"But what about the autodocs?" asked Uncle Karl.
"He said we can say a chant to fool the autodocs. He said we have green genes and red ones and we can say a chant to do other things besides help plants."
"I have a bread-baking chant," said Great-Aunt Hilda.
"I have a spinning chant," said Aunt Germaine. "I never thought it worked. It just ran through my mind as I spun, and the thread came out strong and even."
"This is crazy," Aunt Irene yelled. "You people are nattering on about superstition, and we have thirteen children threatened by machines! Where is that rascally old man? I'll wring his neck, and then he'll tell us what to do!" She got up and stomped out of the room.
People muttered.
"I think we have to be careful," Lexi said loudly, trying not to be shrill, "to make a chant that does just enough and not too much. I've been trying some chants out. We have to make them one-day chants because I don't want to be normal any longer than I have to. It makes me feel sick. One I came up with is, for today you find in me nothing strange that you can see."
A lot of the grownups were talking to each other and paid no attention.
Her cousins, the ones who would have to go to school and face the autodocs, came forward. "For today," muttered Amy, approaching the platform.
"Maybe we shouldn't say it until tomorrow. What if it won't work two days in a row?" Jason Nine asked.
"We should try a chant on something else and see if it works," said Herman. "Let's charm a chair."
"For an hour, be a flower," Karla said to a stool. "Nothing happened."
Lexi said, "Grampa said a chant is just a way to focus energy. We have to concentrate and work on it." She looked at her cousins, who had joined her on the platform now and were looking at her as if she were important. Most of them were fieldhands and plantworkers, though Amy was studying bees. They had always been a little scared of Grampa.
Lexi licked her top lip, then knelt by the stool Karla had been talking to and put her hands on it. Behind her, she heard all the grownups arguing, but near her were her cousins, all silent. "For an hour, be a flower," she said. Karla joined her, repeated the words with her. Then Herman knelt too, laying his fingertips on the chair. Lexi felt a rustling under her skin. The stool blurred, slowly, its outline softening, and then it shifted into a giant water lily. Its scent was heavy and sweet.
Cousin eyes met cousin eyes across the new flower, and the children all grinned.
"If this works, just think what else will work," said Jason Nine.
"For now, let's focus all our energy on getting through tomorrow. We better find somebody we can test things on," said Lexi. She glanced over at the grown-ups and saw her brother Jerry, watching them. He had gone through enough grades that he didn't get tested anymore. He looked so much like Grampa it made her heart hurt. She stood up, staring at him, and he came over and knelt to touch the flower that used to be a stool.
"This is incredible," he said. "You did this?"
"Yes," said Lexi. "Will you help us? We need someone to test our ideas on."
"Sure."
He sat down in the midst of them, and they discussed chants, the ideas coming faster and faster. "Maybe a chant to help us come up with the right chant," said Carrie.
"What if we only have so much energy? Maybe we should be careful with it, not use it all up."
"Maybe — "
Lexi sat down next to her brother and put her hands flat on the floor. World spirit was somewhere below her, she knew, and maybe Grampa was there too. If she had green genes and red fixer genes....
Faintly she felt it, a slow murmur of magma, the density of a heart beneath, buried in the grave of itself. "Be strong, be true, remember," she whispered to the world spirit, "remember..." She realized that these were the old-plant chants she had forgotten, what you said to a plant that had lost the will to live. "Keep alive the tale of what you were, whisper it to all who follow you, tell them how you grew and what you knew, everything the water taught to you..." She remembered the leaves rising from Grampa's head, and thought, why not do the seedling chants to the old world? Maybe it would sprout too. "The outreach of the root, the summoning of the shoot, the strengthening of the stalk, the lifting of the leaf — "
"The blooming of the flower, the mixing of the genes, the ripening of the fruit," said Jerry, beside her. He had his hands flat on the floor too.
"Seed grows, ghost plant inside — "
"Dives into fertile earth — "
"Sends root and shoot in search — "
"Finds strength in sun — "
"Sips water strength — "
"Weaves earth and sky — "
"Grows green, unghosts — "
"Blooms bright, combines — "
"Finds strength in self — "
"Grows seed..."
"The outreach of the world," said Lexi, and took a trembling breath. "The summoning of the spirit, the strengthening of the soil, the lifting of the heart." She looked up, because the gathering room was quiet now, and her words had fallen in the still air like drops of water into a pond.
Her family stood all around her, looking at her. Their faces were calm. Her father knelt and placed his hands on the floor.
