Lessons in differential history continue as I make my way through Guns, Germs and Steel. I’m fresh out of the part on the invention of writing. Yes, this is crucial stuff for me.

So far, I’ve established that there is at least one kind of writing on Andala. Tani just so happens to be her village’s teacher. As Marie describes the experience of learning alongside Tani’s little sister:

Aia let me play with her writing squares, which I found more intricately detailed than I imagined.

“ra” she said as I picked one up, and “ni” as I pointed to another.
“Spell my name, Aia. Spell Marie.”
Little Aia grabbed two squares and righted them, then read them out to me. “Ai-a!” She said with pride.
“Oh, okay, well done.” In just that moment, she had taught me these weren’t letters but sounds. Each square was a syllable. Or at least what the Ana considered one to be. I figured she’d need another pair for me. “Now spell my name, Ma-Ree, Marie!”
She grabbed three more squares, and slid them around the first half of her name.
“No. That can’t be it.”
Aia grabbed my finger and brought it down the line she’d made. Reading aloud, “ta-kai-yeen”.
“Ah, I should have guessed!”

That’s a syllabary. A writing system similar to an alphabet, but with more symbols as it chooses the next larger unit for its sounds. The Ana use the Azu script, developed by their neighbours for themselves. Anatara is a little awkward when put into written words, as it doesn’t work quite the same way as Azu; a clumsiness Marie hints at above. Nothing quite as bad, I imagine, as the English language’s maddening flights from all reason in the Roman writing you and I share here; but not quite as clean as the Azu’s own tongue for which it evolved.

Speaking of which, I’ve found myself questioning my assumptions given where I’ve just been. So writes Jared Diamond:

To us today, it is tempting to ask why societies with early writing systems accepted the ambiguities that restricted writing to a few functions and a few scribes. But even to pose that question is to illustrate the gap between ancient perspectives and our own expectations of mass literacy. The intended restricted uses of early writing provided a positive disincentive for devising less ambiguous writing systems. The kings and priests of ancient Sumer wanted writing to be used by professional scribes to record numbers of sheep owed in taxes, not by the masses to write poetry and hatch plots. As the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss put it, ancient writing’s main function was “to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings.” Personal uses of writing by nonprofessionals came only much later, as writing systems grew simpler and more expressive.

Guns, Germs and Steel, p.235

Sumerian cuneiform was indeed born a dirty mess. Writing, the handful of times we invented it from scratch here on Earth, was not a thunderbolt of inspiration, fully formed in one shot. It evolved. I knew this, but I overlooked it in the interest of clean and shiny simplicity and design. That’s what happens when you read more about Sumerian than you read the stuff for yourself, with the old master as a guide.

You can either invent writing the long and messy way, for yourself, or you can steal it. Actually, it’s not always just that. Sometimes, if you hear someone else has a way to scribble down their language, you rush to its conclusion and invent your own way. Diamond describes this as carbon copying versus diffusion. A good example of the latter is Cherokee. Its inventor, an ingenious fellow by the name of Sequoyah, borrowed some printed English that he couldn’t read, and devised his own syllabary around symbols from our alphabet. He didn’t invent writing, but he didn’t just copy the Romans as we did, either. He didn’t know that the characters he saw worked the way they did as he invented his alternate system, closer to the what the Minoans used than us. Funny what’s possible, when you know it can be done.

Perhaps Andala’s true first writing is dead and buried come Marie’s day. And so the Azu script is a descendant, more like Sequoyah’s, created anew without the telltale cruft?

The Andala that I’m writing, come the time of our discovery, is one in transition from illiteracy into its modern age. We weren’t a necessary trigger, but happened to arrive coincidentally to see it. Or the way it could have been.

I’m not about to kluge up the pretty little writing system I’ve long had squiggling through my mind in the interest of looking the original. Not yet. But this research is leading me to consider the whole geography and history of Andala in new light. The Azu are my world’s oldest people, its first empire and the most populous. Azuya, their continent along with the Ana, is clearly my Old World. What went on there, long before Proteus showed up? And what have I already created, in my unwitting assumptions, that could well be for the better in any case? This is what I’m working on. While I can.

Although I’ve twice expressed my disagreement with Francis Fukuyama’s proposed End of History, I shan’t deny that the English language is coming to dominate the world. It’s not that everyone speaks it everywhere, as any dedicated traveller soon enough discovers, but that those with power and influence do. Like every lingua franca before it, English is the tool of trade and the resulting élite. It reaches further now than ever before, and ultimately may indeed become the supreme second language of the world. But that day is still to come, if it does.

My stake, in this book, is that English is indeed the primary language of the Earth come that point in time. But it is far from the only one we the people speak. Whatever metaphoric good would a world state be without a hint of Babel? English is the fallback, the safest means of interchange; much as it is now, only more so. The Anatara word for English – humanitara – is essentially accurate. “Humanese.”

