Gama and Hest: An Ahsenthe Cycle companion novella (The Ahsenthe Cycle) (5 page)

“It’s real,” Gama said.

One spot lit blue-red on Frarm’s throat and he put up a hand to hide it. Maybe to conceal the color from them, but maybe to pretend to himself that he didn’t feel nervous. Gama sent him a supportive smile, but she wished he’d be firmer in his stance. He’d seen what he’d seen with the birds. Better to stand up and face the truth than wish — or pretend — it hadn’t happened.

“I don’t like it,” Iya said. “It needs to stop.”

Hest laughed without humor. “I agree.”

They reached the stream and one by one set down their yokes on a stretch of sandy bank and unhooked the buckets. The water ran quickly here, and deep below the bank. They lay on their bellies, hanging over the side and reaching the buckets one by one down into the water. Iya grunted at the effort to lift the filled bucket, and long-armed Vonti leaned in to help her pull.

No one spoke while they worked. The quiet made Gama nearly as nervous as thinking about what caused the disappearances — a silence born of fear.

Iya set her last filled bucket on the ground, careful not to spill any water, and said, “Who has a guess at what happened?”

Vonti was on his knees near her, hooking his four filled buckets onto his yoke. He didn’t look up from his work. “I don’t mean offense, but honestly I don’t think Hest and Gama saw what they think they did. And neither did Frarm.”

Gama felt her neck warm. First Palu, and now Vonti. Frarm’s dwelling-mates hadn’t believed his words either. They’d all known each other since they were hatchlings. Why would anyone think she or Hest or Frarm had suddenly taken up false speaking?

“Why don’t you think they saw anything?” Prill said, one spot lighting with hope.

Vonti looked up to answer her. “It’s impossible for beasts to vanish from a meadow and birds to disappear from the sky.”

“I know what we saw.” Gama said, kneeling on the rough riverside sand, hooking her own buckets to her yoke.

“What you think you saw.” Vonti leveled the yoke across his shoulders and stood, swinging his shoulders, the yoke moving with them.

A bucket nearly hit her head. Gama jumped up, precious water sloshing from her own buckets. “Might want to be a little more careful, Vonti.” She felt a few spots lighting brown-yellow with annoyance. She saw Vonti’s gaze settle on her throat and was glad he could see exactly how she felt. “Neither Hest nor I are prone to fancies. You know that. I’m surprised you would insult us with your suggestion.”

“Then how do you explain what you saw?” he said. “What happened to the brez?”

“They disappeared. Plain and simple as that. I can’t explain how. The ground could have opened up and swallowed them for all we know.”

“Like a sinkhole?”

“Maybe.” She dropped to her knees again and hooked the third bucket to the yoke. “A sinkhole would explain it. The brez were far enough away that we wouldn’t have seen a hole.”

Vonti steadied his yoke with one hand and placed the fist of his other hand on his hip. Gama reasoned he was thinking through the possibility.

Prill nodded, her eyes shining. “A sinkhole makes sense.” She turned to Hest. “Do you think that’s what it was?”

“Only we didn’t see them fall,” Gama said before Hest could answer “We didn’t see them slip into the ground or hear them call out in fear. The sky shimmered and the brez were gone. That’s all.”

She caught the pinch-mouthed look on Hest’s face.
Leave
it
, he sent to her.
Let
them
have
an
explanation
that
soothes
them
.
Don’t
stir
things
up
with
truth
just
for
the
sake
of
it
.
How
can
we
solve
this
if
we
are
out
of
harmony
?

Gama didn’t know which annoyed her more — Vonti’s disbelief or the fact that she understood Hest’s point. Her sisters and brothers needed explanations they could believe, reasons to not be afraid. But pretend reasons wouldn’t help find the real cause, and they certainly wouldn’t give them a way to stop the strange happenings — if they could be stopped. And what if they couldn’t? Would all the plants, beasts, and birds of the world disappear one by one? She covered her throat with her hand, to hide the muddy-brown of fear lighting on her spots.

Vonti trained his gaze on Frarm. “What about the birds you saw disappear?”

Frarm drew a deep breath and huffed it out. He looked suddenly exhausted. “Maybe it was the light. Or the birds flew behind some clouds and I just thought they disappeared.” He considered for a moment longer, then nodded. “That must be it. Clouds.”

Prill’s spot changed from the color of hope to the white of satisfaction.

The beasts in the meadow hadn’t been hidden by clouds, nor had they fallen into a sinkhole. The brez had been coming towards them one moment and were gone the next. Gama was sure of that. She was sorry now she’d mentioned the sinkhole. She didn’t want to be the cause of her sisters and brothers grabbing onto a false security.

