“Ringstar Bundt became a crescent, now opened on the other side; darkday would soon be fading. Nona’s light was dimming too. The shields turned with Satlin and their angles of reflection were both bright and narrow; when night returned, they would go back to being moondrops. I retreated to a quiet alley where I sat and rested on my case, uncaring as it crackled its complaints about my weight. I put my head into my hands and cried in painful heaving sobs. I’d found no passage south or west—that was the eye of the disaster. Not even Rescue Authority would send ships into those waters. There was work enough for them on Tarralon with the scorched survivors who were managing to get out. The air seemed to echo with the ocean’s scream of pain, you couldn’t walk the streets without smelling the fear ripe in the air—it took its toll on each of us by draining us of strength. My bowel felt like water, my bones seemed made of ice, my blood trickled through my veins as if burned thin by fire, my heart popped with every sour beat. I was tired, I was scared. I wanted badly to go home—whether it was there or not. Home was my retreat.
“I took dinner at a meager ale-house, where a night watch had begun. Sailors there had turned to singers, fueled by the foaming spirits; they roared their boisterous songs with hollow fury, hoping to belie their nervous manner. Both songs and spirits rose with heady, loud defiance as the evening passed, all swirling in a drunken haze as if noise and alcohol alone could stop disaster. I tripped and tumbled gently into the arms of an older Rethrik—she was nearly forty, slightly paunchy, and had a quite unhealthy pallor. She was childless, unmarried and uncircled, she worked with books. She took me home to her place. I suppose that she felt sorry for me, a mere child, alone and so far from home at such a frightening time; she took advantage of my innocence and used my body for her pleasure. I let her, because I was so scared and this was—this seemed so much like comfort. I don’t think I was a very good Dakka to her Reethe, however; already that option was shrinking within me. I left early the next day. I was thankful it was bright and dawning, it made me feel a little better.
“The Lagin was completely gone; there remained a blinking navigation beacon to show where it had been. This was Tenday, and I spent it on the docks again—this time I knew what to expect and approached my work less frenzied and with a greater sense of study. With the return of sunlight, the people on the docks seemed more relaxed as well. We were surviving, we were reborn, we would continue—there was this sense of rebirth every dawn; in those days at Tarralon every feeling was intense. There was an extra chill in the air, an after tone of night; there was an acid bitterness to the wind, but the eye of the sun was open, the colors were intense as ever, brighter even than before perhaps, because we could appreciate them more. The brooding, damaged darkday was forgotten for the moment—except of course for the alcohol and incense hazes of those who’d used their fears as excuses for indulging heavily in the pleasures of the body. Soon the day would start to bake, however. We moved beneath the sky that seemed unnaturally bright, even though it was unchanged.
“There were more ships in the harbor now, many bearing Lagin flags; their rails were lined with refugees—there was no place to land them, all the docks were full, and even if they hadn’t been, there weren’t’ places enough on the island to hold them all; they waited on their ships. Some of the ships were already raising stream and sail to head on farther east. Tarralon was much too crowded.
“Many craft were waiting on the east side of the crescent; their captains craving shelter, they hid behind the island; they feared the open seas. Most shipping in the Bundt was paralyzed while captains waited at their ports for some assurance of the weather and the oceans. There were others—not so prudent—who were outfitting their vessels anyway, and heading east; they were the ones who felt the dangers of the sea would be preferable to the dangers that waited on the border of the heat-storm. But those were private vessels, and even if I’d wanted to be aboard one, there was no way I could have purchased passage. There were too many others begging space, the costs were all too high—and again, none of them were going south or west. All activity within the harbor headed eastward, always east, never south or west.
“This day was fruitless too; as Bundt eclipse approached I went looking for my Rethrik friend again—not out of desire, but inertia. I had no one else to look for. And at least she had been kind in her advances. Instead, I met three sailors, Dakkarik and in their twenties, rough-mannered in a teasing way, but gentle-kind to me. They took me to a nearby humble where they used me each in turn. Humbles were still common then, especially in Tarralon; they were architectural relics of the Seasons of Enchantment. Whenever a new dome was raised, a tiny open room or two were always added on the sides or back, shelter intended for those who wandered homeless, the poor or travelers, or passersby in storms, and, of course, occasional Enchanted. They are not built much anymore, for a variety of reasons, mostly Erdik.
