The Glimmering Sea

CHAPTER NINE

The morning lessons were outside where the breeze blew the Terran offenses inland, so Torquato and the Initiates had glorious clear air to breathe. A few rumpled clouds drifted by as Torquato read a section from The Provided.

With her parents returned to Marea a mere hour ago, Armida's thoughts wandered. Weary from the pre-dawn start to her day and the horrible news her parents brought, her emotions ran wild. For all her distress, she hadn't wanted to be right about the magnitude of what Marea faced. An overwhelming sadness burrowed a pit into her stomach. Was it too late? She might never know the life in the sea she had imagined. What would it matter if Rinaldo chose land and she did not?

The book Torquato read wasn't from a Venetian printer, as most of his books were. It was handwritten text in a decorative script and embellished with bright colors and gold leaf. Ink on paper was strange and fragile. As Torquato turned the pages, they rustled as if the brittle edges would crumble in his hands.

Armida was perplexed that anything concerning Marea was found in books, having heard only the adults' old tales and Laurenza's recitations. Who had written these manuscripts?

Torquato read, "From the Sea, comes Life. The Plumes of Origin grew hot and vaporous. Ancient forms floated, collided, collapsed. An Eye. A Heart. A Brain. These things First Life became."

Torquato looked up at the darkening sky as rain droplets began to hit the ground. "Let us move inside for today's lesson."

Over time, Armida had learned the subtle odor in Torquato's hut was from the books—as if the ink, the paper, and the leather bindings combined in a magical alchemy of sweetness, grasses, almonds, and vanilla. Many days she created excuses to visit so she could draw in the air carrying these aromatic notes of knowledge.

Besides the physical training, the Initiates had to learn to read. Sitting at the table in his hut, they'd spent hours matching the markings on the page to the words Torquato spoke aloud.

"Magister, can Terrans read?" Delfina asked.

Torquato tapped the spine of the book he held and said, "Some can; many can't. But the number will grow. The Terrans in Venice have established themselves as some of the finest bookmakers in the world."

Torquato placed a book in front of Armida. "This is by Ovid." As she fingered the gold embossing, the curve of the circle moved as if alive. The circle became an O, and in seconds the remaining three undulating letters took fixed form, and she read, with crisp clarity, a word for the first time. Ovid. The poet who wrote of the ancient Terran gods. She opened the book. The shifting squiggles recast themselves from indecipherable, meaningless shapes into a word. She gasped with the awareness she could read the title: Metamorphoses.

"Why does anyone need to read?" Delfina frowned and stroked her hair.

Torquato said, "Because, with books, we no longer need to depend on oral history and memory."

Armida quickened at his comment. "Are you saying memory is imperfect?"

Delfina said, "Stop, Armida. You cannot continue day after day. If memory is imperfect, how can we rely on what the Revealer tells us?"

"Maybe we cannot." Torquato's words were leaden to Armida, weighted with too much truth.

Delfina leaped to her feet. "Magister! You spew poisonous talk. Who has infected whom? It is ugly how Armida has become embittered. It is not the Marean way."

Torquato walked to the door and closed it. "Sit down, Delfina. What do you know of the Marean way except the childish games you played as a merpup?" His tone chilled Armida, who had never heard him speak to anyone with such harshness.