“The walls of this hola have heard many stories. But none quite so fantastical as this one.”
K-Ush extends two long arms and draws the boy into the air over her body. She continues to hover as she clasps the boy under his chin and drags his head up to her eye level. She removes the metal band from her head and clasps it in her hand.
“M-M-M-May I say one more thing?”
K-Ush exhales a frustrated breath. “Still trying to delay your death?” She opens her thighs and guides the boy to enter her.
“I must… deliver… my message,” the boy says between thrusts.
“Deliver your message, young one. And deliver it fast,” K-Ush says anticipating the sweet daze of ho-resh-li entering her body.
“The last wero invites you to visit her village. We know you are unhappy here. We want to offer you a different life, away from Wa-Sheya’s lies…”
K-Ush rams the metal band into his spine. Lightening quick, the band stretches, stakes him through his back, and exits through his stomach. The band seeks K-Ush’s navel. When it connects, an electric current snakes out of her body into the virgin’s, spurring all his internal organs into arrest. His breathing halts, his blood suspends circulation, and his brain quits. K-Ush drains all his energy, devouring it, not with joy, but with revulsion. His body—heavy with death—pushes K-Ush closer to the ground. She allows herself to fall back against the floor. Pure energy thrums through her veins. Her tongue swells, the taste of blood fills her mouth. She cannot free herself of the virgin. The band will not contract until all his energy is depleted. Powerless to move, K-Ush lets out a roar that silences all sound echoing in the dogra and instantly calls Sheya back from sleep.
As Sheya ushers K-Ush out of the hola, she again whispers something about the storm.
“No one ever died from a little water,” K-Ush snaps.
“I fear this one will be…”
But K-Ush does not hear the rest of her mentor’s words. She is rushing to lose herself in trance before the boy’s joints stick and his muscles grow cold. She does not want to think of the world he offered her. Her eye rolls back in its socket, her lips tremble, and prophecy flows from her like tears.
K-Ush offers prophecy hour after magnificent hour with a certainty that is terrifying. When the pain returns, K-Ush wonders if the ki-ra-he can bring pain as well as pleasure to her body. She wonders if this is the moment she should resist. The searing hurt obliterates any further thought. She does not call out to Sheya. Instead she retreats deeper into her trance. Her channeling voice continues booming out prophecy, but the aching throb does not let her go.
When K-Ush finally yields to the pain, a warm wetness embraces her cheek. She opens her eye with a sigh. Once more, she has left the dogra. The ki-ra-he is with her, gently licking the side of her face. She feels no fear; she feels relief. Some small part of her knows she is sacrificing something huge, but in this moment she does not remember the seekers, she cannot hold the village in her mind. She is a wero full of exhaustion, need, and want. Her arms drop defenseless to her sides. The licking expands from her cheek to cover her entire face. Then a low sigh rumbles in her chest. The wet warmth nestles against her throat. Every inch of her body feels caressed. For a few delicious seconds, there is nothing. No sound, no guilt, and no pain. She exhales from deep down in her gut, from a place in her body that has never felt release. She cries out like a child, stretches, then surrenders, quietly wishing to die this way.
A chattering of far-away voices disrupts K-Ush’s calm. She clenches her eye tightly trying to keep the ki-ra-he’s embrace. She feels her body rising horizontally against her will. The warmth dissipates. She finally opens her eye to see the ceiling of the dogra drifting jerkily past her gaze. She feels fingers biting into her wrists, waist, and ankles as seekers hold her over their heads. The dogra is in chaos. Panicked faces surround her. All those patient seekers no longer sit in ordered rows. They swarm out of the exit, rising water rushing around their heels.
K-Ush tries to sit up, but the grip of insistent hands holds her prone. She tilts her head back and looks around. At the back of the dogra, the wall is destroyed. A huge hole bursts with furious streams of water. Suddenly K-Ush becomes aware that a terrible rain is pounding the exterior of the dogra. She feels a tingling—it is the ominous gathering of humidity and agitated air. The storm! The storm Sheya promised would be catastrophic. The storm K-Ush refused to prophecy about.
K-Ush twists her head around looking for Sheya. Her gaze bounces around the dogra, zigzagging with the frenzied movement of seekers. Then she sees her. Occupying a sacred space of stillness, Sheya sits cross-legged and silent. Her head leans against a still-intact wall. Her large eye is closed in rest. K-Ush howls her name, attempting to rouse her from sleep. Sheya doesn’t move.
K-Ush screams words, then sounds for Sheya, the old one who became her mother once she took oath. No one reacts to K-Ush’s hysteria. She beats at whatever flesh she can reach with her fists. The seekers take her blows, but they do not put her down. Suddenly she knows that Sheya cannot be awakened. Her voice dies in her throat. Her lips form the words of an ancient mourning song. Sheya’s corpse sits quietly in the rising waters, her posture erect as if she is watching over K-Ush as she always has.
K-Ush has never seen this much water. It is waist-deep and rising. A hastily crafted vessel bobs in front of the dogra waiting for K-Ush. She sees seekers wading in every direction. Some have village valuables bundled on their heads. Others ferry shivering families to safety. And there are those nearby, watching over her. She does not resist when the seekers place her in the rickety boat. Dampness soaks her thin robe as the seekers row her to the focor: the tallest structure in the village. The seekers motion frantically for K-Ush to leave the boat. She surveys them passively, then stands and hovers. The minute her feet no longer rely on the boat for balance, the seekers row away, returning to the dogra to save others.
K-Ush, misjudging the weight the rain has added to her heft, drops heavily onto the roof of the focor. Almost blinded by the diagonal assault of raindrops, she feels the seekers gathered on the roof turn and stare. For K-Ush, their awe is more assaultive than the rains. She folds her lips into a tight grimace and lifts her head in a regal attempt to hover, but the wet anchors her feet to the ground. She wraps her arms around her body and strides past them. In a remote corner, she turns her back to the seekers, pretends she is in her shro, and curls up to sleep.
The water swallows everything. After devouring the dogra, the storm turns to the focor, flooding the roof where K-Ush is recovering from seven days of offering prophecy. Even after the seekers who waited with K-Ush on the focor’s roof have been rowed away, K-Ush does not stir. It is as if she cannot feel the floodwaters licking at her curled up legs. She has completely surrendered to post-prophecy sleep.
A small band of seekers intent on saving the wero dare to lift K-Ush’s inert body, even though Sheya is not around to give them permission to do so. They settle her in the bottom of the last water vessel headed for unknown parts. But the storm is faster than they imagined. With a huge crack, water slams against wood, rousing K-Ush from sleep just before the vessel overturns and she is flung into the floodwaters.
K-Ush gasps, throat burning with unwelcome gulps of water. She kicks her legs wildly trying to propel herself toward the bobbing boat. The current drags her under, but a wero is built to endure. Using her large hands and feet she pushes herself up to the surface. She is dragged under again and again, but each time, she resurfaces, spitting out water and gulping for breath whenever her mouth meets air. Then survival is handed to her—the floodwaters slam her into the clutches of a tree.