Episode 21
Travelling Light E021S01 Transcript
[Title music: rhythmic electronic folk.]
H.R. Owen
Travelling Light: Episode Twenty One.
[The music fades out.]
The Traveller
11th Enu 850
To the community at Emerraine, who carry the Light.
We arrived yesterday in a small, southern town on a small, southern continent on the planet Navestii. The place is called Ikaalu, and is most known in the region as a seaside holiday destination for the local people.
I had spent much of the journey from Mot in my cabin, taking some much-needed time alone. When we arrived in Ikaalu I realised I was not ready yet to give it up. I slipped out and away from the landing site without telling the others of my plans, determined to spend the day in peaceful solitude.
Ikaalu, however, had other plans. It transpired we had accidentally timed our arrival to coincide with a local festival. The cobbled streets were packed with people with flowers on their hats and ribbons in their hair. Music came from every direction, brightly coloured flags fluttering above, and the smell of fried food hung on the air.
I made my way down the steep streets towards the sea front, and bought myself a mug of beer and a hot fried pastry thing of the type found, I think, at every single carnival the galaxy over. Truly, if there is one great constant among the varied peoples of the universe, it is fried pastry.
I ate watching the children running in and out of the waves, squealing with the gulls. After a while, a strange feeling started to come over me. I looked about and realised I had an audience. There was a child sitting on the rocks not too far from me, watching me with unabashed curiosity.
It is very hard to tell the ages of other species, but the child had gaps in their teeth and skinny, coltish legs complete with a pair of grazed knees. On their head, a stubby pair of horns poked out from a thatch of hair, marking them as a member of the majority species in the area.
“Hello,” I said. “What is your name?”
The child's wrinkled their nose, looking at me like I was an especially complicated jigsaw puzzle. They stood, hopped down from their rock, and trotted over to me, crouching beside my leg and looking ponderously up at me. Their eyes were a startling yellow, bright under dark brows.
“Are you having a nice time at the carnival?” I asked. “I have not played any of the games yet, but they look like good fun.”
They considered this. Then they said something fast and chatty in a language full of hisses and clicks.
“Oh!” I said, understanding. “You do not have a translator. I see.”
They frowned, and said something that, of course, I did not understand but with nonetheless perfectly conveyed their displeasure at my continued insistence on speaking my own language.
I showed them my translator, trying to explain the situation, and when they saw the device, their face lit up. They jumped to their feet and ran off without another word.
They returned a few moments later dragging an elderly adult by the hand. Where the child's horns were stubby, skinny little things, this person's were magnificent, curving out from their head in a pair of strong yet graceful spirals.
They smiled at me and made a gesture of greeting, and as they got closer I saw they were wearing a translator device not unlike my own.
“Hello there!” they said cheerfully. “Eiki says she's been making friends.”
“Trying to,” I agreed. “We have hit a bit of a language barrier, though.”
“Oh, is that it? I wondered what she was on about. I'm Toikka. Nice to meet you.”
I was introducing myself when the child – Eiki – interrupted, tugging at Toikka's sleeve. She said something in that same staccato language, gesturing urgently in my direction. Toikka laughed.
“Alright, scrapper, alright. Here you go.”
He tugged his translator's interfaces free and helped Eiki put them on, making sure the microphone was in place. When she was ready, Eiki cleared her throat.
[clears throat] “Hello? Is it working?”
“It seems to be,” I said. “It is very nice to meet you, Eiki. My name is-”
But Eiki had no time to waste on pleasantries. “It's working! Elder Toikka, it's really really working! Where are you from? Are you from so so far away? Did you come on a space ship? I've never met anyone in my whole life who doesn't speak Tatiiski, and I am nearly 10. Elder Vanikka says there are million million different languages and some of them we won't ever ever be able to speak because they do it with lights and colours and we can't make colours in our skin like that – do you speak in colours?”
“Uh. N-no, I speak in words. I have met people who speak with colours though – it is called bioluminescence.”
Eiki's eyes, yellow as daisies, widened in astonishment. “Ohhh! How does it work with the translator if it's in colours? Does it see the colours and turn it into words for you? How does it see? Elder Toikka's machine only has a microphone, do other sorts have cameras? Does yours have a camera? What language are you speaking right now?”
[laughin] “I speak a language called Lyllich,” I said, unable to keep from laughing. “It is spoken on a planet called Serran which is a very long way from here. And I did indeed come here on a space ship.”
You can imagine the onslaught of questions that prompted. I answered as I best I could in the rare moments when Eiki paused for breath.
After a little while, she asked if I would like to go back to the carnival with her and Toikka. Toikka leant in here and said something to her in Tatiiski. Eiki scowled, unhappy at the interruption, and turned back to me with a chastened expression.
“If you're too busy or you want to be on your own, that's OK too. Even though I was going to show you the game where they have all these little wooden fish in a paddling pool and you have to use a big big stick with a hook on the end to grab one and on the bottom it says what prize you get and I'm really really good at it, and they're doing Kustii and the dragon at the puppet show which is my favourite favourite favourite! But you don't have to… [sighing] if you don't want to.”
