Gown of Shadow and Flame

by A. E. Marling

  Wedan asked, “But she'll come back, right? She always comes back.”

  Jerani did not know. His eyes had focused to the east, in the direction of the camp of the Light Hoof tribe. Hundreds of cows ran toward the horizon, their proud and tall horns bright in the night. The surviving men and women of the Light Hoof tribe traveled into the distance with their herd.

  The white cows of the Sky Herders also fled, and a few dozen Rock-Backs chased them, boulders tumbling over the dark fields. Of the Broadhorn tribe, Jerani saw no sign. Round, hulking silhouettes prowled between the fires of the Broadhorn's deserted camp. He could only hope they had escaped earlier in the night.

  “They're all leaving?” Wedan asked. “Where are those tail-first floppers going?”

  “They're scared.” Jerani was too. “Must've seen the Blood Bulls take to the fields. Afraid to stay still.”

  “Oh no!” Wedan gripped his belly. “Does that mean we're to run?”

  “You'll be fine.” Jerani forced himself to put energy and hope into his voice, for his brother's sake. “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

  “Wouldn't be a trouble if I was just feet and legs and nothing to weight me down.” Wedan's fingers tapped a quick beat on his stomach. “The Rock-Backs don't need heads. Wish I could get on without one. Not like most people use theirs anyway.”

  As a warrior, Jerani did not grin, but he felt better despite himself. “Come on.” He propped his spear on his shoulder. “Let's see to Anza.”

  The two brothers jogged to the Greatheart camp, and along the way, Jerani began to think that his brother must be right. Celaise would come back. He could not believe the Bright Palm would have the power to kill someone who danced with the Angry Mother's flames. Celaise must have simply lost control of whatever magic summoned her to the grassland.

  But what kind of magic is it? The words of the Bright Palm seared Jerani's thoughts. He could not imagine Celaise as a Feaster, not the woman who had protected his tribe, who had given him the gift of the bracer and the fiery jewels. Those jewels, he thought, they only lasted the night.

  Later, the brothers ran alongside Anza, who rode on the back of Fairness. Jerani spoke to his brother in a low voice.

  “Do you think…you don't think she could be a Feaster, could she? Celaise, I mean.”

  “A Feaster?” Wedan puffed, and his sweat stood out on his dark brow. “You mean—you mean like who killed Uncle Adsi?”

  “Yeah.” Jerani glanced to Anza, to see if she had heard. He could not tell. She clamped the cow's fur between her fingers, her visible eye squeezed shut.

  Uncle Adsi had boasted how often he braved the night to relieve himself. He had not been one to piss into a gourd. They had heard his screams and found him two days later, dead in a field and surrounded by vultures. The Holy Woman had said a Feaster might have frightened him into a crazed run.

  Jerani and the other children had been warned not to go outside at night. For seasons after seasons they had lugged sticks and stitched hides to make shelters between villages. Exhaustion had kept the Greathearts from building the tent homes, and little good they would do against Rock-Backs.

  The one time they had traveled at night, Celaise had come to protect them. If she's a Feaster, he thought, maybe they told me wrong about them.

  “The cows—they like her,” Wedan said. “Never seen them toss a tail at her.”

  He's right, Jerani realized. He would expect the children of the gods to low and roll their horns at anything harmful.

  He looked at his brother with a bubbling warmth of pride. Wedan was a pest, but Jerani thought he would grow out of it. “You're smart, you know. You'll make a fine warrior, someday.”

  “I'll keep my head then,” Wedan said, “even if it feels heavier than a rock-filled gourd.”

  The brothers ran toward the rising half-moon. The grassland was grey with starlight, pulsing with the distant drum of Rock-Backs. All too soon, Jerani started to worry again. Will Wedan survive to that someday?

  Jerani held Celaise's bracer against his chest. He believed she would come back. She had to.

  Celaise dug her fingers into the bull's back. The animal clopped into the Greatheart camp to sniff a cow's tail. Her heart beat faster than a mouse's feet paddling their way through sewer water, and she felt woozy and weak. She had lost most of her Black Wine when the Bright Palm had punctured her.

