Sound Wars Chapter 1-Sound

[PvtFudge]

Chapter 1 — Sound
Sound arrives before thought. It slips through canvas seams, curls around cooking stones, rides the slow breath of sleeping animals. It is the reed's whisper when wind chooses a path, the faint tick of grit shifting under a bare heel, the metal cry when blade touches blade and neither gives. People forget because the ear is always working, and what never rests becomes invisible. Zet does not forget. He has trained himself to hear the camp the way a hunter reads tracks.

Tonight the village hums like a held note. The fires are small, more for light than for warmth, and each flame has its own language. A crack, a sigh, a single pop when resin gives up a bubble. Children try to copy the sounds with their mouths and fail, then laugh, then are hushed by mothers who want this night to be still. A drum thuds twice near the elders' tent, not a call, only a reminder. Tomorrow is the rite. Tomorrow the boy who has carried the name of king without the weight will walk into the sand and see whether the sand accepts him.

Zet and Zera share a small mat beneath a frayed roof of canvas. The moon leaks through a patch and draws a pale coin on the rug between them. Zera sets a stone rod on that circle. Her hands are dark with dye and crushed leaves, fingers nicked by knives that have cooked more meals than they have cut throats.

"If this is one meter," she says, tapping the rod, "how tall is our door?"

Zet glances at the hut flap. He knows the answer because she has asked this before, but he refuses to hurry. Numbers should be spoken with the same care that you give a friend's name. "Two," he says, and waits for the small lift at the corner of her mouth.

"Good," she says. "You learn with your whole head. That will be useful when the rest of you is tired."

He wants to talk about the desert. He wants to ask what dying feels like if the body decides to go quiet, whether the mind notices the moment the mouth becomes sand. He wants to ask if their parents were afraid when they went out and did not return. He says none of this. He points at the rod instead.

"How did you learn the measures?" he asks. "You know more than the elders and you have never pretended otherwise."

"Mother taught me," Zera says. "Father taught her. They taught you too, though you were busy being a child and I had to learn for both of us. Some lessons rest in the mouth, some in the hands, some in the heart. Tomorrow you will need all three."

He tries on a smile that is braver than he feels. "I am ready."

"Then practice one more," she says, and lifts the rod. "Listen."

He closes his eyes. At first he hears everything at once. A camel coughs. A pot lid touches clay and sings for a heartbeat. A man at the edge of camp mutters a prayer and clears his throat at the same place in the words that he always does. Zet pushes the noises apart until each sits in its own bowl. This is Zera's trick, the one she gave him when he was small. Do not let the world pile on you. Sort it. Name it. Decide when to answer.

"What is far?" she asks.

"The river that is not a river," Zet says. "The wind runs over the dunes and makes a thin whistle. It sounds like water when you want it to sound like water."

"What is near?"

"The old drum. Dero's. He only strikes it when he thinks too long."

Zera laughs softly. "He thinks too long every night."

A shadow moves at the tent mouth. Dero does not knock. He does not know how to knock. He is either outside or inside and he never apologizes for the difference. He ducks in and the canvas leans against his back for a breath, then lets him go. He smells of smoke and of a kind of bitter tea he pretends he can stand.

"You should be asleep," he says, and then sees the rod and softens. "Or not. There are worse things than learning measures at midnight."

Zera lifts a brow. "Like what?"

"Meeting the desert with a full belly and an empty head." He lowers himself to the mat with a grunt and sets his drum between his knees. Two fingers test the skin. The sound is low and warm, a heartbeat that has decided it will keep going.

"Tell him," Zera says.

Dero nods once. "Your father told me a thing when he returned from his trial. He said the sixth day is when the desert grows a mouth. It will call your name. It will show you rivers that do not exist, cities that never were, a woman who swears she loves you and will die if you do not drink. He said the sixth day is not about thirst. It is about pride. The desert asks you to admit that you believe you deserve relief."

