I

 

“Come along, Aratika. We are going to lose Mother,” Daehma scolded.

I tugged on her hand, stamping on a cluster of autumn berries that had fallen from vines that reached over the high walls around us. She pulled me along harder and I had to skip to match her long strides. Ahead of us, our mother’s black hair hung loose down her back in a long rippling wave. I often wished I was married already, just so I might wear my hair like hers instead of bound up in a scarf.

There was little room in Is-Isle. The houses were small and the streets were too narrow for auit-drawn carts. Everywhere people were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder and we never made it to market without one of us getting lost. It was usually Vami, and we all knew he got lost on purpose to sneak off and play with other local boys. It was okay for the boys to play on the streets, but we girls—myself, Daehma and Aleci, who was still just a baby then and sleeping in a sling at mother’s breast—were expected to entertain ourselves inside.

As we drew closer to the markets the street widened and we came to a crossroad that marked the corner of our little winding avenue. From here the main road ran from the harbour, many miles away, to the Temple of Calenia, which loomed over us at the city’s heart. The trade road was wide enough for several carts to pass abreast and there were auits in harness striding past, their bug-eyed heads bobbing with every step. The large ratites were common, used to haul produce in from the farms and waste out to the sea. I liked their silly black beaks, tiny heads and long scaly legs. Though they were much taller than me, I was not afraid of them. Sometimes I would try to pluck their silky feathers as they passed us by, just to see them skip and squawk in their harnesses.

There were also soldier-priests here from the Temple of Calenia, dressed in robes of ochre and mounted on oumandi. The soldier-priests were an army formed entirely of second-, third- and fourth-born sons. They acted as guards and peacekeepers throughout the city, gathering taxes, solving crimes, teaching in the schools and temples and, if war came, they were a united force of defence for the five Isles. Only a special few served the Temple by riding oumandi.

The felines were massive, ranging in height from five to six feet at their rippling, hairless shoulders. They were coloured in symmetrical grey, brown, red and black patches and their skin was as tough as leather all over, but for the scraggy tufts of hair on the tips and undersides of their tails. Their heads were typically feline, with round swivelling ears, yellow eyes and tusk-like canines that jutted below the line of their jaw. Their lips fascinated me, pierced with a dozen or more golden rings that attached to chains, threaded together to form reins. The soldier-priests astride the beasts may have been unadorned, but the beasts themselves seemed to drip with more wealth than all the fine ladies in the city.

There was nothing in my house made from such expensive cloth as their saddle blankets, nor with such exquisite detailing. I thought every oumandi I saw must have been a favourite of the Holy Creator Himself.

Even Daehma was enchanted by the oumandi and we both stopped to watch three of them pass us by. Their riders paid us no heed, keeping their eyes on the road ahead with admirable discipline. I was very excited to spot the sheaths of their rapiers in the folds of their robes.

“Dae,” I said, tugging on her hand, “do the oumandi talk like people do?”

I was convinced Daehma must know all there was to know about the world. She would be thirteen soon and that seemed almost as old as mother to me.

She considered the question for a long moment, black eyes glittering as she followed the path of the oumandi up the street. She took so long in answering that I tugged at her again.

“Dae!”

“I heard you,” she scolded. “And yes they do, but only to their priests. Oi, now we have lost mother. Do you see her?”

Mostly I saw the skirts and knees of people passing us by. None of them looked like mother’s, or those of our brothers Gahm, Vami and Yuku.

“Now we’ll never find them,” Daehma said, “and it’s all your fault.”

I was not particularly concerned, as we knew where mother had been headed and we could always walk home and wait for her on the doorstep.

Daehma hesitated before attempting to cross the busy road, her eyes flickering over the traffic, looking for a gap so that we might not become trapped and trampled in the press. I was always fascinated with Daehma’s eyes. Even though she was a woman, I had seen men shy away from the intensity of her gaze.

Suddenly she tugged me forward and we made a break for the far side of the street, half sprinting, half stumbling. She jerked me back several times when I would have run, helter-skelter, into the side of a cart or other pedestrians. The confusion was too much for me and I just clung to her, trying to keep up and praying she would not lose me.

She did not; I’m certain this was owed entirely to a fear of being flogged by mother and nothing at all to do with her concern for my well-being.

Then we were out of the crush and in an aisle of calm, the odd limbo between the rush of the road and the slow, squeeze of the market crowd. Daehma gave me a triumphant grin. “There, now Ju Forris’ stall is this way.”

I did not like Ju Forris or his stall. He had bad teeth, foul breath and usually stunk of Churnl hens, for his feet were always caked with their scat from gathering the eggs before market each morning. I never spoke to him if I could avoid it, for he would lean down in my face and breathe his disgusting breath on me, grinning and sometimes patting my head with his filthy hands. Worse were the coveys of dead birds, hung up by their feet and staring down at me with mournful accusation.

“Let’s wait for her at Ju Yano’s stall,” I begged, tugging her hand in a different direction. She pulled back sharply.

“Stop it. Don’t be so disobedient. Mother will have missed us by now, she’ll be wondering where we are.”

