Maggie Hogarth                          mcah@stardancer.org

100,500 words

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE WORTH OF A SHELL

by M.C.A. Hogarth

 

 

 

 

	When I was sent from House Mated for the second to last time in my life, it was to attend the Transactions Fair. I had not been tasked to find any specific addition for our Household, but the Fair transpired rarely and mingled entertainment with duty so pleasantly that I considered it more of a holiday. I hadn't had a holiday in longer than I could remember . . . as the kaña-befidzu reminded me.
	"But there is work to be done here," I said.
	"No work that cannot wait," Kerdil replied from her comfortable slump on a nest of pillows. I had only just helped arrange her there, tail and mane brushed and braided and a lotion worked into her distended belly. "It has been long since we've had a fair. Perhaps you'll find us a new anadi, or a sturdy eperu to supplement the House."
	"We don't need more workers," I said. "And you are close to your time. I want to be here when you have your baby."
	"To try your new technique on me," she said.
	"Only if you seem to need it," I said, bringing her a bowl of cool water. "Your child's delivery to House Lized will feed us all for a season . . . and several more Houses are waiting for this evidence of your quality. Can you blame me for worrying?"
	"You would worry even if the Trinity came down to House Mated and said, 'All will be well,'" she said with a laugh.
	I folded my arms.
	"You know you would," she said, and beamed at me until I reluctantly chuffed a laugh. She continued, "I will be fine and you need the holiday. Go, ke Thenet."
	That House Mated still had an anadi kaña capable of calling me "honored Thenet" was part of the reason I wore a gold ring in my tufted ear. No anadi guardian had ever been as deft with the females as I was. Some said our gods were cruel for taking the minds of our breeders under duress, but to me it was simply the way of things. We did what we could to prevent the inevitable, but we accepted the inevitable with grace: that was the lot of the Jokka.
	Kerdil was my greatest accomplishment: all Houses had a kaña, an anadi they considered the most valuable when bred, an anadi whose breeding contract won them more shell than any other. But only a rare House had a kaña-befidzu, an anadi of such stamina and grace that she retained her mental acuity even after several pregnancies. Often the only way to ensure such an anadi's survival was to have a jarana, an anadi-guardian of ability, blessed by the Trinity.
	In House Mated, that was me. This was Kerdil's second pregnancy and it was of paramount importance that she remained supple in mind and body . . . particularly since as a House, Mated made much of its shell on breeding contracts. House Mated hadn't even bought her until I'd demonstrated my worth with anadi of lesser quality. Kerdil had proved her worth by having her first child without event--that child had been sent to the House that had sold her as compensation for her permanent contract. This new child would be the first we'd sell. I didn't want to leave her. But it was also mine to obey.
	"Go," she said... and as usual, I could deny her little. I packed my pouch and left for the fair.

 ~*~

	What could I say about a Transactions fair to one who has never seen one? The whole of the town square had been commandeered for the platforms each employee of the House of Transactions would use to auction off the contracts--every kind of contract, even. Contracts for breeding for the most biddable of anadi. Contracts for employment for the most deft of emodo, the males with their clever hands and more clever talents. Contracts for lifetime employment for the most powerful of eperu, the neuters like me who do most of the work of the House. In their wisdom, the three gods of the Trinity separated us thus: the fragile anadi who gave their minds to bear children; the dexterous emodo whose minds retained enough elasticity to live lives of indefinite intelligence so long as they marshaled their strength; and the near-indestructible eperu, the neuters who plow and plant and build and hunt. We live outside the breeder's cycle, and so avoid the mind-death.
	Which is not to say we never touch that cycle... for also in their wisdom, the Trinity gave us two chances to experience the lives of the other sexes. At our first puberty and at our second we had a chance to Turn. Not all of us do, of course. I didn't. It was not a matter of choice; even if it had been, I'm not sure I would have taken it. I was merely eperu, and had been all my life: marishet-eperu, we called that. "Three times the same." Three times the same, for three gods, made me one of the most resilient members of our species. I had never touched the breeder's cycle, and gods willing I was as far from the possibility of mind-death as any Jokkad could hope to be.
	Spring's delicate shadows and cooling breeze made a perfect setting for the fair. I walked past the Houses of our town, het Serean, at a more leisurely pace than those rushing to man booths or help with the set-up of platforms. By the time I arrived, several auctions were already in progress. I spotted many of the het's most important members mingling in the crowds as well as many strangers: Jokka rarely traveled, but fairs of this size compelled some to brave the unfriendly terrain between towns in search of new blood.
	"Hail the Mated jarana!" a voice called. I turned and found an emodo strolling my way, showing off coarse fangs in a grin.
	"Ke Therun," I said with a laugh. "I should have known you would be about."
	"Of course," he said. "You know I need more people. Speaking of which, you wouldn't happen to be shaking loose from Mated any time soon, would you?"
	"No," I said. "I'm happy where I am, and well you know it."
	He sighed. "Well, if you will not put your formidable skills to work for me in my House, at least come with me to oversee the anadi they're selling today. Tell me which I should buy and I'll buy her."
	I canted a brow at him, but he was in earnest. No surprise, perhaps. Therun was the Head-in-Training of House Sikkul and for a while Sikkul had courted my contract. Mated refused to release me; they knew a good worker when they saw one. For Therun to ask after me was hopeless but it gave me a touch of a white blush, to know I was still sought.
	"I'll be glad to give you my best," I said.
	"--excellent!"
	"Unless I see someone I want for Mated instead," I finished. "Then you'll have to out-bid me."
	He laughed. "Fair words. They have a separate stage for permanent contracts. This way."
	I followed Therun toward the other side of the fair, passing the crowds accumulated around the emodo and eperu stages. As an anadi-guardian I could bid for eperu and emodo employment contracts on behalf of Mated but I rarely did. My expertise was in females, and the fair had brought them in force. While breeding contracts were negotiated continuously between Houses, full sales of anadi happened rarely, and the fair was a good time to buy. There was already a female on the stage when Therun and I joined the crowd.
	"Here we have Salida Metzi-eperu," the Transactions employee was saying. "She began as eperu, remained eperu in her first Turning, and only just became female. As you can see, she has the strong body of a neuter, and having been born with a neuter's intelligence she will surely pass it on to any of her children." On the stool in the center of the stage, the anadi looked bored--still smart enough for that, then. She'd perk up once the bidding started. Who could be bored when listening to people fight for the privilege of buying you?
	"Should I?" Therun asked.
	I eyed the anadi. "No."
	"Just like that," he said. "No reasons, no explanation, nothing? Surely a female from a twice-neuter would last longer..."
	"She will give you trouble," I said. "Few Jokka who are neuter for so much of their lives like being displaced to the life of a female. I would only suggest it if you were willing to let her assist the jarana, or if you were to give her some other duty that would help her feel useful."
	"Useful beyond bearing children," Therun said.
	"Not all Jokka understand the value of the anadi role," I said. "Save your shell for someone who looks anxious and curious."
	He harrumphed, but I could tell he was pleased. Well and again, so was I--this was my work.
	We watched a succession of anadi cross the stage. Over some I shook my head--others, I nodded and Therun bid, though he did not win.
	"You're not even trying," I said after he lost the fourth.
	"No," he admitted. "We need people, but it would be cheaper just to make the purchase at Transactions after the fair. There's too much competition here."
	"You might not find some of these anadi after the fair," I said.
	"And if you tell me there's one I absolutely must have, I will buy her," he said. "But you have only made the mildest of approving noises so far. I won't spend shell on anything less than your fascination."
	I laughed. "Good enough. But I need sustenance to continue my evaluations."
	"Then I shall buy you a roll. Come! The anadi will keep."
	So he bought me a roll stuffed with the tender pink flesh of forest nibblers, the steam carrying the green, piquant scent of herbs to my nostrils, and we ate and we laughed and we watched the crowd, pointing out the best-dressed or the most impressive tails or the most intriguing personalities. As the wind tugged my forelock over my sloped nose and cooled the sweat from my softly-scaled skin, I realized the kaña-befidzu had been right: I'd needed this time away from the House.
	"Back to the stage," Therun said when we'd finished off our third pastry.
	"Back to the stage," I agreed.
	We chatted companionably as the Transactions emodo auctioned off several more contracts. I enjoyed Therun's company; truth be told, I enjoyed any emodo's company. I spent so much time among anadi that the contrast was refreshing.
	But I was not so deep into that enjoyment that I could not be distracted by a flash of gold.
	"Here's a true prize," the emodo on stage declared. "This is Dlane Ashoi-anadi, already a kaña in Ashoi. She's ready to be yours! Shall we start the bidding at 100 shell?"
	If there was perfection among Jokka, it would be hard to quantify: we are so varied, between our three sexes and our Turning between them, and every Turning leaving its mark. But this anadi had never been anything but anadi, not with those broad hips and slim shoulders. She had a noble face and tufted ears longer than any I'd seen, a rich mane of flame-gold to match her arm and foot ruffs, and an exquisitely long tail. Across scales so fine I couldn't see them even with my hunter's eyes, brazen gold spirals cut through the clouds that comprised the hue we name shekul -- a gray built out of a thousand gossamer pale colors, so that each is there for the eye to see, but each subordinate to a greater whole.
	Her beauty was astonishing, like cold water on a summer afternoon... but I could see instantly why she was being sold. Many of the marishet-anadi are tractable, the sweetest and most gentle of our species. But occasionally, the Brightness uses such a three-times-the-same female to reincarnate herself, and nothing is less tractable than a goddess.
	"Oh my," Therun said. "I should buy her."
	"Only if you have a strong hand," I said. "She'll make you beautiful and intelligent children, but you should pray they all grow up emodo and eperu."
	"You're saying she's not happy?" he said. "I could make her happy."
	"No one could make her happy," I said.
	"All that from seeing her on a stage from over four people's heads?" Therun asked. "Are you sure?" His voice dropped. "I've never seen anything like her."
	"And you never will again, I wager," I said. "If you love adventure, Therun . . . buy her. But it will be adventure."
	"Worth it, though," he murmured.
	I looked on Dlane Ashoi-anadi and knew better. She would be nothing but trouble.
	"Two hundred shell!" Therun called over the crowd.
	Contract auctions were far more fun when someone you knew was bidding. My ears flipped this way and that to track the offers. The bid was up to six hundred shell when I chanced to look at the anadi.
	There are days when the sun seethes. On those killing days, even the sturdiest of eperu remain inside--when it chooses, the sun delivers the mind-death with the swiftness of a blink.
	The anadi on stage was seething like the Brightness in the sky.
	"One thousand shell!" Therun shouted from beside me, spreading a complete, awed silence until someone nearby said, "Gods in the firmament." Further from us, someone left the crowd completely--I caught only a glimpse of gray and black. I couldn't blame him for leaving. There would be many more anadi after this one, but none of such astonishing quality. I have seen many females in my life and yet the image of her remained on the inside of my eyes, like a sun-spot.
	"One thousand shell!" the emodo on stage exclaimed, pressing a hand to his chest as if to steady himself. "One thousand shell for the lifetime contract for this most amazing anadi kaña. Do I hear more?"
	You could hear the crowd breathing, but no one offered.
	"Sold to--" the emodo paused, and Therun thrust his House token into the air. "--House Sikkul, for one thousand shell! Congratulations, ke emodo."
	Therun bounced on his heels. "That's all I had. But worth it! After the Head of Household sees that anadi, he will settle for nothing less. No one, seeing her, would settle for less."
	"I have no doubt," I said.
 
~*~

	After seeing Therun off I wandered the fair until my rumpled shadow on the ground stretched long and filmy purple. I stopped at the eperu stage to see what price my fellow neuters were asking for their employment contracts, browsed the craft display the emodo used to entice Houses to buy their services . . . truth, I had a wonderful time. When I set my feet on the path home I was sated with the sights and sounds of other Jokka.
	House Mated's clay walls served more as a boundary for the grazing midena than as a deterrent to other Jokka. I passed through the gate, stopping to pet a few of the milk-beasts, before heading around the edge of the main building toward the anadi caverns. The spear racks on the eastern side of the main building had been emptied--the other eperu were out hunting, then. I was sorry I'd missed them. I loved to care-take the anadi, but my duties afforded me little excitement, and definitely nothing comparable to the exhilaration of the hunt, to working in concert with the other eperu to bring down enough game to feed us. I was Mated's sole jarana, and I spent my days surrounded with females, keeping them as calm, cool and comfortable as possible in their sanctuary beneath the earth.
	It is a place of peace. Perhaps that was why stepping down the ladder and being assaulted by multiple shrieks loosened my grip and dumped me onto my tail on the ground.
	"Ke Thenet, Ke Thenet!" Mila said, leaping on me. "It's Kerdil! The baby is dying! We sent someone to the House but all the eperu are gone, even the healer!"
	"Take me to her," I said.
	Kerdil writhed on the nest where I'd left her, issuing an unbroken series of whimpers that lifted the hair along my back. I set my hand on her belly but that did not still her cries or her twitching. The pain had taken quick-witted Kerdil far from us for her to lose her sense of time and place. For the first time in my life true fear gripped my innards and twisted, and I swallowed back the bile that flooded my mouth. Now was not the time.
	Beneath my palm, the skin rippled. "How do you know the baby is dead?" I asked.
	"Kerdil said so before she stopped speaking," the anadi at my side said. "She said to find the healer."
	The healer always goes on the hunt. We rarely need the healer on the hunt, but when we do we need the healer immediately. There is no replacement for a healer . . . and if there is a Jokkad who costs more to employ, I have not met it yet. Mated was not rich enough to have more than one. "We'll have to make do ourselves, then," I said. "Bring me water, a lot of water, warm. And cloths. We'll do as we did with Duli."
	Mila scurried away, leaving me to hold Kerdil down and pray to the Brightness not to take the baby and its dam. I counted my breaths. I counted Kerdil's. I braided my arm tufts. The water arrived too slowly, but I washed my hands, checked the braids and did as only healers did.
	"What do you feel?" Mila asked. I'd tasked her with keeping Kerdil from thrashing, more to make her feel useful than out of any hope she'd keep Kerdil down.
	Gods help us, but the birth scarf wasn't just tangled around the baby, it had wrapped around its slender face. I couldn't feel it kicking. By this stage in pregnancy, the scarf should be a gossamer fraction of its thicker, newer self; that it remained so heavy emptied my teeth. Not just that, but the flesh near the mouth of the womb had a sickening, bubbly texture, as if part of it had already separated from Kerdil's body... something that was only supposed to happen after the baby had been delivered. I gritted my back teeth and reached further in, trying to locate the stretchy-soft connection between the birth scarf and Kerdil's womb. Our only chance to save the baby involved pulling it into this world where it could breathe before the womb collapsed. It was probably Kerdil's only chance as well.
	"She's not moving as much!" Mila reported.
	I grunted, hoping that meant Kerdil had decided to save her strength. Her womb had a powerful mouth and the birth channel's walls were slightly too small for my arm to comfortably pass--my fingers began to tingle, presaging a loss of sensation that would bode poorly for both baby and dam.
	"Ke Thenet? Something's wrong."
	"I know that!" I said, fighting fear and frustration. Was that it? If I tore the wrong membrane, I'd kill them both.
	"Quickly, ke Thenet!"
	"I'm trying--" I said and grimaced as Kerdil's body clamped on my arm and squeezed. Bright spots flashed before my eyes.
	This. This was the scarf's connection point. It had to be. I forced my claws from my fingertips and slashed, then groped until I found a tiny foot. When Kerdil let go of my arm, I tugged.
	An anadi giving birth attracts the attention of the mind-death, and I'd seen more than one gruesome depiction of a dark shadow waiting over the body of a pregnant female with long claws and dripping mouth. When Duli, another female, had begun the birthing, I'd slipped my hand inside and pulled the baby out instead of letting her labor for hours. Duli and the newborn had been fine and the House had been torn between scandal and high praise. It was not for the jarana to do the healer's duties, not just because of the employment contract violation, but because jarana never had the long, highly specialized training of a healer. But I had and in doing perhaps saved some of Duli's already reduced intelligence.
	But Duli was not Kerdil, kaña-befidzu and prize of House Mated.
	Kerdil fought me for the baby. I pulled, stopping when her contractions threatened to cut all feeling from my arm. It was taking too long.
	"Ke Thenet--"
	"Not now!" I growled.
	Ages later I had a baby in my arms, one that even divested of its choking birth scarf did not breathe, cry or open its eyes. I could not put it down, even so, as I edged around the nest to check on its dam.
	Kerdil's open eyes met mine and in them I saw no laughter, no exhaustion, no knowledge . . . no self.
	I sat hard beside the nest.
	"It was inevitable, ke eperu," said Mila beside me, patting my clean arm. "We should be glad she survived it at all."
	The female did not understand, as females so rarely did. I had just overseen the death of the kaña-befidzu's first child-for-contract . . . and the delivery of that most valuable anadi's mind into the Void. In the barest fraction of a day I had destroyed House Mated's chiefest source of wealth, the source it had saved for, had bought only after assessing my abilities and judging me talented enough to maintain her. That the House had come to love her gentle nature, her way with words, her wisdom only made my act worse. I had killed them both.
	I slumped against Kerdil. When she reached for her stillborn in an attempt to nurse it, I began to weep.

~*~

     The Head of Household and the pefna-eperu found me thus, my body folded over Kerdil's. The healer pulled me away from the anadi so it could examine her. I watched, listless, chafing flakes of dried birth fluids from my arm. My soul aged most of my life's remainder as I waited for the healer's inevitable pronouncement.
     "She was taken," the eperu said at last, straightening.
     "And the baby?" Polen, the Head of Household asked.
     "Needs the cleansing fire," the healer said, tucking it into a bundle. "I am sorry, ke Polen."
     "She's really gone," Makked said. As the pefna-eperu, it was charged with the management of the House's workforce . . . but even as busy as that kept it, Makked had always found time to stop into the caverns for a few bantered words with Kerdil.
     "Yes," the healer said.
     "Sometimes they come back," Makked said, wistful.
     "Not this time," the healer said, and took the baby up the ladder.
     Head and pefna turned to me.
     "What happened here?" Polen asked. It did not know enough yet to be angry, or perhaps the shock of the House's shift in fortunes had turned anger away at the door. No matter. I would fix that.
     "I killed her," I said.
     Polen stepped toward me, just one single step, and in it was all the menace I could have desired. "You did what thing? Say again, Thenet."
     "I killed it," I said, my voice raspy, as if I'd been screaming for hours without actually making noise. A considerate thing, that. "I was away at the fair. By the time I returned, it was already too late. And when I tried desperate measures, those desperate measures killed the baby and took Kerdil from us. It was my doing. It was my fault. I let her send me away when I knew how close she was."
     "And if you had been here?" Makked asked.
     "We might have lost the child anyway," I said, "but we would still have Kerdil."
     "You know this," Polen said.
     I touched my hand to my forehead, my breastbone, my pelvis. "In all my soul, I know it. I killed her. Void take me, but I . . . I delivered her to the mind-death."
     Surprise traveled over Makked's face, made it linger a little too long. Hobbled thus it could not stop Polen from lunging toward me, bashing me against the wall of the cavern. The larger, heavier emodo ground me against the walls, so infuriated he didn't even think to simply open my throat with his claws. Instead he choked me, the point of his shoulder thrust into the base of my throat. The violent scrape and wheeze of the struggle brought squeals of fear from the anadi.
     "Not here," I hissed around my breaking voice. "Not where they might hear and be frightened. Kill me elsewhere."
     Polen released me so abruptly I fell the last few hands to the ground. As I gasped around my aching chest, he stepped back on legs that trembled and feet-hands that opened and closed against the ground, showing flashes of claw. Rage made him a better cloak than shock, and I deserved no better than rage and death. I, guardian of the anadi and care-keeper of the kaña, I, whose only duties involved maintaining the safety, the lives and the minds of the fragile anadi . . . I had failed.
     "No," Polen said. "I will not kill you."
     "Please, ke emodo," I whispered, closing my eyes. The bruises beneath my skin bled white, but they would not kill me as I so justly deserved. "I have earned it."
     He did not speak. In my mind I could only see Kerdil's vacant eyes, devoid of soul. "If you send me to the Void, perhaps He will spare any future anadi of Mated."
     A bag struck me on the side.
     "The future anadi of Mated are no longer your concern," he said. "Pack. I am sending you away."
     "Ke emodo?" I asked. What fate was this? Neither dead nor forgiven, but something other?
     "Leave the het and never return," he said. "If I ever see your face again, I will take a knife to it." To Makked, curtly, "Have three of the emodo see this creature off my grounds."
     "As you wish," Makked said.
     "What is he doing?" I cried, wheezing as the pefna helped me to my feet. "Why doesn't he just kill me?"
     "He's done worse," the pefna said without emotion. It did not meet my eyes. "He's set you loose."
     "But where will I go?" I asked.
     "I don't think there will be much left of you to go anywhere," Makked said.
     I fervently hoped it was right. What was exile into the wilds where no Jokka lived? What good was it to live with this guilt on my soul? Better to die and try again. Better to die and serve the World than to stagger on in search of meaning.
 
#

     So it was that my soul had already lain meekly down to die when the three males dragged me from Mated and down the grass-tangled path toward the perimeter of the het. The force of their grips would compound the bruises beneath my softly scaled skin, but that was only a prelude. They knew the deed that had seen me down this path--they knew it, and the anger that rode them would not let them see me off het Serean's lands alive.
     I wished for a quick death.
     When the dark brown brick of the furthest House had been obscured by the undergrowth of the nearby slopes, one of them tossed my belongings aside and the other two slammed me to the ground. I curled there, eyes closed and ears pressed hard to my skull.
     "It is for the healers to heal, not a jarana," one of the males said. "Let us see if some other eperu comes by to save you from what you deserve." And then he lifted his clawed foot and the beating began.
     I endured, patient, stoic. I waited for the Void to render His ultimate judgment on my heinous crime. Milky blood gushed from my nostrils.
     "Stop!"
     I allowed a crack of light into my eyes. Lifting my head proved more difficult than I'd thought. It felt heavy, hard to stabilize. I tried to see the owner of the voice -- either female or an extremely effete neuter's, perhaps one only just Turned -- but the sun shone in my eyes. I squinted.
     Two of the Mated males turned their attention to the female.
     "Who are you?"
     "Stop beating it!"
     One of the males pointed back at me. "It has earned this. What we do is the way of things."
     "Maybe the way is wrong."
     I could barely believe the voice: wrong? The way of things wrong? How could she say so with such conviction? She didn't even know what I'd done!
     "Leave us."
     "No."
     All three males turned from me, blocking my view of my would-be savior. I assessed my condition: bruised and gashed in too many places.
     "Leave us," the voice said again, and this time I was certain it was an anadi's . . . and gods save me, the moment I decided so a directive stronger than pain rolled me onto my hip. I reached for the bag the male had hurled from me and slipped my hand inside. "Pack," Polen had said and mechanically I'd done so, everything I owned fitting into one bag. Everything, including my weapons.
     "What are you doing out in the day?" one of the emodo said, leaning forward. "You should be home, resting."
     "We should take her home once we're done with this offal," the second said.
     The hafts of the throwing claws slid against my palm, familiar, reassuring. With weak jerks of my wrist, I coaxed three of them from their sheaths and twisted to face the males. I waited, ignoring the runnel of blood from my nose. I waited for the Moment. When the three males charged the owner of the voice, it was trivial for me to slip sideways into the Moment, slip between it and send the claws whistling, one-two-three. Two into two necks, killing instantly, one into the lower back, a slower death, but still certain.
     The owner of the voice stood in a mandorla of light. As she walked closer I could see her shape, a figure that defied description save only that even the Brightness would have been proud to have such a shell. I could not see her face or her colors. She crouched down and leaned toward me, touched my face, and then the Void came for me, soft-footed, wrapped in black spots. He hovered there, reached for my hand.
     "No, no! You can't faint," the voice said, brushing away the Void. A more tangible hand curled into the ruffs at my cheeks. "Up with you, brave eperu! Up! We have to flee!"
     "Flee," I whispered, tasting my blood in my mouth.
     "Yes, flee," she said. "For you're an exile and I'm a fugitive and neither of us will see another day if we linger here. Up, up!"
     I laughed, and my breath whistled between my lower fangs. "Funny."
     "No, no, very serious," she said. "I need your help, ke eperu."
     The directive rose again. Protect the anadi, my soul whispered. But I had killed with my imperfect hands.
     "Please," she said, her voice fraying at the edges. "There isn't much time. I need you."
     With a groan I gave in and blinked several times, clearing my eyes of sweat and blood. Peering up at my newest charge from beneath my matted forelock, my jaws dropped apart.
     "Yes? Get up," she said, pulling at me.
     "Dlane?" I said. "Dlane Ashoi-anadi?"
     "Not anymore, technically," she said, ears flattening against her forehead. "I'm Dlane Sikkul-anadi now, but Ashoi doesn't know I've escaped and Sikkul isn't supposed to come for me until tomorrow afternoon. Can you stand? I know a place we can hide for an hour or two. I can bind your wounds." She grinned, all fine fangs. "Then you can faint."
     I stumbled to my feet. "You--you are worth a House's ransom!"
     "Yes, yes, I know," she said with irritation. "One thousand shell, lucky me. Let's walk that way." She leaned down and grabbed my pack, shouldering it along with her own, then settled my arm around her shoulders to brace me. "Steady, ke eperu."
     "This is crazy," I said around my bruised throat. "I should take you straight back to Ashoi--"
     "--just keep walking this way," she said.
     "Give me a good reason why I shouldn't take you back," I said.
     "Because if you do they'll kill you," she said.
     "And the death is deserved," I said, panting. "A better reason."
     "Because I don't want you to die."
     "Ke anadi--"
     "Oh! Just hush, crazy creature! We're going this way and you're coming and you know why?"
     "Why?" I asked obediently. It was very hard to put one foot in front of the other.
     "Because you can't stand without my help and you certainly can't walk and I am going that way. So you are going that way with me."
     Leaking as I was from so many places, I could not argue with this particular reason. Indeed, I remembered very little of the journey to her safe haven . . . only that it required us to cross a field and past a clump of trees into a shadowed place. She tugged me into a hole beneath the ground and there my knee crumpled and delivered me, cheek to soil, to the Void.
     This time I ignored her entreaties to stay awake. Bad enough that I was alive. I would take this insanity one task at a time.
    
#

     The first sound that convinced me that the Void had not rendered permanent judgment was the faint drip of water striking dirt. Then cool, moist air registered on the pad of my nose.
     And then all the aches flooded my limbs. I groaned aloud.
     "Good, you're awake! We can't stay here much longer."
     I hadn't really noticed how lovely a voice it was. I experimented with my right eye and discovered it wasn't swollen shut. The walls of the burrow explained the soft drip of water and the grinding against my hip. Our packs had been set against one side of our nook beside a tiny brazier. A curl of smoke rose from the coals inside, a fragment of summer broken off from the year's middle.
     And there she sat, across from me, the anadi I'd warned Therun would be more than he could handle. He'd barely bought the creature and she'd already escaped. This close to her, her beauty was not just astonishing, but painful . . . for such loveliness did not come to an anadi without fragility faithfully attending. The need to see her safely ensconced in a cavern where the sun couldn't reach her gripped me so fiercely I could barely breathe--no, that was the injury. I sat up, grimacing, and pressed a hand to my chest.
     "Ooh!" she said, reaching toward me. "Don't move too much."
     I explored the edges of the bandage she'd wrapped a little too tightly around my ribs for comfort, still wincing. Around us were stacked crates and clay shelves lined with items. "We're in a storage burrow?"
     "No one will look for us here," she said. "At least, not immediately."
     She sounded so sure. I glanced at her again; this time my eye caught on the filament-thin gold ring piercing her navel slit, the only thing she wore. House Ashoi had been so certain of her worth it had put a ring on her even though it intended to sell her--for that, they would have had to be sure of her intelligence, her stamina, that she'd Turned both times and both Times only become more anadi. I could count on one hand the Jokka I'd known whose Houses had shown such confidence. And this anadi, this splendidly valuable, expensive anadi, was holding my gaze in great earnest, here in a hole on the edge of town.
     "Are you okay?" the female asked, leaning forward and stretching out a hand. "I tried to patch you, but I don't know much about wounds."
     "I've felt healthier," I said at last. "But not more confused."
     "What are you confused about?" she asked.
     So many questions. Which to ask? "Why did you interfere with my exile?"
     She leaned over her knees, her stubby toes drumming against the cave floor. "I don't like to see people hurt."
     "But I have done a terrible thing. I deserved what was coming."
     Her golden brow lifted. "If you didn't die then perhaps the gods have other plans for you."
     I opened my mouth to protest, but stopped when it occurred to me that she could be correct. If the Void had wanted me dead, why hadn't He intervened? Why had I had the strength to kill the males?
     "Anyway, you already know my name," she said. "I'm Dlane. What's yours?"
     "I am Thenet . . . was Thenet Mated-eperu. Now . . . I don't know." My lips pulled back in a frown that bordered on desolation. "You saved me but I have no place to go. My House is barred to me and no other will take me for what I have done."
     "What did you do?" Dlane asked, her ears canting forward in unseemly interest.
     I stared at her. "I killed a baby and delivered her mother to the mind-death."
     She tapped her knee. "Quite a crime."
     "Yes."
     "How?"
     "H-how?" My tongue tripped over my own words.
     "Yes, how did you do it?" Dlane asked. "I suppose the baby's the one that's upsetting you most . . . so tell me about that. Did you thrust a spear through the its heart? Drop it accidentally? Toss it out a window?"
     My eyes had dried, reminding me to blink. "What does it matter?" I exclaimed.
     "What it does matter!" For the first time, Dlane showed signs of exasperation, brow furrowing over her flame-bright eyes. "Thenet Mated-eperu, there are degrees of wrongness. I want to judge which one you are guilty of."
     "You? Judge me?" I wondered just what variant of polytheism allowed her to adjudicate over other Jokka's souls.
     "Humor me in this, ke eperu. How did you kill the baby?"
     My ears flattened despite my best efforts. I looked at the striations in the burrow wall, counting the thin brown stripes amid the black. "The healer had gone out to attend the hunters and I had gone to the fair. The kaña-befidzu's time came upon her while I was gone and the baby stopped within her. I arrived too late. When I tried to draw the child out, I failed and the kaña-befidzu lost her mind from the strain." Saying it that way made it sound so distant. Saying it that way made it sound so bearable, until I clenched my fist and dried birth fluids pulled at the skin between my fingers.
     Dlane flexed her shoulders forward in acknowledgment. "So the baby died because the healer wasn't present."
     "No! The baby died because I couldn't save it."
     "If the healer had been present, would the baby have lived?"
     My teeth burned but I refused to weep. Weeping was an activity reserved for the living. "I'm sure."
     "But the healer wasn't present, was it?"
     The tingling in my ears was surely loss of circulation. I continued to hold them taut to my head anyway. "No, the healer was with the hunters that day."
     "Then the healer was negligent."
     "But I was there--"
     "It was a tragedy, Thenet, but you didn't kill that baby. No one did. It was an accident."
     I stared at her. "What--what are you saying? Why are you saying this?"
     Dlane heaved a long sigh and stood. She paced to the wall and then to the brazier, back and forth. "Because the distinction has to be made. I saved you because our people don't make distinctions, ke eperu. I saved you because the chances were good that it had happened that way with you. That you were going to die for no reason."
     I closed my gaping mouth. The words I'd barely heard through the haze of my pain before, crying out that the males were doing wrong to me -- I had thought such words an anomaly, but obviously they were a sign of far deeper beliefs. I found my tongue somehow. "That does not change the fact that I now have no home to return to."
     "No, it doesn't. Which means that I'm now responsible for you."
     "You? Responsible for me? But it is for the neuters to protect the anadi, not the other way around."
     She nodded. "Exactly," she said. "And I am in your debt for your protection earlier. But I have freed you and now I have to take care of you. That's all." She wrinkled her nose and cast her golden eyes to the dirt ceiling. "Which is all well, since I'll need someone to keep me safe."
     A faint foreboding rose in me at those words. "Let me guess, ke anadi . . . you are going to be doing something the Jokka do not do."
     "That depends on which Jokkad you're talking about," Dlane replied cheerily. Her tail waved to and fro. "I am planning to make a pilgrimage--"
     That already sounded very, very indecent.
     "--To the Birthwell."
     I rolled onto my back and concentrated on breathing.
     Dlane chuffed a quiet laugh and crouched beside me. She touched my flat chest with delicate fingers. "I see that I have neither surprised nor heartened you."
     I turned my face to hers, studied the youth of her face contrasted with the age of her amber eyes. "Why?" I asked when her face gave only a piece of the puzzle.
     "Because," she said softly, "I do not want to bear young."

#

     "We have to leave," she said as I stared at the fangs of the burrow's ceiling and measured my breaths against the knifing ache in my ribs.
     "Your plan is not sane," I said.
     "Nevertheless," she said, drawing her pack from the floor and handing me mine. "The sooner we leave, the safer we'll be. When summer comes I want us to be someplace I can rest."
     "Summer," I said.
     "That is the hottest season," she said, taking my hand and tugging on it. "Come on, ke eperu. We need to leave the burrow."
     I let her chivvy me to my feet. I let her drape my pack on my least-injured shoulder. She snuffed the brazier, emptied it and peeked out of the burrow's small mouth. I watched her without humor . . . did she honestly believe that her golden mane and shimmering body would go unnoticed no matter where we traveled? And yet when she crept out into the world, I followed her. I set foot to the ground and left the embracing shadows of the earth, and in doing so, I sighed. Some part of me felt dead but I could not abandon a female so bent on peril.
     Beneath her untutored steps grass and twigs crunched; I walked behind her as silently as the ghost I had expected to be by this hour in the day. With my eyes fastened on the small of her back, I thought with pity of the life of the anadi. Thought of the sorrow their plight evoked in any feeling Jokkad, for it was rare indeed for any anadi to retain her swift words and thoughts until she died. Stress is our greatest enemy, stealing our minds from us, and childbirth is a source of great stress.
     But bearing children is a duty we reward the anadi amply for. They are showered with jewels and scarves made by the emodo, zealously guarded and provided for by the eperu, allowed to live a life of leisure in rooms with pools of water to keep their skin smooth and cool and servants to offer them flavored waters and candied meats.
     A life of pleasure and purpose.
     A life that Dlane did not want.
     I could understand a little better now how she could so easily interfere with my exile. In her mind she had already committed a far greater defiance than her simple intervention in my fate.
     I drew abreast of her, touching her shoulder. She glanced at me then stepped back and let me lead. I turned us toward the trees. "Ke anadi, what do you hope to find at the Birthwell?"
     Dlane trotted behind me. "Do you believe the stories are true?"
     "That the first Jokkad had the first thought there? That our race was born with that thought?" I shrugged, a flip of my tangled black tail. "I have never had any reason not to believe it."
     Silence. Then: "I want to go there. I want to see the place where our ability to think, to rejoice and laugh and weep first came to us."
     "Why?" I asked again.
     "Because," she said, and I sensed I would have no more from her on this topic--not for now, at least.
     "Does Ashoi know about this fond hope of yours?"
     Dlane sounded uncertain. "I may have spoken too freely of my interest. It will take them a while to discover I'm gone, but it's possible that when they do they'll remember and decide that's where I've gone to. We can't have the most valuable female of the House getting bored with her lot and having dreams."
     Had the bitterness been any thicker we might have used it to season broth. I flicked an ear forward and she continued.
     "Once we get far enough away they'll stop looking for me," she said. "And you, you're already dead to Mated. They won't bother to come after you."
     The dappled shadows of the leaves patterned my flat white skin as we passed into their shelter. I stopped at the nearest tree and stared at her. "Dlane Ashoi-anadi, surely you are not so naive."
     "I'm a lost investment," she said, determined.
     "House Sikkul paid one thousand shell for you!" I exclaimed. "Ashoi will hunt for you until they find your cooling body."
     "I hope not," Dlane muttered, but we both knew better. Then, louder, "I have a plan."
     I resumed picking our path for us, seeking something off the hunting trails that wasn't so overgrown someone would notice how much damage Dlane did by simply walking past a bush. "And what plan is this?"
     "I packed clothing," she said. "I will dress as eperu."
     I managed not to laugh only because it seemed too absurd even for a joke. Her slender shoulders, those hips flared broader even than a neuter's . . .  "Marishet-anadi, passing for eperu? Surely not. No one will believe such a disguise."
     "They will believe," Dlane said. "Because I will make it real to them."
     Glancing at her, I met her flame-bright eyes; in the forest's gloom they glowed, fierce as the sun at its height. I could almost believe her--no, I could not fail to believe her.
     Gods help me. Who was this mad anadi the Brightness, Void and World had thrust upon me?
 
#

     When I stopped at a stream to fill our water bags, Dlane drew on the casual costume of the eperu. We wore very little while hunting: a long-cloth tied at the hips to fall over our loins, paint and jewelry, perhaps. I had never realized how elaborate our at-home attire was until I watched someone who'd never worn clothing attempt to arrange it.
     "Unlace the pant legs first," I said. Or, "Don't close the vest until you've drawn the blouse in at your waist." By the end of her efforts she'd managed: a simple ivory blouse tucked into trousers dark enough to smudge the line of her hips into a dark brown vest. Unobtrusive in every fashion, she nevertheless radiated a feminine grace. I shook my head.
     Dlane glowered. "Don't say it."
     "Come here and let me braid your mane and tail," I said instead, and a grateful smile broke over her mouth. My fingers trembled as I worked, though I wasn't certain if that was weakness or shame; the female had such lovely hair, such anadi hair, that it didn't seem right to trap it in the utilitarian confines of an eperu hair style.
     We resumed our journey, walking alongside the water as a cool, purple evening descended. I walked more slowly than was my wont, despite Dlane's obvious agitation. I was in no condition to keep her pace, though I could no longer deny my fascination with her. Curiosity kept me on my feet even as I panted for breath, as low and as soft as I could. It was not long before we found ourselves upon an embankment alongside the flowering arms of several thaserat trees.
     "Where are we?" she asked. "I've never been so far from town."
     "This is the skirt of farm fields," I said. "If we keep walking we'll broach the forest."
     "Sounds good," she said. "The farther we get from het Serean, the better."
     Past fragrant fields allowed to run to wildflowers for the spring we walked, squares of land painstakingly nurtured for the growth of crops. The soil in our area taxed even the hardiest of grains, and it was not unusual to find the eperu crouched over the ground, scrabbling at the opportunistic weeds that choked their fragile, nourishing cousins. We tilled our fields with our periculous sweat, and thereby earned the civilized ways that separated us from the prey-following nomads we once were.
     Lamps hoisted on slender poles bordered the fields, inviting the night-fliers to the feast of insects. Dlane skirted the golden cones cut out of the twilight purple; I stumbled at her heels, staring at the low huts that bordered the fields, wondering if I'd see their like again. The further we walked, the poorer the air seemed to me. At last the smell of blood reached my nose and I pressed a hand to my chest, realizing I was bleeding again.
     "Dlane, stop."
     She glanced over her shoulder. "We've only been walking an hour, and we're approaching the best time for long exercise. . . . "
     "Not for me," I pointed out, listing to one side.
     "I am not eperu," Dlane said, her voice flat. "It's healthiest for me to be walking at night."
     "I just want a moment to catch my breath," I said. "Do you have a head-herb I can chew? My brow is throbbing."
     "Not with me."
     "Not with you?" I eyed her.
     Dlane waved a hand. "They grow in the wild, don't they? We can just pick some when we see them. I wanted to travel light."
     "Travel light!" I exclaimed. "How light? Did you pack food? Rope? Knives and fire-starters? Salve in case we're cut?"
     Her ears dipped lower and lower with each word until finally I trailed to a stop. "Nothing," I said. "You wanted to set out on this journey with an empty canteen, a set of stolen clothes and one battered eperu for protection."
     "I didn't plan the last one," she said.
     I covered my eyes with a hand, fighting a sudden wave of vertigo.
     "I've never gone on extended trips before!" Dlane said, and then with bitter humor, "Well, I haven't been on any trips at all." Her hand lit on the fringe of my wrist, and when I opened my eyes her face was there, breathlessly close with those round golden eyes. Her oval pupils had engorged in the darkness. I could see myself in them. "Thenet . . . I underestimated this utterly, didn't I."
     How could I be angry with such beauty? I sighed and said, "Ke anadi, we should find a place you can hide for the evening while I return to find supplies."
     "Return!"
     I chuckled softly. "Would you prefer to go? You have been missed by now despite your hopes, I'm sure. I, on the other hand, could probably hide my bruises long enough to go unremarked."
     Her ears flattened to her skull. "No. No, I don't want to go back." I could hear the word lingering on the end: 'ever'.
     "Then let me go while it's still dark. Where shall we meet?"
     Dlane glanced from one side of the narrow lane to the other. "There," she said, pointing.
     "Ke anadi, that's in the field."
     "Yes. Out of the lights and away from the thoroughfares."
     I shook my head. "Do you have shell, at least?"
     "Shell?" she asked. "You're not seriously planning to buy supplies, are you?"
     "No," I said. "But I'll leave some in the storage burrow after I raid it. The least we can do is replace what we've stolen."
     She blinked those great golden eyes, then laughed. "Oh, ke eperu. Here," slinging a pouch over my shoulder.
     "I will be back in an hour, two at most. Watch yourself."
     "I shall," she promised and then slipped away into the darkness of the neighboring field, releasing with her first few steps the acrid fragrance of crushed wildflowers.
     With my ears twitching back toward my skull, I pivoted and carefully made my way back toward the lights of town. The pouch at my hip banged against my bone with every stride. I was not sanguine about retracing our steps after being so recently tossed out of town. As silently as even an injured eperu can be, I returned to the burrow. The trip gave me an unexpected opportunity to disguise the marks Dlane had made passing through. It took me little time to sort through the storage burrow and find what we needed--I even managed a spear-head--and then I was out again, into the trees and past the stream, heading toward the fields.
     As I approached one of the thoroughfares, the sound of feet scuffling the dirt pricked at my ears. I jumped into the dark, clutching my bag to my aching middle.
     A male and four eperu jogged down the path through the cool air with an undeniable sense of purpose. My eyes traced the gleam of their spear-heads and I gritted my teeth. They had to be looking for her; there was a grim weight to their jaws and their brows that did not belong on Jokka strolling through the evening, when most people were heading to sleep or to enjoy the comforts of home.
     So, stealth the gods’-breath on my feet, I slipped after them. They continued down the path until it split at the fields, then stopped at the fork. I halted behind them, ears flat. In my mind I implored them to turn east, for the anadi was hiding in the fields to the northwest. How they vacillated there on the edge of the gray-green fields shrouded in the night’s dark veil! My hands flexed on the strap of my bag, every muscle in my body tense.
     The twitch of a pale gray stripe in the distance caught my eye. I glanced that way, sucking in a breath. Let them have missed it--
     But one of the eperu pointed and said, “What’s that?”
     “I don’t know,” the emodo said. “But it’s suspicious. Let’s go see.” And they started down the northwestern fork of the beaten path. I cursed and stole after them, praying that the anadi would not move.
     The gray stripe shifted and then a figure bolted from the grasses, sprinting away on light feet.
     Have I said how clear our vision is? Only truedark robs us completely of its faculties. The emodo was not at all fooled by the silhouette with its clothing and braided tail and mane.
     "Get her!", he cried and the eperu beside him sprang forward. Before I could stumble into pursuit one of them had grabbed her and pulled her to the ground. They tussled there, flashes of gray and green and gold as the emodo and the other eperu arrived.
     Dlane struggled as the eperu pulled her up. I squinted at the strange series of contortions she was attempting -- as if she were trying to hug her captor instead of escape. Just as I convinced myself I was insane, she succeeded and the eperu wavered.
     Her mouth was attached to its neck. Slowly it dropped to one knee and then moments later it was unconscious.
     I stared. So did the emodo and the remaining three eperu.
     “Don’t come near me!” she hissed, and as she spoke yellow-gray tears trailed from her fangs. Tears -- just tears. Weren’t they? But the eperu had fallen . . .
     Dlane bared her teeth and said through them, “Don’t come closer. I will bite!”
     The emodo stepped toward her and then halted, uncertain. Nor could I blame him! Legend had it that the tears of the anadi could poison a Jokkad if she bit into flesh, but I’d never seen any anadi try it!
     “Dlane,” the emodo said as I crept closer, “Please come home with us."
     "Home with you!" she said, hissing. "You mean home to Sikkul, yes? You're just worried about the money and poor Ashoi's reputation."
     "No!" he exclaimed, and then calmed with difficulty. "Dlane, this is ridiculous. Running around in the wild, going feral . . . you’ll die!”
     “Better to die knowing what I’ve chosen than to die dumb with a child in the womb,” Dlane replied, dropping the unconscious eperu and glancing warily at the circle. She did not yet see me, which suited me well. Pulling at the fallen neckline of her tunic, she said, “You go home, keeper. I am not.”
     The male took a long breath from the wind. “Dlane. There are five of us and one of you.”
     “Four of you.”
     “And two of us,” I said from behind the emodo.
     The male looked over his shoulder and gasped, and I could well imagine what he saw: only the ugliest eperu in town, appearance now augmented by networks of white bruises and crusted gashes. I knew I looked ghastly and bared my teeth to give him the final touch.
     “By the Maker, Dlane!” he said. “What kind of ghouls are you keeping company with?”
     “I take exception to that,” I said, voice going soft. “You will leave us now, ke emodo.”
     He paused, tail flagging in the dark.
     “I will attack long enough to keep you from binding her . . . and she will poison you all,” I said, shifting my spear-head so that it pointed at them, a fifth claw for my fisted hand. “I would prefer to leave town in peace.” Particularly since my body ached as if I was already half in the afterlife.
     The male’s ears smoothed to the back of his head and he scowled. Waving a hand at the eperu, he said, “Take Shuñel away.” As they picked up their fallen comrade and bore it back onto the road, the male turned to Dlane and held out his hands, palm up. “Dlane, please. We’re all so worried.”
     Dlane wiped her weeping teeth with the back of her hand. “Worried enough to try and capture me like an escaped animal? Thank you very much for your concern,” she said. She shrugged the rest of her ensemble into place. “Forgive me if I’m not enthusiastic about your method of expressing it.”
     I watched, perplexed. They obviously they knew one another; I supposed a kaña of Dlane's quality and intelligence would have attracted many guests to the anadi caverns, just as Kerdil did. Did this one know of her quest-dreams?
     “Dlane, you can’t fight your life, your people, your body. Doing so will only win you pain.”
     I stayed behind him, but spoke. “Ke emodo, she deserves the right to make her own choices.”
     He glanced at me and frowned. “Who are you? You don’t know her the way I do. You don’t care about her the way I do.”
     “Maybe not. But maybe that lets me see her as she is, rather than what you believe her to be.”
     Dlane grinned with glittering eyes, as if I’d uttered some sagacity. I wondered at the ferocity of her pleasure. Turning my gaze back to the male, I found his eyes raking me: taking in my utter ugliness, certainly. The uneven spirals of black on my exposed skin. The unappealing flat white skin and the equally unappetizing uninflected black of my mane and tail . . . the clear, yellow-green eyes that we call ‘beast eyes’, the ones that only aspire to flame-bright amber. I saw the distaste in the flare of a tooth. I hated him in that moment.
     “Who are you?” he asked finally.
     “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “What matters is only that you go.”
     He folded his arms and began, "Not until--"
     And I grew tired of his fractiousness and clouted him on the side of his head with my fist. I hadn’t even realized I’d had that much strength in me, and staring at his body I was suffused with great satisfaction.
     Dlane ran to the emodo and crouched at his side, hands hovering over his shoulder and hip. "Oh, Thenet! Did you--"
     "He'll live," I answered curtly.
     Dlane hung her head, thin tendrils of golden hair falling over her forehead. She shivered. "We should go."
     "Yes, ke anadi. Before the eperu come back with reinforcements from Ashoi."
     "Are you sure he'll be okay?"
     I took her by the arm, handed her the bag she’d dropped before taking up my own and setting off across the fields. "The search party will come straight back to his place where he'll be waiting for them with a nasty headache. Don't worry, ke anadi. We're in far more danger than he is."
     "Danger . . . "
     "Yes. That emodo was from Ashoi, yes?"
     She nodded, eyes wide.
     "Ashoi wants you back, of course . . . but they'll be the most reasonable of the people sent after you. Sikkul just bought you, and they're deeply invested in your well-being. Your well-being in their caverns. We can't expect any more luck like what just happened. Even with your . . . your . . . ," I glanced back at her. "Your fang trick. I didn't know--"
     "That anadi could still poison people?" Dlane shrugged, tail whisking in the wind as she caught up to me. She looked once more over her shoulder at the body of the male, then said, "I heard about it from one of the clay-keepers and practiced somewhere quietly. I thought it might be useful one day."
     "Indeed," I murmured. I did not want to think of how one would practice poisoning a person. Did she find wayward animals for her experiments?
     "He was kind to me," she said, her voice softening. "I thought he understood."
     Our footfalls scared away the birds. We walked on beneath the light of the round, cream moon. "What you do cannot be understood, ke anadi," I said at last. "You forsake everything."
     Her ears flattened. "Everyone says that. I don't believe it. There must be another way."
     I shook my head.
     Clearing the fields required several hours; by that time the night was deep upon us and the truedark hour approached. Cool winds plucked at the heavy braids of our tails and manes and stung our cheeks and noses, a wind redolent with the spicy aroma of wildflowers and fallow earth. It was a beautiful night to throw away your life.
     Dlane sometimes ranged before me, tail swinging and nose raised to the sky. The fabric of her blouse grew taut in unexpected places as she moved. To see a female in clothing -- so peculiar! She wore it awkwardly, tangling herself in it at inopportune moments. When she grew tired of padding before me, she would drop back to stride alongside me, respecting the pace I set. The search party had inspired me to walk more briskly, but my body objected with every twist of my hip, every touch of my foot to the earth.
     But ah, Ke Bakil! Our beautiful world, dry and hard in places, overgrown in others with tough, wiry plants and thin, twisted trees with silver-green foliage. Like the other eperu, I had often hunted beyond the boundaries of the city.
     "Oh," Dlane whispered. "It's wonderful." A few strides later, she added, "And there's so much of it."
     I laughed. "Yes."
     "Have you been this far out?"
     "This far and farther," I replied. I stopped and looked over my shoulder; the lights of het Serean were no longer distinct but a faint haze rising from over the shoulder of a low ridge. My eyes thinned. "There will be shelter three or four hours distant."
     Dlane rubbed her thighs and a breath whistled between her teeth. "Can we rest?"
     The moon had neared the horizon. "It's almost truedark," I said. "We'll walk until then."
     She straightened and nodded.
     I led her on through the scrub and across paths left by hunters, paths that tempted with their ease of use. I avoided them when I could, quickened our pace when we used them. Dlane did not speak; I kept one ear trained on her labored breathing. I had a head full of nausea, but even so I found our walk easier than she did.
     An hour later I stopped beneath a cluster of spindly trees heavy with small, sticky-sweet flowers. "We'll spend the darkness's passing here."
     Dlane dumped her pack to the ground with a tiny sigh of relief. She sat neatly, drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, staring back toward town. I placed my pack against a tree and rooted through it for a vial. A few minutes later, I spread some sap on a nearby rock and sat as well.
     The truedark descended, robbing us of our vision. Not long after, the smell of the sap attracted the firebrights, and they danced a pattern of light above us sufficient to see one another in near-true colors.
     "Is that wise?" Dlane asked, watching them.
     "Pardon, ke anadi?"
     "Won't any searchers see the lights and find us?" she asked.
     I stared at her. "Jokka do not travel during truedark."
     She shrugged, a tail thump that barely moved the dense tresses against the ground.
     A little later: "How do they know how to dance?"
     I glanced at them, weaving trails of pale yellow light in the air. "I don't know," I said. "I never thought about it."
     "I always think about those things," Dlane said after a while. "Why the sun comes up. Why the colors dance to mark the year. Why water is clear, and blood almost so. Why emodo have foot-fingers when all the anadi get are paws . . . and as long as we're on toes at all, why we have five, rather than seven."
     "Seven?" I said, lifting a brow.
     She laughed. "Or two! It doesn't matter. She flexed her toes. "I like to think of such things. What do you think of?"
     Such a question! "I don't know," I admitted as I felt along the edge of the bandage. The clotted blood on its rim pulled at my skin. "It seems like a lifetime since I thought anything normal."
     Her ears flicked sideways and a smile propped up one corner of her mouth. "That's my fault, of course."
     I smiled. A wry thing, but still a smile. "Yes. That's your fault."
     "Do you still think you killed the baby?"
     I didn't answer.
     Dlane sighed. "Oh, Thenet. I have a lot to teach you, I see."
     "Like how to pack for a journey," I said.
     She blushed white at the ears and nose.
     The firebrights tied knots of light above our heads. Beyond the globe cast by their tiny bodies, an abyssal black obscured the rest of the world. The isolation rushed in on me like a wind. I had left my House, my work, the people who knew and cared for me. I could not go back. This darkness without feature, without warning was my future.
     "Tell me about yourself," Dlane said, distracting me from my sudden breathless panic.
     I considered a flippant reply. The anadi had tumbled my world around me, dragged me into exile and put me on a path without destination, and just now she was asking me who I was? Well and again, my answer was 'someone crazy enough to follow a beautiful and insane anadi'.
     Instead, I drew my fingers across the pale, sandy soil, tracing four lines. "When I was a child barely past my first Turning, Makked, pefna of the House, organized a hunt at summer's birth. I waited until a lull in the tumult exposed a path to the pefna, and then I went to it, bold as a new child. I put a hand on its long-cloth, soft woven in olive green, the color of the grass it would hunt through, and I asked to go.
     "The pefna crouched beside me and said to me, 'Thenet, I would bring you on this hunt if I could. But more important than even your aid in bringing down the kill is the guarding of the anadi. Will you stay here and ensure their safety for me?'
     "I thought long about this." I took a breath, drew my finger in a line perpendicular to the four marks I'd made. "And finally I told the pefna that I was too small to guard the anadi alone and needed aid."
     Dlane's eyes widened and she laughed. I grinned at her. "I'm fairly certain Makked was surprised, but it left behind another eperu to help me. That day was the first I saw the duties of the jarana. While I hunted with the others, more often than not I stayed home."
     "To guard the anadi," Dlane said.
     "Yes," I answered. I let my eyes rise to hers. "That is who I am, Dlane. I am eperu, guardian to anadi. Without that, I am nothing."
     She reached to my drawing, straight lines but softly done. I was afraid to crease the ground too hard. With one swipe of a finger she dug a wavy line deep into the earth, slashing my neat diagram. "You must be more than what you do, Thenet."
     I frowned at the disturbed symmetry and rubbed it out with the flat of my palm. "Just as you are more than your ability to bear children, is that it?" I glanced at her. They say truedark is the time of confidences. "What else are you, Dlane, but anadi? Ke anadi?"
     "Noble female!" she said, scoffing. "Respected female! I am neither! I am a person foremost, Thenet. Not a womb. I have dreams."
     "Do you?" I asked. "What do you want, Dlane?" I lifted a hand to still her swift response. "Not what you do not want . . . but what you do."
     She rolled onto her feet, possessing her own, alien grace: not the feral hunter's motions of my kind, but a languid, liquid finish to each of her movements. Her braided tail hissed as it dragged off the ground. As she rose, the firebrights broke apart and then zipped around her waist to return to my bait.
     Standing at the edge of their cast light, Dlane wore mystery and uncertainty in equal proportions. How odd she looked, attired and braided but so obviously feminine! How flattering the warm light on her subtle, layered gray skin!
     "All I know is that I want to learn," she said at last. "I have never been given the chance to dream, Thenet. As long as I've lived my life has been plotted for me in advance. To be traded into another House for an existence of cushioned, fettered luxury, plump with child, time without meaning. I want a chance to find out what I want to do. I want to travel. To understand. To . . . to choose." She stopped, then turned to me with her flame-complected eyes. "That is my dream, ke eperu. I want to choose."
     What could I say to that? I sighed and said, "Come here and rest until truedark ends. We have a long walk before the night closes, and you must not tire."
     She came back into the fullness of the firebright circle. I expected her to slump beside her pack, so when she dropped beside me I started. Moments later she had claimed my bruised thigh for a pillow, golden hair spilling into my lap. Her utter lack of self-consciousness astounded me. Her instant fall into sleep was another surprise. I almost reached to touch her gleaming cheek, the spray of glistening lashes fringing her closed eyes, marveling at her trust. She had saved me and claimed me, and as far as she was concerned I was hers.
     Come to it, I could not really dispute the rescue, nor the claim.
     The eperu do not sleep as the anadi and emodo do. We doze lightly, frequently, never quite relinquishing our vigilance. Given my battered body I would have had difficulty doze-dreaming, so with one hand tentatively on Dlane's shoulder and the other on my knee, I settled down to watch.

