Folio Two, Page Thirty-Eight (svegra mos bietkron tal-kot)
When we came down from the high several hours later, my fingers were raw from playing. Sukua braced his own wrists with wooden splints.
“Where did you learn to play like that?” I looked up at him from where I sat, thinking about how badly I needed to soak my hands in ice water. “I thought I was the only one.”
“There isn’t much to do in this house,” he muttered. “Your kind out there is just jealous of us because we have the Sanctuary.”
I looked down and tried to hide the shame in my face. For the past few hours, I had not considered the delicate position I found myself in. Sitting within these walls tainted me with the same stain that made other people shudder away from their servants at the market. If anyone saw me leave — if anyone had seen me enter — they would run right to Nikis and tell them. The family’s reputation would burst like a balloon.
Actions have consequences. To purge this sin against family meant something far greater than forcing me to bake bread — barring me from entering the household shrines, or even the unspeakable. I raised my hands to my face and tried to think my way out.
Nothing came. In a hoarse whisper, I asked, “Does Yilrega forgive unconditionally?”
“Yes,” Akarsi said without hesitation. “He forgives everything. You need to sin to come to Yilrega — against yourself, against others. He offers the forgiveness of finally knowing who you are, your place in the world. First, he will cut you open. He will rip sinew from bone and refashion you again in the image of the Gods, and you will be blessed — whole and complete, free from the poison that makes your soul rot from the inside out.”
Sukua stared at me wordlessly.
I lowered my hands from my face and looked at them both. “You seem like fascinating people. Let me — let me continue to see you, I want that. But we must manage our meetings better. All of the grownups in my house have gone crazy. One of the Karatha wants to live with us.”
They looked at each other. Had they hated me for it, I would have understood. Being kept in a prison of opulence didn’t seem bad, but they probably hungered for contact with the world like most people hungered for exotic feelings in the mood bars. When you’re a child, though, you think you know how everyone around you feels, and the feelings are usually your own.
Akarsi stood and pulled the heavy curtains shut. She glanced down at the two of us and bit her lower lip. “The Karatha have always protected our family from outsiders. They will not prevent you from seeing us.”
“Why?”
“Because they pulled from our family once fifty years ago for their ranks, as they have since before the Occupation began. We would have remained pure if my granddad hadn’t sullied us,” Sukua said. He looked at the ground and cleared his throat. “The Matriarch says that your family has the most purity out of any in the neighborhood. You — you haven’t had any terrible illnesses in your family for generations, none that couldn’t be helped. You just wandered in after the Occupation ended and took up the last house on Widow’s Jump Road, almost like one of the Gods had told you to come.”
I giggled. “Is that what people say about us?”
They looked at each other again. “Just how daft are you, Eràsis?”
“No one ever lets me in on family business,” I told Akarsi. “They wouldn’t care if I died now that my mom’s gone. Just like Sukua. My cousin Anumë would scream if she knew where I was because she doesn’t like you. No one ever tells me why.”
“You say all of these things like you want to get a rise out of us. You may be clever as weeds, but family business doesn’t go outside, and we all hate rumors.” Akarsi leaned against the curtains and folded her arms across her chest. The tightness in her face made a lump rise in my throat, and I wondered what I had done wrong. I wished I had the power to go back in time and erase everything I’d said. She had every right to hate me for talking down. “You’d never disclose anything bad in your family, would you?”
“Of course not. If I may, I’d like to continue seeing you.” This time, I said it formally and tried to moderate my facial expressions. Moderating was a very Tveshi thing to do, but Channel 46 had a children’s mystery show with mixed Tveshi and Narahji kids and I guess I picked it up.
Sukua raised his eyes to meet mine. An electric charge passed between us. A memory of the music we had made flowed down into my body. I felt the ksibja strings beneath my fingers and tried to keep from plucking.
He said, “I can tell you where the dancers meet. They let me walk home alone. We could meet on the way and go someplace where no one will see us—just as long as my cousin knows where we are.”
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