The Thousand Stories by herenortherenearnorfar

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Cytise Expounds on the Nature of Her Island

1749 SA. The final chapter. For the record, the kids do have names it was just a hassle to put them in and Cytise is the sort of old lady who does not bother.

Also I have a tag of some character moodboards here.

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Home was not much changed. Many years had passed since Cytise had set foot on the island of her birth, but the winding streets were still the same. The low slung palace in the center of the city was spiffier, the docks a bit louder, the last scars of rebellion and plague healed over at long last. Otherwise, it was remarkably identical to the land she had left. The greatest development of the last century had been the temple, dedicated to those who thought to worship a being who was more king than god and built on the bones of a demolished shrine. Even that bold red structure had been built long before her birth, when her parents were still young and conquest was still settling over the islands.

She hated the permanence of everything. As a child she had been certain she would change everything, that the future was full of possibility and great stories. Now she was old and the city of driftwood and limestone was an unchanging marker in a world that did not shift fast enough. 

Teal ocean water lapped lazily against the shellwall of the docks and the sun was bright against the bare horizon. Trees were rare here, the heat and salt made the islands rather inhospitable for large plants, and only a handful of small shrubs could be seen clinging to the coastline. The sun-bleached buildings, many intentionally whitewashed from pale yellow to glaring eggshell, only reflected the radiant afternoon light. 

Her escort to the palace walked her up through the market street. That had changed. Though the signs and stalls were still the same the faces were not. The laughing goldsmith was only an echo of the man she used to consider a friend— a son or a nephew? she wondered. The stonecarver who etched graves was nodding asleep in a shaded chair and did not recognize her as she passed, though they used to talk often when he was an apprentice and she was the little head of a liminally royal house.

There were other goods laid out there. Fish and sea cucumbers, hearty chilis and chickpeas grown in gardens or imported from the mainland, white cloth woven from boles of a plant brought over from the east a century ago, grain for flat bread, and all manner of goat products. There were whole sea turtles being taken apart for shell and meat, polished obsidian knives and rarer blades of iron, and— hidden away in the best guarded stalls— the pearls which brought them such bounty. Divers dragged them up daily from the deeps, ranging further and further away from the islands with every year. Greed depleted even the riches of the ocean. It didn’t help that they turned away from their old god long ago. 

The light brought tears to her eyes. So did the aching familiarity of the cobblestones. Decades she dreamed of the island, and now half-forgotten details stood out to her. The worn leather sound of sandals hitting the road, smoothed by age and the elements rung in her ears. The waxed cloth tarps propped and arranged over every roof like great sails, meant to catch the rainwater and funnel it into barrels and cisterns— had she forgotten about those? The songs of the women echoing out from the hidden courtyards of houses, those seemed new. She thought she saw a man with the mark of a northern slave on him, though there had been no slavery on the island in her parents' day; another change. The long road up to the palace could not have be different. It was her body that was remade in fouler form. She had sprinted these streets as a child too young for dignity and wandered them as a bored young woman. Now the trek made her breath catch and founder.

She was in such a state when she finally reached the palace that the sight of her sister, bent over, grey, and leaning on a footman for support, nearly broke her. 

“Makada,” she whispered, abandoning all protocol in favour of the name their parents had given her. “I’m home.”

Thin and weak as her sister’s arms were, they still held her tight and for a moment Cytise could pretend she was a child again. 

 

Her nephew, who had been a round faced boy of six when she’d left, was now a solemn father of five. He greeted her kindly and, after the formalities were over, said that he still had the presents she’d sent him from the Dark Land; the gleaming sword and the paintings and the box of hidden wonders. He said he’d missed her, though no doubt he’d missed the carefree young aunt he barely remembered. 

The young queen was something of an enigma, not particularly pretty and quiet. She’d been picked over the protests of those loyal to a greater ruler, and Makada had paid for that small rebellion. There was no contesting the choice though. Cytise was certain the young woman could be trusted and that was not always a certainty these days. Their nobility was small compared to the sprawling, scheming courts she’d met and heard tale of. They did their best to plot with the best of them, however. 

