Escaping Exodus

by Nicky Drayden

  “Betcha, Ama,” I say, slipping the watch off my wrist and into my pocket.

  “Feel it, girl. Every time, a second before, I want you to scream out ‘beat.’ Be more than five seconds early and you line up for lashes at the end of the day. One for each violation.”

  “And if I’m late?”

  “Never be late. You’re late, and we’re as good as dead, sure is sure is sure.”

  Ama herds me along with a handful of recruits through the dank, dark twists of rerouted arteries. It smells heavily of ichor in here, the floor still slick with its oily blue-green residue. I mind the countdown timer entwined with my soul, trying to step with a steady rhythm.

  “Beat!” one of the other recruits yells, a whole fifteen seconds early, so early she nearly throws me off my own count. She’s nervous now. We all are. Three beats ago, another of the recruits had been late. The heart-mothers had held the girl down, and one by one, they cut the girl’s braids from her scalp. I’d stood there, watching in horror as her identity was ripped from her, her history erased. For hundreds of years, that same pattern had been braided upon her ancestors’ heads, representing the constellations we’d drawn in the sky, our people traveling freely among the stars. All these centuries later, our sky has changed, but those braided patterns hadn’t, and now it would stop with her. The girl’s own ama had sobbed and wept, watching her family line come to an end. The weight of such shame for such a minor infraction seemed so cruel. I wanted to comfort the girl, comfort the ama, too, but we left them where they were.

  “Beat!” scream two more recruits. Still a tad early. Then several more sound off. My own heart is beating fiercely, waiting for that five-second mark and not a moment later, when finally, I gather everything and scream out, “Beat!”

  Then I count the seconds.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Thunder rumbles all around us. We stand sure-footed as the amas have taught us and wait for the trembles to subside. For the few seconds that follow, everyone is quiet, no one breathes, and all is sacred, feeling the connection we all share with the beast. Then we’re on the move again, like it never happened. Some of the other amas glance at me, impressed that I’ve never been more than five seconds early, but not my ama. She acts like she hasn’t even noticed, just yells that I’m walking too slow or gawking too much or breathing too loud.

  Some of the other recruits start yelling “beat” right after me, like I’m their crutch. The amas are quick to catch on, though, and the recruits get scolded. No promise of a lashing, but, girl, if tongues could sting like a strap of fresh beast leather, they’ll be feeling those words for days to come.

  We continue trudging through the maze for four more beats, knives always at the ready, one of the few sets of instructions they’ve given us. Not for protection, but if we get caught by the ichor’s current, we are to press the blade deep into our stomachs. They show us just where, marking an X on our dresses. Death would be swift, they promise. And it would make the knife easier to retrieve later. The metal is more precious than our lives, though I’ve known that since before I could count. The artery butts up against a bone-carved door inset into the flesh of the beast. We wait there, call out the beat—half of us on time, the others early but not obscenely so. The beat comes, and then two of the amas twist the door open with their wiry muscled arms, herding us quickly through as ichor dribbles over the door’s eave.

  We cough as the sweet stink of copper overwhelms our lungs, and we tear up at the acrid sting in the air. The amas stand and stare at us knowingly, waiting for us to come to our senses. It takes a full minute for most of us, but the one called Tanika is wheezing so hard, I think she’s going to pass out. None of the amas seems concerned enough to even ask if she’s okay, but I catch the slight tremble of Tanika’s ama’s lip. I don’t want to let another of us fail, another name added to the list of the shamed, so I slide over to her, wrap my arm around her, breathe hard in and out, setting a rhythm for her to follow. She follows along with me, and soon her eyes become less glassy, her cheeks a less blanched shade of brown. She nods me away when she’s okay.

  Suddenly something grips me, like I’ve been holding my breath too long, and I yell out, “Beat!” The others frantically follow, and the beat comes not a second later.

  “You let yourself get distracted, girl,” my ama says to me immediately after. “Only one heartbeat matters, and that’s the beast’s. If we start mourning our dead where they lie, there will be no one left to mourn us.”

