[Closed] Something Foreknown to Me

[Tom Cooke]

Crossing the Desert • Eastern Erg

Evening on the 27th of Bethas, 2720

J
aeli?”

The house is covered in cloth. Some of it’s jewel-toned silk, velvety shadows rippling over it, and some is block-printed flowers. The garden is full of it, with thick sheets hanging round the path, the chanticleer and its broken-bottle chimes a warped shadow. When he finds the red door, the kitchen is unrecognizable with reds and blues and pinks, with swirls of vines and delicate, faded poppies there. He can’t find the incense burner or the dented old teakettle.

He’s never heard hama play this song before. It doesn’t have the feel of his fingers on the strings, or the deep rich notes of his oud, and it’s not tuned well enough.

He doesn’t know who else would be playing in his house, and the sound’s drifting from the bedroom, so it’s there he goes. The walls are covered in dark crushed velvet.

He runs the back of his hand over it and leaves something darker glistening in the folds; the thick skin of his knuckles is broken, busted open, blood smeared on his scarred fingers. He thinks to go back and find the junia, or perhaps to find one of the little compartments behind the cloth – he’s never been on the stairs, but he knows there’s bandages and more, hidden here somewhere. His throat is dry; he’ll find hama, and then the water.

This hallway is long, and there are corridors that lead off to many places. There should be lanterns lit. He wonders if he should go and get the prefect; he’s not so good at finding his way here, he should’ve remembered.

He finds it still, just following the song. Somebody else is in there, singing with hama. It’s cheap white cotton hung over the doorway, mottled with old sweat-stains, fraying. There’s a place where the cotton has worn thin, and a tiny hole. He has to bend down to look through it.

“Yer daoa said so t’ me!”

He starts awake, his heart racing. He blinks, and blinks, and blinks, but doesn’t see – until there’s a soft glow at the edge of his sight. His eyes adjust. He shivers and pulls the blanket closer about him.

The woven wool is rough under his fingers. He doesn’t remember a blanket; the last thing he remembers – he sits up, easing back against the wood and heaving a sigh. His throat is faintly dry. In the chill, he can smell dust and sand and sweat, but also woodsmoke and dried spices.

“Oh, adame,” comes a familiar, ringing voice, “a foolish man hacks at the tree that bears fruit he covets.” There’s an intricate tangle of notes, and then a burst of raucous laughter.

“Show us you’ve the fruits, then, Inis,” the first voice shoots back. “Play arogun e’úwas.”

He took his sandals off somewhere in the evening, before he fell asleep. Now, wrapping the blanket round his shoulders, he slips into them. The night air is bracing; the smells are louder, and his stomach aches. At some distance, a break in the dark – a pit with a healthy fire and a broad, shallow clay pot. It sheds light over a spread of blankets over the well-trod sand. There are a few more more, only a little distant.

Closest the wagon, the light limns a familiar shape, glimpsed sidelong – a cloud of hair, red prickling at its edges; a curved, twisted silhouette. Inis is sitting with her legs crossed, an instrument in her lap. It’s not an oud; he doesn’t know what it is, except that it’s oblong, with a stretch of hide underneath the strings and a long, elegant neck.

Nearby, ada’na Ole sits, rapt, an expression not quite a frown on her face. Closer sits another wick with a narrow face and a nose that’s been broken many times, his grin a twist of lines on his face.

“Úquwidi, I said I’d play it before the night was out, and I will.” Inis’ callused fingers dance over the strings, then she shrugs. “If you know the words.”

“Who doesn’t know the words? Except for dzúm’dzapirred hair.”

Inis laughs. “Bhe. You’ll sing, adame, of the lady that comes from the waters of the Turga, and I’ll do the qalqa?”

He takes a few steps out from the wagons, wincing at the ache in his thighs. He feels oddly light-headed, still dry-mouthed, but Inis is playing, and the rough-voiced wick is launching into lilting Mugrobi. The dunes are distant silhouettes, he notices first, and the sky –

He stands with his face tilted upward, dumb, ‘til he catches a familiar face by the fire. He waddles to join them. A clap has started up. Not too distant, the fire licks off a broad face with a jagged scar, but he does not look.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 27 Bethas, 2720
Tseq’ule Caravan, Crossing the Desert

Nkemi had stood at the edge of the wagon, after they had circled them around the edge of the rock, after the camels had been brought down and settled one alongside the other, kneeling in the sand, after the thick, heavy blankets were spread and the fire pit built all in the center of them, after the more distant tents pitched and staked into place.

Through all this, she had thought, looking at him curled up amidst the trunks and boxes, he had slept. She had known fear, at first, waiting, but he had shifted beneath her sight, and she had watched his thin chest rise and fall through the drape of fabric.

