

ANADI DOLLS



by M. C. A. Hogarth


Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 M.C.A. Hogarth

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I was busy vomiting my reproductive organs into my favorite stream when a shadow cooled my back. I licked my lips, testing to see if I was done; now that I wasn’t filling my ears with my own retching I could hear two pairs of feet crushing the grasses behind me. They were a little ahead of schedule, but then I hadn’t had the chance to disguise my fight this time. Good old Nezali and Anoirl. I could always count on them hovering over the prize of House Sadlan.
"Jekun! What are you doing?" Nezali asked, one hand lighting on the small of my back.
"Throwing up my breasts, what does it look like?" I snapped.
"What?"
Their unison would have amused me had I not had bile burning my chin. I dropped my open mouth into the water and shook it in the current until my spit ran clear. No sooner had I lifted my head then the two of them grabbed me by the arms and hauled me upright.
"Is this necessary?" I asked, suddenly tired.
They were both staring at my chest. In the hot yellow daylight I couldn't hide how my breasts had shrunk, not the way I could in the permanent twilight of the cavern beneath the House. I looked past their faces at the swaying tawny grasses; they seemed to extend over the horizon, shimmering beneath a veil of waving heat. It made my eyes water.
"You're too old to Turn!" Anoirl said. It ran its hand gingerly past the limp flesh on my chest. "For the sake of the World, you've had babies already! Everyone knows no one keeps their mind if they've been bred before their final change!"
"Everyone was wrong," I said, lip curling back.
"Well, she's definitely Turning," Nezali said. It glanced at my groin. "And not male, either." It smiled at me. "Congratulations, Jekun. You're going to be eperu, like us."
"I don't want to be eperu!" I exclaimed. "I was born female. I was supposed to stay female, not Turn neuter!" I shook myself free and dropped to the grasses, folding my arms over my withered chest.
"There's no fighting nature," Anoirl said. It crouched across from me. "Just be glad you're going to be something sturdy, less prone to the mind-sicknesses."
Nezali seemed less certain. I liked that: Anoirl looked as exotic as its name, but it was far more set in its ways than my other caretaker. I merited two of them, being the kaña of House Sadlan. It was a nice gesture, but the House kept them so busy they hadn't even had time to notice me sneaking out to vomit and writhe in the grass. I'd never Turned, so I'd assumed the process was natural. Painless. Apparently it's as natural and painless as childbirth. I would know about that, because as they’d pointed out, I’d had babies.
I’d had babies. This was not supposed to be happening. I had never allowed myself to even think of it happening.
"How long have you been like this?" Nezali asked, drawing me back to myself and my sore, turned-out body.
"A few weeks," I said, rubbing between my brows.
"And you've been sick all this time?" Anoirl said. It brushed my mane back, something it did only when I worried it. "You're taking this hard."
"People who change this late sometimes do," Nezali said, stroking my knee.
I twisted away from them both. "Stop coddling me!"
They both stared at me, then at one another. I wanted to ridicule their consternation, but any more unusual behavior on my part would probably give them brain fits. I'd always been the model of anadi behavior. I’d worked hard at being a good anadi. What made the Trinity decide to play this trick? Did it think I wanted the life of an eperu? Constant toil? Having to hunt for your food? Earning your own shell instead of being given everything you wanted? Having no pleasure? No sexual pleasure, even!
My life, the life I’d always known, was over. And they wanted to congratulate me!
Nezali stood and offered me its hands. "Come on, Jekun. We should get you home."
My stomach lurched. "I think I'd rather stay out here a little while longer. In case the stream and I need a re-introduction."
Nezali flicked its tail in a shrug that traveled all the way to the tip of the braid, then sat next to me.
I stared at it. "Can't you just go away?"
Anoirl sat on the other side. I pushed at it. "At least give me enough room to turn if I have to throw up again."
They both edged away. I suppressed the urge to beat them with my hands. I'd never felt this angry, ever, and I was unprepared for the power of it. The way your heart pounds in your chest so hard your ribs ache. The blind, hot rush in your head. The trembling, the acrid taste in your mouth as your fangs leak. It's not the same kind of taste as sorrow. It's peppery.
"If I'm some big strong eperu now, why don't the two of you wander off and do your work?" I said.
"Because you're not a big strong eperu yet," Nezali said. "There's a transition period, Jekun. Not just a physical one, but one involving your role in the House."
Strange how anger could suddenly crystallize into panic. "My role in the House."
"Of course," Anoirl said. "You're eperu. We have to find work for you to do. To find out what your talents are so the House can use you to best advantage. Or barring that, sell your contract. It's all up to the Head of Household. We'll have to talk to him."
"I don't want to work," I said.
"You have to," Anoirl said.
"I'm not good at anything!" I said.
Nezali flipped its tail again. "You don't know that yet."
"I don't want to be sold!" I said.
"That's not your decision," Anoirl said.
"Unless you want to put your contract up for bid," Nezali amended.
"Unless you want to put your contract up for bid," Anoirl agreed.
I grabbed my head against the pounding, and this time it overwhelmed me. I twisted, scattering both my keepers, and retched my fang waste and saliva and bile into the water.
"Eck!" Anoirl said, pulling its tail away from the stream. "Are you done yet?"
"For now," I said. My throat hurt too much for me to come up with anything more biting. I massaged it gingerly near my collarbones.
"Do you want to go talk to the Head of Household, or should I?" Anoirl asked Nezali over my head.
"I'll stay here with her."
As Anoirl rolled onto its feet, I grabbed the end of its curly tail-braid. "Wait! What are you going to tell him?"
"That you're Turning, of course," Anoirl said. "He needs to know as soon as possible, so he can plan. You aren't just any anadi, after all. You're the kaña, and several of the House's important contracts are dependent on your being available for breeding."
I pushed myself to my wobbly feet. I felt strange... translucent, somehow, as if I was barely an impediment to the light of the sun. Was I casting a shadow? "Right. I'm ready."
"You can barely walk!" Anoirl exclaimed.
"So carry me, curse you," I snarled. "I might be Turning but I'm still anadi now!"
Thus my free ride to the House. I wondered if it would be the last of my life.

