Gown of Shadow and Flame

by A. E. Marling

  “I didn't see anyone.” Her words chafed her dry throat. “I'm hungry something awful.”

  A soapy scum swirled over the fire, with floating bits that could have been rice or snot. The sight of the food made Celaise want to stuff her fist in her mouth, but she knew beggars were always hungry. She had spent many a day beside them, trading fleas, accepting their pinches and crude words in silence, until dusk made her whole.

  Afraid her words would not convince alone, she reached into the boiling pot and scooped out a handful of grains. Her hand burned, then so did the back of her mouth. The rice seared its way down into her guts. Tears stung her eyes, and she felt as if she had swallowed a dollop of molten lead.

  “Patience.” The Bright Palm continued to stir without expression. “Perhaps the Feaster crossed that spot earlier than you. Or later. He did not frighten you. Your tracks were of walking, not running.”

  Celaise hoped the mouthful of scalding marsh gunk could justify her sweating.

  “And a Feaster never lets Innocents escape.” His eyes settled on her, terrible with their blankness. “A Feaster would have massacred whole tribes last night. Unless she feared I would catch her.”

  “You calling me a Feaster?”

  The Bright Palm lifted the bubbling pot with his bare fingers. A lid stopped the rice from pouring out with the water as he doused the fire. Showing no pain from the hot clay, he set the whole pot in front of her with a wooden spoon. His eyes examined her brittle arms and wasted legs, skin stretched over her bones. She felt ashamed the Sun Dragon could corrupt her body, even with but a dusky hint of its light.

  “You will want to eat,” he said. “All of it.”

  “Yes.” The pot was huge. It might as well have been a cauldron. I'll never eat all that. “I'm going to eat it all.” It smells like bandages cooked in pus. “So hungry. I'm starving. Never've seen anything so good.”

  Realizing she was babbling, she plugged her mouth with a spoonful. The rice wedged itself between her teeth and began to itch. The rest jammed against the back of her throat, a mouthful of grit. She gagged it down. Her finger pressed against her lips as she struggled against the urge to vomit all over the Bright Palm.

  “The bones of a Feaster shall be wanting in flesh,” he said. “Twelfth tenet, verse two.”

  She flung more into her mouth and swallowed. Nothing happened. The rice stuck in her dry gullet. She worked the back of her throat. The grains clung to her tongue. Celaise spluttered, coughing with her hands over her mouth.

  Is this the end? Her heart beat like the rattle of a crazed jester. I've survived falling from a cliff, and grain will defeat me?

  The Bright Palm rested a hand on a bronze spike in his belt. 'First nail for her leg, Celaise thought, so she may not run. Second for her throat, so she may not speak. Third for her heart, so she may not live.'

  Her teeth shards gashed her cheek, and blood welled into her mouth. It wet her tongue, and she forced the rice down to her stomach where it curdled in her own blood.

  He loosened his grip on the spike. Her hand trembled, half the rice spilling from the spoon before it reached her mouth. When she swallowed, her stomach stretched and quivered in protest. She felt ready to rip down the center.

  “I'm stuffed.” She nudged the pot away from her. It looked as full as when she had begun.

  The Bright Palm gazed at her. He did not seem to breathe.

  I said the wrong thing, she thought. “I mean, it's too hot.” No! This won't do at all. “It's not to my taste.”

  “Outlanders eat grains.” Only his lips moved.

  She lifted another mouthful but could not bear to place the brown gravel onto her tongue. Her stomach was already heaving. “My teeth.” She gripped her jaw. “They hurt me.”

  “Feasters shall lose their teeth before their time. Verse three.”

  “No!” Tears stung her eyes. “Someone broke them. Threw a stone.”

  A beetle crawled up the Bright Palm's arm. He did not brush it away.

  Celaise rammed the spoon into her mouth. It felt like she swallowed splinters. I'll die, she thought. Should tell him what I am and be done with it. Not like I could kill all the Headless anyway.

  She glanced around her, though she expected to find no help. Cows napped on their sides, flies crawling over their noses. Tribesmen rested, arms wrapped around their legs, with heads propped on knees. Only a calf moved, frolicking around. It chased stray flecks of falling ash.

