by Tara Maya, Elle Casey, J L Bryan, Anthea Sharp, Jenna Elizabeth Johnson, Alexia Purdy (epub)
Vessia might still be alive. I might meet her.
The scale of the tribehold gradually sank in as they spent half a day just crossing the folded river and its fields to reach the mound next to the incomplete one. This fourth settlement looked different too; the houses weren’t beehive domes, but longhouses that formed neat parallel rows across the round, flat hill top. Once the travelers walked up the narrow raised path and into the hold, Dindi realized why. There were no ordinary families living here. All of the people who poured out of the longhouses to meet them were other Initiates or Tavaedies.
Hundreds of children had gathered for the Initiation. The majority of them, of course, were Yellow Bear tribesfolk, but there were a few other clans from the Rainbow Labyrinth present as well.
The Tavaedies assigned the children to longhouses based upon age and gender. Jensi, Gwena and Kemla were all assigned to Fourth House, while Dindi and Gwenika were assigned to Ninth House. Amidst the sea of strangers, even an extra week of acquaintance felt like familiarity, so Gwenika clung to Dindi’s side as if they were clan sisters. The long houses had no sleeping platforms, just dirt floors and reed mats. Each girl staked out her spot along the north or south wall, and marked it with her own basket of things. They both contributed a few scraps of cloth to make a separate bed for Puddlepaws, but he sniffed this once, then curled up in the middle of Dindi’s mat.
The diseased yeech had left Gwenika alone during the last week of the journey, but the day after their arrival, the yeech attacked with renewed vehemence. Gwenika broke out into a rash and a fever. While the other Initiates left to explore the tribehold, Dindi stayed by her side all day, patting her head with a damp cloth and brewing her tea. Gwenika’s grandmother had fortunately packed the leaves in the travel basket.
“I don’t know why Gwena hates me so much.”
“Shhh,” said Dindi, dabbing Gwenika’s tear-stained and rash-red cheeks with a cloth. “Just rest as much as you’re able.”
Thinking of Gwena reminded Dindi of the corncob doll. The thing was definitely a menace. Just touching it appeared to set off the magic Visions. But what could she do to protect herself from the doll? She couldn’t just throw it away…
“They’re coming for me again,” Gwenika whispered. “The yeech.”
The ugly Yellow fae rode rats that scampered in the thatch of the lodge roof. A line of them crawled furtively down a wooden post, toward the girls. Unlike most fae, they didn’t want to be seen. If she looked directly, she saw nothing but the thatch and the post, but if she cocked her head, she could see the flicker of light out of the corner of her eye. As before, the yeech were following a trail of yellow light.
“It looks like something is leading them to you,” said Dindi.
Gwenika bit her lip and Dindi could tell that the same thought had already occurred to her. Then she did a double take.
“You can see them too?”
“Just a little—like a flickering candle. Do you want more of your grandmother’s brew?”
Dindi pored some more from the clay jar in the hearth into a bowl, but Gwenika pushed it away.
“No, it’s too bitter.” Suddenly, Gwenika sat up. She grabbed Dindi’s wrist. “What if I’ve been wrong all along? What if it wasn’t my sister? What if it was my grandmother?”
“Why would your grandmother hex you?”
“She and my m other were always arguing. She thought that my mother shouldn’t push both of us to be Tavaedies. One Tavaedi in the family was enough. What if she didn’t want to kill me, only to keep me from becoming a Tavaedi?”
Dindi considered. “Maybe we could follow the yellow rope of light to see where it leads.”
“Yes!” Gwenika chewed her lip. “Unless it leads to a horrible troll as tall as a tree who eats us.”
“If a troll eats a sick person, does it make the troll sick?”
“I’d rather not find out.”
The snakes of yellow light bit into golden aura around Gwenika’s body. Her aura, Dindi thought, recalling what she had seen in the Vision. They followed the thickest strand of light up the post and across the room. Gwenika could see it much more clearly than Dindi, who saw only a flicker. They had to climb into the rafters of the lodge.
“Are you sure you can do this?” Dindi asked.
“It will probably kill me,” said Gwenika. “There’s still time to talk me out of it.”
