[Closed] First and Fierce Affirming Sight

[Tom Cooke]

Deja Point • Thul Ka

Morning on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

H
e’s a very good handle on his face, as Nkemi shares her library hearsay. So does she – it’s the prefect’s face she wears, wide-eyed and serious, same as the first night he saw her – and if she’s not breaking character, then neither is he. He frowns professionally, his brow knit. But his eyes soften as she takes the lass’ hand.

Offer everything, he hears, and thinks of a proclamation. He looks round momentarily for the boy with the patched-up spectacles, but he and his ma have both disembarked. It’s not long before they follow suit, stepping off onto the covered platform, climbing down into yet another place he doesn’t know.

He looks about, drinks in the cafes with colorful awnings, the milling, mingling folk, the windows with signs in both Estuan and looping, flowing Mugrobi. He makes a note of the bookseller Nkemi points out.

They’re dasher more than eddle, the two girls. Nkeji’s is a presence at the edges, sometimes lagging out of range, but Jiowa’s clairvoyant mona mingle with theirs, curious.

And then the sun is on them again, and he looks out over the broad way he’s never quite been able to picture. “Tsed’tsa,” he says.

Beautiful, says Jiowa. He can’t help but smile; a little playful warmth creeps into his caprise.

Wardrobes on wheels, full of books. He never insulted the imbala by doubting it, but it’s still strange to see. One vendor, he notices, is a human, very tall but wiry, wearing a dark green cap and spectacles perched on his nose, fetching down a book for a customer.

It’s not, he might’ve protested, that he’s never seen humans in glasses; he’s seen them plenty, the ones with writs – real or fake – the ones back home that dealt in the illicit book trade. Folk like Binder, even. It’s not impossible for a natt to get them. It’s only that –

It’s only…

The sun beats down; even in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves, he can feel it prickling. He wrangles with the thought, as if he’s wrangling a drake. The throng stirs and parts, and a pinched-looking arata with an armful of papers leads a line of little bochi across the pavilion. Some are laughing; some are not. He catches the eye of an anxious-looking little lad that’s lagging behind the rest, and he doesn’t think the sight of him is reassuring.

“Well, I get to see Ire’dzosat,” says a little voice.

“Like I even want to!”

“Liar…”

Jiowa is asking Nkemi another question. Nkeji’s standing nearby, arms crossed, skimming the crowd.

“I’ve heard,” he mumbles, looking nowhere in particular, “that Idisúfi’s North Hall has a fine collection of the Imúh love poets.”

He hears a scoff; he feels something like rolled eyes. “My interest is with not with the poetry, u’rafe.A term of respect like ada’xa, but usually reserved for elderly scholars.”

“But theirs is,” he shoots back idly, with, he fancies, the air of someone who knows where many of a man’s interests lie.

A pause. “And what does an Anaxi know of poetry?”

“What does an Anaxi know of anything?”

Nkeji is still looking over at a bookseller’s stall, where through the crowd he can see a well-built, serious-looking young man arguing with the vendor in clipped Estuan. “I’ll think about it,” adds Nkeji, with a shrug.

The man’s a good three or four years older than her, and from here, he might be arata or imbala. When the duckling bochi’ve passed, they continue on, Nkeji catching up with Jiowa. His mind wanders; he imagines Aremu here, as a little boy toddling along behind an instructor, then as a young man at a bookseller’s cart, or frowning down at a spread of books in the shade, smoking and taking notes.

“...Idisúfi,” Jiowa is saying to Nkemi, quiet but eager. “I have heard that there are chambers for meditation with very old plots – some from as early as the twenty-fourth century?”

“Poa’na,” sighs Nkeji. “We will miss Professor Uzoma.”

He looks back, smiles. Jiowa is blushing again, two dark spots in her cheeks. “We can find our way from here. Domea domea, ada’na Nkemi,” she says, bowing. She pauses, then, as if remembering, bows to him. “Ma’ralio, ada’xa…”

Nkeji stifles a giggle.

“Antohni,” says Jiowa firmly.

“Ma’ralio, ada’na Jiowa, ada’na Nkeji,” he says, bowing to both, and then still in Mugrobi, “goodbye.”

Nkeji bursts out giggling again mid-bow; she manages an ule’elana looping her arm through Jiowa’s, and then they’re off, Nkeji laughing through something in Mugrobi.

“I had read that the West Hall of Idisúfi was haunted,” he says gravely, as they veer off to a shaded side street, lined with awnings and tables and chairs and more kofi smells. “Perhaps it bears investigation.” He cracks a smile, but raises a brow, as if he’s not quite joking; it’s certainly not a lie.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 23 Bethas, 2720
The Walk of Tsed’tsa, Thul Ka

Nkemi bows to both of the girls, and holds her face still and serious through Jiowa’s attempt at Anetol. She does not offer any assistance, nor any correction; nor, she knows, will Anetol. “Ma’ralio, ada’na Jiowa, ada’na Nkeji,” Nkemi says, smiling. “May you be well-guided by His currents.”

