In the dim market alley, I gulp from the dipper. A beetle struggles across the silvery water in the communal rain urn until I flick him free.
That has to be enough bartering and haggling for a day. I hitch up my pack, bulging with mutton and herbs. Father must be ready to head home — if only I could find him.
Behind the adjacent door, bells clink against bones. The priest! I sputter and drop the ladle, leaving it swinging on its twine.
I lurch past the butcher’s clay pots to disappear in the market throng, but Priest Sleene crashes open the alley door. Bang! Ducking behind a refuse basin, my boots squish in rancid meat scraps.
The priest pauses on the threshold. His black robes clot the doorway, and his attached wings arch stiffly from his shoulders. “Your firstborn female is worthless!” he hisses to the couple inside.
A tiny babe thrashes and starts to cry in the blue scrap of linen dangling from Sleene’s clutch. The material is taut across the infant’s open mouth and little jerking fists.
Despite the baby’s outrage, I can’t get past the door without the priest’s notice. No one wants to draw his eye, least of all me. “Boy,” he sneers whenever he sees me, making my skin pimple.
Sleene sweeps out into the alley. His oiled, bald head glints.
I shudder when the young father stops on the doorstep and bars his pale wife from leaving. She thrusts her thin arms beyond his, and her pleading fingers spread wide. “Our daughter! Don’t take her and leave her out there. She’ll die!”
Sleene spins and glares at her. He raises his voice above the wail streaming from the cloth. “You and your husband would declare her a male then?” He swings the squirming bundle before her, just out of her reach.
Yes, I beg silently.
“We will!” the woman promises and grasps at the air, but her husband shoves her behind him.
“No! Take the babe.” He elbows her back.
“Filthy R’tans,” Sleene mutters, as if even the name of my people dirties his tongue.
I grip my knees and duck my head lower, while anger flames my skin.
The woman lunges past, but the man grabs her around the waist and spreads his hand over her mouth.
Sleene glowers. “Tame your woman, Hangrot, or I will.”
Crying and flailing in her husband’s hold, the woman’s shirt slides off her shoulder, and I notice two wet circles spread into the bodice as her body leaks milk for her babe. Hangrot whispers into her ear.
Finally, Sleene shifts the wriggling bundle and stomps past my hiding place. A newborn fist tears through the cloth. To keep from reaching out to it, I jerk back against the butcher’s wall and cross my arms.
As the priest turns the corner, his robe whips about his ankles, rattling the attached bells and bones sewn along the hem. The end points of his wings drag through the dirt. Trailing jangles haunt the passageway, and a long black feather sticks in the mucky ground.
Why, why did that man let Sleene take his daughter?
The mother wrests her mouth free. “She’ll die, Hangrot! We can’t let him leave her out there. Our baby deserves to live! Declare her male!”
Please, so you can keep her! I want to shout.
“Do you believe she could provide for us when we are aged?” Hangrot’s voice rises. “A female charaded as a male her entire life?”
The woman starts to answer, but Hangrot wrestles her inside the dwelling and slams the door.
Slowly, I stand. “Yes, she could have taken care of you,” I whisper.
Like a mother goat’s keen over her stillborn, the woman’s cry rises.
I scramble out of the alley, into the market.