DEMET DIVAROEN’s YA fantasy Blood Moon Bride follows Rehya who is forced into marriage for her valley’s survival and is faced with the decision to submit or rebel against a ruthless system. Read on for an extract.
Chapter 1
Pa had been buried two days, his ashes not yet one with the Bright Mother’s roots, when the Overseer arrived in our village. I smelled the dirt and sweat of him as he trudged from door to door, heard the scratch of his quill on parchment, the rankness of his breath as he panted in front of our hut like a fat-bellied pig.
‘The Overseer’s here.’
Ma stiffened on her straw mattress. ‘He’s early.’
I laid the rabbit’s carcass on the cutting table and walked to the hearth. I stirred the bubbling pot of broth so hard it spewed out. I imagined Pa’s barking laugh. ‘Aii, my daughter, you have the keen senses of a deer,’ he would have said, eyes glowing like embers, ‘and the grace of a wild boar.’
I wiped my bloodstained hands on my pants and crouched next to Ma. ‘He might be here about Pa. To pay his respects.’ But I knew from the eager drumming of his heart that he was here to take.
The Overseer’s knock scattered dust from the doorframe.
‘Pfft. He’s here to wake the dead, more like. Help me up, daughter.’ Ma smoothed the two plaits resting on her chest like reed rope. I wanted to tug them like I did when I was a child, when her arms and legs could carry more than the weight of my lanky limbs on her back, but I squeezed her hand instead.
‘You’re not well, Ma. Let me take care of this.’ He was here by mistake. He had to be. I still had one more winter at home to hunt and earn enough coin to find a way out of fulfilling my duty.
Our first plan to flee had died with Pa.
I swallowed the building dread, ignored the Overseer’s crazed heart tune. It had been a dull thump when he came knocking a winter ago to note the names and ages of the girls in our village.
I pulled the quilt over Ma but she shook it off and sat up, her arms straining with the effort. Her wasting sickness had sucked the strength from her body. It had started slowly at first. A tremor in her fingers, ache in her legs, until Pa got sick. Seeing him curled up, whimpering in pain, broke her heart and her sickness took hold, robbing her legs of movement.
Ma touched her forehead to mine. ‘I will take care of it. There’s still breath in me yet. Now lend me your legs, my heart.’ She sighed. ‘And hold your saw tongue.’
I helped her onto my back and she wrapped her arms around my neck. I hooked my hands under her bottom to hold her properly and stood up. She clung on, her rib bones digging into me. I’d trade the last of our boar tusks for sheep-tail grease to help fatten her up. To strengthen her fading heart tune so she didn’t join Pa in the Bright Mother’s womb for a long while yet.
The Overseer’s fists thundered on the door and I flung it open.
Spit crawled up my throat at the sight of his yellow smile. He spat onto the ground.
‘Overseer Tohmas.’ Ma’s words were stones.
‘Minna.’ He twirled his patchy squirrel-fur hat between his fingers. ‘My deepest regrets on the passing of Leeyo,’ he said, fist to heart. ‘And to you, Rehya.’
I nodded, clamped my lips to keep from cursing. He was crooked, like all the Governor’s handlers. Power whittled folk like him into hooked blades.
Behind him, across the way, Zayge and her pa had stopped cleaning broom corn to peer at us. I stared back and they dropped their heads, scraping and pulling stalks, scattering seeds at their feet. My stomach curdled at the bloodied white sheet draped over their front door, already darkening under the noon sun.
‘Leeyo was a good hunter, from all reports. May he rest peacefully in the womb of the Fertile Mother.’
I cringed at this smearing of the Bright Mother’s name.
‘We thank you for your respects and prayers,’ Ma whispered. ‘Now we must get back to our mourning.’
‘Of course, of course, yes,’ he stammered, but when I made to close the door he held it open with a thick hand. ‘There is one other matter.’
Ma’s breathing was rapid now. I held her closer. Her breath was tinged with fear. It filled my mouth like the aftertaste of blood. Behind us, the broth bubbled and hissed over the flames.
He looked at his parchment. ‘My records show that Rehya is almost 16.’ His eyes sought mine. ‘I trust there are no problems with your blood phases?’
It took all my strength to stop the curse from leaving my mouth.
‘No, no, she has no problem,’ Ma croaked. ‘But—’ ‘
Good,’ he continued. ‘That means she is likely fertile,’ his eyes grazed up and down my chest, ‘and has no physical failings.’ He grimaced. ‘Except for the improper crop of her hair.’