  With Celaise's other arm raised in a weak attempt to block the Bright Palm's view, she pretended to eat while flicking the rice down the ragged neckline of her clothes. The food dribbled down her chest and stuck between her ribs.

  The Bright Palm smacked her arm aside and tore open her poncho. His face expressionless, he raked his hand over her chest to gather the spilled grain. His fingernail scratched her nipple.

  His hand opened, and the rice tumbled back into the pot. His left thumb rested on his belt, near a spike.

  “I—I…” Celaise's fingers shook so much it took three tries to cover herself with the torn poncho. “…the spoon must've slipped. My hands—they're like this if I haven't had a drink. Do you have wine? B-beer—I mean beer.”

  “No.”

  “Gio!” The Holy Woman called from the other side of three lounging cows. “What're you doing to her?”

  He did not answer, and Celaise flinched away from his stare. Her eyes met the calf's. The white splotch above its nose reminded her its name was Gem. It toddled on its stilt legs toward her.

  White and black beads around the Holy Woman's neck clicked as she approached, hands propped on her narrow hips. “Why's her dress ripped? Answer me, Gio.”

  His eyes slid upward to the Holy Woman. “I think her a Feaster.”

  Celaise felt the world rolling under her. Her head dipped and lolled.

  A long tongue brushed across her chin, pulling rice back into the calf's mouth. Gem blinked at her with its long eyelashes.

  “She may be a weak-blooded outlander,” the Holy Woman said, stepping between Celaise and the Bright Palm, “but that means nothing else. You sparkle but that don't give you cause to be pinning anyone you please to trees.”

  Her eyes focusing, Celaise followed Gem's gaze to the pot of rice. Her brows shot up. She hardly believed a calf so young would be weaned. Celaise had no choice but to hope.

  For the moment, the Bright Palm could not see past the Holy Woman. Celaise dumped the rice behind her, and Gem's tongue began scooping it into an eager mouth.

  The Bright Palm leaned around just in time to see Celaise tipping the pot to her own face. She pumped the spoon up and down, pretending to shovel food into her mouth.

  “Listen, you.” The Holy Woman's cracked fingernails shot out, one finger curling into each of his nostrils. She angled his gaze back to her. “The trouble at night is Rock-Backs. You going to run circles around shadows while the children of the gods are eaten?”

  He rose to his feet. Gem lifted its head to nuzzle Celaise with a damp nose. The Bright Palm picked the Holy Woman up, and she clawed his face, drawing white blood but no expression as she was set aside. The calf smacked Celaise's head with its tail, then trotted away.

  “Gio!”

  The Bright Palm ignored the Holy Woman, yanking Celaise up by her hair. A spike stuck out from his fist as a long bronze claw.

  Both women screamed, and the clay pot broke on the ground, empty. The Bright Palm saw it. He pulled Celaise's poncho forward, peering down, then he searched under the leather pallet. A few grains fell to the dirt but no more.

  Celaise lifted her hand to her mouth as if to cover a belch.

  The spike slipped back into his belt.

  Her chest throbbed with relief. She could not prevent her gaze from slipping to Gem. The calf flopped to its side, to better suckle from the udder of the reclining Gorgeous. Not fully weaned, then.

  The Holy Woman danced with anger. “You start untying her at once. You hear, Gio? What'd the towns do to yo
u? You were such a kind, smiling baby. Never bit your momma's teat. Not once.”

  Celaise ached all over with happiness for the calf. She had not felt such warmth toward an animal since tending the pack of llamas in the mountains. The long-necked creatures had rested their furry chins on her shoulders. Raindrops had glittered on their wool. Llamas stank when wet. Or was it a clean scent? Celaise could never remember smells from before.

  She had been firm with the llamas. Too much caring turns a creature against you. That was why the Lord of the Feast was harsh with her.

  The fur of the llamas had ranged from white, to brown, to black. Working with them had prepared her for the surprise of finding people who looked different on her travels. Celaise had decided a llama was a llama, and a person was a person. And a Feaster is a Feaster.

  Inside, people across the Lands of Loam feared much the same things. Now she had to learn what scared the Headless. Before someone ate her, before she hungered herself into the Void.

