The Riddles Club

Day 3

On the next morning, after Tali's mother and father left for market, the expected knock at the door came. Tali absorbed herself in her basket weaving. She was experimenting with dry fibers, hoping it would keep the finished product from shrinking so much. She ignored the sound and kept weaving.

But the knock turned into two. Then three. Then ten. Until finally they stopped altogether and became shouts. Ysmael's words of "Oi, oi, Tali!" or "Hoi, Tali!" or "I know you're in there!" breached the thin walls of her family home, but she kept on. A moment came and fled, and the world fell quiet again. He had gone. What a relief!

A bang.

The girl flinched in her seat on the floor. She looked; the windowpane trembled. Some grime shook loose of the glass.

Tali bristled like a cat. She leapt to her feet and catapulted to the window. Sticking her head out at the blonde nuisance, she gave a verbal what-for that would horrify the lowest of grammarian majors right out of his hosen.

"If you don't a-quit that caterwauling, Ysmael, by seas I'mma gonna come out there and hoist you by your jimmies and slug ya i'nna the mud! I'mma bettin' you told that Omiya lassie the answer an' you're just awaitin'! An' I doubt you have permission to be a-showin' nobody the Avest'limora, you ayu slug you!"

Ysmael's mouth dropped.

Tali slammed the window shut tight and dropped the lock. She let out a puff of fury. Ysmael yelled something incoherent back, then she watched him leave. He didn't return.

Tali was glad. Proud even. After a while, though, she started to regret it. Then she was angry for regretting it. He deserved the treatment, she tried to reason. And yet she continued to feel bad. Maybe she was overreacting? It was possible poking fun of the low-born had never been his intention. Maybe this really was a bizarre attempt to start a club? It simply didn't make any sense. Yet her considerations continued to hound.

Anyone who knew better would have taken these feelings as signs and went out to apologize—but that wasn't Tali. She didn't know what to do now that she'd been so rude. So she cleaned.

Her parents came home to a tidy house, where they found her scrubbing dishes instead of weaving. They smiled and giggled like parents do amongst themselves, asked if something was the matter, but ultimately chalked it up to child-fight-things, which were never any real concern of an adult's. Tali despised when they did this. After all, whether it was a child-fight or not, it was important to her. So she told them in precise detail the events of that morning, to demonstrate just how serious it was.

Her father acted a little concerned (he hadn't known about the club or Ysmael's visitations) but only warned her to be careful. Her mother repeated the ancient adage that every commonli child was forced to hear at some point in their young lives: "Ayu and commonli are as alike as chicory and spiders. If the spider spends too much time on the bud, the flower can't seed."

Then Tali was made to peel grapes.

Around late dusk, somebody knocked at the door. Tali's mother answered.

"Is Tali home?"

It was Rebeka.

"I am," Tali said, flying to the entry. "Did somebody answer the riddle?" She hadn't thought she would be so concerned, but there it was.

Rebeka shook her head and Tali's worry drained away.

"Uh, he wanted me to send you the third part of the riddle, and to say you're still welcome to join, even though in his words you acted like a-" she cut off, blushing. "Forgive my words, Evra, but he called Tali a dumb-dandy! Don't either of you worry though, I scolded him good."

"Oh, well, I bet that'll learn him," Tali's mother chirped, and left them to chat at the door.

Tali narrowed her eyes. "What a slug!" she said, but it was for show. She still felt bad about her earlier presumptions.

"That's what I said! Anyway, the third part of the riddle is, 'they roam in a cluster closer to you; together they're stronger and smarter too.' Everyone's spinning circles. I kept thinking some kind of insect, or the gliding skink—they can be blue. I don't know though. Seems it could be so many things."

It certainly did. Although, the wording retained a sense of obviousness to it that continued to nag at Tali.

"Okay, Rebeka, it's late, time for you to go home," Tali's mother said from the kitchen. The girl left and Tali ruminated the whole night. She ruminated during supper, during clean-up, in her dreams, to her waking thought. Rebeka's answer seemed very clever, but the riddle was cleverer still. Not everything matched up.