- What is in a Name? -
Dedicated to my beloved boyfriend, who took six months to realize that he'd been saying my last name wrong since day one.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters in this work, nor do I own any of the events in the Book of Atrus. Those belong to the ever-wonderful Miller brothers in whose ultimate glory I can only grovel.
Katran sat looking over the unconscious man on the pallet. He was pale, and not just from his sickly state; his skin was clearly not the sun-baked brown of a Rivenese. There was no numbered marking on his neck. Katran picked up the goggles that had been in his pocket and turned them over in her fingers, observing and considering. They looked like Gehn's. Could this be a servant… companion… friend, enemy, of Gehn's, from his own world?
She jumped back as the man coughed, breaking the silence of the dark hut. He sat up, eyes darting wildly before they locked on her face. There they stayed, entranced, for a moment or two longer than was strictly polite. Blushing at the realization of his breach of decorum, he cast his eyes down at his hands and mumbled some sort of apology that got lost halfway between the speaker and the apology's intended recipient.
Katran raised an eyebrow at the stranger's actions, but dismissed them. The poor guy had been dragged unconscious from a pool, for wahrk's sake. He was bound to be a little disconcerted.
"You almost died," she said, eschewing a more indirect form of introduction to get straight to the point. "What were you doing in the pool?"
He stuttered for a moment, then mumbled, "I don't know." It was obviously a lie.
She tried again. "Where did you come from?"
"Another place." All right, not a lie, but certainly not the whole truth. This person, whoever he was, didn't seem very talkative. Either that, or he was still dizzy from his little swim. She asked the most simple question she could think of.
"What's your name?"
"Atrus. What's yours?"
"Katran."
Atrus nodded absently. "Catherine. That's…"
Katran shook her head. "Ka-tran," she repeated, stressing the hard sound of the 't'.
"Right, Catherine." Atrus yawned, then held his head as if trying to steady his dizziness. "It's nice to meet you, Catherine."
Katran wondered if there wasn't still a little water in his ears. "No, you've still got it wrong—"
But she didn't get any further, because Atrus fell back on the bed, lapsing into unconsciousness once again. She sighed. "Well, I suppose it doesn't really matter."
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Atrus blinked as he emerged into the sunlight from the tunnel, following Katran through her "impossible" Age. She smiled a little to herself, watching his expression of amazement grow at every turn. And he'd called her writing 'impractical.'
He stood on the outcropping of rock at the edge of the whirlpool, staring, mouth open, at the towering thunderclouds in the distance. "It's… it's astounding…" he said. Something on the ground caught his eye. He knelt to take one of the delicate blue flowers in his hand, rising and turning back towards Katran. There were tears in his smiling eyes.
"This is beautiful," he said to her, taking her hand. "Absolutely… beautiful, Catherine."
She twinged a little inside, but smiled warmly. It was an honest mistake, she thought. I shouldn't correct him when he's trying to be nice. "Thank you."
Atrus turned away again, to get a closer look at the whirlpool. "The water… it falls through…" he reasoned, his voice becoming more excited as he went on. "And those thunderclouds… you put most of the mass at the outer edge of the torus, didn't you, Catherine?"
"Yes," she said, starting to walk up the hill towards him. "And, you know, it's pronounced Katran, really."
"What's that?" Atrus cupped a hand to his ear. "I can't hear you over the whirlpool."
"Yes, I did," she called, louder this time. "And my name—"
"Fantastic!" Atrus said. "I've never seen a world like this! It's… it's beyond anything I'd thought possible, but you did it." He held his hands out to encompass the whole mind-blowing view. "Catherine, you're a genius."
She sighed. I suppose it doesn't really matter. "Thank you, Atrus."
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The sun set over the rosy ocean waters, its last rays glowing on the redwood forest of Myst and sending long shadows across the island terrain. Atrus and Katran lay on the beach, side by side, Katran's head resting in the crook of Atrus' arm. Ti'ana was watching the boys, allowing their tired parents a moment of quiet together. The stars blinked into the sky one by one as the sun slipped lower.
"I love you, Catherine," Atrus whispered, kissing her forehead lightly.
The now familiar soft 'th' sent a ripple across Katran's drowsy peacefulness. For the thousandth time, she corrected him softly. "Katran," she murmured.
"What's that, dear?"
She considered restating her name, more loudly this time, but thought better of it. "I love you too, Atrus." Katran turned on her side and drew close to her husband, closing her eyes and sighing. I can set him straight in the morning, she thought. And after all, it doesn't really matter.
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Atrus knelt by Katran's bedside, cooing at the bundle of joy in her arms. He tickled their new daughter's tiny feet, causing a bubbling laugh to tumble out of the baby's mouth.
"Yeesha," he said, moving Katran's pillows so she could sit up more comfortably. "She certainly earns her name, doesn't she?"
"Yes, she does," Katran agreed. She held the child out to Atrus. "Would you like to hold her?"
Atrus took Yeesha in his arms and cradled her to his chest. "Little Yeesha… Oh, Catherine, she's beautiful."
Katran cringed slightly, but Atrus was looking at Yeesha and didn't see it. I've just had a baby, she thought, rationalizing. I have a new baby girl. Why should I be upset over a misspoken name? Katran looked at her daughter, giggling in the arms of the man Katran loved, and was filled with a serene, maternal happiness.
"She has your eyes, Catherine," Atrus said.
Katran sighed again. I guess, in the scheme of things, it doesn't really matter.
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"Look, Catherine," Atrus said, his words muffled through a mouthful of his breakfast. He gestured with his spoon to the piece of paper on the table. "Yeesha's sent us a letter from the Cleft. Want me to—"
He was cut off by a sharp clang from the kitchen. The noise scared off the few birds that had been perching on the railing of the Tomahna kitchen veranda. Atrus, surprised, looked up from the letter at Katran, whose back was turned as she washed dishes at the sink. The noise appeared to have come from a pan that she had put down forcefully all of a sudden.
"My name," she said grimly, "is not 'Catherine.'" Katran turned around, arms crossed over her chest. "You have called me Catherine since the day we met, and I've tried to correct you many times to no avail. We've been married for decades, and you still call me Catherine." She threw her hands up in the air, exasperated. "Did it ever occur to you that my parents, living in a village on Riven, would never have heard of a virgin martyr from a culture that my future husband would only vaguely know about through his grandmother's recollections of the history of her homeland, and would therefore have no reason to name me 'Catherine?'"
Atrus blinked, stunned by the sudden outburst. Katran continued, allowing him no chance to speak. "My name is Katran!" she shouted. "Ka-tran. It's easy. Kat, like a cat, and then ran, as in the past tense of the English verb 'to run.' There is no 'th' between the syllables, no nasal short 'i' sound to be found anywhere within the word. It is not Catherine, but Katran. Katran! Katran!" She stood over Atrus, fuming.
He peered up at her towering form. "Katran, is it?"
Katran nodded, breathing a vindicated sigh of relief. "Yes, that is my name."
Atrus blinked. "Well, then why didn't you ever tell me before, love?"