by L. K. Rigel
The door swung open with yet another customer. Mal glanced around the room for a table as the settler shuffled in behind her, but she knew there weren’t any available.
“I’m sorry – oh!”
It wasn’t a settler. It was a Ptery, and not four feet away. The old crone shuffled forward, and Mal instinctively took a step back. White gauze-like film covered her eye sockets, the orbs jerking from object to object. They fixed on Mal, so creepy she dropped the tray. The dishes clattered on the floor.
As Mal picked up plates and bowls, the Ptery’s eyes widened and a broad grin spread over her face. She reached toward Mal’s hair. Her youthful hand didn’t match her withered face. Mal scrambled out of the way as Palama stepped between them.
“You’ll find no business here, old woman.” Her voice was melodic and kind as always, but her tone was laced with urgency and even a touch of fear.
The Ptery peered at Mal from around Palama’s thin frame. “Let me seek your soul, young one. I’ll wager it’s in there.”
“Get out, witch!” Ma shrieked from the bar. “Charlatan! Get out!”
But for Ma, the saloon had gone stone silent. No one wanted a Ptery in there, looking for souls. Palada came out from the kitchen and stood with Pala. Together they gave the Ptery their you-can-go-now look – the stare they fixed on settlers who drank too much settlement gin.
The Ptery hesitated. Unlike most settlers, Pala and Palada were as well-nourished as aristocrats, taller than the usual worker, and Pala was already an inch taller than his da. Their muscles were evident under their dark brown skin. They wore their hair in thin braids decorated with objects Palada had carved from wood and stone. This alone was a mark of self-respect unheard of in settlers.
Palada was the calmest, most peaceful human being Mal knew, but the Ptery couldn’t know that. She seemed to understand, though, that she wasn’t going to be able to intimidate him.
“The priest is here, witch!” Ma said. “He’ll take you in, he will!”
There used to be a sheriff at the settlement. Now the Samaeli priest had the sheriff’s duties. But Ma was bluffing. He never took anybody in.
Ma wasn’t afraid of the Ptery. She was afraid of trouble with Garrick. A good number of the settlers worked illegally. Some sitting in the saloon at this moment hadn’t gone through the liminal gauntlet to get their souls. If the Ptery found them out, she could blackmail them and their supervisors too.
Palama pulled a packet of textured protein from her apron and handed it to the Ptery. “You should go.” Her voice had gone back to its usual lovely, sing-song cadence. Sometimes Mal didn't hear what Palama said because the music in her voice was better than any meaning in her words.
The Ptery again looked at Palada and Pala – at least, her eyes jerked in their direction – and then at Mal. There was something strange in the gaze, as if the Ptery were boring into her. Invading her.
“I said you should go now.” All Palama’s gentleness was gone. She took the Ptery by the arm and moved her toward the door. The invasive feeling stopped. A few of the settlers were out of their seats, ready to do their own convincing.
The Ptery’s eyes jerked one more time at Palada. She snatched the protein from Palama’s hand and backed out of the saloon. People gradually relaxed and fell back into their previous conversations.
Mal finished picking up the dishes and headed to the kitchen. A settler at the bar turned around and raised his glass of settlement gin.
“To King Garrick!”
The others lifted their glasses to the picture of the king a settler had brought in when the first Sunday bonus came. Ma had put it on the wall to encourage gin sales – and it worked.
“King Garrick!” The settlers drank deep and ordered more.
“To the long life of our natural born king and prince!” The settler offered a second toast –considered grandstanding.
“Garrick.” A somewhat less enthusiastic reply.
“What does that actually mean, natural born?” Mal asked. She’d heard the term so often, she never thought about the reality of it. Not until recently. Not until it might apply to her.
Ma laughed. “You’re about to find out for yourself and make me rich.”
Mal blushed. Then she got mad at herself for blushing and blushed even more. She was tired and embarrassed and hungry, and the Ptery had made her feel odd, shaky. She put down the tray. She was taking a break.
