Pekari -The Azure Fish

by Guenevere Lee

  A group of women were huddled in one of the washing rooms. It was a bare room with drains leading to the canals that connected the city outside. Nearly every evening people would come there with buckets of water to wash away the grime of the day, so it was strange to see that all the women were dressed in their tunics, their heads wrapped in white linens. In the centre of the group was Fanten, squatting between two women who held her arms to support her, her face contorted in pain.

  An older woman Kareth had never seen before crouched in front of Fanten, her hands on the swollen belly. She was frowning, her hands feeling the bumps and sides of the woman. Of all the women, she was the only one who wore a braided wig, and her tunic was dyed a soft red. Kareth was shocked to see a steady stream of blood coming from between Fanten’s legs.

  “I can turn the baby, but don’t push,” the old woman said as though she were scolding Fanten for dropping a tray of dates.

  “Kareth, this is no place for you,” he heard the familiar voice of Mistress Ankhet and turned to see the robust woman shooing him away with her hands. Ankhet was in charge of the kitchen servants but had become the unofficial master of the servants’ quarters as well. She was pudgy from being able to snack in the kitchens all day while she ordered the others about, but she wasn’t cruel. Whenever there was a problem, she was the one people would seek out for help. Her plump face looked rather strained that night though, and her dark eyes were rimmed in red.

  “She’s bleeding,” was all Kareth managed to say before Ankhet forcefully pushed him away from the room.

  She regarded him with kind, exasperated eyes for a moment. “The midwife will take care of Fanten. She knows more potions than you,” she turned away, then stopped and turned back. “You can pray for her,” she said quickly and then went back into the room.

  Yes, he could pray for her, but to what gods? Other than Tzati Imotah, the master of this house and cousin to the Paref, Ankhet was the only person who knew Kareth was one of the Whisperers of the Gods. The land of Mahat regarded Whisperers as dirty heathens, and Ankhet had warned him to be careful no one discovered his real identity.

  He thought of going back to the small cupboard he called his room, but turned instead for the kitchen. Maybe he couldn’t help deliver the baby, but perhaps he could make something to lessen Fanten’s pain. He didn’t really understand how a woman gave birth, but surely the pain felt from an injury was little different than one felt from childbirth.

  Kareth had earned a bit of a reputation as a healer. After a servant’s leg had been crushed before the Paref’s coronation, and he had done all he could to ease the man’s pain and save him, people often came to him after cutting or burning themselves as they worked. He had learned a lot about herbs from watching the Rhagepe as a child, and Tersh had taught him how to extract venoms from scorpions and lizards that could be used to ease pain, but he had learned far more since coming to Mahat. He saw firsthand what worked the quickest and the best dosages to use.

  “Learn,” Tersh had told him before they had parted. Kareth learned something every day.

  He didn’t expect to find anyone in the kitchen, but to his surprise two bakers with shaved heads, wearing only loincloths, were stoking the fire while a young woman sat at the table. She wore the sheer white tunic of the servants who worked inside Imotah’s massive home, the fabric much finer than the scratchy tunic he wore. She even wore jewellery, a beaded necklace and a silver bracelet on her upper arm, shaped like a snake twisting around her limb. Normally, she wore dark eyeliner and amethyst-shaded powder around her eyes, but obviously she hadn’t reached that step yet. Her wig was also missing, and she only had strips of linen wrapped around her small head.

  Kareth knew her well, knew her slightly large nose and small chin. She was very thin and getting taller every day. He’d always thought she looked like a bird. Tahye. She looked at him with tired eyes, which widened in surprise. When he had still been working in the stables, he’d dreamt that the stable master would be kicked in the head by a horse. He’d told her only a few days before it had actually happened, and ever since then she— and many others—had avoided him.

  He didn’t want her to run away. He missed their conversations together, so he spoke quickly. “You can’t sleep?”

