El and Onine (2 page)

The large braided strings of gold were thick and
heavy, but softer than they looked. When I first pulled them by myself, I got
blisters on the palms of my hands, but soon after I didn’t feel a thing. My
hands became hardened by my labor and I liked it. Minosh would tell me it was a
sign of beauty. “A sapient with strong hands is a beautiful one, my little
Pchi.”

I missed her wisdom, her touch, her love.

“El!” Tiro said. He stood a stick’s length away and raised
his rod to poke my shoulder. “The tub of Qi needs scalding hot water today. The
sisters of the Astros are first to use it.”

“Yes, master.”

To bow was expected and so I dropped my chin to my
chest and let my eyes fall at his feet. When I raised them again, he was gone.
I sensed the change in the air. Tiro’s presence made my breath quicken and since
Minosh wasn’t around to protect me, I feared him even more. I was relieved to
return to my work on the chains.

When I’d pulled all one hundred and forty-six of
them down, I made my way to the valves that determined the water level. I set
each one for mid-range to full since the sisters of the Astros were taller than
most Kyprian, and each more stunning than the next. The sisters came to the
Bathing Temple after every half-moon and though I’d seen them at the baths
since I was a youngling, their splendor still amazed me. In four thó, they hadn’t
changed. They were radiant with their honey colored skin and feminine curves,
their long flaxen hair—more beautiful than mine—tied up on their
heads and braided with colorful gemstones that enticed the bloomflies to
flitter about their crown.

“They say the sisters of the Astros are the most
desired creatures on Venus,” Minosh had told me once in the quiet of our
shanty. “The Kyprian fight one another to impress the sisters, hoping to be
granted their chastity.”

In my innocence, I thought their chastity was the
ring of colored stones on their head.

“They are the purest, my little Pchi. They are the most
refined flames.”

“What does that mean?” I’d asked.

She hesitated in her answer and then told me they
were the goddess’s sacred entourage. “The most sublime of her retinue.” Every
Kyprian caught the light on their skin a certain way, but these seven sparkled in
the eye’s rays. I thought that’s what she meant.

While the water filled the tubs, I ran through the bathhouse
to the pits on the other side of the Temple. I wanted to reach one of the fire starters
to remind him the water needed to be scalding hot. Sometimes Tiro didn’t tell
them the half-moon had passed and they didn’t know the sisters were coming to
bathe. For obvious reasons, none of the fire starters were allowed in the room
with the bathers.

As I approached the cedar door, I reached out to
push it open, but before I could Onine pulled it from the other side. I fell
forward, riding on my momentum and was caught in a tumble toward the keeper without
time to recover from the collision. Luckily, he was swifter than I and held out
his stick to prevent our contact. I felt the jab of its point right between my
ribs and the wind was taken from me. The last thing I saw before the world went
black was pain—or maybe it was pleasure—on his perfect face.

I met Onine when I’d almost reached my second thó. He
came to our section of the Temple shortly after Minosh had first taken me to
see it. I say
he
as if Kyprian have
gender, but from what we knew they were all the same. We gave them gender
because it was natural for us to do so. It was probably wrong to refer to Tiro,
or Onine for that matter, as seed-bearers, but I couldn’t help it. To me, the
keepers and masters were like the sapients who distributed the seed, and the
bathers like those of us who cultivated it.

I lost my senses when I fell to the ground but Minosh
was there in the oblivion and I heard Tal’s voice in the darkness. “El,” he
whispered. “Get up. I’m waiting.”

I opened my eyes and looked up, but my vision was soft
and I couldn’t see the fire starter. The keeper was alone, standing over me
with the pained expression I’d imagined on his face before I blacked out. When
I finally spoke, he relaxed his countenance.

“Forgive me, keeper,” I said. “I shouldn’t have been
running.”

Onine had always been a Kyprian of few words, having
barely spoken to me in the time I’d worked under him, though I’d heard him
address others. He held his stick out and offered it as an aide to get me up
off the ground. I wrapped my hand around its tip and held it. He flicked it
ever so lightly and I was lifted to my feet.

