[Closed] First and Fierce Affirming Sight

[Tom Cooke]

A Rooftop in Dejai Point

Afternoon on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

H
e’s grateful to follow, to wind down the shady avenues that branch off from the Walk. He looks down another tributary at Nkemi’s gesture, where the shadows are thick in small balconies where students – seventeen, eighteen, he wagers; he watches one young man, wearing only an asymmetric-cut wrap about his waist, leaning back with his elbows propped on a railing, blowing curls of smoke into the warm, breezy air. Overhead, there’s a long strip of cloudless blue, so brilliant it almost turns the facades of buildings on either side to silhouettes.

There are so many colors, nevertheless, and smells. There are more spices than he could ever name, more than he could ever count – they spill out of this or that cafe as the wind tugs them to and fro. Now, an inhale of something rich and sweet and tomato-red, buoyant on it the chattery laughter of teenage girls; now, a whiff of baking bread, a boy shouting, bajea!, the clack and shuffle of what sounds like ging on a table.

“Small ravenous beasts,” he repeated, laughing, when he found the breath to. He grinned, remembering Ezre’s common room, littered with wine bottles and papers and other spitch.

This is more familiar, at least; or – he thinks – it’s so different from anything he knows that he’s no choice but to follow, to let her lead him through until he can weave the streets and the stories together in his head into something that makes sense. He passes fields; he passes their absence. Sometimes, together, sometimes eating together, though often in groups of either.

Much of the detail’s lost in the magnificent whirl. He can hold onto her voice; everything else blurs, swirls. His thoughts move like syrup, slow but sweet, content.

Once, they pass a place that’s set into a shaded corner, a number of boys sprawled over and demolishing a spread of plates on an outdoor table. The sign above the awning has a turtle on it, and the script is only in Mugrobi. One looks up from his yats as they pass; a few pairs of eyes follow them, not with the sort of frown he got in the library, but with a different sort of look he knows but can’t define.

He blinks up, drinking in the bright blue; he smiles. “I’m glad you can find it again,” he puts in wryly, “unlike a certain Sparrow-picker’s lane.” She opens the door, and he steps inside, and he laughs, even though he braces himself at the sight of the stairs.

They go up slowly, and Nkemi says nothing of it, as usual. He holds the railing as tightly as he needs to; he holds to her arm, too, as tightly as he needs to, and hopes he does not ask too much. They’ve chosen this together, he thinks – he looks up the winding stairs to where light trickles down, and holds his upkeep.

The curl’s nevertheless a relief; he’s taxed, but no sap’s spilt, and he breathes in the shaded, breezy air and knows it was worth it.

He’s been a regular at enough dives to know a favorite spot when he sees one. He caprises the fields as they caprise his, polite and easy, grinning and raising his eyebrows at the curious eyes. When they come near to the edge, he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding in a sigh, and then a laugh – they look small down there, clumps of students spread out across the sun-bathed walks and shaded streets. Like embroidery – and again, he doesn’t know the pattern, only it’s no less sacred than the mosiac in Idisúfi, perhaps more so for its motion.

“Ah,” he says after they’ve taken a seat, after the server has come and gone. He raises his eyebrows at Nkemi, then takes a wedge of lime; he squeezes it into his water. He considers – he’s never heard of taking syrup in water – but then he takes the pitcher, too, and takes a drizzle.

He’s careful not to spill any, though his hand shakes. He stretches them out on his knees beneath the table, taking a moment before he trusts himself to stir his glass.

All is the rippling of cloth overhead; indirect sunlight dapples the deep shade, sparks in the bubbles in the water, picks out the skin of the limes vivid green. Contented green creeps out into his field, and he breathes, taking a sip of cool, tangy sweet water. “I’ve a feeling I’ll be here often in the rainy season,” he says, looking out over the rooftops, some of which are thick – to his surprise – with greenery.

He might ask what, roughly, they’re likely to bring; but in the spirit of surprise, and in his own desire to float on his exhaustion, he trusts Nkemi’s grin. He looks at her, smiling. “Are you looking forward to it?” he asks, his voice soft. “The journey.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Afternoon, 23 Bethas, 2720
Oti’úqaq, Dejai Point

It is always true of Oti’úqaq that the empty tables are clustered in the center, beneath the awning. They know their trade and their customers well; the tables in the middle are comfortably spread out, but the entire rim of the rooftop is lined with them, one after another, set carefully with just enough room for a lanky student to slide in and out of their seat.