Nkemi remembers the better part of a year which seemed to disappear into studying; she remembers the weight of it, bearing down on her, sitting heavy in the center of her chest. She remembers feeling it when she slept, and when she woke; she remembers feeling it even as she laughed and joked with friends, as she climbed Cinnamon Hill to watch the sunlight over the joining of His waters. She remembers whispered prayers with words and without; she remembers falling asleep and waking with papers sticking to her cheek.

Nkemi had known, then, already, that she wished to study clairvoyance; as she had been advised to do, she had made a back-up plan. They all had; they wrote them down and put them in Tso’opuq’s records. Somewhere, now, in her old boarding school, Nkemi thinks, there is that folder, and her dutiful recording of all her hopes and dreams. They each of them stood before the class and said aloud their hope and their plan; Nkemi had choked on the sentence that she was all right with either, and turned wide-eyed to the teacher, tears burning in the corners of her eyes. She was not the only one; they did not make her say it.

In the examination itself she was not afraid. It flowed away from her, and she was washed clean of it. She had poured her head out onto the pages, and her heart, too, crept up out of her mouth and spilled all she had, and afterwards she had gone out until late in the night with friends, the sort of late which spilled over into morning, and found them all as bright as the sun.

This joy is what she hopes Jiowa and Nkeji will find too; she is not so worried about Jiowa as she might be, for she thinks Nkeji a good friend to have.

Nkemi giggles now at Anetol’s suggestion. She takes them into the shade, and sits him down at a table. Nkemi goes inside the small, dark café, and emerges with two clay cups of cool water, which she sets down on the table with a cheeky, unrepentant grin. They smell faintly of licorice, like a memory of tsenid wafted over them.

Here, Nkemi sits comfortably; her legs come up, and her sandals tuck beneath her calves, the folds of her skirt draping fully over her lap, and dangling off the edge of the chair.

“What do you wish to see?” Nkemi asks Anetol, smiling. She leans forward, careful, checking the hour on one of the clocks that ring the square. It chimes, abruptly; there is a languid flurry of motion on the square, a shifting of students rising and drifting in through the archway. “I told Ada’xa Natete only to expect us in the morning; he knows we may come at any time, and he is always glad of more kofi.” Nkemi grins, fondly; she thinks of watching a pot boil for him, and the careful brewing and carrying of the kofi to the scholar which was sometimes one of her duties. She remembers cradling the hot metal glass in both hands, walking slowly one foot in front of the other, so as not to let the froth lap over the edges of it.

“Before, or after, we may search for ghosts in the West Hall of Idisúfi," Nkemi offers with a bright grin, “or if you like I can take you to see Ire'dzosat. You will, I am sure, have many chances…? I think you will like the meditation gardens. It is very different,” Nkemi says, looking at him and smiling, “from the Rijards wing of Brunnhold.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Walk of Tsed’tsa • Thul’amat

Morning on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

S
he’s left him sitting in the shade, listening to the birdsong and all the chatter of the walk. He wonders if this is the place; he looks about him, at a table a few tables away, where a teenage girl sits close beside a woman not much older than Nkemi, pointing out something in an open book. “Think of it this way,” he hears the elder of the two murmur, well-enunciated Estuan, before the breeze sweeps their conversation away. The girl looks frustrated, and neither of their kofi cups are steaming.

I do not have any expectations, he hears Jiowa say. Nkemi taking her hand on the cable car, the little squeeze. Another piece to a puzzle he can’t solve.

He doesn’t much like being out here alone with his thoughts; they sour to vinegar, like wine in the sun.

He doesn’t have to, not for long. Nkemi is back out again, her skirt swishing round her calves, and he takes one of the cups she sets on the table with a smile that’s a wry echo of hers. “Thank you,” he says, firm and genuine nonetheless.

As she settles herself, he drinks. There’s a faint familiar bitter sweetness to the water, and there’s a want that’s never far from his mind. But it’s cool and clean, and the breeze here in the shade is warm but not hot. He sets the cup down feeling like some strain has gone out of him, and he looks at Nkemi.

She’s sitting cross-legged under her bright skirt, still smiling broadly. For the first time today, he thinks – he’s missed this brigk.

A clock somewhere chimes; the girl nearby shuts the book, tucking it into a canvas bag at her hip, and the woman rises with a worried look. They leave, brushing by him and Nkemi, and he realizes belatedly that he’s felt no fields.

He takes a deep breath, thinking.

I don’t want to be a puddle by the time we meet ada’xa Natete, he wants to protest. But he thinks of the festival in Ophus, the vibrant, buoyant feeling of having shown her this piece of Vienda that was so much like a piece of him. So he leans back against the chair and looks up at the ruffling awning, and he thinks.

He’ll have many chances, it’s true, but not with her. Some with another; several places he marks off, abrupt and sharp. But he doesn’t think these are places Nkemi pezre Nkese would think to take him; and on the other side of the concord, Ire’dzosat is –

He thinks wistfully of the children toddling along, and doesn’t think more on it. It creeps back like a tide. He thinks of another child with taped-up glasses.