Andala has more than one language of its own, of course. And with my fondness for symmetry, Anatara is its analogue for English; the second language among the privileged that world over. That rural Ana happen to speak the language of their kings and foreign princes is, as English, an amusing little accident of history brought about far above them.

Speaking of native English, I’ve already exposed my own Anglocentricity by my choice of human characters so far. The Kinnerin family, of Alpha, hails from my own town of Edinburgh. And half the crew of Proteus is from this isle; namely Marie Chen of Tottenham and Robin Henderson of Leith. There’s something to be said for writing what you know. Not least when you’ve a far flung universe like mine to throw them in.

But even if English is the language of the global presidency, that’s not to say the native Anglosphere lies within it.

I’m well minded to keep the Earth of centuries from now quite complex. One good means to this is an independent streak among the English language nations. The United States is already pencilled in as something of a singleton. And for all the awkwardness of playing part of Europe this country shows, I can easier imagine England, alike, outside the eventual United Nations as I’ve described. It’s my own Scotland that I can see as a part of the muddled beast, and so it shall be as this tale’s concerned; whether or not set upon on its own course next year.

All this said, my story’s not about the politics. Surely not up front. The best you’ll find, if I succeed, is the sense of a broader landscape beyond the events described. Make your own inference. I just like to get things right, and you can only do that by the feel of them, not the indistinct fear of their absence.

Yes, it’s all been Proteus, lately. Goodness, if that little ploy hasn’t grown to almost fifty chapters already, of a thousand words apiece. Not quite what I had in mind. But I shan’t repeat myself. It’s all good practice.

Instead, some inside details.

First up is quite what I meant in the latest opening:

Our welcome in Ayanakert was good and warm. Tani, our steadfast advocate then and since, caught Akanai’s agile fancy with her grandstand tales and infectious keen. The pair of them shared an instinctive curiosity, in fact, unable to leave a stone unturned once spotted. Not all Andalans, or Ana, are like this; as I’d seen for myself with Tani’s parents. So they have a name for it. Essin. Despite her rural accent and antiquated ways, the king’s household recognised Tani as Essaieen the moment she got him started. I could see it in their cringing eyes. Each spurred on the other.

This is Marie’s first mention of an idea I conjured up a while ago in Dimensions of Identity. I can’t think of a pithy introduction beyond what I wrote then and since. The concept of Essin and its identity as Essaieen is as big a deal to the Ana as good and evil is to us, or indeed possibly even gender. My intuition’s antennae are a-tingle with the possibilities, even if what I’m writing here this moment sounds too nebulous to be of much note. Let’s just say I’m working on this. And that such experiments may very well be what Proteus is for.

Then there are the statues:

“This is Anatai-kalikaleh. Akanai’s aka.” Said Tani of a statue, the first of a crescent in the hall. They were lifesized and really quite exquisitely detailed.
“His mother.” I explained. “She ruled Andala too?”
“Mm.” Said Tani, who began to name all of them. “Ankelika-kalikaleh. Anaster-kalikaleh. Kanekina-kalikaleh. And…” She paused to look back at Akanai, who waved her on. “Ayana-kalikaleh.” Said Tani, in hushed reverence at the smallest statue of the line. Little Tani almost towered over it in comparison. “They’re all women.” Observed Kingston.
“Aye, and they’ve all got the same fashion sense too.” Robin naturally dwelled on the figures lack of clothes.
“Is Akanai the first male to rule Andala?” Mina asked Tani. “The first man?”
“Mm.” She nodded. “Do not hold it up against him.”

They are of course Andala’s rulers, in reverse order back to the first. Kingston raises a good, if obvious, point. Akanai is none other than the first king of the unified tribes. Every chief before him was a queen. Not that we should hold this against him. These are modern times.

As for the statues themselves, I do have something like cult images in mind. What’s good for Sumer is often good for Andala. I’m not sure as yet quite how Akanai fits into his people’s religion, and whether his ancestors are considered godesses as such, or not. But I’m thinking about it, and so a hook left here and there is welcome enough to me.

What’s the deal with those funny numbers?

“Nai-nai-nai-nai?” Asked Akanai. Then his automated translation in our ears. “65,535?” It said, quixotically.
“Marie know number-speak yet?” Asked Tani, who I had not taught our own system.
“Bigger.” I grinned.
“Kaia!” She told him. More.
“Anka-ko-nai!?” Asked Akanai, with a raised brow. “4,294,967,295!?”
“That’s pretty damn specific.” Grumbled Kingston.
“That’s some power ae two. Near enough.” Noted Robin.

Near enough. But the base is 16. Namely hex. Nai-nai-nai-nai is the Anatara equivalent of 0xffff, or 65,535 to those of us who don’t think in bits. Take a guess at what anka-ko might then mean, given Akanai’s second stab amounts to 0xffffffff. Evidently, they have their own kind of scientific notation. Another convenient, if not too egregious, shortcut.

