The Taing

Chapter One

Ambriel closed the wicket and plodded barefoot, her large middle toe towering over the others, to the front entrance of Priestess Sustina's dwelling place.

She dipped honeyed hands into the hanging basin of cool lemongrass water to cleanse them of ashy dust, then dribbled more of the fragrant water over her brown feet.

"Let me in," she said in hushed tones through the grated hole in the door. "I come for my lesson."

Her black, fishtail braid tumbled over her right shoulder.

Someone inside the limestone igloo turned a wheel. Cogs creaked and the metal door to the home groaned opened.

Ambriel pushed her short, compact but curvy form in through the entryway. Marissa, Sustina's pale, long-legged student with the second eye painted on her forehead, rose on the other side of the door and dusted her parachute pants.

"Hurry up." Marissa waved her in. "She's had a horrible headache all day."

Ambriel paused at the door. In the Underground, "day" was subject to the dials of the clock and the ringing of the tower signalled when night approached. "Is she violent?"

The older female tugged Ambriel into the abode, faded tapestries creating walls and rooms. "Only with me." She leaned over the wheel and turned it counter-clockwise, the neckline of her loose white tunic hanging, offering a view of tiny pale breasts.

Sweat beaded Marissa's forehead, her tied-back red hair frizzing at her hairline from the moist heat.

Marissa caught her staring. "Get going with you."

Ambriel ambled into the narrow room where Sustina meditated.

Sustina liked clay beads, colorful fabrics, and stained glass. Ambriel once gave her a wooden doll with threads dyed blond for hair, and there it still sat, on Sustina's metal cabinet. The block of wood had cost three dozen peanuts. Danya whipped Ambriel for giving away such a treat. But the cost of the wood could buy Sustina's affection.

The priestess perched on an animal-legged stool, her snow-white flesh exposed below the waist, a strip of royal velvet with gold sequins between her thighs.

She faced a landscape portrait, a relic from the Old Days, her auburn hair loose down her back.

Ambriel approached, careful, like a tiger stalking prey. Her mistress' eyes were closed, the heavy black kohl caked across them all the way to the sides of her face.

Ambriel sucked in a breath and edged closer.

And then--"Do you ever wonder what happened to Laney, Ambriel?"

She hadn't thought about him in years. One of Sustina's five children.

The only boy.

"No," Ambriel answered truthfully.

"Why?"

Now Sustina opened her eyes and large red veins ate the whites of them. "You and he are the same age. You were close friends before the Taking." She fluttered her hands up and removed a headdress. As the heavily feathered object came away from her head, Sustina let out a sigh.

Ambriel eyed the sacred diadem and envy bubbled in her blood.

"Does this have to do with the lesson?" She prayed to Sirus she sounded serene.

The priestess set the headdress on a shelf on the metal cabinet beside Ambriel's carefully crafted doll. "Yes," she replied. "I wish to teach you about the Taking."

"I see." Ambriel heard the disappointment in her own voice.

"No disrespect."

The priestess faced her, unsmiling, and for the first time Ambriel noticed hollows beneath her eyes.

"Tell me, Ambriel. Who orders the Taking?"

"You do." She choked back a laugh. Why the history lesson?

Sustina did not grin back. "Why do I order this abomination every five years?"

"You can't truly think..." She lowered her eyes. "Forgive me, Mistress."

A finger pulled up Ambriel's chin, soft yet insistent, exposing her to Sustina's luminous amber eyes. "Speak freely, woman. I will not whip you as your mother does."

"Do you regret losing Laney, Priestess?"

The priestess removed her finger from underneath Ambriel's chin, sliding the pad of her index finger across Ambriel's jaw gently, tracing the softest part of her neck.

Ambriel couldn't help but sigh a little bit inside.

"I willed so hard for him not to be a boy." Sustina faced the wall. "I prayed fervently to the gods of our ancestors, to Sirus as well as the others, and offered them all sacrifices."

"It's an honor to offer our males. Isn't that what you say in the Equinox speech?"

A sustained silence sent Ambriel's large toe to tapping.

"You are going to be the Priestess someday," Sustina drawled with careful precision. "You lived through three Takings, and this April, clock willing, you will experience your own. The one that matters." The priestess peered at her belly as if imagining the soft swell that would grow there soon, a new child.

