Gown of Shadow and Flame

by A. E. Marling

  “Angry Mother, let her eye be whole.”

  He studied the glowing mountain for any sign she had heard his plea. His gaze jerked down at the sound of thumping feet.

  Five Rock-Backs hurtled between termite mounds. And behind them whooped and stomped the Blood Bull Tribe.

  “After 'em!”

  “Now who's hunted!”

  Surrounded and outnumbered, the Rock-Backs pointed themselves between the spires of dirt and rolled away. Once they had turned themselves into bouncing boulders, little could harm them, not club, spear, or horn. That did not stop the Blood Bulls from strutting afterward.

  Three triumphant bulls with dark coats walked with proud and deliberate steps in front of the Greatheart cows. Warriors from the Blood Bull Tribe panted, spears leaning against their shoulders.

  “We gave 'em a taste of our horns, didn't we?” A huge man riddled in warrior marks stomped among his tribesmen. “Beginning to think we should call 'em Soft-Backs.”

  Jerani gazed after the rolling monsters until they faded into the grey grassland. None of them had been killed. They all would return.

  The Bright Palm stepped out from between two termite mounds. He stared at the warriors of both tribes without expression. Jerani hoped Rock-Backs ambushed the false Gio and ate him, piece by glowing piece.

  Tall Tachamwa crept out from where he had hidden behind a cow and approached the Blood Bulls. “Melelek, guess this evens us for saving you last night.”

  “You didn't save nobody!” Melelek clenched a hand under Tachamwa's face. Jerani noticed a lump on his arm, a bubble of skin amid the maze of etched lines. “We would've had those bone-suckers gone ourselves. You owe us for tonight.”

  “It's day.” Tachamwa leaned back.

  “So it is. Do you think—you don't think more'll come back after sunset, do you? Not that the Blood Bulls are afraid of 'em.”

  “They'll only be back if they're hungry.” Tachamwa gazed out over the darkening grassland. The termite mounds loomed as lumpy shadows. “Them and more of their friends.”

  Melelek shivered, then motioned his warriors to leave with him. One of the men gripped a Greatheart cow, Sweet Eyes, by her ear. “Shouldn't we take a few? Seeing how they owe us and all.”

  The headman of the Blood Bulls shifted his gaze from the cows to Tall Tachamwa, then to the Bright Palm, who stared back at him with blank eyes.

  “Nah.” Melelek took a step away from the glowing man. “Them cows are muddies anyway. Look at their coats, all splotch and dirt that'll never come out. Wouldn't even eat 'em.”

  Wildfires of anger flared inside of Jerani. He could cope with the tension of the Rock-Backs, with fretting over Anza's hurt eye. The insult from Melelek toward the Greatheart cows—to the children of the gods—was more than Jerani could bear.

  He launched himself at the huge warrior. “Take it back!” Jerani beat against the broad chest with fists burning from the unfairness of having no mother and no father either, only a sculpture of flesh that looked like him. Melelek had no right to talk about Greatheart cows like that. No one did. “Take it back!”

  The big warrior laughed at Jerani and shoved him to the ground.

  The Blood Bulls left. No one helped Jerani up, and he was left to simmer in his own anger and swallow his tears.

  The nape of his neck burned all the way back to camp. He stomped up to the Holy Woman. She was stitching Hero's torn brisket, and the bull stared into her eyes as she worked below his throat. Jerani ground his teeth, trying to think of what he wanted to say. At last he blurted it out.

  “Why are all the Greatheart cows speckled?” He motioned to the spray of brown marks on Hero's coat. Flame of the Mother! It does look like he ran through mud.

  “What?” The Holy Woman glanced to Chiya, who was holding the bull by his nose. “Higher.”

  “The Blood Bulls, their cows are all red,” Jerani said. The color of strength, of warriors. “And the Sky Herders have pure white ones.”

  “What're you saying, boy?”

  “Why couldn't our cows look like that?”

  “What is the good in it?” The Holy Woman threaded the bone pin then tied off the string. “You think the Rock-Backs would've turned around if the Greathearts had matching coats?”

