Shadowed By Wings

by Janine Cross

  I wondered which of the two women who had helped me lie down before Greatmother for instruction, upon my arrival in the viagand, had brushed her lips across my forehead. I wished I had paid more attention to who was whom, but alas, they’d all looked alike to me.

  Not now.

  They did not look the same, not at all. Yes, they moved more or less in the same lifeless shuffle, and yes, their eyes bore the mark of the dragons’ poison. But as the days dripped into each other, I realized that each damp face differed from the other, and that those who had been in the viagand longest looked palest, moved slowest, had suffered the most drastic hair loss, burned with the fiercest thirst, and displayed the least interest in food.

  Greatmother looked eldest, by mere dint of her missing teeth and the gray so heavily streaking her long, thin hair. Yet a core of purest steel seemed to hold her erect, and I realized that determination to survive her imprisonment as long as she might, coupled with her absolute belief in the justice of her situation, made her the most formidable person I’d ever met.

  Sutkabde and Kabdekazonvia, Sixty-seven and Seventy-two Girls, looked like figures made of melting tallow, and their eyes, surrounded by swollen, serum-weeping flesh, were harrowing. But whereas Kabdekazonvia seemed unable to eat more than a morsel here, a nibble there, Sutkabde would allow the plump eunuch to spoon exactly as much food into her mouth as Greatmother had eaten. Often, she’d gag in the process. Once, she retched up all she’d swallowed. Prinrut swiftly and quietly announced such waste a transgression.

  Prinrut, the newest arrival save for me, looked and acted almost normal. I say almost, for she suffered a tendency to fall into short spells of fear-induced catatonia; fear, after resignation, hung as thick as the scent of venom in the chamber’s air. Prinrut’s shoulder-length hair had a tendency to curl about her face in a disarray that softened her pallor and hid the reddened skin around her eyes. Her meek voice gave the impression that before her imprisonment, she may have been a comely, plump, docile sort. I wondered what crime she’d been accused of, that she’d ended up in such a prison.

  Misutvia, Eighty-six Girl—also relatively new, going by the numerical order of her name—was also least marked by her time in the viagand. Occasionally color would flood her high cheekbones, most usually while pouncing on any transgression Greatmother inadvertently performed. I oft felt that Misutvia ceaselessly watched the rest of us beneath her jet-black bangs, cut so severely and attractively in a straight line across her forehead. Her posture while reclining upon a divan during feeding was always provocative, almost defiant: one arm draped above her head, breasts out-thrust, one leg dangling over the divan, shapely calf exposed. In this respect, she reminded me of my sister Waivia, though with her frighteningly bloodshot eyes, deathly pallor, and languid walk, there could be no mistaking the one for the other.

  As quick as Misutvia was to pounce on any transgression Greatmother performed, I noticed that she never claimed the responsibility of reporting the transgressions performed by other women. Ever.

  With each passing day, my regard for Misutvia increased. In her treatment of all save Greatmother, she was ethical and sane. Occasionally, I noticed her realizing that a transgression against someone had gone unclaimed; I’d watch her struggle with the conflict of wanting to claim that transgression for herself, yet time and time again, she would choose not to.

  Those transgressions, hey-o. They ranged from the outrageous to the unfathomable, and I flinched each time a woman claimed one against another.

  “Greatmother, I noticed you didn’t have a bowel movement today. You’re failing the dragons and the daronpuis by allowing yourself to fall into ill health. This, surely, is a transgression. I claim the right to report it.”

  “Misutvia, you slept uneasily during the night; you kept others awake. This endangers their health. I claim the right to report this transgression.”

  “Prinrut, you suffered a catatonic spell during feeding this noon. You missed a meal.”

  “Kabdekazonvia, you ate even less today than you did yesterday.”

  “Sutkabde, you haven’t engaged in creative expression for a clawful of days. Such mental laxity is remiss; it encourages sloth and physical deterioration.”