  I bristle all over. I try to bite my tongue, oh blessed mothers, I try. “You’re saying I should have just stood by and watched her die?”

  “There are always one or two who can’t adjust quickly enough to the scent of ichor. Better to root them out when the stakes are low. Speak out of turn again, girl, and I’ll lay shame to our family line just as fast.”

  We continue on at a brisk pace through another set of doors, trudging through knee-deep ichor. The amas are all behind us, herding us forward. Rage burns in my heart. I thought I’d grown resistant against Ama’s cold, cruel demeanor, but turns out, I’d fully underestimated it. Tanika brushes my elbow, and I look back at her. She dips her head at me, a silent thank-you, then she smiles. If nothing else, at least I’ve mattered to her. That calms me some, betcha, which is good, because then I notice the ichor that had once flowed along with us has suddenly ebbed, lowered from shin-high to ankle-deep in the course of seconds, and is streaming back against us. Unlike the last artery, this one is tacky all over—the walls, the ceiling. It’s active, and whatever it does when the beat comes, it’s about to do it.

  I glance behind me to get direction from the amas, and they’re all a ways back, cutting deep gouges into the wall. “Beat!” I yell out, a whole twenty seconds too early, but it’s the only way to warn the others without shaming my family out of existence. The others startle, then notice everything I’ve noticed, and we all take our knives and start cutting. I copy my ama’s movements, best I can, two deep arcs into the flesh, then a cut behind them to form a handhold. I slip my arms in and hold on for dear life.

  The thunder comes, and for a brief moment, the ichor on the floor is only inches deep. Then a wave rushes past us. Instinctually, I hold my breath, as we had done so many times during practice, though from the gasping all around me, not everyone has been so thoughtful. The oily flow grips at me, bids me to get washed away. I hug that little strip of flesh like it’s my closest friend, hoping my cut holds just a few seconds longer. But in all my fear, all my dread, something springs forth in my heart . . . a feeling that I’m in a place I’ve belonged all my life. Suddenly, I’m not clinging on for life, because my life is not so significant a thing to cling to. Life is what is flowing all around me . . . I feel it as it moves past me. So, so much of it, and I’m blessed enough to have had so many generations come before me, sacrificing everything for me to have this very moment.

  And yet it is over all too soon. I will have other moments, many other moments, like this one, but there will never be another first.

  The flow of ichor is at my shins again. I unlatch myself from the wall, facing the amas. My ama sees me, sees the light in my eyes. And somehow, I understand her now. Her face is still covered in ichor, but I see her brow bunch. Then everything in her face loosens and she’s running to me, wrapping me up in a hug so tight, so warm, I don’t know what to do with myself. “You felt it?” she whispers into my ear.

  I nod. I don’t know what it is, but I definitely felt something. Something I can’t wait to feel again. She turns to the amas and they all stand looking at me, dumbstruck.

  “She felt it!” she screams at them. “On the first day. In the first hour.”

  I turn to accept the praise of my cohort, but of the eight of us, only five remain. Tanika and two others are nowhere to be seen. Some time ago, maybe as short as thirty minutes ago, I would have cried out about such a cruelty, wondering why they hadn’t be
tter prepared us before throwing us to this murderous organ. But now I understand. Once you’ve become one with the heart’s beat, there is no going back to how life was before. It’s hard to explain, but it changes you. It becomes a part of your soul, and to be turned away from the heart after feeling its all-encompassing grace would be the biggest cruelty of all.

  The amas, they talk about me like I’m not standing five feet away from them. They examine the cleanness of the cut I’d made into the beast’s flesh like three of their daughters hadn’t just been washed away. They argue that I’m a prodigy, that what I did was a fluke, that I’m ready, that I’m too inexperienced. That I’m lucky, that I’m blessed. That maybe I’m all those things, and that none of them matters, because in the end, I’m just wasting my time here when I could be doing something useful, like helping to save everyone’s lives.

