[Closed] All These Colors Fade For You

[Tom Cooke]

The Edge of Dkanat

Early Morning on the 36th of Bethas, 272o

H
e sees Ifran in the canyon when he goes the next morning. Nkemi’s jara is cleaning the case of one of the unlit lanterns that rings the Cultural Center, his lined, long-fingered hands shaky but careful with the glass. He stops to bow, and Ifran bows back, pulling his sloping shoulders straight as he goes back to his work. He thinks something’s changed in the way the old man looks at him, but perhaps it’s only that his eyes are so familiar.

He expected Safeera to hold the fragments of They Are Heard more closely, but they’re still there, waiting for him to take to the small carrel. His notebooks are all still there, and the other books he’s checked out of the archives, where he’s stacked them neatly on the upper shelf.

He takes Dhe’fere’s histories down first. One is worn at the edges by many fingers, the print on the pages faded and chipped, some of the leaves folded and marked with thumbs. It’s one of three copies of Crossed and Colorful Streams in the Cultural Center.

To Oned’tsol pez Dzú and Safeera pezre Mariyam – a wiser archivist and a more worthy apprentice I have never known. To Rana pez Lefo, whose honor is like a pillar to hold up the pages of this book. To Bose pezre Yejida and Oni Opax’aw at Ivuq’way, whose correspondence has been like the lanterns of Serkaih at night, but also like the smell of kofi in the morning.

To Nkaya pezre Nkari, my beloved, who has taught me much of understanding.

Tsan’ehew Worn Smooth: On the Evolution of Ancient Arati Practices in Serkaih reads one cover; he remembers ada’na Ife explaining that it was the first Dhe’fere ever wrote on the subject, a project he’d begun before he even returned to Dkanat. He goes over the leather cover with careful fingertips, smoothing the first page.

To the people of Dkanat.

He can’t bring himself to copy any more out of They Are Heard; he doesn’t think there’s much more to copy, anyway. He has pages and pages of notes, and he’s written out all the monite he can find as best he can. There are a few texts on Ib’vuqem he didn’t work his way all the way through, and he spends the day with those, though mostly his eyes skim the page without reading.

Toward the late afternoon, they come tearing down the hall; he can hear them, even tucked into his corner. “Does that mean –“

“I don’t know,” comes the voice he remembers as Badhe’s. Yesterday, it was hoarse and heavy; today, there’s only the edge of a rasp. “Their way into Serkaih is gone now, at any rate. Tsarero has Aisha and Veke and the others sweeping the area around the remains.”

He shuts his eyes, his hand still on the cover of a book, his fingers curling around the edge.

“How recent?” Another voice, a woman’s, joins Ife’s.

“One day, two days, at best. The closer one is less recent.”

“I will inform Ale’ala at once,” Ife says.

“There were bones scattered around the site,” Badhe goes on. “The descriptions match those in Dhe’fere’s journals; this is how they signal their departure.”

“And why would they wish to signal it?”

They’ve stopped outside. Badhe pauses. “This – Tsarero does not know.” He heaves an audible sigh. “Nkemi has – said,” he goes on, “that Dzevizawa’s madness, for all it is madness, has method; Dhe’fere knew this from his talks with them. I don’t understand it, but I remember how they left three decades ago. They took Aya’wo, may Naulas have guided her, and stopped there. We’ve seen nothing of them since.”

“Why?”

“Nkemi believes they were tracking ada’xa Kafo.”

There’s a long silence. “Ale’ala could find nothing of his family,” she says softly, “and no one here knew him. Ada’xa Farhan handled the burial; I believe it brought him honor.”

There’s a soft sort of silence, and then the sound of footsteps again. When the voices pick up, they’re too muffled and distant to hear.

When he leaves the carrel, it’s as clean as it was when he got there days ago. Ife is sweeping the gallery, where the great Tsan’ehew still stands glittering in the middle of the display cases.

The streets of Dkanat have been quieter, since. It’s been awhile since he’s seen bochi kicking balls in the middle of the street, or wandering too far from their juelas’ houses. Ada’na Fareeha’s chickens still spill out into the street, though he’s heard she’s been telling all the other ladies that Dzevizawa stole one of them. As he passes a quiet house a few streets from Emeka’s, he sees Osferon sitting on the doorstep, his small face frowning. A woman’s voice shouts from somewhere inside; his eyes dart down, and he steps in through the open door.

The last caravan that came found Dkanat quieter than usual, though Lefo’s arguments, he hears, were no less compelling; he hears they brought a tear to the leader’s rosh’s eye.

