The Heart of Dkanat
Nkemi stops; they are outside of the town, still, on the edge of a turn on the slope, just before the path winds back on itself. She brushes his cheek with her lips, and squeezes his arm lightly with hers.
“Trust is honor shared,” Nkemi says, solemn-voiced beneath the bastly swell of her field. She keeps going, and they pick their way ahead down the path in the dark. She does not add the second half of the saying as it was taught to her: even when broken, trust is its own reward. She is not sure that such words feel like truth; she does not wish to commit herself to them.
Her head leans gently on Anetol’s shoulder, for just a moment. She is full enough that it is a harder walk than usual; she knows she will sleep well and deeply tonight, as she did last night, in a room which still smells as it did twenty years ago.
They did not, in the end, visit the goats; Anetol’s eyes were drooping, heavy, and Nkemi could see in the trembling of his hands his tiredness.
“It is best to meet the goats in the light,” Nkemi is saying, cheerful, as they make their way along the edges of the street into town, through the last of the scrubbrush which lines the hill and into a soft pool of lantern light hung at the edge of a yard.
“Iki’dzof is grumpy when awoken, anyway,” Nkemi adds, lightly; she giggles, softly, so as not to awaken anyone.
Nkemi guides Anetol to Emeka’s doorway; there is a lantern hung in the doorway to show him the way, a flickering flame shedding light, even pale yellow interrupted where wires cross the glass. She squeezes his hand, and leaves him to breathe the desert air a little longer.
Nkemi glances back, once, from across the street; she lifts her hand in a wave and a smile, and then she is gone, down a distant street.
Evening, 30 Bethas, 2720
Outside the Light
Kafo did not speak the name aloud; he didn’t. It is a secret name. He does not even give it to Anfe. He worried he would forget but he doesn’t forget; he remembers the name and that it is a secret, and that he must keep it safe. He remembers; he does not forget.
He waits.
Anfe woke him before dawn, when the stars were still bright overhead. It was not to greet them as friends. They left the tent and they left Tseq’ule too, and they went out into the desert on their own. Kafo was not afraid, even though he knows what roams the desert at night; he knows. They hid that day. There are many canyons around Dkanat. Kafo remembered them but he did not know he remembered, not until he saw the way the land sloped, not until he remembered a tree. It was younger, then; he tries to tell this to Anfe, because he forgets, but Anfe does not understand, and Kafo remembers that he cannot explain.
Anfe sleeps much of the day; Kafo sleeps too, and when he is awake he watches the other man. He likes to watch him; he likes to watch the steady rise and fall of Anfe’s chest, and the smoothness of his face in sleep. He likes the scar, too, although he tried to tell Anfe this once, and Anfe did not like to know it.
It is a part of Anfe; how could he not like it?
It made Anfe very angry, to hear this.
Kafo does not wish to sleep; he wishes to sit and watch Anfe, because he does not know how much longer he will have him. He does not know; he is afraid, in his chest, that he does not remember how to let go, and so he does not know if he remembers how to hold on. He does not want to be alone; sometimes in his sleep he feels alone, but he wakes and Anfe is there; he is there.
They go for food in the evening. Kafo has forgotten about food; he remembers when he tastes it and he eats, and Anfe stops him before he is sick. You will be sick, Anfe tells him, and Kafo remembers being sick, and that he does not like it.
He sees Risha, then; he does not say his name. He is walking with the prefect; they are walking away. He sees Risha, but Risha does not see him, and the prefect does not either. Anfe spits onto the ground when he sees her, but Kafo does not spit.
At night it is hard to leave Anfe; he is sleeping again. Kafo creeps away, and he does not say goodbye, because the going is a secret, and he does not wish to wake him. He knows Anfe will be angry, if he wakes before Kafo returns, but Kafo cannot stay.
He waits; he knows because there is no light that Risha is not in the house where he came from. He waits; he crouches in the dark places where no one ever looks, and he listens. He knows him without seeing; he knows he will know.
He does know, when Risha comes. He comes, then, barefoot silent, and he waits, and he watches the prefect go. She is swallowed by the darkness.
“Risha,” Kafo says, then. He comes out into the street; he does not come into the light, even though he can see it gleaming on the many colors of Risha’s body’s hair. “Risha,” he says again, for all the times he did not say it before. He knows what a secret is; he remembers.