THE ASHES DO THAT TO ME
1560 4D
Nadienne and I walk slowly up to Aswar Tyrae, not talking. At Aswar Tyrae a side street, Makazuo, reaches off at an angle that takes you out to Fifth Ring through a sector full of small workshops for metal, ceramics, circuitry, gemfab, biofab, you name it. But not far from Tyrae down Makazuo is the memwall.
It’s not the only memwall in the City, but it’s the one I use. All my friends too. Every time one of us died, we’d all go to Omphalas the Orchid Woman and buy her darkblooms, the deep indigo flowers that burn to a sweet ash. We’d take the ashes to the wall and write the names of the dead over all the other names people had put there over the years. Over time, the layers of names pearl and streak with little runs of water drops. The City‘s tears.
Nadienne said she’d help me with the ashes today.
I hate doing this. I made these ashes happen. When the bodies of Essa and Jackie B went into Return for recycling, I wasn’t there. I couldn’t feel it – but all along something was breaking into glass slivers in my chest. It still hurts.
My hands shake enough to drop the little white bowl with its dark-red lid. Nadienne puts her hand over mine as we come up to the memwall. “Tomas,” she whispers. My hands relax a bit.
A Kai Ren guy, older, big in the shoulders and slow-moving, stands with his forehead against the wall. His fingertips splay and steeple as if he could push them through the stone at his waist. His braid carries four large knots: he’s military. He doesn’t move.
Two girls are at the wall, their four hands up with fingertips extended to touch the gray ash as if they feel someone in the stone. Tears run down their cheeks and stain their dark skinsuits and shawls. The shawls mark them as country people – probably Novander Wye or Gellin Sintherou, maybe even Sinantro – but they seem not to notice anyone or anything except the names under their hands. One sobs softly.
The black-streaked gray ash they have drawn onto the stone wall has a cloying sweet aroma, so they must have brought their own ash from up on the surface where the darkbloom orchids grow huge. The names they’ve written swoop and curl and thrust in the Sintherou lapscript, a calligraphy like soft tangled vines, weaving layers above thick hard strokes of Darko Hejj names, smooth Arcus names, even delicate sharp Fandarinn names. All names of the dead. Dried traces of water rivulets run down through them all, the trails of the City‘s weeping stone walls writing their own unpronounceable names through all the thousands of others.
“Tomas,” Nadienne says again. I look at her. “Here’s a good place.” She shows me a soft gray emptiness between some other markings, not far from where the two girls stand.
“I can’t do this,” I tell her.
“You asked me to come with you,” Nadienne says. “I was there with you when Essa died. We were–“
“I know! It’s just–” It was my fault Essa died. The giant lump of hate won’t leave me no matter what. I hate myself. My hands won’t move. Slowly I kneel before the wall. The two girls look over at us.
“This is where you start, Tomas. Come on, I’m still here.” She stands behind me, puts her hand on my shoulders.
I promised I’d do this. I struggle to my feet and wrench the lid off the bowl. The soft fruitlike scent of the ashes rises to me. Essa, you were so much to me, all the time. You opened your door to me, you loved me, you took me in… Her face appears in my mind, smiling, so sudden I jerk back. I put two fingers in the slick ashes and reach to the wall, ash slipping into dust as I write.
We’re Kai Ren. Our writing is like nested blocks, matrioshki of meaning. I write:
Essa Tarika Shaimau
Love forever
Your gold flowers
Gave me my life
Essa Tarika Shaimau
Please forgive me
and the tears come down my face like flooding rain.
“Now Jackie B,” Nadienne says. I glare at her with swollen eyes. “Now, Tomas.”
I want to scream “No!” at her, but I turn to the next space on the wall and I write:
Jakodar Binzaidin Tua
Tunnel Plugger Man
Stone friend
Shield always
Jakodar Binzaidin Tua
Please forgive me
and back away as if the writing is burning me with its heat. “Is that enough?” I snap at Nadienne. She just looks at me. The two girls watch us both, fear in their eyes.
“Tomas,” Nadienne says, one more time. “Don’t hurt me too, not any more.” Her eyes are steady, but moist, and her jaw is set.
“I–” and that’s all I can get out, because the huge lump in me forces its way into my throat and I slump to my knees again and the racking sobs burst from me like a storm. I bang my head at the foot of the wall again and again, Nadienne‘s hands trying to slow me, cushion me, and I shove both hands in the ash bowl and smear great gobs of gray across the bare space near the floor. Then I hold my face until the ashes and tears have turned me as grim as a ghost, and finally I stop heaving my breath. Nadienne helps me to my feet. The two girls stare and recoil, eyes wide as moons. The Kai Ren guy is facing us now, hands at his sides. He looks me over. One corner of his mouth turns up a little.
At that moment something pops to light inside me, and I see how it all must look, and I grin at them, and I start to laugh like mad, the tears still running. “Sorry, folks, but the ashes do that to me.” I put my arm around Nadienne and squeeze her tight and we walk away up Makazuo. “I’d die for you, Enn,” I say.
“Just live for me,” she answers. “That’s all I want.” All the way back to her place, I stay in step with her, and my heart is light like air.
