by Ivana Skye
I wanted to scream at lir. I wanted to shout at lir. But what would I say? Was I supposed to tell lir off for a single unimportant sentence li’d said years ago? Not that it was just that sentence of course, but, but—
“I’m sorry,” Gazhri said all of a sudden, and I wasn’t sure I heard lir correctly.
“What,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” Li repeated, right there, in the middle of a crowded market. “I know what happened to you. I heard. I think we all did.”
For a second I just stared at lir, considering catatonia. But then I decided venom sounded better.
“Heard?” I asked. I said just the one word at first, as if I was asking more in curiosity than in anger. “You just heard about it after the fact? Really?”
“I mean—”
“It’s funny,” I said with a bitter smile. “You were there all along, and you saw everything that happened. But you heard about it, later. And that’s why you’re apologizing.” My voice was so sharp it almost lilted, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about saying it. It was powerful and cathartic, but I suspected I was going too far.
“I didn’t—”
“Know how bad it was? Didn’t have any way to tell? Didn’t think?”
“People become friends sometimes,” Gazhri argued. “People change. How was I supposed to know that you at fifteen was different from you at twelve just because of her?”
“Because you saw it happen!” I said, not quite screaming, not quite not. “You were there! You were there! You were there at the start and at the end and you saw the process and you saw the result! You were right there. Everyone was right there. Almost everyone I’d known my entire life was right there, and yet not a single person noticed.”
Of course, some traitorous part of my mind whispered to me: you didn’t either. You were the one it was happening to, and you didn’t notice either.
Gazhri shook lir head slightly. “That’s why I was apologizing. Don’t bite my head off.”
I bit my lip instead. And then I turned and left, basically running right out of the market and toward my house. I wasn’t liking this conversation, anything about it. It didn’t sit right, it didn’t feel right.
And fuck me if I was going to deal with things that didn’t feel right, after what I’d been through.
I think it was six p.m. when I realized that I hadn’t actually bought a single travel supply. I was hugging my knees next to the fireplace; I’d started it even though the sun was still up.
I rocked back and forth, slowly. I’d been doing that for a while. Neither my aunt nor my dads had bothered me. They knew I could be like this sometimes—especially lately.
“Zel,” I whispered; we’d lightly been in communication for maybe an hour, but I’d spent most of that time silent. “What do I do?”
I thought you’d already decided that, they said.
I closed my eyes, kept on rocking, bit my lip. They probably meant that I’d decided to travel. Vitalities, I’d even decided where, just today. And it shouldn’t matter, of course, that I hadn’t bought anything yet, I wasn’t leaving for a month at least.
And yet, none of that was what I was asking about.
I wasn’t sure what I was asking about.
I thought about whimpering, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to help. So I just kept rocking. And rocking.
Eventually a plate of something was put down by my side.
My aunt had brought it, but she didn’t try to talk to me or touch me to get my notice. I appreciated that. But the fact was, I actually did want to speak. So I started with: “Thanks.”
She made a small, pleasant sound. The type of sound that often left her mouth when she smiled. I found it cute.
“You know, the kids were actually asking to play a game,” she said.
I turned my head to her and smiled. “Sounds like fun,” I said, and meant it.
We waited until we’d all eaten. We couldn’t afford the distraction of food. We turned on our music player—a new import from Mangtena—and put on the chip that told it to play some heavy drums.
We prepared for battle.
“Alright,” my dad announced, standing in the center of the room, near the fireplace. “We will do this in an orderly fashion. No more shouting out challenges and time limits—”
All at once, my father, aunt, and twin cousins started booing at him. Belatedly, I joined in.
“Fine,” my dad said, sighing and starting to sit down. “Shouting it is.”
“Oh no you don’t,” my father said. “You don’t get to sit down. Oh no. You’re gonna be our first competitor.”
“Ffff … udge,” my dad said.
“Painting!” Senni shouted, before anyone else got a chance.
“Horses!” my aunt shouted at the same time that my father shouted “gardening!”
“Excuse me,” my dad asked, “how in all the ever-loving anything am I supposed to paint the concept of gardening-“
My aunt laughed. “I retract my suggestion due to your complaints. No horses for you, gardening it is.”
Now it was time to shout a time limit. “Three minutes,” I said, smiling.
My father’s face paled.
“Do it, do it!” Senni and Malil chanted in unison, clapping.
We’d already set out every single art material we happened to own on the floor, so no sooner did my father sigh with resignation than did he set up an easel, put some watercolor paper on it, and get out the paints and brush set.
“Here goes,” he muttered, right as my aunt set the timer.
And that’s how my father burst into a flurry of motion, mostly of the green variety—he was starting out with the ‘garden’ part of gardening. A lot of the lines seemed almost random, but I was pretty sure I could see a hedge in there. Probably.
Not bothering to wash off his brush, he switched colors by dipping fingers into the watercolors and pressing them around the green in what I could only guess was probably supposed to be flowers. He started going a little methodically at this, and I almost shouted out a suggestion to not let himself get drawn into doing it well, don’t dare slow down—
“One minute left,” my aunt said, a smirk on her face.
