by Ken Scholes
We’d reached the Desert Gate by then, its arch of rose-carved razu ivory glistening pink in the sun. I shied away from the Kelli elder, Kelli-nai-Marah, who walked beside the cart and probably maintained the veil, but she greeted me with warmth.
“Don’t worry, child,” she said.
“I worry...”
“Yes,” she said, “I know. I know.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Your sister will calm in the desert. It is a good place for those that yearn for the quiet and wide spaces.”
Her kindness overwhelmed me. I wanted to embrace her, to cry, to rage the way Gitit would often rage at the injustice of the world. To beg forgiveness of Gitit, of Kimi, of myself for not knowing better, for having now to pretend that everything was all right. I should have stayed behind with my sister, tricked Gitit into leaving us behind, refused to ever become lovers. “I fear I made a horrible mistake...”
“Daughter,” she said, “your sister is not the first one, not the only one. Trust in the magnanimity of Bird.”
“Then why has Bird made her this way?” It was such a horrible thing to say that I slapped myself on the head, swallowing snot and tears together with my shame. If Bird hadn’t made her this way she would be behind the walls of the inner quarter now, studying the writ and praying to Kimrí, constructing automata, speaking in the scholars’ dialect of Khana peppered with old words the women did not learn. My sister would not be a sister. My sister would be a stranger. My sister would not exist.
“I am sorry. Please don’t listen to me. I am sorry.”
“See?” The trader Kelli pointed out a short, heavily veiled woman that walked with the Oshrat oreg, the only one who had not greeted us when we joined. “Kelli-nai-Berurit will not speak to you, to any strangers. When she is upset, she cannot talk. The veil we constructed for your sister we first constructed for her. She is used to this road now. And if you need to ask, we chose her not out of pity, but because we love her.”
“Nobody wanted to choose us,” I said, the bitterness too much to swallow. When not upset, your lover talks. My sister cannot.
“Your time will come,” the elder Kelli said. She paid for our passage through the Desert gate and would accept no argument over it.
* * *
We parted with the traders Kelli and Oshrat at the crossroads. A throughway, paved and magically reinforced with bricks of compressed sand, would lead the seven older women through the craggy northern edges of the Burri desert, where water was scarce but reliably available at major oases, all the way eastwards to the Old Royal’s city of eleven wells.
It was at the crossroads that the elders Kelli and Oshrat formally invited us to join them in their venture. Kelli-nai-Marah spoke of the splendors of the terraced red city—the painted tiles of the royal tumbleweed garden, the smell of spices and dust, the markets where multicolored birds spoke poetry in the sixteen languages of the desert.
The elder Kelli spoke, too, of togetherness. “We say that it isn’t good for a Khana to travel alone, and there are reasons aplenty to keep old words close in the turbulent world. There is safety and firmness in the sisterhood we offer to each other.”
The women Kelli and Oshrat all nodded to this. Kelli-nai-Berurit, her gaze firmly on the ground, encouraged us likewise to travel with her oregs.
Gitit and I exchanged glances, each not wanting to accept the offer but feeling too guilty to reject that kindness. But we saw in each other’s eyes an unwillingness to swerve from the path marked by us in my grandmother’s silences, woven into the story of the cloth of winds. And so we took our leave from Oshrat and Kelli formally with traditional words and informally with hugs and tears, and steered the small cart down the lesser trodden paths that led south and into the great desert.
The unending freedom of that land, unknown to us and yet familiar from song and story, spread before us. It smelled like the carpets our mothers and grandmothers had brought back from ventures, before they were rigorously beaten out in the streets: dust and wool and herbs that burned with just a hint of sweetness.
We walked in the early mornings and the evening’s cool hours, childishly unafraid of brigands and thirst. Though I was without magic I read our path easily by the patterns made by the great embroidery of stars that stretched taut upon the needleframe of the sky. I named many kinds of low-hanging grass and shrubbery I recognized from the dried shapes and drawings that grandmother-nai-Tammah had shown me in her journeybooks back home, and I made teas for us and poultices for Gitit’s bleeding feet. Kimi abandoned shoes and took to running joyfully around our cart and forward. Gitit made a string bracelet for her, reinforced with magic, so that she could roam without getting lost.
