Chapter Eleven: Hepthys

Hepthys reclined in the modest shelter Kono and a few of the others had built for her. It was a simple structure, merely a wooden floor lofted off the ground, and a sloped roof overhead, covered with a mat of canvas. There were no walls, and at night, the ocean breeze going through it could be bone-chilling. She had two blankets, one untreated and soft, the other waterproofed and much harder. These were folded and stacked with military corners in the center of her hammock. Now, in the heat of the late afternoon, she lay on the floor and listened to the susurrus of the waves. The islanders were clear that she was welcome in the village; a half dozen Kamo’loa had gladly volunteered their homes, but Hepthys wanted to be alone.

The beach itself was gorgeous, the sand in black and white stripes, never mixing, punctuated by trees with a latticework of roots dipping into the water. They looked like the hihia trees that had given her shelter from the pirates, but these sprouted along the shores rather than inland, their roots creating shaded ponds where colorful fish gathered. The beach ended with the jungle, encroaching as far as it could into the open air. A short walk from there, the beach turned into black lava rock where geysers of white water washed over tide pools. Her second day, Kono had taken her on a tour, showed her which of the shelled, spiny, and scaled denizens were good to eat. The answer was “most,” assuming they were prepared correctly. Fruit trees bloomed along the edges of the village, and she had assumed they were naturally occurring. They were, according to Kono, orchards planted and tended by the villagers. As the jungle was good at keeping trees alive and healthy, the islanders simply saw no need to separate the two.

The laughter of children filtered up the beach. Even after her week or so at Kamo’loa, she was a figure of curiosity for them. That was why Hepthys asked for her shelter to be built away from the village proper. Still, the children liked to play on her stretch of beach within sight of her whenever they could. They stared, and if she looked back, they often laughed and hid. She felt like an animal in a zoo.

She looked up only when she heard Kono’s booming voice approaching. He spent the bulk of his days with the other ma’hanu, learning to be a sorcerer. That was the way of sorcerers. The way of everyone, really. Everyone who wanted to be special. Hepthys had spent endless hours of sparring and lessons of Academy. Graduation had put emptiness in front of her, emptiness that sometimes found its way inside her. An emptiness of her future. From the moment she was conscious to the moment she had knelt before the assembled Prefects at graduation, her life had been mapped out for her. There were surprises along the way—Shabunet chief among these—but for the most part she woke up every morning knowing what she would do for years.

And now, the emptiness. Her future was supposed to fit there, but what form that would take was up to her. Right now it was the sea: violent, cold, and unknowable.

Kono was walking knee-deep in the water, playfully splashing a group of children whenever they came close. They howled with laughter and did their best to douse him. When he saw Hepthys looking up, he waved. She sat up straight, dangling her feet over the side of the shelter, her toes only just brushing the sand. Her left was in a stripe of white, her right in a stripe of black. As she toyed with them, she could spray one color into the other, but just as quickly, the grains returned to their original color, rolling and leaping and skittering home.

“Hey, sky-girl. How you doin’?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Looking forward to getting to Mele.”

“You an’ everybody else. All my friends want to get their clubs an’ spears and go.”

“Good!”

“Not yet. Not until the other tribes send their people.”

“Which is when?”

He shrugged. “Soon?”

Hepthys sighed, her shoulders slumping.

“Where your...” he gestured at his shins, then waistline, then head. She realized he meant the bulk of her golden items. The only gold on her now was the harness about her waist and the wing struts. She had started to wear less, either in deference to the heat or local custom. Her top hadn’t gotten any smaller, but now her legs and feet were entirely bare.

She pointed at a hanging sack. She kept the alchemist’s gold in there.

“Good idea. When the sun hit you, you shine maybe too much.”

“To what do I owe this visit?”

Kono sat down in the sand. Up the beach the children watched the two of them and periodically burst into activity.

“We sent three scouts, only two come back.”

Hepthys nodded grimly. “What did they say?”

“Said what we said, but with more people listenin’. The warjunk still there, puttin’ up walls around the Mele. Look like it’s aimin’ to stay.”

“That’s not normal.”

“No, it ain’t. But then, you ain’t normal either.”

"You think I called that thing?”

“No, no. I think maybe your ship make them stay.”

