Thann kept an eye on Isaho while xe listened to xe’s bondmates chattering on about the day, playing dream-games about Linojin. Xe could see no way of crossing the whole continent to get there, not with Impix and Pixa phelas roaming about, hunting each other and killing anything that moved. But dreams were all they had right now and would have any time ahead as far as xe could see-xe and Bazekiyl and Mandall and Isaho and the nameless egg in xe’s pouch.
And it was the same for all the Impix who lived out the wrecks of their lives in this wreck of a city. Whole families and broken families, traders twisting a dangerous living as they scurried through the shadows of war, Brothers of God who were supposed to be untouchable, but who died, too, even when they came to bless, as did the fem Sisters in Godbond who tried to mediate between the clans and the Anyas of Mercy who cared for the orphans and tended the sick and dying. Xe looked at the blue ribbon tied in Bazekiyl’s fine black hair and sighed. Small pleasures. Maybe they’re enough.
Isaho had finished all the fruit and the glass of canned milk from Mandall’s trove and had just a few bites of kaslik left; she was pushing them around with her fork, her eyes so heavy with sleep it was obvious she didn’t know what she was doing.
Thann slipped from xe’s chair, moved around the table. Xe tapped Isaho’s arm, signed, +That’s good enough, Shashi. Time for bed.+
Isaho’s mouth moved and Thann thought for a moment she was going to protest, then she leaned heavily into the anya, yawned and murmured, “Carry me?”
+A big femlit like you+ Xe finished with the flutter of the fingers that was anya laughter. Then xe slid xe’s arms under Isaho’s legs and lifted her from the chair. It wouldn’t be long before xe’s baby was indeed too big for xe to carry and the thought pierced xe to the heart.
Isaho’s pallet was in the pantry which had been a walk-in refrigerator before Mandall had taken the door off. It was the safest place in the apartment.
They lived on the second floor of a five-floor building that once had been a fancy hotel, most of which was rubble now; their rooms were in the back of the hotel’s restaurant-one of the private dining rooms, a piece of the kitchen, a bathroom whose toilet still flushed when Mandall poured the dirty dishwasher or bathwater into the tank, the old refrigerator and the laundry room which Mandall, Bazekiyl, and Thann used as their bedroom.
There was a candle burning by the sink in the kitchen and another in the pantry. Thann settled Isaho on the straw pallet, fetched a basin with a bit of water, washed her face and hands. +Now+ she signed. +Get yourself undressed while I fetch your toothbrush.+
“Ahhh, Thannny, I’m s000 sleepy. I can brush in the morning.”
Thann gave a short sharp whistle, then signed, +And all night little bugs will be digging at your teeth and when you’re trying to smile at a mallit or an anyalit, all you’ll have left are gums.+
“Mallits, hunh.”
Thann tapped her cheek, grinned at her, and went out.
As xe got a glass of water and the toothbrush, xe could hear Bazekiyl and Mandall still talking. There was that in the sound of their voices that made body parts soften and swell. Xe glanced through the door.
Bazekiyl took the blue ribbon from her hair and passed it through her fingers… her head close to Mandall’s, her cheeks flushed, a little smile on her face… winding the ribbon through and through her fingers. Thann’s thinta heated with the feel of xe’s fembond loving the silky slide against her skin…
Xe hurried back to Isaho, impatient suddenly with the child’s demands on xe.
While Isaho brushed her teeth, xe lit the nightlight, a slow burning candle in a glass bowl, and set it near the door. Xe took the brush, so Isaho could rinse her mouth and spit the foamy water into a waste water bowl. Xe dropped the brush in the bowl and set them aside, pulled the blankets up and tucked them around the child, touched her lips with a reminding forefinger, then touched hands with her as they went through the nightprayers they’d signed together since Isaho was old enough to learn what the signs meant.
As xe bent over the drowsy child to give her the night kiss, the floor shook under xe and there was a deafening explosion, then a rattle as the walls of their place fell in.
“Baba!” Isaho pulled away from Thann and scrambled to her feet. “Mam!”
Thann caught her, tried to push her back down on the pallet, but Isaho broke free again and ran from the pantry.
By the time Thann reached her again, she was digging frantically at the pile of bricks and debris just inside the dining room door, grunting, snuffling, crying, calling
Mam and Baba over and over, calling her dead brother, making the dust and bricks fly like a little chal digging in a mound of rock and earth for the mayomayo hiding there.
Thann stopped, stared through the door at the child, at the poufs of dust still floating in the air. A brick fell from the outside wall, smashed one of the windowpanes that ten years of war hadn’t broken. Xe could see the sky, Phosis’ fattening crescent visible through the veils of dust and the glowing wander of the Silkflower Road where stars were so thick the eye couldn’t separate them. And the tail of the constellation called Mayomayo after the little beast that the first Isiging had chased into the Sky. A shadow glided past, a weh-weleh on the hunt, maybe even the one that prefaced Isaho’s song…
They’re dead. They’re under all that. They’re dead. Xe looked down. Isaho’s digging had uncovered a patch of blue.
Bazekiyl winding the ribbon through her fingers… round and round her long delicate fingers… Isaho mustn’t see this. She mustn’t…
Thann caught hold of xe’s daughter and pulled her away from her frantic digging. The child fought xe, but xe held her until she finally stopped struggling and started crying, her slight body shaking with the intensity of her sobs. Xe held the child tightly against xe-leaning against the wall because xe’s legs wouldn’t support xe-the inner wall, the one still standing-it shuddered against xe, almost like Isaho, as the pounding went on and on.
Isaho’s ragged breathing steadied as exhaustion settled like a blanket over her.
When she dropped into a child’s sudden sleep, Thann lifted her and carried her back to her pallet and laid her there while xe used the water in the spit cup to clean the dust and blood off her hands.
Xe tucked the blankets around her, then went back to the dining room to continue Isaho’s digging because there was some faint chance that one or the other of xe’s bondmates was still alive, protected by the table or some vagary of the falling walls.
Xe uncovered Bazekiyl’s hand, flattened and broken yet still lovely, pale gray-green, smooth as the bark of a silk tree, almost as soft as Isaho’s baby skin. Xe pulled the ribbon free, knelt weeping and rolling it into a tight cylinder. Because xe couldn’t bear to dig any more, not right then, xe took the ribbon to the old refrigerator, set it an one of the shelves, and stood looking down at her daughter. Xe was the last alive of xe’s clan and everyone xe knew had little room in their lives for anyone else. Xe didn’t know what to do.