[Closed] Again Tonight I Sang a Song

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Nkemi bowed her head at Anetol’s words, accepting with him the certainty that by the end of the Vyrdag, he would know a good deal more. “May all that the storms wash from you be built back up in the afterward,” she said, politely, with the intonation of one reciting a blessing.

“It flows better in Mugrobi,” Nkemi said after a moment, wrinkling her nose. She looked at Anetol. “May I teach you?” She asked. If Anetol accepted, Nkemi would recite the phrase in Mugrobi, slow and patient; it tumbled soft like the pattering of a river or the whistling wind of a sandstorm, and washed over and around the consonants as if they were not there. Again, careful, not correcting so much as showing him the way to navigate the xs and ks.

They were familiar words; they were words offered in habit, in ritual. No Mugrobi prayed that there would be no storms; the Gods could not but shun such a foolish desire. Storms of all sorts came, whether of rains or sands or mankind. There was no choosing them, nor where they might strike; there was only the hope of sheltering in place until they passed, and, afterward, rebuilding that which could be rebuilt.

“Thank you,” Nkemi lifted her cup and saucer, and let Anetol fill it once more. Steam drifted and wound up into the cool air of the study, and she breathed it in deep, grateful for all the warmth which surrounded them.

She thought that Anetol was thinking the question over; the little deepening frown between his eyebrows said as much, the slow joining of the bright red slashes of hair. Whatever he thought did not please him; his hands were never quite still, but he managed them delicately, most of the time. They shuddered, a little more than usual; the cup overflowed, dark kofi lapping onto the saucer.

“It is a good omen,” Nkemi said with a little grin. “So long as one says the words. May your cup, too, overflow with the blessings of Roa.”

Nkemi did not feel a drift of cold, but Anetol shivered when he began to speak again, as if a breeze had crept in through the tight sealed glass and wood of his windows. She glanced over at the frost crawling against the glass, the slow white spreading, and back at the pink-cheeked incumbent before her

“No,” Nkemi shook her head a little at the question about Anaxi phasmonia. Not colorful places, Anetol said, and it was the Dives Nkemi thought of, mired in the gray fog of the river and the factories, all clinging together so there was little respite from it. She thought she could picture a phasmonia of houses made of gray smog, half-blurred in the distance, and she wondered who would wish for remembrance in such a place.

“I do not know that I have found...” Nkemi was quiet, choosing her words carefully once more, “the border,” she said, in a little more time, “between mourning the dead and celebrating the passing.” She curled up a little more; she took another sip of the too-thin, overbrewed kofi, and marveled at the wonder of it. “But I think your fingers have found the beating pulse of it. Why focus on the death rather than the life?”

Nkemi had heard the question posed the other way around by visitors to Thul Ka; she could not understand those who found Mugrobi funerals distasteful. We are sad, she had found herself telling one of them, careful and patient. But the sands of the time stand still for no one. Who that you love would wish you to dash the vessel of your life against the ground, and waste grains which you cannot recapture?

When Anetol had grinned, Nkemi had grinned too, easy and comfortable. He looked very well in the bright yellow scarf. She knew it inappropriate to say so, but she wished to tell him how lively he looked, so wreathed. Better than the grays which cast such deepness into skin, whether pale or dark. Better to celebrate, Nkemi knew, with a certainty too deep for words.

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

M
ay all that the storms wash from you be built back up in the afterward. Tom looked up, eyes widening faintly with surprise – softening with something else. “I’d be honored to learn,” he replied, brightening.

He didn’t know, in the end, how well he pronounced the Mugrobi. He knew – from the study of Monite, if nothing else – you had to know the meanings of the words, each of them, you had to be able to parse them and figure how they fit together; that was, if you wanted to understand where to pause, and which sounds to emphasize.

But Nkemi went slow and careful, and he matched her as well as he could. He watched her mouth around the Xs and the Ks, and with each repetition his own touch was just a pina lighter, just a little more fluid. Dzidepeqew’dzerua – that which remains after – gave him some trouble, but he rolled over údú like an aeroship buoyant on an updraft. He thought it strange, that something that caused such destruction should have such a lovely word.

He caught Nkemi’s grin, too, with a smile of his own. He thought he’d heard that one before, but never with Roa.

