by Janine Cross
Stiffly, I approached her and tried to sit. I found myself unable to, without a wall to slide down as support. I was astonished by my body’s inability to perform what should have been a natural motion.
“Give her aid,” Greatmother instructed, gesturing at the two women seated closest to where I stood.
With sighs of exhaustion, the two women helped me lay upon a wine red carpet, their touch gentle, their words soft. A kiss brushed my brow. The scent of venom was momentarily as strong as if breathed from the throat of an uncut dragon.
“Your flexibility and strength will return to you soon enough, Naji,” Greatmother said. “Eat well, stretch your limbs, rest.”
Five bloodshot pairs of overlarge, unblinking eyes stared at me.
“Listen closely to me and you won’t return to Prelude, not unless you wish to. Understand?”
She required an answer of me.
“Yes,” I breathed, wanting only to close my eyes and hide.
“Twelve of us currently live in the viagand. You are the thirteenth.” Greatmother’s motionless eyes grew roots into mine. “Some of us are not present. They’re either in the stables or a recovery berth. You’ll meet them if they all return. I’ll warrant your chances are good for surviving the stables; your eyes speak of prior experience with venom.”
“I—”
“You’ll not talk about the life you had before here; you won’t so much as tell us your old name. If you do, your transgression will be reported to the Retainers and you’ll be punished accordingly. Each one of us here will do that, understand, inform on each other. It keeps us pure. And it garners respect from the Retainers and thereby increases one’s longevity. You’ll learn to do such, too, in varying degrees.”
Her tone was that used by an elder sister instructing a younger on how to cook paak for the first time.
“But we must know your age,” said another woman, someone who, in different circumstances, might have looked not that much older than me.
“Patience, Misutvia, I was coming to that,” Greatmother chided, though her tone was almost flat. She stared at me, waiting.
“Seventeen,” I said hoarsely. “I’m seventeen.”
A brief silence as everyone absorbed this seemingly relevant information. Then Greatmother continued.
“As the eunuch informed you, I’ve been here the longest. You’d be wise not to think of me as your friend. I won’t ever think of you in that manner. Understand?”
I gave a small nod, head rasping along the worn carpet beneath me.
“Your survival here depends upon three things. The first of these: your ability to please an authoritative Retainer, that he prefer your attentions and prevent other Retainers from receiving your services. The second: your ability to survive the touch of venom. The third: your ability to interpret what you hear in the stables, and your willingness to divulge such in a useful manner in the recovery berths. This, of the three, is the most crucial.”
I didn’t understand.
“You haven’t explained her purpose here, Greatmother.” Again from the younger woman called Misutvia. “You haven’t explained that this is no ordinary prison for women.”
Greatmother tilted her head to one side as if listening for a worm turning beneath the stone floor. “Did I forget?”
Murmurs in disaffected tones all about us.
“Yes, you did, Greatmother.”
“You forgot.”
“Yes.”
Consternation flickered over Greatmother’s glossy face, though no emotion was revealed in her blood-bathed eyes, in her white-flecked irises. “That’s not a good sign. Not at all. I should be punished accordingly.”
A concurring murmur here and there.
“Well. Let me continue where I should have begun. Your purpose here, Naji: to lay, on a rotational basis, before one of the four venom-intact dragons housed in the brooder stalls. There you will permit the dragon to insert her tongue into your womb, whereupon you will become privy to her divine thoughts. After the dragon withdraws from you, you will be carried by Retainers to a recovery berth, whereupon you will in great detail divulge to the waiting daronpuis everything that you learned during the divine exchange. If you claim that you did not understand what you heard, the daronpuis will employ various methods to encourage you to refrain from hoarding the information to yourself. Understand?”
I stared at her in mounting horror. I looked at the other women draped here and there about me, their red-rimmed, expressionless eyes glittering in their dough-glossy faces.
“But the dragons’ thoughts are incomprehensible!” I gasped.
“You’ve undergone the divine experience before. That explains your eyes, hey-o.”
“I can’t understand what the dragons are saying; I can’t!”
“You must. Your life depends upon it.”