He thinks, sudden and unexpected, he should refuse on principle; Tsed’tsa, he remembers hearing somewhere, is the last place any human can be found on Thul’Amat’s campus.

He doesn’t know whether it’s a thought of petulant anger, or every liar’s yearning for the truth. It’s not a useful thought, not to him or to Nkemi. These lines are not drawn with raen in mind.

“So long as we’re not keeping ada’xa Natete waiting,” he says instead, “I would be honored for you to show me your Ire’dzosat, and the meditation gardens. It seems that…” He pauses, sorting through his words like lentils, putting them on the balance to search for hidden weights. “It seems that many things here are different from Brunnhold.”

The careful counterbalance wasn’t much use, after all; the words have a wistful edge, and the edge of a question, but he smiles anyway. Then he takes another generous draught of the water, finishing off the cup. With a grunt and a sigh, he pushes himself up from the table. He glances down the street, at one of the clock-faces he can see from here in Tsed’tsa.

“As long as we head back at – fourteen, just before noon? Circle, it’s only eleven.” He raises his brows; he’s a laoso sense of the hour, but he supposes it’s this sun. He looks back at Nkemi and offers her his hand, this time.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 23 Bethas, 2720
Ire'dzosat, Thul Ka

Nkemi finishes her water also, and sets the cup down. “By fourteen,” she promises. Anetol rises and offers her his hand; Nkemi takes it with a smile, unfurling her feet and coming to stand. She tucks her arm comfortably through his.

“How much do you know of how we do things here?” Nkemi asks. She thinks of the faint lingering on different, and the tugging together of red eyebrows dusted with gray and white. They move back into the sun of the pavilion; it is like a shock, and Nkemi shivers and draws herself up, as if the longer she is, the more of it she can soak up.

They cross through the archway together; the flood of students has dried down, although there is always a trickle.

“We begin at Thul’Amat only from sixteen,” Nkemi explains, cheerfully. She is smiling all the more in the campus. The pathways are broad and paved, and lined with shade; it is not the thick heavy shade of Cinnamon Hill, but it cuts through the sun, some. Their path leads straight back into campus, through the heart of it; others branch off, and students flow this way and that, spilling through it all.

“The small ones you see, they attend the preparatory schools which line the campus,” Nkemi explains. “There are tours for them, and it is allowed, too, that they come to Idisúfi - so long as they behave,” she grins, and there is something fond at the edges of it, the softness of memory.

“Jiowa and Nkeji are preparing for the Blessing of Vespe,” Nkemi says. Her arm is still looped lightly through Anetol’s. It is not like Vienda or even Brunnhold; students go about here hand in hand, arm in arm, clustered together. Two boys before them walk with their pinkies looped together, and they are laughing; there is no spark between them but that of friendship.

“It is this examination that determines which college you may enter,” Nkemi says. “Every student who is to attend Thul’Amat must take it; it is written first, and then oral.”

The pathway leads to a large square; it lines the edges of it. The middle is all stone blocks carved to make benches and trees for shading; students drape themselves over them like cats, filling up every available surface with gangly limbs and papers.

Nkemi and Anetol trace the edges, and it is here that they turn. The trees draw closer together; hedges line the path, with gaps for them for staircases and doors. A man emerges from one, dressed in all white; a girl follows behind, her arms full of books, shutting the door behind her with her shoulder. “But professor,” she says, wide-eyed, following him along the path, “what happens to the chemical reaction when -“

The path turns, left, and they come upon another pavilion, this one smaller, long and rectangular; there is a water fountain in the center, burbling up and over. Two students sit on the far side, shadows visible through the water. At the far edge is another archway set in the midst of high sandstone walls. This one is smaller than the main gate, but still large. Ire’dzosat is written in a curling, cursive script, etched deep into a stone set through the top of the arch.

Nkemi leads Anetol through the gate, her arm still curled into his; it is wide enough, easily, for them to walk two abreast, and perhaps to do so again. Ire’dzosat inside is not small; it sprawls out through the heart of Thul’Amat. “The clairvoyant department has here a specialized library,” Nkemi says, cheerfully, smiling at Anetol. “They share freely with Idisúfi, of course, but most of the larger collections are here.”

They turn left, past an open courtyard; girls and boys of perhaps sixteen or seventeen are lined up in rows. A student who looks not much older is leading them through stretches, through gentle movements.

“I taught these classes during my tseruh,” Nkemi pauses in the shade, fondly, watching, her eyes bright. She grins up at Anetol, and moves them along. “It is good for students to be reminded of their oneness with their body,” Nkemi explains, “even as they explore the mind.”

They are solidly in the clairvoyant wing, now; there are no signs, not within Ire’dzosat, although the buildings have names. Nkemi remembers fondly the losing of herself between the walkways; it is a little late in the year, though. By mid-Bethas, most of the students have learned their way, or, at least, have the pieces they need to find it.

They cross an intersection; gardens spill out on either side of the path here. A young man is weeding, carefully, pulling bulbs from the earth. He glances up as they pass and grins, friendly; his field caprises theirs, lightly, with the brightness of living conversation, and he goes back to work.