It was a tender place, the shaking of his hands; he hadn’t realized how much, until that grin. So was the calling-on Roa. But if the tightness that’d caused him to spill his kofi hadn’t quite eased, he was comfortable with the discomfort – accepting, maybe – and he didn’t turn away from it, not with Nkemi perched brightly on the stool nearby.

Nor did she. He studied her in the quiet; he thought he could see her sorting through her words, with that small, thoughtful frown that was becoming very familiar.

Why focus on the death? “Anaxi… Bastians, maybe more so,” he mused, blowing on his kofi, sending wisps of steam spreading, “I think we want to honor the dead with our grief; we – we think we’d be doing them some kind of injustice, by not being somber enough. But…”

He paused, looking across at the prefect, meeting her curious gaze. “The dead were living, once; I can’t see why they oughtn’t have a sense of humor.” He smiled, tentative. “The finest thing I’ve ever heard said of a man after his passing, a Mugrobi man, was that he brought laughter. I hope they say – I hope they’ll say that of me.”

He took a long sip of kofi, her question and the Mugrobi phrase still swirling round his head like incense.

He’d always thought that you simply lost, when the storms came; he’d never hoped to regain as much as he’d lost. In the flood, there were damages to the tenement that’d never been fixed, things that had crumbled and broken and rotted away that’d never been built back up or replaced. That was life: you weathered blows until you couldn’t anymore.

It is a good omen, he thought, so long as one says the words. He smiled into his sip of kofi. The cup returned to the saucer with a little ring of pale brown at its base.

Maybe it was because he’d never bothered to say the words.

He looked back at her, cradling the kofi in his lap. “Is it hard to make it out to Serkaih, in the flood season?”

The question was more direct than he’d’ve liked, but they’d spoken freely of stranger things; and he had turned it over more and more in his head, thinking of storms and their aftermath, thinking of the dead and the months to come.

He sucked at a tooth, tapped his chin again. “Assuming an Anaxi visitor is welcome,” he amended, carefully. “I’m no scholar, Nkemi, and I’m afraid I know less than most men of – most things. But gods willing, it’s a journey I’ve felt I should make for a long time, now.”

His brow furrowed. He worried what she might think, still, an Anaxi incumbent dabbling in deathlore – an old man with an eccentric interest, or worse, a flooding tourist.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Nkemi watched Anetol blow on his kofi; she could not see the faint stirring of his warm breath against the skin of the liquid, but she could see tiny clouds of steam puff and billow away, drifting into the air. She listened, quiet and intent, and did her best to understand. She smiled at him, when he smiled, and the faintly worried crinkle in his forehead smoothed out, just a little, when she did.

That he brought laughter. Nkemi marked the phrase behind wide eyes, and tucked it away somewhere. She thought of Anetol’s tentative little jokes, the way he offered them and half-held his breath, as if he was never quite sure how she would take them, and the bright, lovely smiles that dawned over his face at her laughter. She had to swallow a little, then, through the lump in her throat, and she took another sip of kofi to wash it down.

The question was unexpected, and caught Nkemi by surprise; her eyes widened a little, and she looked back up at him from the cup of rich brown liquid. She opened her mouth to answer, and then closed it again, careful and quiet. Her hands were curled around the cup still, and Anetol was nestled comfortably into the soft warm folds of her scarf.

He did not quite withdraw the question; he tempered it, carefully. It reminded Nkemi of a blacksmith, plunging iron into the fire until it glowed red-hot, shaping it as it cooled and the red retreated beneath the dark black skin, and then back to the fire once more. There was a little furrowing of his brow over the careful words.

“By the middle of Loshis it is difficult,” Nkemi said, tentatively. “The Turga is, itself, very dangerous in that season but the worse threat is the mudslides in the flatlands close to the river,” she looked up at Anetol, solemn and sedate. “There are very few caravans which make the journey, then.”

Nkemi thought of early storms and empty shelves, of lentils measured in thin paper on scales, and the tight looks on faces as little bits of brown were carefully, deliberately removed, of startled, swallowed gasps at the prices named. She thought, too, of the distant crack of lightning pale purple on the horizon, winds and rain rattling against wooden walls, and the frantic sounds of pen on paper coming from a small library; she thought of watching the world turn to mud, and knowing no escape.

