I: Fish Stories
"My grandmother told me stories about Men," Aurora said. "She said they're the rarest creatures in the entire world."
It was late, and the bar was crowded, and Aurora's small voice barely carried over the din. Everywhere you turned here there were more women; sailors mostly, and soldiers and sellers and thieves, and of course the serving girls (some of whom were also thieves). There were a hundred styles of clothes and at least as many kinds of accents just in this one common room.
It was Belit's favorite kind of place, a cheap, rowdy dive right by the harbor, with lots of wine and lots of pretty girls, where everybody's money was good and nobody asked a lot of questions about you.
And on top of all that Belit had other reasons for bringing everyone here. She also had reasons for letting little Aurora talk, so for now she drank her wine and watched the room and listened.
Their table was full: Aurora, Belit, Morgan, Achillia, and Lee, plus several winehouse whores who had attached themselves to the group, attracted by how much gold Belit's crew was spending and how fancy their swords looked.
Achillia, a big, strong woman with wide shoulders, held two girls on her lap at the same time, and every time she spoke she jostled one or both of them, who responded with animated laughter.
"So your grandmother saw a Man then?" Achillia said. The big woman was teasing, but Aurora, who was young and had been drinking steadily all night, didn't notice her tone.
"Oh no, she never saw one. But she'd heard stories you see, from her mother and from her mother's mothers...sisters...her mothers' aunts? Anti-mothers?"
Aurora's cheeks glowed. This was probably the first time she'd had so much in one night—and it was certainly the first time she'd ever been in a seaside hole like this. Rich girls might drink, but not in places like this. Well, it won't harm her, Belit thought. Not any more than the rest of what's going to happen, at any rate.
Draining her own cup and wiping her mouth on the back of her sleeve, Belit said, "What DID your grandmother tell you about Men, then?"
Aurora began ticking points off on her fingers. "A Man is a creature mostly like a woman, with arms and legs and a face and everything. But there's differences too: For one thing, they have a lot of hair in strange places. Like their chests."
"So they have hairy breasts?" Morgan said, brow pinched in thought.
Morgan was an odd woman, touched in the head and not even a good sailor. But Belit kept her because she was the most talented spear fisher anyone had ever seen—she could nail a sea bass through the eye from the high deck four times out of five.
Keeping her around meant entertaining her strange states though, and everyone else in the crew knew to ignore what she said most of the time. Aurora, not knowing any better, answered her instead.
"Oh no no no. They have no breasts at all." She paused to let this sink in. "And they're bigger than a woman, mostly," she added. "Maybe about the size of Achillia. Most of them."
Achillia flexed her arms. The girls on her lap hung off of them like tree branches.
The room grew louder and hotter with noise from all sides. Lee made a disgusted sound, trying to be heard over everything. "This is nonsense," she said. "Those were just fish stories your grandmother told you, Aurora. There's no such thing as a Man—just like mermaids or sea serpents."
"Oh, but there are mermaids," Aurora said. "Everyone onboard the ship has seen a mermaid, they were telling me. Isn't it true, Captain?"
Belit shrugged and grabbed another cup from a nearby serving girl. "Lee here is what you'd call an educated woman, Aurora—she doesn't abide by fish stories or sailor talk like the rest of us. In fact, once upon a time she had a post as an imperial librarian to the Empress herself."
Still rosy-cheeked, Aurora looked at Lee with eyes wide. "That's amazing!" she said.
Raising her cup to hide her grin, Belit said, "Oh yes, amazing. Makes you wonder how such a smart woman came to be consorting with the likes of all of us in a place like this. There's quite a story behind that, isn't there?"
Instead of answering, Lee glared. Belit didn't bother to hide her amusement, but she did check herself; she and Lee didn't get along, but they did need one another for tonight's plan to work, so their antagonism could only go so far.
Lee tried to explain two or three more times about the folly of believe in Man stories, but Aurora (now well into another cup of wine) would have none of it. "In the old days, EVERY woman knew Men," she continued. "That's what my grandmother said at least. And they knew the most important difference with them was down there."
And she put a hand between her own legs, inadvertently inventing a gesture that the winehouse girls would probably like to remember for advertising purposes in the future.
"Where they've got a...a...well it's a thing. And if you lie down with one of them, the Man stick that thing inside you, and then you can get a baby—instead of going to the temple and sacrificing to the goddesses to get pregnant like everyone else.
"Grandmother said that Men travel in big boats that come into port every 12 years, and that when they come ashore they'll stick it in whatever woman is brave enough to lie with them."
Now Morgan spoke up again: "Stick it inside you?" she said. "Inside where?"
"Do you need me to draw a fucking picture?" said Achillia.
Morgan's eyes lit up in that way they did when she finally grasped an idea everyone else had already figured out. "No!" she said. "You can't go letting some Man creature stick his whatever-it-is in there. It wouldn't be safe. You'd...I don't know. Go blind."
Belit slipped a coin down the front of their waitress's blouse as the girl bent over to fill their cups, and the server shrieked at the feeling of cold metal sliding down her dress. Then Belit said to Aurora, "So do you believe in Men then?"
"I don't know," Aurora said, pondering for a moment. "I've never been anywhere or seen anything. You've sailed all over the world, Captain; what do you think?"
Belit shrugged. "Easy question: There's no such thing."
"How do you know?"
"You say that Men come into port every 12 years to fuck women? Well, who do you suppose they're all fucking the rest of the time?"
Aurora pondered this grave query for a moment. "Each other, I guess," she said.
"Right," said Belit. "But you say that to do that they've got to take the thing that grows between their legs and stick it in somewhere. Now, where would one Man stick a thing like that into another Man?"
