Beneath Ceaseless Skies #20 Read online

  Issue #20 - Jul. 2, 2009

  “The Land of Empty Shells,”

  by Caroline M. Yoachim

  “The Bone House,” by James Lecky

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  THE LAND OF EMPTY SHELLS

  by Caroline M. Yoachim

  Long ago when the world was young, two gods sat beside the river for a thousand years and watched the turtles. They saw turtles hatch, saw them grow, and saw them die. Scavengers ate the flesh of the dead turtles, and this was good. But in all the thousand years, nothing became of the shells. They were too hard to be eaten, and none of the animals had any use for them.

  So the gods scooped up great handfuls of clay from the riverbank and shaped it in their own image, over and over again, until there were as many people as there were shells. The gods told their people to build homes near the river and make use of all the empty shells.

  Then, with the world completely in balance, the gods left.

  * * *

  Terra dragged her birthing table into the middle of the room. The wooden legs creaked, barely able to support the rainbow-shaped slab of black granite that formed the table’s surface. It was nowhere near as nice as Dziko’s birthing table, which was carved from a single slab of marble, with legs that curved like flowing rivers. His table was fit to be passed down for generations, father to son, though in Dziko’s case it had been mother to son, since he had only mothers and no father.

  They pushed the tables together to form a ring of stone with a wide-open hole in the middle where she and her husband could stand. Dziko stared at her, waiting. Neither of them had made a baby before, but he expected her to guide him through the process. Rain pounded against the roof, filling the silence with a steady patter.

  “What next?” he asked.

  “Water,” Terra snapped. “Everybody knows that!” She regretted it instantly. This was supposed to be a sacred time.

  Dziko placed his hand on the thick rolls of clay flesh that formed the flesh of her back. “Of course, water. The rain comes from the gods to give us life.”

  He bowed his head in the direction of the priestess, even though her mountain temple was hidden by the storm. Dziko had served at the temple in autumn, standing watch over the turtles that lived in the sacred river. He had so much faith and Terra had so little, but still they loved each other. He only made her lead the way because he was afraid to make mistakes.

  Terra brought out a pair of wood-shingled gloves from the top drawer of their dresser. The gloves were covered with chips of overlapping cedar, like the scales of a fish, to deflect away the rain.

  She pulled the gloves over her hands.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She nodded. He opened the window, and she grabbed her turtle shell bowl. As she pulled the bowl inside, a gust of wind blew raindrops onto her arm, above the elbow where her gloves did not protect her. The drops melted her flesh into tiny puddles where they struck. She whimpered and backed away, still clutching the bowl.

  “All right, love?” Dziko’s voice was light, but after he spoke his thin lips pressed together tight with worry.

  “It’s nothing,” she replied. “Almost dry already.”

  She set her bowl on the birthing table and held her arm out to Dziko. The raindrops had formed shallow indentations, like misplaced dimples. None of her flesh had washed away. No harm done. Dziko pushed his palm against her arm to smooth away the rainscars.

  He retrieved his bowl. The shells were the only thing they had where hers was nicer than his because turtle shells were only used once, and each person had to find their own along the river bank. Hers was shallow and broad, with ridges that gave the bowl a stable base. His came from a turtle that had died as a juvenile, a smaller shell with a smooth surface. He had to be careful not to tip it over as he laid out his tools—knives and needles, shapers and smoothers. There was nothing left to do now but begin.

  They crawled under the edge of the table and emerged in the center hole. It was a snug fit; the opening was barely big enough. Terra reached down toward her thigh, and her hand bumped against Dziko’s.

  “Oh, did you want to?” she asked.

  “Or we could—” he said at the same time.

  She moved to give Dziko more space and bumped against the table. They would have to coordinate their movements to keep from getting in each other’s way.

  “Each from our own?” she asked.

  “Okay.”