She went outside, careful to keep to the covered walk along the saloon wall. The day had cooled, and the late afternoon sun sent shadows from the wall’s raptor cages in elongated shapes across the common square. The Ptery shuffled along out in the open, headed for the gate.
Ma’s words echoed in Mal’s mind. You’re about to find out for yourself and make me rich.
She meant the bleeding. All girls bled at puberty. One time, for a day. Two times, tops. They went to Garrick, had their eggs harvested and stored at the hospital, and life went on. But when Mal had bled two months ago, Ma didn’t take her to Garrick. Why bother? Ma had said. Garrick will never give you a license for children.
Ma didn’t explain why Mal wouldn’t be allowed to have children when she grew up, but it must be something to do with her father. Ma never talked about him, and as far as Mal could tell, no one in the settlement knew anything about him. He left them right after Mal came out of the hospital. She was sure there was something horribly wrong with her, and Ma hadn’t figured out how to tell her.
Last month the bleeding came a second time, and Ma had looked at her differently and pinched her less often. She didn’t complain so much when Mal and Pala went outside the wall to look for rabbits and berries. She told Mal to be careful and to keep the sun out of her eyes.
A few days ago it had come again, and Ma turned into a crazy person. She laughed all the time for no reason. Smiled at Mal and asked her how she was feeling.
Mal was a bleeder.
Ma sent word to Red City. In a few weeks they would come to collect Mal. In the last few days, she’d been bombarded by marvelous stories from the settlers about life in Red City. In Red City, there was always plenty of food to eat. The nights were never too cold and the days never too hot. The air was always clean – it was too far from Garrick for the winds to carry the smell of refinery waste. There were no raptors.
“Mallory, are you all right?” Palama had followed her outside. Palama was more of a mother to her than Ma ever was. “Don’t let that old crone bother you.”
“The Ptery? That was weird. But it’s not her.”
“I think maybe you’re worried about going to Red City.”
“A little bit.” It felt good to laugh, to blow off some of the tension she felt about the whole thing. “It just seems strange, the idea of growing children inside my body. I don’t see how I can do it.”
“It’s nothing you have to actually do, once it gets started.”
Palama knew everything. Mal had never thought about it before, but the Palas were too fine for the settlement. They should be citizens, except they almost seemed too fine for that. What a strange thought! It must be the bleeding.
“I’m going to tell you something, Mallory. Something no one else can know. Pala is my natural-born son.”
Palama never lied, but it didn’t make sense. “Then why don’t you live in Red City?” If half the stories were true, anybody would want to live there – especially when the alternative was Settlement 20. Mal knew that much.
Palama stopped and looked at the sky like she was searching for the answer.
“I could never leave my love.”
My love. A subtle click sounded in Mal’s mind. Not mere words. A mystery and a promise. I could never leave my love. Her stomach went queasy with a kind of eagerness. Would she ever feel that way about someone?
“Look out!” Palama yelled. She started running after the Ptery across the common. “Get down!”
A peregrine with a twenty-foot wingspan glided over the wall just as Palama pushed the
Ptery to the ground. As Mal watched, horrified, the raptor clamped a claw down on Palama’s head and snapped her neck.
“Help!” Mal screamed. The raptor flew off with Palama’s limp body dangling from its grasp. Were the cage guards off work today too? “Someone help!”
A second raptor grabbed the Ptery, who wasn’t as lucky as Palama. The old woman’s screams filled the sky long after the bird disappeared over the wall.
Harriet
Settlement crops belonged to Garrick, but anything in the wild was fair game. Mal and Pala crouched between the two kissing boulders and watched the clearing. A clump of scrub brush was covered with a mantle of blackberry canes, the berries ripe and whole.
It was the first year they’d beaten the mice and sparrows to the treasure, and Palama wouldn’t get to enjoy it.
Mal scanned the sky. No clouds today, but raptors could come up from the foothills to the east. They’d been brazen since the peregrines took Palama and the Ptery. Ma had threatened Mal with a beating if she went outside the wall, but this was her last day and she had to get out with the wild grass and rocks and trees one more time.
