by Perry Brass
He was fully covered in dark woven clothing; the outfit of a fighting man. His face was pale, but frightfully angry. Why was he angry at me? I asked myself.
"Go away!" Greeland screamed. "Go back to your own end of the planet. Why are you here?"
"What have we got here?" the stranger asked. "Caught you both naked like filthy animals!" He smiled. "I know what you do—and I will kill you both."
"This is our part of Ki!" Greeland raged. "Get off. Go back to your own end. We have a right to ours! It was given to us in the Agreement of the planet."
The Off-Sexer clenched his jaw. He was broader and slightly taller than Greeland, but only slightly. Greeland was naked. His male sac was exposed; the stranger stared at it. Suddenly, I felt ashamed of myself as if I had been subject to the worst humiliation.
"I will kill both of you. And take your heads back to my parents at the Court."
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I had to do something. I got up immediately as the Off-Sexer grabbed Greeland's male sac.
"So," he cried, "this is the famous third nut!" Greeland flinched. "Pain? Maybe I should grab a little harder."
Greeland panted, holding his breath from the pain. The clothed man commanded the most vulnerable part of my promised friend's body. Desperately, Greeland tried to bite him, then punched him in the face several times. He drew blood from the man's nose, and one of his teeth cut Greeland's knuckles. But he wouldn't release him until Greeland wrapped his hands around the stranger's throat and choked him.
I reached for the sheath knotted to Greeland's breechcloth and took out his hunting knife. It was sturdy, with a medium-sized blade he used every day. It was not a heavy war-knife, an intimidating weapon, like the Off-Sexers on patrol carried by their sides. But I knew its size in Greeland's hands would make little difference. Greeland was a hunter; he would know what to do with it. The stranger and Greeland were grappling furiously. Greeland was on the ground, one hand on his aching groin, kicked several times in his stomach and kidneys, when I crept behind him and passed the knife into his other palm.
The Off-Sexer switched his attention to me; his eyes glittered. I watched them. "Out—you little monkey! I might put a chain around you, and use you as a pet! You're not so bad looking—for your kind."
My eyes stayed glued to his face, his nose still bleeding; he grinned triumphantly at me.
He wiped his nose almost casually with the back of his left hand, and kept his fierce gaze on me. I looked into his clear blue-green eyes that looked like water seen from a great distance, and I didn't understand why any of this went on. Suddenly, he closed his eyes; the grin left his face. He opened them, and just stood there, watching me. Immediately, I felt off-balance again and backed off two paces; then I saw Greeland silently lunge forward and cut the stranger's throat.
His body jerked; blood shot out, glistening all over. The stranger's eyes bugged open so wide I thought they'd pop out of his head. Then he died instantly. Greeland knew exactly where to cut the flesh.
I thought I was going to faint. Aside from animals, I had never seen anything die before. The Off-Sexers were different, but basically similar to us. I looked at him lying on the ground, in the sudden white-silence of the forest. The birds had stopped shrieking. Light cut in razor patterns through the trees. The swampy air thickened even hotter now, but I felt cold inside. I only wanted Greeland to hold me again. I wanted none of this to happen, except our happiness together.
Greeland knelt down beside the strange body, and felt the wound at the neck. He nodded his head and seemed satisfied. I knelt next to him and looked at the Off-Sexer's face that seemed now transparent.
"He's beautiful," I said. Motionless—dead—there wasn't a trace of anger left on his face.
"I hate him! " Greeland exploded. "I don't know his name, and I hate him!" He got up and ran his calloused fingers through his hair, pulling out balls of dirt, leaf blades and twigs that became ensnared during the fight. He stretched his flat, muscular shoulders. He smiled; an idea passed through him. "I'll cut his head off—that should show them. And we'll take it back to show the old men."
His chunky hunting knife, still coated in blood, lay on the ground. Greeland picked it up and drew its dirty point delicately across the stranger's cheek, then down the jaw bone to his throat. His pale nose did not appear to be broken, though blood had trickled from it. It was like a perfect bridge from his brow, not like our own heavier features. His eyes, blue traced with green, were still open. I started to cry. Greeland aimed his knife to start decapitating the Off-Sexer's pale head. The ground shook under me; my own blood dropped to my feet. My head felt ice cold.
