Mal rubbed her itching eyes as she stood outside the crematorium with the other mourners, almost dislodging Gwenh's glasses from her face. Kaia had grabbed the wrong pair out of her bag, placing them on her head while she was getting Clover ready for the day — by the time she knocked them onto her nose, they were already halfway-gone and running late, and she had decided to just push through it. The sudden switch back to a weaker prescription had her eyes strained and over-sensitive, and taking them off altogether didn't help. She pulled them off of her nose anyway and folded them into the collar of her shirt with a rushing exhale, grinding the heel of her palm into her eye.
Kaia squeezed her shoulder. “Are you in pain?” They were dressed in a white pleated blouse with the high, long collar and ribbon epaulettes, long hair hanging in freshly-styled waves around their shoulders — overly casual, for an Akwesasne funeral, but eye-wateringly fancy for the surrounding crowd. She should have told them to dress down, but it was nice to have someone else draw all the attention, for once: they bore it with better grace anyway, quietly preening every time they caught someone eyeing their clothes, even as their fingers absently plucked at the fabric that no longer fit close to their hip. A stab of guilt lanced through her at the lingering evidence of the frantic pace they had set to catch up with her, the lost fat and the listless exhaustion and the pained, betrayed eyes.
"I'm fine." Not that she would say, if she wasn't, not when Tai-Song had been waiting long enough to be put to rest. Funerals waited for no one, not even ones who still carried a stabbing pain in their gut. Clover snuggled closer as she shifted her weight to keep the cramps at bay, the hard edge of the baby-sized snorkel digging insistently into her shoulder. She kept rubbing her eyes, and the ends of her recently-cut hair tickled against her chin.
Kaia had been quiet when braiding her hair that morning, tying it off once at the end and once at the nape — for once, Mal was happy to let the quiet linger, even when it made her sharp inhale obvious as they reached for the sharp scissors waiting on the counter. They had paused, meeting her eyes in the mirror to check in, and when she shakily nodded they squeezed her shoulder once before cutting the braid down to the root. The cut hair was now coiled in her palm, waiting to be buried with Tai-Song's urn.
She blinked hard to soothe her eyes, curling her toes inside the soft leather of her moccasins to ground herself in the present. It occurred to her that someone was cutting it dangerously close: she looked around, squinting past the beacon of Kaia’s pressed white blouse to scan the faces around them. “Do you see Zed?”
They glanced at the crematorium. “She’s not in there already?”
Mal very much doubted it — drone or human, Yuen-Fa wouldn't let Zed sit in on the cremation as a perfect stranger. However, she wouldn't have forbidden Zed's presence entirely: that wasn't the done thing in the city, not even for the worst enemies of the bereaved or deceased. Untouchables didn't nurse grievances on days of mourning, so long as unwanted guests stayed out of the way and didn't wear out their welcome. “You’re taller — can you see her?”
They glanced around obediently, but shook their head. “Maybe she thought it would make a scene?”
They weren't wrong, but it didn’t seem right to hold the funeral without her. Clover fussed, already tired of wearing her snorkel, and she craned her neck to rest her temple against her child’s soft hair, grateful for the distraction. She could swear that she was just a little bit heavier than she remembered, her head sitting a little higher on her shoulder than it had before.
“Are you sure you don’t want to take her back to Un— back to your uncle's?”
“I’m sure.” The city and Akwesasne were alike in encouraging parents to leave their young children out of funeral proceedings, and under any other circumstances, she would have abided by the practise. She cuddled her daughter closer and gently rubbed her temple against her hair, since she could not kiss her head. Under these circumstances, she would not be separated from her child, and she would not be missing this funeral.