“Such times pass,” Nkemi said with an easy smile. “By Hamis, one can travel,” Nkemi offered, although she thought of the bustle of Thul Ka at such times, the hum of political activity which swamped the city even in normal years. “Perhaps – ” Her brow wrinkled again, very slightly, and smoothed out. “The end of Bethas,” she said, carefully, understanding the weight of her words. She looked up at Anetol, quiet and careful. “It could be done then. Not by air, you understand – the winds are very strong, this time of year, above the Turga and through the desert, and there are many sandstorms. But the men of caravans know such things well; they are not like the mudslides.”

Nkemi was quiet, sitting on the small stool, looking up at Anetol; he had leaned forward, intent, listening as if he could soak up every word and imprint them on his soul, deep inside. It’s a journey I’ve felt I should make for a long time, he had said, as casually as he could manage with the furrowed wrinkle of his brow.

“I do not think being Anaxi would present a problem inside Serkaih,” Nkemi said, carefully. “There are many foreign visitors who come.” She looked down at the dark kofi in her lap, the ripple of the liquid. “But to make the journey…” she glanced back up at Anetol. “I have never known any to come – alone,” Nkemi said, carefully.

Nkemi stopped; she stopped. She held there, on the edge, and if she teetered – if she wobbled – if she could hear the sound of pebbles tumbling from the edge and skittering down the sides until they dropped, distant, too far away – she held, there, all the same.

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

A
nd drink in every word he did.

Hamis – even before she went on, there was a pinched look on his face; he pursed his lips, though he could tell, from her hesitant pause, that she figured as much as he did. He didn’t think either of them had ever seen a Vyrdag in Thul Ka, but she knew the city, and he knew the convention. He knew something of what it would look like midway through the second month, when all the birds had settled on the lines and begun to squawk.

Too, he was reminded of how little he knew of mainland Mugroba. He took a contemplative sip to ease his nerves.

Mudslides. Flatlands. He hadn’t thought of it. He knew mud well enough, and he knew what it could do on the east side of the harbor, round Voedale; but there was a weight to her voice when she spoke of it, and in the pause afterward, a look of weighing in her eyes.

He’d always thought a man should tread carefully on unfamiliar ground. It was familiar ground for the prefect, that much he could tell. Qalqa, for her.

And caravans. Hama’d spoken scarce of his days among the Hand. Mostly, he’d spoken of the food – scraps of memory he tried to recreate in their pina kitchen – of the songs, of faces he remembered from when he was a boch, always without names. Manatse, mostly, what fond memories he had, before whatever’d branded him vreska. He’d never spoken of what it was like to travel in a caravan.

“Bethas is – it would be tight,” Tom said. “It’s our custom in Anaxas, as a preamble to the Vyrdag, to have a political fair on Brunnhold campus at the beginning of Bethas. Internships, shadowing – talks with magisters,” he went on carefully, a little more heavily. “It’s the first fifteen days. But if I left just afterward…”

It wouldn’t, he thought, be a bad idea. He was already to be in Thul Ka the last week of Bethas, to settle in before the caoja arrived and things got hairy. A quiet trip to Serkaih beforehand, before anyone had caught wind he was in Mugroba at all...

Men of the caravans, she’d said, know such things well. Something wistful brushed his expression; he glanced down at the incense burner, took a deep breath.

He was glad, at least, that she didn’t take offense to an Anaxi visitor, and didn’t seem to think it would present problems. He couldn’t deny the truth of her words, still; he had weighed it for some time now, and he’d thought it best – however he went, whenever – to look to the companies for a guide.

But that – he thought of ada’xa Yesufu. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to find his way through that viper’s den. He was hearing whispers already among the upper house of assassins, not that he put much stock in them. But he knew nothing of the political landscape in Thul Ka; he knew nothing of the guilds, or of the way one company or another aligned itself.

He nodded. “I’ve heard it’s best to have a guide. Preferably, one who… knows the…” He burbled over the edge, into silence.

He raised one eyebrow, and then the other. With a small frown, he took another sip of kofi. There wasn’t much left in the pot, and the saucer was empty of all but a few crumbs and a dusting of sugar.

Click, as the cup came to rest on the saucer. “If you know of such a one, who is willing,” he said slowly, “I would be grateful for any direction. Though I am already grateful, Nkemi – deeply grateful.” He inclined his head meaningfully. “For your guidance, but also for your friendship.”