My notes say the actual answer to his question is 14 billion humans on Earth by 2169. And another 2 billion between Aria and Gaia, apparently, which sounds a bit high. Let’s just say Marie was right. Consistency being what matters when you are, of course, making it all up as you go along.

And finally the finale:

I showed Tani my ten digits plus three from my friend, knowing she had no idea what our numbers meant. My translator whispered its guess to me when Mina said, but I wanted to make a point.

“That many ahreni. That’s how long we took to get here from our home.”

She and Akanai looked at us, and eachother, understanding what I’d said but finding it a little hard to believe. Then Akanai muttered something and Tani laughed.

“You are old!” She giggled.
“Tell me aboot it.” Sighed Robin.
“Yes. I suppose we are.” I said. “But don’t hold it against us.”

Mina’s answer is correct. Proteus took six years, or the better part of thirteen ahreni to discover and reach Andala. But I like my tricks, and Tani’s reaction might not be to quite what Marie had in mind.

Marie stands before Andala’s king.

“Marie, you must be calm. You must look. Look!” Tani grabbed my shoulders.
“What?”
“Look into his eyes.” She said, staring square in mine.
“Will do.”

She pulled me, very almost off my feet, towards the palace; the house they call Baiyana. She swept me through the gathered singers, who caught me with curious glances. And she placed me down before the quiet man, cross-legged on the ground. He alone did not stare at us.

“Akanai!” She whispered, turning me by the cheeks to show him.
“I know.”
“When he looks, Marie looks.”
“Right, Tani, I’ve got it.”

Eye contact is a pretty big deal among Ana. Tani’s fearless stare was the very first thing I saw of her, and I took some time to learn to match her back. Most humans don’t much like you gazing long and hard into their eyes, not for minutes at a time, and I didn’t either before I met her. But Tani’s people were different. There was no shaking off their inquisitive eyes. Indeed, they’d always wonder what the matter was if you didn’t answer their gaze with the same. Standing there, looking down on the top of the king’s head, I imagined quite how vital a sign of respect it must be to stay with his, of all eyes.

“Kalikaleh?” Tani asked him in a fearful voice.
“Kina?” He answered with a smile. The Ana word for daughter. Then he fixed his gaze on me.

The first thing I saw in Akanai was just how young he was. The way Tani and Takaraya spoke of him, I’d expected a fearsome man, a great and storied leader; yet here he was, younger than me. Physically, Akanai was somewhere in the middle of the people here I saw. He was fairly small, surely compared to his right hand Ganaks, and he was lightweight quite like Tani. But he did have the most luxurious head of hair I’d ever seen on a grown man. Thick and deep jet black, it started from a point above his eyebrows and just kept going almost like a mighty ice-cream cone. You could see his bony temples, broader and more apparent than Tani’s, but after that it was all this singular obelisk which must have been a nightmare to keep in order, so I guessed. Not that I had long to get the gist of his appearance. Good to Tani’s word, I stared back into his big black eyes, wondering where his irises were and quite when he would blink.

Tani held me like an outsized toy and explained to him who I was and what I was like in a hectic babble my earpiece couldn’t quite keep up with. She was usually so confident, and clear, but being this close to Akanai unnerved her. Not least the fact that he was staring at me instead of her. She sounded anxious, and I wanted to break from the man’s eyes, but knowing better I clutched her arm instead. Even among Ana, you are free to blink, yet I felt so strange locked here in his sight that I doubt I did.

“Ma Ree?” He said, halting Tani on the spot.
“Kadeski Marie.” I said, with a smile and some relief.
“Anatara!” He grinned. And then, without the least of effort, he was up in front of me and gave me the traditional Ana hug.
“Tani-taken hata stertara ay Ana?” Tani of Kentaken taught you to speak like us?
“Mm.” I answered. And paid my compliment. “Tani kasteer.” She is very good.

Suddenly, I felt a hand across my mouth. It was Tani’s. I fought to pull her away, but kept my eyes on Akanai, as she’d recommended. Tani apologised for my apparent faux pas, which the king himself shrugged off as nothing. His courtiers quietly complained for him.

“Tani, maybe you should translate for us?”
“Marie! Jai takaytara!” She scowled as I kept pace with Akanai’s epic stare. She didn’t want to upset him with the sound of my foreign language.
“Takaytara?” He wondered. “Ma Ree tara ay, ay…”
“Humani.” I said.
“Mm! Ma Ree tara ay ‘humanayeen’. Na stera tara.” Marie speaks as humans speak. We ought to hear this.

