Loss and Crowned

Mirren Carnegie’s dormitory was awash with a tide of files, books, laundry, and personal effects. Wading through it, heaving great clawfuls of her own things to one side and then to the other in the manner of a frantic dog searching for a long-buried bone, thrashed Mirren, herself. 

She was plain and middle-aged, with a bright sparkle in her gray eyes and a permanent bloom of jolly pink on her cheeks. At this moment, however, her entire face was flushed with crimson, and her salt-and-pepper braid was frayed. Strands of it stuck to her sweaty forehead. 

“Of all the days,” she muttered, tossing another pile of books to the side. “Of all the days to lose it! Of course it would be today!”

The next handful she slung clattered against the wall and sent her framed diploma careening off its hook. She started, coming back to herself from the frenzy. She was looking for her mouth guard. The neurological stress that one underwent in psychointrusive expeditions was enough that the first round of Institute deployments had seen a few severed tongues. By now they were regulation expedition attire. Hers had been in her nightstand drawer in its little plastic case for the whole week leading up to today— and now it was gone. 

She took a deep breath and planted her hands on her hips, glaring at the dormitory as if she could embarrass it into divulging the case’s whereabouts, but she stood there for a full minute, unmoving. Still no case. Wheeling, she marched out into the dorm hallway, looked left, looked right, and locked eyes with her least favorite colleague.

“Rynne,” Mirren smiled, addressing the younger woman by her first name. “I was just—“ 

“Rhynelf.” The younger woman’s tone could have corroded a sunskipper’s hull. “My surname is Rhynelf, Carnegie. Is there something I can help you with?”

Mirren sagged at the shoulders and heaved a sigh rather than reply. Rhynelf continued caustically— 

“Shouldn’t you have reported for surface duty by now? I saw the atmospheric sensors—“ 

Mirren’s brow furrowed and Rhynelf stopped, staring. 

“I can’t find my mouth guard,” admitted Mirren. Rhynelf’s face transformed from sour to sympathetic in an instant. She took a few more steps forward. 

“Oh my god, Mirren, you can NOT wear one of those spares they have in the deployment unit. You won’t be able to chew right for a week!”

“I know,” Mirren groaned miserably, secretly grateful to be hearing Rhynelf’s tone shift. 

“We have to find it!” piped Rhynelf, pushing Mirren aside and striding into the dormitory behind her. 

The maelstrom of clutter didn’t daunt Rhynelf one bit. She marched straight to the nightstand, ripped open the drawer, stuck her hand in, and came out with a little plastic case. 

Mirren was dumbfounded. Rhynelf was more than a little superior about it, but within five minutes, Mirren was suited up and being strapped into the restraints of the Psychologue’s stasis chamber. The deployment engineers seemed excited. 

“We’re looking for an exciting readout today, Carnegie!” said one technician as he finished verifying her gene sample. “We haven’t gotten any good data on these storm gatherings in this region, yet. It’s only ever been the larger island systems.”

A wall of red lights and sensors began to slowly roll over to green. 

“Excited for your first day out of the station?” asked another technician as he buckled her ankle guards. 

She nodded grimly. She was trying to be serious but she was absolutely giddy. Overhead, the station’s orbital glass faced the immense blue planet above the little surveillance moon. On the southern hemisphere brewed a livid blue and gray eye of roiling stormclouds which seemed to glare straight down on Mirren. The Institute Outpost had been waiting for years for these orbital and atmospheric conditions, and she was to be the leading expeditioner— her: Mirren Carnegie, doctor of socio-cultural anthropology.

“All right, Carnegie, we’ve found a good genomic match, and she’s a woman about your age. Important to get that right on the first go around. Makes things smoother. We’re going to knock you out get you online with these surface signals. And don’t forget, doc— you’re just along for the ride.” 

Mirren gave her jaw an exploratory grind, feeling the rubber of the mouth guard between her teeth, and nodded. And everything went dark. 

When she realized where she was, she became aware of the heat of a fire on her back and the chill of cold wind on her chest. Every nerve in her body was singing with sensation. She felt strong, planted solidly on her two feet. The lodge murmured with many quiet voices as the woman from whose eyes Mirren looked out stepped forward.

Her thick arm strained against the gale force on the lodge door and she wrestled it open to greet an approaching face: a woman who lived on the farthest shore from the communal lodge. Mirren felt her throat call the woman’s name— 

“Eyma!”

The woman broke into a smile of recognition and called back—  

“Cora! Cora, my sister!” 

Overcoming weariness, Eyma quickened her pace, now running with her arms outstretched. Mirren reeled at the shock of the cold on Cora’s arms as she reached into the squall to welcome the pilgrim. Her skin was hot against Cora’s in their embrace; she had been trudging laden for hours. 

“Where is Lichen? Where are your children?” Cora asked, helping Eyma out of her heavy pack and wrapping her in a blanket. 

