isha, moans a man’s voice.
He half-sleeps; he drifts in and out.
The neck of his handle of whisky was clenched in his fist when they helped him out, clenched like a talisman; he’d forgot to let go, he couldn’t let go, ‘til gentle hands pried his fingers away and he lost it somewhere on the way. His eyes had widened when he’d seen the scattered stars on the sand, but tangled up with Nkemi, he couldn’t’ve made sense of any of it. He watched them carry off Ipiwo, watched Kafo find the man who named him, too-vivid snippets in the squinting bright sun. He saw the camels with their long lovely lashes and their soft lips, and at some distance, ada’na Inis limping toward where they’re taking Ipiwo, leaning heavily on a stick.
The bastly tilts, eventually; his body’s fast-beating heart has been beating too fast, even in exultation. Nkemi is breathless with relief, and her caprise is warm as ever, but he can see the shadows underneath her eyes. The bright color of her headwrap is covered up almost completely by sand.
So she lets him go and he lets her go; there’s no time – no space in him or in her – for questions, not now.
In the white-covered wagon, he can’t find sleep. He shuts his eyes and patterns of whirling sand flower against the dark. He sees lamplight and stars. He tries to keep sipping water from his fresh canteen, but his mouth is full of the taste of whisky, and his head hurts.
And he dreams. These aren’t the vivid, wild dreams of the night before. These are dark dreams; these are snatches of faces, of voices, of touches. Long calloused fingers tracing the line of his narrow jaw, knuckles brushing his cheekbone. Tears on his cheeks. Whispering, moaning – risha, risha, risha…
His fist is knotted in the long hem of his shirt. He feels fear and confusion and other, less unpleasant things, off and on. Once, he starts awake, thinking he’s felt the wagon shift. Eventually, he takes himself stumbling to where they’ve set up some shade on one of the blankets, where a tall bearded man with a swollen ankle sits with an older woman. He curls up, listening to them talk in soft, worried Mugrobi; he falls asleep, and he doesn’t dream.
When he wakes, he still doesn’t know how to feel.
The relief has drained out of him; the sun is past its hottest point, already sloping down through the deep blue sky. The wind still carries the taste of sand, but there’s no storm on the horizon. His shirt is stained with sand and sweat, hem and collar and map of creases stained dark with Kafo’s sap. He left his bag down in – the wagon, he realizes, shaking the sand out of his sandals – his ruined amel’iwe, too, and his goggles.
In the bright day, he doesn’t want to think about his strange dreams; he feels a blend of fear and embarrassment he doesn’t much like. Nor does he look for Kafo or Anfe among the scattered folk on the blankets. Struggling through feathery, fresh-piled sand on jellied legs, he passes the red wagon; he imagines he feels their glances, rolls his aching shoulders and takes a sip of water and doesn’t look.
(They don’t know. Kafo won’t have told them; even if he has, he won’t be believed. Kafo?
Another one – like him?
Nobody else knows.
Nkemi doesn’t know, he thinks, and will never have to. He feels an odd ache he doesn’t want to feel, and shoves it aside, too, buries it under the effort of walking through the sand.)
He’s not sure what he’s looking for, and doesn’t remember until he sees it again: the parted sand, the sunlight glinting off it. He walks beside it down the dune, careful sideways feet; he keeps looking down at it, wondering. It’s turned thin and shattery, like a skin of water on the sand.
The sight of the green covering, the slat into darkness, wrests him from this and all other thoughts. He sticks in his place, breath stuck in his throat, before he kicks himself into motion again.
He’s not surprised to find the covering untied. He freezes and goes slowly, half-expecting to see – but it’s her, in the end, the light from outside slanting in and just catching on her headscarf and the thin line of her shoulders. She’s by the scattering of luggage.
His bag has been moved, leaned neatly with the others. “Nkemi,” he says softly, not wanting to startle her. He reaches out with his caprise.
She doesn’t know, he thinks, climbing in behind her. The back of his neck prickles.
“Have you lost much?” he asks instead, frowning.