The Black Sky

by Michael Dalton

  I almost told her about the strange girl I’d seen the night before. Something told me to keep it to myself for now.

  ◆◆◆

  The destruction of the Tower of Starlight sent shockwaves through the city, even more so than the previous multiple bombing. I met with the clan leaders again, and they unanimously agreed to step up their investigation of the panikang. They seemed convinced that this was a clear message about their exit from Phan-garad a kumala-talon ago – a message that they no longer viewed themselves as one of the clans.

  But the searches and investigations turned up nothing. Squads of linyang and sorai swept dozens of abandoned buildings and found no meaningful evidence. People claimed to be seeing panikang everywhere.

  I went up to the garden each night, looking for the strange black girl with the yellow eyes, but after three days, she still hadn’t returned.

  The crowd out front seemed to stabilize at around two thousand girls, who were now camped out across several hundred yards of the green space like some kind of music festival. Lorelat and Ayarala picked five more of them as I’d asked. I told them to find two more sorai and linyang, but also a dwenda in hopes of not appearing to overly favor any one race.

  The girls they found were cute and up to the standards of the house, and very enthusiastic about being chosen. Unfortunately, when we went a few days without picking anyone else, the crowd began getting cranky, yelling at the guards and asking repeatedly when the “next selection” would take place. Now and then, they would start up a chant asking me to mate again, but I wasn’t interested in putting on another performance.

  One morning, three more cunelo arrived from Loreloo. Conveniently, three of the pregnant bunny-girls had slipped away earlier that day. So I said nothing and accepted them.

  My quest to help Narilora was stalled. I was convinced the crystal energies had something to do with it, but I had no idea where to find the answers I sought. Lacking any ideas, I went back into Silas’s journals, reading late into the night.

  I finished the first one, and began the second, which I was intrigued to see was subtitled 1783-1784 – I Take Leave of this Fair City.

  As the journal opened, Silas was still in Phan-garad, and things had settled down for about a talon. But one day, while he was walking with some of his wives, they were accosted by a band of sorai, who attempted to capture him. The fight led to a small riot.

  Unlike me, the clan leaders of Silas’s time had not taken him into their confidence and had not involved him in any decision-making. So when one clan moved against him, attempting to take control of his mating activities, the other clans moved to stop it. Linyang and sorai began fighting in the streets, with the talalong and dwenda forming another faction, and the cunelo trying to mediate.

  The fighting spread quickly, causing many deaths. Silas struggled with what to do. He wanted to avoid being caught up in it, and he wondered if his departure might calm things down. But he feared trying to flee on his own.

  And then one night, a group of panikang appeared at his door.

  Their skins were black as coal, and despite their superficial similarity to the peoples of Africa, it was clear to me they were not part of that race. Their hair was long and straight, not curly, and they had ears like foxes and small wings under their arms. Their voices were high-pitched, almost seeming to squeak like a rusty hinge. I concluded that, as with the other races of this land, they are also descended from some animal species, in this likely a form of bat.

  A bat-girl. That was what I had seen. I laughed to myself, amazed that it hadn’t occurred to me up to now.

  These people, who call themselves the pany-kang, tell me I am no longer safe in the city, for they have heard that the clan leaders plot to imprison me once one faction has gained control. The only reason no clan has done so up to now is that it would cause the other clans to unite against them. Their arguments carry force – I have sensed much the same thing in my meetings with the leaders during this unrest. So they have offered to spirit me out of the city to safety. They promised that I will not be a captive and that they have no interest in confining me for mating. I find their arguments persuasive and have decided to accept their aid.

  With the help of the panikang, Silas fled into the forest with his wives. There they built a home, and true to the promises they made, the panikang made no attempt to confine him, merely offering him females to mate with, whom he accepted. For a time, things were peaceful.

  And then I read something that made me sit upright in shock.

  The panikang have a very different society from what I experienced in Phan-garad. They live much like the Indian tribes in small villages within the trees. They eat only fruit and seek to do no harm to the animals they share the forest with. Unlike the modern science of Phan-garad, they instead embrace what they call “the power of the crystals.” They believe the sparkling crystals they collect from the hills have the power to affect their lives, and they use them in healing and many other elements of their lives.

  The crystals.

  My first impulse was to find Ayarala, and I initially leapt up from my chair to see where she was. But she already told me she had nothing left to contribute. I thought of Kisarat. But after the bombing of the Tower of Starlight, I felt as if mentioning the panikang to her would not go over well.

  There seemed to be one option, and one alone. I ran upstairs to the garden. No one was there. I went out on the balcony, seeing nothing. I went over to the edge.

  “Bat-girl!” I shouted. “I need to talk to you! Where are you?”

  Nothing but the stars answered me.

  I called out for her again, several times. I waited. I called again. Then there was a soft flutter behind me, softer than a dove taking wing.

  I spun around. The girl was there.

  “Wait. Don’t fly away. I need to talk to you.”

  She didn’t move. But she smiled at me.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “I am Mereceeree, of the panikang. I am unmated. And I know who you are, Will of Hawthorne. You are the makalang.”

