Escaping Exodus

by Nicky Drayden

  “You’ll have the pleasure of dancing with them all,” Ama corrects as Sisterkin pulls me back into her graceful arms, then twirls me senseless. “All from very fine families.”

  “And what if I don’t like any of them?” I ask, and three and four, and—“Or what if I already like someone—”

  Sisterkin slides right up onto the bridge of my foot. “Sorry,” she says, giving me a stern brow. Matris must have blabbed to her about Adalla already. “Five men and seven women. Surely one of them will appeal to you, but if love doesn’t strike you before the candle wanes, I’m sure Matris will understand.”

  From the pout on Sisterkin’s lip, however, I can tell it would certainly not be okay with Matris. But there’s something else on her face. Regret. She’s said something she shouldn’t have. Five men and seven women. She knows their identities.

  “You have to tell me who they are!” I whisper urgently.

  “I sat through the interviews. Just the preliminary ones, but the front-runners were obvious. So much better than the others, Seske. The men all prim, painted, and obedient. The women all gorgeous, stately, and primed for guiding you into your eventual reign.” Her voice has soured, but her smile stays tight and almost genuine. “You couldn’t find a better set of suitors if you tried.”

  “Then you marry them!” I shout at Sisterkin. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? My family? My suitors? My throne?”

  “This is about that beastworker girl, isn’t it?” Ama says, hobbling toward me, nodding down at me like I’m a child. Good mothers, do they all know? “Sisterkin, could you go show the musicians the way to the refreshment stable? And the florists too. I’m sure they’ve all worked up a thirst.”

  “But, Amakin—”

  “Please. It’s going to be a rather long evening, and everyone needs to be in top form.”

  “Yes, Amakin,” Sisterkin says, then with a sigh, she reluctantly slinks out of the great hall with the musicians and florists in tow.

  When they’re all gone and Ama and I are alone, she wraps her arms around me, and I suddenly realize I’m shaking. “Dear Seske, women like you, women like your mother, they don’t marry for love. They learn to love, yes, deeper and harder than anyone, but sometimes there are people who get left behind.”

  I meet Ama’s eyes and I see the hurt brimming there. “You?” I say, my voice trembling as well. It hits me hard, something both shocking and new and old and familiar at the same time. I’d seen the way Matris and my ama traded glances and held a special fondness that Matris never shared with her head-wife and -husband. Matris’s hand was nearly a constant on Ama’s biceps whenever they were in proximity. Cheek presses lingered during hellos and goodbyes. No intimate bounds were crossed. Matris would never risk that, especially with her record. But Ama and Matris, they butted right up against them.

  Ama nods. “I was a match. A good match. But there was another who was better.”

  “My other head-mother?” I say, obviously.

  Ama shakes her head slowly. “Not her.”

  Then who? The head–family unit consisted of two women and a man. That means the only other option is my head-father, which doesn’t even make—

  And then I’m hit, harder this time. I swallow, my eyes following her body up and down, looking for traces of the delicate procedure that made her ripe to receive her own matriline. Who was she before? What made her decide to go through with such a major transformation? When did this all happen? I have so many questions for her . . .

  But I already know the why.

  “You were cut and drawn for her?” I ask. “To be family. To be close.” But never too close.

  My ama nods. “She wanted to keep me near. And I wanted to be kept near. The position of will-father was already taken, so I did what I had to do, and I have never regretted it. I know your heart is young, but I also remember how hard it can ache. Put your suitors in order. Marry to strengthen your matriline. The rest, if it is meant to be, will come.”

  Ama hugs me again, and I rest my head against her shoulder, trying to pretend I’m not crying softly into it.

  Sisterkin comes running back into the hall. I stand up straight, and Ama smudges the tears from my eyes. Sisterkin stands there alert, like a crib worm eager for feeding. I smile back at her, a wide, crooked smile. She’s missed something. She knows I know something she doesn’t, and it bothers her. It bothers her a lot.

