on
you
.
You
were the one without anywhere to live and with no food…”
Mely scratched her ear, pretending that she hadn’t heard me. She doesn’t like to be reminded about that.
“And,” I added, “I’m still the one who buys the fish heads. So it might be a good idea to be polite to me.”
“You said you wanted me to be honest,” said Mely. “And look what happens when I tell you what I think! You threaten to starve me!”
“You can be honest without being rude,” I said.
“I told you a cat doesn’t know anything about storytelling. So why do you ask me? It’s your fault if you get offended.”
“You like listening to Blind Harim as much as I do,” I said. “So you must know something about telling stories.”
“Anyway, you might tell lies about me,” said Mely, who wasn’t listening. “I’m not a story, I’m your friend. What if you say things that aren’t true? Won’t you be changing how things are?”
So now I understand that Mely is worried about this book, because she is part of the story. When I think about it, she’s right. Books
do
change things. My Book changed things all the time: people took its advice and lived better lives (or didn’t take its advice, and lived worse lives; but they knew what they should have done). It’s hard to see how this book I’m writing will change things, really; it’s a different sort of book, for a start. But I can see why Mely might not want to be a story cat in a story book.
In the end, I promised to be as truthful as I possibly could, especially when I wrote about Mely, because being truthful would change things the least. Mely looked suspicious, but thought that would probably be all right. There are two problems with this: the first is that I suspect that being truthful changes things more than lying does. The Book was powerful, my grandmother told me, because it was always truthful; there might be another kind of power in distorting reality with words, but it will always prove weaker than truthfulness.
On the other hand, Grandmother also said that truthfulness has many faces, and that some of those faces might look like lies. “You can never be quite certain,” she said. “And that is a good thing, because only a god can be certain about the truth, and even then only sometimes. It is much harder to be a human being than it is to be a god.”
Aside from questions about the gods, the other problem is that I don’t think Mely will like it much if I do tell the truth, because it doesn’t always show her in a good light. Although she’d never admit it, I think that she wouldn’t mind if I wrote down a pack of lies about her, as long as they were flattering. Fond as I am of her (and I am very fond of Mely – that is the truth too), she is sometimes very annoying.
As Mely said, we met in Kilok, two days after I left my village, and by then I no longer felt at all peaceful. I was lost and confused and sad.
I know now that Kilok is a small town, but it is much bigger than my village, which is little more than a single road lined with houses and fields and orchards. I had been there many times with my father, who often brought cheese and fish to sell at the market, but never on my own. To me, Kilok seemed bewildering and enormous. I came ashore upstream, just where the houses began, and dragged my boat up onto the bank and covered it with brush to hide it from unfriendly eyes. Then I walked through the straggly outskirts into the market square, my shadow stretching long behind me in the rich light of evening.
I had unthinkingly expected the market to be bustling, as it had been every time I had seen it, but of course by then everyone had finished their business for the day and gone home. A couple of stray dogs nosed about for scraps, and an old man squatted by the well clutching his walking stick and staring blindly into space, but otherwise it was deserted.
The mood of peaceful certainty that had accompanied me down the River all day
you
.
You
were the one without anywhere to live and with no food…”
Mely scratched her ear, pretending that she hadn’t heard me. She doesn’t like to be reminded about that.
“And,” I added, “I’m still the one who buys the fish heads. So it might be a good idea to be polite to me.”
“You said you wanted me to be honest,” said Mely. “And look what happens when I tell you what I think! You threaten to starve me!”
“You can be honest without being rude,” I said.
“I told you a cat doesn’t know anything about storytelling. So why do you ask me? It’s your fault if you get offended.”
“You like listening to Blind Harim as much as I do,” I said. “So you must know something about telling stories.”
“Anyway, you might tell lies about me,” said Mely, who wasn’t listening. “I’m not a story, I’m your friend. What if you say things that aren’t true? Won’t you be changing how things are?”
So now I understand that Mely is worried about this book, because she is part of the story. When I think about it, she’s right. Books
do
change things. My Book changed things all the time: people took its advice and lived better lives (or didn’t take its advice, and lived worse lives; but they knew what they should have done). It’s hard to see how this book I’m writing will change things, really; it’s a different sort of book, for a start. But I can see why Mely might not want to be a story cat in a story book.
In the end, I promised to be as truthful as I possibly could, especially when I wrote about Mely, because being truthful would change things the least. Mely looked suspicious, but thought that would probably be all right. There are two problems with this: the first is that I suspect that being truthful changes things more than lying does. The Book was powerful, my grandmother told me, because it was always truthful; there might be another kind of power in distorting reality with words, but it will always prove weaker than truthfulness.
On the other hand, Grandmother also said that truthfulness has many faces, and that some of those faces might look like lies. “You can never be quite certain,” she said. “And that is a good thing, because only a god can be certain about the truth, and even then only sometimes. It is much harder to be a human being than it is to be a god.”
Aside from questions about the gods, the other problem is that I don’t think Mely will like it much if I do tell the truth, because it doesn’t always show her in a good light. Although she’d never admit it, I think that she wouldn’t mind if I wrote down a pack of lies about her, as long as they were flattering. Fond as I am of her (and I am very fond of Mely – that is the truth too), she is sometimes very annoying.
As Mely said, we met in Kilok, two days after I left my village, and by then I no longer felt at all peaceful. I was lost and confused and sad.
I know now that Kilok is a small town, but it is much bigger than my village, which is little more than a single road lined with houses and fields and orchards. I had been there many times with my father, who often brought cheese and fish to sell at the market, but never on my own. To me, Kilok seemed bewildering and enormous. I came ashore upstream, just where the houses began, and dragged my boat up onto the bank and covered it with brush to hide it from unfriendly eyes. Then I walked through the straggly outskirts into the market square, my shadow stretching long behind me in the rich light of evening.
I had unthinkingly expected the market to be bustling, as it had been every time I had seen it, but of course by then everyone had finished their business for the day and gone home. A couple of stray dogs nosed about for scraps, and an old man squatted by the well clutching his walking stick and staring blindly into space, but otherwise it was deserted.
The mood of peaceful certainty that had accompanied me down the River all day
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