I could see my father panic, even though I couldn’t see his face. He flailed his arms uselessly a little, possibly fighting through several different impulses as to what material to grab. Then, finally, he pulled himself together, got some brown paint on the brush, drew a line, and didn’t bother washing the brush off before putting it in the black to triumphantly finish what he’d drawn in the center of his random burst of greenery: a shovel.
The timer beeped and he collapsed to seating, looking at his three-minute masterpiece.
“Well done,” my dad said.
“You’re just complementing him because you’re married—” my aunt started.
“And you’re just about to insult him because you’re siblings.”
“Judging time?” Mallit asked. “Judging time??” They were almost bouncing with excitement.
“Sure,” my aunt said.
And then, instantaneously, everyone shouted out numbers, too fast to really hear any of them. One meant that an accidental pattern found in dog poop on the street would probably look better. Ten meant that you might be able to hang it up on a wall and pass it off as real artwork.
I squinted, deliberating. I wanted to give my father the benefit of the doubt, but to be fair, it really wasn’t very good. Then again, I had seen worse—
“Orange?” my aunt asked. Right. I was the only one who hadn’t given a number yet.
“Four,” I said.
“So that tallies to … nineteen,” my mother quickly calculated, adding all our scores. Nineteen out of fifty possible really wasn’t all that bad for this shovel-exploding-from-a-green-mess monstrosity.
Everyone cheered and clapped, but there was hesitation in both of these gestures: everyone knew they could well end up the next victim.
Er, I
meant competitor.
Malil basically pushed Senni forward, though, so I didn’t have to worry about it being me. Now, of course, we adults did judge the kids by different standards—they were, after all, only five—but still, it was nothing like there being a guarantee of them getting all tens.
We weren’t that kind of family.
My father smiled and suggested, “painting.”
My aunt booed at him, quietly; it was somewhat boring to have the same medium twice in a row.
“What?” He asked. “I’m getting revenge.”
Of course, Malil wasn’t the average five-year-old; nor was Senni, nor had I been. We all asked really weird questions really young, and that plus the family focus on art had led to the tendency for all the family’s kids to make surprisingly good things for their age.
Still, that probably wouldn’t help Malil now that Senni’d just yelled out for subject matter: “Justice.”
Leave it to the twins to give each other impossible challenges, really.
My dad must have been feeling merciful, because he said: “five minutes.”
But by the time Malil picked up the paints and started looking at them, staring them down with a scrunched-up face that looked hilarious on a five-year-old, I realized my dad hadn’t been so merciful after all. Taking just one minute and getting it over with would have been mercy. But he’d given them the time to actually deliberate.
Malil started muttering to themself; I couldn’t catch exactly what they were saying. But then they, with a few deliberate swipes of purple, divided the canvas first into kinda-vaguely-equal halfs, one on top of the other, and then split the top one vertically down the middle too.
That done, they nodded to themself, and drew a couple stick figures in the top left corner. Except one of those arms was kind of long. Wait, was that a sword getting stuck through the other figure?
The top right panel just depicted one stick figure — the one who’d had the sword—standing, while one with X-ed out eyes was lying down. Dead. Nice.
And then the third, low panel was much the same thing, except with the standing figure getting struck by a very dramatic bolt of lightning. Malil nodded to themself, then added in terrible rudimentary handwriting—which was nevertheless impressive for their age—the words “HA HA.”
They turned around and bowed. I blinked, and found my aunt nearly doubling over with laughter.
“Justice,” Malil proclaimed seriously.
“To be fair,” my dad said, “you did use the medium of paint more like the medium of a pencil—”
“Oh, shush,” my father said. “We all know it’s great.”
“Judging?” My aunt suggested, even though the timer hadn’t quite ended yet.
“Judging,” my father agreed.
My entire being wanted to give it a ten, but technically it probably wasn’t wall artwork, although then again, maybe it was. So I shoved down my doubts, doing the very opposite of what Sā’d always told me to do, and said, “ten.”
So, apparently, had a lot of other people. “Forty-nine total,” my aunt tallied.
I couldn’t help but wish that my auditory processing would have let me hear which of my family had rated that incredible work of art a mere nine.
Malil bowed again, repeatedly. It was adorable. Then they rushed to sit down beside their twin, who despite their competitiveness, immediately high-fived them.
Sometimes I loved this family.
“Now, Orange…” my father began conspiratorially.
Oh no.
“Clay,” my dad said.
“Elephant,” Malil said.
“Two minutes,” my aunt said with a smile.
I wasn’t even good with clay. I never had been. Give me a camera for photography any day, over Vitalities-fucked clay…
But I was a dutiful child, so I stood up, preparing for my humiliation.
Good luck, Zel said in my head, reminding me I hadn’t actually bothered to cut off the connection. Oh well. I was kind of glad I hadn’t, as I appreciated their goodwill.
I went and grabbed the clay and my aunt said, “start.”
