5
HeartStones
Robin D. Owens
Planet Celta, Druida City, 424 Years After Colonization, Winter
SOMETHING, SOME SOUND some pain kicked him into consciousness. The splintering hurt rippled through the door, sharpened as it hit the metal hinges, then dulled a bit as it traveled through his walls and floors, then eventually dissipated through his whole three-storied self.
Pain more than he’d felt . . . long, long, long time.
Ssshh, whispered through him, and a wisp of alive-ness inside him but apart from him whisked through him. It trailed energy that soaked into each of his fibers. Riveted, he watched himself mend and grow stronger.
He’s aware!
Then we must withdraw. He can Heal himself.
A while later, he turned his attention back from his beams and stones to understand a kick did it, brought him to full awareness and kept him there. The kick on his slammed door. His door, part of him. His main portal to the world outside. And odd that he sensed a world outside.
A different type and temperature of air against his rough outer walls than the smooth inner ones.
He began to sense many things, put them in order. Think.
Live.
Primarily, hurt. The smashing of the door hurt. He whimpered and strained and the small pieces rose and set back in place. Still aching, he sent . . . energy . . . into it, soothing himself.
Better.
But still the door didn’t quite fit, and a gaping crack let the cold winter air in.
Now silence lived within him instead of the noises, the mumbled words that he’d been aware of for a while and that had stirred him, reminding him of other times and sounds and voices of beings that moved around inside him, vibrating on his floors.
Yes, he remembered other voices, a snatch of back and forth between two beings long ago . . . conversation.
His oldest memory—words echoing through him, bouncing off his interior walls instead of soaking into them, then. “If I am debris, then you must be detritus.”
He turned over the syllables, again and again, began to get meaning from them.
Debris and Detritus. He liked those words. Said often within his walls, the words fit him because they’d shaped him.
Now as he thought them, he tried to form them in sounds. Odd creaks, not like the smooth facility he’d sensed from those who’d originally made the words. But those sounds, the first words said by his own self, echoed through his walls, sank into his stone, seemed to anchor his being.
He was Debris and Detritus.
The concept of self floated through his mind, new and sparkly thoughts.
A vibration outside his walls, outside, heavy, stopped near his broken door—oh! from a mobile being! Additional ideas tumbled through Debris and Detritus’s mind-self. He was not a mobile entity.
That odd being forced the door in, scraping and hurting. Debris and Detritus let wind whistle through his rooms, giving noise to the pain.
“Huh,” the mobile person grunted, bootsteps stomping on the floor, through the tiled hall of the entryway, into the round mainspace of marble. “Yep, definite squatters here. Kicked in the door. Left a lotta trash. I’ll call in a report that I’m doin’ a sweep of the house. That’ll keep me here and out of the police guardhouse until end of shift. Good.”
The new being mumbled a word, one with weight that fizzed the air around it. And Debris and Detritus experienced another recently-remembered sensation; the inside of the mainspace chamber held less dark, became brighter with light.
He liked that.
“What’s this? A hundred silver coin?” The new person made a series of deep sounds and radiated . . . amusement. Another concept came to Debris and Detritus’s new thoughts. Laughing.
“Those fliggering squatters left something besides trash here. They’ll sure miss that. And I’ve got it! Only fliggering thing of value in this cruddy building.”
More laughing. “Huh. Will come in handy. I’ll stay to end of my shift, do my regular thing so they don’t look at me for stealing that brooch. Only twenty more minutes. But then gotta get out of the city with the jewel. Immediately. Live good for the rest of my life.” The bright white bathing his walls vanished from the mainspace.
He felt the air in his rooms change as the mobile entity traversed every chamber, light coming and going. As the being thumped up his staircase, Debris and Detritus listened to the words coming from the entity.
“Stupid, trashy place.”
That made an odd and different pain inside.
The person kicked more stuff from the center of chambers to along his baseboards. “If it weren’t for finding that silver piece and for giving me a good excuse to hide out alone until end of shift, I’d be long gone from this abandoned and rotting house.”
Debris and Detritus creaked in surprise at more insulting words. He checked, fast. No rot lived within him.
Vibrations back from his third floor down the stairs and into the mainspace, then a ping sounded, a non-being-made noise. Then came a wheezing huff. “That’s it. Shift over. Will report in, then teleporting straight outta Druida—”
Mumbling, then a whoosh of once-occupied-air, and the being vanished from Debris and Detritus’s space. But as he left, a clink sounded as something fell onto the marble floor.
Fascinating object, full of pulsing energy, giving a heavier feeling than the true mass of the worked minerals. Debris and Detritus drew it toward his essence, his thinking stones, and surrounded it with energy, kept it safe. He liked the feel of it.
Then no more sounds or vibrations, either inside or close to his outside walls. Silence and not-light, dimness and dark, gathered within him, and he had much time to recollect the other noises and beings and conversations past, from long ago.
He considered time: minutes, septhours, days, weeks, months, a year.
Terrible event happened perhaps four years ago. Something he disliked—hurt—recalling. The end of the sounds and warmth and light of mobile beings, the beginning of emptiness.
Thoughts feathered at the edge of his brain, that portion of him he understood consisted of his stones.
There had been two mobile beings, persons, people. An old couple who had . . . talked to each other? Communicated?
He knew that word now, conversation and communication—ideas sent to other intelligent beings.
