by K. A. Holt
I can feel strength coming from whatever this is, and I know that I won’t have to eat much of it to feel full. I cannot believe that beetle droppings would be sweet and chewy and flavorful, but I don’t know what else this could be.
Jo releases my face and makes a snuffling noise like, See? It’s just food. Good gods, you gum child. She offers some to Temple. Temple looks at me and I nod, feeling foolish. She takes a handful and nearly inhales it. Jo offers me more, which I gladly take in my hand instead of smashed into my mouth.
I hold up a dark lump. “What is this?” I ask Jo.
“Is . . . ah . . . fruits from hashava plant.”
I don’t know what this is, but that’s okay. I am not eating bug leavings or being drugged and so my morning has brightened considerably.
Jo rolls up the blankets and lashes them to the side of a dactyl that has been quietly snapping its jaws off to the side of our camp. “Is long journey,” Jo shouts over her shoulder. “We take . . . ah . . . I know not your word. Kwihuutsuu.”
“Kwihuutsuu?” I repeat, and point to the dactyl. “You mean dactyls?”
“Dak-teels?” Jo says, and scrunches up her face. “No pretty word for such pretty . . . ah . . . beast.”
Fist stamps his foot, shouts, and claps his hands together. He is getting impatient with us. Jo suddenly grabs Temple hard along the waist and holds her easily as Temple, wide eyed and frightened, struggles to free herself. I don’t understand what is happening. We were all just talking, and now . . . now what is Jo doing?
I run to her, yelling, “Let Temple be!” and pull my arm back, hoping to strike Jo hard enough to get her to drop the squirming girl. In an almost lazy move, Jo reaches out a hand and pushes me into the dirt. I land on my behind in a puff of dust. As I scramble to my feet, intent on putting up a bigger fight, Jo ignores me, taking a handful of dirt, spitting into it several times and then rubbing it throughout Temple’s long hair. Temple shouts and ducks and tries to get away from the Cheese, but Jo continues to hold her tight as she works. I realize she is not hurting Temple. She is disguising her. When Jo is done, Temple’s blond hair is matted and red and can almost pass for Cheese hair. Jo eyes me. Fist says something and then shrugs.
“He say nothing to do with you.” She points her finger to the first sun rising above the gorge. “It is up to Oonatka to make”—she motions long hair, then holds out her hair and drops it back down to below her shoulders—“for you. We can wait only.”
I am not sure why this long-hair business is so gum important to all living creatures but me, but I don’t ask. Fist is glowering and the ovals on the sides of his head are throbbing. I feel I should not encourage conversation at this moment.
Jo, too, sees Fist’s unrest and lifts Temple onto the back of the dactyl. Temple doesn’t laugh and smile like she does when I toss her onto Heetle, but she doesn’t look terrified anymore. She is holding some strands of red, matted hair in her hand and turning them over and over. She has a spark in her eye that I recognize—she is curious. And yet, I know she cannot have forgotten about Papa and Boone so soon. She cannot be . . . liking . . . these animal Cheese.
There is a cry and a cloud of dust and another dactyl lands by us. How do they know to come? I turn and see that Fist has blown into a silent whistle that hangs on a string around his neck.
Fist pushes at me in the small of my back and mutters something. I climb onto the beast—the Kwihuutsuu—and Fist climbs on in front of me. He repeats his movements of yesterday, tying us together on the back of the creature, then with a shout and a squeeze of his knees my stomach is left swirling in the scrub as the dactyl flies straight up and out of the gorge.
The hulk of the Origin grows smaller as we climb higher. I pull on my gogs and the compass tells me we are moving to the south. I throw a glance behind me and tap my gogs to zoom in. We are already too far up and away to catch even a glimpse of the homestead. We are heading to the lands never settled, or even explored, by humans. The lands past the gorge. The lands we could never reach.
Temple’s Kwihuutsuu is no more than ten hands from us now. Her newly red hair flies out behind her in the swirling wind. She could be a child of the Cheese from this angle. No one would see the difference.
