Conmergence: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction

by Maya, Tara

  Though I had not yet reached the age of Initiation, I wore white war paint and a skull mask. Both believers and doubters scrambled to please me when they saw me coming. I could walk into a stranger’s house and demand a blanket, a basket, a beer, whatever I wanted, and it would be given to me with obsequious smiles. I learned to swagger. My stomach was full of meat, and my head was full of myself.

  Then Vumo and I heard disturbing news. Our parents remained among the doubters. Another sept of boys had identified my father and tagged his house, but one of the boys knew he was our father and warned us. We had to set him straight.

  Vumo and I went to my parent’s house. We found my mother, father, and sister huddled inside, terrified, for they saw our skull masks and did not know us.

  "It’s me, father," I said, sliding the mask back up on my head.

  My father responded by shouting insults at me. My mother and sister calmed him down, and forced him to sit still and listen to my plea.

  "Father, I am not here to force you to do anything. I have not even come here to ask you to change your mind." I knelt before him. "I have come to beg you to change your heart. I have heard the prophecy from the Vaedi herself. I believe it. I beg you to believe it to. A better world is waiting for us, if we but have the courage to reach for it. We have to have faith. We cannot hold onto the soiled things of this day and the pure things of the new day at the same time. To catch the bounty about to be given us, we must let go of what we are now clutching so tightly."

  "Boy, never have I heard such foolishness. How can I believe in something I can’t see?"

  "Father, do you remember when the blood-cough plague was spreading? You split our herd into three parts. When aurochsen in two of those showed signs of the blood-cough, you ordered us to kill all the beasts in those two parts. If we had listened, we would have saved a third of our herd. Instead, we tried to spare some of the aurochsen, because we could see no disease in them, and we didn’t believe in what we couldn’t see. We were wrong before, you are wrong now. I am asking you to believe. This whole world is diseased, but by letting go of it, we will save the best of all."

  Tears came to my father’s eyes. He clasped me to him. Much more was said that night, but all I remember is my fierce joy. I had changed his mind. I had saved him.

  Meanwhile, to protect themselves from our attacks, other doubters began to disguise themselves as believers. During the day, they would travel to the clanhold with the Bone Whistler to attend our rallies.

  "We see Sulula! We see Sulula!" they would shout, louder than the rest. Then, at night, they would go home and tend their secret gardens and sequester their herds in hidden fields high in the hills. We called them night-hoarders, those who tried to hoard food. They were ghastly, selfish people. They cared only about keeping themselves and their families alive, they didn’t care their skepticism could destroy the new day for all of us.

  We had an antidote for the poison of hypocrisy. The Bone Whistler’s daughter, Nangi, had the uncanny ability to eat people’s thoughts and tell the taste of their thinking. Even as an Initiate, she was terribly ugly. Her teeth were crooked, her face acne-scarred and she always hunched and scowled. Everyone pretended to like her, for her father’s sake, but of course she knew everyone was lying. No one liked her.

  We boys would finger people we suspected were night-hoarders. The warriors would kidnap them in the night and bring them before Nangi, who would read their thoughts. Usually, they were guilty, and Nangi would tell us where they were hiding their caches.

  The hoarders themselves disappeared.

  I didn’t know what happened to them. I didn’t allow myself to think about it. It didn’t seem important, until my father had to go before Nangi and be tested. Vumo and I would not look at one another as we paced and waited. He came out of his meeting grinning, and Nangi nodded sourly at us. He was a believer. I had truly convinced him.

  The doubters and hoarders appealed to Wuko the Rain Maker for help. But the Zavaedies in tribehold were still preoccupied with their own problems. The clans of the tribehold broke out into their own pitched battles, each still trying to put forth one of their own daughters as a Vaedi to counter Gladola.

  They were useless. We were invincible.

  6. Desperation

  The people feasted right up to the day of prophecy. Cagey doubters suddenly switched sides in the last minute, slaughtered their herds and joined us as if they had been believers all along. All the fated day, we spent in celebration.

  "I see Sulula!" Sambolo shouted. "What do you see?"