  I take a small offering to the spirit wall, calling upon the guidance of my ancestors. I’m trying to be an obedient daughter, trying to learn how to be the thoughtful leader my people deserve, but so many things weigh on my mind, and perhaps they can help. The wall stretches out in an arc, twenty feet high, eighty feet long, a monument to our dead. Besides our Texts, it is our clan’s most precious possession, moved from beast to beast with painstaking care. Faces stare out at me, the bodies of our most recent dead interred upon the oozing surface. Some of those faces are so fresh, I can still make out their eyelashes beneath the tacky gray coating, like statues that might reach out and grab you if you linger too long. Others are partially absorbed, just hints of foreheads and cheekbones and noses, suggestions of arms and legs. I can’t even imagine how many layers of our ancestors are tucked inside, out of sight, but never forgotten.

  I press seven copper beads into the wall’s surface in honor of each of my mothers’ lines, taking care that my fingers don’t touch the coating. There are washing stations on the passage out, of course, but even just the thought of having that flesh-devouring slime upon me for a second sends a rigid chill through me. I shake it off, then step away and kneel next to the tribute candles. The scent wafts up and relaxes me, easing my mind into a heightened state.

  “I know I haven’t been coming as often as I should lately,” I say to the spirits. “But I’m hoping you’ll lend your guidance now. I spent our last expansion as a child, seeing the world through a child’s eyes. Tomorrow I will be a woman, with the capacity and the responsibility to guide this expansion toward its full potential. Not only do I want our people to grow through creative, economic, and scientific endeavors, I also want them to grow their compassion and wonder. And maybe they will start to understand that looking at the world through a child’s eyes is not a deficiency, but just another perspective.”

  A child’s eyes.

  My thoughts skip back to the baby beast. As much as I try to put her out of my mind, I can’t help but wonder if there’d been something else there. If there is more to the beast than just a convenient package of flesh for us to consume.

  I catch a movement on the wall from the corner of my eye. Fingers wiggling, maybe, but when I look toward the offending ancestor, she’s completely still. I stare her in the eyes, wondering if she’ll blink. But nothing comes. Paranoia closes in all around me, signaling that maybe it’s time I get some fresh air.

  I end my prayers by reading my lines and those of my mothers, each of them named after a constellation in our new sky. Then I blow out the candles and duck through the exit that leads to the washing room. Two accountancy guards sit there, watching to ensure none of the wall material leaves the room. It spreads fast and is a bear to clean up. I choose a washing station, and the wash hoglet wiggles from its perch above the basin. The creature recognizes me. I always bring them a small offering as well. I glance back at the accountancy guards, then put my hand in the pocket of my raiment and fetch a piece of worm jerky, and I stealthily plunge it into the hoglet’s puckered snout. The hoglet sucks away the treat and, along with it, any traces of the wall material.

  “Who’s a good girl?” I ask her. She bucks excitedly against her tether.

  “Don’t interact with the wash hoglets,” one of the guards says. “You’ll rile them up.”

  Sometimes they break free from their tethers, and that’s fun for everyone, as the guards have to leave their comfortable seats to capture the hoglets before they get at the wall and do damage. After the hoglet cleanses my left hand, I pat her on the head anyway, right b
efore I rinse off in the basin. The guards manage to holster their annoyance as they inspect me on my way out.

  And before I realize where my feet are taking me, I’m halfway to the womb. Am I really doing this? Am I going back to see the baby beast?

  But then I’m there, waiting for the room to clear out, before stepping next to the cloudy membrane and pressing my hand against it. I get a little choked up, looking at the wound the technicians had inflicted. It’s much longer than last time, wider. I look back at my hand, and beyond it, and I’m relieved to see the baby beast is staring at me, the membrane so clear, it’s as if there’s nothing but air between us.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to her, the words bearing so much weight inside me. Sorry I kicked her. Sorry my people are torturing her. Sorry we’ve killed so many of her kind.

  After a long while, the baby beast moves a tendril next to my hand. I smile. She does something with her mouth that makes me think I’ve made a new friend.

  Then the womb membrane parts for me and I quickly slip inside with the baby beast. I don’t flinch this time when her tendrils explore me. It tickles more than hurts, and she enjoys the sound of my laughter through the womb water. I think it’s the same water that fills our stasis pods during exodus, but it’s so much fresher, so much more alive.

