by Ian McHugh
Niinom Redfingers’s tone was sharper than it had been. “Have you found your resolve ebbing, Kamalija, and not notified me? Do you wish to retire?”
‘Retire’ was such a serene word for be killed.
“I haven’t noticed myself slow, but if I am slowing, it is not because I’ve lost the will to protect the city. Of the last nine nights, I only received libations for six.”
Any pretense of etiquette was trampled in that moment. The extended family sucked in breath and expelled it in light curses and exclamations of disbelief. Dozens of black eyes gazed at Muskii—and Muskii’s mother, who must have noticed their pantry wasn’t as depleted of herbs and lambsblood as quickly as it should have been but chose to pretend she was as shocked as the rest of them.
Kamalija felt as if she’d swallowed a bees’ nest. Niinom Redfingers’s criticism was welcome to fall elsewhere—especially when Muskii had legitimately committed a crime with such dire consequences—but Muskii was still Kamouk’s heir, and Kamalija saw in the girl’s features his eyes and lips, heard his lilt in her laugh. Right now, Muskii’s eyes were as ponds covered in a thin sheet of spring ice, shiny and wet.
Niinom Redfingers bowed to Kamalija. “Forgive us for questioning you, Bloodless Kamalija, when you were doing your best in spite of suffering a great hunger. Know that your meals will never be late again.”
Kamalija bowed once. She looked Muskii in the eyes as she left, hoping that even a shame-crazed adolescent could see sympathy there.
She didn’t dare do more; the verdict was clear, and it had come down in her favor.
The air outside the barracks was cold, but it didn’t bite her lungs the way it once had. Someone had left a pile of furs lying in the gate. No, not furs.
Men. All four guards who had been posted at the west gate.
She darted forward, out beyond the gate, into her territory, but the culprit was gone. She smelled Lafiik on the pile of dead men. Two of them had come on their own time, to watch the front while her ability was questioned. The others were as close to friends as she had, young men who admired her and sometimes convinced her to play word games or sing with them.
The joskri had gorged himself. She could see by the smudges of clay up on the walls that he had turned them upside down and held them there; they had kicked at the bricks while he sucked them dry.
She couldn’t deny that the scent of their blood woke something in her; that her wolf teeth ached in her stitched gums; that she wondered what it would be like to slide her cold tongue into the ragged holes in their necks and inside their arteries, to feel their still-hot flesh tight around her as she licked and licked.
But she was not joskri, so she wouldn’t—and then again, neither was Lafiik. The heat of his chest under her hand was proof that Niinom Redfingers was lying, that every Storykeeper had been lying, or lied to. Kamalija wondered how many bloodless she had dispatched who had a god-given star in their chest which blinked out and became cold the moment she felled them.
Niinom Redfingers must be told about this slaughter, liar or not.
Kamalija returned and announced the tragedy. Even while she mourned those young men, she felt the same selfish flare of satisfaction in her gut that she’d had when Muskii’s sins were revealed. This was what happened when Kamalija was removed from her post.
They might take her for granted again some day, but not until this memory stung less.
* * *
Kamalija smelled joskri that night—other joskri, not that smug Lafiik—scuttling through the woods, but they were properly afraid of her and retreated back down the mountain.
For two weeks, Muskii brought her nightly libations with the setting sun. The girl was sullen and refused to speak, even when addressed by Kamalija, her great-aunt, an honored elder and Guardian. On the thirteenth night, Muskii did not appear, and Kamalija’s mouth remained dry.
The pregnant moon heaved itself above the treeline, lighting the Violet Mountains in the very way that had gained them the name. Kamalija’s blood was fire.
Lafiik, whom she had not seen since before the murders, made no secret of his arrival. He carried a long slim tool by his side. At first she thought it was a spear, but as he stepped into the moonlight, she saw it was a crude spade burned and carved from a single log. He thrust it into the snow, directly on her blood boundary, worked it in with his foot, and tossed a scoop of snow and dirt over his shoulder.
Kamalija watched, motionless. The boundary didn’t affect him—it was her blood—so he must be intending for her to leave. She sucked on that thought like a chunk of slick marrow.
