into heaven to fly with the gods. Kiti was not worthy, and so his grip on the branch help until Wind went away. It was as if Wind were saying to him, You envied your otherself, so I have torn you apart to show you how worthless you are without him.
This was why Kiti meant to sculpt the face of his otherself. And this was why, in the end, he could not. For to sculpt the face of kTi was also to sculpt his own face, and he could not, in his deep unworthiness, bear to do that.
Yet he had to sculpt something. Already the saliva was flowing in his mouth to moisten the clay, to lick it and smooth it, to give a lustrous patina to the finished sculpture. But if he did not sculpt his otherself s face, so soon after kTi's death, it would be scandalous. He would be seen as lacking in natural affection. The ladies would think that he didn't love his brother, and so they wouldn't want his seed in their family. Only some mere woman would offer to him. And he, overwhelmed with clay fever, would accept that offer like any eager boy, and she would bear his children, and he would look at them every year from then on remembering that he was the father of such low children because he could not bring himself to sculpt the face of his beloved kTi.
I did love him, he insisted silently. With all my heart I loved him. Didn't I follow him wherever he decided? Didn't I trust him with my life again and again? Didn't I save him time after time, when his impetuosity brought him into peril? Didn't I even urge him to turn back, a storm was coming, let's find shelter, we have to find shelter, what does it matter if we find the devilpath on this flight or the next, turn back, turn back, and he wouldn't, he ignored me as if I didn't exist, as if I were nothing, as if I didn't even get a vote on my own survival, let alone his.
The clay was growing moist, balling up and beginning to flow in his hands, but it was as much tears as saliva that moistened it. O Wind, thou tookest my otherself, and now I cannot find his face in the clay. Give me a shape, O Wind, if I am worthy! O Maize, if I am to bring you daughters to tend your fields, then give my fingers knowledge even if my mind is dull! O Rain, flow with my saliva and my tears and make the clay live under my hands! O Earth, thou deep-burning mother, make my bones wise, for they will someday belong to you again. Let me bring other bones, young bones, child bones out of your clay, O Earth! Let me bring young wings into your hands, O Wind! Let me make new grains of life for thee, O Maize! Let me bring new waterdrinkers, new weepers, new sculptors for dice to taste, O Rain!
Yet despite his pleading, the gods put no shape under his hands.
His tears blinded him. Should he give up? Should he fly up into the sky of the dry season and search for some faraway village that might want a sturdy male and never see Da'aqebla again? Or should his despair go even further? Should he put the clay out of his hands and yet remain there at the riverbank, exposed, for the watching devils to see that he had no sculpture in him? Then they would take him like an infant back to their caves, and devour him alive, so that in his dying moments he would see the devil queen eating his own heart. That was how his end should come. Carried down into hell, because he was not worthy to be taken by Wind up into heaven. kTi would have all the honor then, and not have to share it with his low, unworthy otherself.
His fingers worked, though he could not see what they shaped.
And as they worked, he stopped mourning his own failure, for he realized that there was a shape now under his hands. It was being given to him, in a way that he had only heard about. As a child, playing at sculpture with the other boys, he had been the cleverest every time, but he had never felt the gods interceding with his hands. What he shaped was always