XIV
The Arcs
of an Untried Alignment

Atnan was summoned by the Sage Minor to meet an old man in important-looking garb.

The old man looked him over. “Well? What have we here? A fish with legs! You can always tell a Fyrean by the smell … and the wet socks.”

Shemulak said, “This is the Prime Sage. Do as he says and answer his questions.” He paused. “You should bow.”

Atnan complied.

The Prime Sage asked Shemulak, “What’s his name again?”

“Atnan of Del.”

“I’ll never remember that. ‘Wet-socks’ will do. Del, you say? What’s that near?”

“Up-coast from Gwetlak, five days or so.”

The elder man waved his hand over the satchel, which caused the dangling bits of his robe to sway. “So, you pinched these ‘artifacts’ up near Gwetlak?”

Atnan signed a negative then wrote, “Found. On island.”

“Which island?”

Atnan shrugged then wrote, “Unknown. Lost in fog.” He drew a little map of Del and the stump island as best he could render. He put up his hand with all five fingers extended and wrote, “By the Five, I swear.”

The elder man said, “That island has a peculiar shape, doesn’t it?”

“The Seaward Elder?” Shemulak wondered.

“Oh, now there’s a story and a half!” The elder man said to Atnan, “Put down your hand! No one cares about your Fyrean superstitions here.”

Shemulak fetched a sheet of parchment and a pen and ink. “Go back to the beginning, Atnan, and write out everything, in detail.”

Atnan recounted the entire story, starting with his acceptance ceremony and ending with him finding the urns and the scrolls inside. He skipped over the conflict with Dub and his temporary exile from the village.

The old man and Shemulak conferred urgently.

“His hand is barely legible,” Mekvat said, “And this document? One part confession, one part — but if it is a fiction, why not make it more — ”

“Believable?”

“Less preposterous, at least. If he is a thief, why not sell them?”

“To whom? They’re priceless.” Shemulak flicked the edge of one of the scrolls. “Or worthless.” He motioned toward Atnan. “Near impossible for him to lead anyone in a fraud. If he’s a criminal, he is a bad one.”

“Hm. Or a very good one. This mutism may be part of the ruse.” He turned to Atnan and gestured at a page of runes. “These hideous scratches, are they yours?”

Atnan signed positive.

“You’ve tried to learn what these scrolls say. Why?”

Atnan wrote on his slate, “To learn what they say.”

“Hm. And did you?”

He showed them the list of city names and his translation, writing imperial above each Fyrean decipherment for their benefit. He showed them the scroll with the rings of symbols, walking his fingers over each block like a road.

The Prime Sage sucked in air deeply.

Shemulak said, “Mek’s eyes and ears! Is that … a wisdom walk?” Seeing Atnan’s inquisitive gestures, he explained, “The rudiments of Kindhir’s wisdom, distilled into a set of precepts to be built into the architecture of the seven cities to educate the people. To acquire knowledge in a subject, one needs only to walk the path. We know them by mentions in the histories, but the originals were lost in the Archival Fire the first year of Kindhir’s reign.”

“If so,” the old man said to Shemulak, “why these peculiar signs?”

“Hard to say, but the symbol in the center represents the sun. Seasons and portents?”

Atnan erased his slate, took a deep breath, and wrote, “I am not a thief, I am a scribe, like you. I only want to see these things preserved, and if possible, understood.”

The two stood silent for a moment, exchanging glances.

“Do you believe him?”

Shemulak shrugged. “I don’t disbelieve him.”

“Very well, young mister Wet-socks.” The Prime Sage waved his hand over the table full of scrolls and pages. “Until we establish the full measure of truth in these matters, you are confined to the archival complex. If it turns out you are a thief, we can always turn you over to the authorities to chop off your hands.” He turned to Shemulak. “Put him back to work, and by Mek’s eyes! Change his clothes — he reeks of fish.”

In the following weeks, Atnan took a single meal with the other slaves and detainees before dawn, then worked until sunset, when he returned to sleep in a cold crowded chamber in the lower part of the archives. He moved from job to thankless job, mucking latrines, picking up rotted fruit, or carrying heavy loads. Whatever work was too lowly for the scholars of the order, they forced onto the detainees. Whatever work was too lowly for the detainees, they forced onto him.

No one spoke to him, which was just as well. Anyone not marked as a detainee was his superior, so he quickly learned the ranks painted on their foreheads as well as what the different colors of robes and sashes meant.