The door to the crematorium shifted open, the base catching on the concrete pad like it always did. Yuen-Fa emerged with eyes red and cheeks stained with tears, cradling Tai-Song’s urn to her chest. Sweat beaded over her bare arms from the heat inside the crematorium, soaking the edges of the white scarf tied around her hand, the long jacket draped over her forearm. Behind her, Willow and Dominik followed and flanked: Willow looked as though he had come straight from the front, his greasy hair tied back in a ragged tail, his sweaty face smeared with gun oil and soot, wearing Tai-Song’s jacket; Dominik had a thick cast on his left leg and Tai-Song’s necklace around his neck, moving slowly and awkwardly on homemade crutches. He quickly looked away from Mal as they passed her by, muttering a hoarse apology, but Willow met her gaze with a steely lack of regret. He nodded to her, just once: I won’t apologize for this, not when you would have asked the same of me.
She nodded back, surprised to find that she had no resentment to hide. He looked away with a tiny flicker of relief, hand steadying on the small of Dominik’s back as they followed through the wake Yuen-Fa had carved into the crowd. Kaia muttered something uncharitable, as soon as they were out of earshot, and Mal hissed for them to can it as she turned to follow them. She kept her eyes down and ignored the looks of muted surprise from the faces around her: it was her right as a close friend to walk behind Dominik and Willow, though it meant walking in a cluster of people she didn’t recognize, though it was a minor breach of etiquette to drag Kaia along behind her.
Like every other funeral, the first half of the procession was dedicated to the sound of a hundred feet marching toward the graveyard. The dull hum of a crowd breathing together without speaking felt so deep and grand that it seemed unbreakable, until Yuen-Fa began to sing in her rasping, grief-stricken voice: “Little brother, where are you? I’d send my love, if only I knew.”
Like every funeral, the crowd answered back: “It’s time to go, it’s time to sleep; time to leave us while we weep."
“Lover, did you lose your way?" Willow’s voice was strong enough to carry them both, when Dominik was wheezing too hard to sing. "We see no footprints along the bay.”
“It’s time to go, it’s time to sleep; time to leave us while we weep.”
Family and lovers having said their piece, it was time for the friends, the confidants. Mal knew her couplet by heart, but she held her tongue, waiting her turn. Those closer to him in these interim years would have the first slots, and once they had spoken their goodbyes, she would bring up the rear with the words shared between her and Gwenh.
She waited, and waited, but no one stepped up to sing. Finally, she lifted her head and looked around at those she was paying deference to — every one of them had their eyes firmly fixed on their feet, a clear sign that they had nothing to say.
More than anything, it made her angry: if these people had nothing to say for the person they had lost, etiquette expected them to stay out of the procession and support the true mourners after, not to mill around and pointlessly take up space. This was meant to be an intimate and loving farewell, but it was being watered down by people who had no business being here: what right did they have to show up now, when if any one of them had stepped up when it mattered, Tai-Song might still be alive? What could he have possibly done to deserve to be abandoned, and then ignored?
Her free hand swung against the meat of her thigh, a loud, stinging slap that shocked a collective gasp from Tai-Song's so-called friends. With everyone's attention on her, she straightened her back and spoke with confidence that she had no choice but to feel, just so her voice wouldn't shake in anger:
“Carve it there upon your grave: too young, my friend, but forever brave.”
She was met with another beat of silence, and her hand clenched into a fist to think that the crowd may deny him yet again. After a momentary lag the voices answered, surprised and chagrined in equal measure: “It’s time to go, it’s time to sleep; time to leave us while we weep.”
She kept her gaze fixed forward, ignoring those who might try to catch her eye, letting Kaia unravel her fist and take her hand in comfort. Yuen-Fa glanced back at her with thankful eyes, sending her a nod across a wide berth that Mal longed to close.
The grave had already been dug, a stone marker already erected. The crowd clustered around as Yuen-Fa knelt to place the urn into the cradle of the earth, praying in Cantonese as she tied a long braid of yellow fabric around the urn's base. Beyond it being very old, Mal had no understanding of what she was saying — all she knew was that Yuen-Fa spoke with the same surety as a river eroding stone. After she reached the end of her prayer, she rose to stand beside the grave, beckoning the next-in-bereavement to pay their respects.
