Escaping Exodus

by Nicky Drayden

  Adalla

  Of Silent Girls and Loud Mothers

  I take each step carefully, quickly. Keep a smile on my face. Eyes focused forward. Eyelids up. I’m passing for sober, I think. “Hello, Uridan,” I greet my partner for the shift. Ama won’t let me work on my own anymore, but the heart needs me. Even gaffed to my eyeballs, I’m better with a knife than most of these women ever will be.

  “Hello, Adalla,” she says, not bothering to look up at me.

  The ground is swaying beneath my feet, but no one else is, so it’s all in my mind. I bite back the giggles. Straighten my smile into something more serious. My ready-for-work face.

  “Crude fat ventricle six today. Shhh-should be an uneventful shift.” My tongue is too swollen in my mouth, and I’m starting to slur. Probably should keep my talking to a minimum. “Have you heard the one about the beastworker, the matriarch, aaa-and the heart-father?” I lean toward her, nearly stumbling.

  It’s then she looks up from polishing her knife, so shiny, I can see the glassiness of my bloodshot eyes. “Adalla,” she whispers. “Are you on mad vapors?”

  “Me?” I ask. “Of course not! What kind of person would report to her shift high?” I almost raise my hand. Maybe I’m worse off than I thought. “Just tired, is all. This is my thirteenth shift in five days.”

  “Maybe you should sleep this one off, then. You look like third-ass shits.”

  “No, no. You look as bad as me.” I pinch her cheek, peer into her drowsy eyes. “And look.” I unsheathe my own knife, lay my hand flat against a fat slab, then run the knife’s point into the spaces between my splayed fingers a half dozen times in fifteen seconds. I show my hand to Uridan, front and back. All the fingers are still accounted for, nothing’s bleeding.

  She nods, and I breathe easy. I fill twenty buckets to Uridan’s thirteen. I might be gaffed, but I’m focused, right here, right now. I’ve made it three months without pining over Seske, without fretting over what additional cruelties my ama will bestow upon me, without dwelling on the life I wish I had. Right here, there’s just me and my knife and this big slab of fat. It’s not perfect, and this isn’t the first time I’ve shown up to shift like this, but it works.

  It’s the only way it works.

  The path to our secret hideout is familiar now, enough so that I could lead the way if I wanted. Parton walks ahead of me, though, a skip in her step. All throughout our shift, she’s had a sly smirk upon her face, and I’ve been beside myself wondering what it could be about.

  Just twenty more steps until we reach our gall, and after the hundreds of held glances we’d risked today, the dozens of brushed shoulders as we passed each other too closely in vein 5P3, and that one bold time we’d locked pinkies together, just for a few moments after an arrhythmic beat and everyone was too harried to notice—the reason for all of that frivolity will finally be revealed.

  I veer toward our gall and tuck up into the bore hole, the only blemish in the spherical cocoon. It’s a tight fit, but we wriggle inside, then the room widens out as we make it to the gall’s core.

  “So are you going to tell me or what?” I say around the bone pipe dangling from my lips.

  But Parton is already two puffs deep into the purple-black gas held back by a thin membrane on her special-order palette. She holds her breath for a while, or forever, and then finally blows a ring of smoke that dissipates right before it hits my face. I breathe it in, then take my own puff from her pipe, so deep it fills my lungs and even manages to sneak into those hollowed-out spaces of my soul. I hold it just as long as Parton had, maybe longer, then blow back at her, five small rings, each chasing after the next. I watch her hands closely, waiting for her to sign some sort of compliment, but they stay still in her lap. No, not completely still. They’re trembling.

  “I know a way to solve your problem with Seske,” she says. Really says, with her own actual voice. It’s deeper than I’d imagined, still scratchy, though.

  My eyes go wide. “You can talk?”

  “I can. With you.”

  “Why didn’t you before?”

  “We’re . . . not supposed to.”

  Something in the back of my mind prods me to ask her more, but my head is still spinning from the mad vapors. I take another puff, shuddering at all the secrets I’d spilled to Parton in the early days of our friendship, back when it was more transactional. I’d plied her with vapors, and she’d lent me her time. Same arrangement she’d had with Uridan and a couple of the other too-lonely women on our shift.

