“Oh,” he said, nodding confidently but not understanding. He didn’t need to. He didn’t care. All Tesh wanted was for her not to shout at him to go away. Every word he uttered was a gamble, and an opportunity. “So, what is it you’re writing?”
“I used to call it The Book Pine Markings of Brin, but that’s too long. Moya shortened it to The Book of Brin, and I guess that’s okay. Makes less sense, but is a lot easier to say. It’s going to be the story of the whole world—from how it began to the present.”
“Since you’re from Rhen, I suppose you’ll say Mari created everything.”
“Actually, no. Erebus did.”
Tesh wasn’t an expert on gods. In Dureya, they worshiped the Mynogan, the three gods of war, and he knew that Clan Nadak worshiped Bakrakar, the stag god of the hunt, and Rhen worshiped Mari. Each of the clans had its own god, but he had never heard of Erebus.
“Erebus is the father of all the gods. And he had four children, Ferrol, Drome, Mari, and Muriel.”
“I knew Mari would get in there,” Tesh said with a smile. He wasn’t really interested in the gods and was ready to move to another topic, like whether she’d consider taking a walk with him. Talking to her in the open with everyone watching was horribly awkward. Humiliation hurt less in private.
“The Dherg like to call themselves Belgriclungreians, but they were originally called Dromeians.”
Tesh smiled and nodded. “I was wondering if—”
“Do you see it? Do you understand?”
Tesh hadn’t been paying close attention and felt he’d been caught. He made a guilty grin that he hoped might be seen as charming. Knowing he was asking for too much, he added a shake of his head.
“Ferrol sounds like Fhrey, and Drome sounds like Dromeian—even Dherg and dwarf—they are all variations of the same word. Although Dherg comes from the Fhrey for vile mole and dwarf is a Rhunic word to indicate something small, in our own language, and they shouldn’t have anything to do with each other, but I think they might. That somehow all those words come from the same root. That would mean the Fhrey, Belgriclungreian, and our own language share a common ancestry. I have no idea how that could be possible. And then there’s Mari…” She looked at him expectantly, inviting a response by making a hand-it-over motion with her fingers.
Tesh was at a loss. I never should have asked what she was doing. Now she thinks I’m—
Brin smiled at him.
I’m okay. It’s like the first part of a joke; she doesn’t expect me to know the answer.
“The masculine form of the word Mari is Mani—do you see now?” Thankfully she didn’t even pause to give him time to answer. “Mani sounds a lot like man, doesn’t it?”
She was excited—really excited. He could see it in her eyes, bright and wide. This was important to her, and she wanted him to respond with equal enthusiasm, but all he wanted was a kiss.
“Okay, so maybe it isn’t so obvious to everyone,” she went on when he failed to say anything. “Even Roan didn’t make the connection, but think about it. Those words aren’t similar by accident. Ferrol is the god of the Fhrey. Drome is the god of the Dromeians, and Mari is the god of Man. It says so right in the tablets I found in Neith. Those born of Ferrol, those born of Drome, and those born of Mari moved out into the world. You see, we are Mari born, the children of Mari, daughter of Erebus. Only…” She looked away, perplexed.
“Only what?”
“None of it makes sense. I mean, okay, so this Erebus had four kids, but with who? Elan? We call her the Grand Mother of All, so what does that mean? For that matter, who was Mari’s husband? Or Ferrol’s wife, or Drome’s…I don’t even know what Drome is—the Belgriclungreians called the peak above Neith Dome Mountain. Could that be a derivation? And what about Muriel? Did she have children? Maybe she made the plants and animals. I don’t know, but someone had to, right? And where’d Erebus come from in the first place? Did he have parents? Wouldn’t he have to? And where’d they come from?” She sighed. “I thought I had it all worked out, most of it written down: father of the gods, three kids that made humans, Fhrey, and the Dherg, but no. That’s what you get from talking to Roan about anything. She keeps asking why until you want to punch her in the face.”
Tesh just stared.
“You wanna go for a walk?” Brin asked.
“Huh?” He blinked. “Oh—ah, sure.”
“Great,” she said. Brin wrapped her pages up in the satchel and capped the ink bottle.
“Where we going?” he asked. For all his desire to go someplace quiet, Tesh hadn’t put any thought into where.
“I’d love to go for a walk in a forest, but there aren’t any. Have you been in the Verenthenon?”
“Not much.”
Brin smiled. “I’ll give you a tour.”
Tesh grinned. “I’d like that.” He took her hand and they set off.
* * *
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