Kiini Ibura Salaam

ANCIENT, ANCIENT

Stories

This collection is dedicated to humanity’s ancient urges, and to the ancient truths that reside in each one of us.

Annunciation

by Nisi Shawl

Be not afraid.

Angels of longing arise from these pages, tugging at your heart, your tongue, testing your nerves, teasing your brain. Bravery is the best way to meet them. I know this from experience.

In 2001, Kiini Ibura Salaam attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle. As a classroom volunteer, sorting and collating participants’ manuscripts, I interacted with her, for the most part, on the surface of things. I retain an impression of her physical presence as a serene steadiness. A beautifully embodied author-in-training, serious of mien, she wore the poise of a poet, the quiet calm of a traveler who knows she has reached a new land and waits expectantly for surprise.

But in a way I was acquainted with Kiini before this face-to-face encounter. We shared the Table of Contents of the first Dark Matter anthology, which was published a year earlier. So I had read her Dark Matter story “At Life’s Limits,” and I was quite aware that deep down, this calm held surprises of its own: strangely refracted glimpses of—of what? Smoke more dangerous than fire? Moth-winged vampires, gentle yet implacable, tragically susceptible to poisonous disbelief? And dance as speech, and orgasm as an alternative to murder—was that really—

When I opened up that anthology and came across what Kiini was doing, I had had to look unflinchingly. I’d had to grasp what she was saying. I’d had to feel it, to know it. Feeling is more powerful than fear. Knowledge is joy.

“Ferret” appeared on the Infinite Matrix website in 2003. Its depiction of a generation ship guided by gut-dwelling oracular animals proved to be just as simultaneously unsettling and enticing as that earlier story.

In 2004, my work kept company with Kiini’s twice more. Mojo: Conjure Stories’ editor Nalo Hopkinson published her “Rosamojo,” a ghost story that continues past the point where the heroine avenges herself on a father she knows will never stop hurting her.

In Dark Matter 2, Sené, the heroine of “Desire,” is a crack-skinned mother of twins set suddenly, magically afire, burning with rekindled sexuality; her adventures alongside a goat-legged sub-Saharan Pan and a seductively crocodilian Venus remind her—and her audience—of the power of fleshly gratification. Let us never forget it.

That same year an interviewer asked me what changes I predicted in sf as a result of the recent influx of Afro-diasporic writers. “Everything is going to get a lot sexier,” I said. Was I thinking of Kiini’s work? Not consciously. I could have been, but I had responded without thinking.

My answer disturbed me even as I gave it, even as I knew it was right. Sexualized stereotypes of African-descended peoples abound. Was I internalizing and validating our exoticization? Was I glorifying our oppression?

I have had seven years to consider what I said. I stand by it, and I recognize Kiini Ibura Salaam as an excellent example of my meaning.

Stereotypes are untrue. Sometimes, though, they bear truth’s imprint. Sometimes they spring up from what truth has crushed down. As they manifest they can co-opt and mispurpose inescapable realities. And that’s what happened with the relationship between sexuality and those of us descended from black Africans. Despite its degradation, despite censorship, despite denial, sexuality is holy and powerful. Sexuality is ours. As African-descended people we possess it—without stealing it or depriving anyone else of their own. It is our divine right.

Sexuality is a form of sensuality, an intensification of it. Distinguishing between sexual feelings and sensual ones has never seemed that important a task to me. All encounters are sensual and all are sexual. As Luisah Teish, priestess in the West African Ifa tradition, once said, “I’ll fuck a plant if you show me the right one.”

Sexuality-cum-sensuality is the experiential link between mind and matter, the vivid and eternal refutation of the alleged dichotomy between them. This understanding is the foundation of my 2004 pronouncement on the burgeoning sexuality implicit in sf’s Afro-diasporization. It is the core of many African-based philosophies. And it is the throbbing, glistening heart of Kiini’s body of work.

This book is alive. Be not afraid.

I’ve mentioned only a few of the stories awaiting you within these pages, only those I’ve read outside of them. Some of the rest were previously published prior to “At Life’s Limits.” Some, after. “Ancient, Ancient,” the collection’s title story, appeared in 2002, but till now its undulating metal had not distracted me and its honey went untasted. My favorite piece is one of three original to this collection, “Pod Rendezvous.” A long and entrancing look at the last libertine hours of a future female who must dedicate her remaining life to selfless nurturing, it swoops on gossamer contrails from crèche to club, from finger-shoveled cafeteria food to bars dispensing star juice. It is the book’s final story. At its end the heroine disappears, a bright spark flying out of sight, and the story is done but not over, or over but not yet done. The pull, the sometimes literally visceral attraction of what Kiini does with words, continues on beyond them.

There is no easy comfort here. No good stopping place, not even at the conclusion of that last sentence. Satisfaction serves only as a base for further explorations. Waves of sensation wash ceaselessly against just-bearably-sensitized skin. Resolution rolls over to reprise. Finishing one story and beginning the next, we are, like Laki, the heroine of “Pod Rendezvous,” merely departing one mysterious path for another. We tread where angels do, or vampires, or gods, or beasts, or nameless monsters. We go to where the power is, the flesh. The knowledge and the joy.

Be not afraid. Be glad.

Desire

Sené. Pregnant Sené. Sené of the tired skin. Sené whose face held a million wrinkles, each one etched deeply as if carved over the course of forty years. Sené whose blood was only twenty-four years young.

< Faru, Faru running through the bush. >

The shining eyes of her boys made her smile, but not much else touched her. Not a full-throated bird’s song, not the sun peeking pink at dawn, not her husband’s fleeting caresses.

< Faru leapt right, darted left. His hoof slipped, and his hind legs buckled. Faru stamped his front hoof, shook himself off, and leapt up again. >

Sené had hard-working hands: dry, cracked, bloated. With them she beat the dirt out of her family’s cloths, scaled fish, pounded root vegetables, carried crops to her husband’s mother, and avoided touching herself.

< Thin branches whipped against Faru’s face as he ran. Faru, the flawless. Faru, the godly. Faru reeking of thick sensuality. His huge goat eyes darted back and forth. His god’s heart beat a fearful rhythm in his chest. His lips lay open in a pant. Desire—his and his sister Quashe’s own special force—throbbed through his skinny goat legs. Desire. That which made Faru who he was.

Faru, Faru running through the bush. >

Sené’s hands were always busy. Just now, they were sweeping out the corners of the cliff dwelling she, her husband Na, and the two boys called home. Now her hands were rolling up the sleeping mats and tucking them away. Now they were building a fire.

< Faru heard the thump, thump of Laloro thundering behind him. Laloro, great god of disease. Faru did not look back. He reached the end of the bush and teetered on the edge of the cliff. >

Sené pulled a bunch of lemongrass from the hanging basket. She squatted, one hard hand holding her bulging belly. She threw the fragrant herb into the pot and watched as the bits danced and dove with the boiling water.

< Faru glanced over his shoulder. Laloro—a godly elephant covered in hideous warts—charged at him. Faru jumped. His hooves found footholds on the slenderest of rock surfaces. He bounded from rock to rock until he landed on a large outcropping. Faru skidded to a stop. >

Rocks tumbled across the entrance to Sené’s home. She put her hands to her knees and strained to rise. Her joints throbbed as she shuffled to the entrance of her dwelling. Faru jumped down from Sené’s roof and landed on all fours. Sené opened her cracked lips to scream, but the sound died in her throat. Faru rose on his hind legs and stretched, exposing the expanse of his human torso to Sené’s gaze. The thrumming of thousands of dragonfly wings beat in her chest. She bent down to one knee.

Faru preened as he always did when admiring eyes drank in the vision of him. He was a god, yes, but he was vain. He twisted his body this way and that. Light undulated across his fur in shimmering waves. He brushed his hooves across his chest, smoothing the flat gray circle of fur that collared his throat. Sené was powerless to look away.

Faru fixed his luminous eyes in Sené’s direction. He licked his lips. A muscle in his jaw flexed and his nose twitched. Sené held herself stiff until the tea hissed and spilled over. Wet tumbled into the fire.

Sené leapt to her bare feet. “Faru, honorable one, would you like some lemongrass?”

“No, no time,” Faru said. “Come.”

Sené’s blood pulsed as she neared the god. She stood before him, shaking, waiting. With a grunt Faru grabbed Sené by the neck. His hooves scratched her skin. Godly lips pressed against common ones. A godly tongue coaxed Sené’s mouth open. She gagged, almost choking as an intangible force flowed down her throat.

< A large shadow slid past the opening of Sené’s home. >

Faru broke away from Sené. “Don’t leave here. I’ll return.”

With that, he turned and bounded away.

< Laloro swooped by the cliffs. Laloro flying by on chicken’s wings. The tiny appendages didn’t seem enough to hold his elephant heft. He delighted in this, the most surprising of his godly powers, but he wanted more. >

Sené, Sené, full of dancing light. Laughter long buried came twisting up into Sené’s throat. She stared at the empty space where Faru had held her and clapped her hand over her mouth. Giggles seeped from between her fingers.

The lemongrass hissed again. Sené looked over at the fire. Even the water, boiling over, seemed something to delight in. She bent over the water, dreamily drumming her fingers on her cheek. Her lips would not lie flat. They twisted up and open, surprising Sené with irrepressible glee.

< The moment Faru reached the top of the cliff, Laloro wrapped his trunk around Faru’s body and flew into the thick of the bush. >

Sené tipped the tea over, dousing the fire. Her nostrils flared as the scent of lemongrass filled the dwelling. Inexplicably, she began to rub the back of her hand over her face. Her fingers wound into her hair, twisting the rough strands into coils, then setting them loose. She smoothed her eyebrows, massaged her neck. Those hard ugly hands found delight in the curves of her body. Her breasts, sagging and full, were a wonder to touch. So was the tight swell of her belly.

< Laloro did not care that his trunk made breathing hard for Faru. In fact, he coiled his trunk tighter. Faru laughed.

“What’s so funny, doomed one?” Laloro asked.

“I have nothing for you. It’s gone,” Faru said.

Laloro’s tiny eyes rolled in their sockets. “I want the bewitching power and I want it now.”

Faru laughed again. “My sister will not fall for such tricks. Quashe will not be seduced by an ugly hulk of flesh covered in warts.”

“Shut up, Faru,” Laloro roared, “give me the power or I will crush you.” >

Sené’s hardworking hands parted the front of her cloth. Her fingertips alighted on the curly tangle between her thighs. Lust unfurled and snaked in dizzying circles within her. Her feet backed her body to the wall. She pushed her spine against the rock. Her hand swiveled and writhed, her hips rotated in delight.

< “Where is it?” Laloro asked.

“I’ve lost it.” Faru said. “Nobody’s perfect, even gods have their days off.”

Laloro stared deeply into Faru’s eyes. Faru looked back, unblinking. Laloro knew from the calm in Faru’s face he was telling the truth. Laloro loosened his trunk and dropped Faru to the ground. >

Sené’s fingers were knuckle-deep inside herself. She was reaching for the mirth that Faru had trickled down her throat. Reaching to stroke the sudden burst of joy filling all her tired parts. When she was trembling, pleasure shooting from the pressure of her fingers, all of her skin sighed. She withdrew her wet fingers and used her own juices to draw patterns on the wall. Each mark was a reminder of this sensation; a sign to herself, a message to her husband Na, that everything had changed.

Sené. Slow Sené. Sené of the new urges climbed down the cliff. She crossed the dangerous ledges and narrow passes carefully. As she stepped down onto flat ground, she glanced up at the peak of the cliff. She saw two forms running there. The wind carried their laughter to her. They were, unmistakably, her boys. “Na,” she yelled, expecting to see her husband’s form just behind them. Instead, she saw the large frame of Na’s mother lumbering in the distance. Just as she was wondering where Na could be, a hummingbird hovered near her ear. Her heart leapt, and she felt the desire sweep through her again.

Sené swayed through the meadow, her thoughts suddenly preoccupied by a flock of yellow butterflies. She was sensitive to all sensations: the wind on her cheeks, the sun on her shoulders, the tall grass brushing against her hips. From the other side of the meadow, she could smell the sweet, sharp scent of ripe berries. In seconds, she was tucking little buds of fruit under her tongue.

< Faru, Faru running to the cliffs. >

When her belly was full, Sené’s skin ached for coolness. She headed straight for the river. Quashe’s river. Before Sené’s toes met the moist river earth, before she could submerge her fingers into the cool dark waters, Sené heard the deep bouncing of her husband Na’s laughter.

< Faru leapt down from Sené’s roof and landed on all fours. He snorted. The sight of her empty dwelling tore through him. Faru, Faru. Without the power of desire, his breath did not call forth horny submission. His presence did not attract an aroused audience of winged, slithering, and walking things. He was invisible. And the horror of it pained him. >

Na? Laughing? Sené crept along the bank toward the unfamiliar sound. She hid behind a tree and peered around the trunk. Na was sitting, legs spread, feet dipped in the water, the seductive crocodile head of Quashe—goddess of desire—leaning against his bare chest. Quashe’s back formed one gleaming stretch of reptile skin. Her torso, neck, and arms were human-soft, honey-amber skin, wet with river dew. Na’s fingers were sticky with her. One palm full of a tight godly breast, the other cupping the curve of fertile god belly. Quashe’s thick tail swished back and forth as she dripped water into Na’s mouth from her crocodile snout.

< Faru, Faru needing the power of desire just as Sené needed breath. >

A flash of anger interrupted Sené’s joy. How could Na be sharing sweetness with this…this…crocodile god? Without a thought, she opened her mouth and sang an imperfect love song:

“Lover the length of you

Your weight between my thighs

Lover the scent of you

An oasis of sighs”.

Both Quashe and Na turned to face the sound of Sené’s singing. Sené. Sené who had so long been a dry discarded thing, stepped toward her husband. Unwavering, she pointed her big belly right at him and sang him to his feet.

Na was, for a few seconds, stilled, his body trapped between godly pleasures and the pull of his wife. Not his wife, a juicy apparition of his wife as a goddess; Sené as a queen, a swarm of butterflies hovering over her holy head.

< Laloro found Faru, bereft, lying flat on his back outside of Sené’s dwelling. Laloro laughed aloud. “You really have lost it?”

He hovered close to Faru’s face.

“Shower me with some horrible disease,” Faru said, reaching for Laloro’s trunk. “Give me some fatal sickness or leave me alone.” >

To Na’s ears, Sené’s song was nothing less than enchanting. In the thrall of her voice, he forgot about Quashe. He forgot the honeyed skin that coaxed him through a labyrinth of pleasure, turned away from the crocodile claws that gifted him with fish and seduction.

Sené opened her arms to her husband, and he stepped into them. Neither of them heard Quashe snarl. Their hands were too busy groping each other, fingers remembering a dance from old forgotten times.

< Laloro took pity on Faru. “Climb onto my back, and I’ll fly you to the Old One.”

Faru climbed on without complaining about Laloro’s warts.

“You are weak,” Laloro teased. “Worse than a mortal. The great vain Faru begging ugly Laloro to disease him?” Laloro raised his trunk and pointed it at Faru as he flew. “Shall I do it? Shall I put you out of your misery?”

Faru didn’t respond. >

Quashe lifted her snout and screeched a series of clicks and trills. Teeth bared, she belched. With every belch, a ripple disturbed the surface of the river. As Sené and Na’s tongues found each other’s throats, tasted each other’s salt, Quashe kept belching.

The river waters swirled, and finally folded in on themselves. From the folds, a humongous crocodile surfaced. At the point of Quashe’s finger, it lumbered onto shore, barreling between Sené and Na. Sené screamed, as the creature, paying no heed to her belly, knocked her onto her back.

< Laloro dumped Faru at the entrance to the Old One’s cave. With his trunk, he tipped the bell to announce their presence. The Old One’s voice drifted out in irritation.

“Who is it calling so loudly?”

“Oh, honored elder, it is Laloro. I am dropping Faru here at his request.”

“How rude,” muttered the Old One. He approached the mouth of his cave slowly. His old gnarled hands clutched two ancient wooden canes. His long white cloths trailed behind him in the dirt as he approached at a snail’s pace. Each of his steps was executed with an enormous amount of concentration and energy.

“Have you no knowledge of protocol?” the Old One said when he finally came face to face with Laloro.

Laloro dropped to one knee and rubbed the pads of his feet together.

“Great one, without whom we’d have no accordance, great settler of confusing matters, we are blessed to be in your presence.”

“Yes, child,” said the Old One, rubbing his groin. “How can I be of service?” >

Still Na had no eyes for Quashe. He leapt onto the crocodile’s back and locked his arms around its neck. The crocodile shook its massive head and Na went flying into a tree. His head thudded against bark. He lost consciousness, and Quashe laughed.

Quashe sprang onto the crocodile’s back and looked down on Sené. As the god searched Sené’s face, river snakes slithered up the riverbank. The snakes slid over the crocodile’s back and settled in coils around Quashe’s arms and waist. Quashe stared without a blink of her reptilian eyes. She stared until the secret to Sené’s power was revealed to her. When she recognized it—the force Sené had used to attract Na—Quashe threw her head back and shrieked.

< The Old One wiggled his nose toward the gourd bowl that rested on the floor near the cave entrance. Faru didn’t move. Laloro sighed and dropped a few coins into the bowl. The Old One sniffed and looked at Laloro disdainfully.

Laloro dropped a few more coins into the bowl. “So Faru has given away his powers. Now he’s sick and wants my help.”

“That is correct,” said Laloro, gazing longingly in the direction of Quashe’s river.

“Why would a vain god do a thing such as this?” asked the Old One.

Laloro blushed. He scratched a patch of dry skin on his back. It flaked and fell to the grass. The grass wilted. >

“Faru,” Quashe said, recognizing the mark of her brother. She leaned forward and opened her huge crocodile mouth over Sené’s face. A forked tongue flipped from the flat of her mouth and flicked over Sené’s lips. Sené turned her head away. Quashe’s snakes writhed.

“Open,” Quashe demanded. Sené clamped her mouth shut. Quashe released a snake. It slid around Sené’s neck in a tighter and tighter yoke until Sené’s mouth burst open in panic.

Quashe’s tongue wrestled Sené’s. She speared the power Faru had banked in Sené’s body and swallowed it. Pleasure sparked through her divine thighs as she leaned back, satisfied.

< “And you are involved in this matter?” the Old One asked with certainty.

Laloro dug into the earth with one huge foot. “I threatened him.”

“What’s that?” asked the Old One.

“I threatened to kill him if he didn’t give me his powers. He lost the desire trying to hide it from me.”

“Ahh,” said the Old One rubbing his nipples. “You have created discord among the gods. I believe you should throw more coins into my gourd.” >

“Now, let us see who Na finds more desirable,” said Quashe, stretching across the crocodile’s back. She sent her snakes slithering over to Na. Each snake curled around a different limb. Together, they pumped blood through his body until Na’s eyelids flickered and he returned to consciousness.

Na’s heart constricted at the sight of Sené trapped beneath reptilian heft. Then Quashe called to him. His gaze leaped from Sené to Quashe. Quashe’s voice yanked all of him into stiff hardness. Quashe shook with clicking laughter and leaned over to confront Sené. “You cannot hold the powers of the gods, ugly one. I should let my crocodile eat you for trying.”

A brief flash of emotion sparked in Na’s eyes, but he remained silent. Every inch of him strained towards Quashe, but entranced or not, he knew the rules—not without Quashe’s permission.

“Stay there,” Quashe barked at him and commanded her crocodile to back off Sené. “You have refused me. I must find something sweet to clean myself of this bitterness.”

< Quashe sat stiffly on her crocodile’s back, Na’s betrayal pulsing in her memory. The flutter of Faru’s desire surged through her flesh as she searched the trees for a few men to ravish. >

Night fell, and Sené had not moved. The sound of Na crying forced her awake. She opened her eyes and saw him standing, immobilized, waiting for Quashe’s return. She put her hands over her ears to shut out the noise and the sensation of hand against skin ran through her body like lightning. Her fingers fluttered. She had thought this day’s delight was done—departed with Faru’s gift, but here she was, still shocking herself with sweetness.

Sené ran a finger from her forehead to her chin and shivered. She held her hands before her face. They looked just as they always had: dry, cracked, swollen. Yet today, they had done new things. They had stained themselves with berries, lured a husband away from a goddess, and painted the walls of her dwelling with the juices of her own coming.

< A flapping sound echoed in Quashe’s ears. A dark figure dove and nipped the dip in her throat. She glanced back and saw a throng of fruit bats hovering close. She pressed her human-soft skin—impregnated with the double sweetness of her and her brother’s powers—against her crocodile. Her tough reptilian scales pointed to the sky. Another dark-winged figure swooped down and broke the skin at her elbow.

Quashe yelled at the top of her lungs. “Aaaaaaiiiiiiieeeeeeee.” >

Sené rolled onto her side and struggled to her hands and knees. She crawled over to Na and pressed her cheek against his calves. A bout of dizziness swept through her. She settled herself against the earth and lay curled around Na’s feet.

< “Old One, I must go,” Laloro yelled upon hearing Quashe’s scream. “Quashe needs me.”

“Yes,” said the Old One. “Go to Quashe and bring her here, I believe she can help with Faru’s problem.” >

Sené nudged Na’s ankles with her charged hands. Her fingers massaged their way up his calves. She pressed her thumbs into the indentations behind his knees. Tears crept down her face. Her fingers shook. But she kept touching him.

Sené rose on her knees and kneaded Na’s thighs and buttocks. Her hardworking hands drifted up his spine, manipulating immobilized muscles. She spread her fingers over his back and raked her fingernails across his skin. She did not think of pain or pleasure, she wanted only to bring Na back.

< Laloro flew in the direction of Quashe’s screaming. When he reached the meadow, he could see Quashe’s huge crocodile crowned by a small mountain of bats. Laloro pointed his trunk at the bats and showered them with a plague. Bat skin bubbled and burst into flame. Laloro took a deep breath and blew the burning creatures from Quashe’s back. Quashe raised her beautiful crocodile head and looked up at Laloro, eyes glittering in gratitude. >

Sené stood, her belly brushing against Na’s back. If she closed her eyes, she could feel him shivering, ever so softly. She pinched his shoulders with little bites. Still Na did not move. She walked around to face him and stroked his forehead with thoughtful fingers.

“Come back, husband. Quashe doesn’t care about you.” She caressed his ears. “Na, please, return to me.”

< Quashe grazed Laloro’s warted skin with her snout and he almost burst from pleasure. She looked at him with new eyes. What had once disgusted her was suddenly quite useful.

“I hope…” she said in a quivering voice, “I hope I can call on you again.”

Laloro bowed. “I am at your service always.” >

Sené rubbed her lips against her husband’s. Her tongue darted out and licked Na’s lips. His body gave a slight tremor. She sent her tongue out again, this time to enter Na’s mouth, to moisten his dry gums with her saliva. Sené pulled Na’s lips apart with her fingers. She strained to pry open the barrier of his teeth. It had worked for Faru and Quashe. Why shouldn’t it work for her?

Sené took a deep breath and blew into Na’s throat. She blew the remembered delight of lying together in the grass, her thigh lodged against his crotch. She blew the memories of Na rushing home from the river to hold their new son, of the tickle of Na’s gentle questions about all the things the baby had done that day. She blew all the desire that had been aroused in her after Faru’s kiss. Finally Na began to blink. His tears sprinkled Sené’s face. He worked his lips into a grimace and spoke as if language was unfamiliar to him.

“Sené. Please, forgive. I’m sorry.” He took her callused hand in his and groped her knuckles with his lips.

< Deep in the Old One’s cave, old fingers dribbled honey in intricate swirling patterns on the floor. Faru lay, inert at one end of the design. When Laloro delivered Quashe to the cave, the Old One sprinkled brother and sister with cinnamon.

“Laloro,” the Old One said, “I am calling on my brothers to help. Please stay in the corner until they have safely gone again. You would not want to pay the price if you should accidentally crush one of them.”

Laloro backed away. The Old One rested one of his canes against his hip and pulled a tiny snail’s shell from the folds of his cloth. He blew out a thin, shrill sound, and a parade of snails slowly crawled into the room. The Old One took the lead, and his brothers followed, treading a circle around Quashe and Faru. The pace was slow, but the Old One’s powers were potent. With each shuffle of his feet, each undulation of his snail brothers’ bodies, Quashe’s wounds healed. Once the Old One and his brothers completed a full revolution, Faru’s powers slipped from Quashe’s body and returned to his. >

Sené and Na supported each other all the way home. Na stroked Sené’s arms. Sené squeezed Na’s waist. Na pulled Sené up the cliff when her belly became an obstacle to climbing. At the top of the cliff, Sené turned away from home, walking in the direction of Na’s mother’s dwelling.

“Sené, sweet wife, where are you going?”

“To get the children, Na. Did you not leave them with your mother?”

Na shuddered at Sené’s unspoken words. Her intonation reminded him that just that morning he had abandoned Sené and his children in favor of Quashe’s delights.

He took Sené’s hand. “They are safe with mother, let us go home and be new together.”

The cave was spilling over with the scent of Sené’s juices. Sené reached into the hanging basket and grabbed an armful of twigs. She dumped them onto the fire pile and kneeled to light a fire. Na stopped her. With her scent vibrating in his chest, he lifted her to her feet. Trembling, as if this were indeed new, he pulled her to the mats. With his free hand, he tipped two mats to the floor and unrolled them with his foot.

< Laloro flew both Quashe and her crocodile to the river on his great diseased back. Laloro watched as Quashe stepped into the river. The water swirled around her. Quashe paused. “Will you be there waiting for me? Perhaps we can feed together when I rise.”

Laloro could not speak. Quashe lifted her tail and slapped it hard against the water’s surface. Drops of water splashed Laloro’s face. He lifted his trunk and trumpeted a loud “Yes!” >

Na kneeled before Sené; he parted her cloth and stroked her bare belly. He pushed his chin between her thighs and kissed her moistness. Sené pulled Na’s head away from her body and looked into his eyes. There was a hard seed-thought hiding out in Sené’s newly juicy body, a dry little nugget of doubt that questioned Na, questioned her own sanity, suggested she had better use for her time than dabbling in fantasy—she and Na would never again be one. But the same scent that filled Na’s nose seeped into Sené’s pores. It drowned that dry little thought and lured Sené into her husband’s embrace.

< Faru, Faru bounding up the cliff.

Rocks flew away from Faru’s hooves as he rushed towards Sené and Na’s cave. Desire was once again his, but Faru was not satisfied. He could see the scar he intended to rip across Sené’s face. He would not kill her, he would do worse—he would kill anything desirable about her. Faru’s goat eyes flashed when he reached the entrance of Sené’s home. He reared up on his hind legs, ready to attack. But neither Sené nor Na saw him. They saw only the stretches of each other’s skin.

Faru’s anger turned to wonder. How could they be touching each other in that way? Faru dropped down to all four hooves. How could Sené be calling up such desire from Na? He suddenly felt as weak as Laloro accused him of being. He listened to the power of desire pounding in his blood. The same power Sené had held, yet she had not died when it was taken from her. She was moving, breathing, calling forth passion without Faru’s magic.

Faru, Faru pausing for the truth.

A moth brushed against Faru’s ear. He turned away from Sené and Na. Behind him a pack of flying night creatures swarmed. Faru laughed and went bounding up the cliff towards the bush. The flying things brushed against his skin, bursting with desire. He leaped and twisted with his throng of admirers. Sené and Na were vague forms, coupling mysteriously on the periphery of his memory.

Faru sprang to the top of the cliff, and ecstasy exploded in his chest. He heard the hoarse groans of bush animals bellowing in heat. It seemed as if the entire night was singing a love song to him. Faru parted his godly lips and let out a triumphant yell.

Faru, Faru running through the bush. >

Of Wings, Nectar, & Ancestors

1

On deep purple-black nights, when the whole house has pushed itself into slumber, WaLiLa’s energy flits around her room like a moth. It leaps up to do jumping jacks & turn cartwheels, then clings to the ceiling. It bounces off the walls & jiggles its knees impatiently. WaLiLa is a jitterbugging ball of need about to pop.

Her energy screams at the top of its lungs. “I want to wake the whole house!” How can they sleep when they know that somewhere the Brugal is being poured, the disco lights are pulsating, the speakers are thumping, & the dance floor is full. How can they sleep?

WaLiLa’s charged energy frowns & pouts in its boredom. Her fuse is dampened. Her flame reduces to a dim glow; the dynamite doesn’t blow. On deep purple-black nights, WaLiLa’s energy kicks the walls of her insides, sulks to the corner of her chest, & slides down into a deep, defeated slump.

call malkai me fuse re-flames. me fire burn long way to club. we go in club. i excited. i holding on wrist malkai. i feel air white & thick on me skin. me eyes see sticks skinny people use to spread air thick. glow of light on end of stick make me think home. i feel burn in me nose. malkai tell me is scent: smell of rum. me heart pumps to music beat.

me fuse is burning me fuse is burning

me fuse is burning is burning is burning

sudden we on floor dance. circle malkai spin me in. feet we slide to beat. i mirror malkai mirror i. we dip, we glide, we bump, we grind. we pause…& EXPLODE! malkai wink. i turn & we go spin & spin & spin.

“I am going to buy a drink Lila, do you want one?” MalKai asked.

“Yeah, me want rum.”

“I want rum,” MalKai corrected.

“I want rum,” WaLiLa repeated & turned back to face the dance floor. WaLiLa saw MalKai’s outstretched fingers cross over her shoulder & impatiently demand her attention. She turned back around with an innocent grin. “Oh, coins you want?” she asked & gave MalKai five pesos.

As WaLiLa scanned the club with her sharp vision, she fumbled with the waist of her stockings. She still wasn’t accustomed to them. At home, they never used such trappings. As her eyes skimmed the faces of the club-goers, their identifications popped into her mind.

◊ Raul Gomez, 21, 5′6″, 150, Dominican ◊

◊ Daniel “Chino” Rodriguez, 21, 5′9″, 210, Dominican ◊

◊ Edwin “Choco” Cruz, 32, 5′4″, 116, Dominican ◊

◊ George B—◊

WaLiLa was interrupted by a sharp nudge at her elbow. She turned around, & as her eyes collided with the face of the person standing behind her, information popped into her eyescreen.

◊ Patrice Johnson, 20, 5’3″, 135, American ◊

Patrice was staring at her hands. She was about to reach out & touch WaLiLa again when she realized WaLiLa was looking at her. WaLiLa was used to such amazement. Her skin was thick & velvety soft. Almost plush, like fur. She was brown from head to toe. People would look at her & stare. The question was always on their lips. “Where are you from?” WaLiLa would always answer with the point farthest from where she happened to be. When she was in South Africa, she said Seattle, Washington. When she was in Seattle, she claimed Mongolia. When in Mongolia, she said Martinique. No one knew the difference.

Her strange beauty was compounded by a unique habit she had of flicking her arms. In the middle of walking, eating, talking, she would involuntarily move her shoulder up, followed by her upper arm, her elbow, then her wrist. Then with a small flick of her fingertips, she would change the direction, & her wrist would lead the heel of her hand, her elbow, & the rest of her arm back down again. After a couple of days in her company, people became accustomed to it & were no longer openly mesmerized by the rippling muscles & graceful arcs of those velvet arms. The motion was fascinating, but people thought it impolite to speak of it. Like a speech disorder or a wheelchair, it was “ignored,” but when people saw her shoulder rise, they discretely stepped out of the way. They knew the force, as well as the grace, of that arm.

When she looked at herself in the mirror her eyescreen inadvertently read:

◊ MiLelKo FruStaTahl WaLiLaHeRaMiNa ◊

But Patrice, having no eyescreen, simply registered her as WaLiLa Eyibe, 22, Ethiopian & friend.

“Hey Lila, what’s up? Who you here with?” Patrice was holding on to some tall, dark Dominican’s hand.

◊ Pito Reino, 23, 5′10″, 187, Dominican ◊

“MalKai I with,” she replied. “You have fun, huh?” WaLiLa smiled at Patrice, jerking her chin toward Pito.

“Si, señora.” Patrice answered.

“You no come with him,” WaLiLa said, more of a statement than a question.

“No, I’m here with C.J. & George.”

“The Haitian?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You like George, no?”

“Yeah, I did, but he’s all up in C.J.’s butt. You know how much they love her light ass here.”

“Lila, here’s your drink.” MalKai interrupted, handing WaLiLa a cuba libre. I just saw Rob, I’ll be back.”

“Now I no have dance mate,” complained WaLiLa.

“Good thing I got one right here,” smiled Patrice holding up Pito’s hand as though a trophy. “I’m not sweating all these men flocking over C.J. Tonight none of that shit matters. Where are you sitting?”

“I no sit still.”

“Look, we’re sitting over there in the corner. You can sit with us. Me & Pito are just going to get a little fresh air. Be right back.”

i back lean in chair metal. seat is soft—color of night flame & fuzzy. i look people in club. i see c.j. on dance floor with…

◊ Eduardo Roberto Capitan, 26, 5′8″, 150, Dominican ◊

sudden man short, skinny sit in next chair. he pick up rum off table & drink it.

“he-llo? this not your rum!”

“that’s not your seat,” the guy say.

i look chair down, look at man. he laugh, give me his hand.

“i’m george.”

“george, the haitian?”

man eyebrows jump. “i’m famous!” he say & laugh more. I shake him hand & lean front. i look george better.

◊ George Beuveaux, 24, 5′9″, 169, Haitian ◊

in corner of me eye i see bad letters i no want see. letters say—“Assignment.”

“you must be a friend of patrice’s.”

“i am. why you here?”

“what, in this club?”

“no, in this country,” i say.

george give me look funny.

“i’m studying medicine at the university.”

“you know dances?”

“compa, rara, boogaloo? i know many dances.”

“no,” i say with sigh big. “you know dance merengue & salsa?”

“i do,” him say & hold me his hand out again.

i smile & take hand. him take me to floor dance. we fit in space tiny in floor middle. with wink in him eye, george begin the sway. we glide back & front on salsa beat, i think what kind assignment george be. will he be many work or many play? feel like play. i smile big. i close me eyes & listen to salsero song. before leave dance floor, i wipe hand on back of neck wet george. i rub me lips on hand, lick me lips & taste wet george. hunt begin.

After that dance, WaLiLa drank nothing. She wanted no liquids to dilute the tingle of George’s sweat on her tongue. That night, she lay down in her bed & tapped her chest. She touched her finger to the tingling spot on her tongue & transferred the tingle to her chest. She offered the taste as a trail, a scent that her hunterself could use to track George to his home. She freed her hunterself & watched her fly through the slanted glass slats left open for this purpose. WaLiLa closed her eyes & passed all of her energy over to her hunterself. She felt a cool breeze on her face as her hunterself sped through the air in the direction of the sparks that matched the tingling of George’s sweat. The further away WaLiLa’s hunterself flew, the weaker WaLiLa became. Eventually, she slid into unconsciousness. Her hunterself didn’t return until morning. She came back breathless & cold. I’m sorry Lila, she motioned. I couldn’t find him. He is too far away. She settled herself into the hollow of WaLiLa’s shoulder blade. I am sorry he is too far. Too far away.

air night feel good to me shoulders naked. me & malkai dance to beat merengue. malkai spin me half circle. i can see d.j. i smile to d.j., i want to him—song nice play me. i feel hand malkai on me waist. he spin me in circle again. over shoulder malkai, me eyes see george. i close eyes slow & smile.

“he me assignment,” i whisper malkai.

“he is my assignment,” malkai correct me. “he will not be your assignment for long if you do not speak correctly.”

“what mean you?”

“what do i mean? i mean he is going to see straight through you.”

“see straight through me?” i ask. i look down & see me body. it still there. it no leave.

“no,” laugh malkai, “not literally. it is a phrase. it means he will know that you are hiding something, that you are not who you say you are.”

“you no worry on that. humans too separate. they not like people from places other, they not take time to know. they no even know people language in places other. i can say i from part different in haiti & he not know difference.”

“so you got the haitian?”

“yeah.”

we spin circle, malkai look better.

“he looks pretty easy.”

“yeah, who you assignment?”

“who is my assignment? i do not know. i have not found her yet.”

“you lucky.”

“lucky, my ass. i am ready to get the hell out of here. i only have two more jobs until i have completed my field requirements. i am going to be upset if it takes me a year to find this assignment.”

song end & we go to chairs. i feel touch soft on me shoulder, & i turn to it.

“hi, george,” i say name george for ear malkai.

“hi, walila, would you like to dance?”

i take hand george after give look & wink to malkai. on floor dance we find space empty. i fit self in arms george, he whisper in me ear,

“i like what i see.”

“and, what see you?” i smile, i like game.

“i see a beautiful woman.”

george feel me body get straight & he get confused.

“what’s wrong?” he asks.

“i am sorry, i not want to give you wrong think, but i not plan on making intimate to you.”

me hunterself say words with me. she know them by heart. we must practice them times many before. elders teach us it. they think to protect us. they not want us give assignment wrong think—assignment feel anger when discover we not them belonging. i have plan many to make intimate to george, but i not tell him. i not have to, george make me job easy.

“está bien, está bien. i can respect that. i just like the vibe i get from you. i would really like to be your friend.”

we go to bar. he buy piña colada to me & rum to him. me think it good time to get background.

WaLiLa closed her eyes for what seemed to George to be a split second. When she opened them they had changed. They were warm & glowing & their brownness seemed infinite. Staring into them, George felt the weight of life & gravity lifting off his body. His torso raised from its usual cool, suave slouch into a straight-spined, erect position. His chest cavity expanded as his heart opened valves, corridors, & veins to WaLiLa. He thought WaLiLa to be a kindred spirit, someone with a deep understanding of his inner self. He didn’t think it was the eyes. Those large probing eyes, wet with seeking, silently waiting at attention for any bit of information to come their way.

“I’m really making good friends with Patrice…” he began. & when he spoke, he almost had to check to see if the sound waves reverberating against his ear drums were actually his, for the talking took no effort. He didn’t have to send his messenger neurons scampering to his brain with the command to speak. His mouth flew open on its own. The words that passed his lips came directly from his heart. They did not pass the rigorous obstacle course through which he passed all his lines when meeting a new woman. The eyes were freeing him. In front of them, he disrobed his protective layers & spoke plainly.

“…I’ve had hundreds of women, hundreds…” WaLiLa appeared to be simply smiling & nodding her head. While her fingers were busy fiddling with her drink, WaLiLa had actually connected herself to the elders. Her eyes worked to ease George into a lulled state of consciousness. One that would allow him to open himself without fear or misgivings. George felt like he was having a spiritual experience. & he was right, he was. Standing there was not simply another soul working the room for love & sexual fulfillment. Standing there was a channel. Through WaLiLa his thoughts, his very being, was flung out into the cosmos. He was transcending his plane, transcending even WaLiLa’s plane, & communing with the elders—his ancestors—& it felt good.

“I must tell you a secret. I’m married. My wife’s in Canada. I’m under a lot of stress because I want to divorce her. I was way too young when we married…” Actually, WaLiLa was a bit more than a channel, she was a filter. She took George’s words & distilled them to their core meaning, their essence. With that essence, the elders would know exactly how to proceed. Everything George said to WaLiLa, to the cosmos through WaLiLa, could be simplified into one phrase—I am a lonely man.

“But you must not tell my friends.” With this information it would be easy for WaLiLa to get in. It would be easy for her to give the healing touch.

“george,” patrice say. “i’m bored, let’s go.”

george nod at patrice. me he turn to, “oh, walila, we’re going to ambi’s, you want to come?”

“no, money i not have.”

“that’s not a problem, i’ll pay.”

me hunterself jump up & down, do it, do it, do it.

“no, thank you,” i say. you must learn patience, i think to me hunterself. “i go with people i come with.”

“well,” george say, he look me body up & down with he eyes. “maybe next time.”

i smile, nod me head, & turn away. few seconds later i feel he hands on me waist & he lips close with me ear, “may i call you sometime, i’ll get your number from patrice.”

“yes.” inside me hunterself scream loud loud, yeeesssss. like i say, i think to me hunterself, patience. you must learn patience.

i stand there & watch them walk far. me hunterself dance mix wild of jig & salsa to celebration for me win. malkai shake me out me trance. his arms circle wild like wings huge. his anger make him not hold them.

“walilaheramina, what is wrong with you?!? why did you not go with them? why are you dragging this out?”

“you no ask why i drag this out. i ask why you in me assignment.”

“lila, you know i am always listening, & you know the elders are tuned in too. what will they think?”

“i no care what they think. they no have to lose life if they get wrong assignment. i only here weeks two, i want know he believe.”

“it is ‘two weeks,’ not ‘weeks two’ an—…”

“why you make joke of me talk every time.”

“walila, i am not making fun of your talking, i am just trying to correct you. if you took the time to learn how to speak properly, I would not have to bother you so much.”

“i hate words. they too many, too many—how is word to not have choice?”

“limited?”

“si, oui, yes, limited. i not can explain me in words. words make me eyes want to cry. i want to talk like i talk.”

“it is too dangerous walila, too many people are looking.”

“but you know true what i say, yes? when i have assignment in australia with people black, they no have word for ‘time.’ when i have assignment in canada, they no have word for ‘saudade.’ here, they no have word for ‘chillin.’ words no good. words too small.”

malkai look me with no care. more hard me try.

“i want talk feeling. i want talk things inside. love fill body. joy come toe bottom to head top. & hurt, hurt sting to finger end, & it jump in belly. words not story give. words fill only mouth. words not enough. i not want hear you say i talk bad.”

“o.k. walila, all i am saying is when you are lucky enough to find your assignment in the first month, you need to take advantage of it. if you keep prolonging jobs, you will be in the field forever.”