Makada and her son insisted she stay in the palace. The home she’d grown up in and then worked so hard to make her own had been handed to a distant cousin after her exile, so she acquiesced. It was easy to settle in amid the slow statecraft and gentle atmosphere of familial fondness. Though it was a palace it was also quite clearly a home, in a way the great tower had never been (though men and women had lived and died there). 

And the children... the children adored her. She had never met them before, had barely spoken to them except through rare letters which took months to travel. Still, Cytise took their affection in stride. They were naturally awed by a strange relation returned from lands far abroad. Perhaps they even sensed how hard she had worked to preserve their freedom. When she’d finally been released from service there had been some talk of bringing one of the oldest ones to replace her. They were barely chest high but such things rarely mattered to people who thought in terms of strategy and long-term benefits. 

In the end she’d been allowed to return home without further assurance. She was old and not likely to make trouble, her people were light in military might, and they despised far Westernesse for their hubris and control of coastal markets. The ceaseless attention of the Excellent had shifted elsewhere and Cytise had been sent on the long journey home.

Knowing her own faults, she still held her tongue for the first few months of her stay. Justified paranoia was a hard habit to break. 

In time it became impossible to deny that she had been forgotten. There were plenty of watchers here, amid the endless turquoise sea and sun-blanched lime, they just weren’t paying attention to her any more. They focused on the king, his inscrutable wife, the loudest of the notables in their circle of warrior nobles. Cytise may have been a danger once but now, cut off from friends and the whirling social life she’d once cultivated, she was just an old woman of good birth. 

One afternoon as affairs of state soldiered on down the hall, she told the children a story. 

They liked her stories. She had a deep well of them and when the priests of the red-hot eye were near she stuck to the least offensive. Tales of animals and morals, of lions and heroes who bravely slew them. She did not tell them about monsters, or the making of the world, or the demons who lurked in the west and the east. She did not burden their young minds with the idea of gods who hated them or a king who would endure long past their deaths, precise and bright as a goldsmith’s flame. 

Stories were for better purposes. Stories were memory and fundamental truths and the worries that could not be spoken aloud. 

“Can’t you do it in another language?” the middle boy complained. “I don’t like this one. It’s for shepherds.” 

Cytise reached down to the cool pool in the center of the courtyard and splashed some water in his face. “Don’t be rude. You like to eat lamb, you owe those shepherds. The least you can do is know their tongue.” 

She had to admit that it was a struggle for her to manage the language of her homeland as well. Though she’d written a good deal in it over the countless years, she had not spoken it out loud in some time. 

It didn’t help that the people of the city increasingly favored the languages of other lands. Vowel heavy Nernean had been spoken in merchant’s houses for decades now. Cytise had been nicknamed in that tongue when she was too young to remember, and now her first name was a relic used only by a few relations. The priests loved the True Speech and insisted on doing business in it, and their neighbors on the mainland spoke a dialect some centuries removed from theirs— and were vital enough allies that a working grasp of it was useful for most leaders. 

The children rarely had a chance to practice their skills with what had once been the only language of the island. Cytise tried to speak to them in it whenever possible, even if her vocabulary was rusty. 

The littlest princess, who had been trying to wrestle a collar onto the small gazelle the children kept, gave her brother a nasty glare. “Don’t be mean, I want a story!”

“You’ll have it,” Cytise promised, leaning back so the jumpy animal could skitter out of the way. “Sit first and lend me your ears.”

With various degrees of willingness, the children sat, some dunking their feet in the shallow water (a luxury when kept uncovered and without purpose), others perching on the edge of the stone rim. The oldest, a naturally suspicious girl, stilled her spindle with some reluctance. 

“Story?” the wiggly little princess demanded, splashing in the water like her gazelle.

“Mmmm.” Cytise checked their surroundings one last time, then, assured that they were alone in the stillness of the family quarters, began. 

“Once we weren’t a land, we were a people. The sun was new and there were many humans wandering the world, looking for a place to call home. For a few years we all spoke the same language but as humans began to settle and find places of their own their languages shifted and grew strange.”