“That sounds like a wonderful plan.”
Eiki bounced on her toes, delighted. “Really really?”
“Really really.”
She was as good as her word, and led me and Toikka around the carnival like a queen showing off her domain. Toikka and I did our best to communicate without the translator, and Eiki was by and large a conscientious go-between, if somewhat distractable.
Eventually, the three of us found our way to the sea wall to have a sit down and catch our breath. Eiki was crunching her way through a bag of little round fried things, her pockets full of prizes from various gaming stalls. Toikka took the opportunity to take the translator back from her.
“It's about time I took this one home,” he said, once he was all hooked up. “But I wanted to thank you. You've been very kind to her.”
“I do not think she would settle for less,” I said, making him laugh.
Eiki asked something in a spray of half-chewed food and Toikka pulled an apologetic face. “She wants to know if you'll come back and visit.”
“Oh. Uh. No. No, I-I will very probably, uh, never be here again.”
Toikka translated, and Eiki took the news with thoughtful, crunchy stoicism. Then she said something to Toikka in Tatiiski, and a slow smile spread over his face.
“She would like to know how you say 'thank you' and 'goodbye' in your language.”
Her eyes found mine, shining up at me, buttercup bright. “Thank you,” I said, meaning it with every part of me. “Goodbye.”
“Sssanku,” she repeated, grinning her big, gappy grin. “Gubbigh.”
I stayed in Ikaalu a little longer after Eiki and Toikka left, enjoying the atmosphere and breathing in the fresh sea air. And when I returned to the Tola, it was with a light heart, reassured that for all the dizzying variety of the universe, there will always be stories, and music, and fried pastry, and chatty little girls with gaps in their teeth.
[The click of a data stick being inserted into a drive that whirs as it reads]
The Traveller
Entry NI85011-5: A folk tale collected in Ikaalu, a town in the southern hemisphere of Navestii.
Key words: folklore and fairytales; Ikaalu; local history; myths and legends; Navestii; oral literature.
Notes:
During our time in Ikaalu, I had the opportunity to attend an annual festival celebrating the town's founding. While I was there, I made the acquaintance of a young girl who was attending the festival with an elderly friend of hers.
This type of intergenerational friendship is highly valued in the region. It is considered the proper order of things for elders in the community to take on the majority share of child-rearing responsibilities, and most of the children I saw at the festival were in the company of people of an age to be their grandparents.
There is a practical reason for this habit. By leaving the very young and the very old to take care of one another, the middle generations are free to fish, farm, trade and barter, and all the other necessary but time-consuming tasks of daily life which a person may be less able to do as they get older.
But there is a more emotional reason this tradition stands so firmly in the local culture. It offers the child chance to build relationships with adults to whom they are not related, outside of the structures of school or organised youth groups. It lets them hear different perspectives and learn different lessons.
And for the older people, it ensures they have a role in the community long past their ability to do physical labour. They stay connected to the people around them, and know that their contribution is valued.
This idea was brought home to me when my new companion insisted on bringing me to see the performance of a local folk tale, acted out with marionettes.
The performers were not wearing translator devices though, and the noise of the crowds, the laughter and enthusiastic participation of the children and the general hubbub of the festival meant I came away from the performance with very little understanding of what the actual story had been.
Fortunately, my guide was kind enough to recount the story to me in full. She sat up on her knees, cleared her throat, and began.
[clears throat] “Once upon a time there was boy called Kustii, and he was brave and clever and kind and he had so so many adventures his whole life, until one day when he was very old he had his last ever adventure where he defeated the wicked giant Hakiimo once and for all.
But his first adventure, way back before he was even anyone at all, before he met Ser Jorvi or Onia the wind-walker or Miskku the talking cat, before any other story, the first adventure Kustii ever had was the one with the sea dragon.
This was long long long ago, way back in the times when we were all a hundred little tribes and not one big one. And Kustii belonged to a tribe who lived right here in this province. And he lived by the sea, just like us! Nobody knows for sure sure whether he lived right where our town is, but I think he probably did.
Anyway, the sea dragon! It was a great big shiny thing, bigger than anything you can imagine, bigger than houses on houses. And it came to the sea near where Kustii lived, and when it whipped its tail in the water, the waves got huge and huge, and when it roared it was thunder and when it breathed it was lightning!
Everyone was so so scared and the fishers couldn't go out any more and the whole town was hungry and frightened. But Kustii wasn't frightened, even then. He was only a boy but he was going to be a great hero one day, and he wasn't scared one bit.
And he said, “I will fight the sea dragon. I will go and I will take my boat out and I will kill it, dead!”
Only, you see, he wasn't really a hero yet. We know he was going to be because we're all these hundreds of years later, but the people in his tribe, well they thought he was just an ordinary sort of boy.
And they said, “No, Kustii, no! No you mustn't! It's much much much too dangerous!”
And Kustii said, “If I don't go, who will? Or will we sit here in our huts and wait for the dragon to eat us and in the meantime we all will starve to death anyway!” He was very angry.