  “My problem with Seske?” I ask as soon as my mind loosens back up.

  “You can be together. You still want to be with her, yes?”

  I sigh. It was so much easier when Seske had been tucked away in stasis. Those months hadn’t been easy, but my mind was still able to focus. I’d lived a normal life. Now it’s like I’m neck-deep in silt sand, treading, treading, just to be cranky and miserable.

  “Okay,” I say. “What’s your idea?”

  “The Hundredth Night Masquerade. All the other grisettes have gotten their invitations. A party to celebrate and recognize our hard work. They say there will be dancing, music, and a ‘feast to end all feasts.’ Please come. You can both be my guests. Wear masks. Dance together. Maybe more?”

  Hands like mine, they are used to the force and exertion needed to rip tumor from flesh. Feet like mine can nearly outpace a tidal wave of ichor, betcha, but I know nothing of stepping to the rhythm of my own heart. Of dancing.

  With Seske.

  For a moment, I imagine us together, swaying to music, my hand around her waist, our faces hidden behind masks. Our identities unknown. There would be no one to care about who was royalty and who was a beastworker. We’d be equals for once.

  “So?” Parton asks. I’m so deep in thought that her voice startles me again, like I’m hearing her speak for the first time. There’s so much for me to process right now, I can’t even figure out where to start.

  “I don’t know,” I finally say. “I don’t know how to dance.”

  “You dance every day. With the beast. But I will show you how to dance with a woman.” She goes to stand, then topples over. I catch her in my arms, and we both break out in giggles. “Tomorrow,” she says. “I will teach you to dance tomorrow.”

  I think I might have lied. Finding my way to our gall cave is trickier than I thought. Parton wasn’t at her shift today, but my heart is racing, hoping that she’ll show up here. My feet press through the soft flesh of the farmland tracts, budding galls knocking against my shins. Here, stuck in the quiet with only my thoughts, I hear the hundreds, thousands of larvae scritch-scratching inside their fast-growing encasements. They’ll be harvested within the next few weeks—before they start their metamorphosis into big, unwieldy beetles—and more larval steaks will grace the plates of the Contour class citizens.

  Finally, I spot the pile of husks and notice the dim glow of our ley light seeping from the bore hole. My heart jumps. My feet are light. I’m ready for my first dance lesson. The Hundredth Night Masquerade is still a few days away. I’ll have time to perfect my moves by then, sure is sure.

  I pop up into the hole, crawl my way to the core, then feel my smile go frigid. It is not Parton who sits among our pillows. It is my ama. I nearly fall back through the hole, but her stare holds me.

  “Uridan says you’ve been showing up to your shift gaffed. I knew you were off, girl, but I never thought you’d defy me such. You’ve burned me, girlie. Burned me badly.”

  I resist the urge to apologize. Parton and I have done nothing wrong. Still, Ama won’t see it that way. I steady my nerves, ready to dodge her pinch or slap or worse. “You warned me off her, Ama, but you never told me why. I think it’s you who’s burned me. I look into Parton’s eyes and all I see is my pai.”

  “Parton?” she asks with a brow raised.

  “I gave her Father’s name. She had no other name to claim.”

  “She’s a grisette. She doesn’t have
a name. Doesn’t need a name.”

  “Am I wrong, Ama? Tell me the truth. She’s my sister.” Never in my life would I have thought my mouth capable of saying such a slur in front of my ama. But I’ve said it, sister, still bitter and slick on my tongue.

  Ama still doesn’t flinch. “There is a hierarchy among beastworkers, Adalla girl. Your head is too full of Contour class dreams for you to notice, but we’re at the top of that pile. Our work is prestigious. Our matriline is solid. You go around consorting with the likes of a bucket waif, and you’ll bring down shame upon your head, and the rest of our family too.”

  “Shame? Just for making a friend? For showing kindness to someone at the bottom of the pile?”

  “She could only wish to be at the bottom of the pile. Adalla girl, grisettes are tools, not people. A mechanism to move buckets for you. It oughtn’t be important where the bucket ends and they begin. They are one and the same.”