***

I won't lie: my House is prosperous, enough to make any Jokkad envious. Sadlan is one of the biggest Houses in het Nekelmi, and shell flows through our hands like water. It's not just because of me, though the fact that I've had several children and never lost my mind certainly helps bring in contracts. The House does it by running caravans: more than that I've never cared to discover. All that mattered was that our home was beautiful, that we're so rich we can get designs painted on the outsides of our multiple buildings as well as the insides, that we spend shell just to water the flowers that climb up the sides of our warehouses. It is a luxurious House, and I was its foremost luxury item.
Being carried into the main building as a future employee of House Sadlan instead of as one of its assets was unpleasant. I was in Anoirl's arms as we passed through a curtain into a room on the second floor, and there I got my first good look at our Head of Household. He rarely visited the anadi caverns and I'd never bothered to learn his name. My eyes immediately lit on the fingers he splayed on his desk as he pushed himself to his feet: long, limber fingers, the delicate hands of someone born male. From the clarity of his emerald gaze and the coarseness of his fangs when he opened his mouth to speak, I guessed he'd never been any other sex.
"Anoirl? Nezali? What's this?" he asked.
"Put me down," I said.
Anoirl eyed me, and I poked its arm with claws extended. It flinched and dropped me gracelessly.
While I dusted the grass and river dirt from my body onto the Head's clean floor, Nezali said, "It's Jekun here. She's Turning eperu."
"Well, that's a pretty twist of fate," the Head said with a scowl. He scanned my body; I noticed he never made it over my neck. "No use getting upset, though. Make Sirit kaña and start Jekun through the rotation."
"Just like that?" I exclaimed. "You are not giving my ring to anyone!"
The Head of Household stared at me as if finally noticing there was a head attached to the rest of my body. "Pardon me?"
"We don't even know this Turning is permanent," I said. "It might be my second, not my third."
"Jekun, that's very unlikely," Nezali began.
"So was me Turning this late," I said.
Silence all around, the silence you award a particularly dumb anadi when you don't want to agitate her. Still, very late third Turnings had happened on occasion in stories, so why not to me?
"I'm keeping my ring," I continued, my hand sliding down to rest over my navel slit and the warm red gold there. "You can wait to declare another kaña."
The Head roused himself. "No, we can't," he said. "We need a kaña so we can re-negotiate our existing contracts. Whether you're Turning again or not, we can't breed you this way. The ring has to go to someone else."
I'd earned this ring. I'd earned it by being pliable. By being smart in spite of bearing multiple children. By being beautiful, the beauty of blank motionlessness. I had compelled this perfection just so I could lie on a table while an emodo craftsman pierced my navel slit and slipped the heavy piece of gold through it. So that I could hang beautiful chains around my hips that told everyone who saw me that I was worth my weight in shell to House Sadlan. It was mine. I was not giving it to anyone, and I opened my mouth to say so.
"Ke emodo," Nezali interrupted, "There is a problem with an immediate declaration of another kaña. If we tell everyone that Jekun is Turning, then all the children from her previous contracts will be suspect. No one wants to work with a House that chances the ruination of their anadi by breeding them before maturity."
The male started. "Truth, Nezali. I hadn't considered that." He studied me. "All right, then, she can keep the ring. We'll start telling people that we're finding Sirit more appropriate, so that no one will ask what happened to Jekun until we know ourselves."
"Since I'm going to be eperu--briefly--does that mean you can start talking to me instead of about me?" I asked. "What's your name, anyway?"
Abruptly I had his full attention, and I didn't like it. "I am Oserit," he said, "Ke Oserit to you. And I'll start talking to you once you start acting like an eperu and less like a spoiled child." He sat down. "Take it away, ke eperu, and put it on rotation. Maybe work will shape something useful out of it."
Anoirl and Nezali each took one of my arms and walked me out of the Head's room while I seethed. Useful! I was already useful... as an anadi kaña! All that had entailed was lying around, eating and drifting in cool pools. Now that I was Turning, I wasn't useful unless I was breaking weeds in fields, or driving caravans, or gods knew what!
"You really should show more respect to the Head of Household," Nezali said into my ear as we marched down the ramp to the first floor.
"I will when he starts treating me like a person!" I hissed.
"You weren't acting like one," Anoirl said.
Both my ears sealed to my head.
"Don't even say whatever you're going to say," Anoirl said. It sighed and dropped my arm. "Where do we go now, Nezali?"
"To put it on rotation," Nezali replied, releasing me. I noticed that after our meeting with the Head, I was now 'it', not 'she.' "As Ke Oserit said. Let's find the least strenuous thing on the duty list."
"I don't want to work!" I said again. "I'll hurt myself!"
"You won't be working. You'll be observing," Nezali said. "Besides, you'll surprise yourself with your stamina." It continued down the ramp. When I didn't follow, it looked over its shoulder and said, "Come on, Jekun."
What could I do? I followed.

