by Maya, Tara
Kavio (10 years old)
In the month Kavio lived as a mariah in Hertio’s household, he never saw the man in full regalia until the day of the sacrifice. A thousand suns of gold jangled and clanged on the War Chief’s costume. Lulla, Hertio’s daughter, helped Kavio with his own, less impressive preparations. Kavio was allowed to wear a white robe embroidered with rainbow beads, as befit his station as Tavaedi, but he smeared white paste on his face instead of a mask, and of course, his captors allowed him no weapons. He wondered if Lulla would weep when he left the compound. She did not.
Crowds gathered between the houses, some snickering about the Tavaedi “dwarf.” A few threw stones. Kavio did not acknowledge them, even when the stones hit.
On the Tor of the Stone Hedge, inside the three circles of megaliths, two delegations of Tavaedies met. Hertio and the Yellow Bear Tavaedies faced off from Kavio’s father, Vio the Maze Zavaedi, and his entourage. Hertio led Kavio to the dead center, where Hertio drew an obsidian daggar. Without being bid, Kavio knelt in the mud. A beetle crawled on his leg.
Hertio spoke over his head, to address Kavio’s father, who stood like a totem pole, masked, watching.
“Twice you’ve brought an army to surround my tribehold,” said Hertio. His voice boomed from a round O in the sun-face on his mask. “Twice you have threatened me with war, Skull Stomper.”
“I don’t acknowledge that name any longer, Mound Builder,” said Father. “I am here now to make peace.”
“So you claim. As you claim this ten year old calf slaughtered a full grown warrior by himself.”
“In self-defense, Mound Builder,” said Father. “The man was crazed and attacked my son unprovoked. You’ve lived with my son a turn of moon now. You know Kavio is a Tavaedi, fully capable of defending himself – but not capable of murder.”
“Even if I believed that,” said Hertio, with a hint of defensiveness, “The man was crazed with grief for a deathdebt unpaid. His son died in your war. Don’t stand there and blame all your actions on the Bone Whistler. You served the tyrant for fourteen years, Vio. You slaughtered whole clans in his name. You tortured and maimed and raped for him. You made your wealth, earned your Shining Name, won your wife, all while serving him. You married your brother to his daughter. Finally, when you had enough power, you killed your War Chief and took his place. For that, we should trust you? If you want peace, prove it in blood.”
Hertio pressed the obsidian dagger to Kavio’s throat. Kavio kept still, head lowered, watching the beetle amble higher up his leg.
“You once let me buy my tribehold’s safety with a gift of one captive,” continued Hertio. “I will return the favor, and let you pay the uncounted septs of deathdebts you owe with one life—your son’s.”
“In those negotiations, I also let you make a counter offer,” said Father.
“There’s nothing else which would cause you more pain.”
Father inclined his head. “But there is one thing which would give you more satisfaction.”
He removed his mask, set it down on the grass and walked into the center of the circle. Power radiated from him, sizzling in his aura like hammering fists. Hertio backed up a step, holding Kavio in front, knife to throat, like a shield.
Father lowered himself to one knee. Then the other. Then he bent his head, all the way to the ground, until his nose mashed mud.
“Take my life instead, Hertio.”
Kavio trembled. A hot tear of shame stung his cheek. He had never seen Father lower himself to anybody.
Hertio pushed Kavio away. Across the circle, Uncle Vumo and Auntie Ugly gestured for him to hurry, join them, and he understood this had been Father’s plan from the day he’d agreed to let Hertio sacrifice Kavio. The knowledge hit him like a punch. He would not leave Father’s side, could not let Father die in his place, and could not stop it.
Gold shingles clamored when Hertio stepped on Father’s neck and ground his face in the mud. Hertio raised his mask over his head, to wild cheers, but if it was joy that contorted his face, Kavio had never seen such twisted and pained happiness. The Yellow Bear Tavaedies pounded drums as if they’d won a great victory.
“Please don’t kill my father,” Kavio blurted.
