by K. A. Holt
This Cheese is no Cheese at all. He is a human man. He does not have the claw nails or the scales or the bony upper lip. His hair is similar to theirs, but when I stare I see it is caked in dirt much like Temple’s was after Jo had finished with it. This man has grown his fingernails to points and when he smiles I see that he has sharpened some of his teeth as well.
“They tell me you are Mayrikafsa . . . She Who Cry the Most.” His language is rusty and bears the trills and grunts of the Cheese.
“My name is Ramona Darling,” I say.
The blue-eyed man-Cheese’s eyebrows raise sky high. “Did you say ‘Darling’?”
I nod. He shakes his head and looks to the sky, sighing. “It has been a long time since I heard that name.” He looks down and stares hard at me, his face expressionless. “You are Ramona Darling no more, my little cousin. Not after this night.”
I am readying to speak, feeling affronted, just realizing he has said the word “cousin,” when the music begins. It is low, like insects on the prairie, but builds quickly into a frenzy that reminds me of a swarm, the music flying through my ears and making my chest thump. It is a combination of humming, whistling, and a beat drummed with sticks on the stones themselves.
The woman with cooling crystals dances to the center of the ring of benches, in front of the fire. The suns have gone low now and the Red Crescent looms, lending a dark-red hue to the sky with its glowing frown.
Her arms reach into the air and back down again, her legs bending at the knees and propelling her gracefully into leaps around the fire.
“This dancer represents Mara,” the blue-eyed Cheese whispers in my ear. “The god of wind.”
The woman playing Mara gracefully leaps and reaches until she is moving so quickly she is nearly a blur. The yellow-dressed Cheese cries out and runs through the fire. Right gum through it. I gasp and the blue-eyed Cheese laughs. As the man leaps from the fire, his costume smoking but not burning, he lifts Mara over his head and carries her in a circle.
“This is Oonatka,” the man whispers to me. “God of the first of the suns. He steals Mara, the wind.”
I want to ask questions, but find that I am loath to miss any part of this production. Oonatka and Mara dance-fight around the fire until a woman in yellow I did not see before appears. She, too, runs right through the fire, and then is dancing alongside the man in yellow as they leap and twirl, giving dance-chase to Mara.
“And this is Oonan, goddess of the second sun. She is Oonatka’s sister. They must decide to share the wind between them.” I can sense he is looking at my face, measuring my reaction to the scene before me. I cannot hide my awe or surprise at the spectacle, even though I want to be obstinate. Who are these Cheese to steal me away from my family, my home, injure me, embarrass me, and then show me beautiful things?
The two sun gods are now throwing something into the fire that makes it spark and burn red. The Cheese on the rock benches watch as raptly as I do, some of them eating seeds from small fabric pouches and whispering and laughing. Parents do not shush the children, but let them run and play and shout, as long as they stay out of the scene playing before them. A mother hands a child a handful of the sweet, brown hashava fruit and it is then that I realize how hungry I am.
As if he can sense my thoughts, the human Cheese pulls out a fabric bag of his own and offers it to me. I intend to devour the entire contents of this bag.
The man painted in black leaps from behind the benches and the Cheese let out a unanimous yelp and then quick snickers. He runs to the fire, throwing handfuls of dust into it until it turns blazing blue.
“Now we have Ebibi,” the human Cheese whispers through the seeds in his mouth. He touches his chest and closes his eyes. “Ebibi, the god of darkness, wants Mara as well.”
Ebibi dramatically pulls at Mara’s arms and the suns release the wind to him, but still give chase for some reason. The dance is around the fire, but also through the audience. There are shrieks and gasps, and the faces of the Cheese are distorted by the flashing blue flames. I am feeling dizzy and disoriented after the dreamlike quality of this night. I close my eyes to steady myself. When I open them, the dance-chase is slowing as the music becomes a quiet twinkle. There is a child’s giggle as the adult dancers begin to slow their movements exaggeratedly. The child appears, chasing fast circles around the slower adult gods, kicking up sparks from the stones tied to his ankles.