Everyone said Red City was beautiful, but she’d been given so many differing and conflicting descriptions over the last two weeks that she realized nobody really knew what they were talking about.
Pala pulled an arrow from his quiver, ready to nock. He motioned her on, an easy sprint to the fruit.
The blackberries were fat with juice, sweet, and warm from the sun. She picked a handful for the sack, popped a few in her mouth, and another handful for the sack. She and Pala worked silently, filling sacks and eating.
Something moved. Pala touched his nose twice and pointed at a jackrabbit between the two granite outcroppings. Mal’s stomach growled so loud they both almost laughed. Her mouth watered at the possibility of rabbit in the stew, and she loaded a quarrel into her crossbow.
The animal startled and darted all over the place. Mal’s heart pounded and she searched the sky. Any raptor within three miles could spot that movement. Sure enough, within seconds creepy chirps and cackles broke out in the east.
“Get down!” She dropped to the dirt and fought her way into the berry canes, the thorns grabbing at her matted hair.
Pala nocked the arrow and sent it flying from his longbow. He burrowed in beside her, and a scream ripped through the air as the arrow found its mark. The arrowhead mechanism would already be dispensing its paralyzing poison. Pala stared at the dirt two inches from his face, and Mal could imagine what he was thinking. If only he’d been in the square that day. He might have stopped the raptor that took his ma.
These weren’t silent peregrines. Eagles were bigger, loud and obnoxious in their attacks. The wounded bird struck the kissing boulders, its bones breaking on the granite rocks.
Asherah, keep me still. How would it feel, being torn apart by raptor talons? Did you die right away or go slowly while the monsters fed on your guts?
The panicked jackrabbit bounded about, its strong little feet scuttling the dirt. A second shadow flickered over the ground, and on instinct Mal turned away.
She seemed to hear a voice: Look! There was something barely visible at the base of the scrub brush. A piece of sandstone stuck out of the dirt, no bigger than the top of her thumb. Not a plain rock. A design was carved into it.
Thrum! Thrum! Thrum! A rhythmic machine-like sound pulsed through the sky, drowning out the eagles’ cries.
“That’s not raptors.” Pala apparently hadn’t heard the voice. “That’s a transport.”
Through the bush Mal saw a black airship larger than Garrick’s harvest transport. A portal near the airship’s cargo bay slid open, and a metal ball shot out and unfolded like a mechanical flower into a baling net.
The net wrapped around one of the eagles’ wings, and as the bird jerked and writhed against the deadly hug, the net emitted a charge of electricity. The stunned raptor fell to earth and broke its back on the boulders near the other bird, Pala’s kill.
The transport moved on toward the settlement. Pala crawled out from under the canes, picking thorns from his braids and skin. He pulled his knife out of its sheath and jogged over to the fallen giants.
Mal returned to the stone half buried in the ground. Had she heard a voice or just imagined it? With a good tug, she freed it and brushed the dirt out of its carved lines. A stone Asherah. Not like the faceless wooden god the priest of Asherah had given her. This one had eyes, a little bump for a nose, cheeks, a mouth and hair – or was it a headdress? It had the same grotesque bulging breasts. This one was as good as anything Palada could make.
She slipped the god into her pocket.
Pala dug into the breast of the bird he’d brought down and pulled out his arrowhead. “Yes!” That was some rare good luck.
The jackrabbit had come to rest in the space between the boulders. It stared at Mal, panting, in shock probably. She didn’t raise her crossbow. It didn’t seem right to kill it after they’d escaped raptors together.
The engines spooled down. The airship slowed and then hovered over the settlement, poised above the common. The Blackbird. The famous transport from Red City was indeed gleaming black. Blood-red roses decorated its tail.
“So.” Pala wrapped the arrowhead in his bandana and put it in his pocket. “It’s here.”
“I guess.” So this was it. She might never see the settlement or anyone in it again.
