for nothing but the study of ancient writings, why, I’m sure we’d find some fascinating stuff! Your dedicate the turns and cycles of hundreds of scholars to the study of the shifting verb tense in not a thousand words of prophecy. In Kadyp, we’ve barely half a dozen experts for each of the people’s than once stood before empire. As for the north, why, no one cares much to study that at all. But what if we did? We’d find so much! The story I just told you, why do you think Douban doesn’t reply? I think it’s because Kayatta’s interjections are added later on, I don’t think they’re part of the original telling. What could the original telling have been, don’t you wonder? The version we have now in the archive is in the High Speech, but it must’ve been translated from a northern tongue. But was it translated, or directly transcribed by a scholar? ‘The princes of the West Wood’ is a massive, sprawling work. It seems impossible to tell aloud.”

Chy was out cold.

“What’s the use of it? You don’t care. Should you care? Why should anyone care about these stories? That’s the question Eva always asked. I only found out later, but it’s a question that every story keeper has been asked by the princess since Eva’s family came to the throne. Oh you don’t care! You just don’t care! Why don’t you care?”

Chy was out cold.

“You don’t care because you’ve been taught that prophecy is what matters. And why does prophecy matter? Because it tells you of the future, or because it’s from the goddess? What I’ve never understood is why you call her the goddess when you don’t have a god or any conception of her corporeality for that matter. Surely it makes more sense to call your one deity a god? Maybe it’s a quirk of the language the Ponticate cult used before the invention of the high speech. Or maybe it’s a hint of something else, of artificiality? Or of a history of a richer, more mythologized theology? Of course you think it’s all nonsense. Marsh witches, spreading lies and heresies, burn them all, you say!”

Chy was out cold, though this would not have been his response and Opal knew it. Opal also knew that there were many reasons to care about prophecy that did not fall into the two categories she’d outlined. Chy, unable to challenge anything Opal said, left her statement unchallenged. Had he been able to speak, he’d have interrogated her baseless assertion that the high speech had been invented, for it was as natural a language as any spoken across the central plains.

A bug landed on Chy’s forehead. Hair long and beard patchy from the weeks of confinement and days in the wild, he looked rather more like the heroes of Opal’s stories than she cared to admit.

“I’ll tell you why stories are important then! I’ll tell you why structures are important! It’s because structures in stories can only come from structures in reality. The clash of tribes, what a fine structure! And we’re living it, aren’t we? What two tribes could be more different than us? And thanks to ample examples in the great cannon of story, we can avoid pitfalls of misunderstanding, we can develop amicability, we can overcome our prejudice and be better for it!”

Chy was out cold, though Opal didn’t need him to say anything in order to put the lie to her words. For despite Chy’s willingness to engage with Opal in debate, it was plain to her that he rather disliked her company.

“Ah, but do I actually use that? The truth is that I haven’t. I’ve taken no steps to incorporate any of the lessons into my actions. And do you know why, Chy? It’s for the same reason that your knowledge of the future didn’t warn you as to the dangers in Tellyphill. And it’s because… it’s because structures aren’t the old way of understanding tales.”

The words tasted like ash in her mouth.

“Do you know why we kept stories for so long? In the face of empire, in the face of rangers and preachers? It wasn’t because of structures. It was because… well in truth it was because it was what Kadyp did. If you were born in Kadyp, you learned that it made you special – that you remembered. That you and your city, your treetop city between bog and sea, you remembered what had been. You knew the stories of nomads, of old republics, and of ancient empires. But if you rose in the ranks of the keepers, took part in the upkeep of the libraries, you’d learn a reason, a proper one. And that reason was that stories were meant to be useful! Ancient wisdom was hidden in them, we were sure. One needed only look at what little left Worstone to be sure of it. Great works are possible, Chy, and the old way said that hints towards those great works hide in the old stories”

Chy was out cold.

“It’s nonsense, of course. I’m sure a lot of keepers knew it was nonsense. And it’s why no one cared for northern tales, until I came along. There was no room for reinterpretation of our entire ethos while we were pushed into the corner, you know. But as the empire faded and receded, we found ourselves free. Free to trade and negotiate, free to seek new stories, free to tell old ones. Did you know we’ve been doing that? Mirrors of your preachers, spreading old stories, complete disregard for their truth a central pillar of the work.”

Chy was out cold.

“And that’s where we come in, isn’t it, Chy? The great shift has already happened. The question now is where we go from here.”