In Del, it’s easy enough to know who is ahead of whom — who is older? We all walk the same path, but some have walked it longer. Here, as always, things are more complicated.

In the city were many paths, some more important, some less. At the moment, his path led nowhere.

One day he was tasked to inventory a storage room. A scholar led him through a maze of scrolls, shelves, countertops, hallways, doorways, and stairways — always down. By the time he was left alone in a dark hallway staring at a bronze-plated door, he was thoroughly lost.

Once inside, he lit a lamp dangling from the ceiling on a chain. As he let go, the lamp swung, casting wobbly shadows on stacks of dusty chests, rolled-up rugs, and folded blankets, as well as clothes and shoes of various sizes and colors. Over the course of the morning, he made a ledger of the items in the room: helmet, made from turtle shell; three stuffed swans; long feather coat, red; spear, pointed at both ends; bronze censer the size of four people, with carrying poles. Above the censer hung a tapestry depicting a ring of scholars, robes dyed every color, heads painted by ranks, encircling a dragon as long as a canoe.

The space was longer than it was wide, more a deep hallway than a room, dissolving into darkness until the next lamp alighted. Before he reached the end, he counted seven lamps.

There, a square tapestry stretched from floor to ceiling depicting the blackened, smoldering stump of a giant tree ringed about by scholars, arms interlocked, dancing.

One scholar, twice the size of the others and dressed in deep indigo with white stars, stood atop the stump holding a torch aloft in both hands.

In the skies above the tree, tall beings in flowing robes sat on a spangled roof. Some had animal heads, as well as extra arms and legs, tentacles, talons, or hooves, all pointing downward. Lines connected the stars on the man’s robe and their counterparts on the rooftop. Underground, similar beings lay tangled in the roots of the tree, striving upward.

Two delicately embroidered ovoids formed a border for the scene. As Atnan scanned them, his pulse quickened. Writing! The outer ring held older Jalithan characters, not the same as the imperial script but decipherable. Pictographs marched around the inner ring, not exactly like the characters of the lost scrolls but clearly related — if anything, the pictures were more detailed, clearer.

During his time in the chamber, Atnan had felt the still dry air was silencing his thoughts, as though they were unwelcome, foreign, sacrilegious. Now his mind whirred, wheels within wheels, signs and symbols interlocking, aligning, disgorging their message as though letting go of a breath held too long.

Speak, Mystery, speak!

If only he hadn’t lost the scrolls.

Hastily, he copied down both rings of signs on one of the ledgers he had been given — a long text, with many signs. Finally done, he tore off his note and stuffed it into his robe.

Some days later, Atnan was summoned on an errand for the Sage Minor in his personal study carrel. The small room had a wooden worktop in the center, tall enough to stand at with barely enough room around to walk without brushing the wall. Beneath the worktop, a wooden grid held scrolls in wicker tubes. Shelves and storage boxes lined the walls and one tiny window across the door filtered light through rippling yellowed glass.

From the pages scattered on the worktop, it looked like Shemulak had spent the last few weeks doing what Atnan had been doing for most of the year.

My scrolls!

     “Here, compare.” Shemulak unfurled one of the little old scrolls, a single-column list, and a large scroll from the archives, written in many columns. “The format is different, but the content is substantially the same — up to Kindhir.”

Atnan read the large scroll: seven columns of names and an eighth containing a date. Kiplirat, Jammu, Nabi-Maktu, Sheb-Nuksimut, Birek-Dammun, Kindhir. A king list. Sure enough, each name could be found on the lost scroll, though in a different order.

Shemulak rolled up both documents and slid them into the storage beneath the worktop, then retrieved another pair of old and new scrolls. “You weren’t wrong about how the writing system works.” He traced his finger along the imperial scroll. “For Mek, a weight of copper from Pelnu.” Next he read from the little lost scroll, syllable by syllable, “For Mek, a weight of tin from fa-na-hu, from fe-ri-ma, from sa-wa-ga-hu-et, from vi-re-uth, from ma-hu-ra — ”

Atnan wrote, “Fanu, Frema, Swaght, Vyrth, Maur: The Fyrean knot.”

“So-called before Kindhir’s Unification.”

We call it the Unraveling, Atnan thought. Why would old Fyreans make offerings to any but the Five? Mysteries within mysteries!

