Read The Unfinished Song: Taboo Online
Authors: Tara Maya
Rthan raised his arms to the sky.
“I beseech you, Merfae!” he called to the sky. “Come to my aide! Do not leave me at the mercies of the enemy!”
All he heard was the distant rushing of the river, alive with a chorus of croaking frogs.
Brena stripped off her outer shoulder blanket and nodded for Rthan to do the same. For any dances that involved throws, lifts or tosses, in the interest of sparing bruised heads, the teachers taught the Initiates out in the woods, under the shade of immense sequoias, where the ground was softer than the stone and clay floor of the kiva. This time, they set up the posts and bear skin enclosure in a shady spot near the river. Her flimsy beaded wrap provided little comfort against
the chill winter breeze
coming in from the river, but she knew once they started moving, they would generate enough heat.
In most other dances, male and female Tavaedies moved interchangeably through the formations. For some moves, in which they formed pyramids or two dancers tossed another, males of course took the roles that required greater strength. Otherwise, gender did not matter. Not so with the Fertility Dances, where men and women danced in pairs. The moves were subtler, more sensuous. Footwork, intricate and exact, played a larger role than acrobatics, and so did handholds. Specifically, there were many moves in which the male dancer caressed or clutched the body of his female partner. He had to lift her and spin her; he
had to stroke her and match
the moves of his thrusting hips to hers.
“The first
tama
we will be showing you is called ‘Jaguar Hunts the Maiden’,” Brena informed her students. She had prepped Rthan before hand, of course, though this would be their first time practicing together. The initial steps proceeded smoothly, and then Rthan gripped her by the waist and launched her into the first lift and spin. Their eyes met as she twirled back down. She slid down his rock-hard chest and thigh, extending her leg behind her. His face smoldered with fierce desire.
She should never have asked him to dance with her. She should never have invited him to touch her body. Not if she had to go home and sleep alone on her mat, listening to his breathing from across the room, unable to touch him again. When the dance called for her to skip away from him, she separated herself from the caress gratefully.
Rthan stalked her from across the dance ground in the jaguar crawl. The way he did it, it looked less like a humble crawl, and more like a triumphant ship sailing over the horizon. He snatched her back into his arms for the next sequence of leaps and spins.
He leaned her back over his knee, and breathed down her neck,
her
nearly bare breasts and
her
belly.
More than enough heat, oh yes.
His
hand smoothed down
her thigh as she transitioned into the next hold.
A scream pierced the air. Brena stiffened in Rthan’s arms. Her will power, or lack, now moot, she broke away from him, prepared to meet this new crisis. But Rthan and all the Initiates were looking at her quizzically.
“I am under attack! To my aide, if you can hear me!”
cried the woman’s voice, more desperate than before. Yet still, Rthan furrowed his brow at Brena, confused, unhearing. He couldn’t hear the Brundorfae.
“Fae,” she said shortly to Rthan. “I
must
go. You are in charge of the safety of the Initiates!”
Before he could sputter any objections, she ran toward the trumpet of the bear.
It pleased Dindi to see the
fertility
tama
would be taught outside, by the river
, since it was easier for her
to
lurk outside under the cover of trees and bushes than in the storeroom of the kiva. Winters in Golden Bear did not bring snow, only a few dreary days of rain intermingled with a colder version of the usual sunshine. Today leaned toward chill and dry. Frosty sugar light sprinkled through the sequoias
that
towered over the hillocks this side of the river. Once she warmed up through a few exercises, she felt perfectly at ease in her skimpy costume of just a breast band and legwals.
However, the need for a partner made it difficult for her. Much of the practice for the female partner required her to learn how to let the male partner lift or spin her in the air. Below, in the Tavaedi enclosure, the
carnal exhibition
Zavaedi Brena and her slave-husband demonstrated together
looked as though one might expect to find a baby on the dance ground nine months later. It left Dindi blushing like a garden of carrots. When she could stop giggling, she located a trunk of a dead fir tree that stood about man high. Two branches stuck out from the sides of the trunk, rather like arms.
“Well, I guess
you’re
going to have to be my partner, Tavaedi Tree Stump,” she informed the stump.
Fortunately, the female’s part launched the dance, while the male stood behind her with his arms up in the air. Tavaedi Tree Stump managed that admirably.
She began in a crouch, head down, knees out to form right angles, toes pointed, hands between her legs. Below her, in the Tavaedi enclosure marked off by posts and bear pelts, the drumbeat began. She pressed her hands into the ground to support, lifted herself into center splits over the ground, then windwheeled her legs around her hands and posed again with one leg in the air. It rested against the “arm” of Tavaedi Tree Stump.
A spin twirled her around the tree stump—here he was supposed to be spinning her, but she did her best—then into another clench in which she leaned back against his other stump arm. With mincing steps and swaying hips, she skipped away from her partner. He was supposed to follow her in a jaguar crawl that turned into a pounce and a leap. Tavaedi Tree Stump did less admirably at this step.
