King Arik shrugged.“Fine.”
My skull ached with how hot it grew in my rage.“Fine?After three moons of being… justfine?”
“I don’t understand your ire, Gentlewoman.I told you you could refuse anything you did not like.I asked you if you wanted to learn faster.You said you did.”He smirked.He most certainly did understand my ire; I could tell by his expression.
“No,” I said again, my head throbbing with inner turmoil.
“Do not be so bitter over it, Gentlewoman.I told you, the stones said you were here to learn.This is what you have done.”
“It was a painful way to learn words?—”
“No, Gentlewoman.It was the softest way I have ever seen anyone learn a great and terrifying thing.”
“Words are not great and terrifying?—”
“That is not what I am speaking of, Gentlewoman.You have learned something it takes a lifetime to master.It will be most useful when you read for me.”
I frowned at him.He looked so smug, I felt sick.
“You, my dear, have learned to say ‘no’ to a king.”
Twenty-One
Having discovered I needed no permission to resume the occasional conversation in Islish, I was able to ask questions about things that had repeatedly confused me.One of the words I’d been searching for during those dark moons wasprivacy.When I finally asked Dania how I could express the idea in Norsern, she said, “Ha!There is no word for it, and because of that, there is no idea of it.This was a source of great frustration between me and Eggun when our strawberry time had ended.”
When I sat there confused, she saidstrawberry timewas when you first fall in love, and nothing the person does annoys you, no matter what it is.Herein lies a perfect example of the complexity of the Norsern language.The wordstrawberryand the wordtimecan be understood and translated, but the meaning of these two words together is something that could only be comprehensible if you had spent time with Norsern people.They had hundreds of these phrases.
When Northerners said,there are too many stars in the sky,they meant they felt such happiness that they were miserable, as they knew such a good moment couldn’t last forever.When they saidthey were licking dew off a thorny branch, they meant they were enjoying the pleasure of being sad.They had a phrase about sitting on a tall horse, referring to a person who perceived themselves as above others, but this one was the same as back on the Isle.
Dania told me not to worry so much about the phrases as there were an endless amount of them and she was still learning new ones all the time.She said I would be better off studying the countless words Norsern had for laughter since these words could dramatically change the meaning of a conversation.
There was a word for the laugh you try to hide when you are getting in trouble.The laugh you make when something is too adorable to handle.The laugh you make when you win a hard contest.The laugh you make when you hurt yourself.The laugh you make when you are in love.The laugh you make when lost or confused or you have failed at something.The laugh you make when someone else gets hurt.The laugh you make when you are so sleepy, you find normal things funny.The laugh you make when you do everything right, but still, the ending is wrong… the list went on and on.I felt certain I wouldn’t be able to hear the subtle differences in the kinds of laughs to make learning their names at all useful.
There was one laugh, however, that I learned intimately: laughingginnaung.Smugly.With a sense ofwell, wasn’t I correct?This was how King Arik laughed whenever I spoke Norsern well or someone commented on how quickly I’d learned.And the more I pursed my lips when he laughedginnaung, the more he laughed that way.
“Come now, Gentlewoman, you are already known for having an owl-face.Do not add to the impression.”
I’m sure I was glaring when I answered.“Owl-face?”
“Yes, so serious and always staring in a way that shows you are judging harshly.When you let your face rest and make no expression, you look terribly mean.Surely someone has told you this already?”
They hadn’t, but on occasion, courtiers had hooted like an owl in my direction.Needless to say, the king’s smug laughter andowl-facetaunting didn’t make it easier to forgive him.
My irritation only began fading after I’d seen another side of The Bard King, a side that has been entirely left out of the annals.It was a sunny day.Still cold, but the icicles hanging off the palace roof were dripping, meaning it was beginning to be theslightestbit warmer.I came to King Arik’s study to find him in a melancholy so stark, I assumed something tragic had happened.
He waved me in, offering no explanation.And since I grew up in the Kepen at the Arched Cliffs—where you don’t ask about feelings even if it seems like you should—I pretended all was normal.
I sat in my usual place near the window and laid out the stones as I had been doing for the past several mornings.I hoped he would ask me to read for him soon, as foolishly, I assumed our arrangement was nearing an end.I could speak the language well enough, which was his first request.The ice on the sea would melt one day soon.I simply needed to become good enough at reading that I could read for him, and then I would be granted passage home.I even considered reading a tale that involved travelling to speed the process along if only I could find a way to word it that wasn’t too obvious…
The king sighed and stared out the window as I attempted to practice.Quickly, I became too distracted by his state and settled on making it look like I was practicing, staring intently at the stones and then sometimes adding one, sometimes taking one away.
Finally, our usual hour came to an end, and it seemed the king had hardly been aware I was there until he said, “Oh, Gentlewoman, if you are not keeping track of the passage yourself, I will warn you, the moon is shy this afternoon.”
I had been thinking only a day or so earlier that it must be time again for the shy moon.I’d noticed the court’s brawls were often more brutal in the days leading up to the shy moon and had begun to wonder if this was purposeful strategy designed to draw forth and solve conflicts before their opponents had the support of loved ones casting for them.There had been a particularly gross wrestling match the evening before, where two men, who it seemed both were romantically involved with a third man, had pounded each other’s faces until two teeth were lost and the white part of one man’s eye had filled with blood.
While the king reminded me of the incoming sacred day, he stared at the grain of the table, digging a fingernail along a crease in the wood.He was smiling to himself in a way I hadn’t yet seen from him; I suspected him of trying to hide nervousness which went against everything I thought I knew about him.
“You are to do something brave?You have people casting for you?”I said, making the obvious assumption.
