[Closed] Again Tonight I Sang a Song

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Nkemi held the chalk loosely in one hand, kneeling on the floor of Anetol’s study. She pushed it forward through a smooth, steady line, and turned it gracefully at the end with a little movement of her wrist, curving it through the delicate shape. She ended it with a little flick, and crouched back, studying the prodigium.

Nkemi knelt forward again, and began to trace symbols of monite between the two lines which, together, marked the edge of the spell circle. She wrote, solemnly, lips moving silently in time with the words, well-practiced at drawing the runes with chalk; she had space enough, even in the small study, to repeat the same phrase over and over, again and again: two as one.

Nkemi eased back and rose, carefully. It was a circular plot, with smaller circles inside, swirled through – some whole, some open, other tangled together like linked chains. The largest link was at the center, and Nkemi stepped to it, and crouched into the center. Carefully, she wiped away the chalk at the center of the links, sweeping it into the small dustbin Anetol had handed her with his little brush, so that the linked chains were open – together.

Nkemi rose, and carried the brush and the dustbin out of the circle, setting them aside. She grinned at Anetol, heedless of the brush of chalk across the edge of her jaw, and the bits of it scattered over her fingers and arms. “Now you have seen Ugoulo’s connection,” Nkemi named the plot, cheerfully, looking back down at it.

She had drawn Ada’na Ugoulo’s plot many times; students studying clairvoyance at Thul’Amat began their practice in prodigiums made of wood marks, of stone or marble laid into the ground, or oscillators, where long centuries of use guaranteed a lack of mistakes. But no one graduated even the most basic classes without learning to draw, painstakingly, at least a few such prodigiums, and Ada’na Ugoulo’s had been part of the curriculum for many centures. Nkemi had drawn this same spell circle in chalk on pale stone ground swept clean of sand, and traced it with a stick into packed earth; she had marked it out in prefect offices, too, on more serious occasions.

Never, however, had Nkemi drawn it onto the wooden floor of a man’s study. She had not known where she and Anetol would meet for their practice; she had not, quite, expected that it would be the study where he had read poetry to her, perched on the arm of a comfortable chair before a warm, crackling fire.

Today, at least, had been sunny; there had been few enough clouds in the sky, and little wind to speak of either. With the clear sun had come a bitter cold, which had lingered, and what little warmth the sun had offered in the afternoon had gone, instantly, with nightfall. Anetol’s firelight and the lamp on his desk gleamed in the window; there was no trace of the distant dark city outside. The light caught all the dark leatherbound colors of his many books, and, too, lit his curly red hair and the curious little frown which pinched his face.

“Now we sit,” Nkemi said, cheerfully. She had left her heavy coat downstairs; she wore her warmest brown sweater, her orange scarf wrapped around her head, and a bright yellow one tucked comfortably around her neck. She grinned at Anetol; carefully, as she had explained to him, Nkemi took a seat on one side of the open link, her back facing the center of the plot.

It had not been like the last time they had cast together. Nkemi had written the spell out for Anetol in careful, precise monite; she had sketched the plot too, roughly, and drawn little x’s for him to show where they had sit. She had explained that he would start, first; his espial would reach into her vestibule, carefully defined. Nkemi would show him the feel of it, what it felt like when another caster tried to push you out.

That had been enough to start with; Nkemi had seen the shakiness in Anetol’s hands. She had seen too, and not known how to understand, something like hunger in his large gray eyes, although he had been polite, and had been clear to her that she did not need to do this. She was not sure how to tell him that she did; she was not sure how to tell him that his insistence otherwise only left her more sure.

Nkemi took a deep breath; her legs were crossed, red sock-clad feet tucked beneath her knees. She closed her eyes, and settled her hands onto her knees, one on each side. She had her own cast to do, her own quiet chanting to weave beneath his; it was not a true spell, but rather the quiet repetition of an invocation, again and again, to tie her to the mona and strengthen her mind for the spell. It was how she had learned; it was how she had, after much consideration, decided to teach.

“I am ready.” Nkemi promised, quietly, straight-backed and upright in the lantern’s glow, surrounded by circles and swirls and runes. She grinned, all the same, white teeth gleaming in the light. “And you?”

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

U
goulo’s connection, Tom mouthed, looking across the chalk lines that sprawled out between them.

Nkemi had said it as if it were basic. Was this what they taught at Thul'Amat? Clairvoyant stand-bys, someone had said to him, once – what are your stand-bys? He hadn’t known what to say, then; he couldn’t’ve told the truth, of course. That he had come to clairvoyance in a tiny room in Lossey, drawing the mona near to him with a ward nobody taught in elementary courses, a ward that could very well’ve thrown him from his body as sure as an arrow or a knife.

