WHERE YOUR QUINCE TREES GROW

I stole your quince, hear? I do not know how to eat it. Quince, the curve of it; the fruit I heard is only good for cooking, but I don’t know. It smells like the sun, like music the sun has sent. I hold the quince between my palms, then between my knees. I’m warming myself with it.

I’m bitter. Do you want me not to be bitter? Then tell me how is it that your magical defenses weeded out my brothers, my sister, my father, sent them away; why is it that they accepted me, my mother, my grandfather—why my grandfather, of all people? And what are we supposed to do now, here by the hill, in this dug-out with a reed roof, how are we supposed to live?

I took my shoes off, and my toes dug into the soil, wet with rain. I felt a kind of golden shiver all through me, tugging at the bitterness, light running in rivulets through me and into the ground. The quince in my palms, my face behind it.

We fled the city. Fled the wars our lords had won at such a cost, but who cares about us, right, commoners who live south of the river, who cares—certainly not our lords. My father, the one your wards kept out, he is the loudest of us. He wanted to escape Katríu. Start his life elsewhere. I have no idea where he is now. I don’t think mother is too sad about that. I don’t know if I can blame her.

I want to bite into this quince of yours. I want to feel the juice of it run down my chin, down my throat. Instead, I just hold it. A curved globe of the sun.

My grandfather had been in the first Katra-Araigen war. Fought in it. He was one of Healer Parét’s patients, one of the soldiers from south Katríu who got treatment from him, for free, for years, until grandfather got better. “The Coast,” he’d say. “Ah, the Coast. If they accepted someone like Parét, they would accept us, any day. And we’ll work hard.” But when the third Katra-Araigen war was barely averted, when hunger and fear came, when father stopped yelling at grandfather and started yelling at us to get packing, we weren’t the only ones to think about the Coast. Leaving the capital. Leaving Katra. Father said, seeking shelter in that land that our lords had conquered long ago would be easy. They’ll have to accept us. We are Katrans. But grandfather wasn’t so sure we had truly conquered the Coast, or that they would want us. It does not matter, father yelled. The Coast is a province of Katra. But now your wards have sent him away.

I shouldn’t have stolen your quince. I don’t know if I should have. I have not bit into it, but the pungency of it has gone to my head. I am not even hungry. I’ve eaten, eaten better here than I’ve done on most days in the city, this last year. Mother made meals with what you sent, large ruddy grains boiled to a sweet mush, roots, soup from the dried fish, but I wanted something more. Why did I want something more? There’s never been anything more. So I stole from you. Is this so wrong? You have everything—you have this orchard where globes of burnished music hang from boughs, how come all we have is mush, how come it’s been a week and all we’ve seen of you are those boxes of food that you sent?

Our dugout is by the slope of a wooded hill, guarded by gnarled small trees whose names I do not know, their leaves glossy and green and shaped like little cupped hands. I don’t know much about trees, these wild spaces. In the city, parks and green spaces are north of the river. South of the river, pigeons, rats, thin trees that grow defiantly on the roofs of old buildings. Bloated pale fish in the river. I do not want to remember.

It is dark now, and the rain has started to fall again. It is dry inside the dugout, though. Mother thanks me, but I haven’t done anything. I have magic, see, I am a named strong. Isn’t this why you let me into your land? It is unusual for a commoner to take magic, but I have one deepname, a three-syllable. A single three-syllable deepname is the most common among those who take power. Neither too weak nor too strong. I heard that lots of things can be done with it. But all I’ve done with it so far was to conceal myself from people as I stole. I had to eat, see.

I could have gotten schooling, I guess. Any named strong is eligible. But by now, everyone south of the river knows it is a trap. They teach you for a year, then throw you out. They don’t really want anything to do with you long-term unless you’re rich. And when they throw you out, you are confused.

I got no schooling, but I’m still confused. I go to sleep in the dugout and the rain is puttering softly on the roots and branches above.

The next morning, mother is clapping her hands over a new box. There is a letter, too.

