"You aren't supposed to die," I told Erdiil when it stiffened and stared at the sky. I swallowed, trying to wet my tongue and fangs. "Do you hear me? Not until I have a name for what you are to me, and even not even then."
"Belong to the Void," Erdiil whispered.
"No," I said, folding over to hold it between my chest and lap. "You've been emodo, anadi and eperu, all three. You don't belong to the Void. You belong to me!"
#
VOID: Erdiil
A white foot stepped between me and the Void's black foot. I froze and stared up at this newcomer, thrown into such sharp relief against the darkness of the god.
"The eperu is mine." A voice like the wind through a field of grasses, that broad, that soft, that many multitudes.
At first I thought my savior was the Brightness, the anadi goddess of the sun. But when I focused on the new shape, I could find no breasts. No, there were breasts, and then there were none. And sometimes the newcomer was male. It--he--she? Flickered between all the sexes with every rise and fall of its chest. Not the Brightness then, nor the World for all its windsong voice: the World was only neuter. Who was this creature, then, with its body pale as blood and its hair as bright as dawn? Whoever it was, the Void did not like it.
"This eperu is mine," the Void said. "It is of more use in death than in life."
"Not so," the stranger said, and beneath the windsong I heard a familiar voice, echoing the words.
"Then madness, so it can be used for labor."
"No," the newcomer said again. "This eperu is mine."
"I will not suffer this creature to live in freedom. I stole its marks before birth. It belongs to me."
"This creature belongs to life," the stranger said, ears folding all the way down. "To light, to laughter and language, to understanding, to exploration, to the illumination of every Jokku soul."
Such an amazing charter. In wonder, I whispered, "Who are you?"
The stranger turned to me, then crouched, one hand steadying it against the ground. It had eyes the pale blue of milk. "I am the first Jokkad who was elithik, who was all three sexes. I am the last. I am all the Jokka in between."
"Like me," I whispered.
"Like you," it said, except now it was male. "Because there is virtue in every sex, but only those who have experienced them all can convince the rest."
"This Jokkad belongs to me," said the thunder, but it was receding, like a storm that was rolling back from the sky.
"This Jokkad belongs to itself," said the stranger. "And, if it will, to me. Do you, Erdiil? Do you will it?"
How I'd longed to bear a child. How I'd sorrowed to lose my manhood. How I yearned to bear some burden now that my shoulders had the strength for it.
How strange those thoughts had been, so strange I'd dared not voice them.
"Yes," I whispered. "Oh yes. I'm yours."
It took my hands and licked them with a cool tongue. Then it did the same to my face, my cheeks. Every lap banished the fear, the heat, a tendril of the Void.
"Mine own," said the stranger. "Lover of the trifold virtues."
#
WORLD: Mayiin
The fang-sharp ache of tormented muscle woke me from the sleep I hadn't remembered entering. I'd twisted to one side to keep from suffocating Erdiil, and there I'd failed in my vigil. It was well after dusk. I despaired. I'd argued with the eperu's fevered whispers for as long as I'd had strength, but in the end its madness had outlasted me.
And yet, the head in my lap was warm, not hot. When I found the courage to peek, it was gazing up at me.
"You look like someone I know," Erdiil said.
I started laughing. "Well I should! We shared a womb!"
"Does that matter?" it asked, but it was smiling in . . . wonder? Tenderness?
"Yes," I said. "It does. It makes us . . . something to one another. Something I have no word for."
"Womb-doubles?" Erdiil said with a breathy laugh. "Grain seeds from the same pod? Jokka like the stars that circle one another in the sky? There are thousands and thousands of words, but there isn't any word for that."
"We'll have to make one up," I said.
"I guess you're meant to stay with me," Erdiil said.
"Yes," I answered, despite finding its statement strangely phrased. "I need someone to finish my circle when I sleep. I can find some place to work in Dardenil while you live in the temple--"
"I'm not going back to the temple," Erdiil said. It struggled to lift itself from the ground and I helped it, worried. Before it could say anything else, I handed it the water bag. Clear beads of liquid dripped from its chin as it drank, and then it looked down and its ears flipped down.
I followed its gaze to the knot of gray on its belly. "You're marked!"
"You have a mark like this," Erdiil whispered.
