Ever (10 page)

OLUS

L
AST NIGHT, AS
I rode my north wind back to my goats, I thought of a glimmer of a plan for how Kezi may be saved, but the plan has a thousand obstacles, and I may be one of them. Before we can face the obstacles, I have to speak to her again, and I don't know how to accomplish even that.

I sit at the edge of my brook and watch her. She squats by her aunt's chair and puts one hand on her aunt's knee. “Aunt—”

Aunt Fedo straightens. “My rabbit ears heard Nia tell me to leave. Why didn't I listen?”

Kezi smiles. I think I understand why. I've observed that Aunt Fedo's rabbit ears hear well, but often they don't listen at all.

“You spared my life! Oh, Kezi . . . Kezi . . . thank you.”

Kezi's hand on Aunt Fedo's knee turns palm up.

After a long pause Merem says, “Kezi hasn't breakfasted yet.”

They go to the eating room, which faces the alley behind the house. Senat and Merem and Aunt Fedo have their second meal of the day while Kezi has her first. It's
simple fare: sheep cheese, barley flatbread, roasted onions, and sweet cucumbers. Kezi closes her eyes while she sucks on the cheese. The others begin to tell stories. While they talk, one or another touches Kezi's shoulder or her cheek or adds more food to her plate.

Their first tales are about her when she was a baby.

“You were motionless only when you slept,” Merem says. “You hardly ever cried.”

“I used to keep you with me in the counting room sometimes.”

“Pado, you did?”

“If you could wave your hands and kick your feet, you were happy. I'd stand over you and watch when I should have been planning crops.”

“You never crawled,” Aunt Fedo says.

Merem corrects her. “Once or twice you crawled.”

Aunt Fedo ignores the correction. “You were too eager to walk and dance.”

“And climb!” Merem says. She pats Kezi's hand.

Senat, Merem, and Aunt Fedo laugh.

“Nothing was safe from you,” Senat says, breaking off a section of bread for her.

“Once when Aunt Fedo and I took you to the market . . .” Merem begins.

Aunt Fedo says, “I had nothing to do with what hap—”

“Almost happened,” Merem says.

“What happened?” Kezi looks from one to the other. She seems happy.

They all seem happy. How can they be happy? But I notice that I'm happy too, listening and watching.

They tell the climbing story, in which Kezi almost poked her face into a hive of wasps. Then Aunt Fedo tells about Merem when Merem was a little girl. Senat and Merem talk about their courtship. Merem can hardly speak for laughing over an occasion when Senat set his beard on fire.

“Because he was looking at me!” Merem says, gasping for breath.

Senat blushes.

Kezi blushes too, and it occurs to me that she is thinking of me. But she couldn't be.

They remain in the eating room all afternoon and into the night. My fresh breeze ripples through to keep them comfortable. They have a wonderful day. We all have a wonderful day. Sometimes Kezi looks away while her aunt and her parents speak. Her face is alert and peaceful. I'm certain she's concentrating on their voices. Sometimes she watches their faces, her eyes passing from one
to the other.

Senat never goes to his counting room. Merem and Kezi don't work at their looms. Aunt Fedo doesn't leave to manage her own affairs. It's a holiday, a holiday because Kezi is to die, but a holiday nonetheless.

KEZI

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I go to my loom. Mati is already working. On my loom is the marriage rug. I hate the sight of it, but I begin to tie my knots. Even now, I cannot waste so much work.

Mati's yarn tangles. For a few minutes she tries to untangle it. She calls herself bumble-fingered, then calls herself cursed, then looks at me, her face stricken, be
cause I'm the one who's truly cursed. She runs from the courtyard.

I sit back in my chair, my hands in my lap. I don't want to weave or even to move. If I could, I would turn myself into the lizard that's sunning itself on the edge of a fern pot.

Nia comes into the courtyard to water the ferns. The muscles in her thin arms stand out from the weight of the copper watering pitcher.

Once, when I was five, she found me playing with a doll that I had stood on Admat's altar in my bedroom. She rushed at me and pulled me away, scolding that the altar was not a place for games. My doll fell on its head, which Nia said was my punishment. She prayed over me until Mati called her. I've always wondered how long she would have prayed if she hadn't had to stop.

Now I want to know what she thinks of my sacrifice. She is the most pious among us. Maybe she can explain my sacrifice in a way that will comfort me.

“Nia?”

She puts down the pitcher.

“Why has Admat made this happen to me?”

“Ah.” She smiles. “Little Mistress, Admat wants you to dance for him alone and make rugs for him alone.” She
picks up the pitcher again and begins her task.

She's made Admat seem selfish.

Maybe he will prove himself unselfish and extend my life.

I don't hear Pado until he pulls Mati's chair away from her loom and sits in it. He strums the warp of the loom as if it were a lyre.

I want to ask him about Olus: How long has Olus rented our land? Does he take good care of his goats? Does Pado like him? But Pado will ask how I know there is a goatherd.

He sings softly,

His voice breaks.

He weeps, stands, and wanders away from me toward his counting room.

I don't know how I will bear to spend my last month with my parents' unceasing sorrow.

OLUS

I
WATCH
K
EZI THROUGH
her sad day. Aunt Fedo visits again and takes her turn in Merem's weaving chair. She is silent for the first time in my knowledge of her. After half an hour, she rises and goes to be alone in the reception room. They are each alone today: Kezi motionless at her loom, Senat in his counting room, Merem on her bed, Fedo in the reception room.

I with my goats.

In the evening I send my clever wind to Akka.

KEZI

A
S
I'
M FALLING ASLEEP,
I wonder if Olus might be able to help me live beyond the twenty-seven days I have left. Maybe Admat sent him to me for that purpose.

I don't know what magic a masma can do. Perhaps a spell could make someone swear an oath that goes the opposite way from Pado's. Whoever fulfills the new oath will have a long life. With Olus's aid I could fulfill the second oath.

Or Olus could cast a spell to slow time just for me. With such a spell I would live for years in my remaining days. Lonely years, unless he slowed time for himself as well.