  They’re yelling over one another, and I’m not even sure where my own ama stands on the issue, but it’s all over in two minutes, and Ama is rushing me away from my cohort, through a bone door and out of the artery, before the next beat comes.

  She’s huffy, out of breath, irritated, and a little proud.

  “Did I do something wrong?” I whisper to her. It seems safe here, away from the rest of the group.

  “No, girl. You did something exceptional.” The way she says it, though, doesn’t quite sound like a compliment. “We’ve lost entire cohorts before. Probably would have happened today if you hadn’t spoken up. Maybe that’ll make your lashes more bearable this evening.”

  “Beat.” I say it calmly now, and the world stops for a moment. I savor the tremble. Yearn for it. It’s become a part of me already, involuntary, easy as breathing. Then: “Lashes? I was only early that once.”

  “The day is still young, child. I can’t tell you much, but cling to your instincts. There is much for you to learn, but good instincts, that’s just something that can’t be taught.”

  Those girls, the ones who had been washed away, Ama doesn’t even mention them, doesn’t shed a single tear. They were too slow on their feet, too slow with a knife, too slow in their reactions . . . the kind of slowness that could mean death for us all if they’d been allowed to advance in rank. It was a kindness, really. But then I start wondering at those who had successfully heeded my warning. “Ama, the others. Will they be good enough? I shouldn’t have warned them, should I?”

  Ama sighs. “It would be good for you to stop thinking of death as something permanent and final. What we take from the beast, we give back eventually. One or two would have caught on before the beat came. The others would have enriched the beast’s blood, making the beat stronger for us all. Does this bother you, girl? Or will we be able to count you among our rank?”

  I swallow back my sick, wondering how many beats would pass before arms, legs, hair, or teeth were reduced to bits indistinguishable from the ichor. I wonder how many pieces of lives now drip from my skin in viscous clumps. It bothers me, but truth is, I can see it is also necessary. “You can count upon me, Ama.”

  Ama squeezes my hand, then pulls me along. The artery we’re standing upon dips, down, down, down, opening into a cavernous expanse of arteries and veins, alive, undulating at the flow of the beat. And at the center of the network stands the heart.

  Ama touches my chin and I close my gaping jaw. The heart, it’s massive. I mean, I knew it was going to be massive, but I just hadn’t fathomed the girth, the complexities of all those chambers. Must be a thousand ley lights strung up all around it, each as big as a speck from down here, but all together, they cast a soft light upon this glistening gray-brown node, wibbling, wobbling, growing slowly larger. And then . . .

  “Beat,” I say, right as the contraction starts, a ripple of muscle that sends millions and millions of gallons of ichor coursing through the arteries of a beast the size of a small moon. I take in the breadth of the massive organ as the tremor shakes nearly every thought from my head. I forget how to blink. Or maybe I just don’t want to miss a single thing.

  “Ama,” I gasp.

  “I know, girl. I know.”

  She lets me gawk a little longer—to enjoy the view, I think, but Ama has never let me enjoy anything, so I realize it’s not that. She’s waiting for me to say something, to notice something. I squint, looking at how all the muscle and tissue comes together, then see little black specks crawling in and out and all around. People. Those are people.

  “We’re going up there, Ama? Way up there?”

  “Betcha, girl. How?”

  I look all over, studying the structure. My eyes track the ripples and undulations, the dozens of entry and exit valves to the chambers. The flow soon forms a map in my mind, and then I point. “There,” I say, gesturing at the access door directly across from us. The vein is the shortest and has a gentler slope compared with the others. We’d be going with the flow, and we could make it in and out within two heartbeats if we hurried.

  “Mmm. Not the best way, but acceptable.” We cross the expanse, wait for the beat, then rush inside. The vein is steeper than I expected, and I immediately start to wonder if I’ve made a mistake. Ama just pushes me forward. I’m looking up, trying to figure out how we’ll climb all the way to the valve, when instinct tells me to brace myself. I steady my stance, and suddenly, there’s a tremendous suck. The valve flaps open and Ama and I are sucked right in along with the tide of ichor.

