El and Onine (3 page)

“I need to ask you,” I said. “What happened when I almost
ran into the keeper?”

He shrugged. “You fell on your back like a bolt. If
I could’ve reached you, I would’ve.”

I smiled beneath my veil but he didn’t know it.

“What did the keeper do?”

His pupils widened ever so slightly. “What could he
do?”

For many moonscapes I’d thought about that moment,
one that would live with me forever, one that had changed my life. “Did he …” I
couldn’t bring myself to ask.

“He froze, I guess,” Tal said. “He didn’t try to catch
you if that’s what you’re asking.” He snorted a little when he said it.

I closed my eyes, recalling the pleasure of the
moment.

“But he looked confused, I guess,” he said. “Like he
wanted to help you. That’s the best way to describe it.” I held my breath. “I mean,
he seemed upset. Almost sad.”

“Sad?”

“I know,” he said. “Impossible. Maybe it was a
reflection.”

Sapients can see their emotions reflected on the
faces of others, but never on those of Venusians.

“Maybe—”

“El!” The shout came from inside the Temple. Tiro had
returned and I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

“Go,” Tal said. “Hurry.”

I rushed in, trying my best to think up an excuse.
The sisters of the Astros weren’t due for a full moonscape, but Bellamé was
coming in to bathe and I could say I needed to let the fire starters know. It
was a poor excuse, but I couldn’t think of another. Tiro was leaning over the
kidney-shaped tub when I reached him.

“Yes, master.”

“Where were you?”

“I went to see Ta—the fire starters to tell
them the—”

“Stupid sapient,” he said. “Fill the salts and
polish the gold in this tub. It’s beginning to lose its luster.”

The kidney-shaped tub was one of the most exquisite
yellows in the Temple. Its gold inlay was radiant, especially when the eye shone
directly down through the glass above it. If it was losing its luster, I couldn’t
tell.

“Yes, master.”

I let out a small sigh when he left me to go out to
the fire pits. I hoped he wasn’t headed for Tal. He couldn’t have known it was him
I went out to see.

Onine had made his rounds already and I was certain
he’d left when he took Tiro with him, but he came back. When he floated by, I stopped
thinking about what Tal said and the shiny kidney-shaped tub and the empty salt
vats. The wind from his stride stirred my veil and blew it ever so slightly off
my chin. I inhaled when he passed and smelled the sweet scent of his skin. I’d
never noticed his smell before, but at that moment I couldn’t imagine him
without it. I glanced up at him, as he glided by, hoping to catch a glimpse of
his pale eyes. He looked away but I grinned beneath my veil when I noticed his smile.
He’d caught me looking at him and I was grateful the veil covered my blushing
cheeks.

I polished the kidney-shaped tub until Tiro called
for me again. “You will finish after moonscape,” he said.

No one worked overtime at the Bathing Temple. The
Kyprian disappeared before darkness settled in. While sapients rejoiced at night’s
arrival, the aliens renounced it. Minosh told me it was because they were
incapable of surviving without the eye’s light. By the time it sunk beneath the
horizon, they were safely in their greenhouses soaking up the warmth of a fake eye.
Faraway from the sapient shanties, Venusian glass houses lit up the horizon. We
couldn’t see them from where we were, but their glow radiated across the
landscape like a patch of stars fallen from the sky or like dangling lanterns along
the edge of a mountain range way off in the distance. Sometimes I stared at
those artificial stars instead of the real ones and wondered what the beautiful
aliens were doing.

“They weave,” Minosh had said. “They coil around one
another, sharing their heat, their energy and beauty.”

“How do you know?”

She shrugged and giggled. “I have seen it, my little
Pchi.” Of course she meant she’d seen it in the baths.