Willow helped Dominik to kneel before following suit, placing a pair of paper flowers in with the urn and the rope. Dominik turned to Yuen-Fa and took her left hand, fingers resting over her pulse as he bowed his head against her knuckles; when he rose to stand beside her, Willow took his place to show the same deference, before joining them to stand vigil over the grave.
As the first to sing, Mal would be next in line to mourn, but she was suddenly taken with the certainty that if she came any closer to that urn, she would fall into a thousand pieces and never recover. It seemed impossible that the entirety of Tai-Song’s heart could fit in that tiny pot, let alone the rest of his body. Where’s the rest of him, she wanted to shout, where’s the rest of my brother?
Kaia’s voice was in her ear, asking if they should take Clover. She flinched away from them, arms encircling protectively around her daughter; walking closer felt like it took hours, and it took even longer to carefully crouch down and drape the long braid in around the base of Tai-Song’s urn. The ceramic, when she accidentally touched the back of her hand to it, was too cold, not longer warmed by the ashes or by Yuen-Fa's body heat.
Her knees straightened with a painful jolt, sending her upright just in time for her feet to turn and flee from the grave, shamelessly leaving Kaia behind as the crowd’s whispering voices followed close at her back: that’s Mal, she’s the one who knew him best, she’s the one who found his body, she’s the one that’s always too late. She steered herself south, taking the winding path toward the gazebo at the top of the hill, and didn’t look further than her shoes until they landed on the stone-and-moss floor. The sweat on her back turned to ice as the funeral continued on below, as everyone but her stood vigil. She exhaled around the burning lump in her throat, rocking Clover in her arms and sweeping her hair from her forehead. The sudden flight hadn’t disturbed her too badly, but her eyes were reproachful, and with a confused whimper she reached up to grasp at the ends of her mother’s shortened hair.
Mal laughed helplessly and sank down behind one of the pillars, tucking her knees around her daughter. Once the laughter subsided she began to weep; somehow the nine years apart translated to nine times the tears as she came to grips with the fact that she would never know the man Tai-Song had grown up to be, only the boy she had left behind. She would only ever have the sour memories, too many of the little annoyances and grudges and not nearly enough of the laughter, the companionship, the role of brother he always took too seriously.
The loss turned in her mind, over and over again, as though a new angle might break the calcified material into more manageable pieces. She had not planned for a life without Tai-Song in it, without his moods or his unsolicited advice or his knack for starting pointless arguments. She had not planned for a life where she could no longer seek out him out for his thoughts on a problem she was having, where he wasn't just around the corner and always waiting to be roped into a new adventure. What exactly was she supposed to do, if Tai-Song was always going to be gone-and-never-coming-back? How was she supposed to carry on like his death hadn’t rocked into her core, like Render hadn’t carved out half of her heart and eaten it in front of her?
Clover squirmed in her arms, her face crumpling sympathetically as she reached up to touch her mother’s tear-stained cheeks. Mal cradled her closer with a soothing hum as she began to whimper, gently rocking her side to side. “Shh, I’m sorry, my girl. I’m sorry.”
Clover continued to cry, like she knew what heartbreak was. Mal wearily dried her eyes on the corner of her blanket and glanced down the hill. Even with blurry eyes, she could see that time had slipped away from her, and that the funeral was all but finished: only Yuen-Fa remained, standing over Tai-Song’s grave with her long coat fluttering in the smoggy breeze. Mal stared down at her friend’s tiny figure, absently rubbing her daughter’s back as she tried to will herself to return and offer some comfort.
Yuen-Fa turned on her heel and mechanically walked away from the grave, passing Kaia as they lingered at the boundary road without a backward glance. Mal sighed, standing up and approaching the path downward, cradling her tearful daughter closer against her chest.
“I was looking forward to introducing you two,” she told her quietly, past her tears and onto the drier, achier parts of mourning. “He would have loved you so much.”
