Amid the Crowd of Stars

by Stephen Leigh

  Once again, unsatisfactorily, it didn’t make the door close any faster or louder.

  All That’s Beautiful Drifts Away Like The Waters

  THE STORM OF THE previous cycle had torn large, twisted lengths of kelp from their anchors on the rocks between the Stepstones and Great Inish, the waves tossing the strands into periwinkle-and-plum–colored piles up and down the White Strand, with several iridescent orange flutterbys with gossamer wings dancing above the stinking mess and occasionally landing to lap at the decaying leaves with their long, curled tongues. Along with several aunts, uncles, and cousins from both clans, Saoirse was helping to gather up the seaweed, which they used not only as an addition to soups and stews, but as fertilizer in the compound’s gardens.

  It was a wet and smelly job, since among the kelp were dead bluefins, wrigglers, spiny walkers, and other sea creatures, along with assorted detritus that the storm had also hurled at the island. The long leaves of kelp, hastily cleaned of other matter (especially the mildly poisonous spiny walkers), were placed in large, two-handled reed baskets, which were then hauled to the end of the Strand where the baskets were tied over the sturdy backs of capalls. The dim-witted but strong creatures were then driven up the long, steep path to the upper village. There, the kelp was offloaded and the capalls sent back down for the next load, while the cooks of the two clans separated the kelp into small “edible” piles and much larger “only-good-for-fertilizer” piles.

  Saoirse had been working since first light; they’d managed to clear three quarters of the strand thus far. She and Gráinne were carrying a full basket toward where the capalls waited. They had just reached the point where the beach met the inlet that was Great Inish’s harbor when Saoirse saw her mam waving to her from a currach being rowed by Uncle Angus and Liam, approaching the small wharf that connected to the beach. “Saoirse, leave Gráinne with her cousins and come here,” her mam called out.

  “Sorry, Gráinne,” Saoirse said to her sister’s frown. “Yeh heard Mam.”

  “It’s not fair.” She stamped on the sand. “Yer leaving me with all this dirty, nasty work.”

  “I’m sure Mam has other work in mind for me,” Saoirse told her. “It’ll probably be worse.”

  That didn’t seem to mollify Gráinne, who continued to grumble as Saoirse made her way to the wharf through the bright sand strewn with broken shells, cleaning the smears of dried sweat from her glasses with her sleeve. Uncle Angus was holding the currach against the outgoing tide with an arm around one of the pilings.

  “Where are yeh going, Mam?” Saoirse said as she approached the boat.

  “Out to the Sleeping Wolf. I want yeh to come out with us.”

  Saoirse cocked her head at that. Usually only the clan elders went out to the Sleeping Wolf; the arracht preferred that the island had few visitors. “Why me?” she asked.

  “I think it’s time yeh were properly introduced to the arracht we call Kekeki. One day, yeh might be Banríon yerself. Yeh need to understand how to talk to them, especially her.”

  Saoirse could feel her heart beating and her breath quickening at the thought, even as she held back the objection that threatened to spill from her throat: But I don’t want to be Banríon, Mam. I don’t intend to stay here at all. I want to go to Earth.

  She could imagine the disappointment her mam would display if she actually said those words now. She’d already seen it when she had first mused about going back with the Terrans when they left. “That’s not going to happen,” Mam had said then, “so just put that thought out of yer silly head.”

  They’d argued for two entire bells after that, a fierce and profane disagreement that still made Saoirse’s cheeks burn when she thought of it. They’d both said things that they’d later regretted. It had been three cycles before they’d finally reconciled, and Saoirse had been more careful about what she said around her mother afterward, though she knew that half the compound had overheard their shouting and knew exactly what had happened and why.

  “So are yeh coming?” her mam asked her now.

  “Aye,” Saoirse said. “I suppose.”

