Where fantasy meets anthropology
The stories of Janet Loftis
SKIN JOB
In his hand was death...and life. Death to the viricamas, the witches...to Uida should he find her. May the goddesses have mercy on him, forgive him his shame, grant him his revenge.
Bellar rubbed his thumb over the pure, lethal crystals, careful to not spill the precious supply — precious because of his stupidity. They seemed so fragile, so starkly white against the dark skin of his palm. They would be his salvation.
As the half moon rose over the far edge of the ravine, Bellar held out his handful of salt so the light could bathe the crystals. They sparkled like fireflies or like Uida’s eyes when she rode him—
“Fool!” Esaf barked. “You wish to drop all we have left in the witches’ own pit!”
Bellar did not flinch. Esaf had never been the quietest of hunters; Bellar had heard him approach and, knowing Esaf’s gruff demeanor, had expected such an outburst. They were friends.
“I wanted Kaja,” the moon goddess, “to bless our weapon.” He carefully slid the salt back into the pouch hanging from his belt.
He turned to look at Esaf as he asked, “Have you found a way down?”
Esaf nodded just as a cloud obscured the moon, putting them into darkness. Bellar had a moment to consider that, being Esaf’s skin was the darkest of all their tribesmen, in the totality of night he could not be seen at all. Perfect for hunting their quarry — if only he could be silent.
And totality of night was where they were going: down into the ravine itself. Into the vira, as the wise women had named it, into what should never be seen by mortal eyes.
With Esaf leading the way, they skirted the edge of the ravine until they reached a narrow cleft which looked like it had been carved out by an ancient waterfall.
“It’s steep, but passable,” Esaf said as he swung his legs over the edge. He looked up at the moon. “Say goodbye to Kaja.”
For we may not see her again, Bellar finished the thought himself, then shook his head at his own pessimism. He would kill Uida. He would.
As they half-slid, half-climbed down toward the darkened tangle of treetops below Bellar kept an eye on the sky above. Not just for a last glimpse of Kaja’s blessed light, but for—
There. One ball of fire, like a mass of angry red fireflies, rose from the canopy. It brilliantly lit up the trees below it, like a torch moving over the forest as the fireball soared in the direction of their village.
The two men flattened themselves against the walls of the cleft as the fireball passed nearly overhead. Then they waited, feet slipping on the loose soil, hands clutching jagged edges of rock. After what seemed an interminable amount of time, a second fireball emerged from the canopy and passed over just to the south.
“So...now we find out if Kenar was right,” Esaf muttered. “Are there just two remaining like he said, or three?”
Bellar prayed for two. They waited, until Bellar’s arms began to cramp from the strain of holding himself in place. “Two,” he pronounced, hopefully with conviction.
Esaf did not move, except for his eyes which scanned the trees. Bellar knew his hunting partner had committed to memory the locations from where the fireballs originated, and was now waiting for a third. That kind of concentration was why Bellar had asked him to come along. And because he was his friend. When others — what few other men were left — had volunteered to come along, Bellar said no. It was his right to decide on the hunting party members; he was after all the Codro Sal, or salt-keeper, the guardian of the brine wells. So the others had not questioned him, even though his true motivation for bringing Esaf was that if Bellar’s shame was to be revealed by the viricamas, he could bear no one but a friend knowing.
Finally, Esaf took his eyes off the trees, and began the descent again.
By the time they reached the bottom both men were scraped and dirtied, but neither paid it heed. They had until just before sunrise to find their quarry in this forest, which wasn’t a long time at the height of summer.
Still, Esaf paused before entering the dark, brooding, vine-covered trees. “Remember the stories?” he asked softly.
“My sister—” Bellar choked off a rush of emotion, “used to think it was funny to terrify me with demon stories. It kept me awake at night so I’d be too tired to do my chores the next day and then my father would punish me for being lazy.”
Esaf looked at him, sadness plain in his eyes. “I am sorry.”
“How was she to know the stories were true?” He tried to make it sound lighthearted, but knew he failed miserably. How could Nedisse have known her husband would be ravaged by a viricama, and that her own immense love for him would drive her to intervene, so that it was she whose life was taken instead. Now Benno, her husband, wasted away in his own grief, a burnt shell of a man and a burden to the tribe.
They were not stories; they were not women. Witches and other evil spirits inhabited the vira. Before the current crisis no one but fools had dared to enter the vira in more than two generations — none of them had ever returned. Nor did any of the brave hunters before Esaf and Bellar return even though they had succeeded in reducing the number of viricamas to two. At this moment, Bellar’s and Esaf’s remaining families were preparing their mourning rituals, and then, abandoning the village. If the two men were not back by midday, they would be presumed dead and left behind. By the following morning, the Nabil Eade would no longer exist as a tribe because their home formed part of their identity. The tribe would journey beyond the mountains bordering their homeland and take a new name. And Bellar and Esaf would be forgotten — on purpose.
Neither man dwelled on what could be their fate, but both knew their actions were necessary. The attacks by the viricamas had risen in frequency and were no longer restricted to the men; women now died equally, especially the pregnant ones. The wise women believed that was how the viricamas had grown in number so rapidly as of late; it was said that the fetuses of the dead mothers-to-be were no longer with the bodies, that they were taken and...changed...made into women that were not women.
Uida....
The one thing they did not expect in the vira was silence; silence that allowed Bellar’s questions and doubts to echo in his mind. The stories were filled with sound: especially the agonized shrieking of the viricama’s victims as their disembodied souls relived the memory of their flesh burning or cried for revenge they could never have. Nedisse’s stories had always included an animal of some sort, a companion demon whose unearthly howls she reenacted with such spine-tingling enthusiasm that Bellar — as a young boy — would wet himself.
In the real vira there was none of that.
“Do—” Esaf stopped as his voice unexpectedly boomed rather than being muffled by the dense foliage. Whispering, he continued, “do you suppose they’ve killed all the animals here?”
