Waterborn

'Noticed what?' Ghan demanded.

'Wad is made out of qwen and sungulh.' It was, though the simpler characters were distorted; the oval of the 'pot' was quashed way down, but now she could see that it was indeed sungulh. Qwen—the three wavy lines joined at the base—was quashed, too, and the center, straight line stuck right up through the middle of the pot. 'Fire and a pot. Cooking!'

Ghan cleared his throat. 'Ngess'e',' he demanded.

'I… I don't remember that one,' Hezhi confessed.

'Look it up.'

Hezhi did; this time, she understood from the start what she was copying; the glyph was made of 'pot' again, this time combined with the symbol for 'person.' It took her a moment to understand.

'Ngess'e' is the old word for 'body,'' she mused. 'Does this mean that a person's body is like a pot?'

Ghan nodded. 'Sungulh really means 'vessel,'' he explained. 'Anything that holds something.'

'I see, I see!' she said, nearly forgetting herself and giggling. How could she have been so stupid? ''Ship' is made from that, too, isn't it? And so is 'house'! A vessel with someone in it!' She doodled the two glyphs quickly, imperfectly—but legibly. Now that she could see that the lines weren't just random squiggles but other, simpler glyphs, they were easier to write.

Ghan watched her do that for a while, impassive. Then he reached over and stopped her with a touch on the wrist.

'Now,' he said. 'Now draw su'.'

Su' was water, a little swirly coil. Hezhi put it down, but her mind was slipping ahead. Of course; ice had this in it, and so did weep—that was 'water' and 'face.' She waited eagerly for Ghan's next command.

'Do the glyph for road,' he said, using the modern—not the ancient—word for 'road.' That puzzled her but did not give her pause. She etched out the complex symbol. Then she stared at it, surprised. It looked like 'water' and 'land' mixed together.

'That should mean marsh, or island, or something, shouldn't it?'

'Why is that?'

'These are the glyphs for 'water' and 'land.' '

'Say what you just said slowly,' he said, eyes intent on her face, watching as if he could see how she thought.

Hezhi complied. 'These—are—the—glyphs—for—'water'— and—'land.' '

'Just the two words now.'

'She', nyun,' she said. 'Water, land.'

'Doesn't that sound like shengu, 'road'?'

Hezhi wrinkled her brow. 'A little, but not very much.'

'But what if you name those glyphs like that in the Old Language, with the old pronunciation?'

'Su'-ngan,' she said carefully, then smiled. 'I see! Su'ngan sounds like sungu, the old word for 'road.' '

'Indeed,' Ghan said. 'In those two ways, all complex glyphs are constructed.' He smirked. 'Rather than having to learn thousands of glyphs, you need only learn the hundred basic symbols.'

Hezhi nodded, lost in the wonder of it. 'How beautiful,' she breathed.

'Now,' Ghan asked softly, 'do you think you can take these with you and know them by tomorrow?'

'I can take the book and the paper?'

'I want you to learn this quickly,' Ghan explained. 'I have no time to indulge you every day. You must work at home, as well.'

'I'll know them tomorrow,' she promised.

That afternoon, she had to restrain herself from dancing out into the hall where Tsem waited. He seemed puzzled by the happy look on her face.

'You seem to be feeling better, Princess,' he observed.

'Yes, Tsem, I do feel better. Ghan is teaching me to read.'

'Ah. I can think of nothing that would make me feel better.'

Hezhi noticed that, as he spoke, he kept glancing distractedly up and down the hall.

'Something wrong, Tsem?' she asked.

'No, Princess, nothing you need worry about.'

'I don't like the sound of that,' Hezhi remarked. 'Whenever someone tells me that, it is almost certainly something I should worry about.'

'No, not this time,' Tsem said. 'This is my own problem.'

'Can I help?'

Tsem looked sharply at her, as if he thought she were joking. When he saw how earnest she was, though, he chuckled and tousled her hair. 'No, Princess, but thank you for the offer. Shall we go on home now? Qey was making crescent-moons with cheese, I think.'

'Fine,' Hezhi said. 'I have a lot to do, anyway. Come on, race me.'

'Race you?'

'Like we used to do. Remember? I used to beat you all of the time.'

'I remember letting you win so you wouldn't have a tantrum and order me beheaded,' Tsem corrected.

Hezhi pretended to pout, then changed her expression to one of surprised discovery. She pointed up the corridor, where Tsem had been so nervously gazing. 'Is that who you were looking for?' she asked.

Tsem turned to look, a flash of concern passing over his heavy features. When he turned back, puzzled—there was no one in the direction she pointed—it was just in time to see Hezhi's skirt vanishing around the corner. He rolled his eyes, bellowed, and gave pursuit.

 

 

Her servitude became joy after that. Each day her knowledge of the old script advanced, and, soon enough, Ghan began to teach her indexing. Indexing was actually simple enough; it involved reading—or at least skimming —a book and making a list of the subjects and important personages detailed or mentioned in it. There was a master index—a truly enormous book that Ghan kept hidden away—composed of entries under various subjects and persons. Under each heading could be found a list of the manuscripts that mentioned them and a set of numbers indicating where in the library the book was likely to be found. Hezhi was amazed—and a bit chagrined—to learn of this index. It would have made her earlier search much simpler. Books were shelved in the order that they were acquired, and as soon as they were placed on a shelf, that shelf was labeled with a number—the number following the one before it, naturally—and the same number was written on the inside cover or first page of the book, so that it could be reshelved. This meant there was no telling where a book on a particular subject was without the index.

Indexing was by turns boring and interesting, depending upon the book she was reading. Ghan seemed satisfied enough with her work, however, though he was gruff and even caustic when she made mistakes. As time went on, however, her mistakes became fewer and fewer; her eyes could dance through the glyphs, discerning their meanings, and, now that she could understand the complex play of metaphor and even outright punning that the script was based upon, she began to catch subtle shades of meaning she had never guessed at.

So absorbed was she in her work that she did not think much about the ghost that had attacked her in the hall or the strange forest she continued to dream of so often. Her mind had returned to the earlier question of D'en and her inescapable conclusion that she needed to better understand her own family if she was ever going to discover his fate—and her own possible fate, as well. So in the evenings, when she was done with whatever Ghan asked her to do, she would turn not to geographies of strange places or treatises on ghosts, but instead to Royal Chronicles. She did briefly glance at one rather recent geography that seemed to suggest that while there were no forests such as she dreamed of in the central part of the world, the distant reaches—north, west,