  Terra reached down to her thigh and pulled flesh from her leg into a bulge above her hip. Dziko did the same. They gathered a thin layer of flesh from their legs, a handful from their shoulders, a bit from their rounded bellies—never too much from any one place. Soon, each of them had a lump the size of a baby resting on their hip.

  “Is this going to hurt?” Dziko asked.

  Terra didn’t know. She gave her lump an experimental tug. “Ow. Definitely yes. Help me?”

  Dziko stretched the flesh away from her hip, twisting as he pulled. The strand of clay connecting the lump to her body got thinner and thinner until, suddenly, it snapped. Terra managed not to scream. Dziko set the flesh on the table and reshaped her hip.

  “Motherhood looks good on you,” Dziko said, running his hand over her stomach. She was nicely plump but no longer bulging with the excess weight of a childless adult.

  Terra helped Dziko separate his babyflesh. Her technique wasn’t as good, and when the lump came free, Dziko yelped.

  “Sorry,” she said. She massaged the jagged flesh at his hip until it was smooth.

  The rest of the birthing was hard work, but painless. They sprinkled water over the clay to soften it and kneaded the flesh together until there was no way to separate his riverbed brown from her sunset orange. Then they divided the babyflesh into two equal pieces, soon to be their children.

  Dziko shaped their son, and Terra shaped their daughter. They made full-sized heads, skinny torsos, and tiny stubs that would one day become arms and legs. Most of their efforts were focused on the children’s faces. Terra gave her daughter Dziko’s lips, her own nose, and Avani’s eyes. Terra barely knew her husband’s sister, but she had beautiful eyes. Her manipulations made the flesh brittle, and tiny cracks appeared around her daughter’s mouth. She dipped her smoothing tool into the rainwater and moistened the flesh until it softened.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  Terra jumped, unaware that Dziko had been watching. She peeked over her shoulder and saw that he had given their son full lips, and Terra’s eyes. So strange, to see her own eyes staring back at her, empty and motionless.

  They crawled out from the center of the table, an easy maneuver now that they had given so much flesh. Dziko held her, wrapping his arms around her newly thinned waist. It was their last moment of peace before the babies demanded all of their attention. Still, they couldn’t wait too long, or the babies would dry out. Terra moved the bowls of rainwater to the top of the dresser and Dziko bowed his head to the temple, silently begging the blessing of the priestess for their children.

  “Joren and Urvara,” Terra said.

  Dziko repeated the names. He leaned over Joren, and she leaned over Urvara, and together they blew the first breath into their babies. After a long anxious moment, the earsplitting wails of newborns filled the cabin. They were parents.

  Over the coming weeks, they would have to flesh their children every day. The babies’ limbs, now little more than bumps, had to be grown into arms and legs. When summer came, she and Dziko would be thin from having given so much flesh, but that was the natural way of things.

  * * *

&nb
sp; The first people used the turtle shells as bowls and used the bowls to make their children, and it was good. But in those early days, the rain could come in any season, and many people melted away and were lost. So they built a temple, high in the mountains, and chose a boy to be their priest. The boy climbed to the top of the temple and asked the rain to stop coming. The rain refused. The boy expected this, so next he asked that the rain come only in the spring. Still the rain refused. Finally, he asked the rain to warn them before it came. He thought surely this small boon would be granted, but the rain refused.

  Defeated, the boy sat atop the temple and waited. It rained, and his flesh flowed down the sides of the temple. The rain saw the horrors of death up close and repented. Now it only rained in spring, and the rain called out with thunder before it came.

  * * *

  Urvara followed Papa and Joren up the temple stairs. From up here, she could see the whole village, row after row of cabins, all raised up on stilts so they wouldn’t flood in the spring rains. Trees blocked the spot where Mama was sitting, waiting at the base of the mountain trail because she wasn’t as religious as Papa.

  “Don’t dawdle, Urvara.”

  She walked faster to catch up with Papa and Joren. Midsummer was a strange time. She and Joren were nearly as big as Papa now, which made it easy to keep up. Urvara wondered if it was nice for her parents to not be so fat, or if they missed their excess flesh.

