by Avi Silver
She was supposed to be relieved—when the alternative was exile, she was supposed to be overjoyed. She grit her teeth against the anticlimax of it all, forced her head high when she felt like curling up with it between her knees. This was meant to be a lucky thing. A fresh start, where her father was alive and her very existence wasn’t cause for shame.
It makes sense that I feel weird, she thought to herself. But I don’t need to act weird. This is uncomfortable, but I can handle it. I can handle all of this.
And that might have even been true, if it hadn’t been for Eakang.
Eakang Minhal was completely insufferable. They were always gawking at her, or else finding a way into her business. At first it had just been during meals, when they accosted her with questions: what’s it like in Ateng? Is your brother still there? How big do the sãoni get? Do you want new clothes, Sohmeng? Aren’t those sãoni skin clothes itchy, Sohmeng? You can borrow mine if you want, Sohmeng!
Given that Eakang was about half her size, Sohmeng had no idea what they were playing at with that ridiculous suggestion. Still, she let it go—they were a couple years younger than her, immature. They didn’t know better.
“Minhal children do a little bit of everything in Nona Fahang!” Eakang explained at one point. They had taken it upon themself to play the role of Junior Grand One. “We drift through different roles until we find one we like, but we’re never really expected to stay anywhere too long. We’re like butterflies, or chameleons!”
It got worse when they started introducing her to the other Minhals, showing off how special and unique they all were because of the free reign they were given in Nona Fahang. Luckily most of the others weren’t too bad, but Sohmeng couldn’t stand the way they all buzzed around Eakang like they were a big pink dung flower.
“Sohmeng’s so cool,” Eakang said one afternoon to their phase-mates. This was the same day they’d forgone their signature braids in favour of a bun, beaming at Sohmeng all the while. “They ride sãoni, I even saw them doing it!”
“Wow,” said another Minhal breathlessly. “I can’t even imagine. Those things are so scary.”
“Yeah but Sohmeng is super brave. Like their dad, but even more!”
Sohmeng bristled; how many times had she used the feminine I in front of them? Just because she was going by Minhal didn’t mean she was changing her entire identity. But no matter how many times she made the correction, they never seemed to take the hint.
“I’d love to try it one day,” Eakang said, looking embarrassingly hopeful. “Maybe you could teach me?”
Not on your life, Sohmeng thought.
“Mrr,” Sohmeng said, and mumbled some excuse about having somewhere to be.
But everywhere Sohmeng went, Eakang seemed to follow—asking questions, making useless commentary, or just sticking that big goofy smile in her face like it was the best day of their life. Which she supposed it was, given how much everyone seemed to adore them. It was truly shocking that no one else had noticed how annoying they were, every hour of the day.
“Ahn, I’m serious,” she groaned to her captive audience. “They’re the worst. Verifiably the worst person in Eiji, possibly on the planet. Does anyone suck this much in Qiao Sidh?”
“Hard to say,” Ahn replied, grunting as he dug out a latrine. “I haven’t met everyone.”
“Don’t take their side,” Sohmeng hissed, peering from behind the house Ahn was digging for. After his work with the silvertongue had been successful, she’d persuaded the Grand Ones to let him do some manual labour for the community. He looked calmer when he had something to do, and it seemed like a good way to build goodwill. “It’s so obnoxious! They follow me everywhere, talk to me about absolutely nothing, try to pull me into their stupid little club. I’m going to strangle them with their own braids, I swear on both the gods.”
“It sounds like they really admire you,” Ahn commented, yanking at an enormous rock that was caught in the soil. “Like a younger sibling would. I used to trail my siblings all over the palace.”
“Please don’t make me send you back to the hogs.”
As the phases passed from Dongi into Se into Won, Sohmeng did what she could to keep busy and turn the tides in her favour. To her dismay, the Grand Ones didn’t budge on their position regarding Ateng. Their reasoning was relentless, and impossible for Sohmeng to effectively argue against. What if the sãoni at the base of Fochão Dangde decided to stalk them during the journey? What if the Qiao Sidhur attacked and scouts returned to find their home destroyed? How much could go wrong in the time it would take to repair the Sky Bridge?
