Sylah, get up.Hassa was standing over her.
“When did you get up there?” The warmth of the joba seed enveloped her, and as exhaustion settled within her bones she lay backward, her plaits fanning out.
They were braided with trinkets, fragments of a family she no longer had and that carried with them the frayed threads of memories and so were cherished above all else. Some she wove lovingly in her hair each mooncycle. Others, a leaf, a melon rind, had simply appeared uninvited and masqueraded as valued tokens.
Two sheer pebbles of glass, dangling from her fringe. The mottled remains of a woven scarf that had been absently stroked to tatters. Strands of a bow string and a quill knotted side by side at the end of two braids. The shell of a sand snail behind her ear. When she tilted her head, her hair clacked like aching bones knocking together.
The skeleton of all the pieces of her.
No lice, though. Sylah was proud of that.
The braids were shorter, the hair coarser, angrier, where they frizzed around the scar that ran ear to ear across the back of her neck. A puckered smile from the officers who had cut her.
That had cut them all down in the end.
She rubbed the keloid skin absently. Six years, and still the scar refused to fade.
Hassa kicked Sylah in the shin.
“Ow, go away. Can’t you see I’m sleeping?”
Sylah, you can’t sleep here.
“Why not?”
Because you’re in the middle of the street.
Sylah turned her head left and right, and saw, through the molasses of her daze, that she was indeed in the middle of the street. The crowds from the ripping had already begun to disperse, some stepping over Sylah without a qualm.
Sylah, get up.Hassa offered her wrist, and Sylah took it reluctantly.
As much as she wanted to sleep, the officers were still on patrol, and despite her earlier outburst, Sylah didn’t want to be their next victim. Though sleeping on the streets wasn’t an offense, she was sure the officers wouldn’t simply step over her. And their boots were heavy.
Come on, let’s get you home.
Hassa began to lead the way through the Dredge toward the Duster Quarter, Sylah resting her elbow on Hassa’s shoulder.
Are you going to go to the Descent later?Hassa asked.
Sylah growled low in her throat. For a moment she had forgotten it was the Day of Descent. But now she looked around and spotted the signs of the holiday sprouting like weeds in the streets. Limp kente cloth flags and dirty rope streamers were strung from roof to roof. The breeze carried the smell of candied plantains, boiled in sugar that had been hoarded just for the occasion.
But no matter how hard the bakers tried, the aroma couldn’t mask the Dredge’s pungent smell of unwashed bodies and filth. Even if you were lucky and the wind blew the other way, you’d get the acrid smell of raw latex from the rubber plantation fields outside the city’s walls. Depended if you preferred spoiled cheese or shit, really. Sylah barely noticed either scent anymore.
“The Descent? Ha! No. I’m not going to watch four people walk down some stairs and call it a festival.”
It’s not just four people walking down some stairs, it’s the changing of the government. The disciples taking their holy seats as wardens.Hassa’s eyebrows pulled her shaven scalp toward her ears as she frowned.
“Blah blah blah.”
It only happens every ten years. I don’t remember the last Descent Day.
“ ’Course you don’t, you were only seven.”
You were only ten, Hassa shot back, mischief alight in her dark eyes.
“Exactly, so I don’t need to go again. I remember it all.” In fact, she’d tried to forget it many times.
Sylah ran her tongue over her teeth. “Hassa, I’ve run out of joba seeds.”