I dropped my chin in reverence, and when I looked up from the rim of the tub, she was gone. I did feel better, but also more lost than ever. How’d she know I’d come into full sapience? It only just happened. Could she sense it? And who was she warning me away from—Tiro—Onine? I wondered if Venusian had the gift to see into our minds like Minosh could read the gold sediment of their baths.
I was glad Saturnia’s sister was one of my last bathers. I had to empty all the tubs, scrub them down, and reset the one hundred and forty-six chains for the next pull. I worked efficiently, all the while hoping the keeper would return, but he never did. When Tiro called for me at the gate, I was grateful he ignored me. I rested my head on the side of the cart, as he drove out of the Temple. I didn’t hear the others get on or off the cart and when I reached my little shanty, I fell onto my bed of silks, lost to a dreamless sleep.
***
“Wake up, El!”
A Kyprian shriek yanked me from my sleep and I rolled to my side before pushing myself up on the bed of silks. The eye hadn’t risen yet but was slowly making its way up and onto the horizon. The sky from my open window was purple.
My pain was gone—my muscles didn’t ache, my shoulder wasn’t sore, my stomach was no longer delicate and I embraced its grumbles. I rose to greet Bendo, loosely draping myself with the frock I’d worn when I almost stumbled into Onine. The goat was asleep until she detected my step on the peat. “Greetings, Bendo.”
Bah! I stroked the top of her head, knowing she liked that best. She always dug her nose beneath my chin when I did so. Her hot breath warmed my skin since the air was cool and my cheeks were fresh.
“How’d you sleep?” Now that Minosh was gone, I liked to talk to Bendo. I could trust her. I only wished she could talk back. “You know what Saturnia’s sister told me when she bathed?” I asked the goat as if she were interested in the frivolity of sapient life. “She told me I was special, just like Minosh used to.”
Bendo bleated when she heard me say Minosh. She recognized the name of her mistress.
“She told me the goddess has chosen me,” I said. “And that I must be careful of him—him, she said.”
Him?
A Kyprian wouldn’t refer to another that way. Saturnia’s sister wasn’t referring to a Venusian at all but warning me about a sapient. Do not let him take you. Could she have meant Tal? Was Tal going to take me somewhere?
“El.” The greeting startled both Bendo and me, and the goat bleated softly. The sound of his voice made me lightheaded and I dropped to the peat moss without turning to look at him. I didn’t know he approached until I felt his stick on the small of my back. His touch was barely a touch at all, and the loose frock fell from my shoulders. I felt naked without my veil, and certainly too undressed to greet a Kyprian.
He didn’t speak again but I knew he wanted me to face him. The fine hair on my skin stood on end and I breathed in deeply, hoping to quell my terror. My fingertips tingled and my toes tightened when I leaned on the ground in front of me to push myself up. I struggled to keep a hand on the frock. I was afraid to show him my inelegant face once more. It didn’t matter he’d already seen it in the golden forest, he’d already studied it, traced it, memorized it.
“I can’t greet you properly, keeper.” Bendo bleated and I shushed her without thinking. “Please let me go in for my veil.”
He placed the point of his stick on the nape of my neck and drew it across my skin. I held my breath, knowing I couldn’t avoid facing him any longer. I turned with closed eyes, wishing I’d only imagined him in my garden. It seemed impossible for him to be only half-lit, in the darkness where the eye wasn’t up to warm him, but when the tip of his stick traced the curve of my left jawline, I knew he was real. I opened my eyes and he pulled his stick from my face. My legs trembled beneath the frock and my knuckles turned white with the grip I strained to keep on its trim. Bravely, I searched Onine’s violet eyes. The hum of the air around me hushed, and everything seemed to fall away except for the small screeches of the Kyprian tongue. Onine spoke to me in his language.
“I can’t understand you,” I mumbled.
“Yes you can,” he said with a shriek.
“How?”
“You have not forgotten.” As he continued, I did recognize words through the shrieks. “You cultivate beauty inside of you now. I have seen it. It is your potential to procreate that makes you radiant. It overwhelms me to hear the call of your inner being. I touch you with the point of my stick, press its tip against your skin just to feel your energy again. I miss you. We may have conquered the sapients, but you have conquered me and I worship you still.”
I was speechless, struck dumb by his confession.
“Oh, that I could touch you with my fire. I would remove the covering from my hands and place them on your brow, press my fingers into the rounded skin beneath your dark eyes, run my fingertips over the grooves of your pale lips and let them linger until they knew all the subtleties of your face—your deep-seeded haunts—the same face you share with your creator.”
“But you can’t,” I said. “You mustn’t.”
“I wonder if touching you is worth an existence of nothingness. I cannot live with just your gaze for much longer. It cannot be all I ever know again. You are still mine.”
I couldn’t breath. I felt a tightening in my chest so strong I fell forward and dropped to my knees. “Please,” I barely spoke.
“You have been selected,” he said. “But they are ignorant and I will keep him from taking you.”