  The temple loomed above them, a stair-step pyramid that looked as though it had been carved from the mountain, except for the color. The mountain was gray, but the temple was flesh-colored, a deep red-brown.

  “Is it made out of people?” Urvara whispered to Joren. It seemed too ridiculous a question to ask Papa.

  Joren shrugged.

  “Papa,” she said, “What is the temple made from?”

  “Stone, little curious one,” Papa said.

  Urvara thought about that. The temple was shaped as though it was made from stone. Still, it didn’t look like stone. “Did they cover the stone with... something else?”

  Papa laughed. “They paint the stone, Urvara, to honor the priest that tamed the rain.”

  Urvara remembered that story, one of many that Papa had told them in the spring, when the rain kept them from venturing outdoors. She thought it was foolish for the priest to sit out in the rain and melt, but she knew better than to say so to Papa.

  They climbed up the side of the temple on the flesh-colored stairs. Near the top of the pyramid was a doorway, guarded on either side by turtle statues that were taller than Urvara and carved from the same black granite as Mama’s birthing table. Another family was leaving as they arrived, the father holding his son’s hand and the mother holding her daughter’s. Joren could hold Papa’s hand as they left, but Urvara would have to walk alone.

  Papa and Joren passed between the two turtles, and Urvara followed them into the dimly lit main chamber of the temple. The priestess sat cross-legged in the back of the room, too far from the door for daylight to reach. Her body was illuminated by a pair of torches. A crack split her flesh from the crown of her head, down the bridge of her nose, and over the middle of both lips. Urvara couldn’t stop staring at it. Her face looked like it was about to crack wide open and split in two.

  “Go on,” Papa said, nudging her forward.

  “Make Joren go first,” she said, but Joren shook his head. He didn’t want to be first either. Papa wouldn’t make him go until he was ready. That was why Urvara had to go first, so that Joren could see what happened and be prepared. It wasn’t fair.

  “Go.” Papa repeated.

  Up close, the priestess looked even worse. Her limbs didn’t seem to match, each one a different color flesh. Everything except her left arm was scarred with deep crevices like the one on her face, but that one arm was almost smooth. Younger than the rest of her, but still covered in hairline cracks.

  “Closer.” The priestess barely moved her mouth, which made her hard to understand.

  Urvara inched closer, trying not to let the revulsion show on her face. When she was as close to the crackled woman as she could bear, she knelt on the cool stone floor, as Papa had told them they must.

  “This girl is sound of body. She has strength and courage,” the priestess said, raising her left arm. Urvara wondered what had happened to her old arm and where the new arm had come from.

  “Don’t stare, child, it’s rude.”

  Urvara dropped her gaze to her lap, to the smoothness of her own flesh. She started to mumble an apology, but suddenly the priestess reached out and pressed her hand against Urvara’s forehead. Her instinct was to pull away, but she forced herself to be still.

  “I give her my blessing,” the priestess declared.

  Relieved, Urvara started to back away, but the priestess held Urvara’s head. For an ancient dried-out woman, her grip was remarkably strong.

  “I give her my blessing, and I claim her for the service of the temple.” With that, the priestess released Urvara’s head. She fell backwards.

  “You can’t,” Joren said. He marched forward and stood before the priestess. “One from each family is chosen, and I should be the one, not her.”

  Up to this point, the priestess had moved nothing but her lips and her arm. Now she turned her head to look up at Joren. The movement made the flesh in her neck rumble softly, like stones rubbing together. Urvara expected the flesh to snap, but it didn’t.

  “Joren,” Papa said, “What are you doing?”

  Joren turned away from the priestess to answer. “It’s supposed to be me. All your stories about the honor of serving the gods, about watching over the sacred turtles, protecting the shells from those who would steal them out of season—you told those stories to me. So I could be like you. So I could do everything right.”

  “Kneel,” the priestess said, ignoring Joren’s outburst.

