Conmergence: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction

by Maya, Tara

  Writing, just like theater, is a performance. It’s a just a dress rehearsal until you put it before an audience. I was in a bind because I couldn’t let it go until I could let it play. But no one would let me on stage.

  Then came the worst blow. I was told that I was not a fit match for my graduate program. My interests were "too broad" for a PhD candidate. When I received this news, I was a week away from giving birth to my third son, a child we could not afford. The economy had done a swan dive, we owed more on our house than it was worth, and our outgo was exceeding our income every month. At this point, I had failed at everything. I failed at my childhood dream of being a novelist and I failed at my adult dream of being an academic. I had failed myself, and I failed my family. Suicide offered a romantic way out, but was neither practical nor fair. It was just another form of running away, and running away was no longer an option.

  Tomorrow We Dance

  1. Vexation

  The Bone Whistler’s name evokes nothing but terror and revulsion now, so it is hard to explain to those who had not yet been born what he meant to us back then.

  As a child of five, six, seven years old, I herded aurochsen for our family. When my brother Vumo was old enough, he helped me. We lived in a three-room adobe house in the tribehold on top of a mesa in a large desert valley cut by a river. We knew we lived at the center of the world; we knew our tribe was the most important people in the world . On festival days, my father and mother, and my mother’s sister and her husband, and all my siblings and cousins, joined the crowds in the central plaza of the tribehold to watch the Tavaedi dancers. To the beat of drums and the whistle of flutes, they danced magic. Each Tavaedi wore the mask and elaborate costume dyed in one of the six Chroma, and even back then, before I knew I had magic, I could see the ribbons of colored light they wove as they danced. Most people could not.

  I was there the day of the celebration of our final victory over the faery Aelfae. We had fought them for millennia, and finally, invited the last of them to a feast to make peace. It was a trick. When our clever War Chief gave the signal, our Tavaedies and Zavaedies, who are also warriors, rose up, and slaughtered all of the Aelfae, the last of their kind. Their bodies turned to dust.

  And on this day, we all celebrated.

  Our War Chief, who danced the rain, and our Vaedi, who danced the rainbow, performed the victory tama to bless our animals, crops and tribe. They danced together as gracefully as two eagles soared in the sky. He caught her by the waist and spun and twirled her, and then, toward the end of the dance, the culmination of the tama that would bless us, a flute hit the wrong note, he threw her into the air…

  …and did not catch her.

  She fell on the adobe stage, and her head twisted backwards against her neck. Her blood made a dark mark on the white clay.

  #

  We boys were among the first to notice when our aurochsen began to sicken. At first, it did not seem too bad, just a dry, husky cough. It worsened, however. Soon the aurochsen began to cough pinkish spittle—speckles of blood. Within a few weeks, their whole bodies would shake and heave each time they coughed out huge clots of blood and phlegm.

  They suffered diarrhea and could no longer eat. Toward the end, they looked more like skeletons than living beasts. Their eyes rolled up from the agony of their suffering, their muzzles frothed with saliva, and after weeks more of this agony, they died. The meat of such beasts was inedible—it was as though they had rotted from the inside out.

  Nor were our aurochsen the only ones to suffer. Anyone whose aurochs began to cough immediately traded it away for a healthy beast, or even for goats or peccaries, and as the diseased aurochsen spread through trade and travel, so too did the blood-cough.

  We plied the Tavaedies with gifts, and asked them to dance a cure to save our herds. But though they took our gifts, they could not cure our aurochsen.

  Only a new Vaedi could cleanse the blood that had been spilled. Otherwise, the old Vaedi’s blood would continue to cry for vengeance through the lives of our cattle. But there were no more girls who danced all six Chromas, and the Tavaedi secret societies could not agree on which of their dancers deserved to be the new Vaedi.

  In the meantime, we did what we could to salvage our herds. For the matriarchs of the tribehold decreed that the only way to stop the hex from spreading was to sacrifice all the cattle in any infected herd.

