by Naomi Foyle
Spilling, spooling
Powering, pouring
She was on the outer rim of the labyrinth now. If she were in battle, she would be one of the bravest warriors, facing the enemy, baring her teeth, lunging and stabbing, never losing formation. But she was safe, shielded by the Boundary, its wealth of ruby and silver illumination coating her from braid bead to toenail as she walked the far edge of the circle, back yet again to near the entrance, where the path made a wider loop inwards, up past the middle rings she’d already walked and into a simple spiral, its coils tightening towards the centre of the labyrinth. From the corner of her eye she could see the Cedaria had reached the centre. The girl paused, only for a moment, then turned and began to spin back out again onto the path. As Astra made the dizzying rotations towards the core, she met the girl returning, and then her train of Cedaria celebrants. One by one they stepped carefully around her. The prospect of this interweaving had concerned her when it was explained in rehearsal, but now it was occurring she realised the path was wide enough and the brush of flesh on flesh a signal of the energy building in the labyrinth. She had wanted to be the first student, hers the first school to enter; she had thought that being first was a privilege, she had wanted the whole labyrinth to herself; but she now understood it was more powerful to be lost in Gaia’s eternal turning. She dug deeper into her petal bag: she had to cast away all her petals, all her childish doubts, desires and fears, before she reached the centre.
Into Gaia’s
Sacred Womb
Even though she had been spying it the whole way, that pivotal space – Gaia’s womb-heart, the battle vortex, last standing ground of mighty Warrior Kings and Queens – when the centre of the labyrinth was finally there, underfoot, its arrival surprised her. A tiny part of her mind had been worrying that it was too small, too crowded, her time in it would be too short – and she was briefly crushed up against Fox and Leaf as she entered and left, the queue bunching and inching to accommodate her – but in the moment that she stood and planted her staff in the soil between the three paving stones that marked the centre, she felt as open as the steppes. Her petal bag was empty, her head sang with understanding, her heart was winging in her chest. She whirled once around her staff and began to retrace her steps back to an entirely new world. As she placed one poised foot after another, lightly manoeuvring around celebrants still journeying to the centre, still shedding petals, still burdened with childish desires, she felt her stomach wrench and liquid trickled down her thigh.
She kept walking, but when the blazing white beam passed over her again, she glanced down. It wasn’t wee. It wasn’t Gaia-play juice. It was black.
* * *
She finished the labyrinth walk with tears brimming in her eyes, blood pouring down her legs. Gaia had visited her in the Blood & Seed ceremony. Gaia had chosen her. She chose girls rarely, not every year, and when She did it was a great blessing, not only on the girl’s school, but on the whole bioregion. Astra knew exactly what to do. When she exited the labyrinth, instead of following Fox back into their school row, she presented herself to the two female IMBOD officers still standing sentinel at the entrance. In the spill of light between their two erect figures, she patted her leg and showed them her dark wet palm.
Silently, her back straight, the chalice-bearer strapped the chalice into her hydrobelt, retrieved her Tablette and handed it to Astra. Astra wiped her hand on her belly and touch-typed her name into the screen. Her photo came up, with three rows of text beneath it:
Astra Ordott
Golden Bough School
New Bangor
Not Gaia-bled
This was the official IMBOD Gaia-blood database. Girls who had already begun bleeding were listed with the date of their first Gaia-blood. If their cycle coincided with the ceremony, they had to wear blood panties, like Silvie. The only way to possibly cheat the system was for a girl who had only just begun bleeding to keep the fact secret, then wear a mooncup or a tampon and pull it out and discard it while in the labyrinth. But because of the penetration rule even small tampons and mooncups weren’t allowed until at least age fifteen, so the girl would be breaking two laws. Besides, she would have her staff in one hand and all the other celebrants would see her grappling with her Gaia garden with the other as she walked. Even if the girl had somehow connived to gain glory for her school by asking her friends not to report her, celebrants from other schools would see her, and so would the IMBOD officers in the watch-towers, passing their bright beams over the labyrinth in search of any such desecrating act. And later, of course, the site gardeners would find the evidence, even if the girl had managed to tread her tampon or mooncup down into the earth with her heel. So in fact, cheating was impossible – but naturally the officer had to check the records.
