The Children of the Sun

by Christopher Buecheler

  Ashayt looked up at him, muscles still tense, and saw the truth of it reflected in his one good eye. There was no fighting this creature, not here, not naked and weaponless in an alleyway. She felt her muscles relaxing, giving in to shaky acceptance of what was and could not be undone, and she began to weep.

  “He was the only thing I ever had or wanted to have, and you took him from me,” she said to the thing that had made her a monster. “I loved him. I loved him! I would have died in his stead! I would die now, if it would bring him back.”

  “I took nothing from you but your blood, and I returned that in like amount. I did not choose your victim for you, Ashayt-from-the-desert. Do not seek to place that blame on me. What you did, you did all by yourself.”

  “I didn’t know!” she shrieked. “I didn’t—”

  Again the thing held its hand out, silencing her as if with a thought.

  “You must have known,” it hissed. “Just as I knew, when first I became what we are. Truly, I am amazed that you resisted the blood thirst for as long as you did. I expected you would wake that very next night and dig yourself out from the earth and feast upon the first human you encountered.”

  “I woke in the day, and not under any earth,” Ashayt said. “I dragged myself to my feet and made my way to my home. I did not know that the thirst within me required blood, not until the very moment that I … that I took … that I … oh, my love, what have I done?”

  Ashayt put her hands to her face and wept for some time, but the thing said nothing, only peered at her intently, head tilted and eyes narrowed, considering her. At last it spoke.

  “What you describe is not possible.”

  Ashayt looked up at him, still weeping, and bared her teeth. “You have already called me a murderer and a whore this night. Do not call me a liar as well.”

  She felt for a moment the presence of the thing’s mind, overlapping hers and touching it with the gentle, knowing fingers of a lover. The sensation was both beautiful and abhorrent, and Ashayt hated the creature all the more for giving it to her.

  “No,” it said. “I … you are not lying to me, girl, but this is not possible. No child of Eresh could walk under the sun, not that soon after the change. Its rays would have been painful even in the midst of your torpor. You should have burrowed into the earth instinctively, unconsciously. You would not have even woken. That was why I left you where I did, because I knew that you would do so.”

  “Yet I did not.”

  “No. I can hear from within you that you did not. And then you arose, under the cruel sun, and walked all the way back from that place to your farm, and even there you did not fall upon your parents and drink from them as I had thought you would. You fought the thirst.”

  “What are you trying to tell me, monster?” Ashayt hissed. She pulled herself to her knees in the sand and dust, unashamed of her nakedness, furious and horrified but also now curious.

  “You are not like me,” the thing said, and Ashayt heard in its voice a kind of bewildered confusion that she would never have expected. “I can feel it within you; I can almost taste it in the air. How is this possible? You are a child of Eresh! There are rules for these things.”

  “I am what you made me,” she said, and the thing shook its head.

  “No, you are not,” it said. “You are something new. Something different.”

  “I am what you made me.”

  “Then I have made you into a thing which I do not recognize, and which I do not know.”

  “Then so be it!” Ashayt shouted, and when the thing held its hand up this time to silence her, she fought against the onslaught of its mind and forced her words out through gritted teeth. “So be it.”

  “I will leave you now,” the monster told her, and Ashayt found the strength within her to grin at it.

  “Have I scared you, beast? Have I made you uncomfortable? You murderous, hateful piece of camel dung … you’ve turned me into a killer. A parasite. A leech. Now, when you see these things you have wrought, you flee in terror? Is that how it is to be?”

  “I do not fear you, girl.”

  “Do not lie to me. Do not dare to lie to me!” Ashayt cried, and now she was standing, hands balled into fists, ready again to attack. If it was true that this creature could knock her head from her shoulders, then she would accept it. Somewhere, beyond whatever doorways were opened by death, perhaps Amun Sa would be waiting for her.

  “A guard approaches from the west,” the thing told her. It glanced at the body of her lover, lying in the sand behind her, and its upper lip curled in a sneer. “If you would murder again to save yourself, or perhaps be executed for this cold piece of meat, then by all means, stay in this place. I wish to be here no longer.”

  And before Ashayt could do so much as take a step toward him, the thing was gone, leaping upward and gripping the top of the wall some twelve or fifteen feet above her head, flipping over it and disappearing into the night. Ashayt felt her anger and hatred leave with it, and became suddenly aware that she was standing naked in an alley with a dead man. She had not been delicate with her bite, and Amun Sa’s blood coated her face and breasts and stomach, the sandy ground, even part of the nearby wall. There could be little doubt as to her guilt. She had to flee or consign herself to death.

  She tried for the latter. It was the only right and proper thing she could think of to do. She had murdered her lover, even if unintentionally, and for that alone she deserved the death that would no doubt be handed to her. That she had, in the moments leading up to his death, been in a state of indescribable ecstasy the likes of which she had never before experienced made this thing that she had done somehow even more obscene. She deserved to die. The Gods would want her to die. She must die. Yes, that was how it must be.

  For a moment she thought she had resigned herself, but at the sound of footsteps in the distance her heart leapt into furious activity, energized by fear and a simple, undeniable urge to live yet a little longer.

