A Bloom in the North

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  The anadi sniffed at Roika's throat and eyes, peered into his slack mouth and then sniffed there too. She showed me her knife and then set it against the top of a knuckle, pricking there and showing me the results as if to demonstrate she meant no harm. When I didn't react, she nicked Roika's hand and lapped up the bead of blood that welled there. And then she shuddered and stared at me. She said something incredulous and then demanded my hand, pointing to it and holding hers out. So I rested my palm on hers and let her cut me too, using the opposite side of the blade. Her tongue was hot and swift, and her expression appalled when she lifted her head.

  Shaking herself, she took a brief inventory of her shelves and then started pulling down jars, talking to me all the while. I didn't need to know what she was saying; from her tone she was distressed and trying to ignore it by focusing on practical issues. I knew it by the firm set of her shoulders and the flattened ears. When she'd satisfied herself as to her list of ingredients she mixed something in a bowl, sniffed it and sighed out. She would have offered it to me as well but she didn't have to: the paste she'd made was so strong it was clearing my nose from the other side of the room. This she rubbed on Roika's chest and throat, around his nostrils. Then she covered him with a blanket and left him propped up on the couch before taking me by the arm and pulling me out of the room, calling.

  Her summons brought the other two and Kaduin, whose eyes were shining. "Thenet!" he said while they talked. "Thenet, they have paper! They have so much paper they use it for scraps! Look!" He brandished a few sheets, full of scribbled notes in several hands. "I think they might be speaking the same language after all, just... so differently we can't hear it right. And some of the words aren't the same. But they are when written. Except when they're not—"

  I held up my hands. "Slow down, please."

  "They use our way of writing," Kaduin said. "But they also use the glyphs we've seen in the ruins. Just like they seem to speak our language, if very, very differently... along with words we don't know. But I can write and they understand. You see?" He pointed at where he'd written 'we are from the south' and received an answer in response. I couldn't read it all, but I knew the word for ocean.

  The anadi had dispatched the other two and was frowning at us. Seeing the paper, she pulled it out of Kaduin's hand, and the writing stick as well. When she finished writing on the paper, using the wall as a flat surface, she handed it to me and tapped it urgently.

  "Kaduin?" I said.

  He looked over my shoulder. "It says 'why are you all so sick?'"

  I frowned. "Did you read that correctly? 'you all'?"

  "That's what it says," Kaduin said, frowning. He jotted a reply, speaking the words as he wrote them. "We are not sick. The emodo is sick."

  She looked at it, flattened her ears and hissed. Taking the stick back she wrote again, then showed him the paper and pointed at it.

  Seper read it this time. "'You are all sick. Like animals that have not seen proper feed for years.'"

  We all looked at one another, then at the anadi.

  Seper whispered, "All the others outside... they look like her."

  "And we don't!" Kaduin said, eyes wide.

  The anadi underscored the word 'sick' with the stick and thrust it at us. Kaduin glanced at me, then took it from her and wrote slowly in response. "Where we are from, we are not sick. Everyone is like this."

  When the anadi read the words, she grew very still. She looked up at us, eyes rimmed in white.

  "It's true," Kaduin told her.

  She took the paper back and wrote, "You will come eat now. We will begin repairs."

  "What about Roika?" I asked. "Ask her about him."

  Kaduin scrawled the question and showed it to her, and she frowned and scrawled, "I made him comfortable."

  Comfortable, I thought. So even here, among these amazingly vital people, there was no hope for him.

  The anadi said something and beckoned, so we followed her.

  Before I ate my first meal in that northern house, I had not tasted food. I had eaten all my life but never felt nourished, not the way this food nourished. The aroma had me salivating before it reached the low table where we were waiting and the actual act of eating was… indescribable. As if the inside of my mouth had been numb until this meal had stung it to life. As if my stomach had been sleeping until I filled it with this food. It did not look much different from anything I’d eaten at home: some kind of red meat shredded with hints of green leaves, of spices and nuts. But the flavor...! It was soaked in a vibrant sauce that tasted gloriously of fat and seasonings I couldn’t identify and our hosts used soft, flat bread as scoops to gather as much of it as they could, so we did the same. And we ate... how we ate. I was not the only one stunned by the food. I had never seen an expression of sensual bliss on Seper's face until that afternoon, savoring that first bite and then the second.