  “No.” Joren towered over the priestess.

  “This one acts bravely only to deny the existence of his fear,” the priestess said. “He fights against the world, and he fights against me. He is not worthy to serve the gods.”

  “Joren, there are other things than serving at the temple. Better things. It doesn’t matter,” Papa said.

  Of course it wouldn’t matter to Papa now, when it was Urvara who would serve. She had never been close to Papa, not like Joren was. Mama had been the one to breathe life into her, and the bond with the breathparent was always closer. But it still stung to hear Papa renounce what had once been so important to him, simply because Urvara had been chosen.

  “Kneel!” the priestess repeated, her voice loud and low like rumbling thunder.

  “I won’t,” Joren said. “You’ve chosen wrong. It has to be me.”

  “Very well,” the priestess said, her voice lowered to its normal rasp. “I have no choice but to withhold my blessing. Leave my presence.”

  Papa’s expression went blank. Not angry, or sad, but empty. Without a word, he bowed to the priestess and left the temple.

  “Come on,” Urvara said, “Let’s go.”

  Joren backed away, never taking his eyes off the priestess. He was silent until they left the inner chamber, but once they’d cleared the giant turtles, a stream of protests flowed from him. The next family to see the priestess was climbing the temple stairs—it was Rhea, with her parents Bhudev and Tlaloc and her brother Yuri. They lived three cabins down the road, but the two cabins in-between were empty, which made them neighbors. Papa had been good friends with Bhudev the summer they were children, and Urvara sometimes played stone toss with Rhea. She and her family were clearly shocked to hear Joren speak against the priestess on the steps of her temple.

  “I am brave,” he insisted. “I would have done a good job guarding the turtles. Why couldn’t she see that?”

  Joren continued down the stairs, mumbling to himself. Urvara waved to Rhea, then glanced at Joren and shrugged. Rhea smiled and crossed her eyes. Siblings, what could you do? Urvara jogged down the s
tairs, nodding occasionally without listening to what Joren was saying. When Joren faced the priestess, hadn’t that been brave? They had both been scared of the crackled woman, and he had overcome that fear. Or had he simply let his anger get the best of him? Urvara wasn’t sure she knew what it took to be brave. She certainly wasn’t sure she had it, whatever it was.

  “Where are you going?” she asked. Joren was leaving the main path, heading off along the steep trail that led down to the sacred river. Far below them, Papa stormed down the mountain. He was almost to the base, where Mama could comfort him. Maybe wandering off for a bit wasn’t such a bad idea. Urvara clambered down the uneven boulders, hurrying after Joren.

  The river cut a shallow canyon into the mountainside, and short scraggly trees with twisted limbs lined the water on either side. Some grew almost sideways from the riverbank, their roots clinging to the mix of rock and dirt and clay. Joren had climbed one of the bigger trees and was perched on a branch that hung over the river.

  “Joren,” she called, “I can’t get down the canyon wall.”

  The drop was only a few arm lengths, but she wanted Joren to come down from the tree, and asking for help seemed like a better idea than telling him to come down because it was too dangerous.

  “Liar.”

  Urvara sat down on the lip of the canyon. It was mid-summer, so the river was not so wild as in the spring, but it still moved with a steady hiss, like a startled snake. In autumn, when the water was lower, the new temple guards would come to protect the turtle shells. She would be one of those guards, she realized. For now, the river itself protected both the live turtles and the discarded shells.

  “Turtle,” Joren said. Big gray rocks dotted the river and the water swirled around them. Something black and round moved on top of one of the rocks. Urvara scanned the river and spotted a few others, though not as many as she’d expected. Their shells looked like Papa’s birthing bowl at home, small and smooth and dark. They must be juveniles. She wondered where all the bigger turtles were.

  “They look so strange,” she said, in awe of the armored creatures that swam freely in the deadly water. She had assumed they would be delicate and pretty, but instead they were fierce, almost ugly, with big heads and beak-like mouths.