“Here,” Nkemi says, fondly. “There are many meditation gardens throughout. I thought – perhaps,” she glances at Anetol; she smiles at him. “This one is called only Iz,” Nkemi says, simply. It is not a garden before them, but a low stone doorway wreathed in vines; Nkemi opens it, and takes the down.

Inside, below, the world is cool and damp; the walls, ceiling and floor are all stone, and one must be careful of their footing in this place where so many have tread . The pathway becomes a gentle, sloping bridge, narrow; after the dry, parching heat outside, it is almost overwhelming to be so cool. Water rushes underfoot, and flows in a circle around them; they can follow the bridge, carefully lined with cool metal railings on both sides, to the center, where there are smooth stone seats. Nkemi sits on one, guiding Anetol with her, and breathes the water in deep; she closes her eyes, settling her legs beneath her.

The path disappears into a waterfall at the other end of the circle; it cannot be known, here, how deep the gardens go.

[Tom Cooke]

Ire'dzosat • Thul’amat

Morning on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

T
he blessing of Vespe. Is it – he doesn’t want to be the Anaxi to ask – is it so for both arati and imbali? He thinks it must be this blessing of Vespe that Aremu spoke of, when he spoke of choosing his name and his qalqa at once; he can imagine it that much more clearly. He remembers Jiowa’s serious face, and he thinks Nkemi must’ve been in her place, once.

What is it that troubles him? The path they take is straight, as if it’s leading into Thul’Amat’s heart, and he supposes it is. Nkemi is straight-backed and soaking up the sun, glowing with it in bright fabric and warm smiles.

They pass students sprawled with books and papers, some napping more than studying. He hears a rustle and sees, at the edge of the square, a paper drift slowly down from a tree at the edge of the square. A rangy lad is sitting in the shadowy boughs, a book open in his lap and a pen in his teeth, staring fixedly down as if he hasn’t noticed what he’s lost.

Among the hedges, it’s shadier; he feels a breeze tugging at his sleeves. There are tantalizing glimpses of doors, of stairways twisting up into shadowed archways, of walls half-covered in tangled roots such that they look like they were carved there. Nkemi guides them along the path as if she’s done it a hundred times before. He tries and fails to imagine what it’d be like, finding himself in here for the first time as a little lad.

He might, one day. If he wants. If he can. The backs of his arms prickle; he’s still arm in arm with Nkemi, so he suppresses a shiver, though he feels as if he’s shrunk.

The sight of a row of gangly young galdori doing their stretches with an instructor, some more successful than others, brings an unexpected smile to his face. The memory of doing stretches with Ezre comes to him, not entirely without its pain, but fond and good nevertheless.

“During your—?” he asks softly, mouthing out the word, as they move deeper into Ire’dzosat. She goes on; he nods, slowly, and settles into quiet, intent listening once again.

They’ve long stopped passing students without fields, of course, as he knew they would. Even after Hox, the sight of a galdor weeding a garden still makes him smile.

He caprises a few passing fields, polite and cheerful enough; some are rushing here or there, books under their arms, and scarce have time for a brush. A clairvoyant lass passes them with a full cup of kofi in each hand and one tucked worrisomely in the crook of her elbow, walking at a clip. Some, like the living mancer, are tending to the plants, or sweeping the walks free of leaves and dirt.

When they reach the door, he repeats the name: “Iz,” he says, and he thinks he manages that consonant, at least, well enough.

His fingertips brush cool stone as they descend into it.

He has never been in a garden like this. There is more cool, eroded stone than sage or phlox or sorrel, no neat rows of vegetables or twisting little trees tied to posts to keep them straight. There are walls and a ceiling, but the place feels strangely as if it goes on forever.

He shivers in the damp coolness as she sits with him on the stone in the center. He’s smiling, looking at the soft-voiced waterfall and the burbling stream; he looks at her, but her eyes are shut, and so he shuts his.

He is, he realizes, more than a little afraid to be in his mind.

He eases himself into it anyway, counting each inhale and exhale, feeling the mona settle around them both. When it comes, this time, he knows it: he sees a little boy with his arm around his mother’s waist, climbing off the car one stop before them, pushing up his crooked glasses on his face so he doesn’t lose them.

Even here, in Iz, not all of the tension has left him. He can feel Nkemi breathing at his shoulder, soft, in and out, almost the same rhythm. What would he ask? he thinks again, letting himself feel the pain, not pushing it down.

Maybe he would tell. Maybe he would tell everything; maybe he should. Before they board a steamboat, before they cross the desert, before she brings him into her family’s home. He hasn’t realized until now, and here, how much it weighs on his heart. Just how much he’d like to shift that weight off, so everything he sees – everything he thinks – doesn’t feel like a profane secret.

He’s not sure how long it’s been, but he breaks the silence first, his voice soft. “The test at Brunnhold isn’t one you can study for,” he says. It’s not exactly what he wanted – what he meant – to say, and he thinks she must know already how things are in Anaxas.

What is Jiowa afraid of? Why was the human boy wearing glasses? He doesn’t know what the two questions have to do with one another, but they sink in him together like stones.