He hadn’t realized how hungry he was for this. Not until they had been huddled together over the paper, spread out over Anatole’s heavy desk, the pen tip tracing unfamiliar circles in Nkemi’s careful hand. She’d held the pen just as loosely as she held the chalk; even at a smaller scale, she’d drawn with her shoulder, confident and purposeful, let each line guide itself. No wavering, no threading little strokes.

Her Monite, too, was careful – almost as careful as a grimoire’s, and a far cry from his shaky hand. And, he’d thought, skimming each line, up and down and right and left, distinctive nonetheless.

He’d realized with a jolt that Monite differed from hand to hand just like Estuan; he’d thought that some of the sharp-angled runes were softer, though no less articulate, as if from the pen of one who wrote in Mugrobi script. Like an accent, like the softening of vowels. He tried to remember what Ezre’s Monite looked like, and he couldn’t. He’d thought how he might notice more, if he could see it again –

Not hungry, no. Starving.

It was the orange scarf, tonight, wrapped round Nkemi’s head; he remembered it from that first night, weeks ago, in the parlor. It was a welcome splash of color, bobbing about his study as she knelt to trace the lines, to lay her careful Monite along their bones.

Two as one, whispered the Monite, over and over. Two as one… He mouthed it, too, in those sacred syllables, as fluid and strange as the runes were sharp.

When he had gone down to the foyer to greet her, he’d been surprised at how warmly he felt, seeing it, seeing the prefect’s small serious face beneath it – and then the smile that had spread across it, brighter than any phosphor. It puzzled him, but he knew to accept it; there was truth in the feeling, in every bit of it.

If he wondered what lay beneath its twin, the yellow scarf, he knew better than to ask. He thought the answer was in that smile, anyway, and in her assurance.

He no longer wore a scarf around his neck. For his own part, he wore only a simple, cable-knit sweater in light grey – he’d had it made himself; it wasn’t Anatole’s – and if there were any traces of those bruises above the collar, they were faint, and he wore them without shame.

There was truth in the hunger, too. Not hunger for the knowing, necessarily – he knew too much, he thought, most days; he knew more than the prefect could guess – or even for the seeking. In this life, he spent almost all of his time in the seeking.

Now, crouched at one end of ada’na Ugoulo’s beautiful prodigium, he knew what he’d lacked, and what he’d needed so badly. It was as if he’d caught the end of a poem without knowing the beginning. He’d made sense of it well enough, but he’d needed all the words on which the last stanza had been built.

A teacher.

A smile flickered across his face, no less delighted for all it was fleeting, as Nkemi made the last move – brushed away the last line into his little dustpan. He understood, more now that he’d seen it drawn to scale, in action. She’d explained, oes, but he’d needed to be shown; and she’d shown him, now, and not as if he were mung or less, not as if he were a natt who could never understand.

Now we sit, Nkemi said, and Tom smiled again. There were dustings of white on her face and arms – and everywhere – bright against her dark skin; he knew some had got on him, too, and there was something benny about it, the both of them smudged with chalk.

She sat with her back to him, slim underneath the thick brown sweater. Seeing her there in the midst of all the lines, he felt a prickle of uncertainty; he let himself feel it. With a deep breath, he joined her on the other side, his back to hers, roughly half of ada’na Ugoulo’s prodigium spread out before him.

The chalk was luminous in the warm-lit dark.

He thought he could hear the shape of a grin in Nkemi’s voice, even though he couldn’t see her. His shoulders were pulled back, comfortable; his jaw set. He could not quite manage a smile, not now.

She had described the spell to him; it’d reminded him, the back of his neck prickling, of Ezre’s attempt to touch his mind in the phasmonia. But every moment in the warm mingling of their fields was a reminder of all that had changed. He thought –

“I am ready, Nkemi,” he said, honestly. He’d prepared; she’d agreed, for all he feared she’d no clue what she was getting into. Boemo: so be it.

Taking in a deep breath, feeling it deep in him, he began.

The mona stirring. Nkemi’s voice, higher and smoother, underneath his – the same invocation, over and over – tenuous lines, growing more solid, more distinct. The air around them, thinner and thinner; etheric. He could breathe this thin, strange air, he knew. He knew both of them could, though he could feel it draining him already.

Still, all of him sang with it. Each vocative spilled out of him, stronger and stronger; the mona responded – wordless, uncertain – for a moment, he was afraid he wouldn’t know what to do. The last time he’d opened an espial –

But this time, his mind fit well into the grooves of the prodigium. There was one path to follow. Just one, like a narrow street. He shut his eyes; the study melted away.

At the end of the street, he thought he could feel something. He reached for it.

His lips kept moving; his tongue flickered against his teeth. He couldn’t hear his voice, or feel it rumbling up from his diaphragm. The lines glowed brightly, more solid than any flesh or wood, more real than the sprawl of Vienda outside the dark window.

