by Faye, Audrey
Tee’s eyes opened really wide—and then something shifted and she just nodded and reached for Kish’s hand. “Sure. Do people call you Lakisha or something different?”
Kish blinked as she felt herself hauled away from the wall and onto the carpet of grass. Tee’s hand was warm, like a drill that had been running for a couple of hours. Kish had the strangest sense that the warmth was telling her not to worry, that everything would be fine.
And the even stranger sense that she maybe wanted to believe it.
-o0o-
Tee grinned as she dragged her new friend toward the buffet table. Somehow she always found the weird ones. That was okay—Mundi said that weird people made the most interesting friends.
And Kish needed a friend, just like she needed the calm that Tee was pushing out of her hand. It was something she’d just learned to do, to take a plant’s energy and pass it to someone. It only worked when she was touching them, but still, it was pretty cool.
Right now, she was sending Kish some energy from the sleepy patch of bluebells she’d helped her little cousin water right before the welcome picnic started. She wouldn’t tell Kish that yet. If she was scared of tomatoes, she probably didn’t want to hear about bluebells, either. That could wait until after they’d been friends for a few more days. It was important to be honest with people you liked, but maybe not right away this time. Mundi said there were exceptions to every rule, and growing up was about learning when to make them.
Tee didn’t really want to grow up—it sounded complicated.
As they got closer to the buffet table, she steered them toward the end with all the processed foods. It hurt her Lightbody heart to see it there next to the real stuff, but she supposed if you grew up eating stuff that came from a machine, that was what you would want if you were feeling all messed up inside.
Kish might look angry on the outside, but her insides were mostly scared and lonely and confused.
Tee slid into an empty spot at the edge of the table and picked up a plate. “What looks good?”
Her new friend stared. “Um, some of the potatoes, maybe? And if there’s some hamburger?”
Tee couldn’t let anyone she liked eat nasty machine meat, but the stuff that was supposed to be mashed potatoes didn’t look too bad. She took a big spoonful and dropped it on Kish’s plate.
“Me too, please.” A plate reached between their shoulders, attached to a bubbly voice and the wildest red hair Tee had ever seen.
The new girl grinned at both of them and pulled another trainee up beside her. “Hi. I’m Iggy, and this is Raven.” She reached for a spoon and helped herself to something that might be fake carrots. “I know some of you are all excited about the real food, but I’m a spoiled brat from an inner planet, and I’m kind of freaked out about stuff that grows in the dirt.”
She was telling the truth—kind of. With their arms touching, Tee could feel Iggy’s fondness for the fake carrots, but she could also feel her interest and kindness as she plopped some of the carrots on Kish’s plate. Helping the kid from the digger rock feel less strange.
Tee decided instantly that she liked Iggy.
Raven stood behind them all, not saying much and watching everything, but when Tee looked at her, she smiled. “I eat real food, but I’m full.”
There was kindness there, too—and something that felt a little bit like what lived inside Mundi. Something old and wise and tough and really, really smart. Tee tucked that tidbit away. Raven was going to make a really good grown-up.
And probably the auntie of this new little tribe. Tee could feel the rightness of it, the connecting of the four of them, even if not everybody in the group had figured it out just yet.
Kish especially. Her face was calmer now, but her hand in Tee’s was still spewing energy that felt a little bit like when Tinker the cat had fallen into Aunt Minia’s pond.
Tee just smiled and kept holding on while Iggy filled plates and Raven stood witness. She knew what Kish needed. In two days it would be Sunday, and she would bring her new friend to the Lightbody family dinner. It would be outside in the courtyard at this time of year, and full of laughter and fun and enough food that her new friend would never have to be scared of an empty belly ever again.
And the aunties would make sure she tried the real stuff.
Tee looked over at the other two, Iggy and Raven, trying out their names on the tongue of her heart. They would be friends too, and good ones. The dirt under her feet liked them, and that was all the votes she needed. She’d bring them to Sunday dinner too—just not the first one. They would love the Lightbodies, but Kish needed them.
Always heal the plants with the most damage first.
It made Tee sad that KarmaCorp had done this thing. There had to be a way to collect the tadpoles without hurting so many of them. Kish wasn’t the only sad face today, or the only scared heart. She was just the angriest—and judging by the looks the teachers were casting their way, they all knew it too.
Tee didn’t say anything, she just stood firm and let them look. There was a Lightbody on the job now.
“You live here?” Raven had started them moving, even though it didn’t look like she was doing anything. Just like the aunties.
“Yeah.” Tee hadn’t figured out yet whether the other trainees would think that was a good thing or a bad thing. “My family grows the food for Stardust Prime.”
“Cool.” Iggy’s eyes were alight with interest, flitting from the conversation to the goings-on around them and back again. “That must mean you know where to find all the good stuff.”
“Probably.” It wasn’t bragging to tell the truth. “What kind of stuff do you want to find?”
“A tunnel.” Kish looked shocked to hear the sound of her own voice and quickly ducked her head. “Never mind.”
Tee knew better than to ignore anything said with that much wishing energy behind it. Stardust Prime didn’t run to very many underground passageways, but it had a lot of other cool things. She tried to think about why somebody from a mining planet might want a tunnel. “Do you want to know where the shortcuts are, or someplace away from trees, or good hiding spots?”
