Folio Two, Page Twenty-Six (svegra mos rokron tal-pirh)
The remainder of the evening went by in a complete blur. At some point — I believe this part is corroborated in my interviews and personal history — I played the ksibja. The piece, “Autumn Reverie,” was composed by one of the great ksibja masters, and it had taken me over a month to learn the dizzying glissandos and accidentals. The two members of the press who heard it would mention me in their articles, and that kicked off my somewhat belated child prodigy career.
Anumë excused herself just after I played, which did not bode well, but she said nothing that evening to me. I prepared the dough for cakes and went to bed, setting the wall panel to wake me up an hour before dawn to finish them.
The night passed slowly. Below, I heard the adults laugh. The front door opened and closed as all of the stragglers finished paying their respects left, and occasionally someone walked past my room. They quieted just when the wind started making music at my window. Laseà came out from behind the clouds to illumine the trees outside, joined soon after by its half-full brother.
I dropped into a troubled sleep and dreamt that Anumë had broken my ksibja, and the memory of that nightmare still makes my blood run cold. It awoke me in the thick of the night and I found that sleep would not come, even though I cried a little. The cold pillow beside me offered no comfort, so I decided to go ahead and start the cakes because it was what every girl without a mother would have done in the films.
Aunt Nikis gave me such freedom in the kitchen at that age because, while suspicious of smart locks, she had installed programmable AI ovens. Everyone in the house knew the voice commands for various dishes, and if one’s memory lapsed, each was listed on the pinned-up poster board beside the window. Our AI would even do a remote scan of the dish to make sure that the interior had finished cooking, so it was rather state-of-the-art. She had named it Sjai, and we had plans to extend it from the kitchen into the remainder of the downstairs for convenience.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a twig hit the kitchen door and went to look out. There, in the moonlight of the early morning, I saw Sukua tal Fædeim.
“System unlock back door authorization Aneti,” I said. The automatic lock on the door relaxed, leaving only a deadbolt separating me from the boy I had cast aside.
The kitchen timer would tell me when the ancestors’ food finished, so I didn’t mind going out into the cool night. The nightflower blooms stuck to my feet as I walked across the tough vines, which spilled among the trees that graced the small ravine’s edge. Sukua knelt just at the top of it, dressed completely in black.
“I’m sorry for leaving you,” I said. “D’you end up okay? What are you doing here?”
“I was looking for you. My dad showed me what you did — everyone everywhere is talking about it, and I was wondering if your folks hated you for it.”
“No, they’re being okay,” I said. That was the other thing about growing up in the Canyons — kids looked out for people they called friends, and no matter what happened within one’s family, it was usually certain that everyone would have a support network. “I’m supposed to offer the ancestors cakes as an apology this morning, but my cousin’s got to pay for locking me up. Say, you and I both don’t have moms now …”
“Mine’s different.”
“Oh?”
“They don’t like me talking about it, but she got kicked out of the family.” He looked down. “But I guess it’s the same thing, anyway — just like bread and rolls.”
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