  Her voice was the tinkling of wind chimes on the breeze, her name the chirping of songbirds.

  “So there are panikang in Phan-garad.”

  “We have always been here. But we are not seen unless we wish to be.”

  “Are you the Black Sky?”

  She looked up, laughing.

  “The sky for us is always black. Why should we need to make it so?”

  “Then who is it?”

  She stepped up very close to me.

  “That is not the answer you seek, Will of Hawthorne. It is not why you called out for me, into the night.”

  “No.”

  “Ask your true question of me.”

  “The crystals. I need to know how the crystal energies work. The healing. What I did to Narilora.”

  Mereceeree smiled. She reached up to touch my lips.

  “That is the question, and the answer, we can provide. But not here.”

  She turned and ran toward the wall, leaping.

  “Wait!”

  She stopped, somehow balancing on the glass, toes curled over the edge more than should have been possible. She turned back to me, laughing again.

  “Seek us in the forest, Will of Hawthorne! Your wife knows how to find us. You will have what you seek when you and I have mated.”

  Then she spread her wings and was gone.

  ◆◆◆

  How long I stood there, stunned, I couldn’t say. It had all happened so fast that I wasn’t sure I hadn’t imagined it.

  The panikang.

  Did they have the answers? No one else appeared to.

  I went down to the bedroom. Ayarala, Eladra, and Narilora were asleep in our bed. Merindra and Kisarat were up, talking quietly on one of the couches.

  “Get up! All of you! I need to talk to you.”

  Kisarat and Merindra jumped up in surprise as the others began to wake.

  “Wh
at? What is it?” Kisarat asked.

  Merindra rushed up to me, tail thrashing in agitation.

  “Tsulygoi? What’s wrong?”

  But I pushed her gently away.

  “Sit. I’ll tell you. But only with the others.”

  One by one, Ayarala, Eladra, and Narilora rose from the bed and joined us, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. When they were all sitting around me, faces creased in worry, I began.

  “This is an issue between the six of us. No one else. I’ve talked to some of you about it only because I wasn’t sure where to go with it. But it’s something that matters very much to me, and to each of you.”

  Ayarala’s and Kisarat’s eyes began to dawn in understanding. I could see Narilora knew where I was going with this. She bit her lip softly.

  “This has to do with Narilora. And what I have realized that is that what she’s dealing with is my fault, not hers.”

  She jumped up from the couch.

  “Will –”

  I stopped her. “Sit. Just listen.”

  I explained what Ayarala and I had discussed, what Kisarat and I had learned at the university. Narilora’s eyes began to swell, and Merindra and Eladra began looking rapidly around at the others, even though Ayarala and Kisarat sat there, confused and uncertain.

  Then I told them what I’d read in Silas’s journals. Ayarala jumped in as I finished.

  “Will, I am sorry. But that on its own means nothing,” she said. “I told you how it was back then.”

  “I would agree with you, except for one thing. The panikang still believe all that, and they want to help us.”

  Kisarat gasped.

  “What?”

  I told them about Mereceeree and what she had said. All of them were stunned into silence.

  “I don’t know how she knew, but she did. And she said they have the answers.”

  Narilora rose slowly and came over. She did her feline head-butting thing, pushing her head against my chest, then leaned in, putting her arms around my waist. I pulled her close and reached up to scratch her ears.

  “It’s a chance,” I said. “I want to see if they speak the truth.”

  “You should go,” Merindra said.

  Ayarala took a long breath and exhaled.

  “I understand none of this. But Narilora deserves the chance.”

  “But the Black Sky?” Kisarat asked.

  “I don’t think it’s the panikang,” I said. “She laughed at me like it was silly when I asked.”

  Kisarat looked down at the floor, then back at me. “I agree with Ayarala. You should go.”

  “The one thing I don’t know is where. She said, ‘Your wife knows how to find us.’ I don’t know who she meant.”

  “It’s me.”

  Eladra, who had been silent up to now, stood up from the couch.

  “It’s me. She meant me.” She reached up to run her fingers through her hair and her ears.

  “The village where I grew up, it’s in the forest near where the panikang live. People were afraid of them, and we knew they wanted to be left alone. I was afraid of them. So we left them alone, and they left us alone. But we knew where they were, more or less. We stayed away from them. But I know where it is. I can take you there.”

  “Awasa-late –” Narilora began.

  “No,” Eladra said. “I want to do this. I need to do this. I know it’s the cunelo who make you feel so bad about yourself, that we’re so fertile and you’re not. I want to do this for you.”

  Narilora turned from me to Eladra. She took Eladra’s hands, then they came together in a hug.

  “We should leave tomorrow,” I said. “First thing.”

  Chapter 8

  We were heading back into the woods, into an area that Eladra described as near-primal wilderness uninhabited by anyone except the panikang. So I got out all my camping gear, and Narilora pulled together our swords and crossbows and my armor. On the way to Phan-garad from iXa’aliq’s house when I’d first arrived here, we used a special pass to get all this stuff on the train. I now had one of my own, which Ceriniat had secured for me a while back.

