Towards the evening, Leivayi set up a small square loom and threaded it. My sister tangled the threads and laughed, but Leivayi patiently corrected her. She guided Kimi’s hand in hers, repeating the same motion over and over.
And in Naïr’s tent, grandmother was still talking. “Who am I to say what I should or should not be called, whether I am or am not a man already? My grandchild is a girl because she cannot talk, but she is not a girl...”
“I don’t think your grandchild knows—cares—what tai is.” Naïr used a pronoun common to many desert languages—tai, taim, tair in Surun’—that indicated ‘neither he nor she’. The Khana language lacked such a word, both in the speech the scholars used and in women’s talk. In Khana, a person was either she or he. In Khana, all the words were either she or he—carpets, carts, grains of sand, stars in the sky each had their chosen form, female or male. There was no escaping this, but the desert tongues lacked such a distinction. One could be anything. In Surun’.
“Your grandchild may never know, or it may never be important to taim. And because it is not important to taim it is not important to us what style of clothing tai wears, or whether tai chooses to spend tair days among men or among women. If tai were to learn Surun’, tai would ask to be called tai, or something else, when tai knows it. If it is important to taim. Tai might never know, we might never know. But you know. You have always known.”
“Yes, I have always known. And yet...”
“You always hesitated,” said Uiziya. “I thought it was because of your lover, but now that she is gone, I thought...”
“It’s all about Bashri. It’s always been about Bashri. After forty-four years... I do not know how to live otherwise, do not know how to live in this world without Bashri, I do not know if I want to live...”
I left them. I sought out Gitit, sat by her side while she spoke to other women of carpets that might be woven for trade. We talked later that night, awkwardly, rediscovering words, rediscovering how they hurt.
“What is it that angers you,” she asked, “this thing about the elder-nai-Tammah?”
The truth burst out of me, the shape of it before this hidden even from myself. “I would not know how to talk to her if she is a man.”
Gitit frowned. “And what if I were a man?”
“Are you?” I asked. “Are you a man?”
“Does it matter?” she asked.
It doesn’t—
No. It mattered. It mattered to me. I had never talked to scholars. Marriage did not scare me, but only because it would be such a formal thing, and such a needed thing, to beget lives—but it would not really matter. Marriage was not for closeness, not for conversations or journeys. For that one had lovers, oreg-mates. If Gitit were a man, how would we trade? How would we expand our oreg, raise our children, what would the other women say? Would she even stay with me? The scholars wouldn’t accept this transformation, and in the quarter she’d have to hide, so why break your heart changing anyway?
Only after Gitit left me I remembered, with a sticky rush of shame I remembered grandmother-nai-Tammah’s words, of what my grandmother-nai-Leylit had told her. Almost the same. The same.
Dark had fallen. The stars keened above. Somewhere beyond the veil of that darkness my grandmother’s soul could not find rest, her arms outstretched towards the cloth of winds.
NAÏR AND UIZIYA constructed the large horizontal frame of the loom with the help of others, men and women. None of them would utter the name Benesret, would not speak of her story, but it seemed they’d keep her promise.
The women with deepnames began to sing quietly, drawing winds out of the sky to thread the warp. I could not see them, but I heard the sound they made when pulled taut on the loom—the snapping voice of strong, thin threads. Grandmother, wound tightly in veils and bent like a scholar over a tome of writ, paced around and around the construction.
Kimi learned the Surun’ words for snake, thread, and hand. The large yellow snake still followed her, and Leivayi kept teaching her to weave. Other children would join them now, pulling and pushing and giving instructions to Kimi in voices joking and serious. The youngest of these children, aged three, spoke far more better and fluidly than Kimi ever had.
They talked of my sister as tai now, but I did not. If Kimi had not decided, if Kimi did not know, then how would one pronoun be better than another? Besides, I spoke in Khana in my head, and there was no such thing as tai. She, I continued saying, she, defiant and guilt-gnawed, no longer sure whose truth was real. If only Kimi could tell me... but if Kimi could talk, she would be he. Perhaps not in her deepest heart; perhaps like grandmother-nai-Tammah she’d yearn for change, but she—he—would live in the inner quarter with the men, and would not be now traveling with me.