“you keep tell me to take time & learn language good. time same you want me hurry & finish job. it not so easy. i not want die.”

“die? you are so morbid. why are you always talking about dying. it is easy, you just follow the elders. they give you an assignment, you get the nectar, & you move on to your next assignment.”

“oh yeah? that not happen to ralinwa in london. if it so easy, tell me why ralinwa not in field now.”

“ralinwa was not thinking. her assignment had green blood. she should have known, if the assignment has green blood it usually means the nectar is bad.”

“and if she no know blood green?”

“she should look it up in the book.”

“malkai, book old… and elders use rules old still. book not always know. if parents not say blood green, it not be record. today it not simple so.”

malkai look at me & shake he head. he arms no circle so wild, but they move more still.

“malkai, you make like it all fault ralinwa, but what you say to indrasha or norkori or lorsenkipé? they assignments not have blood green. problem not is blood. is world new. different all is. we must see…”

i no take more. i no use words more. i no want speak of me people with words. i feeling me muscles move & me shoulder go up & bring flick arm. malkai first stand with no noise. then he turn & walk away. but i no see him leave. i letting me back arch into me familiar talk. i circle me foot on floor, then let me body dip into only talking i trust.

WaLiLa climbed into George’s jeep.

“I bet you didn’t think I’d call,” George said, kissing her quickly on the cheek.

“I not thinking you call day next,” WaLiLa teased. “Where you go me?”

“To dinner,” George said and grinned.

As George drove WaLiLa down the highway, the lights of the city disappeared. She felt the night had swallowed her whole. Night was usually a source of comfort for WaLiLa, but tonight it was full of uncertainty. MalKai did not like to think about it, but something powerful had destroyed RaLinWa… & hurt InDraSha, NorKoRi, & LorSenKiPé. MalKai did not like to think of RaLinWa’s twisted body shrouded in the grey strands of salve. Did not like to think of the elders’ futile attempts to restore the luster to InDraSha’s skin, NorKoRi’s eyes, & LorSenKiPé’s smile. But WaLiLa thought about it constantly. She often saw RaLinWa’s bony finger, frozen in its feeble attempt to lift in conversation. All the wounded had now was words. Even though they had returned home, InDraSha, NorKoRi, & LorSenKiPé couldn’t practice the body speak. They had no energy to raise their shoulders in greeting. They could not muster the strength to throw an arm flick with attitude. They lay weak & shriveled, deteriorating because of the poisonous nectar they took in from non-believers. i could be just like them after George, WaLiLa thought as she & George were driving deeper & deeper down night’s throat, further & further away from the lights of the city.

When George finally turned off the road into a driveway, WaLiLa was weak with apprehension. She slid out of her seat and looked at the huge house rising in front of her.

“Here dinner?” she asked.

“Yeah, I cooked,” George said with a wink.

WaLiLa felt a soft touch at her back. She turned & noticed a brown flutter flitting through the air. Instead of following George into the house, she followed the brown flutter around the side of the house. It flew onto the back porch where it landed on a white wall. WaLiLa crept onto the porch and stared at it intensely.

George opened the back door and stepped out onto the porch. He opened his mouth to ask WaLiLa what she was doing outside when he noticed her staring at a furry moth on the wall. The moth held no fascination for him; his eyes were drawn to WaLiLa’s face. She & the moth shared an unspoken kinship. Their brown bodies flitted as the moth escaped & WaLiLa shifted away from George’s stare.

WaLiLa followed the moth into the house where it settled onto a multicolored tapestry that was thrown over the back of a sofa. She knew the moth was the signal that the elders wanted her to strike. Sadness washed over her. George felt her sadness & responded as though she had spoken.

“I know how you feel,” he slowly uttered, reaching out as though to touch WaLiLa’s back. “It…it is so beautiful, that you want to touch it.” Then he drew his hand back as if to stop it from acting on its own, “but you are scared that if you do, it will fly away.”

i lay in circle on floor george. videos of music from france, canada, & haiti he show me before mix in me mind. i try not think on home. i know elders not like. ayy, lila, they say moving their shoulders rapidly in unison, you always do it the hard way. why tempt your emotions? you always have to be in control don’t you? why don’t you just complete your assignment & leave? when you are done working the field, you will find your love here, at home. i go sleep with remembering voice george…

“can i hold you?”

i remember how jump me heart. i no answer, but i go close to him & lay in he body shape. i watch video. he watch me. time whole i thinking: do you believe? do you believe? me eyeskin tight slide on me eyeballs when feeling lips on me cheek, me neck. it almost too hard make stop george, but i keep control. i push he face off, but stay in he arm circle. he fingers on me face, me waist, me hips. yes. i like. he sleep, me head in he lap. i calling him. he no hear me. i sit up, he wake up. he no sleep until…until…until i put me head back in he lap.

moth the elders send fly in room all night. i not see signal. i too busy feeling.

WaLiLa watched George walk back over to where she was sitting & couldn’t help but think “what if?” what if i don’t have to go back? what if i could stay with my assignments? Her work in the field never allowed her to go past these first tender moments. She was an expert at the chase. Knew the rushing sensations of the first dates well, but what happened then? What did two months feel like? Three, four? The elders kept promising she would know the feeling when she got home, after the fieldwork. But what if they never took her off fieldwork? Some of the best were still in the field on extended assignments. WaLiLa knew the same thing could happen to her. George broke into her thoughts asking,

“Do you realize we’ve seen each other every day this week?”

WaLiLa shook her head, yes.

“Do you realize how much I like you?”

Silence.

“I know, I know. I have to stop thinking like this, but I need to know how you feel about me.”

“It no matter how I feel. I no stay with you. I leave soon.”

“You will leave with Patrice & the other Americans?”

“I no same like Patrice & the other Americans.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Just tell me how you feel about me.”

She kept silent. It always came to this. A demand, a need to know that the tenderness in the air was reciprocal. Still, she would not speak. She preferred to focus on enjoying the tingly feelings. She couldn’t expose the real pleasure she felt in spending time with her assignments. Not to them. Not to the elders. Not even to herself.

He brought her home in silence. When they reached her house, WaLiLa stepped out of the jeep slowly & waved goodnight.

“WaLiLa!” Her name sounded like it was ripped from his throat. “Would you…could you come over tonight?”

i run in house & get clothes & things. i no want contact elders, but i not can complete assignment with not talk with them. i get on knees & pull me hunterself out to get on knees too. me shoulder raise. i start with arm flick. the circle of life is beginning to strain. i curve me elbows & i make circle with me arms. they who do not believe in you, my elders, are winning. i push me arms tight to me side. i know you feel i am willful and disobedient. i chop down with final move. but i am afraid. i move arms quick in air around me body. the non-believers hope to exist and progress without feeding their predecessors. i brush me fingers from me belly to the floor. this desire is powerful, so powerful it seeps into the nectar and destroys the cycle. i bend back from me waist & lift me chest up to sky. this you know, but you don’t know how it feels to look into the eyes of the non-believers. i raise me arms & shake me fingers hard. they can kill. i move me arms in angle to behind me. my behavior does not ensure that george or any assignment is a believer. i sway me body from side to side. but i must follow my instincts. they tell me to get as close as possible so that i might feel what they feel. i roll my head around on my neck. you who are wise, please accept my apology. i touch me forehead to ground in front of me, close me eyes, & move me prayer to Ancestor First. i get me bag & me hunterself & run out door.

When they got to George’s house WaLiLa’s eyes were so heavy with sleep, she could not keep them open. She knew the elders were trying to lull her into a state of unconsciousness to stop her from completing the assignment her way. She sat on the sofa & tried to appear lucid.

“WaLiLa, I’m going upstairs to take a shower, okay?”

WaLiLa nodded. As she heard the faint splash of water dripping on George’s body, WaLiLa slid off the sofa & fell into a deep sleep on the carpet. George returned to find WaLiLa curled on the floor. He watched her torso’s silent heaving motions. He examined her unguarded face softened by sleep. Sitting next to her, he caressed her sleeping body with his eyes. Laying with his back to her, he took deep stabilizing breaths & touched WaLiLa over & over in his mind. His cautious breathing woke her up. It was so careful & so loud. It was slowly passing its tongue over her ear. Come to me, it said. Wake up & hold me, it said. Come, I want you. Then the insistent breathing gave way to mumbling. The mumbling evolved into words. The words were asking if he could put his arms around her.

“Yes,” she murmured through her veil of sleep.

He wrapped his arms around her, & a current blazed through her, zinging her awake. He started mumbling her name again & pulled her closer. She ignored his call, acted as though she couldn’t hear.

“WaLiLa,” he said more urgently.

“Hmmm?” she whispered.

“Lila,” he called.

She turned over to face him. His face showed all the torturous emotions that were shooting through his body. WaLiLa knew it was time. Well, she looked up at the elders, I gather the nectar my own way. WaLiLa closed her eyes & kissed him. That one kiss, a simple touch of the lips opened a floodwall of actions & emotions. Tongues passed through the barriers of lips, clothing parted & lay rumpled on the floor. As their hips grinded to their own beat, WaLiLa remembered defending herself to the council of elders. Everybody has had to do fieldwork from the beginning of time, they said. Why, they wanted to know, why did she have to be so difficult? Why couldn’t she just do it the old way & get the nectar while he slept? It didn’t matter to them that nectar gathering was a richer & more fulfilling experience during lovemaking. The nectar that seeped through the skin during sleep was thin, almost translucent. But when she gathered nectar while the flower was open, its essence was so powerful, it almost knocked her unconscious.

She pushed the council of elders out of her mind & extended her arms as wide as she could. To George, it looked like she was unfurling large wings, like those of a moth. He dismissed the thought, crediting the delusion to his happiness. She enfolded him in her wings & pulled in all of the energy, sweat, & fluids he released to her. His surrender released the potent nectar WaLiLa had been sent to Earth to obtain. She and hundreds of other fieldworkers spent the majority of their youth learning tactics and techniques to persuade humans to part with it. This nectar runs the veins with the blood and exits the pores with the sweat. It is active in saliva and tears, but humans hadn’t even begun to discover the nectar’s existence. No human language even had a word for it. In WaLiLa’s language, it was signified by a slow fluid motion from the head to the heart. The nectar of a believer could incite a shock in the body ten times as powerful as the adrenaline rush of an orgasm. But the nectar of a non-believer could freeze all life within the body starting with the slow petrification of the bones. It may be blood that sustains human life, but it is the potent nectar that ensures the continuation of the life cycle.

George and WaLiLa lay quiet. WaLiLa wiggled her fingers & toes, & smiled. She was still alive—George believed! He believed in the ancestors, and this belief begat a new cycle of life. George felt a warm glow in the base of his belly. At this moment, he knew he was complete. He did not know about the healing touch. He smiled thinking he had found his better half in WaLiLa. With her, he thought, I can be whole. He did not know that this feeling was his. In exchange for his belief, WaLiLa had passed this completeness to him through his navel from the center of her being. He now owned this feeling, & tomorrow, when he called his mother, he would call her as a complete being, not expecting the successes of his life to be dependent upon her. Next week when his medical project failed, he would fail as a complete being, not granting his failure to his thesis partner. And next month when he found a lover, he would come to her whole, expecting not fulfillment, but love. WaLiLa had given George back to himself. Absolved him from guilt & pettiness. Freed him to really be. George closed his eyes & began to drift off into sleep when he felt WaLiLa shift underneath him.

“What?” he murmured.

“I… I must go,” WaLiLa stammered. “Out I must go. I need have air fresh.”

“Now?” George asked worried.

“Yes.” WaLiLa wiped moisture from her eyes.

At George’s insistence, they walked outside together under the canopy of the cluttered night sky. His concern for her safety made WaLiLa smile. Full with the moon & star constellations, the sky was calling her. WaLiLa knew her time was up, but she felt her connection to George still tugging at her hips. She glanced at him. He was walking slowly with his head thrown back, caught under the sky’s spell. WaLiLa lowered her head and wondered how George would react to her departure. He won’t remember, she consoled herself, and concentrated on how it felt to be with him.

As their feet propelled them forward, they began to discuss stars & spirits & where it was exactly that the ancestors dwelled. Whoosh—a moth fluttered between them. George caught an anguished look on WaLiLa’s face. Two more moths flew by & took George’s attention. Soon a steady stream of moths were flying between them. So taken was he with this miracle of nature, he did not notice that WaLiLa had stopped walking.

George turned to utter some phrase of amazement, and found that WaLiLa was not there. He looked back and saw her, standing in the misty night air with her eyes closed, her body eerily still. The moths were attaching themselves to her body, softly and gently. Her hands were open, palms tilted upward in a gesture of acceptance. George ran to her and began to frantically brush the moths off her body. But as he removed one, two more would replace it, until WaLiLa’s body was completely covered. He could no longer see his hands. George’s fingers were shaking in disbelief. The moths!

Staring at WaLiLa’s moth-clad body, George shook his hands free of moths. WaLiLa’s arms floated upward, and in a graceful motion, began performing some kind of entranced dance; her body began to sway. In moments, George could see the flapping of one, two, then thousands of moth wings. Eventually, they took flight, leaving George stooped in the middle of the street, alone except for a pile of moth’s wings marking the place where WaLiLa had been standing.

MalKai’s Last Seduction

“the most powerful seductions are executed against the silence of few words”

Sometimes, I feel

shoulder shrug

like a motherless child.

cheek rub against shoulder

Sometimes, I feel

like a motherless child.

body slump

At twilight, when the earth is settling down for rest, MalKai is turning over inside. The colors of dusk pierce him like a rusty pin breaking skin. Yellow gets him in the gut. Auggghhh. It is the color of his home skies. Orange knocks him in the temple. Hhhhhhh. It is the color of his soil. Rose pushes against his heart. It is, like here, the color of love. MalKai’s spirit groans with aching for home. Nothing can soothe him. He spends his hours speaking the words. He has little use for human languages, but he feels the moan, he understands the feeling she sings about. The wail in that woman’s voice wraps itself around his loneliness and strokes his painful yearning to be among his people. He spends hours speaking the words, but in his own language: shoulder shrug, cheek rub against shoulder, body slump.

The buzzing that had settled in Cori’s ears over the past couple of days was MalKai coming to get him. When the first “zzzzzz” licked his ear drums, Cori had swatted at the air around his newly-pierced ear lobes. A meddlesome mosquito—he imagined—hovering near. He made repeated attempts to shoo it away, but his arms soon grew tired. His shoulder ached from throwing his biceps into repeated attack arcs. His fist grew bored of finding no tender little bug crushed in its grasp. Eventually he shrugged his shoulders and rescinded the attack.

Like any constant noise will, the buzzing eventually disappeared from Cori’s consciousness. Seeing MalKai’s frame draped in a relaxed stance at the base of a huge sycamore brought the “zzzzzz” back into Cori’s awareness. The sound reconstructed itself gradually, like the pieces of a forgotten dream slowly becoming crystal clear. Cori didn’t connect MalKai with the buzzing. He peeked at MalKai’s body out of the corner of his eyes while biting at his lower lip. What Cori discerned through the thick of his lashes was a mass of pulsating energy. Cori felt it radiating from MalKai in waves. It buzzed around MalKai’s form, building a composite of legs, arms, and wings. Wings? Cori flipped his head quickly to face MalKai as though to catch a culprit in the act of thievery. All he saw was MalKai’s brown body swaying back and forth in slow motion like a heavy fruit ready to drop to the earth. No wings. Cori dismissed his vision as a hallucination induced by the sun’s glare. He lifted his hand to his forehead and brought much needed shade to his eyes.

When Cori walked past MalKai, the buzzing exploded in his eardrums with a boom. Cori stopped short. The hair on the back of his legs felt like it was on fire. In the pit of his belly a million atoms danced a nervous rumba. His heart threw itself into convulsions, but he couldn’t look back. He felt if he looked back the zzzzzz would take over his brain and push him into insanity. He put his thumb between his lips, gnawed on his skin, and begged for his legs to unlock so he could walk away.

The noise now had a source: MalKai (a mosquito he was not).

Though MalKai’s skin might have felt like the brush of a thousand humming wings, it sheathed a strong solid body that could not be crushed with a smack. MalKai’s mouth was used for sucking, but not for sucking blood. The tongue housed in MalKai’s mouth was flat and thick and warm, quite contrary to the mosquito’s hollow tube. And the swell of a mosquito bite?—Negligent when compared to the swelling of the soul triggered by contact with MalKai’s lips.

The soft brush of something against Cori’s skin roused him from his frozen stance. It wasn’t a mosquito that had been flying around Cori’s ears, as he had first imagined; it was a moth. Cori automatically responded to the moth’s flirtatious touch with a shoulder jerk and an ear swat. MalKai, who had been morosely passing time under the sycamore’s shade, straightened and focused when his eyes registered Cori’s motions. Those involuntary movements spoke volumes to MalKai; in MalKai’s language, Cori had just whispered come on in.

Cori had no way of imagining a velvet people who spoke through balletic motions and muscle spasms, arced arms and bent necks. A nation that consisted of beings who were physically similar to humans but biologically distinct. A people who thrived on human nectar.

MalKai did not wait for the ancestors to confirm that he had found his last seduction. When Cori’s motions fully saturated MalKai’s consciousness, his hands flew through the air in a gesture of relief. That he had some nectar to collect before he could return home, seemed a mere formality. MalKai had plans, plans that did not include a lengthy chase. Under the crushing pressure of his homesickness he made no provision for elongated discussions that could discern the safety of his assignment. He did not care to proceed carefully. By whatever renegade tactics he had to employ, MalKai was getting the nectar he came for, completing his last assignment, and going home.

Now.

Cori began the seduction. Only he did it in ignorance. Didn’t understand he was parading his openness when he turned to face MalKai and offered up a weak, uncertain smile. Didn’t realize he was making it easy for his seducer when he sat quietly under the shade of the next tree (an oak), close enough to make pursuit unnecessary. Was too ignorant to know it was on when MalKai appeared in front of him with a huge grin plastered across that velvet face. The grin should have told Cori something. It was all teeth, without calculation or hesitation.

There was no shame either.

It was MalKai whose voice rode the wind first. Cori’s tongue appeared at the corner of his mouth to wet his lips in nervous preparation. He looked over his shoulder, scanning the area that surrounded the oak tree. His search for intruding eyes revealed his anxiety, but it was an unnecessary revelation. His anxiety was visible, he was suffocating in it, and his worried eyes were pounding out an S.O.S. on MalKai’s face. Those paranoid gestures were like spoken confessions. MalKai kneeled and skimmed his fingers over the back of Cori’s hand. Cori glanced up in confusion and found himself caught in MalKai’s brown eyes.

The buzzing stopped.

Cori could no longer feel the breeze. MalKai flipped Cori’s hand over and traced a slow circle on the skin of Cori’s palm. When MalKai pushed on Cori’s palm, Cori felt something wrap around him and squeeze out his secrets. He found himself releasing thoughts that had never before crossed his lips. Then somewhere, a little girl screamed, her mother cursed, and Cori blinked. With that blink Cori regained something like consciousness and jerked away. Heart first, then hand flying away from its resting place in MalKai’s firm grasp. Cori looked down at his hand, eyes clouded with disbelief. He could almost make out a trail of wildfire where the kiss of MalKai’s finger had seared his flesh.

Something inside him cringed.

The second his hand was free, Cori’s mind started buzzing. His mind buzzed all the way through chatty introductions, appraising glances, and MalKai’s smooth descent into a seated position beside him. The buzzing of Cori’s mind was nothing like the buzzing that MalKai had sent to sit in Cori’s ears. Cori’s buzzing was visual. It was composed of images of large square men tottering on tiny angular spiked heels. A television clip of a pedophilic priest and jagged pages from porno magazines displasying studs in ripped overalls.

No, Cori’s buzzing was not at all like MalKai’s.

The blood vessels in Cori’s hands were so strained he felt they would burst. He stared at his shaking palm, and his fluttering life line gave way to images of his and his cousin’s blurred bodies as his cousin chased him though his adult-empty house, of their nude bodies pressing together in his parents’ big empty bed, of their tingling bodies working together to achieve that sweet, sweet release. MalKai’s fingers crossed Cori’s fluttering life line and obliterated Cori’s memories. I did not come to earth to encourage the reminiscing of reluctant assignments, his fingers insisted.

In this last seduction MalKai was tugging on needs Cori didn’t know existed and answering questions Cori didn’t ask. He was leading Cori down an invisible orchid-lined path, heavy with the scent of déjà vu and lust.

Amidst the heady chain of events, Cori’s mind had become a blackboard upon which complex theorems were frantically being worked out. Spurred by velvet touches and hinging on fear, Cori nervously built the type of mathematical sentences he had learned could prove any geometric fact. “If someone sees me, then the whole world will perceive me as abnormal.” “If I do this, then everything I have done up until this day will be called into question.” “If I enjoy this interaction, then what am I?”

The chalk snapped in Cori’s mind and left him solutionless. Math abandoned, Cori offered a shaky-fingered reply to MalKai’s advances. Their hands began to dance. First teasing palm-stroking with fingers, then fingertips rubbing against each other. MalKai’s fingers were no longer alone in their advances. Cori’s fingers ceased their trembling. Both hands mirrored the intimate joining of lovers. The undulations of their hands fascinated Cori. He sighed in wonder at how such simple movements could shake him to his core.

MalKai’s fingers soon grew tired of palm stroking. They began to wander to Cori’s wrist, up his arm to Cori’s shoulder, and to the nape of his neck. They lingered there for a second. Long enough for MalKai to contemplate the next move…

…and also for Cori to contemplate his. Cori wanted to believe the dancing hands were the climax of this daring adventure. Thought that hand-fucking with a total stranger was risqué enough to merit a life-long memory. He didn’t realize that the film had just started, the theme music was playing, the opening credits were rolling, and he was the leading lady. Anyone peeping from afar, watching the seduction play out as if on the silver screen, knew where Cori would be in scene two:

Naked, fingers in mouth, chest heaving, lips moist from nervous licking, lowered eyes, staccato breath, belly trembling, body spread across bedsheets… or grass… flared nostrils.

Cori kept replaying how he had gotten to this point. How was it that he had landed under an oak tree in the web of a velvety hand-fucker whose motions, intent on turning him out in plain view of the entire world, had him pressing through the fly of his new silk boxers. Cori’s eyes closed involuntarily when he felt MalKai’s hand on his chest. A muscle he didn’t know existed, twitched in his groin. His ears were burning with embarrassment. Could anyone see him?

The seducer stares ahead toward the end of the road, with his head cocked at a devious angle, calculating how long it will take to get there. The seduced looks behind at the beginning of the road and, with his brow creased in concern, wonders how it slipped so far away. Cori’s entire life, it could be argued, was an attempt to avoid any event such as this one. For years, he discretely avoided eye contact with men who wore their privacy in public like an expensive coat of chinchilla. Didn’t want to rub shoulders with those who stood outside their closets, for fear of contamination. Purposely refused his hand’s desire to linger on the shoulder of an especially intriguing friend. Newspaper clips announcing trysts in the park left a bitter taste in his mouth. That he could be so caught up as to release control out in the open and let down his guard unnerved him.

This was a propless seduction. There was no sensual wailing floating in the air, no liquid intoxicant on ice, and no satin sheets beneath Cori’s back. In fact there was nothing Cori could blame his transgression on. He was resting against the dirty bark of an old tree atop a hill covered with dying grass. Nothing short of a miracle could have brought Cori to this point—and the miracle was a touch so utterly sensual, an understanding so undeniably sexual, that it could not be ignored. Every refusal Cori had forced his body to accept in the past decade, delivered him here—a willing participant—in MalKai’s lap. Each little impulse he had previously suppressed quietly collected itself into an explosive mass, and now, two clasped palms had coaxed the explosion.

If there were a movie camera hovering somewhere in the skies, as Cori imagined there must be at this seminal point in his life, it would close in on the oak tree that sheltered the seduction. From a great distance, it would reveal the green silhouette before swooping through twisted, leafy branches to reveal Cori and MalKai’s heated embrace at the tree’s base. The camera would then pan over MalKai’s shoulder to reveal a brown moth resting on the tree bark and close in on the moth’s wings as it fluttered by, tickling the kissers and rousing them from their soul sucking.

The battle within Cori had been won. The mutiny was complete. Now, Cori had forgotten there had been any dissent, submitted completely to the lips that had devoured his fear, his indecision, his revulsion—and he couldn’t wait. Cori couldn’t wait to break down barriers and go where he had never gone before. To bring shame upon his family. To participate in an act he would never verbalize to anyone. To create a memory to file next to his afternoon pleasure trips with his cousin. Only this time, it could not be excused by age. Only this time, there would be no aunt to say, “Don’t worry, they’re just little boys.” There would only be condemning eyes and accusing fingers.

And hate.

Arms encircled and crushed solitude from Cori’s lonely body. Lips soothed, and pushed tenderness through his teeth, down his throat. Hands left a trail of shivers along his passion-warmed skin. Cori had often found peace—or at least momentary joy—crushing some woman in his embrace. But he had never been crushed. Nor had he been seduced. Cori had never been the one with thoughts of escape up until the last moment.

Yet here he lay, under the boughs of an oak, ready to agree to anything this thick-fingered stranger suggested. A dog squeezed out a marathon of barks without stopping for breath. A painfully sweet bursting feeling split through Cori’s chest. His cells wanted to know the contours and textures of MalKai’s velvet skin, but his mind launched one last protest. He stood with his toes hanging off the brink of discovery and felt the intense desire to shuffle backward to a safer spot. His will faltered: did he really want to uncover the secrets he was coaxing out of hiding? Certainly he could live life without knowing what it’s like to be fucked under an oak tree by a velvet stranger. He took one more glance back to that point at the beginning of the road, but it was too late to turn back. This was happening now.

Mid-seduction.

This is the now, Cori, and those are lips inching up the back of your neck. This is the now, and you don’t know the owner of those lips, you’ve just met him under this tree. You can’t take him home to meet your family or to your apartment to help you paint your walls. You don’t even know if you will see him again.

Ignoring his fresh whispers of doubt, Cori bravely turned his face to MalKai’s and opened himself under the caress of the breeze and the watchful eyes of the skies. It was all-consuming curiosity that made Cori unbutton the top of his shirt. It was vanity that made him think of all the women who had ever loved him. It was pride that made him consider how shocked they would be to find him here—half naked, crushed in a strange man’s embrace.

All philosophy went out of the door when MalKai attacked Cori’s lips with a finality that shook Cori to his bones. MalKai pressed his body against Cori’s. Cori’s eyes rolled back in their sockets, and his shoulders dropped into relaxation. He boldly began a grind that signaled he had left all questions and doubts behind—or at least swallowed them, so that they might resurface at a less critical time.

When Cori opened his eyes he was startled to find himself reclining on one of the wide branches of the oak tree. His eyes felt heavy like they did when sleep had a powerful hold upon him. His mind was as jumbled and confused as it was whenever he was abruptly disturbed in the middle of an intense dream. He saw what looked like large moth wings folding down into MalKai’s back. Under the intensity of the moment he could not focus on supernatural visions.

MalKai’s lips on Cori’s open thighs were too distracting.

The birds must have been shocked: Cori and MalKai’s bare backs writhed and undulated as the sensations traveled up and down their spines. The squirrels must have been pissed: Cori and MalKai jerked like epileptics, shaking the branch and disturbing the tree’s peace. The ancestors must have nodded knowingly. Though muscles cramped and body parts twisted, pain was not felt. Not until the dam broke and the waterfall flowed.

One of the last visions that burned in Cori’s retina that day was the golden glow radiating from MalKai’s body. If he hadn’t just had his mind blown, Cori would have noticed that the glow was most intense where MalKai’s lips touched his skin. If he hadn’t been reclining on a branch twelve feet in the air, he might have realized that the glow was coming from him and that MalKai was drawing it out of his body. He might even have concluded that the entire love dance had been executed to render him so full and so yielding as to make MalKai’s nectar-collecting possible.

But Cori’s feet were not firmly on the ground, and his mind was far from its clearest state. Tracing the path of an after-sex glow was not at the height of Cori’s priorities. Instead he confused the glow of his own nectar with the setting sun and squinted in its glare. Through the slits of his half-closed eyes, Cori saw MalKai throw his head back and the moth from the tree land softly on MalKai’s lips. Cori slowly reached out a shaking hand to brush it away. Then as if on cue, hundreds of moths attached themselves to MalKai’s body. Sure that his eyes were tricking him, Cori rubbed them with a sweat-soaked hand. When the moths began to flap their wings, Cori stuttered some phrase of incomprehension. The moths took off with MalKai’s body, and Cori drew in a deep breath of disbelief. Overcome, he rested his throbbing head back and closed his eyes in exhaustion.

When Cori woke, it was night. He opened his eyes, and saw darkness; then his eyes dilated into focus, and he began to discern the cocoa brown ridges of bark. As Cori’s mind raced to orient his body to his surroundings, his eyes flitted around seeking something familiar to grab on to. His body welcomed him back into consciousness with the tingling sensations of a painful resting place; his skin greeted him with the gritty roughness of dirt. Cori sighed. His chest was tender where the bark of the tree had rubbed against it. As he turned his head upward, to the sky, his nose brushed the base of the tree and his ear separated from the earth packed around the tree’s roots. Cori sat up and supported his weight with a trembling arm.

The moon was low that night, low and heavy. The fingers on Cori’s left hand itched to touch it. With his hand outstretched and his arm fully extended, Cori felt a memory tug at his gut. He didn’t remember MalKai, but he remembered a feeling. He thought of his mother, but the minute she appeared in his mind, so did ten other women. He could not hold his mother in his mind without simultaneously thinking of his grandmother, his best friend’s mother, and that crazy woman who sat on the corner selling religious papers. It was as if the singular had been erased from Cori’s mind. His thoughts could no longer focus on individuals; he could only focus on groups. He couldn’t remember his job, his vendettas, or his debts. He couldn’t remember his closet either. Nations of communities had set up camp in Cori’s mind, and he began to work connections and create links between them.

He lowered his head in exhaustion. A night breeze blew past him, and his skin rose with goose bumps. He looked down and realized he was naked except for a pile of moth’s wings resting in his lap.

Cori cursed softly.

At Life’s Limits

There are places human beings know nothing about. Beneath infinity’s umbrella, among the flaming gases of the stars are unimaginable beings. Cocooned and comatose, they float, silently awaiting their next assignments. WaLiLa is among them. Her body hums with a bone-drenching sense of peace. Light suddenly suffuses her cocoon with a bright glow. Her journey is activated when energy pierces her skin and lodges in her being-center, her message-center, and her vision-centers. Flashing like shooting stars, the layers of her cocoon peel back and burn slowly until disintegrated. An organic tunnel collects its walls around her. The tunnel tilts itself downward, coaxing her body into motion. Soon she is slipping down, down, down, through places humans don’t know about, into the human realm.

1.

Musicians, practicing an age-old tradition, scatter syncopated rhythms across the night sky. Through rapid hand movements and homemade instruments, they pay homage to fierce gods. The music tattoos the sky’s surface with patterns of prayer, patterns that transform themselves into welcome mats for beings in realms the musicians have no knowledge of. One such welcome mat beckons to WaLiLa’s tunnel. The tunnel dips and glides, then aligns itself with the musicians’ tones. Her body plummets, tumbling along the tunnel’s path as it shoots through space. Occasionally, she bumps the small of her back, her knees, or her toes against the tunnel’s pliant walls.

When the tunnel breaks into Earth’s atmosphere, it contracts, jostling WaLiLa into consciousness. She discovers herself crouched in the travel position: arms bound tightly about her, folded legs pressed close against her chest. The tumbling is dizzying, but tolerable. She throws her head back and grimaces as she struggles against the forces of motion to uncurl her body. Fully extended, WaLiLa picks up speed. She pushes her arms against her sides and points her toes to streamline her body as the tunnel narrows around her.

Within seconds, the tunnel recedes and deposits her into the air. Unaided, WaLiLa tumbles into the Realm of Human Being. When her toes reach the human altitude, they gently brush against a shoulder frosted with sweat. That shoulder smoothly dips down and across, making space for WaLiLa’s nude body. She slips into the opening, gentle nudges press against all sides of her being. A sea of swaying torsos, reverent palms, and open-throated song surrounds her. A pulsating mass of people—sealed into their own individual worlds behind the cloaks of closed eyes—rubs against her body. No one notices her arrival.

WaLiLa starts to push through the crowd, searching for some place on the edge where she can analyze her surroundings. Then, with the collision of a deeply-scarred palm against a taut drum, an explosive sound breaks through the crowd. Controlling beats roll forcefully toward the people. The peaceful trance is shattered. Every face lifts and faces east. Guinée lies east. Holy Guinée.

The drumming becomes feverish. As the frenetic rhythms burst above their heads, the crowd’s swaying becomes erratic. The drumvoices soar within WaLiLa’s chest like a command from the elements. Behind her, people begin to surge forward, straining to get closer to the drummers. Questions burn in her being-center. What land is this beneath my feet? What language is this dancing in my ears? What people are these surrounding my body? Her message-center reminds her to stay alert.

WaLiLa advances, following the demand of the drums. A sudden breeze slaps her into sharp thinking. You shall soon be seen, her message-center communicates. She tugs a piece of white muslin from a woman’s shoulder and quickly wraps it around her body. She turns around, searching for an exit through the sweat-soaked crowd, but finds none. The people between her and the drums begin to part. A narrow path is cleared, and the drums rush through and grab a tight hold of her throat.

Soon she is toeing the barrier around the drummer’s circle. An arc of drummers sits before the crowd. They are all of the male sex and completely oblivious to WaLiLa’s presence. Rhythm! their hands cry, Must maintain the relentless pace of the rhythm. Between the crowd and the drummers is a circular clearing. A woman in white whirls herself in swooping spirals around the clearing’s edge.

If WaLiLa weren’t positive that the soil beneath her feet was Earth’s, she would mistake the woman’s motions as bodyspeak: her own language. It isn’t—she knows this as well as she knows the danger of her mission—but the woman’s dancing unfolds into so many familiar movements that her wrists, arms, and calves ache to join in conversation. She has long since trained her sporadic arm flicks into oblivion, but when the woman expands her chest into an open position and juts out her swinging breasts, WaLiLa feels so welcomed that her neck dips, her arms swoop up, and she loses her body to rhythmic swirling.

Through bodyspeak, WaLiLa queries the woman about their surroundings. The woman’s brain tells her this is simply a dance, a dance she performs at religious ceremonies, or rather a dance that performs her when an orisha gets a powerful hold on her. WaLiLa’s message-center registers communication—an essential gathering of information. The woman’s responses to WaLiLa’s inquiries are so eloquent and clear that WaLiLa wonders if the woman is conscious of the communicative function of her movements.

WaLiLa learns that she is on an island in the Caribbean sea. Spanish is spoken here, and Africa is remembered. There has been bondage and savage killing. Twice determined youth revolted, causing citizens to drink optimism and communism like wine. After celebrated freedom, hardship rooted itself in the island soil. Today despair is as common as clouds. The local diet is resilience. The simple pleasures of work and food float beyond the reach of the common folk. The people have been losing family members with the passing of the years. Cousins, parents, and lovers try to escape by walking into the sea, as their tar-toned ancestors had done centuries past.

WaLiLa is so deep into the conversation she barely notices the new pitch the voices around her have engaged. A different tune is being expressed, and the woman’s motions change immediately. WaLiLa slows down her conversation. The woman opens her mouth, lets out a series of shrieks, and falls to the ground. The drumming lowers to a whisper. The chanting drops to a low rumble. Three people gather around the fallen woman. They clear the charged air around her with palm fronds. An old man stops singing long enough to bark some blessings over the woman’s body and shower her with rum sprayed from the fountain of his lips. The three lift her to her feet. Once on her feet, the woman opens her eyes. They shine like dark moons beneath the rim of her white head-wrap. When her eyes make direct contact with WaLiLa’s, the woman’s identity pops into WaLiLa’s vision center.

◊ Elisa Eguitez, 51, 5′4″, 201, Cuban ◊

Then the woman’s eyes flutter closed. The dark moons are strong, decides WaLiLa. This woman will be my host.

2.

After the ceremony, Elisa walks directly to WaLiLa and asks her if she has a place to stay.

“You can stay with me, m’ija. What I’m offerin ain’t too special. I only have a small place, and I share it with my two sons, but…”

WaLiLa doesn’t question how Elisa knows she needs lodging. It has been some time since she last spoke this tongue and wants to observe more before she starts stretching sounds through her lips.

In silence, WaLiLa follows Elisa’s heavy, swaying flesh across a grassy field. Elisa stops at tree and leans over a rusty orange bicycle. She stuffs a bag full of mango and banana into a straw basket rigged to the front of the bike. Behind the seat, attached to the top of the back fender, is a plank of wood. Elisa motions for WaLiLa to sit. WaLiLa hikes up the cloth she had hastily wrapped around her body and sits. If Elisa notices WaLiLa’s shoeless feet, she says nothing. Nor does she comment on the flowers stuck to the soles of WaLiLa’s feet. With a grunt Elisa pushes the bike pedals into forward motion. After a couple of slow, strained pedal rotations, the bike takes flight. WaLiLa’s body jerks back. She spreads her arms and closes her eyes as the cool breeze rushes past her face.

During the bike ride, Elisa neither asks questions nor offers information. In the absence of chatter, a cotton-soft stillness envelops the bicycle. WaLiLa’s message-center is overcome with surprise. Serenity rarely visits in the presence of human beings. WaLiLa welcomes it as it reminds her of the deep peace of floating in a cocoon surrounded by the dark matter of space.

The quiet embrace of silence is abruptly broken when Elisa skids to a sudden stop. WaLiLa feels the imbalance instantly and slides to her feet. A thick crowd blocks the sidewalk and the street. Elisa pushes through the crowd with repeated permiso’s. WaLiLa follows. When they finally reach the front of the crowd, Elisa gasps. Her hands spread in shock; the bicycle tilts, then clatters to the ground.

“Changó!” Elisa whispers.

“What is?” asks WaLiLa as she feels her skin bend under sharp jabs of burning air. A ferocious being of concentrated heat leaps through the small courtyard in front of them. Its multiple fingers of light dance in the windows and on the roofs of the courtyard’s houses. The crowd is frozen in awe as fear spirals through the air.

“Changó!” Elisa yells a second time. The terror in her voice shoots over the crowd and bounces against eardrums that had been formed in her womb. Her children rest their buckets of water on the ground and turn to scan the crowd for their mother. When they see Elisa, they run across the courtyard, dodging neighbors, and grab a tight hold of her.

“I’m sorry, Mamá, the fire cannot be stopped.”

So this is the great being’s full fury, WaLiLa thinks as she instinctively backs away from the fire. She fixes her vision on the houses again. She watches as the little structures weakly bow and yield before the fire’s will. I have seen tales of your destructive powers, she quickly motions to the fire before returning her focus to the humans next to her. As the boys speak to their mother in soothing tones, WaLiLa examines them.

◊ Modesto Alonzo, 24, 6′1″, 160, Cuban ◊

◊ Pedro Alonzo, 38, 5′7″, 135, Cuban ◊

As Pedro’s slight body fills WaLiLa’s vision-center, the Assignment signal blinks immediately. It is the elder, WaLiLa thinks, who must provide the nectar. She crosses her arms and studies his mannerisms as he attempts to quiet his mother’s mumbling. WaLiLa can’t discern if Elisa is mumbling curses or prayers. She looks back to the fiery courtyard, watching as the fire, perhaps bored with toying with human emotions, burns down to a simmer, then finally extinguishes itself.

3.

The day after the fire, Elisa, Modesto, Pedro, and WaLiLa stand in front of Elisa’s fire-buckled front door. A smoky scent hovers in the morning air. With worried fingers, WaLiLa twists the hem of the dress Elisa’s sister-in-law loaned her. Smoke is a bad omen.

Quietly, as if arming herself for battle, Elisa clutches the colorful beads that hang from her neck and begins to pray. Surrounded by the soft light of dawn, she begs for protection and salvation. She asks Obatalá, the ancient, for his wisdom. Observing Elisa’s prayer, WaLiLa sees a world of difference between the tightly-clenched body next to her and the whirling image in white who introduced her to this island. If there is ever a time for bodyspeak, for exalting arms and passionate wrists, WaLiLa thinks, this is the time.

Elisa’s plum-black lips move mechanically, pushing out prayers without passion. The gravity of her plea is communicated by the tremble of her lower lip. After the prayer, she inhales deeply and lumbers to the door. When she twists the doorknob, the door refuses to budge. Leaning her shoulder against the crumpled piece of wood her front door has become, she uses her heft to force it open.

The first things to greet her when she crosses the threshold are concrete shards, they crackle underfoot and grind into the floor. She sinks to her knees. Her body tenses as she realizes it is the fifteen-year-old concrete head of Elegua, the watcher, shattered before her. Elisa draws in her breath sharply and wonders if Elegua’s destruction was the result of the fire or the cause of it. She drops a small prayer of apology like a rainshower from the dark clouds of her lips.

Elisa stands and leads her sons into the house. WaLiLa watches as the blackness of the house swallows their bodies. She does not enter. The sun batiks patterns of heat on her bare neck as it rises in the sky. The scent of dew resting on thick flower petals slowly drips across her face. Her being-center leaps. You have not fueled since your arrival, her message-center notes.

WaLiLa curses herself for allowing the ceremony to distract her from collecting flowers. When her fuel banks are empty, she will no longer be able to transform human air into a breathable substance. One of the ancestors’ admonitions rushes into her consciousness like a clap of thunder. WaLiLa, she imagines them motioning, you never follow the rules. Upon arrival to Earth, the first order of business is fuel-collecting. But most times motion is not married to my arrival. I come alone, in quiet night. This time I plunged into a dark sea. A dark sea not empty, but full of beings. And they gathered tightly around me. And I swam with them. She pushes her fingers against her lips and wonders how she could have forgotten.

