Folio Two, Page Twenty-Seven (svegra mos rokron tal-pyes)
“You can come in and help me if you want,” I said. “I know I’m not supposed to let others into the ancestor shrine, but I’d be shipped off to my dad’s family if they knew who he was, so if they like me, they’ll like you.”
He hesitated. “My grandma doesn’t let me go into our ancestor room.”
“So you’re not in your family, either?”
“I guess.”
“Come with me, then.”
We snuck quietly into the house and got the rolls, then brought them to the ancestor shrine at the back of the house. From before the Occupation, we had been left with practically nothing, but relatives had pieced together names on pieces of stone and wood, ashes if possible. The urns we had in the generation right after the Occupation were simple clay boxes, but the urns got more complicated with each generation. The one we’d gotten for my mom had a voice-activated holographic portrait, but we wouldn’t have it for days.
Sukua waited at the door, hands on his hips, but I pulled him in by the elbow and shut the shrine curtains to keep people from seeing him. “You’ll carry the plate and wave it around, all right?”
I took the nut milk from the special refrigeration unit by the shrine’s entrance. We didn’t leave offerings in bowls or a ground pit like the Shiji or Iturji. Instead, an egg-shaped pillar formed from sandstone graced the center of the floor, set in concrete. The milk would drain out through holes drilled at the base. The top of the pillar made an invisible line with a hole in the floor above, our prayer room.
While he stood shaking by the entrance, I lit the candles and called out the family’s customary opening prayers to Hatkranar, Yilrega and Oryiyan, along with the Lord of the Underworld who shall remain nameless for superstition’s sake. Oryiyan and Yilrega were our family’s patron deities, but we hadn’t had a strong devotee of Yilrega in a generation. You know how that goes.
We walked around the pillar seven times. I sprinkled the milk, and we both chanted hara hatkra mitzeiga, a phrase I still don’t understand but generally take to mean “Hail to the Dead!” His voice had a pleasant cadence, and I wanted to play my ksibja with him singing.
After we had offered the dead their milk, we approached the fire bowl and lit it. The nanny AI beeped twice to acknowledge where we were. Sukua dropped the offering in and we waited for it to burn up, carrying the smell of burning bread to the dead and beyond.
We just stood there in silence for a while, neither of us daring to speak until the fire had gone quiet. Sukua said, “I guess this means you have to marry me, Eràsis.”
“Guess so.”
“Your parents would hate it.”
I didn’t dispute that, but ending up with Sukua didn’t sound like a bad idea. At that age, I had no idea what adults did together other than work and have a baby. The bawdy stuff we saw on holidays should have clued me in, along with the copulating frescoes in some of the temples. I guess kids never look at those things. Gods, my hair hadn’t even been sequestered yet.
He extinguished the candles with me. Upstairs, I heard the showers come on, along with the sound of the morning bells. It felt exciting to have Sukua so close, just a curtain away from discovery. I wish I’d kissed him.
We slipped out the back door just as someone came down the stairs. It banged loudly behind me. Before he slipped away, I said, “You’ll meet me at the fountains after school. Promise?”
“I can’t go there,” he said. “At my house. Say you want my cousin.”
“Okay.” I wish I had thought to ask why I shouldn’t ask for him, but we didn’t have time and I was too young to think anything of it. “Goodbye, Sukua.”
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