  I’m drowning, not sure what’s up and what’s down. I’ve got seconds to act. Soon, we’ll be expelled. I right myself the best I can, swim up. Ama’s already clutching at one of the tendons connected to the valve. I grab one as well and hoist myself up, high as I can, until my cheek’s pressed up against the ceiling.

  I’m in the heart. Blessed mothers, I’m inside the beast’s heart. The chamber clears, and we drop down to the floor. Doors open, and workers come rushing in, see my ama and me, and a heated exchange follows while I catch my breath and thoughts. The arguments here are concise and very pointed. No time to waste beating around the bush. My ama’s words hold clout, but still no one believes.

  “You,” a woman says to me, the naxshi patterns on her face so dark that they must be newly set with ichor from this beast, not like the faded ones we all wear. Her uniform is special, too, made not from the beast’s hide but from tender inner flesh—maybe made from heart leather itself. “Let’s see what you can do with this.” She tosses me a knife, a metal one like my own, but three times as big. Worth more than my life many times over. The hilt is heavy and cold in my hand, carved with symbols of tribes long forgotten. The blade gleams, impossibly sharp and waiting. “You want a spot in the heart? Claim it.”

  She points me to a calcified pillar of flesh, unpliable, the wall and floor around it looking aggravated and angry. I know instantly that it doesn’t belong here. As I get closer, the smell becomes chalky and putrid—a sickly-sweet fragrance I can taste in the back of my throat. An impish girl comes shuffling up behind me, eyes cast down, holding a bucket.

  I’ve got a minute and forty-five seconds left, but still I eat up several moments deciding where it’d be best to cut. I touch the blade to the calcification, getting a feel for the texture, examining how deep it penetrates the healthy flesh. I can feel the anxiety growing behind me. Rushing me. But this is not something that can be rushed. I take note of the four nearby capillaries, one of them compromised, and then plunge the knife an inch below with the force of my entire body. I ignore the collective gasp and slice downward in a clean motion, flaying one side of the tumor away. I take a second cut, wedging my way deeper into the structure, then do the same from the other direction. I prop up the massive growth with my off hand and my hip, like I’m carrying a child. The angles are odd from this direction, but I’ve cut so deeply, only a few nicks are needed to pull the tumor completely off, all except where the bad capillary sits. I leave a little tumor there, serving as a protective cap, and then I hand the large tumor—nearly half as big as I am—to the girl with the bucket too small to conta
in even one of Old Man Saym’s shits. She drops her bucket and holds the tumor up with both hands as two other girls come running to help.

  I don’t waste a second and rush back to the capillary. Take two more precise slices, until only the thinnest layer of bad flesh remains. It doesn’t look quite right, but what to do next falls far beyond my instinct. “What do you do now? Have some sort of surgeon repair this?” I ask.

  When no one answers, I turn around, noticing the crowd I’ve attracted. The woman in heart leather comes and examines my cuts. “Hail a surgeon immediately!” she shouts, then whispers to me, “I meant only for you to cut a few chunks from the calcification. Not the entire tumor.”

  “With all respect, why? That would take hours!”

  “Why? Because if you would have nicked here, or here, or here, we’d all be dead right now.” She scoffs, but her eyes are wide with wonder as she turns to my mother. “We will take her provisionally. She will work directly under me.”

  “Thank you, Uridan,” my ama says to the woman. Then she looks at me and nods once. From her, it’s like a celebration with favors and food and family. For maybe the first time in my life, I’ve impressed my ama.

  I wish so much to savor this moment, to allow myself to live in it, but we’re nearing in on thirty seconds, and this tumor needs to be cleared away. I hack at it, breaking it down into five chunks, so it can easily be carried out. My head is still dizzy, and when I toss a tumor chunk toward the bucket being held by one of the waifish girls, I miss. I’m so embarrassed, I quickly go fetch the tumor before anyone notices. She stoops at the same time, and we grab the piece together. Our eyes meet.