  Hearing those transgressions was an instruction for me. I ensured that I moved my bowels once each day, regardless of how much straining it required. I scraped dry, clotted paint onto a canvas to avoid the transgression of mental laxity. I ate heartily, even though my appetite decreased with each venom draft the plump eunuch gave me. I took to stretching my limbs in the presence of others, prior to each noon feast, so that I couldn’t be accused of not recovering from Prelude fast enough to please the daronpuis.

  As I said, at all other times I curled into my stone burrow and escaped from life through sleep.

  That was the safest way of dealing with the monstrosity of my situation: ignoring the reality of it as much as I could, much the same way, I suppose, that Prinrut did each time she plunged into catatonia.

  But I couldn’t completely avoid the whole issue of transgression reporting, for each evening, after being force-fed dinner, any woman who had claimed a transgression against another during the day would stand before the plump eunuch. He would solemnly mark the transgression in a ledger with a quill, dipping it meticulously in an inferior inkwell whose gray glaze had crazed during firing in the kiln. He’d mark down both the name of the transgressor and that of the woman who had reported the transgression.

  I surmised that it was a tally system of sorts, whereby informing on others decreased whatever demerits had been logged against one on prior days, or earned one a merit to be used in the future, should there be no demerits scribed next to one’s name. I didn’t ask when or how the recorded transgressions would be turned into punishments, and, by staying in my little cave at all times except meals and my brief forays to scrape paint upon a canvas, I avoided the company of others who might inform me of such.

  I knew, though. I knew how important those tallied transgressions were.

  I knew by the way each woman reacted when caught committing a violation, guessed that the eventual punishment would be no mere knuckle caning. Each time a violation was claimed against a woman, the transgressor would freeze. Stare fixedly at the air. Remain so for long moments while a frantic pulse beat visibly in neck or temple. Each such trance would end with noiseless tears or a paroxysm of shudders.

  Their fear created my own.

  I took great care to remain well fed, silent, and mostly unseen.

  Then, deep into a humid, honeysuckle-sweet night when the first monsoon of the Wet thundered outside, I committed my first transgression, and I committed it with a hungry passion that astonished me.

  I was asleep, and then I was not, staring at the slick cave ceiling mere inches above me, uncertain whether it was star-flecked night I gazed into or quartz-flecked rock. Maybe it was both. It felt that way, at the time, the enclosure of rock as immutable as endless sky, the flecks of quartz as hypnotic and scintillating as starlight.

  Something had woken me, a feeling, a presentiment. A presence that whispered something forbidden and unknown into my ear. My name? Not that, no, even though I’d been prohibited from speaking it to any. Yet the feeling pulsing over me, emanating from the little mouth of my stone burrow, was as familiar as my name, as forbidden as such.

  I turned my head. A figure crouched at the entrance to my burrow, a hand’s breadth away.

  I held my breath and realized, belatedly, that I’d been practicing solitary intimacy in my sleep again: my thighs were spread, the fingers of one of my hands satiny with my brine.

  I realized, too, that the figure had been crouched there for some time. Watching me. Her own thighs were spread, one of her hands tucked into the dampness of her cleft.

  We held our breaths, she and I.

  Oh, yes, it was a she. Not one of the eunuchs, no. The figure before me had hip, had breast. The moonlight seeping through the casements in the central cha
mber lit her curves, clothed in the linen of her bitoo.

  I knew not what to do. The woman crouched on her haunches at the threshold of my burrow seemed likewise paralyzed, and in her fear, I recognized her, despite her features being shrouded entirely in dark. Prinrut.

  I felt safe, then, for her withdrawn, docile demeanor made her the least frightening woman in the viagand. I withdrew my hand from between my thighs and offered it to her. I was instantly befuddled, not having expected myself to do such, taken aback by my own action. My hand wavered, but she withdrew her hand from between her legs and clasped mine before I could retract it.

  Her fingers were warm, wet. They interlocked with mine. I found my grip tightening. She responded likewise. My body quickened. The heat in my groin swelled, pulsed, and I began to breathe too quickly.

  I tugged her forward at the exact moment she came toward me.

