Anna Maddalena Patti

Year 1706, Nomron, 1st day of the Tash: the Moon is New.

Today I felt very egsited because i am in Boron Akadimy now. The city is very loud. There is lots of comoshin evryware. When we walked there i saw a big rock as tal as a lot of trees and it looked like a man. I asked my master about it. He said it is caled the jiant but it is just a rock. I got lashes becus my speling was not good enuf for the Akadmiy. The master said i should not be here wich made me feel very angry. I am suposed to be here and the jurny was long. I wil work on my speling thoh.

Year 1710, Limron, 14th day of the Steed: the Moon is a Waxing Gibbous.

Dear Masters of the Academy at Boron,

It is my intention to convinse you that I am ready to go further in my studies. I have worked hard in all my subjects and am first in my class in logic. I am also second in history which is my favorite. My teacher says my writing has improved and more adequately demonstrates my intelligence. If you give me an opportunity to speak I shall demonstrate it further. Even though I was caught outside the school grounds and at the dancing field no less it does not effect my standing in academics. I have served my punishment under my teacher’s guidance and my studies have continued. As the senior students say I hope by the Giant you will be well and you will come to a merciful desision.

With respect,
Rulon
4th year

Year 1714, Lirron, 2nd day of the Shamir: the Moon is Young.

The Master brought us out to the Great Stone Giant today. We had a picnic right under its shadow, and the other boys laughed and played with the grass or caught moths, but I couldn
’t stop looking up at it. It was so tall, like a mountain, and even though I enjoyed the shade, it frightened me that I could look up at something and it so easily blot out the sun. It really does resemble a gigantic man, and the rock that looks like a foot is even raised like he’s taking a step. I can’t decide if it’s terrifying or comforting. I told this to the Master, and he said it was common for “young things” like us to put all kinds of feelings onto everything so things are neither here nor there. He said when you get older life gets more solid like the rock. I hope it doesn’t get too solid, or gray. He also said its normal for boys my age to fall madly in love, and he said it is called being in love with being in love. I don’t think I’ll ever lose my zeal like him. A man’s ideals are what make him strong. I’m going to be solid all right—solid in my love for Maryavel. My devotion will be as unchanging as the Great Stone Giant.

Year 1718, Norron, 18th day of the Steed: the Moon is Full.

Hanma and I made love under the Giant today. I brought her to the place of the Raised Foot and we had each other just under his stony heel in the ferns and moss. It was exhilarating, like making love on a precipice with a torrent below, like any moment the Djinn of the rock might release his hamstring and crush us beneath his foot. But then, it was the strangest thing, as soon as we were finished the cleft became a warm cave sheltering us, and we slept like babies. I felt so alive, and then so… newly made. What a glorious day. It flew by on the wind, and yet I could count every sweet second.

Only one thing troubled me, which I noticed the morning after when we returned to town: I remember my first trip to the Giant like it was yesterday, but I don’t remember the Raised Foot being so high off the ground. Maybe at fourteen I was too small-minded to take in the scale, though usually when you’re young the world seems bigger. Maybe the soil underneath is eroded. Maybe I’m not the only one who brings a highland girl there, though usually boys my age are afraid of the Giant.

Year 1722, Limron, 14th day of the Griffin: the Moon is a Waxing Gibbous.

Master Hoyeth had me take the little ones to see the Giant today, and I got to re-live my first visit through their eyes. They asked so many questions, though I’m happy to say my private inquiries paid off and I answered them roundly. I may have even captivated the attention of a few, which with those bunch is no small task. Old Hoyeth always said I might stay on at the school if I desired, and while that decision is a ways off, the idea isn’t entirely ill-fitting. Yet my mind has little room for thoughts of the future right now. Nothing will stay there but theory—theory about the Giant. I’d be thoroughly ridiculed by my peers if I ever said this aloud, but—

Alright, I must say it. It moves. It moves! I have no doubt about it anymore, for I’ve measured it by reed now fifty times or more and logged my findings in the margins of some disposable palimpsest, not having the courage to even write it here with the rest of my private thoughts. Until now, of course. Even in the last year its Lifted Foot has ascended a full span, and this is after accounting for the negligible soil erosion. I’m there often enough to know for certain that my adolescent tryst with Hanma was uncommon fare—most highland girls are raised in sensible families, and the sensible ones all know not to meddle with the Djinn’s rock. Us lowlanders at the academy have no such sensibility, although perhaps I paint too broad a brush. As I’ve probably said before, most of the boys seem to avoid it. The Giant seems to breed highland superstition into the most urbane of us. (What does that make me?) For some reason the others prefer loitering around Boron’s muddier streets. As the school grows, so does the town, and the cattle and stench of shit.

