Escaping Exodus

by Nicky Drayden

  Somehow, I manage to grin without salivating all over myself.

  Her eyes alight, and she takes me on a journey, through dark corridors, around corners, under passageways—so deeply, so thoroughly, that I feel I’ll never get lost upon this beast again.

  Seske

  Of Questionable Crimes and Undisputed Punishment

  Matris denies everything . . . well, not everything. The mass murder, she’d sanctioned. Only she won’t admit it’s murder. She claimed the grisettes are not even real people. Artificially birthed and grown in vats. “They’ve barely got brains” were her exact words, but hadn’t I stood there and talked to the girl who had to be Adalla’s sister? Same bright stars in her eyes, despite everything she’d been through?

  I’ve never hated anyone so hard as I hate my mother right now. She won’t budge on the matter, and she refuses to allow me to speak otherwise. But on the issue of Khasina’s attempted coup, Matris insists it was all an unfortunate misunderstanding. Khasina would never do such a thing, and for me to think otherwise is an insult to the throne. My sister had felt sick at the spirit wall, that’s all, overcome by the potency of the fragrant candles. The guards had escorted her home, just to be safe.

  Convenient.

  I poked holes in their lies, but they kept digging deeper ones beneath me—that I’d misheard Khasina or that she’d simply misspoken. That clearly, I’d been too distraught from my misfortunate event to process my thoughts correctly. So I left my mother and sister before I found it impossible to climb my way back out of their pit of deception. My allies are few, and those with the power to help me are even fewer, and those I’m on good terms with . . .

  Well, I go to Doka’s house anyway. I know we don’t always see eye to eye, but he has a good heart, and he’ll help me figure this out before my sister tries to kill me again.

  “Seske!” Doka’s will-mother and -father greet me at the door, pulling me in for a tight embrace. The commotion draws out Doka’s other parents, and before I know it, I’m surrounded, greeting each and answering questions about what I’ve been up to lately.

  “Oh, you know, just wedding planning mostly,” I say, a huge smile plastered across my face. The muscles in my cheeks feel like they’re going to snap from the tension, but I can’t go raving about coups in their company. Not yet, at least. With three Senators in this room, it’s best I play to their good sides, build trust, and then when it’s time to strike, I’ll have them in my corner.

  “Doka’s in his room hosting his little patina party,” his will-mother says, the youngest of Doka’s mothers, and definitely the most talkative at the dinners I’ve attended.

  “Fussi!” his will-father says, pinching his wife in the side. “You know full well it’s a proper social club.”

  “Aiee, again . . .” She turns and whispers to me. “You give them a little leash, and this is what you get. Mind our sweet Doka, yes? Keep him in place? He’s got his father’s fancies, I’m afraid!” She nudges me, and her husband just shakes his head.

  “I’ll go get him,” he says.

  “And fetch his honor attendant too!” Fussi hollers after him.

  “Your feet work just as well as mine do,” he mumbles.

  “What, dear?” Fussi asks, even though it’s clear from her exasperated smirk that she’s heard him.

  “Nothing, dear! I’ll call her right down!”

  While he’s gone, the other parents fawn over the gift I’d presented them when I’d officially proposed, a detailed replica of the relief of the twelve mothers who were the first of their line. Both Doka’s and my ancestors were among them. Isn’t it amazing? his parents say, their voices all a blur in my head, sounding distant like they’re miles away. There are three slivers of real actual wood from the original mixed in with the beast bone. Pine, I think it was called. Is it pine? We’ll have to ask your mothers. I just nod and smile. Like I can still see beauty in the things created by the same people who pressed this unjust system upon us.

  Finally, Doka’s here, and his eyes light up when he sees me, and I want to go to him, to tell him everything, but we maintain a respectable distance, not willing to defy Doka’s parents like we do with his honor attendant.

  “Seske, it’s good to see you.” He looks around at his parents, then back at me. “Did we have a study session I forgot about?”

  “Doka’s always got his nose in a book, doesn’t he?” Fussi says. I can feel her grin on the back of my neck, along with those of Doka’s other parents. I can feel their stares too. It’s all eyes and teeth in here.