She jutted her chest and pounded her closed fist against her heart. "I'm ready. I won't fail you."

"I'm sure." Sustina's mouth curved up. "You still haven't answered my question. Why must the Takings occur, and why only once every five years?"

Ambriel numbed her mind in preparation for the old adage the teachers had drilled into her brain years ago. "To atone for the sins of our ancestors, those who call themselves "male" are condemned to the mines where they must rebuild what they have stolen. To atone for the sins of our ancestors, those who call themselves "not male" are condemned to lose their fathers, sons and brothers."

Ambriel blinked, saw that Sustina was not satisfied. "The Takings only occur every five years because it takes nine months to bear a child, several months to wean it, then another four years to teach it independence so that it can go into the mines to work."

Sustina ran long, clay colored fingernails through Ambriel's hair, sending prickles up and down her spine. "Not every woman gets pregnant during the Taking. Why do we meet every five years? Why not every two?"

Ambriel leaned into the touch and whimpered slightly, her secret spot throbbing. "If we procreate more frequently than five years at a time, we will run out. Of space. Of resources to sustain our offspring. Any less frequently, and our race will die out."

"Such a practical young woman you've become, Ambriel." Sustina smiled. "Top of your class. That's why I selected you as my predecessor, because I know you'll do whatever I ask you to do."

Ambriel gulped at the high praise. "What would you like me to do, Sustina?" When she was a small child, Ambriel used to imagine that Sustina was her bloodmother, instead of angry, aggressive Danya. Not now.

"Meet me tomorrow, when the dial of the clock reads nine, at Roxie's place."

Everybody knew Roxie. Xe was as legendary as Sustina.

Sustina let her hand fall. "That's it for today, woman. I'm tired now."

Ambriel felt cheated. She struggled to hide her profound regret. "But...I want to talk more about my first real Taking. What will it feel like? Some of the older women say it hurts, and others--"

"Pain." Sustina stared at the landscape. "It's always pain. Now go away."

Ambriel obliged, not because she wanted to, but because she recognized that tone in Sustina's voice meant violence. On the way out the door, she paused near Marissa's warm body, steaming hot from pounding dough in a bowl, and brushed the fly-aways from Marissa's eyes.

Ambriel felt her lower body moisten. It always did, whenever Marissa was around. "Danya requests your presence at our dwelling tonight," she said, neutrally.

Marissa's gaze sharpened. "Again?"

Ambriel didn't answer. She flew through the opened door, down the winding dirt path, and out the wicket. Through the black streets of the murky Underground.

#

"Where have you been?" Snaggletoothed Danya set firm hands on her hips when Ambriel appeared in the doorway to their small metal shelter. A large woman with long brown fingers, Danya made bricks and built homes in the Underground for a living.

Ambriel began to loosen the belt fabric around her slender waist. "Sustina requested me."

Danya's thick eyebrows rose toward the cave ceiling. "A good sign." She fidgeted with her elbow, studied the ground. "Did you see Marissa while you were there?"

"I invited her over for you."

Danya's face reddened, her cheeks dark like a plum. "The twins are hungry. Go feed them. Then all of you, off to sleep. The clock is late."

"And you will stay up and talk to Marissa?"

"I have many important things to tell her," Danya replied, an eager, almost greedy glint in her eyes.

Ambriel found the twins playing with the old clay pots that Danya's bloodmother had given them. She braided their hair, caressed their plump cheeks, and urged them into the sleeping room. They sat on the stuffed pallet sheets surrounding them, while Ambriel mixed powders and a measured pouch of rice in some cold lemongrass water.

"Do men sleep in beds like these?" Agathol, the firstborn twin, asked.

"No." Ambriel poured the mixture into three dishes. "Men sleep in pods that lock them in so that they can't even get out to urinate."

Terra giggled and covered her mouth. "Do they pee in bed like Hondu does?"

"They wear suits to catch their excrements at night." She passed them each a clay bowl, and then sat down on the straw pallet. The twins scooped the meal with their hands and sucked it off their fingers. Ambriel started to eat with her fingers from the bowl in her hand. But hunger wasn't biting at her tonight.

Danya might want it more.

