News has spread in the night that I've returned with Naqi, and that I've claimed the star of Gaia, and people whisper that maybe it wasn't even my fault in the first place that Roaz caught the stain.
Surely a star like Gaia would not have accepted someone who did such a thing.
Brother Marat believes the stain appeared on Roaz because of the line I drew, and he is right. Naqi believes the stain appeared on me because of what happened, and he is partly right.
Both think the stains are gone for good, now, and that is true – for Roaz.
In the morning, in the dorm, I wait for Pea the way I always do. When she wakes she looks at me, then ticks her eyes away, then comes down her ladder quietly, quietly.
She must have questions about what happened.
"Pea?"
She startles.
"Oh, stars. Sorry. You don't have to wait for me all the time, Lumi."
I shake my head; I don't mind.
She's still looking away. She runs her hand over and over the back of her head, the scruff of it, and then she says, "Is, so is everything, alright now?"
I nod.
I say, "Thank you," and the words are an odd shape in my mouth, "for not telling anyone."
She ducks her head. She fidgets. "—Naqi didn't tell?"
I shake my head.
Pea fidgets some more. But when she looks back up at me, she has pulled on a smile. "Okay. You're welcome. And you don't have to worry. I won't tell anyone. I mean," her eyes tick to my shoulder, "it's gone now, right? Like Roaz's?"
"Yes," I say, and the shape of this word, this lie, is nothing like odd in my mouth.
#
I am washing fruits in the sink at the back of the kitchens when Naqi finally wakes beside me. He yawns, and says good morning, and then Roaz pushes through to the kitchens and snarls, "You. Veil."
It's far too early for this. And Naqi groans and says, "It's way too early for this."
"How is any of this right?" Roaz bulldozes on. "You cursed someone with the stain, and you're still allowed in the race? In the temple? How are you even still allowed to live?"
"Roaz," Naqi cuts in. "That's enough."
"Enough what? She wrote the omen onto my skin. You saw it. You all saw it."
"She didn't mean to. And the stains are gone now."
"She didn't mean to," Roaz mocks. "So let's acquit the poor pure Veil of all blame because she didn't mean to. Poor Veil. Poor thing. She's pure, alright. Pure evil."
"Stop," Naqi clips. His brows and mouth have set into hard lines. "You've done nothing but pick fights with her the moment you laid eyes on her. Stop."
"Yeah. I'll stop. I'll stop once the holy Veil gets hers. And you can bet that I'll make sure she does."
Roaz twists to leave. He stops at the exit, and glares over his shoulder. He spits at me and says, "Should've been you that was stained. Scum."
He leaves.
I turn back to the sink.
My hands are shaking, so I dip them underneath the water to hide the shaking.
Naqi wipes his hands on his robes and says, "Stay here."
I look over at him. "What?"
"Stay here," he repeats. He does not look at me, and turns from the sink.
He stalks out of the kitchen.
I pause, and then follow after, frowning, because I won't be letting Naqi tell me what to do.
Out in the mess hall, people are wiping down and setting the tables. They move light and slow in the morning. Naqi steps up to Roaz, who has picked up a heavy stack of plates. I pause.
Naqi says something. Roaz replies. Then back and forth until veins are bulging from Roaz's temple and neck, and Naqi is—I don't know. It's hard to see. The hard line of his back is mostly to me.
Naqi shoves him. Roaz drops the stack of plates, and the glass and clay shatters like a scream, and then the two are throwing punches. They topple to the ground. They have each other by their collars and are scraping each other through broken glass until their robes stain red at the elbows, at the backs.
Pea is crying. People are shouting. In the heat and the din and the taste of iron, Roaz fumbles his hand over a shard of glass. He is not thinking. He takes a hold of it despite its cutting, and aims it at Naqi's temple and, I'm there, I've moved. I'm grabbing Roaz's arm. I wrench it down at the wrong angle. He yowls over the snap.
Roaz's friend comes in and kicks me in my mask, where my mouth would be, and the mask cracks. A shard of it falls and splits open my lip.
Someone else yanks me away – Naqi, it's Naqi – and just like that, the two of us are back to back, brawling. We swing out at anyone coming at us. I punch someone in the ear. Naqi twists someone's arm and slams them against the side of a table.
