Shadowed By Wings

by Janine Cross

  She did neither; merely stared unblinking straight ahead of her, wan face expressionless.

  “Please.” One of the newest women spoke, her voice a strained whisper. “I must relieve myself.”

  The urgency in her voice made my own need urgent. Others shifted about me, aware of their own states. We all sat there, unmoving, until one of the new women cried out in dismay. She clambered to her feet, ran to a painting easel, snatched at a crock of dried paint, placed it on the floor, hefted her bitoo, and straddled it.

  I almost wet myself at the sound.

  At once, we were all struggling to stand. A moment of chaos followed. Greatmother and Sutkabde were too debilitated to move quick enough, and they soiled themselves. The rest of us jostled for the few remaining paint pots and filled them to capacity.

  In the ensuing silence, we stared at each other in horror.

  “We shall be stoned,” one of the newest said, trembling.

  “That would be preferable to what will happen instead,” Sutkabde replied.

  “You instill debilitating fear in the viagand with your remark,” Greatmother chided. “That is a transgression. I claim the right to report it.”

  “And I claim the right to report that you soiled floor and bitoo both,” Misutvia swiftly said.

  A pause. Then chaos ensued as we all breathlessly claimed the right to report everyone’s transgression of urinating in paint pots. Our world was so fearful and narrow, understand, that it not only made sense at the time, but seemed an integral part of survival.

  Transgressions claimed, heads thumping from tension and thirst, we drifted back to the cushions and divans and sat. We waited. We dozed. We woke raging with thirst in darkness. No day-shine drifted through the casements, only the night’s chill. In the blackness, fear blossomed.

  “What is this? Have we been abandoned to die?” a disembodied voice whispered in the dark.

  The silent quickening of our hearts.

  “Who spoke?” Greatmother said. “Such fearmongering is a transgression. Identify yourself.”

  A wondrous silence as no one responded. A thrill pimpled my skin and I momentarily felt brave.

  “We could ask the Retainers guarding the door for water,” I suggested. “It’s unlocked. Someone could crack it open a little.”

  No one would dare such temerity.

  “We will wait,” Greatmother pronounced, her hoarse voice part of the dark. “It is a test of our purity, of our obedience. We will wait.”

  “So this has occurred before,” a clipped voice stated. Misutvia.

  A pause before Greatmother replied. “No.”

  “We have no reason to think this is a test, then,” Misutvia argued. “We’ve never been tested before. I’ve never heard tell of such testing, either.”

  “You admit to idle gossip. Gossip is a transgression. I claim—”

  “I admit to no such thing,” Misutvia said with an anger as wondrous as the defiant silence that had met Greatmother’s command, a short while ago, that the unidentified speaker distinguish herself. “It is the one who imparts the gossip who transgresses, not the one who overhears.”

  A cumbersome silence from Greatmother as she strove to find the resources to respond.

  “If not for the receiving ears, there is no gossip, only mutters into air,” Greatmother finally said. “Thus, you have transgressed.”

  “And by extension of your argument, you also have transgressed, Greatmother,” Misutvia countered. “For if ears overhearing the words of another are guilty of transgression, then so too are eyes that witness such. And you, Greatmother, as our uncontested and recognized elder, said not a word to prevent our earlier transgression of voiding bladder into paint pot. I therefore hold you responsible for all our ills, and claim the right to report this great transgression.”

  A profound silence as the lot of us slowly realized what a nest of snakes Misutvia had just overturned.

  Who was responsible for a transgression, the witness who could have prevented it or the transgressor? Both? But to what degree? What then if the transgressor knew not that she was violating some esoteric law, but the witness did?

  My sluggish mind wrestled with the questions. Irritated, I spoke without thought, licking lips shrivelled for want of water.

  “It won’t matter who transgresses and who witnesses what if there’s no one to report to.”

  I tensed at my own nerve, waited for a bodiless voice in the dark to pronounce my statement as fearmongering and therefore a transgression. From the direction where Greatmother sat like a ghostly wraith, I heard her gather breath and strength to declare such.