Nkemi has sat up here writing busily, intent, barely looking up for long enough to eat; she has sat up here laughing for hours with friends, passing around smoke and puffing it over the edge as the sun titled against the horizon and dragged itself lower. She has come as a student, as a tseruhiq, as a prefect; once, memorably, she snorted tsenid out of her nose on this rooftop, and laughed and cried all at once, her face buried in a borrowed handkerchief. More often, and with the gentle coming together of many moments into one which is almost a feeling, there passed quiet hours in study and contemplation, knowledge which she absorbed with a full stomach and the comfort of easy surroundings.

“It is a good place to be,” Nkemi says; she smiles at Anetol, taking another little sip of her sweet lime water.

Nkemi smiles when he asks, and she nods. For a moment, she does not trust herself to speak; she looks sideways over the edge of the rooftop, out onto the sprawling patchwork of buildings – and there, at the edge, where they wind down, and where one can see distant into Thul’Amat, bits of brickwork and white stone and even, perhaps, the edge of an archway.

“Yes,” Nkemi says, carefully; even if he must have already known her answer, she knows it is worth the saying. “The destination, but the journey too,” she grins back at him. “It is well that we discuss it.” She has written him the details of the trip – the river, first, two days most likely, and then the caravan for another two and a half, most likely; it is the season for an easy trip, though neither the river nor the desert can ever promise such.

“The river has its dangers,” Nkemi says. “The Turga is wide and strong,” she looks past Anetol, towards where she knows it to be. There is too much of the city between them, but she thinks she can see a glint like the sun on water, and the Turga lives, regardless, in her heart. “You will see maja’wa – crocodiles, I think they are in Estuan – and water buffalo. There should not be any storms, so early, so the water will be deep blue, foaming at the edges and sides, in the widest parts more like a lake than a river, but for how it is always moving steady and fast.”

“In the desert,” Nkemi says, smiling across the table at Anetol, “we will travel all the day on camels, most likely; there may be a wagon, and if the sun is too much, sometimes, one can sit amidst the boxes, but it is usually done on camelback. The desert sun is hotter and drier; at night it is cold – not so cold as Vienda, but colder than you will think to expect. You shall want to be covered, but not hot; even when there are no sandstorms, the wind surprises you with the sand, brushes it against you when you least expect it. If you do not have goggles, I shall find some for you.”

“We will camp at night,” Nkemi says, watching him, “in tents pitched on the ground, and sit around the fire.” She hears the fondness in her voice. It is a journey she has made many times, back and forth from Dkanat to Thul Ka; from the very first time holding Nkanzi’s hands, weeping silently at night with her juela and jara behind her, to not even yet a year ago, leaving the city behind for just a little while.

“Do you have any questions?” Nkemi asks.

The server comes; he sets a smooth metal tin down before each of them, with a spoon, knife and fork to the side, and a basket in the center of the table with sour, spongy bread curled and wrapped around itself. They are each given, too, a small metal bowl with water, a lemon wedge floating in it; Nkemi washes her hands off, and the server grins and takes them away.

On the metal tin they each have five scoops of different dishes, in different vivid colors; one is small soft bits of pale green gourd in a brown sauce; another is dark dry greens, chopped, sautéed with onion and spices; another is lentils, yellow, spreading out against the metal; another is dark red-brown, with bits of meat simmered in the sauce; the last is yellowed cabbage and potato and carrot, simmered together.

Nkemi breathes in deep the warm smell of the spices; she reaches for a piece of the sour bread, and rips it off, holding it in her hand. "It is best with the bread," she says, cheekily, "but it is good, also, if they are separate."

[Tom Cooke]

A Rooftop in Dejai Point

Afternoon on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

D
oes he have any questions?

As the yats comes out, the most immediate of them she’s already answered, and with a cheeky grin; he perks one eyebrow and sets to looking at what is spread out before them. There’s a splitsecond where he wonders, though – thinking for all Vita that the young arata’s set down a basket full of rough-edged, speckled brown cloth, thick and folded at the edges. It’s only when he breathes in the smell, warm and sour, that he realizes. He blinks at it, then smiles and inclines his head at the server.

His hands are still trembling as he dips them in the lemon-water, washing them off. He hasn’t thought he’d shake the tremors in a moment sitting in the shade; he knows tomorrow morning, and evening too, will likely be hard.

“Yes,” he says right away, smiling again at Nkemi – a softer, more grateful smile. He pauses to think.

