Navola

by Paolo Bacigalupi

“Think on it then. Think hard. You like to read stories of legends. The journals of Marcel of Bis. Avvicco’s Travels. I know you like the legends of the old gods. Are they true? Does it matter if they are true? Or does it only matter that they inspire a true feeling in you?”

The Navolese are as twisted as the plaits of their women’s hair. —Common saying, recorded by Marcel Villou of Bis

“You offered the Callarino a bad idea, so that he would have the chance to think of a better idea. Then he would think the idea was his, and would be happy to do it. You made him think it was his own idea.”

Memories inhabit the minds of men. They are the myths we use to explain ourselves to ourselves: who we are, where we come from, where we go—just as I tell this story to you.

Virga’s weave is all about us. Her winds rustle our hair and her warm earth hums beneath our toes. The fish in the stream luxuriates in the cool waters, the fox the green fern, the cricket mouse the shadow of night. Virga blankets us with her love. And yet we stumble blind through her weave. We cry out for her sustenance, when it is in fact all around us. Such is man, fallen from the weave. Such is man, always. —Soppros, Conversations II

There are plots and plans, and, above all, there is the player, sitting before you, and he or she will tell you many things, if you read them. If you watch them closely.” She gestured around, pointing at each of us in turn. “If you see the players clearly, you may know their cards without ever seeing the suit or count, for the face of the player reflects all.”

The sharpest weapon a woman can wield. A man will never know her heart, for her face will always reflect himself, like a pleasing mirror.”

“ ‘The Pool of Forest,’ ” Celia acknowledged, and then recited: “A woman’s face must be a mirror, must never show her soul, for her man would fear her, should he ever know her truth. He would call her Demona, Fata, though she only desired love, he would cut her heart from her breast, for the crime of being true.”

“Up the ass, then! What do you care, anyway? If I’m wrong, you can dash yourself on the rocks tomorrow, and you will have lost nothing. Today or tomorrow, the rocks do not care when your thick skull cracks upon them. It’s not as if this is some special appointment as far as the rocks are concerned. The cliff, too, will be here tomorrow. So come with me tonight, and let me entertain you. You can always smash your brains tomorrow.”

wait a little longer. Draw the silence as you would a hunting bow. Draw it until it sings with tension and desperation to break, let it tremble there, desperate for release. Love that silence, for it is your friend. If you are patient, if you wait, a false man will often reveal himself into that silence.

Watching him in combat had been like watching a dancer almost, a graceful whirling amongst the men who wished him ill. The elegant cutting of the tethers of each man’s life in turn, each death seeming as beautiful as falling autumn leaves and as ugly as maggots on a butcher’s offal pile.

As wheat bends before winter winds, so must a people bend before politics. —Avinixiius, Observations