  "We see Sulula!" we cried.

  "What do you see?"

  "We see Sulula!"

  "What do you see?"

  "We see Sulula!"

  Hundreds of beautiful girls danced in Sulula costumes, imitating Gladola. It was quite a sight for me, even if I was not strong enough in my magic to perceive them as anything but gloriously naked. Every married man in the crowd could see Sulula that day, or at least assured his wife that those girls were masked and clothed head to toe.

  The sun sank below the horizon. We wore our best clothes, Sulula or not. We held hands and sang songs. We danced without growing exhausted. We were too excited to sleep. The stars above were as bright as ten thousand moons, and the full moon, when it rose, was as bright as a sun. We knew it was a night for magic.

  "Do you see the color of the moonlight? Do you see how Sulula it is?" we whispered to each other. Vumo and I grinned together like maniacs. My sister, father, mother, mother’s sister, uncle, and my cousin, her husband and their new baby were there too, everyone I loved.

  We sang more songs. We waited. The moon set. Dawn rose. Was the sun brighter? Was the light more Sulula? Did we hear the voices of our ancestors upon the hill?

  The day stretched.

  People began to mutter. Then to complain. Then to shout and argue.

  No new cattle appeared, no ancestors joyfully ran to hug us, no granaries overflowed.

  The joyful multitude turned into an angry mob. Over and over, I heard the shout, "We have been betrayed!" I may have shouted it myself too. We all felt it. We stormed the homestead of Sambolo, where we demanded an explanation in a thousand voices.

  We did not see the Bone Whistler, but we heard the notes of flute music float over us. We calmed enough that Sambolo was able to appear on the flat rooftop of his adobe. He did not inspire confidence. His skin had blanched whiter than bone, he trembled and shrank from the crowd’s rage. People began to throw rocks at him. The roar of the mob increased again.

  Then the Bone Whistler stepped out. Calm, confident, unafraid. And angry.

  "We have been betrayed!" he shouted. We were startled to hear our own grievance flung back at us.

  "Yes, betrayed!" he repeated. "What did you expect? While you were sacrificing your last aurochs, what were the fat Zavaedies in the tribehold doing? Do you think they have followed the instructions of the prophecy? They are the worst of all hoarders, and yet we have not stopped them. The ancestors didn’t fail us. We failed the ancestors. We flouted their one request, to purify ourselves before they arrived. Is it any wonder they did not appear?"

  "What must we do?" Sambolo asked, loudly, for us all to hear.

  "Destroy the hoarders," said the Bone Whistler.

  #

  My brother and I had often wondered why the Bone Whistler did not call for us to take over the tribehold by force much earlier. The day we attacked the tribehold, I finally understood. Even weakened by dissension, even virtually unprotected and taken by surprise, the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehold was the strongest fortress in Faearth. If we had tried to move against the tribehold earlier, too many people would have become discouraged and switched sides again.

  Now, however, we had reached the point of no return. We had nothing to eat. Nothing. All the food left in the lands of the Rainbow Labyrinth lay stored up inside the stone maze under the hold. We knew that. We were still fat and strong from months of feasting, but the weeks that foll
owed taught us to fear hunger again.

  This was the first battle in which Morvae fought Imorvae, for by now almost all the Imorvae had been purged from our ranks, and Morvae had defected from theirs. The tribehold did not fall easily. Our discipline, edged by desperation, combined with their disorganization, tipped the battle to us. Even then, we might still have lost, but the common people finally threw their lot with us. One moonless night, they opened the gates to us, and by morning the tribehold was ours. Only the guilty were killed. Any one who opposed us was guilty.

  7. Exaltation

  A repeat of the previous months unfolded now in a matter of mere weeks. Slaughter, feasting, giddy celebration of the new day yet to come. Now sure to come. The Bone Whistler opened up the vast storerooms of the subterranean labyrinth under the hold, and we gorged ourselves on it. We learned to vomit between dishes, just to keep eating more. Then we burned the food we could not finish.