Bellar nodded thoughtfully. “They truly are consumers of life — all life...” He fingered a thick, broad leaf, “...except this.”
“They need meat,” Esaf said roughly.
“Or something with a soul,” Bellar concluded, but only to himself as Esaf was already pushing forward again homing in ever closer to the location fixed in his mind.
The heat grew oppressive as they plunged deeper into the vira. Soon, Bellar’s skin felt like it was on fire. He knew it was just sweat popping from his pores, but it did not feel like the sweat from chopping wood for the fires to boil the brine or like the sweat generated by the heat of those fires. Bellar reached up and rubbed his fingers across his cheek, stuck them in his mouth. Too salty, as if the salt were purposefully being drawn from his body.
The gesture reminded Bellar too much of the moment when he realized Uida was a witch. Her taste — it had been all wrong. A woman’s juices were salty just like a man’s (so he’d been told), but in that momentarily delightful instant after he’d had his hand inside her and then, in anticipation, had raised his fingers to his mouth wanting to lick them, wan
ting to savor that womanly taste.... His stomach churned.
Esaf hissed. “You lose yourself too much in your mind, Codro Sal.” His eyes, all of him that Bellar could see, were accusatory. Then, taking Bellar’s chin in his hand, turned Bellar’s face so that he was looking into a tiny clearing.
At first, Bellar saw nothing, but as his eyes slowly focused upon the unmoving grass...there...a pale pile of skin. Their quarry.
“Go,” Esaf said, releasing Bellar’s chin. “I’ll find the other.” He squeezed between two tree trunks and disappeared back into the forest.
Was Esaf afraid to enter the clearing? Bellar pondered that for a moment knowing it was more an excuse to delay action than a question he needed answered. After another moment’s hesitation, he stepped forward with one hand clutching his salt pouch. Murmuring the traditional salt blessing he took one careful step after another until he stood looking down at it. He would not label it a her.
Bellar crouched for a long moment before he could bring himself to touch it. He wouldn’t need to touch it at all if not for his own stupidity; he could simply sprinkle the salt and be done with it if he didn’t need to know whether or not it was Uida. But the skin was loosely folded, lumped on itself, hiding the face.
He didn’t know what he expected. It didn’t quite feel like skin, but he couldn’t describe it as rubbery or like animal hide or fur or feathers...maybe more like softened bone. And it was warm. He had imagined it would be cold, but then Uida had been so hot.
Steeling himself for disappointment or satisfaction, he flipped the face over. Surprise. It was not Uida, but then he would never have suspected that Magala was a viricama. But there was no mistaking the mottled birthmarks covering Magala’s face. Or her ragged hair and the way it hung down over her eyes. Those empty pockets seemed to stare at him just as her eyes would during the moon rituals. Now they mocked him: Magala was a priestess of Kaja. Did that corrupt all he knew of Kaja? Did the goddess who claimed to protect his village really seek to destroy it?
For a very long moment Bellar stared at those empty eye pockets, not knowing what to do or to believe. Too many questions reeled in his mind.
Only a chirping whistle, repeated three times, broke him out of his disturbance. Esaf. He’d found the other skin.
Quickly, Bellar emptied half of the salt into his palm and began carefully sprinkling the white death on Magala’s skin. Salt, the only true protection against evil spirits, the only true barrier, would prevent the viricama from reentering its skin; when the sun arose while the viricama was still in its fiery form, fire would kill fire. The witch would die.
He hesitated only once as he did this, wondering if his offering the salt to Kaja for blessing would have the reverse effect. The whistling came again — impatient this time. Finished, Bellar secured the pouch and ran in the direction from which Esaf called.
Another tiny clearing, another pile of skin.
Esaf again held back from entering the clearing as Bellar, confident this time that his revenge was at hand, began sprinkling the rest of the salt on Uida. Wanting, purely for perverse reasons, to rub the salt around her empty mouth as if he could erase the memory of her lips pleasuring him, he turned the face toward him—
Who was this? He didn’t recognize this witch at all. Could it be one of the prematurely-aged stolen fetuses?
“What is it?” Esaf called softly.
Bellar looked over his shoulder. “Kenar was wrong. There are three left.”
“How do you know?”
He almost couldn’t bring himself to say it, not even to his friend. “It’s not Uida.”
Esaf closed his eyes, effectively disappearing from Bellar’s sight. His voice seemed to come from no where. “She cannot be....”
Bellar didn’t understand Esaf’s strange tone.
“She is.” Bellar put what was left of the salt back into his pouch while hoping it would be enough for one last skin. “There is no salt in her. None that I could taste.” Esaf would know what that meant. They often talked about their women; Bellar could not explain why he’d kept his liaison with Uida a secret.
Esaf’s eyes flew open. “If she is viricama, then what are you?”
Bellar paused halfway between Esaf and the salted skin. He didn’t know what to say.
Esaf seemed to forget his fear of the clearing and began advancing upon him. “All the other men who’d been sexed by a viricama are either burned or dead. How did you survive?”
He tried to lie. “It wasn’t—”
“You sexed her. I saw.” Esaf paused for only the briefest of moments and began speaking hurriedly, “The others were concerned about you, about the Codro Sal being alone and vulnerable to attack while tending to the brine wells so I was assigned to protect you, to follow you.” Following him secretly went without saying: the brine wells were considered so vital to the tribe’s existence that no one but the Codro Sal could know their location; it was a secret passed from father to son for generations. Not even Esaf, one of the potters who supplied the pots for the boiling of the brine, knew.
“I saw much: how strangely you behaved after sexing her, how strange it was for you not to share her,” as they’d done with other women — an acceptable practice among the unmarried men of their tribe, “...but I said nothing...nothing....” Esaf trailed off, clearly distressed.
