A Dystopian Science Fiction Novel
Date Published: 03-25-2025
Opaque mist with the scent of evergreen
and anise is receding to reveal sandstone walls. To lead the visitors to the
high dry place that whispering people are using for gatherings. To be simple is
the walking, but Arrivi guests are picking their steps and wiping their brows
and talking together. Returning softly are their sighs, echoing among the
obelisks. The stone forest is hoarding echoes of heroes from seasons past.
Never fading are these returning sounds.
To be asking what? Orissa’s lies! To
use your Cochin words well enough. The subject before the verb. And to correct
your words is my right too, are you thinking?
Sure, to make myself understood. Glad
to.
To be arriving together ... they arrive
together ... returning from a khalif’s funeral, the guests are disembarking
from one fixed-wing plane, alright?
Uninvited guests attracted by the
torture of Bybiis the beastmaster, to be spying our goods at the bazaar table.
What? They ... they are spying ... browsing our goods, asking for matrix opal.
To know what is matrix opal. Oh, fine.
Matrix opal be’s known to me: good enough?
I know about matrix opal.
There, in five words or less. To keep
this up, I can go all day, your love of pronouns. He, she, shit, they, and I –
always with the I. Me, me, shit, me. Never looking past your noses.
To be making an effort to learn my
language, which of you be’s stepping up?
So... uninvited guests arrive here to
enjoy the torture of Bybiis and approach the worktable in Dianko’s bazaar where
my cousins trade for Stroenuk slate. The female commander Omiibuk of high
acclaim, Osal the sailor with his own ship, and Baleb the silk merchant who
be's known to us. Bringing with them a pregnant woman, a real worrier by the
name of Kelly, a poet and the wife of Rufus el Arrivi.
Being a wrong term is Stroenuk, but you
are not caring. Men who can shiver slate from the towers in our stone forest
are Stroenuk, only them, but using the term in hard tones is your choice. Not
even knowing the word’s value. And blame is settling on me.
Enough Cochin for you that is being?
Kelly has coppery hair braided down her
back. A roomy leather vest with a long rear panel is hers, and tying her skirt
into pantaloons over wide sandals that mostly are not sinking into the molasse.
“The path is uncertain in this mist,” Kelly says between ragged breaths. “What
signposts to guide us?” She is touching the sandstone wall for balance, tangent
to a ward of direction and nearly making it flare.
I choose to pick the new leaves of a
striisnia succulent. I gesture to Kelly. “Under your tongue for easier
breathing.” Kelly is turning the leaf over in her palm, and rubbing it clean of
any grit. “And for my companions?”
Omiibuk is staying in the town, not
counting our task as important. Osal the sailor is seeming steady, glancing
around as if counting the towers. Baleb el Yahya is sweating and sighing like
city folk. Store-bought slip-on shoes with an eel skin vest over linens. To be
well supplied is Baleb’s rucksack as though my cousins are helping him to plan
this journey.
To offer Kelly ... I offer Kelly two
more new leaves and, turning away, I am hearing them debate the relative risks
and benefits.
In a long tube with a strap, Kelly is
carrying a map and several images of the summits of our stone towers.
Yesterday, she is rolling out the map on the merchant’s table and wanting me to
admire the features, claiming that her tribe is living on the savannah beyond
the Striiduc ridges, calling our sacred forest a rift valley of thin towers in
regular rows that are shaped when the plateau is shivered by con-ti-nen-tal
drift. She is wanting me to nod at her use of the big words.
Honor she is expecting for her few
Cochin words mixed with Arrivi? No attempt is made before today to know the
whispering people. No attempts by Arrivi to rescue us from the torturer.
Only because payment is made am I
leading them on the path. I wait for them to catch up with their stumbling
steps. Kelly is wiping sweat from her brow. “So easy to get turned around. How
do you find the path?”
I lick two
fingers and touch the tower wall, then lick them again. “Sandstone,” I say with
a jerky gesture to show alternating ridges beyond. “Next is limestone.” I flail
the air with my hand to show more distant ridges. “Next is slate and nickel.
After that is only basalt.”
“And the opal is in the basalt?”
“Opal all around. Os-si-fied in cracks.
Easy to dislodge.”
“And the matrix opal?”
Like that word is unknown. Matrix opal
I am seeing many times, the tendrils of black basalt obvious against the milky
gemstone. To walk ahead and consider choosing a longer path that is boggy. To
take the high path, not for Kelly and her friends, but to honor the whispering
people who are waiting.
Yeah, yeah. To use my pronouns, to
posit the self in front of events that must follow in my wake. Events all
around, not waiting for Arrivi guests to sort them.
The dry place is a squat plateau rising
from the molasse, surrounded on three sides by totems that are seeming to
gather in council. Behind them, the many towers of our stone forest are
emerging from the morning mist as if to spy the intruders, reflecting sunlight
with the warm flavors of pine and tamarind.
Elder Aremore waits, a bundle of bones
wrapped in linen decorated with leather strands beaded with opals. Behind her
are Froon and Faulk. I bow with fingertips touching my collarbone before
stepping back, ignoring Kelly’s demand for greeting. Faulk is grabbing my arm.
“To be bringing them here?”
I jerk away from him. “Payment be’s
made in the bazaar.”
Aremore is circling the fingers of a
bony hand, and Faulk is falling silent. She is gesturing that the three
intruders may sit cross-legged on the ground. They are spending time in
greeting, and Kelly is rolling out her aerial map of which she be’s so proud.
