People of the Sky

by Clare Bell

  The tread of sandals sounded on the path to Aronan House. Whoever it was, they were coming toward her. She shrank back against the wall of a corn silo, hoping that the fact she was downwind from whoever approached might conceal her.

  She waited until she could see the figure hurrying up the path. Her eyes widened. It was not the shaman, as she had feared, or Nyentiwakay, but the woman Chamol. She carried her son Jolo bound across her back in a blanket, but from the fierceness of her steps, Kesbe guessed she was not bound on any maternal errand.

  The set look on the Pai woman’s face warned her that Chamol wouldn’t tolerate interruption. Curious now, she leaned against the cool stone and watched from her place in the shadows. Chamol strode purposefully to the door-flap of Aronan House and Kesbe was too far away to hear all of the conversation between them, but as Chamol raised her voice, she caught more of the exchange.

  “I have asked the kiva priests and they say my brother is no longer there. The shaman will tell me nothing. Have none of the child-warriors seen him?”

  The young man mumbled something that Kesbe couldn’t hear, but she saw Chamois shoulders slump, as if the weight she bore had become too much for her.

  “Could you not let me into the kiva to search for myself,” Kesbe heard her plead. “I will enter in reverence, I will not desecrate that which is holy.”

  The young man shook his head. “Only the kiva chiefs may say who enters.”

  “But I have asked and they all tell me the same thing. Go to the shaman. It is she who has forbidden me to see Imiya.”

  “Then speak with her again or obey,” said the young man, trying to be kind. “We of Aronan House can do nothing for you.”

  He stood with his hands open helplessly as Chamol turned away, the tears bright in her eyes. Kesbe stood still in the shadows, abruptly recalling what Baqui Iba had sent to her. The pain of the one who struggles to bear…What else had the aronan said? She put her hands to her temples as if she could press the information out of her unwilling brain. If only she hadn’t been interrupted…

  Quietly she left her refuge and strode down the path after the Pai woman, timing it so that she caught up with her just as they passed the part of the pueblo containing Kesbe’s own quarters.

  When she was just behind Chamol, she hissed the woman’s name. The other turned abruptly. She beckoned quickly in the direction of the doorflap that led to her own small chamber. Chamois eyes widened, but after a quick glance left and right, she followed.

  Kesbe poured more oil into the guttering clay lamp. She offered Chamol a place on her rug. Jolo began to cry fretfully. Chamol unslung the child and quieted him, holding him against her breast. Then she peered at Kesbe with frightened yet hopeful eyes.

  “I heard you speaking with the door-warden at Aronan House,” Kesbe began without preamble. “How long has it been since you’ve seen Imiya?”

  “Many sukops, warrior-woman. The last time he seemed to be almost healed from his injury, yet it was afterwards that the shaman forbade me to visit him.” She leaned forward, her face warming with excitement. “You, you have been trained in the kiva. Surely you must know if Imiya is there.”

  “I haven’t seen him,” Kesbe answered slowly. “I haven’t been allowed beyond the area that Sahacat uses to instruct me. But,” she added, as Chamois eyes began to shimmer with grief once again, “I have…a reason…to think he is.”

  Kesbe knew she and Chamol could not visit the kiva in daylight. Instead she waited for dark, hidden in the inner rooms of Chamois house. She sent word by a child-warrior that she was ill and could not come to her lesson with Sahacat that day. It was a poor excuse, but not to appear at all might alert the shaman’s suspicions.

  When night came, the two women went to Aronan Kiva. Chamol had said they would find it unguarded, for who among the Pai would desecrate it or steal anything? Kesbe was surprised to find that this was indeed so. If the boy was here, he was not being kept by force. She climbed down the lash-pole ladder into the depths of the kiva, feeling ashamed at taking advantage of the trust the Pai people placed in each other by leaving a sacred place open to all who might enter.

  Yet even though it was open, it might not be innocent. One would not need guards to hold one who was drugged or sick or broken of will. And a faint sourness tainted the earthy scent of the underground chamber that hinted of sickness and suffering. It was so faint, Kesbe knew that if her senses were not on edge as they were now, she would have failed to detect it.

