Teeth of the Gods

by Sarah K. L. Wilson

  I kept my eyes on Rusk, watching as the noon light highlighted the curves and lines of his muscles. When the sun caught on his eyelashes they looked longer than a man’s should be and his eyes were deep and thick like honey. It was hard to hate him for being nearby when my mother died—not now that I knew how easy it was to be part of a killing you never intended. Maybe he had been as incapable of stopping my mother’s death as I had been of stopping Toure’s.

  “Your generation has forgotten almost everything. Even the generations that came before you forgot much. Olimpia. Evereed. Betina.” As she said their names my other ancestors appeared again. I gasped, arrested from watching Rusk and focused now on the women who had tried so hard to help me. “They also forgot. I am angered that they forgot and did not teach you wisdom. They have grown casual in their teaching of our young and now we find ourselves in a place of peril with none to step up and answer for the promise.”

  My three ancestors bowed their heads, not meeting my eyes.

  “Nana Olimpia?” I asked.

  “Do not speak to them,” An’alepp said. “They are a disgrace. And you more so! You have forgotten everything. You do not remember true freedom. You believe existence and wisdom begin and end with you. Foolish. How will I break you of this foolishness? You do not possess the tools to do the work before you. You cannot do the most simple of things—wield your link to the Common without killing those around you.”

  “It’s not simple!” I argued. “No one else calls forth lightning.”

  “And why not?” An’alepp asked. “In my day, it was as common as sneezing and now here you are, snivelling that it is so difficult. Enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I will take your training in hand and these three will watch and learn what they have failed to accomplish.”

  “I don’t have time to train. I must find the Teeth of the Gods,” I said. If she thought she could ‘wring’ me like Amandera did, she could think again!

  “Exactly. All the more reason to train. And I will tell you where the Teeth are.”

  My eyes grew wide. “Were you one of those who hid them?”

  She scoffed. “How old do you think I am, girl?”

  “As old as the Teeth.”

  She grunted. “The Gods laid a path and you will follow that.”

  “If they laid a path, then why has no one found it?” I objected.

  From across the palanquin, Rusk finished his work and turned to me.

  “We must talk,” he said, “about your heartlessness.”

  I sighed.

  “I think I will need to find my own way,” I said to An’alepp.

  “Nonsense. You will follow the signs and the path that has been set for you.”

  “Tylira,” Rusk started again. “You must listen to me.”

  “I’ll go my own way, An’alepp,” I said, trying to finish my conversation with her.

  “Headstrong and stupid. We didn’t put you in this place to lose you to your own foolishness.”

  “You didn’t put me anywhere! I had to push everyone and everything out of my way to get here!”

  She laughed, and her laughter continued to echo in my head as she faded away and only Rusk was left there staring at me with eyes equally pleading and hostile.

  “I am not heartless or headstrong,” I said to him, crossing my arms over my chest.

  He ran a hand over his head. “You killed your own armsman and showed no remorse. Listen, you may be as heartless as you wish inside, but you must at least pretend to care or you will not be able to inspire your troops to loyalty. And my sisters will be killed because I couldn’t teach you anything.”

  My forehead wrinkled as he spoke.

  “You want me to lie?”

  “If you must,” he said earnestly. “Your success depends on it.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You really think that I don’t care? Why teach me to lead well if you think I don’t care?”

  His face flushed and his scowl deepened as if he were struggling to contain his emotions. “The lives of my sisters depend on your ability to learn from me. Please accept my wisdom.”

  “You think I’m some kind of monster!” I said. “That’s completely unfair! It was an accident! I didn’t mean to kill Toure. I didn’t mean to kill the man in the caravan.”

  He held out his hands, palms down, making a supressing motion. “I’m merely advising you.”

  “Why would you think that of me?” I asked. As if he had a right to judge! “You’ve been watching me all this time. You saw how Amandera treated me, and how hard I’ve been fighting to be free. Did I ever kill someone intentionally in that time? Did I hurt anyone intentionally? It was an accident!”