14
JO WAS RIGHT. IT IS a long journey. A day, a night, and another day on the backs of our dactyls. It has been quite a trick trying to relieve myself while flying thousands of hands above the moon. My skirt will need to be burned.
Fist seems practiced in such riding. He has barely eaten, has not relieved himself one time, and does not seem fatigued at all. The Kwihuutsuu, as well, seems full of boundless energy, like it is of the wind itself.
At points during the journey, the two Kwihuutsuu would slow so that Fist and Jo could speak, shouting over the wind. I would ask Temple if she was okay, and she would seem exhilarated by the ride. I can say with surety, though, that if I am needing food and drink at this point, Temple must be barely conscious.
I tap Fist on the shoulder for the hundredth time. He turns for the first time.
“Drink!” I shout. “Food!” I point to my mouth, my stomach. I make a face like I am dead to show him that he is starving me. He says something that is garbled by the wind, but that I wouldn’t have understood anyway.
Below us, I see what I think he was talking about. In the near distance, smoke rises on the wind and caves are nestled into rock walls that reach high into the sky, but not quite as high as we are. And far, far ahead of us, there is something strange. A darkness looms on the horizon, vast mounds of land.
“What is that?” I shout, pointing past Fist’s face, at the darkness.
His head turns slightly, and he smiles. It is not a mean smile or a scary smile, it reaches all the way to his eyes, making creases in his scaly face I have not yet seen. It is a smile of relief, of happiness.
“Ebibi,” he shouts back, smiling broadly now. “EBIBI!” He touches his chest and briefly closes his eyes. He gives the Kwihuutsuu a quick kick and we fly fast and low, landing with grace in front of a fire pit in the middle of the ring of caves. Just behind us land Jo and Temple.
Fist unties me from the back of the Kwihuutsuu and I fairly fall off, landing in the scrub, leaving an embarrassing streak of filth down the side of the creature as I fall. I lie in the scrub, trying to catch my breath, wondering if I’m having a breathing attack or if it’s from hunger, or anticipation. I close my eyes and start to count, low, under my breath.
A foot nudges at my rib cage and I open my eyes. What I see startles me so much, I scurry backward a few hands as if I am an insect, turned over on its back. Hundreds of black eyes peer down at me. Hundreds of Cheese with their beaky, bony upper lips, chattering in low vibrations. Hundreds of throbbing ear skins as they listen to my groans and to the winds and to the loud Kwihuutsuu as the beasts caw and chirp at treats they are given.
Hands reach down and pat me all over, tugging at my shift, poking at me. There are snuffling giggles directed at my skirt, and hands patting my hair, my face, rubbing and pulling on my ears. They are murmuring something that sounds like, “Lolobee, lolobee, lolobee,” over and over again. It is all very indecent seeming. And then, there are so many hands on my ears, pulling, hurting, that I clap my own hands over my ears and start shaking my head with my elbows pointed out, to make some space for myself. The Cheese will pull me apart!
The hands lift me now and a few of the Cheese jump back, their hands covering their noses and mouths. Yes. I stink. Amid the scuffle of hands and noise of incomprehensible chattering I see another clot of Cheese surrounding what must be Temple. Their noises are more joyful than the disgusted noises of my crowd. Or maybe I am just hearing it wrong.
The hands turn me by my shoulders and I am face-to-face—well, face to chest—with an extraordinarily tall, thin Cheese, with fingers long as shine tree needles. This Cheese has wider hips and dark lips like Jo,
but is not stout and fierce. She is lithe and graceful, her turtle nose is upturned in an almost elegant way. She smiles at me even as she wrinkles her nose in disgust. Her hair ropes fall down her chest to almost her waist, and are decorated with bits of metal that seem to match the metal of the Origin. Her eyes are big, her skin scaly, but smooth. She has very high cheekbones and looks like an ancient image we studied once with one of the scholars. It was an image I could never forget because of the woman’s profile and the strong eye staring at me from the drawing on the scholar’s slate. Like that eye knew something about me. Like it knew the world.