“You know better than I, ada’na,” Nkemi had said, turning to Ole with a bow, soft-voiced still. She stood balanced in her sandals on the sand, lifting her chin to the caravan’s second. “Does it disturb your work, to have him so?” There had been no pressure from her field, no flex, no weight in her voice. She had only looked up at Ole, and asked, meeting the other woman’s gaze across the distance between them.

It was not long later than Nkemi had returned with a scratchy wool blanket, and knelt on the floorboards at the wagon’s edge to drape it over Anetol, as he shifted in slumber still.

There was little more to do then but to stay out of the way, for Nkemi. She went to the fire, and helped with the building, shaping the dry wood in a circle of stones; she sat on the edge with a wrap of her own around her shoulders, and felt the flames lick up warm and glow into the night.

“Like leather made soft by the beating,” Nkemi had said cheerfully when Úquwidi asked. She grinned. “But my heart remembers the desert.”

Úquwidi had laughed, loud and hard, and gone back to his work. In time the other guests of the caravan trickled around the fire, all of them sore and stiff. Ipiwo had gone to one of the tents, walking stuff-legged with her husband Ofero’s help; she had glanced over at Nkemi with a faint smile as she passed, and Nkemi had felt the faint green queasiness of her field. Neither of them had since emerged. Nkemi thought she had seen a a shifting of the fabric in the distance, but the wind, too, rustled at them, even in the lee of the rocks.

Once Nkemi had looked up to see a slim dark figure standing some feet back from the wagon where Anetol still slept. She rose; the sun was setting still, slanting, and spilled out enough light to see the gleam of scarred skin on the man’s arm. The man with the scarred face came over; they lingered, a moment, talking quietly, and then as one turned to go. Nkemi had risen, by then; she stood, watching, a moment and then two.

“Did you see something?” Awaro had asked, glancing over his shoulder.

Nkemi had eased herself back down, slowly, sitting cross-legged once more. “I thought I saw a hawk,” she had said, smiling. “All the way from the Isles?”

“So too must the best spices journey,” Awaro had wiggled his eyebrows, and they had all laughed.

The time passes, slow and swift. The crackling fire grows and builds; the sky sweeps vivid and then dark, the last vestiges of the sun red-black at the horizon. Opposite there is a scattering of stars, and some which glow overhead, rising as the light falls.

The last motions of the caravan quiet. The pot in the center of the fire is burbling thick; Nkemi’s stomach growls loudly enough to be heard over the crackling of the flames. She laughs first and they all follow, and she eases, comfortable, into the waning.

Nkemi finds the chorus of the song, and raises her thin high voice cheerfully into the beauty of the waves, clapping her hands to the pounding of the currents beneath. There is no other sound in the desert at night but the rhythm is their voices, the faint brush of the wind, the echo of small strange bugs well hidden from sight. She feels the brush of Anetol’s field at the edges of her own; as always, she opens and they mingle together, free and easy, undaunted.

He comes and sits beside her; Nkemi grins at him, and raises her eyebrows. The chorus is not so many words; they finish it and Úquwidi dives into the next verse, as Inis’s hands find the echoes of the melody, callused and deft and quick.

The song winds around again; Nkemi listens, her small hand set on Anetol’s. She laughs with all the rest when Úquwidi finds the joke woven in to the words. He comes around to the chorus once more, and Nkemi raises her voice once more:

“She climbs the banks,
She climbs the banks!
Overflowing, overflowing!
She climbs the banks,
She climbs the banks!
Overflowing, overflowing!”

They are a roar of sound, of raised and laughing voices atop the clapping, each chorus louder than the last and mingled with rough bright laughter; they echo bright through the night, and the sounds cover up the silence.

[Tom Cooke]

Crossing the Desert • Eastern Erg

Evening on the 27th of Bethas, 2720

E
very limb feels as if it’s been weighed down with stones. By the time he reaches Nkemi’s warm caprise, he’s ready to sink to the ground beside her, though it’s an effort to fold his stiff legs beneath him. He stretches one out, rolls his shoulders and listens to them crack.

Nkemi’s hand finds his, small and cold – at first – until it isn’t cold anymore, until the warmth beneath the skin leaches through both. He looks over at her to meet her eye, the bright coals sparking in them. The soft, flickering light limns her cheek, brings out all the warm colors in her skin, and glows in her bright headwrap.

He feels the tiredness sagging his face; he feels as if the skin is holding onto the bone by its fingertips. He grins anyway, squeezing her hand as they turn back. Suddenly, beside him, he can hear Nkemi’s voice join the rest. It doesn’t sound unlike he’d’ve thought it would, but he hadn’t thought; it’s a strange, wonderful surprise, like a bright bird streaking up into the sky.

The song’s a lilt of Mugrobi to Estuan to Mugrobi, to Tek. He catches words here and there in the verses, but not many. Sometimes, he knows why they laugh – when Inis’ fingers tangle over the strings, outdoing even Uquwidi’s rough, lilting voice, and she shoots him a look that says, far’ye, kov? Sometimes, he doesn’t, but there’s an uncertain smile on his lips anyway. The chorus comes and goes again, and so does Nkemi’s bright, clear voice, and he finds more of the words.