Snarling, Hertio kicked Father.
“I accept your offer, Maze Zavaedi.” Hertio looked at Kavio for the first time since they’d set foot on the tor. “I spare your life and accept your offer of peace.”
Brena
Brena watched Kavio row alone in a single-man kayak toward the tor where faery lights glowed, wondering what one man, even he, could accomplish alone.
Suddenly, she knew.
And she couldn’t let him do it.
Dindi
Dindi came to repose just as the Vision woven in the center of the circle faded to gray. Dawn light softened the stone hedge even as the wild glare of faerie magic dimmed. Three nights and three days had passed. The dance had ended.
One by one, all of the fae disappeared from the Tor, until only the Golden Lady remained.
“The bargain is sealed,” said the Golden Lady in her sultry growl. “I said before that you asked much and offered little. We didn’t understand until you sang the song which riddle you meant. We were wrong. You offered much and asked little.”
“I did?” Dindi swayed on her feet. All she wanted was to collapse, but she couldn’t, not yet. She had to wrap her woozy mind around this conversation.
“The tama you sang was the Curse of the Aelfae,” said the Golden Lady. “By your pledge, you will lift the curse and bring back the Aelfae from the dominion of Lady Death. Otherwise, on the day the Curse destroys our sister, the Rainbow Faeries will be no more.
To her came her darkest sister,
Put her arms about her, kissed her
Drew her to her in the middle
Of the twisted ways,
Whispered in her ear this riddle:
‘Chose the Windwheel or the Maize!’
“I am forbidden to tell you the whole of Death’s riddle, the Curse on the Aelfae,” said the Golden Lady. “Lady Death is cunning, and her power grows with time.”
“Am I your Henchwoman now?”
“Not mine,” said the Golden Lady. “I have chosen a Champion of my own. You do not serve me, or any of my sisters. You serve the Aelfae. Until they are restored to life, however, we must speak for them.”
“Restored to life.” The morn was chill enough that Dindi’s breath formed mist. The rising sun turned edged the megaliths in glamours of light. “Is that possible?”
“If you solve the riddle, everything Lady Death has done to our sisters and brothers can be unraveled.”
“Is it true the Aelfae cursed me to hide my Chromas?” Dindi asked. She didn’t need to ask for confirmation she had six Chromas. “Did my family do them ill?”
“I don’t know,” said the Golden Lady. “I do know you must use all your powers to solve the riddle or you will surely fail.”
“What if I do fail, Lady?”
“The Aelfae will be swallowed into oblivion. And we will claim you into our dancing circle.”
“Killing me.” Dindi’s tongue felt heavy and dry in her mouth.
“If you break the Curse, you won’t die.”
The Golden Lady shifted into her bear form and ambled away.
Never bargain with the fae. How many people had warned her of that? You will always bargain away more than you think. How could she have imagined that the riddle the lower fae had posed to her grandmother was the oldest and cruelest Curse in Faearth? How could she defeat Lady Death herself?
For now…she just needed sleep.
Without even leaving the Tor, she staggered to the grass in the center of the circle of stones and collapsed.
Death
The faeries had fled. The human girl had fallen. How young and powerless she seemed… though Death knew better than any other how deceptive that vulnerability was. But even this girl had her limits, and she had exhausted her powers for the ti
me being. There would be no better chance.
Nothing stood in Lady Death’s way.
After all…the Tor of the Stone Hedge belonged to the Deathsworn too.
It was time to claim her own.
You won’t thank me today for what I am about to do. But one day, Death silently promised Dindi, You will love me.
Kavio
The trek up the shore of the hill felt to Kavio like a gauntlet of scourges. He dreaded reaching the top, but also wanted to finish this gruesome task as quickly as possible. He hoped he was not too late to offer the fae another sacrifice. He knew he wouldn’t believe in Dindi’s death until he saw her lifeless body for himself.
