by Zaide Bishop
She laughed. “My sisters will be thrilled: ‘Here, sit on this a few times a week and let’s see if you die while whelping.’ I am the scientist, Tare. I am the one who will do the experiments. Besides, we’ve already started.”
Tare put her hand on India’s belly. “And nothing is happening.”
“Maybe I am not in bloom. The bitches start to bleed before the dogs...” She trailed off.
“What is it?”
“The bitches bleed. About twice a year. And then the dogs won’t leave them alone. Maybe that’s like...like a flower. A dog flower. That’s when it needs to be pollinated.”
“I’ve seen that moon thing you do, and it’s terrifying,” Tare said, taking her hand away from India’s skin.
“But it would make sense. I haven’t bled in a long time. Only the sisters who eat well, the ones with some fat reserves, bleed. The underweight sisters like me rarely do.”
“So you need to eat more, then we have sex when you’re bleeding? And you’ll whelp?”
“Perhaps...” India was chewing her lip thoughtfully.
Whiskey was thinking too. She always bled, more than any of them. If India was right, then she would be the most fertile. The healthiest. The most deserving of little sisters. India was small and fragile. Her offspring would be small too. If she were a bitch, they might have culled her pups.
There was no way Whiskey was letting India have the first new sisters. Not even if she had to rip the pollen out of the Elikai with her bare hands. But then...where did the Elikai keep their pollen? Whiskey would not even know where to begin.
She chewed her lip until she tasted blood, eyes locked on Tare and India.
“It doesn’t matter,” Tare coaxed when India had been silent too long. She pulled the Varekai closer and kissed her. India went to her eagerly, and the gorge rose in Whiskey’s throat.
It was sickening. Fascinating, but repulsive. Much like the Elikai themselves. When Tare put her arms around India, Whiskey had to bite back a cry of warning. Her throat was tingling, remembering the last time an Elikai had touched her. The way she had crushed her windpipe. The way the light had begun to dance and the world had turned to fur and warmth as her consciousness had faded.
The taste of Elikai blood, dripping into her mouth from the stick she did not even remember picking up.
But India wasn’t afraid, she wasn’t even wary. Her hand cupped the shaft between Tare’s thighs, stroking it with practiced rhythm. Tare’s hips thrust up to meet the caress, and she groaned. Her cock seemed to grow larger again, swelling and moving of its own accord until even when India released it, it stood upright, trembling and urgent. The muscles across her belly were rigid, every muscle defined and shining with the oil the Elikai rubbed themselves with.
Tare sat up to kiss India, the passion passing between them obvious even to an observer. They were oblivious to all else. Whiskey was sure she could have stepped out into the open and they wouldn’t have noticed she was there. Tare’s fingertips trailed down India’s body, playing across her nipples, squeezing and tugging the tender flesh. India groaned, taking Tare’s hand and guiding it lower. Whiskey could see the back-and-forth of Tare’s wrist as she penetrated India with an easy familiarity.
India pushed her back against the furs, holding her down with one hand on her flat, muscled chest. They did not look away from one another, their eyes locked, as if something more was passing between them. Some communication Whiskey was not privy to.
India slid onto Tare’s hips. She almost had her back to Whiskey, so she could see between India’s thighs; the dark folds of the witchdoctor’s shell were familiar to Whiskey, more familiar to her than her own. She could see India was plump and aroused, glistening with wetness. With her own fingers, she opened herself and used her other hand to guide the head of Tare’s erection to her opening. Whiskey watched, fascinated and sickened, as the plump, fat nodule sunk into India’s flesh. India rocked back slowly, and inch after inch of the shaft vanished inside her until she had taken it to the hilt. For a moment they both seemed paralyzed, frozen in the intensity of the sensation, then India began to rock, her hips rolling against the alien shape inside her.
