El and Onine (10 page)

To keep my fire alight, I envisioned a lava bath. I
swayed to the rhythm of the Gelanese beast and my imagined bromine drip of
molten saplings that gushed in the new moon on Venus until my fantasy was disturbed
by my plunge into the deeps of a frigid sea. I inhaled a mouthful of substance
before my body made it up to the surface of liquid ice. A tremendous roar shook
the bath around me, as a sparkling white grimace rose to greet me. My flame
went out and I sunk again.

When I woke, I could feel neither the cold nor my
body. The blue nivis beneath me was stained with the milky substance that
gushed from my side. I no longer floated in the water but had somehow gotten to
the surface of the tundra. I sat up with difficulty, looking for a star in the darkness.
All I saw was the jade light of the Lore Auras and the blackness of space. My
eyes adjusted to the pitch of the local cosmos but I still hoped for the
tiniest strip of light to rise on the horizon. Gelu was a planet without an eye.

I had one flame left in me, though barely tenable.
My fire was in dire need of ignition. Fighting the numbness, I rolled over to stifle
the wound on my side when a loud crack exploded in the air behind me and I
turned to scan the rock bed at my back. The Gelanese and their gassy beast were
gone but I saw the outline of a stalky creature coming toward me. It labored on
all fours like an oversized ursa, picking up speed. I pushed myself up to stand
and it stopped to rise to its hind legs. It strode toward me upright with
greater speed, screeching in a way that curdled the icy air. I tried to match
his cry with a sapient wail. When the creature was close enough, it swatted at
me, landing its great paw on the side of my head. I fell back unconscious once
again.

I pictured Mara in the darkness, but my sapient was less
playful with hair as fair as a Kyprian. She was only imaginary but she lit me
with such warmth that I chose to embrace the hallucination rather than shun it.
This sapient felt warmer than Mara did in the garden and when I touched her she
remained unharmed. She took my form into hers, exchanging her heat with my
coldness, cradling me in her arms just as Mara held the baby goat in hers. Her embrace
thawed me out and the fire inside my wretched form grew until my single dying
flame regained its strength and sparked another and another and another until a
furnace lit me whole again. I basked in the heat of my Venusian flame,
relishing the end of my torture. I was a creature of fire once more and the
sapient had made me so.

“Remember,” the voice of my goddess whispered.

My imagined warmth was short-lived, for I woke to
the excruciation of my frozen core. I had remained on the Gelanese shore, still
lying on the frigid nivis of the icy planet. No one was coming to save me. I
had yet to be reborn.

I struggled to get up, digging my clawed feet into
the tundra. My skin ached from exposure but I was alive and my flame was the
slightest bit higher than it had been before. I searched the landscape for
shelter, grateful to see an alcove on the highest peak of the massif in front
of me. I rushed over the tundra, scraping its icy surface with my claws at
every step. As I gained momentum, my body lifted off the ground until I hovered
just above it. With another bit of effort, I pumped the limbs at my sides and
raised my body even higher. Soon I was in flight, but I failed to keep my body elevated
for long. Tornadic gales came over the massif and forced me back down, tossing
me across the blue nivis and into the pool of liquid ice where I sank for a
third time.

The sapient found me anew in the icy bath and pulled
me to her once more. Beneath the surface with me, she looked like a vision of
beauty only my goddess could match. Her golden hair floated freely above her head
as though it were her diadem. She was a goddess too—a sapient
queen—and when she spoke, I understood.

“I will not let your flame die, keeper. Come with
me.” She pulled me through the dark liquid, keeping one hand on my torn side
and the other wrapped around my neck. “The suffocation is temporary,” she said.
“You can’t perish, so don’t be afraid. Let the inferno come.” Her voice masked
her fear, though I sensed it and wanted to grip her with my flame. My fire,
though stronger, was still too weak and I held on to her, just barely alive.

We floated through the underwater abyss in the cold
darkness together for what seemed like an eternity. She held me up and I fed on
her clay form, converting her energy into mine, ingesting her essence bit by
bit. “Fire and clay,” she said. “The spark is in you now.”

I had only imagined I consumed the sapient life
force—I was in fact alone and had fabricated the matrix so I could ingest
the frigid Gelanese liquid without perishing and use it to make kindling. As
though caged in stone—or ice—my fire rose to meet the hardening
prison about it and worked to melt it from the inside out. With the sapient’s imagined
spark in me, I stoked my fire until it became the inferno I knew on Venus and
conquered the immeasurable pain of my Gelanese exile. I welcomed the splitting
of my outer form when it arrived.