I pulled the waist of my pants down so it could see--no, not just see. So it could confirm the memory.
"I don't belong to the Void," my double whispered.
"No," I said. "You belong to us."
It glanced at me sharply. "We have work to do . . . Mayiin."
"Work we can do together?" I asked cheerfully.
Erdiil laughed and said. "Yes."
"Good enough," I said. I studied its eyes with care. "You're certain you're well?"
It met my gaze, ears splayed. "Well enough. And you? You're certain you want anything to do with me? You don't know me very well."
"I know you in my blood, and you know me in yours," I said with satisfaction. "We'll do your work, and we'll make up the word for sharing the same blood and the same womb, and having been born of the same seed."
"And decide why that matters," Erdiil said.
I wrapped my hand around its arm--gently, since it had been so lately fevered--and said in a low voice, "It matters because I missed you like another part of my heart. Because my soul never forgot you. And now it will matter because we will be clan to one another."
"A strange clan, of people who are of the same blood!"
I nodded. "Very strange. So now I'll ask: will you want anything to do with me?"
Erdiil canted its head, touched a finger to my nose. "There must be something to your strange idea," it said with a soft laugh, "because I trust you as if I've always known you. So yes. Let's go do the work."
I grinned and bounced to my feet, helping it up. "So what is this work, anyway?"
Erdiil's eyes had a secret sparkle. "We're going to teach the Jokka the virtues of every sex. That there's as much honor and beauty in being anadi as there is in being eperu or emodo. That all of them should be equal in the eyes of a Jokkad."
I stepped back, ears flattening in alarm. "Surely you don't mean that. Of course, we need the anadi and the emodo and their roles are sacred, but . . . who wouldn't want to be eperu?"
"There is beauty in being emodo," Erdiil began.
"I can see that," I interrupted. "At least you get to keep your mind longer."
Erdiil reached for my hands and took them, turning them in its. My fingers remained as short as they had been at birth, though work had given them more strength. Erdiil's were long and delicate and powerful, still the hands of an emodo. "Have you considered that there's more to life than being smart?"
I stared at it. Perhaps the sun had baked Erdiil's brain after all. "What more could there be? How can you enjoy anything without understanding it? Without . . . without a way for others to explain it to you? Without . . . "
" . . . without a name?" Erdiil asked, dawn-purple eyes sparkling.
Exasperated, I said, "That's different."
"Is it?" The eperu touched my chin. "You sought me on the strength of something no Jokkad can name. I, too, have something in me that has no name, and it is the joy at the thought of bearing children, the pleasure of an open womb, the ability to spark life in others."
"But you don't . . . " I stopped abruptly. If Erdiil missed those things, reminding it that it could no longer have them was cruel, wasn't it? The t
hought boggled.
"Can you see the edges of it?" Erdiil asked.
I tried. I had been anadi once, but I'd been too young for thoughts of childbirth. Still, if I forced myself, I could remember something . . . a sense that I could receive the world and hold it in me longer. Perhaps that's why anadi fell so easily to the perils of the world: they were built to welcome it. And to be emodo . . . well, what would it be like to sire children?
What had it been like to be our sire? To lose your children?
I let my head dip forward until my cheek rested against Erdiil's shoulder.
"You do see!" Erdiil whispered.
I did. I licked my lips and said, hushed, "Teaching Jokka to value those things . . . such a work will take a while."
My double, my womb-mate, my other-self born to me like the stars that circle one another in the sky, said, "It will never be done. That's the best kind of work."
#
TRIFOLD: Erdiil
Shadows cast by cool stones in moonlight are a favorable gray. Shadow colors of all kind are favorites among us, for light and heat are infrequently kind, but the night shadows are best-loved of all, and the words we use for the subtle colored ones are often used in poetry when we speak of ease, of relief, of refuge.
That color is the color of the knot on my belly, placed there a strange god who looks a great deal like my new companion. I look up at the sky and I laugh, and then I pick my way after Mayiin, to begin what will never be finished.
***
About the author:
M.C.A. Hogarth has been many things--a web database architect, product manager, technical writer and massage therapist--but is currently a parent, artist, writer and anthropologist to aliens.
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A Trifold Spiral Knot Page 2