The Stars Are Legion

by Kameron Hurley

  “Give me the womb,” I say. “I’ll bear the world to term. You can’t have long left.”

  “Are you mad?” Nashatra says.

  “Yes,” I say. “Sabita, you’re a tissue technician. You know how to pull out my womb and give me another one. Take mine, Nashatra. You’ll want children more than worlds, anyway.”

  “That’s a serious surgery, Jayd,” Sabita signs.

  “I know,” I say. “I’ve done it before, when Zan gave me her womb and we took out hers. Being able to bear children was the only leverage I would have, the only thing that could get me here. I couldn’t have gotten close enough to Rasida to get the world in that womb. And it’s the world we need, in the end.”

  Sabita signs, “When did you do that?”

  I say out loud, “On the Mokshi.”

  “You and Zan—” Sabita signs.

  “What we planned is bigger than the Legion,” I say. “That’s all I can tell you. We’re no madder than Rasida. No madder than staying here and enduring her wrath. Where’s the medical lounge?”

  Nashatra considers.

  “I know you don’t want that world,” I say. “What autonomy do you have when you cannot even decide what and when you birth? That was taken from you. We can fix it.”

  “This way,” Nashatra says. “You’ll need the witches’ help or this will kill you. They will heal your—”

  “All right,” I say, because I want it done. I want to go on. We need to move.

  Nashatra leads us to the medical lounge. We pass several women, but because we are with Nashatra, they give us only passing glances. I hope Rasida is sleeping or on another assault to Katazyrna. But part of me expects her to be in the lounge already, waiting for us, one step ahead, always.

  The medical lounge is as hideous as the one on Katazyrna, maybe more so. The witches are already there, and to my horror, they are standing over a slab on which rest the bodies of the girls who once served me.

  The witches raise their heads.

  “These are not natural deaths,” they say.

  “Yours won’t be either,” Sabita signs, raising her bone knife. “I need healing salve, tissue repair gel, quick sutures, and liniment.”

  “The lord will be displeased,” the witches say.

  “She will not be lord much longer,” I say, and get up onto the slab next to the bodies.

  “ALL I’VE LEARNED OF THE WORLD HAS TOLD ME THAT IT’S NECESSARY TO GIVE UP WHO I AM TO SAVE US. CALL THAT ALTRUISTIC. I CALL IT SENSE. THERE’S NO REASON TO LIVE LIKE I AM WITHOUT A FUTURE.”

  —LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION

  31

  ZAN

  When I wake, Das Muni is still breathing, but I cannot rouse her.

  “Moving her will make her worse,” Casamir says. “I think we should split up.”

  “We’ll just get more lost,” Arankadash says.

  “If we each take a different direction, we might have a chance to get out,” Casamir says. “Right now there’s no chance. We’ll die of thirst.”

  I had seen Casamir drinking her own urine before we slept. I don’t feel that bad off yet, but it’s tempting. I stare into my pack at the last half-globe of water I have. What an irony, to come this far from the belly of the world only to die for lack of water. I press my cheek to Das Muni’s. We must leave her and find a way out.

  Hungry, thirsty, disoriented, we wander the crystal forest. I lose track of time, and maybe that’s better than whatever this is. We stumble off into opposite directions, though I can hear them all laboring not far away. Sound travels so far here. I hear Das Muni whining; it’s a sound that cuts me deeply, like listening to the crying of a child.

  I’m so thirsty that when I doze, I dream of water. Bathing in it. Rolling in it. Drinking until I burst. When I wake from one of these reveries, I find myself staring at my own reflection in an opaque crystal just inches from my face. The light of the bluish crystals around it illuminates me and my reflection.

  I gawk at myself. It is the first time since I woke to Jayd’s luminous face that I have seen my own reflection.

  My skin, I know, is the same dark color as the Katazyrnas, but I am taller and broader. I have known all of this, but somehow seeing tall, lean Arankadash assured me that I was not aberrant, just different.

