by Eden Wolfe
Irene followed behind, stunned still at the idea of cultural evolution.
Leadon gestured into the women who mingled in the pathways in front of her hut. "Do you see how they demarcate themselves? At first, I thought it was only those who wore the traditional garb from the West, but then I started watching more closely. There are greetings that Westerners give each other. There are styles of speaking used by the more permissive Easterners. They live together, but they are not one." Leadon looked back to Irene. "They are on the verge, Irene. If we come to a great test, as our ancestors did - be it starvation or war - we will crack down the middle. Our seams will split. It will be the end of Gana. Batrasa saw it, but she laid her hope on Aria being the one to unite all of Lower Earth. And now look where we are. Look," Leadon paused, "Look how our Queen plays on the divisions in Lower Earth. Gana will be no exception."
Irene controlled her questions.
She called her the Queen, she didn't call her Aria. What does she know of Aria? She can't know that she's dead. She must believe the Queen is Aria, or does she?
Irene didn't know how far to take the questioning. It wouldn't change the course of their conversation and it wouldn't change the course of Leadon's chieftainship. Irene would not test those waters now, lest Leadon become suspicious.
"You underestimate our Queen," Irene tilted her head. "You have so little knowledge of what goes on beyond these borders."
Leadon stepped forward, "And why is that, Irilena? Where were you, my kin? When I needed this guidance, when I needed friendship, when I needed someone to buffer the masses who judged me for the condition of my birth, where were you? Nowhere to be found. Hardly even returned, and when you did, I was like a scab, a parasite you flicked away. I have much to make up for now, and I'm learning quickly. All the times I asked so little of you, and now you come to cast judgment." Leadon shook her head.
Irene felt her spine pull up, "You were common. There was nothing you needed from me. You were not and were never intended to be Chief of our people."
"So you're jealous."
"Jealous? I am doing everything within my power to work within a system our ancestors despised. This was no choice of mine, but I will represent our people with pride."
Leadon whispered, "Irene, you don't even know who these people are anymore. We're in a crisis here. Never mind Geb, never mind the rest. I have to start here because those who came before and those who left have given me no choice but to rebuild."
"Your cultural evolution."
"Yes."
"You are a naive child." Irene could stand by no more, humoring Leadon's ways would only encourage her deeper along this mistaken path. "Look at these women. For generations, they have been allowed to become soft. You want a cultural evolution, start with our roots, Leadon!" Her voice was getting louder, the sound coming from somewhere deep within, saying words she'd held back for so many years. "We are warriors first, my misguided genetic kin! Forget this talk of garb and greetings, we must go back to who we were, who we've always been." Irene put her hands on Leadon's cheeks. "You grew up in the fields, your privileged country lifestyle. You know nothing of the world we are becoming. You may be able to lead your little cultural evolution, and then where will we be? Singing around a fire as the land burns around us. We will be conquered without seeing the enemy coming. You play at leadership while the Queen has all of Lower Earth riding on her shoulders. You'd best watch your loyalties. First to Gana, then to Queen."
"To Queen Ariane? You'd have me pledge my loyalty to Queen Ariane?" Leadon's shoulders pulled in. Irene couldn't understand the tone of her question.
"You’ve been playing as you’ve always played. But no more. You must abandon your childish fantasies if you are to prevent the Ganese from falling to ruin and extinction."
Leadon stepped close enough to Irene that she could feel her breath on her face. "Go back to Geb, Irene. You have spoken many impermissible words, and I will forgive you for them, but I cannot stand to look on you now. And for the moment, I am Chief and you are in my hut. I will call upon you when I am ready to hear of your ideas for my people. For now, get out of my hut."
Irene felt her temper nearly about to explode, but when she looked on Leadon, she recognized the same fire in this sister-self across from her; the power of their genetic bond was too obvious for her to ignore.
The realization was a bucket of water on her rage. Her breathing slowed.