#

     Truedark's lifting found us again on our feet. Dlane seemed the better for her short nap, though rousing her had been difficult. They sleep as if dead, the anadi. It had frightened me badly to see her so still as I shook her.
     Blue starlight fell in beams through the sparse leaves of the gnarled trees that eked their survival in our unforgiving climate. I pushed aside a twisted branch for my smaller charge, listening for any followers. I heard only the wind and the soft whine of insects.
     "That way," I said, indicating a hole in the shrubs off the path we'd detoured onto. Dlane ducked through it, the leaves shivering at her passage. I glanced up and down the trail and then followed her. The closeness of the trees relieved many of my anxieties; I felt exposed on the paths.
     As she tried her best to place her feet where mine had been, Dlane asked, "Where are you leading me, Thenet?"
     The question was a good one; good enough to stop me. I looked over my shoulder at her. "I don't know," I replied, candid because she had again caught me off-guard. "My priority was to get you as far from town as possible. Then we could make a decision."
     "I suppose that'll have to do," she murmured. Small hands lit on my lower back and gently pushed. "Go on, then!" she teased. "We are not far enough, are we?"
     "No," I answered. "But we will have to go faster."
     A faint shiver coursed down her body, but she gestured her assent.
     So I led her faster. I am eperu; I find myself in the wild. With the forest alive with the scent of bruised leaves, of spicy sap and the blood of nature's cycles… with the creaks of branches tested by the wind and the rustle of animals sliding through the brush… with the cool against my skin and the dew in my hair I am alive and my awareness pushes all the way to the ends of my body, so that my fingers and toes tingle.
     Alas, for all the forest quickens me, it dulls my poor anadi. I forged a trail for her because she stumbled. The trees caught at her mane and tail as if suspicious of this disguised female; she tripped over roots, tangled her unfamiliar clothing in the shrub. Noises startled her. She made no protest, brave Dlane, but the alienness of it filed down her courage. By the time the edge of the sun lipped the horizon the overload had translated into weariness. I had resorted to holding her up, one arm around her slender waist. My spear-head I had racked at my spine, tied to my pack. I would find a haft for it soon.
     "Is it time to rest?" she said, her legs trembling.
     "Not quite yet," I said. "The heat of the day won't be upon us for a few more hours."
     "A few more hours!" Her voice slurred the words together.
     I slid my arm beneath her knees even as they knocked. It was a simple matter to pull her to my chest. She was light, so very light… the Brightness itself.
     Her lithe arms looped around my neck, and her head rested against me. I could feel her heart fluttering against my chest and I worried that she'd over-exerted herself… but other than her obvious fatigue she showed no signs of sickness. Her body grew slack against me as she fell like a stone into the sleep of a female, that deep dark we cannot plumb.
     Through the rising light I carried her against me like a mother a child. The comparison was strange, if apt. I was eperu; guardian, not mother. But this anadi, not child nor woman but some creature in-between, inspired so much strangeness. The sunlight dappled her skin, patterns upon patterns. We called this place Neked Pamari: 'the Kind Forest'. It was kind to Dlane's body… not that her body needed much kindness.
     I chose a tiny clearing to rest through the brunt of the day. Settling Dlane against a tree where the interwoven shadows of the leaves would fall on her soft skin, I stepped away and swept the edges for any signs of pursuit: no sounds, save those of the woods normal to the late morning. Satisfied, I looked around until I found a likely candidate for my spear and set to hewing it free.
	It was several hours later when I propped the spear against a tree and crouched beside the pack. Long ago, before my life had ended, I had packed flatcakes made with sponge cake, filled with wild honey and nuts and pressed flat. I scraped my teeth against a bar, softening it with my tongue as I watched the Brightness rise, occasionally dozing with my eyes open. The world gains a fey aspect when dreams distort the grass, the trees, the sky. Like a mist over reality, the dreams of eperu. I wondered what Dlane's were like.
	An hour before dusk she showed signs of waking. I observed the process, curious over how long it would take.  An hour and a half later I had my answer as she reached blearily for the water canteen. I hastily uncapped it and set it in her grasping hand.
	Dlane suckled at it and then groaned. "I am a thousand aches and pains," she said.
	"We can rest a while longer," I said.
	"No," she said, rubbing first one eye, then the other with the butt of her hand. "No, I will be fine."
	I disagreed, but there was no point in fighting with her when her body would convince her far better than my feeble, easily disregarded words. Instead I handed her one of the flatcakes. "Eat. It will give you energy."
	She gnawed obediently on the bar.
	"Later I'll hunt for us," I said.
	"Later?"
	I glanced at the descending sun. "After we're well away. Hunting requires time and would take me from your side. I’m not comfortable leaving you alone."
	"Because you think they'll find me? Or because you're afraid I can't keep myself safe?" Dlane asked, faint amusement in her lovely voice.
	I smiled, eyes half-lidding. "Some of both," I answered.
	She sighed and shook her head. "Let's go."
	"Not before you drink more," I said, touching her wrist just above the soft tuft of golden hair that adorned it. The skin flaked beneath my lean fingers. "You need the water. If I could find a stream I'd dunk you in it."
	"That would ruin my clothing," Dlane said primly.
	I laughed. "Your clothing," I said, shaking my head. "It would do you good to shed it. It slows you."
	"No," Dlane said. She pulled from the canteen again, then capped it and dropped the strap over her head. "Let's go."
	I sighed and rose. Pushing aside a branch I gestured mutely. With her head high, Dlane padded beneath my arm and entered the olive green and sandy gray embrace of the trees. I scuffed away the signs of our brief rest and then followed.
	Neked Pamari is a forest typical of the land around our town: a patchwork thing of densely packed trees interspersed with random clearings and sparse fields, it stretched almost two weeks to the north. The area around town was almost completely flat; nearer the northern mountains the land grew rumpled, but we lived too far from them to claim more than a few dimples. None of the trees grew tall, preferring to grow broad instead. The most common tree was a gnarled species that spiced the air with its pungent sap. This late in spring only a few types of flowers remained open, adding their subtle perfumes and their tiny splashes of soft white and pale orange to the dark greens.
	Dusk is a beautiful time to travel. The purple veil lent a lambent glow to the tiny flowers. Dlane very nearly wore a halo, and the twilight shadows played patterns across her complex skin. There were times it was so breathtakingly beautiful that my breath caught.
	"You do that a lot," she said.
	"I cannot help it," I answered. "You are lovely."
	"So are you," she replied blithely.
	I chuckled. "Do not sweeten it for me, ke anadi. I know very well that I may charitably be called unsightly."
	She stepped in front of me so abruptly I nearly tripped over her foot. As it was I found her chest against mine as she braced her spine with a gray trunk. I kept expecting the flat, hard body of an eperu from the clothing; the soft swelling curves put me off my guard.
	Her hand lifted and curled in my flat dark braid, pulling it over my shoulder. The yellow beads glittered as she rolled them in her fingertips. She tugged my hair and said, "I will hear none of that from you, ke eperu. You are mine, and I say you are beautiful."
	"Your wishes will not change reality, ke anadi," I said.
	Her lower eyelids crimped and a slow smile spread over her mouth. "Watch me," she said.
	I found a mild smile, as charmed by her determination as I was saddened by the futility of it. "We must go on."
	"Yes. But you are beautiful, Thenet. You have to know that."
	"I am an ugly but serviceable eperu who has for reasons inexplicable even to itself has decided to escort an equally obtuse female through the wilderness. Do not make of me more than I am."
	She laughed! She laughed at me, the crazy anadi. "We will see," is all she said, and slid around the trunk to walk on.
	I pressed the butt of my spear deep into the sandy earth and growled, but in the end I followed.
	Sometimes I led; sometimes she led. Always she came back to me. Thus we journeyed through Neked Pamari. Each evening she trekked alongside me as I cleared the tangled underbrush for her, and at truedark we stopped for an hour, forgoing the firebrights to avoid calling attention to ourselves. Then I carried her sleeping against my chest for the rest of the night and most of the morning.
	On the fourth day she woke in the dusk and straightened as if every bone in her body required a reminder of its proper place. I heard a few of them pop in her spine and winced.
	"I am tired even when I've just woken," she said, a frown dragging down her golden brows. She leaned over to massage her broad, beautiful feet - perfectly shaped, toes all a neat arc. "When will I be strong enough to walk as much as you can?"
	I reached over and pulled a leaf from her tail. The braid had already begun to grow tangled. I had judged that the niceties of grooming could wait until we were safely away from the town. "Ke anadi, I have been running since I was old enough to stand. You will not develop a lifetime's stamina in three days' travel… nor with an anadi's body."
	She glowered. "That again."
	"And always," I agreed.
	Dlane looked away with a scowl. In the space of a breath as I watched, her expression cleared like clouds parting over a brilliant sky. "Oh! What's that?"
	I followed her eyes as she rolled to her feet and approached a nearby tree. Flat against its trunk, a lithrekid aired its wings: vivid splashes of deep crimson and glowing blue interlaced with black and a sort of green-furred brown on roughly triangular panes each as large as a grown emodo's palm.
	"Is it alive?" she asked, hanging back from it.
	I rested a wrist on my knee. "It's a lithrekid. It's alive, but if you're gentle you should be able to touch it. They're somnolent in the dusk."
	"A lithrekid? Some kind of insect?" She extended one finger toward it, her hesitation barring her from touching it.
	"Actually an animal. Like us, they bear live young. They don't live very long, though."
	"The colors are so bright," she murmured, eyes wide. She finally allowed the pad of one gray finger to graze its furred wings. It didn't move. "It's furry!"
	I chuckled. "Yes. And the wings are far thicker than they look."
	"Oh! And it has… fingers? Arms?"
	"Fingers," I said. "It'll wake up later tonight to go hunting for insects."
	As I spoke a faint frown marred her lovely face. She stroked the wing gently. "Something…."
	"Ke anadi?"
	She turned to me slowly, one hand steadying herself against the trunk. "I've seen the colors before. In pins…."
	"And combs?" I asked. "Yes. If you kill them, the wing membranes harden and become brighter. They make good jewelry and decorations."
	Dlane didn't reply but her ears flattened against her skull. I shook my head and rose to my feet. "We should move on."
	"I guess so," she said softly.
	I handed her pack to her and picked up my spear. She spoke little that night as we traveled.

#

     On the sixth day I set her down tenderly in a deep fold in the earth and divested myself of both our packs and my spear. I drew my vest and blouse off as well. The thin cuts across my chest were beginning to close, the lips crusting over with white blood. No matter Dlane's protestations, it was true that I was ugly, but at very least my skin showed few scars.

     Satisfied that I was mending, I checked the perimeter of our glade and then slid into the brush. Without Dlane's fumble-footed determination I was free to move as eperu move: in silence, with barely the hiss of a leaf beneath my clawed feet to mark me.

     We were near a major path through the forest and my hunter's sense demanded that I survey it. The emodo Dlane and I had chased away a few nights hence would not simply stop searching for her: he had that look in his eye, the kind that brooked no understanding of Dlane's trespass. Not that I blamed him. The bushes drew long thin fingers over my bare back as I crept to the path's edge. The trees were my shield and my cape. Thus accoutered I approached the edge of my prior life.

     Just as I peered down the path voices cut through the still morning's air. I froze, eyes wide, and prayed to the Void that I had not come too close. With ears cocked and muscles trembling, I listened and tried not to sweat. I was a branch, nothing more.

     "They can't have gone far."

     "We've been searching for days."

     I was a branch and the leaves on it. The second speaker was eperu, its soft mezzoalto strange to my ears after days of only Dlane's mellifluous and unmistakably female soprano.

     "The forest is broad. She will get lost and come home."

     "You do not know her," this a male's voice, but not the emodo I'd met on the field. "Her House says if she can find a way, she will. We must take this quadrant of the forest. The other crews will search the western and southern faces."

     It was a scenario out of my worst doze-dreamings, that they were still searching so ardently.

     "Go further north and keep looking," the emodo said at last. "Another crew will follow. She is traveling dressed as eperu… and possibly with another eperu as companion."

     I stiffened.

     "Another eperu?"

     "One cast from House Mated. If you find it, it does not need to live."

     They were visible now: four eperu and one emodo. The four gestured their assent and jogged north up the road. The emodo watched them leave, then turned and headed back down the path.

     Holding my breath, I snaked out from beneath the leaves and slunk back toward the fold as swiftly and silently as my feet and hands would take me.

     But when I slid down into the shadows beneath the crest of the earth Dlane was still there, sleeping beneath the exposed roots of the flowering tree that surmounted the fold. I let out a shuddering sigh and reached with quivering fingers to touch her slender ankle and the fringe of golden hair that started there.

     Dlane did not move… like the lithrekid, she didn't even twitch to note my touch. I felt the hand of the Void travel over my back.

     Grimly I rose from my crouch and investigated the nearby bushes, plucking root and branch and flower here and there, allowing the task to distract me from the words repeating over and over in my mind: 'it does not need to live'. For someone who'd been resigned to its death only a few days ago I had an acutely intense desire to survive.

By the time Dlane woke I'd boiled a thick gray sludge on a tiny pot over an equally tiny fire.

     "What?" Her nose wrinkled. "Is that food?" she asked, stifling a yawn.

     "No," I answered curtly, "It's hair dye."

     A frown appeared on her face. "Hair dye?"

     "They know, ke anadi. They know you're still out here, and they're still looking."

     Her golden eyes widened. "How…"

     "I saw them on the path through Neked Pamari. There are at least three groups searching the forest." I almost didn't finish, but she deserved to know, "They're hemming us in. It will be difficult to get out of the trees if they decide to simply wait us out."

     "Surely they can't encircle the entire forest's edge!" Dlane said, sitting up. She gulped in a breath and composed her face to an admirable calm: no histrionics. I was relieved.

     "They may loose ñedsu," I said. "Given how hard they're searching it wouldn't surprise me."

     Her ears flagged. "Oh no," she said softly, pressing her palm to her mouth. Lifting her eyes to me, she said, "Thenet… please…."

     "Don't," I said, my voice sharper than I intended. I didn't like the way helplessness dragged at her shoulders, blurred her posture. The thought that most anadi looked that way normally flashed through my mind. "First we'll dye your mane and tail. They know you're dressed as eperu; no doubt they have a physical description too. They might hesitate if you don't look exactly as they were told you would."

     "Hesitate?" she said, staring into my pot.

     I smiled faintly. "Even a few seconds would give us longer to run."

     She shivered. "I didn't know," she said.

     "That they would hunt you?" I growled and said, "I told you, ke anadi."

     "I am just one female!"

     Leaning over, I slid my hand beneath her rumpled blouse and crooked a finger into the ring pierced through her navel slit. I tugged it and she started, one of her hands lighting on my wrist.

     "You are more than just a female," I said. "I would wager every shell I've ever earned you were their kaña."

     Dlane looked away.

     My smile took on a grim air. "You aren't contradicting me, ke anadi. Can it be the Jokkad so determined to defy the truth is unwilling to look at it?"

     Her chest leaped, but she did not pull back her lips - did not show signs of weeping. "I don't know if I was Ashoi's kaña," she replied. "But… it would not surprise me."

     "So, you expect them not to send out every eperu in the House to bring home their prize? The female whose marriage into another House would probably net them the money to run the House for another year?" I let go of the ring and cursed. "Aksha, Dlane! Foolishness!"

     Her voice trembled but she kept her fangs sheathed. "You will keep me safe," she said, low.

     "I am one eperu, and a damaged and dishonored one at that."

     "But you are mine," Dlane said, lifting her eyes again to mine. Her gaze had steadied, her chin raised. "We will manage."

     I stared at her. Slowly my anger faded and a sigh escaped my lips. Ears splaying, I returned my attention to the pot. "Let's dye your hair and move. We'll have to be quieter and faster."

     She was staring at me now. "Thenet."

     I brought the pot to her side and captured her tail in a hand. Scraping up a handful of the dye I let it dribble onto her hair. "Yes?"

     "What about you? Are they looking for you, too?"

     My hand betrayed me with its faint quiver. She leaned forward. "They are looking for you, aren't they?"

     "Only because I've abetted your escape," I answered, my voice low. "If it were me only, they would not have bothered."

     "But they are," Dlane said.

     "Don't worry, ke anadi," I said. My earring bumped against my head as my ears swept back. "They aren't interested in dragging me home."

     My fate hung between us… and despite my every wish, so did my desire to evade it. Clear-eyed female that she was, Dlane could hardly miss it. She spared me her pity, though. In silence she leaned over and cupped some of the dye and slathered it over her feet ruffs.

     Her hair and brows were the last to be painted. While I dug a hole for the remainder of the dye, Dlane stood and examined herself in the rapidly falling darkness. "I stink of flowers and bark," she said.

     "Better that than of female Jokkad," I answered. "It will give the ñedsu pause do they send them after us."

     "Are you sure they won't smell me a hundred paces away? I feel like a walking bush."

     I laughed. It felt strange after the blackness of the afternoon. When I'd heard the eperu and emodo so casually discussing my disposal I'd wondered if I would laugh again. "Come on, ke anadi. We should be long away from here by morning." I scuffed out the marks and handed her the lighter pack.

     "When will we reach the edge of the forest?" she asked wistfully. "I miss the sky."

     As if we would see the forest's edge in safety. "If we travel without pause, we may reach the northern edge in a week, a little less perhaps."

     "Then that's what we should do," she said.

     I glanced at her, pushing a vine out of my way. "Ke anadi, you can barely walk half a day without dropping out of consciousness and you want to start traveling without rest?"

     The Jokkad stared straight ahead as she strode forward, stretching her legs so far apart that her hips swung like a pendulum. Her brow had set over her flame-gold eyes. "It's not a question of what I can and can't do anymore. It's a question of what I must. Isn't it?" She smiled at me, a curving of lips just broad enough to banish most of her bleak mask. Most of it.

     "You'll kill yourself," I said. "You're not built to abuse your body so."

     "Then I'll die a free Jokkad," Dlane said, "Which is not so much - and a free anadi, which is a great deal."

     I stared at her rigid back, so strangely housed in the stained white blouse and partial vest. Then I sighed and walked in front of her, leading her down the easiest trails.

     We paused for truedark, but when we commenced our travels again afterward she forged on several hours past her usual wont. In late morning, I bore witness to an amazing betrayal. Walking before me, Dlane leaned forward in determination. Her shoulders had long since slumped with exhaustion, but she'd determined that she would carry herself on. One foot lifted, stretched toward the ground again. She placed her weight on it and it wobbled. When she lifted the other foot, the first simply collapsed. Like a limp doll dropped by an uninterested child, Dlane tumbled to the ground, her limbs splayed without grace or reason.

     I immediately ran to her, checked her pulse, rested the back of my hand to her forehead, her breast. She was not overly hot and her breathing recalled her deepest sleeps.

     "This may not work the way you want it to, ke anadi," I told her lax countenance. I lifted her to my chest and walked on. I did not halt until late in the afternoon.

#

     "Stop," I said.

     Dlane froze immediately. Two days later we'd traveled farther than I'd expected but not, apparently far enough. My canted ears strained the forest's noisy dusk and heard the faint chuffs of the hunting ñedsu, the beasts employed to track by scent what the Jokka cannot see to kill.

     "They brought the beasts," I whispered.

     Dlane's pupils contracted. "Oh, no, Thenet…."

     "Ssh," I said. A few minutes later, I said, "They're not far enough for my liking."

     "What are we going to do?"

     I glanced back the way we'd come; there was no profit in moving deeper into the woods. The ñedsu were slender and sure-footed and would find us anywhere on the ground.

     My eyes rose up the trunk of the tree beside her. "We climb," I said, grabbing her waist.

     "Climb?" Dlane said with a gasp as I swung her up toward the nearest branch. "But I don't know how to climb…."

     "Now is an excellent time to learn," I answered, deadpan. "Grab the branch and get onto it. I'll be up behind you."

     She scrabbled into the tree, leaves rustling. As she searched for her bearings I grabbed a handful of flowers and crushed them, sprinkling them over the ground near the roots… then I crouched down, muscles twitching in my thighs, and sprang straight up into the tree.

     Dlane squeaked in surprise as I manhandled myself up beside her. "There. The flowers should confuse them."

     "Are we going to hide here all night?" she said.

     "No… we're going to resume traveling," I answered, pointing to the north.

Her gaze followed my arm and she blinked a few times. "You want to climb from tree to tree?"

     "They're tangled together. It will be an ideal way to keep our scent off the ground," I said. Resettling my pack, I reached up to the next branch and pulled myself up. I offered her my hand.

     Dubious but trusting, she took it and let me haul her up after me. We repeated the routine until the branches supporting us became small enough our toes and toe-claws could wrap around them. Gently, I pushed apart the foliage and peered down at the forest floor.

     "Shouldn't we get out of this tree?" Dlane whispered, her tight grip on my hand betraying her nervousness. From the direction of her ears she too heard the chuffing of the nearby ñedsu. I pressed my free hand to her mouth to quiet her, felt her body go rigid against mine.

     Through the holes between the shimmering olive green leaves I saw them spill into the clearing beneath our tree: lithe, slender creatures as tall as my calves with thin, long legs and silvery scaled bodies. Their sleek heads looked like extensions of their ropy necks, wedge-shaped with a diamond pattern on the forehead. There were ten, milling in the dirt, nosing the flowers I'd crushed, sniffing and panting.

     Dlane's chest jumped and I pulled her closer to me, hand still over her mouth. I could feel her breath, moist and hot against my palm. My eyes did not leave the bodies of the beasts swarming beneath us, and as they sought our scent trail I counted heart-beats: one and a half beats of hers for each of mine, a syncopated pattern that heightened my anxiety.

     The ñedsu moaned, milling in confusion. Even as my heart finally began to match Dlane's in speed, they turned as one and bound back the way they'd come, wailing their frustration.

     A tiny whine escaped Dlane's mouth through my fingers. I let my hand open enough to free her lips, but did not release her chin, listening to make sure the ñedsu's masters weren't coming this way to see what had confounded their beasts.

     "Thenet," Dlane whispered, quivering against me.

     "Hush!" I hissed. I strained the wind: nothing but forest murmurs, trees exchanging caresses, the soft cooing calls of the birds regaining their courage as the breeze swept the scent of the predators away. The white ache in my chest vanished as I let the breath go, the one I hadn't even noticed holding. "They're not coming back. For now, at least."

     I never quite knew what to expect from my crazy anadi… but for her to bury her head in my shoulder, shivering violently, acting as normal anadi would… no, not that. I wondered how it was that she could flip my expectations so quickly. Hesitant, I slid my arms around her, tangling them in the clothing she wore so badly. "Hush, ke anadi. They did not find us this time."

     "I just want to be left alone," she said into my shoulder. Her mouth rested on my exposed clavicle, her cheek against the bunched fabric of my blouse collar. "Why won't they leave me alone?"

     "They want you home," I said, uncomfortable. I had held females before… but never eperu. And while Dlane was undeniably anadi, she wore clothing. It jarred. "They want you back."

     "They have no right to want me!" Dlane said against my skin. "I am my own. I have not given myself to them."

     She was making no sense. Giving yourself to other people? Could you do that? What did it mean to withhold yourself from others, anyway? "Dlane…."

     "It's not fair."

     "Life isn't, ba anadi."

     "No, Thenet," she said, drawing away from me, wary of her balance on the branch. "Jokka have made life that way. It isn't that way on its own." She turned her flame-bright eyes on me. "And I am not a child."

     I hadn't even realized I'd been calling her one: ba anadi, youngling female. A rueful smile hiked up one side of my mouth. "No, ke anadi. If you were, they wouldn't be looking so hard for you."

     "Let's get off this tree," Dlane said.

     "And into the next," I agreed. I scooted around the trunk. "This way. We need to head east, if we can."

     "East!" Dlane exclaimed. "Isn't that toward town?"

     I smiled grimly as I skirted the branch on the other side of the trunk, the stink of sap cloying in my nostrils as leaves rustled around me. "No, ke anadi… town is to the southeast."

     "That's close enough!"

     "They're expecting us to head away from town," I said. "We will confuse them by not going precisely where they expect."

     She skirted the trunk and joined me on the branch, chest heaving beneath her rumpled blouse. "But we'll still be going toward them. We'll lose time."

     "Time!" I sighed, reaching for a limb above me: it was attached to the neighboring tree, and became thick enough to support weight well before the one beneath me gave out. Would that we'd be so lucky in all our junctions. "What's your rush? Do you need to be someplace specific at a certain time?"

     Her ears flattened to her skull as she edged out behind me. "No," she said softly. "I just don't want to travel during summer."

     "Summer is a ways off," I said, even though it was only a few weeks away. The reminder of her body's fragility bothered me. "And even so, there are ways that anadi can travel in the heat." I stepped onto the next tree and turned, holding out a hand to her. "Come on," I said, noting how round her eyes had become. They quivered minutely in their sockets as she stared at me. "Come on," I said again. "I won't let you fall."

     She laughed nervously and took my hand. "See that you don't, please."

     Dlane almost lost her balance hopping to my branch. My arm shot around her waist and dragged her close as her feet scrabbled at the bark. Her grip was desperate, and I could hear her heart slamming through her chest against my side. The branch had ceased to bob when she finally said in a small voice, "I hate heights."

     "There will be greater ones when we cross the mountains to the Birthwell."

     A shudder rippled through her, but she disentangled herself from my grasp and edged up the branch. My tail flicked my ambivalence, but I followed her. She was strong, my anadi, but there were limits. I wasn't certain whether to be disappointed or relieved.

     We traveled thus, carefully, in a generally eastward direction until the dusk deepened too much for me to trust our senses. We Jokka are creatures of mostly sight, very highly developed sight; had I been alone I would have continued, for I trusted my vision implicitly, particularly with my hearing to bolster it. But I was not alone, and Dlane's fear and inexperience made her clumsy.

     I chose a black pew to spend the rest of the night, a nondescript tree in a cluster of others far from any glades or valleys. It had a splendid split in its trunk above the branches of several of its fellows, two massive black boles separating to form almost a cradle.

     "Here," I said, taking my pack off and hanging it on a stunted limb just above the crotch. I turned and helped her into the bowl, divesting her of her pack and hanging it as well. Dlane settled into the black pew's cradle and shivered.

     I touched her shoulder, straightened the folds of her blouse. "When I was young, my mother's sister used to brew tea of the black pew for me to help me relax."

     "You remember the female who raised you?" Dlane asked.

     I canted my head. "Vividly. She was kind and had a beautiful voice. She would sing me through my doze-dreams."

     Dlane curled up, back against the wood. "I never knew who my mother was. And even if I had, she probably would have had no mind left…." She slid her hand over her belly. I could almost sense her fingertips running over the golden ring through her navel. The eperu wear them in their ears, the emodo at the base of their spines, and the anadi at their navels - those rings, the ones that marked us as special.

     "You are safe here with me," I said, touching her knee. "It has been a difficult evening. Why don't you rest?"

     "I don't want to rest," she whispered. "I want to hold on to every moment I am aware."

     "No one is going to take you," I said. "Not tonight, at least." I glanced up and said, "I'm going to look at what's around. If you need me, cry out."

     With that, I scrambled up one of the branches forming the cradle, higher and higher toward the canopy of dark leaves. Pushing aside a few sprigs, I poked my head above the forest's roof. The relief of the open sky sent a few appreciative shudders down my back as I gulped in the cool air, free of the scent of resin and moving constantly in a breeze that ruffled the leaves around me. Locking my legs around the bough just beneath the canopy, I found my balance and let my body sway with the black pew, enjoying the wind.

     After a while such indulgences gave way to more practical concerns. I scanned the horizon, trying to triangulate our exact position. We hadn't traveled too far off our chosen course, perhaps half a day. My gaze drifted to the north, to the mountains that barred the path to the Birthwell, gray smudges nearly leeched of the sandy haze they wore in daylight. Even if we kept moving every day, we wouldn't make those crags by summer’s end. I wondered how I was going to keep Dlane safe from the heat. Particularly if she insisted on going clothed the entire way.

     A black moth settled on my hand, mistaking it for a leaf. I glanced uneasily at it, a velvety black with satiny black markings and black curlicues that had a distinctly purple cast. Its legs tickled. I thought briefly of eating it, then shook my head and cast it back into the sky. Better the honey bars than an insect, though we would run low on the bars soon enough.

     Climbing down I found Dlane in the cradle, sleeping an anadi's sleep. Sitting on a branch radiating from the bole of the tree, I sang her the lullaby in my quiet alto. I had forgotten the words, but such details were immaterial.

#

     "Did you read much?" she asked me as we made our perilous way across the roof of the forest the following afternoon. The sun's pale rays drilled through the spaces between the leaves, cutting glittering, eye-mazing patterns on our branches and the matted earth beneath.

     "Read?" I asked, perplexed. "Read what?" I leaned over and grabbed the limb of a neighboring tree, pulling it taut so Dlane could use it to cross.

     "Well, House histories. Tales. Lyricals. That sort of thing." Hesitantly, she slid her scintillating hand over the branch and hopped over, her feet splaying against the pebbly grey-brown bark.

     "Why would I want to do that?" I asked, bemused.

     "You do know how to read, don't you?" Dlane asked, looking back at me.

     "Of course I do. To leave notes, and read signs and waypost marks."

     Dlane's delicate nose wrinkled. "You've never gone to the clays?"

     I chuckled, braided tail swaying in amusement. "I never had the time to go to the public clays, and the private ones were too costly. How much spare shell do you think I had as an anadi-guardian in Mated?"

     "Surely enough to go to a reading once in a while!" Dlane said.

     "There were other things I needed to spend my salary on," I said. "New wood for my spears and staves. Clothing and medicaments. Ornaments for festivals…" I saw her incredulous stare and said, "Do you think Mated provided those things? They offered food and board, but those other things… you earned them. Who would want to wear clothing or hunt with a spear they did not choose themselves, anyway?"

     "I can't imagine such a thing," she said, more a muse than a comment to me. "Choosing everything for yourself."

     "Accustom yourself to it," I said dryly. "Your life ahead is nothing but choices."

     A grin seized her mouth as she reached the trunk. "I look forward to-oh!"

     Her gasp ran liquid through my body; in a breath I'd snatched my spear from its sheath on my back and stiffened, ears and eyes searching. I saw it only a few heart-beats later: one of the ñedsu at the base of our tree. When they lost the scent they hunted alone, and one piping ululation would bring the rest of the pack when that one found its quarry. The creature raised its blank eyes to mine, opening its mouth.

     I dropped to the ground and rammed my spear down its throat as the first note escaped its black lips. The bottom of its skull cracked as I thrust it down and pinned it to the earth. It flopped and twitched for a few minutes and then slumped.

     "Dlane… climb! Climb!"

     "Thenet!"

     "Climb, damn it!"

     With a squeak she leaped up onto the trunk and began shimmying awkwardly up toward the thickest blankets of leaves. I pulled my spear from the ñedsu's head with a grunt and glanced up with narrowed eyes. She wasn't visible, nor were the leaves ruffling.

     The second ñedsu bashed into my side as I stood there and I turned on it with a snarl, tossing it away with a hand. Three more burst from the knobby shrubs at the base of the tree. The first made the mistake of snuffing too long at the body of its fallen comrade; my spear parted its ribcage and spilled its organs across the sandy earth. The other two backed away from me and howled their eerie song. I leaped and scattered them, trying to break their concentration.

     The rest of the pack spilled out of the surrounding brush, overriding the moans of the first two with a symphony of disconcertingly harmonious snickers. I've always hated the growl of the ñedsu, like the laughter of the worst kind of empty and vicious anadi.

     I lifted my spear.

     "Hold!" A voice cried: emodo, too deep for even the largest of male-Turned neuters. Pushing aside a branch, the Jokkad appeared from behind his pack, two eperu at his side. He was well-shaped: scaled skin a respectable palette of crimsons with silver curlicues and a mane of silver and gray and black. His purple eyes matched the sash wrapped around his waist, securing the black trews to his thickly muscled body. The House pendant dangling from his neck did not match Ashoi or Mated's… perhaps he was of the house that had hoped to gain Dlane as a match from Ashoi.

     "Call off your beasts," I said. I prayed Dlane did not choose this moment to fall or squeal.

     "You're an arrogant one," he said, hands resting on his hips. "In case you had not noticed, ke eperu, you are not in a position to issue commands."

     "I have as much right to do so as any traveler unjustly detained," I replied, flattening my ears to accentuate my displeasure.

     "A traveler!" He laughed. "One who happens to fit the description of the rogue eperu who kidnapped the Ashoi anadi? Really."

     Whatever prompted my next comments would forever remain a mystery to me, but they popped from my mouth before I could stop them. "A rogue eperu? Kidnapping an anadi? Brightness, World and Void, what a story! What's going on? Who was it, do you know its name?"

     The male shifted, perplexed. "Your act won't fool us," he said, but there was uncertainty in his voice. The eperu at his shoulder exchanged confused glances.

     "What act? Tell me the story, already! I've never heard of such a thing! Was the anadi hurt? What would an eperu do with one of the anadi? Ke emodo, do not leave me in suspense! I will give you a honey bar just for the tale!"

     His frown was far more pronounced now. "I… you look just like it, though."

     "But where is the anadi?" one of the eperu behind him wondered.

     "With the eperu, I guess," I interjected, tail swaying in what I hoped was agitated curiosity. "Where did the kidnapping take place? Do you know where they were going? Perhaps," I paused and lowered my voice, "Perhaps they were in love."

     The two eperu behind the male jumped. "Surely not!" one of them said, eyeing me askance. The other shook its head with a delicate shiver.

     "If you were that eperu, you could have hidden her," the emodo said, pointing at me with very little conviction. The ñedsu milled around him, confused by his lack of confidence.

     "The tree, perhaps?" one of the eperu suggested.

     I chortled. "More evidence for an eperu-anadi love pair," I said, trying very hard to project an unseemly interest in the forbidden and unspeakable. "Anadi don't climb!"

     The leaves above my head chose that moment to rustle.

     I froze; the emodo froze… the eperu froze. Then the emodo lifted his hand. "Climb that-"

     A cloud of moths erupted from the branches, composed of individuals just like the one that had so lately investigated my hand. They fluttered to the ground, covering the two ñedsu corpses completely, so thickly that the bodies seemed to grow a writhing black carpet. I recalled my unease at the sight of the moth and remembered now the reasons: carrion eaters. I shuddered, then proffered in a small voice, "Sorry about those two."

     The emodo stared at them, then shook himself. "It happens." To the two eperu, he barked, "Move on!"

     As he turned away, I said, "Ke emodo? A honeybar for the tale?"

     "Another time, perhaps," he said. A whistle from his lips drew the pack away and they all melted into the dusk. As all signs of them withdrew from my listening ears, I crouched beside the corpses, twin meals for the cloud of moths that crawled and twined above their ruined bodies. To that fluttering mass, I whispered softly, "Thank you."

     "Thenet!"

     The hushed, urgent tone yanked my eyes upward, but it was the explosion of sound moments later that drew me to my feet in time to catch her. Her spine smacked against my forearms and Dlane rolled toward my chest as my knees flexed. My body recoiled like a giant cushion absorbing the shock of her, the weight of her, the beauty of her face through the mask of her fear.

     I registered her trembling before my body had straightened, cradled her to my chest.

     "I couldn't hold on any longer, just couldn't, ke eperu, oh Thenet you were wonderful-wonderful!" She buried her face against my breastbone as she quaked. The hot snakes of her tears slithered down the inside of my blouse. Warmed my chest and set fire to my skin, so thin over my ribs, the scales too tiny even to see.

     I looked over my shoulder; her fall hadn't even dislodged one of the moths. With a female in my arms and the black moths at my feet, I experienced a peculiar vertigo.

     "I am the World," I murmured softly.

     "What?" she asked. I looked into her eyes; they were flame-complected, but their slit pupils gave me back my reflection. Not the World, caught between Life and Death… just a Jokkad holding an exhausted and frightened anadi with an effluvious sack of bloodied meat at its feet.

     "That was too close for my liking," I said to her instead. "We should move on."

     "Yes," Dlane said, curling against my chest.

     Carefully I crouched and slung our bags and my spear over my shoulder, balancing her against a knee. By the time I rose her breathing had slowed. The anadi and emodo slept after stress. I wished briefly I could do the same.

     The afternoon had lost its brilliance during my encounter with the hunters, and a strange sense of peace buoyed my steps as I resumed our journey. A wind followed me, tangling my patterned long-cloth against my legs. Dlane's beaded tail swung alongside my knee, and her long, slow breaths warmed my throat.

     Luminous purple pieces of the sky shone between the black silhouettes of the trees as I picked my way over sandy slopes, claws digging deep into the soft soil. My general heading was northwesterly; for the nonce my fear of discovery had deserted me, leaving only more immediate concerns. Was Dlane well? Was I gripping her too hard? Would taking too great a step over that ditch dislodge the packs on my shoulder?

     By true nightfall I'd located a ravine closely guarded by the sentinels of tangled trees. The vines wrapping the branches together had a thick, dark scent enhanced by the green perfume of the fern I crushed beneath one foot as I stood on the bank. It occurred to me that I should be tired… but I was not. After kneeling to re-establish my hold on my sleeping anadi, I stood and followed the smell and sound of the running water. My ears tracked the soft splashes and bubbling of insects and their predators bounding across the wet pebbles.

     If I was correct, this ravine would broaden into a stream thick with fish once it left the forest. We might build a permanent camp there while we decided what to do. If Dlane truly wanted to travel to the Birthwell, we would need more supplies than we had now… and it was questionable whether she even had the stamina.

     I looked on her sleeping face and found her beautiful… but there was a touch of pity in my observation. The anadi are not meant for punishment, but as delicate ornaments to a Household. I wondered if it would be a kindness for me to turn around right now and deliver her back into the arms of Ashoi, where she would be safe, a precious treasure attended by faithful eperu whose charters were to see to her every need.

     But I did not turn.

     Truedark found my arms aching. I stopped and closed my useless eyes. The ravine beside me trickled; I could hear it and the wind through the trees. With caution my companion I took my first step, violating a directive old as my people: do not travel when you cannot see.

     But anadi didn't run away, either. And eperu did not protest when they were banished from their Houses to the arms of the Void.

     I walked. I banged my knees and shins, stumbled several times and stopped frequently to get my bearings… but I did not stop. Every danger sense I'd developed went off and didn't stop ringing; eyes open, eyes closed, it didn't matter. When the first ray of light pulled up the curtain of black from the world, my hungry eyes seized on it and a giddy rapture threatened my balance and my reason. I staggered to a stop and stared at it, shuddering.

     Dlane murmured in her sleep, distracting me. I squeezed her tightly and forced the shivers away. Pacing alongside the bank of the ravine, I found a thickset trunk with roots that lurched out of the earth to form a cage around the ground and over the water. Nestling into one of the hollows behind one of the tree's knees, I covered her with my arms, curled into a ball around her and dozed… with my eyes closed, to shut out the world and what I had just done.

     The gradual lightening of the veil behind one's eyes is easily ignored, so it was the abrupt shadow thrown over me that roused me the next morning well after dawn. Dlane was leaning over me, great golden eyes trained on my face in open concern.

     "I was worried!" she said. "You are usually awake before me."

     "Yes," I said. Fire spread over my back when I tried to move my arms. My thighs and calves were in similar shape and moving them apparently caused an appalling set of expressions to contort my face, for Dlane's eyes widened and one hand rose.

     "Thenet?"

     "It was a long night," I said with a grimace. I rolled awkwardly onto my knees, steadying myself against the tall root.

     Dlane watched skeptically as I tried not to groan. "Sit down."

     "We have to keep moving."

     "Sit down," she said again, knitting words to action as she pushed me back to the ground. Tired indeed I must be for an anadi to be able to do so! "Not that way. On your stomach."

     I complied with a grunt, stretching out parallel to the bank of the ravine and watching shafts of sunlight play on its rippled surface. After the horror of the utter darkness last night, just to see again was an unalloyed pleasure.

     Cloth dragged across my spine as Dlane straddled my back. As I opened my mouth to protest, her hands gripped my shoulders and pulled. A very undignified squeak escaped me instead. She didn't have very strong hands, but determination: that she had in plenty. And she didn't need strength when she could rest all of her weight on the balls of her palms. Her thumbs pushed down along the doubled ridge of my spine while I sank slowly into the earth, certain that my insides were oozing together.

     "You're very tight," she murmured.

     "Pardon?" Or I said something that sounded like that.

She must have understood because she continued, "Your back. I don't know if it's because you're over-worked or if you're normally that way." Her fingers softly skirted one of the bruises still healing from my expulsion from Mated. "You feel good, though."

     I gurgled something incoherent and she leaned forward. The insides of her thighs grew taut against my hips and her face appeared at my shoulder. "Thenet? Are you okay?"

     "I am… at your mercy," I said finally.

     She giggled. "That's good, I hope."

     "If you keep doing what you're doing, I'll be yours forever."

     "You already are," she said, satisfied, and returned to kneading my shoulders.

     I swallowed all the saliva collecting in my mouth and said, "We should move on soon."

     "Soon isn't immediately," Dlane said. "Are you always this tired in the morning?"

     I didn't say anything for a while, eyelids drooping as she pushed her fingers into a tight swath of muscle across my shoulder-blades. I wasn't sure whether to tell her about my experiment during truedark. Of all people, she would probably understand… but in the light of day I could hardly believe I'd done it. Traveling through truedark? Madness!

     "Having to fool the hunters made me far more tense than I thought," I said at last. "And it was harder going alongside the ravine… the ground is softer, more give."

     Dlane leaned back against my rump. "I didn't know there was a stream here."

     "We're going to follow it out of Neked Pamari. There'll be fish big enough to feed us once it clears the forest."

     "Won't they think of that?"

     "They?"

     "The searchers," she said. "Won't they assume we'll be following a ready source of water?"

     Sharp, my anadi. "There's more than one stream in the forest; this is the least friendly of the three. The others are clearer and wider."

     Dlane frowned. "Oh."

     Her weight on my rump exerted a pleasant pressure against my tail-plate bone, and she bobbed on it as I chuckled. "Don't sound so skeptical, ke anadi. This stream might be clotted, but it's clotted with edible weeds and crunchy insects we can eat if we're pressed for food."

     "Insects!"

     I laughed again. "Yes, insects. And now, ke anadi, we are resuming our travels!"

     "You can't go anywhere if I sit on you," Dlane said.

     I rolled over, spilling her to the ground. She squealed, torn between laughter and indignation. "Not fair!" she said, lying mussed on the sandy earth, sunlight winking off the red and orange beads in her braided hair. "You're stronger than I am!"

     "Of course," I said. "I am your eperu, aren't I?" Leaning down sent spears of pain up my back which I steadfastly ignored. Picking up the packs, I slung one over my shoulder and handed the other to her. "Come on."

     Dlane pulled the pack awkwardly over her dirty blouse, pausing to examine a small hole in the fabric with a tiny frown. "Is everything so fragile?"

     "Not if you treat it well," I answered. I pointed northwest, alongside the ravine. "That way."

     With a sigh, Dlane ducked under a branch and began walking through the dappled sunlight. My truedark adventure had skewed our walking pattern; we'd have to go more slowly as the day ripened, or the anadi would droop like a flower without water. I followed her, unsheathing my spear with protesting muscles and pushing aside the wet, ropy vines that clung to the trees overhanging the stream. Water was scarce; it was no wonder they grew so darkly fat nearby that they nearly strangled the branches that supported them.

     "Why are there no animals?" Dlane asked.

     "No animals?" One of my brows lifted. "They're everywhere, ke anadi. Just hiding from our large, clumsy footsteps. You can hear them running from us if you listen."

     Her lovely ears swiveled forward and back and she stepped more cautiously. Poor delicate female-she began to approximate the feral grace of an eperu that way, but she'd been anadi too long to take so easily to the wild. I cast my eyes to the branches, searching for one of the somnolent wingflutters-ah!

     "Look up," I said, and gently prodded a tree limb with the point of my spear.

     A flat, wedge-shaped head fell off the branch, eyes like cabochon opals sparkling as it nosed at my spear. A thread-thin tongue twinkled as it sipped our scent. Dlane gasped as it began raveling itself around the haft of the spear, spreading brilliant wings as it did so: stiff feathers of searing-hot blue and gold-green to match its skin, tipped with a pearlescent carmine red.

     "What is it?" she said, backing away with a hand at her throat.

     "A wingflutter… this kind is harmless. Some of them are poisonous, but they're hard to provoke during the day. If you hold them they can't seem to tell that you're not just another tree." I caressed its head as it slid down the haft and over my hand.

     "Are those real feathers?"

     "Yes… but hard. They can't fly as much as glide."

     Dlane took a step closer. "It's so bright. Like a head-piece I've seen on one of the emodo."

     "It might have been," I said. "They're easy to kill while somnolent." I unwrapped the flutter from my wrist before it could crawl any further up me and dropped it back on the branch.

And then I froze.

     The musty perfume of the wingflutter - it must have clogged my nose. The smell of the ñedsu struck me so hard I staggered.

     "Ke anadi, run!" I cried, but even as I said it they boiled from the bushes on both sides of the stream. I cursed myself seven times a fool for letting down my guard.

     Dlane let out a strangled cry and moved behind me, pressing her breast to my back and locking her arms around my waist. I cupped her rump with one hand, the other holding the spear and waiting for the master of the wailing beasts.

     He stepped out of the brush a few minutes later, a different Jokkad from the one I'd deceived. My mouth dried on seeing him, and Dlane's throat moved against my shoulder as she swallowed hard.

     He was simply beautiful. His skin looked like black glass, deep but with a sheen that gave its upper layers the illusion of transparency. The spirals across his skin were numerous and perfectly symmetrical, white and edged like frosted cuts in glass. They matched his mane and tail, a thunderous storm gray in all the shades of a darkening sky.

     His eyes were calm and the complex gray-blue of the head of his spear: as hard as well. No other Jokka accompanied him, but he hardly needed the support. He was without doubt the most feral-looking emodo I'd ever seen. His feet-claws had been sharpened, and like the eperu on the hunt he wore only an abbreviated long-cloth.

     He said nothing, only held out one hand to Dlane, who began quivering at my back like a wounded animal.

     "No."

     The word was mine. I had the presence of mind to wonder at the clarity of my voice.

     "You are a nothing, eperu. A dead thing walking. It is not for you to decide her fate."

     "It is as much for me to decide her fate as it is for you," I said. My grip on my spear tightened. "You will have to kill me before you take her."

     "I won't have to," he said. "She'll come to me. Won't you, ba anadi?"

     Still Dlane did not speak. I spoke for her. "She is not a child."

     "She is acting like one," the emodo said.

     My ears flattened. "Who are you? Have you no respect? Your name, at least, rude male!"

     He must have been amused by my insolence, given my untenable situation. I could have bested him as long as I kept out of his stronger arms, but not with twelve ñedsu ringing me. "I am Roika Edze-Emodo. You are Dlane Ashoi-Anadi and the dead-walking Thenet Mated-Eperu. Now that we are acquainted with one another, let us end this thing."

     "Stop saying that!" I said testily. "I am not dead, if you hadn't observed."

     "You will be if you interfere," Roika said. He canted his head. "I am not interested in you, det eperu. You are dead as far as our world is concerned - a Houseless being, useful to no one. It is the kaña I've come to retrieve."

     "Why do you care about her?"

     "Because Ashoi has said whoever can bring her back will win her. And I want her for my House. I want my babes in her womb."

     Dlane's trembling intensified. I could sense her revulsion in every shudder.

     "But most of all, I want to take the clothing off of her and return her to the world she belongs to. The one you have forfeited, det eperu."

     It was growing more difficult to ignore the snide title. I forced myself to focus on his eyes and said, "You might as well set the beasts on us now, ke emodo. We will not come with you."

     Roika strode to us. I stared at the prints he left behind in the soil: I could fit two of Dlane's strides in his, one and a half of my own. Within moments he was standing before us and I no longer needed to estimate his size. Taller than I was by a head and so thickly sinewed across his upper body he could have broken either of us with his corded wrists, he loomed, allowing only a bare finger's breadth between my ribcage and his stomach. My only thought was that Dlane would shatter trying to bear this behemoth's vibrant children.

     He had a curious look. "How can you possibly think to defy me?" he asked, honestly puzzled from the tilt of his ears. His eyes still held the hardness of metal. "You are two weak beings against me and my twelve hunters. You cannot possibly believe you can win against me. Would you honestly prefer death to your return to a proper life?"

     "May I remind you that my 'proper life' is actually death at the foot-claws of the emodo of Mated?" I asked, letting my lip curl back from my fangs.

     "I had not forgotten, eperu." At least he'd dropped the insulting prefix. "But I know about you. You were born to be guardian to this," he reached out and touched Dlane's chin over my shoulder. She shivered violently and I snarled as he continued, "How can you take her from her element? How can you allow her to risk her life this way? Have you gone mad?"

     "She made the choice, not I," I answered. "Now it is for me to keep her as safe as I can. Not to command her. It is never for the eperu to command!"

     "Except to keep the anadi and emodo safe. Do you forget yourself?"

     His preoccupation with me both confounded and inspired. If I could keep him talking long enough, I might be able to catch him off-guard. Steeling myself, I said, "No, ke emodo. But I am an eperu without allegiance now. I can no longer go home. If this anadi wants to run away, to guard her is all that's left to me."

     "You should have taken her home."

     "And then submitted myself to death," I said. I could sense Dlane's confusion warring with her fear: her quivers were intermittent now, interrupted by stillness and the tension of her taut muscles against my back.

     "Yes," said the emodo.

     Unaccountably I found myself looking away from him. "I had thought to," I admitted, ignoring Dlane's hiss. "But I do not want to die, ke emodo. And neither does she."

     He surprised me by taking my chin in his hand and pulling it back. "And if I offered you a place again?"

     "Why?" I challenged. "Why would you bother? I am a dead thing walking, as you said. You could easily wrest her from me and leave me to the ñedsu."

     Roika grinned. "I like you," he said, voice so deep it vibrated through his fingers to my jawbones. "You are afraid of me, but you are standing here all the same."

     "And if I took your offer?" I asked. I was certain I wasn't interested - reasonably certain, anyway - but if I could convince him otherwise….

     "Then I will take you both home. Your beautiful anadi will become the kaña-befidzu and care for my House while she bears my children… whom I expect will be as lovely and intelligent as she seems to be. And you… may be her guardian."

     I understood, then, that I was talking to the Head of House Edze… and I was completely unprepared for the swell of longing that set my heart to thready racing. To belong again! To be part of a Household! To know my place again, to not have to worry about Dlane's strange ideas….

     His fingers gently spread over my cheeks. My indecision was as obvious as the sunlight. I thought about bathing tubs in cool stone rooms. Of flavored ices I could spoon into Dlane's mouth and silken sheets I could lay out for her star-silvered bed.

     "Come with me," he said. His thumbs traced my cheekbones to my eyes, blocking the afternoon sun.

     I thought of my anadi, trapped in the harness, of blind eyes and a slack mouth, washed clean of language by the drool of madness.

     I shoved Dlane into the ravine. "Run! Swim!" Then I rocked back and kicked Roika in the stomach with an open foot, claws extended. It was like striking a rock. One of his hands grabbed my ankle, the other seized my throat. I dropped the spear and our packs to grab his hands. Behind me the uneven splashes of Dlane's feet receded as she stumbled away through the water.

     He whistled to the ñedsu, sending them wailing in pursuit, then slowly returned his gaze to me. "Why did you bother?" he asked, and there was more curiosity than anger in his rumble-deep bass. "You know she cannot outrun them. You wanted to come home with me. You wanted respectability. I could see the yearning in your eyes."

     A strange mix of shame and desire warred in me. I swallowed against his broad palm and said, "But it was not what she wanted, ke emodo. And I want what she wants."

     Roika laughed. I wanted to hurt him, to smite him… anything to make him stop. I wanted to bite him. So I did. My knee crumpled forward. My fangs punched deep into the tender scaled flesh at his shoulder. I tasted the white syrup of his blood. I sucked on it until the flesh came clean and then ripped back.

     Startled, the emodo loosened his grasp. I twisted away and jumped into the ravine. My feet scrabbled for purchase and then I was off, sprinting after Dlane and the hunting beasts. I had only a handful of minutes before Roika followed: that we bleed copiously from open wounds is a definite danger, but those wounds clot quickly if held together.

     Without spear, without packs, I raced after my anadi. Scooping up a rock as I splashed through the water, I pursued the wail-song of the hunting beasts until I could see the backs of the stragglers. The pebble whizzed from my hand and connected with the base of a bobbing skull. I snatched several more and stopped for a heartbeat. Everything had slowed: dust-motes in the sunlight glittered and fell with an aching languor. The Moment had retrieved me and I could walk through it like honey. Two more of the ñedsu fell and I was running again, only it felt as if I barely moved.

     The thick black tree hunched over the ravine shot to me and I fell in the water trying to stop fast enough to avoid it. Dlane hung in its topmost branches, surrounded on all sides by the hunters. They took no note of me… it was the anadi they had been set upon. Their single-minded dedication allowed me ample time to knock a few more down before the first realized the pack was under attack.

     Then they turned on me.

     "Thenet!" Dlane shrieked.

     The ñedsu and I… six of them and one of me. But I was in the Moment, and Roika had taken away all my fear. I let claws slide from the pockets in my finger tips, dug my feet claws deeper into the soil and snarled at them. Their gibbering moans rose in pitch to slavering wails and they rushed me.

     I jumped, straight up, onto the tree. The leaves hissed as my claws sank into the flesh of the branch. From there my collection of pebbles flew from my hand to their tiny eyes, or down the maw of open throats. It was almost laughable, how quickly the last tottered and slumped.

     Dlane whimpered. I shook myself from my fugue with difficulty and reached to her, unnerved by the swiftness of my hand. "Come on," I said, but my voice was hoarse. "He won't be long."

     "I thought you would leave me-"

     "You thought wrong," I said roughly. I dropped from the tree branch back into the ravine and held up my hands to catch her. For a moment she studied me, her eyes thinned to glittering golden slits. Then she dropped off the tree and into my arms. Our backs and bodies relieved of any burden, any aid, nevertheless we jogged down the stream without empty hands: holding the other's. The sunlight filtered through the leaves to dance merrily upon the sprays of water we splashed.

     "Will he follow us?"

     "I don't know," I said. "We must assume it."

     Her fingers tightened in mine. "He…."

     "Frightened you-"

     "-Tempted you."

     I glanced at her, then laughed. Quietly, too aware of the fragility of our safety. "It is not a sin to long for things, ke anadi."

     "No," she said after a moment, "And you made the right choice."

     Before I could reply to that, she finished, "You would make a bad wingflitter."

     I snorted. "We might be caught yet, ke anadi. Let us run!"

     And we did.

#

     By early nightfall Dlane was tripping on her own feet. I looped an arm around her waist and said, "Stop."

     She needed no other incentive and sagged against me. Lifting my head, I tasted the air, sampled the hum of the insects for interruptions: only the plash of tiny beetles in the water and the scent of sap and water and acid soil. In the layered shadows of the darkness I could discern no abnormal movements, only the passing of small creatures, the weaving of branches in the earth-spiced wind.

     "I think we're safe," I said quietly.

     "Good!"

     "For now," I finished.

     We stood silently, enveloped in the cool hand of the forest. Dlane gulped at the air, sounding alarmingly like she trying not to sob.

     "Ke anadi?"

     "Will it ever end?" she asked, the intonation that might have made it a question failing. "You've killed fourteen beasts and saved me from two searchers. How much longer can we be so lucky?"

     "This isn't luck, ke anadi," I said, pulling her into my arms and resuming our course down the stream. She did not resist.

     "And now without food or clothing or even your spear! How will we survive?"

     "As Jokka always have. Through skill and intelligence, and perhaps the will of the Trinity."

     "The Trinity," she said bitterly. "What Trinity? What gods?"

     "Hush, ke anadi, you're talking nonsense," I said. She could take many things from me, my anadi, but my faith in the Brightness, World and Void… that she would not have.

     Perhaps she sensed my rejection… whatever the case she rested against my chest without speaking. Her body was damp, and the soft hairs cloaking her feet had curled from the run. I found a rhythm and strode down the ravine, trying not to disturb the water.

     "Intelligence," Dlane murmured. "Always intelligence. If it is intelligence through which we survive, why do we destroy it in a third of our population?"

     I opened my mouth, then frowned. "We do not destroy intelligence, ke anadi."

     "Yes we do," Dlane said. "Breeding the anadi. It kills their minds."

     Exasperated, I asked, "And the alternative? Shall we get children on animals?"

     "In the end, that is exactly what we do," Dlane said. "And I would end up as intelligent and malleable as a ñedsu. Point me in a direction and give me a simple command, and wailing and moaning I follow."

     The image so revolted me I stumbled.

     "You see?"

     "What can I say?" I said. "What would you have us do? If we did not breed, we would grow old. There would be no laughter of the young to sustain us. The last of us would finally die and there would be no Jokka. The wind would chase clean the fields we tended, the towns we built, scour them from the earth, and it would be as if we never lived. What would the world be then?"

     "I don't know," Dlane said. "Would it matter? We would not be there to see it."

     "A world without Jokka!" I didn't stop because the motions had become mechanical, beyond my control. I walked because stopping, I would fall. "I cannot fathom it! Dlane… we are our race."

     "Why does it matter so much to you?" she asked, golden eyes rising to mine. I did not spare a glance for her; to do so would be to drown in the gold, to acknowledge her utter earnestness. To acknowledge that she could hold the death of our race in her mind with enough detachment to measure whether it was good or bad. "You will die, Thenet… and after that, you will know no more, or at least have no more concern with the Jokka."

     "How do you know?" I asked. "My death will not make me any less a Jokkad."

     "You'll be dead, Thenet. The only Jokku thing about you then will be your corpse, and even that will rot away and return to the earth," Dlane said.

     I almost dropped her.

     "When I die," I said, staring down at her, "I will be embraced by the World. It will help me to my feet and anoint me with the paint and long-cloth of the Earth and Wind. It will give me eyes of the Sky, so that I may hold the Brightness without blinking, and scales of stars that I may be held by the Void without shivering. With a spear I will hunt the unmaking spirits with all my comrades at my side, and make safe the World for the Jokka still living."

     Dlane said, "For all eternity."

     "For all eternity," I agreed.

     "How wearisome," Dlane said.

     My arms trembled. I stopped to draw a long breath of the cool air, then walked to the nearest tree. I pushed her toward it.

     She climbed onto the branch, eyes wide. "Thenet?"

     "Stay here," I said roughly. Turning my back on her, I began splashing down the way we'd come.

     "Thenet!"

     I didn't answer.

     Behind us, where we'd encountered Roika, I'd dropped my spear. Retrieving it would arm me again, and perhaps take my mind off the anger and fear twisting my stomach into knots. The sky had grown far darker but I barely noticed it, so intent on my own thoughts that I had no attention to spare for the world around me… a sad state for one of the eperu.

     Without Dlane to slow me, I easily traversed the distance: even in the stream I was silent, walking in the shallows where the clammy mud muffled my foot-falls. My body ached but I did not tire… and it was only when I'd drawn nigh to the place I'd dropped the spear that truedark surprised me utterly by falling.

     Slowly I bent down and stretched my hand over the ground, feeling its bumps and nubs, the torn flesh of grasses, the tickle of insects. Sliding from the stream bed onto my hands and knees, I let my fingers see for my eyes. The skin on my back tingled at every brush of the intermittent wind and I shivered. To be so horribly exposed in the utter darkness without vision - I hadn't expected to travel again during truedark, and I'd quickly blocked from my mind how terrifying it had been.

     My fingers scraped across the haft of my spear. I grabbed it, grateful for the feel of something familiar.

     A firebright skated over my back, tracing a thread of light through the air so intense my eyes watered. I shaded them as several more of the dancing insects flew from the trees toward a point not sixty paces distant. A knot of the firebrights collected over a rock there, casting a warm yellow glow on the face of a Jokkad….

     Of Roika.

     I drew back, the spear rattling against the ground.

     "Who's there?"

     He could not see me. The emodo could not see me! But I could see him. I drew myself to my feet and said, "No one worth your time, ke emodo."

     "Thenet!" he hissed, sitting up. "You are out there, in the dark?"

     "I am here, ke emodo," I said, and added cruelly, "And I am watching you."

     The flickering of the firebrights painted his face in broad swatches as he leaned back against the tree and folded his hands behind his head. "Watch then. I do not fear you."

     "You should," I said. "I am armed, and you would not see my approach. Nor hear it, unless I wanted you to."

     "But you will not hurt me." He sounded supremely unworried. It annoyed me. "Although I admit to curiosity. It is truedark. Jokka do not travel during truedark."

     "Ah, but I am a dead thing upright, remember, ke emodo?" I answered with asperity. The muscles of his midriff rippled as he breathed and caught the dance of the firebrights, reflecting them on glass-dark skin.

     He chuckled. "Ah, my words to my face, is that it. Perhaps I underestimated the power she has over you, ke eperu, if already you are unyoked enough to brave the darkness of the deepest hour."

     "What do you mean, unyoked?"

     "Don't you understand?" He smiled. "She is the new way through the forest, and I am the path. Which way are you walking, ke eperu? And how long will it be before the other calls you back? How long before you cannot decide which is best?"

     "You will not unnerve me with riddles," I said, my fingers drumming softly on the spear's handle. "I have my anadi and you do not, and that is the way it will remain."

     "Don't worry… you will come back to me. I don't think you're strong enough for the trail Dlane is making for you, ke eperu. No offense intended."

     "No offense taken," I said, though my ears had slicked to my head. "Who are you?"

     "Roika Ed-"

     "No," I interrupted, angered. "Who are you? You answer sometimes in riddles but literally when it suits you. You know too much. You are more than a hopeful suitor."

     He laughed again, a sound like rocks rolling against one another. "Ah! But perhaps your mind is indeed as swift as your feet, ke eperu. Very well. I am the Head of Household because I have no anadi."

     "You are a junior House," I said.

     Roika shook his maned head. "You are not listening, ke eperu; quite a failing in a hunter. I said I have no anadi."

     "No anadi? None? Not even your mother? I… I don't understand. You're not saying you are Broken?"

     "And if I am?"

     My vision thinned until I could see only him, and I would have staggered had it not been for my spear. I leaned against it and said, "There has not been a split of House within town in more ages than a mountain can count. I would have heard…."

     "If I'd been from your town, but I am not. I came here to start anew. Ashoi needs the money I can offer and the promise of a trade alliance. I need the legitimacy Ashoi's kaña will bestow on my outrageous head."

     It did not surprise me at all that he needed legitimacy if indeed he was Broken. Houses split with predictable regularity, based on allegiances and finances. But a House made by Break and not by Founding was unusual in the extreme. Only scandal or violence could Break a House, leaving me to wonder which had sent Roika a-field from his home turf. Afield from his home turf! Jokka did not often travel to other towns. I couldn’t even think of the names of any.

     "Is that all?" I asked warily.

     "I don't know," Roika answered. He grinned. "Is it?"

     "Somehow I don't think so."

     Roika showed his teeth. "You'd be right. But you're not ready to hear the rest of it yet, ke eperu. And because of that I will let you go."

     My heart tripped over itself. "Pardon, ke emodo?"

     "You heard me. Leave the forest. No one will stop you… I will see to that."

     Suspicion crashed over me, tightening my grip on the spear. "Why?"

     "Because neither you nor your anadi is ready. When you are, you will come to me. You will recognize in me the best of your choices."

     "Never," I said.

     He shook his head. "We shall see, shall we?"

     "Look well on me, ke emodo," I said haughtily, straightening even though I knew his eyes could not part the smothering folds of truedark. "For this is the last time you will see me."

     Said he only, "Time will decide."

     Angry at him, at Dlane, at the world for dropping the deep darks on me, for catching me unawares, I turned my back on him and strode away with a confidence that had more in common with foolishness than prudence. Luck kept me from falling when my foot slid on the muddy edge of the ravine, and my spear bit into the opposite bank in time to give me leverage to remain standing. Poised there with my feet teetering on the slippery bank and the greater part of my weight resting against the haft of the spear, I realized the precariousness of my senses… for though I could hear the noises of the woods, could feel the movement of the wind against my skin, I'd never really been trained to navigate by them alone. Without sight I was as able as Dlane - less so, because of my dangerous assumption of my own competence.

     I glanced over my shoulder, but the light from Roika's honey was obscured by the trees. I was alone again.

     Pushing myself back up, I very gently took the first steps into the ravine. Our dropped packs could not be far from here, but I hadn't the slightest idea where Dlane had dropped them. I could wait until truedark lifted to search for them… but if I could see, so could Roika. He'd said he would not take us, but I could not believe him. I had only his word against the certainty of his mysterious and perhaps disreputable past.

     The wind had a soft whisper but no rhythm to its irregular slough. The insects sometimes peeped and sometimes fell silent. I could hear no pattern. I felt disconnected.

     I pressed on. There was little I could do otherwise.

     Seeing Dlane later that morning re-acquainted me with the ire I'd thought had passed. Not even the signs of a night spent in terror could gentle my soul. She wanted my soul, did she? It already belonged to the legion of the World. My afterlife was too great a price to pay even for the strange extension she'd bought on my living.

     So I did not say anything to her, only helped her off the tree. Her body was wracked with shivers grossly magnified by the sensitivity truedark-traveling had elicited in my skin, my fingers. There was a dark smear of tears along the edges of her mouth and down her throat. She smelled like a terrified animal, all acrid oil. Her body was softness: slender curves, padded by a luxurious and sheltered life. I could barely feel the knob of her hip bone through her skin.

     I let her down onto her feet and began walking again. She followed, kicking up the water.

     We continued well into the afternoon. I paused to drink and to pull a few of the more palatable weeds off the edge of the ravine. My stomach rumbled but I ignored it.

     I was aware of Dlane stumbling doggedly beside me but I did not make allowances for her weaknesses. Did she wish to break the mold of the anadi? Did she wish to travel free as eperu do? Then let her do so.