After a few moments, he’s slipping his hand from Nkemi’s to clap along with the rest.

Úquwidi falls silent once, grinning as if chagrinned, for the solo. Inis enjoys herself, lingering on the notes. She’s a way of rocking back when she finds the pulse of a melody; there’s something stiff about the motion, but no less graceful for it. She bows her head once with concentration, and the smile has completely dropped off her face. But she’s grinning as she slides into the song again, and Uquwidi’s voice rises in one last chorus.

Inis joins this time, as if the backing’s easy after all that. “Tsayit ifaq,” she says clearly, and Nkemi beside him sings, too, “tsayit ifaq; iwe’tsudowa, iwe’tsudowa!”

He knows it will come round again, but he hasn’t the courage. He swallows thickly. He had forgotten the joy of it. It wants to claw its way up out of him, unrepentant.

Even as a lad they sang to warm the blood, Jackaroe and Fair Peggy, Bold Raynard the Fox, wassails to warm cold Clock’s Eve. Hama taught him more, though he’d not the voice for it. They don’t know the joy of singing for its own sake Uptown, or how every natt everywhere knows all the old songs. These folk, too, know the joy of singing, and so he thinks does Nkemi, though that has never surprised him in the least; she knows much of joy, anyway.

The thought of her hearing Anatole’s voice seems the crossing of worlds, but he can’t help himself. He raises it with the rest, and for once he can hear the helpless grin on his face in the warmth of it.

“With her braids like the reeds,
He’ll take her,
But her feet’s always slick
With the Turga’s claim
And she’s no man’s bride,
None but Hulali…”

No more choruses; Úquwidi falls quiet, and Inis winds through like the curling of a spell.

It happens again, then: the man beside him spits first, and there’s a whoosh of it all around. He finds such spittle as his dry mouth is capable of, and spits himself.

“Top of the spice rack, Inis!” Úquwidi laughs. Nearby, sitting cross-legged and uncharacteristically at ease, Ole is smiling. Across the bubbling pot, he can still see a scarred face half in shadow; he can’t read its expression.

Inis runs a hand along the neck of her instrument. “I think we’ve time for one more, adame,” she says, “haven’t we?”

“Ah, but we all heard the hama koketa in ada’na’s belly.” Úquwidi grins at Nkemi, and he raises his brows, thinking he’s missed something. “And I have one in mine, though our pina gkacha hid it well.”

Inis laughs. “Ada’na, you have never traveled before with Tseq’úle,” she says, plucking an idle string, smiling at Nkemi. “And you are the one who journeys home.” Her smile softens, warms. “Would you honor us with a request?”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 27 Bethas, 2720
Tseq’ule Caravan, Crossing the Desert

Anetol’s voice burbles up next to her, deep and rich; there is a roughness to it at the edges, and the warmth of a smile which echoes through. Eyes gleam from across the campfire, through the smoke. Nkemi is singing too, breathing deep and exhaling it all back out with her voice raised. Laughter trickles through the song, and they are all of them smiling breathless as Inis plays soft through the quiet notes.

Nkemi gathers up the moisture in her mouth, and spits off the blanket onto the thirsty desert ground, a little offering to Hulali. She smiles, feeling the ache of the song in her throat and the hum of it in her voice.

Nkemi giggles, soft, when Úquwidi speaks of hunger. She is hungry and full at once; she feels she could eat bowl after bowl of the chickpeas cooking thick on the fire, and that she could sing the rest of the night without fail.

Nkemi smiles back at Inis. “It is I who am honored to be asked,” she says, firmly, inclining her head. “Do you know Safala the Desert’s Son?”

There is a roar of laughter from around the campfire; Nkemi grins, broad and bright. Inis knows the melody; there is not, perhaps, much to know, at the base of it. Her hands cradle the strings and she begins to place.

Nkemi goes first. She does not have much of a voice for singing, but her words come out clear and strong, and for all that her voice is pitched high, this is a song which favors many voices.

“Safala the desert’s son,” Nkemi sings, high and bright over the quickly, lively melody, “one day he went to wander. He knew not where, he knew not how, but the desert was his home.”

This is the beginning and end of the verse; this is the beginning and end of every verse. Nkemi claps a soft rhythm, which echoes round the circle. “He came across a goat was stuck, her head buried in the sand! He took her out and held her high and peered all down himself,” there is a ripple of giggles from around the circle, and Nkemi grins too, “he looked and looked and searched and saw nothing at all instead; Safala found he too was stuck within the sandy bed!”

This time the rest join her. “Safala the desert’s son, one day he went to wander. He knew not where, he knew not how, but the desert was his home.”

