Chapter Text
Your former glories and all the stories
Dragged and washed with eager hands
But woah, oh your city lies in dust, my friend
- Siouxsie and the Banshees, Cities in Dust
The Suli were travellers. For them, home just meant family. It's only natural that Inej, who spent her whole life with the Suli, thought of home and family as the same thing. For her, home was helping her mother cook while watching her father prepare her cousins for their performance. For her, family was the caravan and the tents and the air, where she belonged.
The caravan was moving to the next city today. Her parents let her sleep in since the only things left to move for that day were too big for her to help, but the sound of her family moving around was enough to wake her anyway. She got out of bed and dressed quickly, sneaking out before her parents packing the horses in front of the door could notice. As she passed them, she heard a snippet of their conversation. She didn’t want to eavesdrop, but her curiosity got the best of her, so she stayed to listen in on them a bit.
“... asked her if Asha and Sweta could let her be in their next act,” she heard her mother say. “She said they would love to include her. I want to tell her tomorrow as a birthday gift, but I don’t know if we should let her do it. I know she wants this more than anything and I would hate to take it away from her, but this would be such a big change.” Her mother was not one to worry too much. She was sure the Saints would guide her and her family back to the right path. Inej admired her unwavering faith and the way she never let anyone sway her mind on anything. If she was worried about her, she had a reason to be, but Inej knew what she wanted. She wanted to stay with her family, she wanted to show a crowd how good she was, and she hoped her parents wouldn’t stop her from reaching her dream.
“I think it will be alright, Dana,” her father replied, and Inej sent a prayer to the Saints. If anybody could change her mother’s mind, it was her husband. “She has the opportunity, she should at least try it. If she doesn’t like it, they can stop practising, and if she doesn’t like performing, she doesn’t have to.” Her father took her mother’s hand in his and kissed it.
“I suppose you have a point,” she sighed. “I just wish she didn’t have to grow up so fast.”
“It has to happen sooner or later. It’ll be alright,” her father promised. “You should be happy she doesn’t want to climb on the tightrope yet. I’m sure she’ll do it one day and give us all a heart attack.” She didn’t stay to hear what they talked about after that, but her mother’s answering giggle rang in her ear as she dashed away to tell the news to someone.
She found her cousins sitting next to the stream just out of the view of their family. The stream was small and full of rocks, and the children loved playing in it. They came up with more and more complicated tricks to impress the others. It wasn’t a competition, but Inej was sure she had won with her performance just two weeks before they moved. She had blindfolded herself and jumped over the rocks without faltering even once. It hadn’t been very hard, she’d done it a hundred times before, she knew where to put her feet, which rocks to avoid. Hanzi had told her she ‘looked like she had wings’ and his sisters should include her in their act. She hadn’t stopped begging her mother to ask them since then.
Asha and Sweta were sewing something purple and shiny, the fabric not unlike the night sky, but she was so thrilled about the news that she didn’t even ask them what it was. She wanted someone to share her happiness with.
“Sweta, Asha you won’t guess what I just heard! Mom said I can finally perform with you! But shh, it’s a secret!” She was practically jumping with excitement. The twins were three years older than her, but their parents were very close, so she had time to bond with them. Sweta was her best friend. It took her a while to open up to Inej, but from the moment they first met, she treated Inej as an equal, even though she was the youngest of their group, so Inej gravitated towards her without much thought. Sweta loved insects and anything she could find in the grass. She had a collection of four-leaf clovers and ripped-off wings of bugs. Her twin was the opposite.
Asha was loud and rowdy, such a perfect copy of Hanzi that people joked they should’ve been twins instead, but Inej was sure they were happier this way. She and Hanzi teased each other, but Sweta was her other half. They knew the other’s thoughts and even if they preferred to do different things, they stayed glued at the hip. Asha dragged Sweta along to cause chaos and chase butterflies and she stayed with her sister when she spent a whole afternoon reading a fairytale or kneeling in the grass, watching the ants try to move a particularly large stick.
“Well, it is hardly a secret if everybody knows it,” Asha joked. Sweta smiled at her, silently agreeing with her sister. “Our mother told us about it first thing in the morning. She said we should start making your dress for you if you will be joining us. Would you like to help?” She held out the shimmering fabric, and Inej nodded with a grin on her face. “Then you can sew the pearls on the cape. You do know how to use a needle, right? Well then, come sit down.”
