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Wake Me Up Inside by Dave Ziegler

The boy, Tamika decided, had made pleasing tribute. Though sundown approached, she languished in bed, sated but unwilling to relinquish sight of his beauty just yet. And beautiful he was. Exquisite, even. His curls, heavy and rich like good earth, demanded admiration, as did his lean form and cherubic features. She followed his movements as he dressed wolfishly; he noticed, green eyes cocksure, and grinned. Tamika flashed her teeth in return. Yes, such a lovely creature had never been gifted her before.

It was a shame she’d have to castrate him.

Tamika had known immediately. She’d lain with too many virgins during holy rites to believe him an innocent. He was far too deft and creative. Why he’d so discard his manhood, though, she couldn’t guess. Perhaps he thought his considerable skill a match for divine doctrine? The idea, she realized heatedly, hardly lacked merit. Just the recollection of his touch made her tremble, hunger, ready to pull him back to her.

No. She had sacrificed that chance when she pledged herself to the Solastra. Thoughts otherwise were a betrayal. Tamika had no need for her own family, children. Her devotion was to Rowaena, golden in the sky; her succour for every Ynoan babe, not just those of her blood. Hers was a life of holy purpose, and those who made sport of it were punished for their presumptuous heresy.

Judgement came later, however. At sundown the childbirth would begin, and she was needed. The boy departed—with a last, lingering kiss—to head for the foothills, where family and neighbours sheltered and prayed for her victory.

Clothed and armoured, Tamika left her rooms and made for the physician’s hall. It stood at the western outskirts, as customary in every settlement in Ynoa. A rising wind promised no escape from the stench of mulch and manure, a spring staple of these rustic hamlets. Less sturdy folk were sick before long, but Tamika was used to it. Even without burgeoning crops to fight the smell with their crisp scents, she could be at ease.

This town was very like her birthplace, after all.

Bitter memories lived there.

Tamika was fourteen when it happened, the year her parents finally conceived a second child. Rowaena’s augur foretold a son. A family never knew such joy. When the birth neared and the Solastra arrived, Tamika volunteered herself as tribute. In service to her family, she decided the Solastra could only sate his earthly passions within her maiden sex. She was anointed and given to the holy warrior. During their lovemaking, he discovered her anxieties and assuaged them: over and again he tenderly swore to safeguard her loved ones.

How sure and true that vow sounded as she lay pressed to his flesh.

Afterward, Tamika and the villagers fled the coming danger. With little shelter nearby, safety meant a half day’s walk across the lowlands to a failing wood the people relied upon to hide them from harm. There they prayed for a day. The trek home was hard, but she felt her legs made light by anticipation of her new brother.

Instead they found the Solastra’s severed head. His body was stripped bare and spread-eagled to better display the expert cut of his wounds. Within the hall greater horror was done. No messages by this death, only merciless butchery. The memory of those hewed bodies—her family, stinking and feasted on by flies—haunted Tamika ever after.

The priests counselled her to treasure those images, especially her brother torn from the womb, because her rage and grief were as Rowaena’s own, a gift of power from the goddess.

And they spoke truth.

She soared effortlessly through the training, as a falcon might appear snatching prey. Then she started active service, was assigned her first childbirth, and faced her enemy for the first time. The heathens looked like ordinary men, but the order made plain their unnatural lifespan and strength. Secrets mattered little in the end. The infant butchers’ blood spilled just as easily as normal men’s by blade, and their flesh cooked and bubbled readily in Rowaena’s holy fire.

Two score at least had fallen to her in the thirteen years since, and each was a rapturous delight.

Tamika unsheathed her dagger as she approached the physician’s hall, and looked to the sun. Half gone behind the hills and falling faster, its waning fingers lit the clouds in deep purples and pinks. It was time. She cut Rowaena’s likeness into the door’s aged wood. Minutes later the last of the sunlight struck the image, and it burst aflame.

Now she waited.


Fields surrounded the town, ploughed, seeded, and smelling ripe. The bygone farmer in Abrim imagined it verdant and felt envious. He would dearly have loved to show its blossomed splendour to his wife or daughter, or recreated that picturesque image at home. Both were gone, though, and his country little more than barren heath.

To survive they needed fresh land; Abrim wouldn’t partake in its discovery. He had tried to convince his son to stay behind, to aid the exodus and not sacrifice his youth to this quest, but the boy stubbornly followed. Abrim couldn’t fault him. The exodus had failed for years, and worse things had come to the cursed Jucundi.

Yes, cursed. How else did one explain it? War had waged for generations and nearly destroyed his people. They prevailed, escaped the terror of extinction only to find it again in the now ashen earth. They gathered what they could and left. Many starved. Then the other deaths began, queer, sudden deaths, neither of want nor disease. The Jucundi were an old people, the first, and quickly they perceived the truth of things.

The souls of those dead did not journey to Paradise. They lingered in the world, pulled across the sea to an unknown fate.

The Jucundi were being killed for their souls.


