“That is a strange thing to ask a gazer.” Tau chuckled. She made another mark on the inside of her hull, marking the position of a star as it winked into being.
“You fathom so many of the older chants, and you have such a nice turn of phrase,” Keke replied. “You must make a good storyteller.”
Tau grimaced. “I prefer to be as far as possible from firelight on clear nights.”
Keke’s chuckle demanded nothing. “So it seems.”
Tau decided to take a dive. “Are you here to try and fathom me out? Find out something about Nhia?”
Keke’s full laugh was as deep and booming as a coral roller. “Prickly as a peuru, and just as to the point. I like that. Yes, I fathom I am.”
“She sings well.” Tau scratched absent-minded at the flaking salt crust on her skin.
“I can hear that.” Keke’s chuckle kept moving with the tide.
Tau paused, and then, prompted by the memory of the looks Nhia sent Keke’s way when he was not looking, she barreled on. “Nhia is fertile now.”
Keke’s mouth snapped shut like an uglyfish out of water. Ah, so he did not smell the spiciness of the wiro-leaf she chewed and the peuru coming out in her skin, Tau thought. Perhaps Koro’s anecdotes had some merit—men were not as attuned to a woman’s ripeness.
“Do not fret the knots that tie us all together under Ia’s soft gaze,” Tau assured him. “The others are not long off. Most of them will be ripe by the time the final selection of the gathering is made.”
Keke was silent for a moment. Tau thought him restrained for not questioning who of the maidens she thought would not be ready in time. He finally looked up, his pretty dawn-green eyes lost beneath the tumble of sun lightened locks. His undemanding gaze unnerved her. “Do you ever wonder if the gathering is—”
He broke off as he slipped over the side of his oka, barely making a sound as his skin met water. “Forgive me, sisterfriend, I speak out of turn.”
He finished with a kah, then pushed off in a smooth breast stroke.
“Yes, I do often wonder,” Tau said, too softly for him to hear. “More and more, these days.”
•
A treasure-trove of wood littered the half moon bay, but this was no mere storm debris. The finely carved hulls of many oka knocked a symphonic counterpoint to the hush of waves, pierce of ululations, and hoarse wail of shell horns. Hands fluttered with the voices and breeze. Smoke from numerous cooking fires and ceremonial braziers promised scents of mystery and delight. Skin of brown, burnished gold, ebony and copper flashed against a myriad of colored wraps and lush greenery.
The days of the gathering had been spectacle enough to warrant a hundred new chants, but the nights had truly been a wonder. As a keel-woman, Tau had little time to enjoy the pleasures of the evening. Any time left her after primping, oiling, dressing, accompanying, introducing and ego-stroking Nhia was given over to the Stone Moon.
Having escaped the fourth evening banquet and dance, Tau watched the almost-moon’s sliver shiver on the horizon. Her nightly observations were an in-held breath, shared with like-minds. This close to moon-rise, many were torn between their duties to their sisters and their gazing; for this moment she had the beach to herself.
The moment the moon breached its ocean womb—surely only two or three nights away, Tau had calculated by celestial angles—someone would die.
“There you are.”
A pair of legs as familiar as her coral-etched shins whisked out of the bushes. “The Blood Moon wanes. You should be getting your rest.”
Nhia gave an inelegant snort and plopped to the sand with the ease of the long limbed, which Tau envied. “The activities in the next wari made it a little difficult to sing to the Stone Mother.”
Tau choked off her chuckle. “If Kai’Lei is caught—”
Nhia flipped a hand. “No need to dip your oar too deep. Kai’Lei has, shall we say, been going for many long walks. I suspect she might even be sleeping on the sunriseward beach some nights.”
“Keke?”
“He is a very popular person.”
Tau grunted and dug her naumu into the wood, skewering a star into place with more force than its luminosity required.
“He has eyes for you, you fathom?”
Tau’s chin shot up and she stared at her sister-friend defiantly.
“I can smell it on you,” Nhia said, the light from the kissing moons casting hard shadows across the usually pretty angles of her face. “You are close to your Moon. If you so wished, you could beget a welcome seed together.”
