003 - His tiny delicate fingers crackling

I saw a pair of square orange eyes with gold edges, and a monster with stickles in his spine made of fire-jewels, and a black face with holes with flame coming through them for eyes and a hooked nose, and a wall with evenly spaced cracks and… the fire-poker in Mama’s great hand destroying all in a hail of sparks, and creating new shapes. In fall and spring, she’d run the stone-stove with the door open sometimes, letting out the roaring and crackling and hissing, and wisps of delicious-smelling smoke now and then.

The floor of my world here was warm sheep-fur that tickled my skin; my roof, the creaking base of her wicker chair; my door, her legs. The dogs would shove their noses at me until I took them in under my arms. A thread of yarn stretched from the ball to above, twitching now and then and gradually moving upwards; she’d be crocheting socks or a marya or a crib-blanket for the next sib coming, still in her womb, while she spoke adult things with whoever else was there. Sometimes I would lie on my back to gaze at the fire, because it was even weirder upside-down.

My crib-blanket was blue and green, the colours of Yeola-e, but my grandmother, Second Naingini, had made it, embroidering my name, the first place I learned to read it. It was my blood-mother who made me a marya in the Vae Arahi pattern, with the single and double stitches interlacing and reflecting each other to a child’s eyes running over them, to mean balance and transaction. The fringe dragged on the floor when I wore it, but when I was a man, she assured me, it would just fall to my waist as my father’s did.

It was spring and I was three and she was big with child, but reading instead of crocheting. Reading made her oblivious to me. I twirled a lit twig to make light-trails in the air. “Fourth Chevenga, you’re not allowed to do that and you know why, yet you’re doing it,” she said. “Why?”

“Why aren’t you making a blanket for the baby coming?” I asked.

I thought she was going to scold me for answering a question with a question, but she said, “I’m doing something else for the baby coming.”

Shock filled me. I collected myself. “Mama…” I tried to put it politely as I could. “Please, may I know why you are lying?” I can tell, with anyone I know well, and often with people I don’t know well or strangers. I didn’t mean to accuse her; I’d always been punished far worse for denying I’d done something wrong than for doing it, but I couldn’t imagine she would lie for anything other than very good reason. I just wanted to know what it was, and didn’t yet know a more polite word for it.

My blood-mother is quiet by nature, but not from timidity. She fought with distinction in the darya semanakraseyeni elite in the wars against Tor Ench, before she went asa kraiya. She was never one whose eyes went wide or whose cheeks reddened easily. Her eyes were so much like mine that I could very easily become her in my mind, as I did now, while she stared at me, my chin and nose adult and female, black love-locks brushing my face, the heat of tears in my eyes just enough to shimmer like faint sun on the edge of a cloud, because my son knows. My question forgotten, I wanted to fling my arms around her and say “There, there” as she did me when I cried. I’d never seen her cry in my life.

“I owe you truth, my child,” she said finally. “But I can give you only very little—only that there is a reason I am not making a blanket for the baby coming, but you are too young to know it. I’m sorry, Chevenga. Will you forgive me?”

I wrapped my arms around her neck and kissed her and said “Of course, I forgive you, mama.” I never mentioned it again. The baby died in the stream.

They gave him his rites in the old, open fire, with its granite hearthstone and its andirons, after the rest of us were supposed to be in bed. I crept in silently, and with their eyes fixed on the fire, none of my parents caught me. I saw the flames curling around my little brother’s body, turning it black, heard his tiny delicate fingers crackling. I fled back to bed and wept my pillow soaking, then dreamed. Such dreams always slip out of my mind as I get close to them, like a faint star that one can see from the tail of one’s eye but not looking straight on, or the Second Fire, too terrible for the mind to approach any way but circuitously. I have always wondered who he would have been.

When I thought about it, I understood it all. She had foreknown that he’d never need a crib-blanket. But she had told no one because she had wanted to spare us the pain of knowing beforehand. This didn’t seem out of the ordinary to me, and it never occurred to me to wonder why it didn’t.

Mana-lai Chereda and I were born only thirteen days apart, so our parents had put us together as babies as soon as he’d come out of the stream alive, so we never met, as we remembered it, but were always just there. When we were four, he, Krero Saranyera, Sachara Shae-Shaila and I were already tight-knit. Sometimes Nyera Harayel would run with us, too. “Let’s go up to Sukala’s cave,” I said one day. “By ourselves! We’re big enough.”

“But you know the saying, ‘Keep stream-tested babies away from cliffs’?” Krero said. “You were done the hard way—”

Rage filled me. “I am not a baby! You take that back or I’ll grind your face in the dirt!”

“I didn’t mean—”

“And I’m fine near cliffs!”