He opens his eyes, looking up at the stone ceiling. Reflections from the burbling water play across the smooth stone, shimmer in its waves.

He starts to ask what’s beyond the waterfall, but pauses, smiling with every bit of his face. “This place is like a vestibule,” he says instead, and looks at Nkemi. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 23 Bethas, 2720
Ire'dzosat, Thul Ka

Tseruh,” Nkemi explains, smiling at Anetol. “It is – I think you would call it post-graduate studies? Here it lives by its own name. It is a project – an undertaking – which a student who wishes to do so, and who has the support of a professor, may attempt. It is done after the degree, and it comes in its own time – a few years, or so many as five, or even longer. It is finished,” Nkemi says, with the grin of echoed words, “when it is finished, in its own time; it may not be rushed.”

“Mine was the spell I told you of,” Nkemi explains; the clairvoyant and static mona mingle freely in her field, all the more easily now, “under the guidance of Professor Ruedka pezre Etriket. I hope that you will meet her also; she is traveling, now, but I am sure – by the beginning of the rainy season…” Nkemi does not go all the way to suggesting that Anetol ask Ruedka for advice on meditations, on tethering; he is not a child to be guided through careful stretching and deliberate movement.

Inside Iz, they both breathe deeply and freely. Nkemi’s own field is calm; she feels the same watery coolness soothe through Anetol’s field, and she offers a quiet prayer to Hulali in the midst of her meditations.

Nkemi thinks of coming to Iz the first time – of passing through the waterfall, into some of the larger, deeper chambers beyond. They did not come, then, in large groups, in whole classes, but in smaller ones, a few together. They were told to explore on their own, first; they came back, then, later, with instructors. They sat in groups, legs crossed, hands settled on their knees, and placed their minds wholly on the image of water dripping – a little bead of it dangling from a rock, filling slowly, and tumbling down, until the cycle begins again – until they saw nothing else but that, breathed nothing else but that.

There is a knack to settling one’s mind into stillness. The world is busy; Thul Ka is busy; even Ire’dzosat is busy. One’s private world also is busy; Nkemi finds hers a dizzying array of colors, thoughts and feelings, and longing chief among them. She welcomes the feelings; they flow around her like water, and she sits atop them in the stillness.

She, too, has found her calmness by the time Anetol speaks. It is not forbidden here in the outskirts of Iz; she would have warned him if it was. Nkemi’s eyes open when Anetol speaks, and she smiles at him, soft and warm, like the seeping of their fields together at the edges. “No,” Nkemi says, quiet; a little pinch of trouble worries at the center of her brow. She looks at Anetol, at the red-gray-white of his hair, a bright shock of color in the midst of this place of coolness. She looks down at herself, too, at the colors of her skirt, and looks back up at him.

“Brunnhold is a place of much knowledge,” Nkemi says, quiet, her small hands folded together in her lap. She is a guest in Anaxas, she reminds herself. She leaves the rest of what she wishes to say tucked into the silence; she swallows, her throat moving silently. “There are many things,” Nkemi says, slowly, thinking of a crowded tenement, a man shaking on a roof; she has thought of him since. She wonders where he is; she hopes he is somewhere now in Thul Ka, perhaps in the Turtle, “that I do not understand.”

Like a vestibule, Anetol says, and Nkemi’s face lights up. She chooses to smile too; it is not hard, not with the warmth glowing across Anetol’s face. She nods; she reaches out and takes his hands in hers, and squeezes them, warm and friendly. “I am glad,” Nkemi says, simply, and easily. She breathes in deep the coolness again, and exhales it out. His color is good now; he is all pale white, but for the shocks of freckles against his skin, and his field retains that smooth slippery stillness, even though they have spoken, carefully, around a difficult thing.

“It is good to learn stillness in the midst of such beauty,” Nkemi says, cheerfully. She grins. “There are more than only four gardens, but Iz, Ifús, Tseli and Úvew are the oldest. They predate even the founding of Ire’dzosat, when it was all Thul’Amat.”

[Tom Cooke]

Ire'dzosat • Thul’amat

Morning on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

H
e thinks at first he’s misstepped, though he feels nothing change in Nkemi’s field. She hasn’t spoken since they entered; he remembers what he’s heard of some parts of Thul’amat’s campus, some parts of Idisufi. Again – or maybe for the first time – he feels like a mung human in a sacred place.

When he looks over, she’s smiling at him, warm as the mingling of their fields. No, she says gently, with a small, familiar crease at her brow. There’s more written in the silence than the words. She’s told him as much before; he hasn’t meant to make her speak of it, and he wonders why he spoke to begin with.

She brightens when he does, and to his surprise, she takes both of his hands in hers. He breathes in and out when she does; it’s still there, whatever it is, but he lets go of it, slowly. The tide draws back.

In the midst of such beauty and such age, he thinks. “And – before? When it was Dejai?” This one’s set deep enough, and made of such smooth, strong stone, he can imagine it surviving a conflagration.

He doesn’t know these words, iz and tseli and úvew, though he remembers tseli on hama’s tongue once, in the garden. Ifús, he knows: fire. He can guess some of the rest.