     Thus I led her well into the evening. I made a concession to her need to sleep by stopping then even though doing so would force her into a sleeping mode alien to the anadi, who rested during the heat of the day. By dawn I was up again, pulling her roughly behind me. She did not protest.

     How she managed I cannot say. I wore anger as a shield and a blanket, and my lucid dreams when I dozed were violent, full of screaming ñedsu and emodo hunters with foaming mouths and poisoned spears.

     Slogging through the broadening stream in water that reached up to caress my calves, I squinted against the rays of bronze sunlight that shimmered through the translucent leaves. The trees had grown sparser and past their trunks I could catch glimpses of the open plains. An occasional fish rubbed as it swam past, a sure sign of the encroaching edge.

     A few steps later I stood in the sunlight, my shoulders thrown back. A perfect stillness descended at this final break in the canopy. Before me the vista of endless freedom stretched, framed only in a few delicate fronds. Brilliant were the bronze rays falling on the sparkling water.

     The silence shattered with a splash. Startled, I twisted around to find Dlane in the stream, one hand alone keeping her chest above the water. Having barely looked at her in the past days I abruptly saw the lines drawn beneath her weary eyes, the gracelessness of her sagging head. The water sloshed around me as I dropped to my knees next to her, pulling her up.

     "Dlane!" I paused, realized she was due far more respect than I'd been giving her lately and said, softer, "Ke anadi, my sorrow, I was cruel-"

     She clung to me weakly.

     "But you angered me."

     Her soaked fingers caught in my mane braid, pulled at the glass beads woven in it. "Thenet… I did not mean… there is just… if there are gods for me, then they have betrayed me by giving me this mind and then handing me an anadi's fate. Do you understand? There is nothing left for me. Nothing."

     Even her voice had lost its smooth and lovely timbre. I pulled her body out of the water and against my own. Her skin was radiating an alarming amount of heat, slick fire against my waist, my thighs. What had I done to her? Had I killed her? Void forfend! Brightness forgive! "Ke anadi, please, please be well. I should not have pushed you so far."

     "You were angry. You are not used to them. I have lived with them all my life, these terrible thoughts. They have driven me like whips, like a harness, they have stripped everything from me."

     "Hush!" I said, touching my finger to her mouth. "Hush. Save your strength. Don't tax your body with vile thoughts. Just rest here. I won't let any harm come to you…."

     A twitch of a sob almost freed a few tears from her teeth, but she was too tired, too dry inside. I held her curled to me like a shell and doused her hot forehead with the waters of the cool stream, gently brushed the sodden tendrils of hair from her beautiful cheeks.

     "Don't die," I whispered to her. "Not after what you have done. It's only dawn, and I don't know what to do with the day."

     Her ribcage rose and fell, too swiftly for my taste, too hot to my fingertips. I scooped her from the water and carried her as tenderly as any infant to the banks. There I divested her of her cold wet clothes and wiped her dry with my blouse. I held her and rocked her and sang her lullabies until the sun set.

#

     Through that insufferable night I remained there at the bank of the stream. Beneath the shade of a softly rustling white-leaf tree I sat, cradling Dlane in my arms. I braced her body between my legs, my hands curling her naked body to my dirty blouse.

     I stroked the dye, the beads from her hair as the thin, shallow breath of her body slipped from her mouth. My fingers untangled the braid from her tail and combed it until it felt soft to the touch, its bright gold muted by the blue and purple of the eve. The last glass ornament dropped from her mane with a soft thunk, catching a crescent of light in its amber depths as it rolled behind a clump of grayed grass.

     "Be as you are, ke anadi," I said softly to her. "For you are anadi… at least today."

     She did not hear me, for if she had she would have replied. But to have her nude at last, unfettered by the masks of pretense and wishes, relieved me even as it fueled my fears. No reasonable anadi would have been able to keep the pace I'd set.

     Her body was still too warm. I held it close and set my chin atop her head, staring into the dusky horizon. The wind pulled a few strands of flat black hair from my mane and blew them over my eyes, caressed the soft scales of my cheeks with a cool dry touch that coaxed a shiver from the base of my spine. My ears cupped the trickle-speech of the stream, but I could not understand.

     We were so close to freedom. Roika had guaranteed it. The plains were only a few steps away… but I did not move. My reason for motion rested in my embrace and while she slept I had no purpose.

     As the night layered its veil more and more heavily upon the world around me, I wondered at the strangeness of this cusp. What worth was a life that had no power? No direction?

     The minutes dragged. My own breathing became an enemy; I heard it, compared it to hers, tried to breathe more rapidly and prayed for her to slow. We would meet in the middle, I told her, but her eyelids didn't even flicker. I traced the fall of a golden lash down her cheeks by the thin glint it gathered as it tumbled.

     I closed my eyes. Our hair mingled, troubled my eyes. I ignored the itch inside my mouth. There was no time for tears. Or was there?

     In the dark, safe when safety least mattered, I was no one: a dead thing, waiting for the verdict, waiting for the Void to claim me, or the Brightness. So I closed my eyes and let my ears see for me, and the sour tang of thick sadness welled from my teeth and tainted my spit when I swallowed.

     Truedark came. I could sense it without even looking, for it obliterated the subtle play of the dark grays seen through my eyelids. With it came the silence of the world… only the few insects still waking, only the bravest hunters who knew the earth with claws and noses walking. I listened to the wind through the trees and the occasional fish bob to the water's surface. I listened to Dlane's breathing and licked my fangs over and over again, catching my tears before they could stain her naked flesh. My first hissing sob surprised me, but I did not have the strength to stop it.

     I laid my cheek against her head and wept the knot of pain and confusion tighter in my chest until it burned hotter than Dlane's sharp, thin ribs against my waist. Until the pressure was so great I thought I would die. Truedark is the Void's time. I waited for Him - I wanted Him.

     Take me, I cried. I cannot withstand this.

     The wind's chill hands on my fevered neck and shoulder sent shudders through my body. I welcomed this proxy, did not object to the cold fingers running toward my hidden chest. Be open, it seemed to say. But I could not with Dlane in my arms… and I could not give her up.

     The leaves ceased their murmurs. In the cool and utter dark I was spared… or condemned.

     When I opened my eyes, it was to the faintest smudges of gold on the horizon… and the brilliant pool of gold in her eyes. They were open, and I could see my haggard face clearly on their surfaces.

     "Dlane," I said, or tried. The hoarse rattle that my throat produced was only faintly like her name. I tried again. "Dlane…."

     "You did not abandon me," she said softly.

     "No," I said, trying to pull her closer, but we were crushed together. I tried to find words my throat would allow, but they did not appear. "No."

     Her mouth pressed against my throat, and parted lips freed her tongue to lap against my skin. My head hung, and I closed my eyes, accepting the kiss. One last shudder rolled up my aching spine and in its wake came a serene emptiness, flooding my abused spirit like a tide on a dry and cracked shore. Filling the cracks. Easing them. She licked the knot apart and the day came.

     "Now what?" I whispered.

     "Now anything," she answered. "That is the wonder of it."

 

 

Part 2

     I crouched, enveloped in the Moment. The heat of the afternoon sun prickled gems of cool sweat from my skin. Coiled tightly, my body sang: the muscles had already moved, they were only waiting for the world to catch up with them.

     My shadow covered the broad stream as I leaned forward, my extended claws gripping the rock near its center. My arm held the spear out-thrust from my body as I waited, my beaded mane hanging in front of my shoulder.

     As always, the first fish tentatively swam from the heat of the stream into the cool shadow I provided. Each tail swipe that propelled them had a languor so pronounced one wondered how they moved at all. I watched until a particularly fat one wandered into the optimal area. The twitch I sent through my body seemed slow to me, and my hips tilted backward, my arm swinging forward with an inevitability fashioned from my entire weight. The bright tooth pricked the surface of the water and came up flushed with pale blood.

     The Moment shattered when I grabbed its wriggling, slippery body and jerked it off the spearhead. A quick twist and it was dead.

     "Thenet?" her sleepy voice summoned me from my perch. I slid from over the stream, wiping my brow with the side of my arm.

     "You're awake early," I said, crouching beside her. "I've barely finished catching our dinner."

     She sighed and settled down on the bank beside me. "You are so good to me, Thenet. I don't know what I would have done without you."

     "Eaten very badly, if at all," I teased gently. The bottom of my long-cloth hung sodden by the stream and I wrung it out. I touched her chin with wet fingers. "You look so unhappy. It is a beautiful day, ke anadi. Why the sad mask?"

     Dlane shook her head. "It is nothing," she said. "I am restless, maybe. We've been here so long…."

     I strung the fish up with a tough vine and looped it over the haft of my spear. It had only been two weeks, but for my purposeful anadi, I could see how it might chafe. "Come," I said. "We can talk about it while I cook."

     She nodded, rubbing the edge of the blouse with her dry fingers. I'd given her my pants and shirt when we'd made our camp by the praying tree, both to return to her that strange sense of control over her destiny and to protect her more fragile skin from direct sunlight. I retained the patterned long-cloth, and occasionally the vest when I took cold… more out of comforting habit than need with the summer beginning.

     Together we walked to the praying tree, the only tree within several days walk along the banks. With its broad, flexible limbs and long, thin leaves, the hardy praying tree was barely troubled by winter or even the occasional wind-storm. Its smooth, yellow-gray trunk had an ageless elasticity that served it well in adversity, thus its name: for prayer makes of the soul a thing enduring, and faith lends a flexibility to the soul that lets it weather any inclemency. It seemed entirely appropriate to me that we had made our meager camp there, and that its blade-slender leaves provided our shifting shade in the warm breeze.

     I dropped the product of my afternoon's labors onto the ground beside the small fire pit and started laying the fire ground: drying the twigs and leaves of the praying tree offered a more palatable cooking fire than other alternatives, and the fire burned well if fed with some of the thicker weeds clustered around the banks of the stream. I built a fragrant, smoky fire to roast the fish on and set to cleaning them - something easier said than accomplished. My spear head was attached to the haft, rendering the metal blade useless for this sort of work; even more annoying, the blade edge had grown dull and I had no proper tools to hone it without mangling its shape. Even if I'd decided to break one of my glass ornaments for its edge it wouldn't be large enough for me to safely hold.

     In the end I contented myself with bone slivers scavenged off the corpses of the few herbivores that found enough sustenance on the scraggly back of the World to survive. The slivers were not large enough to make true bone knives of, but they sufficed once I wrapped them in fabric and fresh weeds. Good fortune had stocked the river with more of the skinned fish than the scaled ones, which meant I made a little less of a mess.

     As usual, Dlane watched me at my labors. I'd never offered to teach her these simple chores; she needed more sleep with so little shelter to keep her cool, and conscious she tended toward more somnolence than I'd seen in most anadi. I alternated between concern and actual fear for her safety, and took care to keep her covered. My long-cloth served as an adequate additional cover when strung over the branches of the praying tree on especially sunny days.

     "There is more I have to do than just stay here," she said, plucking at the tangled golden hair on her ankle. It had been quite a while since either of us had seen a comb. "Though you have made this pleasant, Thenet, it is time to leave."

     "Leave for what?" I asked, and held up a hand as she opened her mouth. "And don't tell me 'to journey to the Birthwell.' We're not even close to equipped for such a journey."

     "Can't we make what we need from the land and the animals?" Dlane asked.

     I stared at her incredulously. "We are Jokka, Dlane. We do not live without other Jokka. There's too much I don't know… I wouldn't even know where to begin to make a mobile town of two self-sufficient without even a sand-strip to keep a useful point on my spear."

     "We are not going back to town!" Dlane said, baring her teeth.

     I shook my head. "No. But there are more settlements than ours. We could travel to one of those, re-supply. Then we might have what we need to make a long journey."

     "Then others would see us," Dlane said. "They would wonder what a lone anadi was doing, traveling with a single eperu for escort. They would ask us what House we hailed from, and what town."

     "Probably," I said.

     She glanced at me. "They would not ask a single eperu those questions, would they?"

     I frowned, leaning back from my efforts to study her. Her skin was still cracking from the heat. She needed lotion - some of the scented, moisturizing kind made by the emodo from crushed leaves, flower petals and fruit flesh. Would that I had some to slather on her dry, tired face! "They would ask. A Jokkad traveling alone is still strange."

     "But fewer questions," Dlane said, pushing.

     I stuck the fish with the twig with a little more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary. "Ke anadi, you are asking me to leave you alone."

     "Yes."

     "For enough time to shop in town… no! For enough time for me to beg or work for enough shell to pay for supplies in town? I could not do such a thing, ke anadi. I will not leave you alone for so long. You can barely keep yourself cool and you're asking me to leave you to the wind and the animals and the hunters? Are you mad?"

     Dlane did not reply, letting her midriff down between her crossed legs and stretching her arms in front of her. I balanced the fish on their sticks over the fragrant fire and the first hints of their tantalizing aroma wafted toward my flared nostrils. I buried the entrails some distance from the camp; when I returned she hadn't moved.

     "Thenet," she murmured.

     I crouched before her, elbows resting on my pale knees.

     "It has been a long time since I've felt clean."

     I smiled wryly. Sand made a poor substitute for soap and did very little for mane and tail. Combs, shell and clothing were only the beginning of the things we'd lost in the packs. "You get used to it," I said.

     "Do you?" Dlane wondered. She rested her cheek against her arm and looked up at me. "I didn't think I would miss civilization."

     "It's no crime to want a little comfort in life," I said.

     "Isn't it?" She sighed. "Comfort breeds stagnation. It helps you forget things. It helps you lose perspective. When you no longer have hardship, you can't make comparisons. How can you be happy, when you've never had the chance to be sad?"

     I hunkered down beside her with a grunt and rubbed my shoulder. "That's nonsense."

     She moved behind me and her small, warm hands smoothed over my back. "Why?"

     I shivered as she pressed her thumbs against the knots beneath my shoulder-blades. "I don't know," I said. "Because… well, because you're saying that it's useless to try and eradicate suffering, because there would be no happiness. That doesn't make sense."

     "But happiness is stagnation," Dlane said.

     I shook my head. "I can't see it."

     "Well… growth is a kind of change, isn't it?"

     "Yes," I said, sensing the trap.

     "But growth is painful, isn't it?"

     "Sometimes," I said. "Only sometimes. Sometimes growth is joyous."

     Her hands gently fanned over my double-edged spine. "I don't know," she said, resting her face against my shoulder. The moist warmth of her breath tickled the hairs at the base of my neck. "I don't think you can really grow without pain, or at least effort. Joy is a different thing. Fecund anadi ripe with child are happy, are content. They are not joyful."

     "Aren't they?" I asked. "Children are a wondrous thing, ke anadi. Haven't you ever stopped to think about the process? From two people spring a third, not just half of each but a whole and different person, a unique person. Doesn't that strike you as somehow magical?"

     "A parasite, leeching the intelligence of its mother for itself? I find that sordid, Thenet."

     "Ke anadi!" I exclaimed. "Babies do not suck the minds from their mothers through their breasts or their wombs. That's…"

     "Horrifying?" she suggested.

     "A distortion," I said.

     Dlane did not reply. She worked her way down my back, kneading the base of my spine above my tail. My eyes rolled back beneath their lids.

     "Well, you will not have to worry about that, at least," I mumbled finally. "No one is interested in taking to House an anadi without a name or a family to negotiate with. So long as we don't return to our home, you will never be forced to bear any children."

     "Good," she said, punctuating that with an especially strong push against my tail base. When I twitched she said, "Did I hurt you?"

     I shook my head. "No… it just felt… strange."

     "Oh." She returned her attention to my neck and shoulders. Only the scent of the fish managed to distract me from her exquisite attention.

     "Let's eat," I said.

     She smiled and nodded.

     Later that night I sat with my back to the praying tree, counting the stars through the blade-thin leaves and listening to the wind's rustle and the stream playing over pebbles. The fire had died to rich red embers, buried in black soot, that gave off a rich perfume like the incense the keepers burn in the temples of the Trinity.

     Dlane padded back to me and sat beside me, so that I could sense her warmth. After a while, she said, "Thenet?"

     I glanced at her.

     "May I sleep against you?"

     Truth be known I'd missed sleeping with other Jokka. We tend to sleep in groups; the neuters in the biggest group beds and the fragile anadi and emodo in smaller ones. I paused, then nodded.

     She slid an arm over my chest, tracing the edge of my collar bone, then wiggled closer. The swell of her belly pressed against my hipbone and she rested her torso against my side. She was softer than the eperu I'd cuddled with. It felt strange to be sleep-curled with someone who wasn't eperu. Her breasts were heavy against my ribs.

     The cold metal of her navel ring slowly warmed against my hip until I ceased to notice it. I slipped an arm around her shoulders and held her close. It was not all too different from the times we'd sheltered in Neked Pamari.

     Her finger roused me from my reverie, tickle-tracing the spirals across my lower belly. I jumped. "Ke anadi!"

     She laughed. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to startle you. You just have such unusual patterns across your stomach. Here is a flower-opening… this is a leaf-from-stalk… this is another leaf-from-stalk but it's much larger." She walked the line of the spirals beneath my slit navel. "And finally an unopened seed! Like an ornate belt slung around your hips."

     "Oh, ke anadi!" I chuckled. "You make it sound so beautiful when the truth is that the markings are asymmetrical, of a horrible coloring, and far too crowded."

     She did not answer for so long I feared I had offended her. "Ke anadi?"

     "Oh, Thenet," she said. Her hand skated across my chest and settled, fingers dipping into the trough between collarbones. "Don't you have eyes of your own? Must you see everything through everyone else's?"

     "I don't understand," I said.

     "No… you don't, do you." Dlane's chest rose and fell in another, longer sigh… more resignation than sadness, I judged. Her skin in the twilight almost glowed with its richness. How could she think me beautiful, when all I did was reflect the wan light of the stars? And badly at that!

     She slept against me then, a dead weight against my side. I was accustomed to the restless motions of dozing eperu; we rearranged ourselves constantly, tangling our limbs and tails and manes more and more tightly as our few hours of dreaming progressed. To have someone simply slumped against me, unconscious, was frightening.

     I distracted myself by studying the world. At night you could see the wind: it bent the grasses, changing their colors from fulsome gray to a silvery hue touched with lilac. You could smell it as well, bringing stories of the places it had sojourned in the scent of the forest's dying leaves, or the spicy herbs of the broad, lonely plains. It was more comfortable to doze here. Very little could sneak up on us from such short scrub.

     Hesitant, I stroked Dlane's golden hair from her brow, watched drops of starlight glow on her lashes. And I dreamed my lucid dreams, gentler ones of incense and clean skin and of combing my anadi's hair until it spilled between my fingers like the perfumed water of the inner sanctums of the Houses we'd forsaken.

#

     When the motley collection of covered wagons appeared in the haze of the green dawn, I thought I was still dozing. A few hasty blinks assured me I was most certainly not. Heedless of Dlane's comfort, I slid from beneath her and rolled onto my feet to scramble for my dull spear.

     In the warm embrace of the summer dawn, I stood before my sleeping anadi, legs spread, arms open and spear held off the ground. The long-cloth dipped and touched my ankles occasionally in the breeze as I waited. Common sense suggested that no one would send a train of six wagons to recover two Jokka, but any stranger was a threat right now. We were too few and too weak.

     The squeak of wooden wheels and the whicker of the teams of slender rikka grew in volume as the peculiar procession approached. They were the strangest wagons I'd ever seen, with floors as tall as my waist and long, thin poles springing from the four corners. A rectangular frame hung on these poles, supporting pots, pans and bags off the outside edges and an amazing set of triangular sails of pale cloth. These sails could be set at any number of angles; currently each wagon had its sails pointed in some fashion toward the east, though each had its own particular way of arranging them to allow for the best shade.

     Accompanying this incredible train were several handful of visible Jokka, all eperu from what I could see. A pang of hunger twisted my heart, for they all looked so at ease, so confident, so healthy: hips dressed in embroidered long-cloths of misleading austerity, with spears and hair embellished both with decorations of glass and metal, tiny chiming sounds to match the bells woven into the harnesses of the rikka.

     The wagon train made an impressive racket: the bashing of the pots and pans hung from the wagon frames mingled with the sound of laughter and chatter, all in the familiar ranges of high tenor to high alto… ah, my comrades! I must look a poor and ragged thing to them.

     I thought they would travel straight past me, half-hoping that they wouldn't. The stragglers at the end of the train rolled to a halt beside the water; of course, the stream was the first source of water in the open after the forest.

     The driver on the first wagon pulled its reins to halt the team of rikka. "Hail the walker!"

     I cleared my throat and called back, "World hold you, traveler."

     The eperu climbed off the tall floor of the wagon and dropped lightly to the ground, its silvery-pale tail swinging. It was surprisingly lovely, a darker dun color across its skin with startling, thin spirals in black to match its lashes and its dark eyes. Strands of silvery-pale hair fell before its eyes and its mane, braided in purple and clear glass beads, and draped down a solid, well-formed chest. Its flared hips were sheathed in a tasteful long-cloth, tan and gray and beige with accents in black, purple, lilac.

     The eperu reached forward, rested fingers on my shoulders. "Cousin!" it said, frowning. "You look terrible! What have you been undergoing to be so in dismay?"

     I opened my mouth without knowing really what I would say… which is when the dun eperu looked over my shoulder. Its eyes widened appreciably. "Trinity… that's not an eperu, is it?"

     What could I say? "No, ke eperu."

     "Wearing clothing… do not say it… she is one of the unfortunates who Turned."

     My heart skipped once. Would that be a plausible explanation for these strange wayfarers? I took the chance. "Indeed. It was an ally in another House and when the Turning took it, its House was so impressed with its beauty that she was made the kaña."

     "What a horror story!" the eperu exclaimed. "To go from honored hunter and guardian to most valuable babe-maker? No wonder she fled."

     I nodded. "I did not want her to go alone… she does not take well to the new restrictions of the more fragile anadi constitution. She does not even like to be reminded of the entire situation."

     "I imagine," the eperu said. It pulled back and smiled at me. "I am Ilushet, master of this trading caravan. We are traveling north, if you would journey with us a while."

     "I am Thenet," I said, "And she is Dlane. I… I am honored, ke Ilushet!"

     Ilushet shook its head. "Enough of that. I am a cousin, and I understand your plight and what you gave up to flee." It lightly touched the heavy golden hoop hanging from my left ear, the one that signified that I had been recognized as a major source of House Mated's livelihood. "If you would travel with us, we will have you, and we will call you both cousins."

     I bowed my head. "Truth be known, cousin, I'd join you just for the chance to use a comb again."

     Ilushet laughed and squeezed my shoulder. "Good and good! You'll come with us, and you'll have the use of as many combs as you desire! Go wake up your companion and I will introduce you to my people."

     While the caravan-master turned to tend its beasts, I darted to Dlane's side and touched her cheek, her throat. She roused at my finger-whisper, dreams filming her golden eyes.

     "Ke anadi," I whispered.

     "Mmm," she replied, sleepily wrapping her arms around my neck. I let her pull me down so that my forehead rested against hers. The sweetish scent of her slumber was strong on her breath. "Thenet…."

     "I have found us something to do," I said with the faintest amusement in my voice.

     That pricked a few of the dreams apart and she struggled to sit up. "What?"

     "Look," I said, and she did, eyes widening.

     "What…?"

     "A caravan, heading north. They are traders, if I take their mien right. They've invited us to travel with them."

     "Do they… I'm dressed as eperu…."

     My voice dropped even further. "They think you changed. You still look young enough for the second Turning. I told them you were a comrade from another House, and they assume you fled because you could not handle being female."

     A tiny giggle flew from her mouth. "They are not far wrong, at least."

     "Shall we?" I asked. I had agreed to Ilushet's offer already, but without her approval it wouldn't matter.

     "Oh yes, Thenet!" Dlane said, hugging me. "Anything but sitting here, losing the days like a beach to the tide."

     I wondered if she had somehow seen a beach, then dismissed the thought and said, "Come and meet them, then!" I pulled her up and toward the wagon in the center where the caravan-master was drawing aside a curtain of dry reeds. "Ilushet…."

     The eperu turned, its hand being used to steady an anadi.

     She was not beautiful, the anadi; her spirals were as asymmetric as mine, if more evenly distributed. Her sooty-dark skin had not the many-layered depths of Dlane's, nor was she especially tall or graceful. But her rust-brown hair fell in luxuriously large curls over her rounded shoulders; her dark red eyes held the mysteries of wine and the cunning of poets; and her voluptuous body begged for children, for fruitful and dangerous pleasures. She exuded an earthiness, a fecundity, that simply stole my breath.

     Said Ilushet, "This is Magun Shethu-emodo. We have been tasked to escort her to Het Oihap, where she shall enter into House Farah and hopefully a fruitful trade alliance; one that will grant me and mine a joyful and profitable livelihood transporting the textiles and goods Shethu and Farah will exchange."

     I looked for and found the gold ring pierced through the long slit of her navel, threaded through with a chain of clear glass beads and smaller brass droplets, cleverly draped to accentuate her broad, inviting hips. Had this hungry female ever truly been male? I couldn't imagine her before her Change!

     "I did not know that marriages were made between Houses of different settlements," Dlane said. I could sense her trembling beside me and was not surprised; no one could stand within a few feet of this anadi and not be drawn.

     "You….," said Magun huskily, reaching out and touching Dlane's chin. "You could have the choice of any settlement on the World's Back."

     Dlane tilted her head. "And if none of them were good enough?"

     Magun laughed, a rising tone of utter delight. Even so her voice never touched Dlane's in range. Her voice had not lifted much from the young emodo's she must have had.

     Clearing its throat, Ilushet said, "I am glad to see the two of you get along, for no one travels with us who does not have a duty. Dlane, cousin, I would much appreciate your tending to Magun."

     "I would be honored," Dlane said as Magun ran fingers over the lapel of her blouse.

     "You wear clothing," Magun said.

     "I enjoy wearing clothing," Dlane replied.

     "Does it not make you over-hot?"

     "A little discomfort is good. It reminds you to enjoy a little pleasure when it comes along."

     Again the older female laughed. "Come with me, strange anadi. We will walk while it is still cool."

     The two drifted toward the bank of the stream, leaving me to stand beside a bemused Ilushet.

     "That went well," said the caravan-master.

     I chuckled. "Indeed."

     "So, now, cousin… what shall you do? Would you prefer guard, drive or scout duty?"

     My soul longed to range ahead, free to exercise my body to its fullest, to crouch and leap through the grasses, staring ahead with my keen vision. But to be so far afield from Dlane - "I will take guard duty. I don't know how to drive the rikka."

     "We'll change that," Ilushet said. "But for now, guard duty it is. The two eperu you and your companion will free I will assign to scouting. They have been yearning for it anyway."

     "Are trains like this frequent?" I asked finally, tearing my gaze from the two anadi with difficulty. "I had heard the occasional story that there were Jokka that lived free of towns, wandering the plains, but I'd thought them… well, mythical."

     Ilushet thumped its hard stomach with a fist. "I feel quite real, I assure you, cousin!" It chuckled. "But no, we are not 'free-living'. We are traders. We allow settlements to exchange goods they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. I am sure even your town saw a train or two a season. Or was your town so large it didn't need them?"

     I looked away.

     "I'm sorry. I understand you might not want to talk of the place." Ilushet gripped my shoulder with a hand. "You will bide with us for a while, and perhaps even enjoy it! Now come. I will give you that comb you were so desperate for, and something to replace that tattered excuse for a long-cloth you're wearing while we repair it."

#

     Thus we began our wandering. Ilushet was far more clever than I'd initially believed, for Dlane's task kept her in the wagon with Magun where the sun would not tax her and she could sleep as much as she needed: an elegant way to fulfill my request that no one discuss her 'original' sex, while also accommodating her frailties.

     I sat on the edge of the third wagon, its fragrant curtain of dried reeds clacking together as the platform swayed. It neared evening; about the time Ilushet usually stopped the train for the day. Though only a week had passed since we’d joined them, I’d discovered a routine and a pleasure to it: to be again with other people, particularly other eperu, was soothing.

     "It's so exciting," Dlane said, slipping through the curtains to join me on the edge. Above us the clay pots and leather pouches clicked together, their shadows a stark purple in the approaching sundown. "To be moving all the time."

     "Moving… yes," I chuckled softly and looked at her. The combs were kind to her golden hair, and the new, gauzy white blouse she'd been given was far nicer than anything I'd ever had. The bleached suede trews were shorter than the fashion I was accustomed to, laced with dove gray to match the decorative long-cloth strung over her belly to hide her own navel ring. "How is Magun?"

     "Well enough. She'll wake in half an hour or so, when the night is more fully advanced." Dlane grinned. "I don't know how she can sleep! It's so wondrous."

     "Today's plains are no different than yesterday's, and yesterdays look not much different from last week's, when we started this," I said, amused at her enthusiasm.

     "Oh, Thenet!" Dlane shook her head. "You need to learn to see."

     "I see just fine," I said. I resettled my spear in the grasp of my feet, its haft pressed between my knees, and returned to the carving I was attempting to decorate the head: a piece of bone from the thigh of the nibbler I'd caught for the caravan's soup bowl the first day. "I'm just happy that every day carries us farther away from discovery."

     Dlane shivered. "That too," she said softly. "Do you think he could find us?"

     "I don't know," I said, because I didn't, and "I don't think so," because she needed to hear it. "Is this the life you want, ke anadi?"

     "Traveling? Trading?" She looked puzzled. "I don't know the first thing about finances."

     A new voice interrupted us. "Certainly you do. The first lesson in finance is that you are worth more than a House makes in the life of a Jokkad." Magun parted the curtain with a long-handled brush and smiled at us both. "You know that already. You just don't think about it much."

     Dlane shivered. "I am not a token," she murmured.

     "No? You should be proud," Magun said. "Your friend beside you is not worth so much, though it bears the golden ring in its ear. We anadi are highly prized. It is far better than being emodo."

     "But bearing children…."

     "Oh, a necessary evil. There are compensations." Magun smiled, lids dropping to shade sunset-red eyes. "The pleasure is worth the pain."

     "Pleasure is a moment," Dlane said softly. "Pleasure is nothing. I want fulfillment."

     "What better way to gain it than to be anadi? If you are cunning enough, you can wallow on cool blankets with a whiteblush ice while all around you the people you command carry out your bidding and your House prospers. Never for you the breeding harnesses after your first child… if you watch your step."

     “You are speaking of running a House,” Dlane said, ears swiveling sideways.

     “A kaña-befidzu might as well do so,” Magun said. “Very certainly she controls the anadi of the House. Who controls the children, controls the House.”

     I glanced at Magun, sprawled across the green and taupe pillows. With a lush hip cocked in the air she presented an air of utter, sensual indifference. But her exposed foot, each toe still articulated like an emodo's and bearing the exquisitely mobile thumb-claw of a male, was slowly curling into a fist and opening again. As if it could feel the throats of prostrate Jokka. I clenched my teeth and shaved another splintery piece off the bone.

     Dlane twisted to look at Magun. There was a smile in her voice as she answered, "I want a simpler life."

     "The simplest life is in the harness, little anadi. A few turns in it and I guarantee you won't ever worry again."

     Dlane's ears flattened to her skull and the wagon rocked through eight more turns of the wheels: each one had a seam that produced a slight bump. I'd long since learned to let my hips move with the wagon and my carving was completely unaffected by the motion. Affected by my lack of skill, definitely, but not by the wagon's motion.

     On that eighth bump, though, Dlane spoke. "Simple and stupid are not the same thing."

      Magun yawned. "Yes, they are. You turn away from power. Why? You would wield it well. You seem smart enough."

     "Why do intelligent people have to want power?" Dlane asked. "What good is power over other people? Power over yourself is more interesting."

     I glanced at Dlane, confused; nor was I alone in that, for Magun rolled onto her belly and leveled a full stare on my anadi, her brows eloquent in conveying her skepticism.

     "It's true," Dlane said only.

     The descending twilight hid my face from her. Soon the eperu would light the lamps. I listened carefully, though, ears tilted toward them.

     "Power over oneself… what a useless desire! You are born with it," Magun said.

     "Hardly!" Dlane said, her voice stiffening with something between disgust and… anger? Contempt? "To master yourself you must know yourself. Too many fail to turn their eyes on themselves and honestly assess what they see. If they can see at all."

     I blushed, unnoticed.

     "Does it matter why you want something? When you want it? Getting it is the thing." Magun sounded less threatened and more intrigued. What a peculiar one she was!

     Dlane sighed. "Oh. It is so much more than just to want a thing."

     "There are things that everyone wants, things it is natural to want." That was my voice. I was speaking. What was I thinking? This was a conversation for anadi, for cold pools sprinkled with the essence of waterblooms, for the languor of the heated evenings, not for the eperu so rooted in concrete realities. So used to ground beneath their feet and spears in their hands…. "To be useful. To be healthy. To be safe. To be loved."

     Magun snorted. "Your eperu is naïve, anadi. It believes in love."

     "My eperu is a person in its own right, Magun," Dlane replied softly. "You will address it instead of treating it like an inanimate object."

     "Love is a fantasy," Magun said, to both of us but looking at me. "And even if it were real, it would be a nuisance."

     "I believe there is love," Dlane said.

     Magun laughed. "You probably believe in love between sexes, don’t you. Please, don't be ridiculous."

     "I wouldn't go so far," Dlane said. "But love between anadi and anadi? Emodo and emodo? Eperu and eperu? I believe in that."

     "Eperu do not love other eperu," I said.

     There was a silence broken only by the thump of the wheels turning and the click-clack of the clay pots, the reed curtain. Both females were watching me so intently that my fingers trembled. The knife slipped and I nicked my thumb: a tiny hole, but I popped it in my mouth and pressed my tongue to it. The blood was sweet.

     When the taste faded, they were still regarding me. My ears twitched against my head. "Well, they don't," I said defensively. "We may be companions to one another. Comrades. Friends accustomed to depending on one another, or cousins or teachers, students or elders. We may feel affection. Concern. But love? What is that? That is a breeder-thing."

     "It has nothing to do with breeding," Dlane said. "In fact, it is everything that opposes breeding. Opposes stupidity and violence and casual acquaintance, opposes the use of others, the parasitic and sexual use of others, the trading and the buying and the selling of people into Houses and harnesses and parenthood. Love is a choice. All the rest of it," she waved a hand, "all the rest of it is chains."

     There was little that could be said to that.

     The cessation of the wagon's sway was startling. I put the bone carving on the platform's edge and hopped down, turning to help Dlane after me. I could feel her heart hammering through her clothes. After I let her go I could feel it fluttering on my hands still, like the memory of a wound.

     Into the purple twilight I padded in search of Ilushet. The caravan-master was lighting the lantern on its wagon, hanging it off one of the protruding frame poles.

     "Good even, cousin!" it said.

     I smiled, though the melancholy and faint discomfort of the conversation hadn't left me yet. "Yes, Ilushet."

     "Do you smell it on the wind?"

     I lifted my head and snuffed, but the scent was too uncluttered. The forest, the hills - those places I knew. "I don't," I said. "What's coming?"

     "Rain," Ilushet said. "Another day or so, perhaps, and we will have a storm. You can smell the water a week away. Comes stealthy and thin at first, but when it's about to pour on you it'll be as subtle as a blow."

     "Rain!" I said. "I haven't felt rain on my body in… well many lights. Since I was a child."

     "Then you're past due for the experience again," Ilushet said, laughing. "Rain is infrequent. It should be enjoyed."

     I took the lantern it handed me, the cool glass sucking the heat from my palms and with it the ghostly echo of Dlane’s racing heart.

     "Go, light the camp," Ilushet said gently. "The work will take that glazed look from your eyes."

     "I…."

     "Oh, I saw you talking with the anadi, cousin. They are not like us. Hear their talk with one ear and you'll do better."

     "If you don't listen, how can you understand?" I asked.

     Ilushet shrugged, a fluid motion that rippled across its lovely body in the deep amber glow of the lantern at its shoulder. "There are some things that cannot be understood, cousin. One should wonder why one even tries. We are as we are, and they are as they are, and we are all as the gods made us. What more is there to know?"

     I did not reply. The lantern I left above the developing campsite, shedding light on the eperu who nodded to me as it dug the smoke pit. I sought Dlane and found her seated beside the wheel of the wagon, resting her thin shoulder against it. I crouched beside her. "Ke anadi?"

     "I am fine," she said, brushing my knee with warm fingers. "Just a little tired. I may sleep until supper."

     "Do that," I said, beginning to unfold.

     "Thenet…."

     I paused.

     "Do not listen to any of them. Don't even listen to me, except for this: your mind is your own. Your eyes, too."

     "I know," I said, puzzled.

     "Do you?"

     My frustration spilled over. My spear scraped across the top of the platform as I grabbed it and my little piece of bone. Eschewing the company and the light of the train, I stalked into the falling violet night. I sat in the middle of the sharp-scented grasses, took my borrowed knife and resumed carving with a little more violence than was strictly useful.

     It was too much, all of a sudden: to have Dlane's crazed theories contrasted against Magun's so deviously anadi way of thinking, a way of thinking that was not discouraged in our society if not quite condoned… on top of this strange way of living, itinerant and footfree, with only the layered sails between your body and the sky… there were obviously many more ways to live than I'd been taught, and when confronted with all these glorious, bewildering choices I only wanted to go home.

     My teeth itched, but I refused to cry. With knotted brow I stabbed at my bone ornament and straight through it, divesting it of half its length and almost divesting myself of a finger. I threw knife and bone away and pressed my hands to my mouth. I would not weep. I refused to weep even out of sight of the others; even if they didn't smell it on me, the sky would know, and I would know.

     How utterly alienated I had become from normal Jokka… even Jokka from other towns and customs. How apart I was, exiled from House and alive, guardian to an anadi with the brain of a goddess. Perhaps I was the walking dead, as Roika had said. Perhaps that was why as soothing as the company of the other eperu were, I couldn't find a way to fit myself into their delicate community. Or perhaps it was a strong community. Perhaps it was only I who made them delicate. Dlane's strangeness had made me a spear with a hard, sharp tooth. She wielded me, even when she was not beside me.

     But it was the life I'd been given, and better than none at all. Wasn't it?

     I hunted through the dark for my discarded knife and carving, spreading my fingers through the grass and searching with vision still clear in starlight. Before long I was seated again in the darkness, the summer’s hot wind smoothing my flat-black hair from my forehead as I turned the bone over and over in my hands. I tried to conceive a new form for it, one that made use of its fragmentary rim. After studying it, I decided that its ragged edge could in fact be its essential element. Plying the knife with more sensitivity showed me that bone could respond, if treated carefully. If caressed. So I caressed it with the knife, and it responded. I shaped it there in the darkness and the quiet.

     How much time I lost I cannot even guess, but eventually I realized I could no longer proceed without finer tools. Reluctantly I straightened, the bones in my back threatening to snap in their displeasure. I rubbed the base of my spine to placate them, gazing at the spangled skies with their stars all a-glitter on impenetrable black. When had it become so late? And my carving wasn't even half-done yet. I'd mangled so much of it with my earlier attempts.

     With a sigh, I rolled onto my feet and sought the camp again.

     "Ilushet," I called, seeing it near the outermost wagon.

     It stopped and looked my way as I jogged to it.

     "Do you have tools for working bone? Smaller ones than a knife."

     "Getting complicated, I see," Ilushet said with a chuckle. "Come then. I have a few things in the chest that might work."

     I tagged on its heels back to the head of the line. Together we pulled back the high floor of its wagon: really just a cover for the hollow hold beneath. The other wagons carried cargo in theirs, fabrics and exotic spices or rare curios to sell. Ilushet's carried items held in common trust for the people of the train and supplies, food, water.

     Ilushet hopped into the bay and opened one of the chests, rooting through it. "Should be something suitable here. Some of us do carve on the longer journeys."

     "This one isn't long?"

     "Oh, no. There's a nice cluster of towns between here and our wintering spot. It's the spring-time journey to the southern towns that takes a long time. There's a stretch of barren nothingness that's enough to drive a person mad."

     I watched it unpack, settling each bundle carefully aside before continuing its search. On impulse, I asked, "Ilushet, do we love?"

     The eperu turned to me, the box in its hands forgotten. "Now I know you have been speaking too long to anadi, cousin. Love! A truedark story for fanciful emodo and anadi."

     I frowned. "But it's there."

     "Is it?" Ilushet shrugged. "I personally find the possibility unlikely. Have you ever seen love?"

     I opened my mouth to answer, then frowned. "Ilushet, I don't even know what it is."

     The caravan master handed me the box. "Here." When I stared at it blankly, it said with gentle amusement, "The tools you requested."

     "Oh! Thank you. But cousin - "

     "No more, dear Thenet. Too many stories and the darkness will strike you blind."

     "Jokka do not travel during truedark," I murmured.

     "Just so," Ilushet said, replacing all the bundles it'd excavated from the trunk and closing the floor of the wagon. "And it is bordering on that time now. Go back to your place and doze, cousin. Tomorrow is another day."

     What else could tomorrow be, I wondered?

     I returned to my post and glanced onto the platform: Magun and Dlane were sleeping in a nest of pillows, ribcages rising and falling in that obscenely deep slumber. The eddies of Dlane's golden hair had ensnared the gleaming of the lantern, and each tress seemed to sparkle as if lit from within. I reached to touch her but did not… the golden glow surrounding her barred me. They were anadi, sleeping. Eperu did not sleep with anadi.

     I jumped lightly onto the wagon's floor and climbed on top of the driver's block at the fore. Curled there with my knees to my chest and the spear propped at my side, I let my eyes droop half-closed and welcomed the whisper-webs of dreams.

#

     In the following days the skies darkened so that even a novice to the plains could see the coming storm. On the sixth day, I woke to find the burgeoning clouds so thick that the warm fog they sent before them almost merged with the constructs of my dozing. Several minutes passed before I convinced myself I'd really woken and even more slipped through my fingers before I was certain the slate gray murk was actually hiding a morning well advanced past dawn.

     Picking up my spear, I hopped off the wagon block and joined the shadowed figures near the smoke pit.

     "It will be thicker than tears soon," Benih was saying.

     "Another hour at least," another opined.

     "Will we actually travel in this?" I asked as I joined them.

     "That's up to the caravan-master," said Benih.

     "And the caravan-master is here," Ilushet said, stepping out of the fog. The graceful fan of its forelock had dissolved into a wet straggle of hair on its brow which it occasionally scraped away. "It will not rain for a few hours at least. We will travel for several hours and then stop when visibility grows poor."

     "Visibility?" I asked, startled. "We don't have problems seeing. Even in this. Unless it'll grow as bad as truedark…?"

     "No, no," Ilushet said with a quiet laugh. "But the rikka hate it. They will not walk when they cannot see well."

     "Oh," I said, glancing at the tethered beasts with their slender limbs.

     "So? What are you standing here for?" Ilushet said. It waved. "We go!"

     "We go!" the other eperu echoed, with a few laughs scattered off the heavy fog. They dispersed to their driving blocks and guard and scout positions. I did likewise, checking on the two anadi: sleeping soundly, not even seeming to notice the water they drew in through their noses. The humidity lent a strange sheen to Dlane's cheek and a limpness to her hair that disturbed me, though I couldn't decide why.

     I returned to my place alongside the wagon and some distance from it, spear loose in my hand. Not long after the wagons shuddered into motion, and curls of wet fog broke as the rikka forged through them. The visibility was no worse than at false dawn, or dusk; more interesting to me by far was the sensation of the wetness on my skin, my scales, dragging at my mane and tail. I'd not been out in this kind of rain since childhood, though as an adult I'd often hunted through the frequent mistings that spring delivers as a paltry offering to the forest. Storms that brought such thick runners were rare in the extreme, an occasion to hide inside. I suppressed a laugh when I observed that the fog dulled the other eperu's nicer hides to the same flat ugliness as my own. And so we are all equal beneath the thunder.

     And what thunder! Not the indistinct sound I was accustomed to, muffled by a het’s heavy roofs. It had its own timbre, and changed moods: the first few were like soft growls extended from the long throat of the cloud bank, barely audible. My ears flicked nervously to catch these warnings, as it would for an animal I'd hunted to a stand-off.

     But the animal's belly was as broad as the sky.

     The wheels of the caravan provided a thin, creaking counterpoint to the rumbling storm. I strode alongside. At some point the slap of my braided tail against my calves became more of a squelch, and a few drops of warm water rolled down my chest and back. This at least was familiar: our mistings in the spring had the same effect. The water didn't fall out of the air as much as bead onto everything beneath it.

     It was a quiet morning. Usually I managed to catch a glimpse of at least a few of the plains-dwellers: tiny succulent nibblers fleeing the groaning behemoths of our wagons, or the less frequent drekdoks bounding through the grasses on fragile legs. Birds I saw more often: feathers in muted colors for the deepening summer spread against the brilliant sky. The few that flew overhead today looked eye-wateringly bright against the muddy clouds.

     Several hours passed as the caravan tunneled through the fog. At approximately noon we stopped; approximately, for none of us could pierce the dark clouds to see the sun. Rivulets of water raced down my spine and my hair clung stickily to my neck and back and legs. I felt as if I was breathing water. Pushing my way to the front of the line I called, "Is it ever going to fall?"

     "Soon enough," Ilushet said. "Help me with the rikka."

     We unbuckled the harnesses off the skittish beasts and I led them to the makeshift shelter the other eperu were erecting. When I'd handed the last of them to the eperu beneath the canopy of the hastily built tent, I said, "What of us?"

     "A little rain won't hurt us," the caravan-master said.

     Wouldn't hurt us, certainly! Nevertheless I padded back through the mist to my wagon, squinting past sodden eyelashes. Climbing onto the platform, I glanced at the two females, still sleeping. I wondered if they were dreaming of hot pools.

     The sails that formed the roof of the wagon had grown far heavier in the intervening hours. I grunted as I dragged them down and tried to arrange them so that they overlapped. They had not been designed to lie flat but I managed a facsimile and climbed onto the driver's block to drape a blanket over the exposed areas.

     No sooner had I finished than the rain dropped. It did not simply fall: a solid wall of it came washing our way, so thick I could barely see past it. In amazement I stood frozen on the edge of the wagon's platform, and so took the brunt of the first fall on my chest and face.

     I spluttered and dashed back into the rude shelter, pulling the paltry shield of the reed curtains in place.

     There in that moist space I weathered my first thunderstorm outside the safety of town. The thunder's voice had a chilling intimacy as it snarled and bit, and the blinding flashes that accompanied each word from the sky stole my breath.

     Even beneath the blankets and sails and hemmed by the reed curtains, there was water. Thin drops fell from over-saturated sails to plink almost inaudibly over the low, hard roar of the downpour. The humidity beaded on my skin and rolled off it onto the floor. I shivered and glanced at the anadi, curled up together in their nest of pillows and damp blankets.

     Dlane roused herself with a yawn, tongue curling. Her brows furrowed as she pushed her chest from the clump of bedding. "Thenet?" she said.

     "Rain, ke anadi."

     Dlane crawled out of the blankets and leaned against me. "This isn't rain," she said. "This is a waterfall."

     I chuckled. "Isn't it…."

     "Magnificent?" she finished when I couldn't find the words.

     "Yes," I said.

     We spoke no more and watched instead. The rain filled in the silence for us. When some fifteen minutes had passed, Dlane said in wonder, "Will it ever stop?"

     "It's not thundering as much," I said. "Soon, perhaps."

     Ten minutes later, she shifted against me.

     "Well, maybe in a little while."

     She giggled when I sighed in exasperation a full half hour after the rain had started. It had lost some of its passion but now had a steady, dreary quality. "I'm tired of being wet!"

     "Wet isn't so bad," Dlane said, licking my shoulder. The contrast of her hot tongue and the warm dampness made me shiver.

     "Wet is unnatural," I said. "For eperu, at least."

     "You hunt in the mistings."

     "But this is no misting!"

     Dlane lifted her head to gaze solemnly out into the undulating sheet of silver water. "No," she said. "This is as to the misting as the sea is to my mouth."

     I frowned at her. That ancient word - the sea - as if she’d seen one. But no Jokka had seen the sea since our ancestors had left the Birthwell. The word, the metaphors remained with us, without the reality to ground them.

     In the hazy gray of the falling rain I could see the silhouettes of the other eperu. Most of them were huddled on the ground, unmoving. Others were lost against the rikka tent. One or two were still on their feet, crossing slowly from wagon to wagon.

     "How can they bear it?" I wondered aloud.

     "Bear what?" Dlane asked.

     "Walking through that!"

     Dlane laughed. "Maybe it's fun!" She pushed open the reed curtain and, before I could object or even grab her, tumbled out. I lunged after her and almost struck her head with my chin as she laughed in my face. "Oh, Thenet, it is fun! Come!" She grabbed me by shoulder and mane and pulled me after her.

     Being partially wet was bad. Being drenched was to being damp as the sea was to her mouth. Brightness save! The mud sucked my knees and feet in as the rain beat me into the ground. It was nothing like mistings; each drop was a spear with a point as discrete as a knife's.

     "Oh, it's lovely!" Dlane exclaimed, rolling onto her back. I wondered if there was anything she didn't find novel and intriguing. I crawled through the mud and positioned myself above her, belly hanging over her face.

     "Thenet?" she asked, twisting to glance at my chin from between my arms.

     "Keeping you dry," I said with a sigh. "This can't be healthy."

     Great glistening lashes fluttered twice, and then she started laughing. "Oh, Thenet! It's just rain! All the animals get wet."

     "You," I said pointedly, "are not an animal."

     "Aren't I?" she asked. "Aren't we all?"

     I ignored her and remained there, wondering when she'd get tired of the rain and crawl back into the wagon where she could stay dry. When her finger lit soft as a breath on my navel slit, I jumped.

     "Ke anadi!"

     "It's strange to see one without a ring," she murmured, barely audible over the drumming of the rain. "So clean. The fold is… uninterrupted."

     She must have taken ill… she was babbling. And she was tickling me. "Get back in the wagon, ke anadi."

     "But it's nice out," she said.

     "In!"

     She laughed softly and hugged my waist. "Very well, my protector. I go!" Scrambling from beneath me, she climbed back onto the platform, and with a soft growl of effort pulled herself inside. The last of her tail slithered between the reed curtains, still muddy. I'd have to brush it clean later. Blessed combs.

     Which left me in the rain, soaked to the scalp. Squinting, I looked up at the clouds and realized that the world had a different, cleaner smell and a strange sound… and even a taste, of airborne drops flavored with pollen and heat.

     So maybe it wasn't so unpleasant. I took a few experimental steps, with the soil sinking beneath my feet. The sleeting water seemed to connect me to the earth, and we were all one thing: sky to back to foot to ground. Curious, I kept walking… and then jogged… and found myself loping toward the plain. Every part of my body tingled, reminded of itself by the drops splattering against it. To run for the sake of running, and not because of pursuit - what a glorious thing! I skidded to a halt and my momentum pulled me to my knees, and I was laughing.

     As suddenly as it came, the fall stopped. My head lifted to the sky to find the sun I could just sense behind the clouds, and encountered instead a vast nothingness.

     The emptiness of the plains and the immensity of the sky struck me so violently I flinched. I had hunted the forests and the mean hills, and had occasionally climbed out of the shallow bowl of our town's skirts to see the broad back of the World… but never pierced it so, days into its oppressive flatness. I had never really understood the size of the place, never held it in my mind and heart.

     Here, with the curtain of silver water abruptly lifted, the sight was as a new one to me. It shocked me to vomiting in the mud. Trembling and choking, I blinked water from my eyes to grope hungrily for the view of the wagons - there! To ground me, take away the dizziness, the sudden sense of my own utter inadequacy. My very smallness.

     I stumbled back to the wagons. Quivering ears managed to pick up enough conversation for me to know that we wouldn't be moving further until the mud stiffened, probably tomorrow morning. My limbs shook like an old one's as I clambered back into the damp confines of the wagon and dumped myself onto the platform. I curled into a ball and tried to stop shivering, to stop seeing the endless plains on the backs of my eyelids.

     "Thenet?" Dlane's soft whisper in my ear sent a shudder down my spine.

     I tried to find my voice but couldn't. The words I fumbled for fled my mind completely when the first press of her breast and stomach registered along my spine. A cold circle burned against the base of my tail before her navel ring warmed to my flesh.

     She tucked an arm over my ribs and chest and pressed her thighs against mine.

     "K-ke an-n-nadi," I said. My teeth were chattering. I tried to make them stop. "An-n-nadi d-don't sleep with ep-peru."

     "This one does," she said simply, and that was the end of that.

#

     Neither of us slept: of that I was certain. I came close, but my doze-dreams were horrifying recreations of my adventure in the rain and kept catapulting me from rest. Why she didn't sleep I don't know, but her breathing never deepened, a fact of which I was kept intimately aware by the swell and press of her breast against my back. To curl around her and shelter her while we were fleeing civilization… that seemed as appropriate as running in the first place. But to do this while we were in the company of others, while we were surrounded by other Jokka - it reminded me of what was proper. This was not proper.

     I stared between the reed curtains, one ear swiveled toward Magun who was still deep in the grip of slumber. Watching the other eperu walk to and fro between wagons, I found some sense of equilibrium.

     Dlane's hand gently rubbed against my chest. "Better?" she said into my ear.

     I closed my eyes. "I think," I said hoarsely.

     "Should I… can I ask?"

     I didn't reply for a while, and I could sense in her not patience but some other thing I could not name: as if she was content to merely lie with me.

     So after heartbeats too numerous to count, I said, "Ke anadi… what if we are… insignificant?"

     Her breathing didn't change, nor even her voice. There was no challenge in her words, no triumph, nothing but the same gentle connection. As if she were giving tongue to a conversation we'd already had in our minds. "Strange words from someone cradled in the Brightness, World and Void's hands."

     "What if it's true, though?"

     "Insignificant to whom, Thenet?"

     My eyes opened so I could frown. "Whom?"

     "Significance… it implies a comparison. What are you comparing your life to, that it doesn't measure?"

     "I… I don't know," I said, ears splaying. "I just… have you seen the size of the World? And have you seen how pale our flight, our peril seems in comparison to the work-a-day lives of these eperu? I feel insubstantial. Like nothing matters because I've forgotten how things matter."

     Dlane's soft chuckle somehow did not offend. "You are beginning to sound like me." Her hand slid down to press against my stomach, and I noticed that my fetal curl had loosened.

     "What is your answer?" I said, twisting my head to look back at her.

     Her smile was rueful. "I don't know, my Thenet. But I will tell you when I find out."

     "You're supposed to have all the answers!" I said, torn between laughing and disappointment.

     "I will. Just not today," she replied, and ran her hands up and down my stomach. I broke into giggles and writhed away from her hands, which is how Magun found us when she woke: tickling one another into heaving fits.

     "Oh stop," Magun said, throwing a pillow at me. "You'll tax her to fainting, and then where will you be without your precious anadi?"

     I threw the pillow back. "You're just jealous because she's more precious than you are."

     Magun guffawed. "Oh, I don't ever have to worry about that. She's only precious if she rejoins the society I'm entering. Which I think she won't deign to do."

     I was surprised she'd taken the comment seriously. I certainly hadn't meant it that way. At least, not completely.

     "And you," Magun said to Dlane, "Act as if you were still indestructible. When your body begins to fail you, don't be surprised."

     Dlane folded her arms over her chest and looked down on Magun. She was magnificent: slick and wild and haughty and I wanted to hug her for her passion. "Better to have used it up than to linger in it, pale."

     Magun snorted, pushing her frizzy rust-brown curls over her shoulders and reaching for a comb. "Spoken like a breeder."

     "Don't talk to her that way!"

     The strident words rang in the stillness, accentuated by the occasional drip from the sails hanging overhead. I barely recognized them as my own, but they were.

     Standing slowly, Magun canted her head and said, "Do you deny the order of things, eperu?"

     The hair on the back of my neck and spine rose at the blatant lack of respect the unvarnished title wielded. "Do you, anadi?" I said, returning her favor. My hands at my sides had curled into claws. "You speak so smoothly of fighting your way to the top of a House where you won't be forced to mate and bear young. How natural is that?"

     "Natural enough if I want it," Magun said, tossing her mane back. The humidity did not favor her the way it did Dlane. She looked hot and ill-groomed. "How else are we to cull the unwitting? The stupid? In our world only the smartest live well."

     My nose wrinkled, lip sliding back to expose some of my sharp teeth. "No wonder there's no love among anadi," I said. "As you would have it, your lives are so brutal and angry that there's no time for friendship - only opportunity to size up enemies and be rid of them. How distastful to be anadi!"

     "Not at all!" Magun exclaimed. "Are you really so stupid? Anadi rule the world! The eperu live to serve us. The emodo toil to buy us. Who would not want to be one of us?"

     Dlane stepped between us, startling me. I'd forgotten she was even there. Lifting her chin she said clearly, quietly, "I wouldn't."

     Taking my hand, she led me out.

     "Was that wise?" I asked her in the mud and the gray. She shrugged, a listless motion of hip and shoulder. "I don't know. Was it?"

     "You never answer me when you can reply with a question," I said, torn between exasperation and affection. I took her shoulders in my hands and gave her a little shake. "Ke anadi. What is it?"

     "I hate being female," she whispered, looking at the ground.

     Again the ambivalence pinned me between concern at her unhappiness and unease at her sentiments. She wore an eperu-style patterned long-cloth, hanging to her ankles, but no blouse; probably left to dry. Yet she crossed her arms to hide the swell of her breasts. I found myself drawing the damp shirt from my body and gently hanging it over her, lacing it over her throat. Her arms unfolded to slip through the sleeves, and then she hugged me, tucking her head beneath my chin.

     "Oh, Thenet, Thenet. What if it is all meaningless?"

     I cleared my throat and pet her back. "In relation to what, ke anadi?"

     She laughed.

#

     "That's it," Ilushet said. "Het Bakka."

     A tidy blot of black and brown on the olive back of the plains at sunset, Het Bakka could not have been more than two dozen buildings. But the surrounding fields grew in wet, dark squares and the deep amber lights hung on the poles outside were familiar and well-tended.

     "How long will we stay?" I asked after I'd taken my fill. Somehow the contrasts were as charming as they were disturbing and I wasn't sure what answer would satisfy: that we would stay long, and assuage my curiosity, or but briefly pass through, and avoid my discomfort.

     "Two days," Ilushet said. "Het Bakka is small… one day to sell and one day to buy is usually enough." It glanced at me. "It is usual to allow a few hours of leisure for the caravan's members, to spend the shell they've earned with their labors."

     Startled, I said, "Cousin, I had no idea I was earning shell…."

     "Not much," Ilushet said with a chuckle, "But your labors are worth something to the caravan. We do not earn simply to spend again on new goods. If there is no profit, how do we prosper?"

     "I suppose I'd never thought about it," I said.

     Ilushet laughed and tapped my shoulder. "Go see Atha tonight. It is the purser. And don't forget to withdraw for your companion's labors."

     "Thank you, cousin," I said bemused.

     It shook its head, chuckling, and walked back to the lead wagon.

     In the week that followed the soaking the plains had yet to shake off the rain; the ground was still somewhat soft, and the eye-bright greens of new plants had pricked through the surface of the soil in thousands of places. The air still retained the faintest softness, a weight that whispered of water. Concentrating on these things helped me reduce the inevitable sense of vertigo that attacked when I let my eyes drift to the horizon. I did not mention my new disability to my comrades, and even Dlane did not see my occasional trembling fits.

     The smudge that had grown into Het Bakka had proved a welcome distraction… and it was not solely of interest to me.

     I handed off my rikka to another eperu and pulled myself onto the platform. Before I could even straighten, Dlane was on me.

     "Is it true, is it a town, are we finally here?"

     I laughed. "Yes, yes and yes!"

     "Oh, Thenet! We must go. To see another place at last…! How exciting! How other Jokka live-"

     "Not much differently than we did," I said, amused. "We are all Jokka."

     "That does not make us all the same," she said, shaking her mane back and grinning. "When can we go?"

     "When Ilushet gives us leave," I said.

     "And pray tell me, anadi, are you going dressed?"

     My eyes narrowed as I stared over Dlane's shoulder at Magun, rising languorously from her bed of blankets. Her ample assets slid over her lush body, unfettered, and I rolled my lower lip between my teeth. Dlane was no Magun, but her shape was unmistakable, even through clothing. Seen from afar she might be taken for eperu, but close scrutiny would reveal her. How far might stories of fugitive anadi travel? Across rain-soaked plains to distant towns? Black specters, vast as the Void, rose from the shadows cast by the lanterns.

     "Maybe the females wear clothing in Het Bakka," Dlane said, turning to smile at Magun.

     "They don't," Ilushet said from the ground.

     Startled, I glanced down at it. "Cousin?"

     "I came to tell you that you have leave to go tonight, if you want," it said.

     I did not have to look at Dlane to know her answer. "We do."

     Ilushet nodded. "Good. Take Magun if she wants to go." It glanced at Dlane. "And consider your choices wisely."

     I turned to Magun as Ilushet walked away. The female grinned and said, "I'd be delighted to go, particularly with such a protector."

     Of course. Said I, "Go to the smoke pit, then. We'll join you shortly."

     She glanced at us both, then hopped down from the platform and vanished into the purple dusk.

     If the stories had traveled, then letting Dlane walk naked through town would advertise her presence to all who would capture and return her. But if the stories had traveled, perhaps hiding would be the best way to draw attention. I touched my anadi's cheek and said, "Sometimes it is better not to be a mystery."