Carefully, Atnan placed his ledger of signs from the dark tapestry on the counter. Shemulak’s eyes grew wide as he read the imperial script:

In those days dread spirits wandered the land, disturbing the peace of mankind. At Ka-la-pa-ra-nu, Kindhir broke the last bridge with fire and blocked them, above and below.

Shemulak trailed off then inhaled sharply. “This story is untold in the histories,” he said. “The rest is an almanac of sorts — what to plant and when to harvest, how the gates of each city should be arranged according to a standard calendar — which they certainly are not.” He turned away from examining the ledger toward Atnan. “Where did you find this? In the archives?”

Atnan gestured in the affirmative. Everything there was “in the archives,” wasn’t it?

Shemulak rolled the ledger and tucked it away with the others. “Hm! You should not hoard such things to yourself. Still, I am glad to have it. The Sage Prime has tasked me with deciphering these scrolls and this will speed things along.” He paused, considering. “I say, you have a peculiar knack for discovery, don’t you?”

Atnan signed the affirmative again, this time with as much enthusiasm as he could manage, waiting for the Sage Minor to say one last thing: “I should very much like your help in this.”

Taláni sent out delegations to the regions beyond the river with gifts and invitations to greet the new rulers of Kalparaana. The only one to accept was the Dar of Jalun, a port city down-coast from Kindhirak. Sixty heralds preceded her, all with brass horns shaped like serpents and banners bearing a dark green dragon device.

The Dar, a sturdy, elegant woman, arrived on a litter borne by wicker-clad soldiers with twin curved daggers like crescent moons dangling from their belts. Jade combs of similar shape secured her veiled headdress, and the sleeves of her robe bore the same serpentine device as her banners.

As she stepped off the litter, her entourage clapped hands against thighs in unison and shouted, “Jalun-Dar!”

Melíksi began greeting her, but one of the Dar’s ministers stepped forward. “The Dar does not speak this language. I will interpret.”

Melíksi gestured him away and switched to speaking the language of Kindhirak, which Taláni had intentionally never learned.

After exchanging pleasantries, Taláni showed off the scaling ladders, siege rams, barges and war boats, and every sort of weapon made from the dull gray “star-stone.” He recounted the arrival of the meteor and how they had invented a new kind of furnace to work it. The tour ended with the mountain beasts, horns now clad in star-stone sheaths that were affixed with rivets.

His mother translated for the Dar, who remained silent, walking or looking in whatever direction he indicated. The Dar’s face, barely visible through the gauzy veil, was expressionless.

Is she unimpressed, or toying with me?

They dined together in the style of Old Kalparaana: Fire pit in the center surrounded by a hearth mounded high with fish, game, vegetables, and herbs, surrounded by counters where cooks set prepared dishes. The diners reclined around the edge, arranged by rank, while servants ran full and empty dishes back and forth, fulfilling every demand as though it were a personal challenge.

Taláni sat with his mother on one side of a single bench at the head of the circle and the Dar and her consort, an elegant man wearing a high collar, on the other. Throughout the meal, Taláni watched the Dar intently. She ate a small portion of pheasant and a dried fig and drank only water.

His mother whispered, “Do not show displeasure, nedóru. The Dar will be an ally or a rival, and dangerous either way. For now, she is testing us.”

Taláni stood. “Jalun-Dar, I have a gift for you.” He handed her a short-handled spear made of the new metal, engraved with swirling vines, its handle made from the belly scales of a white gavial and inlaid with carnelian.

The Dar passed it to her consort, who examined it closely, admiring it. She spoke, and Melíksi translated: “They also have a gift, but wish to present it in private.”

Melíksi had prepared a quiet low-roofed chamber in a far corner of the citadel for this more intimate conference. They reclined on couches with fat pillows in front of a cozy fire that hissed and crackled. Melíksi had the servants bring fruit and tumblers of spice-bark tea.

The Dar spoke first, in accented but fluent Silgath. “Is it wise to attack an empire when you haven’t bothered to learn the language?”

Taláni tried to show neither surprise nor anger at her earlier ruse. “I find ‘wisdom’ most often to be an excuse for inaction.”

“No doubt.” She nodded to her consort, who produced a small wooden box, which he separated into two trays, one a hexagonal field of circular tiles arranged into three zones, the other containing various figures of lapis, opal, and cinnabar.

Taláni scoffed. “A game?”

“A lesson.”

