El and Onine (4 page)

“I need to touch you,” he said. “I need to know.”

His gloves were off and I could see his elegant
hands, his perfect sinewy fingers. His skin was bronze like the sisters of the
Astros, a vision of dangerous beauty, tempting and frightening all at once. When
I saw his hands, I longed for his embrace. I swayed in the breeze, bending
toward the tips of his fingers, meeting his touch. It was gentle, it didn’t
burn. His energy ran through me and I felt Kypria infecting every one of my
sapient cells, making the tiny hairs on my stem stand on end.

If I went up in flames, I didn’t feel it. The
sensation was nothing like fire. I felt a surge of liquid rush through me, drenching
me in dew. Sticky and wet, ecstasy quickly turned to pain and I sensed a
crushing in the part of me that once had a stomach. Agony tore through my
lavender stem and I thought I was being ripped up from the ground. I toppled
over in the wind and lay there trampled amidst the row of my singed siblings. He
was gone, but I sensed his presence still.

I wept until I finally woke on the peat moss beside
Bendo. I was a youngling once again. The pain in my stomach was with me still and
I curled up on the grass to relieve the cramps that ripped through me. I’d been
wrong, I was no longer a youngling. When I woke, I’d reached full sapience. My
change had finally come.

***

If I could drop the stick,
let it fall, then I could touch you. Then I would know you are like no other,
that you are more than a mere sapient, that you are ethereal like me. Somehow,
some way, I know. You possess the thing we do not, the beauty so raw it runs
deep, deep within you, so deep it is invisible to us here in the dull light of
your planet. Raw, fleshly beauty. That is you. No mere sapient, but a
dirt-bound goddess in your own right, a surreal vision … a fleeting face … a
fading skin … a dying beauty.

I should abhor your subpar,
ephemeral frame. It is lower than that of the hexapod on Venus, more inferior to
the four-eyed gnat that suckles the refuse from our basest beast — even
it possesses more beauty than you, and in only one of its eyes!

But your inner peace … your
inner strength blinds me and I cannot deny its splendor. I see it in those dark
eyes every time I look at you, every time I am near you. Wonder, softness,
salvation are there. I come for you when the eye sinks—I watch you, as
you sleep—I lose myself in you—but I am denied the joy of knowing
you.

I must touch you … just
once. I cannot resist this desire, this need burns through me and bends my
will. Soon it will break and I will touch you again. I cannot resist. I will
drop my stick and touch you with my burning flesh. Do not move. Do not make a
sound. I am coming for you.

***

By the time the eye graced the horizon, my cramps were
gone. The discomfort of the change, however, was with me still. Minosh had
prepared me for this, she’d told me everything I needed to know, though we’d
always thought it would happen before she left.

“When it comes,” she’d said. “We will celebrate.”

She’d planned a small ceremony to mark the event.
We’d light up the garden with jars of firebugs, just the two of us. She said
they wouldn’t mind the confinement for my special night. We’d toast with a
dandelion beer that she’d ferment with the wheat and some of Bendo’s
milk—I didn’t question her ingenuity.

“You will blossom, my little Pchi,” she’d said. “From
that moment you will see our planet in a whole new way.”

“How so?” I wasn’t a curious youngling. I’d never
asked her about the world, about our existence, how we came to be. She told me
most of what I knew because it was her responsibility to do so, but she never
explained how I came from her.

“You will know what it is to be full sapient, a
cultivator of seed,” she’d said. “And you will understand the gift that is this
body.” She pointed to my bare belly. I was only in my fourth thó then and had
just finished my evening bath. Ours was nothing like the Venusian—our
baths were in cold water from the spring. She wrapped me in thick silk and
tousled my hair with its ends.

“When will it come?” I was eager then, impatient and
unripe.

“Soon, my little Pchi.” She threw her arms around me
and the silk clung to my wet body. I’d gotten a chill from the cold water, but
her embrace put an end to it.