I jumped on him and we rolled around on the ground savagely. He was bigger than me, with hair that was very dark brown and thick brows that joined slightly in the middle even then, but I was stronger and faster. “Fine, you’re not a baby and you’re fine near cliffs, truce!” We stopped and got up and he said, “I just mean that if you fall off a cliff I’ll be in trouble. Or if we get lost and a mountain-lion eats you or something.”

We Yeolis are somewhat famous, I’ve learned, for how we will let our children run free from the moment they can run, even amid lethal dangers. The feeling is that a child who does not grow up free in that way cannot be a free adult; besides, even babies have more sense than people in other countries give them credit for. But it is also felt that this does not hold so true for those who were stream-tested, so parents are more careful. I am not sure whether it actually is true. The one high place I jumped off as a toddler was only a man-length and a quarter high, and I just got bad bruises.

“You won’t be in trouble,” I said. “Even if we all end up dead, everyone will know it was my fault, because everything we do that we’re not supposed to is my fault. Besides, there’s four of us so we’ll beat up the mountain-lion. Come on!”

It’s an easier climb when your legs are longer and stronger, as I learned later, but we managed it eventually, distracted only by a marmot or two, and a hawk we watched circling for a while, hoping to see him dive and then come back up with a squirrel in his talons. We finally came to a lip of rock leading to a level bit that had a carpet on it that was from some strange country where they made rugs with weird patterns, and was worn with people’s feet.

I don’t remember meeting Sukala either, since I was still in the sling when I did, my mother going up for a visit with a basket of fruit or a pack of firewood on her back as she did now and then. To me it felt as if Sukala had always been there, like part of the mountain, same as the mountain was part of Yeola-e. She kept a tiny vegetable garden on a meager patch of soil clinging to the crag, and had a herd of goats and some other animals; mostly she lived on what people gave her in return for her wisdom, and with the help of people who’d come up to do chores. This wasn’t expected of children, but I made sure each of us had a chunk of hardtack or a bag of raisins in a pocket or pouch.

“Sukala?” I said. “Are you home?” She hardly ever went anywhere else, but this was polite.

“Nye’yingi, Chevenga!” her ancient voice echoed deeply from somewhere inside the rock. “Welcome, love! Nye’yingi, Karani! Such an articulate son, speaking for you!”

“My mama’s not here,” I said. “It’s just me and my friends. We came up by ourselves!” Blinking to try to get our eyes used to the dark sooner, we linked hands and went into the passage that was pitch-dark for a bit so you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face but had to grope your way so as not to go nose-first into a twisting wall, then found the lamplight and the main room, as round and huge inside as a womb must look like to a baby not yet born, like the mountain was a giant stone mother. We went into the riot of colours.

Sukala’s furniture was all made of sticks tied together and wildly painted with stripes and dots and running-patterns in scarlet and turquoise and purple and green and orange and yellow and black and white; her floor was littered with sheepskins and goatskins all crazily dyed; her hundreds of knick-knacks, given to her as gifts over the decades, were all garish too, since people knew that’s what she liked, and each had a special meaning which she would tell you for days if you wished.

There was a bulb-shaped stone-stove with a chimney that curved up into a hole in the rock above somewhere, all made of smooth river-pebbles; on top of it was her fruit-dryer, its square wooden form painted with apples and cherries and apricots. From the ceiling hung bunches of dried herbs, strings of garlic and onions, the odd pig or goat carcass curing, her piebald old dog licking up the drippings, and even a set of glass wind-chimes, though there was never wind in here so they never made a note. There was a tabby wing-cat who might come flapping in—he could see in the lightless passage, of course—land on a cushion by the fire, lick his wings and butt, then curl up contentedly. She and whoever else was there would feed him meaty table-scraps—it was fun to toss them up for him to catch in mid-air—and she never had to worry about bat-kyash landing on her things.

“I’m collecting light,” she said. Going a bit further in, past the cavern where she slept, we found her perched up on the wall, gathering faintly-glowing jelly-like stuff from the stone with an oddly shaped spoon and dropping it into a glass jar. “Get me and yourselves cups of tea.”

“Mana, check if she needs another log on the stone-stove, while I find the tea,” I said. He was the same size as me, with red-brown hair and brown-green eyes that easily smiled. He threw one on. “Can we all have some, Sukala? With honey in it?”

She climbed down like a three-legged lizard with the jar under her arm, and pushed over some clutter to make space on a table for it. In winter she’d wear woolens of every colour, from head to foot; in summer she’d go naked, even if it was cold; now, spring, she was sort of in between, wearing a Vae Arahi marya and a pair of socks with no toes. No one knew how old she really was, but the wrinkles on her face were complex as a spider-web, seeming always to converge into a smile, and her mottled skin hung so loose on her body that you could see every sinew and tendon flexing and stretching as she moved, with the veins clinging over top of them like vines.

“Yes, you may, but not too much honey; the bees haven’t had enough flowers to feed themselves this year, much less make honey for us.”

“We can get you honey,” I said.