The new woman Cheese walks alongside me as another Cheese pushes me out of the crowd toward a cave. I dig in my heels. “Temple,” I say. “My sister. Can I see her?” But as I turn I see that Temple is on Jo’s shoulders and Jo is running through the crowd with her while other Cheese pat Temple’s knees and she giggles, holding Jo’s hair like reins.
“Kala omma,” the tall Cheese says, and I am sure to my bones that she means, “Your sister is fine.”
We walk into a cave that is lit by small fires contained in stone vessels. There are rugs on the floor and some on the walls, though mostly the walls are bare red rock. There is an area to the side that has been carved out of the stone wall and I see bowls stacked and rough fabric bags. There is a low-burning fire near the entrance, the smoke escaping through the doorway. This must be their kitchen. The woman Cheese pushes me farther and farther back into the cave and I am surprised it goes so far. The air cools around us and dampens and at my feet there is a lapping pool of water. I lean down and let my fingers skim the surface.
“Ha!” I shout with glee, before realizing I have done so. The Cheese tilts her head at me, her eyes going soft. She walks into the pool, which appears to be as deep as her waist, which is nearly neck high for me, and she motions for me to come to her. I do not have to be asked twice. I would not care if this pool held ten hundred Rae-eating monsters, it would be worth being eaten to feel the coolness over my whole body.
Still, I have never seen water pooled in such a way before. Our tanks at home are filled from the wings of angels, Papa always says, assuring me that miracles are a daily fact in our blessed Origin Township. I wonder if there must be pools like this somewhere near the township, though. Surely it is more reasonable to believe in hidden pools of water rather than angels. But no one ever told me about any pools—or told anyone that I know about any such thing.
I feel a pang of betrayal as I step into the water.
The Cheese points to my boots.
“Ottan,” she says.
“Off?” I say. “Take them off?”
She nods. “Owfffff.”
I lean down and unlace my boots, placing them on the dusty floor just out of reach of the water. The coolness between my toes makes me gasp out loud and the Cheese laughs. It sounds a lot like Jo laughing, an animal-like snuffling that is so filled with comfort that I both ache for Heetle and ache for the ability to make a noise like that myself.
I would like to take off my skirt and shift, too, and throw myself naked into the coolness, but I feel too modest with this woman Cheese, even if she is not a human. I pull my gogs from around my neck and place them by my boots. Then I walk farther into the water, feeling my skirt grow heavy and feeling the tickle of bubbles rising up my legs. Soon I am within arm’s length of the Cheese and she reaches out, snatching me by the elbow and then pushing me completely underwater.
My arms fly out instinctively, my lungs fill with liquid as I struggle. She pulls my head out of the water and I cough, splutter, and choke out streams of water. Then, with a mighty strength, she pulls off my clothes and flings them from the pool. They land with a loud thwap on the floor of the cave.
Naked and shivering, I feel my joy at the cool water running cold in my veins as her abnormally long fingers grip me around my belly. She produces a rag from gods only know where and begins scrubbing at my hair, my face, my back, my arms. The water is soon tinted pink because the blood from my wounds is running freely again from the roughness of her scrubbing. I cry out a few times, but try to remain silent. She does not seem to be hurting me on purpose, though I can’t help but struggle and fight against the pain. She is terribly strong and not gentle, but she moves with purpose, scrubbing off days of muck and gunk and grit and dirt.
When she is done, she releases me and I scramble out of the water. I am gasping for breath, shivering, naked and terrified. She climbs out of the water after me. I flinch at her closeness but she brushes by, disappearing farther into the cave. For a moment I think she’s left me by myself, but she returns with a folded stack of fabric. She drops it by my shoes, motions that I am meant to cover myself with what apparently is a towel.
I do as instructed, even as she stares, feeling cold and vulnerable in my nakedness. I quickly wrap the towel around me. The Cheese woman kneels in front of me, grabbing my hands, roughly pulling me, trying to get me closer to her. I do not want to be closer to her. I ache from the journey, I ache from my wounds, I ache from her rough cleaning. I just want to be left alone.
I twist my body, jerk my arms, resist her pulling, and the flat of her hand meets my cheek in a stinging slap. Gulping air, trying not to cry, trying not to look weak, I resist for another moment but she is too strong.
