Sisters of the Revolution

by Ann VanderMeer

  As a result, Carmina’s mother went blind, her skin ghosted and faded until she was nearly transparent, and she was rarely conscious. Her aunt, to her credit, followed the instructions to the letter. All, except for the singer, which she felt was an ostentatious addition to a household populated by women.

  As it happens, the singing was the one thing that could have saved her, if brought in immediately. Without song, Carmina’s mother, though she breathed, was already dead.

  Death does not exist in the minds of the men who live in trees. Nor birth. There is no sign for either. In my first dealings with the Molaru, after my initial tours of the penal colony, as well as our small, but growing, University of the Upper Opponax, I was introduced to a man who was a healer of the Molaru. He had been called to the Central Mansion to see to the child of the Governor’s most beloved and most beautiful mistress. The child had suffered from fevers, which had grown progressively worse, until he lay, white faced, on the crisp, linen sheet, as near to death as one could be without actually being dead. The healer entered the inner room where the child lay. My lady commanded that I ask if the child would die. My knowledge of their hand speech was far from adept, but I did my best regardless. “End. This. Small Man.” I asked with my hands. The old healer stared at me. He brought his middle finger of his right hand to his mouth and let it fly gently away, like a butterfly. He looked at me meaningfully. I said to my lady, “It appears that he is saying, ‘the small man is free,’ though I cannot possibly know what that means.” That night, the child died. That night, a Molaru prisoner at the penal colony escaped—the first person to do so. He was a very small man.

  —From the journals of Tamino Ailare

  Carmina ground her teeth as her aunt lashed on the heavy red dress. She imagined that in the Northern and only slightly barbaric cities of the Empire, such a dress would make sense. Or, at least it would make sense in winter. Carmina’s mother, originally from the cities in the North, was the original owner of the dress, and doubtless looked beautiful in it. Carmina held her breath as her aunt stretched the thick, luminous velvet around her merciless corset. The fabric cut cruelly into the tender flesh of her breasts, and the flounce of skirt, as heavy as church drapes, from her hips to the floor made it difficult to walk. Her aunt attached the stiff collar and attached it with pins that bit at Carmina’s shoulders and upper back. She winced and said nothing, though she knew she bled. Her feet were strapped into tiny, beaded shoes that whispered against the stone floors as she walked.

  Her aunt eyed her critically. “Not fit for a bride of God, but you’ll do for a man,” she said. “Especially that man,” she added with a half smile and glittering eyes. Carmina decided to ignore this, and went to see her mother instead.

  Carmina’s aunt did not marry, but made vows to the Sisters of the Western Sky and came to live in the province at the mouth of the Opponax river, separated from the world by Abbey walls, four feet thick and twenty feet high. In spite of the wall, the Abbey was destroyed only two years later during the unpleasantness between Empire forces and the rag-tag armies of anarchists, expelled students, displaced aboriginals, and defrocked clergy. The Empire forces, led to believe that the Abbess was harboring terrorists within its sacred walls, blasted a hole in the western edge and poured inside. All its residents were slaughtered, save one—Carmina’s aunt. No one knew who told the general that dissidents hid in the Abbey. In truth, no dissidents were found. As a result, the Church released Carmina’s aunt from her vows. For your grief, they said.

  The men who live in trees do not grieve as we do. Since death does not exist, grief is altered as well. Recently, the Molaru sanctioned me to live with one of their own for a period of three weeks. I was not allowed to visit the communal dwelling of their people—even if there is such a thing. Some say that the men who live in trees build nests like birds and sing out their territory. I don’t believe this to be true, but since I’ve never seen their homeplace, I suppose that anything is possible. Instead, we slept on the ground each night, facing the sky. The man taught me the intricacies of Molaru storytelling, and how to draw their handpictures on the ground. On the eleventh day, he brought me to the walls of the penal colony. The soldiers walking the wall did not observe us, though we stood in the open. He instructed me to lay one hand upon the wall and another hand on his palm. I did, and instantly felt a stab of grief that pierced my poor heart. Through my one hand I felt the groans of the prisoners, their dry mouths and empty bellies, their rotting limbs and broken backs, and their crushing despair. Through the other hand, I felt my new friend’s shocked horror, numb acceptance and breaking heart. We left without a sound. We were not seen.