  My parents split up our herd into thirds and sent them to different pastures. I watched one herd, my brother Vumo another, and my sister, Gia and cousin Loola, the final herd. In my herd and my sister’s, a few of the aurochsen began to cough, and soon to cough blood. Vumo’s herd stayed clean. My father said we must kill the two herds that were infected, every head, to protect the one good herd. I loved those beasts and cried when I heard the decree.

  My mother’s younger sister and her husband and their two daughters also lived with us, and their aurochsen grazed with ours. My uncle did not want his aurochsen killed. He was sure that those who weren’t coughing could be saved. So he ordered his daughters, Loola and Herba, to secretly move the healthy aurochsen from the condemned herds into the healthy herd. My sister Gia found out and told Vumo and me, so all we children knew about my uncle’s scheme. Still, we stuck together and helped him move the cattle in the night.

  My uncle acted from his greed on his own behalf, and we from our generosity on the poor beasts’ behalf, but both greed and generosity had the same effect. The aurochsen we thought clean had been infected, and no sooner moved, began to cough. We killed them, but too late. They had brought the blood-cough to the herd that had been clean. If we had done as my father ordered, we might have kept a third of our original herd alive. As it was, we lost all but nine cows, out of a hundred.

  All across the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehold, other clans suffered similarly. Some saved as many as half of their herds, but few more than that. And as clans took their herds and fled the tribehold for clanholds in the hinterland, the hex spread ever outward, until there was no clan in the whole tribe who did not fear the blood-cough. Clanholds began to shoot arrows at any visitors who traveled with aurochsen.

  To add to our misery, the dead cattle, whose corpses, remember, could not be eaten, were often left out on the hills to rot. An army of rats rose to gnaw on the bones left by the larger predators. Many of these rats also began to destroy the crops in the fields, so now, having lost our meat and milk, we were also in danger of losing our bread and beans.

  And still, the Tavaedies could not decide on a Vaedi! In their secret underground rooms, they bickered and dithered, and sought their own advancement, while we ordinary people desperately needed strong leadership.

  Then he arrived.

  The Bone Whistler.

  2. Eradication

  When the Bone Whistler first arrived at the tribehold, he was greeted with neither acclaim nor scorn, for he was just another vagabond from the countryside. As the blood-cough spread throughout the land, many such scraggly types fled to the tribehold, expecting us to have the magic to solve their problems. They were disillusioned to know that we were the source of their troubles, not the solution.

  The Bone Whistler soon proved different. He was young in those days, handsome, according to the women folk, and undeniably charming. He wore the attire and title of a Zavaedi, although he never said with whom he had studied or which clan he called home. Since he wore all white, even then, no one ever knew what Chroma he danced. When asked by other Tavaedies what his Chroma was, he told them he danced "Sulula," but, he added, only the most powerful dancers could perceive such a subtle hue. Most people laughed at this nonsense, but others were baffled. Sulula? Did he mean Red or Blue or Green? Did he have six Chromas, or three or one? His detractors said he had no colors at all.

  He spoke with a strange accent; some said he wasn’t even of our tribe. He had no wife, but he did have a little daughter, just eight or nine she must have been, when he first arrived. Unlike her jolly father, she never smiled, b
ut in those days, we seldom saw her.

  He had his bone flute from the first. However, either it did not yet have the power it later had, or he chose not to show the reach of his ambition so early. In either case, he used the flute only to play and dance in the back alleys of the tribehold, the narrow passages between blocks of adobe houses, where midden piles churned the orange clay ground to reeking mud. Rats crawled over the filth, fighting beggars for the scraps thrown from the rooftops of the better-off, yet his cape was always clean, bright white.

  He was kind and humble. He had a sense of humor. Above all, he feared nothing. In that time of great fear, people drew close to him to bask in his fearlessness. And he encouraged them. If there were destitute people who could not afford to give gifts to the Tavaedies, he agreed to dance magic for them for whatever scrap they could give. The poor people of the tribehold loved him for this, and to the same extent as their love, the Tavaedies hated him.

