The Unfinished Song: Sacrifice

by Maya, Tara

  Hadi sighed. “Of course. Just my luck.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She would probably just laugh at me anyway, like Kemla did.” He took her hands. “Dindi, if they do pick me, and you never want to be seen with me again, I’ll understand. I won’t hold it against you. Do you understand?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “You will,” he said morosely. “Meanwhile, just…don’t trust Kavio.”

  Gwenika

  The Shunned had been allowed to erect huts on the bank of the river, not far from the Unfinished Tor. Hertio wanted them to work on the tor in exchange for their stay in Yellow Bear, and War Chief Vultho, more out of indifference than endorsement, had agreed. However, most of the Shunned had fallen ill again, which meant that so far, they had provided little labor. On the contrary, Vultho complained that they drained the time of his healer Tavaedies, and he discouraged healers from helping them.

  Gwenika was one of the few Tavaedies who did not let this discourage her. Every day, she found time to visit their camp and do what she could for them. It was frustrating that as many times as she healed the same individuals, within a few days, the same people had symptoms again. She could see how annoying she must have been to those around her back when she was always suffering from one ailment or another.

  She stopped by the Tor of the Moon, where Gremo shared a dwelling with Svego to see if Gremo wanted to go with her to the camp.

  “I’m sorry, niece,” he said. He was scraping his flint dagger on a sharpening stone and had a leather pack with more weapons on the packed ground beside the log where he sat. “Kavio keeps me quite busy these days, and I don’t want to let him down.”

  “I understand,” Gwenika said. She tried to hide her disappointment.

  “Kavio is quite the slave driver these days,” Svego said from the doorway of the house. As always, the Olani was dressed in a dapper assortment of feathers and beads, and his long hair swished behind him. “I’d like to shake that boy for keeping my Gremo from me far too often.”

  “You should come practice with us, Svego,” Gremo said.

  “Sweetling, I don’t think so,” drawled Svego. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

  Gwenika laughed, but she had a hollow feeling in her stomach after she left. She did not like making the trip to and from the camp by herself. She was terrified the Blue Waters warriors would launch a sneak attack at any time, and, with her luck, probably when she was in the camp nearest the river with no one but sick, terrified people to defend her. But she didn’t like to admit her selfishness or her fear to Gremo and Svego. They thought she was brave and kind.

  If only they knew what a horrible person I really am, she thought. A person too cowardly to stand up for her friend.

  Maybe she shouldn’t bother to go to the camp of the Shunned at all today. She didn’t feel like she would be of much use to anyone.

  “Gwenika!”

  She heard footsteps jog up behind her. To her surprise, it was Tamio. A deep blush overcame her and she stammered an incoherent salutation. Tamio was the most gorgeous boy in their cohort, and she hadn’t forgotten how he’d stuck up for her at the secret meeting of the Initiate Council of the Duck Hunt.

  “Are you going to help the Shunned?” he asked. “So am I.”

  “Y…yes.” She blinked. “You are? I didn’t know you danced Yellow.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “I’m just curious to meet the Imorvae from Blue Waters. I hear they’ve been terribly abused. I think that’s terrible. Just goes to show you how awful our enemies are, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  So far, she was holding up her end of the conversation brilliantly.

  But Tamio didn’t seem to mind. He chatted easily the whole way. With him at her side, Gwenika wasn’t afraid of an enemy attack. At the camp, he was just as wonderful. He didn’t get in her way while she spoke with the Shunned and danced for them. He fetched things for her before she asked, and spoke in the same gentle, companionable way with the Shunned as he had with her, putting them at their ease.

  She stayed longer than she usually did. It was midmorning by the time she and Tamio left. She told him about her frustrations healing the Shunned.

  “They have been ill-treated so long that they have accepted it as their lot in life,” she explained. “So instead of using their magic to help me heal them, they are using it to block me. They don’t do it on purpose, but they don’t know how to stop themselves. If only I were a better healer, maybe I could show them….I don’t know.”

