Fall and Rising

by Sunny Moraine

  “She will be impossible to replace.” Nkiruka hadn’t known Ixchel especially well. Old Mother to the entire ship, beloved of all, Ixchel had nevertheless been inscrutable to almost everyone.

  “Even so.” Kae sighed. “We need an Aalim. We’re the lead ship, it makes no sense for us to lack one. And given that Jakana and Suzaku picked theirs weeks ago …”

  “All things in their own time.” Nkiruka fiddled with a beaded cuff on her wrist. “That’s what she would have said.”

  Kae shot her a faintly sardonic smile. “Maybe it should be you.”

  “Me? No.” But she couldn’t pretend to be entirely surprised at his suggestion. Others had said it. Some careful to be discreet, but others increasingly less so. “I can’t be an Old Mother. I can’t be an Old anything. Only ten years ago I was Named, you know that.” She injected gentle teasing into her tone, but there was an edge of something heavier under it.

  “So you’ll decline? If they pick you?” Kae sounded more solemn now. It was a serious question. In the past a candidate had declined their nomination, but it was rare and hadn’t happened in the living memory of the convoy, though it had happened more recently in one or two others, and news of it had traveled even across vast distances. It was always a turning point in the candidate’s life, and a difficult one. The point where they had marked their own desires more important than the needs of their homeship and their people.

  After, nothing could ever be the same. It wasn’t unheard of for a declining candidate to simply cast themselves into exile.

  “I don’t know,” she said at last. She hadn’t wanted to consider this, the real possibility of selection and what it would mean. Around her, as if sensing her unrest, the glowbugs were humming slowly away into the trees. “I don’t want it to come to that.”

  Kae nodded but said nothing else. After a short period of silence he pushed himself to his feet and picked up his tray. But he hesitated, still looking down at her. Nkiruka waited, letting him come to the words in his own time.

  “If I find you later,” he said, “will you do a reading for me?”

  Nkiruka hesitated. “I’m not very good. You know that, right? I’m not a replacement for Ixchel, no matter what the others think.” Kae was searching for something. They were all searching for something, sensing the hole in themselves. More and more, people were coming to her. Pushing her in a direction she didn’t want to take, but thus far hadn’t been able to entirely resist.

  How was she supposed to resist helping people who seemed to need her?

  Oh, it’s going to get so much harder than this.

  “I know. I don’t care. Do what you can.” Kae’s face briefly twisted, and confusion and unhappiness flashed across its handsome lines. “Please.”

  “I will,” she said softly. “After the sunlamps dim. After Satya and I share a meal. Come to me then.”

  He nodded and moved off into the shadows without another word. The Halls swallowed him up.

  Nkiruka sat for a long time after he was gone, absent the glowbugs or any of the other creatures that whispered and flew and crawled through the sacred spaces of the Arched Halls. She was thinking, but it was a directionless, scattered kind of thought, packed with so many things that it almost made her dizzy. She was already aware of what Kae wanted to ask. It was a question held in common among many of the Bideshi, at least the ones in this convoy, and especially the ones on Ashwina.

  And she had no answer. No matter how much she wished she did. But perhaps tonight the stars would be kind to her, and give up secrets even to someone who didn’t dance in the darkness in which they spun.

  At length she rose, shaking out her skirts, and made her way toward some of the Halls’ more traveled courses. Here were people praying, singing low hymns, meditating in the shadows. Inside her was still unrest, but as she moved among them, nodding and smiling to those who offered her greetings, she let their peace flow into her. Since Ixchel’s death, the Arched Halls had been visited more frequently, though every Bideshi on the homeship went there occasionally, for the great Masses if for no other reason.

  Need. It was everywhere.

  The trees thinned out around her, the path widened, and then fell away entirely and she came out into the fields, the grass whispering in the breeze and carrying the sweet smell of heather and the bracken at the edge of the wood, mixed with the headier scent of honeysuckle. The light of the sunlamps was deepening into afternoon, and for a moment Nkiruka stood, breathing it in. She tilted her head back. Far above her, through the transparent ceiling, the stars shone in the night that went on forever.