‘It’s convenient for hunting—’
He held up a hand as if he hadn’t heard Ma. ‘Rehya is to wed at the esteemed Blood Moon Ceremony in four days.’
Ma’s arms tightened around my neck. ‘Respectfully, Overseer. That can’t be. Rehya is not 16 until five days after this Blood Moon sets so she is not eligible. She will fulfil her duty at the Blood Moon Ceremony next winter when she is nearing 17. You yourself told us this when you were here last.’
He smiled but his mouth barely moved. ‘As you know, our fertile lands are relentlessly under siege. Governor Kyra, may he grow ever stronger, foresees a decline in population in the near future.’ His voice grew solemn, but the words were empty of feeling. ‘So, for the safety of all, more girls across Mennama Valley’s villages must help the cause. That is why he has seen fit to change the girls’ starting ages in the Blood Moon Ceremonies to 15. Every girl between 15 and 20 winters must fulfil their duty to help the advancement and prosperity of Mennama Valley.’
My blood roared.
Not every girl.
Not the Governor’s daughter or the daughters of the rich city folk. The Blood Moon Ceremony was held for girls from families who hunted and gutted the valley’s meat, sewed clothes for the rich, washed their greed- stained dishes and wiped the shitty bottoms of their children and elderly.
‘We of course want to help cultivate the best match for you on Show Day.’ The Overseer wheezed like a boar. ‘So be at your best when suitors come knocking tomorrow.’
Cultivate. As if we were soil to be readied for planting. I laughed then, a rumbling bark like Pa’s that made Zayge drop her broom corn stalks and Ma pinch my neck to stop, but it was a long moment before my breathing calmed and the Overseer’s reddened face swam back into view.
His eyes were slits. ‘Is something funny, girl?’
‘Of . . . of course not,’ Ma said in a fluster, covering my mouth. ‘She is grieving, Overseer Tohmas, you must please excuse her and let us go now, for I am ill. We have much to prepare for her suitors.’
He nodded, brushed sweat from his brow. ‘May the Fertile Mother bring you back to good health.’ He took out a vial of blood and a white sheet from his satchel. He dipped a thick brush into the blood and marked the sheet with a flaming moon, the Governor’s emblem. ‘May this home attract many a suitor in the next two days and be blessed with a fruitful match on Show Day.’
He nailed the sheet to the front door and left.
Ma’s tears wet my neck as I backed into our hut. I lay her down on the mattress and then slumped into Pa’s chair. His tobacco smell curled around me. I breathed him in.
I was to be a Blood Moon Bride.
Chapter 2
I paced the length of our home, 10 steps up, 10 steps down, my heart clawing at my throat. Not even the crisp afternoon air through the open shutters helped cool my rage. Bariss Village was a chorus of sounds tumbling into our hut. The shriek of a waterbird from the banks of the Saffir River, rusty shutters scraping against windows and the excited chatter of girls preparing for suitors.
‘Wait till they taste my preserves—’
‘Fetch me the rosewater for the scrolls—’
‘Weaving baskets—’
‘Healing hands—’
There were other sounds, the muffled tears of mothers and daughters, long fearful sighs I couldn’t bear to hear. I breathed in, long and slow, until I caught the scent of lemon and cinnamon. I pulled it inside me, held it until the world grew quiet. Only the buzzing of flies lingered. They circled the bloody sheet outside our door as if it were a carcass. Tomorrow, when the blood turned crusty and the flies lost interest, suitors would march in and out of marked huts to get to know potential brides. They would eat food made with hard-earned grain, ogle and take note of their favourite girls to bid for on Show Day.
I squeezed my knife. It took every bit of my control not to rip the cursed sheet off our door. I returned to the table and skinned the rabbit. I cut off its head, tail and feet before slicing along its stomach. Its guts slid out in one yank. I was careful not to nick them like I did when I was learning with Pa. The foul innards had seeped into the body and rotted the meat. I placed the guts gently into a bowl, smiling. The smell of shit sickened folk quicker than a blink. I’d slice the lining open tomorrow, bathe suitors in the rank odour and send them running.
‘Rehya.’ Ma was watching me. ‘Whatever it is you are planning, my heart, it won’t work.’
I bit my tongue and plucked out the rabbit’s heart, kidney and liver. Pa used to throw raw rabbit hearts into his mouth as if they were berries. The memory made me smile and wince. That’s what Pa was now. Memories stained in every plank of wood that held up our home. ‘I won’t just stand here like plump fruit ready for picking,’ I said at last. I cleaned out the rest of the innards and dunked the rabbit in a bucket of cold water.
