Shadowed By Wings (30 page)

Prinrut was free and whole.

Upon murmuring Kabdekazonvia’s name, I thought lights exploded about Prelude, white-orange sparks thrown from a temporal fire. Sharp and turbulent, the sparks zinged chaotically off Prelude’s walls, eventually discovering the crack under the door. Crackling and hissing like compressed bonfires, they disappeared from my sight.

This is what I thought I saw, and though I’ve never seen such since, I’m convinced that it was no hallucination evoked by the foamy residue of venom in my blood. No. I’m convinced that what I saw was the numinous release and regeneration of the essence of the women I’d known.

Understand, we didn’t lie with the dragons often. Such would have killed any woman, regardless of her tolerance for the dragons’ poison. Only thrice did I lie with the dragons during those long months in the viagand. Three times only. Yet how memorable they were.

What did I learn, during those pleated, undulating, wildly contracting and expanding days in the brooder stalls and the recovery berths? What did I hear?

Song that glorified and cleansed, melody that redeemed and transcended. Whispers melancholic and grief laden. I heard earth, heard water, saw fogged images of blood and radiance. I smelled loss and constraint, tasted barbarity and amputation. Rapture was a sound, had texture, knew grief.

Images sometimes flitted through the songs, fractured and blurred, seething, fuming, fermenting. Words belched from my mouth, disgorged by the tumult rampaging through me. Convulsive and savage, scorching and bestial, the images I saw and the eruption of words clashed and howled in orgiastic storm.

I felt my cloaca stretch as thin as fine paper as I laid an egg.

I flew from tree crown to tree crown, seeking my hatchling while the scent of humans burned like sulfur in my nostrils.

My hind legs trembled as, flanks heaving with exertion, I fought the young upstart that would mount my brooders.

But the images were not like this, not as I’ve presented them. They were frayed jigsaw pieces, worn at edge by time, and my intoxicated mind pieced them together as a confused whole, a collage that made little sense without the song and empathy that structured them. It was only during the dream-dizzy days and nights I slept in my burrow back in the viagand chambers that my mind assembled the pieces into coherent images, and in such assembling, many jigsaw pieces were lost, and pieces from the puzzle of my own life inserted instead for a logical picture to result.

Certain images
did
recur from each visit to the stables, though. Over and over, I experienced shinchiwouk as a bull. Over and over I felt territorial rage against my opponent, fought young bulls and old ones that I might prevail and mount the brooders gathered to watch. Long after I’d been returned to the viagand chambers, my limbs would twitch in a flashback of lunging, striking, turning, protecting flank and wing and throat. Over and over I triumphed, or was subdued and retreated.

And over and over, I felt the harrowing grief of losing a hatchling to python, vulture, or man. Over and over, I felt the agony of knife amputating wing from flank, felt hobbles about my forelegs, felt the burden of yoke across my shoulders.

But never once did I receive even an inkling as to why an egg laid in a Clutch was never an involucre for a bull dragon.

Never once.

My time of grace, if any stage of imprisonment can be deemed one of grace, was not long-lived.

After awhile, the uniqueness of my interpretations of the dragons’ music wore off and the daronpuis tired of my talk about fodder and brooder health. That, coupled with my increasingly irrational rambling while in the grips of venom’s embrace, only frustrated the daronpuis. Other strikes against me: my rapidly declining appetite; my disinterest in even pretending to create art, that I avoid sloth and animate my mind; the frequency of my “restless sleeps” in the viagand chambers, claimed against me by Greatmother and others as transgressions; my pallor and pustulant eyes; the frequency with which I wept for want of venom while in the presence of the eunuchs.

When Najiwaivia, One Hundred First Girl, arrived in the viagand chambers one afternoon, and shortly after, Najikazonvia and Najirutvia, I knew my time of favoritism was over. Those three would provide fresh interpretations of the canticles. My waning advantage was gone. Even in my debilitated, hazy state, I realized that my next obligatory visit to the Retainers’ bunks would go very hard indeed, and those unfathomable steel instruments in the recovery chambers would be employed by the daronpuis upon my person, that I might interpret the dragons’ song better.

