Heyna's Tale - Chapter One Revised
Relief Arbors
Bird shit dries hard on the floor of relief arbors. It drips and dribbles and splatters and hardens in the cracks like concrete. Hosing alone won’t clean it, not the way the Quetzalcoatl want it cleaned, the way they expect it to be cleaned, no. Mom has, “very high standards,” and she’s only really happy when we exceed those. For Mom it’s a matter of honor.
Sure, high standards for cleaning bird toilets. Heyna fumed as she leaned down and scrubbed with a long handled wire brush. Her eyes watered, and she tried to hold her breath. Her mother called from the other room.
“I can still smell the feces.”
“I can still smell the feces,” Heyna said in a mocking whisper. Her mother’s super nose could smell a fart from the other side of the city. Unfortunately, so could Heyna. Like all her people Heyna was cursed, Mom would say gifted, with exceptional olfactory organs.
One sniff was all Heyna needed to tell that her friend Xico had used this arbor and had what… she sniffed again, carotenoids, phenolics, ascorbic acid. She’d had sautéed mango for lunch? Xico had mango without me? Heyna hoped there was some left.
And Goddess forbid some Quetz smells someone else’s shit, like their bird noses were even that sensitive.
“Still scrubbing,” Heyna said, coughing and spitting. The taste was in her mouth now. She turned on the hose and sprayed the arbor, and then turned the hose on herself, trying to wash the crap out of her mouth and the scent from her nose. She shook out her fur and hosed the arbor down again.
Her mother stuck her head around the door.
“We’ve go to move on to the South wing. Are you almost done?”
“Yeah.” Heyna gave the arbor one last blast with the hose. As she watched the last of the shit flush down the drain, she thought again of her brother’s advice.
“Shaping. Think about it. You don’t want to be a cleaner your whole life.” Heyna hated to admit it, but her brother Jaasi was right. She couldn’t do this job forever. She wasn’t like her mother. She wasn’t like her father, always bowing and scraping to the Quetzalcoatl. Honor? Where’s the honor in that?
“Come on,” her mother said. “We’ve got six more arbors to clean before dinner.”
“I…” Heyna started. She was going to say that she was done, that she wanted to join a shaping crew and leave the family business. Instead, she just said, “Sure.”
Maybe, let Jassi to talk to Mom and Papa about me leaving the family business? Yeah, she was a coward.
As she scrubbed her way through toilet after toilet in the South wing of the Plesh mansion, Heyna debated with herself. Her family had worked for the Plesh family for hundreds of years. She was not even sixteen. Mom had already worked this job twenty years or more. Heyna counted the years ahead and recoiled at the thought. Her uncles and aunts and cousins in the River Clan worked for other Quetz families, cooking and cleaning and whatever their employers wanted.
Some of the Quetzalcoatl were not as enlightened as the Plesh, and some of them were harsh and unreasonable. Some had, “unorthodox,” tastes, as Mom put it.
“We’re meant to serve,” Papa said. “The Erda people made a bargain, eons ago. We serve and create. They let us live in their city in the tree tops and pay us well.”
With the stink in her nose, Heyna thought that there wasn’t enough treasure in the world to make this scrubbing life worth her while.
“Done!” Finally, the last relief arbor was clean. She packed her kit and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” her mother asked.
“Gonna hang with Xico.”
“Mrs. Plesh say that was okay?”
“Mom!”
“Well, wash up before you go over there. And let me groom you.”
“By the Trees! I know!”
“Okay. Okay. Don’t get your tail in a twist.”
Heyna went to the servant arbor and washed until she could only very faintly smell the shit. She dabbed a little vanilla under her arms for good measure. She headed over to Xico’s room in the North wing. Xico was her best friend, only daughter of the Plesh. She was kind of a princess, Mrs. Plesh being the president, though the Quetzalcoatl didn’t technically have royalty.
“Heyna!” Xico wrapped her long body around Heyna, tickling her tail.
“By the Trees! Today was tough. You are a sight for sore eyes.”
“And you are just a sight!” Xico said wide-eyed. “When was the last time you were groomed?”
“Mom tried, but I was too anxious to get here.”
“Here, let me.”
Xico began to groom Heyna’s fur which was still damp from the hosing.
“Ah! That feels good,” Heyna relaxed as Xico worked with beak and claws. “Where have you been all my life?” Xico laughed. It was an inside joke. They grew up together.
“Now do me,” Xico said.