In the first week we met others, Khana traders and strangers from the desert and from lands far away. With all, we spoke respectfully and all spoke back to us likewise, and as luck shines upon fools and children, we were unhindered. Further south we traveled, following the sky-roads I believed would lead us to the tents of the snake band of the Surun’. The wind was quiet upon the land. We saw no bones, of wondrous beasts or otherwise.
The miracles began with small things—Kimi bringing back an emerald-eyed lizard that escaped before we could determine whether it was mechanical; the wind blowing in a great sudden gust as we hid from the desert heat in a small embroidered tent gifted to us by Gitit’s grandmothers Lur; bones, always bones, that the wind left after it receded, small fragments bleached to a faint pink and yet striated differently from any razu ivory we’d studied. Kimi’s solitary runs stretched longer, and her face browned to an even deeper hue, as did Gitit’s.
We did not worry about Kimi’s excursions until one day she brought in her clenched fist a brown lump that she bit over and over. She swallowed the thing before we could see what it was or twist it from her fingers.
In our hastily pitched tent we fussed over my wailing sister, feeling guilty and foolish for not imagining the kind of poisons Kimi could eat in the desert. Always before she’d been picky, reluctant to try new foods even with family, much less pick them from the ground; yet we should have considered this.
Gitit made fire with her magic, and I brewed poultice after poultice for Kimi. She’d have none of it, kicking and flailing and spitting with grim determination. Once again we felt keenly the absence of grandmother-nai-Tammah, for she had fed much bitterer medicine to Kimi without any apparent effort. We got lucky—either the thing she ate wasn’t poisonous, or stray drips of my boiling brews had done the deed; by nightfall, my sister looked no worse but for the wear we had inflicted upon her by our worry. Gitit and I were done for. Slumped with exhaustion, we slept like the dead through the night and into the morning, when we awoke to the incessant wailing of the wind.
It must have been going for some time, building up before it woke us, gusts that shook the tent and rattled the cart and climbed ever higher in pitch. Kimi, oblivious to the sounds, slept curled on the side with the cloth of winds draped over her face.
In whispers we consulted with each other. The tent pegs, reinforced with Gitit’s magic, should hold even though they would have been stronger, more stable in a magical weave done by two. But perhaps we could further reinforce—
With a great push and a groan the tent was torn from its pegging and was tossed up and sideways, toppling the cart. The backlash flung me back and sideways, painfully into the dust, into—
—I lay on my back, staring up—
—all around me, a great ring of warriors, clothed in armor of polished bronze and headgear of enameled tin feathers that rattled in the wind; warriors with curved breasts and also beards, their faces lighter brown in color than my own, their hands wrapped around pennons and spears. Between them prowled small lions, feather-maned and winged, that bared at me thin fangs of sharpened emerald. I struggled up as one of the warriors raised a hand, the bronze spear in it clutched to strike. I heard more than saw Gitit rush towards me with a great cry, thrown back with the wind’s wailing. Kimi, hands outflung and laughing, spun fo
rward—
“No!”
I do not know if I cried this or another. In-between the wind’s great roar a man appeared, in Khana veils and a billowing kaftan, slicing through the army on flat planes of white metal painted over with the seedlike letters of the writ. In one hand he held a spear of blinding light, a work of magic so powerful it was visible even to me. Moving ever forward, the scholar swung the spear that spread into a fan of two, three, a thousand spears, sweeping into the warriors, sweeping through the warriors who folded like shadows and collapsed into the sand. The emerald-toothed beasts bared their teeth and growled, defiant, before the sleeve of the whirlwind was lowered over them, folded them in—and all went quiet.
Shaken and unsteady I rushed to the fallen Gitit, and our savior sped to my sister in a motion so achingly familiar I knew Grandmother-nai-Tammah before she lowered the veil.
In the moments that followed I had no time for thought. Gitit was injured and unconscious. Blood seeped from a spear-wound in her side where no spear remained. Kimi laughed and laughed in confusion, running around and around until with my help grandmother-nai-Tammah pitched her tent over our toppled but unharmed cart. Of our own tent there was no sign.