Her message-center announces that she has five hours of fuel remaining. She slumps into a body sigh. She must separate from Elisa and her sons, locate fuel, and return once she is rejuvenated. WaLiLa approaches the threshold and peers into the dark house. Inside, nothing is left standing. Each of Elisa’s possessions has betrayed her, turned their backs on her ownership, willfully destroying form and usefulness to welcome fire’s full embrace.

Surrounded by the ravages of her life, an uneasiness settles in Elisa’s bones. She turns her back on the wreckage and clasps her fat hands on top of her head. She walks down the hall and sees the silhouette of WaLiLa’s body swaying in the doorway. She smiles bitterly at the irony of a house guest and no home. She steps to the doorway and stops when her body is a few breaths away from WaLiLa’s. The two bodies mirror each other. With the sunlight radiating behind her, WaLiLa stares into Elisa’s eyes. With the shadows of the house swirling behind her, Elisa gazes back.

“Have you ever had a fire?” Elisa asks WaLiLa.

WaLiLa shakes her head no. Hot fingers of light do not exist on her planet. Here on Earth she has been fascinated by the little fires that heat human fuel and light dark spaces, but they are nothing like the fire she experienced last night. Smoke, too, is a stranger to her systems. A toxic intruder, it creeps into the being-center and fans out through the body, triggering malfunctions of thought and action.

“I can’t…” Elisa starts to speak. She looks up at the sky with a wrinkled brow, then fixes her glance on WaLiLa. “I can’t continue. Would you go in and see if there’s anything salvageable in there?”

WaLiLa’s belly shoots arrows of warning through her body while her message-center reminds her that Elisa is her bridge to Pedro. Her message-center also reviews the Human Decency Laws, which dictate that by accepting Elisa’s offer of shelter, she has placed herself in Elisa’s debt. Human codes state that WaLiLa owes Elisa gratitude in the form of courtesy or kindness.

Against her belly’s urgings, she turns and clears a passageway for Elisa to squeeze out of the narrow door frame. They pass each other as WaLiLa enters the house. As the sunlight recedes, she rotates her shoulders back and forth—each two shoulder movements a small prayer engaged to shake off the doom pressing against her scalp.

In every room she sees nothing but unrecognizable pieces of black. Then she reaches the back of the house. There she finds the only intact door inside the destroyed home. She turns the doorknob, and the door swings open with surprising ease. Two mice scurry out of the room, racing over her feet and disappearing into the ruins. She opens the door wider, and a bird swoops out. The bird is followed by a river of roaches streaming past WaLiLa’s legs. After the roach exodus is complete, she pauses, waiting for more creatures to flee. When none do, she enters the room.

The room’s air is cool, and it rolls over her silently. She senses that this is Elisa’s room—not her bedroom, but her prayer room. Above, a low white ceiling hangs solid and certain. The walls are plastered with scraps of paper filled with the markings of human speech. The floor is covered with mounds of objects. Each mound is a strange collection of items organized by a theme unknown to WaLiLa.

WaLiLa stoops to the ground and looks around. The mound directly in front of her consists of a jar of honey, an orange silk butterfly, a necklace of yellow flowers, old gold coins, and a pile of five oranges. The pile to her right has blue ribbons, three crystal glasses of water, silver rings, a doll in a frilly blue dress, a miniature ship with many sails, and a lace doily. The room bursts with ceramics, keepsakes, fruit, flour, flowers, water, wine, money, metal, nuts, coins, beads, shells, silk.

She leans back on her haunches as she takes in all the items that surround her. She focuses on a photograph of a smiling, young-looking Elisa holding hands with a beaming, sienna-colored man. Written on the back is “La Habana, 1973.” Next to it, under a crystal glass of water, rests another photograph of the same man. He stands knee-deep in the sea, his left hand resting on the corner of a handmade raft, the right one lifted in a melancholy salute. Written on the back is “Para Miami, May 1985.” Behind the glass of water, a small bundle wrapped in white silk waits. WaLiLa picks it up and hears the soft clink of metal. She gently unwraps it and discovers two plain rings. Inscribed inside the rings is the phrase “Elisa y Gigaldo, para siempre.”

WaLiLa reties the bundle and puts it back behind the glass of water. She stands and carefully steps to the center of the room. She takes a deep breath, and the unmistakable scent of fuel sinks into her body. Suddenly conscious of the energy pulsating through the items in the room, her hands begin to tremble. Not a flower has been singed, nor a fruit shriveled. She looks around and realizes most of the mounds are adorned with fresh flowers. One petal from each pile, her message-center calculates, will keep you fueled for the remainder of this trip. She tiptoes around the piles, plucking one petal from each altar and shoving them into the pocket of her dress.

When the collecting is done, WaLiLa listens to the noises in the rest of the house. She hears the muffled sound of things being moved around. Certain of her solitude, she lifts the hem of her dress and tucks it into the dress’s neckline. She presses two rose petals against the center of her torso and closes her eyes as her body accepts the fuel. Her practiced fingers feel nothing amiss. Neither her fingers nor her message-center consider that these petals stubbornly survived the threat of fire only by filling themselves with smoke.

4.

WaLiLa sits at a round table nestled under the stairs with a belly full of mango batida and egg sandwich. The table, the stairs, and the apartment belong to Liliana, Elisa’s sister-in-law. On the night of the fire, Liliana guided the dispossessed family to her home. She filled them with hot chocolate, wrapped them in sheets, and insisted that they sleep. Elisa sits at the table across from WaLiLa. She stares vacantly at the wall. Since the fire, Elisa has locked herself into a silent state of mourning. She eats when Liliana places food in front of her. She bathes when Liliana fills a bath bucket for her. She only leaves the house when Liliana insists. Prayer is the only activity Elisa does unasked. The majority of her hours are spent staring into space, entertaining visions her mind creates and thoughts no one else has access to.

“Buenas!” Elisa’s former neighbor Silvia enters the open doorway ushering in the morning. Her soft, yucca-colored body is thinly covered with sweat. She sits down uninvited and asks for a cup of coffee. She runs one hand through her short curly hair, while she holds up a tattered envelope with the other.

“M’ija, this arrived for you yesterday afternoon. Papo brought it. His cousin had a visitor from Spain who carried it in his suitcase.” Silvia places the envelope onto Elisa’s lap with ritualistic flair and breaks into a self-mocking laugh. “Que triste! How sad it is that the mail travels more than we do.”

As Silvia presses her lips to the rim of the coffee cup, Elisa opens the letter. Silvia launches into an extended lament of exhaustion. Her bicycle is broken, she had to borrow her son’s, it is so hard to use a bicycle for transportation, maybe not for the children because they never had a vehicle, but wow, how she misses the old family car, and oh, what a hard life.

“What is it, m’ija?” Silvia interrupts her tirade to ask of Elisa’s contorted face.

Elisa looks up from the letter.

“My mother-in-law, she’s ill, she needs me in Spain.”

Liliana grabs the letter from Elisa and peers at her mother’s shaky scrawls. By the time she reaches the end of the letter, she is crying.

“She didn’t want us to know,” Liliana says to no one in particular.

Elisa stands and rests her arm around Liliana’s shoulder. A departure from Cuba’s arms is the last thing Elisa desires, but she’s the only one who can go. Liliana couldn’t get out of the country in a million years. Nor could any of Liliana’s brothers and sisters. Elisa, with her income and status, is the only one who can fly to her mother-in-law’s aid.

“Aiiii, mi niña,” Silvia complains, “if we were in any other country! Your poor mother may die before you get a ticket in this maldito country.”

Elisa shushes Silvia with a few clucks of her tongue.

“Don’t you worry, Lili. I’ll go get Mami, and I’ll bring her home.”

“Of course, of course,” Silvia coos. “I’ll help too. I have a cousin in the visa department. We’ll get the papers you need.”

“I appreciate it, vieja,” Liliana sighs. “I’ll go to Señor Alberto and Señora Franco to get the money Papi left with them. It’ll take me two days. You think your cousin can help us then?”

“Sí, I’ll go talk to him now,” Silvia says.

“I’m coming with you,” Elisa says and goes upstairs to collect her purse. Before she leaves, she wakes her sons and tells them what has happened.

“Liliana’s going to the country to get money from our relatives. I’ll be too busy running after visa papers to look after our guest. Watch over her, m’ijos. Make sure she has everything she needs. And…” Elisa adds to the list of commands, “ask no questions of her.”

5.

The minute Elisa, Silvia, and Liliana walk out of the door, WaLiLa feels relentless questions whirling around her. These questions do not pass through the brothers’ lips. Fulfilling their mother’s request, they maintain a painful silence. Throughout the days, questions drop from their suspicious glances and take root in the air, like seeds in fertile soil. Left unasked, the questions blossom and grow. As afternoons pass, the questions learn to walk. They wander around the house following WaLiLa with their eyes. Soon, they sit across from her at the table peering at her as she eats. Eventually, WaLiLa bursts out with answers.

“I live from a town small near to Toronto under Canada. I travel and study. I collect information of people, places, things. I watch and listen, then I bring stories to people mine. People mine do not much travel, and they want to know what world is. Your mother is nice to take me. After fire, I tell her I go other place, but she say I stay here. If I am problem, I go.”

“No!” growls Pedro, “Unless my mother says otherwise, you will go nowhere. As long as you are in Cuba, you stay in this house. Understand?”

WaLiLa shakes her head in agreement, keeping an eye on the questions. They still sit across from her, but they are shrinking. Now their eyes barely reach the rim of the table top.

“There is much to study here,” says Modesto. “We have a long and rich history, why don’t you take a tour?”

WaLiLa’s message-center processes this question as a challenge rather than a suggestion. She feels a tightening in her torso. The nuance of accusation she hears in his voice discomforts her. Is this what it feels like, she wonders, to be hunted? She slowly winds her arms around her belly. The smoke from the fuel she liberated from Elisa’s prayer room has saturated her being-center and clouded her judgment. With her hunter’s acumen weakened, she has not even attempted to find the source of the pain. She has one intention: to connect Pedro to the ancestors. To do this, she must reach his eyes. She turns her face toward him and says, “Tell about history long and rich. I feel pain, many pain here.”

Pedro lights a cigarette and glances up at the ceiling. As he exhales a breath of smoke with a sigh, WaLiLa stands and slowly walks to the kitchen window. She casually pulls a rose from a vase of flowers sitting on the window sill. She pushes the rose against her nostrils and returns to her seat, maintaining surveillance on the thin curls of cigarette smoke. The smoke does not reach her, but she keeps the rose pressed to her face anyway. She trusts its petals to filter smoke from the air before it can enter her body.

She looks at Pedro, and their eyes lock for a brief moment. When Pedro looks away, words start to spill from his mouth. “The pain you sense here is very specific to this time period. We have always lived with pain. Sometimes very little, sometimes a great amount. Today we are living at the limit of human dignity. We struggle to maintain some semblance of life, but it is …” he pauses, his effort to translate thoughts into words visible on his face.

“When we lost the Soviet Union, we lost a lot. Without their support, we are isolated and alone in the world. It’s a strange thing really,” Pedro mutters as he squints at the wall as if looking at something in the distance. “We are isolated and alone, yet the entire world watches us and regards us with curiosity and suspicion. You came out of curiosity, I assume?”

Pedro turns his head and glances at WaLiLa, then turns away when she nods her head in agreement.

“Oh, especially the Americans, they salivate waiting for us to fall so they can pounce on us. Castro will never let that happen…”

WaLiLa focuses on the bitterness in Pedro’s voice. She tunes out his speaking, wishing she could gain some assurance from the ancestors. Her muscles strain, begging to communicate with them. Can they want nectar from such a bitter fruit? Her thoughts are interrupted by a loud crash. She realizes Pedro is no longer talking and her wrist is stinging. Both he and Modesto are staring at her.

“Why you look me?” she asks.

“Do you know what you just did?” Pedro asks.

“No.”

“You knocked everything off that shelf above your head.”

She looks up and sees a small plank of painted wood tilted off its wall supports. She looks down and sees the floor littered with overturned spice jars.

“Oh, my muscles jumps, must came back.” How could the arm flick have returned? She scrambles for words to explain, as her message-center simultaneously races to find an explanation.

“I have muscles jumps. I have no medicine here, so they come back.”

WaLiLa mumbles this as she kneels to pick up the spilled spices. Modesto also kneels. As his knees knock against hers, she looks up, and their eyes lock. Barriers open, and Modesto dives into the infinite space he sees in her eyes. He begins disrobing his soul. I hate it here, his soul cries. It is too painful to stay. Breathing the air here is like tapping a raw nerve. He speaks of a child conceived with a Spanish tourist. He speaks of joining her and their son in Spain. He admits to staying home so as not to see the prostitutes selling their bodies to foreigners. He describes the pain of having nothing, doing nothing; of endless days of smoke, smoke, smoking. He details the days he sits alone holding himself for he has nothing substantial to offer the hungry young women the regime has bred.

Pedro’s fingers wind themselves around Modesto’s collarbones and dig into his flesh. The pain forces Modesto to blink. The connection broken, Modesto looks up at his brother with a wet face.

“Qué haces?” Pedro yells. “What the hell are you doing?”

Pedro drags Modesto to his feet and pushes him away from WaLiLa. He shoots her a sharp, angry glance. His eyes are full of fire. In them, WaLiLa sees fear and a stubbornness that screams, You will not conquer me.

6.

Over the next week, the memory of Modesto’s crouched frame heaving with confessional sobs under WaLiLa’s gaze remains in Pedro’s mind. When she blows into the room, he examines the burning end of his cigarette, stares at her lips as they move, focuses on any other activity so as not to fall into those eyes. Neither witty conversation nor exposed shoulder can draw his eyes to wade in her vision pools. Her attempts to establish herself as a love interest have fallen like a dove struck by a stone. Her body feels just as bloodied. Each passing moment of failure brings more pain pushing through her like pins piercing skin.

One day while the house is quiet, WaLiLa finds herself slumped on the floor almost paralyzed by pain. With each inhalation, she feels the air squeeze her like quicksand. She bites the inside of her cheek and pushes herself up from the floor. She holds onto the wall and pulls herself upstairs. Her arm leaps into an arc as she stumbles into bed.

She nestles into the folds of a rough blanket and closes her eyes. She intends to do a full review of her body functions and find the source of her pain. But before she can begin, her hunterself pushes against the inside of her chest. She taps her chest and allows her hunterself to exit. Her hunterself brushes against her forehead then starts buzzing around the room. After sweeping the room twice with broad wing strokes, her hunterself discovers one of Pedro’s rumpled T-shirts discarded on the floor. She lands gently on the shirt and collects his scent in the wells of her body, then flies out the room’s only window.

WaLiLa quickly loses the energy her hunterself is expending and abruptly falls asleep. With the road map of Pedro’s scent in front of her, WaLiLa’s hunterself goes flying through Havana, dodging families who spill out of doorways onto sidewalks, bouncing on the sounds of conversation, and flying over avenues filled with rusted vintage cars and legions of bicycles. She skids to a stop when she no longer feels Pedro’s scent. She doubles back and locates his scent two blocks away, floating outside the first floor of a little house. Hovering in the air that presses against a cracked window, WaLiLa’s hunterself sees Pedro gathered with ten people in a small, cluttered living room. Eleven mouths share a bottle of rum while eleven pairs of hands exchange cigarettes and finger snaps. One of the eleven leans against pillow cushions embracing a guitar. They all sing, glowing in the space made light by the gathering of hearts.

Many laughs and musical notes later, discordant sounds reverberate in the small room. The crashing of a glass against the concrete floor. The rise of angry voices, followed by soft apology. Tears fall now; then a shaky-voiced reminder of tomorrow’s departure. The threat of the sea and fear of isolation wells up from the floor. The room is as quiet as held breath. Pedro is the first to speak. “We’ve been planning this for two years. I think we’ve deliberated enough. I’m done thinking. When tomorrow comes, my things will be ready, and I will sail.”

Before Pedro’s lips have stopped moving, WaLiLa’s hunterself is gone. Flying at breakneck speed, she returns to the attic where WaLiLa is resting. With a crackle, she rejoins WaLiLa’s body. Immediately the knowledge of Pedro’s journey sinks into WaLiLa’s being-center. She sits up abruptly. She feels as if shards are puncturing her lower back. With stiffness weighing on her bones, she commands her message-center to review her body signals, note which senses are malfunctioning, and identify which poisons are capable of triggering such reactions. It then cross-references those poisons with elements she has come in contact with. Hopelessness washes over her as her message-center comes up with a match: SMOKE SMOKE SMOKE.

She considers the smoke: It has been quietly damaging her systems for weeks, and it is too late for repair. Then she considers Pedro. She doesn’t have time to follow him. Her equilibrium is already damaged. She won’t have the capacity to walk, much less gather nectar in the next few days. WaLiLa twists her arms back and forth. She falls back against the bed as she accepts the truth: death is already promised her. If I am to die anyway, she thinks, the possibility that Pedro’s nectar may be poisoned cannot harm me.

WaLiLa sits up and slides her knees beneath her body. With a fluid, flicking motion from the top of her forehead into the air before her, she reports her decision to the ancestors. Oh great ones, WaLiLa raises curved, outstretched arms. The Earth air is binding its poisonous cords about me. She folds her arms behind her back. This vessel that carries me is no longer strong. She collapses to the right, then collapses to the left. I speak now to expose my failure. Palms outstretched, she crisscrosses her arms at the elbow four times. I cannot connect this human to you. She drops her head and shakes it vigorously from side to side. He is resistant. She snakes her torso forward. He fears me. She rocks her upper body forward and back. I have been ineffective with him. She cleaves her hands in the air, then breaks them apart suddenly. Because I refused to follow your rules. She bends forward weakly from the waist and shakes her head from side to side. I have ingested a lethal substance. She sits erect and stiff, and lowers her right ear to her right shoulder. With death as my insurance. WaLiLa lowers her shoulder blades to the ground. I am free to complete my assignment. She lowers and raises her fists with a constant steady rhythm five times. If his nectar is poisoned, it will die with me. She pounds the air with her fists, then drops her arms lifelessly. If it is not, I shall return to you and deliver the nectar. She pushes a path from her center to the space above her head. Then the smoke damage will bring my death. She lays on her side briefly. She ends by touching her forehead to the bed and rolling her hips.

Her communication ended, WaLiLa lays back in the folds of the blanket and slips into sleep.

7.

As WaLiLa sleeps, night thickens. When the air reaches its blackest point, Pedro rides in on midnight wings. He is surprised to find his mother sleeping in his bed: the cot next to his brother’s. Pedro’s eyes rise up to the ceiling as he visualizes the only empty bed in the apartment: the bed upstairs next to WaLiLa’s. He sits on the floor between the two cots and soaks up his family’s energy. When he can keep his eyes open no longer, he rests his hand gently on his brother’s head, presses his lips to his mother’s cheek, then climbs the stairs. Keeping his back to WaLiLa, Pedro drops his shirt and pants on the floor. He sits on the side of the bed in his boxer shorts, attempting to quell the sadness that claws at his throat every time he imagines leaving his mother and brother behind. Then he lays back, solemnly reclining as though the bed were a coffin. He clutches the images of his mother and his brother closely to him and drifts off to sleep.

WaLiLa’s hunterself thumps on the inside of WaLiLa’s chest for thirty minutes, attempting to alert WaLiLa to Pedro’s presence. After WaLiLa becomes aware of the thumping, she takes another thirty minutes to rouse herself from rest. By the time she releases her hunterself and rises from the bed, Pedro is in a deep sleep. With teeth clenched, WaLiLa drags herself to Pedro’s bedside. Her hunterself flutters around his head. As taught during training, WaLiLa places one hand over his closed eyes and another over his abdomen, her thumb connecting to his navel. Under her velvet touch, Pedro’s eyes do not open. He does not even stir.

WaLiLa closes her eyes and pushes her chin upwards to the skies. As she establishes portals between their two bodies, WaLiLa begins to glow. Her hunterself detects a sound and flies to the stairs, peeking over the banister to investigate. She flies over to WaLiLa and tugs at her ear. When WaLiLa opens her eyes, her hunterself communicates Modesto’s presence at the foot of the stairs. Knowing that Modesto will soon be privy to her actions, WaLiLa tightens her grip on Pedro. She shrugs one shoulder in disappointment. She has never experienced a hunt so fraught with failure.

When Modesto reaches the top of the stairs, a painful sensation rips through WaLiLa’s body. Poison jerks through her torso. It rips into her organs like shards of glass. Modesto stands frozen, transfixed by what he sees. With gritted teeth, WaLiLa flexes her torso, closing off the internal portals through which Pedro’s nectar had entered her body. A loud tearing sound rips through Modesto’s eardrums and breaks his trance.

Modesto screams his brother’s name. As Pedro stirs, WaLiLa pulls herself away from his body and stumbles backward. When Pedro opens his eyes, he sees WaLiLa fall limply onto the bed. Seeing her skin soaked in a dark green liquid causes a mixture of terror and compassion to riot across Modesto’s eyes. Pedro sits up and rubs his temples. When he brings his hand down from his face it is moist. He brings his fingers closer to his eyes and sees green liquid on them. He looks down at his body. His torso is covered with the same liquid. As he jumps up and scrambles away from WaLiLa, the haze of his sleep dissolves.

They will come for me, WaLiLa motions weakly. They will come for me.

Exhausted and delirious, she slides into a deep coma. Long after her lids are closed, she imagines the brothers’ unblinking eyes examining her. She prays that when she opens her eyes she will be home. She pretends that she is already there, wrapping herself in the thick air of her nation until she vanishes into the folds. She imagines herself lying in maroon cloud fields over gold skies. She promises herself that as soon as she’s home, she’ll compete in flying races with her clan and never use her voice again.

8.

When the coma finally lifts from WaLiLa’s body, she pushes her eyelids open to see herself resting in the same small room where her death began. The brothers are gone, but there is a pair of shining eyes staring at her from across the room. When the eyes see motion flicker across WaLiLa’s face, they rise from the camouflage of darkness and float closer to the bed. WaLiLa knows from the weight of the footsteps that the eyes belong to Elisa.

Elisa hovers over the bed, filling WaLiLa’s vision. She pushes a glass against WaLiLa’s lips. WaLiLa turns away. Elisa stands back, places one hand on her hip, and regards her silently. Why Elisa’s face holds no anger or fear is a miracle to WaLiLa. She closes her eyes again, twirling her wrist with the repeated question, Will they come for me?

“They will not come,” Elisa says, chopping through the thick silence of the room with her voice.

WaLiLa’s eyes pop open, and she stares into Elisa’s face. Seconds pass as the two examine each other in silence. Just as she is dismissing Elisa’s announcement as hallucination, Elisa speaks again.

“They are not coming for you.”

WaLiLa rises up onto her elbows and stares at Elisa incredulously. To her surprise, her body does not hurt when she moves it. Only her head throbs with pain.

“Who are you?” WaLiLa demands.

“I am Elisa,” Elisa responds with an amused smile. “I was once a nectar collector, like you, but Pedro’s aunt put an end to that, much as Pedro has done for you.”

“But…” Questions slam through WaLiLa’s mind battling for dominion of her lips. “How long have you been here? Did you know who I was from the beginning?” Then she motions with her arms, Will I die here?

“I’ve lived here longer than I care to remember. I realized what you were after you stole flowers from my altars. Before that, I only recognized you as a traveler and welcomed you as I had been welcomed on my previous Earth trips. And yes, you will die here.”

WaLiLa lays back on the bed and pounds her fists against the mattress in frustration. Then turns back to Elisa.

“Does that mean…?”

“That means you shall no longer collect nectar. Nectar shall be gathered, the ancestors shall be fed. But you will no longer do it.”

WaLiLa is overcome with strange sensations. Water drips from her eyes.

“Don’t look so confused. You died, but you have just been birthed. You are breathing your first breaths as a human being.”

“A human!”

“Yes. You have human emotions now. You have the ability to cry. Haven’t you noticed how easily you’re speaking? You were also given the facility to speak human languages.”

“But I thought…” WaLiLa touches the water dripping from her eyes and rubs it between her fingertips. “I thought death was supposed to make me an ancestor.”

“Not here. The rules of our people don’t matter anymore. You will never see the ancestors again.”

The strange sensations wash over WaLiLa again. More water falls from her eyes.

“How could this happen? Was it the smoke? The poison?”

“What smoke?”

“The flowers I took from your room were filled with smoke.”

“Ahhh, so the poison saved you.”

“Saved me?”

“Smoke is lethal to us, but not to humans. Think of it this way: the poison you consumed is known here as ‘mortality.’ It is a death agent for humans. Their death is not like ours. They consider death to be a finite thing.”

“What is finite?”

“The final thing, nothing more will happen after death.”

“But how can death be finite? Death is transformation. Death is change.”

“WaLiLa, I know that’s what you learned, but you must remember, you are on Earth. Humans are bound by such things as time and gravity. At least they believe themselves to be.”

“Will I die a human death at the end of this journey?”

“I cannot know until I meet my own death.”

“So I am never to be anything other than human?”

“I don’t know, WaLiLa.”

“But this is my first life, I will know nothing else!”

“That is not true, you are beginning your second life now. Although you still exist in the same outer shell, life here will be different from your life as a nectar collector. I promise you that Earth is not without its delights.”

“But how—”

Elisa interrupts. “We will talk later. For now, let your body do its work…”

“But why…”

“Rest,” Elisa repeats firmly. “You shall need your strength.”

Debris

Debris has a bad effect on me. It’s in my heritage. Everyone knows about the great Limione who got dust in her nasal holes and spent the rest of her life bequeathing her bones to cripples. It was harmless enough when it began. She offered a few of her decrepit digits to a little boy who was missing a foot. Sharing is a good thing, Grandmother told us, hobbling proudly through the house, the model of benevolence.

We stopped admiring her charitable spirit the day she was wheeled home with no skeletal structure from her pelvis down. She waved off our horror by claiming she’d been using her legs less and less. When she was down to just her skull, her daughter—my mother—put my grandmother’s head on a marble desk and locked her in the altar room.

It is legend how my mother kept my grandmother’s eye sockets clean with the pure white feather of a cockatoo. She often sent me to the forest to pick marigolds to stack high around Grandmother’s skull. Grandmother loved the smell of them. She told me so every time I entered the house with an armful of the fragrant weeds.

After my grandmother’s head had been sitting in the altar room for a month, my mother realized my grandmother was dying—not because of her missing body, but because she was bored. Mother brought Grandmother into the living room and positioned her right in front of the window. There Grandmother sat happily for a week until Dad caught her promising her skull to an epileptic candy vendor.

Mother couldn’t bear the thought of locking Grandmother up again. So Dad came up with the idea of sitting her in the middle of the living room facing the kitchen. Grandmother didn’t have much visual stimulation, but she could hear the sounds of the street. While staring at boiling pots and waiting for one of us to keep her company, Grandmother amused herself by mounting day-long monologues in response to the whizzing, clicking, and chattering that wafted into the house through the window.

One November, Trucia decided we should suit up and go down to Earth for the Days of the Dead. The humans make so much mischief during those days, they don’t notice us creaking through on our bones. My costume had seen better days. Trucia said it was my sin that had made me run my robes down into dirty tatters. Lorki doesn’t believe in sin—he doesn’t believe in costumes either. Easy not to believe in anything when you’re always aligned.

When I started slipping out the door that November night, I swore I heard Grandmother whisper “be ill.” I stopped and looked back, but she was silent. I stared at the cracks that worry their way down the back of her skull, but they, too, were silent. Grandmother said nothing more, so I turned and slipped out the door. Down on Earth, we looked for the cemetery with the most lights. We figured the busiest graveyards were best. While people drank, ate, and cried for their dead, we could sneak in unnoticed.

We found what we were looking for in Oaxaca, a tiny little desert town in the middle of six kissing mountains. Lorki’s black velvet cape covered us as we rushed into the swirl of activity on a dark, dank wind. The minute we landed I started trembling. That happens whenever I find myself in close proximity to humans. They have the best emotions. Their feelings are so sharp and hysterical and self-propelling. Their auras make me vibrate. With the candlelight swimming around us, the buzz of voices and the emotions flying through the air, I felt a sense of intoxication. A grandeur.

How can I explain what it felt like to dance with a stilt walker whose stilts were thicker than my femur? How can I tell you about the eerie flesh-like shadow that shrouded Trucia’s cheeks as she laughed at Lorki yanking people’s souls out of their chests and juggling them with one long-boned hand? How can I describe the moist succulence of a tiny child’s fear when it glimpsed my weathered, pocky bones and swallowed the sight of me with undiluted dread?

Trucia thought it funny to pass her hand through people’s spines. She would reach into their backs until her wrist bone was buried in their flesh. She’d rub the tip of her index finger along their hearts, moaning filthily when their bodies went stiff with pain. While she was enticing me to find a spine to disturb, I felt a sudden chill licking between my fifth and sixth vertebrae.

When I turned around, I saw a huge child running toward me. “You can’t catch me,” it yelled. The child did not touch me, but the force of it passing knocked me over. I fell across a grave, and a parade of children—yelping in delighted terror—ran by.

Humans are dirty beings. They never learned how to transcend Earth, especially in their graveyards. The debris kicked up by those murderous little feet covered me in a canopy of dust. This was not the little spray of dirt that, once stuck in Grandmother’s nasal openings, induced her suicidal bone-endowment spree. This was huge clumps of dirt. I was clogged, I was suffocated. I was nothing more than a pile of jammed joints and rigid bones.

Lorki tugged at the bowl of my pelvis. Trucia yanked at my anklebones, but the debris was stronger than their worry. Trucia pulled harder and harder. But I didn’t stir—couldn’t stir. Every inch of me was paralyzed.

A little girl approached me. Her arms were full of marigolds. She started framing me with them. She stuck some through my ribs, a few under my jawbone, six or seven around my skull. When the earth under me started shifting, Lorki and Trucia couldn’t bear it. They didn’t stay to see the dirt seizing bits of bone to feed the grave beneath me. They went home.

When my body was completely dissolved, I became something else. The spirits that haunt these graves say I am one of them. They roam the confines of the cemetery, licking leaves, drinking morning mist, and planting crazy notions in human flesh.

Lorki and Trucia will never return to witness the proof that there is breath beyond the bones. Yet, when the spirits retire to their graves, I find what’s left of me grasping at sticks to scratch symbols in the dirt. Grandmother may never understand the shrieks I now use to communicate, but I must conjure a way to tell her the truth.

She must discard her skull.

We are more—so much more—than elegant skeletal spectacles. I will find a way to whisper it to Grandmother—may your cranium be eaten away. There is something else beneath the bone. Something indestructible. Something nothing, not even debris, can destroy.

Rosamojo

Eyes half closed, I see the dark of daddy’s pants. My bedroom door swings open. Light rips into my room, then disappears. I am alone now. Daddy’s footsteps get softer and softer. I can’t relax ’til I can’t hear him no more. I turn my face to the wall. My neck is sore, but that’s better than it being broke. My breath goes from fast to slow. Then I start to notice other things. Like the moon glowing outside my window. My leg shaking so hard I can’t stop it. My fists clenched tight.

I open one hand. It’s empty. I hold my fingers up to my face. It’s dark in my room, but I can see two white marks my fingernails made when they were digging into my skin. I squeeze the other hand tighter. A soft springy clump of daddy’s hair shifts in my palm. It would tickle if I let it. But I don’t. I can’t laugh while I still hear daddy’s voice whispering that I’m his favorite.

Sunlight creeps under my eyelids, climbs into my eyes. I curl over on my side and draw my knees up to my chest. Don’t want to move, not ever. I hear mama screaming at Lola to hurry up in the bathroom, and my heart catches in my throat. Benny is crying at the top of his lungs. I know I better get up, unless I want mama to know. I jump up and pull my nightgown over my head. At first I go to throw it in the dirty clothes hamper, then I stop and shove it under my mattress instead. My head feels dizzy, but when I hear mama’s voice in the hall, I know I gotta make everything look right.

I stumble over to my dresser and pick out a clean nightgown. The new nightgown is soft on my skin. It smells like soap powder. I wanna go lie down again and close my eyes. I wanna sleep with the fresh smell, but I don’t. I yank the edges of my sheets and tuck the corners under the mattress. I climb on top of the bed and throw the top sheet high up so it’ll fall down flat. Before the sheet reaches the bed, I see them: two dark streaks—one short, one long. I go to pull them dirty sheets from the bed, but then I start thinking ’bout how far away the clean sheets are. Be smarter to hide the stains from mama, than try to get some fresh ones from the hall closet. I grip the edges of the top sheet and pull it smooth. If mama comes to check on me now, she’ll be real happy with how tight I made the bed. She’ll be so proud, she’ll never even see the stains.

When I peek out into the hall, nobody’s looking. I run straight to the bathroom and shut the door behind me. Before washing up, I wipe a warm washcloth between my legs. When I look at it, I see the same dark red streaks that were on the sheets. I rinse the washcloth and wipe ’til it shows no more red. Then I wash my face and brush my teeth.

Mama is already at the stove when I sit at the table.

“No kiss for me this morning?” she say.

I don’t move. I just sit at the table still as a stone.

“Rosamojo, you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?” mama laughs. Then she comes and kisses my cheeks.

Daddy kisses me on top of my head like normal. I sit on my hands because if I didn’t, I’d scratch his face and mama would know something’s wrong. Mama drops my plate down in front of me. The two huge yolks of my eggs is still jiggling from their journey from the stove. I don’t say nothing. Not even when Benny start to tease me ’bout how long it take me to get out of bed. Not even when Lola steal two pieces of bacon from my plate while looking me dead in the face. Not even when mama says “Rosamojo’s having a bad day,” and puts cheese on only my grits. Lola look at me and squint her eyes. When mama go back to the stove and daddy go to the coffee pot, she ball up her fist and say, “You better not be doing no magic.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t do no magic, I swear.”

“What you said, sweetheart?” daddy ask when he hear my flat voice.

“Nothing, daddy,” I say and stir the cheese into my grits.

Benny and Lola are loud in the backyard. Daddy and mama been left, but I’m still sitting at the table, dirty dishes spread all over the tabletop. Lola runs into the kitchen with a knobby piece of branch. Benny comes in right behind her carrying two sticks. Lola bangs the branch on the floor.

“Wanna go scare some neutra rats?” she ask.

I just shake my head no.

“We got you a stick,” Benny say.

I shrug my shoulders.

“We goin then,” she say. “And I don’t wanna hear nothin ’bout them dishes.”

I shrug my shoulders again.

Lola looks close at me. “What’s wrong with you?” she ask.

I don’t say nothing. Lola bang her stick on the floor, suck her teeth, and turn away.

“Come on, Benny, let’s go to the canal. Rosa’s actin all funny today.”

It feel like the air around me is thick and I gotta move real slow. My favorite overalls be the only thing I can think of to make me feel better. I put them on before I jeck the sheets from my bed. In the tub, I wash out the dark spots. I bring the sheets down the hall, down the stairs, through the living room, through the kitchen to the back door. Just when I’m ’bout to step outside, I see nosy ole Mrs. Roberts looking into our yard. I back up, arms still full of sheets. If Mrs. Roberts see me hanging up a sheet with a few wet spots, she gonna ask mama if I got my cycle. And mama gonna come asking me questions like she did Lola. So I go back upstairs to my room. I let the sheets fall out of my arms onto my bare mattress. Then I sit on my bed a while, thinking and staring out the window. Real quick like, I get an idea. I jump up onto the mattress with my slippers on. I strain to lift the windows and struggle to get the screens out. I hang the flat sheet out one window and the fitted sheet out the other. Them wet spots should dry real quick. I just know I better get them screens back in before mama gets home.

In mama and daddy’s room everything is cool and quiet. It’s like they room ain’t part of the rest of the house. It’s so dark in there I can’t see my reflection in neither of mama and daddy’s two mirrors. I get real close on them, but I can barely make out my face. Then I start snooping around. I don’t even know what I’m looking for until I see it: daddy’s favorite harmonica sitting on top the dresser with mama’s combs and jewelry. I slip the harmonica into my side pocket. On the floor next to daddy’s side of the bed is the sports section. I crouch down and look at it. It’s all marked up with inky black fingerprints. I roll it up and stick it in my back pocket. I go down the hall to the bathroom and stand on the step stool. In the medicine cabinet, I see lots of little bottles with words I can’t read. Then I see daddy’s toothpicks. I put a handful in my front pocket and go to the kitchen with my pockets loaded.

Beneath the sink is a burlap bag full of daddy’s favorite coffee. I grab the bag by the edges and drag it out the kitchen, through the living room to the front porch. Back in the kitchen, I find the metal bowl mama uses to soak burnt pots and pans—I bring that to the porch too. I stick the toothpicks in the harmonica holes and wrap the harmonica in the newspaper. My hand twitches. I look at it and suddenly remember—daddy’s hair! I run upstairs and scoop up the hair from my dresser drawer. On the porch, I unwrap the newspaper and stick daddy’s hair into the harmonica holes too. Then I wrap the whole thing up again. I put it in mama’s metal bowl and set the whole thing on fire. As I squat, watching it burn, my lips begin to move. Words come spilling out of my mouth, spelling out a protection prayer I never even knew I had in my head.

When the fire burns out, the whole porch is cloudy with smoke. I use a dishrag to pick up daddy’s burnt things and shove them deep into the coffee beans. It seem like it take forever for me to drag that bag of coffee upstairs, but I do it. By the time I stuff the bag under my bed, my arms are wet with sweat.

When Lola and Benny come home, all the smoke from the fire is gone. I’m back sitting at the kitchen table, looking like I didn’t move. My pockets are stuffed with cotton balls I took from under the bathroom sink.

When Lola sees the dirty dishes still spread over the table, she punches me hard.

“Why you didn’t clean the dishes, stupid?”

I give her the same evil look she give me this morning, and she backs off. She hates my magic. She liked it better when she could beat me up. Now she be a bit more careful.

“Come on, Benny, let’s do the dishes,” Lola says.

“Yeah,” Benny says, like doing the dishes is a treat.

After mama tucks me in and turns out my light, I grab the cotton balls and put them under my pillow. Then I sit on top, and those prayers start coming out of me again. This time, they come so fast, it’s scary. I sit there for hours, mumbling to myself, waiting for daddy to come home. When I hear daddy’s car creep into the driveway, I jump out of bed and drop down to my hands and knees. As the front door opens, I grab hold of the burlap bag and yank it hard.

Daddy’s footsteps are on the stairs. I’m tugging on the bag, but it don’t come free. I got to get it unstuck somehow. I catch a tighter hold of the burlap, but it still won’t come loose. I hear daddy’s footsteps at the top of the stairs, and I just panic. I run to my desk and snatch my scissors from the desk drawer. I stab the scissors into the bag. The bag splits and coffee beans spill out. I jam my hand into the coffee and make wild grabs, feeling around for daddy’s stuff. He’s so close now, I can almost feel him breathing down my neck. ’Stead of my door, I hear mama and daddy’s door squeak open. I let out a little sigh, but I don’t relax. I keep searching ’til my fingers touch something hard. Then I grab it—the burnt bundle of daddy’s stuff.

Mama and daddy’s door squeaks again. I listen for a second, thinking maybe daddy just got in bed, but no, I can hear the clunk clunk of his footsteps. I stick my hand under my mattress and feel around for my magic pouch. Daddy’s footsteps stop in front of my door, and it feel like my heart stops. I turn the pouch upside down and shake it wildly. Marbles, gum, and a picture of Ronald, the boy I have a crush on, spill to the floor. Daddy’s turning the doorknob now. My fingers are shaking as I reach for the cotton. I stuff a little cotton into the bottom of the pouch and drop the bundle of daddy’s things on top. I turn to face daddy as I fill the pouch up with cotton and a handful of coffee beans.

Daddy’s face is confused. He stands in the doorway as I tie the pouch closed and hang it around my neck. When I am finally still, he starts to walk toward me.

“Don’t be scared, baby,” daddy says.

I put my hand out in front of me and daddy stops short. I turn my palm up to the ceiling and imagine daddy’s heart resting in my grasp. The second I feel the weight of his heart in my hand, I snap my fingers shut. Daddy gasps and bends over. I squeeze until the thing stops beating. Daddy stumbles away.

The next morning, mama’s not in the kitchen. Me, Lola, and Benny go to mama and daddy’s room. Lola pushes the door open, and me and Benny creep in behind her. Mama is sitting on the bed crying. She don’t ask about the missing bag of coffee or her burnt metal bowl. She don’t even notice how I bent the screens. The only thing she notice is daddy. He’s lying next to her breathing heavy. His hands are shaking. His skin looks gray.

“Lola, honey, go call a ambulance. Your daddy is sick. Benny, come with me downstairs. Help me make daddy some tea. Rosa, stay here with your daddy. Call me if he starts to lookin worse.”

I nod my head, but I can’t speak. When everyone leaves I’m too frightened to move. I stay with my back against the wall, close to the door.

“Rosamojo,” I hear daddy whisper. “Rosamojo.”

I don’t say a word.

“Rosa, make me well.”

Tears start to drip out my eyes, but I don’t make a sound.

“I won’t do it again, Rosa, give me my heart back.”

“I didn’t mean to, daddy,” I whisper.

“Can’t you see how upset you makin your mama?”

I put my hands over my ears.

“Daddy, I didn’t mean to,” I say a little louder.

“Take the hex off me, Rosa, please,” daddy says.

But I can’t. My mind is blank. Nothing comes. Not like the protection prayer that just spilled out my lips. Not like I knew exactly what to do to grab hold of daddy’s heart. I can’t think of anything at all. When mama gets back, I’m crying hard.

