Ossia: A Novel

Folio Three, Page Ten (etràgra mos itzkron)

2011-10-18T18:34:00.000-04:00

Still, after we had called the next school on stage, I pulled him to the backstage storage room where the palace keeps its old, dusty things for ceremonies among centuries of forgotten drama troupe props and costumes. He hardly had enough time to set his drums down before I pressed him up against a trunk and kissed him. His head hit the back of it and sweet-smelling leather dust fell around us like black snow.

He tried to dig his hands into the trunk and turn his face away, but I grabbed him by the neck and finished the kiss before he could protest. His face was ruddy and his breathing had gone heavy.

“You’re insane,” he murmured. “Do you know where we are?”

I shook my head and kissed him again. This time, he relaxed into it and kissed me back. “You’re not leaving me for the High Wilds.”

“I’d never do that.”

“Good.” I stepped back. He grabbed the front of my jacket and pulled me back in for a short kiss.

“Your lips are so cold,” he said.

“The performance hall is freezing.” I shivered.

“You say that about everywhere we perform.” He shook his head. “So, what does this mean? Do you want to go steady with me?”

I nodded. “You’re the only other kid in town who is as weird and contrary as me. What do you think? We can still go climbing and visit temples together like we did when we were kids, but we’re almost adults now.” We’d be older on Attara, of course — the twelve-year-olds there were still just kids. Maybe he wanted to be there because he thought it would make him more independent.

“What will your aunt say?”

“You do know I don’t care, right?” I wondered what my mother would have said. Dating a boy like this would make me notorious, at least if word got out about it. Maybe she had intended me to aim for something else.

He grabbed my hands and brought them to his lips. From the stage, I heard the sounds of clapping and banging from the dancers, but couldn’t identify the school. “If I see any marks on your skin, we’ll call our relationship off. It’d be just like abusing you.”

“My family doesn’t like a lot about me. How would you know it was your fault?”

Sukua let go of my hands. I pulled him closer and looked into his eyes. Once word spread about our relationship, his family would never let him end it without good reason, no matter what my cousin Anumë pushed our relatives to do. Besides, everyone who had problems with the marked kids had left the last time. Aunt Nikis had donated a lot of money to charities that worked with ones whose families had abandoned people like Sukua.

It sounds like a lot of grandstanding, and it was. Only my mother had liked the nahitakhë enough to engage with them as people. The rest of polite society just wanted someone else to take care of the problem.

« Folio Three, Page Nine

Folio Three, Page Nine (etràgra mos tusjga)

2011-10-04T23:24:00.000-04:00

Sukua and I sat apart from each other on the train, and I separated him from me when we reached our station by keeping the dancers between us. None of them paid any attention to him at the back of the pack, but he had more talent and intelligence than any of them.

The palace gave us our own room for changing and practicing. Sukua and I slipped on our plain white jackets and moved quickly to help our dancers assemble their gorgeous, flame-inspired costumes. Sukua helped them lace up the back while I knotted fabric around their wrists and ankles to keep sleeves and pants from the flame bowls and cymbals. The director and his assistant tested the safety extinguisher by setting small strips of cloth on fire and extinguishing them over a small bowl. Both wore the finest clothes they owned.

We painted our faces white with red sweeps beneath our eyes. They pasted jewels and heat-activated holographic phantasms to their bare skin. I started tuning the ksibja while we waited.

At the beginning of large performances, the preceding school welcomes the next one onto the stage with their own instrumentalists. Then, and only then, do the musicians dance together. I had never done it before, but Sukua had come to the palace once before. We waited agonizingly through the main invocation and two of the schools before our moment came.

Sukua and I had hardly looked at each other in hours, and now we had to keep eye contact with each other and not trip.

I let him take me by the hand. It was as cold and sweaty as my own.

We pressed our wrists together at the beginning, arms crossed, and spun around each other. The dance required less flexibility, but all of the patterns blurred together until I hardly knew whether I had stumbled or had fallen into the next pose. We had practiced dozens of times, but not enough for the moves to have stuck in my muscle memory.

The subconscious takes care of so much. In the blink of an eye, it had finished and the dancers had brought our instruments onto the stage. Sukua and I locked hands and bowed to the audience. I tried not to look out into it for faces I recognized.

All too soon, we gave the spotlight to our dancers. I kissed my ksibja near the tuning knobs and started playing.

Playing for dancers takes a lot of skill. The notes need to match the precision of the dancers’ steps, and we never used sheet music while playing for them. It had to ebb when they ebbed and start moving again when they moved. Each step needed a specific series of patterns. We used to send messages back and forth this way in the Canyons — one dancer stepping out the sounds, waving her hands for the vowels and the breaths, while the instrument played behind her for the town’s entertainment. The poses gave us our alphabet, and you can almost see that they used to be cupped hands or a bent body if you squint.

Every school adds embellishments. A long time ago, someone had the brilliant idea to throw torches and set hand cymbals on fire. Thus, our school was born.

Some of the fire stunts made the people in the front half of the audience gasp.

I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have. My hands had gone on autopilot. I glanced at Sukua every few seconds. The decision to kiss him never seemed more desperate and foolish than it did then.

« Folio Three, Page Eight

Folio Three, Page Ten

Folio Three, Page Eight (etràgra mos kot)

2011-09-13T10:50:00.002-04:00

“I don’t know.”

“I’d like to,” I said. “What about you, Sukua?”

He shrugged. “Attara sounds nice at this time of year.”

I caught the joke immediately, but I don’t think Senet did — one of the hemispheres will always be in either spring or summer. “Did you see that photo of the Jewel Desert in Modernity?”

“No,” he said.

“I’ll link you to it when we’re at a terminal.” Most families restrict access to technology because children have difficulties moderating themselves at times, and my communication band could only make ingoing and outgoing voice, video, and text messages. It was like having a phone instead of a communication relay device. Sukua’s much less restricted one had broken, and I don’t think his family wanted to replace it. “It’s so pretty.”

Senet rolled up his sleeve and started typing on his sleek, forearm-long band — an Odyssey series. A magazine appeared above it, and he started gesture-flipping through it to the appropriate page. The Odyssey communication bands alone could produce portable holograms with crystal-clear images. It was like having a personal Dream Garden.

He turned it towards us when he reached the page. The photograph showed white sand interspersed with multicolored rocks. “The rocks’ color comes from oxidation,” he said, “and they were deposited by glacial activity over 10,000 years ago.”

Sukua reached out and flipped through the pages. More nature photos of Attara appeared: rainforests filled with white-tipped trees, exotic animals playing in a water hole in a savannah, and a tundra landscape teeming with high-rise lichen masses. They didn’t have ice flowers like we did, but Attara’s warmer temperatures and closeness to its star didn’t spur evolutionary adaptations to extreme cold like the plants in our arctic.His fascination with Attara frightened me.

“It’s two star systems away,” I said. “If we didn’t rip to it, it would take several hundred years to get there — too far away from home, don’t you think?”

“Not really,” Sukua said.

I reached forward and gestured the magazine closed. Senet smiled at me. I didn’t like feeling this jealous about a boy over some stupid planet, but I couldn’t stop the venomous feeling in my gut. Sukua had gone soft for those pictures like slowly-resolving chordal progressions. The turbulence in his voice and eyes had all but disappeared.

Modernity is the one magazine I never let my manager schedule an interview in.

« Folio Three, Page Seven

Folio Three, Page Nine »

Folio Three, Page Seven (etràgra mos pyes)

2011-08-16T23:21:00.000-04:00

All of the dancers swayed nervously back and forth while we waited to board the train. Sukua and I rested our instruments on the platform and held hands, while Senet stood beside us with his arms folded across his chest.

As a show of non-discrimination, the Regional Academy of Fire Dancing had requested that Sukua not wear his contacts. It was one of the few times I had ever seen him without them, and I loved the ruddy warmth of his eyes despite how irritated they looked from not having the UV blockers.

They say that, when a pregnant woman contracts the muakanua and joins the nuamua, the pigment that turns their eyes red over the centuries collects in the developing fetus. If the fetus has a vulnerability to the muakanua, she miscarries; if not, she bears the child in the usual amount of time, but its eyes are marked. Everyone knows what happened to his or her mother — and everyone fears the child. Most of them once lived as outcasts, doing all of the jobs no one else could bear to do. Iturja even had laws regulating which jobs they could perform, at least until my mother had them overturned.

I wanted to marry him — not out of political obligation, but because I was one of the few people outside his own family who had seen him as more than a malformed abomination. We had enough compatibility for a love marriage to work and enough years ahead of us to convince my parents.

Today, I resolved, I would kiss him.

Of course, I couldn’t have let him know! — what kind of girl do you think I was?

Senet had carried my ksibja case to the station along with my bag full of ceremonial adornments, and he waited with us on the platform. I think he had business elsewhere in the city. While the Karatha and the nuamua would have representatives at the dance, he hardly ranked high enough for the upper echelon to add him to their party — at least I imagined not, as we never knew whether he had gone out traveling for several days on official business or had holed himself up in that room. Sometimes, he would leave his dishes outside the door or wash them himself in the sink. It was how the rest of the family knew he was still alive. I always heard his door open and close at night.

“Will you be gone long in Menarka?” I constructed it as formally as possible and squeezed Sukua’s hand when I said it so he wouldn’t feel jealous.

“I’ll spend the next few days in several different Canyon towns, followed by a week on the coast,” he said, but I noticed that he didn’t carry any bags of his own.

Maybe the Karatha just wandered like that from town to town, surviving on the kindness of strangers. He was lucky we had lived for so long in relative security that people had started to genuinely trust the Karatha again.

I knew how Senet wanted me to answer, but I couldn’t do it. “Everyone has been to the coast. I wonder if the coasts of the other worlds look any different—do you think anyone has seen the beach-cliffs and sand on each one?”

« Folio Three, Page Six

Folio Three, Page Eight »

Folio Three, Page Six (etràgra mos pirh)

2011-08-09T22:23:00.002-04:00

Two weeks before Salus compiled the black box, her primary contact went missing.

That was the deceased’s problem.

My problem involved some uncertainty about the amount of time that had elapsed between the recording and her train accident. Perhaps my mother had compiled the box in a panic and had actually accomplished everything herself. But she could have removed — no. She had died in a tragic accident. Besides, considering the outcomes I have heard of what I did, everyone would have seen the fruits of her labor.

The only way to guesstimate the time involved retrieving her journals, and she thankfully provided instructions for that. Everything else remained vague, possibly to prevent me from knowing too much before executing her plan.

All she told me: Rise up as high as you can. Get attention wherever and whenever you can. Make sure people know who you are. And never remain completely alone and open with anyone.

I needed protection.

Thinking about how to obtain it took very little time at all. Namgyatzi would certainly attend the performances at the Deimo’s palace, and he would know how to put me in contact with the nuamua in Equilibrium Nexus. They couldn’t know what I wanted, but a childhood in the Niksubvya household had taught me that anyone could get what they wanted if only they tried hard to obscure all of their desires behind a veneer of civility and concern.

Two years before I died, I wrote lyrics about the hours I spent awake in my bed that night.

Darkness and concern, that’s how it started:
That elevator to the sky, climbing higher and higher
Until the abyss opened up.

We want to think that the world is a good and just place that we have filled it with beneficent spirits that have no weaknesses and monsters that have more banes than stars in the sky. The abyss refers to what I experienced as I struggled to forget the images my mother had poured into my head — like scalding liquid or burning fire, those crimes against humanity entered my head and completely filled me up.

Everything I may have mentioned about resenting my mother for how much people loved her conceals another suite of resentments: she commandeered whatever fate the Great Weaver had spun for me; destroyed my lust for glory in favor of justice; and made me step into the quagmire of intrigue that I had vowed to stay away from.

Granted, she did lead me to do great things. There is always that. But now we must move from this to the dance. As Yilrega’s teachings say, dancing animates the universe. She of the Thousand Million Suns danced the universe into being while she slept.

The ksijba part I played as the School of Fire’s accompanist was sacred. I fasted the entire day before on bread and water (though such a show of devotion is no longer required) and received permission from Aunt Nikis to have myself purified and adorned with henna at the Temple of Yilrega. Together, we went to the Hall of Music and made cake offerings to Sebhu, the Lord of the Flute-Tent, and Gamgyatsahagia, She of the Painted Bowls and Mistress of Dexterous Hands.

On the morning of the dance, I prayed to the ancestors — especially my mother — and the household gods in seclusion. I swept the old ashes from both shrines and peeled the dried henna from my forehead.

« Folio Three, Page Six

Folio Three, Page Seven »

Folio Three, Page Five (etràgra mos sjek)

2011-08-02T21:11:00.001-04:00

The recording went dark for a moment, and when it came back, I no longer saw my mother. Instead, the hologram had panned a view of the solar system and major constellations. The screen panned first to the Galactic Center and then to the edge of one of the adjacent constellations, the Night-Bird’s beak.

It zoomed in. The hologram wavered, and I realized it had switched from a true sky view to a simulation.

My mother’s voice narrated. “An Ameisi woman and her team discovered an ancient burial site from Qamaq’s colonization some time ago — quite by accident. The ruins were dated to about five thousand years ago, during the period when Ameisi civilizations were recovering from a worldwide dark age. Archaeological records indicate that Qamaq (which according to all archeological evidence was space-faring) declined at about the same time. Pockets of advanced technology persisted elsewhere for at least a thousand years after it disappeared from Ameisa.

“The burial site contained coordinates to the system being presented to you now. A team from Ameisa was created in secret and sent there to investigate. Only one person survived, and the project was taken over by an International Congress-appointed top-security group, officially overseen by the Working Group on International Security and Planetary Border Patrols. Top-security documents refer to them as Kada, the Leissi word for ‘sanctuary.’

“What you are seeing now is a reconstruction of the planet’s surface from primary documents. The top secret designation of the documents and access controls in the government’s system make it impossible to show you real documentation.

“I first learned about Kada five years after becoming an adviser when our Deimo tasked me with finding a replacement archaeologist for one who had died somewhat unexpectedly. While looking at the reports, I learned about the value they posed to our civilizations — not just on Ameisa, but on all of the worlds — and greatly respected the International Congress for their wise decision to look into the matter.

“The International Congress disbanded Kada twenty years later, citing personal disagreements among its members as the primary reason. I never found any of these members, not even the man I had appointed, to corroborate this information.

“The documents in this black block include launch data for top secret missions that remained ongoing even after the group disbanded, along with financial information I gleaned from an associate. Two years ago, I discovered 13,000 correspondences between Kada representatives, a member of the Working Group on International Security and Planetary Border Controls, and the shipping manager for WellnessWorlds. Halfway through the correspondence, Kada renamed itself Kadah Esta, or Final Sanctuary. I am assuming the word ‘final’ is significant.

“The photos streaming now come from some of these correspondences.”

Nishet, I believe you know what I saw. The first images sickened me. No girl of twelve should have to see anything so horrible. Every time I closed my eyes for the next few years — when I wasn’t dropping from exhaustion — I would see those eyes staring back at me —— those cold, lifeless eyes. The children. Those poor, silenced children …

« Folio Three, Page Four

Folio Three, Page Six »

Folio Three, Page Four (etràgra mos dros)

2011-07-12T21:19:00.001-04:00

But I would never have described Salus Nitannyi as a sane woman.

She had pulled me in, reaching beyond the grave to grasp my world with those forever-cold hands and shake it until it fell apart, without anyone noticing despite their hardest efforts to keep everything she had done from ever greeting the sun.

Gorged on food and sore from climbing, I was vulnerable to just about anything, including but not limited to the blue light that had started flashing beneath my wardrobe.

I shut the door as quickly as possible after entering the room, not because I knew it was a secret, but because it reminded me of the strange things that had happened after my mother’s funeral. Also, the bottom of the wardrobe looked completely different.

My mother had masked the secret compartment beneath the wardrobe using a hologram-driven illusion. Not even a tesekhaira could have seen through it without inspecting the wardrobe carefully through touch.

When I knelt down beside the wardrobe and put my hand beneath it, the force shield dropped and a large, flat box fell onto my hand. It was heavy enough to leave a bruise where my knuckles hit the floor, and I bit my tongue.

The box was black and reflective, the kind of thing you expected to find someplace slightly more important than an orphan girl’s room. On top, it had a small circle with a little fingerprick node — the kind that takes DNA samples, pulse rates, and temperature ratings so it can tell if the person who wants to open it is actually still alive even if she has been authorized. I had heard of them, but had never seen one before now.

When I put my finger on it, the box pricked my finger and the circle flashed blue. One by one, the locks around the edge retreated back into the casing.

I tore it open as quickly as I could and locked the door without even bothering to look at the contents. When I turned to face it, my back against the door, the gyena slipped from my hair the dreadlocks spilled out from beneath it. The woman who stared up at me had the same face, but hazel eyes. The hair barely contained by her matronly gyena was white.

My face must have gone pale. It felt like seeing a ghost, staring into the eyes of this hologram; when she spoke, I felt tears come to my eyes. I would have given anything to hear my mother address me again.

“Eràsis, please make sure that you’re alone.”

I pushed myself away from the door and checked to make sure the curtains had closed completely. Her voice barely went above a whisper. I looked up at the cameras and a lump rose in my throat.

The hologram said, “System execute program rapidserpent authorization Nitannyi.”

The camera lenses closed. Surely Nikis would have noticed — but she would never say anything to me, and whatever the hologram had done would remain a mystery forever. My mother’s electronic ghost had successfully disabled the room’s entire AI.

“Daughter, if you are viewing this message, it means that something has happened to me and that enough time has passed that I will likely not return.” She paused and pulled the gyena back from her hair. “Quite honestly, I would rather not be in your debt. The risks of doing as I say are high. During my service in the government, I made many enemies, and I could never have kept you as close to me as I wanted.

“I made every effort to make you as happy as possible. It’s the least I could do for a child, let alone one who I brought into the world without the family’s consent. But they say that we live on through our children, so I consider you well worth the risk.” My mother cleared her throat and paused, presumably to check the recording status. “Please do not share the information I am about to give you with anyone, no matter who asks. Provide your verbal consent here.”

The video paused. My hands had started shaking, and I felt numb. This woman who had given me everything, yet told me nothing — the one who had left on that train, the one who had died — my mother wanted something from me. Every orphan, hearing such a celebrated woman speak, would have jumped at the chance to prove themselves to even her shade.

And yet, I understood completely the implications: I was not an accident. She had conspired to have me in secrecy. Doubtless, she had completely relied on the mother-daughter bond to sway me.

Now, I held the power in our relationship. I had the ability to say yes or no depending on my whims. Whatever she wanted, I could turn to my advantage — or at least try.

“Yes,” I said.

« Folio Three, Page Three

Folio Three, Page Five »

Folio Three, Page Three (etràgra mos biet)

2011-07-05T21:21:00.001-04:00

Sukua waited with me outside the dance studio, drumming a rhythm into the bench that sounded like a funeral march. “Do the Karatha actually eat?”

“Senet has eaten everything our family has put on the table or brought up to his room — never leaves a bite on the plate.” I thought about leaving my ksibja in the rehearsal locker overnight and decided it should stay with me. “They must need food, otherwise how could they move and regenerate dead tissue and everything?”

“Are you scared?”

“I don’t get scared.”

And that was right. I usually didn’t get scared. The botched depression treatment had narrowed my emotional range, although sometimes I think it intensified anger and full-blown panic. Panic was that twisting, churning sensation in my gut. Anger caused a series of uncontrollable violent impulses, and I often struggled to control it.

Sukua, on the other hand, did get scared. Walking down the street in Kobsarka had turned into a ritual of self-humiliation. Some of the temples wouldn’t let him in because his condition carried ritual impurity in some traditions, so he worshipped in Menarka where fewer people knew about his family’s shame. When we walked down the street together, people noticed me more than they noticed him.

He stopped drumming and looked up at me. “They are so alien. All of them. I mean, couldn’t one of the Karatha live forever? Could you even call something like that a person?”

“They can think and reason.”

“But that’s the definition the textbooks and the media have spoon-fed us. It should apply to sentient creatures on other planets. I — I just think I would trust you with one of them a bit more. At least we would have common ideas about mortality. The Taritit — they were bad and all, but at least we could kill them and make jerky.”

“You think too much.” I couldn’t get the image of skinning and cooking a Taritsi out of my head. No one had done that during the war, but Sukua must have gotten the image from somewhere. Even the dead have basic rights. “We should go into Menarka tomorrow to ask for blessings. Playing for the Deimo makes me more nervous than climbing with someone who has been like a brother to me the past few years.”

We both saw Senet walking down the street towards our studio. I squeezed Sukua’s hand and smiled. “Meet me at the train station tomorrow afternoon.”

Sukua nodded and left. Lately, he had seemed jealous whenever I talked about interacting with Senet, although I don’t know why. Sukua and I — barring Anumë’s interference — stood a high chance of having a match, and having intimate relations with a tesekhaira was taboo.

But hurting them isn’t, I thought. The image of the roasting Taritit flashed through my head. It made me feel sick, but it prompted a question: If you wanted to kill or disable a tesekhaira, how would you go about doing it?

Senet stopped to greet me a few feet from where I stood. I picked up my heavy ksibja case and stumbled over a raised tile in the sidewalk. “You’re late,” I said.

“Something happened in Menarka. I shouldn’t talk about it.” His hands dropped to his sides. “Walk with me.”

“I don’t understand why everything must be so secretive when it comes to you lot.”

We started walking towards one of the better roast places in town. Senet took some time to formulate a response. “Families in Narahji society like to keep everything cleanly behind closed doors so they can affect unity and strength in the world outside. It … it is similar for the Karatha. We might be a collective, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have disagreements with one another. If you want one of my faction’s stronger opinions, Namgyatzi manages his collective better than we manage ours. I think it could be that he tries to distance himself from affiliation with any one of that collective’s factions. Our … our foci pick sides.”

“When you talk about factions within the nuamua, do you mean Equilibrium Nexus?”

“They’re the one most people know about.” He paused. “Did you hear about them from your mother?”

I shook my head. “History class.”

“Your mother had strong ties to Equilibrium Nexus, but also to Namgyatzi. They worked together to advance many different issues, although I hear she had a fallout with one or two people in the Equilibrium Nexus that she was closest to. I’m surprised she never told you anything about her life.”

“I was seven.” I shifted the ksibja case to my other shoulder. “Namgyatzi’s entourage was the only group of nuamua at the funeral.”

“Your mother knew how to burn bridges.” He paused and winced. It amazes me how often people did that after realizing what they said referred to one or more conditions surrounding my mother’s death. “Sorry — sorry about that. But she never told you anything?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Probably for the best,” he said. “She had a lot of enemies.”

As a young child, I had never thought of my mother as a politician, but now I realized just how entwined in court politics she had been. Senet told me about some of her rivals — obviously omitting the Karatha — and the power that they had struggled with one another to exert over the country.

Of course no sane woman would have pulled her only child into that mess.

« Folio Three, Page Two

Folio Three, Page Four »

Folio Three, Page Two (etràgra mos roh)

2011-06-28T19:26:00.001-04:00

Two days before I accompanied the dancers at the Deimo’s palace, I made a plate of fruit, nuts, and stale bread and went to the courtyard to finish some of my homework. Several birds had flown in through the gap in the ceiling. I heard them cooing in the tree overhead. Small, spiny feathers drifted down onto the equation I had started—a proof for the trigonometry course that I had just started.

Music and mathematics are linked at a fundamental level. Playing the ksibja, as soon as I had attained the appropriate scientific understanding, became a ritual of ratio and frequency patterns. It astounded me every time it resolved into perfectly-tuned notes. In music and mathematics, there is always a right and a wrong answer. Notes are either in tune or they are not in tune. A proof either works or does not work. Scales either incorporate microtones or they do not. The specific methods you take to arrive at an answer, however, must be defined by the constraints of the problem or the piece.

I stopped working and resorted to doodling in the margins. Nothing fancy, just strings of musical notes, eyes, and maybe a few triangles.

A cool breeze ran up the back of my neck. I twisted my head to the side and saw Senet standing on the path, hands in his pockets and young as ever. He looked like a businessman from the city, and he wore a bright blue tunic with red and gold trim and embroidered pants. I resisted the urge to look for a briefcase or an industrial tablet.

“Fætzù,” I said. Hey. “Are you trying to impress anyone?”

“I went to a morning reception in Menarka,” he replied. “May I sit?”

I studied his face for any sign of individuality. It had become a game, teasing it out. The stories got better when he came out of that shell. “Yes, but I have rehearsal soon.”

Senet sat down on the ivy beside me and studied the doodles I had made on my assignment paper. He put his hands on his knees. They had reddened from too much sun exposure. “May I inquire about something personal?”

I turned onto my side and looked up at him. His shoulders tensed, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Whatever you like.”

“I heard that your family has levied financial pressure on you to turn towards a more helpful profession, and you have seemed a bit off lately. Do you need any help?” He sounded breathless, and it must have taken a lot for him to mention it. “Your affairs are none of my concern, but I have always admired your music, and I think—I think it would be a shame to leave your talent to rot in the sun.”

“I have no intention of being intimidated,” I said. My voice remained steady, but a lump had risen in my throat. I could have used a haircut, for one, and I had eaten hardly anything outside of the communal meal for over a month. At the beginning, it had left me dizzy like my insides were clawing at the inside of my ribcage, but now I felt hollow. Given the choice between food and sheet music or an instrument tuning, I always chose the latter. “The family could shit seeds for all I care.”

He chuckled. “You are very dedicated.”

“I know. They say I take after my mother.”

“Still, everyone deserves a break. After practice, I’ll take you out for roast and the wall-climbing simulator down by the train station. Have you ever been?”

My mouth watered at the thought of fire-roasted vegetables, fish, and dip. It would make me hungry for the entirety of rehearsal. “No, I didn’t know we had one.” Instead of the fancy virtual reality climbing systems, I had paid about 5 lh. per week to access the large climbing facilities and complimentary classes at the community center.

Senet patted my shoulder twice. Until I started dreading my hair at about ten, he had ruffled it to show affection. Now I observed ritual purity and wore the gyena, no man could touch it, but some online forums claimed that male tesekhairač didn’t count.

« Folio Three, Page One

Folio Three, Page Three »

Folio Three, Page One (etràgra mos itz)

2011-06-07T10:04:00.001-04:00

My dearest friend,

Thank you for your kind words and the telegram at the reception of my letter. News travels so slowly without well-developed infrastructure, and I am grateful that we at least have that comfort down here. The raft hunt went well; I only lost one of the crew, and that was due to his own stupidity when faced with one of those canyon beasts you people in the shallows have so many nightmares about.

Now to reply to your points. I apologize for how rushed the end of the last letter seemed; that period of my life makes my heart race, and I cannot think about the circumstances surrounding my treatment without more than an acceptable amount of contempt for those involved, especially Senet. And I agree that perhaps I glamorize my life a bit too much, especially in that preposterous scene with the animals—except, according to my memory, things did happen this way. Gods know it was probably just a few strays that got blown up into a slightly more extravagant story by my fever-addled brain.

But I think the rest is just uncalled for. How dare you say that I am making my seven-year-old self seem too old! I will have you know that my memory, while far from perfect, is capable of recalling sensitive details about my own childhood.

I may not have used the same words, but I certainly did know my wildflowers from my vines at that age. Failing Tveshi does not translate to being an ignoramus. As you well know, that language is very difficult for non-native speakers to understand, what with their stupid clicks where everyone else would put proper k’s and s’s — or sh’s, I forget, is that what they use? Swear it sounds the same — and those difficult-to-the-point-of-indecency verb moods and tenses. Who the hell needs a verb mood that indicates a statement’s logical necessity? Can’t they just use indicative for that?

Point: I placed forward a level in mathematics when I was nine.

Regardless, we should move forward.

1908 was the year my family decided that my interest in the arts had gone too far. If I were common, it wouldn’t have mattered so much; as one of the Narahji elite, I needed to make something of myself. Nobody wants their family’s twelve-year-old girl seen alone at the opera, especially one who has just wrapped her hair in a gyena. It was indecent.

To solve this, Aunt Nikis reduced my living allowance from 50 to 25 lh./month. It was a great blow, as I had counted on the larger amount of money in my scramble for an appropriate traditional outfit for a performance at the Deimo’s often-vacant palace in Menarka.

To make ends meet, I took several of my mother’s older garments from storage and sold them to one of the theaters. Aunt Nikis would have hated me for selling a part of the family’s assets; even though my mother had left her belongings to me, the family could rightfully have taken a 25% cut. The sale netted me about 200 lh., enough to cover clothes for the dance with about 50 lh. left over to use at my discretion. I could not add the money to my bank account without the family noticing, so I sewed the marbles into an older dress.

« Folio Three, Page Zero

Folio Three, Page Two »

Folio Three, Page Zero (etràgra mos nagi)

2011-05-24T23:07:00.002-04:00

These notes were written on the blank page between the daraiga hide cover and the first page of Eràsis.1908 in my father's handwriting. – Nàsis

Query — Does Likua tal Bisum still exist? Discover where local nuamua congregate and ask. ~~Meeting with him would be most illuminating.~~ Too risky. Providing him with sealed letter instead. Should meet in an out-of-the-way place. Temple of Hatkranar on the outskirts probably most suitable.

