Ee-mi was showing the other girls how to work the thin white threads of hemp from the heaps of cut off stalks that had been dragged in from the fields. After the stems were smashed open then the crew would have to roll them flat with the rocks and then everyone would lean closer, feeling with fingertips to be the first to pull the fibers free. Ee-mi expertly hooked a string over her thumb and presented it, smiling, to the older girl who crouched next to her.
There was the sound of someone approaching and even before she looked up, Ee-mi knew it was Jemma. Jemma’s big thighs scissored in a beautiful tight flowered skirt as she came up to the shady work area. Jemma’s breath was deep and throaty, her fleshy breasts damp with drips of perspiration, as if she had hurried a long way.
“Why are you dressed so nice, S’si Jemma?” she asked innocently. She rubbed the back of her hand against her eyebrow where it itched, looked questioningly at Jemma. Her sister’s wife seemed so nervous.
“Ee-mi. I have bad news. Happy-Dancing is sick. She needs you at home right away,” Jemma said as she pulled Ee-mi upward from her kneeling position in the workgroup, straightened her short skirt, tried to brush away the dry yellow dust from her knees and legs. Happy-Dancing was the name of the little girl-dog that would jump up when Ee-mi held out food.
Ee-mi was confused. This couldn’t be. From where they stood she could see the tips of Happy’s paws sticking out from behind the trunk of a nearby tree. “But, Happy-Dancing is right here with me.”
“Ee-mi.” Jemma changed her mind. “Listen to me. Let’s go for a walk. I need to talk to you about something.”
What are you doing, S’si? We have work to do here.” Not like you, Ee-mi thought with sudden irritation.
“It’s your day, Ee-mi. Come on,” Jemma commanded. But it wasn’t. Ee-mi’s eighth birthday had been months before. “Never mind. You’ll see,” Jemma said. “It’s hard to explain.”
The town was still and hot at this time of the morning. A slanted row of woven cane structures cast shadows that directed them away from the busy group of winnowers. All the men had been sent away. Ee-mi could see only a few of the sick sitting stiff and thin in the shade of their homes.
The soft yellow dust and its lacy shadows drifted behind as they kicked their way through it. Jemma began pulling Ee-mi’s bare arm painfully along. By now they were almost running.
One of the village’s warrior women emerged slowly from her hut ahead of them. She bowed her helmeted head impassively, then turned to let the two of them pass.
“Are we going home, S’si? We’re going the wrong way!” Instead of making their way around the outer circles of the town Jemma was leading Ee-mi straight toward its center. More and more of the villagers were standing straight from the entrances to their houses. Like Jemma they were dressed in their best and most colorful clothing, draped in rows of jangling jewelry.
“Stop it, stop it,” Ee-mi said. She tore herself free from Jemma’s insistent grasp and stood, uncertain of what to do next.
A tall woman as dark-skinned as Ee-mi slipped from a sideway, strode silently to where they stood. What Ee-mi saw right away was that she was naked between the legs. She was wearing bound leggings of striped antelope hide, wound from her ankles to her high hips with braids of the raw hemp. For a second Ee-mi thought of dashing away, running back to join the other children at their work. But as soon as the idea came she was prevented from acting on it. Two strangers stepped from behind to take hold of her arms.
“Ee-mi, ah-nonna-mi.” It meant favored one. The woman’s face was old, old and made strong by experience, and her voice was rough and sweet and hoarse, like raw sugar. Despite the glaring heat of the morning her head was framed by a collar of bristling fur.
Ee-mi stared up in wonder into the woman’s eyes, deep dark brown centers set in yellow and white that measured everything inside her. “Yes, mother,” she replied.
Ee-mi’s head reached only half as high as the nearly naked figure who stood before her. It put her right at eye-level with the line of coarse kinky hair that began beneath the woman-witch’s belly button and curled down thick between her legs. Ee-mi couldn’t stand the way it looked, couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable it would be to have so much hair down there. How could she ever pee? The thick growth had been plucked away to expose a long wrinkled ruffle of dark purple flesh. It was the ugliest thing Ee-mi had ever seen.
Worried that the tiny child before her might not yet be ready, the shaman reached forward to grip Ee-mi by the shoulders. Brass bracelets were squeezed tight around her arms and wrists and her nails were curved and hard and they dug into the girl’s skin.
At eight years old, Ee-mi was thin and strong, unused to being held still, and she shrugged back against the examination. The little girl was naked above and beneath the scrap of skirt tied around her narrow waist. Her sensitive nipples were the surest sign of her readiness, though, swollen into soft gray circles against the flat black skin of her girlish chest.
“This way, child.” Ee-mi allowed herself to be guided into the longhouse of the women. She slid by Jemma swiftly and without touching, pushed through a narrow opening draped with thick tanned animal hides. Betrayer.
For men the ceremonies always happen in the open night, highlit with the drama and frenzy of dancing flames. But Ee-mi entered in the quiet of morning. A slow and secretive rattle broke the heavy darkness of the inside, shaking into a steady stacatto. Suddenly she was surrounded by the ghosts of the recognized present, faces and forms that swam before her stll dazzled eyes, closed inward toward her, touching her, talking to her without making sense.
Ee-mi had never been allowed to enter the longhouse before. The inside was rich and wide and tall, the ridgepole nearly twice as high as a person. Two rows of carved bone lanterns led along a narrow way, spreading and circling their flickering light around a glistening leather pedestal that stood as tall as the little girl.