Ma’s shoulders slumped. ‘Oh, Rehya. You know that is not what me and your pa wanted for you. If only the sickness didn’t get your pa . . . then maybe . . .’ She buried her face in her hands.
Maybe then we could have run as we’d planned. Paid a foreign merchant at the Trade Sarrai outside the valley walls to smuggle us to the port of Jahaan Valley and sail across the Ark Sea to a foreign land, where Governor Kyra’s arms couldn’t reach.
But the sickness did get Pa; it gnawed at him over two winters. His travel papers were gone too, ripped from our hands by a Caretaker on the morning of Pa’s burial. Without that yellowed parchment with Pa’s name on it, Ma and I couldn’t get past the Valley gates.
But we could still run.
I tried to shake off the thought, but it held on.
We could disappear into the Dark Woods of Silverwood Forest, where treetops huddled so close they snuffed out the light. ‘Now there’s a place that can keep a secret,’ Pa had said the few times we set snares around its black opening, before we avoided the area altogether.
But running was no life for Ma, not with her limp legs, her fading heart tune. What she needed was good rest and more meat on her bones, not to be carried into woods so dense they smothered even the strongest torchlight.
It was as if Ma heard my thoughts, because she said, ‘I will not hold you back.’ Her mouth was pressed in that stony way. ‘You hear me?’
I washed the blood and dirt off the rabbit’s meat, picked at the fine hair along its skin and placed it on a cloth. ‘Ma, it’s too late. There’s nowhere to go. Not anymore.’
‘That’s not true. Your pa told me about the Dark Woods. You can hide for a time—’
‘Not without you.’ I crouched by our mattress, held her coarse palm against my wet cheek.
‘I will only slow you down. You know this,’ she whispered. ‘You know . . . my body . . . it’s . . .’ Her breath trembled. ‘I don’t have long left—’
‘No.’ I kissed her hands. ‘You just need to build your strength.’
I won’t lose you too.
‘My dear heart.’ Her mouth clicked as she swallowed. ‘If you stay, you will likely be married to a man twice your age. You will be with child soon after. And before your milk dries up you will be heavy with another. Will you give in to your husband, huh? Bend to his will without a word? Breed children until . . .’
I shuddered at the image of a man on me, a stranger’s skin on mine. At my belly swelling with the weight of a babe, winter after winter, until life bled out of my body. ‘I will, Ma. For you.’ So you may live. ‘I’ll be what they need. I’ll control myself—’
‘Like you controlled your laughter in the face of an Overseer, knowing he might think you insolent?’
I sighed and pressed my throbbing temples.
‘And what of your . . . nature? Will you be able to deafen your ears to the stories the wind blows in? Not curl up in pain when a birthing girl’s screams drift across the village and rattle your bones? Hold your laughter when you taste a child’s burst of joy a few huts away?’ She wiped my tears, her eyes like smouldering coals. ‘You cannot control who you are, my heart, just like a river cannot control its currents.’
Dread hardened in the pit of my stomach. I slumped onto the ground beside Ma. ‘I’ll stuff my ears with cotton. Rub mint oil under my nose.’ Scrape off the smells and sounds of the world like scales off a fish. ‘It will work this time—’
‘You know it will only make things worse. You will hollow out like a dead tree. Your skin will grey, you will not eat, you will lose your words . . .’ She shook her head as if to banish the memory of the times they tried to fix me with remedies as a child. The tonics Pa bought from Trade Sarrai healers fogged my mind and sapped the world of colour.
Breathe. I counted the slivers of light filtering through the cracks in the window shutters until numbers filled my head like stones.
Outside, the shrill laughter of children chimed like tiny bells connecting.
‘The Bright Mother made you with more spirit than meat and bone, Rehya. Why do you think your pa and I planned to run with you? You can’t bend, my heart, nor should you have to. You’ve been stubborn ever since your first suckle when you nearly ripped off my breast in your haste to bend the milk to your will.’ She pushed herself up and leaned against the wall. Dust and fuzz lined the cracks of her feet. I lay my head gently on her legs as she threaded her fingers through my hair.
‘Please, Rehya, you must listen. You must run.’
‘I won’t leave without you! I won’t damn you to save myself! They’ll call you a deserter’s mother. They will slowly starve you to death!’
Her hands stilled in my hair. ‘And I won’t sit back and watch you marry a man who will try to break you, my heart, and if he cannot, he will send you to the Nest because you can’t please him or control your tongue or breed fast enough!’
