"THEY TOLD ME YOU WERE DEAD," SUPAARI SAID IN H’INGLISH, STARING at the tiny foreigner. Horrified, he spun away and walked a few paces and then returned to her, like a scavenger returning to a carcass. He reached down toward Sofia’s face, disfigured by the tripled scar, and felt even more ashamed when she seemed to flinch away from his touch. "I would have looked for you," he said, pleading for understanding. "The VaKashani told me you were dead!"
Because he expected it, he saw hatred and blame in her face. Exhausted from his journey and all that had gone before it, staggered by the sheer majestic variety of ways he had managed to be wrong about things, the Jana’ata sank by degrees, weight shifting from feet to tail to knees to haunches until at last he slumped on the ground, head down between hands sunken into the forest humus. Her wordless reproach—her very existence—seemed to him a killing blow and he was fervently wishing for some quick death when he felt her small hands on each side of his head, lifting it.
"Sipaj, Supaari," she said, kneeling so that she could look into his eyes, "someone’s heart is very glad you have come here."
Bleakly he thought, She didn’t understand me. She has forgotten her own language. "Someone thought you were gone," he whispered. "Someone would have tried to find you."
He rolled heavily into a sitting position, knees akimbo, and looked around: sleeping shelters, with their graceful sloping thatched roofs, creaking and flexing in the breeze; woven windbreaks decorated with flowers and ribbons; raised sitting platforms paved with beautifully made cushions. Runa, going about their lives, untouched by Jana’ata law or custom. Apart from the awful disfigurement, the little foreigner appeared well.
"Sipaj, Sofia," he said finally, "someone has a great talent for error. Perhaps it was better for you to be free of his help."
She said nothing and he tried to read the expression on her face, to make sense of her scent, her posture. It was unnerving, this inability to be sure of what anything meant, knowing now how little he had understood Sandoz, wondering if he had even been wrong to believe that Ha’an had cared for him. "I think," he said slowly in K’San, for Ruanja did not have what he needed and he believed Sofia had forgotten H’inglish, "I think that you will hate me when you know what I have done. Do you understand this word, ’hate’?"
"Apologies." She joined him on the ground, sitting’cross-legged on the low grassy herbage that covered the clearing. "Someone has forgotten your language. Someone knew only a little." She could see how tired he was and the long, handsome face seemed thin to her, its elegant bones more prominent than she remembered. "Sipaj, Supaari, such a long journey you have made," she began, the Ruanja formula as natural to her now as if she had lived with it all her life. "Surely, you are hungry. Will you—"
He stopped her with a single stubby claw pressed gently against her lips. "Please," he said in a tone that Anne Edwards had interpreted as wry. "Please, don’t offer." He threw his head up and away from her. "How can I eat?" he asked the sky in K’San. "How can I eat!"
From out of the crowd surrounding Supaari’s VaKashani escort, Djalao came forward, having heard his cry. She was carrying the sturdy basket she had packed with provisions for him and his child and dumped it abruptly on the ground. "Eat as you always have," she said quietly, but with a hardness that Sofia had never before heard in a Runao’s voice.
Some kind of unspoken understanding passed between Djalao and Supaari then, but it was beyond Sofia’s ability to read from their body language. The children—scampering and chasing one another, excited by the visitors and the break in routine—became louder and more unruly by the minute, and before Sofia could call out a warning, Kanchay’s daughter Puska took advantage of her father’s absorption in adult talk to leap onto his back, instantly pushing off it with an arching joy-jump that tipped Supaari’s basket over. Unruffled, Kanchay separated himself from the adults’ conversation, repacking the basket’s contents quickly before the children could catch the scent, and then tore off, bent over and arms flung wide, gently barreling into the little mob of youngsters, sweeping them into a delighted, squirming heap.
Smiling, Sofia looked around for Isaac, concerned that he had wandered off while everyone was preoccupied. But there he was: lying on his back, watching winged seeds spiral down toward his face from the w’ralia above him. Sofia sighed and returned her gaze to Supaari, sitting dazed on the ground.
"Sipaj, Fia. Everything has changed," he said. He glanced up at Djalao VaKashan, and his ears flattened. "Someone didn’t understand!" he cried. "Someone knew but didn’t understand. Everything has changed."
"Sipaj, Supaari," Djalao said, standing above him. "Eat. Everything remains as it was."
Not what—who is in the basket? Sofia thought, realizing now that Kanchay had repacked it quickly to protect the children from an early understanding. Chilled, staring at Supaari, she thought, He eats Runa. He is djanada.
It was a long time before any of them could speak. "Sipaj, Supaari, we are what we are," Sofia said at last with the simple Runa logic that was, for the time being, all she could muster. Standing, she grasped the Jana’ata’s arm in a token effort to lift him to his feet. He looked up at her, distracted. "Come and eat. Life goes on," she said, tugging on his arm a little. "We-and-you-also will think of problems later."
SUPAARI GOT UP AND TRIED TO CARRY THE BASKET AWAY FROM THE clearing so he could eat downwind and beyond the lines of Runa sight. He must always have known what he was doing at some level; even before, it had seemed unconscionable to eat meat in the presence of Runa. Snarling softly, he struggled with the basket—the handles of which were, after all, suitable only for a Runao to carry—and felt even worse when Kanchay climbed out of the tangle of children to help him.
The girl Kinsa, neither adult nor child herself, had sat murmuring to Ha’anala all this time, not quite sure where she belonged. Seeing Supaari move off, she decided to follow along, carrying the baby on her back. Sofia, walking beside her, reached out and put a finger under the infant’s tiny curved claws. "Supaari!" she cried. "Yours? But how? Someone thought—"
"It is a long song," he said, as Sofia took Ha’anala in her arms and Kanchay calmly unpacked a portion of meat. "When someone arrived in Kashan after the riot—" He paused, looking again at her terrible scarred face. "You understand this word, ’riot’?" Sofia looked up from the baby cradled in her lap and lifted her chin in affirmation. He went on, "The VaKashani were in a great confusion. So many were gone and among them, most of the Elders. There was no one to tell it clearly and there was everywhere fierno, even days after the culling. Your ’lander’ was still there, but the VaKashani said that all the foreigners were gone. The carcasses were eaten, they said."
She had been thinking what a joy it was to have an infant meet her eye, but hearing this…. Of course, she thought. Meat is meat. But even after what happened to Anne and D.W., it had never occurred to her that the others had been—. Oh, Jimmy! she thought, throat closing spasmodically.
Mouth dry, Supaari put his meal aside. "Later, when it was nearly dark, Askama came forward. She was only a child, but she knew you foreigners well, so someone listened to her words. She used H’inglish because Ruanja is confusing for this. She said: Meelo is not dead—" He stopped when Sofia changed color abruptly. He could see the pulse racing at her throat, understood now the full tragedy of what he had to tell her. "You didn’t know?"
"Where is Meelo now?" she asked. "My God. My God, if he’s alive it changes everything—"
"He is gone!" Supaari cried. "Someone is so sorry! Do you understand? Someone would have looked for you, but the VaKashani said you were all gone and ’gone’ can mean two things! Askama said only Meelo is not dead, that he was with the Jana’ata patrol. She said nothing of the foreigner Marc or of you—"