by Audrey Faye
Delia reached for my hand. “You opened my heart and my eyes today. I will share it. The Wanderers have always honored that which you call the great mother, but today she held me. I will not forget.”
Neither would the great mother.
Or one travel-weary Shaman with a job still to do. It was time to go hop on a shuttle and face the storm. I had locked the nodes, and only one recognized as a daughter by all three tribes would be able to unlock them. And I had done it not as a Shaman or a Fixer, because that, Regalis might have undone.
He didn’t understand tribe well enough to break what I had wrought.
For most, the nodes were now useless. Regalis would perceive them as dead. Closed to Travelers and whatever black dangers he saw in the stars.
But closed by choice, not by death or corruption or the care of souls who did not understand what it was to be a part of something greater than one and smaller than many.
An enormous, galaxy-altering choice—and I had made it. A choice that threw my weight on the side of the scale that said a thirteen-year-old girl and millions of sensitives and undiscovered children who shared my Talent were not acceptable casualties.
A choice that would still allow the great mother to hold her daughters close.
And a choice that had a very quiet back door in case her power was needed again one day. It was a back door only someone with tribal wisdom would even recognize—and they would all have grandmothers.
The great mother would live—but she had just ceased her role as a pawn in anyone’s galactic game. And I was under no illusions that the price for that would be cheap.
24
I walked across the pretty expanse of grass and flowers that graced the common outdoor space for the Fixer and trainee residence pods and started letting home seep into my skin. Technically I’d been home since I set foot in the Stardust Prime shuttleport, but this was always where I began to feel it.
Sometimes I took a detour through the backcountry if I had dark and gloomy to shed before I landed, but this time, I just needed my tribe.
“Raven, wait.” Bean hustled over from the admin building. “It’s good to see you. I hope things went well.” She dropped her voice as she got closer. “I need you to come with me.”
That sounded dire. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Well, maybe a lot, but everyone’s okay.” She cast me an apologetic look even as she dragged me across the commons and into the building that housed classroom pods, dance studios, and the lab spaces where Growers liked to make things explode. “Sorry. No one’s hurt. I just need you before Yesenia discovers you’re back. Or that I’m not at my desk.”
Definitely dire. “What’s going on?”
Bean looked almost frazzled. “This morning we got an incoming SATSEC call. From Oracle One.”
High-security communications weren’t that unusual. Ones incoming from the StarReader tower were. They didn’t use electronic communication—they made people come to them. “Regalis?”
She nodded, eyes wide. “He yelled. Regalis Marsden. I could hear him from my desk. What the heck did you do?”
I eyed her as we quick-marched down the hall. “What makes you think it was me?”
She snorted. “Like I said, he yelled.”
So much for secure comm channels. “Well, apparently I made a StarReader mad.”
“He’s not just any StarReader.” She grabbed my arm again, clearly confused about whether to drag me wherever we were headed or kidnap me and head straight for the nearest shuttle.
“I know. He had me drugged and snatched off the street in Galieus so he could have a chat with me.”
Bean stopped dead in her tracks, jaw nearly hanging to the floor. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. He wanted to make sure I got my assignment done the way he wanted it done.”
If Bean’s eyes got any bigger, they were going to choke off her airway. “And did you? Finish it?”
“Yes.” I glanced at the corridor and got us moving again. Trainees had notoriously big ears. “He might not be happy about the way I finished it.”
“Oh, I think you can count on that.”
Right. Because Regalis had yelled. That was seriously hard to imagine. “Did Yesenia yell back?”
“No.” Bean smiled faintly. “She ordered a fruit bowl after. And played Rachmaninov.”
Yesenia had a fixation for the old classical musicians of Earth. Which meant trainees rapidly learned to tell their Rachmaninov from their Beethoven, because the boss lady’s music tracked her moods. “She’s pleased about something.”
“Maybe.” Bean looked skeptical. “It’s probably not a good idea to assume it’s you.”
