Skipfa

by Laurie Tom

Mewahi didn't want to grow up. When the other girls came of age she saw them laugh and cry as they spun through the village, hair shorn from their heads as their skipfa sailed like ribbons about their maturing bodies. Mewahi wanted a skipfa, but only women had them - to be their tiny guardians, said Paffi, Mewahi's mother.

Tahfo girls did not cut their hair from the moment they were born until the day they became women, and Mewahi loved her long, luxurious locks. She could divide them into seven braids, each thicker than the headman's finger, and still have hair to spare. Paffi said she must have her father's hair. Nolu had otter's hair, so thick it kept the water from his head.

If the wind was right, Mewahi could stand up on the cliffs, hair unbraided, and the locks would catch the air, becoming wings that let her fly above the sea. The menfolk and boys scoffed and teased the girls, calling them silly gulls who always returned for food, but Mewahi loved to fly and if she dared she would not come back. She would fly away from the land and join the wild skipfa whose women had died.

Mewahi did not want to grow up, to return to earth never to leave it again. Not even for a skipfa.

The menfolk came for her late at night, when she thought herself still safe under the wing of childhood. She struggled and screamed, but they would not let her go. Not her uncle, not her father, not her brother. Paffi only watched and told her that it would not be so bad.

They forced her to the ground, pressing her cheek to the dirt floor of the hut, and with a hunting knife hacked off the long locks as she sobbed. More than the pain, more than the betrayal, she did not want to be without wings. Even if they gave her a skipfa it would not be worth it. Her hair would never grow back again, not to the length that would allow her to fly.

Lost in her own sobs, she missed the words of prayer from Liei, the village shaman, as she passed Mewahi from child to adult. Mewahi only realized what had happened when Liei pressed a ball of hair into her hand.

"Have hope," said Liei.

With a pat on the shoulder, the shaman left, taking the menfolk with her. Mewahi looked down in her hand and saw, instead of her hair, a tiny winged serpent coiled in sleep; a skipfa.

She raised it to her eyes, watching it stir and gaze back at her with such trust and innocence; all that which she had lost. The skipfa had hope, and bright joyful wings. Though she could no longer fly, the skipfa would do its best for her, and once time came for her to leave this world, it would carry her higher into the skies than her wings ever could.

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©Laurie Tom

Laurie Tom was born in the Chinese Year of the Snake and holds a degree in biology from UC San Diego. She lives in southern California where she works for a prominent video and computer game publisher. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as Hadrosaur Tales, Parageography, and AlienSkin.