Page 136 (1/2)
And indeed, it was not long before the listening gray pebbles washed by weak gray foa water Lashing the ferry to it, Idyll squinted into the an just beyond the beachhead He did not step onto the dock
“This is the Isle of the Dead,” whispered Seven, gripping the dock post hite knuckles The ferry sound that echoed across the shore like an ax blow
“There is no Isle of the Dead! The geography of this place is ine! Why do you think these docks are needed, and a ferryman? I am no mere psychopomp—I am the lake-pilot I know all the ays, all the Isles There are as many as there are whales in the sea, and ether Perhaps whales and sharks and tortoises and aneable paths, I knohere to take each wretched soul that coo after her? This is where she caht her, and she paid as dearly as you, never think she did not She wanted to come to this shore alone of all the others This is where I take the Stars, it is the Isle of Lost Light, and I would not take you beyond it—you are not qualified, and neither are they”
Out of the Garden
DINARZAD FOLDED HER HANDS IN HER LAP ON EVERY FINGER WAS a ring of gold and tiger’s-eye, and so her hands seemed to look back at her, baleful and fiery and sad The braziers flickered and warh veils the color of a peacock’s head she watched the banquet which seemed to whirl around her like dishes around a mute centerpiece, or dancers beneath a tall, elaborate lamp that has no choice but to shine The ivory circlet cut into her skin, and in theher forehead would be red and chafed The ht her as the sixteenth in his parade of gifts a tiny bird of paradise carved fro sapphires and topaz Its eyes were dead and shi, and when you pulled the tail, some mechanisht it was , but to her it see the time She pulled its tail It chimed She delicately placed her napkin over it, so that she would not have to look it in the eye
She was thinking about the girl in the Garden
It was the pirate ship that she reirl’s stories, the pirate ship and the sad, broken Papess She thought she understood that, how to give up and give in to the inevitable She knehat inevitability felt like, how it tasted It felt like the mustached man’s hand on her knee It tasted like his kisses She wished that she could cut her hair like a Sigrid, so that they would stop stringing it with jewels and brushing it straight She wished she could cloister herself away from inevitable kisses
She wished she were an orphan with endless tales to tell and no one to love her enough to bring her birds of pearl
But she was not her brother, she could not bring herself to sit at that girl’s feet and listen to her openly, she could not bear the possibility that the girl was not a bird of pearl, that she could not sied for But she did long for it
“And where is the little Sultan tonight, your brother?” said her suitor a over her and into her skin whether she willed it or no
“He is hunting in the country,her eyes under the deep blue veil “After all, when he is not so little a Sultan anymore, he will not have time for such noble pursuits He took our father’s ebony bow and went to shoot a lion inpresent”
She wondered at how easy the lie was Is this how you tell a tale? she thought You open your mouth and chime, let whatever see than the tolling of a clock? She warmed to her story and lifted her eyes demurely
“My brother is most ier hastly roosters He is most interested in the olden clockwork of that other man”
“Why, I should be happy to show him how it is done!”
“I aenerous of you, to marry his sister and show him such wonders! He will surely reward y in the ways of diplohts in conteovernors, and in the perfect halls of his mind he moves them as deftly and surely as shatranj pieces He thinks so often and with such intensity that I have with my own eyes seen steareat Sultan, when he is grown, and he will always re of my lord’s birds”