Xessa wondered what Ilandeh had argued about this time, but then the queue was melting away from the trough and Otek shambled towards her. Xessa smiled at her father and paused the water screw just long enough to move around to the front of the trough and take Otek’s face in her hands. She kissed the old man on the cheek, but when she pulled back there was no recognition in his face. She smiled again, through the spike of hurt. A string of gourds hung forgotten from his hand and she took them from him gently.

‘Let me fill these, Father,’ she signed. Still nothing. Otek had been eja for most of his adult life, until the spirit-magic had broken him. The shamans said he was spirit-haunted and unlikely to ever return, but he never seemed that way to Xessa. He was just … empty. Somewhere else.

The Tokob at the front of the queue spoke to him with voice and sign, their hands coming to rest on his arms and shoulders again and again, gentle as butterflies. Honouring his sacrifice, though he paid them no heed. None of them begrudged his place in the line, or Xessa stopping the handle to tend to him. Otek’s eyes were empty, as blank and dead as the spaces between the stars. Eyes that had seen too much, a mind that had been invaded by the spirits over and over until it was devoured by them, or until it resided permanently in the spirit world. Until Otek was as hollow as the gourds he had carried.

‘If you wait, I will be finished here soon and we can talk,’ she signed after she’d passed back the string of gourds. There wasn’t enough in them to last, but people dropped by old ejab houses every day to top up their rations and see they had food. ‘We could eat together.’

Otek’s eyes watched her hands and face and then he shuffled around and wandered back out into the sunlight. Xessa watched him go with fierce pride and aching sadness. I’ll make you proud. I’ll catch a Drowned for you and we’ll learn how to beat them, how to prevent them singing or breeding, or which poisons will kill them. I’ll make you so proud.