For the first time Ee-mi was afraid. Strange hands, old hardened hands grasped her and held her from both sides. Something smelly was waved beneath her wrinkling nose. It was hot thick smoke and she nearly choked as it felt its way through her nostrils, curled upwards into spaces that lay behind her vision.
Ee-mi was taken up. It no longer mattered that her small feet touch the pounded earth floor. A nest of arms curved beneath her, turned her body over, slowly unfastened and removed her clothing.
The woman named Jemma came forward first. She kissed her wife’s younger sister tenderly beneath the chin. Ee-mi stared straight upward now, unwilling to acknowledge the touch of the one who had delivered her. But Jemma just smiled. Her fingers slipped downward, closed possessively around the tiny twin spouts that pricked out from the girl’s upper torso. Ee-mi wanted to shake her away but she couldn’t move. All she could see was Jemma leaning over her, now withdrawing her hands and beginning to stroke her own large breasts, pinch and pull at her huge brown nipples.
“Milinka-a-t’mem, Ee-mi.” Jemma breathed. She was staring straight into Ee-mi’s eyes. “I am giving you my milk, Ee-mi.” And she was. Jemma’s naked breasts had begun to flow with a sweet silvery cream, and she was crying now with pain and emotion as she squeezed and clenched and gathered it into her palms. She reached forward and began to smear the liquid across Ee-mi’s skin.
Other women had begun to rise from the dark recesses where the woven roof of the longhouse came close to the floor and emerge into the smoky tallow-yellow light of the candles hung from the ridgepole. Their rounded shadows danced across Ee-mi, their gentle hands pulled and stroked the smooth skin of Jemma’s dangling mammaries, splattering the young initiate with hot, sticky magical rain.
“Drink, Ee-mi!” Now Jemma had brought both brown breasts tight together, was forcing her hardened nipples through Ee-mi’s lips. Ee-mi bit down hard and the salty spark of blood suddenly shot through the milk. “Eee-miii!” Jemma shrieked with tortured joy.
Ee-mi was whimpering and snorting like a baby again and the women murmured sympathy even as they pulled her suckling mouth away and prepared her for the next part of the ritual, turning Ee-mi over and facing her head down in the high hard leather saddle she had seen when she entered. Her arms were stretched forward and bound together with the same hempen rope that was looped tight and scratchy around her waist.
It was as though Ee-mi was taking a bareback ride on a beast with no front legs. In this position her knees were spread wide, slightly bent, her feet dangling, stirrup-less. It held her young hips higher than her head, opened the space between them.
Now the women were making noises of approval, running long stroking fingers across her upraised bottom, touching and testing the soft inner flesh Ee-mi’s placement exposed. Her thighs slipped and slapped against the leather flanks of her seat. Why did she feel so suddenly guilty?
Something was happening. Ee-mi felt her baby parts clench tight together in response to a deep steady sound, beating first from her heart, then beginning to throb and pulse inside the back of her head. She felt a warm trickle run down to her waist, felt the pressure of shaping palms as handfuls of wet clay were brought forth, smoothed across her buttocks, sculpted into two high heavy mounds.
The sticky squishy earthen sound was taken up with drums and wordless song. Ee-mi moaned uncomfortably at the first tentative touches, then spasmed and relaxed, then begin to quiver again without control as the tribal women worked and split her new soft flesh, drew the flat line of her bottom deep into a dark canyon.
“It is because you are special, Ee-mi.” The voice of the goddess spoke in response to the question her mind was struggling to form. Ee-mi gasped as a clenched fist pressed between her legs, moaned as a stiffened finger stirred her open, poked inside.
Someone handed another one a long pronged stick. The human finger was withdrawn and someone pushed the barkless branch into the passageway that had been prepared. Ee-mi felt the witchy wood gathering the fluids within as it slid slowly inside, felt the stir of clotted blood as the spread vee of the divining rod pressed snugly up against her built-up buttocks, was turned and lined along her female axis..
The woman shaman, whose name was Ee-mi too, appeared again. With a whoop she sprang from the darkness to prance legs akimbo before the young girl, the curved hollows of her thighs as hard and black as fractured obsidian.
Her round muscular belly was slung low and beautiful below a narrow-waisted jangling cowrie shell belt. A fiery opalescent gem shone inside her clenching navel. Below, a nappy dark pubic bump was thrust forward toward Ee-mi, inside it sat her hot pink totem.
Ee-mi watched in fascination as she twisted her fingers through the strands of stinky crooked hair, tugged back hard, made the little pink animal poke unafraid into the open. It was moist and glistening, crinkled with anticipation. Ee-mi raised her face to see, her mouth suddenly moist, her lips rough and dry.
The older woman guided her gently into place, directing Ee-mi’s extended tongue up in and around her meat-flavored candy, then pressing her down until the girl’s nose was buried deep in the intimate enveloping fleshy folds.
She was watching herself watch herself now, her chin pointing upward and her eyes narrowing to pleasured slits, her hips hard against the leather throne. From behind she could see her lean strutting adult figure lean carefully over her younger self.
“We give you the sacred and the profane, Ee-mi,” Her hands were tight on the divining sapwood rod, “Joy and shame!” There was the tiniest of pains and then it was withdrawn and the stored up, curdled blood began to flow, rich and red.
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