Silver moonlight disclosed the heathen’s approach hours into her vigil. The man was alone. That was strange. While they never came in true force, the infant butchers commonly attacked in groups: Tamika had never fought less than two and upwards of three frequently. A single man seemed too casual a thrust, foolhardy in fact, an insult to herself and the goddess. However her opinion shifted as the fullness of her foe was revealed.

He was a terrifically sized man, with long, bullish legs and arms. If she stood atop a bushel, Tamika still would fail to meet his chin. His every step was light but sure, a soldier’s walk, vigilance and confidence awaiting action. He wore no armour, but carried a long, double-edged blade meant for duelling. A shorter hacking sword was sheathed at his hip.

Tamika rose and whipped her staff through the holy fire burning still upon the hall door. Both ends lit like tinder. She relaxed into her preferred fighting crouch. The heathen was close, but not enough so to strike. Her blood surged as a familiar grim glee possessed her. Twined moon and firelight now showed the man’s green eyes. Another two steps and she could kill him!

“I am Abrim.” He’d stopped, lowered his sword. “The many bloody years of my life have left me little stomach for death. Please step aside. Just the babe need perish, and even that I regret. Any others may live.”

A monstrous offer! Did he think it generosity? Should she surrender the hall, those parents were damned. Oh, they might live, but in the passing years thoughts of this night would chew their hearts apart. They would be dead to everything, with chance reprieves only to remind them afresh of their pain.

“I refuse!”

Tamika stepped and thrust her staff in an opening move meant to crush her opponent’s throat, but Abrim easily pushed the blow aside with his sword. They then fought evenly, well-matched in speed and skill, and she felt a certain pride in how well she had measured this man. Some of his kin before him had come close to this excellence, but none ever sustained it. He was special. Killing him would be all the more affecting for it.

“At length I have searched your country for my daughter,” Abrim said after their blows drove them apart, “and at journey’s end you would stop me in your ignorance? You think the coming babe an innocent; I know that is not so. Please!”

His grief was real, a palpable presence in every word. After years of living with her own hurt, Tamika could recognize it easily in others. Its veracity did little to explain the nonsense he spoke, though. She laughed. “No lie that passes your lips shall sway me.”

“I offer no lie, only truth’s sad face. Can you recognize it?” He regarded her searchingly, sword extended to keep her at distance. After moments, “I see that you can’t. Let me tell you then: your goddess murders to give you children.”

Tamika uttered a black curse.

“Like the widow spider,” Abrim continued, ignoring her invocation, “she kills for the life inside. Our souls are forced into your women’s wombs. We know because we follow our stolen family and free them! Such vile enslavement cannot be conceded. Would you? Or would you fight and kill to save your dearest kin?”

Her goddess and family were defiled by this profane talk. They were spat upon and made base. That angered Tamika: more so than the eager eyes of men come to murder children, more than the Solastra’s bodiless head and its lesson of betrayal, more than the solitary reality that none of her lovers would remain past sundown.

“If Rowaena sees fit to give us your lives,” she snarled, “then I know it justly done!”

Tamika leapt back. The heathen couldn’t cut her at this distance, but she could burn him. Mere steps were nothing to Rowaena’s avenging flames. She held the staff’s blazing butt before her face and drew deeply of the night air. In seconds she would release that breath, and he would cremate in a holy pyre.

An arrow took her through the shoulder.

It knocked Tamika off her feet and punched the air from her lungs. The staff slipped her fingers; its flames guttered as it hit the earth. On her back, limbs twisted and thoughts dizzy, with volcanic pain spreading inside her, she opened her eyes. Through thick tears, Tamika saw the arrow’s bright fletching and her own dark blood. She couldn’t stand, couldn’t use that arm. She was dead.

“May your goddess grant you everlasting bliss,” Abrim said, sword held above her heart.

“Father!”

Tamika’s life changed forever at that word. She knew its speaker, had assented to his wilful suggestions, taken pleasure in his whispered praises, and enjoyed his delighted groans this day past. She may have even loved his guileful grin. Now she wanted only to be sick, to scream, to deny this vile nightmare.

The beautiful boy approached them, bow in hand, arrows quivered upon his back. “Father,” he repeated, “spare her, or I lose something precious.” He forestalled questions with a raised hand. “First, feel as we did when we tracked Lael. Do you not sense something?”

Abrim narrowed his eyes. “The babe made of her soul, it’ll come soon now.” Then, his features confused, “What’s this other tiny life?” Astonishingly he threw back his head and laughed. “What have you done, boy?”

“I have sired a child.”

Child? Tamika felt horror beyond comprehension. With tremulous fingers she grasped her dagger, held it ready, and drove the point toward her belly.

“Hold!” Abrim roared, and Tamika’s hand stilled. “Before choosing death, consider—as I just have—that we are blind to our gods’ wisdom; that we were intended to join with you; that this is salvation! Can you believe that?” Abrim sheathed his sword. “I do, and shall let my daughter live anew to prove it.”

Just then, as if to demand Tamika’s answer, a newborn’s hungry cries rang clear in the coming morning.

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