Unnamed Gods

 

Jaya went down to the sea by moonlight, hearing the cresting tide ahead of her as it seethed across the sands.  The moon was low on the horizon, gleaming like a crescent blade through the clear night air, touching the low clouds with red.  She wondered if the stories were true and it dipped down beneath the earth and immersed itself in the sea of blood each night.  She did not really believe it, as she knew the motions of the stars and the moon were part of the ancient arts of voyaging over the open sea.

She came to the shore, and there stood the black stone that had marked where her ancestors made their covenant with the gods, and where her brother’s blood had broken that covenant for her.  The Tau-ta had made their oath so that they might vanish from the wider world, but now that ancient protection seemed to be an illusion, like mist over the dawn shore.

In her hands was a spear, and she planted it at the edge of the water, where the waves reached highest, foaming around the base of the obelisk.  She took a hollow gourd from where it hung over her shoulder and she held it up.  Here, mixed inside, were ashes from the pyre of her father, and of Anut.  She had taken them, though she knew she was not meant to touch them.  The pyres were supposed to stand until the waves took them away, but she had taken a handful from each, and now she opened the gourd and looked inside at the darkness there, as though it could bite her.

Her heart beat harder as she reached inside and drew forth a handful of ashes, feeling them in her grasp like beach sand.  It was not the feathery ash of burnt wood, but harder and gritty, like stones.  She held it up to the moon and though she wanted to speak, her tongue seemed stilled in her mouth.

She bit her own lip until blood came and then she spat it into the night.  The gods of her people were not named aloud, and to do so broke the promise of ten generations.  “I name you now.  Sea-serpent, wave-dragon: Nagai.”  She felt the weight of the name, unspoken for so long.  “I call you, judge of the dead, guardian of all who pass beyond the sea, and who go down to the sea of death.  I invoke you.”  Her voice choked, and she felt tears stinging her eyes and could not have said exactly why.

“Go before my father, and herald him as a great warrior who died brave, who died for his people.”  She flung the ashes into the sea, seeing them shimmer in the red moonlight as they drifted on the wind and settled down to the water.  Some of the ashes blew back over her, and she tasted them on her tongue and felt her belly twist inside her.

“Go before my brother, and herald him as a great warrior who died brave, who died for his people.”  It was not proper to name Anut a warrior when he had not been tattooed, when he had not killed an enemy, but she would not take it back.  She scooped out another fistful of ashes, and she wondered for a moment what part of her brother was there in her hand.  His hands?  His heart?  She choked on her own words, and then she angrily flung the ashes against the obelisk, heard them rattle like shells on the stone.  “I charge you, Nagai, guard of the dead.  Take them where I cannot go.  Take them to the halls where our ancestors rule enthroned forever.”

She flung the gourd out into the waves and sank down on her knees.  The cool water washed around her, drawing her down into the wet sand a little at a time.  She reached out, tears beginning to smear her sight, and took the spear and uprooted it.  It was Anut’s fishing spear, the one he had fought with and died with.  She held it in her knotted fists and laid it across her lap.

“I name you now.  Wave-cutter, flesh-render: Arang.”  She thought of the shark god as she imagined him, vast and pallid, black-eyed and hungry, ever in the deep away from the sun.  “You are the revenger of family blood.  You are the keeper of oaths and the one who follows the scent of prey.  I give you this.”  She cut the back of her left arm with the spear, three even cuts, and then she let the blood run over her hand and drip into the sea.

“I give my blood promise, sworn on the ashes of the dead, that I will follow those who have harmed me to the edges of the world.  Lead me to them, and I will cut and cut until blood feeds your children.  I will take heads and mark them with your teeth and your dagger fin.”  She touched her thumb to the blood and drew the mark of the upright fin between her breasts, then she smeared the ashes of her father and brother over the cuts so that they would darken and scar.

She planted the spear point-down in the sand.  “Let this spear stand until I have returned.  Let it stand until my oath is consummated.  I will have death for death.  I will have blood for blood.  I name all the gods.  Nagai, I name you.  Arang, I name you.  Armor-skin, death-speaker: Ularu, serpent king.  I name you.  Fire-sided, claw-keeper: Hamau, tigress of the mountains.  I name you.”