I imagined the heavenly bodies, the creatures of
fire, dancing and swirling about one another, twisting their flames together
and stealing bits and pieces of each other. The sight would be
magnificent—spellbinding, really. I thought of Onine. I wondered what he
looked like without his covering, what he looked like in the flesh—not
flesh, I supposed, but gold. They said Kyprian skin was made of fire, which
transformed into gold on our planet. But they weren’t statues of yellow
element. On our planet, their golden skin simply looked like ours but smoother
and more radiant. They were larger than most sapients too, taller and more
brawny, though they resembled us in some ways. They appeared to us as sapients because
of our ability to reflect.

“They look like us,” Minosh had said, “because we
cannot imagine them any other way. I suppose we could see them as animals, like
Bendo, if they did not speak, or think, or rule over us.” Minosh said Kyprian beauty
conquered the sapients when they came and revealed it to us—they were the
flames, we the moths.

“El?” Tal startled me. I wasn’t expecting him, though
I should’ve known he’d come to see me in my garden.

“Would you like a cup of dandelion?” It was fitting for
us to drink as our creators had, both of them being gone now. Tal’s had
migrated a partial thó before mine, and it was a partial thó before then that I’d
last seen him standing in my yard.

“Actually,” he said. “I’ll take some milk if you’ve
got it.”

“I might.”

He waited for me between the cabbage rows, under
Luna’s slivered bodice—the smallest form of our fractal goddess. He petted
the sleepy Bendo until I returned with the two cups.

“She’s getting old,” he said.

She was, but so were we.

He downed the goat’s milk, wiping his lips with the
back of his hand. He let out a little burp and rolled the empty cup between his
palms. It was pleasant to see his face without the silk. He smiled at me and
turned his head to the side. My staring embarrassed him.

“Why’d you ask about the keeper?” I shrugged like Minosh
used to. I didn’t have an answer. “You must’ve had a reason?”

He sounded serious, much older than his six and a
half thó. Many lunar cycles had passed since he’d come into full sapience, but
his voice had only grown husky this past cold season. He sounded like an elder
already. I was still a youngling, just over five thó, and my change hadn’t come
yet.

“Well,” he said.

I hemmed a little bit. “I thought …” I didn’t know what
I thought actually. I couldn’t explain what I’d seen on my keeper’s face, what
I’d witnessed in his eyes. The experience wasn’t meant for words.

“I feel differently,” I said.

“Are you sick?”

I shook my head. Tal looked away again and I sensed
his frustration, his confusion, but I didn’t know how to reassure him. I was so
awkward in my ways—my change seemed too far off, and we were no longer
assigned.

“He looked sad?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said in his deep voice. “Why
does this matter?”

“I saw something.” When the words came out, I
couldn’t believe I’d said them. I didn’t know why I felt compelled to tell Tal
about my experience, to share Onine’s sublimity with him.

“What?”

“The goddess,” I said. “I saw her.”

“Wh—” he said. “How? That’s impossible.”

It was forbidden, actually. Both of us knew that. “I
did.”

“Why would a Kyprian—”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s profane, and against the rule.”

I dug my toes into the moss beneath my feet. “But the
image just won’t let me go,” I said. “The beauty’s ruined me.”

Tal exhaled and tossed his head to the side. I could
smell the smoke from his breath. I searched his eyes for the fire I’d seen in
Onine’s but they were empty. Blue, cold, dark.

“It was the keeper,” I said. “I tried to keep my
eyes on the ground but he made me look. I didn’t want to but he forced me—I
did my best to avoid them. Really. But he—he—”

I knew I sounded ridiculous saying something like
that. Onine wasn’t interested in sharing his sublimity with a sapient. Kypria was
too sacred to be shared with an alien, especially one as dull as me. We were mere
hums and drones on a terrestrial landscape that now belonged to the Venusian.

“I saw,” he said in a low voice, almost invisible.

“You did?”

He nodded slowly and looked away. I was relieved to
hear him say it, to know I hadn’t imagined the whole thing. Onine had done it,
not me.

“Forget it,” he said.

