B is for Broken, page 6
The Muto Qandunar closed in.
Like a fog of sleep, they slowed the mind.
Like a pool of mud, they mired the feet.
It was said the collective force of their fixation could stop a Qandunar mid-stride and hold him there while they carved him into meat.
The lieutenant reeled, face softening, and his mouth fell slack.
I choked on the tears in my throat and screamed again. “Nereyu! Look at me, at me, not them! Don’t lose yourself to this when they might need you most! That’s what he said, remember? They need you now!”
Rain dodged the slash of a Muto Qandunar sword, slid under the swipe of a Muto Vele paw, spent naré like a miser on each and every confrontation. Her isché spun like wheels on a dry road, rang like chimes against the steel of the enemy. Nereyu bent to retrieve his weapons and turned toward me, malevolence and misery warring in him as he rose.
I jumped down from the dais, frantic, scouring myself for scraps of naré and wondered if I could give what Brother Empho had lost; the pulse of life in my own body. “You haven’t failed anyone! Stop blaming yourself and fight for the people you can save! You have the right to be whole!”
You have the right to be whole. The words resounded in my mind as if I were screaming them at myself, and suddenly the burden of my awful memories eased. ‘Wounded monk’, Rain had called me, and I was. Just wounded. Just a monk.
A restive warmth gathered in my belly and uncoiled into the blackened furrows above it. Stunned, I dropped the sleeves of my robe and watched a shimmer of light travel up my chest; burning away the darkness, leaving only plain, human scars in its wake. I have the right to be whole.
When it came, the flow of naré from my body was a curative deluge that needed no transmutation. I poured and poured and poured it into my friend, who spilled it over Nereyu and washed him clean.
They came together like twin birds of prey and soared into combat. Rain dove at the Muto Qandunar with my naré, and Nereyu followed in a flurry of blessed blades. Rain swept from one liberation to the next, and Nereyu drew his wakened warriors into the fight. She was the instrument of change and he the hope of life beyond it. Seeing this, the fence of swords around the dais found its courage, and together the Qandunar pressed the attack until the fixation of their comrades faded away.
The Muto Qeyunar paled like autumn leaves. A fallen monk near the doorway fled to the plateau. Another followed, and another until they were all fleeing before the victory cries of the Qandunar at their backs. The Muto Vele in the chamber shrank, thinned, woke unhurt and barreled after them, the fierce young woman on her back shrieking with fury. There was no mercy in the beast or its rider. I stared at Inu’s abandoned head and wondered if there was any mercy in me.
Mother Anyamé stepped down from the dais and went to retrieve the warmaster’s remains. “They’re going to jump.” There was no pity in her tone, but neither was there any pleasure.
“They’ve spent too much naré.” I shrugged back into my robe, knuckles tracing the pink ribbons of flesh on my chest. “They won’t survive the fall.”
“They might.” She knelt, closed the man’s eyes and laid a hand upon his cheek. “Novitiate Sama, what you did just now was extraordinary. I wish Brother Empho had seen it.” She looked up at me with a regard so profound it made me blush. “Thank you.”
I had nothing to say in reply, so I walked out onto the plateau, where a roar and clamor announced the liberation of all the Muto Vele. Those who could run chased their tormentors to the cliff in a feral rage. Some of the Muto Qeyunar made it, vaulting over the side in self-preservation or suicide. The rest grew pallid, lagged behind, surrendered their stolen immortality to malaise and imperfection. These the Vele caught with ordinary teeth and claws, and the screams that rose from their feast were entirely human.
Rain turned from the carnage toward Nereyu and offered up her borrowed isché with trembling hands. Her gaze traveled the battlefield, lingering upon each of the dead in turn. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as if she had slain them all. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...” Her voice thickened on the words until they crowded together in sadness, and then she met the lieutenant’s eyes, lifted the weapons a little higher. “Are we done? I don’t... I can’t touch these anymore. Please.”
Nereyu took the swords with one hand and brought her into his arms with the other. “We’re done,” he murmured, shielding her dignity as she wept. “We’re done.”
We have the right to be whole.