Úquwidi takes the next verse; he repeats the chorus at the beginning, and winds on into his own story. There are no rules; there is no set length. Inis plays the melody over and over again beneath him as long as he can stretch it on, until he ends with the chorus once more. It ripples around the circle; it dances back and forth, it flows like the breeze. Sometimes it is sung fast, sometimes slow; the shortest verse is a line or two, and the longest winds round like the river.

Safala’s misadventures are equally varied and strange; some verses have him ten feet tall, striding across dunes in a single step; most poke at him, gently, as he tries to catch hama koketa or goes to sleep in a cactus bed, or searches for a mirage on the horizon.

Once Inis sings herself, but her verse is as much music as song, an embellishment of the melody that has them all clapping all the harder. They do not all sing; there are those who stay silent, who shake their head even as eyes fall on them, and the chorus ends there, and the next weaver takes up the thread. The man with the scar is one such; the firelight gleams over his face as he shakes his head, the whole side and then the scarred side, only one ever visible.

Nkemi sings in the chorus every time; it is Estuan, sometimes, and Mugrobi others, and Tek last. She knows little of Tek, but this she can sing, freely and easily. There is laughter, too, alongside the song, and her spirit soars in her chest. Her field lifts, bastly and bright; it tangles with Anetol’s and glows goldshift around them both, brimming with joy in the firelight.

It’s Inis who catches Nkemi’s eye at the end; Nkemi inclines her head.

“Safala the desert’s son, one day he went to wander. He knew not where, he knew not how, but the desert was his home. And home, home, home he went; and home, home, home he went, and never could he stay. Safala the desert’s son, one day he went to wander. He knew not where, he knew not how, but the desert was his home.” Nkemi draws out the last note, such as she can, and giggles as she ends it. There is another scattering of laughter, soft and easy, all around the camp fire, and Nkemi smiles so widely her cheeks ache for it.

[Tom Cooke]

Crossing the Desert • Eastern Erg

Evening on the 27th of Bethas, 2720

H
e shakes his head the first time, still catching the rhythm of it, trying to figure the rules. If it doesn’t come round again, it’s no less a blessing for it; but it does, and this time he’s ready, having sipped water and strung together the words. “One day he finds an osi,” he sings, “and in the cool water he bathes – only up he comes, and looks to the banks, and an uliam’s stolen his clothes…”

His voice teeters and wavers, uncertain if he’s holding the rhythm – or what rhythm there is to hold – and Inis plays along underneath him, undeterred; Úquwidi guffaws.

Did you know it? He thinks, and the laughter fills some of the pit in his stomach. What verse would you have sung?

Nkemi has the final chorus, and the final verse. It’s fitting, with how she started it. He remembers the burst of vibrant laughter at the name of the song. He tries to picture her as a lass, sitting round a fire not unlike this one, drinking in the song with wide dark eyes. His fingers are tangled in hers, as warm as their fields; he watches her, smiling, as she holds the last note alone.

It dissolves into a familiar giggle, and he grins. The laughter drifts warm on the smoke, and even ada’na Ole has something like a smile in her eyes, even if it doesn’t reach her lips.

Inis nods slowly and begins to set her instrument aside. Ole takes it off her, hands just as reverent as Inis’, if not more. She runs one along the swell of the side, brushing her fingertips over the mottled goatskin; he watches her rise with it and tuck herself through a tentflap behind, disappearing into dimness and smoke.

“Ada’na,” says a natt, scratching in his beard, “will we have the usa’dzosat?” He says something else in Mugrobi. His eyes dart past her, toward more tents, canvas rippling in the chill wind. He thinks he catches a word he knows for sick.

When Inis looks up, it’s not rightaway a smile, but he can’t read it. Her face smooths out anyway, and her eyes glitter through the smoke. “Do hawks fly, adame?” She gets to her feet with a grunt of pain, adding, “We’ll taste the tsenid after yats, and that is when we will sing the usa’dzosat. Before we sleep.”

“Yats first,” Uquwidi laughs, patting his belly.

It’s not a flurry of motion so much as a swell. He sits still on the blanket, grateful; Ole has come back out, and more than one natt has risen to fetch bowls and fill them. It’s still hard to keep track of one face in the fray, and though he searches, he’s lost the scarred kov. He remembers still the way he shook his head during the song, remembers his thick-tongued lisp and his unblinking stare.

It’s times like these he wonders if he’s dreamt him; he catches a glimpse of him, moving round the fire, but the warmth and light of everything else pulls his mind away from its gnawing. Ole has come back out with Inis’ elaborate-carved pipe, and they’ve lit it, and they’re passing it round, spilling fragrant smoke.

Soon enough, there are warm bowls of chickpea stew, different than the stuff he’s had in Thul Ka and elsewhere; there’s a blend of smells reminds him of vraun, only just. This flatbread is fried, mottled and speckled crispy-dark, and there’s dried meat and dates to go with it.