“A’akow,” whispers the blue-eyed Cheese. “Child god of fire, representative of A’akowitoa, this blazing-hot moon we live on. Oonatka and Oonan, Ebibi, too, are so enamored with the beauty of the fire child they stop fighting, just to watch her. But the fire child does not love them. She only loves Mara, the wind, because Mara can carry her through the air.”
The woman playing Mara has broken away from the other dancers and is chasing A’akow, careful of the sparks trailing from the child’s feet. The child slows, turns, and is lifted into the air by this woman in blue. The child laughs out loud and I realize, This is no Cheese. This is Temple! Painted, running as if she is one with them!
I stand, spilling the bag of seeds, and start to shout, “Temp—,” but the blue-eyed Cheese pulls me back down.
“Ebibi, who is the god of darkness, remember, and the sun gods agree to share watch over the fire child and the wind, to make sure they are safe and protected. The fire child and the wind cannot escape, but they are protected and loved. And they love each other as well.” I struggle to stand, to go to Temple, but the man-Cheese holds tightly to my arm. Ignoring my protestations, he looks at me. His mouth is smiling, but his eyes are not. “It is beautiful, no? There is another part, dealing with Hosani, god of the Red Crescent, but I have not seen it, myself. It is before my time, and has not been spoken of since the people of Hosani grew very ill and stopped all trade with A’akowitoa and the Kihuut.”
He is speaking in so many strange words, I am having trouble understanding what he says. Temple is fully part of the ceremony now, and my brain struggles to make sense of what is happening with her, and of what he’s saying. It is too much information at once.
“The Red Crescent?” I sputter finally. “Hosani? What illness? I have only heard stories of homesteaders fighting a series of quickly won but violent battles.”
“Of course,” he says. “The Origin Massacre.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “The Origin Massacre was when the Cheese killed so many of the survivors of the crash.”
The man-Cheese tilts his head to the side and purses his lips. “That’s not exactly what happened.”
I watch as Temple laughs and runs around the fire. Is she not frightened, as I am? Is she not bewildered by this place, these people?
I put my head in my hands for a moment, then look up. “That is exactly what happened. The Origin crashed. The Cheese killed many survivors. The people of the Red Crescent joined with the Cheese to battle the Origin homesteaders and then there was the Miracle of the Gorge when the homesteaders prevailed.”
The blue-eyed Cheese shrugs. “Perhaps I remember my lessons incorrectly. It has been a long time after all.”
The ceremony has continued throughout our conversation. I have so many more questions, but I see the blue woman carrying Temple off into a cave, and I lose my thoughts. The other dancers follow them into the cave as the Cheese build the song into another swarm of sound. Then everything is quiet.
“This is the history of our moon,” the man-Cheese whispers. “A history of love and compromise.”
Love and compromise? This moon? If I weren’t so stunned from what I’ve just seen and heard, I’d laugh.
Fist walks to the center of the circle and begins to chant. He holds his hands above his head and the man-Cheese pulls me to my feet. “Now we enjoy the story of beast versus beast. A celebration of our moon as it is today.” He smiles at me, his eyes not quite matching his upturned lips, and it s
tills my heart. He drags me to Fist even though I dig my heels in, a very bad feeling crawling up my neck. We go past the boy who was in the cave with the pool earlier. The boy stands on one side of the circle, a sneer on his face, his arms crossed over his chest. He watches intently as the man-Cheese pushes me toward Fist. Fist shouts something to the crowd and is answered with a series of cheers and hollers.
The man-Cheese backs away, whispering, “Good luck.”
Good luck? My stomach is filled with sandmoths and I regret the heaps of hashava I just ate. My bad feeling grows by leaps and bounds.
Before I even know what’s happening, the boy Cheese charges me, his bony head smashing into my chest and knocking me off my feet. My wounds from the dactyl claws burn, chunks of poultice falling from the bindings.
I lie on the dusty ground, stunned, and the boy kicks me in my belly. Entire universes of pain explode through my ribs, my breath dissolving into a series of gasps. Why is he doing this?
The ringing in my ears is loud, but I can still make out the sounds of the crowd. They are cheering. They are cheering for him to beat on me! My face burns as hot as the high-summer suns when the realization hits. They think I am nothing but a gum weakling. A poor, scrawny human girl.
