“And because this tale is true—”
“Here is another story. In the desert of Šammuramat, far to the east of this desert, the army of Kandros ran out of food and water. Thousands died. Then we found a stream, a pathetic thing, that killed yet more soldiers and camp followers who drank too much, too quickly. Among them, I stood, only five years old, drinking slowly from a greave that had belonged to my mother. Kandros was drinking nearby and, seeing me, said that I was the future of his army, because I was five and already carried a greave. That story is true.
“So is this one: eventually I left the water and walked towards some of the camp children I knew, to sit with them, but suddenly a wind kicked sand at me. It turned into a person, taller than me, very slender, so that I assumed I was looking at a woman or an older girl, although I now suspect that none of the winds are women or men, even when shaped as people.”
The wind smiled, briefly.
“That wind said, in the only language I knew then, ‘I am the edge of a storm raging in the mountains far from here. I am a person who once lived here. I am telling you to leave this water now, before the flash food comes and sweeps your people away. I am not bothered by the deaths of soldiers, but people like you do not need to share their deaths.’ Then that wind blew away.
“Kandros, who had been standing nearby, called me to him and asked what I had seen, for he had seen it too. I told him. Why would I want more soldiers to die? Kandros thanked me and called me blessed, for a god had come to me, and he advised me not to tell anyone of it. I realized why, a few years later, when he disappeared into the far north-west after his soldiers would follow him no further: here. I realized what the storm wind had said: a person, who once lived here.
“And this is from a song I heard in the women’s quarters, where I continued my mother’s warrior training with many other girls under the tutelage of Roshanak: in the great desert, of which Šammuramat’s desert is only a tributary, there are hundreds of winds, there are dozens of temples, and there is a temple in its heart where the winds are born.”
Berenike smiled again, and added, “There are as many untrue tales of Kandros as there are stars across this sky, but that does not prevent some of us from keeping hold of true ones.”
“You would not be who you are now,” the wind said.
Fear crept under her breastplate like a knife—but she thought of the South-East Wind, of the storm wind in Šammuramat’s desert, of the wind standing in front of her now. They were people. “What should I fear?”
“A wind is not a person.”
“Will I remember my goals, my life, myself?”
“You will be much more than those things.”
“Stop giving me these useless answers,” Berenike said, firm, though the fear remained. If she lost sight of her plans and never returned south, if she slipped from the memories of soldiers and storytellers—she was no Kandros, to be remembered despite her disappearance. She knew that. Before long, her soldiers would join another general’s army, and eventually the spoils won in new wars would erase her name. The storytellers would turn to fresher exploits.
“Every wind is different,” the wind finally said.
Better the risk than sure obscurity.
“I will do this,” she said.
The wind laughed, arms spread in a wide gesture encompassing the ruined temple. “There is no rival general or beast here to be slain.”
Berenike ignored the wind, returning to her exploration of the temple: its featureless rooms, its smooth floors. No wind blew past her. Above her head, the sun shone bright through the great holes in the roof. Broken steps went nowhere, scattered across the floor like forgotten votives. Berenike eyed the walls. Smooth. Too smooth.
Outside, the temple’s walls were equally useless, but Berenike walked twice around the perimeter, looking for details.
There—in shadow, a wall not plain but carved in pristine snake-curls and fox-points. Berenike hoisted herself up it with ease.
What remained of the roof was flat, a plain like the desert beyond it.
Winds blew around her, buffeted her, drove her gasping to her knees, winds hard and sharp and slicing and pulling—it was agony; it was torture.
It stole her screams.
It blinded her.
It tore her skin from her body, it strung out her innards, it ground her bones to dust.
It tried to rend apart her thoughts.
I am Berenike, daughter of Kesty
Unrelenting.
founder of
It split her self open, it scattered her.
A woman who knows the name of the sea of grass, leader of men who love fighting on foot, and I will win this war
It could not dissipate the pieces that were Berenike.
The wind blew harder.
* * *
she says: “Grandmother Kesty, I don’t know what you would think of her. Would you be proud? Afraid? Both? I am.”
* * *
• I am •
The wind blew across the desert, unsure, uncertain, like a new horse, trying to see • seeing a city that can’t be real, seeing a caravan of men with golden machines for hands, seeing rivers and lush forest, seeing the desert south and east of the ruined temple, full of tall rocky pinnacles that hide caves behind their small mouths • trying to focus on the pinnacles, trying to blow between them, inside them, looking for evidence of the man who had gone missing in the desert almost forty years ago, of the great conqueror who had failed to achieve what she had just done.
What were those other deserts? They looked as real. Future deserts? Past deserts?
Trying to blow in a single direction, trying to plan a route, trying to think, to hold a thought, to be • I am blowing strong, strong, strong •
Being a wind was • strong, strong • easy.
• no •
The wind concentrated on the desert, the pinnacles. • I am Berenike, daughter of Kesty and Ariston, victorious general, founder of Berenikia, a wind • The wind blew into the pinnacles • why are they full of grain-sacks • which were empty and not empty • what are these swarming men with dog-heads, what are these shining buildings with caves in their bases, what are these bones •
A person’s bones, poorly arranged, bitten and broken by fox-sharp jaws.