And more solid than even the lines, though the lines led him to it – a presence. Nkemi? He couldn’t’ve said where he felt it; there was no sense of place, not here in the dark. There was only a path, and at the end of it, some faint impression of color. But he knew it, he thought, tentative, like he knew the pad of bright red socks on the floorboards, like he knew the soft lilting voice. He thought.

He followed the lines to it. He found –

A vestibule.

A wave of fear threatened to wash over him – all was unfamiliar – where was his study? Where was he? – but he did not let it swamp him. The lines glowed behind him, and he could find his way home. He eased into the vestibule, and found himself someplace new.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Nkemi let the invocation fill her mouth; she chanted the sentence slowly, again and again, until it was as much a part of her as the breaths she took to sustain it. It was different every time, just a little, like standing on the banks of a river and watching the water skim over the surface.

Beneath it burbled the heavy dark currents of Anetol’s voice, the same invocation and then deeper, steadily, into the spell.

Nkemi let go of the little prickle of fear. Her eyes were closed; she settled herself into her head. Thoughts rushed through it, bits and pieces of then, and she plucked them from the river of her mind, one by one, like bits of leaves after a storm. She returned them to the latibule, careful and deliberate, and slowly, with the cleaning, the vestibule began to reveal itself.

Your vestibule is about focus! Professor Halasa’s voice had echoed sharp through the classroom; twenty sets of small bright eyes had followed his every move, reverent. There is no right way to make one, but there are many wrong ways. Crack! He had brought down the stick he had never once used on a student against his desk. Find a place in your mind which is home; start there, and fill it with whatever you wish to share.

Discipline your mind! Crack!

Focus! Crack!

Nkemi could not but smile, but those memories too she tucked aside, gently. It was beyond conscious thought, now, the chanting of the invocation; she could only scarcely hear the words flowing from her own lips. She drifted home; she settled there, eyelids fluttering, and held, waiting.

She felt Anetol, then. It was hard to describe; it was not a nudge, not quite; it was not a light, not quite, either. It was not the pressure of a shaky hand against hers, nor the slow warming of the smile on his face at the sight of her. It was not hesitant, careful truth, nor a worried, tight frown. It was none of these, and yet all of them, and Nkemi knew when the connection was made.

They stood at the top of a canyon; there was something like the brush of wind at his back, the faintest sense of heat and light, the distant echo of a snap of wind. The world behind them was cracked and dry, brushed with sand. Beneath -

Beneath what were not quite feet, but something like an awareness of them, a small delicate path carved its way down through layered, multicolored rock. There were stripes of color, wavering together and apart; red and orange and yellow and pink and purple. It stretched down beneath their feet-sense; the light caught another pattern across the jagged canyon. It spilled, wide, as far as the eye could see - as far as the mind extended - all different, all beautiful.

There was detail; there was rich and brilliant detail, as if taking on a life of its own. The sunlight glinted off the rock, giving it stripes of a faint glowing sheen. Tiny pebbles were scattered across the surface of the path; the tiniest scrap of green-gray moss clung, tenacious, to the canyon’s edge. The sky was pure brilliant blue, but just a little dark; the sun was beginning to settle, though not it was not yet sunset.

Nkemi was not there; Nkemi was the canyon. She was the colors - the stone - the path - the gentle, even surface - the light and warmth. She had poured herself into it, and she let Anetol in without hesitation.

Nkemi did not seek to rush him; she let him wander, freely, for a little time without time.

And then - she squeezed.

It was not a harsh squeezing, but it came from everywhere it once. It was dimming, coldness, pressure; it was the slow start of the shuttering of the very world around him. It was a voice whispering in him: go! and a distant echo like the crack of a stick beneath it.

Brambles crept up the trail down into the canyon of Nkemi’s mind; they lay across the path, and thorns never seen in Serkaih glistened vicious-sharp along their edges.

Rolls

Strength of force out: 2

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

U
It was a feeling more than a seeing.

It was familiar, though the shape of it wasn’t. It was a feeling of familiarity, this space; a sharing of a feeling of familiarity, maybe.

Anaxi called a feeling like this a whisper from another Ever; Mugrobi, who had the right of it, ipi’wu, already-seen. You could get it from a lifetime of ley channels and warding, from a blurring of the borders and edges of your mind, a peeling of the paper.

(If you were used to fitting into the minds of others, breathing in the strange waters of strange vestibules, the waters of your own could overflow the vessel. They called the other side of the coin dzep’iwu, never-seen. Dr. Arushi had told him of it at the beginning, to account for what made the unfamiliar familiar, the familiar unfamiliar.)