  In that breath-shattering moment, she had shifted to her center of vulnerability, atop the bull. Whether it had sensed her need to escape or followed some other instincts, the bull had lifted its head up, rippled the muscles on its back, sucked air into its nostrils, and walked off toward its own herd.

  The bull tilted its horns upward to lay its head over a cow's back in an intimate fashion. Having no stomach for where this might lead, Celaise scanned the Greatheart camp for the Bright Palm then slid off the animal.

  Her crutch hit the ground first. She clattered after it. Her limbs felt held together with twine, and she made her way between the hoofed legs on her hands and knees. She crawled out of exhaustion and because she feared to leave tracks that the Bright Palm would recognize as her own.

  Every time a pair of human feet stepped over her, around her, or—even once—tripped over her dragging leg, she expected to look up and see the Bright Palm stabbing down with a bronze spike. She winced at the sound of each voice, thinking to hear his toneless drone. She never did, but that only worsened her anticipation.

  “They aren't moving out, are they?” A tall warrior spoke to the Holy Woman. “The other tribes wouldn't leave us.”

  “They're going.” The Holy Woman sighed, fretting with the black and white beads of her necklace. “Their heads are empty as their horns.”

  The warrior cursed with a stream of words involving human body parts, horns, and lava.

  Celaise wanted only to hide, to secret herself away, to never be seen by another person again. She had often pictured paradise as a world with no one alive but her, the lands empty and quiet and peaceful. She would have wished for that now, except that isolation would impoverish her Feasts. The thought of tasting human fear again gave her the strength to keep creeping between the cows. Have to find shelter.

  As for Jerani, she hoped he did not do anything tonight that would make the Bright Palm suspicious enough to kill him.

  Unless...unless the two had been working together. She wondered if Jerani could have pretended to rescue her only for the Bright Palm to catch her at her magic. No, Jerani would never do that. He wouldn't hurt me.

  The thought chilled her, made her shake from fingers to her knocking knees. No trusting, Celaise. Or you'll be right back at the cliff, and a stone in everyone's hand.

  The Holy Woman was speaking again. “…five days a'walking to Big Stump. We'll be running it in three.”

  “True, true,” the tall warrior said, “but there's not much grass around that rock. What if the Rock-Backs surround us?”

  “Then we'll be low-tailing it away again during the day, when they're as lazy as you.”

  With increasing desperation, Celaise watched the Greathearts prepare to leave. She could not keep up in her state, and if she tried to get back on the bull, they would see her during the day. She had so little Black Wine left, her mind bled with the effort of shielding herself with a gauze of shadow.

  “Where's Jerani?” Bone jewelry clacked against itself as the Holy Woman looked about. “Is anyone seeing the fire maiden?”

  Another woman draped a rope over a cow's back, and Celaise watched her with a jaguar's focus. The tribeswoman attached a gourd to one side of the brown-speckled flank and a basket to the other. Few burdened their cows with their belongings, but this woman did. Celaise saw this as her chance.

  Waiting until the woman had left to gather her children, Celaise slunk over to the basket. Lifting the woven cover, she flung out the carved horns and other trash.

  The calf with the jewel pattern on its brow scampered up to her and prodd
ed her side with its wet nose. The baby cow squeaked a moo.

  Celaise clambered into the basket and wormed her way between leather pelts. With the lid pulled down over her she was safe. She would not ferment any more Black Wine tonight unless a Headless tore into the cow and gave her no choice.

  The animal carrying Celaise in the basket picked itself up and began to trot. She heard the sounds of hundreds of hooves and feet on the dirt. Pricks of moonlight glared through the holes between the basket's grass weave, and they reminded her of stars in her own private, cozy world. She thumped against the cow's side, and though the creature was warm, she did not stop shivering.

  Her ears picked out Jerani's voice. She thought she heard him say “Feaster,” and his brother said something back. If Jerani doesn't know, he suspects. He had proven himself in ways no other man had, and it pained her to think how she must watch him for signs of treachery.

  When she sensed dawn threatening, she allowed herself to drift into sleep, thinking of the Lord of the Feast. She needed help to defeat the Bright Palm.

