sea to the other. . . .” Firdred of Bain himself, that most strictly factual of authors, writes that in the Sea of Sound his ship was pursued by another; this ship was under the sea, gliding upon its other surface, so that Firdred saw only its dark underside: “Its sails were outside of this world.” In Tinimavet there are countless tales of sea-ghouls, the ghosts of the drowned, and of magical fish and princesses from the kingdoms under the sea. I wondered if I would see any of them here, where the sea was wildest—if at night, suddenly, I would catch in the depths the glow of a ghostly torch. But I saw no such vision, except in my dreams, when, thrilled and exhausted with poetry, I stood on deck and watched the glow worm dances of the ghouls, or caught, afar off, the rising of a dreaded mountain: the great whale which the sailors call “the thigh of the white giant.”
Above me, on the upper deck, the island merchants sat: men of my own rank, though there were none as young as I. There they yawned through the salt afternoons under flapping leather awnings, drank liquor from teacups, predicted the winds, and had their hair oiled by their servants. The Ilavetis, slowly sipping the thin rice wine of their country, also had their fingers and toes dyed a deep reddish-brown; the smoky scent of the henna drifted away with the fog from their Bainish cigars, while one of them claimed that the odor of henna could make him weep with nostalgia. I despised them for this posturing, this sighing after their forests and national dishes mingled with boasts of their knowledge of the northern capital. None of them knew as much as I; none of them spoke Olondrian; their bovine heads were empty of an appreciation of the north. The Olondrian boy who knelt on a pillow each evening to sing for their pleasure might as well have sung to the sails or the empty night: the merchants would have been better pleased, I thought, with a dancing girl from southern Tinimavet, plastered with ochre and wearing mussel-shells in her hair.
The boy sang of women and gardens, the Brogyar wars, the hills of Tavroun. He knew cattle-songs from Kestenya and the rough fishing songs of the Kalka. The silver bells strung about his guitar rang gently as he played, and the music reached me where I sat beneath the curve of the upper deck. I sat alone and hidden, my arms clasped about my knees, under the slapping and rippling of the sails, in the wind and the dark. Snatches of murmuring voices came to me from the deck above, where the merchants sat under lamps, their fingers curled around their cups. The light of the lamps shone dimly on the masts and rigging above; the lantern in the prow was a faint, far beacon in the darkness; all was strange, creaking and moving, filled with the ceaseless wind and the distant cries of the sailors paying their londo forfeits in the prow. The boy broke into his favorite air, his sweet voice piercing the night, singing a popular song whose refrain was: “ Bain, city of my heart .” I sat enchanted, far from my gods, adrift in the boat of spices, in the sigh of the South, in the net of the wheeling stars, in the country of dolphins.
Halfway through the voyage a calm descended. The galley slaves rowed, chanting hoarsely, under a sky the color of turmeric. The Ardonyi unrolled herself like a sleepy dragon over the burnished sea, and sweat crept down my neck as I stood in my usual place on deck. The pages of my book were limp with heat, the letters danced before my eyes, and I read each line over and over, too dull to make sense of the words. I raised my head and yawned. At that moment a movement caught my eye, an object beetle-black and gleaming in the sun.
It was a woman’s braided hair. She was climbing up from below-decks. I closed my book, startled by the strangeness of the image: a woman, an island woman with her hair plaited into neat rows on the crown of her head, aboard an Olondrian vessel bound for the city of Bain! She
Above me, on the upper deck, the island merchants sat: men of my own rank, though there were none as young as I. There they yawned through the salt afternoons under flapping leather awnings, drank liquor from teacups, predicted the winds, and had their hair oiled by their servants. The Ilavetis, slowly sipping the thin rice wine of their country, also had their fingers and toes dyed a deep reddish-brown; the smoky scent of the henna drifted away with the fog from their Bainish cigars, while one of them claimed that the odor of henna could make him weep with nostalgia. I despised them for this posturing, this sighing after their forests and national dishes mingled with boasts of their knowledge of the northern capital. None of them knew as much as I; none of them spoke Olondrian; their bovine heads were empty of an appreciation of the north. The Olondrian boy who knelt on a pillow each evening to sing for their pleasure might as well have sung to the sails or the empty night: the merchants would have been better pleased, I thought, with a dancing girl from southern Tinimavet, plastered with ochre and wearing mussel-shells in her hair.
The boy sang of women and gardens, the Brogyar wars, the hills of Tavroun. He knew cattle-songs from Kestenya and the rough fishing songs of the Kalka. The silver bells strung about his guitar rang gently as he played, and the music reached me where I sat beneath the curve of the upper deck. I sat alone and hidden, my arms clasped about my knees, under the slapping and rippling of the sails, in the wind and the dark. Snatches of murmuring voices came to me from the deck above, where the merchants sat under lamps, their fingers curled around their cups. The light of the lamps shone dimly on the masts and rigging above; the lantern in the prow was a faint, far beacon in the darkness; all was strange, creaking and moving, filled with the ceaseless wind and the distant cries of the sailors paying their londo forfeits in the prow. The boy broke into his favorite air, his sweet voice piercing the night, singing a popular song whose refrain was: “ Bain, city of my heart .” I sat enchanted, far from my gods, adrift in the boat of spices, in the sigh of the South, in the net of the wheeling stars, in the country of dolphins.
Halfway through the voyage a calm descended. The galley slaves rowed, chanting hoarsely, under a sky the color of turmeric. The Ardonyi unrolled herself like a sleepy dragon over the burnished sea, and sweat crept down my neck as I stood in my usual place on deck. The pages of my book were limp with heat, the letters danced before my eyes, and I read each line over and over, too dull to make sense of the words. I raised my head and yawned. At that moment a movement caught my eye, an object beetle-black and gleaming in the sun.
It was a woman’s braided hair. She was climbing up from below-decks. I closed my book, startled by the strangeness of the image: a woman, an island woman with her hair plaited into neat rows on the crown of her head, aboard an Olondrian vessel bound for the city of Bain! She
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