"I am going, Leadon. But Maeva is coming. I don't know when, but soon, and on order of the Queen. Don't ask me her objectives, I couldn't tell you if I wanted to. What she'll do when she finds you here with your friends, circled around the fire with your hands to the sky, I do not know. But she's coming. Be smart. Be ready."
Irene turned and walked out of the hut without another word. She would return. She always returned. And next time she would be smarter. She would say it in a way that Leadon could not ignore.
20
Rose
Rose opened her eyes, hearing Irene leave the hut several hundred feet away. Rose's red hair flew across her face in the evening wind. She climbed the tree under which she'd pitched their little tent. She pulled herself up easily, climbing to the highest point that would support her weight, scanning the landscape from along the Gana border. Her eyes found Irene, six hundred feet away. She focused on the distant woman, the retina of her eyes adjusting as required. The Commandante was pounding the ground as she went, her steps heavy with emotion. Rose could see it written across her face.
Commandante retreating, Leadon full of pride. Her position in Gana assaulted. She is raw. Now is a good time to see Leadon at last.
She came back down the tree, hand over hand as a monkey would. She'd always been adept at hiding.
Rose landed on the ground where her little traveling companion was waiting for her. Rose smiled, but she received a scowl in return.
"Are you going?"
"I have to go," she said in low tones, "but I won't be long."
"I don't like it when you go. I don't like it."
"I know you don't. That's why I promise to be as quick as possible. This is an important meeting. I want us to finally have a home." She kneeled down and put her hand on the child's face. "You do as you are supposed to do. No wandering." The child's lips pursed at her. "I mean it. We have to conduct your treatment tonight. You cannot go far."
She let her hands stroke the soft cheeks, seven-year-old cheeks, and the feeling blazed inside her. Such love she never knew she could give. Such love she never knew she could receive. She didn't have to birth a child to feel the pull; ever since she had run into the depths of the Dark Counties and pulled the toddler from the sacrifice table, she knew they were bound together until the end of time.
He was her life.
He was her meaning.
He was the only boy in Lower Earth.
She straightened a lock of hair that had fallen into his face. The long hair was essential so that he would be mistaken for a girl to anyone who may catch sight of them during their travels.
He put his hands on her cheeks, their ceremonial goodbye. He didn't mind the way her skin pulled in multiple directions across her face. He'd never judged her for her disfigurement. He loved that her hair was the color of the fire from which he’d been pulled. He'd been so petrified when she found him that no birth defect could have struck him any deeper into fear. Ever since then, he would run his fingers over the folds of her face, around her widespread eyes, over her protruding ears. He never asked about the accident of her birth. He never knew she died before she was born.
He accepted her as the one who gave him new life.
His mother.
Even though she still felt such longing in her - for the life she was supposed to have, for her sister selves, for those who had died and for those who were estranged - Zev gave her new hope. Rose had been a lost soul, full of anger, full of righteousness. She still had those feelings, but she tamed them. They had been destructive, eating away at h
er, breaking down her being. When she arrived in the Dark Counties and heard the voices of the people in hushed tones speaking of their plans to kill the boy, those feelings all dropped aside. Who was behind it, Rose couldn't tell. It wasn't the women themselves, she could hear the hesitation in their voices, but someone had planted the superstitious idea, and it only took one to commit the act.
Her longing remained, one day it would rise again in her. But for now, she was satisfied, fulfilled even, whenever Zev laid his head on her chest to sleep. She stood taller than him, but the day would come when he would far surpass her. She hadn't grown after the age of twelve. All part of her gene sequence, which had been unnaturally modified.
Her DNA was a mosaic.
She inhaled deeply. If she were to go to Leadon, she would have to call up old memories, painful memories. She steeled herself for the words she would have to say.
"Don't be long," Zev repeated, pulling Rose back into the moment.
She smiled and touched his head before running at a speed that only Rose - and the few with whom she shared her original DNA - could.
