The girl’s eyes widen. “But Mamakuru!” The Anchorite barely acknowledges the girl’s existence; Akanwa is still terrified of her—understandably so, Kelafelo would say.
She puts on a reassuring smile. “Mamakuru isn’t here, is she?” Kelafelo holds out her hand. “Come, before the rains decide to stop.”
Akanwa regards the hand like it might turn into a viper and lunge, but slowly, she reaches out and takes it, and then together they go outside and let the rain soak them to the skin.
There is no drastic change in the girl’s behavior, no sudden epiphany that makes her less timid, but in the rain the thick wall she hides behind cracks somewhat, and she even seems on the verge of smiling, though she doesn’t quite get there. Her hands wander to her wet veil like she wants to lift it off her hair, but she hesitates.
“You don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it,” Kelafelo says, and to prove her point she takes off her own patterned veil and lets her dreadlocks free. She laughs and tilts her head toward the rainy skies, checking herself when she realizes that this is the first time she’s laughed since she lost everything.
Akanwa lifts her turquoise veil off her head, letting her hair fall in luxuriant curls. Were it not for the metallic hornlike appendages curling out of her temples, which shimmer now with raindrops, Kelafelo might have thought her pretty. As it is, they are too much of a reminder of the girl’s otherness to simply ignore.
She almost changes her mind, however, when the girl finally lets herself smile as she spreads her hands to capture raindrops with her fingers. She sees something innocent in that smile, something pure, and so fragile Kelafelo knows she could crush it with a single harsh word, and it would never surface again.
In that moment, Kelafelo realizes something about herself: she will never love the girl, not like she did Urura. The part of her that could love—truly love—feels like a dead thing inside her chest, bloated and full of maggots, like her daughter’s corpse on the day she finally had the strength to trek back to her old village and bury her. She will never love the girl, that much she knows, but she can certainly like her.
They stay together in the rain until it dies down, and from that day onward, caring for Akanwa is no longer a chore.
She comes to discover that she is most comfortable with the branch of cipher prose dealing with Void craft. It intimidated her at first, but as she grapples with it, she comes to realize that the principles underpinning the craft are beautifully simple. Inevitably, this is where she decides to take her Axiom.
Despite the work she puts into the Axiom, however, the final result is never one she is satisfied with. For some reason she can’t quite achieve a desirable rate of conversion. Her Axioms either rapidly convert a vanishingly thin stream of essence into Void craft or convert a thick stream at a dawdling pace. Neither type would allow her to perform the effortless spell casting she has seen the Anchorite perform on many occasions. She loses count of how many times she writes the last cipher of a new Axiom on a parchment only to throw its pages in the fire upon a thorough analysis. The task becomes a drain on her soul.
She doesn’t allow herself to give up. She keeps wrestling with the problem, and only after many moons without a solution does she decide to approach the Anchorite for advice. She knows the old woman can’t help her with the Axiom’s specific architecture but wonders if there is something basic she’s missing and if maybe the Anchorite can help her identify the problem.
She later wishes that she’d never asked.
“I was wondering when you’d decide to come to me.” The Anchorite breathes out a cloud of smoke and shakes her head. She’s smoking her calabash pipe beneath the knotted witchwood tree, watching Akanwa chase chickens around the compound. Kelafelo has seated herself on a mat in front of her with a quill and parchment in hand, in case she needs to take notes. “Why did it take you so long?” the Anchorite says.
“Devising an Axiom should be a lonely journey,” Kelafelo says. “Isn’t that what you said to me?”
The old woman grunts in contempt. “Don’t go using my own words against me, young girl. I was beginning to grow impatient with you.”
“I wanted to make sure I’d exhausted every option before approaching you, Mamakuru.”
“And? Have you?”
Kelafelo looks down at the outline on the parchment. “I’ve tried everything I can think of, but I can’t find a good balance between the flow speed and volume of conversion. I always have to sacrifice one for the other. It’s almost as if . . .” Kelafelo tilts her head and taps her cheek with her quill.
“Yes?” the Anchorite prods her with obvious interest.
“I feel like there’s a missing piece somehow, but I can’t see it because I don’t have the necessary framework to see it. Does that make sense?”
The Anchorite prolongs Kelafelo’s suspense by dragging on her pipe, and when she exhales, a little smile lifts one side of her wrinkled face. “It makes perfect sense. You feel that way because there is something missing, and you do lack the necessary faculties to see it.”
“But . . . why?”
“I once told you about spiritual insights of agony and how they enrich our understanding of Red magic, did I not? Well, my dear girl, you have reached the threshold of your spiritual insights. To achieve a higher level of understanding, you must subject yourself to more agony. Only then will your eyes be opened.”
The first currents of discomfort roil in Kelafelo’s belly, making her old scar throb. She knows of mystics who disfigure themselves in their search for power, some who gouge out their eyes, carve scars all over their bodies, or give themselves wounds that never heal. Is this what she must now do to herself?
Not long ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated, but now the idea sends uneasy chills down her spine. “How far do I need to go?” she says, dreading the answer.
“A single brutal act of violence will do the job.” The Anchorite speaks with such blatant callousness the air seems to freeze around her. She lifts an eyebrow upon seeing Kelafelo’s startled look. “You thought I was going to ask you to mutilate yourself, didn’t you?” She smiles, shaking her head. “No, dear girl. You’ve already suffered enough physical agony. The scar on your belly is proof of that. What you need now is to stain your soul so deeply the secrets of the moon will crack open right before your eyes. That is why you need your humanity; there has to be a soul to stain, otherwise no amount of agony will help you.”
Kelafelo tries to remind herself that she came to this place for a reason, but right now that reason is hard to remember. “What sort of violence, Mamakuru?”
“The sort you would be incapable of perpetrating without help.” The Anchorite’s forehead creases with intent. “There is an elixir of Blood craft I will give you, born of the most powerful compulsion magic in existence. Before you drink it, you must think of the thing you wish to do but are incapable of doing because it is too heavy on your soul. Once you drink it, however, the elixir will take control of your body and compel you to do this thing anyway, and your mind will remain aware the entire time—this is important.”
Kelafelo refrains from shivering. “But what will it make me do?”