Wise words. The type Eshonai hadn’t heard out of her mother in years.
“Child!” Mother said as Eshonai approached. Solid despite her years, Mother had a neat round face and wore her hairstrands in a braid, tied with a ribbon. Eshonai had brought her that ribbon from a meeting with the Alethi years ago. “Child, have you seen your sister? It is her day of first transformation! We need to prepare her.”
“It is attended to, Mother,” Eshonai said to the Rhythm of Peace, kneeling down beside the woman. “How goes the pruning?”
“I should be finishing soon,” Mother said. “I need to leave before the people who own this house return.”
“You own it, Mother.”
“No, no. It belongs to two others. They were in the house last night, and told me I needed to leave. I’ll just finish with this shalebark before I go.” She got out her file, smoothing one side of a ridge, then painting it with sap to encourage growth in that direction.
Eshonai sat back, attuning Mourning, and Peace left her. Perhaps she should have chosen the Rhythm of the Lost instead. It changed in her head.
She forced it back. No. No, her mother was not dead.
She wasn’t fully alive, either.
“Here, take this,” Mother said to Peace, handing Eshonai a file. At least Mother recognized her today. “Work on that outcropping there. I don’t want it to keep growing downward. We need to send it up, up toward the light.”
“The storms are too strong on this side of the city.”
“Storms? Nonsense. No storms here.” Mother paused. “I wonder where we’ll be taking your sister. She’ll need a storm for her transformation.”
“Don’t worry about that, Mother,” Eshonai said, forcing herself to speak to Peace. “I will care for it.”
“You are so good, Venli,” Mother said. “So helpful. Staying home, not running off, like your sister. That girl… She’s never where she should be.”
“She is now,” Eshonai whispered. “She’s trying to be.”
Mother hummed to herself, continuing working. Once, this woman had one of the best memories in the city. She still did, in a way.
“Mother,” Eshonai said, “I need help. I think something terrible is going to happen. I can’t decide if it is less terrible than what is already happening.”
Mother filed at a section of shalebark, then blew off the dust.
“Our people are crumbling,” Eshonai said. “We’re being weathered away. We moved to Narak and chose a war of attrition. That has meant six years with steady losses. People are giving up.”
“That’s not good,” Mother said.
“But the alternative? Dabbling in things we shouldn’t, things that might bring the eyes of the Unmade upon us.”
“You’re not working,” Mother said, pointing. “Don’t be like your sister.”
Eshonai placed her hands in her lap. This wasn’t helping. Seeing Mother like this…
“Mother,” Eshonai said to Supplication, “why did we leave the dark home?”
“Ah, now that’s an old song, Eshonai,” Mother said. “A dark song, not for a child like you. Why, it’s not even your day of first transformation.”
“I’m old enough, Mother. Please?”
Mother blew on her shalebark. Had she forgotten, finally, this last part of what she had been? Eshonai’s heart sank.
“Long are the days since we knew the dark home,” Mother sang softly to one of the Rhythms of Remembrance. “The Last Legion, that was our name then. Warriors who had been set to fight in the farthest plains, this place that had once been a nation and was now rubble. Dead was the freedom of most people. The forms, unknown, were forced upon us. Forms of power, yes, but also forms of obedience. The gods commanded, and we did obey, always. Always.”
“Except for that day,” Eshonai said along with her mother, in rhythm.
“The day of the storm when the Last Legion fled,” Mother continued in song. “Difficult was the path chosen. Warriors, touched by the gods, our only choice to seek dullness of mind. A crippling that brought freedom.”
Mother’s calm, sonorous song danced with the wind. As frail as she seemed other times, when she sang the old songs, she seemed herself again. A parent who had at times conflicted with Eshonai, but a parent whom Eshonai had always respected.
“Daring was the challenge made,” Mother sang, “when the Last Legion abandoned thought and power in exchange for freedom. They risked forgetting all. And so songs they composed, a hundred stories to tell, to remember. I tell them to you, and you will tell them to your children, until the forms are again discovered.”
From there, Mother launched into one of the early songs, about how the people would make their home in the ruins of an abandoned kingdom. How they would spread out, act as simple tribes and refugees. It was their plan to remain hidden, or at least ignored.
The songs left out so much. The Last Legion hadn’t known how to transform into anything other than dullform and mateform, at least not without the help of the gods. How had they known the other forms were possible? Had these facts originally been recorded in the songs, and then lost over the years as words changed here and there?
Eshonai listened, and though her mother’s voice did help her attune Peace again, she found herself deeply troubled anyway. She had come here for answers. Once, that would have worked.
No longer.
Eshonai stood to leave her mother singing.
“I found some of your things,” Mother said, breaking the song, “when cleaning today. You should take them. They clutter the home, and I will be moving out soon.”
Eshonai hummed Mourning to herself, but went to see just what her mother had “discovered.” Another pile of rocks, in which she saw child’s playthings? Strips of cloth she imagined were clothing?
Eshonai found a small sack in front of the building. She opened it to find paper.
Paper made from local plants, not human paper. Rough paper, with varied color, made after the old listener way. Textured and full, not neat and sterile. The ink on it was beginning to fade, but Eshonai recognized the drawings.
My maps, she thought. From those early days.
Without meaning to, she attuned Remembrance. Days spent hiking across the wilderness of what the humans called Natanatan, passing through forests and jungles, drawing her own maps and expanding the world. She’d started alone, but her discoveries had excited an entire people. Soon, though still in her teenage years, she’d been leading entire expeditions to find new rivers, new ruins, new spren, new plants.
And humans. In a way, this was all her fault.
Her mother started singing again.
Looking through her old maps, Eshonai found a powerful longing within her. Once, she’d seen the world as something fresh and exciting. New, like a blossoming forest after a storm. She was dying slowly, as surely as her people were.
She packed up the maps and left her mother’s house, walking toward the center of town. Her mother’s song, still beautiful, echoed behind her. Eshonai attuned Peace. That let her know that she was nearly late for the meeting with the rest of the Five.
She did not hasten her pace. She let the steady, sweeping beats of the Rhythm of Peace carry her forward. Unless you concentrated on attuning a certain rhythm, your body would naturally choose the one that fit your mood. Therefore, it was always a conscious decision to listen to a rhythm that did not match how you felt. She did this now with Peace.