Escaping Exodus

by Nicky Drayden

  “You know, the Sisters of Lost Lines may be disbanded, but their ideas don’t have to die.” His voice is merely a breath.

  The idea moves me, but I grunt. “Listening to you is what got me into trouble in the first place.” I nod toward Doka and sigh. “Any chance I could hire you as my honor guard tonight?”

  “Oh, Seske. He’s probably as nervous as you are. It’ll be over before you know it.”

  “You aren’t helping,” I tell him, then stare down at the jellied currants jiggling on my plate, almost as if they have a life of their own. They remind me of puppet gel, and all the times I’d used it as a prop in my bed to fool my parents when I’d snuck out at night. If I could fool my half-asleep father, then maybe a drunken Doka might fall for it as well. But I’ll need some help. “If you had to choose,” I ask Wheytt, “whose wedding guest would you be tonight? Mine or his?”

  “Yours, Seske,” he says. “Always yours.”

  “Good. I’ve got a job for you, then.”

  I suck in a deep breath, my hand pressed against the door to our new bedroom. Doka leans on me, drunk, but not drunk enough. He whispers sweet nothings into my ear, reeking of beer, eyes bloodshot.

  “Welcome home, my dear!”

  He stumbles forward, and the door swings open, revealing our love nest to us for the first time. The bed sits at the center, a four-poster made from bone that extends from floor to ceiling, with the histories of our line carved meticulously into each post. On the nightstand sits a bottle of ink and a fine-tipped brush for me to mark my line upon his forehead once the deed is done.

  He pats the bed, bids me over. I pretend not to notice and head for the dresser and pour us both a shot of liquor.

  I take a taste. “Love, you should try this!” I look at the vintage, from seven beasts ago. Beyond priceless.

  “You can’t mix liquor and beer,” he says, covers drawn back now.

  “Please, for me? A toast to our honor.” This gets his attention.

  “That, I will toast to!”

  I bid him over, watching closely. Three shots will probably do it. I sip mine slowly, keeping my wits about me. Waiting to give Wheytt the signal. Finally, Doka’s eyes are glazed, and his pants have fallen down to his ankles, and his sweet nothings are even less sweet than before. He sways left, right, left again. I think maybe three shots were too many. I don’t want him passing out before we do the deed.

  “I’m just going to slip into something more comfortable,” I say.

  Doka nods, then embarks upon the monumental task of figuring out how to get his pants to slip over his shoes. It might take him a while. I go to the closet, where Wheytt is waiting for me. He’s got the puppet gel, shaped like me. Highly accurate, but I guess after our experience with the beast, he knows my body more intimately than I do, down to the depth of each and every pore.

  “She looks just like me,” I whisper. I touch her arm and the gel reacts, jerking up and around, like she’s trying to embrace someone in a hug. Her body jiggles, wiggles. The brown patina he’d used is an exact match to my skin. Eyes. Nose. Everything is eerily perfect. “I think this will work.” I help her into my bridal nightgown, a wisp of silk coming to just below her buttocks. I slip into an identical one, while Wheytt throws his attention toward the bedroom, peeking out the closet door.

  “Oh, he’s definitely ready,” he says, and I can feel the grimace on his face.

  “Let’s do this.” I nod at Wheytt. I exit the closet, put on my best prance. “Hey, love,” I say, drawing the curtains, blowing out the candles. Darkness consumes us, and I make my way to the bed. Wheytt’s tiptoeing right behind me. I touch Doka on his chest, his belly. “Are you ready?” I ask.

  “Uh-huh!” he says.

  Wheytt slips the puppet gel onto the bed. I sit, just out of view, next to the bed, poking the puppet to animate the gel and forcing a moan as Doka mounts her. I hear the squelch of splitting gel, a horrid wet rip, and then the poor puppet takes on a life of its own—jiggling, wiggling, limbs flailing wildly.

  “Daidi’s bells,” I whisper to Wheytt. “I think he’s got her in the belly button.” My stomach curls.