It was exhausting. It made sense. It made Sohmeng want to scream. She had always believed that all the hmun of Gãepongwei would show up for each other—it sucked to have that belief challenged. She wanted to keep fighting, to find the magic words that would make the Grand Ones behave in a way that made sense to her. But as the days passed and the rejections piled up, she was forced to admit those words didn’t exist. For as long as the Qiao Sidhur invasion remained a threat, help for Ateng would not come from Nona Fahang.
So Sohmeng changed tactics, and focused her attention on Ahn. If she could find a way to turn the trial in his favour, then they could get back on the road to Qiao Sidh and return to their original plan. Bargaining felt more complicated now that she understood the violence that had occured in the northern hmun, but it wasn’t impossible. If Ahn could understand he’d made a mistake, why couldn’t his sister? All Sohmeng needed to do was get everyone to the camp in one piece—and that meant using this thirty-day window wisely. Her pleas to the Grand Ones for Ateng became reports on Ahn’s good behaviour, and she did what she could to find work he would excel at. She was confident that Ahn regretted what had happened—he just needed a way to make it right. To atone, like Grandmother Pel had said.
It worked out sometimes. Often, he was regarded with disdain. It would have been easier to judge people’s distrust if she hadn’t met the refugees from Hosaisi and Kongkempei. Some had integrated with the community, but many kept to themselves, their grief still fresh on their faces. Looking at them sometimes made Sohmeng feel like she was advocating for a cause even more impossible than securing aid for Ateng. But for the sake of Eiji, she kept going, only able to hope that she wasn’t making things worse.
Sohmeng felt her legs ache with every leap forward, every step back. The days felt at once too long and too short, and the stress began to grate.
The final straw came one evening when she was alone with Eakang, helping to prepare dinner.
Eakang had been battering her with questions about Ateng, asking about everything from the language to the holidays to their Tengmunji practices. Thinking of the bodies she had found, Sohmeng’s answers got more clipped with each passing minute. It made sense for Eakang to be curious about other hmun, but she wished they could give her a day off, or at least be less in her face about the whole thing.
“So they just all vote instead of going with the person with the dominant phase?” they asked.
“Yup.”
“That’s so weird!”
“Mhm.”
“How do they know they’re making the right choice?” Eakang pressed.
“They’re the Grand Ones,” Sohmeng said, passing them a thick ginger root as encouragement to get back to work. “What they say goes.”
“That must be so frustrating.” Eakang sighed, peeling and grating the root into a bowl. “Especially with how harsh they are, right?”
Sohmeng stiffened.
“Like the exiling and all that? That’s so messed up. Like not even because you’re a criminal, just because you’re...” They trailed off, glancing at Sohmeng with a look they must have thought was sympathetic.
All at once, Sohmeng’s distaste hardened into something unnamable. She hated the way they were looking at her, waiting for some personal response, some Minhal camaraderie despite their vastly different experiences. It made her burn. No one in her hmun had ever had th
e right to this information, and yet this absolute stranger somehow felt entitled to her privacy, to her life. Was it not enough that they’d already gotten her father?
“Sohmeng?” Eakang turned to face her, the smile on their face an indicator of just how oblivious they were. “I just wanted to say that I think it’s great that you’re also Minhal. It’s so unfair that Ateng would have exiled you, but I’m really glad you can be yourself here.”
Be herself? They didn’t even know her! She stared at them, stunned into silence.
“Like I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through.” They bit their lip, having the nerve to genuinely look upset. Like it was their problem. “I was wondering though, um, your friend? They also speak Atengpa, right? But they don’t seem like they’re from your hmun, so I was just wondering if they were also—”
Sohmeng slammed her knife into the waste bucket, the sound of it nearly knocking Eakang flat on their butt. That was far enough. “That’s not your business.”
