Mother, Maiden, Crone

by Gwen Benaway

  First things first: I have to find Kiwu. She must be in the grip of puberty by now.

  I head through the plaza toward Yana’s house. The plaza stretches across the top of the hill the village is built on, which isn’t really a hill at all. At least not a natural one. New homes in Hilowa are built on the ruins of old ones, and over hundreds of generations and thousands of years, the old mudbrick has become part of the earth again.

  On my way to Yana’s house, I pass by women sliding bread into ovens and men chopping firewood, preparing for the coming change in seasons. I pass by artisans selling their jewellery and pottery and families selling meat pies and fried bread. Most are familiar faces. Many are my cousins. After nearly fifty years of life in Hilowa, I know almost everyone in the village. Being ela, and having danced the role of Alale for multiple solstices, I am known by most of the village too. But no one greets me or even acknowledges me as I walk through Hilowa for the first time in three years. Even Suwomu, whose son I helped deliver several summers ago, silently turns back to tending her oven’s fire after noticing me. Her husband Towatsu doesn’t look up when she whispers something in his ear.

  Fear? Something is wrong here.

  That’s when I notice the shapes moving among the alleyways and rooftops of buildings. Their strange clothing and monochromatic skin are unmistakeable: Nahaka soldiers. They’re scattered throughout the plaza, maybe throughout the whole village, patrolling silently and carrying their fire-metal weapons, which they call “guns.”

  I understand now. I was betrayed. I thought I was free now, but the people of Hilowa are prisoners here too. How long have the soldiers been here?

  That’s when I notice the other thing that’s wrong with Hilowa.

  There is no laughter to be heard in all of the plaza.

  There are no children playing in the village streets. There are no children here at all.

  My heart craters.

  “What happened?”

  Yana can’t look at me. We’re standing in her home. It’s small, with only a main room and a single bedroom, but the mudbrick walls keep it cool in summer, and a single fire will warm it all through winter. Yana isn’t as happy to see me as I hoped she’d be. Once upon a time, I was supposed to be her daughter’s godmother, but Kiwu isn’t here.

  “What happened?” I ask again. “Where are the children? Why are there Nahaka soldiers in Hilowa? Where’s Kiwu?”

  Yana doesn’t look up, just keeps studying the dirt floor with sunken eyes.

  “He’s gone,” says Yana.

  “She,” I say. It’s the last thing I need right now.

  “Yes,” she stutters. “Sorry. The ceremony never—”

  “She is still ela,” I say.

  “Yes. She’s gone.” Yana looks even more defeated now. But she’s too broken to be more defensive than that. “They came back after you went with them. They took the children.”

  “The Nahaka did?”

  She nods. “It happened quickly. They came back a few days after you left with them. Our best warriors and dream-priests tried to turn them back, but it was hopeless. We … we …”

  “You what?”

  “We let them take them. The children …”

  “You let them?”

  “We had to. It was all we could do, Ume. You weren’t here. You didn’t see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Yana doesn’t say any more.

  She collapses in on herself. She wraps herself in her own arms and backs up against the wall where she makes herself small. For a moment, she reminds me of Kiwu.

  Her husband, Walewo, isn’t here. I didn’t see him on my way, either. No Anishu is ever truly alone. Every Anishu has as many aunts and uncles and grandparents and siblings as they could ever wish for. But it seems Yana has been alone for a while now. During my imprisonment, the Nahaka tried to teach me the Nahakatsi words “orphan” and “widow,” although it took me a long time to understand what they meant. The words don’t exist in Anishutsi. Are the Nahaka trying to teach us the ways of their lost world? Either way, they have our children now.

  “Yana,” I say, as comfortingly as I can. I put my arms out to hug her. It’s not a thing I usually do, but I need to know more. I need to know where to find Kiwu. Yana looks up at me with tears in her eyes. I’m old enough to be her mother, if that were a thing I could do, but my selfish motherly instincts are more toward Kiwu than her.