  Like most of the Inish, she’d been to the Sleeping Wolf occasionally, if only to see the arracht and what they’d built there, and to see if she, like most, would bear the marks of the plotch, showing their affinity with the arracht. She’d acquired the plotch on her first visit, when she was younger than Gráinne. A young arracht had approached her from the water’s edge, two of its arms reaching out to her and its carapace liberally marked with the plotch. Fascinated by the creature, Saoirse had reached out in turn. She still remembered the feel of the arracht’s arms as the tentacles on the end coiled around her wrists, tugging at her as if the creature wanted her to swim with it in the deep water of the caverns under the Sleeping Wolf. Her mam had laughed gently, disengaging the young arracht from her and seemingly rebuking it with a series of clicks from her tongue. Colors suddenly flashed over the young one from mantle to the tips of its arms—Saoirse remembered that vividly, startled to see how the hues raced in rippling waves over its skin. A moment later, an adult arracht rose from the water, its carapace swirling with bright colors. Its clicks were louder, harsher, and the young one released Saoirse, sliding back under the water. Saoirse had wiped her hands and arms on the pants she wore.

  And later that night, back on Great Inish in her bed, Saoirse had first glimpsed the olive-and-violet smudges of the fungus on her abdomen and chest. That hadn’t frightened her at all; she was oddly proud that she—like her mam, her aunts and uncles, and many of her cousins—was now marked.

  Now, as the currach neared the Sleeping Wolf, Saoirse placed her hand over the blotches hidden under her shirt. Approaching the island from solas—sunward—the island looking nothing like the reclining canine that some thought it appeared to be when viewed from the mainland. Instead, it was a high, rocky headland covered—like a balding man’s head—with a thin covering of grasses and slowly lowering as one rowed left along its sunward flank, the “tail” of the wolf. The crumbling pale rock along the waterline was flecked with the dark eyes of eroded holes, leading to a warren of underground caverns in which the arracht had made their homes long before the arrival of the Inish or of any human to the planet. Rí Angus and Liam rowed the currach toward one of the larger holes open to the sea; a swell carried them into the echoing darkness beyond.

  It wasn’t quite darkness. There was light emanating from the water’s surface, a bluish phosphorescence that brightened as the oars stirred the water and clung stubbornly to the wood as they lifted. They drifted toward a low ledge at the rear of the cave; Angus grounded the boat there—the sound reverberating from the cavern walls—as Liam leaped out to secure the bowline around a rock. Saoirse and her mam stepped over the gunwale and onto the ledge. The water was extraordinarily clear once the ripples died, like looking through the sheets of glass Gavin of Clan Craig forged from the sand of the White Strand, soda ash, and powdered limestone. Saoirse peered down. Under the ledge was a long, sheer drop toward an unseen bottom. In the water below, she could see shimmering lights and movement; dozens of the arracht were gliding gracefully through the caverns in the cliff walls there. And there were buildings below as well: obviously artificial structures with the arracht moving in and out of them, built—her Uncle Angus had told her—of secretions from glands on the arracht.

  One of the arracht was rising up toward them, seeming to grow ever larger as it approached. As it breached the surface, water sliding over the glossy carapace atop its head and mantle, it stared at them with the several eyes in its two eyestalks: golden in color, black slits of pupils contracting at their centers. The creature loomed over them, an island the height of three people, gills pulsing in their slits on the pale flesh of its underside. Its two top arms—the thickness of Angus’ torso—slapped down on the ledge on either side of them, with the fingers of several tentacles splaying out from the end; Saoirse co
uld see four more arms swaying below the body, the finger-tentacles grasping the rocks there. The arracht’s carapace was a mottled bright blue with yellow spots, interrupted by plum-colored areas of plotch. A hooked beak protruded from beneath the carapace. As Saoirche watched, the beak opened, and a bright red tongue produced a series of clicking sounds and hisses.

  To Saoirse’s surprise, Iona and Uncle Angus replied to the creature, both of them greeting the arracht as they might one of the clan cousins. Saoirse saw her mam gesture in Saoirse’s direction. “This is Saoirse, my daughter,” she said to the arracht. “She’s the one I wanted yeh to see. It’s time for her to know yeh as we do.”

  There were more clicks and whistles, and her mam laughed as if the arracht had said something humorous.

  “Mam?” she asked.

  “Yeh’ll understand soon,” Banríon Iona told her. “This is . . . well, the closest translation I can give yeh is that her name is Kekeki, but I think that’s more her title than her name. In fact, calling Kekeki ‘her’ isn’t exactly right either, as the arracht can be either male or female at various times in their life, and they don’t make much distinction between the two. Kekeki’s the equivalent of a Banríon to the arracht, the person who speaks to us for them. Now . . . just be still and quiet.”