The Academy’s oldest buildings have sat serenely in the foothills for five generations. I wonder if any former Masters or students left descriptions of the Giant I could cull from. With enough accounts I might be able to assemble some picture of its movement over time. I’m so impatient to begin; I’m gathering scrolls practically as I write this.

Year 1726, Zeron, 11th day of the Steed: the Moon is a Waxing Gibbous.

Every spare moment I go tromping in the hills, mostly in the untamed heathland surrounding the Giant. Other than the road which runs below it, and the student paths up and down the hill, the moors are vast, untrodden, and glorious. It allows me to feel my own loneliness without shame, because here solitude is a friend and silence a lover. The stillness only amplifies the highland
’s singing palette: red soil, ruby red flowers, vermilion wood, iron trees, violet grass, twisted yellow shrubs. gray and red boulders the size of palaces push out of the earth like the scattered pieces of an ancient crown. Amidst them the Giant lumbers on. The closer I wander toward the Academy, the more still it balances there; the deeper I trek into the wild, the more it seems to move. Perhaps I am manic—the heath breathes something intoxicating into me, no doubt—but if I put my head to the ground I hear a rumble: a low, deep, profound reverberation almost beyond what my ears can fathom, like the slowed heartbeat of something tremendous in size, unfathomable in age. I look up and see it, foot raised to take a step, the momentum of it half-frozen in time. Then I watch as a flock of cantbirds takes off from its shoulder, and the illusion is shattered: I am alone again.

Year 1730, Peqron, 32nd day of the Tash: the Moon is a Waning Crescent.

I’ve labored beyond what I thought my limits these past long years; I’ve delved into tiresome and esoteric minutia with no end in sight, until… Something coalesced today (these past few days, but I haven’t slept so it’s been one long preternatural hour for me), what exactly I could not say, except that five years and tireless (ha, as if I weren’t completely spent!) labor resolved at last into a final draft of my thesis. As you can see from the shakiness of my letters, I can hardly hold a pen anymore. Usep read it over breakfast and laughed (as I had feared), but it was my mistake to let fools into the inner studarium. Hoyeth may not like my conclusions, but he will nevertheless have to accept the soundness of my logic; besides, I did not overstate the hypothesis. The accounts of my predecessors clearly suggest (how’s that for a vacillating word?) that the Giant has moved, that or his surroundings have profoundly changed, and at an alarming rate (which I do not condone as a feasible alternative, though I also do not protest too strongly, so as to not appear over-eager). I make only cursory suggestions as to how scholarship ought to proceed from here, as I hopefully have the rest of my career to oversee further inquiries myself!

If the thesis is rejected outright, I know myself well enough to expect that I will (likely) destroy every copy in rage, and though the whole project by now holds little joy for me, I’d better preserve here that glimmer of hope which has kept me going. The following is a remarkable quote, and finding it brought no small healing to my disillusionment. It is from the grand Archmagister Buhola himself, yes, the very same who fled the Nishtharin mystics to this backwater no-place and founded our school. The following words are preserved from the inauguration of the old fellows’ hall (emphasis added):

“Indeed, esteemed ones, was it not for this reason alone that we have trekked, each from our own tribes and clans, to this daemon-forsaken edge of Silf-kind, to sit in contemplation beneath the stone visage? Why else did we follow the running djinn of the mountain but to understand the very Pillars of the World?”

When I read it I nearly wept. Yes, I too have witnessed the running djinn, but I seem alone in this pursuit. Are there no other true scientists, or will I find companions to join the chase? I suppose tomorrow I will know for sure.

But I am delirious and rambling. I must go and find a cot before I collapse in my ink…

Year 1734, Yilaron, 9th day of the Ork: the Moon is a Quarter Full.

I have not written here in a while, but I am kept busy tending to the students. Yes, I attend them still, though I pine for natural study and rigor. It is clear now that damn old Hoyeth is deliberately holding me back. He made it plain from the start what he thought of my area of study. “Rulon,” he said, “every academy has its addled and deluded, though most don’t start so young.” The tribunal only approved my thesis by the necessity of its own rubric. If I’d been less enamored of syllogism in my youth, I doubt I’d have had the chops to survive their censure. I haven’t forgotten that Varoshe tossed me her laurels, but the approval of one auxiliary magistra does not loosen the tribunal’s grip.

