Jorl went to the adjacent kitchen’s small cupboard and took out an assortment of fruits and nuts before returning to Arlo’s son. He beckoned Pizlo over to the table, setting the bowl down while he took his seat again, and helping himself to a large plel. Pizlo took hold of the wastebasket by the desk, upended it, and used it for a stool as he settled in and began working his way through the bowl of food.
“The thing is, it’s never the same three. At least, it never has been. No two Aleph-Bearers have ever been marked for the same reasons.” Jorl finished the plel, and looked for the wastebasket to spit out the seeds, recalled its recent transformation, and spat them out the newly opened window instead.
Pizlo seemed thoughtful, or perhaps it was just that he was busy eating. Jorl had never known a child with so much energy, or one who could eat so voraciously. Already the bowl was all but empty. Even so, he suspected Pizlo had already eaten breakfast this morning. At least once.
Amidst mouthfuls he said, “I got mine because of my insect collection. It’s the best one in Keslo!”
“No doubt,” agreed Jorl. Pizlo spent most of his days and nights out of doors, making his own trails in the spaces that surrounded the Civilized Wood and doubtless venturing down to the Shadow Dwell far below. Tolta had set aside an entire room to house his collection of several thousand specimens; it was one of the ways she lured him to come for an occasional dinner or spend an infrequent night sleeping in an actual bed. “But that is just one accomplishment. You need to have two more.”
Pizlo took in this new information, digesting it slowly while he chewed on the remaining plel. Only after he had finished the fruit did he cock his head. “I … I can swing real good. On vines. That’s how I flew in through your window!” He beamed at Jorl and waved back at the window as evidence of his qualifications.
“Fair enough, but that’s still only two. Perhaps you should wash that paint off and go back to asking permission to come in, at least until you manage a third appropriate accomplishment.” Jorl took the boy by the hand and led him to his utility closet in search of a rag and some solvent.
After they’d removed the paint, Pizlo asked Jorl to take a walk with him. He agreed, but only after insisting that the child exit by the door and not back through the window. They strolled along the boardways, the morning warming around them. The reactions of the other Fant they passed varied depending on whether they saw Jorl or Pizlo first. Friendly greetings trailed off to silence. Smiling faces turned cold and looked away. Some just stopped in their tracks, jaws slack, trunks limp, as they tried to make sense of a prestigious Aleph-Bearer out for a stroll with a non-person. Pizlo didn’t appear to notice; they were no more a part of his world than he belonged to theirs.
The pair made their way along one of the less traveled routes and paused at a balcony that looked out on a hollow bowl in the green of the forest surrounding them, an open space that sometimes housed a suspended stage where students put on plays during the seasons of wind and mist. Pizlo leaned far out over the railing, glancing at other balconies above and below theirs. Jorl resisted the urge to grab hold of the boy and protect him from falling. He’d seen him climb before, and the likelihood was that Pizlo was as comfortable hanging there as Jorl would have been in his own bathtub.
“I may have a third.”
“A third?”
Pizlo scowled, pulled himself back onto the balcony and sat at Jorl’s feet. “A third thing. Only it’s not the word you used before. Not an accomplishment.”
“No? But it’s something you’ve done?”
“Kind of. It’s something I’ve always been able to do. I guess. I don’t know why other people don’t do it, but they don’t.”
Jorl settled onto the polished wood of the balcony floor opposite the boy. “Okay, tell me about it. What is it you do?”
“I talk to…” He stopped. It was an odd thing to put into words when none of the things that spoke to him actually used words. He tried again. “Sometimes I know stuff … stuff that other people can’t know, or won’t know, or don’t know yet.”
“Other people?”
“Yeah, like you and Tolta, and Arlo back before he died.”
Jorl winced. He’d never once heard Pizlo refer to either of his parents as mother or father, only by their proper names. “What kind of stuff?”
“Stuff. A lot of it doesn’t make any sense. Like, which way up a skipping stone will land if I pitch it into the waves. Or how many bowls of cereal I’m going to eat between now and the solstice. Or the best route and time of year to travel from Keslo to Emmt and avoid the crowds of wandering bachelors. Or how one day, you’re going to circle the entire island. You know, stuff.”
Jorl laughed. He took out his daypouch and withdrew several pieces of tart fruit, giving Pizlo his choice. The child grabbed one in each hand and greedily resumed eating. “What do you mean ‘circle the island’?”
The boy tilted his head to one side, and tried again. “You know. You. Keslo. Circling it.”
“Ah,” said Jorl, still lacking any understanding. “Maybe it’s something you dreamed?”
“Maybe. For some things. But not all of it. Not even most of it. Sometimes it’s like something I read in one of the books you loan me, where the words tell me one thing but later, maybe days later, something else that the book didn’t come right out and say, makes sense, but it still came from the book. Only it didn’t. It came from me from having read the book. Only sometimes, for some of the things I know, there wasn’t any book that started it, and I just know them. Like knowing how to get to places I’ve never been, and feeling as familiar as sitting here. Like, a couple days ago, I knew where I had to go to find a kind of bug that I’d never seen before. It was a place I’d never ever been, but when I went there, there was the bug. Stuff like that. Would that count toward getting an aleph?”
Jorl had been peeling a piece of citrus while listening. He popped a couple wedges into his mouth and shrugged. “It might, I really can’t say. There’s a council that travels from island to island and makes those decisions for everyone in both archipelagos. Maybe next time they come to Keslo you can ask them.”
“They won’t talk to me. They’ll look right at me, but they won’t see me. No one does.”
Sighing, Jorl admitted that was probably true. Instead of replying, he offered Pizlo a few fruit wedges, which the boy took without pause.
They sat a while in silence, enjoying the tart, juicy flavor released as they chewed.
“What did you do?”
“To get the aleph? I didn’t really do anything. I just went ahead with my life. When the council gave it to me I was as surprised as anyone.”
“But what did you do?” Pizlo insisted, he squinted and stared at Jorl with obvious concentration.
“I was in the Patrol,” said Jorl, pausing to lick the juice from his sticky fingers. “I joined when you were only a couple years old.”
Pizlo glanced at his own fingers and mimicked Jorl, speaking around them as he dipped them one by one into his mouth. “It’s more than six hundred years since anyone from Barsk served in the Patrol.”
“Why do you say that? Is that one of the things you just know?”
The boy gave Jorl a hurt look. “No. I read it. In a book. One of your books.”
“When was this? I don’t remember you borrowing a book like that.”
“You were out. Don’t be mad, it wasn’t one that you were using, I found it on one of your shelves and I put it back when I was done. You didn’t even notice.” Pizlo had the good grace to murmur this last bit in an apologetic tone.
Jorl hrumphed. “Fair enough. And you’re right. It’s a provision of the Compact; Fant are exempt from conscription.”