The big bearded natt from earlier breaks away, moving to one of the more distant flaps and poking his head through. He watches him bow, then back out of the tent and return.

“The evening’s passed well for you?” he asks, turning to Nkemi with a smile. “Thank you for letting me rest,” he adds, inclining his head. He suspects – but he doesn’t know how to thank Nkemi for the thick blanket wrapped round his shoulders, without which even now he’d be shivering laoso. He pulls it closer about him, nursing his warm bowl between his hands.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 27 Bethas, 2720
Tseq’ule Caravan, Crossing the Desert

One man with a scarf wrapped over his face leans over the fire, the heavy ladle scooping into the spice soaked gram and depositing them into bowl after bowl. A few tumble into the flames; they hiss and spit and the smell of spices burning hums through the air.

A hand at the end of a scarred wrist thrusts a bowl over Anetol’s shoulder; it hovers in the air until he takes it. Nkemi looks up; she sees his face in the fire’s glow, his eyes a dark gleam and his cheekbones sharp. He turns away; there’s another bowl in his hands, and he holds it down to Nkemi, his gaze still lingering on Anetol.

Nkemi takes the bowl, “Domea, ada’xa,” she says.

He inclines his head; he goes, and does not look back once he has turned away. The man with the scarred face is watching them; his eyes gleam in the evening light. Nkemi looks up to meet his gaze, and he looks away first, taking the pipe as it comes his way and blowing a drifting mouthful of smoke into the air.

Nkemi holds the warm stew in her hands; she settles the bowl into one hand and tucks in with the other, scooping up bits of chickpeas and onion in thick brown-yellow sauce, rich garlic threaded through. She smiles up at Anetol, when he turns to her between bites. “I am glad to be here,” Nkemi says, honestly.

The light of the campfire is nothing, against the darkness of the desert. Through the smoke, through the flames, there is a glimpse above of the gleaming stars; it is well late by now, and the sky is blanketed in them from horizon to horizon, the only break the gleaming dark outline of the rocks which stretch overhead, which break the worst of the wind as it sweeps over the ground. Nkemi breathes it in, deeply, chews and swallows.

Ofero is the first to caprise them; belike mona greets belike, easy and gentle. “Good evening,” he says, inclining his head; he and Ipiwo settle onto the carpet next to the two of them. Ipiwo is rubbing the sleep from her eyes, covering a yawn with her hand; she looks bruised and dazed, though she walked through the sand without assistance. She sits of her own power as well, though it is with a faint, pained noise, like a whimper.

“Good evening,” Nkemi says, smiling; she caprises the both of them politely, shifting a little and scooting back so she is not between them and Anetol, so that she will not need to turn her back to either to speak to the other. She cradles the warm bowl in her hand still.

“Good evening,” Ipiwo smiles too. Her eyes linger on the bowls in their hands. “That smells good,” she says, hopefully, adjusting the thick folds of the blanket over her shoulder; she glances at the fire and the stew bubbling on it.

“It tastes just as well,” Nkemi says. She wraps another bite in the bread, neat with her fingers.

Ipiwo and Ofero are given bowls too, and flatbread; it is a man Nkemi recognizes only by passing at the oasis who brings them, smiling.

“Domea domea,” both of them chorus. Ipiwo breathes in deep; she rips at the bread first, nibbling at it. She sets the stew to the side, after a moment, and looks at Nkemi.

“How are you, Nkemi?” Ipiwo asks; her eyes search Nkemi’s face.

Nkemi blinks at her, prefect-straight. “Tired, ada’na,” she says with a rueful grin, “from a long day. And you?”

“Oh,” Ipiwo shifts, slightly, on the carpet. “Like a fish on land,” she says with a little laugh. Ofero smiles fondly at her; he is eating, already, busy scooping the gram up with the bread and eating hungrily.

Ipiwo looks at Nkemi a moment longer; she shifts, and then does not speak. She turns instead to Anetol, smiling. She takes her bowl, and prods at the thick sauce around her chickpeas with the warm flatbread; she nibbles, carefully, at the result. Something relaxes in her shoulders. “And you, Mr. Vauquelin?” Ipiwo asks; she smiles at him. “Is this your first journey in our deserts?”

The fire crackles behind; the last of the chickpeas are scooped out, now, and the bottom is gleaming dark, thick with the remnants of many such nights. Two men with heavy gloves heave it out, the dark bottom glowing still with warmth, and bury the base of it in the sand to cool.

[Tom Cooke]

Crossing the Desert • Eastern Erg

Evening on the 27th of Bethas, 2720

T
o say domea or thank you – he doesn’t know if he has the hang of it, when to use Mugrobi and when to use Estuan, and to whom, and with this face. He doesn’t know if there is a hang of it. He chanced domea, this time; he wasn’t sure what he saw in the glitter of the natt’s eye, but he wasn’t sure he’d done well. Either way, the thin natt left without a word in return, and there was little more to think on it.

