Thinking on Luck is too hard. It makes my chest hurt.
I put my hands to my belly, suddenly remembering Soli’s roundness and what Luck and I did in the pool. My own flesh slopes in slightly below my ribs. But it could be early still, I remind myself. The thought moves my heart to pounding and fills me with a mix of dread and hope. It could be, I think. My head feels light. I know I didn’t deserve Iri’s sacrifice, but if I have Luck’s smallone, that might make it worthwhile. Maybe some part of him can live on that way. Is it possible to want something and not want it at once?
When she finishes reading, Miyole serves herself some stew and sits at the table, swinging her legs. She stares at the light tablet, stopping to tap it every once in a while and swallow another mouthful of soup. When she’s finished, she cleans her bowl, then neatly folds the tablet back into its square and places it carefully in its drawer. She draws out a sheet of cut metal, along with welding goggles and a little handtool. She sits cross-legged on the floor, twist-clicks the end of the tool so it buzzes to life, and leans over the metal sheet.
“What are you making?” It still hurts to talk, but it’s better than thinking.
“Hmm?” Miyole looks up at me through the goggles.
“The hangings.” I gesture around. “You’re the one what makes them?”
“Oh. Yup.” She holds the piece of metal up so I can see. “This one’s going to be a fish. My manman sells them on her flights sometimes to help buy my lessons.”
“They’re beautiful,” I say.
Miyole shrugs, but I catch a small smile at the corner of her mouth.
I lie on my cot and pretend I can feel Luck’s arms around me as I watch Miyole turn the blank, jagged piece of metal into a scaled fish with lips and eyes and striated fins. The smell of burned metal curls the air. I close my eyes and picture the smallone, Luck’s child, tucked in me. I see Iri again, falling. Blood on her teeth.
In the high window, the sky goes from pale, hot white to deep, creamy blue. All the sounds below us grow louder: the lap of waves on wood, motors gunning, roosters calling, cats scrapping and yowling, people shouting. Wherever we are, it sounds bigger than I imagined. It’s as if someone has settled a cook-pot lid over us, and all the noises are trapped inside. Miyole runs up to the roof to start the generator, then back down again to flick on the ceiling fans and the single tube light suspended over the kitchen table. I doze.
The whum-whum roar of the mail sloop vibrates overhead, waking me. Miyole dashes to the window. From my cot, I watch Perpétue’s ship lights whip overhead and listen for the sigh of the burners winding down. A loud metal bang sounds, and a few seconds later Perpétue’s feet beat up the outer stairs. She breezes in, humming to herself, untucks the knife from her belt and drops it on the table alongside a handful of irregular metal scraps.
“Manman, look!” Miyole holds up the fish, its scales shimmering orange in the low light.
Perpétue takes it and holds it at arm’s length, careful of the pointed fins. “Lovely.” She smiles at Miyole. “Sharp and lovely, like its maker.”
“Did you get me more?” the girl asks.
Perpétue tilts her head to the scraps. “On the table.”
Miyole skips over. She sifts through the metal while Perpétue takes a yellowed plastic jug of water down from a shelf.
“How are you, fi? Any better?” Perpétue calls over her shoulder as wets her hands from the jug, then pumps soap into them and rubs them briskly together.
“So,” I say, even though I’m not sure.
Perpétue turns to her daughter. “Did she eat?”
“Yes, manman,” Miyole says. “I read her my lessons.”
Perpétue splashes water over her hands and dries them on a rag tied to her belt. “That’s good, ma chère.” She kisses her daughter’s head. “Did you eat?”
Miyole nods.
“Good. Go and wash up for bed.”
Perpétue heats a bowl of soup for herself, then breaks down the portable stove and stows it beneath the table. She brings her bowl over and pulls up a chair across from my cot.
“You’ve been sick.” She takes a bite and talks around it. “Your friend, that woman who was with you on Bhutto station, she said you have family planetside?”
I nod and swallow to clear my throat. Iri, the blood on her teeth. “The so doctor’s daughter. She’s my blood modrie. My mother’s sister.”
“Your tante?” Perpétue raises her eyebrows. “That’s good. That’s close family.”
I shake my head. “Not really. I never met her. Or, well . . . she never met me.”
Perpétue leans back in her chair. “But you know her name. What was it?”
“Soraya Hertz,” I say carefully. “But I don’t think she knows about me.”
“You know where she lives?”
“Mumbai?” I say.
Perpétue waits. When I don’t say more, she leans forward in the chair again. “That’s it? Just Mumbai?”
I nod.
“No street or neighborhood or quarter?”
I shake my head.
Perpétue sighs and works her tongue around the inside of her bottom lip, eyes on the fan blades spinning in the breeze. “Anything else about her? Anything to help us track her down?”
“She’s some kind of doctor,” I say. “And my grandfather, her father, he was a doctor, too.”
“Do you know his name?”
“He was Hertz, too,” I say.
“And your tante never married? Never changed her name?” Perpétue rubs her hands together, deep in thought.
Panic strikes me. What if she’s changed it? What if it isn’t enough to track her down?
“I only saw her the once, some ten turns back,” I say. “Do you think we can find her?” If Iri were here, she would know what to do.
Perpétue shakes her head. She rests her forehead on her hands. “I don’t know, Ava.” She looks up at me again. “Mumbai’s a city of a hundred and seventy-five million. Add to that, we don’t know if her name’s the same, or even if she’s still there.”
One hundred seventy-five million. It’s a number so large my mind can’t grab hold of it. My crewe numbered a slip over two hundred, the Æthers somewhere near five hundred. I don’t think I’ve seen more than one or two thousand people in all my life, counting my time at the station concourses. Any number bigger than that might as well not be real. I fix my eyes on the dark square of sky beyond Perpétue’s shoulder and hug my sides, willing myself not to cry. I want to go back to sleep, to dream of Luck and the private glow that surrounded us after we sealed ourselves. Or better yet, not to dream at all.