“Forty and some odd years ago, I was a poet,” said Abso. “I wandered over half of the islands of both archipelagos, finding inspiration in the strangest of places and never dreaming I might stop and settle down. Then I met this one and realized I’d found the muse I hadn’t known I’d been seeking.”
Tarva blushed and picked up the tale. “I taught math,” he said. “Not the most popular of fields, nor the easiest. But it suited me. I’d also wandered, even more than him. There was always something in me that would not let me stay still. But I managed, for a time, after meeting Abso. It was wondrous, but after three seasons together I just couldn’t stay. You know how the wanderlust gets for some? And yet, in all the rest of my life’s wandering, I never met another person who spoke words to rival the beauty of mathematics.”
“Nor I, anyone who let me see things in such miraculous ways.”
Phas made a rude noise with her trunk and everyone started. “So here we sit, two hundred-some Dying Fant, and these two act like it’s some deliberate act of the universe set in motion for no better reason than to bring them back together again. I’ve known other poets and fictionists with big egos, but who knew mathematicians thought so highly of themselves?”
Rüsul stiffened, but from the reactions of the others it was quickly clear that this was old ground they covered and the remark in good fun. And almost without thought, he joined in and told a story of his own life, followed by Kembü telling one about herself when she was younger than Jorl — and judging by the expression on his face it was clear he’d never imagined his friend’s mother as ever having had any other life.
When it was Tarva’s turn again he sighed and got a wistful look in his eye. “All of this reminds me of my gram. She had the most amazing adventures. Of course, it never occurred to us that any of it might not be true. But Gram wasn’t telling us tales for truth. She filled us with concepts and questions and amazement for the world. I like to think Gram was a born mathematician, only she never knew it.”
Phas, Mlarma, and Abso chuckled, and Rüsul realized they’d heard this comment before. If Tarva noticed, he gave no sign.
“I couldn’t have been more than four, and it was one of my sister’s birthday, though now I don’t recall which one. Our aunts had cooked her her favorite meal and barely two bites into it Gram asked her if it was good. My sis laughed and told her it was delicious, and Gram nodded and we all went back to eating. A bit later she asked her ‘does it taste like it did the first time you had it, and decided it was your favorite, or when you say it’s delicious are you tasting the memory of that first time, and making a comparison?’ That was my Gram.”
Tarva paused, turned to gaze into Abso’s eyes for a moment, and then smiled sheepishly as he continued. “And just like that, she changed my life. I mean, wasn’t she really asking if the second time we do a thing are we forced to remember the previous time to understand it? That every time my sister ate that meal, at some level, she was eating all the other same meals? I tell you now with no shame that it gave me bad dreams for nights, the notion that so little in life is truly novel, that so much of what we do is connected to our previous experience of virtually the same thing.
“One evening, about five nights after my sister’s birthday dinner, Gram found me sobbing in my sleep and woke me. She asked me why I was crying and I tried to explain it to her, how it seemed like life had become empty and hollow if most everything I was going to do was something I’d already done. And do you know what she said? She told me that if that was true, then I’d done something new by fretting and crying about it, and that now that was old stuff and if I was really that worried about all of it, then I shouldn’t bother doing either of those things again. Then she hugged me and wished me good dreams. And when I fell back to sleep everything was fine. Neatly tied up. And now here I am, telling that same story again, and when I think that it’s so like but still a bit different from the other times I’ve told it, instead of feeling the futility of things, I can almost feel my Gram hugging me and telling me to go back to sleep.”
Abso sighed. “And I’m the one who’s supposed to be the poet, right?”
Rüsul could only nod. He looked at Phas, thinking of a life he hadn’t known, and then glanced at Jorl. The young man looked to be pondering the story still, or perhaps pondering futility itself.
EIGHTEEN. ONE-SIDED CONVERSATION
LIRLOWIL could not keep herself from sobbing. It had become an automatic response, as much a part of her as breathing, her body wracked by the stress of hosting the Fant Matriarch in her head. Her once-sleek pelt felt grimy, the fur matted and spiked. But far beyond any physical discomfort, the horrible presence that had penetrated so deeply into her mind would not leave her alone.
The koph she’d consumed for the summoning had long since worn off, but Margda had stayed. Lirlowil had woken up slumped over her workstation, and dared to hope that her last summoning had been a dream. But when she closed her eyes, the old Fant was there. With frantic precision she’d performed the patterns and rituals for ending a summoning and dispersing the nefshons of her conversant, but to no effect. The particles of the discoverer of Speaking had taken on a life all their own, clinging to her brain. Lirlowil might as well have been in a dream.
“Why won’t you leave me? Why are you here?” She hated the whining sound of her own pleas, but couldn’t help it. The Fant’s enduring presence violated her to her very core. Her mind, which had been the source of all her power, once sacrosanct, had been laid bare. “I’m sorry, I know, I know, I violated the Edict. I shouldn’t have. It was wrong. Beyond wrong. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t want to summon any Fant.”
She could feel Margda in her mind, as if the Fant sat biding her time in quiet meditation, ignoring the sobs and pleas of her summoner. She’d said nothing since Lirlowil had awakened, merely existing, like some hideous old woman napping in her brain.
When she opened her eyes, she glared at the Lutr and spoke as if picking up the thread of a conversation. “I’ve told you, Child, your wants and wishes don’t interest me. Your sense of volition, or the lack of it, is an illusion. Everything you’ve done needed doing and was set in motion long ago. Let go of your self-pity. Your feelings in these events matter no more than a leaf’s desire to steer the wind!”
The chill and brutal words caused Lirlowil to flee to her sleeping room. She leapt into the null field and threw herself upon her bed, gripping the bedclothes to keep from rebounding in the absence of gravity. Her sobbing shifted to shudders. The room was real, she knew it with certainty. Margda no longer bothered to maintain the nefshon construct of her long-vanished home from Barsk, nor of herself either. The Fant existed as a presence, a hideous creature Lirlowil alone saw when she sought respite from the external world, a voice sneering at her within her own head. But more, Lirlowil’s telepathic abilities had vanished. Whether it was a consequence of having Margda in her mind, or something the Fant was doing to her, she didn’t know.
“But why won’t you leave?” Lirlowil wailed again, to herself, to the room, to the unseen Patrollers who presumably monitored everything in her suite of rooms, but mostly to the obscenity in her mind. “You’re not doing anything! If you’re going to punish me for violating your damn Edict, then just do it and go back to being dead!”