“Thank you, keeper.”

I kept my eyes on the ground in front of me out of
respect, if not fear. I’d always avoided looking into Kyprian eyes. Minosh
warned me they had the power to intoxicate.

Onine lifted his stick and placed its point into the
fabric of my veil beneath my chin. Had I been running more quickly, had I
fallen into him, had he not stopped me from touching him, he’d have perished,
and though I deserved punishment for my carelessness, I was certain he wouldn’t
scold me. He raised my chin and brought my face up to meet his, forcing me to gaze
into his pale eyes, making me drunk on the depths of the cosmos. I saw the
whole universe there—even the goddess. Kypria revealed her flame and it was
soon etched in my mind forever. I wondered if Onine knew I’d see such splendor
in his eyes. It was as though I sensed the whole of him in me, the heat on my
skin, the fire in my belly, as though he were crawling inside and pulling me
into him at the same time, as though wrapping me in an embrace and letting my
sapience sink into his gold skin. In that fleeting moment, we exchanged worlds.

When it was over, I was left with a chill. He looked
past me again, as if I was no longer there, his stoic expression replacing the
hurt I’d seen before. Or maybe I’d only imagined it in the first place. He tapped
his stick in front of him and tossed his head back before he turned away, opening
the cedar door of the bathing room and disappearing into the steam of the tubs.

Beneath my veil, my skin prickled with sweat. I felt
the weight of my grains and milk rise to make an escape, and I held my mouth
shut until the wave of nausea passed. The violent urge to vomit was the only
trace of his splendor.

“El,” Tal said. “Are you all right?” He abandoned
the fire he tended to and ran to my side as soon as Onine left.

“I’m fine.” I hoped he could see my gratitude
beneath my veil when I smiled, but his eyes narrowed. “The baths must be
scalding hot this morning,” I said, as I turned to go.

“Wait,” he said, as he reached for my arm but then
stopped himself in time.

“El!” Tiro’s call came from inside the bathhouse.

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

Tal couldn’t keep me, as I bolted for the cedar door.
Into the steam, I found my bearings by following the wax that lit the path
along the tubs.

“I’m here, master,” I said, as Tiro leered at the
sisters of the Astros floating into the Temple for their baths. I didn’t mean
to spy on him but when he realized I’d seen him, he gave me a grin.

“Clumsy sapient.” He raised his stick and brought it
down hard on my shoulder. The sting made my eyes water.

“Forgive me, master.”

“Get to work before I give you another,” he said, as
he scowled and jetted off to check the rest of the baths.

***

I rose before the eye and went out to look at the map
in the cosmos. The clusters of fire were splattered across a black, black sky. I
sat on the peat moss and named the constellations, each one as Minosh had taught
me. Bendo slept between the rows of cabbages I’d planted at the start of the
season. She never ate the cabbage but it was her favorite spot to lie in the
garden. As I sat in the dark looking up at the endless sky, I whispered to my creator.

“I miss you, Minosh. I don’t like it here without
you. Now that you’re gone, the master doesn’t restrain himself.”

I was frightened to say Tiro’s name aloud for fear
it would make him appear. On more than one occasion I’d felt the stifling
atmosphere of his presence lurking in the shadows by my shanty. The idea was
impossible, he wouldn’t come when the eye slept, but I felt the oppression of
his spirit nonetheless.

“He taps me with his stick more than I deserve,” I
said into the darkness. “And he does so with such spite. He despises me,
Minosh, and I don’t know why.”

His assault would always come when we first arrived
at the baths, before Onine passed through my section. The keeper didn’t know about
the master’s cruelty since Tiro hid it well.

“I can’t win his admiration,” I said. “I’m not one
of them. I’ll never be anything but sapient.”

As I spoke, looking up at Luna’s vast landscape, a
burst of light shot through the blackness and burned brilliantly for several
seconds before burning out all together.

