“Forgive me, keeper,” I said. “I shouldn’t have been running.”
Onine had always been a Kyprian of few words, having barely spoken to me in the time I’d worked under him, though I’d heard him address others. He held his stick out and offered it as an aide to get me up off the ground. I wrapped my hand around its tip and held it. He flicked it ever so lightly and I was lifted to my feet.
“Thank you, keeper.”
I kept my eyes on the ground in front of me out of respect, if not fear. I’d always avoided looking into Kyprian eyes. Minosh warned me they had the power to intoxicate.
Onine lifted his stick and placed its point into the fabric of my veil beneath my chin. Had I been running more quickly, had I fallen into him, had he not stopped me from touching him, he’d have perished, and though I deserved punishment for my carelessness, I was certain he wouldn’t scold me. He raised my chin and brought my face up to meet his, forcing me to gaze into his pale eyes, making me drunk on the depths of the cosmos. I saw the whole universe there—even the goddess. Kypria revealed her flame and it was soon etched in my mind forever. I wondered if Onine knew I’d see such splendor in his eyes. It was as though I sensed the whole of him in me, the heat on my skin, the fire in my belly, as though he were crawling inside and pulling me into him at the same time, as though wrapping me in an embrace and letting my sapience sink into his gold skin. In that fleeting moment, we exchanged worlds.
When it was over, I was left with a chill. He looked past me again, as if I was no longer there, his stoic expression replacing the hurt I’d seen before. Or maybe I’d only imagined it in the first place. He tapped his stick in front of him and tossed his head back before he turned away, opening the cedar door of the bathing room and disappearing into the steam of the tubs.
Beneath my veil, my skin prickled with sweat. I felt the weight of my grains and milk rise to make an escape, and I held my mouth shut until the wave of nausea passed. The violent urge to vomit was the only trace of his splendor.
“El,” Tal said. “Are you all right?” He abandoned the fire he tended to and ran to my side as soon as Onine left.
“I’m fine.” I hoped he could see my gratitude beneath my veil when I smiled, but his eyes narrowed. “The baths must be scalding hot this morning,” I said, as I turned to go.
“Wait,” he said, as he reached for my arm but then stopped himself in time.
“El!” Tiro’s call came from inside the bathhouse.
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
Tal couldn’t keep me, as I bolted for the cedar door. Into the steam, I found my bearings by following the wax that lit the path along the tubs.
“I’m here, master,” I said, as Tiro leered at the sisters of the Astros floating into the Temple for their baths. I didn’t mean to spy on him but when he realized I’d seen him, he gave me a grin.
“Clumsy sapient.” He raised his stick and brought it down hard on my shoulder. The sting made my eyes water.
“Forgive me, master.”
“Get to work before I give you another,” he said, as he scowled and jetted off to check the rest of the baths.
***
I rose before the eye and went out to look at the map in the cosmos. The clusters of fire were splattered across a black, black sky. I sat on the peat moss and named the constellations, each one as Minosh had taught me. Bendo slept between the rows of cabbages I’d planted at the start of the season. She never ate the cabbage but it was her favorite spot to lie in the garden. As I sat in the dark looking up at the endless sky, I whispered to my creator.
“I miss you, Minosh. I don’t like it here without you. Now that you’re gone, the master doesn’t restrain himself.”
I was frightened to say Tiro’s name aloud for fear it would make him appear. On more than one occasion I’d felt the stifling atmosphere of his presence lurking in the shadows by my shanty. The idea was impossible, he wouldn’t come when the eye slept, but I felt the oppression of his spirit nonetheless.
“He taps me with his stick more than I deserve,” I said into the darkness. “And he does so with such spite. He despises me, Minosh, and I don’t know why.”
His assault would always come when we first arrived at the baths, before Onine passed through my section. The keeper didn’t know about the master’s cruelty since Tiro hid it well.
“I can’t win his admiration,” I said. “I’m not one of them. I’ll never be anything but sapient.”
