Pleckoo opened his eyes and laughed. At first, the laugher hurt, and he slapped his chest as if to dislodge something trapped for ages inside it. Around the leaf, the others were looking at him, smiling in approval, some echoing his laughter.
“Must be his first time,” said Glip.
“But not his last,” said Naloti, and everyone laughed. Pleckoo looked around the leaf as the family smiled at each other, touching each other’s arms or legs as they commented on the food and the drink. He was fascinated by the hands and nails of the old woman across from him, which had a delightful way of flaring outwards as she picked up her food. The sleeves of her garment contained a world of beauty within them, including the fibers of the material as well as the variations of their dyes. The movement of her arm to her mouth was captivating, as well as the rolling motion of her lips as she chewed.
Returning to his food, Pleckoo picked up a honey crystal and looked inside it to see brilliant lights racing inside its facets, like the play of children. The crystal, he was sure, had dropped from the sun into his hands, and felt warm and comforting and pleasantly sticky. Inside of his mouth, he felt a lake of cool water and as he extended his tongue to lick the crystal; it felt like some great, happy grub reaching out of the earth to savor the sunshine.
When his tongue and the crystal connected, the sweetness was so intense it left him shaking. He closed his eyes and found himself on the back of a bee, on a saddle between its four wings. It flew him to a vast, globe-shaped hive where honey makers with stripes in rainbow colors marched in circles to make a living tapestry. The hive’s six-sided cells overflowed with honey, which fell in soft drops to the mouths of a throng of fervent worshippers who dance-prayed on the ground below. The hives’ layers unfolded to reveal the Bee Goddess, who shone bright, then brighter until She had become the Rising Sun.
Pleckoo opened his eyes and the vision was gone; but the crystal was still in his hand. He looked around to see others were biting their honey, crunching it with their back teeth, and making sounds that were almost sexual as they acknowledged the extreme pleasure. Part of him wanted to go off on his own with his sweets and lick them in solitude, to devote the rest of his life to this one activity. When he realized this would never be possible, it struck him as enormously funny that he could not eat sweets all day, and he laughed without constraint. As his diaphragm ached from laughing too hard, he looked from side to side and saw that no one was offended or even thought it strange.
The conversation and the laughter was growing louder, and as he looked at everyone’s faces, their eyes seemed larger and brighter and deeply beautiful. Daring, for the first time, he looked directly on the faces of the women. Never before had he seen middenites who were so thoroughly adorned; but never before had he realized the physical beauty of his own caste. Under their wraps of bright cloth, he could see the studs of jewels the women wore in their ears and noses, and could glimpse the hair they had washed, perfumed, and parted in the middle. He imagined the loose wave of this hair when it was freed to swing over their lithe, arching backs, and then he imagined the rest of their bodies, which had to be taut and firm from heavy labors.
An old curiosity was roused: what did low-caste Slopeish women look like when they were naked? He should have known since he was born from one, but nudity was forbidden on the Slope. He imagined their breasts were perfectly orb-like and had thick, upturned nipples. He wanted to know, then felt like he had to know, as he imagined their chests tapering to thin wasp waists with sweet navels, where he could insert a pinky, and below that would be a soft, fragrant patch of fine, curly hair and, under it, the trench of sweet fire.
His mind turned to that sweetness—to the hot and wet sensation of a woman who wanted a man inside her. He felt a climbing under his tunic and realized he had an erection, the first he had experienced in so many sexless days. His elbow dropped to conceal his arousal when Glip clapped his hands and stood as a sign that they were leaving. The men exited first, followed by the boys.
As Pleckoo stepped out the door he took a slow, shy glance at the women behind him, including Glip’s daughters. Both were of marrying age and they chatted and giggled as they rolled up the leaf. Being noseless at Cajoria meant a life on the outskirts of the midden as a pitiable bachelor. Was it the same in Palzhad, or would these women overlook it? So many of these men had been deformed by violence, some recently in their war with the Hulkrites. Glip’s oldest daughter was a true beauty, tall and confident, who could marry above her caste; but her younger sister had chubby cheeks that looked as if they were storing food. Her cheeks made her tiny mouth look even tinier, but she was still possessed of large shining eyes and her body was plump yet well proportioned. Pleckoo imagined she might be grateful to have his attention.
