“Then we’ll have to go somewhere else,” said Luan. “Ballooning is not for those too set on their destinations. Curious Turtle may not always find a way to get to where you want to go, but it will always take you somewhere interesting.”
They reached the spot in the sea where the cruben had breached earlier, and Luan turned up the flames again to raise the balloon out of the breeze so that they hovered above the swell. The water parted again, and Zomi leaned eagerly over the side of the gondola, hoping to see another acrobatic breach up close. But this time, the cruben only poked its head above the water, its gigantic horn like the mast of a ship, and exhaled through the blowhole, shooting a fountain of mist high into the air near the balloon. Zomi cried out in joy and turned to face Luan.
“He was laughing at me!” Her face was bright with a smile and wet with the spray from the cruben.
Luan felt at once very old and also very young as he laughed along with Zomi.
As she slept, Zomi dreamed of home.
“I don’t know how long I will be away,” said Mimi.
Aki nodded. She was packing a stack of sorghum meal cakes soaked in honey and a small jar of salted caterpillars in a cloth. She spoke without turning to look at Mimi. “If you miss home, have a cake to remind you of the sweetness of our summers. If you are sad, eat a caterpillar to remind you of my cooking.”
“Mistress Kidosu,” said Luan, “I promise to take good care of your daughter. She is extraordinarily talented, but she cannot learn what I want to teach her without seeing the world.”
“Thank you,” said Aki. “I’ve always wanted Mimi to stay by my side and live a life like mine, but that’s a selfish desire, driven by the fact that the gods have already taken so many I love from me. Yet I’ve always known that she’s special, and it surprises me not one whit that you’ve found her.”
“I will learn the secrets of the world and come back to give us all a better life,” said Mimi. She had so much she wanted to say, but she wasn’t sure her voice would not crack, and so she simply said, “You’ll eat white rice every day.”
“Study hard, Mimi-tika,” said Aki. “And do not think about me too much. You’re my daughter, but you do not belong to me. The only duty any child owes to her parent is to live a life that is true to her nature.”
Zomi woke up.
Overhead, the flame roared softly as Curious Turtle continued to ride the wind. All around her, she could see the stars, bright pinpricks of light like the glowing sea jellies that she was familiar with from swimming in the bay during the brief summers when the water was warm enough. She liked swimming: The water freed her from the bondage of her disobedient left leg, and she felt graceful, complete, not lame or crippled.
She liked flying in the balloon at night. It was like drifting through an empyrean sea.
Yee-ee-squeak, yee-ee-squeak…
The strange sound caught her attention. She turned and saw Luan sitting at the other side of the gondola with his legs stretched out in front of him. He had some contraption made of sticks and bundles of ox sinew wrapped around his right calf, and as he flexed his leg, the contraption made the rhythmic noise she had heard.
“What’s that, Teacher?”
Startled, Luan stopped flexing his leg and looked over at Zomi. “Oh, nothing,” he said. “Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you up to steer the balloon in a few hours.”
Zomi was going to ask more, but Luan draped a blanket over his leg and opened the thick book that he always carried with him, which Zomi had learned was called Gitré Üthu, which meant “know thyself” in Classical Ano. It was a companion that her teacher seemed to love more than anything else, or anyone—he never spoke of a woman, or a child, or parents. What would make an adviser who had helped a king build an empire prefer the company of unlettered children and wild seas? There were so many things about him that she didn’t know.
As the stars spun overhead and the gondola rocked her, Zomi fell back asleep.
While Luan steered the balloon, Zomi practiced her zyndari letters on a slate with a piece of chalk. The breeze was steady and strong, scented with the clean smell of the open sea.
“How much longer until we reach Crescent Island?” asked Zomi. She stopped writing and yawned.
“If the wind holds steady, probably another two days, but the wind never is steady,” said Luan. He looked at Zomi affectionately. “Already tired? You’ve only been writing for a quarter of an hour.”
“I’m bored! I memorized all the letters and their sounds two days ago, and you’re just making me write the same thing over and over again. When will you teach me the Ano logograms? Will it take more than five days?”
Luan laughed. “You’ll have to learn Classical Ano along with the logograms, and it would take you many years to master them.”
“Years! Then we’d better start right away.”
“Don’t be so impatient. I can’t teach you how to carve wax in the gondola—the knife can be dangerous with the balloon swinging around like this.”
“Come to think of it, I don’t even know if I want to waste my time learning the Ano logograms. Isn’t it enough to learn one way of writing?”
Luan had never encountered any student who thought it might be all right not to learn the Ano logograms, but then again, Zomi was not like the students who could afford private tutors or academics. “We’ll talk about the logograms another time. For now, you still need more practice writing the Hundred Names with zyndari letters. Your handwriting is terrible.”
“It’s hard to fit the letters inside the small squares you’ve drawn! And why do I have to put them in the squares anyway?”
“The zyndari letters were invented long after the Ano logograms. We arrange them into word squares in imitation of the shapes of the logograms so that if they’re used together, as sometimes happens when you need to gloss an obscure or new logogram, their shapes harmonize. It is not enough that one can write, one must also write with beauty.”
“Why does beauty matter?” asked Zomi, an edge in her voice. “Isn’t it enough that my meaning comes through?”
Luan looked at the scar on her face and the walking stick on the floor of the gondola next to her legs and realized that he had struck a sore point. “There are many kinds of beauty in the world, some of which are the province of gods, and some of which are the province of mankind. Beauty of expression when writing is within the control of the writer, and elegant calligraphy prepares the mind to be persuaded.”
“Sounds like you’re saying that the well-dressed will be listened to more,” muttered Zomi.
Luan sighed. “That’s not what I meant, but I can see why you feel that way. Since you’ve asked me to be your teacher, you must do as I say on this. Practice forming the letters within the squares in pleasing proportions; no matter how much you hate it, it’s a vital skill.”
Reluctantly, Zomi went back to writing. But after a few moments of silence, she piped up again. “This reminds me of carving the lucky cakes for the High-Autumn Festival. Mama always said I was too impatient to make the pretty patterns in the pastry before baking, but at least there you get something delicious at the end.”
“Are you suggesting that I get you some sticky rice flour so that you can make edible word squares?” Luan asked sarcastically.