  “No, but…”

  “Bless you, dear,” the Holy Woman said, scratching Hero's fuzzy chin, “and you, too, Gorgeous.” The lead cow rested nearby and had rolled to her side. She gazed up at the Holy Woman with her huge lashed eyes. “Truth be truth, you're not young anymore. Your bag is getting floppy. Your teeth are nubs, and your coat is ragged. Never were the biggest. What this fly-brained boy don't understand is none of that matters.”

  Jerani felt his face flushing around his warrior marks. Size and looks do count. The huge Melelek had shrugged off Jerani's punches and swatted him away. And his one-eyed sister might never marry.

  The Holy Woman said, “It's not what you see that matters.”

  “What about Hero?” Jerani realized he was shouting, but he was too angry at everything to care. “His back is muddied, and he leaps from fights faster than an antelope!”

  “What's the use of a bull so full of bile and bluster that he gores his own calves? That he tramples anyone who's in his way?” She patted Jerani's hand with her wrinkled fingers. “You're a warrior, so I'm not expecting you to see the value in gentleness.”

  Jerani hated when people talked down to him, even the Holy Woman.

  “The Greathearts are the best herd in the 'land.” She rubbed some grime from Gorgeous' horn and began murmuring to the cow.

  He had heard enough, and he kicked stray stones on his way to the edge of the tribe. Though Jerani wanted to be alone, he wanted less to be eaten, so he stayed close enough to the camp to hear the cows' soft lowing.

  The murky daylight deserted the grassland. Bladed grasses reached from the darkness to cut his thighs. The bracer on his arm glimmered red. His fingers tingled when he ran them over it. The copper felt smooth and new. He knew Celaise was close now, and that both comforted him and put him on edge. They don't really expect me to marry her, do they?

  He liked the idea even less than before. She had been gone when his sister and brother were hurt. Celaise might have been tending to a goddess or eating dinner.

  Daylight returned in a blinding slash. Lightning arced from the side of the Angry Mother to the ash cloud.

  He could see everything for miles in that moment. Hundreds of Rock-Backs stood out as pebbles on the grassland, rolling closer. One looked as big as a rolling gourd, and though Jerani could not judge size too well from this distance, he dreaded finding out just how enormous that Rock-Back was. The ash cloud stretched in all directions like a wrinkly grey hide that hid the stars.

  The sounds of flopping footfalls made Jerani turn to see Wedan. His younger brother walked with round chin raised high, the spear held at arms length like a poisonous snake.

  “Oh, no,” Jerani said, “you can't think to fight tonight. Not after last time.” He had knelt over Wedan dying once already, and that was more than enough.

  Wedan's eyes flicked halfway up to Jerani's then fell back again. He lowered the end of the spear shaft to turn it between two of his toes. “I…” He lifted the spear again to hold it sideways to Jerani. “Well, I just thought you should have this.”

  Jerani touched the heartwood, and then his fingers wrapped around it. With the thick wedge of horn at one end, the spear was massive enough to intimidate a rhino. But Jerani's relief made it weightless. His brother had handed over the spear on his own. Jerani had not had to shout or tackle him to stop him from battling his guts out again.

  “I think,” Wedan said, “father would've wanted you to have it. When he was, you know, himself.”

  “Father's still out there,” Jerani said, “in the towns. The Bright Palm isn't him.”

  “You—ya think?” His brother tried to play off a sob like a belch. “Excuse me.”

  Holding the spear out wide
, Jerani hugged his brother. Jerani worried Wedan would try to squirm away, as he often did. This time, Wedan returned the embrace.

  The two brothers stood together as silhouettes in the camp firelight. Jerani was glad. Tonight he could focus on fighting the Rock-Backs, knowing his brother would be safe. He wished Celaise could see him now, with this small victory.

  Gazing past Wedan's shoulder, Jerani though he saw her out of the corner of his eye. His vision swam then sharpened on Celaise. Her dress flowed with slow-moving smoke, and she held her cape wrapped over her face as a black veil. Her barbed brows crept upward, perhaps in surprise that he had spotted her. She made no move to reveal herself to his brother.

  Jerani unclasped his arms from Wedan. “Can I have a moment? Before the battle tonight.”

