Chapter 20 -scenes of gore and self mutilation-

Mila hadn’t given it much thought, but if she had, she didn’t think she’d have been able to guess what Jed had planned.

Perhaps he had felt a little stood up after their mock fight. Perhaps he’d liked the coolness with which she’d used the bo staff. It seemed that his goal was to outdo her.

Mila and several wolves watched with rapt attention while Jed used two flaming rods to dance. It was particularly fascinating to watch through her second lids as Jed ran cool, but the flames burned bright, moving as though on their own.

The unicorn had cantered to the far side of the field, none too pleased by the fire. Mila herself felt the hair raise on her arms. It wasn’t that she couldn’t take a little fire. It would actually be extremely difficult to burn her as her mermaid skin didn’t experience heat in the same way.

In the oceans were volcanic vents blasting out temperatures capable of melting human flesh. The heat couldn’t kill her, but since getting human flesh, she was considerably more wary of it.

Still, it was beautiful and Jed’s fluid motions were so elegant. She almost felt she could fall in love.

She felt true disappointment when he stopped dancing just twenty minutes later to the applause of many, Mila included. He grinned her way in a cheeky sort of way that she couldn’t even find annoying.

“Impressed?” he asked her as she made her way to the stage.

“Very,” she gave a genuine smile.

The wolves gathered around to watch. The eldest she-wolf had someone bring her a chair. They waited for Mila, young wolves wagging tails eagerly after Jed’s amazing performance.

Mila stood up. She wore a cut-off white tank top and a white sarong that showed off her tanned flesh. She removed the daggers from her sheaths and gave a low bow.

“Thank you, wolf packs, for allowing me to join in your festivities. As you know, my people come from the water so the dances I’m about to perform were created with the purpose of worshipping our god above the ground.”

A young wolf cub wasn’t able to contain his excitement and raised his hand to ask a question. “What is the name of your god?”

Mila smiled stiffly. “My god is the oldest. They come from the primordial waters before there was a distinction between oceans and lands. So old that there was no one else around to call their name if they had one. Our people only refer to them as our ‘god’, but for this, I think we can use the ancient Sumerian name, Abzu.”

As she explained to the child, she began moving her body is slow, writhing motions. She spun, bringing the blades close to her body and by the time she’d turned all the way back around, the ancient pictograms for the name ‘Abzu’ had been sliced into her collar.

Winnie gave an audible gasp. Without meaning to, Jed leaned closer to the stage. His eyes fixated on the red words.

The dances were similar to old war dances, designed to intimidate. It was meant to show that she had no fear of pain. She had to measure her breathing carefully as she sang, illustrating the torrential old oceans before the time of the mermaids.

The first dance ended with the birth of the first-born, marked by Mila slicing along her lower belly like a cesarean. Many wolves, particularly females, expressed concern and discomfort as the blood began to pour over the top of the sarong. A couple of the younger boys whispered “cool” at the gore.

Mila smiled to show it was okay. “The birth of Ae facilitated in the building of our ocean home, but with the eons came changes to our world. The rise of continents and evolution as our creatures left the depths to explore the world above.”

Mila’s next dance was much less aggressive. She allowed her body to drop, wriggling like a worm, slowly extending to a crawl to show the evolution of sea critters turning into the first dinosaurs. The dragging caused her sarong and legs to become streaked with blood.

Still, despite the continued bleeding, she rose up like a tree, extending life over the barrens. Slices along the underside of her arms rained blood onto the stage, expressing the flourishing of the land with the eons of life and death, nurturing.

The great cataclysm that wiped out the largest of the flora and fauna was shown when she flipped, landing hard on her knees, shoulders hunched, her back bleeding from long slashes. Her hair covered her face and she sank once more, showing the return of many of her beloved creatures, taking new forms.

But not all returned. The first mammals explored the ruins the of the old world after leaving the safety of their caves. They helped grow the earth anew even while continents shifted and the surface became as treacherous as the waters.

Children laughed when Mila mimicked the first primates slowly going from crawling about on all fours to walking on two legs, their backs straightening. Mila turned and in an almost sensual gesture, pulled her hair over her shoulder to expose her back. With deliberate slowness, she carved down the center of her back, cutting her shirt along with her skin.

She bent, pushing out her spine to stretch open the human skin and show the darker chitinous skin below to the sounds of gasps.

“Ae saw these first primates from the brief glimpses of our people as we leapt from the water,” Mila did a series of jumps and flips, the way a porpoise might propel itself out of water. “Each time, we saw more and more change.”

The sin of curiosity had Mila crawling again, reaching to touch something that evaded her. Ae had wanted to see these creatures in person. They’d wanted to see what the sun had done to the ocean folk that never returned home.

Mila’s dance became violent again as she slashed at herself. The violence of her people that fought for the honor of escorting Ae. She shrieked in rage and anguish, blood now pouring from her arms and legs as well as torso.

“I was one of the chosen. I’d earned it, spilling the blood of myself and my kin to breach the surface world as guardian to Ae. I have lived my life for Abzu and Ae, following them through thousands of rotations around the sun.”

Mila used the curves of the blades to spread open the skin of her chest like rib-spreaders. Several people had to look away, but others were in rapture. Her real skin exposed to them was scaled with iridescent plates.

Mila reached inside and, with a sound like cutting metal, removed a plate from the center. The blood that came from her was a golden ichor. It was thick as honey and hardened swiftly when exposed to the air. She had to plunge her own hand into the wound to encourage it flow harder.

Years of practice had made her hands adept at shaping the hardening liquid. What she came away with was an amber statue in the rough shape of a wolf.

She ripped bit off her sarong to reseal the opened chest. She hopped down from the stage and presented the wolf to the elder who took it gingerly in her knobby hands, nodding respectfully.