***

I refused to examine the duty list while Anoirl and Nezali discussed my placement for the day's remainder.
"There's not much left open," Nezali said. "Everyone's gone for the day except us."
"I don't want to go anywhere," I said.
They ignored me. "Where are you due today, then?"
"I have a longish journey to see the new dyes at House Kishanil," said Nezali.
"You have a rikka for the journey?"
"Yes. There's probably another available if Duret hasn't taken it. Riding isn't too strenuous--"
"I don't want to go anywhere," I repeated. "I feel sick. I might vomit on your rikka."
That won me both their stares. Nezali sighed and looked at Anoirl.
"We don't have time to teach her to ride," Anoirl said—I had become ‘she’ again, probably because I was being difficult--"And we can't have her throwing up in front of our partners, anyway. I'm shepherding this afternoon. I'll take her along. If she needs to upend her stomach again I can just point her at the nearest patch of weeds."
Nezali nodded. "Done. I'll see you in the evening, then."
They touched palms--easily, as if in ritual, though I'd never seen any other Jokka do anything similar. It occurred to me to wonder whether they were friends as well as my keepers. Then Anoirl turned to me. "Well," it said, "let's go find you some clothes."
"Clothes!" I recoiled. "I don't want clothes. Clothing will make me too hot."
"You're not anadi anymore," Anoirl said. "It won't hurt you."
"I'm not eperu yet, and it could," I answered, folding my arms over my chest.
"You will wear clothing," Anoirl said, and for the first time I heard fangs in its voice. "I will not have the children seeing an eperu wearing an anadi's kaña ring, and we certainly aren't going to show off your chest in its current state."
"Children?" I said, dazed. I knew, intellectually, that the House had children... all Houses do. But I'd never really considered where Sadlan's children were kept or who watched them. They certainly didn't remain with us in the anadi caverns. I'd been a child at some point, but I couldn't remember what anyone had done with me. My memories of youth had been dowsed by the darkness of the anadi caverns in which I'd spent much of my life.
"Yes, children," Anoirl said. "So you will conduct yourself as a responsible adult, and if you can't find anything respectable to say you won't part your jaws at all, understand?"
I pinned my ears back. "You will not--"
"Not what?" Anoirl asked. "Talk to you like this? Just because I haven't before? No one is as important as these children, Jekun, not even you. You will behave around them."
I flattened my ears and nodded. Anoirl's stuffiness made sudden sense in context to its duties. In tense silence, the eperu handed me a light, short vest, tied my hair back, and gave me a long cloth that tied high on my waist with a broad sash that covered my navel ring entirely. I must have let some expression leak because Anoirl freed my heavy belly chain from the ring. The eperu resettled the gold over the sash, where it hung so low my tail held it up in the back.
"Won't people realize I'm the kaña with this on the outside?" I asked with reluctance. I didn't really want Anoirl to hide it again, but... well, children. Who knew what they'd think? I had no idea how children's minds worked, real children, not anadi whose minds had devolved to childlike status.
Anoirl chuckled. "It might surprise you, but plenty of eperu can afford jewelry this nice. The ring and chain are special not solely because of their cost, but because you were anadi, incapable of buying it personally, and had it anyway."
"Am anadi," I muttered.
Anoirl said nothing, fluffed my sash, and led me outside.
And then there were the children. They ran from behind a building in a laughing stream, followed by a weary but smiling eperu I didn't recognize.
"All yours, ke eperu," it said, handing a staff to Anoirl.
I couldn't stop staring at these miniature Jokka dancing around Anoirl's knees. The creatures that had exited my womb had barely looked Jokku the few times I'd actually seen them before they were whisked off. I'd never had to nurse my children as they'd always been born of contracts with other Houses. These bouncing little people... did they ever stop laughing? One of them grabbed my loin cloth and twisted it, staring up at me with bright eyes nearly impossible to meet. He tore away and joined the knot of other children around Anoirl. "Today," it said, "we are going to look at trees."
"Trees!"
"We also have another friend along, ke Jekun, an eperu new to the House. Everyone say hello to ke Jekun!"
"Hello, ke Jekun!"
I thought I would die right then at the sight of those bright faces turned to me: the sun would strip the life from my body and I would crumble into ash. How tragic, to see their shining eyes and know that within years, fear would chase each single one down. Which of them would be the lucky ones? Which would Turn some sex that condemned them to a life they hated? How bitter the fruit sprung from such happy seed!
"All right, let's get moving," Anoirl said. "Head that way." It pointed southeast with its staff, and its herd frisked that way. I followed in the rear of all those little swinging tails, hugging my sagging chest. I thought about my breathing; I was breathing fine. I thought about my heart; my heart wasn't racing. I thought about the coming exhaustion of my limbs, but didn't feel it. I'd always been a strong anadi, but surely not up to a walk in the sun, up steep grassy hills, passing beneath no shadows.
Anoirl stopped frequently to point out some cluster of edible flowers, or some tiny creature of interest. The children gasped with delight or terror, according to their natures. I stood apart. I stared up at the brilliance of the sky, so intense it shimmered in my gaze. Impending blindness? But no, I could see Anoirl's back just fine.
From indifference to fear and back swung my heart, tapping my chest with a flutter on each change... but the tickling cushion of the grass beneath my paw-like feet distracted. It was easy to stop wondering whether the journey would be the death of my quick mind. There was a wind... I had never felt a wind. It combed my mane with tricky fingers, tangling it.
Always I'd been hidden in a tiny cavern. My mind had imprisoned me--I remembered that much. No one in Sadlan had wanted to risk a smart anadi child's mind. Indeed, I looked around... no females that I could see danced among the flock.
"Just a little farther," Anoirl called, waving its charges in front of it. "Over the ridge!" The children gamboled past, laughing and racing one another to the top. I climbed silently behind, not even breathless, concentrating on every footfall. Once I reached the top I closed my eyes. There was a green and living scent in the air that made my breath come easier. It was such an intoxicating smell that I couldn't imagine any sight equaling it, and yet I cried out when my eyes opened onto the verdant leaves. I clapped a hand to my mouth. As it passed me, Anoirl smiled before wandering on after its charges into the deep green shadows and the rustling eaves. I had never seen more than one tree in one place at a time. Somehow I'd imagined they would be static, a collection of trunks as still as a mural. Not this... this poem of motion and life, weaving patterns with gently nodding leaves.
I wondered in how many other things my imagination had failed me. I sat on the crest of the hill and folded my hands in my lap, waiting for the group to exit the grove again. My wrists trembled, as if my anger was a rikka they had to rein in.

