by Marc Secchia
When No’otha sang, it was in eerie tones that made Pip’s neck hairs prickle, a low droning of syllables older even than most spoken forms of Ancient Southern. He intoned:
Spirit-salutations of elder days,
The brooding presence of ancient ways,
Magic rooted in olden time,
The Ancient Powers’ life and rhyme,
Island-song, life-song, spirit-song is sung,
From old to young, life must flow,
In consecration.
Pip knew her understanding was imperfect, yet each time No’otha repeated the song through seven iterations with minor modifications of inflection and meaning, she grasped more. She resisted the urge to look about for where the Dragonwing must be watching from a distance, as No’otha had stipulated. This part of the ceremony, of her journey, was for Pip alone.
When his song faded into the night’s gentle sounds, the Elder nodded gravely.
Pip said, “Calling upon the spirits of her ancestors, this girl declares her readiness to embark upon the sacred journey into adulthood.”
No’otha responded, “This girl is ready, anointed and welcome. By the spirits of our common ancestors, I bless the joining of a new spirit into the fullness of Pygmy life. Let seeds be planted which will grow to fruit. We journey together.”
Setting her face westward, Pip followed No’otha down the long, gentle curve of the hawser-like vine as it reached into the dark, starry night. The Island’s earthy scents mingled with the fragrance of innumerable jungle blossoms were strong in her nostrils at first, but soon faded into the deeper, more mysterious scents of the night. Pip filled her lungs, a ritual No’otha had prescribed. Inhale the world. Imbibe its essence. Unbind the spirit that it might roam the night, mirroring the physical transition of her person between Islands.
Minutes ticked by. Pip breathed starlight, darkness and the faintly rancid scent she recognised as the Cloudlands. Ay, she knew that smell from when Leandrial had raised Pip upon her paw. Quiescent now in her spirit, she recalled the strange events of her life which had brought her to this place, of the people she loved and the longing that still consumed her to understand what it meant to be fully Human, to partake in the common life of humanity. Yet was that her destiny? Could a person dream their destiny and choose to seize it, or did inheritance and circumstance determine the future? Much had been done to her, she realised. This journey was about forging her adult identity. Taking responsibility for her own life and destiny, a notion that loomed large in Master Kassik’s teachings.
Suddenly, she realised No’otha had stopped. Halfway already?
He motioned her to take the lead.
Pip had not even noticed the passage of time. Now, the winds swirled about her person, capricious and conniving, willing her to make a misstep upon a vine which had shrunk to but a foot wide in this place, a mile and a half above the Cloudlands. Yet the eyes of her spirit saw life and magic coursing through the plant, pointing as it were the pathway into the future. She forged ahead. Each step became harder, as though she were pushing through layers of history and being and magic and oppression and slavery to zoo thinking and littleness and incapacity and grief. She swayed, sweating freely. Pip glanced back at No’otha, who regarded her impassively, yet with a knowing air that assured her, this was her task. This was the test.
Cold perspiration trickled down her neck as Pip forced herself to continue. Fears mobbed her mind like a flight of feral windrocs, from the wind’s buffeting to the horror provoked by her probable fate at the Shadow-beast’s inescapable hungering. Her footsteps stuttered. Snagged on a tiny protrusion.
“No!”
Pip wobbled horribly, falling to her knees. Just breathing, a slow, laboured rising and falling of her lungs. Panic? She was a Dragoness! She had flown between Islands, and now she could not walk a solid vine across the same void? Rising, only to fall, she had once thought. That was not her life’s song. She must soar.
All it took was the courage to make that first step.
Thunder reverberated over the deeps! The voice of a vast, overwhelming presence crushed that fragile spark of audacity as though it had never existed. Was she worthy? Who was she to make this journey? She sank lower, clutching the vine. Pressing her face against solid vegetal life, a plant which by some miracle of magic knew how to span the Islands, bridging the past and the future.
