The Unfinished Song: Sacrifice

by Maya, Tara

  “You’re alive, and that’s all that matters,” said Brena. “That and seeing that nothing like this happens again.

  “You are all witness to my testimony,” she announced to the assembled Zavaedies. “As a Zavaedi of the Initiates, with the power to speak on this matter for the secret society, I decree that this maiden may be taught the secrets, the Patterns and the dances of the Tavaedi Society. She has survived three nights and three days upon the Tor, withstood the test of the fae, and thus earned her place as a Tavaedi.”

  “But, with no disrespect intended, how can she be Tavaedi without magic?” asked Abiono. “It would destroy the spells danced by the Patterns.”

  Brena cleared her throat.

  “Perhaps even if she must not perform magic, she could still be allowed to assist the troop as a serving maiden,” said Brena. “And stand in during practice for any part as is needed. If this is acceptable to you, Dindi?”

  Dindi nodded.

  “Zavaedi Abiono, you are the Zavaedi of her troop. Do you agree to these terms?”

  “Who can argue with the fae?” asked Abiono. He looked both awed and relieved. “Her mother will be glad of this news, I think.” Under his breath, he added, “But her Great Aunt Sullana will eat my ears for middle meal.”

  Dindi should have felt happy. Instead, she felt the knife again, still twisting inside her. She glanced again at Kavio.

  He was gone.

  She shut her eyes. She could see it, the bowl, falling, as if in slow motion, crashing to bits on the ground.

  All around her, voices clamored. Praises, questions, congratulations. The words merged into an indistinguishable buzz in her ear. All she could hear, over and over, was Kavio’s ice cold question, “Who are you?”

  “Please!” She held up her hands to stop the chatter. “Please, could I just have one moment here alone?”

  They all fell silent.

  Brena said, “Of course, niece. You’ve been through an ordeal. We will wait outside the circle of stones. When you are ready, we will row you back. The waters are still high.”

  They withdrew, herded by Brena.

  If you change your mind, Dindi had told him, don’t give me your reasons. Just break the bowl and walk away. Pretend you don’t know me.

  He had only done what she’d asked.

  Once they were gone, Dindi let herself go. She sank to her knees in the shards of ceramic and scattered apple.

  Shattered to pieces.

  Dindi

  You never forget the first time love breaks you.

  In years to come, in moments when you are too tired or upset to resist, the image of your broken bowl will return to you, frozen as if in ice, and you will shiver all over again with this exact sense of shock, helplessness and betrayal. It is only now, kneeling in the ceramic shards, letting their edges slice your knees, you admit you never believed this is how it would end. At the same time, you can see clearly – for the first time – there was no other way for it to end.

  In years to come, you will ask yourself what you could have done differently. You will wonder what you could have said, what secrets you should have shared, to prevent this moment from happening. You will fantasize about joining the faery ring and dancing time backward to the exact day you could have fixed everything, but you will never be able to decide which day that is.

  You were betrayed, but not by him. You betrayed yourself.

  In years to come, you will ask yourself how you could have been blindfolded to reality. Every conversation you ever shared with him looks different now. You recognize how you deliberately turned away from the truth again and again. He told you he must marry someone else. You told yourself his honesty proved he loved you. He told you he would put duty first. You told yourself his struggle proved he loved you. He wouldn’t touch you in front of his kin or allies. You told yourself his chivalry proved he loved you. With his every word and deed, he warned you he would never choose you. You told yourself he would choose you in the end because he loved you.

  The blindfold is off and you see how you deluded yourself. How he could never have truly loved you because he could never respect you as his equal. What you took for love was pity. In the end, he would not so much as ask how you could help his quest because he refused to believe you could truly help. In one final act of contempt, he showed you tangibly, irrevocably, that he rejected any chance of returning your love, even your friendship.

  All you know now, on the ground with bloody knees, is that this feels like death. Worse than drowning, worse than smothering, worse than stoning.

  In years to come, you will wonder if it was surviving this day that gave you the strength to face the man in black.