  I pushed my back against the burrow’s wall, that she might squeeze in beside me, and I wondered, trembling, at what I was about to do, wondered whether it was not too late to avoid it, wondered whether I wanted to avoid it, wondered whether I’d gone mad. Wondered, too, at the intensity and immediacy of my reaction to her smell, her wet fingers entwined in my own.

  Her breath sounded loud in my little burrow. Her form and warmth filled the cave. She lay down beside me, on her side, the both of us squeezed together, facing each other. One of her knees lay between my thighs. One of her arms draped over my ribs. Because there was no room, no room at all, I placed an arm over her. My hand perched uncertainly atop her hip, like a nervous bird that could at any moment burst into flight.

  Never before had I been with a woman in such a situation. I was surprised and delighted by the curve of her.

  Her breath, so venom laden, breathed warmth against my face. She moved closer. I swelled with want. Then her lips pressed against mine, and oh! the hunger in me.

  Her breasts against mine felt so different from the firmness of a man’s chest, felt so welcome and warm and giving, and at once I was filled with a need to feel those breasts against mine without the cloth of our bitoos dividing us. I tugged at her bitoo, she at mine. Elbows grazed stone, mouths panted; it was impossible to remove our bitoos in such a space. I thought I heard something rip. Her neck tasted salty and was soft, so soft, beneath my lips.

  Oh, Re, I wanted her breast in my mouth, wanted her nipple on my tongue.

  And then her fingers were in me, and I gasped, arched. Melted. Her arm moved, fast. My need built greater. I needed the dragon, needed its tongue, wanted its song.

  I think I climaxed, but it was so incomplete, the need that rolled after it so fierce, that I pushed my hips against her in greed. I realized that her own want was huge, and in craving divine merger, I sought her moist depths in hopes I might alleviate a little of the immense need in the both of us.

  How new and warm and welcome the wet of her. How intoxicating the push of her muscle, the soft curve of her breast and hip and belly.

  We invaded each other, over and over, until I felt swollen and raw and could scarce breathe from exhaustion. Soaked through with sweat, we lay in each other’s arms.

  Finally, our breaths slowed.

  She moved, then, and placed her lips against my ear.

  “Someone will have heard us,” she whispered, so quietly that I had to guess at half her words. “Even above the sound of the monsoon outside. Please, may I report our transgression tomorrow morn? Before anyone else does? Will you give me that gift?”

  I went cold. Was stunned.

  “Someone will have heard us,” she repeated, and by the catch in her throat, I knew she wept.

  She was afraid. Afraid of the inevitable report of transgression. Afraid of the mark the plump eunuch would make in his ledger against her name.

  She was asking me to allow her to announce our intimacy to all on the morrow, that in declaring such, she could earn a merit, thus detracting a demerit or so that would be marked against the both of us. She was also calling our beautiful, passionate embrace a transgression, which I knew in my soul it was not.

  Befuddled, I shrugged.

  Agreed.

  I didn’t realize until later that I could’ve claimed the right to announce our transgression myself, and thus reduce somewhat the punishment that was to shortly come my way.

  I’d not make that mistake again.

  Shortly after weeping her thanks against my neck, Prinrut crawled out of my burrow and melted into the dark, to her own cave.

  “Naji slept restlessly last night,” she announced the next morning, before even half of us had crawled from our respective burrows. She avoided my eyes. “I claim the responsibility of reporting her transgression.”

  “You, too, slept restlessly, made noise that interrupted the much-needed sleep of others,” Greatmother said, her white-flecked irises swimming in orbs of blood. “I claim the responsibility of reporting that transgression.”

  It became clear to me then.

  Those dove coos, those feather whispers I’d heard in dreams I’d attributed to childhood memories, had been the kisses and gasps of viagand women joined in need within their burrows. I realized, belatedly, that the phrase both Prinrut and Greatmother had used, you slept restlessly, was code for the intimacy we’d shared. It was an intimacy that Greatmother would not name for what it was, for it was an act she, too, performed on some nights, out of insatiable need and loneliness.

  I wondered what ludicrous phrases represented other acts committed in the viagand chambers.