“It was only sex.” Like none other. He had yearned for it every moment he was away from her, could hardly think of anything but the heat of her mouth around him.
“But I never told Kenar or the others what I saw.”
Those words seemed to have such import, Bellar questioned them, “What else did you see?”
“I saw you destroy the brine wells.”
Bellar stood still in shock. It was several moments before he could find his voice. “I did not.”
“You did.”
“No.” That was not his shame. “Uida tricked me into revealing the wells’ location.” He remembered clearly telling Uida how to find them, how he’d felt helpless to resist her questions.
“I saw you.”
“No, it was Uida.” Wasn’t it? He remembered little of the night before except how Uida had finally, after so many nights of sexing, presented herself as a meal. She knew how he loved tasting women; he’d begged for her juices in his mouth. It’d been like she was giving him a gift. But could the gift have been meant for the viricamas instead? Perhaps she had bewitched him. He didn’t know what to think, but knew his silence now was only serving to make Esaf more certain of his own beliefs.
Bellar closed the distance between them. “But you owe more to the tribe than to me, even as my friend. Why would you remain silent if what you saw was true?”
“I thought...maybe...you were trying to save us. To convince the tribe to move away from here before we sacrificed all our men to the viricamas. I thought you were desperate after losing Nedisse and overburdened by caring for her crippled husband.”
Esaf was silent for a moment. “Then you volunteered for this mission and I didn’t know what to think. Were you trying to make up for a terrible deed, were you trying to be a hero, or were you one of them?”
More silence.
“So what do you think now?” Bellar asked quietly, not sure if he wanted to hear the answer.
There was no answer. A burst of fire blew through the tree tops, lighting up Esaf’s surprised face as it dropped upon him.
The heat blast threw Bellar backward, the salt pouch flying from his hands.
Esaf began screaming, just like the screams in Nedisse’s stories. But it didn’t last long. Bellar could see his friend within that strange undulating reddish glow as he withered and crisped. Just at that last instant before the spark of life fled, Esaf turned his eyes upon Bellar. In them, he read accusation. His friend’s dead eyes said ‘traitor’. Esaf thought he’d been led into a trap. He’d suspected it all along, Bellar realized; it was why Esaf had resisted entering the clearings.
Bellar tried to
vomit, but could bring nothing up.
The viricama seemed to be savoring Esaf, making sounds that Bellar knew too well: the sounds of a woman enjoying sex, the sounds Uida made when her mouth—
His stomach heaved, but he felt dry on the inside. As he ran his hands through the grass, trying to find the lost salt pouch, he prayed to Kaja. He couldn’t help praying to her; he couldn’t think of who else to pray to. He prayed that there was enough salt left, that he could find the third skin and salt it before he was burned. Even if he died, so would all the viricamas at sunrise.
Then he saw it. Another pile of skin tucked away at the base of a tree.
Searching, scrambling, the salt pouch eluded him but he got his hands on that pile of skin, on Uida. Her face, strangely, was beautiful even now in its flat lifelessness.
He stood, Uida’s skin limp in his hands, her long black hair tickling his arms. The viricama hovered before him, its heat pleasant and comforting, like the nearby fire when he and Uida were sexing.
Did it know he had no salt left? When it did not attack, he knew that this viricama was Uida, and wondered if it had feelings for him.
He remembered Esaf’s words, and read new meaning into them. If Uida were a viricama, what did that make him? If Esaf truly believed Bellar had destroyed the brine wells, perhaps others suspected the same. Perhaps Uida spared him now because the viricamas needed an ally...or a scapegoat. If Bellar returned from the vira alive, when none of the other men had, the tribe might suspect him of betrayal just as Esaf had.
He stared into the fireball, surprised it didn’t hurt his eyes. He tried to see something of Uida in there, but there was nothing remotely human, nothing remotely woman.
And he had no salt, not even upon his skin for he was no longer sweating and could not feel the sting of salt on his skin. All salt — except that necessary to keep his body alive and functioning — had been drawn from him on purpose so that he could not even use his own salt to destroy her. But maybe there was just enough residue left....
Repulsed, yet craving the sensation of Uida’s flesh against his, he rubbed her skin against him, the pliable mounds of her breasts soft against his chest and belly.
He felt only warmth, both from her skin and from the viricama, the warmth which Uida projected when she was amused with him. The fireball drifted closer; the heat — the heat between his legs — grew. Even now he could not deny the satisfaction an erection had always given him.
Uida wanted him, even in this form. He recognized it in the way a tongue of fire stretched out, not close enough to burn him, but enough to drive the erection to quickened hardness. Close enough to seem as if it was licking around his engorged penis as would Uida’s tongue.
She could have it. He pulled at his breeches with one hand, yanking them down, and held her skin out with the other.
At first, the viricama ignored the offered skin. The tongue of fire flowed between his legs, as if it would embrace him. He sensed she wanted to sex him as a viricama, but when the fire briefly touched his penis he screamed — in pain and pleasure — and the fire tongue pulled back.
The fireball shimmered and began to dim, taking on human shape as it reached for the skin.
When Uida was half woman/half viricama, solid enough to touch, to penetrate, but still not fully within her skin, he took her. He took the gamble that if there was enough salt left in him to keep him alive, there would still be salt in his semen. In her woman form, his semen had never harmed her, but maybe in this state when she was neither woman nor viricama, it would prevent her from fully reintegrating with her skin.
Too late she seemed to realize something was wrong and tried to pull free of her skin. But it was as if she were trapped as long as his penis was inside her, thrusting hard, thrusting to release. The fireball flared, fluctuating wildly, searing the skin around his groin, but he felt no pain.
Rather, Bellar had never known such pleasure. When he came it was like a star burst. Sparks showered his face in a firefly dance as the fireball silently exploded, then dimmed to nothingness. The last of Uida’s juices — womanly or no — bathed him in such delicious warmth he just stood there still inside her empty skin until Kaja, in her nightly run through the sky, was overhead. He did not know if Kaja was laughing at him or blessing him.
