e wonders, again, at the Dzevizawa. He’s skimmed over them in his readings; they’re a footnote in both Ghosts of the Past and What Our Ancestors Left, mostly to do with Tsauvo and ib’vuqem’s beliefs.
Hama never spoke much of his bochhood on the Turga; he mentioned a few kints his own had passed, a few tribes from deeper in Mugroba, but never by their Mugrobi names. The thought of a galdor doing anthropology work on a bunch of tekaa pricks him, though not enough to bleed. His brow furrows, though he covers it up with a nod and a soft grunt, listening close.
He doesn’t move – doesn’t shift an inch – and holds the professor’s eye. He keeps the quizzical expression on his face, one brow raised a twitch.
The steam drifts from their kofi cups.
The place has a sense of the preternatural, he remembers, which may have gone a long way to inspire both those scholars of ib’vuqem and their ancient arati ancestors; certainly one feels the weight of such a place, of any such place, and that, perhaps, is the feeling to which Idowu and his contemporaries ascribed a thinning of the veil, or a closeness to the Otherworld. Regardless of what they believed, they understood the key difference between hearing and listening, or observing and understanding: as any clairvoyant conversationalist knows, a question cannot be answered without a connection made…
He continues to look at Natete when he glances away, toward Nkemi. The two exchange glances; he can’t read the professor’s face, and he doesn’t know what is on the prefect’s. Two white eyebrows lift, making a great many wrinkles on his forehead.
Nkemi takes the wheel again with gentle hands. She’s grinning brightly.
He finds a brightening for his own face, too, a smile that works its way – painstakingly, he feels – into crow’s feet. His field has remained indectal, and he reaches with a hand that shakes only slightly, less than it did on the stair, for his kofi. This time, he takes a sip, listening to the exchange.
“Very soon,” he replies, “if Hulali carries us on calm waters.” He sets the kofi cup down gently; the base doesn’t clink or clatter on the carved calypt. “Nkemi and her family do me a greater honor than I could’ve imagined.”
The thought springs unbidden into his head: I hope I’m worthy of the honor. He doesn’t know where it came from, or what weight he feels in it.
The impression when she spoke was enough to knock him flat. Not into the canyon. It still sweeps through his mind, like the distant memory of a single note: he feels a wide, empty sky, stretching above him like a thread of blue silk. He’s just before the brink, bodiless and weightless, as if the wind could snatch him up; one step, and he will look down and breathe in all the colors, fill with them. But he is not quite at the edge, and all is desert.
He swallows a lump in his throat with the distinct feeling it isn’t his. Natete has said something, he’s aware, and is laughing. He hears Nkemi giggle.
Someone’s asked him a question. “Ah – yes,” he replies, smiling warmly, still breathing in a swirl of color with the smell of kofi. He takes a sip, and tastes the vibrant floral spices better now. “She told me a great deal,” he adds, “of its historical significance, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Tsúpik pez Oqi, or his resting place…”
Natete is a skilled, vibrant, and dizzying conversationalist. If the third step of kofi har’aq is meant for serious conversation, there’s plenty of laughter here. And they move through one subject to another – the mysterious disappearance of Tsúpik’s smallest finger-bone, months passed at the Cultural Center, the ghosts of old projects.
When the third cup is poured, they’re discussing research on overlapping burial practices between the ancient arati of Efot’ruchy and what is now Paora Fo, and he is mostly quiet; when Nkemi takes the last sip of hers, he’s laughing, bastly bubbling out into his field.
He’s the last to finish his third cup, and discussion has wound down. The prospect of unfolding his legs is unpleasant, but the light that slants through the high windows – catches on the steam that has swirled from many cups – has changed, and the professor is gathering the tools.
“Thank you,” he says in turn, once he’s gotten to his feet, bowing deeply to the professor. He adds, almost carefully, “If the long flight has me weary, you’ve been a host like an updraft beneath my wings.”