What From the Water Rises #13

In which Isiltlo adjusts to life on Ezu.

The first thing Isiltlo knew of Isle Ezu was light slanting through shutters. It lay golden fingers across their eyelids and pulled them, slow and warm, from sleep. 

They opened their eyes expecting to see the cabin on the Starless Steed they had first taken for a prison, and instead found themself tucked into a pallet on a reed mat floor. Reed panels surrounded them on three sides; on the fourth was a wall set with long, narrow windows, their wooden shutters cracked open. A slight breeze rippled through the sun streaming over them.

Their head barely hurt anymore, but their body felt heavy and a little sore, and they were hungry. Everything seemed unnaturally still and quiet; the rocking they had grown so used to, the incessant slap of the waves, was gone. The reeds surrounded them in a nest of uneven lines.

But these sensations were background to the profound peace resting like a soft, warm weight on their chest. Something far more somber waited just out of reach of their heart, back behind the hunger and the pain and the lethargy—but it kept its distance. 

For now, Isiltlo lay in the sun, blinking slowly. Listening to the quiet calls of seabirds, they allowed themself—for the first time in a long time—to feel totally and completely safe.

They were on Ezu, they knew, and Menetni confirmed it when she came to check on them some indeterminate amount of time later.

“You were very sick when we arrived,” she said bluntly, pushing a clay cup half-full of water into their hands. “I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”

They drained the cup and sighed. “How long have we been here?”

“Three days.” She regarded them for a moment, then elaborated, “After your escape attempt, we spent a day on Hollow Isle—the place where the pirates gather—then set off for here.”

They stared at her in wonder. “I don’t remember any of that,” they said.

“Well, you weren’t conscious. Amet had to carry you ashore,” she said. “Right into this room, in fact.”

That discovery was only slightly embarrassing; more embarrassing was the belated realization that Menetni herself had been taking care of them ever since. But the light, the stillness, the quiet kept their embarrassment, their reality, from quite clicking into place.

For two more days they stayed in bed, that peace upon them like a blanket. They felt the sun on their skin, watched the small slivers of sky they could see through the shutters when the sunlight dimmed enough to allow. They drew shapes in the air with their fingers or eyes—all of them lazy, simple. Isiltlo put no weight behind them, connected them to nothing, just let them be. When they slept—which was often—they did not dream. They did not think of their parents or grandparents, of the university in Sehmera, of obliterated Tolii or the border crossing or their tiny attic room in Mesaanot. Their reed cubby, Menetni, and the sky might as well have been the only things that existed beside themself.

On the third day, Isiltlo woke and realized their bag—their rune device—was not in the room with them.

The peaceful blanket slipped.

“Menetni?” they called into the house.

No response.

They sat up gingerly and pushed their blankets aside, testing their strength. They felt okay. Good, even. Climbing to their feet increased their confidence; they were still for a moment, surprised to find they did not sway where they stood. 

Outside their partitioned space, they found that the house was one large, almost empty room. A low table sat near a cooking nook with a few rough wooden cabinets; another pallet was shoved into a far corner, some of Menetni’s clothes folded neatly beside it. Pawing through the cabinets, Isiltlo encountered a set of clay cups and bowls, a couple of stray fruits, and nothing else—until they opened the final cupboard. 

There, in a heap, was their worn bag with the familiar bulge.

They gasped, wrenching it out of the cabinet and into their arms, embracing it like a cherished pet. Reality shouldered its way past the blanket, understanding shocking them fully awake for the first time in many days. The device was safe—Menetni was safe—they were safe! Praise the endless patterns, the vertices and lines and curves alike! Thank the geometry that had congealed into the power known as Ezu-anvashe above all! They would have to find out what their new patron liked best and give him an offering as soon as possible. Would Menetni know? Should they go and ask their neighbors? Did they have the strength for that?

Isiltlo lifted their head, staring at the shape of their device with a tearful grin, delirious with happiness—

And then the voice lodged in the back of their head whispered into life and asked, Now what?

Isiltlo's peaceful blanket fell away, and the cold froze their joy into a puff of dissolving frost.

They were safe; that much was true. But they'd spent the last few years in a blinding sprint to get there, and before that, their objective had been clear—design their device. Construct it. Fix what had been broken.

Not once, when they fled from Sehmera after their life had shattered, and again after they were forced to flee Mesaanot, had they considered what might come next. And now, here they were, on Ezu, with nowhere left to run to—their original goal out of reach, if it had ever been possible in the first place.

They looked around the room—the only thing they knew of the island that would be their home for the rest of their life—and that distant, desolate feeling that had lain in wait filled them like a cold salt pool, leaving them profoundly, achingly lost.

