Blood of My Blood, Dreams of My Dreams, Heart of My Heart
By Molly Likovich
The Sun was screaming.
Kalinda tilted her head back and let the rays penetrate her skin as she tried to hone in and make sense of the sound. It was a ripe, rough sort of sound. A singer who had just woken up, their vocal cords—scratchy from lack of lemon and water. The sound lingered over her skin, and if she were a less powerful Sistra it might have made her ears bleed.
“It’s early today.”
Kalinda opened her eyes and let them take a moment to refocus as her Sistra Carlotta came into view. Carlotta had cotton balls stuffed in her ears—she was the same age as Kalinda but nowhere near as strong.
“Louder too,” Kalinda said.
Carlotta put a hand across her forehead, just above her eyes, to make a shield against the sweltering rays.
“I don’t know how you can stand it.”
She said this to Kalinda every time the screaming started. It was a ritual of sorts.
“Help me up,” Kalinda said.
Her Sistra held out the hand that wasn’t blocking out the sun, Kalinda took it, and Carlotta brought her to stand. The two smiled at one another and spoke sacred words in whispers that brushed softly against each other’s multi-colored, ever changing skin. Kalinda was a deep ruby shade today, Carlotta was the color of a ripe peach. It was Day 62,096.
“Come,” Kalinda said, taking Carlotta’s hand in hers. “The other Sistra will be waiting.”
The two women rushed down the hill, their white satin dresses billowing in the wind, swaying with the sound of the sun. From above they looked something mixed between angels and wraiths; their autumnal skin a fire blazing across the hilltops.
☼
Jessamine marched back and forth across the temple floor—a soldier before her Sistras.
“They are late,” she snapped as if the other nine women were somehow responsible for Carlottta and Kalinda’s usual tardiness.
“The Sun is loud,” Ayundia said loudly herself, shouting over the cotton in her ears and the thrum of the waterfall across the temple walls. “Kalinda always dailies when the sun is this loud.”
“Yes,” scoffed Dana, “because she thinks she’s better than us.”
“She doesn’t need to stuff her ears,” Sally said.
“And?” Dana said back, her tone full of vinegar.
“She is better than us.”
“Jessamine doesn’t need to stuff her ears,” Dana insisted. “Is Kalinda better than her elder Sistra?”
“Well,” Mary—the quietest of them all—chimed in, “Kalinda is several leagues younger and it took Jessamine quite a long time to endure the Sun’s screams and—”
“I can speak for myself perfectly well, thank you,” Jessamine said. “I must admit I am sometimes loath to accept Kalinda’s power, but Sally is right. Kalinda will very well be the one to lead us from the Sun to the Stars.”
Dana snorted. Unimpressed.
“Sorry we’re late,” Kalinda said as she walked in at a leisurely pace, her bare feet slapping against the temple’s stone floor, her hair soaked from the waterfall.
She didn’t sound sorry at all. Carlotta—her dearest Sistra smirked at her—she knew the truth in Kalinda’s words, she always did.
“Carlotta,” Jessamine said, “I sent you out to fetch Kalinda, not to frolic through the fields.”
“But the weather is so nice today,” Kalinda said, biting down a smile.
Jessamine seethed, and several of the younger Sistras (Ayundia, Haliana, Stephania, and Lyana) laughed at the joke.
“Sit,” Jessamine said tersely.
The two girls took their seats near the back of the other nine Sistras and looked up at their leader Jessamine with mock-eager eyes.
“I have consulted the Threads,” Jessamine announced.
Kalinda and some of the others often likened Jessamine’s lecture to the priests of old and their homilies and sermons. Jessamine would have been deeply offended by the comparison, but no matter what she did her words were too stiff; they lacked all the sweetness of the late Sistra Yoniana—the last of the Lucifer line, until Kalinda.
Kalinda knew (as many of the other Sistra did) that the role of Head Sistra should have been hers by birthright, Jessamine was of the Belenas line whom the Lucifer line had defeated generations ago, long before the order of Sistra was even formed, back when they were waring villages and clashing beliefs. Back before the Sun opened its mouth and unleashed its wails onto the world, burning almost everyone with its blaze.
The Sistra temple was one of very few buildings to survive the burning of the Sun song.
But Jessamine was the eldest Sistra after Yoniana passed, and just as powerful as Kalinda, so no one—not even Kalinda—questioned her when she claimed the golden wreath for her own head.
That was 157 years ago. In that time Kalinda had grown angry. Even her dearest Sistra Carlotta couldn’t fully feel the rage under Kalinda’s skin.
“They have told me,” Jessamine continued, “that tomorrow is the day that the Beast will finally come.”
There were panicked gasps from the younger Sistra and looks of angry fear in the older ones. But Kalinda smiled.
She had been ready for fifty-two years.
