by Eden Wolfe
"Lassa mokha wanna weh."
"Haffaah."
Lea nodded slowly in response.
"Bring over that stool, sit across the fire from me."
Lea did as she was told. She set down the wood stool, low to the ground as it was, and crouched onto it. The single flame of the fire licked up and interrupted Lea's view of Batrasa. She struggled to keep her eyes focused on the old woman through the light. Batrasa had changed so much, and it had happened so quickly. Just a few years earlier, just before Aria had left. It had begun not long before the coronation and since then had been a steady step closer to the next world. White hair, hunched back. Muscles turning into hanging flesh.
But her voice remained as strong as ever.
"Leadon. What have you to say?"
Lea shifted on the stool, unprepared for a direct question.
"I have come as you asked."
"Is that what you have to say?"
She was making a mess of it already.
Focus, Lea. Focus. Do not be intimidated, do not let her cast you off balance. She is just a woman like you.
"It is but the first thing I have to say."
Batrasa smiled and tilted her head to the side.
Lea inhaled deeply. "Indeed, I have much to say, but I have distilled it into this first statement so that you can then hear the rest with the right intention. Gana is my heart, my soul, my love. There are many who look at me and doubt me, but they are wrong and have always been wrong."
"And what have you to say to them?"
"Nothing. They must make their own judgments. I only ask that their words not taint your impression of what I have to say. My motives are good, sincere."
"Yes, you strike me as sincere."
"You face a critical decision, Keeper of the Chief." Batrasa nodded at this, and Leadon suddenly felt encouraged. "And I am not one to advise you on that, not me. Many others may try and they will fail because of it. I do not want to influence you. Instead, I come to implore."
"Implore? I see." Batrasa's wrinkled forehead pulled into an even more severe expression. Lea wasn't sure if the look was one of sincerity or bemusement.
Focus.
"I implore for our friend, Batrasa. Our friend and protector. Aria. Now Queen Ariane."
Batrasa sat up, her back snapping to attention. "The Queen? I did not expect such a request. Explain."
Lea steadied her voice. She had to get it just right. "I know she has not returned since she left, her absence more telling than her decisions from Geb. But I cannot believe she has abandoned us in heart." Batrasa didn't speak, so Lea continued. "She is active in the Direction of Lower Earth. The urges of Lower Earth are demanding; we see but the tip of it here. But I'm saying things you already know. What I came for, what I implore, is that in the process of your sacred discernment, which will determine the course of Gana for generations to come, that you seek out Aria's insight. That we go to her with humility, and on behalf of the people who hosted her before she took the crown. She has abilities, Batrasa. You know many of them. I, too, saw more than most. She was my good friend. And she spoke to the earth like no other. We can rely on her, Batrasa. She will be there for us in our time of need. Consult with Aria," Lea corrected herself, "with Queen Ariane, and we can guarantee a cohesive future, one which will not divide Gana against itself."
Lea sat back on the stool, the weight of her words sitting heavy on her chest. She waited for Batrasa to respond.
Instead, she got no reaction at all.
Batrasa appeared frozen, unmoving, eyes fixed on Lea as though she continued to speak. Lea's breathing became shallower and she shifted under Batrasa's gaze.
Have I displeased her?
Batrasa inhaled sharply through her nostrils, looking up at the smoke-filled ceiling of the hut.
"You are most unexpected, Leadon."
"Unexpected?"
"Your words - they give me pause."
Lea's heartbeat increased. "Have I spoken out of turn, Keeper?"
"Indeed not, I invited you to speak. But your choice of words has rendered me speechless. It's unusual as an experience." Batrasa looked back down at Lea. "Have you ever been speechless?"
"I think I am, right now."
Batrasa smiled and then collected her prayer stick and a fresh set of leaves from the shell beside her. She pressed three leaves onto the end of it and wafted it over the flame, too high for it to alight.
"What do you know of Queen Ariane, since she became Queen?"