  “Tazminera,” he said, not ‘Tylira’ this time. There was an edge to his voice like he was trying to stay calm and was barely able to. “Your honored father holds my young sisters as hostage. He will not hesitate to kill them for no reason except that I displease him.”

  “I’m not trying to get your sisters killed,” I argued, almost yelling in my frustration. “I’m not trying to kill anyone. I just want to be free!”

  “I’m begging you to please listen,” he said, almost panicked.

  “What do you think I’m going to do? Do you think I’ll kill you? The High Tazmin won’t do anything to your sisters. It’s just a threat to make you do what you’re told.”

  Rusk leapt to his feet, he was trembling so much that I worried for a moment he would fall right out of the palanquin. “He killed Ajur...little Ajur who loved bunnies and pictures in the clouds. He was crying when they ripped him from my arms and hacked him to pieces before my eyes.”

  He sank back down to the seat, and now he was crying, fat tears splashing from his eyes and landing on his hands and knees as he leaned forward. He had to wipe his nose with the back of his hand and his words were thick. “My brother.”

  I bit my lip. I felt like crying, too. My mother.

  “That’s what you think of me? That I want your family dead?”

  “Don’t you?” he asked, his head whipping up and hate in his eyes. “When I met you I thought you were innocent of all that. I thought you were just as trapped as me, but now I see the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “That you’re as heartless as her!”

  “As who?”

  “Your mother!”

  I felt like I’d been slapped. “What did she ever do to you?”

  “A lot more than little Ajur did to anyone!”

  “She did nothing. She was all I had except Alsoon. So don’t come to me with your sad stories!”

  “Do you want a sad story?” he asked, through his red eyes and quivering lips. It seemed wrong to see such a hard man weeping. “Our small nation was honored by a visitor. A tiny, lovely creature in brightly colored clothing with the scent of foreign perfumes and spices surrounding her wherever she went. Her voice was like a bell and whenever she spoke, she charmed those around her. So devoted to her were my mother and father that they brought her with them everywhere to see all of our land. With her they rode to the border to welcome visitors from her homeland. When the lights of their torches approached, she smiled so sweetly, and my mother smiled too. Her smile lasted no more than a second, for as soon as it lit her face, the tiny woman plunged a dagger in her belly and twisted it. As my mother screamed in agony that small fury sent the dagger flying into my father’s neck and as he gasped his final breath, she smiled. I see her smiling face each time yours lights up. I think of the orders of her royal husband each time you issue one of your own. Heartless? I wish I had a harsher word. I’d use that in its place.”

  I gasped. He spat out the side of the palanquin and settled down into the seat, folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. He was not asleep; his breathing was irregular and quick. He was simply done speaking to me.

  His words had sounded like truth. Even to me. My fingers wound around the tether between us and then twisted back the othe
r direction. Twisting, pulling, picking at the impenetrable bond that would bind us for many years to come—maybe forever. And my stomach was twisting too as I tried to reconcile his story with the sweet, smiling woman who had loved me from afar since my birth. And the man I had never met but who I had always believed was fair and just—my father.

  Chapter Twenty-One : Unweaving

  I sipped at my water and watched Rusk sleep. He was really asleep now, with heavy breathing and even a slight snore. He looked like he could break if I tried to shake him awake. His face grimaced in pain even as he slept—pain he blamed me for. Meanwhile we had an eight-foot metal tether would keep us side by side for years to come. I ground my teeth and held back my own tears.

  “Fool. Pining over a boy when you should be following the path we’ve set,” An’alepp said, materializing out of nowhere and flickering in and out, proving she was visible only to me.

  The meditation world superimposed itself over my world, semi-transparent so that I was experiencing both at once. An’alepp leaned over Rusk, staring at him for a moment as if she were going to sculpt him later and then she turned suddenly back to me.

