The Days of the Golden Moons (The Two Moons of Rehnor, Book 5) (16 page)

“And
brother-in-law,” she added.

“Ay
yah, him too,” I agreed.

“So
what happened?”  Hesitantly, she sat down beside me, resigned to get wet as I.

“I
tried very hard to pretend he was a normal child.  Rekah loved him, you see.  I
decided that if my baby could love him, he must not be all bad.  I spoke to
him, I chatted as if he would respond and when he didn't, I made up responses
for him.  I put food in front of him though he would turn away from it,
refusing to eat it.  Eventually, he started to.”

“Did
you make him eggs?” she asked.  “He can’t resist eggs.”

I
ignored her and continued my tale.  “After a time, six months or more, he came
into the house covered in filth.  I ordered him to stand on the porch while I
grabbed a cloth and washed him down.  Underneath the mud were cuts and
bruises.  When I asked him what happened, of course he wouldn't say. Somehow
though, I got out of him that he had gotten into a fight with a bunch of the
village boys.  Always they were after him, you know, in the beginning.  Nobody
knew much about him and all of a sudden there he was living with us, half Mishak,
and we were expected to acknowledge that he was our future King.  Of course,
all the wild boys, sons of chiefs most of them, they set out to challenge him
at every turn.  He took quite a beating that day and didn't fight back.  Do you
know why?  If he did, he would have killed all of them.  He didn't want to, of
course.  He knew a year or so later they would all be his friends, so he took
the beating and turned the other cheek so it is said.”

“He
told you this?” 

“More
or less,” I replied.  “But that is not why I brought you here.”

“Garinka,”
she sighed, sitting up and picking at the damp leather of her dress.  “You have
shared with me so far two very interesting stories, and yet this is not why you
brought me here?  Please tell me something relevant now so I won't go home and
cut off the Great Emperor's dick because he's screwed every woman in Karupatani,
in addition to every woman on Rozari.  If I had a laser, I’d be blasting it
off.  I tell you, he had better be heading to the Command Center right now
while you are stalling me because neither poor old Keko nor that big Karupta dude
are going to be able to protect him.”

I
laughed at her words.  “I do like you, MaKani.  You are indeed a Warrior
Queen.”

“You
are stalling, Garinka,” she insisted.  “Are you trying to protect him?”

“This
is what I want to tell you, MaKani,” I continued.  I did not think I was
stalling on Senya’s behalf.  If I was stalling at all, it was to avoid joining
in the dinner preparations.  “Several years later, shortly after Lookah was
born, I was out taking a walk in the early morning hours along that trail back
there.”  I pointed to the trail we had just come from.  “The MaKennah had just
turned sixteen years then.  It was August like now.  My husband, Pedah, and my
father-in-law, the King were worried because the MaKennah had not yet been with
a girl.  Many girls were after him of course.  All the time, you know.  They
chased him like mad, and he would come running into the house and lock the
doors or climb up on the roof or into a tree just to get away from them.  My
husband even asked me to find for him a woman to teach him.  They were a bit
afraid that he, like his Uncle Akan, might favor the men."  I laughed again
for the thought of this was so ridiculous, even as I knew it was then.  The
MaKani coughed.  “Had I not still been nursing Lookah, I would have been his
teacher.”

The
MaKani made a noise like she could not swallow.

“Well,
who better than I?” I asked plainly when she had ceased to make this noise. 
The MaKani did not know how beautiful I was then.  I was not always this fat
old woman with sagging breasts and lines in my face.  “I was young and slim,
with thick black hair.  I was the daughter of a chief, the wife of a Prince and
cousin to the MaKennah through his paternal grandmother.  There was no one with
better bloodlines than I, save my sister who was not married to a prince but
later too had her virginity saved for the MaKennah.”

“I
think I'm going to be ill.”  The MaKani closed her eyes.  “You talk about it
like he’s a champion racehorse.  Did the King collect stud fees for him too? 
Tell me, Garinka.  Does he have a bunch of little bastards running around
Karupatani that I don’t know about?”

