El and Onine (5 page)

“How did you—”

“You, little Pchi.” She giggled and frolicked in the
water, pushing herself across the tub and farther away from me. Her flirtatious
manner was a part of her charm. I walked around the tub to be near her again.

“I miss her so much,” I said. “Have you seen Minosh?”

She smiled and pulled her head beneath the water and
the gold sediment covered her up to her hairline. Confused by her musings, I
hoped she’d reveal more but this was her way of letting me know she’d said all
she wanted to say. I couldn’t put any of it together, for it was a puzzle with too
many missing pieces.

When Saturnia’s sister came out of her bath, I held
her satchel open for her and waited patiently, as she placed her cygnets
inside. Her kiss made each one small again. After she draped herself in her
linen robe, she picked up her diamond-encrusted stick and held it out to me.

“Come closer,” she whispered with a giggle.

I moved toward her, letting the tip of her stick
touch my frock. She closed her amber eyes and lifted the stick onto my left shoulder.
I kept my gaze on the rim of the tub, except when I snuck a glance at her face.
It was absolutely radiant, rejuvenated by the scalding hot water and the
magical sediment of her home planet. The renewed layer of skin made her look younger,
if that was possible. She held the tip of her stick just above my shoulder,
moving it in a circle ever so gently, as she gestured with her other hand. She
let her fingers dance, as they made some kind of secret communication with her
goddess, and the Venusian healer pulled Tiro’s sting out of my body. She destroyed
the affliction in midair, making it evaporate like smoke in the eye’s light. “All
better,” she said.

I dropped my chin in reverence, and when I looked up
from the rim of the tub, she was gone. I did feel better, but also more lost than
ever. How’d she know I’d come into full sapience? It only just happened. Could
she sense it? And who was she warning me away from—Tiro—Onine? I wondered
if Venusian had the gift to see into our minds like Minosh could read the gold
sediment of their baths.

I was glad Saturnia’s sister was one of my last
bathers. I had to empty all the tubs, scrub them down, and reset the one
hundred and forty-six chains for the next pull. I worked efficiently, all the
while hoping the keeper would return, but he never did. When Tiro called for me
at the gate, I was grateful he ignored me. I rested my head on the side of the
cart, as he drove out of the Temple. I didn’t hear the others get on or off the
cart and when I reached my little shanty, I fell onto my bed of silks, lost to
a dreamless sleep.

***

“Wake up, El!”

A Kyprian shriek yanked me from my sleep and I
rolled to my side before pushing myself up on the bed of silks. The eye hadn’t
risen yet but was slowly making its way up and onto the horizon. The sky from my
open window was purple.

My pain was gone—my muscles didn’t ache, my
shoulder wasn’t sore, my stomach was no longer delicate and I embraced its grumbles.
I rose to greet Bendo, loosely draping myself with the frock I’d worn when I
almost stumbled into Onine. The goat was asleep until she detected my step on
the peat. “Greetings, Bendo.”

Bah! I stroked the top of her head, knowing she
liked that best. She always dug her nose beneath my chin when I did so. Her hot
breath warmed my skin since the air was cool and my cheeks were fresh.

“How’d you sleep?” Now that Minosh was gone, I liked
to talk to Bendo. I could trust her. I only wished she could talk back. “You
know what Saturnia’s sister told me when she bathed?” I asked the goat as if she
were interested in the frivolity of sapient life. “She told me I was special,
just like Minosh used to.”

Bendo bleated when she heard me say Minosh. She
recognized the name of her mistress.

“She told me the goddess has chosen me,” I said.
“And that I must be careful of him—him, she said.”

Him?

A Kyprian wouldn’t refer to another that way.
Saturnia’s sister wasn’t referring to a Venusian at all but warning me about a
sapient.
Do not let him take you.
Could
she have meant Tal? Was Tal going to take me somewhere?