Jessamine could also endure the Sun’s song like Kalinda did but what none of the other Sistra knew was that Kalinda understood the words. The Sun’s song wasn’t a feral, meaningless wail, it was a declaration —of war.
☼
“Kalinda,” Ayundia whispered in the night air in the blessed silence of the Moon, “don’t do this.”
Kalinda paused with her hand on the door to the temple. She could ignore Ayundia and continue on with her endeavor—undeterred. Ayundia was not her dearest Sistra, she had only been Kalinda’s Sistra for a handful of decades, nothing in the ways of their world.
But being Sistra was more than that.
Their blood danced in each other's veins. They dreamed each other’s dreams. They tasted each other's laughter. They were one in a way that other creatures would never understand.
So Kalinda turned around. Ayundia stood behind her, wearing nothing, holding a taper, the flame illuminating her robin-egg-blue skin.
“You will die,” Ayundia said, tears glowing in the candle-light.
“I am eternal,” Kalinda said.
“If you die, won’t we all die?” Ayundia asked, ignoring Kalinda’s declaration of undying. “We are Sistra. We are one?”
“We did not all perish when Yoniana died so why should any other deaths be different?”
“Because,” the younger Sistra said, “this world is different. You know that.”
“I have heard the Sun’s song for over a century,” Kalinda said calmly, “I have waited for the day of the Beast. Jessamine does not know what she’s up against; none of you do.”
“Do you think,” Ayundia asked, “that because you are the last of the Lucifer line that you are stronger than us?”
“No,” Kalinda said. “I am stronger because I chose to be. Do you think I was magically able to withstand the Sun’s screaming? Do you believe that is how the Sistra work? Are you so foolish? No. I bled my ears daily, my brain begging me to stuff my ears with anything to drown out the sound. But I refused. I listened. I ignored Jessamine’s precious threads because they did not save our people from the great burning of the Sun’s song and they will not save us now. If Sistra dies then this world will die. The Sun will consume us and move on to sing other worlds into non-existence. So step back, Ayundia of the Neto line and let me pass.”
“No,” Ayundia said; her firm voice surprised Kalinda. “I’m going with you.”
“As am I,” a voice whispered in the darkness.
Ayundia cast her taper’s light down the temple hall to where Mary of the Khor line stood. One by one the other Sistra joined the ranks: Haliana of the Ra line, Dana of the Helios line, Diane of the Apollo line, Sally of the Saulé line, Stephania of the Päivätä line, Kiara of the Aurora line, Lyana of the Nap Anya line, and Kalinda’s dearest Sistra Carlotta of the Sól line (the only Sistra not in attendance was Jessamine).
“You see,” Carlotta said with a smile only her dearest Sistra fully understood, “we are Sistra. We are one. If you die we will feel it in our bones. If you succeed we will feel it in our hearts. But Sistra do not cower. Yoniana thought she could do this alone, but that is not what Sistra is. Blood of my blood, dream of my dreams, heart of my heart.”
“We’re coming with you,” Ayundia reiterated.
This time Kalinda did not argue.
☼
The Sistra have long fought us. The Us who are I. We (I) crack the sun open like an egg and descend upon them. I (We) have warned them of this day when all of ourselves are one beautiful Beast. I am whole again. The corners of every world I swallowed runs through me, emboldening me—I will burn out the Sistra who dared defy me and swallow their beautiful moon and their blood will be sweeter than cherries and nectar; I will make ambrosia from their bones.
I will endure and the Sistra will fall.
☼
The moon was melting as the eleven Sistra who still believed in what their ancestors had burned for, stood together on the hilltop, their skin bleeding into a beautiful hue—a nebula of color unlike any before seen by the beings that once roamed that world. They held tight to each other’s hands and swallowed their teas.
They watched the Beast that was Ra, and Helios, and Apollo, and Saulé, and Belanas, and Päivätä, and Sól, and Neto, and Aurora, and Khors, and Nap Anya, and Lucifer crawl out of the cracked sun to make its way down to them.
Kalinda unhinged her jaw.
The Sistra sang their song of fire.
And Kalinda swallowed the Sun.
Molly Likovich (she/her) is a queer, disabled, proud Marylander with a BA in Creative Writing from Salisbury University. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in The New Mexico Review, Shore Poetry, Rust + Moth, Bluestem, Boomer Lit Mag, Tattoo Highway, Seven Circle Press, and Dreams & Nightmares Magazine. In 2017 she won Honorable Mention in the AWP Intro Poetry Journal Award and the Glimmer Train Short Story Contest for New Writers. In 2020 she won Silver Honorable Mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. Her indie poetry collection Not a Myth, co-authored by Marcia Ruiz, was a #1 New Release in Women’s Poetry on Amazon and her indie romance novella Riding The Headless Horseman was a #1 New Release and #2 Bestseller in Erotic Horror on Amazon. She currently works as the head playwright for A Cow Jumped Over The Moon Theater. You can find her on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube @magicalmolly.