Whiskey tried to imagine what it would feel like. She had masturbated with things in the past; smooth, hardened driftwood, her own fingers, unripened fruit that offered a tantalizing shape and form. But what would it be like to have something warm and living? The flesh of an Elikai. The flesh of the enemy. Burrowing deeper and deeper, sliding against sacred places, filling the shell like a foot in a boot.
Their sounds were becoming more desperate, more intense. Tare raised her hands to cup and squeeze India’s breasts, then sat up and took them in her mouth. India threw her head back, hips rocking harder and faster, her cries unrestrained.
They kissed again. India’s nails left raised red marks on Tare’s shoulders. Whiskey could smell their coupling. Taste them in the air. The animal heat of their need made the air electric, like the pulse of the islands before the storm. Whiskey felt sick and strange, disgusted and a little aroused at the same time.
It was wrong. The way they fitted together, like two parts of a whole, was obscene. India started a new kind of breathless whimpering, and Whiskey knew from personal experience her sister was reaching her peak. Would the Elikai peak too? Her expression was strained, her hips bucking up into India with involuntary, violent motions. She looked as if she was in pain, mouth open, dumbstruck in agony.
Their cries rose in a matching crescendo. Tare went rigid only seconds before India, and she rode out her climax with the Elikai buried as deep into her as she could thrust. Slowly they crumpled, like wilting herbs. Tare stayed inside her, but they lay down, holding one another and murmuring soft words that Whiskey could not make out and that may not have been words at all.
She swallowed, once, twice; her thighs were trembling. Her nipples uncomfortably hard against the leather of her bustier. She slipped backward as quietly as she could, through the curtain of water, moving with exaggerated care until she was certain she was far enough away that the waterfall would cover the sounds of her retreat.
She wouldn’t let this happen. She wouldn’t let India have the first sisters. Perhaps if it had been Charlie, even Tango, it would be different. At least they were warriors, Varekai who didn’t spend all day tinkering with plants and consorting with the enemy.
Whiskey would find her own Elikai. She had plenty of practice tracking and capturing them now. She would find a safe place, one she would not be found or disturbed, and take her Elikai there. She would keep her and have sex with her, until she was sure she was properly fertilized.
She untied her canoe, pushing it away from the sandy bank, and jabbed angrily at a lurking crocodile. It thrashed, spraying her with salt water, and darted deeper into the channel.
She wanted to chase it, to kill it. But her anger was misplaced. It was India she wanted to shake and yell at. How dare she think she could just do this without consulting the rest of them? She paddled for home, lost in thought, avoiding obstacles and danger with instinctive ease. It wouldn’t be enough to choose the smallest, easiest prey. She had watched India carefully harvesting the seeds from the biggest, fullest fruit and cross-pollinating the healthiest of the plants. She remembered the lessons in Eden. To always keep a rooster, to favor the strongest and bravest of them to protect the hens.
She knew, in an abstract way, that pairing two things would create a third that was a sum of the parent parts. If she wanted to create strong sisters, she needed to choose a strong mate. She had to be picky about her choice of Elikai.
She dismissed Tare at once, despite her apparent willingness and familiarity with the process. She was overwhelmingly useless at everything else, and Whiskey didn’t know how much pollen the Elikai was capable of producing.
Love, easy to corner and control, was too small. To
o weak. The idea of coupling with her disgusted Whiskey, and she would struggle to go through with it. She needed another Elikai. Someone who would produce strong, intelligent Varekai. Someone who could challenge her skill as a hunter.
She smiled slowly. There was only one Elikai worth the effort.
Chapter Six
William could see Romeo was in a bad mood. He had been since the night Charlie had shown up in camp and handed himself over to Sugar to stop the war. Romeo was always feisty, but usually in a good way. A fun way. He’d been spending so much time alone recently, William was worried. Now the other Elikai were giving him sexual attention and trying to coax him into their huts, he’d gone from sulking to violent, and had lashed out at Love just for walking too close to him.