He couldn’t say what he felt in the quiet between them. Like a path, maybe, down into a canyon, for all he couldn’t see any brilliant rippling-silk stripes of color. He’d caught the slight widening of her eyes at his question.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Nkemi sat, quiet, watching it play out over Anetol’s face. She had seen the tightening of it when she spoke of Hamis, the way his lips came together and the shadow which fell over his eyes. And then – hesitant, a slow brightening, his eyes opening a little wider with the possibilities. She could hear him feeling it out, carefully, thinking aloud. Something drifted through him, like a cloud, but she saw him breathe it in and out, and the sun peeked through his eyes once more.

Nkemi looked at him, evenly, across the silent chasm. She could not tell how wide it was, nor how deep; she felt as if she were fumbling in the dark, looking for a rope bridge, trying to gauge what it was in her hands, how strong and solid, if it was taut enough to reach. In the distant dark there were flashes of his face, of his shaky hands, reaching for her, and then in the next moment they would be gone, swallowed up again.

Nkemi took another small sip of her kofi, and set the cup back down; it was cooling already, and would cool, in time, she knew, to something scarcely drinkable, if she let it sit long enough. For now, there was still lingering warmth against her hands. For now, she could not but notice that Anetol had eaten several of the biscuits, that he seemed, to Nkemi, as restored as a man could be.

Nkemi took a deep breath, and bowed her head as well, for a solemn moment.

He had not asked; she was grateful for it.

Even by Bethas, it would not have been a year since her last trip. The first night in the tent on the flats she had woken shaking, stifling sobs into her bedroll; the thin fabric of the shared tent whistled in the breeze, and she felt it pressing down on her like a smothering weight. She had not remembered the nightmares, but she had known them; they had chased her for weeks by then, until the skin around her eyes looked bruised, until she found herself crawling into patches of sunlight in the midst of the day to snatch moments of rest, until more than once Ada’na had come running to her room at night with lantern-in-hand.

Nkemi had crawled outside, edging her way past the snores and quiet grunts. She had gone to the edge of the small outcropping where they had set camp, past the dying embers of the fire; the man on watch had given her a quick glance, but left her alone.

Nkemi had sat, her legs wrapped in her arms, on a long piece of stone; she had watched the vastness of earth and sky, and been comforted by her own smallness. She did not know when watching had become sleep, but she had awoken the next morning curled up on the rock, warmed by the rising sun, with an aching neck and a sense of calm.

It had not been so easy; it had been the first step of many, perhaps. Nkemi knew she had not yet reached the end of the journey; she was not so sure it had an end.

It would be nice, Nkemi thought, letting her eyes flutter closed, to go home. She swallowed that lump as well, and took another sip of her kofi. She smiled once more at Anetol, still taking her time to think. He was watching her, and if there was hunger in his eyes, he had not let it come forth from his mouth. She did not think she could judge a man by his thoughts, even in those cases when she was privy to them; it was his actions and his honor which mattered, and she had seen enough of Anetol to know, by then, what she believed.

“I shall make some inquiries,” Nkemi promised, carefully, meeting his eyes. It was not so simple; her time was not her own, not in every way. Honor forbade the making of promises which could not be kept, and no one who valued their honor would do so even implicitly. Nkemi left it there, instead, but she smiled at him, slowly, and offered, too, the tiniest nod of her head.

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

I
nquiries, Nkemi said, and met his eye. He didn’t know what he’d expected; no more than this, he thought – he wasn’t sure he’d wanted more than that, tonight. There wasn’t hunger in his eyes, now.

The brazier spilled the warm, earthy taste of patchouli through the air on drifts of smoke, and through it he had seen Nkemi’s eyes flutter shut. He’d seen the flicker of movement at her throat, underneath the fading yellow ghosts of bruises. It wasn’t so much that he’d laid a weight between them; it had already been there, he thought, behind her wide dark eyes, behind every vivid white grin.

He didn’t need a mirroring prodigium to feel the weight, too. Behind this strange face of his, lodged underneath the alien beat of his heart, sharp and painful. He watched her, and he did not shut his own eyes, but he felt it.

And what if you find him? it whispered.

Not like the thrust of a knife in a malicious hand; it was not a cruel whisper. It would not be a cruelty, in the end. It was a whisper like the smell of rain before a bad storm, before a storm that would have to be weathered, before a storm that would lose you something you’d never get back.

He saw him in his dreams, dark curls whisked by whipping winds, the air thick with sand. Sitting by a fire in some place that smelled like river and churned earth, the sharp lines of his face picked out by the light, shadows bruising his eyes. Long, deft fingers dancing over the frets, risha in one hand, a smile on his face.