  Brena

  The waters subsided, but the crops had been ruined, and much reconstruction would be needed. Thrano, the new War Chief of Yellow Bear, asked Brena—and Rthan—if they would stay in the Tors to help rebuild them. Brena agreed. Rthan formally pledged himself to the defense of Yellow Bear, and Thrano accepted him into the tribe as Brena’s true husband. Brena and Rthan took over a half-ruined hut on the Tor of the Moon. The original family had decided to move to a different clanhold rather than try to fix it, but Rthan had muscle enough to hew new beams and lay adobe bricks.

  While he worked, whistling to himself, Brena fussed over packing for her daughters. She planned to send her daughters home to Sycamore Stand, and Gwena was eager. She was with her friend Kemla on the Tor of the Initiates. To Brena’s surprise, Gwenika did not want to leave. She lingered around her mother’s hut as if those broken walls could protect her. Brena picked up a broom and began to sweep rubble out the door, but Gwenika ignored the hint.

  “Fa, Gwenika,” Brena said when she could stand no more moping. “Even if you do decide to stay in the tribehold—I’m sure Thrano would be glad to have another Tavaedi – you still would need a homestead of you own. You’re a woman now. You’ll have a husband of your own soon.”

  “No, I won’t,” Gwenika said. “I’ll never marry.”

  “What are you on about now?” Brena asked, utterly exasperated. “Are you sick again?”

  “Not sick.” Gwenika brushed her hand along the ragged wall. “Broken.” She looked up with unshed tears. “What man would want me now?”

  Brena set down her broom. “Oh, child.”

  “I used to hate it when you would rant about father, and how men weren’t to be trusted,” Gwenika said. She kicked the rubble pile Brena had just swept. “But you were right. Everything they say is a lie. You can’t trust any of them.”

  “Sugar loaf.” Brena put her arm around her daughter, kissed her. “No. I was wrong. I hadn’t met the right man yet. A real man keeps his word, and real love doesn’t leave you broken. It heals you.”

  Gwenika pushed her away. She wiped at her nose. “I’ll speak to Thrano. He’ll give me land. I won’t bother you, now that you’re finally happy.”

  “We aren’t throwing you out. Maybe you should stay here, just until you feel better—”

  “I’m fine.” Gwenika crossed her arms. “I think I’ll go say goodbye to Dindi. She still thinks I’ll be traveling with her as far as Sycamore Stands.”

  After Gwenika left, Brena resumed sweeping—it was more like whacking the rubble. She didn’t notice Rthan until he stood in front of her. He gently took the broom from her hand and chucked her chin.

  “How are you feeling, Brena?”

  “I just wish I could make it right for her.”

  “I know. But she has to find her own path now.”

  “I just hope she doesn’t give up. I wasn’t a very good example for her.”

  “She’s strong. Like her mother.” His thumb stroked her throat. “I heard what you said. Did you mean it?”

  “You know I do,” she breathed.

  “Me too,” he said, and bent to kiss her.

  Dindi

  The group that set out from the Tors of Yellow Bear to return to the Corn Hills were no longer a procession of Initiates, but
adult men and women, warriors at the forefront, maidens protected in the middle, and Tavaedies guarding the rear. Up until they reached Sycamore Stands, Gwena and her people would travel with them as well, though word came Gwenika would stay at the Tors.

  From now on the warriors would be expected to defend their clans with their honor. They would either guard their natal clans, or, to earn a bride, serve the clan of their betrothed. The maidens were deemed ready for the dangerous task of bearing the next generation. The Taveadies, male or female, would not marry for another six or seven years. By then, however, they would have accumulated enough treasure and power from their dancing that they would have no trouble winning mates.

  And then there was Dindi. She was neither fish nor fowl. Abiono allowed her to walk with the Tavaedi troop. But while the other Tavaedies wore dancing costumes, Dindi deflected attention from herself with the simplest possible dress, unpainted and unadorned, as befit a serving maid.

  They camped the first night in the forest, past the ground that was still swampy.

