Moita dwells in the waste. Her mother calls it a place without value, where no soul finds rest, where the gods never walk. Moita walks there and does not believe, in her child’s heart, that the gods would forsake so rich a land. She has seen fish in the muddy springs and wolf tracks in the sere featherlands. Her we’ma tells her that the wolves no longer live there, that they fed so well on the northern children that they sank from their weight into the earth. Moita does not believe this. She believes the wolves stay hidden, like the fish in the mud, and that when the tracks of the wood hens are no longer seen there, they will rise once more to feast.
Moita brings home the fruit of her labors. Smooth pebbles and twisted branches, shards of coal, and desert flowers. Her mother has no names for these things. She says their people have not long dwelt there and so do not know what the gods might have called them. Moita tells her mother that she has named a thing, a purple spike of leaves, and calls it ‘the bruised hand.’ Her mother says it is a good name. The words sink deeply into Moita. She returns to the waste, and though the gods no longer walk there, she has found their call inside her and will name everything she sees.
The creek bed is eggshell blue and becomes ‘the sky underfoot.’ The rock that casts a shadow over the stunted trees is ‘the place never lost.’ The trees are bristle tongue, black leaf, four fingers, yellow wanderer, sleeping child. She names them all, and brings the knowledge of each one back to the ears of her mother and her we’ma, though they never set foot into the waste. If the gods cannot come to the world, she thinks, she will bring the knowledge of the world to the gods.
One day a man came. He was not a god, but a southerner. The ones her ma and we’ma called ‘too goods,’ with greased hair and a pinched nose. Moita had seen them before, across the marketplace, but never at her house. He did not kneel upon the hearth rug, as her neighbors did, and he did not whisper the name of the undergod before he spoke. His words were thin, like birdsong, and she could not understand him. Her mother didn’t speak, only her we’ma, and both stood with arms folded over their stomachs, a rude gesture Moita had been warned many times not to make. Moita wanted to offer him a slice of mutton, but her we’ma lifted a hand to stall her, just two fingers, and the man did not notice.
They left the waste behind soon after. Before the harvest, before the rains, before their neighbor had her baby. Moita did not want to leave. She wanted to stay, to see the fish emerge from their long sleep, to see the wolves return. Her we’ma told her that this was not their land, that it had never been their land. Her mother said nothing. She took the rug and the fire tools, but left behind the shaved wood and the boiling pot, and the boards that made up their bed. We shall leave them for the next family, her we’ma said, we shall leave them to the gods.
Moita left too her weaving stand, and some of her carving stones. We should be generous, her we’ma said, and Moita was generous. But she went into the waste one last time. She went into the wood and through the blue-shelled course of the stream bed, and to the sounding rock, and the place where the purple leaves grew. And she took with her their names.
2015