He scoured his memory and it flickered like . . . like the fire in his fireplace in the mainspace he had once felt, close to his stones. And he felt, then considered, things he’d heard and what the people had read aloud and those words that had echoed in his walls
Debris and Detritus recalled the last deliberate touch of those two, near his stones, and their words. Shouldn’t be long now; other Houses are Awakening, the higher voice had said, smoothing a hand over the fireplace surround.
The other part of the couple replied in a deeper voice, He will reach critical mass soon, of Flair that has sunk into him from this ground and atmosphere of Celta, of all the Flair his inhabitants have given him over the centuries.
Like us. We’ve shared, said the first.
Like us.
A loud breath from the higher voice. We won’t be here.
Maybe, maybe not.
That conversation went around and around in his mind. He had much time to be, and remember and contemplate.
To come to decisions.
He needed . . . people.
He needed Family.
Somehow he’d get them. He would keep the next ones who came.
One night later
Zane Aster had heard a whisper of treasure . . . a treasure lost in Druida City.
While on duty, a venal city police guardsman had pinched a jeweled brooch from a GreatLord—a stupid deed. From that Lord’s sentient Residence—an even more unintelligent action, since the Residence eventually figured out who’d stolen the item. And, the worst and final idiocy, the guardsman-thief had misplaced the brooch.
Reward money had been offered.
As he stared into his thick, expensive brew mug, Zane wondered if he’d been supposed to hear that rumor. If it had come to his ears because his Family worried about him.
He sat in a luxurious noble social club frequented by all but the highest of society, his ass cradled by a thick cushion that conformed to his butt, the furrabeast leather chair tilted slightly to accommodate his wretched back.
If he’d been whole, he’d be down in a low-class tavern frequented by sailors and other treasure hunters like himself, but his pride wouldn’t let him go back there in his crippled state.
Glugging down the last of the brew, he acknowledged his Family should worry about him. With his sight fading along with his finding psi-power, his Flair, he wouldn’t give himself good odds of making it to spring.
He might not actually commit suicide, but he wouldn’t take care of himself, and there were plenty of ways to perish if you just didn’t give a damn whether you ate or how much alcohol you drank or what streets you wandered down drunk and wearing expensive clothes.
What he had to look forward to tomorrow was another Healing session. Maybe the Healers would break his spine again or plump up the pads in his spinal column or something equally nasty he didn’t want to contemplate. The Healers could fix his back . . . eventually.
They had no clue how to stop his blindness.
Or the diminishment of his Flair.
And he couldn’t just stay sitting on his ass and contemplating a very bad future.
So he called for a hot toddy to go—and exited the warm social club by the main door into the snowy night instead of calling for a glider to take him home.
The wind cut into him despite cloak over jacket and tunic. He didn’t have enough Flair, psi magic, to bend a weathershield over himself. He barely had enough power to activate the warmth spells on his clothing.
As he walked through the streets no more than a half kilometer from his own home neighborhood, he acknowledged that he’d made a mistake in not summoning a vehicle. Even his clothes and the false warmth of the alcohol in his blood didn’t keep him from shivering.
Unless that was just another symptom of the damage he’d gotten in the underwater accident.
Still, when he reached the crossroads where he should turn left, instead he angled right, tripped over the curb of the sidewalk, then slid his foot to test the height and stepped onto it. Because he heard the faint wispy notes of a melody that called to the heart of him, to what had once been his primary Flair. A whiff of an odd but compelling tang curled into his nostrils . . . the scent of treasure.
He plodded in the blue gray evening, ignoring the warm yellow or white blurry rectangles of lit windows as he passed still-open businesses and apartments above them. He should go home to GraceLady Aster’s Residence, his MotherDam.
Where he’d be fussed over and nagged, and he’d hate every minute.
But he could not ignore this final opportunity to hunt for this last treasure before his talent failed.
Time to accept that the large and drifting flakes of snow in the evening light weren’t what dimmed his sight. That deteriorated all on its own. And the sensation of his Flair for finding a prize should have been a lot stronger, sizzling through his nerves, buzzing along his skin, especially since FirstFamily GreatLord Ivy’s recently stolen bauble was more than a brooch, some sort of magical Family artifact.
Zane simply continued to put one foot in front of the other, following the whiff of energy and magic of that power-imbued treasure, calling himself foolish with every step. And he traveled from an upper noble-class part of town to an area of deserted streets devoid of inhabited houses.
The colonists from Earth had built Druida City, sure their descendants would populate it and the world beyond the walls.
But Celta was a tough planet for the humans. Though individuals lived longer, the sterility rate was high, the birthrate low, and the colonists’ grasp on life still slippery.
So the city had never been full, and this part was empty.
Finally, he stopped in front of a tall, narrow house in a row of tall, narrow houses. His vision cleared for a few instants, and he saw rounded bowed windows on both the first and second floors, a balcony on the third, and a whole facade embellished with elongated designs.
A very elegant and beautiful building. And if his eyes and back and feet didn’t throb with aching, he might have been able to call up from memory the Earthan architectural style this row of homes had been modeled after.
But his sight did flicker from the dim evening of reality to gray fuzz to a blank darkness, and he couldn’t quite make out the exterior sculpture.
He could see that the tall and narrow door with a half-round top showed a large, and recent, gaping split. Zane sniffed, flexed his fingers, stomped his feet to move his sluggish blood a little faster and stimulate his Flair, and used his talent. Yes, the treasure awaited inside.
