The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar

Then she told the story of Bel Marfunya, whose blood had dried up. Children gathered as she related the tale, kneeling on the ground, their legs ashen with a mixture of dust and the sparkling goblin silver of the hills. The smaller ones crept close and nestled against the breasts of the women, who stroked their soft hair absently and watched the teller, and Nask fell asleep in the crook of Amlasith’s arm, gripping her finger tightly and trailing saliva on her fiery sleeve. When the story was over Amlasith smiled and snapped her fingers to show her appreciation and her bracelets jingled down the length of her arm. The thinner chains moved slowly, caught on the hairs. “Now,” she said, “does anyone have a question for our visitor?”
    “How can you tell if the white snake has struck?” someone cried, and laughter, quelled by the story, burst out everywhere. The feredhai called love “the white snake” and a lover was one who had been struck or one, it was said, who had swallowed dragon’s milk.
    “ I don ’t know,” I said. Hot light beat up from the lantern into my face.
    “Are you engaged?”
    “Have you ever been struck?”
    “Will you have a green or gold wedding?”
    Suddenly the storyteller, the girl in the leather vest, interrupted, claiming that people in love were unable to eat hoda. She spoke over the protests of the others, telling of somebody she knew, a distant cousin of hers beyond the Uloidas, a man with a beard down to his chest who had gone for a year without eating hoda until he gained the woman he loved as his bride. This cousin had survived only on milk and fish and sama. In the end he grew so thin that his own horse failed to recognize him; it bit him on the shoulder, and the wound went black and he lay in his tent on the brink of death beneath a carpet of flies. Then his uncle, who had refused to support his suit, rode out on his stallion, weeping enormous tears that streamed in the wind, and brought back the girl with her tent on the back of the horse. “That is how it happens,” she said, drawing their laughter toward her, leaving me safe.
    To swallow dragon’s milk. The next day she came to me where I sat with Fadhian, once again clad in her pale cloak. She must be in mourning, I thought. My throat thickened strangely when she stopped and looked at me, dark eyes under curving brows. She said Amlasith wanted me: the women were going to bathe. Fadhian watched the cows, half smiling into his coffee. I followed the girl, feeling like a broken, sideways creature, the owner of a body that would not serve.
    I told myself that this was a lie. I thought: My body has fought and lived . I thought: I could seize this poet’s arm and break it behind her back . I thought: The unscarred women depicted in the temples are gods . Yet misery covered me like a rash.
    At the stream, I removed my clothes as if before an executioner. First the sword. Then the jacket, and then the boots. Some of the girls already splashed in the water, shrieking in the cold, but most stood gazing at me unabashed. Vest, shirt, undershirt. Here then is my map. On my shoulder, a slash received at Orveth. Bar-Hathien across my ribs. One arm is also Bar-Hathien, the other Godol. Now the trousers. This leg: the foothills of the Lelevai.
    I stood shivering under their stares. An exquisite self-loathing frothed in me like wine. And then something brown and galloping seized my hand. The poet, whooping in the raw air, pulled me down the bank till we crashed in the stream, like running into a sheet of lightning.
    Her name was Seren. She had memorized countless lines of poetry. She spoke the che —the secret language of feredha women. It was the language they used to call the goats, a barrage of clicks and humming, but there were words in it too: klasn was water, niernetsa was thread. She told me, laughing, that she had met me before. She would not tell me where. I thought she must have been one of the girls who came riding to