#serakh

Serakh’s eyes grew wide.

“Now?” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

Serakh’s eyes filled with tears as she stared somewhere beyond me. “So soon…?” she stammered.

“What’re you talking about?” I asked, confused. “Her labor came late.”

Serakh didn’t reply.

Then I remembered Serakh had given birth recently—though I couldn’t recall when. Maybe she was worried about Pennie. Maybe she had had a bad experience.

“Serakh, you just had your baby,” I said anxiously. “How long did it take? How much did it hurt? Is Pennie gonna be okay?”

“I am sorry, I must go,” Serakh murmured, brushing past me and hurrying away toward the exit to the kitchen. “Fashha had asked me to help her attend to her daughter’s delivery, when it should come. I must hurry. But first I must finish helping to prepare for the revelry of Tollah’s new moon.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I thought the monthly banquet happened two weeks ago. And dinner’s already been served.”

Serakh shook her head. “This is a different festival. That one celebrates the full moon, when Tollah’s moon has swelled to fullness. This festival happens during the new moon, when Tollah hides her face. It is not a dinner celebration. It occurs at midnight.”

“What happens at this festival?” I asked.

“Much the same as the one you attended,” said Serakh. “But I do not think you would like to attend this one. When Tollah hides her face, men find no reason to blush. If you thought them shameless before, you would bite your tongue tonight.”

I stared at her, afraid to ask more.

Serakh took my silence as a farewell, and nodded as she swiftly headed toward the exit to the kitchen, wiping tears from her face as she went. As Serakh disappeared through the curtain, my attention fell upon Ruut Pentarra at the head of the hall.

Ruut Pentarra was presently occupied…which was a polite way of saying he had his hands all over a Twi’lek woman who was spoon-feeding him dessert. As if in a trance, I found myself gravitating toward him. He was, after all, the father of the baby that was about to be born.

Pentarra and his friend stopped their proceedings as I came forth. The woman looked surprised—I knew it was considered impudent to approach Pentarra without being invited—but Pentarra himself did not look offended.

“Greetings, Ben Solo,” Pentarra said with a tone of curious amusement. “You seem to have a somber look about you.”

I couldn’t think of a good lead-in. “Pen’awen is having her child,” I said bluntly.

Pentarra raised a brow. “Oh, indeed?” he said, as if I were sharing a mildly interesting weather update.

“Yeah,” I said, taken aback by his lack of reaction, though perhaps I shouldn’t have been. “I thought you might want to know. After all…the child is yours, isn’t it?”

Pentarra smiled. “Even if it is, it is not,” he said coolly. “I wish nothing to do with such an offspring, as I have told you already. The child will be weak and deformed: a cruel twisting of my seed.”

I found myself speechless. I didn’t want to hear about his seed.

“I am surprised that you are not now by her side,” Pentarra said wryly. “It is said that you have not left it these several weeks.”

It suddenly became very difficult to look him in the face. I wasn’t sure whether that was more because Pennie was his daughter, or because she was his betrothed. Of the many implications I had failed to consider when I had haphazardly tied myself to Pennie, facing Ruut Pentarra was perhaps the most fatal.

“She…she needed a friend,” I stammered.

Pentarra’s smile grew wider, but he kept his mouth closed. Still, he didn’t have to open it for me to recall the sight of his sharp teeth. He leaned forward slightly.

“It is not said of you that you are her friend, Ben Solo,” he said in a lilting tone.

My heart began to pound. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what he was trying to say. If he was angry with me, I couldn’t tell. But I also knew he had a smile that could never be trusted.

I stood there, mute.

Pentarra seemed to derive satisfaction from rendering me silent. “Why don’t I leave you to your friend, Ben Solo, and you kindly leave me to mine?” he suggested quietly, with all the warmth of an old uncle and all the chill of an executioner. “Oh, do not worry. I bear no grudge against you, for I certainly have no lack of friends—least of all tonight.” His lips parted, and there were his teeth, filed sharp according to male Twi’lek custom. “My grudge is against Pen’awen…and I have something of a premonition that you will do quite well to serve as her punishment and torture.”

