Old Mother Sabe

Written by Kiyo Sugi, head of the Sugi house of lantern makers, for the East Landing book of Mothers, in the thirtieth year of Sabe's office. The clerk asked me because, she said, nobody else would dare. Sabe was told about it and said, "Spell my name right." It has four letters.

The girl on the Salt Steps

I have known Sabe for sixty-five years. We met at eight, in the soaking tanks of my father's workshop, which she had climbed into on a dare from her brother. She stood up to her chin in cold mulberry water, looked at me, and said nothing at all until I fetched her out. Then she said "Thank you", climbed back over the wall and went home. I remember thinking that she had won something, though I could not have told you what.

She was born in the 239th Low Tide, on the Salt Steps. Her mother was an oar at Salt Steps Landing and her father mended boats. She learned to row before she could swim, which in Seiran is not unusual, and to swim after falling in, which is not unusual either.

The oar

She went to East Landing at fifteen and asked Mother Tsuru to take her on. Mother Tsuru told her to come back in a year. Sabe came back in exactly a year, to the day, at the same hour, which tells you most of what you need to know about her.

She was an oar by eighteen and steerswoman of the Kingfisher by thirty. The tall oar she carries now, the one she leans on, points with and has more than once used to tap an apprentice smartly on the ankle, is the Kingfisher's steering oar. When the Kingfisher was broken up in the 291st Low Tide, Sabe kept the oar. Nobody asked her for it back. Nobody would.

The Floodyear

I will say only a little about this, because she would want me to say nothing.

She steered the Kingfisher on all four nights. On the third night, when the Grey Heron and the Little Wren went past the Markers and did not return, Mother Tsuru was steering the Grey Heron. Sabe brought the Kingfisher home with every oar aboard. She has never told me what she saw out there, and I have never asked twice.

At the assembly after the Floodyear she was made Mother of East Landing. She wrote the rule of the Markers into the customs that same night, in her own hand. You can see it in the book. The ink is very dark, as though she pressed hard.

Tea

She carries a dented tin flask of roasted barley tea, brewed so strong it is nearly black, and offers it to everyone who comes to East Landing. Accepting is a mistake you make once. She drinks it all day and has done for fifty years, and she is the healthiest woman I know, which I put down to spite.

The pin

The wooden pin that holds up her bun is a press peg from my father's workshop. She borrowed it in the 250th Low Tide to keep her hair out of her eyes for an afternoon. I asked for it back for about ten years and then stopped. I am told the apprentices believe it is a relic of the founders. I have not corrected them.

What she is like

Strict. The apprentices are frightened of her, and they are right to be, for about a year. After that they are something else, which they find harder to name.

Kind, in a way that takes a long time to see. She never says anything warm. She simply turns up. Every ferrywoman who has ever left East Landing to marry has had a letter from Sabe on the morning of her wedding. I have seen some of them. They are two lines long. They are kept in drawers all over the city.

Few words. She will answer a question with one word if one will do and with none if none will. When she does say a full sentence, the landing goes quiet to hear it.

She knows the name of every lantern she has rowed out. I do not think that is an exaggeration. I tested her once, with the ledgers, on a slow afternoon. She got bored before she got one wrong.

Two things I do not know

I asked her once whether she had ever been past the Markers. She poured the tea.

And every year, on the morning after Low Tide, she stands at the sea gate until the sun is fully up. She says she is counting her ferries home. Her ferries are home hours before that. I have stood beside her eleven times now and not once asked what else she is counting.

I expect I shall stand there again this year. I expect I shall not ask.

K. S.