The Ballad of Little Bird

PREFACE: This story was originally part of the Uruk Press collection "Sex and Sorcery 3." I think that collection is far enough in the rearview now that I can share it freely on Literotica. If I'm wrong about that, Pippa Martinez will inform me and I'll take it down. In the meantime, though, I feel like it's one of my proudest achievements in terms of delivering a fully realized fantasy world, fun sexual content and an emotionally powerful story all in one. I look forward to hearing whether the Literotica readership agrees. -- CJ

"The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom."

- Maya Angelou

Under the Stars.

Every creed has its own way of dealing with those born Fae. In the realms of the Faithful they are called the Four Peoples of the Iteni, a word that clarifies intent for it means "outcast," and outside the Emperor's throne city of Meidan, the place where they are cast is named Serenity. It sits next to the sea, on the east margin of the great estuary of the San-Yin, Meidan's mother river.

In the north, beyond her teeming brick tenements, more than half of Serenity is brackish swamp that looks at first like wilderness—though at night you might spy ghostly lamps of the small and clever Nelemeni fishermen out in their coracles, hunting for crays and broadfish in the little creeks and runnels, their eyes shining.

Look closer and vast shapes are visible here and there in the verdant growth, as if chance and nature had shaped strange faerie castles in the mists and mud. Cobbled or grown together from the materials of the swamp itself, these are the shelters of the resident People, the giant and reclusive Winegit who can grow nearly fourteen spans tall. The "wild" swamp has in truth been shaped by generations of their hands. Thick tangles of banyan limbs form the walls and floors of hutches or the bridges between. Here and there, great artificial mounds of mud and turf anchored atop mangrove root networks form open platforms: the sacred glades used for village rites.

It's these glades and the kith and kin who gather in them, more than the scattered hutches amidst the banyan limbs, that have names. The oldest is called Ozidan. Tonight almost two hundred of the Winegit have massed here for ceremony amid the fire and smoke of torches.

Nearly all of them are naked. With few exceptions, Iteni are forbidden all but the simplest kilts and loincloths, jute or homespun cotton, and perhaps the occasional hempen rain-cape; but the bodies of giants are difficult to clothe even thus. It's a mark of standing to have a loincloth of deer-hide or gator skin, worn garments that have been passed down from before the days when Winegit numbers grew and they hunted out the swamp's large beasts. Most make do with ceremonial mud and splashes of pigment.

It's a good thing they're a handsome People, thinks the old man as he steps forth at the glade's northern end, looking out at them. He's as worn as any old garment, his dark skin seamed and leathery. He feels the weight of responsibility in the vast cape of bird feathers draped round his shoulders—a thing of appalling wealth, mangy though its condition is. His People, though, are strong. Living idols of corded muscle. Their features are expressive and statuesque as they look back at him with hope. Strong, he thinks sourly, as befits beasts of burden.

His name is Mistegish. He is Sabelana of this village, the keeper of its stories and anointer of its leaders. This gathering is his creation, and his pointed ears twitch with anticipation. Even he does not know where this night will go.

Drums made of great hollowed tree-trunks send up a throbbing rhythm from within the worshipers' ranks. A deep, wordless humming chant of readiness comes from among them. Mistegish holds up his gnarled hands for quiet.

"Tonight," he says in a voice rough and pitted with years: "The Four Peoples make ready to seek their destiny. Do you stand prepared?"

A cheer of affirmation greets him. The voices are not just Wineg: for in a great rarity, smaller shapes can be seen among them. Each of the Four Peoples are represented. There are even delegates from the other seven swamp villages, renouncing old feuds and grudges. The moon is new and the stars vaulting overhead are bright and numberless. Magick hums in the air and Mistegish feels the touch of old gods on him.

He pauses and lets the cry subside. Then he says: "So be it. Bring forward the Princess of the Morning."

A pair of Wineg women gently lead her forward from the southern edge of the glade. She is small and delicate, clad in a kilt and a shawl and is of that most numerous of the Peoples, the Baratim. Her name is Cailin, and even by the standards of a People known for uncommon grace, she is a beauty. Her olive-toned skin is smooth and unblemished, her hair a lustrous rain of dark tresses around features of fine-sculpted symmetry, her ears large and well-shaped. Her emerald eyes are the most striking of all; they are watchful, penetrating, and though he can see the fear in her, he can also see how she controls it.