"Very little. Like most of us, I haven't seen her. She hasn't sent for me. Not a message either. I wrote to her, a few times. But no reply." Lea quickly corrected herself, "Not that I expected one. I wanted her to remember that she was still loved here, that she still had a place in Gana should she ever wish to return. I know not all Ganese feel the same, but I - well, I think Gana is better for having had her in its charge for those years."
"And you?"
"And me? What about me?"
"Is Gana the better for having you as its charge?"
So she's coming to it. I could have expected she'd challenge my authenticity.
"Batrasa, I know there are many who speak of the dangers of genetic design, but as sure as I sit here across from you now, I am true and I am honest. Those who speak otherwise are wound in wretched stories from my birth and early years. None of them are true. I never sacrificed any creature for my own domination, I never had designs on the Fortress. I may be of the design of the Commandante, but I am no Irilena. I am Leadon, born of my own skin, beating my own heart, and despite their words - venomous though they have been - they are only words. I am flesh and blood, and I am as much Ganese as any one of them. My heart beats for this nation and I call to our ancestors with the same fervor as any warrior princess. Anyone who speaks otherwise has not seen the truth within my heart."
Leadon felt her heart beating out of her chest, the flames licking so close to her cheeks that it burned, but she had to know that Batrasa had heard her, heard the truth in her words, in her voice, and in her soul.
"Calm, child." Batrasa stood, laying the prayer stick again on the ground. She walked around the little fire and kneeled at Lea's side. She took Lea's hand in her own. Lea felt the bones thrusting through the skin, like wet paper. So delicate. Lea feared the skin would tear at the slightest upset. The sight of Batrasa stroking the back of her hand and then holding it tight brought a wave of relief over her. Batrasa turned Lea's hand over and pressed her forehead against the palm. Soft, warm, snakelike skin under her fingers. She never could have imagined that she would find herself above Batrasa, the Keeper of the Chief lowering herself before her.
Batrasa raised her eyes, which were relaxed and calm. The old woman's face took on a different quality, somewhere far off. Batrasa wet her lips and whispered.
"Forgive me."
Lea could only shake her head in disbelief.
Batrasa bowed her head. "I, too, was one of those voices. I was wicked. I was wrong."
Lea had no words. All words disappeared. Every cell in her body felt electrically alive, rushing. She swallowed.
"Of course I forgive you."
Batrasa squeezed her hand. Lea felt she might disappear, so unreal was the scene before her. Like a dream or an apparition.
"You will have to forgive many," Batrasa stood. "Even if they cannot ask for it. Many do not have the words to ask for forgiveness. It is a skill we've lost in the way of our new world. Forgiveness is worthy of being reborn among us. But it cannot be me, though I'll try. Our ancestors forgave. How else could we have found peace in this, our old world, with their new world ways? We all forgave the settlers a long time ago. But those were days before birth rites and crop disease. Before genetic design. We still have much to learn and re-learn." Batrasa stood tall, her spine bringing her upright, the full height of the Ganese warrior priestess she used to be. "Leadon, you thought you were coming here to implore me."
Leadon had forgotten why she had come at all.
/> Batrasa continued, "In fact, it's me who will implore you."
How has this come to be? Have I been here a lifetime already?
"Please, Batrasa," Lea found her voice, "Anything."
Batrasa looked up at the smoke swirling over their heads. "You will go to Geb. By mule, no horse. You must blend better than that, and as it is you will stand out for the color of your skin against the majority of Geb women. There, you will find your Queen. You will watch her. You will not approach her. You will see if she remains the girl you once knew. And then you will return. If you see your Aria, this Queen Ariane, and if you believe she can influence my decision into what it must be - then I will follow your request. I will. But first, you go to Geb."
"As you wish," Lea managed to breathe out the words.
"Now leave me. I have much to consider."
Lea stood, bowing low and hoping her legs would sustain her until she reached the front of the hut. She paid no attention to the woman at the front; her mind was full of Geb.
