Cauldron Anthology Issue 3: Year 1 Collection Cauldron Anthology Year One Issue FINAL 1.17.18 | Page 34

The Kalip Woman
Allison Walters Luther
I am the Secret Keeper. It is I who guards the Temple. To all who seek, I whisper: “Beware.”
I flinch at the monotonous creaking of the rocking chair. Back and forth, back and forth, wood
against wood, all day, every day. It is a tiresome activity, but still I rock. It is what is ex-pected of
me. Back and forth. Back and forth.
My gaze shifts to a person standing out by the road, my heart caught by his sudden move-ment.
I don’t know who it is, but even at this distance with these old eyes of mine, I can see that it is a
man. I nod to myself, a thrumming tune leaving my lips to match his tight, deliberate steps as he
approaches the stone steps on which I sit. I know what his questions will be: greed or pride or lust.
They always are, and small and petty besides.
Nothing much exciting happens in our dusty corner of the world. People are born, they live,
they die. A few brave souls will try to leave, thinking, as fools so often do, that life will be better
on the other side of the river. What? You don’t think you can be both brave and a fool? Have you
never met a man? A man will rush into battle against the fiercest of dragons, but then flee from the
strong arms of a woman who loves him. Brave fools, the lot of them.
The crunching of the gravel under his feet matches the rhythm of my rocking chair. Back and
forth. Left and right. Stone and wood. Woman and man.
I do not recognize him, which is unusual. There are not many people around here, certainly not
so many that my mind can’t keep track of them. This doubt, this vertigo, is new and harsh and I
shiver in the sunlight.
In a town of familiars, we are the oddities: the Kalip Women, living and dying in the big stone
house by the Great River. No man ever climbs the lioness-flanked steps, yet a baby girl ar-rives
once every generation, shrieking with the shock of living, there to grow and learn and take the
place of the others who must die, one by one. In other places, in other times, we would have been
hunted as witches or persecuted as Romani (who are a great and powerful people, though no
relation to us, more’s the pity). But, for now at least, we are left to our solitude, only tasked with
answering the questions of people seeking their own version of the truth.
The man stops short of the stairs, peering up at me with a stranger’s eyes. I would remember
those eyes, I’m sure of it. Not the color or the shape; they are nothing remarkable and, I suppose,
easy enough to forget for most people. But those eyes . . . Those are old eyes, even if the man in
possession of them appears to be about my own age of three score and one. Ancient eyes, telling
of times long ago when the Kalip Women were the ones who asked the questions and woe to those
who answered in untruths. I doubt my eyes would look as old if I sought my reflection in a still
pond.
I have never seen eyes like these before.
Time hangs in the air between us, like a still-ticking clock frozen between Then and Never. Is it
pressing down on him the way it is on me?