“Your dancing is somewhat wooden,” she told him, clucking her tongue. “Try not to be so stiff.”
A bit of wind rustled his leafless branches.
“There you go.” She giggled.
She whirled back toward her tree stump partner with a handless cartwheel flip combination that vaulted her onto his “shoulders” in a handstand. Now he was supposed to grab her forearms and lower her into a spin through the air,
but, obviously the tree stump could not…
…
but
the mighty arms of a shining fae lord
did
reach up for her. She couldn’t see his face as he slid her into a new hold, with his hands under her abdomen, and spun her over his head. But she could feel the strength and delicacy of his grip; he held her aloft as though she weighed no more than a doll.
A Brundorfae lord! But how odd—the fae never danced with her while she practiced Tavaedi dancing. They bored too quickly with the routines, which she had to practice over and over to master. And she had never seen any fae shine so bright, with such colors, not just gold but a thousand sparkling hues.
Thrum, thrum, thumpa-thrum
, beat the drums. She cartwheeled down from his arms, her back to him as he reeled her around then smoothed her under his legs and drew her up again, and they both launched into a set of high step, fast paced footwork.
Thrum, thrum, thumpa-thrum.
Twirls and spins and kicks and leaps followed, all in dizzy intimacy too intense for thought.
Thrum, thrum, thrum, thumpa-thrum
…
He flung her back over his knee and clasped her back up to him, this time
face to face
, almost lip to lip.
She gasped. Her partner was no fae lord.
On his way to his own hidden practice place in the sequoia forest, Kavio glimpsed a solitary dancer, graceful and pale as new maize. Who was she, and why did she
dance
secluded and all alone, far from the kiva and tor?
He wove through the forest to spy on her, though he told himself he should not. Perhaps she had come to the woods to practice alone, as he had. The possibility intrigued him
—
who else besides he had no need of the guidance of the troop? Who else besides he would dare?
She must have had magic, for she
was
huma
n and not fae. Humans without m
agic danced only to hex, and would be killed in turn, if caught. Yet never had he seen a style quite like hers. She wore no ritual costume
—
neither
wooden mask, nor cornhusk cape—
only white doeskin hemmed with a maze of rainbow beads. Her hair flew about her, unbraided and wild. Though her aura showed no light, he had the odd sense she shimmered with power that warmed the cool December wood with hint of hidden Mays.
She circled the stump of a fir tree, as if it were her partner in a fertility
dance
. He knew the dance of course
—
it was meant for two, not one.
Kavio debated himself. His mischie
f won.
He crept up behind her. Stealth he had honed in hunting and battle served him well, and the broad trunks of sequoias and pines provided ample cover. The dance soon called for her partner to lift her, and she leaned toward the tree stump. He made his move.
In rhythm with her sways, he placed his hands about her waist and lifted her into the spin, above his head and down again. She responded as if she had expected him, and followed his lead into the next exultant sequence, toss and twirl, shimmy and turn. Fancy footwork followed on, sweetly easy. In this sequence of the fertility dance, both partners faced forward, so he could not see her face. The top of her head just reached his chin. Her hair smelled of flowers.
They flowed together like partners who had practiced days in each other’s arms. She amazed him.
He dipped her back, and only then met her gaze.
“Dindi!” He choked on his dismay.
For Dindi to
dance
was taboo
,
so decreed the ancient ways. The law left him no choice.
He must kill her.
Thrum, thrum, thumpa-thrum
, went the drums in the enclosure below. Kavio glanced down at the dancing ground along the riverbank. He took in the excellent view of the dancers, and also that the view was not reciprocal. Unwanted comprehension stole into his mind, but he fought it with a flurry of hypothetical excuses. He dropped Dindi’s arms.
“Kavio. Let me explain.”
“Explain what? What are you doing here? You’re really a Tavaedi? Or are you even a Zavaedi? You didn’t learn to dance that way by yourself. Why did you disguise yourself as an ordinary maiden?”
“I
am
an ordinary maiden.”
“Impossible.
You must have passed the test.
Your
dancing…”
“I failed the
t
est,” she blurted. “I failed the
t
est, Kavio. No one knows I’m out here. No one knows I’ve been dancing.”
He stared at her. The drums growled and grunted in the urgent rhythms of the fertility dance, driving his thoughts down wrong roads. Dindi lifted her gaze to meet
his
as a doe might look
at
a drawn bow, distractingly vulnerable in all her terror and guilt and breathless defiance. While part of him wanted to hold her again, offer her safety and assurance, the rest of him struggled to comprehend her ludicrous confession. Ludicrous, because no one would dare copy the dances of the Tavaedies without permission, no one without the vilest of motives—or the strongest of allies. What were her motives? Who were her allies? Why did she have to look at him like that?