No longer innamorati. His voice, Tek-Mugrobi, the Bastian chorus; more indifferent than laughing.

Anatole, watching him through smoke and sparks, aching. Let me hold it; it’s mine. You promised it to me.

Perhaps his path wasn’t meant for Serkaih, in the end; he wanted it – he dreamt, too, of lanterns in the dark, though he’d never dreamt of such colors. (He seldom dreamt of colors, except for those he could smell, those he could taste.) But it was a hard path, and not one for promises.

And whatever was on his own face, his strange face, he thought he could see something of what was on Nkemi’s. He was grateful that it was not a hard path for him alone, in the end, however he walked his, however she walked hers. If all she could give him was advice, he was grateful for it. If all she could give him was a bright scarf and kofi and the concern in her eyes, he was afraid, but he was, strangely, grateful.

So he nodded when she did, and finished off his cup of kofi and set it with a tiny clatter on the low table. His hands didn’t shake so much, now. He was careful; it was slow going, and a delicate operation, but he found himself patient enough to lower the pretty, rattling things to the table with the glinting silver pot and the saucer full of crumbs.

He unfolded his cramping legs. He smiled warmly at Nkemi. “I would like to hear more of Dkanat, too,” he said, “if you’d like to tell me. And of the desert. But I –”

He hesitated, a troubled little furrow working its way into his brow. She’d asked him a question; he’d answered, best he could. But he could still feel the faintest taste of vastness, still feel the color. And he’d only had pale, thin words to give her.

Boemo, he remembered how rough she’d wiped the chalk off her hand. He remembered the tears tickling at the edges of her eyes. Are you well, now? He remembered the solemn sincerity in her voice. He weighed it in his head for a long moment; he hung on the edge of it, on the edge of his words.

He thought he might show her.

“I’d like to try my hand at ada’na Ugoulo’s connection,” he said, perched on the edge of his seat, watching her intently. “When you’re ready; if you’re ready. There’s less chance of untethering, I should think, the other way round. I think I understand how to strengthen a vestibule, and I know what I – I’d like to try.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Nkemi took another sip of her kofi, in the comfortable silence that settled between them. There was the whistle of the wind, and the scrape of bare branches outside; there was the crackling of the fire, and the faint popping of the brazier. There were two sets of calm, even breaths, and if Nkemi could hear only hers, she knew Anetol’s as well.

More of Dkanat, he said, and of the desert. Nkemi smiled at him, pleased, glad to share. She did not interrupt, although she could think of many things to say. She understood some of what he would take from them, that something, but she did not mind the giving nor the knowing. She thought of stories of chasing goats through dry scrub brush, of a soft white head which had butted her heads and sides, and hard teeth inside a brown spotted mouth which had liked to explore any scrap of cotton.

She thought of trying to speak of the vastness of the world around Dkanat; the way it disappeared into the distant horizon, and then reappeared – slowly – one square building at a time, like a mirage, until abruptly the streets opened wide around you. Nkemi understood that words were not enough; she knew how to paint a picture with them, and would gladly do so. She understood, then, with a softening, that she wanted to show him.

But Anetol had been thinking too, Nkemi understood, and he had something to show her as well. He had leaned forward again, his feet on the ground once more; he was watching her, something sharp on his face – not quite hunger, this time, but not quite not hunger, either.

Nkemi looked at him for a long time, quiet and solemn, her hands in her lap. She thought of how carefully he had placed his cup, and the way the hands in his lap were not shaking so badly, anymore. Nkemi drank the last of her kofi, then, and smiled at him. “Very well,” she agreed, and reached out to squeeze his hand with hers.

There was no redrawing the lines which had been broken; that plot was gone, and the message it had offered the mona gone as well. The rest of the plot could be reclaimed, but those links – the damaged ones – they needed to be swept away and built anew. Nkemi knelt in the center of the plot, and swept them up, slow and careful, taking the open links out of the center of the plot. The rest of it was untouched, the white lines sharp and almost gleaming against the floor; they had not disturbed them, not even a one. When she had cleaned the center of it with the brush, and scrubbed a wet rag at the few lingering stains amidst the floorboards, Nkemi rose, and broke her chalk in half, and offered a piece to Anetol with a bright smile.

They traced the lines together, the intersecting circles swept one inside the other, and Nkemi offered him the brush and dustpan, and stood back as Anetol broke the circle, and swept the chalk up, and made the plot whole.