  As the Bright Palm untied her leg, Celaise gazed up at the ashen sky. Night will come.

  This evening, she would wear fire.

  The Holy Woman's scream jerked Jerani up from his doze. He scrambled to see her white head bobbing as she shouted at the Bright Palm.

  Jerani knew he should be grateful for the glowing man. The Bright Palm had saved his brother's life, but seeing his father's look-alike made him want to vomit.

  A scrawny figure hobbled on her crutch, one hand clutching her odd dress to her chest. Jerani wondered if the cowless woman would try to steal anything. She can't have brought her own food.

  The Bright Palm marched away, toward the nearby Blood Bull Tribe. Jerani walked slump-shouldered over clumps of grass. He passed his sleeping brother and had almost reached his own pallet when a foot lifted to thump him in his chest. He bounced back, looking down at the warrior who had stopped him.

  Tall Tachamwa lowered his leg. He sprawled over two cow skins, hands behind his head in a pose of determined relaxation. Jerani often wondered if Tachamwa soaked up more pleasure from lying down than shorter people, who had less weight to carry on their feet. Eyes half closed, he said, “You'll have to marry her, you know.”

  “What?”

  “The steamy one. The 'chantress.”

  “Celaise?”

  “Isafo gave his best throw and whiffed,” Tachamwa said. “You should offer twenty cows.”

  “Twenty cows? Why? Oh, no.” Jerani understood then. “No—no—no—I couldn't.”

  “The problem is getting those cows to her parents. Who's to say where they are? In a cloud? Under a rainbow?”

  “How could I marry her?” The thought squeezed Jerani round the middle, and he felt breathless and wracked by tingling. A foolish, crazy, impossible idea. “Could just as soon marry the rain.”

  “If a storm could save the Greathearts, you'd marry the lightning.”

  “She wants to be married?”

  “This 'chantress has strong blood in her, thick and bright as lava. But she has no ties to us.” Tachamwa opened one eye to look at Jerani, as if lifting both eyelids would be too much of a bother. “You'll be that tie.”

  Jerani worried what the other Greathearts would think of him marrying so young. His father had not married until he was thirty. Women only wed warriors who survive. “Shouldn't you marry her?”

  He knew he was wrong to say it. He could not imagine Tall Tachamwa rousing himself to jump over the marriage bull with Celaise. A stupid idea, Jerani thought, stupid and wrong. But what if he tries? What if she accepts? A choking heat crackled and smoldered inside Jerani.

  Tachamwa massaged his own belly with his palms. “When she's around, feel like a cheetah is licking its biters at me. Anyway, she gave you that trinket.”

  Jerani covered the scratched bracer with his hand. What if she can sense what we're saying? It did not glow, and he took some comfort in that.

  Tachamwa closed his eyes. Jerani waited to hear what he would say next, but his breaths sighed in and out in a measured pace. The conversation had ended.

  The Holy Woman was speaking nearby, leaning over Wedan and tugging the sleeping boy's ear. “You wake yourself, while there's still light. Have to be getting the herd out from under the Mother's cloud. Find water and a field to munch on.”

  Wedan groaned, and Jerani stepped forward to help him walk. On that day's journey, Jerani even let his younger brother use the spear as a walking stick. Jerani thought Wedan would be well enough in a day or so. Just as annoying as ever, maybe, but healed.

  Jerani recognized the other tribes on the move by the size of their dust clouds. After a few hours' travel, they stopped near a cluster of termite mounds where the grass grew healthy and thick. He could not see any ash falling this far from the Mother, though her cloud still darkened the sky. The sun leaked through, swollen to the size of the moon. Its color had drained, leaving a circle both pale and cold.

  The job of grazing the cows belonged to the youngest sons, but with gloom and threat of claws, warriors led the herd to the choice grasses. Jerani left his brother and sister, going with Tall Tachamwa and half the Greatheart men. Some hobbled, injured from the night before, but they would not leave their cows.

  The herd watered at a pool under the jagged twisting branches of an acacia. Jerani's legs dragged while he guided them around hummock grass tall enough to scratch his chest.