In the meantime, he tears off bread for himself, oddly delighted at the spongy texture. It’s not much like irukew, but something about the fraying edges and the little holes and the softness of it reminds him. “Bread is kinder,” he says; he’s not sure why he’s telling her – he’d’ve been mortified at the thought of saying so to Aremu, for whom he has wanted to keep every thread of the strength he used to have intact, foolishly, for the imbala must have noticed all of it. But he smiles at Nkemi, almost mischievous.

So are Mugrobi arati, he doesn’t say; he doesn’t want to put her in such a position again, though he thinks she knows what he means. Sometimes, he thinks he means to say, the kindest thing is not the easiest. He sets it aside – tucks away the dinners spent struggling with a fork, and the whispers, and all of it – in favor of the macha view over the railing, of the spread of so many vibrant colors and shapes and buildings casting shadows, of moving shapes not like stars but like ants in an anthill, all full of life.

He tucks into what he recognizes, first, lumps of carrot and potato, tangles of cabbage. If she meant to clarify maja’wa with the word crocodile, he’s not sure she has; he has a vague idea – a drawing in a book – but you don’t find them much in the Rose, or Vienda, only in Fen Kierden, where he has never been. Water buffalo he has less concept of: he pictures something like a garmon with fins.

These questions he’s fine to leave unanswered; he reckons he’ll find out soon enough, and he doesn’t think there’ll be much need to know. It wouldn’t matter if it were a crocodile or a man with a knife; he’s about equally prepared to face off with either.

“I don’t have goggles, I’m afraid,” he says between bites, sucking at a tooth. Covered, but not hot. He glances up. “I plan to spend most of tomorrow in Nutmeg Hill, if I can – I suspect if I mention I’m to be traveling in the desert…”

He hasn’t, he thinks, packed for this. He wasn’t sure what to pack; he looked at books, but – “When you wrote to me, I tried to pack with the journey in mind; not everything I could find in Vienda, and even then, an Anaxi galdor isn’t exactly...” He pauses, smiling wryly.

The desert? the tailor had said, balking. She had known better – she knows her cloth, of course; she knows light and airy, covering-without-overheating – but the tailor had looked him up and down, pale and freckled and still dressed in his winter tweed, and balked. The desert? with an unspoken, You, sir?

There was hurt, then; there’s less now, sitting on the rooftop with Nkemi. It wouldn’t matter what body he was in – he was Anaxi as they came, and he’d be an outsider here anyway – but he supposes, in this one, he must be particularly careful of the sun.

There are other questions he could ask. Warmth floods her voice, when she speaks of camping round a fire. Wick caravans, he thinks again, and feels a familiar ache he cannot afford to feel. He thinks instead of Nkemi; he wonders how many times she’s made the journey, that the journey is beloved to her as the destination.

He smiles wistfully, looking up. “I’ve heard it’s easier to see the stars,” he says, “in the desert.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Afternoon, 23 Bethas, 2720
Oti’úqaq, Dejai Point

Anetol calls the bread kinder. Nkemi understands; she smiles at him, and does not look from his face - neither down at the trembling hands pulling at the sour, spongy bread, nor around at the beautiful scenery in the hopes of distraction.

He starts enthusiastically at the food; Nkemi wraps up the lentils in her bread. They taste every bit as good as she remembers, earthy, balanced-bitter to meet the sweet. She eats slowly, savoringly, but not too slowly; the smell of the food on the walk over roused her appetite and it is thoroughly woken now.

Nkemi tries the meat next; it is more flavorful, prickling at her tongue, heavy with garlic and onion amidst other, redder spices. She sighs with contentment, and looks down at her plate; after a moment of consideration, she tries the dry fried greens.

Her mother does not cook so - she thinks longingly of gram and flatbreads - but she has never found any place in Thul Ka which can substitute for her mother’s cooking, and she has known better than to try. This lesson, too, she learned again in Vienda; she did search for Mugrobi food. There is some which is not made for Anaxi tongues; there is some which, even, she enjoyed. Even when it comes close, it is not the same; when it does not, Nkemi knows now, it is worse than not trying, the familiar-unfamiliar jarring, and worse for homesickness than all the bland, gloppy Anaxi food of the Seventen barracks.

“Yes,” Nkemi said. It came up, too, with Natete; he made some suggestions. Nkemi wrote them down then for Anetol; she will add what she has thought of to the list and give it to him, before he goes. “You are a good size,” she says, cheerfully. “It will not be so hard for them to cut cloth to fit you, and quickly.” She grins at him.

