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Bodies of Sand and Blood

by Plangdi Neple

Sneaking into your father’s shrine is one of the most stupid things you have ever done, yet you feel entirely at home among the hanging masks and horsetails. Lanterns beside the doorway and at the opposite end of the shrine cast the faces of the other boys around you in an orange glow. The excitement on their dark, ruddy faces can’t match yours though, and your cheeks hurt from smiling too much.

You are seated on the bench furthest from your father’s big bone chair, hoping to be obscured by the shadowy darkness of the corner. The first three benches are crammed with boys jostling for a better seat yet unwilling to move to the empty benches behind. You scoff at their stupidity but pray they don’t stop clamoring for those seats. In your heart of hearts you belong with them, but you know the further away you are from them, the better.

“Hello.”

The raspy, pubescent male voice startles you, and without thinking you wrap your arms around your chest His eyes follow your movements, and you drop your hands, hoping he does not look for too long. His gaze meets yours while he awaits a response.

“Hello,” you say, modulating your voice to sound lower.

The boy laughs like he knows you are faking it. Terror seizes you, and you open your mouth to beg, but the boy beats you to it.

“I don’t think any of our voices are that deep yet,” he says, his gangly upper arms shaking from his mirth. “What’s your name?”

Relief floods your mind; then your tongue forms the syllables of your given name, and you bite down quickly to stop your foolishness. Pain flares, and you curse yourself for almost blowing your cover twice in such a short time.

“Bamshak,” you reply with a small smile.

The boy nods and takes a seat beside you. “My name is Nanpan.”

Nanpan smiles at you, and you smile back. He has dark, beautiful eyes—like the bottom of the most bottomless well.

“You look like Mishkágam,” he says, and your heart stops briefly. “Are you Kyenpia’s cousin or something?”

The dread lifts and you laugh. The chatty boy does not know how close he has come to uncovering what you have been planning for years.

You open your mouth to answer when there is a sudden silence, inhabited only by crickets and other nocturnal animals that live in the forest. The jostling boys have calmed, and you and Nanpan face forward and fold your hands in your laps to match their solemnity. Excitement buzzes under your skin, as does fear.

Then, the goatskin curtain behind the bone chair moves and your father—Mishkágam—emerges. His bald head gleams under the light, and a tiny feeling of disappointment hits. Only a singlet and shorts cover his muscled frame; all the stories always said he wore priestly regalia made of animal pelts and teeth, lording his power and influence over his pupils.

The other boys stand and bow their heads, and your chest swells with pride at the silent respect for your father. You are late as you stand, and your eyes briefly meet your father’s before your head falls. You fervently pray that he did not notice you, wiping your now sweaty palms on your wrapper.

Because at that moment, he is not your father; he is the priest of your clan and the foil to your—so far—nearly perfect plan.

“So, we have a new member and you didn’t tell me.” The sound of shifting fabric fills the room as he takes his seat.

You struggle to breathe as you and the boys sit back down. Confused whispers float around until someone points your way and they all fall silent. Sweat rolls down your back and you tap your toes nervously against the ground. Then Nanpan pinches your lap, gesturing for you to stand.

When you do, the sharp pain from the pinch disappears under the fire in your father’s light eyes. His jaw moves like he wants to scream but is holding back, and your heart plummets to your feet.

“Get out,” he says. The other boys stand slowly, confused at his sudden change in countenance. His hard stare silences them and they rush out. You stay where you are, afraid and trembling.

When the last boy is gone, your father stands and moves so fast that he is like a spirit. Then he is standing before you, and his palm connects with your cheek in a stinging slap.

“Are you stupid?” His whisper barely disguises the fury in his eyes. You step back, but you are barely a breadth away when he seizes your arm, dragging you back to him and away from the shrine’s opening.

“Eh? Tell me!” He glares down at you, shaking you so hard that your teeth rattle. “Do you know what will happen if they catch you here?”