He wonders how many galdori have sat in these seats, and what exams have weighed heavy on them, and what projects they’ve been chipping at in the waking and in the dreaming and meditating all. The path down is eroded such that it’s almost slippery.

Why this morning, he could ask, Iz, and not any of the others? He doesn’t; he can picture Nkemi coming here throughout all of it, the blessing and all her Thul’amat years and her tseruh, and after.

Water whispers all around, whispers in the contours of the stone. He doesn’t know where the path leads beyond the waterfall, but the streams, too, follow it, and he’s the sense of vastness in the water, vastness and togetherness.

There might be a hundred little streams criss-crossing this place, or a great lake underneath Ire’dzosat, or there might be another small room. He doesn’t know if visitors are welcome deeper in the garden, but he’s content not to know. It feels like holding upkeep; it feels like staying in the vestibule, and not going any farther. Maybe someday he’ll know, but all that is behind the veil, too.

He looks back down at the hands in his lap, ghostly pale in the garden’s soft cool light. He can still feel the warmth from where she pressed them. He looks aside at her. This place brings out the blues in her dark skin, glints flickering in her eyes. Even the brilliant yellow of her skirt is made greenish, shadows deep in the folds.

“There are many things I don’t understand, either,” he says, and smiles more easily. “But it’s good to learn stillness.”

It comes in its own time, like a tseruh, maybe. He watches the water run around the platform, into the shade of the bridges. He can’t picture ada’na Ruedka, but he feels her in what Nkemi’s said – not just of her, but of rivers and the past, and everything else. He wonders if they’ve ever meditated together here. He remembers her gentle not-suggestion earlier, and he hopes he’ll meet her, too.

With the clairvoyant mona settled around them – and static, too, a scattering of brightness – it’s hard to be so afraid; there is, all of this quiet oldness says, no other way.

“I’d like to see more of Ire’dzosat, but – may we linger here? A little while,” he says, smiling over at her again.

There’s much to be done tomorrow, and more the day after, and Circle knows what’s to come in the next week or more. There are many things he doesn’t understand, and he’d like to, if he can put the things he’ll never understand aside. In the word tseruh he hears the pride in Nkemi’s voice when she told him of her map in the Dives, and again, he remembers her taking both of Jiowa’s hands and telling her to offer all she has. It’s not quite like qalqa, but he holds onto the thought.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 23 Bethas, 2720
Ivuq’Way, Thul Ka

I do not know,” Nkemi smiles at Anetol. “I know Dejai had places for meditation; I think these springs must be older even than Dejai. We are taught that in the fire, everything burned; we are taught that nothing which was left behind was the same.”

Nkemi sits cross-legged, still; she thinks. “Change sweeps through like a fire; we rise again from the ashes,” she says, soft, her accent even more lilting than usual, almost like a song. “It is one of the meditations which I thought on, sometimes, in Ifús. Perhaps I would have been better served to think of it in Iz.”

If they had time - if they had the house or more such rituals demand - she would take him deeper into Iz, where there are whole rooms for bathing - where the waterfalls sweep endless changing patterns through the air - where there places for sightless meditation, to focus on the soft pattering of droplets like music. It is not often, anymore, that Nkemi has an afternoon to pass in Iz; she pledges to herself that she will find a quiet day during these next months, and come to search for herself in the reflections of so many pools.

For now it is more than enough - it is a gift - to linger here a little while, in the stillness.

The passageway out of Iz is slow and careful; the world is shaded outside, to ease their return to the light. Nkemi smiles, tilting her chin up, and they move to the side. Two studious looking young men, dressed for bathing, make their way in talking quietly and intently of warding spells.

Nkemi takes Anetol a different way back through Ire’dzosat. “It is easy to become lost at Thul’Amat,” she says with a wistful cheerfulness, her arm tucked through his once more. They pass the edges of a garden which glistens in polished stone; pavilions with sharp roofs draw stark lines of sun and shade through it, gleaming. A spell circle, carved into the stone, spirals outwards.

The bells chime again; a flood of students washes through them, and Nkemi keeps her hold on Anetol’s arm. Briefly they are surrounded by the vibrant flood; fields sweep through and over them, each one teeming with its own entire world. The students know where they are going; they walk with purpose, and the paths seethe and then settle down.

Nkemi takes Anetol back through the archway in the high sandstone walls. She checks a clock, nearby, and they turn towards history. “I would be glad of some kofi now,” Nkemi says with a giggle.

Ivuq’way is all red brick, from this side; gardens of cacti make up a bright, prickly border of vivid greens and other, stranger colors. An arata is raking sand around the bases of them, careful and deliberate; not a young man this time, but one well older than Nkemi, with a soft quantitative field, dressed in soft white. Nkemi and Anetol climb the stairs up, and make their way into the cool halls. Nkemi takes him up to the second floor, and knocks lightly on one of the doorways there.

It opens; Natete beams. Nkemi beams too.

