Zafiil, Distant Past, Chapter 4

The summer ripened with the grain, and Zafiil strengthened with it, rambling on long walks through the forests or near the lake with Duzai. She climbed trees; she sprinted long stretches with the grasses whipping a steady rhythm against her flashing legs. Her finger joints learned to lock and unlock, the first step, it was said, toward developing the MindFire. She steeped in the scents of Quafiirla until they seemed prosaic, natural: the rushes in her bed, the sodden soil after rainfall, the crowd at night, at the Dancing Place. Sometimes she felt as if she could make her body do anything... including twisting through the most difficult scrolls of the Dance.

Autumn promised itself with the passing of the storm season, and when it arrived, the Dance-Teacher would take in the new crop of Faulfenza to learn the sacred Dance bequeathed to the Faulfenza by the God. Would she be one of those young people? Would the FireMother lift the ban on her learning? How many other people knew that she wasn’t to be taught? She was probably the first Faulfenzair in all the long history of her people not to learn at the proper time. Maybe they would make a scroll about her. Zafiil the Abnormal.

Sometimes Zafiil grew broody; other times she forgot the Fauldii’s words and frolicked with all the abandon of the young and strong. But the worry lurked, a sickle waiting to fall when the first breath of autumn dispersed the warm air and whispered of harvest, and later, of winter.

***

Duzai skidded into the greeting-room, letting in a wave of hot air. “Did you hear, did you hear?”

Zafiil had stayed home to help Baila-ai repaint the house’s interior walls. She was cradling a broad bowl of green paint in her lap as she prepared to add enough blue for the turquoise her foster mother had requested. “Hear what?”

“It’s Loriiziin! She’s Kindled!”

Zafiil paused, tail kinking slightly. Loriiziin was a girl a little younger than them who lived in the house next to Duzai’s.

Baila-ai chuckled, wielding her scraper on the wall. “She’s early. Is it a good MindFire?”

Duzai’s hands weaved in vigorous affirmatives as he plopped onto one of the purple body-comforts. “Oh, yes! She has a really hot fire.” He wrinkled his nose comically. “She can’t control it too well, though. It starts, then dies, then starts, then fizzles out again.”

“Control comes with practice, fastfoot,” Baila said absently. “It doesn’t magically appear when Faulza gives you the gift. Or any gift, really. All good things come through work.”

Zafiil shivered. It filled her with wonder that after so many generations, the gift Faulza had made to Qudii First-Mother still Kindled in all of them, granting them the ability to create heat and direct it through their bodies, particularly the hands. Zafiil’s earliest memories involved being held in Qazen-dii’s warmed arms, and she remembered Paden-aul lighting the traditional fires on the festivals of Qufal and Faullaizaf, the two Fireborn messiahs, with his palms. Being able to seize one’s fingers into a position was the first sign that the MindFire was pending. How soon would it be before she had it? Or Duzai?

Duzai rolled to his feet. “When Faulza gives me the MindFire, I’ll be able to hold it perfectly. You’ll see! Mother says,” here he dropped his voice in a conspiratorial hush, “that I’ll be next to get it! Or you, Zafiil... you can make your hands as hard as rock!”

Zafiil flushed purple at the eartips, but she tried not to show unbecoming eagerness as she mixed her paint. “I hope so.”

Baila-ai added, “Since you’re here, Duzai, and idle enough to gossip, you must have time to help us with the painting, yes?”

Duzai started to say something, then sighed dramatically. “You got me. Just point me at whatever chore you have to do next. Zafiil, your mother is a sea-net! She catches everything going by and then she eats it for lunch!”

 “You must be a big fish, then, because you certainly have a big mouth!”

It was the first time anyone had been able to slip past her the intimation that Baila-ai was her mother.

***

Zafiil was sitting on Neden’s lap, as had become her habit, craning her head as she watched Qiirun follow the Dance-Teacher out of the FireMother’s home. Each night she and her foster parents attended the Dance. The novelty of it never wore off; she had never been exposed to so many of the scrolls, been so close to one of the Dancers. No matter how good or bad her day, Zafiil was always at her happiest at this moment.

