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The first solstice that I visit Euphemia, I am in my third year as an apprentice to the trader’s guild. I walk alongside the camels the eighty miles to market – I have not yet earned the privilege of riding. I am barely old enough to wear the purple tunic of a guild merchant, and my nose is overwhelmed by the nutmeg and cardamom and frankincense of the bazaar. I am supposed to be there to learn how to haggle and huckster wares, but I cannot stop by eyes from drifting to the shining ivory towers and kaleidoscope tapestries of Euphemia. Balthazar cuffs my ears because I lay out our bushels of almonds and hazelnuts with the wrong prices three times in a row. In the jostle and bustle of the market it is all I can do not to become swept away, awed by the desire to run my hands over every rug, hold each urn, breathe in deep each spice and perfume.
That night, Balthazar invites me to join him by the fire, with a group of bearded merchants from Octavia – a place of honor, a test. They laugh comfortably, trading old jokes, and toasting to old friends. The bustle of the conversation is even livelier than the marketplace – they swap stories as quickly as coffee beans and bolts of linen, jockeying for the next place in the conversation like barkers calling out their wares. Stories of wars and quests, of dragons and monsters and storms at sea. Of new loves and lost loves, near brushes with death, and treasures beyond imagining. The canvas covering the bag of beans I am sitting on digs prickling into the backs of my thighs has I watch the fire’s flickering, ever changing patterns. My mouth is shut tight. I do not have any tales like these.
And then, just at the edge of the circle of firelight, I catch a glimpse of a face. The kind face of an old woman, worn and weathered by desert winds. Balthazar and the others do not note her – too caught up in the raucous revelry of a companion’s tale.
“This is your first time in the city,” she says, taking a seat by me.
I nod. She shakes her head, side to side slowly. “It’s a lot to take in, no? I can barely remember what it was like, when I first came to this city. It seems now that I have known Euphemia for my entire life – her pillars, her alleyways, the baker who I buy a fresh flatbread from the morning, the fountain in the square that will cool my brow even in the heat of midday – I know them each as well as the lines of my own hands. I met my first love in this city. And my second and third, as well. And lost them here too. I have tasted the finest wines, laid eyes on the ugliest tunics, and heard the music of the strangest bells.”
“Now,” she says, “you must tell me your story.”
“I- I have no story.” I burn red with shame that I have no gift of equal worth to give her in exchange. “I seen so little in my life. I have never been anywhere that can compare tot his city– no where so bright, so loud, or so beautiful.”
But my answer does not seem to bother her. “Thank you,” she says to me, with a slow nod, and she shakes my hand, a strong trader’s handshake. And then she turns from the circle of the fire. As she walks away, there is something lighter in her step, something bright in how the fire reflects in her eyes, something curious in how she stops to peer into each circle of storytellers, how she pauses to behold the clocktower tolling the hour.
On the way back to our city, I ride atop a camel which has been freed of it’s burden of nuts and seeds, traded away for lighter precious spices. As the camel sways, I find myself already counting down the days until the Equinox, the next day that I will get to break a freshly baked flatbread in my hands before laying out my wares. I cannot wait to trade stories around the campfire with old friends again.
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Most times, the trip to Euphemia is a joyous occasion, but this Equinox, it feels sour as the junk struggles upriver. It has been a hard year –a bad harvest, and a year of bad luck since the death of the Queen’s late son. The junk which usually lays low and fat in the river loaded down with wares now bobs along too lightly and uneasily.
At the market, I am ashamed by the wares that I have to lay out. Mildewy, threadbare cloths, and a few mothy barrels of rice. The usurper’s soldiers trampled the rest. I do not blame the passersby who stare down at my yellow mat with disdain as they pass by. I feel more like a beggar than a merchant. I resent the few sales that I do make, knowing that the gold coin in my pocket must only be because a naive buyer did not have the eye to examine the bolt carefully, to spot the cocoony threads in the rice. I feel as rotten and threadbare as the cloths I sell.
That night, year, I avoid the campfires. I have memories which I would love to be rid of - memories which I long to trade away. But I do not think anyone else would want them. It would not be right to burden anyone else with such wormy wares.
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“Jaazaniah! Jaazaniah!” they all chant as the fire blazes. “Let Jaazaniah speak! We want to hear Jaazaniah’s stories!!”
A hush settles around the fire as I begin my story, sweeping my hand like the beginning of a ritual. I tell them the story of how I battled with the Serpent of Kadem-Ruith and escaped at only the price of two fingers from my right hand. I tell them the story of the founding of Egh Eren, and the Well of Two Thousand Talents. I tell them the story of how I bedded the giantess’s sister, and lost her favor, then won it again. I tell them the story of the time I met the Duchess’s son, though it was only for a few minutes, and he was in disguise.
Everyone who comes to Euphemia holds some things close to their chest. There is always the one perfectly glazed vase that you bring to market intending to trade, but find that you cannot part with – it ends up carefully wrapped back in your saddlebags on the ride home. Sometimes, back at home, when I regale my neighbors with my new memories from Euphemia, they will ask me, isn’t it unfair? Surely there must be some who come to trade at Euphemia who don’t know what they’re getting themseves into. Won’t they miss those memories? I say, no one goes to trade something that they aren’t ready to part with. You start telling a story, you already know that you’re ready to let it go. Maybe, even, you wish you were rid of it already.
“Jaazaniah,” they will ask me, “how is it that you always have such incredible stories to tell? How do these things keep happening to you?”
And at that, I smile mysteriously. But to you, I’ll tell my secret – it is not that I live an especially exciting life. I am no extraordinary adventurer, or poet, or traveler. It is just that I hold no memory too sacred to be willing to trade it away.