What she meant by this was unclear. Had Chy been in a position to question, he’d have pointed out that Opal was speaking in rather a disjointed, frenetic manner. Perhaps he’d even have pointed out that there seemed to be little continuity to her monologue, though he may have simply understood this to by Opal’s manner of speech by this point.

The bug on Chy’s forehead now revealed itself to be a bloodsucker of some kind. Opal surmised that, if he awoke, he’d be very uncomfortable.

“It’s really a shame that the old way mostly discounted northern stories, for so many of them rather fit the old way; they are directly useful, in and of themselves, not merely as emblematic examples of wider trends, as I’d like to say. You want an example, don’t you? You always want examples”

Where Opal got this notion is unclear. Perhaps she confused Chy for a holy man. Or maybe she referred not to Chy individually, but to the Ponticate as a whole; as a whole, the Ponticate loved examples – of points… and of people.

“This is the story of Daunper and the Leyrline. It - ” Opal had begun what might have been a recitation but first stopped to consider her audience. Said audience was crumpled in a dirty heap upon a log, various biting crawling things already feasting upon him. The old ways called for directness, didn’t they? There was a more useful story to recount.

“It’s not important to you. I’ll breath the wind! Let’s give the old way a fair chance and call upon something relevant to our situation. This is the story of Kayatta and the Prince’s mirror.”

Chy was out cold, but at last Opal seemed to have recognized this fact, for she set about tearing bits off his tattered cloaks and dampening them in the water. She talked as she worked, the trickle of passing time barely felt as heat and light crept towards an angle ever more oblique.

“Kayatta is a towering figure in the great northern cannon as its come to be called. The son of a minor chieftain, first of the Bowhead brotherhood, burner of the great Oak, slayer of madmen and king of the strange. So many stories refer to him, for so long I’ve wished to know their order.”

Here Chy would perhaps have interjected unhelpfully that the order was probably chronological.

“Of course, some stories are of Kayatta’s youthful antics. Others of his great deeds during the fading of the second sun. Yet more tales abound of his spirit returning, either as ancient wisdom or as the young hero born again. The stories are easy enough to pin to a timeline when related to one another, but that’s missing the point; the stories are not a whole. They are not the court romances of the Khazar’s harem, they’re not the plays put on by Orphic caravans, and they’re not the sailor’s sagas of Jepchy bay. They’re just a mass of stories, their origins impossible to pin down. Doubtless there are hundreds of versions of each, local variants or simply broken retellings. Which are authentic? What does authenticity mean? The stories contradict themselves, not to speak of their relation to myths of the gods and spirits Kayatta converses with! If I now made up a story about Kayatta, who’s to say it’s any more fake than ‘The princes of the west wood’?”

Chy would’ve taken offense at the suggestion of other deities, though even he had by now realized that Opal didn’t believe in much of anything – her mind was too open for most ideologies, much less faiths.

The bugs only slightly deterred by the damp cloth Opal set out on Chy’s skin, she returned to her point.

“There are stories of every kind about Kayatta. There is his great quest to slay the Fuorerlin, his wooing of Tenichta, the race of memory, his speech to the Idriot king, and a hundred more that every child north of the great white road must know. As grand as those stories are, they don’t fit the old ways very well; there is nothing of the practical in them. So, when Kayatta was but a lad, before any of his great exploits but after he had tasted the skydew, there came through the village a prince of a faraway land. Dark and short, his face shaved to reveal a panoply of scars, he scorned the village upon his arrival. Neither he nor his retinue paid Kayatta’s father his due respect, nor did they partake in the hospitality of the huntsmen’s feast.

Kayatta had seen such strangers before, but they had always seemed properly decorous. But this was outrageous behavior! As boys do, he was sure that he and his father were being snubbed for their smallness. Brazen and brash, he greeted the Prince with great ferocity. ‘How dare you disrespect us so!’ Kayatta complained. The Prince only laughed, for as short as he was, Kayatta was a tiny thing, a short boy not ten years of age. ‘And why should I respect you or your father? What slain beasts adorn your walls? What clan shakes when your name is invoked? Which spirits answer the burning of your blood?’ the Prince laughed.”

Chy would’ve complained that he didn’t know what Opal was on about; what was the Fuorerlin? Who was Tenichta? What did the burning of blood mean? What respect was owed to whom, and what social nicety had been flouted? More substantially, when was any of this taking place? How large was the prince’s retinue? How did anyone know he was a prince? Prince of what exactly?

But Chy was out cold.