Nkemi took her seat, the same as before. She felt the ache of panic in her chest, the odd tight familiarity, and she breathed softly through it. She closed her eyes, and listened, and she could hear the faint echo of Anetol’s breath behind her, smooth and solid. She rested; she took her time. She came to the spell when she was ready; she began to chant the familiar words, steady and even, and she heard Anetol open the invocation behind her, his low voice twining beneath hers. For a moment, they echoed one another – and then he held, welcoming and open, and Nkemi went onward, through the spell.

Her field shifted etheric in the air around her; the static mona quivered, and held, warm, but it was the clairvoyant mona which strengthened, their softness not oppressive but welcoming. It drew her in deeper, and Nkemi continued to chant, steadily, making her way into the espial. Her eyes were closed; her lips and tongue moved, and though she could not feel or hear the words they were there, inside her.

They lifted her up; they glowed in her mind like a map, lighting the way; the ink spilled from her fingertips and trailed, forward, and Nkemi rose and went after it, and followed it, steady and unhesitating, to Anetol.

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

T
here was chalk on both their hands – chalk, and the last fragrant dustings of shortbread biscuits. There had been when she’d clasped his hand, still warm from the cooling kofi, though she’d tried to wipe it away on her trousers earlier. It wasn’t so heavy, now, those marks; not to Tom, anyway. There was still a little white smudge round Nkemi’s chin, and some chalk dust caught in her macha red sweater.

There was more chalk on both of them as they worked at the prodigium.

The lines weren’t so wholly broken as Tom’d thought. Most of the prodigium had been untouched, save the slurry mess in the middle, where they’d sat together in the aftermath. That was easy to wipe away; you couldn’t be a clairvoyant of any divinipotent and escape a benny, healthy relationship with erasing and redrawing, erasing and redrawing.

They crouched together, trouser-knees dusted with chalk, fingertips greyed. Graceful, precise lines; chalk flooding everywhere. Some had got in his hair, somehow, and there was now a smudge on the tip of his own nose.

He’d known when she’d met his eye she’d weighed it, for all her brightness and the blessing of an overflowing cup. Maybe the words had done. His hands did not shake, anyway, when he helped her redraw the interlocking circles at the middle. Nor did they when he took out the last link, and opened up the circle.

Then they were sitting again back-to-back in that space, square shoulders and even breaths, tears nothing but a tender-eyed memory. She opened the invocation; they spoke at once, briefly. Then his voice dropped away into nothing, and Nkemi’s carried her into the espial. Tom worked, for the first time proper, at holding a vestibule.

He felt her. He couldn’t’ve said how. A presence finding its way, mapping out the long dark between them in lines and Monite. A brush, a nudge, a distant echo of vibrant color and vastness and smallness all at once. An understanding, laid out in ink and warmth. None of those things, and all of them.

(He made no sound; he did not repeat the invocation as she had. But he held it, and his lips moved, slowly, tracing, shaping the words of welcome – calling, though he’d no way to guide –)

The smell of incense was rich; the darkness narrowed down to it. He held, because the brush of her mind had none of the force of a thoughtless invasion. It was careful, intent, polite. An open palm asking for a hand, not a point seeking a man’s bleeding heart.

He would have to let her in.

The vestibule he could hold, but he didn’t know how to leave it open. He’d cordoned it off from the rest of his mind, careful and precise, nothing like the mess of his vestibule when Ezre’d reached it.

It was easier, now, with Ugoulo’s connection. He could shape it along the lines, like water in a sturdy vessel. It was still hard – horribly hard, laoso strange, alien – but he thought he understood why this was the third form stepping-stone.

But he’d yet to open it, for all he’d asked her close with the invocation. He thought the hint was in the lines; he traced the circles, lips moving, eyes flickering behind twitching lids.

He remembered sweeping the last of the chalk into the pan. He remembered the motion in his wrist, the intent of it in his soul.

The way was already open, he realized. He’d left the garden gate unlocked and ajar, like hama always had.

She’d find him among the rustling leaves, along the winding path to the squat Mugrobi house with its shaded back door and its peeling-paint heart.

He wasn’t there, but the shadow of him lay on the path. Heavy boot prints in the dirt, the smell of whisky. He was there, somewhere; she did not wander alone in the garden.

The air was heavy with the coming rain, and it was heavy too in the turned-down leaves of the trees.

