I DAMPEN MY SQUARE OF CLAY from my bowl of water. Mmm. The water is cool on my hot fingers. Thank you, Admat, for the cool water and the soft clay.
Evening is coming. I’m on the mud-brick floor of our reception room in my pado’s house in the city of Hyte. The clay is on a plate in my lap. Using one of my pado’s styluses, I’m drawing dancing ostriches in the clay. The ostriches will bob and skip across the next rug I weave. I love to make rugs and to dance.
My aunt Fedo sits in the copper-inlay chair, her leather sack on her lap, her cane leaning against a chair arm. She is telling our servant Nia about buying pomegranates in the market. Nia rests her elbows on the high table. Her face is blank. She smiles only when she is praying.
Looking down at my clay, I scratch in an ostrich leg.
Bang!
Before I can see what happened, I am in Aunt Fedo’s arms, and she is limping across the room with me. She is shouting, “Snake!”
Nia yells, “Admat!”
I try to turn my head to see, but Aunt Fedo is holding me too tight. She rushes through the door frame to our courtyard. I hear more running feet and Pado and Mati shouting too.
Aunt Fedo yells that an adder was about to strike me. She caned it, but she isn’t sure if it’s dead.
“I’ll get an axe.” Pado’s feet thud the other way.
Mati takes me and holds me in the air away from her. She eyes me up and down, side to side. When she lets me go, I start back toward the reception room, hoping to glimpse the snake.
Mati pulls me back. “Fedo! Thanks to Admat you were here.”
“Thanks to Admat, who gave me owl eyes.”
Nia echoes, “Thanks to Admat.”
Adders are supposed to have lips like people, and their mouths are supposed to close into a grin. Instead of ostriches, my next carpet will be of smiling adders, doing a zigzag dance.
When Pado returns, he gives me my clay and bowl of water and hands Aunt Fedo her sack. He says the snake is dead. I feel close to tears.
“Your house’s omens were mixed today, Senat,” Aunt Fedo says to Pado. “The snake was bad, but my cane was good. Perhaps Admat took away the strength in my legs so I could save Kezi.”
I separate myself from Mati and take Aunt Fedo’s hand. “Come see my new rug.” I tug her to the courtyard recess, where my child’s loom for rugs sits next to Mati’s loom for cloth. “I didn’t finish.” Above the three dancing mongooses, the top border and my name in wedge letters are yet to be knotted in. I knot from side to side, as I was taught. So the letters of my name will grow gradually, all together, not one at a time.
Aunt Fedo leans back on her heels. “Those mongooses can dance! How old are you, Kezi?”
“Seven and a half.”
“My niece is a marvel.” She gives me a date candy from her sack. “Have you seen the carpet, Senat? One mongoose is leaping.”
Pado nods, but I can tell he’s not thinking about my rug. We return to him and Mati.
“Thank you for saving Kezi,” Pado says. He pulls me against his legs.
“Thanks to Admat,” Mati adds. “The one, the all.”
As I’ve been taught, I say, “As he wishes, so it will be.”
Aunt Fedo says, “Senat, you should hire a masma to cast a spell to rid the house of vermin.”
A masma is a sorcerer. I’d love to meet a masma, but Pado would never hire one.
“We’ll be fine,” he says. He strokes my hair straggles away from my forehead. “Fedo, we’re in your debt forever.”
Aunt Fedo waves the words away, but Mati echoes, “Forever.”
Proud of myself for remembering, I quote the holy text. “A debt unpaid . . .”
“Hush, Kezi,” Mati says, sounding nervous.
I hear Nia whisper,
“A debt unpaid is an open wound.
Admat will make it fester.”