[House of Lives Lived] As Much But Twice

[Philomena]

Minnie lay on her back luxuriously, not ready for being awake. It was not fully morning yet, for the light in her eyelids was not quite strong enough to be the sun full over the horizon, and she’d dreamt so very well. She found she did so more, now, in Abura. It was hard to say why: perhaps the difference in the air, or simply the distance for the sources of her childhood terrors. Perhaps it was the sound of breathing in the room - she had half-roused, now and then, to hear it change, as Semiyr rolled over or changed positions, and for an instant, had though it was Gypa. It was not, and in a sense it was pleasant that it wasn’t.

She half opened a lid lazily, to see the shadow of Semiyr gliding softly back and forth in the room. Dressing probably. She reached a hand up to tuck a stray hair that tickled her cheek back into her short braid. She half stretched, feeling the sweaty crevices of her self unstick form each other with a pleasing languor, and rolled sideways, into the warm hollow between her pillows and Semiyr’s. The room smelled pleasantly of unwashed morning, and kelp tea.

Kelp tea?

She wrinkled her brow - that could not be right, but there it was kelp tea, and what’s more… a warm smell, oily and sour. She opened her eyes again, and pushed to sitting.

“I near thought I smelled kelp fritter—“

She stopped, abruptly. Semiyr was working a sparse brush through her wild hair, and turned with a half-smile. And there, on Minnie’s desk, was a plate, with two kelp fritters, still glossy with fish-fat, and a little milk-glass beaker that smelled distinctly of kelp-tea.

“Thou sleepest late, Philomena. I was concerned as I was told these are meant to be eaten while warm?”

Philomena blushed rosy underneath the rich freckles of her cheeks, “Oh, this is too much… Qalaya’s dirty fingers! This is Northy kelp, not like the stuff here!”

Semiyr smiled, almost laughed again, but the laugh did not quite form, “Well, I’m glad acquiring the import was not a waste, then.”

Minnie smiled, and pulled the desk over, picking up one of the fritters and nibbling a corner of it. She looked up to thank Semiyr properly, and stopped. Semiyr’s back was to her now. Something in her was wrong, something about the muscles of the tail, which hung too slack, or the tension in her wrists and hands. Minnie set her fritter down, quietly.

Semiyr’s wings moved with a slack tired waver, pulling her forward to the pile of cushions beneath the louvered windows. She flickered slowly to the floor - but not the cushioned side, to the bare floor, and leaned her head against the window.

Minnie spoke very softly, “Something is wrong.”

Semiyr started, and turned, her face flickering a kind smile, “Oh, I’m sorry, preoccupied, that’s all, my Qalayan.”

Minnie frowned, “I’m nae a girl, Semiyr. You dunny have to keep things from me.”

Semiyr’s eyes went down, and the smile softened, “I’m sorry. Thou hast sad eyes, I would not put more into them. A little sorrow, now and then, my dear one, that’s all…”

Semiyr turned back toward the window, Minnie, in her chemise, slipped from the bed, to move behind her friend. She cautiously touched her shoulder.

Semiyr took a deep breath, and smiled, but the sadness made Minnie’s heart hurt, “Hast thou been happy here, Philomena Geldscrier?”

“Yes! Yes of course! I… I have not… you ha’ made me a good deal more alive, I think,” the phrase sounded awkward in her mind, but she could find no better way to say it.

Semiyr was silent or a few minutes. Finally she spoke very softly, still staring out into the distance. “I went very early, this morning,” a half smile, “It was still dark, I would not even call it morning. I took the leeward passage around the spire, and the stars - oh the stars! Hast thou seen them so late? They are beautiful.”

Minnie nodded, softly, and moved her hand to run through Semiyr’s hair, “The night I came here, a woman took me from the ship, and out to a sort of play, under the stars, in the sea.”

Semiyr half-turned, “Thou sawest the Fiddler’s Lament? I did not know that…” she half smiled, “It is good. Yes, if thou went out then, you will have seen them, the stars. They are beautiful, over the sea, far from the other lights. Last night, the moon was young, and the stars were very bright. And I flew to the North, along the shore, to see the stars on the wave-tops.”