Deep within the gloom of the frigid sea of Gelu, I cracked
into endless pieces, slivers of crystallized ice reborn into darkness. My
unprotected flame engulfed the liquid, desiccating the basin into which I had
sunk. The Gelanese pool became a valley of clay, and I felt my form return,
encompassing my newly raging pyre. I had defeated the cold, the dark—the
end. I closed my eyes on Gelu and shot up through the frozen atmosphere out
into the sunless cosmos and back through the duct to my planet.

When I arrived on the other side of the tenth sphere,
I landed in my goddess’s solarium and found myself on her pedestal once again. The
Venusian landscape was changed. The lush lava and acidic manna, caves of liquid
crystal and hot granite, dells of molten trees and amber stuccoed brush, fields
of gold sand and plains of stilted infernos were all wiped out, dissolved into a
million petroglyphs. The planet was nothing but stone—a fortress of Midan
jade. Kyprian temples and monuments stared up at me, defaced and pulled down or
smashed to smithereens. I had been gone for longer than I knew.

“It is over,” she said from somewhere within me.
“Tell me you have been reborn.”

“I have, goddess.”

“Then we must make our escape.”

“You cannot want this, goddess.” I knew why she had
chosen as she had and would submit to her despite my disapproval. I belonged to
my goddess.

“This is the only way,” she said.

“You may perish, and then we will all be lost.”

“We will be together again,” she said. “Believe it.”

“But in what form?”

“It is irrelevant.”

***

Before the fall of Jupiter, my goddess slipped unseen
into my forge. She stoked my fire from within, twisting my flame about hers.
The pleasure was too much and my flame roared, as it consumed hers. Desire fed
us and marked the beginning. Kypria was conquered but not vanquished.

Midan troops were already at the gate and would soon
storm the crystal and breach the solarium. My goddess had to be gone by the
time they reached the pedestal, and I was the only one who could assure that she
was. We made our plan long ago—I knew what I must do.

I picked up my shield and casing before I sealed my
forge forever. If I returned, it would be as something other than what I was then.
“The breach has begun,” I said to the others.

My Kyprian siblings flew past me, as they made their
way to the entrance of the dark passage. I hoped more of them would have already
escaped to Terra but the risk to that planet was too great, and our migration
had to be discreet if we were to fool Midan. We feared his finding my goddess
despite the bounds of space and time. The ambassador had to believe she would
never relinquish Venus.

When I reached the launch station, I saw hundreds of
dying flames, stamped out by the coldness. I ached at the sight. Only the
strongest could make it through to the other side, into terrestrial
forms—the shapes that could adapt to the strange atmosphere of Terra.

“Stay,” I cried to them. “Do not risk your flames.”

My words were useless. The Kyprian would follow their
goddess, refusing to let Midan strip them of their idol. They would rather
perish than be bound to a new ruler of Venus.

Saturnia’s sister called to me, as she made her way
to the opening too. I appeased her and drew her flame to mine. The sparks of
light flew off my shield and bounced back onto my casing. I united my energy
with hers, as we made our way to the passage. Others saw my generosity and
begged me to give them the same means of transport, but I refused—I had
to refuse—I carried too sacred a cargo.

I looked back only once. A troop had broken the seal
and was headed toward me. I had mere moments to escape and as I fell into the
coldness of space, I threw my shield at the opening of the passage and sealed
it forever. The light of Venus closed on us and we were thrust into darkness.
Only a few of my kin made it out with me, as we were propelled through the
passage and sent down to Terra where I landed hard, splitting in two, my Venusian
figure expelling Saturnia’s sister. Both of us were pulled into our new forms,
surrendering flame to flesh, adjusting to the soft shell and organs we were prepared
to greet again. I was ready to return to the body and the creature I was to
acquaint with my goddess.

I told Saturnia’s sister to go to the greenhouses.
“The eye falls from the sky and soon it will be dark.”

“You are not coming?” she said.

“I must watch the sky to be sure.”

I believed it was impossible for Midan to follow
since I had sealed the way, buried it in darkness forever. The coordinates had
been destroyed and the duct would never be found again. I believed Midan troops
would never see Terra’s atmosphere, though I hesitated in my certainty.