That went without saying. “At least she didn’t play Odin’s funeral march.”
Bean snickered. “Is that even a thing?”
It was, but I wanted a bath and something spicy to eat, not an impromptu music lesson. “Where are we going?”
She took a left that would head us in the direction of Lightbody turf. “You’ll see.”
I lengthened my stride to match hers better. For a short person, she had ridiculously long legs. Or anti-gravity thrusters in her boots.
Bean kept marching, casting glances into rooms as we passed. Instinctively checking in on all her charges, even when we were in an obvious hurry to be somewhere else.
I breathed in the smells my nose remembered far more clearly than jungle—the humid, fragrant, welcoming breezes of the Lightbody food gardens. They were pretty too, and more than one inner-planet trainee had been astonished to discover that the green and color-dotted wonderland grew most of what they ate, but neither of those purposes reflected the deepest oath of the family who worked this land.
They fed souls. Opened hearts and taught them to listen to the great mother and all that she grew.
I wanted to take off my shoes and dig my toes into fertile dirt and simply breathe. Instead, I sprinted to catch up to Bean, who hadn’t slowed down a bit while I’d paused to smell the flowers. “You’re going to insult the gardeners, charging through at this speed.”
“Nope. They know where I’m going.”
She took a right onto a winding pathway, and I finally knew where we were headed. The meditation garden. My fingers reached for my amulet pouch. “Is Tatiana okay?”
“That’s what I need you to tell me.” Bean was finally slowing down, and I was catching sight of more than a few Lightbodies tending to green growing things that just happened to give them a sightline on the meditation garden’s cleverly hidden door. “She’s been in here for three days.”
I did the rapid math, adding up flight time across four sectors, and winced. I knew exactly what I’d been doing three days ago—and I hadn’t given nearly enough thought to what our work with the node might have done to a thirteen-year-old girl. One who was sister-daughter connected to me.
Tee’s father nodded from a small patch of flowers right in front of the garden door.
“He hasn’t moved for three days either,” said Bean dryly.
Tatiana had so many guardians. “Does Yesenia know?”
“Yes.” Bean came to a halt in front of the entrance to the tiny meditation space. “She’s said nothing, done nothing that I’m aware of, but she knows.”
I didn’t ask any more questions. I ducked under the mossy fronds that shaped the doorway and looked to the garden’s center.
Tatiana sat there, a serene, meditating statue. Not on the bench. On the ground, in the middle of a beautiful mandala of moss and flowers. A being totally at one with the garden around her. I almost backed away, unwilling to interrupt such deep communion—and then I saw her face. Grimy like Seraphina’s, streaked with tears, and shining with the echoes of confused, transcendent joy.
I shook my head. The feelings weren’t something I could see—they were something my Talent was picking up. Remnants. Leftovers of some moment that had absolutely drenched this small space in bright, tear-soaked wonder.
I tho
ught I knew why, but I had to be sure.
Slowly, because I knew better than to jerk anyone out of three days of soul journeying, I made my way to the mandala and took a seat at Tatiana’s knee.
It took what felt like hours for her eyes to turn to mine, and when they did, it was clear she was still a little lost in whatever had come to find her. I watched, a little sad, as she reached for the skin of Tatiana Mayes, Fixer trainee and golden child, and tried to brush the dirt off her skinsuit. “You’re back.”
I nodded and set a gentle hand on her knee. “I am. Tell me what happened, little sister.”
The last word chased away the skin she’d been trying to pull on. Instead, her eyes lit, wide open and vulnerable. “I was in class, and I started to feel really restless. And then I got really, really sad and knew that my garden needed me.”
It had probably been the other way around, but I wasn’t going to argue. The node’s grieving had been soul-cracking at close range. Whatever the girl in front of me had picked up, it wouldn’t have been easy.
But it wasn’t sadness I saw in her eyes.
