Tangon, Apprentice Scribe

Tangon, apprentice scribe, had fingers long and quick like spiders’ legs, spattered with dark blue ink and incredibly, impossibly precise. That was a requirement for the job, you see. One couldn’t risk tarnishing the names of the great scholars and inestimable poets by ascribing to them things they had not said. Every word, every letter had to be perfect—even the last curlicue of the most insignificant little O. 

And the quicker Tangon copied them, the quicker the sundial marks would pass until he could head home.

So his fingers flew across fresh parchment as he transcribed his master’s scrawled notes into a more legible form. Irregular angles were made more uniform, lumpy cursive was smoothed into submission, questionable conjugations were tweaked into perfect clarity. Soon another man’s words were organised in even lines, every tail of every L looped through its neighbours like a twist of beribboned curls. 

He had no time to admire his handiwork. The ink had not yet dried when Master Golvad called him to a different task.

“Have you quite finished, Tangon? Come! I must dictate a letter.”

And so the morning went. A stack of correspondence here, a tabling of accounts there, a rough translation of the Hera Vaelead over yonder: Tangon recorded it all. Master Golvad was a busy man and had more than enough paperwork to keep his apprentice just as busy, no matter the time of day. They paused for a breath at noon when the housekeeper brought them something to eat but no sooner had Tangon swallowed his last bite than Master Golvad reappeared at his side. He set a heavy leatherbound tome on the table beside his apprentice.

Tangon brushed the crumbs of his meagre lunch from his fingers and sighed wistfully as he thought of his wife’s cooking. He would have to wait until the evening—there was yet more work to be done. He turned his attention to the book beside him. 

“Passage fifty-three,” explained Master Golvad, “on the properties of the soul. The finest of our blue ink and vellum, please. I want your best work—Lord Mandur has an eye for quality and,” he added with a satisfied smile, “a heavy purse.”

Tangon brought the book over to the writing-desk and set to work at once.

First, to gather the necessary materials: a quire of vellum, yet to be marked and ruled; the prized vial of blue ink; a selection of quills, already sharpened; and all manner of lesser tools, among them blotting cloth and quill knives. Tangon ordered each in its place. He opened his master’s book to passage fifty-three and, on the first spotless sheet of vellum, began marking out the lines where the copy was soon to take shape. 

It was not a quick task. After much painstaking preparation, every line was marked and Tangon set the ruler aside. At last he could properly begin. The scribe dipped his goosefeather quill in the ink as blue as his beloved’s eyes, took a deep breath, and smiled.

The soft curves of S, the first letter, brought the page alive in a rich and brilliant blue-green. Soon its sisters filled the space around it, copied out in Tangon’s steady hand. He lost himself in the beauty of the lines and the rhythm of redipping his quill again and again to give life to each new word. Perhaps in the poet’s mind the words were a song, but under Tangon’s fingers they became a dance, sometimes barely touching, one nestled in the shadow of another, sometimes intertwined, a flourish of one letter leading into the one below.

Shadows lengthened as he worked, but Tangon’s focus did not waver. As the afternoon slipped into evening, he at last reached the end of passage fifty-three. And it was beautiful. With a fine-tipped crowfeather quill, Tangon added the last details: a curlicue here, a flourish there, a delicate accent on the I over yonder. He wiped a smear of ink from his fingers. The day’s work was complete. Master Golvad would be pleased.

Carefully Tangon set the pages out to dry, packed away his supplies and reported to his master. With the acknowledgment of a job well done, Master Golvad dismissed him until the morrow, and Tangon started home.

His step was light and his walk short. In what seemed moments he pushed open the door to his family’s small home and found himself wrapped in the scent of something hearty and warm. His stomach growled.

“Meren!” he called. “It’s me!”

The patter of feet caught his attention. As Tangon turned, a small human flung herself around his leg and held on, tight. She looked up, her blue-green eyes alight with her smile.

“Olsi!”

Olsi freed one hand and brushed the back of her fingers down her cheek in a familiar gesture. « Da! » She reached for him.

Tangon swept her up and spun her in a circle, his laughter joining with her squeals. When he set her down, his fingers moved quickly: he tapped first his nose, then his chest, and then gestured toward Olsi. « How’s my little girl? » His brows lifted in a question.

Olsi nodded. Her bright smile was soon mirrored by the shape of her upturned palms. « I happy. » She giggled as she grabbed his hands and inspected his stained fingers. « Look, Da—blue! »

« I know, » he signed. He brushed her dark curls back from her eyes and tugged playfully on the blue ribbon his wife had used to tie back Olsi’s hair. « Look! You too. »

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