Suss had forgotten how the story was supposed to end.  The children were all looking at her. She stood at the front of the classroom, biting her lip, and stared back at them.  They sat on crude square pillows scattered before her and wore grey clothes she’d taught them how to make. Their usually empty eyes were hungry for her words.   

“And then,” she said, stalling for time and taking a deep breath.  The word dropped and she waited. And waited. They stared and stared.  They were her family, and she had assisted with many of their births, yet today she couldn’t recall their exact ages.  The moments slid by, and she looked down at her hands. The skin was mottled, still similar in shade to the red bricks of the wall, but bony and shrunken now.  A frail girl started looking at the ceiling, and Suss caught herself following the gaze. There was a crack in the bricks wide enough that sand was streaming through, carried by the desert wind. 

One of the boys shoved the boy next to him, and the silence broke, shattered by their trilling laughter.  All twelve children started talking at once, and she felt the shame evaporating. The pressure to tell the story was fading, though a part of her desperately wanted to know the end.  She remembered learning the story in this room, from the oldest woman in the world. Perhaps her grandmother, but who could remember. What she did remember was that the stories never seemed to end.  The Great Creation and all of Ma’ii’s Revelations. 

Her hands high above her head, she clapped and chirped in her most pleasant voice, “Come, children, it’s time to go outside.”  Their excitement almost drowned out her wistful musings. She felt sad but smiled all the brighter. The world had shifted somehow in her life. 

The children were all hurrying to put their pillows back on the shelves except the oldest girl, who approached her and asked, “Mistress Suss, what are we going to learn tomorrow?”  The girl’s pillow was dangling from her hand, and she reached out for Suss’ hand with the other. 

Suss’ mind went blank, but she started speaking anyway, “What did we learn today?”  She asked, immediately regretting the question, and desperately trying to think of something to teach them tomorrow. 

The girl stared at the floor for a few seconds, her straight black hair fell like a shadow, hiding her face, “You were telling us about how Ma’ii had chewed on the reeds?”  Her tone was vaguely sad, and Suss felt her heart tear. 

“I told you about that yesterday, Aruh,” she reached her hand out and stroked the girl’s head and held her shoulder.  All the children were staring at them, many bouncing from foot to foot impatiently. 

“Oh, then what did we-” Aruh was cut short as another much younger girl ran up and grabbed the pillow from her hand. 

The girl that grabbed the pillow ran to the shelf and put it away and then called out, “Can we go now?  Please? The pillows are put away.” 

Suss smiled and clapped her hands again, “Are we all ready to go outside?”  There was a general murmur of assent, but Suss noticed that two of the youngest had not put their moccasins on.  “Be patient, we all need shoes outside,” she helped the barefoot boy and girl find their shoes and herded the children out into the narrow hall, and then walked through the classroom blowing out the candles.   

The tapestries on the walls had faded until the pictures were hard to make out.  Suss and her sisters had tried making new ones, years ago, but couldn’t get the designs right.  They had simply traded the ones they made off to outsiders. Her whole childhood had been in this room, and it had been a magical place then.  When she found out a baby wouldn’t grow inside her, she had decided that Ma’ii wanted her to replace her teacher, but some days it was hard to understand why.  A teacher should know all the stories. 

Stolen story; please report.

With a heavy sigh, she made her way back through the dark room to the twisting hallway, and began following the children.  Deep shadows pooled at the turns; the candles on the walls were spaced much farther than they used to be. The high priest had said that it was the outsiders fault they didn’t have enough candles.  He had screamed at her, and Suss had not asked again. 

“Be careful not to trip,” she said, loud but kind, as they ran ahead of her.  She kept thinking back to her own childhood, pulling her brightly colored shawl tightly around herself.  It must have been warmer then. The redstone halls were so narrow that adults had to walk single file, and if two were going opposite directions, one would have to back up.  Still, the children pushed and shoved their way through the temple. 

Suss heard a scream, and thought that one of them must have tripped and hurt themself, almost all of the children out of her sight, past a turn.  She shouted, “Who’s hurt? What’s going on?” 

Aruh was the only one still close to her, the only one who had not been running ahead.  She said, “I’ll find out, Suss!” 

Before Suss could respond, she darted ahead with the speed and grace of a child.  Suss was closer to sixty than to fifty and worried as she was, she felt old and slow, groping her way along the walls quick as she could. 

“Aruh?”  She called out into the darkness.  Silently, she cursed the high priest and the outsiders he blamed, for the lack of candles, “Aruh?  What’s going on up there?” No one called back to her, but she heard a strange whistling sound. The sound put into her mind the sound of the wind whispering across the desert sand.  The sound for which she had been named. 

“Suss! There’s,” Aruh screamed from ahead, but her voice cut off in a choke as Suss rounded the corner.   

Scattered across the floor like fallen dolls, her children.  A strange green fog filled the air. There wasn’t enough light.  There weren’t enough candles. She could see their bodies on the floor through the fog, and two shadows moving.  One of them looked unnatural. Too thin to be human. Suss gasped. A sweetly acidic taste assaulted her tongue. Numbness began spreading from her chest.  She turned to run for help. 

Weakness gripped her, and her legs gave out.  A woman’s laughter was all she could hear. She willed herself not to breathe,her chest tightened.  Crawling, she felt the pressure behind her ribs. Voices, the voices of outsiders were getting closer.   

I have to get help.  The thought raced through her mind.  A litany. One of the men, one of the archers could help. 

On her stomach, she pulled herself forward.  Her legs were so heavy. Her lungs were screaming.  Behind her eyes pain began swelling. Her vision blurred.  She pressed her eyes closed and forced herself to squirm forward. 

Something clenched her side.  She tried to move but couldn’t.  Her body wouldn’t listen to her. The numbness had spread to her toes.  She was rolled onto her back, and opened her eyes. The face she saw was inhuman.  She let herself gasp, no longer caring to hold her breath. What she saw was shaped like a man, but metal.  Copper. The hand that grabbed her was like needles stabbing her through the numbness. Her skin tore under its vice grip. 

From behind the creature, a woman appeared.  In the dim light her eyes looked black. She bent at the waist and looked down at Suss.  Her hair is beautiful, Suss thought.  It was an absurd thought and she wanted to laugh.  The metal man reached his spidery hand into a satchel and handed the woman a piece of glass.  Her mouth opened in a wide grin revealing teeth nearly as black as her skin. As black as night. 

Ma’ii save me.  Suss begged internally.

Then there was nothing.

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