Small garrisons were maintained to keep the island from becoming a haven for pirates, though there were also small villages scattered in the interior of the island populated by descendants of the princes and princesses who had founded tiny principalities on the island during the Diaspora Wars. They paid no taxes to the Imperial Treasury and did not heed the Imperial edicts, and traveling storytellers and court poets attributed to them wild customs and improbable beliefs.
“There!” Zomi shouted, pointing to the southwest. At the foot of a towering cliff was a small clearing with about a dozen tiny thatched-roof houses huddled in a circle.
“That’s right, we’ll have lunch there and then hike up into the mountains. You can land in the clearing in the middle of the hamlet. The people here recognize my balloon.”
Zomi moved away from the dial overhead. “Teacher, I think you should land this.”
“Nonsense. Curious Turtle is in your hands,” said Luan. “Everyone has trouble with their first landing, but the real test is whether you view that as a failure or just a lesson.”
Zomi’s face flushed, remembering how her first attempt to land the balloon in the coastal settlement of Ingça had resulted in a hard bump against the earth, causing the gondola to tip over, spilling both her and Luan Zya onto the ground like two flopping fish.
She reached up and twisted the dial deliberately, reminding herself to go slow. The breeze was gentle and the balloon was drifting slowly, and as the flame overhead quieted, it lost altitude slowly.
“Keep your eye on the landing spot,” instructed Luan. “Envision the line of descent and follow it. Think of yourself as sliding down a slope.”
Zomi tried to imagine herself as part of the balloon, reacting to the nudges and bumps of the air currents with minute adjustments to the dial. She was not going to fail and disappoint her teacher.
As the balloon skimmed low over the ground, about fifty feet up, Zomi struggled to lift the anchor—a heavy metal claw attached to a length of silk rope—over the side of the gondola. Her bad leg made it hard for her to get leverage, but Luan did not come forward to help her, knowing that she preferred to do everything on her own.
The anchor dropped, and Curious Turtle jerked up suddenly with the loss of weight. But Zomi was prepared and held on to the side of the gondola. The claw of the anchor smashed into the grassy ground with a muffled thump and skipped over the grass a few yards, throwing up clumps of earth until it caught, and the anchor line stretched taut for a moment before drooping gently like a kite line. The balloon was held fast.
“Well done!” said Luan.
As Zomi worked the winch to bring the balloon down to the ground, a few villagers came out of the houses and gazed up at the billowing balloon coming out of the sky like a jellyfish. Zomi noticed their curious clothing: rough hempen robes cut in strange styles, with belts and waist-purses made from animal hide.
“They look like folk opera players dressed in costumes from the Diaspora Wars,” whispered Zomi.
“Their ancestors came from Arulugi a long time ago,” said Luan. “After generations of living away from the ever-changing fashion on the other islands, they’re like a still pool by the side of a rushing river, a world unto themselves.”
“You sound like you almost envy them.”
“Hmm?”
“Do you want to live like that? Away from everyone else?”
Luan pondered this. “When I’ve been away from the bustle of the great cities of Dara, I miss their noise and color. When I’ve spent too much time in them, I miss the clarity and solitude of nature.”
“Sounds like you’re never satisfied.”
Luan smiled. “I suppose that is true. It’s complicated.”
Finally, the gondola settled on the ground. Zomi extinguished the flame overhead, and the balloon began to lose air and billow in the breeze. Zomi climbed out of the gondola, connected several bamboo segments into a long pole, and pushed against the sagging balloon so that it would fall neatly along the ground and not become tangled.
An old man with a flowing white beard came forward to greet the visitors. Luan climbed out of the gondola as well.
“Weal be hale, all’vry-choon,” said the elder.
“Goad ’orrow, Comi,” replied Luan. “Hale thu weal.”
They bowed to each other deeply, and Elder Comi swept his sleeves across the ground between them three times—just like hosts in folk operas about ancient heroes did to greet their guests—and both sat down in géüpa.
“What dialect are you speaking?” whispered Zomi as she scampered to sit next to Luan.
“It’s the vernacular of Amu.”
“It doesn’t sound like how the Amu merchants I’ve met in the markets talk—wait, is this how they talked thirty generations ago?”
“Not exactly. The way we speak changes quickly—have you not noticed how even elders in your village do not speak the exact same way you do? I’m sure the speech of Elder Comi’s people has changed over time as well. But because they are isolated, they’ve managed to retain some pronunciations and vocabulary from the past that others on Amu have lost. I know how to say a few phrases and can understand a few more, but I have not spent enough time to really learn the language.”
“So how will you talk?” Zomi asked.
“Watch.”
A boy and a girl, both younger than Zomi, came to them from one of the houses. The boy was holding a tray filled with some gray, mud-like substance, and the girl was holding a tray with a crude ceramic teakettle, four cups, and a few dishes of snacks. The children set the trays down between Elder Comi and Luan Zya, bowed, and left.
Elder Comi poured tea for everyone—including a fourth cup for the gods—and gestured for them to taste. Zomi sipped the tea: The infusion was cold, with a floral flavor that was pleasant but unfamiliar.
The elder rolled up his sleeves and picked up a knife on the side of the tray. The edge of the knife was so dull that it resembled a small spatula. He used the knife to carve a grid of squares into the gray substance as though he was slicing a cake. Then he put down the knife and began to sculpt the gray, gooey material in each square with his hands.
“It’s clay,” said Luan.
Zomi watched, fascinated. The elder sculpted the clay squares into little mounds and pyramids, and then began to carve with the knife.
“Is he writing?” whispered Zomi. “These are Ano logograms, aren’t they?”
Luan nodded. “Since the zyndari letters simply represent the sounds of speech, I can no more read his writing than understand his speech if he wrote with letters. The Ano logograms, on the other hand, are not tied to the everyday speech of the people, but are frozen along with the departed language of the Ano, which we both know.”
“So he’s writing the exact same way the first Ano did?” Zomi felt awed at the prospect of seeing someone writing in the same manner as ghosts of people dead for millennia. It seemed like a kind of magic.
“Not exactly. Though Classical Ano is no longer used for daily speech, it is the language of poetry and scholarship, and so it has changed over time to accommodate new words and new ideas invented since the coming of the Ano to these islands. But because Classical Ano is seldom spoken now—and then only by the learned—it is tied to the logograms, which evolve much more slowly than fickle common speech. Even at the time of Mapidéré’s Unification, the logograms used by the Seven States were sufficiently similar to each other that it was easy to master another state’s logograms if you were properly educated and good at seeing patterns. His logograms are slightly different from the ones I learned, but it is not difficult for me to figure them out. We can converse via clay and knife.”