The day the frame was ready, Uiziya approached me. “It is better if those who love Bashri weave the cloth of transformation,” she said. I answered awkwardly, said I did not know how. And besides, I had no deepnames to weave from wind. But when Naïr and Uiziya sat down to the loom, when Leivayi and the children joined them, I could not leave, or simply watch. I sat down by Naïr and asked to be taught.
She gave me a comb of bone and gold and taught me to beat down the weft-weaves of the winds and push them tight against the ones that had come before. I did it by touch, marveling at the feel of compressed winds under my fingers, rougher than wool, prickly with sand and memory. Leivayi and other weavers without deepnames likewise wielded combs, but Kimi threw hers away and insisted on threading by hand. Her laughter rang out like a pair of bronze sticks striking the sun.
“I’m glad you are working with us,” said Uiziya. “His lover wouldn’t, all those years ago.”
I cringed. The Surun’ people had already switched to the language of he with grandmother-nai-Tammah; even Gitit had begun oh so carefully to say not grandmother butelder, one of the rare words in the Khana language used for both women and men. Grandmother-nai-Tammah had decided on the change.
I alone could not change. I alone could not let go.
GITIT SPOKE TO me now, small things. I lost all interest in trade, but with my permission she opened the trading chest and spread our wares, the butterflies whose fluttering brought chill, the splendid jewelry, the rods that extended and collapsed upon themselves.
She sat with those marvels under the awning of the large trade tent erected for the occasion, and women brought her tea in flat cups and goatmilk chilled with magic. At night sometimes we saw sandbirds fall down from the sky, strike sand, and dissolve with the hiss. In the city of eleven wells, the time of the sandbird dance was drawing nearer.
Gitit and I slept side by side now in the trading tent, but it had been too long since we’d made love. My body and heart yearned for hers, but thoughts and words lay cold between us like a spear of bronze forged far beneath the ground, where it is always cold.
IT HAPPENED WHEN the cloth was almost done—a surge of power, clear yet gentle, like a push against my ribcage. Kimi laughed, a small amazed sound. She thrust her hand up in the air. Out of her fingertips came lights, small fireflies more numerous and glowing brighter than Gitit’s. They swarmed and flew and nestled on the threads.
And in that moment the whole cloth came alive before my eyes, all what I could not see before, the rainbow hues of it, the lightning running through some threads that had come from dry storms, swirling sand in others like a road of stars. My sister had taken a deepname.
Not like the usual explosions or waves of slamming anger, this nametaking was a thing of joy and glowing weft-threads, gentle. Kimi leapt up from the loom and began to spin, hands flapping at her sides, fingertips releasing more and more tiny lights that swam through the air and buzzed around her head.
It’s better if those who love Bashri, weave...
Those who love her. Love him. Love her. Love him.
Why did it matter to me so much?
Those who love, weave...
I sought out Gitit that night after we had finished weaving
. My lover sat to tea with women who had bought our wares. She did not want to talk to me, but I pleaded, and at last she relented. “I do not know if I am comfortable,” I said, “I don’t know if I’ll ever be, but I would give the cloth of winds back to you, I would sit down to weave for you if you wanted to change.” I am confused, I do not know if what I think is right, but it is not right to make of my love a prison for you—for anyone... ”I cannot do it alone, Gitit, I have no deepnames, but with others—Kimi, too...”
She began to cry.
I cradled her to me, I whispered, “Love, I am no better than grandmother-nai-Leylit.”
“You are...”
“No, no. I would deny you, would deny myself, because I am not comfortable and I might never be with this, but it is you, it will always be you, I love you, I will never leave you.”
Grandmother-nai-Tammah had said those words to grandmother-nai-Leylit. Without these words we learned, these stories, these mistakes, we could not live. We could not grow. So life by life our lives were woven and compressed to wholeness by the combs of our speech. “I don’t know if I can explain this, but we need words. Words.”
