I AM THE GOD OF LONELINESS as well as of the winds. My brother Lumar, the god of sweet water, closest to me in age of all the gods, is 423 years old. I am eleven, and I have no friends.
From my open-air bedroom on the roof of the temple, I study the mortal children of Akka, listen to their conversations, imitate their speech, practice their gestures. I even starve myself to be as skinny as they are.
My mati Hannu calls me a pretend mortal.
My favorite real mortal is a boy named Kudiya who lives in a hut halfway down Mount Enshi. He is kind and brave, and I want him to be my friend. One moonlit night, I decide to visit him. Before this, I’ve descended from Enshi Rock only for my annual festivals, and then my parents have come with me on their winged steeds. Whenever I’ve proposed going alone on one of my winds, my pado, Arduk, has looked worried, and Hannu has pounded her fist into her ball of clay.
But now they’re asleep. If they discover I’m gone, it will take them a while to spot me and even longer to saddle their flying horses. None of the gods has true flight. I can ride my winds, and Puru, the god of destiny, can disappear and reappear wherever he likes, or wherever fate takes him. But the others depend on their mounts.
As soon as I plunge below Enshi Rock on my night wind, I feel the chilly mountain air. Goose bumps rise on my arms. I don’t know if they are caused by the cold or by my nervousness.
For at least five minutes I stand outside Kudiya’s doorway, gathering my resolve. Finally, I push aside the sheepskin that hangs across the doorway. The hut is tiny. Fear of confinement adds to my unease. I bring my comforting breeze in with me, softly, softly, so Kudiya’s parents will continue to sleep. My quiet wind cushions my steps. I crouch next to Kudiya’s mat and stare. Wake up! He rolls over and flings out an arm.
I hiss, “Psst.”
He slumbers on.
I touch his outflung arm. His eyes snap open.
“Greetings, friend,” I whisper. I repeat, “Friend. Friend.” I beckon him to follow me.
Outside, he says, “Olus!”
How does he know? In our reflecting pool on Enshi Rock, I look like any mortal boy who’s tall for his age.
He shouts at the sky, “I’m having a vision!”
Hastily I cover his voice with my sighing wind. “Sh! I’m really here.”
He shakes his head. “You’re a vision, and you’ll bring us luck all year.”
“Touch me, Kudiya.”
“In my vision I touch your arm.” He does so.
We can’t be friends if he keeps thinking I’m a vision. I lift my tunic, pull aside my loincloth, and pee on the grass. “Would a vision do this?”
“Yes! A funny vision!” He shifts his loincloth and pees too. “Tomorrow there will be no brown grass, because I never left my mat.”
In the morning he’ll know the truth. “Let’s race.”
We tear through Kudiya’s tiny hamlet of five huts. I don’t use my winds to speed me along, although Kudiya is swifter than I am. We approach the Izin, a wide and sluggish river.
“You win,” I say.
We push through a forest of reeds and squeeze our toes in the river’s muddy bottom. The mud is so soft. My grin feels wide enough to touch my ears.
Kudiya tires of squelching. We return through the reeds to lie on the bank and stare up at the stars and at the underside of Enshi Rock, a small irregular black oval in the midnight-blue sky.
“What does this vision mean?” Kudiya asks.
“I’m not a vision.”
“Visions don’t tell what they mean. My parents will hire a diviner.”
“If I tell you why I’ve come, will that prove I’m not a vision?”
“No. But tell me.”
I hesitate. I’ve come in the hope he’ll be my friend, but I’ve observed that friendships grow gradually. One person doesn’t announce he wants a friend. I try to think of another reason for my visit.
He snores. My cradling wind wafts him back to his sleeping mat while I return to the temple roof, where Hannu and Arduk are waiting.
Even before I land, she shouts. “Where did you go?”
“Your mati was frightened, Turnip,” Arduk says. Turnip is his nickname for me, because he created turnips for my first birthday. He adds, “You could have been hurt.”
Gods can be injured, although we heal quickly.
“Where did you go?” Hannu repeats, louder than before.
“Just to a hut.” I tell them my adventure.
“Turnip . . .” Arduk sighs. “This boy will—”
“Friendship with a worshiper is impossible. Look at the boy tomorrow. You’ll see.”
I’m sure Hannu is wrong. My parents have little interest in mortals. Hannu doesn’t mean to, but sometimes she hurts them. She grows angry when her pottery doesn’t go well. If she is angry enough, rocks roll down mountains and fissures open in the earth.
The next day I watch and listen from the temple roof. At dawn Kudiya wakes his parents and pulls them outside, chattering about his vision.
He jumps like a puppet when he sees the brown grass. I laugh until I see his terror. His parents are terrified too. I listen to their conversation. It never occurs to me that I’m spying or eavesdropping. We gods have always watched and listened to mortals.
“He peed on our land?” Kudiya’s pado says.
“You peed after he did?” Kudiya’s mati says.
Kudiya nods.
“And then he left?” his pado adds.
“No. We raced to the river.”
“You let him win?” his mati asks. “Yes?”
Kudiya shrugs.
“You won! You offended him!” his pado says. “He was angry to begin with, and you made him angrier.”
They pray for an hour. I want to fly down and reassure them, but now I understand that I’ll frighten them even more. They sacrifice a sheep to me from their meager herd of three. I don’t want their poor sheep.