  “What could possibly be different about it?” Kaduin said as we ate. “It’s the same sort of things, isn’t it? Animal flesh and plants that grow out of the ground. Why does it taste so real?”

  “Maybe the soil is richer here,” Seper said. “At home, the farming Houses found that the soil faded after years of use, even when fertilized."

  “So you’re suggesting that our soil is deficient despite our efforts,” Kaduin said.

  “Maybe they grow different plants here,” I said.

  “Or they could be better cooks,” Seper said.

  “Whatever the cause of it, I want more of it,” Kaduin said, and served himself again.

  As we ate, our anadi guide watched us. From her expression she was unsurprised by our reaction.

  Partway through the meal we were served cups of a drink made from cream: spicy and salty and sweet and fatty, the taste mild against the bolder flavors of the meat. And when all that had been cleared away, another cup, this time of a clear tisane, some stimulant with a touch of mint and other herbs I couldn’t identify.

  “I want that again,” Kaduin said, nose drooping over the cup so that the steam parted around his nose. “I want to eat like that all the time.”

  “Maybe this was an unusual meal,” Seper murmured.

  The anadi said something to the eperu seated beside her, causing it to rise and fetch a fresh stack of paper and the charcoal stick. It sharpened the point, then glanced over at her. They were siblings, I thought: it had the same hair and eyes and skin very nearly the same rose-amber, but darker. Strange to see two siblings seated together.

  But it was writing. Kaduin scooted over beside it, still cradling his cup, and read past its wrist. “It wants to know why we’re here.”

  Such a question. How could I possibly answer? That we were here because our world was falling apart? That our society was destroying itself in an argument over the just treatment of all of its members? That we had come because the Stone Moon and the truedark rebellion were seeking some way to avoid a war? I looked away, my eyes focusing on the brim of my cup and a highlight there, cast by a nearby lamp. “Tell them that we came seeking the knowledge of the ancients. Tell them about the ruins.”

  Kaduin frowned in thought, then began to write. The others leaned close, murmuring to each other as the words appeared. When he’d finished, he offered them the sheet but our guide flattened her ears and pointed at the first word. She glanced at him until he said, “There.” Then pointed to the next. So he spoke the whole thing aloud for her.

  “There are ruins where we come from, ruins that tell stories we don’t know, ruins whose stories have no endings. Our own world is in desperate need of answers. How can we live so that the breeders don’t fall to the mind-death? How can we have children without risk to the anadi? Did we come from the north, and if so, what happened? Were we born in the Birthwell? We came here hoping for answers. We did not expect living Jokka.”

  The three looked at one another. Then the eperu shook its head and took the stick back from Kaduin, murmuring a question to its sibling. She said something swiftly and i
t wrote. When Kaduin took back the sheet, he read it first, ears dipping. Then said, “They… write… that they didn’t think there were any people left on the birth continent after the great disaster. That a great flame in the sky struck the earth and destroyed everything. Their ancestors fled on a ship and came here.”

  “A flame?” I asked, startled. “Where? It couldn’t have been near het Kabbanil where so much of the city still stands. Was it north or south of there?”

  But the anadi touched my arm. “Kabbanil?” she repeated, and despite her way of mangling the vowels I understood her. “Kabbanil?”

  “Yes,” I said. “One of our cities.” Kaduin hastily wrote for me and pushed the paper on the eperu, who read it to the others. The two anadi shared looks, then considered us. Then she said something slowly to the eperu, who wrote it down and showed it to all three of us.

  “They say we are their ancestors,” Kaduin whispered.

  After that there was no separating Kaduin from the northern Jokka and their paper. I left him to pursue the implications of their revelation and went instead to check on Roika, who was sleeping on the couch in surprising peace. When I trained an ear toward his face I could catch the faint wheeze in his breathing but he was a different Jokkad from the one I'd helped lumber through the forest. Seper trailed in after me and glanced at him. "He seems better."