Onine moved forward and I recoiled. He lifted his stick and used it to caress the arm that held the silk about my bare skin. If he was asking me to remove the frock, I didn’t obey. I couldn’t bare my body. He brought his stick up to the side of my neck and gestured for me to drop my head to the left. I did as he asked and he dragged the tip of his stick down along the line of my neck all the way to where Tiro had whipped my shoulder in the Temple. He held it there for a moment and let out a sigh, as though he could sense the pain I’d experienced, the pain Saturnia’s sister had taken from me.
As he examined me, I marked the curves of his torso. His skin glowed beneath his covering despite the darkness of the early dawn. His bare neck gave off a blue tint, as if his skin had grown cold. His shoulders slumped forward and I thought he was going to topple over onto the ground in front of me. He lost his grip on the stick and it fell onto the peat moss. I reached out to pick it up and offered it to him but he didn’t take it. I held it there for a moment and then he took another step forward, as if he were going to reach for it, but he didn’t and reached for my shoulder instead. I held my breath for the end.
“No,” Tal’s shout came from another place. “Don’t touch her.”
I couldn’t see Tal on the other side of my garden wall, as he rushed toward us. The plea broke the spell and Onine backed away. I let out a gasp and he mimicked me. I couldn’t express my relief—Bendo bleated for me. The keeper stared down at me so intensely, so frighteningly, I felt violated. His whole aspect changed from serene to frazzled in a matter of breaths. I held the stick out to him again, dropping my eyes to the moss. He snatched it from me and backed away, drifting into the field and toward the rising eye.
I dropped to the peat moss, and Bendo bowed to greet me. When Tal rushed at the two of us and pushed the beast aside to swoop down and pull me into his arms, I barely felt his touch. He held me close to his chest, cradling me as though it weren’t forbidden to do so.
“You’re safe now,” he said. “He’s gone.” I was speechless. “What was he doing here?” I’d no idea. “What did he want, El?”
“I’ve—I’ve—” His skin felt cold against mine, colder than the water from the springs, and I embraced its relief.
“You’re skin is on fire,” he said.
“I’ve been selected.”
***
The steam from the baths made me feel hot. I’d never known the feeling of warmth before, so I could only
guess this was it. Sapient body temperature remains constant, always cold.
“How come we don’t bathe in hot water, Minosh?” I was just a youngling when I asked her that question, barely in my second thó. I’d found it strange our baths didn’t have steam like those at the Temple.
“We only need cold water, my little Pchi,” she’d said, squeezing my nose lovingly. “Feel your skin.” She led my hand up to touch my cheek and despite my submersion in the icy bath, my face felt normal, cool. “Our skin is averse to heat because we are warm-blooded beings.”
“Like the Venusian?”
“No, nothing like them. They are made of fire and need the heat to survive. We come from the soil, my little Pchi. Here, our body temperature is stable.”
“What’s stable?”
“It means this is the perfect place for us, just as we are for it.” I remember her smile was so reassuring when she said it that I didn’t question her. Everything Minosh told me made sense.
But feeling hot as I was now, knowing I couldn’t ask her about it, I imagined what she’d say. “Your experience with Onine has made you susceptible to heat and deep down in your core you feel him becoming a part of you.” Perhaps I was merely hoping that’s what she’d say.
The thought of Onine becoming a part of me made me unsteady. As soon as I stirred the tubs, I exited through the cedar door. The eye burned brilliantly in the sky and the flaming tips of the fires over the pits blurred the air above them. Tal’s image was like a mirage amidst the vapor. He was alone at the farthest group of pits stacking the gray rock when I went toward him. He looked up in my direction and waved me over. I hadn’t seen him since he’d saved me from Onine’s visit.
“I’m sorry,” he said before I had the chance to say hello. The little cleft between his eyebrows conveyed his sincerity.
“For what?”
He looked past me and ran the back of his hand across his brow, leaving a trail of soot on his forehead. The heat from the fires made me a little delirious and the pits seemed hotter than the steam from the baths.
“Tiro’s gone,” he said. “The keeper came through earlier and took him and the other starters to the salt beds.”
Just the mention of my keeper made my skin sweat. I hadn’t seen him in the Temple and was relieved to know he’d made it out of the darkness alive.
“Are you feeling better?” Tal reached out his hand as though he were going to touch my forehead. I recoiled and he dropped it.
“Sure,” I said.
“You don’t look like it. You were burning up. I could barely keep you—”
“No, I’m fine.”
“It’s just the heat from the baths then?”
I nodded. “Sometimes the smoke makes everything hotter.” I turned away, trying to break the unsettling look he gave me. He hadn’t stopped staring at my veil. “I heard about your—” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words and he looked as far past me as he could.
“Yes, well, I don’t know why they decided that,” he said. “I mean, I was happy to stay, you know, like you.”
“Celibate?”
I could tell he smiled. “Assigned to you.”
“Oh.” I felt a blush rise up on my already hot cheeks. I was glad to be wearing the veil. “Em seems like a good match.” I tried to hide how desperate I was to change the subject.
He kicked the ash at his feet and looked over at a blaze two away from the one beside him. “I don’t know,” he said. “We barely know each other.”