Nkemi wipes her hand on a cloth and takes a sip of her lime drink. “Many visitors go to the desert,” she says. “They will not find it unusual.” She thinks of his hat, too. “Perhaps,” she hesitates. “A strap for your hat, I think - the wind can be strong.”

Nkemi thinks he will burn, very likely, even with the clothing which covers him and the hat strapped to his head. She resolves to find goggles for him, today if there is time and tomorrow if there is not. She knows - she does not herself burn from the sun, but there are visitors who do, and many other things may burn her. They sell in the pharmacies some small pots of aloe, which can soothe such pains; Nkemi tells herself to remember to bring some for him.

“Yes,” Nkemi says, softly, when he speaks of the stars. She looks around now, at the busy bustling city; she grins back at Anetol. “The sky is all stars there; they stretch from the horizon to the horizon again, and fill the sky. It was strange for me, when I first came to Thul Ka; my juela told me they were hiding, and we should see them again soon.” Nkemi smiles soft at the memory, thinking of girlhood journeys. She thinks of frowns she did not understand from the other members of the caravan, and her mother’s arms wrapped around her as they slept, which she did; in the desert, there was no light to read by, and there would be no scratching sounds of pencils in the night.

Goggles, Nkemi thinks, and a strap for his hat, and aloe, just in case. She knows there is so much more she is not telling him; it is hard even to try to do it justice, when soon he will see for himself. The words could come spilling out one over the next - the beetles, she wants to say, you will see - if we are lucky, and the caravan is good, there might be music by the fire - if there is a sandstorm, take cover if it is near but else stay with the camel; they know to sit and wait, and they are large enough to shade you from the worst of the sand - we may try wasp honey milk, although we should hope not, for honey is not the most honest of names, though when you are thirsty it is sweet indeed - on the river, sometimes, you will see monkeys swinging in the trees.

They are still eating busily, the both of them. “Are you looking forward to the journey?” Nkemi asks instead. She mops another bit of the lentils.

[Tom Cooke]

A Rooftop in Dejai Point

Afternoon on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

I
t’s not like Anaxi food or Bastian, among gollies at least, where there’s a soup or a roast or a stew and you’re scarce even allowed to use the bread for sopping. He’s a moment – a brief moment, before he watches Nkemi tucking in with relish, to the greens and the meat and other stewy things he’s no named for – where he wants to ask what order he’s meant to eat it in.

Mealtime’s had his nerves strained to their ends for so long he’s almost forgotten what it’s like to just eat. Start from the outside, he’ll tell himself, at the beginning of a dinner with Lord Chancellor Leblanc and his withering rosh, and sit under the old man’s pitying rheumy eyes as he tries to spear an artichoke with the delicate fork in his shaky hand.

Where’re you meant to keep the napkin? Sometimes, they make it easy for you, bringing out the food in the order you’re meant to eat it; sometimes, it’s all there, and there’s no rules but unspoken ones. Don’t eat too fast; don’t eat too slow. Don’t eat too much, or too little. Eat neatly, primly and neatly; they will laugh if you spill but not to your face –

He’s laughing, now, wrapping a bit of meat and sauce in the lovely spongey bread. He’s had the greens, too, though his favorite by far is the potatoes and carrots and cabbage; it reminds him of something hama used to make. He has no thought but what the meat will taste like, and he eats with as much relish as Nkemi.

A good size. He wouldn’t’ve called it good, but it suffices here; he’s seldom met an arata taller than him. He wouldn’t be surprised if he’ll find something or other ready-made.

The meat is – warmish, he reckons. The sauce, at least. He pauses, feeling a familiar prickling in his eyes, and reaches for his lime water. None of the rest of it’s been anything like the isles; he’d thought maybe the food in Thul Ka was milder. It’s not ada’na Ahura’s tomato chutney, but it’s not exactly Anaxi-mild, either.

He smiles brightly through – for! – the prickling in his eyes, and listens, nodding intently. A strap for his hat he can do, too, though he’s a building sense of he knows not what. It’s not dread, but it’s familiar to him from the airship to Hox: it’s a flurry of moths in his belly.

It’s not only that, he knows. “I’m glad to know it,” he says, knowing Nkemi must’ve figured how much of a stranger he feels he is, and the weight of eyes; he supposes Anaxi are much less kind to fishes from different ponds.

