El and Onine (8 page)

The youngling was sitting in a field of golden
stocks, twirling with her arms outspread. She was bare and free with long hair
that clung to her head and draped down around the sides of her face, covering
her in ways that indulged her purity. She was unaware of our approach and continued
to spin on the spot where she stood. She made a sound that could only be an expression
of pleasure. When she finally stopped, she faced us, showing my goddess the sapient’s
potential to reflect our beauty.

“It is happening,” my goddess said. “Can you see it?
Can you see the pale glow of her skin?”

The sapient looked unchanged to me but I was only
just getting used to the anatomy I had been given. Mara was smaller than us and
looked pleasant because of it.

“We shall hide their skins until they are fully
transformed,” my goddess said. “They will wear coverings until the only
reflection they offer is that of the Venusian aspect. They will become
beautiful in time.”

“How will you make them obey us?” I had already
witnessed resistance in some, their faces revealing wicked thoughts and passionate
emotion. It was a shame to cover up such vulnerability.

“We will only keep the younglings,” she said. “Like
this one.”

I was more curious about the sapient than my Kyprian
siblings and so when my goddess asked me to address Mara, I moved closer to
greet her. Frightened by my approach, she knelt to the ground and picked up a loose
rock, raising it in her hand. I attempted to communicate with her but could
only muster a Venusian shriek. I saw the mischievous expression before the rock
flew from her hand and sailed through the air toward me. The wind slowed the
rock’s flight and I caught the stone. It melted with my touch and when it seeped
to the ground, the chaff around us caught fire. I saw Mara’s urge to bolt
before she moved a limb. Her desire was written on her face and I lunged toward
her, reaching out to grab her, but the Kyprian shriek stopped me.

“Let her go,” my goddess said. “It may be unsafe to
touch them. We cannot know the consequences of contact and risk contamination.”

I dropped my hand and watched Mara run deeper into
the field where she disappeared in the stalks of golden wheat. My goddess approached
me and put her hand on my shoulder. Her new form felt heavy on mine but I liked
it. “We have found the one.”

“The one, goddess?”

She turned her attention to the retinue and
commanded they follow her to the site of our new solarium.

“What about the sapient?” I asked.

“She will be forced to turn back soon,” she said. “The
outer sands will stop her.”

Terra was cold and dark for half its time cycle and
we rid ourselves of the coldness with stick and stone fires until a molten eye was
erected in our colony of greenhouses. By the third moonscape, we were ready for
the darkness and lived in the warmth of an eye at all times to keep our fires
from dampening. We enslaved the younglings to help build the Bathing
Temple—lava baths and solariums to keep our nature from being lost
altogether. When I found mineral beds beneath the golden landscape, I made my
plans to erect Kypria’s hall of jade.

We worked alongside the sapients we enslaved. The
younglings were easy to ensnare, most of them starving from my goddess’s
immolation of their planet. Saturnia’s sister was assigned to appease their
anguish and discomfort with matter she transformed into sweet
substances—anise root and serum, she called them. We soon realized certain
things should be kept from my goddess’s immolation, and had to leave some of
the organic matter alive to nourish the sapients, and ourselves—wheat,
milk and grains were our new staple.

When Mara
returned, as my goddess said she would, she was made an honorary Kyprian. She
was a funny creature and eventually I grew to like her, but I was hesitant at
first, when my goddess brought her through the smoke to meet me, as I marked
the lava temperatures in the Bathing Temple.

“Onine,” my goddess said.

I paid no attention, forgetting the name she had
given me. She called me a third time before I answered. When I looked at both beings,
I saw them as one. The sapient basked in Kypria’s flame and my goddess was more
beautiful because of it. Each one reflected the other, a visual trick that made
me lose sapient speech for a brief moment and I responded with a Venusian shriek.
My goddess’s glare put me back in my place.

“This is Mara,” she said. “She is to begin work in
the Bathing Temple. She will need to be trained and you shall be her keeper.”

I
nodded my approval and accompanied her through the cedar door into the steam of
the baths. When Kypria left us, the change in the sapient’s reflection struck
me at once.

“We will begin with the chains,” I said.

She remained quiet but bowed her head and followed
me through the Temple. I worked with Mara for a full lunar cycle, whenever the
eye lit the landscape, and she barely spoke to me in that time. I would give her
direction and she would simply obey with a nod. I often saw her looking into
the baths dreamily, as though willing herself somewhere else. I thought we were
gentle masters but the sapient suffered despite our innocuous nature. At times,
I longed to remove her veil of silk, to see her thoughts written on her cheeks.
Her dark eyes revealed little to me, but I remembered the expression on her face
at our first encounter. Her fear, her disdain, her anger were evident in the
coloring of her sapient flesh. To see her face would have told me the things I
wanted to know.

Saturnia’s sister learned of my desire. “Your
curiosity is fitting. Be patient. You will know the chosen one soon enough.”

“For what is she chosen?”

“I cannot say yet, Onine.” She teased me with my new
name, knowing I disliked it. “But you have a greater task on Venus before the
one on Terra. The goddess prepares for our return.”

I had forgotten about our return. Our work had been
instantaneous but we had to face Midan, unable to evade him much longer. Though
we did not speak of the Venusian rebellion, Kypria’s role in the war was
inevitable. Thoughts of the voyage back made me uneasy, though not for the
reasons I suspected.

Shortly before our return to Venus, Kypria summoned
me to the hall of stones. The crystal shrine was as beautiful as the one on our
home planet since terrestrial jade was as rich as the stones from Menaleck. My goddess’s
presence amplified the energy the jade emitted and I was soon drunk with
Kyprian sublimity. I could barely dim my flame to greet her with the reverence
she deserved.