“Yes. All of those.” Iggy wrapped an arm around Kish’s shoulders. “Well, I’m okay with trees, but shortcuts and hidey holes are both good things.”
Kish looked about as comfortable as a frog in a spacesuit, but Tee was pretty sure Iggy knew that. She watched Iggy’s fingers fluttering, and wondered. A Dancer, probably. She walked like one, and most Dancers couldn’t hold still for very long.
She side-eyed Raven as the girl with dark hair and dark eyes guided them into a cluster of rocks. “Singer, Dancer, Grower—you must be the Shaman.” One of each of the Talents. It had a nice kind of balance to it.
“So they tell me.” Raven took a seat at the foot of a small boulder and watched as Iggy delivered Kish to the biggest of the rocks.
Tee smiled as Kish plopped right down on its flat top and exhaled like she’d finally found friendly dirt.
“Eat.” Iggy stuffed a big spoon in Kish’s hand and then dropped gracefully into a cross-legged seat on the ground, eyeing her own plate with obvious hunger.
Tee sat last, closest to the grove of trees, and took off her shoes. Feeding energy into rocks was a little harder than talking to the plants, but not much. Rocks were just dirt that hadn’t happened yet. She reached deep for some of the good, rooted sense of home that lived under her toes and channeled it, letting it gently touch the rock of her new friend with the blonde hair and the hungry belly and the ferocious eyes.
And jumped as a new vibration came through the dirt.
She opened her eyes, not realizing she’d closed them, and saw bare brown toes next to her own. Raven didn’t say anything. She just reached for Tee’s hand and gathered both their energies and tied them together somehow.
Tee had never felt Shaman energy before, and she had no idea what Raven had done, but she could see the result. More than rooting and home
was flowing into the rock now. Wisps of story. Reassurance. Grandfather spirits.
She blinked. Raven was totally like Mundi, only stronger.
Iggy looked their direction and winked, one hand shoveling in spoonfuls of fake carrot, the other rippling in tiny motions over the ground.
Tee didn’t know what the Dancer was doing either, but she didn’t need to know. The important part was right in front of her eyes.
Kish was eating, and her eyes didn’t look so mad anymore.
And the rest of them had just done their first job as Fixers.
-o0o-
The carrots were good, the threads in the meadow had stopped looking quite so frazzled, and she had new friends with some pretty cool tricks. Iggy scraped up the last bite of carrots on her plate and grinned. Not bad for her first day.
And nobody had said anything about the huge pile of mashed potatoes on her plate or the fact that her fingers could never stop moving.
Madame Tsarnova would have lectured her five times by now on the importance of a dancer controlling all her motions and on watching every bite of what she put in her mouth. Iggy had never taken that part seriously—she’d been born a stick and was pretty sure she was going to stay that way no matter how many mashed potatoes she ate. But dancer discipline had been part of every breath at the Tsarnova School of Dance.
Or it had been until the day the woman with pretty brown eyes and the no-nonsense voice had shown up and told Madame Tsarnova that she would be losing three of her best students. Iggy first, and then Cassie and Adoba would come next year. They were all going to be the KarmaCorp kind of Dancers now.
The woman with the pretty brown eyes had moved her fingers a lot too.
Iggy did it because it helped her see the tiny threads of energy that ran everywhere, and to move them where they needed to be. Dancing was the best way to move them, but in the last couple of rotations, she’d figured out how to do it while she was sitting mostly still, too.
Iggy glanced behind her, using the dancer trick of watching without anyone really knowing you were looking. Kish was almost done with her food, and she looked more relaxed now—or at least, not ready to leap up and chop everyone in the meadow into little pieces.
Even Madame Tsarnova’s eyes hadn’t been that tough.
Maybe they would all grow up to have tough eyes. The lady who ran KarmaCorp here had the seriously scary kind. Iggy glanced around, looking for where the threads got really dense. Yesenia Mayes had more threads attached to her than Iggy had ever seen.
Iggy found the Director, and saw a couple of the thickest threads brighten. “Something’s about to happen.”
Raven and Tee swiveled to look the direction she was pointing.
A small woman with her hair done up in short braids and beads stepped into their line of view and held up her hands. “Hi, everyone. I’m Bean, but I’m pretty sure you all know that already. Welcome to Stardust Prime, and if you didn’t get any strawberries yet, you should come see me in a few minutes and I’ll make sure you get hooked up, okay?”
Several students licked their fingers and grinned.
Iggy wasn’t going to leave Kish as the only trainee who didn’t eat strawberries, but she hoped her new friend caved once she saw them. Strawberries were pretty much the best thing ever, even if they did grow in dirt.
Bean was moving her hands again in the way that said she wasn’t a Dancer, but she was a really nice person. “We’re going to have a couple of people talk for a few minutes, but they promised they wouldn’t be boring. Danelle Oscara is one of your teachers, and she’ll say a little bit about what will happen at school tomorrow morning.”
“Is it true they call us tadpoles?”
Iggy couldn’t see the face of whoever had called out, but she liked the sound of their voice.