And so I did. I told him there were four of us, that we came from a world beyond Kai, Aira and the brightest stars. And I told him that our purpose was to learn whatever we could of Andala. I listened closely as Tani relayed my lines, and my own translator whispered the inverse in my ear. She stayed true to my story, and Akanai clearly liked it. His eyes bulged at the idea that people lived beyond Andala. He had questions, all right! He was just as curious about us as we were in him.

“Oh, I will tell you about the other human worlds. But can I introduce my friends first? And, Tani, when can I break my stare?”
“Not now!” She commanded, then duly asked Akanai if I could fetch my friends. Only when he answered yes, did Tani lastly give permission. Goodness, I must have been staring at the man for half an hour!

I walked back down to Bee, trying to shake the crick from my neck as I did. What a relief! My eyes felt dazzled by all the people watching me, in every gaze the same potential snare as the king’s.

I daren’t look back.

From the introduction of Inanna by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer:

“In the first line of ‘The Descent of Inanna,’ ‘From the Great Above she set her mind to the Great Below,’ what exactly does ‘mind’ mean?”
“Ear,” Kramer said.
“Ear?”
“Yes, the word for ear and wisdom in Sumerian are the same. But mind is what is meant.”
“But—I could say ‘ear’?”
“Well, you could.”
“Is it opened her ear or set her ear?”
“Set. Set her ear, like a donkey that sets its ear at a particular sound.”

As Kramer spoke, a shiver ran through me. When taken literally, the text itself announces the story’s direction: From the Great Above the goddess opened (set) her ear, her receptor for wisdom, to the Great Below.

I reckon that’s a pretty economic name for knowledge. And that is what I mean with all this Ana talk of giving people their ears:

“I am an explorer. I travel to new places. That’s what I do. What about you?”
“I give the young watchers their ears.”

Even so, seeing as this is Tani talking, not all is as it seems. As came up today:

“Tani! You’re a teacher!”
“Tee-sher?” She quietly asked.
“You tell them how to do things. Like writing. Taralika, isn’t it? You teach them how to read.”
“Mmm. The Talai here is the young watchers. I give the young watchers their ears.” In truth, she said the “young washers”, but I knew what she was on about.

In this case, it was a sleight of hand in foreshadowing. If that. But the general rule most surely applies. Tani just can’t get her tongue around every sound in common English:

“Tee-sher. Tee-ker. Tee-ser. Tee-ter.” She mumbled to herself, unable to get the funny sounding word out quite intact.
“Don’t worry about it. Humanitara is a funny language!”
“Humanitara?” She grinned. “I think you mean you talk In-lish.”
“Oh, I sometimes do. When I’m drunk…” I rolled my eyes to show I was kidding.
“Druh-unk?” She wondered in an instant. Ever so earnestly.
“Do me a favour and forget I said that!”
“Crazy Humanitara. Dunk. Teesh. Keeld-eren. I hear Azu! I hear Katani!”

Which is to say don’t be surprised if our narrator turns out to be a touch optimistic at times. Not every slip of Tani’s dodgy English needs wind up in the text. So is my excuse!

I expect I’ll be relying on it with the stuff that’s coming up. You’ll see. What else but Anatara would they speak in Ayanakert? Well, for one thing, it is not quite all an Ana city. By any means.

Doing things yourself, you earn a little sympathy for the ways others did it before. Writing in dual languages is my example. Many is the time I’ve seen or read a universal translator at work, Babel Fish or worse, and heaved a sigh, mighty indignant. Why be so lazy? I asked. Why avoid so key an angle on the character of any culture? Why turn down the chance to explore?

Well, clearly it can be a lot of work. Not just for the writer, who in my case can well bear it, but the reader too. Who really wants to have to figure all this out as they follow along? Surely not as many people as would enjoy the story just as well without. I do still have my qualms.

But in doing the work, I have wound up exploring things anew. Even in this solo creation you’d think I’d better know. And one of these is Tani’s voice in English. Unexpected.

I had a rough idea what I wanted Anatara to sound like, going in, and a fair few words to start off on; most still to be used. But what I hadn’t considered was the actual back and forth in living prose. I’ve found that things work better the more able Tani is at talking Marie’s language. Surely more so than Marie’s Anatara in return. In a sense, I’ve learned the lesson of the English-only space operas that I riled against: do it in our language, not one you cooked up on your own. It’s more about the doing than intent.

Oh, I’ll still explore. The old having cake and eating, too. But there is method to the seeming shortcut called quick learning characters. They keep things moving, and, once I’ve established their precedent, ensure the future keeps on shooting off that way.

Speaking of which, Marie noted Tani’s cosmetic indifference to past and future tense.

I liked the way Tani thought of past and future. She did know about them, of course, but she spoke as though the present was all there ever was.

