Pinion by Jay Lake Page A

distant, open plains were blocked by crumbling, rotten rock. Banners began to sprout alongside the path. Tall poles bent slightly with their own weight bore the bundled tails of animals, wrapped strips of bright-printed cloth, or sprays of colored ropes knotted in particular fashions.
    In front of the termite palace they were met by a tall, dark-skinned man dressed in linens and a spotted animal skin. He carried a drum and favored Paolina with a bright smile before speaking with vigorous intent in some language she did not know.
    She strained for comprehension, then answered in English: “I do not understand you.” Would she have to use the gleam for speech? The stemwinder was so dangerous. She’d seen the bodies in the water just before she and Ming had fled to the Wall.
    She wished mightily for Boaz to be with her on this adventure. Ming was cheerful enough, and quite capable, but also strangely deferential. Boaz would have been thoughtful and wise. The Brass had always known what to do.
    Paolina took the stemwinder in hand before she tried greeting the man in Portuguese, then Chinese.
    At the last, he launched into a rapid patter of speech in that language. Ming answered. Paolina caught perhaps two words in ten as the two exchanged first courtesies, then introductions, then expressions of mutual goodwill. She shivered in the wind.
    “Wait,” said their guide in Chinese. He put up a hand. “Let us go within.” He spoke much more slowly now, for Ming had explained that Paolina had only a little of the language. “Feast, then talk.”
    She slipped the gleam back into its pouch among her skirts. Paolina was both relieved and disappointed not to use it. Surely one woman’s ability to talk did not weigh so much on the mechanisms of the world as did tons of submarine trapped amid of a Wall storm.
    As they mounted a winding, irregular flight of stairs, she turned to face the Wall. She had a moment of illusion, as if the soaring mass before her were in fact the surface of the Earth, and she an insect crawling up a wall of some other Creation, ready to tumble into the cliffs below.

    The corridors within were just as organically shaped as the exterior. The dried-mud walls were covered with white and ochre and golden paintings that ran for dozens of feet, spiraling in on themselves and opening to star-bursts. The patterns were beautiful, though they plucked at her eye in a manner that Paolina found both curious and fascinating.
    Their guide, whom Ming whispered was named Seven Trees, led them unerringly to a large, rounded chamber. A feast was being spread there by a quiet group of men and women coming and going from a series of other passageways. All were tall and dark as Seven Trees.
    Eight mats were arrayed in a circle. Each was a different color—one a maroon so dark as to be almost brown, another a gray-green, a third dusty tan, and so on.
    Bowls and gourds stood on each mat. They were different from place to place, one presenting mashed fruits and vegetables, their smells mixing together in a medley of salt and starch. Another mat was covered with rich, dark stews that were almost bloody in their scent. A third held leafy greens and long, narrow slices of glistening roots.
    The mix of odors made her stomach growl. She and Ming had eaten well enough while passing along the Wall, but their diet would never have been confused with plenty, or even variety.
    Seven Trees spread his hands. “Eat,” he said in Chinese. “And we will know.”
    Ming stepped into the center of the circle of mats, then paused to look back at Paolina. “What is your care?” he asked in English. His brown eyes darted to one side, indicating their host.
    “I am not certain,” she admitted in the same language. “Ask him what he means by ‘we will know.’ ”
    Ming looked to Seven Trees. His Chinese was more slow and careful now, so that Paolina could follow some of the conversation.
    “What is it you will know when we eat?”
    Seven Trees