A young woman approached the table carrying a wide rimmed bowl. She knelt before Bes reclined in the chair with the orange cushion. Sudsy water slopped about the bowl as she began bathing the Bes’s feet.

Fascinated, Ule appreciated the tender way the she pat dried Bes’s heavily callused soles and wrap them with the cloth.

“What happened to your arms?”

“I be born this way,” Bes replied, a tint of boredom in her voice as though she had answered the question a thousand times. She reclined slightly, her upper back hunching forward as her toes scrunched the cloth.

Ule’s eyes widened. She knew humans underwent rare, drastic physical changes in their forms. Sometimes the mutations were revered ; usually they were feared and destroyed.

“Does it hurt?”

Bes chuckled. “Na, young bes.”

Six young servers carried large silver trays heaped with grapes, apples, oranges, dates, and an assortment of nuts. They set the trays down at various tables about the clearing, including one at their table.

“I be too warm,” Bes said to the server.

The girl’s response was swift. Tenderly, she began unravelling the red cloth from Bes’s head.

Ule held her breath, wondering if the oddly elongated head was yet another error in form, some strange eruption of bone and skin stretching her skull. Yet when the cloth fell away, she saw a sculpture of shiny black hair. It was intricately braided, curled, and pinned. It towered nearly a forearm high and sat on top of a perfectly normal head with a smooth, high forehead.

“You must have very long hair,” she blurted.

“Longer than my height, I be told .”

Before Ule could ask if someone could style her hair that way, Bes leaned backward. Raising one of her long, limber legs, she shook her foot free from the cloth and extended it toward a bowl. With her toes, she plucked a shiny red grape from the vine and brought it close to her mouth. Her foot lingered as she leaned forward and sucked the fruit into her mouth.

The woman couldn’t possibly be more flexible, Ule thought until Bes reached with her foot toward a wooden goblet of red wine and slipped the stem between two toes. She brought the vessel to her lips in a graceful arc, the muscles in her thighs shifting.

Bes’s dark eyes locked with Ule’s as she sat tall , tipped the glass, and drank deeply until a trickle of wine spilled from the corner of her mouth. She set the goblet down and wiped the wine away with the side of her big toe.

“We consider it a sign of respect,” she began, a slight curl to one side of her mouth, “for guests to dine in the same manner  as their host.”

A little stunned at first, Ule regarded the tarnished silver goblet in front of her and shrugged. Determined to drink wine with her toes, she extended a leg across the low-rise bench.

A hush fell over the clearing.

Reaching with her dusty foot toward the half-filled goblet, she shifted slightly to accommodate the flex in her hip. Faint titters floated in between the crackles and spits issuing from the fire pit. She clenched her toes about the goblet stem, which began to tip as she lifted her leg. To prevent the wine from spilling, she shifted her balance and keeled sideways, tumbling from the pillow-seat.

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The Forgotten Gemstone, Book One in A Xiinisi Trilogy

© Kit Daven & Eager Eye Books, 2013.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any matter whatsoever  without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review or critical article.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, situations, and references portrayed in this story either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

Cover art by Sean Chappell, RedFracture .com.