  Doka is quick and enthusiastic, and his ride is wild and short. Three minutes twenty seconds later, he’s snoring, face pressed to the puppet’s breast, drool dripping over her nipple. I let loose a breath and realize I’m shivering. Wheytt presses closer, drapes a robe over my shoulders.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I nod. “That was only twice as awful as I thought it’d be. Not nearly as awful as it could have been, though.” I light a couple candles, trying to keep my eyes from that horrid rip in the puppet’s navel. “I think I’m going to puke.”

  Wheytt hurries toward me with a bucket, holds my hair, but all I’ve got is dry, painful heaves. He pats my back. “Can I get you some water?”

  “How about some liquor?” I nod at the bottle on the dresser. He snags the shot glasses also. “Just bring the bottle,” I say.

  We settle on the floor, watching Doka snore. The bottle passes back and forth between us, and my mind starts to unknot. My head finds its way to Wheytt’s shoulder. My hand finds its way to his chest.

  “What are you doing, Seske?” he asks nervously.

  “I don’t know. I thought that I might try to kiss you,” I blubber. “You were my first, you know. You’re a good kisser.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “So are you. I still want to kiss you. For real this time.” I burp hundred-year-old liquor fumes. “You know Adalla has a girlfriend? I know you do. Why didn’t you tell me that part? I know you probably smelled them all over each other.”

  Wheytt lets out a sigh. “That’s what this is about? You just want to get back at Adalla for moving on with her life?”

  “I guess. Maybe. But I could have gotten back at her with Doka. I’m choosing to get back at her with you.”

  “I’m honored?”

  “Well, you should be. You’re a great catch, you know. You’re really going places.”

  Wheytt seizes up. “I’m going places because of him.” He points at Doka. “He’s getting his mothers to petition on my behalf for a promotion. And now, I’ve betrayed him. He came to me, you know, worried about tonight. Asked me for advice.”

  “What advice did you give him?”

  “To be gentle. Humble.”

  I take a long, hard sip of liquor. “Gentle, huh? That’s what you think I like?”

  He smiles bashfully, takes the bottle from me, and corks it up tight. He looks me in the eyes. “I think we’ve both had enough, and I really need to—”

  My lips are nearly to his. They inch even closer.

  His breath catches.

  My stomach twists, turns. Finally, he makes a move just as I’m pulling back. I try to turn my head, but it’s too late. Liquor expels from me with the force of a geyser. We’re soaked in my vomit, head to toe. But we’re laughing, the both of us, shushing each other, not wanting to risk waking Doka. We slip out of our filthy clothes, but before I can clean up, my head gets heavy. I nearly topple over, and Wheytt catches me in his arms. I lean into his chest, and he relaxes some, and then the world fades all away.

  “Traitor! How could you do this? Where is your loyalty?”

  The words slice through my head like an ax. It takes me a moment to leverage myself up from this stupor. I squint through the too-bright light, up at Doka.

  “My mothers will hear of this, and your promotion . . . consider it gone. In fact, consider yourself no longer a part of the Accountancy Guard.”

  He goes on squealing for quite some time. Mostly threats and cusses aimed at Wheytt. Yes, I get that it looks bad, us lying together on the floor naked, Doka waking up next to a partially melted pile of puppet gel.

  Wheytt manages to stand, the threat to his livelihood sobering him up quickly. “Please, Doka, you have to understand. Nothing happened between Seske and me last night. Not even a kiss.”

  “You think I’m a fool? I
made you, Wheytt. I made you and I will destroy you, too.”

  I look at Doka, but he won’t meet my eyes. He’s beyond embarrassed, and I catch myself feeling sorry for him. He’d probably dreamed of his wedding ever since he was a scrubby little boy, and I’m sure he was the talk of his circles, future husband of the future matriarch. I’d chosen him. Then I’d let him down. I’d crushed him.

  “I’m sorry, Doka. I didn’t mean for it to happen this way,” I say. He finally finds the strength to look at me. His patina is an awful mess, smudged all over.

  “We didn’t mean it,” Wheytt says.

  “Well, what exactly did you mean to do? You think you’re so high and mighty, you think I should be honored to be your husband,” he says to me. “Well, let me tell you, your family needs this more than mine does. You may be royalty, but I’m the one who married down.”