Hepthys stared at the waves. She didn’t want to think she had a hand, even an inadvertent one, in the kind of reckless hate the slavers represented. Kono’s reasoning was sound. If something had changed, look for a concrete cause in it. One of the first lessons about Ash Worlders was that they could seize on advanced artifacts and label them divine. It was better than being killed as a demon, but not exactly an auspicious start for the daughter of Nawaret.

“What?” said Kono.

Hepthys turned to him. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Sure you did. I seen your face do that couple times now. You were thinkin’ on somethin’.”

“I was thinking about my mother.”

“What about her?”

“She’s...” Hepthys pondered. How to explain this to an Ash Worlder. “In my homeland—”

“Atum-Ra.”

“...Atum-Ra, yes. The, uh, the great chief has a bodyguard of elite soldiers called the Kheremun. My mother is one of these.”

“She more than just one, huh.”

A momentary frown rippled over Hepthys’s features. With Kono’s genial grin and barbarian appearance, it was easy to forget how perceptive he was. “Yes, she’s more than just one. She was their leader. A hero.”

“An’ now, because you got lost all the way down here, you thinkin’ you not gonna measure up.”

She swallowed. “Exactly. How...how did you know that?”

“I heard the story once or twice, you know. Haku, he worried he won’t be the fisherman his dad was. Ali’kai, he don’t think he can be the chief his mom is. That kind of thing.”

“And you?” She hadn’t met many of the villagers, and those she did she had trouble retaining their names, but she would have remembered meeting Kono’s parents.

“No, I’m lucky. Hapua found me.”

“Found you? Where?”

He pointed out to the water. “Out there, floatin’. On a piece o’ wood. I was just a baby then. Don’t remember a thing about it. An’ after that, the village raise me.”

“Hapua is your father?”

“Don’t think I have a mother or a father. I got a whole village who cares a bit about me. Not too much to make me think like I’m a failure just for bein’.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without my parents.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“What are they like?” Kono was focused on her completely, and Hepthys found it easier to fall into memory.

“My mother, like I said, is a hero. She...she’s everything an Atumite is supposed to be. Strong, wise, a good soldier, and a stern mother. She leads the Kheremun with vision and her women are absolutely loyal to her. I’m her only daughter, and she made sure to raise me with every advantage. Every tool I would need to join the Kheremun after her.”

“Join? Or lead?”

“Join,” Hepthys insisted. “I wouldn’t be allowed to lead just because of who my mother is. I wouldn’t even be allowed to join if I failed my Meskhenet.”

“Meskhe...what?”

“It’s a rite of passage. I’m not yet an adult. Every Atumite warrior has one thing they have to do to become an adult. A quest.”

“What kind of quest?”

“I was told to go to a distant...a distant land and come back with a flower.”

“That’s easy! We got flowers. You just pick one.”

“It’s a specific flower.”

“Oh.” Kono thought it over. “What about your dad?”

“Not much to tell. He was a normal kind of father. He stayed at home, raised me and my brothers.” Hepthys shrugged. Though she was filled with warmth for her father—nothing could comfort her like a single hug from him—his contributions weren’t something to be bragged about. He was a cooker of meals and kisser of hurts, not a fighter of battles.

“You got brothers!”

“Two,” she said. “Younger.”

“What they do?”

“Same as my father. Probably look to marry well, then raise children of their own.”

“That how it is in Atum-Ra? Men stay home, women go out?”

She nodded. “It’s best that way.”

Kono laughed. “Maybe. We got man chiefs, woman chiefs, mawi chiefs, man ma’hanu, women ma’hanu, mawi ma’hanu an’ nothin’ changes. The nations keep comin’ down, so maybe we do what you do, they stop coming.”

“It’s worth a try,” Hepthys told him earnestly.

Kono offered a crooked smile. “I won’t take that back to nobody else.”

Hepthys frowned. “What does mawi mean?”

“You know,” Kono said, “you got men, you got women, an’ you got mawi.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Mawi are people between. They ain’t one nor the other.”

Hepthys thought of the various villagers she had seen. Though their clothing wasn’t overtly gendered, there were subtle differences. Women were more apt to be in skirts or kilts, more apt to wear something above the waist, more apt to decorate their hair in shells and stones. She had seen some people she’d judged to be either male or female dressed like those of the opposite gender, but had initially dismissed that as her not understanding the customs of this Ash World.