I open it with shaking hands. Inside is a kind of poem, a message arranged in short rhythmic lines; in Katran, in my language, not yours.

“Welcome, stranger, to this fruit

of my trees that sheltered you

of their own free will, the land accepting no borders

for those it welcomes, and so I welcome you.”

Blood rushes into my cheeks and I swallow. Of course you knew. I had not seen you, but you watched in shadows as the fruit fell into my palm, watched an intruder in your land as your ancestors had watched my lords who had come here first to conquer, then to take from the bounty of your land, take heavily to feed themselves, believing perhaps that some of that would trickle to my people south of the river—leftovers of what they’d plundered from your land, took away from you in treaties—or so grandfather says. It is a wonder they had let us in, grandfather says, even the three of us. But now you’ve sent me your welcome after I’ve stolen from you.

I do not want to go out where your eyes can see me. My chest is full like a bloated river under the bridges that separate South Katríu from the more affluent neighborhoods; a river cleansed by magic further north, a river swollen with debris and sewage water as it flows towards the poorer neighborhoods. I shouldn’t have stolen. I should have stolen. All this is behind me. No, inside me. It is where I come from.

*

I huddle in the dugout until my quince goes soft, soft like the squishy ground in the rain. It weeps into my palm, past my fingers, it drips onto my trousers. Mother has long since stopped trying to cajole me out of my stupor, but one day I go out of the dugout again.

I shield my eyes against the light, but it is gentle, translucent. It is dry by the hill; the wind from the far-off sea to the west blows between the branches of the small gnarled trees, sprays the cupped-palm leaves with brine and the odor of seaweed. When I walk down the hill and south, it begins to rain. I walk to the valley where your quince trees grow.

There are quince on the ground, spotted brown, overripe and weeping like the quince I stole. I bend and press my finger to one and break skin, almost but not quite to the seeds. Around me the fruit is shaken by the gusts of weeping wind. Ripe quince fall with a small thud. I crouch under a quince tree, in its shadow. I do not know how to make a shelter with my magic, just that it would be possible with schooling; but I do not want to do that even if I could. It smells so different here, a deep earthy smell so unlike the stones and streets of Katríu; I am ashamed to feel dizzy for this, to feel dizzy thinking of both. In the city, I would be mocked for digging in dirt. Here, I don’t know. Nobody talks to me, see. No friends. No siblings, even.

Your steps are so soft that when you come I do not hear you. Only when you speak do I look up and see you. “Do not be afraid.”

You are tall. Tall and bulky, imposing—but the rain obscures you, as if the borders of your body had gone to water. Your skin is the Coastal olive-brown weathered to a deeper hue than most other people’s that I’ve seen here. Perhaps you spend lots of time outdoors.

I look away. Everywhere but at you. The bark, the moving clouds, the grasses underfoot, the golden swaying of the quince on boughs.

You have a big nose, dark brown eyes, a serious, older face. I know I’m supposed to be threatened by you, to fear, but what I feel instead is quietude. The rain consumes all colors and softens them to translucency.

“What is your name?” you ask. Your voice is soft as my mother’s, but without her fear. There is a firmness to it. You speak my language, Katran, speak it like I’m sure they teach you Coastal people to speak it, with the cadences of Middle City. Not like an upper Katríu noble, not like a commoner either. Even a Coastal lord must never speak like a real lord.

I whisper, “Ailát.”

You sit down, cross-legged. “I am Maitar Lilaván.”

You have a last name, so yeah, I gather you must be the lord. Your clothing is not flashy, but too good for a commoner. You wear a kind of jacket, brown and stitched beautifully at the edges, that falls midway down your thighs. And soft trousers.

Your feet are bare. What kind of lord would bare his feet?

“You are the lord of this land?” I whisper.

You smile. There is a stillness to you, a very great stillness. You do not shift a finger, or move a muscle. “A very long time ago my ancestor, Erígra Lilún, supported Ranra Kekeri in our flight from the Sinking Lands. A thousand years ago. Erígra brought with them the fruit of the quince tree that they saved from the destruction of our homeland. The seeds in that fruit had bloomed into a tree.”