I knew, then, that I’d become like Kabdekazonvia. I yielded to the knowledge as I yielded to everything else my jailers subjected me to.

I don’t know who said it first—Najiwaivia, if memory serves—but it roused us all from our individual stupors.

“Please forgive my insolence, Greatmother, but haven’t the eunuchs usually come by now?”

My lids rasped against my eyes like sacking as I blinked. Slowly, my gaze focused on Greatmother, who sat across from me on a cushion.

We had gathered, by rote, upon the cushions and divans in the central chamber for the morning feeding and were sitting there staring unblinkingly inward. I’d had a poor night, as I oft did after a clawful of days had passed since my last union with a dragon and the venom in my blood was as cold and brittle as rime. My mother’s haunt had maggot-roiled within the cocoon in my psyche all night, clawing wildly at the membrane that enclosed it. Even in daylight as I sat with the rest of the viagand on the feeding cushions, waiting for the eunuchs to show up, I could feel the abhorrent squirming.

“She’s right,” another one of the new women murmured. “Haven’t the eunuchs usually come by now, Greatmother?”

Greatmother cocked her head to one side and stared hard at the jungle hues slipping through a casement.

“It would seem they are tardy today,” she eventually said in her measured, toneless voice. “I’m sure they have good reason.”

“How long do we sit here?”

“Until they come.”

“But we’ve been sitting for some time already. It’s past noon. I have need to relieve myself, Greatmother. Forgive me.”

We
all
looked at the light streaming through the casements, then, looked at the angle in which it fell as weak, wavering fingers upon floor and wall. I felt the merest nudge of surprise at noticing it was true: We’d sat there since dawn, and noon had come and gone. I also dully realized that I needed to visit the latrines.

Greatmother licked her chapped lips. “We must wait further.”

Silence. Beside me, Misutvia drew air into her lungs as though with great effort. “This hasn’t happened before, not since I’ve been here.”

We all looked at Greatmother, waiting for her to defend the eunuchs’ behavior or explain it by way of stating that such a thing had occurred before in her many years of imprisonment.

She did neither; merely stared unblinking straight ahead of her, wan face expressionless.

“Please.” One of the newest women spoke, her voice a strained whisper. “I must relieve myself.”

The urgency in her voice made my own need urgent. Others shifted about me, aware of their own states. We all sat there, unmoving, until one of the new women cried out in dismay. She clambered to her feet, ran to a painting easel, snatched at a crock of dried paint, placed it on the floor, hefted her bitoo, and straddled it.

I almost wet myself at the sound.

At once, we were all struggling to stand. A moment of chaos followed. Greatmother and Sutkabde were too debilitated to move quick enough, and they soiled themselves. The rest of us jostled for the few remaining paint pots and filled them to capacity.

In the ensuing silence, we stared at each other in horror.

“We shall be stoned,” one of the newest said, trembling.

“That would be preferable to what will happen instead,” Sutkabde replied.

“You instill debilitating fear in the viagand with your remark,” Greatmother chided. “That is a transgression. I claim the right to report it.”

“And I claim the right to report that you soiled floor and bitoo both,” Misutvia swiftly said.

A pause. Then chaos ensued as we all breathlessly claimed the right to report everyone’s transgression of urinating in paint pots. Our world was so fearful and narrow, understand, that it not only made sense at the time, but seemed an integral part of survival.

Transgressions claimed, heads thumping from tension and thirst, we drifted back to the cushions and divans and sat. We waited. We dozed. We woke raging with thirst in darkness. No day-shine drifted through the casements, only the night’s chill. In the blackness, fear blossomed.

“What is this? Have we been abandoned to die?” a disembodied voice whispered in the dark.

The silent quickening of our hearts.

“Who spoke?” Greatmother said. “Such fearmongering is a transgression. Identify yourself.”

A wondrous silence as no one responded. A thrill pimpled my skin and I momentarily felt brave.

“We could ask the Retainers guarding the door for water,” I suggested. “It’s unlocked. Someone could crack it open a little.”

No one would dare such temerity.

“We will wait,” Greatmother pronounced, her hoarse voice part of the dark. “It is a test of our purity, of our obedience. We will wait.”

