So Mad at Myself

Reuben, who turns 9 in 16 days--wanted to read the book I wrote and self-published when he was 1 years old. Except I couldn't find it. Anywhere. No worries, I'll get on KDP and order an author copy. Expect I deleted my amazon account and that deleted my KDP account. My book is gone and has been for years. I didn't even know. 

Anyway, I am in the process of making an amazon account again and re-uploading so I can buy a copy for Reuben at least!

Ugh. 

Life is busy. I have no time to write or do much creative things. I try not to be depressed about it and just be happy my family is healthy and the sun is shining. 

The Wandering (FIN)

In the caves, Ignose laughs at Roan toddling. She's wrapped in furs, against the cold, even our fire doesn't drive it all away. Roans waddles over, wraps his arms around me and plants wet kisses on my face. 

“Solamae,” He lisps. “Sing song.” I smile at him and gather him up in my arms, lifting him off the ground to swing him around and around. This plating season, he would be two red moons old. But I would not get to kiss him on his blessing day.

Soon he would be leaving us. I wasn't ready.

Ignose added more wood to the fire, quietly watching me.

“You've grown, Moon-daughter,” She said. Her eyes seemed to weigh and measure me, and I try to stand taller.

“Thank you, moon-sister,” I reply, setting Roan down. He runs to his mother. “Up, up, mama,” he babbles, lifting his little arms high with anticipation.

“Tsk,” She clucked at him, but picked him up anyway. “It is time for you to go to sleep, little sun.”

“No!” he whined, but he doesn't complain as she changes his clothes and bundles him into his furs. The cave flickers with our fire, making the walls dance with shadows. This far back in the chambers I could not even hear the thrum of the village as they made their nightly ablations around their own low flames. 

Everyone was getting ready for sleep. Tomorrow was the Met, and the women were excited. The Coupling happened once every two hands over the winter, and next spring the women would all be fat with child. Perhaps Ignose, too. I studied her as she smoothed Roan's hair, crooning a tune. Twice she had gone to the Met, and twice returned with something akin to satisfaction on her face. What was it like? Being with a man?

I couldn't imagine.

As my eyes roamed the darkness, I tried to imagine what a man looked like. Were they tall? Hard? Or soft, like the moon-daughters. My gaze returned to Ignose. Her hands were trembling, and tears slid down her face.

“Moon-sister,” I whispered, drawing near as she arranged Roan's blankets once again, “I am sorry.”

“I am sorry too.” She sobbed, leaning her head upon my shoulder as I sat next to her. “This is wrong. How do they do this every year?”

Roan's eyes were closed, and I could hear his even breathing. He slept. Ignose buried herself deeper into my frame, and I wrapped my arms around her.

“The sisters, they do not speak of their sons after they go,” She said, as I smoothed her hair. “At least, not from what I hear.”

“Not even at Tide?” I asked. Ignose raised her head, looked me in the eyes.

“Not even at Tide,” She answered. “Come, let us sit by the fire for awhile. I must speak to you.”

She rose, wiped her face, and pulled me gently by a hand. We both walked back a few short steps to our fire. If I stood underneath the flame, I could just look up and see the holes in the cave ceiling where the smoke drifted lazily up and the red moon shone down upon us, marking Roan's second ageday and my twelfth, while bathing everything in rose. We all aged with the moon; even if our blessing day was different.

Ignose pulled me down beside her, our feet stretched towards the flames. She glided me back till I lay reclined on her chest, something we used to do when I was much younger.

“You are growing up so much now, Solamae,” She said, smoothing my hair. I felt a smile tease the corners of my mouth.

Her voice stilled as her hands busied in my hair, both of us listening to the crackling of the fire and the hollow sounding of the cave.

“Did you ever think what you would be if you had not been born a Blight?”

Her tender caresses calmed me, and I felt myself melting against her.

“A weaver.” I said. 

Her hands froze. Maybe she hadn't expected me to respond. Suddenly I felt uneasy, or had the night grown colder? Was that a breeze in the air? My skin prickled. 

“Ah,” Ignose said. She must have felt me shiver, because she reached back and pulled one of our leathers off the nearest woven mat. With a smooth motion, she draped it over me, and resumed combing my hair with her fingers, massaging my scalp.

“I would have been a spear-sister,” Ignose said, and I knew it was true as soon as she said it.

Silence descended. I thought of Ignose, fierce Ignose, roaming the fields with her spear and sleeping in on the communal mats with the other spear sisters. It fit.

“I was never angry until you came along,” Ignose said, interrupting my dreams of her hunting Elk and running on the hunt. “I was like you. Compliant. It wasn't until you were born that I started questioning everything. It's one thing to know I'm blighted and to accept my own wrongness—but it is another to see a little child hurt and abused.”

I curled my arms around my legs, pulling my knees into my chest. Why was she talking about this? 

“I've never been abused,” I said. “That's what the men do.”

Ignose snorts.

“You are abused every day,” She said, “But you do not see it.”

“When?” I ask.

“When you are beaten. When you are deprived food. At Tide, especially at Tide. I should not have let you go again.”

“But, Ignose,” I twist in my seat to look at her. She's crying. I reach up to touch her face, wet, but she jerks away from me. “I deserved that. I am blighted. I must carry the shame.”

Ignose's back is to me and her shoulders are shaking, shaking. Is she laughing? Sobbing? I put my hands on her shoulders, trying to comfort her, but she nudges me away.

“You are not blighted,” Ignose says. “You were born in the sea.”

I hear the sounds of waves crashing in my ears like we are back in our summer home, the sounds of seagulls and sand. The ocean is foamy with froth and undulates, combing the shore like the sun bakes the land. I see Ignose, heaving in the water, her belly full with child, moaning into the waves as she pushes and pants.

“I am blighted,” I say. My stomach flips. I would believe it tied in knots like the ends of my woven grass mat, if I could not feel it settle beneath my hands.

Ignose hides her face. She speaks through her fingers.

“When I found the baby on the shore, I went into the village. She was so helpless. So little. She quieted under my shirt. Everyone was sleeping. I didn't know what I was doing until I had already done it.”

“I went into the tent of the weavers, and saw the mats with sleeping figures to the left and the right. Three woman had already birthed that week. Their baskets were full of their babies, black and fuzzy in the light of moons. I reached down and took one. I put the baby I found on the shore in its place and I left.”

Ignose's voice ends in a croak. My heart is a rabbit being chased by spear-sisters.

“I thought,” Ignose says, looking at me, “I thought. This baby won't be like me. This baby deserves something better. I was going to just put that other baby, the one that wasn't blighted, that one that wasn't cursed, back out on the rocks and go home. I was going to leave you to die. To suffer for all the wrongs that had been done. But I couldn't. I couldn't. I failed. All it took was one look at your eyes to know what I had done was wrong. I was horrified with myself.”

“I tried to put you back. But the Ogna saw me and she saw what I had. She thought it was the baby from the rocks. And she was kind.”

I breathe in. Everything is the same but everything has changed. 

Who am I? 

Who is Ignose?

“Can you-- can you ever forgive me?” Ignose croaks out, pulling herself away from me. “Can things ever be the same?” She whispers.

“Who is my mother,” I ask. It sounds like my voice comes from another person, from outside myself. I don't recognize it.

“A weaver named Paoe,” Ignose says. Paoe. My mother is Paoe. A weaver.

“And the woman who gave birth on the sand?” I ask.

“Cinna.” Igonse mutters.

Cinna thinks she is my mother. But she is not. She is not my mother.

I feel a freedom as high as the clouds for a moment before it all comes crashing back, like a wave returned to the shore but bloated with bracken and brine.

“I forgive you.” I say to Ignose. Of course I forgive her. I love my Ignose. She is everything to me, she is the twin of my moon. She has always been there for me. She is my moon sister and I am hers. I will always forgive her.

Ignose nods, I feel her shift behind me. She crawls forward, she falls at my knees, bending her head to the stone. “I am sorry, moon-sister. Ocean born. Solamae, daughter of the sea.”

I smile. This is the first time she has ever called me sister. A full sister. I don't know how to feel about that. I feel...wrong.

“I will carry your shame.” I say.

Something tugs me towards the darkness, to the cave. I need to wander for a bit. I need to be alone.

I shrug off my furs and take a step away.

“I'll be back,” I say over my shoulder. “I love you.”

I think Ignose understands.

When I turn around, I see her hunched near the fire, staring into the smoke, her chin on her knees. The flames flicker like tiny sea-foam waves. She looks so small, like a bug afloat, a leaf on the wind. Part of me yearns to turn back and hug her. Instead I follow my own thoughts into the darkness of the caverns.

The Caverns stretch out before me. I could go to my people. They would not welcome me. Yet I feel a strange yearning to be among them, to see them again in the light of the news I have received. My feet turn towards where they have laid their fires and spread their mats and furs.

