Jay Lake - Green

“No, no, no,” she said, brushing my face tenderly with her fingers. “I needed to inquire cautiously at first. I did not know if you were alive, let alone here in Kalimpura. This was no more than where the ship I took brought me.”

“You are a traveler very far from home.”

“So are you, Green, for your home is lost to all but memory.”

That she had the right of. We had much in common, the Dancing Mistress and I. The thought saddened me, so I bowed my head and tried to will myself toward peace as she slowly dabbed at my wounds. I was cut in a dozen places, and bruised in twice as many. Not to mention the hurts to my soul. My skin was marred with friction burns and smears of coal dust. Pains plagued me just as after the roughest workout, which the cool touch of the wet rag soothed.

Her fingers were lithe enough, for all that they were stubby and broad. The caress of her hands was so gentle as the fur slid over my skin. I let myself be eased into the Dancing Mistress’ arms while she cleaned and comforted me.

After a time, I realized that she was singing softly to me in some language of her people. I did not understand the words, and could barely hear them besides, but the sense of it seemed to be a chanson of peace and rest.

When they came for us, her life could be at an end. Mine was likely in peril as well, depending on how many of Mother Vishtha’s stalks I’d broken. Here in the shadowed cold and damp of the cell was as close as I’d felt to cared for, at least since the night Jappa and Samma had helped me back to the dormitory. Possibly ever.

I curled in the Dancing Mistress’ embrace. Her silvery fur was the softest of blankets. Her hands slipped over me like night wind through a garden. She traced the patterns of my bruises, giving me a little jolt of delicious hurt without it being so painful as to draw me to full wakefulness. I moaned so slightly at the touch, and so she did more of it.

We were entangled a very long time. It never passed into the pounding sex I had enjoyed with the older Mothers. More like the early exploration with Samma. Nothing was pushed or opened or thrust within, but the endless circling of her hands, and then her tongue and tail, brought me to a wet, wishing tremble all the same.

I wanted to stir myself, to wash her, to stroke her fur and tickle her back and find a way to return the jelly-legged feeling she gave me, but the Dancing Mistress was too giving, too kind, too gentle as she folded me closer into her arms and laid her head across my shoulders.

What came next was a dream, I supposed later on. Or possibly a visitation from the Lily Goddess. She was not shut of me, nor I of Her, for all that we had so tenuous a connection. She is an autochthonous deity, as Septio explained to me later-meaning that she is rooted in her place and time. Even Bhopura to the east within the same lands was beyond the purview of such a goddess, let alone the doings of a girl across the Storm Sea far to the north.

Yet there are those who ascribe much to the tales of the Splintering of the Gods, the so-called theogenic dispersion, the birth of the gods in the First Days when the course of suns had not been laid in the sky and the plate of the world was silent as any table the night before the feast of life was laid upon it.

Mistress Danae might have said that the Lily Goddess was a splinter of one of the titanics in the leviathan times before, one of Desire’s children. As a nephil-daughter of their shattering, She would have sister shards in other times and places.

I stood in a rainfall. Not the straight, warm rain of the Selistani monsoon season, but a whirling bluster of cold water and dissonant wind as autumn might bring, back in Copper Downs. A city lay in ruins around me. It stretched beyond the horizon. Most buildings were rubble and foundation posts, but a few stood higher and nearly unharmed. One of those was the Ragisthuri Ice and Fuel bunker. Another was a looming bluestone fortress, which might have been the Factor’s house.

Plants grew around my ankles, rising from the soil even as I noticed them. I looked up again to see the ruins being strangled. Already the works of generations were being lost in a curling jungle. The leaves were broad and shaped like hands, with a low nap of silver fur on the underside and a pale, fleshy aspect above. They moved, their fingers wriggling, and each showed me a silver lily before the rain washed the flowers away.

In time, I stood alone atop a rock amid a wind-tossed lake. The city was gone, but for the bit beneath my feet. The twining vines had become roots for plants that floated like water lilies. I was amid a sea of hands. They began to curl one by one, then all of them, to the horizon, forming fists that reached for me.

I awoke with a sharp gasp, unaware that I had been dreaming. My head jerked back and jammed into the Dancing Mistress’ jaw. She mewed in pain, but hugged me tighter.

“I am sorry,” I mumbled in Seliu. “Was there a wind within our cell?”

She stroked my hair. “I cannot understand you, dearest, when you speak the tongue of this place.”

Though I did not want to leave the circle of her arms, I sat up. The stone floor was cold. I pushed my blacks beneath me for a seat and leaned close to her from the side, as friends will.

“Nothing came as I slept?” I asked in Petraean.

“Nothing and no one.”

“Mmm.” I hugged her closer. “I am sorry that we hurt each other.”

She whispered in my ear, her left hand on the skin of my right thigh. “You have learned so much.”

“And more I would show you, if times were different.” We both giggled at the tone in my voice. “Now that you have found me,” I finally said, “will you explain what it is that drove you so far from home to search for me?”

She folded her hands and stared at the floor a little while. Embarrassment or simply lost in thought, I could not tell. Then she looked up. “These are dire times in Copper Downs. Much that the Duke had bound away was loosed when you struck him down. Trouble has unfolded on trouble. Some… some of us… feel that your part in the fall of the Duke might give you powers of both resistance and attack in the problems at hand.”

My heart skipped. “Some of who? Only you and Federo even know of my role, yes?”

“There are others. Septio. Mother Iron.”

“Septio and Mother Iron sent you across the sea?” I was baffled. “What did Federo have to say about it?”

“Federo does not know.” She took a great shuddering breath. “It may be that he stands at the center of these difficulties.”

Then I realized she was weeping. I drew her head into my lap and began to stroke at her cheek, her neck, her little round ears. The Dancing Mistress did not cry, exactly-I do not even know if her people can cry as humans do-but she was a knot of fear and sadness. I knew that mix well. Even though these troubles were not mine anymore, my heart opened to her.

I held her close, kissing her head and calling her sweet names in Seliu. In time she sighed and drew me down, and we kissed mouth to mouth. Her breath was no worse than any other woman’s, and her arms were familiar.

For a while we managed to forget what was soon to come.

When the door banged open, the Mothers were angry. The Dancing Mistress and I tried to untangle, shielding our eyes against the invasion of brighter light. They became angrier.

“Get up,” barked Mother Vishtha. She had Mother Argai beside her, the other woman with a crossbow in her hands. I could see several more Mothers in the hallway beyond. Had they expected me to grow violent and give battle to them all?

I stood, all too aware of my nakedness. Both these women had many times taken me into their beds, but now the revulsion was plain upon their faces. The Dancing Mistress found her feet beside me and slipped into a fighting stance that would let her use the immense leverage of her hind legs.