“Kayatta argued, and perhaps out of pity and perhaps out of fear, the Prince relented. ‘You wish to be respected? Then I leave you a trial. Tonight I leave for the court of the Pelurlark. In a month’s time I shall return. I now gift you a mirror, and until the day I return you are to take your night’s sleep no more than two paces from it. If you succeed, you shall have earned my respect.’

Kayatta was suspicious of the challenge but having worked himself into such a frenzy over the issue, he accepted without question or hesitation. The mirror was a grand thing, polished sliver slickened regularly with –

You know Chy, I’ve read a version of the story that here interjects with a ten-stanza song detailing every part of the surface’s upkeep. But that’s not quite relevant, so we’ll skip it.  The mirror was grand, and surrounding the polished surface was a thick wooden frame. Images of warriors and monsters carved into its surface; the eyes large to accommodate the set gems.

That night, Kayatta set the mirror by the pile of furs he called a bed. A fireplace ever alive with the spirits of the southern bow sat between Kayatta and the mirror. Warmth and comfort assured, Kayatta turned to sleep. The Shaman had warned him that the mirror might shelter the spirit of some disturbed creature. Kayatta feared no such haunting. Soundly he slept, but he awoke to the terrible sight of red welts upon his arms, his legs, his torso and neck. Well Chy, can you guess the twist?”

Perhaps he could’ve, for he too was currently welting away. Unresponsive as he was, Opal merely continued her recounting, all the while scraping watery mud, ground leaves, and some few remaining crumbs of biscuits into a foul paste.

“Kayatta first sought the huntsmen, for surely they were the worldliest and wisest of the tribe. In shame of his injury, Kayatta spoke in riddles, asking in general terms of the dangers lurking in the night. They told him of bears and gangles, and the ways to ward them off, the setting of a guard, the wary half-sleep that allowed a man to awaken with sling or spear in hand. They told him of the wisp-fruit, its sweet allure different to every man. And they told him of the horrors that lurked just beyond the pale glow of the fairy ring that surrounds the wisp-fruit. Long was the talk, for the men wished no disrespect for their chief’s son, and frequently Kayatta would let the men ramble on unrelated points, for he found their ways fascinating and admirable. Kayatta finally thought to ask about steel, wood, and gemstones, and what dangers they might hide. But steel was a rarity, wood so commonplace as to be unremarkable, and gemstones pointless trinkets unseen in the forests that these men knew so well. Frustrated, Kayatta returned to his bed at sundown.

The next day, more welts had appeared, so far had they spread that already the layers of skin partially healed and newly harmed were hard to distinguish. Kayatta knew he must find an answer soon. Reasoning that no good would come of repeating the same actions day after day, Kayatta resolved to try something new even if he’d get no answer from those he asked.

Merchants and woodworkers were next to be interrogated; merchants for the breadth of their experience, woodworkers for hints as to the dangers wood can hide. The merchants were not as deferential as the huntsmen had been, and it was just as well for Kayatta took little interest in their trade and expertise. He’d hoped to learn of the dangers gemstones might hide, but chief among these seemed to be the risk that you were being cheated. Woodworking was much more to his liking, though the woodworkers themselves had little time for his incessant pestering, and so all he got was fragments; industry waits for no man, no matter his honor. Dangers described by the woodworkers mostly consisted of the practical – splinters, cuts, poisons in the leaves and poisons in the mixtures used to cure and insulate the wood. Of all he’d heard, the poisons sounded the most plausible. Still, he was assured that in any finished product any such poisons would long ago have been purged, whether by heat or by hex.

That night, having come to no firm solution, Kayatta set about on his plan of random action.”

This was where Chy was supposed to drolly comment that he saw why Kayatta appealed to Opal so much. Opal knew Chy well enough to pause as if he’d made the comment, instead of being unconscious.

“His first idea was to turn the mirror around, such that the metal faced the wall. He had also contemplated ways of waking during the night, to allow for multiple attempts a night, but had come to no conclusion.”

Had Wicker heard this, she’d have set herself to contemplate the optimization problem that arose – how much time was best spent in each endeavor? Any time spent not learning about the mirror was time wasted, unless it allowed for some other benefit. Multiple attempts a night was a benefit of a sort, but unless there was a method to the madness, how much benefit was there in random attempts? But once some information had been gleaned, repeated experimentation would be of paramount importance. So then, should a means of waking up be pursued now, or later?

Had Felton heard this, he’d have noted that ways of waking up during the night are not hard to come by, and that if anything it’d be rarer to sleep the night through. He wouldn’t have interrupted Opal’s telling to note this though.

Opal’s audience was only the wood and its creatures, so no such notes were made.

