April 18, 2017

PodCastle 466: Blood Stone Water

* Author : A.J. Fitzwater

* Narrator : A.J. Fitzwater

* Host : Graeme Dunlop

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

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First published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Rated PG-13

Blood Stone Water

By A.J. Fitzwater

Tau bit deeper with her paddle, and green water hushed beneath the oka hull. Nhia sat in the bow, serene as when they’d pushed off from Ia that sunrise to a farewell ululation. Her fingertips trailed in the smooth ocean, eyes unfocused on the fins that kept time or searching further forward to their destination five sunrises hence.

Tau fell into a cadence, and Nhia’s sweet harmony twined thoughtlessly around her bark-rough voice. Nhia’s easy joy sang at odds with the impending rise of the Stone Moon.

Death awaited them at the end of their journey.

Tau risked glances at Nhia. Like many Stone Maidens, Nhia gathered sun to her as she did eyes. Tau reasoned with their skills they would be a good fit together, but touching a Stone Maiden was forbidden. Nhia was unashamedly content to let her look, needing little prompting to show off her kiho-nut brown skin and unusual light grey eyes; she was the only one in a generation born on Ia under a Stone Moon.

Tau’s chest ached, and not from exertion. Kah, she sighed to herself, twitching her keenly muscled arms in an effort to find a more comfortable position; the stiff, new kiho fabric wrap, a gathering gift from chieftess Lau’Ia’Maa, rubbed her tender. At least I’ll get through the gathering before I’m indisposed for this rotation of the great keel.

The Ia-mother’s salt-cracked tattooed lips formed the parting words again in her mind. “I encourage you to ride your own wave, but you can’t ignore the potential seed mates awaiting you at the gathering, Tau’hene”.

Tau smiled and offered a little curse to virility as she tried to pretend the heat between her thighs had only to do with the sun. She fell into daydream, imagining a child with her thick frame and Nhia’s eyes.

The conceit couldn’t last. If Nhia survived the Stone Moon gathering, she could choose anyone. A maiden would never grant a common keel-woman, carver and moon-gazer the opportunity to make life with her.

Both women scented the change in the sea before they saw the shoals of the reeflet. Tau chanted off the fifth verse of the Travellers From Ia cadence and discovered they’d missed a sand bar. She added a lilt to the verse as a way to notate the shifting geography.

Nhia balanced easily, an image of Ia On The Mountain, one foot braced against the bow head. “I’m starving. I’ve been looking forward to this all morning.”

Tau grunted as she aimed for the narrow opening in the reef. The Water Moon tide had just turned, and the oka shot between the gap. In respect for the passing Stone Maidens, the reeflet was empty of the usual fisher folk spearing peuru worms and gathering molluscs.

“You prepare the fermented wiro-fruit, I’ll be right back,” Nhia ordered, so easily.

Tau had to look away as Nhia stripped off her wrap and slipped like a shining eel over the edge of the oka.

Nhia returned with two peuru still twisting on the end of her spear and a handful of link-shells. Dark ropes of hair clinging to her throat, Nhia hung over the edge of the oka and carefully manipulated the oozing orange innards of the peuru with her thigh knife onto a bark shell, expertly avoiding the poison-tipped spines. With a flick of her knife tip,

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