"The outreach of the world," Lexi said in a small voice, but he said it with her, and it sounded loud. "The summoning of the spirit. The strengthening of the soil. The lifting of the heart. The outreach of the world..." Others knelt and joined the chant, putting their hands against the ground. A thread of counter chant rose, riding on top, someone's high voice, perhaps Aunt Irene's: "We bless you, we thank you, we cherish, caress you, we give what we have to you, bless you, we thank you — "
Against her hands, Lexi felt the slow pulse of the world. Under her skin she felt the rustling she usually associated with standing in sunshine. The chant built as everyone joined, with counter-chants mixing in, songs of bread and thread and hearth, babies, friends, fire, water, air, and earth, parents and children, time spinning out, a dream of rain and wind, and underlying all, gratitude for the gift of life.
Lexi, hands, knees, and toes pressed to the earth, felt shimmers that traveled from the crown of her head down through her body, radiating out of her at her contact points with the ground. The shimmers moved in time with the chant. "We give what we have to you," Lexi said along with Great-aunt Irene, and felt that she had become the music, a song resonating in the air, notes coming from everything, a serenade from the universe to itself, starshine and black space, void meeting matter, gravity inviting, sap rising, air entering, leaves decaying, sun sparking, water warming and evaporating, life swimming underneath, everything giving and taking, embracing and parting, meeting, meshing, separating —
After a time, the chant ended itself.
Everybody sat in the silence left behind. Collectively they took a breath, released it, exchanged smiles.
The pulsebeat under Lexi's hands felt stronger. Between her hands, a little green plant had sprouted from the stone. Its three leaves were shaped like hearts. She glanced up. The skylights had gone dark, and the niche-lights had brightened.
"I'm starving!" said Jason Nine.
Lexi's stomach rumbled.
"I'll raid the stores," said Great-aunt Hilda.
"I'll help," said other people, getting up.
Suddenly the trance was gone and everything was back to normal, except that a lot of time had passed. "What did we just do?" Lexi muttered.
"Whatever it was, I think it was good," said Jerry, "but tomorrow morning just got closer."
"We never tested anything on you," Lexi said. "We still don't know what to do about the autodocs." She sat back on her heels and frowned at the little plant in front of her, touched a leaf. It was a plant she didn't recognize, but something about it was familiar. "How can you root without seed or soil, little one?" she asked.
"You can change the world," a voice whispered.
"Grampa," murmured Lexi.
"Before you let the world l
imit you, change the world."
The leaves drooped. Lexi sensed that Grampa was gone again, maybe for good this time. She touched the little plant. It was still alive. Beside her, the stool that had been a flower had reverted to being a stool again; its hour was long gone.
"Change the world," Lexi said, "change the world. Why should we turn into normal children and feel sick when we can change the autodocs instead?"
Before breakfast, she and her cousins and their siblings decided on a chant that would convince the autodocs every child they tested was normal. They chanted it all together sixteen times, which seemed like the correct number.
Walking the corridors to school with a bunch of her family, Lexi felt buoyed up by the wonders of the night before and the work they had done this morning. In the classroom, among children who weren't related to her, Lexi felt stirrings of unease. The teaching computer, a creature of soft voice and endless patience, was eclipsed by the autodoc, a large burnished gray machine with a cavity where you stuck your arm for the med tests. Lexi stood in line next to her best friend Arliss, wondering if the night before had all been a dream, if she had been asleep this morning and dreamed the whole chant for disabling the autodocs.
Arliss was sweating.
Candy, first in line, walked up and thrust her arm into the hole.
"What's the matter?" Lexi whispered to Arliss.
"This year it's going to know," he whispered back. "This year it's going to catch me and take me away and turn me into fertilizer."
"Why?" asked Lexi. Candy walked away from the autodoc, and Douglas stepped up.
"I'm not normal. I don't know why I didn't get caught last year."
"But — " It had never occurred to her that any of the other kids would have a problem with the autodoc. They were the ones she and her cousins were trying to be like. "But — " she said again, and gripped her conviction that everything she thought had happened in the last day had actually happened. "Don't worry. We fixed it," she said.
Douglas turned away from the autodoc. It was Arliss's turn. Lexi stepped ahead of him and went to the machine, thinking through the chant. Conscious of her green genes, she put her arm into the dark hole on the autodoc, and waited.
-End-
About the Author
Over the past thirty years, Nina Kiriki Hoffman has sold adult and YA novels and more than 250 short stories. Her works have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and Endeavour awards. Her fiction has won a Stoker and a Nebula Award.
A collection of her short stories, Permeable Borders, was published in 2012 by Fairwood Press.
Nina does production work for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She also works with teen writers. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.
For a list of Nina's publications, go to: http://ofearna.us/books/hoffman.html.
Connect with the Author
You can connect directly with the Nina Kiriki Hoffman through Facebook.
Other Nina Kiriki Hoffman Titles
You can find the following titles online. The links below will allow you to purchase directly from Amazon or read free fiction online.
Short Fiction:
"Trophy Wives," by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"Escapes," by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"Ghost Hedgehog" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"How I Came to Marry a Herpetologist" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"The Weight of Wishes" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"Key Signatures" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Family Tree Page 2