  —From the journals of Tamino Ailare

  After kissing her mother on her shrunken, shriveled lips, and arranging the bedclothes around her tiny body, Carmina went to the front door, placed her hand in the hand of her grim lipped aunt and walked out into the thick sunshine, Deborah the servant trailing behind, holding up a very small parasol, which did little to block the crushing heat.

  Although she was not accompanied, people on the busy street knew from the red velvet gripping her damp body, they knew from the beaded swirl of her heavy hair and the layer upon layer of powder on her face, neck and bosom that she was a bride-to-be. And, in truth, many had begun to wonder when a suitable match would be found—one that would satisfy the girl’s aunt, and would satisfy the future mother-in-law. Since, as relatives of a Banished Individual, that being Carmina’s beloved father, by law they were not permitted to access the vast resources of his family’s coffers. Ever since Tamino Ailare was sent to the upper Opponax, he and his dependants were allowed a monthly stipend, which saw to their general well-being and provided the necessary luxury for maintaining a certain level in the larger society, but it was not enough for a dowry.

  However, anyone who married Carmina, would have access, as a relative once removed, to the largely untouched fortune, and would thus be very rich.

  The man standing on the opposite end of the square wanted to be very rich, which is to say that his mother wanted him to be very rich.

  The extra weight braided into her hair pulled on Carmina’s scalp, giving her a headache. She looked the young man up and down as she approached. She had seen him before, of course, but it had been a while, as his mother sent him to the university in the Emperor’s City, though how she afforded it, no one really knew. The young man came from a family as old family, nearly, though not quite, as old and glorious as the Beloved Emperor himself. But his grandfather, one of the progenitors of the concept of the penal colony and its lucrative business pulling rubies from the ground, had sold all of his family’s lands and sunk the proceeds into two ruby mines that produced for five years and fifteen years, respectively. Now there were no more rubies, and the family’s fortunes dwindled.

  He wore a silk shirt that was bound with lace at the throat and riding pants made from the skin of something soft and young. A rabbit, perhaps. Or a young doe. His high boots wore thick layers of polish and gleamed impressively in the noonday sun. But this, Carmina could see, was only for show. The boots, though polished, were old, perhaps his fathers, and they buckled deeply at the toes as though walked too long with feet that never grew to their limit. The doeskin, freshly dyed cornflower blue (hope’s color), was creased and cracked, it’s seams pockmarked from excessive mending. And the dye bled upon the rim of the shirt, a blue that would never wash away. He didn’t look at Carmina. Not at all. He looked instead at his overlarge boots and sighed deeply, moping his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief.

  Carmina looked into the face of the woman on his left. Despite the heat, she looked dry, bloodless as dusty bones. Her thin lips cracked into a frown.

  “Your dress is creased,” she said in a dry voice.

  Carmina’s aunt nodded ruefully. “Indeed it is,” she said. “She dressed in haste. She is an anxious thing.”

  The mother’s eyes wrinkled to slits. “And she sweats like a servant. Did
n’t she know to bathe before an occasion such as this?” Carmina flushed, caught her anger in her teeth and bit down hard. It was true, she sweat openly. It gathered at her hairline, ringed her neck, flowed downward past her breasts and navel. What was worse, she knew by the ache, heat and flow at her thighs that she bled as well.

  “Then send me away in shame,” Carmina said in a low voice, “or bind our hands and be done with it.”

  Both mother and aunt gasped, but Carmina sighed in relief.

  “She is young,” her aunt gasped. “Young enough to be molded. Bound.”