     A darkness stole over her golden eyes, and her laugh was husky. But it was a laugh nevertheless. "Beautiful, wonderful Thenet. And you say you are not subtle."

     "I am subtle as a rock," I answered. "And lovely as one too. You will not be nervous?"

     "I have been anadi all my life. To be anadi a little longer in exchange for the sight of a whole different town… that is worth it."

     But it was with reluctance that she unyoked her embroidered long-cloth of bronze thread and purple and rolled down her dark olive-brown pants. The white blouse was the last to come off, leaving her naked.

     Naked. Not nude. Somehow the gleaming ring through the slit in her belly skewed her skin out of balance. The weight of her breasts and the curve of her hips, the delicate creases between her legs were all magnified.

     Her eyes rose to mine. She touched my cheek. "Ah, Thenet. How quickly the soil of your soul has drunk up the rain."

     "What?" I said, shaking myself from my bizarre and uncomfortable reverie.

     She smiled softly. "Come. Het Bakka is waiting!"

     It was a simple thing to retrieve the soft leather bag from Atha. I glanced inside and was surprised to see ten shells; far more than I'd expected, though naturally much less than I made as protector and hunter for House Mated. But the caravan was not House Mated, and I had occasion, more than once, to be thankful for that. Gathering my two wards, I led the way across the spice and rain-scented plain to the edge of the town.

     Dlane touched the side of the outermost building. "It is not wood," she said softly.

     I paused and ducked into the shadows cast by the overhanging reed roof. The buildings looked like any other to me, if a little thicker somehow, as if they'd bowed in the middle from the weight of their walls. Now that Dlane had lured me closer, I ran my hands over the side and felt the rough granulated surface. "Clay, I think. Baked," I said, from some faint memory of a makeshift oven created for a summer festival.

     "I'm sure the owner of the house would be much pleased to have you fingering it," Magun said, the words lolling with boredom.

     Dlane wrinkled her nose in the dark and I almost laughed. Instead, I turned and said, "Let's go into the light, then, and see what Het Bakka has to show us."

     "Looks like mud and dirt so far," Magun said.

     I shrugged. "Mud and dirt are a part of life." We walked onto the thoroughfare between buildings on the outskirts: more a plain path beaten clean of plants by passing feet, spacious given the small dwellings it separated. The spirit of the plains blew here: the Jokka knew how much land they had, and had not thought to cramp their town. It was strange after the tight alleys and crowded streets of home.

     There were a few others walking down the thoroughfare who called quiet greetings in the darkness. The yellow lamps set on the tall brick poles shed too frail a light to touch one another, and so we passed in and out of the purple twilight as we walked. The evening was unseasonably cool for summer. Dlane chafed her arms against the wind’s occasional caress, though she was too busy staring greedily around her to notice. Magun kept her silence.

     After a succession of small dwellings, we at last came upon the center of town: little more than a broad square edged in more buildings. It had little to recommend it architecturally, but it was clustered with carts lit by petite lanterns, each merchant with its own. Aromas both herbal and succulent rode the free breezes to my nose, and the faint murmur of several score voices wove a tapestry above it.

The center of the square had been commandeered, if the relative coziness of the merchants was any indication, by a small raised platform I imagined quite precious, made as it was of wood. Around it several Jokka milled while others lit braziers of elegant brass. They looked familiar: not unlike the coal bowls from one of the temples at home.

"What's this?" Magun wondered.

     I shrugged and leaned toward a fruit-seller. "What's the commotion, ke emodo?"

     The male glanced at me. "Trader, are you? Picked a good night to come. The Trifolders are putting on a dance tonight. Should be starting soon."

     "Thank you," I said, and he nodded absently. I wasn't buying, so he wasn't interested.

     "The Trifold… isn't that your belief?" Dlane whispered to me.

     "No. I follow the Trinity. The Trifold is… different." Different! That was a gentle way of saying it.

     "How?"

     "Would you like something to eat?" I asked Magun, who was beginning to drift toward one of the carts with spun candies. I handed her a shell and watched her sway toward the merchant, there to make inviting noises no doubt. Turning back to Dlane, I said, "The Trifold and the Trinity both believe in the sanctity of the three sexes: anadi, emodo, eperu. But the Trifold believes that we are each godlike by virtue of being one of these sexes. The Trinity holds that the three sexes are each associated with a heavenly body, and it is by kinship with them that we arrive at our fullness of self."

     "So you put your faith in gods and they put their faith in themselves," Dlane said.

     I frowned. "It is not that simple!"

     "It's not?" she asked. She had at least the grace to look sad and somewhat accommodating.

     I sighed, looked at her so utterly anadi in her nakedness, though she kept one arm over her breasts. Then I went to rescue the hapless emodo merchant from Magun's charms. Taking her by the elbow, I guided her and her new bag of sweets away.

     "We are staying for the dance, aren't we?" Magun asked, nibbling on a spun sugar square with her coarse fangs.

     "I don't think we should be out that long," I said.

     "I'd like to see it," Dlane said suddenly.

     I tried very hard not to glower. The last thing I wanted to do was to sit through a dance by a religion that glorified its own members with two anadi, both of them mad. While I decided what to say, Dlane took my hand and said, "Let's walk around first."

     "Very well," I said, tail flicking in agitation.

     With Magun in tow, suckling on her candies in a lascivious display, I guided Dlane around Het Bakka's small market. She stared at the beaded baubles like the chain hung 'round Magun's waist, tried hard not to finger pouches and clothing meant for emodo and eperu, and lingered over the jewelry in the warm darkness. Lingered too long, really. When I looked over her shoulder, I found her staring with fixed, shadowed eyes at the rings. They were laid in neat rows on a cushion: the smallest for the ears of the eperu, the medium-sized for the navel slits of the anadi, and the broadest for the bases of the spines of the emodo. All of them priced as they should be, so that only the most affluent could afford to be awarded them.

     "Ke anadi," I murmured in her ear, "Perhaps you shouldn't stare."

     "Do you remember when they punched the hole in your ear, Thenet?" Dlane asked.

     I paused, then said slowly, "Yes." Glancing toward the merchant, I was relieved to find him occupied with his evening meal.

     "Did it hurt?"

     My brow furrowed. "I suppose. I don't remember it very well, in all honesty. We really shouldn't be hovering here if we're not planning to buy anything, ke anadi."

     Obediently she stepped away, her hands smoothing over her body to rest finally in a frame around her navel. "I had no idea they cost quite so much," she murmured.

     "Gold is expensive," I said.

     "And so am I?" she said softly. "What does this thing say about me? I am a thing to be purchased at great cost?"

     I glanced at Magun, sucking sensually at her candies while watching the passersby. "Magun would say that to be the object of someone's extended labors is enviable."

     Dlane looked away, the yellow lantern light skidding down her nose as it turned profile to me. Her shoulders fell. "Magun can survive our world, Thenet."

     A shiver traversed my spine. I called, "Magun! Come." And when she joined us, I led the way back through the market. Counting out my own shell sparingly, I put my mind from weighty matters and concentrated on getting the best price for a few luxuries the caravan didn't provide: hair softeners, scented lotions for dry skin, a net for filtering the sandy water we picked up at streams and small pools.

     "Hoping that a few magic potions will make you beautiful?" Magun asked archly as I bought a file for my claws and Dlane's. "You're wasting your money."

     "It is beautiful," Dlane said, her voice deepening. "You simply do not see it."

     "Oh, I see it just fine," Magun said, batting her rust-dark lashes. "You're just sun-struck, dear sister."

I ignored her and finished my purchases. I'd much missed the items we'd lost to Roika's chase, and dragged both females with me as I completed my errands. It occurred to me to me when I was done that I still had half a bag of shell left.

     "Ke anadi? Would you like to buy something? You've earned shell yourself."

     She hesitated, then shook her head. "Come," she said. "Let's see the dance."

     I'd hoped she'd forgotten about the dance. Fighting to keep my ears from lying flat, I allowed Dlane to guide me back to the center of the dais. By this time the revelers had set up rough benches, and Dlane slid onto the one in the front. I sat beside her, with Magun on the other side of me.

     As we waited for the performance to begin, a trio of Jokka walked among the gathering crowd, balancing baskets against their hips and bellies. The eperu came our way, stopping before us. Fire from the nearby bowls licked its face, and as it dipped forward a pendant swung into the light. My eyes were tangled in the whorls of its design, but I couldn't see it very well.

     "Ke Jokka," it murmured in a sweet, low voice. "Would you buy refreshments? Cool juice or clean water, a sugar roll or slice of cheese?"

     "No, thank you," Dlane said for me, because I had no voice. I shook myself from my reverie to find it moving on to the next group.

     Discomfited, I sat braced between the two anadi as the benches filled behind us. Soon the crowd-working trios had vanished into the deep shadows clustered around the dais, and the lights on the fire bowls dimmed. One of Dlane's hands slipped onto my knee and squeezed, and in the darkness I covered it with one of mine… aware, for just one brief moment, that hers was smaller and smoother beneath my calluses.

     A vast drum boomed out of the dark. The chatter of the marketplace died with its first beat and the resulting silence shuddered beneath the implacable onslaught. Slow and rhythmic, like the heart of the Void. Thun. Thun. Thun. My heart slowed to meet it and my breathing as well. Thun. Thun.

     Into this primeval darkness came the first dancer, emodo, dark as the Void. The side of his body glowed with the faintest of lights cast by the rightmost bowl. He stepped in time with the drum. I did not realize the pace was swiftening, slowly, oh so slowly, until my chest was leaping and the dancer had reached the dais's edge. Then the lights from both foremost fire bowls burst into life, shattering across the emodo's skin. Two more emodo joined him, and the dance began in earnest.

     Oh, how they danced, the emodo! In the safety of the unusually gentle summer night, embraced by the life-giving breeze, they leaped with the power and delicacy that was their birthright. Their strong, sinuous fingers and toes outstretched, curled in, their broad chests emblazoned, their tails flags over proudly bunched buttocks and hard thighs. They went naked, staffs hard as the rippled muscle of their stomachs. They were not simply emodo, but the prime of their kind.

     When at last they fell back I found myself breathless and caught myself, swallowed past a dry mouth. Beside me Magun panted, fragrant with the spice of her desire. In stark contrast Dlane sat upright, transfixed and seemingly untouched.

     The sonorous drum had slowed and a new, smaller drum joined it, syncopated so that my hard-won composure fell apart. I struggled for breath as my heart tried to decide which beat to follow. Eventually the two settled into a two-toned rhythm, heralding the arrival of three eperu.

     Oh, my kind, my kind! And they were so beautiful. As the emodo drifted into the darkness at the back of the stage, the three eperu, splendid in their nudity, in the smoothness of their supple bodies, commenced their dance. It was a thing of predatory power and enchained fates: their hands running over one another, lifting one another into the air on powerful arms. The fire touched their flat bellies and chests, their starkly featureless crotches, ran like liquid up and down the lines of their muscles. I longed to join them. Too soon they faded back into the dark, leaving only the twin drums to fill my ears.

     I waited to see the last of the triad, wondering how they would be heralded.

     The two drums sang on, but over them glided the sudden shivering of zills. Tiny cymbals clashing softly together, the sound of intricate, small bells… it was to this high-pitched, shimmering sound that the anadi came.

     Magun moaned beside me, and even Dlane shuddered. They danced as one, the three anadi, a sensual tangle of limbs and waving manes, wet eyes and mouths and slick thighs. Their hands trailed over one another's bodies in deliberate display, lifting one another's tails and cupping the round slopes of breast and buttock. Rubbing cheeks and chins and bodies, they seemed less three Jokka and more like one great beast with innumerable limbs, stroking itself in open invitation.

     At the crescendo of the drumbeat, eperu and emodo joined the anadi in the light and they separated into triads, one of each sex in each. They danced together, so smoothly it seemed impossible: where two formed a circle of arms and body, the third had a graceful arm to insert into the space. They were interwoven, dancing with one mind. Emodo and anadi pressed to one another, touching, evoking the mating that would bear fruit in her womb, and above and always around them, eperu, eperu, protecting, observing, ever apart.

     Into this chaos came a final triad from the back of the stage, born on a palette by shadowed dancers. The platform seemed to drift to the dais of its own accord to display its prize. Upon a couch reclined an anadi, her belly so heavy with child she probably couldn't move without aid. Her weighted breasts slid over her ribs, and one hand rested on her navel where the gold of a kaña's ring glinted, draping a chain of gold and amethyst over her generous hips. At her feet crouched an emodo, hair tousled by the breeze, staff held so hard the bronze chain threaded through the ring in his spine was looped around its thickness, and the garnets on it glinted against his skin.

     Straddling the couch was the eperu, wearing the hips of an anadi and the shoulders of an emodo, composed of both and yet its own self, stripped of the hormonal trappings of either. In its hand it held a spear, and its heavy earring swung from one cocked ear. Its waist too was decorated with a chain of silver and creamy moonstone.

     The dancers swept around this tableau in a frenzy as the beat thundered in my ears. My hand clenched over Dlane's on my knee. When at last I thought my heart would burst in the race to meet the drums, they stopped and all the dancers fell. The lights guttered, except one: backlighting the three in the front, the eperu with the spear between its legs, the silhouette of the virile emodo over the heavily pregnant anadi, their jewelry and rings catching the last of the light as it faded.

     In the darkness and the silence, I looped an arm around Dlane's body and felt her touch her cheek to my shoulder. She was so stiff she barely bent against me. The scent of arousal on the air was not hers… if anything, her sweat stank of fear, and the very tiny shiver I felt her still at her tail was revulsion.

     First one lantern, then another lit and the marketplace slowly let the veil of silence fall. I glanced surreptitiously at Magun as the merchants pushed the dark back and found her gaze both hungry and contemptuous.

     "I," she said as the lights revealed the stage echoingly empty, "will never be trapped that way on a couch."

     "It is the natural order of things," I said because I wanted to see her scowl. But Magun only smiled.

     "For some," she said. She stood and stretched languidly, as if proud of her fertile body. I stared… how could she so brazenly display herself after that? I could smell the stickiness of her hunger on her body, catch glimpses of it as she spread her legs… almost as if trying to entice someone. But there was no one watching her but me.

     I looked away, gently brushed Dlane's hair. "Ready to leave?"

     She roused herself and nodded. "Yes," she said after a silence so long I began to worry. As we stood, she placed a light hand on my wrist. "I think I have something to buy."

     I followed her gaze, saw her watching a few of the dancers. They had at last emerged, the emodo and eperu modestly clothed and the anadi more demurely nude.

     "Ke anadi…."

     "Ssh," she said, touching a finger to my chin. She took the bag from me and walked toward one of the eperu.

     "What do you suppose she's up to?" Magun said, back to snacking on her sweet candies.

     I managed a chuckle though my throat was dry as a hard summer. "Whatever she pleases, as usual."

     "Ah. In that at least, she acts like an anadi."

     I thought but did not say that Dlane was all anadi, no matter her strange desires.

     After earnest conversation, I saw the flash of shell and metal changing hands and Dlane returned, tail sifted by the breeze.

     "Bow your head," she said.

     I didn't even think as I did so; it was only after she'd put the pouch down and was leaning over me that I started to ask, "… What?"

     "Hush," she said, looping a leather cord around my neck. A smooth piece of metal struck my chest as she pulled me straight, then arranged it against my skin. "There."

     I looked down. It was a round, cut medallion like the one the eperu offering drinks had worn; in the light I could see it better. Three spokes, embellished with endless, eye-mazing designs, emanated from a central point… but the central point was skewed to one side, as if favoring one more than the others.

     "Eperu," she said, covering the medallion with her hand, pressing it to my skin. In her mouth the word was not an insult, not naked… merely elemental. The essence of the Jokku neuter, stripped of title and social meaning. It was a definition.

     "You name me," I replied hoarsely.

     What Magun thought of this, I had no idea.

     We returned to the caravan afterwards, leaving the lights of Het Bakka behind for the lanterns and the soft flickering of the fire in the smoke-pit. Magun climbed into her pile of blankets and rested there, staring out at the other eperu until her lids drifted closed and she slept, body still wreathed with the scent of her hunger.

     I helped Dlane onto the wagon's platform and arranged the pillows around her. Tucking a sheet thin as a mist around her, I leaned down and pressed my cheek to her head. The medallion swung beneath my neck, grazing her ribs.

     "Thenet," Dlane said, and I finally heard the fear in it that I'd expected. Her fingers lit on my jaw.

     "Ssh," I said, catching her hand in mine. "No matter how strange it is to me, if you don't want it they'll have to kill me to force it on you."

     She looked up at me, her gratitude written in the release of her brows. I could smell the tears on her breath when she kissed my fingers.

     "Sleep now," I said, and she did.

     I spent the night on the driver's platform, watching the stars, my spear beside me, my purple and red and black long-cloth tangled between my legs and the medallion warm against my breast.

#

     The back of the rikka rolled like the grasses beneath the wind. It had taken me days to acclimate to it, and still I was only a passable rider. Atha had kindly given me the most docile of the beasts when Ilushet had invited me to ride with it.

     "They will pull the wagons readily enough," it said when I glanced dubiously at the saddle. "But they prefer something more intimate, to bond rider to ridden. Occasionally we will indulge them."

     So in the weeks following our stay at Het Bakka, I learned what it was to ride: to feel the bone of an animal between your legs, the steady pressure of their barrels lifting and falling beneath your calves, and more than anything, the gait: a long-shouldered walk. For days my vertigo at the sight of the sky was mistaken for motion sickness as I fumbled with the reins and the saddle, and perhaps the eperu watching me were not far from the truth in that.

     I learned the trick, at last, of letting my hips sway with the rikka while my spine remained upright. That helped. After that, my occasional morning rides with Ilushet became a pleasure.

     "Three nibblers already," it murmured as it glanced at the fresh kills hanging from the saddle. It was a particularly clear day, and the memories of the dance were hazy and far away.

     "My luck has been good," I replied, rocking with the animal beneath me. The hot wind tousled my mane, tugged ineffectively at the heavy glass beads anchored in its flat black plaits.

     "Your luck is always good," Ilushet said. Unlike me, it rode as if it had been born a-back… and perhaps it had been. "There is not a day you go out to hunt that you don't return with something. The others wonder if there is magic in your spear."

     I laughed. "Only the magic in my muscle… and in the Moment, perhaps."

     It cocked a dun-colored ear at me. "The Moment?"

     I nodded. "Yes. When in a battle you enter a place and time falls away. Then you can choose your strike exactly as you want. One of the eperu at home taught it to me."

     "Ah. I had heard of such teachings, but they're rare. We do not battle much, we Jokka."

     "Don't we?" I asked, but it was an honest inquiry. I didn't know.

     "Not that I have heard," Ilushet said. "Perhaps tales, but they are only stories. What truth there is in stories is something I leave to you to figure."

     "What would we fight over if we could?"

     Ilushet glanced at me, dark brows lifting. "I don't know," it said. "I suppose if there were cause, we'd already be at it, wouldn't we? But there is more than enough land, and what resources there are we all share."

     "How many Jokka are there?" I asked suddenly.

     Ilushet squinted. "I have made this circuit many years," it said, hand smoothing down the arched neck of the rikka. "Have seen many settlements. Have seen ruins of settlements, even. I would say the all the towns I trade in combined have held, at one time or another, some hundred thousand of us."

     We rode in silence for a while, the plains seared gold by the sun and the wind. The perfume of soil and warm grass bruised my nostrils. After a while, I asked, "Is that a lot?"

     "Ten thousand bushels of grain is a great deal," Ilushet replied after a while. "Ten thousand beats of a heart is not so much at all. And ten thousand drops of rain is enough to the earth when it's parched. What is a number without context?"

     "Not much," I admitted.

     It grinned at me, white teeth against dusky lips. I returned the grin. We rode quietly, the creak and rumble of the caravan behind us. It was easier to look at the world from between the large, oveate ears of the rikka: the frame mitigated the vastness of the world. Dlane slept, and Magun as well: no trouble for either with the sails to shade them and the blankets in case the breeze cut too swiftly. I relaxed at last, content in my niche with these other eperu.

     Which is when my hand strayed to the medallion and I frowned. "Cousin… how will the caravan go on when you are gone?"

     "I don't understand, Thenet."

     I looked at the eperu, bracing myself against the saddle as a faint sickness threatened my stomach. "You have no breeding pairs. What will happen when you need new people?"

     Ilushet chuckled. "I trust the gods to bring them to me when we need them. Do you honestly believe anadi and emodo would long survive the pace we set, cousin? And we have been slowed by the need to keep Magun safe."

     "Magun," I muttered.

     Canting its head, Ilushet invited elaboration. I fidgeted, then said, "She troubles me. She is not demure as anadi are. She… displays herself."

     Ilushet chuckled. "It is not abnormal to be pleased with one's body."

     "I didn't say that well. She displays herself as if inviting copulation. Who would invite such a thing?"

     "Who indeed," Ilushet said. It smiled, hands flexing on the reins. "Perhaps it is not so comely a trait, to want to breed. But if no one did, how would we live?"

     I could find no answer to that.

     Later that night I stretched myself on the ground to work the kinks from my body. In the smoldering fire only bones testified to the meal my nibblers had provided for the caravan. The eperu had dispersed to their tasks… and indeed, I'd brought mine with me; the carving tools and assorted bones rested within arm's reach on the cool earth. I had started several pieces before finishing the original bone piece… I didn't feel ready yet to try and work it to its final shape. But the others I used to practice, to grow in confidence, and several already decorated the haft of my spear on a pull string I could use to silence them when I hunted. I had a few new pieces I was working now, larger than the last ones: those I'd brought with me and now ignored, for the World's breath had stilled for once, and a full belly and the flickering of the fire distracted me from the slow easing of my spinal bones.

     The weight that settled on my rump surprised me and I opened my mouth to protest, but all sound died in my throat at the fingers pressing against my shoulder blades.

     "You are tight," Dlane said. Her thumbs were slick with something soft and scented like crushed flower petals and mint. "Riding, driving, hunting, walking… I don't know how your body stays together."

     I gurgled as her hands grasped the muscles over my shoulders and plucked, leaving a trail of heat and scent behind. After swallowing, I managed to rasp, "It is what eperu do, ke anadi. We work."

     "The emodo work as well," Dlane said. Not a reprimand; she sounded absent as her hands drew designs with my skin as canvas and hot oil for paint. The air seemed cooler on the squiggles she left behind, accentuating the lack of the breeze.

     "Not the same," I said. "They sit in shops and hammer at jewels or count grains or sell goods. They spin and weave and keep accounts and run Houses. That is work of the mind and hands, not of the body."

     Gently she rubbed her fingers through the hair along the ridge of my upper spine, dragging the fragrant oil through it. "So upon the backs of eperu do we make our society, is that it?"

     I frowned. "I don't think…."

     "That sounds wrong to you? Who harvests the grain we eat?"

     "We do," I said.

     "And who builds the houses?"

     "The emodo plan them. And they help to build them," I said, trailing off.

     "But in short shifts. It taxes their bodies, does it not?"

     Reluctantly, I nodded.

     "How long would it take to build a house if only emodo built it, I wonder? Who guards us from animals? Plants the harvest? Hunts food? Pulls trade wagons from town to town? Mines the hills and mountains for stone and metal?"

     "I guess we do," I said.

     "The anadi and the emodo would not live long without the eperu," Dlane said.

     "The Jokka would not live long if it were but eperu," I said after drawing in a long breath.

     Dlane chuckled softly, pressing the flats of her hands against my lower back. "No… we were not meant to be without one another."

     A twinge of well-being crackled beneath her hands, as if the coals in the smoke pit lived somewhere in my body. The hair on my back stood on end. It was a peculiar sensation, and relaxation and tension came in its wake and nestled together somehow in the pit of my body.

     I felt her shift forward by the slide of her hands, the pressure of her weight transferring farther up my back. Her voice sounded close to my ear. "Thenet? What is it?"

     As I opened my mouth, the feeling bled away. I sighed. "Nothing," I said. "Just… nothing."

     Her hands paused, then resumed their work. "If you say so."

     I let her massage my back - how could I stop her? I was bone in the knives of her hands. She caressed and I conformed to the shape she desired. I realized belatedly that I was drooling and licked my lips furtively, thinking.

     "Ilushet said something strange to me today." That was my voice. I hadn't expected to say anything.

     "Oh?"

     "It said it had seen the ruins of settlements."

     "Ruins!" Dlane exclaimed, her surprise punctuated by an especially deep stab between my shoulder-blades. My body rocked beneath her hips, but her center of balance never changed. She already knew how to sway. "But… that would mean there were once far more Jokka than there are now, wouldn't it?"

     "Or that we moved settlements from a less favorable spot to a more favorable one."

     "What a strange thought," Dlane said, her voice now taut with excitement. "What do you think happened?"

     I stretched one foot-hand slowly, closing my eyes. The fire's light was orange on the inside of my eyelids, and the night warm on my skin. "I don't know," I said. "You'd think there would be stories. Histories of them. Have you seen any histories?"

     "Only a few," Dlane said. "They are much longer than most stories, so the clay-keepers rarely display them. Stories mostly of the Houses that have helped run the town… who first began them, who ruled them, what decisions they made. Nothing about the Jokka as a whole."

     "Don't stop!" I exclaimed as her fingers drifted to a halt.

     She laughed. "Just a moment." Her body shifted across my hips, and I heard the scratch of stone against stone: she was unscrewing the top from a bottle. A few minutes later she rubbed her palms together with a thin wet sound. Sheathed in hot mint and flowers, her fingers resumed their dance across my spine. I let out a long low breath.

     "Why do you suppose we know so little about it?" she asked.

     "Do we know so little about history? Or is it just you and I?" I said after thinking.

     That she laughed surprised me, and I rotated one ear back toward her quizzically. She tickled its tuft with a fingertip before saying, "You're beginning to ask the right questions, at least. Maybe next time we come to a town we can see the local clay-keeper."

     A frisson of dread ran down my back. She must of felt it because she leaned back, though she didn't speak until my shiver subsided.

     "Didn't like the Trifold, did you?"

     "They glorify our living. It's wrong. We live and the living kills us. We're no great mystery… just people. If we are all there is to greatness, what use is greatness?"

     "If we can't ever become great, what good is it to have greatness at all?" Dlane asked.

     "So we have something to strive toward," I said.

     "Why bother if you can never achieve it?"

     Frustration drove the distraction from me. I twisted onto my side so I could look at her as she straddled my body. "We can't be great, Dlane. Greatness is for gods and heroes and stories."

     "Why not?"

     "Because we are base!"

     We stared at one another, and I think she was as surprised at my bitterness as I was. I had never had these thoughts before. In what dark soil in my heart had these roots sent down their streamers?

     Dlane touched my chin with slick fingers. "Oh, Thenet," she said. "Who taught you to hate yourself so?"

     "I don't think I do," I said, but she'd managed to confuse me yet again and I couldn't meet her golden eyes. "You seem to be the one filled with hate, ke anadi."

     "Anger, Thenet. Anger. Not hate. And not at myself… at the world I was given to live in. The one that couldn't hold me."

     I glanced at the stars, the deep sky, the broad plains and the wagons fencing us in. "It seems to be doing well enough."

     She laughed low, reached over and kissed my forehead. "My silly eperu. We'll teach you to love yourself yet."

     "Love is for anadi," I said, wrapping an arm around her and squeezing. "But I'll let you try and fill my head with fancies."

     Dlane pulled back and grinned, showing off petite, fire-polished teeth. "Oh, Thenet! I already do."

#

     The plains were coy and barely displayed the passing seasons. It was easy to let time loose and forget about it, to exist not day, to day, but in a sort of permanent now. The sun rose and fell and rose again, but it was all one time, and the weeks scarcely mattered. So it was with our time with the caravan.

     Driving one day I chanced to look at my hands and saw that the sun was falling full on the flat white skin and through the tufts of hair embroidered around my wrists. It occurred to me as strange indeed that my hands were not warm despite the sun's touch. Somehow, autumn had come and I had not caught it.

     "Preoccupied?" Ilushet asked, drawing alongside.

     I looked down at it, walking beside my team of rikka. "I… had not realized how long it had been."

     "Since you joined us?" Ilushet smiled. "Your arms have helped unload the barrels into four towns, cousin. You have ridden rikka for almost a month and a half, and it has been almost three since you and your companion first joined us. Does that help you regain your balance?"

     Three months! My hands tightened on the reins, but practice by now kept my wrists lax. The team trundled on undisturbed, bruising the brittle grass with their clawed toes.

     "It is longer than you'd anticipated," Ilushet said, lifting a black brow.

     I nodded dumbly.

     The caravan-master smiled, its staff biting into the earth at a regular rhythm, thumping the pace for each stride. "You had much healing to do."

     "Cousin?" I fumbled for my bearings. "I was not wounded."

     "Weren't you? I saw the signs on your body when you washed, and on your mind at other times. Your companion's soul is still perturbed, but that is not altogether surprising. She is anadi. No, cousin," Ilushet shook its head, pale plait glistening with glass beads as it shifted, "Your escape harrowed you both. But you're far now from the cage that bound you. Perhaps you might think of where you might fly now that flight is no longer a fearful thing."

     My mind leaped from image to image: from Roika to the emodo of House Mated hunched over me, to the forest and the hunting beasts. I longed to divulge the secret to Ilushet, to beg its advice. "Is flight not fearful? I think that we may run forever, the anadi and I, and never outrun the danger."

     "There is peril in every course," Ilushet said. It glanced around, then tossed its spear up to me. I grabbed it absently as it climbed onto the driving block beside me. Its body wore a halo of warmth that made pointed comment of the cold wind. I leaned toward it.

     Setting its hands on its knees, Ilushet said, "There is peril in life, Thenet. Safety is illusory."

     "That's not what I wanted to hear," I said bitterly. "I live to keep her safe. If there is no safety, why should I waste my energy?"

     Ilushet sighed. "It may not be what you want to hear but it is the truth. You must at some point decide what is an acceptable risk… and at what point your life is no longer worth living because of the activities you refuse out of fear."

     "I am not afraid," I muttered.

     I knew it didn't believe me. I didn't believe myself. I was afraid for Dlane: afraid that she would be discovered and destroyed, afraid that even if she wasn't discovered she would maim her own spirit with her strange thinking. And I was afraid for myself, though I couldn't articulate why. I knew only that every day some part of me reported its foot had reached the edge of a cliff and that the drop down it was long and cold and lethal. On the yawing edge of that abyss nothing seemed normal, and so I lost myself in the Now: the Moment that the caravan's languorous journey had become.

     Ilushet covered one of my knees with its warm, smooth hand. "It is okay to say the truth sometimes."

     My ears flipped back. "One truth leads to another, cousin… and when your soul is bare, even the wind can wound it."

     "Then the secret is to make wounds inconsequential, isn't it?"

     I frowned and looked at it, lips pulling back from my teeth. "Riddles, cousin!"

     "More truths," Ilushet said. It sighed and looked away. "I would help you, Thenet. I would help you more than I am allotted. But I cannot speed you down the path to a greater understanding. Simply consider this: to be afraid of pain presumes that pain gives others an advantage over you. If it doesn't, then you can walk naked as a newborn into the darkness and let it claw you, and even if you die it will have had no victory. No victory that you did not allow it."

     "I don't understand," I said through a parched throat.

     The caravan-master took back its staff and planted it on the ground. It hopped off the driving block as the wagon creaked on and looked up at me. "You can," it said, and then walked on.

     I stared after it. The absence of its body reminded me that I was cold, and my flesh contracted. Had it not been for the living scent of the rikka and the sight of the other wagons placidly pacing mine, I might have fled, or wept onto the back of my hand.

     And yet I could not fathom why.

#

     When Dlane woke I was sitting cross-legged, carving a thigh bone into an abstract shape by the light of a lantern on the wagon's floor. My shadow flickered, dusky yellow, within the puddle of gold light that cast away the gloaming. Her drawn breath was so soft I wouldn't have heard it had I not had an ear twisted that way. Then the gossamer sheet hissed as it slid off her body and she drew herself against me, pressing her head against my thigh. She yawned, complete with a tiny squeak at the apex.

     "My Thenet," she said, voice warm and thick with her dense anadi dreams. She wrapped an arm around my back.

     I smiled down at her, put my carving tools aside. "Good evening, ke anadi."

     "Where is Magun?" she asked.

     "She went to sit by the fire," I said. "How did you know she was gone? You didn't turn to look."

     Dlane chuckled. "Your body is stiff when she's about."

     "It is?" Bemused, I looked down at her golden eyes, her subtle face.

     "Oh yes."

     I chuckled. "There is little I can say to that, I suppose." I glanced down at her; she was staring out through the reed curtain, long lashes painted in shadowy reverse on her smooth gray cheek. "Ke anadi, where are we going?"

     "I don't know," Dlane said. "I thought you were the one who spoke with Ilushet about such things."

     "No, no. Not where the caravan is going. Where are we going?" When she twisted to look up at me, I took a breath and let it out. "We can't stay with the caravan forever."

     "Why not?" she asked, her gaze intent. Not a question, but a probe.

     "I… I don't know. It seems abnormal. Do you want to live this life?" She was confusing me again. As usual!

     "It is not a bad one," Dlane said. She shifted so that her head rested on my thigh, golden hair piling in soft, thick waves in my lap. She played with the beads in my tail. "Quiet, the people are kind. The work is interesting."

     "Carekeeping a crazed anadi? That's your idea of interesting?" I asked, ears flipping back.

     Her eyes rolled up to mine, innocently framed by lifted golden brows. "You don't like Magun?"

     "Who could?" I said, folding my arms and looking away. "She's obnoxious. And proud of it!"

     "Pride is not evil," Dlane murmured.

     Exasperated, I said, "Why do you always have to talk in circles? I asked where we should go. You were the one who dragged me away from the hands of the Void. You were the one who fled your House and bound me to you. Now we're fled, and my charter is only to keep you safe, not to decide your fate for you. So tell me, ke anadi… where are we going?"

     Said she simply, "I don't know."

     "That's it?" I said, my hands balling into fists.

     "I'll know where we need to go when we need to go there," the anadi said.

     My thigh slid out from under her head. I found myself on my feet, parting the curtain and dropping onto the cold ground. I strode out across the plains. We'd stopped for the night beside a pool of water, and a few stunted trees had broken the soil nearby. I chose one to sit beneath and slid to the ground, the tangy odor of the tree's flaking bark in my nostrils. The lights of the caravan were barely five wagon-lengths away, but the distance seemed uncrossable.

     I took a deep pull of the chill air and stared up at the stars, daring the vertigo to come for me. Now that I understood - now that I knew I'd been living my life in a stasis, hoping never to reach the dizzying horizon - I wanted to move on. The wagons stifled; the reins had grown heavy, the creak of the wheels cloying, the sight of the endless, empty land depressing.

     "Bored of us already?"

     My lips drew back from my teeth but I didn't look at her. "Go away, Magun."

     She swayed closer, hips rocking back and forth. The wind passed through her hair and brought me the scent of her desire.

     "I didn't want you to be lonely."

     "Did it occur to you that there might be a reason I'm here, Magun? Alone?"

     "A few," Magun admitted. "I thought perhaps you'd tired of your female."

     I snarled. "Speak of her with respect. She is twice your equal."

     "Oh?" Magun tilted her head. "Was she born anadi, then?"

     I realized my slip too late and looked away, ears burning. I didn't care if Magun knew that Dlane was born anadi. I worried more about what Ilushet would think of me if it knew I'd lied to it.

     "I see," Magun said. "That explains a lot… and leaves even more to be uncovered. What does she really want, eperu? And how," crouching before me and scooping the medallion off my breast, "Did she buy your silence?"

     Her audacity was beyond belief. I glared at her but did not reply.

     "You are so tiresome, Thenet," Magun said at last with a sigh. "What about her has you so bewitched? I am a far more tractable female than she ever will be; surely you realize that. Why is she running? Is she barren? Why are you following her?"

     "If you could understand," I said, "You already would have."

     "Do you honestly believe such opaque answers will dismay me?" Magun asked, lifting one rust-dark brow. She shifted, knees parting. I turned away from the sight and smell of her: not unpleasant, just like her personality, overpowering. "You're using them as a staff, Thenet. Don't think that because anadi do not fight that we don't understand defense and attack."

     "What do you want from me?" I asked, at last, frustrated. Anything to get her away from me so I could breathe in the smells of the world, shut out the cares of the day.

     "I want to understand what drives you both," Magun said, stroking the medallion flat to my chest. I ignored her fingers. "I want to know why you're fleeing."

     "But why?"

     Magun grinned. She had an emodo's coarse teeth. "Because to understand people is to rule them. Until today I have understood the motivations, the fears and the hopes of every person I've encountered. We Jokka are a simple folk, Thenet. But you and Dlane… you refuse the mold. You may not speak of it, but your actions, your expressions, your bodies scream your furtive ploys. I want to know you." She leaned toward me. "I want to have you."

     Her breath had the honied sweetness of candy, and I could smell the blood pulsing at her skin. Her hunger was appalling. I was eperu! No part of the cycle she evoked with her desire, with her smoky red eyes, with the slick drops of saliva dripping too slowly from her fangs. Her tongue dragged over my cheek, one of her hands pressed on my chest and her knees spread over mine.

     I panted, felt her closeness. "No!"

     Magun tumbled away before I even realized I'd propelled her. I stood, trembling. "No," I said again, calmer. I swallowed. "I am eperu. I will be no part of you. You cannot have me… you cannot even touch me. And if I find you near my anadi again, I will tie you down on a mirror for the sun to burn. Do you understand?"

     She backed away, stumbled once. Her delicate feet flexed against the ground, and then she spun and ran back to the wagons.

     I watched her go, my body still shaking. My arms I held apart from my body, for all my limbs felt unnatural. Even my breath only seemed to call attention to the strange, tight dryness of my windpipe. It hissed in and out through a mouth and nostrils that didn't seem mine.

     Slowly, my knees unlocked enough for my body to slide back down to the ground. Pressing my legs together, I slumped against the bark and took great gulps of the air. Anything to wash the smell of her away.

     The darkness, the towering sky made me feel small. For once I was grateful, grateful to be pushed into a tiny space by forces outside myself. Anything to keep my blurry soul confined in my uncertain body.

     The night advanced in fits and starts, measured by periods of stillness and shaking. At some point the former began to outlast the latter until finally, at some hour I could not name, I had come to an equilibrium. The wind tousled my mane and traced patterns on my bare chest, and the medallion was cold against my skin. Strips and pockets of warmth lined the insides of my thighs and calves, huddled in the cracks of my elbows and folded knees. I was exquisitely aware of the temperature differences, of the melange of scents the wind brought, of the high sounds of the tree's thin branches rubbing together, like the crackle-dry skin of an elder's limbs.

     My eyes closed, because sight had become superfluous.

     "Thenet?"

     Her clear, soft soprano shattered my peace - so sublime, oh! I felt the knife drive in, saw the pieces fly away. When I opened my eyes I expected my hands to be bloody.

     They weren't. I lifted a head made heavy but could barely see her. I blinked to clear my vision, but still she remained a hazy shape.

     "Ke anadi?" I said huskily. The cold had dried my voice in my throat.

     "Thenet… it's almost truedark. I was worried…."

     More than worried from the skitter of her voice. I cleared mine and said, "I am here."

     "You should come back-"

     "No."

     She came closer: I could smell her, rich, floral. Could hear the cloth crinkling: a partial vest, from the way the sounds changed across her chest, a long-cloth and a belt of clinking glass crystals, perhaps a few stones. "I don't understand," she said. "Did I offend you earlier? I didn't mean to drive you away."

     "I know," I said.

     Dlane paused, then sat next to me. Her body was far warmer than mine. We remained thus in silence as the night thickened toward the hour.

     "It's getting colder," Dlane whispered.

     "Sit here," I said, patting the ground. She fumbled toward me in the near darkness, clumsy without sight to augment her grace. Cautiously she leaned back until her spine rested against my chest and then she sighed and her body grew lax. I drew up my knees, one on either side of her, and rested my wrists atop them.

     "It's so dark," she whispered.

     "There's nothing to fear," I said softly. "I am here, ke anadi."

     She turned against me and shivered, tucking her head against my collarbones. "Thenet," she said. "The world is so dark. It's as if everyone wanders blind to the hopes and fears of one another. I'm…."

     Her pause was horrible and endless. The bitter black had taken our sight from both of us, and the lack magnified the tiny quivers of her side, her shoulders.

     "I'm afraid."

     I closed my eyes and listened to her breathe.

     "There's no safe place. Everywhere I go I must always ask who will come for me next. How long it will be before my measure is up. My luck can't last forever."

     "I'm here," I said again, wrapping my arms around her.

     "I know," she said. I could feel her shifting to look up at me even though there was no seeing in truedark. "But not even you can turn aside fate, setasha."

     Her tongue left a cold spot on my chin and lips, but I was too far gone to stop her, to protest.

     Setasha, she named me. Love. I am not part of that circle. But she has named me before, and names me again. I am her creature. I cannot be setasha - I am not - but I cannot deny her - my confusion was beyond words, beyond explication. I opened my mouth and felt her lapping at my teeth, too close for a true kiss for comfort. I turned my face from her.

     "It's so cold," Dlane whispered, stealing the breath as it came out of my body. I was wracked with a shudder so intense it had to be a negation, but she rode me and my hand slid down her back to the base of her tail. My fingers threaded through the soft hair and then curled into a fist, pressing against her spine. She shivered.

     I did not recognize the motions I made, nor what moved me… only that her fear was as unbearable as the thought that she loved me, and that to touch her so, on her breast and hip, drove away the acrid scent of tears I could smell on her lips when they brushed across my cheek and throat. There was a tension in her body that grew as I undressed her and my fingers came away slick from her tacit reply.

     It was the Trifold's dance, but skewed. I was no emodo to move an anadi to this. I had nothing to give her in response to her open heart - for I did not need to see her face to see that I owned her. That my hands and my body and the heat of my skin had undone all her careful disguises. Writhing in my arms, she was anadi full and complete.

     And beautiful in it. I found myself longing to see her face.

     "There," she whispered in my ear. "There-oh, setasha." Her voice calmed even as it thinned to silence, and the liquid length of her body curled inward, stiffened. I could feel the taut grimace that exposed her teeth as I held her against my body.

     With a whimper, her muscles went lax. She pressed her head against my neck and it was only when a rivulet of cold streaked down my heated skin that I realized she was weeping against my throat, bared teeth grazing my flesh and the deadly poison mitigated by the length of her tears.

     "Ke anadi?" I whispered, and then huskily, "Dlane?"

     "I feel sick," she said, then gulped back a sob. "It's so wrong, so wrong to feel so happy and then so ill…."

     I couldn't begin to imagine the release, much less the giddiness of an overworked body. In all my years, I'd never once felt faint as so many of my kind do, even other eperu. I could not share with her the experience of being dizzy, not with pain or with pleasure.

So I rocked her and held her tightly, and wondered what I had done.

     Truedark was lifting its veil when I felt her egg break apart against my thighs. I was no emodo to give her the seed to make it take in her womb; and even if I had been, I'm not sure I would have knowing what it would do to her. But the feel of it hot against me made very clear indeed what I'd done.

     Dlane shuddered but did not weep. She'd long since run out of tears.

     "Thenet," she whispered, her soprano cracked and tiny.

     I pressed a finger to her lips. "No." I felt the stirring of her body and added, "No. Not what you're thinking… not a denial. Do you think me mad?"

     She deflated against me and I pulled her tightly to my chest.

     I had given an anadi a very private pleasure, a thing between mating couples, a thing to facilitate the birth of children. A barren union, my fingers and her flesh. It was meaningless… wasn't it? And yet, I couldn't imagine any eperu doing what I'd done. Pleasure was for mating, a messy and dangerous duty left to males and females. Neuters were no part of that circle.

     Dlane was still against me, her clothing scattered on the ground beneath the eaves of the tree. I held her in my lap and curled my limbs around her to shield her from the cold. The heat that sealed our bodies together was damp with sweat and smelled strongly of my exertions, her desire. The wind carried it away, but always an eddy brought it back to cloud my mind.

     The night lifted and I felt her calm attention on the rising colors. She hadn't slept; I could feel her chest pressing against mine and I knew its rhythm. When the first sliver of the sun crested the horizon, I said, "We can't go on."

     Her head dragged against my shoulder and I finally looked at her. There were smudges beneath her filmy eyes. Matted golden hair suggested a metal veil across her forehead and one cheek, and her mouth shone gold with the residue of her weeping. And yet there was a softness in her expression that I had never seen, a calm and a stillness, and as in a pool of water I could see further in that stillness than I ever had.

     She was radiantly beautiful.

     Gently I pushed the tangled hair from her face.

     "Go on?" Dlane said wearily. "Or go back?"

     I couldn't decide on the answer to that. Despite the revelation of the sight of her, I had no emotional energy left to rise to the level of her speech, so demanding. "Go on with the caravan," I said. "Go back to that life. I… couldn't face them."

     Couldn't face the other eperu, knowing that for one night I had had an emodo's hands. I was no longer wholly neuter.

     "Them," Dlane said. "Magun."

     "Ilushet. Atha. All of them," I said, though the thought of being found thus by Magun was terrifying. I drew in a long breath to calm myself and looked down at her, cupping her cheeks with my hands. "Is it time to move on?"

     A fragile smile fluttered over her mouth. "Setasha, you are learning."

     I licked her cheek, and her words gave my spirit wings even as they brought me crashing down in pieces. I didn't want to understand. I didn't want this world where emodo and eperu and anadi are not unlike. I didn't want a Trifold world without gods, where mere Jokka could aspire to greatness. If Jokka could be great, who was I?

#

     "You're leaving," Ilushet said before I could open my mouth.

     I stood, jaw agape, and it reached over and touched my shoulder with a chuckle.

     "Yes, it is that obvious. Do you think I've never had transients before? You are not the first, cousin."

     "But how do you know?" I asked at last. I hadn't come prepared to ask; I had my spear with me, decorated with its bone and glass ornaments, and wore a simple set of gray short pants and a knee-length long-cloth patterned in gray, gold, black and auburn.

     "In the way you stand," Ilushet said. "The look in your eyes. They reveal you, that you are intently focused on something. Before your gaze drifted to and fro." It smiled. "So am I right, then? You and your companion are leaving."

     I nodded. "Yes." I paused. "We'd like to go to a town and stay a while. Do you have any recommendations?"

     Ilushet studied me with calm, dark eyes for several minutes; it was sitting on the platform of its wagon, oiling the leather of one of the rikka's harnesses. The other eperu were preparing for the day's journey, but here there was a lacuna. "Het Narel," it said presently. "They will ask you no questions. Do not forget to collect your shell from Atha before you leave."

     I nodded and turned to go. Stopped before I could think better of it and said, "Ilushet, there are so many things…."

     "That you wanted to tell me?" Ilushet shook its head, tawny mane drifting in the cool autumn winds. "I told you it was okay to say the truth, cousin. It's also okay to keep secrets." It smiled. "Go. Remember to walk unafraid in the dark. And take the tools."

     I bowed my head and backed away.

     Dlane was in our wagon packing as silently as possible. When I looked up onto the platform I glanced toward the blankets: Magun was sleeping.

     "Here," Dlane said, her voice hushed as she handed me a pack.

     I looked into it. "Ilushet gave me the box, the bone-working knives and awls."

     Dlane's golden brows rose. She picked up the box and handed it to me, and I carefully placed it in the pack and closed the flap. I helped her down.

     "Ready?" I asked.

     She smiled brilliantly at me.

     I offered my hand and she took it. While the other eperu hitched the rikka for the day and Magun slept, the two of us slipped into the gathering day heading east, toward Het Narel.

     "Do you have a plan?" I asked.

     "Yes," Dlane said, grinning. "This is it!"

     I laughed.

PART 3

     "It has no trees," Dlane whispered to me as we walked out of the great and lonely plains into the nub of civilization and comfort that was Het Narel. She pulled on the chain of her long-cloth, then pressed against me. I tugged on her hand as a mind-boggling amount of Jokka passed us, some waving, some eyeing us with mild curiosity. After the tiny towns on Ilushet's route and days of a handful of caravan members, to have more people in eyeshot than I could count seemed incredible.

     "Oh, there are trees. Just not big ones," I said.

     "Or many," she muttered.

     I laughed. "Will you speak badly of the gift?" I asked her. "Look at all these people. They aren't staring at us like we're insane, anadi and eperu walking alone hand-in-hand out of the desert! This place is a blessing."

     "Yes, but now what?" Dlane asked.

     "I thought you were the one with the plan?"

     She grinned. "We've exhausted the entirety of it by arriving."

     "I should have know," I said, torn between amusement and weariness. “Let’s rest a moment.”

     We sat on the ground on the edge of the thoroughfare together, her hip leaning against mine, her shoulder tucked under my arm.

     Het Narel wasn't much like our home. The streets were broader and weren't paved or marked with stones; instead bare, hard soil testified that the passage of thousands of feet had driven the memory of pungent grass and bloom from the earth. The buildings were baked brick accented with colors: ecru, beige, salt white and funnel-cloud gray-yellow. Some of the houses were even adorned with expensive wood, no doubt brought by caravans like Ilushet's.

Closer to the center of town, the buildings rose to a startling three or four stories high, probably housing the richer families. It was a broad sprawl, but I could see little of it at a time; the land was so unrelentingly flat that there was no place from which I could take a long view.

     And Jokka! Through this subtle backdrop of gray and pale brown and beige and clay they were as bright as banners. Clumps of eperu in festive white and purple and teal blue, emodo wandering from shop to shop, hair in shades of black and blue and red, white skin and glass-yellow, spirals in every shade. They were flowers in the autumn pallor.

     "We could get lost in here," Dlane said.

     "That's what I'm hoping." I pushed my braid back over my shoulder and watched the crowd stream past. Apparently mid-day was a busy time. "We don't want anyone to think us abnormal. The more people live here, the better."

     "What will we do, though?" Dlane said. She pressed closer as a wind ran through the streets, and I blessed the coming cold. Having the anadi overheat was the last thing I needed.

     "Now," I said, standing and helping her up, "We go find Transactions."

     "Are you sure that's wise?" she said, wide-eyed.

     I tucked her blouse more neatly around her body. At the perimeter of the city we'd stopped to bind her breasts and give her shoulders a little more bulk with a wrapped scarf. While her face was still delicate, with an artificial chest she could pass for just-Turned. "We need to live somewhere," I said. "Better that we live legitimately than in fear of the authorities. Come, ke anadi! This is only the beginning of our adventure. Don't tell me you're ready to give it up already?"

     "Oh no!" Dlane said, and a smile grew on her face again. "Never that." She took my hand, squeezed it. "I trust you, Thenet. Take me where you will."

     I hesitated, then squeezed her hand in return, still awkward with this language she spoke with her eyes and body. Anadi fancies, I thought, but her hand in mine was warm. I shook my head and pulled her with me through the dusty gold and gray and eggshell of the town. Into the crowd, so fiercely scented of people: of perfumes strong and subtle, of sweat, of pheromones tickling the top of my mouth.

     It took us the better part of twenty minutes to navigate Het Narel, which was much larger than I'd originally believed. Nor was it laid out as I'd expected. At home, shops and markets had been in the center of town with the habitations of the major Houses fanning around them and the riches of the House slowly decreasing the farther from the center of town one walked. Because Het Narel had also appeared to have small Houses on the fringes of town, I'd made the mistake of assuming a similar layout… but the middle layer of Het Narel was the shop and market layer, with the great Houses clustered in the center.

     It was around this middle layer that we found Transactions, fully known as the Place of People Transactions. This was the most powerful branch of Town Services, for it was here that the trade in anadi and the occasional emodo and eperu took place. Whether you were a neuter seeking employment for a different House or an anadi being dowered into a new family, Transactions kept the records.

     Here, as at home, the building was marked by a sign with a painted spiral shell. I walked into the narrow, two-story building, Dlane at my heels. The smell of baked clay clouded my nostrils, acrid and thick.

     Behind a desk in the front room sat an elder emodo, his slate-blue skin sliced through with spirals of rich, deep brown to match his mane. His polite eyes when he looked up at us were a clouded amber that was neither the unalloyed beauty of Dlane's nor the beast-ugliness of mine. Some intermediate shade. I found it pleasant.

     "May I help you?"

     As before the hunting emodo so long ago, some strength I was unaware of used my voice, spoke for me. "Please and thank you, ke emodo. My companion and I would like to put down a stone."

     One of his brows lifted. "Is it just the two of you, ke eperu?"

     "Yes," I said, trying not to twitch. I could feel Dlane's amazement, but was gratified that she hadn't moved.

     The emodo cleared his throat. "You are aware that you cannot build a House with two eperu, ke eperu?" He glanced at Dlane, then back to me.

     "Respect, elder, but my companion is Turning emodo. It will be the head of House. I have several crafts, and so does it, and we believe we can trade our wares for enough anadi to begin a proper Household."

     He squinted at Dlane, beckoned her nearer. She walked to him with her anadi's grace and he took her hand, turned it. He gazed into her face. "It does already have an emodo's bearing, ke eperu. Does it still have an eperu's mind?"

     "I do," Dlane said for me. I could see the strain in her face; it displeased her to be spoken about as if she not present.

     The emodo leaned back. "While it is unusual for anyone to put down a stone without a larger group, the law says that if you would put down a stone, you require only a breeding Jokkad and shell to pay for the certificate. So long as you have these things, ke eperu, we can accommodate you."

     I let out a breath. "Thank you, ke emodo." I pulled my pouch from my belt. "What is the fee here?"

     "Thirty shell," he answered.

     I flinched. That was almost half of our combined salary. I understood the purpose of such a stringent price -- those who would build a House must be prepared for far greater expenses than the legal fee - but still. I counted each shell out, one by one, beneath the watchful eyes of the emodo. When I'd measured them out to his satisfaction, he opened his drawer and removed a stone and one of the precious sheets of bleached bark. I'd never actually seen paper, and longed to touch it, but did not. Even at home paper was rarely used.

     He began to write the details that would make us an official House in Het Narel. It occurred to me then what a risk I was taking. To give our names to this Jokkad would be to expose us to anyone who cared to come looking; House stones were a matter of public record. But when I looked at Dlane, she had a resolute set to her jaw, and her gaze on me approved.

     "What are your person-names?" the emodo asked.

     "I am Thenet, and this is Dlane."

     "And your birth-genders?"

     "Eperu and anadi," I said.

     He glanced up at her and said, "From female to neuter to emodo? You have had a tumultuous youth, pu eperu."

     "I am glad to have settled on something at last," Dlane said, and the old man laughed.

     "And what will be the name of your House?"

     My mouth froze open. Of course the House needed a name, but I had been Mated so long I couldn't conceive of being aught else….

     "Reña," Dlane said without hesitation.

     The emodo nodded as he continued penning the writ, the sharp aroma of ground nuts rising from his wet ink. I glanced at Dlane, who smiled at me.

     "Thenet Reña-eperu, Dlane Reña-anadi, I will need your signatures here, and here."

     He handed me the reed pen first, and I squinted at the document. I could not understand half the words he'd written, but 'House', 'new', and our names I did. On the space he'd tapped, I carefully wrote out my name and then signed my personal symbol beneath it: a circle with five claw marks marring one side. The circle for the completed circle that the eperu is, requiring neither emodo nor anadi to be complete, and the claw marks for what I had been: guardian to anadi, ever vigilant. I handed the reed to Dlane and stared at the mark, realizing suddenly that I had become it again: eperu to House Reña, guardian of my most precious ke anadi.

     Dlane wrote her name with more confidence and grace that I had mine, and her symbol beneath it perplexed me: a set of three curving lines sprouting from a single point, and above it a flattened oval with a line through it.

     The emodo had withdrawn from one of his drawers a corked pot almost as large as his fist while we’d signed our names. This he opened, and from it came a hard, sharp odor, strong as the smell of burning oil. Dipping a brush in this, he painted our stone with a mark, like a combination of our signatures. My circle with the five marks, encased in the three curving lines like grasses. The center line of the grasses rose straight through the circle. This he also painted in the same ink on our parchment.

     Handing us the stone, the emodo said, "On this day House Reña put down a stone in the place of People Transactions in Het Narel. It was duly recorded here by Marzed Ketti-eperu. In the future when you build your House through marriages, contracts or employment, please remember to come here to have the transactions witnessed and recorded. Congratulations, ke eperu, pu eperu, and much luck with your House-building."

     We thanked him and backed out of the building; only then did I look at the stone, warm and real in my grasp compared to the cool breeze that ruffled my wrist fluff, tickled my fingers. Dlane pressed against me and stared at it.

     "Did we just do that?" she asked.

     "Declare our own House in a town months from our birthplace?" I closed my fingers over the rock, measured its weight and flicked my ears forward. Grinning, I said, "I am reasonably sure we didn't imagine it."

     "But… a House!" Dlane wrinkled her nose. "I am not displeased," she said slowly, "Though I still believe I should take the journey."

     "We will go to the Birthwell," I said, for the first time feeling it in my heart. "Just not now. We need to wait for the proper time… isn't that what you told me?"

     "Told you and taught you, apparently!" Dlane exclaimed. She grinned and hugged me tightly, rose-spice sweat in my nostrils. I looped an arm around her back and laughed.

     "We should get out of the middle of the road, I think."

     "And now what?" Dlane said. "There are so many things to do! I've never run a House before. Even a House of two people!"

     "Mmph. There are two things we should do." I untied the pouch of shell and counted out five of our remaining thirty-five and handed them to her. "You need to see a clay-keeper and ask him for the House-builder's guide."

     "You want me to wander alone?" Her tone was more curious than frightened.

     I looked around at the Jokka passing without even glancing our way. I got no sense of menace from them at all; simply polite disinterest. "Right now you look like eperu, and I imagine none will harm you. But if we are to make enough shell to run a House, we will have to be used to being apart." The idea elicited a twitch from my lower spine, but some part of me was also relieved. She wanted so much to be not-anadi, my Dlane, but she would never take that first step unless she began to be self-sufficient. To help her become what she wanted to be, I had to push her out on her own.

     Knowing this didn't help with the guilt. Nevertheless, I said firmly, "So you go to the clay-keeper."

     "And you?" she asked.

     "I will go look for a building for us to live in! Let's meet where we first came into town by sunset. Agreed?"

     "Agreed!" She hugged me once more and then trotted into the crowd. I watched her with lowered brows and ears… she had the mien of a child at a festival, but I noted with approval that she also seemed alert, glancing to and fro every other step. Satisfied that there was nothing more I could do, I went in search of a dwelling.

     I'd never rented a building before, but a few dim memories from home guided my feet toward the edge of town. I didn't even bother investigating the center of Het Narel: the rent in that district would be more than Dlane and I could afford without a stable of emodo to do craftswork for us. So I jogged back to the fringes of town and began investigating, looking for empty houses. Exploring the first few revealed a plate with a name and signature -- the name of the emodo who owned it, no doubt - and a set of two numbers. I guessed those were the amount needed immediately, and the amount per month in rent.

     We were not, I could see, going to be able to afford even a small house.

     I sat on a bin beside one of these empty buildings and let loose a sigh. Even the meanest of the available buildings required at least fifty shell up front and another twenty-five a month. I toyed with the thought of building us a shelter, but doing so would require more work and more learning than I had. We needed to spend our first few months settling in, building a client base with whatever skills we decided to sell.

     "Why so dark a face, ke eperu?"

     I glanced up to find an emodo leaning against the fence. He was older than I, but not so much so: his skin the color of baked red clay, hair black and lustrous. Brown eyes studied me, curious and lively, shades lighter than the near-black spirals across his body. He wore a black long-cloth patterned in red, beige and silver over brown trews, and his brightly polished thumb claw shone in the aging sunlight.

     "I am afraid I am not heartened by the cost of housing here," I said, lifting the stone so he could see it.

     "Oh! I see. A new steader! Where is the rest of your House, ke eperu?"

     "It is getting the House guides from the clay-keeper," I said, a rueful smile tugging at my face.

     "It? You make it sound as if there are only two of you," he said with a grin.

     "That would be because there are only two of us," I said.

     The Jokkad canted his head, one ear tilted outward half in jest. "You are serious, ke eperu? It's no wonder you're disheartened over the cost of housing."

     I chuckled. "I am as serious as I look dark, I'm afraid. It's just the two of us and this," I held up my little bag and shook it so that it clacked softly, "bag of money."

     He snorted. "Doesn't look like much, ke eperu. But maybe you just need new eyes."

     "New eyes?" I asked, wondering if everyone I met was going to talk like Dlane.

     "Come on," he said, and having little else to do, I pushed myself off the bin and joined him.

     In the wake of the jocular emodo I walked around the perimeter of the city until we reached the northwestern edge. There were few people here, and I was startled to pass several large rocks. I let a hand drift over one as he walked on.

     "Surprised?" he said with a grin.

     I nodded.

     "We're not so far from the mountains as we might seem," the emodo said. "Perhaps a month’s journey to their base."

     "So close?" I glanced at the horizon. I'd been traveling so long, staring at them, that I'd lost perspective on how much ground we'd covered. Maybe they did seem closer.

     "Truly," he said. "I wouldn't lie to you, ke eperu."

     "And why is that?" I asked archly.

     He ducked around another of the stones, this one nearly waist-high. "Because I like you. You look honest."

     "Do I," I murmured.

     "Besides, you're wearing the medallion of the Trifold."