Mama kisses me. “Don’t cry sweet baby, daddy will be fine.”

But I just cry harder because I know he won’t.

Mama hugs me. “Go downstairs with your sister and brother, sweetie. Let me talk to daddy.”

But I don’t move. I’m terrified daddy will tell. Mama pushes me toward the door, but my body is stiff as a old oak.

“Go ’head, honey,” she says. “Go on downstairs.”

“Can I tell daddy something first, mama?”

“Go ahead, Rosa.”

I force myself to walk close to the bed.

“Don’t tell, daddy. Don’t tell mama and I promise, I’ll fix it.”

Daddy grunts. He can’t see my fingers crossed behind my back. It’s not that I don’t want to fix it, it’s that I can’t. If daddy dies, things are gonna get real bad. But I can’t let mama find out what I did. Not ever.

I go downstairs and sit between Benny and Lola on the couch. Benny is crying, Lola is picking a scab on her knee.

“You think Daddy’s gonna die?” Lola asks.

When I don’t answer, she shoves me, but I still don’t say nothing. When the ambulance sirens get close, Benny stops crying. Before they even pull up in the yard, I feel a fire burn inside me. I don’t say nothing to Lola, but that’s how I know daddy died. Mama screams loud and we all tense up. When mama comes downstairs, she don’t say nothing. She points the ambulance people to the stairs and sits on the couch with us. She spreads her arms wide and squeezes us tight.

That night I dream of mama. Her face close to my face, we giggling and talking girl talk. But then I feel the string of my pouch pulling at my neck. My eyes fly open. Mama’s face is close to my face, but ain’t no giggle in her eyes. She’s hanging over my bed, and her hairline is all sweaty. She looking at me like she don’t know me—like I’m not me, not a girl even, just some stubborn piece of meat she’s tugging on.

My hands fly up and I grab my pouch. Mama hiss out some air before she speak.

“Be sleep time, Rosa,” she say.

“I know, mama, but I can’t sleep with you wrenchin on my neck.”

“Take it off, then,” mama say, like she daring me or something.

“Mama you know I always sleep with my pouch.”

Mama closes her eyes like she can’t look at me while she’s talking. Silence hang between us for so long, I think I’m dreaming again. Then mama open her eyes. She look at me like she searching for the truth.

“You just a child,” she say. Then she blink all the pity out her eyes, and her voice get hard again.

“Empty out the pouch, Rosa.”

My heart starts beating double time. I start to cry.

“Why you want me to do that, mama?”

“I can’t survive no more bad news, Rosa,” she say with her teeth all clenched up. “It all got to come out tonight, so when the sun rise tomorrow, it’s done.”

I start crying harder then. Mama stop talking and lick her lips. One second, she look like she want to love me, the next second she look like she want to kill me. Her hands are shaking like she been wrestling with the Devil himself.

“Rosa, there’s some things in life that’s too troublin to understand and too wicked to look straight in the eye. You just a baby, and God knows I don’t want to witness to this, but I can’t lie to myself no more.”

Mama gives me a soft look, then evil steal back into her eyes. “You shoulda stayed asleep, Rosa, and let me find out on my own.”

My legs start twitching cuz they wanna run right out the room. But they trapped in the twisted up sheets. Besides, there’s no way I could get past mama. Not tonight. I take a big ole gulp of air trying to slow down the hurt rushing out my chest.

“I can’t,” I whisper, and I look at the wall ’steada at mama. I wanna say—“Mama, I can’t”—but I don’t know if she still be my mama after what I done to daddy.

Mama rise up to her feet then. I can feel the anger crackling off her like lightning. “I never had no cause to hit you before, Rosa, and tonight is not the night to start. Now hush up and empty out that pouch.”

I don’t want her to be mad at me, but it’s like my whole body is yelling “No!” I hunch my shoulders over and cover the pouch with my hands. Next thing I know, mama is on me. She’s scratching my face and neck trying to rip off the pouch. When mama finally get a good grip on the pouch, it don’t make no noise. All the protest is coming from the draw of my breath and the thump of my heart.

Soon as the pouch leave my body, I gets to shaking. I’m shaking so hard it feels like the whole house is trembling with me. I don’t know who starts to wailing first, and I don’t know who is the loudest. All I know is when daddy burnt harmonica hit the floor, me and mama turn inside out. All our hurts like to drown us in that room. I go hot, I shiver with chills, I get ate up by fear—wild, hungry fear—worse than when daddy was coming to my room that second time. When I can’t take it no more, I just start to yelling. I yell so hard my throat start to close up on me. Then mama voice break through all that noise. I can hear her screaming, “Why? Why? Whyyyyyyyyy?”

I’d do anything to make mama understand, but my mouth is numb. I can’t tell her the truth. If I tried to explain, the words would rip me right down the middle and break mama into a million tiny pieces.

“Ask daddy why,” I whisper and my whisper cut through all that screaming and wire up the air with electricity. Mama’s chest is heaving like something evil is truly inside her. Sweat is pouring off her like the wet on a jelly jar fresh out the icebox. The rhythm of my breath scatter all over the place. My throat feel like roadkill, and I can’t gather up enough air to keep my lungs going. The last thing I remember is mama staring at me with a look I don’t ever want to see again. Then my eyes roll back in my head and my body just give out.

Next time I see mama is at daddy’s funeral. First time I’m seeing Benny and Lola, too. Soon as mama see me, she look at me real hard. Not mean or scared, but just studying real serious. Maw-Maw’s been fattening me up with pound cake and gumbo, but I don’t think that’s why mama’s staring. I think she trying to peel me open with her eyes, trying to figure out if her little girl is still inside me. I want her to see I’m still me, I want her to love me like before—but if she don’t, I won’t fall to pieces like I thought I would before Maw-Maw got her hands on me. Maw-Maw give me peace and trust and plenty of hugs and kisses. She never look at me funny or make me feel like she suspect me of harboring the Devil. She told me all God’s children got they miracles and they struggles, and sometimes those two be the same thing. Then she brush my hair and tell me not to trouble myself with worry.

After the funeral, Lola and Benny sit there gobbling up big plates of fried chicken with red beans and rice. They act like they don’t miss me at all, but I catch them staring at me when they think I ain’t looking.

After the eating’s done, Maw-Maw unwrap three cakes. I snatch up a piece of one and sneak off. I can’t take mama’s stares or Benny and Lola’s looks no more. Don’t know who else know I ain’t been home, but I don’t want to feel nobody’s prying eyes picking me apart.

I find a corner next to the china cabinet in Maw-Maw’s sitting room. Ain’t supposed to carry no food in here at all, but I mean to eat private, even if it gets me in trouble. Before I take my first bite, I feel somebody hit me on the shoulder. I look up, but I’m scared to look back. If I’m leaning on the wall, can’t nobody hit me from behind, can they?

I wait awhile, but nothing happens. I break off a chunk of cake. That’s when I feel that tap tap on my shoulder again. This time I turn and look back. Ain’t nobody there. I get up and move to the other side of the room. I settle down and bite into Maw-Maw’s cake real quick before that ole tapping can stop me. While I’m chewing, I hear daddy’s voice inside my head.

“It good Rosa?” he say.

I jump and look around. Daddy laugh.

“You can’t see the dead, Rosa.”

“Daddy that you?” I whisper.

Daddy don’t say nothing. I take a sad look at my cake. Look like don’t nobody wanna let me eat in peace. I get up and take my cake to the backyard. Soon as I get outside, daddy start talking again.

“Rosa, you have to forgive me.”

I slam my plate down on the picnic table.

“Me? Forgive you?”

“Yeah, I wanna go where my soul supposed to go, but…”

Daddy fall silent. My lip starts to poke out like it does when I’m feeling prickly.

“Rosa, you holdin me back.”

“That’s why you sneakin around here tappin on my shoulder at your own funeral?”

“Rosa, I need you to forgive me so I can go where I need to go.”

I go quiet on that one. Me forgiving him make it seem like he didn’t do nothing wrong.

“You gotta tell mama what happened,” I say and cross my arms.

“How I’mma do that, Rosa? You the only one that could hear me.”

A big knot of sobs is welling up in my throat, but I choke it down.

“You ain’t the only one can’t go where you supposed to. I ain’t been home since you left. Mama don’t even want me no more.”

“But Maw-Maw takin good care of you, Rosa. I’m nowhere.”

I turn my back to daddy, which I realize is stupid real quick because daddy is everywhere and nowhere at once.

“I can’t help you ’til you make mama know I’m not the Devil’s child.”

“Once I make your mama know the truth, then you’ll forgive me?”

I sit down on the picnic bench in a heap. I feel like all the air done left my body.

Finally I say, “Daddy, can I forgive you even if I’m glad you dead?”

Daddy go real quiet. After while I figure he’s gone.

“Daddy?”

Daddy clears his throat. “Did daddy hurt you that bad, Rosa?”

I nod my head.

“And you was gonna keep doing it.”

Then daddy quiet again. Finally he say, “Sometimes right and wrong not so easy to sort out, Rosa.”

“I’m a child, daddy,” I wail. “I’m not ready for grown up things.” My voice starts shaking, before I know it I’m bawling.

“It’s alright, Rosa,” daddy say. “I can see you not ready to forgive me. I’m terrible sorry you hurtin so bad. I never meant to do you wrong. I’m gonna go now, but I’ll be back. I’m not gonna push you, but you can’t make me stay here forever. You gonna have to forgive me and let me go where I need to go.”

I don’t answer, I just sniff real hard. It take me awhile to pull myself together. I look at the tops of the trees. I stare up under some birds as they fly by. I watch a stretch of raggedy-looking clouds float on by. When my tears finally dry up, I wipe off my face and head back to the house.

When I grab hold of the door, I hear daddy again.

“Rosa, honey, please promise me you’ll at least think about forgiving me.”

“I will,” I say tiredly. I ain’t got no more fight left in me.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

And I’m still keeping that promise to this very day.

Battle Royale

It is something about the feathers, how they fall about his bare shoulders. Not bunched on rawhide around the neck, nor bundled on a cord around the waist. Instead they hover cape-like around him, each one undulating like a dark glossy wave every time he shifts. I pretend not to notice his eyes returning again and again to the ugly scar that wings across my chest. Those eyes have a dangerous glint that softens each time it encounters the smooth stretch of broken cells that rises from my skin.

The nasal twang of the European rings out just behind my back, causing me to return my attention to the room. Daylight filters through the window behind a puffy judge. The benches and tables in the room are thick, wooden, oppressive. Other men of my color sit in rows shackled behind me. The tiny hairs at the base of my scalp quiver and stiffen. What crime have I committed?

Words like prevalent and supersede grate against my ears as the European tries to explain why the work of the House of Burgesses has changed so radically since me and my kind arrived. I imagine that nasal twang sputtering to a halt upon discovering the true details of my arrival. I did not come on massive creaking ships along with my fellow laborers. I came clinging to the shifting seeds of time. This was my punishment, to drink the terephthalic acid, mount the compo, and travel to a time that Grandfather warned me would make me cry for another chance to obey him back home.

I knew he’d be right (he always is); I just didn’t know how right he’d be. This scar has become something I caress obsessively as if it were your komboloi, the worry beads you lashed to my wrist while I leaned my head back to drink the acid. Whatever terrible act that begat this scar is long forgotten; yet as I circle my fingers over its contours, I know its presence on this body is no accident. Grandfather must want me to know that ripped flesh—cells forced to separate, then claw their way back together in a lumpy uneven embrace—is the life I escaped. History has been the grace that allows my body—my true body—to remain strong and unscarred. Virtually.

Virtually unscarred.

The Battle Royale is not supposed to maim. If you’re good, you never get hit. You duck and dodge, slipping away just seconds before a blade or a heel or a stick hits. It’s a dance, the razors were added for flash, to make the game prettier. You get a lot of bruises, a few players have lost chunks of flesh, but only one death.

“It’s safe,” I told Grandfather.

“Battle Royale,” he muttered under his breath and went back to his beakers and chemicals and explosions.

I was forbidden. I was forbidden to battle, but you were there. If I didn’t dance, someone else would have dazzled you with their blades, and I would have disappeared before your eyes.

So I got cut. Yeah, I bled. But I didn’t break anything. I didn’t have to go to the hospital. I walked all the way home. Trailing blood, and you behind.

When Grandfather saw me he was shaking. Not from fear, but from anger. Grandmother protested that I needed to heal, but Grandfather would not listen. He dragged me down into the basement, pulled me over the threshold of his lab, and pushed me onto the compo. He was so angry he didn’t notice that my blood had spilled all the way down the stairs, and you behind.

I drank. I didn’t have a choice. He raged about whipping posts and ignorance. He questioned my right to be free, and you cried. You, who had never even touched my cheek, who I had never even kissed, you cried for me and wrapped your worry beads around my wrist.

Grandfather has a bad habit of creating the poison before the cure. Now that I am sitting here watching feathers hanging in air, listening to the buzz of legal speech, fingering a scar placed on this body before I entered it, I wonder when Grandfather will bring me back, if he can bring me back. If I will fall faint or asleep and open my eyes to see Grandfather’s face hanging over me—you behind, praying that I survived.

I hear the man in the feathered cape whisper, “Uexolotl,” and I know it is a curse. A lance thrown down the throat of the haughty European. But the European does not respond; he continues his speech. The realization comes to me slowly, but I grasp it. The magic-cape man—with his brown skin and his shiny black hair—he cannot be seen by the European.

“He and his kind are dead,” a voice whispers. I look around, but there is no one here. No one who would have whispered such a thing. The men surrounding me do not whisper. Their voices insist and impose. They flail dark-robed arms and toss white-wigged heads. The men shackled behind me are silent.

“Dance,” the voice whispers.

“What?” I ask with dry lips.

“Dance,” the voice whispers again. I listen harder. I may be crazy, keeping company with dead, feathered men. I may be crazy, hearing words on the wind. I may be crazy, but I am certain this is your voice. You, who are not here, but I think you must be reaching for me. I imagine you peering through Grandfather’s murky liquids, whistling into beakers, wondering how you can bring me home.

I stand.

“Now dance.”

Before I can move a muscle, the scar starts to screech.

“Dance the Royale?”

The scar wails in guttural tones, begging me to sit. It speaks in a language I can’t decipher, but fear needs no words to be understood.

“Dip.”

I don’t know where this scar came from or how it was born, but I know you. I have been waiting to dance for you since the moment I met you. Before you can whisper another word, I dip. My hands flick helplessly, no razors to grasp. A club blurs toward me, and I slide back, snaking my hips low. It crashes against my knee, but it doesn’t matter. I’m in the Royale now.

They surround me—black robes, rotten teeth, anger. They surround me, but they can’t catch me. The Royale has me. That ancient vibe has slipped into my skin and nested down into my chest. It guides me, showing me the gaps, and I glide through, ducking just when they think I’m captured. Then just like that, the Royale leaves me. It rolls up behind me and shoves me forward. I stumble under the force, and then I run.

I scramble over benches and climb through an open window. As soon as my feet touch the ground, I take off running. I hear sounds behind me: explosions and shouts. I feel tiny fires shooting past me. The Royale pants behind me, low and fierce. Every pant is like a heartbeat. I dare not still my feet.

Out the corner of my eye I see feathers flying next to me. They rush, creating a wind that pushes me faster and faster. I run beyond my pursuers. I run beyond the trees. I run beyond the Royale. Then I hear the gritty sound of time grinding into a different gear, or year. My limbs go liquid and lose their speed.

Intense heat is the first thing I feel, then exhaustion. I feel it down to my bones. Muscles like mush, as if I’ve been walking for miles. To the right and left of me are sand dunes, notched with hypnotizing ridges where the wind has kissed them. Before me is a woman’s back, her head hangs low as she plods along a footpath. I look behind me. More women, a long line of them snaking back further than I can see. They all wear dingy white robes and tattered headwraps. I hold up my arms. The same dingy cloth covers me.

My eyes swing back up to the woman’s neck. Foreign memories flash in my mind. Men with black-lined eyes breaking into a family camp. A man—who must be this new body’s father—bloodied but fighting. A woman—who must be this new body’s mother—lying with her throat ripped open, a bloom of blood haloing her head. The bite of sand on palms and knees as this body crawls to safety, crawls like a dog, choking on fear. I shake the scene from my head and stare at the back of the woman’s neck again.

“You must forget there was ever anything called home,” a voice whispers. Your voice. I feel a gasp of panic explode in my head. You can’t ask me to forget home. I won’t forget home; I won’t forget you. Anger chases away the panic. Grandfather, with his reckless lessons and self-righteous speeches. Doesn’t he know what everyone whispers behind his back? That one, they say, pointing their chins at me, that one gets his wildness from his grandfather. Is he punishing me for being like him?

My arm swings up in an arc, muscles twitching with memory. It’s the block I should have thrown in my last Royale, the arm flick I could have used to knock away the razor and avoid getting cut. The repeated sway of my arm is numbing, like a narcotic. For a few blissful seconds, I’m not on a long desert walk to enslavement—I’m nowhere.

After my arm grows tired, I let it fall limp by my side. I notice two small mounds rising from my chest. Breasts. I touch them with the back of my hand. My sleeve rolls back to reveal the ridges of a scar on my forearm. I push the sleeve up further, there’s a crude X burned into my arm. When I look up at the woman in front of me again, I understand why I’ve been staring at her. It’s not her neck I’m looking at, I’m staring at the scar burned on her back—the top edges of an X visible above the scoop of her robe.

I peer ahead. An indigo-draped figure rides a camel. The set of his shoulders tells me that he decides my next breaths. Whip gripped in hand, lazily swatting air with a motion that cools him and flaunts his power all at once.

What has Grandfather done?

I step out of the snaking line, and look back. My gaze is darting around, looking for more guards when, thwack, something hard cracks against my jaw.

I don’t fight the fall. I don’t even feel the impact when my body crashes against the hot sand. I lay there, motionless, aware of nothing except the sun’s searing heat and the parade of feet stepping over me as the women plod on to their terrible destiny.

I can smell death rising with the heat around my body. It smells like decay, a tinge of sticky sweetness mixed in with a rank earthy scent. I feel a blow to my side, then another. I allow my body to rock with each kick. A thought rips through my mind: If I die here, will my life end? I would rise and fight, but why? Whether I lay here until death claims me, or I stand and walk toward my own slaughter, I will die anonymous and unloved. No one among these trillions of grains of sand can see my true face, and no one knows my name.

“I know,” your voice says. “I know your name. Come home.”

At first I feel a flush of pleasure: you want me. Then that bitter rage flares again and extinguishes my pleasure. You want me, and I am powerless to join you. Coming home is not up to me. This is Grandfather’s game.

The army of feet trod on, kicking up tufts of dust, coating my face with grime. The sun is so merciless that the blazing heat begins to feel physical. The idea of releasing my grip on life is seductively sweet.

“But we have not yet tasted each other,” you whisper.

A small sound that doesn’t know if it wants to be a laugh or a sob pops in my throat. Not even your voice—with its melodies and catches—can stop me from thinking about committing my body to the earth. I want you, but I also want to break into a million pieces and melt into the sand. I want to stop the procession of roughened heels and downtrodden women. I want to die.

“Dance,” you say. Your voice has taken on a depth I have never heard before. You have pushed beyond laughter and flirtation, scattered gravel and broken glass in your voice. Then I understand. You mean not to entice me, but to compel me. You are trying to awaken the warrior in me.

Another kick catches me. Pain implodes in my side. My body lifts up from the ground, then falls limp. A captor yells something over me—something rumbling and fast. More of them come. They turn me over. I don’t blink. I’m not even sure that I’m breathing. I lay face up, eyes glassy and blank, limbs splayed crucifixion wide.

You want me to rise, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to rise from a bed of my own blood, from a stretch of earth made soft by the pummeling of my limbs. I don’t know how to stand and dance, not even for the Royale. Not to join a caravan of the enslaved, not to travel toward a tomorrow of torture and death. No, not even for you.

“You will dance,” you say, and suddenly violent retching tugs at my throat. Grandfather’s magic must be stuck or broken, or else it’s incredibly cruel. Something is pummeling me, piercing my skin with pinpricks. I don’t know if it’s another time shift, abuse from my attackers, or you trying to rouse me.

I lift a weak wrist and for a brief second there is relief. Then the pain returns—like a million tiny axes chopping at my organs. I throw open a thigh to ward off the trembling. There is no faith or courage here, just feverish desperation as I move through the Royale.

I imagine Grandfather’s unsteady fingers working to bring me back. A gritty moan rustles in my ears. At first I think it’s my voice winding out over the sand flats, but then I realize it is you, reaching down deep to pull out a wailing too gutbucket for your small frame. It is the straining in your voice that hooks me. I tilt my head back and gulp down deep raggedy breaths. I open my mouth; nothing but dry rasping comes out. I work at it anyway. I search for a part of me that is unbruised and untouched by pain. I open my mouth again, struggling to thrust out a mangled yell that can match your wailing. Then the sands of time grind at my bones, and everything goes dark.

“You have the things?”

I blink and look around. My body lurches forward. For a few brief seconds, it feels like I’m hurtling through space. I grab onto a pole overhead, than drag myself back to standing.

“Keep tight! What were you thinking?”

I look at the person speaking to me and almost gag. I look away, but a glance around the room sickens me further. The room is crawling with mangled people. No facial feature is where it should be—limbs are attached at odd angles on all the wrong parts of the body. I force the muscles in my face to be still. Then I look again. It is a man speaking to me, was a man. Now I don’t know what he is. He has eyes on either side of his mouth, and his nose sits at a violent tilt. The space where his eyes should be is covered with a huge, lumpy scar. Even as I am battling revulsion, I can see that his oddly-placed eyes are flicking appraising glances, sizing me up.

I look around again. Through the narrow mesh platform beneath my feet, I see more of them—the mutilated—packed in like cockroaches. There are so many of them that they look like rashes or rust corroding the metal walls. Besides the revolting people, everything in the room is metal—metal walls, metal poles, metal mesh flooring.

When I look up, a few droplets of wetness fall into my eyes. I shake my head and blink it away. I look up again. A clump of blistered kids are wedged between the overhead poles and the ceiling. The realization rises in me slowly: I must be disfigured too. I look down at my body. I see my shoulder just beneath my chin, and my arm jutting out from where my chest should be. What kinds of freaks are we?

When next I look at the man, the air around me seems unstable. The fearsome roar that rings through the room starts to echo in my ears. My eyelids droop, and my muscles start to go slack. The man opens his mouth, a tiny wet hand emerges. He wipes the bottom of my nose with it. A moldy scent bursts in my sinuses, and my eyes pop wide open.

“You gonna make it? Ain’t no short trip!”

I nod mutely, revolted and relieved.

“You have your things?” he asks again.

I shrug. He squints at me. I can tell he thinks I’m a waste of time.

“You know about the things, right?”

I shrug again, this time nodding.

He turns his head and opens his mouth. Out comes the hand again. It feels along the pole we’re hanging on. He picks at something flat that’s stuck there and rips it off. I hadn’t noticed it before, but only one of his arms ends with a hand, the other ends with a foot. He only has one standing leg, and it’s keeping him balanced on the platform beneath us.

He waves it under my nose. It’s an old tattered label.

“Mmmm-mmm!”

It takes me a few seconds to realize he can’t talk and hand me the label at the same time. I grab the label.

“Not going to ask. Why you don’t know what we’re doing here is none of my concern. How you got on the transport without knowing about the things ain’t my trouble.” He looks around. “But you better learn fast. There ain’t no return trips. At the end of this, either you’ll get out or you’ll die.”

I can tell by the hard edges of his words that he meant to scare. Instead I’m thrilled. Could this finally be the end?

“You need three things. Three. You got them?”

I began to feel around my body, awkwardly learning how to use my rotated arms.

“Pocket the label.”

“What?”

The guy’s eyes roll up like I’m useless. “Pocket the label, it’s your pass.”

I look at the label. It’s grimy and stiff. Though it’s ripped I can read something on it: “Regiment Green: Disrespect on a cellular level.” Reaching around my hip, feeling for my back pocket, my hand catches on an opening in my clothes. It’s a pocket. I drop the label in and feel around the rest of my clothes. I’ve got pockets all over.

I poke around in the pockets, unsure of what I’m looking for. My fingers happen upon something stiff in the fourth pocket. I pull it out—a shiny black feather. The man makes a weird fluttering sound with his mouth. I imagine that wet hand flapping against his moist jaws.

“Don’t show me. Don’t show anybody except Him when you get there. Got it?”

I nod and keep feeling around, but the rest of the pockets are empty. After I check all my pockets twice, I realize that my fingers are covered with grime. I put my hand back in a pocket and pinch at the bottom. When I draw my hand out, there’s something grainy sticking to my fingertips. I hold my hand up to my face—desert sand. I start grabbing pinches of sand wherever I can find it.

“Tighten!” the guy yells.

I grab on with two hands. The transport dips, then turns sharply. My feet fly off the platform, and a burning flares across my palms where they rub against the overhead pipe.

I hear a yell, then two bodies drop down from above. The yelling fades and is replaced by a sinister hissing. The air fills with smoke, and a high-pitched wailing rings out.

“Don’t lose your grip,” the guy mutters.

“What’s down there?”

“Engine.”

Fear bubbles up in my throat, but I choke it back down. I focus on the impossible task of filling one of my pockets with sand. When I’ve piled all the sand I can grab into one pocket, I let out a relieved exhalation.

But the guy breaks into my relief. “You need three things. Two’s no good. He won’t send you if you don’t have three.”

My thoughts run around my mind in panicked loops. Who is this person and where will he send me? Will this take me home? More moisture falls on me from above. I’m suddenly aware of my armpits and my crotch. They are soaking wet, my entire torso is wet—I am terrified to the bone.

Suddenly I know what my third thing will be.

“What if I want to bring liquid? What can I hold it in?”

The guy doesn’t answer. He throws his head back, barks something guttural and fast. One of the children wedged in overhead shimmies forward on the pole. He almost cracks my knuckles in the process, but I don’t cry out. He reaches up, grabs something white and cup-shaped from the ceiling. He brings it to his mouth quickly, gulping something down. Finds another cup-shaped thing from the ceiling and grabs it. He passes them down to the guy, whose head is thrown back, lips spread wide as the wet hand is outstretched waiting for the cups. When he has them, he flicks them at me.

“Won’t last forever. You better hope it holds out till we get to the Man.”

I nod. I see him staring at me curiously. I tilt my head forward, hold the cup underneath the tip of my nose, let my sweat drip into it.

“Tighten!”

I throw my hand over the pole and yank on it with my wrist. We careen backward this time. I lose all my sweat but I hold on to the cup. It takes me three more tries, but I finally fill the cup.

Something like admiration creeps into the guy’s eyes.

“Pass the empty,” he says.

I pass it. With a flick of his wet fingers, he turns it upside down and holds it out to me. I fit the cup filled with sweat to the empty one. He pinches the edges of the two cups with his tiny hand. I take the cups back and drop them into my pocket.

A ghostly sensation washes through my body. At first I think it’s relief, but then I feel it fluttering in my chest. I look at my guide with new eyes, eyes that are probably now as wet as my skin. I haven’t caught a glimpse of the outside, but I know from my brief time in the bowels of this machine, this world isn’t a pretty place. Surrounded by all these damaged cells, in the middle of this ocean of desperation, my guide suddenly seems holy. Before I can hold it back, reverence and gratitude pour out of my face. My emotions register in his eyes, and he turns away.

After my flush of emotion, “Tighten!” is the only word he says to me for the rest of the trip. In the absence of his gaze, the balancing act becomes routine; I find myself oddly acclimated to periodic peril. Soon I’m dozing off between veers and drops as the drone of the engine soaks through me. By the time the engine room shudders and slows, I have become what everyone else is: a jumpy, sweaty fugitive—frightened, yet determined to survive.

A grinding sound parts the damp heat around us. Everyone begins to chatter in different tones and pitches, and the transport jerks to a sudden halt. I look up just in time to see hundreds of thin metal shafts shoot down from the ceiling. The noise is deafening. I feel the whoosh of wind slap my cheek as one of the spinning metal shafts rips through the air next to me. A dizzy panic whirls through my gut. I grip the pole tighter and pray not to faint. When I regain my balance, I look at my guide for reassurance, but his eyes are closed and his mouth is moving steadily. Is he talking to himself?

A thin drizzle wets my cheek. I touch it—it’s not water. It’s thick and green, and it stings my fingertips. The green gel splatters through the room sounding like footsteps or bloodshed. Then a pounding roar drowns out the splattering. My stomach clenches. What is coming for us?

I glance at my guide again—he’s standing stock still, eyes closed. Some of the others have let go of their poles, but not my guide. As the roaring grows louder, I nervously gnaw on my shoulder. All around me people are leaping from perches and diving from ledges, green goo lashing against their bodies as they plunge.

Just when I think I’m going to bite through my skin, my guide opens his eyes. His mouth moves, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. His mouth moves again, and he pitches his body forward. It looks like he’s saying “Jump.” My muscles tense as I prepare to leap. My guide opens his mouth and extends that small wet hand. He puts one finger up, and I hear a deafening crack. It sounds like the whole room is going to split in two. My guide nods, we leap.

The freefall makes me feel like vomiting. Instead of crashing on the engine, we land on a wave of green gel. It is washing through the engine room in rivers now. Those who did not leap are engulfed by it. Those who leapt too soon lay broken somewhere on the engine below.

The gel hurries forward, carrying me at a frightening speed straight at a wall. I shut my eyes tight, but I don’t but slam into the wall. With a whir, a circular door opens before me, and I surf through it into darkness. My eyes—useless. The gel bobs gently, misleadingly—as it is rocking me, it is searing my skin. People call out names and numbers. Some voices are frantic, others pleading. A crackle that sounds like electricity silences them all. Light flashes, and I see that everyone is looking up. I look around wildly for an exit or a sign—something that can tell me where to go before we are plunged into darkness again.

When next the light flashes, everyone is still looking up. Probes, shiny and bulbous, start to lower from the ceiling. Darkness comes, forcing me to calculate how long the probes will take to get to me, and how far I need to move away so as not to be crushed. I feel a ripple as the probes slide into the gel. Another flash, and I see bodies scrambling up onto the probes. I feel around blindly until I touch something cool and hard. I grab onto the probe. It crackles and a gentle electric current rolls through my body. Before I can climb all the way onto the probe, it starts to lift.

The burning on my skin cools as soon as I am out of the gel. I allow myself a few seconds of relief as the probe lifts through the ceiling into a new room and a floor closes underneath us. The thump of people dropping down from the probes is the first thing I hear. Then feet scattering.

“Run!” people start to yell, “Ruuuuunnnnnn.”

They scatter—hopping, crawling, rushing. No one seems to know which way to go. I can finally use my feet, but I am faltering. I turn around in circles, looking for a door, a window, a hint of light, anything that can show me the way out. But all I see is rows and rows of probes hemming us in; I can’t even figure out the shape of the room we’re in.

I hear a faint sound.

“Ahhhh-lay-lay-lay. Ah-la, lay, lay, lay. Ahhhh-lay-lay-lay. Ah-la, lay, lay, lay.”

You are singing. For a few seconds I am paralyzed with grief, stricken by the certainty that I will never see you again. Then I see it, a purple mist spreading through the room. Your song seems to beckon to me, growing faint then pulsing in one particular corner. I follow your voice from one end of the room to the other. Every time I think you have led me to the way out, the light I am walking toward dissipates.

The mist quickly fills the room, growing so thick that I can no longer see. I hear breathing around me. It sounds heavy and panicked. A suffocating sweetness blossoms in the back of my throat. My limbs begin to tingle. A loud chattering breaks out behind me. The last clear thought I have is that if I can find the voices, I can find the exit. I twist around and run. After a few steps, I bang into a probe, then trip over something large. I’m sure it’s a body, but my mind is too jumbled to process the thought. I ignore my mounting hysteria and latch onto the image of me running. I force my limbs forward, but gravity overtakes me and starts dragging me down. My eyes roll back in my head, and my ears stop registering sound. Before I drop, someone shoves me from behind. I stumble and follow the crush of bodies. Suddenly the air is different—sharp, crisp, no mist. A weak thrill vibrates through me, then I fall face-first onto the ground.

Suddenly I’m lying on a bed of soft green leaves. There’s no noisy, painful time shift, but I’m in a different place. Not home, but my arms are nestled around you. You have flowers tucked behind your ear and gold beads in your braids. You’re holding me with an easy comfort, almost as if you’ve held me many times before, as if you know you’ll be holding me many times again.

I snuggle closer to you.

“Time to go,” you whisper before kissing me on my jaw.

I feel someone shaking me.

“Time to go,” a voice says.

Then I hear that wet flapping sound. It whips through me like an alarm. My eyes pop open. I climb to my feet. Dead leaves and dried insect wings flutter off me. I grab my guide in an awkward fumbling embrace. Why am I still here?

“Let’s move,” he says and hops away before I can ask how he found me. He leans on a branch for balance, moving with surprising quickness for a one-legged man.

I follow, taking quick glances around while I hustle behind him. On one side of us is the base of a cliff. We are traveling on a narrow path that cuts through a tangle of overgrowth that has managed to flourish in the massive shadow of a mountain. On the other side of us is a dark forest; cool air rolls out from between the tress and licks at our cheeks and ears. Every twenty feet or so, my guide stops and peers into the forest. He’s too far ahead for me to ask what he’s doing.

A shriek cuts through my thoughts, then I see people running. Without a word to me, my guide races forward, hopping as fast as he can toward a cluster of people staring into the forest. He pushes past them and, by the time I draw near, he has disappeared into the mass of altered limbs.

I push into the crowd too, struggling to keep pace with my guide.

“This it?” my guide asks, motioning to a large cave.

Someone grunts. My guide looks at me. I take a step forward. He stares at me for a few long seconds, then he blinks.

“Going in,” he says. When he turns away I know that was goodbye.

He hops into the cave opening. A curtain of pastel-hued light shimmers as he enters, and then he’s gone. My heart goes wild with fear. I don’t think I can take another world, another blow, another scar, but I am instantly overtaken with terror that I’m being left behind.

When I step inside the cave, I’m assaulted with light. The light is everywhere. The strongest glow comes from deep within the cave where the light’s intensity is amplified by discarded metal rods and glass tubing littering the floor. Shielding my eyes from the glare, I walk deeper into the cave. I feel the temperature drop right when I find my guide. He is standing at the back of the cave in front of an old wooden table. On the other side of the table is the Man—I’m pretty sure it’s the Man. He is massive, intimidating. His dark robes do nothing to disguise the broadness of his shoulders. His head is shaven clean, and I can’t see his eyes—they are covered by plastic welding goggles. He taps his hand impatiently on the tabletop.

My guide gestures, pointing at something on the table. The Man lifts one hand and shoves the goggles off his eyes and leaves them to rest on his forehead. He says something to my guide. My guide nods. The Man says something else, and my guide says, “I promise.”

He picks up a cup from the table and drinks from it, then he disappears right before my eyes.

My heart convulses, but before my thoughts can whip into a frenzy, the Man yells, “Next!”

He doesn’t bother to look up when I stand before his table.

“Your things,” he says. I pull out the feather and place it on the table. Pinch by pinch, I pile the sand into a mound. Then I get the cup of perspiration out of my pocket and place it on the table. It has gone stiff in the middle where my guide pinched it. It tilts to the side, but the liquid has not leaked out.

The Man picks up my feather and inspects it. Its iridescence takes me back to the man with the glossy hair, his watchful eyes, his fierce spirit. The Man sets the feather back on the table and pokes his fingers into the sand, flattening my pile. Memories of the girl who watched her parents die run through me. By the time he picks up the cup, I am remembering the scar that wailed to keep me safe. The Man sniffs the cup, turning it around in his fingers, then places it back on the table. He clasps his hands in front of him.

“What is freedom?” he asks. He tilts his head back and looks up at me

I gasp.

There is no mistaking those features. The thickness of the eyebrows, the thinness of the nose, the full bottom lip, the scar on his left jawline.

“Grandfather?”

Not a flicker of recognition passes through the Man’s eyes. He doesn’t repeat his question, but the intensity of his stare lets me know that he is waiting for my response.

A thousand thoughts go spinning through my head. I don’t want to be afraid, but I am. How much of Grandfather is in this man’s body? I flash back to the rows of men shackled behind me in the courthouse. I remember the long snaking line of women plodding through the desert. I know what freedom is not.

The man who may be my grandfather bangs his hand on the table.

“Many are waiting. Do you have an answer?”

“I’m…” I wet my lips.

I think about my body, my real body, loose-limbed and free. I remember the Royale, how it always made me feel: flush-faced, high on adrenaline, disconnected from everything ordinary, locked in some ancient formula of ferocity and flight.

The man with a hand for a tongue didn’t prepare me for this.

“Freedom is the ability to be whatever you want—without control, violence, force, or limitations.”

Grandfather takes a closer look at me then. He squints as if sizing me up.

“Why do you deserve to be free?”

“Everyone deserves to be free,” I snap.

A slight smile creases Grandfather’s lips; then his seriousness swallows his pleasure, and he continues his inquisition.

“What will you do with your freedom?”

I know what Grandfather doesn’t want to hear. He doesn’t want to hear that I’ll pick up the razors and enter the Royale, he doesn’t want to hear that after decades of bondage, I will choose to squander my freedom by getting myself maimed in a fight.

I remember the freedom the Royale gave me, a freedom Grandfather will never understand: a freedom of feeling, a freedom of weightlessness, a freedom to be pure motion, to be more than I am. When I try to put my words together, I stumble, blinded by thoughts of you watching me dance, by my need to dazzle you again.

I look Grandfather in the eye, careful to strangle down all the hatred and anger that I have carried with me on my travels.

“I will obey my elders and love my friends,” I say. None of this is a lie.

Without another look at me, he grasps a glass beaker between his thumb and index finger and pushes it toward me.

Smoke wafts from the opening of the beaker.

“Drink,” he says.

A small dry chuckle falls from my mouth. This is the last of Grandfather’s potions that will ever pass my lips. As I raise the beaker to my mouth, he says, “May freedom be all that you wish it to be. May you be strong under the weight of its burden.”

I throw my head back and take a big gulp. The potion swells in my throat. I slam the beaker on the table and spit out the fluid that was in my mouth. As soon as I draw my hand away, Grandfather and the table are gone.

Traveling back home is like being smacked with a hundred small hands. There is nothing to see, but plenty of sound. After my skin has been slapped raw, I begin to tingle all over. An intense tickle starts at the crown of my head and splits my body, traveling right down to my pelvis. Heat spears up my throat and I jackknife forward, gagging.

When the vomit comes, I am back on the compo, my face a mess of mucus and tears. I force myself to my hands and knees and scramble off the compo. Then I look around me with wild, shifting uncertainty. Pain pulses through me like a mantra, but I cannot let it consume me.

All around me are the tools of Grandfather’s treachery. My skin bristles at remembering the scars, the mutilations, and the brutalities. I know he will dismiss the idea that I was ever in danger. He’ll crow over the power of his chemicals and insist that he was in complete control.

The urge to upend his worktable and shatter his beakers overtakes me, but I am too weak to stand. I hear Grandmother moving around in the kitchen overhead. I want to cry out, but I can’t squeeze sound out of my throat. I crawl over to the stairs. When I try to lift my hand to the doorknob, my limbs tremble violently. Hatred for Grandfather burns in my heart.

I ram my head against the door, blind to everything but the need to be seen, to be held. I bang the door with my head again and again, oblivious to the impact of the wood against my skull. Before blood breaks through my skin, exhaustion consumes me. In its wake, a blackout blankets my consciousness—and without knowing if any one has heard me, I collapse to the floor.

Ferret

The ferret’s claws clicked echoes into the silence. I wanted to scream out. Instead I listened to the rasp of grandfather scratching his chin. Everyone’s gaze followed the ferret as it scurried around the compass, but I turned away. Without looking I knew the ferret would be running in dizzying circles. The dull thunk of ferret teeth sinking into wood rang out in the divining room. Grandfather’s robes rustled as he stood.

It was only compulsion—not faith, not hope—that pulled me toward the compass. I stood behind Grandfather as he leaned over the ferret’s inert body. He unfurled a long bony finger and stroked the ferret’s head. The ferret loosened its grip, and a servant removed the wood block from the ferret’s jaws. My breath caught in anticipation. I hated my body for that. I knew every movement of this divination was empty—useless—yet here were my cheeks, flushed, as the servant hung the block in the space for the speed directive.

“D,” the crowd yelled in a burst of noise. The servant turned back to the compass. They all watched the ferret begin circling the compass again, but I kept my eyes on the block. After years of use, the letter was almost obscured by teeth marks. I squinted, wanting to be certain the block did indeed have a “D” carved on its face. My scrutiny was aborted by the sound of the ferret sinking its teeth into another block. The servant lifted it and placed it in the space for the direction coordinates. By the time the crowd yelled out “U,” the ferret had already selected the last block: “B”—the distance directive.

“D—U—B,” my grandfather mumbled to himself as the ferret backed away from the compass.

He turned to all gathered and proclaimed “Dub!” in a loud voice. The crowd, fools that they were, started clapping. They still believed Grandfather and his ferret avtandi would bring us home.

Grandfather redirected our aimless little bubble according to the new speed:direction:distance directives, then drifted away from the compass. He called his avtandi with low clicking noises, and I prepared to leave his side. Grandfather held a shaky hand in front of his solar plexus. It took a full minute for the sphere of flesh and organs to detach from his torso. Slowly, the five-inch globe gravitated toward his hand, leaving a circular hole straight through his body.

