Ariah (50 page)

Kisi and Halaavi sang a walking song as we approached, a sort of code that alerted the camp to our presence and identified them, at least, as clan members. They were met with smiles, warmth, and then the clan spotted me. The songs stopped, the children skidded to a halt. Steely fear bled from one brown face to another to another. It burned into me, sucked in by the gift. Groups are never easy for a shaper, but groups where emotions are so contagious are especially difficult. I lost myself. I became, in a very literal sense, scared of my own self.

Halaavi took me by the arm and brought me forward. “I advocate for vim.”

“
Ve is a settler,” an old person said. Vis hair was gray and thinning, eyes rheumy and joints swollen with arthritis. The clan parted to let vim through. “Halaavi, you sow chaos.”

Kisi shot Halaavi an apologetic look and ran to the rest of the clan. Halaavi stood fast, vis dark brown hand on my pale silver arm. “Sing to them what you sang to me,” ve said.

The clan’s uniform suspicion did not budge when I sang what Halaavi had said to that slave years and years ago, but interest and curiosity seeped into them. In unison, the clan turned to Halaavi. “Vis name is Ariah. I advocate for vim. If ve proves a danger, both of us will take banishment.”

The old Droma stepped forward, right up to Halaavi. They locked eyes, and I felt a transference of feeling from one to the other. There was a sense of communion between them not unlike the shadow of magic I’d felt when Dirva or Vathorem read someone in front of me. “This death wish of yours is unbecoming, Halaavi.”

“
We turn vim away, and the clan will have blood on its hands. We owe a debt to the land, Idok Arvada, and the land gave us vim. What the land gives, we take.”

Arvada frowned at me. “The land didn’t give us this; the thieves gave us this. This is not a matter of spirituality, Laavi, this is a matter of safety.”

“
These two things are not so separate.”

“
This is chaos.”

“
In chaos, growth.”

“
In chaos, death.”

Halaavi smiled. It was a cold, removed smile, one that hinted at a well of darkness within vim. I realized ve had not denied that accusation of a death wish. “The land shows us that one begets the other. What grows dies. Death breeds space for new growth. There is no life without chaos. The only thing in the world that is not chaotic is death.”

“
You confuse chaos and change.”

“
I confuse nothing. There is not one without the other.”

Old Arvada’s jaw clenched. Arvada stared at me, hard, and I felt a gentle prick of magic. The Droma do not have shapers, not quite the way we think of them, but there is something there that works in parallel. It pricked my attention, and I read vim back.

When a trained Semadran shaper reads another trained Semadran shaper, it is a battle of walls. Our shapers duel sometimes, each lunging at the other, each parrying with a new formidable wall. Mr. Atoosa’Avvah’s book describes it as a necessary aspect of training, but the stories go that he was partial to duels because he won them so often. A Semadran shaper does not read another shaper unless it is a duel or for work; the code of privacy rules it out otherwise. When Athenorkos charmers turn their magic on each other, it is a game, a push-pull of friendly skill. Magic for them is a thing of tricks and traps. With the Droma, magic is understood in an altogether different way. I read Arvada, this old suspicious elf, and ve let me. There was no resistance. There was a muted surprise that I could, but my magic swept into vim with no dams and no barriers. Arvada’s surprise bled out to others in the clan: picked up by some, amplified by others, soothed and smoothed out by a few. The magic was communal and utterly frank. This was a people who had never heard of walls and, when I later tried to explain them, found this concept
—
so central to my understanding of my own magic and culture
—
distasteful at best and woefully impolite at worst.

I read Arvada and met with nothing but this clear and untroubled link with the other one hundred and seventy souls crowding the center of the camp. I felt, for the first time in my life as a man harnessing magic, a peace with it. There is a terrible clarity to an entwined life like this, a nakedness and constant exposure, but it was revelatory, and it was comforting. It felt right to me. I felt I belonged. And the link spread this feeling of mine to the rest. As a whole, the clan stepped forward. Arvada’s face softened. Ve cut a disapproving look at Halaavi, but Arvada nodded approval. “What skills does this one have for us?” Arvada asked.

“
I speak Droma,” I said. All eyes turned to me, and I laughed nervously. “I can fish. I should be able to learn to weave. I am able.”

“
We will teach you what we can,” Arvada said.

I stuck close to Halaavi. I was fed, and I was given a set of warmer clothes. The children, especially, were fascinated with me. The adults kept to themselves and gave Halaavi and me a wide berth, but the children crowded around me. They touched my hair, my skin. I had a beard then, and they were fascinated by that, too. The gold elves, like the reds, don’t have much luck with facial hair. Around dusk, the herders drove the livestock back to the camp, and I had to be advocated for all over again. It was simpler this time since the rest of the clan had allowed me in, but valid suspicions take root quickly and are hard to eradicate.

After the evening meal—a stew of collected roots and nuts served with sharp goat cheese—Halaavi led me to a yurt on the edge of camp. “We sleep here,” ve said, holding the door open for me. Inside, a fire burned in a shallow stone bowl. It threw dancing yellow light around the circular wall of the yurt. Four other people my age sat around it in various states of undress. Three I had met already; the fourth seemed wholly uninterested in me. The floor was strewn with unfurled bedrolls and messy blankets, each like separate untidy islands. Open bags gaped next to the beds, full of clothing and trinkets. Next to one bed sat a set of drums not unlike Abira’s. The sight of them gave me pangs of nostalgia. As soon as I felt it, everyone in the yurt turned to look at me. The one I hadn’t met followed my eyes to the drums. “Do you play?”

“
I don’t. I knew a drummer.”

“
Ve sings,” Halaavi said.

