e can’t imagine what it’s like to spend a bochhood alone. Alone – the word, lilting, blows a strange wind into his mind; he’s the impression of a vast blue sky and empty air all around. It scatters, like grain tossed to the breeze, and he doesn’t know why he felt it, or where he’s remembering it from.
He can’t hold it; he thinks only that it’s so far from his own childhood, where there was always noise. The chatter of the ladies – and all the other noises – at Greene’s, the talk and laughter through the walls of the tenement. Even in your own place – and he thought, then, it was a benny thing, that Meggie had half a room instead of a dressing-room and a cot; that there was a curtain, at least, between them and the Bastian family always coughing and talking and laughing just by. Noise from the streets, streets full of bochi, thickets of buildings…
Alone. Nkemi says it cheerful enough, and Tom can’t guess much more. Maybe it was pleasant. He thinks he’d’ve given birds to have some space as a lad, not to be fighting the other boys for scraps.
Maybe it was lonely; he watches her smile, and he remembers all the old sailors that went quiet and stone-faced on the open sea. AAF who’d talk about the singing of the sands, in the desert. A loud sort of silence, always.
Maybe, maybe not. He doesn’t let himself dwell. There’s more to look at, to think about. Nkemi knows the weight of it, when she speaks of lines. Some places where the lines are clear, some places where they blur. Negotiations. Sharing. There’s at least talking, in Mugroba, he thinks. There’s at least reaching-across, sometimes, though even that dizzies him, beyond his comprehension. Harder to grasp than any desert scene.
She speaks carefully – with a careful clarity that surprises him, in a galdor, though he wonders what Uzoji’d’ve had to say about it. City boy, him; a pirate on top of it. He’ll never know, he knows, but he wonders.
And he finds himself – eerily; creepingly – feeling something like sympathy. He expected to be angry. He suspects he will be, off and on, once he’s had time to think; there’s a gift in the not-knowing, in the not-thinking. He doesn’t think there’s a time he didn’t know the line.
But he knows something, now, of learning its contours, of crossing it and turning and seeing. His heart aches for all growing pains, he thinks.
“A feast,” he murmurs, rapt. Wicks and galdori at a feast. And dancing - with drums, of course.
Nkemi has eaten the last lovely bit of mushroom, and he’s glad of it. They’re coming to the end of the skewer, now, the rough mean-looking spire of it laid bare in the pale yellow light. He savors the crumbling of the charred bit of steak between his fingers a moment more; he pops it in his mouth with relish, tries to hold onto all of it, the taste and the texture and everything around him rolled into one color.
Pffpffpffpff, snores the dog, shifting and settling deeper into Nkemi’s lap. Two hands on him at all times, ever-vigilant: taking turns scratching and petting and patting, always attentive. There’s the smell of charring meat, sizzling vegetables, salt and oil and spices; wafting strange perfumes; the faintest hint of wet dog.
No, there’s no bitterness, no anger he can hold onto, here. That will be for later; it comes, it goes. So strong he thinks it’ll never end, then – he doesn’t know where it goes. It flips onto its belly; it reveals that it was sadness, all along. Bone-dry and tired. Growing pains.
But she’s unfolding all this for him, unfolding it like a map. He’s tracing the lines; he’s coming to name the landmarks. He remembers how she corrected him, poa’xa, though he still doesn’t quite get it; he will, he will. How she respected him enough to correct him. And he is bastly-grateful, warm as a hearth.
He thinks of lines he remembers. “It wasn’t done, when I was young, playing around the spokes,” he says, “when they visited. You know what sort of a lad I was. I spent a lot of time sneaking round the kint and ubo.” He smiles wistfully, playing with pup’s ear; unexpectedly, pup sneezes.
He laughs. “There’s a gitgka – old woman; grandam, informally – who has a stall here, who reads the lines on your palm for Evers as I remember a spoke doing, when I was younger. I thought we might –” He hesitates.
Mugrobi spokes – do they fortune-tell? He thinks of truth, of what can and can’t be done with magic. It’s well for imbali to lie, to wear masks and play on a stage; he doesn’t know where wicks are.
He looks up at Nkemi, tries to read the extent of intent in her eyes. “Have you ever met a tekaa fortune-teller?”
They come to the last of the skewer, just enough for two.
He lightens. “Do you care for the mushroom, or the pepper, Nkemi?”