The Stars Are Legion

by Kameron Hurley

  After the endless slogging through the levels of the world, the jerking, rattling, uneven ride over the terrain is oddly soothing. I end up sleeping for a good part of the journey. Das Muni curls up next to me, and she is so warm that I don’t even crave a blanket.

  It’s not until I wake to the sound of retching that I realize I’ve been so focused on getting to the next place that I haven’t stopped to care about Das Muni’s increasing temperature.

  When I wake, we’re stopped at the side of a bone-and-flesh edifice that looks human-made. Blue lights blink on and off across the whole of a long-abandoned settlement.

  Das Muni is standing a little away from the sledge, vomiting, while the deercats snort and slather.

  Casamir is looking for something in her luggage and Arankadash remains seated, her expression bored.

  I climb out of the sledge and go to Das Muni. “Are you all right?” I ask.

  She wipes her mouth. “I’m pregnant again, I think,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say. “How does it . . . How do you know?”

  “It’s the right time,” she says.

  “Come on now,” Arankadash says, “I’m halfway through my pregnancy and you don’t see me whining about it.”

  “I thought there weren’t any child-bearers in your settlement,” I say.

  “Didn’t say I was pregnant with a child,” Arankadash says. “Most people don’t give birth to children. We give birth to things the world needs.” She gestured expansively to the ruins around us. “The world always needs bits and pieces of itself to be reborn. That’s why we’re here.”

  “I’ve seen what Das Muni gives birth to,” I say. “I don’t think that’s necessary for any world.”

  “You can’t pretend to understand the will of the Lord,” Casamir says. She finds what she is looking for in her pack and munches on it.

  I help Das Muni back into the sledge.

  “So, you all just . . . get pregnant?”

  “Predictable as breathing,” Casamir says. “But more dangerous, of course. It can still kill you.”

  “What do you . . . give birth to?” It’s another question I’ve been afraid to ask. But it’s time to start reconciling myself with the answers.

  “Mine is an amsharasa,” Arankadash says.

  “But . . . what is that?”

  “A necessary piece of the greater whole,” she says.

  “And mine doesn’t happen often,” Casamir says, “which I think is pretty lucky. Maybe once every six cycles. So, it’s only happened twice. The seers all say they’re necessary things, yes, but we don’t always keep them.”

  “Blasphemer,” Arankadash says.

  “Engineer,” Casamir says. “It’s not logical to keep something you have no use for. Sometimes we just put it into vats, make protein cakes out of it.”

  “That sounds . . . awful,” I say.

  Casamir shrugs. “It’s life, is all.”

  We continue. The sledge gets stuck occasionally in the pitted road, and once, we have to unload and lift the whole thing up over a rotten hunk of the ceiling that has fallen across the path. I lift Casamir’s torch and try to see the where it’s fallen from, but far above us is only darkness.

  “There used to be lights along here,” Arankadash says. “But it’s become unstable since I was a child. It gets worse and worse. We worry sometimes that the rot will reach our home. Maybe not this generation but the next.”

  “Can it be stopped?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “We have too much invested in our settlement. It’s the strongest in the region. When this rot comes up there . . . I don’t know. We try to study it, but what’s there to study? The world is old. Perhaps it has a limited lifespan, the way we do. Perhaps we are coming to the end of it.”

  “But there are . . . thousands of people here,” I say. “Where will you all go?”

  “Perish with the world,” Arankadash says. “Me, you, everyone.”

  “That’s a long way off,” Casamir says. “There’s nothing like this on my level.”

  “There will be,” Arankadash says. “We didn’t think it was real either when traders told us stories. But after a time, the traders stopped coming, and the rot spread.”

  I think of Anat’s great war being raged all across the Outer Rim of the Legion, and I wonder how much she knows about how rotten the world is. Is that why she wants the Mokshi? Is it a younger world? But if what everyone has told me is true about how we are bound to the worlds we’re born on, then moving her people to the Mokshi won’t solve anything. Will it? Or is it more complicated than that?

