Walls of Wind and the Occasional Diamond Thief Boxed Set

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  She takes a deep breath, like it’s all she can do not to hit me despite him being there. “Your father will speak only Malemese, now,” she says. I can’t even look at her anymore, because her voice is so calm, is such a lie. “You must translate, tell me what he needs. Can you still do it?”

  Why won’t he speak Edoan? I want to ask, Why Malemese? What happened to him there? But I know she won’t tell me—maybe she doesn’t know herself—and I’d only anger her more. I nod without looking up.

  “You heard the doctor? You won’t speak Malemese?”

  I nod again. I want to scream: I get it! But even more, I just want to get away from my mother.

  ***

  My parents’ room, which is now my father’s sickroom, is beige like the rest of the house, but instead of the usual clay tile flooring it has a thick, soft rug, terra cotta, the color of dirt. It looks okay with the simple, bare beige walls and the white oak dressers. Owegbé has ‘impeccable taste’. But I wish I could take my father into his cluttered, colorful den. Maybe his gaze would focus again if he had something to look at. I get up from the chair beside his bed and turn to leave.

  “Vienada preem.” Come closer.

  He’s speaking Malemese. I’ve been called in often over the past weeks to translate. For the last few days he hasn’t spoken Edoan at all. I’m the only one who can understand him now. I’d be happy about that, about sharing something only with him, if he knew he was talking to me.“Vienada...” Come.

  What would have been impatience when he was well comes out now as only weariness. I go closer, stopping two feet from the side of the bed. I can’t look at his face, so I stare at his arm lying on top of the bedcovers, long and limp alongside his covered body. It’s dark against the white sheets, and so thin I can see the veins standing out under his skin.

  Slowly his forearm rises. The fingers move slightly, beckoning me even closer before his arm drops back onto the pale sheets. I creep forward until I’m nearly touching the bed.

  “Look at me,” he whispers in Malemese.

  I don’t want to raise my head. I’ll look into his eyes and he won’t recognize me. I should be used to it by now. But each time I hope it will be different. Maybe this time, I think as I lift my head, because he seems to be speaking directly to me. But then he calls me Owegbé or Etin and gives me nonsense instructions that I can barely understand to translate. Mostly, he just calls for water, or fumbles about in agitation until someone guesses his need and helps him.

  “I haven’t given you much reason to love me, Akhié.”

  I stare at him. I can feel myself grinning like an idiot but I don’t care. He knows me! He recognizes me, even if he is still speaking Malemese. He’s getting better!

  I mustn’t upset him by answering in Malemese.

  “No reason at all to love me,” he repeats sadly. He turns his head, glancing restlessly over the sheets that cover him to stare unseeing at the air in front of him.

  “I do!” I cry in Edoan.

  It’s no good; he hasn’t spoken or responded to Edoan for over a week.

  “I love you, Father!” It’s like he can’t even hear me in Edoan, like I’m not even answering him. What if he dies thinking I don’t love him because I didn’t answer? It might be too late already, the way his mind wanders. He’s staring into the empty air, no longer focused on me at all.

  “I do love you,” I whisper, this time in Malemese.

  He starts as though I’ve hit him, and pulls himself onto his elbow, leaning toward me eagerly. “Ahhh!” he cries, staring just above me.

  The look on his face... a second ago I wanted to hug him, and now I can’t help backing away.

  “Sariah! At last!”

  I look over my shoulder. There’s no one there.

  “All these years I’ve pitied you and hated you, because of it. At last you’ve come to claim it back!”

  I peer around the room, afraid to move. Who is he talking to?

  “Take it! Take it!” His hand moves in a jerking gesture toward the dresser. The agitated movement nearly makes him fall back against his pillows. He holds tight to the side of the bed.

  What if someone hears his raised voice? Only its weakness has prevented it from carrying beyond the room, but someone could walk by any moment and hear the shrill urgency of it. “Shhh!’ I whisper, “shhh!”

  “There, in the top drawer!” Again the desperate gesture. Whoever he thinks I am, my only means of quieting him is to do as he insists. I hurry over and open the dresser drawer.

