Stranger Skies
Flesh Prison
Silva woke to alien smells and sounds. Her hearing was duller than a wolf’s but sharper than a Terran’s. The sounds of a fire crackling, bacon sizzling, people outside chopping wood, talking, laughing — all the sounds of a morning on a farm — assaulted her.
There were too many hearts. The rhythms were off. She was used to one heart per body; now she had…two? Three? They thrummed in her ears; she could not escape the beat of them. Her chest felt as if it would explode.
She couldn’t divide the smells. There were so many. A cacophony of scents invaded her nose. She knew she smelled bacon, for the sounds had told her she would, but the rest was a mishmash: horse, cow, pig, snow, dirt, fire, must, sunlight. Her first coherent thought was gratefulness that her sense of smell was intact, no duller than a wolf’s, but then she lost coherence as the pain registered.
The weight of her own bones nearly crushed her. Heavy blankets rested on her and scratched her skin, which was far too sensitive, pushing her into a mattress that was lumpy and poked her in odd places. Her head pounded and every muscle ached, as if she’d been stretched out violently and beaten back into shape with a hammer. The thrumming of her three hearts beat out a constant tattoo against her senses, overwhelming her. She was drowning in this new reality.
She thought she whimpered. The darkness made this all too frightening. Should she open her eyes? What would assault her sight?
She forced her eyelids open. They were gummy and glued together; fuzzy colours danced in front of her. She blinked a few times until the fuzziness resolved itself into shapes. She gazed upon the hell she was in; searched for escape.
It was a room, illuminated by the single window and the orange glow of a roaring fire to her left. The fire was in a pit and above it there was a funnel-shaped hole in the ceiling, for the smoke to go out. Above the fire was a grill, on which rested a cast iron pan, the source of the bacon she had heard and smelled. A table sat a few feet away — worn wood, with six chairs of the same material sitting around it. The opposite side of the room contained a kitchen area, counters and cupboards and what looked like a lack-of-indoor-plumbing’s answer to a kitchen sink. There were two exits from the room, one beyond the table and chairs, which Silva guessed led outdoors, and one behind the fire, which looked as if it led to the rest of the den — house. The room was empty of life, save Silva.
As if summoned by that observation, a woman entered the room from the hallway behind the fire. The woman was tall, with red curly hair tied in a low ponytail that spilled down her back over her dress of simple homespun, dyed purple. Pointed ears sat on either side of a pointed face. Her features were almost…what was the Terran word? Elfin. The woman’s eyes were violet with gold flecks, striking against the deep, dark brown hue of her skin. When she saw Silva was awake, her generous mouth broke into a wide, happy smile and the skin at the corners of her eyes crinkled.
“You’re awake! Good. Scoas was worried that you may not wake up at all. The wise woman said you had a concussion. I’m Natai,” she added, obviously seeing Silva’s confusion. “Scoas is my husband. He and our children found you out in the snowy fields, a few nights ago. How did you get there?” Natai came closer to the bed now and looked at Silva earnestly.
Silva didn’t know what language Natai spoke but she understood everything perfectly. Apparently she hadn’t lost all her powers.
She tried to speak, to answer the earnest curiosity of the woman whose family had saved her life, but found she had too little breath. Nor did she know how to respond in the proper language. She ended up whimpering like a wolf cub.
“Oh, forgive me! You must be thirsty. I’ll get you some water.” Natai bustled out the second door in the room, letting in a blast of cold air as she went.
Silva tried to sit up but gravity pushed down on her. This planet was heavier than Tau Ceti and she was mortal. She was mortal. The truth of her predicament finally hit her and she started to cry.
Did the wolves of Minae not believe in her? Did they even have a deity? Perhaps she was intruding on some other god’s territory…but if she were, why wouldn’t that god have come to Council meetings? Or been mentioned by the rest of the Minae delegation?
Perhaps the concerns of wolves are not the concerns of the rest of the Minae. Another reason she was usually quite glad to not have a pantheon to call family? Non-human deities were better off alone.
Natai returned then, carrying a bucket. This she sat down by the fire before rummaging in the kitchen cupboards. Producing a mug, she dipped it in the bucket and brought it to Silva.
“Oh dear,” she said, seeing Silva’s tears. “What’s wrong?”
Silva shook her head, unable to speak. How could a mortal understand?
Natai knelt beside the bed and put her arm under Silva’s shoulders, lifting her up. The farm wife was surprisingly strong; or perhaps Silva was just unaccustomedly weak. The mug was pressed against the lips of the wolf goddess — ex-goddess — and she drank the cold water gratefully. It tasted of the deep, dark earth, pure as snow. While she quenched her thirst, Natai spoke in soft, soothing tones.
