“You think this is me? You dumb, stupid cat. You think I just go to some stream of rage and drink till I fill myself? Is anger who keep finding me. Is anger who won’t let me go.”
“Why should it? Grief come to you and you banish it.”
“Listen to this man telling a woman how to bear grief.”
“Bear? You don’t have no grief to bear. You never show it. All you do is hurt your children and yourself, because you don’t want it.”
“I don’t want it. What you want from me, tears? You want a show, since showing is all you do? Fine, let me find a tree and scream at it.”
“You want someone to eat your blame.”
“I don’t want nothing you can give me.”
“You right. I can’t give you back your son. But maybe you gone blind these two moons, Sogolon, but you have six children still living. And you treat them like it’s them why he’s dead.”
“Don’t tell me how to treat my children.”
“You have six still living.”
“No, I have three.”
And that do it. He give me a look I don’t see since he bury the bones of his children, where his eyes brim with tears so full that he look away to blink it out. He breathe deep. He pause. He rub one paw with the other, for all of this make him half shift.
“You lose one. I lose five and one.”
“Fuck the gods, this is no contest.”
When he turn back to me those eyes look colder than I ever see them.
“The Aesi had no cause to come after me, and certainly no cause to come after your children.”
I gasp. It don’t feel like gasp, but like my own wind (not wind) knock me down.
“I never ask you why. Why even with children you go to death fights at night. Every night I have to tell myself this may be the night you don’t come back. And I still never forbid it. I never ask where you come from, or why you was up that mountain, or whatever secret come down that mountain with you. Or who you really trying to kill every night you leave here with your stick. Because whatever you go out to discover, you never once bring back home. Now you in here looking for somebody to eat your blame. I don’t know no truth, Sogolon. I don’t know no facts. I have nothing to tell a judge if he ask me. But I do know that were it not for you, my boy would be coming through that door right now. Were it not for you, my boy would be healthy and hungry. You think you angry? You think you know anything about anger? Nearly every night for the past two moons I swear to every god I going to kill you, because I know this is your doing. But then I think of the children you don’t think of anymore. I think even as she is they need their mother. Even if three of them she don’t consider hers. So you know what you can do, Sogolon? You can take your fucking blame and eat it yourself.”
He didn’t need wind.
I hear tiny footsteps—some of the children watching, or maybe all. I try to talk but it come out as a wail.
“I want to die,” I say. “I rather die than live so. I want to die, Keme. I want to die. I want to die. I want to die. I want to die. I want to die. I want to die. I want—”
He stoop down and grab me, crushing my words into his chest. I still want to punch that chest and rip the hair out. But my hand is weak and it can’t do nothing. That night, he come to my bed, the first time in a half moon. My back is to him, but everything he need from me he can get without me facing him. I pull up my robe but he stay my hand and stop me. Instead he walk his fingers in my hair and smooth down the back of my neck.
“I’ve been keeping things from you. Things you might not want to know,” Keme say.
“If you think—”
“I don’t think. I don’t presume to know you. I never presumed to know you.”
Sometimes I think he don’t know that his words can have the edge of a knife. But I can’t see his face, so I don’t know if he was cutting for real. For too long now I keep the windows closed, because dark is never just black. Black will shift on you and turn into legs and arms and sword jumping in to kill you. But this night I open every window, and the night air cool the room. I was under furs when he climb into the bed with me.
“The court went mad,” he say.
* * *
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