“When I say the bees, I don’t just mean mine, but all the bees in Vae Arahi,” she said. “The whole government is going easy on honey right now, didn’t you know that? Spring’s late.”

I stared at her, struck with revelation. My parents had told me not to put too much honey in my tea, but they hadn’t said anything about bees or flowers or spring being late. It made sense, I realized. Spring happened to everywhere at once, so, naturally, everyone was equally affected. I filed it away in my mind, like all new bits of knowledge. It seemed like the sort of thing a semanakraseye should keep track of. Sukala was always good at explaining the why of things.

“Five of us plus you makes six.” I poured by using two hands, and she handed us down a tray painted with arabesque-like grape-bunches wrapped in ribbons. We put the all the cups on it and followed her into the great-cavern, Mana taking one end of the tray and me the other.

Everyone else took a sip or two and then wandered off, mostly to look at the jar of light. That was old hat to me as she’d been doing it once when I’d come with my mother, so I stayed with Sukala, who picked up her tatting. All of the delicate little lace snowflakes she made, she’d throw off one cliff or another as soon as they were done, spinning them out as far as she could with a flick of her gnarly wrist. “You never know where my snow might fall, and who it might bless, in what way,” she’d once said to my mother.

“So it’s not just Vae Arahi that all the flowers bloom at the same time,” I said. “But all over Yeola-e.” I’d been thinking. It had to be so.

“All over the Earthsphere—though in places far enough away, the seasons are backwards, and the flowers are different.” Sukala was good that way. Other grown-ups would say, “What are you talking about?” because they had their minds too full of their day or work or something to remember what they’d been discussing with a child a little earlier. Sukala’s mind was never too full to fit something else in it.

“Well, if I were semanakraseye of the whole Earthsphere, then, I’d tell the people who are in seasons when they have lots of honey to send it on ships to the people who are seasons where they don’t have lots,” I said.

“Good idea,” she said, unlike most grown-ups, who were more likely to frown and say something like, “Fourth Chevenga! You’ll never be semanakraseye of the world and you won’t be allowed to tell people what to do.” I also knew I could trust her even if she told me something outlandish. She’d once said that bees helped make apples by carrying dust from one tree’s flowers to another, dust that was like the seeds in men and women that made babies, except it made apples. I had wondered if this was one of what Esora-e called her ec-cen-tri-ci-ties, but my mother said it was true.

“Help!” Krero said, from inside the mountain. “Cheng! I have to go pee!”

“He’s scared,” said Sachara. His hair was true red, that thick, rich paprika colour, and he was more serious and liked to see into things.

“Shut up, I am not!” The two of them were inseparable, when parents permitted.

“You are too.”

Sukala’s privy was a cleft in the rock over a drop of about five hundred man-lengths. Sometimes you’d see eagles flying below, and you’d hope they flew out of the way. Nobody lived on the ground underneath, where the tops of the evergreens were blue in the haze. If they ever had, I realized, they’d soon have moved. You’d hold the hand-grips that were carved into the rock, put your feet on either side and do it—if you were grown-up, that is, and could reach the hand-grips.

“My mama always just held me over,” Mana said. “I’ve never done it myself.” None of us had.

“Cheng, you have to hang on to me!” said Krero. We were all crowded into the cleft now. “No pushing!” I said as I took hold of his hands.

“I can’t,” he said.

“You’re too scared,” said Mana.

“Eat kyash!” said Krero.

“Can’t, it’s all way down there.” Everyone started giggling except for Krero, who looked murderous.

A breeze breathed upwards into our faces, carrying the distant scent of pine and spruce. “I wouldn’t want to do this in winter,” Sach said. “Your bum would get cold.”

“Sukala’s bum must be made out of leather,” said Nyera, whose hair was ash-blond with a tight enough curl it was frizzy, and whose eyes were true green.

“She says no one’s died falling out of her privy this year, yet,” said Mana.

“Oh eat kyash, my pee was almost started but you made it stop up again!”

“No one’s ever died falling out of her privy, stupid,” I said, without knowing absolutely for sure this was true. Just then Sukala said, “Five kids went into my privy; I hope more than four will come back out.”

“Just think of waterfalls, Krero, and fountains and...waves and pouring water out of a jug...”

“Stepping on black rocks in summer barefoot...”

“You want more of us to grab your hands?” I said. Before he could say yes, Nyera and Sachara were doing it.

“I can aim your pee-pee if you want,” said Mana.

“Don’t you touch my pee-pee or I’ll beat your head in!” Perhaps anger overcame fear, because the mission was suddenly accomplished, the golden stream started. Everyone, including Sukala, cheered. There was always joy up here, and things always turned out well.

I was thinking about the bees and the flowers as we climbed back down, though, and having sudden understandings of many other things about life fall together in my mind, like nets stretching across all I knew and tying it together. That may not have been the first time, but it is the first time I recall, that Sukala and I talked about vast things.