Night of the Hats

  And Their Lips Rang With The Sun by Amal El-Mohtar in Strange Horizons There are fourteen dancers of the sun, women who shake their spears for the dawn dance, who speak the name on their skin with mouths that have golden bells on them. They bring up and teach girls who are born with the name on their skin, each passing on in turn, and when they pass on the dance, they retire to the temple and no longer speak – for without the sun’s bell-like chime there are no words. Does their dance bring the sun? One day a dancer sees a stranger and follows them. Sees another dance at night, one for the moon. She and the stranger spend the rest of the night and she is late to the dance for the sun, running home in the unnatural dark. This story goes on, the teller knowing what must happen. How the words that are names appear on the acolytes of the sun and the moon, and how they are replaced when the time comes. Perhaps they have more to tell. Read This: Gorgeous story of myth becoming...