The boys who performed wonders on the plank. Gone.
No.
Le Chat and his poor excuse for a nurse. The seven taiko drummers. The three singers. Gone.
No!
Remmiau. Ijia. Bayard. All of them, gone.
NO!
Grignal fought to remember his training. He was supposed to sidestep the attack. Hide from it within his mind. Lure the psi in closer. He did, though it felt like it wasn’t working at all.
But then he felt her. Sidanne’s mind. Her mind was arcing through all of them—him, Jaubert, the men in uniform. She was changing their memories, rifling through them like one of Bayard’s interlink bots and replacing it with what she saw fit. The only conspicuous absence was Ettienne. Sidanne wasn’t connecting to her mind. In fact, Ettienne didn’t seem to be there at all except to the extent that Sidanne was placing memories of her in all their minds.
Grignal did the only thing he knew how to do—he bellowed and fought back. He charged. He clawed and growled. He beat against the mind that was toying with his own.
Grignal could feel her fall back. He knew she was weakened from the cryosleeve and no doubt from depriving herself of her body’s basic needs in deference to her delusions. Grignal realized a moment later that he could actually remember Bayard and the first time he’d met the troupe. The memory had returned.
He pushed harder, and Sidanne retreated. She couldn’t keep up the fight against all of them. She concentrated on Grignal instead. And it was all too quickly that she was turning the tide.
But she was desperate. She hadn’t been pushed like this in years, not since she’d started covering up her mother’s death.
The thought struck Grignal and Sidanne simultaneously.
Her mother had died.
No. She wasn’t dead.
She couldn’t be.
Grignal heard a wailing at the edges of consciousness. He knew it was coming from the physical world, but he was so tied up in the battle with Sidanne he had no idea who it might be coming from.
“She’s dead,” Grignal said to himself, sure of it now. It was the only explanation. Sidanne was clearly a powerful psi. She was creating her own warped reality to keep her mother alive, for herself, for her father, and anyone else who got in her way.
Grignal coaxed Sidanne’s mind into remembering by merely suggesting it. And within a few moments, Sidanne, in all her efforts to avoid it, uncovered it for him.
Ettienne had died while walking Sidanne home from a cello recital. It had gone so well. Jaubert, as usual, had been unavailable, but her mother had been so proud. Sidanne had been too. They had decided to take a walk together and enjoy the night, but neither of them did so often, and they took a wrong turn. They didn’t notice the man standing in the dark, waiting. Ettienne had tried to protect Sidanne, but in doing so she had met with a glimmering blade. She died, right then, too quickly for any help to arrive.
Sidanne had buried the memory so deep that she was sure she’d never find it again. Her mother was alive. She had to be. Sidanne would make sure of it.
Grignal regained enough of himself to look about the room once more. The Sidanne that looked so much like a normal fifteen-year-old was gone. Ettienne was still there, but she was motionless, expressionless. The guards were still prone, but Jaubert was on his knees and his face was filled with a light melancholy smile. He was staring at Ettienne.
Sitting in a chair, emaciated, listless, was the real Sidanne.
She stared up at Grignal with sunken, watery eyes.
“Your father woke up from the dream, didn’t he? That’s why he contracted us to send you to Balgique-en-Leurre, to the temple.”
Sidanne nodded.
“He wants you to let go of your mother.”
She nodded again. “But I didn’t want to. I made him forget.”
“How long has it been?”
Sidanne looked so scared then, just like she had on that ledge high above the city. “I don’t remember.”
Grignal smiled. “That’s ok. The people in the temple can help you.”
“How do you know?”
“Because a friend of mine told me so. He’s the leader of my troupe.” He kneeled by the chair, careful not to touch her. “We can bring you to the temple. You can be free of the pain.”
“I’ll never be free.”
“No, you’re right. She’ll never be completely gone, but you can let her go and the parts you love will still be there.”
Sidanne took in a deep, quivering breath. “You’ll take me there?”
“Yes.”
She hugged herself and began to cry.