  Her nose led her downward, to a chamber below the main one where Sahacat had taught her. Traces of Baqui Iba’s scent still hung in the room. As she crossed the floor with Chamol, she tried to blot out the aronan-smell, not wanting to be distracted. She pushed through a hanging doorflap and snapped on her hand-light.

  Kesbe swung her flashlight beam around the plastered stone interior of the small kiva. On a ledge at the far end lay a blanket-wrapped figure that moved listlessly. Her heightened olfactory sense caught a smell that reminded her of Imiya’s. A different odor was mixed with it, a spicy smell with overtones of sourness. When her light fell upon the bundled figure, her eyes were as equally confused, for the flushed sweating face was that of a young girl with Imiya’s features. Gone were the masculine planes of the face and the rough stubble of beard on the chin. The jaw had softened, rounded. The entire facial structure had changed proportions, making the eyes seem much larger as they opened and fixed upon her.

  Kesbe had expected to find the youth weakened by sickness or perhaps in a trance induced by the shaman. She did not anticipate the startling change that now faced her. Her mind sought other explanations, a twin sister perhaps. No. The face had changed, but the eyes, although dulled with fever, were Imiya’s.

  Chamol apparently had no such difficulty in recognizing her brother in this altered form. Before Kesbe could react, Chamol went to him, crouching beside the ledge where he lay, but no recognition entered the eyes. A spasm of pain convulsed the face, making the back arch, thrusting up the abdomen…

  The figure writhed again. The cocoon of blankets fell away. The circle of her light fell on bare flesh, pulled to tightness by the full swelling inside.

  But Imiya, if this indeed was Chamois brother, was male, wasn’t he? Bewildered, she approached, playing the light on the flat pectorals of the chest and the sinewy muscled arms. For an instant she had expected to see the rest of a woman’s body.

  Something rippled beneath the taut skin. Something pushed out, forming a hard ridge. Imiya whimpered between his teeth, clutched at his swollen stomach, breathed hard and harshly. Repulsed, Kesbe backed away, fearing for one insane minute that whatever lay inside the boy’s body would burst from him.

  Her breath rattled in her throat. She only half-heard Chamois voice saying in surprise, “I did not expect to find that he has already been made lomuqualt.” The Pai woman paused, sent Kesbe a sharp glance. “Rohoni, what is wrong?”

  She couldn’t answer. She played the light over Imiya’s drained face, the glazed eyes, saw furrows about the mouth etched by pain. She felt the horror of it creep over her with freezing steps. This boy had an aronan larva inside him. This was not any gentle pseudo-pregnancy, as Nyentiwakay had tried to make her believe, but the presence of a malignant parasite that could infest the human male as well as the female.

  The sight of Imiya clashed with her previous memories of Nyentiwakay. How, she asked herself, could both be lomuqualt? Which was the truth, Nyentiwakay’s joyful bearing or Imiya’s torture?

  Was Baqui Iba also in the conspiracy to deceive her? It would have a good reason to do so—it needed someone to incubate its egg. Could it be she was being led down the fabled primrose path? At first such thoughts seemed unlikely, but the longer she looked at Imiya, the stronger the possibility became.

  Damn you. Damn you all. You lied to me.

  The aronan will use me like a wasp uses a caterpillar. She remembered the horror of her childhood that Sahacat had resurrected to warn her. The shaman h
ad been right. Why hadn’t she listened?

  “Rohoni?” Chamois voice cut in anxiously. “Do you not understand? I thought you were being prepared.”

  “I was being prepared, but not for this.” She made a quick motion toward Imiya, whose teeth clenched and head strained back as the parasite jerked inside his belly. She wanted to press her hands against her own stomach, shielding it, pressing it inward against the pressure of whatever might want to grow there.

  “Something is wrong,” Chamol said worriedly. “He is too swollen, there should not be pain and fever. Something has gone wrong, perhaps because the egg is from another aronan and not his own flier.”

  His own flier. I have my own flier too, she thought, remembering the closeness she shared with Baqui Iba only a short time ago.

