by Unknown
“Who won?” I asked.
“Dare,” he said, and sank to the sun-warmed stone.
“That toad-face? She didn’t gut him?”
“She seemed pleased with him, last I saw.”
“Poor ugly wogs,” I said. Prowl laughed. “What of you? Slowing down?”
“Fine talk,” he said, “from one who didn’t even run.”
“If I had, Dare wouldn’t have her. He’ll be busy tonight.” We both laughed. I considered the female then. “Poor creature.”
Prowl watched me. “Are you well?”
“Some bruises, nothing more.”
“Not that,” he said. His hesitation made me uneasy. “You seem different.”
“Different?”
“Yes. Your face.”
It was changing season, the time when a weak male might suddenly become female. We’d seen one already. I expected more courtesy from Prowl. I stood. “That was insult.”
Prowl’s throat moved as he swallowed. Otherwise, he was motionless.
Suddenly I suspected why he had submitted so quickly at the kill. “Do you accuse me of being female?”
“Your ridge is, ah, softer.” He dropped a quick glance to see if I was growing spurs, and fury flew into me.
“You filthy—” I lunged at him, meaning to draw blood.
He ducked my blow, but didn’t strike back. That angered me even more. My pack always fought well. Not one backed down easily, even against me. They would never strike a female, though. This proved it; Prowl believed I was changing.
He broke past me and ran from the ledge down the trail he’d just climbed. I let him go, more shaken than I wanted him to see. He would return once he gathered his wits. I dove off the ledge into the pool, deep and deeper to the bottom, and I clung there, hiding from Prowl and his suspicion and mine.
When my blood demanded air more than revenge, I released and drifted to the surface. There, I kicked to escape the current, and climbed, dripping, into a hollow under the bank. In the cool air, I crouched, shifted. Prowl was right. Spurs were growing from my ankles. My face was changing, too. In a day or so, I would be fully female. I must leave my pack and live alone.
My pack was my life. I had grown with them, shared hunt and pool with them. We learned together, became strong together. They were all I knew. I grieved at the thought of leaving them.
Prowl found me at dawn. He started to pull himself up under the bank where I was hiding, and I growled. He eased back into the water, only holding to the edge. Heat came off him. He’d been in the warming pool while I slept cold, under the bank.
“Are you all right?” he asked, peering toward where I crouched in the dark.
“Go away.”
“Boon, we’re brothers. Can we not speak of this?”
“I’m warning you, Prowl. Go away.”
“The pack is searching for you.”
“I’ll bet they are. Slimy wogs.”
“They’re worried.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Tell them?”
“Don’t pretend, Prowl. I am changing. I’d rather be dead.”
“Boon, it can’t be so bad as that.”
“Remember the dead female we found?” It was near the end of the changing season last year. The marks showed she had killed herself with her own spurs. “Now I understand her.”
“Don’t say that. You’re no coward.”
“You’ll understand her too, if it happens to you.” He pushed back, then grabbed for the bank as the stream began to sweep him away. “Female.” I spat the word. “Can you even imagine it, Prowl? Hiding by the flood pools day after day, waiting for eggs to hatch. Then watching wogs grow. Hiding, watching, waiting. Never hunt again. Never run again.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” He snickered.
Hard cold anger choked me. “That’s all you think about with your wog brain, isn’t it? Chase, chase, chase, fill up your belly and chase. Nothing else matters.”
“No, Boon, that’s not true. I think about other things.” He spoke as if I had gone simple. I ground my jaw in frustration. Then he filled his throat and chirped:
“Sing praise to Life-giver, endure through her race,
We live by her running, we live by her grace.”
A puddle song, by the gods. I hissed in rage.
“Peace, peace,” he said, as if to comfort a whimpering wog. “Look, what is the real problem here?” He was so reasonable.
I knew the problem. Prowl is my brother; we could not mate. Oh, he would try, if he saw me. Try in a lust-driven state that stripped him of reason. I had already changed enough that he would not recognize me; he would only see a female. Yes, he would try and, if he caught me, I must gut him. I had brought him up, trained him. For his sake, I needed to escape.
He peered into the darkness, shifted, tried to spot me. I waited a beat and rushed him, hit him hard and knocked him into the water. He went under and I scrambled up the bank and raced for the trees. Faster than he could see, I scaled bark and disappeared against the trunk, just a lichen-spotted knot on the shady side of a taubaugh tree.
Prowl searched. The others found him and joined in. I hugged the trunk and watched them, my pack, in frenzied search below, and I longed for them. They were more than meat to me, they were my companions, and I missed them. Worse still was knowing they would not welcome me, not as brother. They were no longer my pack.
Prowl and Dare fought twice—quick, vicious tussles that decided nothing. They gave up the search during mid-day’s heat and wandered upstream. I wondered if they would remember the hunt and stay together, or drift apart to live their lives separate from one another, as our kind did.
The air hung hot and still through the afternoon. My toes stuck together when I tried to spread them. I needed water, but dared not go where others might see me until dark.
At last, the sun set. I eased down the tree, throat too dry to swallow. My spurs were long enough now to be useful. I hated this sneaking female weakness, waiting ‘til dark to move. I longed to roar from the branches again, to throw litter from the forest floor and bellow challenge to any who heard me.
