Offering for the Goddess

Tuhaloni stood at the small table in her hut, carefully measuring scoops of cornmeal to a carved wooden bowl. She’d traded half her husband’s share of the most recent hunt to double her allotment of corn, then spent the past nine days laboriously grinding it into meal. Thrusting her dark fingers into the bowl, she kneaded the meal into water and syrup to make a dough. Grabbing handfuls of the dough slightly smaller than her fist, she rolled them into balls and set them on large leaves beside the bowl. Once all the dough was rolled into balls, she stepped outside to check the batch of cakes slowly roasting on flat stones beside her fire. Using a long stick with a forked branch at its end, she flipped the cakes to ensure they wouldn’t burn. She went back inside to gently flatten the dough balls into a fresh batch of cakes.

The light in the hut shifted as someone stepped into the doorway. Tuhaloni turned to see her neighbor Pahluwei watching her work.

Pahluwei asked, “What are you doing?”

Tuhaloni rubbed the dough from her fingers, letting the crumbs fall into the bowl so as not to waste them, and said, “Is it not obvious? I’m making corn cakes.”

Pahluwei said, “I can see that, but why are you making so many?” She gestured at the stack of cakes Tuhaloni had already baked—more than enough to feed a family of four for a tenday. Tuhaloni and her husband had not yet been blessed with children, as Pahluwei and everyone else in the village knew full well.

“Haven’t you heard? The Goddess Mecalaloni is coming this way. Her procession will be here by tomorrow next.”

“Of course, I knew that—I’ve not been living under a rock. But why did you bother making them into cakes? You could’ve just boiled some corn. That’s what I did.”

Tuhaloni stared agape at her neighbor. Pahluwei was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful woman in the village. Tuhaloni knew she shouldn’t care quite so much about the beauty of other women and focus her attention on her husband, but try as she might, Tuhaloni could not bring herself to feel even half the fascination for Nomakari as she did for women like Pahluwei.

The curves and shapes women’s bodies had, their breasts and bottoms, the way the jungle breeze made their hair dance, and the fascinating way in which their lips moved when they talked, all of it was more fascinating to Tuhaloni than her husband‘s floppy member. She loved Nomakari in her own way and knew it was her duty to the tribe to bear him children. But in all the seasons since their first pairing, she had not been able to make new life bloom. Yet everyone said Mecalaloni represented fertility and womanhood. Tuhaloni prayed her offering would be sufficient to gain the Goddess’s favor. Perhaps Mecalaloni would heal her womb and fix the brokenness inside her that caused her to crave Pahluwei more than her husband.

“How can you be so… so casual about this?” Tuhaloni asked. “The Goddess has not walked among us in living memory, since before our grandmothers’ grandmothers. Yet she is with us now and will soon be here in this very village. We will see her with our own eyes.”

“Everyone who can is preparing an offering,” Pahluwei said. “How will she even notice one bowl of food among all the others?”

“She knows, Pahlu, I know She does. I have to… I can’t…”

She wanted to tell Pahluwei everything. How broken she felt, how wrong she felt. She’d been blessed more than most. Nomakari was a good man. They always had enough to eat. And still, Tuhaloni was unhappy. She lacked the words to explain it.

Pahluwei wrapped her arms around her. Tuhaloni felt the warmth of her friend’s body, her soft breasts and bare stomach against her own. Why did they feel so… right—compared to Nomakari’s loving embrace? “I’m sorry,” Pahluwei whispered. “You’re right. Come, I’ll help you.”

The two women worked together all through the morning. Tuhaloni was just lifting the last of the roasted cakes from the hot stones when she heard it—a rhythmic thumping of feet she would have compared to a marching army—had she ever witnessed such a thing.

“What’s that?” Pahluwei asked.

“It’s Her!” Tuhaloni cried. “It must be!”

Tuhaloni piled the still-warm cakes into an overflowing bowl while Pahluwei hefted the first. Thanks to her friend’s help, she’d gotten them done just in time—she’d be at the head of the line to present her offering to the Goddess.