“Let’s go then.” Pala took off, his bare legs skinny but powerful. Mal slogged after him in her heavy boots and coveralls. She pulled down the brim of her hemp bucket hat.
Don’t let the sun get in your eyes! That was the kind of guidance she got from Ma. Always orders. Never anything important.
Settlers had come in from the fields to fight the birds; they stayed to see what would come out of the Blackbird. The Emissary was supposedly an exotic. You could go a lifetime without seeing one. They filled the raptor cages on top of the wall and stared at Mal as she came through the gate.
She felt the separation already. The Blackbird's arrival had made it real. She was no longer one of them.
The transport’s jets rotated down for landing, and she and Pala had to dodge flying bits of cheap tarmac as they ran to the saloon. On the front porch step, Ma’s gaze locked on the magnificent beast of a machine.
Workers kept coming in from the fields, jostling for the best views in the square. Both the settlers and the square were drab and dusty compared to the shining black airship. Palada came out of the saloon. Only the priest of Samael was missing. He’d want to know about the stone Asherah. Not that Mal would let him see it.
The Blackbird went completely quiet, and the silence felt unnatural. Ma’s bony fingers dug into Mal’s shoulder. Her wild gray hair was tied back with a piece of string. It occurred to Mal that Ma was very old, close to forty.
“We found blackberries, Ma.”
“It doesn’t matter now, Mallory. Wash your face and get back here quick.” But the transport door opened and a flight of stairs telescoped to the ground. Mal wasn’t going anywhere.
Two rows of guards filed down the stairs to form a pathway from the airship to the saloon. They were dressed alike in skin-tight crimson pants and sleeveless black tops cut at a diagonal so you could see the tattoos on their shoulders and arms. Their boots and gloves were black.
Every guard wore black sunglasses, form-fitted so no ray of direct sunlight could touch their eyes. Their crossbows made Mal’s look like a toy.
They were taller than the settlers, well-fed, with full breasts and rounded hips and rock-hard muscles. The tattoos on their arms varied in style. Some had so many, both arms were covered. Some had only one tattoo on their right biceps, a circle of red roses like those painted on the Blackbird.
In two deft moves, shunk-shunk, the guards faced outward and raised their weapons in defensive position toward the sky.
No one moved – the guards were well-disciplined, and the settlers were simply entranced
by the glory of it all.
The tallest person Mal had ever seen appeared at the Blackbird’s door. She wore a hooded red mantle and the same black sunglasses, and she seemed to float down the stairs.
The shorter woman following behind wore a silver mantle over a sky-blue tunic, the color of a doctor. She carried a satchel the same color. Her hood was thrown back. She was dark-skinned like the Palas, with short brown curls and a cheerful smile. Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, but she wiggled her fingers at Mal as if they were old chums. Mal smiled back without thinking about it.
“Emissary.” Ma bowed to the lady in red. Ma clean. Ma bowing. This was a day the settlement would long discuss. The Emissary passed her without a glance and went into the saloon followed by the friendly doctor lady and four guards.
Ma grasped Mal by the coveralls and dragged her inside, bowing all the while at the Emissary’s back. The Emissary whirled around, her mantle flaring a bit before it settled, and her hood fell back. She removed her sunglasses.
Mal froze, and Ma squeaked and jumped back a few paces.
The Emissary’s scalp was covered by a tattooed copperhead snake. For just an instant, Mal thought it was alive. It wound around her neck and up around her head like a turban. The snake’s head came from under her left ear over her jaw, and its forked tongue seemed to lick the corner of her mouth.
She had no eyelashes, but she had thick brown-black tattooed eyeliner. For eyebrows, vertical brown-black lines were tattooed in arches over her eyes. She had full dark lips, a flattish nose, and light brown skin. Her irises were red-brown and metallic-looking. Dramatically beautiful.
She glanced at Mal. A blue light shone through the red-brown and was gone so quickly Mal wasn’t sure she’d really seen it.
The Emissary surveyed the room until she came to Pala. Her eyes glowed again, this time an ember-like flare – or that’s what Mal thought she saw.