Pip trembled, prone. Ridiculous. She could not even raise her head without feeling as if the vine were wriggling about like a snake clamped by a windroc’s beak. Impossible! There was barely a breath of wind. No’otha stood by impassively, watching his charge hug a vine as if life depended on that connection. Yet every time she made to rise, that draconic thundering pummelled her again. Somewhere, not too distant, she sensed that subtle connection with Zardon stirring, pulsing, alive at a level beneath conscious thought or control. Would he know she was close? Fraught? Standing on the fragile bridge between the worlds of youth and adulthood?
That connection with the enemy was a concern for another time. She made a decision. If she could not run, she would walk. Failing to walk, she would crawl. If she could not manage to crawl she would wriggle along on her belly. Nothing would stop her.
If the cage had taught her anything, it was how to yearn for the unattainable.
Or how to sing in harmony with the stars.
Pip blinked. Where had that thought sprung from? She glanced skyward. No, a mysterious force seemed to be drawing her eyes eastward, toward the dawn. Dawn? The night had escaped her, and she was no further than halfway along the vine?
She scanned the eastern horizon over her shoulder, suddenly hungry for what lay beyond. For a voice that called to her with clarion sweetness past that strange, oppressive spirit, so distant yet so monumental. A wink. A tantalising hint of starlight illuminating her darkness.
Pip stared at a star she had never noticed before, there just above the aurora irradiating the eastern horizon, surmounting the delicate penumbral shadow somehow created by the twin suns’ incipient advent upon the Island-World. A trick of refracted light?
The star danced enticingly.
You … aren’t a star, are you? Pip gasped. Who are you?
The star twinkled through azure and turquoise to midnight blue, then giggled.
The Pygmy girl chuckled in return. Now she knew she was dreaming. For the merest fragment of time, her heartbeat and the dancing rhythm of the blue star appeared to pulse as one.
Then she was gone.
She?
Pip looked, and discovered the laughter of starlight in her heart.
Chapter 17: Homecoming
SHE snaked HER fingers an inch along the vine. Two inches. Levered herself forward with the strength of arms and legs. Pip repeated the movement, beating back the Islands’ weight of fate lumped upon her shoulders with the laughter burning like white-hot mercury in her veins. A third time, and she looked to the power which had thundered from afar, and discovered not condemnation, but pleasure. Pleasure so vast, it seemed to resound across the deeps to warm and fizz in the inmost expression of her being. Then it, too, faded from her awareness.
Pip realised that her sense of subjugation had never originated with that entity. It stemmed from her own enslavement and fear, self-loathing and hatred of difference. It was grounded in the fear that childhood innocence should give way to adult existence and experiences. This was itself a loss, a grief.
Having accepted this loss, she began to move, laughing roughly at first, then with increasing freedom. Her arms reached out. Further. Faster. More certain of each hand-grip upon the rough bark. Higher. More confidently. Her head, upturned to the future. Rising to a crawl, scraping her knees on the rough bark. That did not last long. Pip staggered to her feet, as shaky as a child taking her first steps, yet contrariwise, stronger than ever before. She stumbled forward without a care for the abyss yawning beneath her feet, for the clouded realm of death gleaming rose with the dawn. She was alive.
She was al
ive!
The quickening in her spirit spilled over as floodwaters rushing over the edge of a terrace lake, uncontainable. Pip picked up her knees. Faster! Wilder! Feet, be fleeter than a Dragon! Arms, pump out the rhythm! Behind her, she heard the old warrior give a great burst of joyous mirth. He must see that she had become–what, she did not as yet know. Yet Pip knew an unbearable lightness, a freedom from shackles she had always acknowledged but never dreamed of shifting.
Pip’s feet fairly flew over the vine now. She ran with her arms outspread and her face turned to the skies. She left No’otha far behind as she sprinted toward the embrace of the far Island.
* * * *
Great was the rejoicing of her people when No’otha introduced her to the waiting throng. They lived in a huge, sandy cavern beneath the third Island she walked to that morning, reached via a torturous climb along a hidden ravine. No’otha had laughed loudly and long with her when they reached the basal roots of that first vine.
“A mighty achievement, Pip,” he said. “It was harder for you than for many. Don’t try to understand this experience all at once. That will come in time.”