Jaya bent and scooped water up in her cupped palms and splashed it over her face, felt it sting the cuts on her arm.  “Take my blood.  Take my pain.  I will give all to have answer for what has been done.  You owe me this, and I will have it.”  She bent down and wept over the sea, tears dropping into the waves.  She dug her fingers into the sand and shivered with her rage and the wounds that did not show upon her skin.  Her voice was a deadly hiss.  “I will have it!”

o0o

At dawn they all gathered to crown a new king.  A circle was made from long fronds bound and woven together, and within the circle two fires were lit with green logs that smoked and spat into the morning light.  The young virgins gathered to throw flowers into the fire and feed the coals with scented leaves, so that the smell of smoke became rich and spiced as a far wind.  Jaya had last smelled it when her father had been crowned when she was only a little girl, before Anut was even born.  She remembered the feel of her mother’s arms holding her up to see, and it was shocking how the smells brought the memory so keen.

They brought out the throne and decked it with new flowers and bright feathers, and the wise-women gathered beside it with the crown of the Tau’ta held in a basket between them.  The crown was ancient, made from gold hammered with skill none alive could now match.  There were places for seven stones upon the brow, but three of the settings were empty, the jewels lost in the flight from their homeland in the west.  It was said that only the blood of those who had betrayed them could restore the stones, but Jaya did not believe it.  The stones were lost, that was all, there was no magic in it.

Jaya sat with her brother to the side of the throne, legs folded on woven mats.  She looked at him as the crowd gathered and the singing began, the chants and invocations of the crowning of a new king.  He sat stiffly, his back straight, his head up and his gaze fixed far away.  He had oiled his skin, and his tattoos gleamed black in the rising sun.  He had no warrior tattoos, only for hunting.  Jaya was due marks for the men she had slain, but she had not begun them yet.  She had heard the mutterings that Nur was not fit to rule because he had come late to the battle and had not killed an enemy, while Jaya had cut down three.  It was not written that the successor must be eldest, or a man.  A king could choose another to follow him, but her father had made no wish known, and tradition was strong to pass the crown to the eldest.

Jaya did not grudge it.  She did not seek the crown or want it.  Nur had come late to the battle by chance, just as she had taken heads by chance.  It did not mark him as lesser, nor her as greater.  The only honor she wished for was to have saved Anut’s life, and that she had failed to do, and she scourged herself for it.

The people chanted and swayed, waving their hands in the air like the palm fronds when the storms came.  The wise women came forward and lifted the crown of the Tau’ta.  Three times they lifted it to the sky and shouted, and then they turned to Nur and he stood, looking neither right nor left, and strode to stand before the throne, facing the sea as the sun rose crimson from below.

Now would come the moment when his battle honors would be recounted and the skulls of his enemies brought forth to show his skill, but he had none, so there was a small hesitation, a moment when many eyes flicked to glance at her, and then she sensed movement behind her and turned to see Lapan the Old there like a ghost out of the lost ages.

He was the keeper of lore, the master tattooist and the one who knew the ways to prepare the skulls of the dead as trophies of battle.  His skin was almost black, as shiny and smooth as ancient bone itself, as though he were already dead.  His face was long and his eyes sunken deep in their orbits, filmed with age and creeping blindness.  He leaned on a twisted staff, and his belt was hung with so many shells and bones it was incredible he could move so silently.

The pause in the ceremony grew longer, and Jaya heard whispering.  Every stilled moment was an insult to Nur, and Jaya felt it like a thorn digging into her flesh.  She hesitated, and then she felt that it was upon her to act, to call Lapan away and let the coronation proceed.  He was close, so she reached out her hand, and when she did he lifted into sight three fleshed skulls, still gleaming with oil.  The empty sockets stared at her as they swung on the cords fitted to hold them, and then, before she could speak, he cast them down before her.