Zet watches his hands on the drum. Old hands, rope and bone, a map of everything he has done wrong and right. "He did not drink," Zet says.

Dero's mouth twists. "He did not. He waited for the seventh. He found nothing. Only sand, which is an honest answer. He told me to tell you to wait. That is the whole counsel. Wait. Then listen, and when sound arrives, follow the sound that does not flatter you."

Zet swallows. His lips taste of smoke and the last of the bread Zera pressed on him. "What if I do not hear anything at all?"

"Then you return," Zera says. "Not every king finds a place. Some kings learn how to keep people alive while they look."

He looks at her and sees the tired place under her eyes that she tries to hide. He reaches for her hand and then pulls back because he thinks kings do not reach for hands. He hates that thought as soon as it arrives. He takes her hand anyway.

"You will come back," she says. "I would command it if I could."

"Your commands work better than mine," he says, and she snorts.

Dero clears his throat in the way that says he is about to say something he would rather not. "Your father said something else. On the seventh day, if you live, pay attention to small drops. He did not explain. He only said that and closed his eyes and slept like a man who finally set a jar down."

Zet nods, lines the words up in his mind, tries not to let them spill. "On the sixth day, wait. On the seventh, listen for drops."

"Good," Dero says. "Now sleep."

Zera tucks the blanket around Zet the way she did when they were small. He lets her, though his body has lengthened past the way she remembers, and his feet stick out and catch the cool air. She leans and kisses the place above his brow. "Tomorrow you will be as brave as you need to be," she says. "No more, no less."

He tries to keep his eyes open so he can make a joke about bravery, and then he is asleep. The camp settles around him. The drum stops. Dero and Zera sit in the friendly dark and do not speak for a long time. There is nothing new to say. They have already said all the true things and the lies are not worth the effort.

Morning comes with a hush instead of a shout. The sun pushes up a thin lip of light and then climbs. The air changes first, from night's animal breath to the chalk taste of day. Men stretch and spit. Women bind hair. Children wake confused and then remember that this is a special day and try to stand taller than their bodies allow.

Zet washes at the clay basin, one handful at a time. The water is warm because the night did not cool it enough. He rubs his teeth with ash and a rag. He braids his hair the way Zera likes because he might as well carry her order with him as far as he can. When he steps out, the camp sees him, then sees the valley of possibilities they have carried for ten years on their backs. Hope is a cruel creature. It makes the unready feet jump.

The elders meet him at the well, which is not a well at all, only a hole that sometimes holds a puddle when the air is kind. They place their hands on his shoulders and say the words. They are the same words they said to his father and to other boys who never returned. The words taste of smoke and dust and duty. He nods because nodding is what the living can give the dead.

Dero stands near the circle of men, not inside, not outside, his body an argument with time. Axios steps up behind him, large enough to look like a wall. Axios does not speak. He knows that any word he says will be remembered, and he respects words too much to spend them here.

Zera ties a strip of cloth around Zet's wrist. It is a plain thing, the color of soil. "If you fall," she says, "the cloth will not help you. It is not meant to. It is meant to remind you that I am not done with you."

He smiles and the smile is real. "I will bring it back."

"You will bring yourself back," she says. "The cloth is unimportant."

He turns to the people. He has not planned to speak, yet a few sentences line up and insist. His throat tightens. He swallows the fear because a voice should not tremble when it feeds a crowd.

"I am going," he says. "I go for those we buried. I go for those who never had names. I go because I am hungry and you are hungry and hunger is no way to live. If the desert shows me a lie, I will wait. If the desert gives me sound, I will follow. When I return, I will return with more than a story."

It is not an elegant speech, but the camp stills as if words could be shade. Some faces shine with belief. Some harden with habit. A few look away because they cannot bear to lift hope again. Axios lowers his head. Dero looks at his drum and rubs the rim with a thumb, a small blessing.