  “I cannot,” she moaned to herself. “Oh, forgive me, my love, but I cannot go down that road with you yet.”

  Energized and strengthened though she was by the blood, she knew she could not make the leap that the creature had made, and so she gathered up her dress in her arms and bolted for the mouth of the alley. She heard a cry of surprise from the guard as she burst out into the night, naked and moving at tremendous speed, and reached an arm out as she passed him, shoving him away even as she averted her face from his gaze. She knew that in this light, her tattoos served only to make her skin seem even darker than it was, and she hoped she might be mistaken not for a human, but for some foul creature of the night, like the thing that had made her what she now was.

  “You there, wait!” the guard called as he struggled to his feet, but Ashayt was gone. Gone into the darkness, crashing away toward the east, toward the great river and the outskirts of the city. Behind her she left the body of her lover, and the life that she had known since she had come to this place as a child. Never would she see either of the two again.

  During the burning day that followed, Ashayt took shelter in the tomb of some ancient nobleman, long since plundered and left to sink slowly into the desert. She had run for many hours, amazed at her body’s ability to sustain such effort, but with the coming of the sun she had grown weak and exhausted. She was thirsty again already, so thirsty, and she knew that there could be only one cure for the desperate need within her. The thought of it sickened her, even as excitement coursed through her body. It would be beautiful, and horrible, forever.

  Sitting on the ground in the shadows of the tomb and watching as a single ray of light crept its slow path along the floor before her, she allowed herself to contemplate at last the full horror of this thing she had done. She wept, as she had in the alley, but also screamed, raged, begged, and pleaded with the Gods. She beat her fists against the rock walls until her knuckles bled, until the pain of it was like white-hot iron pressing into her flesh, and still she would
have continued if not for the realization that the thirst within her was bringing her perilously close to licking her own blood from her skin and from the walls. At last, lying on her side, pink tears leaking from her eyes to fall and be sucked up greedily by the dry sand, she made the first of two vows that she would spend the next four millennia upholding.

  “I will never kill again,” she told the darkness, and whatever creatures, gods, or demons might be listening. “I will never, ever take another life, so long as I may live. I swear it on my own soul, though that be damned already, and on the soul of the man I love, Amun Sa, son of Hêtshepsu, may he find peace forever in the land of the dead. I will never, ever kill again.”

  Exhausted, heartbroken, and more alone than she had been even in those long days and nights after the slaughter of her tribe, Ashayt laid her tired head on her arms, and she slept.

  * * *

  The creature that had once been known as Harad’ur visited her but one time more. It came only eight nights later, as Ashayt made her way north along the river’s edge by the light of the moon, grown now nearly full and shining like the sun to her new, powerful eyes. She had fed on each of these nights, had fought the ecstasy with all of her being, and each night it had grown easier to not kill whichever poor slave she had chosen for the activity.

  She was beginning now to retain enough consciousness to note that they seemed to be enjoying it, and she found this very curious indeed. She was coming also to understand that she possessed a tremendous ability to overwhelm her victims with lust and desire, and that when she was done, they would wake with no memory of the event. She had watched from the darkness beyond their limited vision, several times, to make sure of this. Never had she seen the panic and fear that she had expected; there was only confusion, and a kind of unexpected serenity. She had murdered her lover, but she was bringing these random strangers joy. The thought of it was darkly ironic, and it left a bitter taste in her mouth that was even stronger than the salt and sweet of the blood.

  Ashayt was walking with her head down, watching the rocks at her feet and trying not to think about Amun Sa, trying not to think about anything but putting further distance between herself and the city of Ineb-Hedg. When she felt the presence descend upon her as it had twice before, Ashayt stopped cold and found herself turning in circles, staring out into the night, trying to find the source of the feeling. At last she pinpointed it: a group of palms, not far from the river’s shore. She stood staring for a time, but the creature seemed to have no intention of approaching her.

  “Come out, thing,” she called to it. “Come out and say whatever it is you have to say and then be gone, unholy monster that has damned me to this hell.”

  There came from the palms a chuckle, and the creature’s rotten, grating voice.

  “You could end your own life, little girl, if you wanted. It seems you yet wish to live.”

  “I am afraid,” Ashayt said. It was a simple truth, and though it shamed her, she was not about to let this creature hear it in her voice. “I am afraid to die, and so I flee the punishment I deserve.”

  “There is no such thing as ‘deserve,’” the thing said, and it stepped out from the palms and stood with its bare feet in the sand, regarding her. After a time it leaned back its head, and sniffed the night air, and sighed with contentment. “It is a lovely night, don’t you think? Even now, after hundreds of years, nights like this make me appreciate the freedom that I bought when I killed my master.”

  “What do you want?” Ashayt demanded. “You’ve done what you wished. You’ve taken all that I had. What more can I give? Do you want my life, now? Is that how this ends? Then take it. Come here and take it and leave me in peace.”

  The creature gave her a leering grin but came no closer. “You will never be at peace. I knew that when I made you what you are, and that is why I gave you my gift.”

  “I never wanted your Gods-damned gift,” Ashayt said, her voice broken and weary.