There was an air to the crowd this night of anticipation, and Zafiil wondered what it was they were expecting.

“Fauldii Qodii, tonight on this night of nights, I ask your blessing and Faulza’s.”

The FireMother placed both hands on Qiirun’s head. “Be blessed, Fiilzafiir Qodii. Tonight on this night of nights, you will Dance well… for many years ago, on this day, Faullaizaf, FireBorn Messiah of Faulza, was sent unto us. He ushered us past the Time of Ashes and led us to our new world: this one, Qufiil. Inspired by Faulza, he gave to us one of the most momentous scrolls of our people. Tonight, you will perform the greatest Dance of our people.”

“Your will and Faulza’s. Tonight I will Dance the Promise of Faullaizaf, in his honor.”

Zafiil gasped. She had seen the Promise scroll once in her life, and though she’d been very young she had been exhilarated by it. Faullaizaf’s Birthing Day! How could she have forgotten? And now she would see his scroll, the scroll written by the greatest of the two FireBorn ever sent to the Faulfenza!

Qiirun was already in the prayer-stance, forming the name of the God... and then he sprang into the Promise scroll, and Zafiil hung on his every motion.

‘Across the ages do I speak to you. Across the years do I speak to you.

Across the ageless universe, and the long years between stars, these

words come to you.

In the name of Faulza, I tell you this tale. In the voice of Faulza, I

bring you these words. With the authority of Faulza, with His will etched

indelibly into my mind with words of flame, do these words come to

you.

I am Faullaizaf, Painted FireBorn of the God. Since the day I was born

with his Paint on my fur, I have served the will of Faulza. Through the Time

of Ashes, as Quzen beneath our feet fell to the first Nothingness from 

which He created everything, I have been for the Faulfenza the Messiah of

the God.

Past the Time of Ashes have I commanded the Faulfenza in His name.

Through the stars have I sent the Faulfenza in His name.

To Qufiil, a new world filled with new life, I have brought the Faulfenza in His name.

And my work is almost done.

But there were those who went their way. Those who went on Faulza’s

errand, and continued on. Those who, shrouded in cloth and decorated with

jewelry, gave grave farewell to their sisters and brothers, mothers and

fathers, and moved on.

I had words for them as well. They had a mission that was different from

yours, Children of Qufiil.

The Severed Ones, the Lost Kin, went in search of Others. Others who

were made by Faulza, wearing a different face, giving a different name.

Others to make with the Faulfenza, Lost Kin and Children of Qufiil a partnership

of such strength, such steel, such fire, that you will know an age like no

other. A Golden Age of Fire.

Beyond the stars. Beyond your doubled world. Beyond your sun that glows

like Faulza Himself... there are those who would become unto you as

sisters and brothers.

With the mouth of Faulza, I bring these words to you. With His voice on

my tongue, I speak to you. With His fire, and His will, 

I bring this news to you...

I bring this prophecy to you...

I bring this Promise to you.

The Promise of Faulza, to his Children on Qufiil: 

In a day when you have reached what you believe to be 

the best age of your world, once again, you will find the Lost Kin. 

In a day when you have reached what you believe to 

be the most you can be, you will find the Others who will be unto you

like brother and sister. And with one hand in the hand of your Lost Kin sister,

and the other hand in the hand of the Other brother, the Faulfenza will

go into a golden age that will never end, a time so perfect, and so true that

only Faulza can know the words with which to describe it.

This is Promised to you. Never forget. Never stop seeking. When

least you expect Faulza’s oath to you to be fulfilled, it will be. And then

you will see that what you have now will be as unto nothing before what 

shall be.

So do I say to you, in His Name.’

Cries of rapture greeted Qiirun’s final prayer-stance, the soft keening of some too overwrought. The words of Faulza’s Promise burned into them. And Zafiil...

Zafiil was consumed by that sizzling heat that had woken her from her nap, so many weeks ago as she slept in the forest. It filled her ears with a buzzing noise and tickled her skin from the inside where she could not reach to scratch it.

“Do you feel it?” she whispered to Baila-ai.

Baila glanced at her. “Feel what, dear?”