***

My keepers did not allow me to sleep with the other anadi. Instead, I tossed and turned in Nezali's bed, swathed in thin sheets that tickled my skin. I wasn't used to sleeping in a bed alone, absent the company of other females, the hushed rhythm of their breathing. Halfway through the night, I stared at Nezali and Anoirl, dozing together on Anoirl's bed in that way of eperu, so deeply sunk into the matting only their tails and limbs were visible.
I hated them for leaving me alone. Anadi were never alone. If I learned to sleep as eperu do, the doze-dreaming that is never quite unconsciousness, then I would be forced to face this solitude all night, every night. What if I never grew used to it?
What if I did?

***

I woke exhausted when Nezali flung a pair of pants at my head. "Up with you, sweet," it said. "You're lunged to my saddle today."
"I don't want--"
"Anything, anywhere, I know," Nezali said. Its voice was kind, but I sensed it was planning to blithely ignore my protests. "Nevertheless, I'm not going to be late for my first inspection, so up with you."
"Can I at least bathe?" I said.
"Absolutely," Nezali said. "But not in the anadi pools. Come on."
Outside, I blinked blearily against the faint orange glow just beginning to tinge the sky. Even after my wild flights into the open when the change had begun, I didn't know what to think of mornings, or sunlight. I'd heard of anadi caverns that had covered holes to allow in selected lights during cool days and most evenings, but Sadlan didn't have any. It felt to be outside during the day without urgent cause. Because it was normal. It made my skin itch.
The bath turned out to be a spout rigged to the back corner of the eperu living quarters. Nezali relieved me of the pants, positioned me under the spout and then pulled a cord, drenching me in cool water. I yelped and danced, clawing my flattened hair out of my eyes.
"Are you trying to kill me?" I cried, trying to dart away from the flow. Nezali pushed me back under it and applied a handful of soap to my back.
"You'll get used to it," it said. "Think of it as a privilege, like bathing in the rain."
"How would I know what bathing in the rain is like?" I said, shivering. "And why do you do this instead of taking a bath, like normal people?"
"Because eperu get very very dusty," Nezali said. "Put one of us in a bath and the water will quickly be too disgusting to stay in. Jekun," grabbing my shoulder as I again tried to slip away, "you're so busy hating everything that you're not even allowing yourself to experience it. This is not a road to happiness."
I glanced over my shoulder at it, wide-eyed, then scowled.
Nezali dressed me extensively, and I mean that exactly as I said it: I had no idea how to fasten most of the things it thrust at me, nor any clear idea which limb went where. The pants made no sense even after Nezali tucked me into them: why were the floral patterns on the inside of the legs? And after you go through all the trouble of hiding your legs in these things, why put on loin-skirts at all? At least my chest was left relatively unbound, outside the short vest.
"Why?" I asked Nezali, following it onto a path and trying to keep my legs from tangling in the three panels of the skirts.
"Why what?" Nezali asked.
"Why all this?" I waved my hand at the clothes.
"Because we can," Nezali said. Then, thinking, "Because it makes us prettier."
I wrinkled my nose. "I can understand that in emodo... but why do eperu need to be pretty? It's not like you need to attract a mating contract."
Nezali's ears flattened. I thought that for the first time, I'd upset it. "Not everything is about mating contracts, Jekun."
What a stupid comment. Of course everything was about mating contracts. If there were no children, there was no House. If there were no Houses, there was no trade. If there was no trade, there were no Jokka, and then the world ended. My work as anadi was the first work, the source of all work, the only work worth doing. I knew this, because it had to be so.