Wouldn’t you know: I’m trying to keep things simple? I doubt such a spanner in the works would do this, in fact, but I just plain like the idea that Anatara has no such thing as time beyond the present. I find the innumerable tricks of indirection we play in our own language are more often a hindrance to communication than they are a help. And by “often” I mean “always”, of course. Not that this makes life easier for the Ana, I’m sure, but it’s quite the kind of difference whose philosophy I’d like to bring up all so sneaky in the background. So, for now, it is: Anatara only ever speaks of the present.

Not all Ana are alike. And so too for Anatara. What goes for Tani might not always be the case with other Talai, let alone the wider nation. Consider Tani’s little half-sisters, Atty and Aia, who already differ from her and the adults in one instance so far. I like to think that language is the creation of the youth of a people, not the crusty elders. And sometimes fact agrees with me.

In that vein, I’m playing fast and loose with Tani’s spoken style. I’m trying to keep her believably simple, being so new to this deeply foreign language that she speaks, but cogent too. As I’ve figured out before, her key rôle is to be our introduction to Andala, and Marie’s vital bridge. Tani is the precedent, in literal fact and figurative deed. Yes, I can still revise what she says and how and when, but I’m playing this by ear. Something tells me I’ll know better once I’m done, what it was precisely I was looking for when I went in.

Speaking of Sumer, it was, of course, my source for Tani’s first attempt at making legend.

Storytelling naturally intrigues us storytellers. The Sumerians were surely into it, dedicating a good part of their all-important writing to the deeds of gods and heroes. We know a fair bit about how they saw the world and their lives within it through this record. The way you praise your heroes and curse your villains says a lot about you and your intended audience. What I find most fascinating of all, however, is the fact that, sometimes, your readers live tens of centuries later than you thought. Just imagine it. As that is all we ever can.

My own knowledge of the world’s oldest literary style comes from the highly recommended History Begins at Sumer by the great Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer. It’s a series of thematic essays, each one cutting through the historic record from a different angle, and all of them backed up with quotations straight from the ancient source. Reading direct line for line translations of the original material makes for a very different experience than reading other people’s narratives, such as mine right here. You begin to get a sense for the pace of that pioneering people’s prose, as well as a tantalising sweep of their foreign yet familiar vision of humanity and the world. I can do no more than to simply state that I’ve unbound admiration for the painstaking work that has gone on, and continues to, in reconstructing that culture, so distant and all the more telling because of it. As for my part, I will borrow what I can!

Tani’s story is my take on the Sumerian style of legend, as I’ve read in Kramer and elsewhere, transported to the scene she found as she watched Bee’s descent on Andala. Marie’s version is already told. Her Ana counterpart’s went like this:

First, I, brave Tani of the noble Talai, the feared of the forest and the sovereign of the steppe, was out upon the night. Beyond Keyet, beyond the final fortress of the dawn, Tani sets her eyes to mighty Kai, in plea, and obtains a vision. A streak of fire, like aner without a master, like aner without a guiding soul, is brought across the sky. Is tearing the roof of eternity in two. Fire threatens the very night, the very day, fire endangers the realm of life itself! I, Tani of the righteous Talai, brightest children of all the Ana, Tani fixes her fiercest vision to the baleful fire. Tani asks of greatest Kai the chance to prove herself, and knowing this truth, Tani follows the fire across the farthest highest wilderness of sky.

Presently, Tani hears a terrible explosion of thunder without lightning! I am not dismayed. Kai is on my side. Next, Tani sees the fire change direction, Tani sees the fire choose its path. She is still a stranger to fear. Whatever this may be she sees before her, Kai has spoken, Kai is on my side. Lastly, Tani sees the fire become…

The fire! It became sera! Before her eyes, Tani saw in amazement, the fire was now metal! She follows the metal fire. Tani hastens to keep it in her sight, as the metal moves so quickly you could not believe her if she told you. Lastly of all, the metal approaches the river, the metal nears Aykataliya, the metal chooses to rest upon the bank. Tani watches it, Tani who knows no fear. Tani approaches it. I reach the metal. I stand upon its back!

From the metal, as Tani watches, from out of the metal’s mouth, she walks! Her name is Marie.

Repetition is key to Sumerian writing. They were practically always at it. Quite whether it was how they talked, or, more likely, how they emphasised themselves for recital, it turned out quite a favour for their translators thousands of years later. The surviving tablets are just as beat up as you might expect in that time, and “fragments” are truly that. This habit of saying things not once, of saying things not two times, this habit of saying things at least thrice, made the impossible only difficult. It made the puzzle possible at all. It was a kind of redundant error correction built into their text.

Emesal, for instance, only really made sense to us as Inanna and her women peers were so often repeated by their male narrator.

What I did was to take the feel and flow I could remember from the translations, and place Tani at the centre. As she is improvising her own legend, I reckoned a little awkwardness was in order. She shifts about, speaking in first person and then third again, indeed there’s even second in there, mixed up from line to line. Her story is unprepared, and she is not well versed in presenting such a mighty feat to a crowd. But Tani is well educated by the local standards, knowing a good selection of her culture’s staple favourites, so she has this one in her when the moment comes. Just as vital: she has the ego for it.

