Vessel

Her clan, her family, cried to the sky. “Bayla, Bayla, Bayla!”

She was the dance. Her body knew it; each step had been drilled into her muscles by hours of daily practice. Her legs whipped beneath the skirt as she spun, arms open wide. Her feet flew over the sand.

Faster . . . Thud, thud, thud. “Vessa oenda nasa we!”

Overhead, the sky deepened to azure, and the desert darkened. Stars materialized as if someone were flinging shimmering droplets across the sky. Liyana’s breath burned in her throat, and her lungs ached. She felt her muscles strain, but she welcomed it. She’d danced to this point and far beyond in her training. She had only begun to dance.

The bells in her hair sang between the drumbeats. Her feet beat staccato on the sand as her arms beckoned the goddess’s soul. She sang the summoning words with her people. “Ebuci . . . ebuci . . .” “Come! Come! Your vessel is ready!”

As the hours passed, her feet felt the sand cool through the soles of her shoes. She had ceased to notice the faces outside the circle. The drums continued to beat, and Talu continued to chant.

Stars watched cold from the sky above. The torches threw their light into the circle. Her feet stabbed the cold sand, worn from the pattern of her dance. She heard whispers between the drumbeats, voices from beyond the circle.

One carried itself to her ears. “She hasn’t come.”

Liyana’s feet faltered. Quickly she caught the step, and she twirled and spun in time with the drumbeats. But the words wormed themselves into Liyana’s mind. By now, the goddess should have come. Her soul should have filled Liyana’s body, and Liyana’s soul should have been displaced. She should have been drawn to the Dreaming while the goddess breathed her first breath with Liyana’s lungs.

Talu’s voice was hoarse, but still it echoed across the camp. Liyana noticed that someone had draped furs around the old woman’s shoulders. The night wind whipped past the tents and chilled Liyana’s skin. Her bells continued to ring, and she continued to dance, but each move felt stiff. She hasn’t come, Liyana thought. She should have come!

The moon etched a path across the sky. Still, Liyana danced. And still, her goddess did not come.

Chapter Three

At dawn the drums ceased.

Liyana collapsed forward into the sand. Sky serpents circled above her, their glass scales catching the rose and gold rays of sunrise, and scattering them like a thousand jewels onto the desert below. Songbirds called to one another from the tops of the date palm trees. Chest heaving, Liyana tried to swallow. Her throat felt raw from breathing so hard for so long. Her braids were plastered against her cheeks and neck with her dried sweat. On hands and knees, she dug her fingers into the sand. These were still her hands. This was still her body.

Talu’s voice died, and Liyana raised her head and felt the first kiss of sunrise on her face. Dawn dyed the sand dunes red as it had yesterday. She shouldn’t be here to see it again.

Around her, the clan was silent. She noticed only a few children remained, and young men and women had replaced the old as drummers. Their hands rested limply on the skins of their drums. A few covered their faces with their hands.

Someone in the clan keened.

Liyana looked at her parents’ faces. Her father’s was ashen, his eyes sunk deep, dried tears etching his cheeks like scars. Her mother’s face was frozen, as if she had forgotten how to feel.

“She didn’t come,” Liyana whispered. “Talu, why didn’t she come?” Her body was shaking like a palm tree in a windstorm. She wrapped her arms around herself. Every muscle screamed, and her bones felt like liquid. She wasn’t supposed to feel anymore. “Talu . . .”

“My children, my children!” a woman wailed. She was the master weaver, a woman with five daughters and three sons. “You have killed their future!” Two of her children huddled behind her skirt. Eyes wide, they looked like spooked horses.

Liyana could find no words in her throat. Once a century, the goddess of the Goat Clan walked among them and ensured that her clan could survive the next one hundred years. She used a human body to work the magic that would fill the wells, revitalize the oases, and increase the herds. Without this infusion of magic . . . In an ordinary century, this would be a disaster. But now, in the time of the Great Drought, it meant death. Already this oasis was a tenth the size it once was. Others were worse. Many of the desert wells held only a few buckets’ worth of undrinkable salty brine, and most of the others had dried up a full month earlier than they used to. Half the herd had sickened over the last season. Children were too thin, and they had lost far too many of their elders to illness. They needed Bayla more now than they ever had.

Others took up the master weaver’s cry. Liyana felt each voice as if it were a whip on her skin. Talu raised her arms in front of her face as if to ward off invisible blows. Shoulder to shoulder, the clans people pressed forward, crowding together outside the circle that Talu had drawn in the sand. Their shouts overlapped until Liyana could not distinguish individual words. Startled, the birds fled the trees, darkening the sky with their bodies.

“Silence.”

The word rolled over the clan.

All voices faded, like wind falling in the wake of a sandstorm. All eyes fixed on their chief, Chief Roke. It was his bellow from a chest as broad as a horse’s that had cut through the cries.

Chieftess Ratha, his wife, drew herself up to her impressive full height. With her headdress of feathers and leaves, she towered over those around her. She spoke into the silence. “Talu, tell us what has occurred.” Her voice was soft, yet it carried across the oasis like a rumble of thunder.

“I sent my words to the Dreaming,” Talu said. Her voice cracked and splintered. “Bayla should have come!” Tears poured down the wrinkles in her ancient cheeks.

Murmurs spread around the circle. Talu could not heal a broken body, but she could ease its pain. She could not summon water to the wells, but she could sense how little remained. She couldn’t work miracles, but this . . . this was a small magic. She could not have failed.

Chieftess Ratha turned to Liyana. Her face was as expressionless as the sand itself. “You danced true. Yet the goddess did not fill you. Why did she not come to you?”

Unable to explain, Liyana shook her head.

Talu’s voice was broken. “Liyana, what did you do?”

Liyana flinched at her teacher’s words. She had done all she’d been asked! She had eaten only the food Talu had approved, she had strengthened her muscles every day, she had protected her unblemished skin from the scorching sun, she had preserved her purity, she had perfected the summoning dance . . . But it hadn’t been enough. Bayla hadn’t come. Her eyes hot with unshed tears, Liyana could only shake her head again.

“She was unworthy!” a woman cried.

The clan erupted into shouts. Each shout felt like a spear hurled at her body. “Unfit! Unworthy!” Pressing closer, the clan crammed together at the edge of the circle. One hand—Liyana didn’t see whose—threw a rock. It smacked the sand beside her.

Louder than them all, Liyana’s mother roared, “My daughter is more than worthy! Bayla has judged us! We, her people, are unworthy! Bayla punishes us!”

Another rock hit the sand.

Talu cried out. And then a rock smashed into Liyana’s back. Liyana dropped onto the sand and curled into a tight ball as rocks rained around her and Talu. One hit Liyana’s shoulder. Another, her thigh.

A high-pitched shriek split the angry shouts, and a small form darted over the line in the sand. Liyana felt a warm body hurl itself on top of her. Her little brother wrapped his arms around her, covering her body with his. “Stop!” he yelled. “Stop, stop, stop! Don’t hurt my sister!”

The rocks stopped.

The clan fell silent.

Liyana unwound herself, and she embraced Jidali. “I am sorry, Jidali,” she whispered into his small shoulders. “I failed you. I am so sorry.” For the first time in weeks, she cried. Her tears fell into his hair. Holding him, she