  “Nothing planned. I was just hoping to schedule one soon. So . . . um, you remember what we were talking about the other day? About names?”

  “Baby names?” a mother, not Fussi, says.

  “Hush, dear!” says Doka’s head-father. “They’re not even ready to think about extending their line!”

  “No, no. Not baby names,” I say, assuring them with a quick shake of my head.

  Doka steps around me and addresses his parents. “You know I love each and every one of you, but please . . . can’t we have a semblance of privacy?”

  “Two minutes,” Doka’s head-mother says, one of the Senators. “And your hands stay in your pockets at all times.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief, shove my hands deep into the pockets buried under the layers of my silk skirts, and follow Doka a few steps down the hall.

  “What’s wrong?” he whispers to me. “Is it Khasina?”

  I nod. “We were right. She tried to kill me. And I’m sure she’s going to try again.”

  “Okay, this is serious,” he says, hands also in his pockets. He thinks for a long moment. “What if we move up the wedding? We could get our house in order and our lines strengthened. Khasina might be desperate, but no way would she risk riling a family with Senators three-deep.”

  “I don’t know, Doka . . .” My brain is already wrecked. I can’t handle anything else right now.

  “Seske, it’s going to be okay. We’ll figure out how to protect you.” He bites his lip, then leans forward so that our foreheads nearly touch. “Remember I told you about that time I snuck into the Senate? That wasn’t my biggest secret . . .”

  “It’s that you smoke cigars?” I say. “It’s fine. I think it’s charming.”

  “No, what? I . . .” He shakes his head, probably wondering how I knew that. “I mean, yes, I do. But what I mean to say is I’ve got some friends visiting. Male friends. We meet once a week to discuss all kinds of things, but we often talk about how we can get men into positions of power.”

  “Wow. Okay.” It takes me a moment to process this, but the way he’s looking at me spurs me toward a more articulate response. “Yeah, I think that’s great. Well, when I’m Matris, we can definitely make that a part of my platform.”

  “That’s decades from now, Seske. We’re seeking action now.”

  “To promote men’s issues?” I say, wanting to understand.

  “To promote the betterment of us all. To help set up rules that protect everyone, men and women, and those who don’t fit neatly into these narrow roles we’ve defined. To protect the Contour class, beastworkers . . . the Accountancy Guard . . .” His voice trails off.

  But I’m rapt. He’s really thought about these things. I haven’t the nerve to entertain hope right now, but maybe one day, with him behind me, I could find it and do some good with it.

  “And there’s one more secret . . .” Doka grimaces. He whistles, and a door down the hallway opens.

  He’s not dressed in his uniform, so it takes me a moment to realize who it is, but when I do, I feel like I’ve taken a kick to the chest.

  Wheytt. Now it all makes sense. “You planted him at the coming out ceremony to talk you up so I’d choose you as my suitor,” I rasp. Meanest rasp there ever was.

  “No!” Doka whispers with fierce urgency. “He didn’t join the group until after that. I approached him, and he said no the first few times, but I persisted. So if you’re
going to be mad at anyone, it should be me.”

  “Oh, I’ve got enough anger inside to spread between the both of you,” I say, trying to figure out what this emotion is that I’m feeling. Jealousy? Resentment? Distrust? “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “We knew it wouldn’t look good if you found out,” Doka says. “But I could tell Wheytt needed the camaraderie. Being the only male in the Accountancy Guard was taking its toll. The stories he’s told us haven’t been pretty. A lot of harassment and crude jokes. We gave him the support he needed, and now he’s being considered for a promotion.”

  “I’ve had enough lies thrown at me today. I don’t need any more,” I say.

  “He’s telling the truth,” Wheytt says. He’s bad at lying, and none of his usual tells are showing right now. “About everything. I’ve navigated the system, and now I want to help others. We’ve even got a guy we want to try to put in the Senate next session.”

  “Okay. But how are you going to do that without a matriline?” I ask. “It’s written into the Senate’s mandates. You taught me that,” I say, my words striking at Doka.

  “He has one. We’ve found a loophole.”

  “How?”

  “He was born with a matriline.”