***
As they walked back to Jay’s, Kaia’s silence was a stewing kind, a sign that they were gathering up all their courage to ask an uncomfortable question. Mal leafed through the endless things they could be itching to ask, and decided to let them stew a little longer — anything to avoid being quizzed on why Jay didn’t seem to like them, or whether she had changed her mind about taking off for Proxima, or why she had abandoned them in the middle of a funeral to go and cry by herself.
She gave her head a shake and walked a little faster as they turned up the path to Jay's house, up to the door that required two hands and a shoulder to open from the outside. Before she could navigate doing so with a baby cradled in one arm, Kaia cleared their throat and stepped closer. “Do you want me to hold onto her, for a minute?”
She turned to stare at them incredulously, certain that she had misheard. Kaia was almost paralytically terrified of accidentally damaging small children, and after holding Clover just once — in the delivery room, under duress, when there was literally no one else available — they had privately confided in her that they thought they would die of a fear-induced heart attack. And yet, here they were, having already offered once today, arms open and holding her gaze with a hopeful look, and she was in no mood to wonder what had changed. She quickly dumped Clover into their arms before they could walk it back and turned to wrestle the door open, ushering everyone inside.
The building's atmosphere dulled the transmission of both noise and pollutants, and so Mal had no time to prepare for the sight that awaited them in the kitchen: Jay and Etienne were in weeds of a screaming argument, and had clearly been so for some time, snarling and circling the kitchen table like it was the only thing keeping things from coming to blows. Her heart sank as she recognized the shape of the argument: Jay wanted his son close by, Etienne wanted to be somewhere far away, and there was no middle ground to be had.
Clover flinched back and began to cry, frightened by the sudden onslaught of raised voices. Jay and Etienne whirled around to face the three of them with heaving chests and mouths pinched shut, wide eyes falling to the floor in abrupt and all-consuming shame. Kaia began to bounce gently, brow furrowed in concentration as they tried to soothe her.
Jay shook his head and cleared his throat, clapping Etienne on the shoulder in a show of apology. “Go and take a lap, we’ll talk when you’ve calmed down.”
Etienne grimaced, twisting out of his grip and swiping his snorkel off of the table. He paused to draw Mal into a quick, tight hug, long enough to confirm that she was real and short enough to keep her from feeling smothered. He bent down to gently squeeze one of Clover’s socked feet, murmuring a gentle apology for scaring her. She whimpered mournfully, still hiding her face in Kaia's shoulder, and he visibly flinched at the muffled sound. He pulled away, strapping his snorkel to his face, and the door clicked shut before Mal could call after him.
“Oh, my girl, don’t cry,” Jay cajoled, scooping Clover out of Kaia’s arms and propping her up against his chest. She stopped crying almost immediately, sobs receding until all that remained were hiccups as she stared up at him. “Uncle Etienne is just being stubborn, that’s all. We didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What’s he stubborn about?” Kaia asked. She shook her head at them, and hoped that they understood how to avoid a sore subject. They blinked at her, and hurried to course-correct: "Oh, I didn't mean—"
“Don’t worry about it.” Jay set Clover’s snorkel down on the kitchen table and turned to Kaia, expression falling back into mild hostility. “And what did you think of the funeral? Do our ways pass muster?” His voice was expectantly tight, already anticipating confrontation and doing nothing to deescalate.
Kaia glanced at her with slightly-raised eyebrows, but answered calmly and didn’t rise to the bait. “I thought it was a very respectful farewell, and I'm grateful to have been there to support Mal. I’m very sorry that you lost Tai-Song so young.”
“I’m going to have a rest, Uncle,” Mal interjected, reaching out and taking Clover back into her arms, ignoring how her hiccuping cries started up once more. “Kaia, will you stay for a while before heading back?”
They nodded, giving Jay another strained smile as she pulled them into the nursery and ensured the door latched properly behind them. She walked slowly around the room to turn on every lamp, holding back a heavy sigh as Etienne returned and the argument ignited once more, though in far softer tones. She did her best to tune it out as she set Clover down next to her blocks; Kaia winced as the voices grew briefly louder, before falling back to a civil volume.