But then an old lady in the tribe called Ruut, she spoke up and she said, “Kustii, you are a headstrong and wilful boy and you will not listen. I will go with you to the sea dragon and I will keep you safe.”
Well, Kustii didn't like that one bit. He thought old people were boring and stuffy and no good for doing things with like having adventures. But the whole tribe agreed that they would only let Kustii go if Ruut went along with him. So they packed their boat, and they set sail to find where the sea dragon was hiding.
There's lots of stories about the things they saw on their journey, and sometimes people say this was when Kustii met Onia the wind-walker for the first time.But my atta doesn't tell the story like that so we're not doing it that way.
Instead, they just sail for time time time, so far away they haven't seen any land for days and days. And this whole time, Kustii and Ruut have not been getting on. They bicker and squabble, and Ruut thinks Kustii is reckless and rude and Kustii thinks Ruut is boring and stale bread. And they are not one bit friends.
And then, suddenly… everything… goes dark.
The sky, which was bluer than blue just before, it's suddenly all black, black as night but with no stars at all. And the sea isn't green or blue or grey any more, it's black black black, deep black all the way down.
And slowly, the boat begins to rock. Just a bit at first, but then more and more and more, until it's thrashing around and it's all Kustii and Ruut can do to hold on and try not to fall out! And the sky splits with a roar of thunder and there's a flash of lightning so bright they're blinded by it, and the sea dragon is right right there!
And it soars up out of the water, and the boat is tipping in the waves, and Kustii and Ruut scream and scream and scream! Until the sea dragon swirls around, and opens its mouth and it swallows them up in one big gulp!
But Kustii can't die yet, you see? Because he's got all of these adventures to go on. So instead, he wakes up and he's down there in the belly of this sea dragon, all on his own. And it's dark and it smells awful, like fishy sick, and he's blinking and blinking, trying to see.
And then he spots a light in the distance. And he thinks maybe it's a way out, but maybe it isn't, but either way, he doesn't know what else to do, so he goes towards it. And the sea dragon's belly is so so big, it takes fully three days and nights for him to walk all that way.
But eventually, he sees that it's Ruut, holding a lantern, calling out his name. And she's been trying to find him all those three days and nights!
They hug and laugh and they sing all these songs and they're so so happy to see each other and that neither of them is dead! But they are still very much stuck in a sea dragon's belly, and it's only a matter of time before they get ingested and melted in acid and turned into poo. They know that they have to get out.
Some people tell the story where they get out by killing the sea dragon – sometimes it's that there were barrels in its belly from other ships it had eaten, and the barrels have something in them that explodes when they set it on fire.
Or sometimes they do it where they find a big barrel of pepper and make the dragon sneeze them out, which I like better than killing it and also it means they splatter out all covered in dragon snot.
But the way my atta tells the story, she says that they talk to the sea dragon and it asks them riddles and when they get all the riddles right, the sea dragon is so angry it roars and roars and Kustii and Ruut get blown out with all of the roaring.
And I like that one better only I'm not as good at thinking of riddles as my atta so you have to just imagine it. They're really, really clever though and things you wouldn't ever have expected, and Kustii and Ruut get them all right because they're so so clever and also because-
Oh! Oh, this is the important bit! No matter how they get out, whatever way you tell it, the important bit is that they do it because they work together.
Ruut is wise and thinks things through and she's been alive for such a long long time that she can find clever answers to anything. Meanwhile Kustii has all these new ideas and imagination, and together, they get out of the sea monster
And if they killed it then it's dead and it's all done, but if they do it the riddles way then one of the rules of the riddles game was that it has to swim off somewhere else and never ever come back to the place where Kustii and Ruut's tribe are.
And they go home and everyone's so so happy and so so proud of them and they have a big party and there's more more songs and they stay up for the party for three on three on three days and nights, just celebrating!
And from then on, everyone knows that the best thing is for children and elders to be friends, and to do things together. And that's why me and Elder Toikka are friends, and Elder Vanikka and Elder Yotii and everybody else.
They look after us because they know lots of things because they've been alive so long, and we keep them company and have fun with them and do adventures with them. See? The end!”
[Title music: rhythmic instrumental folk. It plays throughout the closing credits.]
H.R. Owen
Travelling Light was created by H.R. Owen and Matt McDyre, and is a Monstrous Productions podcast. This episode was written and performed by H.R. Owen.
This week’s entry to the archives was based on an idea by Matt McDyre, with accompanying artwork available on our social media accounts.
If you've got an idea for an archive entry, we want to hear it. You can send us anything from a one line prompt to a fully written entry through our website, by email, or on social media. For more information, see the show notes.
If you want to support Travelling Light, please consider leaving a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can also make a one-off donation or sign up for a monthly subscription at ko-fi.com/monstrousproductions.
With tiers starting at just £1 a month, all supporters receive bonus artwork and additional content, the ability to vote on audience decisions, and an invitation to the Monstrous Productions Discord server.
This podcast is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The theme tune is by Vinca.
[Fade to silence.]
--END TRANSCRIPT--