  We installed the new Vaedi. Gladola and her naked cohort danced through the streets. Every time two people passed and greeted one another, instead of, "Hello, how do you fare?" "Well enough, thank you," one would hear, "Can you see Sulula?" "I see Sulula!"

  Sambolo gave a new date for the dawning of the new day: the next full moon.

  As Vumo and I burned a pyre of corn, he asked in a voice too low for anyone else to hear, "Vio, what if the new day doesn’t come this time either?"

  This was our terrible dilemma you see. It was too late to back out now. Even if we stopped destroying food, there was not enough left for everyone. We could not replant until next spring. Hundreds would die. The new day was now our only hope.

  "It must come," I said. "We mustn’t leave a grain left to stop it from coming."

  As the orgy of feasting and destruction had repeated, in exaggerated, frenetic repetition, so it was with our last night before the new day.

  The word went out. Everyone must join. Everyone must dance. Not one could stand aside, not if we wanted the new day to dawn. Not if we wanted to see Sulula.

  The Bone Whistler played his flute. I had never seen such a mass of people. Everyone who had been spared after the battle, man, woman, child, all pressed into the plaza in the center of the tribehold. Though we were all skinny, still there were so many of us, we were pressed flesh to flesh, like rats in a piss ditch.

  Sambolo and Gladola led us in the tama to bring the new day. It was an unfamiliar dance, clumsy and unlovely. We did not know it. Even the Tavaedies and Zavaedies did not know it. It didn’t matter. The Bone Whistler played his flute. For the first time, we felt the true power of that flute. No one could resist the song. There were some who had refused to come to the plaza, but the flute forced them out of their homes and drew them to our ranks. All, all of us danced, together, in perfect time. Seven thousand legs lifted as one leg, seven thousand arms lifted as one arm. We were not moving our own limbs, but jerked like puppets to the tune.

  It was terrible, it was glorious. Power moved us. It used us, but it also exalted us. I had never been taken out of myself like this before, as if I were no longer a lonely boy, but belonged to a single animal with seven thousand heads and one heart. I felt hope again. This was what had been missing before, this exaltation, and I knew, this time, without any more doubt, the new day would come.

  All night we danced, limbs on one beast, sure in our faith. And with dawn, the new day…

  … did not come.

  The many-headed beast had danced as one and now it raged as one. We knew we had been betrayed. Who had spoiled the new day this time – which doubters, which hoarders? The Bone Whistler had the answer.

  He silenced the exhausted crowd, then raised his voice, and magic carried his hiss and thunder to fourteen thousand ears. The Imorvae, he said. They were witches secretly working their own dances to defile the new day. They had been our enemies all along. They had caused the cattle to sicken and die. They had caused all our preparations to fail, our bellies to rumble. They must die.

  But hadn’t we rid ourselves of the Imorvae?

  No. There were yet Imorvae hiding among us, pretending to be Morvae, pretending to be loyal. They were serpents, rats, vermin. We must root them out and exterminate them.

  And their leader – oh, the sorrow, the fury, in his face when he revealed this, for this was the worst betrayal of all – their leader was the last one we would expect.

  Their leader was Gladola, and her vicious, lying uncle Sambolo.

  We acted as one animal. Not a mob, but a predator. Fingers pointed, shrill voices cried out names. Daughters denounced mothers, nephews accused uncles, brothers turned on sisters. The Bone Whistler played his flute and forced all the accused to the center of the plaza, to dance while his warriors tortured them to death. They saved the worst torments for Gladola and Sambolo. The Bone Whistler called for volunteers to help torture them; I stepped forward and he favored me, for he had noticed me by then as one of his most loyal followers.

  I would have just beaten them. I didn’t know how to prolong pain, but the flute moved through me, and I did things that made them scream. Others helped me. Those two traitors screamed for days. What I did made me feel sick, yet I would have done worse if I could. They had lied to us. Worse, their lies had made many people doubt the new day, doubt Sulula. Doubt the Bone Whistler.