He is no more than Anetol’s height; she is not sure, because to her he has always seemed ageless, but she thinks he was likely Anetol’s age when first they met. He has all of the same energy; he is like a coiled spring even now, with a bounce in his every step. His head is gleaming-shaved today; stubble, if it grows, is tightly wound wiry white. His smile glows through every wrinkle; they have a way of amplifying it, as if to stretch it across his entire face. He takes his glasses off and tucks them away and bows, and Nkemi bows too. Behind him, light flows through a window across a paper-coated desk, and gleams along the spines of what seems like a library of his own on walls packed with shelves.

“Nkemi pezre Nkese, you shine like the sun,” he clasps her hands, squeezes, and holds for a bright moment. Then he turns to Anetol with a smile. “This must be Anatole Vauquelin,” he pronounces the name with ease, if with a lilting accent, and he bows again. “A pleasure! I am Natete pez Rojas. Welcome to Mugroba!” His field of soft clairvoyant mona, not much stronger than Nkemi’s, greets them both with a caprise; it is deep and easy with Nkemi’s, welcoming, but friendly and searching with Anetol’s too - not intrusive, but curious.

[Tom Cooke]

Ire'dzosat • Thul’amat

Morning on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

W
ords are swept away by the quiet, for a little while; if he has questions, he saves them, savors the way the water rushes in to fill them. Sometimes he sits with his eyes shut, feeling Nkemi’s soft breath at his shoulder, and sometimes he looks about him at the licking of light over the walls, or at the waterfall and all it hides. Sometimes he tries to narrow himself down to the purr of the water, to shut out everything else – even thought – until it’s all he is; he imagines this is what it’s like between death and birth, but he doesn’t really know.

Iz is a strange place to meditate on fire, but it’s these words of Nkemi’s that have crept back to find him. There’s a time when burning feels cold, a white-hot flame like a stream of cold water if you shut your eyes; he imagines being washed away, by fire or by water he doesn’t know. They carry him, carry all of them, to the same place, back out into the sea, like scattered ashes.

The way up out is easier than the way down in, and Nkemi has her arm looped through his again as soon as they’ve broken out into the soft light and dappled shade of Ire’dzosat.

And to be found, he thinks and doesn’t say, looking a moment longer at Nkemi’s bright smile before he looks up toward the shivering boughs and leaves. The sky’s still as blue as when they went in – bluer! – and the colors on her swishy skirt and her bright headwrap and her yellow shirt are still as bright as they were.

But they’ve lost time; he can tell this by the angle of the shadows, even before the bell chimes. He gets a glimpse of a side garden through the shrubs, the tracery of an unfamiliar plot swirling outward from the center – did he see it before, or is it new? – and one little square bathed in sunlight, a break in the trees, with stone chairs that pull their shadows close about them.

It’s something to see, at the strike of the bell. It’s like the changing of the shifts at the factories, the streets flooded with sooty natt that’ve just clocked out or are about to clock in. This press is even closer; dreamy-tired from the flight and the hour in the cool damp place, he feels the brush of dozens of caprises, some deeper and more curious than others, catches the flash of eyes and smiles.

Nkemi has held fast the whole time, and when the crowd disperses and she giggles, he looks at her with a smile. “So would I,” he says, and laughs too.

As they pass into another part of Thul’amat – red brick he sees, and the fleshy flowered spiny shapes of cacti – he realizes he’s no clue where she’s leading him, but he trusts her; this is a place of guiding and seeking, not signs. “Iz,” he says after a moment, quiet, “water – and Ifus is fire – is Tseli air? Or earth,” and their voices burble together under the birdsong.

There’s not much time to speak of them, but he’s a glimpse: places where the air moves in sacred patterns, invisible except for when you throw a handful of sand into the current. Places where the stones sing, where the walls sing, where a pattern of whistles or hums reveals secrets. Places where the flames burn so high the air prickles and is painful, rooms where the path must be found through a thicket of steam.

As they come up the stairs, she’s explaining that some melted-down remnants of Dejai are in Tseli, how earth is that things are broken down and reform themselves, eroded and transformed. He inclines his head to a man in white, busily tending a cactus with vivid pink blossoms.

It’s cooler inside, in the hall; he didn’t realize it, but the walk winded him, and he catches his breath easily in this close, quiet place. When the door opens, light floods in around a slim shape; his eyes adjust, and he sees a broad smile written into many lines, a bald head just barely dusted with hair the color of frost.

He expected ada’xa Natete to be taller, maybe, or younger, or maybe he hadn’t known what to picture at all. Somehow, it all falls into place and clicks snugly there, as he presses Nkemi’s hands and tells her she shines like the sun.

To understand, he hears in that voice suddenly, feeling the curious brush of a clairvoyant field and caprising it in return; to understand the dead, not to speak with them, but to understand and to listen was the aim of…

He bows deeply at ada’xa Natete’s lilting welcome. “Thank you, Professor Natete,” he says. “You know much of hospitality.”

It’s the books he sees, first, rows on rows of them, mostly Estuan, but loops and curls and dots of Mugrobi glinting here and there on the spines.