“So this
has
occurred before,” a clipped voice stated. Misutvia.

A pause before Greatmother replied. “No.”

“We have no reason to think this is a test, then,” Misutvia argued. “We’ve never been tested before. I’ve never heard tell of such testing, either.”

“You admit to idle gossip. Gossip is a transgression. I claim—”

“I admit to no such thing,” Misutvia said with an anger as wondrous as the defiant silence that had met Greatmother’s command, a short while ago, that the unidentified speaker distinguish herself. “It is the one who imparts the gossip who transgresses, not the one who overhears.”

A cumbersome silence from Greatmother as she strove to find the resources to respond.

“If not for the receiving ears, there is no gossip, only mutters into air,” Greatmother finally said. “Thus, you have transgressed.”

“And by extension of your argument, you also have transgressed, Greatmother,” Misutvia countered. “For if ears overhearing the words of another are guilty of transgression, then so too are eyes that witness such. And you, Greatmother, as our uncontested and recognized elder, said not a word to prevent our earlier transgression of voiding bladder into paint pot. I therefore hold you responsible for all our ills, and claim the right to report this great transgression.”

A profound silence as the lot of us slowly realized what a nest of snakes Misutvia had just overturned.

Who was responsible for a transgression, the witness who could have prevented it or the transgressor? Both? But to what degree? What then if the transgressor knew not that she was violating some esoteric law, but the witness did?

My sluggish mind wrestled with the questions. Irritated, I spoke without thought, licking lips shrivelled for want of water.

“It won’t matter who transgresses and who witnesses what if there’s no one to report to.”

I tensed at my own nerve, waited for a bodiless voice in the dark to pronounce my statement as fearmongering and therefore a transgression. From the direction where Greatmother sat like a ghostly wraith, I heard her gather breath and strength to declare such.

Misutvia spoke before Greatmother could utter her first word.

“We’ll return to our burrows to sleep. Pointless to sit here further.” Misutvia’s voice was firm. “In the morning, if no one appears, we’ll do as Naji suggested. We’ll ask the two Retainers outside the door for water.”

“We’ll need it,” I croaked hoarsely, and thirst moved all the women into murmuring fervent agreement. With venom in our veins, thirst was a constant, unwanted companion. We all craved water, ceaselessly. Going without it for this one day had given us pounding heads and a restless, irritable mien. “We won’t last long without water.”

“No,” Misutvia agreed. “We won’t last long.”

With the unexplained, unexpected change in our routine, the entombing darkness of night suddenly seemed thicker, chiller, fraught with crouched menace. I made my way to Misutvia’s burrow and crawled in with her.

Her bony frame and gelid skin offered little by way of comfort, but it was not physical succor I sought; it was solace of spirit.

“The other viagand women,” I whispered into her ear. “The ones currently in the dragon stalls and recovery berths. I wonder if they’re also being tested in such a manner.”

“Don’t be sensational,” Misutvia snapped.

I shuddered against her and held my tongue, and I realized, by her very irritation, that she too was greatly unnerved by this sudden turn of events.

Sleep came grudgingly that night to both of us, and when it eked my way, I dreamed ceaselessly of the haunt clawing its way free within me. Just before dawn, I could no longer bear the vision and the accompanying sensations. I left Misutvia’s burrow and returned to mine, passing in the vapid light the gray shadows of others slinking back to their dens. We averted our eyes from each other in a tacit complicity of pretending we never saw each other. A short while later, we crawled from our burrows.

My thirst was paramount. I could scarce swallow. My eyes felt gummy. We waited, swaying, for someone to claim the first transgression against another, for the violation of sleeping restlessly. My spittle was too scarce to waste; I would not speak lest someone claimed first against me.

We all remained silent, muted by thirst. Greatmother stood in a stupor, seemingly unaware of us, of our predicament. Exhausted, I broke the spell by staggering over to the feeding cushions. The others shuffled after me.

Long moments passed as sunlight oozed through the narrow casements in the stone walls, obfuscated by entangled vines, thick tree trunks, curtains of moss, and ceilings of leaf and frond. No rain fell outside, but fog dew dripped incessantly upon bract and leaf.