Oasis came downstairs wearing a printed shawl of reds, whites, and yellows swirled together in square patterns that wrapped over her body and hugged her waist leaving her dark-olive skin exposed at the sides of her breasts along with her phenomenal legs. She’d tied her hair back on one side with a white lace scarf and silver hair pin, but left a twisting lock of bronze hair to fall beside her round face, with her exposed ear decorated by several tiny silver ringlets and a delicate chain that had a small diamond-tree stone dangling at the end carved into hundreds of tiny facets that glittered like a rainbow. About her feet she had black sandals that webbed over her toes all the way up her calves. Her light-green eyes met mine directly as soon as she appeared.
Anyanna fixed her eyes to mine as Oasis came downstairs, then she looked away as soon as I turned to face her.
“Oasis, this is Anyanna. She says there’s a place called Turtle Plaza that promises to be fun.”
Anyanna angled her face towards her, but didn’t raise her eyes up to meet. Oasis smiled and nodded. As we turned towards the door, Anyanna leaned close to me. “I don’t speak Goloagi very well.”
“Nothing at all?”
Anyanna shrugged. “A few simple phrases, but not enough to hold a conversation.”
“Well that's a conundrum. She doesn’t speak Herali.”
At that, Anyanna glanced over at Oasis and stepped forward to lead the way without another word.
Through the crowded plaza, Oasis and I followed Anyanna down a westward street with the midmorning sun casting its warmth on our backs. The street dropped down, taking us with it. Up above, a stone Cougar six stories up kept watch over the passersby, with the building on the opposite side hosting a stone Alligator doing the same. In a shop on the left, the fragrant invitation of fresh cut flowers called out, and at one corner a boy stood quietly holding up a folded stack of paper pressed with the day’s news. He just stood there and said nothing.
I turned to Oasis. “I was that boy in Kyoen for a few weeks; they made us shout the headlines as loud as we could.”
Oasis smiled and nodded, glancing over her shoulder at him before he was out of view. Anyanna glanced back at me over the remark, then turned back ahead of us and kept walking.
As for Turtle Plaza, we could hear it well before we got there. Above the bustling noise of the street below, the thunderous boom of a bass drum echoed off the stone walls of the towering buildings as it curved round and to the left.
By the time we rounded the turn, I could hear other instruments join in. Strings, horns, rattles, a song of every color echoed off the stones, but Anyanna led us down a side-street small enough that we could have easily walked past and not noticed it was there. About ten yards down amid a handful of makeshift stalls of rough-hewn planks of wood showing wares of dyed cottons, carved wooden beads and other wares was an old man with dark-green skin.
I’d only ever seen people that color before in the tapestries from the day before. It was real. Wherever he came from, people had that color—dark green like the color of seaweed and wrinkled from his years. His hair was long and ivory colored with streaks of gray, braided down his back beneath a black cap that fitted over his head like a rag, and his eyes were golden yellow. He wore a simple brown tunic made of burlap, and I could almost make out beneath the collar the tip of a white tattoo peeking from underneath.
Oasis didn’t seem to mind him all that much, but I could scarcely take my eyes from him. He spoke not a word to me, but nodded and smiled with what little teeth he had left. Before him on the stand was a series of brown cups made of pressed coconut husk, along with a series of ornate tins. Behind him, he had a small brick fire over which rested a large metal cauldron filled with sand that let off a sharp, nutty aroma unlike anything I’d ever experienced that dominated everything around us.
Anyanna spoke to him. “ʃʊsi kafiθʊma?”
I turned perplexed to Oasis, who shrugged back at me and smiled.
Anyanna reached into a pocket and pulled out some coins, then set them on the stand for the man as he turned around. Then she passed her fingers through her hair while glancing in my direction and smiled.
“What are we in for?” I said.
Anyanna answered me. “It’s called kafi. You’re going to love it!”