“The skulls of a warrior,” Lapan said, his voice dry and cracking.  “Taken from enemies in battle, cut away and cleaned of flesh.  Now their souls will not reach the sea of the dead.  Now they will dwell forever as prisoners of their killer.”  He swept his glassy stare across the assembled crowd.  “One who should wear the crown.  One who should rule the Tau’ta.  That one should be a killer.  That is what was spoken in the oldest days.”  He smiled, but it was cold and showed no laughter.  The old man pointed his staff at Nur, and then flicked it aside, as though dismissing him.

No one spoke, and they watched as the old man turned a contemptuous back and walked away, leaning on his staff, moving slowly until he vanished into the shade of the trees.  Jaya found her heart was beating very fast, and as she turned back to look at the crowd she felt the weight of all eyes on her.  She saw the wise-women looking at her, the crown delicate and gold in their hands, and then she looked at Nur and saw etched on his face a terrible anger.

Jaya was not sure what she should do, and she instinctively looked to the throne, as though her father would be there and could guide her, but the throne was empty, and Nur saw the direction of her glance and his face grew darker.

She knew she had to leave, to draw away the anger and the terrible silence that was all around them.  She got to her feet quickly and then she looked down at the skulls that lay beside her, teeth gleaming in the thin sunlight.  If she left them here, it might seem as even more of an insult, and yet it would gall her as well – as though she did not deserve them, as though she had not killed in defense of her people.  She bent to grasp the braided rope that held them, and Nur’s voice cracked across the quiet like a blow.

“Leave them,” he said, and she had never heard such deadly anger in anyone.  She did not want to meet his gaze and yet she refused to bow and look away, so she held still for a breath, and then she picked up the skulls, the sound of them clacking together very loud in the space between them.  Jaya stood straight and looked at her brother, and she heard a gasp whisper through the crowd.  She was very aware of her father’s sword where it hung beside the throne.

“I said leave them,” he said, his voice again low and poisonous, and now Jaya began to feel anger inside, simmering in her belly like banked coals.

“I will not,” she said, her voice steadier than she would have expected.  “They are mine by right, and you cannot deny them to me.”  She held them up, and there was another gasp.  “I took them in battle, and they will hang beneath the eaves of the longhouse to remember it.”

Nur glanced side to side, and she saw that he knew he could not claim any right over her trophies, even if he had already been crowned, which he had not.  He was only her brother in this moment, and she was a warrior while he was a hunter.  She looked at the crown and she knew – knew down inside where there is only dark – that she could walk forward and take it, and there would be many who would be glad.  Yet she knew that Nur would fight her then, and the tribe would split as it always had before when two claimed the throne.

There was a long breath when she realized that she did not fear her brother, that if he fought her she could win, and then she would be queen.  Then she saw Anut’s dead face, her father’s staring, empty eyes, and she turned away from that thought.  She would not shed family blood, the blood of her own people.  She did not desire a crown.

She turned away, and she heard another gasp then.  Nur hissed through his teeth, and she wondered if he would come after her, would try to stop her and begin the struggle that would end with one of them slain.  Jaya paused, turned slightly without looking back.  “I am going.  Wear the crown and be the king, I do not covet the throne of our father.”  She thought on the ship of the invaders, so tall and fretted with ropes, the golden eagle on the prow.  That sign she would follow.  Nur would be king, and she would leave the island and go forth as none of the Tau’ta had done in centuries.  That was her path.

Jaya left then, hearing voices rise behind her, hearing anger and discord in her wake, and she closed her eyes.  It did not matter.  She would go away and none of it would matter.  Let him have his throne and keep the tribe safe as he might.  The skulls swung beside her and she was glad of the weight of them.  Death was the only crown she coveted.

o0o

At night she packed a small bag and drew a woven shawl over her shoulders, for she knew it could be cold out on the sea.  She didn’t know where she was going, or how she would find land, but she would not remain here any longer.  All she knew of the rest of the world was that it lay to the west, where the islands rose high above the blue waters, and the reefs were sharp and deadly.  The deep waters rolled in waves high as hills, and the children of the shark god swam under the moon.

