“CONFIRMED, CODE 05032011. PROCEED.”
Some moments you put into a little file in your mind because you know they’re important, and what Isae Benesit says to signal the attack on Voa is one of those. She says it clearly, every consonant crisp, and she doesn’t hesitate. When she’s done she pushes back from the desk where she was speaking to General Then, stands up, and walks away, brushing off Ast’s outstretched hand.
It doesn’t take long for the attack to start. For the anticurrent blast Pitha loaned us to fly toward Thuvhe on a special ship designed for just this purpose. The crew of the ship is Pithar, but it’s General Then, the commander of Thuvhe’s armed forces, who actually presses the button, per Thuvhesit law.
I imagine the hatch doors opening at his touch, and the weapon—long and narrow, with squared edges—falling, falling, falling. There’s poetry in it, in that poetry can be raw, and cruel, and strange, like this.
Isae, Ast, and I watch it from her quarters. The Assembly ship is facing the sun, then, so the walls are opaque, and they show an image of Shissa in the swirling snow. The little flakes get stuck to the sights that captured the footage, every now and then, so the image is blurry most of the time, white blobs right up against the dark night sky. Between them, though, I see the buildings hanging from the clouds like drops of rain suspended in time. Shissa isn’t home, but it’s where I went to school, where I found a life away from my mom and her constant prophecies, so I still love it there.
Shissa is what I’m looking at when the news footage comes up on the screens, and I see only a flash of the sojourn ship’s destruction before closing my eyes against it. Isae stifles a sharp sound.
“What is it?” Ast says. No robotic guide beetle can help him with something on a screen, after all.
“There were people around it, did you see?” Isae says. “Why were there people around it?”
I turn up the volume on the news feed just in time to hear: “Initial reports suggest there were a few hundred Shotet around the craft, attempting to evacuate the city—”
I turn the screen off.
“A few . . .” Isae gasps. “A few hundred—”
Ast shakes his head. “Stop that, Isae. Casualties were still minimal.”
“Minimal,” I say, and it’s all I can manage. General Then’s estimates said casualties would be around three dozen. Not hundreds.
“Yeah,” Ast says, eyeballing me. “Minimal. Compared to what could have been. That’s why you suggested the sojourn ship, remember?”
There’s a flow of words in my mind—hundreds, men, women, children, old, young, middle-aged, kind, cruel, desperate, people people people—but I stop it, like two hands clapping around an insect to kill it. I am better at this than I should be, after too many tragedies poisoned my memories. It’s how I survive.
I don’t answer Ast. I am tired of the way he prods at me. I pull back on my gift as hard as I can, hoping that if Isae feels less comfortable, she’ll call him off.
She’s facing the swirls of snow, arms folded. The Shissa buildings in the footage light up green, purple, pink. They remind me of the baubles they sold at the Hessa market when the planting started, for people to hang in their windows for luck.
Isae’s shoulders shake. Shudder, really. She slaps a hand against the glass to steady herself.
Ast and I both stand, eager to comfort even though I’m sure he doesn’t know how any more than I do.
Isae is hunched, turning so I can see the side of her face.
She’s laughing.
“All those . . . people . . .” She gasps, wrapping her free arm around her stomach. “Bowled right over!”
Ast’s face goes slack with horror, but I know what this is.
“Isae,” I say. “Take a deep breath.”
“All those . . .” Isae bends at the knees. Her hand squeaks against the glass as it slides down.
I walk to the bathroom and run cold water over a washcloth to soak it all the way through. I carry it back to her, dripping all over the floor. She is crouched next to the window, laughing, sobbing.
I put the wet cloth on the back of her neck, and run a hand over her back. Ast finally seems to catch on—a bit late, I think, but he seems dense that way—and he urges Pazha forward with a whistle, so its clicking guides him to us. He crouches near us, silent but present. It’s the closest he and I have ever been to each other. Sharing air.
“All those people,” she whimpers.
I watch Ast’s reaction as I unfurl my currentgift like a banner and drape it over all three of us. For once, he doesn’t object.
“I miss her,” she whispers later, as we sit together by the window and watch the currentstream.
I take her hand, and press it to my cheek.
I show her a memory of Ori asleep at our kitchen table, slumped over a detailed sketch of an iceflower. There was ink smeared on her cheek. My father sipped his tea, smiling fondly down at her, and my mother clicked her tongue, though her eyes still smiled.
My father bent to ease his arms around her, and carried Ori to the living room. I watched her long legs bounce up and down with his footsteps.
“Well,” my mother said to me. “We do call it ‘Ori’s room,’ after all.”
Isae and I drift gently out of the memory, her hand still pressed between my cheek and my palm, and she smiles at me.
I’m holding her together, I think.
And, What happens when I can’t anymore?