“The itching inside. The fiery feeling. And the scent!”

She could smell it as she spoke, floating over the stronger odors of the crowd’s excitement and intense emotions. But Baila-ai only shook her head.

“I feel nothing?”

Zafiil twisted to look at her foster-father, but he gave her the noncommittal gesture that indicated he didn’t understand. Neither of them understood, and the sensation was already fading.

***

“It’s so hot out. All the time!” Zafiil said, floating on her back in the lake.

Duzai paddled past her. “Why do you think we have water?”

Zafiil silently asked the sky to give her patience. “Faulza didn’t make water to cool us,” she said, “He made water to keep our bodies from drying up.”

“What do you think it’s doing when it cools us?” Duzai asked innocently.

Zafiil made an exasperated noise. “Why do you always have to be the one who’s right?”

The boy twisted onto his back so he could float alongside her. “Because being right is more fun than being wrong?”

She sighed, torn between a laugh and exasperation. “You are so annoying.”

“I know!” His grin was audible. “I’m lucky… you’re so hard to put up with yourself, or you wouldn’t bother with me! Jeniiz says I should thank Faulza.”

Zafiil started. In all the weeks—months? Surely not!—she’d been in Qodii, she hadn’t managed to secure any friend but Duzai. It wasn’t that she didn’t want other friends, but the rest of the young people were never free when she was. That was the reason they’d never gotten to know her, wasn’t it? Was she really as mean as Duzai sometimes called her? Why didn’t she have other friends?

“See what I mean? You just sorta float off sometimes, and Faulza knows where your brain is. Zafiil! Come back!” A splash of water capsized her, and she came up spluttering.

“Maybe she’s thinking things that are too deep for you to understand, Duzai!”

There was a girl their age standing at the water’s edge, hands on her hips and tail high. Sparkling pale green eyes looked just right against her cool gray fur with its long, white ruffs and pale red tips.

Duzai filled his cheeks with water until they puffed and squirted a stream at the girl. While she gasped and ducked, he said, “Why’re you defending her, Renii? And where’d you come from anyway, aren’t you supposed to be helping your parents with the garden?”

“I’m done for the day, and I’m also done being curious about the new fosterling. You’ve been keeping her all to yourself… well, that’s done!” She dropped onto the ground and dunked her feet in the water. “You’ll just have to get used to me.”

“That’s for Zafiil to say. And Zafiil likes my company!”

“I do like your company,” Zafiil said. “But—”

Duzai groaned. “Not the ‘but.’ There’s always a ‘but’ with girls. It’s unfair!”

Renii giggled. “Oh, no, poor Duzai. Surrounded by unfair girls. We feel so sorry for you. Don’t we, Zafiil?”

Flattered to be included in the vast fellowship of females, Zafiil said, “Of course not!” Her reward was the inevitable squirt of water. “Ew! Piipiizauq-spit!”

Duzai shoved a wave of water at her but Renii came to her rescue, splashing into the lake to smack Duzai with a water-logged tail. The fight erupted in earnest then, punctuated by mad giggling: Zafiil splashing Duzai, Zafiil splashing Renii, Renii splashing her and Duzai, and Duzai splashing them both. Laughter, cheers and shrieks of outrage sounded until Renii and Zafiil teamed up and advanced on Duzai, pushing a wave before them.

“I give up! I give up! Aaaaaaaaaaaah! No more!”

“I’ll grab him, Zafiil, you tickle him!”

“No! No tickling! Ack!”

Zafiil set to her work with a wrinkle-nosed grin while Renii giggled and held the thrashing Duzai down.

“Hey! There’s two of you and only one of me!”

Over Duzai’s head Zafiil and Renii shared a mischievous look, and their friendship was baptized in water.

*** 

From then on Renii joined them to play tag, climb trees, and swim. Duzai complained that she was complicated and unpredictable, and Zafiil could see his point: some days Renii was the gentlest companion anyone could ask for, and the next easily offended and short-tempered. But her bad moods never lasted long, and her indignation easily mollified, and after all, it was a little bit interesting, like a summer day that might have a storm in it.

