Smiling Sick
Tale of the Tide World #1
My boy sick.
That’s what Nanna said, but nobody cared.
Nobody even believed.
He sick. Just you look at him. Why him smiling like that? I never heard of no baby that never cry.
Nanna held her son at arms length, scrutinizing his every feature. She brought his face close to her own and frowned. Something was wrong in his tiny smile. Too easy. Too wide. Too happy. She knew the wrongness of it the way she knew a storm was coming from the ache she got in her hip. Something inside her was aching like her hip ached. Something was warning her.
My boy sick, she insisted.
She began to insist this with a sudden fervor that gave people pause. Men pulling in their nets on the docks would turn to look at her when she passed by, forgetting their work. Everywhere she could hear the whispers of the other village women. They watched her from the shadows of their huts, their dark eyes conspiring. Little by little, when the people of the village started to turn to her in the daylight their faces were bereft of compassion, and they were surer by the day that ol’ Nanna had gone insane.
You had your baby too old Nanna, they would say. You had your baby too old and now you all crazy with wanting him to be sick ’cause you can’t believe you finally got a baby. You think he sick ’cause it make you feel like you doing your job by him. But that baby all right. Ain’t nothing wrong with that baby, Nanna. So you hush yourself now. Be glad you got a baby and don’t worry us no more.
My boy sick.
Her body ached with the truth of it. Ached until it was ready to burst and hot tears came down her face.
My boy sick and if I don’t help him, him going to die.
But nobody believed, and nobody cared.
Her baby was over three months old when Nanna realized she had never heard him cry. He woke sometimes at night to get her attention for feeding, but only with soft coos and gurgles. Never tears. Never with a shriek of a howl. When the idea struck her that not once, not ever, had she seen or heard her baby shed so much as a single tear Nanna sat down gasping. She did not know why the terror unhinged her so, she just knew that she had to do something —anything— to make her baby cry.
She pinched his bottom as hard as she could.
Cry baby. Come on, cry for ol’ Nanna. Cry for yo mamma who need to hear it so bad. Just one tear, baby.
He made no sound. He only turned to her with deep, curious eyes and grinned wider.
Ashamed both by her failure and that she had purposefully caused her son pain, Nanna fell into inconsolable sobs in the corner of her shack.
Everyone thought her crazy when she told this story. Their eyes widened at the sickness of it, and the whispers behind her back turn to murmurs.
Nanna gone crazy in her head. We got to do something ‘fore she hurt that baby.
She never heard those words but somehow she could feel them being spoken out of sight.
Taun would have listened to her. Taun would have known that her instincts had an eerie accuracy, but Taun was dead. He had been gobbled up by the sea right after he had finally put a baby in her old belly, and now everyone thought she had gone crazy with the grief. When she said, my boy is sick, all they heard was, I’m a sad crazy woman.
Nanna knew better.
Nanna watched her baby Taun, her new Taun, smile at hidden things and her guts twisted in fear. There were old stories. Stories from before her people had come to the Crescent. Stories from back when the glittering rock sands were not so rare. Stories about the hand of the statue rising out of the ocean that you could see on clear days. Stories about men and women who smiled too much at things no one else could see or hear. Nanna was nervous when she tried to remind the other villagers of these stories.
It seemed there was only one story people wanted to talk about in the village.
Nanna gone crazy. Who can blame her? She had a baby at her age, and her husband never see her baby not even once ‘fore he fall into the ocean? She live out all by herself on the Knife and she going crazy out there!
One day, before anyone could stop her, Nanna picked up her new Taun. Every time she saw the bruise on his bottom she was moved to tears, and could take inaction no longer. She strapped him to her chest the way mothers who combed the beach did with their children, and started walking. Everything she had of value she carried on her back.
Barefooted, Nanna walked down the black rock of the Knife, where she had dived for pearls since her girlhood, then turned north until she found the course of the big river where her mama said demons had attacked long ago. The river split the whole island right down the middle in the stories, so Nanna followed it knowing it would lead eventually to the Harbor.
Nanna had never owned a pair of shoes. Never known a single person who did. She did not even know what shoes were until she crossed a village where their lack made her suddenly conspicuous. The words were different, too fast, but she understood the questions about her feet and kept walking. She walked until her feet bled. She walked until her soles turned to cracked leather. In the evening, she spearfished in what those other villagers called the Gap for her supper.
Taun hung heavy around her chest, his weight greater than that of a baby. She had to be rid of that weight. So Nanna walked until she was at the Harbor where all the great boats were docked. She reminded herself that she was a woman of the world. She was a pearl-diver who sold goods to the outsiders. She did not care if the boats here were larger than any she had ever seen or even dreamed.
And Nanna, she told herself, was not a woman who shook like a leaf in fear when her baby needed her.