  Her mam nodded to Kekeki. The arracht pulled itself closer to the ledge and the nearest arm lifted toward Saoirse, who started to back away until she heard her mam call her name. “Saoirse, just be still. There’s nothing to be frightened of.” She heard Liam chuckle behind her, as if he were amused by her fright.

  Several tentacles wrapped around Saoirse’s neck like a thick and heavy scarf; where the suckers touched the side of the neck, she suddenly felt a brief stabbing pain that made her gasp involuntarily. Then the tentacles fell away from her as Kekeki’s eyestalks flexed and stared at her, as if waiting for some signal. Saoirse clapped her hand to her neck; when she looked at her palm, she found it dappled with blood. In the same moment, she began to feel disoriented and slightly dizzy. She sat down hard on the ledge, her legs gone wobbly. Kekeki was still clicking and hissing when the arracht’s noise strangely resolved itself into words.

  “. . . talk to us now, aye?”

  Saoirse blinked. “What the feck did yeh just do to me?” she asked. Her voice was shrill, anxious.

  “It’s yer plotch,” her mam said. “Kekeki has awakened it for yeh. Now yeh can hear Kekeki’s words as ours; if yeh speak to her, she’ll hear it in her own language.”

  “Uncle Angus? Liam? This was done to yeh as well?” She glanced at them; they both nodded.

  Kekeki lifted herself a bit higher in the water, her arms flexing on the ledge. “Aye, we did that,” she said, “and to others among yeh.” Her voice, in Saoirse’s ears, now sounded as if the arracht had grown up in the village with the Inish accent, though her voice was thin and high. “For those of yeh who have need to speak to us, we’ve always done the same.”

  Saoirse looked again at her bloodied hand. Her neck throbbed. “Damn it, I didn’t ask for any of this! Take it away!”

  “We can’t,” Kekeki answered. “It’s done and can’t be undone.”

  “But how?”

  “We’re not entirely certain ourselves,” Kekeki answered. “We could always talk to the other creatures of the sea: we were all part of what we call the Jishtal—‘those who can speak to Others.’ We discovered that yer people could also join the Jishtal, sometime after yeh came to live in the archipelago. Consider it a gift from Spiorad Mór, as we do. Without it, yer people—the ‘eki,’ those with Four Limbs only—would still be hunting us, and we’d still be killing yeh in defense. Now, yeh can speak to me, and I can speak to yeh in return. Banríon’s daughter, we want to know more about the new people, the eki who traveled here from where yer own people first came. Yeh’ve spoken to them and we want to know what they want and why they’re here. The ones you call Mam and Angus have told us that yeh know them best.”

  Kekeki let her body slide down until her head was nearly completely underwater again. Thick clouds of bubbles erupted along the shore of her carapace before she lifted up again, staring at Saoirse with the twin rows of eyes.

  Anger merged with Saoirse’s fright, tightening the muscles of her face, though she still felt too weak to stand. “Yeh did this for that? Without asking me? I don’t know that much about them,” Saoirse told her. “This is utter shite. Mam, take me back home!”

  Her mam said nothing. Kekeki responded as if she hadn’t heard her objections. “Will the Four-Limbs on the skyship hunt us as yer people did at first?” the arracht asked. “Is that their intention? Do they want to eat us? To take the oil from our bodies as the ones you call Mainlanders did, as yeh once did yerselves.”

  Saoirse glanced toward her mam. “I . . . I don’t know if they’ll hunt yeh or if they care about the oil,” she admitted. “I don’t think so, but they won’t eat yeh. That much I know. They don’t eat anything from here. But . . .”

  Another of Kekeki’s arms lifted from the water, tentacles wrapped around a large and unrecognizable piece of metal and plastic that it slapped down on the rocks next to Saoirse, who stared at the device. “We destroyed the hard false birds they sent, the ones with no meat on their bodies,” Kekeki continued. The tentacles prodded at the wreckage, then slipped back into the water like a swarm of sodden, thick ropes, leaving the broken device behind in a pool of water. “Will they send more? Will they be angry that we killed their birds? Will they try to do more?”