I would go east and teach in Serat-al or Delphin if I could bring the Giant with me. Alas I’m hitched here like an old neglected nag, tugging feebly every few seasons at my harness and braying at no one in particular.

Without further study I can’t confirm my hypotheses any more than I already have, but being stuck in this mire has given me some insight into the other factors at play. It’s not simply a matter of incredulity or my unpopularity among my fellows. We live under the shadow of the Giant; to not see what looms above us requires a special kind of blindness. It requires both the motivation and will to not look up. The will escapes me—it takes all my strength to keep my head bowed. As for the motivation, there is of course the politics, the unholy dominion of Hoyeth, Roden, and Farkas, the sheer inertia of belief, the tyranny of opinion which gnashes its ego-gnawing teeth; but I think there’s more, an ideological sticking point, something about the supremacy of Vueno and our place in this perfectly arranged lattice, whose solemnity and law must be maintained like the rules of the most competitive game of marbles among the younger students.

That is a rather vague intimation for a scholar to make, but intuitions are often the fruit of thought so deep-dwelling it only surfaces occasionally for mortal air. At least thus is my contention. I would also contend, if I were feeling adventurous, that the thoughts which generate intuition happen on a time-scale quite distinct from that of logic, which works at the ponderous speed of mortal speech. Of course I’m not feeling so unscrupulous, so I will suggest nothing of the kind.

Year 1738, Wolron, 23rd day of the Pard: the Moon is a Waning Gibbous.

Thank all the heavens and hells that old Hoyeth is stuck to his chamber pot these days. While the old bull daily excretes his own weight in manure, I, still whole and hale, may teach heresy to my heart’s content. I took the children up to the Giant today, as I did in my youth, and held class under the Place of the Raised Foot. The toes are nigh invisible from beneath, so upward-inclined are they now, and between the ground and the heel is the span of three men of my stature. I appreciate the students more than ever; their awe and naked curiosity are the natural remedy to the cynicism of the triumvirate. Though now that Varoshe is stepping in for Hoyeth, I stand more of a chance. Roden is still an insufferable prig, and Farkas has eyes for nothing but his speculative astronomy, but with Varoshe’s equanimity on board some serious open-minded inquiry might be able to slip through. I laughed when I first learned they’d let a woman into the school, but like all follies of youth it only took some experience in her presence to recognize that fools laugh at what they do not understand. Her area of study is daemonology, which I once laughed at as well, though her thesis On the Daemons of the Imaginal Realm, that is the Vicissitudes of Mental Emanation-Spaces is the most difficult text I have ever read and left me idiotically inept one shared lunchtime. (This was under the Place of the Raised Foot again, though I swear I did not bring her there to woo her, or if I did, it was wholly unsuccessful. Besides, she is ten years my senior. She hardly looks it, I might add.)

I would be very happy if I was one day permitted to sit on the tribunal at her side, though at the rate I’m going I will likely see nothing but classroom work. I said happy, though I meant honored. Or perhaps my true daemons are showing through.

Still, Hoyeth’s perpetual indigestion affords me plenty of time now—and what do we have but now anyways, the moment, the midst of the hour? My tables and charts of measurements, not only of the Raised Foot but the Lowered as well, the shoulders (I could not find enough ladders, so I swung Ngamu-like from a rope and showed myself to the whole world to be a clumsy, near-sighted scholar, to one foraging midwife’s delight), the proportions of the various limbs thanks to some survey equipment borrowed from Farkas’ tower, the speculative tables of pseudo-measurements squeezed from the diaries of former magisters, stretching over many sheets and containing lexicons of symbology worthy of Haro-Zalar himself, geometric breakdowns by conic section that would make Turfhan the Geomantic green—even the very beginnings of an almanac, of stellar occultation via the Giant, a hobbyist’s perusal which I am untrained for; I flounder in the star-seas without Farkas in the room. All this perseveration is perhaps procrastination disguised, yet what reason is there to become a scholar except that you enjoy minutiae?

Year 1742, Jhóron, 6th day of the Behemoth: the Moon is a Waxing Crescent.

