by K. A. Holt
“We are unarmed,” I say. Not smart, Mayrikafsa, I chide myself. You should have said that part first. I hold the child over my head. “And the baby is unharmed.”
Old Man Dan appears from a booth at the other side of the market. He is laden with a handbow and a light rifle, his gogs pulled tightly against his face. He is in no mood to negotiate, I can see.
I put the baby on my shoulders, bracing with a hand. She pulls my hair as she squirms. I hold up my other hand. “A simple trade. I would speak to Billie Darling. We seek medicine.”
Old Man Dan begins to laugh. Harsh, barking noises, bouncing off the meager buildings and booths. He takes several quick steps closer to us, though he is still three Kwihuutsuu wingspans away.
“You seek counsel with Ms. Darling,” he says, his voice mocking. “You seek medicine.” He steps closer still, giving the light rifle a shake and activating its firing coil.
He has stopped laughing and more heads are now popping up from behind counters and doorways. These people are like prairie spiders testing to see if an electrical storm has finished or is beginning.
“For decades you raid us. Steal our supplies, our horses, equipment from our wreckage. And you steal our ears.” He points the rifle at me. “You also steal our children. The very soul of our township. Now you want to trade?” He spits and shakes the rifle once more.
I swallow hard.
“Brother Livingston,” I say. “We have not come to fight. We have come with contrition. We have brought your girl back. I only seek to give you your daughter and speak to Billie.” I pause, never taking my eyes from him. “To my aunt.”
Huge gasps go up from the booths and doorways and even Old Man Dan seems shaken, as the rifle drops a smidge.
I laugh because the reaction surprises me. “Did you all not see my ears?” I ask. “Not note the blackness of my hair?” Because it is true. While my language is tinged with Cheese, and I wear their clothes and decoration, I will never resemble them physically. I have no scales, no bony upper lip. I have no ear membranes. My hair is not red, though it has become ropelike over the months. And yet, everyone seems shocked that it is me.
“Rae?” A harsh voice has come up behind me. I turn, placing my hand up on the baby’s back to keep her settled on my shoulders.
“Rae.” It is no longer a question. Aunt Billie stands before me, dropping the handbow that must have been pointed at my back. She rushes at me and stops just short of hugging me. She seems smaller than I remember, but smells just the same—a mixture of herbs and sweat and soap.
“Aunt Billie,” I whisper. I am taller than she is now.
She looks at me, scrutinizing my face, my peltan, my Cheese shoes. She sees the empty holster on my thigh, then looks up into my face again. She reaches up and gently runs her fingers through the hair hanging over my shoulder from the horsetail.
“You look just like one of them,” she whispers, tears flowing freely down her face. “Benny? Is he . . . is Temple still . . .” She fights through her words, showing more emotion than I’ve ever seen, then calms herself. “Your sister, she is . . .”
“Kela omma,” I say, with a small smile, then realize I have spoken Cheese. “They are well, Aunt Billie. Temple thrives, Benny is . . . Benny is well.” I fear that Aunt Billie will collapse at these words, as the look of relief on her face has washed over her so quickly it has caused her eyes to close and her mouth to go slack.
“How fares Papa?” I ask, wanting to know, but also not wanting to hear her say it.
“He still recovers from his injuries,” Aunt Billie says, grinding her jaw, staring at Natka. “He shall never walk again, but is alive, thank the gods.”
“Mayrikafsa,” Natka says in a low voice.
I turn and see that Old Man Dan is standing only a few hands away now, pointing his light rifle at my chest. A few other men and women have ventured from the booths and are also pointing weapons at us.
“We just want medicine,” I say. “Then you have your daughter back and we leave.”
“And in a few days, you’re back,” Old Man Dan sniffs. “With your beasts and your brethren. And you take more ears, more children, and do it faster and fiercer because those among you who need medicine are now stronger and healthy. You are indecent, inhuman creatures whose lives go against the gods in all respects.” His eyes roam up and down my shape. “We do not do business with heathens. Besides. We have no medicine.”
