Glad to be nothing more than one in a hungry crowd, Tokela fell in. When his turn came, he tendered a grateful smile for Darhinu’s generosity. She always insisted he was just skin over bones, remained intent upon feeding him up. Filling his skin with fruit water, Tokela skirted the crowd and found himself making his way up Overlook.
For the first in a long while, he didn’t head for the driftwood railing—not even a longing glance where River lapped at the watercraft and Her sand-and-stone shore. Instead Tokela settled his back against the sienna stone wall and heeded his meal.
The stew was rich with fat and redolent of spices, thick with last summering’s dried šinc’teh and this summering’s early greens. The bloodfin fell from the bones—tender, and hot. Not minding singed fingers, he just dug in, sucking air to cool it until he’d finished every bite and scraped the bowl with his flatbread. Giving a satisfied sigh, he leaned back against the stone and closed his eyes.
So quiet, above. River pushed gently at the edges of his notice; Tokela set his teeth and instead focused on the echoes of gathering wafting upward from the Bowl; the happiness of everyone sated from work, willing to wait for play. Part of him wanted to return, join in. Sit with his family, belong…
Everything had changed.
N’da, not everything. He had changed.
The t’rešalt, the Chepiś, had changed him. He had gone into the forbidden places, all tossing mane and snort of defiance. Had taken a path he shouldn’t have done, hoping… denying… daring the blood that without doubt surged his veins.
You are a’Naišwyrh!
He was his mother’s son. None could take that from him. But if his sire was of those scorned, feared…
Shunned. Not only outlier, but not of People.
Tokela had walked his own changing journey when he’d gone through the t’rešalt. Been Broken with benefit of blood, smoke blessing, and guide. Only not in a way he’d ever expected.
And now, in the aftermath of Breaking…
River spoke to him. Made talk. To him.
Claimed him.
He is mine. You are mine. My own.
Tokela sat there for a long time, fingers idly tracing the well-swept stones. A loud Yip! from the great Bowl made him jump and snatch his hand sideways—instinctively, to brush away the sketches—then halted. This time, a curious smile touched his lip at what his fingers had conjured from dust and damp. Eyeing the stair once again, Tokela relented. No graphite, no traces left in the wake of a forbidden talent. Instead he licked his fingers and deliberately sketched more figures upon the pavings—Ilhukaia rocking and bobbing gently in a swell with trade weavings flying; Aylaniś’s laugh upon the banks, Palatan and Našobok’s embrace in the Riverlet—then ran a careful touch along the first sketch:
Ilhukaia’s chieftain, eyes upon Sun and Wind in his hair.
Tokela threaded the pouch over his head and reached in, took out one of the objects he’d gathered from his basket in the ahlóssa den. The Seashell fitted in his palms as if formed there, and when he raised it to his ear, it whispered his name.
Našobok had given the shell to him, nine summerings previous. More, Našobok had believed when Tokela had told him:
That’s Sea’s voice you hear, cousin. More powerful than River, even.
Does She whisper your name, too?
Sometimes… sometimes, I think She does.
I want to go there. I want to hear for myself.
Then one Sun, little Riverwalker, when you’re old enough, I’ll take you.
At the time, he hadn’t understood what it truly meant. ‘Riverwalker’ hadn’t been the insult others would make, but a fond, close-spun camaraderie offered to placate a lonely ahlóssa. Merely a kind exaggeration or evasion, not unlike the ones Tokela used to distract Madoc.
Had Našobok found, even as Tokela was finding, how kindnesses could turn, how fair intentions could noose and love’s intensity smother?
Why else would he bend over the shell?—whisper I’m here, now. I am.
Why should he think the shell would agree?—breathing soft-faint into his ear.
Because I want this. Not to be Other. I want my people, my place… Here. I want to belong here, be in my body if only for thisSun, this heartbeat, if…
Perhaps he can show me how.
He hears you, he said as much, Tokela informed the shell. Then slowly, inexorably, his eyes slid upwards, cast over River. He’s yours, after all, and if he hears you then, perhaps…
Perhaps this was not…not… of Them. Of Other. Perhaps this was what it meant to be wyrhling?
And from behind his eyes She rose, pounding the blood at his temples and neck, surging in the back of his throat with a tang of brack and copper silt. He shuddered, sucked in a gasp, flinched away.
Dropped the shell.
His booted toes thankfully broke the fall; a heartbeat later he had snatched it up, head pounding, and hunched over it.
Stayed there, for long breaths, as Wind riffled Tokela’s hair to sting his hot, hennaed cheeks. His heart pounded, the surge of blood overtaking River’s insistent voice.
Only the drums, and the sound of his pulse.
He was his mother’s son. He would admit nothing else. He was normal.
Normal.
And he would make this decision before it made him.
IT WASN’T the way. There would be no one to Smoke and Mark him, none to see him safe upon his oških journey… but hadn’t he already made it? Already wandered into the wild and come back in different form… changed.
N’da, not changed, not like that. Broken, they called it in duskLands, when the change came to ahlóssa. In the end, weren’t all such journeys made alone? If he was to belong, then he would ensure that belonging in the only way he knew.
The Moons peeped through the new leaves of the weeping tree wykupeh, ghosting shadows down where Tokela scooped out a small pit in the sand and gravel to kindle Fire’s breath from berrywood and spicetree. Beside that he smoothed his