  Yana lets me hold her. I’m a full head taller than her, so she buries her moist face in my neck and breasts and clings tightly to my shawl like a child. I let her cry in my arms. I stroke her hair with one hand, whispering comforting prayers in her ear. I move my other hand to the side of her head, where her temporal lobe is, and begin to read her nightmares.

  Kiwu is screaming. “Yanashi! I don’t want to go!”

  Yana is screaming. “Where are you taking him? Leave us alone!”

  Walewo is struggling against the Nahaka soldier dragging Kiwu away by the wrist.

  Inside Yana’s head, I want to scream too.

  A second, younger, more official-looking Nahaka soldier stands to the side, trying to explain something that can never be explained.

  “This is for the best,” he says in broken Anishutsi. “For everyone on this planet. We’re helping you. At the new school, your children will learn how to be like us, how to be human.”

  Yana spits. “We’ll never be like the Nahaka.”

  The official-looking Nahaka scowls. “Your children will. You’ll learn too if you know what’s good for you. If we are to co-exist on this planet, you’ll have to learn how to be civilized. We’ll have to teach you creatures at least a little humanity.”

  “This isn’t your world,” says Yana.

  “It is now.”

  But Walewo, gasping and heaving, has nearly subdued the other soldier. He takes Kiwu’s hand and pulls her free. “Get out of our home,” he says.

  Then: a clap of thunder. The scent of smoke.

  Walewo is thrown back, and he collapses to the ground. A pool of blood stains the sand red beneath him. It grows and grows with his ever-fading heartbeat.

  A third Nahaka soldier steps into the room. Their leader from days before. He points the gun at Yana and puts his other hand on Kiwu’s shoulder. He squeezes and Kiwu yelps in pain.

  “Don’t interfere,” says the Nahaka leader to a dying father and a dead-inside mother. Yana can’t understand his words, but she knows he can kill her too. He turns to the other soldiers. “Put this one with the rest and let’s get out of here.”

  Yana reaches toward Kiwu as the soldiers yank her away into the cold night air.

  Yana falls to her knees.

  “Kiwushi,” she says, “don’t be afraid.”

  “Yanashi!”

  “Be strong. Remember who you are.”

  “Please! No!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yanashi! I don’t want to go! Don’t let them take me!”

  Yana’s heartbreak is my heartbreak. In real life, I may be crying with her too now.

  Yana turns to her husband, who is bleeding to death on the floor of their home behind her.

  She turns back to Kiwu, who is looking back at her with panic in her eyes as the Nahaka soldier pulls her away. Beams of flashing lights dance and gun shots echo in Hilowa plaza outside. All across the village, the same thing is happening in every home.

  Even now, in the shifting shadows, Kiwu looks like her mother. She has her night-brown eyes, and her dusk-brown hair, and her earth-dark skin flecked with gold and silver dream-marks.

  She is stronger than she knows.

  I want to protect her.

  But there’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing Yana can do.

  Kiwu disappears into the night.

  I need to leave Hilowa again. The
Sun is setting, but there is work to be done.

  I put Yana to sleep before I go. I give her good dreams.

  I stop only to change clothes and pack new food for the trip. I know where I need to go now. I just don’t know where it is. Luckily, the earth will guide me.

  At the edge of Hilowa, I kneel on the ground and put my palms on the sand. I close my eyes and whisper the prayers that return me to the place where the waking world mixes with dreams, and I ask Hani Eshi, earth-mother, stone-dreamer, to tell me the way. Her dreams are ancient and powerful and difficult to read. But hidden in her history of the world, I find a new nightmare, even more recent than the opening of the World Breach. A nightmare of machines digging into her, ripping her apart, and covering the open wound with a foundation of metal and wood and clay. The construction of a new school. I know where it is now.

  I open my eyes, stand up, and start walking.

