“‘uzi zubæ ʃaxeŋi θemovevisa!” The old woman spoke effusively, reaching up to grasp my face in her withered hand and smiled wide with the teeth she had left.
“O.. K…” I said, “so… those were words.”
She hunched over and cackled, then rested her hand on my shoulder, slapping gently a few times. Then she lifted her yellow eyes to me and spoke in clean Herali, almost as a whisper, “come and sit down. Listen. ‘uzi is like a past tense, but only when we need to express the origin of something. How things came to be.”
“‘uzi,” I nodded. “OK?”
She nodded. “zubæ is the action. Make sure to hear the vowel, /æ/. It's the same vowel you hear in the fat cat shat on the mat.”
That made me laugh. Hard.
The old woman poked her finger into my chest and grinned wide, “I have jokes too, young man! You'd better watch it!”
That made me smile. “I will.”
“So,” she turned towards a small iron stove in the corner beside the open window where three baby green spiders had made their home. She was dressed as everyone else, her shriveled body nearly naked and sagging breasts exposed to the world. “zubæ means to make something. To carve, to sculpt, like a work of art.”
“zubæ,” I repeated. “To make. OK?”
Her hovel wasn't large. Inside I could see wooden frames surrounded by mud with roots creeping down from the roof like fur. Inside, it was comfortable. Not trying to find some way to beat this horrid humidity and this is the least intolerable comfortable, but it was nice. The air was crisp and had a delightful earthy scent that made you feel connected to the world, and it was cool as the shade beneath an oak tree in the mountains of Osenia on a summer day.
“ʃaxeŋi,” she continued. She took up a pot from the stove and set it on a tray with two cups and plates of other things.
“Let me carry that for you,” I moved over to her.
“Oh, no!” her voice quivered. “Every day my body asks me ‘do you still need this?’ And if I say no, I'll lose it forever. Please, sit down.”
Beside the earthen wall were two bag chairs like the one I'd seen that braided woman sitting on the other day. They were set apart with a small, round wooden table between them.
She wobbled a bit as she walked ever so slowly towards me. “That's the subject. You know, the one doing the action. ʃaxeŋi is the one doing the carving.”
“Shaheni,” I nodded. “What does it mean?”
“The Devil!”
“Oh, wow. OK?”
She leaned over and set the tray down, then carefully lowered herself into the chair opposite me. “The next one is the object—the thing that was carved. θemovevisa.”
I nodded and made a mental note of what she'd said so far, wishing I’d had a notebook to write these down. “What does that one mean?”
“Well,” she picked up the pot and poured out a steaming cup of tea into each of the cups, then set it down. I couldn't place what kind of tea it was, but it had a sharp head to it. “Pay attention to this.”
“I'm listening?”
“No, look,” she pointed. “Do you see how neither of these two cups is closer to you, or to me? They’re side by side between us. Whenever you pour, always arrange the cups this way.”
“Hmm,” I raised an eyebrow. “What if there are three people?”
She smiled wide and nodded. “Very good! Very good! I love the way you question! Then you must place them all in the center.”
I studied the arrangement, then looked around. There was an old, tired dog with grayed, matted fur sleeping in the corner beside the door, and in the other corner a tousled bed small enough for my tiny host. I looked back at the Elder of Elders.
She laughed and squinted her eyes at me. “Also, you must choose first.”
“Oh,” I laughed, then picked up the teacup on the left.
She pointed out a small plate with three ceramic ramekins, each with a miniature spoon. “This is ‘azʊka, lemon, and bison cream. Take as much as you like.”
“nuvidesa,” I felt at ease with her. She wore her emotions as naked as her old, wrinkled body. The flap of fabric she wore about her waist wasn’t fine silk and had no gold or silver embroidery. Rather, her loincloth was a simple, undyed cotton with the thread on one side woven a little too taut, and had a small flower in one corner of pink yarn with the rough, haphazard stitching of a child.