The light of their flames reaches my eyes before the noise. I hear a low hum of voices. I make sure to stand far back, ever silent and watchful. This feels wrong. I feel wrong.

Who am I?

The villagers sit together, close, wrapped in furs, heads leaning on shoulders. I see a crop of baskets at the feet of many and imagine the curly haired wonders that sleep within. Babes, only a few months old. Treasured, ocean born children. 

The moon maidens seem merry, if subdued. Many a soft hug is being exchanged between tidbits of roasted root veggies and dried game. Others are stretching sleepily, and arranging their warm leathers more deftly around them. I see many whittling, bone-knifes working at hunks of wood.

I feel a deep pain in my chest. An unfathomable ocean of dark waters stretches between me and them, yet I could be there in just a few steps.

My heart is beating so loud I am sure someone will hear it. Just as I am about to go, a woman stands. It is Ogna May. She is gesturing around the fires, speaking. I cannot hear what she is saying, but everyone is listening. Some are nodding, rocking their baskets with absentminded toes, hunching together for warmth. They listen with rapt attention.

How did I get closer? I don't remember moving, but here I am, crouched at the edge of the shadows, listening.

“And she climbed the vines. Up and up it went, higher and higher, until the leaves were spun of moonbeams. The tree and its garland twined towards the heavens. Kogialili's arms ached. Her sides ached. When she looked down, moon-daughters, she could see the sea spread like a vast droplet hung suspended between the firmaments, drooping as a woman's breasts heave in labor.

I had never heard this story.

“At last she reached the pinnacle. The alabaster moon. Where she would make her petition to the Creator. She prostrated herself before the temple that rests upon the white moon, where lives the ambassador, he-who-would-go-between.”

“And here, here, moon-daughters—here she poured forth her lament.”

“'Oh great one, he-who-sees-the-creator, take pity on us. My sisters toil endlessly under the sun. We are forced to eat the second-bread and wear the Kaerma. We are beholden to those-you-have-created. Take pity on us and end our afflictions, for we are without hope.'”

“And he-who-would-go-between prayed to the Creator on our behalf and poured out many offerings and wrote many songs. For two red moons he prayed.”

“And the Creator saw all the evil men had done, under the sun and the moon. He had counted up all the hurt and wrong men inflicted upon us and our daughters, and the sum was more than the stars in the sky and more than the hairs on our heads. And thus he smote the man, that when they reached 10 hands and saw their 10th red moon rise over the waters, they would be mute and without speech.”

“Thus did he free women into tribes.”

“For our own transgressions though less than man, numbering as the ants in the hills or the fish in the streams—he banished the moon-daughers to the valley we now call home,” Here Ogna May pauses, looking up. I think her eyes meet mine, but not a drop of recognition crosses her face.

“And Kogialili descended the vine. On her way down she spoke an oath, and promise we hold to still. She promised to birth within the ocean, to offer her womb-blood and her daughters womb-blood to the Creator in thanks and memory of his judgment. To not be born in the waters, sisters, is to be blighted and to bring dishonor upon us all.” She had seen me. She must have.

“And thus we have always been. The Creator placed around us this ring of mountains—oh and how the earth did shake, daughters, for 2 hands it shook and quaked like a woman's afterbirth. But as the tulmalt subsisted, a valley was born. This very valley that we now live in, where none can enter except through these caves.

“So are our woman safe from our oppressors forevermore.”

“Oh, moon-sisters, this is how our world came to be from my mother's mother's mother's time. And may it always continue.”

“Let it be as you say,” Droned the villagers as one, almost making me jump. “Let us carry this memory, Ogna May, and let us never forget.”

One by one the woman began to go to their mats, still smiling and swaying a bit, speaking to one another in hushed towns. I sit on my rock and watch.

After many had laid down, the Ogna stirred. She turned and looked right at me again. I look back, and nod to her. I watch as she turns and walks into the darkness, and after a few heartbeats, I follow, edging around the camp so as not to disturb the sleepers.

“Solamae,” She said when I arrived, “ Moon daughter. Why are you watching us?”

I sink to my knees, trying not to shiver. This far from the saunas a chill wind blows and reminds me of the snows that blanket the outside.

“I am lonely, Ogna May,” I answer simply. She sits and lifts my face from the ground until I perch on my haunches next to her.

“Yours is a hard lot, Solamae. I wish the blighted ones did not have to carry so much shame.”

I don't speak.

“Remember your place in the great ocean. We are all part of the wave and we all have our crests to carry to the shore. Yours is to serve as a reminder of our Creator's judgment, and the oath our sisters took to thank him for his freedom.”

I nod. “I am blighted,” I say. Though, not with as much certainly as I said yesterday.

Ogna May reachs out and hugs me, crushing me to her ample chest.

“You are, yet you are still beautiful, Solamae. Don't forget that. In time your turn will come. Remember in here you are cursed, but out there—when the men come over the hills to lay with their chosen, you will be just another woman.”

I shiver, and she mistakes my thoughts.

“Don't fear it. As soon as your red moon begins to flow, you can join us on the hills, and then it will be your turn to heave in the waves on a moonlit night.”

No, I tell myself. Never.

“Go back to your mat,” Ogna May commands. I watched her bulk amble away in the near dark, heading back toward the tribal fires. My heart burns with something I can not name, and I realize belatedly that I no longer feel the cold.

It was only when I am halfway to my woven mat and my own fire that I understand I am angry. I don't like how it makes me feel, like a smoldering ember tossed about in a clay oven, or like a sharok quietly prowling the sea.

The cold quells my anger quickly. I move down the tunnels, deeper, deeper, until at last a bit of warmth sneaks back into my sea-yearning bones. Here, at the caves, the sea is so far from us. Ice will have covered our huts and the fire-pits in our summer home will be barren. Yet spring will come.

The cave saunas are a place of warmth and gathering for all the women. Here there is trade, and bathing, and games, but not for me. Now the area is vacant, empty except for the faint hiss of vapor and the smell of sulpher, pungent and thick. It is warm here, the air moist, and the light from the lichen and moss glows an eerie green in the dampness.

This hot spring is what allows the moon-sisters and I to live in these caves through winter. Without them, the caves and us would be frozen tombs. I breathe in. Bliss.

The pools are empty. Everyone must be asleep.

I shed my clothes eagerly, sliding into one of the smaller cisterns until I am up to my neck in warmth.

Relax.


I close my eyes and let myself float.


Many hours later, I feel ready. All the anger has been soaked out of me, I am wrung like a cloth. I am ready to meet Ignose with open arms. I now can extend to her true forgiveness. I am ready to carry the shame, ready to shoulder the weight of my blighted past. Ready...to discover the small ache that is budding between my breasts. It is new and foreign. I dip one finger in the cleft of my ribs, and feel my heart still beating there.

I do not know what to call it this. The feeling I cannot name. It puzzles me as I dress, dripping sweat and salt and steam. Is it being awake so late? Is it being alive so long? Is it knowing the truth? It is Roan? Is it Ryia?

I take a breath of hot air, and the mote between my breasts swells within me. Everything is beautiful.

My outer firs gather like soft foam around me, I follow the paths home, almost skipping, no longer feeling the cold, my euphoria mounting. I will tell Ignose the tale I heard Ogna May share with my moon-sisters. Something new, something delicious to share between us. Over breakfast, she will ask me to tell it again. Together, we will tell it to Roan.

I'm humming, I'm warm. I was not born on the rocks, but in the sea. Ignose saved me. I am not cursed. I am not blighted. Paoe is my mother. I have a mother!

I am fr-

I crash to a halt, my gaze leaping over our campsite. 

Where is Ignose? Where is Roan?

He is gone. She is gone. Where her mat should be, an empty rock lays, the nettles and mat-weaves strewn about. Her basket is gone. Her firs are missing. Our cooking supplies are in a heap, and the tidy arrangement of our bathing things are spilled over, topsy-turvy. Her pack is gone. The fire is almost out.

I gasp, my hand to my throat.

Her snowshoes are gone.

I turn and run. This time the slap of my feet against the stones cry Ignose, Ignose, Ignose. Or is that my voice? I can no longer tell.

-------------

The End of Part One

The Wandering (Part 13)

I will not make many words of our times in the caves. 

It was a long, weary season. 

I cared for Ignose, as she was unable to care for herself or Roan. She neither ate not moved, for weeks and weeks. Only she lay, wrapped in furs, her lips parted, tonelessly mouthing Ryia. Sometimes her eyes wept, but mostly they were dry. 

She whispered for her daughter during the day, she moaned for her doing the night, and she screamed for her in the wee hours of the morning, until even I grew sick of the name. 

She did not go out to the Coupling, she did not tell me stories. Sometimes I would wonder if she still breathed, as I lay beside her in the caves. I was afraid to go to the sauna or out to hunt, afraid if I came back she would have died and Roan burnt in the fire due to neglect. 