Retrieved early music files of Eràsis's work. Loaded onto solid state non-networked media to avoid contamination and detection. List of works include:

“Light” – ksibja and voice, duet with unidentified masculine tenor
“Falling Down” – ksibja, voice, and taksnà drum, alternating vocals with unidentified masculine tenor fom previous song
“Heartbeat” – Eràsis on ksibja, same male voice singing. Probably recorded prior to other ones. Begins with dialogue:

Erà: Just as a warning, I don’t know what I'm doing.
?: You know what the key is. You’ll think of something.
Erà: I haven’t done improv since I was a child.
?: Just five minutes. Five minutes and I’ll prove to you that all of this is worth it. I think you could really go far if you just stopped getting so anxious.
Erà: Sorry. [plays a few chords] How is this?
?: Just keep doing that. I'll count to three, okay?
Erà: Good.
?: One, two ... three.
“Questionable Intentions” – ksibja, Eràsis singing alone. Sounds of crowd in the background. Closes with clapping. Difficult to distinguish individual voices.
“Pink” – ksibja and voice. Lyrics for this are actually quite amazing. Eràsis has obviously had some philosophy training.

These are the most notable. Others do not connect to narrative points. Saryukh likely candidate for unidentified male.

1908 letter raises several questions. Amkzí presents Eràsis as a bit of a flirt — what is her intention with communicating this? A bit disgusting considering social taboo against relationships with tesekhaira, but one has to admire Senet’s restraint. Also: significance of time lapse? Just over five years ...

kqxV1-12-1289 – Call this number

standing stones — significant?????

Folio Three, Page One »

The Structure of Folio Three

2011-05-24T22:28:00.001-04:00

Dearest readers,

My father kept five folios containing letters from Amkzí, all of them hand-bound using soft daraiga hide covers. I remember watching him peruse them as a child. He remained obsessed with Amkzí long after she ceased contacting him; I owe the majority of the supplemental research to him. We have now completed the first two, and it falls to me to provide some more information about the texts now that you have familiarized yourself with their structure.

The first two folios, as we have seen, each contain one letter and very few annotations. The media coverage of Eràsis increased as she aged, so he could not compare as much of the earlier material to the available media records.

The third folio contains a unique structure. It is the thickest of my father's volumes and contains three long letters from Amkzí. My father annotated this volume heavily, and it shows more wear than the others. I imagine he bound these letters together for convenience.

The first letter, which I call Eràsis.1908 in my notes, dicsusses events happening in the singer's life at the age of twelve. The second, Eràsis.1910, jumps forward two years. The final letter in Folio 3, Eràsis.1913, combines some description of her higher education with the founding of the band Tapestry.

The early folios puzzled me when I first read them. Many of the events seem insignificant and, quite frankly, they read like Amkzí does not understand proper narrative flow or comprehend that things can be omitted.

All of these misgivings changed at the end of Folio 2.

I suspect that she wanted to set things up so we could identify the antagonists and the allies in her life. It all comes down to that little bottle of ukarsevei. I will leave the rest to your analysis.

Solidarity, friends,

Nàsis kul Leksones

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Five (svegra mos pirhvan tal-sjek)

2011-05-14T12:43:00.002-04:00

Senet brought me the ukarsevei after everyone had gone to bed for the next several nights. He would come up to my room and sit on the bed beside me, pour a glass, and bypass the bedtime security code on my wall monitor so we could watch whatever I wanted. It wouldn’t take long for me to fall asleep. I always awoke beneath a layer of blankets to the morning alarms.

We should have reported the nausea and shaking to someone at the experimental treatment center. Perhaps they could have reversed the process before the nanos had completely adjusted to my system or before the founder — and the sole person who really understood the technique — died from unknown causes, leaving notebooks of enigmatic drawings and medical fragments that never resolved into a removal procedure.

The real problem came when I next sat down to play the ksibja. Some kind of balance had thrown itself off in my head. I tried to reach for the sorrow and the pain present in so many Narahji songs, but it just didn’t come. Instead, I felt that sick lightheadedness again. The notes swam on the page.

But I wasn’t sad. I was just … empty.

All right, slightly giddy.

I threw the ksibja to the floor and stared at it. Someone had taken the music from me. And — and I knew Anumë must have been responsible somehow.

Anumë had corralled the other adults into punishing me for kissing a boy on the cheeks (or the mouth, as she said) simply because he was a nahitakhë and hadn’t bothered to tell me.

Thinking about that brought back all the anger and pain I needed to pick up the instrument again. It wasn’t just or fair for them to legislate my behavior when they didn’t even think I truly belonged to the Niksubvya family.

So, on that afternoon just after the end the monsoons, I decided four things:

I would not let anyone regulate my behavior again;
I would not become a politician like the rest of my family;
I would find some way to wipe that self-satisfied smirk from Anumë’s face;

and

I would join the dancers and become the best ksibja player the Canyons had ever seen.

They were fairly lofty goals, I admit, a fusion of childlike stubbornness and that certain almost-adult thinking most smart kids have — the kind of mind that doesn’t understand consequences, merely results.

And what do you know? I failed Tveshi that year.

Ŋuskzei,
Amkzí

« Folio Two, Page Sixty-Four

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Four (svegra mos pirhvan tal-dros)

2011-04-19T23:51:00.001-04:00

The surgery they put me through probably resembles what they do now, so I won’t bother discussing it. Coming out of that blackness and back into normal life felt fantastic.

I ate a full meal that evening, or so I remember. It may have been pureed. Everyone was astonished, including Anumë. I must have looked like some dead thing desperately climbing back into the world of the living.

The vomiting and shaking didn’t begin until late in the night, and I was too terrified to tell anyone because that medical clinic smelled like ammonia and machines and I didn’t want them to take me into one of the sterile, white rooms they reserved for “long-term guests,” the ones I had seen for the first time on our way out of the complex. Instead, I quietly made my way down to the toilets once, then twice. The third time, the convulsions brought me to my knees and I had to grip the wall to remain standing.

The noise disturbed Senet next door. When I came back from the toilets down the hall, he took my temperature and looked me over. “I think your system is in shock from the sudden change,” he said quietly. “But we’ll not tell anyone — come, let me get you something for relief.”

He took me into his room. It looked nothing like the rest of the house, although I had played in there before when no one was looking and knew what it looked like underneath the additions. He had installed a three-tiered window garden with herbs, all lit by ambient full-spectrum light. An open file folder rested on the desk. In ordinary circumstances, I would have tried to read it, but the thought of moving that far across the floor made me feel even more nauseous.

Senet poured a glass of water from a decanter and opened a small refrigeration unit. He pulled out a dark blue bottle covered in Tveshi writing.

“Is that a mood drug?”

He looked at the bottle. “No, it’s a remedy for nausea. I think the mood companies discovered it while working on some new sensation or other … I keep it just in case. Please sit.”

I watched him mix the water and the drug. “Does it have a name?”

“Ukarsevei.”

I took it from him. A few minutes after drinking, the nausea began to subside. I felt a bit lightheaded. “Could you tell me a story, Senet? The one about Siha and the Jaiska, if you will.”

Senet smiled. “Anything you like.”

« Folio Two, Page Sixty-Three

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Five »

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Three (svegra mos pirhvan tal-biet)

2011-04-05T23:55:00.001-04:00

The screenings happened while everyone else was away at work.

It didn’t matter that I had no willpower, and although the doctors and technicians tried to be nice to a young girl, I saw more than a few stares. Early-onset depression was bad genetic luck that usually resulted in a lifetime of diet regulation, supplements, and medicines. That’s probably why Aunt Nikis had gone for the experimental treatment. Our family wouldn’t survive that kind of scandal.

The doctors had sworn themselves to complete confidence, but one of the staff must have said something to everyone else. My condition ended up in the news. When I looked back at the news stories as an adult, it made a pit drop in my stomach to see how the condition was exploited.

Everyone weighed in, from my mother’s new cult to life force doctors who accused my mother’s ghost of leeching energy from me. Akmarha, they called it — a restless ghost.

Sometimes I wonder, Nishet, if the presence of the nuamua and the Karatha and all of those other tesekhaira has conditioned us to believe in things that, in all likelihood, are not there — like the restless ghosts sucking life energy or those monsters from the deep ocean that drag down ships —— like those kids people claim can move things just by thinking or set things on fire with no more than a gesture ——— because we don’t want to confront our own ignorance about the way the universe has constructed itself. Although … maybe something uses these stories, I sometimes think, to convolute things and go unnoticed. I’m sure that those of you back in civilization may have a slightly better assessment of the situation by now.

Of course, this may not make sense if you haven’t seen any media commentary about my childhood illness. Let me know if you would like names of prominent period newscasters; I will send them as quickly as possible to the address I have on file for you.

My apologies for interrupting the story. It seems that I have only hours until the next Canyon boat leaves; afterward, I must interview a new crew for the Smoke and hopefully leave for another run, so you won’t hear from me for the next few weeks in any capacity. I hope one of them actually knows how to navigate a SmartRaft in shallow water. We must have lost half of our catch with the last incompetent idiot.

Speaking of which, please take precautions with these letters. I don’t want our conversation intercepted by anyone who could compromise my situation here.

« Folio Two, Page Sixty-Two

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Four »

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Two (svegra mos pirhvan tal-roh)

2011-03-30T00:15:00.001-04:00

The first child psychologist found no solution. The second diagnosed me with severe depression, likely something in my genetics caused by a traumatic environmental trigger. Only two or three other cases like mine existed in the medical record, all with children at least three years older than I was.

“In the other cases, the result was fatality. I ... have hope for this one. A research lab has recently made some experimental treatments available using nanotechnology. The nanos regulate brain chemicals and help the emotions maintain equilibrium. They will ... normalize her, if all goes well.”

“But do they work?”

He cleared his throat. “You may have heard of them. The Amber Moon Research Group applied the same technique to Maràsis, the child theater actress. One of my friends who works there says it has been successful.” He looked from Aunt Nikis to me.

“And treatment is ... noninvasive? Will it impact her ability to have extension implants later in life?” Aunt Nikis was always so practical. “Not that our family uses them much, but I read a recent technology report saying that human augmentative technologies will be more mainstream in a few years.”

The psychologist shook his head. “No. Augmentative technologies are capable of adapting — they won’t even notice the nanotechnology.”

“How early can you do it?”

“Midweek next week. I will need to take her in for some screenings at the facility.” He took out an input pad and started typing. “Yes, they do have an opening. 56 Poràkol at maybe Fifth Hour?”

“I will put it on my schedule.”

As soon as he left, she turned to me and said, “You won’t let anyone know about this. I don’t trust anyone in the house. Not the kids. Not those conniving, shitty adults.”

I nodded.

That day, I sat up in bed on my own and even helped the attendant wash myself — an accomplishment, according to the primary physician. Things were bound to get better.

« Folio Two, Page Sixty-One

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Three »

Folio Two, Page Sixty-One (svegra mos pirhvan tal-itz)

2011-03-15T19:30:00.002-04:00

By the time Thassannyi finished cleaning me, I had a fever. The average body temperature is about 220 Kumari, and mine was dangerous, something like 224 if I remember correctly.

That morning, Anumë brought medicine and soup to my room, but I wouldn’t let her feed me and I was too shaky and delirious to feed myself. I may have screamed when she touched me. Hiret relieved her. The soup tasted heavy and horrible in my mouth. She had salted it too much to be palatable, but he forced it down my throat.

The fever lessened as the day wore on, but I still couldn’t bring myself to leave the bed. My body had gone cold and a severe lethargy had crept over my limbs and into my head. I’m probably going to die, I thought. It’s just as well.

I had fitful dreams that night of going deep into the canyons where a tree had nestled itself between two boulders larger than two people put together, dripping with nectar and fruit, only something was chasing me that I couldn’t quite see and when I awoke I had wet the bed. I lay there for hours in my own urine before someone came because I couldn't lift myself up.

The next day saw no improvement, nor the next, but I had no sense of time because the delirium had come back. Aunt Nikis canceled two events that she had scheduled.

Sometimes I saw Anumë lurking just beyond the door with a suspicious amount of concern written in her gestures.

On the third day of my sickness, Aunt Nikis left for a business meeting in the steppes. Nikis Taltsuya tried to drag me from bed while she was gone, and when I couldn’t stand, she beat me. I was too weak to even flinch. Aunt Nikis called the doctor when she got back. I think the beating had sent me into severe shock, but I don’t have much of a memory of what happened, who the doctor was, or what he said. I just know that I felt so completely horrible that I almost couldn’t do what he said. He didn’t even bother to take Aunt Nikis aside for the diagnosis because I seemed so non-responsive.

The rest of the family would have just left me there to die.

“The problem is not physiological, although it looks like she’s taken some physical harassment. I’d say the real thing tying her to this bed is psychological. I know someone — a child psychologist from Menarka, very good at cases like these.”

After he left, I think I heard screams from elsewhere in the house. I never saw Nikis Taltsuya, her husband, or their son Leiset again.

« Folio Two, Page Sixty

Folio Two, Page Sixty-Two »

Folio Two, Page Sixty (svegra mos pirhvan)

2011-03-01T21:32:00.002-05:00

Nikis Taltsuya dragged me down the stairs by my hair while Anumë ran to her room for rope. The other children stood with open mouths on the landing. I still didn’t know what I had done wrong or why they thought Sukua was a nahitakhë. He didn’t even have the eyes.

They took me into the central courtyard. Most of the ceiling there was vaulted with glass ceilings, the monsoon water being channeled into a waterfall along one side for the household purification system. It also filled the underground irrigation system that watered the garden’s plants while leaving the ground barely moist. Nikis Taltsuya shoved me into the middle while the others ran the ropes from my wrists and ankles to the pillars so I couldn’t move. I remember looking up at the sky and thinking what a perfect day they had chosen to do it. What had Nikis Taltsuya’s family done to her between rainstorms?

On the walkway above, I saw Hiret limping towards the shrine door. Someone told me several months later that he spent the entire night praying and missed two article deadlines for the political journal he wrote for, but I didn’t smell the incense from where I hung. I’m surprised no one violated his supplicant’s rights.

Deimoa cut the clothes from my upper body and rubbed a sensitizing cream on my back and shoulders before they went on me with the whip. I had no idea where it had even come from — Anumë or Nikis Taltsuya, perhaps — but I screamed when they hit me until my throat had gone raw. That’s about the time the rain started.

It smeared against the glass until it had dusted the courtyard roof with little droplets, and then larger droplets, and then they tilted down in rivulets. The first stream hit the crown of my head, but the second hit my sensitized shoulders. It felt like ice. The water went into my eyes and over my mouth and I couldn’t look up because I felt like it would drown me. And then it started pouring and I couldn’t breathe and there was water everywhere.

It amazes me that the shock didn’t kill me.

The ropes held me up for hours. Darkness overtook the garden, and everything around me swam. I thought — I still think — I saw things in the blackness. Little, black flitting things like shards of obsidian chittered and shredded through the trees, and something round and sticky rolled through the red vine cover on the ground. I could almost feel it reaching up to lick the tips of my toes. When I felt something sharp against the pad of my foot, I screamed and kicked and bit at the shadows like some rabid animal. The obsidian shards looked up from where they hid and roared. A light blotted out the rain. I fainted.

Everyone says Thassannyi turned on the lights and pulled me down. Maybe they’re right because she had scars after that night that I had never seen before — a slice that went all the way down her cheek, some criss-crossing on her arms like something sharp and serrated had fought with her in the vines. But whoever it was, they ran a tepid shower to clean the blood off. I awoke and started screaming and biting. I think something in my head had broken just a little.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Nine

Folio Two, Page Sixty-One »

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Nine (svegra mos sjekron tal-tusjga)

2011-02-23T13:29:00.001-05:00

A hand reached out and grabbed me at the base of my skull. I was sure the warm fingernails would break through my skin and rip out my spine, but it pulled me into the house and shoved me onto the floor before I could scream. Someone bound my hands and my feet and heaved me up. I tried to hit them in the chest with my knees.

“Fuck, is it loud.” That was Deimoa. I kicked harder and screamed a few times.

He didn’t respond to the squirming or the yells. I wondered where everyone else had gone — Senet, perhaps, or Aunt Nikis — but when Deimoa set me at the top of the stairs and my aunt’s office door opened, I knew something horrible had happened.

Deimoa shoved me down onto the floor, and I bumped the side of my head. My vision swirled and no one moved to help me up. Anumë did not even notice me. She stood in front of Aunt Nikis’s desk whispering like an angry ghost, and Nikis had steepled her hands over her face, leaning her elbows against the table. Hiret stood against one of the bookshelves, reading something on a clear touchpad that looked like the news. Nikis Taltsuya competed with Anumë for Aunt Nikis’s time, only she let her voice bellow in the old woman’s face.

“All I'm saying, Matriarch, is that it’s horrible luck for the family.” Nikis Taltsuya pounded her fist on the table. Aunt Nikis’s bottle of setai rattled. “What if she carries that disease into the house and spreads it to my son? I don’t want him to have a foreshortened life just because you can’t control that gutter shit Salus left behind.”

Anumë stood up straight and put her hands on her hips. She turned to Nikis Taltsuya like an animal smelling blood. “She’s right, you know. You can’t control that brat. Do you know what she did yesterday with that tasteless —”

Hiret cleared his throat. He didn’t look up from the touchpad. “She’s right here, you know. Talk about tastelessness.”

He used the word dosrìsja for tastelessness, not ìsjamsa — we only used the former word as an insult, generally to adult women who couldn’t socialize or put on their best face. Anumë whirled around and slapped him hard in the face. “Don’t you ever talk about your own sister that way again.”

Nikis Taltsuya looked down at me. “Thank you, Deimoa. I, for one, don’t think that filthy thing should be left in the house now, at least not until we know she doesn’t have the muakanua or ... something worse.”

“Eràsis does not have the muakanua.” Aunt Nikis stood. Her hands shook, but she gripped them together so it didn’t look like she was so afraid. “That’s all just canyon superstition. Nahitakhë kids don’t carry it. Besides, why would I punish her? It will make us look better in the public eye if they are seen together on the streets. I’ve known about it for some time.”

“And yet you never thought of notifying us how unclean she was? We let her into the household shrines!” Nikis Taltsuya was furious.

“She kissed him.” Anumë sneered and looked down at me. “Right on the mouth. I saw it through the window. Is that the kind of public performance you want? Marriage with a charity case?”

Hiret glowered at Anumë. “What century do you think this is, sis? It’s not any worse than running off with some explorer from the High Wilds. I hear Attara is a great planet for a wedding.”

“Will you shut up? I’m tired of hearing you defend her!” Anumë’s voice had gone shrill. She waved her arms around. My gut tightened. “If you want to know, I have gathered all of the adults. The majority of us think something should be done. Hiret and Thassannyi can shove it. And if you don’t agree, you fucking senile piece of shit, I will take that chair from you and turn you out onto the street where you belong. Allowing that trollop of a sister to stay in the family after what she did!”

I tried to make myself really small so no one would see me working at the bindings, but Deimoa lifted me up by the throat and pressed me against the wall. “You won’t be going anywhere.”

Nikis Taltsuya poured herself some water from a decanter on Aunt Nikis’s desk. “She’s a favorite of yours, I know, but nothing ever came from going easy on kids. When I was a girl, if I even thought of something that disgraceful, my parents tied me up outside during the monsoon rains and whipped me. Wouldn’t take me down until the night had passed.”

“Uncivilized trash,” Hiret murmured.

“Keep quiet or I’ll lift you up with her,” Anumë said.

“You can take that disgraceful woman back into the Canyon dark where she belongs,” Hiret said. “I’m leaving. Might call the police if I feel so inclined.”

He tried to make it to the door, but Deimoa was quicker and stronger. He pulled back his fist and punched Hiret in the face, then shoved him to the ground and started kicking him. The tablet went flying and shattered beside Nikis’s desk. I wanted Hiret to come up — I wanted him to hit Deimoa as hard as he could and make teeth go flyign — but he was no match for someone stronger and more athletic. But he didn’t scream, no matter how hard Deimoa hit him. He didn’t say anything at all.

When Deimoa pulled back from him, I heard someone gasp. It wasn’t Aunt Nikis, but even she looked more afraid than she had before.

“Our family has a reputation,” our Matriarch — Matriarch in name only! — murmured.

“Do you want to join Hiret on the floor?”

Aunt Nikis collapsed into her chair. She looked like she could cry. “I will not sanction it, but I cannot stop you.”

Those were the most terrifying words my aunt ever spoke.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Eight

Folio Two, Page Sixty »

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Eight (svegra mos sjekron tal-kot)

2011-02-15T23:32:00.001-05:00

When the final teacher dismissed us that day, I gathered my things quickly and walked alone through the halls. Some of the older kids spoke to each other in the halls. From the sounds of it, someone had played a prank on one of the instructors who taught Fourth Year because he was new and from one of the Menashi neighborhoods of Galasu. Nikashannyi, the only Menashi girl I knew of in school, had started yelling at them.

“But it’s funny,” one of them said. “He can’t get the handcuffs off if he slips the consonant!”

They saw me watching, and I darted through an exit. The cobblestone circle outside was alive with color and light from the Grouping Ceremony earlier that week. Due to the wind from the oncoming storm, some teenagers had taken out kites to fly. Several younger kids, most of whom I knew, sat at the edges eating some sweets from a vendor stationed just beyond the school perimeter. I wanted some, but the line looked too long.

Kobeis and the other Niksubvya kids met me at the main gate to walk home. Khatein and a girl I did not know had already crossed the perimeter. I saw them kiss. He came back with a crown of ivy and flowers in his hair, some petal-nectar smeared on his face.

“What are you looking at?” He wiped the nectar off with the back of his hand and smeared it on his pants. Khatein’s face had gone red, and he tried to hide it by popping up his uniform’s collar. I didn’t understand why he felt so ashamed by a kiss.

We dropped the subject and started the walk home. My favorite part of living in town was glancing this way and that as things changed through the seasons and years. It seemed magical when I was a child that everyone knew exactly how to approach the order of the days. The shaved ice vendors always knew which flavors to stock at the end of monsoon season or at the beginning of the second flowering, and the Sehubvya family at the corner of Weeping Tree and Hospital Road knew when we needed gifts for birthdays or shrine days.

I sensed something had gone wrong the moment I set foot on my street. The rhythm of nature here had lagged since my mother’s death. The sweet alahara trees at the edge of the road should have sagged with fruit by now, and the vine-flowers should have withered weeks earlier. Today, even the air in my lungs didn’t feel right. It lingered in my lungs like bonfire smoke, although the air had no smell.

The school couldn’t have known I spent most of the lunch break scaling the roof. I hadn’t let any tiles fall this time. So — what was it?

The sky above, weighed down by rain clouds, had stifled any breeze. The flowering vines knew about the coming storm; they had closed all of their petals. Unconsciously, I reached for Kobeis’s hand and clutched it tightly. Khatein and Meihannyi walked ahead of us, giggling about something that only mattered to people slightly older and more experienced than me. I suspect it was about the girl. Leiset behind us had knelt down to pick up stones.

“We should get home,” I said. My throat felt tight. “Come on, I’ll race you.”

I ran as fast as my feet would carry me, but Kobeis at two years younger was my height, so we were fairly evenly-matched — and climbing legs aren’t necessarily the best for races — what am I saying? She beat me to the door.

Instead of peeking out and gloating over her win, I heard no sound from inside. My hand paused at the doorknob. Maybe something had gone wrong.

If something had, I had to see. I opened it.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Seven

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Nine »

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Seven (svegra mos sjekron tal-pyes)

2011-02-08T22:58:00.002-05:00

And now we come to the moment you have been waiting for. The moment when I, the daughter of Salus Nitannyi, temporarily lost my mind and a bit of my soul. You could say it runs in the family.

It seems odd to think about this happening to one so young, yet I cannot think of myself as a complete child. I was a hybrid, the mind of an adult in the body and emotional mess of a young girl, brain firing with new ideas faster than I could conceive of consequences.

It began the following day, shortly after breakfast, after I had prayed to the ancestors and made offerings to my mother. I had no doubt that she would forgive me for the transgression I had made against her person — the world recycles dead souls, anyway, so I doubted she would remember her complaints — if only to save us from the mob gathered at our door. Sukua stood there.

I didn’t let him in. Instead, I ran to my room for the lucky charm he had given me so I could press it into his warm hand. It seemed like an eternity since we had seen each other.

“Did you enjoy the second half from where you were?”

“Yes, Domìntar hid me down beneath the stage.” He smiled sheepishly and put his hands behind his back. “You would probably get the dancer melodies easy. You know, we have an opening.”

“I don’t think my family —”

“Tomis, she died in the same train your mom was in. Her family wanted to send her to Regent’s Academy of Music and the Theatrical Arts for post-nat, so she had to audition …”

I thought about the girl Tomis must have been. Fourteen, excited to leave the city — Gods, I was so restless — clutching that cold ksibja case between her knees as she watched the train maneuver over canyons and flit between foothills. She wore a gyena like all Canyon women before marriage, and I thought she might have self-consciously looked in a pocket mirror before flirting with a boy several seats away — unless, of course, her family had already arranged a marriage for her. Then she would have entwined and knotted it with a golden string. No boy in his right mind would have looked at her.

Not only that, but an audition at the Regent’s Academy!

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Let me think about it.” I already knew I would accept, and maybe my family would if they knew people who played there could get into post-national — “post-nat” — music schools, or at least make it to the audition pull. But maybe that would have made them say no.

Everyone, with the exception of Hiret, had gone to MeDaSi, the Menarka mu Dafæsnàyal Simu. It had trained the most famous Narahji and Menashi politicians in rhetoric, political systems, ethics, and law since the Occupation ended — and they had built it on the grounds of the famous Simu mu Menarkal, which had served much the same function before it burned to the ground during the Invasion. My mother had taken me for a tour of the grounds on her last visit.

Hiret had studied journalism in Galasu. I don’t know how that happened.

“You won’t say yes,” Sukua said suspiciously. “Why?”

I leaned forward and kissed him once on each cheek. “My cousin Anumë is evil,” I said. “She would find some way to stop me.”

When I left him, I went back inside and finished gathering things for school. More than once, I glanced inside my mother’s wardrobe for the one senatorial gown she owned and wondered if I could ever live up to the dust in her wake.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Six

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Eight »

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Six (svegra mos sjekron tal-pirh)

2011-02-02T12:02:00.002-05:00

The following morning, everyone observing the communal meal waited for me before sitting at the table. Hiret sat me down, hands resting lightly on my shoulders, as though I were more important than an illegitimate young girl. Nikis Taltsuya set a bowl of porridge in front of me, along with a tray overflowing with every topping imaginable — even spicy-sweet petals, which were out-of-season. I chose the best petals and juiciest pieces of fruit, but no nuts. No one stopped me from taking my share first.

Today, we would observe the final day of my mother’s rest. The ashes had gone on tour to the Deimo for approval, but also to other places of importance to Salus. I wanted the ashes here. I wanted to pray to them at our ancestral shrine. It was, after all, the best thing I could do after an evening of my own success. For me, people had not kowtowed when I entered the room, but everyone must start somewhere and I would catch up to my mother someday. They already respected me for my musical talent. It could open doors that Salus’s death had closed.

I finished everything and stood to leave while the rest of the family ate quietly. We didn’t have school. The ashes would not arrive for hours, and I wanted to find Sukua.

When I opened the front door, though, I saw a crowd of roughly a hundred people parading up the street. It seemed strange, and I wondered if they wanted to protest something downtown. If Sukua and I found anything in the ravine to sell, a huge crowd of people would have ruined it.

I shut the door and started walking down the road, confident that I would hear the people murmuring behind me. I had nearly reached the bottom of the hill before they stopped in front of my house. What kind of awful thing had my family done to merit a mob?

Running up the hill gave me some time to think about what I would do. The mob had made a semi-circle around the house; no one could get in or out. As soon as they saw me, though, I heard whispering. They knew who I was. Someone rushed forward to grab my ankles and suddenly the mob had formed around me and air just wouldn’t come. As I squirmed and squeezed towards my own door, I saw a woman fall.

I didn’t know what to do. This is what I had wanted for myself, but I shakily helped her to her feet and pushed her back into the crowd. In the resulting confusion, I ran up the house steps. Behind me, they chanted, “Maigyenezhai. Maigyenezhai. Maigyenezhai. Maigyenezhai.” The new god-name for Salus.

I stepped back against the threshold and prayed to the household gods and ancestors (of which my mother was now a member) that nothing horrible would happen. This kind of hubristic behavior would have consequences. My mother wasn’t this important.

Something needed to happen, and because no one else had noticed the crowd, I would have to do it. I rushed up the stairs to Aunt Nikis’s office and burst in. A pile of accounts rested on the table in front of her, and the wall screen danced with shifting charts and figures.

“There are people outside. I think they want to come in.”

“There are people to receive them.”

“There are a hundred of them, and they are the ones who think my mother is a deity.”

She dropped her keyboard and looked up at me. The morning sunlight caught wisps of her hair and the little cracks at the corner of each eye. She sighed and said, “I’ll be a moment downstairs, just a moment.”

The more time passed, the more the crowd surged until many more than a hundred people blocked traffic on the street. Accounts differ. Several media crews had decided to come.

The people wanted my mother’s ashes because she had become their god and they needed some way of proving their legitimacy — of creating their own mystery. Everyone knows that arguing with devotees ends in tears and hurt feelings.

Whenever Nikis mentioned the family’s ancestral rights to the crowd, they hissed at her. One of them even spat in her face. She retreated inside to think.