  Tamio looked thoughtful. “You know, Gwenika… I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I think I know what the problem with you is.”

  She stopped walking. “The problem with me?”

  “Never mind. Most people would misunderstand what I was going to say, and I don’t feel like being accused of insulting your honor.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Gwenika, if you choose to put your own importance over that of—let’s face it—total strangers. I wouldn’t blame you. Only a few, rare healers would be willing to make the kind of sacrifice …never mind.”

  “Please explain what you mean. I’m willing to make whatever sacrifice is necessary.”

  “The problem is that you are a maiden.”

  “Well, of course, I’m a maiden, what else would I…”

  Tamio slid one arm around her waist and caressed her neck with the other.

  Heat rushed to her face, and other parts of her body. “Oh.”

  “Your true power is still blocked,” he whispered into her hair.

  “You…you really think that would…” She pushed him away, aware her heart pounded too fast and too loudly. “I’ve never heard of that.”

  “Who did you expect would tell you? Your mother, Zavaedi Brena?” He laughed bitterly. “She doesn’t want you to unleash your full potential. To her, you’re still her little baby. And she’s right, really. You are still a baby. You have no idea the power of passion.”

  “And I suppose you’re volunteering to help me find out.” Gwenika tried to sound scornful, but feared she only sounded breathless.

  His face closed. Abruptly, he turned away. “No, not me.”

  “Not…?”

  “You should find yourself a nice, safe boy. How about Hadi? I think he worships you. But me? No. I’m not a nice, safe boy, Gwenika. I’m a beast. I eat little girls like you for morning meal. I’m not proud of it, but all my life, I’ve had to be hard. My father left before I was born, to fight in a war, and he never came back. I had to be strong, to be the man of the house, and protect my mother. I won’t apologize for that. But there’s no reason to drag you into my darkness.”

  “Tamio.” She touched his shoulder. “I had no idea.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and this time, she did not push him away.

  Dream

  Moonlight. The scent of honeysuckle. A shadow bends over her.

  “Passion is a beast, Dindi,” he murmurs huskily into her neck. “It can only be tamed if a willing woman gives up her innocence, with her whole heart, to a man who loves her in return.”

  He leads her to the center of the stone circle, where three slender planks of wood had been lashed together in a g and elevated on stones. She strips off her clothes and sits down where the beams met. The wood is cool and coarse.

  Behind her now, he lowers her head to the central plank. His touch sends shivers through her body. Fingers like feathers, lightly guiding her, as if to show her a dance move. Instead, he pulls her arms over her head and binds her wrists and ankles to the other branches.

  “Must you?” she asks, feeling fear, yet also trembling with something else. Anticipation.

  “You will lose control of your body when you thrash in ecstasy,” he whispers.

  She shivers.

  He drapes six colored cloths over he body: over her breasts and pelvis, over each thigh and calf, over each
arm. The heft of the cloth is not great, but just enough to make her aware of what is covered. What is not. The wind flutters over her, rustling the fabric. The sent of night flowers mingles with the scent of him.

  Fae creatures gather in the circle around the outside of the stones, satyrs, beating drums, gyrating succubi...

  He begins to dance. Strength and grace unite in his motion. His movements transfix her, as a flickering flame mesmerizes a moth.

  Spins and kicks and aerial somersaults weave a cage around her, and disarm her. Deft hands snatch away one colored cloth after another as a he whirls around her. Then he touches her on each pass, caresses her, kisses her. He straddles the wooden beam between her legs. She feels exposed and powerless, yet she trusts him completely.

  “Will you sacrifice yourself to me?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she breathes. “I want you to take me.”

  He lowers himself onto her…

  Dindi

  Dindi woke up.

  The dream faery winked at her. Disappointment rushed through her, followed by embarrassment. She had never had such a vivid dream before. Was it a prophecy? Had Hadi been right, Kavio would ask her to sacrifice her innocence to him... the “ritual” in her dream?