You touch your chest, bring out a pendant on a silver chain. It is shaped like a walnut, but made of silver, or perhaps a very pale gold. Your long fingers open the latch and tilt the walnut to show me what is inside the locket. Seeds. You latch it again with your thumb.

“Erígra was Ranra’s lover. Ranra took many lovers.” You look at me, and your forehead furrows. “Is this of interest?”

“Yes,” I whisper. “Please.” I do not know why I swallow, why the vision you speak of makes my throat constrict so.

“When we came here, the land accepted both of them. We came from elsewhere, because our old homeland had been destroyed. We had sailed on seven ships, led by the seven erams, the seven captains that you Katrans would call lords. The seven great houses were born on this land. Ranravan the first, the house of Ranra Kekeri; and the last, Lilaván, after my ancestor. The land accepted us. The marsh receded to make space for us to live. This land needed us not to conquer, not to impose our will upon silt and rock, but to serve.”

The wind gusts again. You open your palm. Your magic becomes engaged, two deepnames of two and three syllables each. It is strong, much stronger than mine—but the power of the Coastal named strong is legendary. I heard your configuration was called the Common Angle. It does not feel like much, compared to what we’ve been told about Coastal magic.

You curve your fingers up like you’re holding a ball. Then you tip the palm down, your fingers touching the ground. You close your eyes, and new deepnames flow from your mind, from your structure, into the ground. I’ve never heard of such magic.

I feel each new deepname enter the earth, like tiny pinpricks of light. The land, the land feels content, as if it has been fed before, not starving but eager for these small magics now. “You ask if I am a lord of this land. I am an eram to my people, but I am not the lord of this land. This land is its own. In this land, a person nourishes it. All else passes above it as shadow. Like Erígra, I, too, support the house Kekeri. The land you are on is kept by the house Kekeri, by my own eram. But it is I who nurtures these trees.”

The fingers of your right hand curl up, and your hand moves back to your knee. You reach out with your left now, palm on the bark of a tree I’ve been crouching under. You close your eyes, and deepnames flow from your mind and into the bark.

When you are done, I ask, “How many of your people did the land accept?”

“A thousand years ago?” You shrug. “All of them. All of them that survived.”

“But it did not accept us.” I swallow. Not that I miss my father, but I miss my siblings, yes, and the bitterness of it floods me. I do not know where they went. I think that it is you who rejected us, not the land.

You say, “I cannot tell you why the land accepts or rejects. Except that your people came here twice, to conquer. Except that your lords profited from our harvest, this work of our hearts, since you won.”

“They conquered,” I say. “They won. Not I. Not people like me. The lords profited from your harvest and ate it, too. In Lower Katríu I’ve never seen a quince. I’ve hardly ever seen fresh fruit.”

“I do not know how the land chooses, Ailát,” you say. “I see that you are bitter.”

The trees wave their arms as you go, sending more fruit to the earth.

*

I told my mother I saw you, and my grandfather, too. They wanted to know what you said, but I did not tell them. That the land spat out most of us who came here, accepted only a few. Accepted for what purpose? I feel angry. Angry and weeping inside like a rotten quince.

I said my people waged no war, but I lied. Twice, my people came here to conquer. The second war they won. Grandfather says the Katran lords corralled the commoners for soldiers, promised them riches, and they went. I’ve seen it, when they were recruiting for the third war with Araigen, the one that was barely averted. The people, my neighbors, friends. Some went singing. Giddy. My grandfather hid us.

My grandfather went to Araigen decades ago, to conquer and burn there. My grandfather, too, this land now accepted. But if it were four hundred years ago, he would have fought in a different war, would have come west here and not to east to Araigen, would have plundered and torched this land, and would it accept him then, after?

In the morning, another letter arrives. It bears my name, this time.

