Teenae’s body was trembling. “All right.” She breathed deeply to stay out of shock, smelling her own flesh burning from the hot needle.
“’S all right,” said the naked little sister crawling over to pat her on the head.
“Was Oelita a temple-goer?”
“Oh, she was at our temple all the time!” He began to cut again and Teenae’s body shuddered once. His male voice dominated her senses, flooding over the pain like maita. Concentrate on the voice. The voice droned in and out as if the speaker were not in one place. “She competed in everything. She raced.” An endless scream traced its path down to the hump of Teenae’s buttocks. “Oelita played chess. Her eyes were the quickest, her hand the fastest. She’d spend days with a puzzle. She’s the village kol-game master, though you’d never know it…”
Teenae took her teeth off the hardwood strip long enough to interrupt. “I love kolgame!”
“… because no matter whom she plays, she only wins half the time!” Zeilar’s hand sought a new knife and that brief moment of relief was spring and summer and autumn. “Nobody ever earned a higher kalothi rating in this village.” The new knife began the quick maneuverings again. “She does not need to be merciful,” he said proudly, “but she is.”
“Wait! I have to wait!”
“We are almost done. I think it will be beautiful.” Tenderly he mopped up the blood and applied more stinging beetle mash.
“When did she become a lonepriest?”
“Doesn’t wisdom come on us in hard times? Life was full for her. She had a great father, may he still nourish us, and all the friends a human could hope for. She could have married into a great clan. She could have had any clan, except perhaps your o’Tghalie.”
“Our men would have loved her!” Teenae laughed.
“Are you ready yet? Shall we continue?”
“Yes, but keep talking. The knife is bearable when you talk and I can concentrate on your voice.”
“She could have joined a Stgal family!” The knife began again with a torturing zigzag walk. “Even the Kaiel would have had her, I’m sure of it. The Kaiel! She was beautiful. No woman ever took more care in decorating her body! But it was not to be.” The knife paused while he shrugged.
“She took a lover. A great traveller. He came overland from the Aramap Sea. Imagine that. The Aramap Sea. Handsome. Powerful kalothi. She was young then. Very young, and wished to prove to the world her worth as a bride by bearing the most beautiful children in the village. She had twins, both of them genetic cripples, nothing wrong in their minds — they were both alert and intelligent children like their mother — but crippled in the legs. You know the disease, Ainokie’s curse. She’s a carrier and never would have known had she picked another lover.”
“She didn’t eat them at birth?” asked Teenae, so appalled that for a moment her pain vanished.
“No. She has a gentle soul. She raised and protected them but would not marry. They had kalothi. She always said that. They had kalothi. But the famine came.” The thought seemed to disturb him and he began to carve the kernels of the wheat in silence.
Teenae cried in gasps, “Go on with your story. Don’t stop!”
“It was a bad famine here; I don’t know how it was where you came from. The Culling began. First the criminals. The famine gnawed at our bellies. The low in kalothi went to the temple to give us life. Even the old went to the temple to give the young life — that’s how bad it was. One out of every ten became part of the living. We were decimated. The village shared Oelita’s children. That was when she stopped Chanting to the God of the Sky, our rock of superstition, and when she began to show us a better way.”
How cruel to keep monsters alive in the name of mercy, thought Teenae through her pain.
The artwork continued. The story continued. Teenae ceased to be aware of either. She endured the pain. She struggled to stay conscious. She breathed deeply. She tried to crush the rods in her fists. She left teethmarks on the hardwood bit. Sometimes she screamed through clenched teeth. She could not stop the tearless sobs. Somewhere in her mind she thanked the God of the Sky that she was a woman now, a full-grown woman because there was no more blankness upon her body. The littlest girl, who had all of this still to experience, kept patting her head compassionately and when it was over, she was there, directly in front of Teenae, smiling.
Zeilar swabbed the wounds gently and bandaged them. Two of his wives came up the ladder. They had been preparing Teenae’s swimmers. They fed her the raw brains and gills. Pain sharpened the taste buds, they said, and now was the time for delicacies. The remains of the swimmers they had packed to rot in little jars so that the meat would be ripe in a week.
“You’re spoiling me,” she said when the women began to sponge the sweat from her face and body.
“We welcome you to our bond,” said the younger woman.
Teenae had saved her most important question until exactly the logical moment. “Will I ever get to meet her?”
“Yes,” said one-wife.
“Of course,” said three-wife.
“She is in hiding now,” said Zeilar, “because the Mnankrei have challenged her by Death Rite.”
“I’d heard a rumor like that. It frightened me.”
“Her wondrous kalothi will protect her and so they cannot win, but still she must be careful. You will meet her.”
“Why can’t people just leave each other alone!” Teenae spoke with adamant anger against Joesai, though it seemed that her anger was directed against the sea priests.
“Oh, but she welcomes the challenge. When the Mnankrei lose they will owe her a Great Favor.”
Yes, you will owe her a Great Favor. Teenae savored the coming victory over Joesai. Logic was better than tradition.
13
When the land is full of strife, the mother of the Savior-knowing that she is the mother of the One Who Speaks To God — shall spill her blood deep in the Graves of the Losers and the child who is born upon the stones, breathing the incense of kaiel with his first cries, shall rise from that mournful place suckled by his mother’s certainty.
HOEMEI HAD LEFT a message and she had not replied. To meet him was forbidden by clan edict. Even to speak to him was forbidden. Why did he persist? Those maran-Kaiel were shamelessly bold! Did they not fear Aesoe? Was their love so small they would endanger her?
Yet how could she just forget them? She folded her arms crossly above a belly so large that it indicated a baby near term. Life was grief and anguish. Was a refusal morally correct? She had not refused Joesai. It had overwhelmed her with surprise the way Joesai had approached her after the interdiction, pushing through the social barricades so casually. Love that strong was difficult to resist. Since then duty and fear had hardened her. Being forewarned by Joesai’s behavior and no longer surprised, she had refused when Hoemei had first tried to see her. She had been cold, she had ignored him — and yet in his shy way he persisted. Her loneliness was weakening her resolve.
She wanted to see Hoemei. She desperately wanted news of Joesai — and Teenae, too. I will not see him! But what could Aesoe do if she spoke to him for a moment? Suppose the meeting was carefully clandestine, how could he even find out about it? The thought frightened her. Kathein was afraid of Aesoe.
I’m not brave. Her mind paused. I’m weak! she added furiously. It was their boldness that had attracted her to the maran-Kaiel when they had decided to court her. She was conventional. She stayed on the roads and only wondered about shortcuts. Gaet and his cavalier way with all that was sacred had fascinated her from the day they met. How did he survive? When he had brought her home she had expected a conservative family to balance his impulsiveness, but the whole family had turned out to be equally free of what seemed to Kathein to be the irreducible constraints. They were freer than Kathein had ever wanted to be.