  And though I resented Prinrut claiming the transgression against me, and though I burned with fury that she would even call the passion we’d shared a transgression, I forced myself to let go of that anger and, if not forgive her, then move on. I decided that I had to let go of my ire, see. Because I wanted affection with Prinrut far more than I wanted to hold a grudge against her.

  I craved affection. Acceptance. A sense of family and belonging.

  Prinrut visited me each night thereafter. She would answer none of the questions I asked of her, though, would turn away from me as I pressed my love-swollen lips against her ear and breathed my questions softly so that none could hear. After several nights, I stopped asking, for her continued silence aggravated me and saddened her, and I did not want to lose her companionship. No. If not for our intimacy and the venom draft the eunuch gave me each eve, I would have given in to a madness of despair.

  After our first time together, I was smarter: I refused to concede Prinrut the right to claim a transgression against me. We agreed in hushed voices that we would announce our own actions each morn, using the accepted code. After the first few announcements, I easily deceived myself into believing those marks against my name in the eunuch’s ledger meant little.

  I don’t know how long I would have mindlessly gone on in such a manner, obediently quaffing down drafts and engaging in pleasure with Prinrut, if one dusk the plump eunuch had not refused me my venom.

  I stared at him, on the threshold of panic. We’d just returned from the latrines after being force-fed an evening meal. Instead of waddling to my stone burrow alongside me, to hand me a venom draft, he clapped his hands together and made an announcement.

  “The rest of the viagand returns from the recovery berths two days hence. Make sure you’re all well rested for their return.”

  Rigidity amongst those around me. Prinrut gasped. Her eyes glazed over and her limbs locked picket stiff. At once her face wore that slack, vacant look of catatonia.

  The eunuch clucked with annoyance. “Greatmother, see to it that she revives before morn, hmmm?”

  Greatmother murmured acquiesence. The eunuch turned to leave.

  I stepped forward, one hand outstretched. “My venom draft?”

  Again he clucked irritably. “Naji, don’t be noisome.”

  “Will you bring it later?”

  He frowned. “You’re walking, eating, quite hale now. You’ve recovered from Prelude nicely. You’ll not require the drafts
further.”

  “But—”

  “One mark against you, for insolence!” he cried, and he drew forth the ledger he’d held tucked under one flaccid biceps and furiously leafed through it.

  “I claim the responsibility of reporting her transgression,” Kabdekazonvia said.

  “You,” the eunuch snarled. “I’ll not waste my ink giving you the benefit of Naji’s effrontery. You’ve eaten nothing for three days now. Nothing! Stupid girl; stupid, stubborn girl.”

  Kabdekazonvia stared groundward, her sloped shoulders appearing to melt off her.

  The eunuch scratched the ledger angrily with his quill, slapped the book together, and tucked it back under an armpit.

  “Good evening, girls,” he said primly, and he jerked the sole door in the chambers open. I caught a glimpse of the Retainers beyond; the eyes of one man met mine and he licked his lips lewdly. The eunuch closed the door after himself and I shuddered.

  “Naji, Misutvia,” Greatmother said wearily, “carry Prinrut to her sleeping quarters.”

  We did so, draping one each of Prinrut’s arms about our necks and drag-pulling her forward. I avoided looking at her vacuous stare, closed my mind to how the cool rigidity of her arm about my neck reminded me of the death-lock of a corpse.

  With force, Misutvia and I managed to fold Prinrut inside her cave. I crouched at the entrance of the burrow, paralyzed by her glazed eyes and vacant face. I felt impotent and useless.

  “Prinrut, wake up,” I murmured, and I shook her nearest arm. It was like shaking a felled tree. I dreaded a night without both her and my venom, didn’t know how I would survive the dark with only the reality of my imprisonment to keep me company. “Wake up, Prinrut!”

  “You’ve become attached to her,” Misutvia said, from where she was crouched beside me. “It’ll be hard on you, when she goes.”

  My heart tripped against my ribs. I studied Misutvia’s cool eyes, shadowed beneath her severe ebony bangs.

  “Goes?”