“Now,” she continued, “θemovevisa can break down like this. vi makes a possessive…”
“Wait, I know this! visa is yours, isn't it?”
“Ahh,” she nodded and smiled wide. “Yes! Very good! And θemove is a face. Appearance, in general, but we usually mean face.”
“Your face,” I tapped my chin and put the words together in my mind. “Uh… the Devil has carved your face into being?”
“Not my face,” she lifted a hand to her chest in exaggerated denial, then leaned into me, “your face!”
I smiled, but the words didn't make sense. “The Devil carved my face?”
She leaned in close and whispered, “to tempt women!”
That made me blush hard. I don't think I'd ever heard anything like that before, but she meant it. I tried to laugh off a pang of embarrassment. “Well thank you… I think.”
She giggled under her breath and sipped her tea. “You have options, boy.”
“OK… well… since we're talking about language, do you mind if I ask, what does amunahata mean?”
She laughed hard and slapped her knee, lifted up her head and leaned back. After a while, she settled down. “That one's easy. ‘amu is a fly, ŋa means on, and xatʌ means shit.”
“What?” I giggled. “Fly on shit? That's what it means?”
“It means, you must think you’re important.”
“Uh-huh,” I nodded.
“Here’s another one you can use. xatʌŋayaŋʊ.”
“Shit… on…?”
“yaŋʊ. Tongue,” she said. “Shit on your tongue. It means you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“That’s… interesting?”
She giggled under her breath and sipped her tea. “It means you were going down on your lover and ended up in the wrong spot.”
“Oh my God!” I cried. “That’s what it means?”
She laughed hard and slapped her knee, then smiled at me. “Oh, but here’s a nasty one. dʌsekæ damʌvise. That’s a real classic; it means your wife uses a dildo.”
“Good God!” I broke out laughing. “I can't believe you're teaching me these; I should be writing them down!”
“You’ll get it,” she assured me. “There’s plenty more. Here’s a basic one—ɣowi. It means stupid, incompetent, sloppy, lazy, absent-minded, pathetic, all that.”
“All that?”
She nodded, “it means meat, but yes, it means all that when you use it as an insult.”
“How? Why would…”
She leaned back and stared at me in shock as if it were obvious, “because the jungle will eat you!”
“OK,” I laughed, “well that makes sense. What about… uh…” I bit my teeth, unsure if it would be too much.
“Ask me anything.”
“Um… OK… the F-word?”
She grinned wide. “Fuck?”
I winced. “Heh! You say it so casually!”
“For a little old lady, hmm?” she smiled again.
“Yeah,” I shrugged.
“Listen, boy! I had five children, nine grandchildren, twenty-three great-grandchildren, seventeen great-great grandchildren with more on the way, and last month I held my great-great-great grandson. You think I don't know how fucking works?”
I chuckled, “I guess you do!”
“First, listen carefully; it's not an insult. We don’t use it like that. Fuck off, get fucked, fuck you, none of that; a lot of your usual insults just won't translate. Same thing with sucking cock…”
I couldn’t help but smirk.
She grinned. “It’s a beautiful thing! The asymmetry, the selflessness, the pure altruism that you offer to your lover; I always took great pride in bringing him to that place. Your language says ‘suck my dick’ with such derision; why should anyone want to do that for you?”
I had to pause to consider that. Peyumi sat smiling and sipping her tea while my eyes meandered around searching for a response, and I felt a pang of shame over the truth of it. “You know, I don't think I've ever looked at it that way before.”
“Hmm!” she only smiled at me. “Well, in response to your question, ʃʌkæ is like smashing into your lover. It's when you just need them, right then and there, and you don't care about anything else. ʃʌ’aso is to make love, slow and smooth, long and deliberate. If it's a special anticipation, migʊdʊʃʌ. That's for the first time… or the first time in a long time, when your heart races at the thought of being with them again. Routine sex is puyoʃʌ…”
I shook my head, still in shock over it all and still chuckling through my embarrassment. “I… actually… don't know about any of that. I'm chaste.”