I allowed myself to be dragged along, scuffing my feet and dawdling as much as I dared. I knew Daehma would never cuff me, but she had a tongue plenty sharp enough to make me cry. She was paying me little heed, stopping every minute or so to stand on her tiptoes, trying to catch a glimpse of our mother and our brothers ahead of us.

People glared as we passed. I heard some men comment scornfully on unmarried women and appropriate behaviour. Such comments followed Daehma everywhere, and I could sense her bristly annoyance.

I was still dawdling and feeling contrary so I fell back further and further until her arm was outstretched behind her just to hold on to me.

Then I bumped a fruit cart. It was an accident, but as my sleeve brushed the fruit several of them fell free.

“Dae!” I protested, slipping my hand from hers to fetch the fallen fruit. She made a deeply exasperated noise and stopped with her hands on her hips to wait for me as I gathered the fruit in my skirt and began to pile it back in place.

“Stop there!”

I looked up to find the cart owner looming over me.

“Give me those,” he snapped, snatching the fruits from my skirt and tossing them back onto the pile. They all rolled back onto the ground, but I don’t think he noticed. “Where are your parents? Where do you live? I’ll speak to your father.”

I was certain I was going to cry and I pressed my mittens over my eyes, but Daehma put her hand on my shoulder. I could feel her standing close behind me and she wasn’t shaking at all.

“She wasn’t stealing your fruit,” Daehma said. She sounded angry. Almost as angry as the stall owner, I thought.

All at once the crowd around us grew thinner and I peeped out from behind my mittens to see a huge oumandi padding across the marketplace toward us. The soldier-priest swung off his mount, holding the feline’s reins in one hand.

“What’s going on here?” The priest had a smooth, quiet voice. He sounded rational and I was suddenly very glad he was there.

“This one had a skirt full of fruit from my stall,” the merchant said. I hid my eyes again, but Daehma was fearless.

“She wasn’t taking them! They fell, she was picking them back up again.”

“You need a husband who will flog the words from your tongue!” the merchant snarled. I could see white specks of spittle forming on his lips.

The soldier-priest held up a calming hand. He seemed very old to me, perhaps seventeen. “You have your fruit. No harm has been done.” He turned his attention to me and asked, “Did you knock down the fruit?”

I lowered my hands and nodded. Behind him his oumandi mount was looming closer, bejeweled lips drawn back to show its huge tusks. It snarled, a low, throaty noise. The priest jerked its reins and the oumandi’s lips were momentarily tugged down, but it tossed its head, shouldering the priest aside as if he were nothing. I suppose to a creature of that size, he was.

I squealed as it stepped toward me and Daehma fell back. Apparently she was not immune to fear after all.

Without thought I broke and ran, ducking through the legs of a crowd that was quickly dispersing with shouts of terror as the oumandi bounded after me. The priest had not released the reins and the rings in its lips ripped loose. When I looked back over my shoulder its muzzle was already stained with gore and its saliva came away in red ropes.

Fear moved me faster than I had ever moved before, but in only a few strides it was on me. It swiped at me with one massive paw, as wide as the whole of my back.

The sensation of its claws was a tug, pulling me back as they hooked through my flesh, but I was scrambling forward on my hands and knees under a cart, through broken pots of honey and the sensation only spurred me on. There was an alley behind the cart and I was hemmed in by cream-coloured walls. The oumandi was bashing through behind me, its skin sticky now and its own blood matting its jaw.

The pain struck only then, a blossoming white agony that engulfed my back like flames. I was screaming, maybe I had never stopped, and the oumandi stepped toward me through the pools of honey and broken crockery. There was blood on my arms. The most blood I had ever seen before was on the day Vami fell down the stairs and stubbed his toe so badly the nail had been ripped away. It had seemed like a fountain then, enough to soak a handkerchief. Now my own blood was drenching me, like someone had poured a jug of it over my back and it was in everything, wetting my skin through my clothes.

I was consumed by pure, primal terror. When the oumandi roared and thrashed violently sideways, his head knocking chunks of sandstone loose from the wall, I could not understand what was wrong. The alleyway was too small for him to turn, so he back-stepped quickly. He roared again, but this time it was a scream of rage and pain.

It was only when he spun, free of the alley, that I saw the spike of wood wedged deep in the taut muscle of his hind leg. The shaft was imbedded horizontally and it wobbled with fleshy grace. His second wound was not so forgiving. On his side, just below his ribs, was a gaping hole. It opened and closed like a breathing mouth, bubbling hot blood. It did not just gush from the wound, but squirted, splattering walls and the fallen remains of the cart he was clambering over. Then he fell, lashing out at his attacker one moment and unable to stand in just the space of a heartbeat.

Daehma bounded over the oumandi as he struggled to rise, a second wooden stake still clutched in her hand. She was fearless and gathered me up in her arms, unheeding of my screams as her hands touched the lacerations on my back. She carried me back out into the market square, where the crowd was so thick there didn’t seem to be any air. I saw the soldier-priest, his stained rapier in his hand, standing over the dying oumandi. The bond between beast and rider was legendary. I cannot imagine what it cost him to take the life of his own mount to save a stranger. The last I ever saw of him, his eyes were closed and his face was streaked with tears, then the crowd closed around Daehma and I, and I was taken from her.

 

 

COPYRIGHT. TALITHA KALAGO. 2008