  I was there when they finally confronted him. A crowd gathered when we saw the Zavaedies and Tavaedies, fully masked and armed, marching through the streets. We knew they must be going to confront the Bone Whistler. We children pushed to the front of that crowd, so I saw and heard everything.

  "Strange Zavaedi," said the old Rain Dancer, husband to the Vaedi who had died. He seemed tired and afraid. It was said he had not danced since his wife’s death. He was the one who had dropped her, and though it was an accident, many blamed him. Maybe he blamed himself. He looked shriveled and sounded shrew. "Your mother’s clan is not known to us, nor did any of our societies give you leave to dance magic here."

  The Bone Whistler smiled. His eyes twinkled. Yet he answered politely. "Zavaedies, do not be angry at me for helping those you have already refused."

  The crowd loved his audacity. We laughed and cheered.

  The Rain Dancer’s neck flushed red under his wooden mask. "You must leave at once."

  "By whose order?" asked the Bone Whistler. He raised his arms to beseech the people. "Is this your will? Do you want me to leave at once?"

  "No!" cried many voices from the crowd.

  My brother Vumo and I exchanged a look.

  "Can they make him leave?" asked Vumo.

  "I don’t know," I said. Anger swelled in me at the injustice.

  "These people have no say," said the Rain Dancer, gesturing at all of us, the common people. "It is a matter for the secret societies to decide."

  "That’s not fair!" shouted Vumo, along with many other boos and catcalls.

  "No, no, it’s quite alright," said the Bone Whistler, still smiling. "I understand the Rain Dancer’s fear. What proof do you have that I am a Zavaedi, that I have earned my Shining Name?"

  "That was not—" began the Rain Dancer, but the Bone Whistler kept going.

  "I will prove it, with a simple tama. I will rid the whole tribehold and surrounding valley of the plague of rats." He beamed at the Rain Dancer and the armed Tavaedies behind him. "Surely then you must agree that I am who I say I am."

  My brother and I and the other children began to jump up and down with excitement, for we were the main ones who had to fight off the rats with sticks and slings. The adults took their cues from us. "Yes! Yes! Rid us of the rats!"

  The Rain Dancer pursed his lips on sour defeat. He could not refuse to let the Bone Whistler try a spell that the Tavaedies had not been able to do. He conferred with the masked men and women behind them. When he turned back to the Bone Whistler, he sounded sly.

  "We don’t wish to let you try such a difficult spell by yourself. What if you make matters worse?"

  "You lot aren’t doing it!" cried the crowd, and, "Give him his chance!" and "Yes, let him prove it!"

  "Very well, be let it be noted that we warned you," said the Rain Dancer. "We were planning to do it ourselves—"

  The crowd shouted out in derision.

  "And no one will be happier if you succeed," continued the Rain Dancer. "But, in view of the risk, there must be some penalty if you fail. If you are as great a Zavaedi as you claim, then you will be willing to accept our terms, which are these: If even so much as a single rat remains after you perform your spell, you must concede failure, and you must leave our tribehold."

  The fickle crowd agreed with this judgment too, and the Rain Dancer raised his arms to accept their hollers of accord.

  "I will give you a day to decide," he told the Bone Whistler smugly, apparently in the hope that the upstart would sneak out in the middle of the night like a coward.

  "I don’t need a day, or even an hour," the Bone Whistler said, as unafraid as he had always been. "I will do it now."

  The crowd cheered.

  Then and there, he lifted the bone flute to his lips. He played and danced. Never had I heard a note so true, so pure. Everyone stilled to give homage to the haunting music. Even we boys stopped our heckling and roughhousing in a shock of transported emotion.

  I was concentrating so hard on the flute song that I can’t remember when I first noticed the squeaks and skittering. It wasn’t until I felt something furry scrape my ankle that I saw the rats. I yowled and hit one with a stick. But more came.

  Screams curdled the multitude. Individuals peeled away from the crowd, fleeing the oncoming streams of rats.

