e knows to look away.
He’s seen her do it with bochi, oes; he’s seen her do it with the odd tekaa, but mostly natt, mostly nattles. Young lovers, sometimes. He’s sat with her, smoking the long varnished pipe she only takes out sometimes but always shares – sat unassuming in the corner, among the clutter, as she shifts all of herself to shine on one face, one palm. He watches, though there is always a moment he looks away.
Now’s that moment. The kint is all drifting smoke edged with warmth, spots and pockets of color: Nkemi’s purple, orange, red; Ette’s blue; the pale hands in his lap. He looks down at them, finally, folds them together in the dark wool of his coat.
It takes all the pieces of a place, Nkemi is saying, and fits them together. He wonders first what Ette must make of it, this talk of maps. Can she guess at the details of Nkemi’s qalqa? Can she know, somehow?
He thinks of Ezre’s prodigium, watery-pink in places, weaving together Jonathan Emmett’s life – or something like him, some shadow of him – from his things. He thinks then of Ugoulo’s connection, too; if he’d known it at the time, he’d’ve recognized a curve borrowed from ada’na here, a swirl there.
It has always been hard for him to fit the pieces of a place together. He likes to get lost in the Rose, or so he says, but he can get lost anywhere. He can get lost in the halls of the Vauquelin house, if he isn’t careful. His sense of space and distance is warped; he can think of the rooms, brushed lively with smell and feel and color, like a Tivian painting – but when he tries to guide himself from one to another, the image falls apart.
It’s not what she means, he knows. But he feels sorely he’s made a mistake. He’s given Nkemi the pieces of himself, but not the connections. He knows it must trouble her. He knows he can feel the strain, between all his names. He hasn’t known which name belongs to him tonight.
He’s given her as much as he can. The edges of his hands grow hazy; his eyes prickle.
He shuts them, and he hears Nkemi say the words hama and qalqa. She stretches them: they’re different in a way he can’t describe. It’s all the more dear, strangely, ineffably, all the more macha, to hear her feel out their contours and set them in place, in the way she can.
“Ye chen yerself,” Ette is saying, finally. There’s a smile in her voice, though he still knows better than to look up, to draw back the curtain from this moment with his eyes. “Ye chen yer head” – and she pauses, and in the silence he imagines her lifting her hand to brush Nkemi’s forehead – “an’ yer hama – an’ yer qalqa.”
He wonders if Nkemi knew, a year and a half ago, where her map would land her. There’s almost no wondering; he knows, having seen her face when he speaks of bends in the river, having imagined what it’s like to stand on a rooftop and look over the Turga. Head emptying out into Hulali’s water, or maybe freezing, fixing on a single sight, a single sound. He doesn’t know what it’s like, for her, but you can’t look ahead from that.
And then, to Anaxas – given to the water, like on Maltalaan. She carries a mant weight behind that smile; she dances with the natt in Vienda, oes, bright as can be, but the way she speaks of the drums back home.
He knew so little, a year ago. He never looked ahead; the act is new to him. She can say, at least, she knows her own shape. Does he? What’s he asking of her, with all this?
“It’s them that’s connectin’ the pieces,” says Ette, gently. “Yer the roads, not the landmarks.” He opens his eyes to see Ette squeezing her hand, drawing away.
Pup stirs, as if woken from a dream. He’s shoving his nose into Nkemi’s hand, as if to say: who cares what the lines mean? It’s the smells that matter, and this hand sometimes gives me yats, which is the most important thing.
Ette laughs, creaking back in her chair. “I can give ye nothin' more but spitch an' stories,” she says. “Yer Evers are yer own, pina beata, an’ now’s all any of us know. I see the glow in ye, ada’na, brighter than any jinga. Oes, I see. Light can cut through any fog.”