Your silence is enough answer for him, and he drops your hand like it burns him.

“This place is not for girls, Kyenpia,” he says, and bile fills your throat at the feminine name. “Go home.”

“I’m not—”

The flapping sound of moving cloth cuts you off, and you spin to see the boys gawking at you. Nanpan is in front, and his expression cuts you the most. Underneath his disbelief and anger is a softer emotion that you glimpse in your father’s eyes every time you challenge who he thinks you are.

Sorrow.

The silence in the tent is deafening. No girl had ever dared to sneak into the shrine when the Mishkágam was teaching. And that is what they see you as—a girl, even when you aren’t.

The boys overcome their shock and go around Nanpan to enclose you in a circle of dark bodies.

“Punish her, Mishkágam!” they scream as they slap and hit you.

You turn frantically from one face to another, looking for an ally but finding none. Then the boys quiet and you turn to see your father raising his hand by his shrine. You have always been able to read your father’s eyes better than anyone. Your mother regularly joked that it was the gods’ gift to you. Anger still clouds his features, but now so does fear, and its appearance confuses you.

“She will not suffer the full punishment.” His words cause another uproar that even his glare cannot defuse.

“Instead,” he says louder, voice resonating in the wooden structure. “She will spend one full day in the punishment cell without food and water.”

His decree pacifies the boys, and they nod their heads, oblivious to the fear coursing through you. Your body feels hot yet cold. You look your father in the eye. Please, you mouth.

He turns his back on you, and a bag is placed over your face. Something hard hits your head, and you lose consciousness.

---

When you come to, you immediately recognize the metallic scent around you and your stomach revolts before you can stop it. Retching sounds echo in the space as you empty your stomach onto the floor.

Tired and disgusted, you try to wipe your mouth and discover your hands are bound behind your back. And by the absolute darkness and tight pain behind your head, there is also a blindfold on you. You settle back on the ground, dejected.

“Why will someone just vomit like that? Just stinking up the place anyhow.”

Your jerk in surprise, and your body moves toward the voice. A portion of your sadness leaves you. At least you are not alone in this dark, unknown place.

“I don’t even understand again o.”

The second voice is higher than the first; both have the same tinge of annoyance.

“Who’s there?” you call out.

The voices shriek, and a strange sound fills your ears, like claws dragging on stone floors.

“Why is he shouting now?” the first voice demands. From the volume, its owner has moved away from you.

“He’s doing like Kú’um did when he first made humans,” the voice continues, making a strange stuttering sound after their statement.

“I remember!” the second voice replies, its voice an octave higher than before. They make the same stuttering sound, and it occurs dimly to you that they may be laughing.

Fear slithers through your chest, and you shuffle back until your back touches a cool, solid wall. There are things in the cell with you, and they are not human. You shake your head, convinced you are hallucinating from hunger and thirst.

“I actually thought he’d just leave them like that,” the second voice says when the stuttering has stopped. “I didn’t know he could use his sand like that.”

“See, let me tell you something,” the first voice says.

“Go away, go away,” you whisper, hoping they don’t hear you.

“Is this one stupid or what? He should just shut up if he doesn’t want to speak our language.”

“Was I not saying something? Let me finish,” the first voice says, clearly miffed. “Anyway, as I was saying, Kú’um didn’t know he could use the sand like that. It was me that caused it.”

“What did you do?” the second voice said with glee.

“I bit his hand because I was angry with him that day, so his blood mixed with the sand as he created another human. That’s how he now went to brag to his father that he had finally made two different human beings.”

The knowledge that the owner of the voice has teeth sharp enough to make a deity bleed—combined with the smell of blood in the air—fills you with terror and you curl into a ball.

So, this is the punishment for anyone that sneaks into the shrine, you think. Psychological torture. And they even made up lies about the gods too.

