A Hundred Secret Names

This month’s stories are by authors Margaret Ronald, Kij Johnson, Brian Slattery, and Tessa Gratton. The first story of the month is free to read, but it’s our paying subscribers who allow us to keep publishing great stories week after week. We are delighted that nine of our 2023 stories appeared on Nerds of a Feather’s Hugo Reading List and seven of our 2023 stories are featured on Locus’ 2023 Recommended Reading List. If you haven’t already, please consider signing up

For February’s first story, we are so glad to see a new tale from Margaret Ronald — who wastes no time in introducing us to an extraordinary new voice. ~ Julian and Fran, February 4, 2024

---

A Hundred Secret Names

by Margaret Ronald

My forty-eighth secret name is Accurate-in-Speech, so you will know that every word I say to you tonight is true.

I was born under the ice mountains, the second-youngest of a clutch of five. Like me, my siblings were loud and demanding in our fiery infancy, and unlike me, they are uninteresting. My mother was much the same; the only importance she has is that before she left us for good (for we had grown near her size and would soon be extinguished enough to venture out), she took each of us aside and whispered to us our first secret names. My siblings, being what they were, immediately told each other and reveled in this new ability to be individually loud. I, being as I am, wisely kept my name to myself.

Of course I’ll tell you: it is Tinitul, which, in the language spoken under the ice mountains, means “tumbleweed.”

My life from that point to this is hardly irrelevant, but we have limited time. I will not insult any of us by attempting to summarize, so instead I will evoke what is necessary: the sounds of trumpets as I first touched earth, the awestruck gapes of those who summoned me, the shocked laughter of those who discovered that their drinking companion or fellow traveler or unconsidered beast was such a resplendent being as I, the taste of upper air in my skin as I went where I willed.

I could go on. I would love to go on. The ninth of my secret names, after all, is Goldenmouth, and golden indeed are the tales I could tell you. But our time is limited.

Suffice it to say that I am as I am, resplendent as none could match, and I had taken it in mind one day to travel. I had laid perhaps a thousand leagues of gliding footprints burning across the clouds when I heard a sound that had no business being in the upper air: the sound of grief. Now, the monk who gave me my fifty-first secret name (which is Grazia) said that no one was like me for hearing, and that day I proved him right. I followed the sound of that stoic despair to a tower as thin as five needles bound together, topped with a platform of teak no wider than a serving platter. And on that platform, bound to that spire, stripped and blinded by frozen tears, stood the prince.

Yes, your prince, however he is currently styled. I should note, mind you, that it was no wail of loss that escaped him, there in air so high that it froze his breath to his lips. Had it been, I would have found him sooner, though it would not have made as fair a testament to my skill. I paused before him, wondering at first if he had been placed there as a gift for me or some lesser being. It is not unknown, though less likely now that such gifts have fallen out of favor since I gained my thirtieth secret name. Then I thought that perhaps he was meant as a signpost of sorts, or an attempt to beautify the upper air, for even bound and cold as he was, he was a delight to look upon, your prince. Art has been perpetrated for flimsier reasons.

At last, finding no immediate reason why a naked man should be in the upper air, I concluded that this might be something that did not directly involve me, and it was for that reason as much as any other that I spoke up and asked his name.

Your prince opened his eyes—he could do so now, as my proximity had dispersed the outer frost—and stared at me. After a silence so long as to border on rude, he spoke: “Hail, child of the flame. I beg forgiveness for not bowing to greet you, as I am bound to this spire and cannot move.”

Such courtesy. Such manners. You would think that— Ah, well.

I acknowledged that I was such, forgave him for his inability to observe the proper forms, and asked what had brought him to such a place. I will not bore you with the specifics of that conversation, save to reassure the patriots among you that your prince was as courteous as could be. Much of the details you know, or you should: the night-dark princess with a soul like a star, the bitter feud with her mother and father both, the many enchantments that separated the would-be lovers. All true, all true, for is my forty-eighth secret name not Accurate-in-Speech?

And so, when the prince had said his piece and truly melted my heart (for my nineteenth secret name is Tender-of-Spirit), I struck a bargain with him: I would devote my many talents to winning this princess for him, and in return I would have what was under his father’s left foot.

No, I did not know at the time. Why should I? We never know, when we strike these bargains, and stories are never told of the times when it is no more than a cockroach or a pigeon or a butter churn that fulfills the contract. Though I will note that in my case, it is never so, for such tales would be dull, and as the Duke of the Diamond Peak could tell you, I am never dull. He gave me my twelfth secret name, which is Besklan; he said he liked the sound of it, and so do I still.