The boy Cheese’s foot rears back, but this time I am ready. Despite my exhaustion and the pain in my arms and chest, I grab his foot and pull, knocking him off balance. He falls next to me, his bottom crunching in the dirt. The crowd is on their feet now, shouting, whooping, snickering, yelling words I don’t understand. Everything echoes off the surrounding stones, creating such a noise it feels almost electric in the air.
I am still holding the boy’s foot as he kicks out, trying to free himself. My grip is tight and strong, despite my missing finger. I have years of tending to a gruff Heetle to thank for this grip.
The boy uses his other foot to smash my fingers, causing me to yell in pain and release his foot. He scrambles to his feet as I scramble to mine. We circle each other like animals while the crowd magnifies its noise. I hope to the gods they do not also make Temple fight like this. Surely even heathens respect that she is too young.
Exhaustion makes my arms and legs heavy. Sweat drips into my eyes, stings the cuts all over my face. My initial burst of frightened energy is waning quickly. I do not want to be fighting. I do not want to be here. I want to fall to my knees and weep. I want to go home.
The boy must see the energy leave my face because he laughs into the sky and charges at me.
Well.
I may be tired, but I am still Ramona Darling and this monster will not win as easily as that. I hold out my arm, stiff, and ram the heel of my hand into his nose. Blood bursts forth as the crowd’s noises turn from yells to sympathetic groans.
The boy screams and grabs my arm, pins it behind my back, pushing me to my knees. My vision is clouding at the sides, the pain intolerable. I do the only thing I can think to do, I reach my face around and bite the other hand that grips my shoulder.
He hollers but does not let go. I sink my teeth in deeper, tasting the tang of Cheese blood. My jaw bites so hard that even when his fingers reflexively let go of my shoulder, my mouth holds his hand in place. He is screaming freely now, attempting to shake me off of him, but I hold on tight. I will never let go. I will never let these heathens believe a human can be beaten so easily. Even an injured human, even a scared and bleeding girl-child can best one of these monsters. If Papa can kill a Cheese warrior and save a rope of hair in a box, I can win a fight and save a shred of self-respect in my heart.
I breathe hard as I bite, feeling more animal than I have ever felt before. His screams drown out the screams of the crowd.
There are hands on my shoulders now, a third hand smashing into my face, wrenching my jaw from the boy’s hand. I am on my back in the dust, blood everywhere. My blood? His blood? I do not know.
The boy is also on the ground, tears streaming down his face, his hand cradled against his chest. The tall woman is with him now, looking at me with what I can only guess is surprise. Fist stands over me, pulls me to my feet. His dark claws clap me on the back as the crowd cheers wildly. He shouts words I do not understand and the crowd is ebullient, cheering and laughing.
I cannot help but to smile, just a little, as people swarm me, patting me on the back, nodding, approving of my horrific violence. I can only imagine how I look, hair in disarray, dust and dirt and blood everywhere. A human girl-child pushed to the brink of madness.
From nowhere, the man-Cheese is at my side.
“My gods, Mayrikafsa, that was quite a show.” The crowd parts as he leads me close to the fire pit, where Fist and the tall woman are now standing together. The boy sits behind them, an old Cheese tending to his hand.
“I thought I was to watch the Kwihuutsuu feast on a weak and terrified girl-child, but you have surprised me. You have surprised us all.”
“They were going to feed me to the dactyls if I lost?” My voice is hoarse, I can feel the sticky drying blood cracking on my chin as my mouth moves.
The man-Cheese says nothing as he gently pushes me onto my knees and puts the crook of his elbow around my neck, holding me in place.
“It goes numb fast enough,” he says quietly in my ear. My eyes go wide and wild as I see they’ve brought Temple out, too. I struggle against his arm. “No! No! She cannot fight! She is too young! She . . .” I shout my protests as she is made to kneel next to me, still painted in deep red, her white teeth standing out like stars. Another Cheese holds her in the same way I am being held and she stops smiling.
“Rae?” she says. “Your face. What did you do to that boy? What’s . . .”