They followed the shimmery trail of light all the way down the lodge, creeping from beam to beam in the framework. The golden rope led down again and then back across the floor to the other side, then climbed once more into the rafters, then across the room…
“The fiend is clever,” huffed Gwenika. “She’s hiding her handiwork and leading us in circles!”
“Gwenika!” Dindi stopped in her tracks so abruptly the other girl bumped into her from behind. “Don’t you see what’s going on here? The strands of light are coming from you. That’s why we’re climbing in circles. Your aura is shining so brightly it’s attracting the yeech. You hexed yourself!”
She gently reached to massage Gwenika’s shoulders and neck, the area where the cords of light seemed thickest. The aura flexed and twisted under her touch. Now Dindi saw that there were several other colors embedded in the aura, just slivers, outshone by the gold, but still there. Gentle movements of her hands over Gwenika’s back strengthened the other colors. The yellow strings fell away.
The yeech howled in frustration. Without the path of light, they weren’t able to proceed any further. Hissing and growling, they skittered away.
Gwenika batted her hands away. “Leave me alone! If you don’t believe how sick I am, you could have just said so. You didn’t have to pretend to believe me and then say it was all my fault. You sound just like my mother!”
“Maybe your mother is right. You have to figure out what you’re doing to yourself and stop it. I know how terrible I would feel if anything made me miss my chance to be a Tavaedi. I wouldn’t want that to happen to you either.”
“I hope I’m not chosen. All my life, it’s all I’ve heard, you have to be a Tavaedi, you have to be a Tavaedi, and I’m sick of it!”
Gwenika clapped her hand over her own mouth. “Oh!”
Brena
“Each of you will be Tested for magic upon the Tor of the Stone Hedge,” Zavaedi Brena instructed her flock. By tradition, none were the Initiates she’d arrived with, so she could not show favoritism toward her own kin. Elsewhere, in front of the longhouses, other Tavaedies gave similar instructions to other groups of adolescents. “Those of you who have magic will learn the secrets of the Tavaedies. The rest of you will learn the responsibilities of manhood and womanhood. For some lessons, all three groups will assemble together; otherwise, Tavaedies, warriors and maidens will meet separately.
“Wear your totem doll on a cord around your neck,” she added. “You will present it after the Testing to whomever will be your new teacher, and receive a totem of adulthood in turn.”
She shooed the Initiates into two long columns, boys and girls, to trek from the Tor of the Initiates to the Tor of the Stone Hedge. They wore their tribal colors. Also, they had to don again the blindfolds and submit to having their hands tied behind their backs.
Though she kept sharp watch over her assigned charges, Brena also glanced from time to time at her daughters, who were in another group. Tension knotted her belly like labor cramps. She suspected she was more nervous than they were. The night of her own Initiation had been the worst and best of her life. She forced herself to take deep breaths.
Three rings of menhirs, upright slabs of granite, formed concentric circles on the flat summit of the hill. If one looked closely, one could see strange symbols etched into the stones. No one knew what the glyphs represented or who had put them there. It was believed that the Aelfae had built the circle of stones, and inscribed them, but others said the Brundorfae had done it, and others, that the Deathsworn had built the monument. Some said all three shared in the b
uilding of the rings, one ring each.
The Zavaedies and Tavaedies in charge of the Initiates rolled away a huge stone from a hole in the ground. They drove the blindfolded children down the hole, into the darkness. Remembering again her own Initiation, the stark fear, the chill close brush of death, then warm stroking hands, Brena’s stomach roiled. Oh, my daughters, I’m sorry. You have to face the darkness on your own.
Once the last child had descended into the dark, the adults rolled the stone back over the hole, sealing them under the earth. They took their position just inside the innermost ring of stones, to begin their long vigil.
Rthan
Rthan and his men slipped the canoe into the river. He leaped in first. The warriors climbed in and crouched behind him. All were dressed in full war regalia. Meira, his daughter who was not his daughter, glowed blue from her seat in the prow, where she leaned on the graven head of the war canoe. She looked so small and out of place, like a child playing where she didn’t belong.