  “Born a girl . . .” Halli the Mangler is the first thing that comes to mind, born a girl, but her parents hadn’t braided her hair before her first tooth came in, and the old spirit turned their daughter into a son. But then I think of my ama and how she’d changed herself to become a part of our family. A man wanting to become a woman, and all the privileges that came with that honor . . . that made sense. This definitely doesn’t. “You mean she was cut and drawn? But in reverse?”

  “He was. And yes. Something like that.”

  “But why would anybody want to—” I clap my hand over my mouth, realizing what’s about to come out. Worse than calling Doka “well-spoken” for sure.

  “I think our two minutes are just about up,” Doka says. “Supper’s nearly ready anyway.”

  “Wait!” I say. He’s trusted me enough to share this big secret of his with me, and I’ve managed to insult him in return. “Please wait. Give me another chance. I’ve got something to tell you too. Something that could help us gain some leverage over Matris and my sister.”

  I open my mouth to tell them all about the baby beast, but I can’t figure out where to start, and even if I could, it wouldn’t do her justice. “You have to see for yourselves . . . meet me at the second ass tonight.”

  I pace back and forth through ankle-deep sludge, candle lit for peace of mind. Too bad it’s not working. If this place wasn’t haunted before, it definitely is now. The village where the grisettes had once lived now lies empty. Doka and Wheytt are running late. Curiosity gets the best of me, and I venture deeper into the village with all the respect I show when visiting the spirit wall. I need to feel this emptiness. This wrongness. It needs to latch on to my soul, so I can convince the Senate that we need to reevaluate our culture and traditions. I need them to see that our ancestors so long ago had destroyed one world, and here in space, we’ve only gotten better and better at that destruction.

  I see a broken piece of pottery lying in the sludge. I scoop it up, run my fingers along the smooth inside, then the carved outside. I imagine the meals it had held. The water it had hauled. Maybe even the flowers it had displayed. Was there even beauty like that down here? A million other questions run through my mind, but I will find no answers. Whoever had used it is now long gone.

  In the quiet, the unclenching of the sphincter is incredibly loud. I run over and help Wheytt through. He lands ungracefully in the sludge. Gets up, dusts himself off like it’s no big deal. I look out into the dark of the first ass, but there’s no one else.

  “Doka got caught by his honor attendant,” Wheytt says, looking down at the carpet of critters crawling up his boots. “I’m really sorry, Seske, about not telling you.”

  “It’s fine. We’re just friends. Barely friends. You don’t owe me an explanation.”

  Wheytt’s brow crumples. “What did you have to show us?”

  I ignore the hurt on Wheytt’s face, and the inkling of remorse in the pit of my stomach, and lead him through the tuck in the wall, all the way to the womb. It’s quiet, but the stench overwhelms me immediately. The scar is no longer solid. It looks infected, white pus oozing. It’s so deep, so awful, I almost turn away, but then the womb wall goes transparent and I see the baby beast inside. There isn’t much room for her to swim around. She just floats listlessly, staring at me.

  “Whoa . . .” Wheytt says, jaw dropped. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “She’s what you think she is, yes.” I press my hand against the womb, and the baby beast does the same with one of her tentacles. She seems to perk up. “We need to visit with her,” I tell Wheytt. “Maybe your heightened senses can catch something I’ve missed.”

  “Visit?” he asks, but before I get to explain, the membrane thins, and I’m passing through it, suddenly surrounded by liquid. I reach my hand back toward Wheytt, and he timidly takes it.

  The baby beast looms in front of us, its many tentacles waving, glad to see me and very curious about this new friend I’ve brought. She’s slow and gentle with him, offering tendrils one by one. Wheytt looks over and sees I’m already covered with them, sees them snaking inside me. I think this scares him more than reassures him that it’s safe, but as soon as the first tendril makes its way up his nostril, I feel something different from what I’ve felt with the baby beast alone.

  I feel what Wheytt feels. I see his thoughts, taste the cool liquid in his mouth.