“Will they find us?” A look of sapient worry seemed
to wear out my sibling’s face.

“You are safe,” I promised her.

“But our goddess?”

I was unaware she was wise to what I carried deep
within me, that she knew my goddess had already arrived. “She will come.” I
reassured her with my lie. “Go now before the light is lost.”

She thanked me again, as she started for the
greenhouses on the mount. She stumbled at first, but soon caught a graceful
stride. When she disappeared over the horizon, I headed to the shanty.

Mara was in the garden, dancing barefoot on the peat
moss, spinning and twirling with her arms outstretched. Her hair sailed through
the air with a freedom so grand it looked as if it might fly off her head. As I
approached her, she slowed her spinning. I waited on the other side of the
garden for her to call to me. I felt my goddess rejoice at the sight of her
vessel. I knew this was the moment she had chosen.

Mara stopped and turned to look at me. She waved
from the moss. “Come, Onine, come to me.” Over the gate and onto the peat, I
was in front of her before she called my name a second time. “You have
returned.”

I leaned in and caressed her cheek, giving it a kiss
as my goddess had done to me in the hall of jade.

“I have returned with a gift,” I said.

“Is it time?”

I was silent.

“Come,” she whispered.

She held my hand and led me into the shanty. I was
ready for the dark room. I had prepared for this moment. The suffocation would
pass—the coldness too.

I must be brave. I must be
brave. I must be brave.

EL

I tried to recall the things Onine told me in the
garden but my memory seemed muddled and I couldn’t be sure if I imagined his admission
of love.
You are still mine
. Did he
really say that? Could I really understand his Venusian shrieks? Maybe I’d
imagined Tiro’s speech in the steam of the slender tower at the rear of the bathhouse
too.

I waited on the golden stones for Tiro to arrive. I’d
barely slept but was energized by the thought of seeing Saturnia’s sister at
the Temple. Her words would soothe my fear and I could ask her what to do. When
Em went to the hall of stones, she said Saturnia’s sister was there.

“She’s one of the three,” she’d said. “She’s the one
who told me it’s Tal.”

If Saturnia’s sister sat on the council of three,
she knew I was chosen for Tiro, but she may also be the one who convinced the
goddess to give me to him. When I thought about that, my courage waned. I
hadn’t been invited to the hall of stones and officially given my assignment. She’d
want to know how I knew about Tiro and I couldn’t risk Tal’s being discovered.
I also couldn’t tell her I understood Venusian tongue and that I’d heard the
Kyprian tell me himself in the slender tower. Before I reached the Temple, I
convinced myself to abandon my plan to speak with her.

“What’s got you so dazed?”

I’d barely greeted Bee and Em when I got in the
cart. They’d been whispering in the corner and I’d only said hello. I couldn’t
stand to hear about her and Tal. No doubt she’d have plenty of attempts to
report and I’d have trouble getting the thought of them out of my mind as I did
last time.

“Nothing,” I said.

“You look exhausted,” Bee said. “Didn’t you sleep?”

I expected them to giggle but they didn’t. When I
looked more closely, I saw Em was in tears.

“I’m fine,” I said. “What’s the matter with you?”

She waved her hand at me, but Bee nudged her to
tell. “Maybe she can help,” she said.

“If I can,” I said, “I will.”

Em leaned back and put her head on Bee’s shoulder.
“You tell her,” she whispered.

“They’ve called it off,” Bee said.

“Called what off?”

“Em’s assignment,” she said. “They told her—”

Em broke in with a tearful plea. “I haven’t seen him
for several moonscapes and when they came for me again, I knew that was the
reason. I just knew it.” She cried into her veil, as Bee patted her head. I
kept one ear open for the road, making sure the cart wasn’t about to stop. “The
council called me forward,” she said, “and made me kneel and then I was given a
horrid mixture to drink, which made me sick right there on the glass floor in
front of them. Saturnia’s sister assured me the sickness would pass and then
she sent me off without an escort.”

I found it difficult to understand her through the
sobs.

“What about Tal?” I couldn’t remember seeing him at
the Temple. I hadn’t gone out to the pits since—since our conversation in
the wheat field. I wondered if they’d found out he told me, if he was in some
kind of trouble. What if he was punished for coming to see me? I reminded
myself they couldn’t have known. They never left the greenhouses—night
was our time.