I grabbed Greeland's arm, and pulled the knife away. Then I fell down onto the spongy ground.
Greeland held me and kissed my brow. "You don't want me to take the head, do you? It is not something we normally do, but surely they would do it to us. I think it will make an interesting remembrance—both for us and the Off-Sexers."
"No," I said. "Let's go back to the old men. They will know what to do."
I got up. Suddenly Greeland grabbed me by my arm with such force that he hurt me. "I did not finish having you, Enkidu. I want you now."
"Now?"
"Yes."
My body shivered. Suppose I started to throw up? We were only a few paces away from the bodies of the small young buck-dear and the stranger. What an audience! I looked back at the stranger's face. "He's ... still watching," I stammered. "His eyes are open."
"He will never watch again," Greeland said. He smiled. He went back to the stranger's body and started to shuck its clothes off. "I never understood why they have to wear all this," he said, shaking his head and ripping off the man's blood-spattered hunting tunic, so his hairless chest was bared. "And they change so often. You can't recognize them by what they wear." He pulled off the man's boots; then a pair of dark britches, streaked with grimy forest stains. He rolled the man over, so that his tender white buttocks showed.
Greeland grinned, and stuck his chin out. "Sometimes," he said, "I think they all look alike. Yes, that's why they wear so much. They only change clothes to keep fooling each other." He flipped the body over again, so that it faced us.
The Off-Sexer was now naked, with unblemished pale skin. In the mossy shadows of the dark forest, he shimmered. The light from the Star hit him in lovely, dappled patterns. He had pink, small nipples. At the bottom of his stomach, a light foliage of blond hair trickled into his groin. His male pipe appeared like the heavy stem of a flower. He looked more appealing—more beautiful—than any animal we'd ever hunted. I couldn't keep my eyes off him.
"You like him, don't you?" Greeland asked. I didn't want to answer. But we cannot lie. It is not in our character.
"He would take you, or kill you, "Greeland said. "You don't know how dangerous the Off-Sexers are. It is like something is bred into them."
"He's beautiful," I said. "The most beautiful thing I've ever seen." I felt nauseated again.
Greeland took me into his arms. "You were promised to me. I will love you always; you must understand that."
He began to kiss me passionately. I shook all over. My knees felt watery from so many different feelings streaming over me. I looked at the dead stranger. His face had turned towards me, with a mask-like, vacant smile. I looked at Greeland. He was hard, and pulled me towards him. He entered me standing. Then he lowered me to the ground, his pipe still in me. "You were promised, remember that."
I felt his third testicle become enlarged and hot next to my soft haunches. Then his movement became my own. I stroked myself, until we both exploded at once, he into me, and I into my own hands. Greeland pulled out of me and held me to his chest. He brought my hands to his face, and greedily licked my seed from them.
I thought he would be satisfied then, that we could go—I wanted to get away was soon as I could. To leave, and have this violence washed away from me, the way the stranger's blood would wash from Greeland's knife. I only wanted
to remember the Promise, made real by the sex we'd shared, between Greeland and me.
"I want the Off-Sexer," he demanded. I had no idea what he was saying. "I'll have him, like I had you. But I'll not give him the seed from my third Egg."
"He's dead," I said. "How could you do such a thing?"
"How could he come at us to kill?" he answered. "I will force him for the pleasure of it."
"What kind of pleasure can you get?" I asked.
"Revenge."
I felt myself crying, unable to stop the tears. "You will defile him even in death?"
"Shut up!" he grabbed me and shook my shoulders, making me feel like a child. "You don't understand."
"Please, leave him alone," I cried softly.
"You don't understand," Greeland said, spitting out anger. "I must have him. I waited so long for you, and he came only to destroy this day in every way. Everything will be destroyed without this. He would ruin our happiness. He would win, even dead."
