Strange Noises Fiction by Rachel Greenham

I meant to go up to Samila's bedroom that night after finishing work, but I had to help Jalese and Hethan clean up the bar and by the time I can get away and go upstairs it's too late. Really. The sky is starting to lighten away to the East and my soft knocking on her door receives no reply. She has her own room, apart from Kerilas and Lotan. Hethan clearly didn't think any other arrangement was suitably respectable. So I go back down to the basement and my own pallet. Or rather ours, as Jalese and I have pushed ours together. The nights get cold here, down in that basement, and it's just cosier. In the total darkness her body seems almost luminous. I think my body temperature might be lower than human normal, but I feel fine and I sleep so comfortably in her warm glow. The following morning at breakfast she's being ratty. I did try, but she just snapped a "Leave me alone," at me, so I beat a retreat. We've taken to having breakfast together -- the five of us, with Jalese and myself nominally serving -- in the inn's rear courtyard while it's quiet before the rest of the guests wake up. It's a nice place to catch the early warmth of the sun. The old olive trees gnarl their branches above us. We ought to get together at some point and count up how much money we've got, whether we can afford the harbour fees we're racking up as well as the supplies we came in for in the first place. I think we'll be okay. I'm getting lots of money through tips (via Hethan, as it turns out, but Jalese says he's straight about these things. Otherwise word would get around and no-one would perform here.) I'm also getting my daily wage for the other work I'm doing at the inn, and it's adding up nicely, all the while I'm paying practically nothing for my keep. So on day two of Market I get some time and wander down to the harbour itself to see if I can find some more clothes. Something that'll be mine and not things some stranger just left behind. I walk down the pontoons between marketeer vessels. It's pleasantly cool under the awnings, and the movement of the pontoons on the water gives an immediate feeling of rightness. It had taken me two nights to shift the feeling that the ground was moving while I lay in bed. A few feet onto the pontoons and I feel more at ease already. I'm naturally drawn first to the familyship I saw docking the day before. I reach up and run my hand along the smooth wooden hull as I walk. It feels almost like glass. Yes, there are recollections here. This isn't home, but it's very like the place I grew up. There are resonances here. Strange and alien to a part of me, but homely and familiar as well. They've done something I've never seen before, and actually lowered a wide portion of the side of the hull like a drawbridge to the jetty. There's a kind of stepped ramp on the inside leading into the interior of the ship itself. I step in between the living ribs of the ship. The deck overhead has been opened out as well, so it's still light and airy. I browse idly among the goods on sale, trying not to appear nosy, but there's another Neri here. A young male sea elf, seeming almost ostentatiously androgynous and being studiedly unintrusive. I'm not the only shopper here, but I think he's watching me. Finally I go over to him. "Excuse me, do you have clothing for women?" Amazingly, given the circumstances and everything that's happened to me, I feel just as shy and embarrassed at asking this now as I ever did in my previous life. And just to fit in with my nerves, he gives me a funny look, then answers in a different language, "Go up on deck, Miss. Everything's there." His eyes are large, and a limpid grey-green, and there are no whites visible, which reminds me mine are the same. "Thank you." _That must be Elvish,_ I realise suddenly, feeling his eyes on me as I go. It's a more sibilant, musical language. Although it had no particular tune, it was almost as if the simple sentence was like the line of a song. I find the stairs and go up on deck. There are lengths of fabric in gorgeous, irridescent colours, some as light and as fine as a spider's web, ranging to others that are as heavy and luxurious as velvet. There are complete, made garments as well. The fabrics are lovely, the workmanship even to my eyes is clearly superb, so much so that the borrowed dress I'm wearing feels almost like patched together rags. They don't have prints, so if there's a pattern, it's embroidered in with exquisite attention to detail. But -- and it's curious that I should feel guilty about this -- while the fabrics are lovely, I'm not at all taken by the styles. This is clearly very upmarket, in the context of Jeodin. It isn't only elves that wear these sorts of clothes, but it's shouts an elvish aesthetic that I'm a little surprised to discover I don't share. They're too 'flowy', or something. I'm struggling to understand what about it isn't working for me. They don't seem familiar either. They're not like the clothes in my occasional flashbacks. They're too impractical. You couldn't wear them while working or just moving around on board. Which suddenly brings a small epiphany. Of course, these clothes for sale are made for a land-based human idea