“But he must’ve wanted—”

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“But why’d he—”

“Because he’s Kyprian,” he said. “He’s—they can
do whatever they want.” He sounded hurt, frustrated, angry.

“But,” I said. “But it must mean something.”

“Mean something?” His cheeks reddened. “Mean what?
That you’re worthy of something? You’re something to be valued?”

I turned away and looked at Bendo. Tal’s words were
hurtful.

“Maybe I’m special,” I said. My voice sounded small,
alien.

“You’re still a youngling. You don’t know anything.”
His words hit as one stroke of anger after another. I didn’t know jealousy then—I
couldn’t understand such base and petty feelings. He was a stranger and I
resented him for chiding me as he did. Without the veil, I’d little chance of hiding
my emotions and the tears stung the corners of my eyes.

“You should go,” I said, as I reached out and
snapped the cup from his hand and turned toward the shanty. He followed me
inside.

“El,” he said with a voice more hoarse than before.

I kept my back to him. I was the angry one now and my
tears burned my cheeks. I wiped them away but he knew I was crying. I couldn’t
stop my shoulders from heaving and I dropped my head forward as I closed my
arms around me. I would’ve given anything to feel Minosh’s hug. “Go,” I said,
finally finding my strength.

I didn’t see the pain on Tal’s face, I didn’t know
he lifted his hand to caress my shoulder, I didn’t hear the small whimper he
made, knowing he’d hurt me.

“Go,” I said again more forcefully.

“Please,” he whispered. “El.”

His low plea made me shudder. I didn’t want to hurt
him, I didn’t want him to feel bad but when I turned to make peace, I caught
the back of him, as he rushed out of the shanty. He tore through the wheat
field before I could reach the end of the yard. Bendo bleated as though voicing
her disapproval. “I know,” I said to the goat, as I stroked her head. “He’ll be
back.”

I fell asleep beside Bendo, watching the lanterns on
the landscape until my eyes were so heavy I couldn’t keep them open any longer.
The catcher of dreams came for me in my sleep, came to take me to another place.
He picked me up in his arms and carried me to the ground in between rows of
lavender. The scent tickled my nose and I stirred. The purple flowers were the
same color as Onine’s eyes and their stems stood high above me, but I was one
of them. Luna had planted me at the feet of the flowers and the wind told me to
push my little roots deep into the soil. “Luna needs you,” the wind said. “She calls
you hers, little Pchi.”

The ground beneath me softened and I began to sink.
The soil engulfed me but I wasn’t scared. I didn’t cry. I felt her with me—Luna—guardian
of our planet. Minosh was there too.

“Luna loves you,” the wind said. “Stay-y-y-y.”

I let the soil embrace me, warm and smooth like
silk. Soon my skin and the soil became one and I melted into the ground. It
wasn’t long before my entire body was consumed and only my head stood up from
the patch among the rows of lavender. I couldn’t see myself, but I knew I was one
of them. My neck and chin and cheeks and nose and eyes and ears and hair were one
with the flowers. I was no longer sapient. I sprouted and stood as beautiful as
any Kyprian, only I didn’t come from fire. I was born of dirt, made from clay.

I don’t know how long I stood among the lavender, my
kin, my creators, my saplings. The breeze blew us back and forth in unison and
our lovely scent filled the air. The bumbles came and made love to us, stealing
our pollen, tickling us with their stingers, making us laugh with their buzzing.
The blue sky was light now, as the eye rose well beyond its mid-point. We
swayed peacefully until he came.

Down like lightning, he struck my row of kin. The lavender
burst into flame, blazing at the sight of him. He didn’t speak but he touched.
He touched them all and then he came to me. He stood in front of me and stared
at me with his violet eyes. I saw his fire again, the goddess in him, and I
knew he’d come for me. He reached out his empty hand, having dropped his stick on
the ground. I tried to beg him not to touch me, I tried to speak but I had no
voice.
Please do not make me ash
. For
an instant, I thought he received my message, I thought he could hear my plea.