Beneath Ceaseless Skies #118 Read online

  Tau pulled back from the blustery force of Nhia’s new boldness.

  “And besides,” Nhia continued, “you have six older sisters, all of whom have willingly shared their seed with Ia, mother bless their wombs.”

  She inscribed the air with a quick circular blessing of her fingers. As Tau followed her hand-dance, Nhia grabbed Tau’s fingers and held them against her chest. Tau swallowed her sharp intake of breath.

  “And there is something else, I fathom,” Nhia said, voice as rich as koca-bean soup. “Perhaps someone else.”

  “I—” Tau tried to snatch away her hand, but Nhia tightened her grip and pulled her closer.

  This close, Nhia’s pupils were dark moons against her golden skin. Her quickened breath smelled of sugared vilas, the rare aphrodisiac delicacy presented at dinner that evening.

  “You can tell me,” Nhia whispered. “I am your sister-friend after all, am I not?”

  “Yes.” Tau’s whisper faltered again.

  Sand-spackled fingers brushed her cheek, and Tau closed her eyes. Words lodged in her chest as if she had been punched too hard in the fighting dance.

  A heart-beat. Two.

  A sweet pressure on her lips, raising the pressure in her chest to almost intolerable levels. Tau tasted salt, sand, and sugar; an embodiment of the ripe smell of her torments.

  Then Nhia was gone, a slap of bushes, the rustle of sand on skin.

  A beat: the hush of water.

  Another: sandals on grass.

  Tau looked up, hoping Nhia had returned; to apologize, to make good, to continue even though it would risk everything.

  A smaller figure. Bathed in the shadows of the trees, only her moue of disappointment visible.

  Kai’Lei.

  She turned and fled. Tau, not fathoming or caring to who she ran, gave a little kah and closed her eyes to the silvered horizon. Death, rebirth; it was life to Stone Maidens, and some would seek out their eternal glory any which way they could, even if it meant betrayal.

  A Stone Maiden’s sacrifice was theirs to make; to live and die by.

  * * *

  Tau angled the oka stormward, her paddle biting deep as the rising sun cut naumu slivers off the water into her eyes.

  She did not resist the headache. The uncountable cups of fermented wiro-fruit juice the previous night had helped dull the memory of the knife dashing across the throat of the figure positioned in ecstatic adulation across the great round stone.

  The carefully carved representation of the great mother-moon had not resisted the chosen’s stain. Neither had it broken beneath the weight of portent; change simmered in the blood of the next generation of Stone Maidens, but the change had not come swift enough to belay one more needless death.

  Tau glanced at the figure in the bow, crouched against the impending storm, the first of the end season, a break in the perfection that had held its breath over the gathering. With face edged with resignation but not regret, Nhia had been silent since they had cast off that morning, not even calling or chanting out to the other okas pushing for home. Tau’s heart fell as heavy and low as an anchor stone, meeting and warring with the cool ache of relief in her belly.

  Kai’Lei had been the maiden to gladly meet the bite of the mother’s blade. Her final chant, the perfect combination of sweet traditional sentimentality. There had been no whisper of Nhia’s impropriety.

  “I can hear your thoughts from here.”

  Startled, Tau lost her grip. Before she had the chance to reform her thoughts, she had to quickly strip off and dive in to retrieve her paddle.

  A smile a shade more cynical than expected greeted Tau as she heaved herself back over the edge of the oka, spluttering and cursing. Nhia quit her rearward rescue-paddling and held her own dripping paddle firmly in her lap.

  “And just what do you fathom about my thoughts?” Tau pushed her hair out of her face, muttered another curse, and squeezed water out of her wrap.

  “A little moon-broody there, fathom?”

  “Stop pushing, or you will be swimming home.”

  “That would please you.” Nhia chuckled, and Tau bit her bottom lip to arrest a smile.

  “You can not fathom what would please me.” Tau straightened her back and dipped her paddle.

  Instead of turning back to her contemplation of the dark horizon, Nhia displayed her teeth and throat in a laugh. “You would be surprised.”

  Tau kah’d. “Stop dancing around the issue.”

  “You stop.”

  Tau’s paddle clonked against wood, and she squinted at her sister-friend. Ropes of hair slapped her cheeks as Tau shook her head. “That was some final chant you sang, quite the turn-around. Nhia, I cannot fathom even where to begin.”

  “Then I will make it easy.” Nhia rushed ahead like the rising wind. “I failed at the gathering, so I must return home with some set to my sails.”

  Nhia cut off Tau’s placating noises with a swift flourish of her paddle.