She paused outside Leadon's hut. She had heavy news to share, and she wasn't sure how the new Chief would take it. Leadon had been a friend to Aria.
Aria, beloved sister. How the world would have been different had you become Queen.
And Ariane, sister of Strangelands, where have you gone? Did you throw yourself off the Rainfields cliffs like so many who came before? I no longer feel you. I can't sense your heartbeat anymore. Are you dead or are you away? Will you ever come back?
It still struck Rose as sick how four daughters had the code of one mother, and all had been given the same name.
Mother played it dangerously, laying bets across daughters, playing with life circumstances as a test for future resilience. It was wrong, Mother. You were so wrong. Look at us now.
She centered herself. Rose looked up at the rising moon and touched the pelt over the entry. Fox fur, it had the same color hair as her. Rose pulled the hut curtain aside and entered.
Leadon was seated on a stool, her face resting in her hands. Rose stepped, quieter than sound. She let her hand run along the wall of the hut to catch Leadon's attention, not wanting to surprise her, trying to gently rouse her from her thoughts. But Leadon didn't stir.
Rose looked down at herself. Her cape hid the worst of her deformity, the hood pulled low over her face. Her height was an advantage in these situations, most believed her to be a child. When she was with Zev they appeared to be two girls in the countryside, not an unfamiliar sight in the Outer Counties. It was only Geb that was off-limits. Rose knew they'd be found out within moments of their arrival. But Gana was safe. Leadon was safe.
Rose whispered.
"Leadon?"
Finally, Leadon's head rose from her hands. "Child, why are you here? Who allowed you to enter?"
"Forgive me, I need to speak with you."
"I am not in the spirits for speaking."
"I know things you must hear."
Leadon cocked her head to the side, her black hair falling over her shoulder. "If you have things that I must hear, then I must hear them." She gestured for Rose to approach. "Remove your hood, child."
Rose hesitated. "I will, but let me first begin my story."
Leadon opened her hands in front of her in the Ganese way, inviting Rose to begin.
But the beginning wasn't evident. Rose had thought it over many times but now that Leadon was in front of her, beginning was harder than she'd expected.
"You knew my sister," Rose began.
"Who is your sister?"
"She spent time here, much time. She grew here. She loved Gana though she was foreign to its ways."
Leadon's head pulled upright.
"I have come because my sister has been wronged. So very wronged. There is no saving her from the wrong she has been done. But there needs to be right in our world."
"Who is your sister?" Leadon's voice was barely above a rasp.
Rose swallowed.
"Tell me, child, who is your sister?" Leadon was leaning forward now, the hint of it pulling at her. Rose could see that Leadon sensed it. She heard Leadon's blood rushing from her heart through her veins the blood pumping and the beat accelerating.
Rose slowly removed her hood.
Leadon's eyes batted to clear but she did not recoil at the sight.
"I am no child. I call myself Rose, because I must. My birth name is charged, my birth name is borrowed. My sister was my sister-self, a parallel to your experience with the Commandante. But different. Deeper. And broken." She watched Leadon's eyes darting trying to keep up with the information. "We have much to discuss, but let me be clear with you in a way you cannot help but understand."
Rose paused, breathing the secret one last time.
"Aria was my sister."
"Aria?" Leadon pulled herself forward off the stool onto her knees. "Come, come closer, Rose. Let me look upon your face."
Rose hesitated but knew Leadon needed this. She stepped forward to the kneeling Chief and closed her eyes. She felt Leadon looking at her, from crown to foot, heard her breath move in angles.
"Rose, what you say is near unbelievable."
Rose opened her eyes.
Leadon continued, "I believe you."
Rose inhaled, relief washing over her like a waterfall.
"Rose, please, tell me. Where has Aria gone? Where did they take her? Can I find her? Can we bring her back? The Queen is false. I knew it the moment I laid my eyes on her. This cannot continue; Aria was meant to lead this world. She was born for it, raised for it, she had goodness in her and the ancestors of Gana infused in her, even if she was not of our blood. Please, Rose, where is she?"