A shiver crept up my spine at the thought of Hazzal’s writhing body the day Caretakers bundled her into the back of a horse cart. ‘She is a danger,’ her husband had yelled. ‘Make sure to fix her insolent mind. Teach her how to serve, as is her duty.’ The putrid stench of his words made me gag. They took Hazzal to the Nest, a walled manor at the edge of Mennama City. Her baby Remii had cried after her for days and no matter how much cotton I stuffed in my ears, my heart ached with his every trembling scream.
I scrambled up and walked to the hearth, stabbed the wood to wake the flames. I poured more water into the pot of broth, threw in a palmful of dry mint. The smell seeped into my skin. ‘With the Bright Mother’s luck, I might be matched with a man like Pa.’ A kind man who protested every time I traded part of our shrinking pile of coins for hemp seed oil to dull his pain.
Ma loosened a long breath. ‘What me and your pa had . . . we created, my heart. With time, with affection. For all his faults and vicious cruelty, at least Governor Kyra’s father gave girls a say in choosing their husbands, even if we did have to wait for the Blood Moon to marry. There were many young men to court and no war cutting them down. No hurry to marry young or breed more and more children. No locks on the Valley gates, no high walls shutting us in. No Show Day.’ A muscle twitched in her jaw. ‘In the 25 winters that Kyra has ruled, there has only been loss.’ She looked at the front door as if her words might slip under the cracks and collect in the wrong ears.
I was about to remind her that there was loss when Kyra’s forefathers ruled too, that they robbed folk of the Book of Khali, turned almost every copy to ash, when I heard stomping steps chewing up gravel down the lane. Only one snot-nosed child walked as if he had paws. Wyn, running an errand for Overseer Tohmas, no doubt. The echoes from his stomping bounced like balls off the wall of Hazzal’s hut, then Cella’s.
‘Is someone coming?’ Ma said, straightening.
‘Maybe.’ I held up a finger. The balls of sound were closer now. I waited a few breaths before opening the door to watch Wyn’s bony legs marching towards me, a parcel tucked under his arm.
‘Overseer Tohmas sent this. For Show Day.’ He sucked on a ball of tree sap and grinned, golden spit leaking onto his tunic.
Ma tsked behind me.
‘Thanks.’ I snatched the wrapped parcel before he touched it with his sticky hands, and glowered at his curling fingers. ‘Don’t you dare—’
He hit me with a small fist and said, ‘A punch for a Fable!’ before running off, laughing. I threw the parcel on Pa’s chair and half turned to run after him, but he was too quick. ‘I’ll remember this the next time you beg for my honeyed berries!’ I yelled at his disappearing back.
Ma’s eyebrows were raised in that way that made me feel childlike for paying attention to the mindless slights of village children.
Fable.
Butcher Haas coined the name for me after I told him his lies smelled like fish guts. ‘Your words aren’t true,’ I’d said when he told a man he had no deer rump to waste on dirt-poor bellies. ‘I can smell the deer rump hiding under that cloth!’ The butcher turned so red I thought blood was going to burst out of his nose. ‘You are the liar, girl – nothing but fables going ’round in that dim head!’ He spread that name through the village faster than the scent of Old Man Gill’s loose bowels. That’s when fear, thick and strong, filled Ma and Pa and they traded cured meats for tonics. When that failed to fix me, they decided my sharp nose and keen ears would be better used hunting in the forest than foraging through folk’s secrets. Sure, the forest was better company than most townsfolk, but part of me knew, even as a child, that they were keeping me hidden. And the shame of not being made right, of causing Pa and Ma worry, ground a part of me to dust.
I looked up. Ma’s gaze was fixed on the white dress that had fallen out of the parcel and onto the floor like spilled milk.
I cursed at the sight of it.
Ma swallowed. ‘It will serve you well on Show Day,’ she said, looking away. She pushed herself onto the ground and reached for her small floor table. ‘Now, pass me the rabbit for butchering.’
My stomach dropped at her resigned tone.
I placed the rabbit and a knife in front of her, held her gaze. ‘I’m not running, Ma. Not without you. No matter what Show Day brings.’ I kicked the dress out of the way as I made for the door, Ma’s sigh of sadness trailing behind me like her limp legs.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Demet Divaroren is the award winning author of Living on Hope Street and the co-editor of CBCA shortlisted anthology Growing up Muslim in Australia. Her writing has appeared in Griffith Review, New Australian Stories, Island magazine, The Age Epicure, The Big Issue, From the Outer and Best Summer Stories. Blood Moon Bride is her second novel.
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