“What do you mean?” I asked weakly.

Pentarra chuckled. “Do not tell me you do not know. Have you not observed? It is impossible to love Pen’awen, beyond the feminine pleasures she can provide. She is strident—irritating—quick to tears and demands. She has no gentleness or kindness about her, except whenever it may serve her interests. I know you cannot truly love her, Solo. You will soon grow tired of her, as I have, and wish to escape her…which will destroy her spirit far more powerfully than any consequence I could devise.”

My stomach sank. Pentarra squinted as he considered me.

“…If I am not mistaken,” he said with quiet humor, “you have begun to consider leaving her already.”

I couldn’t stand it anymore. “I have to go,” I muttered. I turned and fled down the aisle and out of the hall.

Serakh rushed out of the hall soon after. She passed me without acknowledging me a second time. I watched her ascend quickly up the staircase and fly down the women’s wing.

Connie Pentarra knew. Connie stopped me as I was pouring my third cup of tea (they don’t have caf in that region of Ryloth, so I had to chug three cups of tea every morning just to stay stable).

“You know, Ben Solo,” she said with scathing sweetness, “if you were planning to make your way through all of my sisters, there are a couple of us you skipped over.”

I was not nearly caffeinated enough for this conversation.

“What are you talking about?” I snapped.

“Don’t be stupid. Fa’nakhra denied you, and so you went after Pen’awen. Charming.” Connie poured herself her own cup of tea. “Surely you know it is no great accomplishment to woo her. She will have just about anyone. Or…perhaps you knew that, and that is why you picked her.”

“Oh, for—I am taking care of your pregnant sister!”

“Yes, I’m sure you are taking quite good care of her!”

I sighed the kind of sigh that scrapes all the way through your throat. “What do you want, Connie?”

“I want you to stay away from my family,” she said coolly.

“Well, take better care of them and maybe I will,” I shot back. “Goodbye, Connie.”

I was much happier to be accosted by Mikal, who had shot up in height since last year and seemed even taller than he had been in the summer. His voice had begun to change, too. It was in the awkward stage now, deep and squeaky at the same time.

“Will you celebrate the festival of harvest tomorrow?” Mikal asked.

“There’s a festival tomorrow?”

“Yes,” he said. “It is the autumnal celebration thanking the goddess for her provision. Each clan celebrates its own festival.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “I need to check with someone first.”

“You mean Pen’awen,” Mikal supplied.

“Uh…yeah.”

So Mikal knew, too.

It occurred to me, as I was passing through the women’s quarters, that my daily commutes to Pennie’s room were pretty obvious. Men weren’t supposed to be over there. The rules weren’t concrete, but they were clear nonetheless: Women were allowed in the men’s quarters because men only had reasons to welcome them. Men weren’t allowed in the women’s quarters because women had every reason to distrust them.

I kept my head down, showed off my tray of food like an apologetic passage ticket, and tried to walk as quickly as possible without alarming anyone with a full-on run.

Darn it, Pen, didja have to take the room at the very end of the hall?

My dutifulness was rewarded in the usual way—by which I mean Pennie first complained I had taken too long, and next complained that her tea was too cold, and then complained she felt too sick to eat, and finally wrapped up with a general complaint about how horrible life was and how much she wanted to die.

I would have been a little more pissed off, if it weren’t so much like looking into a mirror.

The bright side was that Pennie’s endless grousing had largely whittled away at my desire to do the same. There was only room for one drama queen, and Pennie had already claimed the crown. “Oh, shut up and eat,” I said cheerfully.

“I cannot,” she whined. “I feel ill.”

“Then go throw up. Quit making it my problem.”

“You know I don’t want to do that,” she groaned.

Pennie, I’d learned, had a pathological fear of being sick. No one likes being sick. But Pennie abhorred it. I’d told her about fifteen times she’d probably feel better if she just threw up and got it over with.

She always refused to. I think she hated not being in control of her own body. To a person who delighted in manipulating others, losing control of oneself was unbearable.