Don’t
let
Vonti
upset
you
, Hest sent her.
I
know
what
we
saw
.

“What we need,” Iya said, hefting her yoke onto her shoulders and standing, “is a song. Hest, you lead us off.”

As if a song would make everything all right, Gama thought. She was wise enough not to say it though. In truth, a song was a good idea — a welcome distraction. A way to not think about what crowded everyone’s minds. Sometimes a good distraction was just the thing to clear the mind and let new thoughts come in.

Gama lifted her yoke onto her shoulders and stood. “
The
Water
Song
seems fitting.”

Hest nodded, took a few steps, cleared his throat, and sang,

“I am the clear water

That glistens in sunlight.”

I fall from the sky

In light and in dark.”

They all joined in, Vonti, Kis, and Prill singing loudly. Gama couldn’t work up the same enthusiasm, even though she thought singing was a good idea. Frarm, she noticed, hardly sang at all. The brez were gone. The birds were gone. No amount of cheerful songs would make that different.

“Falling, falling

Kisses on dry land

I am sky’s beauty.”

Hest gulped for breath between verses. Gama knew he’d been singing but thinking, too. Hest never lost breath when he was focused on a song, but if he let his mind wander, he’d need to stop and suck in air. She turned toward him and raised her eyebrow ridges — a clear question. He could think-talk to her if he had something to say. He shrugged and began the second verse as they approached Reev.

“I am the dark cloud

That brings the clean water.

I sail the sky

In light and in dark.”

Hurry
!
Hurry
! Wall sent as they drew close.

They all stopped singing on the same note.

Gama’s scalp prickled with sweat.
What’s
wrong
?
What’s
happened
?

I
can’t
say
, Wall sent.
It’s
too
horrible
.
Just
hurry
.

They couldn’t hurry and risk spilling their precious water, but they sped their steps as much as they dared — their necks all lit with the dark-gray of worry. Gama wanted to throw off the yoke and run.

Wall threw the gate open.
Go
to
Community
Hall
, Wall sent.
Everyone
is
there
.

Just inside Wall, Gama slipped out from under her yoke, being as fast and careful with the buckets as she could. She ran toward Community Hall, Hest and the others alongside her. Gama hardly saw the structures she rushed past.

Hall opened its doors for them but didn’t say anything.

Reln stood on the dais. The soft-green-yellow of relief bloomed on his throat. “We’re very glad to see you.”

A shiver of nerves ran up her breastbone.

“I don’t know any way to say it but plainly,” Reln said. “The carding house is gone.”

Six

The kin parted, stepping back and squeezing up against the soumyo next to them, to let Gama and Hest through.

“It’s one more thing,” someone said low as Gama passed by.

“Too many things,” said another — words that sounded as though they came from between clenched teeth.

Gama’s neck burned and her heart beat hard. The carding house was gone? An entire structure? How could that be?

“Join me at my dwelling,” Reln said quietly when they reached him. “We have much to discuss.” He looked out across the room and dismissed the assembled kin with a wave of his hand.

Gama watched them go. They were like birds suddenly freed from the pen, she thought — some talking excitedly, some with their heads hung low, as if weighted, colors glowing on their necks — the signs of anxiety, concern, confusion, and shock. She felt her own spots light and change with her shifting emotions while they waited to hear what Reln would say. Hest touched her neck. Gama touched his neck in return — small offers of comfort.

“Shouldn’t you go to the communiteria to answer questions?” Frarm asked, his voice quiet and shaky.

Reln waited until nearly everyone had made their way out the door before stepping down from the dais and answering Frarm. “I’ll go as soon as I’ve spoken with you. We can go together after, if you like.”

Gama felt her anxiety like a living thing that had come to dwell within her. She shifted from foot to foot. Reln walked slowly through the nearly empty room without speaking, his hands clasped together behind his back. The six of them followed behind — Hest, Iya, Vonti, Frarm, Prill, and Gama, an edgy procession. If it had been night, the intensity of the colors on their necks would have lit their way. Thought-grains moved through the room. She supposed Reln was think-talking to Hall but had chosen not to let them hear.

Beneath the open sky, Hest sidled up next to Reln and asked the question Gama felt certain pounded through all their thoughts.

“What happened to the carding house?”

Reln gently put his finger to Hest’s lips. “Not right here.”

Hest’s emotion spots flared blue-red with anxiety again, and brownish-pink with uncertainty.

