by R. E. Carr
“Thank you, Winowa. I realize how busy you have been.”
“No thanks are required, Priestess. May I go now?” Winowa’s voice never rose above a whisper.
“Wait! Please. I just want to find out more about you. You say you’re not human, but—” Jenn started.
Kaschaka raised a hand. “Winowa, go and attend Lord Kei.”
“Yes, Priestess.”
“But she looks just like—” Jenn stammered as she was laced into the last part of her dress. “Oof! Not so tight, OK?”
“Winowa is from farther south, where rabble have sometimes served our kind,” Kaschaka sighed as she tied the last knot.
“Are they slaves?” Jenn asked.
The old woman exhaled and surveyed her crooked knots. She ripped them out and started work on the silky row again, her knuckles cracking with age and exhaustion.
“No, they are outsiders. Slavery is an affront to everything the Path teaches us. Tonight, I will get a shaman to tell you more of our stories.”
“So far, all I’ve gotten is that I have to find the seals that are keeping you from talking to your god, right?” Jenn said as she started fidgeting with the beads braided into her hair.
“Yes, Serif-fan. You must travel all throughout the land and unseal the six remaining gates to heaven. You are the seventh seal, of course.”
Jenn sighed, “What choice do I have?”
“Acceptance is the first step on the Path, Serif-fan. There is hope for you yet,” Kaschaka said. The aging priestess surveyed the marvel she had created.
Jenn MacDonald’s tangled bed head had disappeared into a smooth updo of rusty-red hair. A thin braid trailed from behind each ear.
“This one is your life braid,” Kaschaka said as she draped one over her left shoulder. “As you grow, it will grow. The amber bead is taken from the heart of the Holy Forest. It is the gift of our land to one from heaven. The moonstone bead represents your connection to the divine.”
Jenn gulped. The old woman pranced around her and swept her second braid over her right shoulder. “And this braid is your connection to the tribe. I have plaited in a lock of the Great Bear’s mighty mane. You are always a part of us, and we become a part of you, Serif-fan.”
As a cover was pulled away from a nearby mirror, Jenn stared in absolute delight and confusion. Her dress swept from her shoulders, looping back into a strange sort of split sleeve at the wrist. The corset slimmed her waist and flattered her chest.
“I don’t look like me.”
She rubbed her ears and winced. Four fresh golden rings punctured each throbbing earlobe, and another one cut through her septum for a bullish effect. As her corset shifted, Jenn winced at the two other fresh piercings she had endured. Jenn’s biggest gasp, however, was reserved for the crown jewel on her body—literally. It glittered and glowed with a fiery red light, right in the middle of her forehead.
She touched the skin around the gemstone. This time, she didn’t flinch. She rubbed it a bit and felt no movement at all. Her eyes also sparkled the same red as her ruby.
“I have red eyes, Kaschaka, and a rock in my skull!”
“Please calm yourself, Serif-fan. You must be at peace for your tour,” a lesser priestess said.
“I need to sit down,” Jenn said, shaking. “Really.”
One of the maids brought over a little stool. The Serif-fan wasted no time in collapsing. She kept staring, slack-jawed, at her own reflection.
“CALA? Do you see what the hell has happened to me?”
“Affirmative. Sensory units are online.”
“So, this rock really needs to stay in my skull?”
“Affirmative. My I/O device is implanted in your cranium. Once in contact with a suitable terminal, you will be able to access all my capabilities. Warning: approaching life-forms.”
Jenn snapped her attention back to the room around her. She looked in the mirror and saw a residual glow from her gem. “I’m sorry, again. I was—”
Kaschaka nodded. “I am used to your lapses. It must be difficult being so close to the Great Spirit.”
“More like distracting,” Jenn sighed. “Let’s get this tour going, Kaschaka. I don’t think I can spend another day cooped up in here.”
“Fresh air would be advisable.” Kaschaka paused. “Are you ready to face your Sora-khar again?”
Jenn stiffened. “He—”
“He is your chosen . . .”
“Are you sure he has to be my chosen one? Can’t I just choose again?”
