Gown of Shadow and Flame

by A. E. Marling

  “Jerani.” Chiya said it as she might to a troublesome calf. “Don't you have more water to carry?”

  Isafo looked down his cleft chin at Jerani, gave him a smug smile, then turned his jaw back into the sunlight. Warrior marks crossed over his brow in two rows of pebbled skin. Chiya stared up at him, her lips a grin.

  Not wanting to see more, Jerani stomped around the pair. Water splashed from the gourds, but Jerani hurt too much to care, pain crisscrossing over his midsection.

  He wished he were as tall as Isafo. Carrying all this water shortened me, he thought. Anger flashed through him toward his mother, for falling sick just as he began to really grow and leaving him to lug the gourds for years. Then he felt rotten for thinking that, then even angrier at Chiya for ignoring him.

  Jerani stomped off a ways, then remembered one of the gourds he was carrying on the pole belonged to Chiya's family. Not able to turn his head around to look back, he shouted, “Where do you want this gourd? Should I leave it at your mother's?”

  In answer he only heard giggles. His face blasting with heat, he trudged into the village. He slung the first gourd in front of her home. The second, he left at the Masinji's.

  A grizzled woman with drooping breasts snatched up the gourd and glared up at him. “What kept you? You chase a zebra?”

  “S-sorry,” Jerani said. “I can carry the milk now. It's inside?”

  The woman hefted his water gourd. “No milk today.”

  “No milk?” He repeated it out of shock.

  “Cows didn't give any. Too upset after having the herd split last night.”

  Jerani could not meet her gaze because he knew she lied. Frightened cows would give less milk, but not none. She must have taken it all for her own family.

  In the dimness of the hut, a man was drinking something. He set down the bowl and licked a whiteness from his upper lip. The woman stepped into the entrance to block Jerani's view. She scowled at Jerani, as if he had been the rude one. She snapped the cowhide door shut behind her.

  Jerani struggled not to hate her for making his family go hungry. His brother and sister were both growing, and even if Wedan looked over finished, he ate no more than any other boy in the tribe. And often less.

  Jerani's own stomach growled from not eating since last evening. The water he still carried seemed twice as heavy. Jerani snatched the gourd on his head as it began to tip, and the copper on his wrist knocked the side of his head.

  The gourd steady, he glanced down at the bracer the sky woman had given him. She said her name was Celaise.

  Celaise. He did think the name was beautiful, and he consoled himself that at least one woman did not seem mesmerized by Isafo's chin.

  The bracer no longer glowed like it had last night. Jerani rubbed a spot in the metal then gasped, shame whipping through him. Dents marred the design of the winged circle. Scratch marks etched the bracer's length, ragged furrows in the copper.

  “How?” He felt trampled by elephants. Celaise had entrusted him with this jewelry, and he had already ruined it. “What did I do?”

  Nothing could have happened to it while he was sleeping because he had not so much as lain down. No cow horn had clipped him. He did not remember smashing his arm against any boulders near the steam vents. By the look of it, my wrist would've broken. More than chipped metal, the copper had caved in.

  Somehow he had damaged the bracer, and he worried the magic in it would no longer work.

  Jerani felt exhausted, and he still had to collect and dry cow patties, enough for tonight's fire. Another woman's job, he thought, no wonder Chiya wouldn't look at me.

  He hated to see the look on his sister's face when he told her there was no milk. As he wondered what he would say, he stopped by the Holy Woman's hut. The hide flap was open. He thought to ask her about his bracer. The sound of a groan crushed that idea.

  A warrior lay in the hut with his eyes pinched closed. He was Farule, and he often had put his long arms to use helping the tribe during difficult calvings. Jerani hurt to see the sweat beading on Farule's face along the circles of warrior marks.

  The Holy Woman stooped over his leg. At the ends of her white braids, pieces of horn jewelry jangled. When she looked up, Jerani glimpsed that Farule's ankle had been shredded.

  The sight stung Jerani. A Rock-Back must have bitten him. Could've been me. Would have, and worse, if Celaise hadn't come. Lowering the gourd from his head blocked his view of the wound.