"Why?"
"I hate him. I hate him beyond death for what he did. You will not understand how much I wanted you. You mean my very life to me, and now I see in your eyes that he has taken you. You must see that killing him will not be enough. You won't forget him. I don't know why he has taken you, but there is no satisfaction for me, even now in his death."
I turned away. It was true. The stranger, the Off-Sexer, had taken me. I would never forget the sight of him, lying vulnerable, drained of all life, a few paces from us. I did not know at that time what effect he would have on us, but I knew that the stranger's presence would never leave me.
"You must tell no one," Greeland demanded. "Promise me that. And afterwards, I hope you will see this day differently." He looked down and gently kissed my face. "You will know how much I love you; and how much I must possess you through him."
I got up and put on my breechcloth. I watched from a distance as Greeland turned the dead stranger over and pushed his pipe into him. He was savage with him, thrashing and beating at the stranger's pale haunches until there were blood-red bruises on it. I watched him, and didn't say or feel a thing. And I saw that Greeland was very wrong: I knew he loved me; but he could not possess me in this way.
But one thing was true: all this time that he had come to see me and told he how much he would care for me, I had not known him—if he could do such a thing out of anger with the body of the Off-Sexer.
Chapter Two
After he had finished with him, Greeland sat for a while quietly under the same sheltering tree where we had stopped to make love. His eyes were closed. He propped the body of the Off-Sexer up next to him. They looked similar. Both still. Absent. The only sounds came from the forest itself. A huge flock of pink and white water birds flew overhead. I could now make them out above the trees. The Star had passed from its blinding midpoint directly above, revealing more of the sky. The water birds—thin-beaked; wings so silent they appeared to float in the moist air, rather than fan it—were like a rosy evening cloud before a rainfall. I felt calmer, after so much turmoil.
Greeland got up. "I said a prayer to the powerful Goddess for him. I asked Her to speed his voyage back to Her. And for them both to be good to us, and bless our union."
"What should we do with him?" I asked.
"The old men will know," Greeland said, redressed in his breechcloth. Now, he seemed more familiar to me; his brawny shoulders and neck were striped with fine berry stains. A small headband of shiny, black feathers, tipped with tufts of white monkey fur, ringed his head. He replaced some of the ornaments he wore. Strings of bright, blue shells around his neck. Around his wrists, he wore leather thongs pierced with polished pieces of crocodile and turtle bone.
He hoisted the small buck's carcass up around his shoulders, and we started off, away from the dense heart of the forest, to our own enclave.
The enclave we belonged to was busy now. The elders—old men, as we called them—were getting ready to lead a Goddess Dance, a series of chants, dances, tableaux and mimes in which we played both male and female roles, acting out scenes from the myths and history of the planet. The dances kept our history alive, since there was no writing on Ki. They were done at certain cycles of the Moons—during the Three Moons, sacred to us, we did one—but the most elaborate was during the Ten Moons, a period held in reverence by all of Ki. The Ten Moons Goddess Dance was spectacular. We all looked forward to it; even the wars among the Off-Sexers were interrupted to convene for it. Sometimes, during a time of danger to the planet—a war that would not stop, a famine or drought—an "emergency" dance might be performed in the hope that the Goddess Herself would see it and help Her children on Ki.
We trudged up a steep hill, then turned around a bend, and lowered our heads past a waterfall. There were fifty or so huts. The huts were made from trees or skins. Some of them had sturdy rock or earth-clay foundations. It has been said that our enclave, called The Dark Men, had been there for countless Ten Moons. No one was sure who the original "Dark Men" had been. But some of our own elders believed that the Dark Men went all the way back. Back to a time even before the appearance of the first Same-Sexers. Before the third Egg and even the Promise itself.
