“I could hear the roaring fill the air but I could not find a source. A waterfall around the bend, I thought, across these rocks. Ahead, I could see a small crack in the rock. I went forward prepared to leap it. As I took the step nearest it, I glanced down. “And nearly fell, two hundred feet I’m sure, into a boiling cauldron of water trapped in a deep, narrow chasm of stone so curled and convoluted by erosion that it seemed like some fantastic cloth. I can record all this now but at the time I had to fling myself back, and the navigator grabbed me and prevented me from sliding in. We both fell backward, and I lay there panting and sweating. “‘What?’ she said. ‘What?’ I gestured, and she crawled ahead. When she returned, her face was white, but she was laughing. “‘I can die now,’ she said, that Avanue phrase Annalise has read in books but I had never heard spoken before. The navigator lay beside me laughing until she calmed, while the others, including the merchanter, took their turn. He alone seemed unmoved. “When we jumped across the chasm (so narrow there was no effort to it)—and there is no easy way to say it—she jumped not across but in. I did not see it. No-one saw it but the merchanter. I only heard her falling laughter.… “Annalise tells me that if a northerner says that phrase ‘I can die now,’ it means great joy, but they mean it truly. Not many of them choose to actually die, but they do not grieve for those who do.” LovePainHappinessJoyFearGrief Book:Black Wine Source: Black Wine
“They all know the chant except her. She tries to follow along but her signs are halting. Still, the people on either side of her smile at her. The silence in the room is overwhelming, broken as it is by nothing but the involuntary sounds of the deaf and the rustling of the sleeves of the signing people. The girl is about to start to cry when she hears around her a muted chuckling sound. Who’s laughing, she thinks furiously, only to realize that the sound was the sniffling of other people already weeping. At the realization, she is hard-put to suppress giggles instead. She thinks: maybe all ritual has mystery and absurdity, and maybe that is what it is for. It is a curious and complex thought and like most of her legacy from the madwoman it makes her head hurt. She concentrates then on her signing.” LoveHopeLanguageLossGriefSecretMysterySlaveryDeaf Book:Black Wine Source: Black Wine