Old Man Dan steps closer to me and I clearly see his grizzled face dripping in swaths of skin around his neck, his red nose speckled with burst blood vessels. His gogs are old, the plastic cracked around the lenses. I doubt they work anymore. If they did, he would have seen immediately I was not Cheese. Or maybe that wouldn’t have changed anything. Maybe his old-man eyes have stopped working as well. No. He is still looking me up and down, making me want to spit on him. His eyes work just fine.
“How stupid do you think I am?” he breathes, leaning closer, his mouth curling into a frown, the yellow-white whiskers at its corners glinting in the suns.
“We will call a truce,” I say, thankful that Natka must not know this word because he stays quiet.
Old Man Dan laughs. “A traitor, holding my daughter hostage, says her newly adopted people will call a truce. Who are you, girl, to make promises like this? What must they think of us to have sent a girl-child as a negotiator?” He fair spits the word “girl-child” at me.
Aunt Billie steps forward, her eyes narrowed to slits. “She is not a traitor, Brother Livingston. She is a captive. She has obviously been sent here in a nonthreatening gesture. She has no weapons. She has your child. She asks for a trade.” She turns to me. “What kind of medicine do they need? For what illness?”
“Infection,” I say. “Fever. I tried to remember some of the tinctures you were teaching me, but I couldn’t.” This doesn’t seem like the time to bring up the fact that Klara and Jo believe humans have magical germs and medicines that they can use to kill and cure at their own whims and mercies.
Natka, who is two hands taller than me, so nearly three hands taller than Aunt Billie, looks over her head at me. His lip snaps up and his hand has flicked to his side even though his knife is no longer there. It rests on his hip, his fingers tapping. I shake my head ever so slightly to reassure him that there’s no need for fighting or impatience. Not yet, anyway.
Aunt Billie walks past me, letting her hand squeeze mine as she passes by. This small move of affection tears at me, throwing my concentration, making my breath catch. My hand flies to the crystal around my neck. I am okay. Easy breathing. Just surprised.
“Let us speak, Brother Livingston,” she says, placing a hand on Old Man Dan’s arm, lowering the rifle. “In a private area.” Then she raises her voice and speaks to the people who have come to surround us. “No harm will come to my niece and her companion while Brother Livingston and I have discussions. Or so help me.”
Hearing Aunt Billie speak this way fills my throat with a rock that is difficult to swallow around.
Natka turns, his back to my back, so no one can sneak up on us again. The baby has wrenched free a handful of my hair, and from what I can tell, is sucking on it.
The air is stifling, the hot breeze not helping one bit. There is a flash of light in the distance. An electrical storm brewing. Oh, gods, if we are to make it home on the Kwihuutsuu, we will need to be in the air very soon.
The men who surround us are still, their weapons aimed and ready. They openly stare at me, their faces streaked with sweat and dirt, their beards wild in the wind, their eyes roaming. Some faces fill with pity, others with hatred, others with something more unspeakable. No one makes a sound and I can hear the quiet snuffles of the Kwihuutsuu carrying on the breeze. There are more flashes of light in the distance.
After the suns have begun their afternoon descent in the sky, and the roiling storm clouds have incre
ased and moved closer, Aunt Billie and Old Man Dan emerge from the booth where they held counsel. Aunt Billie’s jaw is set. She holds out her hands for the baby. My eyes search her face.
“And the medicine?” I ask.
“Once you turn over the child, I will take you to the medicine storage site.”
I do not like this.
“Are there not herbs at the homestead?” I ask. “In your treatment room?”
Aunt Billie shakes her head. “Not the kind you seek.” She holds her hands out for the baby again. “You must trust me, Ramona.”
It has been so long since anyone has called me by that name, it takes me a moment to respond. I reach up to take the baby off my shoulders. Natka hisses.
“Kehka ke ton?” His eyes spark.
“What am I doing? I trust Aunt Billie,” I say, wishing I felt those words as strongly as I used to.