“Stay, on this high ground

north of my home, where the slopes

sway with the limbs of quince trees unplanted

years and futures since,”

And so I go up the hill and down again, due north, moved by an emotion that has taken a root in me despite myself. Of my stolen quince now, only the seeds remain.

The land curves up again, north of the dugout. There is a small mountain here, home of deer and butterflies, bracken and wildflower. A friendly place. I clear some bracken away and sit down, then arch my fingers like you showed me. I have no second deepname, but the three-syllable is like one of yours, except that I’ve taken no schooling. And they do not teach this in Katran schools. To toil and till the land is for peasants; everybody scoffs at them, even the poor city folk south of the river.

My fingers touch the ground and the shiver is back, long and golden down my spine. I whisper new deepnames into the earth and I fumble, feeling silly and self-conscious. It is no use. I cannot do this, I, city child, so far away from the city. Was that my place? I miss it, too, at night, when the seawind blows our way and the smell of it brings to my mind the burgeoning smell of the river in spring as the snow melts. The absence of city noise cloaks me, past and present blend into a kind of mist. The smallest movements of animals and birds startle me.

It is no good. I cannot feed the land like you did. I go back to the dugout, my head heavy. While I was away, people brought us stones and cut timber.

Grandfather says he saw you, though you did not stay to talk. “A fighter, that one. Not for a while perhaps, but old habits die hard, see. Like a heron about to strike.” Grandfather is not sure how to build with the timber. But I do not think he wants to go elsewhere.

I go back to the mountain the next morning. I plant the seeds my quince spat, and whisper over them, with more confidence than before. I know so many of us wanted a city, wanted the rush and color and smells and food, and the milling of people; traveling here, my brothers said the landscape was boring, not a city in sight. I am not bored. I’m tired and distraught and under that I am curious. I whisper more deepnames into the ground, and a feeling of calm steals over me. I want to do this again.

Not trusting myself, I plant a little flag in the ground where I planted the seeds, just to find them again.

*

The next day my mother and grandfather follow me up the slope, their steps much slower than mine. The flag is gone—chewed by a deer, I think—but of course the deepnames I’d planted are there, shining in the earth like tiny beacons. Mother and grandfather crouch down to watch as I touch my fingers to the earth, make new deepnames to nourish this very small patch of the land where I’ve planted the seeds. My mother gives me advice, even though she does not have deepnames.

Later that evening I look for you beneath the quince trees in the valley. You are there, harvesting the quince with some other people, Coastal, all dressed in brown tunics, soft pants, and short coats.

“Have you found your answer?” you ask.

“No,” I say. “Only more questions.”

You nod, listening.

“If the land accepted you,” I say, “if the land chose you, if the land is so powerful to keep most of my people away, then how could we conquer you? And if we conquered you, then why cannot more of us come here?”

Your companions listen in, shake their heads and murmur in the Coastal language, which I do not know. I recognize one word. Eram. Captain. They call you that, and they cluster around you, protective, as if I were someone against whom you would need such guard. You speak to them quietly, and I see their shoulders lose hardness, yet they still flank you.

You say, “The second time the army came, the land would not protect us. We were at war with our neighbors who live in the sea, the Taryca. The land did not want this.”

“What does the land want, then?” I ask.

“An eram once meant captain,” you say. “But now it means a keeper of the land. The Taryca live underwave, but they come from the sea to the sacred grounds in the marsh for rituals.” You gesture south and east, I guess, towards the marsh. “Ranra made agreements with the Taryca without fully understanding the nature of these bonds. You must not make war. Yet we made it. The land did not want this. We, too, hold the marsh sacred. When we first arrived here, the marsh receded to make space for us, so we would nourish it, and the Taryca, too, would nourish it; and it was the marsh that refused to defend us against the Katrans.”

You have not answered my question, but the sound of your voice has lulled me. Above, the sky is overcast. Soon it will rain again. I ask if I can lend a hand, and you let me pick the fruit of your trees and put them in baskets.

