A Kirin, The Bearkin

Today I become blood, Dardanelle knew.

The honey feed would be held that evening. Her mama painted her face, breast, and tail with the spuzgum fruit as she held perfectly still. Spuzgum numbed whatever it touched. It did sting, but Dardanelle did not dare protest. She thought of Anji and Rena, of Ellraz a Catcher and Mip her Cousin: They too would be painted, and beautiful, but she would be the most beautiful of all. “Ouch, mama.”

A thick slab on her cheek brought her back. The pain!

“Hold still, child. You only make it more difficult on yourself. Quit flinching! Oh, Mawa be by you―you are fragile.”

The girl pouted in return. How she hated being called that. Forbid that any of the Kin heard her mama use that term. Many of the eld would call her odd. It was no compliment, but still, that, Dardanelle preferred to weakness. Her papa said once to her, “Do what you will, but learn to act. The queer and guideless are as good as Kin of Nichaa,” meaning hardly kin at all. Unsod.

You’ll teach me then, papa? she had thought. Guide me since I am so queer.

Once the painting was done, she nodded to her mama her leave. She frolicked in the forest with those also of the twelfth year. They played chasing games, hiding games, and spoke of ceremony. Rena complimented her paint. She spoke her thanks. Rena was a good friend. True blood.

“Phooey on your ma. Phooey on your pa. You and I are true bearkin, and you are not queer,” Rena said. “Quit saying that word. Queer is awful to hear.”

“I am glad you agree.” Dardanelle sighed. “If only the spuzgum would numb my fear. I wish I were confident as you, Rena.”

“You are bearkin, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Well, be bearkin!”

Being bearkin was tough.

The sun set low and the horizon was blue orange as the two of them returned to a circular clearing in the hub of tall trees where drummers practiced parts and eld talked in confidence. Her mama found her. Mama scolded her for fooling around in the woods; a reckless child she was; it took Mama hours to beautify her. Dardanelle gave perfunctory nods, bowed, apologized. She waved bye to Mama as mamas and papas were urged away; the ceremony would begin now. A tension and silence swept the clearing. Drums rolled into swift beats, and staff flutes stabbed at the ground in rhythm like snares. All the eld left, aside from the drummers and staffers and Knuckle who led the ceremony each year. Knuckle sang,

“MAUAAA―BO―BA―WAWAAA―YEHHH―O―MAUUU―WA―MAAAA.”

It was nonsense: the clan name and Mother Bear’s name jumbled together in a throat-sing. Eld still howled and clapped for him at the end of the song, however. Dardanelle glanced over at Rena who glanced back. Bearkin, Dardanelle thought. But am I only Mauabo? Sometimes I do not know, Rena. A shrug from Rena and a roll of her eyes as she turned away.

“Children,” Knuckle called. All attention returned to Knuckle. “Mawabobey’s children. Kin of your birth mothers and fathers who are Mawabobey’s kin all the same. Tonight you become Mauabosod. True kin.”

A pause. A giant loogey was hacked up, spat to the dirt. He thumped the blunt end of his staff in the soil in front of him. “Come.” As he turned away and hurried into the woods a voice echoed: “Come now or come never!”

All the children came. Eld too. They trekked the the beaten dirt path which was partially stoned from an era prior. Old yews lined the edges of the trail. A light breeze blew back Dardanelle’s hair. A cool sensation she felt on her face and tail and breast where the paint was. It was ten minutes a walk. On that walk, drums beat, staves pounded to the beat―some were held to lips at the hollows and played as flutes―and the eld chanted the way Knuckle had earlier. Hips bobbing, hooves flying: Energy filled the forest silence.

At the end of the dirt path were the most enormous and old yews. The tallest to be seen here by Bursmat River. Trees with cryptic patterns in their barks. And they were covered with golden brown hexagonal structures: giant walls of honeycomb. Active hives. Bees lived here, buzzed here, built here. Those hives were Dardanelle’s―all of their passage to sodhood.

A half-circle was made adjacent to the comb walls where musicians continued their beat. Dardanelle’s adrenaline raced. Twelfth years were called by name, by Knuckle, and Ellraz a Catcher went first. “Good luck!”; “Don’t faint too quick”; “Fetch me a honeycomb too,” some twelfths told him.

“Ah, you think me the type to faint, ay?” The kirin smirked snidely as he raced toward the walls as daredevilish as ever.