News passes in and out of Emeka’s guesthouse every night, and he eats with the old man and his daughters, because he knows he must listen. Esúy’ori has camped here for the night, Emeka says when he returns, and Lefo has been quarreling with them, too; some of the bochi have come out now that it’s safe, though Aafu keeps a close hold on Jeela, and there’s laughter and lights. They’re expected to leave in the morning.

He sleeps that night.

He wakes early in the morning. His desert clothes have been washed, and he’s a swath of long light cloth; he finds his hat and his goggles and his scarf. When he comes down, Jioma’s clucking over him, with a breakfast fit for days’ travel. He eats as much of it as he can while Emeka and Jinasa watch the tents go down, watch the duri ready the camels.

Dhafed and Tsowo carry out his trunk to the wagons; he doesn’t protest, because he knows he hasn’t the strength for it, this morning. He bows; he feels all the warm caprises.

Outside, the chill of the night still clings to the dry earth. The breeze whisks his hems and sends shivers through him. Efedhe is sitting outside the guest house, on one of the fence posts, watching him.

At the edge of Dkanat, the air is full of the smell of dust and camels, mingling with kofi and breakfast. He turns at movement in the corner of his eye, coming up the path toward the colorful stone walls; he catches sight of her coming down the path, her shadow long but soft in the dawn light.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Early Morning, 36 Bethas, 2720
The Edge of Dkanat

Nkemi rises, early, before the sun, before the stirring of any sound from the goats outside or her parents’ bedroom. When Ifran comes down the stairs, she is pouring the water from the battered kettle into the eschana, and the smell is trickling out from her to fill the room.

Ifran’s steps shuffle quietly over the cool floors. “Efa’on,” he says, quietly. “Is rest not wise before such a journey?”

Nkemi smiles at him. She sets the eschana on the table, and two cups as well, and the small bowl of sugar lumps, covered tightly against the ants which have so few places to search in the desert. “There is that which is more precious to me than sleep,” she says.

Ifran’s heavy face curves up, slowly, into a smile. He sits, and lets her pour him kofi, when the smell tells them both that it is ready. Nkemi takes his hand, and holds it. She walks him down the hill, slowly, her arm threaded through his, and lingers at the bottom, watching the curved slope of his shoulder as he makes his way along the desert path, towards the edge of the canyon where she cannot make out any distant lights.

Nkemi climbs back up the hill alone. The goats are bleating busily, and Nkese finds her mother in the midst of them; their hands together make the work light, and Nkemi is laughing by the end of it. They go inside, and Nkese cooks for them, and they eat together, in the old house full of light, of spices, of laughter, of love.

I can manage the trunk on my own, Nkemi thinks to say, once, as she closes up the last of her things inside it and tightens the straps. There is no need, she thinks to say. She does not; she has not spoken so. She thinks of herself making the long walk along with her trunk, down the hill and through the dusty streets, and she does not speak so.

In the end Nkemi lifts the front and goes backwards, and her mother is behind her, her strong small hands holding the other end of it.

“Every burden is better shared,” Nkese says, her voice soft.

“Your light is always with me,” Nkemi replies.

Esúy’ori is stirring busily at the edge of the town. Anetol is there already, a slim figure draped in tan. Nkemi and Nkese find the luggage wagon, and they heave the trunk to the human who is standing in it, already; he takes it from them on his own, and tucks it in amidst the rest, and they leave him to the strapping down.

“Anetol,” Nkese says, smiling; she goes to him, and bows, reaching out for a warm caprise. “Thank you for such gifts! We are most grateful.”

Nkemi smiles as well; her field greets his, a gentle caprise which does not deepen. “I shall check on the progress,” she says, and goes makes her way along the edges of the caravan, through the dust and shifting camels, the reins and leather. She hears her mother behind her.

“… a long journey,” Nkese is saying, smiling.

Half an hour, the leader tells her, and he grunts, tightening the reins on the lead camel. Nkemi thanks him, and makes her way back down towards the slight figure of her mother, and the slim white figure of Anetol. She smiles at them both.

There is a flurry of motion; it stirs up the unsettled dust, washing it in waves.

Nkemi knows him in the glimpse of the scar on his face; his eyes are red-swollen, his mouth twisted. He is there, then – Nkese cries out in Mugrobi – and Anfe’s fist crashes into Anetol’s cheek, hard enough to send him to the ground.

There is a burst of noise and screaming from all around. Nkemi is there, then – her arms lock around Anfe, and though she does not have the strength to hold him back, perhaps it is the surprise of it that he does not even strain forward against her.

Anfe chokes. “It was – him,” Anfe grounds out, hoarse. “Kafo went to meet him – he – “ he loses his breath in a wash of sobbing. His face clenches tight, and his every breath is a strained ache. He sinks to the ground and Nkemi with him, her hands still on his arms. "They took him from me," he gasps.

