Heir of Beasts

Ch. 2.5- The Fourth Goddess of the Desert

As I lay the shoes on the ara in front of me, I remember the little girl who wore them. She saw a man walk on hot coals at an open-air market once and decided then and there to turn her soft soles into callouses thick enough to withstand the heat of the desert sand, if not fire itself. When her mother couldn't dissuade her from running barefoot over the dunes- whooping and hollering, sunburned and dusty- she extracted a grudging promise from her vagabond daughter to wear shoes at all times. It was honored only as long as an adult was present; when just her cousins were around, she'd fill the hated slippers with sand so they wouldn't blow away and retrieve them after hours of raucous play. When one cousin dared to insult Shira, she pulled her shoe from her foot and threw it at him.

On hot days, she slipped them from her feet and waded into the shallows of the River Imer to chase the quick-darting silver fish that shoaled there. When she turned fifteenth she danced all through the night to ring in her adulthood, then left them bent and bruised in the cool darkness of the Goddess-House vaults. Most girls' mothers kept their shoes tucked away in ornate boxes, but the daughters of the dimaraste left their baby shoes with priestesses of Zsavina herself.

I think for a moment of the other pairs that slept beside mine all these years, the little blue and gold slippers of my cousins Alya and Moseq. I can almost see them for a moment, flitting about the antechamber like strange moths. Laughing behind their hands while the priestess anointed their shoes with river water and placed them on mats of woven cattails. Getting chastised by their mothers for chasing each other down forgotten hallways where every footstep echoed. They echo louder now, even if I'm the only one who can hear their peculiar cadence.

I wonder if anyone thought to destroy the shoes, or if my cousin's still rest abandoned in the family vault, shadows of girls waiting for women who will never come to claim them. It makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time, those little orphaned shoes, achingly tender and heartbreaking and absurd all at once. They're just cloth and soles, after all, and beads and gems. Thread and leather holding it all together. But they're like seals on old letters, tattered portraits, whisps of baby hair and lost teeth. Relics of a whole past reaching out through the shattered present, begging us to remember a time when life still made sense.

I place my girlhood shoes on the altar and step back. The heavy wooden doors separating the ara from the antechamber of the Goddess-House are closed, plunging us into darkness. A second later a novitiate in white and blue with close-cropped hair pours out sweet-smelling oil while another lights a fire with a silver taper. For an instant it seem like the fabric of my dress or the priestess' robes will be ignited, but the sparks stay contained in the stone bowl. More oil is added, showering the darkness around us with brilliant light.

I bow before the firelight, my knees biting into the cold stone floor as my dress pools around me like liquid silver. The warmth of the offering and the intense smell of incense make me feel nauseous. Thankfully, the required words come easily. "Chezsei ai tonath alithi o'u pel kamshet," I murmur into the darkness the fire, now burning low, keeps just out of reach.

Sentence after sentence spill from my lips easily. I barely hear the words I speak, relying on memory to carry me through this moment. I close my eyes and try to breathe through the weight of this still, cold place. This last moment of sovereignty spent kneeling with holy strangers before I enter a marriage that mocks the very concept of union.

I renounce the past at the same moment I hold it close and beg it never to leave me. I shelter inside my memories only to have them rain down on me like bullets. Somewhere nearby, a little girl in bright red shoes laughs as she seeks her cousin hiding behind a stone pillar. They grab hands and spin, their childish laughter filling the space with light as surely as the shoes before they were reduced to ash. I wonder how many steps there are between then and now, how far off course we've wandered. Been pushed. How many birdcalls have I followed to oblivion? How many dead ends have become my sleeping-place? How many different ways have I tried to answer the question, why?