Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction Read online

  I did not want to talk to grandmother-nai-Tammah. She’d given Kimi another piece of cake and helped me hoist Gitit upon our trading chest, but she’d deceived us. She’d let us believe she was too fragile and old for our journey, and yet her mechanical shoes, wide and sturdy on their planes of white metal, had carried her effortlessly through the desert. She was a three-named strong and could do whatever she wanted, and what she’d wanted was to travel alone.

  On and on we journeyed, delayed in our progress by Gitit’s weight on the mechanical chest too weak to carry her. Grandmother-nai-Tammah made small improvements, but there was only so much she could do in the desert, far from her underground workshop and tools.

  For days and days I remained resolutely silent. Grandmother, too, stopped even greeting me. She slid after Kimi into the desert that trembled with the heat’s music, returning only to break camp at high noon. We’d hoist the tent up, and she’d reinforce the pegs with her magic, three deepnames at three points making the structure stable enough that no wind could carry it away.

  Even the act of it, simple and easy for a woman with so much power, reprimanded me for my uselessness. If I hadn’t lacked deepnames, I could have reinforced Gitit’s fastening. Even a single deepname, even a weak one, would have secured the magic that held the tent down, would not have failed us in the storm, would not have subjected us all to danger. Grandmother-nai-Tammah did not have to say anything. In the dimness of the tent we lay with our backs to each other, tense and miserable.

  But the silence between us did not extend to Gitit. My lover, too weak to talk much, expressed gratitude at my grandmother’s offers of tea, and inquired after her health—small things that left me with a strange bitter slithering in my stomach. One day Gitit asked my grandmother about her mechanical sliding shoes, and was treated to a lengthy story of Khana women who had established, centuries ago, an underground workshop for each other, even though holy artifice was forbidden to us.

  I rushed out of the tent. It was either that or screaming.

  Gitit came after me. I was too upset to turn around, shaking with anger that threatened to tear me apart from within, rising inside me with devouring intensity I had never before experienced.

  “What is it, heart?”

  “Why do you talk to her?” I snarled at Gitit, taken aback by my vehemence and yet unable to stop. “She lied to us. She wanted to travel alone. We are a burden to her!”

  “How are we a burden? She...”

  “Oh, you are not a burden,” I cried. “A two-named strong of good family, of course she’d talk to you. Any strong Khana would talk to you! You’re wanted everywhere! Everywhere! It’s Kimi and I that are redundant, even to our own...”

  Gitit recoiled. “She is your grandmother, Aviya-nai-Bashri. She followed us and shesaved us. But you can say whatever you need to say.”

  My lover turned away, and back into to the tent she slid, leaving me alone to stare at desert shrubs alive with small winds. Somewhere to the east, the snake-band of the Surun’ traveled, weaving carpet after carpet from these threads of breath. To the south-east, singers of the Maiva’at plucked feather after sunset-colored feather from Bird’s triumphant plumage. And further east beyond these lands, beyond the Old Royal’s city of eleven wells, the Loroli people walked behind the blazing star that rolled inside their sacred tumbleweed. And even farther to the east, the crags, the grass-grown mountains, and beyond them, nothing. Oh, the lands of trade and splendor that the Khana women crossed, the lands well-told and yet unknown and new—they’d be as nothing to me now, an emptiness more barren than the desert. Doesn’t she understand? Did I? Did anyone?

  A bird, long-legged and bent-beaked, dove down from the sun and slid close to me, spread herself into the sand whirls at my feet; dissolved to nothingness. And I felt nothing.

  AT SLEEP-TIME, KIMI brought the cloth of winds and spread it over my face. She’d never paid attention to my crying, to anyone’s, even though laughing and anger fascinated her; I do not know if she noticed my tears that time, or if the gesture was random. But I lay beneath the shivering touch of the winds, strangely comforted by the warmth that wasn’t there, by the bitter and burned smells of liongrass and stillweed that came from another time. Kimi nestled next to me. Her left hand slid under my cheek and touched the cloth of winds. Afraid to move, I lay there. Just outside the tent, the voices of Gitit and grandmother-nai-Tammah began to weave together.