  Now that I can see my face, I see something else entirely. I see someone who does not belong to the Katazyrnas at all. I have deep, sunken round eyes with gray irises, made to look deeper by broad, flat cheekbones unlike any I’ve seen here. My eyebrows are bushy and as ashen gray as my eyes, and they sweep back from my face like feathers. A long scar cuts across my brow, the same one I felt slathered in salve when I first woke. It’s twisted and ugly and pulls up the left half of my face, smoothing the lines there. I’m older than I thought, probably as old as Vashapaldi.

  I lean away from the crystal so my reflection distorts and blurs, becoming just another refracted bit of shadow and light.

  I reach into my pocket and pull out the soft sphere that Vashapaldi gave me.

  I press the face of it, trying to understand why I would have left such a trinket behind. All I can think as I stare at its spongy mass is that I was as mad in my prior lives as I am now.

  I stuff the thing back into my pocket and crawl along until I lose all sense of time and myself. I know only that I’m thirsty. Perhaps I am dying.

  Is there a reason I shouldn’t die?

  I gaze at the refracted images of my own face, fascinated.

  Time skips.

  Light. Reflections.

  And then:

  Das Muni leans over me, proffering a bit of gray flesh. I turn my face away, but she speaks in soothing tones and parts my lips with the slippery tail of the thing.

  “It will make you better,” she murmurs.

  I know this is a dream, because Das Muni is surely dead where I left her, five hundred paces behind me. I even twist my head to look behind me where I abandoned her body, but in place of Das Muni I see a slithering mass of black, toothy fishes crawling across the crystals, flopping in a sea of afterbirth.

  Since this is a dream and I am very hungry, and even thirstier, I eat what she gives me. The thing is, thankfully, dead already and does not wriggle about in my mouth as I chew and swallow. It’s surprisingly salty-sweet. I feel my fog begin to lift almost immediately.

  Das Muni holds me in her arms and sings to me, a song that sounds half-familiar. I lie there and stare at the crystal ceiling, trying to remember this song.

  “How are you alive?” I ask. “You were dead.”

  “A jinni came and saved me,” Das Muni says.

  “What’s a jinni?”

  “A spirit,” she says. “You must remember the spirits.”

  “I don’t remember anything,” I say.

  “It’s all right,” Das Muni says. “Sometimes only I can see them.”

  “Lord of War,” I sigh, “I don’t know if you’re speaking the truth or delirious or both.”

  “Both,” she says.”

  “We are going to die here,” I say.

  “No,” she says. “They are drawn to water.”

  “What is?”

  “My friends,” she says, and I see that in her hands are the little biting fishes that I first saw her birth back in the recycling pits.

  She releases the things in her hands, and they fall to the crystals at our feet and begin to wriggle their way through the crystalline forest.

  Das Muni hooks her arm under me, and we follow the snapping fishes. I stumble over Casamir. She is staring into her hands as if they, too, have become crystalline surfaces.

  “Get up,” I say. “Follow us.”

  Arankadash has made it the farthest. She stands on a great crystal, face wan and drawn. When she sees us, she squints like she can’t believe we are real.

  “There are living things here,” she says. “I ate one.”

  “Where did the rest go?” I ask.

  She points down a narrow, craggy precipic
e.

  “We must follow them,” I say.

  I know that what I’m saying doesn’t make sense, but Arankadash doesn’t argue with me. She sets off ahead of us. As I walk, I begin to feel stronger, more clear-headed. Whatever is in Das Muni’s offspring is a potent restorative.

  When Casamir lags behind, I go back for her and help her along. Das Muni keeps on ahead, looking back at us occasionally. I hear the change long before I see it. A rushing sound fills the air, louder and louder. Cool wind blows against my face. I smell water.

  Arankadash ducks under a low-hanging crystal. I slide after her with Casamir and land in deep mud up to my ankles. I gaze out at a muddy plain and there, at the far end of it, four or five hundred paces distant, is a waterfall. The water pounds down from the level above. It has carved a chasm in the ceiling. The lip of the other level has rolled downward like a knobby tongue, and the water cascades over it and into a great pool. The pool drains toward us, making a mucky river that twists and turns and disappears under the edge of the crystal forest.

