[Closed] Something Foreknown to Me

[Tom Cooke]

A New Landscape • Eastern Erg

Late Afternoon on the 28th of Bethas, 2720

R
isha, moans a man’s voice.

He half-sleeps; he drifts in and out.

The neck of his handle of whisky was clenched in his fist when they helped him out, clenched like a talisman; he’d forgot to let go, he couldn’t let go, ‘til gentle hands pried his fingers away and he lost it somewhere on the way. His eyes had widened when he’d seen the scattered stars on the sand, but tangled up with Nkemi, he couldn’t’ve made sense of any of it. He watched them carry off Ipiwo, watched Kafo find the man who named him, too-vivid snippets in the squinting bright sun. He saw the camels with their long lovely lashes and their soft lips, and at some distance, ada’na Inis limping toward where they’re taking Ipiwo, leaning heavily on a stick.

The bastly tilts, eventually; his body’s fast-beating heart has been beating too fast, even in exultation. Nkemi is breathless with relief, and her caprise is warm as ever, but he can see the shadows underneath her eyes. The bright color of her headwrap is covered up almost completely by sand.

So she lets him go and he lets her go; there’s no time – no space in him or in her – for questions, not now.

In the white-covered wagon, he can’t find sleep. He shuts his eyes and patterns of whirling sand flower against the dark. He sees lamplight and stars. He tries to keep sipping water from his fresh canteen, but his mouth is full of the taste of whisky, and his head hurts.

And he dreams. These aren’t the vivid, wild dreams of the night before. These are dark dreams; these are snatches of faces, of voices, of touches. Long calloused fingers tracing the line of his narrow jaw, knuckles brushing his cheekbone. Tears on his cheeks. Whispering, moaning – risha, risha, risha…

His fist is knotted in the long hem of his shirt. He feels fear and confusion and other, less unpleasant things, off and on. Once, he starts awake, thinking he’s felt the wagon shift. Eventually, he takes himself stumbling to where they’ve set up some shade on one of the blankets, where a tall bearded man with a swollen ankle sits with an older woman. He curls up, listening to them talk in soft, worried Mugrobi; he falls asleep, and he doesn’t dream.

When he wakes, he still doesn’t know how to feel.

The relief has drained out of him; the sun is past its hottest point, already sloping down through the deep blue sky. The wind still carries the taste of sand, but there’s no storm on the horizon. His shirt is stained with sand and sweat, hem and collar and map of creases stained dark with Kafo’s sap. He left his bag down in – the wagon, he realizes, shaking the sand out of his sandals – his ruined amel’iwe, too, and his goggles.

In the bright day, he doesn’t want to think about his strange dreams; he feels a blend of fear and embarrassment he doesn’t much like. Nor does he look for Kafo or Anfe among the scattered folk on the blankets. Struggling through feathery, fresh-piled sand on jellied legs, he passes the red wagon; he imagines he feels their glances, rolls his aching shoulders and takes a sip of water and doesn’t look.

(They don’t know. Kafo won’t have told them; even if he has, he won’t be believed. Kafo?

Another one – like him?

Nobody else knows.

Nkemi doesn’t know, he thinks, and will never have to. He feels an odd ache he doesn’t want to feel, and shoves it aside, too, buries it under the effort of walking through the sand.)

He’s not sure what he’s looking for, and doesn’t remember until he sees it again: the parted sand, the sunlight glinting off it. He walks beside it down the dune, careful sideways feet; he keeps looking down at it, wondering. It’s turned thin and shattery, like a skin of water on the sand.

The sight of the green covering, the slat into darkness, wrests him from this and all other thoughts. He sticks in his place, breath stuck in his throat, before he kicks himself into motion again.

He’s not surprised to find the covering untied. He freezes and goes slowly, half-expecting to see – but it’s her, in the end, the light from outside slanting in and just catching on her headscarf and the thin line of her shoulders. She’s by the scattering of luggage.

His bag has been moved, leaned neatly with the others. “Nkemi,” he says softly, not wanting to startle her. He reaches out with his caprise.

She doesn’t know, he thinks, climbing in behind her. The back of his neck prickles.

