CHAPTER 21

  "Why do you stare out of that window?” Word Urba barked. "Your mind should be here, in this room, and not woolgathering. I do not abide it with my own Glories and I certainly will not with a Freedom."

  Why had Ran ever said anything to Kiyo? But even as he thought it the enemy taunted him. Urba's skin was dark, but not as Ran's own. His tones were akin to rich, bountiful soil, ringing especially around his eyes.

  One of the massive wood doors to Word Urba’s office opened revealing his nervous attendant, who shuffled forward holding out a slip of paper. The Word snatched this, sneered, "For your sake, See, I hope this is not again that cursed missive.” His hazel eyes barely glanced at it before throwing it back. "Tell that jester Sitor if Ferapa wants something he can come to me. He is not king of Wordheal, much as he might like it. Tell Heracla the same, just because. Though the little coward never leaves his Canton.”

  As See left Ran noticed the attendant looked every bit as empty as he himself felt.

  "Tell him further that he’d be wise to treat his elders with more respect.”

  See stopped. "Which one?”

  "Which?" Word Urba nearly retched the word back.

  "Should I tell that too, Word?”

  "Am I not older than both? GO!

  See flew.

  Ten minutes in the office and Ran had already heard countless variants of the phrase "respect your elder”. All Wordheal knew the Word, for whatever reason, liked to pretend he was much older than he was: bleaching his hair and eyebrows a pale milk when his roots were still fairly black, lathering odd makeups on his face to craft non-existent wrinkles, limping slightly when he walked. . . though that might also be due to his stupid, giant chain.

  "Misbehave in estate today, boy? Hmm? Speak!” Word Urba did not even give Ran the chance to respond before he pushed his long, angular body out of his chair, stalked aroundf the desk. "Vapid generation! Oh, how I long for my youth! The Glory Courts in Olde Honour. Men with rokkish knowledge furnished by reason of rokkish authority! Even those as dull as a First bench could beseech them! Because of it, certainty we no longer enjoy. This revolting day!”

  The hazel-eyes of the middle lands, where the megacity Ovon had sat for ages untold, had always been a people enamored of tradition, even before the Gift. Ran’s favorite myths and poems and histories came from those unGiven hazels. Word Urba retained the same childish pomposity, but lacked their imperial gravitas, their silent fortitude.

  "Why, Word Urba?” asked Ran.

  "’Why?’” The Word mocked. "What do you mean boy, 'why?’”

  "Why do you ask if I did something at estate today, Word?”

  Urba’s eyes narrowed, "Why else would that obsequious freak Sitor and Ferapa want you? They are practically kicking my door in! 'Insist,' is it? The very word put to me in my own Canton tower.

  Sitor? Ran thought.

  ----------------------------

  Sitor knocked several people from his path as he followed, stalked really, Pilgrim, Kiyo, Tek and Ran up and out of the amphitheater. Spindly, with thin hair skin that sat in perpetual contradiction to his youth, Sitor was not pleasant on his best day. Even his pale blues sat in holes etched deep in his ugly face. It was only when the family congregated before the massive, sparkling Central fountain, away from the crowd, that Ran was able to hear their pursuer.

  "--invited to meet with the Word of Wordheal. You can’t simply say 'no.’”

  "Word of Wordheal?” Kiyo scoffed. "Word of the Freedom Canton.”

  Sitor’s eyes took her in with disdain. "Distinction without difference.”

  Ran heard a cough, looked up expecting to find Pilgrim’s crazy countenance. What he saw in the man’s face was. . .what? It was as a canvas covered in lush colors depicting a park but in its center was not a lake or gazebo but a hollow of unpainted blank. A quiet. A vacancy.

  "Wow," the bald man said, "you’re even more unpleasant in person. Well get this, weird mummy-guy, I don’t want to meet Ferapa. Go. Get.”

  Sitor frowned, little use to such dismissal, such irreverence. Then he leaned in, said, "I know who you are.”

  Pilgrim smiled down at Ran, then screamed, "WELL I CAN’T IMAGINE HOW YOU FOUND OUT!” All the pigeons around them took off, everyone turned. To Sitor Pilgrim said, "Who am I?”

