Stoneskin

by K. B. Spangler

  Chapter Nine

  The months blurred.

  Classes were hard—almost impossible. Leps drove them to exhaustion every day. Morning lessons were tedious: move one foam ball to a target; move two foam balls to two targets; move three foam balls and one stick to the ceiling and make them rotate clockwise. And so on.

  Tembi did learn where the term “clockwise” came from, but that was about the only thing she learned during those morning lessons. The rest was training and endless, endless repetition.

  “The Deep understands specifics,” Leps said, swinging another long stick. “You will learn to be specific in your requests. Short, tight sentences. Zero ambiguity. The Deep is a partner, not a friend!”

  That stick was an effective distraction; each student had gotten whacked at least once, and they instinctively kept an eye on it. It had taken Tembi several weeks to recognize that the goal was to be aware of the stick while not thinking about the damage it could do. This was (just the slightest bit) easier for her than the other students, but she still found her mind returning to that damned stick if she didn’t keep herself focused on the task.

  “Do you want to risk jumping yourself?” Leps would ask, as she cracked the stick against the metal legs of the black-topped tables. “Do you know what happens when a jump goes wrong? No, you don’t! Nobody does! The Witch never comes out of the jump—she’s gone forever! Do you want that to happen to you?! No? Then don’t try to jump your fool selves until you can talk with the Deep!”

  It was a lecture that came at least once a week, and never failed to send chills up Tembi’s spine. She could move foam balls across a classroom room with unerring precision, but the idea that she would one day send herself through the Deep? Or…or…other people? Matindi and the other Witches could jump across the galaxy without a second thought; Tembi couldn’t stop thinking about what might happen if the Deep lost track of what it was doing, or decided to listen to another Witch instead of her. She might end up stranded on an alien planet. Or worse.

  Those were the mornings. In the afternoons, it was star charts and practical telemetry.

  “You need to know where your cargo is coming from, and how it needs to land,” Leps would say, as she swung her stick around the room. “We take all of this for granted,” she would say, banging the stick on the desks. “What happens if the Deep decides it doesn’t want to land a ship? Or takes the afternoon off? That’s on you, to get those people somewhere safe until you can get the Deep to behave again. You are their lifeline to a planet, and you will not scrape this up!”

  Some of the students would roll their eyes. The Deep, stop working? Please.

  Tembi, who would never forget the half-mad look on Leps’ face when the Deep had temporarily stranded her on Adhama, memorized star charts and trade routes until they were burned into her mind.

  When class finally ended for the day, Tembi was usually too tired to do more than shuffle back to Matindi’s quarters and collapse on her bed. But today, at the end of a five-day work session, she and Bayle didn’t make it more than a hundred steps from the Tower before they flopped face-down on the lawn.

  “Breakday tomorrow,” Tembi said. She couldn’t feel the grass against her face, but the ground was soft and forgiving. Like a mattress. Oh, to sleep…

  “We need more than a breakday or two,” Bayle groaned into the grass. “We need a breakmonth. Breakyear. Breakdecade.”

  “Breakcentury,” Tembi giggled.

  “Five on, two off,” Bayle said, mimicking Leps. “You work for five, you rest for two. That’s how it’s always been. That’s how it’ll always be. Tradition!”

  The ground trembled ever-so-slightly as another body crashed to the ground between them. “Tradition can bite me.”

  “Steven, we’re starving,” Bayle muttered. “Don’t tempt us.”

  Tembi turned her head. The young man who had collapsed between them had deep brown eyes, and light brown skin covered with a fine dusting of scales. His skin wasn’t any harder than her own, but it was certainly more noticeable: Steven’s people had chosen a different bioforming option to help them survive on a world nearly as unforgiving as Adhama.

  “Food run?” Steven asked. His paint took the shape of bronze leaves floating on the breeze. The leaves looped up into his dark brown hair and down again, ending just above the opposite ear. “Go into Hub for some tumbarranchos?”

  “I don’t have the energy,” Bayle sighed.