The Chalice Officer examined her Tablette, rapidly thumb-swiping and tapping the screen. The swirling light from the Boundary was haloing her thick hair and the screen up-glow coated her face with a greenish patina. She smiled, and her teeth glinted like emeralds. For a moment, she looked like the ancestor in the far seat of the arrowpain. Then she put a hand on Astra’s shoulder and gripped it in a half-shake, half-hug. Beside her, the Second Officer raised her flagon in the air. The Chalice Officer shoved her Tablette back in her belt and twisted Astra around to face the stands of parents and teachers. As the two watchtower beams converged on them she grabbed Astra’s staff-hand wrist and lifted it high in the air.
Astra was quaking and a lathe of pain was rotating in her stomach. The bright white lights were cascading over her, delineating every blade of grass at her feet, sending long black shadows criss-crossing down towards the school rows, striping the celebrants still processing out of the labyrinth, still chanting the Blood & Seed hymn. Over the choral tapestry of interweaving voices, a roar rose up from the stands. The adults were applauding. They were calling Gaia Gaia Gaia.
The officer was yanking her arm out of its socket and her gut was wound tight as a scarf caught in a bicycle chain. Her face contorted with pain and she was afraid she might drop her staff. When she opened her eyes, a Kezcam was dropping out of the sky. With a tiny shudder, the black ball stopped directly in front of her, on the edge of the spotlight.
Astra stared into the lens and placed her free hand between her legs. She thrust her dripping red palm out towards the camera and up into the air. The cheer of the crowd intensified and their clapping became rhythmic in time to the chant. The spotlights swerved back to the labyrinth, the applause ended with a final full-throated GAIA, and she and the officers were left in the dark.
As her eyes adjusted back to the marbling Boundary light, the Chalice Officer dropped her arm and bent down to shout in her ear, ‘Go back to your place in your row.’
She was a woman now – but like a child, she wanted to find Nimma and curl up in her cushiony lap, or go and lie in the long grass on the edge of the woods. Instead, she rejoined the queue of exiting celebrants, strange students from another New Bangor school who parted to let her in, and when the queue reached her row she peeled off and slipped back to her place next to Fox, walking slowly with head held high past all her friends, who couldn’t reach out and pat her on the back or hug her because the Kezcam was following her and any breach of protocol would subtract from the points she had just earned, but whose sweet, kind, familiar faces radiated joy for her and pride for Golden Bough School.
They stood tall, chanting and waiting for the labyrinth to empty of students. The blood was crawling down her leg, tickling her as it reached a sensitive spot just above the knee, but Astra didn’t dare wipe it away. When all the schools were back in their rows, the watchtower lights strobed rapidly, then cut off. This was it, the signal for the final act of the ceremony: the Sec Gen laser ritual.
Everyone stopped chanting. The Pilgrimage site was lit only by the four officer spotlights and the ghostly glow of the Boundary. In one fluid movement, the students of all fourteen schools knelt on the ground. Just as they’d rehearsed,
Astra paused for the count of three, then placed her staff to her right and lay back on the grass, her feet on the earth, knees in the air, hydropac coiled like a mat between her shoulder blades. She reached out for Leaf and Fox’s hands and held them loosely, her right wrist resting on her staff. She was a link in a chain of children staring up at the stars, waiting, hearts steady as pulsars, to take the final step into adulthood. From the Boundary, a single soprano voice soared over the site, a high keening wail of aspiration, followed by a deep male bass, a rumbling counterpoint that answered the soprano’s cry for knowledge with a fathomless echo of the night’s impenetrable mysteries.
Astra’s skin erupted in a cold rash of joy. The sacred singers of Vanapur Temple had emerged from the watchtower to serenade her and her generation. The singers, in their high traditional headdresses and woven wrist- and ankle-wraps, were standing on the parapets of the Boundary, arms raised to the sky, embracing the watching parents and teachers. The labyrinth officers were securing their chalices and flagons into their hydrobelts and taking their square black medpacs from their shoulders. Ensconced in the light of the four spotlights, they were leaving the entrance to the Chakravyuha and marching down the central aisle, medpacs in their hands, each stopping before one of the first four schools, pausing, bowing to the parents. They were turning into the rows, kneeling before the first students, unbuttoning the medpacs. How long would it take for an officer to reach Golden Bough School? Her knees trembled and she inhaled and focused on stilling the tremor. She couldn’t let everyone down, not after being Chosen.