“Nkemi,” she hears; she shakes her head and does not look away from the sobbing human kneeling before her.

“Your grief does him honor,” Nkemi murmurs, softly, and the man kneeling before her shakes and sobs.

[Tom Cooke]

The Edge of Dkanat

Early Morning on the 36th of Bethas, 272o

I
’m grateful to have been your guest, ada’na,” he says with every bit of what he feels, bowing deeply and meeting her caprise. It’s not hard; that troubles him deeper than anything. The static mona are warm, and so are the clairvoyant mingling with them, even after the brush of the prefect’s field. “I hope they bring you and your family joy.”

He doesn’t take his eyes away from Nkese’s face, though he watches Nkemi move off, a blur of swishing tan in the corner of his eye.

He nods, clasping his hands in the small of his back and holding his hat there. He shifts his weight; he’s raw thinking about the journey ahead, his thighs already aching. But he smiles. “Ada’xa Emeka and ada’na Jioma have left me well prepared,” he replies, letting the edge of a warm laugh creep into his voice. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much food in the morning.”

“Dzifú dzifú,” comes a voice from where the men are saddling the camels, “eugh!” There’s a burst of rough laughter, and bright bochi voices. Efedhe runs past him and Nkese, shouting something in Mugrobi, chased by another, bigger lad. Hadha stands not too far off, a tiny boy clinging to one thick leg, and a woman with her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

Nkese laughs, with all the familiar lines and shapes it makes on her face. His heart tightens. “I hope the journey back finds you an osi.” She glances over his shoulder, her smile warming – tilting sad, at the same time.

He starts to turn before he feels the brush of clairvoyant and static mona. He’s still smiling; he smiles back at Nkemi.

There’s a blur in the corner of his eye. He doesn’t feel it at first – the pain, anyway. That’s the way of it, with such things.

He feels the impact reverberate through his jaw, and he loses his breath. It yanks the sight of Nkemi and the caravan behind her out from in front of him. They go spinning away, and so does he; one of his feet goes sideways, because there’s no good weight to root him to the ground. It’s a new experience: he folds like paper. The packed earth hits him before he even knows where he is. He’s scrabbling at a few tufts of dark green scruff that stick up out of the ground.

He hears the voice before he knows what it’s saying; he knows the voice, though it takes him a few minutes to place where. Kafo, the voice says, and he knows. He expects to feel the big man’s heavy weight on top of him any minute.

He pushes himself up on shaky claws, dribbling. If it’s going to happen, he’s going to meet it like a godsdamn man. He squints through the haze. He sees him now, all right, his face a tearslick twist, patchy with stubble around that scar. But he’s on the ground, and two thin dark arms are around him, swathed in rumpled tan cloth. “Your grief does him honor,” Nkemi says gently.

“Nkemi,” Nkese is saying, bending to touch Nkemi’s shoulders.

The ache. He knows it’s coming; he’s ready for it. He’s smiling, he realizes, through the swell and stab of pain along his cheekbone. The smile turns into a grimace.

Going to bruise, at least. “Mmmngh,” he snarls, spitting out a little watery blood. Hasn’t lost any of these pretty golly teeth, at least.

“Ada’xa,” says a heavily-accented voice. One of the men has him by the elbow, and he’s pulling him up whether he likes it or not. “Are you all right?”

He blinks, bleary-eyed. “Fine,” he mumbles, “thanks,” though his jaw feels strangely detached.

There’s a sharp whistle from his side. “Get Tseq’úmem,” the man calls. Nkemi’s arms have loosened around Anfe. He’s sobbing into his hands, his breath rasping unevenly in and out of his chest.

He takes a shuddering breath. The twist of his own face falters; his brow furrows. His eyes feel red and raw. He looks away from Anfe, down, because he wants to respect the other man, he tells himself. He doesn’t think of Kafo; he can’t bear to. His eyes go up, slowly, to Nkemi’s.

“Come with me, ada’xa,” the man says, and he stumbles and lets himself be drawn away.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Night, 36 Bethas, 2720
The Midst of the Desert, North of Dkanat

In time, Nkemi eases herself onto the back of the camel.

Anfe is crouched in the shade of the small rock wall which lines Serkaih, and his shoulders still shake, every so often. In the shade, Nkemi does not know which side of his face she looks at, and she does not try to guess. She has never asked him why he was afraid of her; she knows, or knows enough.

“Arrest me, prefect,” he whispered, once, almost too soft to hear over the heavy sounds of his breath.