Geb. The capital. To see Aria again.
The fear and excitement of the journey ahead rose in Lea's throat and she ran back to her quorum house, not caring who saw her or what they thought. She had to be in her room, on her bedplate, crunched in a ball as she made sense of the mad scene she just lived with the most important woman in their society. Everything just became more important.
Leadon felt like her destiny was being laid before her.
2
Leadon
The two-day journey went by fast and slow. The mule was a steady companion; often Lea chose to walk alongside him rather than ride. She was restless and eager. But when her legs grew tired she happily hopped onto the mule's back. Despite her height and weight, he didn't seem to mind.
The Free Route was well worn; the few forks in the road were well marked. She saw signs belonging to the first settlers, carved stones with symbols whose meaning had been lost over the four centuries that had passed. They were simple geometric shapes: tilted triangles, dots within a circle, diamonds.
The first settlers. Who knew these childlike symbols would give rise to the powers of Central Tower? 'First settlers', what a terrible term. As though we weren't already here.
She meditated on the idea of first.
First settlers, first viruses, first genetic duplicate. One word, so many applications; its meaning different in each one.
She approached the checkpoint on the Geb Free Route; the Ganese had managed this one since the second generation. She hoped she'd recognize someone there. The initial excitement was wearing off, and left behind was a knot in Lea's stomach. She was used to being alone, but this trip was nothing like anything she'd ever experienced. She suddenly wished she could share it with someone.
The checkpoint was a hamlet, the point almost halfway between Gana's gate and Geb. A Ganese woman took Lea's papers without as much as a greeting and showed her to her tent. The woman took the mule to the stable, leaving Lea and her bag at the tent's entry.
"Dinner at eighteen hundred. We practice old rites. Be on time."
Lea nodded and watched the woman leave with the mule plodding beside her.
Old rites. She's a West Ganese. The meal will be plentiful, but I better not expect lively conversation.
Lea awoke the next morning with the sun. The thought of the journey and the arrival in Geb whirred her to life. She nodded in thanks to the woman and walked out along the main track. But something told her to stop. She dropped the reins of the mule and returned to the woman.
"Before I go, I wish you the will of the old gods with the blessings of the ancestors." Lea put her hand on her heart.
The woman opened her palms before her, her eyes softening. "I accept their will." She let her hands come to her sides and her face changed to one of surprise. "It has been a long time since I heard the prayers of West Gana here."
Lea loved the blessings from West Gana, even if most Easterners thought they were archaic and misplaced. Lea bowed to the woman and took up the mule's reins. She smiled as the pines turned to brush and the brush to rust-colored gravel.
She saw Central Tower before she saw any other sign of the city. In absolute terms, the fortress was higher, built into the cliff hill at the city's far eastern border. But Central Tower rose like a phoenix from the dark concrete blocks below it. A vision of steel and glass, of what the settlers could accomplish, even though it pre-dated their arrival. It stood as a sign of success in architecture and in research. So they'd all been told. A symbol of humanity's revival when it had reached the edge of extinction.
Lea had heard it described by the few Ganese who'd traveled to Geb, but their words of ‘grandeur in simplicity’ didn't capture what Lea saw before her. Cylindrical, it reflected the sky in every direction. It was as though the Tower was the sky itself brought down to the city, and not the city extending into the sky.
She halted the mule a few hundred feet from the place where gravel became asphalt. She would walk into Geb on her own two feet. She tied up the mule and set forward, her only information being the name of the rooming house and the name of a "friend to the Ganese" that Batrasa had given her.
Her senses were overwhelmed. The streets were straighter than a crow's flight, apartment blocks of three four and five stories nestled side to side but each one an individual in its own right. Some were simple flat squares while others had winding designing carved and creeping up the walls. Lea's curiosity grew.
Why wouldn't they use the same design throughout the city?