When he pushed through the door’s flap, he stepped out into an intense sunshine that candied everything it touched. Whatever he had imbibed—probably cannabis—it made him unsure of his legs. The world seemed unsteady as he took a few steps, then realized he had to find his own feet. Once he did, he was walking—this amazing ability to move with legs instead of sit like a stone. What a fantastic thing! As he watched the walking men ahead of him, he thought it astounding that each of them did it so differently. Some of the men had a strange, comic stride and others had a grace and fluid strength. Some men, crippled in the war—a war that I waged against them!—walked with an evident pain that was heroic and beautiful. At that moment, Pleckoo was humbled. These men of Bee-Jor, and even some of their women, had risked their lives and fought against Hulkrites to live in what they called the New Way.
The middenite men from other houses were joining them with their women following close behind. But something had changed in the separation of sexes; the women were not completely divided from the men, but followed them closely and called and joked with them as they walked ahead. As all of them moved forward, Pleckoo had to will himself not to turn and look at the females; this cannabis had revealed to him how magnificently beautiful they had always been. Regardless, he knew it was still not acceptable to look openly at a woman other than one’s own wife or mother, and only in private. That much had not changed on the Slope—or Bee-Jor if they wanted to call it that.
Pleckoo was unsure of where they were headed but he did not care—he just wanted to keep going, to take in the unending beauty of Palzhad and of the very world itself. They arrived at a ring of houses three above their own—different castes were going to mingle! This ring of dwellings had finer houses and a larger outdoor shrine. Near it was a pyramid-shaped structure under construction, which had the beginnings of some strange markings carved into its top layer. Next to the shrine was its idols keeper, who pulled a cord attached to a tower with a carillon of wooden bells that sounded different pitches.
A priestly sled arrived and out of it came one of the old Palzhanite priests and his acolyte—a dark-skinned young man!—who nodded to the idols keeper, then struggled up the steps of the pyramid. When the two reached the top, the people quieted as the acolyte unrolled the scroll. The priest looked on the scroll’s drawings and then began his recitation. “These are the eight essential laws of Bee-Jor from which all other laws will descend,” the priest shouted. When he had finished reading, he returned to the ground and nodded to the idols keepers before reentering his sled.
These laws and their reciting are the work of Anand, Pleckoo realized. He had a memory of Anand as a boy of ten summers who had followed him everywhere and looked up at him with awe and admiration when he had performed feats of strength or killed attacking mosquitoes by ripping out their needles from their faces. And Anand had always thanked him, quietly, with tearful bows of the head when Pleckoo had protected him from the taunts, fists, and knives of the other boys who hated him for being the darker-skinned roach boy.
And now Anand wants to protect all the abused of the Slope with his laws. As Pleckoo pondered this he felt a chill down his spine and then stiffness in his chest as a wave of warm feelings overwhelmed him—
it was love for his little cousin. Pleckoo feared he would start crying like a woman and forced himself back to the present, to the beautiful new world around him. He watched as Glip went to greet the foreman of this upper ring, a man wearing a large mite-scraper around his neck that was painted locust-blue. Glip smiled, and presented the foreman with a barrel-jar that likely contained more of what had been drunk that morning.
Behind the shrine was a series of tall, vertical drums and scattered around these on the ground were smaller percussion instruments. The man with the kerchief who Pleckoo had dubbed Silent Cricket handed him a hollow, stoppered seed that sounded as if it had ground sand inside it. Following Silent’s example, Pleckoo raised it over his head and approached the shrine and shook it as an offering to the gaudy idols. Some of the altar’s idols were being bathed, scented, and freshly dressed before they were returned to the altar. Among them was a newer one, a carved likeness of his cousin as the demigod Quegdoth set before the chubby moon idol, Glowing Mushroom. They had depicted him with dark purple skin and astride a night wasp that no longer looked like a fierce demon, but carried a look of submission and defeat. Is Anand really a divine being? Pleckoo wondered. Since we are related—does that make me divine too?