“Interpret the images you see, connect them with the emotions they provoke,” Misutvia said, interrupting Greatmother for the third time.
“Do not color the way she might translate the dragons’ thoughts by informing her of your own methods of interpretation, Misutvia,” Greatmother said, a subtle urgency behind her flat tone. “That’s a transgression. I claim the responsibility to report it. You’ll be punished accordingly.”
Misutvia dropped her eyes to her hands and I saw then that her hair was not as thin and oily as that of the other women about her.
“You’re correct, of course,” Misutvia murmured. “And I claim the responsibility of reporting your forgetfulness, Greatmother, which you moments ago defined as a transgression.”
“No one else has claimed the responsibility to do so before you, so certainly the right is yours. I should have claimed the responsibility myself. Clearly, my mental faculties are weakening. I will discuss this with the eunuchs and my Retainer. Perhaps my execution is warranted.”
A moment of silence about us while I stared in disbelief at Greatmother. She’d spoken in a sensible, unhurried manner, as reasonably as if discussing the merits of a bitoo she might purchase.
“You strive admirably toward purity, Greatmother,” Misutvia finally murmured, without looking up from her hands.
“Yes. I do,” Greatmother said.
At that moment, the door behind us sighed open. The women languidly turned, as did I from where I lay on the floor, to watch the eunuch reappear bearing a platter of food. Behind him walked another man bearing a platter, also clearly a eunuch. He walked in a peculiar, mincing manner, as if thorns stabbed the soles of his feet. A third eunuch followed, a mere boy, bearing two buckets slung over either end of a pole, balanced across his shoulders and the back of his neck. He kicked the door closed behind him and set his burden down with a groan.
“Noon feast, girls,” sang the plump eunuch, the one who had bathed me. “Pastries and nerwon, and I want you all to eat more than you did at breakfast, hey-o.”
The women about me sighed or closed their eyes wearily.
I, on the other hand, was gripped with an immediate, shuddering hunger, and if my body had been able to obey my wild need, I would have leapt pantherlike upon the eunuch and mauled the contents of his platter. As it was, I watched with a territorial intensity as he set the platter upon a worn rug not far from me. I didn’t want anyone touching the food upon that tray. I wanted it all to myself.
Cubes of nerwon—breaded and fried egg yolk glazed with hot fat and bittersweet crushed plums—steamed in a chipped crock. In another bowl alongside it, white strips of paak lay like islands in a sea of yolk yellow sauce delicately laced with minced muay leaves. A third bowl gave off a vinegarish scent. Neat stacks of quanis formed a steaming pyramid within a large bowl, the vinegar-soaked muay leaves rolled around a traditional stuffing of crushed coranuts, diced dried oranges, and slivers of fiery chilies. Tarnished spoons lay haphazardly about the three large bowls, as if tossed upon the platter as an afterthought.
The eunuch who walked as if upon thorns placed his platter alongside the first: pastries the hues of
a splendid sunset—wine red, tangerine, old-gold yellow—sat artfully arranged in a sunburst display, all oozing amber honey.
I whimpered.
“Yes, we’ll feed you first, Naji,” the plump eunuch clucked indulgently. “Watch how well she eats, girls, hey-o? Think how much it pleases the Retainers when a woman has a little flesh upon her hips. Think of how popular Naji will be.”
He shuffled toward me. The yolk sauce slopped over the sides of its bowl.
“A little of the jalen for you; no nerwon or quanis. Too rich. Tomorrow maybe, yes?” He picked up the crock of paak slices floating in the yolk and minced muay sauce. Jalen, he’d called the dish. I’d never tasted such rich food, not even during my youth in the pottery clan, for the dishes required ingredients and preparation time rishi could ill afford. With one of the spoons from the tray, the eunuch began feeding me.
He did it in an odd way, carefully placing each spoonful in my mouth and, after I’d swallowed, sucking the spoon clean. I was revolted but too hungry to care.
Before my hunger was anywhere near appeased, the eunuch licked the spoon one last time, sighed, and beamed at the women draped about us.