The old man pulled a small, silver pot from the sand and opened it. He then took three of the cups and poured into each of them a dark-brown almost black steamy drink and handed one to each of us.
I wasn’t sure if he would understand me. “Thank you.”
He nodded and smiled proudly with all three of his teeth.
“Where are you from?” I asked him.
I felt Anyanna’s eyes on me as he answered, “na’uhuide.”
I tried my best to repeat it. “Na’uhuuwee-day? Where’s that?”
He laughed and nodded some more.
Anyanna clarified. “He’s from Uhui. Come, drink it.”
So I did. The heat was bearable, and the taste on the tongue was sweet like candy with a hint of something pleasantly bitter, and a strong nutty afternote that fully justified the intense smell. I sipped again. Oasis did the same, grinning wide with each taste. Anyanna watched though she’d introduced us to the promised land and savored our reaction.
Oasis then spoke to Anyanna in Herali. “What, uh… what… call is?”
Anyanna smiled and tried her best to answer in Gologagi. “It calls kafi. Very good is yes?”
I’d managed to sip my way through about half of my kafi when I began to notice a strange sense of energy lace throughout my body. It was as though the whole world surged through my veins, and I merely wanted to move. A quick glance at the two girls, and I could tell they felt it too.
After a few minutes the three of us finished, then set back on our journey.
The Turtle was a massive stone circle in the middle of the plaza that set his four legs out onto the street with a staircase on each leading up to a flat platform on the top of his shell covered in a white canvas awning. It was there that a dazzling array of musicians with all sorts of instruments played together in a song they all seemed to make up as they went along.
A Herali lyrist sat in one corner strumming a rhythm to a nearby drummer from Kulun, who stood next to a Goloagi flutist who tooted out his own accompaniment.
Anyanna turned and beamed with joy, shouting above the music. “Isn't it amazing?”
There was something magical about it. People of all colors, all manner of dress playing drums, strumming stringed boxes decorated with fine carvings and glass jewels, various flutes, even an old Goloagi man had a long brass trumpet. Then, half the musicians stopped and turned towards a Tobori man in the center with a pair of drums tied around his shoulder who then went crazy banging out a melody. This for a good minute before the rest of them cheered and started back up again.
All around the plaza there were a handful of couples dancing. That strange energy pulsed through my veins, and I turned to Oasis. “Let’s dance!”
By the time Oasis gave me her hand, I saw Anyanna turn and face me directly. Then she turned away, and Oasis and I started to figure out what steps we both knew.
Of course it was awkward, but that wasn’t the point. I tossed her about and watched as her face lit up in joyous laughter. The music quieted, and a young Herali boy stepped forward with a dasegwa, strumming through some chords that didn’t quite sound right to a rhythm that didn’t quite align with the rest of the troop. None of that mattered, and they all cheered him anyway before going back to full ensemble.
In the corner of my eye I saw an elderly couple dancing with all the vigor of youth in them. From my other eye, I saw Anyanna watching our every move.
We twisted around. Oasis then turned, swiveled her hips and turned round again, only to come up beside me and bump her hips into mine and break out laughing. I held her hands, brought her in close, only to lift her up, spin around and set her feet back down. She stepped away, turned, then twirled into my arm, only to drop down low, taking me with her. Then I lifted her back up and twirled her around again. We held hands, arms stretched out one each so as to press together but offset, then dance around in a circle then reverse and prance around together once more.
Oasis was beaming; it was nice to see her that way for a change. It was also nice to feel her taut waist, her breast squished against my chest as we danced.
At length, she stepped back from me and bowed. I turned to Anyanna and reached my hand out for her to take.
She shook her head and turned away.
“Let’s dance,” I said.
Instead she turned around and fixed her gaze upon the musicians.
I wasn’t sure how I should take that. When I turned, I saw Oasis looking longingly at a shop on the corner. In a display at the window was a wooden form with a dress of red silk draped over it.
“Let’s go have a look,” I shouted.