Tani had her work cut out for her. She did her best, and it almost even did the trick. She must do better for the next time, as she has bigger powers to impress, and scenes more complex than her little village. She’s on the right track, she just needs to find her audience. The attention her visitors bring should soon see to that.

Marie can thank her lucky stars to have Tani for a friend. Their bond is the beginning of everything for Earth and Andala. And as such, you just know it’s going to turn a little tricky. High tales and hopes as always. Legends within the one they know to tell.

Another Protean push is underway. And, well, it’s a little thick with my fictive language. What to say? There’s a tension between my hesitation to dive too deep with the stuff on one hand, and the demands of active narrative on the other. Proteus is all first draft. With all that this entails. So I’ve been leaning in favour of overdoing all this Anatara stuff for the time-being, with the thought it can be cut out somewhere along the way. Certainly, there’s more of my made up language on show for now than I’d ever aim to see in Alpha when I’m finished.

Already, I find I’m playing games. Here’s a prime example. The latest “chapter” of Marie’s tale, a name I’ll use for convenience’s sake, contains this conversation.

“He sounds just like your dad.”
“Why Marie think that?”
“Tah-neeeeee…” I said, in my best Taki impression. Aia and Atty immediately laughed themselves into howling hysterics.
“Marie! Do not talk like man.”
“Talk like what?”

Why would men talk different? As ever, this goes back to Sumer.

Like the ancients themselves, I’ve a soft spot for Inanna. She was their ever-present and mischievous sex and war goddess, at once both the guardian of harlots and the Queen of Heaven. Yes, a complex and ultimately Sumerian state of affairs! Inanna was one of the most popular of the gods, and easily the most mentioned goddess. Indeed, the tablets often speak in her own words. The strange thing being that when they do, these are in a different dialect.

Sumerian women spoke emesal. “Women’s talk” or “fine language”. And that included Inanna as their archetype in goddess. A different variety of speech entirely from the men? The existence of such a fussy distinction intrigues me. Let alone how it ever came about in the first place. How did mothers speak to their infant sons? Yet it survived into their writing and that was that. Colour me baffled.

And that is usually just the moment when I say “yoink!”

I’m not sure how far I’ll run with this, but here’s the current plan. Kentaken, the backward outer fringe of the Ana kingdom in which Marie and company landed, still clings to the old ways. And once upon a time, there was a gender difference in pronunciation, if not full dialect, between Ana men and women. The drawling vowels of the men there are a telltale to every other Ana. As clear an accent as you’d encounter anywhere on Earth. The fact it’s just the men is my borrow from Sumer. I may just build up a bigger picture of the why and wherefore later.

Another purposeful oddity, as if it could be a plain and prosaic mistake!, is the way Aia and Atty say la. The usual Ana exclamation of wonder, “light”, they say as lai instead. Why? Well, how about they are the vanguard of a generational shift? The same thing happens here time and time again. It would help if they were in the city, let alone out where they are, but I can contrive. As one who looks for the future in the deepest past, I naturally like the idea that old and new can share the same strange place.

Much later in the story, well beyond Marie’s account of Proteus, I’ve another scene set aside for Tani. In fact I’d thought of this before all the plot and details of the current thread, and in a sense it’s what she’s for and where she really came from. A lifetime has passed, and Tani is as old an Ana as there has ever been. She’s living in London instead of her childhood home among the Talai. Madala, a character still to be born back in the Proteus narrative, comes to see her. And what does she notice? Tani still talks the old way. So much has changed since then.

Hospitality. Talai style.

Accepted now by her people, I took a good look around the water village of the Talai. Tani’s home was quite idyllic in the light of day. The most you would hear was other people’s voices, which were forever chatting away as long as anyone was awake. People you could walk right up to without much ado, and address yourself, free from the distractions of our world. Here, there was no such thing as a stranger. They weren’t much for formality, the Talai. And we were to be treated well now, by Takaraya’s leaving command.

Everything the islanders built seemed well suited to where it stood and what it was for. Though where it stood exactly was more than a bit haphazard. The little village was no place for town planning. Every alley seemed to take a different spiral on its way around. The Talai themselves just hopped from place to place, as often as not over the roofs. I preferred not to do that.

There were perhaps fifty people living here. I never quite saw all of them at once. About a dozen of them were children younger than Tani, including her sisters who were determined to keep a close eye on us. I only saw a handful of elderly faces, and they didn’t look that much senior to Takaraya. The adult men kept to themselves, easily the quieter half of the people here. And the women watched us cautiously, without breaking from their eternal conversation unless asked. The young adults like Tani seemed to follow suit. The girls were the ones you’d see. The boys, well, they were around but only just.

