#ch 2_4

Blood. On her hands, under her nails, pounding in her ears. The knife’s grip slipping in her shaking, red-slicked fingers. Her heart, frantically drumming. Thud, thud, thud.

She runs. Walls close in around her. Corridors she cannot escape. She turns, this way and that, the sounds of her sin washing the world behind her. It sounds like the cry of a crowd that rises up around her, above her, their voices beating against her. But this isn't that place. She slips on the wooden floor and falls. Her grip on the knife; tight, white knuckled. White through the blood. Bone through the skin.

The blade goes down.

She’s in that room again.

Amara startles awake.

She feels a small hand on her shoulder and she jerks away.  The weight of a blanket falls from her and onto the ground, and the faint crunch of dirt against leather crackles as the hand moves. Its owner retreats.  She blinks rapidly, tears and settled dust blurring her vision, before she turns towards the sound.  When her head ceases to spin, she sees Sori, bandaged hand still hanging in the air, kneeling out of arm's reach and watching her.  Her eyes, like the hair that covers much of her face, are dark enough that she almost blends into the shadows completely.

It is deep into the night, now.  There is no bright fire to warm the cave.  Instead, bodies sleep, covered by furs and blankets and sheltered from winter’s bone chill.

Sori's hand drops.  She crouches close to the wall near the head of the cave––the only source of illumination in the night.  She stands protectively over one of the men that lie in the dark, peering at Amara as though waiting for her to make a move.  Then, she turns and hops soundlessly to the front, stopping beneath the dim light from above and perched on some narrow, negligible ledge.  Wordlessly, she gestures for Amara to come to her, her hand flicking back and out in Amara’s direction and waving her over.

Amara gets up on shaky legs and steadies herself against the wall before stepping over, and over, and over the sleeping forms of various residents.  Sori keeps her hand stretched out to Amara, an offer for her to take it if she wishes.  Amara, in turn, steps to the side of it, and crouches down at the foot of Sori’s perch.  Sori retracts her hand and watches Amara for a moment.  Quietly, she climbs off her perch on the wall and crouches down to just beneath Amara’s level.  She sits beside her, but not close, then reaches into her cloak and takes out a waterskin.  She holds it and offers it to Amara in her bandaged hands.  In the dim light, her hands shake.  

“Nightmare.”  A statement, not a question. Her face is drawn and tired, dark circles resting beneath her darker eyes, but she looks calm. Clear.  Understanding.  “Water. You can drink it.”

Amara takes it and drinks.  It is cool.  It helps.  She sighs.

“I bother anyone?” Amara asks.

“No,” Sori says, very quietly.  She rubs her face.  “You looked upset,” Sori continues, her words enunciated with great deliberation as she tries to hide her accent.  “I woke you.”

“Well, thanks.” A pause.  “Weren’t you gonna wake me up earlier?”

“Couldn’t,” Sori shrugs.  “Amma said you needed the rest.”  She cocks her head to the side, then looks up and out of the cave.  “The mists did, too.”

Amara accepts this after a second of consideration, then gives Sori a strange look, her mouth pulling back as her brows furrow.  She glances upwards as well, out of the cave.  The mists, a constant presence in the night for as long as she’s understood the difference between it and day, ghost over the tunnel mouth.  Strands almost seem to dip down to meet them, but never quite reach the ground past Sori.

“The mists?” Amara looks the girl beside her over, once; noting again the way she is dressed in a combination of rags and clothing too big for her, and the way she keeps herself low and compact even when she reaches out.  “They say anything else?”  

Sori’s brows raise at the question.  She almost smiles, then tilts her head to the right, lifting her left ear up, and closes her eyes.  She sits there for a moment, then opens her eyes and starts pushing the dirt beneath their feet around.

“You’re like me,” Sori says after a moment of pause.  “But you also aren’t.”

She reaches back up the ledge and pulls down a wooden bowl.  She presents Amara with a serving of stew, long since cooled, a pair of thin sticks resting together over the top.  Amara takes the bowl and takes the sticks in a fist, trying in vain to pick anything up.  Sori watches her struggle, her brow furrowing as she reaches out, then retracts her hands several times.

“Yeah?” she grunts as she takes a seat against the wall and stabs something in the bowl.

“Nightmares,” Sori replies, and pauses again, watching her struggle.  “And our hands.”

Amara’s arms are wrapped in tattered pieces of cloth, and so are Sori’s.  Amara pauses her violent wrestling to look at Sori, then at their arms. She holds out one arm to compare wraps, the sticks still clutched in her hand mournfully devoid of anything except a few droplets of broth.

Amara’s arm is thicker than Sori’s is, and a little longer, but only because Sori is smaller than she is.  But when they open their hands, she realizes that Sori’s hand is small compared to Amara’s, and glows a faint, pale blue from beneath her bandages.