  She dreamed of the gorge with the black mirror walls, the mustard sky bitter and lumpy above her. Her voice was a tinny, small thing as she made herself hoarse calling for aid.

  A shake and a tremor up her spine would mean the Lord of the Feast approached, and she both hoped and dreaded it. But the Father never came. The angular cliffs reflected her face in hundreds of green-tinted aspects of despair.

  Her head jerked up at a slithering and a slurping. A pale thing snaked its way over the cliff edge, sticking to the rock and leaving a trail of slime. Celaise glimpsed a flicker of metal in the moving goo, and a woman's naked breast.

  Celaise believed she had heard of this Feaster. “Lyss,” she called upward, “Lyss Oil Bones?”

  The maggot-skinned creature made no answer, and she did not even seem to have any eyes. Celaise still thought this must be one of the Feaster Knights. They were trained to fight Bright Palms with blades.

  “A Bright Ass is on the savanna,” Celaise said.

  Lyss Oil Bones slid up the cliff and out of sight.

  “Wait!” Celaise's desperation reverberated in the gorge. “I need him dead, or I'll never finish my trial.”

  She saw nothing more of any Feaster, not so much as a toenail claw. Perhaps Lyss would come herself or at least tell the Lord of the Feast. Celaise could hope. But she did not. She was no good with hope.

  Instead she imagined the Bright Palm riding to her at the lead of a hundred ravaging Headless, with Jerani laughing as those blinding fists nailed her to a burning tree.

  Jerani…Jerani…Jerani. She would not repeat past mistakes and trust. Celaise did not want to, but she forced herself to promise that as soon as her trial was complete she would Feast on Jerani first.

  They ran most of the first day, stopping only at a watering hole, the pool stained orange with grit and surrounded by yellow clay. That night, Jerani kept the second watch, but he spent most of it glancing down at the bracer, wanting to see a shimmer of red, some sign that Celaise lived. His eyes burrowed into the copper until he wondered that his focus alone did not cause sparks.

  Tall Tachamwa scooted around the campfire to rest nearby, lying with one arm propping up his head. “Sounds like they're all rolling together now, doesn't it?”

  Jerani pulled his eyes from the bracer. “What?”

  “Listen.” Tachamwa pointed into the night. The darkness under the stars throbbed with the beat of Rock-Back feet, a high tap-tap-tapping sometimes rising above the rest. “Think they've all gathered into one group? One hungry herd?”

  Jerani did not know why Tachamwa would ask him this. The headman was the knowledgeable one, not Jerani.

  “Seems they're hunting another tribe,” Tachamwa said. “The poor danglers. Ah well, at least we'll reach Big Stump.”

  Big Stump was a rise on the grassland surrounded by trees, with one chopped-off horn of rock at its peak. The tribes knew it as a place of safety, the only one available until rain transformed the Mother's ash from grey poison to green life.

  Tachamwa reached out to touch Celaise's bracer. “How many Rock-Backs do you think she could roast?”

  Jerani jerked the bracer away without meaning to. “Er, I'm not sure.”

  “What about a hundred?”

  “You think there's that many?”

  “Sounds like it,” Tachamwa said. “Wish more women could fight like her.”

  “Like Celaise?”

  “Yeah, I mean, why couldn't women be warriors? Why only men? Kill us off while we're calves, ay?”

  Jerani did not know what to say. Most male calves were culled. It was not bad or good, just the way it had always been.

  Tachamwa made downward flicking motions with his hands. “And bet I would've made a champion milker. Better than me as a warrior, at least.”

  Jerani had never heard Tall Tachamwa speak so fondly of women's chores. “But you always keep your calm. Always know what's to do in battle. You're a warrior.”

  “You think?” Tachamwa asked. “Sometimes I'm not sure myself.”

  Tachamwa lay in silence, seeming to mull it over, but then he started snoring. Jerani sat out the rest of the watch alone.

  The next day they still saw no sign of the Rock-Backs, and Jerani wondered if Tachamwa could be right about all the monsters working together to hunt a single tribe. At mid-afternoon, the Holy Woman decided to risk resting an hour on a lush field of flatgrass.

  While the cows chewed, Jerani peered over the heat-rippling land for signs of roaming beasts. He was the first to spot the Bright Palm.