She opened her eyes wide and pulled her face back and smiled at me without another word.
I felt like I had to break the silence. “I, uh… I’m an orphan; I was raised in the Daenma church, so… you know… I suppose one day if I get married, then… you know.”
The old woman giggled lightly under her breath. “So that’s why you don’t have a Naveris.”
“Uh…” I hesitated. I never mentioned that to anyone, not since the day we arrived.
“Uh-oh,” she read another reason on my face. “There’s more to it, isn’t there?”
“Well, um… OK. So there’s this girl… woman, back home, and we grew up together. She’s an orphan, too. I really liked her; she’s such a sweetheart, I just love her.”
Peyumi leaned in close; a permanent smile was fixed into her wrinkles. “What does she look like?”
That got me smiling. “She’s beautiful! She… she actually looks like Commander. Same yellow skin, same kinky bronze hair, same pitch black eyes, only she wears it with such style and grace, there’s no comparison. Sometimes people of the village would talk as though they expected me to marry Guenevieve… she’s another girl we grew up with. She’s… they call her a pureblooded Herali girl. For them, Sarina was invisible; they never suspected… we got away with so much!”
“Oh, really?”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Yeah. We used to try things out on each other, learning what feels good, that sort of thing.” I checked the door, not that this was a secret anymore. “One time, she came to me saying she’d seen Dariana in the pub sitting on some man’s lap while he kissed her breasts, and wanted to see what that was about. That sort of thing.”
The old woman laughed. “So not completely chaste, then.”
“We never went all the way.”
“So what happened?”
“I screwed up. We talked about Naveris the day I was called, and I ended up kissing Guenevieve instead.”
She smiled and rested a hand on my arm. “I’m sorry.”
“Everything according to God’s plan, right?”
“Tell me, have any of the women here at Carthia caught your eye?”
I winced. I wasn’t ready to go back to thinking about that. “I don’t know. I think I need to focus on training and set that part of me aside for a while.”
“Why would you say that?”
I sighed. “Because I don’t want to put anyone else off. I’ve been a complete jerk since I got here. You know, yeah. There’ve been a couple, but I can’t think about that. I need to just focus on being a better man, learn how to act appropriately, stop being so…” I shrugged. The words escaped me. “I need to fix myself before I entertain those thoughts again.”
“No,” she shook her head and smiled.
“No?”
She chuckled again. “No.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, no?”
“You deserve to love, and to be loved, right now. Today. Work on being a better man, do that, but don’t deprive yourself of what’s right in front of you.”
“There’s nothing in front of me! There… I mean… I screwed up every opportunity I… I didn’t even have any opportunities, but I still screwed up.”
“You’re going to screw up; that’s life. If you wait until perfect, you’ll spend your whole life waiting. Even more, you’ll miss the whole point. Loving your partner is forgiving them when they make a mistake and having the grace to forgive yourself and allow them to forgive you. This is how we grow. We learn to be better people through our relationships; how can you ever learn these things all by yourself?”
I shrugged. “I guess… I could keep my eyes open?”
She laughed, then took another sip of her tea. My thoughts ruminated on what she’d said, yet she had more. “What do you want from Carthia?”
“Huh?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“Well, think about it for a moment and tell me, what do you want from Carthia?”
“You mean like what do I want to accomplish? Well… I guess… that depends on what's possible.”
“Don't let ‘impossible’ stop you, child. You have no idea what's possible. Tell me what you want, and then we'll talk about how possible it is.”
“OK,” I nodded. Then a smile crept across my cheek as thoughts of pure fantasy danced across my mind. “How big can I get?”
“Let your ambitions know no bounds.”
“I suppose I'd end the war. Let people… uh… find a peaceful solution that works for both sides.”
She grinned wide and wiggled her nose, “and what if there are three sides?”
