Folio Two, Page Eight (svegra mos kot)
My feet made dirty imprints on the cold tile floors of the Kobsarka Heights stop as I panhandled for train money. The women and men in the station wouldn’t touch me because I looked like a half-wild vagrant, the kind who came out of the deep canyons to try her luck on the illegal child labor market. All of the people I knew had already taken the Kobeis Line into the city for the procession.
The sky darkened overhead, and the first droplets of rain hit my hands and feet. I knelt just outside the train station against a concrete pillar and looked out at the people rushing towards me, some of them laughing, but most of them somber and scowling in mourning red. Almost everyone carried an umbrella.
If you have heard any of my music, you must remember the song with xylophone accompaniment that sounds like staccato rain.
Hamànra has covered her blue head with sheets of rain
To punish sweet-smelling blossoms for their beauty.
Why should beauty reign when justice has fallen?
Yilrega withdraws vine-blossoms into their buds,
Souring the taste of future spice-sweet alcohols.
Why ease our cares when her body lies broken?
Kanugna droops grain-stalks in the valley below;
For a moment ìr wants our harvests to fail—
Why nourish us when our provider lacks breath?
The boy blended with the downpour at first; after my morning, a phantasm seemed like an appropriate next encounter. He stopped in front of me and gripped his knees, panting, and squinted at me in the rain.
“Is that you, Aneti?”
“It is. Who are you?” I leaned forward and looked at him. “Are you all right?”
“Sukua,” he said. “We live down the street from each other.”
Sukua and I had never met at school, and he had never played with the other neighborhood children. “What is your matrynom?”
“Fædeim.”
The Fadeim family certainly lived in the neighborhood. My cousin had whispered about their misfortunes to the other adult members of the family for years. “It was so unexpected,” she had said, “and to think that they will be burdened with that for the rest of their lives. You can’t mingle with society after deciding to keep a thing like that. I would love to invite them over, but I just can’t bear it.” Akarsi tal Fædeim, who went to our school, never spoke much to the other children, and I knew that several of the rougher kids regularly blackened her eyes.
I stood and looked at him in the eyes. “Where are you going?”
“I stole my grandmother’s money to attend the funeral. Your aunt was a really important person. She … she helped everyone.” He looked at the digital time. “Shouldn’t you be there with your family?”
“They left me behind.”
“Oh.” He looked down. “I have extra money. It’s my father’s, but he doesn’t care.”
We smiled awkwardly at each other. I nodded emphatically and slipped my hand into the crook of his arm. A knot rose in my stomach, and I decided not to tell him what I wanted to do.
Only Kaladeis runs freely, intertwining hearts.
Mourning minds find their tears dried as they lust.
Why cry for her when life will be born anew?
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