Oasis shook her head and smiled, then shouted back. “I am not having money.”
“Don’t need money; just tell them you want to try it on. Go on, I’ll be right behind you.”
As she went off, I brushed Anyanna’s shoulder. I startled her, and she backed away, turning to face me. I leaned in so she could hear me over the music. “We’re going into that store to try on a dress. Will you come with us?”
She nodded lightly and spoke not a word.
I checked behind me to see that she was coming, and we followed Oasis through the door.
Inside, several wooden forms were set up wearing dresses of all colors. Greens were arranged in a row from light yellow shades to the off-black with every shade in-between, and in the next row light pink faded into dark crimson. Anyanna came in behind me and walked among the blues.
The clerk was a Herali woman a few years older than me with long, straight hair that matched the darkest of greens. She herself was decorated in a red silk that flared at the sleeves and around the hem, with black leather sandals on her feet. She glanced up at me and smirked, allowing her eyes to traverse my body before turning back to Oasis and speaking Herali. “I’m sorry, we wouldn’t have anything your size.”
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She held out her hand as if to usher Oasis out the door without deigning to touch her.
I had to think quickly; Oasis deserved to try on a dress as much as anyone else. So, I came up and faced Oasis directly, bowing my head low and speaking quietly, just loud enough to be sure I was overheard. “Your grace, you can't wander off like that! These streets…”
Oasis picked up the cue with the same ease with which we danced and snapped her fingers at me. “You not will talking at me in this way!”
“I apologize…”
She held up a finger, and I stopped talking.
Oasis then turned to the clerk and spoke, her tone dripping with entitlement. “Are you speaking the Goloagi? I want trying on this dress!”
At that, the clerk hesitated, then painted a smile across her face and shifted her stance so as to face Oasis directly, gesturing to the dark red Oasis held. “That, uh… this not… is for the tall ones.” Oasis being on the shorter side of average. ”Not being to… uh… the you have color I think. I know that you will like, wait please?”
“Fine,” she spat with her chin high.
As the clerk disappeared beyond a blue velvet curtain, I couldn’t help but smile. Oasis scrunched her nose up to smile back at me over the game we’d made up together. I turned to Anyanna, who'd hidden herself in a corner behind another form that was host to a white silk with pleated flares around the hips and necklace of rough diamond-tree stones.
“Are you OK?” I said.
“Mm-hmm,” Anyanna nodded.
I leaned in close. “I don't know how much you understand, but this lady was being a cunt when we walked in. We're pretending Oasis is nobility so she thinks we have money.”
“Oh,” she nodded.
“You want to play?”
“I, uh… I don’t know…”
“It’s easy. Just nod when she says something to you, hold her clothes, that sort of thing.”
“OK,” Anyanna shrugged, then came up and stood next to Oasis as the clerk came back with an armful of different outfits.
The clerk made a passing glance at Oasis’s new handmaid, then held up next to her a blue woolen dress with black stripes, then winced and set it aside. Oasis’s eyes perused the options and pointed at a burnt-orange flap of silk hidden beneath a black long-dress. The clerk pulled that one out and held it next to her, squinting her eyes at the possibility.
Oasis then glanced at Anyanna, who nodded without a word. “I will trying on this one.”
The clerk nodded and ushered her over to a corner where stood a large, folded screen decorated with a watercolor of swampy waterways with birds flitting about amid mountains in the backdrop. Anyanna stood, lowering her eyes every few moments as if struggling to remember to be the servant in our game. After a moment, she received Oasis’s printed shawl and laid it over one arm while the clerk stood beside me. I hadn’t turned to face her directly, but I could see from my periphery her eyes scanning my body up and down every few moments until Oasis reappeared.
The dress was a simple burnt-orange fine-silk mini that shimmered in the daylight with thin straps over her athletic shoulders, a waist that hugged her gorgeous figure, and a hem that scarcely covered her luscious arse. And… I mean… I knew she was fit, but… damn. With those arms, she could probably have wrestled me to the ground. Her breasts were just the perfect size for her figure. There was a full-body mirror on the wall, and as she turned her back to look at herself, my eyes were gifted with the most…
She was an attractive female.