But Gitit drew me to her, and there was no need for words after all.
Later we lay on a tight-woven carpet in the darkness of the trading tent, and Gitit put her hand on my cheek. She laughed—a high-pitched and embarrassed sound. “To answer your question... no, I am not a man.”
“You aren’t?” I felt relief and simultaneously regret, regret at not needing to live through this, and what wisdoms loomed before me on that path like blood and rubies.
“I am sorry. I am... very much like everyone. I am not special. I am a girl, I have mediocre but nice magic, I love trading... I wanted to know... I wanted to know if you’d be as fierce for me as you are for Kimi, for Bashri-nai-Tammah—”
“Bah!” I screamed. “Bah! As if I would not—as if I would not love you because you are not...gah! Not untraditional enough!”
It’s then we heard a sound of winds. Of wings. Like rustling.
OUTSIDE, GRANDMOTHER-NAI-TAMMAH STOOD in veils of winds, arms up as if in prayer. Birds of bright fire fell down from the sky to wrap and wrap my elder in their wings completely, head to toe. Bashri-nai-Tammah became a figure all of sandlight, then a figure no more—a cocoon, a ball of swirling feathers, night-beguiled.
All people in the Surun’ camp woke up, went out to watch as streaks of sandlight fell and fell towards that conflagration; shooting stars from Bird. They stood, not talking, rocking slightly on their feet, and only Kimi ran around. Her waving fingers sent sparkles into the sky, to greet the birds, to dance; the snake-guardian undulated between her feet, nudging her away from the cocoon when the spinning brought her too close.
The night grew thin, and bird by bird, the starfall slowed. With a sigh, the last few sandbirds settled over my grandmother’s glowing light. And then, slowly, they began to fade, to pour in grains of sand down to the ground.
It was then we heard it—singing—from behind the veil of fiery feathers. With the first rays of dawn the singing grew louder, clearer, more intense; grandmother’s body cleared, with arms still raised up, singing for the first time the dawnsong—that sacred melody that scholars sent out every morning in supplication to the men’s god, Bird’s brother, Kimrí, that song the women were forbidden to sing.
With the last grains of sand pouring down to the ground, grandmother—grandfather?—walked over to us. He—he—looked glowing, radiant with light and newly made. His arms spread to us in a blessing, in a wave of great and unfeigned happiness.
It was at this moment that Kimi sang, artlessly but with candor, a song without words that resembled the dawnsong and also a gurgled scream, and also choking. We laughed because we had no idea what to do, and whether Kimi should be permitted to sing, and whether that even mattered.
GRANDFATHER WAS HAVING trouble.
“You should go sit with men,” said Uiziya. They had no problem sheltering a woman, or a person who was neither, but a man basking like a lizard in a woman’s tent was pronounced unseemly.
“I said already, I have no idea how to talk to your men... I am a Khana artificer, not that my people would accept me now, or ever...”
Grandfather had regrets.
“I cannot go back. I may have a man’s body now, but not the scholars’ learning, and our men would never accept me, and I am too old to simply wander into a different city and lie my way into a Khana quarter there... although I could try... I cannot even speak the way the scholars do!”
“Or you could stay here,” said Naïr. “You really should talk to Bulvát.”
“And say what? I don’t know—”
Grandfather had hesitations.
“What should we call you now?” I asked.
“I want to still remain Bashri,” he said, “even if she wouldn’t approve. But it’s not just that she wouldn’t approve. Even to call myself nai-Tammah—for sure my grandmothers would not approve...” He cast his hands around himself. “I wish I could consult the writ! There must have been a precedent, a law... Unless they’d thrown all precedents out of the quarter...”
Grandfather had moments.
“Is there deeper meaning,” he asked Uiziya, “to my grandchild always walking around with the guardian snake? Kimi is quite powerful, I think, so it might be an omen—”
Said Uiziya, “Of course there is a deeper meaning.”
“Yes?”
“It’s a great secret.”