  "He does," I said. "I wonder how long it will last."

  "And what was in the unguent," Seper said.

  The anadi entered, brushing past us to sniff at Roika's breath and check his wrist again. She seemed satisfied with the results though not happy, unsurprisingly. I had yet to meet a healer who did not feel personally affronted by the diseases it couldn't cure.

  Sitting behind her desk, she found a sheet of paper and a pen this time, dipping it in a pot of ink. She began to write. When she had finished she twirled the paper to face us and tapped it. Seper leaned closer, frownining.

  "She asks if we eat things from the sea and things from the land."

  I glanced at the anadi, who was staring at me as if willing the answer from my lips. "A fine thing to ask of people who only recently re-discovered the sea."

  "I will tell her that we eat plants," Seper said, writing carefully. The eperu did not have Kaduin's facility with language, but then no one did. I drew better than Seper, but it was more literate than I was. When it was done, it showed the anadi the sheet. She scowled at the words and shook her head, ears flattening. Tapping it she said something, forgetting that we didn't understand, and when we didn't respond she made an exasperated noise and wrote in a hasty hand and shoved the results under Seper's nose.

  "I... I'm not sure I understand this correctly," Seper said. "But she says... that our blood is... flat? That we are starved. We must eat a great deal and properly while we are here."

  "No hardship that," I murmured.

  Seper's brows lowered. "...but she says that this will not fix you, because you were starved during your Turning and it was... something here I don't understand." It glanced up at the anadi and pointed at the word. She said something, then scratched it out and wrote something new. Seper said, "Not finished, now, it says."

  I touched my chest. "Not finished."

  Seper wrote for me and the anadi answered, and I saw on her face concern and that anger particular to healers when confronted with health problems that could have been avoided. "She writes that Turning Jokka must always be fed properly and rested, particularly when going from neuter to breeder. Otherwise, the change might not complete. It will cause problems."

  "Yes," I murmured. "I imagine so."

  The anadi was writing again. I didn't have to look up to tell; the furious scribbling, so confident, was very different from Seper's slower, more erratic response. I closed my eyes and waited.

  "She says she must look up exactly the... I don't know what this word is. Look up something in something in order to decide how to treat us, to make us better. Our problem is so rare she has never seen it in a person. Only occasionally in animals who have been trapped in the mountains." Seper's voice grew sardonic. "Like animals in the mountains."

  The anadi answered its tone and though we didn't know the words we understood her well enough. None of us liked the situation. "Tell her thank you," I said. "For her hospitality, for her healing, and for taking care of Roika."

  "Are we truly grateful for the latter?" Seper asked, but it took up the pen.

  "Whether or not we are," I said, "she didn't have to see to him and she did. Her effort deserves thanks."

  It snorted and wrote, and this note the anadi stared at for a long time before sighing. She stood and touched Seper on the shoulder on her way to the door, and there she stopped and caught my eyes before touching her fingertips to her womb and then to her heart. She left before I could stop her, but then... what could I say? That I was shocked that she knew the sign of an anadi's respect to an eperu? It was, wasn't it? But I was no longer eperu and this she apparently knew.

  "We have a great deal to learn here," Seper said.

  "Go with her?" I suggested. "If she is going to look for information on what's wrong with us... I'd like to know what form it takes. Perhaps they have records. If they're written in the same way..."

  "Then I could understand them," Seper said, and dipped its head. "I will go, and check on Kaduin."

  "Thank you," I said.

  Once it had gone, I closed my eyes and let my head drop, drawing in deep breaths until I'd found some strength to rise. As I did so, Roika said, "Is it true?"

  I halted and slowly looked over at him. He was lying just as he had been, hands folded on his midriff, but his eyes were open.

  "Yes," I said at last. "Your doing."

  "My doing!" he said, brows lifting.

