Red Moon Rising (9 page)

“Do not struggle,” the man-Cheese says in a low voice. “Whatever you do, do not struggle.”

I don't know why I listen to him, but I do. My body goes limp. And then there's a searing, fiery pain across the back of my neck as one of the red-hot metal sticks brands my skin. I cry out at the same time Temple does, our screams filling the night air, echoing through the ring of caves.

And then there is such a jubilant cry from the crowd that even as I lie in agonizing pain in the scrub, gasping, choking, my hands held behind my back, I feel the jubilation lifting me up—or, no, hands are lifting me. Temple and I are being carefully carried above the heads of the crowd until we are deposited at the mouth of the cave with the pool. The tall woman is there, the ovals on the sides of her head beating in and out, in and out. The metal in her hair shines in the bloodred light of the Red Crescent. She lifts her silver-and-gold-painted face to the night sky and trills a noise that comes from somewhere that is not shared with humans. Jo appears at her side and translates, pausing as she searches for the right words:

“Now we, Klarakova,
krasnoakafsa
of Kihuut, and A'alanatka, partner and
tontakafsa
to chieftess, watch over you as the gods watch over us. Mayrikafsa, She Who Cry the Most, and Kalashava, She of Sweet Scrub, you are . . . now one with Kihuut, with people of A'akowitoa. You have third eye to watch for blessings and curses. You are us. We . . . you.”

The woman walks to us, Fist at her side. They both hold
out their hands, and together, in voices somehow both melodious and made of quakes, they say, “
Lo'a Lia
.”

“Welcome,” Jo translates. “Welcome home.”

And she places our hands in theirs.

15

THE MORNING COMES EARLY AND
the work goes late for the Cheese, too. But in different ways than with the settlers. I am in an open space of dirt and large boulders. We are here earlier than yesterday; the morning suns have not yet reached their full height. Jo is with me, carrying a large woven bag of mysteries, just has she has done every day for weeks now. Yesterday, it contained a broken handbow, a spear, a broken light rifle, and a rock. The day before, it contained nothing but handfuls of what she called “knife dust.” The day before that it was full of pebbles.

“Remember you mouth?” Jo clacks her jaws and snuffle-laughs. “Anything can be weapon,” she says. My cuts and bruises—and growing swiftness at avoiding more cuts and bruises—are proving her right.

Temple is not here. She is never here. I have seen her twice since the fire ceremony, and both those times only for an instant as she ran by in a clump of Cheese children laughing and chasing a plini. They bounced rocks off its hard shell as its fast little legs carried it away in a cloud of dust. It appears the Cheese do indeed respect that she is still a little girl, and, even though I hate them, I am grateful for this allowance.

Jo tosses the bag on the ground and smiles. “What in this bag?” she asks me.
“Neh plitoka?”

“
Neh plitoka?”
I repeat, feeling my tongue trip over the words. “In the bag?” I kick it. “There's nothing in the bag.”

“
Naa,
” Jo says, shaking her head. “You are wrong. There is not nothing in this bag.
Mara
in this bag.”

“The wind?” I say, confused.

Jo nods, smiling wide, showing off her sharpened teeth. “Today we practice running like the wind, Tootie.”

“Tootie?” I say. “It's just Rae. Or Ramona. Not Tootie. ‘Tootie' means ‘to stink.'” I hold my nose to indicate its meaning.

“Ah, then this name work on
maa kali
—many level—yes? Now, run, Tootie.”

Jo whistles and a
Kwihuutsuu
—a small nasty-looking one, with extra-sharp teeth and deeply pink scales—plummets to the ground as if the Red Crescent has spit her at us.

“Go, Kwihuu, sweet baby beast. Find your lunch.”

“Lunch?!” I yell, starting to run and tripping over my
boots, thankful that at least I no longer wear heavy, cumbersome skirts. The baby
Kwihuutsuu
throws her head to the sky, screeches out a deafening caw, and flies right at me.

“Use third eye, Tootie,” Jo calls after me, touching the back of her neck to indicate the raw scar on mine. “If Klara think you worthy to be warrior, then
be
warrior.”

“Aaaaah!” I scream, and take off as fast as I can as the creature darts and dives and pecks at me. I did not ask for a searing-hot stick of metal to brand my skin. I did not ask for this third eye. I do not ask to be a warrior. And yet . . . here I am.