     My hand stole to the carved metal. I'd almost forgotten the necklace, since I'd never taken it off. I opened my mouth to say I did not follow the Trifold, but what use was it? Trinity or Trifold, I had stepped outside the circle of any named religion the night I'd worn an emodo's hands.

     "Here we are," he said, stopping.

     I came to a halt beside him and blinked a few times to clear my eyes. He'd brought me to a little building, two stories high and made of the ubiquitous baked clay stained a mellow yellow-gray. It had a few windows on the inside, and a balcony that could have supported maybe two people, little more than an overgrown ledge.

     He stepped onto the raised ledge while I rubbed my hands over the nearby stones; three on one side of the front of the house and two on the other, like teeth guarding a throat.

     I hastened to follow him inside and found what I'd expected: it was one large room on the bottom with a firepit against the eastern side, and a circular ramp led to the second floor, another large room.

     "It even has a water closet," the emodo said. "First floor only, but the waste falls in a pit so you can collect it for compost. And here," he stopped beside the firepit and opened a small door above it, "Is an oven for slow-cooking anything you want to preserve. This lever will control how much of the updraft from the flue it receives."

     I wandered after him as in a dream, stopping only at the back door. It opened on a view of the mountains to the north that Dlane would adore.

     "This is your property, isn't it," I said.

     "It is indeed. And you can have it for twenty-five shell now and an additional seven a month."

     Shocked, I said, "Why so cheap?"

     The emodo started laughing. "Careful, ke eperu! Such unguarded honesty would tempt a lesser Jokkad to raise the price. As to why so cheap…." He walked to the front door and opened it. The town was a smudged blur. "That," he said, "Is a good ten minute walk. And I haven't met a House or a business yet that wants an abode quite so far from the middle of things. But you..," he grinned, "You, I think, will like it here. Am I right?"

     I stared at Het Narel. Ten minutes wasn't so far, really. And it would keep people from seeing us too often. "Ke emodo, if good salespersons are made by being able to read a customer, then you must be one of the best."

     "I like to think so," he said. "So, are we agreed?"

     "Absolutely, ke emodo."

     "I'd be pleased to have you use my given name, ke eperu. I am Barit Dzeri-eperu."

     "Thenet Reña-eperu," I said, clasping his hand and shoulder as eperu do. "Let's go make this legal, landlord!"

     And so we did.

     That evening I escorted Dlane to our new home.

     "We are walking far from the town," she said to me.

     "Yes," I said, relieved to smell and feel her, familiar as my own skin, more familiar even.

     And then, "Oh…!"

     I grinned.

#

     "The clay-keeper offered to take me as an apprentice," Dlane said to me the next morning. She'd dropped to sleep immediately on getting home and I too had dozed more heavily than was my wont… but only after examining the precious sheet of waxed bark that were our House guides, instructions I could barely read on how to conduct transactions legally in Het Narel.

     Sitting on the threshold of the back door, gazing out to the mountains, the anadi said, "He’ll pay ten shell a month, and he'll give me lunch each work-day. Was that a good price? Should I have said no?"

     "It will pay for rent," I said, unfolding our clothing. We had no furniture for the items Ilushet had so kindly sent away with us, but spreading them out made the house look a little more lived-in. "And a few shell more. Truth told, ke anadi, I think he may be overpaying you. But we shouldn't complain!"

     She grinned. "I'm so glad you approve! I was frightened you wouldn't…."

     "Why would I do a thing like that?"

     "Because anadi don't work."

     I stopped. Forcing my hands to resume the mechanical motions of folding proved more difficult than I anticipated, but I managed. Tuck. Tuck. Straighten. Had her way of thinking proved so insidious, that it had finally crept fully into my mind?

     "What I want to know," I found myself saying, "Is why he hired you, since indeed anadi don't work."

     "I convinced him that I was still mostly eperu. The clothes and chest-binding worked… the rest of it was out of pity, I think." Dlane rolled her lip between her teeth and worried at her long-cloth. "As long as I keep looking mostly eperu, I don't think he'll mind paying me. And I'll get to learn!"

     With a sigh, I turned from the clothing. "Fine. But when summer comes again we'll have to rethink this plan. I don't like the idea of you wandering in the heat where you can faint."

     "Are we staying that long?" she asked.

     "How am I supposed to know?" I said, exasperated - fondly so, but still. Picking up a brush I sat behind her and gently combed out her messy golden braid with my fingers before applying the brush to it. "I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to make us any money."

     "You could carve," Dlane said.

     My brow wrinkled. "I don't think I'm that good yet."

     "Maybe you'd be surprised."

     I refused to answer that. "When do you start your work?"

     Dlane grinned. "In an hour!"

     Startled, I helped her brush out her hair and rebraid both mane and tail. After wrapping her all-too-anadi breasts, she donned a fresh set of clothing and was on her way back to town, leaving me to lean on the post of the front door, dizzied. I hadn't let her out of earshot for months and within one sunset the world had gone topsy-turvy - again!

     Which left me with our much reduced bag of shell, a lack of food, and no purpose. What did a guardian eperu do without an anadi to guard? I stared at the brittle eggshell sky of the autumn dawn, tempted to lapse into melancholy.

     House Reña was poor. The cupboards of House Reña were empty. It was time for this lone eperu to go shopping.

     I returned some time later with a bag full of simple foodstuffs and some seeds. We lived on the outskirts of town; there was no reason we couldn't grow at least part of our own food and save the expense. Unless that reason was that neither of Reña's members knew how to grow so much as a flower.

     I walked out of the back door and onto our vast lawn, stopping to stare at the mountains. It was quiet… too quiet. I missed the sound of her breathing as she slept, the sound of her laughter when she woke. Shaking my head, I sighed and jogged out further onto the plain. Choosing a place beside a thin ribbon of a stream, I settled down to dig, my bag of seeds crumpled beside me. The cold nagged at me, but I ignored the faint warning it insisted on whispering. I had other problems.

I had no idea how far apart to space the seeds. Or how large they would grow. Or how much water they needed. Frustrated, I leaned back on my heels and wiped sweat off my brow, reflecting that it was strange how one never realized how much of life depended on the collected knowledge of other people… until forced to rebuild all that knowledge alone. Perhaps I should be the one going to the clay-keeper.

     Leaning forward, I clawed a pebble from the tumbled soil. That couldn't be good for the seeds. I resumed my work.

     I planted in tidy rows, and by the end found myself almost on top of the stream, my hands wet with mud. It clung to my arms and stuck in my wrist-fluff, drying in hard nodules. Frowning, I sat beside the stream and stuck my hand into one of the holes I'd made, clawing at a hard lump on the bottom… another rock to foul my poor seeds.

     I dug it up and held it in my hands. There was no sign of the rock beneath the layers of dirt, so I scraped at it.

     And scraped. And scraped.

     There was no rock. It was just a big, hard hunk of clay. Was it all the way under my plot? How could the tender new plants dig through this? I kneaded it while my mind worked furiously, trying to decide whether to claw up all the seeds and ruin the afternoon's work or to take my chances.

     It was only when I'd stolen a moment to breathe between my ruminations that I realized that kneading the clay was fun. I turned it in my hands: a reddish-brownish-grayish blob, with a consistency altogether pleasurable to my fingers. I twisted around and stared at the stream… more of the same colors were buried in the exposed soil.

     Clay.

     The bag of seed I left behind, but the lump I took with me back into town. The last of our shell I spent on a potter's wheel.

#

     My first pot exploded in the house's tiny oven, and that after days of trying to figure out how to make the thing stay on the wheel.

     So did the second pot.

     The third pot only cracked.

     Dlane viewed my experiments with obvious bemusement, lolling on the second floor and staring down into the first through the ramp cut-out. She avoided the heat of the firepit, as well she should, and kept her own council.

     She was wise, my anadi. I was beyond speaking. The clay had seized my tongue and my mind, and even when I slept my fingers twisted and curled, shaping the doze-dreams that overlaid reality like glaze on the pot I wondered if I'd ever make.

     My failures multiplied, each one slightly different from the next. The clay cracked in the fire - it exploded. Holes with spiderweb weaknesses appeared in some. Others never even made it to the oven… they came out disfigured, lips gaping as if broken-jawed, misshapen bellies, twisted necks. I despaired of ever creating anything.

     I'm not sure if it was need for shell that drove me; it certainly never entered my mind, though pottery was a lucrative business in any settlement. Perhaps it was the need to make something: perhaps the same eperu who had taken on an emodo's hands now wanted to borrow an anadi's womb.

     Maybe I was abnormal.

     The third week of our stay in Het Narel, I was again home alone, my anadi away to learn the paths of clay and letters. The single-minded intensity I'd been devoting to my efforts remained, but with it finally came a certain patience. I kneaded the blue-brown clay, gently working each of the pebbles and twigs from its body. When I tossed it to the wheel it stuck in the center. I closed my hands and felt it as I spun the wheel, and its body seemed to breathe.

     I caressed it, felt the walls shiver as they grew. Shaped and coaxed and trimmed. It was not so different, perhaps, than it had been with Dlane.

     While the pot dried, I went to survey my garden. It occurred to me then as the breeze ruffled my tangled mane that perhaps planting just before the onset of winter had not been the most intelligent of my actions.

     The next day, in silence, I trimmed the bottom of the pot and put it in the oven. I went for a long walk afterwards, meandering through the fields. I followed the stream for several hours with the cool sunlight on my back. There was little but fields and hills for miles, but the scent of the brown grass and the water cleared my nose of fire and clay. I breathed deep, and remembered where I was and who I was.

     Thenet. Thenet Reña-eperu. Guardian to anadi, bringer of pleasure, carver of bones and hunter of animals, confused and elated and simply alive.

     I washed in the stream before making my way back home, chilled but laughing.

     That night when I pulled the fragile pot from the oven it had no crack or flaw. Its slender neck rose straight from an elegantly bowed belly, and its lip pouted like the mouth of a lovely anadi.

     Looking over my shoulder, Dlane said, "It's beautiful."

     I turned and saw her for the first time in three weeks. She was radiant, her golden eyes dancing, resplendent in the patterned clothing of a neuter. I touched my hand to her hair, to her cheek, then crushed her close. The spiced sweetness of her scent tangled in my nostrils with the smell of hot coals, the dried herbs I used to perfume the fire.

     That night I borrowed an emodo's hands to give Dlane a gentle pleasure before she slept. It did not seem so odd to me, who had so lately worn an anadi's womb to birth a pot from the reluctant clay of the earth.

#

     That first pot I put on a new shelf I built for our house with a plank of wood bought by the sale of the next. Another shelf joined it; then a table and chairs. The doors and windows were soon decorated with curtains of deep wine-red, and even later extravagant wooden doors. We bought rugs in wine-red and gold and purple, draped them on the floors and walls. Dlane's salary paid our rent and some of our food, but it was mine that made a home of our house, and a House of our home.

     Reña, said the townsfolk, makes good pottery.

     I built another, roomier kiln outside for my larger pieces, and the stream bank soon showed the signs of my labors. The year turned colder, and Dlane slept snugly in a blanket. I watched her carefully for signs of discomfort from the heat but like the eperu she pretended to be she found no fever in the sheets.

Through the winter I worked. In a way it was almost unfair: it was the emodo who ran the businesses of the Jokka, the emodo who made the pots and cloth and tracked our histories. But being eperu, I did not need to sleep as the emodo did, and my pottery wheel kept me occupied well into the coldest hours. The fire in the kiln outside rarely slept; like me, it only dozed, its coals faint and crimson-cool. No emodo could have made the amount of shell I made in the same time, given that handicap… but Reña needed the money, and so we were lucky.

     For a while, life was far more normal than I'd had the chance to experience since being thrown from Mated. As winter cast its bitter winds and lifted the blanket of warmth from the plains, I found a serene center from which to live my life in that little house.

     Dlane skittered inside and said, "Quick, quick, look out!"

     I glanced over my shoulder. "Ke anadi?"

     "Oh, quick, you'll miss her!"

     Puzzled, I joined her at the window and glanced past the wine-red curtain. A flicker of silver? Like ice. "What was that?"

     "Who, you mean. She's been following me home for the past three days now," Dlane said with a giggle. "She honestly believes I don't hear her behind me, I think. I've never been able to catch more than a glimpse of her, though… I'm afraid if I confront her she'll run away."

     "An anadi? Following you? Why?" I squinted out into the gathering dusk. It was unusual for anadi to be about, particularly alone, but winter was the best time for them to wander if they were going to do so.

     "I don't know," Dlane said. "I'm hoping she'll be brave enough to approach me before my curiosity demands scratching!"

     I looked up at the sky, then back after the glint of silver. "Maybe I'll follow her."

     Dlane straightened. "Oh, Thenet… can you? It's getting dark already. And it's cold!"

     A grin pulled my lips apart. "I have been in the house all day with the heat. It'll be good to feel the breath of the World on my back for a little. Besides, I can see in the dark."

     She threw her arms around my bare middle and squeezed, pressing her cheek against my chest. "Be careful. We live far from the lights of town."

     I let my chin rest on her head for a few moments, inhaling the essence of her, the honeyed wash I gave her hair every tenth day. She was everything that was anadi, and all that was Dlane as well. I hugged back, then slid from her embrace and onto the trail that led back to town.

     My fingers touched the tracks first. The ground had hardened in the cold, but there were signs for a hunter to see and taste: scattered pebbles, and when I lifted my head the taste-smell of warmth left by a body, and the faintest hint of a perfume, lilacs. Potter's fingers, emodo's hands, eperu senses. I came alive in the darkness and stole after the trace of the anadi. She'd taken a curving path, approaching Het Narel from its edge. I'd been traveling only ten minutes when I spotted the hint of silver yet again.

     I froze and watched - indeed, there she was, stumbling along as if she could barely see the trail she walked. I drew closer and, once I judged I'd come close enough, kicked over a rock.

     She flung herself around, waves of long hair spinning from her thin shoulders. Anadi, oh yes. And even in the dark I could see her skin was what mine could have been: a lustrous white holding a thousand layers, as if her skin was only the topmost glaze on a slim pot of exquisite workmanship. The flash of silver I'd seen had been the reflection of her hair on her skin, masses of soft silvery tresses, straight for most of their length before ending in large curls.

     Her mouth formed the rounded shape of a gasp. I straightened.

     "I have a few questions to ask of you, ba anadi," I said, for she seemed young.

     "I'm not a child!" she said, her voice a soft soprano only a few notes darker than Dlane's.

     "Only a child would be out and about so," I said, "Or following Jokka when they should be at home by their reflecting pools."

     "So why does she get to dress like an eperu and go to work?"

     My mouth worked, and what finally came out was, "She was very lately eperu-"

     "Oh, and I was very lately a rock. That Jokkad was born anadi and is still anadi, and she can tell that story to the clay-keeper until the sky bleeds white but she doesn't fool me!"

     I did the only thing I could to such a blatant threat to our cover… I grabbed her by the waist, slung her over my shoulder and started back home. She scrabbled against me, but her struggles seemed only inspired to acquire a more comfortable position. Then she lay still, as if this had been her plan and not mine. Maybe it was… I wouldn't be surprised to discover that every anadi who hadn't yet lost her mind had a scheming one.

     So it was that I opened the door to our dwelling with our unlikely spy on my shoulder. "Ke anadi…."

     Dlane's head popped out from the ramp cut-out and she blinked a few times. She laughed. "Oh, you didn't have to bring her back, Thenet!"

     "I most certainly did," I said, pulling her off my shoulder and settling her firmly in a chair. "She knows a little too much for my comfort."

     In the firepit's light the girl's skin soaked up the reds and yellows and set them glittering in the creases of her body. She had large, pale violet eyes to go with her silver and white coloring, and these eyes she trained on us as if eating through them, and she the victim of a famine as long as her life.

     Dlane padded down the ramp and plucked the teapot off the hook in the firepit. With a set of cups I'd made she set out places for us, and sat. And she met the girl's eyes.

     Two of a kind, I thought with mild exasperation and sipped the spiced tea.

     "And you are?" Dlane asked.

     "Linuthet," she said. "Linuthet Kathara-anadi."

     Dlane glanced at her navel, then back at her face. "You haven't had your second Turning yet, have you."

     "How did you know?"

     "Because if you were fully anadi, you would have had a ring by now. You are too pretty." Dlane smiled sadly. "I would know."

     "But you're here. And you're working. You wear clothing. You… hide your breasts." Linuthet's ears flattened. "You won't be bought for some other House's harness, will you?"

     "Dlane," I said, trying to curtail this episode before it got out of hand. Bad enough that the girl knew of Dlane's subterfuge, but for her to know of Dlane's unorthodox views as well might be tempting the Void too much.

     "No," Dlane said. "I will never be sold. Or bred. This is my House, and in my House no anadi is sold who does not want to go."

     "I can't imagine…," she trailed off.

     "Dlane," I said.

     "You don't have to imagine," Dlane said. "It's real."

     "Dlane!" That at last caught her attention. "Perhaps we should talk a moment over there," I jerked a thumb at the back door.

     She stood and joined me at the back while Linuthet played with her cup nervously.

     "We can't go saving every anadi in the street," I whispered to her, ears flat to my head. "We are not a temple."

     "No," Dlane said. "We're a House. And Houses need anadi."

     "You're not thinking seriously of engaging her!" I exclaimed, perhaps a little too loudly. I hissed and lowered my voice. "Do you want to go buying every anadi you can save from the harnesses? You want to build a House of unmated females with one eperu for guard?"

     One of Dlane's golden brows lifted, and her eyes were steady on mine. My soul sank.

     "You are considering it, aren't you," I said.

     "This is what I wanted when I let you lead me to the place of Transactions," Dlane said, passion stirring in her voice. "To build a place where no female need fear for the loss of her mind. That is why we're saving money. That is why we have a House."

     "Dlane! If people notice what we're doing we'll be run out of Het Narel! And if we get enough anadi and keep them idle, trust me, people will notice!"

     "We'll worry about that when it happens, then," Dlane said and walked back to the table. I stared at the two of them: shining anadi, lovely and ripe and… unrealized. Women without children. What was I thinking, all this time? These months in the company of an unnatural female had made me unnatural as well. To find normal the sight of them so earnestly talking was not normal at all.

     I opened the tall, thin cabinet beside the door and extracted a few items of clothing. Pinning a sash across my breast and a winter long-cloth to my hips, I said curtly, "I'm going out."

     "Okay," Dlane said, and returned to her conversation with Linuthet. That was it - just 'okay'. My anadi had no eyes for me. She had a soul to save.

     Well, so did I.

     The door bounced behind me as I strode from the house and down the trail leading to town, my muscles so tight I barely felt the touch of the wind. I couldn’t identify the origins of my anger - perhaps it had come twinned with a premonition of the kind of danger Dlane invited with her course. To send herself into peril alone by flouting the ways of our kind, that I could only barely countenance: she was anadi, to be protected and calmed. But to take with her a House full of fledgling philosophers? All their ideals would shatter into bone shards and screams when the mob came from Het Narel to put order to the chaos of a House that would deem itself above the cycle of childbirth and marriage. A Houseful of anadi with no emodo in sight! And their lone eperu would die first, inadequate to the task of guarding them all.

     My hand stole to the medallion at my breast and with a growl I tugged it off. My body twisted with a violence that was born of my heart and I flung it - and the night seized its breath to watch. In the Moment, I felt the pendant leave my fingertips, the cool disc brushing my skin. The scratchy leather cord followed, stinging. It flashed a dull, milk-pale spark as it twisted.

     Gods damn the Trifold! I could worship nothing that gave us these powers of choice, to choose what could damn us for the hubris of preserving our minds despite the cost.

     But she had given me that medallion.

     It was the Moment, and as the pendant glittered dully just beyond my arm and the leather burst free of my tingling fingers, my other hand leaped from my side and caught the cords.

     The World breathed again, and the Trifold pendant was in my hand. With a sigh I tucked it into a pouch on the side of my long-cloths and continued walking.

It was no surprise to me that I ended up in the Temple quarter. Here all the religions that wanted an edifice could put up Houses to their gods or their ideals, whichever mattered more to them. The solemnity of the quarter at night suited my dark mood. I walked in and out of the yellow light of lanterns, savoring the layered differences between the amber cast of the illumination against the cooler, bluer light of the stars and moon.

Barely a soul breathed among the clay columns of the temples, and it was not the stillness of the wild, where no Jokka stirred, but the stillness of the silenced. Of the willfully mute. Of the obedient and temperate and dutiful soul. I approved.

     The temple of the Trinity was marked by the sun, star and world of the gods. Long strips of black and purple shadow cast by the facade's columns dappled the stairs leading to the doors. Straightening my clothes, I ascended and passed into the sanctuary.

     The temple enveloped me. It was dark, but the cool, blue dark of stars, not the suffocating dark of a womb. It was silent, not the open silence of the unbounded wilderness but the silence of an enclosed space undisturbed, a receptive silence sharp with the cold, hard stone of the floor. And the incense! Drifting in barely visible arabesques, the incense suffused each breath with a subtle palette of spices and sweet herbs, fire and resins so delicately mixed I stopped where I stood to simply bathe in the taste-smells.

     My coming interrupted the air currents, and I could feel them stirring the delicate hairs on the insides of my ears: talking of me. Each footfall on the hard stone sent a spike of cold up my leg, and the scrape of my claws and hiss of my foot-hair changed the quality of the silence irrevocably. I had intruded into the sanctity of the place, and it had accepted me… but barely.

     Amid columns of quarried stone shone to mirror brightness I lost myself, accompanied only by my black reflection on the floor. The starlight was transformed by the paneled glass of the windows, to blues and whites and grays and a lilac so subtle it wavered between gray and colored. In the patterns of light cast on the floor I could see the incense smoke as shadow, twirling in a sinuous, endless dance.

     I sat then, on the circle of light. The smoke fell over my shoulders, tickling my neck and cheek: asymmetrical spirals of spice to complement the asymmetrical spirals of skin that twined over my collar bones. My breathing slowed, opened. With my hands resting on my knees, I pulled in sweet air and released my troubles in long plumes through my nose.

     My life was in the hands of the gods. It always had been. I hadn't had much chance lately to consider my afterlife in the ranks of the World's hunters, and when I tried to imagine it I failed. Too many things had yoked me to this life for me to reach for the next. But the presence of the Brightness, the Void, the World in my life… that I needed, reached for and found in the cool, clear, perfumed dark.

     "Sibling," a quiet voice said: not soprano nor bass, and not measurable in between. It could have belonged to any of the genders. "Welcome to the temple of the Trinity."

     I looked up. A hooded figure had come to the crisp edge of the window's cast light. It had brought the darkness forward, robbed it of some of its haunting depth. The long folds of its robe rose from the black ink of the stone floor, but the nearest edges of the cloth were not so lush a darkness. Nor could I really see the color of my visitor's eyes, only that they were wet, touched with a highlight the color of stars.

     "Thank you," I said, and my voice was hoarse and small. It did not echo across the sharp floor with the stranger's clothing to muffle the breadth of the silence's receptivity.

     "Do you need anything, Sibling?"

     I opened my mouth. My hands clasped tighter on my knees as my thoughts tangled on the shape of an anadi, the shape of my heart. "What I need is here," I said at last. "In the Trinity."

     "It is the Void's time, Sibling," the voice said from beneath the hood. "Be careful what you ask when He is ascendant. He is cold as the light of stars, as the marble in winter."

     My chest was full of the spiced incense. "The World is always here."

     "But what is the World at night? Every god has his time."

     The sensual shadow of the incense crawled across my lap, regal as Dlane curving beneath my hands. And the emodo Void was all around me. I had brought the World into the temple, riding my soul. But how much of me was the World when I was a maker of things and a bringer of anadi pleasure?

     I shivered. "Leave me," I said, my voice a low, trembling thread.

     "As you wish, Sibling."

     And the silence spread open again as the stranger left. I bowed my head and let the incense caress my cheek and neck. Something inside me grew cold.

     When I uncurled from the floor my joints creaked with the chill of the stone. I dragged my hand across its polished surface as I stood. Such expense for the temple… quarried and dressed marble to remind the innocent of the power of the gods. I thought of Dlane and myself, and the Void without His vessel and shivered, hastening outside.

     And into total darkness. Time had slipped from me and ushered in the truedark while I sought my center and the natural order of things, the same natural order of things that said Jokka do not travel when they cannot see. I was paralyzed, standing on the steps of the temple, blinded and seized by a frigid wind. The world had vanished. I held up a hand and could not see my fingers, and the acrid taste of panic flooded my tongue and teeth.

     A slip of lank hair had escaped my mane's braid. Its touch had the tenderness of a caress, and I twitched. Skin tracked its soft trail across my shoulder and onto my collar bone. Sensations returned, not with the force of a punch but gentle, subtle, one by one. The panels of my winter long-cloth brushing over my trembling legs. The wind's cold fingers on my chest and belly. The swing of my braids… the liquid wet of my eyes as I blinked. The world smelled open, full of the subtle herbal tang of grass and the sharper bite of ice. And my ears could twitch to follow the path of the wind through the unfettered streets.

     It was the sound I followed from the temple quarter, through the blinding darkness and out of town.

     I did not question that I should travel through truedark. What good was there in rhetorical questions? I had done it before. I was cold and tired, and small, small, small. I wanted to go home, so I did. As before, every sense I had came alive and guided me, though I couldn't quite close my eyes.

     When I pushed open the door, the fire blew away the veil from the world. Dlane stood on the ramp, a lantern in her hand.

     "Thenet," she said, a smile growing on her face. She held out a hand.

     I came into her arms and wrapped mine around her slim waist. "What are you doing awake?"

     "I couldn't sleep, knowing you were out there," she said. I could smell the heaviness of her fatigue on her breath, see it in the slow droop of her eyelids and the weighted grace of her movements. I took the lantern from her.

     "You should sleep," I said. I glanced around. "Where's the female?"

     "I sent her home. Tomorrow we will go to Transactions and buy her from Kathara."

     I sighed. "Can we afford an anadi so soon?"

     Dlane's tail flicked. "We must, dear Thenet. We are too small." I wondered if she thought us too small because of our solvency or if she was thinking of all the anadi she had yet to save. "Besides, Linuthet is not past her Second Turning. Kathara will sell her cheaply since she's not a known quantity."

     "How do you know they'll sell her at all?" I asked.

     "Oh, they will," Dlane said, "If we sign the clause that says we won't fine them if she Turns some other sex."

     "What if she becomes eperu?"

     Dlane chuckled. "That's fine. Another eperu can always be of use to you."

     "And if she becomes emodo?" I asked archly.

     She frowned, but shrugged after a pause. "Emodo too have their place."

     "Do they," I said. I shook myself and guided her back up the ramp. "Dlane…."

     "You're frightened," she said, and somehow she didn't seem as tired as she had. "I know, setasha."

     A shiver rolled down my spine. "Don't call me that," I said softly, the chill of the temple still in my marrow.

     "You love me, don't you?" she said, cupping my cheeks in her delicate hands. Her eyes on mine were more painfully bright than the heart of the lantern.

     "I don't know what love is, save breeders' fancies," I said, my voice lowering to a husk. "I don't know what I am."

     "You are eperu, my Thenet," Dlane said. She looked not at all disturbed by my protestations. "You will come to peace with that soon." One of her fingers drifted down to the meeting point of my collar bones, there to linger on the hollow. Devoid, I remembered suddenly, of the medallion she'd given me. My ears flushed white and I looked down.

     "Oh, setasha," Dlane said, a sad smile on her face. "You went looking for your gods, didn't you?"

     "And if I did?" I lifted my face to look at her, the rasp in my voice growing more marked as the tone dropped out from beneath the words. They were my gods, not hers. My soul to save, not hers to change.

     "Did you find what you were seeking?" Gentler than I'd expected, given her opinion of religion. Perhaps it was this unexpected gentleness that prompted my candor.

     "I don't know."

     She sighed, and her hand splayed against my cheek, warm fingers. "My poor love. Silence where you needed music. I'm sorry."

     "For what?" I asked, unnerved by her nearness, by the heady scent of her, the warmth of her body.

     "For everything I've done to you," she said, and then her lips touched mine.

     The kiss of a Jokkad is a thing of danger and invitation. Fangs that weep poison are too sharp and perilous for soft lips. I'd never witnessed an actual kiss across mouths, for they were to be shared between breeders - this heat, this languorous lapping, this tasting of self is not for the eperu. But when she licked my teeth with the tip of her tongue, I could only let my jaw hang open so she could continue, and then she drank the water of my mouth from the cup of my tongue.

     My limbs receded from my body. My world narrowed to the taste of her in my mouth and tingle of fangs itching to answer her.

     I don't know how, but I returned it. Braved the poison I'd seen her use and explored her mouth, learned the roof of it, the length of it, the spars of her teeth, the sharp points of her fangs. Sampled the water of her mouth from the depression in her tongue, flavored with the bright bite of the honey her fangs had already proffered… not yet the sweetness of the poison, only the glaze.

     When she drew back, a thin liquid thread joined us at the mouth before it grew too heavy and broke between us. The sound and sight of it shattered the heavy, wet heat between us and I gulped in a breath. My body broke into violent shudders.

     "Sssh," she said, touching my mouth with her fingers. My lips felt bruised. "Sssh. There's nothing to fear."

     "Ke anadi, this isn't right," I whispered.

     "What's right? What's wrong? Does it matter? Did it please you?"

     "Yes… no… I don't know!"

     She hugged me then. I held my arms out. I couldn't figure out what to do with them. To hug her… maybe the scent and feel of her alone would transform the rest of me into an emodo. Could she transform me by the bare power of her touch alone? And yet I knew full well she wanted me as eperu - that if I had been emodo, she would have shunned me. So wrong! How could an anadi desire an eperu with whom she cannot mate?

     My teeth itched now for a totally different reason, and all my good intentions about not weeping in front of her dissolved. Amber tears leaked from my mouth and I stifled them as best I could, but she heard. Her ears flicked sideways.

     "Thenet, setasha. Lie down with me," she said, pulling me to the nest of blankets and pillows.

     I had no resistance to her. I lay down beside her and let her pull me into her arms. She arranged my head against her breasts and rested a leg over my hips - broad as her own, though I'd never thought about it. An emodo's chest, an anadi's hips. Eperu, some unnatural amalgamation of them both. Maybe the eperu were some nightmarish creation, born to be tormented by their place outside the circle of life and birth and mindlessness and death.

     I closed my eyes and listened to her breathing, the beat of her heart through her skin, but it did not calm me. She smelled moist and sweet and warm.

     "What are you making of me, ke anadi?" I asked.

     "I don't know," she answered. "But whatever it is, it is where you want to go. I am only… only showing you."

     "And you? You never change." I touched her ribs.

     She laughed, a flutter of her chest beneath my cheek. "Oh no, my love. I am changing every day. I am becoming something too."

     "I did not ask for this journey," I whispered.

     "No one does," she answered, her fingers gently combing my hair back from my neck. "No one asks for a mind, or for the pain of change. But to deny it is to be the dead thing walking that emodo claimed you were."

     "Roika," I said with another shudder.

     She shivered, but did not stop stroking my mane. The heat of the kiss was dissipating from me, leaving only a drowsy warmth. "Yes. Roika."

     "I wonder where he is."

     "Not here," she said firmly.

     And yet I felt an ache at the reply. I did not want Roika here, but this life Dlane wanted to build, a life of eperu and anadi without emodo, lacked a balance, a center.

     "Tomorrow," she said, "We will begin augmenting our House."

     "Yes," I said.

     She rumbled contentedly and held me close. The rush of her breathing slowed and I listened to her heart as it evened for her dreaming. My tears dried and as the shadows of the room grew and danced to my own on-and-off dozing, I could believe our kiss had been a similar fantasy, a twisted thing just one step to the side of what was real and normal.

#

     I was trying to etch a design on the lip of one of my pots when Linuthet arrived the next day. The door that closed behind her let in a swathe of the cold and a rectangle of golden morning sunlight. I didn't greet her, too concerned with the motions of the knife: it was easy to pierce the lip in the leather-hard clay and render it flawed.

     She did not speak, for which I was thankful. The heavily built fire soon restored the room to its comfortable temperature and the crackle of the flames and the soft scrape of the blade were the only sounds in the room for a while. When I'd completed the design, a set of interlinked spirals, I stood and turned.

     I'd forgotten all about the anadi, she'd been so quiet. She was sitting on a tiny stool by the fire, hands on her knees and a bag at her feet.

     I sighed. "I'm not going to eat you."

     Her head was bowed, but her eyes rose to fix on my face. "No, but you don't like me much, do you."

     I flinched. How to explain my ambivalence? "I don't dislike you, Linuthet. I'm just not certain Reña can afford you yet."

     "I'll work for the House!"

     "Doing what?" I asked, one brow lifted.

     She deflated. "I don't know. I've never been given the chance to work before."

     She was a pretty thing, wearing that layered white skin and with all those silver curls. It was painful to see someone so young so dejected. I ran a hand through my hair and said, "Well, we'll find something later. Why don't you go upstairs and put away your things, and then maybe cook something?"

     "Okay."

     I turned from the firepit after she'd vanished up the ramp and shook my head. Linuthet might be willing to work, but what could she do? The kinds of work available to a fragile anadi were few. That was part of being anadi, gods damn it - they weren't supposed to work. But Reña had no pool of cool waters for its anadi to bathe in, no flavored ices for them to sip. If we were going to grow large enough for our anadi to live in comfort, if ever they decided they wanted to, then work of some kind we'd have to put Linuthet to.

     I walked outside to the front of the house and leaned on one of the teeth framing our porch. The wind ruffled my mane, reminded me that I needed to do a better job of braiding it if I was going to keep the slip out of it.

     A familiar red figure was toiling up the path to our House. I waved a hand. "Hail, Barit Dzeri-eperu!"

     "Hail the House Reña!" the emodo called back as he joined me. Our landlord's grin never changed; perhaps because Reña was his last stop on his monthly route and never failed to pay in full. "It's a brisk winter, don't you think?"

     I clapped him on his cloak-covered shoulder. "Brisk enough for a warm drink by the House's fire, I would say."

     "As always, your hospitality is quite welcome," Barit answered.

     "Come, then."

     Inside, I relieved him of his cloak and hung it by the door before retrieving a few of my nicer cups. Linuthet had put tea to brew over the firepit, so I brought the pot with me and a tray of the nut pastries I sometimes brought home from the confectioner's. I liked Barit… he was emodo, but he had been eperu once, and it was good to talk with someone a little more down-to-earth once a month.

     "I see you're hard at work, still," Barit said as I prepared the food. "The people speak well of your wares."

     "It's shell in the bag," I said. "And I enjoy it."

     "I haven't seen you in town to sell in a while."

     I grinned and sat across from him. "It's been a long time since I've had to. Most of my work is commissioned now."

     "That is the place to be!" he said with a laugh, warming his hands on the walls of the mug as I poured the tea into it. "Though I suppose it renders my proposition unnecessary."

     "Proposition?"

     Barit stirred the tea, releasing a few spirals of wet white heat. "I have a new property opening next month. A small storefront."

     "Oh?"

     "In the Green."

     "Oh!" I leaned back, trying to keep my eyes from widening. In the center of town, where the gardens of the Green were tended stubbornly against the seasons and the harsh climate, the most affluent of houses and businesses made their homes. "Barit, that's… quite a locale."

     "They say location is everything," he said with such innocence that I laughed.

     "Do they, now. But what would I sell there?"

     "You could take a month off to do some pots to put on the shelves," the emodo said. "Don't tell me that you can't do it, ke eperu. I know you can work most of the night and often do just for the love of it."

     My ears dangled asymmetrically. "I don't love it…."

     He gave me such a look that I spread my hands and laughed again. "Okay. Maybe I do. But even if I did, I couldn't man the shop and make pottery. I would lose too much time."

     "Rumor would have it that Reña has a new member," Barit said coyly.

     "Yes. Anadi, and without skills. Do you want me to send her to tend a shop in the Green alone? What would Het Narel think of Reña then?" I said sharply. A little too sharply, for Dlane's unnatural attitudes had been wearing on me.

     Barit looked away, sipped his tea. His ears rotated forward so slowly I thought he was recovering from my outburst, but he was staring at the tea. "What is this? It's fantastic."

     I sniffed the tea, then took a sip. It rolled over my tongue, peppery sweet - such a flavor that I swallowed more out of surprise than design. "I… have no idea. Linuthet?"

     The anadi appeared on the ramp. "Ke eperu?"

     "What is this?" I said, pointing to the tea pot.

     "Something I made," she said, blushing white at her ears and cheeks. "Was it bad?"

     "Bad!" Barit exclaimed, "I've never had anything like it. It's sublime! What's the aftertaste? Something hot and spicy, almost, but sweet, too."

     "It's a combination of things…."

     I stared at her.

     "A combination of things, she says," the emodo said, chortling. "As if anyone could mix them up. Whatever it is, could I have some?"

     "I could make you up a packet to take home," Linuthet said, looking at the emodo in confusion.

     Barit grinned slyly at me. "Don't let me forget to compensate Reña for the services of its herbalist."

     Herbalist! "Linuthet, do you do this a great deal?"

     She shrugged, a motion rolling across her shoulders, down her plumed tail. "I like the taste-smell of things. I always used to play with the herb cabinet at home, make my own hair washes, my drinks, seasoning for food."

     I cleared my throat. "If you could get a packet of this tea for Barit to take home, that would be wonderful."

     "Okay!" She jogged back upstairs.

     Barit was grinning at me over his mug when I turned back to him. "Still not interested in a store in the Green, ke eperu?"

     I sighed. "Barit…."

     "Concoctions make a lot of money. Particularly in the Green, where they like everything to smell unusual and they use perfume daily."

     "But I can't send her to sell it!" I said. "I am still the mainstay of this House's income, and I cannot go to town every day to sell perfume to the rich. I have orders to fill."

     "You will let her work, though."

     I paused.

     "As you let the other anadi work."

     I'd never tried to hide Dlane's comings and goings from our landlord; he knew the money had to proceed from somewhere. But on the issue of her sex, I'd never said clearly whether she was anadi, or emodo, or emodo-turning anadi or the other way around. Feeling my way forward by the sobriety in his gaze, I finally nodded.

     The emodo played with his cup, ears flicking backward. I couldn't read the expression on his face: his mouth and eyes were set, but his brow had lowered, casting brown shadows between his nose. "Last week, as I have been in the past, I was called to service by my House. We have an ongoing contract with Rabeil and I was chosen for this cycle's duty." He rubbed his thumb over the handle of the mug: one of mine, with a silvery purple glaze. "She was not unlovely, and did not resist me. There was nothing in her to resist me. It is an open contract, so we were allowed to exchange names at the end… she could not hold mine in her mouth. She forgot the first sound while speaking the last."

     I almost reached out to touch him, but his sorrow was too private. He looked up at me. "We all have duties, ke eperu. That doesn't mean we have to enjoy their results. I am idle most of the month, and need only a handful of days to collect payment from the properties I manage for Dzeri. If you want to rent the storefront in the Green, I would be honored to take an employee contract with Reña."

     Stunned by the admission and the offer, I stared at him blankly.

     A white hand clasped my shoulder as Linuthet joined us and laid a fat packet stitched with a bow to hold it closed on the table. "For you, ke emodo," she said. She hesitated. "I don't know your name…."

     "Linuthet, this is Barit Dzeri-eperu," I said, "Our new employee." I grinned with teeth at him as he sat up. "Let's talk of prices, shall we?"

#

     A week later I entered the Green through the delicate bronze gate, my arms full of pots and Linuthet at my heels. She opened it for me: a formality, really, a tiny thing barely waist high and without a lock. You are entering another realm, it said by its blatant lack of utility, watch your step and your manners.

     Well, I was watching. Reña was new enough that we could jeopardize our standing with the older, more affluent Houses by simply being too arrogant. We had a reputation for taste, thanks to the elegance of my work, but reputations are fragile things, subject to the whims of a fickle society.

     We walked across the octagon that formed the center of the Green. The gardens had taken on Winter's seeming: thin, spiky trees pruned so their branches formed graceful patterns, their bark scraped so that the color of the skin and the fluctuating hues of the bark, some aged, some fresh, proffered interest to the wandering eye. The expense of maintaining the Green's gardens was shouldered by the Houses and businesses that took advantage of them, and reflected their shell flow with sobering accuracy.

"Have you been here before?" I asked Linuthet.

     "No," she answered, balancing the jar I'd given her against her hip. It was one of my carrying models: two handles nearly flush to the skin through which one could thread a broad leather strap. She had filled it with her herbal teas, each in a special, soft leather sack to keep the smells from wandering into one another. "These Houses have far more money than Kathara ever did, and probably ever will."

     "Luck," I said. "Their anadi bred true and often, and produced fortunate amounts of females and males."

     "You call it luck," Linuthet said. "I call it cruelty."

     I glanced at her, and she wore obstinance badly over her fear. Unlike Dlane, she had not yet become accustomed to voicing such unspeakable thoughts aloud. She continued. "They breed the anadi like animals until they become them, and then it doesn't matter anymore how often they're pregnant."

     Resettling the bowl against my body, I sighed and said, "I know, ba anadi. Say no more about it here, please? The last thing we need is for all Het Narel to hear such craziness. Particularly in the Green."

     "It's not crazy, though, is it, ke eperu?" Linuthet asked.

     I shrugged. "The wheel must turn. Come on."

     She hastened after me, and my long strides put to rest any questions she might have plied me with following my ambivalent answer. I didn't want to discuss it again. Dlane's answer might give dignity to the anadi, but it would eventually destroy our race, and that particular solution to the plight of the anadi was not an acceptable one. Not to me and certainly not to normal Jokka!

     My haggling with Barit had taken quite a while, and I saw why when I stopped in front of our new storefront. Not only was it in the Green, it faced the central gardens and sat on the main walkabout of the octagon. The great Houses of Het Narel were on the roads leading from each of the sides of the octagon, but Reña's new storefront… you could sit outside, were there chairs, and watch the cool winds through the branches. Prime property indeed.

     Barit was waiting outside, a black cloak embroidered with burgundy spirals whirling around his solid legs. He held it closed over his chest and complemented it with a somber look. He'd taken his employee contract very seriously indeed… enough to make me think that the incident with the mindless anadi had troubled him even more than he'd allowed me to know with his confession.

     "You brought items!" he said by way of greeting. "A lot more than I thought you would."

     "You have the wheelbarrow?"

     He grinned. "Parked just inside the shop, as promised."

     I nodded. "Good. I'll drop these things off and leave you with Linuthet to discuss how to arrange them while I go back for the rest of the wares."

     "Ke Linuthet," Barit said, inclining his head.

     Linuthet giggled. "I'm not that old yet," she said, then walked past him into the store with her jar bumping her hip. I'd dressed her in pants and an old blouse, uncertain as to how to keep anadi warm without making them too hot. I couldn't just let her walk around in the kind of cold that Het Narel was beginning to serve even during the days. It was far colder here than it had ever been back home in the south.

     Barit grinned and shook his head. "Feisty thing, isn't she."

     "Yes, well, just another product of topsy-turvy Reña," I said dryly.

     "Herbs, pots and anadi sharper than glass. I suppose it could be worse," Barit said.

     "Oh?"

     "Yes. You could be staging a revolution," he said, tail swaying in amusement. He ducked into the store and returned with the wheelbarrow. I was still standing where he'd left me, frowning after him.

     He laughed. "Pulled your ears well and good, didn't I."

     "Oh, be quiet," I said, torn between affection and irritation. "I'll return shortly."

     Back and forth I went that day, hauling the pottery and herbal packages Linuthet and I had put together. I'd barely even dozed the previous week, so busy had I been on finishing my orders as well as creating new work. I transported the wares, not without pride, barely noticing the hours passing; though my eyes took in the changing hues of the shadows, deepening and growing richer in hue as the sun crested and fell toward the horizon. The air chilled as well.

     The shadows were long and an enticing shade of plum purple against the darkened gray-yellow of the soil when I left the house with the final load. This one contained the lettered signs created by Dlane for the inside and outside of the storefront. Like most stores wholly owned and operated by a single House, ours was named by its affiliation, not by what it sold: Reña-kurestheña, House Reña's storefront. Dlane had painted the letters on the board Barit had brought back after we'd finished haggling, and as I drew up to the store I climbed on the stool Barit had left outside and hung it carefully from the carved willow-wood branch, too aware of how expensive both board and hanger were.

     When I climbed down and examined my work, I chuckled. The setting sun set the words aglitter, for Dlane had painted over the black letters with some of my purplish glaze and outlined the results in a bronze metallic ink I occasionally used, one so very sublime it neared silver in hue.

     I walked into the store to find Linuthet lecturing Barit on the contents of one tiny clay vial after another. I chuckled. "What, not done yet?"

     "I'm beginning to think I'll never be done," Barit said, ears splayed.

     Linuthet giggled. "He'll understand. Just not immediately. Maybe I can write it down in the meantime, so you can consult the list if you forget."

     "That would be wonderful," Barit said.

     I chuckled. "Fine. That's for tomorrow. Barit, will you be ready for opening two days from now if I bring you the labels tomorrow?"

     "I could open tomorrow," the emodo said. "I might not know one perfume from the next, but I can tell which rack is for perfume and which is for washing manes. That's enough to sell to a normal customer."

     I was sorely tempted; the storefront had cost quite a bit, and I liked the idea of being able to recoup some of that expense immediately. But I shook my head. "No… we want a style, a way of doing things, to be associated with Reña, and part of that style is for you to be knowledgeable about what you're selling. If it has essence of thornrose from the northern mountains in it, I want you to be able to say so."

     He grinned. "As you will, ke eperu. I will do my studies when you bring the labels."

     "Very good," I said, then smiled. "You did well for the House in renting us this storefront, ke Barit. Thank you."

     "Ah. You are a pleasure to work with, my friend. Much more so than others."

     "Mm." I gestured to Linuthet. "Come on, ba anadi. It's time to get you home before you grow too tired."

     "Be careful, ke eperu. I'll see you in the morning."

     "Good evening," I said, ushering Linuthet out. I checked her and pulled a cloak off the wheelbarrow, tucking it around her. "Are you cold?"

     "A little. Not uncomfortably so," Linuthet said. Her lilac eyes were shining. "Oh, ke eperu! It's so exciting. I am making shell for our House!"

     "In two days, most probably yes," I said, amused. "Come  now."

     Out through the gate of the Green we went, into a darkness that had welled up from the eastern sky, enfolding the buildings in a deep, dark blue. I wore only a short vest and a pair of pants, and the chill was far sharper than I remembered.

     "I wonder if it’ll snow like in the mountains," Linuthet whispered to me, leaning into my side. She was taller than Dlane, and our hips bumped together uncomfortably as we walked.

     "Snow?" I asked. "We’d better hope not."

     Linuthet grinned at me with chattering teeth. In the fast-falling night her irises were almost transparent with the faintest sheen of purple. Her swollen pupils seemed to hang in her eyes like ornaments. "I think it would be fun! I’ve never seen snow."

     "How would you know it was fun, then?" I asked. "It’s cold enough without wishing mountain-weather on ourselves."

     As we neared the edge of town we encountered more Jokka… the rich folk of the Green might go to sleep early, or retire to talk by the light of expensive lanterns, but outside the town's privileged center, people were only just closing shop and heading home, having squeezed every last cockle shell out of the day. The creak and rattle of fold-up carts crowded people on foot into the sides of the streets at the busiest intersections.

     One of the carts lumbering past brushed against my side and I glanced at it. The breeze whacked my nose with the strong scent of spun sugar as the brightly painted cart blocked my peripheral vision. I whirled around - a candy cart, like the one I'd bought Magun's trifles at. I shivered and turned back.

     "Linuthet? Linu-Trinity take it!"

     Linuthet had been accosted by two emodo whose flat ears and lashing tails told me more than I wanted to know about the just how obvious the shape of the anadi's body was through her clothing. I approached the group with clenched hands.

     "It's cold!" Linuthet said, torn between anger and fear. Her voice wobbled as she backed away. "Would you rather I freeze?"

     "What are you doing out in the cold in the first place?" the first emodo asked.

     "Pardon me," I said, stepping up behind them. Their heads turned toward me, and starlight flashed in their eyes, blanking their gazes. "Is there a problem, ke emodo?"

     "This female is wandering alone in the dark in clothing."

     "She's with me, actually," I said. "And I'm just escorting her home from visiting with friends. Really, ke emodo… do you need to scare her so?"

     "Visiting with friends," the male hissed. "In clothing? That makes no sense."

     "It's a little cold to be wandering without them, don't you agree?" I said, walking between them and taking Linuthet's upper arm in my hand. I could see her opening her mouth, but a quick, sharp squeeze stopped whatever it was she was going to say. "It seemed better to clothe her than to risk her safety. The head of House says she might be our next kaña."

     "Mmm," the second emodo said. "She is a pretty one. A little young, though."

     "Indeed," I said. "Unless you need anything else, friends? I need to get this anadi home and put her to sleep. She's had an exciting day."

     Linuthet squeaked her outrage but I pressed my fingers harder against her arm.

     The two emodo shrugged, tails rippling in the breeze. "No… we're just glad she wasn't alone. Good evening, ke eperu."

     "Good evening," I said, pulling Linuthet after me.

     We walked. Stiffly. Linuthet stumbled alongside as if the arm I held was diseased. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure they were gone, I sighed and let go. "All right, ba anadi."

     "The… the… animals!"

     "We are all animals, Linuthet. They didn't mean you harm."

     "Harm! It depends on your definition!" Linuthet rubbed her arm, ears sagging. Her voice was still bobbing from anger to misery. "Oh, gods… they were so awful! So hungry and angry."

     I frowned. "Ba anadi, they were just emodo. Average emodo at that."

     "I hate emodo!" she said, hiding her head in her hands.

     "Sssh!" She was going to get us in trouble with such outbursts. "At least wait until we're home before you start. Besides, you like Barit, don't you?"

     "Barit was eperu once! He understands!"

     I sighed. "Hush. We're almost home."

     By the time we'd reached the house Linuthet was less obviously distraught. I ushered her in and sat her in front of the fire, then gave her a cup of warm tea. "Drink," I said. "Relax." Then I went upstairs in search of the Head of the House.

     Upstairs, soft wet candles bathed the room in a flickering bronze light. The nest of pillows and blankets that Dlane and Linuthet slept in gained a secretive air, crannies and nooks riddled in shadows the color of rust at dusk. Even the plain walls seemed more exotic, painted in long streaks of gold fading slowly to burnished bronze and finally to umber shadows touched ever-so-slightly with the deepening purple that crept in through the balcony windows.

     Reclining in the nest was my Dlane, my crazy anadi… luxuriously naked save for a long-cloth that spilled over her broad hips, glittering gold, crimson and plum-violet in intricate floral patterns. The cords that connected front panel to back panel fell naturally into the depression between the crest of her hip and her leg, leading my eyes toward the secretive darkness pooled near her tail. She was resting on an elbow, staring at a polished surface; when I drew near I could see it was the lacquered round of bark. Every month Holdings would wipe its surface clean and write out our account's withdrawals and deposits with a wax pencil. To this Dlane applied herself, since she was better with writing than I was.

     I tasked myself to remembering why I had sought her. Clearing my throat, I stepped into her haven of flickering light. "Ke anadi."

     She glanced up, and a smile spread across her mouth. "Thenet! You're back! How did it go today?"

     My tail twitched in irritation. "Well enough. We'll open in two days. Ke anadi… what are you teaching that girl?"

     Dlane's ears flicked outward. "Pardon?"

     "Linuthet. She is convinced that emodo are evil."

     At that, Dlane drew herself slowly from her elbow and sat straight, the round on her lap. Her shoulders rose. "Emodo… evil?"

     "A couple stopped her to ask her why she was wearing clothing. She over-reacted. Ke anadi, you aren't teaching her that emodo are evil, are you?"

     "Not precisely. Only that what they do to us is wrong," Dlane said.

     I growled and crouched in front of her. "It is not what you make it sound like - as if it were their intention to make you dumb. You know the emodo don't want that."

     "They don’t?" Dlane asked, one golden brow lifted.

     "No!" I exclaimed. Trying to lower my voice, I hissed, "Barit doesn't!"

     "Barit is one Jokkad, Thenet. Only one."

     "So, you would teach Linuthet and all the anadi we buy that one third of our race is their enemy? What kind of teaching is that, Dlane?"

     "The only teaching I know how to give them to keep them safe!" she said, frustration narrowing her voice. She touched my shoulder. "Dear Thenet. Can't you see? I need to keep them away from the emodo so they can find their own way."

     "What I see," I replied, "Is that you'll never free the anadi forever by making war against the emodo. If you want this to work, you need the help of all the Jokka, not just the anadi and one battered eperu."

     She traced one of the thin creases down my chest, remnant of the attentions of the emodo of House Mated. "You are wiser than you know, setasha."

     "So will you stop it?" I asked. "Teach them something else!"

     "I will think about it," she said, looking at me with those eyes of hers. She touched my cheek, let her soft fingers drift over my lower lip.

I caught her hand in mine and said, "Promise me."

     She nodded. But when I went downstairs and walked around Linuthet on my way out to catch some of the breeze, the haunted veils over her eyes blinded her to my passing.

#

     Barit did finally learn the ins and outs of Linuthet's complicated wares. I stood in a few days listening to him charm the passersby, and no eperu or emodo who entered the shop could simply walk out without letting him entice them. A quick whiff of a specially blended essential oil of stonewhite and pale-blossom might turn inexorably into a lecture over its possible uses, and before the unwitting Jokkad knew it the shell had changed hands and it or he had gone home.

     They returned, though.

     I learned to read the ledgers while working through Barit's lacquered rounds on repeat customers. Within weeks we had to close shop for a day to give Linuthet time to work up another shelf full of merchandise. This only served to heighten our desirability. Scarcity made for good business, particularly when your House was the only one with as discriminating a nose as Linuthet's.

     A month later I was sitting on the edge of a stone fountain near the center of the Green's winter-stark gardens, nibbling on a piece of dried soli fruit. My cloak piled in heavy folds on the ledge before dropping to the cold, hard ground. It was a rich thing of god's breath, a complicated fabric that approximated the hue of a beautiful Jokkad better than most. Mine was dark crimson with a nap of truedark black, so that at times it seemed the color of autumn wine, at others pale as flame, still others as shadowed as a purple dusk. The black embroidered hems tickled my toes as I watched a gray cloud drift across an ambivalent sky.

     "Ke eperu?"

     I twisted and squinted at the figure approaching: limber beneath the weight of a woolen blue-gray cloak, shoulders a respectable breadth and hips flared like one of my more graceful pots. The voice was a neutral tenor, neither male nor female.

     "May I help you?" I asked.

     The eperu drew near. Its skin was the color of soil in winter: that cool and subtle gray-brown. Richer brown hair framed its face, and eyes a slate blue. It had the palette of early winter, pleasing to the eye. I found myself wishing it had some splash of color somewhere though: a scarlet scarf, or a bright gold earring….

     Earring. The elegant sweep of its right ear was marred by a break.

     This close I could see the pallor of its cheeks - it was nervous, perhaps? Embarrassed?

     "Ke eperu… you are Thenet of House Reña, am I right?"

     "I am it," I agreed with a cant of my head. I waited.

     It drew its cloak closer around its body and said, "I am Seper."

     The name had an unusual cadence: accented on the last syllable, with the trill of the 'r' softening it further. The lack of a given House name made one of my ears swivel forward in curiosity. "Ke Seper. How may I help you?"

     It glanced at the gardens, then back at me. "May I sit?"

     "Of course."

     It touched the stone before seating itself, moving with a fluid, feral grace not at all marred by a curious fatigue. A long silence separated us, but I felt at ease… it had been long since I'd been able to sit beside another eperu. Not since the caravan summer, and even that had been in an uncomfortable place. Being eperu in a town… that I understood.

     "It is a beautiful day," it said.

     I smiled. "If you like winter. It's a bit cold for me."

     Seper drew in a long breath. "Ke eperu, I do not want to waste your time… but I wondered…."

     "If I have space for you in House Reña."

     It paused, eyes widening. It had lovely lashes, thick and richly brown. "Yes. You knew?"

     I touched my own ear, where the golden hoop still hung after all this time. It looked down, ears flattening.

     "Is it so obvious?"

     "To one who was looking, perhaps," I said. "What happened?"

     The sinuous movement of its throat contracting caught my eye, and then it turned to me and slowly drew its cloak from its body and held out its hand. Perplexed, I studied it and made as if to touch it; when Seper's expression didn't change, I turned its hand over and hissed.

     A long scar, barely healed, drew a deadly line over the top of its hand. When I gently pressed its wrist, the long fingers barely twitched. "Hunting accident," I said, looking up at it.

     It nodded.

     "And when you didn't heal correctly, your House ignored your excellent service and took all your rank, reasoning you could no longer serve it as an injured Jokkad."

     Again, it nodded.

     Full contracts weren't cheap. Dlane and I had spoken of buying other eperu to fill our numbers, but unlike anadi and emodo, eperu could negotiate their own contracts. As the true workers of a House, they could charge large sums for their House affiliation contracts and expect to win them… particularly if, like Seper, they could claim an earring. Nevertheless, this example of waste angered me past any prudence. To cast out a Jokkad simply because it could not do all that it once did - because it made a mistake, some part of my mind whispered - struck me as a moral crime.

     "Come," I said. "We will go to Transactions at once."

     Seper rested a hand on my wrist. "Ke eperu, you hardly know me, and I would rather not get you my House record."

     Of course; it would have to go back to the House that had dishonored it so to retrieve the record that listed its accomplishments. I shrugged, my tail jerking.

     "I will see no one thrown out like garbage. You were cast to the bottom of the rung to serve in the most menial tasks because you were hurt while serving your House. I need eperu to help me. Will you help me, ke Seper?"

     Its ears swiveled forward under the hood. "They say Reña is a House to watch, ke eperu. And softly spoken, they also say that Reña treats its people well. I would be part of such a House."

     "That is enough for me," I said, and stood.

     Seper stood. It was taller than I was by several fingers. "Thank you. You will not be sorry…."

     "Thanks!" I laughed. "As if this were an act of charity. Ke Seper, I plan to work you hard."

     The eperu grinned. "Good," it said. "I have been missing work."

     "We'll see if you feel the same way in a month," I said. Its grin was infectious, and my spirits lightened. "Come. And please call me 'Thenet'. Ke Thenet makes me feel withered."

     "Then I am just Seper."

     "Well, then, Seper. Let's go buy your contract."

#

     "A new contract so soon?" Dlane leaned forward against the table and watched me pour brown tea. Linuthet was already asleep and Seper, newly transferred, was out hunting, an activity I'd enjoyed but found time-consuming when combined with my pottery-making duties. Not only that, but I found myself clumsy in the cold. "Are you sure that's wise?"

     "Have you seen our returns from the storefront lately, ke anadi?" I asked. I sat across from her, wrapped my hands around the cup. "We can more than afford it." I frowned. "Besides, I couldn't leave it that way. It had been cast out for no other reason than it had lost some of the strength in one hand."

     "So not only a new contract, but one for a cripple," Dlane said.

     Startled, I looked up at her only to find her grinning. The knot in my midriff unraveled. "You approve," I said with a heavy sigh. "Why didn't you just say so?"

     "Why do you think you need my approval?"

     "You're the Head of Household…."

     "Oh, please." Her hand stole to mine, curled on top of it. "Thenet, we went into this venture together. If there is a Head of Household for Reña, it is us together. You are the one who made possible my education at the clay-keeper. I could not learn were it not for you."

     "Have you learned anything interesting?" I said into the uncomfortable silence after that. Dlane rarely told me about her daily efforts, though she came home content.

     She laughed. "Mostly accounting! But also stories…."

     "True ones?" I asked hopefully. "Histories?"

     The anadi shook her head. "Only that from what is known, we did indeed come from the north, for there is more evidence of our ancestors in the northern lands than there were where we lived."

     "The ruins," I said.

     She nodded. "And other artifacts. I have even seen one… a large piece of an ancient stone tablet. The writing is not so different."

     I leaned back, amazed. "What did it say?" Some epic poem, some great wisdom, some knowledge from the depths of time… my curiosity itched like tears.

     "It was an incense recipe," Dlane said.

     "A… what?"

     She laughed at my expression, and I joined her after a moment.

     "No profundities to be found, eh?" I said.

     Dlane chuckled. "Not on that tablet, no."

     "I wonder… if we could make that incense?" I liked the idea - a link to our past. To think that the incense burned in our home had been burnt by Jokka so old I could not trace their lineage… it comforted me with a sense of our continuity. One day I would die, but there would be Jokka after me, just as there were Jokka before.

     "It's not so different from what they burn in the temples, I think," Dlane said. "I could bring home the ingredients to see what Linuthet could make of it…."

     The door creaked open and I twisted around to find Seper, cloak hissing around its feet. It closed the door behind it and said, "There is meat outside in the cache."

     "The cache?" I said, bemused. "I didn't know we had one."

     "We do now," Seper said with a laugh. It spied Dlane and walked to her, kneeling before her. "Ke anadi. I am honored to be the newest member of your House."

     Dlane smiled and touched the eperu's cheek. How lovely, how suited to this role she seemed. "Welcome, Seper."

     "I have a gift for our House…." Seper drew from beneath its cloak a broad pelt and set it on Dlane's lap. It sparkled with the beads of a thousand drops of water, melted frost. Brown guard hairs could not disguise the softness of the sand-pale fur beneath, and as it dimpled over the anadi's knees it took on different shades: a near white at the top of a fold, a rich, tipped gray-brown in its folds.

