Kiini Salaam - Ancient, Ancient

Fogo chuckled. “I think you should wait.”

“No.” Laki turned over and grasped his arms. “We can do it again later,” she whispered, “But I need it now.”

“I am a benevolent ruler,” Fogo said as he allowed Laki to guide him to enter her. Laki had expected the shuddering and the bliss, but as soon as she and Fogo’s bodies were connected there was something else—something dark and ancient that unfurled between them. She gasped, then narrowed her eyes to study his face. His expression of knowing arrogance had dissolved. Unmasked, he looked like a different person. The pleasure and surprise Laki saw reflected on his face seemed like the first true emotion he was allowing her to see.

An intense current of sensations began to thrum through Laki, pulling her outside of herself. Long-held lashes of pain unfurled and vibrated within her. Hurts began slipping out of her mouth along with a low moaning. As the mysterious connection between them built to a crackling climax, time and space began to blur. Laki felt as if her very being was disintegrating in air. When she was fully drowned in rapture, a chill rustled over her skin; she began to shiver. She opened her eyes and saw a swirl of sparkling colors and patterns. A cloth fell over her body and obliterated Fogo’s touch. She blinked and the rendezvous with Fogo dissolved.

The chaos of her party was just as she had left it, but she was not prepared for what she saw standing before her. She startled, then scrambled to her feet. At first she thought it was the mother-unit—her mother-unit—looking down on her. But when her mind cleared, she noticed the faces. She could see eyes, noses, lips. All the women in this unit had thinned their cloaks so that the part of the veil covering their faces had become transparent.

“M… M… M…?”

“Mahini,” the mother-unit sang together.

“How did you…?” Questions flew through Laki’s mind. How could a whole mother-unit fit into a pod? How did they get past the concierge? Why were they here?

“We never answer how,” sang Mahini.

“You looked cold,” sang one mother.

“Happy, but cold,” sang another mother.

Laki bent down, scooped up the cloth, and draped it over her shoulders.

“You are the girl who is going into a mother-unit tomorrow, are you not?”

Laki nodded.

“So why are you wearing a marriage belt.”

“Have you changed your mind?”

Laki pulled the cloth tighter around her body. She was having trouble accepting what she saw before her: a mother-unit with faces. She examined the expressions in their eyes, the set of their mouths.

“Can you leave the unit?” Laki burst out.

One of the mothers smiled. “I believe we asked you a question first.”

“This…” Laki said, throwing one edge of the cloth open to reveal a glimpse of the belt. “…is a souvenir. I can’t seem to get it off…and you, can you all leave the unit?”

The women of Mahini shook their heads. “Temporarily, in an emergency, but our cloaks are bonded.”

“We are one,” they sang together.

“What about your children? What happened to them?”

“We refused to accept them. They belong to someone else…”

“…and we belong to the world.”

“We mother those who need it.”

“We mother with our songs.”

“We mother those who have never heard of us.”

“We mother each other.”

Laki’s head bounced around as she looked into the face of each woman as she spoke.

“Where do you…” She began to ask a question, but was interrupted.

“We don’t answer where,” Mahini sang.

“Where is the owner of that belt?” one of the mothers asked.

“Not here. Probably somewhere in the Stretch.”

“You don’t want to join a mother-unit.”

Laki searched their faces. “Is that a question?”

“No, that’s an observation. Look at you. You’re wearing a stranger’s marriage belt, passed out at a wild party, yet restless as a caged animal.”

“How should I be spending my last night, attaching bells to my cloths?” Laki snapped.

The women of Mahini looked at each other and smiled.

“She’ll be head mother,” one of them commented.

“Feisty yet docile enough to follow the rules.”

“Headed off to a mother-unit like a good little girl.”

“You call this mothering?” Laki asked.

“It isn’t all hugs and pheromones,” one said.

Laki thought about the mother hanging from the sling, giving of her body to nurture the babies. Neither hugs nor pheromones could do that. She opened her mouth to give a tart retort, but found that she didn’t have the energy to respond. She was weary—weary of conversation and weary of escape. The weight of tomorrow was pressing down on her, and she had spent too much time thinking about mother-units. Tomorrow belonged to the mother-unit, tonight was hers.

One of the women began to sing the chorus from their song about the nature of mothers. It was a song that Laki had always loved but never understood. She noticed that Mahini’s veil was billowing around the edges. She unwound her cloth from around her neck and rearranged the cloth Mahini had draped over her. She adjusted it so that the edges lined up in front of her body. Running her hand along the ends of the cloth, she fused it into a flowing robe. She pinched under the arms and shaped roomy sleeves. Laki listened to a few of the mothers chattering about her prospects for success in a mother-unit, then she shrugged off the conversation. She moved around to the back of the mother-unit to investigate the billowing veil. She was surprised to see that the veil was billowing because—while their sisters were chatting or singing—two of the mothers were dancing. Laki stood there, momentarily entranced by the women’s faces and the grace of their movements. Then she covered her face with her hands, as if to protect herself, and joined in.

Once Laki began to move, all the women of Mahini started to dance. Movement, it seemed, was connected to singing for them. As they danced, a humming rose up—a humming that turned into chanting. Their intonations started to reach the ears of Laki’s guests, and one by one, they stopped their revelry and turned to watch Laki dancing with Mahini. It was a sight that very few people had ever seen before and that very few people would ever see again. A mother-unit with exposed faces, dancing with abandon in the Velvet Stretch, veil fluttering and undulating like a living thing.

A feeling of flight, of progress after prolonged struggle, blossomed in the chests of all who heard Mahini’s song. Their message was wordless, but forceful: be free, be free, be free. Mahini encircled Laki, causing their melodies and harmonies to cocoon her. The song dislodged her calm composure and sent her pulse racing.

She had been careful to avoid the embrace of Mahini’s veil, but once she was undone by their song, she lost awareness of her surroundings. When their veil brushed against her skin, she felt as if it were her own veil being thrown over her. The sensation wasn’t all encompassing like the memory of Fogo. Instead, Laki felt as if she were in two places at once. She was dancing with Mahini, feeling the delicious expansion of possibility flowing through her limbs; she was in training with her mothers, feeling suffocated by the veil. She arced an arm overhead, and she was in the past, nothing more than a child grabbing at the veil, letting it tickle her tummy as her mothers dressed her for bed. She spun around, and she was imprisoned in a web of her own panic as the veil was being laid over her for the first time.

The veil was nothing like Laki had thought it would be. She had thought the veil would make the world look hazy, shrouded; instead it made everything sharper. When she was inside the veil, the things that required her attention acquired a glint, a shine. She imagined the veil would feel light and weightless, which is how it looked when the mothers were rushing down the hall to deal with something urgent. But instead of floating over her, the veil had pressed against her skin, sticking to every part of her.