Goda's Slave (Lesbian, Dystopia, LGBT Fantasy)

Chapter 42: Mahara's Death and Rebirth

Kanna Rava fell over the foot of the bed. The sheets were wrapped around her ankles and they held her back like tangled vines when she rushed towards the exit, so instead she slid head-first onto the floor. She knocked over the cup of yaw tea that she had left behind. Though it spilled and flooded her nostrils with its bitter essence, now that her face was pressed to the ground, she could finally smell the faint remnants of unburnt Rava Spirits coming from the stove.

The mixture was hard for her to swallow back. She freed herself with frantic kicks and groped for her clothes in the dark. She could not remember where Goda had thrown them, so she crawled around like an animal until she felt her hand graze the rough fabric, then she scrambled to her feet and pushed through the door.

"Goda!" she called. "Goda, goddamn you, don't do this to me!"

But the giant was nowhere within the confines of the barriers. Everywhere she looked while she staggered through the yard and fought to dress herself in the dark, there were only empty shadows cast by the moon. Not one of them held Goda's presence. Even when she closed her eyes and searched for the giant within, to see if she could set herself behind Goda's perspective again, there was nothing; there was only a tangle of snakes dancing in a void. It was as if the immaterial cord between her and Goda Brahm had been snapped in half.

Kanna ran towards Lila Hadd's house, ignoring a pang of sharp pain that throbbed where Goda had been. Every window in the house was dark, and she could see nothing but her own reflection when she peered into them, so she ran to the huge doors that had shut her out. She banged on them wildly with her fists; she shouted into them as if someone were standing directly behind them, actively holding the locks closed.

"Lila!" Kanna screamed. "Lila, you slave-driver, you glorified jailer! Let me out! Let me out!" She grabbed for the knobs and tried to rattle the doors, but they were so heavy that they barely budged. It felt like they had been barred with a plank from the inside, deadbolted, chained, sealed with every possible padlock.

Kanna jerked her head up when she thought she saw some curtains rustling. On a second floor window, where the moonbeams reached, there was a tiny crack between the twin sheets of fabric. She could just barely see two small eyes gazing out at her with almost no reaction—with only mild curiosity—and this served to infuriate her further.

"Lila!" She stepped back to try to better see the woman's face. "You knew, didn't you? You knew she was in there and you led me right to her. For what? For what? So that she could abandon me again, and I could be tortured by her absence? So that the one thing in my life that means anything to me could be torn away, taking another piece of me with it, until there is nothing left of me? Is this the practice you speak so highly of, Lila? Is this what it means to surrender to the naked idol of Mahara or to that god of yours—that Samma—who lives in the bowels of the Earth with the rest of the dung heaps that give rise to that cursed flower?" Her voice was raw. "Answer me! Stop staring and answer me, you witch! At least offer me that dignity, if you're not going to free me from this torture!"

But Lila's eyes glared in the light as her gaze shifted toward the far wall where Goda's small paradise lay. Kanna followed the gesture with confusion, but she found that the garden had fallen into darkness, shaded by the canopy of its single tree, and so nothing stood out to her at all. When she turned back, Lila's eyes had disappeared and the curtains swung lightly in her place.

"You can't just ignore me, Hadd! I'll scream at the top of my lungs! I'll wake up the whole city! I'll throw a rock into one of your windows and climb to freedom myself if you don't open these goddamn doors!" Kanna slammed her hands in fury against the delicate lines of the wood. "You're no better than a serpent-sucking Middlelander, you hear me! If you let Goda kill herself, you're no different from that monstrous engineer who wanted to shock her to death in the cuffing room!" When still no answer came, she kicked the frame of the door and turned back to the prison that encased her like a shell.