  “Jerani,” the Holy Woman asked him, “you've been seeing your father?”

  He had not, for many days. Jerani twisted the bracer about his arm. He uncorked the gourd and poured water into a bowl. He pressed it to Farule's lips to help him drink. The warrior gasped his thanks between sips.

  After Jerani had recapped the gourd, the Holy Woman led him outside. Her horn beads clicked and tinkled.

  “If you do manage to spot your father, say Farule's wound isn't smelling good.”

  Jerani nodded before hefting the gourd back to his head.

  “Has Tachamwa found Glowface and Flower?” The Holy Woman made a circling motion with a finger. “Need him to run to the other tribes. The Angry Mother is trembling.”

  Jerani sucked in a breath. “It's her time?”

  “Might be it is. The tribes best move off her together.” The Holy Woman ducked back into the hut.

  Jerani was left to trudge through the village. Until last night he had thought his tribe safe from the Rock-Backs. They stayed away from the Angry Mother. They're frightened of her. And for good reason. The goddess brought both ashen death as well as life in her rich soil. Now his tribe might have to descend her side, into a grassland swarming with Rock-Backs.

  His fingers traced down the bracer, and he frowned when his thumb dipped into the marred surface in the copper. He wondered if Celaise could fight off dozens of Rock-Backs at a time.

  Hot cloth smoldered about Celaise. She had dreamed of being trapped in the Void, and she woke hungry. Lifting a hand, she clawed fabric away from her mouth and gasped in the dryness of savanna air.

  Darkness still covered the world, and something poked her right eye with a woodpecker sound. Celaise thrashed. Feathers scraped over her arms. A screeching, a beat of wings.

  Celaise pulled the wooden sleep mask from her face, and the paint had chipped over its stylized eyes. The daylight gouged her own eyes, and she squinted at the vultures padding around her, their plumage white and black like a gull's. Beaks snapped above the scarlet skin of bare necks, and the birds screamed their irritation at her for being alive after all.

  “Sorry.” Her voice was a rasping whisper. “But not today.”

  With wings open, each of the vultures was as big as her, with flesh-tearing talons. Still, better to wake up to ruffled vultures than not at all. She thought herself a lucky girl.

  The scavengers would receive no hugs from her, though, and she scrounged for her crutch to fend them off. Bones in her hand clicked and shifted in spikes of pain when she picked up the wooden support. Rags trailed the crutch's shoulder saddle as she swung.

  The scavengers hopped backward needlessly. Her arm was trembling with weakness, and her elbow did not bend as far as it should. The daylight wasted her away. Each sunrise locked her in this cursed body, this false body. Even after three years, she had never grown comfortable in it. Its shortcomings still surprised her.

  Propping herself to her feet, she waited for the brightness to recede into recognizable shapes. Daylight lashed and scoured her in waves of hot ill will.

  She hated the sun, the Winged Fire, the Sun Dragon. But it hates me more. The people of her homeland had worshiped the Sun Dragon, who carried light across the day sky. At first she had thought the Sun Dragon had cursed her for leaving her nation and renouncing it as her god She had learned it was more than that. The Sun Dragon tortured all Feasters, twisting and warping them into broken reflections of their true selves.

  Worst of all, her dress melted away under the dragon's gla
re, leaving her in a faded blue poncho and sack skirt. She was defenseless.

  “You big blinding bully.” As she said it, the dragon's ravaging light slipped into her mouth and stung her gums in ten places. Her teeth throbbed. “Ow!”

  Celaise stumbled away from the vultures and into a tufted field. The bluish grass scraped against her tattered poncho. Her hip and ankle clicked with each step, the crutch digging into her armpit, ribs creaking with every panted breath.

  She stumbled into a patch of tall grass, the blades scratching her and leaving welts. Blinking, she believed she was walking uphill, toward the village. The vultures padded behind her, still cawing. No doubt they hoped she would decide she would be better off lying down to die after all. Not such a bad idea, she thought, with hatred pouring from the sky, and hundreds of Headless to kill.

  Celaise kept creaking onward, if only out of spite.

