Between the Mountain and the Sea

“Ready?” Iyo asked his twin sister Issa. He tucked a stray lock of her tawny hair under the scarf to hide it. Today was one of the three days a year Issa had to face the invaders, and they were known for taking what they wanted.

“R—” Issa cleared her throat. “Ready.” With her animal-gold eyes lowered and her hair hidden, all traces of the invader who had raped their grandmama during the Conquest of Olendara disappeared and she looked fully Olendaran, brown skin over sharp bones.

“I’ll be there,” Deeka, their seven-year-old neighbor said, curling her hand into Issa’s.

“And me,” Deego, her twin said.

“We’ll take care of each other,” Issa said and somehow managed to raise her chin while still looking down.

They crossed the Westing Bridge over the canal and joined the streams of Olendarans entering the market square to declare their taxes for the next season. Not even Deeka and Deego, starting their apprenticeship rotation as oyster divers today, were exempt, though they would barely earn enough to buy one family portion of rice this season. And after taxes, not even that. Iyo pushed away thoughts of their own earnings—reduced now that Mama and Uncle were so sick—and started to pay attention to his surroundings.

The old temple, as scarred and maimed as any living veteran of the invasion, still dominated the square in spite of the gouges in the blue stone façade where the invaders had hacked away the images of the Whale and Dolphin. Most of the arcades were bricked up with the warm yellow stone that looked so right in the rest of the city and like a forty-year-old wound here. There were only three entrances now, open and ready to swallow Olendarans. The closest was heavily guarded. It led to the caves below the old temple, once the holiest place in Olendara, where the ocean met the land and priests had asked for miracles from the Whale and the Dolphin. Or so the priests said. They were dungeons now and no miracles occurred there.

Wooden stalls closed up around them, narrowing the view to vendors and their wares, which was mostly fruit in this section. Papaya, salak, mango—the smell of durian rolled over them and Deego sneezed. We should talk, to blend in more, but I can’t think of anything to say. Anything I can say here. A gold-skinned invader lounged against a stall piled with imported star melons. The tricolor braid and whistle pinned to his black and red vest swung as he straightened, frowning at Iyo. No, at Deeka, who was openly staring.

“Deeka, stop looking at him,” Iyo hissed.

Issa pulled Deeka closer, and Iyo cut behind a row of bundled sugarcane that reached higher than their heads. On the other side, Issa led them the long way around, out of sight of the invader and his three-squad, while Iyo kept a watch behind. After a few turns, Iyo signaled that the invader hadn’t followed and Issa stopped at Mama and Uncle’s empty stall. One withered flower was caught between the counter and the upright, a reminder of normalcy. The cabinet underneath, where Uncle locked his spinning wheel, looked untampered with, due as much to the neighbors’ care as the taxes to hold the spot. Mama should have been there, Uncle spinning coir at her side, watching the invaders who bought her flowers.

“What are we doing here?” Deego asked. “Are your mama and uncle better?”

Iyo winced.

“Of course they’re not,” Deeka said. She stuck her wet finger in his ear and made him shriek, a sound he cut off quickly. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed.

Everything they did was circumscribed by the invaders. Resentment flared, but Iyo pushed it down. If he thought about how much he hated them, he wouldn’t be able to do the things he had to do.

“Don’t fight here.” Issa pulled the kids apart. “We’re just stopping for a moment.” She touched the dead flower but left it in place. “Iyo?”

“My line is even longer than I expected. I should go with you.”

She made a rude noise. “And spend all day here? No. I’ll find someone to walk over with,” Issa said. In spite of the invaders’ own laws against stealing women, it didn’t stop them from harassing women, and Issa’s unique coloring seemed to rouse an avaricious, animal-like response.

Iyo left Iss, Deego and Deeka in a line with only a few mothers and uncles and their apprentice-age children. His line, in contrast, snaked halfway down one side of the square and hooked to the right in front of the old temple before curling around the bell tower and ending at the table set up over the First Holy Well, which was capped, blocked and the centerpiece in the rite of seasonal humiliation.

The younger twins in front of him were arguing about the children’s races tomorrow during the festivities. Later today the guilds would issue invitations to their apprentices to join as adults. Tomorrow, all seventeen year olds would be initiated into adulthood. His invitations and his initiation. For a moment, the old, familiar worry about what happened during initiation, while the rest of Olendara partied, pushed aside the newer, sharper worry about Mama and Uncle.

Tomorrow we’ll be adults. It felt no more real than when he had thought ‘next year we’ll be adults’ or ‘in four years we’ll be adults.’ For the first time, he didn’t know if he wanted to be an adult, not if it was anything like this last moon and a half.

The line crept forward. Worry for Mama and Uncle swept over the other worry, rearranging it like a wave over shale. A three-squad ambled by, two men white as raw fish, the third dark, their kilts the color of fresh-spilled blood. Their posture, swords and crossbows said they owned the plaza. Deego and Deeka’s blind cousin Loira, who fed the Olendaran prisoners in the old temple, didn’t get out of their way fast enough and they tripped her. One of Loira’s other cousins caught her and earned a casual slap for spoiling the invaders’ fun.

Iyo’s hands curled into fists. The invaders moved on to the old man scrubbing sea parrot guano off one of their precious beast statues. A group of Belennite refugees walked by and blocked Iyo’s view.

Another normal day.