But she doesn’t have time to finish. Fist pulls two long sticks from the flames, sticks of metal that are glowing red at the end. Chanting loudly now, with other chants from the hundreds of Cheese filling in the spaces where he takes a breath, he nods once. The two Cheese holding me and Temple push our heads forward into the dirt.
“Do not struggle,” the man-Cheese says in a low voice. “Whatever you do, do not struggle.”
I don’t know why I listen to him, but I do. My body goes limp. And then there’s a searing, fiery pain across the back of my neck as one of the red-hot metal sticks brands my skin. I cry out at the same time Temple does, our screams filling the night air, echoing through the ring of caves.
And then there is such a jubilant cry from the crowd that even as I lie in agonizing pain in the scrub, gasping, choking, my hands held behind my back, I feel the jubilation lifting me up—or, no, hands are lifting me. Temple and I are being carefully carried above the heads of the crowd until we are deposited at the mouth of the cave with the pool. The tall woman is there, the ovals on the sides of her head beating in and out, in and out. The metal in her hair shines in the bloodred light of the Red Crescent. She lifts her silver-and-gold-painted face to the night sky and trills a noise that comes from somewhere that is not shared with humans. Jo appears at her side and translates, pausing as she searches for the right words:
“Now we, Klarakova, krasnoakafsa of Kihuut, and A’alanatka, partner and tontakafsa to chieftess, watch over you as the gods watch over us. Mayrikafsa, She Who Cry the Most, and Kalashava, She of Sweet Scrub, you are . . . now one with Kihuut, with people of A’akowitoa. You have third eye to watch for blessings and curses. You are us. We . . . you.”
The woman walks to us, Fist at her side. They both hold out their hands, and together, in voices somehow both melodious and made of quakes, they say, “Lo’a Lia.”
“Welcome,” Jo translates. “Welcome home.”
And she places our hands in theirs.
15
THE MORNING COMES EARLY AND the work goes late for the Cheese, too. But in different ways than with the settlers. I am in an open space of dirt and large boulders. We are here earlier than yesterday; the morning suns have not yet reached their full height.
Jo is with me, carrying a large woven bag of mysteries, just has she has done every day for weeks now. Yesterday, it contained a broken handbow, a spear, a broken light rifle, and a rock. The day before, it contained nothing but handfuls of what she called “knife dust.” The day before that it was full of pebbles.
“Remember you mouth?” Jo clacks her jaws and snuffle-laughs. “Anything can be weapon,” she says. My cuts and bruises—and growing swiftness at avoiding more cuts and bruises—are proving her right.
Temple is not here. She is never here. I have seen her twice since the fire ceremony, and both those times only for an instant as she ran by in a clump of Cheese children laughing and chasing a plini. They bounced rocks off its hard shell as its fast little legs carried it away in a cloud of dust. It appears the Cheese do indeed respect that she is still a little girl, and, even though I hate them, I am grateful for this allowance.
Jo tosses the bag on the ground and smiles. “What in this bag?” she asks me. “Neh plitoka?”
“Neh plitoka?” I repeat, feeling my tongue trip over the words. “In the bag?” I kick it. “There’s nothing in the bag.”
“Naa,” Jo says, shaking her head. “You are wrong. There is not nothing in this bag. Mara in this bag.”
“The wind?” I say, confused.
Jo nods, smiling wide, showing off her sharpened teeth. “Today we practice running like the wind, Tootie.”
“Tootie?” I say. “It’s just Rae. Or Ramona. Not Tootie. ‘Tootie’ means ‘to stink.’” I hold my nose to indicate its meaning.
“Ah, then this name work on maa kali—many level—yes? Now, run, Tootie.”
Jo whistles and a Kwihuutsuu—a small nasty-looking one, with extra-sharp teeth and deeply pink scales—plummets to the ground as if the Red Crescent has spit her at us.
“Go, Kwihuu, sweet baby beast. Find your lunch.”
“Lunch?!” I yell, starting to run and tripping over my boots, thankful that at least I no longer wear heavy, cumbersome skirts. The baby Kwihuutsuu throws her head to the sky, screeches out a deafening caw, and flies right at me.