My book On the Motions of Giants was met with as much success as groans. In quantity the criticisms and accolades were equal, though in quality not so. Maybe I’ve grown too used to dismissal, but each warm reception thawed many years of rejection. Varoshe was practically jubilant and passed it around amongst her advanced students. Farkas approached me as well, and expressed keen interest in my stellar occultation project. He’s getting more esoteric as he ages: his last work was On the Zodiac and Digestive Health which read more like a monk’s herbal than an astronomer’s treatise. Roden is ill with pox and it looks like he may go old Hoyeth’s way soon. He remains dignified despite his condition, and I cannot help but admire such unflappable spirit. They will decide soon who is to take his seat, though I think it a very good sign that they chose me to fill in as substitute.

It will be a relief when it is over, as Varoshe and I have put our trysts on hold until it is finished. With how others talk, it was better that she give the fellows no reason to suspect a potential bias, though she told me in no uncertain terms that I am to be judged by the same standards as all the other fellows, and if Farkas thinks I’m not ready, that will be the end of that. I respect her forthcomingness and love her uncompromising honesty above all else. The way she set her face like flint when she told me made me want to kiss her.

We had our tenderest moment last week sitting below the Giant like an old couple, a scholar couple, in middle age finally grown into our precociousness that as children must have made us miserable company. I voiced for the first time, ever muddling and musing as I am, that I think the Giant is not just shifting, but that it is doing something. She laughed and said of course it is. Her response caught me off guard and I was left with nothing erudite to say.

“Where is it running to?” she asked.

I met her with silence. I didn’t know, I still don’t, but I raced her from the rock into town, twenty years old again, as if time were reversing—no matter how our lungs showed our age, my heart, and hers, were reclaiming a childhood we never had. At the bottom of the slope, hidden behind a hill, we kissed the way people are supposed to kiss.

The zodiacs turn, the Giant runs, and another season passes. My anxieties are ill-fitting; I will join the tribunal soon, there’s not much doubt. And when I do, I will ask Varoshe to wed me, or that I wed her, and we can run with the Giant wherever he goes. I know she has scorned more suitors than I can count, and has vowed off such “mercenary contracts” outright, but time has a way of equalizing, relativizing, erasing our difference of age, our accidents of sex, the temptations of beauty (not that hers has diminished, but the suitors have become less frequent), of class and clout, and besides, I can presume to something none of her lovers scorned could ever pretend to: when I look at her, I see the interminable mystery, more insurmountable than a dozen running Giants. What reason is there to become a lover except that you would delve into the minutiae of another?

Year 1746, Tzorron, thirty-sixth day of the Black Hart, the Moon is New.

Rumors went ahead of the conquering bastard like messenger birds. We thought our land would remain untouched by the Dark Prince and his ravages, protected as we are by the boundless woodland between us and him. Never underestimate a violent man. Rumor is the forests of Kordesh burned for an entire moon. Once the woodlanders fell, the lowlanders bowed their heads in supplication. King Abiam must have seen in this monster a kindred spirit, because the Reaper of Natal bent a knee to the Slayer of Kingdoms in a heartbeat. The woodlanders are beat, the lowlanders pay bribes and tribute, and us highlanders do our best to keep our heads down. Here in the furthest reach of Natal, on the border between Silf-kind and Mu-kind, not much of that political nonsense even touches us.

Nevertheless, a watchman spotted the scouts of Prince Droedd in the hills with the rising sun at their backs. They did not pass into town. The bastard’s murderous troops did not approach us. Folk say the Giant scared them away. Maybe so. I shall make an offering to the Giant, like my mother did to her ancestors. Would that the hours might speed up, or the Giant might step into our time frame, and lift his foot over those bastards to crush them. Then again, the Djinn rock is a bit like Boron itself: slow, remote, removed from the petty happenings of the world below. The highlands thank the Djinn a hundred forty four times, and then some.

Year 1750, Bâron, 7th day of the Shamir, the Moon is in the First Quarter.

Note of significance: Var[oshe] and [illegible] helped out with the intercalary [illegible] & safe to say 60 years in mortal time = 1 beat [second] in Giant
’s time.

Year 1754, Zhiron, 5th day of the Strix, the Moon is a Waxing Crescent.

Qoshe finished the last illustrations for the Picture Codex. There are a total of fifteen illustrations in all, and fine calligraphy such as can’t be found even in Dam Malaq among the royal scribes. I am supremely proud of his work, and showed it off to the other tribunes at length. Old Farkas’ eyesight is as good as gone but he saw what he could and appreciated what he did. Varoshe cradled it like it was the Sacred Writ itself and poured over each page with her characteristic rigor.

