Fedor's body was burned the next morning.

We stood with Gedeon, mother, aunt Arleta and Tessa in front of the small pyre and watched my brother's remains disappear in the flames.

The faya didn't come. Even though he was Fedor's father, this son meant nothing to him. He was just an entry in the voluminous ledger of t faya's seventh wife and an expired workforce. Even my oldest brother Odon, whom I only knew from stories, did not attend the funeral.

I remember crying. A lot. Even when I was young, I knew I would never see Fedor again. My voal was wet from tears. I knew I was going to miss his caresses when he came back from the mines. As well as the nights I snuggled up to him for warmth. In a flood of sobs, I remembered my mother's words and tried to keep Fedor's smile as he died. Mother was right. It was important to remember. Just like the memory of my brother's last smile is the only thing no one can take away from me.

The only sign of my mother's grief was how tightly she gripped my hand. She did not wear a voal or a mantle. She wore her own mask. Lips pursed tightly and face expressionless so no one could guess what she was feeling.

That night my mother let me sleep in bed with her so I could cry over my brother's death. She wanted me to at least get some sleep. The very next day she took me to our gura.

The word gura in the language of the original glaziers meant mouth, which was very apt. He was the only one who could submit the pleas of the glaziers from our ghetto to the faya. For us, he was a real faya. Not the one who appropriated the title and lived in the palatul. But the one who shared our life with us, lived in a koliba, and was one of us. Every ghetto had such a gura. Glaziers went to him for advice, resolved their disputes with him. Gura was the only one who could read and write.

Gura Elmar was the oldest man in our ghetto. He was seventy-two years old and had never worked in the mine, for his face was clean. He did not wear a mantle, but a stema, a kind of a coat with sleeves. His hair was long and thin, his eyes hidden behind lids as if refusing to look at the world around him.

I remember standing in a small room watching my mother confer with the gura. They sat at an old table and drank apu, goat's milk diluted with water, from wooden bowls.

"She heard the shield before the curpulas," Mother was saying. “She can hear it, you understand? She can listen! This quality is very rare in women.”

Since Elmar knew everything that went on in his ghetto, and the glaziers had a real trust in him, he also knew my secret.

"Are you sure?" Elmar asked his mother again, looking at me.

"Yes," the mother nodded. Her bloodshot eyes were still full of pain. Nevertheless, she tried to recover quickly so that she could do something for at least one of her children. Perhaps Fedor's death spurred her on. Perhaps the sad event reminded her of how little time she had.

Elmar got up from the table and walked over to me. Then he knelt down. "Ilan, what exactly did you hear?"

I remembered that sound and immediately remembered Fedor's smile. It was difficult, but I tried to separate the two memories.

"Some singing," I said finally. “Very high and it kept getting louder. Then there were curpulas."

Gura nodded his head in understanding, his hands covering my shoulders.

“Ilan, now listen to me carefully.” He fixed his brown eyes on me and I wanted to back away. However, Elmar held me tight, as if he expected such a reaction. “Now I'm going to take you to someone. But you know you can never tell anyone that you're a girl, don’t you?"

I immediately nodded and looked for my mother.

“If anyone found out, your mother would be killed and you would never see her again. You have to be very, very careful, Ilan. Do you understand me?"

I nodded again.

Then Elmar grabbed my hand and led me away. Mother stayed behind the table and just watched us. And since it was my mother's wish, I complied.

Gura Elmar was the only one allowed to leave the ghetto without the permission of the Amarian faya. The guard who was guarding our "prison" in the Fayala district let him pass after a few questions, mainly about me.

We walked side by side in silence for a long time. I got out of the ghetto only once in my whole life so far, during the feast of the foundation of Amaria, but I didn't remember anything about it.

Now through the voal my eyes were devouring everything we passed. Every now and then I stopped somewhere and asked Elmar. Each time he answered only briefly. We were in a hurry. I felt as if I had entered another world. We left the smell of burnt bodies far behind. We met beautifully dressed people and their servants or soldiers in blue and black uniforms. We walked past tall white houses, whose varied shapes captivated me. I gazed admiringly at the slender pointed towers of the palatuls and the stone walls with tiny drawings. With my mouth open, I tilted my head and tried to see the small sculptures that Elmar called gargoyles. I longed to smell the flowers in the long windows of the houses. I enjoyed the cool, smooth pavement that didn't scratch my feet. I didn't see anyone wearing a mantle anywhere. Everyone was so clean. And we humbly dodged each of them. We did not bow because they did not even look at us. As if we weren't there. The world outside the ghetto walls was beautiful, full of color and fresh air, but the glaziers did not belong in it.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

After some time we came to a high wall stretching across the whole street, with a huge door in the middle, in front of which stood a guard. It was lower and cleaner than the ghetto walls, and there was no smoke coming from inside. Gura explained the reason for the visit and then knocked on the thick wood. In a moment, the door opened a little, and a small, chubby man with a mustache appeared in front of us.

"Elmar, greetings," breathed the man, and the gura immediately returned the greeting. "Who are you bringing to me?"

Both men stared at me for a moment, then we went inside together. We walked down a long, dimly lit stone corridor and into a vast room. I looked around with greedy eyes. From all around me came a faint singing similar to the one I heard two days ago, though not nearly as soft. Men both with voal and without it bowed over the black stone and he answered them.

It suddenly dawned on me that the gura had introduced me to the best and most gifted of glaziers. This was the second option to avoid working in the mines. My mother told me that lapidaries were once very respected. Their refined hearing allowed them to work with sclenite in its hardened form. There were several dozen of them. According to their different colored mantles, they came from ghettos all over the city. Compared to others who were born deformed and gifted, their work was safe and clean. And this gift was rarely found in women.