“I am no prefect here,” Nkemi says, softly. She kneels beside him still, though she has long since let go.

She does not try to imagine what will become of him; she cannot.

Nkese waves; her face is slick with the wetness of her tears, and her lips tremble. It is always so. Nkemi’s face is damp too, and she holds the reins with one hand and leans back as the camel begins to lift, moving with him forward and back. She waves, and she waves, and even when she knows they cannot see, she turns back to look once more.

In time, Nkemi eases herself onto the back of the camel once more. There is no shade for this break but that which the camels and wagons make; they eat tough flatbreads and drink water crouched in it, sneaking bites beneath cloth face wraps between drifts of sand. The camel rises once more. Anetol, before her, is little more than the brush of a field she meets politely, and a glimpse of red hair between a hat and a scarf. He sways with the motion.

It is no surprise to her when, at the next stop, he staggers from the camel, and goes shakily to one of the wagons. She watches him go. The camel lifts again, and they go on.

There is no relief from the heavy heat of the sun, or the steady movement of the journey. Esúy’ori presses hard, and they go through the afternoon, through the downward shifting of the sun, so that they are making camp nearly in the dark. It is a good stopping place, at least, an outcropping of rock set up above the dunes.

Nkemi’s legs are stiff and aching; she moves through it, slowly, and makes her way towards the rocks at the edge of camp. She sits on them, scarf clutched around herself, and looks out at the spreading dunes below, bathed in moonlight. Benea is little more than a glimpse in the sky above them; Ossa has lost her fullness, and begins to wane. The wind is warm, at first, with remembering the day, and then grows cold.

The fire is already crackling by the time Nkemi returns to it. Anetol is already there, wrapped beneath a woolen blanket. She sits cross-legged beside him. She asks how he is, though not in so many words; he answers enough that she understands. There is laughter, and drink, and song.

The food comes before long, lentils simmered in a broth of bones, with roots cooked alongside them, and thick pieces of flatbread. Nkemi mops up all that she can eat, though it is not only with stomach that her stomach twists.

The tsenid, next.

The small cups go through the caravan, all of them huddled close together by the fire, the scattering of tents beneath the rocky outcropping their only company. Nkemi hands Anetol his, and takes her own.

They all drink; Nkemi drinks too.

“How is it?” Epowuk asks, raising his voice. The caravan’s leader is a dura, tall and whipcord lean and strong; a heavy beard masks the bottom of his face, and his eyes gleam beetle-dark above it.

“As sweet as Benea’s kiss!” Someone calls; Nkemi cannot make out who, through the dark and the flame.

A ripple of laughter scatters through the camp.

“Like the Turga itself come to bless us!” Hedha, a plump merchant who has been with Esúy’ori several days, raises his voice and his field, cheerful after sips of eza earlier. He, too, is met with shouts and bursts of laughter; more voices echo them both.

“Let it be so!” Epowuk announces, finally.

“Let it be so,” Nkemi’s voice echoes all the rest. She looks down at the pale milky gleam left behind in her cup, the barest crescent; she sets it aside.

[Tom Cooke]

Crossing the Desert

Late Morning on the 37th of Bethas, 272o

T
he taste of the tsenid itches in his mouth. “Let it be so,” he says, Anatole’s deep voice lost under the rest of them. There is a smile on his lips; it stretches the skin unpleasantly over his cheekbone.

The prefect’s at the edge of his field, as she has been since she brought him the tsenid, since she came back to sit by him. He’s sore in all the places he expected to be; he chafes and itches, and the back of his shirt’s sticky with dried, cold sweat. He’s been drinking water throughout the day, one sip after the other, so his throat’s not so parched. His belly is full, for all the pit in it grows. He ate mechanically, with Nkemi eating her fill beside him.

Still, the warmth of the tsenid tingles through him, reminds him of the whisky in his bag. He didn’t take any of the eza, though it was offered him. It has a kick, Hedha promised brightly. A bright-eyed dura lass, giggling tipsy and limned by the firelight, tried to pull him from his place and into the dance; he shookhis head.

She recruited Hedha instead, who giggled and brushed the night air bastly gold when he passed.

Nkemi still looks tired.

It comes and goes, whatever it is he feels. Sometimes he’s angry; it’s as if Anfe’s fist has pulled a lever, and the purpling, stinging bruise is like a brand. It’s easier to feel than any of the other things. During the day, at times, he was angry enough he could see nothing but the expanse of sand, and he told himself – stiff-backed, lock-jawed – that if the sand swallowed him up again, there’d be no one to find him. The prefect prickled at his back, and he half wanted to ask if she was taking him to Thul Ka to stand trial.