  “Sure you do,” Steven said, poking her in her ribs. “Food first, then maybe we’ll go swimming.”

  “In a nanocleaned pool.” Bayle snapped out that last word as if it was a curse. “It’s an insult to water.”

  “Or the lake,” Tembi said quickly. It was always best to head off Bayle’s complaints about treated water as fast as possible. The girl could rant for hours. “Or…or we could catch a hopper to the beach for the weekend?”

  Bayle and Steven exchanged one of those glances. One of those glances which suggested she was being silly. One of those glances which couldn’t help but remind Tembi that however nice Bayle and Steven were, they were still three years older than her, and three years mattered a lot right now.

  “But tumbarranchos sound good,” she added.

  “Yeah,” Bayle said, standing. She was in robes of storm gray, and stray pieces of dried grass stuck to the fabric. “Let me run home and get some shoes.”

  Tembi did the same. She would have preferred to stay barefoot, but Hub had citywide ordinances about food and shoes. Besides, people were not nearly as sanitary in Hub as they were in Marumaru. Tembi knew she had grown up in a poor neighborhood, but she had never once stepped in fresh human waste until she had started exploring the back streets of Hub. Shoes had more than one purpose.

  They met back at the Tower, in the line for the hopper shuttle. Some of the older Witches shook their heads as they passed, bemused by the idea of Witches who weren’t yet skilled enough in talking to the Deep to risk jumping themselves to the nearby city.

  “Scrape ’em.” Steven said, as they joined the queue of travelers moving from Lancaster to Hub. “They were us, once. If they can’t remember what it’s like to worry about accidentally stranding yourself a million light-years from nowhere, that’s their problem.”

  “The Deep wouldn’t do that,” Bayle said, as she examined her manicure. Her fingernails flashed a deep blue-black with streaks of moonlight through them: night had settled on her homeworld.

  “You want to risk jumping yourself to Hub?” Steven asked her. “Not me. I’ll meet you there.”

  Tembi stared out the window of the hopper at the setting sun. She was pretty sure the Deep would take her anywhere she asked, but she still couldn’t hear it. There was the physical risk, yes, but… How was it fair to ask it to jump her all over the galaxy without knowing what it wanted from her in exchange?

  The feeling of wings brushed the sides of her mind.

  All right, she thought to herself, as loudly as she could. If you want to talk, I’m listening.

  “Tembi?” Bayle was watching her, blue eyes wide. The girl reached out and touched Tembi’s hand; Tembi unclenched her fists.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Just thinking.”

  “Careful, kid, your brain might get stuck like that,” Steven said. Bayle swatted him across the back of his skull.

  The hopper’s warning bells chimed. The doors slid shut, and the machine lifted into the air like a bird taking flight. Below, Lancaster’s rolling lawns swept towards its woods and the city behind them, with little flecks of light and shadow the only signs of human habitation.

  This hopper was a different creature than the one on Adhama, made of unblemished plass and gold-colored metal, and so much faster! The trip took all of three minutes, a short hop that took them the twenty kilometers from Lancaster to the station nearest their favorite restaurant. The doors opened, and the three young Witches joined the other passengers as they moved into the city.

  Tembi felt b
etter the moment she stepped onto the pavement. Hub welcomed her like Lancaster never would—cities had their own heartbeat, and she never felt truly alive when she was at the school. She wanted to scrub the birds from her face, throw off her shoes and run barefoot through the streets, tear the gold trim from her robes and the scarf from her hair and sell them for enough money to—

  “Good,” Bayle said, as the restaurant came into view. “There’s no wait tonight.”

  They ordered: Steven was a vegetarian; Tembi and Bayle got their meals with meat. Their food was up, almost as fast as if had been made by the Deep, and they went outside to sit on the steps of a nearby office building to eat.

  Tembi had never had tumbarranchos before moving to Hub, but now she couldn’t imagine her life without them. A thick slab of fried corn arepa, cut in half and loaded with cheese and vegetables and all kinds of other flavors, then pressed between an iron and a hot griddle until the edges were seared. Sandwiches were a tumbarrancho’s poor cousin.