Tau used the same shadows to hide her blush. Nhia’s own fertile scent had become hard to shake. Tau’s late-night gazing excursions were also an excuse to avoid the infused air of the snug-thatched wari they shared. She often caught herself bending her face close to Nhia’s hair as she weaved in flowers, tiny shells or beach beads, prettying her for her next test.
Their closeness in fertility made Tau’s belly twinge, as if in sympathy or need. She had not decided which. Tau could not stop a shudder, and a mischievous smile drove a dark slash across the harsh planes of Nhia’s face. “Ah, the tide is coming in now. You do not desire him.”
“Yes. No. I—” Tau heaved a great sigh and gently put down her shell and naumu. “You are leaning into the wrong wind, sister.”
“Then tell me which way it blows.”
Tau made a show of brushing sand off her newly carved shells, cutting a look at her sister-friend. Tonight, there was a layer of weariness tripping over wariness, an edge of fear along the usual knife edge of her teasing. Tau wondered if the irrelevancy of the tests imposed by the gathering elders were getting to Nhia.
During each evening’s eliminations, the elders eyes slid off Nhia just a shade too fast. She had made it this far, and yet…
No one liked to see the knife lifted above someone they truly care for.
Tau crossed her arms across breasts that protested the harsh treatment. “I do not deny he would be a worthy contributor of seed to Ia’s children. However, I—” She kah’d, unable finish the thought out loud.
“You are too fertile of mind at this point in your life to carry a parasite,” Nhia finished.
Tau could not help but laugh. “There is no need to put it so crudely!”
“You get the drift.” Nhia’s teeth flashed blue white in the whispering dark.
“Lau’maa will be disappointed if I do not return fecund.” Tau’s laughter drifted with the tide that crept on dark feet up the sand.
“She will not.” The forcefulness of Nhia’s tone made Tau peer again at her sister-friend, noting the strain around her dancing eyes. “If you think that, then you fathom your mother not at all.”
Tau pulled back from the blustery force of Nhia’s new boldness.
“And besides,” Nhia continued, “you have six older sisters, all of whom have willingly shared their seed with Ia, mother bless their wombs.”
She inscribed the air with a quick circular blessing of her fingers. As Tau followed her hand-dance, Nhia grabbed Tau’s fingers and held them against her chest. Tau swallowed her sharp intake of breath.
“And there is something else, I fathom,” Nhia said, voice as rich as koca-bean soup. “Perhaps someone else.”
“I—” Tau tried to snatch away her hand, but Nhia tightened her grip and pulled her closer. This close, Nhia’s pupils were dark moons against her golden skin. Her quickened breath smelled of sugared vilas, the rare aphrodisiac delicacy presented at dinner that evening.
“You can tell me,” Nhia whispered. “I am your sister-friend after all, am I not?”
“Yes.” Tau’s whisper faltered again.
Sand-spackled fingers brushed her cheek, and Tau closed her eyes. Words lodged in her chest as if she had been punched too hard in the fighting dance.
A heart-beat. Two.
A sweet pressure on her lips, raising the pressure in her chest to almost intolerable levels. Tau tasted salt, sand, and sugar; an embodiment of th
e ripe smell of her torments.
Then Nhia was gone, a slap of bushes, the rustle of sand on skin.
A beat: the hush of water.
Another: sandals on grass.
Tau looked up, hoping Nhia had returned; to apologize, to make good, to continue even though it would risk everything.
A smaller figure. Bathed in the shadows of the trees, only her moue of disappointment visible.
Kai’Lei.
She turned and fled. Tau, not fathoming or caring to who she ran, gave a little kah and closed her eyes to the silvered horizon. Death, rebirth; it was life to Stone Maidens, and some would seek out their eternal glory any which way they could, even if it meant betrayal.
A Stone Maiden’s sacrifice was theirs to make; to live and die by.