“So, what do you do here, Tani?”
“This.” She reached into the idle water fountain we were passing to splash her face and wet her hair.
“No, I mean what do you do in general?”
“General?”
“I am an explorer. I travel to new places. That’s what I do. What about you?”
“I give the young watchers their ears.”
“The young watchers?” I hadn’t the foggiest what she meant. “How do you go about doing that?”
“I show you when new day. Now Tani is explorer with Marie!” And she strode forward with her sisters in tow.

We walked all around the tiny town, stopping to meet the people of each square and lane. There wasn’t that much difference from place to place, everyone seemed to live more or less the same, though there was definitely a pecking order. Tani’s own house was at the low end of town, the most exposed to the prevailing winds and the odd flood. Not to mention right beside one of the water-facing entrances, through which trouble always came. Higher up and at one of the squares: those were the place to be. There you’d see glass windows and tiled halls. I wondered quite where those were from.

At the biggest, most prestigious clearing of them all, Tani showed me a house that was for rituals. Some sort of shrine, she would not say much about what went on in there. She claimed she was too young to know. Outside was a shallow pit of cinders, the hearth of many a great ceremonial fire, open to the air. This was the highest spot on the island and you could see the encircling ring of forest along the lake’s far shore, pierced by mountains. Some clear, some shrouded in the distant haze.

“Hunger?” Asked Tani, at the sound of my stomach a good Earth’s day after I’d last ate.
“Yes. Just a bit. What do your people usually eat?”
“Many things. Different things.” She said, leading me toward one of the roundhouses.
“This isn’t your parents place.”
“Tara has us a food.”

The house was a little roomier, and generally just nicer, than Tani’s own. It belonged to her grandmother, Tara, who had a higher rank than Tani or her family for some reason I didn’t know, but could tell by the street. Not that this mattered given the departing chief’s instructions. Tani was determined to make the best of her chance.

“Aka-a-aka! Tara, tara, tara.” She sung as we arrived. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

After an awkward wait, Tara showed up to greet us, in her own way. Which was imperceptible, to me, from a bitter, seething resentment. And I thought Takaraya had a cold stare! Tara looked more like I had imagined Tani’s mother might. Indeed, I thought she was her aunt. The people here surely wore their ages well.

“Aka-a-aka! Aka?” Sang Tani, rolling on her toes, like someone half her age. What was all this?

Begrudgingly, Tara waved us in. And Tani gave the all clear to her sisters who were waiting just out of sight. Apparently, Tara was getting twice the party she had bargained for.

“Tara eat Tani’s home. Many, many time.” She explained to me as we squeezed around the hearth of her grandmother’s roundhouse.
“Tara means talk, doesn’t it?”
“Mm.” Tani answered, and laughed.
“She doesn’t seem to exactly live up to her name.”

Icy silence reigned while the four of us tucked in to Tara’s reserves. Tani was right. There was all kinds of stuff here. I couldn’t figure out what many of them were, but was willing to give most anything a try. Their food was certainly salty, and when it wasn’t dull, it packed some of the most savoury flavours I had ever tasted. The art was in the surprise. The texture gave away that much of it was from animals. I wondered how to ask if they farmed or whether they caught their food themselves. Either way, Tara didn’t have too much of it. She brought us a second variety round, fresh from the fire, and this stuff was much better.

“Did I spill something?” I asked Tani, wiping my mouth with my stain-resistant sleeve, as everyone was suddenly staring at me.
“Marie big hunger!” She declared, and slapped me on the back. Her sisters giggled and did impressions of my eating. Apparently you were to take things slower here. What can I say? I was famished!

“Ta-neeeeee…” Said the man of the house, so very quietly I almost didn’t hear him. He was a ghostly presence, somehow even quieter, until this point, than his terminally taciturn wife. Did they have marriage here? I made another mental note to follow up with Tani. They exchanged a few words, quick on Tani’s part and slow and almost silent on his. All I could really hear was his drawl.

“He sounds just like your dad.”
“Why Marie think that?”
“Tah-neeeeee…” I said, in my best Taki impression. Aia and Atty immediately laughed themselves into howling hysterics.
“Marie! Do not talk like man.”
“Talk like what?”

Naturally, all Tara and her partner wanted was to get us out their house. Preferably while they still had some food left. I felt guilty for eating as much as I already had, and made sure we took off pretty quickly. Atty grabbed the last few things she could for her pockets as Tani lifted her out by the collar. A trail of morsels spilled out from her neck and sleeves, which Tara deftly gathered without a moment’s hesitation. The three girls sung a thank you at the door, nevertheless. Well, you have to be polite, I suppose.

“Thanks, Tara.” I said with a bow, and the door slammed barely any distance from my face. I stood there for a moment with my eyes closed and heart racing, as the draft blew through my hair. I would have to learn that tradition before I got a bloody nose.