She sighed, and her eyes were glassy, “There was a stake there, in the stone, in a hollow rushing place, where the water pours in and sucks out to the sea quick and fierce. And the stake had a rope, and the rope was a sea-hanging. Hast thou seen one? Humans, I think… they lynch from tall trees. For my people, such a thing would not work. The body cannot understand, and even when they heart knows that it is time for death to come, the body rebels, in the ending moment, and struggles for life.”

Minnie was pale and cold, and her hands were tense in the woman’s hair.

“To die, then, one must circumvent the body, one must make it so that when the moment, the ending moment, it is too late for the body to rebel. A sea hanging is just so. There are such inlets, where the sea sucks with such violence, that the rope will go taut, and snap the neck.”

Minnie whimpered softly, “Oh…”

“I have not seen it, before. It is not pretty, the body swells with the seawater, and the tongue is heavy and black with pooled blood, and the face grows monstrous with the strain. He had… great raw patches on the skin of his face, I could not think why, until I saw the sea suck his body outwards, again - the rope whipped across the cheek, sharp in it’s taut strain, tearing at the flesh there.”

“Who… did you know him?”

She shrugged, and Minnie felt the trembled of her body, exhaustion and emotion, “We are not many, we Akvatari, and all come to the House of Lives Lived at some point, yes? I knew him, not closely. He was a good fellow - a chair-lift man, he hung himself by the cords of his lift, long ropes, made of hair, actually. I had not seen it before. They are beautiful, I wish I could have asked him about it before he died. He had been a beautiful boy, before this.”

Minnie swallowed hard, thinking of the chair-lift and its operator, of the long rope and the narrow wooden seat. Of his face, which she DID know, if only from that once. She had not seen him again - why had she not asked! Had she even wondered? To ask, earlier, someone might have found him, spoken to him, saved him…

“It was not so long ago, my Qalayan, when I had been ready to die. Not as he did, no, I… I would not wish to be found. I would drown myself, though it is a painful death, particularly for us. I had planned it all very carefully. It comes back to me, sometimes, that plan. Times like this. You will laugh at me, do you know why I pushed it away? Because I thought, ah! But there is good that I must still do, for my friend Philomena, with her sad eyes, I have—“ her voice caught, “So, I went and I bought these things. Kelp, and flour, and— Oh, I’m sorry, thou must forgive me, for saying—"

Her voice choked, and Minnie turned her around abruptly, pulling the larger woman’s head into her shoulder, to cry.

“Shh… there we are, love… there we are…”

She ran fingers up and down the shaking back, and sang very softly.

"Lullay, my sweet Lully,
See how close the sky has come,
Lullay, my sweet Lully,
And won't it fall on us soon?
And you and I
Shall softly lie
Beneath its awful weight,
Lullay, my sweet Lully,
But I shall hold you to my breast,
And raise my little arms,
And hold the sky from off you
So that I may sing a lullaby,
Before you go to sleep.”

x

[Philomena]

The lower door of the shaft hissed softly, and the harsh sunlight of late spring streamed inside.

“Onti?”

“Belslea-la? Come in, child, and shut the door, I’m up here.”

Minnie sat on the edge of the basket. Her crozier was hooked to the thin rail on one of the shelves, and she had pulled the basket over to pore over a shelf. Belslea came up a moment later.

“Onti,” she offered, looking solemnly at Minnie, “Thou hast been crying.”

Minnie laughed around tear-swollen eyes and a runny nose, a soggy laugh, “Yes, Belslea, a little bit. Thank you for coming this way, Semiyr Geldscrier is resting.”

Belslea nodded, her eyebrows wrinkling deeply. She flew forward impulsively to wrap her arms around Minnie, which sent Minnie into a new gale of tears, whereon, her grip on the crozier slipped, and the basket began to swing away towards the center. She grabbed it again in time before it escaped the basket’s confines, and carefully pulled it in, then hugged the little girl back. The little girl nodded, and leaned back, fluttering just over the floor of the basket.

“Thou shouldest be resting too, Onti?”

Minnie sniffled, wiping her nose on the back of her arm, “No, no. We must do a bit o’ work today, so that the Mussy can rest. A boy died last night, we’re going to find the box for him, and go rest on the patio, so that they dunny come into the office for the closing of it.”

She shared the name with the girl, who nodded. Minnie had hoped it had been close enough to the top that they had already reshelved it in the ordered archives, but for reasons she had given up trying to divine, sometimes a box from the recent past was to be found somewhere deep down the shaft. Minnie had already spent a good twenty minutes hunting for this one. Belslea set to work across form her.

