The Girl Who Could Do Almost Anything

In Azara, a woman could grow a house, call rain into a cooking pot or send her voice across three hills without interrupting her breakfast. Senamé could do all three, provided she had seen someone else do them first. Yet every year the travelling companies left without her, and every year someone discovered that the baths needed warming.

This morning her bag was packed beneath the examination bench. One sandal protruded from the fastening, exposing a departure she had meant to keep discreet. Afiwa pushed it back with her toe as she squeezed into the place beside her, bringing the smell of fried bean cakes into a room that had so far offered only medicinal leaves and damp wood.

Beyond the doorway, breakfast smoke threaded the bridges between the houses. Rain still dripped from their living walls, although sunlight had reached the upper rooms. Senamé knew which shutters would stick by noon and who would call her to mend them.

Afiwa pressed a leaf parcel into her palm. Grease had soaked through one corner. Senamé ate while her friend worked the necklace cord free of her curls; by the time Nan Loló called the first candidate, she had burned her tongue, stained her thumb and acquired a powerful reason to finish before the second cake went cold.

The other women waiting along the wall had dressed for the ceremony. Senamé had dressed for the road, in a short tunic that left her strong brown arms bare and a wrapper tied clear of her knees. She had intended to look ready. Beside the embroidered hems and carefully oiled shoulders, she looked available to carry something.

Afiwa brushed a crumb from her lap. Her travelling strap was worn smooth by journeys Senamé knew chiefly through the things she brought home. Senamé wanted to ask about sleeping outside the protections, but asking before the result might spoil it. Instead, she surrendered the second cake just as Kékéli descended towards it.

His wings opened over their knees, scarlet feathers lifting to reveal gold and green beneath, with blue deepening into violet along his tail. The draft scattered crumbs onto the floor. Denied the parcel, he settled on Senamé’s shoulder and began picking them off her tunic with an intimacy she would have resented from anyone else.

At the table, Kossiwa’s pearl touched the water.

Black spread through the shallow bowl, gathering violet at its edges. The ripples slowed around it until Senamé could see the roof reflected whole on the surface. She leaned forward despite herself. Kossiwa made even difficult magic look as though it had been waiting for someone to arrange it properly.

Her braids lay close to her head, exposing the clean line of her neck. A spotted genette rested across her shoulders, one paw hooked into the cloth below her collar. While Nan Loló examined the reading, Kossiwa kept a finger beneath its chin to stop it drinking the water. Only the pressure of her other hand against the table betrayed how carefully she was listening.

“Binding and preservation. Witch classification confirmed,” Loló announced.

The recorder began to write. Kpénahi inspected the bowl before authorizing service beyond the inner protections, and Kossiwa’s fingers relaxed. Senamé watched her retrieve the black pearl, trying to understand how such a small thing could make leaving so simple.

Loló called her next.

Senamé wiped her greasy thumb inside her wrapper before accepting the Intendante’s hand. Loló’s skin was warm and dry; the bitter smell of steeped leaves brought back childhood fevers and the reassuring scrape of a stool beside the bed.

Senamé lowered her grey bead into the bowl.

A reader adjusted the polished disk to brighten the water while another sent a small pulse towards the bead. Senamé felt it pass beneath her fingertips. Nothing answered. The water reflected a distorted portion of her face.

She had known it might happen. During the night she had prepared several sensible things to say if it did, but with the readers waiting and her bag beneath the bench, all she could think was that she had cleaned the bead. She had cleaned it so thoroughly that the cord had begun to fray.

Loló touched her wrist, encouraging her to breathe more easily. From the far end of the table came a whisper and her mother’s name.

“The one Ablawa left.”

Senamé turned towards the woman.

“Did she leave instructions? Because if you know something that would help, I’d rather hear that.”

The woman glanced at Loló, who kept her attention on Senamé.

“Your mother’s circumstances are not being examined today,” Loló said.

“Then let me take the practical.”

She retrieved the necklace before anyone could suggest another change of light. Water ran along the cord and into her sleeve.

“Kossiwa is cleared for the outer wards. Let her try to hold me. If I can get through, consider me for the same work.”

Kpénahi leaned back, her shoulders extending beyond the broad chair. Pale scars interrupted the earth marks on her muscular arms. Senamé knew their immovable weight during drills, the surprising care with which they had carried her home as a child.

“Getting through a ward isn’t the same as surviving beyond it,” Kpénahi said.