Looking at the idol of Quegdoth, Pleckoo felt envy, a deep wound, and a tug back to the mass of suffering that had followed his failure to take the Slope. He shook his head hard to release those ugly thoughts and felt them fly out of his ears like a swarm of midges. His vision blurred and doubled, and when it cleared he saw the idols keepers facing each other to blow on their thorn horns. The horn’s sharp blasts pulverized the last remnant of dark feelings inside Pleckoo. He was ready to celebrate.
A man began drumming and others followed his beats or pounded their own to blend with it. Though he was given no instruction, Pleckoo shook his seed as he wanted. The rhythms intertwined and grew like a pleasant, flowering vine to a place in the sky where all Bee-Jorites could dance in a spiral up the leaves, and join the gods in their tree palace. When he looked over at the women, he saw they were spinning, with their colorful skirts spreading and rippling, like whirling flowers. Pleckoo wept happily to realize he had somehow ended up in Paradise without dying—I am here!
As he looked up and into the sky, all the gods of his youth were standing as giants in a circle around him. Termite reached out the middle of His six arms to join His hands with Grasshopper and Ant Queen. And then, the black and lovely Goddess Cricket approached the other gods in a cloak that trailed the star-spattered night behind Her. When She arrived, the other gods bowed to Her.
It was late afternoon when Pleckoo awoke inside the vast twig and leaf tent that had been erected for the day. He tried to remember the moment of exhaustion when he put down his seed and left the round of chanting and dancing. As he lay with the other men on rag rugs, the women filtered through to hand out cones of liquid. Pleckoo slurped it, and tasted a touch of honey and some kwondle bark extract that he knew would revive him.
When he stepped outside, he looked out to his right to see boys and girls were riding on ants for no reason other than pleasure. They were visiting with other children who were of higher castes and better dressed—some were even wearing royal yellow. On his left, he saw Naloti and the other women preparing the evening’s feast. The main course was hairy yellow scorpions that had been baked in the sun-kilns. Their stingers and venom glands were in a vat that Little Grinner was hauling back to the midden. Glip and Silent Cricket arrived to help the women with the strenuous task of cutting into the scorpion shells. “Give us a hand, Vleeg,” Glip shouted to him, and Pleckoo picked up a handsaw, which he used to break open the hard claws and tail segments to release their firm, sweet meat. His stomach grumbled when he remembered the delicious taste of scorpion flesh, something which had a good chew. When the chest cavities were opened, the women scooped out the gray tomalley, which they thinned with barley beer for a sauce.
“Have you ever eaten scorpions?” asked Glip.
“Yes,” said Pleckoo.
“Really? Where?”
“In Hulkren.”
“In Hulkren? You have been in Hulkren?”
Pleckoo panicked, tried to contain his breathing. Above his face kerchief, he saw Silent Cricket furrow his brow and squint in suspicion.
“I ate them once . . . with the Britasytes . . . on the way from Gagumji. The scorpions were from Hulkren.”
“They are a special treat,” Glip said after a pregnant moment. “Even better tasting after imbibing the divine leaf.”
“Divine leaf,” Pleckoo repeated. “Cannabis.”
“That’s one name for it. It’s a gift from Goddess Cricket, whose children are very fond of it themselves. It’s what makes crickets so happy that they sing through the night. Tonight, offer your drop to Cricket before sucking it up, and She will bless you with the most intensely holy experience. Look, here they are now.”
“Who?”
“The priestesses of Cricket.”
Pleckoo watched as women with shaved heads and long, floating antennae passed through the crowd and to the shrine, where they brought scent-offerings of evening primrose in soaked wadding to set before the idol they resembled. The priestesses were wearing rough, grass tunics with a back end that resembled the three-pronged tail of a cricket, with its thorny egg-laying pipe in the middle. Attached to the back of their ankles were two large false legs that rose and fell with their movements and completed the illusion of a cricket walking upright. Some distance behind them was a taller, light-skinned eunuch with a noble bearing; he wore layers of diaphanous gowns and a tiny jar of something around his neck. He had a kind smile in a plump face, and nodded to all over his clasped hands. His embroidered sleeves draped to the ground, and his hair was powdered a garish pink and cut to look like a spiderling riding on his head. As he passed, the people were not reverent, but cheering and applauding.