  He tripped over a rumpled hide of a dead lion, its mane matted with mud. Its dull dried eyes stared toward the black horizon. Jerani felt a touch of disappointment that the Rock-Backs had eaten such a noble hunter. It lay beside a carcass of a wildebeest, its limbs also shriveled. Something about them struck Jerani as wrong, though he had to lean forward to see.

  “They don't look chewed. Except for that spot there and there.”

  “Skin-Backs.” Tachamwa trudged past with several cows. “Grown to Rock-Backs after that meal. Best be watchful.”

  Celaise leaned against a monolith of dirt, catching her breath after the tribe's hip-wrenching pace. What had looked like a grove of pointy trees had turned out to be eerie piles of sand. Some taller than houses, some slender and dribbled, others massive and peaked.

  Her fingers scraped against one. It felt solid, like sandstone. And warm? She wondered if a creature piled this dirt, but she found no nearby burrows. A white ant flew and landed on her shoulder.

  Between two distant dirt spires, bulls thrashed their way through bushes. They looked darker than Greatheart animals. Several warriors followed them. Celaise moved out of their line of sight, supporting herself on her crutch with each stride.

  Grass clung to some of the mounds. A tree grew on top of one, and Celaise amused herself wondering if the tree had sprouted on flat ground then been pushed skyward by the spine of some underground horror. She would have loved to explore more. She wished walking hurt her less.

  Her eyes upward, she spotted the Bright Palm on top of a dirt pillar. Aching with sudden chills, she leaned out of sight, between the grainy wrinkles in the nearest mound. Hope he didn't see me, she thought, trying to hide from him.

  Boulders peeping up from the grasses looked all too close to kneeling Rock-Backs. The Greathearts found a stretch of moist and crunchy grass. Jerani had lots of time to think, watching the cows graze, but he did not want to, not about his family, not about the monsters that might catch them soon. He could not hear any of their drumming, only the whirling drone of insects.

  He watched the cows eat, trying to soak up their contentedness and peace. They were calm despite their fight hours ago.

  You can learn everything from cows. His mother had said that.

  Jerani sat down, resting the side of his head on his hand. The cows milled over the tender flatgrass which grew on the rich soil around termite mounds. The grass hugged the ground, plump with water. It curled and wandered over itself in a mat.

  On the horizon, the Angry Mother poured her river of ash into the sky. The cinder cloud reared upward, immense like an ups
ide-down mountain. The summit glowed red through the smoke.

  Red, the color that had shimmered on Celaise's bracelet. Jerani wondered if she did belong to the goddess, who might blister at the thought of her marrying a mortal. Last night Celaise had looked ready to smother Isafo when he had mentioned a bride price.

  Or maybe she is mortal. Isafo might've upset her by talking about her parents. By the rippling force of her anger, Jerani wondered if they had been murdered. Isafo had been thoughtless to bring them up, and Jerani would not make that mistake.

  He could not imagine himself asking Celaise to be his wife. Isafo and Tachamwa seemed to think it a little thing, but Jerani worried that offending her with another marriage offer might drive her away when the Greathearts needed her most. He might not even have a chance to ask her. Perhaps she won't be coming back, after what Isafo said.

  The thought speared his chest with pain.

  Jerani also worried he was thinking like a coward. Maybe Celaise wanted him to ask her. That's why she gave me the bracer. But something inside him warned him against the idea. He simply knew too little about her. He would have to learn more before he acted.

  All he knew was that she was like no other woman he had met. Her feet left no tracks. He had imagined her with long legs and graceful strides, and learning that her magic carried her had alarmed him. Jerani understood using magic to battle Rock-Backs, but riding it seemed a waste when a woman had her own feet to walk on.

  An unwelcome thought slipped into his head, of Celaise with the beggar woman's legs. One crooked, one stiff, both shrunken, they dangled within her magic dress. Jerani pushed the horrifying thought away, felt guilty for imagining it. He had been taught to judge women by their figure, and the powerful Celaise could have no flaw.

  Oh, Anza! He labored to his feet, heavy with worry for his sister. He wondered if the Holy Woman could do anything more for Anza's eye. He laid his hands over the back of his bent head.