  “Back. Left.”

  I hear him gasping for breath and half turn to tell him to lie down, to rest. His eyes are bright with fever. He gives a sharp nod toward the open drawer. I give up and reach into it.

  What am I looking for? I pat at the folded clothes. Should I pretend to find something? Would that calm him? I hear a soft rattle in his breath that frightens me. I have to get him to calm down.

  “The corner... behind... wood.” Every whispered word is punctuated by that horrible rattle. He’s so certain, there has to be something here; he’ll only be satisfied when I bring it to him.

  I’m about to give up when I feel a narrow crack between the backing and the bottom of the drawer, in the far left corner. A piece of leather seems to be stuck in it. I pull on it, but it resists. I hear a gasping breath from the bed. Getting a firmer grip, I pull with all my strength. Slowly, the thing comes free. A leather pouch, no bigger than my two thumbs curled together, lies in my hand. I hold it up to show him.

  He nods, a small jerk of his chin as he sinks back against the pillows. “... inside, just as... it from you.” I can barely make out his whispered words over the rattle of his breathing.

  “What is it?” I hurry over to him, risking Malemese again.

  “You know! It’s yours...your heart...”

  I almost drop the pouch. Does he really believe it holds someone’s heart? It seems to grow heavier in my hand, and colder...

  He whispers something. I bend over the bed, my ear only inches from his mouth, trying to sort the breaths that are speech from the background of labored breathing.

  “...no one knows about it ...take it away ...I’m done with you at last... Sariah!” His words end in a sudden, harsh rattle. With a soft sigh his head slides sideways, mouth half-open.

  “Father!” I grab his hand, shaking it. “Father!”

  My scream brings everyone rushing to the room. Owegbé pushes me aside. “Itohan,” she moans, her voice so low she might be whispering a secret to him as she bends over the bed to embrace him. Her face is so twisted with grief I hardly recognize her.

  I can’t breathe. In all my fourteen years I’ve never seen Owegbé like this, never imagined her capable of tenderness, or grief. It’s awful to see her so changed, and terrible to know that she has so much love, but none to spare for me. My sister pushes me further aside, crowding up close to Owegbé. Neither one of them has spoken to me since I started caring for father. The way they push me aside now makes me want to scream again.

  “Come away,” Etin whispers, pulling me out into the hall.

  He puts his hands on either side of my head, his thumbs wiping away the tears I didn’t know till then were on my cheeks, ignoring his own tears. “You spoke Malemese to him, didn’t you?”

  I start to pull away but he holds onto me. I open my mouth to deny it—

  “He was already dying, Akhié. He’s been dying for years. It isn’t your fault.” Etin pulls me into a hug. After a moment, I hug him back, and begin to cry harder. He holds me and lets me cry for a few minutes. Before I’m anywhere near ready to stop, he releases me. I feel like I’m going to fall, but his hand is still on my shoulder, supporting me. “You should go off somewhere. Don’t return until evening. Let them mourn without seeing you.” He gives me another quick hug then pushes me gently toward the door. “Don’t look so guilty when you come back.”

  I watch Etin go back into father’s room. The whole family’s there, all but me. I lo
ok down at my hand, still curled around the leather pouch. Stuffing it into my hip pocket I run down the hall, pull the front door open with an angry jerk, and leave. It shuts noiselessly behind me.

  All I can think is, they don’t want me, as I hop onto the transit strip and drop into a seat. The people around me block my view of the city rushing by as it picks up speed. Usually I stand at the edge, my arm wrapped around one of the poles, where I can feel the speed and see the low, almost seamless line of pink and copper brick buildings racing by on either side. I like the way the sun shines brightly on the hollow red clay tiles of their roofs, shaped to deflect its heat, and turns their windows into rubies as I flash by.

  Today I don’t notice anything, even when the crowd of people dwindles and the buildings are clearly visible. I look up only when the ruby reflections have long ceased and most of the remaining walkers have swung off to enter the low, windowless hotels for space travelers. A little farther and there are no buildings at all, only rough fields of red dirt and scraggly weeds, and a few clumps of tall, spindly trees, their long fronds drooping in the hot sun. I’m at the edge of the huge fields that surround the landing areas of the spaceport.