Eyma wrung out her thick braid and smiled grimly. 

“The shoals are thin this year, sister-friend. Lichen and the girls could not be spared from fishing while the season lasts. I will sing our songs to them when I return.” 

Satisfied, Cora leaned in for another embrace and kissed Eyma’s rainwashed cheek before ushering her further into the lodge. Many teeth bared in grins of recognition and out of the dim shadows many hands offered food and drink to the latecomer. Eyma was absorbed into the crowd of family and friends. Everyone seemed excited to be in the quiet dimness of the lodge together, and the roaring of the tempest outside smote against the low, round meeting-house. It held firm. Mirren sensed something extremely heavy in the pit of Cora’s stomach— a twisting of worry and fear that did not seem to belong.

Back in the deployment chamber, Mirren’s vital signs were screaming with the panic attack that her consciousness sensed only vaguely. While she felt anxious in her alien surroundings, she did not have a body that could send her signals of fear. Right now, she had a body that was in a place of peace and fellowship. Mirren melted into her host’s nervous system. 

The scents were intoxicating. There was a deep pine-pitch undertone to the whole bouquet, but the heat of the wood fire intensified the musk of bare chests, the perfume of sweetgrass roof thatching, the almost chocolate smell of the supple deerskin in which most were clad. She felt the bare floor between Cora’s toes as she picked her way forward, dancing from cluster to cluster of gathered tribesmen as all began to arrange themselves in seated rings around the fire. 

Mirren wasn’t sure who started up the singing. It seemed to her that someone had always been singing, or that the storm itself had been singing, but soon the whole room was droning in a low hum of six-noted chords that washed back and forth like the surf on the coast. The song was a song of the tribe’s island, from the tides that throw themselves onto the sand and stones, to the pines that reared up from the island’s proud, mountainous heart. Mirren felt the resonant melody in Cora’s deep chest, felt the rumble of notes much lower and stronger than her own lungs could sing.

Away to her left, several of the elders began to lower their volume as they sang. Those who heard followed, and the hush rippled out from the central fire like a ripple across a pool’s surface. Soon, the whole lodge was humming with one continuous, barely audible note. Then the chief stood. Only the storm sang now. Mirren felt herself shrink to a mote within Cora. She reached herself to the tips of Cora’s fingers and toes, feeling every hair on Cora’s body bristle with anticipation of something that no one else seemed to sense. Mirren diminished her sense of self and leaned fully into Cora’s body. She fixed her attention on the chief. 

The chief— a short, ancient man called Slice —was not easily distinguishable from the other aged members of the tribe. He wore no ceremonial dress nor riches, and his gnarled hands bore many scars, many broken knuckles crookedly healed, and callouses raised from long toil. He raised his hands in greeting, and the firelight cast their decades of degeneration in stark shadows. It appeared that two tree roots reached into the air rather than into the soil. A soft smile played across his jaw, but his eyes sparkled with a knowing sadness. 

“My dear family,” he rasped, hands still upraised, turning to look into every face before he continued. “Long ago, the gods made sacred the storm and the man at once.” 

The whole lodge softly murmured a response in unison.

“In it, we woke. It made us new, and we made it new.” 

“In the flash of lightning—” he prompted.

“--we first saw,” they responded. 

“In the blast of thunder—”

“—we first heard.”

“The gods wept—”

“—and their tears roused us.”

“The gods breathed—”

“—and the sails of our hearts filled for the first time.”

At this final response, a very small voice, young and out of step with the rest of the lodge by just a moment, piped the last syllable of her sentence alone in the silence that followed the room’s response. The little girl gave a gasp of embarrassment and, brimming with tears, reached out to Cora. Cora scooped her up easily with one arm and plopped the toddler onto her lap. Slice went on. 

“And so we gather to use our eyes, our ears, our minds, and our hearts.” 

At this, the liturgy concluded. He lowered his hands. He took a long, slow breath before continuing. 

“My family, this storm brings us together under hard tidings. Our brother, Bar, Son of Ark, has slain a fisherman of the Falls tribe, and they seek to exact the price in blood.” 

A wave of hushed voices radiated out from the fire, but died down quickly. Cora’s stomach churned ferociously, and her pulse quickened.

“The shoals have been thin this year,” continued the grinding voice. “Because of this, when Bar met a Falls fisherman in open water, he took that man’s life with our full bellies in mind. I, his elder, do not condone him nor condemn him, but the Falls people are bristling with battle. They will have their atonement, or we will have their wrath.”

Cora’s clasped hands were white at the knuckles by now, and her body was wracked with tremors and weakness. A feeling that she was falling through the floor sent her head swimming. 

Slice turned and looked straight at Cora. 

“But he will not go,” said the chief, a glint of mirth in his eyes. 