“You
do not understand our ways, MaKani,” I replied.  “And as far as any of us know,
there is none but your own son.  Whether or not he is a bastard, I will leave
that for you to decide.”

She
made another noise which I did not understand whether it meant that she was
relieved or more angered.  “So you didn't because you were breastfeeding
Lookah?  I'm surprised that stopped you.” 

“Don't
be sharp with me, MaKani,” I retorted.  “This is our way whether or not you
like it.  Let me tell you that your husband has a reputation for being cold with
all his lovers.  He had no concern for any girl's pleasure, only his own.  But
that is the way it is with these de Kudisha Princes, the most spoilt group of
men every to live in this galaxy.  If I had taught him, he might be as great a
lover as he is King.”

“Oh
he can be,” she replied haughtily.   “Maybe it just took the right girl.”

“That
is good for you then.”  I smiled and showed her I was not angry.  “Tuman is a
terrible lover.  Pedah was much more sensitive, but I won't talk about that.  Now,
let me continue my story.  I was walking the path that morning, and I did espy
this very meadow filled with flowers.  I had walked this path many, many times
since I came to live in this village and always in the early morning as I left
my house and my babies asleep with Tuman.  Then I might get a few moments'
peace and exercise before my day began.  Sometimes, I did even meet Pedah
here.  Not once, never, did I ever come across this glade before.”

“Maybe
it was always too dark,” she suggested.  “Or maybe you were too distracted. 
Both brothers, huh?  Did you have a go with Sorkan too?”

“No!
 And not Merakoma either if that is your next question.”  Although I did not
speak this aloud to her, I would have if he had asked.  He was forever devoted
to his dead wife, my mother’s cousin.  “Do you want to hear my story or shall
we return to the village?”

“Okay.”
 She rolled her eyes and lay back in the grass again.  “Go for it.  You were
walking on the path, and you saw this meadow which you had never seen before.”

“Here
it was always as the whole way there.”  I pointed behind us at the fallen logs,
ferns, dirt and wild berries.  “Never had I seen such a grassy meadow and
variety of wild flowers all together.”

“And?”
 She grew impatient.  Perhaps the darkness bothered her or perhaps she was
hungry and anxious to attend the banquet.

“So
I came off the trail and walked into this glade when I did now discover the
MaKennah lying here just as we are among the grass and flowers.  His wrists
were cut and seeping blood, and he was pale and unmoving.  I thought he was
dead.” 

I
was so relieved that he was dead.  He is over and done with, I thought, and we
shall not have to worry after him again.  Every night when he did not return to
his bedroom, Tuman could not sleep.  We did not know what would become of him. 
Would the Mishaks return and take him away?  Would they kill him?  Or would he
grow up to rule over all of us with his foul temper, for we knew even then he
had strange powers that would emerge when he was angry.  Would he destroy us
all?  Of course, I chastised myself for such evil thoughts but still I didn't
move. 

“I
should have run back to the village and gotten help,” I told her.  I could even
have stood here and screamed, and surely someone would have heard me.  I did
not though.  I just stood watching him.”

“Obviously,
he wasn't dead.  Or maybe he was.  I think he’s on his fifteenth life or
something like that by now.”  She picked a handful of wet grass and tossed it
in the air.

“No. 
I watched him until finally after a time, he stirred.  He awakened and he
smiled and his eyes grew bright, and for a moment I thought it was for my
presence that he was so pleased for never before had I seen him as this.  He
laughed, he was so happy.  I knelt down beside him and asked him what made him
so, and he laughed again.”  

He
was so beautiful when he was happy.  If he had asked just then, I would have pleasured
him.  I wanted to.  Pedah and Tuman were still young and beautiful, but the
MaKennah was an untouched boy with a body that knew not the pleasures I could
introduce to him.  He didn't want me though. 