  She had not been born on Ashwina but on the residential homeship Suzaku, where the High Fields were drier and faded into patches of red desert, and the Arched Halls were—strangely—lusher and more humid, like the equatorial jungles of Terra, as people described them. She had grown up in those Fields and those Halls, had carried their dust and drifting pollen within her when she came to Ashwina in the year after her Naming, to learn how to fight, to dance the death dances, to pilot an escort fighter. It had been an adjustment. She would never love these lands the way she loved the lands that rested at the top of Suzaku’s great bulk, but she had grown to love them all the same.

  Anything growing. Miracles in the black.

  She began walking again, following the path toward the great rock face and the stair that would lead her down into the winding corridors and vast chambers of Ashwina.

  Like the quarters of most of the people on the homeship, Nkiruka’s home was small, though larger than it had been when she first came to Ashwina to take up her apprenticeship. Not that she’d done anything particular to earn the size; quarters were assigned according to need rather than station. The reason for the relatively large size was waiting for her inside, and as she approached the door she smelled spices and cooking meat, turmeric and cinnamon, beef from Jakana. She smiled and the door opened at her touch.

  Inside, the main room was in a pleasant state of disarray, cushions scattered on the floor in front of the wide couch, an easel and paints piled in a corner, a cup of forgotten tea on a low table, set perilously close to one of the paper books borrowed from Ashwina’s great library. Nkiruka let out a fond sigh and moved to the table, shifting the tea away. She turned toward the kitchenette that took up one wall, around which bustled a curvaceous woman with black hair flowing loose all down her back. She was singing softly to herself, stirring something steaming in a pot on the stove. It was from this pot that the scent of spices came, seeming to grow stronger each time she stirred it.

  Nkiruka slipped up behind her and curled her arms around Satya’s waist, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. “Hello, habibti.”

  Satya laughed and reached up to comb her fingers through Nkiruka’s hair, their tips stained yellow with turmeric. “Nkiru. I was starting to wonder if you’d be home for dinner at all.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it. I just let slip the time.” She pressed another kiss to the underside of Satya’s jaw, Satya tilting her head to allow more access, humming happily. “Kae came to see me.”

  “Oh?” Satya arched a brow and reached for the jar of cinnamon that sat on the side counter, shaking a bit more of it into the pot. “And what did he want? Is he going to be a good neighbor and let Leila drag him here for dinner next week?”

  “I didn’t get a chance to ask him.” Nkiruka stepped away, still tugging idly at a strand of Satya’s hair. It was true enough. For those few minutes, talking to Kae, she had forgotten all about dinner, though not social niceties. And not Satya.

  “No? Well, no matter. We’ll see him again.” Satya glanced over her shoulder and gestured to the meal table that sat against another wall, its one end melded into the wall’s curved shape. It was piled with sewing. “Clear that off, would you? I meant to finish it all today, but they needed my help in the gardens earlier this afternoon.”

  Nkiruka began to gather up the sewing, quickly abandoning any hope of folding it into any kind of order and
simply laying the pieces on one end of the couch. A length of bright red and orange brocade that might become a skirt or a form-fitting top, a bunch of gauzy black material that might be anything at all, and a bundle of pink silk that Satya had expressed the intention of making into a flowing dress. Nkiruka paused, this last in her arms, and again found herself thinking of fire and hot steel in the shadows of the Arched Halls. The ceremony that would make a merely gifted person into something much more.

  No. Never.

  “He’s coming tonight,” she said suddenly. “Kae is. He wants to see me.” Where the abrupt honesty originated from, she wasn’t entirely sure, but it came on strong and inarguable, an urge deep and instinctive in a way that she had long since learned not to fight.

  Satya had turned, the pot in her hands. “Get some bowls …” she said, the last word trailing off just as Nkiruka finished speaking. She frowned. “Why?”

  “He wants a reading.”