  Misutvia spoke before Greatmother could utter her first word.

  “We’ll return to our burrows to sleep. Pointless to sit here further.” Misutvia’s voice was firm. “In the morning, if no one appears, we’ll do as Naji suggested. We’ll ask the two Retainers outside the door for water.”

  “We’ll need it,” I croaked hoarsely, and thirst moved all the women into murmuring fervent agreement. With venom in our veins, thirst was a constant, unwanted companion. We all craved water, ceaselessly. Going without it for this one day had given us pounding heads and a restless, irritable mien. “We won’t last long without water.”

  “No,” Misutvia agreed. “We won’t last long.”

  With the unexplained, unexpected change in our routine, the entombing darkness of night suddenly seemed thicker, chiller, fraught with crouched menace. I made my way to Misutvia’s burrow and crawled in with her.

  Her bony frame and gelid skin offered little by way of comfort, but it was not physical succor I sought; it was solace of spirit.

  “The other viagand women,” I whispered into her ear. “The ones currently in the dragon stalls and recovery berths. I wonder if they’re also being tested in such a manner.”

  “Don’t be sensational,” Misutvia snapped.

  I shuddered against her and held my tongue, and I realized, by her very irritation, that she too was greatly unnerved by this sudden turn of events.

  Sleep came grudgingly that night to both of us, and when it eked my way, I dreamed ceaselessly of the haunt clawing its way free within me. Just before dawn, I could no longer bear the vision and the accompanying sensations. I left Misutvia’s burrow and returned to mine, passing in the vapid light the gray shadows of others slinking back to their dens. We averted our eyes from each other in a tacit complicity of pretending we never saw each other. A short while later, we crawled from our burrows.

  My thirst was paramount. I could scarce swallow. My eyes felt gummy. We waited, swaying, for someone to claim the first transgression against another, for the violation of sleeping restlessly. My spittle was too scarce to waste; I would not speak lest someone claimed first against me.

  We all remained silent, muted by thirst. Greatmother stood in a stupor, seemingly unaware of us, of our predicament. Exhausted, I broke the spell by staggering over to the feeding cushions. The others shuffled after me.

  Long moments passed as sunlight oozed through the narrow casements in the stone walls, obfuscated by entangled vines, thick tree trunks, curtains of moss, and ceilings of leaf and frond. No rain fell outside, but fog dew dripped incessantly upon bract and leaf.

  I could stand it no longer. I rose, went to the cool, dew-beaded stone walls, and licked. The dust-gritted pearls of condensation at once disappeared upon the swollen surface of my tongue. Lizardlike, I continued lapping the walls. It wasn’t long before others copied me.

  With our thirst not so much satiated as masked by the dampness now in our mouths, we returned to our divans. Greatmother, I noticed, had not permitted herself the dew on the stone walls. She sat rigidly staring at nothing, eyes slightly wider than usual. Her lips were parted, the gap of her missing front teeth visible to all.

  We waited, and with each passing heartbeat, the tension and our thirst climbed higher. At last, one of the new women spoke. She addressed Misutvia.

  “Who will do it, then? A
sk for water?”

  We all looked at the door. On the other side stood two Retainers, burly criminals permitted to assault us at scheduled dates as remuneration for their service to fortress, Temple, and dragon.

  “Naji will do it,” Misutvia said.

  “Why me?” I cried.

  “Someone must, else we expire from thirst.”

  “I went to Prelude. You do this.”

  She shook her head. One of the new women whimpered.

  “And what if the Retainers’ answer is rape?” Greatmother said, and her voice husked from her parched throat like sand rasping over a reed mat. “Or simply an order to get back inside and remain silent? Then what has Naji gained for her audacity? Nothing but shame and punishment. No, we stay. We wait. It is our duty.”

  Sutkabde neither nodded nor disagreed. She merely stared at Greatmother. One of the new women began weeping.

  Misutvia met my eyes. “I’d rather know I’m to die, and suffer in gaining the knowledge, than have death creep gradually over me.”