“Then test what you need to test. But test me.”

For a moment the only noise in the room was Kékéli worrying a loose thread on her shoulder. Kossiwa unhooked the genette’s paw from her collar and passed the animal to an attendant. She was ready before Kpénahi gave permission.

The testing ground lay between the examination house and the maternal quarter. Women waited beneath the awnings with welcome baskets. Senamé recognized the woman whose washing she had carried yesterday: seventeen baskets suspended by a drying charm, following her traction spell. The woman had been delighted enough to fetch more.

Senamé tucked the necklace inside her tunic and stepped onto the damp red earth. Across the circle, Kossiwa settled her heel into the clay while Kpénahi explained the conditions. Immobilization or surrender would end the match. At her call, every working must be released.

The first seal closed around Senamé’s sandal almost as soon as the signal came.

A wrench of her foot left the sandal behind. She sprang clear, landed short of a second mark and had to throw her weight sideways as a third tightened beneath her toes. Kossiwa stood near the opposite edge with two fingers against her pearl. Each small movement of her free hand removed another patch of ground Senamé might have used.

Water gathered beside the sorceress. It rose into narrow legs, a pale striped body, a head already lowered to charge. The sitatunga’s hooves struck the clay with a soft, wet sound.

Senamé dodged its horns and found a seal waiting where she meant to land. Another leap carried her across it, close enough to feel the closing pressure brush her heel. Kossiwa turned her hand; the animal came round, driving Senamé towards the only clear space left.

That was where she would be caught.

She jumped back towards the sitatunga, twisting past its shoulder as a horn grazed her wrapper. Beneath the rush of blood, the spell began to make sense. Two short pressures marked the place; a longer stroke closed the binding once her weight settled.

Her bead warmed in recognition. She could borrow the seal now, but she needed somewhere to put it. Kossiwa scarcely moved, and planting traps around her own feet would only make the spectators happier.

The next charge came while Senamé was still looking for an answer. Her bare foot slid; a horn passed beside her ribs, catching the edge of her tunic. She braced for the pull.

The sitatunga stopped so sharply that its hooves furrowed the ground.

For a breath, Senamé stood with the animal’s muzzle against her throat. Warm air passed through the cloth covering her necklace. It sniffed again, ignoring Kossiwa’s command to advance, and Senamé dared to turn her head.

The sorceress’s fingers had tightened against her pearl.

Around Senamé’s foot, another binding began.

Two short pressures. Through the warming bead, she felt where the shape fastened to the earth. Yesterday she had joined a holding charm to a pull; the baskets had stayed suspended as they moved around corners.

There was no reason the seal had to remain here.

She caught the working at its closing stroke. Pain rang through her teeth, sharp enough to make her bite her tongue, but she held the borrowed shape while easing its grip on the ground. The bead burned beneath her collar. With her weight braced on her back leg, Senamé fed the traction spell beneath the binding and pulled.

A white mark slid across the clay.

Kossiwa stepped out of its path. Senamé brought it after her, and the surprise on the other woman’s face almost broke her concentration. A quick downward cut severed the first edge, but the second was already curling behind Kossiwa’s heels. Senamé turned her wrist to close it.

Kossiwa dropped to one knee.

The sitatunga wheeled towards its summoner as Kpénahi called the end. Senamé loosened her hold, expecting the seal to fall apart. Instead, the altered edge tightened. Clay compressed beneath Kossiwa’s knee; her palm struck the ground to keep her balance.

Heat crawled up her neck. She could feel every pressure she had borrowed and, for a horrible instant, could not separate them. Then she found the displaced anchor and broke it, tearing the binding open.

The sitatunga collapsed into water.

Afiwa’s shout carried across the court, followed by Kékéli’s piercing imitation. Senamé stood ankle-deep in the spreading puddle, breathless and unable to stop smiling. She had won in front of Kpénahi, the readers, the women who sent her for baskets. Tomorrow there could be work beyond the boundary. Tonight there might be a place at one of the house tables.

Kossiwa was brushing clay from her knee. Senamé reached to help her up, already wanting to explain the moving edge. With Kossiwa’s control, they could probably make it travel much farther.

The sorceress looked at her offered wrist.

Beneath the skin lay a small iridescent scale. Senamé rubbed it with her thumb, at first mistaking it for something caught there, but the smooth patch remained while the surrounding skin reddened. Her hand began to shake.