She knows so much, and she knows so little, and that’s it, too. With Ezre, he’s gone to see people like him, in company that knows him for what he is; she knows him and does not know him. She knows him better, in some ways, and not at all in others, and something else creeps at the bottom of him, something dark and strange.

But now, as if she knows the weight of all that’s unspoken between them, she speaks of stars.

“Ah, me!” He breathes something like a sigh, casts his glance out to the city with hers. It seems to him for a while they drift on the breeze; he thinks he can catch a distant glimmer, between the thicket of buildings. “Hiding,” he repeats, wistful. “Like it where it’s quiet, I suppose.”

He can’t picture such a spread of stars as they must see in the desert, in that wide flat expanse he’s only felt in the vestibule of her mind. He finds himself picturing the stars over the Isles, and his heart tightens and aches, and he reminds himself again of the letter he must send tomorrow.

She speaks again, and he looks at her, raising his eyebrows. “Yes,” he says firmly, honestly, midway through wrapping more cabbage and potato in his bread. He knows that much is true, for all that crawls and whispers in him.

He pauses, chewing a bite.

“Have you ever had a feeling like butterflies in your stomach?” he asks after he’s dabbed at his lips, his smile softening. “This journey is important to me,” he says, “and I can’t help feeling them. And I'm afraid I will not be the spryest of traveling companions.” She’s honored his honesty with grace, now, and he must honor her question with more honesty.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Afternoon, 23 Bethas, 2720
Oti’úqaq, Dejai Point

Anetol laughs softly. Nkemi watches him, his shaky freckle dusted hand grasping a piece of the spongy bread. He looks down at the meat, smiling; he scoops up a bit of it, and tries it. The smile does not fade, even when he clears his throat and his eyes prickle with moisture; he takes a sip of his drink.

Nkemi does not laugh, quite, but she is smiling too, and it is warm all through her, like the spices and the food. It is comfortable and easy, this meal; she settles into it, and could not ask for more than the cool breeze whispering over the city, the taste of pepper on her tongue, the laughing chatter all around, and Anatole’s enthusiasm as he goes, undaunted, back for more.

Nkemi nods in answer to his question. “We call it the same here, sometimes,” Nkemi says, “and sometimes - eyo’xaw i’xupo. The wind leaps in my heart.”

She remembers the feeling before her first trip to Thul’Amat; she remembers the beginnings of a sleepless night, a little girl tossing and turning and wondering, and thinking she would not sleep a single second the whole night through, so that the time would pass more slowly. She remembers, too, if not so specifically, the coolness of her pillow against her cheek, and waking the next morning to light filtering in through the blinds.

Nkemi remembers the feeling before her second trip to Thul’Amat too, and her third, and her fourth. She cannot say quite when it stoped; she know she does not feel it, anymore. But she felt it, and she felt it long after she knew of classes and friends and the bustling life of the city, and all the other things which awaited her on the other end, when the journey itself was no longer so strange, nor anything to be feared.

Nkemi nods. “I do not know if it will be comfortable for you, camelback,” She says. “It is -“ she pauses, and grins at him, sheepishly. “They have very wide backs,” Nkemi says, solemnly, with the littlest glint of mischief in her eyes. “There is the wagon, if need be.”

Once started, there is no turning back. Nkemi thinks he knows; at the end of the river boat, when they have reached the docks, there will be a chance. In the desert - the odds that they will pass another caravan heading the other way are slim. There are no roads; there would be no sense to them. The world changes beneath your feet with every breath of wind; the sand scatters and reforms and makes it anew. A road would be buried - would be lost - and would be foolish even in the attempt, for what had once been flat becomes over time a dune, stretching and rising up.

But she knew his limitations when she made her offer. Nkemi wipes her hand clean and sets it carefully on the table, for all that the food still calls to her - she is not full yet; she thinks she could eat the entire place and still yet more - and waits, smiling at him.

It is not so unfamiliar, either, to be hungry here. Her teenage years are a blur of hunger and joy; she remembers eating ravenous one this very rooftop, dragging herself from a book to the needs of the body.

“There are those who say eating is a meditation,” Nkemi says, when she has given Anetol’s hand a squeeze. She tucks back into her meal, devotedly, and grins at him. “Each bite is a little different than the one before; our body can tell us this, if we listen. It knows how the meal changes as we proceed through it, how each bite is what it contains, yes, but also shaped by what has come before and what yet remains.” She mops up a bit more of the lentils, and returns to the cabbage, potato and carrots.