“Thinking” was not done in her office. She went up into the room where we keep the gods and barricaded herself in there. I heard her crying, and this is the first time I had seen her so weak. Thank Fortune that Anumë had gone into town (although for what I don’t know); she would have jumped on Nikis’s weakness like a wild animal.

Everything had nearly fallen apart, but as I waited for Nikis to return, I thought of something that could work. The idea seemed so doable that I banged on the door and yelled her name repeatedly, waiting for her to answer. As soon as she opened it, I said, “What if we just give them a small portion of ashes? What if we mix a small amount with incense ash for the deities? That would be all right, wouldn’t it?”

She looked at me, and for the first time I thought I saw respect. “Yes. We will do exactly that when the emissary comes. You should make the announcement now. We must bring the ashes inside and do this in secret.”

She deferred to me, but only because I would likely have more luck. I walked outside and walked up to a silent woman with a megaphone. Doubtless she thought of coordinating the crowd once the ashes came. “Ma’am, I would like to announce something, if you would.”

The woman had cold, clammy hands, but I squeezed them when I grabbed the megaphone. She bowed. At least my status in the cult had some tangible influence.

“Thank you for gathering here today. The Niksubvya House would like to acknowledge your rights as devotees of the new goddess. However, our house must also perform its ancestral devotions, so we must compromise. I am the daughter of Salus Nitannyi, your beloved adviser to the Deimo — and I have something to tell you. Through my pleading, my Matriarch has decreed that we will split the ashes between us so we all may do our rites in peace. Obviously, each of our parties wants the ashes intact, but this is the only course of action that will satisfy us all.”

A few individuals began clapping, and suddenly a noise rose from the crowd. I handed the megaphone back to the woman. My heart felt like a drum in my chest, and I needed air — but there was none to be found. The emissary had come, and the crowd pressed to the sides, carrying me with it. I could barely push through.

We split the ashes inside and mixed the ones for the crowd from incense ash that belonged to great Gods and lesser gods. They suspected nothing.

It was a spiteful, horrible thing to do, but we had no other option — or at least I tell myself that. Everyone always has a choice. The Gods must have groaned in Heaven; our ancestors must have gnashed their teeth beneath our feet.

Perhaps what happened next was retribution.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Five

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Seven »

Niksubvya Family Prodigy Plays at Midnight Garden

2011-01-27T11:43:00.001-05:00

Categories: Entertainment Reviews, Up-and-Coming Stars, Quick Reports

Menarka Music Review • 4 Kaiakhin of Poràkol 1903 (34 Poràkol)

Khadein tal Tasya, Music Editor

Everyone knows about mythical ksibja players who could calm storms, overthrow tyrants, and restore the dead to life simply through their command of the instrument. In these stories, such talented players usually come from humble beginnings before their talent raises them. They are orphans, beggars, and thieves; it is the ksibja that transforms them.

Seven-year-old Aneti of the Niksubva family is well on her way to becoming a real-life version of these stories. An illegitimate daughter of the late Adviser Salus (also known as Nitannyi for you Tveshi readers), whose tragic death shook millions earlier this monsoon season, Aneti’s identity was kept unconfirmed by the family — presumably to avoid scandal.

The child’s extraordinary command of the ksibja was put on display last night at Midnight Garden, where hundreds of upper-class men and women from all over the region gathered to hear her play.

Aneti of the Niksubvya family selected a heartwarming rendition of traditional Narahji pieces, including several opera solos for the ksibja. Menarka Music Review was issued two complimentary tickets to the event.

The evening began with a technical rendition of “By the Ivis at Midnight,” a ballad written in the 14th century by a soldier’s Narahji paramour. While this piece is commonly vocal with accompaniment on the bowed sama, Aneti’s ksibja expertise conveyed the heart-wrenching emotions without leaving one wondering why she didn’t hire a vocalist. The true jewel of the evening, however, was her performance of the ksibja solo from A Night, Winged, which eludes many musicians with much more experience. “Tribute to the Dawn,” while not as demanding as Aneti’s best pieces, seemed rushed by comparison.

Unfortunately, I cannot say that many of the others there enjoyed it. Sabiyyi ital Maiya in The People commented last week on the decadence of the leisured classes, what with their gross excesses in the mood bars and excessive human interface modifications that lack all taste and decency. She writes,

What is our society coming to when the best among us sink into drug use and hyper-augment their bodies to the point of absurdity? Synthetic mood drugs originated as an alternative to the more damaging intoxicants, hallucinogens, and narcotics on the market, but their supposed safety has increased substance abuse and made the new drug lords richer than the monarchy. Personal augmentation should not serve aristocratic whims for wings or tails, but the far more pertinent issue of human-technology integration that will smooth our relationship with present-day augmented reality and computing. Automaton bodies should find their use in mine shafts and the vacuum of the High Wilds, not in the bedroom where the sympathetic connection between a machine drone and the individual leads to self-fornication without any sense of the sanctity of the natural sexual experience.

Her statement accurately describes the atmosphere of the room. Most individuals in attendance took so many drugs that I doubt they remember the titles of Aneti’s pieces, let alone how her musical skill exceeds most musicians three times her age. Only myself, Namgyatzi (the nuamë nuaf iča), and a handful of other individuals remained sober enough to contemplate the true meaning of the performance. Just thinking about this child’s potential after she is old enough for augmentation gives me chills.

I only hope that Aneti’s family displays her in a much more appropriate venue for someone of such brilliance next time.

Khadein tal Tasya

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Five (svegra mos sjekron tal-sjek)

2011-01-26T00:19:00.001-05:00

Senet stood beside Anumë. They spoke in hushed tones, foreheads nearly pressed together, and Senet had rested a hand on her shoulder. I wanted to rip it from her. Anumë had called it my duty to befriend the Karatha’s representative. Perhaps drink had convinced her to impose on him, but that didn’t keep a small piece of me from dying when I saw them. As I walked back to the auditorium, my fingers shook. To think he had touched that conniving bitch.

“What have I gotten myself into?”

I saw the ksibja sitting on stage where I had left it. I saw people having a good time, not knowing or caring that I stood just offstage studying them. Namgyatzi whispered at his table with a few people. I couldn’t stand it — the whispering, I mean. Everyone kept things from me. My mother had done it on her communication band sometimes when she thought I was asleep. It didn’t matter if the conversations had nothing to do with me. Someone could have at least asked. (What a self-important little brat I was!)

Shaking wouldn’t do, though. I needed to remain calm. I needed to pretend that none of it existed.

The ksibja absorbed me almost as soon as I took it into my lap. At least the Gods had given me one gift.

People would mention my name in the days to follow and the exemplary performance I had given, although they would never remember the particulars when a thousand chemicals smoothed the edges of their memory. They would never, ever remember the way my hands shook or the note I missed in “Tribute to the Dawn.”

I covered for myself, as I had always done. I knew how to hide in the cracks between places, even the notes between notes, and I could make myself into whatever I wanted to be.

It wasn’t a superpower, but a quirk of personality, and I doubt most people noticed at all. They had so many expectations of what an illegitimate protégé should be that they ignored every other part of me.

You see, Nishet, the story about the flowering plant and the gardener has always been about me. Read on. He waters it every day hoping to see it bloom, and the buds grow and grow — they’re quite giant — until the flowers open. They have the most powerful and quintessentially floral scent possible, more petals than even an ivis tree. But he has forgotten one thing: while he focused so much on getting the flowers to bloom, the rest of the plant developed as well. It has grown so high that it blocks out the sky and everything else in his garden has died.

When I saw Anumë, I knew that she hated me even with all of the drugs in her system. She alone did not congratulate me, but I felt her eyes on my back as high society congratulated me. It was overwhelming.

As soon as the crowd dispersed and I could see clearly again, Namgyatzi blew a kiss at me with his right hand. I knew that he felt proud, and for some reason that mattered.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Four

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Six »

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Four (svegra mos sjekron tal-dros)

2011-01-17T23:14:00.004-05:00

Once the doors opened, I saw many individuals I had only heard of. Already, most had thoroughly buzzed themselves on chemicals; by the time I started my third piece, I could have played scales without anyone realizing a thing.

Namgyatzi had retreated to the third row, where several companions had joined him. Senet stood at the back of the auditorium with his hands across his chest, flinching whenever anyone touched him. Neither partook of any of the food or drink, and the weight of their gazes far exceeded the nervousness fidgeting of Aunt Nikis or Anumë in the front. They called me Aneti publicly (after the Tveshi etiquette, as always), and more than once I wished I were beloved enough for people to call me by my familiar name.

Everywhere my mother had walked, people called her Salus. She never raised her voice at anyone or fought to maintain composure at people who smelled horrible or the people from the drug dens who sought her forgiveness. They called her domha, savior, instead of Adviser. Such a thing would have seemed shameful to the Tveshi, but in the Canyons it meant everything. In my mother’s case, it represented the difference between a public official and a candidate for akačehennyi (Narahji term: tikadeisva), or divine ascension. Akačehennyi could come from phenomenally humanistic endeavors over the course of a lifetime, or from religious devotion and the love of a God, but most often from how people remembered you after your death. To a lesser extent, it represents any cathartic experience. If my mother had become a God, that should have made me a living embodiment of deity.

I keep trying to bend the narrative to make myself seem less narcissistic. Truth be told, I wanted the glory for myself, but I always took care to think about in terms of her. Family makes a difference. Remember that.

At intermission, I left the stage with Domìntar and went to the backstage cast balcony to get fresh air. My fingers ached from playing, and the anxiety had made me sick. Domìntar squeezed my shoulders and kissed my forehead. “You shouldn’t worry so much. Half of those well-to-dos are high, anyway.”

I smiled and looked out at the rain-hazed houselights of an offshore island. We had such a beautiful view of the sea that I almost forgot to look down — and then I did. A thin sheet of floor-grade glass separated us from a plunge into the water below. The surf crashed against the rocks like it wanted to pull Midnight Garden into the sea.

Soft fingertips pattered at the door in rhythm. When I turned to look, I saw Sukua standing just inside the doorway, looking over his shoulder to see if the adults had spotted him.

Domìntar pushed me aside and stared at him. “What are you doing here?”

I touched her waist. “We’re friends,” I said. “He lives down the street.”

I went to Sukua and pulled him by his arms farther onto the balcony. He looked down first; suddenly his hands dug into my elbows and his breathing came short. “How did you get in, Sukua?”

He shook his head. “I took the train and then came in through the staff entrance.”

“Why?”

“Because I forgot to give you something.” He let go of me and reached down into his pocket without looking down. “It’s a necklace. I wear it during performances. My dad had it blessed.”

I took it from him and slipped it over my head, then tipped it beneath my dress. “Thanks. I — I’m happy that you came, Sukua. Will you stay?”

Domìntar breathed in through her teeth. “I’m not sure an event like this would be appropriate for him.”

“He could go behind the stage. No one would know.”

She bit her lower lip and looked from him to me. I don’t think she recognized him; if she had, she probably would have thrown him out. “I had a sweetheart when I was your age, too. Let me take him into the back. You’re on stage in five minutes, so I suggest you go.”

Just inside, I saw Anumë. I don’t think she saw Sukua — otherwise, she’d have yelled — and she’d had enough chemicals to make her mellow.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Three

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Five »

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Three (svegra mos sjekron tal-biet)

2011-01-11T13:19:00.002-05:00

The second time I met Namgyatzi, he approached me just before the Midnight Garden event. I don’t know how he got through the bustling servers setting up tables or the crowds of people in the standing areas of the gardens drinking synthetic chemicals and gorging themselves on food before the show. He sat down at one of the finished tables and washed his hands in the bowl at the center.

Midnight Garden provided an outdoor environment for synthetic chemicals and holographic entertainment. Tonight, though, the entertainment would be aural, not visual or holographic; the venue had requested they wire up my hands and vital signs to display on the four large monitors that domed the garden. I was too young to offer consent for SenseProxy, a new technology that allowed you to feel what someone felt while they were performing. Most larger venues used it when the stunt performers came.

The sensors on my hands felt bulky; anything thicker than clothes would have caused the same reaction, and I had already started panicking about some of the music. I needed to run through them a few more times.

As soon as I finished playing, I greeted Namgyatzi in the appropriate way. I think he winced, just like the last time. “You have dirt on your dress,” he said. “And you don’t have to do that — have some dignity.”

I brushed the dirt from my long ceremonial dress. Thankfully, the garden was protected from the rain. Mud would have made everyone in my family furious. “Why do I make you angry?”

“I’m not angry.” He sighed. “Aneti.” My formal name sounded like an afterthought, and I was grateful that he hadn’t confused it with my cousin’s like everyone else did. “I thought we might take this opportunity while public attention is elsewhere. I know you want to practice — it won’t take much time.”

“Yes?”

“Did Adivser Nitannyi ever mention someone named Kamak? Do you remember?”

“You mean the planet?”

“No, that’s pronounced qah-maq, with the q down in your thro — never mind. Kamak was a person, understand.”

I shook my head. “She never talked much about work, but she would have mentioned a Kamak if it were important. Is it?”

He looked at the ground. The anger had reappeared on his face. He probably would have yelled at my mother had she been there. It shows a great deal of character that he didn’t take it out on me. “She mentioned it once in a meeting we had. I only wanted to make sure she didn’t want to pursue anything. It would have stirred up too many ghosts.”

I picked up my ksibja. “Is this all?”

“I would rather you didn’t tell anyone I asked about this.” Namgyatzi cleared his throat. “It took a great deal of bribery to have our current conversation unmonitored. But — thank you for putting me at ease about several points.”

“Did my mom like you?”

Namgyatzi rolled his eyes. “No, as a matter of fact. She only tolerated me. Having a position of power and a body of mythology large enough to fill an entire storage archive doesn’t guarantee admiration. But what about you? What are you looking for in life?”

“I want to be like my mom, but happier. I really like playing music.”

He laughed. I would have, too. My family probably intended me for public service, the music to fall away as soon as it gave me access to the people I needed. With Namgyatzi, the laughter seemed genuine, and maybe it was. It softened the intensity in his eyes and made his complexion less sickly. When our eyes met, I felt an echo of that night with Senet and quickly averted them.

The event staff had nearly finished checking up, and fairly soon the audio controller would ask me for a sound check, but I had a few moments alone with him. I thought about things to say — maybe the flowers I had seen on the vines outside or something I had heard someone say from school — but nothing seemed memorable enough and, for whatever reason, I needed him to like me. Maybe I felt this way because he didn’t judge me, or maybe I wanted to hear the rhythmic way he spoke, enunciation punctuated almost like an actor.

I decided to play something for him, but I hadn’t prepared anything specific. Nothing ran through my head except a stupid poem I had written in a composition class. It would have to do.

He seemed taken aback when I said I would play for him, but he let me pick the ksibja back up and go through some fingerings. I had no idea what I wanted, but the chords ended up minor. The poem, incidentally, is one of the most embarrassing things I ever wrote in my childhood. I sang it in an interview years later, unaccompanied.

How the monsoon rain blows
against our windows, a battering ram
from heaven, but at least
good times are ahead inside!
Here we remember the red flowers
blooming on the sidewalk edge,
here we move the pieces on our boards,
waiting for the rain to pass.
What fun it would be to come back again,
a drop of rain falling to the ground,
to see the entire world so many times
and understand things no one is supposed to know!
I’d blow against my window, battering it,
but when I saw the good times inside,
I'd probably wish to be there instead.

It started with several glissandos, and I found it difficult to come up with a rhythm and chord progression while singing. While the concepts expressed in the song found repetition in my later work, my insufficient understanding of poetic meter made phrasing difficult, and I found myself stopping mid-phrase to catch breaths. Every moment’s pause, I looked at him. He said nothing.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-Two

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Four »

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Two (svegra mos sjekron tal-roh)

2011-01-05T22:12:00.003-05:00

Without saying a word, I climbed down the tree and out of the ravine. Sukua struggled up behind me, snapping twigs and root systems as he struggled. He looked so pathetic when I peeked down at him. I — I didn’t know what to do.

We had come out of the ravine close to the train station. Today we had nothing to sell, but some of the regulars recognized us. It must have taking some doing, considering that I looked like an imp. A few religious pilgrims stopped and whispered close by. One of them snapped several pictures with her clear enhanced glasses and started gesturing through an image library.

“Damn, I want some of those.” Sukua tried to wipe some of the mud from his face, but just succeeded in making it worse.

“I heard if you start too young, it’ll make you nearsighted.” I cleared my throat. “And don’t think I meant anything by calling you a ghemda. It just slipped out.”

“You could just laser correct everything later.” He smeared more mud across his face. Some leaves and roots had tangled in his hair. I may have looked like an imp, but he looked like a combat zone child. “Erà —”

Something touched my wrists. I thought some animal had brushed up behind me — the way Sukua stared made me think about rows and rows of teeth, that or whip-like stinging tentacles. No one had seen any gamàlgnya this shallow in ages, but the stories from the middle depths terrified even the adults. The more I thought about it, the more it felt like someone else’s hands.

The woman with the enhanced glasses knelt behind me with her hand around my wrist. She murmured something I couldn’t understand — it sounded like Menja, one of the three creoles spoken in the Menashi part of Menarka. Our family had once called itself Menashi — my mother had used the word several times on her official web site — and sometimes it seemed like the date we decided to become fully Narahji shifted depending on which relative needed reelection. My mother had made an effort to please the Menashi. She could have translated.

When I looked at the person grasping me, she averted her eyes and pressed her head down to the ground. The other religious pilgrims kept their distance, but they knelt and clapped their hands together.

One of the hawkers — Mozkà, the man who went around buying broken electronics to fix up for market — leaned against the side of his booth and clicked his tongue at me. “She wants a blessing, kid.”

“I — she wants what?”

“She wants a blessing from the daughter of Maigyenezhai.” He chuckled. “And if you can send her over my way …”

I opened and closed my mouth. The devotee couldn’t understand the way we spoke in Kobsarka — it’s not that the words are different from regular Narahji by much, just our way of pronouncing them when we didn’t want outsiders to hear — and she didn’t understand my confusion. She looked almost hysterical.

“What do I do?”

“Touch her on the forehead with your index and middle finger. Say a few words.”

I did as he asked and tried to help her to her feet. My hands shook so badly and I felt so weak that I wished Sukua would come and help me. The blessing left a bad feeling in my gut.

The other devotees also took blessings, along with some bystanders who had gathered to watch the commotion. When they learned who I was — the daughter of Maigyenezhai — some of them even kissed my ankles. I wondered how many of them came away with muddy mouths.

Eventually, I slipped behind the hawkers and through an alleyway with Sukua.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty-One

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Three »

Folio Two, Page Fifty-One (svegra mos sjekron tal-itz)

2010-12-30T17:02:00.002-05:00

I went to the ravine to play with Sukua. He wanted to talk and talk, but I worked hard to tire him out so he’d keep quiet. Thoughts ran so quickly through my head that I struggled to remain aware of my surroundings. I found myself in the treetops in what seemed like seconds. He staggered up behind me, chest heaving like someone with asthma.

When we stopped, I clasped his hands and kissed him on the cheek. “Would you do what everyone else thinks you should do or what you want to do.”

“What?”

“Say, if you wanted to become a doctor but your family preferred manufacturing. Come on, don’t look like a dumb fish.” I let go of his hands pinched his forearm and stuck my tongue out when his eyes widened. “And don’t tell me you’d just ask your Matriarch.”

“I — I’d go with what I wanted to do. Sneaky so no one would know until I’d got the degree.” He rubbed his arm. “You pinch hard.”

“What does your Matriarch want you to do?”

He put his arms behind his back and looked directly at me. I tried not to stare at the streak of mud on his cheek and the drops of water falling from the trees as the wind rushed through their leaves, but I couldn’t keep my gaze steady. The bird in the tree behind me sang slightly flat, but I liked the melody.

We stood in awkward silence for a few moments. It’s too soon to marry us off, I thought. We couldn’t do it behind my family’s back for a few years, right? Besides, the gift couldn’t have meant anything else. Every girl my age received gifts from families with young boys. Not short swords — usually perfume or a gyena — but still gifts. I still hadn’t told Aunt Nikis and had hidden the box in my closet.

“Are you just a groom boy?” It’s really difficult — the word hasn’t been used in ages. Ghemda, ‘boy who makes happiness’ — that’s what we called it. Perhaps the term still exists, but I think arranged marriage practices were reformed a while ago to give men more powers of consent?

I — I don’t — but — I broke the narrative again. It’s so hard to jump into things when I start thinking and analyzing. Remembering the little things sometimes trips me up, and you have no idea how many times I have had to stop myself from asking if one shop where I bought sweets with my allowance is still there or if the abandoned theater filled with vermin finally received enough of a vote to tear down. And Sukua. I — it brings back everything I have ever felt about him and pulls the rest with it, all of the agony and regret. You don’t know how much he meant to me.

A ghemda does no more than secure a family’s position. He receives training in etiquette from a young age and generally obtains several cultural hobbies by the time he turns eleven or twelve, such as dance. Everyone knows what his family has trained him for.

“I hope they let you do what you want,” I said hastily. Enough with playing — I’d had enough. Climbing didn’t change much from tree to tree, so unless someone let me have at a building I didn’t want it.

« Folio Two, Page Fifty

Folio Two, Page Fifty-Two »

Folio Two, Page Fifty (svegra mos sjekron)

2010-12-21T21:42:00.001-05:00

My mother’s belongings were delayed on the way from Galasu, probably due to the construction on the Canyon Travel Corridor where she had died. Whatever had happened to the train had bottlenecked traffic down to one two-way track, so all of the shipments were routed through Iturja to make way for passenger cars. At least, that’s what the delivery boy stammered when Aunt Nikis interrogated him.

I remember the sweat that beaded on his forehead and the sympathetic looks from the three men hauling crates inside. Deimoa did crunches in the parlor’s corner while Meihannyi and Khatein played dice at one of the tables. Kobeis and Leiset Taltsuya — one of the distant relatives we boarded — had started a movie in the rec room, the volume up high.

Aunt Nikis turned to me. “Eràsis, your mother’s things won’t fit in your room. You will go through them by the end of the week — we will store them in the spare room, and I want it to remain locked at all times. Do you understand?”

Choosing which of my mother’s things to keep seemed easy enough. “Yes.”

Khatein looked up from the game. “I know a few people who’d be willing to buy the castoffs — good people.” He only mouthed the last two words, but my heart rose in my chest.

As an illegitimate, maybe I would need that money.

“Thanks, Kha.” I smiled as broadly as I could.

We led the delivery boy and his crew to one of the spare rooms on the second floor. They unloaded the crates quickly enough, but Nikis kept querying the AI for the time. “Get out of the way, Erà!” She had never shortened my familiar name before. “Come with me to the office and I will set you up with a key.”

Nikis’s calendar remained open on her wall screen, and I tried not to look at it. The family’s business didn’t concern me as much as my mother’s well-being. “How should I — how do I open the crates?”

“I’ve asked the delivery service to do it for you.” She sighed. “Gods — just once …”

I sat down in the chair across from her desk and stared at her busy hands. She needed to clip her nails. “Why didn’t my mother ever get married?”

Nikis stopped and looked up at me. The expression on her face made my stomach churn. How she could still board an orphan girl who asked such stupid things was beyond me. “Any woman would have pounded her forehead into the dirt for a chance to marry your mother. It gave Sekìnteis so much grief to see a daughter shun the marriage bed. Your grandmother was so superstitious.

“She said your mother’s refusal would ruin us, and the years kept creeping by. You’re so young … but when you have a few decades behind you, it becomes so easy to forget lost loves and the horrible things you’ve done in the name of your country and family.” She opened the key drawer and took out the tray of spares. “Salus — she was different. She couldn’t forget. Teinar and I knew. Her fiancée was murdered, and then she fell in love with that terrorist Aneti she was busting. I don’t think she ever recovered from either. She — she said she was fine, and she tried to smile, but sometimes we’d go shopping when she came home. She’d see a young woman in the market and just start crying.”

“Was my mother insane?”

“Your mother was brilliant.” She lifted up one of the keys and set it down in front of me. “You remind me so much of her. She was eleven years older than me, seven older than Teinar. We idolized her.”

“Really?”

“Yes. But you have to be careful, Eràsis. There are people out there who will try to take advantage of you just for being her child.”

“And what should I do about that?”

“Stay focused. Don’t let anyone manipulate you into doing things in her name.” She smiled at me and typed something on the computer. “I need to finish business. Remember not to trouble anyone.”

« Folio Two, Page Forty-Nine

Folio Two, Page Fifty-One »

Siha and the Jaiska

2010-12-14T23:15:00.008-05:00

This story identifies Senet’s people as the Imāsma, a primarily nomadic people in the arctic circle who share some territory and resources with the Sheedakla. The name Senet is a simpler form of Senēste̔̔, a common male name meaning “averter of evil.” One public document lists Senet’s nationality as Homori, although the name Senet means nothing in the language. Due to the reclusive nature of the Imāsma and their hostility towards the tesekhaira, a Karatha from Imāsma Territory might wish to draw less attention to himself. Senet’s incorporation into the collective must have been a very traumatic experience.

Seventeen documented versions of this story exist, but this is the shortest and most popularly available in Tveshi (even though better translations exist elsewhere). Eràsis would only have learned about the jaiska from Senet. The texts only came to attention following Eràsis’s death, and they corroborate similar stories of chaos from Malzmā texts that speak of a worlds-encompassing war following a period of great technological and social achievements. The story of Siha and the Jaiska is told in a very repetitive folk style, and in the original Imāsmi it is also alliterative.

The jaiska shares features with bogeymen from the region. While its conquest by Siha is celebrated in folk poetry, the jaiska creatures are well-documented in folk tradition. Mothers of young children will place mirrors around their children’s beds to ward them off and turn them into protective guardian spirits. A celebration of this transformation called Jaiskāhavu occurs on the Winter Solstice. Gifts are given on Jaiskāhavu, but they are not opened until the first sunrise after the winter darkness. On Jaiskāhavu, ice effigies of children are smashed to ensure the good fortune of living offspring.

It came out of the forest of ice,
the wandering one, the wanting one,
when our people first came to the icy North.
We called it a jaiska, a creature who was six,*
for six is close to seven and thus always lacking.
The jaiska had six legs to walk on,
six long fingers to grip the city walls,
and six sharp teeth to gobble up young children.
Many nights passed in horror when the people first came,
many nights waiting for the jaiska to do its evil work.
Many times the oldest among us thought we should flee
back to the South where the grasses grow high and the fruit
weighs down the branches, even if it meant death.
We all wished for freedom from the bloody warfare
to the South, where men who climbed to Heaven had been thrown
back into the dust where they belonged,
but we had traded terror and bloodshed
for our own blood spilling across the virgin snow.

Siha came with the blackness of winter,
the virgin from the ruined South,
to our people who shook with fear in the icy North.
We called her Shining One, the virgin with the bark crown,
for her sword shone at her waist and cried out for blood.
Shining One had seven strong warriors,
seven oarsmen who knew the waters well,
and seven gifts for the leaders of our people to open at dawn.
Many people came from their huts to look at her.
Many people thought her dark skin would blanch from the cold.
Many times the oldest among us wondered at her presence.
Anyone from the South should be weary of grief-bringing war,
even though bloodlust kindles bloodlust, even if they love the kill.
We all wished for our freedom to start life anew,
away from the South where men who climbed to Heaven had been thrown
back into the dust where they belonged,
but we had traded terror and bloodshed
for our own heartbreak in the frozen wastes.

First she went to the council, appearing
with her seven warriors and seven oarsmen,
and she offered the seven gifts with her head bowed.
I heard that your people had fled to the frozen North, she said,
and that something has come from the ice forests,
a jaiska who has six legs to walk on,
six long fingers to grip the city walls,
and six sharp teeth to gobble up young children.
And Iahēta, our leader, answered, Your words come hard upon our ears,
we who have lost so many children
we who dreamed of starting our lives anew,
we who wanted a livelihood from fishing with our spears
and gathering lichens and ice-flowers. What can you,
a girl from the South that wages grief-bringing war,
where men who climbed to Heaven have been thrown
back into the dust where they belong,
give to we who have traded swords
for family life in the blackness of winter?

And the Shining One replied: Your words ring true,
but the God of War does not dine at my table.
I am Siha, a noble from Mitrav, cast from my homeland, cruel war’s victim.
My father it threw from our towers into the churning seas,
my mother it slashed into quarters as she prayed for peace,
my brothers it seduced until the wounds drained their bodies of blood,
my sisters it coaxed to take poison or be taken as captives,
my relatives it turned against each other until none stands alive.
If you desire a strong warrior in the peaceful North,
let me shake my sword free of ice and slash the heart of this beast;
if you desire a peaceful end, let me go about it another way,
let me return to my boat where I may devise a stratagem,
closing my door to the God of War.
I, too, wish for freedom from the bloody conflict
to the South, where the deeds of the fallen endanger your people’s future,
dragging us back into the dust we abhor.
I have traded my bloodlust for trickery,
and I will quicken the blood of your lineages.

Iahēta laughed, and people’s faces shone with joy.
Here they had found a champion,
a quick-witted girl from Mitrav who shunned the God of War.
Women showered her with hot lichen broth.
Men kissed her strong, cunning hands.
Children cried for joy that they would not find death so soon.
The Shining One, Siha, the noble girl from Mitrav,
left the council then for her strong ship,
accompanied by the seven strong warriors,
seven oarsmen who longed for the safety of the water,
but she left the seven gifts for our leaders to open at dawn.
There she devised a stratagem, closing her door to the God of War,
for she, too, wished for freedom from bloodshed
reigning supreme in the South, where those who had reached for Heaven
fell, ruining all with their brashness.
She had traded her bloodlust for trickery
and promised to restore our people to greatness.

