Sundari had a mental habit of ignoring entire worlds while pondering the more arcane facts of their biology, so she did not hear the song until her hair was washed. She was wrapping it in a towel and walking barefoot across the spicewood floor, past the bed and sample tables and chemstove and microscopes and netset, when it occurred to her that someone had been singing for the last few minutes.

The song got louder, breaking into three parts. This meant the Eskiloni was female; males only had one set of vocal chords, which was why they normally sang in chorus. Trilling and soaring and burbling all at once, the song was made of equal parts sadness, loneliness, and a dark-blue, icy-cold note Sundari had never heard in a Yama song.

Perhaps it was the unexpected note that made her stop to put on coveralls. As usual, she was wearing only cargo shorts – a reasonable habit in a region with average temperatures above fifty Celsius and two meters annual precipitation. Modesty was a ridiculous, utterly human notion among the Yama, who only noticed if she did wear much. Her sole human contact never minded her casual semi-nudity; he was her husband after all – “It is my right, duty, and privilege to see you naked as often as possible,” Ale liked to joke. Sundari felt a need to cover up now, and that disturbed her.

The air chilled as she pressed the double-layered cloth shut. The tiny indoor cold snap was enough reason for wonder, but then the light faded from evening orange to a strange, twilight azure and she felt the chill to her bones.

Putting her feet into sandals, Sundari pushed the banda-cane door open. The jungle was blue. It should have been green: chlorophyll was the same color anywhere in the universe. The song, which gained now in volume, did not come from anywhere in particular, but from that blue everywhere in the hilly jungle of equatorial Eskilon IV.

Her gaze turned to the clearing, to the singing maiden, amid the singing of the forested hills.

Like the foliage, Eskilon’s people were boringly Earthlike: bipedal, four-pair-base DNA, two eyes and ears and a minimum of decorative extras. The maiden was wrongly blue, like the jungle. There were no mottled spots on her slender hips. Her hair fell loose about her torso. Puberty covered Eskiloni flanks in brown, and mothers wove their hair about their heads. She could be no more than fifteen years old, local time – thirteen Earth years.

The maiden stroked a shell-comb down her long, silky tresses with one six-fingered hand while her other hand held them straight. That hair was the deepest indigo – but where it shined, it was the reddest of red, as if dipped in blood.

The maiden never looked at her. But Sundari saw her eyes: blue, like the jungle. Eskiloni eyes were green, or yellow, or sometimes a magnificent ochre, but never, ever, blue.

The knowledge of an experienced, highly-educated xenobiologist was suddenly insufficient. For the first time since her arrival on Eskilon, Sundari felt afraid.

That was why she felt a chill: it was the frosted touch of fear.

Without orders from her mind, her hand touched the nine-pointed star at her throat. She stepped backwards into the gohan, letting the door slap shut. The banda-cane made a hollow, woody bang, banishing the blueness and the terrible song. Just like that, the song had never been sung. The afternoon light was orange. She’d held her breath in a trance, perhaps? But, why would her skin be goose pimple-clammy?

Her hands shook. She wanted Alejandro – she even whispered “Ale, Ale” – but the time display on the netset said his shift had just ended. He would already be on his way from Port December, an hour’s commute.

Shivering, Sundari crossed to the bed, slipped under the netting, and curled up in a ball.

His electric motorbike was quiet, but the wheels crunched dirt road and his headlight shined through the windows. Sundari woke from her shivering half-sleep and looked at the netset: he was two hours late.

“Ale,” she called out. “Ale, where have you been?” She crossed her arms tightly and went to meet him.

He stepped off the bike and came up the steps. “Had to stay over,” he muttered. “Bad fusion coil on one of the shuttles.”

Sundari threw herself against and around him. “Again?”

He took her into his arms. They were solid, like steel beams. “You know how the shuttle jocks like to break atmo too fast. I hate it too,” he said, stroking her long hair. He kissed her softly on the lips.

