How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

by N. K. Jemisin

  Cet drew back, abruptly unnerved by the way Ginnem was looking at him. “I respect her.”

  “You find her beautiful?”

  He said it with as much dignity as he could: “I am not blind.”

  Ginnem looked Cet up and down in a way that reminded Cet uncomfortably of his father’s customers. “You are fine enough,” Ginnem said, with more than a hint of lasciviousness in his tone. “Handsome, healthy, intelligent. A tad short, but that’s no great matter if she does not mind a small child—”

  “‘A Gatherer belongs wholly to the Goddess,’” Cet said, leaning close so that the disapproval in his voice would not be heard by the others. “That is the oath I swore when I chose this path. The celibacy—”

  “Comes second to your primary mission, Gatherer,” Ginnem said in an equally stern voice. “It is the duty of any priest of the Goddess of Dreams to bring peace. There are two ways we might create peace in this village, once we’ve dealt with the brigands. One is to let Mehepi goad the villagefolk into killing or exiling the secondwife. The other is to give the secondwife a chance to control her own life for the first time. Which do you choose?”

  “There are other choices,” Cet muttered uneasily. “There must be.”

  Ginnem shrugged. “If she has any talent for dreaming, she could join my order. But I see no sign of the calling in her.”

  “You could still suggest it to her.”

  “Mmm.” Ginnem’s tone was noncommittal. He turned to gaze at Namsut. “That horse you spoke of. If you could have helped it on its way, would you have? Even if that earned you the wrath of the horse’s owner and your father?”

  Cet flinched back, too startled and flustered to speak. Ginnem’s eyes slid back to him.

  “How did the horse break free, Cet?”

  Cet set his jaw. “I should rest while I can. The rest of the journey will be long.”

  “Dream well,” Ginnem said. Cet turned away and lay down, but he felt Ginnem’s eyes on him for a long while afterward.

  When Cet slept, he dreamt of Namsut.

  The land of dreams was as infinite as the mind of the Goddess who contained it. Though every soul traveled there during sleep, it was rare for two to meet. Most often, the people encountered in dreams were phantoms—conjurations of the dreamer’s own mind, no more real than the palm trees and placid oasis which manifested around Cet’s dreamform now. But real or not, there sat Namsut on a boulder overlooking the water, her indigo veils wafting in the hot desert wind.

  “I wish I could be you,” she said, not turning from the water. Her voice was a whisper; her mouth never moved. “So strong, so serene, the kindhearted killer. Do your victims feel what you feel?”

  “You do not desire or require death,” Cet said.

  “True. I’m a fool for it, but I want to live.” Her image blurred for a moment, superimposed by that of a long-legged girlchild with the same despairing, angry eyes. “I was nine when a man first took me. My parents were so angry, so ashamed. I made them feel helpless. I should have died then.”

  “No,” Cet said quietly. “Others’ sins are no fault of yours.”

  “I know that.” Abruptly something large and dark turned a lazy loop under the water—a manifestation of her anger, since oases did not have fish. But like her anger, the monster never broke the surface. Cet found this at once fascinating and disturbing.

  “The magic that I use,” he said. “Do you know how it works?”

  “Dreamichor from nonsense dreams,” she said. “Dreamseed from wet dreams, dreambile from nightmares, dreamblood from the last dream before death. The four humors of the soul.”

  He nodded. “Dreamblood is what Gatherers collect. It has the power to erase pain and quiet emotions.” He stepped closer then, though he did not touch her. “If your heart is pained, I can share dreamblood with you now.”

  She shook her head. “I do not want my pain erased. It makes me strong.” She turned to look up at him. “Will you give me a child, Gatherer?”

  He sighed, and the sky overhead seemed to dim. “It is not our way. The Sister … dreamseed is his specialty. Perhaps …”

  “Ginnem does not have your kind eyes. Nor do your Sentinel brethren. You, Gatherer Cet. If I must bear a child, I want yours.”

  Clouds began to race across the desert sky, some as tormented abstractions, some forming blatantly erotic shapes. Cet closed his eyes against the shiver that moved along his spine. “It is not our way,” he said again, but there was a waver in his voice that he could not quite conceal.