All of it was heavy, but rich; it blurred, drifted, indistinct but vivid. A soft wash of colors: the morning was the faded-out green of sage, and the air tasted of it. The air tasted too, in fits and starts, of onions frying in ghee, of tomatoes and something spicy.

Details changed place, flickered in or out. The impression of wavering stalks of lavender would become dewy pink clary; short shivering shrubs of white sage would turn their leaves to junia.

A warm salty breeze stirred the cottony white blossoms of the chanticleer, rattled the bits of broken bottle strung up to serve for windchimes. There was a light in the window, though the thin ragged curtains were drawn.

The wind caught snatches of song and scattered them through the garden. Not enough to make out any words – just a voice, suffused with warmth, dancing down the winding dirt path among the budding pink savory and bobbing blue bugloss.

It was strange to feel her wandering there. He’d felt Ezre there before, but it’d been different, then; no lines, no enclosed walls, just light and color and wildness bleeding. He’d winced, too, in expectation of the mona frizzing wild round them, but he could feel nothing but the mingling of etheric clairvoyant mona. If Anatole’s stragglers hung by, they didn’t have a chrove; they simply gathered and watched.

Tom could feel the strain in his body, even if he knew nothing of the study around him. He’d thought it’d be hard. He’d half-wondered if she’d have to show him how to let her know. But now he’d aligned himself, now he was the garden and she walked the garden path, he thought he knew.

There was laughter now beyond the dusty panes of the window, two sets of voices, but the door with its peeling paint was shut. He wasn’t sure it was locked; if she pressed, he wasn’t sure he could hold her back from his latibule. But the door was shut, oes, shut tight, and stormclouds gathered above, and the air was heavier and heavier with the rain.

And he pushed, gently, from everywhere he could. It’s time, the garden and the shut door might’ve said.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Nkemi went into the dark; it was all around her, and she was herself inside it, cradled in the arms of the spell circle. The glowing lines of the map shaped her, and spilled all around her, and within them she simply was; there was nothing to feel or think, no sensation, only being and the faintest edge of waiting. There was no space, between those lines, for panic or impatience, no space either for hope; she only was, and she held, being, in the space between.

Anetol opened, and let her in.

It was the brush of wind; not wind making its own way across wide open spaces, but wind whistling through rich green leaves and plants of all sorts, winding traces along narrow paths. It was the warm pressure of rain-heavy air, the taste of it on Nkemi’s not-tongue, and the smell of alcohol faint somewhere beneath it.

It was the slippery soft smell of sage, something distant and spicy which ached in the place where her heart should have been.

Nkemi wandered through the colors:

purple

pink

white

blue

and distant above them all the heavy bluish-gray of thunderclouds, and faint storm-light which tinkled prisms against rough glass. Sometimes she stepped; others she drifted, floating, and lost herself amidst the sensations.

Distant laughter, too, and Nkemi wondered, but did not go; she did not reach for the closed door with its peeling paint, or try to understand why the footprints she left were so heavy.

She felt it like wind shivering through the leaves, like the sudden drop in temperature before the rain. She drew back, slowly; she wound like the breeze back along the path, and the colors she could not see with her eyes wound back too, slowly. Thank you, she offered, voiceless. She felt something like the brush of cold metal against her lack of a hand, and then she was back in the map, hovering up above, looking down at the shape of it, with the colors only a distant memory.

Nkemi opened her eyes. Her voice was steady through last of the amandation, and through the curling of the spell neatly closed. She felt a deep and disconsolate loneliness, a sort of separation, and the feeling of a cold garden gate tingled in her hand. She sniffled; she pressed a chalk-covered hand to her face, and was surprised by how damp her cheeks were, and, too, by the tears still slipping from her eyes. It was grief, she thought, that hollow ache inside her which even time could only smooth over.

Nkemi took a deep breath, and let her gaze lift to the light spilling over Anetol’s desk, the way the pale yellow light blurred at the edges against the wood, but reflected sharp against the edge of a piece of paper, clear and defined. She found herself, breathing steadily; she looked down, then, at her own hands on her lap, and the smudge of chalk against her sweater. She smiled, a little bit; she wiped at the tears and left chalk smudged behind against her cheek. She traced the lines of Ugoulo’s connection around them, and listened to Anetol breathing softly and steadily at her back.

I’d like to try, Anetol had said, carefully.