  Bellies full, the three of them went to wander the streets until they felt they could face Lancaster again. Any one night was like all nights on Found, but if Tembi had been back home, she would have said it felt like late spring. Some of Lancaster’s fireflies had found their way into Hub’s windowbox gardens many generations ago, and had since thrived; the city was full of small floating lights. Steven caught one that was drifting by, snatching it from the breeze as easily as catching a ball, and then tossed it back into the air unharmed.

  They stopped for drinks. Bayle finished hers, then Tembi’s, and was eyeing Steven’s with malicious intent when a tall man with red flames painted on the side of his face cut in front of them.

  “Tembi,” he said, grinning. “The Deep said you were nearby.”

  Her ears perked up. “Moto!”

  “C’mere, little girl” he said, and she flung herself into his arms. “Where’ve you been?”

  She tapped the golden birds on the side of her face. “I started class.”

  “Oh, congratulations,” He looked up and noticed Bayle and Steven. “Who’re your friends?”

  Bayle was staring at Moto, open-mouthed. Which made perfect sense to Tembi: Moto was gorgeous, about five years older than Bayle, with the type of smooth features that would have earned him a steady paycheck on any of the romance channels. His worn black Spacers’ uniform fit him like a second skin. His ears, like Tembi’s, were longer and more tapered at the tip than Earth-normal.

  (Tembi thought her own ears made her look like a moth, but on Moto, his long ears were exotic!)

  Tembi made the introductions, showing off this Witch from her homeworld who put everyone and everything else in Hub to shame. Bayle and Steven did their best, but a little voice inside Tembi snickered at how her friends were as off-balance around Moto as she usually felt around them.

  “I’m going to steal Tembi for a few minutes,” Moto said, and the two of them moved aside to let the people using the sidewalk pass them by. He caught her hand in his own and inspected it, then pressed the palm of his own hand against her face. “Tembi—”

  “Don’t say it.” She knew she sounded waspish, and pulled away from him. “I know, Moto, I know.”

  He said it anyhow. “Our people wear our lives on our skins.” His hands were gentle on her shoulders as he drew her back, and she forced herself to look at him. “What can I do to help?”

  “You went through training,” she said, and tried not to resent how his skin was nearly Earth-normal. “You know what it’s like.”

  “I know it wasn’t this bad for me,” he said softly. “And you know I’m here for you, right?”

  Tembi nodded once, quickly.

  “You know you have to keep yourself under control. When was the last time you went to the gym?”

  “Who has time?” Her voice sounded bitter.

  “You make time,” he said. “In fact, we’re going to make time right now.”

  She wanted to scream at him. Instead, she said, “I’m out with my friends.”

  “Bring them along,” Moto said. “They probably need to burn off some stress, too.”

  “Moto—”

  He grabbed her hand and pressed his fingernails into her skin. When he took his hand away, there were no indentations. He did the same to himself, and showed her the small half-moon marks as if they were trophies. “You need to be able to feel, Tembi,” he said. “The worst it got for me was that I could walk on hot pavement. But this? This is bad.”

  “All right,” Tembi sighed. She turned to Bayle and Steven, who were pretending not to eavesdrop. “I need to go somewhere,” she said. “Moto can jump you back to Lancaster if you don’t want to wait for the hopper.”

  “We’re with you,” Bayle said, as her eyes darted sideways to take in the curves of Moto’s butt. Spacers’ uniforms didn’t leave much to the imagination.

  Moto gathered them together in his arms, and jumped. It was a short trip, with none of the signs of the Deep within it. They passed through a space that existed nowhere in the physical realm, and emerged in a room which reeked of cedar shavings and sweat.

  Steven clasped his hands over his nose. “Oh, nooo,” he groaned.

  “Give it a minute,” Tembi said, patting him on the back. “You’ll adjust.”

  “Oh gods, no I won’t!” His eyes were watering. “Some idiot decided my planet needed a whole population who could smell a dog fart from a kilometer away.”