“Didn’t she do well? She’d eat more if I let her, wouldn’t you?” He clucked. “Tomorrow. Small amounts only today, hey-o. Now, who’s next? Greatmother?”
Incredibly, he then fed Greatmother in the exact same manner, with the same spoon, sucking it clean each time after she swallowed. He also coaxed her to nibble part of a quani, to swallow two cubes of nerwon. When she closed her eyes in protest and weakly waved away further offerings, the eunuch clucked and moved on to another woman.
The mincing eunuch likewise began feeding those about me, wheedling and cooing as if he were feeding fussy toddlers and not grown women. The boy at the door squatted on his haunches and dozed.
A few of the women wept, helplessly, as the eunuchs badgered and coaxed them to eat.
“You’re skin and bones; no wonder the Retainers use you roughly,” the plump eunuch snapped. “They hanker for some softness, some flesh! Eat, eat, you’ll live longer; they’ll hurt you less. Eat!”
I closed my eyes to the tyranny, wished I could close my ears, too.
At last the eunuchs stopped, then woke the boy dozing near the door, and the three finished the remainder of the noon feast themselves. They ate melodramatically, loudly sucking the dripping juices from their fingers, rolling their eyes as they popped cakes into their sticky mouths and licked grease from their chins. I watched it, fascinated and detached both, as if I were living a strange dream from which I’d soon awake. The women about me watched with their huge, unblinking eyes, their faces expressionless.
Torpidity began descending upon me, bringing the threat of deep, long sleep.
“Hey-o, girls, on your feet. Come, come,” the plump eunuch sang, clapping his hands briskly. The mincing eunuch tiptoed to the door. The young boy now held a whisk and dustpan in his hands; as the women listlessly rose and shuffled toward the door, the boy darted about the rugs and cushions, carelessly sweeping up crumbs.
The plump eunuch lifted me to my feet brusquely, almost impatiently.
“You can sleep later, Naji. Walk now. I know you can walk.”
But my legs didn’t want to obey. I didn’t want to obey. Nor, really, did I wish to sleep, for then Mother’s haunt would pulse strong within me, its angry necrotic presence, which had been growing stronger as of late, bulging and sweating in my body, trying to burst from its cocoon within me and infest me with its will, control my mind and limbs, and eradicate all I truly was.
The eunuch took my wrist and pulled me forward. I stumbled and almost fell. Clucking irritably, he gestured for the boy to leave his crumb-sweeping and instead act as a crutch for me. The boy darted forward and slid one of my arms over his narrow little shoulders with practiced ease. His toenails were painted henna orange too.
The mincing eunuch opened the door and gestured the women forward. Before each woman shuffled out, he dipped a ladle into one of the two buckets of water the young boy had carried in. Each woman drank greedily and requested more. The mincing eunuch either granted or denied their requests, according to the dictates of the plump eunuch.
“You ate well today, Greatmother; drink your fill. Good girl. No, no, Prinrut, no more for you. You ate very poorly; I’m very disappointed in you. And you, Kabdekazon, only half a ladle of water for you. You’ll be dead in a clawful of days, I’ll warrant.”
When it came time for me to shuffle out the door, the mincing eunuch held the ladle to my lips, too. The water tasted like it had been filtered through moss, slightly muddy, but I drank gratefully anyway. I didn’t ask for more, for I didn’t crave water the way the venom-saturated women did, and the eunuch didn’t offer it.
Again the Retainers at the door watched me with greedy anticipation. The plump eunuch perfunctorily kowtowed to them and pushed to the head of the line of women.
We followed him along one moisture-slick corridor to a set of stone stairs, climbed them, turned left down another corridor, then right down another. I longed to collapse. The boy holding me pinched me to keep me awake and moving.
We arrived at two stone latrines, stinking and perched at the end of a corridor like two crumbling thrones. No doors on those latrines. We were required to void bladder and bowel in full view of all.
