I am alone. I sit on my cot, my knees pulled to my chest, staring at the empty chamber of my room. I’ve unraveled my braids, my hands desperate for distraction, and now I sit with my back against the wall, finger-combing each zigzagging section. Every now and then I look into the Artery, but the only communication I pick up is the thrumming tongue of the qalm.
Hamankush had killed the igua, and what seemed like moments later Rasimbukar and other Faloii had appeared, all communicating soundlessly. I and the other youths were swept back to the city, and I was jostled here to my room. I had asked for my grandmother and was ignored. The Faloii man who had brought me here was as unreadable as the walls of my room, his facial spots low and solemn across his brow. All around me, the tunnels are closed, but I don’t need to be told anything in Arterian to know the scent that pulses around me. Fear. Anger.
The igua must have escaped from the labs alongside Adombukar and the rest when I left N’Terra. Why had I not sensed it? The cybertronic parasite planted in its brain by Dr. Albatur? The igua must have been partially altered and then either escaped or was let free.
I pace the small room. No one had ordered me to remain here, but venturing outside the qalm seems pointless. I don’t know where to find my grandmother, or if I’m even allowed. I’m turning back to my cot when a presence makes me spin back to face the wall. Sure enough, the minuscule vines are simultaneously parting, revealing the doorway. In it stands Rasimbukar.
You are changed, she says. At first I think she’s referring to my unbraided hair, but I sense a different meaning. We all are. Come with me.
I follow her out of my room and down the hallway. The smell of fear is stronger here. It’s not the qalm that emits it, but it does seem to come from the walls.
“Where are we going?” I say when she leads me outside.
“We have questions,” she says.
I follow her in silence through the city. All the pleasant motion of yesterday is gone, faded like a puddle shrunken by the sun. The odor the many trees—ogwe and others: syca, marandin, and duna—emit reminds me of the day my mother was arrested in N’Terra: a dire smell, a smell of warning.
Yes, says Rasimbukar, sensing my feelings.
She leads me to a small qalm, its green a deeper shade than the school—almost black. I lay my hand on it without thinking, sensing its complicated nature. It’s very old. Perhaps older than anything else in the city.
Decisions are made here, Rasimbukar says as the vines part to admit us. Her facial spots are low and still but widespread. This look always reminds me of my mother somehow and I avert my eyes. She gazes at me a moment longer and then sweeps into the qalm.
It’s one room. I’d expected a honeycomb of chambers and halls like the other buildings I’ve been inside, but instead I am greeted with a circular space lined with platforms that grow from the walls, jutting out at varying heights. An array of Faloii sit on these platforms, some upright and some slouched, all watching me and Rasimbukar intently. At the center of the room grows a small bent tree, giving off a soft orange light like a flame. Beside it sits Hamankush, cross-legged on a low platform that rises from the ground. Hers is the only pair of eyes not fastened on me. Hers are closed, her facial spots drifting slowly back and forth across her forehead in perpetual motion.
Your grandmother, Rasimbukar says, and indicates the back wall with one hand.
My heart leaps at the sight of her, half sitting, half lying on a platform by herself. She gives me an encouraging smile, sending me green shapes in the tunnel. I hadn’t fully realized until I saw her how afraid I am, the anxiety clawing at me as if my ribs are a cage it must escape.
You may go to her, Rasimbukar says, and I do, giving Hamankush and the center of the room a wide berth. I climb up on the platform and let my grandmother gather me against her the way she did when I was a child. She is warm and so is the room but I don’t care: the feeling of her soft hands gripping me through my new suit transports me to a safe, distant place. Rasimbukar takes a seat on an empty platform.
The silence lasts a long time. The warmth from the strange tree in the center of the room fills the space with an almost smoky heat, and I find myself nodding off as the minutes turn into an hour, more. My head is just lolling sleepily against my nana’s shoulder when Hamankush speaks.
“I come to tell the truth,” she says. “And seek repair.”
The room fills with a hum that startles me. At first I think it’s the qalm, but a quick glance around shows me that the sound comes from the throats of the Faloii. Deep and resonant, it thrums from each of them and joins with the others, filling the room like an invisible cloud. They go on humming and I realize the place at the bottom of Rasimbukar’s throat glows a soft green, shining gently through her skin like an incandescent jewel. I watch in awe, gazing around the room at the glowing spot on each Faloii present. My grandmother’s hand squeezes my shoulder. Something tells me not to speak, even to whisper a question.
As suddenly as the humming began, it stops.
A conversation begins in Anooiire. It’s the first time I’ve heard it spoken aloud at length, and its rapidity is almost shocking. It flows like water, nearly without pause, a rhythm of sounds and cadences foreign to my ear made familiar only by the polished wooden tones of the Faloii speaking it. The voices come from around the room, including Rasimbukar’s, all their words directed at Hamankush, who sits with her head bowed by the tree. She responds occasionally, her answers short.