  I get up and move to the edge of the transit strip, balancing myself hand-over-hand against the poles. The tug of the wind increases. I ignore the cord that will signal the strip to slow down—I haven’t used it in years, nobody between the ages of twelve and thirty does. Instead, I lean with one hand against the cool curve of a pole and stretch out my other hand, slipping it into the looped strap hanging just above my head. The strap is attached to a rotating metal disc at the top of the edge pole. Pushing off lightly, I swing myself over the edge of the transit strip, dangle a half instant watching it move just below my feet, then let go. I drop with my knees slightly bent onto the ground. The entire maneuver takes only a few seconds. It’s so automatic I barely noticed what I’m doing, until someone jostles me from behind.

  “Sorry,” the man mutters, grabbing my shoulder to keep from falling. I step aside, wondering why the idiot didn’t take a second to adjust to the change of speed before dropping, or pull the cord and wait for the strip to slow, like most people his age do.

  “You going to spaceport?” He says in Central Ang with the heavy drawl of Coral, one of the Inner worlds. I stare ahead, pretending not to understand.

  “...backward people with archaic travel-ways...” I hear him mutter in Coralese as he turns and heads for the spaceport.

  The midday sun is hot. I scuff my feet on the dry, red dirt, feeling the heat in the soil through my sandals. I squint up at the sky, brilliant with sun from horizon to horizon, as constant as people are inconstant. I hate my family for sending me away, for wanting to grieve without me. Maybe that’s not fair—Etin was only trying to protect me from revealing my secret—but it amounts to the same thing. I wish I never had to go home.

  Then it hits me: my father’s dead. I’ll never talk to him again, or see his smile, or even wave my hand in front of his unfocused eyes when he’s thinking about something or remembering something or whatever he does when he goes away like that. I’ll never again be mad at him for it, when I’m trying to get his attention; or feel the way I feel when I have his attention, when he looks at me like there’s nothing else in the world as important to him right then as I am. No one will ever look at me like that again.

  I stumble and almost fall, but I catch myself and blink hard. I can’t think of my father, not yet. I need to get somewhere no one will see me. My legs are trembling so much they barely hold me up. I force them to keep moving, up over a small rise and down the other side to where I can’t be seen from the walkways or the transit strip if someone rides by.

  I sink to the ground. I want to cry, it hurts so much, but I guess I did too good a job of holding back my tears because now they won’t come. I reach down and grab a handful of the warm, dry soil of Seraffa and hold it against my cheek. A single tear runs into it, leaving a narrow trail of red mud across my face.

  I hear the piercing whine of a space shuttle approaching the distant landing field. The ground shakes beneath me as it settles on the landing site, the weeds around me swaying crazily. I stare at them numbly, waiting for the ground to stop trembling.

  How can anyone stand to live in a spaceship? Cooped up without the feel of the sun and the breeze on their skin, without the warmth of soil beneath their feet or the sight and the sweet, pungent smell of familiar growing things around them? Better even to be a weed, unwanted and despised.

  I reach for one of the tall stalks beside me, brushing my fingers up the sturdy, maroon stem and across the lighter, copper-colored leaves, plump with stored water, smooth and waxy to touch. They’re tough, weeds. They take what they need on this desert planet. What do they care if no one wants them?

  I lie down, stretching my arms and legs wide to crush as many weeds as I can, breathing in the fresh sap smell that rises from the thick leaves and the similar, sharper scent of broken stems. I lie there, motionless and dry-eyed, with the sun on my face, the hot breeze in my hair, the firm earth with its cushion of vegetation underneath me.

  And inside an emptiness that all Seraffa’s warmth can’t fill. It disappears into a small vacuum inside me, leaving nothing but an ache. All I can feel is that ache: not the sun, not the wind, not the soil with its weedy softness, just the emptiness and the deep ache of it.