His face, when I see it, is red. I've never known that colour on him.
I only know Naqi by the white of his smile, by the yellow of the sun around him. I never knew he could be this shade, where the white of his teeth are bared for me, where the yellow of his bruises are caught for me.
#
We're barred from breakfast and lunch and dinner, Naqi and I. We're given a bucket of water instead, to hold over our heads as we kneel in the dust of the courtyard outside the mess hall. People go about their chores. They brush their brooms around our space. They stare when they think we do not see.
I do not hang my head. I tongue the edge of my lip, of the cut, and taste salt. I stare ahead and say, "I didn't ask you to do that."
"Yeah," Naqi says.
"You're crazy," I say.
"Yeah." He says.
"It's all your fault this happened, you khab."
"I mean," and he can only twitch out a smile, because his face is set with bruises, "I wasn't the one that broke Roaz's arm."
"You started it."
He pulls in breath. "Yeah." He says, "And by the stars, did it feel good."
I shake my head. "I don't get you."
"What?"
"You heard me. Your head is full of static, you messed up, make believing khab."
He laughs. He would raise his hands if they weren't already raised. The water from his bucket spills. His arms tremble like mine, and he winces.
He complains about his bruises. He whines about the cuts stinging on his cheeks, over his back, and the aches that cut into his ribs from fists and heels. He does not complain about the bucket over his head.
He does not whine about kneeling in the dust with me, where everyone can see.
#
A few days pass. Everyone in the temple knows by now what has happened.
I'm made to suffer through a few more punishments – katohs before the titan's eye and incense prayers to the wall of sirens, and I'm made to tend to Roaz as he heals. Naqi is made to whistle starsongs over him, daily, to aid in his healing.
It will be tight, but with the help of starsongs, Roaz should be healed by the end of the month. If he isn't, Naqi and I may then be kept from the races as well, as punishment.
So Naqi flies twice as much over Roaz than he's required to, and I cross my arms and glare at Roaz as he eats, like maybe that will frighten his body into healing faster.
Roaz himself gloats at it all.
Serves us right, he says. Now the two of you know your place, he says.
But strangely, strangely, he no longer taunts with the same bite. He no longer mocks with malice. He quips at me, and smirks at me, but that is all. He trades barbs with Naqi, but something must have happened – either during that talk before the brawling, or after when I was not looking – because sometimes after their barbs, they laugh.
I cannot believe it, but Roaz and Naqi are friends, now.
As for me, I do not call Naqi khab as much anymore, but I will. I'm only waiting for his cuts and bruises to heal. There's a deep gash down the side of his back that's still scabbed over. He tears it all the time, when he twists and soars on his anchor in the air, when the sun glints white over his laugh.
#
Flying at the pit with the others is exhilarating.
Flying itself is exhilarating, breathtaking, like leaping and diving through the sky while gravity has loosed its strings on you, and cannot hurt you. It's the end of the second week.
Gaia's presence is immense. I can fly twice, thrice, the speed I could before. The only one that can keep up with me and my lines is Naqi, and we fly on and on, longer than we should, long enough that Brother Marat needs to scold us to give others a turn.
The pitches we whistle out harmonizes and twines, and it's music.
I don't think I could ever tire of hearing it.
Aside from Gaia's power, I can't pinpoint much else about her personality. Naqi's star is playful, and he says it helps him think up wild lines, fanciful lines, lines that make him laugh.
Others talk about their stars in a similar way, like they are people, friends that they can converse with.
But Gaia hardly converses with me.
The only time we spoke was at the kori tower, when she asked me what I wanted, when she wondered whether or not I would lie again.
#
I learn that Naqi has a habit of collecting things.
Soft things. Broken things. Things the others no longer want, or need.
"You're more bird than boy," I say.
"Going by that logic, you'd be more hedgehog than girl." He grins.
I try not to bristle, because then I'd be proving him right. I ask instead, "What's the point of collecting junk?"
Naqi thinks about it.
"I think," he says, "there is no point. There's just something about having things that are yours and only yours that makes me think of home. And I miss home, or having one. You should try it. Collecting things, I mean."
