by C. C. York
"If no Dua comes, everyone will assume you are Dvarian or from one of the lesser kingdoms past the Magara. If your particular Dua becomes obvious, then we will have a harder battle ahead of us."
Elaine nodded even though she didn't understand what she meant. She desperately wanted to be as magical as the city around her, regardless of how unlikely it was. It's probably better then that I'll never get magic of my own, she thought.
Kara took hold of either shoulder. "Follow these rules, and we'll be ok: Don't talk about how you got here. Always forget where you came from. And under no circumstances are you to ever, ever mention hearing voices in your head. Do that, and we'll figure out the rest together."
Elaine wanted to ask what the voices meant but knew she couldn't. So she kept nodding her head, alternating between hope that she'd hear the voices again and prayers that they left her alone once more. Kara studied her a moment longer and then held her hand as they made their way back to their cluster.
***
Kanne Da'Neen was a skinny pile of wrinkles. A sharp stick held together a tangle of white hair piled high on her head, and her liver-spotted hands gripped a rough-hewn stick that served as her cane. She waited for Elaine and Kara on the same rickety stool she told stories from at night in the courtyard. A couple of other matriarchs working from the steps nearby watched Elaine and Kara with interest. They turned away at Kara's hard stare.
"Sit, child. Time hasn't helped my eyesight, and I'd like a good look at you now that you aren't a fuzzy blob." Kanne Da'Neen said and waved Kara off. Kara winked at Elaine and left the cluster in the direction of the Trades.
Kanne Da'Neen ran her hands all over Elaine's face and down her arms, clucking disapprovingly. She examined Elaine like cattle, turning her clockwise and then back. What does the old goat think she'll find in my ears?
Kanne Da'Neen had Elaine to pick up a pinch of dirt from between the busted cobblestones under their feet. She made Elaine scoop a handful of water out of the low fountain behind them and later hold in an uncomfortably long breath. Without warning, Kanne Da'Neen snapped the fingers of her gnarled right hand, and a flame the size of a baseball appeared in her palm. Elaine leaned back at its abruptness and then inched forward to peer at the hovering flame in her hand.
"So cool! I haven't seen that up close. How does it work?" Elaine asked.
Kanne Da'Neen narrowed her eyes at Elaine but ignored the question. "If your Dua comes, it will come as naturally as the dirt between your toes, the water cupped in your hand, the breath in your body, and the heat from your blood," she said. "You do not think about walking or swallowing until it becomes restricted. Your mind is restricting your Dua, so your body is fighting it."
Elaine interrupted, "I'm sorry, ma'am, but what if I don't have any Dua?"
"Then you are not an Efendian and you can choose to remain here as an immigrant or go back to wherever you came from to live on, unblessed. But tell me this, are you sleeping well?"
Elaine shrugged, unsure what answer was correct.
"You are hot to the touch and breathing hard," she accused as she leaned into Elaine's personal space.
Well, it is 99 degrees here at sunrise and I'm being boxed in by an old woman and a bunch of onlookers. Elaine folded her arms. "Lots of people get hot."
"We Efendians grow up with the Dua of our mothers and aunts surrounding us. It's not natural for an Efendian girl to encounter Dua at your age for the first time, so perhaps you are not one of us. Time will tell. I am old, and the stairs to the Trades are long. If I'm to waste my time with an angry immigrant, I can at least use you to help me up the Fhazik steps so I can see something other than these prying eyes." She tilted her head, and the women moseying around the fountain blushed.
"Come. You are tall enough to be a decent walking stick at the least, and in return, I'll answer any question you have about Dua."
Elaine's annoyance quickly shifted into excitement. Kara gets prickly whenever I ask about her Dua, and Farisha talks in riddles about hers. I might finally learn something useful with this one. The pair walked through the neighboring clusters to the main staircase that would lead to the Trades.
Round clusters of lean-tos, similar to the Hadishi's, make up Low Town. Each community is sandwiched between the next Tier and each other. Elaine and Kanne Da'Neen wound a haphazard path over trash, meager vegetable beds, and kids running underfoot. Elaine thought back to when she first arrived and was given her first impromptu tour of Efendi. Any Efendian woman wanting to buy property in a Tier above the one they were born in had to gather recommendation letters from potential neighbors, as well as perform a test of Dua to show that they belonged. Men were automatically lumped into their matriarch's status, unable to deviate independently. Money could buy or bypass both requirements, but in Efendi, money and Dua went hand in hand.