  But she knew now. She knew the truth. She found herself shuddering at the thought of coming near an aronan. To think the partnership between her and Baqui Iba had been something she thought precious. The creature was hypnotizing her with its pheromones, seducing her into the role of passive host-mother. She could be the one lying there with a stomach inflated with parasite…

  For an instant she wanted to run, to flee to her plane, fire up the engines and get the hell out. The selfish impulse ebbed. No, she could not leave the boy behind. She was partially responsible for what had happened to him. If she left him here in this rathole of a kiva with god-knows what eating his guts, he would die.

  She strode to the ledge and began wrapping the boy in blankets, ostensibly for warmth, but really to hide the sight of his belly. “Help me carry him,” she said sharply to Chamol.

  “Kesbe-Rohoni, I brought you here to find him, not to take him away,” Chamol began.

  Kesbe slapped the first-aid kit on her belt, to which Chamol had pinned some hopes. “Nothing in this is going to do any good. I think this boy is dying and the only way to save him is to get him away and have the thing inside him taken out.”

  “No.” Chamol blocked Kesbe’s hand. “It would be wrong.”

  “Look at him,” Kesbe hissed. “How long do you think he is going to live like that?”

  Chamol closed her eyes, then opened them, moist with grief. “It has gone badly I think you are right. If we leave him here, he will not survive, but where can we take him?”

  “I know a place, and we can reach it in Gooney Berg. Help me with him. Hurry.”

  Even as Kesbe and Chamol gathered the boy up, he began to thrash and kick. “Brother,” Chamol whispered to him. “We take you to save your life. Do not fight.”

  Imiya’s head rolled. His eyes fluttered open and the torture of pain in them made Kesbe swallow hard. What kind of society did this to its children? One of his hands clutched at the ledge with surprising strength.

  “Do not take me from the kiva,” he gasped. “I must stay lomuclualt even if bearing this one costs my life. It is my only chance, my only road back to my people, Sahacat has told me…”

  “The shaman lies,” Kesbe said fiercely, trying to pry his hand from the ledge. “Chamol, he’s delirious. Ignore what he says.” Another convulsive spasm shook the boy, loosening his grip. Kesbe thought she felt something lunge angrily inside his belly.

  “Let’s get him out of here!” She heaved him up, clamped him in her arms to still his struggling, then dragged him off the ledge, blankets and all. Staggering under the weight, she carried him into the next room of the kiva.

  Chamol was ahead of her, motioning her through the secret ground-level entrance of the kiva. There was no way they were going to get up the trapdoor entrance ladder with Imiya. Together the women began to run, carrying the boy between them.

  The narrow mesa trail forced Chamol and Kesbe to go one after the other, lugging the boy between them. Kesbe let the Pai woman have the lead, for Chamol could find her way through the dark over broken rock and keep them both away from the treacherous edges. Though Kesbe had a light, she avoided using it for fear of attracting attention. She could only struggle up the stony ground, her arms laden with Imiya’s weight and that of the parasite inside him.

  Chamol stopped. Kesbe, carrying the boy’s shoulders, felt his feet sag. Chamol said nothing, but she sensed the Pai woman listening. Now she too heard it: the rush of wings against wind.

  Had Sahacat discovered the abduction and sent mounted child-warriors after her? She prepared to let down her burden, to turn and fight.

  “No,” Chamol whispered. “The aronan is alone. It has no rider.”

  Kesbe listened to the wingbeats. Each flier had a slightly different wingbeat signature. She realized that she knew this one and wished at that moment she didn’t. Baqui Iba was flying this night. Flying alone, seeking her.

  The sudden, almost instinctive surge of joy was severed by a knifeblade of fear. The aronan must be seeking her because it was ready. Ready to implant in her the same horror that moved in Imiya’s belly.

  One word came out in a moan between her numbed lips. “Run!”

  Chamol did not stop to question. They broke into a scrambling stagger along the trail, jolting moans from Imiya.

  Kesbe heard the wingbeats directly overhead. The breeze in her face carried a smell that told her she was beloved. It was the same aroma that had rushed over her during the last flight that now seemed so terribly long ago. Then it had been heartbreakingly beautiful and had touched her to the deepest part of her being.

