The Fire-Moon

by Isabel Pelech

  The Fire-Moon

  Isabel Pelech

  Copyright 2017 Isabel Pelech

  Content Warning: This book contains descriptions of child abuse and child death.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: Sunlight

  Chapter Two: Moonlight

  Chapter Three: Wildfire Light

  Chapter Four: Tomblight

  Chapter Five: Sunlight

  Author's Note

  Chapter One

  Sunlight

  Teshar hated the priest before she ever saw him.

  It wasn’t that she had been expecting, or even hoping for, an easy day. Since she had stumbled back out of the desert, there were no easy days. She woke in the last frigid moments before dawn, hitched the donkeys to their monotonous wheel as the sun rose, and then spent morning to baking noon hauling the water that the wheel pulled up. The cistern always needed water, and so did the high-walled gardens. The largest and worst task was the barley fields, where the oncoming dry season raced this year’s tardy harvest. After noon, when the man she now called Master was already sleeping off dinner, Teshar collected her bread from her “mistress,” Nairuntu, and tried to find an unassailable place to eat it.

  And that was when today went wrong. Instead of looking past Teshar, Nairuntu stabbed at her with a finger. “Where were you? What have you been doing?”

  “Watering the—”

  Nairuntu slapped at Teshar, but she was too agitated to notice that Teshar ducked the greater part of the blow. “Don’t give me that! Do you have any idea what’s happening today?”

  Teshar could feel her eyes narrowing in what Nairuntu called her demon look. “Holy Oseros could be marrying his brother in the barley field, and no-one would bother to tell me about it. I was—” She ducked again.

  “Don’t blaspheme!” Nairuntu strode across the room, opened a high cupboard, and added almost pleadingly, “For the love of the gods, girl, don’t bring his anger on your head or mine. Here.” The sack of coins, small but heavy, hit Teshar mid-chest. “Go to market. Buy me a jar of milk, good cow’s milk, three whole ducks, all the fresh grapes you can find, and a coconut. Get cheated and I’ll skin you alive. Be back before sundown, or—”

  “A coconut?” Teshar squeaked.

  “Are you deaf or stupid? Yes, I said a coconut. The priest is coming today. If he finds fault with our hospitality . . .” Nairuntu actually shuddered. “Go on. Run, you don’t have until the rains come!”

  She had, Teshar admitted privately and reluctantly, a point. It would take her half the afternoon to walk from this farm to Hasmahi and its little village square, and the rest of the day to trudge back with a full load. And the last thing she wanted was to be caught out when the light began to fade. “All right. I need my bread.”

  “You need a beating. Go!”

  “But I—” She’d had nothing to eat since last sundown.

  Nairuntu’s eyes bulged slightly, and Teshar knew she had pushed her mistress as far as she dared. A certain amount of defiance was possible because in her heart, Nairuntu knew she was in the wrong. Pass a certain point, however, she would beat Teshar until she couldn't walk. “Go! Now!”

  Teshar went.

  It was not, she thought as she plodded down the dusty trace between near-parched fields, fair. Or lawful, or mahath, or any other word for right. Her life wasn’t meant to be like this.

  No. You should be bones by now, white shining bones in the desert. The thought was as inevitable as it was unwelcome. Grief came with it, heavy grief for her brother, lesser grief for her mother and her “master” Menib and even Nairuntu. Nothing is as it should be. Nothing in the world.

  That perception was borne out even by the market, when Teshar finally arrived. It was not a large place. Hasmahi was not a city or even a town, just a cluster of craftsmen who catered to the farms between the Lake Shirez marshes and the desert. But it should have had children, both younger and older than Teshar, chasing each other around the square and ignoring the eternal admonition to, “Stay where I can keep an eye on you, gods take it!” The paper cutters should have made successful conquest of the temple steps to spread their drying wares in the sun, and old Dejre the local priest should have been out arguing with them. But Dejre was dead now, and the paper cutters had moved away, despite the abundance of good reed in the marsh. One of the mothers who had once watched Teshar play came around her market-wagon with a stone in her hand, and Teshar ducked instinctively.

