But I knew that Athenorkos was different, and I thought that by knowing the language I understood the people. Holistically speaking, Athenorkos is a fascinatingly simple language, one with few descriptors. Speakers of Athenorkos rely almost exclusively on nouns and verbs. I find the clarity of it somewhat intoxicating. The purity of the language, its simplicity, evaporates with the family. A Semadran is faced with a mind-boggling number of names for the complex, reflective, shifting relationships the red elves have to each other. Siblings can be full (meaning you share both biological parents) or half (meaning you share your mother) or split (meaning you share your father) or linked (meaning you bear no actual biological relation, but you regard this person as a sibling because of his or her relation to your biological parents; for example, if your half sibling’s father has a child with another woman and the two of you are raised in the same household). There are close-links and far-links. There is an elaborate typology of relationship structures: romps (fleeting physical relationships with little emotional interaction), flings (short-lived relationships with a highly emotional component that end amicably), tosses (short-lived relationships with a highly emotional component that end badly), joinings (the Athenorkos equivalent of marriage), broken bonds (essentially a divorce), knots (several individuals all married to each other), and tangles (a messy sort of arrangement of those engaged in joinings and broken bonds). I was fluent in Athenorkos. I thought that meant I understood what these terms meant. I thought, as I stood outside the door that first evening with Sorcha, that my fluency with the language meant little would surprise me. But everything about these people surprised me. The depth of the relationships they had with one another—even when they weren’t related by blood—shocked me. The bareness with which they expressed themselves with one another overwhelmed me. The palpable trust they had with each other was a thing that felt like it would swallow me whole.

Dirva came back, and I came with him, and at those dinners I bore witness to the trail of carnage he had caused by both leaving and returning. It sunk into me, through my pores and into my blood. It rooted itself in me. And then I would see Dirva and his da, this ghalio criminal who had made him the man I knew, the only one in the room who saw Dirva for himself, and it took every ounce of strength I had not to weep.

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6