Elaine and Kanne Da'Neen stopped at the broad base of the main staircase. Kanne Da'Neen grumbled something that sounded like an Efendian cussword before taking Elaine's shoulder to begin the trudge.
Staircases scattered throughout the kingdom were broken up by Tiers, which Elaine likened to plateaus of increasing status the higher one climbed. The homes that clung to the walls of the mountain under Efendi became more stable, more elaborate, and grander with each Tier until they ended at the Fountain Tier below the glittering domed Palace.
Elaine and Kanne Da'Neen stopped for a break at a Tier just below the Trades. Elaine ignored the pointed stares at her dingy beige clothes. "But what I don't get is how you pull fire from your blood?" Elaine asked after Kanne Da'Neen explained that she felt flush and loose-limbed whenever she called her Dua to her.
The old crone laughed and opened her weathered palm to Elaine. She nodded to the thin, silver rings around the first knuckle of her thumb and middle finger. Elaine could see a small, flat stone on the inside of one ring.
"Flint."
The matriarch snapped again closer to Elaine's face before continuing. "The second ring scrapes against the stone to produce a tiny spark. Our Dua does the rest." She closed her palm, smothering the flame. "All Duawielders keep their element close. Waterwerkers wear jewelry with vials of water just in case they aren't near a water source. The fountains are pretty, but they're everywhere because most middle-class Efendians work in water."
"And air?" Elaine asked.
"Do you see a lack of air anywhere?" Kanne Da'Neen waved her arms around her with an amused look on her face, and Elaine laughed with her.
"Some Groundwerkers will carry dirt in their pockets if they leave Efendi, but most of their power is lost while at sea. That's why most never leave for the islands," she continued.
"Why don't men have Dua?"
"Do the men in your kingdom birth children?" Kanne Da'Neen asked with a twinkle in her eye. "Why is it such a leap to think women have special powers when they already create us from a seed?"
Makes sense, Elaine thought, and she wondered if Kanne Da'Neen would let her play with the flint rings.
Kanne Da'Neen stood up from the step she had been resting on and placed a hand on Elaine's shoulder to continue up the last segment of stairs to the Trades. Elaine turned to help her, wondering how Firewerkers didn't get burned and accidentally knocked over a stone cup. Dark red liquid pooled in front of an unremarkable door, and Elaine jumped back to avoid its reach. A deep, familiar laugh chilled her to her bones.
She glanced around to find the owner of the laughter, ignoring whatever Kanne Da'Neen had just asked her, but they were alone. Her heart sped up, and she tried to breathe through her nose to tamp down the panic. She tapped her hand at her side with the increasing urge to flee. I remember this voice. The others always felt harmless, but this one gives me the creeps. The laugh came again, as if it heard her thoughts.
Not now. Not now. Not now, she thought.
"Are you alright, child?" Kanne Da'Neen asked.
She didn't understand why it was terrible to hear voices, but Kara always looked after her. D
on't let her think you hear something she's not, Elaine thought. She ignored the laughter and the odd singsong voice filtering through her mind and focused on Kanne Da'Neen's voice instead.
"Yes, ma'am, just a touch dizzy is all," Elaine gave a weak smile, and the pair continued their climb up the steps. The walls faded from the beige tans of the lower Tiers to a turquoise color indicating the beginning of the Trades. She was watching her feet instead of the path ahead, so she saw the man's wide shadow before his face. Kanne Da'Neen sucked in her breath as the giant man from the Lantern Alley stood before them.
He rubbed his hand over a thick, red beard that ran past his chin and grinned yellowing teeth. "Hello Maman. Taking in another lost soul, eh?"
Reed
The Itreni creature warily watched the standoff between Reed and Monti in the barn. "I'll give you a moment, but do not tarry. The tunnels are used by more creatures than me these days."