He moved into it with the tentative nosing caution of a cat in a home that isn’t its. As he did, it took shape. It was a passing across the threshold; it was being enveloped.

He felt the cracked earth. He felt above him an opening, a splitting-apart into wide sky, wider than he’d ever seen. He breathed it; it tasted of warmth on bare shoulders. It tasted of the sun lazing toward the horizon, of a deep, comfortable blue for which Tom had no name.

Tom had never been in a place where the wind had room to stretch its wings and sprawl. He had been in the sky, on the deck of an airship, but then he’d been tossed by it; he’d had no sense of its size. Now he felt it, like the air itself was the ocean, washing around him and back from the sun-bleached rock.

He felt the ease of breathing here, ipi’wu, as if cradled in the arms of a mother and father he’d never known. As close to him as the tangle of streets round Greene’s, in that moment, as if he’d grown up around these rocks.

He knew his mind stood at the edge of something. He lingered in the sky and the wind and the sun-kissed rocks, then let the canyon wash over him.

Color –

Color bleeding from pale thirsty earth; color spilling, glowing in the sunlight, patterns of striations.

(In the study, his breath caught; his back went rigid.)

He opened up his mind to take in more of the color, more of the familiar detail. He felt her here, even in the scrubby little plants that clung to the canyon’s edge, even in the pebbles and their shadows dotting the path. He did not move down into the canyon alone; she was there, in every motion and every lungful of sun-warmed air.

It welcomed him, that presence, like kofi wafting out into the streets of the Ford.

(His heart hammered and ached.)

It sprawled all around him, this colorful place, for longer – for shorter – for a time he had no sense of. How long had he been here? The pale dry expanse of the desert was a memory behind him. He’d lingered there, too, among the wind and the sun and the hairline cracks in the dirt; he hadn’t known what was hidden just beyond. Hidden, but even bigger than the sky and the wind, bigger and infinitely complex.

It was nothing like the world of touch and taste and smell, of sight-with-eyes – but it was as if someone had torn away a thick heavy curtain. The memory of why he’d come slipped him; he only knew it was warmer and brighter than he’d felt since – since –

And he knew he wasn’t alone. It was warm, and he wasn’t alone. He wondered at it; he’d thought to be alive was to be alone. This, then, at the edge of the long lonely desert–?

Something pressed him on every side. It was soft, but it was everywhere. A sense of closing, of narrowing, no walls then walls closing in.

There were barbs; they didn’t belong here. He felt if he moved, he’d be pricked and stung, someplace deeper than bleeding. Go, voice-that-wasn’t-voice whispered.

How?

Maybe forward was the only way out; maybe he had to press through the barbs, to scratch himself bloody and barrel deeper into the canyon. He didn’t know. But he couldn’t move back, either; the closing-in was from all sides. He could see no path but forward, back – was there a third? But where?

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Go, the voice whispered again. It was somewhere inside him; it was all through him. It echoed in him like a voice calling through the canyon: go, repeated again and again, like the beating of a heart in his chest. Go, repeated again and again, like breath filling him, rippling into his mouth and down through him, flooding his veins and all of him.

GoGoGoGoGoGoGoGoGoGoGoGoGoGoGoGoGoGoGoGo

The world narrowed a little more; the sense of pressured heightened, closing down around him. The path narrowed; the broad spread of canyon pulled closer in. The colors spilled together, slowly, trickling over the boarders into one another. The light darkened; the feeling of the wind pressed in, like storm winds whipping gently at him.

It was everything; it wasn’t a panicked, desperate flailing, but a controlled intense push. The place was Nkemi; it was all her, every inch, and every inch of her, deliberate, urged him to go.

They held there, a moment longer.

Nkemi could sense Anetol; she knew where he was along the path, the presence of him creeping down into the canyon of her mind. He was a breath of salty air in the desert, tinged with lavender color, winding, creeping cat-soft along the path. She could feel the hair rise on him – feel something like confusion, hesitation – something tinged with panic. The thorns were growing, slowly, steadily; the tip glistened close to his body-that-wasn’t –

He was drifting closer to the thorns, then, as if he would tangle himself up in her defenses; as if he would thrash against them, and fight his way through, to press himself deeper into her mind – to fling himself on the barrier between the latibule and the vestibule, and either break through or shatter –

Lanterns shuddered on in the glooming; a thin string of lights, strung one to the next, glowing golden-yellow against the darkness. They seemed to rise from the ground itself, glowing and bobbing along the path – they danced around Anetol, glittering, and showed him the way, out and up – not back up the narrow path, nor deeper down into the canyon, but

away,

into

the

dark

sky

above;

they

swirled

like

constellations

against

the

darkness.

And buried in the darkness there was the amandation, and the pattern, where Anetol could fit into himself once more.