Siha returned that evening from her ship
hours before the jaiska would come
from its lair in the ice forests to destroy more life.
Her seven warriors brought with them
large objects wrapped in cloth, mirrors to hold the jaiska at bay.
This she had devised as a stratagem to ruin it.
In a semi-circle her warriors placed the mirrors.
In a semi-circle the people gathered around to watch.
They worked long and hard at her trick, fingers
numb from the deep cold of winter, until she tore the cloths
from the mirrors and stared at her own reflection.
We will trap it with mirrors, she said, bringing peace to the people,
achieving freedom from the veil of death that
holds the South captive, where the fallen men drag the world
into the dust of ignorance, breaking all hope.
Let’s show them all that cunning minds can win.
Let’s show them that it will restore your people to greatness.

The jaiska would come soon,
the wandering one, the wanting one,
a bane of our people from the icy North,
the one so named because six is close to seven.
The jaiska would come on its six spindly legs,
it would grip our walls with six-fingered hands
and gobble our children with six sharp teeth.
Siha promised the night would not pass in horror,
and this night the jaiska would not do its evil work.
Siha promised we would not have to flee our new home,
running back to the South where the grasses grow high,
because she would bring it death in a mirrored trap.
Gladdened, we hoped she could bring freedom from death,
for we had come from the South where Heaven-stripped men
wrought war after a proud civilization’s collapse.
But we had traded the old world for peace,
laying foundations on virgin arctic snow.

One more thing Siha needed:
a child to feed the jaiska’s hunger.
At the edge of the forest, Siha unsheathed her sword.
She carved a young child from a block of ice,
perfect down to the smile on its sleeping face,
and wrapped it in layers of cloth.
Mothers everywhere tightened their hearts, so alive it looked!
Fathers covered their eyes with shame, so childlike it seemed!
Brothers and sisters averted their eyes, thankful they would not die.
Siha and the God of Tricks had played together in her youth.
He had taught her the ways of deception,
wondrous and terrible things that would now aid the people.
She could make the child cry without breath or life.
With heavy hearts, we wished the form to cloud the jaiska’s mind,
for we had come from the South and took falsehood for granted.
The ones who keep breath** had lied to us all,
so we had traded intrigue for simplicity,
establishing a just rule in a faraway land.

Now the jaiska came out of the ice forest,
the wandering one, the hungry one,
whom our people hated in the frozen North.
This creature liked the name jaiska we had bestowed,
for it always wanted more of our people’s flesh and blood.
It galloped over the tundra on its six legs.
Its six-fingered hands dug into the packed snow.
It bared its six sharp teeth to the aurora light.
Tonight, the jaiska thought it would bring more horror,
another night to relish in its fate-ordained work.
The jaiska saw the crying ice child in the snow.
It licked its lips and came forward for the kill.
These jaws brought death, but no hot blood trickled.
The jaiska had wished for another child to sate its hunger,
one of the strong children of the South who had escaped war,
but instead found Siha’s trickery.
It had traded the warmth of its lair
for certain death on the long winter night.

The jaiska reared its back four legs.
The jaiska clawed at the air with its front two.
It lifted his eyes to the mirrors, and its fury was good.
This creature would slaughter more children tonight,
one for each horrible tooth in its evil mouth.
Suddenly it saw the girl behind it, Siha of Mitrav,
she who had shunned the bed of War.
It saw the bark crown sitting atop her head,
and beauty shone from her cold-ruddied face.
To slash at her now would end the miracle before it.
What wondrous beings the children grew into!
It closed its mouth and looked at its own reflection,
the fur-coated monster who lived in the ice forest.
The jaiska wished he could be as the girl was now,
one of the strong women of the South who had escaped war,
but found himself less perfect.
Instead of nimble hands, he had thin claws.
Instead of compassion, his face showed fury.

Siha stood without fear,
no matter how much the jaiska whined
or gnashed his murderous teeth in pain.
The noble from Mitrav knew he saw her in the mirror.
The noble from Mitrav knew her face captivated all things.
This creature would slaughter no more children tonight.
Look at what you destroy, you jaiska. What do you desire now?
Even ugly children grow into fine adults.
Think of how many you have torn apart with those claws.
Better to die now than know yourself a murderer.
Jaiska! How about ruiner of all things beautiful?
Jaiska! The word should make even you laugh,
a bumbling idiot with finely-sharpened claws.
The jaiska cried out and wished his tongue could make speech,
words like those Siha from the South spoke now,
but no apology could erase the deaths.
Instead of speaking, he tore himself away.
Instead of repenting, he ran to the ice forest.

The jaiska never came again,
the wandering one, the wanting one,
like when our people first came to the plentiful North.
Sometimes we hear the jaiska howl six times,
for six is close to seven and thus always lacking.
Some say he lies in wait for stray travelers.
He carries them to the city walls on his strong back.
He will save the people’s children from the pitiless cold.
Many good deeds must happen to erase his sins,
many nights of aiding the people in our good work.
Many times the oldest among us have found him kinder
than the beasts of the South where grasses grow high and fruit
weighs down the branches, even though he murdered our kin.
We all wish for freedom from bloody warfare,
even the jaiska who has never seen the proud South fall,
a chance to raise ourselves from the dust.
We have traded terror and bloodshed
for a prosperous life on the fertile tundra.

* Jais is the Imāsmi word for “six,” and the suffix -ka indicates an adjective.
** The Imāsmi word for a tesekhaira is omāka, contracted from omē wa a̔̔ kah, or “one [who] keeps limitless breaths.” Omāka is pronounced “ow-MAA-ka” (with a soft a), and omē wa a̔̔ kah is pronounced “ow-MEH wa ha KAAH.”

Folio Two, Page Forty-Nine (svegra mos droskron tal-tusjga)

2010-12-14T16:45:00.001-05:00

While I showered my fear away, Senet sat just outside the water jets and told a story from his childhood about a carnivorous animal called a jaiska (with six legs to walk and six long fingers to grip the city wall and six sharp teeth to gobble up young children) that saw its reflection and wanted to become one of our people. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the ivy wall tiles. People outside Narahja don’t understand the open showers, and people outside the entirety of Tveshë don’t understand communally-used showers altogether. Senet probably came from one of those places where they pretended nudity didn’t exist.

“Did your mother tell any stories when she visited?”

I shook my head. As far as I could remember, she had mostly shared her passion for opera and the theater with me, but I always suspected that she had done more and I just couldn’t remember it.

“She brought me home an old-fashioned storybook once about a boy and a wishing tree.” It hadn’t contained music, so I had ripped it up. She never brought paper books home again. “But I watched a lot of shows on the television. We’d sometimes view them at the same time during a call. She hated Mercy and Justice, so we usually did Blossom Brook.”

Mercy and Justice is one of those programs that dates me. At the time, I loved watching the protagonists — a mother, her son, and the girl next door — fight crime from the basement of their apartment building. Everyone from the High Wilds was depicted as a shrewd, money-grubbing lawbreaker and every tradition-respecting Ameisi person — from Narahja or elsewhere — showed an unrealistic amount of altruism and intelligence. People would never permit their children to watch something so racist now, or so I understand from the radio dramas. Blossom Brook (which had existed for over thirty years by the time I was fifteen, so perhaps you’ve heard of it) followed a group of kids who fought imaginary creatures and absolved the unfinished business of ghosts. The Karatha always came at the end to take the children away, but some new group would take over. Some of the episodes gave my classmates nightmares.

I turned off the water and reached for the towel. Senet turned around, and I suppressed the urge to giggle. He probably showered in the middle of the night. “Do you miss watching programming with her?”

“I liked playing music for her more. She was always so sad and tired. It made her smile sometimes.”

“Do you know why she was sad?”

“She never told me.”

« Folio Two, Page Forty-Eight

Folio Two, Page Fifty »

Folio Two, Page Forty-Eight (svegra mos droskron tal-kot)

2010-12-09T23:23:00.001-05:00

“Eràsis?”

How could a hacker have made me so perfectly afraid? And no one would have believed me. It sounded perfectly crazy to think that someone had jetted the air like breathing or — or — but the beeping wasn’t a part of that. It sounded like a low alarm.

“I’m — I’m coming.”

As I walked to the door, I realized that I had wet myself. It seemed like such a boyish thing to do. Girls like me should have fainted or screamed. I grabbed a towel from the wardrobe and turned on orchestral music to overshadow the beeping.

When I opened the door, I saw Senet. He looked no different than before, but he was warm and soft and hu — not the thing in my wall screen or Nightofday1840. He didn’t know what to do when I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him close, but I bet he smelled the urine and saw the sweat beading on my forehead.

“I’m not sure —”

And then the tears came.

He stroked my head with his hand and pulled me closer. “Maybe we should clean you up while I retrieve your aunt —”

“No, don’t.” I looked up at him. If she knew, she would take the wall screen from my room or discipline me for even troubling him. “I think there’s something wrong with the screen in my room. It keeps — it keeps — the eye, it opens and I don’t know what to do, and sometimes things move when I’m not touching … I think someone’s there.”

Senet pushed me away and knelt until we were face-to-face. “How long has this happened?”

“Since … earlier this week.” I didn’t want to tell him the exact date. It felt stupid. “I think that someone’s trying to hurt me.”

“Why would they do that?” He moved beyond me into the room and looked at the screen. The eye was closed and the wall screen had gone to sleep around it. “Is this networked with the other computers in the house?”

“I don’t know.”

He turned on the wall screen. Everything from last night had disappeared; the final shutdown had reset everything, including the browsers. The messages would still remain, but if I didn’t log in, no one could find me.

“Not a word of this to anyone,” he murmured. “Did your mother use this machine while on holiday?”

“Yes, and her portable one.”

“I see.”

“Shut the door.”

He hit something and went into a blank screen with terminal commands, all of it written using the Tveshi alphabet, and switched keyboard settings. The characters on my board metamorphosed before my eyes, filling out the blank spaces until the entire alphabet manifested. Most of the output consisted of strings of numbers. Technical names in the output were common to both languages because we had developed the technologies together, but I still didn’t understand most of them.

While he wrestled information from the computer, I looked at the small glossy smear on the wardrobe door where my urine-dampened pants had brushed against it. It had come from the founder of our dynasty, my mother had said; she had carted it out of the middle depths. I felt so ashamed.

“Two different accounts have accessed this computer from beyond the household — one in the city and one in Galasu.” He smiled at me. More lines of information appeared.

“How can you get this stuff? Do you — do you work with computers?”

Senet shook his head. “Operating systems contain built-in parameters that allow the Karatha to retrieve important information. We can’t learn everything about a person, but … it’s helpful.”

“Can you see everything I’ve done?”

He met my eyes. It was like being drawn into the ocean and tossed about in the waves “No — Eràsis?”

“Ah …”

“What are you doing?” The end of his sentence was nearly an octave above the beginning, and a faint light pulsed from just beneath his skin. If I could only touch it —

It seemed too much like a fantasy story, or at least one of the more whimsical things coming down from the Tveshi religious texts. The tesekhairač, while essentially immortal, had no special powers and seemed to have more inhibitions than special abilities. Mere mortals with special abilities always had severe psychological problems. I didn’t want to go insane. Still, the light kept growing.

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t stare at me like that!”

I looked at the ground. The glow subsided. “Have you found anything else?”

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t know what to make of you, Eràsis, or understand why you weren’t screened properly — but I won’t make it public as long as you maintain the same confidentiality. Just never do that. It could kill you. Shit.”

“Okay.”

Senet closed out of the terminal and returned the screen to its normal function. “I enabled some basic locks on the computer to prevent outside interference. Talk to your aunt about upgrading the security on your network. She’s the only one with permissions. You would expect a family with so many political connections …”

“But you’d still be able to get into things, right?”

He changed the keyboard back. “Many of the things you’ve heard about us are wrong. The Taritit nearly wiped us out — thousands gone in just the first year. And yet everyone still expected us to find a way out of the Occupation. They killed us whenever we came out of hiding.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your family is in the Progressive Movement. Your founder hated us.”

“You mean Adviser Tenes Sari?” I scrunched my face up and turned away. “He must be a hundred by now. Everyone says people from the twenties were crazy. How old are you?”

“I’d rather not say.”

« Folio Two, Page Forty-Seven

Folio Two, Page Forty-Nine »

Folio Two, Page Forty-Seven (svegra mos droskron tal-pyes)

2010-11-22T12:29:00.001-05:00

As I opened the door to put my ksibja away, I felt hot breath on the back of my neck and saw something — a shadow, maybe — reflected in the doorknob as I fumbled with the lock. My fingers shook. I remembered seeing my reflection in the lens the previous night, my cheeks blue from the glowing wall screen. Everything had stopped, but perhaps it had found me. Maybe Nightofday1840 had apologized because he couldn’t protect me. To turn around seemed like a death sentence, but I felt a quiet gaze at the back of my neck —

“Who’s there?” I tried to whisper, but my voice box had stopped working. I shoved the door open and whirled into the room as fast as I could, shutting and locking the door behind me.

When I pressed my ear against the door, I heard something shuffle and shake. Looking through the lock revealed only an empty hallway.

I retreated farther back into the room until my back had pressed up against the wardrobe. The door pulsed when I looked at it—I thought I saw it breathe, and a shadow passed beneath it —— and all at once my wall screen turned on, flashing images of thunder and lightning, and the eye —! My pants felt wet.

From the closet, I heard beeping. Unlike everything else, this seemed the most real and concrete — this was the only thing I could rely on — but I had to find the source before it stopped forever. This time I knew it was coming from under the —

And then someone knocked on the door. My wall screen went dead. Maybe Anumë — but —

« Folio Two, Page Forty-Six

Folio Two, Page Forty-Eight »

Folio Two, Page Forty-Six (svegra mos droskron tal-pirh)

2010-11-22T12:20:00.001-05:00

Sukua and I exhausted all of the climbing spaces in the ravine behind my house in the hour between school and my ksibja practice. As we scrambled down from the last tree, his fingers slipped down the thick bark and grasped at the reddened leaves. He looked like someone struggling to swim against a current. From my perch, I saw all of the hand- and footholds he had missed. He wouldn’t have made them even if I had pointed them out.

The bell tolled. I was late, but we were close enough to home that it didn’t matter. I quickly made my way down and checked to make sure the fall hadn’t hurt him. Sukua looked on the verge of crying when I touched his ankle, but he seemed fine as he walked along the ravine towards home.

Ksibja practice that day meant working through pieces for a performance Aunt Nikis had booked for me at the Midnight Garden, one of the upper-class mood bars out on the sound, thirty minutes away by train.

But today, I hadn’t practiced as I should have and the notes wouldn’t come. The fast-paced glissandos and complicated networks of fermatas and accents tripped me up so badly that I had to slow down, something that had never happened before. I set the ksibja down on the bare bed and cried.

Domìntar played through the section once for me and stood to look out the window. I remember looking through tears at the lines in her forehead as she stared at me. “Have they pushed you hard in your classes?”

I didn’t respond. She meant to say, And how is Tveshi treating you? Have they made any recommendations to hold you back in the class? At my age, I didn’t understand what that meant, only it upset most of the adults I knew except Domìntar. The family needed to prime me for a position in politics, and Aunt Nikis said that I couldn’t expect to gain respect without knowing the national language by heart. What could I have told her about the late night and my fight for survival? It seemed more comfortable to acquiesce to the more believable lie — although, truth be told, I had almost failed our last oral check-up.

She poured herself some fruit juice and drank thoughtfully. “I would never recommend falling behind in your classes, but you have talent, kid, and you’re coming to that time in your life when you have to choose between what you love and what everyone else wants you to do. You’re clever enough to make it work.”

“But why do I have to choose now?” It seemed like the right thing to say — what any other seven-year-old girl would say in the months leading up to group sorting. “Can’t I wait?”

“I don’t make the rules, the school does. Something about kids your age needing to gain more social responsibility and have a stable peer group.” She smiled at me. Domìntar’s husband was a child psychologist on a five-year shift in space, she said, and the language he used in his letters drove her mad. I often thought of their correspondence like little lessons they each gave, him telling her all of that about child development and her sending off chords. It didn’t make much sense otherwise. “Sorry, Misjo again.”

She clapped her hands in time with the beats while I played the passage again. It came more smoothly, and I only muddled the notes twice — but that was shameful and wrong, and I either got it or didn’t.

“Tell you what,” she said. “We have two days before the performance. You can play some of the staples — we’ll only add this one if you get it right.”

« Folio Two, Page Forty-Five

Folio Two, Page Forty-Seven »

Folio Two, Page Forty-Five (svegra mos droskron tal-sjek)

2010-11-09T15:18:00.001-05:00

In those terrible moments of waiting, I heard a million demons brush down the corridor outside and not one bothered me. No shadow cast by the trees outside metamorphosed into a ravenous beast.

At some point, I fell asleep, and when my eyelids open morning rushed through the open curtains. The wall screen played its familiar alarm, and I saw no trace of my conversation with Nightofday1840. The eyelid had shut, leaving the screen clear and perfect.

From downstairs, I heard the normal sounds of people fussing about over the coming day and smelled spice cakes baking in the kitchen. No matter what had happened — no matter what anyone had said — I couldn’t be an adult at night and a child during the day. It was one or the other, and I had had it with all of the frightened and angry people screaming back and forth on the streams … at least, that’s the story I told myself. Maybe I couldn’t have handled the truth.

The truth is that I was scared. Even thinking about logging in again made my hands shake. I remembered the eye in my wall and that face — that face! — blinking through the static to look at me, though I couldn’t remember who or what it was. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to.

« Folio Two, Page Forty-Four

Folio Two, Page Forty-Six »

Folio Two, Page Forty-Four (svegra mos droskron tal-dros)

2010-11-02T15:49:00.002-04:00

My fingers sweat and I struggled to breathe. I had ceased looking at the screen; involuntarily, my eyes moved to the audiovisual encoder at the center of the wall. Aunt Nikis knew that a Niksubva needed privacy. She never used them, not unless we had done something wrong, to spy on us from afar. I had only ever seen the lid on that eye pull back during videoconferences with my mother.

But now — my heart palpitated —— I wrung my hands together and avoided the urge to kick and scream ——— they had violated so much ———— the eye reflected my own face back at me. From the corner of the screen, I saw a beeping orange indicator.

“Nightofday1840,” I whispered. “Are you there?”

The eye remained mute. Perhaps he only watched me. He must have understood me if he was any good at his job. He must have known.

A new message popped onto the screen.

Someone is watching you.

My hands shook so badly that I almost dropped the keyboard.

If not you, then who?

The screen filled with static. I had only ever seen a device do that once, an old video screen salvaged from Attara. Our history teacher had showed us that for comparison. See how bright Ameisa’s past was in comparison, not having to deal with static television before digital came out. If the Taritit had done one thing, it was to liberate us from the steps between steam power and wired consciousness.

I almost thought I saw someone in the grains.

Nightofday1840 said,

I’m sorry.

The screen went dead.

« Folio Two, Page Forty-Three

Folio Two, Page Forty-Five »

Folio Two, Page Forty-Three (svegra mos droskron tal-biet)

2010-10-27T00:42:00.003-04:00

At the last hour of night, I awoke to a pulsing light on my wall monitor. I didn’t understand what was going on at first — my head felt like it was filled with sand — and lay in bed watching it.

And then I bolted up.

Every account had been left open. Some people had taken my arguments to heart, and they combated the naysayers for me — but I only saw that through the pulsing white alerts. I had a message on my Scoop account, a gossip site.

The name was unfamiliar, but I hadn’t been treating the naysayers like people. Who they were didn’t matter as much as proving them wrong. This one had broken the protocol and messaged me internally.

His name was Nightofday1840, which I presume refers to the massacre at Blue Sky. He listed himself as male with no age or birth date visible, and his profile message said simply that he “knew things.”

Standing in the moonlight
The stars shine like lights
In an obsidian disk, nebulae
Hang wraithlike in the vastness.
From the Canyon Dark, you
See an image of the universe
Reborn as foliage and rock.
But one thing hangs above them
All — Fate cannot be bribed,
Not even with your lips against
The fruit that sustains the ages.

Keep your guard up, Niksubvya. I know who you are. They might, too.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would have gone to my aunt, but now I had no one. Whoever Nightofday1840 was, he knew my family name — or at least he had guessed it — and he threatened me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done this, I thought — but how could I go back now? Other people had taken up the sword where I had fallen.

I remember the exact words of Nightofday1840’s message, but I must paraphrase my own reply.

What are you insinuating, Nightofday1840? My family hates the Niksubvya House … we’ll bring them down any way we can, just you wait!

Masquerading as an enemy of the family made my heart sink. I was no better than Aneti.

He retorted in minutes.

Your life is not the only one on the line. Maybe I was mistaken about you — you do sound like a kid, by Yilrega! — but you should really be thinking about the future. Dunno why I thought otherwise … but your account is definitely coming out of the Niksubvya House. She may be your mom, but do you really think she would have liked this?

Most of the reply truly made no sense. I pinged a resource guide for assessing a computer’s security. He could only have found me through hacking, and — I couldn’t think about it without retching — I had seen a hacker in one of the children’s shows who had accessed the room’s audiovisual feeds remotely, and she had done so silently. Had Nightofday1840 seen me sleep? How could I protect myself from someone — and I did imagine the worst —— after all, I was only a child!

« Folio Two, Page Forty-Two

Folio Two, Page Forty-Four »

Folio Two, Page Forty-Two (svegra mos droskron tal-roh)

2010-10-19T19:58:00.002-04:00

My door remained locked that night.

Dustmaiden22 had a backlog of responses to take care of. Trolling took more care and precision than I had originally thought. Two people had blasted me for my Tveshi spelling, calling me an ignorant brain-dead corpse-fucker. I had to access the Kobsarka Knowledge Center’s online dictionary subscriptions to figure out most of the slang, but the AI filtered some of the definitions because my household access point didn’t have adult clearance. Not only did my poor understanding of Tveshi hurt things, but some people accused me of being under the minimum posting age.

I constructed my responses more carefully this time. Using the Knowledge Center’s subscriptions, I found idioms and quotations that sounded more adult to me and replaced some words with things I found in a thesaurus. After crafting three responses in two hours, I realized that the present and past tense of the verb “to be” were the same word. It just hadn’t occurred to me before.

The edits on Volume and KnowThat held.

« Folio Two, Page Forty-One

Folio Two, Page Forty-Three »

Folio Two, Page Forty-One (svegra mos droskron tal-itz)

2010-10-19T19:53:00.003-04:00

Senet arrived the day the storm broke. He didn’t carry much luggage with him, but the two bags he had were heavy. Kobeis and I took them upstairs while the family gathered to greet him.

We welcomed him in the traditional way, offering milk and fruit from one of the trays in the presence of our ancestors — the only time we would allow him into that room. Everything was scrubbed clean and polished, courtesy of a cleaning organization my aunt had hired to make everything presentable.

He wore a simple tunic and pants, cream-colored like his skin, and spoke softly. His face was lineless like a sculpture, but when he smiled at me laugh lines crinkled around his eyes. Senet had a glow about him like no Karatha I’ve met since. The best part about him was the silence. Unlike everyone else, he never said things just to keep the drone of conversation going, and for the most part he kept his opinions to himself — although once I did see him watch a gunslinger film when everyone else had gone to bed, the volume down so low that I almost didn’t realize anyone was using the entertainment center. How much of this was his real personality slipping through and how much of it was just the collective I never learned.

We had meat in his honor, that and a table piled high with every fruit endemic to the canyons and about seven or eight varieties of bread. It felt like greeting royalty. Senet chose to sit right next to me.

I felt myself warm up to him in spite of the secret glances from one or two of relatives — which I thought meant I shouldn’t speak too much or engage him in pointless discussions about the sky or school. Now that I have grown older, I know they didn’t want me to get hurt.

After the festivities ended, he politely excused himself and locked himself in his room. I heard someone whispering when I tiptoed past it to my own. When I opened my own door, he was standing behind me. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck and smell the strange perfume he wore, all musty and tart like fresh gobahja berries — but when I turned around, I saw no one.

« Folio Two, Page Forty

Folio Two, Page Forty-Two »

Folio Two, Page Forty (svegra mos droskron)

2010-10-05T23:05:00.001-04:00

The Regional Academy of Fire Dancing occupied one of the oldest buildings in the city, and it had even trained dancers during the Occupation. The Taritit had seen traditional Canyon dancing as a curiosity, and while they couldn’t tell the difference between the schools beyond what the dancers wore, they had allowed the old system of training and initiation to continue.

As you have always seemed mystified whenever I mention dancing, perhaps you have never given thought to the performances you have seen in the city. Go to any major square at the end of the week (with the exception of those weeks during monsoon season) and you will see one of the schools giving a demonstration of their craft. The schools each have an approach that matches their name. Shadow Dancers believe in the martial aspects of the craft, and their way of manipulating the shapes and moves was borrowed by the Tveshi Shadow Guard. The Rock Dancers do impressive footwork, and many of their postures emphasize balance. They keep low to the ground. You get the idea.

Now, Fire Dancers are more passionate than the rest. The school trains their dancers to be more flexible than all of the others combined, and sometimes the moves remind me a bit of those reckless idiots who string tightropes across ravines and do tricks for tourists. They always stay on the edge of what they can control. Their forms flow like flames shooting up a burning building.

People begin training for one of the dancing schools at three or four, but the dedicated can become masters even if they begin late—they just need a flexibility trainer. No once dances with real fire until they reach fifteen.

All of the schools also train musicians with almost the same rigor. Each of the dances — or speeches, as they are called when we don’t borrow words from Tveshi — has its own requirements for key, rhythm, and chord progressions, but the musician may innovate as he or she likes. That Sukua had made it in even with his family’s reputation spoke to his talent.

I remember the light rain hissing against the concrete as I walked up the steps and the perfume-laden flowering ivies that clutched against the sides of the building, the birds staring down at me from the middle of the street. A train whined down the street behind me, shaking my image in the antique windows. The downtown Kobsarka houses squished together all along the block on either side.

One of the street sweeper robots stopped in front of the Academy and looked up at me. The sight chilled me. I pressed my hand against the door and jiggled it open. Inside was hot — almost unbearably so — and I felt myself break into a sweat just standing in the doorway.

Two girls about my age sat on benches in the corridor. We probably went to school together, but I hardly remembered anyone from my class. They all had something wrong with them — words can’t describe how I felt seeing them — and sometimes it seemed mad that I had to stay with them for years. It was like something in my head kept turning and propelling me forward and everyone else remained trapped behind me, blinking in the dust. It wasn’t very team-oriented of me to be so smart.

They whispered something to each other and ran off, hair bobbing behind their heads. Another train passed by outside.

Sukua rushed out behind a gaggle of other children, sticking to the shadows. I poked him as he went past me. He stumbled and fell to his knees.

“What’d you do that for?”

“You told me to meet you here, remember?”

“Not inside!” He jumped to his feet and whirled around to face me. “Hey, I thought your eyes were blue.”

I put my hands in my pockets and looked down at the woodwork. “We got a new shipment of contacts in. Need to make a good match, or so my cousin says. Too much blue in the family, even though we’ve always been clean.”

“That’s stupid.”

I looked down. “My mom used to say I had eyes like my Dad, whoever he was. But everything will be all right now. So what do you want to do? We could go to the ravine and muck about for a while. I know a place where we can get berries.”

“Sounds good.”

We grabbed hands and walked out the door. The rain came down harder now, but every kid from the Canyons plays outside during monsoon season. By the time we’d gone half a block, it had plastered our clothes to our skin.

Water rushed down in the ravine in a huge surge, so we couldn’t go down, but we climbed some overhanging trees and sat close to each other, looking up at the dark afternoon sky. I could hardly hear him over the deluge, and then it started hailing and I wished we’d gone someplace inside — but inside meant someplace where other people would see us.

I climbed up the slick branches until they creaked in protest beneath me, always pushing to see how far I could go before they sent me tumbling down. Climbing and pressing into places others didn’t or couldn’t go made me feel accomplished, the closest thing to disappearing into nothingness. Sukua couldn’t keep up.

We left after about an hour of climbing, but we came back the next day and the next until the storm broke and the waters receded. We gathered stormberries along the water and sold them to the tourists downtown until we had enough money for rail fare, and then we went into Menarka where no one recognized us — but I get ahead of myself.

« Folio Two, Page Thirty-Nine

Folio Two, Page Forty-One »

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Nine (svegra mos bietkron tal-tusjga)

2010-09-28T21:14:00.001-04:00

No one noticed me slip through the kitchen door. The house had fallen quiet, just like the woodlands after a big storm has swept through.

The first thing I did — after getting refreshment from the fridge because the AI didn’t care and I was famished — was to lock myself in my room and activate the wall screen. My aunt had locked out all of the brutal news, but I could still get some of the major stories and religious things without alerting her or asking someone over fifteen for permission.

It makes me sick with awe and horror to this day, seeing my mother’s face plastered everywhere. She looked so much like me when she was younger that I almost thought it was me plastered up there, except our eyes were different. I saw her in photos with other people from the Progressive Movement, old men long dead and young people now graying in prominent Movement positions, but the stories remained the same: Salus, our Mother of Narahja, is dead, but her spirit lives on.

They called her the Protector of Trains and Our Lady of Progress. The people had started calling her Maigyenezhai, Virgin Enthroned. My fingers trembled against the input and I almost felt like screaming.