“When I got here, I felt better.” Her voice quavered, and her hands reached instinctively for the moss underneath her. Stroking it. Allowing herself to be gentled.
My Talent tweaked. Tee touched green growing things that way. I reached out, suddenly wildly nervy. Multiple Talents were exceedingly rare, except in Travelers. And if that’s what had happened here, worlds were about to turn upside down.
My spirit knew the answer first. Tatiana’s soul spoke deeply of her connection to green and growing, but not as a Grower. As a gardener, and now as a child of the great mother. As one who had found herself newly born here in the dirt of the small garden she had tended.
I could feel the tears on my own cheeks. The rest of the story was written in the grimy face and dirty clothes. She’d heard the great mother’s call and come here and curled up in the dirt, in the one place on Stardust Prime where such behavior would be revered and protected.
Her fingers traced the ragged bracelet on her wrist. “My bracelet started freaking out. In a good way. Like it knew who was sad and it needed to help.”
She still had the agency backward. A thirteen-year-old girl who couldn’t yet wrap herself around the idea that the universe had reached for her, had found her pain and her need and wrapped fierce arms around her and collected her tears and washed her with dirt. I looked over at the small pebble from my amulet pouch, sitting in the crook of the bonsai tree where Tatiana had left it. The way the great mother had known where to find this daughter.
I sank my own hands into the moss and the dirt. Giving thanks. Letting my own tears water what was good and holy and soul healing. Because when the node had claimed the four of us in the cave, it had clearly claimed Tatiana too. That was the wonder I felt echoing in her spirit web, the remnants still draped over her shoulders and streaked down her face and holding her hands to the dirt.
The incandescent joy of a child who had, for the very first time in her life, been embraced by a mother.
25
I’d had a solid night’s sleep, which either meant Yesenia hadn’t calmed down enough to see straight yet after her call with Regalis, or she somehow knew what had gone on in the meditation garden. I couldn’t imagine any other scenario in which she’d permit me a full night’s sleep before she called me onto her carpet. Not with what I’d done.
I wasn’t a Fixer who’d ever followed mission parameters with much precision, but having the head of the StarReaders call to yell about my performance wasn’t something I’d ever come anywhere near achieving before.
I strode past Bean’s empty desk, missing the sympathetic nod I’d have gotten if she were there. Yesenia’s door slid open as I approached it—whether from sensors or a Traveler paying attention, I wasn’t sure. She looked up from her chair as I entered, and the first thing that occurred to me was that she looked tired. Exhausted, even.
I reached out for her spirit web, the Shaman in me wanting to help, and felt her Talent splatter me against the windshield of her energies.
She raised one eyebrow exactly half a centimeter.
I dipped my head. Acknowledgement, but not apology. Her daughter had spent the last three days curled up in the dirt because she finally felt loved by a mother. Unless the woman in front of me had nanotech instead of feelings, that must have been devastating. Especially if my very quiet suspicions were right. That she ignored Tatiana out of deep love—as an act of fierce maternal protection.
And then stood close enough to see the results of her neglect.
It had to kill her inside a little more every day. Regalis Marsden stood alone. Yesenia, for all that she put on a good act, absolutely didn’t. She had a tribe, and its most obvious member was the dreadlocked, kindhearted, streetwise assistant who guarded her door.
“Are you done yet, Journeywoman?” Yesenia’s voice was dry, cold steel, but she couldn’t quite match it with her eyes.
I spoke to the eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m a little jet-lagged yet. I spent quite a lot of time with Tatiana yesterday, and it kept me from the standard sleep-recovery protocols.”
I’d given her the opening. I stood absolutely still and willed her to take it.
Her gaze flicked down to her tablet. “And how is Trainee Mayes doing?”
Her energy was locked up tight. I matched her as well as I could. “She had an experience in the gardens, one where she felt a deep kinship with the plants she’s been tending. I had Tee check, but it isn’t Grower Talent. Just a teenage girl who’s found something to love.”