Nearby, the uniformed men curled up and vomited. Jaubert coughed and shook his head and fought his way to his feet. He blinked his eyes several times and then locked eyes with his daughter.
“Sidanne?”
They stared at one another for a long time.
“I’ll go, Father. I’ll go to the temple.”
Jaubert released the troupe within the hour. Bayard was so afraid Jaubert would change his mind that he nearly forgot several who had been held in another prison a few levels down from the bulk of the troupe. But within a half-day, the entire troupe was packed away and heading outside the city walls.
Sidanne rode on a wagon with Remmiau. Ettienne sat on the bench beside her most of the time, always watching, never speaking.
Oddly enough, despite the eerie simulacrum of her mother, Remmiau had taken to Sidanne. He told her tales about Alé Surçois from before Sidanne had been born. Grignal kept a close ear out, though, for anything that would be too inappropriate for a girl of her age.
Late that day, Sidanne moved to the back of the wagon. It took her a long time to do so, for she was still very weak. She hung her thin legs over the edge of the piled-up tent and watched Grignal lumber behind her. Ettienne followed and wrapped her arms around Sidanne, hugging her tight, as if she were only five.
Sidanne had a wicked grin on her face. “Remmiau told me to call you a lizard.”
Grignal shook his head. “Then why don’t you?”
“It’s too mean.” Sidanne shrugged. “Besides, you don’t seem like a lizard to me.”
Grignal smiled and continued on in silence. Sidanne and her mother were watching the city. The wagons would soon drop over a ridge, and Alé Surçois would be lost from sight. Grignal took in the grand cityscape one last time—its glimmering shield, its walkways and towers, its tram line stretching across the horizon. “You’ll see it again,” Grignal said.
“I know,” Sidanne replied.
Grignal smiled. “How do you know?”
She shrugged. “I just do.”
“When will it be, then?” Grignal asked, only joking.
“Many years from now.” She said it in a very distant manner, as if she were viewing the event across the years between now and then.
A shiver ran down Grignal’s back.
When they had passed below the ridge, Sidanne turned to Grignal. “How long until Balgique-en-Leurre?”
“Six weeks.”
“What can I do until then?”
With abilities like hers, there were a lot of things she could do. Grignal was glad Remmiau wasn’t paying attention.
“Perhaps I’ll teach you how to juggle,” he told her.
And with that, completely unexpectedly, Sidanne giggled.
It was a beautiful sound.
How Peacefully the Desert Sleeps
The first time I woke, blood fell upon the desert floor.
At the time, I didn’t know whether it was good news or ill.
Kallie’s coughing fit started, as it often did, when the alabaster sun brought the rising heat of the desert with it. When the fit had passed and the pain had subsided, she cleared her throat and spit blood-tainted phlegm onto the cracked desert floor. Then she stood tall on the driver’s bench of her two-wheeled cart, hoping to see any sign of the Ohokwa village, but all that greeted her was a sea of adiwa cacti running clear to the
horizon.
Kallie’s heart sank as she dropped back into her creaking seat and took a long pull off her waterskin; it appeared she would need to rein in her pack bird and spend another scorching day under the direct sun before reaching Ohokwa Gorge. But she whipped her kuko into motion anyway, not willing to give up as long as she was able to withstand the heat.
Only minutes later, movement caught her eye. A few hundred yards up, two Ohokwa warriors bearing tall spears filed out from the cacti and onto the trail. With a whip of the reins and a cluck of her tongue, her kuko released a ragged caw and trudged faster.
With each passing second Kallie’s anxiety rose. She was about to take the first real step toward healing the consumption that had struck over a year ago. She’d managed to enter tribal lands and elude the Shaukauna, the settlers’ fiercest opponent in their unquenchable thirst for westward land, but now it came down to talking, a skill Kallie hadn’t been blessed with, and it soured her gut that her future depended on this one conversation.
