“People love you and sell you too.” Awa hissed. Mother and Kenu had let Father sell her, so Kenu could build towers to the stars. “Love isn’t enough.”
Bal looked stricken. She hadn’t told Awa who’d sold her to the enclave. Awa leaned close, hoping for this secret. Bal only said, “That’s true, I guess.”
“You must take better measure of yourselves.” Yari, carrying lesson scrolls and nut bread, dropped down beside them from a jagged overhang. “You two know how to listen and, without losing yourselves, hold anyone or anything in your heart. This is grace.” Yari wrapped long arms around Awa and Bal. Cloud-silk robes smelled of sugarbush and desert rose. “Grace is how you fashion something from nothing, Bal, and why you can traverse Smokeland’s border-void, Awa.”
“I thought it was spiders and bees, guiding us.” Bal giggled.
“Laughter is good. So is sweat.” Yari set down the nut bread and pulled out a double-headed drum decorated with Aido cloth and sweetgrass. Squeezing brown and gray leather cords that connected the black goatskin heads, vie modulated tones and made the drum talk. Ancestor words shook Awa’s bones.
“Dance, read, and think on the measure of your spirit.” Yari could drum a child into this world or reason out of a person’s mind. “Move!”
Awa tripped over her feet trying to catch the beats. Even Bal groaned at tricky polyrhythms.
“Make your own music,” Yari commanded. Bal sang several harmonies with herself and worked her feet like a stampede. She pulled Awa into a furious dance. “Fill yourself with now,” Yari sang, “tomorrow may not come.”
Awa kissed her teeth. “If the world ends, we won’t be here to be sad.”
“Are you sure? Basawili—not the end, more breath to come.” Yari took off into the laurel trees. Songbirds flew from the berry bushes, grumbling. Yari was fast and relentless. Awa and Bal resigned themselves to being out of breath all day.
Good Empire citizens believed life in an enclave was dull and brutal: wandering, camping in drafty tents, eating grass and worms, chanting. People told many lies on the Elders. Where were the raggedy savages, liars, thieves, and perverts living like it was yesterday? Garden Sprites never had to walk on coals. Father had gotten those ugly purple scars on his feet somewhere else.
Father also claimed they bashed his head with jumba jabba. But Awa loved the discipline and adventure, the poetry and history, the animal lore and number play. Yari taught her ancestor tongues—Zamanzi, Anawanama, Lahesh—and signs and ciphers to map the everyday or hold tangled Smokeland memories. Awa practiced writing and drawing three times a day while Bal sang and sword danced.
Awa stood once in a herd of wild horses, memorizing hoofbeats before they vanished to who knows where. She drew a history of bees, tracked fish flight, and calculated the distance to the moon. Wherever the Elders made home, by the sea, in the desert, or on a mountaintop, Awa and Bal memorized the sky. Awa’s torment over her family faded to an occasional ache, and Bal always hugged these sorrows away.
Best of all was Smokeland. Awa’s trips beyond the border-void were long and luxurious. She mapped and catalogued many wonders. On one trip, Awa passed through a border realm of exploding jellyfish, lightning bolts, and deadening void-smoke. She barely held onto herself but came upon a village in the treetops: a weave of houses, balconies, bridges, and temples. Lovers with spiderweb hair and cloud-silk robes swayed in the branches. Their pleasure rippled through the leaves and through her body too. New aches surprised her.
In another region, Awa discovered underwater river forests undulating to the melodies of golden behemoths who sported white speckled fins. She swam beside creatures twice the size of elephants against the currents. She wove her song into behemoth sounds that she could feel but not hear as they swam among seaweed bushes and feathery trees. Iridescent eyes peered at her from murky caves, and tentacles reached out to greet or eat her.
The behemoths nudged the curious tentacles aside with a flap of tail flukes and a roar of bubbles. She laid her cheeks against cold skin, grateful for their caution. Exuberant behemoths flew with her out of the water and plunged deep again. In a third region, a city of boats—floating towers with sails or spinning waterwheels—washed in on a blue-green tide and out again leaving iron horses and singing books on a rocky shore. Distant cook fires on the waves twinkled like stars. The metal beasts frolicked to the music the books made. Enchanted, Awa danced with them until they disappeared into caves.
Awa returned to the everyday exhausted and delighted after this long trip. While she’d been in Smokeland, weeks had passed and the Elders traveled beyond the maps to a wild side of the Mama Zamba mountains. They camped far from any barbarian or Empire city at a rocky oasis in the sweet desert. As long as the rains came and the desert bloomed, the enclave enjoyed peace and posted few guards. When the dry season unleashed deadly storms, foolish men became desperate. They’d attack anyone anywhere, even Green Elders who knew the most powerful weapon-spells in the Empire. Today was peace.
Yari cornered Awa and Bal at the cook fires. Vie smelled of cinnamon, jasmine, and sweetgrass. “Tell me, what do you say to people in Smokeland?”
“Nothing.” Awa cringed, embarrassed. “My tongue knots up.”
Yari feigned shock, rattling moth cocoon anklets. “Knotted tongue. You?”
“Yes. Me.” Other smoke-walkers, their starlight hair glinting and volcano hearts pumping fiery blood, were too beautiful for words. “Nothing comes.”
Yari turned serious as a knife thrust. “Avoid anyone whose heart is an ember.”
Awa grumbled. “You told me before. A hundred hundred times.”
“You might lose yourself in their eyes. Spirit slaves are Hezram’s weapon.”
“Not just Hezram,” Bal interjected.
Yari bristled. Too angry to mask it. “Hezram is the worst.”
“I’ve only seen a few,” Awa said. “They were too sluggish to catch me.”
“Don’t count on the speed of thought.” Yari danced around Awa, jabbing her with drumsticks. “Spirit slaves will suck your dreams and leave you hollow.”
“I’ve never seen that happen.” Awa dodged the sticks. “People make up terrifying lies about smoke-walking because they’re afraid to venture beyond the everyday.”
“True”—Yari halted—“but always play caution and risk together. Promise me.”
Awa groaned. “Of course.” She held up her charm bracelet. “I always carry bee stingers from a Smokeland hive.”
“Good. Rehearse what to say to other smoke-walkers beforehand.”
Awa had yet to meet Mother. Would she dare Smokeland journeys without Awa? Just in case, Awa decided to rehearse a speech for her. “I will.”
Bal balanced on an arm, swirling her legs and a sword in figure eights, so elegant and deadly that Awa wanted to … what? “I’m tired of just guarding your breath body here and now,” Bal declared. “Just waiting, waiting, waiting…”
“Practice patience,” Yari said. “Shadow warriors can’t let stillness be an enemy.”
Bal rolled her eyes. “Who’d poison Awa’s breath body in an Elder enclave and then live to steal her spirit body in Smokeland?”