“Is that you, Minosh? Are you up in the sky?”

She didn’t answer though I heard a voice. I thought a
Kyprian whispered in my ear.

“You are the one,” the hollow voice said. “It is
you, El.”

I turned to the side almost certain I’d see Onine a
stick’s length away but I was alone in the silence. I don’t know how I recognized
his voice but I did. I thought about him for a moment, his stature, his radiance.
He was a beautiful creature and yet he possessed something both strange and
familiar, something I was dying to know.

The black sky started to blue, as the eye strove to
slay night once more over the golden forest. The moonbugs chirred in the tall grass
and Bendo stirred. I watched Venus rise bright in the sky, as Jupiter set, the
two balancing one another in their opposition far above the planet. I wondered
what the Kyprian were doing up there at that moment. I closed my eyes to
imagine their goddess radiating her beauty across the whole planet.

“It must be a magnificent terrain filled with shiny
beings and incredible vegetation and epic wonders to witness,” I said to the
purpling sky. “I’d give anything to see Kypria’s realm, to feel the warmth she
emits, to bask in her radiance, if only once.”

I started to shiver when a chill air rushed in from
the field. I squeezed my arms tight around me and pulled in my knees. The eye would
be high enough soon and I’d have to prepare for the Bathing Temple. I rolled
off the peat moss and crossed the garden. Bendo was awake and I greeted her
with a loving pat on the head.

***

Tal lit the eleventh fire, as I crossed the deck to
speak with him. I’d planned on inventing some reason to slip out to see him but
didn’t need to when Onine took Tiro away. I had watched with interest, as my
keeper communicated with the floor master in their mysterious tongue, their
language sounding like a series of sharp but muted shrieks that rose and dropped
with a stilted cadence.

“We will never understand their language,” Minosh
had said. “They do not intend for us to know it since they speak ours.”

“How’d they learn ours so easily?”

She’d told me they could communicate with us from
the beginning. “I would imagine nothing is above their learning, my little
Pchi.” Only their appearance outmatched their intelligence. Kypria and her
followers were exceptional beings and at times I wondered why they’d chosen our
planet.

As I approached the pits, Tal turned to greet me. I
couldn’t see the smile through the silk covering on his mouth but I imagined it,
even his one crooked tooth. “What’re you doing here?”

“I was hoping we could talk,” I said, as I scanned
the pits around him.

His scowl marked his concern about being caught on a
break. “Come here.”

He led me in between two unlit pits on the far side
of the camp, farthest from the other three fire starters who lit the pits on
the other side.

“So?” He was sweet. His eyes lit up when he said
so?
It was then that I realized he still
favored me. It was a secret we shared. Tal and I’d been assigned at one time
but were no longer matched. When I reached my fifth thó, I was supposed to be
paired with the one the goddess had chosen for me. Tal was selected to be my
partner when I was born but last season when the grain fell from the wheat, our
union was annulled with no explanation. We were told the goddess had changed
her mind about my duty to procreate and decided I’d stay celibate until my end.

“It is an honor, my little Pchi,” Minosh had said.
“You have been selected to remain untouched like the sisters of the Astros.”

It was hardly compensation since my beauty was
sorely lacking. “But I want to have a youngling just like you,” I’d said.

She consoled me for several moonscapes after the announcement.
The news devastated me. It broke my heart to know I’d never bring a sapient forth
from my own body, from seed, just like my creator had. My dreams of passing on
the things Minosh had taught me were dashed when I was reassigned to celibacy.

Before then, Tal and I’d spent time together. His creator
would sit with Minosh and sip dandelion tea in the garden while Tal and I’d run
through the wheat field. When the blades were tall enough we’d play secret
find, taking turns hiding a jade pebble until the seeker found the hidden treasure.
One eve we tumbled into a fit of giggles so exhilarating we couldn’t stop.
Unveiled and free, we laughed until he kissed me. His soft lips touched mine as
gently as the breeze and I could smell his smoky breath. The fires stayed with
him—in him—but I liked it.