Jo Clayton: The Burning Ground

Xe tucked the blankets around her, then went back to the dining room to continue Isaho’s digging because there was some faint chance that one or the other of xe’s bondmates was still alive, protected by the table or some vagary of the falling walls.

Xe uncovered Bazekiyl’s hand, flattened and broken yet still lovely, pale gray-green, smooth as the bark of a silk tree, almost as soft as Isaho’s baby skin. Xe pulled the ribbon free, knelt weeping and rolling it into a tight cylinder. Because xe couldn’t bear to dig any more, not right then, xe took the ribbon to the old refrigerator, set it an one of the shelves, and stood looking down at her daughter. Xe was the last alive of xe’s clan and everyone xe knew had little room in their lives for anyone else. Xe didn’t know what to do.

Isaho’s face was relaxed, her breathing slow and deep, but she was crying as she slept, tears seeping past her short thick lashes, sliding down the sides of her face to wet her pillow.

Thann went back to digging.

When xe uncovered Mandall’s head, xe’s last hope died. Xe bent and kissed the matted brown crest hair falling over his ear, the only place xe could bear to touch, then began covering him again.

Xe’d almost finished when a sound brought xe swiveling around, a piece of broken brick in xe’s hand.

Isaho. The ribbon was tied in her hair, a big awkward ugly bow. She was looking out past the pile of rubble, not seeing it because she was seeing something else, though what it was Thann couldn’t guess. Xe’s thinta read anguish driven so deep it was almost not there-and over the top of it was a frightening eagerness, a need that reached out and covered over everything like the devouring iscabu weed that was eating Khokuhl almost as fast as the shells were destroyed the city.

“Linojin,” Isaho said suddenly. “Mam and Baba and

Keleen, they’ve gone to Linojin. We have to go find them, Anya meami. Soon as it gets light, we have to go.”

The Heka’s Shawl drawn tight about her shoulders against the evening chill, Wintshikan sat on her leather cushion and watched the remnant of her ixis moving about the stopping ground, setting up tents, the mallits and femlits fetching down-wood and maphik droppings for the fires, hauling water for the maphiks that pulled the wagon and the three skinny milkers that was all they had left of the Shishim herd. Her anyabond Zell knelt beside her, elbow on her knee.

“When it started, I was fierce for the war,” Wintshikan whispered.

+I know.+ Zell’s hand traced out the signs on Wintshikan’s thigh.

“The Impix were doing evil in God’s sight, dirtying the land and air and water.”

+Yes.+

“I thought we’d teach them the Right Way and with God and the Prophet guiding our hands, it would be soon over and things would be right again.”

Zell sighed and stroked her hand along Wintshikan’s thigh, xe’s fingers eloquent in the gentleness of their touch.

Shishim Ixis was camped here, in the hills above Shaleywa, when word came of the Impix marching into the mountains to build their filthy smelters and claw away God’s flesh in their hunt for iron ores that they might go on in their blasphemous ways, destroying One’s body, stealing One’s blessings from their own grandchildren. And there on the Meeting Ground of Shaleywa the Hekas of all the Ixin and the Elders of the Pixa came together to declare Holy War. The Heka Wintshikan was strong in her loathing and sure of her rightness, impatient with the doubters and proud beyond pride when her mate Ahhuhl was first among the swell of volunteers to take arms.

It was here, in the hills above Shaleywa, that Ahhuhl lay for the last time in the arms of Wintshikan and Zell, his bondmates.

He was dead before leaves fell in the first War Winter.

It was her habit, when the Shishim Round brought her back to this stopping place, to spend her days in thoughts of God and her nights in contemplation of the occurrences of War, mourning her malbond and her only son who followed his father to God’s Arms the year after.

She heard Zell hiss, then lifted her head and saw Luca come strolling into camp, her face sullen, her bare feet filthy from tramping off-trail. “Bhosh! I wish I knew what got into that fem.” She lifted her hands, cracked them together. “Luca, get over here. Now.”

Luca was the youngest of the ixis ferns, moody and secretive, refusing to keep the Right Way. She came late to Praise and stayed at the edge of the group, hovering there as if she were readying herself to run at the first break she got. She wouldn’t learn the Sayings, wouldn’t join her heart to the heart of the ixis, wouldn’t take an anyabond though she lay with any mal who’d have her. She didn’t come out and say she refused to give a child to the ixis, but it was in her eyes and in her deeds. She hunched her shoulders as she answered the Heka’s summons, not quite daring-yet-to refuse to answer it.

“Why do you take your tent into the trees away from us when you’ve been told again and again that your place is in the heart?”

Luca shrugged, dug at the ground with the toe of her foot.

“If you find this ixis unbearable, though we would sorely miss you, Luca, I will speak at the Meeting Ground and find another for you.”

Luca’s mouth tightened, her throat worked as if the words she’d swallowed for months and yet more months were fighting to find a way out of her. In the end, she said only, “It doesn’t matter, does it. They’re all the same.”

Wintshikan pressed her lips together; it was a moment before she could speak. “I’ll think on that,” she said. “In the meantime, raise your tent where it belongs, or we will do it for you.”

She watched the fern stalk off, anger putting energy into her walk.

“Ah, Zell, do you see the world falling apart? I do. There’s no joy left in the Way. It’s like a shirt that’s been washed too often, only a few threads holding it together.”

“So sayeth the Prophet,” Wintshikan sang as the Praise began. “Rejoice in the Land for it is God’s Flesh given for your pleasure.”

“Rejoice,” the ixis sang back to her, the anyas whistling and signing-an uncertain thin sound with all the mals gone except Oldmal Yancik and Blind Bukh. Ten ferns (it should have been eleven, but Luca wasn’t there), seven anyas, two very young mallits and three femlits.

“So sayeth the Prophet,” Wintshikan sang. “Touch the land lightly, for it is God’s Flesh given for your sustenance.”

“Lightly,” the ixis sang back to her.

“So sayeth the…” She broke off as a band of Pixa mals came gliding into the firelight, nine of them; they moved into the circle of ferns, ignoring her and the Praise. A Pixa phela but no one she knew, led by a mal with a thumb missing and angry red scars on his face.

He set his hand on Xaca’s shoulder. “Where’s your tent?”

Wintshikan was shaking with anger. The phelas that had come by before had been perfunctory with pleasantries, but none so unrighteous as to break into a Praise or expect the ixis ferns to spread their legs without the courtesy of choice. “You are unGodly,” she said, her voice coming out strong and full, powered by the anger in her. “Step back and let us finish.”

He stared at her a moment, and she grew frightened when she saw there was no soul behind his eyes. He turned his back on her. “You want it here,” he told Xaca, “‘s all right with me.”

In the flickering firelight, Xaca’s face drained of color. Trembling, she got to her feet. “No. I’m not an animal.” Her voice shook as she said it, and she wouldn’t look at him. She walked ahead of him to her tent at the edge of the trees and went inside, still without speaking. She gave him no blanket blessing, telling him without words that she was unwilling.