  “Sure you want to stay this far?” Wedan backed toward the camp, squinting toward Jerani. “Can't see a thing.”

  “I'll be safe,” Jerani said.

  Celaise hovered beside him in a dress of darkness and smoke. Her hem lit with fire.

  The lightning burned purple lines inside Celaise's eyes. When the afterimage faded, the thunder hit her in a tumbling roar.

  Wearing her True Gown sharpened her hunger, and her starvation beat within her guts like a second heart. Clenching, searing, unclenching. I must Feast before dawn, she thought, or be locked back into the Void.

  “Is it true, then?” Jerani gazed over the smoke billowing within her dress. He alarmed her by sinking to his knees. “Are you the goddess?”

  His scent, she thought. Each night it deepened in flavor and texture, either because his fear intensified or she attuned her senses more to it. His smell reminded her of a steaming cacao drink, a brew enjoyed by nobles in the land of her birth, and the aroma of bitter deliciousness and rich darkness soaked up her nostrils. His fears for his siblings swirled within her mind as vanilla and cinnamon, and his anxiety spiced the dish with a shadow of chili pepper.

  Her soot-black gloves clenched toward his bowed head, sparks flicking out her fingernails. I must Feast on him. He would want it. More Black Wine would give me the strength to roast the minds of the Headless. Otherwise they'll disbelieve my magic, and his tribe will die.

  She would die, too, she knew. The Lord of the Feast would ravage her for Feasting on a whole person. Celaise saw little hope for herself, and she wondered if she would be better off either throwing herself on the Bright Palm for a quick death, or Feasting one last time.

  Can't win. Can't Feast. Can't flee. Can't live.

  Smoke leaked out of her as she hugged herself, shivering despite the fires burning within the depths of her gown. Only when Jerani spoke again did she realize she had not answered his first question.

  “Are you a handmaiden to the Angry Mother?” His eyes darted up to her gown. “You carry her veil of smoke. And—yes—you take her messages into the sky. Your first dress, I understand now.”

  Celaise had named herself an enchantress, not any sort of god's messenger. And I'm no god. She would not risk changing her story, and neither did she wish to argue over something so trivial, not when she bathed in his lovely scents. She believed she detected the undertones of artichoke.

  A flavor of nervousness?

  She motioned him to rise, and when he sprang to his feet, two tendrils of his hair fell over his face. An ichor of mud and grease caked his braids into stiff, twisting locks. It made him look less human and more fierce. She liked it, and she wanted to reach out, slide her hand up the angle of his jaw to set his hair back in place.

  Of course, her smoky fingers would pass right through. She could not touch him. Not without making myself vulnerable first.

  Beyond Jerani's shoulder and tresses of crimson hair, the ash above the volcano glowed like the dying rays of sunset. Lightning crackled in the cloud, snaking in and out with bursting rumbles. The sight entranced Celaise, and she watched orange coils seething in the black fume.

  “It is beauty,” she said.

  A white whip bristling with violet barbs cracked upward from the peak, the lightning cutting a crooked pattern outward before stabbing sideways into the column of smoke. For one pure moment, Celaise forgot her hunger.

  Jerani turned his head from the volcano back to her. “You are the same.”

  His chin dipped, and the artichoke scent expanded to a delicacy steamed and dripping with peanut oil and herbs. Celaise wondered what this flavor of nervousness meant.

  “Celaise, I…is there anything you need? I mean, do you want something from my tribe? From me?”

  Her stomach lurched—a wild, snarling thing. To distract herself from hunger, she considered his question. She wanted someone to watch her as she slept, so she need not fear being smothered or trodden to death. She often wished for a hand to help her during the day, to steady her. She needed him to promise to stand at her side at night, to bludgeon the Headless she was too weak to kill.

  His spicy sweet aroma warmed her lungs as she breathed in to answer, but her eyes snagged on the copper hugging his arm. My bracelet. My one mistake, to trust. The memory of that betrayal prickled up her arm, and she felt as icy as when she had leaped off the cliff to escape her parents' pummeling anger.