Alejandro drove the distance four days a week, to and from the village, to be with her. Like other dirtside crew, he could have stayed overnight in barracks. He could have gone to Camptown to sample the brothels and saloons – it was depressing how quickly some Eskiloni had picked up on the worst ways to profit from humans outposting on their planet. But her Ale was not one of those men. He had her.

“Why are you wearing this?” he wondered, pulling at her coverall. “Christ, It’s forty degrees out there.”

She told him about the singer while he cooked an omelet of dageris eggs.

“You saw a ghost?” He asked in a flat voice.

Sundari shrugged.

Alejandro returned his attention to the omelet with renewed vigor. “I came two hundred light years to get away from superstitions. You’re a scientist, for fuck’s sake.”

“I didn’t say it was a ghost,” Sundari replied softly. “It was ghost-ly.”

“The world turned blue. The air turned cold. You’re playing with your little silver god now. You’ve seen a lizard-ghost. Explain the science, sweetie.”

Sundari stared at the floor and let her hand drop from the nine-pointed pendant. “They’re not ‘lizards,’ Ale.”

“Sorry, ma vida, it’s got so even the ones who work for us call each other ‘lizard.’” He was quiet for a time. “I tell you, it’s a good thing our chemicals mix, because an atheist and a believer? It wouldn’t work, otherwise.” He scooped the omelet onto a plate, set it on the table, and touched her chin with thick, gentle fingers. “A cloud covered the sun, a Yama girl sang, and you got spooked.” He leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Eat, you’ll feel better.”

She pulled his face to hers, and kissed him for a long time. “I feel better now.”

She watched Alejandro sleeping. One of her hands lay against his hip. The other hand touched a place below her navel.

It was not time. They were not ready. He refused to have his tubes opened. “Babies can wait,” he always said. “We all live three hundred years anymore, what’s the hurry?”

There was no hurry. Only desire. He smelled of the soap in the locker room showers, but it was the smell of Ale – the chemicals, he said – that made her want to hurry, and be full of him.

Sundari forgot about blue jungle and spectral songs. But she had dreams about them.

The Ansible News Agency had only the usual suspects to report today: Eskiloni factions making peace in exchange for development. Mars 5000 Exchange prices dropping in the trading period. Her home state, India, had completed the Diwali festival. It was always nice to hear news of home, but she wasn’t Hindu, so this news wasn’t satisfying.

Ale kicked the stand up. “I’ll be home early,” he said. “I’ve already got overtime for the week. Try not to see ghosts today.” He swung one leg over the cycle.

Sundari kissed him, said she would try, and wanted to keep her word. She looked at her notes and thought hard about Eskiloni biology. Complex but surprisingly elastic, Eskilon had developed inherited immunities to Earthborn diseases in just two generations. It was a good world to be a biologist. But her mind would not quit the song, so one hour after Ale left Sundari gathered up her things, tied on a sari, slipped on her hiking boots, and left to find Grand-man Tytharyth.

The men were all gone, and Tytharyth was not in his gohan. Mora Mina, his youngest daughter, waited outside his hut with a child on her broad, mottled hip. When Sundari asked after the Grand-man, she pointed to the jungle. “The men are all visiting ancestors,” she said. “He asked me to show you the way.”

He had a knack for that, did Tytharyth, for knowing when she would come. During her first year in the village, he’d insisted on taking her by the hand to point out and explain every plant, rock, and insect. If something grew or moved in his jungle, he knew all about it, wrapping its life-cycle in bizarre, yet amazingly descriptive mythologies. Eskilon boasted more innovations in one patch of jungle than she’d seen in all her Earth-bound studies. This biosphere’s intricate dynamism affected the way everything lived, and Grand-man Tytharith was a codex for understanding it all.

The Grand-man was partly shaman and partly chief, but mostly matchmaker. Like any social and sentient race, pair bonding was a critical affair. The Grand-man and Grand-woman made matches and negotiated contracts between clutches. Among the Yama, youth were indoctrinated for marriage and paired in a mass-ceremony every year. Eskiloni romance was thus equal parts business arrangement, basic training, and prom night orgy.