Kaschaka dismissed her maids. “As I have said every other time you have asked that, Serif-fan, no. We must follow the traditions set forth in the Scrolls of Nanut. You called for Kei first, so he is Sora-khar. The Tribal Council has already recognized his claim. What is done is done.”
“Can’t I change who I want? Aren’t I the Serif-fan?” Jenn challenged.
“The scrolls are clear, Serif-fan. When you were first summoned, you channeled the pure will of the Great Spirit. That is why, at that moment, the Sora-khar is chosen.”
“But I don’t want to be with that—that cat-man-thing!” Jenn snapped.
“Then we are in agreement, because I do not want to be with you either,” a new voice purred from the doorway.
“I will leave you two alone,” Kaschaka said, scurrying out of the room.
Kei hadn’t bothered with his hood, but he did wear a high glove to cover his arm. His tail twitched. Jenn wrinkled her nose at his ratty vest. This time she counted the three brambly looking tattoos peeking around his collar.
“I didn’t mean—”
“So what did you mean?” Kei snorted. “I am not known for being a man of wisdom or subtlety, but I believe you were quite clear in what you said.”
Jenn studied Kei. His messy shag of hair, primitive clothes, and tribal markings jarred with his soft, raspy voice. Rather like a Shakespearian actor slumming in a soap opera. Something in his mannerisms made Jenn pause. She finally chose to press on.
“Hey, they say your god chose you, so don’t look at me,” she snapped.
But looking at her was exactly what the cat-man chose to do. His alien, feline stare sized up her dress and paused more than briefly on her neckline. “Then our god has a sense of humor, Serif-fan,” Kei growled. He jumped on her bed and sat cross-legged.
Jenn slid away from him, pulling a shawl over her shoulders as she stood. Every time she moved, his strange eyes locked onto her. She bumped into the mirror and tripped.
“I’m sorry for what I said,” Jenn said weakly.
“Why? I am, as you say, a ‘cat-man-thing.’”
Jenn stared at the floor. “I’m sorry.”
Kei shrugged and began toying with the tip of his tail. The sheer naturalness of the gesture made Jenn raise a brow. Every few moments, he would look away from his preening and send her eyes back to counting cracks in the floor. Kei finally whipped his tail behind him. “Save your apologies, Serif-fan,” he said. “We have a great deal of work ahead of us.”
“We?”
Something in her voice made the cat-man’s eyes darken. Jenn reflexively took a step back. Her flicker of fear made Kei snort.
“We have a mission,” he snarled.
“I know, I know. The seals,” Jenn snapped.
Kei smirked as he saw a bit of color return to the Serif-fan’s face. “Not to mention our Joining.”
The Serif-fan blanched. “What’s with the evil grin? Hey, is there something I need to know here? The Joining is just one of many ceremonies, right?”
Now Kei’s gray skin bleached white. “Just one ceremony? The priestesses did not explain the Joining to you yet? By the spirits, I swear no one in this city knows their own ass. Why . . . ?”
Kei’s sudden bewilderment and fury caused him to rake his claws into Jenn’s bedpost. The startled Serif-fan inched toward the door. “W-what exactly is this Joining thing?” she asked as she tried to slide against the wall. The wild feline suddenly switched gears, into a
more stumbling-kitten mode.
Kei stared at the floor. “I do not know quite how to say this.” He hopped off the bed and paced around the room.
Jenn’s gaze followed the undulating thrashing of his tail. After two laps, she finally let out her first growl of frustration. “Kei!”
“I suppose I should just be blunt—”
“Why be any different than usual?”
“At the next change of seasons—you and I—you and I are supposed to perform the Rite of Joining and become husband and wife.”
“What?” she gasped, dropping to the floor.
Kei leaped to her side and tried to reach for her arm. Rather than accept the help, she slapped his paw away.
“I—I have to marry you? I don’t even know you!”
“Well, I do not know you either, Serif-fan!” he snapped back. “I—”
“I can’t marry you,” she said flatly.
Kei smiled. “Then we must get my execution order as soon as possible.”