“Anyway, the sailors used me. I had thought they might be going south; they weren’t and I didn’t care, at least I’d tried. I did not protest their eager couplings; they were gentle in their way and not purposefully unkind or hurtful. They were merely looking for a bit of pleasure—it might be their last; I suppose we all were thinking that in those falsely festive days of Tarralon. I suppose that I fulfilled some fantasy of theirs, that is, my body did—I don’t think they noticed that I wasn’t there. If they did, they didn’t mind. They didn’t hurt me, but neither did they care—and in a way, that was hurt enough, so while my body moved with theirs, I left it for a while.
“In the morning, I woke sobbing and one of them held me against her for a while, while I cried in blubbering frustration; the other two had gone. When she left, she gave me several tokens, told me to find an inn and not sleep in humbles anymore, they might be dangerous.
“Eleven was another sunday, nooning bright and falsely reassuring when eclipse passed off. The docks were busy, frantic and confused. Again all traffic was sailing west. All the inns were filled with those whose ships had docked in trepidation or were preparing for their imminent departures. Everything was churning. I couldn’t fight the riptides of emotion any longer; where was Rotto and the boat? I could not cry for help. I gave up, I let myself be carried on the waves of restless masses—and in doing so, I floated, and began to drift above them; separated from the undertow of fear, I was detached. I was entranced and dazed, as if by summer sun. All afloat, I moved in fantasy, I wrapped it round me like a lofty shroud and spent the afternoon wandering among the crowds of the bazaar, pretending that I was a fancy Dakkarik shopping. I looked down my nose at all the mundane offerings, all the pickled things and spiced ones, all the dried ones and the smoked ones; I disdained the painted weavings, the fancy papers and the carvings to adorn a room with; I ignored the totem offerings—I was seeking things of self-adornment, yellow silks and crimson wrappings, rings for ears and nose and fingers, charms and beads to wear around the neck and hair, gaudy hues for cheeks and eyelids, rouges for my lips and nipples. I was a merchant princeling, I walked proud and unafraid through the scuttling chaos, I was erect with noble bearing, a majestic manling strutting tall and handsome. I was magnified with my nobility. I touched and sampled all the sights of the scattered booths and stalls, as should a proper person of my rank. I sniffed and peered and tasted, I opened all my senses. There was the dry breath of the wind across the open circle of the market; it carried distant tinklings of a set of glassy chimes, and perhaps the wail of a wind-horn and a chorus of soft prayers. It carried scents of ocean summer, of seaweed, sand and dead fish rotting. It carried sounds of trouble voices—all so distant now, so far away. I moved between it all—and gauging every gesture as I made it; was I elegant enough? And were these people worthy of my elegance? Did they sense what majesty I lent their dreary lives? Was I an eddy in their presence? The crowds parted for me as I passed among them. Once I heard the whispered word, ‘Enchanted’—but it had been said by one whose eyes prevented her from seeing things as I did; these were the ones who so
rely needed help, they were like tiny scuttle fish beneath my toes in shallow pools. Cease to struggle, rise above it, float and let it carry you to greater worlds beyond, I could have told them had I known the words. I moved in golden auras—I could see them sparkling from my fingers. I left a trail of glitterdrops where I moved, they fell like pearls from my clothing, splashing brightly on the pavement, and all around me people turned to stare in wonder as I passed. I grew brighter as the twilight fell. I suppose I should have found a place to spend the night, but there was no palace worthy of my presence on this island, save the glowing sky itself. I was aloft, I looked down on Tarralon from my silvery height and let magic scatter where my footsteps chanced to touch. And I fell in with a pack of friendly bodies who moved at that great height with me—younglings, they recognized me as I circled, and circling with me, gently, they gathered around as acolytes and worshipers, basking in the aura, protecting it from mundane things, touching it and reaffirming its existence, sharing its golden light. They knew who I was. I saw them clearly now—they were the Songless Minstrels, the Children of Enchanted, Gypsy Souls, call them what you will, they were wanderers of night, they were urchins of the street—they were the only ones who could recognize a magic when they saw one; but being Children of Enchanted, that was to be expected. Every island has its share of homeless bodies; like moths they flutter all around the circles of civilization, but never seem to touch the flame—as if they know instinctively the danger that it holds for them, they stay distant and unburned. Like wild creatures peering from the forest, their eyes glimmering in dark and shadowed places, they stare at us in wonder, uncomprehending how we live. They drift through starlit nights like swirls of leaves and fireflies; they travel on a hot dry wind. They joined me now—attracted by the magic. It was a mutuality of darker purpose. These were incandescent ones, who lived for too-brief moments, like the embers of a firework—they craved a larger life; and taking it, they made it theirs, dancing, singing, reveling and whirling in the dark deserted avenues along the docks, creating their own kind of time, creating their own twilight days; their lights shine only for themselves, and only twilight eyes can see them. To the uninitiated, they seemed merely youthful party-goers, capering beneath the lanterns of the shore, but then they turn and vanish to their hidden places in the winding streets, leaving only echoes of their laughter—and wonderment within the souls of those who’d stopped to stare.