     "What is that thing?" I asked, stunned. In all my sojourns around the area, I'd never seen anything like it. It would have been able to bite my stomach had it stood on its back legs -- and that pelt!

     "One of the genarabi," Seper said. "A predator, and in its winter guise it is hard to spot. They frequent the watering places at night."

     "It's beautiful!" Dlane said, petting it. She turned it over and rubbed the edge.

     "It wants a little more care," Seper said, "But afterwards, it should be salable."

     "Seper," I said sternly, "You did not tell me you were a trapper."

     Seper grinned. "That's because I am not a trapper."

     "How do you explain that, then?" I pointed at the pelt, which from my vantage seemed flawless.

     "I am a very careful hunter," the other eperu said.

     I laughed. "Oh! I bless the House that threw you away. Their loss is Reña's very gain."

     Dlane's eyes sparkled as she glanced at me. "Maybe we can afford another few contracts after all."

     Seper had the grace not to look smug.

#

     That winter Reña made its name in Het Narel. Spiced incense thick as temple smoke, delicate floral washes, elegant pottery and thick, glossy furs were by no means necessities, but how the folk of the Green loved them! Which is not to say we didn't sell to Jokka of lesser means, but they learned to come to our House directly during the noon-hour and buy from myself or from Seper.

     Ah, Seper. What would I have done without it! It seamlessly took over duties I had been working: cooked and cleaned, hunted and ran errands, all accomplished with an excellence that belied the weak hand. Its attentions allowed me the freedom to walk Dlane to and from the clay-keeper's place, something that relieved my mind. Our House became far more pleasant to live in, and if such menial tasks were beneath Seper's skills, it didn't stop the eperu from earning the shiny brass earring that I myself affixed to its right ear to replace the one so ludicrously revoked. Nor did it complain when we used one of its own furs, a silvery-gray kippel, to edge the new cloak we bought it at winter's end.

     Nevertheless, it was with relief that I greeted our first spring in Het Narel. The warming weather brought a riotous selection of flowers to run like water down the slope of the road. Linuthet's tiny gasps and thrilled exclamations had followed her like a veil the first day she walked outside and found a cluster of berrybrown blossoms nestled against the edge of our porch. Her spring fragrances had all the verve of new life, verdant floral bouquets evoked with a single whiff. Her facile touch with the mortar and pestle made its way into our house, in lotions and hair-washes that gave even my hair a little softness, a little color.

     It was indeed a very satisfying arrangement.

     "There's a caravan on the horizon," Seper announced as it walked in with a bundle of fish hanging from its spear.

I glanced up from my work detailing the belly of a bowl for House Weffa, ears flipping forward. "A caravan?" I asked. "From what direction?"

     "South," it said. The eperu opened the canvas bag and withdrew the flesh, dropping it in the pot simmering over the firepit. "It should be here in an hour."

     I put down my brush and cleaned off my fingers with the cloth on the desk. "We should go greet them."

     "Oh?"

     "I traveled once with a caravan," I said. "I'm curious. Besides, if we come to them, we'll get first bids on anything they're carrying."

     Seper laughed. "Thus speaks the shell-counter!"

     "Frugality is good for the purse," I said.

     "I'm glad you don't tell that to the custom," Seper teased, and I chuckled as I stood. I pulled on a short, sleeveless vest of crimson and black embroidery and buttoned it, the cloth-covered buttons coarse to my still-sensitive fingers.

     "Let's go," I said, and Seper didn't argue.

     We closed the house and checked on the kiln and the cache on our way out… the slender thread of the road became more tenuous around Reña, but we followed what there was of it to the twin stones that marked the edge of Het Narel's zone. Beyond it the road ran, a twisted and broken path of beat grass and pebbles. Past these rocks the people of Het Narel no longer maintained the trail, and staring down it I found myself wondering who had built it in the beginning. Ilushet's caravan had not followed a set road because there hadn't been one. Or had there? Had it simple fallen into disrepair, engulfed at last by the ardent grasses?

     The old road, deeper into the north where our ancestors had lived. Perhaps they'd built better in their youth.

     "Why do we not maintain the roads?" I mused.

     Seper had sit on the opposite rock, its spear planted firmly in the ground. The broad plait of its mane hung over one shoulder, twinkling with tiny beads red as sunset's eye. "I don't know," it said. "Who would do it?"

     "I don't know," I said.

     And so in silence we awaited the approaching caravan, a snake of nine wagons. As it drew nigh, I called, "Hail the travelers!"

     "Good greetings!" the caravan-master called back, pulling its wagon to a halt. As I’d anticipated it was not Ilushet but another eperu, sooty brown as the ash of a cool fire with blowing white hair. "Very good greetings, as we've never been greeted thus before. You're of Het Narel?"

     "A new House," I said, "House Reña. We are close enough to the edge of town to have seen your coming and thought we'd stop by for the news."

     "News?" The eperu looked bemused.

     "Of other towns to the north," I said and added with a grin, "Also to see what you have to sell."

     The caravan-master laughed. "That I understand. But news… do you have friends in distant towns?"

     I shook my head. "No. Just curiosity. What is it like? How is the weather there? Is there enough food, contentment? Have any of the towns grown or shrunk?"

     "Strange questions," the caravan-master said, and even Seper was staring at me. "But I can try to answer. Will you share a cup with me?"

     "Better yet, come to our House," I said. "It's on the edge of town and you can spend the lunch hour with us."

     The eperu laughed. "Done!" It slapped the reins on the backs of the rikka and the caravan lurched again into motion, the wheels spraying pebbles on the first turn. I grinned at Seper and led the way back to the House.

     Linuthet appeared at the door when the entire caravan train came to rest on the flowered plain across from our front yard, the pale brown road a vague marker between us. Her mouth dropped open as I jogged to her, Seper at my back. My tail waved as I stopped beside her. "Linuthet, ba anadi, put on your prettiest vest. We are entertaining."

     "How many people are in that caravan?" she asked, voice wobbling between curiosity and a very amusing horror.

     "Enough that Seper and I are going hunting now," I said with a grin. "Go make one of your special teas! And make it a big batch!"

     "I will-eep!" Linuthet said as the caravan-master and several of the eperu walked over the road toward us. She vanished inside, tail flaring, and I turned to the caravan-master.

     "My name is Thenet Reña-eperu and this is Seper, also of my House."

     "I am Sisheh. Your hospitality is… unwonted, ke eperu, but heart-warming all the same. May we hunt with you to feed our people?"

     "That would be welcome indeed," I said, my grin growing broader.

     How good it was to hunt with other eperu again! How wondrous to work as a group, to knit the tapestry of camaraderie tightly enough to find sustenance for us all. The spring's balm in the breeze sifted my clothing, my mane. The blossoms sprung beneath my foot pads, cushioning them and silencing my step. I would have traded nothing for that warm morning under the sponge blue sky, sliding through the hills in search of the tiny grass-eaters that run the plains, or the fish that had regained their feisty vigor after their winter somnolence.

     We returned with food for all the caravan, dug pits and nursed hot fires with wind-blocks formed by careful arrangement of the wagons. At the end of the lunch, I sat inside with Sisheh over a mug of Linuthet's berrybrown tea and listened to the caravan-master with attentive ears.

     "So three stops we made before turning back: Het Noidla, which is the furthest north, Het Nekelmi, and Het Kabbanil. Het Noidla was under snow when we left. They'd had a good harvest, but a few of the families lost more than the usual amount of people to the weather and birthing problems, so they were not wont to purchase as much as usual. What little we did sell were condolence items… trinkets people buy themselves when they sorrow."

     Sisheh sipped the tea, paused and looked into the mug. It drew a long pull of the moist heat rising from it and looked at me. "What is this?"

     "Our youngest House member mixes herbs. She makes enticing teas and incense and perfumes."

     "If all of them are like this, I shall want to speak with you about buying some for trade. This is amazing!" Sisheh dipped its spoon back into the mug and stirred before glancing at me with arched white brows. "She?"

     I nodded. "She is not ready for mating, and is not yet past her second puberty. It seemed harmless to allow her to grind herbs, so long as she doesn't feel sickened by the work."

     That explanation seemed to suffice for Sisheh. It continued. "Het Nekelmi was in better straits. We found it very much as we did last year. They're somewhat more self-sufficient than the other two het, but still hospitable enough.

     "It's Het Kabbanil that's my favorite. The largest I've ever seen, and I have seen many! Its buildings are peculiar… built of stone. Some Jokka whisper that it's built on the original foundations… that unlike the new towns, this one never went to ruins and had to be rebuilt elsewhere. That the glory of the ancients are still in the stone roots of Kabbanil."

     How Dlane would gasp if she knew of this strange town and of… "Ruins? There really are ruins?"

     "Really are ruins, it says!" Sisheh twitched a shoulder. "Ke eperu, there are ruins not half a day from your House. Have you never seen them?"

     A chagrined smile touched my mouth. "Look around you, ke Sisheh. We are a new House of four members. We have work enough to do without loping around half a day from town, searching for oddities." I hesitated. "Of course, if we knew exactly where to look…."

     Sisheh laughed. "Then it would be your duty to check such ruins to ensure they do not present a danger to your outlying House."

     I nodded sagely. "Just so."

     So it drew me a map, and then I escorted it back to the caravan where we had a haggling session as bracing as the sweet breeze. I traded pots, Linuthet's wares and a few furs for perishables: grains, fruits and vegetables. I bought glassware: beads for our manes and tails, bowls and glasses. I bought clothing from distant lands and intricately woven blankets and pillows.

     "You," Sisheh said, following me back to the House with an armload of my purchases, "Are a hard customer, ke eperu."

     I grinned. "I would have it no other way…." Squinting. A silhouette against the road, tinted in bronze and purple - when had it become dusk? I trotted out to meet Dlane.

     "We have guests!" she said, startled. Her round eyes danced like flame. "Is it…."

     "No," I said, "But I think you'll like Sisheh just as much."

     So I introduced my anadi to the caravan-master.

     "This is the Head of Household, Dlane Reña-anadi."

     "Lovely ke anadi!" Sisheh said. "I am honored indeed."

     Dlane laughed. "You are too kind, ke eperu. And so is my Thenet. It is also a Head of Household."

     "You have… two… Heads of Household?" Sisheh glanced at me uncertainly.

     "We do things a little differently in Reña," Dlane said, her serenity so compelling it seemed to surround her like a second cloak. Which made Sisheh's expression when Dlane doffed it to reveal her elegantly appointed outfit remarkably comical by contrast.

     "It is still a little cool out," I murmured.

     "Even anadi grow cold, I suppose," Sisheh said, but the caravan-master sounded bemused. "And it is a lovely piece of work, your long-cloth."

     "Thank you," Dlane said.

     "I bought several more," I added. "The caravan-master is carrying a wagon of interesting clothing."

     "I hope you bought some for yourself!"

     "Well, they're interchangeable," I said, caught off my guard. Clothing had never really mattered much to me, as long as it kept me warm and didn't get in my way. I suppose I gave some eye to making sure it didn't look ugly when combined in all its parts, and that it was clean and neat, but….

     Dlane turned her golden gaze on Sisheh. "I don't suppose you have something lovely we could clothe our Thenet in, do you?"

     "Ke anadi!" I exclaimed. "What would I do with it?"

     "Wear it," Seper proffered from the corner.

     "As a matter of fact," Sisheh said, tapping its chin. "I will be back in a moment."

     I stared helplessly after the eperu as it left, then turned back to Dlane who was lighting a candle, her face opaque with innocence. "What am I supposed to do with a new set of clothing? I don't need one. I have plenty!"

     "You don't give yourself enough, Thenet," Dlane said, sitting at the table and folding her hands together. "We all have little allowances to buy ourselves things that give us pleasure, whether it's candy or jewelry or brushes…. But your shell has been climbing and you don't use it."

     "There's a reason for that," I said dryly. "Perhaps I'm not interested in any of those things."

     "Frugality," Seper said from the corner, "Is good for the purse. But not for the heart."

     I opened my mouth, then closed it. Even Linuthet, sitting on the ramp with the box of glass vials we'd bought for her perfumes on her lap, looked up at me and canted her head.

     "Oh, very well," I said, irritated. "I'll look."

     Sisheh entered the House with a long copper mirror as the two eperu behind it manhandled a trunk into the common room behind it. It thanked them and waved them back out, then issued a sly smile that, matched with twinkling eyes, I distrusted immediately. "The most beautiful clothing," it said, warm tenor wetter and smoother than one of Linuthet's honeyed drinks, "comes from Kabbanil."

     It unlocked the trunk, flipping the expensive brass tabs up, and pulled up the heavy wooden lid. I was so busy staring at the trunk, trying to estimate its worth, that I missed the flourish of Sisheh's presentation of its contents. Muffled gasps from the rest of the room made me lift my eyes.

     The first words from my mouth were never more truly spoken, and to my heart they touched the core of why I never thought much of clothing for myself. "I am not beautiful enough to wear that!"

     And I wasn't… but oh, how my heart pounded at the sight! In all my days I'd never seen an eperu gown, though I'd heard of them. They are the formal wear for the eperu, as the tights and blouses are for the emodo. The under-gown was cream of the egg, a fabric I'd only heard mentioned but never seen: soft and incredibly heavy, but thin, its hue the richness of an egg, creamy with the faintest tint of silver-gray. The hems of the under-gown were embroidered in black with spiral flourishes bordered in black lines and black knots. The full, heavy sleeves were also cream of the egg, and like the skirt were given body by a sheath of crinoline.

     But as marvelous, as subtle as the under-gown was, it was the over-gown that stole the eye. I had never seen such a velvet, a rich crimson that bled toward vermilion and hazy orange in the light, then thickened to a complicated tuscan red, plum-purple and violet in the shadows. The bodice was embroidered in floral black-bordered gold, and the same patterns repeated on the inside borders of the split along the front of the skirt, stylized into massive knotwork blossoms at the floor and trailing in golden leaves and stems all the way around the hem.

     The cuffs matched the bodice, and scarlet sashes tied the heavy sleeves at the elbows.

     As I stared, Sisheh smiled and its words had the feeling of a final punch to a downed foe. "It comes with a fan." It presented the translucent fan, a rich scarlet oval with flared sides, its panels of golden-yellow and orange outlined in black, with a black rod.

     "Try it on," Dlane said. Her voice was implacable.

     I glanced over my shoulder at her, unaware of when I'd stood. "What?"

     "Try it on," Dlane said. Linuthet and Seper were nodding.

     "I couldn't possibly-"

     "Thenet." Dlane stood. "Come with me. May I, ke eperu?"

     "Certainly," Sisheh said, resting the gown over Dlane's extended arm. When Dlane walked up the ramp I followed, as if drawn on a cord.

     In the candlelit upstairs, Dlane unlaced my long-cloth. "Help me with this."

     My confusion brought back older days, when every word and movement from the peculiar anadi who'd claimed me could set my mind to reeling. Completely off-balance, I was helpless before her suggestions, and I drew off my blouse as she tugged my breeches off. And then she slid the dress onto me.

     The sensations were overwhelming. I could barely feel her brushing behind me and tightening the laces in the back. My arms were too distracting - they were heavy, tickled by the lining of silk between my skin and the crinoline in the sleeves. The same silk caressed my thighs, my hips. The smell of the fabric intoxicated me: musty, complicated, heightened by the pungent fragrance of the wood in which it had been resting.

     Dlane growled in effort, then patted my back near my tail. "There. Laced." She walked in front of me and held my arms out from my body. "Oh, setasha…."

     The bodice cut almost beneath my pectorals, two embroidered flaps in gold folded down from the vee in the center of the chest line. It was off-the-shoulder, and my shoulders felt naked contrasted to the weight on the rest of my body. "I look ridiculous, don't I."

     "Oh, no. Come on, the mirror's downstairs."

     "What!" I let go of her hands. "I'm not going down there in this!"

     "Why?" Dlane asked, eyes wide. "You look so beautiful, love!"

     "Painting the rock doesn't make the rock lovely, ke anadi," I said, perhaps a touch bitterly.

     Dlane took my chin in her fingers and shook her head slowly, eyes never leaving mine. "I don't know why you insist that you're ugly, Thenet."

     "Because I am!" I said, exasperated and trying to keep my voice low enough to escape the hearing of those downramp. Why did she have to keep reminding me? "Look at my skin! My hair! Flat as paint!"

     "That's one of the reasons you are so beautiful, setasha," Dlane said.

     "What?" Dressed in this incredibly ornate and beautiful confection I couldn't begin to grasp the brain spasm such a statement would have required on her part. "Look at me!"

     "I am," Dlane said. "And your skin and your hair don't distract me from the lines of your face and your body. Your nose, your shoulders, the set of your brows, the size of your eyes… they are all so perfectly proportioned, so classically beautiful that a more translucent skin, more complicated hair would have distracted me from seeing them. Without that, they're… severe and uncompromising."

     I stared at her, and she stroked my chin, the line of my jaw, her eyes following her fingers and her brows furrowed… as if she were seriously considering the flare of my bones. As if she were serious. Could she be serious? Can a Jokkad with ugly skin and hair still be pretty? She was crazy!

     She had always been crazy. But that hadn't always made her wrong.

     "Come with me," she said again, and this time I let her lead me, reluctant but not unwilling, down the ramp.

     "Here it is," Dlane said simply, preceding me. She cleared the ramp and slowly I drifted down it, frightened that I would wrinkle or hurt the gown, frightened that I disgraced it with my body. It rustled all around me when I moved.

     Sisheh was the first to speak. It chuckled low in its throat and says, "I think I'll be leaving that here."

     "Why can’t the anadi wear pretty things like that?" Linuthet said, ears flipping forward. Her eyes were round. "Oh, ke Thenet. It's so beautiful!"

     Sisheh gestured toward the mirror it had brought and, throat dry as the plains, I stepped toward it.

     And in the polished copper, bruised by its travels as it was, I saw myself in the gown of a truedark tale and it was as Dlane said: I was not at all unlovely. I was transformed.

     Numbed as I was by these revelations, I stared at the point of my collar bones where they joined my neck. The hollow there, the dimpled bronze shadow, seemed far too vulnerable for any eperu. I swallowed, watched my throat move, and turned around.

     "But where would I wear it?"

     "An opportunity will present itself, I'm sure," Dlane said. "Don't your gods do everything for a reason?"

     How could I argue with that?

#

     A week later, Seper and I girded ourselves for a day's excursion. I put aside my pottery and it put aside its chores and together we left Linuthet to tend the house while we set out along the path laid for us by Sisheh.

     It was no hardship to walk the back of the World near Het Narel in high spring. The further from town we traveled, the more dimples in the land, and we walked on sage-green ridges cresting with the foam of saffron yellow and pale pink blooms, all of them releasing the heady, wild and thin scent of wildflowers. Vast and cloudless, the sky felt flat. I stared at it as we hiked through the fields together, untroubled by its endlessness. It hardly mattered how large the world was… Dlane and I had found a place to stay. We had a House, a successful one. We had House members to care for, friends in the city, a thriving business. I had roots. What did it matter that the World did not?

     We hunted our breakfast on the way to the site, crunching the bones of our kill over a quick fire before continuing on. By lunch we'd found them - the ruins.

     If I hadn't known to look I wouldn't have seen them, obscured as they were by vast banks of flowers and rambunctious climbing vines. But the teeth rising from the ground were not the smooth stones of the World's bones, but shaped rocks on crumbled pillars. Tumbled bricks lay in disarray, submerged in green grass and waving weeds.

     Seper and I moved into the site, our footsteps soft and hesitant. The whisper of the wind rendered the ruins unreal. This place of death and memory should have been silent and cold and gray, not sprinkled with white and red flowers and rife with the perfume of grass and soil.

     "This way," Seper called. "There are more places intact."

     I turned from my examination of the tumbled columns and jogged after the eperu. As I wended my way west, larger and larger blocks of stones thrust their heavy bodies above the soft blankets of grass until I joined Seper beneath a makeshift arch formed by two columns. Mostly intact, the two behemoths had fallen against one another and formed a join so old and stable flowering vines had crawled up to their intersection and put roots there.

     I let my fingers trail down the ridged bodies of the ancient pillars. Their skins scraped my fingertips, rough and granulated.

     "There's a door down this way," Seper said. "I found it almost by accident…." It ducked beneath the arch that led nowhere and walked around several other stones to a pile of rubble almost head-high. There Seper knelt and pointed at a hole in the stones. I squinted after its finger and saw what it had found: a smooth angled surface, obviously a door-frame. Who would build a door at such an angle, though?

     "Come on," I said. "Let's move the rocks."

     An hour later I discovered why the frame was angled: it led into the earth. Its door hung open into the depths.

     "How… peculiar," Seper said, blinking. Like me, its skin had developed whorls of grime and sweat and rock dust.

     "How amazing!" I said. Grabbing my spear I started down the ancient ramp. It proceeded far enough that my head was below the level of the earth before it turned into a corridor. The walls were smooth, faced with stone panels cool to the touch. I stopped to examine the sconces set into the wall on every third panel: delicate items of expensive metal, worked into floral arabesques, and hanging lamps of glass and iron. One of those fixtures alone would have fed a Jokkad for a year, and the workmanship….

     "Exquisite," Seper said over my shoulder. I glanced back at it, then moved on down the corridor.

     The room at the end of the hall was only the first of wonders. Round with a ceiling like the dome of an egg seen from within, complete with a near translucence at its apex. I squinted at it for several minutes, standing in the shaft of filtered sunlight, until my eyes adjusted and I could see the thick panes of glass. They must have been dug into the soil near the ground.

     The room was paneled in stone, with a strip as broad as my arm decorated in… words. Or I assumed them to be words, though I couldn't understand them. I glanced at Seper - it shook its head as well.

     "Did they speak a different tongue?" I wondered, my voice low. The hard, cool soil beneath my feet soaked up my whisper, and I flexed my claws against it.

     "Maybe," Seper said. "Or maybe they just wrote differently."

     Together we explored the hall of the ancients. There were other rooms, but all of them were smaller, budding off the corridors that led to the main hall with the dome. Some of these rooms had friezes, decorated with stylized Jokka dancing or sitting together. Others had the wall trim of letters we couldn't read.

     "Thenet!"

     I jogged down the cool, silent halls and found Seper crouching in one of the smallest rooms, fingers scraping the hard-packed earth. A flash of wet light ran down the disc of glass in its hand, which it offered to me. It reminded me of the glass lozenges hanging in the temple; like those, it was lined with metal. Its faces were incised and shaped and painted with gold. The design was strange… like a bank of clouds rearing, but with too much weight. I rubbed my fingers along the skillful lines, the glass smooth and without ripple.

     "A gift from our ancestors," Seper suggested.

     "I'm not sure we would take it…."

     Seper folded my fingers over it and stared up at me with its earnest, slate-gray-blue eyes. I sighed and said, "Oh, very well." It grinned at me, and I returned the smile after a moment.

     We left not long afterwards, and arrived to find the anadi had already eaten and gone to their nest. And for some reason I was compelled not to speak of our explorations.

#

     Spring ripened into summer; the shell flowed into House Reña, and with it the anadi. Like flowers to decorate the crown of our House, they came: subtle Witha with her breeze-whisper voice; husky Degerra with her skin of amazing yellow-gold and iridescent crimson; Osa the clever-fingered, once emodo and now full-breasted; Neña and Koise, costly and fire-bright twins, unusual and much desired among Jokka (and therefor to Dlane's mind much more in need of protection). A string of adolescents, freshly Turned, followed in the late months of the season: Adzani, Sekootet, Madad, Iihaf, each one bringing laughter and joy and her own brand of mischief.

Nor did we neglect the eperu, for Seper and I brought home an additional two to join us, Fooshet and Larin. The four of us erected two additional rooms on the first floor to accommodate the anadi while Barit watched in bemusement. He alone of the emodo of Het Narel had any significant interaction with the gaggle of females and neuters Reña had collected, and for the most part they treated him as mindful anadi will treat an older brother: harmless, amusing, fun to tease.

     Never once did we consider selling contracts for our anadi. There were no harnesses in the rooms of House Reña.

     Perhaps Het Narel talked of the strangeness of the House on the edge of town. Whatever the case, the townsfolk never stopped patronizing the store in the Green as our anadi added their sharpening skills to the luxuries available for sale. Thus I was not entirely surprised, when summer had waned to the pale blue of autumn, to receive the Leaf.

     "What is it? What is it?" The anadi clustered around me as I closed the door on the back of the messenger.

     Dlane waded through the females, eyes wide with curiosity and a smile pressing at her lips. "Thenet?"

     "It is… the Leaf," I said, and showed them all. A chorus of appreciative gasps and delighted giggles fell on my ears like summer's last sunlight. I grinned.

     "The Leaf!" Dlane took it from my hands and turned it to and fro. It was lovely this year, shaped like its namesake and painted in ductile metals of coppery red and greenish bronze over white and clear glass. The year was incised in its center, and a hook allowed the recipient to hang it in his storefront window… as certainly we would, for the prestige of having been invited to the preeminent gathering of the year would draw even more customers to Reña. "Oh, Thenet! I didn't think we'd be asked so quickly."

     "We have made great strides, and our products are high quality luxury items peddled with great charm and skill by a handsome emodo on the Green's parkway," I said with a chuckle. "What did you expect?"

     "Will you go?" Madad asked, ears straining toward me.

     "Oh, yes, ke eperu, will you go?" They all took up the words until I couldn't help but laugh. Who could resist so much enthusiasm? I looked toward Dlane, saw her serene smile, and turned back to them.

     "Dear Jokka, when the most influential Houses in town ask you to their invitation-only autumn ball, you do not send them back the Leaf."

     They cheered.

     "Let's get together a special supper to celebrate," Dlane said. "Ba anadi, be about it! We'll eat in an hour!"

     How Dlane loved them - her daughters, as she called them. They cheered and dispersed to their tasks, familiar with the preparations, for we'd had such special dinners each time we brought home a new member of the House. As the fire rose in the pit and the scent of herbs bit the air, Dlane held out her hand to me.

     The dusky room upramp was ours alone now; the other anadi and eperu slept in the new rooms annexed to the common room. She led me into it and rested her hands on my bare chest.

     "Are you happy, ke eperu?" she asked.

     "Happy? Oh, yes," I said. I didn't have to think about it. As abnormal as our emodo-less House was, it was still ours, and it was successful and full of love and laughter. We had friends - family - a business - and now the approval of high society, which was as good as an invitation to become an influential House ourselves. The warmth and comfort that suffused me at the thoughts sent a flush to my skin, and I looked down at Dlane.

     Her face was cool, her eyes thoughtful and clouded. I frowned. "Ke anadi?"

     She shook her head. "Nothing, my Thenet." A flash of a grin now. "You are comfortable going alone to this gathering?"

     "Alone!" I started. I hadn't really thought about the particulars of attending. I'd made the easy assumption that Dlane would be with me, that as joint Heads of Household we would arrive together….

     "Alone," Dlane said firmly. "We may share the responsibilities of running the House, but that's hardly normal. An anadi should not go to a ball."

     It was a baffling time for her to have embraced the illusion of orthodoxy. I blinked a few times to clear my head, found it didn't help. My ears swung back against my skull, earring jouncing against my temple. "Ke anadi, I can hardly go without you! You are the soul of Reña."

     "And you are the mind and body," Dlane said, touching my cheek. "We have done so much for this House, setasha. We shouldn't ruin what we've built. The Houses of the Green are even more inflexible than the Jokka of our old home. Do you truly want to risk everything we've accomplished?"

     Her argument flabbergasted me. It was as if some other person wearing Dlane's body and face was using her mouth to speak in her voice. The Dlane I knew would risk everything for a principle.

     "I… ke anadi, I don't understand," I said finally, because it was all I could say.

     Dlane's ready smile returned; my confusion must have been as plain as the spirals across my shoulders. She traced them and said, "It's not just about me anymore, my love. We have a house full of anadi to protect, and your eperu as well. There are good risks and bad ones, and there is wisdom in being able to choose between them. Going with you to the Leaf gathering is a bad risk. Sending you alone would strengthen our position in Het Narel and allow us to do the more important but eccentric things, like continuing to buy anadi for the House without putting out breeding contracts. Do you understand?"

     It did make sense… but I couldn't shake the belief that she was holding back. I touched her chin, studied her eyes; she didn't blink or look away. I took a breath and said, "I understand. And I don't mind going alone."

     "Good."

     The aroma of baking sweets reminded me of dinner brewing downramp. "I'll want quiet after I eat, though," I said. "I'd like to go to the temple."

     Surprise chased the highlights from Dlane's eyes briefly, and then she nodded. "Of course." Another warm smile. "Let's go celebrate with the others."

     After supper, I took myself from the house where the others were still sipping fragrant teas and laughing over pastries. The relative silence of the night was bracing, and I drank it in with attentive ears. Looping my scarf around my neck, I started down the road to Het Narel through the chirp of insects and the sigh of the breeze. I found I welcomed the quiet. It was rarely quiet in Reña anymore.

     The temple was much the same as I'd found it before: forbiddingly cold, rich in its darkness and its colored light. I ascended the steps and passed beneath its columns into the subtle world it created. Again I was enveloped in the dark that was the Void's province; again the heady texture of the incense, tickling with its heavy veils, suggested the Brightness. And again I gave myself over as ransom for the World: eperu, neither male nor female but something wholly other.

     I took one of the brass eggs of incense resting in the prayer racks, cupping the warm metal with my hands. The insulation protected me from the metal chamber in the center where the incense burned, but the plumes accompanied me as I padded deeper into the temple, my claws scratching against the marble tiles. What I sought I couldn't name; I hadn't found it on my last visit and it was likely that I wouldn't find it now. Perhaps… perhaps there were no gods, as Dlane suggested, and the Trinity was just some fanciful conceit dreamed up by frightened Jokka to explain the irrevocability of death. Perhaps I was a fool, for believing in the gods.

     No, I couldn't believe that.

     Why had she seemed so reticent earlier? What had she been holding back? Wasn't she happy, saving the anadi from the harness in Het Narel? Wasn't it enough?

     Was anything ever enough for a Jokkad like Dlane?

     Strands of glittering charms hung from the ceiling near the back of the temple as I explored its recesses. My eyes adjusted quickly to the rich, cool blacks and pulled out the faint gray glimmer of the glass and metal, reminding me of the amulet I'd found in the ruins. One strand depicted fetishes of the Brightness: many-pointed stars of flat gold, their centers hung with faceted crystal drops that threw off subtle, grayed crimsons and violets.

     The strand beside it had been dedicated to the World: lozenges of glass carved into the shape of fetal Jokka, clasping their knees to their chests, their faces without features suggesting the heads of every Jokkad. The glass ovals had been ringed in gold, and the chains that connected them were also of gold, its gleaming muted brown and hazy blue-black in the dark.

     There was no string of charms for the Void. My body and heart ached at the realization; my mind wanted the completion of the Trinity. Without the Void, the Brightness and World did not balance. I toyed with the idea of what such a string of fetishes would look like, had it been created: black marble balls, smooth and hard and heavy, perhaps. Or a drape of black silk sewn with a net of glass droplets, painted white on their undersides so they flashed like stars.

     How long I stood amid the chains, I did not know. The ribbons of incense uncurled in mind-bending shapes from the brass ball, tickling the front of my nose with the bite of a spice and the back of my throat with a deeper, milder resin. Beside the two streamers I was an intruder: the third place had been spoken for, and it was not for another eperu.

     When my feet scraped forward again, it was to propel me  on a search for the emodo, for the Void, for the balance of male, female and neuter. There was a circle, a proper circle. Images from the dance so long ago in Het Bakka flashed in my mind, seen through the murk of my reticence. But beneath the arching ceiling of the temple, through its riddled darknesses in deep purples, cool blues, hard, high browns, I could find no sign of the Void except the night sky.

     I returned to the prayer rack when the incense trail accompanying me finally petered to several thin threads. Setting it on its cradle, I murmured my thanks to the gods without knowing what to thank them for - and bewildered, because hardly half a day ago I had had everything to thank them for.

     Walking out of the temple, I realized that I'd not only not found what I'd been looking for, but I'd lost something as well. The sky was the dull blue of the hour before truedark. Disturbed, I returned home.

#

     The day of the Leaf gathering came soon enough. I spent the morning relaxing outside, a blanket furled around my shoulders as I watched the thick, gray-blue clouds scud past. The anadi could not stop dashing hither and yon, excited beyond measure by the honor that had been conferred upon our House; my arrival at the ball would signify that Reña had accepted the honor and was ready to move into the inner circle of the Green's society.

     I for one wanted to get out of the anadi’s way. The closer the day had come, the quieter I'd become inside… for I had been observing Dlane, and in the moments where she did not laugh with her chosen she was somber, too somber. Her eyes had grown distant, as if focused on some object on the horizon. My eyes, too, turned more toward the mountains; not out of any desire for travel, but out of anxiety, of grim appraisal.

     That evening I shooed the anadi away and bathed myself before the firepit where I'd destroyed my first pot. I combed my own hair, leaving it loose - the style of a Jokkad not at work. I picked up the glass beads on the table, rolled them between my fingers, then discarded them without understanding why; I didn't want anything in my mane or tail. In the privacy I'd commanded, I carefully pulled on the gown I'd never thought I would use.

     "Do you need help?" the soft soprano asked from the ramp.

     My ears flicked back and I smiled at my hands. "I think so."

     Dlane came down then, helped me lace the back of the crimson bodice. In her silent gaze I saw approval of my choice of hair style.

     "Could you bring me the box upramp in the bottom drawer?" I asked her, sitting in front of the small bronze mirror we'd hung in the common room. She nodded, leaving me to my reflection. I opened the pot of kohl and examined my face, spreading my hands over my cheeks like the fanned wings of a lithrekid. Then with fingers steady as stone I painted my eyelids with a stripe of black, thickening the line of my lashes. I outlined both eyes so, lighter on the lower lid than on the upper, and blinked a few times to dry the paint. Cosmetics among the Jokka tended toward stripes following the major lines of the nose, the cheeks: accentuating facial features. I hadn't seen anyone rim their eyes so, but I thought it might be a pleasant effect.

     Dlane arrived with the box and handed it to me. She paused. "Setasha…!"

     I canted my head.

     "That's… beautiful. Your eyes look so large!"

     A dim warmth suffused me and I looked again at my reflection. It worked, then. I opened the expensive wooden box and withdrew from the right side the Trifold pendant Dlane had bought for me so long ago. I held it out to her.

     She stood behind me and drew it around my throat. I didn't have to tell her to tighten the strand until it rested between my collarbones… like me, she seemed to understand that unseemly fragility of the hollow there needed concealment.

     From the left side of the box I pulled the glass disc I'd found in the ruins, hung on a piece of delicate lace ribbon.

     "Oh," Dlane murmured, catching it as it swung from between my fingers. She laughed. "You thought of everything, didn't you! A House token!"

     I chuckled softly. "Help me?"

     "Of course." She went to one knee in front of me. While I pulled back the flaps of the over-gown, she located the tiny loop at the waistline sewn onto the cream of the egg under-gown. She tied the lace through the loop. When I let the flaps drop back to the floor, the glistening amulet peeked from beneath the over-gown, suggesting that Reña thought well enough of itself that its representative could trade favors rather than shell or contracts.

     Dlane straightened, then nodded. "Ours will be a proud House at the Leaf gathering."

     I held her eyes, then smiled. "Let the others in. I'll never hear the last of it if I leave without letting them see me first."

     But the anadi did not exclaim over my dress when Dlane opened the door to their annex. They crowded into the common room, followed by the eperu, and fell silent and still. I began to fidget after the weight of their gazes seemed to bear down on my naked shoulders. "What?"

     Seper stretched one knee before it and bowed forward, tail arched. The others in the room rustled as they followed suit. The sign of deference disturbed me - such motions should be reserved for moments of great emotion, when pierced to the soul with beauty or sadness. I could not be the crux of such a feeling.

     Could I?

     Dlane was smiling from behind the arched backs.

     "I… will be back later," I said, and brushed past them. The door shut with a heavy thump behind me and I gasped in the cool air, the bones of the bodice straining against my ribs. Once I'd regained my composure it occurred to me that my exit had been anything but decorous. But bowing…! I would have to speak with Seper sternly when I returned!

     Rucking my expensive skirts up to keep them from gathering dust, the fan clutched awkwardly in one hand, I started down the road toward the Green. By the time I'd reached the bronze gate leading into the gardens, I'd calmed enough to begin to look forward to the evening.

     The site of the Leaf gathering proved easy to find. A vast hall perched on the northern edge of the Green, facing the mountains, its heavy roof and pediment bore down on the thick support columns as if driving them into the sandy soil. The columns had none of the fluted grace of their predecessors lying in the ruins, and as I ascended the steps I paused to drag my hand along them. Standing beside them on the portico just outside the circles of yellow lamplight, the hall's relationship to the Trinity's temple was almost painfully obvious.

     The hall's main floor was the second; it had been built on lifted piles over a fold of rock so that half of the main floor hung out over it, an outstretched balcony. I passed through the night's purple-black shadows toward the sound of music and talk, toward the amber light streaming from the opened double doors.

     And into a warmth that dispelled the autumn evening. My gown rustled as I came to an uncertain halt. Before me, a cavernous room stretched, complete with two wings tucked near its outer edges: one that led to a raised dais visible from the front of the room, the other to the darkened balconies. And crowding the hall were the Jokka of the Green: mostly emodo with a scattering of eperu. The intellectual knowledge of the amount of Houses in the Green and the power they wielded had not prepared me for the spectacle of them all in one place, their influence and riches displayed on their bodies in the form of ornate and splendid vestments.

     None, I realized after staring for several heartbeats, were as rich or as ornate as my own.

     That gave me the fortitude to press into the room. I recognized several emodo from visits to our store in the Green and greeted them. Their reactions to me proved baffling: a sort of hesitation, then a broad and appreciative smile. Bemused, I wandered through the crowd, ears pricking to the occasional strand of music: they were playing 'mingle-music', pieces that wandered and had no beginning and end, popular during the first hour of a dance since it demanded no attention.

     I was here to be seen, but now that I'd arrived there was little to do. I found myself wandering without aim. A substantial clump of people had gathered in the eastern wing on the raised dais, so I glided that way, the unaccustomed weight of the gown dragging at my limbs.

     At the outer edge of the circle of spectators I caught a whiff of musk that set my hair on end. The world contracted, and imprinted on my mind every detail of the alcove: the bisque and sand-gold tile of the smooth stone floor, still cool beneath my bare feet, the straight columns rising to the low ceiling, the light and shadows in every color gold: dusky sepia corners, brilliant yellow auras around the lamps. The backs of the emodo melted away as I pressed through them, and my ears tilted forward to catch the sing-song timbre of a voice - a voice that should have been an emodo's, but had the purr of an anadi's.

     There on a nest of pillows lifted from the floor, Magun reclined in all her atavistic succulence. Her charcoal skin gathered all the butter-warm light over her polished, naked hip-bones, glided over the weight of her heavy breasts, invited the eye to delve into the crannies hidden from the lamplight between her oh-so-carefully arranged legs. Her eyes were heavily shadowed by the fringe of thick red lashes, and her crimson hair had grown since I'd last seen it: it fell over the pillows in lush, gleaming waves from her head and buttocks, decorated with tiny brass and clear glass beads. They matched the chain threaded through her navel ring.

     I was as unprepared for my reaction as I was for her presence: for the disgust, the anger, and even worse, the fear.

     "Why, Thenet! Is that you?" Magun slid up to her elbows and stared at me with feigned innocence, the weight of her hair sliding into the indentation in the pillow left from her shoulder. I hated her voice on my name. "I almost didn't recognize you!"

     "Magun. You look…," I paused. 'Ripe' didn't seem particularly polite. I couldn't bear to say 'lovely', either.

     "At a loss for words, I see," she said, rolling onto her stomach and pinning me with her eyes. Oh, she loved having me there, loved my uncertainty. The light poured down her dimpled back like liquid.

     "You know ke Thenet Reña-eperu?" one of the emodo asked. "How splendid! Ke Thenet, Magun is one of several Jokka who have traveled to visit our het. Strange, isn't it?"

     "Very strange," I murmured. It made no sense. Hadn't Magun been destined for some town? Oihap, wasn't it? For a lucrative contract with House Fatha. What was she doing here?

     "Reña-eperu, is it?" Magun said. "A House of your own?" She reached over and caught my favor-token. "A wealthy one as well!"

     I slapped her hand away before I could control myself. Clearing my throat I said, "It's breakable, anadi. I don't think you could afford to replace it."

     This comment brought a few amused chuckles from the watching emodo, who were not so mesmerized by Magun that they were willing to forget their exalted status. Rallying, I looked down at her and waved my fan idly, saying, "So, Magun… have you had children yet? You seem past the age."

     Ah, I'd caught her now. The emodo waited for her answer, ears erect. Naturally they'd assumed she'd already thrown a few babies given her obvious sexual maturity. To say differently would invite difficult questions, questions that might force her to explain her feelings about using other anadi to breed for her so she wouldn't have to bother with pregnancy. She knew it too, for her eyes smoldered as she smiled at me. With teeth.

     "You wound me, Thenet. I'm not that old," she said.

     "So what's brought you here?" I riposted. "I'd heard you were bound for Het Oihap."

     Magun rolled onto her back, hips still twisted to one side to tease the emodo with the shadows that kept her lower body hidden from their eyes. "Oh… I was detained by a far more convincing offer. I didn't think Shethu would mind once they realized what kind of emodo was prepared to purchase my contract." She grinned, eyes heavily lidded. "You'll have to meet him. He's here, somewhere."

     "An interesting man," one of the local emodo said, ears splayed sideways.

     "Tell us more about yourself," another said, distracting Magun from the predatory staring match she was trying to win with me. Once she looked away, I retreated and found a chair near the front hall. The gown sighed around me as I sat on the amber pillow. I caressed the black pole of the fan, ears sagging. Magun in Het Narel. What could it mean? Was she staying? Would she try to make trouble for Dlane and myself?

     Stupid eperu! Of course she would. She had always thought us strange, and then when I'd pushed her away that night… there are some Jokka who will never forget a rejection. Magun was certainly one of them.

     I sighed and listened to the conversation of passers-by. Most of it centered around the visitors, particularly Magun. I listened half-heartedly while I rested on the pillow.

     My ear twitched to follow a thread. Magun, they said again. Magun Edze-emodo.

     Edze-emodo.

     The name woke a dim whispered memory in me, but I could not see through the darkness. I half-lifted from my chair, anxiety rising through my body to grip my heart. Edze-emodo. Wasn't that-

     And suddenly I smelled him. I stood, my fingers gripping the fan's handle so tightly my hand trembled.

     "Ah, Thenet."

     I jumped, and the gown whirled around my feet as I turned. My voice was a bare whisper, stripped of shield or spear. "Roika."

     He had changed, I felt in my bones. Oh, he looked the same: skin like black glass with cut-frost spirals, mane a tumbled stormcloud gray, eyes that complex stone-blue. But something had invested him with a power beyond the masculinity that had impressed me before.

     He wore an open blouse in soft white tucked into high-waisted breeches that clung to his waist and hips, the fabric an exotic black that gathered a pale dew when struck by the light. A long-cloth of expensive tapestried gold, silver, wine-red and black hung between his legs, and the black, gold and red repeated itself in a sash that tied the sleeve down at his left arm.

     He was magnificent. I was terrified. I would have backed away had his gaze released me.

     "Ke eperu," he said after a moment that paused my heart. He held out a hand to me. "Even knowing what to expect, you surprise me."

     I stared at his hand as if it would leap into my chest and pull out my heart. His fingers splayed after I made no move to take it, and his rumbled chuckle moved me to lay my fingertips delicately over his. He curled his fingers in to trap my hand against his broad palm. I swallowed.

     "I fear you have the advantage of me, ke emodo."

     "As you once did with me?" He smiled. "The truedark-traveler, breaker of custom."

     "You… you knew I was here," I said, finding courage in the reference. "What do you want from me? Why are you following us?"

     "Following you?" Roika's gray brows lifted and he laughed. "You and your Dlane, is that it?"

     "Magun told you where we were, didn't she? She found out somehow and told you. And now you're here to take us away! You couldn't have her then and you can't have her now!"

     Roika was watching me with surprise and laughter in his eyes. I hated him, but couldn't release his hand. My body bowed from our joined fingers and I quivered with the ferocity of my rage.

     "Ke Thenet, ke Thenet… really, the world does not revolve around you and your pretty anadi."

     "W-what?"

     "I didn't come here to steal you away," he said. "Though finding you here is an opportunity I fully expect to take advantage of."

     "Not… here because of us?" The breath in my lungs escaped in a long, shuddering sigh. I felt dizzy and sat again. "I… I don't understand. If not following us, why are you here? Jokka do not travel."

     He pulled up a chair, never releasing my hand. Few Jokka came near us, and I desperately wished they would. Anything not to be alone with this male.

     "Jokka do not travel, is that it?" he said. He chuckled. "You should know better, ke eperu. You traveled with a caravan for a season. You wear an obviously imported gown." He paused, and added, "One that suits you very well."

     My ears dipped and I looked away.

     "From what I hear, Reña holds the reins to all the caravans coming into Het Narel, so do not tell me that Jokka don't travel."

     “An exaggeration,” I said, turning the fan handle in my fingers.

     “Is it?” he asked.

     "You are not here to trade," I said, turning my head back to his.

     "No," he said. "I am here to rule."

     I almost dropped my fan.

     He laughed again, delighted. "Oh, ke eperu! Such a look, so priceless. But even as you sit in shock, you understand, don't you?" He reached with his free hand, cupped my cheek and guided my face so that he might look on it better. "Our people are in disarray. Towns barely speak to one another. What passes for government is disjointed and spare. But it was not always that way."

     "The ruins," I whispered.

     Roika cupped the token on my lap, tilting his palm to and fro so that the glass and metal caught the lamplight and glittered. "You have been to one of them, I see. They loved the ocean, our ancestors. When they came out of the Birthwell, over the mountains, they brought that love with them. They built roads, cities that would have made Het Narel look like a grain of sand on a world of beaches. They had trade and couriers, and some sort of system to keep all the cities and towns informed very quickly of events. And then something happened."

     He looked up from the token. "What, I don't know. But we fell from our glory, ke Thenet. And I want it back for us."

     My throat wouldn't stay wet. "And you plan to do this how?"

     "First, by surveying what we have. Then, by leaving arms of my House in every town: my children, some of my anadi, and at least one worthy eperu. And then by setting up a network by which we can communicate quickly. After that, I will take control." He smiled. "Someone can. Someone must. The roads are rotting. The towns are dwindling. Our ancestors fell to dust. I would not have us follow them."

     My hand fluttered over my lap, plucking at the fan's handle. The other remained trapped beneath Roika's on the stone chair. "And you do this out of some altruistic desire to help our race."

     "Gods no!" He laughed. "What do you think me made of, Thenet? Stone? Oh, no. I want a better Ke Bakil for myself and my children. I don't want them to be born to the twilight of our race. I don't want to die in the dusk. And I want to be the one remembered for bringing back the sun."

     The question that left my mouth hadn't been planned, nor the acid that laced it. "And you bought Magun for this?"

     "Oh, she's vicious. But she's genuinely intelligent beneath all that flesh." Roika smiled thinly. "I need smart children. She'll do."

     The idea that the same male who had wanted Dlane could live with Magun as a substitute revolted me. I glanced away.

     His low laugh irritated me. "You don't like that, do you? My treatment of the anadi as the breeders our natures intended them to be. But you are looking at them as people, ke Thenet. I do not need my anadi to be people. In my plan, they serve the purpose they were born to: bearing children. Children who will take back Ke Bakil from the dark. Don't you want that for our race?"

     I pulled my hand out from under his and hissed. "Of course I do! But not at the cost of the anadi!"

     "Not at the cost of the anadi?" He straightened. "It can't be done without their sacrifice. Have you considered how selfish it would be for them to deny their role? Not just in my plans, but in our life?"

     "Of course I have!" I exclaimed, ears flattening. "But it doesn't seem right…."

     "There will always be injustices in life, forced on us by our bodies, by nature, by death. Dignity is meeting them," Roika said.

     I blushed at the ears, and he brushed a lock of hair from my cheek. The silence as his hand drifted over my skin set my body to trembling. Then: "What have you done to yourself?" he murmured. "You are quite lovely. Happiness has made you beautiful, ke eperu."

     "I am not beautiful," I said.

     "You are beautiful. Beautiful and thoughtful. I need thoughtful eperu."

     I lifted my chin and said haughtily, "Edze could not afford a contract out of Reña."

     Roika laughed. "Don't be so quick to judge." He stood, one ear tilting sideways. The musicians had stopped playing the mingle-music. "Dance with me, ke eperu."

     "I don't-"

     "Dance with me. You hunt, you run, you laugh and live. You can also dance."

     The musicians began a stately slow-dance, one for breeders: the pace of the song allowed anadi a chance to join even if somewhat fragile. A heady, dangerous feeling rolled through my body, weakening my knees. I stood. "Very well."

     Roika tilted his head. "This is a song for anadi and emodo."

     "And?" I said, smiling with narrowed eyes.

     Roika grinned. "Just reminding you, ke eperu."

     He led me onto the cleared floor and steadied my waist with one hand. The other slid over my bare shoulder down to my shoulder-blades, fingers weaving through my mane. My skin was cold - my flesh hot. I shivered in his embrace.

     Anadi dances were easy on the feet and the mind; their rigid patterns, once learned, danced themselves. It did not take long for me to find the rhythm of the dance, leaving me alone in the arms of a dangerous emodo, whose skin gave off an enticing, warm scent, whose able arms guided me, whose very body exuded an intoxicating, frightening amount of power. His thighs brushed against the front of my dress, his hips against mine.

     How easy it would be to give in. To let him make my fate for me. To follow him as I did in the dance.

     My head dipped toward his chest. I couldn't resist the impulse to rest my cheek against him. To listen to his heart count out the minutes of his life, thumping slow and hard against his skin. To let the spice and heat of him invest my nostrils with the balance that had been absent for so long from my House and life. Emodo, oh emodo. Last of the sacred Trifold.

     His chin rested against my hair. Perhaps he felt it too. For all our struggles, all our anger and pain, for all the sense we tried to make of the bodies nature had given us and the lot those bodies gave us in society, we all felt that primal need to be completed: anadi-eperu-emodo.

     The music segued, clean and bright, into an energetic dance for eperu and emodo with more stamina. I didn't have time to ask Roika if he would like to stay on the floor before his hands slid to my waist, clasped it hard, and I was in the air.

     I laughed. So, he was up to the challenge? Half-flight dances had been my guilty pleasure as an adolescent, for the closer dancing came to athletics the better my limbs responded. Not even the encumbrance of the gown could keep my feet on the ground.

     How we danced! There was no time for reflection, for the guilty realization that I moved in yoke with a male who would serve Dlane her worst nightmares. There was only the relentless beat, spurring us on, the scrape and leap, the swift turns and the ceiling rising to meet me.

     And after that, there was another dance… and another. My world narrowed to his black hands and broad chest, the smell of him, his laughter and mine.

     We did not come off the floor completely for several sets. By the time we did, Roika had to hold me up and I no longer noticed that I leaned against him. I was too busy being amazed that he was in better shape than I.

     "Done?" A sharp voice asked. My ears swept back.

     "Magun, leave it be," Roika said in the tone of one who'd uttered similar words many times before.

     "Why do you bother with the eperu? You don't need it," Magun said. She strode to me and stared me in the eye.

I squinted. "Then you go out and dance three sets with your emodo," I said.

     Magun bristled. "I do not need to exert myself to prove myself to the emodo."

     "Enough!" Roika said. Irritation lent his low rumble the frayed edge of a growl. "I choose to dance with whomever I please, Magun. You will not forget who you address."

     "I am kaña-befidzu!"

     "You can be replaced," Roika said.

     Magun's hands balled into fists and her voice jumped up an octave. "With what? Its false female?" She pointed at me. "The one who wants to live forever? The one who never wants to have children? Who wants to be some sort of not-Jokka? Please!"

     "Her opinions don’t make her less anadi. She has a womb like any other female.”

     Magun sniffed. “Wombs are cheap, and anadi dumb.”

     "But the kaña-befidzu should be more," Roika said, and looked at me.

     It was as if the wall of water from my first summer storm on the plains hit me again. Cold water. The Moment came on its heels, so powerfully arresting that my breath hissed to a stop in its grasp. I pulled away as if falling, looked back at Roika and saw him suddenly as the Void: powerful. Inescapable. Smotheringly cold, engulfing, destroying… the darkness to the light of the Brightness, the sky that owned the World during half the day. I trembled, and my fear set time in motion again.

     Magun's snarl eased and her voice took on a contemplative air. "Of course, if you do take her, you would get children on her. Many children. I would like that."

     The utter venom of the statement, the obvious hunger and enjoyment she found in letting it loose to color the air, sent me back a step.

     "Thenet?" Roika said, one hand cupping my elbow to steady me.

     I could not defy him, but I had to. He did not want to destroy Dlane. But in his quest to restore our race, she was both expendable and desirable. A token in a game where the stakes reduced the importance of a single person to pebbles on the road.

     "I… feel a little ill," I said.

     "Too much dancing," Magun said sweetly.

     "Perhaps you should rest," Roika said.

     I nodded. "I… think I will go home now."

     He smiled. "Do so. I'd like you to be fresh for when I see you next. House Reña may be rich, but I still think her contract prices are not out of the range of Edze."

     How I managed to laugh, I don't know. But it had a brittle sound to me. "We shall see. 'Til then, ke emodo."

     I did not bother to bid farewell to Magun; nor did I stop to issue my goodbyes to any of the other Jokka of the Green beneath the hall's eaves. I managed to exit the gathering without due haste until I stood outside in the cold dark.

     Then I picked up my expensive skirts and ran.

     In and out, my chest pressed against the boned bodice. Urgency lent my feet a lightness, and fear chased me down the streets. I would not weep: I had no time. No time for anything - my simple life was over, again. The buildings blurred as I sprinted past them.

     I burst into the house, startling Seper from its seat by the door.

     "Pack! Pack now! Only what we need. Wake the anadi. We're leaving tonight!"

     "What?" Seper rose unsteadily, blinking away its doze-dreams. "Thenet! What is it?"

     I grasped Seper's shoulder. "There is no time to explain. We are in great danger and we must leave tonight. Pack everything you'd require for the House to live outside town."

     "But where are we going?"

     Where indeed. My mind grasped at strings. "The ruins," I said. "If you block the tunnel mouth no one will suspect you're there. We have to hide-go!"

     Seper nodded and vanished into the annex.

     Upramp, I stopped beside Dlane's sleeping shape. For a long heart-beat I crouched there, fabric pooled around me. She had a loveliness in sleep, with her brow unlined and her golden lashes glittering on her domed cheeks. Even the long-cloth and blouse she wore were a part of her, without which she would simply not have been Dlane. Not my Dlane. My… love.

     "Setasha," I whispered, ignoring the ache in the roof of my mouth that presaged the tears I had no time for. "Setasha, wake up."

     "Thenet?" She lifted a head heavy with anadi dreams. "You're back… so soon…?"

     "Dlane, he's here. Roika is here."

     Her body stiffened. "No…."

     "We have to go," I said. "Seper is packing and waking the anadi. We are moving to the ruins. He is coming in the morning and I don't think anything will stop him from taking you. Taking us both."

     "No," she whispered again.

     "I won't let him," I said. "Come with me. I know a safe place for Reña while we're gone."

     "Gone?"

     I touched her chin while I swallowed my tears so she wouldn't see them. "Your heart has been on the road to the Birthwell for many weeks now, setasha. Do you think me blind?"

     She threw her arms around me and I held her close, listening to the flutter of her heart in her neck. It was easier to be strong when she needed me to be.

     "Come on. Let's take care of our House."

     That night a long line of anadi and eperu, their spines distorted by bags and packs, snaked from House Reña and onto the dark road toward the ancient ruins. I supervised the evacuation, my gown rustling in the insistent breeze, holding the unlit lantern. When the last anadi walked off the back step, I checked the house.

     All my dreams. My happiness. To live the life of normal Jokka… to have shell to spare and family to share it with… here in this house there was nothing but false promises. Ears flat against my head, I closed the back door and strode down the road after the others, and the wind and the dark whispered through my soul as if the Void had already claimed it.

Part 4

     I pushed them as hard as I could through the chill darkness, pausing only for truedark; moving so many anadi through the truedark would have been problematic, and I dare not summon the firebrights. We started marching again as soon as the faintest scrap of gray rose into my view. Together we managed to make the ruins just before dawn.

     Teeth clattering together and bodies shaking with exhaustion and cold, the anadi padded into the silence of the ruins, tripping over the numerous bricks hidden by the low white mist. Seper and I guided them to the door, prying it open and watching as one by one they tramped down the ancient stairs. I let the eperu go before me and followed, closing the door behind us. It would look recently used if scrutinized, but there was little to be done about that. My gown hissed against the stone as I hurried after Reña.

     Seper had led them into the center room with the skylight, anointed now with a few thin strips of dark-greenish light from the threatening sun. There they had sit, exhausted, all save for Dlane. I stepped in and took a breath, allowing myself to relax just a little. For now we were hidden.

     “Now what’s this about?” Linuthet asked, ears flattened. She hugged herself, still wearing her long sleeping shirt.

     I glanced at Dlane, who nodded, her golden eyes sober.

     Closing my own, I sighed. When I opened them I found all the anadi and eperu staring at me, calm and attentive despite their exhaustion. “Many of you were attracted to our House because of our unorthodox ways… knowing that you had freedom and a chance to earn a living. Such ways do not only attract Jokka with similar ideas, though. When Dlane and I left our home, we were hunted by those who thought our ideas bad. One of our hunters was a male… his name was Roika Edze-emodo. And he managed to track us here. He has designs on Dlane and now all of Reña, for he is looking for females and neuters of high caliber to expand his House. It is my assumption,” I glanced at them all, “that your ambition is not to become the decorations of House Edze.”

     An angry mutter replied me and I nodded. “As I thought. Seper and I guided you here because it was the first place I could think of that was both large enough for us all and secretive enough to hide you if you take care not to be seen. It is here that I charge you to stay under Seper’s direction while Dlane and I are gone.”

     “Gone?” Koise asked, her voice tremulous. Her question was in all their eyes.

     Dlane stepped up beside me. “There is something we must discover, Thenet and I. About our race, a place we must go.” A minute frown touched her lovely brow. “My daughters… my sisters… House Reña needs more than just a building on the edge of a town. It needs a philosophical cornerstone, one I haven’t finished uncovering yet. Without it, we cannot be strong enough to face off the Edzes that will come for us. And I want us to be strong. I want… I want a Ke Bakil of Jokka who will not build their race on the backs of their females’ minds. But we can’t simply stop having children.”

     I glanced at Dlane, startled. She’d never admitted to that before.

     “So Thenet and I are taking a journey to the Birthwell. As soon as we return, we’ll have our answers.”

     Seper leaned on the wall, exhaustion dragging at its shoulders. Said it, “You wish us to stay here, ke eperu, ke anadi, until you can come back?”

     I nodded.

The eperu smiled wearily, the ruby beads in its hair glinting dull in the reluctantly rising light. “Then we shall do so.”

     “But how will we eat?”

     “There is game,” Seper said. “And there is a stream nearby. We’ll manage easily, if we’re careful.”

     “When are you leaving?” Linuthet asked.

     “Tomorrow morning,” I said. “The sooner we’re away, the farther we’ll be from you in case we’re caught.”

     That brought forth a chorus of moans.

     “Peace, peace!” Dlane said, holding out her slender hands. “Everything will turn out as it should, you’ll see. You need only bide here and be safe and furtive. We’ll come back for you.”

     “Rest now,” I said. “It’s been a long march.”

     They were loath to sleep but they’d been walking all night. Within minutes all of Reña had slumped to the ground, curled up together for warmth, the eperu for once almost as deeply mired in dreams as the thick-slumbering anadi.

     All of Reña… save her founders.

     Dlane and I walked into one of the nearby corridors, stopping in a room with a sliver of a skylight. There she looped her arms around my waist and tucked herself against my body. The heat of her seared my skin as though my gown were made of tissue, and I closed my own arms around her, one hand cupping her head.

     “Oh, Thenet. Will they be safe?”

     I thought of Roika, of his knowledge of ruins. He may have found this one already, or not. It might be the first place he checked… or he might assume it too obvious. I could not guess his next action; that was one of the reasons I feared him so. Now I was the one trapped in truedark, he the hunter. “I don’t know,” I murmured into her golden hair. “But where else can we go? The town will scatter them, or give them to him. Another town is too far to go with so little, and we would be easily discovered on the road. We can’t take them with us, and they can’t live in the open. It’s the best I can do.”

     “What about us?”

     “Two are more easily hidden than an entire House, ke anadi,” I said. “We will be fine if we are alert.”

     “Just like those first days,” Dlane said softly, cheek pressed against my chest.

     I chuckled, the sound rasping in the small, empty room. “Just like,” I agreed. “You should rest. We must start in a few hours, and you have been walking just as all the rest.”

     She nodded and did not object when I slid my hand under her knees and pulled her into my arms. I sat on the floor in the corner, my back against the wall, and held her in the spilled fabric of my lap. She lapped a kiss against my throat and slept, almost instantly, as if she’d only been awaiting my permission.