“Belslea,” Minnie offered, “You’ve been at these higher shelves for weeks with the indexing work. Why don’t you work on them, and I’ll lower myself down b’low the door jamb, and start there?”

The girl nodded, and did what Minnie could best describe as a flying, skirtless curtsy, and Minnie took the pulley to lower herself into the dim. The light of Belslea had hooked to the shelf cast queer dancing shadows above her head, making the dark below Minnie seem the darker by contrast. Minnie tapped at the globe-light on her own basket - she was not sure if it was just her imagination, but she felt as if this ‘stirred it up’ a bit and made the light brighter. She hooked the shelf, and pulled herself to the wall again.
x

[Philomena]

The work was a blessing - it directed her mind towards a productive practicality, instead of towards the alternatives: the sickening proximity of death and a yearning painful pity for Semiyr. Names on boxes were just mindless and just distracting enough to keep her mind from wandering.

For what little mind power remained, she found herself playing at anagrams. The sheer whimsicality of the Akvatari naming tradition was a continual source of pleasure and mental stimulation to her. The simpler names (Nipa, Wroros) had the pleasure of their own simplicity, the letters dancing with each other in pleasant little whirls - shift left, turn right, switch places, roundabout.

But there was no dearth of truly puzzling names. Some it was for simple technical reason - for instance, names that were anagrams of multi-word phrases were terribly difficult, particularly if there was no indication of word length or seperability of the letters. Some, it was simply that the word would be an unexpected one - a child, for instance, who seemed to have died before she reached her first birthday was named Feckenheart - which aside from the delightful distraction of ‘heart’ in the word, finally she determined must simply be an anagram of ‘neck-feather’. She’d actually paged through the archives in search of an explanation for that, and had found not a clue.

Then, there was the nature of the dialect of the Akvatari, which had taken strange journeys from the Valterrian to the present. This made for some fairly marked differences in spelling, many of which she was aware of only after the fact, when she would have to confirm a name with a written source. Work, and her own research, didn’t always leave time for this - and besides this, there were so MANY names now in her work in the House of Lives Lived, that she would as often as not forget them before she could write them down.

She had descended, now, well below the earth’s surface - the walls here were sandstone, and behind the shelves, were sometimes only roughly cut, though the shelves were formed to seam against the wall so artfully, that it made for a not-unpleasant effect. as if the earth itself had formed this shaft, had torn itself asunder, just to hold these boxes.

Such a tearing motion would almost not have surprised Minnie, for there were definitely segments of these shelves that quite LOOKED as if they’d been through an earthquake. Minnie began to see striations of a sort in the shaft, differences when, perhaps, a Geldscrier came or left, or went through a difficult patch in their life, reflected in the orderliness of the shelves. At this level, whoever had been the Geldscrier must have been in a particularly bad way - half of the shelves were stacked horizontally instead of vertically, many of the boxes had the names facing the walls, and at one point she found a wooden bowl carrying the desiccated remains of a half-eaten fish. It was maddening process looking through them, for Minnie was in a hurry, and could not stop to fix the problems.

She begin pulling the boxes one at time from a horizontal pile that, inexplicably, had been neatly stacked with its labels toward the wall, when she finally found the box she was looking for - a queer box it was, half-filled with pebbles, and on top of them, a bit of broken metal, rough edged, sharp and unpleasant to look at. It made her sick with sorrow, this box, and she set it gently on a cloth, wrapping it up so she would not have to look at it until the box owners arrived.

She turned back then to move the boxes remaining so that they would, at least, not shift and topple until she or Belslea could come down to fix them, but having taken much of the pile off, the shelf was crowded, now, and leaving the remaining pile at an awkward angle against the now vertical boxes beside it. She took the moment to quickly slip the last few boxes into place, hurrying a bit.

“Belslea-la? I found it!"