“Absolutely.” Bean grinned. “Does anyone know what a tadpole is?”
“Yeah,” said the same voice with disgust. “It’s a little baby fish that’s going to turn into a frog one day, but all they are at first is a tiny brain and a tail.”
Bean looked like she was going to laugh any minute. “Ever try to catch one?”
Silence, and then heads shook all over the field as trainees checked in with their neighbors.
The woman with the beads in her hair nodded, still smiling. “I figure that all those people who say tadpoles have tiny brains are just mad at being outwitted by something so small. People underestimate tadpoles, it’s true.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Your job, every year, is to remind them how silly that is.”
Iggy grinned as half the threads on the meadow shimmered brighter. Trainees, all a little happier to be here.
Even the energy behind her shimmied a little. Kish might not look like she was listening, but she was.
“Before Danelle talks to you, though,” Bean drew their attention back her way, “Director Mayes is here, and she wanted a chance to welcome you.”
The threads in the meadow wobbled as Bean stepped to the side and the stern lady with the black hair and eyes even tougher than Madame Tsarnova stepped forward. Iggy thought she moved like a Dancer, but the GooglePlex said she was more than that. A Traveler—a Fixer with all the Talents. Iggy was really glad she only had one. The stories about Travelers had been awfully sad.
The Director looked around at all the faces, her eyes pausing briefly on each one. Iggy tried not to flinch as the four of them on the rocks got surveyed, but she couldn’t stop her fingers from wiggling just a little.
Her heart nearly stopped when the stern lady’s fingers wiggled back.
Iggy froze—it wasn’t trouble. More like a welcome. And something else that might almost be pleasure.
She felt the red rising in her cheeks. She hadn’t meant to call attention to herself.
And then Iggy felt steadiness at her back. A long, low tone of it, almost like the rock behind her was humming. She thought maybe she was imagining it, but then the Director’s eyes widened and she knew it was real.
Iggy leaned back, listening to the quiet music of the rock—and then realized it wasn’t the rock singing. It was Kish. A tough-as-nails, reliable-as-ancient-hunks-of-granite message in a single note.
She had a friend at her back.
Iggy felt her hands fluttering, and the deep need in her body to jump up and send relief-happiness-joy out into the universe. But she also knew, as surely as night turned into morning, that if she did that, the girl behind her would go find one of those tunnels and never come out ever again.
So she sat as still as she possibly could and only let her fingers move.
She figured Kish couldn’t see the tears on her cheeks, so those were okay too.
“Some of you already know why you’re here.” Director Mayes was looking right square at the four of them as she started speaking, and then she let her gaze travel again. “And some of you might not figure it out for a rotation or two.”
Nobody said a word, but Iggy could see the confusion on the field. They all knew why they were here—to be Fixers.
“Most of you come from worlds where you have a vague idea that you’d like to do good things in the universe.” Yesenia Mayes paused a moment, letting the energy in the threads build. “Here, it is expected of you. You’re part of KarmaCorp now, and we are a force for good in the galaxy. You will spend the next ten years learning how you will be part of that, discovering your own strengths and weaknesses and how to get the job done in spite of both.”
Iggy wasn’t sure she understood what that meant, but she was mesmerized anyhow.
“At some point in the next few months, every single one of you will want to leave.” The Director’s eyes were as harsh as her words. “Some of you will be in my office when it happens, and some of you will be crying on Bean’s lap.”
The woman with the beads in her hair didn’t look at all discomfited by that idea, but everyone else did.
“You will not leave.” Yesenia’s words were blunt, and Iggy felt Kish tensing b
ehind her. “You belong here, even on the days when it feels like that might not be true. You have great gifts, and the people and the worlds in this quadrant need your help. One day, if you work hard enough and apply yourselves with enough discipline and fortitude, you just might be good enough to actually help them.”
Her eyes scanned the absolute silence of the meadow. “For now, you are tadpoles. Your job is to swim fast and learn quickly and transform into what the universe needs you to become. There are many here who will help you with that job. Be smart and let them. Those of you who can’t manage that will see me in my office, and I can promise you that neither of us will enjoy that overly much. Welcome to KarmaCorp.”
Iggy blinked. Her insides were quivering like jelly. Even Raven looked a little shaken, and Tee’s eyes might be clear, but her fingers clutched handfuls of dirt.
Threads all over the meadow spoke of fear and awe and trembling.
Except for one.
The one running to the girl on the rock behind her, holding a plate that had once held carrots and potatoes.
That thread was laughing.
-o0o-
Phew. The boss lady was tough.
And somehow that had made Kish feel better. Raven could feel the energies up on the flat rock calming, finding their groove.
Kish understood tough.
She wasn’t alone in that. The grandmothers on Raven’s home world had guardian spirits of rock and eagle, bear and wild ocean waves.
But this was a different kind of tough. Raven looked back at the woman Tee had called the boss lady. Yesenia Mayes looked fierce right down to her shiny black footwear, but something around her shimmered. Back home, they would have called it her spirit web, but Aurie said that KarmaCorp people didn’t use words like that. She said they were good people, but still trying too hard to understand things that the People had always known were true.