  Much of the task I’ve been given since I woke is sorting out the truth from the lies, the real from the rhetoric.

  We camp for five sleeping periods before I finally smell the sea. The smell is brackish and rotten. A cool wind blows over us from the direction of the sea, and I wonder, again, about where the blasts of air are coming from. It’s like the whole world is breathing.

  Above us, great stalactites hang from the ceiling, dripping salty moisture onto us. The formations are mottled red and orange, the colors swirling. They are met from below by stalagmites, great rearing teeth twice as tall as I am, which make navigating the sledge difficult.

  We stop twice more to free the sledge from an entanglement. The deercats are impatient and tug hard. Arankadash yanks at their reins and whistles for obedience, but they have caught the smell of the sea.

  We come over a low rise, and there it is. The sea is a flat viscous gray soup. Great blue lights glow and shift within it, roiling like living things. After a moment, I decide they are living things—it’s their heads and spines that glow. Each is long as the sledge. I climb to the top of an outcropping along the edge of the sea and gaze out. There are lights moving along the ceiling, too, a forest of green glowing fungi. I can see far enough across the sea to note a horizon, that place where the blue-shimmering sea meets the green sky. Dark shapes are flying over the sea and occasionally skim the water. They have black leathery wings wide as hands and bulbous bodies, but that’s all I can make out from this distance and in this light.

  “I stood exactly there when I first saw the sea,” Arankadash says. “I did not believe such a thing could exist.”

  “It’s extraordinary,” I say.

  Casamir points to the flying beasts. “Can we eat those?”

  “We can eat anything,” Arankadash says, “but I’ll tell you they are difficult to catch, and when they claw up your face, you will regret your decision to pursue them. They taste awful. Not worth the effort.”

  Das Muni stands at the edge of the sea, silent, her cowl up.

  I have not noticed a swell in her belly, but I can see it now on Arankadash as the wind blows against her body, pushing her long robe behind her and revealing her full outline. Doesn’t it terrify them all, I think, to have no control over when and what they give birth to? But it’s normal here, isn’t it? As normal as eating one’s companions and swimming across a viscous sea. I press my hands to my own belly. What am I meant to give birth to? Is this another reason my memory is stripped away, because the truth is too much for me?

  “I don’t see a boat,” Casamir says.

  I tear my gaze from the horizon and back to the shore. She is right. There is no boat, only a long beach made up of bits of calcified deposits and ground metal pieces. I hop off the crag and take up a fistful of the stuff. No doubt Casamir’s people will sift all the metal from this and make a fortune with it.

  “Sometimes it’s farther down,” Arankadash says.

  “When were you here last?” I ask her.

  “When I left my child here and gave it to the light,” she says. “It was born wrong.”

  I don’t know what to say to that.

  Casamir heads farther down the shore.

  “Das Muni and I will look the other way,” I say. Arankadash waves a hand at me.

  I start in the opposite direction, but Das Muni isn’t following me. She is still staring at the sea.<
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  “What is it?” I say. “Come on.”

  “It’s so beautiful,” she says.

  “The Mokshi doesn’t have seas?”

  “It’s a very different place,” she says.

  “You should tell me about it.”

  “No. It was a long time ago. It’s better to forget.” She walks down the beach, head lowered.

  “Is there a family in charge there?” I ask. “Like the Katazyrnas? Did you live below, like here?”

  But she doesn’t answer, only toes the shoreline. I sigh and march out ahead of her, swinging my walking stick. My leg has been bothering me less. The compress from Casamir’s people fell out back in Arankadash’s settlement, leaving a scarred chunk in my leg. When I saw it, I laughed because it seemed like I had created a secret compartment within myself, some terrible living pocket for contraband. But it also had the desired effect. It reminded me of my promise to Casamir’s people.