“Have you lost much?” he asks instead, frowning.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Late Afternoon, 28 Bethas, 2720
The Southern Desert, Tseq'ule Caravan

Her trunk is open only a crack, and Nkemi thinks, perhaps, at first, that nothing has been lost. She eases the trunk open wider, and she understands then that the closing was a kindness, done by one of the men who tried to set the trunks upright and straighten them, once the wagon was taken from the sand.

There are still places in the wagon where the sand is heaped high. There are other trunks battered and cracked; there is one which gapes open in the corner and even in the dark Nkemi sees a scattering of sand like dust through the opening. There is another which is smeared darker, and there is no smell, anymore, but Nkemi knows the look of it, even dried.

Nothing is left untouched; how can it be?

Nkemi kneels in front of her trunk; she clears off the floor before it, and begins as if she is unpacking – not fully, but enough to sift through what remains. Rice is scattered at the bottom of it, piles of it, and the grains tumbled all through the clothing and fabrics which remain. She shakes what she picks up out into the trunk; she is grateful for what still remains.

There were more books, before, and more clothing, too. She cannot find the onion and garlic flakes; she finds the dried fruit, and she holds it in her hands, and closes her eyes, and gratitude washes over her.

The oranges are gone.

Nkemi feels a swelling in her chest; she knew better when she bought them, and she does not regret it, but she welcomes this feeling all the same, she acknowledges it, and she lets it pass. She sets the dried fruit back down in the chest, tucks it in the fold of a shirt even though she knows this will not protect it. She begins to place the rest back in, books and fabric and gifts carefully intermingled, and though the chest is not so full as it was before, it is full enough.

The name and the brush of his field come as one; Nkemi turns, and she smiles to greet him, bright-eyed, her field lifting to caprise his; the last of the sadness drains out.

“Anetol,” Nkemi says, joyful. He is frowning; the shadows drag all the lines of his face down. She does not frown; she smiles, and she leaves the rest behind on the sandy boards and goes to him, and takes his hands in hers. She squeezes, lightly, and then she wraps her arms around him, and squeezes all of him.

“Nothing which I was not prepared to lose,” Nkemi says. “We call the loss of such dzu’tsogiq, sometimes – offerings to Roa.”

“How do you feel?” Nkemi asks. She guides Anetol towards a sturdier trunk; they sit, together, Nkemi next to him. She crosses sandaled feet beneath her legs; she is stained all over with dust and sand, every inch of her dusky pale over the darkness of her skin and the lightness of her clothing, and she makes no effort to brush herself clean.

Light spills in through the open flaps, and leaks in through the fabric – not only the hole cut into it, but all the rest too, faint but visible.

Nkemi’s gaze searches Anetol’s face; her hand is still in his, small and sturdy and strong. She thought she saw him sleeping, when she set down, a small pale figure with a gleam of red hair in the sunlight, curled up on a blanket in the shade. She did not come close enough to feel the brush of his field in slumber or to see the rise and fall of his chest, for all that she wished to; she weighed her desire for this against his need for rest, and found she could gauge them well. But she is grateful, all the same, for the unexpected gift of his presence, for the smile which echoed hers, however shadowed his eyes, however tight the line of his shoulders.

[Tom Cooke]

Tseq'ule Caravan • The Southern Desert

Late Afternoon on the 28th of Bethas, 2720

H
e doesn’t freeze, doesn’t stiffen, when she takes his hands. He echoes her smile with the ease of practice; if something in his own is wan, he can feel the weight of everything dragging down the lines of Anatole’s face, carving the hollows in deep. She squeezes the incumbent’s hands, and he uses them to squeeze hers back; he doesn’t know if she can feel the strangeness in it that he can.

Then she’s drawing the man she thinks he is into a warm hug. “Dzu’tsogiq,” he repeats into the soft, sand-dusted cloth. This one he doesn’t have to repeat. He lilts over the g, handles the t with care, only barely pronounces the q.

Nothing which I was not prepared to lose, he hears, and he can hear in the silence what she was not prepared to lose. His heart flips over on its back, wriggles its way up to make a lump in his throat. He puts both of those skinny arms around her and rests his chin on her shoulder and shuts his eyes.