We did not visit with the other blighted ones, Ignose scared even them when they would come by.

Though, some took pity on me and would leave dried meats or berries or broths at my fire, when I would get back from walking Roan or foraging. 

The long hours, as the red moon cast a pink shadow over all; I spent my time either caring for Ignose, caring for Roan, foraging for food, and hiding us from Ogna and our tribe, least they kill Ignose. 

A blighted maiden who lay comatose in the dark was good for nothing. Especially when they had a spare.

We both grew thin. I simply couldn't gather enough, and Roan, who was growing rapidly, needed more than I could give. And what-odd things others brought did nothing to fill the gaps in our diet. Mostly they made me hungrier, reminding me what real food was when I finally had enough to fill my belly for one meal.

I was hungry, and when I wasn't thinking about hunger, I was thinking about water and wishing to bathe myself. And when I wasn't thinking about that; I was talking to Ignose. Screaming at Ignose. Kicking her, even.

She never moved. 

I had started to wonder how I was going to get her home. Spring was coming, I knew from my notches on the wall. What was I to do? She had to get up. I stared at her across the darkness, lit by our fire, from logs I stole from the tribe at night; and suddenly she stirred. She rolled over. She got up. I was holding Roan who was fussing and she walked over, took him from me, and sat down before the fire. 

Was I dreaming? 

No, she was up. She was up and it would all be okay. 

"I'm okay now." She said, while I blinked at her. And she was, at least from the outside. She bathed herself in the sauna and helped feed us, and a few short days later we left for the shores, and another planting season with the tribe. 

But in a short time we were back, resting our feet before our fire in the caves, the furs spread around us and Roan a chubby toddling boy, no longer a mewling baby. 

And that is where I am now. In the same cave where we sat, writing on the leathers, old and wrinkled, writing our story before I die, in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will come along and read it. Ignose, maybe she will read it, and know of me and that I never blamed her. I never once blamed her.

---

Part 14

The Wandering (Part 12)

Night. We are upstream from the moon-sisters, close enough to see the lights of their fires. Ignose is bathing her swollen feet in the river while I light our own flame. I reach around Roan to pull the flint out of Ignose's pack, and strike it against my knife. Soon we have our own flame, carefully hidden behind a rocky outcropping where we will escape notice. 

A Lyx howls somewhere behind us. Ignose pulls her feet out of the water, and hobbles over to me. She has caught two fish in her basket. She looks much better, the marks from her beating have turned to bruises now, her swelling face a normal size. Instead of a puffer frog, she looks only like she fell into a patch of wineberries, the purple and black juice dotting her skin. I smile at her, but turn to look into the dark, searching after the sound. 

“We must keep our fires well stoked tonight,” She says, looking in the direction of the Lyx with me.

I nod. I had never seen a Lyx.

“Tell me a story about the Lyx,” I ask Ignose, as I gut and clean the fish, spitting them on a stick over the fire to cook. Even though it is night, the fullness of two moons, and half of a third brighten the sky to dusk. And if you squint a tiny tinge of pink pervade the horizon, signaling autumn with the rise of the red moon.

Ignose gathers Roan to her, and latches him to her bare chest. She nods, and I passed her a handful of berries and dew-folded leaves, feeling my excitement rise. Ignose tells the best stories. And she had not told me one since the day she had spoken of my birth, many months ago.

One time, I was 2 hands old, just as you are.

Dark and skinny and dirty, hair matted like an old oak

On my walks to the cave

I would sleep in a tree, perched tall

Like Yeul, who flies over the mountains



That night,

one night when the night sky

was alight with the light of the moon

I awoke 

the silence shook me

and the stars were whispering

my body thrummed and

my breath stilled in my lungs



I looked down

what had called my name

what has shaken me

from slumber?



Oh, yellow eyes of the lyx

down below in the shadows

three cubs, soft with ruby fur

feet padded like the wind

beasts of wild power



As I watched

she; tail twitching, prowling

seemed to say

go back to sleep

Ignose my daugher

it's not worth the mud

to eat you.



I sigh with satisfaction when she is done, picking my fish from the flames, my hand wrapped in my furs, to singe my mouth as I gulp it down.


Ignose crooks her lips, reaching for her own fish.


“Hot” she cries, but a few minutes later I hear a sigh escape her lips, too.


Roan has fallen asleep on her chest. We both lay down on our furs, me to stare at the stars and Ignose to..? I turn over to look, but she has curled inward on herself, her body contorted like the spiral of a sea shell.

---

Part 13

The Wandering (Part 11)

Halfway there.

The sun is hot. The dew I have gathered from passing foliage is sweet.

“Don't drink too much,” Ignose mutters.

----

There is a storm in my soul equal to the weight of the burden upon my back. Each step forward is agony yet I keep moving. I'm afraid to stop, least the questions catch up. The questions hover somewhere behind our path, threatening to overwhelm me if I pause to catch my breath.

The invisible voices are asking: why, why, why in impertinent way that has the tone of one expecting to be answered. And I know why, but I don't know how. I would do it again, if I could. That isn't the issue. Just as I know I will right this wrong, somehow. The thought of it tastes sweet to me, something beyond my lips, something dark and forbidden but whole.

That focus is what keeps pushing me forward as the pain from Cinna's beating chips at me like a relentless series of waves. As each one swells, it presses upon my mind until it is all I can do to step on.

It's not as painful as labor. But it's close.

It's her, her that stops me from giving in. Her: the shadow dodging my steps. The voice that lists after me, meandering on about the wind with her dark eyes the flit over the trees. She's always talking about the forest, like berries and fruit and bushes are mysterious creations from another world, all planted to delight her.

I look back. Yes, her eyes are on the sky.

“You are going to trip if you keep staring up,” I say, turning myself back around. No pause. Step, step, and step. No time for the questions.

“Oh, but I was looking for berries and collecting sap,” She says. I scowl. But I can't be mad at her. It's not her fault. It's mine, it's mine, it's mine.

And that's why.

-----

Part 12 here

The Wandering (Part 10)

I spend the morning banking our fire, securing our leafgrass lean-to, and burying our possessions inside our hut for when we return. In the hole I dug goes our cooking pot, carefully wrapped in leaves, our two cups, and the bowl I use for fetching water. I mark the spot with an upright stick.

Next I roll our sleeping mats up and place them at the far end of the lean-to, where they will rest until next year. I remove the broken bits of leaves and seeds that have accumulated in our hut over time, sweeping them out of the lean-to and back into their home in the forest. Our space is fresh, open, and I admire the hard packed earth, free of debris.

To my upper leg, I secure my gutting knife, and to my back I bundle a full water skein, my sliver of washing stone, and three woven grass-skirts I have made to trade at this years gathering. I stack dried meats, berries and fermented cheeses together with the hard traveling bread in my warmest robe. This I tie into a second bundle, place it into a basket, and heft onto my back. The basket will come in handy for gathering herbs, fruit, and the sweet dew-soaked leaves later on our walk, but for now I'll carry it.

Ignose is standing outside. Her face is red and purple and one of her eyes is swollen shut. She's chopped off the parts of her hair from where Cinna mangled her braids, and there are welts and bruises on her arms and torso. Roan is comfortably resting in a sling against her breasts, bare in the sun so he can nurse while we walk—and her bundles are on her back.

“I am ready.” I tell her, and I follow her bent form through the paths to our village.

We walk through the quiet, still village. The long huts have been dismantled, the fire pits hang smokeless in the heat, and even the fields are covered with broken branches and brush to keep them weed free. We walk.

At first I scout the broken reeds and bent grasses for signs of my moon-sisters passing. Their feet have left indentations and impressions in the earth, and these we follow. If we are careful the moon-sisters will not see us until we arrive at the caves. This is the game Ignose and I play, to lesson the beatings.

I side-eye Ignose. Sweat beads her face, but her eyes gleam like two small embers. I purpose in my heart: the first trade I will make is for some salve for her hurts.

Ignose does not speak, and my voice feels drowned in a sea-swell. I study the forest as we walk. The path weaves sun-bright, and the trees are speckled with sheen of dew. All around me the bugs fill the silence, their song as regular as the washing of the tide we have left to our backs.

At half-light, we stop. Ignose heaves down her burdens, unwinding Roan. He is fussy after being worn so long. She collapses into the grass beside the path while I lay out our meal. Roan kicks and whines, missing his mother and rolls, stretching the sleep from his limbs. The woven wrap has dug into his legs and after he ends his complaints, he tumbles gleefully around us as we munch on cheese, meat and fruit.

I study Ignose as she eats. Her eyes rest on her own knees, and I keep having to hand her bits or she just sits and stares into space. Roan picks that moment to babble, and her eyes flick to him, pooling with tears.

