

THE SMELL OF INTELLIGENCE
A Story of the Jokka



by M. C. A. Hogarth


Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 M.C.A. Hogarth

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I had but set a foot in the common room when the smell of sweat assailed my highly valued and sensitive nose, a scent sour with worry, decayed over hours and deepened by exhaustion's bitter tang. I stopped just inside the room and wondered what new tragedy had befallen House Gesha.
"Fatha," said one of the two Jokka awaiting me: Paza, the pefna-eperu, the first among neuters. "Come, sit. Tea?"
"Please," I said. As it poured, I sat across from the second Jokkad, our Head of Household, Kamil--emodo, since that position is restricted to breeders, and in practice only males are suited to the work. I thanked Paza for the cup and waited for them to tell me whatever it was that had tainted their scents so.
"How did your errand to Transactions go?" Kamil asked.
My ears flattened. "Not well. For my part, there are no eperu who list the guardianship of the anadi as their primary duty, and even those who listed it as secondary did not have experience with the severely mind-taxed. In the matter of replacing Raddin... there were many who could do the work, but none we could afford."
Kamil grimaced. "That is poor news. We had hoped--"
He didn't finish, and neither Paza nor I filled the silence that followed. A grim cloud hung over House Gesha. We were a relatively new House adjacent to het Serelni, a town with many more established clans; our business was farming, and we'd had enough modest successes that we'd been hoping to enlarge the House by breeding some of our females after spring planting. A large part of that was my doing, for I am an unusual asset in a field where few are talented: I am a scent-maker. I mix lotions for dry skin, rinses for manes and tails, cleansing pastes for claws and fangs and perfume for all the body. I work underground in the anadi caverns, where the cool damp slows the decay of my oils, and there I spend the other half of my day warding the anadi. We have six females, bought at low cost... for all of them are severely mind-taxed, good only for the breeding we'd hoped to finally begin.
In anticipation of the forthcoming children, Gesha had been planning to hire a new eperu to work as a jarana, an anadi-guardian, leaving me to scent-work for the entire day to earn extra shell. But then one of our best workers, Raddin, had died abruptly of fever, taking with it all its knowledge and its quick competence in the fields. Suddenly our plans for children were jeopardized at a time when we needed to grow our own labor, and now a good portion of the fields would go unplanted.
"Well, there is nothing for it," Paza said. "If there is no one we can hire, we will not create someone by wishing. What are we to do?"
"Now more than ever we need Fatha to work on its perfumes the entire day," Kamil said. "The shell we make from selling them may help us survive the harvest shortfall."
"There is another problem," Paza said, and its worry-scent spiked. I could smell it over the grassy notes of my tea. "It's Dzen."
"Dzen?" I asked, ears flattening further. Dzen? My dearest friend?
"Dzen is Turning anadi," Paza said.
Kamil and I both stared at Paza, horrified. Perhaps Kamil saw the ruin of Gesha with another of our eperu lost, Turned female, unable to toil without risk to mind and body. But I thought only of Dzen. I loved all our anadi, though most of them were no better than gentle beasts. Some part of me even rejoiced that heat, exertion, mating, pregnancy--none of these things would ever make them any less than they were.
But I did not want to lose Dzen.
"So now we've lost two eperu and we must support an additional anadi?" Kamil asked in a ragged voice. "It cannot be done. Forget the children, even. The Brightness will Turn before we could afford them... if we even survive the season. We will have to sell one of our people. Possibly several."
Kamil said people. He meant anadi. And our mind-taxed anadi wouldn't fetch as high a price, for their care required time and attention.
Quickly, I said, "We should not make hasty decisions. Perhaps the night's dreams will bring good counsel."
Kamil sighed and stood, pushing his chair in. "Perhaps, if we burn enough incense. We'll talk again in the morning."
"Good evening," Paza and I said nearly in unison. I glanced at it to see if it needed me, but the eperu shook its head.
I was almost out the door when it said, "Fatha."
I turned, cocked an ear at it.
"Outside. Near the tree."
How well the pefna knew me. I hurried on in search of Dzen.
We had only one tree near the house, a stubborn, gnarled lif-leaf that bore only a few fruits in autumn. Nothing distinguished it save its loneliness, planted in the dust with no shrub or flower to accompany it: we were not so well-off to plant for beauty's sake. Against its knotted trunk I saw Dzen's shoulder and its flaxen plait... beautiful Dzen! It never listened to me when I told it how lovely it was. We call the color of its skin sheshil, a dark brown glossy on the surface but layered deep with foggy banks of darker brown. Its honey-pale spirals seemed to skate just above those dark mists.
"Dzen," I whispered.