  In her dream, she had wanted nothing more than to give herself to him, body and soul. Now the prospect terrified her.

  I love him, she realized in horror.

  Kavio

  He awoke in a sweat. The sticky web of the dream dissolved in his hand when he tried to capture the dream fae. Embarrassed at himself, he went to the water pot around the back of his hut to rinse himself. Once he had washed, he felt better, but it was unlikely he would be able to get back to sleep.

  The dream would not stop plaguing his thoughts. He could still see her naked body glistening in the moonlight.

  Would she agree to the sacrifice he has asked of her? Would she guess what it was?

  He had told himself it did not matter one way or another. He had asked her only because it was part of a larger plan of his to fool Vultho. That wasn’t the whole truth. He desired her willing cooperation. He desired her.

  Dindi

  It took her a long time to fall asleep again, and when dawn arrived, Dindi woke up shivering on her mat. Weather was generally mild in Yellow Bear, even the winters, but morning came with a nip and she usually liked to snuggle a few minutes under her wool blanket before yawning her way into breakfast. However, her wool blanket seemed to have slipped off during the night. She assumed she had just kicked it off, but when she searched, she could not find it anywhere around her spot in the lodge.

  “Excuse me,” she asked the other girls, who were already dressing for the day, “Has anyone seen my blanket? It has many colors and a swan pattern near the fringe.”

  The girls nearby glanced at her, then looked at each other and giggled. They walked away without answering.

  Goosebumps pimpled her arms, but that wasn’t why she felt a chill.

  She tried to shrug off her uneasiness. The morning routine was a reverse of the evening. First the piss pits, then a rinse at the cistern, then over to the outside kitchen for a cornbread breakfast. She made it as far as the piss pits.

  There, just visible in the ditch under the squatting boards, she saw something brightly striped. She couldn’t see the fringe, but she knew with dread certainty that she would find swans on the edge.

  She seriously considered skipping breakfast.

  At breakfast, however, she had no troubles, and she began to wonder if she had simply imagined it. Maybe someone had needed to go to the pits during the night and just grabbed the blanket to keep warm, dropped it by accident, and then been too embarrassed to admit what happened. Jensi waved her over to eat with her and her friends. As always, Jensi babbled about this and that, catching Dindi up on all the comings and goings while Dindi had been gone. Jensi ate methodically, rinsed her hands with her water bowl, and at once picked up her latest basket in progress. She and her friends were trying a new weave, which required the nimblest of fingers. They discussed the patterns with the same intensity Tavaedies talked about their tamas.

  “You should sit with us today, Dindi, and we’ll teach you how to do it,” Jensi said.

  “You know how my baskets always turn out.”

  Jensi did. “There’s a simpler pattern that I’ve learned which I think you will love.”

  Dindi nodded. She remembered Hadi’s warning, and thought it would be a good idea to spend more time with the other maidens. If she never spent any time with her cohort, they would all become suspicious and start asking questions. She resolved she would spend all the time she wasn’t with Kavio back here, sharing chores with Jensi. That should alleviate her kinfolk’s worry for her.

  It was not to be. No sooner had she settled in with Jensi and a big bowl of water to soak willow branches for a new basket, Tamio approached her.

  “Dindi, you’ve been ordered to be a water-fetcher for the men working at the quarry. I’m to escort you there.”

  “What’s this about?” Jensi frowned at Tamio. “Better not be one of your tricks, Tamio of Full Basket. I’ve heard all about your storytelling abilities.”

  “I’m just the messenger.” Tamio flashed an innocent smile. “Jensi, that is an amazing basket. I wonder if you would make one like that for me? All I have to trade for it is this bone-tooth necklace…” He flashed a valuable necklace of many strands of tiny, dyed beads, clearly worth more than a basket. “I was saving it to give it to my mother when we return home, but I think she’d love one of your baskets even more.”

