Jermone crushed his hands into fists under the sand. If anyone else said this… but no one else would. Only Cynda, the accidental Queen who had always been the second daughter would be so irreverent, and only because she was his friend could he listen.
But he feared for the ceremony. He thought she was trying to back out.
“Everyone says Bundi is mad. He’s old, mad, and no one listens to him.”
Cynda went on as if she didn’t hear him. Sunlight glistened on her shoulders. She closed her eyes as if shutting out him and the forest and the light.
“The old wreck on the beach shows we’re from some other place. Bundi says from another star. It carried us to the island, but the trip or the landing damaged it. People tried to live here, though. They tried, and there must have been a lot of them. Look at their buildings.”
“Those are the gods’ homes.”
A branch snapped in the woods. Strain as he might, Jermone heard no more sounds.
Cynda said, “They built them tall and shiny, but the forest fought back. Maybe their babies all had to be killed, and they couldn’t live with the sorrow. Maybe the animals were too much. They lost. They retreated to the island where they could kill any threat.”
“The people have lived on the island forever.”
“And what about the clothes-apes? What do you think they are?” Cynda turned again toward him, reached across herself and held his wrist next to the sand.
“Devils?” Jermone offered. His thoughts tumbled. There were no elders to answer her arguments. He had to stand for the island and the ceremony’s success. He could see it slipping away. What would he tell them if he failed? The hunts would go bad. The whales would run deep and too fast. Fish would flee the nets and fruit would rot in the orchards.
A low frond on a tree near the edge moved, and for a second Jermone thought eyes looked out at him. He blinked, and they vanished.
“Are they apes becoming men, or are they men becoming apes?” said Cynda.
Jermone rubbed his free hand across his mouth, profoundly aware she still held his wrist. “Cynda, if I had not been king, and if you had not become queen, would you have declared for me?”
She didn’t answer, but her grip tightened.
“The tide is almost out,” she said. “It’s time for the ceremony.”
“You’ll do it?” he gasped. “You’ll do the ceremony?”
She stood and straightened clothing, knocking the sand from the feathers in the skirt and untangling the bead strings that dangled from the breastcloth.
“Not for the gods. I’ll do it for you, and because you believe in them. It’s ritual and offering just like goats and fish and grain. Don’t make me talk, afterwards, though. I have to end it then.”
She walked toward the water line, then waited till a wave came in and made a mark in the sand where it stopped. She knelt and pushed sand aside, hollowing a place in the beach. Water flowed into the bottom, but she continued digging a long, shallow depression. “It has to happen where the sea gods and the land gods meet. Bundi says we believe in symbolism.”
“We believe in gods.” Now, so close to the ceremony, Jermone struggled to breathe. They were doing the gods’ business, making life good for the island, and they should be joyful. But Cynda moved as if she wore a thousand stones tied round her. Her movements slowed and seemed painful.
He didn’t know all the details of the ceremony. These were the Queen’s secrets, and the Queen’s mother. They knew the ritual’s procedures, the hidden words to be spoken and the mystic gestures. Jermone knew just his part, and what he had to do. “I don’t want you to be sad.” He held his own hands together helplessly. “The gods will reward us all for a good ceremony.” But he didn’t believe his own words. The gods seemed imaginary, and only Cynda existed.
She stopped and observed the shape she’d dug, a human shape with a place for arms and legs to lay flat, half buried and half revealed. “Next year there will be another king for the Whale’s run. I’ll be here with a different king. In fifteen seasons, mother had eleven children.” Her voice sounded old and distant. A wave slipped over the edge and carried some sand into the depression.
She faced him, eyes so brown and profound he thought he could fall into them. “I am to remind you the ritual is not about you and me as people. You are, today, on the Whale’s run first day, a representative of the male force in the universe.” She chanted now, not looking at him anymore. “The male force hunts and protects, feeds and builds, fathers and dies.”
Moving her feet into the matching shape, she sat. The water covered the back of her legs. “I am a representative of the female force in the universe.” Laying half in the earth and half out, she said, “The female force nurtures and instructs, creates and maintains, mothers and dies. If the sea gods and the land gods are with us today, we will make a Queen’s daughter to lead the people when I am gone as my mother did before me. We will assure the Whale’s run success and the hunters will come home sated and unharmed. Many children will be born live and whole.”
Jermone looked at her. Water soaked the feather skirt. Her eyes closed, and the line of her jaw was grim.
“Think of me,” she said, “as earth and sea. You are sky and trees. Cynda and Jermone are not here now.”
Still, Jermone did not move. From the jungle he could feel eyes upon him, judging him, and nowhere did he feel the gods. For many nights he had envisioned sky and tree gods filling him at this moment; he had imagined Cynda as she was now, willing to be with him and everything would be correct, but he hadn’t guessed at this emptiness. He hadn’t foreseen reluctance or misery.
Cynda opened her eyes. “Come on,” she whispered, reaching her hand up. “We have no choice.”
And she drew him down into the sand, into forgetfulness, where the sun warmed him and the sea became a salty caress. And at the explosive, powerful moment, he thought she said, “I want just you, Jermone.” But he couldn’t tell because he called her name over and over again in his mind. In the sand and the sea, in her and in him, he sensed no gods—or he touched them all. The world was different and new. Nothing mattered.
Afterwards they both cried. He didn’t feel adult. He didn’t feel like a king. The ritual ended, and he had done his part. Cynda lay beneath him in the sand, and every wave swept around them in warm baptism.
Now, only the sacrifice, the offering, remained.
He didn’t talk, and Cynda kept silent as she had promised. Like some earth elemental, she rose from the bed she had dug, the sand and water falling from her. Before she stepped into the canoe, she touched his face once, not like a good-bye, but as if she wanted to be sure he was real. Then she paddled into the ocean, leaving him sitting on the beach, watching her form grow smaller and smaller until he lost her on the horizon.
For a long time, he sat thus.
He thought of her on this beach a season from now, digging a bed for herself with some other king, and the picture left him empty. He could see no gods in it.
Then, something screeched in the jungle behind him. Jermone didn’t turn at first. He searched for Cynda on the sea, one last glimpse. Dried leaves crackled; something grunted, and stealthy footsteps crunched in the sand.
When Jermone turned, twenty had come from the forest. Some monstrous, some human, male and female. Others, he didn’t know. He wished he could tell Cynda—he wished he could talk to her again—they did wear clothes. Cloth scraps hung from their shoulders or around their waists. One wore a hat, a battered blue cap with leaves stuck in it.