“Execution?” Jenn gulped.
“I had Sotaka read through the sacred scrolls all night. There is one way we can avoid our union. There is a way to save my tribe from the ridicule of having me as its chosen one!”
“So if I don’t marry you, you die?” she asked.
Kei nodded. Jenn shook her head ferociously.
“No!”
Once again, he knelt beside her and stretched out his hand. Jenn finally took a moment to study Kei’s expression—rather than just focus on the conglomeration of bizarre features on his face. All the former malice and mocking had drained from his eyes.
“Do you honestly think a creature like me could save a people?” Kei asked softly.
“Kei, I don’t think I can save a people,” she said softly. She waited for Kei to revert to his cold, brutal glare, but that nagging look of desperation remained. Jenn turned away from him and whispered, “I can’t kill you. You shouldn’t have to die because—”
Kei bowed to her. “If that is what you wish, but I am giving you the option. Do not feel obligated to save—”
“Just shut up! I cannot, will not kill anybody.”
The cat-man slinked toward her. She shivered as he coiled around her. “I will make it easier for you. Can you imagine these twisted hands running over your pristine body?” He purred. “Would you want—?”
Jenn jerked away. Kei rose stiffly and offered his more normal hand to her one last time. “I disgust you, Serif-fan. I can smell your fear . . .”
Jenn took a deep breath. “I am not going to kill you. Are we clear?” she said as she dared to stare him right in the eyes.
“If you do not want me dead, then we will have to come to an understanding.”
She gingerly took his hand. “One step at a time, OK?” Jenn asked.
“As you wish, Serif-fan.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“As you wish, Ji-ann.”
“When you say my name—” she sighed as she let her Sora-khar escort her out the door. “Why does it sound so familiar?”
Jenn stumbled a bit as she tried to make her way down the winding stairs in the hall. Kei, to his credit, did stop her from falling on her face several times. Every time his flesh touched hers, however, she shuddered.
Everyone they passed by bowed in her presence. Jenn found herself blushing by the time she reached the ground floor.
“This temple is one wicked big tree, isn’t it?” Jenn asked as they reached the front door.
“All of Gracow City is carved into the living wood.”
“Weird,” Jenn sighed, awestruck. “You managed to get a fireplace and everything carved into a tree trunk. It’s amazing. We don’t have trees this big where I come from, not even in California.”
“The trees in the city pale to the giants found higher in the Holy Forest. There is a redwood there that is wider than the palace tree—”
Jenn screamed as she saw a huge tiger being led up the main road. Its enormous fangs hung like sabers. The creature shambled down the street more like a bear than any of the felines on earth. It jerked against its leather leash with frightening speed and power, nearly toppling the trio of guards escorting it.
“What? It is one of my brother’s servants,” Kei said as Jenn cowered. The animal looked up to him quizzically. Kei shrugged.
“It’s a—It’s a saber-toothed tiger! A Smilodon! They’ve been extinct for thousands of years.”
Kei pulled Jenn away from the gathering crowd. He held her close and hissed in her ear, “You are supposed to be a dignified holy woman, not a gawking commoner.”
Jenn jerked away and snapped, “Don’t grab me like that.”
Kei sneered. “I am trying to look out for you, Ji-ann the Serif-fan,” he snarled.
“I will look out for myself—” Her bravado faded as she squealed and jumped away from a four-inch-long cockroach.
“Really?” Kei asked.
Jenn scowled as the bemused Kei bowed out of her way. She squared her jaw and straightened her shoulders defiantly. It didn’t really matter though; the next sight sent her jaw dropping all over again.
A group of Beast Tribe men in light fur clothing tried to coax a stubborn woolly mammoth out of blocking the road. The pachyderm seemed determined to keep grazing on a patch of grass that resided just beside the main path.
“Mammoth!” she gasped.
“It is a nuisance that is blocking our way,” her companion sighed. Kei turned to the struggling handlers. “Can you not control your animal?”
“He is young and full of stubbornness, Lord Kei,” one said, dropping to his knees.
“I am an expert in stubbornness,” Kei said as he looked right at Jenn. He turned to the handlers. “Allow me.”