So boring is their talk, like the
public torture happens never before. In Dianko while the first tattoos are
added to the shoulder of Bybiis, grackles are flocking with harsh cries, and
the erriv are aborting twins. An infestation of spiders, not uncommon in this
season, seems to be called forward by her suffering. More tattoos are added to
the skin of Bybiis and the beasts are settling, thus showing the suppression of
her talent by applying the skin wards.
Aremore is signaling for me to step
forward. “Advising these ones in Dianko is your duty now. Spend the day with
them tomorrow.”
I know Aremore and her ways. She is
sending me out because I am having no value to them. “What benefit is coming to
me?”
“To be named to the council of the
whispering people is your mother in her turn.”
“No appeal in a future benefit.”
We are hearing the insects buzz while
Aremore considers what to offer. Her leadership is extending past her prime.
Dislodging her is sacrificing little in my view. “To attend the college on
Moorea, a sister is wanting. We are not refusing.”
“Both sisters, leaving before I agree.
Travel costs and tuition are for you.” Aremore grudgingly nods. “And what for
me who is risking all?”
Aremore smirks; her turn for securing a
favor. “These foreign men are wondering why you must be the advisor. Show
them.”
“Only describe.”
“To show is more convincing.”
“My word is my bond.”
Aremore is removing a chain over her
head that is holding a platinum brooch. Nestled within the scrollwork is the
matrix opal of Orissa, the famous opal of seeing. “For your journey tomorrow.”
“A day trip?”
“For as long as you advise. But … these
ones must have proof of the testing.”
“What proof are they offer–”
Froon and Faulk are grabbing my arms
and forcing me to my knees with my back toward the intruders. Ignoring my
struggles, Froon loosens my belt and is pulling the tunic to reveal a colorful
tattoo between my shoulder blades and extending to my waist. Two newts, one
with feathery gills raised, are circling in a courting dance. The marbled backs
of the tattooed newts are covering inert wards. To be bottom feeders in our
ponds are newts, the choice of image an insult to the whispering people. I am
showing no tears, though, and no sobbing. I raise my chin, and my back is
straight. Let the intruders have their fun.
Aremore is
handing the chain to Froon who is slipping it over my head so the brooch rests
against the tattoo, against the larger newt’s head. I feel the chain’s weight
and the cool platinum. “Ariseng is having the talent to create wards and making
others flare,” Aremore is telling the intruders. “The warden in Dianko is
believing that Ariseng’s talent is suppressed by tattoos, that her skill is
tainted. The same is possible for your Bybiis. Show them.”
I struggle against the strong grip of
the men. My talent is my own.
“A Dianko warden before,” Aremore tells
Kelly, “is having a skill, but many seasons ago. This current torturer is
adding a wrong structure. Against the black skin of Bybiis the lines of tattoo
are not showing, so adding color becomes his new business for appeal.”
With my back turned, I am hearing Kelly
sigh. She is making no objection to the display of my flesh, I notice, allowing
them to shame me. “The talent of Ariseng is not suppressed?” Kelly whispers.
“Show them,” Aremore insists to me. I
only shake my head, and she sighs with exasperation. “The brooch you may keep
for the women of your family for as long as echoes are sounding in the stone
forest.”
I turn my head to consider her bargain.
“And the matrix opal of Orissa belongs to me only.” Aremore is nodding and
looks away. “Say it,” I insist.
“Ariseng be’s the one true holder of
the matrix opal of Orissa.”
I shrug off the
restraining arms. I straighten my back and square my shoulders so the brooch is
resting on the center of the tattoo design, in a space between the newt bodies.
I place my left hand on the right hand and my doubled palms on the dry place, feeling
the gritty warmth of my home. A slight buzzing is sounding in my ears. My touch
is revealing the blue glow of wards etched into the sandstone. Foreign guests
are sitting on a circling blue pattern of Orissa’s wards that is extending into
the long pathways of the molasse.
Sweat is showing on my forehead. I feel
the sting of salt in my eyes. I slowly release my breath, tasting anise. On the
closest obelisks, the connecting wards for direction and stamina are coming
alive in the sunlight, flaring in a rush before fading when I remove my hands
from the sacred ground. The caw of a murmurey bird is resounding in echoes, and
she launches from the high branch so that her shadow is passing over our
gathering. Whispering together are these intruders, impressed with the bird’s
leaving.
“Not curtailed is Ariseng’s talent,”
Aremore tells the visitors. “To be making Ore’s torture stop, Bybiis must agree
that repression is successful.”
“We value your advice,” Kelly says to
her. “We are doing as you suggest.”
I only straighten the tunic and stand,
looking down at Aremore. I double the chain so the brooch is resting on my
breastbone. “My sisters leave for college before I am leaving with these ones.”
She nods and looks away.
Kelly and the
two men are closely watching. The shoulders of Osal are moving like he sways to
some music. His leathers are laced with wards for protection, but not for him.
Grabbed up from the original owner this vest is being. How can Osal believe the
wards are helping him when they are made for a man who is dead?
“Serving is not my duty,” I tell Kelly.
“Running errands and to follow orders are not for Ariseng. Advice is offered
when I am having some, but demanding is not the good choice.”
Kelly is holding a palm high and
horizontal as if to receive alms. “We are honored that one of talent deigns to
walk the path with us. We agree to your terms.”
About the Author
“I grew up with all brothers, so I knew about women from stories and from school. What I found at school wasn’t anything like in the stories, so I set out to learn why.”
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