“I know, you must be terrified, but you have nothing to fear. We here in Min welcome strangers as future friends. Scoas and I will take care of you. You will be safe here, alright?” Natai looked at her, nothing but simple friendship and honesty in her eyes.
Silva nodded, feeling like crying again. Natai set the empty mug down on the floor and used her now-free hand to smooth Silva’s hair back before lowering her down to the bed again. It was such a gentle, mothering gesture, that Silva was flooded with sudden exhaustion. She’d never had someone treat her so tenderly, and she was not sure how to deal with it. Her mind decided the best thing for her to do would be to sleep. Silva tiredly agreed.
On the eighth day, she tried to walk.
She had crawled out of bed a few times, with the help of Natai, to use the chamber pot as needed, but it was embarrassing. She was Silva, Lady of the True Woods, Queen of the Deep Furs. Goddess of wolves and their cousins. She shouldn’t need help to urinate, like a days-old puppy.
Silva resolved to walk by the end of this day. She was used to the strange rhythm in her chest now, more or less, and the increased gravity no longer crushed the air from her lungs. She was still trapped by mortal flesh but she refused to be trapped in her bed.
She also refused to ask for help.
She waited until the family was outside the house. There was always work to be done on a farm, even in winter, and all four of them were out tending to animals and doing various other farm chores. For days, Silva had smelled sheep, chickens, cows, pigs, horses. Her dreams had been twitchy.
She smelled wolf, too, in the house. But there was something wrong with the scent — it was cold, stagnant, and soaked in anguish and fear.
She tried not to think about what this meant.
These were good people, she knew. She’d been given no cause to fear any of them. They were gentle, hard-working folk and they’d been nothing but kind to her. If there was a dead wolf in the house…she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to have reason to hate the people who had saved her life.
So with Scoas, Natai, Brinna and Alaev outside the house, she prepared to walk.
She balled her hands into fists and pressed them into the mattress, pushing up with all her strength — which was not much. Slowly she rose, working on swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Every muscle in her body screamed with agony.
Enendoa, the wise woman who had come by to check on her, had told Silva to take it easy. The ex-goddess had decided not to listen to the stout woman. Perhaps that had been a mistake.
She was sitting up now. Halfway there. Her entire spine ached, and the nerves in her lower back were on fire. She had next to no muscle tone in her abdomen, and her body cried out for support.
Inch by agonizing inch, Silva moved her butt forward until she rested on the edge of the bed. She was sweating with the effort now, a new sensation. Even if gods could sweat, wolves didn’t.
Her panting for breath was a well-known reflex and, oddly, it comforted her.
She looked at her feet; they were at odd angles to each other, like drunk ptarmigan. She supposed they were not in an ideal position to support her in a standing position but try as she might she could not get them to move. It was as if they were glued to the floor in that position.
If I fall, I fall.
With a burst of energy she forced herself up and into a standing position. The pain in her back doubled, tripled, for a few agonizing seconds, and then faded to less than its previous strength. Her feet moved now, almost of their own volition, and found their place on the floor, giving her support. A head rush made her dizzy. Nauseated, she swayed a moment, but did not fall.
She was standing.
Silva smiled, something as alien-seeming to her now as sweating was. She was standing, and this was cause for celebration.
As suddenly as happiness had come, melancholy now took her. This is what I have to look forward to now? A mortal life with mortal achievements? Being happy when I can stand?
In such a short time her world had become so small. She was Silva, lady of the deep furs. She’d held reign over the boreal forests of Terra and all the wolves in that world. Her laws had governed an entire species and their cousins. Huskies had been her more faithful followers, truth be told. Something about their proximity to humans made them the more religious of the lupo-canine species.
Now she lived in a box so small it would not have contained her previous glory. A goddess who ruled over the very fate of at least three entire species was reduced to smiling with joy when she could stand up from a tiny bed in a tiny house on a tiny alien planet.
She shook her head, either with despair or self-pity. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to face it.
A mirror stood in the corner of the room. She’d not noticed it before because it had been behind her, at the head of the bed, opposite the door into the house.
It was good quality, as far as she could judge these things. It looked nice and, as she stepped closer, she noticed it smelled nice too. The wood was dark, like mahogany, and the reflective surface was some sort of precious stone — not glass, like Terran or Tau Cetian mirrors.