It turned and clicked out of the barn, leaving Reed to face the wrath of Monti after his admission. She backed away again, this time with the gun barrel aimed at his face.
"I don't care if you are the only person I know that can get me home. I will shoot you in the face if you don't tell me what's going on right now."
He held his hands up. "My name is Reed Wells. My mother and I fled this miserable nightmare of a world twelve years ago and have lived in the US since then. I only want to go back, even if it means prison for life."
"How did we get here?" Monti demanded. "What did you do?"
"I had nothing to do with this. Someone else, someone very powerful, and someone we never want to see is likely behind it."
"How did this person take us then? And why the prison?" She lowered the gun a touch but didn't put it away.
"I have no idea why the whole prison was taken. It's unheard of. There are people called Rifters here that can walk between realms. I've seen one take two people at a time along with themselves, but I didn't think it was possible to do anything on a large scale."
Monti on a mission was surprisingly succinct. She turned but didn't pause her interrogation as Reed shucked off the prison garb in favor of the white shirt he found.
"How do we get home?" She asked.
"The only way to leave is to find another Rifter. They were hunted almost to extinction before I was born. The best chance to find one is in the mountains, but it's a full day's ride from here."
"How are you so sure it wasn't one of the other prisoners trying to get out?"
"Because Rifters are only women, and you were likely the only woman in there during the Rift."
Monti opened for another question, but Reed stepped close to her. He gently took the gun from her hand and slid it into the holster hidden at her back, careful to not startle her. Reed was more than a little satisfied at her sharp inhale and to see her eyes dip to his lips for a millisecond. He mentally shook himself back to the problem at hand. What is wrong with you? Focus.
He spoke quietly in case the Itreni hovered nearby. "I promise, I will answer every question you have once we are out of here, but right now, the only chance we have at shelter is with a creature thought too dangerous to live near humans. It's important that you follow my lead and do not speak. It's not safe for both of us to sleep below ground at once, so I'll take the first watch when we get settled."
"Let's get one thing straight if you want me to be at all cooperative," Monti said as she stepped back. "I am getting the hell out of this place with my dad, and you are going to help me. I don't care who else comes with us, but that is our only goal. Understood?"
"Yes," Reed said, relieved that this woman who had complained and harassed him since they arrived was on the same page. He walked to the slim opening between the Aygirs but stilled at her cool hand on his arm.
"And we are going to have an awfully long chat when we're out of here, but answer this first," she said. "What is Sakalid?"
He ignored the feel of her soft hand on his forearm and let himself acknowledge the shit storm of his situation. "You're standing in it. Welcome to Sakalid, realm of magic and misery."
Elaine
A July sun is slow to sink in South Carolina, but Elaine found her gator just as pockets of the marsh turned dark with twilight. She had tied her DIY dinner of a PB&J and a Coke in a plastic bag to her handlebars and was barreling down the brackish water's edge to the spot she'd deemed most appealing to a gator days before. She didn't see the scutes barely submerged in the dark creek when she unpacked her feast, or when she shucked off her shoes, or even when she dipped her sandy toes in the water. She wasn't sure how long the living fossil had been watching her, but when she did, she knew in her bones that he'd had his black coin eyes on her for a while.
Elaine felt the same way looking at Hvard Canavar.
"Hvard, you look as bearded as usual," Kanne Da'Neen said nonchalantly. However, she stepped in between Elaine and the brutal-looking man towering over her on the steps to the Trades.
He rolled the edge of his coarse beard in between a calloused thumb and a forefinger and let the barb roll off his meaty shoulder. "Why don't you introduce us, Maman?"
"Hvard, this is Elai. Elai, this is my son, Hvard. Now, I'm afraid we were just leaving, so have care."
Her son? The cane Kanne Da'Neen used was more substantial than the collection of wrinkles and bones that made up Kanne Da'Neen. She rapped it on the stones twice and pulled Elaine down a step.
"I'll walk you down. Wouldn't want anything to happen to you, would we?"
Hvard took the old woman's hand off her shoulder and placed it on his tattooed forearm. Black ink warred with freckles, scars, and strawberry blonde hair in the vague shape of a massive octopus ravishing a boat.
Elaine still fought to quiet the chanting voices flitting between her ears, so she almost didn't hear Hvard's question.