“He
sat up and then he did something amazing,” I told the MaKani.  “He rubbed his
wrists together, and they healed, before my very eyes.  The cuts stopped
weeping and immediately scabbed over.  A few hours later the sores were gone
completely.  Whilst we were still in the meadow there, he rose to his feet and
turned his face to the sky. 

What makes you so happy?
I asked of him. 

Katie,
he
replied and then he raised his arms and disappeared right before my very eyes. 

I
did not know what this word meant, Katie.  I thought perhaps it was some kind
of new drug.  A few days later, he told Tuman, Pedah and the King that he had
been with a girl from a distant planet in a metaphysical way.  We all laughed
at that, but it was true.  Later on, I understood that when I had come upon
him, he was near death as in order to visit you as he had done, he had to be
near enough to death that his soul could depart his mortal body.  He killed his
body so that he could come to you and give to you his virginity.”

“How
do you know this?” she asked though the challenge had gone out of her voice.

“Did
he come to you then?”

She
didn’t answer, just picked more grass and tossed it in the air.

“I
know something else,” I said, looking at her steadily.   I did not know if she would
believe what I was about to say.  She would think I was truly this mad old
Karupta woman, yet I believed this with every fiber of my being.

“What?”
 She wiped at her face smearing grass stains on her cheeks.

“He
is not of this world.”

“That’s
for sure.” 

“I
say this to you in all seriousness.”  My heart pounded hard as I spoke this.  “He
is not mortal.”

“Garinka,”
she sighed and rose to her feet.  “I was almost completely with you on the
first revelation, but you've lost me here.”

“You
do not believe me?”  I was disappointed.  I wanted her to understand him.  I
wanted her to know that he was unlike any other man, and she could not expect to
treat him as if he were.

“No,
that's patently absurd.  I am out of here.  I've had enough of Karupatani
weirdness today, and Garinka, this is just the icing on the proverbial cake.”

“Katie,”
I called her by her name.  “He is not simple like you or me.  We cannot do what
he does.  We cannot separate our souls from our mortal bodies and transverse
time and space as he does.”

“He's
got alpha and beta proteins which give him weird powers,” she replied as if it
were that simple.  She fumbled through the brush, searching for the path back
to the trail which would lead us to the village.

“He
is an angel,” I cried, my voice trembling.

“More
likely a devil,” she snorted.  “How the hell do we get out of here?”

“He’s
come here for a reason,” I told her.  “I think he’s even an Archangel.  I think
he’s Mika’el himself.”

She
stopped and turned back to face me.

“Have
you been getting into the Barkuti, Garinka?”

“I
know you think me crazy,” I said quickly, catching up to her.  “Sometimes, even
I think I have lost my wits.  If you look at him, you will see it, the aura,
the Heavenly glow.”

“Oy
vey, Garinka,” the MaKani sighed.  “All I see is the aura and glow of a really
crabby, unhappy man who works too hard and doesn't sleep or eat enough.”

“No,”
I protested, shaking my head as she walked forward without me.  “I tell you
this not because I am some crazy old Karupatani woman with too much time on her
hands.  I know of these things.”

“You
could have fooled me.”  She stomped through the brush.  “You’re sounding an
awful lot like a crazy old Karupatani woman with too much time on her hands.”

“Ten
years ago when my father-in-law the King died, I had nothing more to do with my
life.  My children were grown, Tuman was gone already as many years as Pedah
was dead.  There was no purpose for me until one day I received a letter.  It
said at the behest of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Rehnor, I was to be
admitted into the University of Turko.  My education and all expenses were paid
by HIM.  I packed up, and I left immediately telling my son and daughter I was
off to live with my sister. 

For
ten years, I have been studying, and for the last couple now I have an
associate professorship.  My son and daughter still think I visit my sister
every year for nine months at a time.”

The
MaKani pulled up short so that I nearly bumped into her.