When she was there, at the Great Harbor of Valaen, where no one knew of a crazy lady named Nanna, she found a captain.
I want to buy passage on a ship, Nanna said. I want to get me to Angard, where them Weavers live.
Nanna did not know much about bargaining, but she knew that she should keep her tongue in her head when she looked at the great boats docked side by side. So many, so many out there on the waters. The ocean had never looked so big as when she looked out at those boats. She clutched her small bag of pearls tightly.
Not knowing that she had just lost her husband, or that everyone where she was from thought she had lost her mind, Captain Jerian Bose of the Wings Spread Wide gave her a cot and a meal chit and told her to mind her baby and herself and she would have no problems at sea. Nanna took her smiling baby below decks to the cabin they shared with two other people, and for the first time in a long time, she rested.
Nanna felt pride.
She had walked until she found her feet on the wooden planks of one of the great ocean-faring ships, and now she was off to Angard and she was happy as could be, even if she didn’t have hardly no money left. She had sold every single thing she owned to pay for passage. Every last little pearl. But she had hope now.
On Angard the Weavers had a school where they did nothing but figure out every kind of illness that every kind of man, woman, and child had ever had in the history of the world. They would know why her baby never stopped smiling.
They had to.
Your baby happy, that why he smile.
A month into the voyage Nanna made the mistake of expressing her concerns with another one of the passengers. They worked together scrubbing the decks sometimes, which was part of the deal she had made to secure passage. She was nice young woman who had hair knitted tight against her head in a way that reminded Nanna of home.
Nanna had never felt so alone in her life, and thought her nice enough that she had could afford to share, just a little bit. Now she knew better.
Nanna hadn’t opened her mouth in a week for fear of making it worse.
Why you got that frown on your face? Her new friend would ask. Can’t you see your baby happy? Some baby is just happy! That should make your heart glad up, Nanna. You got yourself a happy baby, and that ain’t in no ways bad, is it, Nanna?
The girl talked to Nanna like she would talk to a child who was afraid of the dark. Nanna wanted to scream.
Just look at him! It ain’t right for him to be smiling like that looking at the sky! It’s the day time, ain’t it? And there be clouds from horizon to horizon. So what he smiling at? Where the stars he see twinkling? But Nanna said nothing, and the nice young woman who thought she was being kind kept talking.
You think he’s touched a bit? Worse things could happen to a baby. We had us a touched man in the place I growed up. Him was happy all him life. Your baby be like him. Happy. No big deal.
No, Nanna wanted to say, it’s something else. Something different. A mother knows.
But she said nothing.
It seemed that if her despair had no vent that she would simply split into two pieces from the pressure. She watched Taun at night, laying on her chest as the ship rocked, smiling like he was falling in love with everything every day and there wasn’t nothing nobody could say to make him feel sad inside. That much happy wasn’t right. That much happy would get you killed.
Nanna knew now to keep her concerns to herself, that nice young woman was starting to get word out around the ship. Even her silence was attracting notice. She’d have to learn to be quiet with her whole body.
Late one afternoon, as she crawled on hands and knees scrubbing the deck, Nanna’s hip started to ache. She tried to tell everyone that a storm was coming, but no one believed her. They’d all figured she was crazy by then. It didn’t matter when she admitted to having a knack for the weather. When she clumsily tried to explain she feared her knack had become something stranger in her son, so she wasn’t crazy. No one was listening by the end. Nanna even caught the captain giving her long considering glances, like he was thinking that maybe a woman like her had no business with a little baby.
Nobody objected when Nanna went below deck.
She held little Taun tight against her, and whispered that she was never going to give up on him. His body was warm against hers.
The storm came less than an hour later, all of the sudden, and when it was over that nice young lady who had thought she was being kind to Nanna by telling everyone she was crazy had fallen over the side of the boat. No one had been able to get to her in time. After that not even the captain would look at Nanna, and everyone stopped talking about her baby.
Nanna was glad for her knack for the first time in her life. It had kept her and little Taun safe. After so long being told she was crazy, she had begun to doubt herself. It made her feel better about trusting her other feeling. The one that told her something bad was gonna happen if she didn’t get help for her baby.
Nanna cuddled with little Taun, holding tight to him and they fell asleep together, her arms instinctively folding tight around him when the ship hit a swell. But there was no danger of them falling off the bed now. There was plenty of room now that that nice young lady wasn’t bunking with them anymore.
Nanna had nightmares about that girl walking across the bottom of the ocean, her face covered with seaweed, but with the same tight knit hair.
Nanna managed to sleep through the visions. It was better than seeing her baby smile.
All Nanna had left when they set foot on Angard was some shell jewelry. Cheap junk that had no more value than its meaning to her.
Nanna shivered, standing on the dock, for it was winter and her voyage had taken more than a season. She had no warm clothes to put on herself, but she wrapped Baby Taun in the scraps she had of her other clothes and kept him bundled against her as she started to walk again. She and her baby would keep each other warm.