“And I fell in with them—it wasn’t hard to do. Like a single entity, they hungered around me, gathered me up and swept me down the staircase toward the slums of lower Tarralon. These weren’t individuals, they were blurs of night, but faces are no matter in a pack, they’re always changing anyway; it is the pack that lives, not its members, these are merely organs of a larger body, incapable of separate existence of their own. Possessions lose their value, identities are things unknown—somewhere I lost my case that night, and probably my soul too—and if I’d ever had an identity, that too was whisked away. This pack was self-contained, it had no need of anything I owned or was, except my soul; it fed on souls. It caught me up like one more scrap discarded by the city and held me in its whirlwind and made me part of it; it took my soul for that night, and while it fed the hunger of my fears, my soul gave it life. Whatever part of me said, ‘Here I am, I’m me, had ceased to be—and gladly so. I dance willingly into that larger death, not knowing if it were another truth or just a sweet illusion, not caring either; thankful merely for a purpose that fit the size of my ability and the shape of great urgent need.
“All of us were caught in that, we moved with single purpose; we’d transformed into pieces of a greater soul, self-designed; a coruscating, meshing, complex and multiplex, sparkling ballyhoo of night-child revelries; each one of us just one more piece of it, an ever-turning whirligig of motion and emotion, light and terror, in chords that crashed and echoed into shallow silences and startled looks. Whatever private whirlwinds might have turned each one of us, whatever storms of need and fear and anger lurked behind each pair of haunted eyes, peering out in stricken recognition of our mutuality—or the gaping illusion of it at least—we saw it in each other, our inner persons took us over; the pack fed on those energies and turned us all upon each other and the streets of Tarralon like stingfish in a sea of lights. We were enchanted in a fierce and violent way, culminations of all the needs unspoken that had been building in each soul for the years just past and peaking in the present—but also something far more wild, a harbinger of vast despairs to follow hard upon us in the days and years to come. Something was being born that night, which would send its waves and ripples spreading outward over all of Satlin, touching every heart and mind and soul with its agonies before it died. And Satlin would never be the same.
“I was a young identity, I was . . . the pack. Flush with the pack. Some of my parts were just beginning, others swelled rosy glow of borrowed youth and stolen blush, I was . . . the out, pointing stiff with crimson pride; there were sometimes furtive touches of their breasts and nipples—none of them were bright with innocence, which was my strength, only a core of hardened fear where joy might once have lived. They all were old, too young, my bodies, and yet none of them had passed her second blush, and that speaks of my origins in child-fear—I was something moving as a wave of energy—sexless, too; with inner certainty, I knew that any single act of sexuality would destroy the magic and direction of the larger soul which was me. Sexuality was a thing between just two—and the hunger of myself would not let those bodies fragment me, I held them to my bosom till they clung to me in fear of being turned away. Whatever sex I let exist within myself must happen only casually, undirected—or directed, toward myself; six without a soul of its own, except to feed me, let it be a greater kind of masturbation, a worship not of Reethe or Dakka, but of me. Let each body rub another as itself, and rarely to the point of satisfaction; the energies that I controlled were seeking something far more powerful than satisfaction—we craved release. We sought it through the darker means of alcohol and incense, poured into a dozen childish throats in ever-larger doses as the night wore on, and even Erdik drugs and pills were tumbled into dizzy life; there were nostrums meant for curing, I would use them for a taste of god. I played fantasies of fire and ice, I turned myself on cold-burning soars, letting bodies fall like embers, I shaped new roles for each of them, rose of dominance and shame. I played identities upon my souls and felt the curious fiery thrill of emotions untested and undreamed before.