  Satya’s expression darkened. For a moment longer she stood there with her hands tight on the handles of the pot. Her knuckles turned pale.

  “You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” Satya’s voice, when it came, was as tight as her hands.

  “He asked me,” Nkiruka said helplessly. No, she hadn’t wanted to be this honest; it was peeling back what fantasy had covered and concealed since the death of Ixchel, since the rumors had begun. There had been a brief moment when the two of them had faced it all head-on, and then they had put it away. But it had still been there. Now here it was in front of them again, something not only hungry but needy, wanting to pull at her, to devour her not from predatory malevolence but simply because it had no idea how to stop itself.

  Like a child. A panicking child.

  She always said she wanted children.

  “You didn’t have to say yes.” Satya pushed past her, setting the pot down on a mat in the center of the table with a dull thud. “Please get those bowls for me. And some sticks, unless you want to eat this all with your fingers.”

  Nkiruka got the chopsticks and the bowls. She wasn’t sure that there was even anything she could say. It was done; Satya was angry with her and it was too late to take any of it back.

  Satya didn’t say another word to her, not when Nkiruka stood close to her to set the bowls on the table, not when she was handed her chopsticks, not until she was preparing to ladle out spoonfuls of noodles and meat and sauce. Then she stopped with the spoon in the pot and turned to Nkiruka.

  Her green eyes were shining with tears. Nkiruka stared at her, aghast. But not totally surprised.

  “How can you do it?” Satya’s usually melodic voice was thick and choked. “How can you encourage them like that? You know they want something, you know what that thing is, and you’re giving it to them, and what happens when they actually start to expect it?” She released the spoon, her hands gesticulating with the force that filled her voice. “You’re making these little choices now, and I know they don’t seem like much, but what about when later they amount to one big choice, and it’ll be too late for you to unmake it?”

  She didn’t have to say more.

  But how was Nkiruka supposed to say no to anyone when the need was so clear and so great?

  “They can’t force me to do it, Satya.” Nkiruka dropped her hand to her side again and faced Satya squarely, meeting and holding her tear-blurred gaze. “No Old Mother has ever been forced to take the vows. It has to be freely chosen. You know that.”

  “That was then,” Satya murmured. Much of the anger seemed to be gone from her now. “As I said. All you have to do is make all those little choices. They’ll lead you to the same place in the end. You won’t feel like you can say no.”

  “I can say no to that.” Nkiruka reached up and closed her hands around Satya’s upper arms, pulling her closer, till their faces were barely inches apart. This was what it came down to. Becoming an Aalim—once that was done, love of the many must always take the place of the love of one. It was many decades ago, but everyone still remembered the only one who had broken that rule, who had been cast out forever. She had lost everything in the end. That was what was at stake, in that choice to cut love out by the roots. “I will never choose it over you, do you hear me? I will never do that.”

  Satya stayed silent for a few moments, her breath hitching, her eyes still glistening with the tears. The pot sat forgotten on the table. Everything else sat forgotten as well. The pain on Satya’s face was raw and naked, and Nkiruka wondered how long it had been this bad, and whether Satya had simply hidden it that well or whether Nkiruka had simply been unwilling to see. “I want to believe you,” Satya whispered at last. “I believe you believe it. Nkiru …”

  None of this is fair. Nkiruka dragged Satya across the last distance between them and sealed their mouths together. There was an instant of resistance that dissolved almost immediately, and then Satya clutched at her, kissing her like it was the only thing that would keep Nkiruka there.

  Five years. Not five years gone, not for this.

  Nkiruka pressed Satya back against the table, then shoved her up onto it. Satya steadied herself with one arm braced behind her, and then she knocked everything onto the floor. The bowls shattered, the pot went with a crash, and noodles spilled in a slippery tangle across the floor. A cloud of spice scent enveloped them, and it was like Satya—it was Satya, the essence of the kiss. Satya spread her legs and hooked them around Nkiruka’s slim hips, pulling at the cloth that wound around her torso and breasts.