Zet takes the walking stick Zera has carved for him. The wood knows his weight. He turns his face to the dunes. The first steps are the easiest. Sand is cruel; it lets you think you are strong, then steals strength a grain at a time. By the time the village noise is gone, his breath has settled into a pace he could keep until the world hardens again.

Day one is heat and a sky that does not know how to blink. The light is a rule, not a gift. Zet keeps to the backs of the dunes when he can, the shadowed side that pretends it is mercy. He talks in his head because there is no one to talk to, and because speaking out loud would admit fear. He names what he sees and what he does not. He counts in twos, then in threes, then in a pattern Zera taught him when he could not sleep as a child. He sleeps shallow and wakes foolish and angry at his own body for wanting water he cannot give it.

Day two he stops wondering whether he has already failed. That kind of wondering multiplies. He decides that each step is the trial, not the day. He keeps his tongue still so it does not lick at the memory of water. He thinks of Zera's hand on his hair when summer storms cracked the sky. He thinks of Seti, who used to cough himself purple and still found a way to laugh at Zet's serious face. He thinks of his father, a man shaped like a question he never got to answer.

Day three he hears his own heart too often. It knocks at the inside of his ribs as if asking to be let out. He hums a little to cover the sound and then stops, because the hum makes his mouth dry. He wraps the cloth tighter on his wrist. He speaks to the desert in his mind. You are not alive. You do not hate me. You do not love me. You are only patient.

Day four the wind rises. It climbs over the dunes and runs a thin blade along the back of his neck. Sand writes itself on his lips and in the corners of his eyes. He ties his headscarf tight. He tucks his chin. He has learned from Dero that a man who is small lives longer than a man who tries to stand tall in a storm.

Day five is smaller than the others. The sun is the same, the sand the same, the ache the same, yet his mind loosens its grip on stories. There are no stories here, only hours. His body becomes a series of questions and he answers most of them with no.

Day six arrives in the voice of water. He stands on a ridge and hears a stream just beyond. The sound is perfect. It carries the little beads of noise that stones make when water walks over them. It carries a birdcall that would choose such a place. It carries relief. His legs move without permission. He takes two steps down the slope and then stops, because somewhere under the lovely noise he hears another sound. It is Zera's voice, not spoken, remembered.

Wait.

He closes his eyes. The stream insists. His body shakes in small, shameful ways. He thinks Dero's name and his father's name and his own, then lies down and presses his ear to the sand. The stream is still there. He says the word no, not to the sound, only to the wanting. He sleeps without meaning to and dreams he is walking through a city where every wall is carved with numbers and each number holds a different kind of rain.

He wakes when the night turns gray in the east. His mouth is a broken pot. He wonders whether the sun has finally chosen to break him. He wonders whether he will die here with the last thing he heard being a lie he refused. He sits up. He waits, because there is nothing else to do.

The first true sound arrives small. A single drop from a leaf he has not yet seen. Then another. Then the softened strike of falling water on a wide surface. A quiet roar gathers itself, the voice a river uses when it knows it does not need to prove anything. Zet stands and the desert becomes a valley in a blink. Green rises where there was only tan. The air is new. The world has been hiding an answer behind a curtain, and the curtain finally tires of the game.

He stumbles forward and does what any animal would do. He drops to his knees at the edge and drinks. The water is cold enough to hurt. He coughs, remembers Zera's warning about slow sips, and lets the river teach him how to live again. When he lifts his head, a bird skims the surface and shakes droplets into the light. A jackal stands at a distance and studies him with the frankness of someone who owes him nothing.

Zet laughs, once only, because laughter takes water and he will not waste it. He presses his palm to the damp earth and closes his eyes. The valley answers with a sound he will later struggle to name. It is not music. It is not speech. It is the word yes spoken by a place.

He breathes and lets the yes move through him. He is still a boy with chapped lips and hollow hips, but he is also something else now. He has heard what he came for. He does not yet know what it will cost. He knows only that he will pay.