My heart hurts too. I rewrap the food, and move behind Ignose to kneed at her back.

“Thank you, Solamae,” She says, her hand briefly brushing mine as I work down her spine. “That feels great.”

We both turn to look at Roan, who is crawling after a raie. I take two steps and cup it in my hands for him, letting him inspect the filaments and see the wings. He babbles again, as I rise to shoulder my packs. Ignose lets out a heavy sigh.

“We can do it,” I say. “Only a few more hours and we can stop and make camp. I'll make a fire tonight, and if we make it to the stream, fresh fish!!”

Ignose pushes herself up, but she makes no move towards Roan.

“Come on,” I say, as she stares at me. Her hand rests on her face, on the swelling and the bruises.

“Tell me,” She says, “Am I disfigured?”

I blink in surprise. Disfigured? She removes her hand, and once more the puffy confines of her face are revealed. She blinks her one good eye at me, before attempting to smooth her hair.

“Cinna beat me,” She says. Her voice is flat, and her arms hang limply at her sides.

“Cinna beat me for wanting to hold my own daughter,” Ignose continues. Her eyes flick to Roan, meandering in the grass, intent on more bugs.

“We need to walk,” I say, holding out my hand to her. Ignose ignores me, her eyes still on her son. Her swollen face is blank. But behind the void she wears as a mask, I fear she is breaking, breaking, right before my eyes.

Ignose has always been my rock. The lapse I feel is as wide as the ocean. I am a beetle, I think—and somehow the thought settles me. Purpose is in those words. I am a beetle.

Ignose laughs, shattering my thoughts. She reties her bundles, this time to her front, and Roan to her back, giving him a piece of dried meat to suck on. She's still chuckling as we head out, although what she finds funny I cannot tell. I feel that asking her would expose a grievous flaw within me.

So instead, I keep thinking, clinging to what brings me peace—the rhythm of the sea, the arms of Ignose, the sweet kisses of Roan.

I am a beetle. I whisper, and let the measure of my steps drum out the words. I am a beetle. And Ignose is a...?

----

Part 11

The Wandering (Part 9)

“What happened to you?” I gasp, as Ignose shuffles into camp. She is covered in bruises and bleeding. Her eyes are blackened and some of her hair has been pulled out. 

Ignose does not speak. She goes to Roan, and picks him up, marching to the fire. She is holding him by his leg. He swings his arms widely, chortling, but every hair on my body is standing at attention.

Her arm reaches out until he is danging over the flames. He begins to scream as smoke billows into his eyes, arching his back and shrieking in pain.

“Stop!” I yell, trying to grab him, but Ignose just hoists him higher, dancing away from me. I fling my arms around her waist and force her to the ground. Roan lays discarded on her legs, hollering his discomfort. I pick him up, ignoring Ignose who is sobbing, her breath coming in short hysterical bursts. He's okay. The smoke and the heat had only frightened him. 

I fold him into my lap and scoot away from Ignose, who is now laying prone on the ground, rocking herself and moaning.

“What happened,” I ask again. Roan hiccups, finds his thumb, and starts to doze.

“Cinna,” Ignose says. Her voice is thick.

“I only wanted to see her, I swear. I just wanted to see her a little bit. And hold her. I miss her so much, I miss her so much, I just wanted to see her. She's so perfect and little and she looks just like Roan, I swear I just wanted to hold her a little,” Ignose babbles. Her legs come up until she's cradling them like a baby, rocking her body back and forth.

Silence.

We sit. Roan falls asleep, the tears on his dark skin finally dry, even it the smell of the smoke on his skirt and soft moccasins lingers.

“If I can't have her, no one should,” Ignose says. Shes sitting now, and her tears as gone. She's looking at me but she doesn't see me. She's looking inward, where I can't go.

I turn, lift a log, toss it on our fire. 

“I can't live without her,” Ignose says, making me jump. I hadn't expected her to speak, not when she was like this. 

I move Roan to his basket and bring Ignose a honey-square. Tomorrow we walk, and there is still much to be done. Tomorrow we head to the caves. Tomorrow she will forget, she must forget. Because I can't live without Ignose; and if she can't live I am as good as dead. 

Guilt gnaws at my stomach. If I had not...if she had been born on this mat...

But no. They would have killed her. One blighted maiden is acceptable. Two, a strange and frightening thing. Three, and the balance would be upset; bad luck would prevail. The village would not have accepted such an abnormality. 

I had done the right thing.

But why did my chest ache so? My vision blurred. I brushed away the drops and they shone in the firelight like stars in the night sky.

---

Part 10 here

The Wandering (Part 8)

[Transcription Note: Several hides in this section were beyond recovery] 

I always feel when it was time to head to the caves. I woke up knowing. The sun still shone bright and hot on my black shoulders, but I knew. A trek to the sea told me the same. The waves sparkled, the never-ceasing foam rising and falling, but instead of warmth and sunshine it whispered promises of cold and frost. Everything, from the way my roasted vegetables and soured cheese tasted, to the fit of my shift--felt off.

“We have weeks left,” Ignose said, scooping up the gleeful, rolling Roan and dangling him across her shoulders. I handed her the warp, and she tied him to her back.

“No,” I said, my eyes on the trees. The forest chirped with noise—birds, bugs—and the sun beamed hot upon my back, filtered as it was through the high branches, but I knew. “It will be soon.”

-----

I couldn't tell what is was—some noise, some animal sound lost to my ears? A chita, whose call I always heard, was it missing? No—that was there. Subdued, quieter, but there. Something in me felt the call to wander, something yanked me southward. I yearned to answer, already I felt restless, discontent with the sameness. Our days were the same—wake up, forage, avoid my moon-sisters. Play with Roan, see Ogna May, who checked on all the babies—pray for good luck and hope not to be beaten. And, since I had been beaten six out of the last 10 days, I was weary of it. My back stung and Ignose also looked discomforted. 

For the loss of the goats, they had beaten us both.

Yet hope blossomed in my belly. The two week trek to the caves was something I enjoyed every year, a time of rest—everyone usually too busy to remember Ignose and I.

And oh, what a time to wander. Right before fall, right when the days were warm but not cold, and before the leaves closed up into buds. I could taste the sweet leaf nectar now, just beyond the tip of my tongue. There was nothing better. Grasslands, forests, new game and wild mushrooms of many flavors abounded on our trek. And as we traveled we met with many other woman and girls making the same progress to the caves. Trade, and celebration, and friends abounded. For each tribe had their own Blighted Maiden, and as we traveled we could all be together.

I knew the name for what I felt now. Belong. For those four hands, I belonged.

That evening when Ogna May looked over Roan, she told us. The preparations would began tomorrow, and in two hands we would leave. Ignose whined—she would, after all, have to carry Roan all the way—and she hated walking. I promised to rub her feet each night and carry her sleeping mat for her, but she still sat scowling at the fire.

The Ogna flipped Roan over, examining his manhood.

“A fine strong boy,” She said, nodding at Ignose. “You have done well. He will make the moon-daughters proud.”

Ignose said nothing, only gathered Roan up in her arms when she was done.

“And now, Solamae—how about you. Is your red moon flowing?” She asked, turning her attention to me.

I shook my head no.

“Many girls start as young as 10. But some do not began their moon-flow until their 16th celebration. When your red moon arrives, come to me, and I will tell you of the pleasure between the sun and moon, and what awaits you at the Coupling”

“I can tell her,” Ignose said. Her voice snapped like a tree whipping in strong winds, but the Ogna paid her no mind.

“This rite of passage belongs to me,” Ogna May said.

I am not interested in laying with a man. But I said nothing. All the maidens enjoyed meeting the men in the grasslands outside the caves, on the last day of the last hand in our calendar cycle. I had seen them for many winters return to the cave, their faces flushed and excited, their firs wrapped around them, but their limbs languid and relaxed, sharing nothing of the brightness on their faces. In the saunas they would speak of the pleasures, showing off their game-offerings and baubles the men left them. Yet only a few months later they would be screaming into the sea like Ignose. Like Ignose, who even now called out in the night for her daughter.

Ryia, Ryia, Ryia.

The wind seems to speak her name, rattling the leaves and whooshing forward on its journey to the sea. Our journey, however, lay south. The snow was coming.

-------

Part 9 HERE

The Wandering (Part 6)

Suddenly a villager was there.

“I stole game from the spear-sisters,” A voice said. “I cooked it in the sauna fires and ate it all by myself, even through it was the week of fasting.” 

I jerked my head from left to right, trying to follow the voice.

“You must now carry this shame, Blighted one. May your bad luck never touch us.” 

“I will carry this shame,” I said, tensing myself. Something crashed into me, making me topple onto my side. A foot? A branch? I curled inward, waiting for more, but no more blows came. Sharp breaths. Twisting. Turning. I inched upright as best I could.