Yesenia’s focus was on her tablet, but I almost imagined I saw a flicker of a smile. “That often happens to trainees who spend time with the Lightbodies.”
It did, but I suspected we both knew this was more than that. How much more, I didn’t know. There might well be a node in that meditation garden now—I hadn’t dared open up enough to find out. Not with the Harmonium vacuums on the loose. Not until there were more cards on the table and I had both gardeners and grandmothers by my side. But I suspected. Nodes obviously came in different sizes. I’d been born into the embrace of a planet-sized one. This newest one might be the precise size of a tiny meditation nook.
Just large enough to hold one daughter.
I debated, hard, whether to tell the woman in front of me. But that would require telling her far more about my lock and back door than I intended to. Unless the nodes considered all Travelers daughters, which was a possibility I wasn’t willing to reject.
I cleared my throat. I needed all my wits about me, and thinking about the great mother wasn’t going to keep my head sharp. “I heard you got a SATSEC call from Regalis Marsden.”
Yesenia’s eyes shot up to mine. Apparently, she hadn’t expected me to parachute into the danger zone. “Yes. He’s most displeased with you.”
Bean always knew. “I’m not overly pleased with him, either.”
“You have put yourself squarely in his sights, Shaman. Some advice—also work to earn his respect. At some point, you may need it.”
That day was a very long time away, whether I ever sat in her chair or not. “He’s going to have to work to earn mine. He drugged me. I consider that unacceptable.”
“As do I.” Her lips firmed. “He had me brought to him in such a way once. It’s not a behavior I expected him to repeat.”
If she wanted someone to punch him in the nose, I could probably get Kish to volunteer. “The drug they used might be short acting, but it was potent. If he has it, someone else in the galaxy does too. Can I ask Tee to work on an antidote? She’ll be able to read its footprints in my system.” At least I hoped like hell she could, because I planned on having that antidote, permission or not.
Yesenia laid her hand on her tablet, and this time, her eyes nearly crackled. “It already exists. It will be standard issue for all Fixers in the field from now on. I apologize to you, Journeywoman, as deeply as I am capable. He will never drug one of my
people again. I promise you that you are the last.”
It healed some hidden, treacherous uncertainty in my soul to hear her fury. To see it at every level of her spirit web. She understood just how deeply I had been violated. Her math and Regalis’s were not the same, and until this moment, I hadn’t realized how badly I needed to know that.
“Don’t judge him too harshly,” said Yesenia quietly. “He carries burdens no other man could walk with and stay sane.”
Sane wasn’t the same thing as healthy.
“There are many who judge my choices at least as harshly as they do his.” Her face dared me to do the same.
That was something the great mother was going to have to decide. “I may have thrown a wrinkle into those choices.” Somewhere in the dark of night, I had taken Regalis’s dire mutterings about threats to the galaxy via the nodes, put it beside the terrible choices of a mother who was also a Traveler, and done some arithmetic of my own.
Yesenia hardly breathed, and when I yanked my Talent into gear, it was obvious why. She was scanning. Tracing energies.
Frantically looking for her daughter.
Wielding her sword, ready to lop off any energies that had heard my words, that might be headed for a girl who would one day be tangled in them.
I held up my hands. “That won’t be a problem any longer.” Tatiana and I had sat in the dirt a while and had a chat about Elleni’s turtle shield. Or the Dancer version of it, anyhow. “I taught Tatiana something I picked up on my travels.”
Yesenia froze, and then her eyes narrowed. “Regalis is right. You meddle far beyond your knowledge.”
I was a Shaman—we were always doing that. “It’s done.” Tatiana had already been halfway there on sheer willpower. A girl poised on the brink of womanhood, very tired of being yanked around by galactic forces and a mother she didn’t understand.
I watched as Yesenia’s impenetrable shield settled firmly back into place. She brushed her tablet again, and the frantic mother I had just seen was gone. Entirely banished. “Very well. What have you done to the nodes?”