I’ve included one of his preliminary drawings here with the hope it will always rejuvenate my old interests. It is not nearly as glorious as the final illumination, but it properly demonstrates the scale. See how the Giant’s trajectory takes him toward Mount Resbet in the distance? Yes, it is certain that the stone djinn is on a pilgrimage of his own.

I need not add that Qoshe’s dissertation passed with unanimous approval. I hope this is not the last student to take such an interest in the Giant. There is a new scholar (I cannot remember his name, does my mind slow already?) who shows special promise in this regard. He led some young things down to the feet and they orated at each other to their chaperone’s amusement. Very precocious.

Year 1758, Malnorron, 19th day of the Cantbird, the Moon is Full.

Varoshe and I returned yesterday from our pilgrimage to Mount Resbet. Our first evening we visited the cave-dwellers on the eastern slope. Those cliffs are full of ascetics of every stripe, both Thumidines and Nishtharines, sages and vagrants, Silfan and Mu. I’ve never seen both races live in such harmony. We were received graciously by one of the mixed enclaves and offered their sacred barometz. We ate of the fruit and became open-eyed like youths. The monks laughed at us, for when we heard the tinkling of spring-water deep in the cave, we were certain it was the ringing bells of the Fae. But when Varoshe called out an ancient evocation for the matrical daemons to join us, all the monks, Silfan and Ngamu alike, bowed their heads in reverence.

The next morning we climbed as far as we could on the south-eastern slope and rested on a plateau with a magnificent view of Boron. You could see the slowly rising walls from there, and the manors and farms, and of course, most striking of all: the silhouette of the Giant, posing like some daemonic wayfarer seemingly frozen in time on the horizon. We’d set out before dawn, and when we reached our vista the sun was just rising from behind the djinn’s head, creating a halo. I could barely keep my gaze for the blindingness of the light, but Varoshe looked dead upon it and gazed without breaking. When at last she turned away to rub her eyes, she was laughing.

“What are you laughing at?” I inquired.

“I know what the Giant is doing,” she said. She smiled as if nursing a private joke. When I pressed her about it, she refused to answer, only took my hand and helped me to my feet. She came close to me and swayed a little, then thought better of whatever she was going to do and pulled me back toward the trail.

Year 1762, Giron, 26th day of the Pard, the Moon is near the Second Quarter.

Varoshe is dying. A physician from Fal Beon confirmed it this morning. She has blood-lung, has likely had it hiding in her for some time. I remember her cough when we returned from the pilgrimage four years ago, and I remember how I brushed it off. I feel like a consummate fool. I wish I had spent half the time at work as with her. The past suddenly fills with regrets. We should have traveled together, away from this ungodly academy, to someplace fresh. I am a consummate fool.

She begs me to cheer up. I feel horrible and burdensome, that she is the one dying and I’m the one needing comfort. Her face still glows, and her voice still cracks like a whip. It is only her body that is dying. Her soul is alive while mine withers away. I wish I had thrown away my studies and left the tribunal when we still had some good years. We could have traveled. She was always a traveler at heart. Her mind was always racing a thousand miles a day to as if to empty her of her wanderlust.

Today she called me to her bedside and had the most mischievous smile on her face. “I never told you what the Giant is doing,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter now,” I said.

“It does to me,” and perceptively enough she added, “so it does to you.”

I wasn’t in the mood, but I humored her:

“What is it doing, my love?”

“You’re so blind,” she laughed. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s dancing.”

Year 1766, Nomron, 1st day of the Myraj, the Moon is New.

Qoshe,

I want you to take good care of my notes when I’m gone, as you have taken care of my students. Do not be too upset—at least, don’t let it slow down the good work you do. I lived a good life and have more than I need to show for it, and if that’s enough for me, it should be for you. Have the students keep my wife’s garden watered, and don’t let that new librarian try and remove her books again. And keep an eye on that new prefect, I don’t remember his name, but you know which I mean: the one who ran from the monks. Make sure he is given good discipline, but also learn to appreciate his fire. It’s the fire of a dervish, and this is a school of dancing dervishes, though my predecessors may have forgotten. The school will keep pirouetting onward whether you follow these instructions or not, but it comforts me to know someone still has their head and heart arranged right.

Most important of all, make certain every student under your care visits the Giant at least once.

—Archmagister Rulon