As you try to mentally block out their stuttering, your mind registers that they are not speaking your local dialect. The language they gossip in feels strange and old, like what you imagine your great-grandfather would speak if he were alive…or like what you heard your brother and his friends speaking three nights ago.

---

Your father finds you after what feels like a week, shivering and chuckling incoherently. The lantern he holds hurts your eyes when he removes your blindfold, and you hiss. When you lower your hands, your father’s eyes bore into you with noticeable relief.

“Let’s go,” he says in a brusque tone, lifting you by your shoulder. You shrug him off, intent on walking clumsily on your own.

It is so dark outside the cave that you can barely see. Thunder rumbles overhead as you and your father pick your way through tall grasses and shrubs. Mosquitoes bite your ankles, and in your delirium, you pity them for sucking malnourished blood from your starving body. You walk for a long time. Some of the trees look familiar in spite of the darkness and you consider that your father is leading you in circles to confuse you. You scoff internally. He doesn’t need to. Nothing would ever take you back to that bastion of darkness and madness.

No one is awake when you get home, nor does anyone appear when you open the creaky food store door. You frown as you turn and look at all the closed doors.

“Why is everybody sleeping so early?” you ask.

“I told them to,” your father replies, crossing his arms over his broad chest.

The casual response reminds you of his standing in the community and power as the Mishkágam. Your chest burns with resentment. One word from him, and no one would question you or scoff when you tell them you are a boy. But as your weak bones and shaky gait prove, he would rather punish than help you.

You nod bitterly and move to enter the store.

“Kyenpia, please,” he starts, then sighs as he rubs his face in frustration. “Please don’t ever try that again. Do you know what would have happened if I hadn’t recognized you and started teaching even briefly? You would be dead by now, dead!”

Your body trembles and you inhale sharply, prepared to defend yourself.

“If you want to learn magic so badly, why not pay attention when your mother is teaching the other girls?”

There it is again, that word that makes you want to tear at your skin and turn your body inside out. Your father must see the disgust and anger on your face because his pleading expression clears, and his lined face becomes passive.

“I don’t care if you’re a girl or a boy,” he says, stepping forward. “Unless you can somehow change your gods-given body, nobody will ever let you learn creation.”

He walks away and leaves you standing there, fighting tears, your hunger forgotten. The knowledge that he is right irritates and fills you with immeasurable sadness. It doesn’t matter that you know deep down that you are a boy. They would never see past the breasts on your chest and never let you live as you should.

Like a cruel joke, the words of the creatures in the cell return to you. A self-deprecating smile forms on your lips as you turn and search the storage room for food. If only you could be Kú’um and mold a new body for yourself.

---

“Your father said you went to stay with Hafsat yesterday,” your mother says the following evening while you help her spread millet on a mat in the middle of the courtyard.

You nod and smile, hoping it is not as unconvincing as it feels. “Her mother said I should greet you.”

She hums and says nothing, fanning herself with one corner of her wrapper. Her “help” is more supervisory than anything, and your arms quake under the weight of the sacks of grain you lift by yourself. She corrects your placement of the grain, oblivious to your diminished strength,

Footsteps interrupt your internal griping, and you glance upwards to see your brother emerge from his room, knotting his wrapper loosely like your father.

“So, you’ll just pass like that,” your mother sneers after he has passed her and is almost out the gate. “You think you’re too big to help your sister? Come, do you even know what she is doing?”

Your brother turns, and you burst into laughter at his shocked look.

“You want me,” he beats his chest with his hands and arranges his face into an exaggerated incredulous look. “You want me to stay here and learn how to dry corn with Kyenpia?”

He laughs and shakes his head. “You think I’ll waste my time here instead of learning from Mishkágam? Foolish woman.”

Your smile vanishes. The grains in your hand drop to the ground, and you march up to your brother and slap him.

“Don’t talk to your mother like that,” you hiss before he can spew any more vitriol from his wide-open mouth. His eyes—wide from the slap—grow even larger at your words. In that moment, your brain catches up to you and you clamp your hands over your mouth.

