House of Eclipses by Casey L. Bond
2
The sweltering heat that had pressed down upon us slowly lifted. Once nothing remained on the stone where Joba had lain and a quiet prayer to Sol was spoken, all but one of the priests silently disappeared into the temple as Sol lifted herself higher into the sky, reclaiming her place in the heavens.
Perhaps the goddess was offering a reprieve, leaving him as the priest chosen to escort me into the sand.
Kiran was my friend.
If anyone knew, even his station and the privileges and rights that came with it couldn’t save him from Father’s wrath, but Kiran refused to abandon me as he should. And I was too weak to refuse his kindness and support.
His long hair was pulled back and neatly tied at his nape. He stood, carrying the heavy urn, patiently waiting for me as any of the priests would have done. I moved toward him and his eyes tracked mine, but neither of us dared speak. Not here.
The muscle in his jaw clenched as he took in my lip and the now-dried blood on my chin. Other than that tiny tell, he didn’t give us away. He pretended to be the benevolent, gentle priest everyone expected.
In truth, Kiran was the only priest I worried might one day rebuke the Aten. The day he did would be his last. I’d told him that many times. I would not be able to survive this life without him. I told him that, too, refusing to hold anything back in the few stolen moments we were able to speak. Moments that were becoming rarer the older my sisters and I became. My obligations as Atena and his as priest kept multiplying, greedily consuming our free hours as we rose into adulthood.
I took the heavy, hot urn from his hands, noting how his palms had blistered from touching it. The heat did not harm the priests for long. He would heal before we reached the bottom step. But Sol did not spare them from the temporary pain and effects of her heat. The priests were chosen by Sol, but I wasn’t sure how she indicated them to the others in their order. There were many secrets Kiran could not reveal to me. His oath was to Sol alone.
Down the center of each of the temple’s four sides ran a broad staircase. Kiran followed me down the temple’s steps opposite the ones my family had taken, ones that drifted away from my home. The staircase we took did not lead to a stone pathway, or into the city. When our feet left the carved stone, they found nothing but burnt orange sand, stretching far into the desert as far as the eye could see. Swells of dunes rose here like charred waves of the seas that used to grace these nearby lands. Seas that only churned in tomes now.
Had Sol hated the oceans so much that she burned them into the red sands upon which we built our home?
I paused as Kiran stopped on the bottom step and deftly wrapped his feet in pale strips of cloth. If he waded into the dunes barefoot, his feet would blister so badly I’d have to carry him back. While I wasn’t a waif of a girl, I wasn’t strong enough to lift Kiran for any time or distance that would truly help him.
He was a few inches taller than I, his skin the familiar deep olive tone all Helioans shared. His hair was the common shade of dark brown that bordered on black, and his face was cleanly-shaven. His lips pressed into a thin line as he concentrated on his task.
Kiran wore a golden kilt in honor of Sol. All the priests did. And they did not adorn themselves as Father did, and as he insisted we do. The only gold he wore was a cuff on his bicep, forged by Sol herself and given to him when he accepted her call and took his vows. Father had stolen the idea for his brides. I wondered if he thought himself as important as the goddess herself.
I tried to ignore the way his body had changed in the past year or so. The way he’d gone from boy to man. Priests were not to be ogled. But even though I knew that, and even though it was a slippery slope, for just a moment, my thoughts strayed down the path of what might have been if Sol had passed him over and chosen my sister as her Aten…
I quickly reined them in. It wouldn’t have mattered, I told myself. Kiran was strong. If Sol hadn’t chosen him, he would’ve been sent into the guard and I would never see or hear from him again.
Besides, if Father would kill him or use him against me for being a friend, what would he do if Kiran and I became more? It wasn’t worth it. I needed to thank Sol for keeping him in my life in this way and not covet more.
Kiran straightened, satisfied with the way his feet were thickly bound. We didn’t speak as I led him into the sand, our feet barely making prints as the grains spread thinly over the bedrock lain for Sol’s temple foundation.
Soon, though… it thickened. Our feet sank deep into the orange-red grains and we struggled into the dunes, climbing up their unsteady sides to the tops where it was easier to walk.
Their crests were hardened; our feet punched holes in the crusty layer scorched on top of the towering waves of sand.
The winds that tore at my family’s clothes and the priest’s kilts as they left the temple, now clawed at us.
When we were far from the temple and wholly swallowed by the desert, Kiran finally spoke. “Are you okay?”
My lip was sore. “Of course I am.” I adjusted the urn to hold it with one hand, balancing its weight on my hip as I walked, then pressed a few fingers to my mouth to assess the damage.
“You shouldn’t have spoken to him so boldly,” he said softly.
I speared him with a glare. He knew better than to blame me for Father’s actions. I’d told him enough times what I thought about Citali doing that.
Kiran raised his palms to me. “I’m not defending him, Noor. I’m hoping to protect you, or more importantly, encourage you to protect yourself. I wish there was something I could do to free you of him for good,” he lamented.