It--no, she now--looked around the thin trunk and offered me a wan smile. "I worried about what you would think," she said quietly, still a warm contralto. Second-puberty Turnings sometimes don't change a Jokkad's voice.
"When did you find out?" I asked, crouching across from her.
"This morning," Dzen said. "I just... knew. I told the pefna I needed some time, and why... and I've been here since."
I took both Dzen's hands in mine and brought them to my cheek. I could sense her watching me.
"You are not glad," she said. "But you shouldn't grieve. There is good work to be done as anadi, work for the House. And you will take care of me."
"I would--you know I would," I said, and licked her knuckles. In the thin flesh between her fingers I could taste the beginnings of the sweet high note that floated over every anadi's scent. "But it may not be that simple."
Dzen flexed her fingers. "You didn't find anyone to replace Raddin."
I shook my head.
She looked away, ears flattening. By the shadows that flickered through her rose-amber eyes I knew she'd come to the conclusion I had... yet she did not speak immediately. It was one of the things I loved about Dzen; it--no, she--considered long after others thought they'd uncovered all the implications of a thing.
Her voice was softer this time. "To be anadi when you can help your House and be cared for by your dearest friend is one thing. To be sold away... I want my body's use to have meaning."
I cringed to hear it stated so baldly and turned one of her hands over to lick-kiss the palm, hoping to distract her. Beneath the anadi scent Dzen's own sublime essence lingered. "I'll think of something," I said. "Kamil hasn't made any definite decisions. We'll convene again tomorrow, after the night brings wisdom."
"The wisdom of the Void," Dzen said. "Somehow that doesn't comfort."
I didn't answer that. "Come on," I said. "Let's go inside."
Dzen nodded and accepted my help into the house. She would not be fully anadi for some weeks yet, but I didn't want to take chances.
Together we passed into the heart of the house, to the ramp leading down into the dwelling we'd hollowed out for the comfort of our females, who do poorly in the heat. We descended in a single file until we reached the soft cool ground and the low ceilings of the anadi cavern. In the gloom Dzen's unease grew more marked. "Is this what it's like usually?"
I nodded and watched her stepping toward the pools sunk into the floors, her tail flagging. Yesterday I'd found her in the fields with the sun on her back and arms, her golden mane braided in an untidy plait with strands of long, yellow straw. I'd always preferred the night, but Dzen belonged to that sunshine. To confine her beneath the earth was unjust. I suppressed a sigh.
"It's been a long time since I've been in here," Dzen murmured.
"I'll introduce you," I said, divining her discomfort from the direction of her gaze. Most of the anadi were dozing, and in lieu of rousing them I pointed them out and uttered their names. The last was awake, though. Kidla, the smartest of our anadi, seemed more a permanent child than a beast. I loved her dearly.
"Fatha," she said with a smile.
"Kidla," I said, leaning down and stroking her nose. She rubbed her face absently against my hand, her eyes on Dzen. "This is our newest anadi, Dzen."
"Eperu," she said.
I smiled. "For now. But not much longer. Dzen is Turning anadi, like you."
"Eperu," Kidla insisted.
"No," I began again, but Dzen interrupted.
"I don't think she's talking about me."
I stared at Dzen, then at Kidla. The broadening hip might indeed indicate that she was Turning neuter, but I didn't believe it until I rested my nose in her mane and took a deep whiff near her ears, her throat. The sweet high note that was the smell of anadi had taken on a tenor tone.
Surely the gods would not allow such a farce. Brilliant Dzen, wise and thoughtful, should have remained eperu through her final Turning. Sweet but slow-witted Kidla should have remained anadi. They were best suited to their own sexes. What poor joke involved switching their roles?
A dull ache informed me that I'd fallen to a seat on my braided tail. I didn't even remember making it to the ramp. Dzen was watching me with a sad half of a smile, as if reading my thoughts.
"All right?" Kidla asked me, anxiety widening her eyes. She joined me, sitting at my feet with such an expression... my heart hurt.
I petted her with a sigh. "Yes. It's all right."
Dzen sat by my side and I took her hand with my free one. The world tilted until my head found her shoulder, and she rested her cheek against my forehead.
"Not what you'd planned," Dzen murmured against my hair.
I shook my head.
"Well, at least there's a balance, to it," Dzen said.
A balance to it. I sat upright. "You're right. We haven't lost a second eperu. We've just traded one for the other. I can tell Kamil that we can make do somehow if we put Kidla to work in the fields."
Kidla looked up at me at the sound of her name with a quizzical expression. As I petted her, Dzen glanced at me askance, ears akimbo. "Quality of mind..."
"Matters more than quality of body, I know," I said. "But we'll make it work. We have to." I leaned toward her and pressed my cheek to hers. "I won't let you go to a different House. I couldn't bear it."
She was holding her breath... then, at last, a release that ruffled my mane. "Neither could I."