“It is well to feel nervous,” Nkemi says, smiling at Anetol, “before this or any journey.” She remembers casting before her tsreuh committee; she remembers casting in Brunnhold. “I am glad you feel the weight of it.”

[Tom Cooke]

A Rooftop in Dejai Point

Afternoon on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

E
yo’xaw i’xupo,” he repeats, slow and careful. If she chooses to correct him on the delicate turn of a consonant, he’ll repeat it again, yet more carefully; only then will he say, “The wind leaps in my heart,” as a gust ruffles the canvas overhead.

It makes him think of the wind sweeping and leaping and whirling over a plain, or over rooftops and through the branches of trees, rather than something trapped and beating papery wings against walls. He tries to take away the walls, and accept that it’s a gusty day, instead of trying to swallow the wind and press it down into nothing. He feels it still: flutter, flutter, whirl.

He thinks Nkemi must have some experience with wind on the heart. Jiowa, too. He wonders what it was like, the night before boarding the airship to Anaxas, knowing the weight of why she’d been sent and not knowing the half of what she’d find on the other side. It must’ve been worse than the preparations for Ire’dzosat, or even all of the tseruh, knowing the moments before it had all led up to – that.

He thinks Nkemi is good, too, at making what she can of the flutters. There was that look in her eyes, when she spoke of the campfire, of fondness – fondness earned, maybe. He wonders if there’s anything about Anaxas she’ll look at fondly; not so much as a childhood memory, he knows, but if anybody can look at Anaxas fondly, it’s her.

He’s never been much good at it, he feels. He pushes them down and away, instead of feeling the weight of them. You can’t learn from it, if you pretend like it never happened.

He grins at her; he makes a show of wincing even as he grins. He still doesn’t have a single godsdamn clue what a camel is.

He’s scooping up a bite of lentils now with the ease of a long and mostly unbroken love affair with yats. His smile softens, and he pauses. “I suppose that’s true,” he says, after a moment. The thought of his body telling him anything – but he looks past it, and pauses, as if listening. She’s wiping off her hand, settling back; he’s taking another bite, not wolfish-ravenous, not delicate as at a dinner. He’s eating as he likes to, but he stops to pay attention.

“There’s a rhythm to it,” he agrees, once he has finished the bite. “Just like meditation.” He wipes off his own hand, taking a sip of water. “Or poetry, or the wind. Or the river.” He meets her eye with a warm smile.

There’s something he could say – wants to say, suddenly, in the same way he wanted to share what the bread meant to him – of hearts being tossed by the wind, and meditation. He’s never looked too closely at it; it’s a little more, though, than a tatter of a memory. He dreams of it sometimes, the drifting and the cold, the hunger.

Every moment, then, he remembers, eyo’xaw i’xupo, only I had no heart; it was just the wind, billowing through me. I had no stomach to turn. It was cold, he wants to tell her, and I was so very frightened, because I had to take a step I didn’t want to take. I had one body, then none, then another, and each step, I’ve had to relearn how to listen. And now, where has it taken me?

He doesn’t know if he’s learned from this; he doesn’t think he has, but wishes, someday, he might. “Thank you, Nkemi,” he says instead.

He looks out over the streets again. You can see a bit past Dejai Point from here, though not quite to the Turga. There’s a street halfway to the horizon with dots moving across it, back and forth. A silvery glint rushes past – a cable-car – he sees flashes of brown, green, red. He wonders if that’s the street she guided him across earlier; he knows it’s not. There are so many streets in Thul Ka.

“One more question,” he says, tearing off a last bite of spongy bread. “When you say – camel – you don’t mean the, ah, green…?” He raises his brows, imagining scales in tender places.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Afternoon, 23 Bethas, 2720
Oti’úqaq, Dejai Point

Oh, no!” Nkemi says. “Those camels are not very easy for riding, even with a saddle. We will ride desert camels. They are similar in their looks, but with soft brown fur all over; they have bigger teeth, flat instead of sharp, and they spit very well,” Nkemi smiles, fondly, thinking of wick caravans once more, of being gathered with other children when she was too young to know any differently, and excited gasps when the camel began to huff, its cheeks bulging, followed by an enormous wad of spit.

She knows better now; it was on a caravan trip that she learned how sweet they can be, for all they have a reputation as frowning.

The camels to which Anetol is referring, the ones which they have seen in the streets, are not so friendly; Nkemi knows those which are allowed into Thul Ka must be well-trained, and there is a hefty fine in every neighborhood for a poorly trained camel. Their teeth are sharp and long; enough to bite through an offending arm, very easily. She has seen them trained, and the heavy leathers the trainers use for protection and, too, the scars which linger below.