Asha and her sister wore matching outfits on stage, made of the same fabric they were using now, but she hadn’t made the connection when she first saw it. In truth, as enamoured as she was with the idea of joining them, she hadn’t thought she’d get an outfit of her own. “Our aunts helped us make our own for our first performance,” Sweta told her. “When we’re done, you can try it on and we’ll put the cloak on your shoulders. It'll be our very own secret initiation ceremony.” Asha winked at her and even without the actual clothes ready, she still felt even more excited than she did in the morning. She was going to be one of them. It was going to be the start of something new, a new chapter in her life.
Inej looked at the cloth in her hand. It was an even darker purple than the rest of the fabrics, almost black. She always thought the twins looked like they cut out pieces of the night sky to wrap around themselves, the pearls glinting like stars. Now she would make her own piece of the sky. She took one of the stars out of the bag Sweta handed to her and rolled it around between her fingers. She lowered herself on the stone and got to work. She threaded the needle and struggled a bit with tying a proper knot, but she fell into the rhythm of the repetitive work easily.
They spent the morning quietly, focused on the way their fingers moved the stitches into place. It was a bit like magic, how something so thin can transform textile into clothes that’ll follow Inej through her performances, and even Asha was mesmerised by her work. As for Inej, she stopped after every pearl and held her work far away from herself, trying to determine where to sew the next one, completely lost in adding stars to the sky. When they were finished, they laid the clothes out on the grass to admire their work. Inej has seen the girls perform, dreamed of joining them all week, but she didn’t think it would come so fast. Seeing the dress laid out, the dress she would wear during their show in a few weeks was much more definite than her daydreams. The elated feeling from the morning has dissipated, leaving behind a much calmer euphoria and lurking anticipation, along with a bit of anxiety. She understood what her mother was worried about. This would be a big change. She was going to perform for a crowd, she was going to be a part of a team. Both of those things sounded delightfully new.
Asha was the first to get tired of waiting and gently shoved Inej forward. “Well? Aren’t you going to put them on?” So she did. Sweta and Asha turned their backs as she quickly tugged the shirt and pants on. “You can turn back,” she told them as she inspected her reflection in the water. “Inej, you look wonderful!” Asha gushed. “Purple is a great colour on you!” Sweta smiled quietly and picked the cape up. Asha leapt to her side and tried to tamper down her excitement, but Inej could see she wasn’t very successful. “Come on, Inej, turn around. I want to see what the cloak looks like on you.” Sweta was a bit better at hiding how eager she was, but the way her smile was practically splitting her cheeks in half betrayed her.
Inej’s back hurt from being hunched forward all morning and they all had multiple pinpricks on their hands, but it was so worth it. She turned back to the water and the twins carefully grabbed the cape and put it around her shoulders. She twirled around to see the reflection of the pearls glitter in the water and they all giggled.
**
She loved the tightrope more than anything in the whole world. She never felt as right as she did when she was up in the air. Most of the time, she did it solely for pleasure, to test her limits, to see how much she could do. But she liked performing too. She often snuck to the exits after the show ended, to hear a few snippets of conversation, to know if she left a mark on the audience's memory. It was always interesting to hear what they thought of her.
She was preparing for a show, putting on her new clothes. Even after she'd become a solo act, she kept the clothes Asha and Sweta helped her make, save for the cape which would’ve gotten tangled or caught in something during the performance. She reluctantly put it away in one of the boxes under her bed, but the time came when she outgrew the rest of the clothes as well, the shirt and pants Asha and Sweta made, no matter how much she tried to delay giving them up. She and her mother sat down and made her a new outfit. She wanted it to be darker than the first one, but they made it out of a thinner material. She thought it looked plain, and her mother said the same thing. She promised Inej she'd make a decorated vest for her to wear.
"Hello, darling." She was fixing the collar of the shirt and she didn't hear her mother slip in through the curtains separating her from the rest of the world. In her hands, she held a package. "I want this to be a surprise, so close your eyes and I'll help you put it on."
She closed her eyes and obediently let her mother arrange her arms and fasten the clips in the front. She tried to sneak a look at herself in the mirror, but her eyes were gently covered with a palm.
When the palm was finally removed and she opened her eyes, she was once again amazed by her mother’s skills. As far as she was concerned, her mother was the most talented cook and storyteller in the whole world, but now she had to add the best tailor ever to that list.
The front was off-white with golden clips holding it together. They were elaborate, but nothing was sticking out, so it wasn't going to get stuck in anything. Her mother hugged her from behind and she gladly leaned back.
"Turn around, I want to see your face when you see the back," her mother told her, and she hesitantly freed herself from her embrace. The back was as dark as the night sky, and there were pearls stitched on it. She spun around and hugged her mother once again. At first, she thought she made it so it looked a bit like her old cape, but she recognised the stitch in one of the corners. The I.G. she signed her cape with.
