The serving maid with the long twist of auburn hair arrived in my guest room. She helped me into the convoluted lengths of white cloth that she had first brought in. The fabric draped around me, cool to the touch. Afterwards, she handed me my t-shirt and jeans in a plain brown sack. I draped the sack over my shoulder and followed her through the torch-lit palace, the folds of my robe fluttering as I walked, cooling me from the night’s heat.
We stopped before a high wall bearing an enormous tapestry. The red tapestry was sliced in half down the center. She swept it aside to reveal a vast hall beyond, and I went through into the orange glow.
The hall was so richly foliaged that, for a moment, I thought I had stepped outside. Fronds covered the walls and trees grew thick in the corners. The ceiling rose high, latticed in a pattern so the stars shone through. Directly beneath the ceiling, from the mouths of stone leopards, two thin waterfalls poured long on either side of me, falling into a pond that filled nearly the entire hall like a swimming pool. A platform floated in the center, covered with an elaborate rug, surrounded by stepping stones. At the far end, the walls opened into a set of pillars. The waters ran past the pillars into the night outside, feeding into a lake.
A statue of a woman stood at the lake’s edge. The moonlight lined the golden statue with silver, and it was apparent that she was intricately made, with bronze skin and a twirl of copper hair twisted behind her head. A white flower held her hair in place. Her pale robes were folded differently from mine, in a way that was somehow more feminine.
I was about to walk forward when a leopard emerged from the foliage. I stopped at the sight of it, cursing quietly at the abundance of giant cats that roamed the palace freely. The leopard passed me, its tail brushing against my legs. It leapt across the stepping stones before stopping to sit beside the golden statue. The statue moved its lustrous hand to stroke the leopard’s head.
At the sight of her gesture, I stood frozen.
The golden lady was looking at a white star. The star grew larger, nearer, and soon it materialized into a familiar shape – Audrey’s white beast. The creature landed on the lakeshore, stretching its wings as Audrey and Hallain climbed from its back. The lady received Hallain with a kiss, taking his arm in hers.
“Kevin, you look lovely in a Moreinen taris,” Audrey laughed at me.
“Why can’t I just wear jeans?” I muttered.
“Oh please, your clothes are torn and filthy.” Her own white robes flowed around her naturally. Her hair was wet and she smelled fresh with honey. She took my arm and guided me towards the stepping stones. Hallain and the lady were already on the floating platform.
“What? No kiss?” I joked.
She pinched my side in a way that was gentle for her, but I cringed and knew it would bruise tomorrow.
“They are devoted,” Audrey said, indicating her brother and the lady.
“What?”
“Devoted. It means… together, engaged, in a relationship, married – like that.”
“It’s all the same here?”
“Yes.”
I walked across the stepping stones with the waters lapping at my feet. The stones slid slightly, like lily pads in a pond, and I noticed they floated on the waters.
“Come and have a seat on the dining rug,” Hallain said, patting the carpet. He gestured to the lady who wore a golden band across her forehead, the same as his. “This is Caliri, daughter of Tekran’s cousin in the West. I’m sorry to say that Tekran is not well enough to join us this evening.”
As he spoke, a line of male servants filed into the hall, wearing only white pants that billowed out to their knees. Their heads were completely shaved. They held platters at their shoulders as they came over the stepping stones, the flames shining in a gloss on their bronze bodies. They placed the platters on the rug before filing out, disappearing beyond the great tapestry.
Each platter was warmed by spheres of orange fire dotted around the food. On some dishes, the fire was sprinkled over the cuisine like embers.
“Kevin and I were going to continue our discussion over dinner,” Hallain remarked.
“Oh, really?” Audrey raised her eyebrows from behind a seashell that she held to her lips. She sipped from the shell as if from a bowl, warming sparks flickering on the shell’s underside.
“Yes,” Hallain turned to me. “You had an interest in Reiya.”
“Um, that’s right. Tell me more about Rylo – Reiya!”
Caliri sat around the corner of the rug next to me and the leopard crept up to sidle against her. The cat was enormous, far larger than a leopard from home. This close, I saw that what I had taken for spots on its coat were instead swirls of lines. Caliri plucked a shrimp from her dish and fed it to the cat.
There was a sudden silence. I realized Hallain had been speaking and was waiting for my reply. “Uh, yes,” I nodded. I picked up a clay cup and took a sip, hoping I’d deceived him into thinking I’d been listening.
It seemed to work, for Hallain gladly continued, “So you want to hear it? It’s a traditional Moreinen song, often used to tell the Legend of Origins. By Her blood, I don’t know if I could translate it.”
As Hallain spoke, I felt Caliri’s eyes on me, puzzling over me. Her honeyed eyes peered over the red leaf that she held on her palm. When she saw I’d caught her staring, she rolled some meat into the leaf and hastily stuffed it into her mouth, dropping her gaze.
“I’ll give it a try,” Hallain was saying, and cleared his throat. He began haltingly to sing a strange tune:
In the beginning, the Sun had two children, Earth and Moon. She favored the younger son, Moon, and gave him her light.
Because of that, Earth was grieved, and turned from the Sun into the darkness. And that is why we have night.
After Earth left, Moon missed his older brother and left the Sun to follow Earth into the darkness. That is why the Moon becomes darkened into its crescent forms.
For the loss of her children, Sun grieved, crying tears that became the Stars. It was from the Stars that rains fell, and all life on Earth grew from the rains of the Sun’s tears.