Sometimes, he wanted to ask her if she was trying to protect the others from him. Even now, he feels it, with her sitting calm and indectal beside him, their empty eza cups between them. He wants to turn to her and ask – demand – if she thinks he chose to be what he is. If she thinks him that much of a monster, that he would hurt any of these people. If that’s all she can see in him now.

As the fire dampens, the shadows deepen in her face. The skin around her eyes looks bruised, and there are small lines at her forehead. Her clothes are dark with dried sweat, too. He remembers the way she raised her hand to the small figure at Dkanat’s walls. The way the sunlight caught on the tears wet down her cheeks, like sand turned to glass.

He struggles to get to his feet, when it’s time, and she helps him up. Her small callused hand is firm; she’s rooted and strong like a sapling. He breathes heavily, then evens his breathing out. He smiles at her briefly, a reflex; the smile flickers out, and he glances down and away.

The night is hard. He wonders how hard it is for her.

The anger doesn’t hold inside the small blue tent. Anger for him’s always been like a vessel with a hole in the bottom, anyway. He has some junia paste from Tseq’úmem, and he spreads it over the bruise with careful fingertips. Tentative, wordless, he offers her the tin.

He doesn’t dream, but he barely sleeps. He’s not afraid of what she’ll do; she’s no liar. He wishes he could sleep, but he stays very still, listening to the wind rustle the canvas. Somewhere distant, uliam cry.

I’m sorry, he wants to tell her, empty as it is. Another murderer jumped in the river.

He thinks he must’ve gone to sleep, because the light comes sudden, and Nkemi’s gone from the tent. He comes out on stiff legs. There’s ised’usa in this, and ised’usa in the rest of it, too. The tents come down; her caprise is there once more; they’re securing the harnesses on the camels and mounting again, and Nkemi is at his back, and he no longer feels as if she’s leading him to be sentenced. He feels rather as if she ought to be, but he doesn’t think that would be much easier for either of them.

The morning is harder than the day before, but he pays attention to his stolen body. He’s strained almost to snapping when the cry goes up; it flurries down the camels. “Osi!”

“Osi,” he murmurs, muffled by his scarf. He can see the splotch of color on the horizon, not too far away, rippling in the heat.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 37 Bethas, 2720
Al’Aqas, On the Turga

Osi!”

Nkemi does not join in the cry. She thinks to, but the word sticks dry in her throat, and though she smiles through it, she opens her mouth no more than to exhale a shaky breath.

They come off the camel in the sand and the shade. His legs are shaking, and she takes his and guides him to the shaded grass. She lies back, there, and closes her eyes. It is easier, in the daytime, she thinks, drowsy.

The night before passed in a strange dark haze. It was the first time which she was afraid of him. She has been afraid, perhaps, since he told her; she has been afraid to understand what this means for everything which she once thought she knew. Of him, though - of Anetol, and the grief in his dark eyes - no, not afraid. Lying beneath the blue tent in the dark, for the first time, she felt it, a creeping uncertainty which crawled down her spine, and left her frightened and ashamed both. She thinks of his thin pale hands, and her small strong ones, and for the first time she wonders.

Drowsy in the sun she cannot think of it. The bruise on his face is dark enough to see in the shade; there is a little swelling beneath it still, which makes the shape of his face strange. She does not eat; she shakes her head when the flatbread comes around. Instead she dozes; she closes her eyes and turns her cheek against the spongy grass, and drifts a little while.

He goes in the wagon when they begin again, and then to her surprise in the afternoon he comes back out. She looks up to see him making his way stiff-legged across the dunes, his face pulled down into a frown, all the strange lines given a home in it. His hands shake on the reins, and he comes upright, and the camel rises too, and they continue on.

A sand-choked breeze whisks against them.

Nkemi squints qt the dust choked horizon and sees the gathering darkness through goggles made cloudy by sand. She breathes in, sharply; she thinks she hear it ripple through the group of them.

They linger a long while in the uncertainty. Some caravans would stop, looking at such. Esúy’ori pushes on up one dune and down the next, until they can glimpse Al’aqas below, nestled closer to the dunes than Tsaha’ota. Nkemi looks at the distance and she thinks it perhaps an hour.

The horizon is all glowering darkness, thick and heavy.

The breeze shifts cool suddenly; Nkemi is not the only one to jerk upright. The rain comes next; it splatters against them, sharp and heavy.

Someone howls first; Nkemi howls too, laughing through it, throwing her head back and whooping into the sky. They all feel it together, that joy which surges through them at the first rains of the season.

Down below there is a rhythm which is not only the rainstorm; the sound of drums drifts up from Al’aqas, pounding out a rhythm of celebration. Rain drifts like curtains through the desert, great sheaths of it writhing and flowing.