***

As pefna-eperu, Paza took Kidla from me and assigned an eperu to teach it the duties of the field. My heart wrenched at the former anadi's confusion and fear as it was guided out of the cavern and away from the routine that had comforted it in its former life.
The pang faded and left behind foreboding. I ignored it and returned to my table to work.
I have said that talented scent-makers are unusual. We Jokka are creatures of sight first: our world is intensely painted, layered in shades fluid and complex. Save for that short time in deepest night when truedark makes us all blind, our eyes guide us. Next we would choose sound, caught so easily by our tufted ears... and after, touch, from the tug of the wind on our tails to a breath's soft sough on the skin of our most sensitive emodo.
Taste-smell is our least developed sense. We have few names for what we smell, and what goes unnamed is poorly understood. I mix my potions in the dark, dabbing the oils beneath my nostrils, rolling them across my fingertips, dipping my claws in them and licking them to test them across the roof of my mouth. My talents are known as far abroad as het Kabbanil and het Narel. It is not immodest to say I am the best scent-maker in the north.
Sitting at my table that day, though, some smell began to interfere in my admixtures. It rested across the back of my tongue and the top of my nostrils, a slick film that dulled my sense of taste-smell.
Surely I was ill. One of the sticky, annoying little sicknesses that sometimes afflict one, more irritation than danger. I asked for leave to go to the healer in the het's center, but that worthy found nothing wrong with me. I wondered if my diet had prompted the change and tried consuming nothing but gruel and weak tea, with no effect. I began to garner odd glances at the table for my bizarre dietary experiments, but I dared not tell the pefna and the Head of my impediment. House Gesha had trouble enough without me developing some mysterious malady of the nose... and I certainly didn't need them panicking at the prospect of my earnings decreasing.
My sense's decline wasn't my only worry, for Kidla proved a slow study in the fields. The pefna had assigned her to planting, but her mind wandered and shortly after her feet. They'd tried teaching her to weed, but she was too easily distracted. At last they gave her water duty, but forcing her to wait for someone to call her for a drink made her skittish and unhappy. Turning eperu had not given Kidla an eperu's spirit, or more importantly, an eperu's intelligence. There was no duty she could do unsupervised, and as such she was a liability we could not afford.
Lack of intelligence did not inhibit Kidla's sensitivity to other people's feelings, however. On my way back from the kitchen one day I found her weeping in a corner of the house. I crouched beside her and took her into my arms while she sobbed. A few weeks had melted her breasts to half their original size, but in every way that mattered she was still anadi. I sighed and rocked her until her tears ceased to leak from her teeth.
"Better?" I asked, leaning away and holding her face in my hands.
Kidla licked her teeth a few times, shoulders drooping. I straightened her vest, which she had tried to unbutton. Anadi did not wear clothing. Kidla often wiggled out of hers before the end of the day.
"Better?" I asked again.
She nodded and let me help her up. I hated to send her back to the fields, but I had no choice: we both had our duties. The despondency of her gait and the drag of her tail on the ground stayed with me as I returned to my work-table, there to... not work. I was covered with anadi tears, and I had good reason to know that they were far too pungent to allow me to discern any nuance in my potions... assuming, of course, that I could smell anything at all over the film in my throat. I sighed and let my head drop to rest against the edge of the table.
"Fatha?" Dzen's hands smoothed over my shoulders. "Your mane is wet."
"Kidla was crying on me," I said. "She's not settling in well."
"She?"
I blushed white at the ears. "I keep forgetting."
Dzen sighed and combed my hair back from my cheeks with her fingers. "I suppose cautioning you against such lapses in memory would be pointless, since no one thinks of Kidla as eperu. Not even Kidla."
"Particularly Kidla," I said, unhappy. If Kidla couldn't do the work, who would? "If only there was some way to fix her."
Dzen's fingers paused in their work. I glanced over my shoulder and found her an unwonted wariness in her rose-amber gaze. She was guarding her thoughts. I couldn't bear the idea. "What is it?"
"It's nothing," she said.
"Then why the look?" I asked. When she didn't answer, I turned to her and caught her hands in mine. "Please, Dzen. You know you can tell me anything."
Dzen looked at me with steady eyes. "They say House Nirada has a chenji."
"A chenji? Like from stories?" I asked, so surprised I couldn't even be skeptical.
She nodded.
"But magic isn't real," I said.
"Maybe not," Dzen said. "Maybe what she does isn't magic at all, but something else. Whatever the case, they say she can Turn Jokka into anadi."
It sounded so absurd I answered as if it could be possible, which of course it could not be. "How would that help us? We don't need more anadi. We need more eperu."
Dzen nodded. "It wouldn't help House Gesha, certainly. But it would help Kidla. Kidla belongs in an anadi body."
Was I having a conversation this surreal? "So we would Turn Kidla back. She's one of our best anadi. We could sell some of the others--" since this was still a thought experiment, I could speak of it without pain, "--and keep Kidla for breeding."
"I could stay in the cavern and take care of the anadi," Dzen said. "That isn't too strenuous. Then you would be free to make scents all day."
"Paradise," I said with a laugh. "Everyone would live happily for the balance of their lives."
Dzen grinned. "Only if there was sunlight, and I could be eperu again for you."
Her smile didn't seem forced, but still I felt her words like a steel fang. I could only answer by pulling her into my embrace.
There, tucked into her hair behind her ear, I smelled it: the film, the thin slippery essence that had been shrouding my nose and mouth. It rested below the other scents that were Dzen's alone, bitternut spice and pine. I hid my alarm, but my enjoyment of her closeness drained away. Could it be Dzen's presence that hindered my work?
What would Paza and Kamil say if they found out?