“RAAAAAAAAGH!” I said, attacking the clay with my fingers, hoping that pummeling it would turn it into an elephant. Fun fact: it didn’t.
But, but, okay! I had this! I would just rip at one part of it, pulling at the clay until it became a trunk. That would work, right?
The “trunk” broke off. Fuck. “You fudging blackberry-cursed piece of—!”
I shoved it back on, haphazardly, and attempted to pull some legs from the clay too. One of them stayed put. The others broke, falling on the floor, and fuck, I didn’t have time to pick them up—
“Uhhh,” I said, trying to figure out what I did have time to do. Of course, I was losing time as I attempted to figure it out. Fuck, fuck, fuck—
Trying to get ahold of my breathing, I poked a finger into the “head”—if it could be called that, which it really couldn’t—attempting to make an eye. Unfortunately, the “eye” covered over half the area of the “head.”
“Uhhh,” I said.
“Time,” my aunt said.
Blushing, I held my attempted creation up for all to see. “It’s, um,” I said. “A one-legged cyclops elephant?”
People voted, and as usual I couldn’t really distinguish words in the overlapping voices, but I thought I heard at least one “one.” Oh boy.
“Total is,” my aunt said, “twelve.”
I blinked. “Really?” I asked. That was better than I’d expected.
My father winked at me as I sat down. “Your verbal description earned you extra points,” he said.
Right, okay, I thought. So he’d given me some decent points, but guess who hadn’t—
“Maét,” I said, sing-song, my aunt’s name. “I think it’s your turn.”
“Flamingo,” she said under her breath, even though she and I both knew she enjoyed this game. As, ultimately, I also did.
“Performance art,” my dad said.
“The story of Ganni and the princes!” Senni called out; that was a favorite of theirs.
“One minute,” my father said, clearly having already used up every drop of mercy in his body.
Ganni and the princes was a story about a girl—it was set way back in the two-gender times—who couldn’t walk, but did have a wheelchair that could go really fast. She criss-crossed the desert, going between villages and delivering messages. Unfortunately, two rival princes both cast their sights on her, getting more and more enamored each time she talked to them. As the months passed, it looked more and more likely that the region was going to plunge into war…
Until she just went ahead and married both of them, of course.
And my aunt was supposed to perform that in one minute?
However, strangely, she was smirking as she walked up. I couldn’t help but wonder what she had planned.
When she stood in the center, my father dutifully starting the timer, I expected her to start gesturing and act out the whole thing.
Instead, she sang.
It was the tune of a common drinking song—of course it was—but she changed the words on the spot, covering the gist of the story in the space of a quickly-sung verse and chorus.
Or, well, part of a chorus. The timer beeped and cut her off before she got to the last couple of lines.
Despite that, a few of us clapped. She did well.
“You cheated,” Malil said, pouting.
“No, child,” my aunt said. “I was merely instructed to do performance art. Singing is a subcategory.”
Well, I couldn’t say she was wrong about that.
The scores got shouted out quickly—obviously all high ones, as according to my father, she got forty-five in total. Not as much as my cousin’s five-minute comic, but then, what could really beat that?
I high-fived her as she sat back down, and all eyes turned to my dad.
“Now, next up…” my aunt said, smirking once more.
I smiled. It was a good night, and these were good people. Sometimes it took a lot for me to remember that although my community at school had failed me, my family had always been a safe place for me.
And, even though I was going to leave soon, it probably always would be.
8
Nena & Maràh
sedge
There is a town at the edge of the desert, just below the mountains. This shouldn’t be surprising: it’s a rather obvious location for travelers coming from either direction to restock on their supplies. That demand, in addition to impressive natural hot springs, made it inevitable that a town would grow here.
We were still at the foothills above the town and I was enjoying the dramatic wind in my braided hair when Maràh turned to me and said, “So, do you have nickname suggestions?”
I blinked. They’d never directly asked me for help before. “I mean,” I said, “I guess I could.”
“Good,” Maràh said. “Because now seems like as good a time as ever to say good riddance to this awful name.”
I almost smiled and I turned to them on that wind-swept hill and said: “Be careful, though. You wouldn’t want to accidentally stumble upon your truename with me already knowing it.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’d actually mind that,” Maràh said, and I was pretty sure they were smiling at me. “Getting one of those would be pretty fucking nice, even if someone else ended up knowing. It’d just be nice to have one. And, yknow, to not have this name.”
“It’s not that—”
“Yes, it is. It is that bad. And you don’t get to tell me it’s not. You don’t get to tell me what names do and don’t horribly communicate my identity. You. Don’t.”
I nodded. “Point,” I said. “Now, what kind of name are you looking for?”
“One that isn’t this.”
“Got it.”
“So,” I said. “As tried and true places to look for nicknames go, there’s always obscure science terms…”
“And how are we gonna track those down before we get into the town? That seems like the kind of thing you’d need a library for.”
“Well,” I said. “I do have a synonym. I could contact one of my parents, or something.”