Over the next year I give them all the good fortune I can. I send rain clouds when their land is parched, blow away the clouds when sunshine is needed, keep their animals from wandering. The family prospers.
I don’t return to Kudiya or visit any other Akkan mortals.
When I am seventeen, I leave Enshi Rock. I hope to end my loneliness by living among mortals. Because I want to come and go unrecognized, I depart Akka too, although I promise my parents that I’ll return yearly for my festival.
Hannu is too angry with me to say farewell. Arduk asks me to down a goblet of therka with them before I go.
Therka is the beverage of the Akkan gods. We enjoy other drinks, too, and eat whatever food we like, but therka satisfies us as nothing else. It contains honey, flower juice, and Enshi Rock water, but the most important ingredients are extracts of each god’s and goddess’s power. On my ninth birthday, I added wind to the therka.
I gulp down my drink, eager to leave. Hannu sips hers to delay me. When she puts down her goblet, I kiss her. She turns her cheek away but squeezes my shoulder.
“We’ll miss you, Turnip,” Arduk says.
I nod. I’ll miss them, but I’m happy to be leaving. I don’t anticipate how difficult it will be to pretend to be mortal.
First I join a camel caravan as a spice merchant’s servant. I am kicked by the merchant’s camel, then by the merchant. My mischievous wind wants to take revenge, but I do the job myself. While the merchant sleeps, I steal his cargo and fly off on my steady wind. I deposit his little spice bags, one by one, on the route ahead. He will find them, or someone else will cook a tasty stew.
Next I’m hired as a jeweler’s helper. I am indoors all day, which I can hardly bear, even though the jeweler’s workshop is spacious. I like the man and enjoy his stories about who will wear this necklace and that bracelet. I fancy we’re friends and become too zealous on his behalf. When I use my nimble wind to speed the bead drill, he becomes afraid. Trembling, he dismisses me.
I harvest millet. On the second day a sickle gashes my leg. The wound will heal too quickly. I depart before I can become a source of fear again.
Now I despair. I’m not ready to live among mortals, in their very midst. I gather a cloud around myself and ride my winds over the lands surrounding Akka, seeking I don’t know what.
Everywhere people are together—except for the shepherds and the goatherds. I decide to try goat herding. I’ll still be lonely, but I’ll observe people without being observed myself. When I’m prepared, I’ll rejoin humanity.
Near the city of Hyte I discover a small valley of good grazing land, part of the estate of a palace official named Senat. The brook that waters the valley is a miracle in this dry countryside.
Senat is willing to rent the valley to me. “As your flock grows,” he says, “give me one kid in ten and you can stay as long as you like.”
It’s better than a fair rate. I begin my new life with the purchase of a dozen goats and a donkey, paid for with a silver goblet from Akka. I build a pen for the goats to stay in at night and dig a cellar to protect my goat’s milk and goat cheese from the heat of the day.
Senat’s generosity interests me, so he becomes the first mortal I observe. I watch him in his city house, and my attention is captured. I can hardly look away. My clever wind does my herding.
Senat and his family are what I’ve wanted. His daughter, Kezi, dances through the house. My eyes can barely keep pace with her feet. She and her mati, Merem, weave together. Merem makes bawdy jokes. Her daughter blushes. Merem’s fabric loom turns out tunics and cloaks and scarves, useful and handsome. Kezi’s rugs are more than useful. Her subjects are common things—a thistle, three pebbles, a scorpion—made uncommon by her artistry. My favorite is the thistle rug. The flower’s spines turn it into a miniature sun, and the hairs on the leaves are an army of silver arrows. Her name in the top border twists cleverly in and out of a leafy vine.
Kezi’s aunt Fedo stops by often to lean on her cane and gossip while her sister and niece work. Even Senat joins them now and then. I want to be in the room too. I long to be in Kezi’s presence when she dances across the courtyard and when she fingers her goat’s-wool thread, choosing a color.
I even wish I could join the family’s morning and evening prayers. The mood is serene in the reception room when Senat recites from the holy text of Admat, the god of Hyte. Senat looks to the side of the altar flame, never directly at it. Merem holds her daughter’s hand. Kezi sways as if she is longing to dance the prayer. A few servants fidget. The servant Nia, most devout of all, prostrates herself.
Curious, I read the holy text, which astounds me. Admat is believed to be everywhere at once and to be invisible to the living, visible only in Wadir, the land of the dead.
No Akkan god is invisible, and none of us can be in more than one spot at the same time. I wonder how Admat can be everywhere. Is he in my sandal? Or is he my sandal itself? Why would a god bother to be a sandal? Does he wear shoes or sandals himself, invisible ones?
Admat is supposed to know everything, and yet, according to the sacred text, mortals keep surprising him by disobeying his commands. He’s forever getting angry at them or forgiving them.
I consider a trip to Akka to ask Ursag, the god of wisdom, about Admat. I want to know if Ursag has ever met Admat or heard reports of him from anyone who has. Chiefly I want to know if there is an Admat at all.
But I don’t leave. My god’s vision isn’t farsighted enough to see Hyte from Akka, and I don’t want to miss even a day of watching.
Nonetheless, when something happens, I’m asleep under a tamarind tree. When I awaken, Merem is ill. I jump up, my body straining southward. If I could cure her, I would fly to her bedside on my fast wind, but I have no power over disease.