  A blob on the horizon wriggled into focus as a man sprinting, and when he grew closer he shone more and more. Then Jerani noticed he wore nothing but a loincloth, carrying only two bronze nails.

  Jerani wanted to walk to the other side of the camp, hide behind Gorgeous, let someone else deal with the madman. Jerani worried his anger would seize him by his nose and take control, as it had two nights ago. The Bright Palm had assaulted Celaise.

  Wedan was watching, and Jerani did not want his brother to think less of him. Setting his spear to lean out at a confident angle, he waited for the man who had stolen his father's shape. The Holy Woman took up position beside Jerani, cupping Hero's wrinkled nose.

  “Going barefoot, Gio?” She smiled down at feet so alive with flickering veins that he seemed to wear white boots. “Your mother always was telling you to put on sandals. I'm glad you're remembering yourself enough to kick 'em off.”

  “The Blood Bulls are dead,” the Bright Palm said.

  His words and their neutral tone so jarred Jerani that he could in no measure understand them. Even the Holy Woman seemed at a loss. Hero lowed in his deep, resonate voice.

  “I could not believe any sacrifice I made would have saved them.” The Bright Palm's face was slack. He did not even pant after his sprinting. “I knew the Feaster still endangered the other tribes, so I am here.”

  The Holy Woman pressed three shaking fingers into her brow. “You're saying all the cows and people of the Blood Bulls are dead?”

  “Yes.”

  She asked, “You saw Rock-Backs gobbling them all?”

  “No.”

  “Then some might be living?”

  “Some were eaten,” the Bright Palm said. “The rest fell to Skin-Backs.”

  A tsk-tsk sound hissed from the Holy Woman's shriveled lips. Jerani felt unwell, thinking of all those Skin-Backs growing into new Rock-Backs. The bulls of that tribe could nourish some hefty monsters. And those people, no, Jerani could not think of them yet. He was not ready.

  The Bright Palm asked if any in the Greathearts had died without wounds. “Or with wounds,” he said. “Some Feasters try to hide their deeds by desecrating the corpse. But the bleeding is less.”

  He jogged back and forth through the camp, head down. Looking for tracks was Jerani's guess.

  Straightening, the glowing man stared at the horizon then ran back to the Holy Woman. “
You lead the Greathearts to the Big Stump?”

  The Holy Woman said she was.

  “The Feaster must have escaped with another tribe,” he said. “If she has not destroyed them all, I will guide the survivors to Big Stump. Only with the tribes together can the Innocents be safe.”

  “Yes, all in one herd,” she said. “Good to hear you have some sense left in that glowing gourd.”

  Jerani felt a shred of thankfulness for the Bright Palm, until one of those white-veined hands clapped onto the bracer.

  The Bright Palm said, “Has the Feaster shown herself to you?”

  Jerani forced himself to meet that white, shimmering stare. After what the Bright Palm had done to Celaise—since he had ignored Anza and her hurt eye—Jerani hated to tell him anything. He would argue with him over the color of milk.

  “There is no Feaster,” Jerani said.

  “Have you seen the woman with the crutch?”

  “No, I haven't.” Jerani had not thought about it until now, but it was true. Sands of doubt blew over his skin, and he thought the outlander may have died. Is this why Celaise hasn't returned?

  “They are one.” Only the Bright Palm's lips moved. The arm holding Jerani's wrist and the rest of his body stayed rock still. “The cripple and the woman with the dress share one false heart.”

  Jerani felt those words crawl into his ears like flies, and he had to fight off a grimace. Comparing Celaise to that cripple disgusted him.

  “The woman with the crutch appears Innocent,” the Bright Palm said, “but she is not. The woman with the dress appears beautiful, but she is not. You must not let either illusion deceive you.”

  For moments at a time, Jerani could imagine himself as a boy again with his father scolding him. Jerani had often shirked his duty of grazing the cows, leaving them so he could play with the other boys. He had only grown attentive after his mother had sickened and his father had left. His father, the man with the same face and name—with a disturbingly familiar voice—as the Bright Palm who scolded him with a tone that could put cows to sleep.