Across the square, voices rumbled in upset. The twins in front of him stopped arguing, their shoulders tense. Iyo’s neck prickled. The line was too bunched up for him to see anything. “What’s happening?” he asked.

The girl behind him whispered, “Something at the new registration table.”

Whale and Dolphin drown it, not today. Not Issa.

Deego darted out of the crowd. “Iyo! It’s Issa. An invader—you have to help.”

I shouldn’t have left her alone. He pushed out of the line and grabbed a hammer from a cobbler’s stall.

“No, boy, don’t do that,” the cobbler implored.

“Stay here,” Iyo said to Deego.

Iyo ran. He dodged another snarling statue and the Olendarans who had stopped to stare. As he got closer, he could see Issa with a pale invader’s fist wrapped around her hair, forcing her face up. A gold woman and a dark man watched. Issa’s scarf was gone and her tawny eyes stared back at him unblinking. Did the invader understand her expression? Was he enjoying her fear?

~No,~ Iss said loudly in their language. ~I don’t want to be your concubine.~ Her voice cracked on the last word.

~You already belong to us. Anyone can see it.~

~Sir. Sir, I mean, Captain,~ a merchant said, ~you can ask, but you have to let her go now that she’s said no. It’s your law.~

~The law wasn’t meant for ones like her,~ the invader said.

The gold one smacked the merchant. The pale invader bent Iss’s head back farther.

~I am Olendaran. The law does apply to me,~ Issa said, her voice flat with fear.

Rage narrowed Iyo’s vision. The invader wasn’t going to let go, and the others weren’t going to stop him. Iyo raised the hammer. Two small hands circled it and he jerked free. Deego threw himself at him, wrapping his arms around his waist, mashing the hammer into his side.

“Iyo, Iyo, Iyo,” he yelled, drawing attention to them in the too-quiet market.

“Don’t be stupid,” a stranger said. “You know the penalty for using a weapon against them.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Deego said. “Be smart. Please, Iyo. No weapons. No fighting. Your grandmama needs you to stay alive. Look at Deeka.”

Deeka was perched precariously on top of a stack of large amphora that were probably full of oil—no, indigo dye by the stamp on their sides. Iyo sucked on the scar on his lip. He wanted to smash through the invaders and kill them all, but the kids were right. He wasn’t thinking. The punishment for attacking an invader was death. With a weapon, torture before death.

Deeka mimed pushing the top amphora off. Iyo jerked his chin in agreement and dropped the hammer. She rocked back and forth on the pile. At first nothing seemed to move, but a great heave that tumbled her from her perch set them toppling. They bounced and rolled unevenly and hit the beast statue with the same accuracy she used with her slingshot on rodents. The amphora shattered. Blue dye drenched the statue from muzzle to rump. It looked offended.

Bystanders jumped back and murmured in dismay. Everyone except the invaders crowding Iss stared. Whale drown them. Iyo ducked behind two men and yelled in his best invader accent, ~The statue—they’re desecrating it.~

The pale invader looked away from Iss. She stomped on his toes and he reared back. She slid out of his grasp and along the edge of the table. Iyo bowled into the group, elbowing their ribs with more force than he would in a crowd of Olendarans. Even the little pain he caused was satisfying, and it opened enough space for Issa to run.

The pale invader grabbed at Iyo’s elbow. He jerked free and kept running. A glance over his shoulder showed the invader running a few steps after them before his fellows called him back to deal with the more serious problem of the defaced statue. They had been bending their own laws and they knew it. Issa’s appearance always had that effect on them.

His hands trembled with anger as he tapped Issa on the shoulder. They slowed to a walk, just two more Olendarans leaving the market. Issa pulled her second scarf from her belt and covered her hair. Her breath was uneven. Iyo didn’t look at her; his anger might catch the wind again and fly. There were too many invaders tempting it.

When they reached the wide, stone bridge over Slow Turn Canal, Iyo pushed aside the other pedestrians to reach the railing and looked back. A buffer of empty space surrounded the blue statue and the dark-skinned invader next to it. But they didn’t look like they were organizing a search to find Deeka. Iyo’s hands trembled harder at the realization of just how much he’d allowed Deeka to risk. I wasn’t thinking.

He leaned on the railing, and the chipped stone bit into his hands. “Do you see them?”

“They’re fast… look.”

Deeka waved from the steps of the Westing Bridge, and Deego was jumping along the row of boats tied up along the canal below her.

“I shouldn’t have let them do that.”

“You couldn’t have stopped them and also helped me. They know their age protects them.”

“Not as much as they think.”

“Or as much as you thought either,” Issa said. “Look, the invaders aren’t whistling for reinforcements, just impressing everyone in sight into a clean-up gang.”

“Drown it. I hope that’s all it is.” Nearby merchants produced baskets of water and the impressed Olendarans knelt to scrub the statue. “Did you get them registered?”

“No,” Issa said. “Dora Dano will have to take them.”

“I didn’t pay either, drown them. You’ll have to come back with me later.”

“I know.”

Deeka and Deego met at the entrance to Flower Street, hooked their arms over each other’s shoulders and strutted out of sight, as proud as any rooster. Relief stole the last of Iyo’s energy and he slumped against the railing.

“That’s that.” She slid a glance at him, and he saw the long scratch on the side of her face.

“Iss, I’m sor—”

“Nothing wrong with me.” Which meant she didn’t want to talk about it. She never did.

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