The icy wet of the iron door latch nearly seared his hand, and with a grunt and a shove of his whole body, he forced the thickly paneled door open. It scraped across the floor—a not-wood floor, unusual.
A spurt of anger zipped through him that someone had damaged the door, and he used the tiny amount of energy left to mend the wood fibers by feel, not by sight. Made the door whole, straightened it on its hinges.
His balance failed, and he windmilled and managed to set his shoulder, not his bad back, against the wall as he panted. Probably shouldn’t have fixed the door, though he’d locked out the wind and weather.
He blessed the Lady and Lord for being out of the spitting weather if not out of the cold. He breathed and felt the warmth of his breath against his face as he moved forward through the entry hall, extending his senses. He passed doors on his right and left, he thought, then tripped on a low threshold from one room to another and stopped. A touch of sweat filmed his armpits.
His breath came ragged and harsh, sounding too loud. Did the material of the walls cause sound to echo? Or did he strain more to hear since his sight faded?
The drips from his clothing plopped around his feet, and since standing in a puddle didn’t appeal, he scuffed his toe around and found even and solid ground.
Dark filled the interior of the abandoned house and he hesitated. On one hand, he could pretend his sight didn’t decline in a night-black room. But he cherished even the slightest haze of pale gray that he could see. Which might vanish during the night.
Find the treasure and go.
So he stood tall and probed the room with his senses and pushed at his psi-power to work.
Oddly enough, the room felt circular, with a bank of colder, tall glass windows curving some meters ahead, looking out on the back. Not that he could see.
He tilted his head, noticing that the reverberations of the small noises he made sounded unusual. Slowly stretching out an arm, he touched a smooth pillar. Ah, more small columns must grace the room. Probably marble. He sniffed. Smelled like marble.
And yes, something not of the house, new to this environment, throbbed in slow and heavy pulses. A great magical artifact indeed. After inhaling through his open mouth, he tried to taste the essential magic of the artifact, thought he got a tang of bitter ivy. More overwhelming was the flavor of the house—sweet like golden honey, another peculiarity.
Blinking, he peered into the darkness, saw nothing, no glow from the brooch, which should blaze to his Flair-sight. He swallowed the despair coating his throat, shuffled a couple of steps in and past the pillar. Turned in the direction of the ivy taste, the whiff of Flair, the tiny hum of a magical artifact out of place. The jewel that needed to be returned to the Ivy Family, where it belonged and would be cherished.
“Just get the brooch and go,” he muttered.
So he ignored his blindness and strode to the right into the room. A chill breeze whisked through the place, his foot came down on a piece of thin papyrus, and he slipped, toppling backward. His head hit the column, definitely stone. His mind spun dizzily as he fell, then his wits got swallowed up by a more gentle darkness than that of blindness.
The mobile being with male genitalia—a man—lay too still on Debris and Detritus’s floor. An unfamiliar feeling, a rising sting, pulsed through his walls. He did not know the name of the emotion and did not like it. His windows on the third floor shivered as his air pressure increased due to the emotion.
No, he did not know this feeling and needed this man, his new Family, to explain it. Explain a lot.
The empty time before the man had come had stretched into an infinity of quiet moments, and Debris and Detritus began to realize how much he did not know. Did not understand concepts he should be able to grasp but made no sense.
Debris and Detritus did know of time intervals. The brick courtyard with a sundial behind his not-street-facing walls measured time. The previous mobile beings had told him of time and the sundial when it had been built. That instruction, and the bit of Flair they’d sent him at the time, had made a strong enough impression that he could access it.
But when the man had come and moved so quickly, Debris and Detritus had not been prepared. Especially since the man wanted to take away the powerful sparkling thing the last person had left. Debris and Detritus had swept a piece of flat stuff under his foot to slow him down.
Now the house had two sparks on the floor, and it appeared that the one from the worked minerals—the brooch!—was stronger. That did not seem right.
He did not know what to do, and he let out distressful creaks until the man made a terrible sound.
Lady and Lord his back ached! Worse than his head. Bad enough that Zane couldn’t deny that he’d awakened from the chill of pain tears on his cheeks. Taking stock, he thought he’d be able to move; he hadn’t torn any muscles or broken any bones. Just wrenched the damn thing.
Concentrating on keeping his breathing even and gentle, he let input lap at him and sensed the Flair of the Ivy brooch. The last treasure he could ever hunt and find.
It lay on the floor to his right about two arm-lengths away.
When the pain faded a bit, he rolled, and that didn’t seem to tweak his back as badly as he’d anticipated. He came up against a slight ledge. The odor of old smoke and soot filled his nostrils. Extending his fingers, he touched cold metal. He traced it, discovered a fancy pattern, realized it was a fire grate.
His fingertips tingled this close to a great artifact. He refused to recall other times when his hands had nearly burned at the proximity of power.
Stretching over the grate and into the fireplace, he tried to touch the brooch, failed, and felt the sweat of pain coat him. That would chill him fast in this cold house; better to keep his exertions normal.
Rest again and wait. Don’t hurry and use energy he didn’t have.
Greet. You, said a mature male voice.
Zane jerked in surprise, let himself subside. “Who’s there?” But his own words echoed through the chamber, so he felt foolish. “Anyone?” The harsh grating of that word emphasized that the salutation had been telepathic, mind-to-mind.
A Fam! His heart thumped hard. An intelligent animal companion. Lord and Lady, what a blessing, a being to help him get home.
