A Trifold Spiral Knot Read online

  A TRIFOLD SPIRAL KNOT

  by M. C. A. Hogarth

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2010 M.C.A. Hogarth

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  VOID: Erdiil

  When the sun has not yet woken but the night is threatened in the east, the sky is a sublime and fragile purple, heavy with age and darkness. It carries with it the multi-hued gleam of fading stars. It is tired by defeat. It is fleeing the spectacle of dawn.

  That color is the color of my eyes.

  The color currently shading my ribs is a different kind of fragile purple, a thin translucent one shivering with hot sunlight. It is thrown by a prayer fan held upright by sand-weakened soil. Stripes of red and tree-blood yellow border the translucent purple panes. The fan's handle casts a violet shadow, nearing black. By midday, the shadow will have compacted into a black so dense it seems to deny the sunlight.

  This is the color of my skin, the pooled and active blackness of truedark, of lack of sight. The sun puzzles at my edges. It seeks to illumine the spirals that decorate other Jokka and does not find them, for I am unmarked. It is the reason my clan sent me away to serve the gods. Since I was old enough to hear and understand, I have known it: I am the Void's. Snuffer of stars, bringer of silence, the calm of nothingness. The Void is male, but no one ever speaks of His children.

  The sand beneath my shoulders and hips is still cool. By midday, it will burn.

  #

  WORLD: Mayiin

  My toe pads didn't touch dust in Dardenil until late morning; I'd hitched a ride with a clan heading north until they'd reached the forest stand, and then we'd parted company. Since then it had been me, my aching feet, my determination . . . and now, my destination.

  My sojourns in the south had taught me what to expect of the town: a handful of rough buildings made of mud brick and thatched with sun-burnt grass, a well, and communal beast-keep. The number of buildings varied as you travelled, but for the most part decreased as you headed north: most of the larger permanent towns were still near Serel's, who had started this crazy-wondrous thing. Permanent living places! Surely Serel had gorged on too many truedark tales.

  I wished I could have met it.

  Still, I had a mission of my own, and I'd spent most of two years pursuing it. At long last, Dardenil stretched in front of my aching toes: Dardenil, the only town that had built a temple to honor the gods. Dardenil, with its secret treasure, the one I'd needed most of a year just to name.

  The Jokka sitting in the shade of the houses looked prosperous. I saw no anadi, no doubt all hidden in their special rooms beneath the ground, but emodo and eperu I saw in plenty. Both males and neuters wore precious gems and shaped and painted clay medallions in their manes, and the neuters wore clothing painted with colorful swirls.

  I stopped the nearest one, a wiry eperu with delicate features and skin the shimmering gold of sand beneath an early afternoon sun. "Pardon, ke eperu, but do you have a moment for a footsore traveller?"

  "Of course," it said, brown brows lifting.

  "The temple," I said. "I've walked far to see it."

  It smiled then, and pointed between the houses. "Keep going," it said. "It's by the pond."

  I thanked it and followed the route. A frisson of pleasure and dread ran through my body. So close at last to my goal. What would it be like, to finally reach it?

  Around the corner from the last building in Dardenil I found myself enfolded in beauty: a low building of rich tawny brick on the bank of a pond that blazed the blue of the summer sky. Trees and brush lined the edge of the pond and shrouded the building in fronds of water-rich green, and where the foliage leaned too far over the water it reflected its verdant boughs. Truly the gods could be worshipped here.

  And yet as I approached, I saw that the pond and its greenery were isolated. No streams ran from this peaceful place. The plains encroached on its borders, caging it in waving yellow grasses.

  I shivered for an entirely different reason and entered the building.

  #

  VOID: Erdiil

  The sky is an interesting case. Some Jokka say our first color terms evolved to describe the sky. It's true that we have beautiful words for all the many moods of the firmament. The rarest of these words evoke the sky in its vast emptiness, untouched by the graduations of light shed by the rising and falling heavenly bodies, by the refraction and dilution of clouds. Such words whisper to the spirit of stagnation, of moments trapped outside of time, of context.

  No color is without change, except the color of the cloudless sky at midday, and the sky at truedark's hour. Today, as I lie beneath it, the sky is neide, a word ancient in its cadence. A neide sky is empty, like me. It is stagnant, like me.

  I was born emodo--male--which is one of the reasons I was chosen to serve the Void: I was not just unmarked but also the right sex. But at my first puberty, I Turned anadi, and there were many hushed conferences about what that meant, that the Void would Turn his chosen vessel female. The others discussed it at length, and decided in the end that it was meant as confirmation of their plan.

  The individuals who serve the gods exist thus far on the sufferance of the community. The other Jokka feed and clothe us, helped us build our temple. We are in a time of plenty, and they are happy to please the gods by aiding us. But plentiful times never last. Planning for the harder years, the gods' servants had thought of breeding and offering their children in return for the support of the townspeople. My Turning female was the sign they'd sought. I was to be the first.