•
Tau angled the oka stormward, her paddle biting deep as the rising sun cut naumu slivers off the water into her eyes. She did not resist the headache. The uncountable cups of fermented wiro-fruit juice the previous night had helped dull the memory of the knife dashing across the throat of the figure positioned in ecstatic adulation across the great round stone.
The carefully carved representation of the great mothermoon had not resisted the chosen’s stain. Neither had it broken beneath the weight of portent; change simmered in the blood of the next generation of Stone Maidens, but the change had not come swift enough to belay one more needless death.
Tau glanced at the figure in the bow, crouched against the impending storm, the first of the end season, a break in the perfection that had held its breath over the gathering. With face edged in resignation but not regret, Nhia had been silent since they had cast off that morning, not even calling or chanting out to the other okas pushing for home. Tau’s heart fell as heavy and low as an anchor stone, meeting and warring with the cool ache of relief in her belly.
Kai’Lei had been the maiden to gladly meet the bite of the mother’s blade. Her final chant, the perfect combination of sweet traditional sentimentality. There had been no whisper of Nhia’s impropriety.
“I can hear your thoughts from here.”
Startled, Tau lost her grip. Before she had the chance to reform her thoughts, she had to quickly strip off and dive in to retrieve her paddle.
A smile a shade more cynical than expected greeted Tau as she heaved herself back over the edge of the oka, spluttering and cursing. Nhia quit her rearward rescue-paddling and held her own dripping paddle firmly in her lap.
“And just what do you fathom about my thoughts?” Tau pushed her hair out of her face, muttered another curse, and squeezed water out of her wrap.
“A little moon-broody there, fathom?”
“Stop pushing, or you will be swimming home.”
“That would please you.” Nhia chuckled, and Tau bit her bottom lip to arrest a smile.
“You can not fathom what would please me.” Tau straightened her back and dipped her paddle.
Instead of turning back to her contemplation of the dark horizon, Nhia displayed her teeth and throat in a laugh. “You would be surprised.”
Tau kah’d. “Stop dancing around the issue.”
“You stop.”
Tau’s paddle clonked against wood, and she squinted at her sister-friend. Ropes of hair slapped her cheeks as Tau shook her head. “That was some final chant you sang, quite the turn-around. Nhia, I cannot fathom even where to begin.”
“Then I will make it easy.” Nhia rushed ahead like the rising wind. “I failed at the gathering, so I must return home with some set to my sails.”
Nhia cut off Tau’s placating noises with a swift flourish of her paddle.
“Let me finish. I did not come with my face entirely turned to the Stone Moon. I knew what I was singing about. The Stone mother should smile upon life, not death.”
Her jaw worked, a spasm and a swallow before she continued. “Most Maidens do not want to die. No matter what you have been led to believe. I want to do something with my time, before I take my final dive beneath the waves. I pushed Lau’maa to choosing you as my keel-woman, because I knew you would hold me up against a stiff wind. In your sand rough way, you are far more adept at navigating the shifting tides of fireside talk and story telling chants than I.
“Do not look at me like that. Your mother is shrewder than you fathom.” Nhia’s smile turned softer. “I also had another reason: you.”
Tau had to look away. She pretended to search the threatening horizon though she knew by smell alone how long they had to reach shelter.
“I revere life,” Nhia continued. “We are both fertile. We are ready. We are right. Let us create a child together, while we have this chance.”
Tau rubbed the calluses of one hand against the scars of the other; she could not fathom her hands being gentle enough for such a task as guiding the life of her own seed.
“I will carry the child, as I fathom you dislike the idea.”
“Sister, I cannot ask that of you.” Tau stared straight ahead, mindful of the black clouds stacking up.
“Why not? The child of our mingled seed will be intelligent, inquisitive, and beautiful.”
“But you are my friend,” Tau protested, her biceps quivering with more than physical effort.
“Even better.”
“But you fathom I would make a terrible parent.”
Nhia kah’d and rolled her eyes. “And where is it writ that you have to parent? You have many wonderful sisters, mothers and aunties who make light work of it, in the Ia way.”
