The Shipwright and Other Stories by Matthew Buscemi

Author:Matthew Buscemi [Buscemi, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Matthew Buscemi Publishing
Published: 2019-08-12T21:00:00+00:00

Rite of Courage

Kele’s mother took her to temple for the first time when she was eight years old. She had been to the community shrine with her mother many times prior, but the sight of the temple left her awestruck. Columns of marble and metallic tripods lined the pathways. The flowerbeds and shrubs had been ever so carefully pruned. Incense wafted, particulate strands gyrating and distending in the gentle breeze. Light shone down, spattering the ground through the leaves of enormous trees. The complex itself was expansive. Three marble patios surrounded an enclosed central chamber, all atop a hillside grove that must have been at least five hundred mettrs square.

The space itself seemed to be inhaling and exhaling with the ebb and flow of the wind. Kele’s heart slowed and she let herself gaze up into the trees. She let the sounds of nature—the chirps of birds and the rustling of squirrels amongst the shrubs—pass over her, through her.

All at once, her foot hit something and she stumbled, tripping, barely righting herself before falling into a shrubbery. Coming out of her daze, she realized that she’d inadvertently wandered up against the edge of the pathway, and her foot had hit the row of bricks lining it.

“Kele,” her mother called. “This way.”

Kele hurried toward her mother, and they proceeded toward the central chamber.

More people appeared as they drew closer, not just other visitors like herself, her mother, and her fourteen-year-old cousin Hállok, but temple attendants, too. Those wore long, white robes that stopped only just above the ankles, and the tops were adorned with long hoods. And their forms… she couldn’t see any of their faces, but the chests and hips… Kele was only eight, but she could tell that the attendants were unmistakably women. Thoughts of the trees and sculpted gardens left her. She had never before seen women doing anything that seemed important. Men ran the stalls in the market. Men built the buildings. Men smithed the bronze and iron. Men defended the walls of Fid. Women, Kele understood, were to stay at home and manage household affairs.

She trained her gaze on a group of priestesses, six in total, who had congregated around a particularly large nearby tripod. One priestess pulled down her hood. Her head had been shaved, but her features were unmistakably feminine. She reached into her pocket and retrieved a bag. She then reached inside the bag and pulled out a handful of powder, which she promptly threw into the tripod. It erupted into blue flames momentarily, followed by a plume of dark purple smoke. The priestess and the other five attendants began chanting words Kele didn’t understand. The words drifted away as she followed Hállok and her mother past them.

At the center of the structure stood an enormous statue of the hermaphrodite god Isórrop, whose worldly manifestation was the white moon visible in the sky half a month at a time. Now that Kele was old enough, her mother had told her that morning, it

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