Looking into the young man’s handsome face, nearly breathless at the prospect of the answer, Leeka asked, “You are the one they call Spratling?”
“I answer to that name. What of it?”
Leeka wished his lips were not so swollen and stiff, crusted with dried blood and salt. He wished his puffy eye was not obscuring his gaze and that he had a drink of water to loosen the words in his throat. But none of these things was about to change, so he said what he had planned to.
“Prince Dariel Akaran,” he began, “I rejoice to set eyes-”
“Why do you call me by that name?” the young man cut in, flaring with confused anger.
To Leeka’s relief, another answered for him. The large man hobbled his great bulk forward. “Calm yourself, lad. It’s my doing. It’s my doing.”
CHAPTER
Mena grabbed hold of the loops of rusty metal and pressed her bottom to the sand. Thus anchored she tilted her head and gazed up through columns of living mollusks. She sat, as she often did, on the sandy floor of the harbor, some thirty feet from the surface, her breath clamped tight inside her. Her hair floated around her in sinuous tendrils. Around her rose a towering forest of shadows, each of them a chain suspended from the surface and anchored to the ground. Oysters hung from the links by the thousands. Full grown, the creatures were as large around as a child’s head. Though much of this bulk was composed of shell, each of them could feed three or four diners, simmered in a coconut milk sauce and served with transparent noodles. They were a delicacy around which the temple controlled a monopoly. The export market in black oysters filled the temple coffers each time the floating merchants passed the archipelago.
Her lungs began to burn. They heaved against her chest. Every muscle out to her fingertips and toes twitched in protest, every part of her shouted in anger. Beyond the oysters, the brilliant turquoise of the surface glow highlighted the weight and size of the mollusks, as if the world above was a blessed place of light that she could regain only by the most perilous of ascents. She unclenched her hands and floated free. As she flew upward toward the light she blew a stream of bubbles preceding her. She was never sure if it was the bubbles themselves or if the oysters sensed her coming, but one by one the creatures folded their gaping shells closed, opening a passageway for her all the way to the surface. The last few moments were the worst, the most frantic, the entirety of her being screaming to get out of her skin, sure she had hung on too long.
She broke into the air with her mouth a gaping oval. Air engulfed her, as did light and sound and movement, as did life. She could not explain her need for this strange ordeal, but it always left her feeling temporarily secure about the purity of her soul. This was a thing that concerned her, especially on a day like this one, when she would look into the face of grieving parents and swear that a child’s death was a boon to them all, a necessary sacrifice, and a gift any parent should wish to give.
She left the oyster farm mid-morning. For nearly half an hour she negotiated the labyrinth of piers and floating docks that clogged the shallow, crescent harbor. The portion of the docks owned by the temple was a solitary domain in which Mena spent hours. But in the commercial harbor she entered a bustling throng of merchants and seamen, fisherfolk and net weavers. She wove through stalls offering all manner of foodstuffs: fish and crustaceans, fruit from the coastal plantations and jungle meat from the inner mountains. Salesmen cried their wares in the singsong cadence of Vumu speech. She moved through it with quiet purpose, accepting the mumbled greetings directed at her, the respectful bowed heads, and the prayerful invocations. Maeben on earth walked among them. Usually this made people joyful, but this afternoon there was veiled import behind the eyes watching her.
As she walked the last stretch of pier to the shore, Mena noticed the stillness of a sailor who had paused to look at her. He stood on the railing of a trading barge, one hand grasped around a rigging rope to steady him. She glanced up at him just long enough to take in his shirtless torso; his clean-shaven, angular jaw; steady eyes; and head wrapped in strips of white cloth, the ends of which hung down to below his shoulders and stuck to the sweat on his chest. He was not from Vumu, but sailors were always a polyglot bunch. There was nothing kind in his countenance nor lecherous, but his attentive silence made Mena uneasy. She quickened her step.
At the temple she dressed in all the accoutrements of her guise as Maeben: talons fastened to her fingers; layers of feather robes; the spiky headdress that capped off her fierce, flamboyant appearance. As she felt the hands working around her she waited to feel the divine presence animate her form, place words in her, use her tongue to speak with, and form in her mind the resolution of complete belief. Thus far, however, the goddess refused to enter her when she was most needed. She held to her silence, and Mena was left to answer for her as best she could.
At first Mena had thought herself deficient. The senior priest assured her the goddess was just testing her, harsh mistress that she was. It was only a matter of time, he had said, until Maeben truly came to live inside her at all moments-not only during the frenzy of ceremonies. Though that had not happened, Mena had grown more and more comfortable with her role. All around her seemed complete in their belief, and that was usually sufficient to buoy her. Today was different, however, and she could not help but dread the meeting awaiting her.
A short while after dressing she sat on a thronelike chair in the anteroom of the temple. The head priest of Maeben’s order, Vaminee, stood beside her. He was dark skinned. His complexion was so smooth as to betray no obvious hints at his age, though Mena knew he had held his post for more than forty years. He wore a thin robe that fell from his shoulders in diaphanous folds, and he stood so still he might have been a statue. This was not the first time they had waited for a meeting like this to begin. In truth, they had shared this same silence three times in the last few years.
The young couple entered, flanked by lesser priests. Heads down, hands held before them with palms upraised, they approached slowly. Mena could not help but note how small they looked. They were but children themselves! How could they have borne-and now lost-a child? They knelt at the foot of the dais.
Without ceremony, Vaminee asked, “Who are you? Of what place? What circumstance?”
The father answered in a high-pitched voice, choked with emotion. They were inlanders, he explained. They lived in a village in the mountains. He hunted birds for the feathers used in temple ceremonies; she wove palm fibers for baskets and various wares that they sent to market in Galat. Their daughter, Ria, had been a good girl, round faced like her mother, shy among other children. They had loved her more than life. He would have given his own soul instead of the child’s without a moment of hesitation. He could not understand why-
“You have another child,” Vaminee said. “A boy who is twin to the girl. Be thankful of that.”
“And we had another before that,” the father said, anxious that this point be understood. “Our children came all three at one time. We lost our first to the foreigner’s offering. They took Tan from us. So why would Maeben punish us yet again?”
Oh, Mena thought, they had given a child to the Quota already. Now they had lost a second!
Vaminee was not moved. “Three children in one womb is too rich a bounty to go unnoticed. But tell us exactly what happened to the girl.”
This fell to the mother to answer. She showed little of her husband’s visible emotions. Her voice was like her eyes, flat and weary, as if she had passed beyond grief and found herself in another place. She had been walking a ridgeline with her daughter, she said. Ria had trailed some distance behind her, but she knew the trail well. She could hear her singing, repeating a few simple verses over and over and over. At some point her song stopped. Simply clipped in mid-phrase. She looked back to the spot where her child should have been, but it was empty. When she looked to the sky, she saw her daughter’s legs. She saw them dangling as if from the sky itself. And then she saw the spread of wings that carried her away. And then she heard the beat of them.