"My Maman is such a kind soul, little Elai. Has she told you of the little boy she took in years before you?"
Elaine shook her head, not meeting his eyes. She watched his meaty hand pin Kanne Da'Neen's frail hand in the crook of his arm. Her flint rings pressed flat and far apart from each other over the Leviathan tattoo.
Kanne Da'Neen stared grimly straight ahead and said nothing.
"There was once a little boy who was born to a powerful house. The woman decided, though, that her home was no place for someone without Dua, so she cast him out to live in the streets," he said.
Elaine glanced at Kanne Da'Neen in question, but he shook his head.
"No. This lovely woman was not the little boy's birth mother. She found him months later, fighting rats for food in the Silos. It took her years to become the second mother to abandon him," Hvard said.
The high sun baked Elaine's scalp. People pressed around them on the stairs like water filtering through a rock crevice, yet Elaine shivered. Her legs itched to run, and Elaine tapped her fingers against her leg in agitation. I could run, but I don't wanna leave Kanne Da'Neen with this creep, even if she calls him "son." She stilled her fingers when she saw Hvard watching them tap, brows furrowed.
"Hvard. My house has always been open to you, but not to your cruelty. Yapi has forgiven us for many faults and would welcome you again if you admitted your guilt," Kanne Da'Neen said as she gripped her cane.
He barked a laugh that boomed between the walls of the staircase. A few people gave them a wide birth despite the lack of space. There was nothing merry in his laugh.
"I need Yapi like I need your pathetic flame." He spit on the ground just as a lanky man with matching C tattoos around his eyes approached and whispered something to Hvard.
"I'm afraid I have to leave. Perhaps I will come around soon, Maman, to visit with you and your little one. There is something familiar in this one." His eyes washed over Elaine again before abruptly leaving, and she shivered despite the heat.
Neither said anything on the walk back down. The chanting Elaine had heard was finally quiet, but Kanne Da'Neen would n
ot look at her. Elaine looked around for a way to shatter the palatable silence between them when Kanne Da'Neen finally spoke.
"Hvard had been alone for almost a year when I found him. He barely came to my waist and was as feral as the wild Kingalias in the valley. I thought time would lessen his anger towards his mother, towards Dua in general, but it built on itself as his life unfolded. He hated working in the fields and thought other Towner work was beneath him. He blamed his mother, me, and the women around us for his lack of upward mobility, and he started to lash out in his teens physically. He left the city for Dvari for a few years and later spent another year on a Perisien raider ship. Yapi forgive me, but I was sad when he returned.
"He spent time in the dungeons for stealing, but when a girl from a cluster around the bend accused him of rape, I forbade him from coming home. I didn't see or hear from him for many years until word of the 'Canavar Company Troupe' made its way to Low Town. He had collected other men like him and formed a popular performing caravan that came around Efendi for a few months each year. I was happy for him."
Elaine prompted her when she stopped speaking, "And then what?"
Kanne Da'Neen stopped the two of them before they entered their cluster. "Something happened. I'm not sure what. He dropped the troupe but not all of the men, and they became simply the Canavar Company. He claims he's a merchant now, but I'd wager my cane that there is nothing legal or moral about what he trades."
Kanne Da'Neen told Elaine they'd meet each morning again for the rest of the week. Elaine was at the Hadishi door when Kanne Da'Neen stopped her.
"I don't believe Hvard will come here again, Elaine, but if he does, stay as far away from him as you can."
Elaine nodded solemnly. I know a thing or two about keeping away from bad men.
***
Kara's irritability hit new heights the next few mornings, so Elaine happily stayed out of the way. She harassed Kanne Da'Neen with every question she could think of regarding Dua without asking the one question she desperately needed to be answered. She sat with Otum to mend grain bags by the fountain and helped Reiki in the Trades. She searched for the pockets where she could hear the voices again to no avail. Efendians watched each other warily, and even the Trades felt thick with tension as more reports of disappearances occurred. Elaine kept her romps through the Trades closer to their stall, ignoring her increasing urge to explore. She chewed her nails to stubs as she scanned the crowded Trades for any sign of the Canavar Company men.