Heir of Beasts

Ch. 3.4- The Glimmering

We leave the water's edge behind, heading towards bonfires and the sound of laughing voices. The party is sprawling. People sit around tables sunken into the sand, eating and talking, while three men take turns turning a huge boar on a spit. Sparks from the fires leap and dance in the air, and faint trails of ash and smoke rise into the black sky, almost like they're searching for something. Beyond the beach, there's a small glade. When I squint, I can make out women dancing. Someone races by us, laughing, before disappearing into the dense woods with a pursuer hot on their trail.

And it's all so very lovely, and so very foreign, because the only parties held outside in Shikkah were stilted, highly orchestrated affairs beneath canopied tents. This looks... organic. Like the dark water of the lake called people to surround it on a lonely, starlit night. Like the fires lit themselves to provide warmth and light, while the night insects sang lullabies to the children resting heavy in their parent's arms.

"This is new," Irei murmurs softly, so only I can hear. "Before, Kemvir's crowd would've been in one corner, Anissi's in another, with everyone else caught somewhere awkwardly between. That is, until Kemvir's strongest supporters stopped coming altogether to make a statement. The first few years after the Compromise were fraught, and there's still tension and mistrust and, shards curse me, politics, but this clan is finally acting like a clan again. Like people who actually want to be associated with each other, imagine that."

But I don't have to imagine it because it's right in front of me. So is the fact that not one person has said hello to Irei or greeted me as we walk across the beach. No one has so much as lifted a hand to wave. It's like we're invisible.

"Are they snubbing us?" I ask quietly. "Is it because we're late?"

Irei laughs. "No, we just have to pay our respects to the Matriarch first. No one will acknowledge us until we greet her and she gives us her blessing to be on kionaxi land."

We near a cluster of people and Irei stops. When they notice us, they widen the circle and he strides into it purposefully, pulling me along beside him. He stops in front of two women and offers a small bow, first to the one who's about my mother's age, then to the girl of no more than eleven standing tall beside her.

The elder woman has auburn curls hanging in a nebulous cloud around her heart-shaped face, softening the decidedly sharp curve of her nose, the hard arch of her brows. Her mouth, though, is full and smiling, her eyes a soft, warm brown above plump cheeks spattered with constellations of freckles. Her long-sleeved white dress flows over her abundant curves before ending at her ankles, revealing tanned skin and bare feet. Her eyes are wry and vibrant.

The girl beside her is more typically Kamai in appearance, with dark almond eyes, thick black hair, and dusky skin. Her expression is cool and solemn, her dark eyes possessing a depth unusual in one so young. She, too, is dressed all in white, but a red and gold sash is tied at her waist, and ribbons of the same colors twine through her dark hair. They dance around her small face as the wind blows, the effect strikingly ethereal. I could easily believe her some ancient island spirit, some deity of salt and clay who one day took human form and walked out of the sea to greet man by the sandy shore.

"I seek your indulgence and your blessing, Matriarch Iriis of clan kionaxi."

"Who asks this of me?" she asks smoothly, her voice thick and rich as honey. The words are clearly prescribed, ceremonial and precise in a way that reminds me achingly of Shikkah, of my own family and our myriad rituals and customs and superstitions.

"Irei'kionaxi Nara, son of Markiri Xibha, grandson of Tenriis Sura. Mother of stag, stem, and stone, keeper of the old ways, heart's blood of the island, will you welcome me?"