As I spoke, looking up at Luna’s vast landscape, a burst of light shot through the blackness and burned brilliantly for several seconds before burning out all together.
“Is that you, Minosh? Are you up in the sky?”
She didn’t answer though I heard a voice. I thought a Kyprian whispered in my ear.
“You are the one,” the hollow voice said. “It is you, El.”
I turned to the side almost certain I’d see Onine a stick’s length away but I was alone in the silence. I don’t know how I recognized his voice but I did. I thought about him for a moment, his stature, his radiance. He was a beautiful creature and yet he possessed something both strange and familiar, something I was dying to know.
The black sky started to blue, as the eye strove to slay night once more over the golden forest. The moonbugs chirred in the tall grass and Bendo stirred. I watched Venus rise bright in the sky, as Jupiter set, the two balancing one another in their opposition far above the planet. I wondered what the Kyprian were doing up there at that moment. I closed my eyes to imagine their goddess radiating her beauty across the whole planet.
“It must be a magnificent terrain filled with shiny beings and incredible vegetation and epic wonders to witness,” I said to the purpling sky. “I’d give anything to see Kypria’s realm, to feel the warmth she emits, to bask in her radiance, if only once.”
I started to shiver when a chill air rushed in from the field. I squeezed my arms tight around me and pulled in my knees. The eye would be high enough soon and I’d have to prepare for the Bathing Temple. I rolled off the peat moss and crossed the garden. Bendo was awake and I greeted her with a loving pat on the head.
***
Tal lit the eleventh fire, as I crossed the deck to speak with him. I’d planned on inventing some reason to slip out to see him but didn’t need to when Onine took Tiro away. I had watched with interest, as my keeper communicated with the floor master in their mysterious tongue, their language sounding like a series of sharp but muted shrieks that rose and dropped with a stilted cadence.
“We will never understand their language,” Minosh had said. “They do not intend for us to know it since they speak ours.”
“How’d they learn ours so easily?”
She’d told me they could communicate with us from the beginning. “I would imagine nothing is above their learning, my little Pchi.” Only their appearance outmatched their intelligence. Kypria and her followers were exceptional beings and at times I wondered why they’d chosen our planet.
As I approached the pits, Tal turned to greet me. I couldn’t see the smile through the silk covering on his mouth but I imagined it, even his one crooked tooth. “What’re you doing here?”
“I was hoping we could talk,” I said, as I scanned the pits around him.
His scowl marked his concern about being caught on a break. “Come here.”
He led me in between two unlit pits on the far side of the camp, farthest from the other three fire starters who lit the pits on the other side.
“So?” He was sweet. His eyes lit up when he said so? It was then that I realized he still favored me. It was a secret we shared. Tal and I’d been assigned at one time but were no longer matched. When I reached my fifth thó, I was supposed to be paired with the one the goddess had chosen for me. Tal was selected to be my partner when I was born but last season when the grain fell from the wheat, our union was annulled with no explanation. We were told the goddess had changed her mind about my duty to procreate and decided I’d
stay celibate until my end.
“It is an honor, my little Pchi,” Minosh had said. “You have been selected to remain untouched like the sisters of the Astros.”
It was hardly compensation since my beauty was sorely lacking. “But I want to have a youngling just like you,” I’d said.
She consoled me for several moonscapes after the announcement. The news devastated me. It broke my heart to know I’d never bring a sapient forth from my own body, from seed, just like my creator had. My dreams of passing on the things Minosh had taught me were dashed when I was reassigned to celibacy.
Before then, Tal and I’d spent time together. His creator would sit with Minosh and sip dandelion tea in the garden while Tal and I’d run through the wheat field. When the blades were tall enough we’d play secret find, taking turns hiding a jade pebble until the seeker found the hidden treasure. One eve we tumbled into a fit of giggles so exhilarating we couldn’t stop. Unveiled and free, we laughed until he kissed me. His soft lips touched mine as gently as the breeze and I could smell his smoky breath. The fires stayed with him—in him—but I liked it.
