Beneath Ceaseless Skies #162 by Marissa Lingen & K.C. Norton

Author:Marissa Lingen & K.C. Norton [Lingen, Marissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: _Beneath Ceaseless Skies_ Online Magazine
Published: 2014-12-11T08:00:00+00:00

Copyright © 2014 Marissa Lingen

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

Marissa Lingen lives in the Minneapolis area with two large men and one small dog. Her work has appeared in Tor.com, Lightspeed, Apex, and multiple times previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others.

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GOATSKIN

by K.C. Norton

I had heard, of course, that the Lady Uduru was the most beautiful woman in the world. I was not impressed. Beauty doesn’t matter much to a goatskin girl—beauty brings nothing but trouble, usually from the men who are always talking about it.

But kneeling before the Lady Uduru’s chair, I could see the truth for myself. She was clothed in silk and cotton whiter than new goat’s milk. The cloth had been beaten to paper-thinness so that the outline of her body sloped beneath it like a shady oasis in dry-season sun. Her smooth skin was the color of a starless night, her eyes agate-dark. Her hair was knotted so that the ends rose in tufts above a nest of braids, the roots painted red with clay slip.

She is too beautiful to be human, I thought. She does not look real. Don’t think that I meant this as a compliment, or as an insult. The surface of things isn’t what matters, as every goatskin girl knows.

When the Lady Uduru spoke, even her voice was otherworldly. It seemed to rise out of the Earth beneath her, like a tree taking root. “Do you have a name?” The words reverberated in my chest the way drum-beats do.

“I am called Shanzi,” I told her. My own voice sounded hollow and nasal in the wake of the Lady Uduru’s.

“What did you cost?”

I peered up into her face for clues; it was blank as a mask. “Three buffalo,” I answered, “and some lentils, and some yams.”

“How many yams?” The Lady Uduru’s neck was so long and straight. Egrets had necks like that—and Egrets did not smile, either.

“I did not count.”

“Then how do you know what you are worth?”

I tilted my head, else I should have shaken it. “I do not know, Mistress. But I know I am worth the same as I was before the yams and the lentils and the cattle changed hands.”

Ah, I thought, there is something human in there, because a emotion tugged at the Lady’s broad, perfect mouth before she spoke again. “You will stay with me, Shanzi,” she told me. “And what I tell you to do, you will do.”

Of course I would—but what, I wondered, did the most beautiful woman in the world want with a two-skinned girl?

* * *

Before you ask, no, it did not trouble me to have been either bought or sold. My Mother and Father, and little Ange and Nasif, had more to eat, and I myself had a softer bed and better meals than in my old life. What other arrangement would have gotten us all of that? Marriage, perhaps, but most men do not want a wife who is only human when she chooses to be.

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