End
TALEBONES
Finger bones and toe bones rattled inside the oracle’s shaking fist, clacking and clinking as if the bones themselves were angry. When she opened her hand, the pieces fell from between her fingers like heavy raindrops in a thunderstorm. The bones hit the hard-packed dirt floor, bounced and bounced again, scattering in a seemingly random pattern, the last one landing in the bowl of holy water near her left hand. The surface of the water turned an oily gray, shielding the precious bone from view.
A hush fell over the petitioners. With a twisted frown on her wrinkled sun-darkened face, the oracle grabbed the bowl and flipped it upside down so quickly that no water splashed outside the circle it made on the dirt. Instead, the water trickled out from under the bowl in tiny rivulets toward the front row of people who scrambled up from their seated positions and away. Except Meela. She watched the slick water wind its way toward her via the scuff marks made by someone’s toes to stop just inches from her fingertips. She dared not move, dared not lift her hands from their palm down position indicating her supplication.
Meela did lift her eyes to match the gaze of the oracle. The old woman’s rheumy eyes didn’t blink.
After a long moment, a relieved sigh ran through the tent—the only breath moving in the stifling, humid air. Meela relied on her ears to tell her when the other villagers began sitting down again, their thin cotton clothing rustling lightly, and her nose to tell her Jorad now sat directly behind her. The chief’s son had not bathed in at least a week.
Everyone now sat behind her, as if Meela had been singled out by the oracle’s strange powers. It wasn’t an odd situation for Meela; she’d often felt alone or out of place in her birth village ever since she’d returned upon her mother’s death a year ago. And that was why she sat here now, imploring the oracle for justice. Justice for her murdered mother.
“The bones do not lie.” The oracle’s strong voice belied her many years. “They are the purest parts of us, the strongest. When our voices have been silenced, only our bones can speak for us.” The oracle had spoken these words many times and had mastered the technique of projecting her voice so it sounded like it was issuing from the scattered bones themselves. It never failed to impress the crowds, except for Meela who knew the secret to such petty tricks herself.
The last rays of the setting sun, peeking between ridges of the surrounding hills, burst through the unsecured tent flaps which fluttered in the suddenly rising breeze, shining upon the clean white bones. Showy, Meela thought. She’d not realized it as a child, but the oracle always held court when the late afternoon winds picked up and positioned the tent precisely to capture the sun’s dying rays whatever the time of year.
For one horrible moment, Meela’s faith in the oracle began to wane. The entertainer’s tricks were simply a part of the ritual, weren’t they? To silence the unbelievers. To reinforce the oracle’s role as judge. It didn’t mean all of the oracle’s abilities were trickery. Meela’s ability to read the flesh and blood of others certainly was no trick. The young, whose growing forms transmitted a mass of information, were especially easy to read, and adolescent bodies, with their rapid transformation from child to adult, shouted to Meela’s senses so strongly she could smell them approaching before they came into sight. And young minds were as easy to read as young bodies.
Swaying with the breeze, the oracle held her arms in front of her, waving her hands over the bones. She closed her eyes, squeezing their milky yellow discharge out and down her cheeks like tears.
No one spoke. But from the stench of his farts, Meela knew Jorad was nervous. And well he should be. Passing by him and his father every day during her trips to the central well, kn
owing what they had done to her mother, had been too much for her. In her anger and hatred, she’d threatened him, privately, and then gone looking for her mother’s bones in the rice paddies which should have been Meela’s inheritance.
Justice for Meela’s mother would have to wait just a little longer though, as the oracle’s hand paused over the tiniest bones in the collection. No one had to ask to whom they belonged: frail Emina, newborn of Dorag and Yuseela. Rumor had it that Yuseela had shaken the baby too hard or that Dorag had stepped on his own daughter after too much rice wine.
Truthfully, frail Emina’s blood was bad and would have killed her before her first birthday if her oldest sister hadn’t smothered her. But only Meela knew that. It was Meela who’d put the thought in the sister’s head. For Meela, who’d seen a child die of the disease in her husband’s village, it was a mercy killing...and a means to bring the number of dead seeking justice to three, a requirement for the oracle’s ministrations.
The oracle panted rapidly, almost like a woman in labor. Her arms became rigid, stringy old muscles standing out in stark relief against the old woman’s papery skin. Her fingers curled in, trembling as if resisting a force pulling them in tighter. The joint disease, Meela told herself. The oracle was creatively using her age-related infirmities as part of the act.
After what seemed an eternity, the oracle snatched up one of the bone fragments and flung it into the crowd all without ever opening her eyes.
Meela watched over her shoulder as the bone flew past Jorad, past Dorag and Yuseela, past crazy Ulenny, and struck Esana—Emina’s oldest sister—in the forehead.
Esana’s eyes, squeezed shut like the oracle’s, flew open. Her young fair skin burned a bright red. The fourteen year old girl burst into tears.
The dead baby’s parents gasped, in horror and relief.
Jorad motioned to his younger brothers, not that much older than Esana, who grabbed the girl by her arms and dragged her from the darkening tent. She whimpered protests, but no one listened. No one spoke on her behalf. The bones had spoken.
Yuseela and Dorag wept quietly, but Meela could still see the relief on their faces. They’d been cleared of suspicion, spared watching their baby die, and—although they didn’t know it—spared from the exorbitant dowry marrying off a barren daughter like Esana would have cost them. With as little as Yuseela and Dorag had, they would’ve been forced to sell their land to compensate Esana’s outraged future husband, leaving no inheritance for their sons. To Meela it was a mercy killing too.
And it was all proof that the oracle’s powers were true. There was no other way for her to identify Esana as the killer—Meela had seen to that—except for the bones to tell her.