Omens don't own things. Owning things means you could have them taken away.
"Whatever for."
"For fun. For the sake of it. And you know," his voice lilts, so I squint because I know he's caught an idea. He grins and says, "If I'm a bird, I'm going to need a nest."
I argue with him, of course, that the Suns are going to confiscate his things, that he'll get in trouble with the other acolytes for making a mess, but in my head I'm already thinking of the places we could hoard his collection: my old cell, maybe. One of the unused worktents, maybe.
We'll need lots of space, space enough to hold something like a home.
In the end, of all the locations, we return to where Naqi and I first met.
By that hole in the wall, we soften the cradle of branches and vines with his worn blankets, moth-eaten cushions, faded fraying rugs. We light the space with his broken lamps and stumpy candles with barely any wick left, with warped vases that we fill with warped stars the temple no longer needs. We decorate the space with toys and figurines that don't get played with anymore, and hang coloured glass from the branches so that reds and blues and yellows blur our nest into watercolours.
Tented in that space – warm, wrapped soft in dusty, broken, forgotten things – it is easier to give, to ask, to bare.
I ponder what he said to me, that I should try collecting things. But I think if I do, if I ever did try to own things for myself, I could only have things that no one could ever take from me.
It would hurt too much, otherwise.
And in the quiet and lull of our nest, we waste time musing over things that don't matter at all, silly things, stupid things, like who we would want to be if we weren't Naqi and Lumi, what our jobs would be, what our names would be.
(And I wonder, in those moments, what my real name would sound like coming from Naqi's mouth.)
We draw shapes in the stars above us and make believe life on other planets, moons, colonies. We draw shapes in our hands, and then Naqi teaches me more hand signs, ones that mean yes, no. Eat, hug. Sorry. Thank you.
"What's the sign for khab," I ask, and Naqi laughs, because there is no such sign. So we create our own.
Khab, we decide, is tapping the side of our temple then pinching our fingers from the brow, like maybe there was a speck of something stuck on the eyebrow. The sign for zap, we decide, is snapping two fingers in both our hands, and rotating our hands like we are reeling in a fish. Siren's teeth is clawing our fingers and dragging our nails down the back of our hand.
Naqi scratches the nail of his thumb over his forehead, then wiggles his fingers, and already he is snickering. Static for brains.
I'm reminded, then, of Yashi, of her missing tongue, of what Pea said that time in the markets. So here, in the sanctuary of our nest, I ask Naqi for the truth.
"Yashi doesn't keep it a secret," is what Naqi says. "If you ask her, she'd tell you."
"So it's true."
Naqi nods.
I frown. I'd heard of black market doctors that deal in omen amputations. They're wildly expensive, and the operation is risky; never guaranteed to work. Who's to say the stain won't simply appear somewhere else on the body?
"There's a hospital," Naqi continues, "that treats people like Yashi. A secret place. Don't know how she managed to find it."
"And the temple knows?"
"About her? Yeah."
"And she's still allowed to be here?"
"She's not an Omen anymore."
I fall silent.
Not an Omen anymore, Naqi says, so easily, so very easily. If I had done what Yashi had done when I was younger – gouged out my flesh at my shoulder blade – I wonder if things would be different. I wonder if it'd be true, then, when I said I was not an Omen anymore.
"Hey."
I look up. My thoughts must've leaked into my face, because Naqi's voice is soft. He smiles at me, but it's different. This smile has no teeth, and no cheek, and it makes my eyes sting.
"Ya'tuv mi-eh." He says.
It's the strung together sounds of a starsong, and I know ya means you. Tuv means bury. Mi-eh means me. I don't understand. He is telling me to bury him.
Naqi raps his knuckles against his heart, then brings those knuckles up to his forehead. He says again, "Ya'tuv mi-eh."
And I remember one night, winter, with the glare of red neon lights over ice, a man opening his jacket and folding a woman into it. He zips it up with her inside, and they kiss each other, and laugh.
The scene was soft, soft, like something I've never been taught.
That is how Naqi says it, and smiles, and how he reaches for me – softly. I block his hand, because I don't, I don't think this is something I'm allowed.
"Don't."
