The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [70]
The sisters waggled their fingers to return the greetings, and to allay doubts.
Yet they, too, were concerned.
Beyond the cave, a narrow exit: they emerged, able to stretch again, soaring in the relative brightness of the central crater. They passed over simple structures, tiers of gardens. More people—looking up, bodies trim and brown—paused in their work.
As Kingu and Aspu came in for a landing on the shale pad, they called for the exemplar, who, from his front deck of his home, had been watching the sisters’ return with a degree of trepidation.
Seven years he had been more than content to be the chosen one, with the host in his body. Never had he performed duties other than listening to benign whisperings, pondering instructions on planting or building, or giving out instructions himself about offerings and sacrifices. His four fat wives had agreed to be with him as a direct result of his position. They certainly treated him well. Seven years he had first choice at feasts. His hut was large and in a prime location at the mountain’s foot.
But now, as the host inside him tugged uncomfortably, and his saliva tasted bitter, the sisters barked at him to appear: he would gladly have surrendered the position to anyone, anyone at all—
Meet us, the benevolent sisters cried. Meet us!
At least this time he wore his sandals.
Jogging the path toward the goddesses’ slab, with large red flowers bowing either side of him, the exemplar soon stood near where the sisters were settling, bless them, pinging and hissing as their temperatures shifted. That heat again, washing over him. Their eyes were open.
“Aspu,” he said. “Kingu. Most benevolent sisters. Bless you. Happy returns. There was, uh, there was a storm, and we lost several nets. And—”
He stopped. Aspu was splitting in two. Or maybe it was Kingu. With his heart thudding, the exemplar watched as the goddess slowly gaped wider and wider. What must have been her mouth extended back, past her shoulders, opening so wide that the benevolent sister’s entire front half was divided.
Inside was a dim interior, peppered by tiny lights. No bodily fluids or entrails spilled forth.
Exemplar, said the sisters, come closer.
His feet managed to obey. He stepped onto the shale slab. Now he saw movement inside the body of the goddess, and he heard moaning.
These women need fresh water, and food. Nothing heavy, just bananas for now. And aloe cream. Lots of it.
“Women?” he repeated, idiotically. “What women?”
No answer.
Panic rose in him. He felt like a child must feel, on the verge of tears, when confronted with an inexplicable, confounding aspect of the adult world.
Go, exemplar, get what we asked you. These women are nearly dead.
Squinting, he tried to peer into the goddess’s mouth—and he did see them, he did! Two women, prone, arms at their sides. There was room inside the throat of the benevolent sister for a dozen people or more. No blood at all, just hard shapes in there and what looked like chairs and shimmering figures of light, and the two women, half-naked, reclined on cots.
Go!
The host sent jolts through the exemplar’s body. He staggered off to obey.
The chatelaine arranged for her fire to be relit, and asked that servants be sent up to the dungeon to light her father’s fire. Naturally, there was mild protest concerning this request, for none of the women wanted to venture up a tower only to have the naked castellan heap abuse on them, but protests over assignments from the chatelaine could not last for long, or be particularly strong; two fat women vanished, faces covered by gauze, grumbling from her chambers, to