From a drop of rain, the girl Tura fell from the Stars to the desert that was Moreina. In the desert, she was hungry but had no food, so she prayed to the goddess Reiya.
Reiya heard Tura’s cries and transformed herself into a tigress.
The tigress spilt her own blood and told the girl to drink her blood that the girl may have life.
As the tigress lay dying, her blood coursed over the lands and became the Dabi. Because Reiya’s blood was so full of life, the girl drank of it and became pregnant, and she gave birth to the people who became Moreinans.
“Brother, that was a lovely translation,” Audrey chimed, between mouthfuls.
“That is why tigers are sacred to Moreina,” Hallain said, with a nod to the leopard beside him.
“Brother, that part of your translation was not so accurate. He means all large cats,” Audrey explained to me. “From lions to tigers to leopards. All of them. Of course, we don’t have lions and tigers exactly the way your world does. But you get the point.”
“I see,” I said. I sipped at the amber tea again. The fragrance of it warmed my face. It tasted like syrup mixed with chocolate and nuts.
“How’s your coca tea?” Audrey asked. “I think you have the sweet nut flavor. Try it with the berry grapes.”
Obediently, I dipped a grape into a swirl of red sauce as Hallain said, “Tell us about the religion of your world, Kevin.”
I struggled to speak against the tang of the grape that was pinching my mouth. I could feel the heat of Audrey’s wry smile. “Uh, we have many religions,” I managed. Quickly, I rinsed down the grape with a sweet wash of coca tea.
“Your main one, it’s very interesting. I believe you call it – science?”
I swallowed a mouthful of tea, its warm spices filling me with a sleepy pleasure. “Um… It’s not really a religion.”
As we talked, dolphins swam near our fl
oating platform, their striped dorsal fins cutting through the waters. We swayed as the dolphins bumped against the stone platform.
“Really? It seems to be a philosophy of belief,” Hallain said.
I tried to remember Audrey’s argument against science back in my Berkeley room, on a day that seemed so long ago. “I’ve taken a lot of science classes and it’s the truth, not –” I stopped as I wondered what science could explain the impossible world that surrounded me.
He swept up some rice with a slice of unleavened bread. “I don’t understand how it could not be a religion. It’s a system of thought about our existence, like any other.”
I poked at the rice with a wooden skewer, holding a grain to a sphere of flame in the dish. I could see through the amber grain to the fire behind it. “It’s just – different,” I finally said, lamely.
“We believe that all the world’s religions are different ways of looking at one truth. Science seems to be the same, giving a truth, only dispassionately compared to other religions.” He sliced his fish with a skewer. The fish was blanketed in a layer of red seasoning. He wrapped the bite of fish with crimson pasta before eating it with a swallow. My own handling of the skewers felt clumsy in comparison.
“So where does all your seafood come from?” I asked, hoping to change the conversation.
“Almost all our food comes from the Dabi, even our grains are sown within the Dabi’s silt. When the Dabi rises, the grasses of our grains can still be seen above the river waters.”
I felt a splash on the back of my neck. I looked up to see the dolphins leaping over us in an arch, spraying us with droplets before landing in the waters on the other side.
“Those are tiger fish, to give a bad translation,” Hallain informed.
“Back home, our dolphins are grey,” I said. “But here, everything’s some shade of gold.”
“That is why we’re known as the Land of Sky,” he said. “Because Moreina is gold like the sun, and Alhallra is silver like the moon.”
“Speaking of the moon, look at the time,” Audrey interjected. She glanced past the pillars to where the crescent moon had moved across the night, displaying itself in a perfect reflection on the black waters of the lake. “If Kevin and I don’t hurry off, we’ll be eating right through the midnight meal.”
Audrey reached for a plate topped with spheres of auburn leaves. She placed a few into my brown sack. I figured it was food that Audrey wanted on our journey.
Together, we crossed back over the stepping stones, the dorsal fins of the tiger fish gliding through the waters at my feet. The dolphins followed us outside, swimming into the lake, rippling the crescent reflection of the moon.
On the lakeshore, Audrey’s white beast looked exactly as it had been in the touch. Except now, it had materialized into the world before me. Somehow, that made it more beautiful. In its shadow, the murmur of Audrey’s and Hallain’s voices drifted in soft Alhallren words. Caliri stood nearby, lovely and silent, studying me with golden eyes.
Within the hall, a giant black cat was stalking along the walls. I thought it was a sik at first, but I looked again and saw that it resembled a panther with a short black mane cropped down its back. It peered at us with bright yellow eyes and moved past the pillars to drink from the lake’s edge, lapping up the reflection of the moon. Near the dining platform, a golden leopard with tiger stripes materialized from the foliage.
Relief swept over me when Audrey gave her brother a parting embrace and mounted the white hine. I couldn’t wait to put more distance between me and the cats.
“Thanks for having me over,” I said to Hallain. “Your place is beautiful, and your pets are – amazing.”
“Pets?”
“These creatures – the tiger fish, the cats and birds – are all free to roam,” Audrey said from atop the hine. “They’re not quite pets. They’re at least half-wild.”
I glanced nervously at the giant feral cats lounging in the dining hall. “Well, thank you,” I said again. I stuck out my hand for a handshake, but Hallain only blinked at it, puzzled.
“Kevin, just get up here.” Audrey pulled me up by my robes and seated me behind her, at a pleasant height from the cats below. “Goodbye, brother,” she said. “I’ll visit often. This is rather a pretty place after all.”
And with a sweep of wings, we lifted into the sky, the spiced lands of Moreina falling away into the night beneath us.
Chapter 25