She pulls me close and begins plastering my wounds with a poultice. It smells of mint and roots that so fiercely remind me of Aunt Billie I know the stinging in my eyes is not just from the pain of the herbs, but from one that goes deeper. The Cheese binds the poultice into my shoulders with rough fabric that she ties off in knots, and then she hands me a shirt made of dactyl skin that has no sleeves and seems invented to show off my weakling arms and bandages. It is against the word of the gods for women and girls to show their arms in a polite setting of both men and women, and so I balk at the shirt. She hits me again, though her eyes seem strangely calm as she does so. She does not show the fire and spark that Papa does when he strikes me. She thrusts the shirt at me. I spit on it. She grabs me around the waist with one arm and as I struggle with the last bit of energy I have, she forces the shirt onto me. She is so very strong.
Next she holds out a small strip of fabric that is apparently supposed to serve as diaper-looking pants, but I would rather eat actual beetle droppings than put it on, so I take the pants and fling them into the pool. She blows air from her mouth, grabs my face with a clawed hand. I feel the sharpness of her nails digging into both cheeks as she squeezes my face, forces me to look at her. She shouts something I do not understand. I shout back, “I will not wear your gum ugly indecent pants!” and for a moment we have a standoff. By now I do not care if she hits me again. My body is going numb from so much pain already.
After another moment of staring and shouting, she roughly releases my cheeks and stalks off into the distance. She returns with a wad of coarse fabric and throws it into my chest. Pants. I put them on and she kneels in front of me, tying a piece of twine around my waist to keep the pants up. She pulls tightly at the twine, making me gasp. If she were human, I would swear she clucked her tongue at my stubbornness, or maybe about how skinny I am. But she is not human.
The Cheese pushes me back to the front of the cave, where there is a boy near my age, maybe older, it’s hard to tell because his Cheese features are so different from mine. He is sitting on the floor, restringing a handbow that looks to be older than us both combined.
The Cheese woman says something to him, her voice sharp, commanding. She nudges his foot, clad in the ridiculous Cheese shoes that hug every toe. He slowly lifts his head and his gaze meets mine. He looks me up and down twice, leans back on one elbow, and does the snickering, snuffling Cheese laugh for so long that the woman Cheese rolls her eyes, says a few more sharp words, and pushes me out of the mouth of the cave.
It is near evening now. Cheese walk through the village carrying animal hides and baskets, talking to one anot
her in small clumps. A group appears to be gathering in the center of the village common area around the fire pit. I look for Temple, but do not see her. I think of Boone and wonder what has happened to him, not daring to go to the dark places my mind suggests.
I hear a laugh on the breeze and my heart stops. Can it be? But no. It’s just a higher-pitched Cheese snuffle. Not Rory. How could it be Rory? I look at my right hand, my missing finger. Rory took her shine tree needle full in her flank. There’s no way she survived. No way.
“You don’t know anything,” she’d say to me if she were here. Laughing, swiping her hair from her eyes. “So serious all the time, Rae. Like the Red Crescent is just sitting on your shoulders all gum day.” She’d snatch me up in a hug if no one was looking. A quick hug. A tight hug.
More Cheese begin filing out of the caves, congregating around the fire that is now sputtering to life. Some of them are wearing clothes like I have never seen. A woman has cooling crystals woven into her hair, blue paint cascading down her arms in intricate circles. A man is painted black as night with yellow spots dotting his face and body and even hair. Another Cheese is wearing dactyl skin colored yellow—bright yellow, like the suns. And then there is a child, covered in red, laughing and running with other children. Thin ropes trail for several hands behind the child, tied to the child’s ankles. At the ends of the ropes are knobs of rock that spark and flash as they hit the stones littering the scrub under our feet. It is the most magnificent display I have ever seen.
I look again for Temple, but do not see her.
Firm hands press on my shoulders and I sit on a rock bench that is one of many that encircle the fire. I look to see who has made me sit, expecting the elegant, fierce woman cheese, or even Fist or Jo, but it is someone new. A Cheese with startling blue eyes that remind me of Temple’s. He smiles and puts a hand on my arm.