***

The next day, before I'd even had a chance to bathe, Paza found me and invited me to break my fast with it and Kamil. My stomach knotted, but I followed it to the common room where Kamil was pouring us cups of steaming tea. Despite my crippled nose, I easily identified it as the starcorn and lilac blend I'd made myself. Wonderful. They were so certain their news would upset me they were trying to appease me in advance.
Once I'd taken a cup and my seat, Kamil said, "We'd like you to prepare Dzen for sale."
I almost dropped my tea.
"We just can't keep her," Paza said, ears sagging. "We're sorry, Fatha, but Kidla can't work the fields. As a mind-taxed anadi, we could consider selling her, or even her children since she was graded well. But a mind-taxed eperu? No one would buy it."
"We have an obligation to keep Kidla, since it's part of our House," Kamil said.
"And Dzen isn't?" I said past a strangled throat.
"Dzen would fetch us enough to hire another eperu for the fields," Kamil said. "Without you making perfumes all day, we can't afford to leave the planting half-done."
"I could work in the fields at night," I said: words from nowhere. Was I mad? They both looked at me with skepticism, but I hastened on. "And Dzen could look after the anadi for me. She's more than mindful enough and the work wouldn't hurt her. She could fill the role of the jarana we were planning to hire...."
Paza shook its head. "Fatha, you'll collapse. You're too important to risk your health so."
"Mixing scents is not physical work," I said desperately, clutching my cup. "I like the night. I need the exercise and fresh air."
"Fatha--"
Kamil held up a hand, stopping Paza mid-thought. He studied me with gentle eyes, and in them I saw pity. "I would agree with Paza," he said after a moment. "You are needed as a scent-maker, Fatha, and your loss would be devastating if you were to collapse from overwork. You know very well how precarious our situation is...."
"If only we sell a child," I said, thinking of my talk with Dzen.
 "Only Kidla was graded high enough to produce a child worth any money to other Houses. Now that Kidla's eperu, none of our anadi could deliver such a child... unless..." Kamil's eyes lit. "Dzen. She hasn't been graded yet, but she would score well; she's intelligent, strong, was eperu twice... yes, that may be the solution!"
The idea of Dzen pregnant struck me dumb with horror.
"Since you feel so strongly about it, and we value you so much," Kamil was saying, "we will let you try mixing your perfumes during the day and working the fields at night, with Dzen care-taking the anadi until we can get a child on her. Can you take Dzen to be graded tomorrow?"
Dzen, being measured, questioned and prodded until someone could declare her prime breeding material. Dzen paraded before a dozen Houses. Dzen in a breeding harness...
"Tomorrow," I said, the words again surprising me on their way out. "There are a few emodo in House Nirada I've heard good things about. Perhaps after grading I can stop there with her and investigate."
"That would be wonderful! Perhaps there will be a way out of this mess yet. Ah, thank you, Fatha! Had we not had this talk, I might not have seen the possibilities. We may save this House yet!" Kamil squeezed my shoulder on his way out.
I stared into my tea, not even seeing my reflection in it, determined not to reveal my desperation.
"Fatha?" Paza asked gently.
To my everlasting shame, I started weeping, almost choking myself on my long, clear tears in my effort to keep them in my mouth. Paza walked behind me and encircled my head in its arms. I leaned my cheek against its chest, nostrils flaring as I gulped.
"I'm sorry," Paza said when I'd calmed: no false comforts or promises, for we were eperu, accustomed to seeing those we cared for lose their minds as we trudged on alone. If it was our lot to grieve, we would at least be proud that we could shoulder it. This was the first time I'd felt so overwhelmed.
In times of utmost despair, one notices inconsequential things. Beneath Paza's musky scent of felt-grass and lif fruit hid the familiar slick essence. Something common to all eperu? Did that mean that somewhere, deep in Dzen's body, the gods had hidden a chance?
I had to find her.
Dzen was where I'd left her, in the cavern resting on a mound of pillows, when I skidded down the ramp. I had her in my arms before she could even lift her head.
"Fatha?"
"The chenji!" I said, "The magician. House Nirada, yes?"
Dzen nodded, mystified.
"We're going there tomorrow," I said. "She has to change Kidla back, or you'll be put in the harness."
Dzen tucked her head against my chest and shuddered.