Your mother’s eyes ricochet between the two of you, confused, and you realise she understood neither your brother’s insult nor your rebuke. Your body trembles, and you cannot look away from the mix of shock and anger your brother pins you with. His breaths come faster, then he turns abruptly and speed-walks out of the gate.

“I blame your father. He should have stopped that stupid practice of teaching only boys our rituals,” your mother says, hissing and rolling her eyes at his disappearing figure. She turns her curious eyes on you. “What language were the two of your speaking? I’ve never heard it before.”

You shake your head, mumbling under your breath and returning to the corn. But your hands can barely focus on the grains.

Three times now, you have heard that language.

The first, three days ago, from your brother and his friends, as you snuck after them to discover the location of the shrine school. Hidden behind a tree, you’d understood the guttural and musical tongue, despite not knowing it. You’d brushed it off, blaming it on your imagination. After all, how could you understand something you’d never heard before?

The second time was in the cell, trapped in what may or may not have been a hallucination. And now, the third time, from your very own lips.

Your heart rate increases, and your brows crease in annoyance. Something niggles at the back of your mind to pay attention but you don’t know what it is.

“Kyenpia!” Your mother’s raised voice makes you flinch and you turn to find her shaking her head.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks.

You ponder how to ask what you want to without sounding stupid and throw in a quick prayer to the gods for extra help.

“Mama, is there a language that…that only some people can use?”

“Yes now,” your mother says, clearly annoyed now. She waves a hand in the air. “Do you know how many languages there are in the world?”

You shake your head, a headache blooming from your frustration. “No, I mean in our village.”

“Oh.” Her mouth twists as she appears to think. “Some men have claimed they can speak the language of the gods, but your father and the other Mishkágwom before him always accused them of blasphemy, so no one paid any attention to them.”

Goosebumps cover your arms, and you run your hands over your sternum, flinching when your fingers graze the tops of your breasts. You are now sure that you were not hallucinating in the cave and that those sharp-toothed, gossiping creatures and their ancient language were real.

Then you realize what that means, and you inhale sharply. Their words about Kú’um and his accidental creation are true.

“Are you going to continue kneeling there, or will you finish drying this corn before the sun goes down?”

Your mother’s words remind you to focus on your task and you go back to arranging the grains, even as your mind spins. For no reason you can fathom, your mind continues to return to the creatures’ story as you sort the corn.

Blood and sand. One to another. Blood and sand.

The sun sets, and you gather the empty sacks to return to the store. As you approach the door, you remember your conversation with your father, and sharp anger chases away your swirling thoughts.

Unless you can somehow change your gods-given body, nobody will ever let you learn creation.

You scoff. If only the old man knew that you cared more about being seen as a boy than learning how to play with stupid sand—

Your body jerks back, and you stumble to the ground. Your mouth falls open as what has been niggling you finally falls into place.

Sand. Blood. Change your gods-given body…

Laughter spills from your lips, and you muffle it with your palm. Tears threaten to spill down your cheeks as you stand and run. And as you run, the tears flow freely, and your heart is lighter than it has been in years.

This time, the boys do not wait for your father to intervene. Their outrage is more than the night before, and they drag you—laughing—back to your cell.

You are still laughing as you are hauled and thrown with no bindings or blindfold into your old cell like a sack of bones. They leave you there, and you wait alone, so long that doubt creeps back in.

Maybe I was actually hallucinating?

“So, it’s you again.”

It is the same voice from the previous night, and you turn so fast you feel a pang of pain in your neck. Two thin humanoid creatures emerge from the shadows, looking like mad men with their sharp teeth gleaming. Their hands stretch so far down their fingers brush the floor. Simple cloths cover their groin area, and your eyes are drawn to the double slits on either side of their torsos that open and close like gills.

“Help me, please! I need to know where the sand is!”