“And you will be my teacher?”

“We will educate each other.” She smiled, not pleasantly. “It’s called Three Cities. Kindhir the Great invented it, centuries ago.” She set up three tall pieces, one in each zone of the board. “These are the rulers, and each set of colored tiles is their territory.” Next, she surrounded each ruler with other pieces, whose functions and movement she described too quickly for Taláni to follow. “Each side takes a turn, advancing or retreating.” She moved a red pikeman toward the blue zone. “What happens now?”`

Taláni studied the board, worried it was a trick. “Blue will retaliate.”

“What about the third city?”

Her lesson was becoming tiresome. “I am red, Kindhirak is blue, and you are white. Good! Join us, and — ”

“The point of this game is to illustrate principles of unity and reciprocity among the seven cities. If any one of them decides to turn and attack its neighbor, a third city will help defend. Moreover, the cities are arranged such that if any one of them is attacked from outside, there are always two others nearby.” She continued moving pieces, allying white with blue against red. “You seem intent on overwhelming them by force. You may defeat one or at most two cities this way, but not all seven.”

Taláni moved a red piece. “We are aware of this.”

“I see you disapprove of my gift.”

Melíksi said, “No, of course not.”

“The game is a token, no more. Jalun is a small city, of no use to you in a direct assault. But I have multiplied my strength by cultivating something you lack: information.”

Taláni leaned back on his couch and held out his hand to indicate he was ready to receive.

She moved a white piece to attack one of its blue neighbors. “You must learn how to win without playing the game, which means listening to lies and hearing the truth while speaking lies without revealing the truth.”

More riddles!

Melíksi said, “The first thing you said today was a lie.”

“And quite illuminating. For instance, I learned that you, dear lady, are an accurate translator. Too accurate.” She gestured to Taláni. “And you are too proud of your achievements. You reveal too much, the both of you.”

Taláni was beginning to lose patience with her. “Our might is proven by our actions.”

“Proof? Ha! No more than a trick of the mind! A memory of certain sensations, a vapor whose residue is belief. Go ahead, ‘prove’ your might through action — it will cost you much. I have nothing to prove. I can tickle the same sensations with hoaxes and suggestions. Everyone wants to believe in something, if only to quiet the screaming inside, to fill the secret void that lies at the center of every man, woman, and child.”

Taláni leaned forward as she spoke, ready to rebut.

Melíksi pulled him back. “What do you advise?”

“Women do make better leaders, don’t they? Anger makes men easy to manipulate, like caged animals.” She moved another piece and nodded to her consort who spread out a rolled-up parchment, on which was drawn a detailed map of the Seven Cities.

Finally, something of value!

The Dar traced her finger along the map. “Let me see if I can guess your plan. First, you will advance to the gravel banks near Kelwath, where you will ford after the ice clears but before the river swells. Then along the road to Kusumnu.”

Taláni pointed to the map. “This much is written on the land itself, for anyone who can read it.”

“Indeed. Your journey ends here, at the walls of Kusumnu. Those ancient blocks are too hard to break, too smooth to scale, and planted too deep to undermine. They will see you coming and ring their bell, and Cheshak and Shiriwak will meet you at the gates, with Suppurak and Pelnu close behind.”

Taláni pointed to Nepsilam. “This is the serpent’s head.”

“Yes, but the body will strangle you before you get there.”

Melíksi asked, “What do you offer, and at what cost?”

“Now we come to it!” The Dar took two white game pieces and put them on top of Cheshak and Suppurak. “These cities at the mouth of the Great River are closest to us. Our war-boats can reach them, and our agents and sympathizers inside can open the gates.” She put blue pieces on Kusumnu and Shiriwak. “These cities are out of our reach: Shiriwak is too far up the coast, and Kusumnu is too far inland. However — ”

She toppled the blue piece on Shiriwak. “We happen to know of political unrest in Shiriwak, which we can further stoke from within — all it takes is the right story and agents to promulgate it.” She tapped the blue piece on Kusumnu. “That leaves Nepsilam, Pelnu and Gwetlak to contend with. Pelnu will arrive first. Can you play the game?”

Taláni remembered how in his vision he had stared down from the tower and watched his ants scurry around as the hornets poured out. Finally, he spoke. “We take Kusumnu at first melt, and deal with Pelnu and Nepsilam.” Exactly how, he still wasn’t sure, but when the Dar said Kusumnu would ring their bell, an idea formed. “When you see us move, take Cheshak and Suppurak. We will see how long you can hold them with fables and stories.”