  I’m behind his eyes, seeing what he’s seeing, which is me looking at him. It’s weird. It’s exhilarating. Then I’m falling into his mind, like a trapdoor has opened beneath me. I tumble and tumble, deeper and deeper. I find the memory of us dancing together. His senses are so much more acute, and as I relive this shared memory, I find his experience was completely different from my own, even though we’d been only inches apart. His eyes are fiercely focused on my suitors, picking up little clues about each of them, all to make them less of strangers to me. But then I catch whispers of the very thoughts in his head, about how he wished this dance with me would never end.

  Patriline Wheytt Housley having those kinds of thoughts about me?

  One-two-three-four . . . The dance count becomes louder in my ears as he tries to distract me from his thoughts, or maybe he’s trying to distract himself. I feel him flushing as he tugs back against the memory.

  But it’s too late. We’re connected now, and there are no more secrets that can exist between us. I tug at tendrils and his toes twitch and his brain releases endorphins. He goes slack all over. I replay that dance for him, feeling his arousal . . . or maybe feeding it. Tendrils tighten around his biceps, his mouth becomes slick with saliva, pooling into the cool waters that surround him. Each and every pore stands on edge.

  And soon I feel him, crawling around in my brain. Prying at my thoughts. Wondering what I’m doing to him. His entire body frowns, then he’s tugging my tendrils like reins, and I’m yanked back, completely frozen. I feel something slip inside me, like I am an ephemeral hand puppet, and then limbs that don’t exist begin to dance. I’m falling into a rhythm, and now we’re dancing again. Wheytt throws back his head and laughs. I press back, trying to regain control, but he is so much better at this than I am. Or so he thinks.

  I rewind through time and play the instant before he’d saved me from getting crushed by scaffolding, so long ago. Instantly, he’s more receptive. I weave the memories together, our kiss, our dance, and bitterness drops away.

  Then our world drops away.

  It’s just him and me, surrounded by nebulas, the cold of space pressed to our skin. Together we stroll between stars on a timescale that feels like minutes, but the drastic shifts in the sky surrounding us suggest otherwise. Below us, a star system with two suns, one grand and one smaller; we dive toward them
, feeling the tug of their gravity. And then I see it—a planet! A big, beautiful ball of blues and greens.

  The planet draws closer, and the details of mountain ridges and lakes become clearer, offering a picturesque background to our intimacy.

  We are careful, taking only what the other offers, knowing that a connection like this is deeper than either of us can fully comprehend. He reads poetry to my spleen. I tell fairy tales to his bile ducts. The inside of his navel is a vast, unexplored desert. He lounges upon the cushion of my lips. His desires rise, and I pretend not to notice, diving right into the pool of tears caught in the corner of his eye. I don’t make a single splash. And while I swim laps, he hikes across the boundless expanse of my molars, and then I’m climbing up his chest hairs.

  We’re curious, playful. Adventuresome. The landscapes of our bodies like the foreign world we orbit. Is this how the beasts communicate with one another? A life without secrets? Becoming intimately familiar with everyone you touch? If I were still that naïve girl whose biggest problems were running from carnivorous plants in the woodward canopies, I’d dare to hope my people could one day experience such openness and honesty, but I am no longer that girl by a long shot.

  Our connection severs.

  My eyes open. I see the womb all around us, but it’s gone completely clear. Completely vulnerable. Outside, I see four technicians holding their contraption right up to the scar. The tip blazes. Wheytt shudders, then screams bloody murder; my world goes white. I convulse. The baby beast convulses. She spits us out of the womb, but we’ve still got her tendrils up our noses, in our mouths. The baby beast tries to close the black protective web around her, but her tendrils are in the way of a perfect seal.

  She retracts them, but not fast enough. Many are caught, cut clean off as the web slams tight this time. I cough them up, nearly spew out my weight in severed tendrils as they pile onto the floor.

  The web flickers, then the womb goes transparent again. The baby beast is in distress. For months, she’d been able to resist the worst of the assault, but now the scar has pierced her skin. Our world shakes all around us, worst quake we’ve ever had. Wheytt realizes what’s going on too, and he kicks the lead technician square in the gut. She stumbles backward, then charges at him, a sudden pause as she considers if she should hit a man, but in that moment, my fist comes down on her jaw, and she’s knocked out cold. The others, with nowhere near her stature or bravery, back up. Whatever fire they see in my eyes is enough to subdue them.