I didn't ask Nezali where we were going, but after a while I became curious. We had left the perimeters of Sadlan with the sun barely touching the horizon, and now I could feel it climbing my back, warming the bare skin between the waist of my pants and the bottom of my vest. I was glad of the plait Nezali had made of my mane.
Another small hill rose before us, and I trudged up and over it to find het Nekelmi spread before my feet, tawny houses in their pooled purple shadows, spread around one another like the paragraph of a clay I couldn't read. My ears flattened to my head. Just how many hills hiding incredible vistas were there around House Sadlan? And all so close! And I had never seen any of it--
"We'll be visiting with House Kedret," Nezali said, distracting me from my anger. "They have a new shipment of bee silk they'd like to sell us. If you'd like to look at any of it, feel free, but show respect for the Jokka of Kedret even if you feel the silk is flawed."
Good silk, bad silk... as if I cared. I flicked my tail in a shrug and followed Nezali down the path into the het.
House Kedret did not have many buildings, but the ones it did have were admirable. I tried not to stare as Nezali and I were escorted to the warehouse by a well-dressed emodo with beautiful hands and feet. I was still staring at those long toes when Nezali started going through trunks of cloth, pulling long scarves of it through its hands. The sparkle of gold and scarlet caught my eye.
I sat on a bench and stopped staring at the emodo to stare instead at Nezali. And to listen to Nezali. Almost everything it said made no sense to me: talk of strand thickness and weave tightness and dye ingredients. At one point it even queried the emodo at length about the flowers the bees visited! All the while it hunted through the folds of cloth, choosing some and discarding others based on criteria I couldn't see.
This was not the Nezali I knew, who existed to pamper me. I couldn't have imagined it as this confident creature any more than I could have imagined Anoirl with children clambering all over its body, weaving flowers into their hair or toting them on its back.
On the way back to Sadlan, Nezali wrapped the scarlet silk around my waist. "Kedret's is not a bad collection," it said. "It should make us a fair amount of shell."
I petted the sash. "You bought it?" I asked, dazed. I hadn't even noticed the negotiations.
"Some of it," Nezali said. "That's my work. I am the buyer for goods in het Nekelmi. House Kedret's wares are good, but not good enough for our southern-faring caravans where the bees produce finer grades of silk. The amount I bought will sell well in het Noidla, to the north."
"Is this for me?" I asked, ears sagging. For silk that wasn't good enough for the south, it felt quite wonderful to my untrained fingers.
"It's typical for Houses to give me free samples," Nezali said. "But I have little interest in such things. Consider it a gift. The first thing that you actually own yourself!"
"Anadi own things," I whispered.
Nezali shook its head. "No," it said. "Anadi share common things provided to them by the House. Few of them keep their minds in the end, so they lose interest in possessions... and none of them make their own shell, so they can't buy new things for themselves if they want. They must rely on the House." It looked at me, and I noticed that its eyes changed color--in the afternoon sun they were orange-brown. "You're eperu now, Jekun. You will work hard... but you will be fairly compensated."
"I don't want to--" I sucked my lip between my teeth, then started again. "The work I know how to do is breeding."
"So do you want to be in charge of the anadi?"
"No!" I shuddered. To be back in the cavern again with the females who had been my only company... "I couldn't bear it."
"We have to find some work for you to do," Nezali said gently.
I stared at the scarf fixedly so it wouldn't notice my lip trembling.
"Tomorrow," Nezali continued, "Anoirl and I will send you with other eperu until you've sampled all the duties that House Sadlan requires of its eperu. Hopefully you'll find something that suits you."
"Right," I said, almost too soft to be heard.

