“Hey!” I hear.
I turn back to see her head peek through the crack. “If you aren’t your father’s heir, you should be who you want to be instead. Maybe I’ll see you here tomorrow?”
Then she’s gone.
For the first time in the whole day since I left Bone and returned, I’m happy. I feel free again.
It doesn’t last.
CHAPTER 3
COUNTERPOINT
For three years, I live in blissful ignorance of the machinations of my father and the Pantheon. Days are spent swimming in the ocean and fishing. When I was little, my mother taught me to read, but it never seemed as fun as watching aquagraphics. Since my trip to Meridian, though, I devour everything I can. I want to know everything, not only about my world, but about the many worlds of the Fracture that were only hinted at by those strange travelers. I love the legends and myths of the Daysiders. I ask for more. I read during afternoons when others take their naps. My mother finds tomes for me from off-world, histories and fictions of other places, other times. The Pirates of Nonthera, The Lost Anjins of Miral, The Prosperan Countesses, History of the Chironian Civil War are some of my favorites.
Nadia and I meet by the cliffs almost every day. I tell her about the books I’ve read. She tells me the news of the daily market. We talk about Old Wusong and the day of the christening often. She makes me describe the strange visitors from off-world over and over again. We dream about where they came from. We invent new people and new planets as a game to pass the time. I tell her what I’ve learned from my reading, how the great scientists think that our universe is only one of an infinite number of universes, shaped like amoebas that sometimes touch or bubble off from one another.
She says I’m an idiot.
“Everyone knows that in the beginning there was just the Chaos Sea. The universe burst forth from a giant egg, creating the sky and stars. Then the ancestors were born who whisper into the wind of all things.”
“Well,” I say. “They do think that the dimensions of hyperspace are like a roiling sea, and universes are like foam bubbles constantly forming and springing up. Most universes probably don’t have life. The only reason we know this one does is we’re here to observe it.”
“That seems self-centered.” She sighs, unconvinced. I shrug, but she’s adamant. “Some things just are, with or without you.”
“Scientists think black holes might hold entire universes inside of them,” I say.
“Next time you’re in a black hole, let me know!” She punches my arm.
She is thirteen, still a tomboy, all knobby elbows and knees, but several centimeters taller than me. It might as well be a mile. I blush at the touch, even though it’s a punch.
We watch silver streaks of rockets burn through the atmo overhead. Even though Nadia says I’m an idiot, I know she, too, dreams of flying beyond the day sky.
We’re told the rockets carry men heading to the deep Nightside where it’s so dark and cold it’ll freeze your bones. That’s where they drill for minerals and ore. Nadia and I sometimes talk about where we’d go if we stole a rocket. The cracks of the Fracture could take us anywhere in the universe.
“If you leave, won’t you be afraid you won’t be able to find your way home?” she asks one day.
“No,” I say simply. “If I was lost, I’d never have to worry about my father ever again.”
I change the subject. I ask her to show me how to scale the boulders. She’s been showing me the intricacies of how to climb sideways. She calls it traversing. Sometimes I feel like that’s what she and I have been doing, just moving sideways instead of up. That’s okay, though. I’m happy and would stay like this with her forever if I could, best friends just moving sideways.
A week later, I’m in town with Mother when I see Nadia manning a cart in the market. She stands with a small, kind-looking man selling fish. Mother stops by the cart and asks the man if she may buy some dried octopus. The man gives her a price, and Mother haggles. I look at Nadia, but she won’t meet my eyes.
The haggling becomes heated.
“Surely you don’t expect me to pay ten. This is clearly a third-rate specimen.”
It’s not an insult my mother gives. It’s just the island way of doing business.
Nadia’s eyes are still glued to the ground. Have I done something wrong?
“Mother,” I interject. “Give him double.”
Both adults stare at me, shocked. My mother’s brow furrows.
“This is the best fisherman on the entire isle,” I say.
“How do you know that?” she asks incredulously.
“Because Nadia is my best friend. She saved my life,” I reply, and indicate Nadia, though she’s looking at the ground.
Mother looks at me curiously. I’ve kept my time with Nadia secret. I don’t know why. I guess I figured she was a confidante, someone I could tell everything to, even the things I can’t tell my mother.
Cleopatra turns to the fisherman. Her face is not exactly the same as it was before her horrific beating, but she is still beautiful, and she still commands respect.
“This is your daughter?”
The fisherman nods.
“Is what Edmon says true?”
“Yes, m’lady,” Nadia replies, eyes downcast.
My mother hands the fisherman double his asking price. “For the finest fisherman on Bone.”
The fisherman bows and accepts the payment. He pulls the octopus from the clothesline, wraps it in cloth, and hands it to my mother. We amble up the winding road toward our home. I wave goodbye to Nadia, but she stares in the other direction.
As the Eventide feast commences, the shades are pulled low to mimic night, and the fireglobe is placed in the pit in the center of the floor. My mother presides, welcoming the guests. She sits at a high table and discusses politics and gossip with the other islanders. I smile at the woman she is, fiercely proud of her people, a leader.
Then it begins with the beat of a drum. Flutes and pipes sound. Strings take up the melody.
Gorham has been teaching me the flute, but I can play the drums and strings, too. Singing is actually my favorite, but Gorham says that if I can make an instrument sing like it is my own voice, my true singing will become deeper than the ocean and rise higher than the Elder Stars. So I practice my flute with focused determination.
“Feel the rhythm,” he instructs as always. “Melody first. Make the tone as pure as you can, unchanged. Then change it. Find variations.”
I try it on the flute.
“Your song is part of the whole. Listen to the others. Complement them.”