Snakehead by Ann Halam

quickly rearranged my face, and whooped and cheered and pounded my palms together. Everyone shouted that the singer had surpassed herself. Foreigners threw coins, which is
not
a good idea in a crowded bar. Mando stood, and bowed, sat down again, and called for another drink.
    Kore was still working away. Palikari suddenly had the presence of mind to drop down from the counter and stand in front of her. Papa Dicty must have been watching too. Before the applause showed any sign of letting up, he stood, and spread his arms. “How beautiful it is that we remember the dead in our midsummer festivities. I have always thought that’s a very moving Serifiote tradition. Now, the crowd in here is unsafe, so please go outto the terrace! We can thank and praise the incomparable Mando more pleasantly outdoors, when she’s had a chance to catch her breath!”
    The people obeyed without protest; they must have been glad to get some fresh air. We cleared the dining room, and the kitchen-yard crowd trooped after them, Palikari and I politely encouraging the stragglers. Dicty took a lamp from the high table to the bar, and looked over Kore’s shoulder.
    “You can read and write?” said the boss softly.
    She barely glanced at him. “Yes … Please excuse me, Papa Dicty, I’m trying to remember the meter, one more line …”
    “That’s a strange kind of script. Who taught you, my dear?”
    Her hand was still flying. “It’s a new kind of writing. I worked it out: I use different symbols to mean
sounds
, not things. It’s much better. You can use it for poetry, not just accounts. You can use it for any language you like.”
    “Great Mother,” said the boss.
    He sat down hard on a bar stool, as if someone had knocked him on the head.
    Kore dropped her stylus and leaned back, wringing her hand: it must have been aching. Moumi, Pali, Anthe and I crowded close. We looked at the little dancing marks, and then at each other, in blank astonishment.
    We kept accounts at Dicty’s, with the usual signs for different kinds of goods. We stored our yearly figures onclay tablets, and we thought that was pretty special. We knew of Eygptian writing, of course. But no one,
no one
could read and write in the islands these days—not this way, setting down thoughts and ideas. For us the skill had been utterly lost since the Great Disaster. It was rare beyond price,
anywhere in the Middle Sea
.
    The king of Serifos was the first threat that leapt to my mind. If he found out about this! But even then I knew that Polydectes was not the danger.
    “Great Mother,” said Dicty again, in a hollow tone.
    The tallyboards were rough, flaky scraped wood. They weren’t meant to last; we used them for kindling when they were done with…. I could not make Kore’s marks stand still. They seemed to whirl, and melt into each other. It was like a language so foreign it sounds like water running, or the twittering of birds.
    Papa Dicty was frowning, thinking hard. He stood up again.
    “Could you read what you have written, Kore?”
    “Of course.” She began to speak, slowly, her eyes on the board.
    It was astonishing, and
eerie
. I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. She got through the first, ominous lines of the funeral song, then she looked up and saw us all standing there openmouthed. I saw the horror dawning on her face.
    She had given herself away. She had revealed a secretthat marked her like a shining brand. Was that what made her look so terrified?
    “You had to do it.” Anthe took her hand. “You couldn’t help it,
I
know.”
    “Here
, what’s this caper?”
    It was Mando. She’d been sitting there on her stool all along. The singer got up and trod heavily across the room, mopping her dripping mascara with a table napkin. “What’s that on those tallyboards? Some kind ’er spell? What are you all looking at? Has this girl stolen my song? Lemme see. How’s she done that?”
    The funeral song was not Mando’s property. It was older