Then she stopped, turning one of the last few boxes up into place. On the top corner of the box was a word she recognized: “Imtapptendosin"

Her breath caught in her throat, and she slid the box out, to look at it more closely.

x

[Liminal]

The box had no outward markings other than the name. The lid opened easily, to allow Minnie to view the contents. The largest item inside was a woodworker's gouge, with a high sweep and a narrow channel. The end of it was bent awkwardly, rendering the tool unusable, and the channel had several grains of sand wedged into it. On the butt end of the handle, there was an incised "IM." The next thing that would catch Minnie's attention was a silver locket on a matching silver chain. It was heavy, and probably would have been worth a fair amount of money. The design was in the shape of a whelk shell, and the craftsmanship was incredibly fine, enough to put the jewelers in Zeltiva to shame. The locket was open, and the only thing inside were the neatly engraved letters: FTE. Beside that lay a wooden pulley wheel. It had clearly been taken from something that had been heavily used -- the wood was almost white with salt and sun, and it had a hairline crack running across it. Aside from the scars of use, it was unmarked. The last thing, almost hidden from view, was a small piece of paper. It was heavily creased, and very brittle. The ink on it had faded from black to brown to a barely legible red, but it was still possible to make out the words, written in a hand that Minnie might recognize: "The lady of memory remembers."

[Philomena]

Minnie stared at the items, blinking slowly, going over them in her mind, captured for a moment to forgetfulness of the things she needed to do. How strange to think, this tool, it was perhaps the very tool he'd mentioned in his journals, dropped, wedged with sand! Kept, perhaps as a remembrance and symbol of his craft, which clearly meant as much to him as craft to did to most of the Akvatari. The locket, with the initials - FTE - a leibsanger, perhaps, for he had mentioned seeing her in the Red Spire. A beloved, perhaps, or a symbol of some change in him that love brought.

And then the pulley wheel and the note - the note was clearly in Kenabelle's hand, and faded, faded so much - light faded, or water, and for all the untidiness neither seemed likely in the shaft. Insects, as well, for she had not seen any here, and there was none of the spotting that came from them on the paper, that she could see. The paper was old, but then, if one were to keep old papers, there was nowhere in Zeltiva so likely to keep them safe as this place, with its aridity and with the glass keeping it from being disturbed.

The best guess, then, in her mind was that the note had been kept on his person before being put in the box, that it had been dear enough to carry with him his whole life. Perhaps, even, it was his death-geld, though the locket could have been as well - she made note to herself to ask Trekusether if he had ever seen his grandfather wearing or holding a silver locket. Or, perhaps a much creased slip of paper.

But, what made the paper so dear? And what was it talking about, precisely? It was not a conversational remark, after all, it had been sufficiently precise in meaning to commit to paper, devoid of some longer letter (or at least it seemed to be so near as she could tell).

The lady of memory - could that be the Lady mentioned in the old wood-carver's journal? But... no! The formulation here seemed to so clearly refer to Mother Qalaya - any other being who took the name of 'Lady of Memory' (except perhaps, one of her agents on the earth?) would be guilty of... well, of a certain arrogance, in Minnie's mind, tantamount to blasphemy. But that seemed nonsense! How do you find Qalaya's house? How do you lock its door, and with a physical key? It seemed almost embarrassing, the idea, as if Qalaya, the Lady of the Doleful Eyes, the Lady of Memory, Mother of Stories, lived just around the corner, and you'd simply never seen her name on the post-box. And yet... who else would she have given that name to?

Then the pulley, the one item which was not obviously attributable to SOME fact of Minnie's knowledge. Of course it could be anything - perhaps, say, it had been the pull wheel of a derrick on the wharves, that cracked, and, say, dropped his masterwork onto a stone, destroying it. Its the sort of story that one would remember, and the kind of memento that one might keep. And yet, she could not manage to be reasonable about it, could not quite bring herself to think of it so reasonably, to accept that it was not correct, for that spray of salt, that evidence of hard use, even the crack, they felt like a ship's pulley - like a pulley, she could not help but hope, from the Seafarer.

It was not an outlandish theory after all - it WAS worn and damaged, and who better to have the bit of flotsam than a woodcarver, and a talented one? There were no Akvatari ship-wrights, after all, and this was the days before the guild-house in Abura, so a woodcarver with a talented eye and good tools (she looked almost lovingly at the gouge, for one like it would have been used to make a pulley's groove) would have been the first to come to. And the ship - or at least Kenabelle - had meant something to this Akvatari. When he set the pin on a new pulley wheel, would he have kept the old, as a bit of geld from where his hands touched history itself?

"Onti! Onti!"

Minnie jerked back to herself, setting down the frame carefully, "What, what is it, is something wrong, Belslea?"

Belslea was working with small arms at the wheel of the hatch, "Come quick, they are coming, they are coming!"