He opens his eyes to look at the open case, at the neat bundles of fabric and carefully-tucked books. He doesn’t know all what she had before, or what’s missing; he thinks there’s space for more, but he won’t remark on it. Like memories, he thinks. Maybe you can see what’s forgotten as dzu’tsogiq. Or maybe those are offerings to Imaan or Alioe, like gifts on Maltalaan are for Hulali.

His hands rest on her shoulders for a moment when she draws away. He squeezes them, blinking away some sand-in-his-eyes prickling he didn’t know was there. Then she takes him to sit on the heavy trunk – not the one that fell; he doesn’t know where it is, and he doesn’t want to look. He’s grateful, because he doesn’t want to find his own trunk, either, to go through his things and find out what’s dzu’tsogiq.

He might’ve hoped the gifts would placate Her, ease their journey. That’s not how gifts work; they’re freely given, and without the expectation of a return. So it goes.

“Grateful,” he replies first, grinning over and down. For whatever else, it’s honest; he knows what he wasn't prepared to lose. He sorts through everything else he feels, but it’s easier said than done. The trunk is hard against his bony erse; he thinks he may’ve bruised. “Tired,” he adds, finally turning to look at her eyes as they search his face. “Strange.”

Conflicted, he thinks; guilty. He puts those away.

He looks briefly at the dark smear on the boards. His bag is leaned against the wall nearby, and beside it, his purple amel’iwe, creased and dyed with dark splotches of blood. The slat in the fabric throws a gash of brighter light over the wall, like a scar.

He takes a sip of water, then looks back at Nkemi with a smile. “I saw the sand outside,” he says. “You made a map.” He’s never seen her do it before, but now he’s seen the aftermath. It’s not ink, but it is, he suspects, the same principle. It must’ve been damned hard to do like this.

Et’oso told him Tsif’úsir says Ole suspects Inis believes (of course) they’ll be in Serkaih – in Dkanat, he said to Et’oso gently – by tomorrow, barring another storm. If they rest up tonight and move strong through the morning and the afternoon. He thinks of Nkemi arriving at her fami’s home alone and fresh from this, and whatever else he feels, the gratefulness is not a lie.

Her eyes are still watchful. He feels a swell of something; he takes one of her small hands in his, both of them warm as if both are living, and squeezes. “How are you feeling?” he asks. She looks better than she did; there’s less sand in the folds of her headwrap, and different folds, and though her face is tired, something of a good sleep hangs about it.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Late Afternoon, 28 Bethas, 2720
The Southern Desert, Tseq'ule Caravan

Nkemi inclines her head.

“If you had asked me whether I could do it in sand,” she says after a moment, glancing back over at Anetol with a little smile, “I do not know how I would have answered. But I have been grateful for the time to study,” Nkemi pauses, and thinks over her words, and her smiles widens a tiny fraction, “and, too, for the will,” she adds, “since last we spoke of it.”

She remembers telling him about the spell; she remembers sitting on lopsided chairs at a table in the midst of the Dives, with a table spread full of green apple vraun and gleaming curved peppers. It seems a world away – it is a world away from this place, with the wind whisking through the sand outside – but Anetol is smiling at her from the same distance, and Nkemi is grateful enough to fill every inch of her.

Even still, she did not know whether she could do it. Even still, she did not know how to do it; she strained herself in the asking, in trying and trying again. She knew, already, spells to turn sand to glass; they are a favorite in Thul’Amat, and no staticmancer graduates without learning the mechanics of it. But never before had she woven such a spell into a map; never before had she asked the static mona to make their interpretation through anything except ink.

She feels tired, still, to think of it; she is glad that her grimoire is in her trunk, still, and she knows that she must write it down, today, and not wait until tomorrow – as many of the words as she remembers, in as much of their order as she can. There will be time to cast again, in the future, to experiment; she does not know whether it is worthwhile to register this version of the spell with the magistrates.

She does know she will tell Ruedka about it; she can imagine her mentor’s wide eyes and smiling face, and she looks forward to all the questions that will emerge in the telling, and the truths she will find in their answering. Perhaps she will write her from Dkanat, Nkemi thinks, although even a letter sent the first day will scarcely return to Thul Ka before they do.

“Grateful and tired,” Nkemi smiles at Anetol; her fingers twine through his, and she squeezes softly too. “This we call dzesi’tsofe, the tiredness which lays along the bones. It is not uncommon after casting. It will pass.”