Now, would it next be Meela seeing justice done for her mother, or would it be old man Poley—the third petitioner—who insisted it was the jealous daughter-in-law who killed his wife, not he?
The oracle went back into her act. Her hands wavered over the scattered bones as if she couldn’t tell whose were whose. Suddenly she leaned forward, her own bones creaking in protest, and picked up the overturned bowl with one hand and grabbed the hidden bone with the other. Meela caught only the briefest of glimpses of the bone—turned a sickening blackish color—before it struck her in the forehead.
Even Jorad gasped. Then laughed.
Meela was certain her face was as red as Esana’s had been, but hers was not shame.
The oracle blinked at her as if trying to remember who she was.
Jorad motioned to his younger brothers who were just reentering the tent.
Meela stood up. “I did not murder my mother!” She pointed to Jorad, still sitting cross-legged behind her. “He did!”
“The bones never miss,” the oracle said. Heads nodded. They’d all seen it themselves, bones bouncing off dirt or a tent pole or a hearthstone in order to strike murdering cowards hiding behind innocent people.
She shrugged off Jorad’s brothers. “I did not murder her! You all know I was living in my husband’s village on the other side of the Tarek Mountains when she died.”
“We know no such thing,” Jorad spoke for the first time. His voice was infuriatingly deep, entrancing, stimulating. “Your husband’s village cast you out with charges of witchcraft.” He shrugged as he slowly stood up to look her in the eyes. Tall for a woman, Meela matched him inch for inch. “They had no proof they could share, but they wanted no part of you nor any offspring you might produce. You’ve been wandering the hills for nearly two years now, time enough to plot the death of your mother and, with no living brothers, to take over her land holdings. It was the only way for you ever to gain a home again.”
Meela’s mother had married well, and with the loss of husband and sons, had come into possession of the village’s largest and best rice paddies, twice as much as the chief’s family. More than enough to generate jealousy and greed.
“That is why you killed her,” Meela said in a low voice. “Her land.” All the while they spoke, she worked at his mind, trying to undo its folds, to rearrange them. But it was useless. She could picture his brain, its intricate pulsating ridges, but couldn’t pull them apart. They were packed too tightly together. It had always been this way, the older a person the less effect she had on their thoughts, as if their brains developed an immunity to her powers with all that muscle mass folding in on itself as it matured and tucked away memories and lessons, hiding away the vulnerable spots that her thoughts were otherwise able to influence.
The only adult mind she’d ever been able to touch was Nahmia’s, her own mother, and even then all Meela received were images and emotions: like Jorad’s face and hands as he stabbed Nahmia in the gut, like panic as Jorad threw Nahmia into the rice paddy before she was even dead. The terror of drowning.
Jorad’s face rippled, as if Meela were looking at him from below the red-tinged water’s surface—her mother’s last vision. “Your family’s power is waning. You needed my mother’s land to solidify your hold on the village or else your son would never have the stature to become chief when he is of age.”
Jorad stepped closer, pressing up against her, as his brothers grabbed her arms to hold her in place. To her disgust, she could feel herself trembling, not just with fear, but with revulsion at the thrust of his hardened penis against her. If they’d been unclothed, he would’ve penetrated her.
Softly, so no one else could hear, he said, “If you were not a witch, I’d have you simply for the pleasure of teaching you a lesson.”
She spat in his face. “You murdered my mother.”
“The bones do not lie,” the oracle pronounced.
Meela turned her head to glare at the old woman. “How did they buy your trickery?”
“You are the trickster,” the old woman said as she rose. She stepped carefully over the bone fragments and stood on her tiptoes so she could whisper into Meela’s ear. “Playing with the minds of children.”
Meela’s heart thudded against her chest.
“That was not one of your mother’s bones I threw,” the oracle whispered more, “It was another of Emina’s.”
“She would’ve died horribly anyway. I’ve seen it.”
“So have I.” The oracle “tsk”ed under her breath. “You are an amateur, my dear foolish Meela. If perhaps you’d been born to me, I could’ve taught you real gifts.”
“What could I have learned from a liar and a thief?”
The oracle shrugged. “Survival.”
Meela looked at the other villagers, who’d scurried to huddle in the back of the tent at the first mention of witchcraft. They’d heard none of the exchange. “Jorad murdered my mother for her land! I only came to seek justice for her!” She had no proof of her vision, no way to explain how she knew without labeling herself a witch, without ruining any chance she had for vengeance. The others must believe her innocent or they wouldn’t believe her bones.
“No, you are the murderer we have sought.” Jorad smiled, but none of the others could see it.
“Finally your mother’s soul can rest.”
No one contradicted him. No one spoke on her behalf.
She spat in his face, satisfied how the spittle streaked his lips and at his revulsion. If he truly believed in her powers, he might think he was now cursed.
As it had been in her husband’s village, the others simply watched her being dragged away, this time to her death.
Amateur, the oracle had called her. Well, the old woman would see the truth for herself. In Meela’s own experiments with bones, she’d discovered she could not affect those of others, but could feel strange things happening to her own bones. If she turned her mind inward to the folds of her own brain, to the folds of her muscles and sinew, to the traces of her blood vessels, she could see all that happened within her own body. At first a chilling experience, but now a means of revenge.
As Jorad’s brothers took her out to the village midden and placed her face down over the chopping block, she burst tiny blood vessels inside her legs, and used the hot pulsing liquid to write on the long bones the names of her mother’s murderers—now her murderers—the oracle included. Over and over again, she burnt the red letters into the white bones, so there would be no mistakes, no mischance should one of the mangy mutts who scavenged for food in the midden run off with a limb.
Jorad’s youngest brother raised the axe.