We both knew there was nothing to be done. The only way I would be free of Father was when he or I departed this world for the next.
“He threatened to kill you today, in front of all of us. He’s never done that before. I fear you’ve pushed him too far this time.” Kiran held his hands out as if he wanted to relieve me of the weight of the urn, willing to scorch his palms to help, but I wouldn’t have it. He rolled his eyes at my stubbornness. “Noor,” he said, staring at the urn. His eyes flicked to mine. “What if he had tried to?”
“If I thought my life was in danger, I would have no choice but to fight back.” Father knew I would, too. Perhaps he hoped to provoke me to anger so he could rid himself of me.
“Then I would have no other choice than to fight alongside you,” he said resolutely, lifting his eyes to Sol as if apologizing for the truth that left his lips. Sol already knew. She knew our hearts, minds, and souls. The good and the bad.
“I don’t want you to ever do that,” I told him, meaning every word. “Remember your oath, Kiran. You are a priest and your duty is to Sol alone, not to the Aten, and certainly not to any of his Atenas. You owe me nothing.”
“That’s not true,” he weakly protested before closing his eyes and taking a deep, cleansing breath.
When his eyes refocused on me, the sandstorm in them had settled and relief washed over me. Their hue was so familiar. Sol had scooped up the very orange-red sand beneath our feet and sifted it into Kiran’s eyes, along with the warmth the sand held within.
Those red-orange beacons lit with the orneriness I remembered, but rarely saw now. “As you are still among the living, I should tell you that the look on his face when you remarked on the burst vessels in Joba’s eyes was worth all the gold in Helios.”
I tried to smile, but the weight behind that comment settled over me.
The whites of my mother’s eyes had burst with red, too. A sight that still haunted me to this day. Some days, they were all I could see when I closed my eyes to sleep.
For years, I wondered why they looked like that. I stopped wondering when I learned what had caused the effect. Once, when I became ill, I asked my healer what would incite such trauma and he, albeit uncomfortably, told me that when a person’s breath was cut off and pressure built in the head and face, vessels often burst.
I asked him what else might cause it, but he had no other answer. That was the only one.
Today, I snapped. I couldn’t take another departure without uttering the words to insinuate publicly what everyone privately knew, to make sure Sol heard me atop her temple, among her priests, beside her Aten. Every word I’d spoken was retribution for every second he held her throat and refused to let go – until the light bled from her golden eyes. Eyes that matched mine.
I wanted the priests to know that their suspicions were right; the sort of man they bowed to, the man standing before them, was unworthy of Sol’s blessing. And I wanted Father to know that I would one day carve out the cinder she’d left behind in him and finish what she started before he ended her life – or die trying.
The latter might be true sooner rather than later. Father would not let this transgression slip from his mighty, crushing hands.
A comfortable warmth settled into my chest as the memory of his surprised, horrified expression resurfaced. Kiran was right. It was a sight worth all the gold in Helios.
I looked to the great burning disc overhead and wondered why she hadn’t burned him away with Joba, why she didn’t punish him for killing the other women.
Why?
Perhaps Sol kept the priests from stripping him of the title and duties of Aten. Perhaps the goddess admired the dark opposite of her flame, the alluring shadow that even she could not penetrate that lay in the bony pit where Father’s cinder heart lay.
Surely Father did not hold power over the goddess who chose him.
Without another word, I led Kiran further into the dunes to the place where I had carried all the others. As we drew near, the wind died away. Even Kiran’s breathing quieted. He paused and waited for me to complete my task.
Sol’s burning corona could almost be heard flaring and calming, only to roar to life again. This was a sacred place. Uniquely undisturbed. The sand was exactly as I’d left it a week ago. Even my footprints remained. I couldn’t help but wonder why Sol preserved it for me, when she would not guard me from her Aten. Though I had to thank her for the small mercy of leaving them as I’d arranged them so I could tell my mother apart from the others, so I could sit with her.
No part of Mother was undesirable to me. I had loved her wholly while she was in my life and loved her now just as completely. I missed her with an ache in my heart that even Sol could not assuage or burn away.
Across the highest dune in the sea of sand, my mother’s remains led to a line of other women’s. Each small pile of ash and bone resembled the vertebrae of a great beast I hoped might one day be resurrected to consume the one who’d cruelly slain it.
I knelt in the grains a respectable distance from Father’s seventh wife’s remains and removed the lid of Joba’s urn, then shook the urn to empty her as Kiran whispered to Sol to commit Joba back to the sand from which she was made.
Kiran was quiet as I walked to my mother and sat beside her in the indented sand that always cradled me. I wondered if she could hear me. If she’d seen what happened and had already moved across the sky to find Joba’s light and comfort her, welcoming her into the hereafter.
Kiran fought it, but the burning sand began to hurt his feet. He lifted one foot, then the other, switching back and forth. Before taking up the empty urn, I promised my mother I would be back as soon as I could.
“Let’s go before the cloth burns away,” I told him.