  We find many things along the shore, including a jellified animal that washed up there. It’s twice as long as I am, with a tangle of tentacles and transparent body. I suspect it’s one of the glowing blue things in the sea. I give it a wide berth.

  Das Muni picks up little items as we walk; a metal square, a polished bone disk, a carved wooden ring tangled in slimy weeds.

  But no boat.

  The green fungus above begins to fade, and I realize it must be on another cycle, like the creatures down in the pits.

  “We should get back to the others,” I say, and Das Muni nods.

  Then it begins to rain.

  The drops come soft at first, like the rain in Casamir’s city. Then it comes harder, big dirty drops smeared red. They soon coat our faces, and when I see Das Muni’s face, it’s as if she is crying blood.

  Something thunks into the ground between us. A heavy stone hits my arm. Stone? Is that what it is? The hard little pellets are unfurling on the ground and wriggling away like snakes with legs. They rattle down around us, so fast and furious I raise my hands up over my head.

  Das Muni points away from the beach. “Up there!”

  I see a crumpled shadow on higher ground. I run after Das Muni. We crouch under a long shelf. I can’t tell what it is or what it’s made of in the dark, but it provides cover from the rain of snake-lizards.

  They scurry up toward us, trying to take over our shelter. Das Muni kicks at them, and I help her. I don’t know if they’re venomous, but I don’t like them.

  As the rain subsides, we huddle up under the overhang and wait. I feel something behind me shift as I lean back.

  “What is this?” I say. There’s no light, but my eyes are adjusting to the dim. The object behind me has a long nose and a low, flat bottom. It’s a little spongy, like everything seems to be, but it seems to be repelling water instead of absorbing it. The surface is slick with dewy moisture. It’s warm under my hands and shifts beneath my fingers.

  I jerk away.

  “What is it?” Das Muni says.

  “Something alive,” I say.

  “Oh, no,” she says. “That’s just a boat, I think.”

  Her eyes are enormous in the dim, and I remember that she can see far better than I can.

  We haul the boat down to the shore. It’s even stranger than I thought back in the cave. Its middle is fat, and it pulses as if it’s breathing. The sides are curved up and out, expanding the breadth of the boat enough that I think we can all get in. Most peculiar are the eight fins that flop at its side.

  Das Muni and I wait down on the beach for Arankadash and Casamir to return. Das Muni curls up next to the animal-boat and whispers a little song to it, so low that I cannot make out the words. I scan the water. More creatures wait there, I know. Stranger things.

  I hear Arankadash and Casamir before I see them. They are arguing about what it was that fell from the sky, and why.

  I stand and wave. “I found a boat. Or something like a boat?”

  “Yes, that’s it,” Arankadash says.

  We work together to get the slippery thing into the water. “Will it swim away?” I ask.

  “Hold tight,” Arankadash says, “and jump in quickly.”

  When the boat reaches the edge of the water, the fins start flapping. It shivers, as if in anticipation.

  “How are we going to control this thing?” I ask.

  “It knows the way,” Arankadash says.

  I gaze out at the hazy blue light of the creatures bobbing just below the surface of the sea. “That’s not very comforting,” I say.

  “It’s not meant to comfort,” she says. “It’s truth.”

  Casamir and Das Muni get into the craft, and Arankadash and I push it into the sea. The boat begins paddling its arms immediately, and I have to scramble to get myself inside. The viscous, watery sludge that makes up the sea clings to my trousers and soaks me through. I roll into the craft as Casamir tugs at my arms.

  Arankadash is already in. She’s positioned herself at the head of the craft as we glug out into the sea.

  I catch my breath and peer back over the edge of the thing at the bobbing lights.

  Das Muni squirms up beside me. “Do you think they’ll see us?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Let’s just . . . be quiet.”

  Arankadash glances back at us. “I have been this way half a dozen times,” she says. “We have never had trouble crossing.”

  “You couldn’t even find the boat this time,” Casamir says.