Heyna began carefully combing Xico’s feathers and smoothing her scales. She wiped the mucus from Xico’s eyes, Heyna grabbed a cuttle bone and sharpened Xico’s beak. Then, they hung in Xico’s hammock, and talked.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Heyna said. “I still smell of shit. How many years?”
“Stop it! You are not my servant. You don’t have to work for me. We can be together like we’ve always been. Share an arbor like we always have. I could talk to my mother. And… you don’t smell so bad.”
“You know what I mean. I have to do something. And… you couldn’t smell a fart in the wind.”
“Well, what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. I would like to see more of the world than just Paititi. It’s beautiful, but the Erda here have a prescribed role. We’re servants. Jaz says I should join a shaping crew and work BelowLight, learn a craft. But… I just don’t know.”
“Don’t think about it now. Just relax. You’ve got plenty of time. Ooh! I missed a spot.” Xico started grooming Heyna again.
“Hey, you have any of that mango left?”
“How did you…? Oh!”
They both laughed.
Heyna enjoyed just being with Xico, gently rocking in the hammock after their laughing fit. A gentle wind blew through the arbor and kept the rocking going. After a while Xico spoke again.
“Are you really going to do that?”
“Go into construction? Yeah, probably.”
“But, Heyna!”
“Jaasi says I can make twice as much as I do in domestic service.”
“And ten times as dangerous! You’ve never even been BelowLight! And you’re not even sixteen!” Xico’s eyes were wide and her voice was squawky and tight.
“Sixteen in six days! This job is the best I can do without higher education.”
“And,” Xico went on without a breath, “we wouldn’t see each other nearly as often with you living with the shaping crews.”
“Yes…” Heyna was sad about that. “I will miss you, but I’ll visit whenever I can.” Heyna gently combed Xico’s feathers with her claws. Xico wrapped her long body around Heyna tighter.
“Oh, Heyna.”
“It’s just that I don’t want to end up like my parents, serving one family all my life. Or worse, hopping from one Quetz family to another.” Heyna wiped her glasses. “I mean… not that I haven’t enjoyed being with your family. I just mean…”
“I understand.” Xico looked out at the jungle just beyond the window trellis. The blooming corla flowers with their crimson petals trembled in the breeze.
“Look. We grew up together, you, me, and Jaz. I’m not leaving you, I’m just taking another job. I want something more than scrubbing out poop arbors. I want to travel beyond the jungle someday. I want to sail on a ship, maybe see Beoford.”
“The Erda city? That’s on another continent. No! I’ll get my parents to pay you more. You won’t have to work down there. You’ll be able to stay.” Xico gabbled very quickly.
“That wouldn’t be fair. I don’t want to put you in that position with your parents. And… I don’t want to be a servant my whole life.”
“I told you that you’re not my servant! You’re my best friend! I don’t care how other people see you. You are my equal.” Heyna looked down. Dappled sunlight spilled through the branches of the arbor and flashed on Xico’s claws.
“Other people…” said Heyna.
“Oh, you! You know what I mean! We’re equals.”
“It’s not only that. As beautiful as Paititi is, I want to see more of the world.”
“We’ll all go together.” Heyna’s brother Jaasi was suddenly there at the door, butting in. “Your mom won’t say no.” Jaz was smirking. “Sure. She’ll let her little princess sail the seas with Erda, Dragons and Gryphons, and the occasional Quetz.”
“If it isn’t the construction worker,” Xico said. “It’s your fault that Heyna is going down there! Tell her how dangerous it is.” Xico squinted in anger.
“It’s time. Heyna’s almost of age. If she ever wants to do anything other than clean bird shit off the floor…”
“Jaasi!” Heyna shouted.
“What? That’s what Mom and Papa have done their whole life, isn’t it? That’s not what you aspire to, eh?” Jaz chuckled. “Look, baby sister, if you ever want to see the world, the shaping crew is your only shot.”
“You know what, Jaz? Take your advice and tell it walking away,” Xico said. “I’m talking to my friend.”
“As you wish, your majesty,” said Jaz kowtowing out of the room.
“Your brother is a thorny nut bush.”
“No argument here.”
“Please, let me talk to my parents.”
“No.” Heyna said firmly. “It wouldn’t be right. I’ve got to do this on my own.”
“Well, in that case, no more work today! Let’s go for swim.”
“Let’s do.”
Claws scrabbling and wings flapping, they headed for the bathing arbor.