Remembering Ignose, I began to weave my legs through my arms and around to my front. A trick. The blindfold had not looked so dark from the trees last year.

I had watched her, every time. Did she know? Was she watching me, now?

Another Villager. 

“I crave a man, moon-daughter, even through the time of ice is not upon us. I crave a man and I feel shame. You must now carry this shame. May your blighted luck never touch us.”

“I will carry this shame,” I said.

A slap. My head rang.

And so it went. One by one the villagers came to me and told me of their deeds. One by one they bruised or cut or hit me. 

The air felt cooler now. Was it nearing halfnight? I was very thirsty, and my head thrummed to the beat of the ocean.

A light tap on my shoulder made me start with fright. Laughter bubbled up from my left. Ignose. I wilted, relived. 

“You look ridiculous naked,” Ignose said. I felt her hands at my bindings, and as she released my arms, I yanked off my blindfold. The sea was now in front of me, the tide swelling with foam, and the sight of it calmed me. 

“Ignose,” I said, “You didn't tell me it would be so dark.”

Ignose shrugged. Halfnight had come, moons twining the sky, one low on the horizon, one high. The beach spread out behind me white and glimmering. But I was shaking, dizzy and out of breath and could not admire it as I ought. Ignose knelt and helped me drink some water.

“After halfnight, they will come with the stone,” She said. “And the fermentation.” 

I nodded. 

She smoothed my hair, and dipped the water-bowl into the sea, rinsing me off several times. The cold water made me gasp, but afterwords I felt much better.

“I should not have let you do this,” Ignose said, but I shook my head.

“I'm okay,” I tried to croak through wet lips from my dry throat. Ignose did not look like she belived me. “And it's almost over.” 

“The last past is the hardest,” Ignose said. With a glance at the sky, she re-tied my bindings, leaving the blindfold for last. 

“I will see you after,” She whispered, and then she was gone. 

And thus I sat while halfnight deepened.

I could not tell what changed, but suddenly they were there. My villagers. Ogna May untied my arms and legs and I choked back tears as tingling flooded my limbs for a second time. The sky was black, the darkest time of night. Tide had come. 

She took the vest, filled with pebbles from the sea, and placed it over my chest. I bent under its weight like a weed in the rain. 

“We wash our transgressions in the ocean,” she intoned, as she tied the vest in place. “These stones represent the burden of our wrongs.”

“I will carry the shame,” I managed to rasp out, trying to sit up straight under the weight. Both sides of the vest pressed into my chest, making it hard to breathe. I slid one of my hands under the front and pushed it away from me to relieve the pressure. This made the bulk of it pull tightly on my neck and shoulders, and I strained under the burden. 

Ogna May hefted the fermentation, and Cinna stepped forward. She gripped my jaw, thrusting my head back, pinching my nose shut with her other hand. Ogna May frowned at her, but said nothing. She eased the end of the bag into my mouth and suddenly I was choking as sour wine spilled over my cheeks and burned down my throat. I spluttered and swallowed and tried to turn my head, but the bag followed me where ever I jerked, until at last it was empty and I gasped for breath.

“It is done,” The villagers intoned, but I was already having trouble concentrating. Were the trees moving? A face floated over me, and my body felt hot and heavy. Sounds came in a rush, and colors wove together and danced in front of my eyes. My belly burned and I swayed, watching the trees climb towards the sky with dark, twisting fingers. My nipples hardened, pressing into my stone vest, and my vision swam with light.

“You have given her too much,” A voice said. I tried stand up, concentrating on keeping my breathing even. I could not rise. As I sat, my gasps for air increasing as I tried to climb out of the fog. Lightheaded. Was I swimming? I could feel each grain of sand pressing into my thighs and legs. Yet, a wetness? Pressure. Voices. And every night sound—a bird cooing, the steps of the villagers receding—loomed over me like the roar of a raging, relentless storm.

I tried to swallow, to wet my tongue, but found it swollen and thick. I pushed the vest away, gasping for breath, but the touch of my own hands against my skin made panic flood my senses. It was too much. I felt too much. 

With incredible concentration I rose to my knees, pushing myself up. 

I took two steps into the fog before everything went black. Wetness. Fog. Breath. Heavy.

Where was I?

-----

Part 7 here

The Wandering (Part 5)

Two hands passed. A full rotation, a week's time, 10 days, marked by the digets on our hands for easy remembrance. My age, 2 hands, as well. A special number, not more or less, but perfect and round and enough.

Two hands marked with the rise and fall of the alabaster sister. Her twin, came doubly slow, and only now made a soft decent towards Leaochis. The ever-moon was in her ocean phase, pale blue but still glowing softly, the highest and brightest light in the night sky.

Today was the beginning of our tidal celebrations. All week Ignose had prepared, while my stomach had grown tighter and tighter. How would Roan fair, without her for a night? How could she bare the pain, so soon after birthing her twins?

As night swelled round and full like her time was near, I made my decision. I would go instead. It was time, I was ready. And it was my place too. Ignose had Roan tucked under her arm, and a calm expression on her face, little expecting my purposed thoughts.

She looked serene now, all motherly affection, but I alone knew how she had tossed and turned all night, moaning with pains. She had woken to nurse Roan at least six times. Often I had heard the soft sounds of her feeding him as she sobbed quietly. Now she stood straight and tall, like a palm tree unruffled in sea wind, smoothing Roan's black hair and sniffling over his dark eyes. As I watched, she whispered his sisters name to him, crooning as the women did to their new babies. Ryia. Ryia, soft as wind. Ryia, who was not here in his mother's arms.

I could still smell the blood. Unlike the first hand her bleeding had ebbed somewhat. But now, as the second hand culminated, I still saw Ignose dumping sodden rags into our washing basket at least once every mealtime. Did it hurt? If it did, she did not say. Yet she tossed and turned...and moaned and cried.

Ryia, Ryia, she whispered, and it pained my chest so to hear it echo across the night from her lips.

There had been so much blood. Could she lose more?

My stomach was squeezing, and my palms were sweaty, but as she prepared to leave, I faced her. My mind had been all but made up when she had told me, many moons ago that she was with child.

“I will go,” I said, taking a step towards the women that waited at the edge of our small footpath, their eyes on Ignose.

“No,” She said, but her voice hesitated. Broke. “No.”

“Yes,” I said. “You must rest.”

“You don't know what you are asking,” She said.

Roan squirmed in her arms, his mouth searching for milk. She adjusted him, and made to hand him to me.

“I do know,” I said, and met her gaze. Her brows tightened, and she continued to hold out Roan like some moon-offering between us.

“I'm going,” I said, and turned. I looked back when I was halfway down the path to find her staring at me thunderstruck, as if the lightening from my birth day storm had finally shocked her to the ground.

It was Cinna, Beia, Mai and Ogna May.

“Is Ignose coming?” Cinna asked, tossing her head in the direction of our lean-to. “It is Tide, moon-daugher. Fetch her at once.”

I raised my head a fraction, to look at the neck under Cinna's chin, her black skin weathered but still smooth, wiry with a weaver's grace.

“We know,” I said. “I have come. I am also Blighted.”

Mai gasped. “She's too young,” she said.

I looked down again, curling my hands. Waiting.

“Ignose was younger, when she started. Six red moons, I think,” Ogna May's gravely voice made me relax. “How old are you, Solamae?” She asked.

My eyes roamed, found her cheeks. Wrinkled, wonderful cheeks, craggy with age and but pleasant to behold. Like a stone, the Ogna May was. A stone you picked up and held for luck, cupped in your hand until it wore your skin away, until you knew it's every crevice and dip. Until it became a part of you. That's who the Ogna was to our village.

“11 moons soon, moon-sister,” I said.

We left.

The first stop was the saunas, where I was meticulously bathed. No one spoke, and the steam rose and fell like ocean waves over my naked body.

After my bath, the weavers took me into their tent. I sat on a red mat while they brushed and plaited my hair into 18 different braids. 18, one for each month in our yearly rotation. They oiled my body, still naked. I shivered under their warm hands, sliding across my arms, now dipping between my legs, now reaching around my back. When they were done my black skin glistened like sea-spray on a moonlight night.

Still no one spoke. I kept my eyes on the floor.

The Ogna met me at the door. She smiled at me. Her I could look at. Her I did not always fear. She took my hand and walked me around the village, from hut to hut, space to space, for all to see.

I saw the woven grass huts, with cream fibers newly pressed and mended, as was the custom on the even of our tidal celebration. The dark skin of my moon-sisters glistened in the moonlight, making the whites of their round, black eyes almost glow in the night. I met each gaze, many for the first time. Limbs and moccasins were my identifying marks to name my sisters, due to my cursed gaze—but now I on this most ancient and solemn of celebrations, saw faces. And how varied those faces were, how quiet and puzzling their glances, where I was used to anger and disgust. Studying the dark faces of my moon sisters left me feeling like a beached fish after a summer storm. My belly felt like it swam with minnows but I tried to keep as calm. This was important. This, I could do.

