The Town of Tsaha’ota
The Úwaq’dzola is at the heart of Tsaha’ota; Nkemi leads Anetol back into the main stalls of the market. It is morning now, full, and the thin rows that wind between the stalls packed busy. Still, the crowds do not brush each other; they weave in and out, around stalls of vegetables and fruits, of lentils and other, stranger grains, of herbs set out front and hanging far at the back, of cloths and books and far, far more.
The path empties out, suddenly, into what seems like a wall of cloth. That it is a circle, stretching in a circle at the outside of a kint, is obviously after a moment, but at first it is only a sudden, abrupt change. Bits of blue leak overhead, and smoke, heavy and white, trails out of some invisible opening far above.
“We are not too late,” Nkemi says with a grin. Her arm has not left Anetol’s; they wind around the edge of the tent, to the large flaps which are drawn back, and they step into the smoke.
The same white smoke which winds its way out of the top of the tent fills the inside, too; they drift through it. The tent is full of other figures, here and there; they are hard to make out individually, almost indistinct in the rush of it. The strongest smell is sage, but other scents drift through as well, thick and heavy in the air.
Nkemi remembers standing in the midst of it as a girl, looking up, unable to see Nkanzi’s face, so swallowed were they by the smoke.
Now, she glances over at Anetol, and he is only blurred sharp planes, a hint of red hair which emerges from the white, and the trace of color on his clothing. She keeps her arm looped through his, and knows not to let go.
It starts slowly. There is a steady chanting in monite from the center of the tent; she knows Ohihú by his voice, deep and rich, thicker than the smoke. It bellows out, and the smoke puffs outwards; for a moment, all is clear, and Nkemi and all the rest can see through it.
There – across the tent – she sees the three wicks from earlier, now without their cards. Inis is there too; it has been years, but Nkemi knows her at once, standing with the other caravan leaders in a half-circle behind Ohihú. Ohihú, too, is as Nkemi remembers him; he sits on the ground in a pool of white robes, long scrawny arms thrust out from his sleeves. He is a bellows of a man, all ribs, his arms and legs spindly scrawny, and his voice is deeper even than Anetol’s; his thick hair is white all through, making a cloud like the smoke around his head.
Ohihú chants; whatever little conversation there was falls silent.
Nkemi glances around; she feels the prickle of eyes on them – on Anetol, she thinks, though there are few enough like them inside the tent. Two humans watch them; she recognizes one as the camel man from the caravan, although the man next to him, with a scar down his cheek, she does not know. He stares, directly at them, unblinking. Next to him, a third man fades half into the shadows; he too turns their way, but Nkemi cannot see his face.
The smoke rises again, and writhes, and fills the spaces between them, leaving only the faintest of gaps around Ohihú. Ohihú comes through what in a clairvoyant spell Nkemi might call the invocation; he falls silent. His eyes, gleaming gold, search the room, slowly, and Nkemi does not doubt he can see through the smoke.
“You who would ask of the flames and the smoke,” Ohihú says in Estuan, his voice low and deep, “you who would ask of the wind and the sky, you who would ask of the earth and the rock, you who would ask of the water and the tides. State your questions now; pour them out like the smoke, and I will shape them.”