So: the tasks. I would certainly hope you have heard of the tasks, even down here! As we have limited time, I must lean on the strength of the storytellers and add only the gilt to their illuminations. You must have heard how I brought your prince down from that spindle, wrapped in my wings, setting him in the marketplace in a riot of living flame (for my twentieth secret name is Glorious Blazing), how I split the earth asunder when the princess’s mother called it to crush him (for my seventy-second secret name is Steadfast), how I took the form of a different animal every night for a month to deliver messages to the princess so that she could devise her part of the plan (for my sixty-fourth secret name is Manifold), how your prince and I spent a day and a night shattering the endless rain of razored arrows sent by the princess’s father (for my fourth secret name is Qifiri, which means “shield” in the language of the lords of the dead valley), and how at last I bore him up on my shoulders to the princess’s sanctum—and, as my fifty-fifth secret name is Discretion, drew up my wings that I might not see their loving reunion. Truly, it pains me to leave the telling so sparse, but we do have limited time.

A question? If you must, but time is short and I am not given to digressions.

Of course I speak my secret names aloud. They are names, they are meant to be used. Held close, they are like coins tucked in a man’s mattress till he is too old to spend them; given too freely, they are like dry leaves on the autumn wind. A coin may buy a loaf of bread or a man’s freedom, depending on how it is used. Now, if we are done? Good.

Well, when the lovers had quite tired themselves out, I invited both upon my back so that I might ferry them home. “And when we arrive,” I said, “we may discuss payment, O prince.”

“Certainly,” he said, but I could tell he didn’t really mean it. My forty-ninth secret name is not Keen-Eared for nothing.

“Beloved,” said the princess, “surely a deed done calls for a deed repaid, a wonder for a wonder. Surely Kitty deserves that.” For I had allowed her to call me by my eighty-eighth secret name, given to me by a toddling child for whom I had changed myself into a brindled tom. Ah, her wonder when I finally revealed myself—and her sorrow to lose her Kitty, such that I returned to that shape again and stayed in it for some years. I still visit her grandchildren when I have mind to.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Payment.

We landed in the great square, to much astonishment. People swarmed the streets, even as the gates of the palace opened, where we found—

Well. You and I both know this, but if a man takes it into his head to stand on his throne to see over a crowd and witness his son’s homecoming, that’s hardly a flaw in either him or his son.

I gently reminded the prince of our bargain. To his eternal credit, he did not try to pawn me off with a gilded chair; no, the throne he had promised me and the throne I would have, with all the titles and accolades that it brings. I had never ruled a kingdom, and I was looking forward to it. Such is life, I suppose. I sometimes wish that my eleventh secret name had been Foresighted, but the sorcerer I served at the time gave me Mighty-Among-Stars instead, so it was hard to regret.

No, one can’t just ask for a name. What, am I a scrounging hanger-on to wheedle a gift from someone? Were we not in our mutual circumstances, I would be highly offended at the suggestion.

At dawn the next day, I arrived to claim my throne, and at dawn the prince met me in the great square. “Behold your king,” he declared to the crowd. “Tinitul, who is Bright Spear, who is Voice-Within-Smoke, who is . . .” And on and on, all ninety-eight of them, all so glorious. I cannot express . . . Well, we have limited time.

I knew what he was doing, of course. I may choose where and how to reveal my secret names, but the invocation of all of them may be used to bind me. Which is no bother, truly! I would not have met many of the people who told stories of me, would not have gained near a third of my secret names, had I not allowed myself to be thus bound. And yes, I suppose it was a betrayal of sorts, but not an unexpected one. Your prince is learned and cunning, else he would not have come so far as to meet me in the first place.

He reached the end of the list, and the people raised their voices in a cheer, if a perfunctory one for some. Still, what a sight and what a sound, the hundreds gathered for my acclamation, the palace awaiting my hand, the nobles with my raiment and crown! I bowed, happy to be bound for a generation or two if it would be to such fascinating people. And then the excellent fool went on: “And this also I name you, Imprisoned King.”

And that was that. My names are my names, and I was put in chains to match them—they were kind enough to use silver, look—and brought down here to make your acquaintance. And I must say that even in our straitened circumstances, you have been quite the fine companions, momentary discourtesies aside.

Vengeance? Of course not! It is the nature of princes to trick the likes of me, and in my nature to be as I am named. And Imprisoned King has such a lilt to it, do you not agree? So dramatic. So noble. So inducing of pity in those who are inclined to justice.

As the princess is, and has always been, as well as fond of her Kitty. And, as I have said, we had limited time for my story, for is not that light at the steps leading to our mutual imprisonment a lantern carried in her gentle hand? It is, and here she is, here you are, my princess, with your mouth full of my ninety-nine secret names—and one more.

Cell-Breaker. Poetic as your beauty, and generous, too, to this my audience. Take my chain, good companions; I am sure the links will serve you better than they could ever have served me. And you may trust my word on that, for is not my forty-eighth secret name Accurate-in-Speech? Every word, good companions. Every word.

#

Thank you for joining our journey this week.

---

Margaret Ronald is the author of Spiral Hunt, Wild Hunt, and Soul Hunt, as well as a number of short stories. Over the course of the past few decades, she has worked in fields from media to academia to biotech, usually on the margins, where the view is better. Originally from small-town Indiana, she now lives outside Boston.

“A Hundred Secret Names,” © Margaret Ronald, 2024.

The Sunday Morning Transport: Selected Stories 2022 is now available at Weightless Books!