  It was hard and desperate and over too fast, the two of them gasping and still arching against each other in the aftershocks of their mingled orgasms, and when Satya touched Nkiruka’s face, her turmeric-yellow fingers looked like the tips of flower stamens dusted with pollen.

  “Never,” Nkiruka whispered in Satya’s ear, each syllable sending a shiver all through her. Never, never, never.

  Nkiruka met Kae in a deserted corridor on one of Ashwina’s upper floors, close to the outer hull.

  She had left Satya sleeping, or at least lying in bed facing the wall, and Nkiruka hadn’t found it in herself to risk disturbing her to make sure. She’d made herself ready, trying to calm her own mind, trying to remember how one had to listen in order to be able to turn the listening into a true reading. She had her own small deck of pads, but they were nothing to Ixchel’s, nothing to her power, nothing to what any Old Mother would be capable of.

  They were in the pocket of the shawl she’d wrapped around her shoulders. Because the truth was that Satya was right. Nkiruka couldn’t say no.

  She knew what this place was. Everyone knew the Old Mother enough to know where she kept her councils, where she wandered in pursuit of her own odd, esoteric ways. The light spots of dust—the remains of old footprints—made Nkiruka even more certain.

  What had truly led her up here?

  “Here,” Kae murmured, turning in place. He gazed back at Nkiruka, and something passed between them. She was there. Maybe only her echo, lingering traces of her, like her footprints, in a place where she had woven her magic and listened to her stars. Or maybe more. But she was there. She was waiting.

  The pads tucked in Nkiruka’s pocket felt as if they were vibrating at the edge of what it was possible to feel.

  “I think we can do it right here.” Nkiruka nodded at a cluster of the spots with thinner layers of dust, perhaps some place where Ixchel had stopped for a time. “Sit?”

  Kae nodded. They sat down opposite each other, silent, as if the dust was eating up all sound. On impulse, Nkiruka laid a hand against the floor and lifted it up again, examining the gray handprint that she had made.

  You’re not my ghost, a voice whispered in her ear, and with a shiver she recognized it as Adisa’s. Once the man—leader of Ashwina in all but name—had stood here and said those words to a woman now gone to join the branches of the Arched Halls and the stars beyond. Nkiruka had no way of knowing that—but she did.

  What she might become, where the potentia
l rested … That woman would know it well.

  “Nkiru?” A touch at her knee and she shook herself; Kae, peering at her with open concern.

  “I’m fine.” The smile she gave him didn’t feel especially convincing. “It’s just strange, being up here.” She reached into her shawl and pulled out her deck, untwisting the scarf that wound around it. Undid the cord that bound them together, shuffled the thin pads through her hands, letting the rote movements calm her. Part of her already knew what was coming and the anticipation wasn’t pleasant, but it had an inexorable quality, the feeling of something that couldn’t be turned aside. Something that touched too many people, that exerted a tug on too many orbits.

  She laid the deck down in front of Kae. “Cut.”

  Kae cut the deck in a single smooth movement, well practiced. She’d expected this. Kae, steady Kae; everyone familiar with him knew how he placed deep importance on personal readings, on consulting the dance of the stars—unusually so, even for a Bideshi. It was because of what he had learned, so early in his life, about himself. It was because of how early he had gone to be Named. And it was because of the reason that he was here now.

  In some ways, he was more comfortable in this moment than she was.

  She selected the first few cards and began to lay them out, facedown. “Ask.” It wasn’t usually done this way, with the question laid out beforehand. But sometimes it was appropriate to query directly, to do what one could to shape the direction of the answer before the wave function collapsed.

  Kae took a slow breath. “Are Adam and Lochlan alive?”

  Here it was. Finally. Nkiruka suppressed a shiver. She had never met Adam—many people on Ashwina hadn’t, or had only seen him in passing—but as everyone did, she knew what part he had played in what had happened on Takamagahara. Was Adam alive? By extension, was his lover alive as well? They were questions that most of the people on Ashwina had certainly asked, were certainly asking, but here was Kae, the one with the courage to give it voice and send it out among the stars.