That made me smile deep. I set my cup down so that I could better talk with my hands. “It would have to work for all parties. It would have to be an arrangement that allowed all sides to maintain their dignity and a good degree of autonomy while also addressing the reasons why there was conflict to begin with.”
“Hmm,” she grinned wide. “Now that is ambitious. Most of your friends said they just wanted to survive and go home.”
“Well, that, obviously!”
“No,” she shook her head. “Take nothing for granted, including that.”
“OK?”
“Let me tell you something. When I was a little girl, I used to play in the construction site, this was back when they were still building these walls. There was this one foreman, big giant man. And every time he saw me swinging from the scaffolds, he would bellow out, ‘get away from there!’” She laughed and slapped her knee at the memory. “Oh, but they never did catch me! Then one time, he was sitting down with his lunch, and I was swinging from the bars like I liked to do. He didn’t say anything. I was perplexed.”
“He was on break.”
She laughed. “After he got up, he left some bread and cheese behind, and some grapes, and went back to work. He went back to yelling at me and telling me to go away, but every day he saved some of his lunch for me.”
That made me smile. “Nice!”
She looked up and tapped her chin. “If I were to choose one thing that makes the most difference between those who thrive here and those who don't, it’s respect.”
The tea bit hard on my tongue, but the sweetness had me craving for another sip. “What does respect mean to you?”
“Oh!” She smiled wide. “Another brilliant question! I love it! To me, respect is an act of appreciation. To respect something is to say, I don't know what value you serve, but I appreciate your existence. I know I may be angry sometimes, but I still appreciate you. Some people conflate respect with fear. They think that threatening to beat someone over the head with a beehive will make you respect them. They think you can force someone to respect you, but making someone fear you only gives them reason to hate you, and no one appreciates people they’re afraid of.”
I nodded. “That makes sense.”
“Acting upon appreciation. That would be how I define respect. Now. Let's think about what a peace that works for all sides would look like. Do you have any ideas?”
“No,” I shook my head. “To be honest, I barely know what's going on here.”
“My, my, your fruit does grow on a different tree!”
“What does that mean?”
“Let's start at the beginning. You know this is the River of Unending Torment,” she pointed towards the wall, “right?”
I nodded.
“Would you like to know how it got that name?”
“Maybe?” I shifted nervously.
“Well. Long, long ago, and this was a very, very long time ago, so definitely before yesterday.”
I laughed at that.
“Pirates used to sail up the river and let the current carry them back out to sea. This island was perfect for them, being able to rest and resupply on land, far away from the Empire and all. For just as long, mountaineers came over the pass, the same one you came in on. For them, too, this island was a safe place to rest from packs of wild vita’o that prowl the jungle at night. The locals knew this island was a favorite place for visitors, and so they knew where to go to trade. You can imagine—over time, Carthia became a settlement. Now, the story goes that there was a guide who took the visitors around to trade and teach them how to pour tea, all that wonderful stuff.”
“Right. OK?”
“And one day, they said to her, ‘what is the name of this river?’ Now. At first she thought, name a river? Who would do such a silly thing? But then, she realized they were serious, so she told them, ‘this is the River of Unending Torment!’ I'm sure you can imagine! They were cross; they thought she was playing a joke on them. She was, of course, but that's not the important part. They went to her elders and told them what she'd said, and they demanded to know the true name of the river. So the elders talked among themselves and figured out what was going on. The fact alone that this was so important to them was hilarious, so they reaffirmed the name she'd given them: the River of Unending Torment.”
“You have got to be kidding me!”
“True story!”
“That's it?”
“That's it!” She laughed hard. “The Lake of Doom, Valley of Suffering, over that way is the Hill of the Damned.”
“It was all a joke!”
“Well,” she grinned wide. “Over that way is the Valley of Orgasms—for some reason they get more visitors than we do.”
“I can't imagine why!”