“Oh!” Eakang stared at her, stumbling over their words. They looked embarrassed, aware that they had overstepped, but Sohmeng wasn’t in the mood for an apology. “I shouldn’t have—”
“No,” she said coldly. “You shouldn’t have.”
She stood up, brushing off her pants and abandoning her work. Eakang was trying to backtrack, but Sohmeng cut them off with a sharp Sãonipa snarl. “Tell my father I’m not staying for dinner.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“I don’t care,” Sohmeng snapped, and she found that she meant it. She didn’t care what Eakang Minhal had intended—she cared that they had crossed a line. It was one thing to bother her day in and day out with questions; it was another to drag Hei into a conversation they weren’t even present for.
She stormed out the door before things could go into territory she’d have to apologize for, keeping her head down until she made her way outside Nona Fahang’s walls and into the colony’s territory. The moment Hei saw her, they jumped up, clicking in alarm.
Ignoring the calls of the scouts above, she went straight into their arms, hugging them tightly and simmering with anger. Hei guided her to Mama, who nosed her worriedly as the hatchlings scrabbled at her feet, squeaking up a storm. Unable to find words to describe her frustration, and sick to death of jumping between two inadequate languages, Sohmeng made every furious Sãonipa snarl she knew. The creatures around her clicked in what might have been confusion, but she chose to take it as solidarity. Hei held her closer, not pushing for an explanation.
It only made Sohmeng burn deeper, thinking of how casually Eakang had asked about Hei. As if the idea of them getting exiled was some far-off myth rather than an actual tragedy that had happened to an actual person. Actual people. She buried her face in Hei’s shoulder, breathing slowly and counting off the phases in her head.
Par Go Hiwei Fua Tang Sol—
It wasn’t fair.
Jão Pel Dongi Se Won Nor—
It wasn’t fair that Eakang had gotten to steal her father for four years.
Chisong Heng Li Ginhãe Mi—
It wasn’t fair that she was angry at her father for finding joy outside of her own family.
Ker Hiun Ãofe Soon Nai Tos Jeji—
It wasn’t fair, but it was so hard to stop.
How could she tolerate being around Eakang when they had lived such vastly different lives? How was she supposed to handle the fact that they were celebrated while she had to spend her childhood hiding who she was? Why were they treated so differently when they were both—
Minhal.
Sohmeng exhaled, rolling her forehead against Hei’s collarbone. If only Ateng’s Grand Ones could see her now, containing her anger just the way they’d always wanted. Exiting the stressful situation before she could blow up at innocent bystanders. Would they finally see her as an adult?
Hei chirped softly, nuzzling Sohmeng’s cheek until she felt the unmistakable sensation of charcoal clinging to her skin.
“I don’t know how to behave with other people,” she mumbled into Hei’s shoulder. The teeth sewn to their clothing bit lightly against her skin. “It would be easier if they knew how to behave with me. If they’d meet me halfway.”
“Humans are difficult.”
It was true. Sohmeng’s opinion of other people had improved after so many months away from them. She had forgotten how complicated it was to communicate, how she always felt at least a little bit like an outsider. A new phase name wouldn’t fix that.
Up above, the gods shone with Won’s influence. It hit Sohmeng then—it had been a full lunar cycle since she’d entered Eiji. Just over one hundred days, a quarter of a calendar year.
Merging her two lives felt like pulling down the sky to touch the earth, like trying to wear the skin of both past and future iterations of herself. There was no story to guide her, no map to consult. She felt for the first time like maybe she didn’t know how to be an adult after all. She didn’t know how to access whatever secrets adults had that enabled them to do so little, to let the world stay so wrong—and she didn’t want to. Growing up was supposed to make her feel less helpless, wasn’t it?
Hei was right—humans were difficult. She sat beside her partner, trying to reimagine herself into a person who knew how to manage this situation. Who could be determined, and patient, and fair. Who could fix problems she hadn’t even caused herself.
Ahn was not used to feeling dangerous. Back in Qiao Sidh, his sword was a symbol of devotion, his rank a sign of the depths of his caring. Even the bone in his ear was something tender, a physical manifestation of love and loyalty.