Then back to the viagand chambers, whereupon the boy led me to one of the many small stone burrows notched in the circumference of the vaulted central chamber. Only shadow and darkness granted the burrow privacy; no doors or curtains existed across its entrance. Not that the entrance needed much in the way of concealment beyond shadow, for it reached only my knees, it was that low, and I had to kneel to crawl into the dank place. You’d have thought I would have balked, after so many weeks in Prelude. You’d have thought I would have been deathly afraid to squeeze myself into a dark, unknown place so cramped that my head brushed the slick stone as I crawled within. But I did nothing of the sort. I was too exhausted, too overwhelmed, to summon the energy and wit required for defiance. Thus I began submitting to the will of my jailers.
Inside the burrow: darkness, mildewed cushions, and the scent of venom so strong it seemed as if I knelt not in a stone den but in the venom sacs of an intact dragon. I lay down upon those mildewed cushions and curled into an infant’s position.
“Drink this,” the eunuch murmured. His bulk was crouched in the entrance to my burrow, silhouetted by the greenish jungle light trickling through the central chamber’s casements. “Take it, Naji; drink. To ease your aches, to help you sleep. Drink.”
He thrust a gourd at me. A citric tang wafted from it. Venom.
With trembling hands, I reached for the draft.
The venom blazed down my throat, and my eyes stung and itched as if rubbed with coarse salt, then streamed tears. My nostrils burned as if coated with chili paste. Lusty heat radiated through my groin.
Bliss.
“Thank you,” I gasped, overwhelmed with gratitude toward he who held me prisoner. “Thank you.”
The eunuch chuckled benignly and took the empty gourd from me. I closed my eyes and sank back onto the damp cushions. They felt as soft as down. I was floating on them. The burrow was constricting no longer. It cradled me gently, like a mother’s arms. Cradled me and rocked. I sighed, contented.
Then, for the first time since being arrested in the dragonmaster’s stables, I slept. Truly slept. Unhindered by my mother’s haunt.
THIRTEEN
The next clawful of days fell into a routine of draft-induced sleep punctuated by the plump eunuch’s summons to eat. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d slept so much. Not since I was a child in the pottery clan compound, certainly. I luxuriated in venom-induced sleep at night, wallowed in it during the day, felt glutted yet greedy for more. Oh, haunt-free bliss! Oh, black escape!
I spoke with no one during those days, and no one spoke with me, either. Each day passed like the one previous: We were spoon
-fed by the eunuchs and rewarded accordingly with water rations; we were led to the latrines, then returned to the viagand chambers. We slept.
Sometimes as I slept, I roused slightly, heard the merry whistling of the boy eunuch as he dusted or swept or scraped lichen from the walls. Now and then I heard apathetic voices in brief conversation. To sharpen a venom-dulled mind so that it could better interpret the dragons’ memories, the plump eunuch occasionally badgered a woman into splashing paint onto a canvas in a parody of creating art, or harassed her into a game of darali abin famoo with the destiny wheel. But mostly, all I heard was a wilted, damp silence that clogged the ears like sodden chaff. We all lay in our little caves sleeping, see. Immersed in escape.
Sometimes, other noises penetrated my slumber.
Recognizable sounds, they were, which, upon waking, I realized must be the coo of wild doves, the whisk of feathers across stone, the wet slap of frond against frond.
Those sounds came to me in the form of dreams, woven with the golden threads of memory: I dreamed of the mating shack in my birth clan. I dreamed of its paper-wall cubicles, of the gasps and groans and wet, gentle slaps I’d heard as a child when sleeping in a cubicle across from my parents, during those sultry nights they joined each other there.
In the beginning, the sounds were comforting. They evoked the security and warmth of a childhood long lost.
But as the days and nights stretched on, the sounds began provoking adult emotions within me, magnified a hundredfold by the venom in my veins. My sleep was no longer restful then. I’d dream of Dono pawing at my breasts, kneeling while I stood, tonguing me so that I arched and clawed his hair with insatiable want.
And I took to examining the women about me, each time we gathered for feeding.
Did they feel the same as I did, whenever they curled in their burrows? Were they gripped with the ache, the loneliness, the need that only venom and dragon union could alleviate? I couldn’t tell, from looking at them. The women gazed at ground or wall, studiously avoided conversation, touch, and each other’s eyes.