  He heard the smile in her voice just as keenly. “These are your magic-quieted emotions, Gatherer? They seem loud enough.”

  He forced his mind away from thoughts of her, lest they disturb his inner peace any further. What was wrong with him? By sheer will he stilled the unrest in his heart, and gratifyingly the sky was clear again when he opened his eyes.

  “Forgive me,” he murmured.

  “I will not. It comforts me to know that you are still capable of feeling. You should not hide it; people would fear Gatherers less if they knew.” She looked thoughtful. “Why do you hide it?”

  Cet sighed. “Even the Goddess’s magic cannot quiet a Gatherer’s emotions forever. After many years, the feelings inevitably break free … and they are very powerful then. Sometimes dangerous.” He shifted, uncomfortable on many levels. “As you said, we frighten people enough as it is.”

  She nodded, then abruptly rose and turned to him. “There are no other choices,” she said. “I have no desire to serve the Goddess as a Sister. There is none of Her peace in my heart, and there may never be. But I mean to live, Gatherer—truly live, as more than a man’s plaything or a woman’s scapegoat. I want this for my children as well. So I ask you again: Will you help me?”

  She was a phantom. Cet knew that now, for she could not have known of his conversation with Ginnem otherwise. He was talking to himself, or to some aspect of the Goddess come to reflect his own folly back at him. Yet he felt compelled to answer. “I cannot.”

  The dreamscape transformed, becoming the inside of a room. A gauze-draped low bed, wide enough for two, lay behind Namsut.

  She glanced at it, then at him. “But you want to.”

  That afternoon they disembarked at a large trading town. There Cet used Temple funds to purchase horses and supplies for the rest of the trip. The village, said Mehepi, was on the far side of the foothills, beyond the verdant floodplain that made up the richest part of Gujaareh. It would take at least another day’s travel to get there.

  They set out as soon as the horses were loaded, making good time along an irrigation road which ran flat through miles of barley, hekeh, and silvercape fields. As sunset approached, they entered the low, arid foothills—Gujaareh’s last line of defense against the ever-encroaching desert beyond. Here Cet called a halt. The villagers were nervous, for the hills were the brigands’ territory, but with night’s chill already setting in and the horses weary, there was little choice. The Sentinels split the watch while the rest of them tended their mounts and made an uneasy camp.

  Cet had only just settled near a large boulder when he saw Ginnem crouched beside Namsut’s pallet. Ginnem’s hands were under her blanket, moving over her midsection in some slow rhythmic dance. Namsut’s face had turned away from Cet, but he heard her gasp clearly enough, and saw Ginnem’s smile.

  Rage blotted out thought. For several breaths Cet was paralyzed by it, torn between shock, confusion, and a mad desire to walk across camp and beat Ginnem bloody.

  But then Ginnem frowned and glanced his way, and the anger shattered.

  Goddess … Shivering with more than the night’s chill, Cet lifted his eyes to the great multihued face of the Dreaming Moon. What had that been? Now that the madness had passed, he could taste magic in the air: the delicate salt-and-metal of dreamseed. Ginnem had been healing the girl, nothing more. But even if Ginnem had been pleasuring her, what did it matter? Cet was a Gatherer. He had pledged himself to a goddess,
and goddesses did not share.

  A few moments later he heard footsteps and felt someone settle beside him. “Are you all right, Gatherer Cet?” Ginnem.

  Cet closed his eyes. The Moon’s afterimage burned against his eyelids in tilted stripes: red for blood, white for seed, yellow for ichor, black for bile.

  “I do not know,” he whispered.

  “Well.” Ginnem kept his voice light, but Cet heard the serious note underneath it. “I know jealousy when I sense it, and shock and horror, too. Dreamseed is more fragile than the other humors; your rage tore my spell like a rock through spidersilk.”

  Horrified, Cet looked from him to Namsut. “I’m sorry. I did not mean—is she—”

  “She is undamaged, Gatherer. I was done by the time you wanted to throttle me. What concerns me more is that you wanted to throttle me at all.” He glanced sidelong at Cet.

  “Something is … wrong with me.” But Cet dared not say what that might be. Had it been happening all along? He thought back and remembered his anger at Mehepi, the layers of unease that Namsut stirred in him. Yes. Those had been the warnings.