  It is the tradition when the Molaru make the transformation from men of power to men of age, to bind their hands and feet as they pray to the river. If the river floods, he is taken away, and they say that is voice can be heard in the first gurgles of spring. If it does not, he is unbound after three days. His hair is white where it once was not and his face is lined where it once was smooth. He is no longer a sapling, but bears a strange resemblance to the twisted grooves in the oldest trees—that which only the strongest wind can ever master.

  —From the journals of Tamino Ailare

  Upstairs, Carmina’s aunt recounted to her unconscious mother the sins committed that day. Her aunt did this every day, of course, but given the magnitude of today’s sins, Carmina knew she would remain in the sick room until late afternoon.

  Not that her sins had made any difference, either way. She was summarily betrothed. Bound. Her well being, and that of her mother and aunt were now in the hands of the man she would marry, which is to say, they were now at the mercy of her mother-in-law. Carmina slipped out the back door and followed the path that snaked past the apothecary’s tent, past the House of Eight Scribes, past the house of ladies, and past the sad hut of the Governor’s first rejected mistress and her many children, until she reached the banks of the Opponax. She followed the thin trail that led upstream until she reached the mouth of a narrow, though deep, tributary, nearly hidden in a canopy of heavy leaved branches. The red velvet and the beads were already gone—the first hung to air in the courtyard, the second counted wrapped and locked in her aunt’s bedroom. She removed her white muslin, her corset, her many layered undergarments. She removed each stocking, each shoe. She removed the ring that was her father’s, the bracelet that was her mother’s. She stood, mother naked by the water, her thighs glistening with sweat and bright blood, and slowly lowered herself into the water, hanging onto a large root to keep from floating away.

  As she watched the tender curve of the trees’ limbs swaying gently overhead, she heard the sharp groan of bending wood and a blinding crack. Above the water’s skin, she smelled the sharp tang of flowing sap—a smell that instantly made her think of green eyes peering through a green wood, though she did not know why. She held more tightly to the submerged root and pulled close to the overgrown bank, her legs still floating freely in the swift water.

  On the other bank, next to a large tree, was a man. A Molaru man who turned to the tree, and patted it gently. He was tall, taller than Carmina, though by how much she could not say. Like the rest she had seen, he wore a head-dress made from the oiled inner skin of the Looma tree, its seams bound up with the gut of a panther. From the forehead, fresh leaves wove with the hair of the dead—both human and animal, creating something of a crown. The breastplate was made of wood, dark, with a strange sheen, carved throughout in patterns of blossom and branch and leaf, and the boots were made of rushes.

  Carmina, naked in the water, watched him as he touched the tree. His hands were small, smaller than her father’s, with narrow fingers and soft, brown palms. He moved as a tree moves, gently, irrevocably, whispering to the wind. He removed his headdress, and the stretched dome of his scalp gleamed in the dappled light. He slipped each leg from the boots of rushes, and Carmina marveled at the delicate arch of the feet, the neatly cinched heels. After untying the eight straps that held it in place, he pulled the breastplate over his head and leaned it against the tree, draping the leafy cloth from around his waist over the top. Carmina’s mouth opened, then closed. His nipples, dark as dates, hovered above the swell of two breasts. His thighs, like hers, were damp with sweat and the flow of blood from the dark scoop between.

  Carmina let out a cry, scrambled to the bank and stood opposite from the Molaru man who was not a man at all. The man who was not simply gazed back at Carmina, unblinking and unsurprised.

  “You,” Carmina said, but the man who was not simply raised her eyebrows. “Oh,” she said. “Of course.” She thought a minute, and tried the signs she knew. “You,” she signed. “Man. Not a man.” Carmina pressed her lips together. Surely she could do better than this. Had not her father taught her the poetry of handsigning? Had she learned nothing?

  “I am a man,” the naked girl across the water signed back. “We are all men.”

  Carmina thought for a moment. Then she signed, “Then what am I?”

  “You?” The girl who was a man shrugged her shoulders. “A child. Son of a wise child.”

  “My father, you mean.”

  “Both of your fathers were wise children. Your father whose blood lives in the stones. And your father who is living and dead at once. Wise children.”

  “Who is your father?” Carmina signed.