Then we went to the beach.

“Solamae, look at me.” The Onga said, and I looked. The sight of her eyes made my heart pound. She was crying. “Do you know what to do?”

I nodded. And so did she. “Make sure you aren't late,” she said. Her mouth opened like she would say more, but she didn't.

I tried to make my face stone, so she wouldn't see my fear. I don't know if it worked but suddenly the Ogna wouldn't meet my eyes anymore. Instead, she reached into her basket and pulled out the kai, the thin reeds to bind me.

“This we do for the wind,” She said, and bound my left hand.

“This we do for the wind,” I replied.

“This we do for the sea,” She said, and she tied my right hand to my left, behind me.

“This we do for the sea,” I said.

“This we do for the sky,” She said, as she looped my legs together.

“This we do for the sky,” I said.

“And this we do for Leaochis,” She said, and she wrapped a dark cloth around my eyes.

“This we do for Leaochis,” I said, but my voice cracked and I couldn't help adding, “Ogna May, are you still there?”

She didn't answer.

“Ogna May?” I whispered, turning my head left to right, even if I couldn't see. “Ignose? Where am I?”

The sound of an owl hooted in the distance. My heart was beating so fast it was hurting my chest. I tried to take slow, calm breaths but I kept having to gulp back the lump in my throat. The sand was hot. I was thirsty.

-------

Part 6 here

The Wandering (Part 4)

When I arrived back at our lean-to after my bath, I spread my damp, clean clothes from the sea upon the hut to dry. Ignose sat glassy-eyed by the fire, holding the sleeping man-child. She did not look up when I sat to add more twigs and sticks to the fire , rocking on my heals before our flame.

“I've named him Roan.” Her voice broke the silence and made me flinch. I looked up, and her face was towards me. Her cheeks were wet but her eyes looked beyond me, towards the trees.

I blinked again surprise and almost fell over.

“You cannot!” I said.

Ignose began to weep in ernest again. 

“They have taken my daughter from me. They have given her to another. All because she was ocean born, and I was not. Because I am cursed and she is not. Why did you fetch the Ogna. Why, why Solamae. Did I not tell you that I would give birth on land? Did I not instruct you, time and time again, to let me give birth as I wanted? A cursed life is the only life I had to offer a daughter. It was good enough for my mother to give to me, but now I am denied this for my own child.” She laughed hoarsely.

I gulped.

“I knew you would not want your daughter to suffer.” I said, slowly. “You said you were having a boy, so I thought it did not matter. The sounds you made scared me. I did not know what would happen. It might have been worse than the rocks.”

Ignose gently laid her son in a basket to her left. She stood, and her face was like thunder over me.

“It is not fair.” She said quietly, as I began to tremble. “My daughter is gone. You have greatly displeased me and the bad omens you have brought will never be forgiven. I will never--” here she picked up a thin branch from the ground-- “forgive you.” Before I knew it, the branch was over her head, coming down on my back. Switch. Again. Switch. Again. I covered my face and fell to the dirt. It stung. It would leave welts, but not bruises. Ignose is kind.

And while it was true she had asked me not to fetch the Ogna... in the deep in the night, she had begged me to never let her daughter turn out like her, out like me. I had done what I had to do.

Three switches later and Ignose was cradling me in her arms and sobbing into my hair while I clung to her.

“Why do you never fight back,” She croaked, squeezing me. “Why don't you yell at me, for a change.”

I smiled and hugged her tighter. For some reason, the switching had left me feeling lighter, somehow. Forgiven. Absolved.

“I need to go fetch some mushrooms for dinner, moon-sister,” I said “Or we will have nothing to eat tonight.”

Ignose released me, and she, too, seemed lighter, more relaxed. She tweaked my shoulder and grinned at me.

“The Ogna brought me a basket of spring vegetables for nursing,” She said. “There are turnips and broccoli, an onion, some peppers...and sweet potatoes.” Now I stared. Sweet potatoes? For us? My mouth started to water.

While Ignose held Roan, I fetched our clay cooking tray and strung it over the fire with kai reeds. Soon the smell of roasting veggies filled the air while Roan slept.

“Tell me the story of my birth.” I begged, to break the silence and to further cheer Ignose. Ignose smiled. She loved this story almost as much as I.

“There was a storm,” Ignose began, reminiscing. I relaxed, turning veggies. This is a story I had heard a hundred times over.

“I have never seen the sky so black. Everyone said the Creator was angry and I also was black and blue from being beaten for my ill luck. I remember crying in my lean-to, wet and miserable and hungry.”

“That night, I decided that enough was enough. Since I had not been born in the sea, to the sea I would go. The sea would be my forever home. I would trouble my sisters no more. My death would bring good omens, not bad, to my moon-sisters. And perhaps, in death, I would finally be forgiven.”

“I left my tent. The downpour was intense. I couldn't see beyond my two hands. The rain was pounding my body and the noise drowned out all else. I made my way down the path, slipping in the mud, not caring where I fell.

About halfway there I passed some of the women. They were huddled around another. She was screaming. I could hear her cries between the peels of thunder.

I ignored them, wrapped in my own thoughts. It wasn't until I reached the rocks that I realized what she was saying. My baby, my baby. And there you were. Tucked against the side of a rock, wet and miserable. When my eyes met yours, you started to cry again, mewing for me. I knew. I just knew. I picked you up and popped you in my shirt. The act of me walking must have soothed you to sleep, because your bald little head was nestled close under my chin in slumber by the time I made it to the village.”

I gasped. She had never said the part about going to the village after she found me. Ignose paused, as if searching for words.

“You were beautiful. And we both saved someone that night.”

I lean back, thoughts swirling. I'd never thought about it before, but who had nursed me back to life? Certainly not Ignose. Yet she always swore by the Creator she didn't know who my mother was, when I asked. Yet someone had nursed me. Hadn't they? Someone must have suckled me and held me close, and cuddled me in the night.

Someone else in the village cared for me. But who was it?

------

Read part 5 here

The Wandering (Part 3)

“Oh!” I said, flinching back. The woman glared at me. It was weaver Cinna.

“Watch where you are going, blighted daughter.” She spat. I immediately sank to the ground, my face buried in her moccasins.

Silent, I trembled, waiting for her to move. As I breathed slowly, Ryia began to cry, not happy with being suffocated against my chest.

Cinna sighed.

“Solame. You bring bad luck here,” She said, in an impatient tone I had grown to be wary of.

From my place on the ground, I tried to speak.

“I am searching for Paqia to nurse Ignose's baby,” I said to the dust.

“Oh, get up here,” Cinna said. Deftly she knelt, hauling at my arm, pulling me upwards in quick irritated yanks. “I can't hear you if you're groveling. There is no harm done, I didn't see the baby.”

Ryia began to wail louder as I stood and dusted myself off as best I could with two arm full of a baby and a load of clothes.

Cinna tisked. “Paqia has headed off for the quarterly hunt. She will not be back until the blue sister falls to kiss her alabaster twin.”

I bit back a grin. That was two weeks! Ignose could have her baby! By the time Paqia returned, her milk would be dried up. She could not nurse Ryia.

“Another wet nurse will have to be found,” Cinna said, clicking her tongue. “Since a cursed maiden cannot raise a moon-daugher...Hmmm. Oai and Paoe both have sucklings at the breast, and six more in the hut are due in 2 hands...”

I studied my toes. My feet longed to be back on that path to tell Ignose the good news.

“I know,” Cinna said, her grip on me softening, “I could nurse her. My son nurses still at the breast, and more milk for a mewling would flow after a few nights.”

I stopped breathing. Paqia was one thing, but Cinna was another.

“I was wondering, sister...” I said slowly, hoping my face did not look flushed, “If there was any bad luck on nursing a cursed one's child?”

Cinna sucked in her breath. I held mine.

“I do not know,” She said carefully. I studied her moccasins again, with their soft hide flaps and blue and white beads. Finally she continued.

“The baby is better being suckled by those who are not blighted. I will nurse her.”

I did not move. Ignose hated Cinna. She would never forgive me if I left her daughter with her. I knew also that Cinna did not care about little Ryia. She would mistreat Ryia. A picture of Ryia, dead, laying on the rocks beside the sea flashed though my heads. She would leave the baby out on the rocks where the cursed ones were left to die. She held no love for Ignose, so why would she want her baby?

“Ogna May told me to leave the baby with Paqia, moon-sister. I must obey the Ogna,” I said, bowing so low while trying to rock Ryia and quiet her. Is I swayed and bent, I felt something fall from my bundle. I watched in horror as my washing-stone tumbled out and split in two against the stony ground. A lump formed in my throat. Ignose had traded many things for that stone. We used to take turns scrubbing backs in the sauna, and I had many fond memories of our time there. And now I had broken it.