  "It is all over the south. By tomorrow the entire city. Myself? I don’t believe it. The greatest Given teacher on Nameless lodging with. . .” he looked up and down Kiyo again, "instead of meeting the city's Word.”

  Unused rage kindled in Ran's heart, but it wet out.

  Pilgrim stuck a thumb toward the amphitheater. "Wasn’t impressed. I saw people go scarlet today despite him.” He began to lead the family once more as Ran regretted his assumption.

  Sitor cut them off, held up a skeletal finger, "This is not an invitation one ignores. Word Ferapa wants to discuss plans for tomorrow at Gift. He’s tasked me with retrieving you. If you get the Guard involved, they’ll be a scene, and then they bring you with me.” Sitor’s smile was crooked. "Maybe these too."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Tek stepped forward, "What in shaking maw is wrong with you, dude?” Kiyo pulled him back.

  "South section,” Sitor spit. "Predic--"

  Pilgrim was in Sitor’s face before the word finished, his head turned as if to kiss the man but with his mouth going the other way, pressed so forward that their eyeballs nearly touched.

  "No little girls here, boy,” Pilgrim voice was a lake at dead calm. "Apologize to these young men, to the lady.”

  Sitor seemed to want to reel back, but instead said, "Yarp.”

  "Apologize,” Pilgrim repeated. "Lest I pants you right here, right now. I'm a crazy person, Sitor. I will do it.”

  Sitor seemed to dry heave but Ran didn't know if it was really a real heave cause he swallowed, loudly. "Young ma’am, me...sorry. . .” After three or four hearbeats, he turned, power-walked away, his butt high and stiff as if still fearing the pantsing.

  Pilgrim turned, "Ah, that was stupid. Alright, who’s ready to paint?”

  "You. Are,” Tek said, "the greatest shaking person I’ve ever know!”

  Kiyo pulled Tek to herself again, though she too smiled. "Eso! Damn the boy and his cursing!”

  "My first name?! Really Kiyo?! It’s so dumb! There may be people around here I know!”

  Ran agreed. Pilgrim was cool.

  -----------------------

  Ran was not. Ran had done nothing, again. Pilgrim had defended them. His little brother defended them!

  His enemy did not pursue these lines. Likely because Ran knew them to be true well enough. Instead it hummed through him as another ugly man dressed him down for the second time in a day.

  "Layabout! Daydreamer! Speak or leave, I do not care which! You are trouble. That anyone can see. Do not think I failed to hear of my dear Vox’s treatment at your mother's. . .urm. . . bar or whatever it is! Had I heard of it yesterday I’d not deigned to accept this meeting. I myself cannot imagine why Ferapa wants to display this Pilgrim, if that’s who this vagrant truly is.” Urba stood and walked to the great book resting on the podium in the corner of the room; began to leaf through its large, wide pages. Urba’s famous notebook, the Glory cantons interpretive laws for its Text-scholars. "It is not the least bit surprising that he is a Freedom. 'Freedom’. True freedom is in submission to your rokkish betters.”

  Ran watched gold-edged pages fall, one after the other. The book itself was so massive, at least four feet squared, thousands of pages, the wood stand that held it was three feet thick. Sticky notes and bookmarks punctuated its sides and based on its mismatched pages in size and color it had been added to thousands of times.

  There were no other books in the otherwise drab office.

  "Word Urba?” Ran ventured.

  "What?”

  "I came to talk to you about some issues I’ve been having. I wouldn’t want to waste any more of your time.”

  Urba returned, slid back into his chair. "'Issues'. I am not surprised by that in the least. You Freedoms are led to believe the most inappropriate things about Rokk. Sebi nonsense! And how self-centered you are! No notion of the totality of the Gift and your meagre participation in it. Obsessed with individuality. No appreciation for total submission; the beauty of the rightly appointed rokkish individual. You would rather have your flashing lights!”

  Ran thought of Rina. "'Sebi nonsense'. I’ve heard Vox say things like that. What nonsense? The Archives come from Sebu. Heir was Sebi.”