Nkemi was kneeling in front of him when he came out, crouched in the pattern; she was still chanting the invocation, softly, beneath her breath, and Anetol’s hands were wrapped in hers, her thumbs rubbing softly over his cold skin. She shuddered when his eyes opened, hers wide, but didn’t break the soft pattern of her words, holding his gaze and waiting for the curling.

Nkemi took a deep, shuddering breath, and let her words end with his. They were back in the small warm-lit study, surrounded by lines of chalk; they were smeared and scattered at Anetol’s back, where Nkemi had brushed them aside, and her knees were covered with white, her hands too – and his, now, where she had gripped him.

Nkemi took a deep breath, in and out. She let go of one of Anetol’s hands and cupped his cheek, worriedly, her eyes closing for a long moment. “You are well?” She asked, softly, worried, and her hand lowered back to his. It was not the Anaxi way, to touch so; she knew this. But she could not help it; she had been so very afraid, and there had been so little she could do.

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

G
o –

Everything was go, like a vibration not felt, like a sound not heard – everything, filling him, filling this strange narrowing space full of color, darkening – narrowing to one unspoken syllable; one impulse.

It was more than a nudge, now, he knew. I can’t, Nkemi, he wanted to say, to shout at the shifting walls of this place, at barb-strewn path deeper into the vestibule, into the –

He didn’t want to go deeper; he wanted to get out. But where? Along Ugoulo’s connection, he knew, along the lines firm-writ on his soul; he knew that much.

But he could not see a destination, not anymore. No feet beneath him, no lungs to fill, no face but darkness. He could’ve melted into what was around him, if it would’ve taken him; he knew, all the same, it wouldn’t’ve – she wouldn’t’ve – knew he didn’t belong here. Where did he belong?

He thought of sliding back into himself, warm, finding the walls around his mind again. The walls of flesh between him and the world: strong, scarred hands to push the world away or to make a kov bleed, hands that drew lines in more than chalk. No ley lines, no mona; alone. Comfortable. That was the destination, he had thought, but he could not locate it. He could not find the him to withdraw back into.

He couldn’t know if he was still casting, but he knew he must’ve been, because he hadn’t brailed; he hadn’t been yanked out into the dark forcibly.

He would try one last thing before his tongue slipped and skewered him. Nkemi’s latibule was behind a wall. He drew all of himself into a center, poured all of his focus into one motion –

There among the thorns:

Lanterns.

They shivered over the walls of the vestibule, filling him with color and warmth. They were bright against the dark, even brighter than ada’na Ugoulo’s lines. Tom did not press further into the canyon; instead, he watched the lights, transfigured, drifting up into the black sky.

The color bled from the vestibule, absorbed by a dozen lanterns of a dozen colors. All round him was black, forward and back a thicket of thorns and shadows. But if he lifted his mind, buoyant among the lights, there were no barbs and no walls.

It was warmer, the higher he drifted, and he was so cold. He’d thought he was ready, but he flocked to the warmth and light like a moth. He’d thought they’d lead him deeper into the colors, but it wasn’t the colors they led him to; it was warmth and the swell of breath in his lungs, and touch, and the sound of two voices in unison, familiar and unfamiliar.

Chalk lines sharp enough to hold with your hands. The amandation, finally, written among the lights, nestled on the other side of the dark.

Slowly, he could see it against the backs of his eyelids, dancing and swimming with motes. Slowly, the lanterns dissipated. His hands were numb and aching with the cold; he could feel another set of hands, massaging warmth into them until they tingled almost painfully with the remembrance of life.

Two voices he heard: a woman’s and a man’s. Nkemi, he knew to call the woman’s; he recognized the even lilt of her Monite, invoking and invoking. The man’s, very deep and edged with the rasp of age, he did not recognize.

He was conscious of speaking. Voiceless, he took himself through the amandation; he felt the spell curl, and the etheric mona shiver still around him.

Both voices stopped.

You are well?

“I –” The voice. It hitched in his throat; he choked on it. There was a small, warm hand cupping his cheek. He opened his eyes, and a face swam into view, smudged with white chalk. Two wide, dark eyes.

Nkemi’s hands pressed both of his again. He looked down; he saw her hands, and… Horror flooded through him.

He swallowed it bitterly. “I’m all right,” he started, rasping, wrangling with this strange new voice.

He felt her arms around him, then. Slowly, he returned the embrace. The wool of her sweater was soft and scratchy underneath his fingertips; her scarf bunched against his cheek.

He drew away, his hands shaking. He wasn’t sure how long the embrace had lasted, but he’d found some sense of himself again; horror drained into resignation. The hands – his hands – were smudged with chalk; the red hair was dusted with white, fingertips powdered grey. There was some smearing his trousers, some on her sweater.