  The Persecutions spread. The new day depended on the eradication of the Imorvae, as it depended on the eradication of the hoarders and the doubters. And I saw that this could go on forever, there might always be hidden enemies to drag forward, to explain the delay of the new day. I feared Nangi would eat my thoughts, so I hid my doubts from everyone, even my own brother.

  I wanted nothing more than to see the new day dawn. I was to blame for dragging my brother, my father, mother, sister, everyone I loved, into believing in the color I couldn’t even see myself. If the new day never dawned, I would not only starve myself, but die with their hunger in my belly too.

  This time, we did not wait out the night of the prophecy camped with the multitude. Each family remained at home, isolated, separately begging the ancestors to return to life. Vumo and I sat vigil with five other boys, our sept. We were all of an age to pass the Initiation and test for magic. The Bone Whistler made no secret that he expected us to prove Morvae, and join his cadres of loyal Tavaedies, but who needed Initiation ceremonies when the new day would come tomorrow?

  So that night we waited.

  We waited.

  We waited.

  And then everything changed.

  It’s strange, and hard to explain, but I saw it before I believed it: a glow surrounded each of my six companions. I could see a red haze around one boy, orange around another, yellow here, blue there, and purple too. Only my brother had no glow, and only green was missing.

  I jumped to my feet like a crazed man. "I see it! Do you see it? I see it! At last I see it! I see Sulula!" Then I jabbed my finger at each boy and called out the color of his glow.

  They gaped at me, fish-eyed with shock, for a full minute. Then our sept leader, the biggest and oldest, stood up and shouted.

  "Those are not the colors of Sulula! Those are the old colors, and if you see so many, it is because you are Imorvae, and our enemy! It is because of you we have not seen Sulula!"

  The other boys fell on me, and would have killed me. I was still strong with the colors that moved through me, real magic, fierce and true, and I fought back. I kicked groins, elbowed throats, punched bellies. I broke their limbs and as soon as they fell on their backs, smashed their faces with my bare foot.

  I thought they had all tried to kill me, and that I had killed all of them, but one remained. Vumo, my brother, had held back. Now we looked at each other, across a room of our dead friends. My feet were splattered in blood and flecks of brain up to the ankles.

  Hate glittered in his eyes, but fear too.

  I did not want to kill my brother.

  A warrior who had been waiting in another house ran to our door and pushed aside the ree
d mat. His eyes bugged at what he saw.

  "I discovered they were Imorvae," I said. My voice was changing that year, and this came out higher pitched than I liked. But Vumo did not contradict me. The warrior invited us to wait the new day in the other house. I no longer saw anything glow. In fact, I was so tired, I slept.

  You know what happened. No new day dawned. We awoke with our hunger.

  Have you ever been hungry? I don’t mean hungry for a day, for a week. I mean, for months. Each day, you eat a little less. Days go by when you eat nothing at all. Then a bite or two, then days again without. You weaken slowly. Your eyes grow to the size of stomachs, and your stomach grows to the size of an eye.

  More hidden Imorvae were found, blamed and killed. A new date was set, the first full moon after the Summer Solstice. Months away. It might as well have been lifetimes. Every night, I wondered if I would wake up to find masked men accusing me of being Imorvae, and every day, when Vumo avoided meeting my eyes, I wondered if my own brother would be the one to turn me in.

  Vumo and I kept alive because as part of the army who scourged the land for hoarders, we could steal food. We had the responsibilities of men, though not yet the formal training. It was like that in our army, because so many of the elders had been accused of being Imorvae, or doubters, or hoarders. Ours was an army of the young. I was given charge of my own sept of men-boys, as was my brother, but this only made things worse between us.

  Though we never were formally Initiated, I found I had already earned my Shining Name. The others called me Vio the Skull Stomper, and considered me a great hero because I had killed five "Imorvae." Sometimes, I could bully loose some chomps on the strength of my name; other times, I used my fists. Vumo was more sly and less direct, but stole just the same. We quarreled once because he found three sacks of only partly rotted beans and he wasted one of them to bribe some girl to his bed. We quarreled over many things. I asked my warriors to watch him.