Just then, the front door creaked open. It was Menetni, and at the sight of her stepping into the shaft of light streaming in, Isiltlo attempted to wipe any traces of negative emotion from their face. Menetni noticed them as she shut the door behind her, and with a half-cocked curve of her lips, she said, “You’re up.”

Isiltlo nodded, swallowing hard past the lump in their throat. Menetni made her way to the kitchen where they stood, and they stepped aside to give her access to the cabinets. From the cloth bag on her arm she retrieved a handful of rough-skinned little fruits and put them away on a low shelf. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” they said, their voice mostly level. “Almost back to normal, I think.”

“Your normal,” she clarified.

“Right.”

She straightened and turned to them, casting a black, distant eye over the sphere in their arms. “Not going to run off the end of a dock with that thing?”

“Um, no. Not planning on it.” Isiltlo took a breath. “I’m sorry for that, Menetni.” They meant to say, “And for dragging you here in the first place—”

Menetni cut them off. “It’s okay. You were messed up. Confused. Can’t fault you for that,” she admitted grudgingly, “even with that brain of yours.”

They almost swallowed the unspoken words again, but there was something in Menetni’s face that worried them. She seemed to be harboring unexpressed thoughts, hiding them behind a flat demeanor. She was usually very forthright with her anger, and they didn’t know why she wouldn’t be now. Was it because they’d been so ill? “And I’m sorry for—”

“Isiltlo, it’s fine. I said I don’t blame you.”

Now that brought them up short. Instead of the snappishness they would expect when her patience with them was wearing thin, her words had come out oddly subdued. Their confusion only worsened as she sighed, then pressed her mouth into a tight smile.

“I’ll have some dinner ready soon, okay?” She turned back to the kitchen and started unloading more from her bag. “Go rest.” 

They stared at her for a long moment before they slipped back behind the partition, kneeling on the pallet with their device still clutched to their chest.

Was Menetni sad?

This conclusion was so obvious it practically sent them reeling. Of course she was sad! She was just as stuck on this island as they were—she would never be able to go home again, and it was entirely Isiltlo’s fault. That this reality hadn’t left her furious with them was the source of their confusion, because it was beyond belief. They were the one who had asked her to help them get to Ezu when Mesaanot had exiled them—and because she was unfailingly loyal and kind, she had done it, condemning herself along with them. Her anger was more than deserved, its total absence alarming. 

Isiltlo might not know what the rest of their life would look like, but it was clear what they needed to do now. They would never repay Menetni for everything she had done for them, but by the patterns, they would try. Menetni had never been one to discuss her feelings, and even if she had, they were probably the last person she would want to talk to about them. But perhaps they could distract her from them, instead, all while they worked to figure out some way to convey their endless and enduring gratitude. 

* * *

The next afternoon, the two of them went to the market.

Over dinner the previous night, Isiltlo had proposed that they explore the city together. It would be an echo of their first meeting, when Menetni had shown them around Mesaanot’s capital so patiently—even taking pleasure in the task—and revealed to them for the first time the kindness hidden behind her somewhat prickly exterior.

Of course, they couldn’t give her a real tour of Zuenos; she’d been leaving the house multiple times a day since their arrival, and they had yet to experience it beyond the four walls of their house. But they would join her in venturing into the city and trying to get their bearings together in this new place they called home. It was the first and only thing they could think to offer her.

She hadn’t seemed too excited about their plan when they'd presented it, but the edge of quiet sadness had grown less pronounced. “We can go to the market,” she suggested.

Their thoughts immediately went to the market in Thyrenosa—specifically, the section dedicated to magical supplies, bustling down the length of an entire side street. “What do they sell there?” they asked with a twinge of shame; the trip was not for their benefit. “I mean, what do they have to trade for?”

She gave a slight shrug. “Whatever they want, or so I’ve heard. Mostly food, supplies”—she paused, so briefly most anyone else would not have noticed—“and some magic items. It only happens once a week, so I haven’t been yet.”

“I see,” Isiltlo murmured, and forced themself to drop it from there. Some secret part of them, they recognized, had been nurturing a second desire, an unspoken motivation for venturing into town: they wanted the excuse to seek out the resources available to repair their device. It almost certainly needed maintenance after its submersion in the ocean, or at least a thorough cleaning, and though it was likely useless here, they couldn’t justify giving up on it after everything they had sacrificed to bring it into being.

But what they really wanted was to share it with someone. Never before had they gotten the opportunity to discuss the device with someone who truly understood its potential; their closest attempt had come after approaching Menetni’s artificer parent about it, but that hadn’t turned out well.

