The wall of the large red tent billowed in the breeze, as if it were waving at me. The door flap was rolled open like an invitation and secured with a white-tasseled cord. A moon-patterned carpet lay in the entryway, a path into maroon shadows.
I walked towards it.
The sign outside read, "Wondrous Spectacle." Shapes surrounded the words, painted in a red clay pigment: harps and giants, two-headed men, and a naked woman whose prominent breasts made me blush. I frowned. Mother had said something about spectacles–
Fire-gold replaced the shadows of the tent interior as a large and brightly dressed woman waddled her way out. Red ochre painted her dark cheeks, and beads bedecked her braided black hair. The pattern dyed into her loose silk pants looked quilted out of orange peels. They bagged around her legs, but even so I could see her warped leg, the foot clubbed. She leaned on a cane decorated with snakes.
She broke into a wide smile. I startled. Gold crowned her teeth, like she was gumming a mouthful of coins.
Her lips moved. They were hard to read, with the flashing of her teeth distracting me. I caught only part of it. "...cast-out, my dear? ...Your flaw?"
I took a step backwards. Mother had said not to join the spectacles. I should have walked straight by.
Her hand stretched towards my head, partly obscuring her mouth. "...Beautiful. ...won't fit... my freaks. ... Can you sing?"
Her fingers stabbed at my scalp. On my back, Sefi flapped her wings against the side of her basket, throwing me off balance. I stumbled away from the woman and cried, "Stop! I didn't give you permission to touch me!" The motion knocked the heavy amulet from my shirt. It dangled there, marking me.
I should have hidden it in my bag.
She stopped. But no mercy or pity or startlement gleamed from those dark eyes – only a sort of cruel amusement. She folded her hands on her waist. Her mouth moved slowly now, but I still didn't catch everything she said. "Deaf, eh, goose girl? Funny voice. Perhaps not singing..."
I kept backing up.
"No matter– I have friends ... can find other work for a beautiful girl."
My back hit something that jammed my pack against my spine and sent Sefi fluttering again. As I jumped, hands settled on my shoulders, callused and large. The scent of mint and resin wafted to my face. Holy scents. And the hands were gentle.
The woman's gaze fixed on the person behind me, a frown blossoming on her painted face. He or she was probably speaking. He, from the size of the hands. I don't know what he said, but the woman's frown twisted into a pig-like scowl.
The hands turned me. I looked up at a tall man with skin the same hue as the desert soil. His clothes were simple undyed linen. His bright curly hair had tangled into long, clean locks that framed his face like curtains. Most of his face was serene and utterly beautiful, as if the Great Unknowns had kissed it and left a little of their blessing on those smooth cheeks. But he was missing most of his nose.
I was drawn to him immediately. His smile was kind, and his green eyes reminded me of Mother. The scar-nosed man asked me, "Is it true? Do you wish to go with her?" And he didn't use his mouth. He used his hands.
I gestured rapidly, "You speak sign?"
"I do," he signed back. "I learned it to greet those like you. Welcome to the Camp of First Steps. At least, that is what my companions and I call it."
"I thought no one out here would speak it. I thought I'd have to write everything down."
"Alas. I fear most of those here cannot read, either. But I heard Madam Vrida bothering you, and you speak well. I think you will manage."
"My parents taught me," I signed, and swallowed my grief. "What does she want?"
He glanced over my head towards the red tent, where presumably the madam still waited. "She wishes to offer you a place as one of her – well, she calls them performers."
"No, thank you. Mother told me to avoid the spectacles."
"Wise," he signed back gravely.
"I told that woman to leave me alone. She didn't listen."
"She will listen to me. I am a perfecta, not an innocent child," my new friend signed, and he turned back to Madam Vrida.
I, innocent child, folded my arms and felt belittled.
I didn't see what they said to each other, but only a few minutes passed before the madam spun back into the tent, her thighs jiggling under the force of her steps. I stared after her.
The crisis was averted. What was I supposed to do now?