Beneath the healer’s awning, heat pressed behind Senamé’s eyes. She concentrated on the assignment cords being carried past: blue for the travelling unit, earth-brown for boundary guards. Three blue ones remained on the tray.

Kpénahi crouched in front of her while the healer examined her wrist.

“You heard the call?”

“The edge caught. I had to loosen it.”

“While it was tightening around her leg.”

Senamé looked past the warrior towards Kossiwa. An attendant was washing the mud from her knee. She appeared unhurt, although Senamé knew better than to offer that as an answer.

Kpénahi placed a cup of water on the earth between them.

“Lift it.”

The cup rose. She had used the suspension charm so often that it required less attention than keeping her expression respectful. The water settled. She waited for Kpénahi to acknowledge it.

A pulse slipped out of sequence.

She reached for yesterday’s correction. Steam, black soap, wet cloth against her arms: she remembered the bathhouse, even the woman asking her to wait for another basket.

She could not remember how she had kept the load in the air.

The cup tilted. Catching it with her other hand spilled water across her lap, and before she could raise it again Kpénahi took it away.

“Your assignment remains the southern frontier.”

Under the next awning, a name was called and answered. Bracelets clattered as someone embraced a successful candidate. Senamé pressed her damp fingers together, trying to hide their trembling from the warrior.

“I beat her.”

“You lost control while holding her leg. Now you cannot sustain a lifting charm. What happens when there is no one close enough to help?”

“Send me with someone.”

Kpénahi glanced at the healer’s fingers resting against Senamé’s pulse. Senamé knew the answer before the woman returned her attention to her.

“Not yet.”

Other girls were allowed to learn on the road. How many more years must she patrol the same three stones? Yet, with Kpénahi so close, some foolish part of her wanted to lean against the woman refusing her and be comforted.

“This is not a punishment,” Kpénahi said.

“Then give me one that ends.”

The healer waited with a clean bandage until Senamé let her have the wrist again. Beyond Kpénahi’s shoulder, Kossiwa received her assignment strip. Nobody had come forward with a welcome basket for her either. She lingered a moment, looking towards the warrior, before an attendant called her to collect her field set.

Loló brought the order herself: rest today, no sustained magic until the fever passed, southern frontier tomorrow. She adjusted Senamé’s wet cloth clear of the bandage. Senamé remained still, ashamed of how much harder that gentleness made it to speak.

Tomorrow she would climb the watch platform, inspect the same stones and sound the evening call. Somewhere beyond the trees, another guard would answer.

Her necklace had cooled enough to touch. Senamé worked a thumb beneath the collar and rubbed the uneven bead, remembering the sitatunga’s breath against that same patch of cloth. The animal had stopped before she borrowed the binding. Whatever it had recognized, it had recognized while the grey thing lay silent against her chest.

Across the court, the readers were putting their instruments away. She could ask them and watch this, too, become part of the decision already written in her lap.

Afiwa emerged from the examination house carrying the bag. Senamé reached for it with her unbandaged hand, then hesitated.

“The sitatunga,” she asked. “Did you see what it did?”

Afiwa glanced towards Kossiwa, who was disappearing beneath the far awning.

“I saw.”

Senamé made room for her on the bench. Before the sounds and smells of the ceremony swallowed the memory, she wanted to hear exactly what her friend had witnessed.

A Place at the Table

Afiwa had described the sitatunga’s refusal three times without explaining it. When an attendant came to collect their bench, they moved into the maternal courtyard with Senamé’s bags. The welcome meals had begun.

Her offering still waited beneath the awning. She had brought fruit, salt and a square of blue cloth that morning, imagining how she would present them when a house called her in. Now the fruit was warm from standing, and she had to move the basket twice to let women pass with serving bowls.

Purple flowers gathered against the water-channel grates. In the nearest birth room, someone demanded a different cushion with enough authority to make Senamé grateful she had only faced Kossiwa. An older woman hurried past with the replacement.

The healers here had washed her wrist and found clean linen without being asked. With the bandage tied and the fever easing, however, there seemed to be nowhere for her to go.

A woman collecting empty baskets paused beside hers.

“Which house?”

“I haven’t been called.”

Through the doorway behind them, one of the successful candidates was being fed by two women who disagreed about the size of the portions. The girl protested, laughing, with her mouth full.

The woman collecting baskets left Senamé’s where it was.

“Keep it clear of the passage.”