  Arankadash sniffs. “That’s not my fault. Someone who came before did not put it back where it’s supposed to be. That’s all.”

  “Who last used it?” I ask.

  “I did not see a sign on it,” Arankadash says. “Did you?”

  “Sarcasm,” I say. “Soon you’ll be telling jokes.”

  The craft moves slowly across the sea. It’s like paddling through a heavy stew. I perch on the back of the craft and watch the shoreline recede. After an hour, I cannot see the rim of the shoreline anymore, and I look ahead into the darkness. Great stalactites make an upside-down forest ahead of us, clawing down toward the sea with their thorny fingers.

  We stand up and push against them when we come too close; it’s the only way we have to steer the craft. And still the thing paddles onward.

  I can see no shore, even after several hours on the flat sea.

  “How much longer?” I ask Arankadash.

  She is mending one of her weapon harnesses. “We will arrive when we arrive,” she says.

  “It’s so still out here,” Casamir says. She pokes her hand into the water.

  “Stop that,” I say. “You’ll get it bitten off.”

  I continue to watch the lights of the creatures bobbing just below the surface.

  “They probably don’t eat things as big as us,” Casamir says.

  “You don’t know that,” I say. “There could be anything living in here.”

  Casamir dips her hand into the water again and comes up with a handful of the sludge. Sniffs it. “Rotten-smelling, isn’t it? Think you could eat it?”

  “Maybe you could eat it,” I say. I can’t fault any of them for trying to eat everything that grows out of this dark place.

  Casamir leans far forward, and I turn away to look for the shore again. I’m not as patient as Arankadash.

  I hear Casamir’s curse and a curious gulping sound.

  Das Muni is standing where Casamir used to be, and Casamir is struggling in the gooey waters of the sea.

  “What did you do?” I yell at Das Muni. I reach for Casamir.

  The bobbing lights all around us go very still. My fingers slip right off Casamir’s skin. I can’t get purchase.

  “Arankadash!” I say, but she is already beside me.

  We each grab one of Casamir’s arms.

  The lights begin to move again. They speed toward us, a dozen, maybe more.

  We get Casamir halfway up. I push far over to hook my other arm under her leg. The vessel rocks and the paddling arms flail.
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  I hear a great moaning sound that makes the craft tremble, and I realize the moaning is coming from the boat. I lose my grip on Casamir and slip over the side.

  I plunge into the sea. It’s warm as soup. I muck about in it, grasping for the edge of the craft. My leg hits something beneath me. Lights dance past my elbow. I press back my terror and think only of what I know: the boat and Arankadash’s open palm.

  A massive appendage surfaces next to me. I call it an appendage because it doesn’t have anything resembling a face.

  Casamir shrieks and her head goes under.

  I dive for her, but the sea is so heavy, it’s difficult to dive. I surface and yell at Arankadash for a weapon. She tosses me her spear. I catch it and stab at the creature nearest me. The sea roils. Eight large white tentacles rise from the water and grasp at the craft.

  I stab again and again until pale streamers of blue fluid fill the sea around me.

  One of the creatures surfaces. I see a globular belly, a multitude of eyes. I stab at the belly. There’s a squelching sound. Air and offal splatter back in my face. The animal sinks, the sac deflating as its tentacles writhe around it.

  I dive again, kicking with all my strength, willing my bad leg to propel me harder and faster. I push the butt end of the spear ahead of me to extend my reach. It bumps into something. I claw forward. Snatch at a bit of cloth. Pull.

  I come up gasping, dragging Casamir with me. I kick to the edge of the craft and heft Casamir toward Arankadash and Das Muni, though I see that Das Muni does not put out her hands until I meet her eyes.

  I throw the spear in after Casamir and clamber up, kicking against the boat as it continues on its journey, oblivious to our concerns.

  I heave in a long breath. All around us, white tentacles and frilly appendages have surfaced. They move in time with the lights of the bodies of the creatures they belong to, circling and circling as the craft powers on.