She is conscious of it, still, even after resting; there is a faint low headache which throbs behind her eyes, and a heaviness all through her, deep within the skin, resting at her core. The faintest trace of etheric residue clings still, to her field, and the world seems to weigh heavy on her eyelids. She will sleep well tonight, Nkemi hopes, untroubled by dreams of Anetol sinking deep unreachably away, of a wagon draped in green fabric sliding and tumbling down over the sand. She does not know if he found rest in his sleep; she hopes he does.

Dzesi’tsofe. There is little that can be done for it but to rest, to eat and drink. A bath or a cool place is recommended, but Nkemi knows better than to wish for that which cannot be. She has felt it worse than this, many times; she does not complain.

“You did well holding your vestibule,” Nkemi says; it is her turn to smile, now. She thinks of the effort of the spell, of the sense she had of being stretched dough thin, pulled steadily apart until gaps formed at the core of her, shredding and tearing, and his hand which met her at the end and held her in place, until she could come back together in a rounded ball. She squeezes his hand again lightly, and for a moment she can taste lightning flickers and see the sea breeze.

[Tom Cooke]

Tseq'ule Caravan • The Southern Desert

Late Afternoon on the 28th of Bethas, 2720

H
is eyes widened slightly when she spoke. At the sight of the glittery, sheet-thin sand, he’d assumed she’d done it before – with sand, with… The realization ripples through him like a stone in the water.

When he’d got off the aeroship, it had been hard to imagine her here, divested of such heavy winter wools as seemed a part of her back home. Now, it’s hard to imagine the reverse, hard to picture that pina nook between the Soots and the wharf. Even harder to imagine her calling him sir or incumbent, bowing her head and asking him if he’s heard yet, as if the whole six kingdoms knew.

He’s watched her smile widen, open up. She isn’t many years out of her tseruh; even then, in the winter, she’d said she hadn’t done her map spell but a few times. What it must’ve been like, with the wagon buried, with nothing but sand, to –

Nkemi’s skin is warm against his, their fingers all tangled up. He doesn’t know if he can feel the thrum of her pulse or if it’s his, or if it’s both of them, humming away. “Dzesi’tsofe,” he repeats, and doesn’t have too hard a time with this, either.

All his bones feel heavy, his mind stretched thin and rippling in the breeze. Her eyes have the soft ghosts of bruises, and he can feel the hollows of his. If he lets himself feel it, it’s not so bad; it’s like the muscle-tiredness and the bruises and the split lips after a scrap, a good, focusing kind of pain. If his limbs feel skinny and feeble, some other muscle feels strong: his mind has the sense of having been pulled to its limits and remaining intact.

His eyes skitter away, back toward the dark stain. He blinks, swallowing tightly. Light washes in through the cloth, banishing all the shadows once cast by the trunks and the bags. That one stays.

You are dead, he hears again, a soft, low voice. A thumb settled on the veins at his wrist. He looks down at their hands on the trunk between their laps. She squeezes his back, and he smiles faintly.

Is it real, his dzesi’tsofe? The tiredness isn’t just in his body, it’s in his mind, too, and he feels all of it, like roots snared up together. He feels her hand on Anatole’s. It may not be his, but he feels everything it feels, and he can use it to hold her hand tightly – even if she doesn’t know who’s inside of the tired bones.

Even if she doesn’t know all of whom she turned sand into glass for. There’s more weight in it than he can bear. He resists the urge to shiver.

He glances up sharply, startled again. “You felt it?” he asks.

A smile breaks out over his face. It feels silly, sloppy; he’s too tired for it to be otherwise. The moment still feels like something from a dream, the weight of her mind and then the passing. He still remembers what he held in his mind.

“You gave me a reason to hold it. I wasn’t – sure,” he adds, with a wistful flicker to his smile, “if…” There’s no need to finish.

He tilts his head, studying the sand scattered on the boards. He feels a pang, thinking of the layer of soft words underneath his, of the man crouched just outside his field. Broken ribs, they’re saying, or so Et’oso says Tsif’úsir says – and so on – and all he can think is of Kafo breathing in and out evenly, as if guiding him. Like he was guiding a student.