“I need to ask you,” I said. “What happened when I almost ran into the keeper?”
He shrugged. “You fell on your back like a bolt. If I could’ve reached you, I would’ve.”
I smiled beneath my veil but he didn’t know it.
“What did the keeper do?”
His pupils widened ever so slightly. “What could he do?”
For many moonscapes I’d thought about that moment, one that would live with me forever, one that had changed my life. “Did he …” I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
“He froze, I guess,” Tal said. “He didn’t try to catch you if that’s what you’re asking.” He snorted a little when he said it.
I closed my eyes, recalling the pleasure of the moment.
“But he looked confused, I guess,” he said. “Like he wanted to help you. That’s the best way to describe it.” I held my breath. “I mean, he seemed upset. Almost sad.”
“Sad?”
“I know,” he said. “Impossible. Maybe it was a reflection.”
Sapients can see their emotions reflected on the faces of others, but never on those of Venusians.
“Maybe—”
“El!” The shout came from inside the Temple. Tiro had returned and I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.
“Go,” Tal said. “Hurry.”
I rushed in, trying my best to think up an excuse. The sisters of the Astros weren’t due for a full moonscape, but Bellamé was coming in to bathe and I could say I needed to let the fire starters know. It was a poor excuse, but I couldn’t think of another. Tiro was leaning over the kidney-shaped tub when I reached him.
“Yes, master.”
“Where were you?”
“I went to see Ta—the fire starters to tell them the—”
“Stupid sapient,” he said. “Fill the salts and polish the gold in this tub. It’s beginning to lose its luster.”
The kidney-shaped tub was one of the most exquisite yellows in the Temple. Its gold inlay was radiant, especially when the eye shone directly down through the glass above it. If it was losing its luster, I couldn’t tell.
“Yes, master.”
I let out a small sigh when he left me to go out to the fire pits. I hoped he wasn’t headed for Tal. He couldn’t have known it was him I went out to see.
Onine had made his rounds already and I was certain he’d left when he took Tiro with him, but he came back. When he floated by, I stopped thinking about what Tal said and the shiny kidney-shaped tub and the empty salt vats. The wind from his stride stirred my veil and blew it ever so slightly off my chin. I inhaled when he passed and smelled the sweet scent of his skin. I’d never noticed his smell before, but at that moment I couldn’t imagine him without it. I glanced up at him, as he glided by, hoping to catch a glimpse of his pale eyes. He looked away but I grinned beneath my veil when I noticed his smile. He’d caught me looking at him and I was grateful the veil covered my blushing cheeks.
I polished the kidney-shaped tub until Tiro called for me again. “You will finish after moonscape,” he said.
No one worked overtime at the Bathing Temple. The Kyprian disappeared before darkness settled in. While sapients rejoiced at night’s arrival, the aliens renounced it. Minosh told me it was because they were incapable of surviving without the eye’s light. By the time it sunk beneath the horizon, they were safely in their greenhouses soaking up the warmth of a fake eye. Faraway from the sapient shanties, Venusian glass houses lit up the horizon. We couldn’t see them from where we were, but their glow radiated across the landscape like a patch of stars fallen from the sky or like dangling lanterns along the edge of a mountain range way off in the distance. Sometimes I stared at those artificial stars instead of the real ones and wondered what the beautiful aliens were doing.
“They weave,” Minosh had said. “They coil around one another, sharing their heat, their energy and beauty.”
“How do you know?”
She shrugged and giggled. “I have seen it, my little Pchi.” Of course she meant she’d seen it in the baths.