  She had a small cup of beer and a bread roll still steaming with heat. Obviously one of the bakers had given it to her, either because they felt sorry for her being woken up, or it had come out misshapen. Kareth loved being in the kitchens because there always seemed to be some unwanted food for the taking. He had filled out quite a lot since coming here. His ribs no longer stuck out, and his skinny arms were no longer bony, but well defined and—he was certain—nicely toned.

  Tahye paused, looking down at her beer and picking at the table. “No,” she finally replied. “I…It frightens me,” she said, as though trying to explain why she was in the kitchens instead of helping the other women.

  Kareth nodded. He’d be frightened, too, if he were a woman. Fanten had looked like someone was torturing her. To think that it could hurt that much every time you gave birth… There was one woman in his tribe with five living children. How did she manage it each time? “I’m going to make something to stop the bleeding,” Kareth decided, going to the shelf of herbs and spices. Ankhet had given him free range to take from there as he pleased, so long as he was making medicine for one of the servants.

  Impossibly, Tahye’s eyes grew even bigger. She really was frightened. She used to be nice to him, maybe she was even his friend. He wished they could go back to the way things had been before he’d told her about that stupid dream. Kareth decided to take a seat next to her at the large wooden table. She looked uneasy, her eyes on the hall leading back to where Fanten was giving birth.

  “It’s not like this every time,” Kareth tried to reassure her. “Mother said baby before me was hard, but I slipped right out,” he laughed, but Tahye still looked tense.

  “My mother…” Tahye turned to him, her wide eyes glossy. “She died when I was born.”

  “Oh,” Kareth felt suddenly foolish. She wasn’t afraid of having a baby, he realized; she was thinking about how her own mother might have screamed like that before dying. “…Fanten will be fine,” he touched her arm. “Help me grind herbs.”

  She allowed him to lead her, her eyes constantly darting back to the hall. The screams were only getting worse. He opened one of the jars and sniffed it. Although he could speak her language rather competently now—the giveaways being a strong accent he couldn’t shake, and he would often get confused and forget words when he was very excited or trying to explain something complicated—he still couldn’t read the markings used to label everything and had to smell or taste everything to find what he was looking for. He was met with a stinging scent that wrinkled his nose.

  “Here,” he handed her the jar full of leaves. “Take three and grind them.” He grabbed a few more things and began to mix them together. They took turns grinding and mixing, and soon a sunshine bright paste emerged. When a particularly strong scream came speeding down the hall, Tahye dropped one of the jars and scattered the precious herbs all over the table. She scrambled to clean the mess.

  “You have sisters? Brothers?” Kareth asked, wondering if he could distract her from the sounds of labour pains, but also genuinely curious.

  “My mother only had me,” she shook her head, “but the servants who helped raise me had children close to my age.”

  “Which servants? Where did you live?”

  “Here, and everyone,” she smiled, obviously a fond memory coming to mind. “I was always sneaking in here to steal a bite of honeyed bread, and Mistress Ankhet would chase me around the kitchens, but the bakers cheered me on.”

  A few more bakers were trickling into the kitchens. It was probably still too early for them to start for the day, but since they couldn’t sleep through the screaming it seemed they had decided to just get the morning’s bread done anyway.

  “Your f
ather?”

  “My father…” she breathed in sharply, and her eyes narrowed. “No blood relation raised me. When my mother died, Imotah had every right to throw me to the mercy of the streets, but he…felt responsible for me.”

  Kareth wanted to ask if Imotah had named her, since one of his mares was also named Tahye, but he decided to change the subject. He was obviously just upsetting her more.

  “I’m happy we talk,” he sniffed the paste in the bowl. It was ready. Then he looked at her. Her eyes were light, like sandy dunes, but in the firelight and shadowy room they shone like copper. “I don’t have friends here—”

  She looked down, her face flushed. “I’m sorry…I—”

  Kareth shook his head, standing up with the stone bowl in hand. “You don’t have to say…I understand.” He held the bowl out to her. “Please, bring this to Fanten.”

  “Me?” The look of fear crept back into her eyes.

