The market-ballad weaves over the glassway, footsteps like applause, flitting between patrons in sparse clusters and dances. A pair of rhapsodes sit in the middle of the road on a stool carved from marble-white wood; they sculpt a meandering rhythm from a single instrument, improvising as the story leaps from person to person. Henry and Hila wander the patchwork. Amelia stumbles after them, weaving around patrons too entangled in their rhymes to notice her.
Her legs burn.
A canopy of voices singes the air, their songlight wavering in a language that ripples like the landscape, jagged and rough and voiceless. The android heads to the edge of the highway, which plummets sharply into the sand. Hila follows; her feet overhang the threshold. The two encounter a vendor seated upon his stall beside his merchandise, drumming the counter with a stack of coins in time with the swaying music.
"Dhes ku maraeshumi kallpar?," he says.
The vendor's eyes narrow, he responds in broken Dhemisht, "Eshu... rijatë deru'dje... kamas?"
Hila steps forward and bends down to see the vendor's face beneath the roof of his stall, "Dhes dio ku eshumi vou maru funjemen?"
He appears to ignore her. Out of nowhere, the vendor lets up a vague, toothy rhyme. The rhapsody leaps to his booth, his coins sway in the rhythm. His measure is brief, its melody indiscernible behind the click and trill of his lyrics. The stall next to him continues the verse, rhapsodes eager to chase the plot.
The vendor clears his throat.
"Funjemen...," he leans forward, staring almost vertically to meet Hila's eyes, which have become stark red, "Funjemen... funjemen...," he points faintly up the road, "Eshu... maru sha... qahkmaj... mendeqë."
Colour is important.
"Më kejamë dio," says Henry.
He jams his hand into his jacket, now comically out of place, and produces a 35. He wills it into a screen and stains it with his memory of the Book's sly remark.
Amelia finds her way to the android through a mosaic of patrons, visibly exhausted, "What did he say?"
The android promptly evades her.
She sounds distraught, "Where are you going?"
"I found some information about a person who might be able to help us with our Book problem," says Henry, finally.
Amelia pursues him down the road, stumbling about passers-through and grappling with her newfound, impossible weight. The sun has begun to beat her firmly over the head. Her skin shimmers with salt. She turns her head to avoid the sun's glare in the street, only to find the homes either side also blinding. Their design resembles a wooden kiln, with a stout door and low windows, constructed from remarkably pale timber. They appear to have risen out of the sand from seeds, rooted to the footpaths, marble against orange sand.
The marketplace ends abruptly.
Various stalls and half-stalls lean against the glasswork as if the entire city had appeared at once, towers overlapping with one another, clipping the market, blotting its songlight, showering planks of marble-wood all over the desert. Sand climbs the wall of glass like waves climb the shore, littered in blades of white grass. Amelia steps into the shadow of the city, staring up as its peaks melt into the haze.
In the native language, this settlement was named "Salkverv," where "sal" has a range of meanings from "water" to "jewellery," and "kverv" sounds like the speaker is choking.
YOU ARE READING
The Book of All
Science Fiction"Knowledge is power," most say, but power corrupts all the same. See, knowledge exists as a pyramid. Very many things know nothing, but only one knows everything. To climb the pyramid isn't difficult, up to some point. The climb can be a taxing thin...