  That’s right. Inoheni’s dead too, isn’t she? With everything else, Teshar sometimes forgot how many of her friends were gone. Inoheni had been her best friend, in fact, but that seemed impossibly long ago.

  “What do you want?” The stone lay quiescent in the woman’s hand for the moment. Her other hand went briefly to the amulet at her breast. Everyone in Hasmahi wore several amulets these days—everyone but Teshar. I don’t suppose I could use some of first-m—of Mistress’s coin to buy bread for myself? Probably not; the way the woman was looking at her, word of her activities would spread the moment she was out of sight. Probably with suitable embellishments about her nasty looks and strange eyes and her hair, which was visibly changed even with the mud Teshar smeared on it. Her stomach rumbled. Unfair, unfair . . .

  “My mistress needs a jar of cow’s milk,” Teshar said. She knew Arya’s family had a cow. “And three ducks. Fresh grapes, as many as I can find. And . . .” Teshar swallowed; it was an outrageous request. “And a coconut. Oww!”

  “Liar.”

  “I am not a liar!” Teshar’s temper, which had frightened her ever since she came out of the desert, reared like a cobra. “I may be a desert demon-child, a bad luck charm, a bad daughter, and a slave in my own house, but one thing I am not. And that—” She could not survive a concerted beating by adults twice her size, either, and she was drawing hostile attention. Teshar backed away from the advancing woman. “Mistress Nairuntu sent me to buy food for the priest.”

  The woman froze. “The priest of Anhyr?”

  Teshar knew nothing about the priest except that he had deprived her of dinner. She nodded, hoping she was correct.

  The woman’s face reminded Teshar briefly of Nairuntu; they bore the same fearful look. “For his lordship the priest,” the woman said, “I have milk.” A brief struggle showed on her features. “And ducks, if you wait here, nice, fat layers. Don’t come any closer to my cart. And don’t touch anything.”

  Teshar blinked. “You’re going to butcher your egg-laying ducks?” Who in the world was this priest, that the mere mention of him prompted such sacrifices?

  The woman spun back to face her. “You don’t know anything, do you? This isn’t some feeble village gods-man. This is a high priest of the Jackal. They say he learned his lore in West Abajahn, in the city of the dead. He could fix you with one long look.” The woman licked her lips, torn between nervousness and the pleasure such an image invoked. “Send you to where you belong and believe me, girl. All the birds in Hasmahi would be well lost if he did just that.”

  She stalked away. Teshar stood frozen. So that's it. Not simply a priest, like old Dejre, but one of the fabled sorcerer-priests.

  Legend said that they could part rivers or ocean with a wave of one hand. They could turn into sandstorms to travel across the desert—or to flay the skin off anyone who offended them. Only a madman would steal from such a priest, because their staffs would turn to
cobras and their coins would burn through the hand that held them. They spoke with gods, walked the lands of the dead, and knew all manner of dark secrets—including, the taletellers would always mention, yours.

  However, it seemed they were incapable of conjuring coconuts when they wanted them. No, Teshar had to go carry and fetch for them. Her stillness was half from fear of this priest, yes. But it was also half from the fear of being clipped with another street stone. She could feel the other merchants watching her. Unfair. If he’s all that they say, he could have a wind spirit for a body-slave, and it could fetch this stuff in the blink of an eye. I’m not going to make it back before sunset—I know I’m not. And I’m so hungry! To arrive at twilight would mean a beating and no supper, at best. To be trapped outside after true nightfall was not something Teshar wanted to imagine.

  Conscience reminded her that slaves probably suffered much more than she. Her mother, at least, still acknowledged her as family. There were stories about cruel masters who starved their slaves for days, or beat them, or gave them inedible food to satisfy the letter of mahath. Before the desert, you didn’t care. You didn’t even think about slaves. And after the desert, all you can think about is yourself. “Oh, poor me, I’m hungry—oh, poor me, I’m thirsty—” when you should be grieving for Inoheni, and Ba’at, and your brother. They’re still out there, all of them, in the heat and the cold and no water anywhere, with no rites for their poor bones . . .