  “Dindi!” Kemla shouted. “Come here! If you’re our serving maid, you might as well make yourself useful. Help me out of this costume.”

  “She’s supposed to be a serving maiden, not a slave, Kemla,” Gwena chided. Since Dindi had saved her sister’s life, Gwena had been much less snobby.

  “Fa-la,” Kemla tossed her hair. “It’s the same to me. Dindi! Get over here now.”

  Heaving a sigh, Dindi trotted over to help Kemla fold the elaborate Red dress and feather crown into a carry-pack. She wished Gwenika were coming with them.

  The next day, Dindi woke before dawn. Despite the destruction wrought by the flood, the receding waters had left behind the gift of rich, black silt. These lands, once drab with dull tussocks of brown and yellow-brown and dun, had, since being rinsed by cerulean baths, burst into a mad frenzy of growth most wonderfully, outrageously green. Dawn frosted the morning with light like sugar. The fae of the morning yawned tiny mouths, stretched tiny arms and unfurled tiny wings. Warbling pixies darted in droves across the sky, and luminous mists of willawisps cloaked the dells and leas.

  A cloud of butterfly faeries hopped leaf to leaf along the path, just in front of Dindi. Seeing them brought her no joy. Where had they been when she’d needed them to prove herself worthy of Kavio?

  Her hand closed around a shard of the broken bowl. The shattered ceramic was sharp as a chert blade. She squeezed it so tightly; it cut her palm and fingers. A few drops of blood fell onto a fern.

  “Dindi!” someone called.

  She whirled around. The wild hope flared inside her, perhaps he had come after all, perhaps it had all been a crazy mistake, a ridiculous misunderstanding they would laugh about when they were both old, sitting on a log, under an eave on market day, with a shared blanket over their laps.

  When she saw it was only Gwenika, Dindi felt emptied all over again.

  Gwenika’s smile fell. “I just came to walk with you a ways to say goodbye. But I guess I can understand if you want nothing to do with me.”

  “No, Gwenika, don’t be silly. I just thought you were him, and so then, when you weren’t….But it doesn’t matter. It’s not your fault.” Dindi forced her mouth into a smile, though it felt like pushing day-old clay. “It’s for the best.”

  “Him?” Gwenika’s eyes rounded. “Did you lose a him as well? Are you…hurt?”

  “I’m fine.” Even as Dindi said this, a sudden headache throbbed behind the bridge of her nose. “Really. And I’m glad you can walk with us a ways before you have to say goodbye. I wanted to give you something.”

  Gwenika tilted her head curiously. Dindi held out a tiny ball of fur.

  “Oh! One of Puddlepaws kittens.”

  “I’ve found homes for the others, but no one wanted the runt. They said it was sickly and would probably die. I thought…”

  “Thank you,” said Gwenika, cuddling the fur ball against her cheek. The kitten purred and tried to climb Gwenika’s ear to bat the feathers hanging from her headdress. “I won’t let this sweetling die.”

  They turned the topic to lighter things, reminiscing about all the things they had shared in the past year, good and bad, appalling and amusing. They shared lunch on the trail. This close to the Tors, the travelers were allowed to keep their own pace, not stay bunched together in a line for safety, so the young women had privacy. Once, however, Tamio, Yodigo and Hadi passed them on the trail.

  “Gwenika!” Tamio called out cheerily. “How are you doing?”

  Her whole face flushed, her fists clenched, and the look she gave him made him take a step back.

  “Fa,” he muttered to Yodigo and Hadi as the young men moved off, “What’s her problem?”

  Even after they were out of sight, Gwenika fumed in tense silence for a long time as they walked.

  “Can I ask you an uncomfortable question, Gwenika?” Dindi asked into the tense silence. “This may be the last time we’ll ever see each other.”

  Gwenika looked wary. “What do you want to know?”

  “You weren’t sick because you hexed yourself, were you?”

  “No.”

  “Does he know?”

  “No. He wouldn’t care if he did. He made that much clear.”