“I know lots of languages,” the oldest prince said, as if this was some sort of challenge. He was holding his youngest brother in his lap, bouncing him with the expert motions of an experienced older sibling. At the end of the day their nursemaid went home to her family (a unique arrangement but not an unwelcome one) and their parents were both very busy. 

“And if you lived when the world was young you might know even more,” Cytise said. “Tongues were quicker then and the air was rich. But we are not speaking of languages, we are speaking of our people. They have had many names but they called themselves the Maiy, then as now.”

“That just means ‘people’.” Her eldest great-nephew said helpfully, only to be shushed by the rapt little ones. 

He wasn’t wrong. For years they had been the people and their island had been the land. Then some trader had called it Maiynáz, using the possessive ending shared by several languages. Time had made that into Mahnás, and now there was no other name. 

That was how it went, Cytise had learned. The greater world eroded what had been, until all that was left was foreign appellations and old wives tales. Your own name was made of another’s letters. 

“They were people. Their own people and that mattered. They wanted to remain their own people so they wandered, not settling in lands where others had set down roots. Instead they looked for a place that spoke to them.”

This was where the story had grown tricky. She had heard it first from an old worker of coral and twine, who was more at ease with the divers and fishermen than the urbane company Cytise had hosted. He’d accepted her invitation so grudgingly and lingered at the edge of the dinner, uncertain of his place. In trying to set him at ease, Cytise had instead discovered a world of old tales, the sort her parents had told her when they were sizing up the value of treason. Stories of the water and the wind and world-shaping music that still lingered in summer storms. 

She’d been 19 then, so her memories of this old bit of doggerel were shaky. 

“They travelled to the great forests of the east where shadows lingered in the trees and by the side of a lake bigger than a sea. The shadows would not speak to them, so they turned away. They went west where the mountains trapped a monster who was raging at the stars, and they heard his cries and were afraid, for though he spoke much of glory and hatred, he did not speak to them. So they turned away. They stood on the mountains and listened to the sky, hoping for some listening cloud to speak, but all was quiet. So they kept on their way. Finally they reached the ocean. And the ocean spoke to them.”

There was a sharp clatter as the oldest girl, whose birth name was Senit and who was called Sintyche, dropped her spindle. Cytise paused as she recovered it and sat back down. 

“All well?”

“Just clumsy hands,” Sintyche said, looking away. 

“More story!” the littlest princess shouted, her voice echoing in the quiet of the courtyard. 

Laughing, Cytise grabbed her and pulled her bodily into her lap, clawed hands aimed at the soft target of the girl’s stomach. When the shrieks of laughter died away, she spoke again. 

“As I was saying before this bird decided to chirp, the people came to the ocean. And the ocean spoke to them. At long last, the people knew that this was where they were wanted, this was where they were home. But there were already people on the shores of the the sea, and they were jealous. Not wanting these two groups of children to come to blows, the ocean opened up a great path along the sea floor.”

“They should have used boats,” her opinionated older nephew said, and this time his interruption got some agreement from his siblings. 

“They hadn’t been invented yet,” Cytise informed him quickly. It wasn’t in the words of the story she had been told but it wasn’t a stretch either. Boats to cross the long miles were not easy to make. “You’re right. It would have been easier. The Maiy were reluctant to walk the sea floor. It took a clever and brave leader and the coaxing of the sea for them to make the long trek. They walked over corals that cut through the soles of their feet and sharp shells, over the hills and past the ravines of the ocean floor. Finally the water around them grew shallower and soon they were on an island! And then, finally, they were home.”

“And they stayed there forever and ever?” the youngest boy asked. 

“And their language grew to suit them, and their hands grew clever, and they knew the love of the water.” Cytise agreed. “They built boats," she nodded to her nephew, "And settled the other islands, and raised up kings to rule themselves. So now you know that you should not give up your heritage lightly, for you are descended from the very leader who helped the people walk the ocean. This is the language shaped by years alone in the embrace of the sea.”

There was a brief silence, punctuated by splashing. “I want a story about a fish-princess next,” came the plaintive cry from the little princess.