  I slog to the riverbed and fall to my knees. I drink, not caring what else is swimming in these dark waters. The water tastes pure, though. It is the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.

  We make camp near the forest. We drink and rest and Casamir catches fist-sized creatures from the water and we eat them raw. They taste terrible, but it’s better than starving.

  I take the time to bathe in the water, which is warmer than I expected, warm as spit. I’m not sure how much cleaner I am after I come out of it, but I feel better, more vibrant. I feel alive.

  I rinse off my suit and get dressed and stare out at the waterfall. I see that there are knobby crags along either side of the waterfall, little curls of flesh from the level above that the water has yet to wear away.

  “I bet we can climb up,” I say, but no one is listening to me.

  Arankadash is sleeping contentedly with her offspring, and Casamir is snoring loudly. Even Das Muni has passed out, arms wrapped around herself, knees tucked to her chest. It’s only then that I realize how close we all came to dying.

  But I don’t want to rest. I want to carry on. Every time we ascend a level, I feel that much closer to getting my revenge.

  I slog toward the waterfall. I get about a hundred paces before my strength gives out. I find a damp patch of ground and lie down. I listen to the gurgle of the water. We are so close. Every step takes us closer. I sleep.

  * * *

  How long we rest, I don’t know, but when I wake, Arankadash is already standing along the circumference of the pool where the waterfall pounds into this level.

  I get up to join her. Her offspring nuzzles her chest, a great faceless blob. I try not to look at it.

  “We go up?” she says.

  “Always up,” I say.

  She pats her offspring. “Perhaps you should go first.”

  “I like a challenge,” I say. I’m not sure if that’s true, though. I’ve been challenged enough.

  Casamir and Das Muni join us at the edge of the pool. Casamir volunteers to give it a try, but I tell her this is my lot in life.

  I stretch out on the edge of the pool and head toward the right side of the waterfall, which looks like it might have more handholds. The surface is slick, but the bulbous face of the worn ceiling is varied enough that I can gain some purchase.

  The way up the craggy edge of the waterfall is treacherous. I claw my way up, digging my fingernails into the soft surface to gain purchase. I tumble hard when I am just a few paces up. I flail. Hit the water with a great smack.

  I swim to the shore and start again, assuring Casamir that I am fine. There is a route up. I will find it. For myself, for Das Muni, for Jayd, for us all.

  I start again, more slowly this time, looking for purchase. I think of my hands as vises, too strong to let go once they have gripped an edge, and I make my way slowly up and up. I am already soaked, but the misty spray of the falls ensures I stay that way. I wipe my face on my shoulder, trying to clear my eyes of water. It’s a pointless exercise.

  As I near the top of the waterfall, my bad leg cramps up. I cling hard to the face of the wall. I push my toes against my foothold, trying to stretch out my tendon.

  There are no calls of encouragement from below. I suspect they are all waiting for me to fall again. They’re afraid to break my concentration. I realize just how strangely quiet it is to not hear Casamir complaining.

  I find purchase on the lip of the wall and pull myself over while pushing with my good leg. I flop over the edge like a swollen fish and lie there gasping. Something flies above me and defecates on my face. I wipe it away and stare up. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of flapping creatures nesting in the high, rotten walls above the waterfall. The sky here stretches up and up, and it’s mostly dark. There are bioluminescent fungi here and there, glowing a faint blue, and some creature flashing white in the water. But after the disorienting maze of the crystal forest, the darkness is almost welcome.

  I stagger to my feet and am pleased to see that the waterway that feeds the falls does indeed slope upward. We’re continuing our climb up from the bottom of the world to its surface, however slow and agonizing.

  I take a few steps, but my strength gives out. Or perhaps it’s my will. I sink to my knees on the soft ground. No doubt it’s covered in the excrement of whatever creatures are roosting in the walls, but I don’t care. We’re all the same thing. We’re all shit. We’re all flesh. We’re all sentient.