  “Mistress Ankhet chased me out,” he smiled, an image of a younger Ankhet chasing Tahye as a girl came to his mind. She wasn’t a girl anymore though, she’d matured into a woman, a fact he was more than conscious of whenever he caught sight of her tall, lithe body in the halls.

  “What do I say?” She stood, taking the bowl. She looked confident, but her voice was weak.

  “This will stop bleeding and numb pain. It has to go on…” he searched for the word, hitting his hand distractedly, “place—wound! Do not eat. Put it where the blood comes from, in her…” he blushed, not forgetting the word in Mahat for vagina, but not able to say it in front of Tahye.

  Tahye smiled, her courage emerging at last. “I’ll tell them.”

  He followed her to just outside the room. He didn’t look in but listened as the midwife explained to someone how some tools she had could help turn the baby. He wished he could peek to see what such a contraption looked like, but was worried Ankhet would get angry at him for being in a place men were not allowed.

  “Mistress,” Tahye said quietly to Ankhet. “Kareth made this for her, to stop the bleeding.”

  There was some muffled speaking that Kareth couldn’t make out, then he heard a clear word spoken in the gruff voice of the midwife. “What?” She sounded annoyed. “I have potions enough.”

  “Please,” Ankhet said softly, but it was clear to Kareth she was holding back her temper. Ankhet did not like when she had to let others take charge, especially in her home. With a smile, Kareth remembered how Ankhet didn’t like to give up power and how she had butted heads with the mistress of the Paref’s own kitchen.

  Another scream.

  “All right, all right,” the midwife conceded, sounding slightly relieved.

  Kareth decided to make himself useful by going to the well outside and bringing in some water to boil. When Tahye came back to the kitchens, she helped him bring the buckets of hot water to the women, but he always stayed out of sight. Still feeling antsy, he began looking through the kitchens for feathers. There was usually a basket of them from the birds plucked for dinner. There were a handful there, and he took them all. There was no seaweed but there were grain stalks, and he felt that was a good symbol for fertility. He began to plait them together, making a crown like the one the Rhagepe had given him before he had left the temple. He had lost it in the Hiperu River when he had nearly drowned. When he was finished, he asked Tahye to deliver it.

  As the morning light emerged from hiding and the servant quarters became as busy as an anthill, the labour continued. Either due to exhaustion or his medicine doing its job, the woman’s screams turned into dull moans. Eventually, he heard the midwife triumphantly announce that the baby had turned. Kareth thought that would be the end of it, but then she commanded Fanten in a loud voice.

  “Push!” she ordered. “Your child is ready to come out!”

  Tahye came out of the room, her face pale. She sat next to Kareth and they listened. He didn’t notice her take his hand, but he felt her squeeze it hard when one of the women yelled: “I see it! I see the head!”

  There was a final gruelling scream from Fanten and then silence. Kareth held his breath, Tahye squeezed his fingers so hard he almost jerked away from her in pain.

  Then, the cries of a baby.

  A cheer went up in the room. Kareth and Tahye scrambled to their feet, and he finally dared to look back into the room. Bright morning light was coming in through the narrow windows, and they could clearly make out Fanten now lying on the ground, one of the women kneeling behind her to cradle her back, the crown of feathers and wheat was loose around Fanten’s arm. The midwife was holding a child so small that Kareth couldn’t believe it would grow to be a man—for it was a boy. She cradled a fat, strong, screaming baby boy.

  Fanten looked beyond exhausted. She was pale and the linens were falling from her head as she lay in a pool of her own blood, but still she weakly held out her arms. The bleeding, he realized with a shock of relief, had stopped. They wrapped the babe in clean linens before handing him to his mother. His cries turned to quiet gurgles, and Fanten began to sob. Many of the women were crying, and Kareth was surprised to find his own eyes burning uncomfortably.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Tahye whispered.

  She was still holding his hand.