The movement she’d seen had been herself and now she looked carefully at the figure in the mirror, amazed at her new appearance. Always before she’d appeared as wolf or Terran. When wolf, she’d been the biggest, whitest arctic wolf in existence. All the wolves of Terra and their descendants on Tau Ceti had known her visage; they’d all known that the wolf who rested in the center of the True Woods was their sovereign, their Alpha.
When Terran, she’d appeared in various guises but always as a woman, and she’d always looked like an indigenous Terran whose traditional land was within her purview, specifically, those whose cultures included the use of sled-dogs. Her favourite guise, however, had been Inuit and for every Council meeting she’d appeared as a short Inuit woman.
This was no longer how she looked. She’d shot up a foot or so in height, making her near six and a half feet tall. Her features now were very similar to those of Natai or Brinna, with a pointed, narrow nose. Before, it had been much flatter and wider. Her face was no longer round, like the full moon that she used to watch over all her children; it was long and thin. She tucked some hair behind her ear — those were pointed, too, like the ears of the family she lived with. Her skin was a deep, dark brown, almost a burnt sienna. There was a star-shape on her forehead, a slightly lighter colour than the rest of her skin. The foreheads of Natai and Brinna bore similar markings, she’d noticed, markings absent from the foreheads of Scoas and Alaev. Come to think of it, Mi had a star shape, too, as did any other goddesses of this country whom she had encountered. If this family and Mi were indicative of the larger population, her own features were now downright Minae.
Her hair and eyes, however, were wolves of a different fur. Her eyes were not violet like those of Natai or Brinna, nor orange, like those of Scoas and Alaev. They shone a vibrant blue like that found on many huskies.
Her hair was the strangest. It was shoulder length and bi-coloured. The top half was white as snow and the bottom half was a deep, conifer-green. It looked like snow on cedars. Or…
…the feathers of an Ice Crown Starling. Her other chosen form, the form she’d tried to take during her plummet to the ground below. It seemed her body had listened to her after all.
But not by enough. Though, had it done so, she would have been trapped here as a mortal bird. Mayhap this humanoid form was better. It would certainly live longer; Ice Crown Starlings were notoriously short-lived. It was part of their beauty.
She’d been changed out of her clothes, she noticed. She no longer wore her leather pants or fur-lined mukluks and parka. That, or she had been found naked. She hoped that hadn’t happened, that Natai had simply changed her clothes while she’d lain unconscious.
She wore a nightgown of soft cotton, the same colour her parka and fur colour had been — snow white. It ended just above her ankles and therefore must belong to Natai; the woman was the same height as she was. It was thick and warm enough to keep the chill at bay while she stood, away from her blankets, in a room with a banked fire.
She stood for a few minutes more, staring at herself. Overall, not bad. She certainly could have done much worse. Not that she was vain, or that she measured things like humanoid beauty. Nothing would ever be so beautiful to her as a sleek lupine form, full of grace, power and mastery. But as long as she had no control over what form she took, she was glad that whatever powers had given her this form had given her one that was pleasing to her eye. It seemed to work okay. Even through the pain and lack of muscle tone, she hadn’t noticed any ungainly awkwardness while walking. Perhaps in time she would regain some of her old grace.
Not today, however. Her legs shook in warning and she turned to stumble back to bed. Her muscles ached more than they had when she’d first awakened and she felt she might fall apart, right that moment. Reaching the side of the bed, Silva tumbled onto the mattress just as her legs gave out from under her.
Limply she adjusted herself, stretching out as best she could, and pulled the blankets back over her now chilled body. Tomorrow, she’d walk farther. Tomorrow, she’d try to make it around the house. Tomorrow, she’d be stronger.
Tomorrow…. Soon thought faded, and Silva slept once again.
It took another eight days for Silva to accept her new life.
The day she’d walked for the first time had been great for her state of mind. But the next day her muscles had protested too much; not being able to move had sent her back into melancholy and despair. Her previous strength was all gone; leached out of her like colour from the world after sunset.
A mortal life. Had Mi arranged for this? Had the other goddess destroyed all belief in Silva? Poisoned the culture of this world’s wolves?
Silva couldn’t fathom a world with wolves who didn’t believe in her. She was their beginning; she was the source of wolfkind. Wheresoever there were wolves, so would she be. So perhaps there was another reason she’d become mortal. Maybe the Minae gods had…done something.
Admitted: she had no idea how gods were made mortal. That issue had never concerned her. To be sure, other gods had speculated about such things — to get rid of rivals, like as not. She had just never heard of it actually being done.
Now she truly regretted her loner status in the Council.
