The walk to and from Cloudyhead has left me shaky and exhausted, but the inspiration that came from Lark’s attempts buoys me up the steps. Once inside, I wolf down a walnut bun and half a cup of urch tea, and then I drop back down with the stamps and papers. Lark follows after telling Rat to stay on the porch. She takes a walnut bun with the same kind of sneak-thievery as last night and sits down opposite me.
Soe’s blank stamp block is small, but big enough for me to cram on the letters I want. I fix them the way I want them, then rock them over the sticky ink pad. Lark watches as I press the block to the paper.
YOU HELP ME SIGN
I pop out the letters and slide in the next ones. There are only two of each letter, making repetition a challenge. Writing would be easier, but my wrist needles me, and I want to test this method. I stamp again.
I HELP YOU READ
I look at her. She raises her eyebrows in surprise and shrugs.
“If that is what you want. I am not sure Arana’s signs are ones everyone uses. And it is maybe different in Eastern and Moquoian. But I can show you the ones I am remembering.”
I nod and gesture for her to watch, hoping she’ll catch on. I make the fist she showed me earlier and circle it on my chest. Then I push the stamps toward her.
She frowns, staring, and my hopes sink. I jump to try to explain.
“You pick . . .” I point to the stamps, but she waves at me.
“I understand. But I have to . . .” She taps her head. “Go from Eastern to Moquoian. I am not so fast as Veran. Give me a time.”
“Ah.” I nod and sit back. She studies the stamps, then selects a few and slides them into the block. She inks it and presses it to the paper.
SORY
I take the block from her, pop out the y, add an extra r, and slide the y back in. She stamps it again.
SORRY
I nod. I gesture for the block back and change out the letters. I stamp them for her to read.
SUN
She grins almost immediately—she knows this one. She cups her hand and hangs it above her head, moving it in an arc like a sunrise. I copy her.
We dive forward. At first, we have no discernable strategy beyond taking turns. Sometimes she stamps a word, I correct the spelling, and then she gives me the sign. Sometimes I stamp a word, she tells me what it is, and then gives me the sign. Sometimes we point at an object. Sometimes she gives me only a sign and I have to guess. When she doesn’t know the sign, I stamp it on another piece of paper to learn later. When she doesn’t know the translation, and if gestures fail, we put it on a third piece of paper to ask Veran.
At first, we choose things within sight and easy to understand with this patchwork language. Cup. Fire. Paper. Table. Sword. Tattoo. Eyes. After a while, I begin signing back to her, to be sure I’m remembering them—she reverses the process and stamps the word I’m giving her. We delve into harder, more ephemeral words. Please. Give. Time. Music. Strong. Love. She shows me fingerspelling, giving me the alphabet to spell out signs I don’t know. We spend almost two hours on that alone, practicing until I can reliably call up the letters I need. I know it’s not going to stick—I’m going to be practicing in my sleep, feeling these signs in my dreams. But I’m too excited to slow down. I press her to show me how to string words together into sentences. I learn to drop articles, to rearrange words, to corral an unruly phrase into a succinct gesture. What is your name becomes name you? How do I sign that becomes how sign and a point.
It’s visual poetry.
I realize it as she shows me the differences between should and must—the same gesture, only with different emphasis and expression. It’s lyrical, it’s theatric, it’s a thousand times more nuanced than I thought it could be. My excitement builds. I’d considered the idea of hand signing during the long, dismal hours in my cell, but only briefly. At the time, I told myself it was because I didn’t know anyone who knew the language. There was a scribe in my parents’ office who was deaf, and one of the mail couriers in Tolukum Palace was, as well. But I expect the first is dead now, and the courier nearly as unreachable in our current state. But this wasn’t the only reason I couldn’t bear the thought of signing for long. Dwelling on the concept made me feel the same way Lark’s casual offering did on the trail back from Cloudyhead. I didn’t mean to turn her down so sharply, but the more she talked, the more it felt like the linchpin in my fate. The truth. That my tongue doesn’t work, and won’t work again. That verbal speech is out of my reach forever.
It was an ungracious reaction, and I hope she understands that I’m sorry for it. I repeat that word, the first sign, sorry, several times, until she finally counters with it’s okay. Then she grins and gives me a string of satisfying curses that I can easily imagine being tossed around her campfire.