The sphere floated silently down to the floor as the ferret approached. The sphere undulated, and the ferret stepped into it. Rather than watch the remainder of the ritual, I fell to the floor, scattering my body into a thousand round molecules and rolling into a distant corner of the divining room. Even so dissolved, I heard the hiss of Grandfather’s sphere engulfing the ferret. I heard the whisper of Grandfather’s hand as he waved his sphere of flesh up from the floor and guided it back into his center.

A gnawing ugliness had begun to eat at my insides. I was certain the servants’ whispers were true: we were at the bitter end of our five-year supplies. Every day, as Grandfather paced the marble halls of our bubble, I struggled against terrible anger. The reality rested cold and hard inside me: Grandfather would soon decide who would feed and who would starve.

“Granddaughter!” grandfather yelled.

I gathered myself up, molecules sliding across the floor to re-form my tall lanky body. Grandfather stood in the middle of the divining room with his avtandi in his hand.

“I mean to consult the compass again,” Grandfather said.

The ferret looked at me with beady glimmering eyes.

“But Grandfather, you just checked it this morning.”

Grandfather paused and parted his beard obsessively. Then he repeated himself in a shaky voice.

“Yes, but I mean to consult the compass again.”

I lowered my head, but I could see Grandfather’s forearm struggling to hold the ferret steady. When the ferret’s claws started rattling, I watched its every move. After it sank its teeth into the blocks and the servant had hung them, Grandfather neared the compass. I followed a few steps behind. The crowd yelled “D!—U!—B!” with the enthusiasm of children, but grandfather made no grand announcement this time.

“They’re exactly the same, Grandfather,” I said.

Grandfather said nothing. His fingers returned to his chin to fondle his beard.

While watching his worried motions, something took over me. Even as I did it I did not know my reasons for my actions. When the ferret scampered away from the compass to return to its haven of grandfather flesh, I placed my hand in front of my belly and coaxed a sphere of my own flesh toward my palm. My sphere drifted to the ground, and the ferret halted, confused. Its beady eyes swung from my sphere to grandfather’s and back again.

The ferret crawled cautiously toward my grandfather’s flesh, then turned away to sniff at mine. Grandfather watched his avtandi’s confusion impassively. Not one of his bony fingers left his beard to alter the outcome. The ferret’s cautiousness deteriorated into panic as it scuttled back and forth between our spheres so rapidly, it became a blur. I took a deep breath and glanced at Grandfather. His face was marked by a dull resignation I could not stomach. I lifted my hand to retract the challenge, but before I could withdraw my flesh, the ferret veered sharply, and plunged into my sphere.

My flesh encircled Grandfather’s avtandi; a deep, ragged breath seeped from Grandfather’s lungs. Was that a slight smile creasing Grandfather’s lips? Fear, paranoia, and regret exploded in my chest. Why was it so hard to breathe? Grandfather’s voice cut through my hysteria.

“It is done,” he muttered.

Those grave words pushed me into action. I waved my hand over my sphere as if my muscles had performed the task a thousand times. My flesh drifted up from the floor, but Grandfather didn’t bother with his. He left his globe of organs discarded at his feet, preferring to watch me—eyes dark with anticipation—as my sphere refitted into my torso.

The moment the flesh rejoined my body an electric shock ripped through me. I yelled and fell to my knees. My palms and forehead were wet with sweat. The room receded from my eyesight as visions flashed before my eyes. I saw me begging my parents to let me go on a brief day trip in Grandfather’s bubble. My parents arguing about Grandfather’s incompetence. Grandfather intentionally setting the bubble on the wrong course. Grandfather taking this ferret, this same avtandi from his grandfather. Grandfather watching his grandfather die.

Terror welled in my throat, but my mind—making sense of the visions at a feverish pace—quelled my emotions. When I regained focus, I was staring at the marble floor. A palpable hush filled the divining room; everyone stared mutely. I heard a muffled groan behind me. When I twisted around on all fours, I saw Grandfather, shriveled into a tiny ball, dying just as his grandfather had. I looked into his eyes searching for a flicker of recognition, hatred, pain, but there was nothing there.

“You…” The condemnation burning in my lungs would not spring from my mouth. Could I blame Grandfather for attempting to escape extinction?

“I…” I started to claim ignorance for my actions, but the apology died on my lips.

“How…” I wanted to ask what alternative I’d had, but my need to be proclaimed innocent wilted just as quickly as it had sprouted. We passengers were the innocents here. He would starve us, before taking us home. Those visions did not lie.

I shook off the last remnants of concern I held for Grandfather and struggled to stand. The unfamiliar weight in my belly pulled me back toward the floor. I strained against the increased gravity and fought my way to my feet.

“Dub,” I whispered while forcing myself to forget Grandfather’s dying body. There was no time for mourning.

I shuffled forward, testing the new balance my avtandi-heavy body required. I neared the compass searching my subconscious for a vision of Grandfather navigating the bubble. I almost lost my breath when I mimicked Grandfather’s navigating stance. I bent over, momentarily disoriented. Then I straightened, took a big gulp of air, and set a course for home.

K-USH: The Legend of the Last Wero

The seekers wait, hungrily, as K-Ush rises and hovers close to the ceiling of the dogra. Her large eye is closed, but she can feel them—the seekers—crouched on the dirt floor below. They send up shards of prayer, puncturing K-Ush’s trance. As their needs—hesitant, but insistent—hit her, a skull-splitting pain flashes across her forehead. Her large skeletal hands twitch. She hears the tiny, timid voice of a seeker plead for help. She’d like to drift down to the floor, wrap her bony fingers around the seeker’s neck, and squeeze.

“What is at the core of you?” K-Ush booms in a deep voice that is not her own.

As the seeker replies, K-Ush rotates her head back and forth. Light glints off the metal band curved around her shaved head. Her lips part, sharing the prophecy the seeker is begging to hear. A loud, raspy breath explodes in her ear; K-Ush’s eye flutters. She almost opens her eye and breaks her trance, but she clenches her fists and fights to hold on. She must not be distracted by Sheya’s dying breaths.

As K-Ush continues to prophesy, the sound of Sheya’s breathing disappears. She has even ceased to feel the seekers’ miserable expectant need. An unfamiliar dizziness blooms in her chest. Her eye flies open. She is no longer in the dogra. All around her, K-Ush feels the condensation of a gathering storm, but she sees nothing. She knows she should focus on the storm—obtain facts, ascertain dimensions, compile a projected duration—but she pushes it away. Sheya will complain. “It is a wero’s job to protect the village,” she will lecture, but K-Ush doesn’t care. Does not want to gather useful information for the survival of the seekers. Let them die, she thinks. Let them all die, so Wa-Sheya can finally be at rest.

The air around K-Ush’s body starts to undulate. A warm wetness touches her at the base of her neck. She turns to look behind her and sees a flesh-colored body zip away. In the distance she sees another form, another wero it seems. The wero beckons, motioning for K-Ush to join her. K-Ush takes a step forward toward the wero, but the wetness returns and coaxes K-Ush to be still. It brushes from the nape of her neck down her spine.

“K-Ush! K-Ush!”

K-Ush hears her name being called faintly, as if from a distance. She ignores the call. Instead, she pushes herself against the wet warmth. She turns her head quickly, and again she sees the flesh-colored body zip away. This time she can discern that it is a tall, four-legged creature. She faces forward, now with a smile tugging at her lips. As she stares ahead, eye focused on the wero in the distance, the wet warmth picks up at the base of K-Ush’s spine. She turns her head slowly, keeping her body still. The flesh-colored creature stands behind her, its gaunt face lowered to her waist. Its teeth are bared as a long, green tongue hangs out of its mouth and strokes the back of K-Ush’s legs.

“K-Ush!”

K-Ush hears her name being called again. This time she leans away from the creature and allows herself to be pulled back to the dogra. When she opens her eye, Sheya is hovering before her.

“You need ho-resh-li,” Sheya says. Sheya lifts a hand, and four seekers rise to the ceiling. They pull K-Ush into a prone position and, without looking directly at her, hoist her onto their shoulders. Just as Sheya waves her hand to lower K-Ush and the seekers to the ground, K-Ush whispers, “Wa-Sheya, I saw another wero.”

Sheya dips down to K-Ush with a speed K-Ush did not know the old wero still possessed. Sheya hovers horizontally over K-Ush’s body.

“What did you say?” Sheya demands.

“I said I saw another wero.”

“You are the last wero,” Sheya replies.

“And a pale creature licked me, Wa-Sheya. It was wonderful…”

Sheya snaps her fingers, and the seekers thud to the ground. K-Ush pulls herself into a vertical hover, leaning away from Sheya.

“You saw the ki-ra-he?” croaks Sheya.

“Ki-ra-he?!?” K-Ush asks, trying to keep panic from creeping into her voice. “No, n-n-n-o-o-o, Wa-Sheya.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

K-Ush’s lips start to tremble.

“Speak out,” Sheya roars. “Do not behave as if you have never given prophecy…speak!”

“Something licked me. It wasn’t bad. It felt good.”

Sheya grasps one of K-Ush’s shoulders and drags her back up to the ceiling of the dogra. She seems not to notice that their heads bump against the wet ceiling.

“You were not yet born, so you do not know what blasphemy you speak,” Sheya says, her face close to K-Ush’s.

“But Wa-Sheya…”

Sheya lifts her chin and fixes a steely glare on K-Ush’s face. K-Ush silences herself and lowers her head respectfully.

“You know this story by heart child,” Sheya says, her voice wavering, this time with emotion, not old age. “You know the ki-ra-he decimated our villages twelve times over before we formed any protection, and you insist on mocking the dead?”

K-Ush feels her energy seeping out of her. Her head rolls to the side, and she dips, losing the strength to hover. Sheya grabs K-Ush before she falls and pulls her back up.

“Never K-Ush, never are you to believe that a ki-ra-he means the village no harm,” she growls.

“Wasn’t a monster,” K-Ush murmurs. She is barely able to keep her eye open. “I know it wouldn’t hurt me.”

“It can’t hurt you, K-Ush. You are a wero.”

“Then why are you so angry with me?”

Sheya sighs, betraying the length of her life and the depth of her exhaustion.

“K-Ush, you have reached the final stage of prophecy.”

K-Ush’s eye flies open. The jolt from Sheya’s words momentarily energizes her.

“How, Wa-Sheya, by seeing a ki-ra-he?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Have you ever wondered how I know when to call a ceremony?”

K-Ush nods.

“I know the warmth you speak of. It is delicious, yes, but it is dangerous. The tongue of the ki-ra-he is its most seductive feature. As it licks, you submit. You did not want to return, did you?”

K-Ush shook her head silently. Wa-Sheya waved a cautionary finger in K-Ush’s face.

“Never forget, little wero, while you allow the ki-ra-he to visit you in trance, it comes to the village and devours the seekers.”

K-Ush shudders.

“It appears when it wants to feed?”

“It appears to the wero when it wants to feed. When the ki-ra-he appears, you must leave your trance immediately.”

“But the ki-ra-he was playful. It was like a game.”

“The ki-ra-he does not play. You are too young to remember the time of blood. The ki-ra-he came at will. They left behind bloody bodies with gouged out hearts, throats, and guts. Each time they came to feed, they left one shro untouched. That was the shro of the three-armed female child.”

“The first wero,” K-Ush mumbles dutifully.

Wa-Sheya nods. “Twelve times the ki-ra-he came before the people of the village realized the ki-ra-he would not enter a shro that contained a three-armed child. They began to build huge shros where everyone would sleep under the protection of the three-armed girl-children.”

“I know the story, Wa-Sheya.”

“You know the mythology, K-Ush, but you do not know the tragedy. You’ve never experienced it.”

“Then why did I become a wero? How am I supposed to protect anybody?”

Again a sigh rustles between the young wero and her mentor. Sheya’s words unravel reluctantly, and K-Ush leans forward to hear them.

“I am leaving soon, K-Ush.”

K-Ush hears Sheya’s words, but she cannot make sense of their meaning.

“The ki-ra-he is testing your strength. It knows as long as I am on watch, I will not surrender to its tongue. But you…you are young. You may risk staying longer with the pleasure.”

“No, Wa-Sheya!”

“You are the village’s protection, K-Ush, and the ki-ra-he may gain entry before you rouse yourself from trance.”

Sheya grunts and rolls her head back. “I feel the storm coming, K-Ush. I fear it will be too great for us. You have seen the storm?”

“I felt it Wa-Sheya. I promise to trance on it after the prophecy, but…”

“You are a wero, you must prophesy not only for the seekers, but also for the village.”

A muffled sound—Is it feet stumbling? Is it a stifled yell? Is it a scuffle?—lifts up from the floor of the dogra and interrupts the weros’ conversation. Sheya swoops down to investigate. K-Ush follows. Near the entrance to the dogra is a swirl of activity. A few cloaked seekers seem to have rushed in, others seem to be pushing near the entrance. After motioning for K-Ush to remain inside the dogra, Sheya plows through the chaos. K-Ush can hear Sheya arguing softly with someone, then silence.

“What has happened?” K-Ush asks when Sheya drifts back into the dogra.

“Nothing that concerns you. You need ho-resh-li,” Sheya says and pushes K-Ush toward the hola.

“But Wa-Sheya!” K-Ush whispers, looking into Sheya’s ancient eyes for confirmation. “If what you say is true…” K-Ush pauses “the prophecy doesn’t stop the ki-ra-he.”

Sheya looks around frantically. They are surrounded by seekers.

“You must not speak of these things, K-Ush.” Sheya looks furious, but her voice remains level. “All that matters is that the seekers believe the prophecy saves them, and not even a wero can stop a le-ish from revolving once it is set into motion.”

“But if all we have to do is be gathered in the same hola…”

“The le-ish has been set K-Ush, you cannot change it. Now go take ho-resh-li.”

“I don’t want to be a wero anymore.”

“It is not a choice,” Wa-Sheya says through gritted teeth. “You will take ho-resh-li now.”

“But if all we have to do is be gathered in the same hola…”

“Go,” Sheya growls.

K-Ush lifts her hands and floats toward the hola.

At the entrance to the hola, K-Ush squats to dip her fingers into the large skik bowl and bless herself with sacred water. The heat of the hola rolls over her body. Without rising, she surveys the room. It is empty, as it should be. Besides K-Ush, the only objects present are the curved holy blade and the virgin. One glance at the virgin’s young skin and K-Ush returns to the first times she took ho-resh-li. Then Sheya had to enter the hola with her. Sheya would hold K-Ush down and force her to take the virgin. Patiently, she taught K-Ush to ignore his terror and absorb his wild galloping adrenaline. K-Ush shakes her head as if to clear it of the memories. She crawls to the center of the hola sickened by one truth: Wa-Sheya no longer has to force her to take ho-resh-li. It is now a need: K-Ush must partake or die.

Still squatting, K-Ush pulls the tie fastening her robe, and the thin cloth falls from her shoulders and rests bunched around her waist. The boy does not look. Everyone knows what a wero’s body is like. Flat chested, narrow hipped, hard and muscular. No fat, no curves, all lines and angles. K-Ush unfurls her index finger and slides the curved blade toward the virgin. It is her brand of kindness. Alive or dead it makes no difference to her. The virgin rises to his knees and pushes the knife to the side.

“You will do it the old way?” K-Ush asks.

“I will, and I would like permission to speak.”

“I do not grant it. I cannot hear another praise song.”

“I did not say I wanted to sing, I asked for permission to speak.”

K-Ush’s head snaps up at the willfulness in the boy’s voice. She looks at his face for the first time. He looks like any other virgin who gives himself for his village, yet there is something determined in the set of his jaw.

“Who taught you to speak to a wero in that fashion?” K-Ush asks.

“A wero.”

Incredulity lurches in K-Ush’s chest.

“No wero that I have ever known. Certainly not Wa-Sheya.”

“No.”

“And certainly not I.”

“No.”

“Then who?”

“The last wero.”

“I am the last wero.”

“There is another.”

K-Ush’s cheeks darken with rage.

“You tell lies. You may not speak.”

She grabs the virgin by the back of the neck and pulls him against her body. She wraps two of her arms around his waist and licks her lips. She pushes her moist mouth against a thick muscle cord in his neck. Her lips draw back and she attaches her teeth to his skin. The boy twitches in discomfort and involuntarily pulls away. K-Ush tightens her grip on him and deepens her tasting. The boy shudders beneath her mouth. His body stiffens, then bucks in surrender. She sucks harder, pinching his flesh between her teeth. The acid taste of blood seeps into her mouth. She draws away, abruptly releasing the boy. She falls back against the air and floats horizontally. With two hands, she pushes her robe past her waist. She kicks her monstrous feet, and the cloth falls in a thin puddle beneath her hovering body.

K-Ush looks at the boy. He rises up on his knees and begins to kiss her body reverently. The virgin’s lips roam over every inch of K-Ush from her bony ankles to her violently protruding ribs. His mouth is different from the others K-Ush has taken in the past. His mouth is not dry and fearful, instead it pushes heat into K-Ush’s skin.

“You are different,” K-Ush says.

“I am,” the boy replies. “Again, I ask for permission to speak.”

“Were I to give you permission, what would you say? Would you beg for your life?”

“No. I would show you this,” the boy says holding up his arm. There a circular hole dents the smooth skin of his inner arm. “And this,” he says, opening his legs so that K-Ush can see the same hole in one of his thighs.

K-Ush laughs. “You are begging for your life.”

“No. I was sent with a message.”

K-Ush rolls forward until she is lying—still hovering—on her side.

“What is it, young virgin? You may speak. What is it you wish to say?”

“In my village…”

“This is not your village?” K-Ush interrupts.

“No,” the boy says with a smile.

K-Ush licks her lips and adjusts her hips. “I am weary, you must speak quickly.”

“You need the ho-resh-li,” the boy says.

K-Ush says nothing. A brief silence unwinds between them. Finally the boy speaks.

“In my village I have given ho-resh-li twice. Once here,” he says pointing to his arm. “And once there,” he says pointing to his leg. “In my village, there are no such things as seekers. We know the truth of the ki-ra-he, and we know the lie of prophecy. In my village the wero live among us.”

“The walls of this hola have heard many stories. But none quite so fantastical as this one.”

K-Ush extends two long arms and draws the boy into the air over her body. She continues to hover as she clasps the boy under his chin and drags his head up to her eye level. She removes the metal band from her head and clasps it in her hand.

“M-M-M-May I say one more thing?”

K-Ush exhales a frustrated breath. “Still trying to delay your death?” She opens her thighs and guides the boy to enter her.

“I must… deliver… my message,” the boy says between thrusts.

“Deliver your message, young one. And deliver it fast,” K-Ush says anticipating the sweet daze of ho-resh-li entering her body.

“The last wero invites you to visit her village. We know you are unhappy here. We want to offer you a different life, away from Wa-Sheya’s lies…”

K-Ush rams the metal band into his spine. Lightening quick, the band stretches, stakes him through his back, and exits through his stomach. The band seeks K-Ush’s navel. When it connects, an electric current snakes out of her body into the virgin’s, spurring all his internal organs into arrest. His breathing halts, his blood suspends circulation, and his brain quits. K-Ush drains all his energy, devouring it, not with joy, but with revulsion. His body—heavy with death—pushes K-Ush closer to the ground. She allows herself to fall back against the floor. Pure energy thrums through her veins. Her tongue swells, the taste of blood fills her mouth. She cannot free herself of the virgin. The band will not contract until all his energy is depleted. Powerless to move, K-Ush lets out a roar that silences all sound echoing in the dogra and instantly calls Sheya back from sleep.

As Sheya ushers K-Ush out of the hola, she again whispers something about the storm.

“No one ever died from a little water,” K-Ush snaps.

“I fear this one will be…”

But K-Ush does not hear the rest of her mentor’s words. She is rushing to lose herself in trance before the boy’s joints stick and his muscles grow cold. She does not want to think of the world he offered her. Her eye rolls back in its socket, her lips tremble, and prophecy flows from her like tears.

K-Ush offers prophecy hour after magnificent hour with a certainty that is terrifying. When the pain returns, K-Ush wonders if the ki-ra-he can bring pain as well as pleasure to her body. She wonders if this is the moment she should resist. The searing hurt obliterates any further thought. She does not call out to Sheya. Instead she retreats deeper into her trance. Her channeling voice continues booming out prophecy, but the aching throb does not let her go.

When K-Ush finally yields to the pain, a warm wetness embraces her cheek. She opens her eye with a sigh. Once more, she has left the dogra. The ki-ra-he is with her, gently licking the side of her face. She feels no fear; she feels relief. Some small part of her knows she is sacrificing something huge, but in this moment she does not remember the seekers, she cannot hold the village in her mind. She is a wero full of exhaustion, need, and want. Her arms drop defenseless to her sides. The licking expands from her cheek to cover her entire face. Then a low sigh rumbles in her chest. The wet warmth nestles against her throat. Every inch of her body feels caressed. For a few delicious seconds, there is nothing. No sound, no guilt, and no pain. She exhales from deep down in her gut, from a place in her body that has never felt release. She cries out like a child, stretches, then surrenders, quietly wishing to die this way.

A chattering of far-away voices disrupts K-Ush’s calm. She clenches her eye tightly trying to keep the ki-ra-he’s embrace. She feels her body rising horizontally against her will. The warmth dissipates. She finally opens her eye to see the ceiling of the dogra drifting jerkily past her gaze. She feels fingers biting into her wrists, waist, and ankles as seekers hold her over their heads. The dogra is in chaos. Panicked faces surround her. All those patient seekers no longer sit in ordered rows. They swarm out of the exit, rising water rushing around their heels.

K-Ush tries to sit up, but the grip of insistent hands holds her prone. She tilts her head back and looks around. At the back of the dogra, the wall is destroyed. A huge hole bursts with furious streams of water. Suddenly K-Ush becomes aware that a terrible rain is pounding the exterior of the dogra. She feels a tingling—it is the ominous gathering of humidity and agitated air. The storm! The storm Sheya promised would be catastrophic. The storm K-Ush refused to prophecy about.

K-Ush twists her head around looking for Sheya. Her gaze bounces around the dogra, zigzagging with the frenzied movement of seekers. Then she sees her. Occupying a sacred space of stillness, Sheya sits cross-legged and silent. Her head leans against a still-intact wall. Her large eye is closed in rest. K-Ush howls her name, attempting to rouse her from sleep. Sheya doesn’t move.

K-Ush screams words, then sounds for Sheya, the old one who became her mother once she took oath. No one reacts to K-Ush’s hysteria. She beats at whatever flesh she can reach with her fists. The seekers take her blows, but they do not put her down. Suddenly she knows that Sheya cannot be awakened. Her voice dies in her throat. Her lips form the words of an ancient mourning song. Sheya’s corpse sits quietly in the rising waters, her posture erect as if she is watching over K-Ush as she always has.

K-Ush has never seen this much water. It is waist-deep and rising. A hastily crafted vessel bobs in front of the dogra waiting for K-Ush. She sees seekers wading in every direction. Some have village valuables bundled on their heads. Others ferry shivering families to safety. And there are those nearby, watching over her. She does not resist when the seekers place her in the rickety boat. Dampness soaks her thin robe as the seekers row her to the focor: the tallest structure in the village. The seekers motion frantically for K-Ush to leave the boat. She surveys them passively, then stands and hovers. The minute her feet no longer rely on the boat for balance, the seekers row away, returning to the dogra to save others.

K-Ush, misjudging the weight the rain has added to her heft, drops heavily onto the roof of the focor. Almost blinded by the diagonal assault of raindrops, she feels the seekers gathered on the roof turn and stare. For K-Ush, their awe is more assaultive than the rains. She folds her lips into a tight grimace and lifts her head in a regal attempt to hover, but the wet anchors her feet to the ground. She wraps her arms around her body and strides past them. In a remote corner, she turns her back to the seekers, pretends she is in her shro, and curls up to sleep.

The water swallows everything. After devouring the dogra, the storm turns to the focor, flooding the roof where K-Ush is recovering from seven days of offering prophecy. Even after the seekers who waited with K-Ush on the focor’s roof have been rowed away, K-Ush does not stir. It is as if she cannot feel the floodwaters licking at her curled up legs. She has completely surrendered to post-prophecy sleep.

A small band of seekers intent on saving the wero dare to lift K-Ush’s inert body, even though Sheya is not around to give them permission to do so. They settle her in the bottom of the last water vessel headed for unknown parts. But the storm is faster than they imagined. With a huge crack, water slams against wood, rousing K-Ush from sleep just before the vessel overturns and she is flung into the floodwaters.

K-Ush gasps, throat burning with unwelcome gulps of water. She kicks her legs wildly trying to propel herself toward the bobbing boat. The current drags her under, but a wero is built to endure. Using her large hands and feet she pushes herself up to the surface. She is dragged under again and again, but each time, she resurfaces, spitting out water and gulping for breath whenever her mouth meets air. Then survival is handed to her—the floodwaters slam her into the clutches of a tree.

Minutes slip by, but she does not move. She holds onto the tree, trembling. Finally, she clutches an overhead branch and hoists herself out of the water. She finds a foothold, then rests, gripping the tree tightly. Below, skik pots, farming tools, body coverings, xopas, everything that makes a home rips past on rushing currents. The branches beneath her feet bounce and sway. Then the bodies come: the bodies of seekers—beings who once prayed for her guidance—drift past, nothing more than useless hulks of flesh, face down in cruel waters.

Time passes on that treetop like it passes when she trances. K-Ush isn’t sure if she’s been clinging to the tree for minutes or hours. She is certain only of her exhaustion. As she wrestles with her weariness, she sees something distinct in the distance: a bloated carcass crowned by four stiff legs. As it drifts toward her, K-Ush feels a tingling at the top of her spine. The tingling shoots straight down her back when the creature is an arm’s-length away. The creature’s dead eye stares at her, its mouth open and that fearsome green tongue hanging out. K-Ush involuntarily draws herself up, away from the waters as if they will contaminate her with the ki-ra-he’s bloodlust. Then she laughs a laugh tinged with bitterness and self-ridicule. The wero, great saviors of the people, trained to resist the ki-ra-he, but with no plan in the event of a cataclysmic storm.

She is ready to surrender to the churning greed of the rising floodwaters, ready to slip down to the bottom and take a rest that does not stink of ho-resh-li and death, when a boat approaches. K-Ush hesitates. She is not certain that safety is what she desires. She does not lust to resume her task of feeding on seekers and giving prophecy, but something about the cloaked figure at the far end of the boat draws her away from the tree’s embrace. The figure beckons, and K-Ush steps onto the boat.

After she sits, she notices the strength of the rowers, the smooth synchronized movement of their arms, and, finally, she notices the holes. Each rower has two or three holes cut into his flesh. K-Ush looks up at the cloaked figure. One hand emerges from the cloak and throws back the hood. The cloaked face is angular, the head is bald. A second hand emerges to extend a dry cloak to be passed, from rower to rower to rower, to K-Ush.

“Who are you?” K-Ush asks as she presses the dry cloth into her lap.

“I am the last wero,” the figure responds.

“I am the last wero,” K-Ush says angrily.

“You are the last wero of legend,” the figure says with an amused smile. “In our village, we have no need for the term wero.”

“You sent the boy.”

“Yes, and you devoured him.”

“Was he not a gift? Was he not offering ho-resh-li?”

“He was, but you did not have to take him.”

“I learned to take ho-resh-li from Wa-Sheya, the most revered wero of recent times.”

“Sheya is a parasite,” the figure growls. “Swallow her lies and you die a bitter and twisted being.”

“You know Wa-Sheya?”

“I asked her for you many times; she preferred to keep you ignorant of life.”

The revelation of Sheya’s secrets burns in K-Ush’s chest like hot bile. She would like to speak in Sheya’s name, say something, anything to silence this angry wero, but she finds she cannot speak of Sheya.

“Why do you come looking for me?” K-Ush asks.

“We know, K-Ush.” The wero leans forward as if she is peering into K-Ush’s soul.

“Know what?”

“How you feel about prophecy, how you feel about ho-resh-li.”

“And you have come to save me,” K-Ush says sarcastically.

The wero draws back, barely masking the flash of anger in her eyes.

“Would you like us to return you to your tree?”

K-Ush is silent. She fingers the dry robe and stares into the distance.

“You are wondering if what I’m offering is worth it. You are thinking death is a more delicious option to life with us.”

“Must I hate Wa-Sheya to come with you?”

“We will leave that to you.”

Staring past the wero’s shoulder, K-Ush nods. The wero returns to the sanctuary of her hood, but not before her lips twist up into a smirk that suggests she knows better than K-Ush how this legend will end.

Bio-Anger

rattling. rattling snaking around my ears. echoes of rattling erupting in my temples. i hear a pop like the little explosions of air that punctuate my ear canals when i’m nearing the ocean floor. reflex. by reflex, i try to turn toward the sound, but my head is tethered in position. the rattling dies out with a slithering hiss. sharp parallel bands of light cut across the room. my head jerks back when light hits my eyes. behind me, somebody lets loose a low, raspy laugh.

“A little jittery, ain’t you,” the laughter mumbles. doesn’t bother with volume, doesn’t separate his words; just lets them tumble out any which way, leaving me to pick meaning out of a jumbled mass of sound.

“So it was a bio-anger, then?” another voice asks. clipped and precise tones dart around my head. a man slides across my view. i see the darkness of his pants leg skim the floor. i can’t make out a chair. looks as if he is gliding on air. been Under so long, everything on the Surface strikes me as strange.

man stops in front of me—face so close to mine, i can see blueness of veins, redness of vessels just under his skin. fold my lips together; try to speak. try bringing up the “b” in “bio-anger,” but my jaw is so tired. my lips fall slack before I can get any sound to part them.

“Won’t speak, huh?” those clipped tones don’t reach my ear until after the man’s lips stop moving.

i set my jaw, try to squeeze out a “c.” CAN’T SPEAK, I yell in my mind. can’t even get a sound to whisper out of my mouth.

“Nothing wrong with her vocal cords.” so says the mumbler. “Had ’em checked. Only part of her in good shape.” chuckles, but stays out of view.

metal grate of an old machine lays dead in the corner. at first, the blank wall behind the clipped-tone man has nothing to tell me. then the banner blinks on. top fourth of wall glows red. bold white letters scroll across the red: 0.74 millimeters of coastal loss since 10 a.m., 22.6 million square miles of land remaining.

“Knew it was broken,” mumbler says.

“Your banner broken?” clipped-tones asks.

“Yeah, this morning when I left, said we had 24.2 million square miles. Knew something had changed. What about dead zones?”

“Don’t know…don’t fuss over any of it. Nothing but a bother. Can’t fix Earth. Wish I could turn mine off.”

“Wish I had yours. Can’t sleep without the latest. Look, no Earth Strikes for 24 hours! Thought for sure the night shift would have gotten one.”

“Why do you think we’re working this one over. Word came from upstairs. Can’t let another 24 hours pass without a report. Have to deliver one tonight.”

silence falls. the feel of the mumbler eyeing me trips across the back of my neck. feel a nervous tingle in my eyebrow. my knee jerks up. surprised my feet aren’t tied.

“Won’t work, sweetheart,” clipped-tones says. twirling a small square mirror in his hands.

a burning ache starts biting at the bottoms of my feet. fingers twitching now. thin, sticky fabric stretched across my thighs catch on my peeling fingertips. clipped-tones notices.

“Had to dress you. Your clothes were in bloody shreds. What did this to you?”

i tune out. let the words fall around me undeciphered. wonder: can water slide over these thin, sticky tights. if i escape, could i wear this to get back Under?

when i don’t speak, clipped-tones slides the mirror between my face and his. i draw away from the face in the mirror.

“No sense hiding from it. Hurt’s been done.” so says the mumbler.

i steel myself and turn back to the mirror. the face i see is not my face. purple-black bruises flowering around the eyes—no big surprise. headache splitting my skull can’t be from a bug bite. slowly turn my head. ragged smear of tiny punctures—neatly gridded—crawls up my left cheek. a thin bloody shadow blankets the wounds. other side of my face, no better. a wide gash—dry, but glistening—cuts across my right cheek. puffed and pimply skin bloating around my mouth. salty water rises, clawing its way to my eyes. i will it back down—ain’t the place to shed a tear, even if it’s for my own flesh.

“So, coordinates. Where did it happen? People need to know.”

shake my head. from what i hear, a bio-anger is nothing like they make it seem on the Net. just because an Earth Strike breaks a few bones doesn’t mean Earth is angry. once you been Under, you stop thinking Earth even notices you. we can’t make Earth angry. we’re about as important as globs of spit.

“What’s this then?” clipped-tones asks. I hear the mumbler clicking away on his hand-unit just behind my head. taking notes? sending messages? preparing a profile to send to the NewsNet? the mirror shifts from my face to flash on my neck and shoulders. first real mirror I’ve seen in a long time. clipped-tones tilts it, showing me a deep groove splitting the flesh above my breasts. thick and hard in some spots, too dry to be new. don’t need a mirror to see it cut across my chest, arc over my shoulders, rip across my upper back.

wet my lips. try to push out “Und-” but my mouth is useless. lift my hand. try pointing down. ragged fingernails scratch at the sticky fabric on my legs.

“What’s she trying to say?” mumbler asks from behind me.

clipped-tone man shrugs.

bang my feet on the floor. UNDER, yelling in my head. thought everyone on the Surface knew about us. Under. I’m damn near a lifer down there. been wearing the tank so long, the edges of the headgear grew into my flesh, got a little more comfortable—you could say. never mattered to me. better fit means less accidents. less accidents means more runs. more runs means more money i can send up to this damn air-breathing place. don’t expect no enviro-cop to ever understand that. us who live Under were born with hard choices to make, that’s all. some people end eighteen years of hard labor tied to a chair with a busted up face, others get to slide by them waving a mirror around. just the way it goes on the Surface.

new sound behind my ear. shrill, metallic. sounds like the arms or legs of a machine clicking into sharp-angled positions. something cold and rigid presses on either side my neck: the metal was clicking for me.

“You sure you have nothing to tell us?” man with the mirror asks. nervous edges flutter in his voice. sounds scared of what’s about to happen. “Look,” he says, drops his voice down to a whisper, slides closer. “We don’t have to link you up. You just cooperate, and we won’t have to extract the information. It’s easier if you talk. Can’t run your story without full details.”

something heavy and round pushes against the base of my skull. panic wells up in my chest. gulp wildly. try to suck up enough air to force sound out of my mouth. Can’t speak! Can’t speak! Can’t speak! strain so hard my body jerks against the restraints. veins and vocal cords bulge in my throat. feet pound the floor.

“I know, I know,” clipped-tones says spreading his hands out. “Just stop. I know you can’t speak. We just… We’re going to have to…”

“Enough with the warnings. Just get on with it already,” mumbler says. “You know the drill. Let’s move.”

“She can’t speak,” man with the mirror says. looks over my head at his partner.

“Don’t matter,” says the mumbler. “They want the story by 8, it’s going to run at 10. They’re already advertising.”

a few drops of water fall out of my eyes. “extract information.” they’ll dig through my memories like starving squatters clawing through a garbage dump. grab my emotions, download them, dress them up, and beam a tearjerker to the NewsNet. who cares if there really was a bio-anger. there will be one now.

flash of light—blinding—rips across my vision. inhale deeply. “Pain,” i think. “That was pain.” was pain? hear a tortured yell. behind me, the mumbler is losing it. wet, feral screams splattering against my back. clipped-tone man jumps out of his chair. his mouth moves but I hear no words.

something is wrong.

no more pain. splitting headache, gone. heat rests weighty between my legs. arms and hands don’t feel like mine—they feel thick and heavy. the room, the clipped-tone man, and the NewsNet banner all melt away. i am sitting in nothingness. nothing around me but a table laden with piles of ghostly flesh. not meat, not food—human bodies. curves of elbow and knee jut out from a sea of skin. here and there an ear, a chin, a pair of lips poke up from the jumble. my mouth moves easily. i lick my lips. no pain in my jaw.

i am aroused.

when my mouth moves, a voice trickles out. the voice is disembodied and tangled—and it is not mine. it is the same voice that has been muttering behind me since i woke up tied to this chair. the mumbler’s voice pours from me, stream of broken diction rambling about women and the marks of saliva he’s left behind on their skin. this is the mumbler’s voice; this must also be his tongue. his tongue resting in my mouth. his tongue moistening at the thought of ghostly flesh made real.

odd memories begin to rain through my body. i am seeing and remembering parts of the female body that i’ve never touched. salivating for the crease of a breast resting on a fleshy torso, longing to push apart meaty female thighs. i fall back into my body for a split second. the room is just as i left it—stark, bright, unadorned. i am still tethered to a chair, and the mumbler is still yowling like an animal. clipped-tone man is behind me now, speaking to the mumbler in a voice that pulses with both worry and soothing. then i understand:

that cold metal circle. the pressure at the base of my skull. the wrong source—it’s tapping into the wrong source.

hunger whips through me like an electric shock, bringing me back to the mumbler’s table. i am the mumbler. predatory. needy. hoarder of fleshy victories. this is my table now, i own these body parts. i need what he needs: bodies, flesh; have no use for feelings. crave the tabled flesh. lift my bound hands, reach for it. hunger erases my boundaries. the room, my bruised body, it all slides away. the mumbler’s memories gush into me, become mine.

something funky and toxic pulses deep in the viscera of my body. a multitude of tiny dried pellets, brittle-shelled capsules lodged deep in my bowels. that’s what’s left of these women after i have lain with them; fed of them, then condemned them to this ghostly pile, this monument of memory.

i sift through limbs, searching for flesh that hasn’t soured or been sucked dry. searching for a ghost that will yield her heart. not the heart that beats blood, the heart between her legs; the heart that speaks to her in feverish rushing whispers. the heart she works hard to ignore.

i finger ghostly bodies, reenact his methods to shut down thought, pluck away restraint, create a frenzy of need until the heart lodged in the chest is silenced by the cacophony of blood rushing between thighs.

i conquer.

i am aroused.

my arousal agitates; the fleshy pile begins to writhe. emotions spray my face. shake my head, fling off sentiment, drown out tears. the mumbler whimpers. i feel his fear. suddenly i am back in the room. clipped-tone man speaks quickly and forcefully. a sharp beeping rings out; relief floods his voice.

“They’re coming, someone’s coming now.”

“Get…” the mumbler speaks raggedly. “Get the story.”

pain clings to the mumbler’s voice. pain that will soon be mine. close my eyes. force myself to pretend to go Under. imagine i feel water slipping over my suit. remember the loud hush of air trapped in my headgear. solitude.

the metal circle taps into me. sharp, icy sparks shoot down my spine. it takes the peace from the water and suffocates me with it. my throat fills with water. then as i’m gagging, the memories come, flying at me like the tail of a stingray. whap! the wiry, steel brush slams into my cheek. when it pulls away, it’s red with my blood. hiss of blade nears me, then cuts a path across my other cheek. a pounding on my back. i go down to the sound of cracking bones—my bones.

in the nightmare again. my tormenters watch me crumble. i can feel a waiting in them, a waiting that tells me they don’t want my pain. beating me is the prelude to something else.

inside the memory and seeing the memory at the same time. glittering crumbs of glass halo my body. wiry brush, wet with my blood, rests on the ground next to my head. acrid odor wafts from the brush. have i been poisoned? for a brief second, my consciousness splits. begs to move on from this memory to the next. there is no bio-anger here. brush’s odor grows stronger, bitterness against the NewsNet solidifies. hate what this memory has given them: raw fear, brutality, a violent attack, all the emotional material they need to send a report. what is real—what really happened—doesn’t matter. pummeling fists will become murderous seeds or heavy, violent fruit. muscular arms will become thick green vines. they record every detail: the tremble of my body, the fluid burning my eyes and leaking onto my cheeks.

the memory does not stop. while i lay inert, burly hands flutter over my face. the hands—disembodied against the backdrop of dark, grubby clothes—hold small lumps of metal nested in palms. the metal glints as the hands dip closer. the men blot out light with their bodies. fingers, quick as fever, attach metal to my mouth. the metal lumps, spider-like, begin a many-legged prancing around my lips. spindly legs prick me rapidly, piercing the skin, pulling the saliva out of my mouth.

skin around my mouth, blistered, stinging. the men paw through their pockets. their hands cradle round, foil-covered balls. my face feels as if it wants to split open. they pull away the foil, uncover powdery white globes. break the globes in half. lodge broken globes between teeth and cheek. slower, prancing metal legs move slower, and slower. stiff with terror, lie there. afraid to touch my mouth, afraid to move my arms.

the hands dance over me, floating in unison. pull translucent tubes from filthy folds of clothing. i don’t exist. they see only the metal on my mouth. not a person, i am just a stretch of earth. a patch of living material, a vessel that spouts something they need. metal legs, stilled. hands attach tubes to metal lumps. don’t close my eyes. watch. they suckle the tubes, suck my saliva. breath, shallow; body, lifeless. i don’t close my eyes.

my saliva rises through the tubes, flows into mouths of my brutalizers. cheeks shudder, they clench their mouths closed. my saliva erupts, sparking a riot in their mouths. eyes roll back. they slump, slack, onto the sidewalk. lay, close as lovers, next to my body—this body, the body they have claimed. a heavy limb falls across my lower legs. finally, i try. strain to lift my arms. can’t. try to shake the metal spiders from my mouth. can’t. no strength. not even to drag myself away. exhaustion engulfs me, wolfs down my consciousness. tumble into a deep dark sleep.

shivering.

something in hands. hold tight. bundle against chest.

“Equi!”

my name. blank. in my mind is blank. know “Equi.” my name. up. up i see dark, gray sky. something grab my shoulder. shake me. flinch. shaking stops.

“Equi.” voice say my name. gentle voice. scared voice.