There is not enough to make palmfuls of, but Nkemi cups her hands all the same, and drinks what she can of them, her covering loosened from her mouth. The wetness on her face is salty too, but she is laughing, still; they all are.

The rain mists over them as they descend down towards the drums. Song drifts up to join it; they can make out no words from the distance, only the great upswell of it, and it starts another round of laughter all through them.

The caravan breaks apart at the edge of the town. The camel drops to the ground and Nkemi scrambles off her perch, stroking damp fur with a grateful hand.

“Come,” she says, turning to Anetol and extending her hand as he steps, shakily, from the camel. Torchlight gleams behind them in the sunset, beneath the most; the Turga in the distance roars with it, as if it knows what is to come.

Nkemi smiles. “The first rain is a time when all must celebrate,” she tells him. “Come.”

[Tom Cooke]

Al’aqas On the Turga

Evening on the 37th of Bethas, 272o

E
ven me? he thinks to snap, for just a second. All? All people? I’m not a person, remember?

He’s quibbling with words the Mugrobi hasn’t said. Or perhaps he wants to make her say it. Or perhaps he’s only tired, very tired, and the thin mist of rain is cool as oceanspray – cool as junia – against the purpling flower of pain on his cheek, and he doesn’t want it to feel as good as it does.

Esuy’ori pushed through the sand, and for a long time, he didn’t think of anything but the next dune to crest. It was nothing like ised’usa. Perhaps that was when he found his hurt again, with all its spontaneous fervor. It was anger he told himself he felt, not fear.

He listened for uliam, but the howling that came was nothing of the sort. He felt it tapping his hat, and then he took his hat off and pushed his goggles up. The edges of them had bit into the bruise, and the relief was as sudden as the rain. He heard Nkemi laughing behind him, bright as every color; he tilted his head up and almost smiled.

They could hear the drums then, and see Al’aqas not so distant. He hasn’t been looking forward to it. When they’ve spoken at all, she’s told him that the steamship Ip’ixúp is expected in the morning, and that they’re to stay the night.

The Turga roars past the huddle of houses. Now, the drums are deafening, tangled through with song. The breeze snatches up the smells of frying lentils and batter and nuts. As Esuy’ori scatters, the laughter and song of the caravan meets the laughter and song of the village like currents of rain.

It’s coming down still, and his face and hair are damp with mist and sand. Nkemi’s face is streaked around where her goggles sat; a little rain glistens in her eyelashes. She’s smiling at him.

“Thank you,” he rasps, sliding his hand in hers.

She helps him off the camel patiently, as she did at the osi. He disentangles his stiff legs and stretches them; he runs his hand over the damp fur on Dzep’adoq’s neck, patting the camel on the back, and then goes with her.

They go down the winding footpath, toward the rough square where the houses are clustered closest. The street’s dotted with torches, flickering and wavering in the wet breeze, and the smell of woodsmoke joins the others.

Steam whirls up underneath canvas covers and out the windows of houses. A woman’s leaning out of one, shouting in Mugrobi and holding a steaming bowl. “How many more?” he understands, exasperated but laughing as she wipes the sweat off her brow and turns it skyward to the cool rain. A boch darts inside and another chases him, swaying ada’na’s skirt, and there’s a shriek and a clang from somewhere inside.

A field brushes by theirs – Hedha, slick and grimy and grinning from ear to ear, flaring bastly as he goes to join the dancing. When the rain picks up for a few moments, battering the coverings and nearly dampening the torches, not even the singers can keep from breaking up with laughter. The drummers are laughing, too, muscles slick with the rain.

There’s a lightness in Nkemi’s step, he thinks, and even in the straightness of her wiry frame. He looks over at her, the lights reflected in her eyes, and he manages to smile. The shadows around her eyes are still deep in the torchlight; he doesn’t think she’s eaten since this morning, with how she turned down food at the osi. He can see the outline the goggles left on her cheek.

He glances over at the all the swimming lights, at the dancing and laughter, and then back at her. “I’ll be back,” he says hesitantly, still smiling as much as he can bear to. You know, at least, I’m not a liar.

She’s still holding his hand, but his legs aren’t so shaky as they were; he slips his out of hers and goes, and doesn’t look over his shoulder.

The smell of peanut and spices and greens is thick inside the house, mingling with the smell of sweat and sand and wet cloth. It takes awhile; he’s jostled by staring bochi, giggled at by lasses in bright skirts. The smell follows him out in a whirl of steam, carrying two shallow bowls of stew and thick, starchy porridge.

