Lake Silence (The Others #6)(37)
It seemed excessive to insist on no contact at all since I wouldn’t mind answering a question or two if it helped solve the puzzle of why the first dead man had ended up dead, but Ilya seemed to be holding back a fair amount of anger and I didn’t want it spilling over on me, so I agreed to do what he asked.
Then it struck me. He had heard what Swinn had said. I doubt he understood why it had hurt so much or why I’d gotten so churned up instead of calling Swinn an asshat and moving on, but he’d witnessed the eruption of Mount Victoria and had decided to shut down the problem by denying Swinn any access to me without him being present.
So, yay, Team Vicki.
The shelf with the new books looked so nice, I made a few more tent signs and rearranged the books I’d previously acquired. I spent a happy hour putting the books into categories so that other residents, and potential guests, of The Jumble could find specific kinds of books.
I slipped the last book into place when Aggie’s comment about having a Reader truly sank in.
Every terra indigene settlement has a Reader. I wasn’t really the proprietor of a human business. Like Honoria Dane, I was the token human who provided a valuable service by bridging the cultural gap between the Others and the residents of Sproing.
Given that the survival of humans on the continent of Thaisia depended on the Others’ feeling some tolerance toward us, bridging the cultural gap should be a good thing. Which made me wonder if the attempt to force me out was part of a plan to have a particular person replace me in order to influence the terra indigene who lived around Lake Silence—or if it was part of a plan to break any chance of peace between our species.
* * *
? ? ?
When in doubt, call your attorney.
I didn’t think I’d sounded urgent, but I’d barely had time to pick up my basket of gardening tools and start weeding the flower beds that bordered the screened porch when Ilya Sanguinati walked up behind me, startling me enough that I squeaked and would have fallen on my butt if he hadn’t grabbed one of my arms and hauled me to my feet.
“I didn’t hear the car.” I had to stop squeaking and develop the full-bodied scream that actors in scary movies managed to achieve. Then again, they weren’t really scared breathless, which I’m sure helped with scream volume.
“I came across the lake,” Ilya said.
“You have a boat?” I couldn’t imagine him rowing a boat or paddling a canoe, so maybe it was a little sailboat?
He laughed. “The Sanguinati’s smoke form can travel over water as easily as land, and the direct route across the lake was faster than using the car.” He waited a beat. “You had a question.”
“Every terra indigene settlement has a Reader.”
“That is a statement, not a question.”
“Aggie and the boys are excited about me being the Reader here, but I’d like to know exactly what that means.”
“Because of the sacrifice usually required to achieve it, being the Reader is a position of respect in a settlement.”
Sacrifice? What kind of sacrifice?
“Would you like to work while we talk?” he asked. “I don’t want to disrupt your schedule of chores.”
I noticed he didn’t offer to help. Then again, when the Sanguinati turned into smoke, their clothes also turned into smoke, which just added to their mystique. I had heard that the whole turning-into-smoke thing was the reason the Sanguinati always dressed in black or shades of gray. That might be something someone made up. Or it could be cultural, like Simple Life men wearing dark trousers, white shirts, and suspenders. But seeing Ilya crouch beside me as I weeded the flower bed, I really wanted to ask if it was as hard to get grass stains out of Sanguinati clothing as it was regular old human clothes.
“Every form of terra indigene has its own teaching stories, the lessons one generation passes on to the next,” Ilya said. “And there are stories that are told as entertainment that appeal to many different forms. It’s only in the past few decades that some of our stories have been written down and put into books that many can enjoy.”
“Like the Wolf Team stories and the books by Alan Wolfgard?”
He smiled. “Exactly. But reading printed words is a human skill, and to most forms of terra indigene, acquiring human skills is considered a necessary contamination—a sacrifice a small percentage of us make in order to keep watch over the two-legged predators who are also prey.”
Well, hearing that sure made me feel special. It also made me realize how The Jumble was different from other terra indigene settlements. “The Readers aren’t usually human, are they? They’re terra indigene who have learned to read well in order to share the stories with the rest of the . . . residents.”
“Yes. Here, with you, the reading hour can be a point of interaction as well as entertainment.”
And a lot of responsibility. “Every day?”
“Oh no. Perhaps one evening a week—and not on your cop and crime TV night—you could read a chapter from a book like the Wolf Team. On another evening, a folktale or one of your human teaching stories. On the third evening, you could read an article or two from a magazine like Nature!—something nonfiction.”
I stopped weeding and looked at him. “I would think you would know more about the natural world than the humans writing about it.”