A Stranger in Olondria: A Novel by Sofia Samatar Page B

it was a baboon-man! He stank, and his teeth were too big.” But my mother said sadly, gazing out through the stone archway: “No, he was not . . . He was one of the kyitna people who are living on Snail Mountain.”
    The thought of any kind of people living on Snail Mountain, where the earth breathed sulfurous exhalations and even the dew was poisonous, shocked and terrified me. How did they live? What did they eat? What water did they drink? But my mother said it was bad luck to think of it. Later the empty pitcher was found standing beside the gate, and my mother had the servants break it in pieces and bury it in the back garden. And some days after that we heard that a party of men from Tyom, armed with torches and spears, had driven the kyitna people away: “They had a small child with them,” whispered the women in the fruit market: “Its hair was red, they could see it in the torchlight—as red as this palm nut!” I wished, at the time, that I had been able to see the kyitna child. Now I studied the girl who lay motionless in the shade of the awning, who took up so little space, who seemed without substance, a trick of the light, who flickered under the flapping shade like the shadow cast by a fire.
    She was not as young as I had thought her at first. She was not a child, though from a distance she appeared to be so—she was small even for an islander. But her waist, showing between her short vest and the top of her drawstring trousers, was gently curved, and the look in her face was too remote for that of a child. She seemed to be wandering, open-eyed; her skin was dark, rich as silt; the crook of her elbow, dusky in the shade, was a dream of rivers. She wore a bracelet of jade beads which showed she belonged to the far south, to the rice-growers and eel-fishers, the people of the lagoons.
    I think she had spoken to me twice before I realized it. She struggled to raise her voice, calling: “Brother! You’ll get sun-sick.” Then I met her gaze, her tired, faintly mocking smile, and smiled back at her. The older woman, no doubt her mother, hushed her in a whisper.
    “It’s all right,” said the girl. “Look at him! He wouldn’t harm anyone. And he isn’t superstitious. He has the long face of a fish.”
    I strolled toward them and greeted the mother, whose eyes darted from my gaze. She had the flat, long-suffering face of a field-laborer and a scar on her forehead. The young girl looked at me from inside the fiery cloud of her hair, her lips still crooked in a smile. “Sit down, brother,” she said.
    I thanked her and sat in the chair beside her pallet, across from her mother, who still knelt stroking the girl’s long hair and would not meet my eye. “The fish,” said the young girl, speaking carefully, her breathing shallow, “is for wisdom. Isn’t that right? The fish is the wisest of the creatures. Now, most of our merchants here are shaped just like the domestic duck—except for the fat Ilaveti—the worst of all, he looks like a raven. . . .” She paused, closing her eyes for a moment, then opened them again and fixed me with a look of such clarity that I was startled. “Ducks are foolish,” she said, “and ravens are clever, but have bad hearts. That is why we came up here now, at noon, when they’re asleep.”
    I smiled. “You seem to have had ample time to study all of us. And yet this is the first time that I have seen you come out of your cabin.”
    “Tipyav,” she answered, “my mother’s servant, tells me everything. I trust him absolutely. He has slow thoughts, but a very keen eye. My father—but I am talking too much— you will think me poorly behaved—”
    “No,” I said. But she lay very still and silent, struggling for breath.
    “Sir,” said her mother in a low voice, looking at me at last, so that I saw, surprised, that she had the deep eyes of a beautiful woman: “My daughter is gravely ill. She is—she has not been well for some time. She has come here for