The smell of sclenite mixed with human sweat assaulted my senses. Each of the men stood at his work table, cutting sclenite with something very sharp or grinding it. It depended on the stage his work was at.

The only sclenite I had seen until then was the pasarela’s viata. I was surprised that the one lying on the table was black. Mother always only talked about the clear one that was used to make turnuls.

I watched in amazement as the grinders every now and then ran their gloved hands over a piece of glass and placed their heads on its cool, shiny surface. Long desks were arranged in rows and there was no guard to be seen. I learned from my mother that you should never rush a lapidary. He himself had to know when his work was finished. The right to decide when the sclenite was perfect was one of the few privileges the lowlanders left us.

Unable to contain my curiosity, I eagerly and childishly tugged Elmar by the sleeve of his gray stema.

"They're fixing the shield?" I screamed out loud. The room was filled with screeching, interspersed with the soft voice of sclenite. Even though none of the glaziers could hear me, Elmar put his index finger to his lips to signal me to be quiet.

Our gura looked serious, but the man with the mustache was smiling. At first he hesitated, but then he leaned towards me and answered:

“Turnuls aren't made here, lad,” he informed me patiently. “They are processed in another workshop in a place that is heavily guarded. And much bigger too. Do you know how big the turnuls are?” His arm flailed into space and took a moment to come back to his body again. "Only a few lapidaries work there. Processing sclenite degets is a very difficult and responsible job. Our lives depend on it. Before the deget is handed over to the faya, glaziers must be absolutely sure of its quality. All of them contributed to creating it, and all must agree that the work is finished. You would only get into such a workshop if your hearing was exceptional. Then you could join our listeners. These lapidaries, boy,” his hand rose again, pointing to one of them, “they work the black sclenite for the lowlands.”

"Oh," I breathed in awe, and without asking for permission I moved next to the man with the mustache.

“And you were in that workshop? And what is a deget? And who are listeners? And what does a turnul look like? And why is everyone hugging that sclenite? And there is also black sclenite? And what other sclenites are there? Are there more colors? And can I see them?” I kept asking excitedly before Elmar's hand held me back. He squeezed my shoulder hard to make me stop. Only I couldn't do it. I have never seen such a place. It was so different from the ghetto with its flimsy kolibas crammed together. Even the glaziers looked different here. They behaved differently. This was a job they loved. They had to do it, yet they enjoyed doing it.

The man with the mustache tilted his head back and laughed.

"Just leave him, Elmar," the guru urged loudly. “It's nice to meet a kid who's so interested, don't you think? It's usually hard to get their attention.'

"They don't hug it," he explained to me patiently as we walked. "They listen to see if cracks have appeared inside the sclenite during their work, or if the grinding has revealed anything that could affect the quality of the product. Notice how he is stroking the surface with that big glove. The bottom of the glove is sprinkled with sclenite dust and thus the sound of the glass is amplified. I used to work in the turnul workshop. I was the best listener in town when I was younger, so now I'm a master in this workshop. My hearing doesn't serve me as well as it used to. And a deget? It's actually a turnul. Everyone else calls them turnuls. In the language of the original glaziers, it means a tower. But when you look closely at the turnul, it looks more like a finger, or deget..."

"You can speak the language that the people who came here first spoke?" I jumped into his speech. If it bothered him somehow, the man with the mustache didn't let it show.

"No," he shook his head sadly. "No one can do that anymore. Only a few words remained after them, which were adopted by other glaziers. The original speech has been lost. And actually no one can be sure if we are translating the words correctly. The language has not been used for ages."

“And where did those people come from?” I continued mercilessly.

The master stopped and looked at Elmar for help.

“From a country called Romania that was in the lowlands. That country no longer exists. It became part of what we glaziers call the lowlands. And those people were Romanians,” Elmar snarled in exasperation. Then he abruptly stopped, leaned over slightly, and continued in a low voice. "Ilan, at that time several groups of people from different parts of the world went to the mountains to find sclenite. And several of them have been successful. But it was people from Romania who managed to figure out a way to control the energy from it and how to rid the mineral of poisons. They settled here and founded our city. And since they were the first, they had the right to name everything. That is why we consider Romanians to be the original glaziers. While we are talking about turnuls, the original glaziers were talking about towers. While we say fereastra, for the Romanians it was simply a window. Romanian was still spoken in Amaria long after the other sclenite-making cities were founded."

“And how do we speak?” Even though I was concentrating on Elmar's words, my head was starting to become chaotic.

"A language that almost the whole world speaks today," he guessed wearily. “It's called English and it's from an island. They say there are only a few places in the whole world where people speak ancient languages.”

“But some words originated here in the Duval Mountains,” interjected the master, winking at me. "Do you know how lorn came about?"

But before I could answer, the man with the mustache continued.

“In the lowlands, everything is measured in kilometers, but most of the turnuls are a kilometer and a half apart, which was long, so the glaziers called this distance lorn for short. Since then, glaziers have used nothing else."

"Most of them?" I hesitated.

The master was already taking a breath to answer me, but then Elmar poked me with his finger. “Enough with the questions, Ilan. We are busy."

I barely managed to stifle a desperate sigh. I longed to learn more about those people from distant lands. This was the best day of my life. So many new things! Too bad I'll never tell Fedor about this again.

And it was the painful memory of my brother that forced me to be silent, at least for a while. We entered the small room with all kinds of tools in silence and the master closed the door behind us. I spun and looked around as the master walked over to the table and picked up two connected glass wheels and placed them on his nose. He then gestured for Elmar to sit down.

"I am listening," the guru urged softly.