Justice for her mother, her bones asked for. And bones do not lie, the oracle said it herself. It would be many days before her bones could speak for her, but to bones time is of little importance, only the stories they can—
End
IN THE SERVICE OF THE QUEEN
First, Paolo died, then Francois and Jean-Pierre, and then Mario and Marcel...the list went on. Of the twenty-member Queen’s Guard, only three remained. Emile, Gino and Luc stood in the dusty roadway, surrounding the horse-drawn wagon holding the queen’s bier. Spindly creatures, resembling giant sloths with porcupine quills instead of fur, dropped from the surrounding trees. They were easily the height of two men, but Emile doubted they weighed even half of what he did without armor.
“Maybe they don’t want her back,” Gino sniped under his breath. It was not the first time he’d made such a suggestion.
This time Emile did not spare a rebuke or even a glance at his subordinate. His eye was better kept on these fast-moving arboreals and the thick, but sharp claws on each hand and foot. Consciously keeping his hand away from his sword, he straightened his road-worn uniform tunic and gave a slight bow, hoping they understood human gestures and languages.
“We wish you no harm. We only want to pass through your woods to the Huikugy city.”
When the creature nearest him spoke, it was like words being drowned inside a cat’s purr. “We guard the Huikugy against their enemies.”
Emile could see nothing that resembled a weapon on any of the creatures — now numbering six — except their claws. Those claws dug into the dirt as each creature settled on its haunches. Their stance seemed to indicate relaxation, but the way the quills stood up stiffly — like hundreds of needles — warned Emile otherwise.
“We are not their enemies. I am Captain Emile Diallo of the Queen’s Guard. We bring home the Huikugy queen.”
“The queen is safe inside her fortress.”
“This is Aulifarwoon, the daughter of Asalioral, the ancestor of your present king. She was married to our king of Madri.” Purely a political liaison because the Huikugy were not remotely human.
The alliance had gained exactly what the humans wanted, a friendly neighbor on its western border, but little else. The Huikugy were notoriously isolationist — even more so than the Torumbur to the north — but still were capable of preventing incursions into Madri by the warlike Arijia.
A rumbling purr passed through the assembled creatures as they glanced at one another, their small black eyes unreadable.
“They don’t understand,” Luc said softly.
It wasn’t surprising that the creatures didn’t know of what Emile spoke. The Huikugy were quite long-lived compared to other species. These creatures probably weren’t born before this queen left Huikugy lands. Likewise, the original Madri king to whom she’d initially been wed had died over a century ago. His successors had inherited their foreign queen at ascension. And Emile was not the first captain of her guard.
“No human may pass, by order of the king.”
“The treaty—”
“—has been nullified by King Revasnatir.”
“When?”
“One moon ago.”
Emile shared an uneasy look with the other two men. The queen’s guard had left Madera, the capital of Madri, in the Boralle Province, twenty-eight days ago immediately upon the queen’s passing. How could the Huikugy have known? There’d been no way to notify them...unless the rumors about Huikugy mental powers were true. Emile didn’t believe those rumors — he’d sensed nothing from his enigmatic queen — and didn’t believe anyway that the queen’s death would affect the treaty even if the Huikugy already knew. She had died of natural causes, old age; her human subjects had played no part in it. Emile could personally assure the Huikugy of that.
The creatures had not moved.
“We bring the queen home so she may be buried among her own kind, in her homeland.”
The queen had left no instructions for the treatment of her remains. As it was the human custom that the dead must be buried in his or her birthplace — even if it meant relatives must take on an arduous journey — the widowed king decreed Queen Aulifarwoon be returned to her people.
The rumbling purr increased in intensity; Emile could almost feel it through his thick boots.
He tried a new tact. “If I may be so bold to ask, perhaps you could escort us to the city gate.” He could suggest these creatures take the queen for the rest of her final journey, but he wouldn’t do that. Not only did honor dictate he remain with his queen, but he had no way of knowing if these creatures truly guarded the city at the behest of the Huikugy.
“This queen you speak of is dead?”
Gino stifled an incredulous laugh, but only after Emile glared at him.
What did these creatures think was beneath the dirty tarp on the wagon? Its shape — squat, round, with eight limbs – was obviously an Huikugy body. Not to mention the smell. Emile had grown immune to it, but not even their best doctors could develop a preservative to keep the body from decaying for a month.
The creatures’ purr evolved into a growl. “No. Touching the dead is forbidden.”
The creatures surged forward. Emile focused upon the claw on the end of the lanky arm swinging at him as he drew his sword. But it was the quills he should’ve watched for. The claw clanged harmlessly against the metal sword; when the creature drew its arm back, the quills raked along his sleeve, piercing the fabric and the skin. It was like having fire poured into his flesh through open wounds. Sparks flitted between the ends of the broken-off quills, setting fire to the fabric.
The creature swung with its other arm; Emile — the closest of the three men to the two horses — ducked under the nearest horse while he clawed at the sleeve, ripping off the burning portion, and furiously plucking at the quills. A second creature lunged at him from the opposite side. Instead of the man, their quills struck the horses.
As the horses bucked and fought their harnesses, screaming wildly, Emile dropped into a fetal position, his hands protecting his head. The stench of burning horseflesh overpowered everything, even the stench of the dead queen.
He could hear Gino screaming too, or maybe it was Luc.
A kick from a hoof knocked the breath out of him, and then a wagon wheel ran over his left foot as the crazed horses, trying to escape the pain and the flames, surged forward. Kicking and stomping, the horses trampled right over the two creatures trying to reach Emile. Viscous, orange blood spurted from the dead creatures’ wounds, running in rivulets through the dirt, bursting into flames wherever it happened to cross a fallen quill.
Their path now free of obstacles, the horses ran, the wagon lumbering awkwardly behind them, its wheels bouncing. The bier, jostled about, slid dangerously close to the wagon’s edge just as the horses rounded a curve in the road. The only sign of their whereabouts were puffs of smoke drifting over the treetops.