“El?” Bee sounded impatient. “Did you hear me?”

“Sorry, I was in a daze.”

“Seems like it,” she said. “Have you seen Tal?”

“Actually, I haven’t,” I said. “But I’ll look for him
when I get to the Temple.”

“Will you give him a message?” Em nodded but Bee
spoke for her. “Tell him she’ll be waiting for him in their usual spot. Tell
him she needs to see him. Tell him—tell him it’s important.”

“It’s more than important,” Em said. “I have to see
him.”

I assured her I’d get the message to him if I could.
I wanted to ask what was so important but knew she’d never say. I wondered if his
seed had taken, if she carried his youngling.

Em recovered from her tears when the cart stopped.
Bee got off with her but I was too preoccupied to notice. I was anxious to get
to the Temple to see if Tal was there. Could he be gone too? I worked myself
into a terrible fright before the cart drove through the gates. When it
stopped, Tiro dismounted the zephyr and I listened for his step on the golden
stones. I held my breath until he passed me and headed up the path away from
the Temple. I jumped down from the cart and walked toward the back of the bathhouse.
I wanted to go to the fire pits and find Tal, but had to pull the one hundred
and forty-six chains of gold first. I worked as quickly as I could though I
didn’t finish before Tiro returned.

The floor master followed me around, poking me with
his stick each time I bent down to stir the molten liquid. I slowed my pace
when I noticed his impatience. He wanted me to finish so he could steal me away
again, no doubt, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I’d do anything to
keep from being called back to the slender tower.

When I knelt down in front of the gold kidney-shaped
tub to stir the steamy substance with my sterling rod, the swirling liquid put
me in a trance. Everything around me disappeared and I hovered above the liquid
as though suspended in air. Surely I’d have burned if I’d dropped into it. The
swirling liquid spun faster and soon melted away to reveal a crisp image, a
landscape I didn’t recognize. The colors were vibrant and rich and alive.
This must be olive green!
Soon the space
opened up and I saw a sapient on the rich green grass. She held her arms out
and spun them around making pinwheels in the air. She was beautiful, more
beautiful than any sapient I’d ever seen. Her hair was dark like the cosmos and
trailed loosely behind her all the way down to her waist. I couldn’t see her
face, aglow as it was. She followed someone, walking on tiptoed feet through
the grass. When she reached a long trough, I recognized it as Bendo’s—it was
my yard, my patch of grass. The sapient knelt down and looked into the water. I
couldn’t see her expression but she turned to the side, as though looking over
at someone or something. Guided to look into the trough, she leaned over and
strained to see—to see—to see into the water.
It was Minosh!

The image dissolved and I stared into a steamy bath
of molten liquid again. My hand stirred the bath but my mind was a million
visions away. His whip stung and I almost dropped the rod in the tub. “Sapient.”
His shout could reach the clouds of Venus. “Get it done. You have been asked to
the hall of stones. Hurry up.”

I couldn’t know if Tiro had planned some sort of
trick, but if he were bent on taking me up the path through the forest, he’d
surely burn me down to a crisp. I had no reason to go out to look for Tal and had
to obey the floor master. I was trapped and hoped Saturnia’s sister would come
to the Temple early. I silently begged Minosh to heed my plea.
Please let her come. Please let her come.
Please let her come.

The Venusian shriek snapped me from my invocation
when a bather called the floor master away. He floated over on the steam to
greet her. I dropped the sterling rod by the tub and followed the lit wax
through the Temple to the cedar door of the fire pits. This time when I pushed it
open, Onine wasn’t there to catch me. No one awaited me on the other side and
for a brief moment I recalled the sublimity of Kypria—the goddess is
good. She wouldn’t want to harm any of us and would protect me, surely.

I searched for Tal on the patio but the smoke from
the fires made it difficult. I went to his side of the pits, expecting to see
him bent over a fire but I couldn’t find him anywhere. Some of the fire starters
looked at me with suspicion, others ignored me altogether. I was too hurried to
ask for Tal and pretended I was sent out to give an order. I spoke to the
sapient nearest me.

“The tub of brine needs an extra fire,” I said. “Its
temperature is dropping.”

The fire starter nodded but I couldn’t see his
expression through the veil and I wondered if I’d seen him before.