“Fam?” he croaked. “FamCat? FamFox?” He called out the most common Fam species.
What is Fam? came the question, along with a long creak as punctuation, and his hopes plummeted. The building. This place had become intelligent, as happened to some after a couple of centuries.
Lady and Lord. He couldn’t send the House to get help. And it sure wasn’t hooked into the network of intelligent dwellings, Houses and Residences, or it would know of Fams.
Hope left him, and the chill pain of his body returned. He closed his blind eyes, let dampness ease the aching dry.
Greet you. Hello. Debris and detritus. Please respond, mobile being . . . man.
The odd phrase rang through his head, debris and detritus, usually leftover stuff after he’d finished a treasure hunt. Usually swept out to sea . . . or claimed by small ocean beings as dwellings. Odd bits that floated away.
Couldn’t stay helpless on his back; he scooted to a pillar a few centimeters beyond the fireplace, propped himself against the column. Not an ungodly amount of pain, though his back did crackle during movement.
The sound of rustling surrounded him.
Finally, he croaked aloud, “Debris and Detritus?”
YES! That is me!
Definitely a telepathic voice, maybe not a hallucination, since he would never have imagined that phrase. Eh, he could talk until the last of the pain subsided, take the brooch and leave.
“Debris and Detritus is you?” His voice sounded harsh and with an edge.
Yes! Another creak punctuated the word.
“Why Debris and Detritus?” Everyone else on the planet had botanical names, following the lead of the FirstFamily colonists who’d paid for the starships and the trip. Those colonists had formed the culture after what they knew of the Celts—and the twenty-five sacred trees.
But the House replied, My former person . . . people . . . one, two, three, four . . . no, only three, I think. One, then two. They were scholars and studied . . . studied legends. Ancient legends of the foreland. The place not here.
“Ancient Earth?”
Yes! That place, and a place of that planet, Greece.
Zane grunted. He knew a multitude of legends but barely recalled those.
This notion of planets is odd.
His throat tickled as Zane began to answer and he coughed. His chest hurt, felt a little soggy. Not good. “The humans—ah, mobile sentient beings like myself—originated on the planet Earth and came through space from there to here, this planet we named Celta.”
The atmosphere around him thickened with heavy silence.
What am I?
“You are a House. Capital ‘h’ because you are becoming intelligent—that is, self-aware and able to communicate in a rational manner with other sentient beings.”
Oh. A House. Long pause. What IS a House? Or a house?
“A house is a building made by us mobile creatures to protect us. A dwelling.”
I have a purpose! To protect a Family.
“That’s right. From what I know of houses becoming Residences—” he cleared his throat where the damp fog had congealed, “HeartStones are placed when people—ah—mobile beings, want their homes to become sentient. The stones are blessed and, ah, given energy during rituals and such—” he pulled a hand out of a warm pocket to wave vaguely, though he didn’t know whether the House could sense the gesture, perhaps a ruffling of his atmosphere. “And after a time, a critical mass of energy or knowledge or spirit or something sparks, and you, ah, become conscious and intelligent.” Sounded good to him.
So I was WANTED.
“So I believe.”
And as Debris and Detritus contemplated that in silence, Zane understood he, too, had been blessed. His chill lips curved in a self-mocking smile. He’d been more than blessed. He’d been arrogant. Had considered all the blessings of his life—his Flair, his career, his sight—as his due as a member of a Family who’d become noble within the first three decades of landing on Celta.
What is a Fam?
“A Fam is an intelligent animal companion who bonds with a person. Cats. Foxes. Dogs. Raccoons, I think, a couple of birds.”
Animals.
“Yes.”
I know of this. A pause. Not humans and usually smaller and not bipedal.
“Usually smaller. Think a horse or two has become a Fam.” Gradually, he began to stretch his muscles, test them, especially his back as he sat up straight, shoulders over hips. Easy does it.
I am Debris and Detritus, the House said with a note of confidence not formerly in its tones.
“Greet you.” If he licked his lips, the cold would crack them, but his mouth was dry. He rubbed a hand across it. “I am Zane Aster, of the GraceLady Aster Family.” Though the lowest of the noble ranks, ‘Grace,’ the early founding of his Family gave them better status. “And Debris and Detritus is a mouthful of a name; I’ll call you D and D.”
That sounds . . . acceptable. A pause. Greet you, Zane of the Aster Family. Now the House sounded wistful. Another pause. We have exchanged names. What comes next?
Suppressing a grunt, Zane began moving in increments. He pushed himself to a squat, crab-walked back to the empty space he sensed of fireplace instead of wall.
Extending a hand trembling with cold—had to be cold causing the shivering, not more futile despair—and his fingers touched a stone, rounded, no doubt a fabulous gemstone, for some reason the facets under his fingers, and the way it . . . resonated . . . made him believe the gem was a great round ruby. It pulsed like heart’s blood.
Yes, now that he relaxed a little, analyzed his senses—undistracted by Flair—he felt glimmerings of the treasure that had brought him here.
Zane Aster? What comes next?
“Next I take this nice little bauble and hand it back to T’Ivy and collect the reward.”
No!
The whole house shuddered with a force that knocked Zane back on his ass, jarring his damn spine again so he sucked breaths through his teeth.
You can’t go. You MUST stay! the House insisted.
“Why?” he asked.
I need a person. A Family. We belong TOGETHER.
Zane paused. “You’re lonely.” He had a big, nosy, and noisy Family, all ready to mend him, though he couldn’t be fixed.
