Inyanga's Star and Other Constellations

II.vi When Inyanga Goes

Inyanga: Does the taboo work for writing?

Inyanga and Storm found a spot in the hedge maze under al-Maysan hall in a quiet dead end where each could lean back against the shivering dark leaves that undulated like gentle waves and compose their messages. The ripples massaged their backs and shoulders.

Storm: Of course it does. Don't you know anything about language production, friend?

Inyanga doubled over laughing, on mute, then straightened up. She didn't want to miss anything her friend wrote.

Storm: Words are formed by the brain, not the tongue.

Inyanga: Yes, I'm fairly certain a bottom wrung primary student can grasp that concept.

More laughter. The words hung in the air and Storm closed her eyes as if retrieving data and information from the deepest recesses of her brain. The hedge's twigs and buds poked into Inyanga's back as the living lattice supported her weight.

Storm: The auditory dorsal stream connects the auditory cortex and the parietal lobe, which connects to the inferior frontal gyrus, so it's responsible for not only sound localization — which means understanding language — but also speech production and repetition, phonological processing, long-term memory — even lip-reading, which is incredibly fascinating. Writing uses dual-route processing, requiring the use of both lexical memory and phonological processing in the left posterior of the superior temporal gyrus.

Inyanga: Good job memorizing the textbook.

Her jaw was dropped, and had been that way for a little while. She read the words over and over, as they hung in the air, tempted to take out some paper and take down notes. Phonological processing . . . phonological processing . . .

Inyanga: Are you saying that speech and writing both use the same pathways in the brain? And a spell to prevent you from telling me whether magic can run out would be directed at that Auditory Dorsal stream, and not at your memory itself? Which makes sense, since you still need to remember the information, even if you can't tell it to anyone.

Amafu arrived with the arepas, reading each girl's text captions as she came.

Passing over the corn pancakes stuffed with cheese filling, she licked the excess green guasacaca from her thumb and said, "I can't recommend that you rewire each other's brains with spellcasting, but I plan on specializing in magical neuropsychology, and our advisor, Maestra Wenling, is at the forefront of research into the dual-route model to describe where and how writing takes place in the brain. Not a lot of testing has been done on the brain while writing, surprisingly."

She put the hand that wasn't holding her own arepa, wrapped in airweave to hold the sauce in, behind her back, and paced back and forth in a perfect imitation of Maestra Aldondra mid-lecture.

"The test subject needs to remain very still within a starlight cast for the highest calibre monitoring to work. However, we know enough to suggest that Storm is interpreting her textbook memorization wrong. You're seeing the dual-route model as an AND, not an OR."

Even though Amafu kept speaking, Storm wrote out: What does THAT mean? All Amafu did was add a laugh and a shake of the head to where her explanation was already going.

"You took dual-route to mean that writing requires BOTH phonological processing in the brain AND lexical memory. It's not both. It's one or the other. It depends on the word, mostly; whether the word is regular or irregular. The spelling and writing of regular words exhibits activation in the left posterior of the superior temporal gyrus, which is associated with phonological processing. Yet irregular words activate areas used for lexical memory instead.

"Now, speech uses most of these parts of the brain too. However, if the spell prevented you from speaking about the taboo by limiting your ability to activate phonological working memory, it's possible that there would be no effect to the middle temporal gyrus, the MTG. Inhibiting the MTG would result in selective alexia or agraphia: inability to read, and inability to write, and it's likely that they left the MTG intact, so you wouldn't be prevented from reading information about the taboo."

When she stopped speaking finally, there was, of course, silence. She punched it with a, "Fun, right?" as if encouraging her friends to laugh out loud, which, of course, they couldn't.

But neither of them wrote anything back either.

Storm and Inyanga were silent — and not because they were under the silencing spell. Moments passed, and just as the two were readying themselves to put some words together, Amafu clued in. "Ah. I get it. You two are struck dumb by the realization that there might be a single subject I'm more versed in than either of you. I just love how you didn't notice, Inyanga, when I helped you work the teleportation spell and I didn't need any instructions to work the stored memory spell. I knew once I had the stored coordinates saved, they became a memory in my brain, and I already knew how to transfer the memory to yours."

Inyanga was writing, I know that, and I didn't mean to act surprised, it's not that I—

But Amafu turned her back, so there was no point in writing more, and she said, "You two geniuses should be able to work it out. I'll leave you besties to your lunch," and she walked off with hers.

Inyanga followed her a few paces, Storm too, both trying to talk at Amafu's back, but no sound came, and Amafu moved fast, charged with outrage and offense. After all of ten paces, just as Inyanga was considering tackling her down, Amafu burned bright, brighter than the moon and the stars, and four paces later she disappeared.

Storm and Inyanga stopped mid-step, both hurriedly writing messages that appeared at the same time.

Inyanga: Guess she's been working on that one.

Storm: Good luck writing out the taboo without her help, Inyanga.

Inyanga: Guess we'll be seeing her in detention, Storm.

The girls still did not have permission to direct link around campus.

Thanks for reading Constellations! If you enjoyed this part, please leave a star for Inyanga.