At sunset I follow your people out of the orchard, south. The endless drizzling rain is warm. We come to a valley, to something you call a harvest house—a large, single-room structure of dun stone with narrow, tall windows that gape without glass. The roof is reeds woven with magic, small sparks of it flickering in the dusk. You show me the ancient rounded stones inside, and teach me how to mill the quince for juice. It will be fermented here, later, in barrels of made of honey oak and loruta tree.

You say, “My eram prefers the grape. But my heart’s fruit is the quince. It is our people’s fruit, the one Erígra Lilún had brought over from the sinking lands.”

I eat with your people, small round bundles of redgrain, soft cheese, bitter herbs, and quince jam. You pour last year’s quince wine for us, golden like a topaz and bubbling gently.

You are old. Maybe fifty. One day I will be fifty, too.

My bitterness has seeped out of me with the pungent odor of the quince wine. I want to know more about your family, about your eram. Why would you, an eram, call another so? Have you ever felt losses, ever strayed from the place of your birth, were you ever confused, have you ever wondered where home was? You are still, even when you talk, as if wary that something may happen. Nobody who’s always been safe goes this still. A fighter, my grandfather said.

I am different. Like the sky, I am always on the verge of rain, my eyes and throat an endless roiling cloud.

I tell you my sister wanted adventures, my brothers looked forward to the din and tumult of a city. I tell you I think the land chose me because of my magic, but you shake your head. No need to import untrained named strong to the Coast. There is enough magic here.

*

Next morning I go north, to visit my quince seeds again. On the slope of the mountain, grandfather has cleared some of the bracken to make space. I crouch for a long time, my fingers in the soil, deepnames running down from my head to my arms, down my fingers, into the ground.

I close my eyes. The wind has blown in from the sea, bringing salt and old dreams up the mountain. A thousand years ago, it had brought a Kekeri and a Lilún to these lands. “Like my ancestor,” you said, “I am supporting a Kekeri.” What would it take for me to support you?

I touch my hand to the chest, like you touched your pendant. Quince seeds inside. Erígra Lilún brought the quince here. A single seed, you said, from which the orchard had grown. You love this land, and you are its lord, but like me you have come from elsewhere, and those trees with you.

When I return to the dugout, your people I met in the orchard are here. They help my mother and grandfather lay the stone foundation for a small house. “Mai likes you,” they say. They speak the same middle-city Katran, but they are less careful with it than you are. They are wary still. Wary of me, of people like me. Wary and yet planting these stones.

*

My siblings sent letters. My sister and younger brother had managed to make it to the Coast after all - they found employment in a Bodumi wharf city on the brighter and harsher southern part of the Coast, where the sea is ever hungry for the work of people’s hands. My father and older brother had returned to Katríu. The Coast is treacherous, everybody knows it, my father wrote, come back—but mother brushes this away.

Every morning now, I go up the mountain to visit the seeds. I’ve had no fancy schooling, but I am no longer afraid. My single three-syllable is enough. The new deepnames I make run down from my mind, down my arms, into the soil. Body and mind feed the land, and the land feeds me. This land does not want adventures or cities, it does not bow to conquests. It chooses, rejecting and accepting as it will.

The land is its own. Its consent, like a person’s, you said, must always be asked for and is always given anew.

And I am planting, I am planting this story. My words, for you. I wanted an answer perhaps, a million times why—why we had to move, why we came here, why these wars, why we stayed; but I have no answers. Except to trust the land with these words. With these seeds.

One day some of my seeds will sprout, the saplings tilting their heads towards the newborn sun. Some of my seeds will die here. The living saplings will mature and bear fruit, each heavy with the magic I made, that the land made—these words and sunshine on the mountain slopes, soothed by the seawind. We will all grow older. I will pick the ripe quince and mill them in your harvest house and ferment them as you taught me, and I will gift you this wine. It will answer for us the questions you and I cannot unravel, of war, of hunger, of what is owed—or perhaps we will bypass even stories as tumult and adventure will pass us by, here in the shadow of the mountain where the nourishing magic spills from our arms, where the land has said yes.