Bees homed in. Face, arms, and chest were stung. No sparks flew, as Dardanelle had imagined, but she heard a many shouts and saw many jumps as the horde stung him. His clawhooves pried at a chunk of juicy comb at the top of the hive formation. A reluctance grew in Dardanelle. It’s a painless ceremony, her mother had told her. You want pain? Wait until childbirth!

Of that, she was uncertain now. Surely childbirth was naught when compared to the pains of bee stings. She must be carried by the current of the drums. Lose her sense of self in the tide. Her bodily senses began to go away. She danced. Rena danced. They all danced.

Ellraz danced, but not in the traditional manner. His hooves padded the ground frantically to each sting of the swarm: a dance accompanied by soft ouch! ouch! ouch!es. Then, the chunk gave. Ellraz was flung backward and strung out on his back holding the a honey-globbed piece in a held-high clawhoof.

“I got my chunk! I got my chunk! Lookie―YAOW!”

A voice drowned out by the beat replied, “Great, bearcub! Now eat it!” It was another twelfth year’s. The kirin Orias who oftentimes called her Odd One.

Ellraz did eat it. It took him a minute to chomp up the entire chunk. Sores spotted him from head to tail when his hoof lay empty. Bees zapped him as he lay there. But he laughed. And he kept on, as he stood. He then ran for the trees, hollering, “MOOOOTHER!”. Tradition called for the river soak after the honey feed was done: And happily soak in the river he would, where the bees would not continue chase. Elders and children cheered as he made exit.

“ELL―RAZ A CATCHER,” Knuckle howled. “MAWABOBEY’S KIN TODAY, MAWABOBEY’S KIN ETERNAL!”

Mip was the second to have her name called by Knuckle. “Wish me luck,” she said shakily, dashing forward.

Fierce cousin, Dardanelle thought, you will not need luck as I do.

Cloud of bees swarmed over Mip, covered Mip. It little affected her, which surprised Dardanelle; her paint was thin compared to Ellraz’s. Especially to her own. A bark-like snap was heard beneath the flute-and-percussion song. It was Mip’s piece. She held it high with a pride Dardanelle knew her for. She stuffed her face like a true bear and munched like one. Her obliviousness to the stings of bees was remarkable. Dancing twelfths laughed. Mip swallowed, hoorahed, then was bound off for the Bursmat.

“MIP,” Knuckle howled. “MAWABOBEY’S KIN TODAY, MAWABOBEY’S KIN ETERNAL!”

After that came Tonji, Rork a Fighter, Anji, Marcelllo, Suzumae a Runner, then Orias. She and Rena were left. She was called.

“You are not queer, girl,” Rena reminded her.

Dardanelle grinned. She ran. Now they will see.

The bees came for her. She came for their comb. Buzzing was all around her now, and black and yellow specks fogged her vision. Her arms swatted at bees. Breathing became sporadic. She knew she was not meant to, somehow. Rena called out her, but she did not answer, perhaps, did not hear. Droning… droning…

Thought Rena: No, no, no… Ignore them! Take your prize, now!

A hoof by chance had clutched a clump of comb. It asked her for all her attention; she jerked it, seized it with all her strength. Dardanelle groaned… held the comb to her breast, and hid her face there, as they swarmed, and stung with their miniature insect lances. Eventually she fell to her feet and elbows. Tears dripped down to the moist dirt below her snout. The drums never did stop.

Rena was making Xs in the air with her waving arms. She was shouting “Dardanelle”. Did jumping jacks. Did Dardanelle hear? It didn’t matter. Dardanelle had to stand up. … Surely Mother Bear would bare mercy.

Nibble by nibble the girl swallowed down each lump of hard comb. Honey was thick and disgusting. It irritated her throat it did. No matter. Quit looking at the hexagons. Quit looking at the bees. Chew. Swallow. You wear on your furs the finest paint of all the paints, and Dardanelle, you are numb to this. So swallow, stupid, and quit acting queer…

* * *

When she could next remember, the light was dark; the drums, the buzz, all that was gone; the sores, the pain, all that was there; her mother, her stare, that brought her shame. But she did not understand. She was happy. She did it. She laid up on the wooden bed and smiled, and said, “Mama, I am Mauabosod.”

“Quiet child,” her mother snapped. On those words she choked. She wept.

Why, Dardanelle thought her mother was applying to her more paint but it was not paint, but aloe vera. Red lumps on her legs seared with pain as the clear ointment was smeared on. She understood that, but the tears smeared on her mother’s cheek and hooves…

“Mauabosod is one thing you are not. Feh! You are a lost, is what you are. I begged her be by you… but still… this thing happened. No, oh, you are something else, something horrible. … What will happen now? What will I do with you Dardanelle?”