  “You wanted to be free,” said Gitit.

  “Benesret said I could do it if I wanted. Yes, it would be difficult.”

  “But you wouldn’t.”

  “The cloth of winds. The birds. They come down from the sun around this time of year, to dance the sandbird dance, the change. At that time, the sandbird festival would happen in the capital. They say the Old Royal went through the change, many times—and other people. It’s harder for those with less magic, but a three-named strong could do it easily, with the help of friends.”

  “And yet you wouldn’t.”

  “Not me. Bashri, she said...”

  And silence.

  Winds stirred on my face like snakes, warm with dreams and comforting. I could not scream or think or speak. Under my cheek, Kimi’s hand made a fist.

  “Tell me what she said.”

  “That we should think of our lover imprisoned—and besides, what use would a man be in an oreg? The scholars would never accept me. And if I wanted to stay with them, how would we live? Wouldn’t we have to hide it anyway, wouldn’t I have to continue my life as a woman, dress as a woman, trade as a woman—and if I didn’t, what would befall us? How would we live among others? How would our children marry? Didn’t Bashri-nai-Divrah deserve a choice in this as well, a decision that would change her life entire? So many reasons to wait.”

  “And you agreed.”

  “Benesret—see, ah. Benesret. She made this cloth of winds for me, that would begin the spell, this promise-cloth, to come back anytime. I wanted to, after we found out what happened to Bashri-nai-Divrah. What did we have to lose now? But Bashri, Bashri-nai-Leylit, she was stricken. How could I do this to her, tear myself from her at such a time? She said that I could as a woman do all the things I wanted to do, that artifice and scholarship were still within my reach, that if I wanted still to travel and trade like a woman, to bake and to raise children like a woman, to fight and use powerful magic like a woman, then why would I even want to change? What did it even matter?”

  “But you wanted to.”

  “I wanted to,” grandmother said. “It’s not about what I do, as a man or as a woman. It is about how I feel, how I had always felt.”

  “Yes,” said Gitit.

  “And so I gave Bashri the cloth of winds. When you’re ready, tell me, give it back to me,I said. Accept me as I am, from north to south and back, a man, a woman, I will always love you, I will never leave you.”

  “Did she ever?”

  “She gave the keys to me so I could give the cloth to the child,” said my grandmother. “By then we were too set in our unhappiness, too tired to steer away. Like Zurya of the Maiva’at, the blessing of our love had turned into a cocoon that kept us constricted and silent until the end.”

  Long silence dripped. The winds lay still upon my cheeks like ropes. I felt the weight of it, that lightlessness that bound my grandmothers in stifling closeness, in tenderness that could not let them grow. I wanted to go out, to hug grandmother-nai-Tammah to me, to ask forgiveness for assuming that she did not want us because of magic or because of Kimi; but before I could stir, Gitit spoke again.

  “But you are going now.”

  “I did not think I would,” said grandmother-nai-Tammah. “I gave the cloth away. But I cannot. I cannot. I am going now.”

  I lay there, thoughts of movement drained from me. You’re going now. You will abandon us, you cannot bear to stay, you’re eager to abandon us. What matter why you shall abandon us?

  The winds whisked my tears away, lulled me at last into an un
easy sleep. I said nothing to grandmother-nai-Tammah when we set out again, I said nothing to either of them for days. I said nothing until we saw from afar the conical, bell-topped tents of the Surun’, until the hissing snakes of air and dust arose from the ground to greet us.

  KIMI RAN FORWARD with a laugh, but grandmother grabbed her and pulled her back. “Stand still,” she hissed. My sister began to wail, hands reaching out towards an undulating vision of the serpent golden with the sun, its scales like triangular diamonds. “We have to wait for the guardians.”

  On and on my sister cried, her body growing rigid and spasming, but grandmother’s grip did not slack.

  A group of warriors approached us, walking slowly through dry stalks of whisperweed. They were men, deep brown in the desert heat and dressed in grassweave shirts and skirts of leather. Their hair was styled as I have never seen—cut down to springly curls and shaved to nothing on the sides, in stripes of skin that patterned after snakes. Each of the men bore a spear of dark bronze—forged beneath the ground, said my books, engraved with symbols of men’s secret stories. So similar the weapons were to those the ghost-warriors had wielded that I barely held myself from gasping.