     I? I could not even doze. I stroked her golden tresses, soft as silk and scented like mist and honey. So deeply had she succumbed to slumber that she’d descended past the point where dreams could trouble her, for her face was slack, lashes still against her subtle gray cheeks. I envied her that oblivion; left to my own devices I could only turn again and again back to my dances with Roika. He too, I could smell, the musk and power of him lingering in my nostrils to mingle with the dust of the room and the perfume of my anadi’s sweat. They did not make a bad combination.

     My shoulders dipped forward and I bowed my head. Unworthy eperu, I, to have such thoughts. To be able to hold in my head a combination that would destroy us all… for to give Dlane to Roika was to see her mind, her bright flame of a mind extinguished, and after that, how could I be happy?

     And yet, even Dlane had admitted that the anadi had to bear young.

     How could it be done? How could Roika’s vision of empire and Dlane’s vision of freedom ever be reconciled? Was it even possible?

     I let out a small sigh and let my head rest against the cool stone.

#

     That evening I stood and peeked outside the room, Dlane sleeping still in the corner.

     “Seper?”

     My hissed whisper echoed in the empty corridor, and a few minutes later I was rewarded by the soft hush of the eperu’s foot-falls. I walked out of the room and presented myself, chagrined, and I didn’t even have to ask before Seper ducked beneath my outstretched arm and began to unlace the back of the bodice. The gown seemed no worse for the wear, though the bottom of the skirt would have to be carefully washed to excise the mud and dirt encrusted on the fabric by my flight. I realized belatedly that I was without the fan; I must have left it in the hall.

     “Are you really leaving tomorrow morning?” it asked.

     I glanced over my shoulder, surprised. “How….”

     “It will be easier for them if you’re gone before they wake. Leaving early seemed reasonable. There.” It stripped the cords from the back and the front of the bodice sagged forward. Together we pulled it off my body, pausing only to undo the glass token hanging from the waist loop. Seper took the lozenge and turned it in its hand.

     “I was told it is the ocean,” I said.

     “The ocean? The sea, you mean?” Seper asked. “Like the Birthwell.” It opened the pouch at its belt and withdrew a leather cord, threading the loop on the top of the lozenge and then hanging it around my neck. It bumped against the middle of my ribcage. “You should take it with you then, and carry the blessings of our ancestors.”

     I looked at my naked body, then bent down and folded the gown carefully. Such an expensive garment, now not only heavy with its own cost but with the memories of the Leaf gathering. I handed it to Seper. “I should also take some clothing with me, don’t you think? Something a little more practical.”

     Seper laughed softly. “Come. I’ve already sent the other two eperu out to hunt, but I think we’ll do well enough alone.”

     Together we prepared for the journey: two packs, the lighter one of clothing and food for Dlane to carry and the heavier one with hunting and medical supplies, blankets, and tools for me. I found it a relief to once again wear more practical clothing: a pair of pants and a blouse with a vest made with one of Seper’s kills, the tanned, supple brown skin of a qedonni lined with its soft gray fur. The glass lozenge I tucked beneath the blouse and vest, and the Trifold medallion nestled against my throat, just visible above the collar of the blouse.

     “It’s good to be ready for this,” I said. “Even though I don’t know how far the Birthwell is….”

     “A month, perhaps,” Seper said. “You’ll be crossing the mountains in winter.”

     My ears flattened to my head. “Just what I need. A snow crossing in a mountain, and no knowledge of either!”

     Seper chuckled. “Just stop by one of the villages before you go up. They’ll be able to advise you, and surely by that time you’ll be too far for it to matter that you’ve spoken to other Jokka.”

     “I hope,” I said quietly.

     A soft soprano spoke from behind us. “So is that it?”

     I turned to Dlane and gave her an outfit like mine. “Just to dress you for the cold and we’re ready.”

     As she donned her clothing, I faced Seper again and touched its shoulder. “I know you were not expecting this, my friend. Are you certain you’ll be fine?”

     Seper’s somber eyes did not flinch from my gaze and with great deliberation it covered my hand with its - the one that its previous House had decided would never be useful again. A smile spread across my face and my ears lifted.

     “You have trusted me with your House, ke eperu,” it said. “I will carekeep it for you.”

     My fangs itched and I turned away, trying not to wrinkle my nose with the pride of it. Dlane was waiting, dressed in gray skins edged in soft brown furs a few shades darker than her hair. In her golden eyes I saw the same sublime emotion. We had built this House. It was hard to leave it.

     “We’ll be back,” I said, tugging the pack over a shoulder and taking my spear from the set propped against the wall.

     “Be careful,” said Seper.

     I led Dlane out.

     A cold wet fog clung to the ground as we exited the ruins, the stars obscured by moist streamers of dark gray clouds. But the sky visible through the patches shone a rich, deep blue and on the northern horizon the mountains crouched, serene and black. I stared at them, taking deep draughts of the chilly air, and laughed very low.

     Dlane’s hand twined in mine.

     “And now what?” I asked her, just to tease.

     “Now… the answers to all our questions,” Dlane said.

     “Our questions? As I recall, it was yours that pushed us on this crazy journey.”

     Dlane grinned. “Can you truly say you haven’t found your own set after all this time?”

     I opened my mouth, then closed it and frowned, tail swishing once.

     Dlane chuckled and pulled me after her, back toward the rotted road that led north. The stones that lined it showed dark gaps like the mouth of an old Jokkad, but the roadbed had at very least been pounded smoother than the surrounding terrain. In the fog visibility would be limited, so I judged it safe enough to use until the night cleared. It would be easier on my anadi as well.

     We set off then, cleaving a path through the fog. My ears swiveled, taut to the sounds of the evening… but I heard nothing unusual, only the piping cries of waterseeker birds, the shrill note of the insects waxing and waning, the occasional rustle of a creature moving through the low grasses. I could see their eyes gleaming as they looked our way.

     “It’s strange,” I said a few hours later.

     Dlane cocked her head.

     “To be traveling again. To be alone.”

     The anadi laughed, but quietly, aware still as I was that we were vulnerable in the open, with Roika no doubt seeking us. Surely by now he’d called on House Reña and found it empty. Thinking of the barren rooms, I found myself wondering what Barit would think, and what would happen to our beautiful store on the Green.

     “Oh, Thenet. Surely you found the domestic life perhaps a little wearing?”

     I only shook my head. “We built something.”

     “That something was more than the earthen walls of a building, and the wooden racks of scent in a store,” Dlane said, one ear lifting askance. “We left it safe in the ruins. It is the sorority we made, the family we created, the bonds of love and trust and happiness.”

     “Still. It is easier to nurture such things in a real house,” I murmured, digging my spear a little harder into the ground as I strode forward.

     “Is it?” she asked, her voice innocent. “We seemed to do well enough with our own bond.”

     “That’s different. We were a special case,” I said. I sighed. “Oh, ke anadi. It’s not wrong to want a quieter life than we’ve lived. Though I could hardly call the success of our House in Het Narel a quiet affair!”

     “Maybe not,” she said.

     We walked in silence a ways longer, close enough to occasionally bump hips. The fog appeared to be draining into the ground and I watched it with narrowed eyes. Too much lower and we would have to leave the road, though it would be prudent anyway to begin searching for a place to camp a few hours.

     “Thenet… what was he like?”

     I glanced at her sharply, then away, ears burning. My grip tightened on the haft of the spear, and my voice when I replied was a rasp. “Magnificent.” The word hung in the air and I cleared my throat hastily. “He looked well, ke anadi. Powerful. He found legitimacy for himself and his House long ago, from how he carried himself. Another thing… Magun was with him.”

     “Magun!”

     My lips curled back to bare my fangs. “Oh, yes. He found us by accident, he said, but I don’t doubt that she was thrilled to have us caught in his grasp. She has no love for us.”

     “No,” Dlane said, and I was surprised at the sadness that touched her reply. “No, she does not.”

     We walked together, and I could not keep it from her any longer. I had to know what she thought of it. “Ke anadi, Roika wasn’t seeking us. Other plans brought him to Het Narel, and only accident re-introduced us. Other plans… other ambitions.”

     She cocked her head and her eyes drew down to narrow, golden slits. “Oh?”

     “He wants to reunite the Jokka, Dlane. To rebuild our people and create an empire as glorious as that of our ancestors. One with real roads, and real communication between towns, with increased trade… the wonders we’ve lost.”

     She did not speak for many minutes. I couldn’t guess what she was thinking, but I was curious.

     Then she laughed. “Frivolous emodo dreams.”

     One of my brows lifted and I said, “As frivolous as a certain anadi’s.”

     Dlane grinned at me. “And we both take them as seriously, I’m sure.”

     Of all her reactions, I hadn’t quite expected this cavalier dismissal. Uncertain of how to react, I turned my attention back to more mundane things and said, “The fog is thinning. We should find a place to stay a few hours before continuing.”

     “Lead on, my love.”

     Love. Another breeder frivolity. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that Dlane couldn’t take seriously the insane visions of another breeder, with hers so often ridiculed. Finding a fat stone on top of a hollowed ridge, I dropped my pack there and dug out one of the blankets.

     “We’ll stay here until after truedark,” I said. “You should sleep if you can.”

     She curled up there, beneath the blanket. As I stood, she reached out and touched my thigh. “Thenet… you know it’s silly, don’t you? The Jokka who left the ruins - they are our past, not our future. We can’t try to remake what they made. We must create our own vision of the future instead of seeking wisdom from bones and tumbled towns.”

     I squeezed her hand. “I hear you,” I said. “Rest now.”

     Dlane nodded and settled down.

     I climbed up beside the rock and hid myself behind its bulk, occasionally squinting past it into the cold dark. There was only silence on the road, and I tried to imagine it as it had been when new: flat and shining silver-gray in the starlight, rimmed in pale, smooth stones, thick with traffic.

     Oh, I heard my anadi. But whether I agreed with her I couldn’t say.

#

     After truedark’s passing we resumed our journey, this time off the road. We labored among the uneven terrain in the quiet of the approaching day and stopped when the sun’s fulsome disc broke the horizon’s sharp edge. Our pattern was thus established; we moved only when the day was weak, during overcast afternoons, or foggy mornings, and saved most of our travel for the night when the dark would hide us best.

     The fourth day, while Dlane slept I went through my pack searching for the clutch of cloth-wrapped dried fruit I knew I’d included somewhere. My searching hand bumped into a lumpy bag and I withdrew it, puzzled. I hadn’t remembered packing it. Opening the flap I found a few of my bone-working tools and the misshapen abstract piece that had been the object of my first, most violent attentions back when my skill was uncertain and our lives were defined by the routine of Ilushet’s caravan.

     I rubbed my thumb over the hard, pale surface, traced the jagged edge where I’d destroyed the thing’s shape. Dlane must have put it in my pack… but why?

     On impulse I dropped the bag onto my lap and applied one of the smaller tools to the piece. There was something in it that wanted freedom, and I’d left it in an impolite state. It deserved better than my first poor attempts.

     The afternoon had passed before I realized I’d spent it with the bone and the carving tools. I glanced up and down the road and found no one on it, then turned to find Dlane yawning and stretching.

     “Thank you,” I said, for I’d spent the day engaged in something pleasurable instead of fretting over whether Roika’s absence held some sinister meaning.

     She reached out and petted my tail. Her smile was her reply.

#

     The terrain gradually sprouted a few more trees, enough to instill in me the beginnings of a sense of security. The flat plains were too open for me, and it was with relief that I saw that the land furrowed more frequently the further we traveled, providing trenches deep enough for us to walk unseen by any on the road.

     On the sixth night, we cautiously regained the road in the thick fog that had descended. Dlane trotted alongside the deep ruts gouged in the earth from passing caravans - their worn edges suggested that it had been a while since any wagons had made them. Perhaps Sisheh’s visit was responsible for their creation.

     A thin wail rose from the mist. My hand darted out and grabbed Dlane’s arm near the shoulder and we both froze, ears flicking to and fro. It had originated from behind us, definitely, but not as far as I would have liked.

     “Ñedsu?” she whispered.

     Another piercing ululation followed the first, differently pitched - a second.

     “Brightness hold us,” I said, ears flattening, “More than one of them!” I took her hand and resumed striding up the road again, but my feet fell silently as eperu’s can. Dlane stumbled after me and tried to keep time; she was far more adept on her feet than she had been when we first met, but she could not equal my skill.

     “Do you think….”

     I squeezed her hand, more to quiet her than to reassure. My ears strained the fog behind us, listening for the sounds of a hunting pack. There was no reason to believe they’d found us yet; the thick fog was impenetrable even to Jokku eyes and their cries had been the eerie songs of idle ñedsu, not the hungry moans of a pack on the trail. If we could just put enough distance between us without drawing attention to ourselves….

     A few snickers and snuffles answered my taut ears and I bared my teeth. They were closer. I could hear no Jokka either. I prayed for the fog to obscure us, sight and scent, and hurried along the path with Dlane. Our swift breathing filled the strained quiet, accompanied by the soft click of our thumbclaws on the ground.

     A chorus of howls shattered the bubble around us, wails and moans that broke the illusion of safety.

     “Run!” I cried, and taking her by the hand I sprinted down the road. My mind raced faster than my legs: how could we outrun sleek ñedsu on flat ground? They were faster by far than any Jokkad. There was no way we could remain on the road, not if we expected to go free. Our only chance was off it, trusting to the trenches folded into the nap of the surrounding earth. I tugged Dlane after me, and we ran off one of the ridges abutting the road and jumped into the ditch alongside it.

     “There’s nowhere for us to go!” Dlane cried out. “Thenet, they’ll catch us for sure!”

     “Save your breath for flight,” I said, letting go of her hand and scrabbling down the shallow bowl of earth between two dark hills. The cries of the hunters did not wane, and my ears pressed to my hair as I led Dlane further from the road, running only as fast as she could. As she panted, I snatched a few pebbles from the ground to augment my spear. We would have to choose a place for a stand soon, and then it would be only me, the ñedsu, and the Moment. If I was lucky, I could kill them all without being hurt, and be away with Dlane before Roika arrived.

     Dlane stumbled and I grabbed her by the elbow before she could fall. Her eyes, lifted to mine, quivered with terror. The giggle and wail of the pack had grown much closer; close enough that I knew they had our scent if not the sight of us. It was time to pick a place to make a stand.

     We sprinted for the final stretch to a drooping ragedna tree with its spindly, naked limbs. Reaching its knobby roots, I grabbed Dlane by the waist and pushed her into the branches. She pulled herself onto them without protest, though her pants and gulps for air filled my ears like the wind of my own breath. The limb she clutched was hardly taller than I was, but it would be better than having her on the ground where the beasts could reach her.

     Turning my back to the trunk, I held my spear out and crouched, waiting. As the wails and chuckles grew louder, claws slid from my feet to scythe into the cold, hard ground. I could smell the hot musk of the hunters.

     They erupted from the fog, sinuous, corded bodies bursting from the nearest banks as if vomited. Thin, angry heads wiggled on the stalks of too-long necks as they snarled and circled me, wary of my spear. I recognized them - it was hard not to remember the crazed faces and patterns of Roika’s pack. I hissed at them when they danced too near, and swatted the ones that dared to snap at my ankles.

     Without a tree tall enough to ascend or a forest to hide in, I dare not kill them. The blood-scent of even one would send them into a frenzy. So I waited with bared teeth for the master of the beasts.

     To see him again… to have failed so quickly… and yet, I almost wanted to see his face again. To throw myself against him and break my body fighting him. To listen to the rumble of a voice so deep it made my jaw ache to hear it. To see those considering eyes.…

     A figure darkened in the haze, gathering shadow until it graduated to full-fledged silhouette. As I waited, mouth dry, the Jokkad stepped out of the mist.

     I gaped. “Who are you?”

     “I was going to ask you the same thing, ke eperu,” the boy said - for so he was. I couldn’t imagine him much past his first Turning, even. An unprepossessing brown with darker hair, he wore breeches and a loin-cloth and a cape to surmount it, and in his hand was a smooth wooden staff.

     “These beasts,” I said, pointing at one of the circling ñedsu with my spear. “They… they….”

     “Chased you up a tree,” he said. He paused to struggle with a smothered giggle before his face grew studiously innocent once more. “I’m sorry, ke eperu. I did not mean any trouble. I am running them for a very important emodo and they are still not good at obeying me.”

     He bent down and held out a hand to one of the beasts, which sidled up to him and hesitantly rubbed the bottom of its pointed jaw against his palm. I stared, flabbergasted.

     “A very important emodo?” I asked finally.

     “Oh yes! He paid me several shell just to exercise his pack!” The boy grinned. “He’s a visitor to Het Narel, and says he has such pressing business he can’t stay. I think he’s going to be someone very powerful one day, and then maybe he’ll remember what a good job I did with his beasts and he’ll want my contract!”

     So young to be thinking of such things… Gods, he might not even remain emodo through his next Turning! I ran a shaking hand through my hair, feeling the hammer-beat of my heart slowing. I pulled the conversation along, aware of a need I could barely define. “And the name of this powerful male?”

     “Oh! He is called Roika Edze-emodo,” the boy said, straightening. Amazingly the beasts had congregated at his feet and were now lying in a pile there.

     “I know Roika,” I said, tapping my finger to my chin and staring into the air as if in deep thought. “Perhaps you could take him a message for me?”

     “A message?” he asked, and a sly light twinkled in his eyes, one I recognized. Not only was he a future-thinker, then, but of a mercenary bent. I couldn’t help but chuckle, and flipped open the pouch of my belt.

     I tossed him a shell, which he snatched adroitly from the air. “A message to Roika Edze-emodo, ba emodo.”

     “What shall I tell him?” The boy asked.

     I grinned. “Tell him this: ‘Not while I am Thenet Reña-eperu.’”

     The boy scratched his cheek-fluff with a puzzled frown. “’Not while I am Thenet Reña-eperu’?”

     “He will understand.”

     The boy shrugged with a twitch of his spine and grinned. “Okay. And I’m sorry again about scaring you.” He glanced up at Dlane’s shadowed shape on the branch. “And chasing your friend up a tree.”

     I laughed. “We’ll survive. Go on, then, and take those Void-cursed creatures with you.”

     The boy clapped his hands together and chivvied the animals back into the fog. They were reluctant to go, but they followed him and I let out a long breath when the last of them slunk into the wet mist. Turning to the tree, I held up my hands and Dlane’s slid over mine. She clambered off the branch and fell untidily into my arms.

     She started laughing. A few seconds later I joined her, and we laughed from the pit of our hips, laughed until at last we had to lean against the trunk to seek our wind again.

     Dlane rested her head against my shoulder, her breath warm and moist against my neck as she gulped down a few final giggles.

     “Me too,” I said, stroking back her hair.

     “I thought for certain,” she said, then sighed. “Oh, it is funny how the world works sometimes, isn’t it, my love?”

     I kissed the top of her head and said, “Sometimes, yes.”

     Her eyes rolled up to meet mine. “Do you think it was wise?”

     “What?” I asked, though I knew very well what she referred to.

     “The message.”

     My tail flicked once, the beaded braid slapping against the backs of my calves. “Maybe, maybe not. But it was… courteous.”

     “Courteous!”

     I smiled. “I don’t know if I can explain… but he is a worthy adversary, ke anadi. If I’m in the position to do him the honor of acknowledging my move in our game, then I should.”

     “Is this a game?” Dlane asked.

     I resettled my pack over my shoulders and started off down the hill. “You’re the one who tells me that life has no purpose, that there is no afterlife to give meaning to what we do. So what can life be, if not a trifle?”

     She caught up with me, breath puffing from her mouth in soft white clouds. A hint of exasperation colored her soprano as she said, “My life is no trifle to me, Thenet. Just because there are no gods doesn’t mean there is no meaning in life.”

     “Just because you believe there are no gods,” I corrected.

     “Just because there’s no proof of a god or several gods,” she said, stubborn. “You must give life its own meaning. Decide what it is you want to accomplish with it and let that goal drive you on.”

     I glanced at her, drank her unlikely beauty, her incongruous intensity, followed the line of golden hair, creased bronze with shadows, as it fell over her cheek to brush her shoulders. And I sighed and returned my gaze to the full-forward, watching for uneven ground. “And what of the people who have no driven goal the way you do, ke anadi? What meaning is there in life for them?”

     “None,” she said.

     I hadn’t expected that. “None? None at all?”

     “You make the mistake of thinking that everyone needs their life to have meaning. Many Jokka are content to be just that: Jokka. To just live, and not to examine that living.” She smiled, but it was a private smile, and her eyes when I stole a surreptitious look were veiled with dreams and secrets. “That is one of the reasons I love you so, ke Thenet, setasha. Because I know you have it in you: to want your life to be more than just living.”

     “You’re riddling again, ke anadi,” I mumbled, uneasy. I didn’t like the concept of my potential as a maverick. Learning to accept Dlane’s craziness was difficult enough without guarding against the disconcerting possibility that I might surprise myself with such notions.

     “I think you understand me quite well,” she said, smiling at me. “But you can say what you like. Your heart and your actions all speak louder than your mouth. Though there are ways that your mouth speaks loudest of all.”

     My ears flushed white, though I had no way of being certain she was referring to my kisses. It certainly wasn’t usual for eperu to be kissing anadi the way I had in the past.

     “We should move quickly tonight,” I said. “When the child gets back to him, he’ll know for certain that we’ve escaped, and I want to be far from the place the ñedsu tracked us to.”

     She nodded, but though her expression remained somber I couldn’t help but think my discomfort was as plain to her vision as if it were full noon.

#

     Slowly, slowly, we traveled north, and the plains at last unraveled at our feet into shrublands and finally furtive forests. We were several weeks out from Het Narel when the World became foreign.

     I felt it in my bones and joints - the ground was harder than it had been at home, or on the plains. When I bent close to it and clawed marks in the soil, the heady fragrance that tickled my nostrils recalled the richest of Linuthet’s perfumes: moist and fertile, whispering promises of greens more fruitful than those I’d ever known.

     “The land is changing,” I said, low-voiced, to Dlane. I spread my hand across the flank of the ground and gently drew my palm over its cool flesh.

     “Changing?” she asked, but the question was half-hearted; I knew she could sense it. A Jokkad would have to be blind and dumb not to sense it.

     “It’s… fecund,” I said. “It releases nourishment less grudgingly than the plains or home did.”

     “It’s the Birthwell,” Dlane said. “We are heading for the womb of the world. This is the land that birthed our ancestors.”

     “Why did we move?” I mused. “We spread south, where the earth is angrier. Why?”

     She shook her head.

     And so through the wilderness we walked, watching as the World changed its character. Even in autumn, when everything prepared for sleep, it could not disguise its fertile weight. The scent of wholesome decay carried on the wind spoke as clearly as if the World itself gave tongue. Game was plentiful despite the season, and the earth offered its own bounty: roots and wild grain and vegetables, mushrooms tucked into the shadows of hunch-limbed trees. We’d brought jerky and dried fruits, but we found we ate infrequently from our packs.

     The palette of our journey was muted by the nights that made our travels covert, but still I enjoyed the layered thickness of the colors: the blue-tinged silvers, the soft, subtle browns and oranges, the blacks that faded to reds so thin they bled near violet beneath the dark blue skies. And occasionally, when I deemed the cover thick enough, we traveled during the early morning, the later afternoon, and then the vista truly engaged the eyes: such graduations of hue! So many shades of brown, from the greenish dull ochers to the reddish sienna browns that neared orange; the scarlet streaks laid down by tired suns; the manifold dull greens of dying foliage adding a welcome contrast to the throbbing cerise of sunrise, sunset.

     “I can’t understand it, but I feel more alive,” I said one late evening, resting on my stomach. We’d diverged significantly from the road to take advantage of the cover provided by the thin forests. In a glade surrounded by a fringe of low trees, I’d judged it safe to light a fire as we prepared to wait out the truedark.

     Dlane fished a small pot from her pack and opened it, releasing a strong, surprising perfume mixed of the tang of herbal cleansers and the thick resins that Linuthet had used for her ointments. “You seem it,” she said. “I think this part of the world is good for you.”

     Before I could roll over and ask after the pot, yet another thing I seemed to have missed while packing, Dlane straddled my hips and attacked my shoulders with her slender hands. Defeated even before the first pause in her onslaught, I sank back to the ground and almost into it as she worked her oiled fingers into the knots all across the back of my neck.

     I licked the saliva from my teeth and said, “You’re… good at that.”

     Dlane laughed. “It is not a difficult skill,” she said, her weight shifting to press harder on the base of my hips as she worked her way down. “Particularly with you.”

     “Why me?” I was impressed that I remained coherent.

     “Because, your body is always so tense it fairly screams where you hurt.” As if to punctuate, she pressed her thumbs beneath my shoulder-blades and leaned onto them. I squeaked as red stars burst from the back of my eyes.

     When I could finally breathe again, she said, “See?”

     I managed a halting laugh. “Oh, yes!”

     Her fingers wiggled down my spine, caressing the bones that formed the dimpled patterns on either side of the center of my back. When her hands slid back up onto the curve of my buttocks, I opened my mouth to question her… and then the base of her palm dug hard into the flesh on either side of my tail-base and I forgot what I was going to ask.

     After the first, startling rush, I identified something different about the sensation. I couldn’t name it, nor was it strong, but there was an element to the pleasure that I couldn’t quantify. I would have enjoyed a few minutes’ respite from the massage to consider it at length, but Dlane continued, fingers working into the bottom of my spine and sending shivers running back up to the base of my skull. The feelings nestled there, itching and burning. They almost sickened me with their strength, their alienness. I wanted to tell her to stop, but could not compel myself to speak.

     Dlane grasped my tail and pulled it back, and the fire at my head rushed forward, spreading all over my body. The pressure of her hands pushing against the underside of my tail briefly registered and then vanished in the overwhelming tide of a sensation so intense I cried out. Every nerve jangled, and my hands and feet twitched. My limbs contracted, and I would have curled into a ball had Dlane not been sitting on my back - but I could hardly feel her. I could hardly feel anything for the pleasure of it.

     No, the rapture of it.

     It was an ecstasy.

     When awareness of the World seeped back into me, I found I was sobbing softly against a hand, great sticky tears unadulterated by the saliva my dry mouth had long since stopped producing while I gasped. The warmth of the fire on my face and shoulders disconnected me from the rest of my body, which throbbed in time with a heart that raced fast enough to skip.

     Dlane rolled off my back and with an arm around my ribs pulled me up into her arms.

     The feel of her: softness, curves, heat and warmth. The fire dying in my hips gave a few soft flutters.

     I pushed her away, wiping my mouth, my ears flushed.

     “Setasha?” she whispered.

     “What did you do to me?” I asked, and even my voice shook shamefully.

     Her hesitation infuriated me. My own body - I didn’t recognize it. It quivered like a breeder’s. “What did you do to me!”

     “I… wanted to give you what you have given me,” Dlane said, her soprano low.

     “Give me… you’re not… what I….” The words melted away before I could grasp them. “You’re not talking about….”

     “I read,” Dlane said. “While I was with the librarian, in Het Narel. I told you he had some of the texts from the ancients. I read one… it mentioned the passion of the eperu. I did a few experiments-“

     Experiments! Always with her experiments! Passion of the eperu? “You don’t mean that,” I said, though she’d used the word that referred to the breeders’ passion. “We are eperu. I am eperu! Eperu are not breeders. Eperu do not experience that!”

     “They do, Thenet,” she said.

     “They can’t!” I cried out.

     “You just did.”

     Time slowed, flowed into the Moment and ceased to exist. I was able to observe, separate entirely from my emotional state, the scintillating colors the fire threw onto Dlane’s beautiful face - the warm, rich yellows, oranges, the golden halo around her lashes and hair. How startling the flame-bright profile was against the vibrant dark blues and blacks of the forest at night behind her.

     And then the Moment shattered, destroyed by the depth of my horror.

     I leaped to my feet, which almost dumped me back to the ground in their pleasured weakness. As Dlane stretched a hand out to me, I turned on her and fled.

     Through the trees I crashed, flinching from their touch across my sensitized skin. I jumped over crevasses in the earth, barely seeing them flash past before they were behind me. The fecundity of the northern earth clogged my nostrils with its heavy scent, and the bite of the cold barely kept me sane. I could hear nothing but my own pants, feel nothing but the whip of twigs against my body and the dying coals of my own ecstasy. My wobbly legs propelled me unevenly, and I lurched through the dark.

     An emodo’s hands, an emodo’s mouth, an anadi’s hips, an anadi’s womb - was my eperu strength, my eperu body only a convenient skin to hold together all these disparate parts? Was I just a failed breeder, constructed of the castaways of the emodo and the anadi?

     Were the eperu truly part of the cycle I wanted so much to deny? If I could feel pleasure, could I too lose my mind?

     My feet tangled, throwing me into the dirt. I skidded across the forest floor, striking a tree’s roots and losing the skin off my chest to the force of my landing. And in the sudden quiet, I realized I had run, mad and unheeding, until the truedark’s falling… for I could see nothing, not even the hand in front of my face.

     The scrape on my chest stung, distracting me from the last tendrils of pleasure that tugged at my body. I felt a stranger in my own skin, as if I didn’t live in this flesh; gingerly, I turned onto my back and pushed myself up.

     With the softest of touches, I brushed at the soil mixed up in the blood on my chest and ribs. My lips pulled back from my teeth and I hissed. I was glad I couldn’t see the body that had betrayed me.

     It had betrayed me, hadn’t it?

     Could it be… no, it couldn’t be normal for eperu to feel breeders’ passion. Could it? If it was, what did it mean?

     The feeling had been incredible. I could not deny the weight of the experience, the release, the rapture. But for no reason I could understand I hated it immediately. Hated the twitching, the flailing, the gasps I could not control, the tears, the utter lack of dignity, of self-possession. My desires had been completely ignored… my body had had its own agenda, one I’d never even recognized existed.

     How many other surprises was it hiding?

     I couldn’t just sit in the dark, alone with these thoughts. They would unmake me. Fear and horror are poor companions when you cannot banish them with sight. I slid onto my hands and knees and felt the earth with my fingers. I had a vague memory of the direction I’d taken in my flight, augmented by the furrow I’d made in the soil when I’d fallen. With the cool earth’s ridges to guide me, I crawled slowly back the way I came.

I concentrated on the images of the camp to center myself, but when I thought of Dlane, the welter of confusion rose with my gorge. I focused instead on the warmth of the fire, and my knife and the thigh bone of the animal we’d killed for our last dinner. Something to do, something to occupy my mind. Fixing those things firmly in my mind’s eye to replace the blank dark before the real ones, I continued my journey.

     How different the face of the World in the black. How much cleaner and fuller the scent of the soil, the harder, more acrid scent of the roots of smooth-barked trees, the wet, pungent aroma of decomposing leaves. I could even catch the faint heaviness of water, though I could not hear a stream: a pool, perhaps, somewhere near.

     No wind gave the forest breath, but my ears caught the rustle of passing animals, low for those in the bushes, high for those on the branch. The thin pipe of insects filled in the silence.

     In this wonder, I could almost forget my misery.

     Almost.

     I clawed my way back into our glade just as truedark lifted; my eyes seized hungrily on the flickers of red of fire’s dying embers. By that almost-light I could catch the slump of my pack, the slender rod of my spear… and in one corner, covered in a blanket, my charge.

     I crouched beside my bag and packed it, mostly by feel, then slung it over my shoulders. A few quick scuffs doused the fire’s last glow and then I cleared my throat.

     “Wake up,” I said. I couldn’t bear to add her name or even my usual ‘ke anadi’. “We’ve a while to travel yet.”

     She rolled over - she hadn’t been sleeping then, given the depth of anadi sleep. A few minutes later she stood with her pack on her shoulder, silent. When I walked out of the glade, she followed without comment… for which I was glad.

#

     I realized in the days and nights that followed that my feelings toward Dlane made the difference between a pleasurable journey and an intolerable one. We spoke little, and then only to exchange the barest amount of information required to continue our travels. The sound of the trees no longer intrigued me; the rich aroma of the earth turned my stomach. My skin reported the cold more frequently, and my joints ached from the constant changes in the terrain.

     When we stopped, Dlane did not engage me in idle conversation, did not rub my back or watch me carve; she took her blanket and her food, ate and fell instantly to sleep… leaving me to doze a few careful feet away, or to stare restlessly at the sky and wish for something to do to relieve the monotony. Even my bone and knife failed me, for my agitation communicated to my blade and made even the simplest of shavings impossible.

     And all the while, as I washed my body with revulsion and shied from any touch with Dlane, myself, and even animals, I worried at the concept of eperu passion.

     What could it mean? Was it possible that such things were normal? And if so, when should it be invited? Was this some mystery other eperu knew that I’d somehow missed?

     No, it couldn’t be. Had it been known, it would have been part of everyone’s life.

     The spires of Het Kabbanil appeared in the distance several weeks later, and still I could not reach out to my anadi. I had no intention of entering any of the towns, for all my curiosity about this largest het that Sisheh had praised. I could see from Dlane’s frequent glances to the east that she too wondered about Het Kabbanil. Nevertheless, I avoided it, leading the anadi into the hollows off the road and finding us our hiding places well before dawn. There was more traffic on the road around the town.

     The day we drew abreast of it I sat on the hummock above our hollowed nook. The grass had long since browned, and in the mornings the dew grew almost cold enough to crackle. The autumn had advanced nearly to winter, and my body shivered despite my clothing. I ignored it, as I now usually did, and stared instead at the glory of the northern hets.

     I had not seen a larger town. As Sisheh had said, many of its buildings were the cool gray of stone rather than the sandy brown of bricks. And the buildings! So tall and so many, flying banners in gold and black. Streamers in brilliant crimson flapped serenely against the pale blue sky. What must it be like to live in such a large town? Perhaps you could get lost in Het Kabbanil. Perhaps Reña would have been safer there, hidden in one of those old buildings with its heavy stone base and the words of the ancients to guard it.

     The thought of Reña twisted my gut. I hadn’t recalled them in weeks now, too firmly entrenched in the endless rut of shame and anger. I glanced over my shoulder at Dlane, snug in her blanket with only a few locks of golden hair loose to blow in the breeze. Smoothing a hand along my knee, I forced myself to study my own body.

     Hesitantly, I leaned forward and pressed my hands against the back of my rump. I’d sit on the thing all my life and never quite felt the sensations Dlane had evoked from my virgin flesh. What exactly had she done?

     Trepidation stole the grace from my movements as I curled around, sliding my hands down my backside. When I finally found the courage to grasp my tail at its base, the movement was jerky enough to cause me pain.

     How long I spent on that hummock in the cold, poking at myself in frustration and fear, I cannot clearly remember. But at some point my fingers found the right combination and the sensation so overwhelming I almost sprained my wrist snatching it away. And then the tremors came over me, and I hugged my knees to my chest and waited for them to fade.

     So I could do it to myself, too.

     When the last of the rapture had sloughed from me, I lay on the dead grass. The itch attacked my nose, and it wasn’t long before I was weeping as quietly as possible, my ribcage aching with the wrench of the sobs I gulped down. I cried myself out and stared at Het Kabbanil’s floating banners.

     I still hated the feeling, but I couldn’t say why. The languor of my satiated flesh repulsed me. The uncontrollable desire disgusted me. Nothing about it seemed right or normal. What did the pleasure matter? What was it good for? Eperu weren’t breeders! They didn’t need a breeder’s rapture! What good was it to be able to experience the passion without the reproduction? It was senseless! I abhorred it!

     That night, Dlane woke and stood to follow me as always. But unlike the nights before, she spoke.

     “You gave it to yourself, didn’t you.”

     I stared at her, my ears so hard to the curve of my skull they shook with the strain of keeping them there. A shudder ran up my spine and I started walking.

     “Why do you hate it so?” she asked, drawing up beside me. “You can experience it without the faintness, the weakness the anadi get. It should only please you.”

     “You are assuming that I… found it,” I said, not wanting to even name it.

     “I am not assuming,” Dlane replied. “I can smell it on you. If I kissed you, I could taste it in your mouth.”

     If she could get past the acrid tang of the tears. I resisted the urge to sniff myself. “I just don’t like it,” I said. To forestall any more questions, I asked, “Do you?”

     “I don’t like what it means,” she said. “It means I’m anadi, that I was built to bear children that will steal my mind from me. I don’t like feeling weak and sick when it’s over. But do I like the feeling? How can I not?”

     “That’s part of it,” I said, baring my teeth as a surge of anger rose. “You can’t help it.”

     Dlane glanced at me, one brow lifted. “You are second-guessing your body? It knows how to make you happy. When you eat good foods and sate your hunger… is that evil? Or when you run to stretch your muscles… is that wrong?”

     “Those are different!”

     “Only in degree.”

     We walked in silence, and I so miserable I barely noticed the uneven ground, the World around me.

     “But I wouldn’t want it at the hands or staff of an emodo. Only from someone I love, someone I trust not to hurt me. From you, Thenet.”

     My cheeks practically glowed white with the depth of my embarrassment. “I take your will from you. I make you mine. I own you in those times, ke anadi. Doesn’t that bother you?”

     “No. It’s one of the ones I show you that I love you. Thenet… after all we’ve seen and done together, and all the ways you’ve protected me and aided me, I think you deserve a few moments where I am yours completely.”

     “I am no one’s completely but my own!” I cried out, horrified. “I didn’t ask for your soul, Dlane. I don’t want to be responsible for taking it from you, even for a little while. To reduce you to that… I know you enjoy it, that you like it, but I can’t bear to think of it. It’s wrong! Wrong! You of all Jokka should think so. It is stealing your identity, your self from you. Your body shoves your mind aside, and you cannot think or feel except what it wants you to… and all because of someone else!”

     I was shaking so hard I had to stop, touch my fingers to the corners of my eyes and try to regain my composure. When I gathered it, I found Dlane standing in front of me, her eyes bronze-dark and her cheeks and nose glowing in the light of the stars. She reached to my face and deliberately touched my chin. I shivered.

     “Can it be?” she murmured, with sadness and bemusement both, “that you feel what I feel more deeply than I do? Oh, Thenet. There’s a time for everything. If you cannot let go, you can never open your heart.”

     “You’re talking about love again,” I whispered. “This strange construct you’ve created - love across genders, love that touches on parts of breeding, without ever the act. Aren’t you?”

     She nodded, the solemnity of her expression lending the motion an aching grace. “It’s about trust,” she said.

     “And about choice. There are no choices when your body activates that way. It makes its own choices, and it’s always in favor.”

     “Oh, setasha. Don’t you see? Lending yourself so to someone is a sign of value. When you allow yourself to be vulnerable in front of another, you tell them more strongly than you ever could with words that you trust them with your heart, your life, your soul. That’s why I like for you to do that for me, even though it makes me ill. That’s why I thought you would like it as well.”

     What could I say to that? It was preposterous, insane. It was not for me to be vulnerable in front of her. I trusted her, but there were parts of me that should be for me alone… and this new facet of my body was too new for me to decide who it belonged to. Not while I was still trying my hardest to repudiate it. My ears splayed, and her hand reached further and cupped my jaw.

     “If it doesn’t mean the same to you, I won’t do it, Thenet.”

     I shuddered, and that was apparently answer enough for her. She let her fingers drop and started north again.

     I followed, relieved to at last be speaking with her again; relieved that the conversation was over; relieved that she wasn’t going to pursue it. But I couldn’t help but think I’d disappointed her, and the concept dogged my mind. Vulnerability, trust, strength, pleasure… it just seemed so perverse.

#

     Our hike across the north toughened even Dlane. By the time we’d passed Het Nekelmi, we were both hard and thin despite the frequent game my spear brought us. The mountains drew ever nearer, and with them came the winter. Though there was no snow, the wind took on a bitter nature.

     “We’re going to have to stop for supplies,” I said finally, standing in the wind and clenching my teeth to keep them from chattering.

     “Are you sure we should?” Dlane said.

     “It’s not a question of should we or shall we. We must. I haven’t caught anything for days and our dry supplies are running out. We need more food… and maybe a few days in the warmth to rest before we continue on.”

     Dlane squinted back to the south. “I don’t want to backtrack.”
     “We should be close enough to Het Noidla. Sisheh said that was the last het in the north.”

     She shivered. “How close is ‘close’?”

     “Close enough if we keep going for as long as we can.”

     She nodded and gamely started again. I led her onto the road; we would need the extra strength to get to town. I had vastly underestimated how barren the north would become as the season advanced, and though I’d kept my voice even in our discussion I was far more worried than I wanted her to know. We had neither packed nor dressed for this weather, and not even the anadi cold-loving constitution could take the kind of wind coming off the slope of the mountains.

     I stared up at the peaks as we trekked down the road. They crouched just above us, blocking our view of the horizon and wearing clouds as dark mantles. They sent their breath to dissuade us from our course, but I would see Dlane over them and to the Birthwell if I had to break the way open with my hands.

     As determined as she was to go on, halfway into the night Dlane staggered and fell. I crouched beside her and found her fighting back the tides of sleep.

     “Ssh,” I said, and she let out a long breath and dropped into unconsciousness. I sheathed my spear through the loops in my pack and scooped her into my arms.

     Powerful memories accompanied me as I made my way through the gloaming. Had it really been nearly two years since I’d first carried her away from our home so far from here? I had met her in the spring… the summer with the caravan… then two autumns spent in Het Narel, building Reña. And now, in the final months of the year I was cradling her to my breast again, carrying her through weather she could not fight despite her courage to shelter and safety.

     She gave me her weakness. I gave her my strength. We both thought them appropriate love-gifts for this relationship we had wrought, somehow.

     I closed my eyes for just a moment, to chase away the itch that threatened to draw the tears from my teeth. There was no time to weep. Het Noidla was still a distance away, and I was the only thing standing between our survival and starvation, exposure.

     I walked on.

     The cold slowed my body, dulled its senses. I lost track of my feet, knew only that they moved because I had some sense of the landscape passing on either side of the road. Dlane I held close with arms I’d ceased to feel.

     I promised her I wouldn’t fail her. I kept on even as I stumbled. But the wind was crushing me down and I lost count of the times I almost fell.

     When I finally did, I couldn’t rise. With my body furled around my anadi’s, I fought the rising tide of darkness and lost to it.

#

     Perhaps I had died, for the unmistakable scent of Linuthet’s amber-rose tea drifted through my nostrils… and it was warm! Fabric pressed against my legs and body, and from its softness wafted the most delicious warmth I’d ever felt. I tried to dig into it, to soak it into my body. If this was the afterlife, then it was a wondrous thing.

     “Burrowing into it won’t make you one with it,” said a gentle voice.

     I was sure I was dead. But when I opened my eyes, there it was: Ilushet, sitting on a stool beside me, pouring a cup of tea from a round pot. The highlights thrown by the fire danced in the beads woven through its silvery-pale mane.

     I sat up, shedding blankets and pillows in my haste. “Dlane!”

     “Peace, cousin. Your companion is sleeping on the other side of the room,” Ilushet said. “She fared better than you did.”

     I reached out and touched its arm, but my fingers barely reported the sensation; they tingled and ached. “Ilushet? Are you really here? I was… I was on the road to Het Noidla, and I fell.”

     “And we found you there. Luckily, for you were close to dying,” Ilushet handed me a cup. “Hold it carefully; your hands are not your own yet.”

     It was right; when I took the cup I could barely feel it between my palms. The heat of the liquid seeped through the walls of the cup and burned at my flesh. I sipped - it was indeed Linuthet’s amber-rose tea.

     Ilushet must have seen the question in my eyes, for it laughed. “House Reña’s wares have spread far and wide, cousin. You should not be surprised to find them in my cargo holds.”

     “What are you doing here?” I asked, still amazed. “And where am I?”

     “You are in a wayhouse in Het Noidla. And I and mine were just settling in to wait out the worst of the winter before returning to the road. As I said, you were lucky that we came upon you… a few hours earlier and we would have missed you; a few later and we would have been too late.”

     “Thanks to the Brightness, World and Void,” I murmured, shaken. “They must have sent you, cousin.” I glanced at it and a wall of shame overcame me, at my deception of it while we’d traveled in its protection during the long summer. “Ilushet… there are things I must tell you.”

     One pale brow lifted. “Cousin?”

     “Please,” I said, glancing toward Dlane’s bunk; only the swell of her hip and shoulder was visible beneath the heavy blankets, but from the rise of her shoulders she was deeply entrenched in her sleep. I put my cup aside. “It is a long story, but you must hear it.”

     Ilushet rested an elbow on the table. “I am listening.”

     I told it everything. How I’d met Dlane, the anadi’s outrageous beliefs, Roika’s pursuit of us through Neked Pamari, the discovery of the caravan… the incident with the dance, my feelings about the Trinity and the Trifold, Magun’s brutal attentions. My voice faltered when I reached the description of my emodo’s hands, first discovered beneath the tree on the plains. I could not bear to look at Ilushet for the expression on its face.

     All our months building Reña I explained. The ruins. The strangeness of our House and Dlane’s philosophies. The Leaf Gathering, Roika and Magun, our flight… and haltingly, my discovery of eperu passion. Finally to our mission to the Birthwell.

     When I finished, I turned from it, my cheeks and ears so brightly flushed with shame that I could feel the heat radiating from them. The pop and crackle of the fire in the hearth filled the silence.

     “I am sorry, ke Ilushet,” I whispered. “I lied to you.”

     “Yes,” Ilushet said after a long pause. “But I might have done the same.”

     I looked up, incredulous.

     The eperu sighed and shook its head. It poured me another mug of tea, added a dollop of clear liquid from one of the bottles on the table. “Drink.”

     I did, and the fire searing my nostrils and opening my throat tore a gasp from me.

     “Did you truly think I would blame you, when you have been so besieged? Cousin… a lesser Jokkad would have come to pieces long ago. You are still here, can still feel, speak, reach out to another of your kind. It is miraculous, and the hands of the Trinity are in it.”

     Its absolution almost unmade me. I pressed the back of my numb wrist to my nose to quell the tears that threatened.

     Ilushet busied itself with its own tea while I composed myself.

     “Thank you,” I said softly.

     It nodded. “Think no more of the matter. It is closed. But I should tell you now - there is no way over those mountains.”

     “What?” I straightened, ears jerking sideways so hard my earring bumped my head. “Cousin, there must be. The Jokka came over the mountains….”

     “Then they were magicians. Look at yourself, Thenet. Your fingers, your toes… we barely saved them from the cold. On those slopes it is snowing, great clouds of snow as high as a knee or a hip.”
     “But the Birthwell….”

     “If it exists, then the secrets to reaching to it have died with the ancestors it birthed, cousin,” Ilushet said, its voice gentle.

     That couldn’t be it. Not the end of all our travails. To have our hopes die here, in the frigid north, with my fingers numb and the mountains triumphant…

     “You should rest,” Ilushet said, tucking the blankets around me again. “You have been through much. You and your anadi are safe here with us.”

     I did not want to rest. But despair made it easy to sink back into the warmth of the bed.

#

     The following day I felt well enough to stand and dress myself. Ilushet and its people avoided us, which suited me - after the intimacy of my confession, a subtle discomfort plagued me when I thought of the serene caravan-master. It had forgiven me for my deception, but that did not redeem me. I should have trusted it.

     Shouldn’t I have?
     I sat beside Dlane’s bunk, watching her ribs expand and contract with each long breath. She hadn’t woken yet, and I could sense the hunger and power of her healing dreams. What was it like? What did her mind construct in that nothing-time? I sighed softly and pulled a lock of golden hair from over her eye, tucking it back with the rest of her mane. I’d known her so long, and still she mystified me - my anadi, my setasha, my Dlane. Her drives, her motivations… I could barely understand how her body worked, much less why she thought her crazy thoughts. How had I gone through life so long without realizing how little I knew about the rest of my race?

     “Ke anadi,” I whispered to her slumbering shape, “How can I tell you that the Birthwell is barred?”

     She gave me no reply, her brow unmarred, lids fluttering ever-so-slightly. My hand passed over the medallion at the base of my throat, the same temperature as the blood running through the arteries beneath it. The gods moved our destinies. But the enigma of the flesh - that was not so simple as I’d thought.

     I occupied myself throughout the day with simple tasks. I prepared food and ate, tended the fire, mended our clothing. I was stropping my knife when her hip moved.

     I was at her side before she’d finished shifting. On the pillow her head lolled toward me, surrounded in a halo of golden hair. How smooth the line of her neck, joining her jaw to her fragile collar-bones! How much I’d come to love the weight of her, could feel without touching it the breast sliding across her ribs as she moved, knew the stretch and tense of her muscles as she looked toward the scent of me and opened her rich, endless eyes!

     “My love,” she said.

     How could I resist her? Deny her? She was in me. I leaned down and brushed her mouth with mine, and when her lips parted in lazy assent, I dipped my tongue to touch her fangs, to lick the water from the backs of her teeth. Her arms slid up to cup the back of my neck, resting lightly.

     It was a soft, smoldering thing, that kiss. When I pulled back her hands arrested me, and she lapped at my lips and chin.

     “Welcome back, setasha,” I whispered.

     She giggled against my jaw, let her hands slide down to rest on my knees. “I wouldn’t mind waking that way every day,” she said, fingers curling on the hem of my tunic and tugging.

     I laughed.

     “Where are we?”

     “Het Noidla… through the providence of the gods alone,” I said, and told her about Ilushet.

     She glanced at the wall and was silent, and even her fingers fell still. “It is enough to make you believe in the Trinity,” she said. I marked her reluctance, but also her wonder, and smiled.

     Turning her face back to mine, she said, “What about the mountains? When will we leave?”

     I’d known she would ask, but hadn’t been able to decide how to reply. Now the question had come and I found myself answering. “As soon as I scout a path for us to follow. I can do it faster than we could together, and with the winter thickening speed is our ally.”

     “Are you sure?” she asked, touching my fingers. “You have been so strained already… I don’t want you to overwork yourself.”

     I shook my head. “No, I must.” I stroked her cheek-fringe away from her face with fingers still somewhat numb. “I’ll go later tonight.”

     “So soon?” Her ears splayed. “Will you be able to see?”

     I laughed. “Oh, my love! The darkness has no power over me. No veil it can drop over my eyes anymore. Not even the truedark can steal the World from me.” And as I said it, the confidence flowed through my body, warming me from the core to the tips of my toes. If there was a way over those mountains, I would find it for her.

     Curling my hand over hers on the blanket, I said, “I’ll go now, to prepare. Do you need anything?”

     She shook her head and yawned. “Just more rest. I feel a little weak.”

     I leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

     “Be careful, my Thenet.”

     Her Thenet. I touched her hand one more time, then left, looking for Ilushet. I found it in the antechamber, talking with several of its people. When I entered, it dismissed them and stood. We clasped shoulders before the hearth.

     “You look much healthier.”

     “I feel much healthier,” I said. “Ilushet, cousin… I need a favor. I need a true cold-weather cloak, and gloves and footwear. Do you have any?”

     “You’re not thinking of going out there!” Ilushet stared at me, ears twitching back. “Cousin… it is cold, and you have only just regained your feet!”

     “Nevertheless,” I said. I saw the expression setting on its face and pulled it to the table by the fire. Taking its hands in mine, I leaned forward and said, “Ilushet, I must do this thing. I don’t know why. The Trinity has been with me all my life, has saved me again and again from ridicule, imprisonment, abuse and death. I can’t believe I am living still so I can make the journey of a lifetime and then stop before I complete it. This sojourn… it’s not just about an anadi’s whim. Or even about an anadi’s dream of self-determination. There’s something on the other side of the mountains that will break the chains of Ke Bakil and let the Jokka free, and it’s calling me.”

     The fire hissed over the logs as I waited, trembling in the intensity of my desire. Ilushet stared at our joined hands, its ears flat to its skull, strands of blond hair draping around its slim neck. At long last, it sighed, and the warmth of its breath brushed our knuckles.

     “My cousin, ke eperu, I fear for you. But I will not deny you your godsquest.”

     I squeezed its hands. “Thank you.”

     Ilushet shook its head and stood. “Come,” it said. “The night is failing, and you will need what light there is.”

     Ilushet outfitted me in a thickly-furred cloak in bronze-tipped black, leather gloves lined with fur, and then wrapped my legs in long strips before pulling the boots over them. I’d never seen such complicated shoes; in all my life in the south I’d only seen the occasional slipper or sandal. The pads of our feet grow callused after only a few months in the world, and our claws make daily footwear impractical.

     In this weather, I could see their appeal.

     Ilushet straightened, and I unbuckled the bag at my belt with some difficulty, handing it to the eperu. “Keep this for me?”

     It pressed on the bag and then frowned. “Cousin, this is all your shell.”

     “I will not need it tonight. Besides, these things you’ve lent me… if something should happen, you will need the money to replace them.”

     “You will come back,” Ilushet said, alarmed.

     I chuckled. “Yes. But still.”

     It studied me a few moments and said, “The anadi has shaped you, cousin.”

     I set a hand on its arm and said, “Does the wheel shape the pot, Ilushet? Look elsewhere for the hand of the potter.”

     “And is that you, or the gods?”

     “Is it the Trinity or the Trifold?” I asked in return and grinned as it shook its head. “I will see you soon, my friend.”

     “Be careful.”

     I went into the dark, to fight the mountains for their secrets. Het Noidla sat on the roots of the rock of one of the range’s vast peaks, and as I strode away from the town I decided that investigating the vicinity immediately around the het would be logical. Perhaps the town had been established by the Jokka crossing the mountains.

     ‘Perhaps’ was an uncertain word to balance a mission on. As I walked on the crumbled stone flanks of the mountains’ very feet, I couldn’t help but wonder how I could possibly defeat them. The night had gathered quickly and thrust itself into every nook and cranny of the land, and thick, cold clouds occluded the moon. The layered clothing disconnected me from the feel of the air, and insulated as I was I stood and stared up the slopes.

     “Gods,” I whispered. “World and Brightness aid me.”

     No divine hand wiped aside the cloud cover that would have facilitated my search. Ears pressing to my head, I turned and resumed my trek, seeking the crumbled black rock that might tell tales of a pass.

     I labored long in the fierce cold, and weariness at last doused the fire of enthusiasm that had leaped into my heart when I set out. Frustration lapped at the edges of my awareness, and I cast my gaze again to the sky.

     “It will not end this way,” I said. Then louder, “It will not!”

     I punctuated the statement with a thump of my fist against the cliff-side and jumped as I was showered with pebbles. With a frown, I directed my gaze toward the flow and saw a purple-shadowed crack in the cliff. The longer I stared at it, the more it seemed to dip down into a hollow, rather than fade into the side of the rock.

     I glanced around, found hand-holds, and scaled the side of the mountain. It was only two body-lengths up, and I slid onto the other side, landing on the ground with a grunt.

     A quick survey of my surroundings stung my hope back to life. This pocket of rock, though close to the ground, had been completely hidden from me as I walked alongside. Perhaps others had missed it - no, I was certain they had. I continued my journey with renewed interest.

Yet I found nothing.

Truedark fell. I leaned against the stark cliff-side and rubbed my brows. My lashes were cold when my closed eyes introduced them to my cheeks.

     I would find a way over the mountains. I had to. But they were not interested in making it easy for me. I sighed and ran a hand over the wall, fingers idly reporting the crags and fissures through the thick layer of my gloves. The sensation was minimal and I’d long since stopped paying attention when my fingers fell through a hole. Startled, I opened my eyes to utter darkness and flapped my hand around the open space until I found its edges. I pushed myself off the rock and ran my hands along the surrounding stone. When the gloves muted even the sharpest edges of the hole I growled and stripped them off.

     The cold struck me immediately, needles of pain thrusting through my hands. I ignored them and once again explored the edges of the hole, felt with a gasp the fluting running down the straight side, nicked and broken in places but undeniably familiar. A door jamb? Here?

     All around I could feel the crumbled slide of scree and rock obscuring most of the portal. I put my gloves back on and grabbed one of the rocks, tossing it aside. Pebbles I scraped away with my hands curled into claws and I grunted with the effort of moving larger stones. I was soon sweating beneath my heavy winter clothing.

     Truedark lifted shortly after the beginning of my excavations, and the hazy outline in the dark only set a-fire the hunger and joy in my heart. I continued.

     False dawn’s murky green had just stained the horizon when I stood at last in the hall hidden behind a knee-high mound of rock. It was without doubt a hall; in the poor light I could still see the even walls, and I didn’t need eyes to feel the carved relief embedded in the stone near waist-height.

     Oh, the ancients hadn’t come over the mountains at all. They’d come through them. My heart was lighter than a cloud’s, and as the sun woke that hall heard the first Jokku laugh since its founders passed from the World.

     I had to tell her. I scrambled over the mound of rocks and out of the sheltered well of stone and ran to Het Noidla, tail a dark flag and my lips agape for the stream of exhilarated gasps and laughter that erupted from my mouth.

     I burst into her room to find Ilushet helping her from bed. They both looked up at me, fire-lit countenances holding completely different expressions: the eperu’s surprise, and Dlane’s expectation.

     “It’s time to go to the Birthwell, ke anadi,” I said.

#

     In the light of the lantern, Dlane’s gray skin gathered the ambers and sparkle-hazed yellows of fire. She belonged here, in this hall, one hand tracing with reverence the dancing Jokka carved into the walls. I looked over her head at Ilushet, who stood outside.

     “We’ll be back soon,” I said. “A few weeks, maybe.”

     “Weeks?” Ilushet sounded uncertain. “Are you sure, cousin?”

     I wasn’t sure why I knew, but I did. “It won’t take us long to go and return. We can meet in Het Noidla, and then Dlane and I will go back for our House and we can bring them to meet you.”

     “Through the winter cold,” Ilushet said, shaking its head. It laughed. “I am sure you have a ready answer for that as well.”

     “It will be done because it must,” I said. “And after this…” I smiled with half my mouth. “After this, very little will seem difficult or strange.”

     “Indeed.” Ilushet chuckled softly. “In a few weeks, then, I will seek you and we will talk of Reña and your future, cousin. Go with the gods, the both of you.”

     The eperu began its hike back to town, leaving the two of us in the hall. Dlane smiled at me, her flame-complected eyes glowing. I offered her my hand and she took it, and together we walked deeper into the mountain.

     The lantern uncovered more and more of the beautiful relief running on both sides of us. Naked Jokka following one another, their bodies stylized so that each sex was easily distinguished from the other. There was no stiffness to their poses, but no depth either; the relief was shallow, and beneath the long row ran strips of decorative designs, their angularity in sharp contrast to the fluidity of the figures.

     “It is like the ancestor of our writing,” Dlane said as her fingers trailed over the designs. “Almost like the tablets I saw in Het Narel, but not exactly so. Oh, Thenet.”

     I squeezed her hand.

     We gauged the passing of the hours by how often we poured oil into the lamp; we’d brought a small bag of leather sacks, and each held half a day’s oil. We’d traveled an entire day when the passage opened into a small round room with a domed ceiling. As I set down our supplies, Dlane followed the carvings with fingers and eyes.

     “They’re resting,” she said, and indeed when I looked up the Jokka on the walls were in various states of repose, some sleeping, others sitting or leaning against one another. Nor was there any separation of sexes: anadi, emodo and eperu all mingled in the raised stone.

     I chuckled and unpacked our small dinner. We’d brought no wood for fires, and though walking had kept us warm the frigid stone chilled the air. We would make due with blankets, and the fur cape Ilushet had insisted I keep.

     By the time she’d exhausted her curiosity, I was ready with dried fruit and roots and a few strips of cured meat. I passed her the water bag and she sat next to me, hips and shoulders touching.

     “What do you think we’ll find?” she said, her voice hushed and curls of white rising from her lips.

     “I don’t know,” I said, pulling one of the blankets around us. “What I see now… this work….” I shook my head. “I am prepared for anything.”

     “I am prepared for wonder,” she said, nibbling on the strip of jerky.

     So was I.

     That night we slept on top of the soft fur with the blankets piled atop us. Dlane set her back to my chest and I pulled her into my arms. It was not long before we’d grown warm enough to relax, and she was asleep in moments.

     My eyes roved over the carvings. I’d always believed that the hands of the Brightness, World and Void cupped my life. This was the first time I’d sensed the presence of my forebears. I tucked my chin atop Dlane’s head and let her regular breathing lull me into a light doze, and the Jokka in the carvings stepped out of the walls and danced and talked in the semi-reality of an eperu’s dreams. I danced with them - the latest in a long chain of individuals leading back to the beginning of time. I was connected to them all, could see distinct faces and colors. They were each a Jokkad.

     It seemed important that each one greeted me, had different eyes and a face of his or her or its own. But the meaning of it eluded me.

#

     We spent days walking through the ancient corridor, spending oil to reveal the beauty of the walls and their not-quite-writing. We spoke little, content to be together as we approached the fruition of the dream that had driven her out of her House and into my life.

     On the ninth day the faintest glint of blue-white light competed with our amber lantern glow on the heads of the reliefs. Dlane stopped beside them and ran her fingers along the cracks and we stared at the shadows they cast - not just umber, but with a hint of lavender as well. Our eyes met, and hers were fierce and bright.

     We quickened our pace after that. Each hour brought more and more complexity to the colors and shadows in the hall, soft hints of white and gray stained with purple. The air carried a new smell, salty and fresh. Our stop to refuel the lantern chafed at us both, and I nearly spilled the precious fluid from the stiffened leather neck.

     When it came it took us both by surprise, for the hall simply ended and the night yawed open. I stumbled over a step and onto the cold ground on the other side, and as I lifted my lantern its glow receded.

     “Truedark!” Dlane cried. “But we just got here!”