Dog had a black eye from a scuffle over it, though he’d got it trying to stop Romeo and Maria having an all-out brawl. Anyone who got between those two in a bad mood was braver than William would be in his entire life.
This afternoon Romeo was sitting on the rocks where they cast their fishing lines, minding a rod and glaring at the horizon. William scrambled up beside him, holding out his hands to show he meant no harm, when Romeo turned that steely gaze on him.
“You come to pressure me into breeding too?”
William shook his head. “No. I just thought you might need some cheering up. You seem kind of down.”
“Frustrated,” Romeo countered. “I hate this. I just wanted to be an Elikai. I never wanted to be singled out.”
“If I could wave my hands and magic you a penis, I would. Really. I mean, we could make you one. With leather or wood. But it’s not going to change things.”
Romeo gave a frustrated snarl. “They can’t do this. This breeding thing. Sugar needs to see reason. He has to call an end to it.”
William blinked. “Why? Don’t you want more brothers? Why is it upsetting you so much? I know you hate the Varekai for abandoning you, but surely you don’t want us to die out.”
“You don’t know what it was like.” Romeo’s fist was clenched.
“What what was like?”
“Watching her die.”
William fell silent, unsure how to react. Romeo never used the words “her” or “she,” and he never talked about Eden or what life had been like with the Varekai.
“No, but—” He hesitated. “I’ll listen if you tell me.”
Romeo was quiet for a long time, and he started to doubt he would reply at all. William didn’t mind. He was happy just to sit beside him, to listen to the waves and Romeo’s breathing.
“November was my best friend,” he said finally, voice quiet.
“I never met him,” William said.
“None of you did. Do you remember when Tare came back he told you about why the Varekai killed the teachers? That one of them hurt November and she got so sad and sick that she—” Romeo hesitated, as if the words were caught in his throat and couldn’t come out.
“Tare said that one of the teachers forced himself on November and he was injured. Then he killed himself, and the Varekai demanded justice. The teachers refused, didn’t they? That’s when you attacked them.”
Romeo nodded. “It was sex, what he did to her. She didn’t tell the others about it. But I was her best friend, so she told me everything. Only we didn’t know what it was then. Something inside her was all torn up. She kept bleeding. The teachers treated her, but even when the bleeding stopped, she just got sicker and sicker. I couldn’t get her to eat. She cried all the time.”
William tried to imagine any of his brothers being ill like that. Crying all day, slowly starving themselves. He tried to imagine it back in Eden, when they were younger and they didn’t understand death. Or sex. They were so naive in those days, so used to the world being safe and reliable.
“It was the first time we’d seen an Elikai teacher. We were all excited to have someone new around. He had hair on his face and such a deep voice, but what he did to November killed her.”
Realization dawned, and William leaned back. “That’s why you don’t think the breeding will work. You think the other Varekai will die.”
“When the Elikai brothers started having sex, I thought you would die too. All of you. But it was fine, and I learned the Varekai were doing the same thing. I thought, well, that must be okay. As long as it’s not an Elikai and a Varekai together. I was jealous. I wanted to have fun like everyone else, but I was too scared. I didn’t want to die.”
“But maybe it was never about Elikai and Varekai. Maybe it was the teachers. They weren’t like us. They were—” William thought back, to the pale-skinned, sickly, oddly tall creatures that had tended them in Eden. “They needed masks to breathe. And they were all as pale as fish belly. All the hair that should have been on their heads was on their faces. They were the ‘wrong’ part. I think they were sick.”
“What if you’re wrong?” Romeo asked bitterly.
William put his arm around Romeo’s shoulders, pulling him close. “Well, then I think India would be dead by now. But just in case—” He paused. “I’ll stay by you and I’ll punch the next brother who harasses you right in the face. And I’ll keep punching them until they all give up and leave you alone.”
Romeo blinked at him. “Nice idea, William. But you’re going to get your ass kicked. Repeatedly.”