She laughed lightly, then continued. “So time passed, and Carthia grew. One pirate had attacked a slave ship and managed to rescue quite a few people. They didn't know where else to bring them, so they brought them here. Then the surrounding tribes began bringing their Returned here. I'm one of them; look close,” she pointed at her lip.
It was difficult to see for the wrinkles covering her dark-green skin, but I could make out a scar that ran from her nose to her mouth.
“I was born with a hairlip. You're supposed to take children like that into the jungle and let whatever eats them eat them. My mother didn't do that. She found someone willing to take care of me, who stitched my lip together.”
“And you've been here ever since?”
“Mm-hmm,” she nodded. “Of course there’s always hostile neighbors no matter who you are. The Duke of Heralia built these walls along with the towers throughout the river bend, and for a long time, Carthia was fine. Then the plague happened.”
“I heard that plagues tend to screw things up.”
“Sometimes they do that, yes” she nodded, then giggled lightly. “Yes, well you weren't there! Oh, it was terrible! We tried everything. Nothing helped. It was the hand of Mother herself tossing a coin for everyone. But we tried everything just the same. You know, that's actually how we found gebu'i.”
“Oh?”
“We were desperate. We had a bunch of volunteers. We're going to try a bunch of random crap on each of you, and write down who lives and who dies. Then we do the same with another group, and then another. But I noticed something. Strange things happened to the people we gave mold to.”
“Mold?”
“Oh, yes. That same green mold that grows on fruit. When we gave it to someone, it didn't do anything for the plague, but it did other things. For one man, he'd gotten the lesions all over his body, and they'd festered. Gebu'i took care of that, and his body eventually started to fight the plague itself.”
“Wait…” I lifted both hands. “You're telling me, that gebu'i is just… mold? That's all it is?”
“Scrape it from your culture, dry it out, and pinch it into a powder—you don't want to damage the spores. Anyway, I was saying. The plague. So, there was a woman, her name is kaxawi. She's from the sewu’oŋi. She lost both her children to the plague, and her response was to blame it on us, these outsiders.”
That reminded me of that book I'd seen in the library. “Is it true that the Emperor planted the plague?”
“Oh,” she waved that off and shook her head. “Volcanoes don't just erupt; it must be someone's fault.”
“You don't think that's true?”
“They blamed everyone! There wasn't one person in the world whose fault it wasn't. But kaxawi insisted it was us. She convinced a few people, but most chased her away. Of course that wasn't the end, though. Would you like some treats?”
“Treats?”
She gestured to a small plate beside the teapot where tiny morsels awaited. One was covered in a smooth, brown shell.
“What is this?”
“Oh, you'll like that one!”
I did. I still didn't know what it was, but the shell part melted in my mouth with a rich, buttery texture and sweet, nutty taste I couldn't place, yet it brought me to heaven. “What is this?”
She smiled wide and nodded. “I'll tell you the next time you visit me. Where was I?”
“You were talking about Kahawi.”
“Oh, that's right. Goodness! How could I forget? You know my granddaughter made me take a memory test the other day.”
“How'd you do?”
“On what?”
“The test?”
“What test?”
“You just said you took a memory test.”
“I did?”
“Yes, you…”
As I spoke, she shook with laughter, then started to chuckle heartily and slapped her knee. “Your face!”
“Good one. You got me!”
We laughed together a little more. “So anyway. At first, kaxawi went around and told everyone that Carthia was the cause of the plague. We brought it upon them, it’s our fault, and so forth. She managed to get a few small tribes to follow her, but soon the peðaxosa attacked them and shut that down. That’s another tribe, very powerful back in the day.
“And then she noticed something. When she talked about the plague, most people didn’t seem to care. They were done with it; they didn’t want to be reminded of it constantly. Better to pick up the pieces and move on. But when she talked about other things, that got people's attention.”
“What other things?”