The scar-nosed man turned back to me, his smile twisting wryly on his face. "I am sorry Madam Vrida was the first to meet you and your pet. I am Amaz. Welcome to the camp. May I ask your name?"
"Zisha Ferimei."
He smiled. "And your goose?"
"Sefi. Pardon me, but if you are..." Perfecta. "...healthy, how is it you are here? Are you the leader of this camp?"
Amaz chuckled. "No one is in charge of places outside of the Plenary Cities. But there are those that command the respect and loyalty of groups."
"Troupes. Is Madam Vrida one of them?"
"I fear so."
But Amaz had stood up to her, as if he were somebody. "And you?"
He bowed to me. "It is my honor to lead a few pilgrims on their journeys."
"How many is a few?"
"I am healthy, as you astutely noticed. But I was not always."
He hadn't answered my question. But his hands seemed uninclined to pause and address it. His signs were stiffly perfect, an unvarying precision that made him seem terribly formal.
Amaz signed, "You see, sweet deaf child, I, too, was cast out. I had closed my eyes to true revelations and the voices of the Great Unknowns. I was too proud of my beauty. And so the Great Unknowns punished me, and my limbs failed me on my fifteenth birthday."
I frowned at him. Mother told me sickness – and difference in general – was not a punishment. It only was.
"I began my pilgrimage on my sixteenth birthday. At the end of my journey, my eyes were opened to the Great Unknowns. I offered them my nose. My beauty. In return, they cured me."
I stared at the knotted scar in the center of his face. He had cut off his own nose?
His hands were still moving. "When I became perfecta again, I chose to remain in exile. My prayer is to guide others to the same revelations. And cure."
Amaz bent to put himself eye to eye with me. I wanted to back away. His honey-sweet breath reminded me of my painfully empty belly. I'd been too sick from grief to choke down first-meal that morning.
He signed, "Will you let me help you, sweet child?"
I did back away. Two steps. I was not sure I wanted to travel with someone who would cut off his own nose to appease the Great Unknowns. For all I knew, he would decide I was an equally valuable sacrifice.
He gazed at me, his green eyes wide and unblinking. They were so green, green as the little cone that had wisped revelations into the air around the Justry.
I could almost smell the visions in my lungs. See them behind my eyes.
I wanted to put my face over that cone, breath in its magic, so badly it made my heart ache. I wanted to cradle it on my tongue.
"Zisha?" Amaz's hands said.
I licked my lips, cracked my knuckles, and came back to myself.
"I don't want to be cured," I signed. "I want to be accepted."
"Sweet child," he signed, and I hated the nickname already. "The two cannot be separated."
He was wrong. He was. My parents had accepted me. And, if what Mother had told me were true, before Holy Efra, so would've everyone else.
"Come with me," he signed, still smiling. "You can make your decision after a good meal and drink."
I followed him. Where else could I go?
#
The camp was larger than it first appeared. Dozens and dozens of round tents hunched around the well, organized like spokes around a wheel, and hundreds of wooly red goats and white donkeys lay in the trees' shade. Painter's quail pecked among the rocks, their green and brown heads flashing in the sun as they bobbed. I'd always been fond of them, mostly due to the name. But no geese waddled among the livestock. The only pets were the tiny white desert foxes that stalked the unconcerned quail, which outweighed them. Their huge ears quivered and turned, showing off symbols of ownership inked in black and blue.
The place really wasn't that small. It was only that I was used to the city and graceful stone buildings that loomed three or four stories high. I was used to being stuck on the top floor, too, high above the earth. Like one of the maidens held captive in the old nursery stories – the ones that dated from the early times, when people still thought girls couldn't rescue themselves.
Everything seemed to hug the ground here, as if afraid of falling into the cloudless blue sea above our heads.
Amaz strode along easily in front of me. I wished he would fall back to walk beside me – any signs he made now would be out of my sight – but he seemed to enjoy leading the way and greeting the locals with smiles and nods.