She belted on her knife, and she wished she could bring her father’s sword with her, to have the ready steel close to hand.  For a long time she was almost tempted to take it, but in the end she chose to let it go.  It would not be easy to take unseen, and it belonged to the king, and by now that was Nur.  She would take a good spear and her knife and find what else she might need along the path.

She left her longhouse under the silver bright of the moon, and she found a dozen men blocking her path, and Nur was at the center of them, his eyes glittering in the dark.  He held their father’s sword in his right hand, the edge bright as glass.  Jaya stopped and stood unmoved for a moment, breathing quick, unsure of what was to come.

“Now this must be decided,” Nur said.  “You wish to contest for the rulership of the Tau’ta?  Then we shall fight.”

Jaya almost felt relieved.  “I do not contest you, and I will not fight you.  You are king and I am –”

“I am not king!” he hissed, coming a step closer.  “The wise-women would not crown me!  I have no battle honors, and you have taken heads!”  He pointed the sword at her.  “They said the gods must decide, so they will decide now!”

Jaya looked at the other gathered men, all of their faces flat and angry, and she knew the split within the tribe had come whether she wished it or not.  “I will not fight you,” she said.  “I wish only to –”

He cut the air with the blade.  “Then you will stand and die!”

The hair stood on her arms as she cast down her bag and drew her knife.  “I will not.”

He came forward, half-crouched and ready, the sword held up and hovering to strike like a stinger.  Jaya looked at the other men as they closed in around, and she knew this was not the word of the wise-women.  A contest like this had to be witnessed and marked and surrounded by the proper ceremonies.  This told her that her brother feared to face her in the open, and it meant that no matter what happened, he intended her to vanish.

Jaya remembered him, then, when she had been very young.  She had picked up his fishing spear and played with it, and he had taken it from her and knocked her to the ground, not caring that she cried.  She remembered the hard anger on his face then, and she saw it again now as he came toward her.

She feinted once and then again, and the third time she seemed to invite the same opening, and he struck for her.  She slipped aside from his blow and struck his upper arm with the heel of her hand, slowing his return stroke so she could trap his arm under her own and turn to the outside, locking his elbow.  He was larger and heavier than she was, and he could pull free if she gave him time, but all she had to do was cut deeply across the inside of his arm and the sword would drop free.

She could not do it.  Could not cripple him for life, and instead she raked the back of her knife over his fingers and stripped the sword from his grip.  He cried out and pulled away and she let him go.  The sword was there, bright on the sand, and she dropped her knife and caught it up, felt the clean and deadly weight in her grasp.

When she turned back to face him he was already coming for her, wrath making him heedless, and she saw his hand reaching for her face and struck without thinking.  The edge came down between his outstretched fingers and split his left hand almost to the wrist.

The blood came free, black in the moonlight, and she saw it sling from the blade as she drew it back.  Nur cried out and fell to his knees, clutching his hand as the thick blood poured out and down his arm.  His face was pale in the moonlight, eyes wide and shocked.

The other men surged forward, and she turned on them, sword raised, and she saw it all in her mind, the hack and cut of steel, the flesh and bone carved and the blood soaking into the earth, and she knew nothing would come of it save that more of the Tau’ta would be dead.  She looked the men in the eyes, saw them hesitate, and then she cast down her father’s sword and stepped back from it.  “I am not one who will kill my own kind.  I will not take the lives of Tau’ta.”  She found her voice growing deeper, as though it were the voice of her father.  She held up empty hands.  “I will be clean of that blood.”  She looked at her brother.  “Decide if you will be.”

Nur staggered to his feet, still gripping his maimed hand, and she saw a terrible, frightened rage in his face.  “Bind her!” he hissed.  “Bind her and we will let the gods decide her fate.”

o0o

They lashed her arms before her with braided ropes, and they dragged her from the village and up the slopes of the shoulder of the mountain that rose behind it.  In the darkness branches and fronds slapped at her face, but she made no sound and did not fight them.  Her brother went before them, his hand wrapped tightly yet still dripping blood upon the earth like a curse he could not stay.