  A new sound came from behind her, beginning as a birdlike gobbling noise and growing to the muffled laughter of madmen with their mouths tied shut. Hyenas, she thought, and close. She wondered if the mongrel pack had followed the circling descent of the vultures.

  Have to reach the village. She could not think too clearly, and it was painful to hold her eyes open for more than a few blurry seconds.

  Picking the direction she was nearly sure was uphill, she trudged onward through heat and through pain. Her ears strained, listening for the patter of hyena feet.

  The ground lurched, a single heave that rocked Jerani to his toes.

  A fence of thorned branches rattled. Calves bawled. His sister had been petting one with a white tuft of hair on her head. Gem's horn stubs poked up behind floppy ears. The calf toppled into Anza, and brown hooves and Anza's pink soles kicked into the air.

  A nanny cow mooed. Deep voices answered from the herds grazing below on the grassland.

  Anza said, “Someone pushed me!”

  “The Angry Mother.” Jerani's chest tightened as he craned his neck up. The mountain summit trailed steam. “Must be her time.”

  “What's made her angry?” Anza asked. “Angry-er. Angriest.”

  He blinked down at her. Jerani did not know how other brothers felt about their sisters, but he thought Anza had to be the best little girl ever. She was the brightest thing in his life, and watching her play drained away his weariness. I would carry any amount of water for her.

  “I have to go,” he said. “Have to pack everything. We'll be leaving soon.”

  “Why is the goddess angry at us?”

  Jerani did not answer her, but after jogging halfway back to their home he wished he had. They had some time. Perhaps a day before they would have to abandon their houses—the homes were usually destroyed when they returned after the next rainy season. He always felt sad leaving, but this time numbness and fright ebbed and flowed within him.

  Jerani realized he had left the water gourd with the calves, but by then he had reached their home. The walls smelled of distant green fields, from the cow dung plastering the sticks together. His brother was sitting inside in the shade, rubbing a horn at the end of the spear with a damp cloth. Jerani was not pleased to see Wedan.

  “Can we practice now?” Wedan hopped to his feet, knocking the spear with his gut and half dropping it.

  “I told you to watch the cows today.”

  “That's for little boys. I'm going to be Wedan the Warrior, Savior of Heifers.”

  “The cows'll be frightened after that quake. You should be with them.”

  “This is more important.” He jerked the spear upward, and the horn whisked close to Jerani's eye.

  Jerani snatched the spear from him. “You're wrong.”

  “Hey!” Wedan tried to take back the spear, but Jerani held it above his head. “I'm a Greatheart warrior!”

  “You're too young.”

  “I'm thirteen! Mostly.”

  “You'll get in the way, get yourself hurt. Now go look after the cows.”

  “You can't tell me what to do.” Giving up on the spear, Wedan yanked the war club out of Jerani's belt and ran. “You're not my father.”

  Jerani watched his brother disappear between the huts. “Someone should be.”

  He gazed down at the three leather pelts on the floor, the gourds—most empty—and the horns his father had carved with the likenesses of grassland animals, for his mother. Not much to remember them by, but he would not leave any of it for the ash flows.

  Have to see to the cows. He jogged downhill, spear in one hand and shaft resting on his shoulder. Worry burdened him more than the keepsakes, and the spear felt too much to carry. How long can we survive on the grassland, he wondered, with Rock-Backs hungry all around us?

  Hyenas whined in the distance. He quickened to a run, not wanting to think of the black-muzzled mongrels nipping at hooves. The Holy Woman had mentioned a few cows were lost, and he could not allow the hyenas to find them. Without the cows, his tribe would have nothing to eat on the grassland better than thorns and poison leaves.

  Someone hobbled up the trail toward him. The figure wore coarse blue cloth and leaned on a stick. Jerani could tell the person was an outlander from the stoop. His own people were descended from the goddess' fire and carried themselves tall and proud.

  The figure's head lifted, and tangled black hair slid back from a woman's sunken eyes. Like a dying cow's, he thought. She unsettled Jerani because he could not tell if she was young or if the tautness of skin against the bones of her face hid the wrinkles of age.