  "We had a refugee from het Serelni. There used to be a chenji there, an anadi witch, who could Turn other sexes anadi by mating them to emodo. It does not always work."

  "But it did on you," Roika said. "How is that possible? When you came back to me to kill your House-mates, you were still eperu and it had been months since the incident in the breeding chamber."

  "I was... ill," I said, looking away. "Too sick to recover well. And when I finally regained some strength I spent it all preparing to kill you. It wasn't until I began eating normally and resting more that I began to show signs."

  The words were reluctant to leave him judging by the pauses between them. "I would never have chosen that for you, Thenet."

  "Is that an apology?" I said, voice harsh.

  "Yes," Roika said. "Yes, it is. I regret hurting you, Thenet. I regretted it even as I was doing it."

  "You didn't stop," I said.

  "No," he said. "I was past stopping. I—" He bared his teeth and looked away. "I wanted, very badly, for you to join me. Your refusal drove me past reason."

  "You had some fantasy," I said. "You, me, Dlane. All together, all helping you build your dream of empire."

  "Would it have been so wrong?" he said. "You wanted it."

  "But she didn't," I said. "And I loved her, Roika. I love her still."

  "Don't let your love for her blind you to truth," Roika said, quieter. "My way may not have been the kindest way. But it has been the only way."

  I growled but he didn't flinch from my glare and then... then I heard the words and frowned. "'Has been'?"

  "Has been," he said. "Maybe now there will be a new way. Help me, Thenet. These people know things we've forgotten. They have things we need. For better or worse I speak for Ke Bakil. Decisions I make here will be carried out by the empire when we return." He touched his throat, his chest. "I feel better now, but it won't last. The good periods no longer outnumber the bad ones. When I begin to fail, promise me you will speak in my name. In the empire's name. And if I die here, bring those decisions back for me."

  My heart had begun to pound halfway through his entreaty and by the end of it I was shaking, my incredulity was so powerful. "You trust me with this?"

  "Yes,
" he said.

  "But why?" I asked, stunned. "You've just learned that your rape Turned me anadi. I've told you that I love the anadi who counted you her worst enemy. I lied to you, stole your children and raised them as my own, killed half the anadi you took from me. And you would trust me?"

  "Yes," he said again. "Because you still want the best for Ke Bakil. And you are too honest to turn your back on what the Stone Moon has accomplished once I am no longer a threat to you."

  "You're mad!" I exclaimed.

  "No," he said, quiet. "I'm dying. And if I don't live to see our home again, Thenet, I must arrange for its safe transition into another's hands."

  "I don't want power," I whispered.

  "Then don't take it," he said. "Give it to someone worthy. But help me bring home the secrets of the north, Thenet. If these people can heal us of whatever sickness they claim we have..." He closed his eyes. Then managed a smile. "Then I'll die without resentment."

  "And without regrets?" I said.

  He looked at me then, gray eyes unreadable. "Show me a life without regrets, Thenet, and it won't be either of ours. Will it?"

  I could not argue that and he knew it. I left him to rest.

  Our hosts improvised sleeping arrangements for us in the room beside the entry hall... this after Kaduin's hasty explanation caused them to dismantle the nest they'd built for us to share. "They form triads," he said after they'd withdrawn and left us to the dim warmth of the banked fire. "That's how they do things. One each of each sex, and they become a family group. The eperu here is the herbalist's sibling, and it and the other anadi have made an initial agreement. Until they find a third they're staying here with the herbalist."

  "Triads," I repeated.

  "Yes," Kaduin said. His voice was tight. "Here it's normal for Jokka to love one across sexes."

  "And our host?" Seper asked. "The healer?"

  "I don't know," Kaduin said. "They haven't said anything about her having mates." He fluffed his blanket and then slid under it. "Tomorrow they are bringing some people to talk with us. They're very excited, ke eperu. They never expected anyone to survive when they left. They said the skies were dark with ash and the seas had drowned half the land and taken the cities there with them... it was a terrible catastrophe. Plants died, the waters were poisoned by the ash and the flooding. The animals lasted a while and then they started dying too."