If my mother had never had connections with men, it meant that I couldn’t exist. They had forgotten about me.

I sat down on the bed and scrunched my face up tight, but every now and then I peeked up at the news reports and saw something different. I screamed into a pillow to keep people from hearing and beat the mattress. The girl reflected in the mirror looked like a mad thing, a villain, her face all red and blotchy and unladylike. But I was through with being a lady in miniature.

Using the name dustmaiden22, I trolled every article related to the hysteria surrounding my mother and asked about her daughter. I went onto the two competing crowd-sourced encyclopedias, Volume and KnowThat, where I edited the page about my mother to include a small section about her daughter. When people flagged the changes two hours later, I even provided sources that almost everyone had overlooked: the music discovery article and the audio feed from the procession to the crematorium. If anyone argued with me, I yelled at them.

In short, I turned into a seven-year-old self-propagandist.

No one is more selfish than a seven-year-old girl fighting for her mother’s memory. An older child would have had self-control. She would have thought through her actions, ever mindful of the stress the complete revelation would give others. Perhaps she wouldn’t have tried to manipulate the system just because she could.

« Folio Two, Page Thirty-Eight

Folio Two, Page Forty »

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Eight (svegra mos bietkron tal-kot)

2010-09-21T14:45:00.002-04:00

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.”

« Folio Two, Page Thirty-Seven

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Nine »

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Seven (svegra mos bietkron tal-pyes)

2010-09-14T23:14:00.003-04:00

Akarsi led me to Sukua, the servant in tow. I don’t even remember the halls we passed through or the stairs because the most insignificant things completely overloaded my senses — the fabric brushing over my legs, hushed voices behind large wooden doors, even the thud of Akarsi’s feet on the ground.

We passed from the corridor into a wide, open space filled with light. I thought it came from outside, but the sky was pregnant with rain. The room’s designer had incorporated full-spectrum lights into the windows.

Sukua stood in that fresh light, clutching the mallets for a large wooden xylophone. A robotic music stand shifted pages of smart paper for him while he played a complex sequence of arpeggios. Each scale transition made my head feel like it was cracking open, and I couldn’t help but bring my hands to my head and cry out. Music poured out of my ears and burned through the floor.

The servant stopped Sukua and handed him a cold vial. I don’t know what passed between them or if it had happened before, his Matriarch bringing girls up to see him and drugging them both to make connections happen. Maybe they did it all the time. He was a bit young.

Akarsi remained sober. She waited for the servant to arrange cushions for her on the floor while he drank, and when she sank down she hardly moved.

I knelt on the floor and took my ksibja from its nest. The moment I touched the strings, I felt the potentiality of the notes. My mind vaguely recalled another time when this had happened — in the distant past, perhaps, when I was almost too young to remember — but this time I knew that I could reach out and touch the music. I could make the air tremble. My fingers touched the strings — the light on them danced; — I knew that I had seen notes slam through the air before.

The experience terrified me, but the mood drugs contained something to prevent any bad trips. Before the emotion lessened, I wished that someone could be there to stop me. I was too young to be left alone.

Somewhere in the room, hesitant fingers struck a xylophone. They were timed less than a thirty-second note at 128 beats per minute after my note changes, off enough to jar me back into some self-control.

In the canyon dark, there is nobody to save you. That’s what I meant, Nishet, when I said you were lucky to have a family who pulled you back, even though you tried to run. And that’s all right, too. I hope you found what you were looking for in the end.

Sometimes when I think about that day, the room filled with light is dark and the sky outside is bright as our sun, and my mother shrieks in the shadows. She tears at me as I play, tearing at my arms with her ghostly claws — half god, half nightmare — and cries out, but the darkness has sucked the air from her lungs. It is true that the melody I played that day was more melancholy than anything I have attempted since, rolling like tears down a boy’s cheeks.

« Folio Two, Page Thirty-Six

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Eight »

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Six (svegra mos bietkron tal-pirh)

2010-09-08T22:24:00.002-04:00

I bowed my head. My cheeks flushed with shame. “No, she does not.”

She lifted one of her tentacles and touched the back of my head. I shuddered and couldn’t help but think how she went to the bathroom. Did the urine run down them? Did she have to squat?

“It is probably best that your family remain unaware of your connection for the time being. You have liberty to travel where you like in the house, although you must stay away from the locked doors and the place where we do our business. I have tokens for you, Eràsis Niksubvya. You may stand.”

I scrambled to my feet and avoided staring at her tentacles. Instead, I looked at the tattoos lacing up her arms in the traditional sinuous style and the sheer clothing over her breasts. She must have worn something baggy to meetings. The tentacles would have just scared people.

An attendant came up behind her with a towel and scrubbed her long, loose dreadlocks, while another approached with a large box.

The woman took it in her arms and opened it with two of the tentacles. I saw two short swords, each about the length of three-quarters of an adult arm. “Take one of them and feel it. You will have no shame in it — they are gifts from my family to yours, made in your honor. The blades are made of a super strong titanium alloy. Only the best for the child of a new goddess.”

I picked out one of the short swords and unsheathed it. The blade was lighter than most, and I adored the feel of it in my hand. “My mother was Salus, Adviser Nitannyi.”

“Trust a child not to watch the news.” She smiled at me. “She answered a woman’s prayer. You’re too young to know how these things go, but I suggest paying attention. The world is yours, but only if you take it, child.”

When I put the sword back, Akarsi held her breath. “Thank you. What may I call you?”

“Matriarch Fædeim. I am pleased that you like the gift.”

She smiled and set the present on the floor in front of me. I lifted it up. The box made my arms sag, but I could manage it in front of her. The Matriarch of one of the other families on our street had given my cousin Kobeis several headdresses for when she married as a similar token. It meant that the family wanted to solidify its connections with mine, possibly through marriage but also politically.

The Matriarch beckoned the first servant to come forward again. This time, she carried a tray with several color-coded shot glasses, each labeled in immaculate handwriting beneath its section. They looked like the liquid in the endrai bottle Nikis kept in her office, but each of them smelled very pleasant.

“Your Progressive Movement wants to tighten the restrictions on these mood-enhancing drugs,” the Matriarch said, “but we are not so strict in this family. We would like your opinion on a new taste we have developed — happy with a tinge of bitterness, sorrowful with a hint of malice, or ecstatic. You may make a choice. The portion size has been tailored to your biometrics.”

I looked at the servant and wondered what her name was or if she had a family. She still wore the gyena, so she had not yet married. I wondered if the family made her happy or if she just worked here to support her family someplace else. Did they give her mood-enhancing drugs to keep her quiet and docile?

The servant lowered the tray to my level. My fingers danced in front of each of them. I knew that I didn’t want to taste sorrow — it would have only worsened my feelings — but I now wish that I had. Instead, I touched the one labeled ecstatic and lifted it from the tray to my lips.

It tasted synthetic, but they had flavored it with citric acid and some sweeteners to take away the bite. It surged down my throat. I couldn’t wait to taste the results.

When the effect started, it burst through my body like a flower and hummed just beneath my skin. I felt like I had felt that first night when I saw the ksibja players on the stage. The notes stretched out into infinity and silent music hummed through the air. Everything dissolved into components. I stood outside of myself watching the blood beat through my veins, pumping more and more of the drug into my brain where it flamed through my receptors. I wanted more.

« Folio Two, Page Thirty-Five

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Seven »

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Five (svegra mos bietkron tal-sjek)

2010-09-02T11:07:00.002-04:00

“No, he plays the xylophone for the Regional Academy of Fire Dancing,” she said. “They make sequestered children have at least one community activity, and the dancers were the only ones who would take him.”

“I can’t believe that people would hate you all so much,” I said.

Akarsi shrugged her shoulders and pushed against a wooden door, her hands slipping down painted figures outlined in gold etching. The air suddenly smelled spicier, and I heard someone singing one of the hymns we give to the Canyons. Each household had its own rituals, and my family did not honor the life-giving Canyons on the same day.

When I walked through the door, I expected to see a garden with a tree or a fountain at the center with the small, labyrinth-carved boulder just beneath it, weather-worn. Their courtyard looked like a pleasure garden. The walls had all been knocked out, replaced with transparent panels through which water roared. Small iridescent fish and rainbow jellyfish swam in the current among a haze of green kelp and seaweed that poked up from the bottom. The rocks lining the bottom looked like fool’s gold.

They had replaced the traditional courtyard with a completely closed greenhouse and swimming area. The bottom of their pool glistened ruby red and emerald green, sapphire blue and diamond white. At the center of the pool, a mesh catwalk covered in flowering ivies opened up into a circle where the stone stood. Two girls made oblations of milk there, dressed all in white, faces streaked with ash.

I had never seen such an ostentatious display of wealth in my life. It made me draw inward. I closed off my body, touching the children’s clothes that had been worn in my family for generations, and thought about what this could mean.

The distraction came quickly. I saw a woman in the water — or at least I thought she was a woman. She had Akarsi’s eyes and gently sloping forehead. Something about the way she moved in the clear-as-glass water bothered me more than anything. It took me a few moments to realize why.

She had replaced her legs with tentacles.

We had often joked about people like this at school — the ones too stupid to realize that it was cheaper and less permanent to create a supplemental skin for yourself than to alter your own physical body — and their insipid subculture. Posties, we called them, for post-human.

As she came out of the water, I felt my hands shake and hid them behind my back. She reared like a frightened daraiga. The surgery must have been intense.

“So this is the girl who has captured my nephew’s heart,” she said. Her eyes were half-mad. “You’re the Niksubvya bastard, aren’t you?”

Akarsi poked me in the back. I pitched forward onto the ground. My hands stung when they hit the tile, but I held back any sound. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Does your Matriarch know that you have come here?”

« Folio Two, Page Thirty-Four

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Six »

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Four (svegra mos bietkron tal-dros)

2010-08-25T18:58:00.002-04:00

Instead of going home, I stopped about a block from our house at the large granite walls that separated the Fædeim family from the rest of the world. Through the front windows high above the low-hanging fruit trees, I saw the murkiest shadows through the sheer gold curtains and heard faintly-playing music from an operatic recording.

They hadn’t put up the granite walls to keep people out, but to keep themselves like water in a jar. The wrought iron gates stood open and gaping as they had done since my earliest memories of standing in front of the complex, wondering if I dared go in. All of us kids in the neighborhood avoided it, and mothers clutched their snugly-wrapped babies close to their chests, covering the infants’ eyes as though the blurry sight of those walls would take their breath away.

The Fædeim family had hundreds of patents in the synthetic mood drug industry. They had made a fortune exporting it to the High Wilds and around Ameisa. Their company name was Wild Vine Enterprises, a nod in the direction of recreational mood drugs’ humble beginnings in the temples of Yilrega where the milkvines dripped their elixir into vats for their followers. No one but the devotees had drunk from them until the Taritit restricted alcohol, but suddenly everyone had plants growing in their windows and courtyards.

The exterior of their house showed a certain opulence that my family had never wanted to convey. They employed at home-servants, including someone whose only job seemed to be dusting and opening the door for people wishing to enter. A robot would have been classier and more cost-effective.

“New money smells,” Anumë had said once at the table. I imagine that they were new money, even in 1903 — seventy-seven years after we kicked the Taritit out and they started that enterprise. But the animosity ran deeper than that.

Everyone hated the Fædeim family, even those who tipped vials of “melancholic with a hint of irony” for their lovers’ weddings or “bitterly happy” at closed family events to keep the sting fresh.

Their attendant answered the door almost immediately. “I want to see Akarsi tal Fædeim,” I said, just as Sukua had instructed. “We go to school together?”

I looked beyond him into the foyer. Several businessmen from the High Wilds waited there, casting suspicious glances my way and speaking a strange jumble of syllables that I couldn’t understand. One of them was so tall that his head almost touched the ceiling.

“May I have a name?”

“Eràsis from the Niksubvya family.”

He left me in the foyer with the foreigners. I tried not to look at them, but my gaze strayed to the strange patterns on their shirts and the unsightly hair on their faces.

Akarsi came just when I thought I could stand them no longer. She had dark skin like the rust-colored flowers on the vines along our road, the ones that snapped up insects and the small gelatinous critters that came out after dark, and wore the mark of Yilrega on her forehead in good henna dye. It looked like she’d done it herself in the mirror. As for height, she stood a few heads higher than me, which wasn’t hard by any stretch of the imagination — but of course Akarsi was already eleven or twelve at this point, old enough to get screened into the less intense Dream Gardens, old enough for the gyena.

She smiled and said, “Hello, Eràsis. You can come in if you like — just be quiet, Dad’s in a meeting.”

“Thank you.”

We walked along the corridor to the central garden. She never once glanced down at me. “I know you came here to see my cousin,” she said. “What do you know about him?”

“He gave me change for the funeral. I had to take the train. I was late. I — is he a dancer?”

« Folio Two, Page Thirty-Three

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Five »

Band Promotion: The Whitewater Festival

2010-08-18T21:24:00.000-04:00

This is a part of Tapestry’s promotional material for the Whitewater Festival Concert, which happened early in its career.

The band frequently used words and phrases with ecstatic connotations in order to compete against other activities, such as the Dream Gardens and the worship services for Yilrega. The experience Eràsis had with an Oracle must have encouraged this approach.

More specifically, she makes a subtle play on words and iconography. The Narahji word for tapestry, sùmbha or sàmbha depending on the dialect, sounds much like the word sombha, or world. These words are often contrasted in traditional Narahji poetry because some creation stories describe Gyisfen weaving the worlds together with rainbow threads from primordial spiders and worms. The rainbow coloring on this advertisement only proves the connection.

The Whitewater Festival happens at the peak of monsoon season, when the rivers and streams have reached their apexes, and originally was designed to propitiate the Gods against flooding and mudslides. Since the Restoration, the festival has become more like a carnival, with bands and improvisational acting troupes performing all across the Canyons in large tents while the rain pours down. Tapestry was the keynote band two years in a row.

A Tveshi translation follows the image.

TAPESTRY

[logo]

Masàra Docks, Eighth Hour

Whitewater Festival

see the world

encounter the all

find your fire

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Three (svegra mos bietkron tal-biet)

2010-08-17T22:19:00.001-04:00

The entire block smelled like incense, and the air was thick with smoke and spices from the open air market close by. While my family lived in a very bourgeois portion of town, this was the heart of the suburb’s historic district with buildings going back before the Invasion and the Occupation, and the houses were enormous. It was only accessible by bike or microrail or on foot.

I had enough money in my pocket to buy a bath at the Temple of Sahamatsra and a small votive statue to give for use of the Oracle, which they kept in a bronze box beneath the temple’s icon. I didn’t need a summer career fair to tell me what I wanted from life. I could taste it beneath my tongue like a coin for the dead, feel it shudder in my bones and sing through my blood like a major scale arpeggio, but thinking about it made me feel sick. Besides, the heroines from the stories always consulted the Gods before doing anything.

Most Oracles are people. In our region, there are three temples dedicated to Sahamatsra with small boxes that contain bones way back when Menarka was still a dream. Some claimed that Sahamatsra had preserved the bones of one ksibja player, inscribing each with the enigmatic phrases in the language the world spoke before people came. According to the myths, Kobsarka’s temple had the thighbones of Sahamatsra.

I let the attendants bathe me and drip the milk onto my ksibja. One of the priestesses who had known my mother accompanied me right up to the icon.

“We don’t usually take these out for kids,” she said.

“I know.”

“And sometimes the answers you get won’t be what you want. You understand that, right?”

I nodded.

She handed me a thin sheet of copper and waited while I inscribed my question, then wrapped it around the figurine for me and placed it beside the statue with all of the others. I watched her take the box from the front and shake it vigorously, waiting for the bones to fall into place. I picked three from the top.

“Something will happen to you,” she said when she looked at the first one. “This one signifies motion in a direction, often against one’s will, and a conflict of some kind that you will never see directly. It’s someone you’ll grow to trust.”

“And the second one?”

“A person. You need to find them. They will — the last one says new directions. You need to find someone who will take you in a new direction. He will come quite suddenly when you need him the most, a sunbeam venturing into the thick of your storm. The three symbols are all very masculine. Masculine energy is turbulent and violent — not good for building homes, nations, or dynasties, but excellent for spinning legends out of air. You should remember that.”

It seemed like an awfully vague statement for so much preparation, and it disappointed me like nothing else to learn that Oracles or interpreters didn’t behave like they did on television with the flashing lights and differently-pitched voices, all cloaked in darkness and mystery. No wonder everyone had flocked to the endocrine-drugged raves in the Temple of Yilrega or the local corps of musicians dedicated to Gamgyatsahagia. They’d profiled both on one of the local news stations. Maybe I should have gone there, but they would never have allowed someone as young as me.

“Thank you,” I said.

« Folio Two, Page Thirty-Two

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Four »

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Two (svegra mos bietkron tal-roh)

2010-08-10T20:57:00.002-04:00

Anumë went to the wardrobe and looked through the clothes. She picked out one or two items and held the ensembles up against me with a thoughtful look in her eyes. “Your mother’s belongings have transferred to you. She stated that quite clearly in the personal will. She had to provide for you somehow.”

“What?”

She smiled. “Never mind.”

“What do you want from there?”

“I want nothing from her,” she said. “Go through the pockets and make sure she left nothing in them. There will be a shipment from her apartment in Galasu coming in a few days. You must go through that as well. The boxes will be sent up to your room.”

Someone elsewhere in the house had started screaming, probably one of the really young kids. Our house was almost never quiet except in the darkness of night. “But I’m just a kid. Won’t someone want to help me?”

“She used the Progeny Clause to will everything to you instead of the family. Quite frankly, her trick was brilliant. The less we know about what she did, the better,” Anumë said. “Besides, some people in this house have oil-greased fingers. Keep your door locked.”

She meant herself, of course. I had known about her doublespeak long enough to understand. It meant that somewhere in the house — on whichever private channel Nikis hid the camera screens — she sat and watched us in the darkness, studying our mouths for evidence that everything she wanted Anumë to communicate had been said. Anumë wouldn’t have hidden theft from me. She would judge me by what I did or did not do to stop her.

As soon as she left, I locked up the cupboards and changed all of the passwords to the storage compartments by the room. The AI let me do everything. Perhaps it had forgotten my earlier transgressions against the family.

I wouldn’t check the pockets for Salus’s things, not this close to her death.

From one of the cabinets, I took my ksibja case and slung it over my shoulders. It poked up behind my head like the crests on the mara birds that had built a nest outside my windows the previous year. I imagined for a moment that my arms were wings and that I was diving down, down, down — but I always stopped thinking before that turn up. The rushing water I imagined below terrified me.

About half of the household had gathered downstairs to play card games or Three Armies, a Narahji strategy game that had taken off during the Occupation as an acceptable and cheap way to spend the evening. Nikis hadn’t activated the AI in the front foyer, so no one noticed me slip out.

Outside, I took a deep breath of the fresh summer air and opened my arms to the bowing sun. The trees’ red leaves brushed against the concrete sidewalks, branches sagging. Purple-tinged creeping ivies along the road closed their mouths as a commuter pod train passed by. We had always battled against the forest, even here, and this is the first time in my memory that it seemed the darkness of the Canyons would win out over everything. I saw the overgrown ruins of Kobsarka in my head and prayed that my children would never see it.

You must suspect the route I took from my house, Nishet, but you’re wrong. I took the high road to the block down by the old university outpost where they taught swimming and had the summer career fair to encourage the young kids to choose what they wanted to do in violation of their families’ hopes.

« Folio Two, Page Thirty-One

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Three »

Folio Two, Page Thirty-One (svegra mos bietkron tal-itz)

2010-08-03T13:49:00.001-04:00

After our last experience alone together, I needed to use what I could to keep her from hurting me. I activated the AI protocols for guests loudly so she could hear before letting her in. She strode in like a princess, hands on her hips and a big, earnest smile on her face. She left soot fingerprints on the door when she closed it, and I realized that she must have been the one tending the fires all night.

She cleared her throat and twisted her hands together, not looking at me but at the wall behind me where the AI Sentry was embedded in the wall. “I take it that you feel awful about what happened with Senet.”

“I thought the Karatha did nice things.”

Anumë sighed. “Our family is too important for that.” She took a necklace out of her pocket and dangled it on her wrist. The elaborate carvings identified it as a spirit guardian, which people sell outside of the temples in Menarka and most other Canyon cities. “One of them would have wiggled its way into our house eventually. Don’t be too hard on yourself. They manipulate everyone.”

“But Aunt Nikis — I saw her today and she looked at me like —”

“You know that I hate you, Eràsis.” She threw the spirit guardian on the floor between us. I winced. “But you must listen to me. Sacrifice that guilt. Pray for forgiveness if you have to.”

“For forgiveness?”

“You are not your mother.” She cleared her throat. “She always said what she meant. Everyone else had to clean up for her because she never understood that living by principles wouldn’t end well. You need to make Senet like you.”

I looked down at the pendant and back up at her, unsure of the correlation. “Why?”

“The Karatha have influence everywhere. Every country, every town — you just can’t escape from things you do to them, and they can communicate with each other as fast as lightning. Keep him close to you. Do it for your family, and if that doesn’t strike your fancy, do it to save Salus.”

“You’re not the boss of me.”

“No. Nikis is, and she will curse you to the depths of hell if anything bad comes of this.”

“What’s the pendant for?”

She cleared her throat. “The magus said it would help others overlook your social gaffs. It contains an invocation to Yilrega as the bestower of friends. Not that I believe it will work.”

“Why not?”

“Endocrine drugs are my weapons of choice. Almost everyone reacts to them. I’m not sure about the Karatha or the nuamua, and I wouldn’t dare try.” She chuckled and looked down at the floor. “Besides, I thought you’d be a throwback like Aunt Salus. She hated using technology. Hell, she spent a while writing on old-fashioned paper before she got too busy to keep journals.”

“Mom wrote her life down in books?”

“Dozens. I’m not sure where she left them. Maybe they got burned.”

“Why?”

“When you get popular enough, you have to sacrifice the fragments you’ve left behind. Anyone could find them and publish them. Your career and family would be finished.” She looked past me at the open wardrobe. “What were you doing with her clothes?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Just making sure everything was still there.”

« Folio Two, Page Thirty

Folio Two, Page Thirty-Two »

Folio Two, Page Thirty (svegra mos bietkron)

2010-07-28T13:06:00.002-04:00

I stayed up there for hours. Around the house, I heard slamming doors and shouts from almost everybody. Through the glass ceiling, I saw billowing gray smoke from the prayer room.

The fires stayed lit until noon the following day. I returned from school to a scrubbed home. Only my room remained untouched out of respect for the dead. I crawled into my mother’s wardrobe and leaned against the boards, breathing in the still-strong smell of her perfume and sweat and skin. “You shouldn’t have left me here with these people,” I whispered. “How am I ever going to know right from wrong without you to guide me?” Tears streamed down my cheeks. She never would have kept things in the shadows, at least not for long — except for me.

As my weeping subsided and I surrendered to the afternoon stillness, I became aware of a faint beeping noise below my feet. She had always kept the bottom of her wardrobe clean, whereas my storage section looked like tornado fallout. I saw no electronic devices, just solid wood and a small box of ornamental pins and chains to keep loose-hanging gyenya in place.

I opened the door and ordered the lighting fixtures to bend enough to shine into the wardrobe. Everything seemed smooth, and I couldn’t find a depression. I knocked on it once, twice, a third time — nothing happened. It made me want to cry. I couldn’t remember any of the things people did on television.

The beeping stopped. Perhaps she had a weight alarm on the bottom of the wardrobe.

Just then, I heard a knock at the door. “Who is it?”

“Anumë. May I come in?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. The AI would have alerted family members if I tried to lock her out, but seeing her made me feel like a bird in a cage. What would she break this time? “What do you want?”

“I need to speak to you about something. It’s important.”

She sounded urgent, but I didn’t want to see her alone. “We can meet in the courtyard,” I offered. “Whatever you want to say, you can say there.”

“We need to speak alone.”

« Folio Two, Page Twenty-Nine

Folio Two, Page Thirty-One »

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Nine (svegra mos rokron tal-tusjga)

2010-07-20T22:58:00.002-04:00

Matriarch Nikis cleared her throat and looked at each of us in turn. The look in her eyes made the hair on my arms stand on end. “In our family, we have a tradition of keeping secrets from one another and from the world at large. The death of our sister Salus has brought some of these things into the public eye. Ordinarily, scandals bring only the attention of the vermin in the press, but the visibility of our family and the amount of time we have kept it under wraps has attracted the attention of certain members of society at large.

“At the reception, some of you may have seen the ghost” — ghost being a slang term we called people with pale skin, as established in the epic Impermanence — “who chaperoned our own Eràsis at the funeral reception. His name is Senet, and he is a member of the Karatha.”

Kurannyi looked as though she might faint. “The Karatha usually send someone to official receptions when someone’s important enough. Why should this mean anything to us?”

“Senet asked to board with us. As you are well aware, I could not have refused — it would have seemed suspicious, such an absurd breach of hospitality. Combined with recent events, I believe that he has been assigned to us by whoever is in control of them to spy on the family. Now, none of what they find will be usable in a court of law, but the Children of Sehìnta have their own infrastructure of retribution that none of us wants to trifle with.”

My face grew hot. I wondered why she hadn’t told me the truth — that I had invited Senet to live with us. He couldn’t be as bad as she makes him out, I thought. Senet was a perfect gentleman to me.

“Some of us here have made pacts and agreements that the Karatha would not like. Others have taken actions they might find untoward. We have arranged for him to move in following the end of this week. I suggest that you relocate any compromising materials.

“Furthermore, I cannot stress enough that our family must appear stable. We must present the appearance of acting with one mind. To this effect, I would encourage those of you who have spent time and energy cultivating rivalries with other family members to desist. I will not tolerate any more destruction of our family.

“And I’m sorry, Hiret, but this means that you must patch up the disagreement with your wife. You have lived for the past two years under my roof and have not once set forth in her house. I will give you two weeks to get back in her good graces and reestablish your commitment to her family. Otherwise, we will annul the marriage and you will join my son in the bachelors’ quarters.”

Hiret looked a bit ill, and several people repressed their laughter. Anumë whispered something in her husband’s ear that made him frown.

“Do you have any questions?”

This was the boring part. Every time we had an emergency meeting about anything, practically everyone would chime in with advice on how they would handle the situation. Thank Gods Nikis had decided not to put something to a vote.

As for me, I curled up deeper into the branches and tried not to let anyone see how upset everything had made me.

« Folio Two, Page Twenty-Eight

Folio Two, Page Thirty »

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Eight (svegra mos rokron tal-kot)

2010-07-13T20:07:00.002-04:00

That afternoon, I didn’t meet with Sukua, but I sent a message with his cousin.

Matriarch Nikis had called an emergency meeting in the garden — the only place where all of us could gather in relative comfort. My ksibja lesson ended early, so I got there first and climbed up into one of the fruit trees, leaving space low in the branches for the other kids.

Aunt Nikis didn’t seem to comprehend someone was there. She paced up and down the ivy path without even glancing at the tangles of blue and white flowers creeping up the arbors and down the path, and she crushed more than a few underfoot. Every now and then, she took a piece of paper out of her pocket and took out her reading glasses. I watched her practice her bearing in the relative seclusion. Seeing her like this made my stomach tighten, and I almost wished I’d told Domìntar, my music instructor, to take me through one of the pieces again.

This seems as good a place as any to go through a list of the household, and it will provide a starting place for the future additions and subtractions. We had my mom’s sister, Teinar, and her husband Nikoa, both retired. Nikoa spent most of his time in the recreation room yelling at the television. The two of them were responsible for Anumë and Hiret, who were both dysfunctional in radically different ways. Anumë had married a hulk of an athlete, Deimoa, who had family connections in the State Office, and together they’d had Kobeis and Kepus.

Aunt Nikis came from the other half of the maternal family, and she had had two sons. The first, Moha, still lived with us; Karatau had married into one of the families down the street, and we almost never saw him. His daughter Lelais went to school with me.

Other than that, we had three distant relations from the Taltsuya family in residence, along with two orphans that Nikis had adopted, also distant relations of ours — Meihannyi and Khatein. They were several years older than me. We also boarded a paternal relative named Kurannyi, along with my ksibja tutor, Domìntar.

Almost everyone in the family had involved him- or herself in politics. We had a lot of skeletons in the closet, more than any of us kids could have conceived.

Everyone trickled in as slow as the Nara river. Khatein and Meihannyi sat in the low branches of the tree, and Kobeis sat in front of the fountain at the center of the cobblestone labyrinth that went through the gardens. She knew how to climb trees, but Anumë would have freaked.

Nikis stopped pacing as soon as most of the adults had arrived. She stood beneath the arbor with her hands clutching the wrought iron around her. I thought she looked more like someone bracing for a halting train than a matriarch about to give a speech. Dignity had always seemed very easy for her, but not now.

“I have something important and terrible to tell you,” she said.

« Folio Two, Page Twenty-Seven

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Nine »

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Seven (svegra mos rokron tal-pyes)

2010-07-06T13:55:00.003-04:00

“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.”

« Folio Two, Page Twenty-Six

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Eight »

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Six (svegra mos rokron tal-pirh)

2010-06-29T21:38:00.002-04:00

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.”