I could not bring myself to number those who were dead; counting them would have reduced the lift of their voices in chant, the sheen of sweat on their bodies, the private ruminations of their hearts to the click of a tally stick. And because I could not do that, neither could I number the living. Instead, I ministered to the liberated, those people and Vele returned from a dark sojourn in need of solace.
Banth’s burial site, once a tidy place of final repose for the mountain’s monastics, grew to a field of upturned earth and bodies, including those of the Muto Qeyunar whose power had been insufficient to their fall from the plateau. Nereyu and Rain dug Inu’s grave together, and my first work in the white robe of an ordained Qeyunar monk was to bless it with the naré of falling snow.
“Death is only a transformation,” I said to the gathered mourners in the too-silent valley at dawn. “The decay of his flesh we consign to the ground, which needs all the naré we can give it now, but the spirit of Warmaster Inu we bid farewell as it travels the flow of impermanence to rebirth.”
Afterward, Nereyu argued we should evacuate to Dunee, but we would not abandon our neighbors and could not abandon the leached and brittle valley that needed our care. So in time, a replacement force of Qandunar came to live on the plateau. They brought with them a master of tattoos, and in the days that followed, Nereyu received the Warmaster glyph. Rain received the only glyph any Qandunar would ever bear for the Battle of Geriahar, and when it was finished, she was the first to bear the glyph for the Battle of Banth. Work stopped for this event, and she sat outside in a circle of warriors, monastics and visiting villagers while a stylized chicken and two isché were inked into the back of her neck.
“What’s so important about Henny?” One of the warriors knelt to poke at the fire, and there was no mockery in the smile that curled her mouth. “I mean, if I’ve got to wear a picture of her on my head for the rest of my life...”
A ripple of laughter rose from the crowd.
Rain met the woman’s smile with a thoughtful expression, careful not to move her neck. “I was liberated with a blow to the head that knocked me senseless. When I woke, there was a yellow chick hiding from the battle beneath my arm, against my body.” She paused while Henny crossed from my lap to hers and settled in. “I laid there a long time remembering the Qandunar who had trusted me the way that little chick did; people I had failed, people I had killed...” Her voice trailed off, and her fingers settled in Henny’s feathers.
Mother Anyamé nodded, her needle flashing through the length of fabric that would become Rain’s novitiate robe. “Liberation and healing are not the same things, Candidate Rain. Your scars may always pain you, but we’ll be here to help when they do.”
I rubbed at the subtle ache of my own scars and knew she was right.
We said farewell to Nereyu on Midwinter Day in the place where we had met him. Freshly-shaven, smelling of soap and leather polish, armed with the whetted isché he had carried into battle, his shadow on the lift might have been Warmaster Inu’s. Rain faced him on the plateau, eyes unshielded as they had ever been, the green of her new robe speckled with bird droppings. Henny clucked from the crook of her arm and pecked at a kernel of cracked corn in Nereyu’s hand, the last of many she had eaten.
Rain spoke to him as a warrior parting ways from a comrade-in-arms. “What are your orders?”
“Back to Dunee until the weather breaks and then wherever we’re sent.” Nereyu dusted his palms together. “Think I might lose a few of the liberated Qandunar on the road, and I plan to let them go.” He frowned, his face lifting to the cloud cover. “They’re broken in ways I don’t completely understand, Rain, not even after you.”
“I hope you never do.” She followed his gaze, and a melancholy quiet fell for a time. A beam of sunlight brightened the space between them and faded. The line of gray it left behind was a road, one Nereyu might yet travel but Rain could never return upon.
Nereyu clapped a hand upon my shoulder after a moment. “When are you coming to Dunee, Qeyunar Sama? I want you with me when I go out into the field again.”
I laughed. “It’ll be a few years before I’m ready for that. Defensive arts are among the hardest to learn.”
His brow lifted in disbelief. “Won’t take you that long. You have a gift.”
“Perhaps.” I shrugged. “But I still can’t explain the burst of naré that saved me at Dareo, and I don’t have any more blackened scars to heal.”
They both stared at me then as if I had said something profound.