  She respected Jerani for standing toe to toe with beasts to protect his brother and sister. And he was strong, not an ounce of soft flesh. His loose clothing wrapped over his left shoulder, leaving his right arm and half his chest exposed. Muscle and tendon stretched under his skin, and his arm looked as if someone had spooled bronze wire around the bone. The next lightning bolt cast an orange sheen over him and revealed the striking redness of his hair.

  Maybe if he had been my brother, Celaise thought, he would've stood by me on the cliff. Maybe it would've turned out different. Jerani might have seen that she had done less wrong than the man who had left her with the copper bracelet.

  The memory of that day sat in her as a stinging tangle of confusion and hate. She could have understood villagers wishing to stone a Feaster to death, in the same way a pack of skunk pigs would trample a jaguar if given the chance. But she had not been a Feaster then, only a young woman.

  She knew such musings were useless. In the end, she could only disappoint Jerani. He thinks I'm a sneeze away from being a goddess. She thought she owed it to him to prepare him for the fall. He had to learn why he could never trust another, and if she had to die soon, he might yet live.

  Celaise would tell him her story.

  “Once, a girl lived on a mountain.”

  Her voice sounded like a lost thing high above him in the winds. His skin prickled. The hair on Jerani's arms stood on end.

  “For her first thirteen years, the girl labored for her family. She weeded stony terraces. She dug up potatoes with hands that cracked and bled in the cold air. She tended a herd of llamas, sweating as she sheared them under the brutal Winged Flame.”

  Jerani did not understand why Celaise was telling him this, but she so rarely spoke that he knew it must be important. He wanted to hear every word, even if he did not understand what some meant. The thunder itself seemed to fall to a hush.

  “The llamas never spit on her, because she was firm with them. They were tall and noble beasts. And caring. Two llamas would cuddle and press their lips together, like a kiss.”

  Her eyes softened while streamers of smoke rippled below her chin like strands of the thinnest black fabric.

  “But that doesn't matter,” she said. “What you should know is the girl did everything her parents told her. Except for one thing. One mistake.”

  The flames surged higher up her skirt. Jerani glanced down, into her dress. He expected to see the lava lake at the top of the Angry Mother. He would have flinched away from the blinding pool of the goddess' blood, but the flames in Celaise did not burn so hot, or bright. She seemed to stand over a fire pit, only with wood burning instead of cow patties. Its smoke stung his eyes, but something about it was out of place.

  Disappointment and confusion sat heavy inside Jerani. He blame
d himself. She stands atop flames. What more do you want? Still, he suspected now that she could not be the goddess herself.

  “Her family could not forgive,” Celaise said, “and her village was small, too small to have an executioner. No one wanted blood on their hands.”

  The voice murmured quiet but shrill, a breeze between sharp rocks.

  “So they drove her to the edge of the cliff, and her father picked up a stone. Her mother picked up a stone…”

  Jerani swallowed, fighting not to cough. The smoke threatened to choke him with gritty puffs that lacked the comforting smell of grass. Strangely enough, the burning wood did not smell of anything.

  “…Her brothers picked up stones. Even her little sister, and all the other women and men in the village. She thought them friends. But hatred turned them to strangers, and after the first few stones, the girl leaped to get away from them.”

  “She jumped?” Jerani felt like a scorpion had stung his ankle. Why does a messenger of the goddess tell me this? “Off the cliff?”

  When Celaise nodded, tendrils of smoke curled up her cheeks.

  “She was…” He almost said “your friend,” but that might mean Celaise had thrown a stone. The story had sounded personal. “Did the girl live? From the fall?”

  Lightning lit the grassland white, except for her. If anything, she seemed to darken, fumes rising from her dress like a woman wearing a hundred black strips of cloth on a windy day. The thunder growled then sighed itself to silence before she answered.

  “No,” Celaise said. “She did not.”

  Jerani felt he was missing the point of the story. “What did the girl do? To make her family angry.”

  “Does it really matter?” Her words punched him in hot blasts of air. “What could I—What could any girl do to deserve that?”

  “I…then I don't understand.” And he wanted to understand her, more than anything else. He doubted he could protect Anza and Wedan without her.