  One of the men waved at the snakes of air and shining dust. I did not see his deepnames crowning him, but something almost shimmered as the snakes collapsed into the ground.

  “Greetings, Khana traders,” he said. And then, “Are you traders?”

  His companions looked at us with wariness.

  “I am Bashri-nai-Tammah,” my grandmother said. “A Khana from Niyaz, but not a trader.” How careful was she to avert her gaze from me, how careful to avoid the word woman. “I come to you after an old friend, Benesret e Nand e Divyát, and by her invitation.”

  The men exchanged glances, and their grips on spears tightened. “Is that so?”

  “I bear her sign. It is a cloth of winds.” Never relaxing her grip on Kimi, grandmother pulled the cloth out of the pocket of her kaftan. Unprisoned from the darkness of the garment, the winds whined and crackled as if before a storm, and stalks of dry grass buzzed and shook at our feet.

  Grandmother, startled, tucked the cloth back in. “Benesret made it for me. She said come back any time.” Calmed by the winds, Kimi fell silent, but when grandmother-nai-Tammah hid the cloth, she sobbed again.

  The leader turned to us. “And you? Do you also seek Benesret?”

  I looked at Gitit, but her eyes remained fixed on the ground. With no recourse I spoke in Surun’, concentrating so hard on the enunciation that I forgot to be afraid of my words. “I am Aviya-nai-Bashri, trader, granddaughter of Bashri-nai-Tammah. This is my oreg-mate, Gitit-nai-Lur.” It grated even more to me now that we were oreg-mates and lovers, and yet we had not taken each other’s names, and lately had not exchanged even words. I barged on. “My sister...” I gulped, “Zohra-nai-Bashri, who goes by the name of Kimi...” Tight in grandmother’s arms, Kimi keened quietly, rocking back and forth as much as grandmother’s body would allow.

  “Ah,” the man said. I could not guess his thoughts. Were we too strange, these generations, these silences, tensions? Why didn’t he ask after my sister? I did not know which felt better—the asking, the pity, the useless advice; or the turning away, the unseeing, the warding signs that mothers made inside their sleeves as if I wouldn’t notice after all those years—fingers moving to shield one against children born strange. The heart in my chest hung heavy and hollow, gnawed out by all the small hurts of what had already passed, of what was yet to pass. Neither Gitit nor grandmother would look at me.

  The man motioned us to follow. His warriors flanked us, none of them giving us names or greetings. As we walked, the worry of it felt dull in me and pressing like the onset of nausea. The first thing I had felt in days.

  My sister quieted. Hand gripped in grandmother’s, she twisted backwards to look at—there, in the dust of the trail, the golden snake with triangular scales undulated in our wake, the boundary guardian not dismissed after all. The serpent’s glimmer made a no-sound of the rain that falls in dreams. Around it, us, the air began to darken.

  Shortly we reached the campsite with its conical leather tents. Small brown goats wandered in-between, not tethered, looking at us intruders with annoyance. The men led us to a large circular construction, a tent painted with serpents and strung with ropes of silver bells that made music like starlight falling. Inside it was hung with carpets, their colorful wool embroidered with plain spidersilk in triangles and squares arranged to symbolize the beasts that rose from buried bone. The tent’s floor was strewn with sturdier weavings I recognized to have been traded from further east, from the peoples of the Maiva’at and the Gehezi—thick-piled and rich with weld and madder.

  Upon these carpets five women sat, the oldest in her fifties, the rest my age or younger. They were drinking tea. All turned to us, their fingers still spread with the weight of flat desert-style cups that curved slightly at the lip.

  The man who brought us addressed the women in a language I did not know. I heard our names given, and the word Niyaz, and I saw the frown on his face. When he stopped, one of the women, middle-aged and stout, addressed us in Surun’. “Welcome. I am Naïr e Bulvát. My husband, Bulvát. My guests, Uiziya—”

  “I know you,” said the older woman so named. “You are the three-named strong for whom the winds came shivering, for whom the bones of the old warriors awoke, the one who carried Zurya’s threads and yet refused to sing.”