  “Fa! Get on with you.” But though she spoke gruffly, Jensi looked pleased.

  Tamio tucked the necklace back under his ermine fur vest and tucked his other arm around Dindi’s elbow.

  “Follow me.” He winked at her.

  For some reason, Dindi felt nervous. Tamio was charming, and told her various outrageous stories as they walked. Was this the storytelling ability Jensi had meant? Somehow Dindi didn’t think so. She wanted to ask him what he had heard about Kavio and the secret sacrifice.

  “Does he treat you right, Dindi?”

  She blinked. Surely he could not have asked what she thought he had.

  “Because if he doesn’t, there are other men who would,” Tamio said solemnly. The bone-bead necklace emerged, and the next thing she knew, Tamio held the necklace against the bare flesh between her breasts and her neck. The beads felt cool and smooth. “This would look gorgeous on you.”

  “I thought you were going to trade that for Jensi’s basket,” said Dindi. “If you didn’t give it to your mother.”

  He grinned impishly. The necklace disappeared back under his vest.

  “This is as far as I take you,” he said. “You’re to wait here.”

  It was an unproposing area of wild grass and large rocks. After Tamio left, a few rock trolls poked out their heads, tugged their beards and returned to their burrows. Otherwise, only birdsong kept her company.

  Then Kavio leaped over a large rock and landed in front of her.

  The air crackled with power.

  “So,” he said without preamble. “Have you thought about the sacrifice you must make to discover if you have hidden magic?”

  Her cheeks heated. “I’d like to ask you something first.”

  It was a lot harder to ask aloud than it had been in her dream, with him waiting expectantly, looking at her with earnest, gorgeous eyes.

  “Um. Why were you exiled?”

  “Ah.”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “You deserve to know. I performed a tama no one else knew. My cousin Zumo saw me. I was given a trial. They said I invented it, that it was hexcraft. Though it was not, I could not tell them the name of my teacher. Nor can I tell you.”

  “Did the hex involve…uhm…a girl and a sexy dance?”

  He laughed. “No. It involved a river and a lot of mud.”

  “Oh.” Wasn’t she an idiot.

  “So
. The sacrifice. Have you guessed what it is? The most precious thing you have that you can never have again once you have given it?”

  My innocence? My passion? My love?

  “Please don’t look at me like that,” he said. “It makes it hard for me to concentrate on teaching you. You have no idea what thoughts go through my head when you look at me like that. Do you know the name of the beast you must hunt to find your heart’s desire, Dindi?”

  “No,” she said.

  “The beast is Time, Dindi. Time. Your hours. Your days. Your years. These are what you must sacrifice if you want to be the best at something. You can’t sit around with your friends gossiping, you can’t farm fields, you can’t go on the hunt. You have to give yourself to the dance. Day after day after day. It’s the only way you can go from good to great, from great to best. You must sacrifice your whole life to the dance, even though you cannot know if you will succeed. Look at me. I’ve worked my whole life to being the best warrior dancer in Faearth. But I’m not.”

  “No one is better than you.”

  “There is a man who is better. I saw him in a dream last night. I couldn’t see his face. He wore all black, including a black mask. I saw him dance, saw that his skill exceeded my own, saw that he was coming for me, and if…”

  “What?” she prompted when he trailed off.

  “If we fought and I could not best him, he would kill me.”

  “Was he your cousin?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It was just a dream. You know how dream faeries are. They lie.”

  “They never lie. They only give us the truth in a shape we cannot recognize. Dreams are always given to us for a reason. This was a warning. I would be a fool not to heed it.”

  He raked his hair with his hand. “That’s why I won’t be able to see you anymore.”

  All the color drained from her face.

  She turned her head from him so he would not see her pinched lips and clenched teeth. “You tell me maybe I can find magic in myself if I spend enough time dancing, but you won’t teach me any more.”