“El.” The greeting startled both Bendo and me, and the
goat bleated softly. The sound of his voice made me lightheaded and I dropped
to the peat moss without turning to look at him. I didn’t know he approached
until I felt his stick on the small of my back. His touch was barely a touch at
all, and the loose frock fell from my shoulders. I felt naked without my veil,
and certainly too undressed to greet a Kyprian.

He didn’t speak again but I knew he wanted me to face
him. The fine hair on my skin stood on end and I breathed in deeply, hoping to
quell my terror. My fingertips tingled and my toes tightened when I leaned on
the ground in front of me to push myself up. I struggled to keep a hand on the
frock. I was afraid to show him my inelegant face once more. It didn’t matter
he’d already seen it in the golden forest, he’d already studied it, traced it,
memorized it.

“I can’t greet you properly, keeper.” Bendo bleated
and I shushed her without thinking. “Please let me go in for my veil.”

He placed the point of his stick on the nape of my
neck and drew it across my skin. I held my breath, knowing I couldn’t avoid
facing him any longer. I turned with closed eyes, wishing I’d only imagined him
in my garden. It seemed impossible for him to be only half-lit, in the darkness
where the eye wasn’t up to warm him, but when the tip of his stick traced the
curve of my left jawline, I knew he was real. I opened my eyes and he pulled
his stick from my face. My legs trembled beneath the frock and my knuckles
turned white with the grip I strained to keep on its trim. Bravely, I searched
Onine’s violet eyes. The hum of the air around me hushed, and everything seemed
to fall away except for the small screeches of the Kyprian tongue. Onine spoke to
me in his language.

“I can’t understand you,” I mumbled.

“Yes you can,” he said with a shriek.

“How?”

“You have not forgotten.” As he continued, I did recognize
words through the shrieks. “You cultivate beauty inside of you now. I have seen
it. It is your potential to procreate that makes you radiant. It overwhelms me
to hear the call of your inner being. I touch you with the point of my stick,
press its tip against your skin just to feel your energy again. I miss you. We may
have conquered the sapients, but you have conquered me and I worship you still.”

I was speechless, struck dumb by his confession.

“Oh, that I could touch you with my fire. I would
remove the covering from my hands and place them on your brow, press my fingers
into the rounded skin beneath your dark eyes, run my fingertips over the
grooves of your pale lips and let them linger until they knew all the
subtleties of your face—your deep-seeded haunts—the same face you
share with your creator.”

“But you can’t,” I said. “You mustn’t.”

“I wonder if touching you is worth an existence of
nothingness. I cannot live with just your gaze for much longer. It cannot be all
I ever know again. You are still mine.”

I couldn’t breath. I felt a tightening in my chest
so strong I fell forward and dropped to my knees. “Please,” I barely spoke.

“You have been selected,” he said. “But they are
ignorant and I will keep him from taking you.”

Onine moved forward and I recoiled. He lifted his
stick and used it to caress the arm that held the silk about my bare skin. If
he was asking me to remove the frock, I didn’t obey. I couldn’t bare my body.
He brought his stick up to the side of my neck and gestured for me to drop my
head to the left. I did as he asked and he dragged the tip of his stick down
along the line of my neck all the way to where Tiro had whipped my shoulder in
the Temple. He held it there for a moment and let out a sigh, as though he
could sense the pain I’d experienced, the pain Saturnia’s sister had taken from
me.

As he examined me, I marked the curves of his torso.
His skin glowed beneath his covering despite the darkness of the early dawn. His
bare neck gave off a blue tint, as if his skin had grown cold. His shoulders slumped
forward and I thought he was going to topple over onto the ground in front of
me. He lost his grip on the stick and it fell onto the peat moss. I reached out
to pick it up and offered it to him but he didn’t take it. I held it there for
a moment and then he took another step forward, as if he were going to reach
for it, but he didn’t and reached for my shoulder instead. I held my breath for
the end.

“No,” Tal’s shout came from another place. “Don’t touch
her.”