***

The next day I took Dzen to be graded, bringing Kidla with me to relieve the others of the need to supervise her. We walked to the center of the het, where each of the nineteen Houses sold their wares, conducted business and gathered socially. Among the shops representing each House were the few places of religion and governance: the temples of the Trinity and the Trifold, the Office of Grievances, and the House of Transactions. It was at the latter that I sat, watching two emodo and one eperu scrutinize Dzen's body, barrage her with questions, comment approvingly on her wit, her beauty, her strength. They tested the grip of her toe-thumbs, the flex of her claws. Every word of praise made me more desperate to flee with her.
They gave her the highest possible grade, which meant no House in het Serelni would pass her by if we offered her breeding contract. Only Kidla's contract had been worth more, and that only by gods' accident: anadi ruined by too-early breeding as Kidla had been were called Brightness-conceived, and their children were considered appeasement to that goddess for believers in the Trinity.
The stone copy they chipped for me with Dzen's grade burned in my hands.
After Transactions, we pointed our noses toward House Nirada. Like Gesha, Nirada was a small House... unlike Gesha, Nirada kept to itself and thus had an air of mystery. They appeared to make most of their shell selling breeding contracts for their anadi. It was an honorable way to earn money, but not one I preferred. Nirada had provided half our mind-taxed anadi, and while their vacant stares did not bother me the way they did other Jokka, I disliked waste.
Nirada sheltered its members in a roughly rectangular building of two stories, larger than Gesha's and rife with exotic flowers. Throat-blossoms in ivory and white had been trained onto an arch over the door, draping sweet perfume and open blooms onto the shoulders of visitors. I found the odor cloying... had I been consulted, I would have interspersed the throats with something spicier or more acrid.
"What may I do for you?" the emodo at the door asked me when it opened.
I glanced at Dzen for guidance, for now that we were here I had no idea who to ask for. I couldn't very well tell them I wanted to see their witch.
"We've come to call on ke Iduna," Dzen said.
"Of course," the emodo said, as if people visited anadi unknown to them every day. "Come in, be welcome. I'll tell her you're here."
The emodo left us in a common area roomier than ours, decorated with intricate rugs in cool hues that contrasted sharply against the red stone of the walls and floor. Kidla moved away to stare at some of the hangings while Dzen stayed at my side. We were not there long before the emodo returned and led us out of the room and down a ramp.
Nirada's anadi cavern was more complicated than ours... only to be expected given their business. Our guide stopped outside an arch blocked by strings of beads and gossamer curtains.
"Through here," he said.
"Thank you," I said, and watched him leave. I looked at my entourage, Dzen with her calm gaze, Kidla with her bewildered one, then pushed through the beads and fabric.
Veiled in incense smoke, an anadi awaited us on an elevated bed of embroidered pillows, arranged as if on display. But she was no mind-taxed female to be mutely inspected. She sat as if aware of her beauty, of the swell of her hips and the weight of her breasts. The chain hanging around her belly depended from the heavy navel ring of a kaña, the most valuable anadi in the House, and its links hung just above the one marking that did not have a match on the opposite side of her body. A single dot just off-center below her navel slit, it accentuated her perfection.
She had pale lilac eyes, and it had been long and long again since I'd seen such clarity in an anadi's gaze--Dzen notwithstanding.
"House Gesha's scent-maker," she said in a husky alto. "I had heard Gesha might have reason to call." She looked from Dzen to Kidla and stopped there. "This must be the eperu I've heard about."
I glanced at Kidla, who was returning Iduna's gaze with interest. I had no idea how she'd obtained the information, but it seemed useless to deny it. I flicked my tail in a shrug and said, "Yes."
"You want me to Turn it anadi, I presume?" Iduna offered a hand and Kidla went to her like a rikka to its handler. I didn't attempt to stop her. The whole meeting had an unreal air, and our mission seemed suddenly ridiculous, impossible.
"You wonder if I can do it," Iduna said. "Though I see your companion has hope. I can't help anadi who want to become eperu. But the other way... it can be done, though as with anything there's no guarantee."
"How?" I asked, my mouth dry.
Iduna laughed. "You expect me to tell you my secrets?"
"I won't leave her here to suffer some poison or danger. Better confused than dead."
"It won't die," Iduna said acidly. Then she sighed and flicked her own tail. "Some eperu can be bred back into anadi."
A spear of horror lanced my spine, rippling up all the muscles. "Your pardon?"
"If I put it to a few males, it may Turn back," Iduna said. "It happens that way sometimes. More often if the eperu was anadi before."
I stared, trembling. "Surely not!"
Iduna said, "I've seen it happen."
Her certainty was somehow more convincing than righteous anger. I glanced at Dzen and found her stoic.
Iduna canted a brow. "So, will you leave it with me?"
"I... need time to think."
"Think quickly," Iduna said. "The closer to its Turning you try, the better your chances... I think, anyway." Her grin lost its humor. "I'll pick the gentlest males to do the work, if it comforts you."
The resin-sweet incense was wandersoul and it was addling my mind. I would not be able to put off Dzen's breeding if Kamil or Paza found someone, and they would be looking. Indeed, with Dzen's grade now a matter of record, I would be surprised if we weren't approached first.
How could the gods allow such an abomination? That an eperu could be bred back into an anadi was heinous. I could almost feel the straps on my back, holding me down... no! But if we could Turn Kidla back, then we could get the necessary child on her and save Dzen, and Kidla would be happier anyway. And if this chenji, insane though she sounded, spoke truth, then I could not unmake it by denying Kidla and Dzen their chances.
I had to do it.
"Can I leave it now?" I asked.
Iduna nodded. "I'll be done tomorrow evening. You can bring the fee then."
"Fee?" I said, surprised. "How much?"
"However much you feel it's worth," she said. "The fee is to remind you that nothing worth doing is free. The amount you give will entertain me."
"How is that?"
"It will hint at what you cherish and how much you'd pay for it."
I shuddered.
Convincing Kidla to stay wasn't as hard as I expected, for the incense and Iduna's gentle caresses had sedated her. I took a long look at her, wondering if she would soon be anadi in body again. Gods forgive me, but I couldn't decide which outcome I wanted. To see Dzen and Kidla safe? Or to live in a world where Jokka only Turned twice and never again?