“There is a market for animals at the river junction,” Nkemi offers with a smile. “I think there are many creatures we have here in Mugroba which may not be common in Anaxas. We may not have much time there, most likely, and it is best to stay with the caravan to avoid any delays; they time the leavings very well, according to what the wicks see in the earth and smoke. It is superstition, perhaps, but spellwork also, and it is best to start the journey off well. But perhaps we will be able to wander, a little.”

It is not quite like the reading of palms; Nkemi’s still tingles when she thinks of Ette in her kint. She can smell, still, the warm rich tobacco on which she coughed so vigorously; she can feel the gaze of those sightless eyes, and the touch of Ette’s fingertips on her heart and forehead, as if she left something imprinted there, like the exchange of minds in an Ugoulo spell circle.

“There are wick elders who read the weather before the journey,” Nkemi explains further at the curious lift of Anetol’s eyebrows, “to advise on the route. They are found mostly in the junctions but sometimes, if you come across a tribe on the journey, the caravaners will pay for another reading in the smoke.”

It is not clairvoyance, of course; it is not quantitative conversation, either, although Nkemi thinks it a better comparison, if not one she might make aloud – even to Anetol. Nkemi has heard the spells since she started at Ire’dzosat; like much of what is cast in the desert, the monite is strange to her, almost a foreign language. She can understand it, but she would try not try to cast it; she knows the words would be foreign on her tongue. Such spells, she understands, are passed down from generation to generation, traced and copied in the almanac of each tribe. She knows the caravaners have opinions on which is better, on who they hope to see in the marketplace.

She has made good work on her lunch, now; Nkemi takes another piece of the spongy flatbread and goes again at the meat, savoring each bite. She has nearly finished her sweet lime water; the same waiter comes with more, and Nkemi wipes her hand clean once more and makes a second for herself. If Anetol lets her, with a smile, she will make one for him too.

This journey, too, is a kind of meditation, she thinks. She thinks Anetol knows already, that he has known, and she does not breathe the words aloud.

“You will see,” Nkemi promises. “It will be difficult,” she would not dream of hiding this truth from him, “but I will be there.” That, too, she can promise.

[Tom Cooke]

A Rooftop in Dejai Point

Afternoon on the 23rd of Bethas, 2720

H
e tries to imagine such things – with humps and brown fur, with mouths that can spit. Can horses spit like men? He doesn’t think so; nor kenser, nor chrove, and chroven are the only he can think of with humps. Humps like boar? Like the whales as they say are in the sea, perhaps, though he’s never seen more of one than a distant tail flipping up amid frothy water.

He thinks fur, at least, will be gentler than scales, no matter how broad the back. Can a thing with scales be related to a thing with fur? He wonders again, trying to hold it in his mind, the half-glimpsed flash of green scales and long, curling pink tongue from outside the coach window earlier that morning.

He perks up at her suggestion, though there’s something sheepish about his look. He can barely imagine what a – not-desert camel, he supposes – is like up close. He hadn’t glimpsed the thing’s teeth outside the coach, but now that Nkemi’s said flat instead of sharp, he thinks he can picture it very well indeed.

He’s wandered in an animal market in the Rose, if not in Vienda; he remembers one well from his boyhood. On the east side of the Rose, where Redwine and Voedale meet in the markets. He remembers men arguing in broad Estuan and Tek over raggedy, lopsided garmon, cages full of quarreling hingles – cages that deft little hands as know their way around locks make quick work of, if they’ve the motive. And for a Sharkswell boch with more anger and mischief than sense, a flood of chittering hingles darting under skirts and a row of empty cages is motive enough.

He doubts he’ll make such trouble a day from now. “If we’ve time, I’d much appreciate some wandering,” he says – and pauses, and looks up at her, and lifts an eyebrow.

Superstition, she says first; only then, spellwork. He raises a red brow, and as if anticipating the unspoken question, she speaks again.

It’s as if layered beneath her words are another’s; he can hold onto their shadow for just a moment, but not long enough to place them in context. Perhaps it is in the garden, to the backdrop of a curling oud and the smell of sage. Perhaps it is in the bedroom. He doesn’t linger on the where, only the what – which is that he knows of this, wika caravanners’ smoke-reading.

Hama only made the journey once, he knows. These memories are wisps from his childhood, if that. He never knew which of it to believe and which not to.