Rose's mouth hung slightly open. It hadn't occurred to her that Leadon would think Aria was still alive.
"Leadon - " the eyes beseeched Rose and her heart broke again for the sister-self she'd lost. "She's dead."
Leadon dropped deeper into her knees, a whimper escaping her lips. "Dead?"
Rose watched the realization roll over Leadon, heard her blood pump hard into her brain, and then slowly calm. Leadon blinked and then nodded her head.
"I understand."
Rose stood still, letting Leadon process it as she sat back onto the stool.
"Rose, you must tell me everything."
Rose straightened her spine. It was all moving ahead as she'd hoped. "I will. But first, you must call me by my birthright. My name is Ariane."
Leadon listened with wide eyes as Rose took her through it all from beginning to end. Rose felt the pull to go back to her little tent, back to her waiting child, so she glided over details, eager to give Leadon only what she needed. There would be time for the rest later. This was only the beginning. Leadon would have to process this first layer of the story. Rose knew that to those who lived outside it, the concept of multiple genetic copies of the Queen was enough to take in already.
“So you are four?”
“I believe we are four. Aria is dead, Ariane of the Strangelands has vanished. Then there's me and the Queen. A mass of tragedies and social experiments.”
“But could there be more of you?”
“I do not believe so.”
"How do you know?"
"I have no sense of any others. I always had a sense of the three. Memories I couldn't place, lived moments that weren't my own. I can't easily explain it."
“But you were the first, the Queen's first child. How could you be denied the throne?"
“Look at me, Leadon. Imagine my newborn body emerging from your womb, knowing that you had already killed me inside you and then brought me back to life. The consequences were unknown. I was afraid even of myself. I didn’t know then what I know now.”
“What do you know now, Ariane?”
Rose relished the sound of her name. “I come from the code of Queens, and I was designed to lead this land. I know that the woman who claimed the throne is a modif
ied version, a redesign of perfection. The result of my mother’s own insecurity.” Rose turned and looked out the door of the hut, the dark of night fully upon them now. “I know that Lower Earth will suffer under her.” She looked back to Leadon. “The current Queen Ariane was designed for a world that never came to be. She was meant for a world at war. She lacks the very humanity that Lower Earth most needs in these times. She will make decisions of precision, mathematical logic, and all at an emotional distance. She’ll see half of Lower Earth dead to save those she thinks most worthy.” Rose felt the anger boiling, as she had since the day the new Queen emerged on the balcony for her coronation. “That’s what she was designed for.”
Rose opened her lips and took in a cool breath of night air. She felt it touch the back of her throat and down into her lungs. Cooling the fire.
“Leadon, we must be allies. As much as Aria was myself, I consider you my sister.”
Leadon looked deep into Rose. “You are sincere. I do not have the experience of my genetic kin, but I have more awareness than she. And I know you are sincere. You have Aria’s eyes.”
Rose smiled, “She had my eyes.”
Leadon smiled.
Rose looked over her shoulder, but she sensed no one in the vicinity of the hut. “Leadon, I need a place to stay.”
Leadon didn't hesitate. “Gana is your home.”
“I have a child.”
“A home for you both then.”
“My child, like me, is an outcast. Unsafe, the world is unsafe for… for my child. I did not give birth, it is not a child by blood, but yet as much deserving or more of life.”
“Of course.” Leadon’s earnestness did not comfort Rose. She didn't need comfort, she needed safety.
“You offer us home, but all I ask is a hiding place, away from Ganese eyes. They will not understand.”
Leadon looked at the ceiling for a moment and then met Rose’s eyes. “I know where you can go.” Leadon’s face softened. “It’s perfect actually. Far on the edges of the other side of the river. No Ganese dares to disturb the place, believing it to be the abode of a Queen.” Leadon smiled, “Aria’s hut.”