« Folio Two, Page Twenty-Five

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Seven »

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Five (svegra mos rokron tal-sjek)

2010-06-22T16:18:00.001-04:00

We left the room and walked to the top of the stairs. In the courtyard below, I saw at least fifty people — hardly a modest number — and the official count told us that over three hundred close family friends paid their respects at some point that evening. Of course, everyone wanted to see the girl who had burst onto the scene that morning, and Senet proved a very good bouncer. He whispered names in my ear as we approached, along with any titles or reasons for personal distinction. It amazed me how many writers and artists my mother knew in addition to the politicians. Several prominent actors and directors from the Royal Theater in Menarka even knew her informal name.

Unlike me, Senet did not kowtow or bow to anyone. He only pressed his hands together and gave a polite nod of deference to some individuals. That power amazed me, and as much as I wanted it, the thought of what he had given up to attain it paralyzed my young mind.

The Karatha in children’s stories from the Canyons — almost all minor characters — leave home during childhood to go with the Karatha, even though they are not officially brought into the fold until slightly later. As much as I hated Anumë, I could never have left my family because I appreciated everyone else, even my somewhat eccentric cousin Hiret. I wondered if Senet had cried when he left home.

Eventually, we made our way to the place where the nuamua stood. They kept themselves separate from everyone else, or everyone avoided them, except for the occasional encounter with someone sympathetic to them.

When we greeted them, I performed the requisite kowtow as Senet looked on. “The daughter of your ally Akah Nitannyi is so polite,” he said, “quite unlike you, Ariëk. I see that you haven’t spoken a single word to me the entire evening.”

“If only everyone showed so much humility,” one of the nuamua said.

Against my better judgment, I peeked up at the one who had spoken, Ariëk. His fists flexed like one of the angry kids at school, but his face hadn’t gone bright red like every angry person I knew. It was only after peeking that I recognized him as the nuamë nuaf iča, the head of the nuamua. We call him Namgyatzi in the Canyons.

“Aneti, you can get up now,” Namgyatzi said. I felt very impressive to know that the Karatha called him by a name I had never heard before, and I made sure to remember it. “The Karatha were too cowardly to send anyone to her funeral.”

The tone of his voice made me think that I shouldn’t have stayed for their conversation, but I did anyway. I slipped my hand into Senet’s and squeezed it tightly. “We didn’t feel that a place in the procession was appropriate, considering that her final wishes specifically requested us to abstain. Besides, you should criticize your son just as much as us — he didn’t bother coming, either.”

“Adviser Tenes is on a diplomatic mission — offplanet — and he is one person,” Namgyatzi said. “They cannot rip here whenever they like.”

I looked up at Senet. “Would my mom like you staying here?”

“Yes, she would,” he said.

Namgyatzi opened and closed his mouth, but said nothing. I was too enamored of Senet to care.

« Folio Two, Page Twenty-Four

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Six »

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Four (svegra mos rokron tal-dros)

2010-06-15T19:19:00.003-04:00

Anumë said something that I couldn’t quite catch, and Senet laughed. He had undermined her, even if he was one of the Karatha, and I doubted that she would take to him at all, let alone follow the order. Quite contrary to my expectations, she made no sound and did as he bade her.

Slowly, I pushed the cabinet door open and looked up at him. He was one of the most attractive men I have ever seen, but not indigenous to any part of Tveshë. Senet had creamy intermediate skin like someone from Comasja or Homor beyond the sea; over time, I would notice that he spoke with the same slight lilt when very tired or excited. His eyes reminded me of the calm ocean, and his partially-whitened hair curled like incense smoke. Despite the hair, he seemed much younger than Nikis or even Anumë.

We stared at each other without speaking. Nikis stood by the door. I saw her fingers drum against her thigh in my peripheral vision, and she shifted her weight back and forth like a pendulum.

I stood up at last and brushed myself off. Senet helped me make my outfit right. The care he took reminded me of my mother. I think I had fallen in love with him, at least a little.

“You may go now, Akah Litaras.” My aunt’s formal name sounded strange, even though I had read it in the disciplinary letters from school. Nobody in the neighborhood used it. “I will escort your niece downstairs and introduce her to the guests. It is the least I can do.”

“Akah Senet, I am sure —”

“My duty here is to act as an emissary of the Karatha to your prestigious family in their time of need. If I didn’t assist you, I would regret it completely.” He reached for my hand and squeezed it; my heart fluttered. “Regardless of our past differences with Salus, we have great respect for your family’s contributions to society.”

She cleared her throat. “How can we ever repay you for this kindness?”

He squeezed my hand again and brushed lint from his skirt with his other hand. “Actually, I have recently been assigned to Kobsarka and I am wondering which families are accepting non-blooded guests.”

“We have some spare rooms,” I said. “Can he stay here, Aunt Nikis?”

“I wouldn’t want to impose on a grieving family.”

“No, it’s all right — you wouldn’t find a family in a better position to accept a tenant. We have had too many sons.” She cleared her throat. “We have several choices of room. When would you want to move in?”

“As soon as possible. I am currently staying at our place in Menarka, but the living situation is somewhat tighter than we would like.”

“Give us until the end of the week,” she said, “for mourning.”

“Absolutely.”

« Folio Two, Page Twenty-Three

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Five »

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Three (svegra mos rokron tal-biet)

2010-06-09T21:17:00.002-04:00

I omitted Senet when listing the components, but he has not yet appeared.

We must continue to waste our time in the cramped cupboard as he enters our house through the front door and tips his head to the stone gate guardian just inside the door. Someone greets him. He sees the commotion in the household and asks what the problem is. One of the servants says, “Nitannyi’s bastard kid has locked herself in the knocker,” and he can understand the thick colloquial Narahji well enough to find the stairs to the second floor and offer his assistance.

Outside the door, he pauses for a moment, looking at my aunt and cousin in a cool manner. Neither woman notices him. He clears his throat. Nikis slaps Anumë again. Finally, Senet says, “May I be of any assistance?”

That is the first sentence I heard from him, and the above is my approximation of what must have happened to make every piece fall into place.

Squatting in the cupboard made my knees feel sharp, but the quick throbbing in my wrists and chest began only when Senet, a stranger, spoke. I thought, That must be one of my mother’s colleagues. As he continued to speak with my aunt and cousin — his formal Narahji was perfect — I focused on his voice’s hopping cadence and commanding volume. It reminded me of a movie hero.

Soon, he went silent. I heard him kneel close to the cabinet and knock against the door three times. “Aneti, don’t be scared. We’ll clean you up and take you downstairs, would you like that?” He used my formal name, so I knew he was proper.

I said, “Who are you?”

“Senet,” he said, “of the Karatha. I came to pay my respects to your family, and I cannot possibly do that without seeing your lovely face.”

I relaxed a bit and pressed my hand against the door. “Have you come to take me out?”

“If you like,” he said. “We don’t have to go anywhere if you don’t want to, but I know that a lot of people downstairs would love to meet you. Just think about it — an unknown daughter of the most important woman of our time.”

He spoke like my mother had on television: all politics and flattery — not due to deference, but because the veiled threats implied by the compliments could not be spoken aloud without instigating something. On the playground at school, I had always imitated the style to prevent bullies from nagging me about things. They always went after the scrawny, weak children in my class, but after a few fights I’d put them in their places.

Senet whispered something. The locks whirred and clicked. I heard the deadbolt fall back. No one moved to take me out.

My hands touched the cabinet door. “Make Anumë go away,” I whispered. “I won’t come out until she’s gone.”

“All right. Is one of you Anumë?”

“Yes, I am.”

“She says that she won’t come out until you leave, and I would rather not aggravate the scene that you both seem to have made this evening. Perhaps cleaning yourself up would be the best use of time?”

« Folio Two, Page Twenty-Two

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Four »

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Two (svegra mos rokron tal-roh)

2010-06-01T14:06:00.003-04:00

Right now you might be thinking, “What does getting trapped in a cabinet by your own shortsightedness have to do with the racy story you promised me? How does your suicide factor into this at all?”

Think of a leaf rushing through a canyon stream or the dead soldiers on the Màsamo battlefield.

The tree the leaf came from germinated from a seed that landed in precisely the right location for a breeze to snatch a leaf one morning and drop it onto the water.

The Battle of Màsamo happened because interplanetary politicians made too many contradictory back room deals that came to light in 1890. None of the men or women who died knew that life would bring them to serve Ameisa’s United Coalition following the Basahi Genocide. They didn’t know about the chemical warfare that would deform their limbs and make them die just hours after they touched down on the planet—they had gone forward with the mission even though the reconnaissance data had been corrupted in two sections. If a historical account of the battle neglected the deals, it would make little sense.

Every piece in the puzzle of that horrible summer locked together at the precise moment that cabinet door opened. It is necessary to gather the components: Anumë’s hatred, my idealistic vision of the future, Nikis’s obsession with propriety, and my mother’s death. Within the greater puzzle are many tiny pieces. For instance,

Why did Anumë hate me so much?
How could someone so close to me in blood feel so little compassion?
What ever possessed me to believe I could be as great as my mother?
Why did Salus never tell me to stop? Why did she always expose me to new things even after my reactions frightened her?
What happened to Nikis to make her so socially conservative?
Who did Nikis prefer, Anumë or me?
Why did my mother die?
— no, how did my mother die? What malfunction could possibly have led to so much death and destruction?
How would others react to my mother’s death?

— and then we must notice that this is not a classical puzzle, but one of those new ones that rotates and contorts just so when each piece has found its proper place. Such puzzles can spin for years before they fall apart and it is the spinning, not the fatal end, that should drive us onward.

« Folio Two, Page Twenty-One

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Three »

Folio Two, Page Twenty-One (svegra mos rokron tal-itz)

2010-05-25T15:05:00.001-04:00

Again, we must return to the instruction manual for standard voice-activated locks. The individual who invented the term “smart locks” (or, indeed, any of the term’s early adopters) must have done so out of irony or stupidity. The locks contained no AI and simply responded to commands in the precise manner the manuals indicated — those very manuals that clearly only a small, mischievous child such as myself would have read. Always eager to get into places that young girls shouldn’t go, I had memorized every voice override possible. Half of the smart paper-based manual was composed of embedded video clips a four-year-old could have understood.

Smart locks — at least those used around the turn of the 20th century — could unlock doors with a series of verbal commands, and they could lock doors in just the same way. Anumë could have reached me quickly with any of the tamer locking commands (and besides, I didn’t have authorization), but the emergency protocols that would lock me in for safety still worked. I screamed them as loudly as possible.

Almost immediately after the locks clicked, Anumë tried to open the cabinet. She gave a command and received a polite response from the unit before proceeding to bang on the door with her flat palms.

I breathed deeply and closed my eyes, sinking as far back as I could. Nikis would punish me further, I imagined, but it didn’t matter — Anumë had violated something that rightfully belonged to me. Even in societies where families communally own almost everything, each individual has some rights, and I needed to exercise mine. Salus would have wanted it.

From outside, I heard Nikis say, “What is going on?”

Anumë replied that I had somehow locked myself inside the cabinet. She sounded a bit smug. Nikis slapped her. Perhaps I had played into her plans after all. She had probably wanted some way to get rid of me and prevent others from knowing the extent of our family’s shame.

“This is why I didn’t want smart locks in our household.”

They argued quietly for a few more minutes. Neither paid attention to me, thankfully, but I didn’t know how long it would last. On top of this, I couldn’t remember the part from the manual about deactivating the emergency protocol locking sequence without summoning the police. My mind reproduced the rest of the page with perfect clarity, but the words had blurred into a great white space that I could not penetrate.

« Folio Two, Page Twenty

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Two »

Folio Two, Page Twenty (svegra mos rokron)

2010-05-18T20:57:00.002-04:00

“Why?”

“I want you to do it to me.”

I bolted to catch my slipping headdress. “I will tell Aunt Nikis and—”

She smiled. “It’s just a kowtow. Would you rather I told her you sliced me?” She reached into her front pocket and drew out a small pocket knife. When I saw her press it against her own cheek, I gasped. My knees trembled. “We will follow Nikis’s rules in public, but I still hold thirty years’ senority over you.”

“Just this one. No others.”

“Get down.”

The knife in her hand still looked threatening. Instead of kowtowing, I reached out for her and touched the steel blade. Her fingers relaxed. The knife was suddenly in my hand. She knelt in front of me and pressed the blade against her own cheek, but we had given the knife no pressure.

“No,” I said. I pressed the fingers of my other hand against her palm. Her fingers relaxed for a moment involuntarily, but it was long enough for me to get the knife and throw it across the room.

She sighed and moved back towards my dressing table. “Your kowtows are fine, but you have no sense of humor. When I was seven, I knew how to play with the adults.”

I sat on the bed and adjusted the safety pins once more. From my position, I couldn’t see what Anumë was doing, but I had an awful feeling about it. She turned around before I could ask with my tray of colored contacts in her hands

“You will want these, I imagine.”

I nodded.

“Too bad all of them are broken.”

She closed the case again and threw it at me. It landed at my feet. Contact shards spilled across the floor. I started screaming. Someone elsewhere started yelling. Anumë lunged forward and tried to pin me against the bed. I ducked past her and ran for the door, which hit her in the face just after I opened it.

Below, I heard the sounds of arriving guests and my aunt attempting to entertain them, but I didn’t care. I needed out, and I needed out now.

The cabinets where Anumë had imprisoned me lay only a few rooms away.

It had seemed perfectly logical that I correct my error that morning and wear contacts. After all, my family wanted me to. Salus had called them the two most important things in my life. No one could fill an order for new colored contacts, the guests were already arriving, and I was too young to know that just about every corner store sold them—and not the glass kind that my mother preferred, but the durable ones that require intense heat and pressure to break down.

Anumë threw herself into the hall, coming at me like a wild animal. Her headdress fell to the ground in one lunge, and her million tiny braids whipped forward against her face. She said, “Eràsis, you little shit!”

I ran through the room’s doors and opened one of the cabinets. In about five seconds, I threw most of the blankets and monsoon drapes onto the floor and inserted myself inside.

« Folio Two, Page Nineteen

Folio Two, Page Twenty-One »

Folio Two, Page Nineteen (svegra mos itzkron tal-tusjga)

2010-05-11T21:02:00.005-04:00

I kowtowed to the drapes just as she had done, all the while thinking about sore knees and the cold tile floor touching my forehead. Anumë fixed the way my elbows had fallen and pressed my rump down.

It all seemed so silly. I suppressed a giggle and mumbled, “Please do not afflict my family or me with bad luck or any other kind of evil, sir or ma’am.”

“Good. Now get up. Was that easy?”

We worked through the entire dull collection of “appropriate gestures.” It would not have surprised me had three distinct prostrations to members of the Karatha existed based on their clothing’s embroidery patterns. The bow to the senator, complete with fingers woven together, seemed far less tiresome. I understood why my mother had become an adviser: they didn’t have to subject themselves to such deferential behavior.

As Anumë helped me dress, I listened to the sounds of guests arriving below. My stomach felt heavy and sick. Each addition to my costume only made the sensation worse. I wished that my aunt had not wanted me to go.

“Now we will do it in your formal clothes.”

She finished tucking my hair into the headdress and secured it to my head with bobby pins. In the wardrobe mirror, I looked like a miniature version of my mother with impossibly light eyes.

When I started towards the dresser to put in contacts, Anumë stopped me. “We will have time for that later,” she said. “The kowtows will not be as easy. Slow down to keep the headdress from sliding, and keep your overdress as neat as possible. We are greeting one of the nuamua.”

Just as we had done earlier, I turned to the drapes. Anumë grabbed my arm and pinched. My eyes snapped shut. “What is it? Have I done something wrong already?”

Turning to look at her, I scanned the past moments for any indication of displeasure she had given. It felt like pulling worm silk out of the air or filling one’s palms with rain — easy in theory, but almost impossible in practice. You’re still angry with me about this morning, I wanted to say. What do you want from me?

She pinched her lips together like an old woman and closed her hand around my face. When I shut my eyes, she released and stepped back several paces. “You have such a high opinion of yourself, tyke.”

“My mother—”

“—had a child without seeking family approval.”

“My mother was the best woman in the entire world.”

She leaned against the wardrobe and snapped her fingers. “I want you to get down, Salus.”

“Why?”

“Kowtow in front of me. Let’s play roles, shall we?”

« Folio Two, Page Eighteen

Folio Two, Page Twenty »

Folio Two, Page Eighteen (svegra mos itzkron tal-kot)

2010-05-04T18:52:00.002-04:00

Every house needs rags, so I tore the remains of my pajamas into large pieces and placed them in my room’s laundry basket. I was not unhappy to see them go because I hated the rough, heavy fabric. My mother’s breathable silk pajama tops would fit me like nightshirts, anyway.

Salus had loved silk. If you ever have the chance to look at her court costuming (which I donated to the Menarka Museum), it appears in everything. Likewise, every piece of clothing she bought for me contained some of it.

The silk pant cuffs I would wear went from ankle to mid-calf. The underpants—the only part of my outfit that wasn’t silk—had smaller eyelets than the cuffs, so attaching them took some effort.

The overdress still lay in white tissue paper with a small safety-pinned card from the artisan. The luminescent lightning bolts, clouds, and rain shimmered. I pressed my fingers against the stitching. It felt just like every other embroidery I had ever worn.

The artisan’s card read, And she ran through the waters of the primordial Seven each in their turn. Lightning crowned her head, and meteor falls honored her with celestial fire. The words came from the Nashë Geni, a book of sacred poetry archived in the Temple of Sehìnta-Enahari. We had gone on a field trip there the year before.

I placed the overdress on the bed and sat down to tune my ksibja. Domìntar, my music instructor, had given me seven exercises to improve my finger dexterity, along with the ksibja solo from A Night, Winged—a piece so difficult that she could only provide me with recordings and clap note rhythms with me. Sometimes, I made myself stumble on the finger exercises because I knew my progress winded her.

Music calmed the pieces of me that still wondered about Anumë’s retaliation. It raised me up and took me down. It pulled me into crevices and across wide meadows. When the passages escaped, I played them over and over in my head, making sure to add longer and longer sections as I practiced so my fingers would not falter again (at least not today).

By the time Anumë knocked at the door, my fingers felt raw. I let her in with some resignation. She looked around the room, but she did not dispute my choice of outfit. Instead, she commented, “Several members of the Karatha and the nuamua collective will be here tonight. Nikis will want you to greet them in the traditional way. Seven or eight of the senators closest to your bitch of a mother, a few advisers, and our Deimo’s eldest daughters will also attend. Each of the greetings is different. Do you understand?̣”

“I think so.”

She nodded and closed the shades, leaving one threading beam of light. “Nikis and I disagree about you, but she is an old woman and we must humor her fantasies about your position in the household.”

There was nothing to do or say when Anumë criticized me besides fight, and we had already bumped against each other once today. I nodded and tried to remember what I had seen on stage and in the movies about upper class behaviors. Had anyone educated me in manners like a proper member of the social elite, I would already have known how to gesture and speak to everyone, just as Sukua knew that he should be polite and quiet in public.

Of course, mothers and fathers had written education manuals forever detailing how to deal with chlidren like me. My mother recalled in her journals once that the family made her stand in a child-sized bucket for four hours during the monsoons for a trivial breach of etiquette. That the family had child-sized buckets showed that she had not been the first to require the markless punishment. Compared to that, everyone but Anumë treated me tenderly.

Anumë looked into the mirror and adjusted her headdress. “For the nuamua, you will kowtow in a specific way. Press your hands against the floor so that your index fingers and thumbs make a triangle. Touch your forehead to the ground just above your fingers.”

She got down and showed me, but faced the closed drapes so it would not appear deferential. In Narahji culture, gesture precedes sentiment. If you act pious, you will be pious. If you pretend to love your arranged partner, your affection will blossom. If you bow or kowtow to a superior, you will understand the other as a superior. If you call our Deimo the Fadehin, you will sacrifice your sovereignty to a lie.

She raised her head. I lowered my eyes.

“Traditionally, you must ask that they not afflict you or your family with evil. Only get up once they have told you that you may.”

“But what about the Karatha?”

“We will get to them.” She clapped her hands together twice. “Now get down.”

« Folio Two, Page Seventeen

Folio Two, Page Nineteen »

Folio Two, Page Seventeen (svegra mos itzkron tal-pyes)

2010-04-27T14:44:00.002-04:00

I left them and took the second-story balcony to the toilets. The entire house sounded and looked like a carnival. Colorful banners and strings seemed to fly out of nowhere. Men and women in uniforms that read KOBSARKA EVENTS INC. stood on ladders, and more leaned over the balcony handing out enormous expanses of red fabric. Sunlight streamed through the translucent courtyard ceiling, tinting everything below their hung fabric red.

Kobeis waited for me just inside the toilets. “Are you okay? What did Nikis do?”

When I finished recounting what had happened, she looked down and said, “I saw my mom put something in your drink last night, but she wouldn’t let me say anything.” Quickly, she reached up to brush tears from her eyes.

I hugged her and kissed her on both cheeks like the sisters in Catching Air, the children’s cartoon series everyone watched back then. She pulled herself away from me and ran towards her room. I didn’t follow her. My bladder was about to burst.

Back in the room I once shared with Salus, I took off the red jacket Adviser Kimajoa had given to me and laid it neatly on the bed. If he came tonight, I would run up the stairs and give it to him; otherwise, surely someone could take it back to Galasu for him.

At seven, my budding interest in costuming manifested itself as a passion for formal clothing. I wore the dresses my mother bought me whenever I could, especially on school days. The press would notice this years later. Almost every interviewer printed a photograph of that pale, slight girl who looked like an ornamental doll — a girl who ceased to be me when my body’s figure opened up like a river changing course.

The components of my elaborate wardrobe had expanded by two hundred percent since my mother’s death. Her dresses did not fit a seven-year-old girl, and over half of the headdresses were designed for dreadlocks. She had owned boxes of ornamental dreadlock cuffs and ordinary hairpins.

Other than the red and gold outfit I had worn for the memorial service at school, I had nothing worthy of a funeral reception. I would not wear it today because people had already seen it. Instead, I wanted to wear the blue silk gown she had given me. Even though I wore contacts to disguise my eye color, the formal outfit matched almost perfectly. “You are shameful,” Anumë told me when I paraded in front of her once. “Go ahead and ruin your chances with every boy in the school.”

She wouldn’t tell me why, but I will explain it to you: people with any shade of blue or green eyes, excluding hazel, have an increased chance of catching the muakanua — at least, according to the 1877 study. Since then, almost everyone in the upper classes had decided not to allow their children to marry anyone with the exotic eye colors. Unless my family did extensive genetic screening, most men wouldn’t marry me.

To prepare, I scrubbed off all of the mud and grime I had accumulated since that morning. The bruises from that morning had already begun to darken; the pumice scrubber opened series of razor-fine cuts on my arms and thighs from the stream bed nettles. The white towel came away pink. We had no antibacterial ointment.

For the first time since my mother had died, I cupped her special hair perfume into my hands and massaged it into my scalp. It smelled bitter and sweet like the ending of a tragedy or beginning of a comedy. She told me that a woman she had known wore it but never mentioned a name.

I found gauze in one of the storage room cabinets and began to wrap my arms. It reminded me of photos from Malzū — they wrap their corpses in gauze and mica dust—and I thought that appropriate for a reception celebrating my mother, albeit morbid.

« Folio Two, Page Sixteen

Folio Two, Page Eighteen »

Folio Two, Page Sixteen (svegra mos itzkron tal-pirh)

2010-04-20T10:24:00.002-04:00

When we reached the house, Nikis grabbed my arm and told me that Anumë and I would join her in the study. I had no choice but to follow her obediently, making dirty footprints on the downstairs floor, to the frightful room at the back of the house.

The desk alone gave me nightmares. The claw frame grabbed at the floor like one of the canyon beasts, and little scenes of demons and minor gods played along the wooden surface. I saw scenes from folk epics and mythological accounts of cities’ foundations, but never completely because Aunt Nikis always kept the large, white drapes drawn tight to protect the books. The side closest to me showed the War of Dancers.

(Nishet, if you have a chance, go to the Temple of the Singers in Amaron, a small city at the edge of the Labrys Region. It contains the oldest stone writings of the War of Dancers. The old pictoral script is lovely.)

Beside me, Anumë silently stared at the floor. I thought I saw satisfaction in the way her lips curled, but it could have been spite.

Nikis shut the door behind us. I felt like running. She turned the key in the lock and dropped it into her pocket before turning back to the desk. The deep chair engulfed her like a wide mouth. “Eràsis, dear, will you please undo the bindings on my dress?”

I nodded and stepped around the desk to help her without hesitation. She leaned forward in the chair. As my fingers worked at the bindings at Nikis’s back, I looked up at Anumë. That bitch could barely hold her laughter. I almost stopped but was so close to finishing that I just worked the string out and laid it on the table.

“Thank you. Now join your cousin.” She took in a deep breath and reached under the table for a clear vial of enra, an endocrine stimulant that older people take instead of alcohol. “Do you know how much of a disgrace you are?”

“Aunt Nikis, I tried to—”

“I meant you, too, Anumë.”

Anumë sank down to her knees and lowered her head to the floor. The sight made my heart pound, and I sank to my knees. Kowtowing would wait until our aunt singled me out for something. Kneeling ought to have been enough to show respect and deference.

Nikis took a shot of the enra and coughed. “Eràsis, you can be so polite when you’re under scrutiny.”

“Thank you, gasjana.” Gasjana is the formal word for matriarch, at least in the older style of Narahji spoken outside of Menarka proper.

“And yet you race from home to Menarka in your nightclothes, absolutely covered in filth, to interrupt one of the most important funerary processions of the decade. This is inconsistent. Don’t kowtow, girl. Look at me.”

I did.

“Why?”

“I woke up locked in a cupboard this morning with my hands—she bound my hands. I was so scared and I wanted to say goodbye to my mother. Please forgive me.” I lowered my head to the ground and breathed deeply to calm my heartbeat, but she didn’t chide me for disobeying her rules.

“Anumë, could you explain to me why Eràsis awoke locked in a cupboard? And the locks, Anumë—why do I have a message on my communication band from the police saying that our smart locks went off this morning? I remember stating rather explicitly that I wouldn’t have those in my house. Do you know why, Anumë?”

“I-I … Aunt Nikis …” Anumë cleared her throat and looked up. “I thought—”

“You think I’m a weak old woman, Anumë. The last time I checked, the family had not named you Matriarch. It shouldn’t matter why I ask you not to do things. They should just not happen. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Aunt Nikis.”

“Good.” She poured herself another shot of enra. “Now, you’re not a girl anymore. I won’t physically punish you. However, we will hire someone to retro the locks on our cupboards, and the expense will come out of your allocated funds. Please think about the consequences next time you try to do something to this house without my permission.”

Anumë’s face blanched. I remembered the web clippings on her room’s net screen: dresses, small technological gadgets, expensive endocrine drugs. She said nothing.

I looked up at Nikis. “Thank you for defending me.”

“I cannot fault you for wanting to escape and join your family, Eràsis.” Nikis looked at Anumë. “Perhaps Anumë should tell you why she locked you in the cupboard in the first place.”

My cousin now looked physically ill. “You wanted me to make her understand that she would not come to the procession. You left the method up to me. It is my cousin’s fault for not understanding what it meant—have you ever tried to tell her something she doesn’t want to hear? She would have kicked, screamed—I don’t know, she’d have broken something!—and I don’t see how you can fault me—”

“Anumë, I don’t want excuses for your behavior.”

My heart beat faintly in my chest. I felt like I would cry. “Why didn’t you want me to go?”

“For your protection. It was unwise to show you too much in public, especially now that the media thinks only of your mother. We needed to protect the family’s reputation. Of course, now that they know, there is no point in keeping you from it.”

“Aunt Nikis?”

“The two of you are cousins. I don’t know what to do with you. Start behaving like cousins is the only advice I can offer. When I die, you two will remain in this house. Please don’t pull the family apart over your prejudices. Anumë, Eràsis will now come to the reception in the courtyard this evening. Please help her dress and teach her the appropriate etiquette. We will have guests in high places.”

“Yes, Aunt Nikis, but—”

“Eràsis, you will make cakes for the ancestors at dawn tomorrow and honor them in the household shrine. Apologize for the harm you have done to our family name. That is all. Dismissed.”

Anumë opened and closed her mouth like a fish. I hid my face in a kowtow because I wanted neither of them to see me smile. Of course we would never make up, but I liked knowing that in the next few days, at least, Anumë would probably not acquaint me with any fresh antagonisms. Penance to the family’s ancestors seemed like a small price to pay for seeing her humiliated.

Of course, I was wrong. Now that my guard was down, Anumë could do whatever she liked.

« Folio Two, Page Fifteen

Folio Two, Page Seventeen »

Folio Two, Page Fifteen (svegra mos itzkron tal-sjek)

2010-04-14T10:35:00.002-04:00

To think, Nishet, that two months have passed since my last letter reached you. So far, I have written much more than I ought, but the story speaks and getting it out in large chunks will be good for me. By now, I have missed five ships out of the canyon-dark, along with two treescraper planes.

Three weeks ago, some divinity, perhaps Mæs, came to me in a dream and warned against sending you too many pieces of paper — the signs indicate that someone will move to intercept if you receive too many. The thought has intermittently occurred to me that sending too many letters is dangerous. Even if you doubt these reminiscences, the events that take place at the end must convince you that, were certain people to hear that I live, remaining here would be impossible. Each of us must make Prudence our mistress.