“What’s that?”

“Mmh?”

“The...the glow, in your hands.”  Amara points with the sticks.

“Mmh.”  Sori unravels her bandages and flexes her fingers.  Her palms are smoother than Amara’s are, though she can see scars from cuts and calluses from gripping her sword along her tan skin.  Her nails are bitten short and close to her fingertips.  In the center of her hand, tracing the lines drawn into her palm, a gentle light pulses.  It fades after a second, and Sori looks at her with quiet eyes.

“When I use the power I have...” She enunciates slowly, then looks past Amara to the rest of the people in the cave. She looks back.  “The power we have,” she corrects, “important parts of us glow.”

Amara rubs her eye with the heel of her palm and squints at their hands.

“Glad my powers don’t come with that kind of thing,” she mutters.  “It could have gotten me killed.”

Sori looks at her for a while.  “It can get us killed too.” She closes her fist and stares at it thoughtfully.  “But it hasn’t.  Not in a while.”  Sori wraps her hand back up.  “‘S why I have this, though.  Makes it less obvious.”  She looks at Amara.  “Give me your hand. And the...mm. The jjūro.”

“The what?”

Sori makes a face, her brows furrowing.  Her hand is open.  “The...the sticks.” She points to the pair in Amara’s hand.  “You’re not...using them right.”

Amara looks at her hand, and the sticks, and cautiously holds out her fist.

“Turn over.”

She turns over her hand.

“Open.”

She opens it.  Sori reaches down with two fingers and lays the sticks down in a certain way in Amara’s hand.  She gently positions her fingers around them, then pulls her own hand away.

“Grip now.”

Amara does.  One stick sits between her pointer and middle finger, the other rests against her ring finger and the crook of her hand.  She taps the ends of the sticks together.  Sori does the same with her pointer and thumb.

“Is like…” she pauses, then cocks her head.  “Is like with these...fingers.  You pick up food.”

Amara nods slowly.  “You don’t use spoons?”

“Spoons?”  Sori cocks her head, her brow furrowing.  Realization flashes over her face.  “Oh!  Hrm.  We do, but...” She gestures around the room.  “Forgot to pack those,” she says.  She shrugs, then folds her legs up close to her chin and sets her head down on her knees.  She looks up through the tunnel again and stifles a yawn.  She shakes her head and rubs her eyes, squinting upwards.

Amara, after flexing her fingers and hands to stir and turn the ingredients in the stew, plunges the tips in and fishes out a piece of meat.  She eyes it carefully, and moves deliberately––controlled.  Her stomach, like a whistleblower betraying an ambush, growls loudly.  She blushes. 

Sori smiles at her.  "Eat, eat. I saved that for you."  Her hand flicks outward, as though to encourage Amara gently.  "Umma insisted we make it for you. So eat."

And eat, Amara does.

It tastes of garlic, meat, and some winter root she knows not how to place.  It may well taste like heaven, for the way she tucks into it.  She pauses once, to cough and swallow a few times.  Sori passes her a waterskin silently.  Amara takes it gratefully, downing a swig before digging back in.

"I know...maybe, could use more salt," Sori says after a while.  Amara pauses, lowering the bowl.  She swallows, covers her mouth and looks at Sori with a raised brow.

"You kiddin' me?" she manages.  "This is sh--stuff’s tasty."

Sori smiles at her again, her eyes squinting shut. Her smile fades after a moment, and she looks away again, this time staring into the cave.  Amara scrapes the last of her stew into her mouth before sighing quietly.  She closes her eyes and leans back against the wall behind her, then follows Sori’s gaze.  Sleeping forms of men lie before her in a row.  Uakea and Wyn sleep, wrapped up in each other, and form a barrier between the men and a great group of children, all piled atop Bii at the very back of the cave.

“What did you dream about?”

Amara’s eyes snap to Sori, who watches her quietly.  Those dark eyes are softer than before, but unreadable.  Amara suddenly feels how young Sori is, and feels something inside her tug.  After a beat, then two, Sori looks down and away.

“You don’t, ah, you don’t need to say.”  Sori’s voice is soft.  She scratches the back of her neck and sighs.  “I, um.  I don’t want to, ah, pry.”

Amara heaves a sigh, then looks up the tunnel and out at the sky.  Sori has moved the cover just enough to see out of it.  Vivid, colorful lights dance across the expanse of the night through the trees.  She glances back at Sori.

“You know, I...it’s kind of hard to talk about.”

Sori hums softly.  “Hmm. Mmhmm.”

“It’s not like...I just...I’m not trying to hide anything, okay?” Amara rubs her neck, massaging a tense bunch of muscles near her shoulder, and she grimaces.  “I just...it’s hard.”