 

A dignitary from a seaside town that knew no master was talking with the king and queen, and all the women and bondmen were busy attending on them. The children— who were not awed by feasts or boring talk of politics, and ardently avoided events where they might be asked to make a show out of themselves — went to bed on their own. At least, the younger ones did. After checking on Makada (who was ailing of late and whose frail condition was why Cytise had reluctantly excused herself from courtly duties), Cytise returned to the courtyard to find young Sintyche looking up at the stars. At her waist whorled the spindle, working an uneven yarn. Cytise sympathized— she’d never had the knack for spinning either.

“What do you see up there?” she asked. 

Sintyche jumped and the sharp movement broke the thread and sent the spindle plummeting to the ground again. This time she caught it. 

“Just stars. The wanderer was bright tonight.”

Cytise had seen contraptions of brass and polished glass in her time, and had been shown the windings of the heavens by people cleverer than she was. “Some people call him the hope star, you know?” There was something reassuring about the first point of light in the evening. Even far away, where the constellations had different names, everyone knew that celestial body. 

“I don’t know why,” Sintyche muttered, “He seems very lonely.” 

There seemed to be something on the girl’s mind. After waiting a decent while for her to speak of her own accord, Cytise looked for understanding. 

“What troubles you?”

“The story you told…”

Though she knew exactly which story preyed on her great-niece’s mind, she couldn’t help a bit of teasing. “The one about the fish-princess?”

“No! The one about the old god. It didn’t feel right. It might get people in trouble.”

It had been a gamble. It was one she was prepared to stand by. “Are they going to criticize a cast-aside old woman for telling stories, or children for listening? More dangerous words have been bandied in these halls in years past. Besides, it is important that you children understand the truth.”

She would tell it again when they were older, if she lived that long. When they knew how to guard their tongues she might even speak of other matters, of how their grandfather and great-grandparents had died, of how they had become princes of a kingdom that wasn't a kingdom at all. In the meantime they would have to settle for stories. 

“Why?” Sintyche asked. “It might have been different back in your day, but now we’re part of something bigger. All men should be united as one, not listening to the whispers of those gods who have forgotten us.” There was fear in her eyes even as she quoted the priestly sayings. Ah, Cytise hadn’t missed that bit of home. Religion really held no place in the Dark Land— worship was hard when you knew your god personally— but at the edges of the protectorate it served a purpose and was well nurtured. 

It was hard to say how much Sintyche’s parents had told her, how much she had overheard and how much she had put together. She was young, yes, but she also clever, and there was a patience to her that Cytise recognized from Makada’s youth. The steady philosophy of an older sister was a power all its own and Cytise, born brash and born last, didn’t really understand it. 

“They may be part of something greater, but this will always be their home. We should not discard our own stories lightly; even if greater works should come upon us. Remember them, I won’t be around forever.”

Sintyche sat abruptly at the edge of the courtyard pool, which reflected the white stars and the torchlit edges of the roof. “Why? You lived there for so long, you must know so much more than this island. Why do we still matter?”

Politics had taken more of a toll on the princess than Cytise had reckoned. She had seen her niece at small gatherings or standing behind her mother during affairs of state, drinking in everything with dark eyes. Maybe she should have known the child was actually listening to talk of kings far away, of mariners with ships that held a thousand men, of planned colonies, of conquest. Of the fact that they were conquered and were now playing a long slow game at the whims of another. 

The courtyard was silent and the sounds of hosting could only be heard from very far away. Still, it paid to be cautious. 

“Senit Lelte,” Cytise said, using the most formal version of her name, and then, because names were slippery as octopi, “Sintyche. Empires do not last forever, but islands fall with less frequency. Inescapable as some powers may seem, I do not think they will outlast humankind. If we are lucky, they will not outlast us. Oh, we may live and die in the worlds they have made, but the languages? The stories? If we are careful, they go on.”

Sintyche’s eyes went comically wide, and then her face scrunched up with the effort of deep political thought. Well, she was only nine. “I don’t think that’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to say,” she eventually whispered. 

Leaning over, Cytise kissed her forehead. “Don’t tell anyone I said it then,” she replied in a voice just as soft. 

Sintyche shook her head, though she was smiling faintly. “Grandma was right, Auntie. You are trouble.”