  Rage swells within me, and any compassion I’d had evaporates out my ears. “Are you bad-talking my line?”

  “I’m doing more than that! I’m having the marriage annulled. Matris won’t be able to bounce back from this one.” He pokes his finger right in my chest, and Wheytt sets off like he really is my honor guard.

  “Touch her again and lose the finger,” he says.

  “You have no authority!” Doka wails. “I trusted you!” And then he takes a swing, but we’re all too hungover to have this be anything but a slap fest.

  There’s a pounding at the door. Once, twice, then the hinges give, and Sisterkin barges through, eyes red like they’re nearly aflame. She walks right up to me, not giving a glance toward the two mostly naked men now wrestling on the floor or the pile of gel in the bed with its eyes slid down to the sides of its face, mouth agape.

  Sisterkin must have found out about the dissolution of her adoption. I brace myself for her fury, but before she gets a chance to yell at me, I say, “It’s mine, Sisterkin. The throne is rightfully mine, and you should be ashamed of yourself for trying to snatch it away from me! Your adoption is history now, you have no name. You might as well scrub the naxshi off your face right now, because there’s nothing you can do about it!”

  Her eyes go wide, like this is the first she’s heard of it.

  “Seske . . .” she says, her mouth screwing up, mind churning.

  “I don’t want to hear it!” I yell at her. There’s no apology authentic enough to undo what she tried to do to me.

  She shakes her head, bottom lip atremble. “Matris is dead.”

  I smell of bitter tar and candle wax. In true form, even Matris’s funeral hadn’t gone without incident. The embalmers had been too generous with the cleansing oils, or maybe the sickness had caused a change in her skin. Either way, her body wouldn’t take to the spirit wall. Nearly slid right off, but the bearers caught her in time, and tar was applied to make her stick. I’d tried my best to keep focused, to bear the robes that had been bestowed upon me, but I heard the whispers, that even our ancestors must not have thought she belonged among them. This is the line I’ve been dealt.

  Back in the throne room, it’s quiet. Too quiet. I’m lost among my thoughts—thoughts of a matriarch. I wield this power but have done nothing with it. Decisions need to be made. There’s no time to mourn, not when so much was left unsettled. I hadn’t given much consideration to what kind of Matris I wanted to be. The title had felt like it was still decades away, plenty of time to plan. Now, I barely have time to react.

  “Truce?” comes Sisterkin’s voice. She’s hurting, too, maybe more since she had been carried in Matris’s womb and had always been her favorite.

  I don’t look back. She could be armed. Here to do me in for good, this time. I deserve it.

  “I can help,” she says. “I know it’s a lot. I don’t expect you to trust me, but with Matris leaving so suddenly, there are a lot of things that need tending to. Mourn another day or two, then we’ll try to piece this back together. Doka says he won’t go through with the annulment. At least not right now.”

  I’m sure he wouldn’t. Not with his new title. Everything has changed. Everyone is treating me differently. My responsibilities have increased tenfold, and my vulnerabilities have become eyesores. With just Doka and me, our line needs strengthening desperately. My stomach churns at the thought, and the inevitability of me taking up a female suitor as soon as this mourning period has passed.

  “Reports are coming in from all over,” Sisterkin persists. “All seven extinction markers have surfaced. We’ll have to consider premature exodus.”

  “Maim another beast?” I imagine myself giving the order I’ve been so eagerly waiting to give for years. But now all I feel is defeat. I’ve already witnessed the baby beast dying before my eyes, and I won’t be complicit in continuing the tradition of murder.

  More important, though, I know another way. I grapple with the tactical system, a blend of our best technology and acute sensory mapping algorithms linked directly to the beast’s brain. I stand firm as I manipulate the sensors, sliding my fingers over a honeycomb input pad, projecting confidence despite the miniscule amount of training I’ve had.

  At first nothing happens, and the screen above shows only a vast waste of emptiness, but then I close my eyes and remember the celestial patterns the baby beast had shown me. They crystalize in my mind, and just as the baby beast had taught me how to dance, I now realize she’d given me a much bigger gift.