Now, the Pygmy Elder walked into the waiting throng, and took two people by the hand. One was a middle-aged warrior, heavily scarred on his left shoulder, flank and arm. The left arm would no longer extend fully, drawn into a half-bent position by tight scar tissue. The woman was of similar age, just an inch or two taller than Pip, her curls already turned prematurely grey, almost white. Her eyes seemed bewildered, as though clouds drifted across the skies of her understanding. Pip looked upon their poverty and simple dress, and felt ashamed of her feelings. So much depended on this. So many years of tortured, heart-wringing hope.
They seemed smaller than she remembered.
Yet familiar.
She could not swallow past an Island-sized lump in her throat as her mother tottered forward, breaking free of Elder No’otha’s grasp. She gasped, “Child, is this true? Do I dream? Are you real?” Wonderingly, she touched Pip’s cheek. Pinched her left earlobe. Traced the outline of her lips, the point of her chin, now a ritual touch of both hands upon Pip’s head, shoulders, breasts, hips and knees, the woman-blessing given upon important occasions in a woman’s life, at birth, cord-cutting, first solid food, first step, first blood, first budding and first promise of marriage, and many occasions thereafter.
A shadow crossed her face. The lips twisted.
“Demon!” Suddenly she shrieked, a thin, terrible wail that pierced and paralysed them all. “Away from me, demon-child!”
Pip could not help herself. She ducked beneath the sudden assault, the fists beating her back, the chipped fingernails scoring bloody trails in her neck.
Three women and her father rushed forward to restrain her, with difficulty. Pip’s mother fought like a jungle jaguar, frothing at the lips and spitting, “Demon! Demon-child!” over and over again.
Suddenly, the whites of her eyes rolled up and the woman collapsed.
The man tore away from that group. “Take her. Make her rest easy,” he said, over his shoulder. Then he approached Pip, who shook violently, her teardrops splattering his chest.
Fiò’tí. She remembered his name, at last.
He moved as if in a dream. Kneeling, he felt Pip’s feet, her ankles, her calves and knees. He read the runes upon her calf with an audible wheeze of recognition. His hands touched her thighs, quivering palpably now. He traced her belly-button and the lowest curvature of her back, then moved to stand behind her, touching each vertebra of her spine. Pip guessed this too was a ritual, perhaps symbolising acceptance of the whole person and all of their parts. It took all of her strength to stand still. When he finished, Fiò’tí moved again to stand before her, his face stone-carved in grief, wet with tears.
A high ululation sprang from his throat, causing every hair on Pip’s body to stand on end. Joy stolen from grief! The lost, found! The mourned, restored! She recognised the sound before he broke off abruptly.
He cried, “I am Fiò’tí, father of Pip’úrth’l-iòlall-Yò’oótha! She is alive!”
Frenzy! Chaos! Men rushed to the log-drums. The women of the tribe rushed to mob her, but Fiò’tí was first and fastest, clasping her in his arms as he screamed that joyous, heart-rending ululation once more, crying, gasping, wailing as though he intended to turn his lungs inside-out. The log-drums struck up a furious, celebratory beat, so loud that Pip was certain every one of her friends, waiting nearby outside of the cavern, could hear the clamour of celebration. The men sprang into near-crazed expressions of joy, shaking and leaping, dancing and beating their weapons together to create a violent counterpoint rhythm to the drums. The women joined in the ululation, dancing the flower-dance in which they surrounded Pip in three concentric circles, the swirling, rising and falling motions of their bodies mimicking flowers furling and unfurling.
“Come, dance!” cried her father.
Pip danced until her feet no longer felt the ground, until the ochre paint ran in rivulets off her body and her spirit flew as free and unfettered as a Dragon.
* * * *
Even lowering the number of Dragons by two Shapeshifters changed to Human form, reduced a cavern large enough to house an entire Pygmy village to very close quarters.
Shimmerith elbowed Emblazon. “Mind your great big paws. There are children present.”
“Do you think we scare them?” asked the Amber Dragon.
