“How like a man, to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do.” Half-exasperation, half-compliment in acknowledgment of his change, the words flew out of my mouth before I knew it.
He grimaced bitterly. “That’s right. I’ll just go sit with the men, then.”
Then he walked past me, head drawn into his shoulders.
the nameless man
I walked where my feet took me, to the outskirts of the encampment. I thought Uiziya might follow me, but she didn’t. I was on my own, and perhaps that was best.
After my transformation, I tried sitting with the Surun’ men. They had showed me how to speak Surun’ like a man and how to move, how to shave my face Surun’-style. They were friends and good people, but I did not want to go much deeper into their ways. I was no warrior. I could fight when I needed, but that was not what being a man meant to me. I wasn’t Surun’. I was Khana.
Our people lived in Iyar, but we weren’t Iyari. Behind the walls of our quarter, walled off from the rest of the city by royal decrees, the Khana lived separate lives, and in the Khana quarter, women and men lived separate lives yet again, divided from each other by an inner wall.
Our men were scholars, not warriors. Scholars and makers of magical automata for the utter glory of Bird and her hidden brother, the singer Kimri. As a child I would wake up in darkness to stand under the white walls of the men’s inner quarter, where I wasn’t allowed—waiting—waiting for our men to sing the dawnsong to bring the sibling gods closer, and with them, the dawn.
But now I was here, far east and away from Iyar, in the great Burri desert. It was here, at this very place, in this dust, on the outskirts of the snake-Surun’ encampment, I had stood in my cloth made of winds, the weave of transformation my friends and my grandchildren had woven for me out of love. I’d lifted my arms to the sky and the sandbirds had come to me, sent to me by the goddess Bird and summoned by the cloth of winds. They were birds of bright fire that fell from the sky and cocooned me, until I could see and hear nothing except the warmth and the feathers enveloping me and the threads of the wind singing each to each until my whole skin was ignited by the sun, my body changing and changed by the malleable flame. And when it was done, I sang.
I sang as the wind and the feathers dissolved into sand under my feet; I sang because my transformation was complete. I sang the dawnsong—the sacred melody that the men of my people sing, standing on the roof of the men’s quarter every morning.
Since then, I had not sung again. As it had for the decades before, the sacred melody sat like a lump in my throat, and I could neither voice it nor swallow it.
I did not know how much time passed, but when I lifted my gaze from the sand where I knelt, I saw Uiziya, the dun-colored carpet still over her shoulder.
Uiziya was a friend from earlier days, when I was young and full of hope still, but now I did not know her that well. She was always at gatherings, weaving with the others—weaving even my own cloth of winds preparing for my transformation, but she did not say much. She was Benesret’s niece, and I asked about Benesret, but the others were wary of Uiziya speaking. Every time she opened her mouth to speak of her aunt, she was shushed.
Now she came closer. Her shadow, broad and round, fell over me, sheltering me from the glare of the sky. The carpet she carried over her shoulder stirred, whispering in a language I did not understand.
“Why did you come back here?” she asked.
I looked away. “You would not understand.”
Uiziya shrugged. “I think I do. It is not hard to be a changer among my people. I know that it is not true everywhere, but in the great Burri desert, changing your body to match your heart is not a thing to bleed your eyes over.”
“It is for me.” Of course, she would say this. She grew up here, the vast Burri desert ruled by the Old Royal, who was a changer themself, and welcomed all changers. I was from Iyar.
“I know it is hard for you, heart.” Uiziya stretched out a hand, but I made no motion or word to welcome her touch, and she pulled back.
“If I was from the desert,” I said, “Benesret would weave my cloth of transformation then and there, when I saw her first when I was twenty-four and she was forty and wise and splendid under the ancient discolored weavings in her tent.”
“If you were from the desert,” echoed Uiziya, “you would not need Benesret. You would have the cloth woven for you by family, if any were gifted enough. Or you would travel southeast to the Old Royal’s capital, and transform at the Sandbird Festival. You would make the transformation as a youth, and go sit with the men and go speak with the men and go guard with the men, and sire children as a man, and raise children as a man, and think no more these noisy, agitated thoughts of yours.”
I did not want to think my noisy, agitated thoughts, but they sat better with me than the matter-of-fact, “everything is perfectly commonplace about a swarm of sandbirds cocooning your body and helping you transform, and then you just go sit with the men” conversation I’d had with so many Surun’ people. I was not Surun’. I was not from the desert at all. As a Khana person from Iyar, I did not fit, among women, among men. Even far away from home, with only myself for company, I did not fit.
I did not want to wound her, but I did not know how to talk to anyone anymore.
“Forgive me. I think you would understand better if you were a changer.”
She lowered herself down slowly, as if the movements pained her, until she sat by my side. “I, too, am a changer.”
“Oh?” I frowned, uncomfortable. I had always assumed—I shouldn’t have assumed—how could I have assumed? “Forgive me.”
Uiziya shrugged. “I made my own cloth of transformation when I was a child.”
I did not know that she was a changer, like me. I never thought anyone was. I had never met others who went through the change in Iyar. They were ban- ished or imprisoned or hiding or dead. But here, in the desert, changing one’s shape was a matter of ritual, of love, not of desperate secrets.
Uiziya kept speaking. “The first weave is the weave of change, the first mystery of the everchanging desert, the first of the Four Profound Weaves that Aunt Benesret taught me. I wove my cloth of winds, and sandbirds came to me, like they did to you. They cocooned me and burned without burning, and when they were done, I was myself in my body.”
“I did not know,” I said again. “I’m sorry.”
“Nobody remembers anymore. I do not think about it too much. It was a relief. I’d always been a little girl.”
We were face to face, Uiziya crouching, me kneeling, and between us the finest threads of sand whispered each to each in a language I did not understand. No longer dun, the carpet of sand undulated with every shade of yellow and brown and gold, and between these strands I saw glimpses of sunset and shadow, and bones—always bones—bones of strange, beguiled animals that had once roamed the desert before the goddess Bird brought our people here, and our stars.
“Why did you return to this place?” Uiziya asked again. She had a habit of asking the same question over and over until she was satisfied.
Because I was running away. No, that wasn’t it. “Looking for something.”