It had been nothing like that for me. I simply went out to the regular desert, at sunset, when orange and blue mixed and mingled; I wove of ordinary sand, took a short fly-about on my carpet of wanderlust, and then put it away where it lay unused for those forty years.
Benesret continued her tale. “I opened my arms to the spinning ancient sky and turned, around and around, the sleeves of my garment filling with wind. Everywhere I looked, I saw bones—bones of beasts, forgotten and ancient, dreaming themselves up into visions I had never seen—a bird with two heads, drumming on four bone drums, a stick in each beak and claw; a lizard, illustrious, bejeweled; the great razu beast in flight, its wings unfolding over a desert like a rainbow.”
Nen-sasaïr said, “These are the images you wove into the great carpet made of song.”
My aunt ignored him. “I knew right then that I was destined to be a great weaver. I would make the Four Profound Weaves and then bring them to- gether, to reveal the greatest secret of all; that the Four Profound Weaves would bring the gods themselves at my bidding, for the desert had revealed itself to me. And everything in it was made of death.”
nen-sasaïr
“Bird is the goddess of death.” I was not sure why Benesret’s tale rattled me so, but I needed to breathe.
“No,” said Benesret. At her knee, Uiziya shifted uncomfortably.
“Bird takes us up when we die,” I insisted.
“No,” Benesret said again.
“It is true. I’ve seen it happen. She came for Bashri as a dove.” I’d lied to my grandchildren when they asked if I had seen the goddess when Bashri-naiLeylit died. My three deepnames gave me power; and of all of my family, I alone could see Bird, but I lied, said I wasn’t strong enough to see what shape the goddess took when the she came for my lover’s soul. How could have Bashri-nai-Leylit gotten such a peaceful vision of Bird when all our lives, all my life she had restrained me? She’d pleaded with me and shamed me with my truth of being a man, until the very end.
I did not realize I had spoken these words, but Benesret said, “Did it feel good to conceal the shape Bird took for her?”
“Yes,” I hissed, the confession spilling from me unrestrained. “Yes. A dove. Such a small thing to conceal compared to my life of forced secrets, forty years of her refusing me when she knew—” I exhaled. “Yet I loved her, Benesret, I loved her, and Bird help me, I still do.”
“I remember that,” she said. “And I see that.”
We stood in silence. Rather, she sat, supported by the sitting Uiziya, and I stood like a supplicant in front of them. Pain wrapped around me like a veil, lending all shapes a pallid hue—or perhaps it was the dawn, called unbidden before the night was done, unfolding now over the two Surun’ women and their throne of bones. I had been glad to find Benesret alive after all those years, but now I was dizzy and wary. Benesret spoke of the great secret of the weaves, but her hand moved upon Uiziya’s shoulder, and a shimmer like diamondflies ran down her long, gnarled fingers.
My lips moved. Uiziya—
She nodded at me. Nothing’s amiss.
Benesret’s mouth pulled wide, as if she was smiling, but I was not sure of that either.
“Bird is not the master of death. I steered my carpet of wanderlust south and east over the everchanging sands, looking for her, but I could not find her. I went to the School of Assassins next, the school built over the buried Orphan Star. The goddess Bird does not come for the assassins, or for their victims. But I learned from the headmaster that they, too, need cloth.”
I shuffled on my feet. “You said you would tell me of hope.”
“Yes, child.” Benesret sighed.“I said no to the headmaster that first time, for I would not weave from death before I wove from song. Tell us why, Uiziya.”
“This tale must be told four times,” said Uiziya, as if reciting a lesson. “Stitched with wind, stitched with sand, stitched with song, stitched with bones. Change, wanderlust, hope, and death. Only then will the ultimate secret will become known. It is the secret of the sibling gods—the glorious Bird and her hidden brother, the singer Kimri.”
“Death,” echoed Benesret. “Yes, death, but not yet. First I became normal, for that is the word people say. I hid the desert’s visions in my heart and went back home to my tent, my two husbands, my goats—I taught my niece and made lesser weaves and I waited. I needed to weave from hope, but I could not envision a hope that would not lead me back to death, to the last of the Four Profound Weaves which I desired so much, but that was not enough.
“One day I took up my carpet of wanderlust and traveled east, calling out for hope to find me so I could be done with my task. I saw a woman of the Maiva’at standing on the edge of her encampment. Her mouth overflowed with melodies that hung in threads down her body. She told me, haltingly, that Bird came to her when she sang, and by singing, she spun these threads out of Bird’s own feathers.”
“Zurya,” I said, for I knew this tale of old, or at least a version of it.
“Yes, Zurya,” said Benesret. “I begged her for these threads, so I could weave from them. Such a cloth I would make—I could already see it in my mind, how it would sing with all the colors of Bird’s triumphant plumage when she flies over the desert at dawn. But Zurya refused to give me anything, and her eyes were dull with hunger for the goddess. ‘I will sing these threads until I can sing no more, because she comes to me, and I spin from her, and I will possess these threads alone.’”
“She wanted to be freed,” I whispered. But perhaps that came later.
“Two years later, you showed up—you and Bashri-nai-Leylit—with these threads for trade. I took them up without asking what happened. I could see it myself: Bird forsook her.”
I shuddered. “We had found her when she could neither speak nor sing, for the threads had cocooned her completely. We pulled these threads, so she could sing again, but she told me she would not.” That had seemed so extraordinary to me then—as Khana women are forbidden from song—that Zurya would refuse to sing ever again, even though she was permitted to do so by her people, even though she could sing so beautifully that she brought down the goddess and spun from her feathers.
Benesret chuckled. “Of course she would not sing again. What hope she had was made into thread, and it choked her. She gave up hope so she would live.”
I shuddered again. “Among the Khana, only men are allowed to sing, and Bashri . . .” I stopped to gulp a breath, then continued. “Bashri-nai-Leylit had asked me not to sing.”
But she’d also asked me not to walk around the women’s side of the quarter in men’s clothing, and she’d asked me not to take up underground artifice, for holy artifice was the domain of men; but I did all these other things except sing. I was not sure now why that prohibition had felt holy to me, untouchable. As if my offered voice would offend not just my lover, but the singer-god, Kimri. “I begged Zurya to sing. To sing because I couldn’t.”
“Did she?” asked Benesret.
“No. What kind of hope is that?”
“I welcomed it,” said Benesret. “I took up the threads, and upon my grandmother’s loom I made the greatest treasure ever woven, all the hope and brightness of the world, and the images of my visions from the desert: the drumming eagle, the lizard, the razu beast; and then I gave hope away. I gave this treasure to you, for your master.”