Grandmother draped the cloth of winds over Kimi, and I was too confused and shaken to contemplate what had just happened. Behind us, a great hole in the ground gaped, but I wouldn’t have dared look into it even if grandmother hadn’t pulled me inside the tent.
I brewed potion after potion while grandmother cleaned and dressed Gitit’s wound. To distract and occupy my sister, Grandmother-nai-Tammah gave her a great lump of brown dough that looked familiar even to my dulled senses, but I continued to work, single-minded until grandmother proclaimed Gitit to be out of danger.
We moved camp later that night, after Gitit came to and asked for water. The hole in the ground had closed by then. The treacherous desert fell quiet, peaceful and placid as before.
I yearned to ask my grandmother a thousand questions, about the wounding memory of bronze-clad warriors and beasts of spiked emerald, about the wind, about her garb, her magic. She must have been a three-named strong—a miracle, a rarity, a marvel that should have propelled her to great power, made her to sit in council, to lead a famous oreg of her own. And yet, though my grandother-nai-Leylit had only a single deepname, grandmother-nai-Tammah, the stronger of them, had called her elder and had taken her name, Bashri. But I had a more urgent question to ask.
Settled anew in grandmother’s tent, I waited to spring it until both Gitit and Kimi had fallen asleep. Grandmother-nai-Tammah sat, her back erect and her face half-turned away from me, expecting my speech as one expects a blow.
I spoke. “Back in Niyaz, I offered you to join us. You said no.”
She said, “I meant to let you go. I gave my cloth away to you.”
“I recognize the cake you fed the child, the poison we thought would slay her. You followed us veiled, knowing that we had no magic to see you. You spoke to Kimi, knowing that she could not tell us where she went and what she saw.”
“I changed my mind,” grandmother said. “It is not good for a Khana to travel alone.”
I gulped for breath. Grandmother-nai-Tammah had meant herself. She’d told us she was too old to travel, but what she had planned was to set out alone and leave us.
I turned away from her, and she from me. My face to the painted leather wall of the tent, I let silent tears fall, not quite lulling me to sleep. Later I turned around. Grandmother lay like a lump under a veil of magic that obscured her from the shoulders down. Her back was turned to me. I could not see her face, could not see whether she slept. Kimi snored quietly under the cloth of winds, and Gitit, numbed by my potions, slept also.
I lay on my back, counting invisible stars beyond the tent’s leather canopy, unable to sleep, thinking, thinking. I gave my cloth away to you, she’d said as if it meant the world—but the cloth of winds had belonged to grandmother-nai-Leylit.
* * *
Gitit slept for eleven hours. When she woke up, grandmother and I took down the tent; Gitit was too weak to do anything but look, hands folded in her lap like nesting birds. Kimi danced around us, asking intermittently for cookies, gleeful at the shadows that fell like sticks around the tent’s collapsing angles.
I did not want to talk to grandmother-nai-Tammah. She’d given Kimi another piece of cake and helped me hoist Gitit upon our trading chest, but she’d deceived us. She’d let us believe she was too fragile and old for our journey, and yet her mechanical shoes, wide and sturdy on their planes of white metal, had carried her effortlessly through the desert. She was a three-named strong and could do whatever she wanted, and what she’d wanted was to travel alone.
On and on we journeyed, delayed in our progress by Gitit’s weight on the mechanical chest too weak to carry her. Grandmother-nai-Tammah made small improvements, but there was only so much she could do in the desert, far from her underground workshop and tools.
For days and days I remained resolutely silent. Grandmother, too, stopped even greeting me. She slid after Kimi into the desert that trembled with the heat’s music, returning only to break camp at high noon. We’d hoist the tent up, and she’d reinforce the pegs with her magic, three deepnames at three points making the structure stable enough that no wind could carry it away.