It’s not personal, Marie, it’s just family.

This was when I saw how politics works among the Ana.

“So, you called Takaraya your mother?”
“Jai! She is not my mom.”
“I heard you say it. Aka means mom, right?”
“Mm,” Tani hummed, “but aka means many things.”
“So, you’re really not related?”
Tani laughed in delight. “Jai!”
“Well, come on. You look quite alike. I was fooled for a bit.”
“Taki is my dad.” She pointed one by one to the adults grouped around Takaraya. “Tara is his mom. Takata is her sister. Tanari was her mom, but she never met me. Tamalika was her sister. Tamaliya was her daughter. Her…”
“This is getting complicated!”
“Takaraya is her daughter.” Said Tani, sternly, surprised I couldn’t follow along.
“So, you are related then. Different branches of the same tree.”
“Talai is Talai.” She shrugged, still a bit perplexed why I needed these things explained for me.

Something I could work out for myself, though, was Azza’s place here. She was Tani’s stepmother, and clearly not a Talai. Her name gave that away, as well as her looks. Either you were born into the extended family, or you were not. Azza had moved here from someplace else, and I imagined Tani’s birth mother must have too. Around Takaraya, the pecking order was on show for me to see. Every time Azza tried to speak, the Talai interrupted.

“Shteh!” Yelled Takata, whose lineage I’d already forgotten. But her name started the right way, and so she got her say. Boy, did she. My translator recognised some of the hot blooded words Tani had thrown back at her parents as they threw us out the night before.
“Ta-kat-aaaaa…” murmured Tani’s father, Taki. But she ignored him as if he was just a boy.

“What are they shouting about?” I asked Tani, who looked on with a wry smile from the sidelines.
“Azza not smart to know. She must shut up.”
“The others are treating her unfairly, don’t you think?”
“Good!” She declared. “Azza take Marie from bai. You not remember?”
“I scared her. Besides, she had every right.”
Tani just looked at me with cocked eyebrows.
“This is all my fault. I should sort it out.”

I walked up to the angry adults, brushing a few junior gawpers out of my way. Tani trailed along, every bit as unenthusiastic as a put-upon teen. As that, I suppose, she was.

“Leave them be!” I commanded, standing between Tani’s parents and grabbing each by the shoulder. “Tani is my friend and so Tani’s people are my friends too.” I was bigger than either of the pair. Looking at their faces, I saw a perfectly matched embarrassment and dread.
“Sang aaaaaa…” Chanted Taki.
“Tani?” Said Takaraya, as cool as ever.
“Ask her what the problem is.”

She did. This time, I had to rely on Tani as my translator was not to hand. I could watch everyone quite closely, though, which rather made up for the inconvenience I thought.

“They do not want you here.”
“Tell them I’m sorry to hear that. I don’t want to upset anyone.”

Another round of rapid fire debate took off at that. The fact I was here, huddled with my two unwilling hosts, didn’t put off the rest of the committee at all. At least Azza was quiet this way.

“They do not be angry with you.” Said Tani when they were done. “You is not problem.”
“What is the problem then?”
“I not know word for answer. Not here. Not of bai, not of Talai.”
“Not from the village? You mean it’s other Ana?”
“Mm.” Tani nodded. “Ana not of here. Ana of Ayanakert.”

The very instant she said that word, Ayanakert, every last one of the people around me flinched. Even Takaraya.

“Ana of what?”

Tani didn’t know what to say. At least with all her people’s eyes on her like that. The argument flared up again. I tried to follow, roughly, what they were saying but simply couldn’t. Sisters shouted down sisters, nieces called out aunts. And the various men Tani had not named, watched just as helplessly as Taki and Azza. Finally I just threw up my arms and left them to it. I was in over my head.

“Tani, tell me about Ayanakert.”
“It is bai of the highest Ana.”
“Your leaders?”
She paused, and she looked at me. “Akanai.”

Silently, a figure hovered behind us. We spun around to see Takaraya, free from her court at last. Arms folded, she delivered her ultimatum. Tani echoed her for me.

“We welcome the stranger, Marie of Humani. She is our child. But we fear the journey of our parents from the far. We not know our parents hunger. The Talai can not home all the high Ana.” Tani’s voice began to tremble. “She, Marie my stranger, go to her home. She go to the sky. The Talai has speak. The stranger does not happen.”

Tani stood, on the edge of tears, as Takaraya clapped her hands and the entire gathered population of the village turned their backs on us as one. Even the children.

“Oh come on!” I shouted, just as angry now myself.
“Takaraya has speak.” Sniffed Tani, terribly alone. I gave her a hug, behind the circles of her whole tribe now turned against us. Something shook my skin. My sleeves were soaked. With bitter tears.