A Stranger in Olondria: A Novel (35 page)

Perhaps even the land named in the books is no longer real. Terrible rumors reach us from the north: libraries burning, devotees of the Stone dragged into the street. Perhaps, one day, Tyom will become the last refuge of books. I do not know. I read. I take the children of Tyom hunting with Firdred, spearing boar in snowy Olondrian forests. Together we enter the dark-shuttered castle of Beal. And Fodra takes us to Bain, to the white walls overlooking the sea, the eternal flavor of olives. Then I look up: the light has changed, the children are restless with hunger, we have all lost another afternoon of our lives, gaining nothing but an enigmatic glow: for the cup I lift now is not merely a cup but carries on its glazed surface the shadows of sails. And this lintel, suddenly it’s darker, as if magically aged. And the flowers of the courtyard, exhausted with heat, hang on their stalks like handkerchiefs forgotten after a midnight ball, like sashes lost at romantic assignations. In the same way, perhaps, I am still influenced by the angel, subtly, hazily, as the tide responds even in the dark of the moon. Sometimes she comes to me in dreams, and it is as if I have been permitted to enter the huge and vanished doors of childhood.

My lost rose, my distant bell! What was that feeling of happiness, welling up unexpectedly under the sorrow? I was in the schoolroom after a lesson; my mother was there; the room was hot and bright, the walls yellow with light from the open doorway. I stood, shaken with joy, concentrating on the feeling as if analyzing a new and delightful taste. It was the angel: the pure heat, the warbling doves in the sunny garden, my mother’s golden face lit by the walls.

“What is it, younger son?” she asked me, laughing.

What is it? Yes, what is it? It is the reason I walk the mountains after dusk, unable to bear even my tattered shelter of dried grass, and watch the fireflies pulsing over the forest. Oh, will she not come? Can they not call her, those roving lamps? No: I am alone in the sultry air, in the faintly violet darkness, in the odor of damp leaves. But I go on waiting for her. I look for her still.

Acknowledgments

This book took two years to write and a decade to revise, and it’s impossible to thank all the people who helped me along the way. However, special thanks are due:

To Anna Jean Mayhew, for her helpful comments. To the “Smiling Authors”: Kerry Dunn, Sheryl Dunn, Richard C. Hine, Marla Mendenhall, Jarucia Jaycox Nirula, Dwight Okita, Steffan Piper, and Robert L. Taylor, for constructive criticism, advice, and moral support.

To Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link of Small Beer Press, for making it happen, and for the magic editing touch.

To Kat Köhler, my partner in crime.

To my parents, who passed on their love of words.

And to Keith—first reader, loyal critic, mapmaker, and inspiration—who was there when it all began.

Sofia Samatar wrote
A Stranger in Olondria
in Yambio, South Sudan, where she taught high school English. She has also worked in Egypt, and now lives in the United States with novelist Keith Miller and their two children.

Learn more at sofiasamatar.com.

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