“And I climbed toward mist and moondrops, seeking glories ever larger to incorporate within myself, glories to embody me, to give me space to grow in, so I might live forever in this golden glowing haze—just a little farther and I might grasp it all, I would ride the wind to heaven, I would rule the gods—if I could just endure—I had to keep on growing—before my bodies fragmented, I want to live a while longer—I hung on and on and on and took the magic and the life from me, my hunger needed feeding—it stretched through shallow darkday, faded into dark and silence, poised and waiting for a dawn—I soared like death, the huuru, on wings of could ebony, while all was still and soundless. I turned upon the west wind, like a gull, hovering and wheeling, waiting—studying the moment, while the shadowed world below turned light with rosy promise. I burned and sputtered in the reddening sky, fading quickly as the light began to spread—it was time to go. There is a ceiling close above, the limits of my flight, a ceiling to sensation, fragile, I break through in screaming fragments, any one of them can swell and seem to be an illness, growing like a fire blossom, enveloping as this one here—
“Release, sweet release—
“I shook my head to clear it—I was somewhere close and stuffy. I wonder if I’ve lost my soul, it felt like it—part of me, at least, was embedded in that larger thing.. There was a resonance—a recognition—something disjointed here—let me get it straight—while I’d lived—I mean, I lived—within that whirlwind, I was the larger me, I knew who I was meant to be; I touched a truth! It was
knowledge inaccessible in day light, it was fragile even in the night—and yet, I’d known it like a beacon! Fulfillment, it was worth it! For one bright and fragile moment, a crystalline and singing instant, we’d each believed we could insert ourselves so far into the magic that it would protect us from the morning doomed to follow. A godling, yes—oh, yes, a godling; a moving pattern of allures—the forbidden knowledge of oneself that can turn one mad with truth—it echoed in my skull; there’d been this pack, they had identity and I had none, I had Enchantment—which I shared with them—we ignited into something larger, that was the godling—and something else as well, I gave them something else—I couldn’t quite remember—but—what had happened, it had used us, driven us like hurricanes—? Godlings often do that—I think—but it was the other thing we’d carried, gestating and growing deep inside, until we gave it birth—that something else (what was it?) that was the thing that used us. Something was born last night; a selfish thing, and hungry. We’d tried to ride a soaring dream, each hoping that its ultimate release would be echoed in our own—that thing had cheated us; it gave us neither, not release nor satisfaction—only left our hunger unfulfilled while it fed its own—it couldn’t even give us hope without it souring to frustration. This thing, it came from—someone’s needs, but it fed on all of us—and when it finished feeding on our souls, when it could feed no more, it let us go; released us to the night as we’d released it to the world.
“A godling is a goodness—this thing wasn’t; it had only used the godling for its darker need. A godling is a moment, self-alive, larger than its parts—it happens spontaneously, sparking alive whenever any mass of people all begin to think and move as one, that’s a godling—the pack had been one forming. Sometimes a godling happens viciously; more often it’s for love or fun; but always as a reflection of its parts, and much more than the sum of all of them. One taste of it is half enough to send one searching for the other members of the mass, as if trying to reassemble all the organs in a body in the hope the spirit it had housed would somehow return and rekindle it to life—as if the next time that it lived, we would succeed and it would take us with it. Godlings are always short-lived beings—but last night’s thing had craved for immortality—there’d been a rottenness within it—something small and evil, which began within the pack, grew up within the godling—like a grub inside a rind fruit, growing till it was the only thing alive inside the swollen skin, fat and oily—looking like a godling, but it was a maggot-thing instead—a huuru thing—we had birthed it! A huuru is like something large that passed through the night and breath-space from your bed, uncaring as it moves with purpose of its own—it can kill you or ignore you, it doesn’t care—when it gets hungry, it feeds on human souls—that was the thing we’d birthed and turned loose upon the world; it had been born within—myself, I think; a seed within my madness, magnified within the pack. It took the pack, the godling, all my madness, it took me—that huuru thing, it fed on us to grow, and left us all as hollow shells and empty faces. I’d thought the pack had fed on me, but I—the thing that I’d released—had fed on them instead—some year to come, I’d know the fruits of this seed I’d planted—something dreadful growing, a piece of huuru here on Satlin, a whirlwind of the dead. It waited somewhere on the other side of life for the moment when it could return and feed some more—and next time it would be mature and wanting more than just a scattering of children—next time it would take everything—next time the huuru hungered, it would do so in a wild mob of mad and searing anger.
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