SSCS 02: Installment 23 of 32
How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
This is Installment 23 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
Previously…
“Have you put the spire to rights, Mina?” The voice was low and scratchy, but the priestess’ own, and Mina, feeling suddenly drained, answered without thought.
“I’m not sure how, gran-Tom.”
…How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
Installment 23: 21.0211
“What have I taught you about the Moon songs, Mina?”
Mina lifted her shoulders in an uncomfortable shrug. She’d listened to gran-Tom sing the Moon song ever since she’d come here, of course, ever since she was little. And she knew that it wasn’t always quite the same. Even sometimes, maybe on a really stormy night so Mina couldn’t quite be sure what she was hearing, it was maybe a different song completely. But gran-Tom really hadn’t taught her about it. Except to say that it was important. As far as Mina could tell, she was only important on this spire in that her presence spared gran-Tom work that might otherwise tire gran-Tom out, and that gran-Tom needed to be able to sing. That was the only way, as far as Mina could see, that Mina’d ever been needed to ‘help calm the sea.’ When she’d been little she’d thought maybe there would be more to it, but she’d long since given up on that.
“You were so young,” gran-Tom sighed, “the first time when you came here. I thought to myself, I don’t want to give her anything that’s too heavy for her. I don’t want her to get whittled away too soon. Can you believe that? That all this time I thought I was going soft on you?”
Mina wanted to shy away from whatever this conversation was. She couldn’t of course. Gran-Tom was standing in front of the kitchen, and neither Mina nor Hedwin had yet had any food today. Provisions had come in yesterday. There would be rice ready to boil, and salt-fish, real vinegar and fresh radishes, if she could just get by the old priestess and through the door. So Mina just ducked her head and moved to slip past, getting another close look at gran-Tom’s tentacles and trying not to shudder to remember how different they were than those others, the close acquaintance she’d had today with kraken tentacles. “We all take care of each other, don’t we?” she said, trying to keep her voice light. But she didn’t want to look up, and for once she was glad of gran-Tom’s fishy-grassy smell that at least wasn’t the unexplainable smell of roses.
“And now on top of all that, something’s gone wrong, hasn’t it?” Gran-Tom hadn’t moved from her place in the doorway, hadn’t stepped any closer once Mina’d gone by, but still Mina found herself suddenly frozen, her hand stretched out reaching for the lid on the basket of rice, but with a hard knot in her chest and what felt like a net of lead weights cast over her shoulders. This was a dangerous conversation; she could feel it. It felt like the conversation she’d tried to have sometimes before only gran-Tom hadn’t seemed able to hear her… Now she nodded, but braced herself for gran-Tom to switch to some inane comment, about what should be for supper, maybe, or about weeding to be done in the garden (now fertilized with both pig shit and kraken shit).
“Yes.” Gran-Tom let the word out with a dusty sigh. “There’s a Moon call, you know, once you’ve learned the songs enough. It’s not just you singing to the Moon. The Moon sings back. Maybe even some of the stars do, too. And when it’s singing, it’s like you’re very far away. I had a letter, from gran-Hamish, that came with the supplies yesterday. She mentioned her acolyte has finally mastered the seventh song, and when I read that I could hear it for a moment, the echo of a new voice far away. And then I blinked and you were singing something to me, handing me the tea. Can you sing it again?”
Over the course of this speech, Mina had slowly pulled back into herself, found herself now sitting at the kitchen table with the lead net heavier and heavier over her shoulders. With this last question, she finally did look up at the old priestess, and then wasn’t able to jerk her face away fast enough not to betray the tears that suddenly spilled down. She shook her head hard. Of course she couldn’t sing it again. The Other One would have taken it by now. “It’ll be gone now.” She tried to whisper the words, but they came out in a snarl.
For a long moment there was just silence from the doorway, and Mina chanced another look back at gran-Tom. The old sea woman looked as pulled-in as Mina felt. But at last she lifted her round nub of a chin and gave Mina a sharp nod. “Right. I’m the one who’s supposed to be giving you songs, anyway. So it’s time you started singing with me. Tonight. Which means we have work to do and you’ve got to fortify yourself now.” She made an impatient gesture with one clawed hand toward the basket of rice, and then scowled with Mina didn’t move her bones right away. Once she did, gran-Tom pulled herself back, tentacles tucked neat around her feet.
“I can teach you the First Hum, now, while you cook,” the priestess said. “First, though, do you want to know how your parents died?”