He’s taken more of the meat in the bread, now, and it’s spicy enough he reaches for his glass, only to find the glass empty of all but dregs. He smiles through more prickling in his eyes. He feels the brush of a dasher again, and finds the server back with the pitcher fresh; Nkemi makes hers, and to his surprise, with a smile, she makes his, too.

He wipes his hand clean as she has. He meets her eyes, large and dark and serious for all the smile on her face and the lightness of her words. He starts to speak, coughs softly, and then takes a drink of the water, mild and sweet enough to temper the heat.

I’m honored, he might say; he doesn’t know if he can say that honestly, but he’s said it before. He thinks, instead – “I know,” he says, reaching across and squeezing her hand, briefly, as she has only moments ago. Both, he does not add.

“I knew a man once,” he says, “who spent his childhood traveling across the desert – only his childhood, and only once. I’ve heard a little of the ceremony, though he didn’t often speak of that chapter in his life.” He’s smiling as he looks out toward the city; he looks back toward Nkemi. “Have you seen it? The elders reading the smoke.”

Are our kind welcome to watch? He doesn’t go so far. He looks back down at his tray; he’s nearly exhausted the cabbage and carrots, and the lentils too. When he gets more bread, he goes again for the meat – far from painful, there’s a growing pleasantness about the heat.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Afternoon, 23 Bethas, 2720
Oti’úqaq, Dejai Point

Such a market, Nkemi truly saw the first time on the journey to Thul’Amat with Nkanzi. By then, it had grown already a little easier, for all that the wind had whistled, steadily, through her heart. She had been many times to the small towns on the edge of the river, which connect the flat, enormous planes of the desert with the bustling Turga.

They are strange, shifting places; they are not solid and fixed like Dkanat and Serkaih. It was some years before Nkemi understood that, some years before she knew that she had gone to the same place twice, only to find it changed beneath her. They moved with the Turga, and when its waters overflowed in the rainy season, they shifted backwards or sideways, and found new homes along the new curves of its banks.

In the midst of them, though, they were almost like towns – clusters of tents and cabin-like structures, market stalls of wood, and bustling busy with people. As a girl that was largely what Nkemi had known of them – an impression of movement, like the first lapping of the water before the wave which was Thul Ka. They had not wandered; she had sat, with jara and juela, in some quiet corner, and waited for the boat. She had known better, then, even if she had not understood, than to make her mother choose.

But on the journey with Nkanzi they had wandered; Nkanzi had known more people there than Nkemi could have imagined, and had laughed and chattered. She had taken Nkemi to see the goats, and then too to see camels of both sorts, leira and whice. She had liked the whice most of all, with all their bright plumage, and the noises they made which sounded so much like speech.

Nkemi tries to imagine bringing Anetol to the market; it is only few days away, after all. She finds she can – slow steps through shaded paths, her arm looped through his, unexpected pauses and raised eyebrows, a laugh, perhaps, here or there, questions she had not anticipated. It is a pleasant sort of picture; she hopes Alioe will bless them on this journey, that there may be time for such things.

Anetol squeezes her hand again, and Nkemi smiles at him. She had thought herself hungry enough to eat two platefuls, but she is settling in to the food – it is settling in to her – and she finds herself growing content, although she thinks still longingly of something sweet with which to end the meal. In the meantime, there are more potatoes and cabbage, more bits of fried green, more lentils and meat, and Nkemi cannot but savor every bite.

Nkemi listens, her gaze on Anetol’s face. There is something about his lips when he speaks; they quirk up at the edges, but it does not quite reach his eyes – or if it does, it does not last. He looks back at her, and Nkemi smiles at him.

“Yes,” she says. She has seen it many times; first with Nkanzi, who took her to watch even though they had no journey but the river, then, and the captains there are more certain of their currents. She remembers Nkanzi telling her not to interrupt, but only to watch; she remembers her hand in her aunt’s, the drifting of colorful smoke, and the smell of incense which made her sneeze. She remembers words which were even more unfamiliar then, drifting rough through the air, and of understanding very little but the sense of awe which filled her.

“We will, almost certainly,” Nkemi says, “as much as anything in such a journey may be certain. It is not unusual for those traveling with the caravan to wish to attend; there are few making such predictions who mind a greater audience,” she smiles, fondly; there is no particular judgment in her voice, nothing but remembrance. “What did he tell you of it?” She watches, now, though not so closely that she holds off taking another bite of food; she is not, yet, so full.