  Although the priest will be going out there, won’t he? He has to, to do something about him.

  As always, the thought sent a tremor through Teshar, a sick gagging feeling that started deep in her stomach, and she turned away from it as quickly as she could. Nevertheless, her mind kept sidling up on the idea. I wonder if even a sorcerer-priest could win that fight. He’s a sort of sorcerer himself, isn’t he?

  What if the priest doesn’t care about the bones? He can’t care that much about any of us, or he wouldn’t demand a supper with milk and coconuts. Or what if he just doesn’t find them?

  He won’t even know to look unless someone tells him. And no-one’s going to tell him, except—

  “Sheskiya said you need grapes, Little Star?”

  Teshar turned quickly, feeling a smile reclaim its long-abandoned home on her face. “Yes, ma’am. Mistress Nairuntu says as many as you have; I guess she figures the season’s over.” This was one of the few people in the village who had forgiven Teshar, and she showed it by using Teshar’s old nickname. Most women felt that Siotesharet—Star of the Desert—was not an appropriate name for a girl, evoking chill nights, trackless sands and deceptive mazes of wind-carved stone, not to mention the oblique linguistic hint of the bad-luck color red. If Teshar’s mother had bizarre barbarian views, and wanted to weigh her daughter down with such a name, she could most certainly call the child that. Everyone else would just call her Star, or Little Star.

  After the desert, everyone remembered the bad luck name too well. They reacted to Teshar’s presence as if she brought the sands spilling over the earthbake walls, trailing her like some great lady’s skirts. Perhaps one night, they would wake up to hear the sand right outside their window, like some nightmare inversion of the spring floods, and the shushing sounds of the sand waves would form words, names: Teshar, Teshar, Teshar . . .

  And perhaps the king of the baboons will fly out of my bottom in a burst of sorcerous smoke and declare me the long-lost princess of the Oasis of Beer. But I doubt it.

  This woman, Esethmerit, was one of the few who still called Teshar Little Star. And although Teshar had never felt as they did about her bad-luck name, she appreciated—no, thirsted for—the sentiment behind it. Esethmerit was the only woman here that Teshar still called “ma’am.”

  “The season is over,” Esethmerit said now. “I have three bunches for you, but they’re small, and they’re my last. Is it true that his holiness will be staying at your house?”

  Despite herself, Teshar felt a flicker of resentment. Do you care about me, or the gossip I might bring you? “That’s what they tell me.”

  Esethmerit leaned forward. “Little Star—as you love Holy Oseros, don’t let him see you.” She looked from side to side, as if she expected the priest to come sneaking up on them. “I know you’re a good girl, but these priests, they have ways of knowing things. And if he finds out—” She motioned wordlessly to Teshar’s hair.

  Teshar put her hand up reflexively, and felt the dry mud she used to conceal it now. “I didn’t—” After so many months of being told what she was responsible for, the phrase I didn’t do anything wrong did not come as easily as it once had.

  “I know. I know, Star.” Esethmerit reached out as if to touch Teshar on the shoulder, but even she wouldn’t go quite that far. Not in sight of the other women. “I just—perhaps I’m worrying over nothing. But it’s better to stay safe, you understand? You never know. There are stories.” She turned, hands moving nervously. “I’ll fetch you the grapes. Just go back home, and stay out of the way for the next few days. All right?” She bustled off without expecting a response.

  Don’t let him see you. There are stories.

  The priest won’t know to look for the children unless someone tells him. And no-one’s going to tell him except me.

  Those uncomfortable thoughts occupied Teshar until Esethmerit returned with the grapes, and until Sheskiya returned with the meat and milk. For a miracle, someone had even found a coconut, a brown thing the size of a newborn baby’s head. Teshar examined it curiously. It looks almost furry, but it feels just as hard as they say. I wonder how you open it?