Maybe he’s imagining it; maybe it was reflex, half-forgotten. But it feels tsuter to say nothing of it. “I was in good company. Ada’xa Kafo,” he adds carefully, honestly, “knows much of compassion. I hope he’s resting well.”

He looks back up at Nkemi. “What did it feel like?” he asks, curious. He's never used that memory as a vestibule; firsts for both of them, he supposes.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Late Afternoon, 28 Bethas, 2720
The Southern Desert, Tseq'ule Caravan

I felt it,” Nkemi inclines her head, thinking back, reflecting Anetol’s soft smile back.

She has cast the spell on a clairvoyant conversationalist before, most recently in Brunnhold. He did not prepare a vestibule for her, and nor did he try to hold on, and neither can most of those she has cast on.

Some have; in the earliest days of her tseruh, when she was refining the clairvoyant portion of the spell more strongly, those friends on whom she tried the spell would help her, would hold long enough that she could test different versions of the static portion.

The first part of the spell is closest to cognomancy, although it is not, quite. But when she has felt it before it was like this, a faint brush of the vestibule and not more, not a swallowing. She thinks fondly of familiar vestibules stretched thin, filling a vessel and tilting, slowly, trickling a drop or two into her mind. She thinks more fondly of friends and their patience and their kindness, and her heart swells once more. There are many faces to see, in Thul Ka.

She thinks most of all of those waiting for her in Dkanat. They know better than to count on the caravan taking two days; they will not worry, or no more than once must always worry, when a loved one is in the midst of such a journey. Soon, her heart whispers: soon.

I wasn’t sure, Anetol says, carefully, if.

Nkemi squeezes his hand, lightly. She aches. She faced a choice. To have reached out and spoken to him might not left her with enough for the new, experimental version of the spell. It took all she had, after the sandstorm; she poured every drop of it into the finding, the seeking and the shaping.

She is gods blessed, Nkemi knows, to have been able to try at all. She does not think of the lines of combed through sand along the line of camels, the vast swath of dunes between them and the wagon. She does not try to count the squares, try to guess how long or whether. The past is a river, and Anetol sits beside her with his hand in hers.

He speaks of Kafo, and it is Nkemi’s turn for her eyes to widen, slightly, in surprise. She thinks of him - of a dangling arm hanging from a tree, of a bowl lowered by the fireside, of a slim dark figure lingering at the edge of the wagon. She thinks of him, too, streaking through the sandstorm, reaching just in time to secure the ties. She thinks of Anetol’s frowns at Anfe’s lingering, of his careful looks. She does not understand, but she does not need to.

“I am grateful to Ada’xa Kafo,” is what Nkemi says, warmly. She saw him with Anfe, asleep in the shade, only just touching, but touching enough to know, even in their sleep.

“A spray of sea breeze,” Nkemi tells him, “and the tingle of lightning. I felt it only as a brush, but it helped me very much in the holding.” She tasted his lightning as she summoned the mona for hers; this she knows.

Nkemi thinks of Anetol’s trunk, and the tired look on his face. Her face, too, is a tired look. She knows, though, that the waiting is not easier than the knowing. She knows too that there are bits half-or-more-buried in the sand outside, though all her bones ache to think of searching them.

“If you would like me to look with you,” Nkemi says, gently, “I am here.” She does not shift to look pointedly at his trunk; she does not look anywhere but the creased, tired face gazing softly at her. She thinks this may be why he came here, came back, but there are other reasons too, to come. There are many men who do not wish what is in their trunk to be seen; she knows Anetol may well be one of these. She does not mind, if he is; she does not insist, only offers.

[Tom Cooke]

Tseq'ule Caravan • The Southern Desert

Late Afternoon on the 28th of Bethas, 2720

H
e doesn’t know what he’s waiting to hear. If he searches himself – he doesn’t – if he does, he thinks he knows what he would find in the tightening of his gut, the expectation with which he holds onto the pauses between her words. He smiles fondly, and his eyes warm and prickle, but there’s always: And?

(Did you feel – anything else? Did I let anything slip?

Do you feel it now?)

Only a brush, she says, and he smiles. Feeling foolish; feeling terribly, terribly grateful that she held on and he held on, that she chose to find them, that she turned to him just moments ago and wrapped him tightly in her arms, that she – he feels foolish and sorry.