“Tell me about the creatures in the forest,” Zafiil asked them one day as they walked through the layered shadows of the forest.

“Well,” Duzai said, “there’s the naadiize: quiet and lives in holes in the ground, good for eating. And the penuzii...he’s got a hide full of prickles like burrs, and he can stretch out flat so that you can’t touch anything but the burrs.”

Renii nodded. “There’s also the serdu. The serdu is tall and lives among the trees, and has delicate, hard claws for feet... he runs as fast as the lightning flashes.”

Zafiil tried to imagine that, eyes wide in wonder.

“There’s the feziizu, and he flies on the highest winds, and comes from the sea,” Renii went on.

“And the duriizii who only flies at night, and has eyes like mountain-stones. He eats the zelii beetles and the darnanii flies,” Duzai added. “And speaking of eating… we should do that. All this talk of animals is making me hungry!”

Their scouting revealed a convenient glade and the three sat in a circle to share the food Zafiil and Renii usually brought in their food-slings.

“Did you hear that Nadau got the MindFire last night? He was supposed to go before the FireMother for his blessing this morning,” Renii said.

Duzai rubbed crumbs off his chin. “Shoulders! How many does that leave of us who haven’t gotten it?”

Zafiil listened as Renii ticked people off on her fingers. “Five I think. Including us.” She paused then asked, “Do... you don’t think we won’t Kindle, do you?”

Duzai snorted. “Don’t be silly.”

Zafiil reached out a hand to comfort her friend, patting her on the knee. “There’s never been a Faulfenzair who didn’t Kindle by thirty-two. The year’s not even half-over. We’ll get it, you’ll see.”

Renii leaned back, her relief obvious, and reached for a slice of iizi—and stopped, straightening in alarm. “Smell!” she whispered.

Zafiil lifted her nose and sifted the wind: there was a hint of something, something that smelled almost like a Faulfenzair but wilder somehow.

Duzai shuddered. “Let’s go, now!”

Renii leaped to her feet and Zafiil scrambled upright, but just as they did something crashed out of the bushes, like black liquid pouring into a mold in front of them.

“Iifaul!” Renii wailed. “We’re going to die!”

Zafiil stared at the predator. It walked on four legs and was as black like nightfall. The creature had a face like hers, but longer, flatter, and (as she saw when it opened its mouth), with far more, and larger, fangs. At the shoulder it was almost as tall as Zafiil herself.

It began to prowl around them, so close Zafiil could see the pupils in its dark eyes, each as large as her nosepad. Renii was pressing her head against Zafiil’s spine; Duzai seemed torn between protecting them and running. But Zafiil… Zafiil wasn’t afraid, but she didn’t know why. She knew she could die. Every Faulfenzair died. But somehow, she couldn’t see herself dying now.

“The iifaul will not kill us,” she said.

They didn’t believe her, because Renii began to keen in terror and Duzai gave up trying to be brave and clung to them both. Neither of them could watch the creature circling them. “We’re going to die we’re going to diewe’regoingtodiediediedie!”

Their tension was making Zafiil sick to her stomach, but she refused to surrender to it. The iifaul had ceased moving and was crouching in front of her, staring her down… so she pushed her friends away from it and stared back.

“You will not kill us,” Zafiil said, willing it to go away. “You’re going to leave us alone!”

The iifaul sprang into the bushes and ran away.

The scent of the village’s Hunters, hidden by the fear-stink clogged in her nostrils, reached her when they did, running through the bushes armed with spears. Half of them continued after the iifaul, but two of them stayed to hug the little ones.

“Are you all right? Did you see it?”

“We saw it,” Zafiil said. “But it didn’t want us.”

Renii exclaimed, “Zafiil stood in front of us, and it ran away!”

One of the Hunters looked at Zafiil again. He shook his head. “Come... let’s get you three home. You need good suppers and sleep after your adventure. You’re out too late in the forest! You should have come home earlier.”

Duzai and Renii fell into step after the Hunter, shaken, but Zafiil followed at a slower pace. She glanced back at the place the iifaul had appeared.