At first, when he reached the hilltop, he saw nothing but the huge grey stones. He walked between the rings, until there in the centermost region, lying on the grass, he saw her body.
Standing over her was an old woman whose white hair and ebony cape whipped in a wind that didn’t touch his skin or rustle the grass. She started to crouch over Dindi, but looked up briefly at his approach, and her face flickered into a skull dripping putrid flesh.
His breath caught. It was not the enemy he’d expected to face, yet he knew her at once.
“Lady Death.” He had to drag his feet forward, the way twenty men dragged a megalith uphill to the Unfinished Tor. “Take me instead.”
“You would take her place?” Death asked.
“Yes.”
Death stood. No longer an old woman, she stared out of a beautiful face, eerily familiar. Her features mirrored Dindi, subtly distorted. She held out something to him. The Black Arrow.
“There is a price,” she said. “I bring death.”
“I’ll pay.”
“There is a gift as well,” she said. She smiled at him out of a child’s innocent eyes. She held out something to him, something else he recognized – Dindi’s ragged totem doll. “Just take one bite.”
In his hands, the doll warmed into a freshly roasted cob of corn.
He bit.
Sweet kernels burst in his mouth, delicious but not strange. He took care to chew and swallow, but the feeling of poison seeping through his limbs, sapping his strength until he collapsed, never came. Dindi remained a heap at his feet.
“I’m still alive,” he said to Death. Angry.
Her face aged and saddened. “Death has many forms.”
She reached up to him with the arrow and drew it ever so lightly across his chest. The shallow gash drew blood, but would not have been a wound of any significance, were it not for the shocking pain it brought. The whole gash burned like liquid rock on his flesh.
Ah.
There it was.
Poison.
He would have sagged to the ground but Death wrapped her arms around him, held him up and kissed him on the cheek.
Then he felt the wind that tore at her. It hit him like a gale, almost rocking him from his feet. From where he stood, he saw the sun tossed across the sky like a ball, over and over, day blink to night, again and again, like a sputtering candle, the moon wax and wane swifter than a spinning windwheel. Men swarmed over the landscape faster than hawks plunged toward prey. They dragged rocks to the Unfinished Tor, covered it with dirt, erected houses. He watched Seven Tors rise and swell into seven proud settlements with wooden walls, then walls of round stones, then towers of bigger stones, cut square, tall as sequoias. Houses spilled out of the stone walls, down the hills, covering the whole valley, and he saw more people than he had ever imagined bustling between them.
Day and night flashed so rapidly he saw nothing of the sky but alternating white and black. The polis rose around him like a forest, but now it was ravaged by fire. Corpses clogged the streets, the stone towers tumbled to the ground—white and black flashed the sky, white and black—grass grew over the fallen towers. The hills still stood, and the rocks in the Tor of the Stonehedge, but everything else rotted, crumbled, burned and died. The last thing he saw was a great ladder, and brilliant beings with wings of gold climbing it to the sun, to escape a world of boiling blood.
The bone white arms released him before Lady Death disappeared in a wisp of charcoal smoke. Kavio staggered and fell to the earth beside Dindi. Hard as he tried to remember everything he’d seen, the images slipped away, water through a fish net. Only foreboding remained trapped in his mind, gasping panic that flailed through his thoughts until he smothered it. He could still feel the poison shuddering through him, but it was not attacking his body.
It was swallowing his mind.
Piece by piece, the poison chewed up his life. Already memories of the battle had fallen into shadow. Other bits and flashes were slipping away too, like sand through a sieve.
He touched Dindi’s face, half from despair, half for comfort. How long before he could not remember her name? How long before he could not remember his own?
The fae had not mutilated the corpse at all. She looked as vibrant as she had in life, as if she slept in innocent repose and nothing more. He bent over her, and kissed her lips.
Dindi kissed back.
He kissed her fiercely then, and nuzzled her neck, releasing the breath he’d held with a long, shuddering sigh of relief. Her hair smelled wonderful.