  Saoirse could only shake her head. “I don’t know that either. Why don’t you fecking just ask them?”

  “We’re asking yeh,” Kekeki replied, her voice calm and unhurried.

  “Then yer asking the wrong person.” Saoirse paused. “But I do know one of the Terrans—Ichiko is her name. She’s here to study our society, and I trust her. I could ask her. Or . . .” Saoirse stopped for a moment, her gaze flickering over to her mam and Uncle Angus to see their reaction. “I might be able to bring her out here to meet yeh, if yeh like. She’d be interested in that. And yeh could ask her yer damn questions directly.”

  Kekeki’s entire body seemed to shudder. “We’re not certain it’s time for that meeting yet,” Kekeki answered. “But if yeh would ask this Ichiko about her species’ intentions and return to give us her answer, we would hear that gladly. In the meantime, we’ll consider what yeh’ve offered.”

  There was a sound of venting air, and the arracht slipped beneath the surface completely. Saoirse, on her knees, leaned over to watch Kekeki vanish into the depths below. She felt her mam’s hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry if yer upset,” she said to Saoirse. “Though I think Kekeki likes yeh.”

  Saoirse pushed away her mam’s hand. “Upset?” she spat. “Mam, yeh let her change me. It was bad enough that I have plotch, bad enough that I’m just breathing the air here. Now I’ll never be allowed to go to Earth, not after what she just did. Don’t yeh understand that? Yeh just took away everything I wanted.” She fought to hold back the tears that threatened.

  “If yer ever to be Banríon—” her mam began, but Saoirse shook her head violently.

  “I don’t want to be Banríon. I don’t want to be here at all. I’ve told yeh that before. Yeh didn’t listen to me, and yeh obviously don’t care. Feck!” She slapped her hands on the wet ledge, water splashing.

  Her mam’s voice quavered. “I’m sorry, Saoirse. I really am.” Saoirse felt her mam’s hands under her arms, helping her to stand. Her knees still felt weak, and she had to force herself to remain standing, swaying a bit as she stepped back from the ledge.

  “Come on,” her mam said. “What’s done is done, I’m afraid, and there’s a lot we should talk about on the way back.”

  * * *

  =Are we still agreed on what we’ve done?= Kekeki asked the others.

  A chorus answered in Kekeki’s head with only a
few sour notes from the few who dissented: a song of affirmation. Keksyn, the arracht who was Speaker to the syna—what the humans called plotch—let his voice rise above the chorus.

  =The syna found a path out of the barriers those on the skyship put around them. They’ve moved into the Jishtal that the eki on the skyship created for themselves. They’ll be able to tell us more even if the Kekeki’s Four-Limbs won’t or can’t.=

  =Good,= the chorus breathed as one. =This is good. We shall wait and we will learn.=

  =Life is persistent. It always finds ways to survive,= Kekeki said, and there was a surge in the underlying song. Kekeki sang with them, and this time there were no dissenting notes at all.

  * * *

  Angus and Liam rowed away from the Sleeping Wolf, the boat bobbing in the swells as they left the cavern. Sitting next to her mam in the middle of the currach, Saoirse rubbed at her neck where Kekeki had touched her. She looked at her hand again; the dried blood had been washed away and there was no new red there, but she could still feel something surging through her body. “I can almost still hear Kekeki,” she said, more to herself than her mam, “like a whispering in my ear that I can’t quite make out.”

  Her mam nodded, patting her hand. “Yer connected to the arracht now, if not to the Others in the Jishtal. If Kekeki wants to talk to yeh or yeh need to talk to her, all yeh have to do is think hard and focus. Sometimes, the call can be heard from as far away as Dulcia. Maybe even further.” She shrugged. “Though I’ve never tried.”

  “So yeh, Uncle Angus, and Liam . . . ?”

  “Aye,” she told Saoirse. “And now yeh, as well.”

  “Kekeki said there are others, too?”

  Iona nodded. “Aye, a few. Rí Craig and several of the seanns of both clans. Maybe another half dozen total. Not many. Most with the plotch haven’t had the arracht change them. The arracht say that the plotch is actually a living community they call the syna, and the syna connects all the species that the plotch live on.”