  But as I look around and get my bearings, I see that the wound is getting deeper as well, jutting several feet into the womb, ridged and gnarly, coming to a cleaved point. If they continue, it will one day encroach so far into the womb, it will pin the baby beast to the other side. The day after that, it will pierce her flesh.

  I’m saddened by this, but she nudges me, like she’s trying to cheer me up. The lights across her body begin to pulse to a beat, and after a few turns, she does something amazing. She lifts these fronds she keeps pressed against her body, raises them to their full height, and flashes them. Suddenly, the entire realm of her womb is full of multicolored lights. The lights ripple and undulate. We spin.

  Thin, inquisitive tentacles lick at the corners of my eyes. A couple plunge inside, trying to dig around my eye sockets and trying to get up my nostrils as well, and I’m too vulnerable to resist. She wraps me up completely. The thin tentacles slide deeper and deeper inside me, but there’s no pain, only an odd sort of pressure behind my ears. Then I feel my fingers wiggling against my will. My toes. Knees bend slightly, elbows. The cocoon falls from me, and suddenly, I’m dancing. Not the remedial Courdarin version I had just learned, but the full palatial molalari baret, with every single one of the finger flourishes.

  Music plays, a full orchestra, but I can’t tell if it’s coming from inside the womb or inside my head. It doesn’t matter. I dance. Like a plaything. Like a puppet on strings.

  I dance. For hours, it seems, until my muscles have memorized every movement, every turn and swirl. When the baby beast has explored every inch of my being, every memory, she curls me back up into her tentacles. Inch by inch, the thin, inquisitive ones pull out from my eye sockets, my nostrils.

  And suddenly, it’s all over, like it had all happened too fast. I’m not sure how to process it. It wasn’t really pleasurable, but not really painful either. There’s just a door inside me, one that’s been closed my whole life, which has now swung wide open. What’s on either side of that door is still the same, but there’s something fundamentally changed. And Daidi’s bells, I’m crying like a babe.

  Then the scar flashes white, pulses. Grows. Three inches. Four.

  Is it morning already? I’d come late, when no one lurked about. But now, now I’ll have to stay here until the next shift change. I feel each pulse at the roots of my teeth. I keep them clenched, and in turn, the baby beast keeps me clenched close to her. Now I’m her rag doll.

  I don’t mind. I drift off to sleep, and in my dreams comes velvety black space filled with the flickers of beast light. The big beast next to me flickers. It is our beast, I can tell that, though I’m not sure how. She tells me a bedtime story with those lights, a story that has been passed down through her kind since near the birth of everything. It is not Vvanescript she flashes at me but a language much more ancient.

  It is the story of a hero, a rescuer. A story of sacrifice and valor.

  The baby beast wakes me before I know how it ends. It’s quiet outside now. No more sizzling in my teeth, no pulsing at the scar. It’s grown by nearly half, though. I exit through the thinned membrane and crouch quietly as my body transitions back to breathing air. I’ve gotten better at this part at least, just letting it dribble from my nose and open mouth instead of suppressing a coughing fit.

  I need to hurry, to get back home so I can prepare for my big day, but first, I have other business to attend to. I look over at the shock gun sitting there unattended. Four screws are all that separate me from its inner workings.

  Matris takes my hand lightly in hers, ignores the oil stains that refused to budge from beneath my fingertips, ignores the tentacle marks that my patinas hadn’t been able to cover up, ignores the fact that I was nearly thirty minutes late to my own coming out party. She should be furious right now, and I should be melting under her ominous brow, but instead her face is one of pure relief, of pride, and of impossible calm.

  She’s had a sip of campadin wine, for sure. Maybe a couple sips, the way her eyes are shining.