Hiding instead, first motionless, then moving slowly, I reached the water’s edge and sank into a pool with only my nostrils clear. Water plumped my skin. I caught a dragonfly, sifted out small meat from silver wings, and wished for big meat with my pack feasting in victory. Never, never more.
I thought of empty silent sitting by some puddle full of eggs every evening, waiting. Small meat. Defending wogs while their legs grew strong, and their gills shriveled, and they walked away. Small meat. The sometimes praise, the sometimes race, the sometimes reverence given, all small meat.
Night voices rose. I lifted up and threw mine into the chorus, and I didn’t know my own sound, so thin and weak. I tried again, full belly and cheek. The song came out a wail. How pitiful I’d become. I let the stream carry me down the rough.
The next morning dawned bright, warm, and hopeless. Fearing to stay in one spot too long, yet not daring to leave the water’s sound, I crept from cover to cover.
Then, beneath a tangled shade, camouflaged by her moss-and-lichen hide, I discovered a female too weak to stand. She had pierced her thigh with her spur and lay gasping with pain from her own poison. This could not be an accidental wound, and I grieved the despair that led her to this action. Nothing would ease her pain, but I whispered comfort. Could she not find hope? Could I?
There was a cough above us, and I shied into deep shadow. A rusty voice chuckled. “Careful now. You’ll catch your own spur and be as bad off as she.” A putrid odor trickled down. “She is beyond hearing,” the voice said, “and she would not welcome your pity. Come out. I can’t hurt you.”
Suspicious, I searched above until I spotted a large female stretched along a tree limb. She had one hind foot gone. The leg oozed. Indeed, she could harm no one.
Her name was Moor. She’d held a hunting lurker’s attention while her w
ogs escaped. Their freedom had cost her the foot, and she counted it a small price. Proud in her telling, she, too, would not welcome pity, though she might die from her wound.
There was a sigh from the one on the ground. She died.
“Do you honor her choice?” said Moor.
Living or dying, she would have been alone. I shrugged. “Is death worse than empty life?”
Moor laughed. “Come, and see purpose.”
First, I packed her wound with lichen and bound it with fern in scant hope that it might heal, then scraped a hole to bury the dead one so she would not draw carrion feeders. Then I went up again to see what Moor would show me.
We climbed, and I marveled at her strength. We leapt from a high branch to the next tree, caught a low branch on that tree, climbed, and leapt again. Gods, she wore me out with fear she would fall. Each leap, with only one hind foot, was a twisted affair, but she kept on and on. Leap and desperate grab, then patient climb and leap again, by leaf and limb, tree to tree.
She stopped finally and purled a quiet sound, a puddle croon. I barely heard it, though I rested just above her. There was a wog on the ground below, this year’s hatching, one of hers. He nosed in the leaf litter, rose up to listen and look about, then searched the ground again. She told me what progress he had made, but didn’t show herself to him.
We moved on and again she stopped to point out another, clinging to the side of a tree, and another farther on who also searched the ground. They never knew we watched.
“Don’t you teach them?” I asked.
“Did your mother?”
She had not.
“No one does. We bear them and defend them at the puddle. That is our purpose.”
“Nothing more?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Beyond that, each must make his own way.”
I felt great pity for her children. Moor was wrong, though I couldn’t say how I knew it.
At the next tree, she searched, then climbed lower and found none of her children. At the next tree again, she saw none, but continued tree to tree, searching, not stopping until there came the sound of water. She paused then to listen.
Her eyes were red with pain. She shifted her weight to her hands gripping the limb and rocked from side to side. Most of the wrapping had fallen from her wound. She dripped a fetid trail that could draw the attention of even a belly-full hunter.
Suddenly, the thin shrieks of crying wogs shivered up my arms. She roared.
I would have said Moor had no strength remaining, but she set a desperate pace, limb to branch, then a crashing leap to the ground. I cast a hasty glance for leaves or moss to soften my landing before I leapt. Though close behind her, by the time I’d plowed into a bed of green and spit out a broken fern, she was away.
I could have wept, watching her hobbled race. On both her hands and one good leg, she flew to her children. Badly crippled, her courage despised pity. First shamed, then heartened, I pelted after her.
Heedless to the danger of our reckless passage, we topped a steep bank, intent only on the cries of dying wogs. A shallow pond lay before us, its edges a meld of grasses and water. A stream trickled along one side. A lurker stood in the slow water near the bank, its knees just below the surface. It was the color of twilight. It turned its head from side to side, looking for wogs at the water’s edge. They had returned to their puddle, though Moor had driven them away. The lurker also had returned.
It turned toward us, somber eyes so near. I chilled. With a lightening stroke, it pierced a wog hiding in the grass just below us.
The wog screamed and Moor leapt from the bank onto the back of the lurker. She began to climb its neck. “Go for its eyes,” she had told me, “if you ever fight a lurker.”
Crippled, she was not quick enough.