It hadn’t obeyed her, of course... that was fanciful. But why hadn’t it attacked them? They would have been an easy meal. Even if Duzai and Renii had been willing to fight, the iifaul could have handled all three of them without even ruffling a hair. Why had she been so sure it wouldn’t?

“Oh!”

Renii had stopped and was staring at her hands. The air around them crinkled, heat distortions that made nonsense of the world caught in its flares.

“Your fear made you Kindle,” one of the Hunters said kindly. “It is not uncommon for extreme emotion to bring Faulza’s gift forth.”

The procession of Hunters and children began again and Zafiil trudged at its edges. Her mind was full of questions and worries, and she had no idea who could answer them.

***

That night after dinner and the Dance, Zafiil couldn’t sleep for wondering about the iifaul. Why hadn’t it killed them? Why had it been Renii that had Kindled and not her? Why had she not been afraid? Why had something so dangerous been so beautiful?

It had been beautiful, Zafiil knew that, now that she could think clearly. The iifaul had been cut like a sleeker, fiercer Faulfenzair made of the night-sky, full of darkness and those eyes like fire. It had never occurred to her that she could be afraid of attractive things. Or that attractive things could be scary? She stared out the windows at the stars dotting the sky; there was a beauty that made sense, because the Faulfenza were meant to embrace it.

On impulse, she threw off the bed-warms and clambered out one of the windows, dropping lightly onto the grass and walking the short distance to the lake. As she strode, she looked for the gossamer keep-dry that connected her to those stars. She imagined flinging golden lines out to those shards of light and feeling them catch like little hooks on them. By the time she reached the lake, she felt as if she was suspended in the net between the stars. If she sat, would it be like swinging in a hammock of golden light? She sat and closed her eyes so she could picture it more clearly.

“What is Little Paidiiza dreaming of?”

Zafiil gasped, startled out of her carefully built daydream. The net vanished and she imagined herself falling, and she shivered.

Jeniiz, Duzai’s sister, had joined her.

“I... I was watching the stars,” Zafiil said finally.

Jeniiz sat down beside her, tail curling around her toes neatly. “I understand. I come outside a lot, to look at the stars.”

Zafiil remembered Jeniiz’s earlier comments, about loving the night sky. “Why don’t you go live up there? On a ship? Like the shuttles, or the ships looking for the Others and the Lost Kin?”

“Sometimes you are called to worship, but not to partake.”

Zafiil frowned, ears rolling flat. “What does that mean?”

Jeniiz sighed a little, and smiled, but her smile was sad. “I mean that some who love the stars are meant to travel them… but others are meant to love them from the ground. You... you might be the kind who goes out to the stars... but I am the kind who stays home and only dreams of them. That’s how things are. How the God intends them.”

“But the God is good,” Zafiil said. “Why wouldn’t He give you what you want?”

Jeniiz laughed softly. It made Zafiil’s hair stand on end, to hear joy and misery mixed that way. “Sometimes, Little Paidiiza, you can’t have what you want. And other times, you should be careful what you wish for. The only certain thing is that Faulza knows what is best for you.”

Zafiil understood that sometimes you couldn’t have things, like extra food at the table when your brother had eaten the last of dessert, or the new pencils she’d seen when walking with Paden-aul through the place-of-vendors... but not to have something you wanted as much as life? Could Faulza deny her the stars, or other people things they wanted as much? Why would Faulza do such a thing?

Zafiil shuddered. She stared up at the sky, wondering if Faulza was in one of those faraway suns somewhere, and if He would hear her questions if she asked Him, and if He would answer her. And what He would say if she asked him this question?

She didn’t notice when Jeniiz stood and quietly walked away.

It was a troubled Faulfenzair who climbed back into her window and crept into her bed. Zafiil stared out the window, feeling cold. She’d gone outside with her questions and come back with nothing but more questions. She wasn’t sure she liked what she was learning here in Qodii. Why hadn’t she convinced Qazen-dii to let her stay in the safety of Paidiiza? None of these unseemly doubts and fears would have sprouted there on the golden sands, with the certainty of the love of her mother and father to buoy her up. How could she have let go of her mother’s waist?

Next time she would glue herself to her mother. Her father’s carpenter glue would be just the thing.