  “Isn’t that what happens here regardless?” gasped the weeping woman. “Death by slow degrees.”

  Misutvia colored and pursed her lips.

  “Our duty here,” Greatmother rasped, “is to serve Temple. We know not in our ignorance the great workings of holy minds, of holy ways. We will sit here and wait for the eunuchs’ return.”

  “We’re prisoners, not acolytes,” Misutvia growled. “I have no duty to Temple. I don’t willingly serve it. I’m enslaved.”

  “You have lain with the dragons,” Greatmother breathed. “You are privy to divinity. You are blessed by being permitted such a hallowed touch, by performing such a sacred service.”

  “I’m a prisoner!” Misutvia barked.

  “You deny that you’ve experienced divinity?” Greatmother asked.

  “Of course I do. We suffer nothing but hallucinations provoked by the venom. There’s nothing divine about whoring to a dragon.”

  “A hallucination does not preclude the divine, but is merely the form the divine dialogue takes,” Greatmother rasped. “As recipients of such, as the dragons’ chosen servants, our duty is to submit and obey.”

  “To rape? Humiliation? Death?”

  “We earn with our suffering the reward of lying with the dragons. The blood we spill cleanses us, washes away our impurities.”

  “You’re mad to believe such.”

  “If I did not believe such, Misutvia, how could I daily submit to all I’m subjected to?” Greatmother said, chin lifted, blood-bathed eyes unblinking. “Who is mad, you who submit for no reason, or I who submit out of faith?”

  Misutvia stared, words eluding her, and I suddenly saw myself for what I’d become.

  “Greatmother’s right,” I said slowly. “If we don’t want to be here, why do we remain? That door”—I pointed a bony, pale finger—“is unlocked. It’s guarded by unarmed men. There are seven of us to their two. At night, when their snores rattle the door, what’s ever stopped us from overcoming them?”

  “With what?” one of the new women asked. “Look how feeble we are.”

  “We use those.” Misutvia nodded at the art easels. “We break them apart, use the wood as bludgeons and stakes.”

  I frowned. “The Retainers would hear us smashing the easels. They’d come in and stop us before we were armed.”

  “We wrap the easels in carpet before breaking them apart, place pillows over the door to muffle the sound.” Misutvia’s color was high.

  I licked my lips. “How do we break them?”

  “With our feet. The easels are old, the joints rickety. I’ve checked.”

  “You’ve thought of this before,” I said, and Misutvia nodded slowly. “Then why … ?”

  But no sooner did I start asking the question than I stopped. I knew why she’d never suggested it before: Revolt required collective effort, required teamwork and collusion. Until now, we’d been too set in our submissive ways, too focused on gathering transgressions against each other. We’d been unified by our sudden abandonment by the eunuchs. The old order was broken.

  The other reason why Misutvia had never before suggested revolt was because to escape was to turn away from the dragons’ numinous embrace. Even if she scoffed at the divinity of the rite, she was not immune to venom’s addictive power and pleasures. Where else but here would these women ever have the opportunity to offer themselves to a dragon’s tongue?

  Greatmother echoed my thought by speaking it aloud. “Once you leave this fortress, you leave forever the dragons’ grace. Never again will you be lifted to the great world of light that lies behind our paltry destinies. Never again will you be embraced by celestial glory, merged with bliss. You forgo ecstasy for starvation in the jungle, celestial union for the tear of feral teeth through heart and brain.”

  “No,” I countered, heart beating as if I’d recently quaffed venom. “Some onais do this thing, too. They’ve trained the infirm bulls in their care to perform this rite. We could survive the jungle. I’ve survived it before. We could join a convent somewhere. We’d have access to dragons then.”

  Misutvia and the three new women gaped at me.

  Greatmother shook her head. “You’re forbidden to speak of your former life, Naji. In doing so, you turn the devout away from their duties here, beguile them with your tongue.”

  I swallowed, defiance brewing a spume of turmoil in my gut. “My name isn’t Naji. It’s Zarq.”

  Silence followed, as great as a sail that a gust has just blown full and taut.