That is, until we decide otherwise!

He put red pieces on the remaining cities. “You play your game, and we will play ours.”

The next phase of Selolo’s life consisted of bleary cycles of sleeping, waking, giving milk, bathing, and eating. Gwahália and Kilími stayed with her to help with the baby, a great relief.

Still, the dreams tormented her. Sometimes she ran to the baby’s basket to find it empty, or full of blood, spiders, or wriggling eels, or if the baby was there, she would run and never reach her. Sometimes the baby grew in her arms and transmogrified into a full-grown avatar of her father.

Once, she dreamed she was an eagle flying over the water and catching fish which she fed to Kirelítsu, mouth-to-mouth. Most often, she found herself locked in combat with Taláni, with his mother, with hordes of blood-witches, or with the evening sun itself, all seeking her infant daughter as a sacrifice.

Whenever she startled awake, Gwahália was ready and sitting at the foot of her cot, head cocked to one side, staring at her with a compassionate, if unsettling, expression. “Another bad dream?” she would ask as she began to tidy or rearrange the room, or if the baby was crying, to take and calm her. “There, there, child,” she would say. Selolo often wondered if she were talking to the baby or her.

Kirelítsu engaged exclusively in four activities: sleeping, nursing, excreting, and crying. The near-constant screeching scraped at Selolo’s insides, rattled the spaces behind her eyes, made her teeth itch.

At one point, Gwahália told her a story her grandmother had told her. “Sulúngabuk are woolly little spirits that sprout from the ground wherever owls leave pellets. After the rain, they grow between the roots of birch and aspen. Their bodies are round and mostly mouth — which is always wide open so they can howl like the wind. Sometimes they throw their newly-hatched young into the fire to singe off all the hair, then swap it for a nice quiet human baby to raise as their own.”

One night, when Kirelítsu could not be soothed by singing, cuddling, or the breast, Selolo held her up in anger and whispered, “Ah, sulúngabuk! Quiet!”

Peering into her daughter’s eyes, she hoped to find some source of the trouble there, but all she found was a tiny version of herself, powerless and afraid.

Gwahália awoke, took Kirelítsu, and walked with her around the fire. “This one is bothered by the shadows.” In a high-pitched voice, she asked the baby, “Why haven’t your aunties put up any chimes? Oh, I know. They don’t do that here, no, they don’t! All their little babies may like shadows tickling their noses, but not us! No, no. We’ll put chimes in every door and window, yes we will.”

Selolo fed the baby once she calmed down again, then fell back into fitful sleep, where she dreamed of standing in the doorway, both arms held erect, long wooden chimes tinkling from each hand, surrounded by swirling shadows.

* * * * *

Anxious weeks passed for Barlas. He went about his daily routines as usual, but his mind wandered to thoughts of Selolo. He caught himself daydreaming while holding his nets and nearly fell into the bay. Instead of finishing his chores, he started sleeping in and staying up late walking alone on the beach.

I’m stuck here so long as Betalia and Layram are alive, and there’s no one, until suddenly there is. She must have a man somewhere — that baby didn’t plant itself. Still, he ain’t here, and a woman could do worse than me, eh?

Still, there were no indications that she meant to build a family with anyone in the village, and in terms of wealth or influence, he was by far the worst choice.

He thought back to his arrival in the village, dirty and skinny as a stick, his black hair one big tangle, barely dressed, knobby knees and dirty feet sticking out of a garment that was little more than a sack made of animal skins. He looked like he had been living in a cave.

He hadn’t.

Before that, he remembered little. He had the vague impression his father was tall, and that his parents hunted and fished for the family’s survival. They got sick and died. He stayed with them until the animals came.

Layram and Betalia had kindly bought him from the traders that plucked him off the shore of his little island. They gave him life and cared for him, they not quite his parents, he not quite their son, with all the obligations of family but few of the benefits.

He heard Betalia’s voice, from a few days before. “When we are gone, you will be freer than anyone. Live here, or move on. Marry. Start a family of your own — without taking on someone else’s problems.”

“They’re not problems,” he had said, angrily. “They’re people, just like me, eh?”

“It’s different.”

It’s not, though. Blood is blood, but a family is whoever shows up to love and love you back, right?