  It is never assured that you will Turn at either puberty, but if you do, it's more likely at your first. No one told me it would hurt. Do not imagine a ripping pain. It is an ache that throbs through your hips as your bones widen. Your belly rounds. Your back strains as your spine settles into a deeper curve. Developing breasts is almost an afterthought: you hunger for certain foods, and the more you eat the more your breasts swell. But it's nothing to the reshaping of bone in your hips, and that ache doesn't begin to address the mental distress of watching your genital pouch shrink back into your skin.

  Months pass, and finally one day you rest your hand on your belly and feel a quivering inside yourself. It is stillness and emptiness, but the kind that is awaiting motion. Not at all like the sky at midday.

  Not at all like my belly now.

  #

  WORLD: Mayiin

  "Welcome, ke eperu," an anadi said as I entered. I glanced at her, startled at the sweetness of her voice and the precision of her enunciation. I had lost the habit of expecting anadi to speak clearly: I'd seen too many in my travels who'd lost their minds to the exertion on the trail, to heat, to pregnancy . . . all the things that afflict the breeders anyway, and anadi in particular. Perhaps there was hope for what I sought, then.

  "Thank you," I said, then took a deep breath. Suddenly words were hard. Hope was hard. "Is . . . I'm looking for Erdiil. Is she here?"

  "'She'?" the anadi repeated, then laughed sadly. Her eyes were the color of sun-browned leaves, rich but hot. "You have not spoken with Erdiil in some time, I see." She touched her throat, ears drooping.

  "What is it?" I asked, throttling a sense of desperation. "Is she hurt?"

  "It has gone into the plains to pray," the anadi said.

  "Is that . . . she's neuter, now?
What does that mean, going to the plains to pray? Will it be back soon?"

  "We don't know," the anadi said. She had lost her gaiety altogether, and I sensed sorrow in her scent and the droop of her head, just ever-so-slightly forward. "The Void has rejected Erdiil, after we thought we understood why it Turned female at first puberty."

  I looked around. There was no place to sit: no furniture in fact in this antechamber save the narrow brick table that separated us. I rested my hands on it. "I don't understand. He Turned female, which is a frightening fate, and then at second puberty, she Turned neuter, and now . . . now everyone is upset? Eperu is better!"

  The anadi stared at me calmly until I dropped my head and blushed white. "I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to insult."

  "The gods love us in all our shapes," the anadi said, then went on, "Erdiil Turned in order to fulfill our need to give the community a child in return for supplies and food. When she Turned neuter, we lost the certainty of the god's approval. Erdiil is seeking meaning in the sun. It will return when it has been absolved."

  Which to my ears sounded like a fine way to commit suicide; we neuters may be the sturdiest of the sexes, but that doesn't mean we should go throw ourselves on the sand and let the sun bake our brains out. And absolution for what? "Which way did it go?" I asked.

  The anadi frowned. "Pardon?"

  "Which way did it go?" I repeated, more slowly. "I came a long way to talk to Erdiil and I'm not going away until I do."

  Perplexed, the anadi pointed westerly.

  "Thank you," I said and turned to go. On a whim, I stopped and withdrew a few strips of jerky. I set them on the brick table. "For the Jokka who serve the gods."

  "Thank you," she said, still apparently uncertain of me.

  I stepped out of the temple, and then forged my way out of the oasis of green and blue. The transition from water-fed foliage to sun-crisped grass was abrupt, and I spread my paws until I felt the hot ground between each toe. To my travel-trained eyes, Erdiil's track through the fields stood apart from the surroundings, a brighter trail of broken grass reflecting the sun, white on gold. I set off in pursuit.

  #

  VOID: Erdiil

  Light itself has colors . . . which is how we tell time. The hours are named for the changing light of the sun as it travels, and how it interacts with the light of the moon if it's risen. It is now the hour between white and copper, when the light is most white while still holding elements of the descending sun. This is a single word: akiiñel.

  There is also a single word for the two hours before midday, the midday hour, and the two hours after, the most dangerous parts of the day: kushuleñe. The hours with fangs. Madness stalks all Jokka: the anadi are the easiest prey, with the emodo following and eperu the hardest of all. And madness has many claws: exertion, pregnancy, over-excitement, age . . . extremes of temperature. If Madness has a foot like a Jokkad, then temperature is its smallest toe claw, and pregnancy, the ultimate of life's expected exertions, is the killing thumb claw. But in summer, exposed, during the kushuleñe, even an eperu might fall beneath the littlest claw.

  I courted insanity.

  I did it purposefully. I hadn't expected to change at second puberty. I had been prepared to offer a child to serve the Void. The spark inside me had quivered, waiting only for the seed to take root. I had loved being emodo, but once I'd Turned I welcomed the fecundity of my body.

  Turning neuter from female is painless and almost unnoticeable. Your breasts melt away. Your hips remain the same size. And then one day you bleed for a few days, and when it's done your body has sealed the last ingress into your womb, and your breath comes easier, and your body begins to build muscle, and walking is a pleasure.

  The spark in your womb dies, leaving the emptiness of the midday sky. No life will come of me.