A blush rose in his cheeks. “I’d do anything to make you happy, okay? And if that means letting Maria and Fox mash my face into the sand, so be it.”
Romeo sighed and rested his head on William’s shoulder. “You’re pretty weird, William.”
“Yeah, well, as long as you like me.”
“A little bit.”
“Good enough.”
* * *
India was gathering pipis on the beach. It was easy to find them in the wet sand; after a wave rolled in, little holes would appear, sometimes spitting bubbles. India would look for clusters of them, then wedge her spade into the sand, turn it over and pick through the creamy brown shells, leaving the smallest to grow, but gathering dozens of fat adults with every scoop.
Pipis were easy to cook. Boiled in a pot of seawater with lemon rinds and native peppers, their shells would pop open and the sweet white flesh could be eaten with fingertips.
The Varekai kept the shells. While the outsides were dull, the insides were white and a luminous purple or pink, swirling and heavy, like twilight. They used them for decoration, crushing them and studding them into pots or piercing them to make jewelry or wind chimes.
This was the end of the dry season, the end of the winter bounty. She should have put on more weight for the lean summer that was coming. More weight still if she wanted enough condition to bleed and fall pregnant, if that was truly how it worked. She had to force herself to eat as much as she could; not just the lean, white meat of the pipis, but sugary fruits and the fattier snake, pig and turtle meat.
She needed to find a better way to keep the bats and possums out of the bananas. The scavengers were doggedly persistent, even when the mango trees were overloaded with fruit.
“I know what you’re doing.”
India had been so lost in thought, she had not heard Whiskey approach. The huntress was stalking across the sand with the lean grace of a cat, near silent. With her spear and the tigerlike streaks on her arms and face, she was a fearsome sight. Particularly radiating hostility as she was now.
“Pipis,” India said, warily. “I am gathering pipis.”
Whiskey scoffed. “Don’t play dumb, sister. I followed you. You’re meeting with that Elikai. When Charlie didn’t believe you, you decided to do a more definitive experiment, didn’t you?”
India hesitated. That wasn’t entirely true. She had first slept with Tare on the mainland, and once they had returned home they’d continued meeting in secret. It didn’t have anyth
ing to do with babies or experiments. Not really.
“So?” she challenged. “What is it to you?”
Whiskey stalked closer. “It’s disgusting.”
“No one is forcing you to participate.”
“If Charlie knew, she would forbid you.”
“Then why haven’t you told her?”
There was a long silence as Whiskey chewed her cheek, hand clenched tightly on her spear. She was angry. India could see that, but she did not think it was for the reason she was claiming. India waited her out.
“You don’t deserve it,” Whiskey said finally.
India smiled a little. “Ah. I see. You don’t think it’s disgusting. You’re jealous.”
“Jealous!” Whiskey bared her teeth. “Of you? Don’t make me laugh. You have nothing I want.”
“Then what is it you think that you deserve so much more than I do?”
“You will produce weak sisters. Small sisters. The first—” She seemed to be struggling with the word she wanted. “The first mother should be strong.”
Mother. India remembered the term vaguely from Eden. She thought it meant “creator.”
India rose to her feet, swinging the grass bag of pipis over her shoulder. “I am better than strong, Whiskey. I am smart. Smart enough to realize the Elikai are not our enemies and smart enough to work out how to make new sisters, while you have been busy slaughtering all the seeds we need to bear fruit.”
“Wipe that smug look off your face.” Whiskey took a step closer.
“You won’t hurt me. For all you know, I am already pregnant.” She put her hands on her belly. “I will call them Rain and Moon, Shark and Flower. And if you hurt me, my Elikai will come for you.”
Whiskey was uncertain, weight shifting back and forth, spear point dipping slowly lower.
“You can’t have an Elikai.”
“But I do.”
India knew, somehow, that this was true. The Varekai were not monogamous, though some sisters had much closer bonds than others and preferred to sleep together.