More than two genders wasn’t a completely alien concept. While Atumites only recognized two, other Fire Worlds recognized more, or none at all. To say nothing of the Storm Worlds, whose denizens could be nearly anything. Hepthys had always looked at it as a weakness. After all, women were destined to lead, and any dilution of that was to the detriment of the culture.

“How do you know what they’re supposed to do?”

“Don’t matter. Anybody can do anything, long as they can do the thing, you know? Mawi want to be chief, they good at it, they get to be chief.”

Hepthys tried to understand. She was tempted to throw it into the bin in her mind marked “Ash World Superstitions,” but she couldn’t quite. Not with so many other Fire Worlds doing it. Not with the kindness of the Kamo’loa people.

Kono turned back to the ocean. “So how come you can’t swim?”

“Oh. Where I’m from, we don’t have the ocean.”

“Don’t have the ocean?” He said it like he couldn’t imagine anything of the sort. As little as Hepthys knew of their ways, she could understand this. They traveled on the sea, got a lot of their sustenance from the ocean. It wasn’t just a way of life for them, it was life itself.

“We don’t. It’s all...high up. Very high up.” She pointed to the exposed black head of the volcano.

Kono watched her keenly. “But you said you don’t have no mountains there.”

Hepthys felt the burn in her cheeks. She hated lying to anyone. It was unworthy of a Kheremun, but how could she make him understand she came from a place where there was no ground? Instead, lamely, she said, “It’s all...highlands.”

“How you get anywhere?”

“It feels closer together. We don’t have this stormy, wet thing separating us. We can travel where we want to go.”

“Separating? Sky-girl, ain’t you been payin’ attention? The ocean don’t separate us. It binds us all together. You want to go anywhere, you step on the water and you go. Want to join another tribe? Go to it. Want to find a place all by yourself? Go! Sure, it also means the nations get to us, but like Hapua always says, nothing exists without reflection.”

“I didn’t think of it that way.”

“Sure. You don’t swim. Once you learn, the ocean starts lookin’ a bit different. Won’t take you anywhere by itself, but it’s the first step.” Kono nodded to himself and stood. With his bulk, he had to do it in stages. When he was fully upright, he slapped his prodigious belly. “Let’s go swimmin’.”

“What? No.”

“Don’t worry. I’m gonna teach you.”

“Kono, I can’t.”

“Sure you can. If you gonna be here, you gotta learn to swim. You fall overboard, what you gonna do? C’mon, don’t worry. I won’t let you drown.” He held out one massive hand to her.

Hepthys considered. A daughter of Nawaret wouldn’t be afraid, not even of something as blatantly unnatural as learning to swim. She took Kono’s hand and the big Ash Worlder helped her to her feet. He let her hand go and led her down to the water, wading in until his breeches turned wet and dark. The waves sloshed against his backside as he spoke.

“Good day for it. Not too calm, not too choppy.”

Hepthys hesitated at the edge of the water. She wasn’t afraid of rust; alchemist’s gold was immune to that sort of thing, but this was a test she had never even imagined possible. Even on Tethys, she’d never contemplated going in the water. Some of the girls had played at it, going right to the edge before retreating with gales of scandalized laughter, but that had been too much even for Hepthys. The waves were something to watch with Shabunet at her side. Not to go into. Although she no longer had a choice. Either go to the sea, or surrender all initiative.

“C’mon. You never get another day like today.”

Hepthys took a deep breath and nodded. Without this base level of courage, she’d never complete her Meskhenet anyway. She stepped onto the wet sand and on cue, a wave washed over her toes. She resisted the urge to scamper back to her shelter.

“That’s it. Look at me,” Kono said.

She looked up, locking eyes with the big Waiolan. His eyes were warm and brown, his smile comforting.

She took another step. The next wave went over her ankles. The one after that, her shins. then her knees, thighs, and soon, she was waist-deep in the water as it sloshed around her. It was warm, like wet sunshine. Kono stood in front of her, planted as securely as a tree, grinning widely.

“That’s the first step. Easy, right? Just walk right on in.”