  “He sleeps? Your body is safe enough here. Come into the meditation fully. We have work to do.”

  “I have my own business here,” I said, but as the words left my mouth my feet began to prickle with an itching fire and then the whole of my legs burned and itched. “What’s happening?”

  “Motivation,” An’alepp said, crossing her boney arms over her chest as her head scarf fluttered in the wind.

  Did everyone with a connection to the Common only use it to bully others? And why had no one told me that the dead could still reach into the world and torment me? I closed my eyes and shoved into the meditation.

  An’alepp sat cross-legged on a stack of hides in a woven tent. Light glowed through the tent’s woven sides and spread across the floor. It was so warm and calm I felt like sleeping and An’alepp’s wizened face had a look of serenity.

  “If I knew finding a connection to the source could let me inflict so much pain on my enemies maybe I would have tried harder,” I said lightly.

  “You tried as hard as you could. It was not motivation you lacked,” An’alepp said with a wry look. Behind her my former mentors appeared, Evereed, Olimpia and Betina. They looked sulky and would not meet my eyes. “These ones have told me as much. They gave up on you. Only our daughter Amandera and I, An’alepp of the Great Ships, have any confidence in you.”

  “Don’t talk to me about Amandera,” I said, crossing my arms angrily.

  “Oh, the tongue on this one, ordering her ancestor about while she still has no idea what her talent might be.”

  “I can raise lightnings!”

  “Ha. You should have kissed Amandera’s feet for wringing you, but even that was only the beginning,” An’alepp said and I paled. “She showed you that you have power, but the lightnings are not your power.”

  “Tell that to Toure,” I said bitterly.

  “Perhaps I shall. Do you think it will comfort him?” An’alepp said leaning her head to one side as she considered me. I paled. Did the dead speak to one another? How could I think otherwise with four of my ancestors standing before me? An’alepp’s laugh was a bit too like the crackling of a fire for my ease of mind.

  “Fine. It’s not the lightnings, but all that digging you had me do, what was the point of that?”

  “Now you can come and go in Ra’shara as you please. That is no small feat. And now we come to the next part. Even you, with your disrespect for your ancestors, might find this enlightening.”

  “If you want to teach me the theories of our common connection, then don’t bother. I know them already. The Common is what all people share—our collective unconscious—and through it we tap into the power of all the people who came before us. For good or for evil.”

  “And?” An’alepp prompted.

  “And there are many ways to tap into the Common and many ways to display that. Some girls speak to others in dreams or can produce a small shield or make you feel pain—as Amandera does to me—or heat a kettle for tea.”

  “And the threads you saw in Ra’shara?”

  “They are what Ra’shara is made of.”

  “Correction. They are what all of this is made of; both Ra’shara and the physical world. When a person taps into the Common they weave a little piece of Ra’shara into the living world and that is what the common people call magic—”

  “But they can only do it in a few specific, small ways.” I finished the age-old lecture. “Usually just two to five small ways for every girl—or big ways if you are powerful like Tazminera Amandera.” I remembered the stinging pain in my feet moments ago. “Or you.”

  “For the most part, yes.”

  “No, that’s it. That’s the whole theory.”

  “It is the whole theory taught to you. The whole theory as believed by the last five generations, but Tylira, memories are thin and people fade. Why do you think I was interested enough to try to help you? Why do you think Amandera was so keen to plumb your depths?”

  “You’re sadists,” I said. Was she implying that I had the ability to tap into something forgotten?

  “Perhaps, but we are also curators, eager to lay hold of a new—or perhaps I should say resurfaced—talent. Because you do not weave threads of Ra’shara into the land of the living.” Of course not. I knew this would end with me as a failure. “You do something much rarer. You unweave. You disassemble threads of this world and weave them into Ra’shara and you unweave Ra’shara and send the threads into your world—or you will when we are finished wringing your talent out of you. For now, you have been fumbling on your own and doing a great deal of damage.”