I reached out to grab one of the pieces, but Cinna swiped it out of the way with her moccasin, and it clattered to the side, hidden among the short grass underneath the working-huts.

“You are clumsy, cursed daughter.” She said. I remained bent over, while Ryia screamed, and tears pricked the edges of my vision.

“I told you to stand up.” This time Cinna yanked me so hard I almost dropped Ryia. She tightened her grip on my arm and hauled me to my feet, then slung back her hand to slap me across the face.

I blinked as it stung, sucking in my breath and swaying on my toes. The light spun.

“What is the meaning of this, moon daugher.” It was the Ogna's voice. In one motion, she plucked the angry Ryia from my arms, and turned to face Cinna, sweeping me behind her. I flattened myself against the earth.

“The cursed daughter brings her bad omens here. You should not have sent her.” Cinna said. With my eyes to the dirt, I spied the other half of my washing stone, and flicked out my hand to tuck it back in among my clothes.

“Solamae was bringing the baby in to nurse. Ignose has been blessed with twins,” Ogna May said. “I instructed her to do this. You forget yourself.”

“Paqia has gone on the hunt,” Cinna said “I will nurse the baby. Yet Solame refused. She should not speak so to her moon-sister. She should not speak back to an elder. She is cursed.”

I felt Ogna shift above me.

“I just heard of Paqia's departure. That is why I came after Solame. I have sent Yegj to run after Paqia. You are still nursing your boy, he has not left your breast yet. You know we do not suckle men and women on the same teet, it is an abhorrence. He must be suckled for the full 2 red moon cycles.”

Cinna mumbled something, but I couldn't catch it with my face in the dirt and my ears ringing from being slapped. I lifted my head a little, but only saw the back of the Ogna's bare feet, calloused and brown against the rocks.

Time passed. I'm not sure how much. My stomach rumbled. Eventually the Ogna knelt down and I felt her gentle hands on my back.

“There, there, little Solamae.” She said. I realized then she had somehow made Ryia quiet. “Ryia will be fine with Paqia. Do not worry youself. Ignose will be okay too. It is for the best. Go and bathe.”

I turned and fled. I had failed.

----

Read part 4 here!

The Wandering (Part 2)

We had both known this was coming. I guess Ignose had forgotten, in the pain. My heart plummeted.

“Can I move into the village?” She begged. “So I can be with my daughter? She was born in the sea. She was born in the sea. Please don't take her.”

The Ogna's face twisted. I thought for a moment she was going to strike Ignose. I dropped my bundle and dashed in front of her, prostrating myself in the dirt.

“She did not mean it, Ogna. She is distraught. Please, I will take the baby to Paqia before I bathe.”

The silence stretched, and when I finally raised my face from the ground, Ogna May's winkles were set like stony crags. Her eyes were kind, though. She nodded to me, and I stood, and took the baby from her arms.

“What is her name?” I asked Ignose, who was glaring at me through a wash of tears.

“Ryia,” Ignose said, her voice wracked with pain. “Her name is Ryia.”

“Ryia,” I said. A good name. “Do not worry,” I said, and turned quickly.

Paqia's hut was in the village with the spear-sisters, those who defended against the cursed clans, those who hunted and sported and fished. This, I knew, was the third time she had returned from the sea empty handed, but she had borne it well. She had always been kind to me. But Ignose, she hated. I do not know why.

As I walked, I swung my bundle quietly. The infant was asleep. She had dark skin, like the nights when the moons were all new. No eyelashes, yet. Fuzzy hair like soft moss crowned her head. 

She was beautiful. I smiled, watching her chest rise and fall and feeling her warmth seep into my arm. 

It was a bit cumbersome, walking with her, and my things for washing, but I managed. I wound around the path—the path from the village to the sea, where Ignose and I had made our home, and thought.

I thought, I need a plan.

Paqia's hut was empty of sisters, the grass pallets spread across the floor like discarded husks, the hollow indentations showing where each body would lay at night. It was quiet. I paused in the doorway, trying to imagine what sleeping next to so many women would be like. What living in the village must be like. A pang like a slap of seawater washed over me, but I set my face as stone. Thoughts and emotions were dangerous here, in the village where I did not belong.

But thoughts washed over me regardless of my inhibitions. I forgot Ryia, snoozing in my arms, and I forgot my bunched clothes and bathing requirements. And I allowed myself to dream. In the deepest depths of my soul I would like to be a weaver. Wielding the spear held no interest to me, but weaving! Oh, it did. I had helped Ignose weave our mats and lean-to every year since I could remember, and our clothes. Even she had said it was much better than she had done alone. I wished to stretch my skill, to have access to the soft plants those in the village cultivated instead of fumbling with my foraged cuttings.

A weaver. As I was two hands old now, I would be in my first year of apprenticeship. I eyed the warp and weft of the hut before me, and the leaves that padded the underside of the pallets. I imagined the spear-sisters reclining here, laughing together, sharing stories of their hunts and battles while they ate the choice meats and drank the fragrant bone broth from their hunts.

The baby stirred in my arms, reminding me of my purpose, and I took a step back. I had almost entered the hut.

Gulping in horror, I whipped my head around. No spear-sisters were visible.

I immediately ducked my head, backed away from the hut, and began to search the village. I should not dream thus. Especially not here.

I passed by the rest of the grass huts easily—where the weavers, the maidens, foragers, child-minders, the fishers slept. Beyond them lay the the inner circle, housing the elderly too old to work, who kept the fire-pits hot and the sauna steamy, and the Blessed, like the Ogna. Many of the women were gathered around the central fires with bowls of fish stew. It smelled delicious and made my stomach rumble, even though I had just eaten.

I didn't see Paqia's dark form or any of the spear-sisters with their short hair and breeches cut for running, so I kept walking. Beyond the fire pit lay the work huts, where the weavers wove and the women processed fish and game. I had to pause and kneel as two maidens walked by, their hair braided like mine. I heard the soft scuffing of their feet scrape as I clutched the sleeping Ryia, but they did not speak to me.

I counted two hands after they passed, and rose to stuff Ryia's fingers into her mouth. She had woken. Her eyes were dark and full, like two twin moons below her peaked brows. She latched immediately and began suckling her hand like her life depended on it. An old trick, I'd seen many of the women do.

Beyond the huts were the fields, with knee-high plants and climbing, half grown kai pushing sun-ward. I hesitated. If the spear-sisters were hunting, I would never find them. Maybe I should bathe first, and check with the Ogna again.

I turned to double back, chewing on the inside of my cheek. Plan. Plan. I still needed a plan. So lost in thought I was, as I rounded the corner of a work-hut, that I ran right into someone.

-----

Read Part 3 here.

The Wandering (Part 1)

It is official. I have too many hobbies. Maybe that is why I never seem to finish things. I jump from this to that and back again-- knitting, blogging, videos, writing, painting, music. I love being creative. Anyway, I wrote another story and will be posting parts of it weekly. Thursday? Thursdays. Enjoy.

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My name is Mary Lennox. I was part of an archaeology team on a watery planet called Leaochis. The ruins were extensive. I was assigned to a set of caves in the southern part of the two land masses of Leaochis, where I found several hides of an unidentifiable animal. On the skins was recorded a story.

Translating and interpenetrating this story has been my lives work.

I have tried to keep with the dialect of the time, but for those of us from the Milky Way, several substitutions were necessary. For example, the plant Pa has a sweet root that is harvested yearly in the southern regions of Leaochis. For ease of understanding I have dubbed it sugarcane, so that understanding may abound. But the reader should know that is not what the Leaochian people would have eaten.

We have barely begun to scratch the surface of the planets here in the Andromeda Galaxy, and many things are alien to us. Understandably, this is why the dialogues were updated. I will make available scans of the original hides, as well as my first three translations so curious observers may see how the manuscript evolved.

Leaochis is a vast ocean planet, with two distinct land masses that are not overly large. The people here were native Leaochians, they ate the plants and hunted in the forests, and fished the beaches. For all practical purposes, they were savages.

Yet this story is important to the history of Leaochis. It is one of three hides we have found. Three hides: the only documentations of life on this planet. There is not much we can glean from discarded pottery, empty caves, and grave dust. This story tells the real tale of Leaochis and her people, the story that the remnants left behind cannot.
-----

I remember the first birth I attended vividly. It was my sister Ignose. Her labor started at shade of the half moon, and she had shaken me awake, panting and breathless.

“My child comes,” She said. Three shade-spans later she was moaning and swaying with pains. “Don't go,” She said, but I rushed to get the Ogna. Her cries to the Creator resounded in my mind as my legs flashed over the smallpath to the village.