  “Things to be used? Abused? I won’t believe it, Ama. And I know you don’t either. You pretend your heart to be so cold. Prove to me it’s not!”

  Ama stands, and it’s like she’s suddenly filling up the entire room. “Girl, she is the reason my heart is so cold!”

  My eyes go wide. She recoils, like she hadn’t meant to speak such a thing, but there’s a crack now. And I see it, all those parts of Parton that don’t line up with Pai, they line up with my ama . . . And I know. I know for sure Parton is Ama’s daughter too. My sister, truly. “She’s ours, isn’t she, Ama? She’s smart. She knows so much about the heart. She’s got more intuition than me, even. She’s as stubborn as you. But you and Pai . . .” Ama and Pai had to be her parents. But such a romantic entanglement was forbidden. A head-father frolicking with a heart-mother? The thought brings bile up into my throat, but I have to know. “How, Ama?”

  She sits, folds into herself. Suddenly, she looks as formidable as scraps of parchment. Her fingers find the frayed edges of her dress, and she lifts it up until her belly is bared. There, a tiny faded scar to the right of her navel. “Because of this scar, child, you have never known hunger. You’ve never had to live a life of scavenging. Never worried about having to work any of those lesser organs that slowly fill your body with poisons and tumors.” There’s a long sigh, and Ama pats the spot next to her. She is hurting. Worse than I am. I go to sit by her side to help her through this best I can.

  “I’m sorry, Ama. I opened up this wound.”

  “No. You need to know. You’ll soon be old enough to make this decision yourself, should we survive long enough on this wretched beast. The first day of exodus, after the Contour class is packed back into stasis, the accountancy guards compare ledgers, and a list with the names of the most efficient, most talented beastworkers is made. Those women are asked if they will donate eggs. They pay nicely for the eggs, and the procedure doesn’t hurt much. Just a few drugs and a little pinch here.” Ama pokes at her stomach and smiles a sad sort of smile. “Men are asked to donate too. Your pai did. That was way back, before our family was even a thought. We weren’t supposed to know, but we were paired together. Eight embryos. Frozen nearly twenty years ago now. You see how many workers we need to get us through excavation and expansion as quickly as possible. When it’s time, as soon as the harpoons take aim at our next beast, they start growing the embryos quickly; and by the start of excavation, they’re big enough to help. By expansion, they’re full-grown and able to assist with building and heavy lifting. Without them, none of this would be possible.”

  So Parton’s story about her origins had been true. That doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.

  “This isn’t right, Ama! Those waifs should have families, not be raised like animals.”

  “It is what it is, betcha girl, and you will not see her again. I’ve sent her to work the doldrums. Be thankful it is not you I’ve sent there instead.”

  “Why did you keep her so close to us to begin with? You wanted her near, didn’t you? You wanted to see the child you’d sold into labor, and yet here you are telling me I’ve done something wrong! I’d hate myself if I’d done what you have!”

  Finally, the slap comes, clean across my cheek. I press my hand there, feeling the warmth bud beneath my skin. Tears rim my eyes. Not because of the sting against my cheek, but because maybe the system has already broken me. It’s taken Seske from me, my father, my sister, and now my ama is lost to me, too, her eyes now colder and more distant than they’ve ever been.

  “Take tomorrow off,” Ama tells me. “Rest. You’ll need your strength for bonework.”

  At first I don’t understand . . . and then it hits me, what she just said. Bonework.

  I am no longer part of the heart.

  I stand there trembling, not knowing what scares me most—being cast down to labor alongside the ruffians and riffraff who work the beast’s bones, or spending another moment here, staring at the contempt on my mother’s face.

  Seske

  Of Unseen Men and Overheard Plans

  So Doka is actually kind of amazing, totally unlike other men. He’s smart, quick-witted, and adventuresome. His interest in politics is intense, which is great for me, because it gives us an excuse to be together when we discuss things. Not that he’s tutoring me. That would be ridiculous, but I like the masculine slant he brings to the issues.