“I used to sit and watch lightning over the bay,” he explains, grinning through his tiredness. “I thought of it, with the – ule’udu,” he says carefully, remembering the cry, “and how much the dunes looked like the sea to me yesterday. I’m told there’s lightning over the desert, too.”

And now a streak of glass across the sands; you’d almost think lightning struck, if it weren’t so neat. He doesn’t know much of such things, but it’s a sight to see.

She looks at him and only him, now, and says what they’ve been thinking. He takes care not to look away, though her gaze is intent, and he doesn’t know what he sees in it or what he’s done to deserve it. Instead, he inclines his head, and says, almost without thinking, “Thank you, Nkemi.” He lays his other hand atop hers and presses.

He doesn’t know where the trunk is; he hasn’t seen it since he came in. It looks much like the others.

As they rise, him dusting sand off his trousers, he wonders if he should’ve accepted her offer. He feels sure she’d’ve left him to it with grace, and if she suspected anything, wouldn’t’ve shown a whit of it. Is this trust? He thinks again, as their sandals crunch on sand and creak on the boards – of a home in Dkanat he’ll be visiting in only a day, gods willing, and her father, and her mother…

“There,” he says; his voice comes out soft and oddly numb. “It’s been moved, hasn’t it?”

He doesn’t think she’d know one way or another. He knows now why she offered. She knew, even if he didn’t. She knows some things achingly well and others not at all, and that’s the problem.

He thought – they’re just things; dzu’tsogiq – but his face says otherwise, slack, his eyes searching the half-undone buckles dusted with sand, the awkward way the trunk’s been stacked on another. He needs her help anyway heaving it down from where some muscled natt thoughtlessly put it, some natt like he used to be. It’s not so heavy, just awkward; between the two of them, it’s easy.

He opens it.

The first thing is brilliant orange, laced through with purple and white. It’s not an amel’iwe, or a long-sleeved wrap for the desert. It’s such a thing as a man might wear at home, or some place he’s comfortable; it’s asymmetric, off one shoulder, airy and exposed, and brightly colorful. He smiles at her sheepishly when he shakes the sand out of it and folds it back.

“Tsadi,” he says, a little breathless, counting the volumes delicately. He moves a bright cerulean scarf out of the way next, and – smiles at the sight of the small, wax paper-wrapped package.

The ribbon is torn and frayed, but he tucks it back in under the books and cloth. Roa has not taken the offerings which were meant for Nkemi’s fami.

He takes out more, bit by bit. Once – “This isn’t mine,” he laughs, a little sad, taking out what looks like a book for bochi in Mugrobi. He sets it aside, then continues. Eventually he’s taken everything out; he’s started putting it all back in slowly when he pauses.

“It’s not here.” He swallows tightly. “My – grimoire.” The one he annotated, he doesn’t say; the one with wards for the dead. He rocks back on his heels, sighing. “Dzu’tsogiq,” he says, looking at Nkemi finally. Blue shivers through his field; he inclines his head, but he smiles.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Late Afternoon, 28 Bethas, 2720
The Southern Desert, Tseq'ule Caravan

There is little enough Nkemi can do for him other than to be present. This too is a journey he must take alone, as she did; she cannot bring back that which Roa took for Her offering, nor can she lessen any pain from its loss. His voice is very quiet when he finds his trunk, when he sees the buckles slack and the grains of sand at their gaping edge.

They lift it down together, to the floor where he can look at it. Nkemi thinks, at first, to help sift through the many folds, but he crouches in front of it, and his hand trembles on the lid only a moment, and she sits back, instead, cross-legged on a nearby sturdy trunk, and only watches.

The first piece of clothing he removes is a brilliant orange-purple-white robe, comfortable and airy, and the only thing brighter than it is the sheepish, smiling look on his face. Nkemi grins back, her eyes soft, as he folds it and puts it away.

She feels oddly grateful; she is grateful that the trunks stayed tied down so well so long. She does not want to linger, but neither can see unsee the roll of the wagon as it lurched down the hill. She knows from listening two of the wheels broke, but that Inis is wise, and there are replacements for both of them; she knows from listening that Ipiwo broke, too, and that they found a bump on her head, but that she woke up for a time, and spoke, and took water and broth made from the soaking of dried meat.