“Nkemi,” he said, finding himself in the voice again. He looked back up at her face; it struck him like the throw of a knife what it must’ve looked like. “Are you all right? I’m all right,” he insisted, taking one of her hands again in both his.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Anetol choked on his words, wide-eyed; he looked down. The reassurance caught somewhere on his throat, and dragged; he was flushed and pale all at once, his skin clammy and starched white beneath the freckles, with two spots of red color high in his cheeks. Nkemi could have wept, all the same; she folded him in her arms, and held, tightly, burying her face against him.

He was still, at first; she could feel her own heart pounding and distant, drifting, beneath it, Anetol’s too. Their fields were intertwined deeply in the air around them, all the soft mona drifting through one another, charged with the strength of the spell; the static ones which clung to Nkemi moved freely, too, through it all, warming the mingling.

Slowly, Anetol’s arms lifted; slowly, they wrapped around her. Nkemi breathed steadily, in and out, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

He drew back first. Nkemi sniffled, only once, and sat back again as well, herself. They were both of them dusted heavily with chalk, by now; she had smeared it in her panic, when her eyes had opened, scrambling out of her position in the plot, terrified to smudge the lines but more scared not to see him. She had not known what she would see – and the sight of him, gray-white and pinched, drained, and the feeling of his hands ice-cold against hers, had streaked terror down her spine and through every last one of her nerves.

Anetol was looking at her now. His gray eyes weren’t so flat anymore, and he said her name, confident, as if he was sure of it. Nkemi was still half-crouched before him; she’d never quite sat. Her hands were shaking, still. Anetol took them in his, and they were warm, now, both of them.

“I am all right,” Nkemi promised. She took a deep breath; she pressed her other hand on top of his, so all four were stacked together.

Nkemi rose; she adjusted the scarf around her throat with shaking, chalk-stained hands. “Just a moment, please,” Nkemi said, politely. "Please - just - please stay."

Nkemi went to the doorway; she went out into the hall, and padded down the stairs, more than half-running despite the numb aches in her legs. “Mr. Morix,” Anetol’s butler was coming out of one of the rooms, closing the door behind himself; Nkemi said his name half- breathless and greeted him with a little bow; he looked very uncomfortable at the sight of it, and his slicked back hair gleamed with faintly suppressed indignation. “Some kofi, please, for the incumbent and myself,” Nkemi said, politely, although the words were tumbling out a little too quickly. “Biscuits as well, with sugar, if you have any?”

Morris bowed. “Right away, madam,” he said, politely unruffled.

“Thank you,” Nkemi said, and bowed a little once more. She turned and half-ran back up the stairs, still in her socks.

Nkemi came back into the study; she went back to Anetol. “Are you ready to stand?” Nkemi asked, softly. She took his hands in hers; she levered him up to his feet, planted, solidly, all her strength prying him out of place. She held, there, a moment too long, still holding his hands in hers; she did not quite let go, but tucked her arm beneath his with a fluid motion, and helped him through the cramping aches to one of the large, comfortable chairs, navigating without thought around the lines of the prodigium.

Nkemi dragged a footstool over, and perched on it next to him. She swallowed; she looked up at him, and then down at her chalk-stained hands. She could not stand the marks, suddenly; she wiped them against her pants, once, and then again, faster, and then she stopped, and took a deep, slow breath, letting it out.

“I have never seen it before,” Nkemi said, quietly. She looked down at the smudges of chalk on her hands, on her pants; she looked back up at Anetol, a little frown on her face. “Do you know what happened?” Nkemi asked, softly.

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

N
kemi bid him wait. The room was empty, then, except for the crackling of the fire and the mirror-dark window. Tom sat wan and hollow in the midst of a tangle of smeared chalk. He breathed in and out, followed the sweeping curves of Ugoulo’s connection until one line bled into the next, until the lines shattered and broke against the smooth dark boards.

He shifted on his aching hip, stretched out one leg. He spread out both hands in front of him and watched the soft light lick over them. He ran his fingertips over the back of one, following the bones, tracing the veins. He turned them over, where the palm was a spider’s web of faint lines. He touched a few unfamiliar freckles.

His breath hiccuped in his chest. His stomach flipped. Tears prickled hot at the edges of his eyes; he swallowed the lump and forced them down, but he still felt sick.

He wasn’t sure what Nkemi had gone downstairs for, but she was back soon enough. She was still in her sock-feet, and the floorboards just barely creaked underneath them as she crossed to him.

“Yes,” he replied softly.

She helped him to his feet, wiry-strong as always. Her arm stayed looped through his, and she began to guide him over to the chairs by the fire.

He half-protested. His lip was twisted, as if he’d swallowed something sour. He was too tired to protest, in the end; his legs felt weak underneath him, and his hip ached. So he let himself be led.