  “Let me finish. I did not come with my face entirely turned to the Stone Moon. I knew what I was singing about. The Stone mother should smile upon life, not death.”

  Her jaw worked, a spasm and a swallow before she continued. “Most Maidens do not want to die. No matter what you have been led to believe. I want to do something with my time, before I take my final dive beneath the waves. I pushed Lau’maa to choosing you as my keel-woman, someone because I knew you would hold me up against a stiff wind. In your sand rough way, you are far more adept at navigating the shifting tides of fireside talk and story telling chants than I.

  “Do not look at me like that. Your mother is shrewder than you fathom.” Nhia’s smile turned softer. “I also had another reason: you.”

  Tau had to look away. She pretended to search the threatening horizon though she knew by smell alone how long they had to reach shelter.

  “I revere life,” Nhia continued. “We are both fertile. We are ready. We are right. Let us create a child together, while we have this chance.”

  Tau rubbed the calluses of one hand against the scars of the other; she could not fathom her hands being gentle enough for such a task as guiding the life of her own seed.

  “I will carry the child, as I fathom you dislike the idea.”

  “Sister, I cannot ask that of you.” Tau stared straight ahead, mindful of the black clouds stacking up.

  “Why not? The child of our mingled seed will be intelligent, inquisitive, and beautiful.”

  “But you are my friend,” Tau protested, her biceps quivering with more than physical effort.

  “Even better.”

  “But you fathom I would make a terrible parent.”

  Nhia kah’d and rolled her eyes. “And where is it writ that you have to parent? You have many wonderful sisters, mothers and aunties who make light work of it, in the Ia way.”

  Tau tasted the bitter and spice of the idea, like fine wiro-leaf, as Nhia mouthed silently, counting, Tau realized, the heartbeats between the far-off lightning and thunder.

  “I went searching for the right person to share seed,” Nhia said “but they all came up wanting compared to you. I need to take something back to Ia, to show my worth to my sisters. To them, I must make restitution for my failure.”

  “You did not fail,” Tau said, paddle digging deep in her vehemence. “I will stand face to face across the fire with anyone who disagrees. You represented Ia superbly. Your trade negotiations will keep us well-prepared for many storm seasons. They will be proud of you. I am proud of you.”

  “And I am proud of you.” Nhia favored Tau with a look as rich and thrilling to the senses as unpeeled koca-bean. “You go back to Koro a full prentice, your work welcomed with open hands at the great library. At least you have found your calling.”

  Tau stopped paddling and uttered a soft kah. She took a deep whiff of the storm, squinting against the spitting rain, and quickly ran through the current verse of the travelers’ return chant. “Take up your paddle, woman,” she commanded g
ruffly. “We can make the next islet before the storm hits, if we push hard.”

  Nhia’s hands flexed around the wood. “And there we can make a baby while we wait for the storm to pass?”

  “We will discuss it.”

  “Will we discuss how much you love me too?”

  Despite the quickly dropping temperature, Nhia shucked out of her wrap. She threw back her shoulders and peeked at Tau from beneath dripping lashes. Her skin darkened with each large drop of rain.

  “You have ideas as big as Ia’s Search For the Ends of the Ocean.”

  Nhia chanted the first few notes of the cadence, adding a wistful lilt that sung of unseen coastlines and faces. “Some ideas, and dreams, are best when shared.”

  “Ia preserve me from baby-foolish sisters!” With a wry shake of her head, Tau set her shoulders straining against the rising waves and wind.

  Copyright © 2013 A.J. Fitzwater

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  A.J. Fitzwater grew up in a small town on a fault line at the bottom of the world. She currently lives on another fault line in a bigger city made smaller by said fault line, still at the bottom of the world. When not fighting rambunctious land ogres and soothing her squawk of dragons, she perfects the art of slipping through cracks, literary and otherwise. Her short stories have appeared in indie press magazines and anthologies. For more tales from the writer’s journey, read her blog at pickledthink.blogspot.com or find her on Twitter @AJFitzwater.

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  COVER ART

  “Marching Off,” by Maciej Wojtala

  Maciej Wojtala is a Polish concept artist who works in the video games industry. For the last seven years, he has been working at People Can Fly, the studio responsible for Bulletstorm and Gears of War : Judgment. He creates environment concept art, prop designs, illustrations, and graphic design elements. View more of his artwork at www.wojtala.com.

  Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  ISSN: 1946-1076

  Published by Firkin Press,

  a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

  Copyright © 2013 Firkin Press

  This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy and share the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.