Nkemi leans forward to take the book from Anetol. “Hadha’s, I think,” she says, turning it over in her hands. There is a small collection of such things as the edge of the wagon, some clean and some sand-caked; she sets it among them, carefully, smoothing what she can of the sand from the cover with her hands.

Before long the sandy floor is a map; Nkemi looks down at it, at the spread of books and clothing, tracing her gaze between the pieces of it, but looking mostly at Anetol. There is only the faintest crease on his face, a small line between his brows. It deepens, suddenly; he holds still. Nkemi watches, and she too is still, perched on the trunk.

“Dzu’tsogiq,” Nkemi agrees softly, but she reaches out and takes his hand. He crouches on the floor amidst his things, the lines of his face drawn down, and she squeezes gently. “I am sorry for your loss,” she finds the Anaxi phrase, carefully, reciting it with the ease of practice. Her face twitches at a little playful smile, and she goes on. “Roa will take joy of it, knowing it was loved well.” She offers.

Her trunk she closes, and his, too, in time; they set it back against the wall, out of the way. There are hints of footprints in the wagon; there will be others who will come to see what offerings they have made, unwitting, and what still remains.

Nkemi climbs out of the wagon, and offers Anetol a hand to descend into the slippery sand below, still thin and ruffled from the storm and the digging. She leans back against it, looking at the disturbed ground all around them, her arm still looped through his.

“Shall we search?” Nkemi asks. She smiles at Anetol. “Perhaps there is nothing but hope to cling to, but I do not mind holding on a little longer.”

She can see in it the place where the wagon was once buried deep, a soft depression with a hard, packed side. She can see lingering shovel marks where the wind his not yet swept them over, and, half-distant, the corner of a bit of fabric, mostly buried. Nkemi squeezes Anetol’s hand in hers; she goes to the fabric, crouching, and digs it out carefully with her hands.

“Once it was purple, I think,” Nkemi says, rueful, squinting at it. She grins up at him, rising, dusting it off and folding it carefully against herself. “I think it will be again.” She goes back to the wagon, and places it, carefully and gently, amidst the pile there.

[Tom Cooke]

Tseq'ule Caravan • The Southern Desert

Late Afternoon on the 28th of Bethas, 2720

I
t belongs to Roa, after all – indubitably. Or Naulas, or both. Nkemi’s been quiet and solemn beside him, and when she offers the well-worn phrase, he manages a playful smile back; he squeezes her hand, too, thinking where the playfulness comes from. Then they’re disentangled, and she’s off shutting and securing her own trunk. He lingers, staring into the bundled cloth and books, until she comes back.

It’s shut before too long, and she’s helping him down from the wagon. A clean shirt and trousers is left on top of the trunk for this evening, when he’s done rooting through the sand.

No, he thought to say; he chews on the thought now that he’s said yes. If they do find his book, nestled in the sand? He knows very well its plain black cover with its swirl of silver embroidery, Oz’iru in Estuan and Mugrobi script, and then – Bindings and Protection. The lengthy subscript is saved for the inside page, thankfully.

And if she searches through the sand and finds it herself? He imagines her placing it in the pile with Hadha’s nanabo book, with the flowery gold headwrap and the sandals thrice as big as either of their feet.

Hope, he thinks, hope. Nothing to do but hold on.

Outside, the falling sun’s brilliant on the sand, rippling over dunes close and distant and as far as the eye can see. The sky’s brilliant blue, too, jewel-blue, and if there’s a hint of pale storm where it’s moving north, it’s a hint; the wind whisks sand from the wavy hills, grainy against his skin, but the air is clear and lazy-hot. It almost hurts his eyes.

Closest to the wagon, the sand’s churned, feather-soft in some places and packed in others. At first, it looks like nothing but sand and shadows; leaned up with Nkemi, he begins to see shapes. She goes to one of them, pulling free a length of fabric.

He smiles wistfully. “Circle willing,” he says as she goes to put it in the pile, only pausing because he doesn’t know who the god of purple dyes is, or the god of lost things found.

They start digging through. Not so far from the broken wheel, he sees a thin, rectangular shape sticking half up out of the sand. He raises his brows to Nkemi and goes to it; he pulls it out, only to find it’s a warped wooden box. Blinking, he turns it over, finds the lid, and opens it with some difficulty. It’s a set of well-cared-for trimming and shaving things.