Nkemi took another deep breath, steady and even. She did not move, this time; she did not smudge the lines traced vivid-sharp in chalk on the floor around them. She thought of herself, kneeling amidst the circle as a little girl, wide-eyed; she thought of the first time she had reached into another mind or felt another reach into hers. She remembered crying then, too, once at least, and she remembered looking up to see Professor Halasa crouched before her, gold eyes unexpectedly soft, his stick set somewhere off to the side, and his hand – which had seemed so large, then – settling on her shoulder as he smiled.

Nkemi leaned back, slowly; she let herself settle against Anetol, only an inch or so and yet unfathomably distant, as every other person was. She felt the pressure of his sweater against her own, and then, just barely, the faint prodding of sharp shoulder blades.

“How did it feel?” Nkemi asked, softly. She smiled.

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

H
e hadn’t expected her to press further; he was grateful still she didn’t. It’d been tenuous, Ezre’s reaching for his mind earlier in the month, and tenuous too the three of them linked together in the Kuleda house – with a prodigium, he was realizing now, not terribly unlike Ugoulo’s connection. That spell was elaborate, and had needed all three of them and a more experienced clairvoyant. This was simpler, he knew, Thul’amat’s building-blocks, leaven – and it was showing him, as he held this space steady and safe for Nkemi to find her way in, just how far he had to go.

Even in the cradle of ada’na Ugoulo’s lines, he could only hold the vestibule so long. His focus was scattered; he could feel more laughter, spilling out into the garden –

Nkemi wasn’t mapping, he knew. He didn’t feel the sharpness of a pen-tip tracing out lines along the parchment of him, or seeking paths to guide ink along. He felt her quiet and watchful, but gentle. This was not a place or time for exactitudes. She asked nothing of him, and he gave what he could.

The tangling notes of an oud; a confusion of sounds, smells – sage where there’d been junia, the path winding strangely, the garden too big or too small, the shape of its borders lost in the lines. The shape of its borders forgotten, maybe. The memory itself - shrinking, the lines grown shakier.

Until he no longer could.

He felt the strain, but he had that nudge in him; it was second nature, almost. What surprised him was the ring of her gratitude all through the garden of him. She found the gate, ever-ajar; this was a place beyond sight, beyond memory of static things like gates and plants that no longer grew, but he did not think she shut it behind her.

For a while, he didn’t close the circle, either. He was left alone with his vestibule. He could smell the patchouli in the study, and he could smell the sage, too. He felt it in the clairvoyant mona.

He stayed in that place, for all he remembered it. And he remembered it so crisply he could taste the whisky on his breath, and he could feel the love in his heart, too. Almost there, it’d been, aching through, bruised ribs and busted lip. A song for him, somewhere at the end of the path.

It was still inside him, or he wouldn’t’ve been able to show Nkemi. He wondered how hazy it’d be in another year, two, three. He felt the loss sharply, just on the edge of letting go.

The first thing he heard when he let go of the garden was the amandation and the curl. Then, a sniffle. His lips were still moving round the invocation, and they went slack, then, slightly parted. He felt Nkemi shift behind him and draw in a deep breath.

He couldn’t’ve said what he felt. He lifted his head, frowning. He studied the shelf on the far wall, across a swirl of chalk lines. Anatole’s books, those. Some law books; some political theory. He saw without seeing. More, he held onto the rise and fall of Nkemi’s breath, listening to it even out with every scrap of his attention. He felt tears pressing at the edges of his eyes, and he didn’t try to swallow them.

She didn’t come round, this time. He felt her ease back against him. He smiled through the blurring bookshelf and, almost without hesitating, settled back against her. He felt the thickness of her sweater; he shut his eyes, and felt a little brush of cloth at the back of his head.

How had it felt? How to answer that honestly? “Peaceful,” he replied, just as softly. The rumble of Anatole’s voice surprised him, but not so much he couldn’t go on. “Bittersweet,” he admitted.

His voice creaked on the word. He cleared his throat and smiled wider. He could feel her at his back, her thin, solid frame, somehow more distant than it’d been moments ago.

“Holding up the vestibule is hard; I felt like my – like my fingers were slipping on the frets of an instrument,” he went on. “Holding it, but leaving an opening for the invoker.”

He shifted, turned his head a little; not enough to see Nkemi, but enough to catch a glimpse of her head-scarf in the corner of his eye, bright. “Did you feel it? The place,” he said more softly. “I miss it; I'm starting to lose the details.”