Where the school where you doctors at? She asked the first person she saw when she got off the boat.
You mean the Mender’s Academy?
They all talked like that in Angard. All clipped and distinct like they were trying their very best to sound appropriate, except they all seemed to do it without effort. Nanna heard once that everyone on Angard knew the whole alphabet, and even little boys and girls who could barely speak knew how to read and write. Nanna hadn’t been pulled from the sea just yesterday so she knew that couldn’t be true.
Yup, that where I want to go. Which way I have to walk to get there?
Elenn. It’s two hundred rods south. The man paused, considering. That happened a lot on Angard. These people didn’t miss a tick.
Do you need any kind of help, ma’am?
Nanna had her pride. The same pride that kept her from gawking at all the buildings and people milling around. Nanna had never imagined there could be so many people in her whole life.
You just point the way and tell me where I can get my baby some food, and I be fine.
The man pointed and told her. Nanna traded a shell bracelet in exchange for food for the baby. The woman tried to offer her more food than Nanna knew the bracelet was worth, but Nanna figured she had all she could carry and refused. Her pride bent only so much as to accept a cloak but she knew she mustn’t give into the temptation to talk too much. Then she started walking.
If word got around this place these people were going to kill her baby trying to protect it, and Nanna couldn’t afford to take that chance. It would be easier to get lost among this many people if she didn’t let herself stand out in anyone’s memory. Although as she walked, she realized the foolishness of it. No one could have mistaken her for one of the people of this land.
They had hard roads in Angard. Made from itty bitty stones all bunched up together and they hurt her hips. But Nanna never stopped walking. She never stopped walking because the baby never stopped smiling and Nanna knew the time was near.
Frown baby, Nanna pleaded. Please frown for me.
For every step Nanna took, a tear slid down her weather beaten cheeks.
Nanna walked for days and for miles. She developed a slouch. Taun had been strapped to her chest for so long it felt unnatural when he was removed. Most of the feeling in her feet was gone. It was the day before she reached Elenn that the ache in her hip flared to life. Seeing no shelter she walked to an outcropping of rocks, and crawled under them. She burrowed deep down away from the moonlight like an animal, and hoped she was the only thing that lived in this shelter.
Taun began to laugh when the lightnings came. His baby gray-blue eyes opened wide, gleaming. He pointed his small fists at the sky not when the lightning struck, but the moment before it struck, and cackled like the world could bust in half and it would be the greatest joke ever told. Again and again he pointed, as Nanna held him.
You stop it, baby Taun! You stop it right now! Or I’s gonna hide you baby or no baby!
Nanna swatted his bare backside. Hard. Harder than she knew was right. She was angry. Furious at Taun for bringing her all the way here. Furious that everyone she had met thought she was out of her mind. Slapped his backside again and again.
Taun stopped laughing. Now he was looking at her. Looking at her like she was the first ugly thing he had ever seen, and did not know where to place her in his picture of the world. Nanna gritted her teeth at him.
You cry! I done wrong by you! I hit you and you just a baby, so you cry! CRY! Nanna shouted at him until her voice was hoarse.
Still, he did not shed a tear, but neither did he point at the lightning or laugh with the boom of the thunder.
When Nanna’s anger was exhausted she held Taun against her. Held him close. And was grateful. She would have said she was sorry except she was certain it would have made her baby smile again.
She didn’t eat for the next few days. There was only food left enough for little Taun.
My boy sick. He need him some help.
Nanna knew she did not look well. She had never been one to carry much fat. Her muscles had atrophied, and her body had become so accustomed to forward motion that she could not stand still without wanting to fall over. Every bit of her trembled to stop her legs moving forward of their own accord.
The man at the little desk frowned when he looked at her. He was dressed fancy like all the other people she had seen. Nanna wondered how much of what she had heard about Angard was true. The pearl merchants told her once every person on Angard had enough clothes that they could wear a new set every day of the week. She hadn’t believed then, but she did now.
Nanna was happy about this, in a delirious kind of way. People this rich would know how to help her baby.
What is his affliction?
Nanna didn’t know what that word meant. Everything on Angard was bigger than it should be. It was such a grand building, the Mender’s Academy. It even had a grand name. Academy. That was a fancy word Nanna had never heard before, but she knew it meant school and that it was full of nothing but the brightest wits in the whole world. It was big and all made of stone and brick and covered with beautiful art. From the outside, it was bigger than the Knife. Nanna had no idea how they could have built something like that but was again happy because if these people were smart enough to build a building this big they were smart enough to take care of her baby.
Nanna decided, when she could focus again, that affliction meant illness.
He smile. All the time. No matter what happen. He smile. Like the stories. He smile like the stories.
They still be born in this place
Them who smile at hidden grace
She couldn’t remember the rest of the words.