“Does that matter?”
He shrugged again. “I know—I just—I don’t know. Whatever.” He sounded defeated.
“She seems excited.”
“That’s good.” He tugged at his gloves, pulling one of them back on. I compared his calloused hands to those of Onine without realizing it. Tal’s were inelegant, imperfect, hard, but they were like mine and that made me feel connected to him.
“I guess—listen,” he said, “I need to talk to you.”
I didn’t know when Tiro would return but had to be in the Temple when he did. “Meet me in the field.”
Tal raised one eyebrow and shook his head. “I can come to the shanty?”
It was already improper for us to spend time together now that he was reassigned. If we met in the field, no one would see us. “Better not,” I said.
“Right. Are you feeling okay?”
“Sure.”
“Cause you’re wet.” He lifted his hand to point out the circles of liquid that stained the fabric under my armpits. I looked down at the wetness, horrified at the sight of my body melting. The drops of sweat tickled my torso, as they dripped down its sides.
“It’s nothing,” I said and turned to go.
When he called to me again, I was halfway across the fire patio and ignored him. I headed into the steam and got lost in the heat.
“We are made for this,” Minosh had said. “Our skin is impervious to heat.”
“Is that why they came?”
“No,” she’d said. “They are here for another reason.”
“What reason, Minosh?” It was a question I’d asked knowing the answer was beyond me.
“Because we possess the thing they value most.”
“What?”
“The treasure inside of us.”
“What is it?”
“Ah, my little Pchi. Something we cannot live without.” On and on she went like this, dancing around the purpose of our treasure.
“Why do they want it?”
“They are without one,” she’d said.
“If we give them ours, will they leave?”
“They are here to stay, my little Pchi.”
Minosh had seen our planet’s future in the baths. She knew what the Venusians wanted but she kept their secret to the end.
***
I waited for Tal in the wheat field, admiring the stars that twinkled in the darkness of Luna’s slivered light. I felt insignificant when I looked up at the sky. The fires were endless, so bright, so faraway. I wondered what I looked like to them, if they ever looked down on me. Was I as bright and endless too?
“El.” Tal’s voice was rich and deep and so real I could almost touch it, a welcomed change from Onine’s screech, though I’ll admit I was disappointed when I heard him instead of the keeper coming through the rows of wheat. Even though I wasn’t expecting the Kyprian, I longed for him still.
“Are you here?”
“I’m here.” I came out from between the rows and revealed myself. I’d heard him shuffle through the soil. He didn’t walk with the grace of a Kyprian.
“I’m glad we met out here.” He smiled and reached for my hand, and his touch sent a chill through my nape. “Come with me.”
He led me away from the light of the shanties and deeper into the field. I didn’t ask where he was taking me. It didn’t matter. When we finally stopped at the knoll we’d laid on as younglings, I was indifferent to the place. It was tarnished now, its gold browning over time, and we no longer slid down it in the sacks of silk Minosh had made for us. “Sit with me,” he said.
Darkness had come upon us. Luna had tucked herself into the clouds and I could barely see Tal’s face. His dark blue eyes were lost in the backdrop of a black sky.
“I’ve got to tell you something,” he said. “But I don’t want you to worry.”
I looked down at his hands and wanted to pick at the soot beneath his fingernails. He sighed my name and leaned in closer. I shivered when he put his hand on my shoulder.
“This is going to sound strange but you have to believe me, okay?”
I nodded.
“Venusian and sapient are going to mate.”
“What?” I whispered my disbelief into the field.
He cleared his throat. “They did it once already when they first arrived.”
“No,” I said. “That’s impossible—the fire starter.”
“Maybe that was just a story.”
“Minosh said she saw it.
”
“Did she?”
I dropped my hand to the ground beside me and dug into it with my nails.
“Maybe it was a rumor, spread to enforce the rule,” he said. “Maybe no one actually saw it happen.”
“Do you think Minosh is a liar?” The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
“Of course not,” he said. “But she’d say anything to keep you safe.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When they first arrived, the goddess insisted on a union—she chose the two species herself.” I couldn’t speak. “It’s the reason she let sapients live. If they’d chosen to mate with the likes of Bendo, we’d be dust.”
“But how?”
“Why is the question,” he said. “Sapients are reliable breeders but the Kyprian aren’t and so the goddess prepared the Venusian for it—the contact—and she expected the best possible outcome.”
“Did the sapient survive?”
“They both did.”
“And what happened? Was there a youngling?”
“No,” he said. “That’s why they’re trying again.”
“How do you know this?”
He looked at me with such serious eyes I became distracted for a moment. “Minosh told me.”
“How could she know?”
“She saw it in the water.”
“Her visions aren’t always—”
“No,” he said. “But this one was real.”
“Did she know the sapient?” He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s possible, isn’t it?” He stared at me blankly. “Why would Minosh tell you this?” I didn’t mean to sound accusatory.
He brushed the hair from his eyes, as though deflecting my suspicion. “She wanted me to protect you.”
El and Onine Page 4