  Not yet, he prayed to Her. Not yet. It is too soon.

  Ginnem nodded and fell silent for a while. Finally he said, very softly, “If I could give Namsut what she wants, I would. But though those parts of me still function in the simplest sense, I have already lost the ability to father a child. In time, I will only give pleasure through dreams.”

  Cet started. The Sisters were a secretive lot—as were Cet’s own fellow Servants, of course—but he had never known what price they paid for their magic. Then he realized Ginnem’s confession had been an offering. Trust for trust.

  “It … begins slowly with us,” Cet admitted, forcing out the words. It was a Gatherer’s greatest secret, and greatest shame. “First surging emotions, then dreaming awake, and finally we … we lose all peace, and go mad. There is no cure, once the process begins. If it has begun for me …” He trailed off. It was too much, on top of everything else. He could not bear the thought. He was not ready.

  Ginnem put a hand on his shoulder in silent compassion. When Cet said nothing more, Ginnem got to his feet. “I will help all I can.”

  This made Cet frown. Ginnem chuckled and shook his belled head. “I am a healer, Gatherer, whatever you might think of my bedroom habits—”

  He paused suddenly, his smile fading. A breath later Cet felt it, too—an intense, sudden desire to sleep. With it came the thin, unmistakable whine of a jungissa stone, wafting through the camp like a poisoned breeze.

  One of the Sentinels cried an alarm. Cet scrambled to his feet, fumbling for his ornaments. Ginnem dropped to his knees and began chanting something, his hands held outward as if pushing against some invisible force. The Sentinels had gone back to back in the shadow of a boulder, working some kind of complicated dance with their knives to aid their concentration against the spell. Mehepi and one of the men were already asleep; as Cet looked around for the source of the spell, the other two men fell to the ground. Namsut made a sound like pain and stumbled toward Cet and Ginnem. Her eyes were heavy and dull, Cet saw, her legs shaking as if she walked under a great weight, but she was awake. She fought the magic with an almost visible determination.

  He felt fear and longing as he gazed at her, a leviathan rising beneath the formerly placid waters of his soul.

  So he snatched forth his own jungissa and struck it with a fingernail. Its deeper, clearer song rang across the hills, cutting across the atonal waver of the narcomancer’s stone. Folding his will around the shape of the vibrations, Cet closed his eyes and flung forth the only possible counter to the narcomancer’s sleep-spell: one of his own.

  The Sentinels dropped, their knives clattering on the rocky soil. Namsut moaned and collapsed, a dark blur among the Moonlit stones. Ginnem caught his breath. “Cet, what … are you …” Then he, too, sagged.

  There was a clatter of stones from a nearby hill as the narcomancer’s jungissa-song faltered. Cet caught a glimpse of several dark forms moving among the stones there, some dragging others who had fallen, and abruptly the narcomancer’s jungissa began to fade as with distance. They were running away.

  Cet kept his jungissa humming until the last of the terrible urge to sleep had passed. Then he sagged onto a saddle and thanked the Goddess, over and over again.

  “A jungissa,” Cet said. “No doubt.”

  It was morning. The group sat around a fire eating travel food and drinking bitter, strong coffee, for none of them had slept well once Cet awakened them from the spell.

  The villagers looked at each other and shook their heads at Cet’s statement, uncomprehending. The Sentinels looked grim. “I suspected as much,” Ginnem said with a sigh. “Nothing else has that sound.”

  For the villagers, Cet plucked his own jungissa stone from the belt of his loinskirt and held it out for them to see. It sat in his hand, a delicately carved dragonfly in polished blue-black. He tapped it with his thumbnail, and they all winced as it shivered and sent forth its characteristic whine.

  “The jungissa itself has no power,” Cet said to reassure them. He willed the stone silent; it went instantly still. “It amplifies magic only for those who have been trained in narcomantic techniques. This jungissa is the child of a stone which fell from the sky many centuries ago. There are only fifteen other ornaments like it in all the world. Three have cracked or broken over time. One was given to the House of the Sisters; one is used by the Temple for training and healing purposes; but only I and my three brother-Gatherers carry and use the stones on a regular basis. The remainder of the stones are kept in the Temple vault under guard.” He sighed. “And yet, somehow, these brigands have one.”