  The rats looked as though they might attack the Bone Whistler, so eagerly did they run toward him from all directions. They climbed down adobe walls, scaled up out of stone wells, jumped from gourds and baskets hanging from balconies, and scrambled out of piles of rubbish between houses. Yet, just when they reached him, they paused, sat back on their haunches, and stared up at him. Soon they encircled him, pressed as closely as they could to one another, yet leaving him an arm’s length of clearance in a circle all around. Their little brown heads tilted back to watch him, their whiskers bobbed with the music, as rapt an audience as one could ask.

  The humans had to back away to make room for the rats. Most people’s reaction wavered between admiration and horror. For me and the other young ones, however, there was no hesitation. The Bone Whistler had just become our most cherished hero.

  He winked at me. At me!

  "Did you see that? Was he looking at us?" Vumo asked me excitedly.

  The Bone Whistler skipped away, still dancing and playing his flute. The rats made way for him, and they followed him.

  All through the streets of the tribehold he skipped and danced and played the bone flute, calling the rats to him. A group of boys, Vumo and myself included, ran after the rats, though we had to stay farther and farther behind.

  By the time the Bone Whistler skipped out the front gate of the tribehold, we could only see a tiny silhouette at the head of a seething mass of fur and tails.

  We stood at the edge of the mesa outside the tribehold wall, watching this tiny figure in white lead a swarm of rats, numerous as a herd of aurochsen, out across the valley floor all the way to the edge of the box canyon, where the river cut the rock.

  The Bone Whistler stood alone on a high boulder over the river. We could no longer hear the music of the flute, but we could see the impact his dance and song had upon the rats. In wave after wave, they threw themselves over the edge of the rocks, into the white water.

  The sun set, and the rats kept coming. Moonglow saw more waves of suicidal rats, a flood that slowed to a stream and finally to a trickle of stragglers. The mighty river patiently bore away the corpses all day and all night. Dawn found the river clean and sparkling and every last rat gone.

  Vumo and I told our families about the miracle magic of the Bone Whistler. Other children must have done the same. All the tribehold prepared to greet him as if he were a victor in a war—which, in a way, he was. The secret societies must have realized that they could not turn him out now. They tried to co-opt the celebration instead. They provided a feast for all the people in the Grand Plaza. As usual, my brother and I squirmed in where we didn’t belong, to watch our hero from underneath the dancer’s platform.

  In the middle of t
he feast, the Rain Maker stood up to give a speech.

  "Bone Whistler, you promised that if even one rat remained in the tribehold, you would concede defeat and quit our hold."

  "I have driven every last rat into the river," said the Bone Whistler. "I kept my word and proved my power."

  "I think not," said the Rain Maker. He threw something down. It raced down the center of the eating mat until it found a choice morsel to nibble. Several women screamed. "A rat! A rat!"

  The Bone Whistler scowled. The geniality he had always shown before tore at the edges, hinting at a depth of fury and hatred I could barely comprehend.

  "You withheld that rat deliberately." He stood up. He said, in a cold and terrible voice, "You will regret betraying me."

  Then he turned to us, the common people.

  "There is a great magic," he said. "Older than this world, stronger than death. I know you have lost cattle. But this magic can bring back the aurochsen. I know you have lost loved ones. But this magic can resurrect the dead."

  "Blasphemy!" The Rain Maker pounded the feast mat. "No magic can do that! No Chroma is stronger than the call of the Black Lady!"

  "No Chroma known to you," sneered the Bone Whistler. "But there is a color you have never heard of before, a color stronger than all the others. It is not Red or Blue, Yellow or Green, Purple or Orange. It is a new Chroma! The color of Sulula."

  "Never has anyone heard such nonsense! There is no color called Sulula!"

  "There is," said the Bone Whistler. "Only those pure of heart can see it. But there is a way to let everyone see Sulala, which will bring the dead back to life. And I know how! Whoever wants to see the secret color and resurrect the dead must follow me."