***

In the following weeks, I learned how to care for rikka: how to brush them, feed them, wheedle them into their stalls, how to tell them apart (for, as Nateru said with great vehemence, "rikka" was just a word for any kind of beast of burden, and encompassed more than one type of creature). I learned how caravan wagons were put together, and how the others maintained them. I learned about the scheduling of caravan trips north and south of het Nekelmi: how some caravans belonged to us and some were driven by independent eperu, and still others belonged to other Houses. The financial details of which caravan bought what for how much boggled and intrigued.
I learned how children were cared for... and when they were sold. I met the Jokka who took care of the buildings, drew our water and cooked our food. I discovered that when it wasn't shepherding children, Anoirl was charged with dispensing the House finances for basic purchases: cloth, grain, even expensive timber. It did this with deceptive ease, and it surprised me with its patience in teaching me numbers. "You could become very good at this," it mused, "A pity we require no more people to manage the shell."
Secretly, I rejoiced that I had a useless skill.
I observed the House healer as it bandaged scrapes, cleaned cuts and chased away fevers. I followed the eperu taking inventory of trunks of pots and cloth and fruits. I even noticed that we grew a haphazard selection of herbs behind the main House building when I followed the eperu hunting through it with a bowl for selected plants.
The sun rose and set on my changing body, until one day I woke up and rested my hands flat on my chest, slid them down between my legs and found that all the petals of my body had closed.
I had Turned... for now. But I refused eperu work. I feigned clumsiness; I pretended stupidity. I went to bed restless and alone. I would Turn again. I had to. There was no use getting used to anything else.