The singing continued, monotonous, swelling, hypnotic, punctuated only by the occasional random yelp or moan. When it was her turn, Astra wasn’t going to utter even a gasp. Her fingers were entwined with Leaf’s and Fox’s and her legs were firm now, the soles of her feet planted securely in the grass. Her eyes were filled with the dazzling smear of the Milky Way, her nostrils hummed with the scent of sweat, earth, lily pollen and the faint tang of blood, her blood, now tracing a line down her legs, seeping into the soil. Her body was not her own: her body belonged to Gaia, to Is-Land, to her generation. She ached for the consummation of all that she was.
After she didn’t know how long, the officer was there, in their row. Beside her, the light beam was flooding Leaf’s body and the officer was kneeling between hir legs. She caught a whiff of an intense, acrid smell that nearly turned her stomach and Leaf was gripping her hand until she thought her finger bones would break. But heesh didn’t cry, didn’t make a single sound.
And now it was her turn.
The officer was between her knees. She mustn’t look up, would never know if her initiator was a male or a female officer, a chalice- or a flagon-bearer. The officer was snapping on a new pair of latex gloves, spreading her buttocks apart and rubbing her Gaia garden with a wet sponge, all the way down to her anus. Just as they’d practised, she opened her legs as wide as she could, raising her buttocks and exposing her perineum. The scent of alcohol wafted up to her nose and the air cooled her damp genitals. Then the officer was drying her quickly with a flannel, not removing it, but plugging her slightly, pushing the cloth a fingertip into her Gaia garden, just enough to prevent the blood from flowing out. It was coming now. She clenched Leaf’s and Fox’s hands and they squeezed back, Fox with more strength than Leaf.
The officer was smoothing the stencil over her perineum now, holding it down with two fingers. Then, with the other hand, heesh was taking the laser gun from hir belt. The spotlight was blinding her, bleaching her body. Everyone in the stands, every Golden Bough parent and teacher, was watching her, all holding their breath for the Chosen one, begging her not to fail them now. She tensed, squeezed her eyes shut, gritted her teeth. It will hurt you more than the others, Hokma had said. Anything I give for the pain will wear off before the ceremony starts. You will have to cope with it yourself. Count to ten. Breathe deeply. Release the air slowly. Clench your feet inside the boots. Press your wrist against your staff. Create another pain.
ONE—
A pinball of fire rocketed up her spine, dislocating her bones, rattling her teeth. She dragged a breath …
TWO—
… of charred air into her lungs. The pain was slowly circling her root chakra. A sickening stench …
THREE—
… invaded her mouth, a sulphurous cloud of rotten alt-meat, struck matches, sucked pennies. The flames crawled up her nerves …
FOUR—
… and it was all she could do not to shake her legs and throw her hips in the air. There was bile in her throat, the searing circle of pain …
FIVE—
… joining like a snake, tail to mouth, complete. She choked back the vomit. A thin red-hot bar began to …
SIX—
… traverse her. She rammed wrist against staff, bone against wood, two crossed dorjes welded together. Now …
SEVEN—
… a downwards whiplash began and …
EIGHT—
… another, meeting in a point on the still-burning circle and now …
NINE—
… at last, the vertical gash, dividing the triangle, back down to the …
TEN—
… point of worst pain …
Just when she thought she had to scream or pass out or die, it was over. The IMBOD shield was branded at the root of her Gaia garden and the officer was spraying her with cooling anaesthetic. Leaf and Fox were pumping her hands. Her eyes burned. She was Sec Gen now, in everything but Code.
2.12
No one had giggled, no one had faltered; everyone had remembered their lines. No one had cried or screamed during the Branding. No points had been deducted for any part of their performance. Silvie and Sultana had been Gaia-bleeding, and Astra had been Gaia-Chosen, and thanks to the extra points she’d earned them, Golden Bough School won the Congregation Site prize for Best Performance at the Blood & Seed ceremony. As the bioregional medals were being hung around their necks, the results of the other four ceremonies came in to the officers’ Tablettes. Incredibly, another girl – from Atourne – had also been Gaia-Chosen that year, but no girls in her school had been bleeding at the start of the ceremony, so thanks to Silvie and Sultana, Golden Bough had also taken the National Blood & Seed prize. The female chalice-bearer announced the amazing news, and everyone at the Congregation Site leapt to their feet and cheered until Astra worried that their throats were being stripped of their linings.