***

It was fortunate that no one asked me Kidla's whereabouts, for I had not the slightest notion what I would have said. As I restlessly rearranged my bottles, I reflected that this was what Kidla's fate had come to as eperu: no one wanted to mind her; everyone hoped she was out of sight doing something, they knew nor cared not what; and no one missed her when she was gone. So the following evening I went without being remarked to Nirada and recovered my anadi-in-eperu's-seeming, and other than her—its—her--more pronounced confusion she seemed no worse for Iduna's machinations. I did not pay the chenji then, nor did she ask me for her fee.
The days passed on a wheel, nights and days mixing so that I could not tell where I was or how long had passed. At night I toiled in the fields; in the day I struggled to mix my potions, cursing the strange blurring scent that had not lifted from my throat. At every hour I did my best to ignore the stream of emodo passing through the House, interviewing with Kamil for the right to Dzen's first and most valuable breeding contract. Worst of all were the days Kamil took Dzen to prospective Houses. I started dozing in the cavern near her, not caring how close I skirted to tradition's breaking. No one questioned my actions, for they knew how I exhausted myself for the good of the House. That the scent-maker was now so tired it slipped into doze-dreams over its charges only stirred pride in my House-mates, not suspicion over my feelings for Dzen.
One of the lonely days, the frightening ones when Dzen was gone, I was interrupted while trying to mix a simple toothpaste by a worried emodo.
"Fatha! Come quickly! It's Kidla!"
Had she died? Had Iduna's magic killed her? I jumped up the ladder and ran with the emodo to the field Kidla wandered while the others worked.
She had crushed six plants when she'd fallen, her arms and legs splayed. The sun bathed her in bright white light, purple shadows sharply pooled beneath her body. The smell of anxiety, turned soil and torn young leaves wrote a poem in my nose and mouth, even through the muddling film. I stumbled to Kidla's side, joining several of the eperu there.
"Is it dead?" one of them asked.
I leaned over her mouth and felt warmth on my nose. "No, she breathes," I said, hoarse with relief.
One of them bent to sniff her ear and throat. "I think it's Turning."
"I thought the last Turning was its second," the other said. Again they looked at me.
"According to its contract, it should have been," I said. "But it was supposedly anadi again at its first Turning. Maybe House Meritne mistook."
Paza had joined us. I could hear its surprise in its voice. "This is a surprise," it said. "Truly a pity."
"A pity?" I said, gathering Kidla's limp body into my arms. With her head tucked against mine I could smell the taste-scent of her coming change. I had to suck in several breaths of it just to convince myself, but the scent remained: the witchery had worked! Somehow, Iduna had saved Kidla! The world was upside-down and even more frightening than before, but Kidla need never worry again. "She is as she should be, ke Paza... now we can breed her instead of Dzen, and Dzen can take on the anadi-guardianship permanently!"
"If she's still able," Paza said with a nod. "But she is due for breeding today, at House Dainal—Fatha, what are you doi--wait!"
I had pressed Kidla's body on Paza and bolted. If the world was so crazy that Kidla could be saved, it would not also be so crazy to allow Dzen to lose her mind. Dainal--oh, House Dainal was on the other side of the het! I prayed to the World to lend me speed, I prayed to the Brightness to be happy enough with Kidla to spare Dzen, I prayed to the Void to pass us all by--
The eperu at the door of House Dainal stumbled as I rushed past it. I could hear its startled complaints even as I sprinted through the rooms. Dainal was a large and prosperous House and I did poorly to disturb it, but I thought only in despair that they could stand to reduce the size of their buildings. Where was the entrance to the caverns?
There! I ran down the ramp, checking every chamber. I plunged past several startled eperu and spun into a dark room studded with breeding chairs; there I grabbed the arm of the emodo about to honor Dzen's contract and yanked him away, splendidly naked but--gods hear my thanks!--not yet engaged.
As he stared at me, dumbfounded, I caught my breath and said, "So many apologies, ke emodo! We have discovered a possible health issue with our anadi and must call off the contract." As he continued to stare, I began to unbuckle the harness. "Please accept House Gesha's apologies. We will send a forfeit fee for your trouble."
He had recovered himself enough by then to nod and stammer his thanks, for the only health reason a House hastily rescinded a breeding contract before fulfillment involved disease. He probably thought I'd saved his life.
Once he'd left, Dzen threw herself into my embrace, shaking.
"Gods forgive me, Fatha. I thought it was over. Kidla?"
"Turned," I said, hugging her tightly, savoring the scent that had baffled me and not minding it one whit.
"Then ke Kamil sent you?"
I blushed.
Dzen's eyes grew round. "Oh, Fatha! You came without permission? What will the Head say?"
"I'll worry about that when we get home," I said.