“Do you think Dragons are carnivorous?” Nak snorted. He, in contrast to the Dragons, was liberally smothered in giggling, playful Pygmy children. He said, “Why do children always pick on me? Is it written on my face? Tattooed on my ineffably handsome backside?”
“Funny,” said Oyda, “I thought that one said, ‘Kick me.’ ”
The three young Pygmy girls braiding her hair paused to compare her curls with Kaiatha’s golden tresses, which had sparked quite the kerfuffle. Kaiatha had six pairs of hands working on her hair; deciding who would braid her hair had sparked a fight. Silver was another matter entirely. Several of the older tribe members had whispered that he was a ghost.
Turning to Elder No’otha, Pip answered his question, “The blue and yellow Dragons are a mated pair. Those two, Tazzaral and Jyoss, will be soon, I suspect. Kaiatha here is hand-holding with Durithion, as am I with Silver, although our relationship is a very fresh bud. And Nak and Oyda are a couple, but not yet–”
“Heart-pledged?” said No’otha, supplying the word missing from her vocabulary. “Why not? They are of age, not so?”
“Er, well, in their culture it seems acceptable for them to … be together, without pledges.”
“It is dishonourable!”
Oyda glanced up at the force of the Elder’s outburst. “Pip, are you two talking about us? What’s wrong?”
Pip shuffled her feet, but in the end under the force of both No’otha and Oyda’s stares, had to confess, “Elder No’otha feels that your unmarried state is dishonourable, especially since you and Nak are so obviously together and in love.”
To her surprise, Oyda blushed up a small firestorm. “Well, we had planned …”
Nak lifted a naked Pygmy imp off his left ear. “We intend to marry just as soon as the war–well, that sounds rather stupid even as I say it, now. Who knows how much time we have together? Besides, my heart is for Oyda alone, even if my eyes misbehave and stray from time to time.”
No’otha scowled at them, saying in Island Standard, “Marry. Tomorrow.”
Oyda raised an eyebrow. “Not a whole lot of arguing with your great-uncle, is there?”
Nak gasped as Tik leaped onto his diaphragm. “Well, I wouldn’t object, especially if the happy event came with a romantic marital night … hurrying on, is he offering? What’s involved?”
After a fair amount of translation and discussion, the happy event was settled.
Well, there was a turn-out for the scrolls, as Master Balthion loved to say. And a good example for the youngsters, according to No�
�otha. The fire of Pip’s Dragoness wanted to blaze against being condescended to by adults. The Pygmy in her rejoiced at being reunited with her tribe, many of whom she recognised. And yet there was the matter of her mother. The shadow over a beautiful day.
Kaiatha kept giving her especially sympathetic hugs.
In the early evening, the young men of the Pygmy warriors returned from their foraging with armloads of dry wood and sprays of particular aromatic bushes and fragrant herbs. They built a bonfire in the centre of the cave, in a fire-pit, and several smaller fires nearby for cooking. Shortly, the older male warriors returned from a successful hunt with seven wild pigs lashed to carrying poles and a very large buck of a type unfamiliar to Pip. The Dragons accepted the offering of the buck gravely. Pip heard Emblazon’s stomach gurgling in anticipation–and also, most likely, in the knowledge that one buck would hardly furnish five hungry Dragons with a decent meal.
The Seer was a youngster no older than Pip, for the old Seer had perished in the same raid in which Pip had been captured. No’otha had explained the tribe’s loss–much knowledge and lore had been irretrievably lost. They had traded away much of the tribe’s wealth in order for her to complete her training with the Seers of other tribes, but the core knowledge and genealogies and particular know-how of her own tribe had to be rebuilt from scratch, from the memories of the tribal elders and the few, precious lore scrolls secreted in their Sacred Cave.
No’otha said the Ceremony of Second Naming was no complex affair. After the rituals were completed, she would petition the ancestors for a word before making her pronouncements over Pip’s life. She seemed no more than a nervous teenager, Pip thought.
Then the Seer donned her mask and headdress, and became another person.