I will think on that word and concept.
Creaking to his squat again, Zane reached for the brooch.
NO! Static electricity snapped through the room. Zane’s fingers curled reflexively, protectively.
“Give me the brooch.” Gritting his teeth, he stretched, nabbed it. No electric jolt of pain that the intelligent Residence he lived in would have given him. Guess the House didn’t know it could do that.
Drop a brick or a ceiling on Zane.
Good.
Bit by bit, Zane straightened to stand—hunched but upright. Soon he’d uncurl from that posture.
Eyes open, he saw nothing but black but recalled the door opening. He glided one step toward it then the next.
You can’t go!
Impatient with being told once more this month what he could and couldn’t do, he barked, “You can’t make me stay.” Naturally, he didn’t have the strength to teleport. “I can kick in that door I mended.” He didn’t want to, and his physical strength felt subpar, his back ached.
If you go you will— Debris and Detritus broke off.
But Zane listened hard, knew the immobile being had nearly said something it might regret.
I can tell you a secret.
“Yes?”
A long pause.
The secret may make you stay.
More quiet, until Zane broke it. “All right, I’m a treasure hunter, so I’m a curious man, tell me.”
When the answer came, it was a feathery whisper in his mind. All who leave me leave something behind. It is the nature of . . . me. My being. My . . . Flair.
That had Zane straightening to his full height, barely aware of his hurt back. His mind played with such a scenario a dozen ways, then he insisted, “That’s not all of your secret, is it?”
No. If the person treated me ill, he loses what is most important to him. Loses more than if I like him.
“I don’t understand that,” Zane replied curtly, but that sure explained finding the brooch here. “You just became aware,” he added.
It just happens. I don’t do it on purpose. A pause. I don’t think, but if I’m upset—
Maybe.
“This always happens?” Zane’s voice cracked. He couldn’t lose the last of his sight, of his Flair, of both, and survive. Could not. Not today. Yes, the House had trapped him.
He turned and pounded a fist on the wall, hurting his fingers. Didn’t care.
Why did you do that? D and D asked.
Zane refused to answer.
I feel . . . heat from you.
“It’s the heat of anger. You know of anger, ire, fury, don’t you?” Zane snarled. “Why don’t you think on that concept.”
But he couldn’t stay still. If the House had been aware longer, Zane would have thought it bluffed. Couldn’t count on that.
As he shuffled to the doorway, turned at the threshold, and walked down the entry hall to the main door, he strained to see. And to feel the object in his fingers as more than a brooch, a true treasure.
Gray-shading-into-black sight. Nothing but shaped metal holding faceted gems.
Face it. He’d already lost his sight and Flair.
Today. Fligger.
The tiles under his feet squeaked then the House said, You will lose the brooch and the reward if you leave.
Minor compared to what he’d already lost. Almost he let his fingers release the thing. His lips curled before he replied, “It is not an honorable act to constrain someone against his or her wishes. To imprison them.”
It is not an honorable act to abandon someone! the House shot back.
“I’ll come back,” Zane grated out.
I do not believe you. This time D and D’s voice whispered, so tiny Zane couldn’t catch any emotion from him.
“Keep the brooch, then.” Zane let it fall. A wind whisked the artifact away. Setting his hand on the latch, he braced, shoved the door open, and followed it into a blizzard.
His caught breath sucked icy air into his lungs, wind whirled around him, pelting him with snow. He saw white, and thought even if he’d had his vision, it would have been the same.
MotherDam? he called with his mind.
Nothing.
No sense of how to go. He’d turned right into the house, but how many blocks had he walked since the last turn? How many times had he jogged left or right? He couldn’t recall because he hadn’t paid attention. First rule of treasure hunting, know where you were and how you got there, and he’d ignored that, sunk in despair. Big mistake.
And if he stood out here more than a few minutes, he would die.
If he tried to find his way home, he would perish.
Turning in place, he sensed the quietness of the open door of Debris and Detritus, and returned, shutting it behind him.
The lock clicked shut. He didn’t care. Didn’t even care when he heard inner bars slide across the door.
You DID come back, the House said tentatively.
“The weather is too bad. I can’t make it home in a blizzard. I have to wait it out.” He returned to the pillar and slid down it.
Emotion radiated from the man in wild pulses beating against Debris and Detritus’s walls; small heat from that emotion sank into the House’s floor where Zane sat.
The man did not speak to him further.
What could the House do to interest him again? To make him think about the non-mobile being Zane shared space with?
He had said he was a curious man.
Debris and Detritus stretched his mind, considered all of his contents—the things transient people had left and those items the people who had made him had stored near his HeartStones, his brain.
Papyrus instructions, ancient books, audios that D and D had not the skill to access. Memory spheres, but they were too odd and strange for D and D, experiencing the world as a human did. Vizes—recordings of his man and his woman.
He could run a viz for Zane.
Straining with the effort of a new ability, D and D projected the viz from one of the stones in his walls.
There, there, three dimensional holographic images formed.
“If I am Debris, you must be Detritus,” the man said.
“What’s that?” demanded Zane.
A viz, D and D replied.
An ugly, spiky noise came from Zane, harder emotions flashed from him. “I’m blind, House, I can’t see a viz.”
Oh, terrible that he’d hurt Zane. I am sorry, he whispered in his tiniest voice. I just wanted you to see my naming.
