Mortal Suns (15 page)

Probably I will be too quick, in my explaining.

I would get up, eat a little, take my morning bath. Then Kelbalba would soak the stumps of my legs in a solution of acid fire. After my new exercises, Torca came in. I would be lifted up and put down into two pits of agony. And in this way, through the days, I would travel. Often I fell. They caught me, or let me go down. Their hands led me, or betrayed. Or there were two traitorous sticks grasped with my own terrified fingers. My eyes were always wide, like those of a rabbit that sees the snake. I lost my virginity during this time. Actually and physically, I do not speak now by allusion. It tore open in one of my many tumbles, my legs sprawling so violently that, had it not been for all my work on my body before, I think both would have been broken. Feeling the other tearing, I knew, but did not speak. I could not care.

I was in pain, any way, from the first, all up my legs and into my crotch, into my very womb. Soon all of me hurt so much that, even after the bath and the massaging which came with evening, I lay weeping, unable to sleep unless hammered down into the dark with the strongest soporifics.

Even up my neck and into my skull, I hurt. And there was, too, the aggravation of the scarlet cord, which had been tied up my body from both my legs, into my hair. Torca had said this was to instruct my brain that as my legs flexed, it must respond. The cord duly wrenched and pulled. I cannot describe fully the mass of agony I became, but it was the thunder-colored pain described by certain poets, shot through with notes of sheerest razor white. And all this, to keep my feet.

My feet.

When I
first saw them, I felt a mixture of delight—and revulsion.

They had been fashioned to Torca’s specification, but in the silversmith’s shop. I was no soldier, but a princess of the Sun House.

They were of silver, mixed with iron and pherom at the sole, then padded here with leather which would, as time passed, be resoled as with any shoe.

And, they were in the
form
of feet, slender and strong, the very ones I would have had if I had not left them behind in the chaos lands, in my rush to be born. They had toes, and every one a nail of gold. They had anklebones, slim and fine as a dancer’s. They rose a little above the ankle, and here, too, was a rim of rolled gold. Inside they were hollow, holding each a sack stuffed with layers of down, into which the stems of me were inserted. The filling would need constantly to be replaced. You would think such boots soft and supportive, putting your hand far into them. Who made them did their very best. Others have not fared so well.

From the ankle-parts, four rods of silver rose to half the height of my calf. Between the rods, a mesh of silver wire. The lacings were silver ribbons, such as ladies had for their hair, or their most frivolous sandals.

When the slave put them before me, Torca said at once I would need all this to be done again, as I grew. There was a slight smile on his face. It did not occur to me then, the expense of such riches so often repeated.

They were strapped on as I sat. When I rose, for a moment I felt my power. I was upright. I was supported. I stood—upon my own feet.

Then I was dizzy. I remembered when the Heart had stopped—had mine? And beginning my first lesson despite that, sickened, bemused, I found the daggers in the softness.

That first night, my legs ran with blood. And for weeks after. Beyond the times of blood, were worse things, when my own flesh sheared from me. The unguents of Kelbalba saved me from further mutilation. I heard Torca tell her, frankly before me, that he would have her recipe if she would sell it to him. He had seen men lose a whole limb to gangrene from such labor as mine.

In my dreams,
I was whirling through air, while beasts gnawed my legs night-long. They ate upward. They would have my center, they would rape me with teeth.

I woke screaming from what little sleep I had.

Perhaps it was still summer …

I think not—there had been leaves caught in russet webs across the garden trees—and now the leaves were gone.

I lay shrieking. I refused them. I refused the feet. Instruments of torture, they stood in their silver purity, with their toenails of sunny gold. And by them, new silver laces, and the red cord.

“No—no—I won’t—no—no—”

Kelbalba lifted me. She held me hard, not the hug of friend or mother, but of the warrior in the thick of battle.

“Come on, girl. Don’t you know how well you do? He says, old Black Beard, he says you are braver than any man he’s known. Braver than he was, with the wooden leg. Come on, come on. Or I’ll slap you. I have a bet on you with my sisters at the stadium. I said you’d walk unaided by Winter Festival. Do you want to make a mock of me?”