Afiwa watched her return inside. Before she could say anything, Senamé lowered herself onto the courtyard wall and began separating an overripe piece of fruit from the rest. Kékéli accepted it with pleasure. From inside the house came a warm call to another girl, which he repeated so faithfully that Senamé nearly turned.

“Come, child.”

She gave him more fruit to occupy his mouth.

The bathing-room attendant found them there. Her eyes went first to the bandage, then to Senamé’s face, weighing the inconvenience of each.

“The third pool has gone cold. Could you look at it?”

The retaining stone had shifted again. If someone emptied the pool, she could wedge it in place and spare herself the next request. She gathered her wrapper, but Afiwa put a hand over hers.

“After she’s eaten.”

“Of course. Once the houses have finished serving.”

The attendant returned to the baths, leaving Senamé half risen from the wall. Across the courtyard, a platter of yam disappeared through a doorway. Nobody had meant to refuse her food. That made it difficult to know where to put the anger.

Afiwa pushed the basket into her lap.

“Stay here.”

Kossiwa’s field set lay open on Kpénahi’s table. Six sealing needles rested in separate grooves, their darkened tips finer than anything she had been allowed to use in training. Beside them waited black thread and a route tablet for the northern wards.

Kossiwa had prepared an account of the defeat: the sitatunga’s hesitation, the altered binding, the moment she should have severed it. Kpénahi listened, then asked whether her knee hurt.

It did. Kossiwa described the damage as slight.

“You released the ankle restraint before she turned it against you. That was sound judgment.”

The approval warmed her enough to open the box again. These needles could hold a ward across running water. She could protect a river without rebuilding the seal after every rise in the current.

Kpénahi was sorting the afternoon’s reports when Kossiwa asked whether she would attend the house supper.

“If I finish.”

Tablets filled the desk. Kossiwa offered to help, but the warrior directed her to review the northern route and rest before the early start.

Her genette pushed its head beneath her hand, insisting on the attention she had withheld during the examination. While she scratched its cheek, Kpénahi opened the request from the baths and frowned.

“Is Senamé still with the healer?”

“In the maternal courtyard.”

“No sustained working. Have the wrist checked afterward.”

From the doorway came Afiwa’s voice.

“She won, you know.”

Kpénahi looked up. Afiwa had an empty food leaf in one hand and wore the expression she usually acquired just before being assigned something unpleasant.

“The examination. Everybody saw it. You’ve given Kossiwa her field set, and they’re sending Senamé to mend a bath.”

“The healer’s restrictions stand.”

“Then tell the baths.”

Afiwa took the amended instruction and left. Kossiwa closed her box with unnecessary care. There was nothing further to ask. Her genette climbed into her elbow and would not settle until she gave it her whole hand.

Afiwa returned with yam cakes filled with peppered beans. Their warmth reached Senamé’s fingers through the leaf, discouraging questions about where they came from.

They ate on the wall while the courtyard emptied behind drawn screens. Senamé burned her tongue again; Afiwa passed her water. Farther up the path, someone sang badly enough for Kékéli to take an interest.

Afiwa explained that she had delivered Kpénahi’s restrictions to the baths. The attendant could drain the pool and wait until morning, or find someone else.

Senamé wiped the sauce from her fingers.

“She’ll say I could have told her myself.”

“You could have.”

There was no comfort in the answer, but no accusation either. Afiwa was occupied with wrapping the crumbs so Kékéli could not scatter them down her clothes. Senamé rested her injured wrist in her lap and allowed the bath to remain cold.

Later, Afiwa walked her home. The travelling bag felt heavier, though almost nothing had been added. At the door, Afiwa moved the flask clear of Senamé’s hip and tightened the strap.

“I know a road south of your post. When the relief comes tomorrow, we can take it.”

Senamé kept hold of the doorframe. She had imagined leaving all morning with a cord on her wrist and someone calling after her to return safely. Afiwa was offering to walk out with the same bag and none of those things.

“Where does it go?”

“I’ll show you.”

Afiwa returned the bag without demanding an answer. Senamé left it beside the sleeping mat that night, close enough to reach if she woke with more courage.

By midday the following day, the bandage itched and the southern frontier had produced nothing more threatening than a monkey stealing cord from the shelter.

She had inspected the boundary and recorded the ditch’s water level. Now she scratched the altered binding onto broken pottery: two short marks, a longer line, then her pull. Recorded, it could no longer vanish from her head.