Minnie's mind clicked back into place, and she looked at bleak suicide's box, then began quickly pulling at the rope of, ironically, her own pulley, up, up toward the entrance way.

"I'm coming! Quick, tell them to wait, I willny be but a minute, and by Qalaya's inky fingers, dunny let them disturb Semiyr!"

x

[Philomena]

Minnie cranked herself to the surface quickly, and pulling herself to the hatch with her crozier, stumbled out quickly, pulling the door to, behind her. She turned to find Belslea resting on the ground uncomfortably beside two other Akvatari: one a child of perhaps twelve, held the arm of the other, a truly ancient woman with deep, milky cataracts over both eyes and a small box in her hands.

"Is that Semiyr, my pet?" her voice was thick and muddy with some affliction of the lungs.

The boy spoke clearly, and a little loudly, "No, elder, dost thou remember, the girl said Semiyr Geldscrier is not well. This is the human geldscrier, Philomena Geldscrier."

Minnie held the box uncomfortably in her arms, "Yes, I'm Philomena Lefting, let me help--"

The woman frowned, and her eyebrows furrowed. Her dark skin, sun-parched into a wrinkled history, hung from the muscles of the frown, and her voice came again in almost childish petulance and fear, "Who is this? Where is Semiyr? I have to finish the box, Neprinsp he died, I have to finish the box. Where hast thou taken me? I must see Semiyr!"

The boy spoke again, "Elder, thou hast not heard me, she is --"

The woman began to cry, and her voice was broken by the sound, "Please, please I need to see the Geldscrier, I'm so tired."

Belslea, distinctly uncomfortable, gave Minnie a meaningful look. Minnie frowned a moment, trying to discern the meaning. Then, with a start she nodded and stepped forward.

"Hello... friend, I'm here, this is Semiyr," Minnie pitched her voice a little bit lower, and tried her best to imitate Semiyr's Akvatari accent. It was not the most... inspired imitation ever performed, but the old looked up.

"Semiyr? Semiyr is that you? Its Ulssena, I've come, for... Semiyr, are you there?"

Minnie, very timidly reached her hand and touched the woman's shoulder. It was spare of flesh and grown rough and dry with age. She squeezed the narrow muscles gently, "Yes you-- " she coughed, "Thou comest for Neprinsp's deathgeld?"

The woman's head sunk a little bit, and nodded sadly, "Semiyr, thou and I, we are grown too old. We should not see young people die."

Minnie nodded, then realized, of course, that the woman likely couldn't see the nod and spoke again. It was, she realized, remarkably tiring to the throat to speak in someone else's voice, "Yes, but there is still good we have to do, to our friends, hmm?" The segueway sounded a little false, but she felt just a bit inspired for paraphrasing her friend's own words.

Ulssena sighed and nodded weakly, "I brought the death-geld."

She opened the box - it took longer than it should have, her rheumy knuckles struggling at the latch ineffectually until the boy leaned over and flicked it open for her. Inside was a a wooden comb curiously carved in swooping, abstract curves.

"He used to brush my hair with it. Such a kind boy! He had no duty to me, after my Sercas died, but came every few days, he did, and he brought me suppers and combed my hair and listened to my stories. I..." she faltered a bit, "He had so little. I did not know what else to bring."

Tears began to sting the corners of Minnie's eyes, "I think that will be a fine gift, Ulssena."

They finished interring it in the geldbox, Minnie guiding the old woman's hand gently to place it inside, and the woman and the boy left. Minnie turned to Belslea, who stood solemnly beside her. Minnie smiled a teary smile and leaned over kissing the girl on the forehead. and taking her hand. They walked together back to the hatch and opened it Belslea put the box in its place and under Minnie's quiet guidance, entered it into the indexes. The Belslea curled into the corner of the basket, shaking a bit.

"Its been a hard day, my girl," Minnie said quietly. She slid slipped quietly into the entryway of the office and took a blanket, returning then to the basket to slide it over the child's shoulders, and kissed her again. Belslea, without saying anything squirmed over to rest her head against Minnie. Minnie put one arm around the girl, and slid her own journal out, and began to write.

x

[Nivel]

Philomena : XP Award: Example 1 Example 2 Lore: Example 1 Example 2 Notes: I'll fill this in when your sheet is up to date. Additional Comments: If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to message me.