  Now she breathed the aronan’s essence and it stank in her nostrils. Everyone lied to me. Sahacat, Nyentiwakay and most of all you. You made me think I was loved. Is the caterpillar also seduced to the paralyzing sting of the wasp to lie helpless while the wasp lays its eggs? I won’t be your caterpillar, Bacqui Iba.

  The rushing wings passed once overhead, faded and then returned. Kesbe tilted her face up in the darkness. She knew her betrayal and rage were rising with her answering scent. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks as she ran with the boy’s weight tearing at her arms. She cursed the part of her that even now could love Baqui Iba because she could never forget the one last flight. Part of her bled inside when she caught the note of bewilderment that quickly turned to anguish in the odor blowing to her from the flier.

  She gritted her teeth, urged Chamol on, ignored Imiya’s groans and feeble struggles. They were almost to the trailhead when the flier swooped so low that she felt the strong wind of its passing. It alighted on the trail, turning to face her. The eyes caught starlight, their facets shining with a pale gleam. Its antennae were silvered feathers. Darkness hid the rest of its face so that the most insect-like features were all she saw.

  It moved and she heard the dry clicking of one chitin surface against another. The odor it sent was heavy, musty, with the sharp sting of hurt.

 

  “I was a fool then,” Kesbe snarled back both in words and scents. “I was a trusting, believing fool. Now I know the truth about you and your kind.”

 

  “Then what about this boy? What do you smell in him, Baqui Iba? Is he happy with what he holds in his guts? Is that why he writhes in my arms?”

 

  “I’d like to believe that,” Kesbe said bitterly. “Stand aside, Baqui Iba.”

 

  She took a deep breath. “No. Go away.”

  The aronan took one step toward her. Quickly she changed places with Chamol, taking the front. Baqui Iba sent again, but the terror and rage in her mind blocked the words from forming. Again the barrier was between them and this time Kesbe was grateful. She formed the surging emotions into an angry scent blast and loosed it toward the aronan. It retreated, its antennae curled tightly. There was a stinging like the odor of molten metal in her nose, a harsh actinic scent. Then the creature was gone and the path to Gooney Berg stood open.

  On the mesa-top, Kesbe staggered toward the C-47’s outline against the stars, her arms aching from Imiya’s weight. She felt Ch
amol stumble against her, lose pace and nearly fall. The Pai woman’s breath rasped in her ears. The bulky form in the blanket gave a moan.

  For one ludicrous, yet terrifying instant, Kesbe thought she had lost the cargo-door keys, but she found them in the depths of her coverall pocket. With a clunk and squeak, the door opened. Kesbe switched on the cabin lights. The two women hauled Imiya inside, laid him down on a pile of tarps. He clutched his swollen belly through the pile of blankets and moaned again, louder. His voice had a raw edge of pain that sent Kesbe scuttling forward to find her pharmaceutical kit.

  She got a syringe with painkiller. Before Chamol could say anything, she had the needle in the boy’s arm-vein and was pressing down on the plunger. She saw Chamol grimace in dismay.

  “This sting takes away pain,” Kesbe said quickly, turning to dog the cargo door against any intruders. “Help me get him forward.”

  She grabbed the youth under the arms while Chamol took Imiya’s feet. As they hauled him along the companionway past the bulkheads, the blanket slipped from his bloated stomach. Again, something moved inside, protesting the jouncing. She flipped the blanket back over him as revulsion stabbed her own belly. She did not want to see.

  The painkiller seemed to help. His eyes grew dazed, his mouth slack. He was belted into the copilot’s seat with Chamol crouching behind. Kesbe slipped into the left side, busied herself with take-off preparations. She was grateful that her mind acted mechanically, pushing aside distractions.

  Gyro. Mags. Starter. Her hand swept across the row of bat switches. A pump whined and banged as the hydraulics came to life. One motor ground, sputtered, faltered. She clenched her teeth, hoping that the electrical system still had enough juice and tried again. This time the big radial engine caught, snorting indignantly at having to perform without a battery cart. The other engine also grumbled, belching out a plume of oily smoke.