“Well, you don’t want to keep your Qandunar waiting.” Rain broke the silence with a brisk change of tone and stepped back a pace, her free hand gesturing in a mudra of protection. It was simple and sure, and the naré of passing sunlight was in it. “I give you change, Warmaster Nereyu.”
“Gave.” He reached up, folded her fingers into his palm and brought her hand to his breastplate. “You gave me change, Novitiate Rain.”
I went to man the crank, and the lift rattled to life. Rain watched it descend until the machine fell silent again, and then we went back into the monastery together.
C is for Change
Sara Cleto
WHEN the sun sets, the Snow Queen rises from her bed and slips a diaphanous robe over her glinting skin. Taffeta, brocade, and leather crowd restlessly in her closet and ease past the doors, spilling in drifts of color onto the marbled floor. The King brings her new boxes, brimming with crisp tissue and crisper clothes, bound cheerfully with a bow, nearly every day.
“For the gala,” he says, or “for dinner with the executive board.”
He smiles at her, all teeth, and suggests with exquisite politeness that she might dress and come downstairs.
She smiles, or the nearest approximation that her stiff, heavy lips can manage, and strokes her newest garment with a single fingertip.
The fabric tears cleanly under her light caress, parting with the casual brutality of a broom on a spider web.
The King sighs gently. “Darling, do remember to wear your gloves. And let your ladies help you dress.”
She looks at the complicated undergarments, plates of metal twined with industrial straps, the screws and bolts that hold the pieces together, and then at the women who never quite leave the shadow of the door. They wear sturdy gloves, the kind that gardeners who tend particularly recalcitrant rose bushes favor, and sturdy lines around their mouths.
“Tomorrow, perhaps,” she says quietly. Her lips clatter against each other, and her words are echoed by the tap of jewels striking the floor. She watches impassively as one of her ladies edges towards her. The woman collects the sparkling gems from where they lay around her feet and places them in one of the many glass caskets lining the room, arranged to catch the light. Her ruined gown is whisked away to be repaired, stitched back into a semblance of wholeness, and laid to rest, unworn, in her closet. The King inclines his head over her hand, lips scraped and lightly bleeding, and withdraws.
Sliding on her gloves, she arranges her robe around her, concealing as much of her glittering skin as possible.
She never goes downstairs.
Gwyn had her first diamond at thirteen.
Light poured through the thick glass windows in the schoolroom, and struck Cory’s long hair, the blow staining the strands the color of a rosy apple. She wanted to touch them, to see how they felt under the soft pads of her fingertips, but the vibrant shade reminded Gwyn of the colors that dripped into her mother’s hair when her father wrapped it round his fist and pulled.
She shivered.
The bell rang, and she lowered her eyes, swiftly gathered her books into her arms. The chair in front of her creaked as Cory turned around, her mouth half open. Gwyn leapt out of her desk and hurried to the door, schooling her face into neutrality.
A sharp itch on her wrist made her dig her fingernails into her skin. A cold, hard shape caught beneath her nail, and she pulled back her sleeve. A perfectly faceted jewel gleamed at the base of her lifeline. Gwyn stared as it swallowed the harsh florescent lights, twinkling sullenly. She tugged her sleeve down and carefully did not think about the diamond until the evening, when she closed the door against the shouting downstairs and pried at it with her nails and then her tweezers. The skin around the jewel had hardened, holding it as firmly as a platinum setting.
Her reflection in the mirror was pale, except for hectic blooms over her cheekbones—they faded as she watched. Breathing deeply until her heart cooled and pulsed evenly in her chest, Gwyn took comfort in her reflection. Her gray eyes regarded her from the glass with a serenity that she didn’t feel. She would be composed as the motionless girl who looked back at her—colorless and chill, numb as stiletto-shod feet in midwinter. Nothing, not a stray diamond or flaming hair, would break through the ice.
Thirteen was young for the advent of a curse, but Gwyn thought she could bear it.
The Snow Queen has grown to hate the mirrors that crowd her rooms. Tall, ornate antiques lean against the walls, and a sleek, modern glass hangs over her dressing table. Small, decorative mirrors are arranged in an artful flurry around her bed, and even the doors have reflective surfaces.