Still trying to catch a breath, Emile grabbed his dropped sword and dipped it into the burning liquid. Its viscousness made it stick to the metal well. Flaming sword in hand, he turned to help his men.
Luc lay on the ground, his uniform smoking. Two dead creatures sprawled nearby, their severed arms making a neat frame around the downed man. Despite the evidence, Emile knew Luc had not killed them himself. Luc was the worst swordsmen in the Queen’s Guard which, ironically, had saved his life until now because the other men took it upon themselves to make up for his weakness and protected him.
Gino, who was the best swordsman in the guard, parried the swinging arms of a third creature. Its quills made strange twanging sounds as they broke off against the metal. Smoke rose between the pair, but Emile couldn’t see who or what burned.
A fourth creature, severely wounded, struggled to its feet and lumbered toward Emile. Immune to its own blood, it stepped right through the burning liquid. Emile nearly faltered seeing that — his only idea hinged upon his flaming sword — but he had to try. He leapt forward, into the creature’s reach, and nearly fell down when his left foot folded under him. The wheel running over it must have broken one or more of its many bones.
Ignoring the pain, he planted his feet firmly in a rut in the road, and ran his sword into the creature’s chest. It almost didn’t penetrate so tough was the creature’s skin, and when it punched through Emile stumbled forward nearly getting his face splattered by gushing blood.
As he hoped, only the creature’s hide was immune to the blood. It was like setting fire to fire. The creature made an “urp” sound, its chest glowing from the inside. And then it burst open, like an exploding fireplace Emile had encountered as a child. Flaming innards showered Emile, who dropped and rolled to snuff out flames licking at his uniform.
When he stood again, the remaining creature was down, but so was Gino.
Emile patted out the flames eating away at Gino’s torso. His maroon tunic had been burned away, except for the back and upper sleeves where the insignia of Queen Aulifarwoon’s protectors was sewn on. Designed by Emile’s great-great-great grandfather, it was a simple eight-pointed star.
Gino coughed. “Luc?”
Emile checked the other man and shook his head.
Gino swore under his breath. “I promised Luc’s father we’d keep the cub alive on this journey.” He coughed again; this time blood came up.
Emile didn’t try to fight off a smile. As captain, he too often indulged Gino’s improprieties, such as giving diminutive nicknames to Luc, but now was not the time to reprimand him.
“I’ve been insolent again, haven’t I?” Gino sounded only partially contrite. “Forgive me, my captain.”
“You’ve always been insolent.” It wasn’t a condemnation.
“You’ll have to—” he gasped, “to leave us here.”
Emile shook his head. “No. I’ll not leave your body in a foreign land. You will be buried amongst your ancestors as you should be.”
“You can’t carry...”
...two of us, Emile finished the thought. “I will.”
Each dead man had been taken home by another, reducing their ranks. Carmine had to be assigned to take both Mario’s and Marcel’s bodies home because no more men could be spared. These decisions made the queen’s guard more vulnerable, but Emile could not break tradition nor disappoint the families of his guardsmen. And now he most certainly could not risk losing the souls of his dead subordinates to foreigners’ witchcraft; should the Arijia discover the treaty’s dissolution, their reputed magicians might soon be swarming through these lands.
That left to Emile the task of taking home both Luc and Gino. But first, his queen.
“I will come back for you. Perhaps we’re not that far from the city.”
Gino gave him a blood-rimmed smile. “The queen’s man to the last. Did she ever appreciate you enough?”
Emile couldn’t answer that question. Not only had his queen never spoken directly to him, or shown any emotion toward him, but Gino was now dead. The question was pointless.
He would see his queen home, and then he’d take his men back to their home in Boralle. He left Gino and Luc where they lay knowing any more of those creatures who might happen along would not touch the dead. But he would have to worry about more creatures.
He collected all three swords, but then had a better idea. He sliced away the skin of one of the creatures — a tough job; it was like sawing tree bark with a dagger. The task left him even more out of breath then the fight had. And it dulled two of the swords, which he left lying in the bloody road.
Careful to touch only a patch devoid of quills and blood, he dragged the skin along behind him as he limped down the road. He’d see if the creatures wouldn’t touch even their own dead.
The horses could not have gone far, not before the fire killed them. As expected, not even a half mile down around the curve of the road, the queen’s bier lay in the dirt. The tarp still covered her body, but several of her legs could be seen. Queen Aulifarwoon had claws for feet and scales instead of skin.
The wagon lay, overturned, against a tree trunk, its baseboards and wheels shattered. The wagon’s other contents — their supplies — were scattered about. The horses lay, smoke rising from their charred corpses, just a bit further along.
What Emile didn’t expect was how close to the city they’d actually been. From where he stood, the road rose up a slight hill to where wooden gates stood closed at the crest. But he couldn’t see any signs of a city, only more trees and the tops of what looked like large dirt mounds. Somehow, despite the physical differences between humans and Huikugy, he had expected something resembling human-built structures. His queen had adapted well enough to Madera.
He also saw no sign of habitation except for three sloth-like creatures hanging from tree branches on either side of him. When he brandished the hide of their dead compatriot, they hissed at him, but did not approach.
He covered up his dead queen, and began gathering unburned rope from their supplies to turn the bier into a sled. He’d have to drag her to the city gates which he suspected might be merely an affectation the Huikugy put up to satisfy the expectations of foreigners.
He found himself increasingly short of breath as he worked, accompanied by a sharp pain in his chest. Emile worried the horse kick had done significant damage, but pushed it from his mind. He must deliver his queen to her own people.
But the Huikugy came to him. Perhaps alerted by more sloth-like creatures he couldn’t see, or those rumored mental powers, the gates creaked open and out scurried a half-dozen Huikugy.
His human preconceptions again betrayed him. He expected that intelligent, civilization-building creatures would look as different from one another as humans did, but he would not have been able to identify his own queen if she stood alive today amongst her kin.