  Ginnem frowned. “I saw the Sisters’ queen-bee stone in our House just before I left for this journey. Could someone have stolen a stone from the Temple?”

  One of the Sentinels drew himself up at that, scowling in affront. “No one could get past my brothers and I to do so.”

  “You said these stones fall from the sky?” asked Namsut. She looked thoughtful. “There was sun’s seed in the sky a few months ago, on the night of the Ze-kaari celebration. I saw many streaks cross the stars; there was a new Moon that night. Most faded to nothing, but one came very near, and there was light in the hills where it fell.”

  “Another jungissa?” It was almost too astounding and horrible to contemplate—another of the Goddess’s gifts, lying unhallowed in a pit somewhere and pawed over by ruffians? Cet shuddered. “But even if they found such a thing, the rough stone itself would be useless. It must be carved to produce a sound. And it takes years of training to use that sound.”

  “What difference does any of that make?” Ginnem asked, scowling. “They have one and they’ve used it. We must capture them and take it.”

  Military thinking; Cet almost smiled. But he nodded agreement.

  “How did you see sun’s seed?” Mehepi demanded suddenly of Namsut. “Our husband had you with him that night—or so I believed ’til now. Did you slip out to meet some other lover?”

  Namsut smiled another of her polite, angry smiles. “I often went outside after a night with him. The fresh air settled my stomach.”

  Mehepi caught her breath in affront, then spat on the ground at Namsut’s feet. “Nightmare-spawned demoness! Why our husband married a woman so full of hate and death, I will never understand!”

  Ginnem threw a stern look at Mehepi. “Your behavior is offensive to our Goddess, headwoman.”

  Mehepi looked sullen for a moment, but then mumbled an apology. No hint of anger showed on Namsut’s face as she inclined her head first to Ginnem, then to Mehepi. That done, she rose, brushed off her gown, and walked away.

  But Cet had seen something which made him frown. Nodding to the others to excuse himself, he rose and trotted after her. Though Namsut must have heard him, she kept walking, and only when he caught her in the lee of the hill did she turn to face him.

  He took her hands and
turned them over. Across each of the palms was a row of dark crusted crescents.

  “So that was how you fought the spell,” he said.

  Namsut’s face was as blank as a stone. “I told you, Gatherer. Pain makes me strong.”

  He almost flinched, for that conversation had taken place in dreaming. But within the mind of the Goddess everything was possible, and desires often called forth the unexpected.

  To encourage that desire was dangerous. Yet the compulsion to brush a thumb across her small wounds was irresistible, as was the compulsion to do something about them. Namsut’s eyelids fluttered as Cet willed her into a waking dream. In it she looked down to see that her hands were whole. When he released the dream, she blinked, then looked down. Cet rubbed away the lingering smears of dried blood with his thumb; the wounds were gone.

  “A simple healing is within any Servant’s skill,” he said softly. “And it is a Gatherer’s duty to fight pain.”

  Her lips thinned. “Yes, I had forgotten. Pain makes me strong, and you will do nothing that actually helps me. I thank you, Gatherer, but I must wash before we begin the day’s travels.”

  She pulled away before he could think of a reply, and as he watched her leave, he wondered how a Gatherer could fight pain in himself.

  By afternoon the next day they reached their destination. According to Mehepi, the brigands had attacked the village repeatedly to claim the mined lapis stones, and the result was devastation on a scale that Cet had never seen. They passed an empty standing granary and bare fields. Several of the village’s houses were burned-out shells; the eyes and cheeks of the people they saw were nearly as hollow. Cet could not imagine why anyone would vie to rule such a place.

  Yet here he saw for the first time that not all the village was arrayed against Namsut. Two young girls with warm smiles came out to tend her horse when she dismounted. A toothless old man hugged her tightly, and threw an ugly glare at Mehepi’s back. “That is the way of things in a small community like this one,” Ginnem murmured, following Cet’s gaze. “Often it takes only a slight majority—or an especially hateful minority—to make life a nightmare for those in disfavor.”