Screens were fixed to several street corners, but all of them were black. Lea had heard tales of a woman who rang out over the city streets at certain hours of the day, but she didn't know the times to expect it.
Green spaces popped up between blocks where girls played under the direction of housemothers. The ways of Geb came in sharp contrast to Gana, where those who gave birth kept the child with them in their quorum until death. Here the children were mixed around, moved out of the home of their Willing Mother into larger Girls Homes, and later to boarding schools.
Lea felt a shiver. It wasn't that seeing the children in their mass reinforced her belief that the process was a cold, impersonal way to raise children, though that had weighed on her conscience since she'd heard of the Willing Woman rules.
It wasn't that. Her stomach tightened.
They all have green eyes. How can they all have green eyes?
A girl, perhaps four years old, marched over to Leadon, a lava rock bouncing against her chest. Lea felt glued to the spot. Her own interest was as powerful as the child's.
"Who are you?" The girl put her hands on her hips.
"I am Leadon. Who are you?"
"You are very dark. Where are you from?"
"I'm from Gana."
"There are rebels in Gana."
"We are faithful in Gana."
“But you don’t wear the lava rock of the settlers.”
“We were here before the settlers. Therefore, we don’t worship them.”
"You look strange."
"In truth, you look strange."
"I do?" The girl started.
Lea forced a smile. This was not the conversation to be having with a child.
"Strange in a good way. You are your own person. Just as I am."
"I think you're right. We are both ourselves. There's no one else just the same as ourselves, right?"
The child couldn't have known that Lea was a genetic copy. All she saw was a dark-eyed, dark-skinned foreigner. Lea was happy to be the odd one out if it was only for those reasons.
"You'd better get back to your housemother."
"Yes," the child leaned forward to whisper. "Mother gets very angry when I speak to strangers."
"Off you go then, quick."
The girl turned and ran with the fervor that only four-year-olds can have.
Lea continued walking, but with every woman she passed, the reality became more and more evident. She looked at the women, their hair,
their eyes, their skin, their mannerisms, their jawlines. Each of them wearing the lava amulet, the symbol of the settlers' first arrival at the Rainfields cliffs.
It's not that I'm different, Lea took in the sights of a market in full swing, women selling oranges and beans, bags of rice and wheat. It's that they all have brown hair. Olive skin. Differing shades but all green eyes.
She looked around, seeking the eyes of every woman who passed by. It wasn't difficult, they were all staring at her.
How does no one speak of how they all have green eyes?
Aria's eyes were brown. Beautiful deep brown with flecks of green. Lea had assumed there was the mix of colors in Geb as they'd heard of in all the outer counties: brown hair, blond, grey, and some red. Blue eyes, brown eyes, hazel, and green. Olive skin, brown skin, darker skin, pink and white.
But no. Not in the Geb she saw.
She turned her head in time to see a man across the market.
She'd only ever seen one man in her life, a tall and broad man, Archer, who was responsible for reporting on Aria's well-being in Gana. But this man in the market was completely different. He was shorter than most of the women. He was sweating, despite the relative autumn cool in the air. His gut reached outward, hanging. Lea wondered how he moved at all; he seemed to defy physics.
He's degrading. She blinked her eyes to take him in with more detail. So that's what it looks like to degrade as the men have done since the Mist.
She'd learned of it in classes, the virus in the Mist that broke down the Y-chromosome. The same virus that attacked lands and rendered them poisonous. The Mist that consumed most of the planet, and she was witness to its effects before her very eyes in the market in the middle of a weekday morning.
She pretended to shop at the market, trying to get closer to the man. Her curiosity made her tremble. Something in her was fearful but she couldn't name it. She stayed across an aisle from him, looking over the wheat, pretending to inspect its quality. Watching his every move. His legs could barely stand him up. He'd have to be in a wheelchair soon.
"You buying it or not?" The vendor had her hands on her hips. "You've been staring at the buckets for ages now. Are you buying or are you contemplating the meaning of wheat?"
