N. Jemisin - The Awakened Kingdom

I swallowed hard, then took a deep breath. OK. This was scary, but maybe it would be like when I had gone to talk to Ral the Dragon, who never did anything except roar so I’d had to roar with it. Zhakkarn was full of battle, so I would have to battle with her. And then maybe we could be friends! This made me be not scared anymore. And anyway, I had battled before with Eino, right? The dance had been a kind of fight. The moment I thought of that, I got excited. Maybe I would like this, too!

Zhakkarn lowered her chin, her eyes suddenly sharp. “There seems to be a bit of the warrior in you already, Sibling.”

Was there? “I was in a fight last night!” I said. “It was fun.”

Zhakkarn smiled. “Let’s hope this one is, too, little Sibling.”

Then she came at me. It was so fast I didn’t have time to be scared, except it was also so fast I couldn’t think, so I sort of squeaked and scrambled backward and hit the wooden railing. But she was still coming! So I folded myself over to the other side of the ring, where she had been.

And SHE DID IT, TOO.

So then her fist was up and she punched like WHAM and it hurt lots, like A WHOLE LOT, like OH HELLS I DIDN’T KNOW MORTAL STUFF COULD HURT LIKE THAT. I tried to will it not to hurt and it kept hurting, even! The mortal realm is not nice at all. Before I could get up she KICKED me. That wasn’t fair! It hurt lots more. I yelled, because I couldn’t help it. Stuff was broken inside me. Then I tried to crawl and she grabbed me by the ankle and THREW ME ACROSS THE RING! I went into the wall some, because the bricks were not very sturdy. And she was STILL COMING.

“Hey!” I yelled, as she walked toward me. It took me a minute to push myself even partially out of the wall, and then I had to spit out some teeth along with rocks. I clung to the edges of the hole I was in, panting. “That is not fair! How am I supposed to fight when you don’t wait ?”

“Do you think a real enemy will politely wait for you to recover?” Zhakkarn was still coming, and oh, was her face scary. Eyes like hard steel and jaw tight like, like, like I dunno SCARY TIGHT THINGS what did it even matter she was gonna KILL me. “Do you think battle is fair ?”

I blinked, because well, I had. The dance with Eino… but now I knew that hadn’t really been battle. It had just been play. Eino dreamt of fighting the way the men of long ago had fought, but if that had been how they’d really fought, no wonder they’d lost.

But—

(I had to stop thinking for a bit, because Zhakkarn grabbed me out of the wall and a lot of bad things happened for a while. I do not want to talk about them.)

OK, so. But.

I lay on the ground where Zhakkarn had thrown me the last time, trying to understand something that had occurred to me earlier. My eyes were swollen shut, but I could feel Zhakkarn coming again—and also, I could feel that she was disappointed in me, because I hadn’t managed to put up much of a fight. That was worse than the pain, actually, because the pain would go away, but a sibling’s disappointment would not.

But . This was important!

But it bugged me that Eino’s kind of fighting wasn’t real fighting. It should have been. It could have been, maybe, if Eino knew more about how to do it than what he’d learned in musty old spheres and scrolls. Or if Eino had been taught the Proper Way to fight, by someone who had worked with him and sparred with him from when he was small! There was no reason for men’s fighting to be any worse than women’s fighting. Women were not magic or anything; they just knew something the men didn’t.

Zhakkarn picked me up by the neck and held me up in the air with one hand. Also, she was choking me. “Do you yield, Sibling?”

I felt like I was on the edge of something—something besides passing out. Oh, right! Darren women knew other women had learned to fight, so they tried. They got good at it because they believed they could. But the men did not try. They did not believe.

(Something cracked in my neck. Ow.)

And no one else believed in them, either. That was why Fahno wanted Eino to be married, was making him be married, when he didn’t want to be. It was because Fahno didn’t think boys could be strong. But boys could be strong! And girls could be strong! Everybody could be strong, if they all got the same knowledge, and if they tried. If they all believed!

I gasped, which was really saying something because my throat was all closed up. And I opened my eyes some, because all of a sudden they were not so bruised and hurt. I stared at Zhakkarn, who blinked.

I get it now! I said into her head, since I couldn’t talk. And then I grabbed her arm to brace myself, and curled up, and kicked her in the chest with both feet as hard as I could!

We both went down, because she still had hold of me, and because Papa Tempa had filled the mortal realm with MOMENTUM which was annoying. She did stagger, though, and let me back down to the ground by accident. That was good, because suddenly I was strong again, or at least not weak! And even if I didn’t know how to fight well, I believed that I could fight, and really that is what matters. And! I did kind of know how to fight because of Eino’s dance, which was too fair and pretty to be proper fighting but only because nobody had used it for proper fighting in godsknewhowlong, and nobody ever would if I didn’t try , so I spun and whirled my arms like I would have in the dance and that made Zhakkarn let go and I was free!

… To fall down, because lots of stuff was broken in me. Mortal realm, mortal rules. I said some bad words.

Zhakkarn straightened, looking down at me, and all of a sudden she didn’t look disappointed anymore.

“More than a bit of the warrior,” she said. “That you scored even one blow is excellent, Sibling. I look forward to our next battle if you fight like this from the outset.”

“I ab nebba fahdig you agan,” I said through messed-up teeth, glaring at her.

“Never say never,” said Mikna, coming into the narrow range of my sight. She crouched, smiling. “I get the feeling you’re stubborn, Lady Shill. You should probably yield, though, unless you want this battle to contin—”

“YIELD.” I did not yell it loud enough to hurt anybody, but it was pretty loud. Mikna grimaced, but laughed. And—oh, thank our parents—Zhakkarn folded her arms to wait for me to heal.

It took a few minutes. Once my stomach-muscles could work again I sat up and glared at them some more. “Not fun.”

“Battles rarely are,” said Zhakkarn, shrugging.

“Well now I know that!” I had just grown some new teeth, so I could talk better now. I was so mad at Mikna! “That didn’t have any point!”

“Didn’t it?” Mikna raised her eyebrows. “But you’ve learned so much, Lady Shill.”

“Like what?”

“Enough that you seem to have grown. Fahno said that might happen, particularly when you got closer to discovering your nature.” At this I blinked, and looked down, but it was true! Now I was long and leggy, and there were little bumps on my chest where my body was thinking about growing breasts.

“I don’t get it,” I said, staring down at all that leg. “I only took this shape so I could be around you mortals. I turned into a lizard already, and some other stuff. Why is it only this shape that changes without me meaning it to?”

Zhakkarn crouched, not that that helped much; she still loomed over us both. But now her expression was a little sad, though she was smiling. “This happened to Sieh in his last few years,” she said. “Not quite in the same way, or for similar reasons—but Sibling, we are living creatures, immortal or not. Life… grows.”