  “I never asked if you did.”

  “No. But I’m asking you, now. What do you want from me?”

  “I have watched you, each of these nights. Did you not feel it? No, because I did not permit you to do so, but I was there. You refuse the gift I have given you. You drink from slaves when you could drink from kings, and you leave them alive. Alive! I have made you into death personified, yet you leave them alive. Why?”

  “I will never kill again,” Ashayt told him. “That is my vow.”

  “Can you not see that they ask for it?” the thing asked her, tilting its head. “How is it that you do not understand? They beg for death with every breath they take. They tempt and taunt it with each passing day. They war on each other, these things. They torture and kill and maim. They keep their fellow men as slaves. You, girl, would be a slave yourself if not for blind, stupid luck. You would never have met your precious Amun Sa if you had but turned left instead of right on any of the days you traveled through the desert, lost and alone and afraid.

  “These people, these humans, did that to you. These things did that to you, and now you refuse to kill them? That is the conclusion you’ve drawn? You could lose yourself in unparalleled ecstasy each night, every night, and yet you choose to end it prematurely. Why?”

  Ashayt considered this for a time, but at last she shook her head. “This thing you’ve given to me, it is true that I have never felt its equal. Even at the height of my passion with my lover I did not feel what I feel now when I take the blood. You are right, it is ecstasy like nothing else in the world, but there is more to the world than pleasure. There is more to the world than the feeling you describe, and there is more to man than the actions of which you speak.

  “You have given me the peak, yes. A pinnacle above what even Amun Sa was able to give to me, and for that you want my thanks. Yet you have taken from me the time after, when I would lie with my head on his chest, and listen to his heart beating, and smell the scent of his skin. You have taken the times when I would walk with him to market and hear stories of his youth and laugh with him. You have taken the feeling that he and only he could give me – that all was right in the world. I loved him with every part of me, not just those simple, stupid parts that respond only to pleasure. You speak of the terrible things men do and I will not deny them, but a life lived only for that dumb pleasure would be just as sad, and empty, and barbaric. That would be nothing. It would be nothing! And that is what you’ve left me with. Nothing.”

  Ashayt found herself weeping again, trembling with rage and loss, furious with this creature and its inability to understand the things it had taken from her.

  The thing that once had been called Harad’ur, that once had feasted on the blood of tiny children left in its circle of stones as sacrifice, looked back at her, unspeaking. If any of her words touched it in some place where once had dwelt a soul, Ashayt could not see it. Its expression did not change. Its gaze did not falter. It only looked on, mute and uncomprehending, and she hated it all the more for this.

  “Go away from me,” she said, and, turning back to the river, she began again to pick her way among the stones.

  She did not look back, and after some time, she felt the creature’s presence disappear.

  * * *

  Ashayt made her second vow while standing on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, some two hundred miles from the darkened alley in which she had killed her lover. Here was the border. Here was the edge of her homeland, the place she had lived every day of her life since coming screaming into the world, and now she turned her back to the waters and looked at the lands she had crossed to reach this point. After a time she knelt in the damp sand and closed her eyes. She thought of nothing until it seemed that the rushing sound of the waves had filled her entire body with a sort of thrumming energy. At last she raised her head to the black sky above, dotted with the tiny sparks of the stars, and looked out into that eternal night.

  “Amun Sa,” she said, and waited. “Amun Sa, are you listening?”

>   There was no response. Only the lull and crash of the waves, and Ashayt put her hands over her eyes and waited, waited in that damnable, deafening, crashing silence, that forever-void she had created when she had taken his voice from the world and sent him on to the land of the dead. Then she tilted her head up, neck extended, back arched, arms out, and screamed his name to the uncaring heavens. She let forth her cry again, and again, and again, until at last her voice shattered like crystal on stone, and she doubled over in pain, digging her fingers like claws into the wet sand.

  “I will never return,” she screamed at the sand in her broken no-voice, embracing the pain that tore her throat, that made the tears pour from her eyes in a torrent, that made her whole body twist in upon itself.

  “This is my punishment. This is my penance. My love, my dearest, my Lord, my beautiful Amun Sa, I will never again touch this land. I will never again see the home of our people. I will never again set foot in the place where I knew your love. Amun Sa, I loved you. I loved you and I killed you, and even if I live until every star in the sky has burned out and the Gods have grown old and frail and senile on their thrones, and even if every day from now until then is agony, it can never be enough. It will never, ever be enough.

  “Please forgive me for what I’ve done, my love. Please forgive me, for I never will. That is my promise. That is my punishment. I will never return to the land of our love, because there can never be forgiveness.”

  Somewhere below, in the Land of the Dead, she hoped that Amun Sa could hear her. Ashayt pressed her forehead to the cold, wet sand and then kissed it with her lips. She could taste the salt of the sea, and with it came a dry and calcified aroma, the scent of the hundred, billion, trillion ocean creatures that had come before her, and those that would go on living long after her sad, sorry life had at last come to its close. She thought of the way he had smiled at her on that first day when they had met, and how she had known instantly and beyond the smallest doubt that she was to be his forever and ever, until the end of all things.