Suss could remember the end of the story.

Ma’ii was found.

Six hundred generations ago, in the desert, a group of refugees were dying. Before they slept every night and as soon as they rose, they cursed their own names. They had chose to flee lands that they no longer recognized. Had they stayed, they could have died slowly and painfully, but it would have been an easier death than the agony they brought upon themselves now. Choosing to live meant choosing to work. Though willing, not one of them knew what needed to be done. Horror and pain wrapped around their throats, robbed them of speech and scorched their skin. Everyday, they watched their children wither, and perish. Every night, elders would disappear, taking nothing and leaving only fleeting grief.

The refugees could not escape from the land itself, land that had turned putrid and hateful. Everywhere they had been, the land was dying. Not one amongst them would dare cast a single spell, for no one could be sure anymore, of what would happen. Magic had turned on them. Scholars in the cities said that magic had caused all of the calamities. The last messages received on the neuronet, before it went down, were warnings. Stop all use of magic. Flee the population centers. Seek shelter. The end is now.

Months they had been traveling, through lands wrought with war. Violence was a thing of such distant memory, that when they first saw it, they did not recognize it for what it was. Other refugees had come upon them and taken their supplies. Others still had taken some of the women, and still more had beaten the weak in plain sight laughing without joy.

Youngest of the children who wandered in the desert was a girl called Sahar, and she fled from eradication into obliteration on her mother’s back. Sahar’s head was wrapped in dark fabric and pressed against her mother’s shoulder. Slow, gentle rocking lulled her in and out of sleep. When she saw the naked woman laughing merrily, she thought it impossible. No joy was left in this dying world. Sahar lifted her head from her mother’s shoulder and looked much more carefully at the woman they were passing.

The woman was a coyote and a woman. She was neither a woman nor a coyote. Sahar accepted this easily, as children do. Since they’d crossed into the desert, each night they had seen coyotes. The adults would run for their bows. Never had they actually hit one, for not even one of the refugees knew the proper use of the bow. Few amongst them had the strength to pull the string back, and the bows were not being maintained properly. None of the adults moved for their bows or even seemed to see the woman.

Sahar called out her mother’s name. Her mother made soothing noises. Again she offered the same empty promise to Sahar that they were close to their destination. The group was passing the woman who was a coyote, and no one seemed to see her. Sahar tried again. She pled with her mother to stop. Such noise she made, the others in the group uttered harsh reprieve. Sahar’s mother craned her neck to look at her daughter. Reprimands and promises of punishment were not enough to stop her though, and Sahar continued to scream. Stop. Look. There. There is a woman who will help us! There is a woman who needs our help. Finally her mother stopped. The straps were undone and Sahar was released unto the ground. Punishment that had been foretold was not to be had though. Sahar’s legs were rested and her mother was tired. So tired.

Faster than the arrows lobbed from the ramshackle bows, Sahar ran. Before the woman, she stood fearful.

Words were spoken.

I am Ma’ii.

I am Sahar.

Your people have forgotten me. Learned to speak and forgot to listen.

I am sorry. I did not mean to forget.

I will forgive you. I will help you.

We are lost. We are afraid. We have no home, no food. We have no hope.

I will teach you to build homes. To grow food. To survive in this land. I will teach you hope. For a price, for a promise.

What is the price?

And now the others were upon them. And now the others could see, could hear the price.

Forget me never again. Carry me in your hearts, carry me always with you. Love me, worship me. And I will teach you.

Ma’ii was found.

Suss could remember the end of the story.

She was amazed at all the things she could remember. Her mind felt sharp in the darkness. The darkness was complete here. She could feel the wall at her back, and the door before her just by leaning forward. It was impossible to sit down, but strangely she had no desire to sit, or to rest. There was no way to measure how much time had passed other than to recite the stories aloud. So she had been reciting them all.

When she had first become aware in here, she could not remember anything of how she came to be here. It came back to her very slowly, but there were still many things her mind reeled from. The children crying out. The oozing green fog that crept through the hall towards her. The tiny bodies on the floor unmoving, the light that was being drained from them. It was much easier to remember her childhood, to focus on the details of each of Ma’iis stories, and for the first time, she could remember how each and every story ended.

Vaguely she recalled that she should feel fear. Some part of her reeled at the wrongness of this, of imprisonment in this tiny cell, but the fear was distant. All of her feelings were cold and direct now. Her mind was tranquil and sharp. Her mind was the sky in the dark nights when Ma’ii’s eye was turned away, and each of her thoughts shined as bright as the stars.

They had opened the door to her tiny cell once. Barked orders at her in a language she didn’t understand. She had walked out of the cell, expecting the light to be blinding. It was not. She stood in her pool of strange calmness, in a dimly lit room filled with dozens of people who were not people. They glistened in the twinkling light, faces made of shiny copper, with lights like torches where their eyes should have been. Below their ‘eyes’ was nothing but a hole covered with silver lattice. They were naked, but they had nothing to cover. Their bodies were smooth.

In the dim light she looked around, confused. Then she saw that her hands were the same shiny copper, the same smooth textureless metallic material. She knew that she was now a person who was not a person. She tried to touch her face, and realized she had no nose. Certainty that she should be horrified tried to assert itself, but the dominant part of her mind said that this was just the way things were, and she accepted it. Ma’ii was not forgotten, that was the important thing. The promise was not broken.

She tried to talk, and the voice that she heard was a metallic echo, “Please, whoever you are, I will do anything you ask, just please don’t hurt the children.”

“Suss!” The voice that called out to her was distant and it was the same as her own. It was a metallic sound like rain falling on a copper pot, and it revolted the tiny part of her that kept insisting she should feel a certain way.

A sound like a bell being struck inside her head jarred her from her thoughts. The man who was not a man looked up and down the row and raised his hands for silence, one holding a strange looking rod. His face was similar to all the others, but it lacked the perfect untouched smoothness. Dents and corrosion marred the surface, and rather than being naked and smooth his body looked as if it had been bound to piecemeal armor. He hung the rod he carried from a loop at his waist. Suss saw on his back the satchel that she remembered seeing the pieces of black glass stored in. He was talking to the woman with the obsidian skin, and Suss realized that his voice was the same as her own. She said something to him, quick and rough, and then stormed off without looking back.

After that it was a matter of being told again and again to do things that she did not understand. Finally the man had started pantomiming his expectations, and Suss was able to perform to his satisfaction. Raise one hand, put it down. Raise the other. Make a circle in the air. Spread the spindly appendages that had replaced her fingers. She asked again and again about the children during this, but he either did not understand or did not care. If anyone else in the room tried to speak to her or to each other, he struck the ground with the rod her carried and the sound it made was deafening. It blocked all thought until its echo faded. He walked up and down the row and painstakingly made each one of the people who were not people go through the same routine she had.

Then he began returning them to their tiny cells. Suss was not upset. It was dawning on her that she could not become upset, and there was a splendid peace in that realization. It was impossible for her to say if she was dead. She felt nothing but peace, but this existence could not be called life, and it certainly did not seem to be the paradise that she had been promised. The memories of Ma’ii were the only thing left in her that seemed to burn with any heat.