“Are you sure she will be safe with you?”

clipped tones. snap head left. see man, see man. down. look down. legs standing, not sitting. my legs standing too. man has brown shoes. i have slippers. shoes from Under. look up at man. don’t see eyes. i look where he looks. steps. hard stone steps. tall gray steps. steps.

“I have to get back. Are you quite sure?”

“I’m sure.”

voice. i know voice. man squeezes arm. looks sad in eyes. runs away. runs up steps.

“Equi.”

look down. woman. small woman, strong woman. dark eyes. wet eyes.

“Equi,” says soft, sad voice. touches my face.

throat hurts. brain hurts.

“ma…” whisper. sound! i talk.

“mama.” i talk again. mama nods. smiles. my voice ugly.

wetness grows in her eyes. “I couldn’t get to you,” she says, hand in my hair. “I couldn’t get to you before they did. I shouldn’t have let you come back.”

wetness grows in my eyes. water. water spill out. wet cheeks. voice louder. voice stronger. yelling now. howling. howl because the wiry brush. howl because the metal spiders. howl because they stole my spit. yell at steps. yell at man. yell all the way up to NewsNet.

mama hand moving in my hair. sad. scared. looks like she wants to “shhhhh” me, but scared. scared to break me more. no more breaking. mama hands pull my bundle, i don’t let go. mama hands wrap around me. my arms lock across chest, my yells shoot up to sky.

“Equi,” says, soft. mama hands pull me, soft. down. down the stairs to flat wide ground. “Equi, we must go,” says a little more strong. mama hands slip around my arm. mama hands pull me.

“Give me that.” grabs my bundle.

grunt. grab bundle back. no more taking. no more taking hands. look down in my arms. bundle: dirty cloths; my clothes, dirty with blood and something glittery. mama pulls clothes. catch the small flat thing that falls. box. shiny box. fancy green letters. hold box to face. read, “Your Bio-Anger.” more letters. serious black letters, say, “Thank you for sharing your story.”

“mama.”

we stop. mama hugs me again. now i hug mama too, not just hug my chest. lean cheek on top of mama’s head.

“Just breathe,” says. “Can’t do nothing with ugly, but breathe it out. Breathe.”

take big deep breaths. lungs hurt. let pain out with screechy animal sounds. deep breaths. hurt wants to take me back to that room. i don’t want to go back. grip mama. i want to stay with mama. look around. look over mama’s shoulder. people. people rushing. people walking. people staring. people pretending not to stare. get nervous. i slip quiet. one second, quiet. two seconds, quiet. three seconds, quiet. mama grabs my arm.

“We got to get you away from here,” says.

rushes me past people. doesn’t look around. looks straight. drags me past huge buildings. drags me past hard buildings, brown buildings, gray buildings. finally looks around. turns.

“there?” i ask.

mama’s face breaks into a smile.

“You’re talking, Equi! You’re coming back.”

words coming back to me. memories too. memories of how it felt to see mama, hug mama, touch mama. laughter. one night of hugs and laughter. want nothing but hugs and laughter here on the Surface.

mama points to a narrow space between two gray buildings.

“There,” says.

mama walks to the space. i follow. she turns sideways and squeezes in between the two buildings.

look at the people. so much gray. people in gray clothes. no color. more color Under than here. Surface doesn’t make sense.

“Equi!”

mama tugs on my hand, then squeezes deeper into the space. waits for me to follow. i step between the buildings behind mama. space is tight and dark. litter crackles underfoot. reminds me of a tunnel leading to a sub-station: narrow and dark with no clue of what lies on the other side.

on the other side, i hear voices. i can’t see what’s in front of mama, but i hear voices. when we step out from between the buildings, the first thing i see are trees. first trees i’ve seen since i been back. i go over to touch one. mama doesn’t stop me. then i look around.

tied to the tree branches are ropes, ropes stringing dirty stretches of plastic overhead. down on the ground, i see as many tents as trees. more. more tents than trees. plastic, fabric, boards—ragtag shelters. noise. the air is full of noise. snaking noise. spiky noise. laughing noise. music noise.

“where are we?”

near the tents, smoke hovers over silver pots. i smell food.

“Last park in this quarter of the country.” mama sounds like just thinking about it makes her tired. “Hungry?” squeezes my hand.

my body feels many things. exhaustion. fear. anger. worry. pain. confusion. no hunger. i turn away from mama, lean my cheek on the tree. run my fingers along the bumpy bark. feel gashes and grooves in the bark. look closer. see words acid-etched on the bark. run my fingers over the words: names, dates, shapes. biggest words say: Squat Park.

“Squat Park.” a sad laugh dies in mama’s throat. “That’s what they call it now. We lived here. After you left. Land loss. Relocations. That seems like so long ago.” mama turns me to face her and takes my other hand. “I saved every bit you sent, Equi. That’s the only way we were able to get out. People like us…people like us…” mama’s head droops as if her thoughts are breaking her, snapping her spine so she can’t hold her head up anymore. “People like us are supposed to squat, we’re not supposed to live in a home.”

purse my lips, fix them to ask how long was she here and was it anything like it is now, was she safe. my eyes wander over the people. i freeze, squint my eyes. two huge men walking shoulder to shoulder. two huge men wearing loose black clothes. they push their way past people. i grab mama’s shoulders, squeeze, spin her so she can see them, point. they walk toward me. fingers shake, arm trembles, but i keep pointing. mama nods, then she turns to look at me. she is smiling. her smile drops when she sees me: shaking my head, trembling. backing away. looking around for an escape.

mama glances back at the two men. they are moving slowly now, confusion covers their faces. grab mama’s shoulders, turn her to face me. try my voice. try to speak to mama. but no words. i have no words. all i can bring out of my mouth is one long squeak.

mama sees fear in my eyes. clasps my hands. “Equi, you’re safe here. No one’s going to hurt you. Don’t you know who they are?”

point again. shake my head, no words. back away. hold on to the tree. men step closer, then stop. one of them eases a sack off his shoulder, rests it on the dirt at his feet. light hits the globe sticking out of his sack, my legs go slack.

“my… my… headg-g-g-ear,” i stammer. slide down the tree with trembling knees.

mama squats down, looks me in the eye.

it’s as if the metal spiders have stolen my tongue again. i croak out strange, broken sounds. my hands fly around my face, fluttering over the wounds, trying to show mama what my mouth can’t say. i see them over mama’s shoulder. they don’t move. they don’t move.

mama shakes me softly, begs, “Equi, please, these are your children. They have been waiting for you all their lives.”

hurt shadows their faces. my children? the question pokes at my chest, tries to pierce my panic. have my boys grown up to be so like my attackers? my skinny, scabby sons whose hunger drove me Under? mine? could these big, frightening men be mine?

mama speaks again, all the softness gone. “Equi, don’t do this!”

mama knows, has always known, what i’m going to do before i do it. she knew i was pregnant before the pain in my breasts sent me to the doctor. knew i was going Under before i told her i’d signed up for training. knows what my face looks like when i’m ready to run.

“Equi!” mama’s voice reaches me, but i can’t focus on her now. grip her without seeing her. my heart beats wild against her bony chest. she doesn’t ask me to go near them, she just says my name over and over and over again.

only for mama, i look at them again. only for mama, i try to find myself in their faces. but these are strange creatures, not children. i can’t bear to look in their eyes. i look instead at their hands. try to judge the size of their fists. wonder if their hands know the weight of metal spiders, if their cheeks know the bulge of the pasty white drug. i chance a glance at their faces—what do they know that mama doesn’t?

fear pants just behind my ear. she doesn’t know what they do at night, fear whispers to me. she trusts them but she doesn’t know. my eyes fall on the shiny globe of my headgear. my headgear. other than mama, it is the only thing that makes sense on the Surface.

i can feel it already, the water. i can feel its pull, its weight, its silence. i look at mama. in that half second, my eyes tell her what my mouth cannot. my eyes beg forgiveness, they weep for my wounds and flash my guilt. then i squeeze mama tight. i don’t look at her when i push her away. i don’t stop to see if she fell or if she’s panic-stricken. i am in flight. i let the urge to flee have me. scramble across the dirt, crab-like. grab my headgear from the sack without another look at the man-children. no more spiders and needles, no more metal disks and memories. no more NewsNet and mumblers. no more home.

run. reach the space where the buildings meet. don’t look back. block out those hurt, angry faces. block out mama’s pain. scratch my skin on the stone buildings. run wildly. listen to the echo of my breath. listen to my feet pounding. run. feel the tightening in my chest. push people away. startle them. don’t stop. run. turn corners blindly. don’t ask questions. no more words. run.

sweat.

sweat stinging eyes. sweat dripping down neck. calves burning. gray sky. hear a squawk, loud and rough. up. look up. see the great white wings. see the orange feet. see the beak. run harder. follow the bird to water. don’t stop. shove on my headgear. let it lock into the groove in my skin. no suit, no tank. i can make it. need the hush of Under. need to hear the echo of my own breath. need the wet weight of the ocean to erase any trace of home.

Marie

The spring that Marie lost her baby, Soho was full of scaffolding. Whenever one stretch of scaffolding would come down, a new configuration would rise up a few feet away. It seemed to Marie, as she strolled beneath the constantly transforming metal frames, that these were ancient bones disguised by peeling paint—the skeleton of some defunct beast that could be dismantled and restructured but never completely destroyed.

That spring was a hazy maze of missed appointments, memory lapses, and sluggishness. Despite the fact that she was remarkably light on her feet for someone so heavy with child, there was no quickness about her. The baby growing inside her made her distracted. Her apartment was perpetually scattered with open books, the kitchen counter littered with ingredients for dishes that were never made, tools from incomplete home improvement projects were left strewn on the floor, and the corners of every room were cluttered with clothes she planned to donate.

Her husband bore the messiness of her downward spiral with a bemused grin. The grin masked his exasperation. He began to lie to her constantly. He lied about how annoyed he was to find a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich on the edge of the bathroom sink. He lied about the inconvenience of always having crushed papers underfoot. But mostly he lied about time.

He cushioned arrival times without revealing that he was infuriated by Marie’s hopeless lateness. At first he exaggerated by only a ten or twenty minutes, but by the end of Marie’s pregnancy he was inflating their arrival times by a few hours. The appointments they kept in those final weeks of pregnancy were due to Steven’s cunning. Marie never noticed his dishonesties; she was too gripped by the bizarre happenings inside her body—the squashed bladder and compromised lungs, the odd pains in her abdomen and hips, the heat rash and heartburn, the otherworldly sensation of a sentient being moving around inside her.

During her third trimester, Marie spent an inordinate amount of time resenting the scaffolding. After living in Soho for four years, she had turned dodging teenagers and tourists into an art form. But the scaffolding disarmed her. It hemmed her in, turning wide, open sidewalks into narrow corridors. She couldn’t dart about, couldn’t zigzag around leisurely shoppers. Steven had heard so many complaints on the topic that he refused to listen to another word. She was left to hate the scaffolding silently, blaming it for everything from her lateness to the anxious tightening in her chest that flared whenever she had to navigate around strollers and slowpokes.

Mostly she resented the scaffolding for stealing her sunshine. The winter had been hell: the coats, struggling with layers, the flashes of sweat that engulfed her when she was finally all bundled up. When she started seeing the sun, and feeling warmth when she pressed her hand to the windowpane, all she wanted to do was go outside and let it soak into her skin. She would smile anticipating the flush of the sun’s rays on her cheeks as she leisurely strolled to her appointments. But the sunny meanderings she longed for would rarely materialize. She would waste time reorganizing her file cabinet, cleaning the edges of the kitchen hardware with a Q-tip, or shredding junk mail with a pair of scissors. By the time she left her apartment, strolling was not an option. She had to make a mad dash for a cab as soon as she made her way down her front steps. She would stand in the shadow of the scaffolding, hand raised to hail a cab, with an angry scowl on her face.

Sunshine was not something Marie grew up chasing. Warmth came early in the bayou where Marie grew up, and hung around—thickly—for most of the year. But here, in New York, spring brought a giddy eagerness that Marie knew her brothers would have teased her for feeling. Their teasing, once the torturous backdrop of her childhood, had become the language of their newfound closeness as adults.

Marie would be the first to admit that their closeness was metaphorical. It had been so long since her last trip home, she might as well have been estranged from her family. The irony of her absences was not lost on her. During her first months in New York, she had held on to her memories of home, feverishly, desperately, as if she would wash away on a sea of the city’s dirty grays and browns if she didn’t hold on to her birthplace as her anchor.

Her perpetual longing for home had been so acute that it had taken on a sound—a staticky buzzing that had followed her around like a smog. In her earliest experiences with subway stations, she’d found that no matter where she stood on the subway platform or in the subway car, she heard a hum and a crackle overhead. She had at first blamed it on the ancientness of the subway system. After some weeks, she came to think of it as her grief and imagined everyone could see a dark melancholy bleeding from her skin.

To make matters worse, her homesickness was tinged by her unshakable suspicion that there was something deeply and terribly wrong with New York City. It wasn’t until Joe Jr. sent her a picture of him and Daddy that everything clicked for her. In the photo they were just back from a fishing trip. Fishing gear peeked out from the back of her father’s pickup truck, and both father and son triumphantly hoisted thick clusters of glistening fish. Eyeing the curve of oak branch arcing just behind Joe Jr.’s head, she realized what had been nagging her about New York City. “Trees,” she whispered to herself. “There are no trees here.”

There were, of course, trees in New York. Slim little decorative things grotesquely outmatched by steel and glass. There were more substantial trees in parks and gardens, but their constrained presence had no strength, could not compare to majestic oaks whose powerful roots ripped up sidewalks, shaded porches, and gifted the earth with a bounty of acorns.

Whenever she mourned the loss of trees, she found herself on a slippery slope to misery. She would leap from missing the old quiet of ancient trees and the drape of Spanish moss hanging from their branches, to remembering the smell of shrimp shells cooking down to make stock and the tangy musk of flour darkening into a roux. Before she knew it, she’d be aching for a steaming paper bag bulging with crawfish, the grainy sweetness of homemade pralines, and salty mouthfuls of gas-station po’boys, especially hot sausage po’boys with their supernaturally red juices soaking into a white pillow of French bread.

The first February was torture. She’d felt like she was trapped on an alien planet. At home there were parties and parades; people went about masked and glittered. But New York had no carnival season—no Professor Longhair on the radio banging out the familiar chords that told the whole city that it was Mardi Gras time, no ragtag neighborhood parades, no liquor in plastic cups. She was disappointed in everyone around her, disgusted at their lack of imagination, angry that no one came to work with a king cake in tow.

In the following years, as her longing for home loosened, up blossomed nostalgia, choking out old hatreds. The first time she wished for a second line to parade across her path, she shocked herself. At home, street revelers had been nothing but an inconvenience and an annoyance. She’d hated the way they backed up traffic as they bounced, dipped, and sauntered down the middle of the street. Yet now she found herself cocking her ear every once in a while, listening hopefully for the guttural vibrato of a roving trumpet player’s instrument.

She even managed to miss the gory magic of caterpillar season. It was a mystery how the sight of dull green insects crawling over each other, coating the branches of trees had become something Marie cherished. Back home, she’d hated how they spilled over in excess, falling from overhead branches, crawling over benches, littering the sidewalk with their smashed, bloody bodies. But the relief of not having to dodge them underfoot was now dwarfed by her desire for a life governed by the unique seasons of home.

The loss that pained Marie the most was intangible. It wasn’t in the holidays or the landscape, but in the people. New Yorkers weren’t particularly mean, nor were they as rude as they had been stereotyped to be, but they were too harried and driven to share intimacies with her. At home, every stranger was a friend—or at least a distant cousin—for the length of time you were in one another’s presence. At bus stops and convenience stores you learned about the private histories, recent disappointments, and crowning glories of someone you had never met.

She couldn’t replicate bayou accents up North, but she tried to inspire Southern fellowship in the city of strangers. She wished random people “Good evening,” tossed a “How y’all doin?” to people sitting on stoops, and complimented subway performers on their singing. She had accepted the fact that nobody, not even the cashier at the grocery store, would call her baby anymore, but she found it trying to hold back the habits of home. Invariably her attempts at conversation were received with the silence of suspicion. She hated the way the lack of friendliness around her fed a stubborn funk that made her New York beginnings seem doomed.

Breaking the back of the culture that reared you is a little like breaking in an animal, and Marie had no taste for it. Ever since she was a child, she hated to watch anyone working the wildness out of a horse. But little by little she did it. She stopped trading back-home stories with the janitor at work. She gave her neighbor’s children a tight smile and shut the door in their expectant faces rather than invite them in to play. She resisted the urge to get to know the bathroom attendants when she went out clubbing. Her friends, proud of her progress, congratulated her on becoming a real New Yorker. One winter, when she found herself pushing a slow pedestrian out of her way, she was horrified. Her friends, exultant, told her that her transformation was finally complete.

Loss and gain are two sides of the same heavy coin. As Marie lost the behavioral habits of an outsider, she gained a painful estrangement she had not anticipated. Her hit-and-run intimacies had not only kept her in touch with home, they had given her an excuse to revel in the company of black people. Her friends found her interest in black people strange. They would question, as gracefully as they could, why she was always gabbing with them at security desks and on street corners. They noticed that she didn’t laugh at their black jokes and never echoed their sentiments when they complained about the blacks splattering their loud, rude behavior everywhere.

Marie never let so much as a hint of anger show when her friends were stuffing black people into tight little boxes of distaste. Internally, she scoffed at their attempts to define blackness. Blackness was nothing like what they thought it was. It was more diverse, and less tragic, than they could imagine. She missed people who understood the nuances of the color line. As she solidified her identity as a New Yorker, she lusted for a cultural milieu that had a place for her, that recognized what it meant to be Creole, and therefore Black. It was with sadness, rather than triumph, that she accepted the fact that no one in New York seemed to suspect she could be anything but white when they looked into her gray eyes.

Turning her back on stranger-to-stranger intimacies meant severing her links with blackness in a way that rang with a finality Marie had never intended. Her brothers would never have found themselves in such a situation. Since their skin and hair didn’t advertise their blackness, they broadcasted their cultural allegiances with cornrows and cut-up eyebrows, clothing that aligned to black trends and postures adopted to interrupt assumptions of whiteness. Marie’s relationship to blackness was a little more complicated. She had no self-hatred and needed blackness in her life to feel whole, but she only needed it as part of her general ambiance rather than her inner circle.

By the time Marie was an adult, her closest friends were white. In a way, choosing them as home had been all her doing. In another way, her closeness to them had been thrust upon her. What was she to do when her parents sent her to a prestigious boarding school on a riverbank in Nowhere, Louisiana? Between her and the five other black people in the school, there wasn’t much comfort to be had. How could she not convert?

After those first flushes of friendship all those years ago, it had become a lifelong habit—forming kinship with white people. At home there was no conflict. Her friends knew exactly what her lineage was. But in New York, she felt trapped. She’d had to work so hard at building intimacy, that when she finally made a friend, she was skittish. She would torture herself for hours waiting for the right moment to reveal her racial makeup, but no matter how many perfect moments she identified, her certainty dissolved the second she opened her mouth. She knew true intimacy would not come without complete honesty, but there was a stubborn hysteria within that refused to yield to truth; a fierce doubt that convinced her that the truth was not worth the risk.

Before she became the New York Marie—the Marie who pressed her hair, wore stilettos, and favored taxi cabs—Marie had an encounter that would have destroyed her had she not packed it away in a tight compartment and left it suffocating in the dark crevices of forgetting. Had she been able to remember the incident, she would have convinced herself that it was nothing more than a hallucination induced by physical exhaustion and emotional fatigue. For when she was newly arrived, the city’s density had frazzled her. She was constantly falling asleep in taxi cabs, on friends’ couches, and frequently, on the subway. Whenever she awoke she always felt interrupted, disoriented, vulnerable.

During the hour leading up to the encounter, she had fallen asleep on her way home from work. She woke with a start—irritated with herself for having fallen defenseless in public—and looked around the subway car. When she saw that she was completely alone, an electric bolt of fear jolted away all vestiges of sleep. She jumped to her feet and walked to one end of the subway car. She peered through the glass on the door. When she saw that the next car was full of people, she exhaled in relief.

She stumbled back to her seat, looking around for a sign indicating what subway line she was on. All the spaces where there should have been signs were blank. She twisted around in her seat to peer through the windows. She could see the dark walls of the subway tunnel whizzing by, but there were no station names to orient her.

When the subway car started to slow, Marie finally saw a station slide into view. She squinted, working to make out the station’s name. When she read the name of the station, she cursed. She didn’t know where she had been going, but she knew that she was far from home. She hurried over to the subway doors and prepared to exit. When the doors slid open, she could hear the tinkling of a musician plinking out notes on a steel pan. She saw people rushing across the platform and running up the stairs to the exits, but she could not move. Sweat began building under her palm as she gripped the pole. Her heart broke out into an irregular thudding, and her eyes darted around wildly. She tried to coax her legs to step off the train, but they would not obey.

Marie was still staring out onto the platform when a tone, signaling that the doors were about to close, sounded. She didn’t see a hooded figure glide onto the subway car, but she felt a vague amorphous danger panting at her back. She was held immobilized and terrified until the doors closed. Then her legs buckled, the subway jerked forward, and she lost her balance. Marie careened into a row of seats, then caught herself. She gripped the edge of a seat and struggled to sit. Moisture seeped from under her arms and between her legs. She closed her eyes, gasping, trying to force air into her lungs.

A whispering rushed past her ears and she opened her eyes. A hooded figure was sitting in front of her. She looked around at the rest of the subway car to confirm what she already knew: she was alone—locked in a speeding metal box with a stranger who radiated harm. Her body went numb as a deep chuckling rustled from the recesses of the stranger’s hood.

“I hear you got something to discard,” the hooded figure said.

It was a heavy voice, a voice that seemed to have been mangled by heavy smoking and drinking. A tingling crawled through Marie’s limbs as if they were waking from a long deep sleep.

“What?” she asked, leaning away from the stranger.

“I said I hear something’s weighing on you real heavy,” the stranger said. The stranger lifted a twisted, knobby hand and shakily pushed back the hood. It fell away to reveal old skin, gnarled with wrinkles and rough craters. There was a slash of a mouth that folded in on itself like the pleats of a discarded glove. There were two eyes: one radiating a piercing gleam, the other—midnight blue—absorbed all light. The eye with the gleam stabbed Marie with its brightness, holding her transfixed. The other eye softened the corners of Marie’s vision, turning everything but the stranger into a fuzzy haze.

At the periphery of Marie’s vision, the plastic seats and metal poles began to melt away. Marie couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw trees sprouting on either side of her. She tried to look to her right, but she found that she could not turn her head—she could only make it twitch. She tried to look to her left, but she could not release herself from the gleam in the woman’s eye.

In an instant, everything went dark. A cold breeze whipped up around her and pushed her to her feet. She crouched, shoulders hunched against an unknown danger that she could sense but could not see. She looked around her, but darkness rendered her vision useless. Slowly a soft glow began to illuminate the sky. Marie caught a glimmer reflecting off the silver hardware on her shoes. As the light grew stronger, Marie whipped her head around, scanning her environment. She saw dense bush, huge old trees with ridged bark, scraggly blades of grass growing at the edges of a dirt road. Overhead, a full moon burned dirty yellow. The hooded stranger was nowhere to be seen.

Marie was attempting to calm the thicket of thoughts ricocheting in her head when she heard an animal wail. Whether it was a cry of warning, pain, or pleasure, she could not tell. Sound exploded somewhere to her left—something was crashing through the bushes, moving quickly toward her. All thought drained from her mind, and she ran, racing down a dirt road away from the sounds. She hadn’t run far when she reached a crossing. She hesitated, then changed directions, pitching herself down the road that had crossed her path. The sound receded, and Marie relaxed enough to observe her surroundings again. But, truth be told, there was nothing to see. All around her was thick foliage, darkened by night.

Marie kept running, watching as the moon flashed in and out of view. A few feet in front of her, a groan rang out. She skidded to a stop. The groan sounded like an old tree branch cracking off its trunk, but then it tapered into a low bellow, like the moan of a large animal catching the lash. She stepped back a few paces and tried to calm her panting. When she looked down at her feet, she was surprised to find that she was standing on another crossing. She allowed herself the luxury of considering which road to take, but even as she weighed her options, she knew it didn’t matter which direction she chose. She could not walk, run, or crawl her way out of this forest—she was trapped.

As soon as she had admitted to herself that she was ensnared, the hooded stranger appeared in the distance. Marie glanced over her shoulder as if checking to see if a magic escape hatch had sprung up behind her, but she knew exactly what she would see when she looked around: no lights, no houses, no people, just the shifting dark greens of dense bushes. She contemplated jumping off the path, but the rustling and grunts escaping the thick foliage were frightening. A memory flashed through her mind of tottering around the bayou with a tear-streaked face, certain a hawk would swoop down and carry her away. She had heard the story for years—how she had wandered out of the family yard when she was three and stumbled around the bayou alone for hours until she had been returned unscathed by a gator hunter who also happened to have an 8-foot gator in tow. She had memorized the details of the story from its multiple retellings, but had never had her own memory of being lost. But now, with fear fluttering in her chest, she remembered.

Marie heard the echo of a cough reaching out to her from afar. By the time she had shaken off her memories, the hooded stranger was drifting toward her. The stranger’s cough—raspy, rattling—sounded like it was right in Marie’s ear. Marie ducked her head and stared at the ground, her shoulders drawn up—mid-flinch—as if waiting for a blade to fall across her neck. Seconds passed; nothing happened. In the silence, Marie straightened and looked up to see the stranger standing two feet away. The stranger’s eyes seemed to be looking at and through her at the same time. Marie wet her lips to speak, wavering on whether or not it was wiser to stay silent.

“We’re at the crossroads, honey,” the woman said, answering Marie’s question before she had uttered a sound.

Marie looked down at her feet. Her eyes grew wide. The crossing in the roads was following her. Suddenly she knew that two dirt roads would have crossed beneath her feet no matter where she had stopped. A racket of confusion broke out in Marie’s mind. When she looked up, an incredulous look had grabbed hold of her face. The stranger waved away Marie’s expression like she was swatting a fly.

“Don’t be scared, little girl. Just hurry up and speak your mind. How can I help you?”

When Marie didn’t respond, the stranger flicked a black speck from beneath a fingernail and watched as it arced over Marie, fluttering as it passed overhead. On the descent it whimpered quietly and fell behind Marie like a stone. Marie covered her face with her hands and shuddered.

“Stop stalling! I don’t have time for this. Speak, lost one. You came to get something or leave something?”

The stranger made a hissing sound with her teeth, and the hissing rattled something loose inside Marie. She felt the gurgling of an answer trying to erupt from deep within her.

The stranger lifted her arms, and her hands floated in front of her. Her arms stretched forward, and she gently removed Marie’s hands from her face. The gleam in the stranger’s eye brightened as she stared at Marie. Their gazes touched for the slightest of seconds. Then the stranger gave two appraising nods and let her hands fall away.

“So that’s why you’re here,” she said. The sound of the her speaking throbbed in Marie’s ear. “You’re here to get rid of that feeling.”

Marie’s body vibrated as a sob rose to her throat. She felt the force of hysteria would strangle her.

“I want to go home,” Marie managed to croak.

“When you go, do you want to take this with you?”

The stranger touched a hand lightly to Marie’s forehead. A familiar heat rose through her. It was the heat that flared every time her friends unleashed an insult, slight, or offhand shaming of black people. It accompanied the inside jokes, the dark derision, the knowing glances that characterized her people as less than. Marie called it her outsider heat, her imposter heat, and it burned whenever she was reminded that she didn’t belong.

Marie retched. Her body pitched forward, but she kept her lips clamped tight. She felt an army of ugly words marching out of her memory, gliding into her viscera, then snaking up her chest, carrying with it the bitter taste of bile. The stranger’s cackle sounded like metal teeth scraping against concrete.

“Don’t nobody ever admit to asking to come here, but once they here, they can’t deny the truths I tell. So tell me then, sweetie, what you gonna give me to get free?”

Marie kept her head down until she started to feel the pressure of blood rushing to her scalp. A fine web of sweat covered her skin. She raised her head cautiously, and a wave of nausea crashed inside her.

“It won’t hurt. Not less’n you keep dodging the truth. Now listen good; I will take all the hurt out your body, and you will pay me for it. You won’t pay me now, mind. I’ll come collect when the time is right. No matter how much you try to prepare for it, it’ll be something you never expect. And when I take it, you’ll remember that you promised to give it up. Deal?”

Marie didn’t speak. She was too busy fighting for breath. The stranger placed her hand on Marie’s shoulder blade. The heat flushed through Marie’s body again, this time at triple the intensity. Marie cried out in anguish. She clenched her fists and teeth, waiting for the heat to pass, but the woman didn’t remove her hand.

“Is it a deal, dearie?” the woman asked.

“Yes, yes, whatever you want,” Marie yelled. “Take it. It’s a deal.”

As soon as the words left Marie’s mouth, she heard a whirling sound. She lifted her head. The trees, the grass, even the crossroads beneath her feet began to rotate slowly around her. She stood and looked around. The nausea was gone—so was the stranger, though her soft, grating laughter lingered in the air.

Marie’s body whipped around in a circle. Faster and faster, she turned. It felt as if the air were pressing against her. Then the ground beneath her feet crumbled away. She shrieked so hard she thought she’d taste blood on her tongue. Then just like that, the ground was solid again, and her body was still.

She found herself staring at her own reflection in a darkened subway window. The subway car jerked around a curve, and she stumbled. When she regained her balance, she realized that she was on a full subway car. Her head was pounding, her throat felt raw. She checked her cell phone. What time was it? Where was she? Where had she just been? Where was she going?

The subway slid to a stop, but Marie was frozen in a sea of amnesia and indecision. She could not muster the mental strength to decide whether or not she should exit the train. Through the subway window, she saw a hooded figure sitting on a bench at the station. A dark vision ruffled its wings within Marie’s subconscious. She blinked and leaned toward the window, struggling to remember. But then the doors closed, and the train took off before the memory could make itself whole in Marie’s mind.

Labor was hard, much harder than they said it would be, and much longer than Marie and Steven had planned. After a day at home and a day and a half in the birthing center, Marie’s baby still had not crowned. Marie was so worn out by her unproductive labor that the words “birthing plan” lost their meaning. When she heard Steven asking the midwife for a few more hours at the birthing center, she squeezed his hand and whispered, “Let’s go to the hospital.”

In the hospital there would be syringes and scalpels, exactly the instruments she had intended to avoid by choosing a birthing center and midwives over doctors and their medical approach, but after 36 hours of labor, Marie had reached her limit. Getting into the wheelchair was torture, but being wheeled past the bulletin board with snapshots of smiling parents caused a more haunting pain. Despite putting in so many hours of labor, Marie and Steven would not succeed at natural childbirth. They would have no right to count themselves as a birthing center success story.

As she rode to the hospital, all she could think about was holding her child at last. She imagined sobbing, kissing him softly, and scolding him for being so stubborn and shy about coming into this world.

The nurse who greeted them at the hospital was old, older than Marie thought nurses were allowed to be, but she could not dwell on that thought or any other. There were just too many distractions. There were the persistent but ineffective contractions that she had brought with her to the hospital, the cries of strangers that surrounded her as she rolled through the emergency room, the swarm of residents in white coats that moved around her room with clipboards in hand. Time was galloping by in odd, uneven clumps. A nurse wearing a shirt with bunnies and balloons printed on it seemed to be checking her blood pressure for hours, while another nurse attached a fetal monitor to her stomach so quickly it seemed as if it had always been there.

In the sea of white coats and pastel cartoon prints, Marie could not see Steven anywhere. Just after an IV port was stuck into the back of her hand, Marie felt her abdomen tensing again. When the next contraction hit, a high-pitched beeping sound exploded from one of the machines.

“What’s happening?” Steven asked.

His voice, thick with worry, cut through all the noise in the room.

Marie winced, smothering her groans, silently willing the doctor to answer. The doctor felt the sides and the top of Marie’s swollen belly with deft hands. He leaned over and pressed a stethoscope to her navel.

“We shouldn’t push this any longer,” he said to no one in particular.

When the contraction had passed, the beeping sound quieted. All the medical personnel turned their eyes to the fetal monitor.

“The baby is stable,” a nurse with a high-pitched voice squeaked.

“What’s… happening…?” Marie muttered through her exhaustion.

“The baby’s heartbeat stopped, but it’s back on track now,” the midwife said patting Marie’s leg.

“I’m going to set up an OR,” the doctor said and shot the midwife a decisive look.

The midwife nodded to him ever so slightly.

“Does this mean…?” Marie trailed off.

Steven was finally by her side. He grasped her hand. “Don’t we get to decide?” he asked.

“Something is happening during the contractions that is putting the baby in distress,” the midwife said. “I promised we wouldn’t put you on a timetable, but this isn’t about time, this is about your child’s life.”

“Are you sure…”

“The only thing we’re sure about,” said the midwife, “is that we don’t want to risk your baby’s life.”

Another contraction rolled through Marie’s pelvis. Marie gritted her teeth and threw her head back. The fetal monitor squealed again. Steven threw his hands over Marie’s ears. Even with the sound muted by her husband’s palms, it sounded to Marie like it was their child squealing, like they were torturing the baby before it had a chance to be born.

“The OR is ready,” Marie heard someone announce. The gravelly tones in the person’s voice shot straight through her and stripped away everything else in the room. Marie looked up and saw the old nurse standing in the doorway. Her gnarled hands rested on the handles of the wheelchair. She vaguely heard the word “epidural” and felt hands on her body, but nothing could break Marie’s fascination with the old nurse.

She didn’t hear the rip of the wrapper as a nurse unsheathed a needle. She didn’t feel the grip of Steven’s hands on her shoulders as he engulfed her in his embrace. The pinch of the needle sliding into her spine barely registered. She heard her heartbeat thudding in her ears, she even heard her baby’s heartbeat fluttering rapidly next to her own, but she was completely estranged from the goings-on in the room.

Two nurses eased her legs off the bed. Holding tightly onto Steven and the midwife, Marie pulled herself to her feet. She leaned on Steven as she hobbled to the wheelchair. There was another contraction or two in the hallway, but they had been dulled by the epidural.

Marie began to lose sensation in her legs while she was being rushed down the hall. Although she had been unhooked from the fetal monitor, she could still hear it screeching in her ears. She could feel her body contract, but was unable to lift her knees or wiggle her toes. Panic pounded her ribcage. Pure terror invaded her.

“Steven!” she yelled, and twisted around in the wheelchair. She was frantic to find Steven, but all she could see were harried nurses in quiet shoes.

“You poor dear,” the old nurse said. The wheelchair made a sharp turn, and soon Marie was facing a set of gray double doors. The doors flew open on their own, and the nurse pushed Marie through.

Marie gripped the arms of the wheelchair and looked back at the nurse. “Where is my husband!?” she asked.

The nurse smiled. Up close, Marie could see that the nurse’s eyes were not symmetrical. One gleamed and reflected light, while the other gobbled it up, hungry as a black hole.

“Where is Steven?” she asked again.

The woman did not answer. She simply smiled. Her grin gave Marie chills.

Marie tried to stand, but when she pushed against the armrest of the wheelchair, she remembered that her legs were dead weight. She fell against the backrest.

“Don’t be difficult,” the nurse said, and the room went dark.

The sound of the nurse’s breathing became amplified. Marie was—briefly—in three places at once. She was tearing through the bushes, yelling for her daddy as a lost three year old; she was standing barefoot and dusty-toed at the crossroads; and she was here now—at the hospital, her fears and history reverberating through her mind.

“It’s time for you to pay,” the nurse said in the dark.

Marie shifted nervously in the wheelchair.

“I have nothing for you to collect,” she said, forcing her voice not to falter.

A glow lit the room from above. The light gathered into a focused stream and showered down on Marie’s pregnant belly.

“I don’t like liars,” the nurse growled.

The nurse walked around the wheelchair and stood in front of Marie. She pointed at Marie, and Marie trembled violently. The trembling invaded every cell of her body. She wanted to plead for mercy, but the trembling had taken over her face, and she could not still her lips long enough to get any words out.

The nurse smiled as if satisfied with her effect on Marie. She took Marie’s hand and leaned over until she was eye-level with Marie.

“Do you want to push?” she asked gently.

Marie shook her head, defiance burning in her eyes. The nurse extended two fingers and placed them on the side of Marie’s neck. Marie’s body jackknifed back, then she fell forward. Bent over her knees, she began to wail, but she could not form words. Her teeth chattered, and even her arms began to feel numb.

“It’s time to push,” the nurse said, her gravelly tones cloaked in cool professionalism.

The nurse grasped Marie under her arms and eased her to the floor. She manipulated Marie’s legs so that each knee was bent and each foot was flat on the floor. Marie squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her entire body as tightly as she could. The nurse walked around Marie and squatted behind her. She hooked her hands under Marie’s armpits and hoisted her into a birthing position.

Marie took deep gulping breaths to keep nausea at bay. Her gaze skittered around the room. It was empty—the room—with no furnishings, no windows, and only one door. The walls glowed faintly in the dim light. Marie latched onto the floor tiles, losing herself in the pattern they made—a chaotic series of snaking lines that curved this way and that. When the floor went blurry, she knew another contraction had found her. She tensed her body, hoping to hold the baby in. When the blurriness passed, Marie heard the plink of dripping water and the raspy, ragged breathing of the nurse licking at her ear. She thought of Steven, desperately wishing that he was by her side.

Instantly, as if triggered by her thoughts, dancing lines of light illuminated the walls of the room. The light was everywhere, as if being reflected by a pool of water, but there was no water—only the old nurse’s rasps, Marie’s pain, and the sound of dripping. The light on the walls twisted and undulated, twining to form images, and then unraveling into random patterns. For a few, brief seconds, the lines joined to become Steven—a frozen expression of false bravado contorting his face. The lights scattered, then rejoined to form the contours of the midwife’s face. Both she and Steven were looking down.

The light built into a shimmering glow that was so powerful that Marie had to look away. When the lines took shape again, she realized that Steven and the midwife were looking down at her. She was lying on a surgical bed, and there was a curtain over her chest. Past Steven, she could see the doctor leaning over the lower half of her body, intently operating on her. Anger exploded within at the same instant that another contraction ripped through her. She yelled, the rage bursting out of her in wild, uncontrolled waves.

The nurse’s voice rang out in her mind.

“Push!!”

Suddenly it was too late not to push. She couldn’t pull back her rage quickly enough. A ripple took hold of her torso and, before she could control it, it squeezed its way down to her hips.

“Noooooooooo,” Marie yelled, tears slipping out of her eyes. The nurse laughed and let Marie go. Marie whimpered, then crumpled to the floor.

Marie felt a stroking on her forehead, accompanied by a soft whispering. When she opened her eyes, Steven kissed her cheek and squeezed her hand. From somewhere in the room, she heard a dull thumping followed by a soft sucking sound. Then she heard three people counting in unison. “One, two, three, four…”

She tried to sit up but she couldn’t feel her legs. She grabbed onto Steven’s arm. “The baby?”

Steven turned away from Marie and clenched his jaw. “The umbilical cord,” he muttered, “was wrapped around his throat.”

An icy dread dripped into Marie’s heart. “Is he…”

“They’re trying… they’re trying to bring him back.”

Steven’s face was wet with tears. Marie felt moisture on her face too, but she lacked the energy to fully cry. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a slow-moving shadow gliding by. She turned her head and saw the old nurse, creeping toward the door.

“Time of death?” someone asked from the corner of the room.

Steven’s body shuddered as he broke under the weight of his grief. No emotion flickered over Marie’s face. She simply stared into the empty air where she could see the woman from the crossroads, protectively cradling a ghost baby—Marie’s baby—cooing at the infant as it lay nestled in the crook of her cruel arms.

Ancient, Ancient

The lamppost shimmered. Asima blinked.

“So what’s this big secret you been keeping from me?” Roger asked and flicked the flame on his lighter.

Asima didn’t respond. She stared across the street at the lamppost. Had the metal really moved before her eyes? An unlit cigarette hung from her dry lips. Roger held the flame steady before her mouth.

“Well, ain’t you gonna light up?” he said. “My finger hurts.”

Asima didn’t answer.

“Damn,” Roger said and let the lighter drop to the ground. He shook his hand then looked at his fingers. Ridges from the lighter had cut into his skin, the flesh of his thumb was red.

“You’re such a baby,” Asima said. She rolled her eyes and pushed past him.

He bent down and scooped the lighter up from the concrete.

“Asima, where you going? Asima?”

Asima didn’t look back. She skittered across the street and stopped in front of the lamppost. She was standing before it with crossed arms willing it to move when Roger walked up behind her.

“What you doing, girl?”

Asima opened her mouth to respond, but no words—only sound—came out. Roger jumped back; Asima clapped her hand over her mouth. The lamppost undulated again—in laughter, it seemed.

“Did you see it?” Asima wanted to ask, but what came out her mouth was: “rrrrrraaaaaaauuuuuuugggggggggghhhhhhhhh.”

In the migration of ants, there is always one that can be distracted. One whose biological imperative hiccups, if only for a moment, and allows it to wander off the track, into some new delight or danger. What would call you from your daily grind? A herd of wildebeest thundering down the street during rush hour?

The movement of metal?

I can feel the magic surging through me now. It is electric, kinetic. It pumps through this form I’ve entered. It is good.

Asima stumbled backwards, but she did not pull her hand from her mouth. Roger lurched toward her, reaching out to help her. She looked at him, light bursting from her pupils. She felt something horrible tearing through her bones. She dropped her hand from her mouth to warn Roger to stay back, and the sound spilled out again: “rrrrrraaaaaaauuuuuuugggggggggghhhhhhhhh.”

