I am expecting a reproach, but I don’t get one. Instead, Shame moves behind me and I stretch my arm to the side. He’s careful but the palpation along the inside edge of the shoulderblade proves to me that at least some kinds of injury are common to both species. I wait for the pronouncement.
“Petchek,” he says. “Mania.”
That might as well be a reprimand. I grimace.
“And madness, tchun.”
I see, then, and I’m touched, because this isn’t an accusation; he’s telling me how his flight from Qenain would have been described, and so, assuring me that sometimes all of us have bad moments when struggling with our vocations. I turn, carefully moving that arm, and say, “I don’t expect to find that consonant blend in the middle of words, but I suppose it must show up there.”
“It does,” Haraa says from behind Kor. “And you are harrowing her soul, father of my daughter.”
“It’s fair,” I say. “This is the second time I’ve given myself an ishas-related injury working on this book. First my finger, then my shoulder. It is madness to keep working despite it.”
“And yet sometimes we must be mad in pursuit of our task,” Haraa says. “And then the right thing to do is give you useful words, like ‘sore’, and ‘stretch’, and ‘exercise’. Instead of cuffing you for doing what you will do. Even Farren works himself to injury. And as to some people in this room who are suspiciously silent, why, they work themselves so close to destruction that they require Correction from the highest authorities.”
Kor huffs, but he’s smiling. “And that is why I have not said anything. But you should rest, qirini. Tsevet’s story will keep a little longer.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I say. “The longer it keeps me, the more I bleed. Is that too hyperbolic?”
“For an artist?” Haraa says. “Not even slightly. But let us do some stretches, shall we? And then if you want to re-injure yourself working, we will blame Tsevet.”
“He’d like that,” I mutter.
“Attend,” Haraa says, tapping my nose to make me come back to earth. “Sore: zeivret. Stretch: kuvul. Exercise: dapit. Raise your arms. Mother! Are your joints supposed to make that noise?”
“No,” I confess.
“Before you work, every day,” Haraa says. “You will stretch.”
“As the osulkedi commands.”
“Until you stop crackling and creaking.”
“Then,” I say, resigned, “we’ll be here for the rest of my life.”
https://mcahogarth.org/gallery/image/144-2026-16-YoungKor