  The Texts are spread out in front of us. He’s been through replicas, of course, but he’s never seen the real thing. He examines the book, tracing the contours of the spine, smelling the pages, eyeing the barely visible ink blotch on the back.

  “Of course, we can’t eat or drink around it”—or have bloody noses, I add for my personal benefit—“but Matris says we can use it all we need.”

  “So much history these pages have seen,” Doka says. He lays the tome flat on the table between us. He flips open a page and reads.

  “Ahem,” his honor attendant says at us. She’s a matronly woman, with a strong, stern face, here to make sure Doka’s honor stays intact. I notice Doka and I have drifted closer while looking over the Texts, well within the three feet we’re supposed to keep apart.

  “How are we to study, Kiravi, if we cannot even read from the same page?” he asks her. “I promise, my honor will hold. We are merely studying. Can’t Seske scoot a little closer?”

  “Closer, but no touching,” Kiravi agrees with little more than a grunt.

  I draw my chair closer and smile at Doka for his forwardness. “You’re so well-spoken,” I whisper to him.

  He gives me a strained half smile. “Thanks?”

  “You’re wel—” My brow bends. “Wait. Was that a question?”

  He shakes his head, flipping three-fourths of the way through the tome, his finger running mindfully down the page. “No, it’s nothing. Here, let’s look at how the Senate gets chosen again . . .”

  “No, tell me. What did I do?” I ask, so struck by his sudden change of tone. “Did I scoot too close?” I whisper.

  “You said I was ‘well-spoken.’”

  “Well, you are! How did that offend you?”

  “It’s not what you said. It’s the part of the sentence you finished in your head that’s the problem. ‘You’re so well-spoken . . . for a man.’”

  “But that’s not . . .” I clear my throat. “Well, I didn’t . . .” I fumble over my words, again and again. I want so badly to defend myself, but maybe that was what I was thinking. Just a little bit. “I’m sorry. I’ll do better.”

  “Thank you,” he says, not a question this time.

  So we study. He leads me down the Lines, but not like my pai takes me. He tells me the stories, shows me the artifacts they’d left for us. Doka also teaches me a song to help me remember the order, and my favorite part is the staccato parade of names from right before the Great Mending, when the average length of the reigns could be measured in weeks. Coups were aplenty back then, and it takes me a few tries, but finally I’m able to get all those cursed names out in one breath.

  Somehow, D
oka makes this dusty old book seem relevant. On the tenth matriarch, he reaches out his hand. I reach with mine. Our pinkies lock. The Texts are just bulky enough to keep this transgression out of Kiravi’s line of sight. If his honor attendant caught us, we could both be strung up by our thumbs for such an act. Doka smuggles me a tight-lipped smile as he continues to read.

  We spend two heavily scrutinized hours together each day for his lessons that are not lessons. Weeks go by, and while I enjoy our time together, it always feels like he’s putting on a performance.

  Then one day, Doka puts the Seven Tenets of the Ancestors to song. Usually, his songs are upbeat, with a tempo that makes them easy to remember, but this one’s a sweet lullaby. His voice is so melodic and lilting, I catch myself drifting, imagining what he really looks like under all that patina and glitter. He’s only halfway through the tenets when Kiravi starts to drift as well, lulled to sleep by Doka’s gentle voice. With his protectorate’s eyes half closed, he becomes bolder and presses his finger against my open palm, and suddenly, I’m wide-awake. He traces a Vvanescript letter into it, an I, but I clench my fist, painful memories of doing the same with Adalla too much for me to bear.

  I like Doka, I do. Being with him is a thrill. A novelty. He’s friendly and interesting, and he makes the best jokes, and I know he’ll be a wonderful and obedient husband, but I do not yearn after him like I should. I know I must try harder. It will make our eventual marriage go smoother.

  “Have you spoken to your mothers about us?” I say softly to him instead.

  “Of course.” He grins. “My fathers, too, and all of my grandparents. They’re all very excited about how our courtship is progressing. Aren’t you excited?”

  “Of course. My parents are excited as well. They all agree it is a very good match.”

  “Extremely good,” he says with a laugh. “Strengthening the ol’ family lines . . .”

  “You sound like you got the same talk from your head-mother that I did.”