Nkemi is tucking in with vigor and relish. He smiles when she replies between mouthfuls. The sight of it – and the rich warm smell – stirs some growling he didn’t know was in Auntie’s stomach until now; he laughs to hear it.

He thinks to say something, to ask something else, but he’s too busy with his flatbread, scooping up bites of chickpea and gram and spices. Go slow, he tells himself, go slow. He’s never been good at moderation, not even as a lad. Ised’usa, he thinks, and thinks of what Nkemi has said earlier, not just through yesterday but on the rooftop in Dejai. He did well both times; he can do well tonight, he thinks.

There are the smoky smells of the fire, and some fragrant mix of tobacco and ganja and coltsfoot and dzúl’iye sage.

There’s the smell of the stew, too. He’s followed his nose well enough, and trusted it; his stomach didn’t roil at the smell earlier, and doesn’t now. For a while, he and Nkemi eat, quiet and diligent.

And it’s benny, or some word he doesn’t know, some word that could describe the spread of the stars in the sky above, more than the freckles on the backs of his arms. The sky’s dark, he thinks, and the earth picked out with light – not here. Here, the sky is full, spilling over, and the dunes are the shadows, the dark outside the campfire thick and pressing and endless. And not even the touch of Nkemi’s vestibule could prepare him for the sense of vastness; he feels small, so small he doesn’t feel like Anatole or Tom or anybody, just a small and nameless thing.

It’s ada’xa’s field brushes theirs first; he feels bad he doesn’t remember the kov’s name, though he thinks he may in time. He looks up, curiously, expecting to see just the one – and smiles brightly at the sight of ada’na Ipiwo, walking unaided, lowering herself to the ground with only a thin noise of pain.

He grins at Nkemi as she shifts out of the way, then at Ipiwo. “It was the smell that woke me up,” he laughs.

As Nkemi’s friend and her husband are situated with the food, he’s still eating. It’s a struggle again to restrain himself. His hands shake, and his muscles are tired; he tells himself he needs to eat this slowly anyway, but he feels a mess. He hears Ipiwo ask, and he hears Nkemi answer, the shape of a wry grin in her voice.

He glances up once. Ada’na Ipiwo is fidgeting a little, in a way that’s familiar to him; he watches her take her bowl up where she’s set it aside, test the stew with the bread. She looks – unwell, he thinks. That’s a polite way to put it. He tries not to stare, though he finds himself hoping with an odd sort of intensity that she takes well to the yats; he’s spent journeys dizzy-headed and empty, sick as a banderwolf – sick as a raen – and he aches to think what tomorrow will be like for her.

To his relief, she seems to relax. He’s midway through another generous bite, maybe too generous; he’s shoveling a mant flatbreadful of stew into his mouth when she addresses him, Mr. Vauquelin, and the Anaxi-ness of the sound alone makes him raise his eyebrows. He swallows, then smiles.

“It is my first, ada’na,” he says, “indeed.” Not far off, there’s the shifting of the pot on the coals; slowly, he grins. “Like a fish on land is a good way to put it, in more ways than one. I’ve never traveled like this, much less the desert – I’ve seldom been outside Anaxas, being honest. I’m grateful –”

He glances over at Nkemi, who’s smiling. She’s still sitting fair straight, still scooping up chickpeas with precision.

“– for my host,” he says, “who has honored me a great deal.” He glances back toward ada’na Ipiwo, then pauses. “Is it yours, ada’na?” he asks after a moment, lifting an eyebrow; the answer might be obvious, but something gives him pause. He can’t put his finger on what.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 27 Bethas, 2720
Tseq’ule Caravan, Crossing the Desert

Ipiwo smiles at Anetol’s question. “I thought I knew the desert,” she says, thoughtful; the skin beneath her eyes is all dark, and she is pinched about the face, Nkemi sees, although she does not show it as Anetol does. “We traveled some around Hulali’s Handprints several years ago, but it was a gentler sort of trip,” she sighs.

“It’s a beautiful area,” Ofero puts in, smiling. “Ada’na Nkemi, Ipiwo says you’re from Serkaih as well?”

“Dkanat,” Nkemi says with a smile, and a faint incline of her head.

“A difficult season to travel home,” Ofero says with a laugh; he shakes his head. “But they tell us sky travel is impossible for another four weeks at least, this year.” He clicks his tongue, and squints up at the sky. After a moment, he shakes his head and shrugs, and settles back into the chickpeas.

For a few moments there is quiet, with only the noise of the men and women of the caravan, eating and talking and laughing around the crackling fire. Nkemi finishes the last of her flatbread; she studies the portion left in her bowl, and then takes another. She crumbles some of the dried meat into the heavy broth, to let it soak soft.

“A wise idea,” Ofero says, brightly; he does the same.

