“Is that the crow god?” a small voice asked.
The woman whispered for the child to be quiet, but Serapio said, “Let them come.” He remembered what it was like to be a child, even before he had been dedicated to his purpose. His mother always mourning for the life she had lost, his father angry at her melancholy, the long stretches of loneliness he had endured, even in a home full of other people. He knew how difficult it was to be young, so small and so powerless.
He bent down and motioned the child forward. After a word of encouragement from the mother, hesitant feet approached.
He held out a hand. He no longer needed a knife for this trick. He imagined his thumb a crow talon, long and black and sharp, and knew it had changed when he heard the others gasp. He sliced the tip of his finger to draw blood and then called the shadow.
“Don’t touch,” he warned the child. “Just watch.”
He formed the shadow into a crow. The shadow crow flapped its wings and hovered over his hand, and the child exclaimed softly. He broke the crow into two crows, who circled each other before uniting and reforming into a single crow and then into a single feather. The smoke feather drifted down to lie against his palm. He willed it to dissolve, and in its place was a real feather.
“You can touch this one,” he told the child. “Go on. Take it.” Warm fingers grazed his skin, and then the feather was gone. He quickly closed his hand into a fist, hoping the adults did not notice the thin layer of skin peeled from his palm.
“A gift from the Odo Sedoh.” The mother bowed. “We do not deserve this.”
Serapio straightened. “Nevertheless.”
And then Maaka and the woman were talking again, which left Serapio to wander through the house on his own. He walked carefully, exploring the place that should have been his had the Night of Knives never happened. He tried to imagine his mother here as a child, no older than the one he had gifted with the feather, but it was difficult. His thoughts snagged on the last time he had seen her, the leaden weight of the poison flower milk in his veins, the dull bite of the needle through his eyelids. He shook those memories off and tried to imagine himself in this house instead, but that felt like pain and betrayal. Frustrated, he thrust all his memories aside and tried to let the walls of the house speak on their own. But the murmured conversation between Maaka and the mother blunted whatever the walls might say. More noises that did not belong to him or his memories: the snuffling wails of an infant, the delighted giggles of a child with a feather. He bowed his head. There was nothing of his family left in this place.
He felt dizzy, untethered from the earth and out of control, falling upward as everything he knew shrank below him. His breaths came short, panicked, and he hurried to the door, stumbling past Maaka.
“Are you unwell, Odo Sedoh?” Maaka’s concern trailed him as the man made rushed apologies to the mother and caught up with him halfway across the courtyard.
“Is there a bench here?” Serapio gasped, remembering the kitchen. “Somewhere to sit?”
“Over here.” He pulled at Serapio’s arm.
He shook him off, annoyed. “Just tell me! I don’t need your help!”
“Apologies,” Maaka said, chastened. “Four paces forward and to your right.”
Serapio used his staff to find the bench and collapsed, trembling. Memories poured over him, none of them good, and he hunched into himself. He turned to Maaka abruptly. “Do you know my name?”
“I…” The man sounded flustered. Unsure. “You are the Odo Sedoh.”
“I mean the name I was given at birth. The one my mother and father chose.”
“To me you are the Odo Sedoh. It is the highest honor.”
“I have a favorite food I enjoy. Did you know that?”
“I…” The Odohaa sounded almost frightened, clearly at a loss.
“I very much like chocolate. I had it once when I was a boy, a present from my tutor on my birthday.”
“If the Odo Sedoh wishes chocolate…”
“No, I do not wish chocolate.”
“Then why…？”
“The kind I had was very spicy. I had something like it on the solstice, too. Here, in Titidi.”
“Shall I find the chocolate vendor, Lord?”
“No, Maaka. I only wanted you to know that I like chocolate.” He tried again. “Do you know any stories?”
“What kind of stories does the Odo Sedoh wish to hear?”
“Something from your childhood. Something of this place, of Odo.”