His tool was poor, and it took him long minutes to scrape away the frozen dirt that had long ago soaked up a concoction containing her blood. The muscles in his arms rippled with each thrust.
It wasn’t until she felt the boundary snap, until her senses expanded into the frosty night, that she understood why he would dig her free. It was almost like a second exaltation. She could smell the individual trees now, hear the delicate feathers of an owl quivering as it glided overhead, taste the hairs of the night frost as their scent whispered past her dead tongue.
“The circle offers physical strength,” Lafiik said. “But there are compromises.”
He threw the primitive shovel down and took ten steps toward the trees before he turned around and waited.
Kamalija slowly walked toward the edge of her existence, the place past which she hadn’t set foot since she had been alive. The waterfall that rushed past the other side of the compound thundered in her ears like the sound of human blood rushing through live veins.
First one foot, then the other, over the churned earth and snow, into a world that was supposed to be forbidden.
Lafiik, for once, said nothing. He was still when she put her palm against his star again. The heat reminded her that the Storykeepers had lied. Small lies, to obscure what might be enormous truths.
His dark, angular eyes studied her for a moment before he leaned down slowly. His lips, unable to close over his wolf teeth, pressed against hers.
Kamalija had never kissed a man, alive or dead. The gentle click of their sharp teeth dropped into the rushing of the waterfall and the breeze and the hunting night birds.
Kamalija pulled away, listening harder. There was a percussive beat that hadn’t been there before. She whirled to find Muskii standing just outside the gate, her eyes wide, her hands cupping a mug of steaming lambsblood. She wore her nightclothes under hastily assembled furs. She’d left the belts behind, so instead of displaying the womanly figure she’d become so proud of, she more resembled a fat little bear cub. Something that whined instead of taking action; but unlike a bear, Muskii would never grow into something strong and proud.
Lafiik snorted softly. “It didn’t take her long to become late again,” he said.
Muskii’s young eyes narrowed, and Kamalija knew what the Storykeeper would hear from those petulant lips, the bitter embellishments that a scorned teen girl would gladly tell to lessen her own shame. Kamouk’s family, her family, their grandfather’s family, would be humiliated.
Grandfather’s bone blades were cold in Kamalija’s hands. She slashed Lafiik’s throat so fast he didn’t even raise his arms to ward away the blow; her other blade sunk deep into his stomach, pointed up toward his star. He hit the snow like half-digested slop being shaken from an elk’s entrails.
Kamalija sheathed one blade and strode toward Muskii, who backed away, her hands still gripping the cup. It was easy enough to wrest it away from her. Kamalija swallowed the lambsblood in one gulp and threw the cup so hard against the compound walls it shattered against the stone.
She said nothing as she strode away into the forest. The scent of the joskri who’d wandered past weeks ago was still there in the carpet of fallen needles, faint but detectable with her new senses. In between their predator scents, she picked up traces of their victims: a merchant’s fear wrapped in spices from her plundered caravan, a shepherd’s regret smeared in the
musk of his flock. It wasn’t hard to follow them down the deer path. She wondered where joskri sheltered. She would know soon enough.
Kamalija had always loved being the hero.
Copyright © 2015 Cory Skerry
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Cory Skerry lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he goes exploring with his sweet, goofy pit bulls and any friends who can keep up. He writes impossible things and paints what he shouldn’t. When his current meatshell begins to fall apart, he’d like science to put his brain into a giant killer octopus body, with which he’ll be very responsible and not even slightly shipwrecky. Pinky swear. For more about him and his work, visit plunderpuss.net.
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COVER ART
“Sundown,” by Feliks Grzesiczek
Feliks Grzesiczek is a self-taught artist from southern Poland. He worked many years as a graphic designer in visual advertising and a publication designer in a printing company. He grew interested in landscape painting after 2005. His work spans both digital and traditional painting mediums and includes portraits as well as cover art for gaming cards and audio CDs. View more of his work at fel-x.deviantart.com.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Compilation Copyright © 2015 Firkin Press
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