It’s impossible to follow what is being said. I understand that Hamankush is being interrogated in some way, based on what happened in the jungle with the igua. When I look at Rasimbukar, the spots on her forehead seem unusually tight, and I wonder if she and Hamankush have some preexisting tension. Eventually the voices from around the room dwindle away, and it is only Rasimbukar and Hamankush who speak, the Anooiire getting faster and faster until I can barely make out one word from the next. Then I recognize one word.
Octavia.
There is a flutter of interest, both in the room and in the tunnel. My skin and my consciousness prickle as both eyes and minds readjust to settle on me, and suddenly, though I’m at the edge of the room, I’m at the center of it. Everyone is staring, and I don’t know who to look at. My hand automatically fastens around my grandmother’s wrist. I am eleven again.
“Octavia.” Rasimbukar’s voice carries across the silent room. I fight the chill it sends down my spine.
“They want you in the center. With Hamankush,” my grandmother whispers. She gently pries my hand loose from her wrist, slipping back into a N’Terran accent. “It’s okay, sweetness. I’m here. I’ll be right here.”
I walk to the center of the chamber, joining Hamankush by the glowing tree. Every pace feels like I’m stepping farther out into the blackness of space, the unknown yawning before me. Hamankush doesn’t look up when I join her.
“You may sit,” Rasimbukar says. Her voice is indecipherable but her facial spots drift gently outward, and I hold on to this small observation as I sink down on the platform beside Hamankush.
Rasimbukar says something in rapid Anooiire, and in my head there’s a sensation of a flower blooming, the tunnel widening to admit the minds of the many Faloii present. It’s almost dizzying, the presence of this many. I would never be able to isolate my Arterian to address only one out of so many—and perhaps this is the point—but Rasimbukar says only to me: All is well. This is a place for truth.
Other voices begin to ask me questions. I can’t discern who they are or any identity attached to the questions. When I answer, it is as if I answer to them all.
Hamankush took a life, the Faloii say. You saw this?
You mean the igua? I reply. Yes. But she had to.
Do you understand that the killing of one who takes no prey is a violation? ask the Faloii.
I—I don’t know, I say.
Do you understand what it means for one of our people to commit this violation?
I don’t know.
They are angry. And somehow I am to blame. Their emotions rush into the tunnel, fear tingeing it all in deep purple hues. Suddenly the tunnel snaps shut and the Arterian is silenced. At least for me. Around the room, the looks of concentration paired with a haziness of the eyes that I have come to associate with Arterian conversations continue. I have been shut out. A lump forms in my throat. Then Rasimbukar speaks.
“This portion of this discussion will be held in your language,” she says, her eyes on me. “You are overwhelmed. It is agreed that truth will be more easily discerned if you are able to fully comprehend what is being asked of you.”
“It is not customary for a discussion in this chamber to be held in any language but ours,” Hamankush says, raising her eyes.
“It is not customary for one of our people to take a life of Faloiv,” Rasimbukar says. She adds something in Anooiire, her facial spots gathering near the center of her forehead. Hamankush bows her head even more deeply.
“It wasn’t her fault,” I say, my body flushing with heat at the memory of the igua’s fangs. “The igua . . . it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t an igua anymore.”
“The Faloii have a deep awareness of the life on this planet,” someone says from the back of the room. “There is no parasite capable of changing the nature of a creature. We inherit the knowledge of this planet’s creatures. Hamankush committed a violation.”
“But she didn’t have a choice,” I reiterate. “It’s not like she wanted to!”
I look at Hamankush, waiting for her to raise her head and tell them what happened. But her eyes remained fastened on the packed reddish dirt of the floor.
“She made a choice,” another voice says.
“She had to do it,” I cry. “It would have killed us all!”
“The igua do not kill,” a Faloii woman says, her facial spots communicating a deep frown.
I cover my face with my hands. Too many emotions are flying inside me, a whirlwind catching all the fragments that I’m feeling and throwing them skyward. Hamankush did what she had to do, I know this. I also know that what she had to do is a direct result of what the whitecoats are doing in N’Terra. Why has Hamankush not told them what I communicated to her—the vasana? Is this a ritual of this qalm, where she is not allowed to defend herself? Or is there another, hidden reason that I can’t see? I remember Rasimbukar keeping the knowledge of her father’s abduction secret, knowing that the truth could start a war between her people and mine. If I tell the truth now, what could it mean?
“What are you going to do to her?” I say quietly. “To Hamankush?”
“Such a violation would mean banishment,” Rasimbukar says without hesitation. “Revocation of the Arterian tongue. She would be extracted from the veins of Faloiv.”
Beside me, Hamankush’s body gives the smallest quake. Even with the tunnel shut, the grief seems to drift from her skin to my heart. My own chest clenches. Rasimbukar knows the truth about N’Terra. Adombukar knows. If they have knowingly kept it a secret, is it one that I can tell? What will they say?
I turn and glance over my shoulder to find the eyes of my grandmother waiting there at the back of the chamber. Round and brown. My mother’s eyes. My mother’s face.
“It wasn’t Hamankush’s fault,” I say. Like her, I fasten my eyes on the soil. It offers no comfort, but I try to lose myself in it. “The igua was . . . changed. It was made into a weapon. By N’Terra. By my people.”