"I just," he stops. His cheeks look red, but I don't know why. He asks instead, "Do you know what it means?"
"No. But don't. I don't want it."
"Want to learn more signs, instead?"
I nod. I'm grateful for the change in topic.
Naqi teaches me the sign for want, for need, for more. He teaches me angry – clawing his fingers against his stomach and pulling up and out. He teaches me afraid – clenching his hands before him and then opening them in shock.
He tells me that there are two ways to say love:
Crossing your fists over your chest and squeezing in a hug.
Combining three letters into three fingers, our thumb and pointer and pinky, to spell I and love and you.
#
At the beginning of the third week, the walls full of siren masks that encircle the titan's eye is pulled away. Brother Marat gathers us by the steps of the portal. He gathers us for our final lesson.
"Should you be amongst the ones to pass the first stage of the races, and also the second, you will then be given the honour of whistling in the third and final stage, one that takes place within the titan's eye."
"Be forewarned," he says. "Not only is flying its depths already quite the dangerous endeavour, it will also be unlike anything you've experienced thus far in the races."
He stresses, "Or in this life."
The portal, Brother Marat explains, leads to a cosmic storm, one of many that dot the dark of space. Its flesh is rolling static and clouds, knit together by lightning. Its currents are said to be the very breath of sirens themselves.
In those storms, stardust is mined. In those storms, new stars are harvested.
"But once every decade, the storm takes on a different quality, one full of possibilities, of visions, of stars thrumming with wishes. If the first stage tests your physical strength, and the second your knowledge, this final stage in the titan's eye will test your very spirit, your very soul."
"Pair up," he instructs. "Use your lit stars as conduit. And as the Choosing had you give up your senses, you are now to train in the trading of it – see as others see, hear as others hear, feel as others feel. Transfer your senses and put on another's, and in this way, shed the shackles of your own distorted truths. Only then, will you be equipped to whistle through the cosmic bowels of the eye."
I don't understand. Neither do the others; everyone is shifting and murmuring. So Brother Marat raises his hands for calm, and says, "Simply remember your Nine Ahs. Cling to their undistorted truths, and they will guard and guide."
He explains, "The eye will test you. The eye will force you to see yourself, truly see yourself. If you are unprepared to be seen, then the storm will spit you out. If you are unwilling to be seen, then the storm will reject you."
Fear like tension winds through my body.
I am left with only two choices, then:
To hide all the depths of me and all that I've done, and to be spat back out, to lose everything I've worked for, sinned for, suffered for.
To lay bare and be seen for all that I am, all that I've done, and I wonder. If I chose this path – exposed myself – and was not spat out by the storm, would I instead be swallowed whole?
#
Between our training, and between our meditations for the sense-transferring, Naqi and I idle away our time at the nest.
Sometimes we talk about Naqi's parents, but he doesn't like talking about them too much, because "It makes me miss them," and then he admits, with a fearful quiet: "That, and I barely remember them anymore."
We're curled on our sides with our foreheads almost touching, and I touch them together in that quiet. Fear on Naqi is not a good colour. Naqi smiles.
We find things to talk about, like the work tents and the things they make, and the people and the food. We find things to complain about.
"Roaz," Naqi complains, "has a thing for Rama, apparently."
"Oh." I think about it. "Pea is very pretty."
"Sure, but he doesn't have to talk about it all the time."
I look at Naqi, and look at him, and ask, "Have you thought about anyone?"
Naqi pauses.
He looks back at me, eyes blank, and then he laughs. It's an uncomfortable sound. He rubs his face, his eyes. Between his fingers, I see his skin is red. "I mean, maybe."
Something like a snake – coiling, open mawed – twitches in my chest. "Who?"
"I'm not telling you that."
I frown. He changes the subject with, "What about you. Thought about anyone?"
I shake my head. I don't think about anyone. I ask again, "What's she like?"
"Who?"
"The person you think about."
"Oh." He looks down, and away, and rubs the back of his head.
"I don't know," he says. "She's—cool, I guess."
I frown again. Naqi whistles like the wind, flying here, there, until you're left breathless. The Suns talk about him in the halls when they think no one hears. They say things like: he could lead us one day. They say things like: he should be the one to win.