That desperate need would have to wait, though. Their priority had to be Menetni. That, and whoever they shared it with would have to be someone they trusted completely. 

After lunch, the two of them ventured out into the city, Menetni walking slowly enough for Isiltlo’s somewhat halting pace to keep up. Their house was on stilts, they discovered; the ocean was nearby, the air tinged with the faintest scent of saltwater. They walked past the other houses—all identical in design but for their sizes and heights, all standing on their own narrow legs—and turned at the end of the road to walk inland, deeper into the city.

The island, as a whole, was an extraordinary sight.

First, it was incredibly lush. The sheer volume of plant life was unlike anything Isiltlo had ever encountered; every empty lot, every untrodden space between buildings, even the margins along the roads were bursting with determined green. Ferns crouched in the shade beneath houses, vines wound up stilts and snuck along siding to reach between rooflines, and palms shaded wild urban gardens thick with the scent of flowers and ripening fruits. They thought Mesaanot had been green, with every patch of rocky soil overhung with cypress and eucalyptus or choked with woody blue rosemary, preening with olives, an arrogant excess compared to the tame, compartmentalized ornamentation of Sehmera, but Ezu—Ezu practically blinded them with green, drowned them in it.

And then there were the people. When Menetni guided them to the mouth of the market—where they had a full view of the way the curving street stretched downhill, its edges lined with traders while a crowd snaked up and down between them—Isiltlo understood, logically, that they had been in much larger groups of people. Still, the diversity between them contrived to trick them into believing the opposite. About equal amounts of the crowd seemed to be of Sehmeri or Mesaanoti origin, based on clothing styles and accents, or of a number of other cultures that Isiltlo couldn’t name. 

What struck them most, though, was how many people appeared uncategorizable—appeared to simply be islanders, with unassuming, undyed clothes and little ornamentation. They moved through the throngs in a way that was unfettered, unaffected, no matter whether they were in a hurry or taking their time, in animated companionship or silently solitary. Seeing the mingling of Mesaanoti and Sehmeri natives was striking in and of itself, but the islanders had mixed up components of these cultures until they walked around exuding the active creation of something new. 

Altogether, the experience added up to more sound and movement than Isiltlo had experienced in a long time, their senses almost overwhelmed, but it was the existence of these people that nearly brought them to tears.

The surveyors of Tolii would have loved this place. Nowhere else on the planet would they have been able to see this particular intersection of culture and climate. A wave of grief washed over them knowing none would ever see it, just as one of gratitude crashed through their heart—gratitude that they might connect their people, in their own flimsy and incomplete way, to a site that would have fascinated them beyond measure. There was a reason they were here; there had to be. The shape of this revelation proved it.

Their awe had kept them mostly silent up to that point, Menetni steering them through the streets with a strong grip on their upper arm; now it pushed them to speak. Breathless, they opened their mouth to tell Menetni how amazing this place was—only to lose their words in a gasp.

They’d reached a table strewn with rune devices. Isiltlo halted in front of it, momentarily upsetting the flow of traffic, and crouched down to study them. Most were incredibly simple—fire starters, lamps, water bulbs—but a few were of designs they’d never seen before, their purpose escaping them without a more thorough examination. None of them, even the simple ones, looked like the devices in common use in Mesaanot—and the entire table was conspicuously absent of any kind of basic artificing supply. 

They looked up from their inspection to see the vendor, a person whose sandy hair nearly hid their heavy-lidded eyes, giving them an inquiring smile. 

“Lo,” Menetni said in their ear before they could land on what question they wanted to ask first, “We already have all the devices we need at home, and I don’t think we can afford any others. Let’s move on.”

Before they could object, the grip on their upper arm became firmer, and she guided them off of the street. The two continued parallel to the road, navigating between the vendors and the larger buildings now sitting empty.

“Oh!” they said belatedly, an idea forming in their tired brain. “Oh—you’re right. I wanted to ask them how they source their materials—if they have a forge, whether they outsource to smiths and fine metalworkers—you don’t think they have a glassworks here, do you?” Nothing caught their eye now that they'd left the artificer’s table; it was mostly buckets of shellfish and foraged herbs and rolls of undyed cloth.

Menetni kept walking, purposeful, eyes forward. “All I know is that they have a guild of some kind.”

“That’s promising!” Isiltlo clasped their hands together. It was beyond obvious how they would make things up to Menetni—they would support her! They generally had very little patience for working on anything that wasn’t their device, but if they could sell—trade—simple devices that they could practically artifice in their sleep and split whatever they earned with her, then she wouldn’t have to spend all her time sailing or fishing. Under other circumstances, Menetni would never accept such an arrangement—her hatred of being indebted to others was part of the reason she had left her parents’ home so young—but in this case, they owed her. It was perfect.