I had to take a deep breath and wrestle my eyes from her for a moment. Anyanna averted her eyes from mine the moment I turned to her, and I felt a pang of irritation over that. It seemed the only time she made eye contact with me was when I was burning Oasis’s sublime figure into memory.
Then, not even a minute later, Anyanna handed Oasis back her clothes.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I can’t do this.” Then she walked out the door.
Oasis turned and looked at me wide-eyed.
“I’ll be back,” I said.
By the time I’d gotten outside, I caught a glimpse of Anyanna dashing across the plaza and towards a street on the far side. I ran to catch up to her, but the bustling crowd blocked me several times. I had to dodge through people, almost trip over someone, then sprint through a straight line of street before catching up to her. “Anyanna, wait!”
She didn’t. She kept walking.
I continued to run until I was able to take hold of her arm. She turned to face me, then tried to wrestle her arm free, but I held on tight. “Let go of me!”
“Stop, please.”
“You’re hurting my arm.”
“Anyanna, please.”
She kept pulling, kept trying to walk away, but I still held onto her.
“Talk to me.”
“Let go!”
“Promise to talk to me and I’ll let go.”
“I can’t do this…”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re hurting my arm.”
I tried to loosen a little without letting go, she continued to try and pull. “Look at me. Stop walking away and look at me.”
“I…” she set her eyes at my neck. “I can’t do this. Please let go of me.”
I did. Then I watched helpless as she pulled the black woolen shawl tight over her shoulders and walked off. After about half a block, she turned around and glanced at me, stood still and stared at me for almost half a minute, then turned and disappeared down a side street.
If by some miracle Dune survived, I’d be seeing a lot of her.
I needed the world to stop turning for a moment. But, I couldn’t leave Oasis alone. So I went back to the plaza and sifted through my mind for clarity on what a complete shit I was.
I found Oasis waiting outside the dress shop in the same printed wrap she’d had on before. She looked up at me with a puzzled expression. “What did happening?”
How could I explain? “I don’t know how to translate. We should go check on Dune.”
She gave me a side-eye, then we walked together. After a moment, she beamed. “I need thanking to you. I was thinking, how I will saying to this woman, I am not having money to this dress. She was wanting three-hundred kren for this!”
“It did look good on you.”
“I am wishing Dune was seeing this dress with me.”
The way back was easy enough. Down streets of gray stone with bright fabrics hanging from overhead windows, the steady drum beat echoing behind us, Oasis had a relaxed disposition I hadn’t seen in her before.
“What’s she like?” I said.
Oasis looked up at me as we passed by an open shop with a dazzling array of perfumed candles that wafted out onto the street. She smiled at the thought. Her smile had a way of filling her whole face when she relaxed a bit. “Dune so much is being smart, but always she was fighting the lessons. Why I need learning this. No I not will sitting down, no I not will quiet the talking. She always was being punished to disobey the rules, this was being the whole time we were growing up!”
That made me smile. “I used to be like that.”
“Yes?” she looked at my eyes and nodded as we walked past another dressmaker on the left. “I am knowing that she is needing the love but it is being difficult because so much people not liking to her being this way. But she not can helping to be in this way so very is being sad for me for watching this.”
“It’s nice that she has you to care about her.”
We got back to the hotel and went upstairs.
We slid the door open, and bright sunlight filled our eyes as shadows from the leaves in the trellis above danced across the room. The warm sunshine and the bitter mountain cold mingled with one another to the music of the city below, and Dune lay perfectly still beneath a thick layer of woolen covers. Her eyes were closed, and the arm with the gaping, maggot-infested wound stretched out.
I came up to her with Oasis by my side, and we knelt beside her. I first checked her fever by setting my hand gently to the side of her neck. She didn’t feel hot anymore.