As if sensing his continued reticence, she turned to him with his daughter’s solemn face. “Never forget what they did to me and mama.”
He saw again the hideously charred bodies, burnt and twisted. He didn’t need her reminders or her faery games.
“It wasn’t you they murdered.” He reminded himself more than her, not from disloyalty but for his sanity’s sake. Of late, he found it easier and easier to forget who she really was. “You’re immortal.”
“I speak for her because she can never again speak for herself.” The blue faery child didn’t flinch. “Will you avenge me, Daddy?”
He tightened his grip on the oars and maneuvered the boat into the swiftest part of the current. He could hear the water slapping the sides of other boats setting out from shore, an entire war party. The glow from her body illuminated the moonless night, highlighting ripples on the black waters.
“I will avenge you, Meira, I swear it,” he said.
Kavio
Kavio noted the changes to the Tors of Yellow Bear since his first visit eight years ago. It had seemed bigger then—he’d only been ten years old—but that was the distortion of a child’s awe. He remembered running down the crazy, curvy paths between the beehive shaped houses, first in play, again after the old man tried to kill him. He recalled the jingle of gold bangles on the ankles and wrists of Hertio’s daughter Lulla and the smell of the boiling nuggets from the smelting ovens.
Beyond the tors, across the river, the land sloped up into a forest of giant sequoias. The oaks and sycamores at their knees bowed before them like conquered warriors. His father’s army had camped on those slopes, keen to make peace but prepared to wage war. Finally, he made himself look at the Unfinished Tor, where he had killed another human being for the first time, and almost started that war.
He could still feel the old man’s breath on his neck, stinking of beer and rotted teeth, shouting, Your father murdered my son, and I will pay his deathdebt with your blood. It was the first time Kavio had met anyone who did not regard his father as a savior, and after that terrible day, and the terrible night one moon later, upon the Tor of the Stone Hedge, he had never looked at his father the same way again.
In Yellow Bear, Kavio had known terror, humiliation and disillusionment, he’d spilled human blood, and been abandoned to die as a slave. It felt like home. If Hertio would welcome him—by no means a certain thing—did he dare settle here? His allies expected him to appeal to Yellow Bear for assistance. His enemies no doubt expected it too. Deep in his gut, he had an uneasy premonition that if he stayed here it would cost blood; no last minute human sacrifice would stave off war this time.
I’m sorry Yellow Bear. I must pass you by, he bid the tribehold, and turned his feet south to follow the river downstream, toward the ocean.
The valley of the Tors was large enough that by evening, Kavio could still see the final tor, the Tor of the Stone Hedge. Along the river, bomas for lookout scouts, made from wood and branches, guarded the tribehold from strangers like him. Several of these scouts noted his progress, but did not challenge him when they saw he was alone and skirting around the edge of the valley.
Toward midnight, they stopped watching him and looked in another direction. Following their interest, he saw two columns of tiny figures walk up the hill, the leaders holding torches against the darkness.
The Initiation, he thought. In the Labyrinth, it was slightly different. It took place in the stone maze beneath the tribehold. Nonetheless, he recognized the ceremony. His own Initiation had not been but three years ago. Unwillingly, his thoughts skipped to the young Initiate girl, Dindi. Let it be, he warned himself. It’s no use casting nets where you can’t fish. Spurred on by that unhappy thought, he decided to press on without camping for the night.
The new moon shed little light on the river at his side, but in the distance, other lights sparkled on the river like sapphire glitter. Coming upstream. Kavio tensed. The lights must be on boats. Who would be boating upstream in the middle of the night? Illuminated by what? Torchlights?
No, he realized. Fae lights. That eerie blue iridescence looked nothing like the yellow-orange of ordinary fire.
He crept closer, crouched behind river reeds for concealment. The lights were still far downstream, but he could make out the silhouettes of bark-sided boats with carved wooden prows. Blue fae perched on top of each of the prows, their phantasmagoric faces uglier than the carvings meant to represent them. Behind the fae, each boat contained one Tavaedi in blue regalia, and a handful of tattooed bare-chested, muscular warriors.