"Please welcome to the stage Inej Ghafa!" she heard her uncle's booming voice say. She gave her mother one last squeeze before stepping on the stage.
She looked over to where the other performers sat, in the very back on equipment they weren’t using for that day’s show, and tried to find her cousins with her eyes. They've seen her performances countless times, they knew she wouldn’t fall, but they still liked to sit through them, even if they didn’t quite pay attention to her every movement like they did when they were practising.
She climbed the ladder quickly and gracefully before finally meeting Sweta's eyes. They were easier to find, not dancing around the audience and the podium like her sister’s. Sweta shoved her sister, and they both stared at Inej curiously. She never paid attention to her audience, she’d learned the lesson about distractions when she fell because of the net, and they did not understand what was so different that day.
When she was sure their eyes were fixed on her, she turned around and stepped onto the thin wire suspended in the air. As she did, she strained to hear her cousin’s reaction. She knew the audience held their breaths while she was in the air as if any small sound might throw her off her balance, as if she’d perform in front of so many people if that were true, but today, she hardly cared about anybody other than the two girls sitting in the back huddled together on a swing. She would’ve liked to say she could tell the exact moment when they realised what she was wearing just from the weight of their gazes on her back, but Asha’s excited scream had a lot more to do with it.
She gave them a small wave before forgetting about everything other than the rope below her feet. She was right in the middle of it, where she was supposed to stumble, to make it look even scarier. There. Good. Now she had to get to the other side. It was what she was good at. The careful journey between the two steady poles in the air where she was left to her own devices. One foot after the other. She had been made for this, she knew it in her heart of hearts.
She would’ve happily lived the rest of her life in the air, but alas, she had to climb down to let the next performer’s equipment be set up. When she stepped off the stage and out of the tent to go around and join the rest of her family, Sweta and Asha were already waiting for her. They didn’t speak as they led her to their swings, but she was sure there were tears shining in their eyes, and hers felt a little wet too.
Years later, when Inej was far away from her family, she would try to remember as many details about the cloak and the performances when she wore it. Every star on her back, every shocked scream from the crowd she could summon from her memory filled her with a new bliss amidst her endless suffering. Asha and Sweta had few things to remember their cousin by, but Dana gave them the vest a year after her disappearance. “You should be the ones to give this back to her.” It hung above their doorway for a long time before Inej held it in her hands again.
**
She knew how to fall, so when she was taken, it didn't feel like the ground being pulled from underneath her, she would've known how to deal with that. Accept the fall, tuck her head in and roll when she hits the ground. Assess the damage and get back up as soon as she can. Walk back to her home. One foot after the other.
But there was no landing. She was stuck falling, and she could do nothing while she waited for the inevitable. It felt like her wings were plucked from her back and she wasn't sure she would be able to get back up after this one.
She thought she would be fine after she reached the ground. She had a home and a family, a family that was supposed to look for her. They were supposed to take her back to the caravan so she could be back in the air in no time, but escape started to seem unlikely when she was curled up in the belly of a ship with so many muddy and terrified children.
Her hands were tied uncomfortably and she kept bumping shoulders with the boy to her right. In broken Suli he’d told her that they were captured by slavers, that they were going to be sold. “The ship will dock in a week. I heard them talk about new buyers and higher wages,” he’d said. He looked pale and sickly, his hair tangled and dirty. He said one of the men beat him for eavesdropping. He wanted to show her his scars, but one of the men yelled something at him in a brusque language that she recognised as Kerch. “As if it matters to them if we speak. It’s not like we can get out of here.” She decided she did not like his smile. It was hollow, like it hurt him to smile, like he was doing it because it would even hurt more not to.
The boy had fresh bruises and scars all over his body. She has fallen off the tightrope before, her father has spent months teaching her how to fall, but she's never seen anything as bad as the ones he had. There were two men with them, both of them had a sword on their hips. They sat in one of the corners, playing cards. Inej could tell they wanted to be up with the rest of the crew by the way they grumbled and frowned when the sounds of cheering reached them.
She spent the night dozing off and waking up again every time someone walked past her. She was a light sleeper, but it had never been a problem for her. Back at home, she and her parents went to sleep at the same time, she only had to ignore the distant sounds of the towns they set up next to. She woke up early and lay in her bed for a long time, just listening to her family and the noise of the locals starting their days. Now she couldn't even escape to her dreams.
She thought of her parents as she drifted off to sleep yet again. She thought of the smell of freshly baked bread and the noise of her family as they set up the ropes for her to perform. She thought they were looking for her. It was all supposed to be fine.