My frightened eyes must have told all, because Ogna May had arose and followed me without a word as I scrambled back to our leafgrass lean-to. I couldn't run now--even though I was breathless to get back to Ignose. The Ogna had been lifebringer for over fifty red moons. She walked with purpose and with a gnarled tree-root to support her and her basket, but she walked slow.

Once we arrived, she had to bend double to get inside. Seeing Ignose, she tisked. “You should have fetched me sooner. Her time is near.”

“It hurt, oh it hurts,” moaned Ignose. I had never seen her look like this, and I reached out to soothe her, worried.

She slapped my hands away. “Leave me alone! Oh, it hurts!”

“We need to get her into the water,” Ogna May said, as Ignose writhed. 

“I can't,” My sister moaned through gritted teeth before screaming. My heart began to thrum against my chest.

“Is she dying?” I asked, tears pricking my vision. Ignose was all I had.

The Ogna laughed. “No, child. She's bringing forth life. This is the way of most women.” She eyed Ignose testily for a second, before squaring her shoulders.

“You will walk. Solamae, help her.”

Ignose screamed again, sweat dripping from her face, and her belly undulated like a snake swaying in the rushes. Ogna May grabbed one arm, and I hauled at the other. Ignose rose.

“I hate the day I laid eyes upon the Sun,” She spat, but she walked, bowed over as the Onga backed out of our hut, Ignose leaning heavily upon my arm.

Ogna May talked as we walked. She talked to the moons, three were alight in the sky tonight. The blue sister, and her alabaster twin shone wanly through the boughs of the trees as we made our way to the sea. The full brightness of the evermoon shown as well, far to our backs and casting beams that highlighted Ignose's dripping face and the calmness of Ogna's weathered one. The only moon missing—the Red-- would come at shade, when the cold came down from the north and all the sisters retreated to the caves. Now, without its rose hue, everything was blue and white and dark. 

I listened to Ogna, half supporting Ignose, half watching the moons.

“For generations our women give birth in the sea. The pains come just as the red moon rises. It is our right and our task to bring life to Leaochis, to bring life from the womb to give to the Creator. He will sustain you as your red moon flows into the sea and life is born once again. He will...”

Ignose cursed, something I will not write of here. The Ogna missed a step, and came down hard on her tree-root, causing it to snap under the weight of both her and Ignose's quivering body. She stumbled to the side, and I found myself supporting the whole weight of my moon-sister as she clutched her belly and screamed. Water gushed from between her legs, drenching my calves. The Ogna fell in a heap beside the path.

Ignose panted, leaning heavily on me. Ogna May heaved herself up, tisking at the sight of her basket and pots. She had fallen on it.

“Hurry,” Ignose groweled, starting forward again. “He's coming.”

Ogna May grunted again, and I could tell she wasn't pleased. But she rose, took Ignose's arm, and we all inched onward.

I smelled the sea before I saw it. The sharp odor of dead fish intensified, mixed with salt and brine. Just before we rounded the corner, the breeze caught me with that vast emptiness, hanging just beyond my view, behind the treeline. The sea. It was near.

The trees thinned, and then we were there.

“I have to push,” Ignose said, but the Ogna just pulled her forward. Across the sand, soft like skin on our toes. To the lapping waves that ate at my ankles. She began to undress Ignose, the lights of the three moons making her dark skin shine blue and silver. We walked out, Ignose naked as the day she had been born here, on these shores, until I was chest deep and the waves lapped at the Ogna's waist.

Ignose reclined back, both of us supporting her, as she floated in the ocean, her breasts mountain peaks in the valley of waves, her belly a moon of it's own. She sighed.

Suddenly she arched her back, screaming. Red gushed between her legs, silver-black in the moonlight. Ignose clung to me.

“Solamae, Solamae, help me.”

I gripped her hand, trying to keep my panic down. This was not the way I had imagined a life-bringing. I'd seen many a maiden walk the path in the morning into the village, a small bundle in their arms, their faces alight with joy. This was entirely different.

'Shh, shhh,” The Ogna said. “It's almost over.”

Ignose screamed again. As she gasped for breath, Ogna May instructed me to stand behind my moon-sister, supporting her head and torso in the water, while she moved to peer between Ignose's legs, her hands cupping her bottom, her feet draped over the Ogna's sholders.

“Push,” She said, and Ignose pushed and cursed and cried.

In the end I was crying too, but a new sound soon stopped my tears. The mewing of a baby. I couldn't see—Ignose's hair was all in my face and the salt water kept bumping me up and down, but I knew, he was here. Ignose began sobbing in relief.

"It is a boy,” the Ogna said, and she placed the infant on my sister's naked chest.

I thought Ignose would grab him, but instead she gasped again. “It hurts, Ogna.”

The Ogna peered down, humming softly. “There is another,” She said, as my sister's cries intensified. “A good omen. The Creator has blessed you with twins.”

Chapter Two

In the morning, when the sun arose, Ignose walked proudly into the village, a baby on each arm. Her cheeks were pink and she was rosy with pride. I was exhausted. The villagers gathered around her, exclaiming over her prizes. A boy, for the sun. And a daughter for the moon. Rare to see my moon-sisters close to Ignose, but no one seemed to remember their places this morning.

I collapsed beside one of the mud and stick huts, watching Ignose. Ogna May waddled up beside me, chuckling again.

“One day it will be your turn, Solame,” She said, squatting down beside me.

I just looked at her. “I will never give birth,” I said, at last. But she only grinned.

“It is not so bad, once you get used to it,” She said. “You are only two hands old. Just wait until your red moon flows and the sun turns it's hot gaze towards you. The sun shines brightly on us, dear one.”

I just shook my head. Do that? No, count me out.

Ogna May leaned in close. “How many of your sisters have you seen go to the water? There might be pain as we bring life, Solame. But there is great pleasure between the sun and moon. That is why many of your sisters are even now heavy with child. Do not gainsay what you do not know.”

I returned to watching Ignose, but in my heart I purposed—I would not find myself screaming in the ocean at night, sun or no sun.

Ogna May clucked at me, as if she could read my thoughts. “Go home and sleep. I will care for Ignose. Eat, and rest. No one can support the moon alone.”

I don't remember walking home, but when I awoke I was on my woven grass mat. A bowl of clear river water and a cloth of fruit lay beside me. I rolled over, to hear Ignose arguing with Ogna.

“It is custom, daughter,” Ogna May said calmly. They must be standing right outside the vine-woven lean-to that both Ignose and I had carefully covered with mud to ward off the rain.

“So not only do I have to give my son up in two red moons, but now you ask me to give my daughter to another?” Hearing Ignose shout was normal, but the tone of her voice now near broke my heart. She sounded like a wounded wolf pup yapping at a mountain lion. 

“It is custom. Paqia miscarried. Her breasts ache to nurse a child. You have two. It does not change the blood, you know this. She will know of you, as she is your first moon-daughter.”

“But she is mine,” Ignose said.

“She belongs to Leaochis, and Leaochis belongs to us,” Ogna replied. I had finished my fruit at this point, and had started on some flat bread we had stored near our mats. The water I sipped slowly, and I trying to work the salt crystals from my hair. The smell of the sea filled our lean-to, and my clothes were pasted to my body, winkled in stiff, briny folds.

I drained the water. I would need to bathe. Soon.

Outside, Ignose began to wail. Her cry was high, a keening sound of mourning. I stripped myself to my flats, picked up my other woven dress, soft from the cloth-souring and meticulous mending, bundled it up and tucked my washing-stone inside.  Thus ready I and pushed back the flaps of skins that covered the opening to our lean-to, and blinked in the bright mid-day light. Before me, Ignose sat besid our fire-pit, holding her son. Ogna May loomed over her holding his twin.

--------

Part Two here.

All my writing can be viewed here.

What Losing You Did to Me

In 2014 I wrote a very short story called "What Losing You Did to Me" on my blog. I recently made it into an audio story for my YouTube channel. You can listen to it below!

Olive and the Station (In The DARK of the Station)

I used to post writing on my blog. A long time ago, before kids, I was a writer. I wrote some good things, and some horrible (bad writing, not scary unless bad grammar and prose scare you). I learned a lot.

I still write.

Here is the book I wrote during NaNoWriMo 2016. I know, I know. It's 2020. I'm sorry.

Well, enjoy! I don't know if I should title it "Olive and the Station" or "In the Dark of the Station". Right now it's "In the Dark of the Station" and the series is called "Olive and the Station" because I want to write a second book.

You can buy it on amazon in ebook and in print.

I'm a (self) published author! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.

Anyway, this book. I have several author copies and I keep having spacing errors. I can't figure it out. Hopefully, you won't care. Sorry! I'll be perfect in heaven. Also I would give my book 3/5 stars. Don't expect anything amazing. It is my first book and I wrote it sleep deprived with a one year old.