They walked without words — tight, nervous steps — past dwellings, two storage sheds, and a granary. The carding house lay in the other direction — or at least the place where it had stood — empty now, bare dirt, or maybe a hole. Even if she turned, she wouldn’t have been able to see anything, not with the way the paths of Reev twisted this way and that. She rubbed her throat to calm herself. She saw Frarm do the same.

The group angled off the main path, taking the thin, winding lane that led to Reln’s dwelling. It swung its door open as they approached. Warmth and light flowed out from inside, and the vague scent of aromatics, musky yet sweet. Gama breathed in deeply, longing for the comfort being inside these walls had always brought. Reln’s dwelling never spoke much when she was there, but she felt a kindness and a caring from it that some other structures seemed to lack.

Reln gestured for them to sit. His dwelling was large, considering that only he and Prill lived in it. The receiving room was generously sized even for a big dwelling and filled with comfortable, over-stuffed sit-pillows in soft colors that went harmoniously with the pale ocher walls. The six who’d gathered water together glanced at the pillows and one another, but no one sat. Clearly her sisters and brothers couldn’t bring themselves to sit and settle any more than she could. Reln remained standing as well.

“Gama. Hest,” Reln said. “You know not everyone believed you about the beasts disappearing right before your eyes. Many corenta-kin doubted Frarm’s story even more — coming second as it did. No one doubts any of you now, least of all me.”

Gama rubbed her hands on her thighs. She should have felt relief, but she didn’t. There was little comfort in being believed now only because a structure had disappeared — something everyone could see and no one deny. She didn’t want her kin to live with the fear that had shaken her since the first day of the shimmering sky.

“You saw it happen?” she asked.

Reln held his breath a moment, then nodded.

She knew he was relieving the moment, the shock of it — the sense of helplessness. Best to get him talking, she thought. “Was it the same with Carding House — there one moment and gone the next?”

“Mostly,” Reln said. “The air shimmered first, and when the structure disappeared there was a creaking sound. Not loud. The kind of sound you think maybe you heard, so you turn your head to look for the source.”

“A creak?” Gama said. “Not a hum?”

“I didn’t hear a hum.”

Gama crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly chilled. “There wasn’t a shimmer or a creaking sound when the brez vanished.”

“Maybe because Carding House is so big,” Hest said. “Whatever took it, maybe there was strain.”

“Oh,” Frarm said. “I didn’t think of that — that something
took
what’s gone. I just thought they disappeared. I didn’t think of how that could happen.”

Gama guessed Iya and Vonti hadn’t thought overmuch about the how or what either, since their throats were suddenly aflame with the orange-yellow of confusion and the muddy-brown of fear. How could they not wonder? Things don’t just disappear.
What
took them was the question that had to be answered. And
why
.

“Could it take one of us?” Prill’s voice was almost a whisper.

They snapped their gazes toward Reln.

“I don’t know,” he said, the only answer he could give.

Gama rubbed her thighs. Nothing was certain anymore, but logic said that anything that could make a structure vanish would likely have little trouble with one of them.

“What are we going to do?” she asked, to turn her corenta-kin from worry to devising a plan to avoid losing more of their own.

Reln sank onto a pillow, pulled his knees up to his chest, and sighed. “To protect Reev from something we can’t see or even name? I don’t know.”

From something unknown, Gama thought. She dropped to her knees on a pillow next to him. “Is it just Reev? Are we in the wrong place at the moment these things happen?”

“No,” Reln said. “We’ve been in touch with all the corentas close enough to think-talk with. Most say nothing unusual has happened, but two report that they’ve had odd occurrences. Kelroosh says all the water in its reservoir dried up in an instant. In Trontin, a female saw a complete orchard disappear. When they sent others to look, the ground was bare, as though no tree had ever stood in that place.”

“Like what we saw in the empty field,” Hest said, voicing exactly what Gama was thinking. Likely everyone in the room was drawing the same comparison.

“They’d been harvesting that orchard for two generations,” Reln said, as though length of time had anything to do with it.

Hest hunkered down on the other side of Reln. “There has to be something we can do.”

“We can’t stay here,” Frarm said. “Maybe it’s only in a few territories. We should go near the corentas where nothing has happened.”

Reln nodded. “Yes. I’ve already decided that, and spoken with the other guides. We’ll leave this evening and link up with Kelroosh and Trontin in a place where nothing strange has happened. We’ll be safe there. You should go now and make ready. If you feel you need to talk more, you’re welcome to come to the communiteria with me now.”