She was a pack creature, true enough, but most other gods were gods for humans. Many watched over animals in addition to their human followers and chosen ones. Very few were gods for non-human animals alone. Those who were, did not often show up for Council meetings.
She had no pack among deities. Her pack consisted of mortal wolves, huskies, wolf-huskies, and wolf-hybrids — poor things. Wolves bred, by humans, with shepherds, pit bulls, any tough canine breed other than husky in a misguided attempt to make macho guard dogs. As if wolves were any more vicious than Terran humans! She tried to stop that sort of thing from happening but even after the move to Tau Ceti humans felt it necessary to try and bend wolfkind to their desires. She was only one goddess, neither omnipotent nor omnipresent.
Ex-goddess. She had to remind herself of that now. Whatever she had been was over. Now she lived a mortal life.
Tears stinging her eyes, she forced herself to go back to sleep. Perhaps she would just sleep herself to death.
The next day Natai tried to get her to eat. Neither the woman’s gentle insistence nor the mouth-watering smell of bacon penetrated the thick layer of depression that surrounded Silva.
Two days later it became apparent that Silva was determined to go into fatal withdrawal. Even Silva recognized this and she could not feel anything about it. Apathy had replaced depression; now she did not care. She would go the way of the first Tau Cetian colonists — she would curl up and die and that would be that. It had only taken twenty-one days for that group. Perhaps she could do it faster.
The family watched her with growing concern but Silva did not let their feelings affect her. Better for them if she were gone, perhaps. They didn’t need some strange alien who had fallen out of the sky in their life, eating all their good meat and wishing she were anywhere else but their home. She was ungrateful for her current life and well she knew it. The family had been nothing but kind to her. They deserved better than her wasting their time and food. Better for all of them if she just faded away. They were not her pack and they never would be.
On the evening of the tenth day since Silva had waked up the first time, Brinna sat beside her bed, working at some fibre craft with her deft fingers. It used bone needles and yarn made from sheep’s wool; knitting, Silva thought it was called. At least it had been on Terra and Tau Ceti. The young woman said nothing to the wolf goddess; she just sat and knit for an hour and a half, until the fire died down. Then she got up and went to bed.
The next night she spoke. It was not a conversation she expected Silva to respond to, that was obvious. She was speaking just so Silva would listen. The broken ex-deity figured she owed Brinna that much; so she paid attention.
“My grandma died two years back. We saw it coming; her wife had gone not long before that. Always said Grandma Tilia had mated for life.” Brinna paused for a moment, a sad smile on her face. For a bit the only sounds were the clicking of her bone needles together and the pop and crackle of the slowly dying fire. At length she spoke again.
“We call it the Running. It’s when the soul is so terrified of living alone that the body just curls up and dies. It just quits. There’s no real cause that doctors or wise women can find; it’s as if the person is just…running away. There’s no shame in it. Our Lady Mi is the Goddess of Runaways. Those who Run go to Her and they’re at peace for all eternity.
“But people still miss them. And,” here Brinna dropped her voice and leaned forward a bit, pausing in her knitting, “don’t tell anyone, but I’ve always thought there’s more to fear from the quiet peace of death than from the messy, chaotic, absolute agony of living. I’d rather feel fear, and pain, and despair, than absolutely nothing.”
She shrugged and sat up straight again. “That’s pretty close to blasphemy, I suppose. I’m glad we’re not in Temple.” Brinna smiled weakly and laughed a little bit. “I can’t help how I feel.” She looked at Silva directly when she said this and for a moment their gazes were locked together. Then she turned back to her knitting and the moment broke.
Brinna spoke no more that night. She sat knitting in companionable silence, with Silva watching her fast moving fingers, for another hour. When the fire’s light dimmed too much to see by, she placed her knitting back into its basket, got up, and put her chair away at the table.
“Good night, friend,” she said to Silva, with a smile as brilliant as her mother’s. Then she went to bed.
Silva was very glad that she was alone in the room, for she wanted no one to see the fresh wetness on her face.
The twelfth night of Silva’s wakefulness, Brinna sat by the ex-deity’s bed again, knitting into the night. Silva was alert this night, avidly watching Brinna’s hands move the needles and yarn, seeming to make something out of nothing. Eventually she worked up the courage to ask the question that was on the tip of her tongue.
She gestured towards the piece Brinna made. “What…what is that?”
It was the first sentence she’d spoken out loud since landing on this planet. Brinna looked at her with such wide eyes, looking so like a startled deer that for a moment Silva worried she hadn’t picked up their language and had just spoken in Wolf. Fierce growls and snarls would probably not put these people at ease, nor be understood.