The House sounded like a child, and its words stopped Zane’s futile and ironic laughter. He wiped his sleeve over the wetness on his face, lingering from the storm, his runny nose. Anything remotely like civilized manners were lost to him.
The future looked—was—dim. Ha, ha.
So may as well while away the time with the past while the blizzard raged.
“Go ahead,” he said gruffly. “Play it, I can hear the dialog, listen.”
Very well, Zane, came the high childish voice again. But then, in any terms, Debris and Detritus was a child, even less, a baby with only a full day’s awareness. The House’s first tones of mature and male were wrong.
“Watch where you’re going,” boomed a woman’s voice. “You’ve broken the last vase. Left debris all over the floor. Well, I am not going to clean it up this time. It can sit until you do it!”
“No, you’re a lump of inenergy aren’t you? If I’m debris, you’re detritus. The detritus that life has left of a woman,” said the man whose voice D and D had copied.
A gasp, then a sniff. “Well, Mister Papadakis, I don’t think that’s very nice of you.”
In a lofty tone, the man replied, “We are no longer Papadakis. We are the Family Parietaria, and I missed being a GraceLord by one percent.”
Zane snorted. That sounded like an old excuse to him. The whole scene sounded well-worn, though it kept his mind off his aches and his future.
The woman grumbled, “But you spend your days researching and writing about that ancient heritage of yours and too much time at night, too.”
The man gave a sharp gasp, and Zane wondered if he’d gotten an elbow in the ribs.
He found himself smiling; more, his back had loosened up, and he’d relaxed against the column. His shivering had subsided into occasional shudders, though his exhaled breath still felt warm against his face.
“Fascinating stuff,” the man said. “I’m pretty damn sure that primal energies tagged along with us on our starships.” Followed by a hiccup that sounded drunk. Then words continued, “Small and large entities. Why not? Our main religion of the Divine Couple is not exclusive.”
“An inclusive religion is a very good thing,” said the woman. “The easiest way for humans to pick a fight is to base it upon religious intolerance. We brought our religious fervor with us in many forms—”
“Our beliefs. Energies might stick to those, form into what we thought,” said the male, more ponderous.
“Or the major energies of the Divine Couple are real,” whispered the woman.
“Who knows?” he grumbled. “And since you complained . . . ” A wet smooch . . . kissing?
Zane straightened from nodding off and cleared his throat. “Very educational.” he said. “You can stop that now.” He drew in a very cold breath, and warning bells alarmed in his mind.
Then he knew. The house was too cold. He would not make it until morning.
Despite the shelter, the cold would invade, and he’d freeze to death. With eyes open to dark gray, he contemplated how long it would take for his Family to find him.
Worse came to worst, they’d hire one of the Blackthorns to track him—the FirstFamily GrandLord with great Flair and an equally great price, or one of that man’s distant cuzes with a minor gift. In any event, it would only be to find his corpse—and the Ivy artifact, of course. If D and D allowed them to leave with the brooch.
Zane’s whole body curled as he laughed. Now that his doom had come, he realized he didn’t want to die.
Why do you make those noises, Zane? asked the House.
“I’m dying.”
What!
“My lifeforce is being extinguished by the cold. Sort of amusing. You came to life yesterday, and I die today.”
No!
Zane leaned back, kept his eyes open to blackness. “I have no Flair,” he croaked. “Not even to call my Family. Not even to light a fire. I’m blind; I can’t teleport when blind. I can’t leave into a raging blizzard outside; I would not find my way home.”
No, no, NO! said the house. I will not let you die.
The House was full of ‘noes.’
I cannot have another death within my walls, another decaying human shell. It is terrible. Vermin come. They burrow into me and gnaw on me and bad stuff coats my walls.
That gave Zane pause. “Huh. If you prefer me to die outside your walls, I can stagger some meters down the street.” He coughed. It racked his body, lasting longer than he’d anticipated. Well, it wouldn’t bother him tomorrow.
No! I want YOU as my Family, the voice in his head sobbed.
Coughing again, Zane said, “There is a fireplace in this room. If you have wood or coal and you can light the fire, I might survive the night.” And maybe he should stop talking and just think words at the House.
This is why you mobile beings constructed me! I am failing in my duty!
Uh-oh.
Not your fault, Zane projected mentally to Debris and Detritus. You don’t feel the cold, didn’t know I needed more warmth than you can give me.
The ceiling split. Zane heard plaster break, felt chunks rain just behind him. A thump hit a few centimeters near him, and he coughed from the dust.
WOOD! cried the House. A beam, use it for fire!
Lady and Lord, Zane matched the moan of Debris and Detritus, why did you do that? I don’t want to hurt you.
It is done. The pain of the lost beam does not hurt me as much as my . . . fear . . . for you.
“Sorry,” Zane managed aloud, through numb lips. But he scrabbled toward the beam, got slivers as he found the broken edge, ignored his back pain as he hauled the thirty-centimeter beam to the fire.
Then he panted and rested. Even such a short exertion exhausted him. His mind fogged as he wondered how to light the beam. Too awful to make the House set fire to one of its bones for him.
Fumbling in the belt pouch his nearest sister had equipped and fastened on his belt herself, he touched various objects then found a bespelled firestarter that would work even underwater. No additional Flair needed.