“I had heard you became a prefect, after Thul’Amat,” Ipiwo says, into the stillness. She is looking directly at Nkemi now.

Nkemi inclines her head. “A junior subprefect of Windward Market,” she says, the bread hovering against the chickpeas at the edge of the bowl. The edge has dipped into the sauce now, so she finishes the motion and eats it, careful, everything but her fingers still neat.

Ipiwo shifts on the carpet once more; she exhales, soft. She looks down at the rug, then back up; her gaze flickers to Anetol and then away. She wipes her fingers delicately on a square of cloth, and there is no stain left behind on them.

“The right hands of Thul Ka!” Ofero says into the silence, smiling. “You’re blessed by Ophur, Mr. Vauquelin, to have the chance to visit Serkaih with one of her daughters and Windward Market with one of his prefects.” He chuckles.

Ipiwo smiles; her gaze holds on Nkemi once more.

Nkemi sits back straight; her legs are crossed by the fire, but there is no yielding in her posture. She meets Ipiwo’s gaze, and she too smiles. Her field still mingles warm with Anetol’s, but the bastly bubbling of the song has gone.

“I‘m sorry,” Ipiwo says, when the silence has gone on again too long; she looks over the rug at Nkemi, very intently. “There was much I did not understand, as a girl.”

“Much passes before any child which they may not understand,” Nkemi says, politely. The line of her back is stick straight; she is smiling still.

Ipiwo’s lips press together; Nkemi sees them quiver, soft, at the edges. She swallows, and looks away, out past the edge of the caravan into the deep darkness beyond. Ofero is finally silent, his hand still with a piece of bread half in his stew, looking at Ipiwo with a furrowed brow.

“Pardon me,” Ipiwo says; she rises, shakily, leaving the stew behind, and takes a few steps away from the fire, clutching the blanket close around her shoulders.

Nkemi sits in silence a moment more. She breathes in, and out; she feels the warmth of the fire, and the prickle of the blanket beneath through the thin fabric of her pants. Her own thick shawl is wrapped right around her shoulders, vivid color which catches the firelight and gleams bright.

After a moment, she rises, too, wiping her hand and leaving the napkin behind. Ofero shifts on the blanket, frowning; he glanced at Anetol, as if he does not know what to say, then looks once more down at his stew.

Nkemi goes quietly across the sands, her feet almost silent against them. Her field brushes Ipiwo’s first, faint and tentative.

“Even the uliam may wish to be alone, Ofero,” Ipiwo says, quietly.

“Time may not always of our choosing,” Nkemi says, just as quietly. Ipiwo glances back, started; her eyes widen.

[Tom Cooke]

Crossing the Desert • Eastern Erg

Evening on the 27th of Bethas, 2720

H
e inclines his head, still dabbing at his stew with a tear of flatbread. There are things he could say to fill the pause; they all seem pale and shallow, or else they’d bring attention to it. He doesn’t study Ipiwo’s face too close, or the soft, bruised shadows at her eyelids. As he scoops up another bite of chickpeas, he watches her hands, even as her husband digs into his stew. He doesn’t have to, at least; he seems to have as much vigor for conversation as for stew.

Hulali’s Handprints he’s only heard of because of Nkemi’s painter aunt; Ipiwo’s husband brings them up again, and he glances sidelong. There’s no gold pulsing through their mingled mona, and talk of home is not warming her smile as it usually does.

Serkaih?

Dkanat.

A sharp glance back at ada’xa, then down at his stew. The friendly smile hasn’t left his face, and his field mingles warm with Nkemi’s. “Ah,” he tuts in agreement, smiling at Ipiwo’s husband, then follows Nkemi’s lead with his own dried meat.

If Hulali is the god of water, he must also be the god of talk. Streams follow paths; paths deepen; streams become rivers. He’s the sense of standing on a bank, now, the soil giving way to mud, the water lapping over its trail and spilling out someplace new. It’s messy when waters leave their rivers, their creeks.

He doesn’t look at junior subprefect Nkemi pezre Nkese of Windward Market beside him, though he can see the straight line of her back under her bright shawl. He watches her hands, too, dabbing the flatbread at her stew. He glances up long enough to catch Ipiwo’s eye, just before she looks back down, and his smile doesn’t falter a whit.

Ada’xa keeps talking. “Blessed indeed,” he replies, looking between ada’xa and ada’na with a wide smile, wrapping another enthusiastic bite in his bread and stooping to eat it.

His hands shake. If there’s a little smear of sauce on the side of one finger, if he struggles once or twice to keep a grip on the flatbread – he tries not to feel eyes where there are none.

The meat’s absorbed the broth, and the broth and chickpeas have absorbed some of the peppery, tangy flavor of the meat, though there’s overlap in the spices; it’s a good texture, too. His own stew’s not quite half-eaten, and he’s a mind to make it so shortly.