  I checked and doubled-checked everything, knowing I would probably forget something like I always did but hoping it was nothing critical. I was still missing a flashlight, but Narilora found a crystal version that would work, not that she needed it. Like all linyang, she could see very well in the dark.

  I packed a crystal tablet so we could keep in touch with the house. Ayarala and I synced things up to make sure they worked and planned to check in once a day. Lorelat would take over the house and wife management while Eladra was gone. I figured we would be there and back in no more than a sampar, so it wouldn’t throw off our schedule too much.

  We would need food out on the trail, but Eladra said there would be plenty available in her village. I assumed we were going all the way back up the line to a cunelo village beyond iXa’aliq’s house. She explained that in fact she’d only been sent there when she was being assessed by the elders for her mating potential, and that her home village was actually much closer – only a couple of hours on the maglev.

  Exactly how far the panikang were from her village, she couldn’t tell me. No one really knew, exactly. But she believed it would likely take us several days of hiking through some pretty dense and rugged forest. I expressed concern about getting lost, but she said the one thing everyone agreed on was that the panikang lived near the upper reaches of a river that ran past the village.

  “How do they agree if no one knows where they are?” I asked.

  She fidgeted in an intensely cute fashion for a moment.

  “Promise me you won’t talk about this in front of anyone in the village. It’s something that goes on, but a lot of people don’t like it. It’s just kind of this open secret.”

  She explained that there were cunelo merchants who traded with the panikang, even though no one ever saw them. The panikang valued certain fruits from elsewhere in Taitala, and the cunelo merchants had them shipped into the village. They would leave the fruit out at night, and in the morning, it would be gone. A day or so later, a basket would come floating down the river filled with carefully packed rare herbs from deep in the forest. Dwenda healers valued these herbs, and the cunelo merchants would sell them on. It was a weird arrangement, but because it made good money for important people in the village, it had persisted for decades.

  So we would follow the river upstream and hope for the best.

  ◆◆◆

  I wanted to get out with a minimum of fuss, so I woke everyone up well before dawn. I was finalizing my backpack when Eladra emerged from the dressing room wearing something that looked like a corset. It covered her chest and pushed her big breasts up almost to her neck. And as I looked her over, I realized there were other parts of it on her arms and legs.

  It was a suit of armor, not unlike what the sorai wore, though lighter. She’d strapped one of the long crystal swords I’d seen on Loreloo’s guards to her waist. And like Narilora did when she was expecting trouble – but I had never seen Eladra do – she had her light brown hair back in a long braid.

  She stood up straight and faced back at the looks she was getting.

  “Everyone thinks cunelo are weak and afraid because we avoid fights. But that’s not why. It’s because we don’t like conflict. We want everyone to get along peacefully, and we try to help that happen. But we know how to fight if we need to.”

  She glanced around at her sister-wives.

  “I’m not Narilora or Merindra, but I know how to use this.”

  Then she noticed where I was looking and glanced down at her chest. She tried to reposition the chest-plate over her breasts.

  “This used to fit better. Before, um . . . ”

  I laughed softly.

  “It’s good, bunny-girl. I’m glad to know this, actually.”

  ◆◆◆

  The house had a small back gate that was used by the staff for deliveries and similar things. Ay
arala, Kisarat, Merindra, and Lorelat followed us down. I hugged them all good-bye.

  “Please be careful,” Ayarala said. “And call me once a day, like we agreed. I will not call you unless I must, in case you are somewhere it could be dangerous.”

  “Good luck, my tsulygoi,” Kisarat said. “I am confident you will meet with success.”

  “I wish I could come with you,” Merindra said, kissing my neck. “But this is Narilora’s quest. I wish you all the fortune you will need.”

  Lorelat hugged me tightly. “Come back to me, bunny-daddy. And take care of Eladra.”

  “I will.”

  It was still dark, and we slipped away from the house without difficulty. The train wasn’t leaving for about two hours. We walked to the nearest trolley stop in silence and rode it to the maglev station. Almost no one was using it at this hour, but there were a few people waiting at the station when we arrived. Narilora got our tickets for a private cabin. I had been in Phan-garad long enough now that my presence prompted only stares, whispers, and photos, but no commotion. As the sun began to rise, they let us onto the train.

  We rode the two hours or so to Eladra’s home village. Narilora just laid across my lap as I scratched her ears. Eladra fiddled with her armor until she’d adjusted the straps on her chest-plate in a way that worked. There was no way to hide her chest, but she at least no longer looked like a dominatrix rabbit with her boobs up around her neck.

  When we started to get close, she stared out the window for a few minutes.

  “Will, you remember how I ended up with you, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “So you need to know that I’m not going to get a very good reception when we get there. Going against the elders like I did, especially on something like mating, is a big deal.”

  I told her what Loreloo said to me during one of the first meetings, about how Eladra had run away from a match. She nodded wearily.

  “Exactly. It’s enough of a transgression that our freaking clan leader heard about it. So imagine what the people in my village think of me now.”