***

Kamil and Paza were awaiting me when I returned, holding Dzen's hand in mine as I stepped into the common room. I could read the pity and compassion in Paza's eyes, but Kamil... Kamil burned with anger. The spice of it punched through my nostrils and set my taste-scent sense on fire.
All this time, I had hidden Dzen's importance to me from others and even, just a little, from myself. But I could not work in Gesha without her, and now was the time to make that clear. I turned to her and kissed her hand, tasting her scent on her palm.
"Go to the cavern. Sleep," I said. "You need the rest." With flattened ears, she acquiesced, with a touch of her hand to her brow and again to her heart when she took her leave of Head and pefna.
I faced Kamil. When he didn't immediately speak, I said, "We have Kidla. We don't need to breed Dzen."
"No, we don't need to," Kamil said, a growl rolling his words. "But we'd made the contract with Dainal--do I need to remind you of Dainal's stature?--and you broke that contract without consulting me. Not only that, but you as much as told Dainal that Dzen was diseased! No one will touch her now... what if we need her children in the future?"
I flicked my tail in a half-hearted shrug. "We will have to make do without them."
Kamil stalked to me, standing so close I could smell him: nightburr and turned soil, and beneath it that cursed slick essence. Not just an eperu thing--but also emodo?
"There is also the matter that your perfumes haven't been of the same caliber lately," Kamil said. "Whether it's the extra work or something else, they aren't fetching the same prices. We could have used a child by Dzen. As it is, the House may still fail, and you have been its instrument. Fatha! How could you put one anadi's mind above the welfare of the House? Anadi lose their wits... it is the way of the world!"
--just as it was the way of the world for Jokka to Turn only twice in their lives--
"Do you have nothing to say? Fatha, I would be justified in releasing you from our service for this," Kamil said. "The shell from your sale might solve all our problems."
All I could think of was the smell of him. Paza. Dzen. Had I detected it in the others of the House? I'd never smelled it on our anadi....
"Fatha!"
"I'm sorry, ke Kamil," I said. It would do no good to save Kidla and Dzen if I was sold away, or Gesha died, but on this I could not compromise. "But selling me would only solve your problem for a season."
Kamil snarled and threw up his hands. "Oh, just leave my sight! Once you counseled patience, that wisdom might come after an evening's rest. Perhaps a misguided Jokkad can still give good advice. Tomorrow I will deal with you."
I touched my hand to my head to honor him before I took myself away. It would probably be best to avoid him until his anger cooled; fortunately, I had an errand.
In the caverns, I found Dzen dozing and ran my fingers over her side. She probably hadn't wanted to sleep, but I knew anadi bodies, and I recognized weariness in them when I saw it. She'd been tired. After that brief caress, I approached my perfume counter and walked my fingers over the bottles I kept on the highest shelf, the fragrances I'd mixed only once and never again. I had different reasons for withholding each, but I knew the one I wanted. I pulled down a vial almost black in color, painted with a single drop of yellow-gold liquid.
I walked to House Nirada in the sweet evening air and passed through the cloying sheet of throat-blossoms into the building, following the emodo down to Iduna's room. She was inside, sipping something dark from a bowl. I could almost catch the odor through the resin-weight of the incense.
She looked up, examined my face and nodded. "It worked."
"I bring you my token," I said and offered her the bottle.
"Is it permitted to ask what it is?" she said, her eyes on my face.
"A one-of-a-kind scent," I said. "I'll make no other like it. I thought it would interest you."
She worked the cork out of the top and rested her nose on the lip of the vial. Her nostrils flared and her eyes flew open. I waited for the sign of my success and saw it when she licked her teeth.
All Jokka weep through their fangs in great sorrow or under duress, but the tears of anadi are different from eperu's or emodo's, thicker, viscous and deeper amber, with a subtle but invigorating scent that quickly decays. No one had ever kept it fresh in a bottle--no one had ever thought to. But I am Fatha of House Gesha.
She tilted her head. "Kidla's Turning is worth the tears of an anadi," she mused. "Truly, I don't think I've ever received a more potent fee. Your gift will intrigue me for a long time, Fatha Gesha-emodo."
I touched my hand to my breast. "I am pleased to serve."
