“Oh, yes,” Ssh’iivha said, “just not out loud, these days. It seems silly to think it’s a coincidence: I suspect he can hear us a little, though he probably doesn’t think of it that way. And he talks to us as if he thinks we can hear, which is considerate for an ehhif.”
“But he doesn’t speak out loud….” Urruah said. He was up on the desk now, peering at the complex-looking black-and-gold machine on the top of it.
“No,” Ssh’iivha said. “There’s something the matter with his throat. If he has something to say to other ehhif, he has to write it down on a piece of paper and give it to them. We can just barely hear him whisper, but other ehhif can’t hear him at all.” Ssh’iivha waved her tail, sadly, slowly. “He wasn’t always like this. A while after I came to live with him, his voice started to get hoarse. Finally he went off where ehhif go to be healed, the hhohs’hihal: and he came home seeming well enough, but without his voice. So now all our People call him Eth’ehhif, the Silent Man, when they visit.”
“I tried to have a look at him to see what was going on with his throat,” Hwaith said, sounding a little embarrassed, “but I couldn’t get far. I’m not really much good at healing: I specialize in spatial constructs, mostly. And he’s spiky, Rhiow: a real tom. You try to get friendly with him, and if he didn’t start the process himself, he wonders what you’re up to, he holds you away….”
Rhiow waved her own tail, trying to maintain her composure. The words “the hhohs’hihal” had brought the fur up on her against her will. She could still see her poor Hhu’ha’s discarded body lying there on a steel slab, not inconsiderately treated, but nonetheless terribly empty of the soul that had so often used that flesh to pick her up and cuddle her and make rude-for-ehhif noises against her belly — an entirely undignified process for a Person, and one without which the world was now all too dry and empty a place. “We’ll look into it while we’re here, if you like,” Rhiow said, commanding herself to some kind of calm. “We’ve got some other things to look into as well, but if we cross his path we’ll certainly try to see if he needs some kind of assistance that we can offer him. Are you expecting him soon?”
“It’s hard to say,” Ssh’iivha said. “He works our hours, truly: he’s almost more one of us than one of them. Out from sunset to a bit past dawn, usually: then he comes home, makes notes of what he’s seen and where he’s been, and after a drink of something, falls over. He’s in the Business, you see. He sleeps the day away…then, a while before sunset, he gets up and dresses himself and goes out again.”
“’The Business?’” Rhiow said. “Which one?”
“He makes dreams,” Ssh’iivha said. Hheivvhwei was the Ailurin word she used, a common one for fiction, as opposed to fwaiwei, “news”, a story that was known or supposed to have really happened.
Urruah jumped down from the desk and wandered back over to them. “He’s working with one of the ss’huhios?” he said.
“That’s right,” Ssh’iivha said. She looked over at Hwaith. “It’s the place that has the lion as its symbol: don’t ask me the name of it – they’ve changed that about three times in the last few years. He’s just finished work on a ffhilm for them. It’s based on one of the stories he told for one of the hviih-sh’ethh, the papers-that-speak-silently.”
“A magazine,” Urruah said. “Interesting.”
“But I heard from one of the other People who come through here, Hhaiivuh his name is, he’s a mouser at one of the other ss’huhios, that the eth’Ehhif was lucky to finish work on that ffhilm when he did.” Ssh’iivha’s eyes went wide with the expression of a Person plunging happily into the latest gossip. “Apparently that big earthquake the other day did a lot of damage at the ss’huhio: some gas connection or something went wrong in the fake-street where they’d been making the ffhilm, and half the backlot burned down. There were even a couple of ehhif killed. The police and the ehhif who put out fires were all over the place for days. And even now that they’ve gone, everyone’s schedules over there are in shreds, it seems…”
“The earthquakes,” Hwaith said, “they’re part of what’s brought us here. But I hadn’t heard that anyone had been killed!”
“Oh yes,” said Ssh’iivha. “And here’s a curiosity for you! The ehhif who died in the fire weren’t even ss’huhio people, Hhaiivuh said. They were [insert Ailurin term here] ehhif – “ she used the word for “stray” that many People used to express the human-English term “homeless” – “and no one’s sure how they got into the backlot, or why they didn’t get out when the fire started. Because it didn’t start suddenly: it took a long time to get going, Hhaiivuh said. Maybe too long.” Ssh’iivha flicked on ear back in a bemused gesture. “Hhaiivuh told me that there’s a rumor going around that the fire wasn’t really caused by the earthquake at all, but started on purpose – “