“E’e naa,” he says. “I do not.”
“E’o.” I tap my chest. “Lonkah.” I hold his angry stare. “You will have to trust me, then.”
Aunt Billie takes the baby from me, kisses her soft head, looks her over quickly, nods once, and hands her to Old Man Dan. He holds the child in front of him like a shield and backs away from us.
“I will take you there,” Aunt Billie says. “Follow me.”
I motion for Natka to follow us. Aunt Billie walks out of the market and away from the center of the township. The wind is strong now, the electrical smell of a brewing storm has reached us. I look nervously to the blackening sky and worry that Aunt Billie is going the opposite direction of Maasakota. It will take us even longer to get to the Kwihuutsuu and get home now. We cannot get trapped here during a storm. We cannot.
“Aunt Billie,” I say, and it feels strange, these words rolling off my tongue. I think of Klara keeping watch over Fist and crying over Natka’s shine tree wound all those weeks ago, how she holds reign over a whole village and yet often allows her emotions to so quickly overcome her. Aunt Billie is the opposite of this, and yet . . . she is not weak.
“Where do you take us?”
Aunt Billie smiles, looking weary. “There are many things that have not been revealed to you, Rae.”
We are just outside the market when Aunt Billie kneels, pushing aside a great boulder that should be nearly four times too heavy for her to move on her own. The wind whips her hair in great bands above her head.
When I approach, I see that the boulder has been hollowed out so that it holds its huge size, but is quite lightweight. Beneath the boulder is a hole with a staircase descending into darkness.
Aunt Billie begins climbing down the stairs, and I follow her. Natka makes a disgruntled sound, but follows us. At the bottom of the stairs there is a rough fabric bag of flameless flares, the same sort with the Star Farmers stamp that the Cheese have also used. Aunt Billie cracks a flare.
“Mind the step,” she says, gathering her skirt and jumping down onto a rectangular platform. I jump behind her, Natka behind me. The platform is big enough to hold the three of us plus more. There are metal railings on two sides and no railings in the front or back. The platform is stamped with the outline of a female figure with wings.
“Now, hold the rails,” she instructs. I do as she says and Natka follows what I do. Then, like Mara has blown her hardest breath, the platform shoots forward, barreling through the tunnel on wheels and a track.
“What is this?” I cry. The movement is both exhilarating and sickening—like riding a dactyl for the first time. I run my foot over the etching of the winged woman.
I turn to Natka and he is grinning broadly, despite himself.
“There are a series of these tunnels within the moon,” Aunt Billie shouts over the rumbling noise. “They were here when our people first landed, used for trading between the people of the Red Crescent and the Kihuut. This one leads to the cave where your grandparents first sheltered upon crashing. It will take us directly to the Origin.”
Well, how about that?
The “wings of angels” aren’t how I pictured them at all.
25
THE RAILS HAVE CARRIED US far in a short amount of time. Aunt Billie leads us off the platform and from the tunnel into a cave. There is a pool of water that must be where Origin Township fills its barrels.
There are drawings on the cave walls that I can barely make out with the orange light of the flameless flare. Crude approximations of the Cheese and the Kwihuutsuu. Mara, Oonatka and Oonan, Ebibi and A’akow are there, too. There is another figure along with them who is painted a bright red. I wonder if this is the god of Hosani, the Red Crescent.
Aunt Billie walks past the cave paintings without a second look. I guess she’s seen them so many times they mean nothing to her now. I could stay for days, studying the stories, learning more of the ceremonies I’ve already seen. Natka seems keen to stay on Aunt Billie’s heels, so I have to run to catch up to them.
They stand at an opening that must lead to Maasakota, but the opening is dark and caged. Aunt Billie removes a set of keys from a pocket in her skirt and unlocks the crisscrossing metal door. She steps forward and rolls away a hollowed-out boulder that has been hiding the cage from the outside.
Natka’s mouth is open. He seems surprised and impressed with the ingenuity of the ro-ri-ta humans.