“Your admiration warms me,” she said. “I will know
it always.”

“I hope so, goddess. I exist to please you.”

She looked around the glass hall. “Even here.”

“Anywhere.”

Our new forms had changed us in subtle ways but we
felt the burden of the one thing sapients possess that we do not. They are
connected to their soil, inundated with the weight of their planet’s core and
bound to it with a pull that makes them heavy. On Venus, our fire burned away
impurities, but here we were forced to absorb them into our skins, a discomfort
that took some getting used to.

“Have you ever wanted more?”

I misunderstood the question but tried to answer it
anyway. “Kypria is all I shall ever need.”

“But what if,” she said, breaking decorum, “Kypria is
no longer the same?”

Her suggestion was absurd but I refrained from telling
her so.

“You will always be the same, goddess.”

“I will always be the same.” She contemplated what I
said and repeated it as if she needed to speak it aloud. She shed her sapient
tongue and spoke in the language most befitting our nature. “What do you think
of Mara?”

I knew the goddess admired the sapient she had chosen.
It had become obvious to all of us Mara was the connection between our goddess
and Terra. If she had been unmoved by the creature, we would have been alone
and without slaves. As it was, we discovered the sapient’s talent for
procreation, which meant a long line of subservient beings to come.

“She learns well.” I had been surprised in fact how
quickly she took to the tedious labor in the Temple. She proved a physical
force and a help to most of the bathers.

“Not her work,” she said. “What do you think of her
as a species?”

“Sapients have their attributes.”

“Are you not attached to your new form yet?”

I was not. “I have been told we are returning.”

“Saturnia’s sister has told you, has she?” My
goddess wasted no time with innuendo.

“She has.”

“We will depart when Jupiter rises after the third
moonscape.”

Kypria approached me then and I felt her fire. Her
scepter was incapable of piercing my terrestrial form, but my knees buckled when
her lips touched mine. The skin beneath my covering tingled and my breath
quickened. She pulled away from our embrace and leaned close to my ear, whispering
in sapient tongue. “Spend the time that remains with Mara.”

“Yes, goddess.”

Kypria made her choice in that moment, perhaps even
before, and my world changed forever.

***

I obeyed Kypria and sought Mara out, but my goddess’s
assignment only became clear in my final meeting with the sapient.

Since the eye had only begun its descent in the sky,
when we finished at the baths I escorted Mara home. We had little reason to
converse and when we reached her shanty, I simply turned to leave. I was
surprised when she stopped me with her small voice.

“Would you like to meet Bendo?”

“Bendo?”

“My goat,” she said.

I had seen all the beasts that survived my goddess’s
induction of gold. I had in fact chosen that particular species myself, knowing
the sapient could live off its sustenance. On Venus, the molten trees gave us
ours and I dreaded consuming sapient food until I discovered goat’s milk. “You
have given the beast a name?”

Mara led me up the path to her shanty and around the
back to a small patch of herb as big as a lava pond. She stepped onto the
living green blades, letting her feet sink into the dirty soil. I refused to
follow her and stayed near the edge of the stones.

“Come on,” she said. “Bendo is at the back between
the rows of cabbages. She’s too small to see from there.”

I heard the baby goat’s bleats, as Mara disappeared
between the stalks. I waited for her on the stone. When she reappeared, she carried
a small bundle in the front of her frock. The beast wriggled in her arms, as she
came to the edge of the stones, staying on the patch of grass and soil. It
seemed as though neither of us wanted to give up our terrain. She held the goat
out to me, as if offering it up. I shook my head and raised my hand slightly.

“Don’t you want to hold her? She’s soft.”

The thought of the goat’s warm pelt against my flesh
made me queasy. Plus, I was afraid to burn it with my touch. “I cannot,” I
said.

“Don’t you have goats where you come from?” Her
question suggested more than one meaning.

“My planet is different,” I said. “But not without
its creatures.”

She shook her head and looked away. “No goats?”

“We have zephyrs.”

“What’s that?”

I smiled at her curiosity. “I suppose it is similar
to the beast in your arms but with much longer limbs and a thick coat of sabine
skin.”

“What’s sabine skin?”

“Nothing like a goat’s pelt,” I said.

Mara laughed and her veil moved in the breeze. “Maybe
I’ll see a zephyr soon.”

“Perhaps.”

She put the goat down on her patch of green and it
found its way back to the cabbages. The eye had reached its halfway point,
somewhere between the horizon and the sky and I felt the coolness coming in
from the wheat field.

“I must go,” I said.

Mara moved nearer to the stones, letting her toes
touch their edges. She was closer to me than ever. She smelled like the wax flowers
on the shrub Kypria kept alive in the hall of stones.

“May I tell you a secret, keeper?” She took my
silence for yes. “We are going to touch,” she said. “I thought it is why you
brought me home but maybe I was wrong.”

“Has my goddess told you this?”

She shook her head and her veil swayed in the breeze
again. The silk was just sheer enough to see her face beneath it.

“No,” she said. “I’ve seen it?”

“What?”

“The conception that’s coming.”

Her cryptic message confused me, as did her confidence
in knowing it.

“Our contact,” she said.

“Do you know the potential danger of our touching?”

She held her breath and nodded and then she leaned
forward and whispered her secret into the air between us. “The water shows me
it’s going to happen.”

“The water?”

“I see things,” she said, “in the bath water.”