They took her to the edge of the crater where once the sea and sky had boiled.  The volcano that formed Ulu’a had been dead for many ages, and all that remained was a semicircle of cliffs above deep blue water where the waves murmured against blackened rock.  Sometimes the seawater boiled under the moon, and steam rose from the place where once fire had ruled, but now it lay still and glimmering under the moonlight, shallow waves rolling inward to the shore.

“They told me to let the gods decide, and so they shall,” Nur said, his voice shaking from anger and pain.  She felt a pang of sympathy for him, knowing that wound might yet kill him if he did not care for it.  Would that lie on her conscience?  She guessed that it would.

“This is not the will of the gods,” she said, and he almost flinched from her voice.

The other men were uncertain, but they brought a heavy stone to the edge, and she watched as they lashed a rope to it and then tied it to her bound wrists.  She looked at Nur scornfully.  “Cast me into the sea, and I will rise again.  And if I return, I will not be merciful again, for that too shall be the will of the gods.”  Her heart was beating faster and faster, and she watched as they lifted the heavy stone, jagged with embedded shells, and carried it to the very brink.  They hesitated, looking at her, and then at Nur.

“Do it!” he hissed.

She spat on his face.  “Arang I call on.  Sword of the sea, arrow-toothed, spear-hearted.”  He cringed from the name of the shark god, and the men gasped and cried out, and then they hurled the stone out into the dark.

Jaya did not wait: she gathered her legs under her and leaped after it, feeling the line go taut just as she sprang.  The weight pulled her down, and she dove, wind rushing past her, the sea a void below lit by faint glimmers.  In a breath she would strike clean water, or she would dash against the rocks and be gone.  She breathed in deep, and struck.

o0o

She cut the surface clean, arms outstretched, and she plunged in like a spear, slowing until she stopped and hung in the water for a moment.  Above she saw only the white glimmer of the crescent moon, and then the rope around her wrists went tight and pulled her down.

Jaya fought against the weight, trying to drag herself to the surface, but the rock she was bound to was too heavy, and it drew her down relentlessly.  Desperate, she put her teeth to the bindings and tried to gnaw through them, but the tough dried and braided vines were harder than leather, the knots like bone knuckles.  The light faded as she was pulled down, and she felt the weight of the sea squeezing on her, pressing on her eyes and ears.

She felt a warmth now, and she knew the belly of the mountain was alive and roiling with fire somewhere beneath her.  Bubbles rose past her in clouds, as if to mock her as the need for breath began to press against her ribs like a stone.  She caught at the line that pulled her down and tried to kick down and follow it, thinking perhaps if she reached the rock she might undo the hasty knots.

Even as she thought it, she knew there was not enough time, even if she reached the rock her breath would be gone, and she would have none left to worry at the ropes and then swim back up to the surface.  What now her pride?  She thought on it bitterly.  Was it worth it to have refused to kill her own people?  It would cost her life, and now there was no mistaking it.  Darkness began to gnaw at the edges of her awareness, and the need to breathe clawed at her throat.

She hung there, suspended in the dark, in the last stretched moments before she breathed in the sea and began to die.  There was no sound, no motion, only the drawing gloom below her that drew her in, and she closed her eyes, almost ready to wish it was over.  There would be pain, but it would be quick.  She shivered all over, trembling and cold.

Something moved in the water, and she felt a wave pass over and through her like a cold wind.  She spun in the depths, and when she opened her eyes she did not know which way was up.  Darkness was crawling in all around her, and her heartbeat pounded in her ears, all through her skull.  Something darker than black moved close to her, and she saw light.

Something moved close like a lantern, and then she saw the immense shape so close to her, the sleek, long form marked by dagger fins, and the mouth deep with uncounted teeth.  The shark hovered there, larger than anything she had ever seen, so big it could have swallowed her whole, and its eyes were pits of lambent flame.  She waited, trembling, all but senseless, for it to devour her.