One of the others cracked a smile. “We all sing,” ve said. “Does ve sing well?” Halaavi gave a noncommittal shrug. The other Droma laughed. The one who’d asked scooted over and patted the blanket. “Come, not-settler. Sit.”

I sat. I warmed my hands over the fire, and Halaavi squatted next to me. Ve was very close, almost protective. “Where do I sleep?”

“
Anywhere there is an open bed,” one of them said.

“
This yurt is for unpaired Vralas,” Halaavi said. Ve said it
triloshilai-shaah
, literally “without a shared skin.”
Triloshilai
was an elusive word, one I had a nebulous sense of from the stolen songs, but not a clear understanding of. I had taken it to mean marriage. Certainly, that was as close to its meaning as I could have gotten in isolation.

“
Vralas?” I asked.

“
Yes; we are Vrala, all of us. Vrala Halaavi,” ve said. Ve pointed across the fire. “Vrala Shinnani. Vrala Kishva.” Ve pointed at me. “Vrala Ariah.”

“
You’re related?” I scanned their faces: some bore a resemblance, some did not.

“
We’re siblings. Born together in the same walk.” I, with my Semadran raising, struggled to see through this simplified structure to the bloodlines below it. Further probing revealed none of them paid much attention to parentage. Few knew who had fathered them, and many refused to point out their mothers. It was impolite, Halaavi explained later. It broke the bonds. I once raised a concern about incest, but Halaavi didn’t understand. As I said, they were all siblings. No differentiations were made. In a Semadran sense, incest was likely somewhat rare due to generational differences and the fluidity of people’s movements between clans. In a Droma sense, incest was common, expected, and encouraged.

That first night, when I was told I was in the unpaired’s yurt, I took it to mean those in it were unmarried, and I took that to mean they were abstinent. I was wrong. I woke to the thrashing sounds of sex. Two of the unpaired Vralas had drifted together in the night, and they were at it in earnest. It woke another, who joined them. Halaavi woke next to me and crawled over to the pulsing knot of limbs. As the group of them grew—voices crashing like waves, heat pouring off them, the sounds and sights and smells of it unavoidable—more of the sleeping unpaired Vralas woke and joined them until only I was left. I didn’t know what to do. Should I leave? Yes. Yes, I should leave. But I stayed frozen in place, watching, listening, captivated, curious, and embarrassed. Wanting it and frightened of it at the same time. It was animalistic, frenzied, and athletic. It was languageless and purely physical. Kishva, who I later learned was an empath groomed by Old Arvada to take the empathic pulse of the clan when decisions loomed large, extricated vimself from the rest and came to me. Ve was flushed with half-sated desire, wild-eyed and incomparably alive. Ve was fine-boned and delicate, something I’d noticed in the calm in the early evening around the fire. Ve took me by the hand and tugged, but I stayed rooted in place. “You want to,” Kishva said. “I feel you want to.”

“
What is this?”

“
Sex.”

“
No, I mean…are you all…” I couldn’t find Droma words for it.

“
We’re all having sex,” ve said. “Shinnani sparked it. Come join the fire before it burns itself out.”

“
I…no. No, I’m all right,” I said, and I slipped out of the yurt into the cold night before Kishva could ask me anything else.

It happened every few nights. Sex always ended up that way: raucous, orgiastic. Decidedly lacking the intimacy I’d grown used to with Sorcha and Shayat. There was no shroud of privacy or tight-knit emotional afterglow. They collapsed in friendly heaps and slept hard after. It was a strange and wholly unfamiliar way of living that took me some time to understand. I avoided the orgies at first, choosing on those nights to slip out of the tent and wander through the clutches of warm, bleating goats. They rarely happened in the daylight, when people spread out and worked at keeping the camp going.

Halaavi taught me weaving and embroidery. Ve had me card the downy undercoat of the clan’s yaks, then taught me to spin it into yarn. I learned to dye using the plants and berries of the land. When winter bested the older livestock, we killed and ate them. Halaavi showed me how to tan the skins, and I learned leatherwork, too. We were together, ve and I, most of the day and most of the night. Weeks and weeks together, side by side, working and talking. The only time we were apart was during those raucous, orgiastic nights in the unpaired’s yurt: Halaavi participated, and I did not. I sat outside, wrapped in blankets in the cool night, and listened. I tracked who from the paired yurts emerged and joined Halaavi and the rest. Sometimes one did, sometimes both, but always the ones who joined were Vralas.

When spring came and the grass grew green, it was time to move camp. The clan’s runners spent weeks scouting the next site. The runners were gifted cartographers, and they pored over maps of their previous routes, of places slavers were known to frequent, and of the intersections between their routes and the routes of other clans. A site was selected, and we broke down the yurt, strapped its pieces to yaks, and drove ourselves and our livestock southeast. We landed in the eastern steppes, a place where the grass is tall and rich. I sang the walking songs with them as we traveled. I ate with them and cooked with them. As the days passed, I thought less and less about the Empire and all that I’d left behind, and more and more about life with the Droma, the way their magic made such easy sense to me. Day by day the others’ suspicion of me faded until one day in late spring it seemed there was none left at all. The serenity of the clan was unmarred by my presence.

The day I noticed I’d been woven into the fabric of the clan was a good one. I was in high spirits. I talked to Halaavi about it. “Yes, they see you for you now,” ve said. “Silver without; gold within.”

I laughed. “An alloy.”

Halaavi nodded. Ve looked over at me and smiled. Halaavi’s smiles were transformative: vis face was angular and in repose looked harsh, and a smile shattered the angles and made vim young and full of humor. “They see you now like I see you, Vrala Ariah.”

“
Oh, you just like me because you think I’m chaotic.”