He has been in other studies and offices before; it always takes him aback, nearly steals his breath, all the books in one place. Even after a year in Anatole’s office. He wonders if he’ll ever get used to it; every collection is different, every dizzying arrangement of nonfiction and fiction, all these words filling up all these pages. It used to be, he wondered how you could write enough to fill that much space; now, he knows what’s been written is limitless.

He doesn’t get much more than a glimpse of them, or the desk scattered with papers behind; Natete’s gestured, and soon they’re out in the hall again, and taking the stairs down. He’s still smiling, for all his hand shakes slightly on the wooden railing. The historian’s managing without much issue, he notices, wry; there’s been a bounce in his step ever since he opened the door.

“We’ve just come from the gardens,” he says, a little breathless, after not much time’s passed. He knows much of the give and take of conversation will need to wait for the ceremony, but he hopes an Anaxi can be trusted to tell the truth, even before he’s taken the water.

Being honest, as they descend and the smell of kofi wafts up, he’s not sure what he’ll say. It’s a new feeling; he’s half worried the dam will bust, and he’ll be rambling like Lilanee. He smiles sidelong at Nkemi, an oddly giddy little smile.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 23 Bethas, 2720
Ivuq’Way, Thul Ka

Natete gestures them down, closes the office door behind himself, and bounds ahead. He wears all white today, Nkemi notices; long white pants, creased somewhere but still neat, and a short-sleeved white shirt down to mid-thigh, richly embroidered with gold and turquoise threads to make a border around the hem, the edges of the sleeves, and the collar, with a dip in the center. His arms are dotted with wiry white curls; there is a hint of muscle in his forearms, and veins which stand out against the skin.

“When host and guest align,” Natete says, cheerfully, “hospitality is as natural as the joining of the waters – and can contain many of the same unexpected depths.”

Nkemi giggles at him.

“Tell me, Nkemi, is there any news to report from Dkanat?” Natete asks, smiling.

“No,” Nkemi says, cheerfully, “although I understand there are five new kids to greet, when I am home.” The lump in her throat is unexpected and tender; she welcomes it, because she understands.

Natete chuckles. “Ahhh, such dear little things! You will have to be careful of your lovely suit, Incumbent,” he grins at Anetol. “And your aunt? Still painting?”

“Yes,” Nkemi says, smiling, “I had a letter from her last month – she is extending her stay at Hulali’s Handprints. I hope she will return to Thul Ka before the end of the rainy season; I myself will not return until the start of it, so the timing may yet be well.”

“A busy trip,” Natete says. “There is much to see.”

“We’ve just come from the gardens,” Anetol says, half-breathless. Nkemi catches his eye; the bright little smile on his face widens and spreads. She does not think she has ever seen him so; she tries only to smile with her, and not at him.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Natete asks, smiling. “Overwhelming, too, I should expect. One can almost think they were built to be; I have always imagined their creators wished to overwhelm us with one sense, perhaps two, to the exclusion of the others. The external foci to lead one to the internal, as it were.”

They come down the stairs, and turn, following the scent of kofi; Natete opens a wood-paneled door in the lower hall. It is cooler than outside, still, but the fragrant warmth of kofi fills the air. There is a small hearth set at the far end of the room, and several clusters of tables scattered throughout, private, quiet corners.

An arata of perhaps eighteen sits by the door; he is rising already when Natete enters, setting his book down, and he grins. “Professor Natete,” he bows, and then bows as well to Nkemi and Anetol; he has a thin field of quantitative mona. “Would you like me to fetch your kofi, professor?”

“Good morning, Ndulue,” Natete says. “No, no – I’ll do it myself. But, ah, if there is any more of this morning’s sweet bread…?”

Ndulue grins. “Of course, professor. But – if you’d rather – the dzutan has just been delivered.”

“Ah!” Natete’s eyes gleam, and he turns to Nkemi and Anetol. “We are all blessed by Ophus today,” he says, cheerfully. “I argued in front of the committee for two hours straight to convince them to change where we buy our dzutan. Tell me – Ndulue – has Roji been in yet today?” Bushy white eyebrows lift; his gaze is intent.

Nkemi is already giggling; she has covered her hand with her mouth to stifle it. A bastly bubble ripples through her field.

“Yes sir,” Ndulue says, leaning forward. He grins. “He had two.”

Natete roars with laughter; he is still chuckling as he leads Nkemi and Anetol both to a table nestled in a cool corner, close enough to the hearth for him to prepare the kofi himself. Ndulue follows after with a bowl of water and a dented basin, sets them politely on the table, and retreats.

Natete goes first, scooping up the water with his hands; he washes out his mouth, and spits. “I pledge my honor to Hulali. I speak truth here,” he says.

Anetol is next; Nkemi goes last. “I pledge my honor to Hulali,” she says, through the lump in her throat. “I speak truth here.” She settles in at the calypt-tree table, wave-like patterns carved into the top and smoothed over, carefully, to ripple in the light. Ndulue carries the bowl away, and the evil with it.

The tools are at the hearth already; Natete examines several jars of beans with intense concentration, and scatters a handful into the roasting pan. “Now, Anetol! Tell me – what do you think of Thul Ka so far? Is this your first visit?”