“Run as the wind, Tootie. You pray to Mara today.” Jo snuffles out a long laugh. “Hopefully you will also learn to watch close. Be strong. Be faster.” She laughs again.

I curse her and run, sweating, around the entirety of the open space, which, to me, feels like circling the suns and back again.

I round the far corner of the space and as I do, I pass the man-Cheese with blue eyes, the one I have learned is called Ben-ton, my long-lost cousin Benny, whom I only knew as a babe and don't remember at all. He brings canteens and supplies to the clutch of boys who also come to the practice grounds every day. He has been watching me these many days, as I shoot or run or fall, and I do not like how his eyes narrow and roam when he sees me. Each time I see him, I find it harder to see the nice things I saw about him on the night of the ceremony. Perhaps I mistook cunning interest for niceties.

“What is your lesson today, cousin?” he calls to me as I stop briefly to catch my breath.

“Mara,” I pant. “Dactyls. Running. Not dying.”

Ben-ton laughs. “Jo likes teaching lessons about harnessing the air as a weapon. She remembers the old days.”

The baby dactyl is so high in the sky now, I can barely see her. It's nice to have a minute to breathe. “I don't understand what you mean,” I say.

Ben-ton steps closer, his voice low. “Jo remembers the plague. She was a child then, you know, when the
Origin
crashed. When, after the fighting, suddenly sickness raged and the humans were blamed. The air brought death. She has been obsessed ever since.”

“Tootie!” Jo yells from the other side of the open space. “Is not resting time!” She blows a silent whistle hanging around her neck and the baby dactyl is upon me like a bolt of electricity. I am running before I have a chance to ask any more questions.

Ben-ton laughs as I fly by, then calls out, “Natka!” He throws a canteen. The boy I fought the first night—the son of Klara and Fist—catches it with ease and drains it. He and a group of his friends are in the same place they were yesterday and the day before and the day before that and so on. They are like prairie spiders hiding and waiting to jump. They practice throwing small rocks tied to long ropes in loops above my head. I flinch as I pass and they begin to laugh.

“
La gowa hee ta!
” one of them shouts at me. It is a
rough translation but I think he has just yelled “She pees now!” at me.

“
Mayrikafsa looa'a kakee!
” another shouts. Again, I am not sure what this means, but think it has something to do with a suckling baby.

“
Pitar!
” Natka yells. This is something he calls me all the time. No one will translate, but Klara hates it. She will flick him on the head with her long claws every time she hears him say it. “
Mayrikafsa pitar!
” he yells, and the boys laugh and laugh. Ben-ton looks like he's trying to stifle a grin. Either that or he needs to visit the latrine. Kwihuu dives at my head, scraping my scalp with her beak, and I can't respond to Natka, though I would ask him how his hand is feeling. I can see it seeping through its bandage. I am only slightly surprised at how
not
guilty I feel about his lingering wound.

I run now faster than I ever have before, feeling as though my heart and my anger will explode any second and shoot me into the sky like the
Origin
reborn.

It has been long enough for the suns to begin their descent in the sky and yet, I am still running from the gum baby dactyl. Even she seems to be tiring; her pecking at my head is no longer strong enough to draw blood.

I stumble twice, fearing that at any moment I will be struggling for breath and seeing stars. I am shocked that I haven't seen them already. There must be something about this village that helps me keep my breath about me. Maybe
it is that the heat and dust are less here among the caves and canyon walls than out by the gorge and the homesteads. It is perplexing.

Finally, Jo holds her hand up, swishing her claws together, signaling we are done for the day. I fall to the ground at her feet and roll onto my back, puffing for air, sweating puddles into the dirt. She empties a canteen onto my face and I relish the coolness, slurping what I can from the falling water.

“Rae!” I hear Temple's familiar shout and for a moment I am lost, not remembering where we are or what has happened. I feel as though I am back in the field, resting, and Temple is coming to tell me of Aunt Billie's flare or of Boone's insistence that it is time for supper. How I long to hear Boone tell me how bossy I am, to hear him crooning at Raj, to be able to fuss at him for those busted gogs.

I sit up, shaking water from my face and hair, and see her plummeting toward me, a comet trailing red, as her hair is continually caked and matted with red dirt now. She is upon me in no time, knocking me back down, hugging me, rolling in the dirt. I am laughing at her girlish kisses to my forehead. She is laughing, too, having adopted a few snickers that sound like the Cheese's. As she laughs, I see one of her teeth has been sharpened.