Even the act of it, simple and easy for a woman with so much power, reprimanded me for my uselessness. If I hadn’t lacked deepnames, I could have reinforced Gitit’s fastening. Even a single deepname, even a weak one, would have secured the magic that held the tent down, would not have failed us in the storm, would not have subjected us all to danger. Grandmother-nai-Tammah did not have to say anything. In the dimness of the tent we lay with our backs to each other, tense and miserable.
But the silence between us did not extend to Gitit. My lover, too weak to talk much, expressed gratitude at my grandmother’s offers of tea, and inquired after her health—small things that left me with a strange bitter slithering in my stomach. One day Gitit asked my grandmother about her mechanical sliding shoes, and was treated to a lengthy story of Khana women who had established, centuries ago, an underground workshop for each other, even though holy artifice was forbidden to us.
I rushed out of the tent. It was either that or screaming.
Gitit came after me. I was too upset to turn around, shaking with anger that threatened to tear me apart from within, rising inside me with devouring intensity I had never before experienced.
“What is it, heart?”
“Why do you talk to her?” I snarled at Gitit, taken aback by my vehemence and yet unable to stop. “She lied to us. She wanted to travel alone. We are a burden to her!”
“How are we a burden? She...”
“Oh, you are not a burden,” I cried. “A two-named strong of good family, of course she’d talk to you. Any strong Khana would talk to you! You’re wanted everywhere! Everywhere! It’s Kimi and I that are redundant, even to our own...”
Gitit recoiled. “She is your grandmother, Aviya-nai-Bashri. She followed us and she saved us. But you can say whatever you need to say.”
My lover turned away, and back into to the tent she slid, leaving me alone to stare at desert shrubs alive with small winds. Somewhere to the east, the snake-band of the Surun’ traveled, weaving carpet after carpet from these threads of breath. To the south-east, singers of the Maiva’at plucked feather after sunset-colored feather from Bird’s triumphant plumage. And further east beyond these lands, beyond the Old Royal’s city of eleven wells, the Loroli people walked behind the blazing star that rolled inside their sacred tumbleweed. And even farther to the east, the crags, the grass-grown mountains, and beyond them, nothing. Oh, the lands of trade and splendor that the Khana women crossed, the lands well-told and yet unknown and new—they’d be as nothing to me now, an emptiness more barren than the desert. Doesn’t she understand? Did I? Did anyone?
A bird, long-legged and bent-beaked, dove down from the sun and slid
close to me, spread herself into the sand whirls at my feet; dissolved to nothingness. And I felt nothing.
* * *
At sleep-time, Kimi brought the cloth of winds and spread it over my face. She’d never paid attention to my crying, to anyone’s, even though laughing and anger fascinated her; I do not know if she noticed my tears that time, or if the gesture was random. But I lay beneath the shivering touch of the winds, strangely comforted by the warmth that wasn’t there, by the bitter and burned smells of liongrass and stillweed that came from another time. Kimi nestled next to me. Her left hand slid under my cheek and touched the cloth of winds. Afraid to move, I lay there. Just outside the tent, the voices of Gitit and grandmother-nai-Tammah began to weave together.
“You wanted to be free.” Gitit.
“Benesret said I could do it if I wanted. Yes, it would be difficult.”
“But you wouldn’t,” said Gitit.
“The cloth of winds. The birds. They come down from the sun around this time of year, to dance the sandbird dance, the change. At that time, the sandbird festival would happen in the capital. They say the Old Royal went through the change, many times—and other people. It’s harder for those with less magic, but a three-named strong could do it easily, with the help of friends.”
“And yet you wouldn’t.”
“Not me. Bashri, she said...”
And silence.
Winds stirred on my face like snakes, warm with dreams and comforting. I could not scream or think or speak. Under my cheek, Kimi’s hand made a fist.
“Tell me what she said.”
“That we should think of our lover imprisoned—and besides, what use would a man be in an oreg? The scholars would never accept me. And if I wanted to stay with them, how would we live? Wouldn’t we have to hide it anyway, wouldn’t I have to continue my life as a woman, dress as a woman, trade as a woman—and if I didn’t, what would befall us? How would we live among others? How would our children marry? Didn’t Bashri-nai-Divrah deserve a choice in this as well, a decision that would change her life entire? So many reasons to wait.”