Tress of the Emerald Sea

by Brandon Sanderson

Though locals called the island the Rock, its name on the maps was Diggen’s Point. No one remembered who Diggen was anymore, but he had obviously been a clever fellow, for he’d left the Rock soon after naming it and never returned.

In short, Tress was a normal teenage girl. She knew this because the other girls often mentioned how they weren’t like “everyone else,” and after a while Tress figured that the group “everyone else” must include only her. The other girls were obviously right, as they all knew how to be unique—they were so good at it, in fact, that they did it together. Tress was generally more thoughtful than most people, and she didn’t like to impose by asking for what she wanted. She’d remain quiet when the other girls were laughing or telling jokes about her. After all, they were having so much fun. It would be impolite to spoil that, and presumptuous of her to request that they stop.

There had been a tree on the property once, but it had done the sensible thing and died a few years earlier.

Five soldiers watched the grounds—though only Snagu and Lead were on duty now—and they did their job well. After all, it had been a horribly long time since anyone in the duke’s family had died from the myriad of dangers a nobleman faced while living on the Rock. (Those included boredom, stubbed toes, and choking on cobbler.)

People didn’t leave the island. Tress knew, logically, that wasn’t explicitly true. Royal officials could leave. The duke left on occasion to report to the king. Plus he’d earned all those fancy medals by killing people from a distant place where they looked slightly different. He’d apparently been quite heroic during those wars; you could tell because a great number of his troops had died, while he lived.

They say that to wait is the most excruciating of life’s torments. “They” in this case refers to writers, who have nothing useful to do, so fill their time thinking of things to say. Any working person can tell you that having time to wait is a luxury.

So Tress didn’t wait. She worked. Still, it was an enormous relief when the first cup arrived. It was delivered by Hoid the cabin boy. (Yes, that’s me. What tipped you off? Was it perhaps the name?) A beautiful porcelain cup, without even a single chip in it.

“Everything is extraordinary about you, Tress,” her mother said. “That’s why nothing in particular stands out.” Well, parents have to say things like that. They’re required to see the best in their children, otherwise living with the little sociopaths would drive a person mad.

“I still think this is a terrible idea,” Ulba noted. Lem nodded. “It is. But a terrible idea executed brilliantly has to be better than a brilliant idea executed terribly. I mean, look at pelicans.”

It might seem that the person who can feel for others is doomed in life. Isn’t one person’s pain enough? Why must a person like Tress feel for two, or more? Yet I’ve found that the people who are the happiest are the ones who learn best how to feel. It takes practice, you know. Effort. And those who (late in life) have been feeling for two, three, or a thousand different people…well, turns out they’ve had a leg up on everyone else all along. Empathy is an emotional loss leader. It pays for itself eventually.

“What is wrong with that guy?” the rat asked softly. “I’m not entirely certain,” Tress whispered. “I’ve met him before though. He’s nice. If…weird.” “People who collect stamps are weird, Tress. That man is a few eggs short of a dozen—and he doesn’t realize the other ten he collected are actually rocks.”

That “wizard” from the stars wasn’t me, by the way. I’ve always wondered who traded the device to Fort. That’s Nalthian tech, with Awakened predictive Connection circuits.

I have to leave it out in the sun once a week, or it stops working, Fort wrote. And its magic won’t respond to anyone other than me. So don’t

Yes, I could taste it. Why wouldn’t I be able… Oh, the five senses? Yes, I said I lost my sense of taste to the Sorceress’s curse. You thought…you thought I meant that sense of taste? Oh, you innocent fool. She took my other sense of taste. The important one. And with it went my sense of humor, my sense of decorum, my sense of purpose, and my sense of self. The last one stung the most, since it appears my sense of self is tied directly to my wit. I mean, it’s in the name. As a result, I present you with Hoid, the cabin boy.

That is one of the great mistakes people make: assuming that someone who does menial work does not like thinking. Physical labor is great for the mind, as it leaves all kinds of time to consider the world. Other work, like accounting or scribing, demands little of the body—but siphons energy from the mind. If you wish to become a storyteller, here is a hint: sell your labor, but not your mind. Give me ten hours a day scrubbing a deck, and oh the stories I could imagine. Give me ten hours adding sums, and all you’ll have me imagining at the end is a warm bed and a thought-free evening.

If you want to ruin Captain Crow’s day, point out that she made someone happy. If you want to ruin her entire week, point out that she did it by accident.

She was, it might be noted, a perfect example of why the word jerk needs so many off-color synonyms. One could exhaust all available options, invent a few apt new ones, and still not be able to completely describe her. Truly an inspiration to the vulgar poet.