“I don’t think artificing here would be so bad,” they began. “Not like in Mesaanot.”

Menetni looked at them sidelong. “You sure about that? You’ve seen one artificer.”

“Yes, but here there’s some manner of choice involved, isn’t there? There’s no government telling me I have to allocate most of my work to the war effort, the rest to domestic devices. There’ll be time and materials to experiment with, colleagues that aren’t part overseer.”

“I suppose. I’m… glad you’re thinking about how to support yourself, at least.” 

They wanted to say, “Not just me,” but there was a strange hesitance in Menetni’s words; glancing at her, the set of her mouth informed Isiltlo that she had something on her mind. They couldn’t guess what it was; they didn’t think it was anger, which they still half-anticipated and silently hoped for.

The uncertainty ballooned toward the intolerable as she guided them away from the market, leading them down a quieter residential street. 

“Listen. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

Isiltlo swallowed despite themself. “Okay.”

“When you came to me in Thyrenosa,” Menetni said, her voice pitched low, “you said you needed to escape in order to remain whole.” Her grip had gradually loosened on their arm as she spoke, and as she paused between sentences, she dropped her hand to rub her eyes. “I never asked you what that meant. I always thought it had something to do with your device.”

They nodded at her, though she wasn't looking.

“I know Mesaanot wouldn’t have wanted it—wouldn’t have let you work on it with all the other work to be done there.” Again, they nodded at her. “But you never told me what your device was for.”

“Oh,” Isiltlo said, startled by the directness of her question. Not only had Menetni never shown interest in their device, she always seemed to disdain, distantly, artificing and magic as a whole. “Well, it—it reads the lines of magic.”

Menetni fixed them with a look—tight frown, brow furrowed. For a moment she stared at them, silent, then said, “Is that all?”

Isiltlo was at a loss for words. Was that all? What did she mean, was that all? It was everything!

Menetni let out a sigh. “I understand, I guess—you won’t be happy unless you can work on this thing, or something else related to that geometry stuff you’re so obsessed with, and you couldn’t do it in Mesaanot.” Isiltlo wondered whether the word obsessed was meant to sting the way it did, but did not ask. “I know what it’s like, in a way. I had to defy my parents to do what I needed to do.”

“I know,” Isiltlo said. She’d told them the story before—her refusal to learn magic, her escape from her parents’ home to become a sailor instead. She’d had to make her own way, too, at some point; they always assumed that was why she was so receptive to helping them do the same.

“But the way you’ve talked about this device,” Menetni continued, “the way you protected it, putting it above your own life—I don’t know. I really thought it’d be something more than what it is.”

“I don’t think you get it,” Isiltlo insisted without thinking, and Menetni frowned at them. It was difficult to hear her minimize their life’s work like this—to imply it wasn’t worth the sacrifices they’d made—and they needed her to understand. “This device could change everything. For all of human history, we’ve used magic without comprehending it. It’s regarded as a kind of esoteric, mysterious power, something only the gods could grasp. But if we could treat it like a sort of science—a branch of mathematics—we could finally start to truly know magic, and that would shift the balance of the world.”

“The whole world?” Menetni asked, and they weren’t sure if she was taking them seriously or not.

“I mean it! In Sehmera, they’re so suspicious of magic. They position it as something opposite of, in opposition to technology and science—but magic is just another part of it! If they knew that, they could integrate it into their lives, get rid of the taboo, allow the people in their territories to worship their gods as they see fit. There are a lot of people under Sehmera’s rule, Menetni; it would change so many people’s lives.”  

At least, changing Sehmera was what they had wanted in the initial stages of development; now, they had come to realize the empire didn’t quite work that way. Withholding this from Menetni felt wrong, even if they were trying to convince her, so they sighed and conceded to that particular failure. “That’s what I thought at first, anyway; now I can’t say for sure if it’ll be enough to change Sehmera. But I think it's still important. I think it could fix something fundamentally broken in the world.” Menetni made a little humming noise, quiet enough that they couldn’t tell if she was expressing doubt or acceptance. “It’s the only hope, the only purpose I have left. I…” They tried unsuccessfully to force the note of desperation from their voice. “I don’t know what my life means without this.”

Menetni turned to face forward again, brows knit; Isiltlo glanced ahead of them, too, and realized she was looking toward the ocean, a glint of water under the sun visible between the buildings and the trees. 

“You know, not everyone’s life leads to some grand meaning or purpose,” she said. “Most people just want to live. But I do wish you luck.”