  “Zarq,” Misutvia said slowly. “Named after Zarq Car Mano. A woman named after a rebel, then.”

  I lifted my chin. “Yes.”

  “Extraordinary.”

  “Evil,” Greatmother breathed. “Do not listen to the beguiling tongue of evil.”

  “You no longer plan to ask the Retainers for water and direction,” Sutkabde breathed. “You plot murder and escape.”

  Misutvia and I refused to glance at her.

  “Shall we make ourselves bludgeons and stakes, then?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Misutvia said, and she smiled for the first time and last time behind those walls. “Let’s arm ourselves.”

  SIXTEEN

  Not only did we break apart the art easels, but I taught the three new women how to break a nose by slamming the heel of a palm against the bridge, a skill I’d learned as a nine-year-old while living in a traveling merchant’s train. They were the strongest of us, those three new women, and the most energetic. They were therefore the most likely to subdue the Retainers and survive. They listened closely, eyes bright.

  “If you’re close enough, use your forehead, like so,” I said, and I clasped Misutvia’s temples and, without making contact, demonstrated how to shatter bone and cartilage and stun a victim by slamming forehead against nose. “Remember the testicles: A man’s strength is sapped by a blow to the area. But move fast and decisively, yes?”

  Swaying from the effort of so much speech and dizzy from lack of water and ill health, I leaned against a wall to steady myself. We all rested for some time, high-strung yet motionless, eyes flitting to and from the door, guarded on the opposite side by the Retainers. At last, Misutvia spoke.

  “We know what to do. We’ll act now, then.”

  “Now,” I whispered, heart hammering insanely inside of me, my fingers as charged as lightning.

  “Now,” the three new women breathed.

  “Kwano the One Snake, the First Father, the progenitor and spirit of all kwano everywhere, I bid you begone,” Greatmother intoned, sanguine eyes riveted upon me. She was uttering the Gyin-gyin, which I’d last heard back in the dragonmaster’s stables on Clutch Re, when Ringus had feverishly murmured the incantation against my mother’s haunt. “I evoke the powers of Ranon ki Cinai, governed by the exalted Emperor Mak Fa-sren—”

  Sutkabde wrapped her arms about herself and began rocking, much as a child about to witness the murder of her father might.

 
; Holding our primitive spears with jagged ends thrust forward, we approached the door. Misutvia laid a hand upon the wooden handle.

  “We know what to do. Do it fast; don’t hesitate,” she mouthed.

  “We can do this,” I said. Nods all about me.

  “On the count of eight, I open the door.” She began counting, and for a moment, the room swooped, I tasted death, and my mother’s haunt was an oyster-cold clot in my mouth, lodged at the back of my tongue, trying to thrust its way to freedom.

  “Eight,” Misutvia said, and she flung the door open and we spilled forth, wraithlike and murderous.

  Our charge was short-lived.

  We spun right, left, turning this way and that in confusion, so intent on clubbing and stabbing that we almost fell upon each other with each dizzy turn. We stopped, chests heaving, and looked about in confusion. Cold bumps shivered over my skin.

  “There’s no one here,” I gasped.

  The gloomy corridor was unlit save for the grassy light crawling through the narrow, ivy-choked casement high up at the corridor’s end.

  “There’s no one here,” I repeated, and the reality soared through us on hope-feathered wings. As one, we dashed to the end of the corridor, though by the time Misutvia and I reached it, we were stumbling and wheezing and scarce able to stand upright.

  We all stopped and stared in disbelief.

  Where the corridor turned right, into what had been another corridor only days before, stood a stone wall. One of the new women reached out with a trembling hand and touched it, checking that it was real.

  “We’ve been sealed in,” she whispered. Horror rippled over us and turned my scalp prickly. “There’s no way out.”

  We returned to the chambers and shut the door. It felt safer, somehow, to have that door shut.

  Misutvia walked straight toward Greatmother, who sat motionless, still droning the Gyin-gyin.

  “Close your lips, old woman,” she snapped. “No murder has been done. We’ve been sealed in by stone.”