“Kei?” Jenn asked.
Kei threw back his head and let out an ear-shattering roar. Jenn cowered as the mammoth reared. Its handlers seized on its fear and redirected it down the road. Kei coughed a few times, making a strange choking sound. As he pulled his hand away from his mouth, Jenn could see blood.
“Oh my God, what happened?” She approached him slowly. “Kei, are you all right?”
He nodded. “It is nothing,” he said, his voice raspier.
“Silly cat, why’d you do that?” Jenn asked.
He took another second to recover and then stared straight at her. “It was in your way, Ji-ann the Serif-fan.”
“Kei—”
“Do not worry,” he croaked. “I also call my spirit to prove he is still with me.”
“Can others . . . ? You roared like a—”
“I am not like the others,” Kei said sharply.
“Why?”
“Besides the obvious? I was cursed for my arrogance. The shaman told me to follow the peace-loving path, to find a rabbit or deer, or other totem suited to my . . . temperament,” Kei snorted.
Jenn raised a brow and smiled. A similar, if slightly fanged, smile broke out on her Sora-khar’s face.
“Don’t they choose you, or something like that?” Jenn asked, now watching the mammoth lumbering into the woods.
“One can try to tempt fate, to beg a spirit to choose them. My brother was the first man to complete the Trial of the Brown Tiger in a hundred seasons. Of course, Saikain could have chosen any of the great totems: Bear, Falcon, Shark, Dread Wolf, Sloth, or Tiger—”
“Did you just say sloth?” Jenn asked.
“Yes, why?”
“Little, slow-moving critters that hang on trees?” She asked. “Rather adorable?”
Kei shook his head. “Enormous beasts with claws as long as my arm and the strength to topple trees.”
“Oh.”
“Is everything small where you come from? Sapling trees? Tiny animals?” Kei snorted. “I should not continue—”
“No, I want to hear. So Saikain could pick any animal he wanted?” she cringed as that last sentence slipped out.
“Yes, the great and mighty First Son of the Great Bear was not limited in
his choices. After a season of careful meditation, he naturally chose the Brown Tiger. Only he had the bravado to go into the dusky caves to face the beast, unarmed, and beseech it to be his totem,” Kei snarled.
“Sounds like he was brave,” Jenn said flatly.
Kei’s eyes darkened to a stormy blue. He took his time to respond, pursing his lips in the fashion of an old school mistress. “Very brave . . . If there is one thing my brother is known for, it is his confidence in his own abilities.”
Jenn smiled weakly. “Well, you must be brave too. You have a leopard as a totem, right?”
“I was foolish and arrogant. As you can see, my totem decided to show my folly to everyone.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. Jenn stared in wonder at the giant trees carved into a living city and at the short, robust people who looked like a cross between Vikings and cave people. No one dared approach them. Jenn eyed her escort’s gray skin. “I wonder who they are avoiding more,” she muttered.
The palace wrapped around the largest tree Jenn had seen yet. Banners of dyed leather swayed in front of the ornately carved front door. A pair of smaller saber-toothed tigers lolled their tongues between their giant canines as they lounged by the entrance.
One of the guards rushed to open the doors and called inside, “The Serif-fan approaches with the Son of the Great Bear!”
Kei said, “My father will be expecting us at sunset. Until then, we can go wherever you wish.”
“Well, considering how few tree palaces I’ve been in, I wouldn’t know where to go or what to do. Is there a TV?” Her nervous laugh echoed under the lush canopy.
“I do not understand you, Serif-fan,” he sighed. “I can take you to the upper garden if you wish. There are more animals to distract you there.”
“More animals like the ones we’ve seen?” Jenn asked.
“Yes.”
She cringed, but she had to grab Kei’s hand to make it up the steep stairs. She started wheezing before she reached the main floor of the castle proper. She stopped for breath by a flickering sconce.
“I guess I’m not in as good shape as I thought,” she sighed.
Kei snapped, “You have the form of a commoner, after all.”
“Kei, could you just try to be a little nicer?”