  “Lady Mercy.” Dindi fumbled for words, but could only find the simplest. “Gwenika, I’m so sorry.”

  “You can’t fool me, you know,” Gwenika said at length, her smile sad and gentle. “I’m a healer. I can see when someone is broken inside. Yours betrayed you too, didn’t he? I could see it in your face when I first saw you this morning.”

  “I knew from the start he could never be mine.” Dindi rubbed her temples. “I know it’s better this way. He’ll be happier without me, and that’s what I want—his happiness.”

  “Fa, I want some woman to cut his heart out and eat it in front of him, so he finally knows how it feels. I can’t wait until he gets served what he’s been cooking.”

  Gwenika kicked at gravel in the path. “Can I ask you an uncomfortable question, Dindi?”

  “I can’t tell you his name,” Dindi warned. “It’s not my secret to break.”

  “It’s not about that.”

  “Oh.” The path meandered under a grove of sequoia. As always the majesty of the trees took Dindi’s breath away. Evergreen giants, with pinecone beards, peered down from the roof of branches. The fae would go on as they always did, untroubled by mortal foolishness. “What did you want to ask?”

  “When you were on the Tor of the Stone Hedge...” Gwenika met her eyes. “Did you make a bargain with the fae?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, no. Oh, Dindi. And here I thought what I did was stupid.”

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing so hard tears pricked their eyes. Hand in hand, they ambled slowly, savoring the golden sunshine of the young afternoon, until Gwenika had to say goodbye, and Dindi, to walk the rest of her path home alone.

  Nameless

  He sloshed through the sunken land as far as he could, until the mists and broken trees hid him from everyone. Not knowing where to go, or who he was, or who his enemies were, he wandered. Though he did not know his own name, his gut told him that he had more enemies than friends. He must avoid all people until he could find himself again.

  Rustles and footfalls in the woods where he walked warned him that those unknown foes might already have found him. A dozen warriors hunted him. They were swift and silent, but he caught the whispers of their movements through the brush.

  They surrounded him all at once. The shadows closed in a square formation around him. They were swathed in black. Bone masks, blackened with soot, hid their faces. Several held bows notched with arrows, the others held spears or clubs.

  Their leader stepped forward.

  “You don’t know who you are,” said the man in black. “But we do. You belong to us now.”

  He gripped his obsidian dagger. “I belong only to myself.”

  The warri
ors in black held out their hands all at once, and nets of darkness leaped at him. Though he tried to kick and slash his way free, he only entangled himself. The shadow coils strangled and bit into him like serpents.

  “Don’t drain him completely!” shouted the man in black. “Snake Bites Twice wants him alive!”

  He rushed the warriors. How many he killed or injured, he could not tell, for even as they fell beneath his blows, the dark web strangled the strength from his limbs. The black streaks were not beams of magic like any of the Chroma magic that he knew. Rather, they were like rips in the world, gashes that widened as they touched him, sucking him into a void. Darkness devoured the light from his aura. The pain felt like a vision of the future concentrated into his own body: he rotted from inside out, crumbled, cracked, burned and boiled. Kavio bellowed and laid havoc among his captors, but the net of darkness, the vacuum that swallowed all his powers, his very lifeforce, dragged him down into oblivion.

  Here ends The Unfinished Song: Sacrifice. The story continues in Book 4, The Unfinished Song: Roots.

  Contact Me

  If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving an honest review of it on Good Reads, Amazon, your blog or my blog. Also be sure and check my site for various contests and prizes or just to chat.

  Questions, comments and fawning praise should be sent to my email: tara@taramayastales.com Complaints should be sent to my agent. Send an email to my account (can be blank) if you’d like to join my newsletter list. I only send out announcements rarely, mostly to tell you if a new book is out, which will hopefully be about once a month.

  Want to review or blurb a book of mine and read it for free? Just let me know. Are you a writer of science fiction or fantasy with a book coming out that you’d like me to blurb? Please let me know.

  Come be my friend on Goodreads, Facebook and Twitter!