The Same Type of Animal #2
He spoke in hand language most of the time, adding words aloud whenever Lill needed them (a “gloss” was what Lill said you called that), and Lill responded in a mixture of signs and spoken language, Hawada and Zashian, slipping from one to another like a stream of water making its own channel over grass and rocks.
He used Zashian words that Vanu didn’t know more often than Vanu said anything in his native language that Lill needed translated, and he had learned the signs for the Zashian letters from Atari and would occasionally forget that Vanu didn’t know them.
His cleverness delighted Vanu, the way it bubbled clumsily out of him sometimes when they were alone together.
When Vanu told stories, Lill peppered him with sharp-eyed, technical questions: How did they get the rocks to stay up there?
Where were you hiding? What kind of sword?
Why didn’t he suspect a trap, do you think?
If Vanu took out a piece of carving to occupy his hands, he could get Lill to talk more.
The boy seemed eager to talk, but there weren’t many things he’d allow himself to talk about.
He never spoke about his family or even about Davanu, except once or twice when he mentioned something he’d seen or tasted, he’d add a little stiffly, “That was at Shawa House.” He didn’t seem to miss Torakand or have much love for the city where he’d spent most of his life.
Vanu had thought he’d been born there, but from some offhand comments he gathered that was not true.
He’d been at one of the royal courts as a very young child, but he didn’t say why.
He liked watching Vanu carve and would ask interested questions about the design and the techniques, but he did not seem to want to learn to carve for himself.
Towards the end of the second week of their marriage, he brought one of Atari’s Zashian books, The Legend of Prince Batan, out onto the balcony, and asked almost shyly if Vanu would like to listen to him read aloud.
Vanu knew the story from a Hawa version he’d heard recited, but of course he said yes.
Lill had a lovely voice and read beautifully.
Even better, he seemed to love doing it.
“I’ll do the milking myself this morning,” Vanu told him after they had taken the breakfast dishes downstairs. The girls had already dispersed. “Susami told me she wants your help cleaning their house.”
Lill looked uncertain, and at first Vanu thought it was because he hadn’t caught all the hand language. He was becoming so proficient, Vanu sometimes forgot to sign slowly for him these days.
“Are you sure?” Lill said aloud, before Vanu could repeat himself. “It’s just that I’ve noticed Susami doesn’t like to be around Khatu and Barda, and they are only a little older than I am … ”
“Khatu and Barda?” Vanu repeated. “They’re not even the same type of animal as you. I mean—”
He’d realized too late that was a plain insult. Khatu and Barda were men, whereas Lill was … also a man, in a way. At least, he was a boy who had grown up, which usually made you a man. But for him the category seemed so inadequate.
Lill was laughing, not looking insulted. “I know. And I’ve been wanting to be better friends with Susami, I really have. I—I think I know how to do it. I just needed to know it was what you wanted.”
“Right … ”
Vanu was ashamed of how little thought he’d given to this situation. He’d only got as far as thinking that it was too bad Susami and Lill weren’t more friendly, but that surely it would come in time. It hadn’t occurred to him that they might have complex reasons to be wary of one another.
“Sometimes I need to be given orders,” Lill signed.
“I am not going to order you to be friends with my daughter. But you have my permission.”
Lill presented himself in the door of the girls’ house.
He hadn’t been in here before. The house was laid out similarly to Vanu’s, with a high-ceilinged front room, a raised seating platform that could be heated from beneath, and stairs leading to a gallery with doors to bedrooms and the balcony along one side.
Susami was mixing a pail of whitewash in the middle of the room.
Her hair was tied up in a kerchief, and she wore a plain apron over her dress.
Lill came cautiously in until she looked up and saw him.
“Vanu said you wanted my help,” he signed.
She nodded and pointed at the pail. “I am going to paint the room.”
She signed slowly, watching to make sure he understood. He was inclined to be insulted—surely she knew how much hand language he had learned in the last two weeks—but he guessed she was just being cautious.
“I want you to climb up to paint the ceiling,” she explained. “Can you do it?”
“Of course!” Lill signed enthusiastically. “I would love to help. But I confess I have never painted anything before.”