  Again Urba interrupted useful thoughts. "You make a clown of yourself, boy. Your thoughts are far too elevated for your station. Another consequence of your Canton. You think when you read the Text you discover something new. You haven't. You have sullied it with an untrained mind. The Text is for the scholars of the Glory Canton, whose authority stretches, through unbroken line, to the Gift. My rokkish nature prevents me from finding too much fault with you, boy. You regurgitate what foolish teachers have poisoned you with.”

  "My mother is my teacher,” said Ran.

  "Then your mother is a fool,” Urba stared directly into Ran’s eyes. Ran stared right back. "I’ll admit,” Urba looked away, "the Archives contain, what shall I call them? Notes? Reflections? Yes, reflections, that Sebi had of Rokk. What else to expect of herdsman and grass-farmers? The Sebi were poor clerks. You doubt? Believe me harsh? Unfair? Read them. My Vox tells me you fancy yourself well-read, and if that’s the case I’m sure you must have gleaned something from some of the other ancient and ignorant fables about rokkae. The Sebi, in that same mode, mistook our precious and beautiful Rokk, Heir in the Red Hat, as nothing more than one more muscled, loin-clothed brute. Land management? Diet? Foolish is not harsh enough. Before the Words came set the greatest minds in Olde Honour took the Archives to pieces, analyzed every word, set every pericope. We cannot go to the civilized world speaking the Gift out of one side of our mouths and savage Sebi grunting and mewling from the other.”

  "But Heir is a warrior, Word. That's just a fact.” Did Ran always sound so detached. Was this why he came here? To argue this with a Word?

  Urba’s curled fingers pulled at his gold chain and he leaned forward so that it scraped against the desk. "Does this assertion find it origin in mommy as well?”

  "She reads to us from the Text every night. It’s all in there. Heir took our poison as inheritance, became nameless, croaked nameless. We're his blood-vomit. That’s what the Letters wrote to The Giant. Ripped it from the hands of they follow in silences like a warrior. See where I’m going?”

  The corner of Urba’s eye twitched, soon the other did as well. By the time he spoke Ran wondered if his face would snap like a rubber band. "You talk of stories from ancient rise, boy. Cave tales from men who believed the Field was a gigantic house, maw a literal mouth beneath the world. Are you so dense?”

  Alright shaker. Thought Ran with an odd determination. You wouldn’t have helped me anyway.

  "Pardon me, Word Urba, but Heir’s Lives are also Sebi rise stories. I don’t need any Canton or big book to tell me that. Guess you do.”

  You could almost hear the man’s skin stretch across his knuckles as he clenched his hands.

  Ran had set his course, and now must pay the price.

  Still, he jumped when Urba’s door burst open, and a man, smiling broadly, stepped in. If Heracla and Urba were extremes, Ferapa was the middle. Healthy, white, not too long or wide, with styled brown hair that hung down just far enough to partially shield his dull blue eyes. He wore neither robe nor hat, but instead a pair of faded blue jeans and a dark vest over a clean white shirt.

  Ferapa stepped to Ran, snatched up his hand, gave it several shakes. "Urba! Friend! Haven’t I been sending for you all day? Ah, but I’m rude! You’re busy! So much to do before the Gift tomorrow! You may not have as many thirsty ears this year, but you do alright. This must be Ran, the clever young man whose devotion to the Rokk is so great that he would spend his free time seeking to learn directly from the two Words! How are you, good son?”

  "Uh--” Ran was pulled up out of the chair, "Good?”

  "I hope you don’t mind if I cut short your meeting, Urba, but I need to ask a favor of the kid.”

  "Take him,” Urba sniffed, hazel eyes frozen on where Ran had sat.

  Ferapa’s smile widened, and he pushed Ran to the exit. "Cheery as ever. I see you’ve added more pages to your book! You’ll need a new cover soon, I fear.”

  Then Ran was in the hall and Ferapa said, "C’mon kiddo, we’ve things to talk about.”

  "B-but,” Ran squeaked, just now processing all that he'd said to Word Urba, and all that Word Ferapa had just said to him! "w-what can I help you with?”

  "Everything,” the Word replied.