***

One evening I came to my bed in a room empty of others. Nezali was finalizing a crate of teas to be sent south; Anoirl dealing with a sudden shortage of meal for the rikka. I had seen them both in passing while eating, and knew they wouldn't return for several hours.
I sat on the bed and heard a series of muffled wooden clicks. Tossing aside the sheets, I found a splayed figure, face down. My fingers shook when I reached for it and pulled it onto my lap.
It was a sweet-scented doll. A soft doll of beautiful woolen sack, which a few weeks with Nezali had taught me was fine quality for bedding but too warm for most clothing. The wooden beads pinching its joints at the knee, ankle, shoulder, elbow and neck were expensive, polished to a fine gloss. Long strands of black rikka hair formed its mane and tail, and two glossy spheres of jet gave the anadi an appropriately blank stare. Its beige body had been painted with coppery spirals.
Dolls are anadi toys. Dumb anadi toys. Children don't play with them. Neither do females with any brain. Certainly no eperu or emodo would be caught with one. Wrath lifted my arm in a quick jerk, the doll's heavy hair slapping my wrist.
…but something stayed that arm before I could fling the thing across the room.
I set it back in my lap and petted the soft tail, spreading the strands over my knees. My teeth itched. I swallowed, then rolled into bed, taking the doll with me. I fell asleep with it in the crook in my elbow, and with my fingers lightly hooked on the ring through my navel.

***

I began working by accident, by taking too great an interest in the herb garden behind the kitchen. As with all menial labor in the House, cooking and kitchen maintenance were part of the duty rotation, which meant the plants had very uncertain care. The day ke Luvret sent me out of the kitchen to keep me from "breaking another bowl," I found myself among the poorly weeded rows. The limp green bodies of the herbs whispered something to me. They looked dejected.
It didn't take long to fetch a bucket of water. I poured a precious cup onto the roots of the first plant and noticed the gnawgrass choking it at the stalks. In a sudden fury I clawed the weed out of the ground and cast it away.
I leaned back on my knees and stared at the field and then at my hands. I flexed my fingers, watched the sun play on the cords in my wrists. They cast veils of shadows, like clothing, like decorations. They looked alien to me.
I bent to work.
A week later, I chewed and smelled my way through the field until I'd identified every plant in it. The garden had been planted in disorderly patches. I labeled each and begged seeds from a bemused eperu working kitchen duty to fill in the rows.
Four weeks later, I wept when passing insects ravaged the bitter mallow. After that, I carried a stick with me for chasing creatures away and spearing insects.
Eight weeks later, I realized the season was passing, that I was no longer on the common rotation, and that instead of asking me to help them with their tasks, Nezali and Anoirl now inquired about the progress of my own. The garden had swollen to twice its original size, and the fruit and vegetables I'd added were now part of our meals.
I was feeding the House.
That evening I retired without washing and sat curled on my bed's edge with the doll in my lap. I rolled its tail between my fingers and fought with my trembling hands; the only way I could make them still was by braiding the tresses. When Nezali entered, I did not look up. It stripped its clothing, ran a brush through its hair and sat to massage its toes.
"You liked the doll?" Nezali asked in a low voice.
My ears flattened. I wanted to set it aside, to prove that I didn't care for it, or even to show that I was insulted by the intimation that I was useless, but I couldn't. "Yes," I said. "She's very pretty. You bought her for me?"
"Anoirl, too," Nezali said. "We picked her out for you."
I swallowed, kept stroking the braids. "Why?"
Nezali looked down and away. I could barely see it in the blue dark in the room; the other eperu hadn't lit a fire bowl yet. "It just seemed like something you should have," it said after a while. It canted its head. "You've never had one, have you?"
I shook my head. Dolls weren't just a frivolity; they were love-gifts, given to childlike anadi out of affection. Ke Oserit's attitude was emblematic of the treatment of anadi in House Sadlan; we were not the major source of shell for the House, and so we were well-cared for, but not loved the way anadi were in Houses that specialized in breeding. Sadlan's anadi were valuable wares to be sold shrewdly for the best cost possible. One did not form attachments to them.
"Jekun," Nezali said, so soft the words rasped over its throat, "you are doing good work in the garden."
I rolled into bed with my back to the eperu, holding the doll. "Thanks," I said, fighting with myself. Despite my best efforts, my fangs leaked. I tried to swallow as quickly as possible so Nezali wouldn't hear or smell them... and noticed as I calmed that my tears no longer had the sweet high note of anadi sorrow.
That just made me weep more.