Immediately my heart leapt with the joy of disbelief, and I went about checking over the rest of her. Her fever broke! Her pulse was still weak.
I couldn’t feel it.
At all.
I pressed my fingers into the side of her neck, desperate to find what was not there, and her lifeless head fell to the side in response.
“What what?” Oasis’s voice carried the desperation of denial as she leaned in close.
My fingers shook. My mind grappled with the truth, and I stood, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly.
“Dune?” Oasis spoke. “Pa-ish?”
I heard her slapping at Dune’s cheek as her calls grew more and more desperate. “Pa-ish?” she began to cry. “Pa-ish?”
I took a step back and looked out over the rooftops of the city, trying to wrap my head around the truth. Then at last, the words materialized. Dune was dead.
“PA-ISH???” Oasis screamed.
I reached out a hand to try and rest it on Oasis’s shoulder. As soon as my fingers found her, she looked up at me as though startled. Tears were falling down her cheeks, and she looked back down at her friend, still trying to wake her.
“PA-ISH!!!!” she screamed, slapping Dune’s cheek hard many times over. The body recoiled with every slap, but returned nothing. Oasis then turned back to me with pleading eyes and her whole body shook.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“VUH!” She turned back to Dune and tried to shake her some more, slapping and pushing at her arms and side. “VUH! Pa-ish! So-wadha mashi! Pa-ish!”
A girl’s voice came from behind me, “what has happened?”
It was Sage. She stood barefoot in the doorway with a white bed sheet wrapped over her body and her hair in a frazzled mess. Geraln stood behind her wearing the same.
Oasis looked up at her and cried. “Pa-ish tare-an!”
Sage ran up beside them and knelt.
Oasis paused. She looked at Geraln strangely, then looked at Sage. Then she narrowed her eyes and looked at Geraln again, then looked at Sage again. Then she looked at me, tilted her head, and looked at Dune. Then she looked at Geraln again and Sage again, then back to me and huffed out, “you did killing her!”
“What?” I eeked out from the shock that filled my thoughts. We all looked at her.
“You did killing her! You doing this on deliberate! You did killing her!”
“No!” I shook my head.
That seemed to make her more upset. She shot up at once and lunged at me. I tried to back up, but she was quick and tossed herself at me with all the force she could muster, slamming her shoulder into my body. I reeled back from that, and she came with me, flailing her fists and screaming out, “YOU WANTING FUCK! YOU HAVING PLAN!”
In the blur of the moment, Sage was behind her trying to pull her away from me. No sooner than there was space between us, Oasis’s fist came around and caught me square on the nose.
“YOU WAS HAVING PLAN YOU DID KILLING HER FOR WANTING FUCK! LET ME GO!”
Sage held onto her tight as she continued to scream. Through Oasis’s accusations, Sage managed a small handful of words. “Just go!”
I turned to Geraln who stood still as though trying to understand the situation himself, and took him by the arm. “Come on.”
Sage’s smooth voice cooing at Oasis filled the air behind us as Geraln and I went to the room next door. He rushed about to pack up his things, going back to grab one item or another, when Oasis appeared at the door. She pointed a finger at me and spat, “you was having plan! You was wanting dead-Dune because you was wanting fuck to me!”
“No! That’s not true!”
She raised her voice again. “I was seeing you to look on me! You never was helping! You did killing her!”
“That’s not true!”
“YOU did killing her!”
Once again, Sage came up behind her and wrapped her arms around Oasis’s body to pull her away just as Oasis started shouting again. Geraln didn’t waste time folding things up neatly, but rather stuffed whatever he could into his pack and held his pants up with his hand.
And so we made our way down the spiral staircase. Up above, Sage continued to hold onto Oasis as she tried to wrestle free. “I WILL FINDING YOU CALEB OF GATH! I WILL KILLING YOU! I WILL KILLING YOU!”