He had to lean back, just look at her. She brushed grass from her skirt as she stood. Her simple grace struck him as new. It made him think of a fawn grown into a doe which no longer wobbled on shaky legs, or a gosling, once awkward and waddling on land, but graceful as a swan in water. He himself felt clumsy as he struggled to his feet.
His tongue touched his dry lips. “You’re alive.”
“Kavio.” She held out both hands; he clasped them. In that moment, he wouldn’t have cared if the rest of the world did heave and boil around them, the two of them formed a circle no one could break and eternity itself must envy.
He heard voices. Brena. Rthan. A crowd swarmed toward them. He ignored them because no one else mattered to him except Dindi.
The grass felt cold and wet against his hands as he fumbled to find the marriage bowl. Her gift, gifted back to her with all his heart. He held it before her, trembling so hard that the bowl shook.
The darkness was stealing him. He had to tell her what he had done before he disappeared entirely. He had to tell her it had all been from love for her. That he would have married her if he could have. That he loved her.
He loved her…
She was so beautiful. Had he met her before?
He was sure he had. But he couldn’t remember it.
Why was he standing on this hill, holding this bowl? How had he gotten here? Who were those people coming toward him?
What was he holding? Whatever it was dropped from his nerveless fingers.
Who was this girl staring at him?
Who was he?
Dindi
She awoke to the delicious sweetness of Kavio’s possessive kiss. He nuzzled her neck and breathed in her hair before he helped her to her feet.
“You’re alive,” he said.
“Kavio.” She held out both hands; he clasped them.
She heard human voices, tribesfolk who arrived in canoes and were now coming up the hill. She ignored them because no one else mattered to her except Kavio.
His hair had not been cut since long before the battle and rogue strands slanted across his eyes. He wore nothing over his chest except a ripped vest, which revealed a thin but ugly slash. She wondered which enemy had hurt him. His eyes glowed with feverish intensity.
He bent to pick up something from the grass, then stood and held it out to her.
It was a bowl of fruit…an offer of marriage.
Joy like a sun glowed inside her. Happiness tasted like sugar on her tongue. He hadn’t even needed to hear the secret about her Chromas. He loved her even though he did not know. Even though he thought her a maiden without magic.
Yes. She opened her mouth to answer his unspoken question. Yes, I love you. Yes, I will marry you.
He dropped the bowl.
It shattered into a dozen shards.
The look he gave her then was so cold she took a step back.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Before she could grope toward an answer, he shrugged and walked away.
He did not look back.
“Kavio!” Dindi gasped, and started to run after him.
However, just at that moment, the crowd of tribesfolk surged around her.
Jensi threw her arms around Dindi. “You’re alive!”
Gwenika shrieked and squeezed her until Dindi winced. “You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive!”
“Yes, I am alive. Thank you.”
“But no one survives dancing in a faery ring,” Zavaedi Abiono said. He looked to the other Zavaedies, who nodded. “How did you do it?”
“How did you do it?” echoed Brena. Then she spotted the corncob doll, still on the grass. “Ah. Of course.”
Dindi stood straighter, rolled back her shoulders and lifted her chin. This was her chance to tell them that they had all been wrong about her.
It was not the doll. It was me. It was me all along. You looked right at me and never saw me for who I really am.
But then Dindi glanced at Kavio, who had walked to the far side of the ring of megaliths and stood with his back to them, and pain knifed her heart. Kavio himself had checked her magic and found nothing. If even he did not believe in her, who else would?
She knew that she was one of the most powerful magic dancers in Faearth, maybe even the equal of Kavio. But she was alone in that conviction. No one else would believe it. Not until she found out what hex the Aelfae had cast upon her, and why.
A flush climbed her cheeks, and she lowered her gaze. Her shoulders drooped.
“Oh,” she said vaguely. “Um. You know faeries. So unpredictable. Who knows why they do what they do? Maybe they thought shocking all of you like this would be more amusing than eating me. Maybe they were full from the battle.”