Were any of us local, though, if we were all cast out of the Plenary Cities? I glanced about as we walked, but I saw no children, even though plenty of men and women were young enough to have them. No one was younger than me.
Most everyone had a visible difference of the sort the Justry would label imperfection. A man with no legs sat on a rug inside the nearest tent, braiding a basket out of desert willow. A young man with a twisted spine milked a fluffy goat. A broad-shouldered woman with shockingly pale hair and cloudy eyes carried a sharp-nosed girl strapped to her back. The girl's keen brown eyes flitted across everything, but her limbs dangled as limp as wilted leaves as the blind woman walked.
The sight of them shocked and discomforted part of me, a little shameful part; I was used to looking out of my third floor window and seeing only the healthy and beautiful perfectas. The rest of my mind, the part that listens to my heart, did a hopeful little dance. These people were like me. Perhaps they wouldn't send me away or expect me to experience the world only through windows.
Almost everyone was busy, occupied with the business of surviving. Almost everyone. A long gaunt figure curled against the trunk of a gnarled tree and picked the tiny leaves from one green branch with pale fingers. I peered closer as we passed and caught a glimpse of a narrow chest and high flat breasts under a blue camise – the most feminine color. The girl's legs would've better fit a stork, and she had the neck of a swan. I would have walked on and given her not another thought, but then she turned her face, setting her braid of ash-brown hair swinging, and I found myself caught in green eyes.
Green. Greener than the leaves stuck under her nails. Green as oracle ore. The thought stirred uncomfortable cravings. But it wasn't just the color that drew me back into memories of my revelations.
Her chin was stubborn, her lips thin and pale. Her small nose turned up at the end. This was the pale-faced girl I'd seen in my visions.
I realized, after a moment, that I had stopped walking and Amaz had drawn ahead. I summoned my voice to bring him back. "Are these people your pilgrims?"
He paused and turned back to me. "Not yet, although I always hope they will come to join us. Our section is yet to come." He pointed forwards, where row upon row of shabby beige tents crowded.
By the tree, the pale-faced girl dropped her branch and used her hand to sweep a small anthill from existence. I looked between Amaz and the girl. I saw her in my visions. It had to mean something.
A sacred tenant of my people is that there is no dogma, no answers that can be taught to the next generation. The universe is infinitely complex, and each person is only capable of containing a small part of the truth. Everyone must find that truth on their own. But whatever divinities had made the universe and our people were not without kindness. They guided us with portents and visions, and sickness and disability were supposedly punishment for the crime of ignoring these divine messages. I didn't think that was fair, not when a message could be anything, even a flight of crows or a beetle in your shoe. But my vision had been more than clear, and ignoring a vision was sacrilege. I couldn't just walk by.
Life had punished me enough already.
Amaz signed, "Come along now. We will find you a meal and a place to sleep. Our tents are overcrowded, but I am sure a corner can be made clear for you."
I glanced ahead. One person, maybe two, would sleep comfortably in those tents. How many had they jammed in? I shook my head. "Thank you, but I'm not hungry, and I want to explore the camp. I may come by later, if I can't find anyplace else."
His eyes grew sorrowful. "Are you certain?"
I nodded.
He pressed his hands to his heart, an old gesture of farewell. "Then I will leave you to your wandering. Please join us tonight."
"Maybe," I signed.
He leaned down to make his eyes level with mine. "Perhaps your path will diverge from mine. All I ask is that you not forget why you are here."
"And what is that?"
He offered a condescending smile. "To clear away your spiritual blindness. To be cleansed and made perfect. To find peace with Holy Efra's words and yourself."
"I had peace when I was home with my parents."
"It was only an illusion."
I did not like him as much now as I did when he rescued me from the madam. I clenched my fists and watched him walk away. He was wrong. I had been happy. And I wanted my family back. I forced myself to relax. Right now, even Grandmother was out of my reach.
I walked towards the girl and her tree. At least I might figure out what the Great Unknowns were trying so hard to teach me.
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