“Is that anything to be worried about?”
“Just try to ignore them.” She didn’t think anything of answering back in Kanien’kéha as she sat down on the couch, shuffling in discomfort. “They’ll tire themselves out eventually.”
Clover squealed expectantly at Kaia, arms outstretched, a block in each hand; they sat down next to her with a grin, taking the blocks and showing her how to strike them together like a flint. “How’s your pain?”
“Two out of ten.” Clover smacked the blocks together with a gleeful yell, before pitching them to opposite sides of the room. They patiently rose to retrieve them, and then the three others that she had scattered while their back was turned. Mal hardly even realized the size of her own smile until she heard it in her voice: “Still not sure about having kids?”
They shrugged, jiggling Clover’s hands as they sat down. “Being a cousin is enough for me.”
“You’re a little old to be a cousin, Auntie.” She grinned at their offended scoff, and cut them off before they could demand an apology. “So — living with Goose, now. Better or worse than that guy in Ganakdagweñni·yo’geh?"
"Don't even allude to the Onondaga devil in my presence. Goose would never treat me so poorly."
She leaned forward in interest. "So, you two are making it work? Even with your thing about—"
"Anyone ever tell you to mind your business? I don't kiss and tell."
"I thought that we established that you don't even like to kiss. What's there to tell?"
"There's more to relationships than sex and romance, Mal. Are you trying to get lectured?"
"No, just—" She sat back with a huff. "I don't know. Gwenh's like you, I think. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how it might work."
"Can't help you there, I'm too busy having stimulating and emotionally intimate conversations with someone I look forward to being around," they replied cheerily, reclining on their hands as Clover continued to bang her blocks together. “Your stories don’t do them justice.”
“I'm liking them a lot more than I used to.” Compared to everyone else in this city, their abrasive nature was a breath of fresh air. The taste of a home that no longer existed, except in a warehouse in Baron — and depending on how angry they were with her, probably not for much longer. “They’re staying on Earth. I’ve told them to try going north, maybe to Cornwall.”
“Cornwall’s fine, I guess — but it’s no Kawehno:ke.” They shook their head and cleared their throat with an embarrassed cough. “If they wanted to visit, I mean, I’m not suggesting that they move in, or anything—”
“You just like them a lot, is all,” she finished for them, finding it easy to muster a smile. “I think they’d like to visit.”
They lifted Clover into their lap, gently carding back her hair and parting it down the middle, persuading the black waves into many small braids. “I don’t want to fight,” they said levelly. “But I still don’t understand why you want to go to Proxima.”
She sighed, crossing her arms as she tried to think of a way to explain it so that they might understand. “Why don’t you want to leave?”
“Because this is my home. I have responsibilities to uphold here.”
“Your home is dead, Kaia — there’s nothing to be responsible for. This planet won’t survive through the end of this generation, let alone the next seven.”
They looked at her sharply, eyes turning to flint. “That’s a pretty horrible thing to say, especially since it’s not true.”
“Come on, Kaia—“
“No. You can’t know for sure that there’s no hope — all we really know is that the black snakes are gone, and so are the people who couldn’t live without them. We have a real chance at making things better.”
“That won’t undo the damage we’ve already done. Maybe people are just bad for this world.”
Their expression curdled into a mean snarl, patience finally lost, and she felt terrible for feeling so relieved. It wasn’t that she relished in making Kaia angry, but anything was better than a mature, measured conversation that she couldn’t easily escape. “Don’t talk like that — you know we deserve a fair shot at life, just like any other living thing.”
“All things must die,” she replied softly. “What business do we have, asking for second chances? What’s to stop us from fucking it all up again?”