“Why is he shouting again?” the second voice asks, indignant. “This one is just rude.”

You groan in frustration. Then you realize you are speaking your normal language. Clearing your thoughts, you mentally focus on what you want to say and let your lips move freely.

“Help me,” you say in the gods’ language, the language only men in your village knew and used—your language. “Please, I need to know where the sand is!”

“And why should we help you? You’re clearly a troublemaker if they keep sending you down here. Why else would they send a boy to where they only punish girls? They should just kill—”

In that moment, your chest seizes, your breath stops, and you burst into tears.

“Thank you,” you whisper when your voice returns. “Nobody—nobody has ever called me a boy before. Everybody thinks I’m a girl because of my body.”

The first creature hisses, its white eyes narrowing. “Human beings have always been stupid.”

Your laugh is pure and joyous. You thought that their empty eye sockets would not see you, and yet, they see you most clearly.

“Yes, yes, we are,” you reply.

The second creature looks at you long before turning to their friend. “Do you think it will make Kú’um angry? We’ve never taken an uninitiated boy to the sand.”

“No, no, we haven’t,” the other creature replies, their lips curving in a wicked grin. “Let’s go.”

That is how you find yourself being led out of the cave-like prison and deeper into the earth, light from the creatures’ bushy hair guiding your movements.

“We’re here.”

You gape at the room you stand in. The cave is like something out of a dream…or a magical hallucination.

Various animal-like calls and cries fill the deceptively small room. A lion with a black and white mane rests on a slab of rock that is covered with iridescent moss moving in a gentle, unseen breeze. A family of horned rabbits runs around each other at the edge of the circle of sand in the middle of a room. A dozen other unnameable creatures fly and walk around, each stranger than the last. The sand in the room’s center ripples like a river and casts a soft golden light over everything, causing you to feel dizzy.

Power. So much power.

“What is this place?” you whisper. You do not want your words to disturb the power that dances in the cool air like heat waves.

“Welcome to the garden of the gods,” the first creature says, waving his arm expansively. His long arm nearly brushes the low ceiling, and you hunch slightly to let it pass over you.

Something round and smooth is pressed into your hands and you look down into a plain bronze bowl.

Walking to the edge of the sand, you kneel and place the bowl in the circle, fingers trembling slightly.

You think back to the creatures’ story. Kú’um’s blood created the first different body. You run your hands over the veins in your arms. Your father once said the gods’ blood runs through your people’s bones.

“So, if I mold the sand on my body, it will change—”

Your words stop. Change. Will it truly be a change if that is who you have always been inside, or will it be…a correction?

Correct. Yes. You like that word.

You smile when you feel the creatures’ hands on your shoulders. You raise your right finger and don’t even hiss at the sharp pain when one bites it. The other scoops some sand into the bowl and they both step back. Quiet permeates the cave, your heartbeat in your ears the sole sound.

You dip your bloody finger into the bowl, bask in the electric power that surges through your veins, and begin to mold.

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Host Commentary

Identity is a fundamental thing. For the protagonist of this story, we see that the challenge isn’t about being unwilling or unable to conform to gender norms, it’s just not who he is. He doesn’t go to the shrine for the secrets of male power, he goes in order to seek brotherhood and belonging, and recognition of his own maleness. Born in a female body, the discomfort he feels isn’t in doing the tasks the women of his community take responsibility for, it’s in being seen as female itself – not because female is lesser than male, but because it’s just not what he is. We see some of the same tension in his parents’ views – they do love their child, and show some willingness to look beyond his differences, but they don’t have either the imagination or the strength to give him the space in society to be himself. And then there’re the gods themselves – the source of power to correct an accident of birth are themselves petty and squabbling. Creation, the natural world, are revealed as chaotic and accidental, with no great power to be revered at the root of it. We are all what we make of ourselves, is the message I take from this story. Gods and societies aren’t owed our allegiance, not when they’d deny who we are.