Fabric flapped in the wind • I know this fine weave, this golden thread • hanging on the ribs like sails. Disturbed sand revealed a knife, a leather pouch, a pair of coins among the messy bones of one hand.
How could bones be carried? How could the shape of the person • Kandros • be held? How could it be presented, how could it be believed to be him?
• I need to just pick them up like a wind carries sand or a person carries several javelins •
The wind turned.
The wind twisted in thoughts of bones, of the poor condition of this body • my wind-body • and how • how will I appear to them • how • how can a wind lead an army with a bag of broken bones • how to • where am I, how do I • become a person again, how to be what the winds tore apart • how • how to be • I am Berenike • the other winds said nothing, though they blew nearby • I am Berenike, I am Berenike, I am •
Berenike spun out into her human body, gasping, gasping so hard that her breath disturbed the sand at her feet.
Still her body, unchanged. Still wearing her greaves and breastplate and tunic, still battle-scarred and strong.
The bones fell around her like rain.
“I am Berenike.” Her voice, too, was unchanged.
“It is not good to hold onto your former self so tightly,” said the wind from the last temple, suddenly standing in front of her. They were not far from the cave where Berenike had found the bones of Kandros; its sunset-long shadow stretched to her feet. “You are more than Berenike.”
“I am Berenike, a wind.”
Her whole body shook, exhausted as if from a days-long march. How long had she been blowing?
“She is new,�
�� said another wind, unfamiliar to Berenike, “and the manner of her birth is not typical.” Looking directly at her, the wind said, “The East Wind forgets that we were born over ten thousand years ago. You are not us. You are not a storm, born from a baby abandoned on a hillside or plain, raised in the high places of the sky, swooping down when conditions are right. You are not a sand spinny, as short-lived as a mouse.”
“How long will I live?” Berenike asked, unable to comprehend the number ten thousand, unable to imagine—
A few centuries, she had thought. A life of legend.
“It is difficult to say,” the wind replied.
“One of your kind blew out in a mere decade,” the East Wind said. “Another is still blowing, two thousand years later.”
“And did that one hold onto their former self?” Berenike asked, shocked again. A decade! If she had stayed in the south with her soldiers, she might have survived another decade. Two thousand years!
The East Wind looked away, at nothing in particular.
“There is no pattern,” the other wind said.
“Then my strength will keep me alive for centuries.”
The East Wind frowned, but the other wind smiled, saying, “Know that you will change. Know that you are Berenike, but you are more than her, too.”
“I’ll save that thought until after I’ve defeated my enemies.”
And now it was the opposite of her need to wear her human body; now the wind tugged at her, ecstatically sharp, and • I will be remembered for this • the wind blew on with the bones of Kandros.
* * *
| I blow far from the desert. I blow in a land where an army marches along the coastal plains. I blow between the high, tiled walls of the city of Berenikia, where every dawn a singer on a high tower ululates in joy. I blow, stirring the short hair of Berenike’s niece, preparing herself to meet the legendary general for the first time. I blow, knowing that there is another wind here—and there, there, blowing at the head of an army, bearing the bones of Kandros like a banner, laying the opposing forces low with fear, turning into General Berenike the person and celebrating victory after victory with thousands of soldiers. |
* * *
The South-East Wind knew when Berenike became a wind, knew—felt it, gusting past the temple, sending the bells into song—when the wind blew south. The bones here of the men who had followed her to the desert and to its temples made fine songs as the North Wind chased the new wind, blowing further south than ever before, curious | I blow between the high, tiled walls of the city of Berenikia, where every dawn the wind called Berenike still blows along the shore, still is depicted on the city’s coins, still sits at the head of the city’s council, hundreds of years after the city’s foundation | but though the South-East Wind now knew something of Berenike’s centuries of life, other parts of those years remained yet to be seen when the South-East Wind once again blew among the bells of the temple instead of guarding them in a human form.
Mirtun speaks to all of the winds, at their temples or out on the sands where bead-eared foxes run and an old vixen with a single, wind-worn bell on its left ear watches over the kits, and what Mirtun asks for is not transformation but knowledge: how to make offerings to the winds blowing across the sea of grass, how to work with them—knowing that their ways will be different to the winds of the temple desert but hoping that the knowledge will aid her in the defense of her home
* * *
before she leaves, Mirtun re-carves the jewelry on the sandstone figure’s chest with careful attention to every original detail, adding tulip-swirls only where the winds have erased the old styles—and she leaves her name at the figure’s base like an offering
Copyright © 2014 Alex Dally MacFarlane
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Alex Dally MacFarlane lives in London, where she is pursuing an MA in Ancient History. When not researching ancient gender and narratives, she writes stories, found in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Shimmer, and The Other Half of the Sky. Poetry can be found in Stone Telling, Goblin Fruit, The Moment of Change, and Here, We Cross. She is the editor of Aliens: Recent Encounters (2013) and The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (forthcoming in late 2014). Visit her online at www.alexdallymacfarlane.com.
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COVER ART
“After the Giants War,” by David Demaret
David Demaret is an art director/artist from Paris, France. He is a senior graphic artist working in the videogame industry for 20 years, and he does freelance and contract work for illustrations and concept art. View his work online at themoonchild.free.fr.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
Published by Firkin Press,
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