Quibble, 72. Qeht

Quibble and Lurah see an Egg explode in the night sky.

72. Qeht @Lurah

Numberless, I have told you almost all I know of Quibble’s sojourn with the Aht, yet one thing remains. Even now, as I tell you of it, I do not understand what I saw that night. I can only say what I saw. Perhaps you know what it means.

Quibble remained troubled by Sen-aht-nah-lapi’s bloody demise. So I led her into the canyon and up a granite stair just within its mouth to a promontory overlooking the Sen-an-dah. The jah Nefri had led me there some years ago. It’s the right place to take her, I thought. At first, Quibble huffed as we climbed the steep stair, but then her spirits rose and she began to pepper me with questions in the tongue of the Djer.

“Emissaries!” she exclaimed, recalling Wahn-aht-nah-asreh’s decision to contact the Djer. “Obviously, I’m one of them. What about you, sah?”

I did not answer. I was keen on no such task. The nah was ignorant of much that would be asked of her now. If I belonged somewhere, it was at her side, advising her on the law. Sehlim-aht-ri-qahf was wise but growing old and feebler every year. Moreover, the sah-uhn-say who flocked to Lapi’s shield and now roamed the Sen-an-dah would be a threat for some time. Qahf did not know them, but I did.

Also, regardless of Lapi’s disgrace, the Sen were Aht. Im must be given them; the nah must use tact. I thought she would do well to ask Sen-sah-aht-ri-yahn to oversee the Sen’s restitution to the Wahn. Devoted to im, he would be fair. Yet the nah must not ask too much – for instance, ask the Sen to name Yahn their ri. If Yahn himself aspired to be Sen-ri, the nah must not help him or even seem to help him to it. As nahli-qah, I learned from Nufra-qahlif-nah-qehl that being nah came with dangers, and some concerned not substance but appearances. Ignoring appearances, a nah could act rightly yet still turn people against her.

Oblivious to these ruminations, Quibble pressed me: “You’d see Rasalah again! Don’t you want to see your sister?”

Still I said nothing. What I wanted of family had been a matter long absent from my thoughts. It had been a relief to learn my sister-qeht, though a Djer-nah, was a good person who took no part in abducting and murdering children. I wanted to believe this knowledge sufficed. It did not, though, and that nagged me. Quibble’s assurances of her goodness and even her very existence, alive, seemed to stand in judgment of what I did and became after her disappearance – of my failure at Say-qahlif, of my journey to Ayn-qesh and the spilling of my qah by my own hand, of my criminality as a sah-uhn-say who plundered and killed, of my selfish choice to lay my sword at the feet of a nah who would be a tyrant. My whole life looked like a gross, ugly mistake.

“Then will you go to look for your children?” Quibble said as we reached the top of the stair.

Suddenly angry, I rounded on her.

“What do you know of my children, Qeht? Have you seen them? Do you know who they are? Unless you can look me in the eyes right now and tell me aught of them, do not speak of them!”

Quibble was confusion, pain, shame, and fear, all at once.

I realized my hand rested on my sword hilt. I had threatened her. I stepped back and let go of the hilt.

“I am sorry,” I said. “I do not know what took me.”

“We’re walking in im-li-suhl,” Quibble said.

“I know. That is what bothers me! It is clear you are my friend, Qeht, but I do not know how I know it.”

“Do you need to know how?”

“Can you tell me?”

“No, of course not. I mean, what need is there?”

That left me mute a third time, and now Quibble grew exasperated. “Won’t you answer one question I put to you?” she said, drawing her cloak close against the cold.

“One!”

Quibble laughed and rolled her eyes. Even in the dark, their different colors were visible. Now they came alive, made her seem more alive, as if merely a moment ago she was the weird being in one of her stories, the iso, and now she was human.

“All right, Lurah. One. Are you afraid of the future?”

“That is the strangest thing you could ask me, Qeht. Often I wonder why you are not afraid of it. Have you learned nothing from the past?”

“I’ve learned I can’t change the past. There’s only changing myself. Whatever the future holds, whatever comes next, you can’t hide from it. You can only change yourself and hope the person you’ve become is wise enough to weather it.”

Like water, I thought.

“My adroitness Definition was afraid of the future, like you,” Quibble continued. “That’s why I asked. I didn’t understand it when I was with her, and I still don’t. I want to understand it.”

Here, then, was Quibble as I first saw her.

In want.

Now we stood at the very ledge at which Nefri and Nuah once stood as a young couple learning to be like water with each other. Far-nah-luhn was rising, an eye open almost full. Star by star, the galaxy’s white arc lit up as night deepened. I gazed up and shrank away to a speck of spirit. Thinking of the boy who fell in love with night, I said, “Qeht, if the stars are not Uhn-far, what are they?”

“Orbs of fire, like the sun,” she told me. “Some are small, some large. You would not believe how large! Some are bright and some dim. There are stars so small and dim we can’t see them, though they’re a great deal closer than the ones we do see. And some stars are really more than one star. Binary systems. Two stars orbiting each other.”

“Do they have names in Djer?”

Quibble chuckled. “Yes, and the Djer have names in them.”

Once again baffled by the Qeht’s words, I sought the depth of night for anything unusual – perhaps another planet – and I picked out a bright star quite close to Far-nah-luhn. “What is that one called?” I asked, pointing.

Quibble looked where I was pointing, closed her eyes. A few seconds of silence passed. She opened her eyes and said, “That’s not a star. It’s an Egg.”