Kallie was close enough now to see the details in their jet-black hair, which was braided behind their ears into two long strands. White folds of cloth hung loose around their shoulders, ready to cover their dark-skinned faces against the midday sun. They wore white shirts and pale leggings of the softest buckskin, embroidered with the angular designs of their people.
Kallie pulled her cart up short when the taller of the two warriors—the one with a half-dozen tiny bones piercing the crown of each ear—laid his spear across her kuko’s path. Kallie let out a slow breath, trying dearly to fend off another coughing fit, and pushed up the brim of her wide, leather hat.
“How do?” Kallie said.
Rather than reply, the shorter Ohokwa whistled, his tongue fluttering to create a rhythmic warble. She’d never heard the call in person, but she knew good and well what was about to happen.
A buzzing, like a child blowing a blade of grass between his thumbs, cut through the desert air. Kallie swallowed hard as two red beetles the size of her hand crawled over the top of the nearest adiwa cactus. One of the dejda beetles raised its iridescent wing case and rattled. The second followed suit a moment later, then another, and another, and soon, the entire area was abuzz with their bone-chilling call.
She’d never been bothered by crawlies and such, but she’d never come face to face with insects so almighty large, and the stories she’d previously heard—the way they swarmed over their prey, their mindlessness when driven by the Ohokwa’s whistling, the poison they injected with each thrust of their stinger—didn’t help one bit.
Then, quick as a hiccup, the dejda highest up on the cactus took wing—a blur of red against the blue sky—and whirred to land at Kallie’s feet. Though she knew it unwise, she couldn’t stop herself from shifting along the bench and reaching for the shotgun resting in its holster.
The taller Ohokwa made it clear that drawing the shotgun would be tantamount to suicide, and the shorter whistled again, louder this time. The beetle near Kallie’s boot rattled once, sending a furious shiver up her spine, then winged back to the cactus from which it had flown. Kallie inched her right hand back to her lap.
“You have nerve, stranger,” the taller Ohokwa said, “bringing firearms to our lands.”
His command of her language surprised her, and she chastised herself; she’d made a promise that she wouldn’t underestimate them. “It’s only to scare the coyotes,” she said, her heart beating heavy. “Can’t shoot worth a damn, anyway.”
As the taller warrior stared at Kallie with hard eyes, the second warrior moved to the rear of her cart and began rummaging through the crates stored in the bed as if they’d just insulted his mother.
Several of the beetles buzzed in unison. One of them took flight, but was immediately whistled back by the taller warrior. Kallie was confused, for she’d heard the Ohokwa had supreme control over the beetles using their whistles and their shared bond. But these, while clearly influenced by the warriors, weren’t behaving as she would have guessed.
“You came through Shaukauna land?” the taller warrior asked.
Kallie coughed once, softly. She daren’t lie now. The Ohokwa and Shaukauna were practically the same tribe. “I did.”
“How?”
“Traveled south, around the foothills, then through the wastes.”
“Those are watched lands, tahone.”
“Might be,” Kallie said with a careless air, “but no one stopped me from passing through.”
The warrior’s eyes thinned. “Then what brings you?”
Kallie winced at the sound of breaking glass. The warrior in the back ceased his inspection momentarily, but then resumed as liquid—no doubt the expensive whiskey—gurgled and spattered against the desert floor.
“Come to trade,” Kallie said. “Simple as that.”
“But why? Why risk our spears?”
Kallie glanced at a particularly large dejda flexing its wing cases. Maybe it was the goddamned beetles driving the spike of fear through her chest, maybe it was the heat, or maybe it was just time, but Kallie started coughing, and this time she couldn’t stop it. She took out her kerchief to mask the blood—she’d be damned before she let them see it—but it was too much, the worst one in days, and by the time the fit had passed, the pale kerchief was spotted through with blood.
The warrior continued to stare, but his eyes had thinned and his jaw had stiffened. The resentment in his expression sent a sickly dread running through her. He knew why she’d come. He knew she’d come begging for the Ohokwa’s fabled healing tonic, kayeya. Years ago, the Ohokwa had shared their prize with the settlers, but that was before the massacre at Holy Hill. Tensions with the tribes, particularly the Shaukauna and Ohokwa, had only heated since then, and it had nearly boiled over into all out war several times this hot, dry summer.