They will swear to you that the Dark Men included the father, whose name has never been known, of the goddess Ki. Her father, they concluded, must have been an element, the darkness of clay or rusted iron, to have been a Dark Man himself before we had names. Certainly, to exist without a name was to take on the magic of the gods themselves. Sometimes Ki was referred to as "The Lady Who Knew Not Her Father"—by logic, therefore a woman who had taken an active part in her own creation. A startling idea to us, since each Same-Sexer claimed not one but two men as fathers. Another story was that at the enclave of the Dark Men the first peace of the planet had been drawn. It was the peace that led to the Agreement Greeland had referred to, and the peace that gave Ki to her first husband. Because we went back so far, the men from our enclave traditionally led the Goddess Dance.
We Same-Sexers, we believed, sprang from Kiwa, the brother of the Goddess. Kiwa was born of Ki's mortal mother, who conceived him with the fruit of a magic hardwood tree whose limbs reached—past all others—into heaven. Kiwa therefore was born of the forest itself; he in turn had twin sons; we Same-Sexers believed we were descended directly from them. The twins came to live among the Dark Men in their wet forests. Ishul, Ki's husband, tried to trick Her and went off with one of Her own daughters. Ki was so angry that She banished Kita, her daughter, and Ishul to a dry part of Her planet, where the Off-Sexers were said to come from, and still live.
After leaving the body of the young deer outside Greeland's hut, we walked into the elders' big house. I could feel their eyes on me. I was still young and shy and did not appreciate the gazes of older men who simply wanted to look at me. Their old hands reached up to touch me. Some of them were hard of seeing, and stared at me with that peculiar, hard glare they had. Others talked in soft hoarse voices. They were gossiping in corners, or looking at new things brought into the hut.
The old men's house was large, but lit by only a few flickering oil lamps. The elders were excellent with their hands, and many beautiful things decorated the long hut. Strings of colored beads drilled from shells and painted bones hung from the ceiling. On the upper walls, pictures of our forests appeared as they would in dreams: red dusks and flocks of hovering birds. Calm circles of water animals; peaceful gatherings of beasts. The pictures were outlined with charcoal, then colored with clippings of feathers, white plumes of monkey fur, and stains made from clay and berries. Carved wooden animals, some stained and painted, crowded much of the hut. They climbed up the walls and were piled onto the floor. Some looked hostile and frightening, others comical. There was a reason for their large number. Every adult Same-Sex man had an animal totem: he believed that this animal was linked with his destiny and ancestry.
Greeland's was Netch, a cunning male dog, never fully weaned from the wolf. Netch had been the totem of Peena, on
e of Greeland's fathers; also by legend he had been a favorite of Ki Herself, mediating for Her between harmony and the uncontrollable wild. I knew about Netch, Greeland's totem, but did not know what my animal was. Greeland told me I might not know the identity of mine for several years. Maybe not until we had a son of our own, born from our combined seeds.
When a Same-Sexer had a good event—let's say a child born to him and his partner, or a special hunting or gathering year—it was traditional to carve his animal figure and bring it into the big house. The elders would go "Ahhh, nice. You remember the old ways," and smile. This was the way that our culture was passed down to us, repeating the carvings of animals. We were told that countless Ten Moons before, when—some say—the Goddess Herself walked among us, we sacrificed living creatures to Her. What a waste that must have been on this small planet: sacrifice , being only another word for kill. The idea upset me; I was happy now that we carved animals, and did not sacrifice them.
Aawkwa stood up. He was the most respected of the old men in our enclave. The Same-Sexers were without a chief or headman. We did not even have a word for what Aawkwa was, but we were without words for many things. Like we did not have a word for "King," which made sense on a planet dedicated to the Goddess and run by Her priestesses. Neither did we have words for what we were. We formed couples, and the couples were "promised" to each other, that is, they were part of the social structure of the enclave. But we did not say "wife" or "husband." There was something about that that did not seem right to us, but sometimes we referred to each other as mates.
"Greeland," Aawkwa said. "We have been concerned about you." He was getting a bit fat, and his belly hung down a little over his breechcloth. He kissed Greeland gently on the lips.
Greeland smiled. "Why are you concerned?"
"Maybe just the stupidity of old ones," Aawkwa said. Several elders giggled.