It moved, swift as a ravening wave, and its sleek bulk flashed beneath her, tumbling her in its wake.  She felt a pull on her wrists, and then she was loose, the line cut below her.  She saw bubbles rise around her and in the moment before she lost all will she kicked upward savagely, drawing on a well of strength she had not known was there.  She rose up and up, feeling the grip of the water loosen, feeling herself draw closer and closer to the fatal breath that would mean her end, and then she burst from the water into the open air and she gasped so deeply and so fiercely it tore at her throat.  The sound of her indrawn breath was almost a scream.

o0o

Jaya clung to a black shard of basalt for a long time, breathing in and out as the waves lapped across her.  Every limb and muscle trembled, and she tasted blood in her throat.  Slowly, she dragged herself from the water and stumbled to the shallows, fumbled among the rocks until she found a shard keen enough to cut her bonds, and then she was free.

Angry, she crawled from the sea and made her way up the cliffside to where they had thrown her from, but found nothing there save the stain of blood on the ground.  The moon was almost down, and the night was deeper.  It seemed to her that she had spent a very long time under the water.  In her mind was the vast shape of the shark, and she shuddered when she remembered how it felt to float there before it, naked and powerless.  Arang, the shark god, the patron of revenge.

She made her way through the forest, up the hillsides, until she stood before the longhouse of the king.  The torches were kindled outside, but the firepit had burned low, and there was no one guarding the way – why should there be?  She smiled to herself as she slipped barefooted into the darkness inside.  All around her she heard the soft breathing of sleepers, the almost imperceptible song of the coals as they burned down, casting only a dull red light.

Nur lay in his place behind the throne, the bed made from saplings and suspended from ropes so that it swayed when he shifted.  His left hand was bound and bandaged, and though he slept, there was pain on his features.  Even now, she found it in her to feel for him.  Her brother, the only family she had left.  She looked at him for a long time in the quiet, and then she reached up and took down her father’s sword from where it hung.  She slung the strap over her shoulder and drew out the quick silver blade.  Then she covered his mouth with her hand and laid the edge across his throat.

He came awake at once and surged up against her hand, but she dug the edge of the sword into his neck and he stilled, his eyes rolling white and afraid.  Jaya leaned down until her breath stirred his hair, and she turned his head and bent to his ear.  “No one will know I live, save you,” she whispered.  “I am going, because someone must follow those who attacked us, and must avenge what was done.  You are a coward, and weak, and I know that now.”

She bent his head to look him in the eye, feeling his breath wet on her palm.  “But I will come back.  No one else will know what you fear, and you cannot confess it to anyone.  You will know that the day will come when I return to take from you all that you have.  Keep my throne for me, for I will come back to claim it.”  She lifted the sword from his neck and pressed it against his face, the edge almost cutting his cheek.  “Goodbye.  Dread the day when you see me again.”

When she took her hand from his mouth she wondered if he would cry out, but he only lay silent and stared at her as she backed away into the shadows, and then she turned and left him, padding silent over the woven mats on the floor, out into the night that would soon be morning.

o0o

She gathered her supplies quickly in her bag, left where she had dropped it.  A fishing spear with line and net was slung over her shoulder, and her father’s sword hung from her side.  She covered herself with her shawl and went down to the sea.  There were all the canoes drawn up on shore, covered with palm leaves to protect them, and she knew the one she wanted.  It was small enough for her to rig alone, but well-made.  She uncovered it and pushed it down to the water.

The tide was going out, and she knew it would help draw her away from land.  She stowed her gear and then rowed until she was far enough out to catch the wind.  The single mast was slim, supple as a lash, and she unfurled the single sail and caught the breath of the morning.  The sky was turning gray in the east and she turned away.  The invaders had come from the west, and the only lands she knew of were all to the west, so that was the way she would go, and follow the dying sun.

The wind bellied her sail and she hung on and leaned as the outrigged canoe cut the waves.  She steered lightly across the bay and then slipped through the opening in the reef and out into the deeper water, where the sea beneath her darkened, and the waves grew long and slow.  The wind was sweet, and she smiled as she let it carry her away from her home, away from the sun, and toward the edge of the world where all was still dark.