But then Brinna’s face cleared and she smiled radiantly.
“You can speak our tongue. I’d wondered.” She held up the piece of knitting. “I’m making a sweater. For you,” she added, when it seemed Silva did not grasp the significance.
She was touched. An instant lump came to her throat. “Why?” was all she could think to say.
Brinna shrugged. “Because you shivered and kicked off the furs your second night with us. You need something to keep you warm; Minae winters are harsh. I wanted you to have something made with love. I don’t think anyone’s ever given you that before.”
It was so direct, so plain, and so true it stabbed Silva in all three of her hearts. She looked away briefly, discreetly drying her eyes with the edge of her hand. When she looked back she saw Brinna was focusing very carefully on the sweater.
“Thank you,” she whispered. Brinna smiled again and they spent most of the next hour sitting in silence, occasionally asking each other the odd, small question. That night, when Brinna said good night before bed, Silva returned the sentiment.
The next day was the thirteenth day she’d been awake and the sixteenth day she’d been in Min. Today, Silva cast aside self-pity and forced herself to be grateful. She would no longer curl up and hope to die; she would face her new mortal life unflinchingly. If she could not accept her new life and deal with what the universe had dealt her, then what kind of soul did she have? Certainly not the spirit of a wolf. That thought brought her too much shame.
That morning, when Natai came out to start the fire up from the ever glowing coals, Silva was standing by her bed, awake.
“Good morning, Natai. I’d like to join you for breaking fast.”
Natai said nothing at first — just clasped Silva in a tight, motherly embrace. Hesitantly, Silva responded. Then something took her walls down. She squeezed Natai hard, giving in to the hug. Six heartbeats reverberated through the two women and suddenly Silva felt as if she’d found a real family.
Natai got her changed out of the nightgown she’d worn for almost twenty days and into a warm, soft dress of homespun flax that the tough-as-nails farm wife had sewn herself.
“We can take you into market tomorrow to get you some new clothes. The ones we found you in were burned beyond use, I’m afraid.” Natai’s face and voice were oddly apologetic; Silva moved to put the woman at ease.
“It’s hardly your fault, Natai. You’ve been more than generous with me. I thank you for this lovely piece of clothing and for everything else you’ve done. I only wish I could repay you…somehow.” She did, truly. Her hearts swelled with her earnest wish.
Natai patted Silva’s hand. “We’re just grateful you’re alive. Come. I must get breakfast ready.”
Scoas, Alaev, and Brinna all smiled to see Silva up, in clothes and even talking. This seemed a happy miracle to them. It had seemed that the stranger they’d taken in was mute at first, whether from shock or some other reason, they hadn’t been able to fathom. They expressed their joy at her improved health and as they sat down to the morning meal Silva reflected how very wrong she’d been about the family’s feelings towards her. They truly cared for her, even though she was a stranger in their midst. She’d never seen that coming.
Breakfast consisted of eggs, steak, tea, and thick slices of home-baked bread with rich butter and fruit preserves spread on it; after the family said a short prayer of thankfulness, as Silva had witnessed them do at every meal, the ex-deity tucked into her food with great relish. It was simple fare but made with love and devotion to quality. To Silva, it tasted far better than any Council meal she’d ever had.
“So,” said Scoas congenially about halfway through their meal. “We’ve been wondering what your name is.”
Silva froze halfway through setting down her mug of tea. Her name.
She could not be Silva here. That much was clear; she was no longer a goddess and Silva was a goddess’ name. It had never been spoken in the air of this planet — she could sense that as deeply as she could sense her new, strange bones and her new, fast-beating hearts. To say it was her name here would be wrong. It would go against the fabric of existence and she would not unravel such power here. Names were so much more than petty words thrown at objects; they had truth and mystery and power behind them.
She was a new being, a mortal, and she would need to find her True Name once again. A new name for a new existence.
She forced herself to set down the cup, swallowed the mouthful of tea she’d held behind her lips, and looked up and smiled at the family.
“I can’t remember.” It was more or less the truth.
Brinna’s brother Alaev grinned at Silva, the friendly tooth-baring of a puppy just on the cusp of adolescence. “That’s fine. We Minae have many great names, just lying around, waiting for people to claim them. You can pick a new one.”
“I’m sure I’ll do just that.” Once my True Name presents itself to me, that is.
The woman formerly known as Silva went back to her food. It was the first day of her mortal life on a new planet and she would need all the strength the land could give her.