This, I hope, will explain the feathered pelts I have enclosed in the shipment. They should catch a fair price in the open market. The dancers will go out to buy the materials for the Carnival of Words about now, if memory serves. Please see this as payment for the paper I received from you last week. I take it that you received my wire.

Lest I forget, send my love to your children and family, but take care to paint me as that provincial girl who proved useful to your quest for enlightenment. If anyone asks about the material I am sending, say that I am giving you a history of the temples and historic sages of the region. Nothing bores secular-minded people more than religious history, and while your family’s lack of concern for ritual is unwise, we may put it to use. Maybe your daughter will grow up in piety? One never knows whose influence a young thing like that will follow.

One more thing: I hope that these letters may continue. A tourist saw me at the market and said I looked familiar, but I laughed. We ate fresh river squid by my waterfall dock and spoke of the city. Not once did he call me Eràsis, and I would hope that his hesitation to name a phantom will keep him silent later.

His name is Likua tal Nasrem, and he comes from Mentasjon——you know where that is, right at the center of the Labrys Region where they make—or made—those fine sap sugars——so you must do me a favor and look for him once he returns. It may take several years. He wishes to study with the ascetics on the Masa Precipice. Of course, if anything eats him on the way, I suppose my worries and request will mean nothing.

But I will return to the narrative immediately. Please do not let this digression distress you.

« Folio Two, Page Fourteen

Folio Two, Page Sixteen »

Folio Two, Page Fourteen (svegra mos itzkron tal-dros)

2010-04-06T15:40:00.007-04:00

I always rushed right in with no head for consequences when I was a kid, not even if I had read and heard the rules dozens of times. Plotting out cause and effect never made sense. Everyone else seemed to know how things would go, but I only saw the future plotted out in fits and bursts. It had never occurred to me that my aunt would stare thoughtfully at me in the train station without saying a word or that Anumë would twiddle her thumbs, eyes downcast. It felt like watching distant monsoon clouds.

Kobeis hooked her arm in mine as we boarded. It was packed, and the air had already turned steamy and thick like soup. We pinned ourselves by one of the windows where an older woman sat with her embroidery.

“What do you think Aunt Nikis will do?” Kobeis’s voice shook.

I struggled to hear her, and then I struggled to put words together. The last time Nikis had punished Anumë — my mind came up with nothing; Nikis had always tolerated her.

She had punished me.

Two summers earlier, I hadn’t wanted to do a genealogy project, so I had avoided gathering colored paper and printed photographs. When that didn’t work, I climbed the monsoon-soaked ivy outside the gymnasium and ducked into the crawlspace where the technicians manage the retractable roof. The teachers had searched for me everywhere, but in the end, I was found in the little nook above the gymnasium showers with baby snakes in my palms. Nikis had flogged me with light, knotted cords. She could have broken my hands.

What would Anumë have done if Nikis had struck her? I hazarded guess after guess. Nikis was not the young girl on the living room wall’s slide show, but an old woman worked in twisted glass. What would happen if she died — but these were just guesses, and I knew very well that life did not block like one of the operas.

Kobeis squeezed my hand. “Eràsis?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t like it when people in the family rough one another up.”

She accepted the answer.

Most passengers stepped off at Kararga and Nobsveika, the two working-class suburbs, and the rest of us waited for the train to reach the outlying suburbs. Kobsarka was the end of the line.

When I found a seat, I leaned back and closed my eyes. The seat vibrated against my head and back. I wondered which car Sukua was in, or indeed whether he had left Menarka at all. I regretted leaving him and realized that he probably thought I had used him only for the money. The thought made me sick.

By the household gods, I swore that Sukua and I would meet again, and not just because I thought that befriending a potential android would be cool. He had tapped a rhythm against the back of the train seat in front of us. Perhaps he knew music.

« Folio Two, Page Thirteen

Folio Two, Page Fifteen »

Folio Two, Page Thirteen (svegra mos itzkron tal-biet)

2010-03-30T14:51:00.003-04:00

The Narahji version of the last rites looks similar to what your people do, Nishet. We first stripped my mother of all clothing and bathed her in sweet nopàra milk. Rivulets of grayish-white water flowed from the metal table and gushed across the floor to the front steps. Two nobuarya swooped from the trees to lap up the mixture. The priestess assured me that this was a good thing; the nobuarya take away the impurities of the dead.

Kobeis helped me raise the large bucket of oil to pour over my mother’s forehead. At first, we almost lost control, and a small drop of oil spattered onto her mouth. I mouthed the words I had heard in the play, but minor children are not expected to know them as well as adults. No child can study the Book of Last Rites, even though many kids sneaked glances at the copies in their houses while the adults busied themselves with mundane life. The words pulsated in my breast like electricity. Through the thick incense, I thought I saw a hooded figure in red with exposed breasts in the doorway. My heart came hard in my chest, and my face felt hot and clammy. The vase of oil threatened to slip through my fingers.

We rested the vase on the ground just as my hands gave way. I collapsed to my knees and started to shake. Prayers to various deities flitted in and out of my head, all of them incomplete and rambling, but no one noticed that I had collapsed. The woman had disappeared. Kobeis touched my shoulder; I nearly screamed.

“Hold tight,” she said. “We’re almost done.”

She guided my hands through the remainder of the rituals. I remember speaking. The priestess struck me three times as a proxy for my mother — a way of bringing her into the underworld or back into rebirth, depending on which school of philosophy one entertains, through the suffering of a blood descendant.

My mother recalled in her journals once that she feared death almost more than facing the palatial offices each day. Each morning, she would walk by the scene where she had failed to save Deimo Akaiannyi and pick up hot flat cakes to place on the dead ruler’s memorial in the middle of the street outside. She poured glasses of nut milk over the stone offering place covered in flowers and her cakes; she drank from the cup of the dead and thought about that trollop she had fucked and teased to learn more about the conspiracy. None of what had come after — not even the appointment — had been worth it, at least not in the end. She had nightmares about dying and facing the wrath of Sehutannyi, who always teared my mother to shreds before she could escape into rebirth. Salus saw rebirth as the holy grail of the afterlife; she wanted to use it to forget everything.

Every person who had touched the dead body went to the small purification room sandwiched between Hatkranar’s temple and the crematorium to bathe and shower. Anumë lit incense by the door and prayed for what seemed like an eternity. Tears streamed down her cheeks. No one spoke to her.

At last, the crowds dispersed. More memorial parades would happen over the next few days — I can’t remember how long they lasted because almost immediately after they stopped, one of the senior members of the Progressive Movement was found dead with her assistant in the Movement’s Menarki offices.

For now, the spotlight remembered my mother. It remembered me. Until you told me that the virus destroyed almost everything, I thought that my childhood face would remain in the network archives forever. Why would people give cult to someone whose memory technology has nearly wiped away?

« Folio Two, Page Twelve

Folio Two, Page Fourteen »

Folio Two, Page Twelve (svegra mos itzkron tal-roh)

2010-03-16T18:17:00.002-04:00

The advisers clustered around Deimo Manurannyi like flower petals. I caught only a flash of her copper headdress between their transparent Menarki jackets as she twisted around. The light cast shadows of embroidery on their skin, dark like henna. Compared to all of them, I was naked.

Just behind the assembly of advisers, I saw several men and women with real tattoos in many vivid colors, none of them speaking. Near them, but not too close, stood a man with red eyes whom I recognized from the Cave of the Infinities. Certainly the nuamë nuaf iča—for that was him, I am sure of it;—but why had he come to my mother’s funeral? He smiled at me and pressed his index finger to his lips. The strengthening sun had left the first blush of red on his impractical white skin. Before, I would have thought such a thing impossible, but now I know that immortality does not leave one immune to nature.

Kobeis rushed out of nowhere and grabbed my hands. The shock of human touch drew me out of the thought space, and I stopped staring at the nuamë nuaf iča for her sake. “Mama said you wouldn’t come, but I knew you’d find a way.”

I kissed the backs of her hands and tried not to look at the deliberating people. “When did she say?”

“Yesterday.”

I looked down.

“Don’t worry. The Fadehin is nice. She gave me a gum drop. It was blue, and it tasted like summer sunshine. She said so herself.” Neither of us had learned yet why our families called the Fadehin the Deimo, and Kobeis would not switch titles until her early teens when the kids at school wrote assimilator on her books in red paint. “Maybe she’ll give you a gum drop, too.”

Deimo Manurannyi suddenly seemed less intimidating. I glanced her way. “You think so?” The question didn’t demand an answer, but Kobeis bobbed her head up and down like a seed caught in the current.

The circle of advisers parted. I saw her again, and she looked magnificent. The serpents on her red mourning gown danced in cloudbreak light. The black woven cords of her wig—thousands of them, from the looks of it—flowed down just below her breasts, crinkling with metal and bells as she moved towards me. As she came close, we locked eyes, and I saw that hers were pale, yellowish amber, not dark brown like Sehìnta’s, and definitely not the variable turquoise I had inherited.

Adviser Kimajoa followed at a respectful distance, never taking his eyes from her feet. When they approached me, he said, “She hath decreed whereby you may perform the rites. Does hereby satisfy you?”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

One of the other advisers removed his transparent jacket. The tunic beneath it looked more fitting for the weather, and I’m sure he was happy to see it go. “For your dignity,” Adviser Kimajoa told me as he passed it to me.

Anumë’s experssion revealed nothing as I slipped the jacket over my shoulders and tied the sash. The tradition would hopefully position us far away from each other.

The red jacket smelled like men’s aftershave and fried amga, the blue-green fritters people sell at the docks by the fancy hotels and that permanent tourist trap carnival. It seemed appropriate that the advisers would stay there, and he had probably eaten a fried amga on the way. At least I could claim respectability now.

A priestess stepped forward from the back of the party. She knelt down and spoke softly to me, telling me everything that I needed to know. The opera had lied to me about most things, but operas seldom depict events as they actually happen. Real life rarely has the appropriate level of dramatic tension. The amount of information made me feel lost, so I asked Kobeis to stand with me so she could help with the particulars. The priestess didn’t dissuade her. “You can help with the anointing vase. One child cannot lift it. Usually, if a young mother dies, the surviving parent helps her, but in Aneti’s case ...” The use of my formal name frightened me more than anything else she said.

We had enough time while the mob quieted to go over everything thoroughly. The day had not quite blossomed in full force by the time the priestess’s attendants re-lit the censers and the chorus sounded the drums that would guide us on our crematorium journey.

« Folio Two, Page Eleven

Folio Two, Page Thirteen »

"Birth of the Hero"

2010-03-09T21:36:00.000-05:00

Red birds moving

sitting in the trees

hot and sticky with summer sap

Dragons in the gardens

stone spirits hanging on

blessing of the rising sun

Breathe color into the sky

Breathe color into your heart

Clear monsters rustling

through fruit trees

A hero was born today

The serpents come to play

untouchable ones speak

baptism by black venom

Breathe color into the sky

Breathe color into your heart

Queen sits in her house

Stacking cards to the sky

Not a circle in the deck

Children watch and listen

Mothers sit and cry

The fathers are all silent

Who will be the golden one?

Who will rock the nightfall?

Who will cut the monsters’

transparent skin, shattering

like glass upon the rocks?

Breathe color into the sky

Breathe color into her mind

Breathe color into the sky

“Birth of the Hero” debuted during the second concert Tapestry played in Menarka. The popularity of the song caused the MusicWhisperer servers to collapse only hours after its release, mostly due to the strong limits on interplanetary communication bands. The song contains the popular Narahji mantra “ohevna i neha,” or breathe color, which refers to the ability of the an individual to manipulate shi perceptions of the world by connecting with Enahari’s divine light hidden within the self.

Eràsis, while writing the lyrics, layered meaning. There are two words for “sky” in Eràsis’s native dialect: hælha and zehra. The vowels æ and a are not distinguished in her native dialect than in those deeper in the Canyons due to the Tveshi influence on Menarki Narahji, and even less in song. Hælha and halha sound almost exactly the same. When halha is substituted, the main chorus reads “breathe color into daybreak.” By Eràsis’s lifetime, the word “daybreak” was slang for murder or assassination, mostly due to the extreme right-wing assassinations carried out by the political group of the same name a generation before. But was this song about the death of Eràsis’s mother? Did she mean to choose a word that implied her mother was murdered?

The images of red birds and clear monsters are common throughout heroic legends, symbolizing the trials and tribulations that befall those destined for greatness. Red birds symbolize the death of loved ones, whereas the clear monsters generally refer to the impurities within oneself that prevent enlightened behavior. The final section of the song about the queen and the mourners most likely refer to the funeral of Eràsis’s mother. From Eràsis’s interviews, we know that Eràsis believed that inferior engineering caused her mother’s death, while she usually refrained from calling it murder in interviews.

“Birth of the Hero” does not only emphasize the death of Eràsis’s mother. To those who study verse, Eràsis has carefully placed herself into a line of elite musical heroines. The baptism by venom refers to the initiation of the great heroine-poet Panakhara. According to Kitzras i Heizan, a twelfth-century scholar

Panakhara, an orphan from Itaka, knew from a young age that she would sanctify her own hands and voice to the Lover of Songs. One evening, when she was still quite young, Panakhara left her home for Kamyizhra Temple, sacred to Sebhu and Gamgyatsahagia, and sat in the wide open space before the divine image. She chanted the sacred names of Sebhu until the sun just broke on the horizon, when her voice had grown so hoarse from lack of water and sleep that she barely spoke above a whisper.

At that moment, a serpent slithered into the temple and rose to meet her face. Panakhara was absolutely terrified, but she had enough faith in the divine names of Sebhu that she did not run. The serpent watched her chant for a long time. When she thought that she could bear no more scrutiny, the beast leaned towards her and kissed her forehead. They say that from that moment forward, a black smear graced her forehead, and that also her voice became so melodic that it drove illness from Lanskara when the plague came to take thousands from life.

The Life of Panakhara i Lanasa, ln. 448

Another heroine-poet, Ammaksa, created songs so powerful that she brought the spirits of the village guardians out of the statues at the edge of town. That dawn, she descended to the underworld with them as her protectors to win back the hero Namakzí and save the village from northern invaders. While in the underworld, she also saw her dead mother, who begged to come back with her; Ammaksa refused.

The public resonated with the song. During Eràsis’s lifetime, the abuse of “safe” endocrine drugs and the explosion of technological excesses alienated many people who felt that the culture was moving too quickly to maintain traditional values. Everywhere, people felt that they need a hero to navigate the world around them. Eràsis, with her unfortunate nanotech emotional regulator and incredible musical talent, used “Birth of the Hero” to offer herself as the person who could deliver people from the confusing material world. The public knew the references, and from the hero cult they created after her death, it seems that they accepted her offer.

Folio Two, Page Eleven (svegra mos itzkron tal-itz)

2010-03-02T19:23:00.004-05:00

If that seems precocious for a child of seven, the sentence formula comes from Red Birds Hanging. You should see the opera next time it comes to Menarka. It has everything—ghosts, death, vengeance, betrayal—and an illegitimate heroine. That last evening with my mother before she boarded the death-train, we saw it. The ksibja part was exquisite, and my mother had promised to order sheet music for me as soon as she arrived in Galasu.

I demand my place at her funerary rites. How powerful a phrase! It means everything if you believe in the powers of the dead—whoever stops the claimant is cursed—see, the curse is that potent—to hauntings and visitations from the deceased until either both die or the claimant performs the essential component of the funerary rites. This meaning meant nothing to me at seven because I only remembered the hunted look on the villain’s face in the opera, her hair free of its bun and soaking up the blood of her husband. Had I not performed my part of the ritual, my mother’s ghost would have come after me—; witness the immediate good of my fame-lust.

The Niksubvya family did not, for the most part, believe in the folk superstitions. Our ancestors became Narahji in the chaos after the Occupation; the line was born Menashi, and the Menashi blood expressed itself in bizarre ways.

One of the advisers whispered in Deimo Manurannyi’s left ear and turned to me. The Deimo said in Tveshi, “You are not dressed for a funeral.” The word for funeral, thučela, was one I had not yet learned. I understood it from context.

“I am sorry.” It was the only thing I felt safe saying in the national language, and I didn’t want the scene I had created to worsen her opinion of me. (Keep in mind that we spoke while the crowd control officers herded the people back onto the sides of the road; it was my fault that they had run forward. Only eleven years earlier, a crowd had overwhelmed a funeral of a much-celebrated priest of Yilrega; it is unsure whether all of his remains were retrieved, or what the people did with the fragments of his body. The state now showed a documentary to students every few years about it to educate them about proper ritual conduct.) “My mother. Funeral body.”

She frowned and murmured something to the man who had whispered, Adviser Kimajoa. They sounded like snakes. Deimo Manurannyi gestured towards me; in her eyes, I saw confusion bordering on hatred.

“Deimo Manurannyi hath decided whereby you may community the funeral.” Adviser Kimajoa’s Narahji made me want to laugh. I think that he was from Iturja, and they are not as sensitive about vowel differentiation. “You maintain whereby you are the daughter to Adviser Nitannyi?”

I nodded, too afraid to laugh, and repeated, “I demand my place at her funerary rites.”

“Apologies. No one surrendered whereby Adviser Nitannyi had a child.” He moved to the side; Deimo Manurannyi nodded at me and smiled. “You have another someone’s eyes.”

« Folio Two, Page Ten

Folio Two, Page Twelve»

Media Five »

Folio Two, Page Ten (svegra mos itzkron)

2010-02-23T19:40:00.002-05:00

When I took off running, Sukua shouted my name. Running didn’t hurt at first. I felt the blood pump through my veins. My muscles tightened and flexed. Behind me, Sukua’s feet pounded against the street. His breathing sounded like a steam engine, but he couldn’t keep up for long.

I willed myself to put one foot in front of the other, but every time I did, I slowed down. My head beat in time with my heart.

The crowd ahead threw confetti on the members of the procession, and some of them chanted my mother’s name. Most remained silent. The Menashi had tied fabric around their children’s mouths to keep them from speaking. Everyone was packed together like canned fruit, leaving almost no space for me to push past when I hit them. Instead of standing, I went down on my hands and knees, dirtying my palms in the mud.

None of these memories feel real. I saw the tapes a thousand times;—the crowd bows and bends, and then I shoot out—someone I know pulled it from the security feeds for me.

A security guard tried to grab me. I don’t remember biting him, but I did. Blinding sunlight shone down on the path like a sign from the Gods.

I ducked away from a stun pulse; it hit someone in the crowd. People screamed. The crowd broke free of the sidelines, and the crowd control diverted to control them.

My mother’s body lay on a flat wooden slab carried by the Deimo’s two sons, but in response to the horrible noise they put it down. The procession waited, guarded by a wall of Royal Guard officers. I recognized some of the people behind them from news streams but did not remember their names. Once I reached the Royal Guard, I kowtowed in the mud and reached forward to touch their feet.

One man said, “That looks like—” but someone hushed him before he could finish.

“Please, I am named Aneti, the only natural daughter of Adviser Nitannyi who fell so recently into the waters of death. I demand my place at her funerary rites.”

One of the Royal Guard reached down to take my hand. Her hand clamped down so hard on my shoulder that I almost cried out. Among the people, I saw my family. Anumë looked weak. She dropped her dish of salt. It shattered on the street, leaving a starburst of white crystals. Nikis whispered something under her breath, but the rioting crowd behind us caught the words like a strong summer wind.

The guard brought me before Deimo Manurannyi, who stood flanked by people in professional clothing similar to my mother’s. I sank to the ground and pressed my head against her wide skirts. The guard knelt beside me and said, “Tell her what you said.”

“Please, I am named Aneti, the only natural daughter of Adviser Nitannyi who fell so recently into death. I demand my place at her funerary rites.”

« Folio Two, Page Nine

Folio Two, Page Eleven »

Folio Two, Page Nine (svegra mos tusjga)

2010-02-16T16:35:00.004-05:00

Sukua didn’t go to the public school like his cousin Akarsi. His grandmother had brought a private tutor into the house, a graduate of Menarka Open University, and he lived by a strict schedule. Lesedau, his Tveshi father, worked as a business liasion with a biotech company; his mother had worked in one of the synthetic skinterface labs before something happened that he wouldn’t talk about. I asked him at least seven times on the train, possibly eight.

The refinements I had escaped through illegitimacy were written plainly in his behavior. He wore his hair in small, neat braids—a traditional young boy’s style—and a small henna flower on his forehead that marked him as a member of a dance group. Showing aggressive behavior in mixed-gender company was considered very impolite; many young boys struggled with it, but Sukua spoke softly and kept his hands visible and still. It was difficult to think of him as a kid. I decided that he was an android on minute five of the train ride.

He narrated two stories about the beginning of the world, and I listened. He inflected voices to represent the various characters, which made me laugh, and imitated the movements of various animals with his hands.

When the train sloped down into Menarka North, I decided that if the police didn’t arrest me, I would call at his house frequently. We looked at each other and stood, preparing for the automatic doors to open. He wasn’t wearing shoes, either. “Did you sneak out?”

“Yes.” He looked down and wiggled his toes. “They don’t like me going out. I did for the first time last year. Akarsi took me with her best friend to a Dream Garden in Menarka.”

“But not … before, you know what I mean? You weren’t taken out before?”

We stepped onto the wet terminal concrete. It had stopped raining in Menarka, but the air still smelled like rain.

“No.”

We took the lowering platform to the city streets in silence. Adults in red mourning attire pressed against us from all sides. It was difficult to breathe. The doors whooshed open. People pushed against me. I locked my fingers around Sukua’s arm and pulled him until we stood just outside.

Shafts of sunlight broke through the overcast sky, illuminating portions of the city below us like a grid puzzle. The air smelled fresh and clean; the temple fires had been exitinguished for the memorial, with the exception of Hatkranar’s sancutary in North Quarter. Black smoke billowed from its ventilation chimenys like a nineteenth-century factory, sending the sour stench of alka leaves towards the western edge of town. The funerary procession would end at the crematorium beside it, a squat structure made almost entirely of steel and organic glass.

“You should sneak out more,” I said. Although we stood on a rise, the roadways curved illogically and I couldn’t figure out which one we needed to take. “I mean it.”

“I can try.”

The street that seemed most direct curved towards a line of small stone city shrines, sculptures shaped like various animals or anthropomorphic figures with space for incense cakes and liquid offerings on their heads or tongues; the entire thing bordered an upscale apartment complex choked with nut trees. We would need to turn away from the street eventually, but I couldn’t see a shortcut from here. “Good. Do you know when it started?”

“Third Hour, I think—halfway Second at the earliest.”

The clock outside the station read 3h03. I didn’t have time to choose the best route.

« Folio Two, Page Eight

Folio Two, Page Ten »

Folio Two, Page Eight (svegra mos kot)

2010-02-09T16:09:00.005-05:00

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?

« Folio Two, Page Seven

Folio Two, Page Nine »

Folio Two, Page Seven (svegra mos pyes)

2010-02-02T17:47:00.001-05:00

Some deity had answered my prayer. In fact, it came roaring around the bend like thunder. Water splashed everywhere. Wild animals cried. I heard a chorus of predatory roars.

In the moments before the herd came, I looked up at the sky. “Thank you!”

Pulling away from the brambles proved more difficult than I thought. The tunic tore, leaving soiled blue fabric behind. I fell back into the mud but managed to keep my grip on the money. I wrapped it in a small leaf that I put in my mouth. A mameku reared. I jumped onto it and grabbed hold of its ridge horns. By some miracle, or perhaps the curvature of the horns, my hands held.

I turned my head and surveyed the stampede. Something awful could have chased the herd—the gnashing teeth and bony tentacles of an orobusa had given me nightmares ever since I saw my first one in a menagerie—but a pack of wild namkazya now followed us. It meant death for some members of the herd, but namkazya don’t eat humans even when we are killed by accident. Mamekya, like the one I rode, and pygmy daraigya are their choice meals.

One particularly stupid namkazë jumped up the side of the bank towards the police, who ran as fast as they could. Someone fired a shot that brought it down. Two other namkazya grouped the main herd, and four followed at a distance.

The mameku I rode, once at the forefront, slipped farther and farther back. Choosing to ride the animal had doomed it. It spent too much time trying to loosen me. My heart hammered in my chest; as if possessed, I kicked its side with my bare foot. The armored underbelly cut through my skin. My heel came away bloody. The mameku screamed and stampeded forward, lowering its head to push a pygmy daraiga aside.

On my left, I felt the brush of down, followed by a full bodyslam as a namkazë took my place on the mameku’s back. My knees skidded against the ground. The mameku tipped over; I let go and scampered backward.

The namkazë stared at me as it pawed through the animal’s thick flesh, only looking away when it delivered the killing blow. Arterial blood gushed up like a fountain, falling on my face and dripping down my chin. I couldn’t look away.

Something else brushed against me. I felt a paw push me down against the streambed. A namkazë tongue lapped at the blood on my face and neck. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to control my trembling body. After what seemed like a century, the pressure lifted.

While the pack feasted on my savior, I ran up the side of the bank and spat out the leaf filled with money. I did not look back.

During an interview, I made the mistake of relating the story. Someone took it from me and invented something horribly fantastical about me riding the namkazë from Kobsarka to Menarka, where it deposited me on my mother’s corpse.

That never happened. I rode the train just like anybody else.

« Folio Two, Page Six

Folio Two, Page Eight »

Folio Two, Page Six (svegra mos pirh)

2010-01-26T14:31:00.003-05:00

Having left my younger self in a very impossible situation, it is my task to prove that she can escape. Anything I tell you will seem fantastical, and we will have passed into the realm of the ancient epics;—except we both know that my story does not end the way an epic should. We could talk of snakes in the crib or shadows of wings on the walls; either would seem just as fantastical. “Nishet deserves much better than that!” is my one thought as I search for ways to prevent the inevitable.

Join me, Nishet. I am only a child, and I crouch in terror from the tranquilizer guns or bullets. I cannot move. Feel my frantic thoughts—see me, injured past recovery performing the final rites and falling across my mother's body, the life bleeding from the wounds— as I think my way out of this impossible situation. My mind has created the sound of drums in the distance. Slowly, I lick my lips. I roll the round coins in my hand like they are magical talismans. The adrenaline has made me nauseous, and I am beginning to feel the weakness of a morning without food. It comes like a flash across my body, followed by a second. My face is hot. I do not know how much longer I can last.

If there is a god listening now, I thought, please have her appear, and may she deliver me. I promise that I will be a better child, that I will always endeavor to do good, and that I will not hit Getsret every times he walks into physical eduation, even if he does look at me strangely ...

Nothing happened. Pebbles skidded down the bank. I peered through the branches and imagined that I saw two bodies standing here, both poised and ready for my emergence. The tranquilizer gun lay beside one officer's feet. Each now held a large black gun. They meant something serious. The distant rumbling sounded louder. Perhaps it was the train on the tracks. Had it already left? Would I be stranded in Kobsarka for another half hour? Would it condemn me to a life in the shadows?

“Come out!” one yelled. “If you do, we won't hurt you.”

That was the worst lie my young ears had ever heard. I burrowed deeper behind the stack of branches. A fern prickled my nose. I dared not sneeze.

“Did you think that you could get away with breaking and entering while a family's at a funeral? Do you have no shame?”

Looking back at that time, I must smile. One would think that an alarm triggered from inside a locked cabinet would have received a more sympathetic police response, even if I had run. Perhaps they hadn't understood why someone would have remained in the house during a funeral. Even the servants had gone. Anumë thought them more important. If the police arrested me today, would my family come to claim me? Would I be declared homeless, doomed to one of the state orphanages?

My face felt hot. Tears blurred my vision. The entire world shimmered and shook. The rocks on the stream bottom danced, sending beautiful wave patterns across the water. I heard the cry of an animal and a deep thunder in my chest, calm and steady. Above, an officer cried out. I raised my eyes.

« Folio Two, Page Five

Folio Two, Page Seven »

Folio Two, Page Five (svegra mos sjek)

2010-01-12T22:08:00.001-05:00

It is really no good to explain to a person—especially not to you—the gravity of the situation I found myself in on the morning of my mother’s funeral. No one with authority in the family would have condoned locking me in the blanket cupboard, but the police would not have understood that.

I had yet another reason to writhe my hands towards my feet and undo the clumsy bonds Anumë had made. A sensation deep in my gut warned that if I did not do something to secure my future with the Niksubvya family, I would lose the shadow of my mother forever. While the state certainly had her genetic code on file, no one would think that the pallid illegitimate was her daughter—at least, unless I showed myself at the funeral and performed the traditional rites. Even those who remained skeptical of the genetic proofs would believe. The superstitious would understand that lightning did not strike me dead when I uttered the words of release. My mother had ordered me never to register my DNA, and perhaps superstition would help me obey without creating an awkward situation.

Anumë had bound my wrists together much better than my feet. I would need a knife to untie them, and for that I would need to go to the kitchens. The once-distant sirens nearly screamed. Two blocks away? three?—it hardly mattered.

My legs went out from me when I began to run. Needles of pain rushed up my legs. I snaked forward and rolled myself out into the hallway and down the stairs, wincing as each step hit a shoulder or slammed into the back of my elbow.

At the bottom of the stairs, I got up again and ran. Car doors slammed outside. I heard someone walk up the front steps and knock once. It would only take the officer a moment to slam the door open and see the girl in rough blue nightclothes running toward the kitchen—but then I made it through the door and pushed it shut behind me—no one followed— I found myself——I found myself reaching———reaching————reaching—————and at the front of the house I heard the door break open. My fingertips grasped the knife. I held it in my teeth. The bindings came loose.