Now, I know that on your planet, steering a ship isn’t that big a deal. In many places, they’ll hand the ship’s wheel to any kid with a standard number of fingers and a habit of leaving at least one out of their nose for extended stretches of time.

Salay also had an instinct for what people were feeling, and she’d noted Tress’s dedication to her scrubbing. A woman who did such a simple duty with exactness…well, in Salay’s experience that sort of thing scaled upward. Same way you would be more likely to lend your best flute to someone who treated their own battered one with respect.

One of the great tragedies of life is knowing how many people in the world are made to soar, paint, sing, or steer—except they never get the chance to find out.

Whenever one does discover a moment of joy, beauty enters the world. Human beings, we can’t create energy; we can only harness it. We can’t create matter; we can only shape it. We can’t even create life; we can only nurture it.

Tress looked toward Crow. And then, Tress took the singular step that separated her from people in most stories. The act, it might be said, that defined her as a hero. She did something so incredible, I can barely express its majesty. I should consider this more, Tress thought to herself, and not jump to conclusions.

The crystals responded immediately, pulling toward the metal, which (from the slate grey color) seemed to be simple iron. The other tool, the trowel, made the crystals grow away from it. It was of polished silvery metal. (Steel, for those who compulsively track these things.)

Unlike the Nahel bond, which trades in consciousness and anchoring to reality, the Luhel bond trades in physical matter. In this case, water.

Right. Rain. I haven’t explained rain. The more meteorologically inclined among you might be wondering about the planet’s weather patterns and water cycle. If you’re one of those to whom these things are extremely important, you have my sympathies. It’s never too late to develop a personality. Maybe go to a party. But try to avoid topics like weather patterns and water cycles. Unless of course you can do it like me.

You can’t taste a memory without tainting it with who you have become. That inspires me. We each make our own lore, our own legends, every day. Our memories are our ballads, and if we tweak them a little with every performance…well, that’s all in the name of good drama. The past is boring anyway. We always pretend the ideals and culture of the past have aged like wine, but in truth, the ideas of the past tend to age more like biscuits. They simply get stale.

Signs of a mind stretching beyond its limit toward ideas just beyond its reach. This can happen to a dunce as easily as a genius; it’s no proof of capacity, any more than a person being too full for dessert is an indication of their weight.

In these cases, it stands to reason that such a person is in fact quite competent—because it takes true competence to feign such spectacular incompetence. It’s called the transitive property of ineptitude, and is the explanation for anything you’ve seen me do wrong ever.

Men, what you want to find is a woman who looks at you like Ann looked at that cannon. Because if such a woman exists, you’ll want to move to a completely different kingdom, inform the authorities, and watch the post for packages containing random disembodied fingers.

That is probably the craziest, most reckless thing I’ve ever heard someone say—and I was literally part of a secret plot to kill God.

“I’ve lost things,” Tress said softly. “And it’s…not going to be easy to get them—him—back. But the thing you want is right here. So, let’s make it happen.”

Is…your trade deal with me today going to go in one of the letters?” He laughed again. Tress, it would embarrass you to know how successful my hunt just was. Have you eaten my food? The first bite of bread you gave me was worth every meal I gave you in the past. And you have not only promised more, but are going to let me take credit with the Dougs? He winked at her. I’m going to brag about this catch for three pages! Now, hurry up. I want to try one of those pies.

During such an eclipse, the preachers spoke about respecting the moons and about the meaning of life. Except every preacher who visited the island seemed to have a different idea of what the purpose of life was. Even two preachers from the same moonschool would disagree. That part had comforted her. If religion couldn’t get it together, then she could be forgiven for being a mess herself.

It should be noted that Tress would have made an excellent philosopher. In fact, she had already determined that philosophy wasn’t as valuable as she’d assumed—something that takes most great philosophers at least three decades to realize.

Memory is often our only connection to who we used to be. Memories are fossils, the bones left by dead versions of ourselves. More potently, our minds are a hungry audience, craving only the peaks and valleys of experience. The bland erodes, leaving behind the distinctive bits to be remembered again and again. Painful or passionate, surreal or sublime, we cherish those little rocks of peak experience, polishing them with the ever-smoothing touch of recycled proxy living. In so doing—like pagans praying to a sculpted mud figure—we make of our memories the gods which judge our current lives.

If we let it, memory can make shadows of the now, as nothing can match the buttressed legends of our past.

Enjoy memories, yes, but don’t be a slave to who you wish you once had been. Those memories aren’t alive. You are.

She sighed with increasing exasperation. I’m accustomed to that reaction from people, but I prefer to be intentionally irritating. It’s against my professional ethics to frustrate people by accident.