  The others have been telling me this from the very beginning, but it’s not until now, saved by Das Muni’s slithering offspring, revived by afterbirth and a thundering waterfall at the center of a hollowed-out world, that I really understand what they mean by it.

  I pull the sphere Vashapaldi gave me from my pocket. The sequence comes easily now, like remembering the way to the home of a friend: the child, the fish, the bird, the water, the water.

  The sphere warms in my hands. I drop it. It splits like an egg, revealing a gooey green core that sprays a red-green mist into the air above it. The mist coalesces into a head-and-shoulder view of a familiar face, the face I saw reflected back at me from the mirror of a crystal. This reflection of me has no scar on her face, though, and there is something different about her eyes. She is more confident, full of purpose. I see no fear in her, no indecision, only absolute faith.

  “If you’re seeing this,” the woman who shares my face says, “it means we’ve been recycled again and Jayd is not with you. You have remembered enough to unlock this recording, but I expect there’s still a lot that’s unclear to you. That’s all right. That’s how it’s supposed to be right now. You’ll remember when you’re ready. That’s how it has to be. You and I both know you’re too emotional to do what needs to be done when you remember . . . Well, you don’t want to remember what happened. It will ruin you as it ruined me, and we must stay focused on the end goal.” The woman looks away at something outside the range of the recording, then back. “If Jayd hasn’t yet found her way to the Bhavajas, through marriage or prisoner exchange, then you’ll need to return to the Mokshi and start again. There are more answers there. If she is with the Bhavajas this time, though, it means we are closer to success than we’ve ever been. Get back to the surface and find her. If she has done her part, then she will meet you at the Mokshi. Be sure the two of you have the arm and the world before you go, though, or we will have to do this again. Don’t think about why this is. Trust me as one can only trust oneself. You don’t want to start over. The world and the arm.” She looks away again, starts to say something else, and frowns. The recording ends. The mist swirls back into the core of the sphere, and it closes.

  “Who is that?” Arankadash asks. She has come up behind me. I didn’t hear her over the sound of my own voice. Her offspring is pulsing softly against her chest.

  “It’s me,” I say.

  * * *

  I replay the recording for the others once everyone is up the waterfa
ll.

  “This is a trick,” Casamir says. “You recorded it just now.”

  “She doesn’t have a scar in that image,” Arankadash says.

  Das Muni says nothing. She has pulled up her cowl again, so I cannot see her expression.

  “Do you believe me now?” I ask Casamir.

  “I believe this delusion is very complicated,” Casamir says. “I’m going to find something to eat.”

  We spend some time foraging along the waterfall to restock our supplies. There are mushrooms and fish-like animals and flying things, which Casamir catches by rigging up a throwing ball she had in her pack with a rope on the end that knocks them senseless. They are about as wide as both of my hands put together, and they are mostly wings, which makes for poor eating. But Casamir enjoys catching them, and after a time, we have a whole stack of them to skin and eat.

  As we sit and skin and chew, I say, “How many levels are there to the world, that you know?”

  “Hundreds,” Arankadash says. “That’s what we’ve always learned.” She gazes up at what will be our route very soon, following the river upward, ever upward.

  Casamir says, “We have scouted and recorded eighteen. These Katazyrna people you talk about aren’t recorded on any of them.”

  “I didn’t fall far enough for there to be hundreds,” I say. “Besides, I’m not the only one to fall. Das Muni has, too. She’s seen another world like I have.”

  Casamir rolls her eyes but says nothing.

  “She saved the lot of us,” I say. “You can be respectful.”

  “Sorry,” Casamir says. She glances over at Das Muni. Reluctantly hands her a skinned bat-bird. “I do appreciate it, even if you tried to fucking drown me.”

  Das Muni takes the offering in her long fingers and sets the bloody thing in her lap.

  “We thought you dead,” Arankadash says to Das Muni.

  “A spirit saved me,” Das Muni says.

  Arankadash nods. “I understand.”

  Casamir grimaces but, after a quick look at me, says nothing. We all create the stories we need to survive. Let Das Muni and Arankadash have theirs.