The lurker let go of the bleeding wog and plucked Moor from its hide. I leapt to the lurker’s back as it shook her with a hard snap that broke her spine. The lurker tried to cast Moor away to get at me, but she clung to its beak with her two strong hands, and gave me time. I scrambled to its crest, grabbed two hands full of slick, dark feathers, and drove a spur into the base of its skull. The lurker dropped.
I pried Moor’s fingers loose from the murderous beak and held her in the slow water. It bore her weight as she died. I hoped it eased her pain. The last of her wogs gathered at the bank and sang an evening song.
♦ ♦ ♦
Seasons passed, and morning came. I waited in a taubaugh tree, higher than ever before, to watch first light. It pierced the dark. I threw out my tongue to catch a dancing gossamer, melting, small meat. My new pack ran below, little ones so eager behind big ones so serious, chasing fresh meat. I smiled, and watched the spangled dawn.
I eased down the taubaugh to a lower limb, waiting. They would come back this way. I knew them better than they knew themselves.
After a time they returned, their faces smudged with success. Careless, they did not see me until I spoke. “Children.”
They stopped, every mouth opened with surprise. These were my first sons, and Moor’s sons who had crooned her death, and a few others. They gathered their wits, then greeted me.
“Mother, mother, mother…”
“Mother, mother…” The oldest nudged the smallest with his elbow.
“Mother,” he said with a voice that was as light as he. Graceful, more long-limbed than the others, a stranger, he would become a quick climber. It was a worthy talent.
The older ones, sons of Moor, rose to sniff the air, pretending innocence. The largest eyed my speckled side, then met my gaze. Too late. I am egg heavy already. I growled a lazy warning. He lowered himself and turned toward the forest as if he didn’t care. I knew their thoughts before they did.
They were fine fellows, every one. They told me of their hunt until I stretched and turned away. They padded off, toward the water, to wash their sticky faces. As they left, I heard the small one say, “Next hunt, can I help?”
“Yes,” said the tall one beside him. “Stay by me. I’ll show you how.”
I am Boon. I teach my pack.
Copyright © 2008 by Catherine S. Perdue
Kingspeaker
Marie Brennan
I have not spoken with my own voice in nearly seven years. I knew this would be my fate long before it happened—but only now do I understand what it means.
They took my voice away in Anahata. Standing in the High Temple, I prayed to each face of the God and Goddess, speaking one final time in their praise. Then the priests took my voice away. They bound my mouth; they feigned cutting out my tongue. They gave my voice as a gift to heaven.
Taking a voice away is easily done, but this was more; I had to be prepared for the voice of another. Thus I spent eight days in silence, in purification. They stopped up my ears with wax, that I might not hear profane sounds. I bathed in blood, in wine, in milk, and then in clean water. I ate austere foods. The silence beat at me, maddening me more every day, until I wanted to tear the wax from my ears and scream simply for blessed sound.
I wanted to speak, but I had no voice.
On the eighth day, quiet fell over the holy city. No bells sounded from dawn onward, and the markets were closed. Noise was forbidden, on pain of dreadful punishment.
The king had come to Anahata.
I met him for the first time in the sacred garden of the Temple. Passing through an archway of fire, I found myself on a path of flower petals, which bruised delicately beneath my bare feet. Two attendants clothed me in a robe of more petals, fragile silk holding blossoms of the flowers for which the days are named. Still barefoot, I proceeded, marking along the path the measured steps of my dance.
For that moment, they say, I was the Goddess Triumphant, but I felt no difference. Only nervousness, that I might misstep in some way.
They had removed the wax at dawn, and even the tiny, faint sounds I had heard since then were a balm for my mind and soul. Soon, I would hear more. A new voice awaited me.
The
king sat on a bench at the heart of the garden, a delicately carved staff of cypress in one hand. He was dressed simply, in an unadorned linen robe, the garb of an old man. I knew he was to play the role of the Keeper today, the eldest face of the God; no one had told me he was a mere boy. Fifteen, I learned later. Younger than myself.
His smooth, youthful face lifted to see me, and in it I saw all the burden this ritual held for him: the new weight of kingship, the fear he would not be equal to it, and the determination to do what he must. I did not know what to make of this boy I found waiting for me. I had envisioned a king like the old one, whom I had seen a few times before. Instead I saw a youth, and I did not know what that would mean for me, for him, for us.
I imagine he asked himself the same questions.
But the ritual did not give us the time or leisure for doubts. He rose as I approached, and together we danced, eight measures of movement repeated by kings and purified women throughout the centuries. At their end, I laid a kiss on his lips, too focused on the prescribed steps of this ritual to tremble at kissing the king. He lay down on the scattered petals, as the Keeper accepts his gentle death at the hands of the Goddess Triumphant. I completed my dance in a circle around him, invoking the circle of the year, and then I knelt and raised him up once more, for I was spring, and with spring comes rebirth from death.
Kneeling with me in the center of the garden, the king spoke. "I am Shandihara Idri," he said, "and you shall be my voice."
♦ ♦ ♦
For a duty which began with such solemn ritual, the daily reality has been substantially more mundane. The king's life is bound up in tradition and ceremony, yet at the heart of it lies a human man, who eats and drinks and sleeps like any other. And I am the only person with whom he can share himself.