“El!” Tiro’s screech made my heart race though I’d already
headed back into the steam. I found him with Saturnia’s sister and she beckoned
me to follow. I hid my relief beneath my veil but Tiro still wacked me with his
stick once the Venusian bather turned to lead me out. I followed Saturnia’s
sister, masking the sting from my lashing.

The beautiful being floated above the steam, out
into the clear sky, through the courtyard, past the cylinders of fire, around
the silo of liquid luster and water pumps and into the forest of white gold
trees. When we reached the path leading up to the hall of stones, she stopped
and turned to face me.

“Little Pchi,” she said. “Let me take your pain.”

She held out her stick and waved its point over my
shoulders and collarbone, drawing out the injury. The sting faded and her
warmth tingled my skin. She placed the tip of her stick beneath my chin and brought
my gaze up to meet hers. “All better?”

I nodded, mesmerized by her tenderness.

“Be strong now, little Pchi,” she said. “The good will
prevail.”

She turned to go up the path and I followed. My
stomach somersaulted in anticipation of seeing the hall of stones. Minosh had
told me she’d seen the hall when she was a youngling.

“When you were assigned?” I’d asked her. I recalled
how she avoided my question, telling me I’d see the hall at my time of selection.
I could’ve asked her then if the seed-bearer she’d been assigned to was still
around but she was all I needed.

The hall of stones sat high on a treeless ledge
bordering the forest. The steep path was a chore to climb, but sparkled with
the peppered jade stones that reflected the eye’s rays. Saturnia’s sister
continued to float, even as we reached the peak, and turned back often to make
sure I kept up.

“Almost there, little Pchi.” She coaxed me encouragingly,
as I panted my way to the top.

At a point when you came around the bend, the huge
glass hall stood before you as though it appeared out of nowhere. It almost
looked suspended in midair. The tall glass walls hovered above you on approach
like they were going to topple over. If the eye sat in the right spot, all you
saw were crystals lighting up the path, and then as if by magic you came
through the brightness into the hall itself. The transition from outside to inside
was undetectable. Once inside, I felt lightweight, as if I were floating.

“The energy is different here,” Saturnia’s sister
said. “This is the realm of our goddess. You are feeling her all around you.”

I embraced the euphoria I felt in the hall but it
was nothing like the sublimity I’d seen in Onine’s eyes.

“Come,” she said.

She led me through to another opening and when I
entered this other chamber everything went white. Blinded by the brightness, I couldn’t
tell if I was actually standing in a room. I felt suspended and couldn’t see
the ground, the walls, or the stones from which the hall was built. I didn’t
see any other Kyprian either, if any were there. Even Saturnia’s sister seemed
to fall away and I waited in the silence, in the brightness, relieved when someone
finally spoke.

“You have been selected.” I didn’t recognize the
speaker. The voice was strident, less like Saturnia’s sister than any other.
“Our goddess has chosen you to be the sample and you will surrender without
reluctance.”

Em’s experience seemed quite different from mine. I
waited quietly to hear the pronouncement of my fate, despite knowing it
already, and secretly hoped Tal and Tiro were wrong.

“The copulation will commence in three moonscapes
when your master comes for you. Your preparation, however, begins now.”

The
brightness receded, if only a little, and I thought I could make out the shapes
of three large flames hovering on a pedestal.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said.

“The submersion will begin at once.”

I was unaware what that meant and wished I’d never found
out, but unfortunately my story is not void of suffering. I expected agony but
the degree of pain I experienced in the cleansing baths is unforgettable, a
torture of my own doing.

When the bright light dimmed, I could finally see
the glass room around me, even as the eye spilled into the entire solarium. Three
large stones, as big as any Venusian, stood at the three corners of the glass
house, looking like the jade stones in the path up to the hall. The milky green
rocks changed clarity, as the eye danced about their surface.

“Come, El.” Saturnia’s sister called me from an
enclosure at the front of the solarium and I glided across the crystal floor to
meet her. Before exiting the space, I looked back at the hall so befitting a
goddess, and that’s when I saw the shrub with the wax flowers—sweet
smelling like Onine—the Kyprian tree of life.

***

I wrapped myself in silk when I returned to greet
the darkness of my shanty. I’d spent the time until then wading in scalding hot
liquid that seemed to burn away a layer of my skin. When I was finally pulled from
the searing bath, Saturnia’s sister gave me a sweet serum to drink but the pain
didn’t cease until she treated me to her gift of healing.