Isiltlo didn’t quite grasp the tone of her words; she wasn’t looking at them, but her face in profile seemed resigned, almost wistful. They thought they knew what it was heralding, even if they couldn’t admit it to themself yet, but there was still something in her behavior that didn’t mesh.

“So, listen,” Menetni continued in hushed tones, “I’ve been talking to some of the islanders, and I learned they have communal housing here. Larger homes where people can live in groups and take care of each other. Maybe, since you’re already thinking about how to support yourself…” She trailed off and shot them a meaningful look. “Maybe you should start looking into one of those places.”

Isiltlo clamped their tongue between their teeth to keep their composure. They had anticipated this. Menetni was leaving them.

“I understand,” they murmured when they’d gotten control of themself. They really did—though they felt a rising lump in their throat, a strange leaden weight on their chest, and an overwhelming swell of guilt as her words landed. “I’m grateful you stayed with me for as long as you did. You didn’t have to.”

“Of course I didn’t,” she said, her voice just as low. “I wanted to.”

“And I want you to know”—Isiltlo paused, took a deep breath, continued—“I’m so, so sorry. This is all my fault. I owe you so much; you can ask me for anything you need, forever. The artificing—I’d like to share whatever I get for it with you. And if you’d ever like to be friends again, that door will always be open.”

Abruptly, Menetni stopped in her tracks. “Isiltlo, what are you talking about?”

They stopped, too, blinking at her. Her question didn’t follow—and uncertainty was written across the lines in her face, furrowing her brow—but they didn’t understand her confusion well enough to correct it. “You’re telling me you want to live by yourself,” they said carefully. “You want me to go live in one of those group homes—because being trapped with me, alone, is intolerable.”

Menetni’s lips parted, but nothing came out; she looked no less baffled than before.

“I can’t blame you”—an unwelcome stab of emotion broke through their words, but they pressed on—“for feeling that way, either. You’ve given up so much for me. I’m the reason you can’t go home again.”

“What?” She put a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide; she shook her head resolutely. “No, I’m—you’re not—I’m helping you find somewhere to live because I want to go back to Mesaanot soon!”

It was Isiltlo’s turn to be utterly and completely baffled. “But—but we were exiled!”

“We?” she echoed in disbelief. “Isiltlo, you were exiled. Did you see me sign any papers? Did you see me swear away my citizenship? All I did was steer the boat! Did you seriously think I’d leave home forever? For you?”

“I—uh—” They couldn’t find the words. That day had been such a blur—Menetni’s parent sitting them down, the government official arriving with the ultimatum that they surrender their device, swear an oath to serve the state, or leave permanently—the desperate search for Menetni, knowing they would never survive the sea on their own, knowing the only place they might be safe was an island they couldn’t hope to navigate to—

They felt their face go hot. They remembered signing away their right to be in Mesaanot, the agreement that they would leave by exile boat within the next twelve hours or face severe consequences, Menetni at their shoulder, staring stony-faced at their parent the entire time. She had said nothing, signed nothing.

Isiltlo had assumed so much it was absurd, beyond embarrassing. Shameful.

“I don’t know if I should be flattered that you think I’m this selfless,” Menetni said, “or mad that you’re so self-absorbed!”

She was right, she was right. But still, they whispered, “Am I—?”

“Yes!” she burst out, clearly settling on the side of anger. “You never think of anything except your geometry stuff! You think you’re responsible for everything! You make all of these weird ‘connections,’ say you’re ‘drawing lines,’ and what’s always at the center of them?” 

She stepped up to them, finger pointed at their chest. They lifted their hands in a feeble gesture of defense, and glanced around the street they’d stopped in the middle of to ensure they were alone. They were; no witnesses would see her tell them off. “It’s you! You told me your people were scattered, your society destroyed, your culture broken, and that the people who raised you told you that you were broken too. That you have to fix yourself, and if you did, you would fix everything else—but how is that any different from what those Sehmeri doctors say about you?”

“Menetni,” Isiltlo whined, but no further words came to them. They could not honestly object to or answer her questions.

“You’re not broken, Isiltlo!” she snapped. “You’re just a person! One who puts themself at the center of everything and is so full of guilt you have to make up things you’ve done wrong in order to justify it!”

Her voice cracked on the last words and she looked away, her lips pressed tightly together. All Isiltlo managed was her name again, a whisper, the syllables heavy with weakness and exhaustion—but nothing else came to them.

Before they figured out what to say, she spun on her heel and stormed away, leaving them standing alone on the empty street.

And they realized, watching her vanish, that they had no idea which direction was home.