“The third morning he arose to more welts. Desperate, he turned to the tribe’s Shaman. He asked of ways to protect from curses and damnations. As much respect as the Chief’s son demanded, secrets of the Shaman’s were beyond that respect – they are the link that binds that Shaman to the spirits of the tribe, to the gods of winter. What the Shaman could discuss was the art of hexmaking. He described the various shapes and runes and how they could be inset in order to call upon the aid of this spirit or that.

There was much wisdom to be gained. Too much. Kayatta could hope to learn of what was causing the welts. He could hope to find a treatment for them. He could hope to protect himself from future damage. He could hope for a thousand things, and all seemed possible through the right use of the hexes. And as the conversation lurched from one vertex of this triangle to another, he never quite got the straightforward answer: what hex do I use?”

Vague would’ve be appalled at the notion that a child could comprehend hexmanship from a single conversation. Less so, she’d be appalled at the notion of using hexes to protect against an unknown threat, undefined parameters.

“Another long day gone, Kayatta turned to chance. He covered the mirror in ram skin. He sprayed the metal with salt water. He draw a line of chalk around the mirror and around himself and went to sleep. It had done him no good. The next day, he turned to study the mirror.”

Pilly, possessing neither honor nor shame, would’ve wondered why Kayatta didn’t simply turn to his father for help. He’d also have wondered at Kayatta’s seeming lack of peers.

Eva would’ve wondered why Opal insisted on drawing out the telling when the point was supposedly to showcase the punctuality and practicality of the old ways. Well, wondered is too strong a term – Eva would’ve known exactly why Opal chose to do this, and she’d have seen it as just more proof the Kadyp was better with her gone.

“Intuition dictated that the important part must be the reflective surface. Old terror stories of mirror worlds and possessed imposters whirled round his mind as he stared at himself for hours. In what I would call a truly brilliant moment of structural observation, Kayatta thinks that perhaps something might appear differently in the mirror than it appears in reality. What exactly Kayatta would then do is unclear, though probably he thought to destroy it or show it to the Shaman.

Whichever it was, Kayatta never got the opportunity, for reality and mirror agreed in all details.”

Wicker would’ve wondered whether this story could perhaps be appropriated for the study of optics.

Opal rubbed the grime into Chy’s forehead and neck, as she went on in the hushed tones of a lullaby.

“Despairing, Kayatta turned to the wooden frame of the mirror. Remembering the woodworkers’ words, he searched for imperfection or hidden latches. But the varnish was fine and the surface smooth to the touch. Except for the bumps around the jade eye of a serpent, near the mirror’s bottom.”

Opal paused in the telling, perhaps because this was where children would interrupt and try to guess the culprit. Meeting no interruption, the telling continued with a sour note of displeasure.

“Now that his attentions were focused, Kayatta set his mind to the task of waking in the night. And – no, you know what? Kayatta simply put his mind to it and woke up in the night. Isn’t that simpler?”

The birds were heckling her; she was sure of it. The croak of some amphibian or other from the water punctuated this disrespect. The telling grew ever more frenzied.

“Inspection by the firelight revealed all. Small, slithering things crawled out of invisible crevices in the wood. Without knowing where to look, he surely would’ve found nothing in the dim firelight. The warmth seemed to attract them, as they slithered around the first and towards Kayatta’s body. Vainly did Kayatta attempt to douse the fire, for the ancestral spirits of flame were more than his match. Cold was the answer! He must make himself cold, deny the monsters his warmth. It was a strange thing to seek, though. The huntsmen knew a hundred ways to stay warm, but to cool off they could think of but one – water. But by the prince’s return Kayatta had found his answer – dirt. Wet dirt and mud, lathered upon skin, isolated the heat just enough to set the monsters to other targets. The prince laughed hard when he heard Kayatta’s solution, but from that moment on treated the boy with the gravest respect.”

Chy was out cold, though he may have complained at the anticlimax.

“And that’s why I’m lathering you up, Chy! It’s because if I don’t, then the skin-eaters and mothballs will eat away at you until you’ll wish you were dead. More than you do now, anyways.”

Opal should’ve realized that something was very strange. She should’ve realized that whatever method Kayatta had used, it was suited for critters of the cold north, not the sweltering plains. Then again, the wood she and Chy found themselves in was not truly of the plains at all.

As four days until the summer prophecy neared three, Chy awakened. He could not recall the story of Kayatta and the prince’s mirror, but it was just as well, for Opal had surely done a poor job in the telling. There were other stories to tell, but it was just as well that they weren’t, for somewhere in the darkness, Chy had found determination.