  “Distinguished lads and gentlewomen, please allow me to present Seske Ashad Nedeema Orshidi Midikoen Ugodon Niosoke Kaleigh, a true daughter of mothers,” she says, taking the time to slowly enunciate each of my mothers’ matrilines, not caring a lick how far we are behind schedule. “From Ekondah Shedita Mendaleigh Amida Gazra Jomari Saseem Paletoba, a true daughter of mothers . . .” Matris then ambles down the lines of my will-mothers, my heart-mothers, and, finally, my head-mothers, extending her own matriline back twelve different ways to Matris Abinaya, the first of her kind. The whole procession takes nearly twenty minutes, and not once does she falter or consult the Texts. The audience stands rapt, the occasional ululation when someone’s matriline is mentioned.

  Me, my eyes and mind wander, first to the hoisting chair. Matris was right. I’d never seen one higher. Its three legs were meticulously carved from the whitest, softest bone and bear embarrassing pictures of me, chronicling my infancy on one leg, my childhood on another, and the woman I’ve become on the third. My amas will stand at the base, each holding a leg, and together will hoist me high. It’s all an illusion, though. The chair is latched firm, with legs that will retract upward half a foot, giving the semblance that they’ve lifted me and some seven hundred pounds of beast bone. It’s ceremony. It’s tradition. But I can’t help but get a sour taste in my mouth, remembering how it felt to have Adalla’s amas tossing me up and about. That was personal. I’d felt the love. Here, I just feel the expense. The pretension. The eyes all upon me, drilling into me.

  Then I notice that Matris has finally stopped talking. I swallow, trying to remember what I am supposed to say. I bow deeply, since I know I’m supposed to do that. I count to twenty, then I stand, and all my suitors have filed in front of me, and for the first time, their identities are revealed. It is as Sisterkin had said, seven women and five men. In perfect unison, they bow back at me.

  “In the pursuit of family,” I say, trying not to hyperventilate. “It is my honor to strengthen my lines, to honor our past while building our future.”

  Matris throws my bloodied cloths in front of them, proof of my womanhood. The entire hall erupts in applause. Then quiet descends as the soothsayer hobbles up to the cloths. She carefully spreads them out in sequence . . . first day, second day, and third day, which was just barely any spotting. She considers the patterns.

  “Strength!” she declares at the first rag. “The ancestors speak of strength of will, of resolve. A logic that will guide us through many tough decisions.” I look over at my will-parents, and they are gushing of course. When the time comes, I will be a will-mother. The entire hall fills with the piercing whistles from will-mothers everywh
ere. The last will-mother Matris was seven lines ago. My Matris, she does not look pleased with this news, but her smile stays firm. Too firm. Finally, when the murmurs die down, the soothsayer looks at the second rag.

  “Agility!” she shouts. “The ancestors claim hers a nimble, agile mind that never rests. Such a leader shall never be cornered and will forever be thinking forward.” The head-mothers hum loudly in unison.

  Finally, the soothsayer leans in over my third cloth, bearing just a few light pink spots. She frowns, flips the rag over and back as if there must be more hidden somewhere. She chews her lip, probably trying to figure out how to best spin the results. The silence runs thick.

  “Idiosyncrasy,” she says, not quite sullenly. “A heart that beats to its own rhythm.” The heart-mothers orchestrate an open-palmed clap that echoes in my ears. We all pretend we hadn’t noticed that the soothsayer hadn’t mentioned how well my heart would serve the people. And before anyone can give it much thought, I’m climbing the rungs of my chair, dress flowing down behind me, so long, the tip of the tail still touches the floor when I’m fully seated.

  My amas pretend to hoist me, and the feast starts, and everyone’s so intent on cramming their bellies full of fermented eggs and tiny, flaky bites of layered pastries that, for a moment, they forget all about me up here, and I can’t say I’m bothered by that. Then my fathers sing an aria, from the Legends of Orinsi, of the trials of Matris Machelle, whose tact and grace moved us through the dark times and who had the idea to move into the beasts, instead of just plundering their resources.

  Their song is lovely, even though the notes they hit strain in some places. But that’s just like how my heart strains, knowing the truth about these beasts. All my life, I’d never given it a thought, never considered that these beasts were sentient. That they could communicate. I want so badly to stand up and yell at everyone, to tell them the toll our lives are taking on these creatures. I want Matris to command us all back into our ship and as far away from the herd as our engines will take us.