“You think the Ohokwa would give a tahone one drop of kayeya?” the warrior said.
Several dejda shouted in unison.
Kallie took as deep a breath as her broken lungs would allow her, and she prayed dearly she wasn’t about to make a big mistake. “What name you go by, tribesman?”
He hesitated, but only for a moment, and stood incrementally taller before replying, “Hochomi.”
“I brung music boxes, Hochomi, the best quality. Some of them play minutes on end. I brung instruments: two violins and a banjo. I got whiskey, aged sixteen year, and five bottles of fine wine. What could one small woman do to your people, no matter what the men might’ve done? What could you gain by denying me what means so little to you? Does that bring honor to your tribe, to kill a woman come begging for help?”
Hochomi stared. His broad face softened for the briefest of moments, but then his eyes locked on her shotgun, and he leaned over and spit at the foot of her wagon. “Turn your cart around, tahone, and never tread these lands again.”
As the men backed away and stared, Kallie scrambled for some way out of this. It couldn’t end here. Not so quickly. Not so finally.
But before she could open her mouth to argue, a stirring in the desert swarmed through Kallie’s consciousness. She felt instantly cool in the oppressive heat, and like a drop of oil slicking the surface of a pond, her awareness swelled. She felt Hochomi and his brother warrior; she felt the nearby dejda like red-hot coals laid against the surface of her mind; she felt the beetles’ gargantuan nest some miles to the west and south; and for the first time since entering this godforsaken oven, she no longer felt foreign. She felt like part of it, like it was a part of her.
But with the awareness came a sense of longing, and suddenly Kallie felt as if she were being dragged beneath the surface of a deep, black lake. She had no idea what it was, but she refused to allow it stronger purchase than it already had. So she recoiled. She beat against the presence. She scratched. Kicked. Retreated.
The desert air exploded as the dejda released a raucous cry. Several skittered across the desert floor toward her kuko. The pack bird high-stepped sideways as several
more beetles took wing and landed at Kallie’s feet. When another landed on her knee, she flicked the thing away before recalling how truly foolish such a move was.
Hochomi and his tribesman whistled their low, droning summons. Most of the beetles halted, but Kallie could see them in her mind turning a molten yellow. Several buried their crimson heads in the sand and raised their hind legs. A few fell onto their back and went into a severe apoplexy.
And then the first of them struck.
Kallie had never imagined the beetles could move so quickly. The first, launching itself from a nearby cactus, flew onto Hochomi’s shoulder and sunk its mandibles deep into his flesh. In the time it took for blood to soak through the white cloth, Kallie saw the poisonous stinger insert and withdraw several times. Another landed on Hochomi’s cheek, interrupting his fluttering whistle.
“Stop!” Kallie shouted, too confused to utter anything useful. She even tried to quell the beetles’ sudden anger, but it was no use. She could no more control the beetles than she could the blistering sun.
The other tribesman whistled louder, but the only effect seemed to be to induce more beetles into attacking.
The dejda swarmed.
“No!” Kallie cried, grabbing her shotgun and leveling it at the Ohokwa.
In moments the men’s limbs, chests, groins, necks were covered by the ravenous beetles.
Kallie aimed down the barrel of the shotgun, debating on whether to end the men’s misery, but the thought of attracting the beetles’ attention proved too fearsome. Luckily, her kuko proved wiser in the face of danger. It bucked and fled westward, and—after a horrid moment of watching the men scream and writhe on the ground—she let it.
Following a mindless and dangerous chase through the desert, Kallie crested a ridge and saw Ohokwa Gorge for the first time. It hacked the landscape in half, revealing a portion of the flame-colored rock it harbored. She urged her bird onward before she could lose heart and headed for the collection of square adobe buildings near the dogleg in the gorge.
Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories Page 30