There was a shift inside, so small and plain. It did not fit her anymore. We burned it with Daddy’s things.
“The rules of the sea,” Mami said that night, when we shared a pint of palm wine in his memory, “are harsh, but fair. When you go to her, you must remember that. They are not like we are here.”
“We were beautiful here.”
“Yes.”
She still lives in that tall house with its thick windows where you can’t hear the whispering of the sea. I’ve made my way all up and down this mangrove coast, into Ofu and the Highat territories and beyond, smuggling goods past the Tanger armies that are still trying to choke us to death. She will not return to Yemaya, who killed her love. She cannot, I think, forgive herself for loving him. One day I will have to go to Yemaya in her stead. But not yet. Not until my grandmother calls me.
And when I go down to that place, no matter how much the rules of the sea differ from the rules of the land, I will bring my fire with me, and the air in my lungs, and though I may not be free, I will be seen.
A HAGIOGRAPHY OF STARLIGHT
By Somaiya Daud
Betimes I wonder, if I had not been so secure in my own power, if I had thought beyond my own abilities and my own desires, whether I would have seen it. If I had listened more and learned to worry, if I would have marked the slow decay, the discord in song, the apocalyptic tune that led my world to the point of no return. But such is the power of hindsight.
I was born in the city of Baal, or so I assume, for I have no memory of the people who bore me and abandoned me in its alleys. Baal was an ancient city with buildings that had stood thousands of years. The song of their age ricocheted against the newer boulevards and pleasure gardens, and rose up in the great sandstorms that assailed the city from time to time. It was the capital of the Baal Empire and therefore its center, just as it was the center of my world.
My world was filled with song, and in Baal’s cradle I learned the difference between the flower song of the gardens and the songs of flowers that grew freely and without human control. It was in Baal I learned the wood song of newer buildings and the stone songs of the ancient. And it was in Baal that I began to understand what people meant when they said kazerach and to whom it was they referred. For it was from the kazerach twining its way around and through our world that all song flowed. It was from the kazerach that we were given life, and it was on the back of his spirit that we flourished.
As a child, shameless and without guile, I sang, and in song, I caught glimpses of him and his glory. Never anything I could hold on to, never a song note I could replicate, but always I came away from such song certain that I had glimpsed a little more of his majesty, of his beauty. And it was in such song when I was eight, as the morning sun rose, that the priestesses of the kazerach—the kazervaaj—made note of me and took me in off the street.
Until then, mine had been a miserable existence, filled with hunger and cold and fear. A girl with no family and no pack of orphans to watch her back was seldom safe in a city like ours. Joy and safety were seldom and fleeting. But the morning the kazervaaj discovered me, I felt joy rise in me as a tidal wave. As the sun touched my face I felt the flush of divinity, like a rising tide of pure light churning inside me, pushing at the edges of my soul. The world was louder and quieter all at once—song rising over the clamor. The air warmed, my breath stalled. It filled me up until it couldn’t, until I could feel it pressing against the barriers of my skin, and then it robbed me of it all at once.
And in my retrieval I finally learned the kazerach’s name: Bayyur.
The House of Bayyur was unlike anything I’d ever known. The kazerach of Baal had many aspects, but key was his love of love. He gave and took life, burned and warmed, starved and nourished. Bayyur sought to illuminate the beautiful in the ugly, and he reveled in pleasure. And the longer I lived in the Baal monastery, the more intimately I learned these things. I had been denied them when I lived scurrying from alley to alley, but now I knew them all in abundance. It took longer for me to understand what it was the kazervaaj wanted from me—that my voice was a prized and holy thing, that it rendered my flesh and the sight of my face sacrosanct.
In the monastic structure of the kazerach there were three orders: the kazervaaj, the hagaad, and the saagkazaar. The kazervaaj were priestesses. Almost all members of the temple were kazervaaj. The hagaad were the warrior order, and resided primarily in the Temple of the Great Mother Serpent. They left only when a saagkazaar was found.
Saagkazaar was an old word with no equivalent in the Baal tongue, but it meant “the state of being prior to bridehood.” Those who left that state were either dead or turned kazerkai—the bride of the serpent.
There were no kazerkai in Baal. There had been none for over a thousand years. The learning of the dance that turned one from saagkazaar to kazerkai had been outlawed, for a bride of the kazerach held untold power over the fates of men. Her word was that of an oracle, and her allegiances determined the results of battles.
I was not named saagkazaar, for the kazervaaj knew they trod dangerous ground even bringing me into the monastery. You could not leash song and dance—you might make the singer and dancer afraid, or you might choose their death. What is one soul in the face of empire? I did not understand this when I was young—I understood only that I was lucky and that I was blessed and that they trained me in what I loved best: song and dance.
Even as I loved the House of Bayyur, I chafed at my restrictions. I could no longer go out, could not enjoy the marketplace. And I was the only child, my companions the hagaad—bodyguards—who protected me.
The head of the kazervaaj understood that my world of palm fronds and still ponds was not enough. She would not give me free run of the city—she would not risk its pollution poisoning me. But we began to take leave of the temple, to travel out of the city environs, and it was in this way I came to know a little more of the empire.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
When I was thirteen we went to the imperial palace, which was called the Temple of Kings. It was nestled against a great cliffside, and framed by six waterfalls, three on each side. Spanning north, west, and east was a great jungle with a single, paved road all the way through. By then I had been to the grasslands, the sea, and the great northern mountains. And at last, it seemed, the king had heard of me and requested my presence.
I heard whispers of the saagkazaar, dancers and singers of the kazerach. I wanted so desperately to be one, to be so connected to the kazerach, to pour all my heart into song for him. And I believed the king’s summons—the king, who was the vessel of the kazerach in the mortal world—was a sign of what I was. But as our caravan made its way along the road, my mind turned with unease. I sat in a litter as we made our way from the palace, each side hung with linen, dark enough that no one could see within, but light enough to allow in a breeze.
There is a concept in dance called ukun: discord. It is the missed heartbeat, the skipped step, the hitched breath. Sometimes, it is good. A kazerach’s appearance often produced ukun. Their touch, their gaze, would disrupt the saagkazaar, no matter how well trained. Sometimes, however, ukun was deadly. It was the world misstepping. A saagkazaar’s song was the song of the world; the enchantment of the kazerach relied on our ability to work in concert with it. But if the world was out of step, if something was wrong, ukun was unavoidable in song.