     “Hush,” I said, and blew out the light. “It will keep for morning. Imagine it, setasha. Dawn on the Birthwell. What would be better?”

     “But I want to see it!” I heard her feet scrape over the ground and I reached out, caught her as she staggered.

     “You will soon. But we must sleep first.”

     Her body molded itself to mine, pliable and warm. I sank to the step leading into the corridor, sloughing off our packs and supplies and engulfing her. As I wrapped my cape around us she touched her mouth to my chin, and I met her kiss with a whole heart. The fire in her mouth, the drip of her honeyed teeth, the utter darkness my open eyes could not pierce… I drew joy from her with my hands, and they were mine: an eperu’s, not an emodo’s. As we sought one another’s rapture, it finally came to me that I was eperu, and that all my life I’d confused unusual and unwonted with unnatural. When her hands slid down to touch the bones above my tail I felt brief misgivings, but did not resist.

     “Are you sure?” she asked into my mouth.

     I kissed her, and let that be my answer. In the truedark in the place where the Jokka had been born, I could not say no… and through the haze of heat she cast on me like a second blanket my ears could hear a heart beating, a heart so large it could only be the World’s.

#

     She slept in sticky contentment against my chest, our fur cape and blankets holding us together in a warm cocoon. I dozed as well, the shame that had plagued me about eperu passion not touching me in my joy over our arrival. The dawn would open the Birthwell for us at last.

     I was startled to wake hours later, for eperu did not sleep so. Sitting up, I found myself alone in the blankets and sought my anadi… and instead saw for the first time the wonder that was the birthplace of the Jokka.

     The heart that I had cupped in my ears all night was not my imagination, but the sussurus of a vast body of water. I had never seen so much water; it rolled all the way to the horizon, lost there in a haze of blue-green against the pearl-cream sky. Over and over teal green waves crawled up the ground and back, bringing with them a sizzling froth that bled white and then vanished. These rolling waves repeated themselves across the surface of the water, and in amazement I rose and took a step forward. I would have expected all water to act as it did in a pool - still unless wind-ruffled. But this thing of constant motion, assayed by mysterious means and without seeming pattern, was beyond my comprehension.

     I ran to the shore, my feet crunching across the pebbly surface of the ground. Bright white splashes fountained from my toes as I stepped into the tide, and the water tugged at my feathered ankles, matting the black hair into spikes.

     Who could encompass such a wonder? My mouth fell open as I scanned the entirety of it. Roika had had a name for it, an ancient-sounding word that seemed to roll out of the very deepest of our memories. Isal. Ocean. Not the paltry thin ‘sea’ I’d always heard. Ocean - this was the word with which tides and power and passion could be associated.

     I brought the ancient token from beneath my blouse, into the light of dawn on the Birthwell’s ocean. Now I could see what it was - a wave. A wave off the sea with its curling cap of foam. I lifted my face to the wind, tasted the heavy scent of salt and moisture and wilder things and closed my eyes.

     My body shook: cold, not exhilaration. I had my blouse on, but no pants. Scampering back to the blanket I’d discarded, I pulled on a pair, hooked my long-cloth around my hips and buttoned a vest on before going back out to search for my anadi. My feet crunched across the white beach, but in my distraction I ignored the wonders of the Birthwell. Where was Dlane?

     And then I saw her, kneeling on the ground some distance from me. I jogged toward her, relieved.

     “Ke anadi!”

     She did not reply, and when I drew near she blew the joy from my heart like a wind does a flame. Bent there against the ground, a tunic untidily spilling to her thighs and her hand clenched, she was tension itself: as if she were trying not to weep. Alarmed, I faced her and crouched. “Ke anadi?”

     “Thenet,” she whispered.

     “Ke anadi!” I exclaimed, horrified at her small, empty voice. This was not the vibrant Dlane that had saved my life - not the bright anadi with whom I’d fallen in love. “What is it?”

     “Oh, Thenet,” said she. “Look. Look at the beach.”

     I did, finally; not at the ocean that had first captured my attention, not at her, but at the ground beneath my feet. I gasped, and my hand dropped to it, closed into a fist, and came up full of more wealth than I’d seen ever in my life. This beach… the Birthwell… with wide eyes I glanced from one direction to the next. The Birthwell was mounded high with treasure.

     It was a beach of shells.

     I had probably crushed more money beneath my feet in the act of walking to her than Reña had ever earned. I lifted my gaze to hers in shock, and in her eyes… my skin prickled and my mouth dried at the hollow despair there. I had seen her in misery and pain and fear, had seen her soul in her, had felt the fury and power of her struggles. But this emptiness… this was the absence of the desire to struggle.

     She held up one spiral shell. Almost as long as my finger, pearly white with a stripe of coral pink along its fringes, it would have bought Reña’s whole household food for months. “Look at this, Thenet.” Her other hand dipped to the ground once more and held up another: an ivory bivalve with a fringe of slate blue almost as broad as my palm. “And this. And this. And this.” She pulled up one after another, shells so large and so pristine they would have represented decades’ worth of earnings of a rich House.

     “What does it mean?” she asked at last. “I could pick up a handful of shells anywhere on this beach and we could go back and Reña would be beyond the power of any House on Ke Bakil.”

     “So let us!” I said. “It is the Birthwell’s gift to us!”

     “But what if others come to the Birthwell, Thenet?” She shook her head. “You don’t see, do you.” She let her head drop. “Thenet… what is the worth of a shell?”

     “What?” I said, feeling briefly the same confusion that had been my primary state of mind when I’d first met her, had first heard her litany of incredible questions. “Ke anadi… it is money. It represents work and wealth.”

     “Why don’t we use pebbles?”

     I frowned. “There are pebbles everywhere. Anyone could just pick one up and exchange it for goods. They wouldn’t have earned… it….”

     As I trailed off, a faint and bitter smile touched her lips. “Now you understand, don’t you.” When I didn’t reply, her sad, hollow voice continued, “It has value only because it’s rare… and for us to know it is rare, we need the context of the world around us. Well look here, now, Thenet. What is the worth of a shell, if there are a hundred thousand?

     “I tell you what it is. Worthless.” Her soprano hardened on the last word, and then she was walking away, leaving me with a handful of shells.

     I understood what she was saying. I thought I understood the source of her despair. She had come to the Birthwell for answers, and it had told her what she didn’t want to know. How exactly her realization related to her situation I couldn’t fathom. When I stood, my knees creaked and I turned my face back to the wind coming off the ocean. I didn’t know how to help her. I didn’t have any reply.

#

     That evening I drew on some of our stores, too listless to hunt for our meal. I crouched on the wealth of a nation, jaws working on a tough piece of jerky. I finished the short meal with half a flatcake and bundled up some meat and cake for my anadi before seeking her.

     The Birthwell at dusk was riddled with tiny, beautiful shadows. The shells threw them off in multiple shades of blue, slivers more complex than any normal landscape. It was eerie and lovely beyond words, and I stopped several times to stare across a sea turned murky-violet with the twilight’s veil.

     I had sensed, coming here, the hands of the Trinity. Had sensed the realization that would set my people loose. But I couldn’t grasp it, anymore than I could the relevance of Dlane’s realization. What was I missing? Would I find it in time?

     In time for what? I glanced back toward the mouth of the tunnel. I had stumbled onto the entrance to the Birthwell through luck and the gods’ will alone. What danger could find us here?

     I resumed my walk, troubled and chilled, and the breeze off the ocean slapped my mane around my neck. By the time I reached the figure slumped on the beach, my skin felt clammy where my clothing exposed it to the touch of the sea and the sky had darkened to a deep purple. I wished for a lantern, to imbue Dlane with an artificial warmth to replace the inner one that no longer animated her face.

     “Ke anadi?” I asked softly. When she did not reply, I sat next to her. “I brought you dinner.”

     Again she gave no answer. I placed the bundle in front of her and looked for her hands. Finding one, I rolled it between mine to rub some of the cold out of it. “Setasha, you must eat.”

     That, at last, prompted a response in a dull soprano. “Why?”

     “Because you’ll sicken without it. We’re far from home, my love. If you grow weak, it will be difficult for me to get you back safely.”

     “Home? What home? Reña is gone.”

     “Reña is not gone!” I exclaimed, startled. “Dlane! What is wrong with you?”

     “Everything is wrong with me,” Dlane said, looking away from my gaze. Her golden eyes were golden no longer, but a dull, pale brown. “The world cannot be fought, Thenet. I am just one Jokkad in an ocean of Jokka. I am nothing, and the unnatural House I built with me.”

     Each word was a throwing claw, slamming into my breast. I dropped her hand in shock. “Ke anadi!”

     “It’s true,” she said, turning to me. The emptiness in her eyes was a knife in the wound in my heart. “You do not know it yet, Thenet, but I am done. I am… I am done.”

     I stared at her, jaw hanging open and ears splayed. Her body was the body of Dlane: the same golden tail splashed against the broken shells of the beach, the same smooth and lovely nose, the delicate ears, the curved hip and shoulder. But the spirit inside… the spirit inside was not my anadi’s.

     “Go, Thenet. You have vowed to see me safe wherever I went; to protect me. To see me happy. I took those vows, and I took you for my own, but I was wrong. You are your own person, beholden to no one, and owe no one your oaths. I release you.”

     I stumbled to my feet and backed away from her, sickened; had the presence of mind to take several steps toward the tunnel before I began to run. I ran through the cold dark until my limbs pitched me to the ground, and there I retched, my rejection of her words and her change staining the pristine shells of the Birthwell.

#

     Dlane and I withdrew from one another in the days that followed. I did not have the courage to face her, though I watched her leave the edge of the tunnel each day. I couldn’t stand the unclean words, the strange spirit that inhabited her, and dozing next to her at night sent tremors of unease to walk my spine.

     One day she rose and shed her clothing, walked naked into the dawn. That night she did not return to sleep with me, and I did not go after her. Some part of me had hoped that if I left her alone she would find herself again, but crouching beside the tunnel and gathering her spice-scented blouse to my nose, I knew, somewhere, that it was over.

The days dragged on. I realized that if we were to leave, I would have to make the choice.

     But I found the Birthwell entrancing. I sat beside the ocean and watched it breathe, listened to it sing and sigh and rustle. The hiss of the foam against the precious shells filled my ears to their brims. With the glass ornament pressed to my chest beneath my clothing, I stretched my body out beside the tide and gathered the water in my eyes.

     On the eleventh morning it struck me suddenly that I had seen no birds in the Birthwell. That absence piqued my curiosity, and I scouted along the beach until well into the afternoon. By the time I stood with my feet in the ocean, I had come to the disturbing realization that not only were there no birds, there were no animals. No insects. No signs of life at all.

     My eyes dropped to the ocean, and as in a doze-dream I bent to it and rested my hand on its restless surface. It slopped over my knuckles and I brought them to my lips, tasted, and gagged. And I noticed then, at last, the white crystals growing on the shells nearest the ocean’s touch.

     Salt. More salt in water than I’d thought possible to suspend in it. The Birthwell was not just undrinkable… it was lethal. Beauty, power, death and riches: truly this place brooked no weakness of soul, and wondered what weakness it had exploited in my anadi. Perhaps she would regain herself outside the Birthwell. I decided then that we would leave the next morning, and turned to the tunnel.

     A figure already stood there, and I caught my breath. Had Dlane returned to herself at last? I jogged toward the tunnel, then ran, eager to see her, to hold her, to tell her it was time to fill our pockets with the Birthwell’s final gift and go.

     A long ululation rose from the tunnel, echoing in eerie assonance. I halted, almost losing my balance, and then like a wound bursting the tunnel disgorged the hunting beasts, dozens of ñedsu, all wailing and giggling as they darted toward me.

     I jerked my head back up to the figure and saw in horror that it was not Dlane at all - not a female figure bundled in thick clothing, but a male. A male with skin like black glass and hair like the clouds over the mountains.

     No. Not here. Not here! I didn’t realize I was yelling until her name left my lips. “Dlane! DLANE! RUN!”

     I didn’t know where she was. I couldn’t protect her. I veered as hard as I could and sprinted away from the beasts, but my capture was inevitable. They were fresh and I was not, and they were faster. There were no trees to climb, and the Birthwell’s sheer cliff-faces mocked the very thought of ascending them. Shells sprayed from beneath my feet as I streaked, gasping, alongside the salt-laden waves.

     In a fit of inspiration, I splashed into the ocean. The ñedsu ran to the edge and milled in frustration, and their moans and gibbering filled me with a fierce determination to live, to be free long enough to find Dlane and drag her away somehow.

     I waded out as far as I dared, until I was chest-deep in the cold waves. My teeth chattered. The beasts dared not follow me. I couldn’t leave. Impasse.

     The crunch of shells heralded the approach of my adversary… how appropriate that he came, destroying the equivalent of hundreds of months of work beneath his feet! He had chased us from the south, scattered Reña before him, and now he had cornered us at last, with our backs to the sea and him beneath us and our only exit.

     “Come from the water, ke Thenet,” Roika said.

     “N-n-no,” I said, clenching my fangs against the stutter. The water lapped at my ribs, leaching warmth from the marrow of my bones.

     “You will be sick,” he said, as if he were concerned for my welfare.

     “Go away, Roika. Leave us. We are not for you.”

     “Aren’t you?” He chuckled and twisted, waving. I glanced that way wildly to see several more Jokka marching toward Roika… and in their arms a limp figure, one familiar to my eyes, to my hands, to my body, to my soul.

     “NO!” I cried, lunging from the water. The ñedsu jumped up, eager to resume the chase, but it was Roika who caught my arm and pulled me to his side. The cold of the ocean was nothing to the cold of the air on my wet body, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

     She lifted her dull gold eyes to me. There was nothing in them - no fear, no anger, no will to fight. And seeing it, I sagged.

     “You see?” he said gently.

     Where the rage came from in the face of the obvious end of all our dreams, our plans, I don’t know. But in that moment I yelled and threw myself at the Jokka holding Dlane, and I would tear them from her limb by limb just to get her free. Time began to click toward the Moment’s utter stillness, and even the ocean stopped breathing.

     My hands had reached the throat of the first eperu when time shuddered back into motion. Roika’s metal-dark eyes pinned me and I felt the hand on my collar jerking me back like a betrayal. The World had always stopped for me-

     And then the blow to the back of my head dropped me, drowned me.

#

     The trip from the Birthwell acquainted me with anadi sleep, for I only woke a few times, and all of those conscious moments were fraught with the weight of my despair and the sour taste of feverwait on my tongue. I knew the drug was used to keep a Jokkad unconscious until its body regained the strength to fight disease, but I’d never heard of it being used this way - to keep someone asleep.

     I dreamed. Lurid, disjointed things, full of brazen images of emodo and anadi together, their cries the piercing wails of the ñedsu. Montages of my life, of Reña and Het Narel and the caravan, all pasted together so that they seemed senseless, without context or meaning.

     The dreams exhausted me. The rock of the wagon beneath my body when I woke brought bile to my tongue, but I had nothing to vomit in my nausea. I was never awake long, and the Jokkad with the powder was the only other person I saw. It came to me that I should try to escape, but my hands and feet had been bound. Even if they hadn’t been, I would have been too weak to stand.

     I endured the waking minutes and slept the journey through.

     The end announced itself when food replaced my drug doses, until one day I found the wagon had ceased to sway beneath my body and that I was strong enough to lift my head.

     The eperu that entered the wagon helped me to sit upright without untying me, then combed my mane and tail and braided them. Its attentions struck me as ludicrous, but I did not protest as it decorated me with beads, stripped my clothing, ran a warm wet cloth over my sweat-stained body. It enlisted the aid of several fellows when it came time to dress me in clean clothing, but I did not fight them. I need more information on where we were, how many people were guarding us, how badly Dlane had fared on the voyage. I needed to plan.

     Two eperu led me from the wagon. My knees and ankles shook beneath my weight, and as I stepped down to the ground they threatened to give way beneath me. Despite the meals I could remember being fed, my muscles trembled and my flesh felt twice as heavy.

     I looked up and almost groaned aloud. Not Het Narel… oh, anywhere but here, where once Reña had stood so proudly. And we were on the northeastern outskirts of town, near the Green but still far enough that I trembled at the thought of having to walk all that way between two eperu, obviously a prisoner.

     But where was Dlane? I was the only one standing in the center of Roika’s eperu.

     I had no more time to consider it. The eperu took me by the arms and set me on the path into the Green and I followed. To my shame, I found I had to lean on them several times throughout the journey. Several Jokka passed us, but none of them met my frantic gaze. Het Narel! Had they abandoned us so quickly? Did they not remember Reña?

I was panting when we reached our destination, and sweat slicked my sides… but that had no effect on my heart as I stared up, and up, and up at the tall, grand House that stood alone even amid the Green’s luxurious array of tall, grand Houses. All of three stories high on the surface and probably another underground if the doors angled against the ground were any sign, it was made of brick and stone, combined artistically to create a mottled gradient marching from blue-gray at the base to cream-gold at its roof. Stringcourses of silvery rock separated each floor, and the windows had been barred with the clearest glass I’d ever seen. My heart turned in my chest at the sight of such wealth.

     “Come,” the eperu said to me, and not unkindly. They had allowed me to take my fill of the facade, and perhaps it was part of their orders to well and truly intimidate me after walking me several blocks while weakened. As clear as the strategy was, I was annoyed to discover that it worked. Tired, horrified at how much my body had atrophied in the few weeks I’d been drugged, torn by worry over the absence of Dlane and now presented with this exalted magnificence, my morale plummeted somewhere around my toes.

     I followed the eperu into House Edze.

     They guided me to a large room and left me there, closing the door. Besides that door, there was another on the wall facing a large window with all that clear, clear glass. I walked to it and spread my fingers across it, my other hand straying to the bump beneath my blouse where the glass token of the Birthwell’s wave sat against my ribs. The eperu dressing me had left my two necklaces alone, for which I was grateful… and angry about that gratitude, since it illustrated how deeply under another’s power I was.

     A long sofa ran along one of the walls, but I was too nervous to sit. I paced instead, my shaking legs protesting every step.

     The door opened, produced Roika. He’d dressed well, in black pants and a black vest that emphasized the crisp, bright white of his blouse; and the ember-red embroidery lining the buttons and cuffs of his outfit, revisited in the expensive knotwork on his decorative black long-cloth.

     I wanted so much to attack him, but had not even the energy to step forward. So instead I let the chill in my voice speak in lieu of action. “Where is my anadi?”

     “In my care, ke eperu. Where she will remain.”

     “She is not yours. Nor am I. We are more than toys for your House; more than another anadi and another eperu for your use. We were meant for something greater. You know that,” I said.

     Roika cleared his throat. “I think that moot. Don’t you? It’s a little late for such statements. I have her. I have you. Your feelings are irrelevant. Your destinies even more so.”

     “I will take her from you, emodo,” I said, not even bothering with the honorific. My words burned in my mouth. “Look well on us now, for you might have us now but you will not keep us.”

     “Do you truly think you have a chance?” he asked, one brow lifting askance. “You’re not thinking clearly, ke Thenet. I thought for certain you had come to your senses on the long ride here. That perhaps you were prepared to join me, to bring our people back to their former glory. Real glory, not this false, unnatural ideology the two of you persist in holding.”

     “Glory! What is glory, riding on the wombs of unwilling anadi?”

     “Now you sound just like your strident little Dlane.”

     “She is larger than you, Roika,” I hissed.

     He bared his teeth. “Is she, Thenet? Why then is she willing to sacrifice the greater good of her people to save herself from pain? That speaks more to me of fear and selfishness than it does of a largeness of heart.”

     “She is wiser than you,” I said. “She knows that no empire can be built without the consent of its members. Otherwise it is no just empire at all, but a collection of slaves serving their master. What good is that?” I turned my back on him, trying to express my disdain without moving much. I felt distinctly queasy. “Give her back to me and let me go, or you will rue it. You will not have her.”

     “Not while you are Thenet Reña-eperu, eh?”

     I let my silence speak for me.

     The door opened behind me, and I heard his low murmur. Then the shuffle of feet as several Jokka filed into the room. Was he planning to take me prisoner again? Lock me up somewhere? Surely he knew better… and too, there were far too many feet for the amount of eperu necessary to subdue me. We both knew just how fragile my health was.

     “Turn around, ke eperu.” Was there sadness in his rumbling bass? A pain? What could inspire such an emotion in him? Anxious, I turned.

     They stood in a line, the perfume of their unbound hair striking me just as the sight of their bound hands did: sweet Witha, head hanging; Degerra and Osa resting against one another. Neña and Koise, hands clasped and eyes staring wearily into a distance. Linuthet, Adzani, Sekootet, Madad, Iihaf, they were all there. Even the eperu came, their hands tied behind their backs and their feet hobbled: Fooshet, Larin, and my beloved Seper. All Reña’s folk, save Dlane and I… and of them, Witha, Neña, Koise, Madad and Osa all in various stages of pregnancy. From the curve of Koise’s belly, he’d captured them only a week or two after Dlane and I had left… and though there was still intelligence in their eyes, it had been smothered by resignation.

     “No,” I said, but my voice could barely produce the sound. My hand lifted, shaking.

     Seper said softly, “I am sorry, ke eperu. I tried.”

     “So you see,” Roika said as two of his eperu entered the room, standing on either side of the line of anadi, “I have met your challenge, ke eperu. I could not have your Dlane while you were Thenet Reña-eperu… but Reña is gone.”

     “No!” Louder this time, and though I shook to my bones I was running, out the door, away from the vacant stares in the anadi I had once gathered flowers with, cooked for, laughed and protected. It was not Seper who had failed, it was me. I had destroyed Reña. I should have taken them with us. I should have left them better fortified. I should have done something-

     “Thenet, stop!”

     I ignored him, dashed down a flight of stairs. His silhouette appeared at the top. “Thenet, you don’t want to go down here.”

     There were two doors. I choose the one directly in front of me and ran in, hoping it would have one of the exterior doors I’d seen outside the House… and stopped as if gutted.

     The room must have encompassed most of the floor, its plain walls unadorned. It held six breeding harnesses, the sloping chairs bolted to the ground, their bizarre combination of leather straps and stone limbs meant to prop up and immobilize an anadi in a position that allowed the emodo ease of use and safety, in case she grew violent.

     “I told you,” he said from behind me.

     I whirled to face him. There was no way out of this chamber of horrors save past him, and when I stopped moving my body resumed quivering and my nausea returned full-force. My chances of escaping were slim.

     “Roika. Don’t do this to her,” I said. “Don’t make an animal out of her.”

     “Oh, stop it!” he said, and at last irritation rasped in his reply. “It’s over, Thenet. I’ve won. And we both know that I must.”

     “It’s not right,” I said, my love for her welling, drowning me. “Can’t you let her be? You’ve already taken Reña. Isn’t that enough?”

     He shrugged, the motion rippling through his gray tail. “She’ll be happier after she’s been bred a few times.”

     And it was true - captured and helpless, Dlane would be miserable. Mindlessness would almost be kinder.

     What was I thinking?

     “Let her go,” I said. “You can keep me.”

     “You’re useless to me unless you want to be here,” Roika said. “Dlane can serve me even unwilling.” He canted his head. “I thought once that you might be willing. Are you?”

     “Would you let her go?”

     “Maybe.”

     “Maybe!” My hands clenched into fists. “Roika! You don’t need to be greedy. You can have the pick of any anadi or eperu or emodo! It’s there in the wealth of this House - you could buy contracts that would beggar every House on this Green. You don’t need us. Don’t need the pittance of a single anadi, a tiny House!”

     He laughed. “You call the smartest anadi I’ve met a pittance? A scrap to be thrown away? You underestimate me, Thenet.” He advanced, and I fell back until my spine struck the foot-rests of one of the harnesses. “Face what has happened, eperu. I have absorbed your House. I have taken your anadi. I have taken you. And I will make my empire and save the Jokka. You have a choice now. You can join me, help me rebuild our race, or I will have to discard you.”

     Something in the way he said ‘discard’ sent a cold shiver down my back. I groped at the harness to stay upright. “We wouldn’t oppose you, if you let us go,” I said, hoarse.

     “You wouldn’t?” He laughed. “How naïve do you think me, Thenet? Your anadi embraces a philosophy that would give every female the choice of whether or not to breed. How many do you think would choose to do so, given that choice? Enough to keep our race alive? Ha! Look at us, eperu! Look well! We have dwindled since the ancestors arrived from beneath the mountain! Not just in stature, but in numbers! Do you think we will give our race a fighting chance on life again if all the anadi decide that they will not give us children?” He shook his head, touched my chin. “Oh, no. No, Thenet. By existing, you oppose the growth of the Jokka. Do you want that on your conscience?”

     “No,” I whispered.

     “Then join me!”

     “I can’t!” I cried. “Roika, I can’t do it!”

     “Then you are against me.”

     “No!”

     He snarled and let go of my face. “What is it then? Do you want the Jokka to go forth to their destiny? To grow as a race? Or do you want the anadi to have the freedom of choice? It must be one or the other, eperu. Choose!”

     “I can’t!” I said, and from the turmoil in my heart I couldn’t. Dlane, or the Jokka? The individual, or the species? My love, or my people? How could I make that choice? How could anyone, and stay sane?

     Roika’s eyes shuttered instantly, darkened to the roiling gray of the storm. I had never seen him so angry and I leaned away, shaking. “Coward! I thought you were strong! I thought there was something in you. But I see now that you are as strong as the other sniveling cowards who have let our race decline to this darkness! Can’t choose, can you? As mindless a follower as any anadi, are you? That’s what you should have been born! Anadi, destined for drooling stupidity! Anadi, mindless follower! Dlane led you by the hand, and now that she’s gone you are unable to make your own decisions! Well, I’ll show you your proper place-“

     “Roika,” I said, terror gumming up my throat as his hands reached for me. But with the terror came something else - the knowledge that violence would destroy him, that this first step on the path would undo whatever good he intended for the Jokka. I do not know whether it was fear of him, or fear for him, that made me cry out. “Roika! No!”

     “I’ll give you what you want! I’ll take your choices from you!” His hands closed on my throat, wrapped around my waist, and he threw me hard onto the stone beneath the harness straps. I writhed desperately, but even healthy I was no match for him. As I struggled, he pushed me down and grabbed my arms, strapping them outstretched to the stone limbs of the sloping chair. A crushing pressure on my back ground the glass token into pieces beneath my chest, and within moments I’d been immobilized with my rump in the air and the blood rushing to my head.

     “Roika,” I said, “Don’t-“

     “Shut UP!” A hand grabbed my tail and jerked it up, and my clothing ripped from my bottom with a tear like a shriek. I pulled helplessly at the straps, but they’d been made to withstand the bucking of wild anadi and I was weaker than the weakest in my state. “I am taking your choices from you, since you deny them. Anadi you deserve to be, and anadi is how you’ll be treated!”

     I scrabbled at the limbs, trying to pull myself forward, away from the hands that grasped my buttocks and tail, and then I screamed as his staff found me and thrust into me.

     I had never imagined, in the pitiful few times Dlane had pressed gently against me with her fingertips, a pain as excruciating as the feel of him jerking in me, all the way until his hips thumped against the bones of my rump. A sob burst from my mouth, surprising me, and I pressed my cheek against the stone as he rocked back and jerked in again, throwing me against the leather straps. “Stop! Rrrrroika!”

     He growled and flexed in me and then the pummeling continued, harder and faster as I wept in anger and pain, writhing against the harness.

     When the rapture ran down my back, cold as rain, my nails dug into the stone and I screamed again. There was no more thought. There was heat, and pleasure, and pain, and raw wrath.

     And again.

     And again.

     And his growls, and cries.

     And the acrid tang of blood in my mouth, and the scent of it in the air.

     And the cut of the leather against my skin.

     The cold of the stone. The heat of his body.

     And his roar-

     And then nothing. Dark, silent, still nothing.

#

     “It’s waking,” a voice said from very far away.

     “I have the tea.”

     “Good. Ke eperu, open your mouth. Yes… yes, good. Drink this, it will heal you-“

     “It’s working.”

     “Yes. It needs to sleep. Only nature can fix this….”

#

     “Why is it weeping? It should be asleep.”

     “Did you dose it with the tea?”

     “Yes.”

     “I’m frightened, ke eperu. The fever-“

     “Hush, hush, ke emodo. The gods saw it into this. The gods will not abandon it now.”

     “I hope so. Because the gods will have much to answer for if it dies.”

#

     Voices. I knew the voices. They comforted me - they were good voices, safe ones. I floated, barely aware of them. It seemed unreasonably hot; was it summer? Surely not already.

     I slept.

     I remained in that not-quite-awareness for a timelessness that needed no measure. But one day, inexplicably, I chose to wake, and the sweet tea that barely hid the sour flavor of the feverwait did not depress me into darkness. I was lying in a bed piled high with pillows beside a window-no, it had no glass. This was a wagon, one with half its above-floor space boarded off. My body lay somewhere beneath me, but I could barely feel it.

     “Hello?” I croaked.

     A shape stirred near the edge of the wagon, and I found myself staring into Barit’s brown eyes. He straightened so quickly I thought he would fall. “Ke eperu!”
     “Barit?” I said hoarsely. “What are you doing here?”

     “Ilushet-Ilushet!” Barit called out the side of the wagon. Then he scrambled to my side and gently touched my shoulder. “You know me?”

     “Of course I know you,” I said. My voice refused to stabilize; sometimes a husky rasp, other times a breathy tonelessness no louder than the wind’s whisper. “Where am I? What am I doing here?”

     Ilushet stepped up onto the platform and joined Barit at my side. Its hand drifted over my brow, down to my chest above the blankets. “How do you feel?”
     “Tired. Empty,” I said. “Cousin, what happened?”

     Ilushet’s eyes meeting mine were too calm. I could see the quiver in its chin. “When you did not arrive as you promised from the Birthwell, I investigated and found House Edze’s people on the road with wagons. I followed them, suspicious. The day after they arrived to Het Narel, Barit found you outside the town, so close to death we weren’t sure we could take you back from the Void. Barit brought you to me, and we struck into the wilderness to hide from those who wanted you dead. Here you wavered between life and afterlife, and only today have you been able to look at us and speak.”

     It came crushing back to me. Roika. Dlane. Reña. “No,” I said, sitting up. “No, Dlane… we have to go back for her!”

     “We can’t,” Ilushet said. “She is lost, cousin. It is too late.”

     “It can’t be too late!” I said. “We can still save her. We have to save her!”

     “It has been over a month since we found you,” Ilushet said. “Thenet, it is too late!”
     “A month?” My jaw gaped open. “A month?”

     Barit whispered, “You were near-dead, ke eperu. He had ripped you open from the inside.” His red skin had taken on a gray cast, and he looked shaken. “By all rights you should have died that night we found you.”

     “Dead?” I asked weakly. “I was almost dead?”

     Gently, Ilushet lifted the covers from me and let me see my wasted body, the bandages around my hips and upper thighs. A smaller strip ran over my chest, and a visceral memory gripped me: shards of glass slashing into my flesh.

     Just as Roika had…

     I turned my face and pressed the back of my hand to my mouth to stop the weeping before it started.

     “We’ve slathered the parts of you we can touch with root of kema,” Ilushet said, its voice still soft. “You shouldn’t feel any pain. But we have not been able to give you food, for fear it would undo the healing.” Its throat pulsed in a sudden swallow. “Broth only. And tea. You bled passing even that.”

     “Am I… will I live?”

     The two exchanged glances. Then Barit said, “We think so. But you must not move much. The flesh… the flesh is mending, but we could not salve it or spread ointment on it to speed its healing without further aggravating its condition. You must lie still until it is safe for you to move, and continue drinking the broth we make you until it is safe for you to eat.”

     But my thoughts were already on Dlane, imagining her immobilized in the horrible sloping chair, the leather straps pinning her down, her struggles as Roika-no. No. “How long?”

     They didn’t answer, and I looked up at them, teeth burning with unshed tears. “How long?”

     “Another month, perhaps,” Ilushet said. “I… I have never seen anyone recover from wounds as grievous as yours, cousin.”

     “Too long,” I whispered. “Oh, Dlane, Dlane, setasha!”

     “It is too late for her,” Ilushet said, touching my shoulder. “We must save you, cousin.”

     I gulped back my sob.

#

     From the prison that was my bed I watched the black night cover the land like an emodo an anadi. The nausea that lurched through my stomach had nothing to do with the tea or the drugs. I pressed my hand to my nose, blocking the scent of the soil, of the thin, acid scent of the oil Ilushet used on the wood of its caravans.

     Dlane. My beautiful Dlane. She had been right that evening in the Birthwell. She had somehow seen her doom and Reña’s fall in the shells of the beach. What power of premonition, what gods-touched ability had been triggered by the sight of our ancient birthplace?

     And why, oh why, had it crushed her when so little before had daunted her?

     I rested my head against the pillow, inhaled the pungent mix of herbs stuffed into it, and was too weary to weep.

     “Thenet?”

     His voice sounded so tentative. I could not turn to face him, but remembering the pain of Dlane’s silence, I answered, “I am here, Barit.”

     The stool squeaked as he pulled it next to the bed. “I hope I am not intruding.”

     As he said it I realized he wasn’t, and that his company was welcome. How long had it been since I’d thought of emodo as anything but enemies? Barit had saved my life. “No. No, I am glad of the distraction.”

     “I’m sorry about… the way things happened. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”

     “How could you have known?” I murmured. “Reña was simply gone one day, and without a note.” I turned my face to his, saw in the dark the crimp of his brows and the rigid muscles in his jaw, marks of an anguish that twisted my already wounded heart. “But maybe you can tell me something. How did…,” I paused, hardened my voice, “How did he find them?”

     “A week after Reña vanished, Transactions declared it Broken. Since none of the members of the House disputed it, Reña’s records were closed. After that, he sent parties to search, and found the anadi and eperu in the ruins.”

     “And then he took them,” I said, baring my teeth.

     Barit shook his head. “No. He bought their contracts.”

     “What?” My body shook in rage. How could he do that? Make it legitimate? How dare he attempt to mask his intentions with such subterfuge? The audacity! “Surely he didn’t.”

     “He did. And, Thenet…,” Barit paused, glancing down at his hands and ears sagging, “Thenet, some of them went willingly.”

     “Willingly? Barit-“

     “I talked with Seper,” he said, his voice low. “Just a few times when this began to fall to. They did not want to be Roika’s trophies… but given the circumstance, some were willing to fight to be the kaña-befidzu and win a limited freedom from the harness that way. Better a ruler over anadi in a House destined for empire than to live their lives, running, fearful of every shadow.”

     “But we were going to come back-“

     “But you didn’t.” Barit looked up at me, and the faint starlight traced the marks of tears over his chin. “Please, ke eperu. They were in extremis.”

     He asked me to forgive them, despite the anger, despite the helplessness and the guilt I felt for abandoning them to Roika, to the world they could not manage without Dlane’s light… and yet, even Dlane’s light had gone out, leaving only one battered, ugly eperu behind. Who would save the anadi? Who would save the Jokka? Not Roika. He would build his empire, and it would crush our people beneath the weight of it.

     “Did I tell you how I came to be on this road, ke emodo?” I said at last.

     “No.”

     “I was a favored eperu within House Mated at home, and all the eperu had gone to the hunt when the matron began to give birth. The child was stopped in her, and the anadi did not have the strength to turn it. By the time they brought me to her, it was too late. I turned the child, but it had died.” I stared into the dark, letting my eyes drift out of focus. “They cast me out of Mated for killing the babe, and Dlane saved me. I did not understand why, then.”

     “Do you now?” he asked, his voice so soft I almost lost it to the sound of the insects peeping and the slough of the breeze.

     The night had a murky cast, with thick, muddy clouds obscuring the stars; in the uncertainty, I nevertheless knew the lines of the hills, curves fruitful and sweet. The dark did not take them away, though I could not see them.

I looked back at him. “Yes. Yes, I understand.” I closed my eyes. “She saved me then, ke emodo, before I had the power to save myself. Now… now I must save her.”

     Barit touched my hand and said nothing.

#

     They had my bag, brought from the Birthwell. I did not have the strength to search its contents, though occasionally I glanced at it. Hunched in a corner, battered and patched, it had seen more of Ke Bakil than most Jokka.

     When the constant bed-rest began to chafe, I found the courage to go through the bag. My grasping fingers found a pouch of tools, familiar and soothing. I pulled it into the light and rested it on my lap. From within it, I brought forth a carving knife and a misshapen piece of bone, its edge still jagged.

     I touched the corner, felt it prick my skin. I pressed my finger to my teeth and studied the bone piece. The blood in my mouth was sweet.

     “Dlane,” I whispered. “You released me from my vows… but every oath I made to you, I broke. No more. I will take it back.”

     Then I set the knife to bone, and caressed it, and made plans.

#

     Ilushet was right. It was middle of spring before I was strong enough to walk and to eat real food. A few weeks after I ate my first slice of bread, I could finally pass waste without pain.

     From then on I played a game: how much activity could I withstand before exhaustion claimed me? How far could I push my body without hurting myself? Ilushet watched me, I knew, but I ignored the eperu and forced myself to run, to throw the spear and to exercise muscles that had atrophied.

     Yes, Ilushet watched… but it was Barit who helped me. He wrestled with me, ran races, danced and fought mock battles, accompanied me on my solitary hunts and dogged my shadow. Perhaps he thought I didn’t see - that as emodo, he was as strong as I, but could not match my endurance, and our bouts and our sessions ended when he tired, not when I did. He kept me from pushing too hard. I welcomed his company anyway.

     I found the Void in solitude, and in my thoughts. I danced with my shadow and understood - slowly - that I had become the light. The mandorla was mine now. I could douse it, and choose the way of the World as it was, the Ke Bakil that existed, the empire that Roika would build… or I could take on the mantle that Dlane had left for me, invite the Brightness into my soul.

     Pirouetting to meet my shadow with the new throwing claws I had made, I thought that the Trinity made no sense when a Jokkad could move between them thus.

     I wrestled with Barit, sought my strength, and felt time’s passage, each day a new wound, each day a new scar that Edze would address.

     The caravan was immobile while I recovered. I wondered at this once aloud, and Barit smiled.

     “The Birthwell,” he said.

     Clever Ilushet. It had collected enough shell to make this year’s trade unnecessary. But what did that mean to the towns that depended on its caravan for the goods they otherwise would not have? My heart turned as I thought it, for I knew that Roika would have had the same concern.

     Roika. Dlane. Oh, beloved!

     I stood in the copper-bright sunlight of a late spring afternoon, a spear in one hand ground into the earth and the other hanging loosely at my side. I wore only a long-cloth, decorated in gold and gray and blue - her colors - and the medallion she’d given me tied to my throat. The wind tousled my loose dark hair, chased it over my shoulders. I took a long breath, and at last felt the strength I had lost.

     “You’re going back for her now, aren’t you,” Barit said.

     I glanced over my shoulder at him as he stepped up to join me. My ears swept back. “Ke emodo….”

     “It’s useless to deny it, Thenet,” he said. He drew abreast of me. “You have been pushing and pushing. I have been with you. And when you stop, you always end up staring to the east. Toward Het Narel. It doesn’t take great intelligence.”

     “I have to,” I said. My voice trembled. “Barit, I left her there. I abandoned her.”

     “No, Thenet. You were… were tortured and nearly killed, then left to die. You were ejected from House Edze, with the intent that you wouldn’t live to return. You didn’t abandon her. You were given no choice.”

     No choice. My fingers curled into a fist, pressed my claws to my palm. “I said I would save her, Barit. This time I will keep my promise. Don’t try to stop me.”

     “Stop you!” he exclaimed. “Are you blind, ke eperu? I’m not going to stop you, I’m going to go with you!”

     “What?” I stared at him. “Barit, it won’t be safe. He tried to kill me before, the House is guarded… by the Void, emodo, he took all of Reña!”

     He took my arm in his hand and looked at me with level eyes, his jaw tense. “You forget, ke eperu. I knew her too.”

     In his face I saw the truth of it - that Dlane had not only inspired love in her wayward eperu, the one who had failed her, but in others as well. And all of us too blind to see it, to see that she could make an emodo love her and want to see her safe.

     That maybe, this is how the empire could work together with Dlane’s vision of freedom… for if the emodo loved the anadi, they would try harder to give them the choices they needed to be full persons.

     Was that all it needed? Love, that strange and unspeakable thing? Had we destroyed our people simply by refusing to touch what we could not understand? For I understood now as I never had the vast gulf that separated emodo from anadi from eperu. Understood the gulf - and the bridge that could cross it. The bridge created by the whisper, ‘setasha’, by a loving touch, by trust… yes, by pleasure.

     It seemed a ridiculous notion, that trust and love between sexes might be the key to freedom. Perhaps that’s why it had never been tried.

     Your kingdom, Dlane. Your empire. It might work. I would make it work.

     Oh, Dlane.

     “We’ll leave tonight,” I said.

     “We must tell Ilushet.”

     “It will try to stop us-“

     “It won’t,” Barit said. “And we might need its help to get out.”

     I shivered, remembering through the haze of memory the pain and weakness of my state at Roika’s hands. There was no way we would survive that alone. “Very well.”

     We had a plan a few hours later - Ilushet and its people would await us on the edge of Het Narel and enter it only if we’d been gone for longer than a day. Barit and I, meanwhile, would go to House Edze. The emodo would wait outside to be my safety while I entered and attempted to convince Roika I was ready to join him. At an opportune moment, I would find Dlane, lead her out, and run with Barit for the edge of town.

     There would be risk in it. But I could think of no other way to gain entrance to House Edze long enough to locate Dlane. And as much as I desired to free the rest of Reña, I had to admit the truth: I may not have the time. If I could save them all, I would. But if I could not, it would be Dlane… or myself. This thing would not end without a resolution.

     Barit and I set out as the evening settled. Back at last to Het Narel.

     Traveling down familiar roads sent shivers down my spine. I appeared unarmed; I could not maintain my fiction with a spear in my hand, though I carried insurance hidden on my body. Barit used his spear as a staff, flanking me as we walked through the clumps of Jokka that wandered the streets, most in search of their homes after a long day’s work.

     At the gate to the Green we separated, Barit to circle around behind Edze and I to approach it openly. My heart beat a nervous staccato as I passed the flowered garden, its perfume riding the warm evening’s winds. I had a long time to consider the many possible ways our plan could fail, but I felt no fear. I was coming back for her. One way or another this thing would end… and the running would be over.

     The two eperu at the door to Edze called, “Halt!” to me as I stepped up to them. I obediently stopped.

     “Who are you?”

     “I am come with business with the Head of Household,” I said.

     “Who are you?” the second one repeated.

     I took a breath and licked my teeth against the foulness of the words about to leave my mouth. “I am Thenet. Thenet Edze-eperu.”

     Expressionless, one of them walked inside. I waited, forcing myself not to fidget. I’d worn my best: a blouse bleached impeccably white tucked into black breeches, and a vest and matching long-cloth of crimson, gray, black and gold. The Trifold’s medallion nestled against my throat, my earring flat against my mane.

The eperu reappeared in the dark doorway. “Come in.”

     I entered. I was guided through the halls, this time to a different room, and left outside the door. “Knock,” the eperu said, “And wait to enter.”

     I shrugged, rapped my open hand against the extravagant wooden door.

     “Come in.”

     A shiver ran through me at the deep bass - fear, anger, and a slender flame of pleasure. I gritted my teeth and composed myself, then walked inside.

     It was a study of sorts; a desk, a pot of ink releasing its nutty odor, expensive wooden tablets with their reusable wax surfaces scattered across its surface. A lamp lit the room, which had two chairs. Decorative rugs in amber, gold, cream and black adorned the walls, proudly displaying the same symbol over and over: Edze’s house sigil, no doubt.

     He was seated behind the table, and when I walked in he stood. His face never changed, but in his eyes I could see him true: he hadn’t expected me to live.

     I strode to him, pressed one hand against his chest, and then kissed him with an open mouth, and in shock he answered me - shock first, and then hunger. I had to make him believe I was real, and that I wanted him. That I was for him. Ilushet, Barit and I had all agreed this was the fastest way to establish his trust.

     I hadn’t anticipated how much it would revolt me, and how deeply I would answer his hunger. The male had almost killed me, but I’d never met a closer match for me. He had been the Void to my World, just as Dlane was my Brightness. I could not deny him that place… and perhaps it was that admission that convinced him, that made him pull me into his arms and drink from me as if he’d been needing it for too long.

     But I had ceased to be the World weeks ago. He would learn it soon enough.

     “Edze-eperu,” he said huskily when we parted mouths. He didn’t let go of me. “I thought it was a joke.”

     “It was a liberty,” I said, grinning with teeth. “I wanted you to know my purpose.”

     “I didn’t think,” he started, then stopped. “I am surprised to find you here.”

     “Don’t dissemble, ke emodo. You are surprised to find me alive, you wanted to say.”

     “Yes.” His hand crept up to my hair, tangled in my flat black braid, loosened it.

     “I am tougher than the anadi you put in the harnesses, Roika,” I said. “Didn’t you think of that?”

     “You came back,” he murmured into my ear. His breath was hot and sweet with the wet of my fangs. “I didn’t think… even if you lived, I didn’t think you would come back after what I did to you.”

     “You think I forgive you?” I asked. Truth and falsehood mixed, but they had to for him to believe me. “I wish I was emodo, Roika. I wish I could throw you in the harness and use you the way you used me. I would do it with the haft of a spear if I could. But my anger at you is meaningless when compared to the just cause you are championing.”

     “Then-“

     “I came back because I want the Jokka to have their empire, and if you’re the one I will help you. But not,” and I stared up at him with blazing eyes, “Because I like you.”

     He threw back his head and laughed, his throat bobbing as it bubbled from his mouth. The emodo whirled me around, pressed me with my back to the desk, his strength still more than mine but not so much so as it had been. I snarled at him even as the desire in me burst into flame.

     He dropped his head until his lips nearly touched mine and said, “You’ll do, ke eperu.”

     “I’ll more than do, ke emodo… and you know it,” I answered, and pulled him onto me, jamming my mouth on his. We squirmed together against the desk, and there was passion and hatred in me, warring, making my struggles more violent. He laughed into my mouth.

     Roika drew back. “I’ll have one of the eperu show you to your room, my Thenet.”

     A hot shudder ran down my back but I slid onto my feet and faced him, hands drawn into claws. He didn’t miss it; I didn’t intend him to. He grinned and his eyes narrowed. “I think you’ll find it quite agreeable.”

     “I’m sure,” I answered.

     He opened the door, and an eperu came as if summoned. “Show Thenet Edze-eperu to its room,” he said, glancing at me with a look that spread a slow heat through me. “It will be staying.”

     The eperu nodded.

     I found myself installed in a room on the second floor in short order. It had a sumptuous bed, a chest made of expensive wood, and more of the ubiquitous House sigil wall-hangings. As soon as the eperu stepped outside the tremendous wooden door, I started pacing. The hunger in me did not disturb me… my mind was busy with other thoughts.

     I had convinced him. I was in Edze. Now how to find Dlane without arousing his suspicions?

     A hand struck my door and I looked up. “Enter?”

     A slim figure stepped inside and closed the door behind it with bound hands. The cord around its wrists matched the one tied around its throat.

     I rose, my voice a bare whisper. “Seper.”

     Seper cleared its throat. “Welcome to House Edze, ke eperu,” it said, its eyes directed at the ground near my feet. “You’re to be given a tour of the grounds. I thought,” and it raised its eyes to mine, “You might want to start with the nursery first.”

     I nodded, breathless. This was no cowed servant of the House. There was a fire in Seper’s slate blue eyes that spoke to no master but itself, and the cords that bound it told their own stories. Fractious eperu too often rebelling. I followed it out.

     We went upstairs again to the third floor, and Seper led me down a hallway to the end of the corridor. It indicated a door and when I went to push it open, it touched my hand. “We are not watched here,” it whispered.

     I nodded, stomach clenching, and went inside.

     Starlight glowed on the floor of the nursery, setting alight the nests of blankets that held the sleeping children. Some were old enough to approach their first Turning; others were infants yet. But I spared only a quick glance for them before I seized upon the shape of an anadi straightening from the figure of a small boy.

     I recognized her. In her nakedness, how could I not? I stepped forward, her name on my lips.

     She turned, and my hopes shattered.

     Her golden eyes were empty, her belly gently swollen, dragging at her hips. I had come too late for Dlane.

     “Setasha,” I said. My throat had tightened almost too much for speech.

     She cocked her head.

     “Setasha,” I said again. “Dlane.”

     Her ears swiveled forward. She knew her name, then, but her blank, curious gaze hadn’t changed. She didn’t recognize me. The tears came then, and I reached for her, took her into my arms. She didn’t resist, but it was with the mild puzzlement of an anadi without understanding of the motion. I wept against her golden hair, as silently as I could, but she did not reach up to comfort me, did not hold me, speak my name… and her belly, slight as its swelling was, forced us apart at the hips.

     “Who are you?”

     I jumped away from Dlane, wiping at my mouth and looking for the source of the voice. I found it in the boy standing behind the anadi. He was tall enough to be past his first Turning; certainly old enough to be ready for his own room soon. He had dark skin and hair bright red… but the metal-gray eyes of his father. I swallowed. “I’m Thenet,” I said.

     “Thenet Reña-eperu?” he asked.

     Startled, I said, “Yes. I am.” And I was, and always would be. My plans were in ruins now, and I was aware of Seper’s silent figure outside the room. How long did we have?

     He nodded. “Aunt Dlane told me about you when she first came. That was before the problem.”

     “The problem?” I asked.

     The boy glanced at her, ears flattening. “She bit open her veins and tried to die. The healers saved her, but there wasn’t much left in her.”

     I stared at him, shocked. She had tried to escape. My brave, beautiful love! Better to die a free anadi than to live dumb with a babe in the womb… The words echoed in my head and I glanced at what had become of my setasha. There was nothing in her now to make a second try.

“After that, we started having lots of problems with the other Reña anadi. They were trying to do it too.” The boy trotted to the end of the room and opened a chest. Dlane and I both stared at him - hers the dumb stare of a curious animal, mine stupified as he chattered on. “Father was furious. Ke Seper explained it to me, though. That’s when it got in trouble. It said you would come, just like Aunt Dlane said you would.”

     The boy returned with a package. Seeing it, Dlane gave a tiny cry of delight. He grinned at her with affection, then handed it to me. “This is for you.”

     With trembling fingers I untied the knot on the top of the bundle. It opened on a note and a sharp object. It was in her strong handwriting; words I could read because of her, because of our life together. They were simple enough.

     ‘Setasha -

          I love you, now and always.

                    Dlane.’

     My hand crumpled on the note and I sobbed aloud. The boy crept forward and set a hand on my knee as my fingers opened on the bundle, spilling it to the ground. Something clunked against the wooden floor and rolled away but I was beyond such things.

     “Ke eperu? Ke eperu?” The boy patted my leg. “Please don’t cry, ke eperu. It happens. She wanted you to have it. Please don’t cry, ke Thenet.”

     I looked up at him, dripping great strings of tears from my mouth. Slowly, I wiped them from my eyes. “What’s your name, ba emodo?”

     “Kaduin,” he said, straightening. “I am the oldest son of Edze.”

     The oldest son of Edze. Something stirred in my mind. “I suppose your father’s very proud of you.”

     “He says so all the time.” Kaduin frowned, tail fidgeting.

     “This troubles you?” I asked him, touching his shoulder.

     “I liked Aunt Dlane. And all my other aunts. But he made them very unhappy.”

     “A House and its family should be happy,” I said quietly.

     Kaduin nodded. “It would be better that way. It… frightens the children when the anadi seek the Void to avoid their father.” He said it bravely with a lifted chin, as if it could conceal the fear and worry in his eyes.

     “No children should live thus, I think, Kaduin,” I said, and the plan began to unfold. “I know of a better place.”

     “A better place?”

     “One where the anadi do not fear the emodo,” I whispered. “One where the children need not fear.”

     “That sounds like a good place,” Kaduin said. “I think we should go.”

     “I think so too,” I said. I glanced past him to the nests I’d taken to be full of sleeping children, found instead rows of eyes looking at me. I smiled at them, then gestured for Seper to enter. It did so, hands straining at their binding.

     “Seper, my Seper,” I said in a low voice. “We are taking the children.” My hand touched the small of my back, just above my tail, and pulled from beneath my vest the bone claw nestled there. A flash of white and it had severed the rope at Seper’s throat and hands.

     “Ke Thenet?”

     I cupped its cheek. “Barit is outside. Find a way to get the children out. Through the window, maybe.”

     “The window,” Seper repeated, but its uncertainty was fading.

     The boy’s voice distracted me. He was reaching up to Dlane, his voice patient but firm. “No, Aunt Dlane, you can’t keep that. That’s your gift to ke Thenet, remember?”

     She was holding a shell in her hand - not any shell, but the first spiral shell she’d shown me in the Birthwell. It had to be the same; I’d never seen one as large. She was stroking it, staring fixedly at its sides with no understanding at all of what it meant, or how much it was worth. My mouth dried instantly as the boy coaxed it from her grasp and she whimpered.

     “It’s okay, Aunt Dlane. It’s safe. You see, it’s ke Thenet. You told us it would come for us, and it’s here. We have to go now.”

     Dlane hung her head, and the boy returned to me, handing me the shell. “It was in the bundle,” he said.

     I suppressed my shiver, tucked the shell into my pouch with the note. “Very well, ba Kaduin,” I said. “Go with Seper.” I walked past them, stopped only when Seper grabbed my arm.

     “Where are you going?”

     “I am going to give Roika my scars.”

     Before Seper could speak, I strode past it. Lowering the children through the window safely and quietly would take time… enough time for me to answer Roika for all the pain and humiliation he had visited upon me and mine, for stealing my Dlane. I went to the second floor, seeking the anadi’s quarters. I passed only one other eperu, who nodded to me as if I belonged there - poor creature! What punishment would its assumption buy it when I had finished here?

     I found the anadi behind a door, curled up together as anadi sleep on their soft, plump pillows, arms lazily interlinked, tails still and ears sleek against their heads. Roika’s treasure: the anadi of House Edze, his prize breeders who would bring him his empire. I slid into the room, and now I let the halo of fire in my soul die, exchanged it for the black veil of the Void.

     The bone claw I had created so long ago in indecision and doubt I rolled into my palm and clutched so that it protruded from between my knuckles. How tempting to liberate the blood of every Jokka in the room, to bleed Edze dry of life and vigor! How easy it would be to simply slit the throats of every breathing creature in this room and condemn each one to death for having had the ill fortune to be purchased by a mad emodo bent on empire!

     But I was no Roika, and I wore the cloak of the Void by choice, and temporarily.

     I went to Linuthet first. Touched her cheek and woke her. Her eyes were mazed, not just with sleep but with the seeds of the stupidity that each child would water in her until the weed broke the soil, foul and dark, to choke her living mind.

     She lifted her hand to my face, showing me the scars at her wrists.

     “I have come to free you, Linuthet Reña-anadi,” I whispered.

     After a moment, the reply came back. “Free me.”

     I drew the claw across her throat and opened it, sending her spirit to the afterlife.

     One by one, I woke the anadi of Reña. One by one they chose my knife. I did not realize I was weeping until the blood of the last stained my bone blade, weeping for their courage, their loyalty. I wiped my mouth and stared into the pile of Edze’s anadi. They were truly Edze’s now. None of Reña remained… save the anadi in the nursery. I would come for her soon enough.

     “You,” A voice said.

     I turned, heard the husky voice. The hair on my spine lifted. Of all the anadi to be spared, that this one should still live and breathe! Magun, her voice still sodden with sleep but her eyes half-lidded and dangerous, rose from the pile.

     “You,” she said again.

     I lifted my chin and bared my teeth. “Me,” I agreed.

     “What… what have you done?”

     “Raped Edze and left him to live with his humiliation.”

     Magun paused. “You mean to take away his power.”

     “I mean to build my own empire, Magun. One that will make his seem like a candle to the light of the Brightness. When his little dream is collapsing, mine will sweep Ke Bakil.”

     “You would never.”

     I grinned with thinned eyes. “Watch me.”

     She lunged for me and I back-handed her, knocking her unconscious. I stared down at her loathsome body. So easy just to trace her jaw with my claw…

     And then I saw the band of swollen flesh pressing at her hips, and I suppressed the urge to laugh. No, I would let her live, and try to save her clever mind and her fecund body when Roika discovered half his anadi dead. She would be nothing soon enough.

     By the time I returned to the nursery, Seper was lowering the last of the infants. It glanced at me, took in the blood scent and the tears on my jaw. Its head lifted, and the ferocity of the pleasure shining in its eyes made me wonder, suddenly, what it had endured at Roika’s hands.

     “There isn’t much time left,” it said.

     “This won’t take much time,” I answered. “Go. I’ll be down soon.”

     It nodded and was gone before I could take another breath.

     “Mmm.”

     I turned, and she was standing there, hugging her stomach. Nausea swam to my mouth at the sight of her rocking on her heels.

     My Dlane.

     Flashes of her:

     Grasping the limb of a tree, staring down at the ñedsu.

     Bravely striding alongside me, panting, out of breath, determined to keep up.

     Riding in a wagon, staring avidly, greedily at the world as it scrolled past.

     Laughing with me.

     Teaching me.

     Loving me.

     “Dlane,” I whispered.

     She drifted closer, touched the medallion at my throat, and looked into my eyes. A frown furrowed her brow and her mouth worked silently for several heart-beats.

     Then - “The… Thenet.”

     Oh, gods.

     I kissed her on the forehead, touched her cheek.

     “Dlane Reña-anadi,” I whispered. “I go to do your work. I cannot ask, but I know your answer.” The bone claw slid into my palm. “As I have known you, as I have loved you, I know your answer.”

     Then the blade that she had shaped drew the blade that it had shaped over her throat. The sweet scent of her blood suffused my senses. Her body sagged and I caught it, easing it to the ground. As her blood poured from her, I lowered my mouth to hers and kissed her, tasted for the last time the wet of her teeth, the heat of her tongue.

     When I drew back she was smiling at me.

     “Good bye, setasha,” I whispered.

     Her eyes closed and her smile grew fixed. Her spirit fled where her mind had gone, leaving only her body. Leaving only a shell. I pressed my forehead to hers and took in a long breath, my hands wrapped in her golden mane. I had done what she would have wanted me to do: what she had prepared me to do, with all her conversations, the grave pronouncements of her desire to die rather than to give birth to a chain of children. Never was I more her creature than when I killed her - my most beloved, the light of my living, my Dlane. I could not show my love for her, my willingness to learn from her, in any better way.

     But it was hard, so hard.

     When I trusted myself to open my eyes, I found them focused on her belly, on the part-formed child that would soon die there. Resting above it, the ring through her navel slit gathered the reluctant light. I touched it, then unfastened it from her flesh. The ring through my ear I likewise unlatched.

     I left her delicately arrayed on the ground with the light of the stars on her face, my ear ring positioned just so beside her outstretched hand… left there so Roika would know without question who had done this to him.

     Her ring I screwed back together in my ear. It dragged there, heavier and larger than the one it had replaced. It felt right there, to take with me the sign of her worth.   

     Barit and Seper met me in the darkness on the ground. I looked around, my spirit still within me. “Are we all present?”

     “Yes. Plus the midena.”

     “Midena?” I blinked, glanced at the children and found one of them holding the tether of nine of the small, nimble animals. They were pulling tender grass from the ground, patently unconcerned over the disruption in their routine.

     “We have a lot of infants here, Thenet, and no anadi back at the caravan to nurse them,” Barit said. “We need the milk.”

     “Fine. Let’s go,” I said, accepting two of the babies.

     We slipped silently into the dark, three adults, fourteen children, nine animals - we stole away with the riches of House Edze on our back, and the treasure of House Edze dead in its House. Dlane could not have designed a better way to answer Roika for his arrogance.

     The shell pricked through my pouch, and as I led our strange procession through the maze of paths leading out of the Green, my mind wandered to it. What was the worth of a shell without a society to give it context? We had given the shell a meaning: we had made it represent money, work, the labors of an individual, a House. But before the Jokka had taken it, it had lain beside the sea, beyond the touch of Jokku meaning.

     But did it need us to give it purpose? To give it a reason to exist? Did anything the gods had put on Ke Bakil require the Jokka to reach its greatest meaning?

     We had given shells a worth. But perhaps everything had its own intrinsic value, one that needed no Jokku mind to validate it. Each shell, each tree, each pebble and rock and Jokku soul, for all their multitudes, had its own beauty, its own value outside the ones imposed on them by us. The gods had made it all, and each single one needed us not a whit to have meaning.

     The worth of a shell? Everything… in itself.

     The Moment came, froze everything, my step mid-motion, the warm wind redolent with spring’s flowers, like one of Linuthet’s perfumes. It was perfection, that heartbeat’s pause, and did not fail me as in my heart bloomed an understanding I hadn’t even realized she’d been preparing me for.

     All along, she had been making me ready for this. She had freed me from the Jokka; freed me to see our society clearly for the first time. To engage it with my full faculties, unbound by prejudice or convention. From guilt, from shame, from confusion and fear, Dlane had released me.

     I was free.

     The world shuddered back to life around me. I looked over my shoulder, but all I could see of Edze were its yellow lights, and those fading quickly.

     “Ke Thenet,” Kaduin said.

     “Yes?”

     “Shouldn’t we stop? It’s getting near truedark.”

     His voice shook, but mine did not. “Truedark? Truedark’s the best time to travel.”