“I don’t know!” Clover whined at Kaia’s snappish tone, and all of the fight leeched out of their body. They took a deep breath and bent down to kiss her head, whispering an apology into her hair, exhaling against her scalp. “Maybe— maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s no salvaging what we had, maybe we’ll never grow beyond our greed, but I can’t let myself think like that. If there’s a chance that something can still be done, I need to take it. There’ll be another Niña, in twenty years — or the Santa Maria, I guess — but if I leave now, I can never come back. I’d rather be a fool for staying on Earth than be a fool for leaving it behind.”
She looked away, wishing she could have that faith, wishing she still had the shining eyes they hadn’t yet lost. "Well, imagine that for me, but in reverse."
It was a weak retort that made little sense, ripe for the impassioned response, but it seemed that Kaia was done with being lured into endless debates of semantics to the point of exhaustion. Instead, they sighed and stood up to walk up and down the length of the nursery, bouncing Clover gently in their arms. “I don’t know what I was expecting, chasing after you. This whole time, you’ve always kept us at arm’s length, treated us like we were just a pit-stop — I should have just let you go, since you clearly didn't want us to care.”
“I didn’t mean it like that—“
“Yes, you did! How else can you mean it, when you never meant to stay? You didn’t want it to hurt when it was time to go, so you never let us get close enough to know you.” Their shoulders hunched in with a pained sigh. “I just wish I could understand why.”
She had thought that the answer was obvious. “Because I never belonged there.”
“Oh, come on.” Their Kanien’kéha had always sounded quicker to her ears, more fluid and personable, but now she could hear the way they over-enunciated, the way they sacrificed confidence for clarity. “So what if you have funny ideas about how things work, or if you can’t speak as well as you’d like? You still have a right to live there, just like the rest of us.”
“There’s only so many times I can answer the same stupid questions about the city.”
“Oh, boohoo, people are interested in your life story.” Their voice was frustratingly, unfairly measured. “And what about the city? Is it home to you again?”
“No.” This was a truth, one she couldn’t dodge — not when she had admitted as much to them years ago. “But it doesn’t have to be. I understand what I’m supposed to doing here, and I understand the people.”
“Do they understand you?”
She pulled her knees to her chest and turned her back to them, resolving to never speak to them again. The argument outside had finally died, the front door not quite slamming shut but coming very close. Several minutes passed with the house in complete silence, with Mal staring at the far wall, with Kaia staring at Mal. The stillness became more and more suffocating, until they gently repeated, “Do they understand you, Mal? Can they give you what you're looking for?”
“They understand the person I thought I was.” She cleared her throat, trying to hide the catch in her voice. "I said I was sorry."
"Sarcastically."
"I'm not sarcastic, it's just my accent." She shook her head in frustration, lips pressing together at the instinct to joke and deflect. “I'm sorry. I can’t just pivot from something I’ve wanted all my life, Kaia — I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with myself, otherwise.”
"Circumstances change, Mal. You don't have to go."
"Yeah? Every time I think about staying, I'm pretty sure I start having a heart attack."
"What happens when you think about leaving?"
Her chest hurt, heart pounding through her ears loud enough to make them ring. She mashed her face into her bony knees and took deep breaths until the feeling passed, until she could feel the hand gently rubbing her back.
To their credit, Kaia waited for a long time before getting in the last word: “I’m saying this because I care about you, but I’m pretty sure you have an anxiety disorder.”
She scoffed wetly, and pressed the tears from her eyes with the length of her forearm. “How dare you. Our friendship ends here.”
“We had a good run.” They gently tilted her chin until she turned to look up at them, and leaned in to transfer Clover's snoozing body into her arms. “I’m sorry you feel like you don’t have a place with us. I wish we could have done better, but I won't try to stop you.”
She nodded, heart in her throat. “I’ll miss you. Will you tell the others?”
They nodded, sadness clinging to the edges of their eyelashes as they hugged her, enveloping her in the scent of bear grease and strawberries. They smiled against her shoulder when she curled one hand around the curve of their bicep and squeezed, turning their head to kiss her cheek. “Come and say goodbye, before you go.”