Worrying about it made his head hurt. He wondered where Atnan might be at that moment, wishing he was there to help keep him sensible. No, he wasn’t there and didn’t want to be.

He made excuses to pass by Selolo’s house, using their peculiar mix of jargon, Fyrean, and pantomime to ask if she needed anything done around the house. She mentioned in passing one day how Gwahália wanted chimes — “singing stones” she called them — in the doorway, so he made her a set with carvings of fish, whales, and eagles, and hung them up for her. Whenever he heard Kirelítsu crying, he ducked in, made a funny face, picked her up, and let her nuzzle into his long curly hair until she calmed down.

Sell thanked him profusely for these and every other small favor he performed.

The other sisters started calling him “Uncle” — not their uncle, but Kirelítsu’s. He wished they wouldn’t; he didn’t want to be thought of as Selolo’s brother.

The cold began to break and the sun peeked from behind the wall of grey clouds — as good a day as any to declare his intentions. Unable to sleep the night before, he formulated a plan as he walked the beach.

“Who is it inside our door?” Selolo said to the crying baby as he came inside. “Uncle Bear! Uncle Bear!”

Kirelítsu took a breath and bobbled her tiny head in his direction, sipped a breath or two, and continued crying.

Selolo handed her over to him. “Ugh, give whynglad.”

This was the word for “gift,” but in her half-learned version of Fyrean it meant something between a favor and a kindness.

Barlas took Kirelítsu, bounced her unsuccessfully a few times and passed her over to Gwahália. “Not today,” he said to Selolo. “First you give me whynglad.”

She tilted her head. “What kind whynglad?”

“Teach me to hunt with your eagle.”

“Now?”

“The sun is perfect, and you look like you could use some, eh?”

“What is ‘perfect’?”

Gwahália said something to Selolo in their language, the gist of which seemed to be: Go and have fun.

Pulling on her boots and vest, Selolo said, “Eagle hunting, not easy.” She scrunched her fingers on his forearm like talons. “Much pain for you!”

“I’m used to pain.” No, stupid! “What I mean is  … I enjoy it?”

She giggled, her mouth covered with both hands.

Selolo put on a heavy leather gauntlet and whistled out a few short loud blasts. After a moment, Nokokolë screeched back and appeared out of the sky, as though flying out of the sun itself.

Barlas had to shade his eyes to see the bird’s final approach as it landed on Selolo’s arm. He had looked but never found her aerie, which must be nearby. He saw the eagle often, circling high above Selolo’s house as though guarding it.

They spent some time putting Nokokolë through some simple exercises, and Selolo taught him how to hold his arm, how to reward her with bits of raw meat, and how to hold the jesses. She tried to teach him to whistle, an abject failure.

It didn’t take long before Barlas and the eagle were no longer amused with each other. Selolo had been right about the talons; if anything, the bird seemed to delight in showing its displeasure with him any time he was nearby.

For her part, Selolo treated every injury he suffered as profoundly comedic, repeating, “You enjoy!” and laughing harder every time.

Most of the afternoon he spent watching Selolo perform. She might have been showing off a bit when she had the eagle snatch a marmot off a rock. The afternoon ended with two rabbits, the marmot, a vole that she let Nokokolë eat.

“Good whynglad! Good for Bear, good for me.”

“Yes! I keep saying: Sunshine breeds happiness, if you let it.” He rubbed his arm. “I think your bird disagrees, eh?”

Selolo mounted her arm into the air and launched the bird, who let out a squawk — petulantly, it seemed to him.

They walked on for a little while. “So.” He tried not to sound too serious, and wasn’t sure what he meant to say next; that is, he had rehearsed too many options, and wasn’t sure which one to choose. Finally, he settled on, “Kirelítsu’s father — what happened there, eh?”

She stopped walking and turned toward him. Her expression was dark, not quite angry. “Please. Not talk of him. Not.” She repeated, wavering. “Not.”

“Hay-hay, but.” He braced himself for whatever she might say. “Will he come for you? For his child?”

Brow furrowed and eyes moist, she said, “Father of Kirelítsu  … dead.” The final word came out slowly and with considerable effort. She turned and started walking, speaking with her head turned away from him. “Go home now. Talking  no more.”

They returned home in silence and she left him without any final greeting. He almost followed her inside to apologize, but he had already pressed too much. For the rest of the day, he threw himself into catching up on his chores.

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