  I try again, and the honeycomb pad races under my fingertips, zooming over, zooming in, until a small blue dot appears among the blackness of space. It’s a planet. The same planet the beast had shown me. It really does exist, and is within seven years’ travel from here.

  “There’s another way,” I say, swallowing my pride so I can focus on selling this idea. “We should consider—”

  Sisterkin hand-waves the image away, and I almost banish her from the throne room then and there.

  “There are millions of planets out there, Seske,” Sisterkin says, “each with possibilities and risks. But beast life is all the life we know now. Even if you can find a planet, and even if you can convince our people to journey there, how will you convince the others?”

  “Other who?”

  Sisterkin buries her head in her hands, then sighs heavily. “The people on the other beasts, Seske. The other worlds? There are seven ships now, worlds just like ours, but the people are different. The customs are different. But we all need the same thing to survive, and with the herd diminishing . . .”

  My head starts spinning. “What? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “There were two ships that went after this beast. A battle ensued. Only one survived.”

  “Matris killed them? An entire ship? With people on it?”

  “Thousands. Tens of thousands. It was either us or them.”

  My heart sinks, but I push it back up. Another of Matris’s past mistakes I vow to never make. “All the more reason for us to go for the planet. I want to talk to them, the matriarchs of all the ships!”

  Sisterkin laughs particularly cruelly at this, like she’s amazed at the depths of my ineptness, then shakes her head. “Mothers’ mercy, we’re as good as dead.”

  In the past, that laugh would have put me in my place, made me doubt myself, but no longer. I stamp my foot down. “If you have a critique of my plan, you will ask to give it, and if I feel like entertaining it, you will give it without insult, or you’re going to find yourself jettisoned out of the nearest orifice. Understand?”

  Even after all she’s lost, Sisterkin has the audacity to sneer at me.

  I don’t let it unnerve me but, instead, let her animosity brew, right out there in the open. I stand my ground. And as if on cue, two of my guards come to stand at my flanks, hands on their weapons.

  I look at Sisterkin, my gaze unwavering.

  She withers under my glare. “I understand, Matris.”

  “Good,” I say. “Now tell me everything I need to know.”

  Seske

  Of Higher Learning and Lowered Exp
ectations

  I run my hands over the weeping wounds on Adalla’s back. The lace pattern is beautiful, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. “Do they burn much?” I ask.

  “Not as much as my heart has burned for you,” Adalla says, big fat grin on her face, like the one she used to have when we were still just kids. Before things got complicated.

  “You forgive me, don’t you? Matris would have had you thrown from the beast!”

  “Well, who told Matris in the first place?” Adalla spits back at me.

  “Well,” I mimic, “I couldn’t just let you go on destroying our way of life! I wouldn’t let Matris kill you, though. I couldn’t bear for that to happen either. What was I supposed to do?”

  Adalla takes my hands in hers. “Of course, Seske. It was a tough choice, Seske, but you did the right thing. You saved my life, Seske! Seske—”

  “Seske!” Doka screams at me. I startle awake, one eye clenched. Face pressed into a puddle of drool. I close my eyes tighter, trying to force myself back into that dream, as if my slumbering fantasies could patch the very real ache in my heart, but it’s too late. And it wouldn’t work anyway.

  Reality calls. I answer. And Adalla is still missing from my life.

  I sit up, notice the drool stain upon the Texts. Then I’m fully awake.

  “Oh no. Oh no!” I say as Doka hands me a kerchief and I blot the mess up. It does the trick, mostly, just another slight discoloration that I hope will dry clear. No ink is smudged this time. “The answers must be here, in our histories, but the harder I try, the less I can concentrate, and it all just jumbles up on me.”

  “Would you like my help? Are you looking for something in particular?” Doka asks.

  My head races. “Yes! You know all about how politics work on the ship. Any insight on how they’ve worked between civilizations—those other ships? How do we figure out who we’re dealing with?”

  Doka smiles and scoots close to me, moving the Texts so that it’s perfectly between us. He flips pages toward the beginning of the book, then points his finger to a chapter when he finds it. “We can start here.” He begins reading, talking about the original twenty ships and their vision, but my mind is already wandering. He sees that and shuts the book.