When she first came to the castle, there had only been one mirror in her room but the king quickly noticed the germinating effect it had on her. He ordered more and more. Light bent between her and her endless reflections, and diamonds fell from her lips like rain. When she covered the mirrors with unworn gowns, the King told her ladies to bare them.
“Every corner of the room must shine with your beauty, my love,” he said as he lay in bed beside her.
She glanced at her reflection in the uncovered glass and closed her eyes against the glare. “If you wish,” she said, and three diamonds fell from her tongue to his chest.
The king smiled.
At first, Gwyn concealed the diamonds with long sleeves, jeans, the ash-blonde fall of her hair. The sharp edges wore quickly through the fabric, and by the end of a long day, pin sized holes dotted her arms, diamonds twinkling through in ever spreading constellations. With cool practicality, she discarded her worn denim, her well-washed t-shirts and went to the thrift store, returning with bags bursting with spangled velvet dresses, discarded holiday sweaters that gleamed silver in the light, blouses heavy with rhinestones. Long crystal earrings, a paste necklace, and shimmering bangles camouflaged the few jewels visible on her neck and wrists. Before her mirror, Gwyn brushed Alice blue powder over her eyelids, frosted her lips, dusted fine glitter over the contours of her cheeks. She practiced her smile again and again in the mirror until it didn’t quaver, even as diamonds pricked into being along her shoulder blades and inner arms.
At school, as she swept through the halls in a haze of refracted light, they began calling her the Snow Queen.
In the drawer beneath her dressing table, the Snow Queen keeps a small box, the color of amber. Sometimes, after the King has left, she takes it out, so careful not to scratch the wood, and sorts through the contents, item by item. First, a well-worn collection of 19th century poetry, the pages yellow and crisp at the corners. Then a scrap of denim, the only remnant of the first pair of jeans that her diamonds shredded. A newspaper clipping with the bold headline “Snow Queen Ices the Runway” above an image of herself halfway down a catwalk, diamonds bared through rents in the scraps of McQueen draped with haphazard precision around her long limbs. At the bottom of the box is a creased photograph of a girl with a sweet smile and a tangle of long red hair.
Gwyn was sixteen when her diamonds won her fame.
Of course, she couldn’t hide them forever. She only knew that she had to try, had to feed the compulsion to cover, bind, dazzle, to postpone the inevitable moment when everyone would know. She could bear their eyes on her, as long as they didn’t know the reason they were looking.
“Why?” Cory asked.
“Why didn’t Coleridge finish the poem? I don’t know,” Gwyn replied, her words punctuated by a strobing flash as she shrugged her shoulders.
“No. That’s easy: too much laudanum. Or too many daffodils.”
Gwyn laughed, startled herself with the unfamiliar feeling, then laughed again for the sheer physicality of it. They were sprawled on Cory’s bedroom floor, books and laptops open as they pieced together a presentation on Romantic poets for English class.
“No, not ‘Christabel,’” Cory continued. She smoothed her plaid skirt over her knees with a quick, restless motion. “You. Why did you start with, um, all the glittering? I’ve always wanted to ask you.”
“I guess I just thought it suited me,” Gwyn said, ignoring the prickling on her ankle as a gem poked through her tights.
“It does. You’re beautiful. But you were just as beautiful in jeans and a tee,” Cory said, then flushed deeply, “I mean, it was just such a change.”
Blood pulsed quicker in Gwyn’s temples, her neck, and she reached for Cory’s hand. She let herself feel her smooth skin, the slightly rough scrape of a callus, and answering pressure of her warm fingers around her own. That warmth tingled in her frozen fingers, eased the chill in her arm, and knocked gently at her heart. Cory leaned forward, her breath a spring thaw. Gwyn felt the weight of a single diamond on her collarbone ease into the brush of a snowflake before melting away.
No. Warmth might mean love, but it also meant blackened eyes, bruises under long sleeves, a voice hoarse from crying—she’d learned this lesson faithfully along with her letters and multiplication tables at her parents’ kitchen table. Better to be snow, better not to feel at all.