“Okay,” she said. “What’s next?”

“I’m gonna lift you. Okay?”

She nodded.

Kono hooked his hands under her armpits and gently lofted her in the air, turning her horizontal. She gasped, the water close to her lips now, but her body knew this position. This was a flight position. Updrafts should be filling her wings, nestling amongst her feathers. She should be in the air, truly at home there.

“You okay, sky-girl?”

She gave a quick, furtive nod, not wanting to talk when the water was flopping up so close to her mouth.

One of Kono’s hands moved to her belly, the other held her thigh. It was a more intimate touch than she might have accepted from nearly anyone, but there was nothing romantic in any of it. Kono had none of the nervous energy of a young woman edging closer for a kiss. He was his relaxed, genial self, albeit concentrating on the task at hand. Hepthys realized something that surprised her: she trusted him. He was an Ash Worlder and a male one to boot, but even in their short tenure together, he had proven to be a good friend.

He sat low in the water now, bending his knees so only his powerful shoulders were out of the water. As he spoke, his bead-decorated beard danced through the frothing surf.

“Good, good,” he said. “I thought you was gonna panic like a fish on dry land. Shoulda known the sky-girl got obsidian in her blood.”

She wanted to smile, but she was too involved in keeping her head up.

“Now move your arms and legs.”

“You’re not going to let me go?” she asked, resenting the panic in her voice.

“No, no. Don’t worry. Just remember, you kick your legs, you push the water with your hands.”

Hepthys imagined her wings pushing the air currents to the side, but this time it was her arms and legs. Learning to fly, her arms and legs were largely ignored, her legs generally expected to be held straight from the body save when landing, her arms similarly employed, except for fighting. Now, her wings weren’t working, so she would use what was left to her. She began to move. She heard the thump of her legs beating the surface.

“Good. Only keep your hands cupped. Move the water, move yourself.”

Below her, shapes flitted around Kono’s massive legs. She moved, first slowly, then quicker as Kono lowered her into the water until it was sloshing around her head and mouth, trying to get into her. She flopped and kicked.

“Don’t worry. Turn your head. I teach you how to deep breathe later, but now, just turn your head, suck in air. Simple as that.”

She listened, forcing herself to overcome her panic. It wasn’t easy, and it would have been impossible without her lessons in Academy. When one has flown through a rain of fully-charged sunrays, one doesn’t fall to pieces with a little water.

As it rose, she had a hard time staving off the panic, even with turning her head to the side and gasping when she could.

She was getting nowhere, because Kono was holding her. She wasn’t sinking for the same reason. Her wings were over her head, a weight pressing down on her. As much as she had grown accustomed to their uselessness, she still couldn’t bear the sensation when she attempted to move them.

Finally, Kono lifted her clear from the water, and she felt true freedom. She wanted to catch an updraft and soar into the crystal blue. For a moment, she thought she could, but a single twitch of her wings taught her otherwise. Kono set her down on her feet, chest-deep in the ocean.

“First lesson. There’s a lot more.”

Hepthys stood, her feet in the sand, her body in the water. She felt only a shadow of the panic she had when it washed over her feet.

“You didn’t drown!” Kono said.

“I didn’t,” she said with a grin.

“How about we go dry off?”

“That’s a good idea.”

Kono swam through the surf easily. Hepthys trudged through the soupy water, wincing whenever the waves hit her wings. Both of them emerged in the shallows, the seawater pouring off them. Hepthys stretched in the sunlight. Whatever else had happened, if she’d learned anything, she no longer held the ocean in any dread. It was at her back, and she was fine.

“I see you at dinner?” Kono asked.

“You will.”

Dinner was communal for the people of Kamo’loa. The villagers did their best not to gawk when Hepthys joined them. They were curious, but they were also generous and kind. They spoke to her, careful to stay away from topics that made her uncomfortable. As much as she could see she was an outsider, the Kamo’loa attempted to show her she was nothing of the sort.

“Good. Later? You learn more.”

“A daughter of Nawaret is ready for any challenge.”

Kono grinned wider. “Now, that’s good.”

It could be, she thought. She wasn’t going to fling herself into the water, not yet, but he had made it hold a tiny bit less dread for her.