I couldn’t see Tal on the other side of my garden
wall, as he rushed toward us. The plea broke the spell and Onine backed away. I
let out a gasp and he mimicked me. I couldn’t express my relief—Bendo
bleated for me. The keeper stared down at me so intensely, so frighteningly, I
felt violated. His whole aspect changed from serene to frazzled in a matter of breaths.
I held the stick out to him again, dropping my eyes to the moss. He snatched it
from me and backed away, drifting into the field and toward the rising eye.

I dropped to the peat moss, and Bendo bowed to greet
me. When Tal rushed at the two of us and pushed the beast aside to swoop down
and pull me into his arms, I barely felt his touch. He held me close to his chest,
cradling me as though it weren’t forbidden to do so.

“You’re safe now,” he said. “He’s gone.” I was
speechless. “What was he doing here?” I’d no idea. “What did he want, El?”

“I’ve—I’ve—” His skin felt cold against
mine, colder than the water from the springs, and I embraced its relief.

“You’re skin is on fire,” he said.

“I’ve been selected.”

***

The steam from the baths made me feel hot. I’d never
known the feeling of warmth before, so I could only guess this was it. Sapient body
temperature remains constant, always cold.

“How come we don’t bathe in hot water, Minosh?” I
was just a youngling when I asked her that question, barely in my second thó.
I’d found it strange our baths didn’t have steam like those at the Temple.

“We only need cold water, my little Pchi,” she’d
said, squeezing my nose lovingly. “Feel your skin.” She led my hand up to touch
my cheek and despite my submersion in the icy bath, my face felt normal, cool.
“Our skin is averse to heat because we are warm-blooded beings.”

“Like the Venusian?”

“No, nothing like them. They are made of fire and need
the heat to survive. We come from the soil, my little Pchi. Here, our body temperature
is stable.”

“What’s stable?”

“It means this is the perfect place for us, just as
we are for it.” I remember her smile was so reassuring when she said it that I
didn’t question her. Everything Minosh told me made sense.

But feeling hot as I was now, knowing I couldn’t ask
her about it, I imagined what she’d say. “Your experience with Onine has made
you susceptible to heat and deep down in your core you feel him becoming a part
of you.” Perhaps I was merely hoping that’s what she’d say.

The thought of Onine becoming a part of me made me unsteady.
As soon as I stirred the tubs, I exited through the cedar door. The eye burned
brilliantly in the sky and the flaming tips of the fires over the pits blurred
the air above them. Tal’s image was like a mirage amidst the vapor. He was
alone at the farthest group of pits stacking the gray rock when I went toward
him. He looked up in my direction and waved me over. I hadn’t seen him since he’d
saved me from Onine’s visit.

“I’m sorry,” he said before I had the chance to say
hello. The little cleft between his eyebrows conveyed his sincerity.

“For what?”

He looked past me and ran the back of his hand
across his brow, leaving a trail of soot on his forehead. The heat from the
fires made me a little delirious and the pits seemed hotter than the steam from
the baths.

“Tiro’s gone,” he said. “The keeper came through
earlier and took him and the other starters to the salt beds.”

Just the mention of my keeper made my skin sweat. I hadn’t
seen him in the Temple and was relieved to know he’d made it out of the darkness
alive.

“Are you feeling better?” Tal reached out his hand
as though he were going to touch my forehead. I recoiled and he dropped it.

“Sure,” I said.

“You don’t look like it. You were burning up. I
could barely keep you—”

“No, I’m fine.”

“It’s just the heat from the baths then?”

I nodded. “Sometimes the smoke makes everything hotter.”
I turned away, trying to break the unsettling look he gave me. He hadn’t
stopped staring at my veil. “I heard about your—” I couldn’t bring myself
to say the words and he looked as far past me as he could.

“Yes, well, I don’t know why they decided that,” he
said. “I mean, I was happy to stay, you know, like you.”

“Celibate?”

I could tell he smiled. “Assigned to you.”

“Oh.” I felt a blush rise up on my already hot
cheeks. I was glad to be wearing the veil. “Em seems like a good match.” I tried
to hide how desperate I was to change the subject.