To look at her, thinks Mistegish with reluctant admiration, is to see what Oga saw. In her the gods have made their will clear. Power thrums within her tiny, bird-like frame. Power greater even than his own.

The gathering is in deep silence now as he calls out: "And come forward, Prince of the Evening." And he feels the sigh run through his People—and sees Cailin give out a little gasp despite herself—as the second party to the rite steps forth from behind him.

At the Temple.

"An rana fuan harenin-ha!"

The croaked exclamation shook Cailin from a deep sleep. She woke in her pallet to see the first glimmers of morning at the window of her dormitory room. Too soon, she thought. It feels like I just closed my eyes.

Her companion was perched upon the windowsill. The white-feathered crow preened, fixed her with a gleaming red eye and croaked again, the same phrase: "O soon must come, must come the day!"

"I get it, Bana," she told him. "I'm up, I'm up." She fished a sandal from beside the bed and tossed it at him. He promptly vanished in a whirl of light and white feathers with an aggrieved squawk.

She stirred, her thin blanket sloughing away from her nakedness as she reached for the clay pitcher beside the bed. As she poured a swallow of water down her throat, took a rag and began to sponge herself, part of her wondered how much of last night had been a dream. But she winced as she touched the cloth between her firm thighs and could not keep herself from smiling. Oh no, Cailin. It was real enough.

The smile faded as she thought about what that meant, until a certain face flashed across her mind's eye and her resolve grew firm again. Briskly, she finished her ablutions and stepped out into the main chamber of her small apartment, breaking her fast with a heel of mealie bread and a cup of ginger tea. She donned her shawl and sandals, tied on her kilt.

She closed her door just as her friend Yeke was stepping into the hallway across from her. They shared a smile. Somehow, ever since they had rooms of their own, they were always synchronous.

Pale and pretty Yeke's dark eyes sparkled with questions, a playful smile touching her full lips. Cailin smiled back, wishing she could tell her friend the story.

They said nothing. Long training as hierodules of the Merciful Lady wouldn't allow them to laugh and gossip the way they yearned to. The Adani are watched by all the Gods of Heaven, they would remember Amma Niure saying when they were girls. To Iteni they grant the eyes of a single Merciful Lady. You must never do anything to anger her!

All the girls along the hallway thus were silent. But even after the morning rite was done and they could talk once more, Cailin knew she could tell Yeke nothing. It was a lonely feeling. She contented herself with holding her friend's hand and squeezing it.

Just along the corridor then, they saw Aine, and the grip tightened.

For as long as anyone could remember, there had been no more singular beauty in Serenity's Temple than Aine. The Adani mother who'd discarded her "changeling" daughter on the steps of a Lady's House in Meidan—for thus had all these orphans come here—had to hail from some far-off nation gifted with an eldritch handsomeness.

Aine's hair was the colour of moonlight, her skin white as milk. Her eyes seemed impossibly large and changed colour with her mood; her cheekbones were high and prominent, her mouth a little rosebud that hinted at passion and desire. Even the freckles dusting her flesh were captivating.

The others had always envied and feared her. Aine had been the queen bee in the hive, suffering no rivals, and it had seemed she could do no wrong. After all, Pereste Duro, who ruled the tiny world of the Temple, had favoured her.

Cailin could remember envying that favour most of all, before she learned what it meant. Since then her feelings about Aine had softened. She had understood the beauty's high-handedness in a fresh light.

Now it was a different thing again: for Aine was clearly ill, and had been for weeks. Her luminous features were drawn and gaunt. Her skin was sheened with sweat and her eyes dark with constant pain. She moved as if she were far older than her years, as if her chest were filled with sharp-edged potsherds. All her former pride was gone.

Everyone knew on whom Pereste Duro's "favour" would fall once she was dead. Even now, Cailin could feel the eyes of some of the girls taking in Aine's wasted form and then straying to her: curious, guilty, pitying.

We all have our reasons, Cailin thought of the night before, of the path she had chosen. There stands mine. She felt a sudden swell of compassion and shared a wordless concord with Yeke. They moved forward, each of them taking one of the frail beauty's arms. She smelled of honeysuckle and weighed next to nothing.