The man with the little book frowned. Nanna’s heart sunk. She knew then he wasn’t going to help her. She had come all this way, and still no one believed. Old Taun was dead in the ocean somewhere, and New Taun was dying right there in front of her. She could feel it, the ache was in her whole body so strong she couldn’t even tell if she was hungry or not. Pretty soon it would just be ol’ Nanna. Ol’ Nanna and a whole lot of nothing.
Where did you come from? Are you sure you don’t require a Mender’s services? Ma’am? Where are you going? Ma’am?
Nanna walked past the little man with the books. She knew he wasn’t a Doctor. He was some boy that knew how to read and write down names. Probably did nothing but scribble in that little book all day long. When he started to come after her, Nanna spread her legs and ran.
You won’t catch me, she thought. You won’t catch ol’ Nanna. I been walking the whole of this world to get my baby the help he need. I been over the ocean nobody in my family ever been over, and I walked so long my feet don’t remember how to stay still, and you won’t catch me. Not ol’ Nanna.
So Nanna ran. And kept running. And she kept running because her baby kept on being happy and she knew the time was close.
She loved him. Loved him fierce and deep and big. Loved him bigger than the Academy. Loved him bigger than the Knife, or the Gap, or the island she had come from, and even bigger than the ocean she had crossed. And as she knew how much she loved him the ache got worse.
Taun smiled with every bounce and leap.
You! Nanna shouted.
She could tell this man was the one she needed. He was dressed too nice even next to all the people who were dressed too nice. He looked like a king and his eyes had a deep wisdom, as if he knew everything in the whole world. As if he had lived a hundred years and more.
You! Nanna shouted again. She was stumbling now, all her strength working to hold little baby Taun over her head. Her love for him burned like the sun. It was bigger than the whole world, all the things she had done to make her baby safe.
You got to help my baby. You got to save my little Taun, she said.
The man took little Taun and… smiled.
All Nanna could do was press the baby into the man’s chest and make sure that he was safe before she fell down to the ground. She was weak beyond knowing, her clothes were rags, and her feet were bleeding. She fell into unconsciousness. All that kept her living was the hope that she would wake up to the sound of her baby crying.
Some time while she slept her body stopped feeling the ache, and Nanna stayed asleep. Even asleep she was afraid of what it might mean.
The the man she made hold Taun was sitting right beside her bed when she woke up. Taun was nowhere to be found.
You believe me? You believe my baby sick?
She knew that the man would believe her. Those eyes… so deep… so knowing. His smile! No one in the world would have said the man resembled her little Taun, except for that smile. Except for her knack, which could sort like to like. This man would believe her even if everyone else had not. She had crossed the whole of the world to find him and now that she had she knew he would believe her. He would know what was wrong with her baby.
I believe, he said. And then he looked sad, and that made Nanna sad.
What? What you gonna tell me? What he got? The stories never say. Please! You got to tell me!
Her voice was gone. She was barely alive, and not a word of all the words she said could be heard unless an ear was strained to hear them. But she knew this man understood. This man understood everything.
He is safe for now. It was a near thing. No one so young is meant to stare so deeply into the Beyond.
She knew didn’t she? That what Taun smiled at was the same thing that told her hip when the weather would change. That there was knowing and there was knowing. There was knowing where people explained things to you and then there was knowing that bled from the rocks or misted up from the ocean, a knowing that was stuffed inside everything. To have a knack was to have the second kind of knowing. A little piece of knowing.
His knack be in his eyes, don’t it?
The man turned to her anew and this time he took a moment before he spoke.
His brain.
Nanna felt the sadness welling in her again, and her face wilted like seaweed plucked out of the ocean and left carelessly on the side of the surf. Just a dried out husk.
That be bad, don’t it?
The man touched her, and she was afraid that somehow he was going to try and steal her pain. She wanted her pain. She wanted to feel like someone had crushed her heart in her chest, because she knew the rightness of the emotion.
Slowly the man stood and walked to a far corner of the room. There was a cradle there. She had not seen it at first.
There is no medicine for wonder but the death of stars. No sling for joy but the horrors of war. For your sake, and the sake of what is to come, I will turn his head away from grace and back to this world. I will… remind him of the Work.
A single hand reached inside the crib.
Nanna had never heard the sound before, but she knew the cry that followed for Little Taun’s. Before she could get out of bed, the man carried Little Taun in her arms and she wept tears of joy to see the fury in her baby. He had the manner of one startled out of a peaceful sleep, who wished to return to an ever-fleeting dream, awake and displeased with the reality he found.
Nanna kissed his head.
I show you, baby, Nanna said. I show you the good. I show you the love that make a mamma walk halfway ‘cross this little world. You my baby.
This was such a lovely story! The fear of going crazy was so poignant, as was the mother's love. More of this world!