  Two more ships come in. One departs. The sun droops lower until the spaceport casts its shadow across me, making me shiver. I shift sideways and feel something hard pinching my hip. Half-rising, I dig down into my pocket. When I touch the soft leather of the pouch, I take several deep breaths before I can steel myself to pull it out.

  In the daylight it no longer looks so ominous. It’s just a commonplace little sack with a small, hard object inside it.

  I have to use my teeth to untie the leather cords that hold it shut. The thin cords are dry and tough in my mouth, and when I finally work them loose they still hold the shape of the knot. Reaching inside with my thumb and forefinger I feel a jagged stone the size of a marble. I pull it out and drop it onto my palm. The sun hits it, and I gasp in disbelief. It is stunningly, frighteningly beautiful.

  The stone is clear and brilliant, like the diamond in Owegbé’s wedding band, except that this one is ten times the size of hers. It has a brilliant circle of darkness at the core, as though I am staring straight into the sun. Light shimmers across this dark center like lightning in the night sky, and shoots out through the surrounding diamond in a rainbow of colors. I stare at it, mesmerized.

  And quickly close my fingers tight around it. I look down at my closed fist for a while, before I pick up the pouch and slip the stone back inside. How did my father come by such a thing? And why didn’t he tell anyone about it?

  He was hallucinating, his sentences disjointed, when he talked to me. “It’s yours” was clear enough, but who did he think he was talking to? I shiver, remembering his intense stare, just above my head, as though he was looking at someone behind me. Just thinking about it makes me turn and look over my shoulder.

  “Sariah,” he said. A word or a name? Either way, I’ve never heard it before. And he called it... what? A heart? Someone’s heart?

  None of it makes sense, because he wasn’t making sense. He was dying. I close my eyes. That’s a word that doesn’t make any sense. How can I live with that word?

  The pouch slips out of my hand. I open my eyes and look down at it. What should I do with the diamond? If I show it to anyone, they’ll ask where I got it. Then Owegbé will find out I spoke to Father, that I broke my promise and spoke Malemese, and she’ll blame me for his death.

  She’s right. I did kill him. I spoke Malemese, knowing I shouldn’t, and it was too much for him to bear, just as the doctor warned me. He warned me and I did it anyway—I lean sideways just before the spray of vomit spews from my mouth, and then I heave and heave, unable to stop. When nothing more will come out I spit onto the ground, trying to cle
ar the taste from my mouth with saliva. I grab a handful of weeds and wipe my mouth, then grab a fresh handful and chew on the stems until their bitter flavor drowns out the other.

  The pouch is lying on the ground, like a written confession. I scoop it up. No one knows about it or the diamond, I think with relief. And then I think: no one knows my father had it, or that he gave it to me. They’ll think I stole it.

  Would they put me in jail?

  My hand tightens around the pouch. Not if they don’t know.

  Chapter Two

  I step off the transit strip in front of the block of residences where I live. The interlocked clay bricks feel hard under my sandals after the springy feel of the weeds, but they’re warmer than the cold metal of the transport strips.

  As independent traders, our family is respectable enough to live in this section close to the inner core of the city, and Owegbé insisted on it, even though my father’s single trade ship earns barely enough to maintain a ground-level, corner apartment at the back. That’s fine with me. I like being grounded. I wouldn’t choose one of the upper level apartments with their sunroof skyscapes even if it was free, so I’m glad we’re too poor to afford one. I wish we had a door, though, or even a window, opening directly onto the narrow courtyard in the center of the block of apartments. It’s not much—a couple benches, redgrass underfoot with shrubs and a few flowers at the corners. Costs a planet to water, which is why it’s so expensive to live here, but in the middle of the clay and steel city, it’s a place I can go to breathe.

  Thinking about it makes me realize how breathless I feel now. What if they won’t let me in? What if Owegbé guesses what I did, why I ran? I’ll have to pretend I needed to be alone. That’s what Etin would have told her. I’m walking so slow you’d think I was crossing a dune, my feet sinking in sand at every step, but I can’t seem to make myself go faster. I reach the corner of our complex and turn down the narrow alley between our building and the complex next to ours. As I approach our apartment, I hear a hum of conversation, too subdued to make out individual words.