When he finds her again, she’s sitting among the crates in the shadow of the canvas, limned by the torchlight. He doesn’t hesitate; he brushes her with a polite caprise before he comes, and then he offers her one bowl.

“How’re you feeling?” he asks finally, sitting down with a twinge of his aching thighs.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 37 Bethas, 2720
Al’Aqas, On the Turga

The thirsty ground soaks up the first of the water, and then it pools and slides about in the dust and becomes mud. Nkemi is streaked with sand, and it clings damply to her skin, chafing cold beneath the edges of her clothing, none of it thick enough to withstand the places where the wind shifts and drives the rain at strange angles.

None of it matters. Nkemi’s face is bright and aching with her smile; she sits on damp crates beneath a shadow of canvas, where only the faintest hint of cool rain brushes her cheeks. Her goggles are settled around her neck, and her facewrap is tucked up behind her head once more, and her damp sandals are set nearby, her feet tucked up through her damp, dirty pant legs.

The drums are still beating. The rain comes and goes; sometimes it is only a thin misting through the air, and sometimes it pours in heavy gusts. The drums go through it all, through the times when there are only a few singers and the times when all voices are raised and joined together, through the times when the dancing swirls and stomps and through the times when it breaks apart.

The light goes quickly, this time of year; the rain goes too, and settles into only a faint thin mist, at least for now. Nkemi does not look up to squint at the sky, to try and guess at the glimmers of stars between clouds through the gleam of the torchlight. It is humid, now, all the lingering heat of the day swept up damp beneath the tent. She does not move, even when it grows warm and cloying, as only rainy season rains can; there is joy in this too, and the remembered ache of being far apart from home. She does not wish to lose a moment of it, even the uncomfortable ones.

Anetol’s field brushes against hers. Nkemi looks up at him and smiles.

Her legs ache with sitting these last two days; some of the ache was loosened out by the dancing, and some of it made worse. The folding feels well beneath her, comfortable and easy. For a moment, it is all comfortable and easy. Her field greets his, politely, some of her bastly warmth still lingering.

She does not reach deep.

“Thank you,” Nkemi says, gratefully; she takes the bowl from him, breathing deep. It smells like groundnuts, like fish, like chopped greens she doesn’t know the names of, like the starchy roots used to make the porridge it rests on. She takes the battered spoon in her hand, and digs in; she knew already that she was tired, but she finds herself hungrier than she realized, and savors every bite.

“Like the ground after the rain,” Nkemi says, a little regretful, glancing down at the mud all around them, where the thirsty earth has drunk its full and then some, and overflows with it. She eats a little more, sighing with the pure joy of it.

“And you?” Nkemi asks, looking back up at him. His face is solemn-pale, washed yellow by the lantern, with the small dots of freckles scattered over it, indistinguishable from flecks of mud. His hair is all dark, an odd sort of brown, either the light or the sand or the mud; Nkemi cannot know, and does not try to. The dark purple bruise gleams through it all, tracing the line of his thin, high cheekbone, making the sharp hollow below even more vivid than usual.

They are not, Nkemi knows, done yet; this is only the first leg of the journey, for all that it is a long one. Her smile does not quite last; it softens a little at the edges, and it is kind. It is not, quite, either, offered to him, for all that it rests between them all the same.

[Tom Cooke]

Al’aqas on the Turga

Evening on the 37th of Bethas, 272o

T
he porridge is thick enough to cut through with the edge of the spoon. It has an earthy taste that clings to the tongue, and the broth’s soaked through it, so it’s creamy with groundnut and fish. He smiles a little again, watching her tuck in; he was worried that his bringing of it might turn her stomach, and he was beginning to regret charging off to ada’na Iyowo’s kitchen first thing. But she’s eating like he hasn’t seen her eat in days, not since the dinner with her fami.

His stomach aches, too. He can’t remember if he had anything at the osi; it was a whirl, all the greenery dyed deeper by the heat and by everything he felt. He knows he’ll hurt himself if he goes too fast with the sharp hollow of his belly, but he eats, and he eats, spoonfuls of vegetables and fish and thick root flour.

Like the ground after the rain, she says, and he pauses, easing himself back from his bowl. He listens to her sigh and go at the stew. The smile fades slowly; he looks back down at his bowl, all lumps of green and white in thick, dark-flecked reddish-brown sauce, spotted with oil.

When he looks back up, there’s a different sort of smile on her face, but he can’t say what it is. Without the depth of their old caprise, he feels strangely mapless.

It’s soft, he thinks. She meets his eye, but she meets it at the edges, like she might a stranger. No – not like a stranger. He remembers being a stranger to her, and the looks she gave him then; she looks at him now across everything that lays between them.