In Nona Fahang, things were different. As he awaited his trial, time passed in a series of tasks, none of them pleasant: digging latrines, doing Nona Fahang’s literal heavy lifting, providing ongoing waste disposal. Much of the work put him into close contact with the very community that despised him. More than once, he wondered if being put in a prison would have made them trust him more or less.
Outside of Sohmeng and Hei, Tonão Sol had been the closest thing to hospitable that Ahn had found, allowing him use of the family’s shower stall. One of the women of the house also offered him food on occasion, but they never spoke much beyond that. It was probably difficult to relax around someone who was constantly flanked by at least one guard. So Ahn did his best to ease the burden of his own presence; he worked hard and quietly, smiled at the children who dared run up to get a look at him. When someone engaged with him, he was polite, and never overstayed the interaction. Slowly, many of the fearful looks he received mellowed into mere unease, and he counted that as success.
But his good behaviour made no difference when it came to Lita Soon.
Ahn was making the rounds collecting entrails for the sãoni, hefting the pole up onto his shoulders and trying to balance the foul-smelling buckets on either side. In a moment of community organizing genius, Sohmeng had suggested using peoples’ cooking scraps as motivation for the sãoni to stay near the walls. It was an easy waste disposal system, and it kept Nona Fahang from having to use up too many of their resources on the creatures’ appetites. It was also disgusting, making Ahn the obvious candidate for the job.
He was just finishing up when Lita Soon approached him. “You missed something,” the man said, tapping his spear against the ground.
Ahn looked behind him, worried he had dropped one of the bird carcasses. Just like that, the scout’s spear took a shot at the bucket to his right, tipping out half of the filthy contents within. They landed with a horrible splat at Ahn’s feet, viscera staining the ground outside the small home.
“Right there,” Lita said, his voice falsely sweet. “Do you see?”
It was a childish trick. One that made Ahn look careless. The woman he had collected these from had actually greeted him this morning, and now— “I see. Thank you.”
Ahn took a slow breath, lowering the pole back to the ground before the left bucket lost balance and made even more of a mess. He
stood over the guts spread on the ground, fingers flexing in hesitation. Beside him, the butt of the spear tapped once more, a casual threat.
Schenn used to joke that Ahn’s fuse was long enough to catch fish with. And it was true—he hated getting angry, found the feeling frightening and unmanageable. But something twitched at the end of the line.
“There a problem, little prince?” Lita taunted. “I figured you were used to getting your hands dirty.”
Tension struck like lightning through Ahn’s body. His shoulders pulled back, his chest locked tightly around his heart. “I would like to know what I have done to you,” he said, his voice as even as he could manage. “And if you would allow it, I would like to find a way to make things right.”
Lita Soon scoffed. “Just clean up your mess, tsongkar.”
Ahn saw the spear rise, ready to take a swat at him. Before he could stop himself, his arm shot out and caught it. The Soon man’s eyes went wide.
“I am trying.” Ahn stepped over the blood at his feet. How was he supposed to be non-threatening when he was constantly being forced to defend himself? “It is clear that I have caused you pain, or else you just get some sort of thrill from exercising control over others. But based on the way you look at me, I can only assume it’s personal.” Lita tried to wrest the spear out of his hands, but Ahn held tight. He had trained his whole life not to be knocked down. “So I ask you, kindly, to tell me how I might settle this grudge.”
Watch yourself, Ahn. No, watch him—you’re scaring him. Let go of the spear.
The warning from his earpiece made Ahn gasp audibly. He released his hold so quickly that it felt like a spasm in his fingers, and Lita stumbled. When the man righted himself, he was looking at Ahn with pure disdain.
Ahn took a shaky breath, stepping back with his hand cupped over his ear. His heel squished in something warm and wet.
“You want to know what you did to me?” Lita Soon asked, his voice shaking. The lack of control made him look so young. Only a few years older than Ahn, a few years younger than Ólawen. Full of such rage. “Kongkempei.”