It was, too, guilt. It rattled around in his soul, tightened every breath. It tossed itself on the cliffs of his fear, irreconcilable.

It hadn’t been just for him, he knew, someplace rational. Hadn’t been just for him Nkemi’d thrown her arms round him and held him tight. He remembered coming back to himself – coming back to this – with her chafing those hands, pulling the life back into them bit by bit, warmer and warmer. Even now their fields merged freely.

She sat nearby his chair on a footstool, wiping her hands on her trousers with something like a panic of her own. Tom’s eyes were shut; his head was spinning. He still was afraid to open them, for all what he’d expected to see and what he saw would run each other through and make a mung of him.

But he tried to gather himself, in the wake of one long, deep breath from Nkemi. He took one himself; he felt his thin chest swell with it, felt his little hummingbird heart flutter.

He opened his eyes. His trousers were smeared with chalk. He might’ve smiled, if he hadn’t been sharply aware of the prefect’s eyes on him, of her small, grave frown.

“I should have…” The voice, again! His stomach turned over; he took a deep breath, and tried again. “I should’ve expected this,” he said, looking at her. “I should’ve warned you something like this might happen. I wasn’t – thinking. I thought – I’ve been the recipient, but I’ve never…”

His head ached. He ran a hand through his hair, pressed the heel of it against his eyes. A spasming flash of color; a sharp pain.

He drew in another deep breath. “I don’t know exactly what happened, Nkemi. I have a – hunch.” He pushed himself up in his seat. One piece at a time, he told himself. That was how it had always been. He had not forgotten his most important tool.

He looked at her very intently, then, through all the strangeness, through all the horror he felt at the feel of his face and the hands folded in his lap. He looked at her, nowhere else, at the small face nestled between bright orange and yellow scarves.

“You guided me, Nkemi; thank you. Most casters – it’s not supposed to be so difficult, is it? Finding your way back.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Anetol had closed his eyes again. Nkemi could not tell – could not know – if there was something wrong, if consciousness itself was eluding him, if it was the strain and exhaustion together, or if it was merely a man trying to gather himself after a difficult experience. She focused on what she could see; there was the soft rise and fall of his gray sweater, the faint jumping of a pulse in his neck. The hands in his laps were trembling.

His voice was strained; there was something in it, something like resistance. It wasn’t the scratchy, damaged ache he had had when she first met him, back before the bruises on his throat had faded to pale yellow – they stood out, now, more, against the pallor, fluttering with his pulse, dabs of light yellow at the edges of where the bruise had been.

But when Anetol tried again, after a deep breath, his voice was steadier, and he was looking at her – and, Nkemi thought, searching his eyes, seeing her. Warned…? Never, Anetol said, and Nkemi frowned a little. He rumpled his soft red curls, and pressed the palm of a shaky hand into his eyes. All the wrinkles in his face were set deep, and cast even deeper by the shadow of the flames.

Nkemi watched him, careful and intent. Her lips twitched at a little smile when he said she’d guided him. She nodded. She had tried; it was not done, as the recipient, to reach back across the ley channel; it was not strictly possible. But she had reached, as far as she could within the confines of her mind, and sent the lanterns of her childhood spinning and bobbing through the darkness.

“No,” Nkemi said, quietly. “It isn’t supposed to be difficult.”

Anetol’s face was still pale, very pale, and his neck too, and Nkemi could count the edges of his bruise, and trace the lines between them. Even so close to the fire, he looked cold. Nkemi unwrapped the yellow scarf from around her neck. “May I?” She asked, softly.

If Anetol did not protest, Nkemi would wrap the scarf around his neck, careful, not too tight; she did not wind it around so many times as she did for herself, so bright yellow dangled down his front. Bright colors, she reminded herself, warmth. Something hot to drink; a flavor easy to taste, like sweet.

“We are warned,” Nkemi said, tentatively, sitting back on her stool, looking up at Anetol, “of such things.” She was quiet, looking down at chalk-smudged hands. “It is very rare, on such a spell, but there are… students, it has happened to, on spells such as these. Even more experienced casters, sometimes, too, who stretch too far or go too deep, they can lose the way back.” Nkemi shivered. “We call it tser’úxiraw, or – ” Nkemi’s gaze flicked up to Anetol, “untethering.” She said, carefully.

Nkemi looked up at the quiet sound at the door. She smiled, faint, relieved, at the sight of Margaret Wealrite coming in with a tray carefully held in both hands. Her eyes were a little wide, once-more, as they skimmed over chalk lines of the spell circle and settled on the chair. It was Anetol’s face they lingered on before carefully, deliberately, averting. “Sir,” she said, quietly, “ma’am.” She set the tray down, the same silver pot as before, with the swirl of inlaid flowers running along it.