In the migration of ants, the one that wanders off, away from the snaking line of workers, is the one who tastes honey. Is the one who climbs a blade of grass. Is the one who drowns.

Is the one who bursts into flame.

I stretch. The flaky chemical covering this form I’m in peels away. I have not moved in years, decades. After eons of stillness, I finally feel it: the bursting forth of the power I once had.

The girl must be terrified.

Roger was squeezing sweat in his palms. He didn’t know what to do. He had heard of spirits riding you, but only during sleep. He had seen possessions before, but only in church. He was frightened for his safety. He was terrified, too, of the secret Asima was about to tell him.

I must act quickly. I know a frightened human is liable to try anything. She saw me move. She saw the form I’m trapped in shift. She is the one I must draw in to free me. She must touch.

In the migration of ants, should you be the one that wanders off, you are on your own. Your feelers and you. No more refuge in the maddening movement of your community. There is no boss. No leader.

No queen.

Asima convulsed and leaped toward the lamppost. Roger didn’t know why, but he sprinted forward and caught her before she touched it. When his arms circled her body, the thing she had not told revealed itself. He heard the whisper of her voice. As the words unfolded he saw new life expanding in the air. The rapid multiplication of cells, the formation of new mitochondria and cellular nuclei—the consolidation of Asima and Roger’s DNA.

Roger pulled Asima to his chest, but she was as good as gone. He did not shake her or scream, nor did he plead for her to hold on. Instead he crumpled to the ground, holding Asima close. He leaned away from the lamppost, not noticing that Asima’s hand fell open and her finger rested against the base of the lamppost.

Have you ever seen a loved one burst into flame? I have. That is how this all began. Ages ago in a country that no longer exists, among a people long believed to be extinct, at least by flesh-dwellers, something that was what I am now found someone who was close to me, as close as this Asima is to this Roger — no, closer — and took her from me. Her body was left in flames, and I held her, wanting to burn too, but the flames would not eat me. Instead, they bridged this disease into me. You think the one in flames is in danger. No. She is already gone. It is the other, the one left behind.

The flames did not burn Roger. Even as Asima lay inflamed, he felt no pain. His mind did not register the heat, only the slow but certain advance of Asima’s death. He would not let go of her. Not even when her body began to glow, white hot. He barely flinched when that new life floated from her belly like a gently blown bubble and hovered over his waist. He stared vacantly as it lowered, disappearing into his solar plexus.

You never realize your loved one has been consumed until they are no longer there. It is only the absence that shocks, not the actual act of disappearing. You may one day forget the burning, having spent eons trapped, waiting for a bridge to another body. But the absence returns — no matter how many flesh-dwellers you consume. You create others like you: burners of flesh, devourers of flesh-dwellers — unrecorded souls.

But it is never enough.

In the migration of ants, there is always one.

Pod Rendezvous

During third meal, Laki was fidgety. She shoveled down her food without registering taste. Being part of a large birth group had trained her to eat quickly but, for once, her siblings were not the cause of her haste. Today, she was eating alone, and it was an odd sensation that she did not enjoy. There was no one to tell her to slow down or to ask for her leavings. She had finished the whole meal before she realized that no one, not even Se-se was going to join her. With a heavy sigh, she folded her platter in half and pushed it into the dish slot in the wall. The slot sealed itself, and Laki left the kitchen to find some company.

The hallways were incredibly empty, emptier than Laki had ever remembered them being. She walked with one arm outstretched so that she could trail her fingers along the wall. Halfway to Se-se’s room, she stopped and turned to face the wall. She placed her palm flat against it and closed her eyes. She imagined there was still a room behind the wall and that her sister Yasla was there, waiting to talk with her.

For Laki, Yasla had been a twin spirit, a guiding light, a soft embrace in a world that had begun to show Laki its sharp edges. And her departure had been devastating. In the year since Yasla’s maturation, Laki had battled disappointments, panic, and rage. While some girls wandered their way toward maturation confused and uncertain, Yasla had always known what she wanted. Before maturation she had applied for and won a top-secret appointment in the mesosphere’s weaponry and transportation department. Laki would have loved to follow in Yasla’s footsteps, but she would not be so lucky.

Laki’s first experiences with maturation had left her indifferent. Watching her older siblings depart into adulthood never troubled her. There were too many of them to build bonds with. She saw them as troublesome competitors who ruthlessly pushed each other around in wild ploys for dominance and attention. But by the time the birth group had been halved, Laki began to see her siblings differently. They became more precious to her; she saw them as friends rather than competitors, and she felt a deep loss whenever one of them reached maturation.

Without Yasla, Laki felt completely alone. She turned away from the sealed entrance to Yasla’s room and walked to Se-se’s room. She called out to Se-se, but there was no answer. She wandered on, making her way to the end of the hall where she stopped and placed her ear against the wall. She listened for echoes of the playful battles that had been waged up and down the halls outside her brothers’ rooms, but there was nothing behind that wall but silence.

Laki’s house never did sustain empty rooms for long. It was an economical entity, completely lacking in nostalgia. After sealing off unused rooms, it cannibalized them, using the raw material to build new rooms. One of Laki’s only at-home pleasures was pressing on walls in search of tiny patches of recycled material. To Laki, walls were like stretches of skin; each patch had its own history embedded within. When she found a new room, she could fuel weeks of ecstasy, methodically working her way around the new walls, judiciously releasing memories and relishing in the company of her beloved siblings—even if only in the fleeting and ghostly form of remembrance.

Laki felt as if the emptiness of the house would drive her mad. Even the hallways leading to the pod landing room were vacant. Where had Se-se gone? What could the mothers be doing, hidden out of sight? Laki walked toward the mothers’ private chambers, still trailing her fingers along the hallway walls. She was a few paces away from the entrance to the mothers’ rooms when she felt the wall buckle beneath her fingertips. She paused. These hallways were no strangers to her hands. She had poked, prodded, and rubbed every inch of wall that she could reach. She had uncovered and released every memory that was to be found in this quadrant of the house. There should not have been a room there.

Laki held her hand over the spot where the wall had buckled; her fingers tingled with expectation. As she waited for the wall to thin, she closed her eyes, anticipating the bliss of immersing herself in the company of her siblings. A moan escaped from the room, causing Laki’s eyes to snap open. She quickly pinched above and below the slit that had begun to part the wall.

She peered through the opening. The room within was full of mothers—more mothers than Laki knew she had. None of them were gathered into a unit. Most of them stood in a circle in the center of the room, dark red orbs hovering over their outstretched hands. Other mothers stood around the edges of the room with their backs against the walls.

The moan snaked through the room again, but Laki could not see who was making the sound. She put her hand over the top edge of the opening and elongated it. She leaned in closer and looked up. There, hanging from the ceiling in a shimmering sling, was a woman. Her head was tilted back, her lips parted in a painful grimace. Laki was so struck by the woman’s expression that a few seconds passed before she realized that the woman was unshrouded. The woman grasped the sling and groaned again. She shifted her body sideways and revealed a long purplish tube attached to her stomach.

Entranced and frightened, Laki followed the tube’s path downward and saw that it was connected to a large globe that was floating just below the woman. The woman gritted her teeth, and the tube pulsed. In synchronicity, the mothers inhaled and exhaled. It seemed as if the room itself were breathing. Silky white strands shot out of the large globe and attached themselves to the small globes that were hovering over the mothers’ hands. The globes filled with light and, for a brief second, Laki could see the curled up forms of embryos within the globes. She let out a loud gasp. A few mothers turned and saw her as the globes’ glittering illuminated the room with an explosion of incandescence.

Before Laki could see anything else, a body blocked her view. The small opening she had made parted completely. A mother glided out of the room, the expression on her face unreadable behind her veil. The mother sealed the room, took Laki by the hand, and led her away from the mothers’ quarters. She stopped at the hallway that led to Laki’s room and turned to face Laki. Laki opened her mouth, but found she could not speak. The mother waited patiently.

“That was one of my mothers, wasn’t it?” Laki asked.

“Yes,” the mother sang. She took both of Laki’s hands and pressed against Laki’s palms with her fingers.

“How many do I have?”

“Nineteen.”

Laki was briefly shocked into silence. “I thought there were only six of you.”

“How do you think we can be everywhere at once?”

Laki heard a smile in the mother’s voice, though she could not see it through the blur of the mother’s veil.

“What is happening in there?”

The mother brushed her hand over Laki’s bald head.

“We received new babies today,” she sang. “We are nurturing them.”

Despite the mother’s calming presence, Laki’s heart began to beat rapidly.

“Will I have to do that? Hang from the ceiling…”

“You will not have to, it will be your choice.”

“But it’s hurting her.”

“It hurts, yes, but it’s not hurting her. She asked to nurture them.”

Laki looked at this lone mother incredulously.

“You will learn, Laki. Mothering makes you want to give, even if it exhausts you.”

Laki shook her head.

“You don’t need to understand now, Laki, but that feeling will find you. Weeks or months into your time with the babies, it will sneak up on you.”

Laki’s face was frozen in an expression of horror.

“You’re thinking only about the pain, La-Laki. Don’t. It is pointless. Every drop of pain is balanced by waves of pleasure.”

“Pleasure?”

“Pleasure. Pleasure at your successes. Pleasure in watching the children mature. Pleasure with the other mothers. Emotions you never imagined.”

“But what if I never find those pleasures. What if I wasn’t made to be a mother?”

The mother burst into laughter. “No one was born a mother, Laki. Yet all of us are able to mother if we allow ourselves to be guided by the needs of the children.”

“But the babies…”

“Laki, you do not need to think about babies right now.”

“But tomorrow—when I join my mother-unit, will I get babies? Will I have to take care of the wombs?”

The mother shook her head and rubbed Laki’s back.

“Tomorrow you will meet with the others in your unit. You will begin the process of melding the cloak. Were you not listening to anything we told you in preparation for the mother-unit?”

“You didn’t tell me about the wombs!” Laki tried to wound the mother with an accusation, but the rage died in her throat. Every word that came out of her mouth was softened by the power of the mother’s love.

“We told you what you need to know before you join the unit. No one learns about the babies until after they join their unit…which you won’t until tomorrow. This is your last day at home. Why are you wandering around the house? There’s no more training today. Take off your uniform. Enjoy the rest of your time, go see your friends.”

Laki didn’t answer. She imagined herself hanging in a sling suspended over a huge womb. Panic welled up in her chest; she found it hard to breathe. The mother hugged Laki.

“Go,” she said.

Laki turned away from the mother and ran down the hall, choking on the urge to scream. When she reached her room, she waved her hand over the sealed entrance. The wall thinned and parted down the middle. She stepped over the threshold, and a softly modulated voice rang out:

“One day to maturation.”

Laki winced. Grabbing the edges of her robe, she yanked the white fabric from her shoulders. Her elbow flung out wildly, triggering the voice to repeat itself:

“One day to maturation.”

“Shut up!” Laki snapped. She stumbled toward her wardrobe portal while pulling off the robe and dropping it on the ground. As she fumbled to release the waist of her dress, she caught sight of her reflection. Startled, she fell still. Swathed in mother-unit whites, she could be any girl on the brink of maturation. A young mother, perhaps, anyone but herself.

Just beyond her reflection, Laki saw a message globe float into the room. She looked at it over her shoulder, then turned back to the reflective wall. She squinted her eyes and tried to imagine what she would look like draped in her mother-unit veil. She envisioned a group of faceless women gathered around her. A disgusted hiss spilled out through her lips. She waved her hand over her reflection, and the reflective wall went dark.

When Laki walked to the wardrobe portal, the message globe followed her. She passed her hand over a flat, round disc embedded in the wall. A rod slid out from where the disc had been and presented her with a row of cloths dancing around on hangers. Even her wardrobe had ceased to be an accurate reflection of her. Mixed in with her customary black cloths, were the mother-unit whites, permanently shaped into formless robes and dresses that, after tomorrow, would become her daily uniform.

At the thought of tomorrow, Laki felt a tightening in her chest. The terror that she had been carefully containing flooded her body. She rifled through the cloths, seizing anything white and flinging it to the ground. When there was nothing left but black cloths and empty hangers, Laki collapsed to the floor. Every wild scheme she had concocted to avoid her fate trampled through her memory. Breathing heavily, she looked around the room manically as if through feverish effort she could find the secret and escape her future. The message globe chirped, and her panic deflated. She let out a resigned sigh. She was powerless to change the thrust of her future, and nothing she did could alleviate that fact.

The globe drifted down to hang next to her shoulder. She blew on it, triggering the release of its message.

“Greetings elder sister,” a high-pitched voice chanted.

Laki shifted so that she was sitting cross-legged on the floor and opened her hand to accept the message. The globe floated down to rest in her palm. An image of her sister—cinnamon-colored skin, freckles, a dark mouth—sprouted in her mind. She heard Se-se whispering, “I think it’s going to work. We’re going to get you out of the mother-unit. You have to meet me later. I’ll send another message.”

Laki rolled her eyes. Even up to the final hour, Se-se was full of optimism. Laki pinched the message globe and it deflated. She flattened it against the wall with the palm of her hand and watched as it melded into the wall. She took a deep breath and climbed to her feet. She peeled off her white dress and threw it on top of the heap of discarded white cloths. She plucked a short length of black fabric from her clothes rod and wrapped it around her body. With the heat from her hand, she fused the cloth’s edges to create one seamless dress. She pinched along the waist, the dip of her back, and under her bust to give it shape. She picked out a shorter length of cloth to wrap over her shoulders and melded it to the dress, creating sleeves. There was a lump around her middle revealing the silhouette of a marriage belt resting on her hips. Nothing to be done about that.

She pulled a blank message globe from the wall and closed her eyes. She projected images of a wild party into the globe, purred “the rendezvous-less zone,” then sent the thought, “Maturation tomorrow.” She opened her eyes.

“Twelve messages,” she said. The message globe split into twelve tiny spheres—each carrying an identical invitation. She touched each sphere while saying a name, and they zipped away to deliver her invitation.

Laki walked to the pod landing room with a grim look on her face. She didn’t look like a woman going to a party, she looked like a prisoner headed to her execution. In the pod landing room, she stood briefly in reverent silence. This, she thought, is the end of my life. She decided to savor every second. She treasured the whirling sound of her pod ballooning to full expansion and the whisper of the exit portal opening in the roof. She craned her head back and reveled in the pull of velocity as her pod shot away from home up into the upper atmosphere.

When she had left her domed city behind, she reached for the sound module. With quick fingers, she programmed it to record the sound of friction, a static-like screeching bristling between her pod and the thick weightlessness of space. She amplified the sound, adding an echo, then slowed its frequency to match the beat of her pulse. She flipped through her archives and sampled sound snippets before selecting a loop of her siblings laughing through the hallways at home. She mixed in a distorted recording of her own voice, and the jumble of sound built into an aural assault. At Laki’s signal, the sound module found a unifying tempo and tamed the layers of noise into a repeating melody. Laki blended it with one of her preferred beats and blasted the mash-up into her pod—a newly created soundtrack for the moment.

For a painfully short stretch of time, the music obliterated Laki’s worries. She turned the music up until she could feel it vibrating the soft translucent walls of her pod. She started by swaying her head back and forth. By the time her pod was approaching the twinkling lights of the Velvet Stretch, her limbs were flailing, her hips were swaying, her knees were gyrating. She had given herself so completely to the music that there was no space for anxiety, heartache, and other demons.

At the entrance to the Velvet Stretch, Laki turned off the music. She pressed her palm to the thin wall of her pod to register herself with the concierge. As she waited for him to complete his procedures, images of lovers she had rendezvoused with started to flash through her mind. She remembered the sweetness of her sessions with Pemfi, the hilarity of hanging out with Benko, and one heart-stopping moment she’d had with Asla. She could hear Se-se’s nagging scorn ringing in her ears—“Do they even have marriage belts to offer, Laki?”

She responded to the concierge’s questions absentmindedly, grinning at the memory of her usual entrance into the Velvet Stretch. Were it a normal visit with a rendezvous awaiting her, she wouldn’t be standing there, half listening to the concierge; she’d be flat-out ignoring him, crawling around her pod in search of props to enliven her rendezvous.

“No rendezvous,” she told the concierge while in her mind she was remembering placing peacock feathers, a pouch of honey, and a latex strap on the floor of her pod.

He slid his fingers over his data machine. “You only have clearance for the rendezvous-less zone. You must return to the concierge’s desk if you wish to enter another level.”

Laki indicated her consent with the tap of her finger, then turned away. Everything else the concierge said was useless to her. He cleared her entrance, and she plunged into the Velvet Stretch.

Savoring the freedom of flight, she went flitting through the rendezvous-less zone. Even though the Velvet Stretch was all about connection, she steered clear of other pods. She didn’t need a date or even a momentary flirt, she needed a private, remote area for her party.

It had been quite some time since she had searched the Velvet Stretch for anything. Amongst her friends, she acted as if she harbored the same appetites that had defined her pre-maturation stage, but the truth was she had changed. She could no longer sustain the intense curiosity of her early days when she had roamed the Stretch, electrified by her quest to find a sexy someone whose love was so intense that being together would feel like a desperation, a feverish need.

Her identity was so twisted up in her reputation that she didn’t know how to embrace a new facet of her personality. She had spent so much time orchestrating fantastic episodes full of intrigue and mind-blowing carnal consummation that solitude seemed like a foreign language. Who would she be if not voracious and doggedly determined to create magical encounters?

Yet somehow the allure of the Velvet Stretch had faded. Gorging on pleasure and emotional intimacies began to tire, rather than excite, her. While pursuing her fantasies, she’d mysteriously transformed into a woman more interested in the workings of her own brain than the mysteries of a stranger’s heart.

Laki found a lone star bar with a dim yellow glow. She lodged her pod right next to it, squinting before turning away from its glow. The way that it seductively illuminated her skin told Laki that it was the perfect location for the evening’s festivities. She checked the time module, then cursed softly. She realized too late that she hadn’t specified a time in the invitations—it could be hours before the first guest arrived.

She felt the silence of the Stretch invade her pod. If you weren’t hopped up on adrenaline, or some other intoxicant, and distracted by your frantic search for a rendezvous, you would immediately notice the Velvet Stretch’s profound lack of sound. The depth of its silence was stunning, yet it had taken Laki years to notice it. She had been too focused on the pods of strangers, and the anatomy of the people ensconced within them, to take note of the majestic expanse of deep space. Now, she was older and irritatingly aware that she was just a noisy little fleck in an infinite field of silence. The loudest thing in the vicinity was her thoughts, thoughts she had come to the Stretch to escape.

She sat on the floor and flicked the sound module on. Instead of hearing the song she had just mixed, she heard a deep voice say, “Let’s do this by starlight.” Her back stiffened. A heat sparked in her chest and shot straight down into her pelvis. She looked around, but no one was there. The voice repeated:

“Let’s do this by starlight.”

“Fogo,” she whispered, remembering the owner of that voice—the last rendezvous she had had in the Stretch and, quite possibly, the last rendezvous she would ever have.

She touched her waist, running her fingers over the concealed marriage belt, then leapt up to examine the sound module. She didn’t remember making a recording that night, and she couldn’t understand why his voice was filling her pod now. She vibrated her fingers in front of the sound module, commanding it to spin Fogo’s voice into a faster loop. She rubbed one hand over her body, guiding it downward to grasp between her legs as Fogo invited her to do it by starlight over and over again. With the other hand, she added the sound of dripping water to the background and mixed in her favorite song—a love-laced anthem by Mahini.

A soft smile spread across Laki’s face. She no longer felt engulfed by the Stretch, not while lust was tingling through her and enfolding her in its embrace. She lay back on the floor and stretched out her limbs. She watched the twinkling lights around her as she ran her hands over her skin, stopping to apply extra pressure here or added caresses there. Singing along with Mahini, she shrouded herself in arousal and buried time with repeated, focused strokes.

Time had long since abdicated to pleasure when Laki felt her pod rock. Disoriented, she sat up and looked around. Her surprise melted into delight when she saw that her friend Zaha had arrived. Laki scrambled to her feet without remembering that her cloth was hiked up over her hips and hanging open. With a rueful grin, Laki fixed her cloth.

As her pod fused with Laki’s, Zaha shook her head. “You’re so predictable,” she said into the hole that was opening between their pods.

Laki pushed her hands into a pocket in the wall of her pod. She felt the cool wetness of the disinfectant splatter against her hands, then she felt heat as her hands were dried. When the hole between their pods was large enough, Laki ran over to Zaha and embraced her.

“You’re predictable too, you know. I knew you’d be the first to come.”

“So that little show was for me?”

“Yes, consider me your maturation welcome committee.” Laki bowed with a mischievous grin.

Zaha laughed. “Last day! And you’re up here making jokes and playing with yourself. I thought you were going to be a mess.”

“I am a mess; why do you think I was half-naked on the floor? It’s the only cure for panic that I’ve ever known.”

“Well I hope they’re open-minded in your mother-unit, you can’t…”

Laki held up her fingers to silence Zaha.

“At this party, we will not speak those words. We’ll pretend that I have no date with the veil tomorrow and that you won’t have to give everything up in…” Laki paused and looked at Zaha. “I forget. How many days do you have left?”

“Well…” Zaha said, and theatrically pointed to the top of her pod. Laki looked up and saw a thin silver marriage belt hanging there.

“You’re saved!” Laki yelled. They both squealed. Laki hugged Zaha, but she froze when she looked at the belt again. Her arms dropped away from Zaha, and she fell silent.

“What’s wrong?”

“No, nothing. I’m sorry.” Laki stumbled over her words as she stepped closer to examine the belt. “That looks like my friend Pemfi’s belt.”

“Pemfi’s? It is. You know him?”

Laki nodded, but offered no explanation. She was, she knew, an idiot in so many people’s minds. Her friends, her lovers, and especially her sister Se-se thought she was sacrificing herself for no good reason. She didn’t know what Zaha would think if she knew how many marriage belts Laki had turned down, if she knew that the last time Laki had seen Pemfi’s marriage belt, he was holding it out to her with trembling hands and she was shaking her head, telling him, “I can’t.”

Laki put her hand to her mouth as she remembered his stung response.

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“What’s the difference?” she had asked.

“The difference is if you can’t, it’s beyond your control. If you won’t you’re just being a stubborn rub.”

Coming from Pemfi, the curse had sounded like a foreign language, but in his anger he had wielded it masterfully. Zaha looked at Laki, an expectant expression on her face, but Laki didn’t speak; she just let out a long slow breath. She couldn’t throw off the memory of Pemfi, how she had wrapped her arms around him and spoken softly. “You want to make this hurt? You want to make me hurt?”

“You’ve been hurting me for years,” Pemfi had whispered in her ear. “But do you know what’s really going to hurt? Getting locked in a mother-unit. It’s going to kill you. They’re going to take away your pod and your props, and your life is going to change forever.”

She had pushed him away and assured him that she could handle it. He hadn’t believed a word of it. Not Pemfi, not after she’d spent so many nights telling him of her nightmares. He’d offered her a marriage of friendship, begged her to let him save her, but she had wanted to save herself.

Laki smiled at Zaha, hoping her face looked warm and reassuring rather than shaky and uncertain.

“He’s a good man, Zaha. You’ll have a good life.”

Then she pressed Zaha into a tight embrace.

“But what is this?” Zaha asked pulling away from Laki. She put her hands on Laki’s waist and felt the marriage belt through Laki’s dress.

“It’s…” Laki felt the pods jostle before she could answer. She turned and saw that Benko had arrived.

“Ben-ben!” she yelled.

As the walls were thinning where Benko’s pod met Laki’s, she said to Zaha, “It’s a long story…not what you think.”

“So you’re not getting married?”

“Who’s not getting married?” Benko asked stepping through the opening into Laki’s pod.

“I’m not getting married,” Laki said.

“But there’s something under her clothes, look,” said Zaha.

Benko held Laki by the hips and examined the bulge. He pushed at Laki’s waist, feeling the belt through the cloth of her dress. “It’s thick.”

“It’s just a loan,” said Laki. “Pretend it’s like any other belt. Did you bring the screen?”

“What kind of freak gets a thick marriage belt and doesn’t get married?” Benko asked.

Laki smacked him on the back. Turning smoothly, he smiled at Zaha and held out his hand.

“I’m Benko, and you are…”

“She has a marriage belt hanging in her pod, and she is getting married. Did you bring the screen?!”

“Wait!” Benko held up his hand. He stood in the middle of the three pods and cocked his head to one side.

“What are you looking for?” Laki asked.

“Not looking. Listening. This mix is depressing.”

He walked to the sound module in his pod. He sped up the rhythm of Mahini’s song, then mixed in a hard, fast beat. Zaha went to her sound module and added the sound of an animal yelping, then punctuated it with intermittent high-pitched tinkling sounds. They looked at each other and grinned.

Laki did a little shimmy. “Nice.” She kissed each of them on the cheek.

The pods shook suddenly. Laki, Benko, and Zaha stumbled a bit. They looked up to see two pods joining them at once. Laki waved at her arriving friends then shot Benko a look.

“Okay, okay, I’ll go set up the screen,” he said and walked toward his pod.

Laki linked arms with Zaha, and they walked over to where Laki’s friends’ pods were fusing with the party. When the pods merged, the space Laki and Zaha were standing in expanded.

Zaha saw Benko float away in his pod.

“Where’s he going?” she whispered in Laki’s ear.

“Setting up the screen,” Laki said.

“What’s the screen for?” Zaha asked.

“Oh, you’ve never been to any of Laki’s parties?” one of the newcomers asked.

Zaha shook her head no. She and Laki glanced at each other before Laki leaned in to hug each of the newcomers and kiss them both on the cheek.

“I see,” said the other newcomer. “You met in the Stretch.”

Zaha laughed loudly. “No, we met at a mother-unit training.”

There was an awkward pause.

“I’m going to go help Beni,” the first newcomer said and walked away.

A silence settled over the group. Then Laki slapped her friend’s arm lightly. “Don’t get all weird. You have a mother-unit.”

“I know, but I don’t know anyone going into one…except you.”

“So what? You think we’re contagious?”

“No, it’s just that…”

“It’s weird knowing you’re gonna spend the rest of your life with a veil on,” Laki said in a mocking voice.

“Why get to know you when you’re just going to disappear after maturation,” Zaha added with a high-pitched wail.

“Aren’t you depressed? Don’t you ever think about escaping?” Laki whined.

There was a dangerous glint in her eye, and her relaxed stance had become combative. Her aggression with her peers had grown over the past year. All anyone wanted to talk about was maturation. And why not? It wasn’t a death sentence for any of them. None of her friends would be entering mother-units; they had no need. That kind of work was for girls who were hungry, girls with no choices, girls whose families couldn’t afford to have a mother-unit raise their children—girls who were relieved to have somewhere to go after maturation.

“I’m sorry, Laki, I just…”

Laki stared at her friend daring him to say something else that would wound. Both she and Zaha were highborn and fully endowed with the indignation of the privileged. But Laki had been orphaned and Zaha abandoned. Their intended futures had dissolved, making them interlopers among their friends and siblings.

“I’ll go help Beni with the screen, too,” Laki’s friend said and left awkwardly without another word.

“These blocks act like I have some fatal disease. It’s not my fault things turned out this way.”

Laki was breathing heavily as her mind tossed through anger, shame, and guilt at blinding speed.

“Tonight is not the night for this, Laki,” Zaha said.

Outside, Benko flew by again, this time with a long piece of cloth streaming from his pod.

“Tell me about the screen,” Zaha said.

“The screen?”

“Yes. What’s it for?”

“To shield the party from peepers and crashers.”

“Didn’t know you could do that in the Stretch.”

“Yeah, we look like an empty part of the Stretch with the screen up.”

“But then the regulators can’t verify you, or anyone else in the party. Don’t they come looking for you anyway? Is this legal?”

A slow smile spread across Laki’s face. She draped her arm around Zaha’s shoulders.

“Well, maybe we’re bending the rules a little bit, but I don’t think we’re breaking any laws.” She winked.

Zaha laughed. “So breaking the law relaxes you?”

Laki giggled, then someone grabbed her from behind.

“Okay, screen’s up,” Benko said, spinning Laki around. “If they catch us and they try to ban you, it won’t matter. You’ll be in a mother-unit.”

“Ban you?” Zaha’s eyebrows went up. She turned to Benko, “By the way those words are banned tonight.”

“What words?”

Zaha mouthed “mother-unit” to him, and he nodded.

“Right. So back to Laki getting banned, she can’t control her parties. Once she gets them started, they just keep growing and growing. The whole level gets packed. Nobody can get in for a rendezvous…”

“But this one won’t be that big,” Laki interjected. “I only invited twelve people.”

“Please,” said Benko. “The news will spread like wildfire.”

Benko gripped Laki around the waist, and they swayed together. Laki grabbed Zaha’s hand and pulled her close. As the three of them moved against each other, more pods joined the party. Before long, Laki, Zaha, and Benko were sweaty and buzzing with the joy of movement. They were surrounded by many others who had joined them on the dance floor.

Once the sweet vibe of languid ecstasy had engulfed all who were present, Laki decided it was time. She lifted her arm and aimed her finger at a pouch that was hanging from the top of her pod. She plucked, and the bag popped, releasing a wet blue fog into the air. Laki inhaled; an intense sweetness burst across her tongue. When she exhaled, her smile was a little wider and her limbs were a little looser.

“She always has the best smoke at her parties,” Benko said into Zaha’s ear.

Laki threw her head back and let out a long wordless moan. For the next hour, she didn’t speak a word to anyone. She was too busy flinging off her troubles and releasing her body in total surrender.

While Laki was slipping into a delicious stupor, Se-se was entering the Velvet Stretch for the first time. Her last three messages to Laki had returned undelivered. The only place Laki could be where Se-se’s message globes couldn’t reach was the Velvet Stretch.

“No registration on record,” the concierge stated.

“First time,” Se-se said with what she hoped was a charming smile.

“No rendezvous?” the concierge asked, without even bothering to acknowledge Se-se’s friendliness.

Se-se shook her head.

“You only have clearance for the rendezvous-less zone; that’s right past the entrance here. There are some basic rules and regulations.” The concierge stopped speaking long enough to pluck a message globe at Se-se. The globe floated through the walls of her pod and hovered near her shoulder while the concierge finished his speech. “People who violate these guidelines may be barred from the Velvet Stretch. Any questions?”

Se-se did have a question—where is my sister?—but she knew better than to draw attention to Laki. She opened her hand to receive the message globe.

“You have been cleared.”

As Se-se floated into the Velvet Stretch, she learned that it was bad etiquette to spy on people. Pod walls were transparent for regulatory purposes and were intended to support mutual consent, not to invite voyeurism. She was instructed on the preferred protocol when approaching a potential rendezvous: hover at a distance until the person you are interested in sees you. Once seen, you may approach slowly, so that the person has the opportunity to accept or reject your advances.

Se-se tried following the protocols as she searched the rendezvous-less zone, but the process was too slow. She wasn’t looking for a rendezvous; she was looking for her sister. Stopping a respectful distance away from pods made it difficult to be certain Laki was not inside. In a burst of frustration, Se-se put politeness aside. She swooped in close and peered inside the pods she encountered. She forgave her behavior by telling herself that people would excuse her sudden and aggressive appearance outside their pods if they understood the urgent nature of her search.

After Se-se had peeked into all the solitary and conjoined pods in the rendezvous-less zone, she came to a halt. She looked around and considered her options. Leaving without Laki was out of the question. If Laki was not in the rendezvous-less zone, Se-se would be stuck. The righteousness of her mission had given her the courage to enter the Velvet Stretch, but she wasn’t so emboldened that she’d sneak into other levels without permission.

While she was mulling over her next steps, a few pods whizzed past her. She snapped into action, jerking forward to follow them, but before she could catch up with them, they disappeared. She bobbed in place, bewildered. She was looking around for the pods that had disappeared when a few more pods rushed past her. Watching them closely, she saw that, after traveling a short distance, the pods dipped down, then disappeared. She sped after them, determined not to lose them, but her pod rammed into something solid, and she was knocked to the floor.

She regained her footing and nudged her pod forward, but it would not move. What had looked like open space was clearly a wall of some sort. She backed up and pushed at the wall again, but it was rigid and wouldn’t give way.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the bouncing lights of two pods. They drifted right up to the wall, stopped suddenly, then plunged downward and disappeared. Plunging down through the rendezvous-less zone was not an appealing thought, but she reminded herself of her promise to not be deterred. She took a deep breath and directed her pod to drop downward. Every few seconds, she pitched forward, searching for the end of the wall.

When Se-se finally got to the bottom of the screen, her pod shot forward and she found herself underneath a gathering of pods that created a room bigger than her and Laki’s rooms combined. Above her the party pulsed with music that she couldn’t hear. She could see the bottoms of people’s feet and the backs of bodies pressed against the floor of the pods.

She navigated her pod up around the side of the conjoined pods. Through the transparent walls she could see bodies everywhere—arms thrashing, hips rotating, heads flung back with abandon. She edged around the perimeter of the party, trying to drown out the voice that was warning her that it was dangerous to fuse with so many pods at once. After looking for Laki from the safety of her pod, Se-se accused herself of stalling. She closed her eyes and guided her pod forward to join with the party.

When she stepped into the party, she felt as if it had consumed her. The air was thick and hazy with an overwhelming wet heat. There was no personal space—everyone was skin to skin. She moved forward slowly, pausing periodically to step over arms and legs and dodge people who were splayed across the floor. She had thought searching people’s pods was embarrassing, now here she was, sticking her face close to people who were kissing and caressing, interrupting intimacies, in search of Laki.

Having determined that she would not find Laki underfoot, Se-se turned her attention to the dance floor. Finding Laki among the dancers would not be easy. As she was scanning the dance floor, trying to formulate a method to locate Laki, a pair of long dark arms rose up in the air and extended above the crowd.

Without hesitation, Se-se plunged into the throng of dancers. It was hard going at first. The dance floor was densely packed, and every space was jealously guarded. After being jabbed by knees and elbows, she reached the middle of the dance floor. There, at the center of the party, whirling around a clearing, was Laki. She was bare-breasted and disrobed, enrapturing her guests with the undulating contortions of her body. Even as she wondered how Laki could be comfortable without her clothes, Se-se found herself mildly spellbound. This was not the bitter, tortured Laki who Se-se had spent so much time pacifying and cajoling in the past year. This was the Laki of legend, the Laki who had conjured up a social life that was a work of art and called the Velvet Stretch her second home.

As Laki’s limbs writhed with furious motion, the marriage belt—radiant and gleaming—added to her otherworldly appearance. On her naked sweaty torso, it looked like a mark of divinity. Se-se was mesmerized by the fascinating contrast Laki’s smooth dark skin brought to the belt, yet she knew that the belt’s opulence was awe-inspiring all on its own.

The first time Se-se had seen the belt, it had rendered her speechless. Laki had been out all night, and Se-se had spent most of the day popping into the launching room hoping to see Laki return. Meals passed, and Laki did not come home. Se-se blew off invitations from friends, helped the mothers, and practiced her debates while waiting for Laki to return. She had watched her brothers and sisters leave home one by one, but Laki’s maturation was different.

When Se-se had learned that Laki was promised to a mother-unit, she launched a concerted effort to save her sister. The closer Laki got to maturation, the more wound up and frenzied Se-se became. She knew that her efforts sometimes spiraled into a mania, but she was powerless to stop herself.

When the roof of the landing room finally slid open in the early evening, Se-se had been waiting in the shadows. She had watched Laki’s pod land on the launching pad. She had remained silent as Laki created a small opening at the base of the pod and wriggled out.

“Sister…” Se-se had said as soon as Laki stood up.

But Laki hadn’t heard her. She stood there gazing up at the sky through the opening in the roof.

“Sister!” Se-se had yelled.

Laki’s head had jerked to look over to where Se-se stood. When she saw her sister waiting for her, Laki crossed her arms and pinched her mouth tight. She stole a glance at her deflating pod, then turned back to Se-se.

Se-se barreled toward her. “We’ve already eaten twice. You sent no messages. You’ve missed your trainings…” It was then that Se-se had seen the belt. She stopped short. She reached for Laki’s waist.

“Where did you find this?” she finally whispered.

Laki had looked down as if she did not know there was a very heavy marriage belt wrapped around her waist, a marriage belt she had not been wearing the previous day when she left home.

“Can’t get it off,” Laki had said, shrugging.

Se-se had surprised herself by murmuring, “It outshines even mine.”

Laki had grinned and kissed Se-se’s cheek. “Don’t worry, sweet Se-se, yours is more true.”

Se-se had put her hand to her cheek as if to hold the kiss there. She felt as if her mind would explode. Laki wearing a marriage belt?! Se-se had masterminded several meticulously planned campaigns to get Laki paired up with a mate. Laki had stubbornly refused each plan. Her excuses ran the gamut from bad breath to inadequate personality to insufficient height. Nothing Se-se had said could sway her. Not even her most logical arguments proposing marriage to several of Laki’s friends. Laki was adamant that marriage should be reserved for magical connections. Anything less would not be entertained.

Se-se had followed Laki around the landing room, pestering her as Laki closed the entrance in the roof and flattened then folded her deflated pod.

“Who gave it to you? It must have come from Embankment 5, or Embankment 7 at least.”

Laki had paused. She looked down to inspect the belt as if considering its worth. Then she had shaken off Se-se’s question and stalked out of the pod landing room.

Se-se had followed, undeterred. “Sisterrrrrrr, who is he?”

Laki had walked to her room and unsealed it without answering.

“Two days to maturation,” the voice had said when Laki entered her room.

Se-se had entered behind her and sat on the floor. “Come on, what’s his name? Maybe I can find him. You met him in the rendezvous-less stretch, didn’t you?”

Laki had bent over to unbutton her boots. “It’s called the rendezvous-less zone.”

“I bet you don’t know anything about him. Did you at least get his name? You still have one more day, don’t you think you should…”

“Stop talking and help me get this thing off.”

Se-se had stood and walked over to Laki. She leaned over and started fumbling with the belt’s knot.

“Is he a friend of yours?”

Laki had sighed. Se-se’s persistence was unextinguishable. “No, I met him by accident.”

“Do you think he likes you?”

“I think he likes women. Are you getting anywhere with that?”

The knot was so tiny that Se-se had trouble holding on to it. No matter how firmly she tugged at it, it refused to come apart for her fingers.

“Did you even get his name?”

Laki had slapped Se-se’s hand. “That’s enough. I guess I’ll have to cut it off.”

Se-se had gasped. “But then it’ll be destroyed.”

“Who cares? He’s a rebel. He doesn’t care about marriage; he doesn’t care about rules. It’s just a belt to him.”

Laki had thrown off her clothing and stepped into the bathing module. She was still wearing the belt.

“Maybe it won’t come off for a reason,” Se-se had said.

But Laki hadn’t answered. The sound of water flowing had been her only reply.

As soon as Laki had stepped out of the bathing module, a tinkling sound had wafted into the room. Both Se-se and Laki had frozen. Panic flared across Laki’s face as she grabbed at her discarded cloths. She had picked up one of the cloths and hurriedly attempted to reconfigure it into a loose robe. Se-se tried to help, but she couldn’t undo the seams on Laki’s cloths. After Laki had succeeded at making the cloth flat again, she threw it over her shoulders, but it barely covered her torso.

Head-mother squeezed through the entrance of Laki’s room. Se-se and Laki kneeled. With their heads bowed, neither of them saw five other mothers enter the room after head-mother. But they had heard them. Thousands of tiny bells sewn to the mother-unit’s cloths rang out as a shimmering veil pulled them into Laki’s room. The mother-unit stood in the middle of the room, bound together by a veil that cloaked their bodies and distorted their features. Each individual woman was unidentifiable, but the force of their presence was unmistakable. The air swelled with powerful emanations of love.

No one had spoken as each of the mothers surveyed different corners of the room. Within seconds, the mother-unit could step into a room and dissect the situation that had been unfolding. The sensation of being deeply seen, disrobed of all pretenses, was so overwhelming that Laki was on the verge of swooning and Se-se began to cry.

“Stand up, children,” the mother-unit had hummed.

One mother had moved forward and embraced Se-se.

“Mothers, I am sorry for missing my training today. I know I have a lot to learn about the cloak, but….” Laki had stopped to gulp down the quivering in her voice.

“What is this around your waist?” the mother-unit had sung.

Head-mother had glided toward Laki from her position in the center of the room. The tiny bells tinkled as the other mothers moved with her in one undulating ripple.

Laki had fingered the belt without looking at it. “It is a marriage belt, but it was given to me as a gift, not as a proposition.”

“A thoughtless gift to a girl who is two days from maturation.”

Head-mother had reached out, every move an orchestra of tinkling. She palmed the belt with cloaked hands, testing its weight.

“Quite heavy, the young man is from Embankment 5?”

Se-se had perked up, thinking she might finally learn something about the mysterious giver of marriage belts. Laki was silent.

“La-Laki,” a mother had sung, “Head-mother has asked you a question.”

“Mothers, I don’t know where he lives. I only know that his name is Fogo.”

“You can’t bring a marriage belt with you into your mother-unit,” hummed another mother.

“You must return the belt,” a third mother sang, “We wouldn’t want his family coming for it.”

“You have a way to return it?” head-mother sang.

Laki had fallen silent. She remembered Fogo’s face, blank and disoriented, after their rendezvous. She’d had to remind him who she was. Why he had wanted to see her again was unclear to her, but he’d refused to take the marriage belt off her waist. He told her it was his insurance that she’d meet up with him again. Laki had no plans to renew their encounter. Marriage belt or not, she didn’t enjoy the indignity of being inconsequential, and she wouldn’t spend any time courting a repeat of the morning after.