Afterwards, newly-adult Eskiloni were expected to arrange things by themselves as responsible adults; marriages were renewed, or not, with the arrival of spring and the mass-ceremony. Even Alejandro had undergone the ceremony with her, despite his many private protestations. His patience and forbearance that spring had sealed her love for him: “You are the only man for me,” she liked to tell him. “No other man would put up with a girl gone native like me.”

“I like you in mufti,” he had joked, tickling her bare hip.

Babies were not allowed to leave the village, so Mora Mina stopped at a carved border post.

“How much further?” Sundari asked, looking up the steep trail on the other side.

The maiden blinked the clear inner membranes across her slitted irises, a thing akin to humans licking their lips. “Not far,” she said, pointing up the trail. Which, given her dubious body language, meant: I have no clue.

When she finally came upon Tytharyth an hour later, he was sitting on the edge of a table-sized stump by the trail, his spindly legs crossed around his eight-foot banda-cane staff. His face was a gentle frown – a smile, on Eskilon’s faces.

Sundari stepped up to him with her hands outstretched, bending to equal his height. It was a gesture of respect that made her waist-length hair fall around her shoulders.

Tytharyth shook both of her hands. That was unique to the Yama: nowhere else on Eskilon IV did anyone shake both hands. “Welcome welcome, child-of-the-village.” He bent his head quickly and then released her hands. “Please,” he said, indicating she should sit with him on the stump.

Sundari pulled her daypack off and sat. “Are the ancestors talkative today?”

The Grand-man shook his head, which meant yes. “There is a controversy.”

“Really?” She settled into a more comfortable position and shut her eyes, a signal she was eager to listen. A distant chorus told her the village men were nearby, all in a group. When she opened her eyes again, she noticed strains of white chalk powder on the Grand-man’s forehead and shoulders.

He blinked his inner eyelids. “You have seen a thing,” he said in a low voice. “And you wish to know what it is.”

Sundira looked down at his waist. A leather pouch tied to his loincloth was dusted with chalk powder, too. “I did.”

He sighed. “I have seen this thing,” he said in that low, quiet voice. “I am the only man who has seen her and lived.”

Sundira pressed her mouth shut.

“There is a thing I must tell you,” he began, reaching for the pouch. “I must tell it and return to the men. They are nervous that I am even speaking with you right now.”

“Why?” Sundari asked.

“We are invisible today, so only the ancestors can see us.” He pulled a puffy blossom from the bag, covered in powder. “They are anxious for me, because I have made myself visible to speak with you. I didn’t want to frighten you by speaking like a ghost.”

“It won’t bother me if you’re invisible,” she said.

He bent his head back to say thank you without words and dusted himself with the powder. This took some time, even with her help. Satisfied at last that he was perfectly invisible, he settled again and insisted on sharing his lunch with her before beginning the tale.

“What you have seen is the Fera Kholos,” he said.

“Death Maiden?” Sundira repeated.

He hissed, Eskiloni for hush. “Not too loud, child-of-the-village.” His eyelids licked at his pupils again. “This is a hard thing to tell.” He stared into the jungle for a long moment.

Tingling, Sundira waited. Eskiloni did not like to tell hard things. When speaking of them became necessary, there was usually some amount of silence first.

“Before the ninth generation past,” he began again, meaning: Once upon a time. “A Yama maiden was betrothed to a very high-ranking prince. He was a haughty rascal, though, and on the day before the ceremony, the prince was discovered wooing another engagement.” His voice dropped off in a whisper. “A woman’s rank depends on her betrothals, yes? The maiden did not marry. Instead, she stayed in her hut for one year, less one day, refusing to come out.” He shook his head. “There was…concern. The Grand-man and Grand-woman tried to find her another match. She refused, and they insisted.” He nodded and smiled, meaning this was a bad thing. “Wisdom is knowing better.”

He was quiet for a time, dabbing more chalk over his body and face. Sundira looked away, letting him be as invisible as he wished.