“Yes?”
“I will reveal it to you.”
“Yes?”
Uiziya whispered, “Your grandchild really likes snakes.”
Everybody around us burst into laughter, and grandfather was embarrassed enough to agree to go talk to Bulvát.
THAT NIGHT, GITIT and I stayed up to talk. She had traded richly while I wove, and now the chest was full of goods. We wanted to move. But not to go back to Niyaz yet—no, we wanted to go on, to trade among the Maiva’at, to ask from them the story of Zurya, to see with our own eyes how threads could be woven of song. And we wanted to learn the tale of Benesret, dark and beguiling at the edges of our minds. We wanted to travel southeast, to visit the bands of spider-Surun’ and spider-Gehezi, to trade for yarn as delicate and glimmering as rays of shooting stars.
But yet we couldn’t leave. Our Kimi seemed so happy here, fitting, learning under the sky’s unending open wings. Grandfather needed help to settle, to adjust, to grieve for that which could not be redone, for people and loves gone—and we, too, needed time to think, to talk through this, to figure out how to live with a grandfather who was of flesh and bone rather than a disembodied name of a scholar behind the wall. We weren’t sure if he’d want to travel on with us, or stay, or go home—if that was even possible. We were still getting used to “he”.
And we were talking more about “tai” now, how it meant—not a decision, but simply that Kimi had not decided, and therefore we should not decide either. But we could only do this in Surun’. There were so many things that we could say and think in Surun’ but not in our own language. We wanted at least to know what to call grandfather now; and he was not ready to name himself yet.
But it seemed that we were ready to name ourselves.
“I’ll take your name,” I said, “You are the strongest of us.”
“Bah,” she said. “I far prefer Aviya to Gitit.”
“It is traditional for the oreg to be named after the strongest, unless there is something wrong with her...”
Gitit grimaced. “Try again.”
I scratched my head.
“What difference will it make?,” Gitit said. “Our lives already deviate from the great pattern.”
“Hah,” I said. “Are you trying to make me feel better about not having magic?”
“Aaaaa...” she moaned. “Enough, enough. You don’t feel bad about not having magic. I like the name Aviya, I love you, why must you be this stubborn? Why can’t you say yes for a ch
ange?”
You cannot still be worried that there’s nothing strange about you... how to say this...”My dear trader-nai-Lur,” I began.
“Please. Aviya-nai-Lur.”
“Oh, very well,” I said, exasperated. “But you’ll explain this to our grandchildren, I will want nothing to do with this.”
She laughed. “I will be glad to tell this tale, grandmother-nai-Bashri.”
“Along with many others, oh grandmother-nai-Lur.”
“Oh yes,” she laughed. “Oh yes.”
There would be many other tales.
NEW YEAR: THE train eels along a landscape of red snow and shadow-dust, on carbonate tracks haloed in anemic light. Heilui keeps half the window opaque to block out the field of endless machine-dead, the sight of satellites pressed against the skyline like bruised mouths on a gash. The other half she fills with a news feed: disasters in montage, kaleidoscope of calamities--cities gone dark and still, streets turned to web-cracks and sidewalks impact-raised into briars, balconies smeared in blackened lymph and rust-red blots.
She has watched it many times; has been made to, during the interrogation. The footage never fails to pull at her heart like the moon exerting its gravity on the acid tides. Pulling at her like the questions from back then, the faces and names lined up and Did you associate with this woman? This man? This woman? This man, this man, this man.
Heilui’s hands are clammy with the sweat of remembered terror, the memory of teetering on the edge of freefall. She wipes them dry. Her lap is heavy with gifts prepared by relatives: engagement boxes of jade bangles and figurines, silk slippers threaded in gold, a bag of crystallized fruits. A kintsugi bowl: black pottery broken and mended in silver, the seams radiant with age. Foreign antique, contributed by a wealthy adventurer aunt.
The train notifies her that another passenger will be joining her, transferred after one of the carriages have detached for another station. She sweeps up the gifts and blanks out the news feed.
Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction Page 5