Blue Waters tribesmen, obviously. What was their goal? What could they hope to achieve? Kavio expected to hear the ram’s horn sounded from one of the boma towers, but the lookouts appeared not to notice the boats.
The same fae light that reveals them to me, conceals the intruders from them, Kavio realized. The Yellow Bear scouts could not see the Blue, which meant that the Blue Waters warriors could hit at least one target quickly before Yellow Bear could muster its own warriors in defense. Where? Oh. Of course. They must know that tonight is the Initiation. Two hundred vulnerable captives, perfect hostages…half of them girls just on the brink of womanhood.
Kavio almost stumbled with relief when he saw a sept of Yellow Bear warriors rushing to meet him.
“We haven’t much time,” he gasped between heavy breaths, “We must intercept them before they attain the high ground of the tor…”
The warriors aimed their spears at him. The sept leader chewed a leaf, supremely unalarmed. “Throw down your weapons and come with us.”
“Are you mad? I’m not your enemy. Your enemy is attacking the Tor of the Stone Hedge! They’re trying to capture the Initiates!”
“I don’t see any enemy but you.”
“Boats are coming up the river…”
“Our scouts would have seen them. They saw only you. Why were you running toward our tribehold?”
“To warn you, you squash-headed buffoons…”
The sept-leader punched Kavio in the gut just as two warriors to either side of him grabbed his arms. He resisted the urge to fight his way free. If he bashed their skulls together, it would make his point more difficult to convey.
“I’m on your side,” he repeated. “I’m from the Rainbow Labyrinth, I’m an ally.”
“We’ll let Hertio decide that,” said the sept-leader.
“There’s no time, there could be a massacre by then!”
The sept-leader curled his lip. “Sure.” Several of the warriors snickered. “Take him. If he fights, kill him.”
Dindi
You never forget the night of your Initiation.
Always, you are taken by force. By now you know the rough hands twisting your arms and blindfolding you belong to your own kinsmen, but this doesn’t reassure you, since by now, also, you have heard the other Initiates whisper legends that some children will die during the rite. The tribe has no use for the weak.
Switches, whittled from green sap
lings, strong and springy, sting the back of your thighs to herd you down stone steps, into some kind of underground cavern. The stone beneath your bare feet is unhewn, too rough for a kiva. The chamber narrows, until you have to crawl, but your hands are tied behind your back, so you writhe like a worm. Gravel grinds under your belly and cuts up your knees.
You aren’t aware of faint light at the edges of your blindfold until even that tiny splinter of light is extinguished. The darkness that follows is so heavy it feels like a rock sitting on your chest. The breathing of the Initiates around you merges into a single rhythm of in-breath and out-breath, as if the cave itself gasped and heaved.
They’ve put a stone over the hole, someone whimpers.
Hush, whisper a dozen others. Initiates are not permitted to talk.
A hiss and the pungent smell of urine. No one admits to pissing themselves, but sniggers and curses lash out against the unseen coward. Disembodied conversations turn into a competition between complainers and those trying to enforce the rule of silence.
Hours of dark teach you to see shapes in sound. You assign faces from memory to a cough, a murmur, a hum. Like bloated rats, bodies skritch past, using one another at guideposts, and you feel the passage of someone’s long hair across your shoulder, the press of bone beads from a costume into your arm. When you find yourself squeezed too tightly between an unwashed boy and the ticklish smell of bobbing feathers from a girl’s headdress, you wriggle yourself free. By now, no one obeys the stricture against silence, so you add your voice to the coos in the darkness, seeking friends. You find Gwenika.
You snuggle back to back against your friend, so you can untie each other’s bindings. Thereafter you stay side by side, hand in hand, despite the heat. For the cave is sweltering, not cold as you generally expect caves to be. Reaching up, you feel the ceiling right above you where you crouch; you could not stand if you tried. There are over a hundred bodies crushed into a cave no higher than a badger. The stench of urine is stronger now, but the sweat is even more overpowering. The spicy breath from someone who mangles your knee as he crawls by makes your stomach roil. It is a sign of how hungry you are that even this foul reminder brings to mind stacks of round, flat bread freshly toasted in the oven and piled with cheese, beans and onions.