“Who is . . . he? A priest?”
“You are in for the best treat yet, Vleeg. That is Brother Moonsinger from Mound Loobosh, the seat of learning. Moonsinger is blessed by Goddess Moth with the gift of storytelling. And tonight he will recount the glorious victory of Commander Quegdoth and the People’s Army against the Hulkrites and their leader, Pleckoo of Hulkren, a middenite from Cajoria.”
Chapter 22
Lies of a Eunuch
Pleckoo wanted to touch his face to make sure he was still wearing his kerchief, then felt it flapping from his heavy breathing. He worried he could not hide his reaction to Glip’s mention of his real name. Silent Cricket was giving him the sideways glare. With no idea of what to say, Pleckoo continued to work.
“Are you all right, Vleeg?”
“Yes. I’ll take care of these,” Pleckoo said, motioning to the pile of baked scorpions. Silent and Vleeg cocked their heads.
“We’ll help you,” Glip asked. “That’s a lot of work.”
“No. Hard work will do me some good.”
“Not too hard. It’s the eighth.” Glip and Silent shrugged and walked off.
Pleckoo poured his rage and fear into his sawing and snapping of the scorpions’ corpses. His arms ached from the difficult work, and he found himself grunting and cursing under his breath, and hoping that the others would mistake his tears for sweat. When Naloti and the women returned to scrape out the meat from the opened shells, they seemed pleased and astonished. “You’ve worked hard, Vleeg,” she said.
“What else needs doing?”
“Our sun-kiln needs cleaning,” she said. “But it’s hot, messy work and . . .”
“Gladly,” he said. “Bring me what’s needed.”
The kiln was dragged on its runners to the shade and Pleckoo pulled out its opening panel and entered its dome of refractory crystals. It was still very warm inside as he broke open pods full of soap-weed liquid. He took a rough thorn brush to scrub the scabby remains of burnt creatures from the oven’s floor, stinking with rancid oils. When he was sure no one could hear him, he shouted at the
resistant dirt and whispered the round of Hulkro’s names to calm himself. When he emerged from the oven, the others stared at him and he knew he must look grimy and mad as he stood over a pile of greasy scrapings. Woozy with exhaustion, he slumped and fell but was quickly picked up by others who righted him. Moozak, without a grin, handed him a water bag as the carillon summoned the people to the evening feast. “Come on, uncle, drink,” he said. “Lean on me if you need.”
Pleckoo shook his head, then stood his tallest and walked to the tent with his chin up. It was crowded and noisy inside what was called “an eighth day tabernacle.” The people cheered when the idols from the shrine were brought in and set on a tiered altar where glow-fungus in kettles was positioned to illuminate them against a backdrop of the moon deity. The idol of Cricket was saved for last, brought in on a glittering litter, and set on the altar’s tallest pedestal. The idols keepers were on both sides of the altar, waving perfumed leaf fans as the worshippers seated themselves.
As Pleckoo took a seat at the leaf for the middenites, he was joined by Mlor and Kelvap, who nodded to him on each side. Silent Cricket sat next to Mlor, acknowledging Pleckoo with a faint nod. He realized they must have made a vaguely strange sight, the four of them, hiding their faces with kerchiefs. Once all were seated around the leaf, Naloti and Glip circled it to dispense the evening’s drop of cannabis liquor. Following the example of the others, Pleckoo took the flat knife with its drop and raised it up to the idol of Cricket before he tucked it under his tongue. I hope it’s strong, he thought as he felt the drop burn, and will deafen me to what I might hear this evening. The taste of this drop was stronger, more bitter, and he quickly felt its effects. His worries did not go away but expanded and consumed him. Soon he felt he had lost control of both his body and his mind.
The Prophet of the Termite God Page 19