of what elvish clothes should be like for formal wear. I sigh and look around for something more practical. I spot a Neri couple up on the bridge of the ship. They seem engrossed in each other, so I edge a little closer in their direction. There's something -- very old about them, although at first sight they look like a young couple. Something about the extreme economy and intensity of movement and gesture seems to speak of ages. He strokes the line of her ear to the tip, and it's the most erotic thing I've ever seen. I turn away, blushing, and look at more fabrics. I wonder about buying some and who I can find to make them into a more practical, fitting style. "What is your name, child?" a voice asks from behind. I turn. It's the woman who was up on the bridge. I hadn't heard her approach at all. She's tall... "Um," I stammer. "Taniel." Up close she is beautiful, more beautiful than I could have imagined, with luminous serenity and grace. I look for any sign of age on her face and there is none but I feel like I'm face to face with antiquity. She stands almost a head taller than me, and is clothed in a surprisingly simple tunic and leggings. My brain rebels at the prosaic clothing for a moment, wanting to insist 'white samite, white samite'. A single toroidal stone of pale translucent pink rests at her throat upon a tiny silver chain. She has no other jewellery. "Your Satthei?" "I... I don't know." I feel like I'm six years old, standing in front of the headmistress at school, being asked questions I don't even understand. "You don't know?" she asks, incredulous. _Satthei,_ I remember. It means ship. It also means mother. They're the same thing. I stare around me anew. The gnarling, woven branches of the gunwales are alive. The ribs like branches below. The true living ship, mostly hidden under the surface cladding. The riddle of my memory is answered. I lay in my mother's arms. I lay in the branches of the ship, where they branch sinuously in the stern, near the bole. They are the same. They are Bound. A Satthei is the joined entity. She's asking me who my mother is. "I don't know," I repeat. "I can't remember. There was a fire." "Oh." Her reaction is clearly honestly emotional. "Taniel..." She seems to be trying to remember. "Oh of course, dear little Tani. You were thought to be dead." I just stare at her. "We have met before," she says. "I am Satthey Fareis. Don't you remember?" I shake my head. "Are you---" She shakes her own head. "We met briefly when you were very small. I'm not so surprised you don't remember. But you should not have..." She trails off. "You knew my parents," I prod her. She nods. "Satthei Encelion. Where have you been all this time?" "I don't know." Her face changes then, and becomes still, as she puts it together, presumably with more detail and context than I yet have. I was taken by slavers. That much was in my character's introduction. I don't have any recollection of what happened in that time. "No. No. Come inside, teya, we must talk." "I'm not sure---" "What? What's the matter?" "I was just trying to buy some new clothes. I... I've got to go back to work soon." "Work? Where are you working? What is your situation?" "I'm... I'm all right. I'm working at the inn over there." I point across the harbour to where the inn is visible, the white exterior of the terrace shining in the noon sun. "Hethan's place?" I nod. "He's honest, as far as I know. What do you do there?" "I, er, I play box-harp and sing, and I help out with the cleaning and stuff." I can feel the English idioms grating in Elvish, but it's all new to me. "How long?" "Only three days. We stole a boat to escape. It's there, see?" I point it out along the quayside, almost lost amongst the other masts. "We're trying to earn enough money to get what we need and pay the harbour fees and then---" "We?" "My friends. We... We came here together." "Neri?" "No." I catch my breath. I'm easily gabbling away and if I'm not careful I'll say too much. "Uh, three humans and another elf," I say incompletely. "We escaped together. I can't leave them," I add, starting to feel that this woman is making plans for me. "I... I won't leave them." As she looks at me I feel like a recalcitrant child. "I just... I just wanted to buy some new clothes," I finish lamely. "Taniel, teya, don't you realise? You were missing for more than twenty years. You were given up for dead. I can't just leave you to go back to working in an inn---" *Twenty __years__ in captivity?* I stare at her, utterly shocked. "Oh you poor dear," she says, and takes my hand, and in a moment she's hugging me. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel. Just confused. "Oh you poor little thing." "I'm... I'm all right." I pull myself free. *Twenty years?* My breath is coming short. Suddenly there's no air on this deck. I run. I can't even rationalise it, but I run. I break away from her and clatter down the stairs to the middle deck and out onto the pontoon and all the way back to the inn without stopping. Jalese practically catches me inside the doorway and I just start crying helplessly. I'm barely aware that she gives Hethan a look before she brings me downstairs to our shared pallet, and there she just holds me while I cry.