  So I waited for the fang and claw of the hours of death. Waited with outstretched arms, on my back with my belly exposed to the sky's cruelty. The heat had long since sunk deep into my flesh. Surely it wouldn't be long now.

  It was the hour akiiñel, so I didn't understand the blue shadow that fell over me like a wet cloth. I looked up and squinted, and saw a Jokkad standing at my feet, staring into my eyes. It took several moments for my eyes to cease their watering, and then I saw this person clearly: an eperu, pale as living blood, shimmering, unmarked. It had a white mane and tail longer than any I'd ever seen. Dust and grass had stained its legs and chest, and burrs were tangled in its tail.

  Its eyes were the color of the first hour of dusk, that wavering lilac that we adore, for it presages the hours of safety, of cool.

  "Who are you?" I asked. "And why have you interrupted my prayer?"

  "I am Mayiin," the other said, in a voice that sounded familiar. "I was sired by your father, and our mother carried us both in the womb at the same time."

  At last, the hours in the sun touched my mind, dizzied me. "Why does that matter?"

  It dropped to its knees beside me and grabbed a water bag. One hand slid behind my head and held it up, and it poured the fluid past my parched lips. "It just does. Drink."

  #

  WORLD: Mayiin

  Had I come so far only to lose it? When I'd discovered halfway through my journey that Erdiil had Turned female I'd resigned myself to finding her dull in spirit, a resignation that had fled when the anadi had told me the news in the temple. I fought my fear as I moved Erdiil's too hot head onto my lap. Cradling it in one arm, I reached over and jerked the prayer fan out of the sand, retrenching it closer and twisting it so that it gave us some paltry shade.

  I returned my attention to the face of this creature, this treasure I'd spent so many years seeking. We Jokka gave little thought to the anadi who bore us, for it was the eperu of our clans who raised us. Nor did we have any special claim on our sires, for the patriarch of the clan was our disciplinarian, and made all the decisions for its members. The clans traded Jokka of similar age whenever they met another group with like individuals, for only thus could we bring new blood to the clan.

  We never knew what happened to the Jokka we grew up with, for inevitably we parted ways. The anadi who bore us were nameless. The clan was everything.

  But I . . . oh, I remembered Erdiil. I remembered how strange we were, the pair of us: Erdiil the darkness of the Void, and me the vivid brilliance of blood. Erdiil had been born male, and I female: the right colors for the right sexes to serve the gods. But unlike Erdiil, I had a single mark, a tied spiral knot just beneath the slit of my navel. My imperfection had separated us.

  For many years I walked, surrounded by others but alone, traded here and there until I Turned emodo, and then unexpectedly eperu at the last. The more I wandered, leading a rikka with my tent and all my worldly possessions, the more incomplete I felt. When I curled up on my rugs to sleep, I realized I was waiting for someone else to mirror me, his head to my knees, his knees to my forehead, a spiral curl of blood and darkness. Slowly, I reassembled my memory of Erdiil, and knew I had to find him.

  Which is how I discovered that Jokka are easily lost, switching members among clans as we do so frequently. For two years I traveled, asking after a Jokkad colored like Erdiil. For two years I searched in vain, because before Serel had thought up the idea of settling in permanent towns, serving the gods had meant being sent to one of many traveling clans composed of mostly those dedicated to the service of the gods. Two years of my life, and my goal was shivering in my lap with heat fever.

  "I will not let you die," I hissed as I wet a cloth and pressed it to Erdiil's forehead. "I will not!"

  #

  VOID: Erdiil

  I didn't recognize the strange eperu until it set my head in its lap. Some memory stirred, in the dark places too deep for words to find. I remembered the feel of those thighs. No, the smell of them, beneath the grass and sweat. Was I too young to have Turned again? Or was I dying in the grasses behind a temple?

  "You're dying in the grasses behind a temple." Words superimposed on dis
tant thunder. I struggled to open my eyes and my entire body thrashed in a horror so deep only my body could answer it.

  The Snuffer of Stars stood before me. All His servants had lied. He was not a Jokkad the black of truedark. He was an abyssal emptiness only faintly shaped like a person, with empty eye sockets and nostrils that gaped as if ripped open. His mane and tail, and the hair at the fringes of His wrists and ankles, quested blindly at the air and ground near His body, consuming whatever they touched.

  I tried to scramble away from Him, but my body remained too weak, cradled in the arms of a figure now bleached and surreal. I turned my face, but I could still see Him, even with my eyes closed.

  "I'm supposed to only go mad," I said. "It wasn't in my plan to die completely. If I live, someone can use my body for labor."

  "Just as your body was supposed to be used in my service."

  I shivered. "It was not me who Turned from you!"

  "Your death will serve me better than your living." He stepped forward. His feet were as articulated as hands, and from each toe a wicked claw protruded, digging furrows into the soil. I moaned and twisted, trying to flee.

  #

  WORLD: Mayiin

  Erdiil writhed against me, burning flesh pressed against my legs, and then jerked away. My only consolation was that it clung to me in its fever. I kept dampening its face and throat and chest, when it was still enough.