  Her frail body tilted sideways as she walked. The leg opposite the crutch ended in an ankle so bent that she landed on the side of the foot instead of the sole. Was she born with that? Her other leg curved like a warped tree branch. Her knees bled from scratches visible through the tatters of her skirt.

  Jerani looked away, embarrassed for her because of her ugliness. If a calf was ever born with such twisted and rickety legs, the Holy Woman would do the right thing and end its suffering.

  Stones clattered down the slope, and the ground pushed up against Jerani's feet. He leaned back to steady himself, arms outstretched, until the Angry Mother stopped shaking. A puff of ash wafted from the summit in a brown blob, followed by the trickle of steam.

  A moan drew his attention down to the outlander. She had toppled, and her walking stick rolled downhill. The way she groped around for it made him wonder if she was blind. She seemed to see him, though, her dark eyes shifting from his face to the bracer he wore.

  Jerani had heard of the greed of outlanders, and he hid the copper jewelry behind his back.

  “Help me?” Dark shards of teeth poked out between her peeling lips.

  He stepped back as if Celaise had bitten him. Sucking in his lips, he mumbled.

  “The cows, I'm to see to the cows.”

  With a shudder, he bolted down the mountain.

  Celaise did not blame Jerani for leaving her. The Sun Dragon's magic was strong, and the fiery god imprisoned her in a body that would repulse even a drunk sailor.

  Knowing that she was helpless to resist the day curse did not diminish her shame. A sourness of vinegar seeped through her. I fell in front of him, at his feet. For the last three years she could walk no better than a toddler. The blighted glare even soaked into her mind, eating away at her thoughts. She had no idea why she had fallen. Crawling, bloodying her legs on the stray rocks, she found her crutch and pulled herself to her feet.

  Celaise realized she had reached the village when she heard the Holy Woman's voice. “…don't bother yourselves patching up that roof. Not that wall either. We'll be leaving by moonrise.”

  A woman's voice asked, “Travel at night? How'll we protect the calves and children?”

  “The Rock-Backs are hungriest at sundown. We'll spend early night by the steam vents, and the Angry Mother is all the protection we need.”

  Squinting, Celaise made out fuzzy forms that could be women gathered outside their huts. She also spotted shade. A tree's branches all reached to the same he
ight, making a flat meadow of leaves overhead that dampened the hammer blows of the sun. Celaise did not regain her true form, but at least her agony faded to a cool itching.

  The women were still speaking. “But, this is her time. Won't we upset her by staying?”

  “And, Holy Woman, the Rock-Backs were here last night. What if they climb to the steam vents?”

  “You shouldn't be worrying yourselves over—hoi! Who are you?” The Holy Woman strode into the shade. She wore a green sheet dress and a clatter of what looked like black and white wooden ornaments. Her white brows angled down in anger. “You cast out by your people? You have the black scabs?”

  Out of the sun, Celaise could fit her thoughts together. She understood what she was being asked. “I don't have pox or Blood Judgment. Not even a leper.”

  “Then why's a cowless walking across the grassland? With that foot turned offways. You go back to your towns, with your scabs or your ticks.”

  “Can't go back.” She had slipped past the Headless the first time with her magic, traveling at night, and even then she had not felt safe. “Please, I'm quiet. I won't get in your way.”

  Celaise hated begging. The words singed and blackened her throat.

  The Holy Woman loomed over her. Celaise backed against the tree, which poked her with a thorny bark. Old but strong hands ripped off Celaise's pathetic clothes.

  By reflex, Celaise tried to defend herself by tapping her Black Wine to create a guardian viper, but her spell burned away in the Sun Dragon's light. No one even noticed the puff of darkness at her fingertips. She groaned at the thought of the squandered magic.

  The villagers looked at Celaise's naked body. Her stiff limbs twisted about to hide her chest and crotch, even though part of her knew it was pointless. No one would care. The nearby women cringed and covered the eyes of their children. Two boys ran away, slapping each other. Only a cow on the other side of a fence gazed on without disgust, its jaw moving side to side.

  The Holy Woman grunted. “You need a mud bath. Filthy with lice.” With her foot, she prodded Celaise's legs apart. “No ticks. That is good.”