“Fine, suit yourself,” I said. “Hey—Mikal told me about the harvest festival tomorrow. Would you like to go? It might be good for you to leave the room for once.”

“I do not think I will feel well enough,” she moaned. “Damn it all, will I ever be glad when this forsaken child departs.”

I watched her heft herself up to lean against the bedpost.

“…Have you thought about what you’ll do once the baby is born?” I asked.

“I’ll keep it alive,” she sighed. “What else?”

“Your sister thought you would surrender it, if it turned out to be a girl and not a boy.”

“I would have, at first. But now…well, all I know is that I do not want her to have it.”

“So…you’ll keep it no matter what.”

Pennie was quiet.

“…I will not allow my sister to have it,” she said at last. I pressed my lips together.

Someone had better tell Fannie, I thought. Fannie had said she’d had visions of the future…but weren’t visions sometimes tricks? Uncle Luke had told me once that not all premonitions could be trusted—especially the ones that seemed to promise you what you wanted more than anything.

“Pennie…did you want to be a mother?” I asked. “Or…did you just want Pentarra to marry you?”

“I wanted him to marry me,” she answered without hesitation. She rubbed her swollen calves as she sat on the edge of the bed.

I was shocked she would admit it so readily. If it were me, I would have been afraid of looking like a bad person.

Pennie looked up at me. I don’t know what expression I had on my face, but it must have been something that prompted a defense.

“I always knew I would be a mother someday,” she said tersely. “It’s not that I wanted to. But I always knew I would. It is the natural progression of life.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I mean…I don’t necessarily assume I’m gonna have kids.”

“That’s because you are a man.”

“No, it’s not. I don’t think everyone’s cut out for kids. And I don’t think all women are destined to become moms.”

“Perhaps where you come from it is different,” Pennie said. “Perhaps it is even different in the cities on my planet. But here, women do not choose to bear children any more than they choose to grow breasts. I knew it would happen to me eventually. Therefore, it didn’t make much difference to me whether it happened sooner or later.”

“Will you…love your kid?”

“I will keep it alive. We shall see whether I feel any love.”

I wondered if Pennie’s mother had taken a similar approach with her children. I didn’t doubt Fashha cared for her daughters in the same way a vixen defends her kits from harm. But Pennie, now an adult, did not strike me as a child who had been loved.

I mean…I’d had it pretty rough, too. But my mom and dad had loved me. That was the one thing they’d always done right. Even though I hadn’t been an easy kid. Even though I’d had a lot of problems.

I doubted Pennie would have as much patience for her child’s weaknesses as my parents had had for mine.

“Pennie…do you think your baby will be…okay?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well…genetically speaking…the nature of your kid’s conception puts it at a higher risk for birth defects.”

“I can only understand so much Basic, Ben.”

I tried to remember the way Pentarra had phrased it. “It’s…unnatural for members of the same family to produce children together,” I explained. “They have a higher chance of being cursed.”

I winced at the way that sounded. It was pretty ableist, and sort of eugenicist (more words that Pennie wouldn’t understand).

…Which, of course, meant it was a framework that Pennie understood perfectly.

She looked at me abruptly. “I didn’t think you believed in curses,” she sniffed.

“Well, I understand how this curse works,” I said. “When two beings come together to make a child, their stronger traits can cover up each other’s weaker ones. But if the two beings are from the same family, and have the same weak traits, then neither of them have the stronger traits to cover them up.”

Yeah, yeah. I know it wasn’t a great explanation. But, hey—I thought it wasn’t half bad, for a guy with a liberal arts degree.

In any case, it seemed to make sense to Pennie. Her face grew concerned.

“…On second thought, we should attend the festival tomorrow,” she muttered. “I must appeal to the goddess. She hates me already—I cannot miss this year’s harvest offering.”

“Why do you think the goddess hates you?” I asked.

“Is it not obvious? Just look at my life,” Pennie huffed. “I once committed an act of ingratitude she has never forgiven me for, and next she will strike my child. Excuse me.”

She padded past me to the bathing room.

An act of ingratitude? I wondered as I watched her pass.