  “Fine.” Tembi grinned at him. “Get Moto to jump you home. You’ll miss the fun.”

  She nodded towards the open floor in the center of the room. It was elevated, and two men were standing on it, trading blows. Their fists had been wrapped in thick mitts and they moved around each other, snaking punches when they could.

  “Old-school boxing,” Tembi said.

  “That’s barbaric!” Bayle shook her head. “They’re hitting each other!”

  Tembi laughed, and went to change into her sweats. When she returned from the locker room, Moto was waiting for her in the ring.

  “Ready, little Marumaru girl?” he asked, pacing back and forth in his corner.

  She jumped up on the platform and stuck out her tongue.

  They bowed and closed.

  Tembi had taken to martial arts like a fish to water. It was different from the street fighting of her childhood: that was sloppy, just punching and kicking and hoping you managed to break somebody’s nose so you could steal their stuff and run. Martial arts had a rhythm to it; it was a music of the body, each fighter playing their own song.

  She didn’t fight to win; she fought to keep the music going as long as she could.

  Moto knew this. He was twice her size and had the training to put her on the ground without trying. Instead, he let her set the music.

  Kick, block, kick…

  Tembi started low, her blows aimed at his shins. Moto caught them on his legs, twisting so her attack glanced off. She spun, her small fist whipping towards the soft spot on his ribcage; he slapped it away, and countered with a quick backhand. She caught this on her forearm and pushed it down, leaving Moto’s left side exposed to an elbow jab—

  “Good one!” Moto said, as her elbow landed. “C’mon, harder!”

  Punch, punch, block…

  Moto sussed out her rhythm and moved with her, turning as she did. He began to block and respond more quickly, turning each punch and kick into a rally of counterattacks. A fist flew at her face; she parried and turned it into a grab, then turned to smash her own fist into his sternum. He blocked with his free hand and spun her away, putting a roundhouse kick in her path. She saw it coming and dodged, but this put her off-balance, and Moto’s roundhouse kick turned into a snap kick which clipped her chin hard enough to knock her down.

  She tackled Moto around his knees and brought him to the mat. A dumb move on her part: he had longer limbs and the weight advantage, and he quickly pinned her. She tapped out, and they rose and moved to their corners before bowing and closing again.


  So it went. Back and forth, across the mat and down, until Moto finally called it.

  “Okay, Tembi,” he said, breathing only slightly harder than normal. “Good match.”

  Tembi bowed to him, her eyes closed, smiling. She felt better than she had in months.

  She jumped from the mat to the ground, landing heavily. The muscles of her legs were barely more than tenderized meat, and she wobbled over to the chairs where Bayle and Steven waited.

  Neither of them were paying attention to her. Steven was rubbing Bayle’s back, trying to get her to pick up her head.

  As Tembi came closer, Bayle looked up.

  She was crying.

  _________________________________

  stonegirl

  stonegirl come

  stonegirl fight

  patience

  Excerpt from “Notes from the Deep,” 4 January 2994 CE

  _________________________________

  Chapter Ten

  “Some people can’t bear to be around violence.” Matindi nudged the mug of chamomile tea towards Tembi with one long green finger. “Drink.”

  “Sparring isn’t violence,” Tembi insisted. “It’s…it’s like dancing. Or singing!”

  “You don’t have to convince me,” Matindi said. “Well, you might have to convince me how it’s like singing, but I understand the dancing part. How it registers in Bayle’s head, though? That’s her business, and it sounds as if she thinks that sparring is too violent.”

  Tembi made a rude noise and plopped her head on the table.

  The kitchen smelled of cinnamon and sugar. Matindi didn’t cook, but she loved to bake, and she had been putting the finishing touches on cinnamon buns when Tembi arrived home. These were cooling on the countertop, waiting for the icing. It had been a lovely scene to come home to, especially after the awkward moment between when Moto had jumped them to Lancaster and when Bayle had run off towards the dormitories, tears still streaming from her eyes.