“Temple!” I push her from my lap and onto the dirt, making her face me. I grab her cheeks, squeezing them between my thumb and forefinger so that her lips splay
open and I can see the tooth better. “What happened to your tooth?”

“I got my first kill,” she says with triumph, her eyes sparkling. “That's what I was coming to tell you. Tootie.” She winks and snort-laughs as she rummages through the woven pack on her back. She pulls out a shell that is about as long as her forearm. “One of the plini. I got it with this.” She puts the shell down at my feet and pulls an old handbow from the sack. It is obviously broken, the laser generator smashed.

“Don't call me Tootie,” I say. “I am still Rae.” I pick up the shell and turn it over in my hands. It has been cleaned of all traces of living animal. “How did you kill it? Did you smack it on the head with a broken handbow?” I smile at her, mouth closed, not showing my own unsharpened teeth, not wanting to think of her tooth and what Papa would say.

“No, silly,” Temple says. “I used one of these.” She pulls a long piece of metal out of the bag. “It's like a light arrow, but made of metal. Very effective.”

I take the stick from her and inspect the deadly point. Ah. I see now. The Cheese have fitted the broken handbow to shoot these sharpened pieces of metal. It is genius, really. It requires no charging in the suns and appears to be very effective indeed. I pluck at the strings. The spring action reminds me of the clapping hands on my stone statue so many moons ago. A melancholy feeling settles over me as
I hand the metal stick and the handbow back to Temple.

“They sharpen a tooth for each of your first kills,” Temple says, grinning. “I am one of the youngest and quickest of our whole clan.” Her face, beneath the dirt and sweat, is glowing.

“It is not our clan,” I say to Temple in a low voice.

Her smile falls. “You are not glad for me?”

“Of course I'm glad for you, Temple, it's just . . .” I don't know what to say. It's only been a few weeks and already she is so much like them. “Don't you want to see Aunt Billie and Papa again? Don't you want to find out what happened to Boone?”

“Can't I do all of these things, Mayri—Rae?” she asks, her lips tightening into a line. “Can't I miss Aunt Billie
and
mourn Papa
and
dream of Boone while at the same time accomplishing brave and mighty feats that our township does not think worthy of a girl-child?” She is near whispering now, her eyes growing bright in the light of the waning suns.

“I will always believe you are brave and mighty, Temple. You have
always
been so.” I put my hand on hers. “But I do not believe Papa is dead,” I say, not at all sure of this conviction—only that I feel like my bones would know if Papa were gone to the gods. “And I do believe we will find a way home.”

Temple stands and shakes her head. “I am sorry you are not happy for me.” She puts her things back into the bag and starts to walk away.

I jump to my feet. “Temple. Wait! I did not say I'm not happy for you. I only meant, don't forget where we come from.”

“I've heard some Cheese say we are the children of humans, the children of people who came here and murdered innocent Kihuut in order to steal their land,” Temple says, her voice taking on an eerie Cheese accent.

“We
are
children of humans, Temple, I don't think there's any way around that. . . .” She makes Papa's hush-your-gum-mouth pinched-finger move and it surprises me so much I am momentarily mute.

“They speak of our people murdering those from Hosani, too. That the Origin Massacre was really one where the homesteaders unleashed a magic, invisible weapon. They say we are children of people who doomed humans to never escape this moon.”

She is scaring me with this talk. She sounds like Ben-ton. “Temple,” I say. “Come on. You
know
where we come from. This is—”

“But really, our ancestors gave us a gift,” she says, interrupting. “Did you know that, Mayrikafsa? A gift. We are not the children of humans, not really.” Temple's mouth is in a tight line, more serious than I've seen in a long time. She looks me dead in the eyes. “We are the children of Oonatka, Oonan, Mara, and Ebibi.” She touches her chest and closes her eyes. When she opens them she says, “We are born of this moon just like the Cheese. Why would you think anything else?”

“Because we come from the other gods, Temple,” I say, my voice rising. “Our own gods.”

Temple shakes her head. “The gods that say girls must stay quiet and covered and work to make the boys happy and healthy? We were born on this moon.
Of
this moon. Those wrongheaded human gods had nothing to do with it.”

I can only stand and gape as she walks away. Her colored hair has grown longer, wilder. It sways in the breeze and blends with the surroundings.