We close the door and reposition the boulder and then follow Aunt Billie into the gorge, appearing right at the crushed nose of the Origin.
A flash of electricity sparks overhead and my belly sinks. We may have lost all time to outrun the storm.
Aunt Billie weaves through boulders and wreckage and takes us to a spot where the Origin has separated into two pieces, a great distance from where Temple and I and Fist and Jo camped so many months ago. Aunt Billie walks us through a curtain of ripped wires and unrecognizable debris, into a ruined section of the belly of the ship.
We move swiftly, light from the waning suns and the Red Crescent filtering in through the countless crumbling floors above us that are cracked and corroded and full of holes.
At last, Aunt Billie shoves away a boulder that has crashed through the weakened wall. There is a door behind it.
When I get closer I see that the boulder is another hollowed-out monster that is much lighter than it appears to be. Aunt Billie pulls the keys from her pocket again and unlocks the door.
Natka hisses and I have to agree. What is going on?
We follow her over the threshold and into a room that has been rebuilt. The floors, walls, ceiling are meticulously clean. There are mostly empty shelves, some boxes and drawers. In the far corner there is a machine that hums as if it is alive.
“This is where I store the real medicine,” Aunt Billie says. “What’s left of it.”
Her face is unemotional, though she blinks slowly, looking tired. “This was not meant to be a secret from you, Rae,” she says. “Just a place that you needn’t worry yourself about. In time I would have told you. You would have needed to know, as my true apprentice.”
Her true apprentice. She was teaching me small things here and there, tinctures and poultices, things like that. She was allowing me to watch treatments and procedures. But it was never explicitly stated that I would be her apprentice. I could have been the physician of Origin Township one day. Perhaps I still could be.
Natka has walked over to the humming box in the corner. He places his hand on top of it, then pulls at a little door handle on its front. When the front of the box opens he gasps and jumps back, and even across the room I can feel the cold air rolling from the machine.
I rush to him and we both peer into the box, seeing small vials and boxes among the fog that is now gathering and spilling from the cold box. Aunt Billie comes up behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder.
“It runs on power from the suns,” she says. “Like your gogs.”
“I haven’t worn my
gogs in nearly a full summer,” I mutter, waving my hand back and forth in the fog. Natka picks up one of the vials.
“Don’t touch that!” Aunt Billie says, her voice going sharp.
Natka’s eyes narrow and he picks up another vial just to defy her, I guess.
“Natka, please,” I say. “Naa aka oo kakeela.” Do not be a child.
He puffs air through his upturned nose, but puts the vials back.
“I need this machine to keep certain medicines cold,” Aunt Billie says.
There is a tremendous bang outside, rattling the shelves. We all jump.
It is difficult for me to think of what to say next. My mind is muddled with Klara’s worry, Jo’s words, the fear of the storm, fear for Fist’s life, needing to get back to the village, but also struggling to comprehend this room, and how it’s been hidden in this mess of a ship for all these years. So many secrets.
“All those times someone was dying of a fever, you could have come here and found the medicine to save them?” My hands are on my hips, my breath coming hard.
“Ramona, it’s not like that,” Aunt Billie says. “There is a finite supply. We have to judge who is strong enough to fight the germs without medicine, who is so weak the medicine wouldn’t work anyway. There is more to treating illness than just throwing medicine at it.” She says this last part pointedly.
“I have warned the Cheese there is no such thing as miracle medication,” I say. “But they seem convinced you have some on hand. That you’ve used it before to save your own skin while killing off visitors from the Red Crescent.” I pause to watch her expression. “And that you used the germs to render the Kihuut nearly barren.”
Aunt Billie licks her lips and says, “That was before my time, Rae.” Then, as if her explanation is all I need, “What kind of infection is it that needs medication? I will find what you need and you can leave quickly. Before the storm gets worse.” She rummages through a series of drawers that line a wall. “What caused the wound?”
I know she won’t speak further of the history of this fabled medicine and the germ weapon. I can tell by the shape of her mouth, by the rigidity of her jaw.