I draped that same silk around me now, willing it to
cease my discomfort. I covered my face and headed out to meet Tiro. I daydreamed
until the cart pulled up in front of the shanty, and then climbed up and into
the back, forgetting to greet my master. The whips cracked and the zephyr
neighed when it took off down the lane.

Em was anxious to speak and as soon as the cart rolled
again she told me she’d finally been assigned. I wasn’t surprised she’d been selected.
She was healthy and well balanced, better than most of the cultivators. I’d
seen her without her veil and since she’d undergone the change, she wasn’t too wanting
for a sapient. “That’s good news for you,” I said.

“You’ll never believe who she’s been assigned to.” Bee’s
thick eyebrows rose with the octaves of her voice.

“A fire starter,” Em said.

“He’s in the Temple,” Bee said. “Your section.”

I didn’t need to ask who it was. I felt it in my
gut.

“Tal,” Em said.

I’d assumed since I was reassigned to celibacy, he’d
be too.

“When?” I asked, letting the sound of the en
evaporate in my throat.

“They came for me at full eye,” Em said.

She meant those in charge of sapient selection, the council
of three. The goddess relied on the council to dictate selection in her
absence. The council had been the ones to tell Minosh I was no longer assigned
to Tal—the goddess had chosen him for another.

“Tell her,” Bee said, as she nudged Em.

“The keeper came for me,” she said, “and told me I
was to follow him. I thought I was in trouble until he took me to the hall of
stones.”

“You saw the hall?” I asked.

“I know,” Bee said. “Can you believe it?”

The hall of stones was closed to sapients without a
Kyprian escort. I’d dreamed of seeing the stones ever since I’d heard about
them.

“I didn’t think I was getting an assignment,” she
said. “I’d given up hope.”

“You must know Tal,” Bee said. “Or you’ve seen him
at least.”

They didn’t know we were once assigned. It wasn’t
something we shared openly since sapient selection was meant to be private, though
you’d never believe it hearing them carry on as they were. Em was overzealous,
and Bee her irritating echo.

“Yes, I’ve seen him in the fire pits.” I hoped she’d
think I’d only seen him with his covering.

“What does he look like?” Em asked.

“I suppose like every other fire starter.” I hated
the question and disliked lying even more. Tal didn’t look like every other fire
starter. He is charming and strong too and has pretty dimples in both his
cheeks when he smiles and his eyes are stormy and wicked. Though sapients aren’t
physically beautiful like the Kyprian, Tal is pleasant to look at and easy to
laugh with and I was happy we’d been assigned. I was eager to share myself with
him even if I didn’t understand what that meant.

Bee and Em spoke in tandem, the one telling me what
the other had forgotten. I only pretended to listen. My stomach ached again and
the heaviness in my chest stilted my breath. I didn’t know what had come over
me. I felt betrayed, like something was being taken away from me. But Tal had
been taken from me more than a thó ago, and I hadn’t cared at the time. I guess
I didn’t know what I’d lost until the moment he belonged to another. I couldn’t
help feeling abandoned all over again.

“Are you all right?” Bee said.

I nodded and forced a smile beneath my veil so my
eyes would at least look lit up.

“I can’t believe it,” Em said. “I just can’t—”

Em cut herself off before the cart stopped. If we
knew anything, it was how long it took Tiro to reach the bathing grounds. When
they were both gone, I let out a sigh that brought tears to my eyes. I couldn’t
stand the heartache. I didn’t realize I’d wanted Tal, that I’d felt that way
about him. It didn’t occur to me we were connected somehow, that I thought he
was mine and I was jealous. My change had made me feel everything more
intensely. I still mourned Minosh and reeled from my vision with Onine but the
pain I felt over losing Tal broke me. I didn’t know it would pass.