“Mama,” Dardanelle whimpered, “where is Papa?”

“Your papa attends the ceremony banquet while I tend to you. You will not see him tonight.” As Dardanelle began to roll her legs off the bed, “Sit you down, fragile child!”

She did not sit down.

She fled onto a dark road for her father. For Rena. I could not have fainted. I ate the honey comb. I must be Mauabosod. I must be. I must be. Tears fell as she shook her head in disbelief.

Wooden huts in her peripherals passed by. Rustles and crackles of twigs as she leapt through the bramble and into the clustered path, leapt over the fallen stump (unseen but memorized), teetered her way up the mossed rocks leap by leap: her old shortcut. Through the hanging vines… over the little stream then under the conjoined overhangs of rock…

She ran into a busy crowd of people: the eld, the twelfth, the children all younger. They were all there and she zigzagged past the most of them. Voices dimmed in the section of the long feasting table she arrived to where her father sat. Father did not bat an eye to her―rather, bit down into a hot leg of lamb, juice dripping down from his chin. “Mm.”

“Papa.”

Papa all a sudden seemed disgusted by the lamb. The kirin kept on chewing (he took his time), then said, with his mouth still full, “Theh’s no papa heah. Ron along nah, chile.”

Dardanelle choked a laugh, shaking her head slow. “Be serious, papa. I wanted to talk to you about the feed.”

Papa hacked half the bite into a kerchief that he took up from under his plate. Rolled it up.

“DARDANELLE… you passed out during the ceremony. It’s done. It’s OVER. You are no child of Mother Bear nor child of mine… nor child of Leire. Forgive me, but Mawa agrees. Rules are rules… and, as a father, I must be prepared for this… and, Dardanelle, you should leave. … Go on.”

The kerchief came back to dry the kirin’s bloodshot eyes.

* * *

Dardanelle ran. Forbid Rena see her, she had swore, but Rena had seen her regardless. Her breaths were rapid as her feet and her face was on fire. Down an overhang, down a cleft in the Earth (she slipped and landed on her tail and cried out; this was not a route she knew; she got up; she continued), through the unfamiliar stone alley (she hit her head and was bleeding), up onto soil, into a thicket. It was all foreign to her now. Yet, somehow, Rena found her.

She cried in the dirt in a corner beneath two perpendicular ledges raised to her shoulders. The noise; the convulsing, still visible staghorns; those, Dardanelle could only imagine gave her away. Scrapes on her shoulders and dirt on her face, breast, and tail. Her paint… ruined. But this paint means nothing, she thought bitterly.

Staring. Watching. Dardanelle wanted her away or at least wanted her to speak. The eyes burning into the back of her skull were awful and ugly. Footsteps heard from behind her moved to her side. The “True Blood” Rena sat beside her. Her knees bent in.

Dardanelle said, “Kudos to you.”

Rena said, “Why.”

Dardanelle said, “I saw you when I saw Pa… the banquet. You are sod.”

Rena said, “It’s a stupid test, Dardanelle. You didn’t bathe in the Bursmat, boo hoo. You ate the comb. Everyone was hurting. You passed out. That’s all. You could not control it.”

“Rena.”

“Go talk to your Ma and Pa.”

“Rena.”

“Talk to Knuckle, Dardanelle.”

“Rena.”

“Tell them to let you take the test again.”

“Rena, this was no test. Tests are graded. Tests have in-betweens. The feed is a ceremony. It has only yes and no. If you are an in-between, you are a no. I am the no, Rena.”

Rena was quiet.

Dardanelle hugged her. She sniffed in any tears that were about to fall. Said in a whisper, “Rena my Friend.”

It was the first time Dardanelle saw Rena tear up. The last too. “Dardanelle, Mine,” she whispered.

“I am to go.”

“Where.”

“The river current leads South. I’ll follow it.”

“Do not go.”

“The Nichaa will take me in. They may.”

“Tripe is all the Kin say of the Nichaa. They do not know. Most like, the Nichaa have their own feed ceremony, except it will be worse, because you know nothing of it.”

She stayed silent for a while. “That may be. What I do know is I cannot stay.”

Rena made her promise to come visit so she promised. They were both silent for a while. Only two heartbeats were heard. The one friend she had finally let go of her as leaves fell from their rising thighs, and their eyes met for a long time. When the eye contact broke, they were both running, as far and as fast away from each other as possible. And Dardanelle ran with the words Rena left her with: We will always be sisters.

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Side note: I found this song extremely fitting for the story.