Afiwa arrived carrying her own pack.

She noticed the shard first, then Senamé’s bag beneath the shelter, still full. The satisfaction on her face made Senamé reluctant to explain that she had not yet decided anything.

Afiwa spread travellers’ memory knots across the watch stone, each holding a bead, cloth or shell to preserve a route or encounter. Senamé recognized one from the supply court.

“Does its owner know you have that?”

“I’ll return it.”

That answered enough. Afiwa selected a blue thread and placed it against Senamé’s fingertips.

Warm pottery touched her palm.

Smoke stung her eyes. Fish crisped nearby, and she sat deliciously tired at an unfamiliar courtyard table. Blue cloth stirred above a man setting down a tray. The hand she felt beneath her own belonged to someone holding a cup; the pleasure in the man’s shoulders was entirely hers.

Beyond him, horses shifted in the shade. People were speaking over one another in languages she did not know. She tried to follow one conversation and caught the edge of a song instead, a voice rising from somewhere near the well.

The memory loosened when her fingers slipped from the knot. Forest heat returned against her face. Afiwa was watching closely enough to be embarrassing.

“There’s an inn after the river crossing.”

“Which river?”

The answer required another thread. Unfortunately, its memory contained dry grass, a ridge beneath an enormous sky and the saddle-sore impatience of someone who had apparently never visited the inn. Senamé tried a third. That one offered an excellent view of a woman’s earrings and no useful direction at all.

She spread the threads on the stone between them.

“These aren’t the same journey.”

“They meet somewhere.”

Afiwa sounded less certain. But Senamé could still feel the inn’s ordinary pleasure: being tired somewhere unfamiliar, occupying an afternoon in which nobody expected her at this post.

The relief guard would arrive before long. They could hand over the watch and follow the southern path.

She looked towards the boundary stones.

“I want to come back.”

Afiwa began to promise they would, then stopped. Beyond the markers, the forest looked no different, but its protected paths could turn a traveller aside. Knowing the way out did not mean the way home would open.

“If they won’t admit you, I stay outside with you.”

The promise frightened Senamé more than the road. She pictured Afiwa sleeping in the rain because of something Senamé had chosen, smiling through it until the provisions ran out.

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“I should get to decide.”

Afiwa waited. Senamé pressed the blue knot once more, felt the warm cup against her palm and laid it with the others.

“I’m going to speak to the Python first.”

Afiwa’s face changed.

“About leaving?”

“About yesterday. The sitatunga knew something the readers don’t. Or something they won’t tell me.”

She drew out the unremarkable grey necklace. An animal had refused Kossiwa’s command rather than touch it. She wanted to hear what another animal would say.

Afiwa glanced at the bandage.

“You think he can stop that?”

“I think he can answer a question without putting me back on this post.”

She had visited the upper sanctuary before, carrying things too heavy or inconvenient for other women. This time she would bring her own offering and stay until she was heard.

A soft rattle interrupted her. Water was moving through the watch ditch.

A fresh current pushed dead leaves through the dry ditch. Senamé caught a palmful. It smelled of stone. Beneath her collar, the necklace tugged.

Tracing the current upstream brought her to an old channel disappearing between the roots. It led towards the sanctuary. She had known it dry for years.

While Afiwa gathered the knots, Senamé entered a sanctuary visit on tomorrow’s watch tablet, after relief. Such visits required notice, not permission. She wrote before anyone could complicate it.

Kossiwa came along the northern path as she was hanging the tablet back in place. Sealing thread rested at her hip, and the genette slept between her shoulders with its nose tucked beneath her collar. Her attention passed from the new entry to the water.

“You’re going to ask him about the invocation.”

Senamé was too tired to pretend otherwise.

“Unless you can tell me why it stopped.”

Kossiwa examined the current from the bank. For the first time since the duel, there was no audience to make ignorance uncomfortable.

“It has never refused me before.”

Senamé gave her time to add something, but Kossiwa had turned towards the nearest boundary stone. She checked its mark, leaving Senamé to return to the ditch.

She lifted a pale fragment from beneath a root. Joined scales patterned its transparent surface, too broad for any forest snake she knew. The whole piece was scarcely larger than her thumbnail.

The grey bead vibrated against her chest.

Senamé wrapped it in a leaf beside the scratched pottery. Tomorrow she would take both her fragment and her question to the sanctuary. Cool water continued to rise from beneath the roots.