  “The trees,” the girl replied.

  The men who live in trees have many stories. Some I remember. Others washed away like water. One story is claimed to be their oldest, though who can tell? As a member of the empire and a distant relative to the Emperor himself, I am afraid they may be more guarded with me than with another. And thus, this, my last great research, may also fail. Regardless, here is the tale they told me: Once there was a man with fourteen fathers. Like all other men, this man was noble and honest and fair. He was a skilled hunter, a moral and merciless judge, a terrible warrior. He was so great that the rest of the people were awed in their respect for him. They backed away when he came, shielded their eyes from his gaze, and would not communicate with him without invitation. As a result, the man was friendless, peerless and utterly lonely. He went to the oldest man and knelt before him. “My spear is unsurpassed in all this endless wood,” he said. “My judgment is sound and unyielding, and I have kept my people fed and safe since I first became a man, which is to say, always. But I am alone, and therefore I have failed. I ask your permission to yield my life to the river, that my spirit may join in the lifeblood of the world and I may protect my people forever.” The oldest man thought on this, and as he thought, drew a circle on the ground. Within that circle, he wove another circle. And within that another. He continued until fourteen circles entwined in a tight knot. The man did not notice. Finally, the oldest man spoke. “Any permission would not be mine to give. Such a decision lies in the hands of your fourteen fathers. Ask them.” But the man did not know where his fathers could be found, so he prepared himself to journey into the heart of the wood. He took a single spear, which he strapped to his back. He brought no food, nor clothing, nor water skins. “I shall go forth into the world as I first entered—naked, hungry, but powerful.” The people listened and lowered their heads. They feared his gaze.

  The man traveled upstream towards the river’s beating heart—the beating heart of the known world. He traveled for fourteen days and fourteen nights. He neither slept nor ate. When he was hungry, he bent his knees to the ground and opened his mouth to the sky, biting down a small piece to chew. Back home, his people noticed bite marks in the high, white sky. Small ones at first, but as the days wore on, they were larger and full of teeth. By the fourteenth day, the rains came, and water poured in heavy gushes from the holes bitten in the sky.

  —From the journals of Tamino Ailare

  “Come across,” the man who was a girl who apparently lived in the trees or under the trees, or perhaps was actually a tree, had said with a gentle movement of her right hand, her left arm outstretched over the water.

  “I can’t,” Carmina said with her palms facing her chest, and flicking p
laintively to the ground. This was one of the first signs she ever learned. She sat down on a rock and attempted to shove her feet into her wet undergarments, now washed nearly clean.

  “Come across,” the girl said again, using both hands for emphasis.

  “I cannot,” Carmina signed back. “My father.” There was no sign for mother.

  “His blood is in the stones. Ask the stones.”

  “No,” Carmina said out loud. She buttoned her white shift over her damp breasts. The girl across the water remained as she was—damp with sweat and blood and muck. From where she fussed with sashes and laces, Carmina could smell her—a lush, woody, damp earth smell. Carmina shivered. “His blood is in his body. He breathes.”

  “One breathes, though dead. The other calls to you every time you walk by. The trees hear it. We hear it. You do not.”

  Carmina nodded. “Did my father know that some of you are men and some are not?” She did not like the girl who pretended to be a man, she decided. But, then, she didn’t like a lot of people.

  “Your father knew that we all were men. He knew it with his last breath.” Carmina picked up a stone the size of a mango and threw it into the water. It dropped with a satisfying splash and disappeared. She wasn’t aiming at anyone, of course, nor did she intend to hurt the girl—or the man—or what ever it was. She simply wanted to throw something. The girl who called herself a man raised one eyebrow but remained silent. Carmina turned and hurried back down the path, rubbing her palm against her hip as though it burned. When she leaned down she heard a whisper—so faint, she wondered if she had heard it before without noticing. Listen, it said as she leaned. In the stones, it said as she reared back. And it arced upwards, it’s pale heft curving through the damp and dappled light of the afternoon, it said, The one true stone, before disappearing with a plop.