We continue well into the afternoon, until we’ve filled nearly all the paper on the table and the plate of sticky buns has been polished off. I could keep going, but eventually she groans and rubs her temples.
“No more,” she says, laughing. “It is more words than I have ever read.” I brighten—already her tenses are getting better. “I am not so smart for all this.”
I laugh and repeat her word back to her, one she showed me an hour ago. You are smart. Damn, it feels good to have the letter s back!
She shakes her head and rises from the table. “Not enough for this. If we ever fix things in Moquoia and in the East”—she gives me the signs for both places as she says them— “you should meet my friend Arana. She shows you them much better.”
Maybe. But you are a good—
I flounder. She hasn’t shown me teacher. I fingerspell it instead, asking for the sign. Lark screws up one eye in thought, first arranging my letters in her head, figuring out what Moquoian word I’m spelling, and then translating it into Eastern.
She shakes her head. “Teacher. I don’t know the sign.”
You are a good one, I insist.
“Well, you had a good idea. This is smart.” She taps the stamps. “Makes me think of the letters better. If the block was bigger, we can write longer sentences.”
Need more stamps, I suggest.
“True.” She stretches her arms toward the ceiling, popping a few joints. “With enough you can write a whole page. You can write out all those smart things you are telling me last night. Stamp, stamp, stamp—put them on lots of paper and let everybody read them.” She laughs at her own joke.
I smile. Then, in the blink of an eye, it slides away, and I’m left staring.
Stamp, stamp, stamp.
I reach across the table and pick up the block, studying it more closely. It’s such a simple tool, just a length of wood with grooves to hold the letters.
Make it a little longer, have multiple sets of letters, and you could write a complex sentence.
Make it bigger, add more grooves, and you could write a whole page.
And then—and then—you could change the page.
A buzz jolts through me, prickling the short hairs on my scalp.
Woodcuts are normal. Woodcuts have been normal for hundreds of years. Carve a picture or a set of words backward, ink them, and press them to parchment. It’s slow work, unadaptable. Mess up a block, want to change a word, and you have to start over. Scribing, especially on the scale my parents worked, is faster and more flexible.
But what if you could change the letters?
Lark drops her arms from her stretch. “Lunch?” she asks. She signs the word to me. “Soe says there is cheese in the dairy jar.”
I stand up, knocking the table. The stamps rattle.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” she repeats, raising her eyebrows.
My brain is turning. I hold up the block.
Do you think, I sign, stumbling back over words we just spent hours learning. Even with all that work, I don’t have enough words. I muss around on the tabletop, but we’ve used every scrap of paper. I unearth my slate from the pile.
DO YOU THINK THAT KIND OF STAMPING COULD BE DONE? I write.
“What kind?” she asks.
MANY STAMPS ON A BIG BLOCK, THAT YOU COULD STAMP MANY TIMES? SENTENCES? PARAGRAPHS?
She scratches her head. “It can probably work, uah? Though . . .” She mimics pressing down. “A block so big . . . it will be hard to ink, hard to press. Hard to get all the letters down. Actually tough work, I think, to press that big block over and over.”
She’s right. I look at our paper again, riddled with patchy words where the ink wasn’t strong enough, or where one of us didn’t press hard enough. Smudges where the paper shifted, misshapen letters where the stamps wiggled in their grooves. It would be hard to press a page-size block full of individual letters and still make it readable.
“Need a giant arm,” she says, laughing again. She flexes and palms her bicep.
My mouth drops open.
A giant arm.
To press with.
“Ah!” I shriek.
Lark jumps. “What?”
I hurtle from the table, knocking a leg and sending papers flying into the air. Ignoring them, I lunge for the workroom. I kick aside the blankets we all slept in last night and swoop down on the big press.
“Tamsin, what is it?” Lark follows me to the door.
I turn just long enough to sign something she showed me. Hot damn!
“Hot damn?” she repeats.
I drag out the heavy wooden arm that fits into the screw of the big press. I hoist it over my head like a trophy.
“Ah!” I shriek again.
Her face widens. “Hot damn!”
Then it’s just yelling.
We just yell.