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Lands of Red and Gold #34: Intermission

Not a very long post here - more of an interlude. Writing the next instalment has taken much longer than I had planned, so I've separated it into multiple sections. Here's the first part.

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17th year of Regent Boringa Yadji [June 1629]
Kirunmara [Terang, Victoria]
Land of the Five Directions (Yadji Empire)

Drums beat, voices chant. Sunlight spills over feather-bedecked, thread-of-gold wearing priests and singers. Leather shoes click on tiles; the floor awaits its mistress.

Lenawirra glides into the centre, her movements sinuous, her limbs moving in patterns shaped in memory and in song, never resting. One step flows into the next, arms and shoulders matching in counterpoint. Stillness cannot prosper, jerkiness would be betrayal. All must be continuous, her body as fluid as the water which drives history. Only the ears can distinguish the separation of her movements, her shoes falling in a staccato of their own, the tap of leather on ceramic.

In the centre she halts, the pattern suspended to await command. Before her rests a cushion, in the hands of one she dares not name, even in the sanctity of her own thoughts. He is the... No, think not of him. Look instead at the object that awaits.

A shape of gold and feathers, a mask that conceals the face and will reveal the soul. Two golden rings to surround her eyes, with a leather strap at their sides to fasten around her head, while the shape of the mask below the eyes first expands slightly, then closes in a wedge that will fit just below her chin, with delicate feathers carved into its shape. She has been honoured beyond words with this gift; no-one else in the court is permitted to wear the shape of the eagle [1].

Gleaming is the mask, polished of gold, a mirror of power. Visions are blurred, in feathers and shapes, but herself she sees, imperfectly yet fittingly. Her skin dark of nature, her hair green of artifice, her clothes woven of determination.

“Wear what calls to you, fear it not,” he says, the man before her. Look at him now she must, for all that she would declaim that privilege. His name she still will not think, for to speak it while he yet lives is to bring misfortune or worse upon oneself.

The Lord of All is he, the Regent of the Neverborn, the supreme ruler of the Land of the Five Directions, the first above the earth. His name belongs to himself alone, and it will not be spoken by another living being until he goes to fight his Last Battle [ie dies], where if he is victorious he will hear a voice calling to him: “Truly fought, my noble Regent, but now seek rest; your Emperor awaits you now.”

That voice has not yet called him, but another voice calls to her. It is the Regent, speaking not according to the forms, but outside of them. “Take up the mask, Lenawirra. It belongs to you, if it belongs to anyone.”

With such a command, she cannot refuse, even if it brings her pain. Coherent now, the Regent sounds. Such a division it brings, the two sides of her heart beating against each other. Better if he were consumed entirely by madness. A fully insane Regent would have forced the priests to resolve the situation. Where sanity flits like a banner caught in the wind, how can anyone know whether to honour the Regent or mourn him?

Take the mask, she would prefer not, yet. Right yet, the time is not. The sun shines on the floor, but not yet on her.

Commands the Regent, though, and obey she must. Rhythm returns, hands moving in the pattern that has become part of her soul. Dons the mask she does, the drums beat again, and the chanters raise their cries. The music dictates her movements, Lenawirra steps outside of herself, and the Mask Dance consumes her.

Woe is unto the night, or so comes the chant, and her limbs move in accord. Flowing, outstretched arms circling her, above and below, banishing the darkness.

Goanna steps into the sun. The dance shapes into a new rhythm, balancing her as she leans back, as if she were poised on two legs and tail.

Owl lands on the tree. Arms outstretched again, swooping down this time, coming into what would be a perfect landing and then stillness, except that the dance calls her into the next steps.

Sun glints off the waves. Undulating patterns of arms, legs, chest and head, dipping and raising, circling slowly around the motionless figure of the Regent.

Whirlwind calls to the dust. Arms upraised above her, still for the first time in the dance, her body twirling in not-quite-circles as she mimics the unpredictable shifting of the eddies of the call of the Lord of Night.

Duck takes to flight. A gliding crouch she shapes, rhythmic and sensuous, with arms calling to the wind in ever-increasing flaps.

Dingo calls the hunt. Circles again, she does, with arms folded and mask uplifted, evoking the cries of the wild dogs now more memory than presence.

Echidna protects itself. With practiced sweeps of her feet she suggests the exploring snout of the spiny totem, and curls her head down into a roll which brings her body briefly into the shape of a ball, as the echidna protects itself. The roll brings her to the feet of the Regent, where she stands with secreted knife now clasped in hand, and plunges it into the Regent’s chest.

Move she will not, as agonised cry comes from the Regent’s throat, overwhelmed at first the chants. Soon those fade as witnesses observe, the criers falling silent, the drums ceasing their beat.

Confusion and shouts, anger and despair, all beyond her. Lenawirra removes the mask, and she returns to herself. The rhythm has fled, the pattern broken, the Regent gone to a contest he must face alone.

“It had to be done,” she says, words that he can no longer hear, and which no-one else cares to know. Where sanity is an occasional refuge, the Land of the Five Directions leaderless, no man dares to take up the knife, to her it has fallen.

It is a crime beyond redemption, they will say. The Lord of the Night has taken on womanly form, they will declare. She cares not. Blame her they will, but praise the outcome they must. Where lunacy ruled, now a new Regent must be named to reign.

The dance of her life has ended, but may the rhythm of the Land of Five Directions resume, moving always until the end of time when the Neverborn breaks free from the earth to claim His own.

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[1] The largest Australian eagle, the wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax) has an extremely distinctive wedge-shaped tailed which is easily recognised in flight. The wedge-tailed eagle is associated with royalty and power amongst eastern Aururian peoples, including the iconic representation of a wedge to show its tail.

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Thoughts?