“Thank you,” Nkemi said, fervently. She reached for the pot without waiting; Margaret curtsied again, and left, with a quick wide-eyed glance at the prodigium, she left.

Nkemi poured a cup of steaming dark liquid for Anetol. She set it down on a saucer next to him, and put one of the little lavender-smelling shortbread biscuits next to it on the plate; it was dusted with sugar, she thought, sparkling faintly in the firelight. She watched him, worried and intent; only once she had seen him take a sip of the kofi would Nkemi settle back, and pour a little for herself as well.

“Strong flavors are said to be good,” Nkemi whispered, quietly, looking down at the dark liquid. She glanced back up at Anetol; she could feel tears shuddering in the corners of her eyes. “Bright colors, sweet tastes,” Nkemi sniffled; she took a deep breath, and a sip of her own kofi. “To restore - the self."

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

T
he bruises were a faint mottling against the prefect’s throat, only a little stronger than his own. The sight brought something like a tired smile to his face; then she was laying the bright yellow scarf round his neck, wrapping it only once.

She had had to come close, to do it. It hadn’t bothered him before; when she’d put her arms around him after the amandation, he’d been too surprised – too caught up inside himself, racing tireless on the mousewheel – to feel much of anything. Now, her knuckles brushed his throat, and he thought: get away, get away; don’t be kind to this. You don’t know what it is you touch. I’m not a sickly dagka; I’m so much worse than anything you could imagine –

She drew away. He felt stiff.

He thought of her chafing his hands and felt a pang. Slowly, he forced himself to breathe. That pain wasn’t hers. She didn’t need it, not right now.

He shut his eyes a moment, nestling his chin into a fold of the scarf. He ran a hand over the length of it, and then gathered the soft heavy wool close to his chest.

His brow furrowed. He tried to imagine how he must’ve looked; he shied away from the thought, for more reasons than one. But he made sure to open his eyes and meet Nkemi’s when she spoke again, and he centered himself on listening.

He’d opened his mouth to speak when Margaret came in, rattling. He caught a familiar smell; he blinked, then realized it was kofi. He loosed some tension he didn’t know he’d been carrying. “Thank you,” he murmured as the nattle set down the tray. Kofi and biscuits, little wafers dotted with specks of lavender and glittering with dusted sugar.

Nkemi poured, this time, without even asking or waiting for Margaret to leave. There was little he could do; there was little he could be sure of feeling. Grateful? Guilty? He smiled sadly when she set a steaming cup of kofi and a biscuit near him.

She was watching him.

It was a few moments before he could take a sip. He shut his eyes and breathed in the steam, and when he brought it to his lips, it was just about too hot to drink.

He tasted it anyway, rich dark bitter, like a whiff of distant memories. Not so distant, maybe. He shut his eyes and held them on his tongue; he rolled them round in his mind. He had expected one memory and got another. The wind ruffling linen drapes, earthy wafting tsug, familiar voices lilting Mugrobi. Tackling string hoppers and eggplant stew with shaky hands.

Bright colors, sweet tastes. To restore the self, Nkemi said, with the tiniest of pauses. There was a protest somewhere in his chest – this isn’t me; this isn’t my self – but it felt hollow and weak, and strangely cruel. He opened his eyes to see she’d finally poured a cup for herself; something glittered in her eyes.

“Thank you, Nkemi,” he said, before he could say anything else. He ran his hand over the scarf again.

Tser’úxiraw, untethering – the implications – the way she’d paused before she’d said students – all of it flitted round in his head; he couldn’t make sense of it. The soul and the mind, he knew, were separate from one another, even as both were separate from the body, even as all of them were –

One?

He was pricklingly conscious, again, of the hands that held his kofi cup, of the reddening fingertips, of the aching joints easing in its warmth. Of – him – him-not-me. But Nkemi sat across from him like an anchor, and he thought of what she’d said in that small voice. To restore the self.

“I know myself,” he said gently, warmly, sitting up and setting his kofi on the low table with a rattle. The incense burner and matches were still on the table where he’d left them; he’d been reading by the fire before she’d arrived. Now – slow and easy – with hands that still shook, he lit a stick. The tip flared, dulled to an ember.

He sat back with his kofi and, dutifully, a biscuit. The smell of patchouli mingled with kofi and lavender and lemon, with the burnt smells of the hearth.

“I know my mind,” he amended carefully. “I know who I am – in here.” He reached up and tapped his temple with a fingertip.

He thought it must’ve sounded moony; he wasn’t sure what she’d make of it, but he had to try. “This tser’úxiraw, this – untethering – of the mind,” he tried carefully, “from the body and the soul. For a man who knows his mind better than he knows his body, it would be easy, wouldn’t it? Even with Ugoulo’s connection, and a damned good teacher.”