He takes a deep breath, looking out over the mudslick village square. Hedha’s short, round frame is dancing with a tall thin woman in red; he spins her and she laughs. “Like the drums,” he says, glancing back at Nkemi with a quirk of his eyebrow.

His cheek smarts like hell. It’s not terribly funny, but he pulls the smile up out of himself, and finds some warmth with it. He can’t quite disentangle it from the bitterness – it’s soaked into it like the stew – but the rain washes some of it off, and it’s warmth, still. “Tired, but ready,” he adds. “Grateful for the rhythm.”

It shifts with the slackening of the rain. They pounded hard when it picked up; now, in the faintest mist, it’s a rapid whisper with an intricate rhythm.

He doesn’t know if he ought to talk or not. He can’t help but to turn this new map around, to look again at the key, to think. Bearable, he remembers promising. No worse. And what will bearable be later, when it’s dark and close and silent?

Can you leave it there, prefect? he has wanted to ask her sometimes, cruel with acrid fear. You know just enough to know, and you can’t stop knowing, once you know we’re out there. Do you know what I’m capable of? You don’t even know who I am.

He doesn’t want to think about her thinking about that, now; he wishes he’d never given it to her to think about.

She’s torn through her stew; he’s still smiling, his brow furrowed. He thinks to ask a question, any silly question that could be between harmless strangers. About the first rains, about anything. But she’s spent the whole time, day in and day out, being his guide. And yet the thought of saying anything else – (This reminds me of when I was a boy, he imagines rambling, and…)

“Can I get you anything?” he asks, starting to rise. “Ada’na Iyowo says her husband’s very proud of the palm wine, this year.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 37 Bethas, 2720
Al’Aqas, On the Turga

No,” Nkemi says, with a smile and a shake of her head. “Thank you.”

He goes, and she is left sitting on the crates with the bowl in her lap; there is a little of the porridge left still, and a little of the stew. She does not play with them, but waits, and in a little while, through the drifting mists, she finds the edge of her hunger again, and finishes the last of it.

Nkemi brings the bowl back to ada’na Iyowo, in time. She stays and chats a little while, about the rain and the night.

“A warm night,” Iyowo calls it, “good for blessings.”

“Hulali is kind,” Nkemi agrees.

She goes, then; she makes her way through the small village. She goes to the edge at the top of the river, and checks the trunks; she goes deeper through the narrow winding paths, where chickens peck at worms and the ground is all but mud, and makes her arrangements.

Nkemi goes back to the crates in time, through the laughter and the dancing. The torches are burning down, and the soft intricacies of the drums are dying away. She comes to the crowd, leaning against a narrow wall, and she sings with all the rest, the soft echoes of a song whose words she remembers only as she goes, from some other distant time.

The gathering dies down, a little more, soothed and calmed; the last of the rains drifts away into mist and memory.

The next time he comes, shoes and pants mud-splattered, Nkemi rises herself, as evenly as she can bear. “This way,” she tells Anetol with a smile, this one easier to summon.

Al’Aqas is a little above the river - the walk down in the morning will be slick, Nkemi knows - and a little more permanent than a town like Tsaha’ota, for all that it is also smaller. There is not much in the way of buildings, but there are some, all clay walls baked dry by the sun, rain slick now and faintly damp. It is to one such they they go.

Nkemi speaks to the man outside; he takes her coin, and he goes.

“Esúy’ori has brought the trunks to a place for Ip’ixúp,” Nkemi explains. “I think Afed can arrange for a bath, if you wish.” She will wait, herself, until the steamship; the mud will be still bad in the morning.

They climb up the narrow staircase outside the edge of the house.

The rooftop is small; there are potted plants lining two of the edges, beneath thin rain-soaked hangings. They have drunk of the rain, and they smell of it and of sage and mint and thyme and other things. Nkemi breathes it in, deeply, and she can almost imagine the greenness of it.

Afed emerges from another hatch; he brings with him bedrolls and blankets, and he sets them out on the hard, slightly uneven surface of the roof. Nkemi thanks him, again, smiling; she sits on the edge of one of the several small stools around the rooftop. They are only just high enough to see the shadowing gleam of the lights below, to hear the last drift of murmured voices and conversation, and the steady rushing of the Turga, never-ceasing; from the edge of her eye Nkemi thinks she can see the gleam of it, in the midst of all this light.

Nkemi takes her sandals off, one then the other; she sighs. She stretches back, looking up at the distant gleaming stars above, half visible through the drift and scatter of the clouds.

“It will be too hot inside,” Nkemi tells Anetol with a little smile, “when the rain begins to dry. I hope this is well for you?”