I imagined the heavenly bodies, the creatures of fire, dancing and swirling about one another, twisting their flames together and stealing bits and pieces of each other. The sight would be magnificent—spellbinding, really. I thought of Onine. I wondered what he looked like without his covering, what he looked like in the flesh—not flesh, I supposed, but gold. They said Kyprian skin was made of fire, which transformed into gold on our planet. But they weren’t statues of yellow element. On our planet, their golden skin simply looked like ours but smoother and more radiant. They were larger than most sapients too, taller and more brawny, though they resembled us in some ways. They appeared to us as sapients because of our ability to reflect.
“They look like us,” Minosh had said, “because we cannot imagine them any other way. I suppose we could see them as animals, like Bendo, if they did not speak, or think, or rule over us.” Minosh said Kyprian beauty conquered the sapients when they came and revealed it to us—they were the flames, we the moths.
“El?” Tal startled me. I wasn’t expecting him, though I should’ve known he’d come to see me in my garden.
“Would you like a cup of dandelion?” It was fitting for us to drink as our creators had, both of them being gone now. Tal’s had migrated a partial thó before mine, and it was a partial thó before then that I’d last seen him standing in my yard.
“Actually,” he said. “I’ll take some milk if you’ve got it.”
“I might.”
He waited for me between the cabbage rows, under Luna’s slivered bodice—the smallest form of our fractal goddess. He petted the sleepy Bendo until I returned with the two cups.
“She’s getting old,” he said.
She was, but so were we.
He downed the goat’s milk, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. He let out a little burp and rolled the empty cup between his palms. It was pleasant to see his face without the silk. He smiled at me and turned his head to the side. My staring embarrassed him.
“Why’d you ask about the keeper?” I shrugged like Minosh used to. I didn’t have an answer. “You must’ve had a reason?”
He sounded serious, much older than his six and a half thó. Many lunar cycles had passed since he’d come into full sapience, but his voice had only grown husky this past cold season. He sounded like an elder already. I was still a youngling, just over five thó, and my change hadn’t come yet.
“Well,” he said.
I hemmed a little bit. “I thought …” I didn’t know what I thought actually. I couldn’t explain what I’d seen on my keeper’s face, what I’d witnessed in his eyes. The experience wasn’t meant for words.
“I feel differently,” I said.
“Are you sick?”
I shook my head. Tal looked away again and I sensed his frustration, his confusion,
but I didn’t know how to reassure him. I was so awkward in my ways—my change seemed too far off, and we were no longer assigned.
“He looked sad?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said in his deep voice. “Why does this matter?”
“I saw something.” When the words came out, I couldn’t believe I’d said them. I didn’t know why I felt compelled to tell Tal about my experience, to share Onine’s sublimity with him.
“What?”
“The goddess,” I said. “I saw her.”
“Wh—” he said. “How? That’s impossible.”
It was forbidden, actually. Both of us knew that. “I did.”
“Why would a Kyprian—”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s profane, and against the rule.”
I dug my toes into the moss beneath my feet. “But the image just won’t let me go,” I said. “The beauty’s ruined me.”
Tal exhaled and tossed his head to the side. I could smell the smoke from his breath. I searched his eyes for the fire I’d seen in Onine’s but they were empty. Blue, cold, dark.
“It was the keeper,” I said. “I tried to keep my eyes on the ground but he made me look. I didn’t want to but he forced me—I did my best to avoid them. Really. But he—he—”
I knew I sounded ridiculous saying something like that. Onine wasn’t interested in sharing his sublimity with a sapient. Kypria was too sacred to be shared with an alien, especially one as dull as me. We were mere hums and drones on a terrestrial landscape that now belonged to the Venusian.
“I saw,” he said in a low voice, almost invisible.
“You did?”
He nodded slowly and looked away. I was relieved to hear him say it, to know I hadn’t imagined the whole thing. Onine had done it, not me.
“Forget it,” he said.
“But he must’ve wanted—”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“But why’d he—”
“Because he’s Kyprian,” he said. “He’s—they can do whatever they want.” He sounded hurt, frustrated, angry.
El and Onine Page 2