  Fifteen years ago, the sky opened up and burning stars fell out. They fell through the sky as flaming stones and shook the earth when they hit. Tendrils of lightning spread out from the hole in the sky and set the clouds aflame. Boiling rain fell and poisoned the ground. A giant beast made of metal emerged from the World Breach and crashed somewhere in the East. In its belly, the beast carried the Nahaka, who would soon spread across the land like a plague.

  On that night, I knelt on the floor of Yana’s and Walewo’s home. In front of me, Yana lay on their bedroll with her legs spread, screaming and breathing and pushing Kiwu into the world. I caught her in my hands and wiped the blood from her body. I made sure she was breathing, and handed her back to Yana. Yana held her in her arms and named her Kiwu. Walewo asked if it was a son or a daughter. I told him the child has a penis, but we would not know more than that for a long time. Only a handful of children each generation are lameshi, or dreamborn, so it isn’t surprising that sometimes people forget our most ancient traditions, but he should have known better than to ask such a question to an ela who just delivered his firstborn child.

  I stayed until mother and child were both asleep, and I made sure their dreams were good. A child’s first dreams in this world should always be good ones. Then, out of curiosity, I peeked into Kiwu’s dreams. Children’s dreams are always amorphous and fluid and beautiful, but there is still always a hint of themselves in them. I wanted to know.

  Kiwu dreamt of herself.

  I left with a smile.

  Outside, the world was ending.

  Time passed.

  We made contact with the Nahaka. They were strange beings to us. Their skin was all one colour, and they couldn’t change it. Most were pale, but a few were darker. They had only five fingers on each hand. The fingers on their feet were short, stubby things.

  At first, things were peaceful. We made treaties. We traded things. They brought strange, new technology, but they knew nothing of dream-magic. They became jealous. They saw us as savages who possess a gift we don’t deserve.

  They wanted this world for themselves. They still want it.

  The other Seven Nations grew wary. A Muwanaku prophet began foretelling war. The Kanaku began raiding outlying Nahaka settlements. But the Anishu still hoped for peace.

  Time passed.

  Five years ago, Yana came to me. She told me Kiwu didn’t want to be a boy anymore. She’d noticed the oldest among her friends’ bodies beginning to change. She asked what would happen to hers. The answer terrified her.

  “Can you help him?” asked Yana.

  “I can help her,” I said.

  A few days later I sat with Kiwu on the floor of my home on the southern slopes of Hilowa. Sakwa grass smouldered in a clay bowl between us, and the red light of the Twin Moons shone through the entryway. For the first night since her birth, the stars were calm.

  “You can be a girl,” I said to her.

  “Really?” Her eyes lit up. Her dream-marks shimmered.

  “You are lameshi, like me,” I said.

  “Like you?”

  “Yes. There are only a few of us for every thousand births. But that’s why we’re sacred. Before you, there were only two of us in Hilowa.”

  “Who?”

  “Myself and Tsuwu, the head dream-priest.”

  “He’s like us?”

  “Well, he is ila. I am ela, like you. Now there are three of us in Hilowa.”

  “How do I become a girl?”

  “You already are,” I said. “If that is what you dream, that’s enough for it to be real. When your body begins to change, I’ll give you teas to make sure the changes are the right ones.”

  Kiwu’s expression changed. Her eyes flickered. She looked ready to break.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. Then: “Thank you, Ume-woshi!”

  She lunged forward, knocking the bowl of smoking sakwa grass aside, and hugged me. She was crying. I held her tight, my heart more at peace than I could ever remember it being before. I’d never let myself dream of being a mother. Not quite. An aunt, a cousin, a godmother, a grandmother, like every other Anishu woman of a certain age, yes. But nothing quite like this.

  I could get used to this feeling.