Agathol made a revolted face. "That's almost as disgusting as this meal," she sighed. "I'll bet the men get peanuts and potatoes and strawberries at every meal instead of once a week."

Ambriel wished they'd go to sleep. "Why the sudden fascination?"

"This is our first Taking," Terra explained. "We will lose Hondu and Talon and Milo and countless others of our friends." Her eyes filled with tears. "The next time we see them, they'll be men. They'll be...on the other side."

Ambriel smoothed the wool blankets over them and took the bowls away. "It's not so bad." She rapped each one with a kiss on their forehead. "You will forget them soon." She had heard of some young ones born male who had been given the rite of transition to allow them to stay in their little community. They had always been female, in their hearts, and Sustina was able to make it so for them, physically.

Why didn't she do that to save her own son, Laney?

Ambriel left the children sleeping. When the time came, the children would be locked away in the safehouse so they wouldn't bear witness to the atrocities of the Taking. A few days later, the boys would be delivered to the gate as the necessary offering to close out the ceremony. That was the end. The Taking would not happen again for another 5 tests.

Ambriel took the final bowl down to Danya. On the last step she stopped, pushed aside the blue cloth, and froze. Marissa, not seeing her, stood naked in the next room, helping Danya remove her linen tunic. Neither woman noticed Ambriel peeking at them between the folds of the heavy, navy curtain. Ambriel took a step back, her heart hammering in her chest, and juices began to flow down her legs.

She'd never seen Marissa unclothed before. She'd seen Danya unclothed many times, lying with her trunk-sized legs spread for the world to see.

But Danya was her bloodmother.

Marissa was beautiful to look at, perfectly formed. Her globe breasts pointed to Danya's back, her nipples pink and engorged, like ripe fruit. Danya faced Marissa, her skirt sliding, bunching up at her feet. Her face glowed like shimmering mica.

Danya ran a hand down Marissa's chest, then squeezed Marissa's breast. With her other arm, she tugged Marissa's slim body into her larger one.

"Will you ruin this with the Taking?" She slid her hand lower and cupped Marissa's buttocks.

The hand squeezing the breast slid lower, to the red patch between Marissa's legs. "Will you ruin this?" She placed a palm flat against Marissa's patch and then her middle finger disappeared between the folds of Marissa's pussy.

Marissa threw back her head and let out an animal moan. Her legs went wobbly.

Growling, Danya pulled Marissa down to the floor, her fingers everywhere, and then she used her tongue in place of her fingers.

Marissa bit a piece of reed to stiflea groan, her hands pressing down firmly on the back of Danya's head, at the base of her neck. As Danya's head bobbed, Marissa's hips gyrated and Ambriel found her hips gyrating as well.

Then, as Ambriel thought they were finished, that Marissa would mercifully put on her clothes and go away, Danya made Marissa switch places with her. Marissa's breasts swayed, beads of sweat dribbling down her naked chest, Danya's legs spread wide.

Marissa's ass hung open over Danya's lips and Marissa sucked and licked Danya's cunt.

The two of them rocked together, moaning, panting, sweating, writhing in this way until Ambriel could not bite her lip anymore.

She wanted to be touched like this, to feel whatever it was that Danya and Marissa felt! So she spread her own legs, slipped her fingers into her wet slit, and began rubbing against her nub in synch with what she saw.

As Danya's tongue moved, Marissa's body arched and shivered and only the force of Danya's arms kept Marissa at her post until at last Ambriel saw whine and bit back a soft cry, her body rewarding her by singing pleasure into every nerve while Ambriel sagged back against the wall to let it sweep her away.

When it was all over, when Ambriel's breathing and heartbeat slowed and Danya and Marissa were at last dressed again, Danya paid Marissa in peanuts.

"Just remember," Danya voice dripped. "It will not feel like this at the Taking."

Marissa brushed back glowing, coppery hair. "It is still my duty to bear a child." She looked at Danya pointedly, then turned.

Danya wheeled the door open.

Ambriel didn't wait for her to close the door so that she could come out and give up her bowl. She couldn't face Danya just now. Not tonight. Not after what she'd done.

She tottered up the stairs, her body still trembling with electric jolts of satisfaction, bowl in hands.