A storm is a living thing, even when not specifically Invested. Because “life,” as a concept, is a human construct. We define it. Nature doesn’t care; it sees everything as a chemical process. It couldn’t care in the slightest that a bunch of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen one day decided it would really prefer to sit on a sofa rather than a bench. Therefore, something lives if we decide it does. To us on that ship, that day, the rains were alive. They had to be.

A window washer can think, same as anyone else, and their lives are no less complex. And as I’ve warned you, “simple” labor often leaves plenty of time for thought. Yes, intellectuals and scholars are paid to think deep thoughts—but those thoughts are often owned by others. It is a great irony that society tends to look down on those who sell their bodies, but not on those who lease out their minds.

(Fun tip: Being told “I kept you in the dark to protect you” is not only frustrating, but condescending as well. It’s a truly economical way to demean someone; if you’re looking to fit more denigration into an already busy schedule, give it a try.)

The first is that heroes can be trained. Not by a government or a military, but by the people themselves. Heroes are the ones who have thought about what they’re going to do, and who have trained to do it. Heroism is often the seemingly spontaneous result of a lifetime of preparation. But if you ask these heroes why they risked their lives, don’t do it on a stand in front of a crowd while you give them their medal. Because the truth is, they likely didn’t do it for their country. Or even for their ideals. Consistently, across cultures, eras, and ideologies, war heroes report the same simple motivation. They did it for their friends. In the frenzied anarchy of destruction, loyalty to causes and kingdoms alike tends to fall to the chaos. But the bond between people, well, that’s stronger than steel. If you want to create heroes, don’t give them something to fight for. Give them someone to fight for.

Tress read the words through twice. And…though her first instinct was still to protest…something else was growing. She’d have called it arrogance, and it frightened her. But arrogance and self-worth are two sides to a coin, and it will spend either way.

“Take note, Ann. If you ever go to make an important deal, make certain your payment can’t speak for itself.” You’d be surprised how often that advice has been relevant during my travels.

We want to imagine that people are consistent, steady, stable. We define who they are, create descriptions to lock them on a page, divide them up by their likes, talents, beliefs. Then we pretend some—perhaps most—are better than we are, because they stick to their definitions, while we never quite fit ours. Truth is, people are as fluid as time is. We adapt to our situation like water in a strangely shaped jug, though it might take us a little while to ooze into all the little nooks. Because we adapt, we sometimes don’t recognize how twisted, uncomfortable, or downright wrong the container is that we’ve been told to inhabit. We can keep going that way for a while. We can pretend we fit that jug, awkward nooks and all. But the longer we do, the worse it gets. The more it wears on us. The more exhausted we become. Even if we’re doing nothing at all, because simply holding the shape can take all the effort in the world. More, if we want to make it look natural.

He settled somewhere between smart and stupid, perched on the very peak of the bell curve and assuming that it was the right place to be, as highest has to be best.

For your own good, you see.” Ah, those words. I’ve heard those words. I’ve said those words. The words that proclaim, in bald-faced arrogance, “I don’t trust you to make your own decisions.” The words we pretend will soften the blow, yet instead layer condescension on top of already existent pain. Like dirt on a corpse. Oh yes. I’ve said those words. I said them with sixteen other people, in fact.

Ulaam, it should be noted, is not known for his bedside manner—as I’ve pointed out, his people lost something when they stopped being forced to imitate actual humans. I can genuinely say that without that burden, they’ve all become increasingly themselves over the decades. That said, Ulaam is legitimately the best doctor I’ve ever met. If you are easily stressed, but need his help, I suggest you ask him to sew his mouth shut before he visits. He’ll probably find the idea novel enough that he’ll try it.

I tell no joke or exaggeration in this, Tress. When he wants to, there are few people in the entire cosmere who can influence events like our dear friend with the inappropriate undergarments.”

Irony is a curious concept. Specifically, I mean the classical definition: that of a choice leading to an opposite outcome from what is intended. Many grammarians bemoan the word’s near-constant misuse—second only in dictional assassination to the way some people use the word “literally.” (Their use of which is ironic.) I’m not one of those people who care if you use words wrong. I prefer it when words change meaning. The imprecision of our language is a feature; it best represents the superlative fact of human existence: that our own emotions—even our souls—are themselves imprecise. Our words, like our hearts, are weapons still hot from the forging, beating themselves into new shapes each time we swing them. Yet irony is an intriguing concept. It exists only where we want to find it, because for true irony, expectation is key. Irony must be noticed to exist. We create it from nothing when we find it. But unlike other things we create, like art, irony is about creating tragedy. Irony is reversal. Set up, then collapse. A perfect bit of irony is a beautiful thing.