Afterwards, Astra’s classmates mobbed her, desperate to touch and hug and kiss her. Just as she thought she might be crushed, Tedis and Baz lifted her on their shoulders and paraded her up and down the central aisle between the stands, Yoki jumping along by her legs. Tablette cameras flashed everywhere – the parents and students of the other schools were as ecstatic as her own friends and community. Gaia had chosen their ceremony, and they would remember all their lives the moment when their labyrinth walk was transformed by the convergence of the watchtower lights on the girl who had become a woman among them. When the boys finally let her down, Tedis hugged her. Her nipples pressed hard as acorns against his chest, but then strange adults were falling over themselves to hug her and Nimma was rushing over, pushing them away.
‘Astra, oh my darling! Let me look at you!’ Her Shelter mother cupped Astra’s face in her hands and kissed it all over. Then she sank to her knees, pulled a damp cloth out of her hydropac and began rubbing at the dried blood streaks on Astra’s calves.
‘Good Gaia, woman, don’t wipe it away,’ Klor boomed behind her. ‘Gaia has marked her twice tonight: let her stay marked.’
‘She can shower at home, Nimma,’ Hokma chimed in.
There was a severe, tugging feeling in Astra’s stomach. Lil had told her about this. ‘I’ve got cramps,’ she moaned.
‘Nimma,’ Hokma asked, ‘did you bring any aspirin?’
‘Only enough for two bioregions.’ Nimma rummaged again in her pac and handed Hokma a bottle. Hokma gave Astra two pills and helped
her fumble for her hydro-tubing. She sucked and swallowed. ‘My brand hurts too,’ she whispered. It was burning again, a lancing, almost intolerable pain, travelling in spurts up to her coccyx.
‘The aspirin will help,’ Klor soothed.
‘Oh, Klor, it’s not nearly strong enough,’ Nimma snapped. ‘Astra, lie down.’
Astra obeyed, opening her knees to let Nimma spray her again with anaesthetic. Klor knelt at her side and stroked her forehead with his gnarly knuckles.
‘Brave Astra,’ he smiled.
‘I don’t see why they couldn’t have been injected,’ Nimma grumbled. ‘It’s all right for the robust ones, but Yoki’s in tears.’
‘They have to learn to take a little pain,’ Klor said. ‘That’s what the Sec Gens do for us all. Isn’t that right, angel?’
‘Well, they’ve done a good job, at least,’ Nimma added. ‘The circle is round as the moon, Astra. You must have held perfectly still.’
Astra nodded dumbly. Nimma was pulling a pair of blood panties up around her waist, flipping the hipbeads out so the three ropes hung over the red absorbent cloth. The spray was working, her stomach felt better and she thought that in a minute or two she would be able to walk again. As she lay there, dazed and catching her breath, a shadow blocked the light: Ahn, Tablette in hand, a Kezcam hovering at his shoulder, was standing over her, smiling his thin smile.
‘So. The Gaia Girl,’ he greeted her. ‘Well done, Astra. Well done, Hokma.’
Astra shut her knees and Hokma said quietly, ‘Thank you, Ahn, but I had nothing to do with it.’
* * *
The traffic was bumper to bumper leaving the parking field, but the cars rolled down their windows so people could keep waving at each other, all singing the Blood & Seed hymn as they inched towards the main road. In the minivan, Mr Ripenson had joined them, sitting in the back next to Ahn; Freyja’s arm was resting across the back of the front seat, stroking Pan’s shoulder and from her seat behind Yoki and Astra, Nimma asked if anyone was hungry and brought out a picnic hamper filled with soy yoghurts, bananas and berry biscuits. Yoki was hugging Astra, saying, ‘You’re my sister. I love you!’ over and over and she was squeezing him back saying, ‘You’re my brother. I love you.’ Then right outside Astra’s window Silvie’s carthorse lifted his tail and dropped a big ploppy poo pile on the road and everyone started laughing, even Ahn.