"Darlings..." Aine forgot the rule of morning silence. "Oh, thank you, darlings." They patted her hands and soothed her on the way to morning service.

Under the Stars.

Her breath catches as Oga steps forward into the torchlight.

In years of knowing him, Cailin has not known until now what he truly is to his people. At the Temple he is simply Oga, Defender of the Sanctuary. A dozen spans tall, imposing and silent, most everyone passes him by as if assuming him a dumb brute. The others who know of her affection for him think her touched, as if she had abruptly decided to befriend a tree stump.

Here he is Shal Oga, an anointed leader of the Winegit. Much about him suddenly comes clear. He has always kept his head shaved and worn one of those hide loincloths, a mark of distinction. He has always had a dignified bearing, and his great dark eyes have seen things others didn't. The deep rumble of his voice could always enfold her in security.

Cailin has loved him in secret since she was a girl. She has held this truth close; others would not understand it. Peoples do not mix among the Iteni, at least not for love. The ties that bind are for one's own.

Long before she plucked up the courage to tell him, Oga knew. Now he stands before her: his pate wreathed in flowers, his golden skin painted with ceremonial mud and patterns of red pigment. His face is a mask of planes and angles, his eyes those of a man in trance. Here he has dispensed with that old hide loincloth that is such a point of pride for him, for now he is the Prince of the Evening.

His cock rears up from between his thighs, pulsing and rampant. Its foreskin has been cut away. It measures a full span, long and veiny, and Cailin still does not know if she can withstand it.

Her heart hammers as the hollow drums of the Winegit pound around her. She sheds her kilt and shawl, watches Oga's manhood twitch as his eyes drink in the pert mounds of her breasts, the curve of her belly, the downy thatch at her mons.

She has spent her adult life as a hierodule. Rites of love are what she does, but she has never done anything like this. Cailin is wetter than she can ever remember being. The ache of desire in her molten core is almost unbearable.

The old one—Mistegish—throws up his hands. Unlike Oga he has a profusion of hair, great white rope-like locks of it reaching down his back. The Sabelana's voice is rough, but she can hear the power in it.

"We come here to make pact," he says. "To unite the poles of Peoples, and call forth the blessings of one even we have forgotten." He pauses—perhaps for drama or perhaps because he is truly in awe about what might come. "Our Peoples had our own gods once. They wait for us still where the eye does not see. Tonight we call Goma, who blesses war. For tomorrow we shed the blood of those who bleed our people... tomorrow we seek our freedom. Where is our freedom!"

Call and response. The voices of the Winegit thunder: "Mag Maula!"

"Where?" Mistegish repeats.

"Mag Maula!"

"Yes!" The Sabelana is in full flight now. "A kingdom of Iteni where the Peoples live in harmony and justice, in prosperity and freedom. Shalesa, come you forth!"

The Bosses of the Peoples in Serenity number in the dozens, elected by and from a fraternity of those who have answered an Emperor's call to war, or whose fathers have done so. Those allied to Mistegish's vision step forward now to seal the pact. All told they are a score strong and forceful in conviction. Each cites a grievance against Pereste Duro and his Temple almoners who control the grain dole, or against Shal Sesarea and his hatchet-men whose muscle and allies and informants keep the peace.

One Baratim, a hawk-faced bravo called An Dumon, tells the story of a shrimp-wife whose husband's boat fell foul of a treacherous tidal surge. Her family's livelihood gone, she has taken her own life rather than whore herself to pay the extortionate bribe Pereste Duro demands for grain.

A wiry little Nelemeni named Faran-Mwin tells the story of a young man murdered by Sesarea's hatchets for failing to return a factor's nod in the street.

There is even an unnamed Shal of the Urogit, draped in a hooded rain-cape and masked to conceal whatever afflicts him, who tells a tale of the hatchets hunting his People across the tenement roofs for sport.

There are many others. Last come the Winegit, one of each village, who all tersely tell the same story of a people's pride affronted by constant insult, and worse, a people's rightful share of the grain dole growing smaller year by year. Of children stillborn, dying of malnutrition or growing up stunted.