Hest sent,
Communiteria
or
back
to
our
dwelling
?

More
talk
is
just
more
talk
, Gama sent.
It
won’t
answer
anything
.
We
might
as
well
get
ready
to
move
.

Hest offered a tiny smile, and Gama knew they’d been in harmony of thought as always — he’d only asked from courtesy.

Iya, Vonti, and Frarm must have been think-talking among themselves, because Vonti had no doubt in his voice when he said, “We’ll go make ready.”

They walked through Reev together until Iya and Vonti broke away to go to their own dwellings. Their paths would take them past where Carding House had been. Gama didn’t envy them the sight and was glad the way to her dwelling led a different direction. Except she wanted to see the place, if only to prove to herself that Carding House was really gone. Funny how that worked — she believed Reln completely, yet still needed to see the proof of his words with her own eyes.

Frarm remained with them until he reached his turn-off.

“Do you want to stay with us again?” Hest asked.

Frarm shook his head. “Everyone knows now that what I said was true. My dwelling and those I share it with want me back. I’d rather be there.”

Frarm headed toward his dwelling, leaving Gama and Hest alone on the path. No one else was out. The sound of their feet crunching against Reev’s dry soil felt too loud — and lonely.

A thought nagged at her as they made their way toward their dwelling, a thought she didn’t share with Hest or Home. If they hadn’t known the beasts, birds, and now Carding House would disappear, how could they be sure where it was safe to land?

-=o=-

The bright sun of day-half-gone lit the air when Reev set down in a wild valley full of tall, twisted, red stones — a place not on their usual route. Gama and Hest ran but weren’t the first to the gate. All of their kin wanting to see this new place — this fine land where they would be safe — and their new neighbors. Wall was much higher than any soumyo was tall, but some clever corenta-kin had hiked a brother or sister onto their shoulders so they could peek over.

“Can you see them?” those on the ground asked. “What’s out there?”

“Two corentas,” a female on her brother’s shoulders said. Her chin rested on the plastered top of Wall. “One about the same size as Reev, the other bigger by half.”

An excited murmur streaked through the crowd. “I hope we get to visit,” someone said. “I’d like to see inside another corenta.”

Gama rubbed her throat. Had everyone forgotten what had driven them there? Or had they resolved not to think about it — to stuff it away and enjoy these moments. She thought that was more the case, but Gama felt worry like a deep thrum under her kin’s every excited word and action.

Reln strode up wearing all his marks of leadership at once — the embroidered shawl of many colors over his bare shoulders, the black hat like a bowl turned upside down and with a wide gold brim, the three thick bracelets on his left arm that represented their corenta — one bracelet for the females, one for the males, one for the structures. He wore a deep-blue hipwrap embroidered all over with crimson leaves — very different from the plain beige wrap Gama was used to seeing on him.

“Their gates are opening,” someone called from her perch on a sister’s shoulders.

Wall opened its main gate and the soumyo crowded inside the jambs to look, nudging their neighbors aside to get a better view. Hest pushed forward, but Gama hesitated. This linking up felt wrong to her. Each corenta had its own course, so that no orchard or meadow was over-plucked, no stream overused for plants or swimmers. Sometimes Gama thought the harmony of their lives depended on everyone conveniently staying out of everyone else’s way.

Reln raised his voice to be heard over the excited chatter of the corenta-kin. “The guides are coming. Please make ready to greet them.”

Little puffs of dust stirred where those who still rode on a sister’s or brother’s shoulders jumped down. Gama scrambled with the rest of her kin to form two lines. Guests from another corenta were uncommon, but everyone learned and practiced the traditional ways to greet visitors — ways that likely hadn’t changed since the first stones were set to form Wall, Gama thought. The Reev kin knew what to do now without being told.

They’re
almost
here
, Wall sent so that everyone heard it.
Have
you
picked
a
welcoming
song
,
Reln
?

One emotion spot on Reln’s neck lit orange with embarrassment. Gama guessed that with the strain of all that had been happening, their guide had forgotten this gesture of politeness.

“Of course,” Reln said aloud. “
The
Song
of
Kinship
.”

It was a good choice. Normally they didn’t meet with outsiders except at mating sites during Resonance.
The
Song
of
Kinship
declared that no matter what pairing produced the egg or in which corenta the hatchling wound up, it would be considered a full member of that kin. It made sense to sing now of kinship with Kelroosh and Trontin, since they all seemed to need each other, no different than how the members of Reev needed one another. She’d been silly before, to fear this new linking — a natural worry when change seemed quick and inevitable.