He grins as he slides the warped wood back into place. He moves back through the sand toward the wagon, finding the pile; he puts it on top of the great big sandals, because he’s got a feeling.

“Anything you want me to keep an eye out for?” he asks her, glancing sidelong. He doesn’t insist any more than she does; just an offer.

It’s funny, what these things tell you, like the ghosts of people. There’s something funny and sad, too, about rooting through side by side with Nkemi, picking up what can be found and taking it back.

It’s her that finds it, first – she calls him over with it, half of a torn page with half of a prodigium, his own shaky notes written in the margins. One nearby nearly flutters away before he grabs it, and there are more scattered about the sands, columns of monite dark in the sun.

“Is there a word for the things Roa gives back?” he asks above the picking-up of the wind, a little breathless with surprise. He picks up another, tucking it under his arm with the others; it irks him to see it so chewed-up, but he skims the sands with his eyes. “She must have a sense of humor,” he calls, “but I suppose we knew that.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Late Afternoon, 28 Bethas, 2720
The Southern Desert, Tseq'ule Caravan

The first page is only a dark curling line against the pale background of the sands. Nkemi has not tried to look for such.

“Anything which may be found is precious,” Nkemi said when Anetol asked. She knows a man who wept for the loss of his sandals, the last gift given to him by one beloved; she knows a woman to whom a piece of clothing has no meaning, but who would search days in the sand for a single paintbrush.

For herself she holds no expectations. There was a sting of hurt, at first; it already fades, the swelling receding, and she is left in the after, in the knowing that what is gone is gone.

Anetol’s face is a bright smile and a tightness at the corners of his eyes. They move busily through the sand; Nkemi secures her shirt in the waist of her pants and puts each precious paper carefully inside, because her hands cannot hold without wrinkling them further. She knew it by the writing on the edges of the page, at first.

Chasing away, Anetol wrote against one curling line of the plot. This symbol spirits?

Elsewhere, she finds a host of scribbled notes. She does not try to read the but she sees the words all the same. Thickening the air... stillness. She thinks of standing in the hallway of the steamship, of listening to Anetol beckon the mona close in the middle of his ward.

Nkemi finds several pages still bound together; she laughs, eager, and lifts them carefully in both hands. The wind shifts beneath and she inhales, sharply, at the gleaming orange curve, tinged with green.

“Oh,” Nkemi says, aloud, sinking to her knees. She tucks the papers away in her shirt first; she cups her hands beneath the orange, then, and lifts it gently from the sand.

Tears prickle in her eyes, and she looks up at Anetol. She curls the orange into her lap, tracing her fingers over the thick unscratched skin, the orange gleam. It is riper than it was; it has only just begun to smell.

“Mercy,” Nkemi says in answer to his question, reverent, blinking away the tears behind her goggles. She breaths deep; she lifts them and turns her face towards the sun, to let the bit of moisture on her cheeks dry. She lifts the orange in a small hand and breathes in deep the smell of it.

Nkemi glances up at Anetol, who has come over, and back down at the orange in her lap. “I did not dare hope,” she admits. She smiles at him. “It is not often Dkanat sees even one orange.” Nkemi looks down at the sand before her; it is all smooth and even. The wind rustles past and the landscape changes, and she does not sully this gift by searching for more.

She takes her fortune; she does not ask for more. Nkemi rises, still holding the orange loose in one hand, and breathes in deep.

There is a distant smoke smell trickling from the camp above; the sun is sinking now, and red just starting to tinge the distant sky. She glances around; she does not see any more pale parchment or curling script

Nkemi hands Anetol back the sheaf of his papers in the wagon, away from the lively wind. She wraps the orange in a vivid-bright orange headscarf, for what it is worth; she crouches at the edge of her chest, and prays in a voice almost without sound, her forehead resting against the edge of it.

She rises, then; she smiles at Anetol. They have added, between them, a few more dusty possessions to the small pile; what is lost is lost. “If she so chooses, perhaps ada’na Inis will sing of Dzu’tsogiq tonight.” She tucks her arm through Anetol’s; they go together from the wagon. “It is,” Nkemi goes on, “as sweet as it is bitter.”