Their tales wash over Cailin as she and Oga stand suspended in their own world. Their bodies sing with readiness. From somewhere overhead she can hear the voice of Bana, her companion, cawing as if to say Get on with it!

Finally the last of the Shalesa has had his say, and the moment is come.

Mistegish raises a hand as the drums accelerate in a crescendo all around them, then with a gesture, stops them: "Let the rite begin!"

Cailin's heart is in her throat. There is no turning back.

At the Temple.

The Temple's Deaconesses walked out into the crisp morning air. The Sanctuary was not far, a brick rondavel with a thatch roof at the heart of Lady's Sacred Complex, which in turn was the heart of Serenity.

All around stretched the tenements and muddy laneways that were home to most of the Iteni. The buildings were haphazard structures up to seven storeys tall. The lattice of improvised bridges at the upper levels were called the "high roads." One could cross the wards from end to end on them.

The bustle of morning was here already. The dregs of the night workers were filtering in by the South Road: gong farmers and corpse handlers, rat catchers and dog fighters, street sweepers and eventide whores. A great river of Iteni streamed in the opposite direction. Baratim and Nelemeni headed for Meidan's tanneries or dye-works, or simply to beg or entertain in her streets. Clutches of Winegit loomed above the crowd, destined to pull carts, haul ferry-boats or lift great burdens on their backs.

Cailin could hear Amma Niure's voice in her mind. Never forget how lucky you are to have your vocation, and the Merciful Lady's blessing. North of the Sanctuary were the Temple's grain houses, where the almoners would be handing out sacks of meal to those in need. She remembered the story of the shrimp-wife.

She kept her face serene, talked low and reassuringly in Aine's ear as she felt the frail beauty flinch from the noise. They came to the Morning Door of the Temple, beside which Oga stood with arms crossed like a brazen statue, a tree limb propped against the wall behind him. Cailin saw his eyes flicker at the sight of her. Her heart hammered and memory throbbed between her legs. She dared not look at him.

Then they entered the Sanctuary and bowed to the image of the Lady in her sconce inside the doorway. The goddess smiled vacantly down at them with cherubic features and a halo round her wavy hair; she did not have an Iteni's pointed ears or tilted eyes. Even here in Serenity, she was the gaze of the Adani.

As they took leave of her and made for a vacant trio of the prayer mats laid around the inner chamber's rim, Cailin tried not to register shock at what she saw waiting at the gathering's centre.

Pereste Duro was there, of course, seated lotus fashion in his kilt of fine palm silk. His pale elongated features were handsome but weirdly empty of feeling as ever, his dead gaze impassive. Amma Niure was beside him in her kilt of white cotton, still beautiful despite her years, her honeyed skin taut and her bare breasts ample and firm, her curls bound up and the dark eyes in her heart-shaped face ever watchful.

Seated behind them, though, were four men. Not men of the Temple. Three of them were hooded in hempen rain-capes. The fourth, clad in a kilt as rich as Duro's, was a proud and well-muscled Baratim with short hair, boyish features too young for his years, and eyes too old.

It was Shal Osho Sesarea.

The mere sight of him made Cailin feel exposed, her heart hammering afresh as she strove to mask her reaction. She and Yeke seated and arrayed Aine between them. Can it be chance that he's here? Today of all days? It had never happened before.

She felt the ripples of surprise all around her, but of course none of the girls dared speak. What could they say? The gathering settled in and waited.

Presently Duro said: "Most of you will assume your normal duties in the City today." His eyes scanned the ranks. "Your Amma and I trust you will perform admirably and stay out of trouble. Things are... ticklish among the Adani, so you must all be at your best."

Amma Niure took up the thread. "In the meantime, our normal morning rite has been replaced." Her tone was hard. "We hear... whispers that mock the name of our blessed community. Slanders against the rightful order. Today our Temple shows solidarity, in a rite of gratitude to those who keep the peace."

Cailin heard a nervous flutter of crow wings in the rafters. Do they know?

"One of you," Duro said, "Will be offered in token of our Temple's respect for order." Cailin felt herself go cold as his eyes flicked across her. Much depended on a certain rendezvous in the City today. If he chooses me... But no, he was pointing nearby. "Deaconess Yeke, the honour is yours."