I tucked my head in my hands and wept. When Tiro
pulled in through the gate of the Bathing Temple, I was relieved he jumped off
his zephyr and left me to myself. I got down from the cart without realizing I
was moving. A wretched automaton, I pulled the gargantuan chains and filled the
tubs without thinking. I ignored the pain too, and shoved the sting of the news
deep into my belly. I rushed as fast as I could through my work, drifting in and
out of my world until I felt the point of his stick in the small of my back.

“Where is your mind today?” Tiro snapped his cane
down, this time whipping my left shoulder. The sting cured me of the melodrama I’d
ingested in the cart. “Petulant sapient,” he said. “Distraction makes you even more
displeasing than you already are.”

“Forgive me, master.”

Tiro held his stick out in front of me, threatening
to use it again. He leaned in a little and I turned away from his gaze. I didn’t
want to know what kind of sublimity was hidden in his onyx eyes.

“Saturnia’s sister awaits,” he said.

The Temple was quiet and I could see Saturnia’s
sister addressing her entourage of cygnets. She kept a laced hemp satchel full
of little porcelain figurines that came to life in the water. Her tub was supposed
to be filled with gold leaves, but I hadn’t had the chance to get them yet. I
walked as quickly as I could to the artificial marsh and plucked a bunch before
heading to the great cylindrical pool. Saturnia’s sister lounged on its step, listening
for me with all her little porcelains lined up on the rim of the tub. She
smiled when she heard me approach but kept her gaze on the cygnets.

“Little one,” she said. “I have been waiting.”

Not an ounce of cruelty lived in her, and even when
she chided me she did it lovingly. Saturnia’s sister was a caregiver. Minosh
told me she was the Venusian healer.

“Why do they need healers?” I’d asked.

“They do not,” she’d said. “She heals sapients.”
Minosh had learned things about her in the gold sediment but wouldn’t tell me
what. I couldn’t believe a Venusian would have the gift to heal sapients. It
didn’t make sense since we weren’t a compatible species.

“Forgive me,” I said to the healer, lowering my
gaze. Like an elegant swan, she used her long limbs to coax her cygnets into
the hot tub, dropping them in one at a time. It was nothing short of magic to
see the tiny figurines come to life and triple in size. The miniature cygnets
would swim around the tub fighting for the gold leaves and the Kyprian would laugh
at them before slipping beneath the steamy water to join them.

“Why are you sad?” Saturnia’s sister was the only Venusian
who spoke to me while she bathed. She’d often chat with me as if I were one of
her porcelains, showing me a generous amount of concern, as well as admiration.
It’s difficult to explain how I knew this, but it was reflected in her.

“I’m not sad,” I said.

She looked down at her golden skin, shedding in the
scalding hot water of the bath, rejuvenating the layer of beauty beneath. “I am
aging,” she said.

“You?” I said. “You’re as magnificent as ever.”

Her pouty lips lifted into a smile and she clapped
her hands. “You are my favorite sapient,” she whispered.

I couldn’t return her smile because of my veil, but
also because she rarely looked in my direction. Even when she spoke to me in a
seemingly intimate fashion, she kept her eyes on her cygnets as if she spoke to
them.

“Your change has come, little one,” she said.

“How’d you know?” I looked down at my frock.

She giggled and splashed water at two of the cygnets
fighting over a leaf. “The goddess is happy.”

She didn’t tell me how she knew my secret and I was
too surprised to ask a second time. “The goddess?”

“Kypria has been waiting, little one.”

“For me?”

She smiled with her lovely perfect lips and teeth.
She was fully submerged in the water, but her long locks were spread out on the
rim of the tub, hanging over the edge like a veil of silk.

“You are special,” she said, and as if reading my
mind, she mentioned Tiro. “The master is cruel to you. Do not let the master
win, little one. The master does not know you.”

“But how …”

Saturnia’s sister smiled at her cygnets. “Sapient,”
she said. “Free yourself from your chains, but do not let him take you. You do
not want to disappoint Kypria. The goddess has chosen.”

I couldn’t tell if she was still speaking about Tiro.

“Let me call you little Pchi,” she said.