  A problem for Nairuntu, not Teshar. Teshar’s problem was coin. She was fairly certain that Esethmerit had undercharged her for the grapes, but Sheskiya made up for it, demanding the whole purse. Teshar made an attempt at bargaining, although trying to haggle without being disrespectful was even harder than bargaining normally. “Ma’am, we don’t have that much—”

  “You try to rob me, you little red-haired demon—” The woman grabbed Teshar’s chin and pulled it upward so that Teshar had to stare into her eyes. “You think you’re so clever. You think you can get away with so much. If I had my way, you’d lie unburied next to my daughter—my daughter who you murdered—and if this priest won’t put you there I have half a mind to do it myself!” She pushed Teshar away from her, onto the paving stones, and then took two steps forward and snatched the purse away from her. “There. Take your wretched food and get out of here, before someone decides to give you what you deserve. Go!”

  Teshar blinked back tears, uncertain if they were from the words or the way she had hit her elbow when she landed. She put the food in her string bag, very slowly. “I didn’t murder Inoheni,” she whispered.

  Sheskiya didn’t even bother to shout this time. “She should be alive. You should be dead. Get. Away. From me.”

  For the second time that day, Teshar fled obediently.

  Before she was halfway home, she knew she wouldn’t make it.

  Even when she left Hasmahi, the sky had begun to color in the west, not the flamingo pinks of the rainy season but the subtle, all-shades-of-bronze gradation that came with dry weather. Before long, the sand wind would begin to blow, and if the barley had not ripened by then, there would be famine.

  If Teshar didn’t get home before sundown, she would have famine, of a more transitory and personal kind. Not to mention being caught out in the evening, with the shadows and the silence and them waiting out in the desert.. Even if Teshar arrived before full nightfall, the thought of gathering dark made her hands sweat. She tried to run for a stretch here and there, but the jar of milk was heavy and the coconut slammed again and again against her back. A fast walk was better, but she hurt, from hunger and her bruises and the little stitch that running made in her side. Unfair, unfair, unfair . . .

  Inside, her thoughts seemed to be answered by the voices of Sheskiya, Nairuntu, Menib, and all the others. Teshar broke into a weary jog; the pain of her body was b
etter than the pain of listening to the accusations. And here, finally, she was on her own fields, if she could really call them hers anymore. If she hurried . . .

  Beyond the endless barley fields, the sun touched the horizon and puddled there, like a glowing drop of water losing its round shape and seeping into the ground. Heat made it ripple like open water. Despite herself, Teshar recalled the desert, recalling dream-vivid the sensation of her tongue when it was completely, horribly dry. There had been a taste, a sandy, dry taste like nothing else in the world. And there had been something between her and the light . . .

  The sun halved, and then slivered and was gone.

  No. No! I should have been able to make it!

  I almost made it. Maybe Nairuntu will be so nervous, she’ll forget and let me have something to eat . . . But nervousness wouldn’t make Nairuntu kindly. Maybe mother will slip me something. As little as she protected Teshar from Nairuntu’s wrath, and as much as her mother stared at her with doubt and fear when she thought Teshar wasn’t looking, Teshar still believed her mother loved her. That’s it. After the meal is done, after I clean and creep off to bed, she’ll come. “I saved you some, Tesharet-child. Not much, but it’s tender, sweet duck just like we gave the priest. And a sliver of coconut—you’ve never tasted coconut, have you? And . . .”

  “You stupid, worthless little brat!”

  Teshar jumped and cursed herself for inattention. “Mistress, I’ve brought—”

  Nairuntu seized the bag from her back. “You’ve brought shame and danger on us, is what you’ve brought. I said sundown!” She held up the grapes and shook them at Teshar. “And what about these little raisins? I said good, fresh grapes!”

  “That was all—”

  It was clearly not Teshar’s best day for finishing sentences. “You mean that was all you felt like finding, because you’re a resentful little monster who only thinks about herself.” Nairuntu assumed a whiny falsetto. “’Oh, that’s unfair! Oh, poor me!’ And then,” in her normal voice again, “you dawdled and played games all the way back. Give me the money back.”