“That’s okay.”  Sori pushes more dirt here and there.  She’s quiet a long time.  Amara opens her mouth to apologize, but Sori speaks first.

“You said...things, you know.”  Her fingers stop in the dirt.  Symbols Amara does not recognize sit in the dirt.  Sori wipes them away.  She looks at Amara.

Amara watches her.  She sits very still, knuckles white.

“I’m sorry, Amara.”

Sori looks back down and writes something new in the dirt, stops, and looks away.  She pulls her knees up to her chest and stares into the cave, watching the others rest. 

Amara takes a breath.  Blinks.  She looks at Sori, her hand lifting off her neck, and tries to make sense of her.  But she gives little away, between the tired way her eyes squint, the way her breathing rattles, now that Amara’s heart has stopped pounding, the way her hands shake when they stop moving.  Amara’s eyes go from her face to the others.  They breathe together, sighing in their sleep, or snoring so lightly they seem to buzz.  Amara looks back to Sori, but Sori watches her family, not blinking.

“You...Sori.  You look kinda tired.  I think.  Maybe we should...get someone else to keep watch.”

“Don’t want to.”  Her voice is not sharp, but it is firm.  Sori blinks at Amara with hard, dark eyes––defensive, almost.  She looks away again.  Amara reaches out but stops when Sori backs away from her.  A sigh falls from Amara’s lips.

“Listen, I’m sorry, I don’t mean you any trouble, but if you want me to leave, I’ll--”

“I know.”  Sori sighs quietly, not looking at Amara directly.  She closes her eyes and breathes, and Amara watches her, waiting.  Her skin prickles, and she can count her anxious seconds in the number of breaths she hears pass from the cave’s sleepers.  Then Uakea sighs in the dark, and Sori’s eyes open again.  Her eyes flick to Amara.  Amara watches her closely, rubbing at the muscles in her tense neck and back.  “I know what happened.”

Amara sighs through her nose, mouth tightening into a line as she thinks, and thinks, and grimaces.  Finally, she speaks.  “I don’t know what you heard.”

“Can’t judge what you do not tell me,” Sori replies.  “It’s why I asked you.”

A long silence passes between them.

“There are no Patricians here,” Sori tells her. “And I will not give you away.”  She looks back into the cave.  “Umma will not.”  Her fingers trace lines into the dirt once more.  “So the others will not either.”

Amara shakes her head.  “Maybe I should go.  Save you the trouble.”

Now, Sori reaches out to her.  She presses her mouth closed and her brow furrows as she holds out her empty hand in the air.  It wavers and shakes, stuttering, almost, as she flexes her fingers.  Finally, she turns over her hand and shows Amara her palm.  That curious glow sits there, nestled at the center.  Gingerly, she takes the wraps off from around her hand.  Amara can see lines of light trace their way through the creases in her skin.  Sori turns her hand down to the ground and takes a fistful of dirt.  She holds it for a while.

Sori makes a gesture with her free hand, then pauses, shaking her head.  She lets the dirt in her hand fall back down to the ground, revealing red soil.  Her palm is brushed scarlet, dark in the dim light of the cave.  She holds her hand out to Amara, her fingers spread so she can peer at her between the gaps.

“This,” she says.  “This is how we are the same.”

Amara is quiet.  Sori’s hand falls down, becomes a cup to request Amara’s hand in her own, and Amara slowly obliges the silent request.  She places her hand in Sori’s, the palm up.  Sori tugs the wraps off from her free hand with her teeth, then presents Amara her own palm.

Calluses and scars on a wide palm contrast with smooth skin with small, still-healing cuts pressed into smaller hands.  Sori closes her hand, and releases Amara’s, shrinking back into herself and leaning back against the cave wall.  She looks up into the light, then closes her eyes.

She breathes.

“Not alike,” she says.  “Our hands aren’t. We aren’t. But we are.”  She huffs a quiet cough and pulls her leg up to hold.  “Somewhere, we are.”  She opens one eye and looks at Amara quietly, nebulously.  “Get it?”

Amara follows her gaze skyward and does not reply for a long time.  Finally, she looks down at her palms––clean, now, and warm––and flexes her fingers.  She makes a fist and opens it, clenching and releasing the way the heart does pumping blood.  And she breathes, too.

“Yeah,” she says.

And nothing else passes between them.  Not for hours that they do not count.  Not until the dancing lights fade into the dawn’s paler hue, and the men stir and wake alongside sleepy children, whose whispers and murmurs chase what remains of those slow-turning mind-shadows back into the abyss to wait for another night.  And even then, what passes between them is little more than a look between near-black and warm brown. Something dark, and solid, and understanding, and perhaps, a little regretful.

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