He lit the beam, feeling ghoulish, and rolled to the fire, but began to sink into a sleep he knew he wouldn’t awaken from. Sor-ry, Debris and Detritus . . . just too late. I am glad of your companionship, though I am sorry I cannot spare you the distress of my corpse. He paused and listened to his slow and ragged breaths, the only sound he made. Debris and Detritus, I think if you REACH OUT mentally, you could contact other intelligent Houses and Residences. You are not alone.
I AM! You are leaving me alone! The entire House seemed to contract in the wail that trembled through Zane.
Not enough, the House wept in creaks around him. Not nearly enough. Please do not die, Zane. Please, fight. I do not wish to stay sentient if another one of my beings dies. I cannot bear it.
A child, no, baby’s cry, that Zane could not ignore. He couldn’t summon his Flair, but he could gather all the strength he had. We . . . will . . . work . . . together.
A pause in the lament.
How?
Zane struggled with sluggish thoughts. Think or die.
You have Flair. As you were constructed, they gave you strength and energy throughout your lifetime until you became aware.
Yes!
If you can share a little of that with me . . .
I can! I WILL!
Right. I don’t know how we can share. Maybe if you run some energy down the beam in the fireplace—
We will work together! *I* know how we can share energy. My HeartStones—
And I WILL NOT hurt you further by messing with your HeartStones.
You cannot hurt me through them. I have much untapped energy that I can share!
Maybe he shouldn’t put his trust into a newly aware House, a baby, but he had nothing left to lose. Zane found himself clearing his throat, mumbling, “All right then. Tell me what to do.”
Stand up and face the fireplace! The order rang in his ears, reverberating oddly as if there was more than one being addressing him.
Nearly beyond him, he forced himself up, staggered, each step jarring his back, making his lungs bellow with breath.
Place your hands on the heads of the sculptures flanking the fireplace. Your reach is wide enough, a high snappish voice instructed, not the House’s usual tones.
Zane blinked, saw only blackness, but now that the House mentioned it, he could feel the irregularities of sculptures. He moved forward, reached out, and found the tops of the heads of two figures, one male, one female, in the same style as those on the front of the House.
Not just your fingers, curve your hands around the facial features of Debris and Detritus, too! A deeper voice intoned, but now the atmosphere around him seemed to seethe with energy. Heat rose from the fireplace as the beam crackled, burning.
He palmed the faces of the figures.
NOW!
Lightning sizzled, arcing through him, and he yelled. He’d tapped into the centuries-accrued energy of the House.
Pain zapped down every nerve, slid over his skin, sank to his marrow—raw power.
He screamed as the force filled him, overflowed, heard the shriek of the House, too. Definitely felt the whoosh of the beam as it zipped away from the fireplace, lifted to the ceiling, creaked into place.
He connected with the House; they melded together for an instant, and his own ribs shivered as the beam became whole, the burned end augmented with Flair and other . . . bits of wood left in the rooms. Plaster ladened the air as the ceiling mended to better than new.
He and the House groaned together. As the energies blew through him, he went toppling when his hands lifted from the statues of Debris and Detritus.
He crumpled, stunned.
I love you, said the House. I will always shelter and protect you, D and D said in the tone of a solemn oath.
Loving Zane? That was too damn quick, but he didn’t say so. Words formed slowly as darkness tugged at the ragged edges of Zane’s mind, complete sincerity, I will always cherish and preserve you. My . . . vow . . . of . . . honor.
The man, Zane Aster, Debris and Detritus’s Family, lay still. D and D stayed quiet himself so he could sense all Zane’s life indicators. He breathed, evenly, steadily. His muscles lay relaxed against the House’s mainspace floor, his body warm.
They had saved him. Zane would live.
D and D’s inner trembling receded. He felt as if he, too, could breathe. Odd that he began to think of himself in mobile entity—human—terms, but so it was.
Zane awoke to heat, and he felt that he lay in a patch of sunlight. Even with his eyes closed, he could delineate the ragged swatch of light on his body. He snorted. Eyes closed, right. From what he remembered of the evening before, he wouldn’t see anything with his eyes open . . . or straining all his Flair.
Both gone forever.
But . . . he felt that sunlight. And his normal senses fed information to him, his skin, his brain, with a nearly painful acuity. As if those senses had expanded, no, magnified. Expanded exponentially. He smiled at the alliteration and opened his eyes.
Not darkness, but gray. A wavery gray like smoke. He didn’t know what that meant other that he remained blind.
“I survived,” he croaked aloud. “We survived.”
Yes. We survived, the House whispered in his mind. The sunshine on my outer walls has heated them warmer today than many days lately.
“The storm has passed, and the weather is better.”
Yes, Zane.
He could hear all the creaks and soughs of the House, some slight scratching of glass like branches on windows. But not on this level. Straining his ears, he realized the sounds emanated from one of the back rooms of the third floor.
His breath caught with a gasp that became a cough. But this cough didn’t emanate deep from his lungs, racking him.
No, he continued to feel good—in muscle and bone, skin and tendon. No frostburn or windburn on his face.
He simply had no sight and no Flair.
But his senses seemed greatly augmented, a conundrum. Something that had occurred when he’d linked with the House the night before? Or the continuing strange results of the underwater accident that had almost killed him and taken his sight and Flair?
Who knew?
Who cared about the why? He didn’t.
With an easy move, he rolled to his feet, stretched, popping joints. Yep, felt good.
“The room is warmer.” He turned toward the fireplace, could sense the dimensions of the open interior, the individual pieces of charcoal in the pile, glowing red or white.