“She was heard singing in the jungle that night. When they found her the next day, she was dead. She walked beyond the boundary-posts, combed her hair…and cut her stomach open with an obsidian knife.”

When he said it, Sundira could see it, so she covered her mouth with a hand. “Oh…”

“She is the Death Maiden now,” Tytharyth muttered. Then, he dusted the chalk on his palms and crossed his arms, meaning: The point of all this is… “Do you remember, when you asked to live among us three years ago, that we made you a child-of-the-village?”

Sundira shook her head. “The happiest day I’ve ever known.”

“We painted you, and welcomed you with kisses from the entire village. This is how the Yama take an orphan. Even orphans from the sky.” He looked up at the setting sun, the orange sky, and frowned sadly, inner eyelids flicking. “We invoked the ancestors to protect you. Do you remember?”

Sundira nodded.

“There are ancestors, and there are demons,” he explained. “When a Yama dies with an heir to learn their songline, they become an ancestor. If the Yama dies before learning their own songline, they return to us as ancestors. Even if they die without an heir to their songline, they can walk among the ancestors and earn the name after death.”

He paused for a long time, frowning at a cloud. “This is not a simple thing to explain,” he said. “Sometimes, when a Yama passes from the living in violence — especially if they die by their own hand — they return as demon, ancestor to no one. The Death Maiden is such a demon.”

The Grand-man stopped, listening to something Sundari could not hear. After a time, he seemed satisfied with what he heard, and continued. “The people can talk to the ancestors at any time. They walk among us always. But demons rarely walk among us. They only appear at times of great controversy.”

Sundari frowned as understanding dawned on her. Whatever the reason might be for the village men to come out here, this far from the village, and consult their ancestors, must also be the reason she had come to see Tytharyth. “And what is the controversy now?” She asked, keeping some of the tension from her voice.

“Child-of-the-village,” he said, “the Death Maiden wreaks her vengeance on faithless men. When she sings, they come. They see her, and want her. I saw her once – only once, and she was my test of strength, for if I had gone to her I would have died. They always go to her, they always die. She cuts them with her stone knife, she dips her hair in their blood, the drops fall across the jungle like rain. We find them…smiling.”

Sundira stared at him for several seconds, and then her jaw dropped open. She stood up. “No,” she said, voice deeper than normal. Her throat caught, and she gulped. Her chest was so tight, it hurt to swallow. “No…”

“She knows, child-of-the-village.” He nodded his head vigorously. “Today, the men atone. We are the ones who pass the trails, and hear word from far away, even as far as your world’s touching-place on our own.”

Unwilling in her understanding, Sundira nodded. ‘The banda-cane telegraph,’ as Port December called it, carried even the most trivial gossip to every point in the jungle, given enough time. It was perhaps the most human thing about the Eskiloni: every last one was a professional gossip.

“It was our duty to be watchful, and prevent this calamity,” he said. “But we stay here today, singing in chorus to drown out her song, that we should live and not die. Meanwhile, your husband — married to you by our own rites — returns to the village.”

“No,” Sundira breathed. She stood, grabbing up her knapsack. “No!”

“You cannot stop her,” Tytharyth called after her as she turned to run. “Can you not hear? She is already singing.”

Sundira did hear. As she ran on steep trails, and the afternoon rains came down in the blue jungle, turning the world to red mud, three hundred voices filled the air, and she finally did hear them. Yama females never sang together, but today every woman and girl in the village sang – even the Grand-woman. For no child-of-the-village would be shamed without invoking the terrible vengeance of Fera Kholos, whose three voices rose above the chorus, a haunting splendor of sound.

When men lie, they also tell lies. The song was of Ale, who lay with Camptown whores from the skid row of Port December. He was coming to the Maiden now, walking in a smiling trance to his death.

Sundira stopped running. Her legs refused to take more than sad, halfhearted, and heavy-footed steps. She walked to the border-post, where she fell to her knees, and joined her wailing note with the Death Maiden in a quartet of love, betrayal, anger, and sorrow.

She discovered the body at sunrise. Ale was hacked open, but smiling.