At this, two people shot up from the ground, just outside the ring of elders at the fire’s edge. One was a lean, athletic boy with a black look of pride in his eye and a gleam of sweat on his bare chest. The other, a square jawed woman with her hair shorn close— a long plait of her hair had been cut, tied off, and draped across her strong shoulders like a scarf. Neither of them spoke, but they both stood as if they faced vicious enemies. Cora’s heart was slamming in her ears. Slice smiled.

“Do not fear,” croaked Slice warmly. “This will be an ocassion for celebration and for mourning. Bar will not go, but I will not allow blood to darken our beaches.” He turned an eye on the standing woman. 

“I will go,” he announced cheerfully. 

Now the whole room shot to their feet at once, all still gravely silent. 

“Soon,” he rasped, still smiling, completely unperturbed, “I will no longer be of much use to you, my dear family. The time is right for my daughter to take my place. She has had her first child, and now knows what it means not only to love someone but also to care for them.” 

The square-jawed woman softened her stance and lowered her eyes in grief. Slice held his hands up to the lodge and slowly lowered them. All in the room returned to the floor except for the fierce boy and the chief’s daughter. Slice extended one hand out to the boy. 

Bar stepped into the firelight. At first he seemed resolute in his pride, but a sob shook him and he dropped to his knees before the bent figure of Slice. All was quiet save for the storm’s raging outside. With some discomfort, Slice lowered himself onto his aching knees, his head bent beside Bar’s, one hand firmly on the back of the boy’s neck. He extended his other hand to Cora. Cora rose, gently setting the little girl from her lap onto the floor, and came to kneel beside her chief and her son. Cora extended her hands to the chief’s daughter, and she came to do the same. They laid their hands on one another’s shoulders and pressed their cheeks against one another’s brows and wept.

The rest of the room took up their song again. 

It was some time before Slice raised his head, but as he did, the song in the lodge gently faded away. The haggard smile on his face told all that he would not be dissuaded. All saw that the path was already embarked. He began to raise himself to his feet, and his daughter sprang from the ground to pull him up. His smile spread further, and he embraced her before turning to the lodge again. 

“My family,” he called to them, the strength of his voice renewed, “greet your chief. My daughter Sluice will serve you and care for you.” 

Each called forth a greeting of their own— some voices blessed her, some hailed her, some welcomed her, and some loved her. The room surged with their greeting. Slice clapped Sluice on the back jovially and set her gleaming braid to ripple in the firelight. 

“Who will end our ceremony, chief?” he asked Sluice as she drew her forearm across her nose. She laughed at herself gently and reached down to Cora. 

Cora felt the broad hands of the young woman grip her own, and she was pulled to her feet. Sluice held onto Cora’s hands and looked at her warmly. 

“Will you have the honor, sister-friend?” she asked softly. 

Nodding, Cora placed both of her hands firmly on her son’s shoulders and gathered her wits. Sluice turned and raised her hands to the lodge in the same manner that Slice had always used. 

“My family,” she called, her voice clear and strong, “fix your eyes and your ears on this teller; fix your hearts and minds on this tale.” 

Cora found herself the only person standing. She was still wracked with nervousness, but it was now the nervousness of joy. The giddy shaking of those who receive a miracle. She composed herself and chose a story to tell— the very first story that she found on her mind. She told it in the ceremonial fashion of her tribe. 

“When I had lived in my father’s house for eleven summers, I began to learn the work of a fisherman. The salmon were spawning and I had spent all summer practicing my spear’s aim in the shallows of the stream until I could send it straight and true. A day was chosen that I should go through the wood with my brothers and sisters to the mouth of the great river to bring back as many fat fish as we could kill. The morning of this day was glorious with gold, and the mists on the mountain were driven before the sunrise. Our mother provisioned us with water and dried fruit and dried fish, and we shod our feet and clad our chests and sang a song of preparation. 

But when I went to retrieve my spear, it was gone from its stand by the hearth. I checked each room carefully, and began to fear that my precious tool was lost forever. Fear gripped my heart, for I had been anticipating this first hunt with great eagerness for many weeks. Above all, I did not want to miss this day. I began to search with greater speed and less care, until I became like a bushtail, scrabbling in the woods for a hazelnut he has buried. 

My sister Eyma found me before I had begun to pry my father’s house apart, splinter by splinter. She walked to the stand by the hearth and reached into the shadow there— the same shadow where I had looked for my spear at the outset. 

And she brought my spear from nowhere, out of nothing. She gave it to me and brought me with her to the hunt.” 

Cora took a breath, looking out over the sea of sparks that glittered in the eyes of her family and friends. 

“Our possessions know,” she continued, “that we are stubborn, hardworking creatures. The gods know that we forget the reasons for our work more easily than we forget the work itself. And so it pleases the gods to keep our things from us when we forget why we need them. It pleases the gods to make us ask for help in the search so that two hands may reach for one lost thing. 

And so, in losing, we regain our love.”