In the eyes of the temple, and in the eyes of the others, Naqi is what it means to be cool. There is no one else on his height.
"I don't know anyone like that."
Naqi laughs. "Maybe she's just a make believe girl."
I scowl. "Fine. Don't tell me. She's likely full of static like you, anyways."
Naqi only grabs his middle and shakes, and laughs.
#
I've been pairing with Naqi for our meditations. We sit crisscrossed across from each other with our lit stars between us, and we treat it like a race, like a contest.
Naqi wins.
I don't realize he's crested the peak, into a trance, until I hear him shivering. His teeth chatter. I open my eyes and press close to him, and I touch his hand so he knows I am there.
He comes out of the trance heaving, sweating, like an almost-drowned man floundering out of the water.
I ask him what it was like, and he tells me it was like popping your ears, where balance yawns open, except it opens in the center of your forehead, where a sense you've never known spreads over you.
"I could feel your life blood," he says, whispers. He is too tired for anything louder.
"It burned through me like something holy, you know? And I could feel that your feet were cold, and that you didn't eat enough for breakfast, and warms and colds and colours ebbed like waves from everything."
"You sound insane," I hush, but I don't stop him. My eyes are wide. I lean closer to hear more.
He says, "I think words and pictures stamped over my mind, behind my eyes, but they weren't my words. Those pictures weren't pictures I'd seen with my own eyes."
"I don't understand."
His mouth twitches at a smile. "Maybe I was reading minds." He says, "Maybe I was reading yours."
I stop. I pull tight. But Naqi only shakes his head. He says, "The pictures were a blur, a single colour. You were just a pale white; you were meditating at the time."
I don't know what to think. All I know is that Naqi's hands are trembling, and his lips are dry, so I let him lean on me when we walk back to the dorms after.
He is too drained to smile, but I know he means to, when he bumps his shoulder against mine.
#
It's the final week before the races, and it's morning. We're meditating in the gardens.
And then, just like that, my ears pop open.
They pop open between my brows. A sense dawns over me like light through parting clouds, or like slipping and falling, falling, falling.
I feel the beats of Naqi's heart. His blood jams through my veins, up and down, like sky-traffic. I see colours even though my eyes are closed, blooming from people-shapes, from tree-shapes, from star-shapes. And just like how Naqi described it, words and pictures that are not mine stamp behind my eyes. Someone on the field is thinking about food. Someone by the tree line is picturing what it would be like to kiss a girl.
The picture I see from Naqi is of him knocking his knuckles against his heart and then bringing his fist to his forehead. He says: ya'tuv mi-eh.
Bury me.
I understand what it means.
Somehow, up on the height of this spiritual peak, all of Naqi's meanings are made known to me. I see what he sees. I understand what he understands.
Your fears and doubts, bury it with me.
Your hopes and dreams, burrow them with me.
Shoot me down with your secrets, because I will take them to my grave.
May death come for me first, so I never have to know a day without you.
I tear out of my trance. Sweat breaks over me. I'm breathing heavy and shallow, too quick and not quick enough. Naqi is pressed against my side because I have no strength to sit up.
"You did it," he says, soft. "Take it easy. You came down from it kind of weird."
"I saw, I saw."
"Yeah. A whole bunch of weird things, right?"
I look up at him, at Naqi, Naqi who tells me to bury him.
"I read you."
"Yeah?" He looks amused. "And what'd you read?"
I say nothing, but I'm still staring, and I'm panting. I try words that do not sound. They do not sound because I am comprehending now that Naqi kneels in the dust for me, that he bleeds for me, and fights for me. Naqi ponders futures with me and builds with me a nest, a softness, that I can accept. Ya'tuv mi-eh.
Naqi doesn't understand my staring. I can tell. His smile lingers, hangs, because he thinks maybe I am trying to be funny. And I let him think it.
His ya'tuv mi-eh is for Lumi, the Veil. Lumi, the good and the pure. She would be worth being buried, worth the weight of secrets and the burden of fears. His ya'tuv mi-eh is not for Sozo, the Omen. Sozo, the evil and the corrupt. Only a fool would die for someone who is not worthy to be saved.
Naqi was right.
The girl he likes is only make believe.