But I had a fever from my wounds. I lay, and feebly cried for my beloved, who had brought me to this pass.

“The prince? Your Klyton? What does he care? He’s off at Melmia, with half the court. He’s forgotten you. You must make him remember.”

Later, when drugs and possets had washed me quiet, she told me the story of how Phaidix kills with pleasure, her lethal arrows tipped with sweetness. But life is bitter. To live one must put up with it. Then, taking my sithra, she strummed a gentle air of the hills. She sang to my feet, which she said I had, although they were not visible. She said they must make friends with the feet of silver. Then all would be well.

She had a hoarse voice, but it calmed me. I slept better than for months, and in the morning, stiff as a board from only a day without moving, got up and called for the silver feet, and put them on.

Then I walked
the length of the room, using only the walking sticks, and not complaining once, though rivets of ice and fire were driven from my groin to my eyes.

It would be almost another year before I could walk unassisted. And rather more before I would walk in the halls of ordinary men.

She brought the god Lut to my rooms that winter I was thirteen, and garlanded him herself for the festival, with red berries from the marroi, the Sun’s promise of summer’s returning.

“Tell him you hurt,” said Kelbalba, folding her big arms, the scar on her cheek wriggling like a snake. “You can say anything to
him
. He won’t mind you whining or crying. He understands all that. And that you’re more than that. He forgives weakness and despair, yet values courage.”

He was in the form of a hunchback, with bandy legs and a bulbous nose. But his mouth smiled grotesquely. It was sharing a joke with his own, those such as I. He was made only of greyish wood, but they had polished him, and he was half a foot high.

I made my ruinous way, in the hollow feet, with one cane, and put him on Gemli’s altar. The flame dipped, as if she were offended, but I meant to offend her. I said, “Give joy, Gemli, goddess of joy, to
his
kind.” But then I poured her wine and sprinkled perfume. I asked Kelbalba what Lut would like.

“In my village, the dwarf girl put him between her legs. He likes
that.
” She could be coarse enough, and I had heard plenty from her, which no longer made me start. “From a princess, just a kiss.”

So I kissed Lut’s brow. I gave him some raisins, too. The winter fruit that year was very succulent. Perhaps he was truly pleased, because before spring, I was doing rather better, though I had a great way to go.

It seemed to me I had certainly been forgotten by all the palace. Udrombis had spent no time on me after the first interview, and I scarcely remembered her, only her important name. Ermias was much away. For Klyton—well, I had no word at all. One day I took off the colcai bracelet which, till then, I had worn every hour, even in my pain. It left a green mark on my wrist.

Torca noticed
quickly.

“Where is your bangle?”

I said nothing. Ermias, who sometimes attended me in the evenings when I was in my right mind, had tutored me too, in the hauteur of my rank.

Torca said, “You should wear his gift. “He gave it you to bolster your endurance and your spirit.”

I shook my head. The cord had been dispensed with by then. But still, when I did such a thing when standing, a wave of vertigo might take me, and did so now.

As I stood at the floor’s middle, on the tilting sea of pain, I heard Torca say, “It came from his first battle honors. The metal was taken from a foe’s armor. A man the prince killed in war. Melted down and refashioned, for you.”

Men killed each other in war. I had been told so. It was correct for them. Klyton was a hero, could be nothing else. I said, “I honor his present. I won’t wear it again until I see him.”

Torca, black and bulky, shrugged, and limped about. He did not dress as a priest away from the sanctuary, but in a gentleman’s leather and linen. His wooden leg lunged like a cane, having no bending parts, as my feet did not. I had been shown I could only ever hope to shuffle.

I stood discouraged. The pretty bracelet had come from a man in death. Klyton, who sent me no word, had meant to help, but had no real interest in me. Doubtless, this was not unreasonable.

Across the room, Lut leered at Gemli. And she, royal and unflawed, her head poised high, looked away.

Winter passed like the moon. Spring spangle-veiled Oceaxis. I was steadier and walked with less pain. But I moved like a deformed old woman. I moved like a monstrosity. I had remembered my earlier name. Cemira—the
thing
. The bracelet lay in a box.