“Well, some men from your culture don’t understand what it means when a woman says ‘no,’ and some of them can be forceful about it. Traditionally, such men were killed along with any sons they had. Quite a few children over the years have been brought here to escape their fathers’ executions.
“Carthia, she believes, is the cause of all that behavior, and says it should be wiped out. She tells everyone that the men of your culture prefer girls to women. She talked about your foreign gods, she made fun of your language, and painted a picture of a corrupt city corrupting the world with its filth. ‘Look at what happens when you don’t return the defective!’ she would say. The only time she even mentions the plague anymore is when rattling off a litany of other sins.
“Nowadays, we threaten their culture, their way of life, their language, religion, everything that soothes the edge off the innate human fear of existence. Carthia has corrupted everything, and it’s time we were exterminated like the parasites we are. ‘abæko, that's the word she uses—parasite.”
“And the people responded to that?”
“Oh, yes! Kill me, and I will be sad. Make me learn a new word, and I will send you to the bowels of hell. There are some things I still don’t understand. I think when death calls my name and I’m drifting away towards the light, then I’ll have it all figured out.”
“Of course!” I smiled. “Why sooner?”
We ended up talking for hours, and she fed me lunch. Not the usual dried bread crisps and brown mush with a few slices of mango like they gave us in the mess, either. She had sweet peppers stuffed with all manner of deliciousness and baked. She made that with a cold soup made of tomato, sweet onions, cucumber, and some herbs like garlic and long, prickly leaves that smelt of coriander but stronger. I'd never tasted anything like it, and I couldn't eat it fast enough. The old woman watched me devour my serving and offered me more. I was afraid of overstepping my welcome.
“Don't be silly!” she said. “I know you're hungry after being chained up to that thing all day yesterday. Please, have some more. And let me get you something to drink; there's one more thing we need to discuss.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“It's the most important thing.”
I sat up and looked intently at her as she shuffled her venerable self over to a wooden countertop where a steel pitcher awaited. She then poured out something dark and purple into my cup and brought it over. It tasted like tart liquid candy.
“It's the reason I wanted to save you for last,” she said.
“What is it?”
She narrowed her eyes and spoke. “What are your intentions with Miyani?”
“Ugh!” My heart leaped and fell down hard. “I am so sorry. Please, tell her, I am sorry. I never meant to offend her; I didn't know. I will leave her alone, I promise. I won't… I will keep my eyes to myself, I won't talk to her. I'm not that guy who can't take a hint…”
She studied my face closely as I spoke and held a big smile across her lips. “Don't want your liver ripped out, hmm?”
“OK, so there's that. That's, you know… Blue seems like a nice lizard, if anyone is going to eat my liver it might as well go to him, but… I plan to use it at some point, so if it's a possibility I'd kinda like to keep it, you know?”
“Of course!”
“Honestly, it wasn't necessary. I get it, she doesn't know my language well enough to tell me to go piss off, so she asked the Marquis to relay the message. But I do understand, and I will respect her and leave her alone. Threats aren't necessary.”
“So unnecessary!”
“Yeah,” I nodded and sipped my soup.
She grinned further and leaned in, speaking almost as a whisper. “You told her she was cute.”
I winced. “You know, I don't even know why I said that. I just…”
“Do you still feel that way?”
“OK…” I ran my fingers through my hair and scratched the back of my head, hoping to stumble across some useful words. “Look, I… I mean… I didn't act appropriately, I wasn't respectful, I know that. I can… uh, I will…”
“I told Hakkon a thousand times to stop telling that story.”
“Huh?”
“Every man who comes through here, he tells them what happened. He thinks that's the best way to teach your people to respect boundaries.”
She gazed at me, watching me stuff another pepper into my mouth, waiting to see if I would make the connection. “He's been giving that same speech for months.”
“So… wait a minute. Did she even complain about me?”
“She didn't even come back to Carthia that evening.” Peyumi leaned in close and grinned wide, “do you still think she's cute?”