As she approached the village center, Tuhaloni slowed to a stop. The form that sat in the clearing could be none but Mecalaloni, a Goddess in truth. Her hair was red like clay, spilling down her shoulders in soft waves, entirely unlike the spongy puff on her own head. Her skin was paler than sand but with a rosy pink glow that shone in the sunlight dappled through the canopy of trees above. Even seated, she towered above the small crowd surrounding her, the tallest man barely reaching the Goddess’s shoulder. Tuhaloni was overwhelmed by a feeling of peace and joy, as if every moment of her wrong life had been leading to this.

At least two tens of men stood beside the Goddess’s litter, rolling their shoulders and resting. Two of Mecalaloni’s priests seemed to be arguing with the village elder, gesturing at the longhouse. From the snippets Tuhaloni could hear at this distance, the priests had expected to lead the Goddess inside for her stay, but even Tuhaloni could see that the building was too small.

If She were standing, Tuhaloni guessed the Goddess would stand more than twice her own height. Despite this, over half of Mecalaloni’s body was made up of two enormous breasts. As big as baby elephants, they rose higher than the longhouse’s peak, wrapped in animal skins held around Her by braided leather cords. Tuhaloni could see from the way Her divine flesh bulged around those cords that Mecalaloni’s covering was too small and wondered how much the Goddess had grown since her coming. Everyone knew the Prophecy; when She came, Mecalaloni would receive the offerings of Her people, growing in divine abundance with which she would, in turn, bless Her people.

The Goddess’s visit, it seemed, was to be shortened from two days to a mere hour. With nowhere to shelter Her divine presence, the pilgrimage would have to proceed to the next village before nightfall. Tuhaloni hefted her bowl and started toward the crowd, calling to Pahluwei over her shoulder, “Hurry!”

A few spear carriers tried to bar their way, but Tuhaloni barked, “Let us through; we bring an offering for the Goddess!”

Seeing the two women posed no threat, the guards let them pass. Tuhaloni’s knees trembled as she drew near to the Goddess, but she took a calming breath and held her bowl out. Mecalaloni smiled down at her and said something in a language she couldn’t understand. The Language of the Divine. The Goddess accepted her offering, grabbing three cakes in one hand and stuffing them in Her mouth. She smiled and spoke again, her words incomprehensible. Chewing thoughtfully, she added, in Tuhaloni’s own language, “delicious.”

“The Great One favors you, child.”

Tuhaloni turned to see a crone in the braids and beads of a priestess. “She… She does?”

Instead of repeating herself, the priestess smiled warmly. “What is your name, child?”

Tuhaloni inclined her head. “Tuhaloni, Priestess.”

“Will you join our pilgrimage, Tuhaloni?”

Tuhaloni’s heart skipped a beat. “M-me?”

One of the priests had stepped up behind the priestess, and he murmured, “What we need are more litter-bearers…”

“Be silent,” the priestess hissed. “Do not question the Will of Mecalaloni!” Turning back to Tuhaloni, she asked again, “Will you join us?”

Tuhaloni realized, with some surprise, that she did want to join them. Wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything. To be part of the Divine Calling, to cook and carry and serve, to watch her Goddess grow, to help the other women weave ever-larger garments to contain Her divine flesh… “I will,” she said. “Of course I will!”

There was only one thing missing.

Pahluwei stood frozen before Mecalaloni. Eyes wide, she seemed to have forgotten what the bowl of cakes in her hand was for. Tuhaloni took it gently from her hands, offering it to the Goddess, who had already finished the first bowl. Mecalaloni took the offering, smiling as she spoke a single word in her divine tongue. Tuhaloni took Pahluwei’s hands, breaking her trance as her friend met her eyes.

“Come with me.”

“W-what? You’re leaving??”

“I must. The priestess says I have Her favor.”

“But what about your husband?”

“Nomak will understand. But I want you with me.”

“You… you do?”

Tuhaloni squeezed her friend’s hands. “Yes.”

Pahluwei glanced up at the Goddess, then back at Tuhaloni. “A-alright.”

Tuhaloni turned to the priestess. “My friend can come too, can’t she? She’s really good at braiding, and she can, um…“

“Of course, she can, child.”

The priest muttered something under his breath and stalked away.

Four men from the village joined the Goddess’s litter-bearers. When the hour had passed, they lined up, bent to clasp their poles, and hefted Mecalaloni aloft. In the procession of priests, priestesses, men, women, and pack animals following the Goddess, Tuhaloni and Pahluwei walked hand-in-hand, glancing at each other and grinning.