Late summer brought another small war, with the tribesmen in Ipyra, now. They said Glardor had refused to take another “spear-bride wife.” Amdysos, Glardor’s direct heir, was to have the treat.

Ermias went
to watch the troops ride back into Oceaxis, I had declined to go. I would have to leave off my unmanagable silver feet, and be carried in my chair. I had torn my hair and wept, again. Lut crouched in the sunset, watching me, and from the town, once or twice, I heard the far notes of trumpets.

What can there be for me?
My thought, in darkness.
Whatever I do, there is nothing for me.

Still sometimes, my stumps sloughed off the wrecked skin. But for the rinses of Kelbalba, I would have stunk, to add to my horrors. Instead, the room smelled of medicine, as if for someone chronically sick.

If this is my portion now, how shall I live?

I thought I would die soon, and did not care.

Then in the night, I woke to silence but for the rasping of crickets beyond the window. Somewhere a kitri sang, as it had in the groves, but fitfully, a broken song.

A shadow bent over me.

I was afraid, as never before.

“What do you want, old woman?” And then—how cruel, how terrible these words: “Don’t you know, old crow, you’re
dead
?”

“Am I?” she said, indifferently, Crow Claw, who was a ghost. “Well, never mind it.”

Then she painted something cool on to my legs, and—just as if Kelbalba had told her—all over my nonexistent feet, following their shape exactly.

The lamp before Gemli had burned very low. I could scarcely see Crow Claw, but yet I could not make a mistake.

“No one loves me,” I said. It was not the cry of a child. I said it, in a way, to excuse myself. The rotting of my skin, my loneliness and inability.

Crow Claw said, “Then you must love yourself enough for two, or three.”

When I woke in the morning, the light shone like silver all over the room—for someone who had not been there had pulled back the drape. The silver feet seemed to be dancing a little, in their corner, as if they had been skipping about all night, and only now settled to pretend they were still.

I had heard the whispers—Ermias—of how my own unattached feet were glimpsed in these rooms. Hetsa, my mother, who had not wanted me, appalled by such sightings, had grown ill and died suddenly.

As I looked
at the silver feet I thought,
Not I, but they know how
.

Presently, after the morning rituals, I was put into them and I myself laced the ribbons, which were new again that day. I have heard of something like this in trying to master another tongue—though I did not myself find it so. All at once—it is in your hands, and under your heart.

I took my honey cup, half full, and walked over to make an offering to ugly, grinning, sensible Lut.

Kelbalba gasped.

She said, “Done!” And then, “Do you know? Can you do it again? For when Blackie comes? He’s too clever, that one. I’d like to see his face.”

“You lost your bet any way,” I said.

“Never had bet. What do you think me? I was trying to make you spit fire, girl. But now you’re
walking.
”

I was. It would need much burnishing. It would need great pains, of care not hurt, to get it right. I have heard them say, years later, that Calistra did not take steps, but glided, as if on runners, and pulled by some invisible uncanny creature to which she had harnessed them.

The feet slid along the floor. One could not raise them, or barely. They knew their way, my body followed, easy, in the dance. They made a faint
ssh-ssh
, the leather soles over the metal. So yet, I was a snake.

Annotation by the Hand of Dobzah

Seeing it is one of my tasks to lace on to my mistress Sirai, every morning, her Feet, I will repeat now that they are no longer of bright silver. She lets them stay tarnished black, though clean within, and refilled at intervals with down. Of course, her lowest legs are scarred quite massively, she calls these marks her “hoofs,” and laughs at them.

I believe that if it cost many in the beginning such work to walk, they would crawl about till the end of their days.

She has seen what I write and says I must strike it out. She tells me all men, all women, are different from each other, what is simple to one may be a severe penance to another, and conversely. She says that in her walking she was motivated by her love, and since love has always motivated her, and is the gift of God, she cannot be judged, nor any other less fortunate.

I therefore
pretended to erase what I had written, but have decided to let it alone. It is like her to say what she has said. But I would have no one think that she did not achieve a great thing. That would be to mislead and wrong those who read here, far more than my mistress.