  The one for whom old warriors awoke...?

  “I’d sing,” grandmother-nai-Tammah said, “not for the warriors or threads, but for myself, and yet it is forbidden for the women of the Khana, and so I kept quiet.”

  “I remember,” said Uiziya, “how your stifled voice rattled inside you, a rotten walnut shriveled in its shell. Aunt Bene—...”

  “Shhh,” said the one called Naïr e Bulvát. “Aunt.”

  “No, I want to know,” said my grandmother, “I want to know what happened to Benesret.” She crossed her hands at her chest, and the women stared at her as if she’d just—

  “We do not tell this tale. We do not say this name.”

  Something shifted in the dimmed light of the tent. I saw—heard—

  But suddenly none of this mattered to me, for grandmother’s hands no longer held Kimi.

  My sister wasn’t inside.

  I dodged past the men, ignoring limbs and grabbing hands, ran out. My sister, knees in dirt, was just outside, thank—

  —wrestling with the snake that wound around her arms in suffocating—

  I rushed forward.

  Stopped.

  She wasn’t wrestling. Snake and child, enraptured by each other, wound against each other—Kimi, rocking slightly, giggled as the snake’s thick yellow body slithered past her cheek.

  “The guardian will not harm her,” said someone. I turned to see a young woman, one of those who sat with Naïr; older and taller than me but not by much. She wore reddish garments and simple ornaments of bronze. Her brown cheeks were rouged with orange. The other men and women poured out of the tent, surrounding my grandmother and my lover like cupped hands.

  “Your grandchild is ready to take power,” said Uiziya.

  “I thought she would, in the desert,” said grandmother-nai-Tammah, “when the warriors awoke and pursued us. I waited...”

  “Yes?”

  “And nothing.”

  Naïr said, “Look at the guardian, helped in shape by your grandchild’s curiosity. This power will not be born in defense or aggression.”

  “If you say so,” said grandmother dubiously. It was intense emotions—anger, pain, fear—that prompted magically apt children to take deepnames on the threshold of youth.

  Uiziya drew my grandmother and others back into the tent. I stayed behind with my sister and the young woman, Leivayi, as the snake and child spun around each other in the dust. Gitit stood with us too. She said nothing. Above us, Bird pecked out small bright holes in the dark clo
th of the sky.

  “Gitit,” I said in our own language. “Did you hear what she said, what they said? The warriors awoke because of grandmother’s magic, and then she waited to save us because Kimi—because Kimi should have taken a deepname, but Kimi—”

  My lover turned away from me.

  “Gitit—”

  “I do not want to hear.”

  She walked off, back into the tent.

  Leivayi stretched her arm out, and the snake guardian crawled over to her and wound around her shoulders, shining full, full, full with the day’s accumulated heat, a shoulder-necklace of pure sun. She offered to take both of us to a sleeping place, and I was too exhausted to argue.

  My sister was too confused to recognize danger, my grandmother too focused on herself and how that measured against what was proper; my lover too loyal to speak against the one who saved her life, no matter how that life had come to be endangered. Where did this leave me? Where?

  Too stubborn to...

  Too stubborn to...

  I did not argue with Leivayi. She seemed to have no deepnames, and her tent was dark. It smelled of leather, wool, and sweat, and sleep.

  TOO STUBBORN TO forgive.

  In my dreams, snakes and children tangled under the star-embroidered sky. Grandmother-nai-Tammah sprouted wings and flew up, gleeful, unseeing. Her wings grew and grew. Joined where my grandmother’s body used to be, the wings alone soared higher, intent on flight.

  I WENT TO see my grandmother the next day. In the tent with Naïr and Uiziya she talked and talked, not paying attention to anything.

  “You should talk to the men,” said Naïr.

  “No!” Was it fear that colored grandmother’s voice so? “I do not want to talk to men. I want to talk to you...”

  “If you’re to be known as a man...”

  Round and round they went. I entered and exited, intent to keep an eye on Kimi, but she seemed engrossed by the snake, and Leivayi watched over them both.