The Huikugy were squat, rounded somewhat like tortoises, with dark gray scales, and eight legs like arachnids. Their necks and heads, covered by light gray feathers, were avian except for the near-human-like mouth where a beak might be expected.
They did not speak to him, not with those mouths. Their words hammered inside his head, drowning out the pain in his chest.
“Human, human, human....”
By reflex, he clapped his hands over his ears even though it didn’t help.
“Human, human, human....”
“I brought her home to you!” he yelled. “The daughter of King Asalioral.” His words echoed amongst the trees, seeming to startle the Huikugy.
“Human, human, human... this is a carcass, carcass, carcass....”
“It is Queen Aulifarwoon! Daughter of King Asalioral.”
“Carcass, carcass, carcass....”
Finally one voice broke in over the mental echoes. “Did you learn nothing from her reign amongst your people? Humans had over a century of your time to learn about the Huikugy.”
“What?”
“Did you not recognize she was dying?”
“Yes, but our doctors didn’t know what to do. She was just old, they said.”
“Irrelevant, irrelevant, irrelevant....”
“We care not for carcasses, only the souls. You should have brought her back before her body died, before her soul was lost forever amongst your foreign souls.”
So similar to the thought he’d had about his own men’s souls. But did Huikugy have souls like humans did?
“She did not tell us.”
“She should not have had to. You should have learned.”
“I spent every waking moment with the queen. She taught me nothing except how well she had adapted to living among humans.” Perhaps Queen Aulifarwoon had been too human in her manners by the time Emile came into her service. Her own ways so alien to her that she no longer could share them with her new guards.
Perhaps she had become so human she should have been buried in Madera.
The thought tore through him, the anguish more painful than the cough racking his chest. He stared, bleakly, at the pink spittle on his hands. The horse’s kick — broken ribs, punctured lung....
“Please, my duty is to return her to you for burial. I must see my duty finished. It is all I ask.”
“Too late, too late, too late....”
“Please. I’ve pledged my life to her, my life and the life of my men to bring her back.”
“And your life you’ve given.”
One of the Huikugy scuttled closer and cocked its head to one side so it could look him in the eyes. He’d always been fascinated by the multifaceted, multicolored Huikugy eyes.
“Be satisfied, human, that you brought her to our gate.”
“What will you do with her?” He coughed more blood.
“We do nothing with carcasses. She will lay here until the carrion-eaters are finished with her.” The Huikugy let out a brief whistling breath — the equivalent of a sigh. “You completed your duty. Be content.”
“I have not.”
“You have.”
“I must take my men home to be buried with our kind.”
“You die before us now. Once you are a carcass, we can not touch you.” Another short whistling breath. “You will lie here with your queen.”
Until the carrion-eaters picked his bones cleaned.
“I promised—”
“Humans have made many promises.”
“Promises, promises, promises...” echoed in his head.
“Promises made without understanding. We have lost as much as you. We will never be complete again because Aulifarwoon’s soul is lost to us. You failed your queen’s soul.”
“Soul, soul, soul....”
How could the Huikugy belief in a soul be so human-like when the two species were so different? He’d never considered his queen’s soul. He protected her — her body — from narrow-minded humans who resented an alien in their royal household.
“Soul, soul, soul....”
No matter how many times he had stared into his queen’s eyes, he’d seen no hint of a soul there, only bizarrely distorted reflections of himself.
“I have not failed,” Emile insisted. “I brought her home.” He couldn’t have failed. Failed to learn the most fundamental aspect of the queen he served. Failed to learn how to read those eyes, her thoughts. Failed to learn the one thing humans and Huikugy shared.
“I have not failed,” he said again. He had pledged to bring her body home; he’d done that. Her body was his responsibility, not her soul.
“As you wish it.”
“I have not failed. I brought her home.” He couldn’t remember if he was repeating himself.
The Huikugy said nothing more, even the echoes died away as they scurried back inside their gate.
“I have not failed,” Emile repeated to himself as he lay down in the road next to his queen.
End
Note: The three stories published here are taken from Skin and Bones, a collection of eleven short stories and a novelette currently available from XC Publishing. These dark-tinged, anthropology-inspired tales will intrigue fans of horror, dark fantasy, magical realism, and science fiction.
About the Authors
Xina Marie Uhl lives in sunny Southern California with her husband and assorted furry and scaly pets. The setting of her first novel, Necropolis, along with much of her other writing, has been heavily influenced by her interest in ancient history. She holds both a BA and an MA in history. In addition to fiction writing, she teaches history and writes educational materials. When she isn’t reading and writing, she enjoys hiking, photography, and planning new travel adventures. She maintains a blog at xuwriter.wordpress.com.
Xina’s available ebooks include:
Necropolis
The Gauntlet Thrown and The Challenge Accepted (with Cheryl Dyson)
A Fairy Tail and Out of the Bag
The Cat's Guide to Human Behavior
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Born and raised in the Midwest, Janet Loftis fled to sunny California to escape the cold, dark winters, only to now explore the colder and darker sides of human nature in her horror and fantasy fiction.
With a BA in Anthropology and Archaeology, and a MA combining Cultural Anthropology with Creative Writing, Janet's stories are inspired by the mythos of cultures around the world. From science-fiction to fantasy to horror, and from short stories to screenplays, Janet has seen her fiction published in a variety of online and print magazines, and placed in the finals and semi-finals of screenplay competitions.
Next on Janet's agenda are more horror shorts, a horror screenplay, and the marketing of a family-friendly screenplay.
More short story collections by Janet L. Loftis:
Zombies And Aliens
Ivy League
The Box Quadrilogy
Wheels and Deals
Connect with Janet online:
Facebook
Amazon Author Page
Follow her blog The Far Places exploring creativity, travel and cats.
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The Ruling Elite and Other Stories Page 16