***

The next day I did not go to my garden. Instead I struck out across the waving grasses, toward the stream. My toes gripped the ground, sensing the warmth and life of the soil. The breeze tickled my face. Sunlight pooled, warm and vibrant, in the dimples along the chain of my spine.
I dropped next to the water and dug my hips and shoulder-blades into the grass, my nostrils flaring to draw in the spicy scent of the crushed blades. Once I'd settled into the ground, I closed my eyes and let the sun pool into my every nook and fold. I wore only pants... no chain nor bauble, no vest nor skirts, no other decoration. Just me and the most elemental item of neuter garb. Wearing my hair in an eperu's plait. Lying in the sun like the most fearless of Jokka.
The most fearless of Jokka. I touched the ring I had not yet allowed anyone to remove from my navel.
I heard Anoirl and Nezali long before their shadows fell over my body. They joined me on the ground, lying at angles to me. The wind teased some of Anoirl's curls over my flat chest, and the hiss of the breeze and the trickle of the stream over rock were the only sounds in our silence.
I licked my fangs, stared upward at the clouds slowly forming and tearing against the brilliance of the sky. "I never wanted to be anadi."
They didn't turn toward me, but I felt their attention like an extra layer of warmth.
"I hated it," I said. "I hated being useless. I hated being trapped. I hated that I could never be alone, that I could never get out, that I was just... this... thing to be used until my mind inevitably wore away." I toyed with the ring in my navel as I spoke, tasting the words. They tasted like yellow sorrow, but that was a memory of an anadi's tears. My own ran clear now. "I had no choices. I hoped that I would Turn, but I didn't, so I... I tried to turn my choicelessness into a choice. I decided to be anadi. I decided to be the best anadi."
"You were the best anadi," Anoirl murmured. They had moved closer, their bodies still relaxed. I smelled the pungent spice of sap as Anoirl plucked a few late flowers and began slipping them, one by one, into my braid.
"I was," I said. "When I became kaña, that was... well, that was mine. I had earned it, somehow, even though I knew I hadn't actually done anything to earn it."
"You had," Nezali said.
"In a way," I said. "But I was mostly lucky. I was stronger than the others." Suddenly my jaw was trembling and the tears were sliding down my throat. I swallowed quickly, trying to still my shaking, and hugged my arms. "I hated my life. I hated it. When I Turned, I couldn't... I couldn't let myself believe it was over. In case it wasn't. Because the hope would have been too much."
Anoirl draped an arm over my chest; Nezali encircled my face with its arm. I shuddered in their embrace, weeping unashamedly, leaking tears down my jaw and throat. The sunlight shone through them, broke into sparkles I could see at the corner of my cracked eyelids. My body seemed insubstantial, formed of sunlight.
My paroxysms subsided. I relaxed onto the grass and Anoirl and Nezali rearranged themselves around me. My head was pillowed on Nezali's hip; Anoirl's was pillowed on mine.
The sunlight and wind's hiss chased away the echoes of my weeping. Into that cleanliness, I whispered, hushed, "Is it safe?"
Nezali gently stroked my hair away from my face. "It's safe, Jekun. It's over."
"I really am eperu?" I whispered.
"Really," Anoirl said.
I slipped my hands to the ring in my slit. I found the catch in the ring and undid it. The other eperu helped me slide it out.
"Ke Oserit will be pleased to have this," Anoirl murmured.
"Not more than Jekun is to leave it," Nezali said with a faint chuckle that vibrated under my cheek.
I smiled and closed my eyes, sunlit warm. For a while, we remained thus. And then I said, “It’s not good, not right. That we should have to feel so about being what we are. Not good that the anadi children never get to see the sun. And that ke Oserit never gives any of the anadi dolls.”
“No,” Nezali said.
“Some things can’t be changed,” Anoirl murmured.
“Some things can,” I said, opening my eyes just a crack. I knew our anadi; I had lived with them all my life. I would choose carefully. With time, when I had earned enough shell, there would be a doll under every arm. Something theirs, and only theirs.
It was not enough. But it was something.
It would have to do.

***

About the author:

M.C.A. Hogarth has been many things--a web database architect, product manager, technical writer and massage therapist--but is currently a parent, artist, writer and anthropologist to aliens.

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