She smiled her serene, cool smile. “It is not hard. Climbing up to the ceiling, that is the hard part. But I already know you can do that.”
When Vanu came in an hour or so later, Lill was up in the rafters with the pail of whitewash and a brush, his hair tied up in a kerchief like Susami’s.
“She really put you to work,” Vanu observed, looking up at him.
“Of course. I was glad to help.”
Vanu grinned at him and went out again, pausing at the door to sign, “I’ll be on the archery range if you want me.”
Lill finished off the corner he had been painting and climbed down.
He was satisfied with the job he’d done, even more so when Susami looked at it and signed approval.
He found himself smiling—really smiling—at her as he pulled off the kerchief she had loaned him, and when she smiled back he realized how much he had wanted her approval.
He picked up the gauzy wedding tunic that he’d taken off for painting and put it back on, fiddling with the sash.
Susami stepped close and pinched the fabric of his sleeve, rubbing it assessingly between her fingers.
“It’s very fine,” she said. “Is this how you dressed in the lowlands?”
Lill shook his head. “This is women’s clothing, and I was strictly a boy in the lowlands.”
He wondered for a moment whether that statement made any sense as he’d phrased it.
He was sure she would give him a puzzled look or ask for an explanation, assuming his fledgling grasp of hand language had failed him.
But she didn’t. She gave him a smile of such warmth and understanding that it took his breath away.
“Then welcome home,” she signed.
He must have looked happy still when he came out of the girls’ house and found Vanu on the archery range. Vanu cocked an eyebrow at him inquiringly.
“Susami said something nice to me,” he said. “I wasn’t sure she liked me, but … ”
Vanu nodded as if he didn’t need further explanation. He loosed his last two arrows at the target, solid bullseyes, before propping the bow against his leg so he could sign.
“I wasn’t sure she liked me for a long time.”
“But you’re her father!”
Vanu made a wry face. “Don’t mean filial respect,” he said out loud. “I mean liked.”
He picked up his bow and slung it over his shoulder. Lill followed him down the range and watched him tugging his arrows out of the butt.
“I was a kid when I got my friend Enu pregnant,” Vanu went on, “and it was a dumb fucking mistake. I should have known better. Enu’s a warrior soul—a man.
Well, a boy, then. But his family made him go back to living as a girl until he’d had the kid.
I didn’t think he’d ever forgive me for putting him through that.
So … ” He shrugged. “Wouldn’t have surprised me if Susami didn’t like me. ”
“But she does.”
He could say that with certainty. The whole reason he’d been afraid Susami didn’t like him was because it was clear to him that she loved her father—was somehow protective of him, almost as much as he was of her—and might not have thought this strange bride from the lowlands good enough for him.
“And Enu—did he forgive you?”
“Yeah. We’re friends again. Me taking Susami helped.
Better for everybody, most ways.” He bundled the retrieved arrows together and dropped them back into the quiver.
“He married a widow with a bunch of kids of her own. Likes being a father better than being a mother.” He slung the quiver over his shoulder. “So—you wanted something?”
“I did?”
“Came looking for me,” Vanu reminded him.
He had, but there hadn’t been any reason. He’d been happy because Susami had warmed to him, and Vanu had said he’d be on the archery range “if you want me,” and Lill had just … come out here.
“I thought I’d try shooting again,” he said, because he had to say something.
“Ah. Mikhi’s bow’s back by the house. Was restringing it for her.”
Vanu strode off up the range, and Lill jogged to keep up. Vanu retrieved the bow from where it was propped against a bench and turned, looking surprised to find Lill beside him.
“Was going to bring it to you. Mikhi usually shoots from—”
Lill popped up on tiptoe to pull an arrow out of the quiver on Vanu’s shoulder, and took Mikhi’s bow out of Vanu’s hand.
He nocked the arrow still facing Vanu, turned, aimed, and shot in one smooth motion.
It was only as he looked down the full length of the range at his arrow trembling in the dead centre of the target that he remembered he had intended not to do that.
“Ah,” said Vanu quietly.
He unslung the quiver of arrows and offered it. Lill took another without looking into his face. He could pretend the bullseye had been a fluke, make his second shot go pitifully wide or into the ground …