She laughed. "It is too bad there is nothing similar for eperu and emodo... but you have less cause for sorrow that we do, we doomed anadi."
I hadn't thought what would become of Iduna eventually. In the truedark tales chenji were always anadi, and one reason they were considered unnatural was that they never lost their minds. I wondered if that part of the tale was true, and if she valued the tears because she had so little cause to weep them on her own behalf.
She interrupted my musings. "I make an assumption, of course. You of all people would know, Fatha Gesha-emodo. Do eperu and emodo have their own signature perfume?"
"One would think," I said. I stood to go, and for the balance of my life I would not know what prompted me to ask, "Would you mind if I tasted your scent, ke Iduna?"
"Not at all," she replied, and measured me with her eyes, with curiosity.
With intelligence.
I leaned down, took her hand, licked her palm near the fingers where sweat accumulates and carries so frequently the essence of a person. I smelled wandersoul and fire, and beneath it, the film floating to coat the back of my tongue, my throat.
"Will you make a perfume out of a chenji's power?" Iduna asked as I straightened.
"No," I said slowly. "But I may need to pay her another fee for opening my eyes."
I left her mystified, but with a heart lighter than wind. I loved all our anadi, mind-taxed or not... but I was unusual. Most Jokka avoided the mind-taxed, and we knew them before we talked with them, before we saw them attempt a task. I had never thought it possible that smell cued us on the intelligence of another, but rifling through all my memories of smells, I remembered that essence in every Jokkad of sound mind. I simply hadn't realized it until Dzen had joined the anadi in my sanctuary and tainted the cool clean air with her mind's fragrance.
To bottle that... to slip it into every potion I made, every perfume, every paste, lotion and wash... everyone would prefer my work without ever knowing why.
How I enjoyed that walk home, through air rife with the spice of spring wildflowers! And home Gesha would remain, once I produced my first new batch of perfumes. Kamil and Paza would dance at the shell I would earn for them. My stipend would increase; I could go to town and indulge myself in enough beads to braid into the hair of all my anadi charges, and a chain to drape around Kidla's waist, something with silver and moonstones.
For Dzen, I'd buy something to match its rich skin and hair, something blue. Something precious.
I did not see the Head or the First when I reached Gesha, and it still seemed wise to remain removed from Kamil's sight. Nor had my discovery released me from my duties. I would check on my charges and then go to the fields.
There was someone I had to see, anyway.
I descended into the cavern to find Dzen awaiting me, wide-awake and nervous, her golden hair in a messy eperu's braid. She met me at the bottom of the ramp.
"You were away so long!"
"I went to pay Iduna after the discussion. It seemed wise to give Kamil some peace," I said.
Dzen wrapped her arms around my waist. "Did they--were they terribly upset, ke Kamil and Paza?"
I licked her cheek, savoring the scent that would save us both. Already I was considering how best to extract it--from a lock of hair? A bead of sweat? "The storm will pass. My perfumes will make us enough to tide us through the season, and then Kidla's child will buy us another year."
She nodded and stood away... my brave, quiet Dzen. Turning anadi had not made her female in spirit. We sat on the edge of the ramp, content to feel our hips, our shoulders touching.
"I should go," I said after a while. "There are fields to weed."
Dzen smiled at me as I stood, but her eyes were solemn. "Fatha?"
"Yes?"
"Iduna Turned an eperu into an anadi after her second Turning."
So quietly, so simply she put into words the revelation I had been avoiding. What to think? What to say? I took a shuddering breath. In the cavern there was near silence: the anadi sleeping in a dark corner. The stillness of unused pools. Dzen's shallow breaths. All was as it should be.
Everything had changed.
I leaned down and nuzzled Dzen's ear. She was still eperu. I said no comforting lie before I left.

***

About the Story
 "The Smell of Intelligence" is only one of many stories about the Jokka. A complete list, in chronological order, can be consulted at the author's website here.Six of these stories are also available in the illustrated Jokka short story collection, Clays Beneath the Skies, available now in print. 
 
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. She has over 40 titles available for the kindle in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, humor and romance.


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