  Kareth sat in the midwife’s small house. It was a one-room building, with a terrace on the roof, a standard home for those who were not royal like Imotah. The walls and ceiling were covered in drying herbs, giving the place a dizzying, musty scent. There were shelves everywhere, against the walls and standing in the middle of the room, filled with ceramic jars which were each carefully labelled in bright paint. There was a small bed in the far corner that looked as though it was rarely used, seeing as it was buried under scrolls, and there was a fire pit near the doorway. He sat by the cold hearth as he waited for the midwife to finish speaking with a young woman. He had come because the midwife had summoned him.

  A few days had passed since Fanten’s baby was born. The day of the birth most of the servants were sluggish from lack of sleep, so it wasn’t until the day after when things returned to normal, the usual activity and chatter starting again, only now the piercing cry of an infant occasionally echoed through the halls. Kareth had been surprised when Imotah had come down to the servants’ quarters to see the baby. He held the little bundle, cooing at the tiny scrunched up face as Fanten looked on, glowing. He wondered if all lords were this interested in the offspring of their servants.

  He had nearly forgotten about the gruff midwife when Mistress Ankhet had found him that morning and given him directions to her house.

  “Her name is Midwife Yunet, and you answer all her questions,” Ankhet had said, practically pushing him out the door. “Don’t worry about your chores today.”

  Yunet was an old woman, her skin looked like a worn pair of sandals. Seeing her now, he realized she was scrawny and petite, and her back was curved from years of hunching over. She handed the young woman a small leather pouch and a small, blue amulet made of faience in the shape of a woman with a hippo’s head, the goddess Tem.

  “Tem will keep you safe,” she said with a voice of rock and sand.

  The woman put a hand on her belly and smiled wistfully. With the amulet held safely between her closed fingers, she quickly left. Yunet turned to him without letting a moment pass. She narrowed her light sandy eyes at him and quietly scratched and readjusted her wig.

  “You Ankhet’s kitchen boy?” she asked.

  “Um…yes. You asked to see me?”

  “Kafeth?”

  “I am Kareth, of the lake,” he said indignantly.

  She laughed, only it sounded more like a cough. She doubled over violently; he nearly rushed to her side to help, but then she suddenly straightened and was fine. “If you tell people that, they might think you mean the Lake Mahat.”

  The Lake Mahat was mentioned often in the fantastic tales told late at night, the ones Kareth would strain to hear, since he had no friends to tell him personally. He had sailed
through the Lake Mahat on the way north with Tersh and Samaki on the Afeth and saw first-hand the pillars of the once great city still sticking out of the water. Only farmers and fishermen lived on its shores now. He didn’t see why anyone would confuse his coming from there or why it was so funny. He nearly asked before she held up the feather and wheat talisman he had made for Fanten.

  “What is this?” She tossed it to him, and Kareth fumbled to catch it.

  “For good luck,” he shrugged. “It means life.”

  “I know what it means. Why do you?”

  He paused and felt uncomfortable under her gaze. He knew how much the Whisperers were hated in Mahat—it’s why he told people he came from the Lake Villages to the west of Mahat, the villages he had passed through before reaching the Paref’s lands. They were the first villages he had ever seen up to that point in his life. A life spent under the stars of the desert sky or in the palm and pond oases. But Mistress Ankhet knew he was a Whisperer. Had Ankhet told the midwife?

  Kareth shrugged. “I saw somewhere.”

  “You have silver eyes. You have knowledge of herbs and medicines. You have knowledge of sacred symbols. If you were a girl, I would know you at once for a Rhagepe.”

  He felt a chill in the room and was anxious to leave.

  “Oh,” her coughing laughter came out once more. “Why do you look so frightened? I’m an old woman, and you are nearly a man.”

  “I am a man,” he would have pointed to the tattoo on his shoulder of a line intersecting a circle, but that might give him away as a Whisperer, so instead, he pointed to his bald head. Children in Mahat kept a lock of hair on the sides of their heads. “My head is shaven.”

  “Only a boy needs to prove he’s a man,” she quipped and waved at him dismissively. “Anyway, I mean you no harm, boy. In fact, I mean to offer you a job.”

  THE MOUNTAIN PASS