We kept spare change for the milkmen beneath the sink. I took from it freely and rushed out the back door.

My pants did not have pockets, so I held the coins in my cupped palms. I heard someone running behind me, so I ran faster and skidded down the mud bank behind the house, catching myself on vines and brambles so I wouldn’t hit the rocky stream bottom too hard. Once I stopped moving, two tranquilizer darts zinged past my head. Crouching down behind a stack of fallen branches, I decided to give it to the count of fifty before I moved farther downstream.

As the officer waited for me to appear somewhere along the stream, the neighborhood’s sound system sang the two o’clock prayer. My entire body tensed; a part of me wondered whether he would stop his chase to meditate to the music. I closed my eyes and imagined the chords as iridescent strings playing through the trees and houses. It made more sense to wait.

« Folio Two, Page Four

Folio Two, Page Six »

Folio Two, Page Four (svegra mos dros)

2010-01-05T22:58:00.001-05:00

The next morning, I awoke in a cupboard with prickly rope tied around my hands and feet. My sweaty fingers writhed. I beat my back against the door.

This new situation baffled me. Legal isolation capsules needed cushioning, and most contained view screens that played soothing beach noises or images of smiling people who could behave appropriately. My cousin had left me with nothing. Instead, the closet smelled like the pheromone perfume she wore. I suspected that she had confined me in the one where she kept her blankets.

Locks in old houses usually have tricks. As the smallest seven-year-old girl in my school heat, I had explored many small cavities in a myriad of settings, perhaps to prove that I had a personality. “The shadow girl can turn herself into smoke and pour through locks,” I whispered, shifting my body around so my fingertips rested against the cupboard's floor. “She is a ghost, a namgisjata, and she sends her fingernails out into the night to devour the ancestral shrines' milk, to make the household dead ...”

At that point, I had successfully lifted the door so my thin fingers could fit underneath. My family's cupboards required lifting and jiggling to loosen the locking mechanism, followed by a quick pull—breaking out of a cupboard would require a thrust. The lock clicked and whined. I stopped moving.

My cousin had replaced our metal locks with the new voice-activated safety ones and I hadn't even noticed.

Most adults don't read the operating manuals for the voice-, fingerprint-, or fingerprick-activated locking mechanisms on the market. Thieves and seven-year-old troublemakers do. While uncertain which model my cousin had chosen, pressing the inside of the lock and crying for help would automatically release the door and send a ping to the local police station. Pressing my head against the inside of the lock, I yelled in Narahji, and when that didn't work I tried again using my rough Tveshi. It opened and I looked down at my second problem.

The distance from a standard blanket cupboard to the floor is as towering as an average seven-year-old, or high enough to make a much-smaller-than-average girl somewhat apprehensive. Most home storage models use the lower space as a small wardrobe intended for hanging things like gyenya, monsoon ponchos, and winter jackets. With my wrists and ankles securely bound to prevent movement, landing on my cousin's beautiful tile floor could easily have given me a fractured skull, but children who don't take risks never develop personalities or do worthwhile things with their lives.

When I hit the floor, I couldn't breathe. I tried to scream, but my lungs wouldn't expand and each inhalation hurt. Still, I pulled myself up and snaked along the ground, feeling the tingle where a bright bruise would make its way across my back and right arms only a few hours later. My vision swirled.

Distant sirens broke through the house's thin silence. Unless a miracle happened, the police would reach me before I unbound myself.

« Folio Two, Page Three

Folio Two, Page Five »

Folio Two, Page Three (svegra mos biet)

2009-12-29T18:20:00.003-05:00

Everything changed seven weeks after my seventh birthday.

People embraced on the streets. They loitered outside the closed train stations, hardly speaking a word, staring at the news projections. The confirmed dead rose higher and higher by the hour. On the adult news channels, I watched the rescue footage with my uncle. People shimmied down to the canyon floor on ropes. Arms, heads, legs—everything was fragmented and charred, some of it completely cooked. I screamed.

When they counted my mother’s name among the dead, others screamed. The streets rang with mourning cries thick like loud recordings. I stared at the latest ksibja she had given me. I followed the ancient geometric patterns with my fingertips. The family treated me like a ghost.

At the time, no one outside of my family knew that Salus was my mother. People always assumed that an illegitimate was the product of a male relative—Hiret, in my case. While he had married out to a rich Menashi family (similar to your circumstances, perhaps, especially the shaky footing!), Hiret practically lived in our house. My aunt gave up trying to run him out when I was four and the rumors at school began to percolate. Pretending he was my father protected my real mother from the kind of bad press that ruins good families.

Hiret and I looked nothing alike. My uncle was tall, and his skin was the color of fired red clay bowls in the kitchen—the bowls he filled with fruit early on weekday mornings as he pored over newspaper proofs, an input pen resting thoughtfully against his lower lip. Eternal sweat drenched the fabric under his arms and down his back, regardless of the weather. He had eyes like soggy driftwood and hair that made him appear to have suffered an unfortunate accident with an electric socket.

Two days before the official funeral, the school our family had attended for generations held a memorial service. As the confident child of the Niksubvya line, I was thrown from my family’s shadow onto the stage. My eyes stung from the painstaking hours I had spent memorizing my speech. I tried to imitate the way my mother spoke. People loved it. One man said it brought tears to his eyes; another gentleman would confide when I turned fifteen that he was sorry I had not gone into politics. I thought I sounded like a pompous ass. The glory of the crowd—her glory—would end as soon as I left that raised platform to rejoin my classmates. But, I thought, why does it have to stop?

My mother’s portrait hovered behind me like a phantasm. Younger than I ever knew her, its hazel eyes glistened with lifelike intensity. My mother had had fairer skin than most Narahji, but not quite as fair as mine. We had the same facial shape and sharp mouth. A silver gyena covered her beautiful dark brown dreadlocks. At seven, my hair was thick, straight, and black as pitch—free for the world to look at. We both wore mourning red.

The speech ended just as I had eased myself into the crowd’s adoration. I stared lustfully at the curving wood of the stage, not feeling the pinches of my classmates. What would it take to have that forever?

When the assembly finished, one of the school’s alumnae, a man who had worked with Salus, stepped up to me and clasped my shoulders. His hands were strong and broad. He smelled spicy. “What a beautiful speech,” he said in Tveshi.

“Thank you, sir,” I mumbled. “I hope I paint a picture proper.” They had not taught us the past tense in my Tveshi class yet, and I had too little contact with the language to infer it on my own.

His hands moved to cup my face. He tilted it up towards the light. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my aunt, perhaps, or my cousin Anumë. “What a remarkable resemblance. Are you ... ?”

I stepped away from him and stared. It was a sign from God. If I could—where were the words printed?—if only I could—

“I’m sorry for disturbing you.”

I do not know to this day who overheard, but I will remember forever what was done about it.

The night before the funeral, Anumë brought me sweet nut milk to drink. She helped me lay out my red funeral clothes and tucked me to sleep as though I were one of her own children. “I am sorry that your mother has died,” she said softly, brushing her fingertips across my forehead. “I know that she was your last chance.”

« Folio Two, Page Two

Folio Two, Page Four »

Folio Two, Page Two (svegra mos roh)

2009-12-15T18:15:00.003-05:00

Salus brought me boxes of formal clothes from the children’s boutiques in Galasu. I was swathed in rich fabrics embroidered with everything from fish to delicate nighttime flowers in silver and gold; my feet poked from stiff pant bottoms that had been sewn with layer upon layer of bells. My mother slipped stinging contacts into my eyes before we went onto the streets. I would have endured anything just to hold her hand on the train platform or sit across from her in a busy restaurant, the menu balanced on my small knees. I lived in paradise, and I wanted to remain in her shadow forever.

Shortly before my third birthday, she brought me to the opera for the first time. It was a performance of Arrowborn, a foreign epic adapted by a Menarki named Namkzra in 1756 Standard Count, only a decade before the Occupation.

It sounded ethereal. For the first half hour, I wanted to be among the women singing the choruses on stage in beautiful costumes. My thighs twitched in sympathy each time they leapt and bound through the sea of color-changing balloons.

I only noticed the orchestra at the end of the first act.

Bows flashed for seconds in the stage lights before vanishing. Bells strobed with sound. The ksibja players’ arpeggios tasted like sweet candy. The mókra flutes’ bass hummed in time with my chest.

From that moment until the show’s end, I remember nothing but the steadily increasing desire to dissolve into the sound. Leave it to my mother’s well-kept journals to illuminate some aspects of that live-changing night.

Last night, my daughter gave me the most terrible scare yet. After Hábara’s cancellation, I brought her to the opera with me because she seemed old enough and has always been quiet and well-behaved in public. For the first act, my child delighted in the dances and costumes. It was a beautiful experience at first, but then something happened.

I had requested some of Eràsis’s favorite foods to come to our private box between the acts. She would eat nothing. My child sat rigidly in her seat. Her eyes never strayed from the empty stage. Her little hands shook so fiercely that I took them in mine and begged her to tell me what was wrong. She only said “the music” over and over in a monstrous voice until I clapped my hand over her mouth. I decided that she had had enough music and tried to remove her from the seat. Eràsis has had such fits before, but she was always docile and seemed perfectly fine within hours. Last night, she fought me and dug her fingers deep into the skin of my forearm, drawing thin lines of blood.

As soon as I stopped trying to remove her, she became quiet again. I stopped the blood with a napkin as the lights dimmed. My daughter moved her eyes towards the musicians filing into their places. She remained fixated on them throughout the second act until the performance ended.

I thought that perhaps the music had frightened her, but she seemed very intent on finding the musicians backstage. As for myself, I hoped that seeing them would restore the sanity that she had lost during the show. Everything seems fine with her on the surface, but I can still feel that insanity lurking in her terrible eyes. We have an appointment with the neurologist tomorrow.

I don’t know why my mother insisted on the melodramatic language. Seeing the musicians definitely fixed me. All of them treated me well. One of them even positioned my hands on his ksibja and let me test the notes. After he placed my fingers in the appropriate positions, I began to play the melody of a dance from the first act. “It was supernatural,” my mother’s account continues, “and all because of that man.”

The neurologist thought that my brain seemed healthy. Several days after the appointment, my mother purchased a child-sized ksibja. She locked it in a cupboard at night and instructed her niece Anumë to take it from me at dusk. I would play it until dawn if she didn’t. The keys soon passed to the ksibja tutor who moved into my family’s house shortly after I turned three.

Anumë hated my mother’s elaborate gifts and displays of affection. “An illegitimate should remain in the shadows,” she whispered in my ear, “if no father can come to claim it.”

To this day, those words make me shudder.

« Folio Two, Page One

Folio Two, Page Three »

Folio Two, Page One (svegra mos itz)

2009-12-08T12:27:00.003-05:00

My dear friend,

Thank you for the concern that you expressed in your last letter. The earthquake did not cause much damage here, and we had no fatalities. Thankfully, the village has complied with all of the national safety regulations. I heard that other villages were not as fortunate.

Your letter also gave me pause. The questions you raised about the historical position of the narrative have made me realize how little people must know about life then. While I cannot use many comparisons to life as it currently stands outside the deep canyons, not having seen most of your technology and not having heard much political discourse, I will try to explain as much as possible. However, I am not a historian, so if you have doubts, check with one.

It seems that beginning at that point in my life was not the best decision. I realized this several hours after I had mailed the letter; if I had had paper to spare, and if I had thought a boat would come in time, I would have mailed you a letter begging you to burn those papers. Your confusion intensified this sentiment.

Instead, we might begin with some important background. I mentioned that my mother had conceived me outside of wedlock, and that she had named no father to take charge of me. She never gave me a name before she died, but I have every reason to suspect my father was someone close to her in the government—a legacy family, I suspect, which is why she kept it such a secret. The common people does not appreciate human frailty in the ruling classes.

Salus, as you might protest, was not attracted to men—how could she have conceived me with one?—but I assure you that it did happen. Her journals prove it.

My existence hinges on a sexual favor granted because my mother lost a bet. She was fifty-three, well past childbearing age, at least for women who didn't bribe genetic laboratories. Perhaps her unfamiliarity with the opposite sex explains why neither she nor my father wore protection. I like to think that both had more common sense.

It happened in a small mountain village on a vacation with -----------------, ----, ---------------, and ----------. (Their names appear that way in her journal.) ---------- is my father. A storm had settled in the valley; for the first half of the night, everyone sat around the fire in the resort's common room with cards and tall glasses of setai, one of those sweet berry wines.

Halfway through Fourteenth Hour, my parents found themselves alone on one of the enclosed balconies watching the rain pelt against the glass. My mother had had too much setai. She held the rail for support while her vision doubled and resolved, staring at the long drop below. Her nipples hardened in the chilly air, poking through her plain blue dress, while my father told a story about the High Wilds.

They had sex twenty minutes later. As they twisted together, she grimaced and tried not to imagine someone else, a blithe young woman named Sehutannyi whose face and scent had all but faded with time. It horrified her that she couldn't remember how that woman's lips felt on her throat. Sehutannyi was an ashen corpse, but also my mother's conqueror—the reason why my mother had decided to forego marriage in favor of lust-driven affairs with women she felt nothing for but always seemed to look like the one whom she had lost——women whom she cast aside, who came pounding at her door pleading to know what was wrong with them, who in desperation confided with magazines how wrong Salus was never to love them. One woman had even called her a psychopath.

Salus described the sexual encounter with my father as a “flirtation brought about by wicked fate, the last of Tsemanok's torments.” She called it a purification, but refrained from using any words that denoted enjoyment.

---------- captivated me when I first read about him in my mother's journals. He made a wonderful scapegoat for everything that differentiated me from her, and like every object of blame, I didn't want to know his name or his favorite frozen juice flavors. He only needed to exist.

My perfect mother was enough. Even though she never mentioned me in public, she loved me.

« Index

Folio Two, Page Two »

The Lakannyi-Eràsis Interview: A Fragment

2009-12-01T06:45:00.004-05:00

The Lakannyi-Eràsis Interview exists only in fragments imported from offworld. The devastating Eràsis virus destroyed all of the Ameisa-based recordings. While originally containing both video and audio, the video is too badly damaged to play. The controversial pieces mentioned by Amkzí, if they existed at all, must be in the eleven minutes of static before Màrasis* is mentioned.

Ellipses enclosed by square brackets indicate small pieces of inaudible text. In some cases, I have attempted to reconstruct the words. These words and phrases appear in curly brackets.

THE LAKANNYI-ERÀSIS INTERVIEW: A FRAGMENT

The first nineteen minutes of this recording are too corrupted to hear.

LAKANNYI

How excited are you {for this concert}?

ERÀSIS

It was always [... ... ...] mine [... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...] assassination plot against [... ... ...] not excited, really, more fulfilled. I feel like this is a cumulation, and I anticipate a success tonight [... ... ... ...] women [... ... ... ... ...] to make [... ...] smoothly.

LAKANNYI

You [... ...] one of the best {ksibja} players in two generations. Do you find [... ... ...] stressful?

A brief interlude of static.

ERÀSIS

{myself} as a great {ksibja player}. [... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...] with a broken arm! Once I may have, back before I {became an adult}. [...] heard cylinder recordings from the nineteenth century. The ksibja technique has really changed since then, and sometimes I think for the worse. I try to emulate {those recordings when} playing.

Five minutes of static.

ERÀSIS

It’s not like that at all!

LAKANNYI

About “Demon Child,” could you give {an explanation of its origins}?

ERÀSIS

[... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...] best pieces. It’s not about the {nuamë nuaf} iča. There was a boy I knew while growing up, a nahitakhë orphan. Is that the word you Tveshi use? His {adopted} father beat him. I don’t know what happened to him. That song {is dedicated to} him and all the others like him.

LAKANNYI

As an

Eleven minutes of static.

ERÀSIS

Màrasis committed suicide because she hated what {nanotech antidepressants} did to her head, and I think everything {would have been all right} [... ... ... ...] possible.

LAKANNYI

There are rumors that you were involved [... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...]** before your band became a huge success. How much of the hype surrounding Tapestry do you think derives from the tabloid publicity, and how much is genuine?

One minute of static.

ERÀSIS

{people hear about} the group and begin listening to what we have to say, it’s all good. Personally, that the controversy has stayed alive this long is mind-boggling.

LAKANNYI

Now, lastly, what kind of music do you listen to?

ERÀSIS

That’s easy. I like a lot of really weird stuff.

Hundred Hands Yielding is my favorite modern group. Nakàmennyi uses chords in amazing ways. They’re older than we are, so I feel like Nakàmennyi has been an indirect mentor to me. She’s the one who knows what the next trend will be, and she’s the one who began combing through the old myths for modern music.

Other than that, I think I mentioned the music cylinders.

Player 19L has the most surviving recordings. I bought datastream versions. Other than that, I have a weakness for opera and classical Narahji music. Tveshi music doesn’t really speak to me that much. They use different musical scales, and the lack of micronotes makes their music seem rather flat.

* Màrasis is considered by many, including Amkzí, to have been Eràsis’s mentor. Their friendship lasted from 1913 to 1917, when Màrasis poisoned herself. Eràsis did not come out publicly against nanotech antidepressants until after Màrasis’s funeral. Her condemnation raised public awareness of the failures of this type of medication and drew strong criticism from many medical nanotechnology specialists. – Nàsis

** It is my belief that Lakannyi is referring to the relationship between Eràsis and Prince Hamā from Baqara. Prince Hamā probably contacted her because a relationship with the daughter of a deified mortal would have increased his popularity on Ameisa. We know that his country, Meġi, wanted an easier relationship with the International Congress of Ameisa for trading purposes. Eràsis will discuss him more later. – Nàsis

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Main »

Folio One, Page Twelve (magra mos itzkron tal-roh)

2009-11-24T22:21:00.008-05:00

Akenë moved away from me and whispered something in Lakannyi’s ear, a sound more like like leaves blowing in the autumn wind than a human voice. Our eyes met suddenly. He was too dignified to show fury.

“Akenë is betrothed to Nàmaraga, the niece of the Fadehin.” She sounded like she wanted to avoid shouting at me. Perhaps I had misjudged the situation. Galasu was not my element. “Perhaps these things are not taught in your canyon gutters. Those of us in civilized society would not covet the betrothed of another woman.”

She wanted me to take the bait. Canyon gutter is what members of the National Reformed Daybreak Movement called Narahja because it was not Tveshi enough to salvage. “I see the sunrise in your eyes,” I murmured confidently. “We have an interview. You have interviewed difficult people before, so I expect you to show me the same courtesy you would give any of them. I do not care what the potential nephew of the Deimo”—and here I used the name for the Fadehin used by everyone outside of Shija, our northern provinces—“would extort from you. Is that clear?”

We fought for dominance with our eyes, wild animals dressed in the vetements of civilization. Akenë watched me. “To think you are the daughter of Salus.” He came forward to take the paperwork from me. “Let’s not make trees of strife’s saplings, Lakannyi.” Those words also came from the Shushei Enaharipui—Sehìnta, not the nuamë nuaf iča, our Namgyatzi.

I must have lied to you earlier, Nishet, when I said I hadn’t deadened my emotions. Surely if I had not, this would have moved me—or perhaps it makes no difference. Maybe one can experience emotions without feeling them, just as we can experience dimentions we cannot see—time—without feeling it rush through our marrow and pull at the skin on our necks. I should stop waxing philosophical, though. There isn’t time.

Lakannyi said, “We will start recording now.” I think we were all relieved.

The interview was much like the others. She asked some questions that were difficult. Most of them, quite honestly, fell within the talking points my manager had outlined for me. Of the ones that did not, I remember this one the most: “How do you reconcile your civic status as an unclaimed illegitimate with the devotion to your mother?”

As you know, my father never claimed me. Most illegitimate children are sent to the father’s family after two years. (The legislation, I believe, was created to encourage young men to use protection—but I have mentioned this before. I haven’t the time to cross it out or go back.) Girls like me—the unclaimed—are rare. “Why should there be something to reconcile? She was my mother. We share DNA. She introduced me to the ksibja. She advocated for me when the rest of my family was silent.”

“So, you call them your family.”

“Of course.”

I think there were tears in my eyes. I tried to stop them—anything to keep the endocrine medication from releasing—but they came. Stars and infinity and the chord stretching on, I thought. My heart pounded. I regained control.

I was still thinking about that question in the dark, adrenaline-filled wait before the show began, listening to my bandmates shuffle into place above while I stroked the ksibja. The audience rippled into applause so heavy I could feel it through the stage’s underbelly. This must be what the Gods feel like, I thought for a brief moment. And then came a completely unrelated thought: When did these relations become my family?

The circular trapdoor above glided open, softer than a predator stalking throught the grass. I felt the hot, white spotlight on my face and hands. The platform hovered up. I prepared the feathered plating on my back to expand. My first note was a high C, then a glissando down. I could do this.

It seemed like only moments had passed before I stared into the darkened amphitheater. Above, rain pelted mutely on the remote-controlled covering. Perhaps we will see stars at Act Three, I thought, even though I knew it would never happen.

“My name is Eràsis. Welcome to Tapestry.” I took in a deep breath.

Let’s leave me, halfway done with breathing, on that forlorn stage. As for the rest, we must wait until another brave boat ventures into the depths of our Mother Nara, she who mirrors the world.

Ŋuskzei,
Amkzí

« Folio One, Page Eleven

The Lakannyi-Eràsis Interview: A Fragment »

Folio One, Page Eleven (magra mos itzkron tal-itz)

2009-11-17T23:35:00.004-05:00

Lakannyi arrived immediately after the makeup artists finished painting my skin pure white, but before they had finished setting the emerald-colored cap over my ruined hair. I remember lifting my hands to greet her. The costume artist couldn’t figure out my metal underdress even though we had tried it on at least a dozen times. It kept poking at the tender flesh below my waist when I moved. Ànu, my favorite assistant, had run to fetch tape.

Perhaps Lakannyi liked how glasses looked perched on her nose, but I gathered she hadn’t gone through eye surgery because she preferred looking at things directly to relying on the zones beyond her lenses. They made her look like a music journalist or one of the contestants on the Debate Channel. Everything about her was smooth Tveshi: that way of walking that lets everyone know that they know they are on top of us all and of course those quiet, dispassionate eyes that come with the clicking consonants and vowels that smear together like lipstick on the face of unlicensed female courtesans as they ride each other for the sick amusement of some sex baron. We were about the same height.

“I am very happy you accepted the interview,” she said in Tveshi, propping a small video camera up on the makeshift table. Lakannyi spoke slowly. For that I was grateful. “We’ll upload it to our docstream as soon as the concert is over. I bet you’re excited for the performance.”

“Yes.” I made a mental note to yell at my manager for not telling me about the video. He had misled me because I hadn’t realized that interplanetary bandwidth had increased enough to allow for digital magazines to stream video interviews. It seemed stupid to omit this.

“I will ask you basic questions before we get into the politics of your music and career just to refresh our subscribers. Is anything taboo? I know your mother—”

“No. I talk about her all the time.”

“Your manager signed most of the agreements, but I need you to give thumbprint consent on several of the forms. My assistant will come in with the paperwork momentarily.” Her gaze followed the unfolding underskirt drama. Ànu, out of breath but successful, cut a fresh strip of tape so the costume designer could fuse the stray wire with one that stayed in place. “I’ll start the recording after you cover your chest.”

“What?”

“We have subscribers outside of Tveshë. The laws on several planets we broadcast to prohibit pictures or video interviews that show breasts or uncovered genital areas, and several of our companion countries also have strict taboos. We want to keep everyone happy.” She cleared her throat.

I tried to move again. The wire no longer stabbed me. I smirked and held up my arms to receive the dress’s wiring. “No matter. Do you want a drink? I’m sure someone will bring—”

“I’m fine.” She cleared her throat and watched my reflection. Restless uneasiness plagued her body language, though I cannot say if it was how her head tilted or the rigidness of her shoulders. Lakannyi was no amateur interviewer. She had a résumé that made her competition weep. The body language made no contextual sense. “You understand, of course, that I will ask about everything. Family relationships, inspirations, friends ...”

I cleared my throat. Ànu covered my chest with the overdress and began fastening the back. “Just give me the Gods-forsaken paperwork so we can start. He doubtless already told you everything we can’t mention.”

Her assistant was a shy boy with down on his cheeks, most likely an apprentice. I liked him instantly because he didn’t make a show of himself, but instead plopped the papers on the table and retreated. Before doing so, he looked at me. His eyes were green, a trait shared by less than one percent of the population—blue eyes are the only color more rare. We smiled at each other. His gaze strayed to the jewels at my throat. I pressed my finger against the smart paper and watched my digital fingerprint come to life in a pleasant, warm blue. Seven prints in total, equal to the number of gates between life and death. The boy had given me such an opportunity ...

“What’s your name?”

“Akenë,” he said softly. He would be an out-of-tune baritone.

“I like your eyes, Akenë. They’re like fruit from the mountains.” He shuddered when I spoke. The words, as you know, come from the Shushei Enaharipui. Sehìnta voiced them when the nuamë nuaf iča was brought before her, begging her not to leave him. He reminded me of a domesticated animal. “I still need a companion for the reception.” I used the Tveshi word kaithekouri, not gianemekouri, for “companion,” an honest mistake for any Narahji woman unused to the nuances of their language. However, I did know the difference. My mother had written about it in her journal. Kaithë is about sexual companionship, while gianemë remains strictly platonic.

He mumbled, “I don’t think that would be appropriate.” I saw the color in his cheeks. I saw the expression on Lakannyi’s face.

You know I didn’t do it because I wanted him like that. Suppose I had gotten with child, a turquoise-eyed girl by a green-eyed boy. People with blue or green eyes are 78% more likely to contract the muakanua than the 99% of the population with brown, hazel, or yellow eyes. Think of the child of that union. Life would be a death sentence.

I called him a kaithekouri because I wanted her to be insulted for him. I wanted her to be brutal to me. There is no point in interviews that don’t spark controversy. How else do people learn who you are?

« Folio One, Page Ten

Folio One, Page Twelve »

Folio One, Page Ten (magra mos itzkron)

2009-11-10T17:50:00.005-05:00

Or, if not exactly pious, I have always enjoyed going through the motions. Our Narahji hymns and chants are beautiful enough to make anyone feel the Gods’ presence, sweet like syrup cream. Praying to Gamgyatsahagia filled me with memories of my mother. The mantra Amu Oyevë Gamgyatsahagia Pareikhra Amu brought back those afternoon walks with her to the small neighborhood temple. I fidgeted with my coarse gray gown while she lit the charcoal and burned the resin. The hymn “O Goddess Who Makes the World My Poem” reminded me of the bowls of nopàra we left on our doorstep in the middle of monsoon season for the local arts festival.

I brushed the water from my hands when we finished chanting and examined one of the document readers, which contained information about our performance. While Abàkeyyi insisted that we leave room for innovation, I encouraged blocking everything to prevent too much downtime between pieces. People will only listen to the lead singer ramble about the meaning of lyrics for so long.

As I read, I heard the manager’s wheezing breath beside me. Raising my head, we looked at each other for several tense seconds before he wet his lips and spoke. “You have a backstage interview.”

“Okay.”

“I scheduled it during your costuming and makeup because you won’t run around after everything. Her name is Lakannyi. She represents World Beats, a magazine with one million domestic readers, half a million international subscribers, and seventeen thousand off-world ...”

I flipped past the blocking and selected the fourteenth song. At our last concert, I had screwed up the ksibja solo, but no one had noticed because we hadn’t released an official recording yet. I must have been mad when I wrote that series of arpeggios.

Abàkeyyi and Mahistva were speaking heatedly to each other as they unpacked the drum equipment. I saw Abàkeyyi glance at Kadzì; she grabbed Mahistva’s arm and whispered softly in her ears. They locked eyes. Whatever she said made Mahistva sigh. Kadzì stared uncomfortably at the ground.

“... an apprenticeship with Gemalahi Sopàra from Amurja. Did you get that?”

“Yes.” Abruptly, Kadzì walked out of the room and slammed the door. Mahistva looked like she would cry. O Gods, I prayed, please don’t let this fall apart. I don’t know what I’ve done, but I promise that I will make it up to you tenfold. “Lakannyi from World Beats is a big deal. Understood. Have you asked the techies to triple-check our electrical?”

“No. I didn’t think—”

“Ask the blond woman and that man who looks like the boyfriend from Growing Up Kahani. I don’t trust the one who keeps buzzing his communication band. He should concentrate on doing his job.” Abàkeyyi put her arms around Mahistva and kissed her forehead. I decided that knowing what had happened would put me under significantly more stress than I needed. “The other two are just unsettling.”

“I’m sure they have better things to do than satisfy your paranoia.”

“I won’t perform if I think the stage will catch on fire.” I turned off the document reader and put my hands on my hips. “That means no interview with Lakannyi from World Beats. Got the harmony?”

“Yes.” His double chin shook as his head bobbed up and down. He thought that I was a mad genius who needed careful handling. “You’ll find, however, that life is more fulfilling when you’re not chasing after nonexistent threats.”

“This conversation is over.”

Maybe I was a mad genius, but for a while I had known that the accidents around me seemed too convenient, too suitable, and more numerous than any other artist I knew had ever experienced. Did I suspect someone close to me? Sometimes yes, sometimes no—but perhaps I shouldn’t move too far ahead. After all, we have not yet met Lakannyi, and I am still standing backstage waiting for the inevitable curtain call.

« Folio One, Page Nine

Folio One, Page Eleven »