Tau tasted the bitter and spice of the idea, like fine wiroleaf, as Nhia mouthed silently, counting, Tau realized, the heartbeats between the far-off lightning and thunder.
“I went searching for the right person to share seed,” Nhia said “but they all came up wanting compared to you. I need to take something back to Ia, to show my worth to my sisters. To them, I must make restitution for my failure.”
“You did not fail,” Tau said, paddle digging deep in her vehemence. “I will stand face to face across the fire with anyone who disagrees. You represented Ia superbly. Your trade negotiations will keep us well-prepared for many storm seasons. They will be proud of you. I am proud of you.”
“And I am proud of you.” Nhia favored Tau with a look as rich and thrilling to the senses as unpeeled koca-bean. “You go back to Koro a full prentice, your work welcomed with open hands at the great library. At least you have found your calling.”
Tau stopped paddling and uttered a soft kah. She took a deep whiff of the storm, squinting against the spitting rain, and quickly ran through the current verse of the travelers’ return chant. “Take up your paddle, woman,” she commanded gruffly. “We can make the next islet before the storm hits, if we push hard.”
Nhia’s hands flexed around the wood. “And there we can make a baby while we wait for the storm to pass?”
“We will discuss it.”
“Will we discuss how much you love me too?”
Despite the quickly dropping temperature, Nhia shucked out of her wrap. She threw back her shoulders and peeked at Tau from beneath dripping lashes. Her skin darkened with each large drop of rain.
“You have ideas as big as Ia’s Search For the Ends of the Ocean.”
Nhia chanted the first few notes of the cadence, adding a wistful lilt that sung of unseen coastlines and faces. “Some ideas, and dreams, are best when shared.”
“Ia preserve me from baby-foolish sisters!” With a wry shake of her head, Tau set her shoulders straining against the rising waves and wind.
•
Vector
Benjanun Sriduangkaew
You. Are.
(A weapon. A virus. A commandment from God.)
The stage is your skull, the script someone else’s, and they are about to win.
Here’s a wall. You are the battering ram against an amassed weight of a million shrines nestled in the crook of ancient trees, in the corners between skyscrapers, the solidity of Chaomae Guanim and Phramae Thoranee: for this
is your land and yours is a land of many faiths.
The viral chorus is vicious and through you it is a tidal wave breaking upon the shore of your history, of a country shaped like an axe. Flash-narratives howl through your lips, biblical verses and names, stories of killing and fire. You understand none of it, but the virus needs a host—a mind that touches and is touched by Krungthep’s subconscious grid—and so you’ve been chosen, with a bit of chloroform to your face and a counterfeit ambulance where you lay able to see but not to think. Neon glare in your eyes and men wearing surgical masks. Farang men with their cadaver skin and their eyes blue-gray-green.
Fear, panic. You try to remember them, but they’ve frayed into abstractions under the shadows of anesthetics.
The chips urge you forward and you heave against a network with mantras and prayers for bone, dreams and desires for muscle. These are what protect Krungthep and these are what they want you to destroy, with their falsity of Yesu, with visions of stained glass and cathedrals, and alien insertion of tasteless wafers into pale thin mouths. Find the cracks. Fill them up with false data, false dreams. Yours is a land that does not open its arms to churches; yours is a land that once escaped Farangset and Angrit flags through the cleverness of its kings. About time they fix that.
This is how to rewrite a country’s past, and when a past is gone it is easy to replace the present with convenience. Belief moves will, and will moves nations. No screens needed, no competition with other channels. Poured straight into the intent grid this stabs the subconscious, direct as a syringe to the vein.
Holes in your skin oozing pus. Blood in your mouth lining teeth and bruised gums. No pain anywhere, because your nervous system has been deliberately broken and put back together wrong. You try to think of something other than this, other than the ports they’ve made in your arms and between your vertebrae, other than the cold metal jacked into you to dictate your heart and measure your synapses.
You dream of ghost dances and processions to pray for rain, a black cat yowling in a wicker cage slung between villagers’ shoulders. You dream of leaving offerings, fruits and sweets and glasses of cream soda to divinities you can understand.
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