“You must find a way to return the belt,” head-mother had sung.

On that signal, one of the mothers had waved her hand over Laki’s wardrobe portal, and her cloths had shot out on their rod. In a blur of twelve hands, Laki was quickly dressed in an outfit reminiscent of the mothers’ clothing.

As the mothers had led Laki out of the room, Se-se had run behind Laki, grasped her sister’s hand, and whispered, “I’m going to find him.”

The Laki flashing her hips and flirting with the crowd at her goodbye party was completely different from the Laki glumly heading to training in her mother-unit whites. Laki had looked ghostly and ashen in her training cloths. On the dance floor, Laki was blindingly vibrant and unmistakably alive.

Se-se was still rousing herself from memory when Laki spun around and threw herself into someone’s arms. She pressed against him quickly then wandered off the dance floor. Se-se lurched forward, afraid that she would lose Laki in the throng of revelers. As she rushed after Laki, Se-se’s foot slipped and she lost her balance. She grabbed wildly at the nearest person to keep herself upright. When she regained her balance, she realized she was draped on a stranger’s chest.

The stranger wrapped his arms around her, holding her tighter and longer than necessary.

“Don’t you smell good,” he laughed.

Se-se untangled herself, gave a grateful giggle, and turned to leave.

“Wait, is this yours?” the stranger asked, thrusting a black cloth at her. “You tripped on it.”

“Thanks,” Se-se said. She grabbed the cloth and nudged her way through the crowd. When she reached the edge of the party, she saw Laki reclining on the floor, draped across a few pillows. Se-se kneeled in front of her sister and leaned toward her. When Laki saw Se-se, she broke into a wide smile. She took Se-se’s face in her hands and kissed her on the cheek. Se-se handed Laki the cloth. Laki wiped her face and sweaty torso with it.

“Don’t bathe with it, put it on.”

“What is it?” Laki asked, stretching the cloth out to see it better.

“Your cloth.”

Laki laughed. “Thanks, sis.”

“Are you going to put it on?”

Laki wrapped it around her neck like a scarf and threw one end over her shoulder. “Are you here to parent me or to party?”

“I’m here to save you.”

Laki rolled her eyes.

Se-se grasped Laki’s shoulder. “I found Fogo.”

Laki did not react. Her expression didn’t show surprise, fear, or joy. Her face locked out all emotion and refused to even hint at her feelings. Someone stumbled over Se-se, and she crawled forward to sit next to her sister.

“Did you hear me?”

“Is he coming for his belt?” Laki asked coolly.

“No, but there’s someone I want you to meet.”

Laki sighed. “Se-se, I don’t need another belt.”

“It’s not like that. Where’s your pod?”

“Why?”

“I told you, I want you to meet someone.”

“And leave my party? No way!”

Laki reached out and grabbed a woman’s leg. The woman kneeled, then yelled Laki’s name. Within seconds, Laki and her friend were cuddling and giggling.

“We don’t have time for this,” Se-se said before standing up and looking around. She had never been inside Laki’s pod and didn’t know how long it would take to check all the labels on the gathered pods to find Laki’s. She looked down at her sister, whose hands were now roaming over her friend’s body. You’ve come this far, she said to herself. Laki’s worth it, keep going.

She reached past Laki’s friend and gripped Laki on the arm. “It’s very important that you wait for me here, please!”

Laki nodded her head, mocking Se-se’s grave tone with a falsely serious expression on her face. She watched Se-se go, then turned to look deeply into her friend’s eyes.

Just as her friend was descending for a kiss, Laki heard, “Laki?”

She looked up and saw Zaha. Zaha’s eyes were moist, like she had been crying. Laki’s friend rolled over and Laki sat up.

“What’s wrong?” Laki asked taking Zaha’s hand.

“I can’t find my pod.” Zaha burst into loud sobbing.

Laki leapt up, swaying until she could find her footing.

“Oh no, sweetheart. It’s okay, we’ll help you.”

“I don’t know why I’m so emotional over this. I’m a wreck.”

“It’s the smoke,” Laki said squeezing Zaha’s hand. “It makes the highs higher and the lows lower.”

Laki started to edge forward, but she stumbled more than she walked. Her friend stopped her.

“You sit down. I’ll take her, but you better be here when I get back.”

Zaha and Laki hugged each other tightly. Zaha opened her mouth to speak, but Laki silenced her.

“Shhhhh, everything is fine. Everything is beautiful. I love you.”

She kissed Zaha and pushed her away. Zaha left, peeking back until the bodies of the partygoers obstructed her view of Laki.

Laki lay down again and rested her head against the pillows. She closed her eyes and felt the air around her spinning. She opened her eyes. Nothing around her had changed. The pods were still conjoined, hovering near the dim star bar, and the party was still packed with revelers. Laki closed her eyes again and felt her stomach drop. All of a sudden she was alone in her pod and it was rapidly descending. Her pod stopped with a bump.

She opened her eyes and jerked upright. All around her, people were dancing and coupling; the blue haze still colored the air. She exhaled and lay against the pillows again. When she closed her eyes again she felt herself drifting into another time. She actually saw herself in her pod. Then she heard a voice that was so deep it was disorienting say: “Sorry about that.”

She knew that voice. It belonged to a stranger who had skin that was as dark as hers, but whose teeth were more perfect. His hair was locked and tied into wild knots all over his head. She saw him lounging with a bemused grin on his face as his pod began to fuse with hers. She opened one eye to peek out at the party once more. It was still there. Then she closed her eyes and gave herself to memory.

A hole was opening in her pod.

“I should be more careful,” the stranger with the deep voice apologized. He stuck his hand into the gradually widening hole between their pods. “It seems we’ve fused unintentionally. I’m Fogo, and you are?”

Laki jumped to her feet and grabbed his hand. “Laki.”

By the time the hole became large enough for him to step through, Laki had arranged her body in a casual but confident stance.

“Ahh,” Fogo sighed, “you seem to be a little wet.”

Laki shot him a look of faux irritation. “Our little accident triggered the shower module.”

“Well, come over,” Fogo invited with the wave of his hand. “I’ve got some heat and a little star juice.”

“You drink in your pod?”

“Sometimes, but don’t tell the regulators.”

“How do you know I’m not a regulator?”

“Besides the fact that I know all the regulators in the Stretch, I can tell just by looking at you that you’re a regulator’s nightmare.”

Fogo winked, and Laki’s insides shivered. She glanced up at the ceiling of his pod and saw that his marriage belt was still there, casting a seductive golden glow. When he noticed her looking, he sighed.

“Yep, maturation 25, and I’m still hanging out in the Velvet Stretch.” He waved his fingers over his drink portal. “Star juice?”

She stood facing him, looking right into his eyes, then taking in his whole face as if reading his history. He took her hand and brought it up to the drink portal. Laki dropped her head back and opened her mouth beneath the drinking spout.

“So,” Fogo said after Laki had drunken her fill, “what brings you to the Velvet Stretch?”

Laki turned away. “It’s a long and tragic story. I’d rather not go into it.”

“But, you shouldn’t be hanging out here. You look like you’re almost to maturation, if you’re not there yet. No profession as far as I can tell.” His eyes roamed up to the ceiling of her pod. “No marriage belt?”

Laki walked to the center of their conjoined pods and sat on the floor. She leaned back on the palms of her hands. Her gaze wandered over the bare stretches of his neck, lingering over his throat and collarbone. She explored the cut of his arms, the length of his legs.

“You are not fond of this topic?” he asked.

Laki looked down at her waist. She rubbed her finger over the space where Pemfi’s marriage belt would be resting had she accepted it, and shrugged. “Marriage belts are useless. I just turned one down.”

Fogo drew back, “You aren’t one of those mother-unit radicals, are you?”

Laki placed her hands flat on the floor. She stretched, lifting her hips until her legs were fully extended. She stood and walked slowly over to Fogo. She stopped when her face was a few breaths from his.

“Do I look like a fucking mother-unit radical to you?”

Fogo shook his head before speaking. “No, no you don’t.”

Laki put her arms around Fogo and grasped his hips. She felt the ravenous lust of her younger days rising from slumber. Maturation was at her back. Why not? she thought. Why not? She flicked her tongue over his lips.

“So are you hanging out rendezvous-less because you want to be alone or…”

Fogo drew away.

“Forgive me, but a woman of your… stature really shouldn’t be here. Unless you think this is preferable to marriage, but even this doesn’t last forever.”

“Auggh,” Laki groaned and threw her hands up in the air. She strode over to her pod and leaned back to begin de-fusing. “Fogo,” she said, “It was wonderful meeting you.” She crossed her arms and waited for the pods to separate.

“Wait,” Fogo yelled. He grabbed his marriage belt and jumped into her pod. “I didn’t mean to irritate you, it’s just that…”

“Look,” she said, “I’m three days from maturation, and you’re sexy as hell. No, I don’t have a profession. No, I don’t have a marriage belt. In three, no, two days I’m going to join a mother-unit, but whether or not I should be here is none of your business!”

Fogo wrapped his arms around Laki’s waist and squeezed her softly.

“Shhhh,” he said, “shhh. I didn’t mean to upset you. Put your arms up.”

Laki put her arms up. “Maturation! It’s all anybody wants to talk about. When did the Velvet Stretch become such a defect?” She felt Fogo lifting his hands behind her. Then he was maneuvering something over her head. “What are you doing?”

She looked down and saw his marriage belt shining gold around her waist. She felt a wild burst of adrenaline pulse through her chest.

Fogo stepped back, eyeing the full length of her. “Very sexy.”

Laki opened her mouth, but could not speak—she could only sputter.

“Bet that doesn’t happen often.”

“What, I get to try on some rich guy’s marriage belt?”

“No, you are rendered speechless.” Fogo grabbed the belt and pulled her to him. “So you want to get sent into the mother-unit with a bang?”

Laki stared into his face, then started laughing. “This is unbelievable.”

She flicked her hand over the time module, but no time appeared. Fogo grabbed her hand and kissed it.

“Let’s do this by starlight,” he murmured.

He waved his hand behind him, and his pod went dark. He rubbed his pelvis against hers softly. Whatever reservations Laki had been harboring dissolved instantly. Laki extinguished the light in her pod, and the glow of the Stretch illuminated their pods, bathing them in starlight.

For a few brief seconds there was no movement. Laki and Fogo just stood there drinking each other in. Then Laki grabbed the front of his cloth and pulled him close. She pressed her lips against his, urgently and impatiently, but he was full of unhurried languor. When she offered him her mouth, he savored it, sucking gently on her lips while she was anxiously pushing her tongue through his teeth. Laki abruptly pulled away.

“I…”

“I know, you’ve got a pod full of props and a few ideas about how this should go down.”

Surprise, then annoyance rippled over Laki’s face. “You don’t know me.”

“I know you,” he said. “You’re used to being in control.”

“You don’t know me,” Laki repeated.

He knitted his fingers through hers and kneeled, forcing her down to the floor with him. He pushed her shoulders back, nudging her to lie on her back.

“Let me run this one,” he whispered.

Laki opened her mouth to speak, then changed her mind. Instead, she made a big show of spreading her arms over her head in surrender. Fogo ran his fingers over the closures of her vest, but it didn’t open. He rubbed his hands together to create more heat and tried again.

“If you really knew me,” she said running her hand along the front of his jumpsuit—the cloth parted and hung open, “you’d know that I wouldn’t allow my cloths to open for anyone but me.”

She brushed her hands over her vest and the cloth slid open. She lifted up slightly and waited. He maneuvered the vest off her arms. With a coy finger pressed to her lips, she slowly opened her knees to reveal buttons lining her legs from her inner thighs to her ankles.

“Nice boots.” He reached out to run his hands over the buttons, then paused.

“Would you?”

With one finger extended, Laki ran her hand along the closures of her boots. Buttons, from the crease of her pelvis to her knee, popped open. Fogo rolled the leather down, then pulled off the boots. His hands hovered over her shorts.

Laki smirked and parted the shorts, slipping them off without sitting up. Fogo reached toward her throat. She shook her head.

“The scarf stays.”

When she reached up to pull his cloth off, he gently moved her hands away.

“This is your moment.”

“My moment?”

“All yours.”

Laki raised up on her elbows. “Then why aren’t you inside me?”

Fogo threw his head back and laughed. “I’m an artist. You must allow me to work at my own pace.”

He leaned over and began to brush the sleeve of his pantsuit over her skin. He started slowly, rubbing the fabric softly over the sides of her torso. Then, as if gauging how much she could take, he added pressure making his caresses rougher. Some areas he rubbed repeatedly while others he barely touched. He punctuated every few touches with a stroking of her inner thighs. He rubbed his cloth down the entire length of each of her legs, then stroked her inner thigh. He brushed his cloth across her chest, across her belly, then stroked her inner thigh.

Each time he returned to her thighs, a swelling crescendoed between her legs and air escaped her in intense gusts. When Fogo’s orchestra of arousal caused Laki to lose all regularity of breathing, he finally disrobed. He shrugged his cloth off his shoulders and let it drop to the ground.

“Turn over.”

“Oh, so you’re still running things?” Laki asked as she turned over.

Fogo began kissing and biting down her spine, veering off course to explore the contours of her back. By the time he reached the fleshy spread beneath her hips, Laki had let go of her performance. She no longer cared who was in control, she simply wanted to feel as much as she could, as deeply as she could. She reached for Fogo and pulled him to her.

“I need it now.”

Fogo chuckled. “I think you should wait.”

“No.” Laki turned over and grasped his arms. “We can do it again later,” she whispered, “But I need it now.”

“I am a benevolent ruler,” Fogo said as he allowed Laki to guide him to enter her. Laki had expected the shuddering and the bliss, but as soon as she and Fogo’s bodies were connected there was something else—something dark and ancient that unfurled between them. She gasped, then narrowed her eyes to study his face. His expression of knowing arrogance had dissolved. Unmasked, he looked like a different person. The pleasure and surprise Laki saw reflected on his face seemed like the first true emotion he was allowing her to see.

An intense current of sensations began to thrum through Laki, pulling her outside of herself. Long-held lashes of pain unfurled and vibrated within her. Hurts began slipping out of her mouth along with a low moaning. As the mysterious connection between them built to a crackling climax, time and space began to blur. Laki felt as if her very being was disintegrating in air. When she was fully drowned in rapture, a chill rustled over her skin; she began to shiver. She opened her eyes and saw a swirl of sparkling colors and patterns. A cloth fell over her body and obliterated Fogo’s touch. She blinked and the rendezvous with Fogo dissolved.

The chaos of her party was just as she had left it, but she was not prepared for what she saw standing before her. She startled, then scrambled to her feet. At first she thought it was the mother-unit—her mother-unit—looking down on her. But when her mind cleared, she noticed the faces. She could see eyes, noses, lips. All the women in this unit had thinned their cloaks so that the part of the veil covering their faces had become transparent.

“M… M… M…?”

“Mahini,” the mother-unit sang together.

“How did you…?” Questions flew through Laki’s mind. How could a whole mother-unit fit into a pod? How did they get past the concierge? Why were they here?

“We never answer how,” sang Mahini.

“You looked cold,” sang one mother.

“Happy, but cold,” sang another mother.

Laki bent down, scooped up the cloth, and draped it over her shoulders.

“You are the girl who is going into a mother-unit tomorrow, are you not?”

Laki nodded.

“So why are you wearing a marriage belt.”

“Have you changed your mind?”

Laki pulled the cloth tighter around her body. She was having trouble accepting what she saw before her: a mother-unit with faces. She examined the expressions in their eyes, the set of their mouths.

“Can you leave the unit?” Laki burst out.

One of the mothers smiled. “I believe we asked you a question first.”

“This…” Laki said, throwing one edge of the cloth open to reveal a glimpse of the belt. “…is a souvenir. I can’t seem to get it off…and you, can you all leave the unit?”

The women of Mahini shook their heads. “Temporarily, in an emergency, but our cloaks are bonded.”

“We are one,” they sang together.

“What about your children? What happened to them?”

“We refused to accept them. They belong to someone else…”

“…and we belong to the world.”

“We mother those who need it.”

“We mother with our songs.”

“We mother those who have never heard of us.”

“We mother each other.”

Laki’s head bounced around as she looked into the face of each woman as she spoke.

“Where do you…” She began to ask a question, but was interrupted.

“We don’t answer where,” Mahini sang.

“Where is the owner of that belt?” one of the mothers asked.

“Not here. Probably somewhere in the Stretch.”

“You don’t want to join a mother-unit.”

Laki searched their faces. “Is that a question?”

“No, that’s an observation. Look at you. You’re wearing a stranger’s marriage belt, passed out at a wild party, yet restless as a caged animal.”

“How should I be spending my last night, attaching bells to my cloths?” Laki snapped.

The women of Mahini looked at each other and smiled.

“She’ll be head mother,” one of them commented.

“Feisty yet docile enough to follow the rules.”

“Headed off to a mother-unit like a good little girl.”

“You call this mothering?” Laki asked.

“It isn’t all hugs and pheromones,” one said.

Laki thought about the mother hanging from the sling, giving of her body to nurture the babies. Neither hugs nor pheromones could do that. She opened her mouth to give a tart retort, but found that she didn’t have the energy to respond. She was weary—weary of conversation and weary of escape. The weight of tomorrow was pressing down on her, and she had spent too much time thinking about mother-units. Tomorrow belonged to the mother-unit, tonight was hers.

One of the women began to sing the chorus from their song about the nature of mothers. It was a song that Laki had always loved but never understood. She noticed that Mahini’s veil was billowing around the edges. She unwound her cloth from around her neck and rearranged the cloth Mahini had draped over her. She adjusted it so that the edges lined up in front of her body. Running her hand along the ends of the cloth, she fused it into a flowing robe. She pinched under the arms and shaped roomy sleeves. Laki listened to a few of the mothers chattering about her prospects for success in a mother-unit, then she shrugged off the conversation. She moved around to the back of the mother-unit to investigate the billowing veil. She was surprised to see that the veil was billowing because—while their sisters were chatting or singing—two of the mothers were dancing. Laki stood there, momentarily entranced by the women’s faces and the grace of their movements. Then she covered her face with her hands, as if to protect herself, and joined in.

Once Laki began to move, all the women of Mahini started to dance. Movement, it seemed, was connected to singing for them. As they danced, a humming rose up—a humming that turned into chanting. Their intonations started to reach the ears of Laki’s guests, and one by one, they stopped their revelry and turned to watch Laki dancing with Mahini. It was a sight that very few people had ever seen before and that very few people would ever see again. A mother-unit with exposed faces, dancing with abandon in the Velvet Stretch, veil fluttering and undulating like a living thing.

A feeling of flight, of progress after prolonged struggle, blossomed in the chests of all who heard Mahini’s song. Their message was wordless, but forceful: be free, be free, be free. Mahini encircled Laki, causing their melodies and harmonies to cocoon her. The song dislodged her calm composure and sent her pulse racing.

She had been careful to avoid the embrace of Mahini’s veil, but once she was undone by their song, she lost awareness of her surroundings. When their veil brushed against her skin, she felt as if it were her own veil being thrown over her. The sensation wasn’t all encompassing like the memory of Fogo. Instead, Laki felt as if she were in two places at once. She was dancing with Mahini, feeling the delicious expansion of possibility flowing through her limbs; she was in training with her mothers, feeling suffocated by the veil. She arced an arm overhead, and she was in the past, nothing more than a child grabbing at the veil, letting it tickle her tummy as her mothers dressed her for bed. She spun around, and she was imprisoned in a web of her own panic as the veil was being laid over her for the first time.

The veil was nothing like Laki had thought it would be. She had thought the veil would make the world look hazy, shrouded; instead it made everything sharper. When she was inside the veil, the things that required her attention acquired a glint, a shine. She imagined the veil would feel light and weightless, which is how it looked when the mothers were rushing down the hall to deal with something urgent. But instead of floating over her, the veil had pressed against her skin, sticking to every part of her.

The memory of that first moment with the veil washed over her. She shut her eyes tightly and screamed in terror.

“Relax,” the mothers had sung, “it won’t suffocate you.”

But Laki had felt suffocated. She had felt like it was plastered against her, crawling over every inch of her body. She had clawed at her neck, trying to pull it away from her throat.

“It can’t be grabbed,” the mothers had sung. “It can’t be touched with your hands. You can only move it with emotion.”

Laki had yelled louder.

“Laki, my love, the cloak is not your enemy. It can’t kill you.”

“Breathe, Laki.”

Laki had taken deep gulping breaths. But every time she had opened her mouth to speak, the cloak flowed into it and garbled her voice.

Now Laki raised her hands high in the air and shook her head back and forth. The women of Mahini mimicked her actions. She began whirling and dipping, trying to move faster than memory, but she could not outpace her fears. They stayed with her, panting inside her ear.

She felt it again: the cloak probing her eyes, nose, and armpits. She heard her mothers trying to ease her panic.

“It won’t always feel this way,” one mother sang, stroking her back.

“Each cloak is unique, it becomes a part of you,” sang head-mother. “It will take from you and become you.”

“Then when you’re in your unit it will…”

“…meld with the cloaks of the other women.”

“It will be an extension of you.”

“You will grow to rely on it…”

“…and it will know you better.”

As she continued to dance, Laki became more aware of the sounds Mahini was making. Not the sounds of their voices, but the sounds of their breathing—and of their bells. Laki looked at their faces as she swayed with them. Each of them, she thought, had lived through their first day in the veil, and each of them had survived.

Se-se heard Mahini before she saw them. She had located Laki’s pod, counted pods until she reached hers, then entered her pod. She had disconnected her pod from the party and reconnected it to Laki’s. When she had done all that, she stepped into a completely different party. The abandon and frenetic energy were gone, instead everyone was swaying as if eerily entranced. For a second, Se-se thought she had made a mistake. She went over her actions in her mind, but this was no mistake; there was no other party this could be. She walked back to where she had left Laki and came to a shocked halt.

Laki was no longer lying half naked on the floor. She was clothed, and dancing with…a mother-unit. Se-se’s shoulders drooped, and her knees went soft as her body prepared to bow before the unit, but then she stopped. She didn’t feel the emotions she usually felt when she was in the presence of her mothers. She took a step closer and saw that these women had revealed their faces. Her mind was a jumble as she tried to understand what she was seeing.

Se-se was momentarily immobilized, transfixed by the veil. It writhed with a predatory autonomy, as if it were an independent creature—haunted and hungry for new mothers. Suddenly Se-se felt the urge to grab Laki and run. She shifted forward, but when she reached for Laki, Laki slipped to the floor. Mahini reacted immediately, smoothly transitioning from chanting into a soft humming. Laki rolled back and forth with soundless sobs, while everyone in the party stood frozen in stunned stillness.

Mahini crouched over Laki and began a whispered accompaniment of sighs and hisses. Se-se crawled over to her sister and pulled on her arms, calling her softly. Laki’s eyes were unfocused and vacant. Every few seconds Laki would yelp, clawing at her face and neck. Se-se grabbed Laki more firmly and shook her, yelling Laki’s name. Mahini closed a circle around Se-se and Laki. As garbled sounds started to spill out of Laki’s mouth, faint trails of blue smoke wafted from her body. Se-se could see the mark of tears on her sister’s face.

Although Laki seemed paralyzed, she was fighting for her sanity within. She battled hysteria by forcing herself to remember her victories. “I can thin the cloak,” she murmured to herself. “I can show my face like Mahini does. I can stretch the cloak for long distances. I can do all the proper maneuvers for privacy. I can sit for hours with the cloak on, it doesn’t hurt me.” But you can’t get out, a voice whispered in her head. But you can’t get out.

The mothers described it as a particular wave of emotion—sudden fear when a child is in danger, a sharp tenderness associated with duty, or heartbreak when a child is in pain—that could part the veil. Once parted, the veil would release a mother from the unit’s bond, and she could temporarily detach, with her own unique section of the veil draped over her.

Laki was full of emotions—primarily anger and rage—but those were useless in a mother-unit. At each training session, she thought of gruesome situations, awful things that would put the lives of innocent babies in peril, but it never worked. No matter what she tried, the cloak remained unmoved.

Maybe it was the pull of Mahini’s voices, maybe it was Se-se leaning over her, but suddenly Laki broke through the mania of grief. She felt the sensation of the cloak falling over her again. But this time, instead of clinging to her, it laid cool and soft on her skin. It felt like the comforting presence her mothers had promised it would become, the gentle companion it had been becoming in Laki’s last days of training.

The memory of the one time she had parted through the veil burst into her consciousness, and pulled her further out of her turmoil. She had been under the veil, drowning in failure, when the thought had blossomed: “I bet Se-se could do it.” Her fear of never learning how to exit the veil was buried under a forceful flood of tenderness for her sister. Then it had happened—a small hole of unmoving air had appeared in the middle of the cloak’s shimmer.

Laki, smiling at the memory, was surprised to feel her dread of the veil slip away. Yes, she could not escape the veil, yet the grip of failure relaxed. She allowed that simple success to part her panic and slice open an exit through her grief. She was suddenly buoyed by the certainty that, with Se-se guiding in her, she would always learn the way out.

Laki heard a whispering, felt someone cushion her head. Her eyes fluttered open. Seconds passed while she stared at the face before her, a few more seconds passed before she realized it was Se-se.

“I thought…” Laki said, swallowing back tears. “I thought I’d dreamed that you were here.”

“I’m here, Laki.”

Laki looked at her sister and felt both relief and a soft sadness descending. In the wake of those all-too-real memories with the veil, sadness was a sweet emotion—a reprieve from her mother-unit anxieties and a welcome respite from her rage. She gripped Se-se’s hands and smiled apologies and love at her. Time and space suspended as everything around them fell away. When their hearts had been silently emptied, Se-se and Laki snapped out of their trance.

Laki let go of Se-se’s hands and looked around. “What happened to the party?”

None of Laki’s guests had left the party, but there was no dancing, no laughing, and no fondling. Everyone was gathered around, watching the sisters. Everyone except Mahini—there was no sign of them.

“Can someone put the music back on?” Se-se asked.

Someone put music on, but the mood was permanently broken.

Se-se helped Laki sit up. “The pods are ready. Are you ready to go?” she whispered.

“Go? Where are we going?”

Before Se-se could answer, the party started to dissolve. A friend of Laki’s came over with outstretched arms. Laki rose from the floor, fully recovered from her outburst. She was, once again, animated and enigmatic. She was passionate with her goodbyes, effusive with her embraces. A few times, she jokingly pretended to faint as punctuation in conversations, and each time Se-se jumped, arms outstretched, ready to catch Laki before she fell.

When the party had shrunken to just a handful of pods, Se-se linked her arm with Laki’s and guided her toward their pods.

“Mahini was at my good-bye party!” Laki murmured.

“Am I the only one who didn’t know they were a mother-unit?” Se-se asked.

Laki burst into soft laughter as Se-se pulled her away from the center of the party so they could disconnect from the other pods together. As they left behind the stragglers, partygoers who were unconscious or profoundly high, Se-se looked Laki deep in the eyes.

“I want you to follow me.”

“Follow you where?”

Se-se didn’t answer. She peeled a patch of material from the interior of her pod’s wall.

“Where’s your navigation panel?” she asked.

Laki waved her hand over a nondescript curve of her pod’s wall, and the navigation panel folded out. Se-se pressed the patch from her pod onto Laki’s navigation panel and waved it shut.

“Just follow me,” Se-se said.

Laki sat down on the floor and watched Se-se walk to the opposite side of their joined pods.

“Tomorrow I take the veil,” she said to Se-se drowsily and lay down on the floor.

As their pods separated, Laki slipped into sleep. She remained asleep as her pod followed Se-se’s around star bars and conjoined pods into the far reaches of the rendezvous-less zone.

Laki opened her eyes when she felt Se-se shaking her. She stayed awake long enough to see that they were still in the Stretch, then she put her head back down and fell asleep again. Se-se sighed. She began waving her hands over various segments of Laki’s pod, looking for the gas module. Her random searching finally coaxed a bulb-shaped protrusion from the wall of Laki’s pod. When Se-se squeezed the bulb, the funky scent of ancient incense squirted into the pod. She turned the bulb and squeezed again. The sweet scent of newborn babies wafted out. She turned the bulb once more. This time a sharp menthol scent shot into the pod. Se-se coughed and rubbed her nose. She squeezed the bulb two more times and pushed it back into the wall. When the pod was filled with the tang of menthol, Laki started to stir. Finally her eyes snapped open.

“I’m up, are we home? Are the mothers awake?”

Se-se pulled Laki to her feet. Laki saw the darkness of the Stretch and groaned.

“I’m tired, Se-se. What are we still doing here?”

“You’ll see soon.”

She fiddled with the robe Laki had fashioned from Mahini’s cloth. She pinched around the waist until it fit so tightly that the marriage belt protruded through the cloth.

“Can you shorten this?” Se-se asked, tugging at the hem.

“Do I have a date?” Laki asked. She looked around the darkness of the Stretch searching for another pod.

“Turn around,” Se-se said.

Laki turned and saw a pod unlike any pod she had ever seen. The walls had a smoky opaqueness that was definitely against regulations.

“This is creepy, Se-se.”

Before Laki had finished speaking, the strange pod started moving toward them. It bumped into their pods gently and began to fuse with them. The new pod’s opacity seeped into their pod walls as if assimilating them. With the loss of transparency, they lost their ability to see by starlight. Both Laki and Se-se waved their hands over the light modules in their pods. When the three pods had fully fused, Laki saw a shrouded figure standing in the middle of the opaque pod.

“Enter, please,” a steely voice commanded.

Se-se grabbed Laki’s hand to guide her forward, but Laki held her back.

The shrouded figure walked toward them, entering their pods. The figure stopped in front of Laki and overtly inspected her.

Laki turned to Se-se, eyes glittering with anger. “What is going on?”

“Shhhh,” whispered Se-se.

The steely voice spoke again.

“You were right, she is stunning.” The figure threw off her cloak and stretched her hand out to Se-se. “I accept your offer.”

Uncloaked, the figure was a woman. She was dressed in shimmering robes, and long strands of colored jewels hung from her ears. She had a look about her that suggested she was unfamiliar with the word no.

Rage rustled up from Laki’s chest and flared in her throat. She glared at the woman, then dragged Se-se away.

“Who is this woman?”

“She’s going to tell you if you give her a chance.”

“I’m asking you to tell me.”

“She’s someone who can change your life.”

Laki shook her head. “You never give up. Tomorrow I’m going into a mother-unit. I’m not running away and hiding out in the Velvet Stretch, I’m not marrying one of my male friends, and I’m not digging around for my hidden inheritance. It’s over Se-se.”

“This is not another fantasy, Laki. I swear. At least talk with her.”

“May I see the belt?” the woman said cutting into Se-se and Laki’s conversation.

Laki looked at the woman then shot Se-se an icy glare.

“Show her,” mouthed Se-se.

Laki lifted the hem of the robe and stuffed it into the space between her waist and the belt. She pulled the hem down so that the belt now rested in plain view. She crossed her arms and waited for the woman to approach. The woman walked over to Laki and lifted the belt. She tilted it forward as if to inspect the quality of the beads. Then she twisted the belt so that she could read the markings inside. A smile spread over her face. She hugged Laki.

“You may call me Strabaha,” she said to Laki.

“Wife Strabaha, what is the meaning of this? Why all the mystery? What do you want from me, and how do you know my sister?”

“Excellent questions.” The woman grinned at Laki as if Laki were her star student. “I met your extraordinarily persistent sister only yesterday. She told me this improbable story of a young woman wearing my son’s marriage belt. This young woman, she said, would soon be joining a mother-unit. She advised me to meet the young woman before her maturation, otherwise I would never get the chance.”

“So this is some type of weird fetish?”

“No, this is a wonderful offer.”

“I need to sit,” Laki said. She turned to Se-se suddenly. “Do the mothers know where you are?”

“Of course they do!”

Se-se and Laki sat on the floor. The woman quickly braided her cloak and rolled it into an impromptu seat.

“I can see that you are tired,” the woman said after she had seated herself. “I’ll try to make this quick, although I do have some questions.”

“Such as?”

“You are intelligent, beautiful, strong…”

“…and an orphan,” Laki said.

“Well, I’m sure if you had a wife mother, she would never allow you to toil in a mother-unit. But no father, no father’s sisters, no mother’s father?”

“My father and my wife mother died when I was a baby. I don’t remember them, and I assume their families don’t remember me. The wife mothers of my brothers and sisters allowed me to stay in the birth group. The mothers raised us all the same. They were able to provide me with cloths and food, but when it came to my school fees, there was nothing that could be done.”

“So they trained you to be in a mother-unit.”

Laki nodded.

“Even though she’s not fit for mothering,” Se-se piped in.

“The mothers say no one is fit for mothering. They say I will fit to it; it will make me what it needs me to be.” Laki’s tone was firm as if she were disciplining Se-se.

“And you believe that?” Se-se asked, sounding more like a bitter Laki than her usual chipper self.

“You have not thought of marriage?” Wife Strabaha cut in.

“She’s had plenty of offers, but she would rather go into a mother-unit than take a marriage belt dishonestly,” Se-se said before Laki could speak.

“Dishonestly!?” Wife Strabaha laughed. She put her hand on Laki’s. “No one marries for love. It was a romantic idea of past civilizations. It didn’t work. Unfortunately, your wife mother was not around to teach you this.”

“There’s nothing you can say to her about it, Wife Strabaha. She can’t help herself, it’s just the way she was made.”

“Wife Strabaha,” Laki interjected, “you said you had an offer?”

Wife Strabaha cleared her throat.

“Yes, I invite you to come and live in my home as my son’s wife.”

There was silence as Laki tried to make sense of what Wife Strabaha had said. Then she turned to her sister, suddenly understanding Se-se’s plan.

“He knows nothing of this?” Laki asked, turning back to Wife Strabaha.

“He barely remembered that he had given away the belt.”

“You are asking me to help you force your son into marriage?”

“He chose to put his marriage belt on you, I did not force him to do it.”

“That is true, but…”

“There is no other interpretation of what it means when someone places their marriage belt on another.”

“Do you know how many marriage belts I’ve tried on for fun?” Laki asked.

“Well who decides when it’s fun and when it’s serious?” Se-se snapped.

Wife Strabaha took Laki’s hands in hers. “Let’s focus on the facts. Your maturation is tomorrow. You have to leave home. Are you ready to enter a mother-unit?”

Images of Mahini flashed through her mind. She saw her own mothers, felt them beaming at her with pride, remembered the hole she opened in the cloak, and smiled.

“Maybe I’m not ready but that doesn’t mean it’s not time for me to enter. I can wear the veil, I can be a good mother.”

Se-se looked at Laki like she had grown spotted skin. Laki refused to look at Se-se. Instead she sat regally, radiating a powerful calm.

“I am offering you a different future. A future in which you will be able to see your sister, even your mother-unit again.”

Laki paused. Exhaustion was pulling at her. She closed her eyes for a moment. “I understand your offer Wife Strabaha. I will have a way out of the mother-unit. You will have a wife for your son. But what will Fogo get?”

“His inheritance,” Wife Strabaha snapped. “He will never marry if it is up to him. I refuse to pass the family money on to…” Wife Strabaha stopped speaking. She took a deep breath. “I see you are every bit as honorable as your sister promised. Will you accept my offer if Fogo accepts?”

“I have been trained to wear the veil of motherhood. I know nothing of being a wife,” Laki said.

“I will teach you everything you need to know.”

Laki’s eyes slid closed again. It was becoming painful to stay awake. Her thoughts kept slipping away, and her body begged for rest. For the first time in months, the impending mother-unit was not a buzzing pain in her head or a throbbing fear jolting her with insomnia. Tomorrow was simply her future, and she had ceased to resist it.

“I’m afraid there is no time for me to change tomorrow, Wife Strabaha,” Laki said, her eyes still closed.

“I will be your wife mother,” Wife Strabaha burst out. “I will pay your school fees, I will help you start a business. Please allow us to visit your home tomorrow.”

Laki’s eyes popped open. Wife Strabaha’s face was stricken with desperation. Se-se’s face was twisted in tortured pleading. Was this what being in a mother-unit would be like—watching the excitable passions of her children from a calm, peaceful distance?

“I have to sleep,” Laki said. She stood and stumbled to her pod. She sat on the floor and paused. Wife Strabaha’s offer lay in front of her, dazzling with portent and promise. She eyed it warily. It was a magical stroke of luck that could manipulate the contours of her destiny. Yet she did not feel the desire to collapse in gratitude, instead she saw the offer for what it was—a departure from one mysterious path to another.

Laki leaned away from Se-se and Wife Strabaha. As her pod began to separate, she realized that she had not given Wife Strabaha an answer.

“Wife Strabaha, you may come to my home tomorrow, but you will have to speak to my mother-unit as I have no wife mother or father.”

Wife Strabaha did not flinch at Laki’s offer. She gracefully accepted it as if the idea of speaking with a mother-unit was not an insult to her.

“And Wife Strabaha, please tell your son that I will enjoy seeing him again. He will be needed to remove the belt should I decide not to accept your offer. I’d hate to destroy such a beautiful family heirloom.”

Laki nodded to Wife Strabaha, as if dismissing her, and winked at Se-se. The glow of admiration spread across Se-se’s face. Laki had done the impossible: she had shed the ugliness that had been weighing her down and was entering maturation luminous and triumphant. Even her pod was majestic in its shimmering crown of starlight.

As Se-se watched Laki’s pod bobbing in the dark stillness of the Stretch, wisps of loss began to unfurl in her chest. She felt the echoes of yesterday tugging at her heart. She had spent an entire childhood chasing after Laki. Even now, after she had restructured Laki’s future, Laki had blown her a kiss and was hurtling away without a backward glance.

Se-se’s vision went blurry as the pain of it broke in her chest. She smiled a quick goodbye to Wife Strabaha then sped away. As she blazed through the Velvet Stretch, the silence of her solitude loomed, mocking her with Laki’s absence. After so many years of living in the shadow of Laki’s brilliance, Se-se was still struggling to hold Laki’s gaze. She soothed herself by pretending that she and Laki had arrived home together, and were running through the halls with twined fingers, breathless with triumph. The need to be at Laki’s side, to share in the glory of the news, urged her to push her pod to move a faster. But even as she raced to catch up with Laki, she knew it was too late. Laki was already gone. All that was left of her was a flash of light, plummeting toward home.

Author Biography

Kiini Ibura Salaam is a writer, painter, and traveler from New Orleans, Louisiana. After being paid $100 for the publication of her first story, she proclaimed herself a “serious” author at the tender age of eighteen. Kiini’s work is rooted in eroticism, speculative events and worlds, and women’s perspectives. Her fiction has been included in such publications as Dark Matter, Mojo: Conjure Stories, and Dark Eros.

Kiini’s creative nonfiction speaks to her two passions: the freedom of women and the freedom of the creative spirit. In essays about date rape, sexual harassment, and the power of the word no Kiini explores the complex layers of societal norms that negatively impact women’s lives. In addition to having been published in Essence, Ms., and Colonize This! her creative nonfiction has been included in college curricula in the areas of women’s studies, anthropology, history, and English.

For the past ten years, Kiini has written the “KIS.list,” an e-column that explores the writing life and encourages readers to fulfill their dreams. She works as an editor in New York and maintains a site dedicated to her work at www.kiiniibura.com. She and her daughter live in Brooklyn.

Publication Acknowledgments

Ancient, Ancient: First published in African Voices, 2002, Cetera Press.

At Life’s Limits: First published in Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, 2000, edited by Sheree R. Thomas, Warner Books

Bio-Anger: First published in Tumbarumba, 2008, http://www.turbulence.org/Works/tumbarumba/, edited by Ethan Ham and Benjamin Rosenbaum

Tumbarumba is a 2008 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation.

Debris: First published in Ideomancer, 2006, Volume 6, Issue 1, Twenty-three Small Disasters, http://www.ideomancer.com/main/vol6issue1/rosenbaum_et_al/debris.html

Desire: First published in Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, 2004, edited by Sheree R. Thomas, Warner Books

Ferret: First published in Infinite Matrix, 2003, edited by Eileen Gunn, http://www.infinitematrix.net/stories/shorts/ferret.html,

K-USH: The Legend of the Last Wero: First published in FEMSPEC, 2005, Volume 6, Issue 1, edited by Batya Weinbaum

MalKai’s Last Seduction: First published in Dark Eros: Black Erotic Writings, 1997, edited by Reginald Martin, St. Martin’s Press

Of Wings, Nectar, & Ancestors: First published in Fertile Ground: Memories & Visions, 1996, edited by Kalamu ya Salaam and Kysha N. Brown, Runagate Press

Rosamojo: First published in Mojo: Conjure Stories, 2003, edited by Nalo Hopkinson, Warner Books

Copyright

Aqueduct Press, PO Box 95787

Seattle, WA 98145-2787

www.aqueductpress.com

This book is fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Print Copyright © 2012 Kiini Ibura Salaam

Digital Copyright © 2012 Kiini Ibura Salaam

All rights reserved.

Digital ISBN: 978-1-61976-010-3

Cover Design by Nneka Bennett

Cover Illustration, “Woman in the Sea,” courtesy Niko Guido

Book Design by Kathryn Wilham

Content

Kiini Ibura Salaam
ANCIENT, ANCIENT
Stories

Annunciation by Nisi Shawl

Desire

Of Wings, Nectar, & Ancestors

MalKai’s Last Seduction

At Life’s Limits

Debris

Rosamojo

Battle Royale

Ferret

K-USH: The Legend of the Last Wero

Bio-Anger

Marie

Ancient, Ancient

Pod Rendezvous

Author Biography

Publication Acknowledgments

Copyright