Much, Ipiwo says, I did not understand.

The water’s pooling about their feet. Nkemi replies, soft and even, and he feels a pang of irritation; Ipiwo has long left attending to her stew, her gaze intent on the prefect. What in Vita, he wants to ask, do you expect her to tell you? You want to lay this at her feet? You want to make her have this talk right now, ada’na, in front of me?

He’s halfway through a mouthful of bread and stew when Ipiwo excuses herself. Nkemi sits beside him, still fair straight. Ipiwo’s sudden absence is an odd pressure. There’s nothing he can do, nothing to say, no pulse of his field or friendly tangling – ada’xa, too, is quiet, even as Nkemi rises.

He doesn’t look after either of them. He wipes his hand off easy on the cloth, then raises his brows at ada’xa. He still doesn’t remember the kov’s name. “It really is an excellent stew,” he says lightly, in practiced politician’s tones, though he’s lost his smile to a faint twisting of his lip.

He eats diligently. Wondering creeps in, but he feels sour for it; he wonders if Nkemi feels his speculation. Ada’na hasn’t left much room for doubt. It’s beyond him to wonder what goes on in the dark at the edge of the fire’s reach – and he knows that however it comes out, Nkemi, at least, will eat as well as ever tonight, and with a settled stomach.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 27 Bethas, 2720
Tseq’ule Caravan, Crossing the Desert

There is a limit to where the gleam of the fire extends. Beyond that there is only the dark gleam of the stars in the sky, enough light to make out the glitter of Ipiwo’s eyes, to trace the dark shape of her against the canopy beyond.

It is not long before Nkemi and Ipiwo come back to the edge of the firelight; Nkemi’s footsteps are light and even, her sandals soft on the sand. Ipiwo’s steps are a little harder, sinking in deeper with each step.

They sit back down, Nkemi even faced; she takes her bowl to herself once more, and finds a bite of chickpeas and spiced meat with her flatbread.

Ofero glances between them; his gaze settles on Ipiwo.

Ipiwo smiles at him; she doesn’t try for the stew again, but she rips at the bread and nibbles at it. If her smile fades at the edges after a moment, loses some of its brightness in her eyes, she keeps nibbling.

The past is a river, Nkemi reminds herself. She stands planted in the midst of it, and it flows around and through. She cannot change its currents; they flow through her, and carry her onward, linking the past to the present to the future beyond. She cannot change them; she cannot dam them up and hide cowering behind, for the waters know something of seeping and seeking, and will make themselves found in time. She can stand planted tall, and refuse to be swept away.

Ipiwo glances up at her, and smiles, very faintly. Nkemi smiles, too, evenly; the line of her back is still very straight.

Nkemi does not look at Anetol; she thinks of their conversation in Dzechy’úqi in Vienda, of the clear bright winter light and the pop of menda spices on her tongue. She remembers the heat of a kofi cup against a cold hand; she remembers the deep frown furrowed between Anetol’s eyebrows, and the way he had taken her hand in his, and squeezed.

It must have been so hard, Ipiwo had said, her lips trembling. I didn’t understand; none of us did.

No, Nkemi had said, quietly, thinking of strong arms wrapped around her as she was drowning in sun, of her father making kofi for her and leaving the room as Nkese taught her to pledge her honor to Hulali, of the slow dawning smiles which lit his face. Still, you do not.

Ofero shifts on the rug; he looks at Ipiwo, and stills once more, closing his mouth.

“Were you singing Safala?” Ipiwo asked, glancing up.

Nkemi smiles easily; she glances at Anetol. “Yes,” she says, now, more freely; she takes another bite of the chickpeas.

Ipiwo smiles too.

“Safala?” Ofero asks with a laugh.

Ipiwo smiles at him. “Oh – it’s a popular song around campfires and in other such gatherings. There aren’t much in the way of set verses; one’s meant to create their own adventure for him as they sing. I heard it a few times during our celebrations with the tribes around Serkaih. I don’t think I’ve heard it since; I almost did not recognize it, half asleep.”

Nkemi inclines her head. “It was popular then, and in many caravans also,” she says; she smiles a little wider. “It is never the same twice, and yet one always knows it. Anetol,” she turns to look at him, her face brightening, widening into an easy smile, “contributed a very creative verse.” there is a softening in her field, a deepening of the gentle caprise between them which does not – quite – exclude Ipiwo and Ofero.

Ofero smiles. “I was busy listening to the rhythms of my mind in sleep,” he says, regretfully. “I am sorry to have missed it.”

The fire crackles into the night; the sounds of eating slow as the members of the caravan begin to finish their portions. Bowls are collected, as steadily as they were dispersed, and the man with the scarred arm is one of those who begins to scrub them clean with sand. Nkemi watches him, just a moment, in the shifting firelight; she turns her focus back to her bowl, coming towards the lack of the chickpeas and meat, savoring each bite once more.