  When Kiwu calmed down, I told her about Alale, the first dreamborn woman, who led the Anishu into the world with the help of the Twin Moon sisters, who she took as lovers. I told her how Alale fought the Nightmare Tribe at the edge of the waking horizons, and how she brought dream-magic into the world. I told her why dream-magic is especially potent in us, even if the dream-priests like to pretend that they’re the only ones who can use it.

  I told her she’s loved. And I told her I’d always be there for her.

  I’m standing on a hill under the rising stars.

  Dull, static lights glow in the valley below.

  I’m so tired.

  When I was a younger woman, I could run from Hilowa to the nearest Muwanaku village before even beginning to get tired. I can still keep up a good pace, but it takes more effort, and I’m slow and out of shape from three years of doing nothing. So by the time I see the Nahaka compound in the valley below, I need to rest again.

  I’d learned what “schools” were during my three years of captivity, but I never understood their purpose. Why confine children to a single room or building while teaching them, when there is the whole world? Now I see it’s just another word for “prison.”

  The “school” below consists of a small cluster of buildings surrounded by tall fences topped with sharp tangles of metal wire. The largest, central building is already dark. The classrooms? There are three smaller buildings still lit. The lights in two of them are slowly flickering out. The children’s sleep-quarters? The last building must be where the Nahaka sleep.

  I need rest. I need a plan.

  But then I feel them. The nightmares. Hundreds of them. Children, screaming in the language of a thousand terrible dream-memories. They rush through my mind in a flurry of dreamscapes before I can do anything to prepare myself. Here, a girl is being beaten for speaking a word of Anishutsi. Here, another girl is crying as she is forced to burn the ceremonial shawl her mother gave her. Here, a boy is being pushed into a bed by a Nahaka guard. Here, another boy is hiding under a thin blanket, pretending to be asleep, while listening to the screams and cries from the bed beside him. And here, a girl is being stripped of the female Nahaka clothes she’s stolen, and being forced to put on the male Nahaka clothing the boys are given. All the children are crying. This last one is Kiwu. She’s crying, too.

  I’m not prepared for this. I’ve dropped to the earth, but the soil isn’t enough balm for this. My bloodbeat pounds in my ears. I can’t breathe. The children’s minds are shouting for help, and I’m the only one who can hear them for miles. And I hear all of them at once.

  I whisper a prayer to Hani Eshi to lend me her strength, and I latch on to one of the night
mares. Kiwu’s. I try to guide her away from this terror, away from this school, and toward Hilowa, toward me. In the dream, at least, she must sense me, as she cedes control of the dream to me. I pull her away from this place. The sounds of shouting and weeping become dull and faraway. The wooden walls of her nightmare shimmer into a starry night sky, and the terrain shifts and reshapes itself. In dreams, the world is still soft and malleable.

  Soon, we are sitting back in my home on the southern slopes of Hilowa. The Twin Moons pour red light through the entryway. The sky glows pink outside. The stars rumble, restless.

  “Can you hear me?” I ask. “Are you here with me?”

  Kiwu sits before me, three years older than the last time I saw her. She looks startled and confused. She’s still wearing the Nahaka clothing from her nightmare, but at least they’re the female clothes again. They feature a skirt instead of the pants the soldiers wear.

  I reach out and gently touch her cheek. She recoils before relaxing. What have they done to her? Her dream-marks are dull, a symptom of frequent nightmares. Her eyes are red and sleepy. She’s still pretty. Puberty hasn’t wrought too much damage yet. Her skin is oilier than it should be, but her cheeks are still soft, her hair smooth. This is her dream-self, though. The waking world may not be so kind. Again, I’m filled with the urge to protect her with everything I have.

  “Ume-woshi?”

  “Yes. I’m here, Kiwushi.” I don’t usually use such terms of endearment, but right now I can’t help myself. It feels soothing, comfortable, needed. “Tell me what’s happened.”

  “Why are they doing this to us?”

  “What are they doing?”

  “They won’t let us be Anishu. They won’t let me be a girl. They say it’s wrong.”