His hands recalled the feel of the two carved statues on each side of the fireplace with enough detail that he could form the images, male and female, in his mind’s eye.
Slowly, he turned in place. His sight yet showed a dark flat gray. But the pressure on his skin, even through his clothes, told him where the columns were, the five tall rectangular windows in the back. He knew how far the ceiling loomed over his head and the dimensions of the doorway a few strides away.
Turning his palm upward, he commanded, “Lightspell!”
Nothing. Not a bit of Flair for him to draw on, the psi magic he’d felt pulse through his nerves all his life.
Blind and empty of Flair.
Zane? the House sounded nervous.
“I’m here,” he said absently, still taking stock. Trusting in this new awareness, he strode across the room, stopped a few centimeters before a column. Raising a hand, he brushed it over the cool stone and frowned; it seemed to him that the pillar was of a light-colored marble . . . but not white. Odd.
This whole thing was odd.
The strangest days in his life. He whirled and jogged across the room and through the door, down the short hallway, noting another door on his left that would be the front room with the bow windows he’d seen yesterday evening.
Pretty much his last image was of the house.
ZANE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Stopping at the front door, he lay his palm against it and linked with the House.
I FEEL you!
I feel you, too, he replied mentally. You and I worked together to save me.
You saved me, too, D and D said simply, I’m glad you didn’t die and rot on my floor. That is scary and nasty, and I couldn’t go through that again.
The atmosphere in the room trembled around him as if the air pressure suddenly dropped.
Zane grimaced. “I imagine so.” Such a young entity would have hidden his awareness from death and decay within his walls and perished if Zane had died.
Yes. We saved each other. He stooped and picked up the Ivy brooch-artifact, then added aloud, “I’m going to turn in this piece of jewelry for the reward, file a claim for you and your land so I will be named as owner.”
Owner!
“I don’t want the general public to know you’re sentient yet. Not with your unique qualities. I want no harm to come to you. And I’ll have to find out how other recently intelligent Houses became their own persons.” He paused. “I think they are all associated with a Family.”
You will be my Family? A tiny breeze scraped papyrus scraps around the room along with the equally tiny mental whisper.
“Absolutely!” He said it so loud it rang against the walls, more, so it sank into the House so D and D would believe him. “I’m also going to arrange the move from my . . . previous . . . abode to here, D and D. I’ll be back within a septhour, seventy minutes.”
You promise?
“My solemn vow of honor, and I have never given that to anyone before.” He paused. “Except for you, last night. You should have memories of all the circumstances of a solemn Vow of Honor. I would suffer if I broke it.”
I . . . care for you. You would hurt me if you betrayed my trust.
“I care for you, too. I’ll be back.” He paused. “One moment.” He strode back into the mainspace, no stumbling or staggering now. He knew his surroundings. Oh, there’d be no deep-sea diving and treasure hunting for him anymore, but he had Flair. Maybe not. Not Flair, but he had some sort of talent or gift that mitigated his blindness.
He touched the stylized face of the male, Debris, then the female, Detritus, the sculptures flanking the fireplace. Gave and accepted a blessing.
Then he turned and walked to the front door, said the phrase he’d only given members of his Family before, but then, this House was his Family, now. “I love you, Debris and Detritus. I’ll be back shortly.”
I love you, Zane Aster of the House of Debris and Detritus. I will wait.
Zane chuckled and slid aside the bars, unlocked the door, and stepped into a cold, clear day. No doubt the sun shone, a white star in the deep blue sky; pain flickered.
Zane? asked the House.
“I’m all right,” he murmured, though no one walked along the street for blocks. He couldn’t see the sun or the sky, but he knew that. He took off down the street with a long stride. Someday he might learn how to teleport again; for now, he could walk the few kilometers to the GuildHall and turn in T’Ivy’s brooch, file a claim for the House.
And he knew he’d left something behind after all.
Despair.
The House hummed to himself, a jaunty song his Family, Zane, had taught him. He tided himself up as much as possible, found a button from Zane’s jacket. He swept it into the pile of other small and interesting items next to the fireplace pillar of Detritus. He dusted and cleaned the entire house using the stored Flair he’d learned to tap.
His Family returned, as promised, within the septhour and pounded on his outside wall, to the right of his door. The House felt the warmth of his living flesh, and through that flesh the joyful emotions of the man. Then he felt a . . . brightness on the wall next to the door. A metal plate that someday he might be able to modify enough to see the street. Fascinating!
What is it? he asked his Family.
Zane said, “It is a name plate, designating you as an individual and an intelligent House.”
Oooooh!
“It says ‘Debris and Detritus House, Aware this Month of Willow, 424 Years After Colonization, Zane Aster Family.’”
YES! trilled the House, then welcomed his Family inside.
Like smoke rising, the minor gods, Debris and Detritus, removed themselves from the statues of the fireplace, their attenuated essence twined into the bedrock beneath the House, separating themselves from the newly intelligent being. They had helped the House become sentient, but now they wished to be individuals.
They’d linger, though. Rest and wait and grow stronger for a few decades.
Then they’d leave this sanctuary and run free.
About the Story
Celta is a planet of magic, telepathic animal companions, and romance . . . currently there are fifteen books in the series (including a novella collection). Throughout my Celta series, I’ve had walk-on (walk-INTO) characters of intelligent houses, sometimes minor, sometimes major secondary characters, arranging from the amusing to the grumpy to the obsessive. In this story, I wanted to show a House Becoming Aware.