  “Well,” I said, shaking my head in irritation, “You’re right about the damage—dead right— but I haven’t been unweaving anything. I’ve been making lightning.”

  “Do you see what you’re doing with your hand?”

  I looked down. I was picking at the tether with the other hand, fussing with the snake-like links as if I could tease them apart.

  “So what?” I asked.

  “You do that with the world, picking at it unconsciously like you can take it apart.” I had been picking at the threads that very first time. “But the threads of reality are strong and slippery like the tentacles of a squid so you lose your grip and...kapow! The thread whips free and lightnings dance uncontrollably as power spills out in every direction. You need help to find your way.”

  My mouth fell open, but a sense of certainty slowly stole over me. She was right. She had just described exactly what was happening to me.

  “Have you known all along?”

  “No. I have been watching patiently. Unlike you, I am wise. I don’t go thrashing around like a bull caught in the thorns.”

  “I don’t thrash!”

  She ignored me. “And I don’t run away from obvious challenges.”

  “Tell me how to control this.”

  “The first step is to make you conscious of your actions. You will need to spend more of your time in both Ra’shara and the living world, paying careful attention to what you are doing in both so that you do not start to pick. I think I will set you a song to sing. You will sing it in both worlds at once one hundred times and will be careful to watch what is around you. Then we will see.”

  “A song?” Did she think I was crazy? Everyone else would if I sang it one hundred times in a row.

  “Yes. A song. Attend.”

  She sang that same song about rings and mountains again. The one that I’d heard her sing twice before. It had a sing-song quality like what you’d expect from someone who was going crazy.

  “Begin now,” An’alepp said, looking pleased.

  I opened my mouth, but the song froze on my lips. Between An’alepp and I, the air seemed to rip apart, and then Amandera was stepping her dainty foot through the rip with a smug smile on her perfect face.

  “Here y
ou are, Tylira,” she said with a toss of her head. “You didn’t really think I was going to let you race off on me like that, did you?”

  I glanced behind her for support but my ancestors had disappeared. Fair-weather friends. Who needed them and their dusty ways? This unravelling nonsense probably wasn’t real anyways. I definitely wasn’t going to sing that ridiculous song. And why had no one warned me that living people could find me in Ra’shara?

  “Here to haunt my dreams, Amandera? Because that’s all you can do.”

  “Actually, Tylira,” she said, with a cat-like smile. “You were coming along so nicely that I sent a letter to the High Tazmin and he was very pleased to hear about your potential...and that I would be bringing you to him in a fortnight.”

  “I guess you’ll have some explaining to do then, won’t you?” I said with a sneer. So, finally Amandera would look foolish. Excellent. I would have done all of this over again just to wipe the smug look off her face and make her squirm. Well, not Toure’s death obviously. I wouldn’t do that over again, but I’d do all the rest.

  “I don’t make apologies. I rectify situations. Here’s my proposal. Stop running. Remain with your armsmen and wait for us to arrive and there will be no bloodshed.”

  “I’m hunting for the Teeth of the Gods, Amandera, and I am protected from all who may try to stop me.”

  “But are your guards? Is your san’lelion? Your precious elephant?” She saw me flinch and stood straighter. “Swear you will accept this peaceably.”

  “I will not.”

  A sudden stab of pain pierced me and I screamed, writhing on the floor of the woven tent. A second stab seared through me, and I could see Amandera’s threads weaving as she rewrote reality and formed pain just for me. With a gasp, I seized at one of the threads, plucking the end lose. It squirmed and flipped around and I lost my grip. Amandera’s face took on a look of shock and then lightnings spread out all around me and everything went white.

  I awoke to the real world. Rusk’s eyes were inches from mine and he was shaking me.

  “Wake up! A dust cloud follows. Someone is pursuing us. Do you have any enemies? Anyone who would wish to see us dead?”