I am going to N’Terra. Damn the secrets. Damn the eyenu, whatever they are. Instead of adding more pieces to the puzzle, I will go back to where this puzzle began.
I step slowly and carefully over branches, sometimes climbing over trees that fell long before I was born. The suit I wear, grown by the qalm, doesn’t tear or snag. When I slide on my stomach over the rough surface of a massive trunk, the suit seems to grow smooth, helping me along. I catch glimpses of the moon as I move north—but the glimpses are farther apart, the moments in shadow longer and deeper. There is the occasional iridescent flower, but the soft glow is enough to show me my hands, and never the nonexistent path. I tell myself my feet will know it when they find it. That some unknown force will draw me to N’Terra. That is not science, a voice like Alma whispers from the back of my mind.
And neither is my decision to go back home, I think. But the similarities between my mother’s approach and my grandmother’s are too glaring to ignore: mystery. Puzzles. Secrecy. Secrecy got my mother killed, I think, and swipe a tear from my face.
I’m just starting to get angry about the irrationality of crying when a sound stops me cold. It’s different from the gentle rhythms of the trees, the ubiquitous movements of a hundred unseen animals. It is purposeful. Every step has a goal. A crackle of twigs, the hush of leaves pushed aside with urgency. I stand rooted to the spot, one hand clutching a branch in the dark. The sounds are louder, come closer, the steps quick and heavy.
It can’t be a dirixi. I would have felt the quake of its arrival. Am I bleeding? Had the smallest thorn pricked my skin through the suit, the smell of blood drawing the beast from its faraway cave? A small one, perhaps. A young one, sent out to hunt for the first time. No one would ever find my body, consumed by its fledgling jaws.
I force myself to widen the tunnel. Too late to arm myself: the branch I clutch is attached to a tree, and it’s too thick to break off. In the dark I can’t even discern a climbable perch. I inhale hurriedly, wondering if a field of rhohedron will rescue me this time, but my nostrils are empty, and the sound of the creature rushing toward me is closer than ever. When the tunnel spirals fully open, its consciousness is almost upon me.
I recognize the presence just as the dense plants part to reveal the creature. A surge of energy, purple with worry. The gwabi bursts from the greenery and closes the space between the bushes and me with a single leap.
“Oh,” I whisper.
She butts me with her massive head, intending to be gentle but sending me stumbling backward with her strength. She growls low in her throat, but I know from the signals she passes me in the Artery that she means me no harm.
“I’m okay,” I say. I run a hand along her back, still in awe of the rock-hard muscles her sable fur conceals, the sticky electric buzz it seems to leave on my fingertips.
She regards me with luminous eyes, sizing me up, searching for wounds. I assure her in the tunnel that I am unharmed, but she continues to express her worry. I don’t know how she found me. She makes it clear that I shouldn’t be alone. Not out here.
“I have to go back,” I say to her, the best way I can in Arterian. Arterian is never words, but it’s different with animals than with the Faloii. She gazes at me, understanding—I think—where I’m going but worried about why. She knows what is in N’Terra. She had been a prisoner there.
“I have to do something,” I whisper, passing her colors and shapes: my fear for my people and the Faloii, my dread for what will happen to the planet if N’Terra’s actions bring war. She gazes at me impassively, her eyes like two glowing orbs. She is angry, her disgust for N’Terra smoldering inside her. She doesn’t wonder what it is I plan to do—she merely assesses me in that motherly way, and I feel from her the same sentiment my mother would have provided. Something that strengthens my resolve.
My hand is still on her back, and she turns away, guiding me around the reaching tentacles of a skinny tree that may not be a tree at all. She warns me to stay close—I’m her blind furless cub in a jungle of thorns. I walk along beside her, comforted by the rumble in her throat. Together we walk south.
The night has thinned in the hours before dawn. Sunrise is a miracle that I have never experienced within the isolated security of the Mammalian Compound: the way the sun, still hidden below the horizon, manages to dilute night’s opacity. The jungle is no longer one jagged shadow after another: I can differentiate between ogwe and marandin trunks.
And I smell water. I have no idea how many miles I have traveled in the secure company of the gwabi, but even with the help of the qalm suit, my body is telling me hydration is necessary. When I communicate this to the gwabi, she is reluctant to deviate from the invisible path she follows, but her concern for my well-being outweighs her desire to press on. She leads me to the right, cutting through the walls of green that surround us on all sides. She moves quickly and I trot to keep up, vines whipping across my cheeks. I use my arms to shield my face as we continue on, but a few moments later I am able to lower them as we break through into what seems to be a clearing. True dawn is still an hour or so away, but its approach shows me that I was correct about the scent of water. There is a lake, shadowy in what’s left of the moonlight, but smelling perfectly drinkable.
Still, I wait until the gwabi lowers her head to drink before I dare scoop up a palmful of it. My father would have a seizure if he could see me these past few days: rubbing the fluids of strange flowers on my skin, attempting to drink water that hasn’t been properly tested. But if it’s good enough for the gwabi, it’s good enough for me. I’m just bending my neck to sip from my hands when the sound of the water stirring far out in the lake causes me to jerk my eyes up.
It’s still too dark to see well, and the forgotten water flows down my wrists as I scan the surface desperately, seeking the source of the sound. I back away from the water’s edge and find the gwabi doing the same thing, a nervous growl rumbling in her throat. I squint, the clouds over the moon playing tricks on my sight: Is that a shadowy figure there in the center of the lake? Something sinking down under the water? A massive something, slipping below the surface just as my eyes fasten on the bulk of it.
I don’t know if it’s me or the gwabi that screeches when the figure appears on the bank, not far from where we stand. We both leap back, the gwabi bristling, ready to lunge. The figure grows larger, standing from where it had been crouched at the water’s edge. I can’t move, too terrified to open the Artery and ascertain whether the creature is harmless or means to attack. The gwabi hasn’t moved, so surely this means the shadowy figure before me is an herbivore? She would know if it was a predator. Any logic that is solid and strong inside me crumbles into powder as the figure moves toward me.
And then the clouds shift. The moonlight is my friend.
The shadow is my grandfather.
“You,” I gasp, my lungs finally deciding to work again. I have a name for him—Jamyle Lemieux—but not a name of the heart, like Nana. This man whose face I know is part of my blood but is a stranger to me.
“Octavia,” he says. The first time hearing my name from his mouth and it’s accompanied by a frown. “What are you doing here? Does your nana know you’re here?”
“Y-yes,” I stammer. “She’s the one who told me I should go.”
“Go where?” he says. “In the middle of the night?”
I hesitate.
“To N’Terra,” I lie. “The Faloii are going to the . . . the Isii? They might turn the planet against the humans. If I can get back to N’Terra and make everyone see the truth, then maybe we can stop this.”
“Back to N’Terra.” He frowns. “I would have thought your nana wanted you far from that place. I don’t think logic and reason are tools that work on those people.”
“Logic and reason are what I was raised on,” I say, and when I hear it out loud, I feel stronger. The idea of going back and facing Albatur and his lies takes the shiver out of my skin. My grandfather says nothing.
; “Someone said that N’Terra sent a weapon for you,” I say before he can challenge me. “Why? Why you?”
His eyes had been wandering out over the black water, but now he peers at me through the dark.
“Not just me,” he said. “Your grandmother too. Albatur blames us for the delay of his life’s work. And he’s right. About this I have no regrets.”
The words life’s work catch my ear and now I’m gazing out over the lake as well.
“Why do you come here?” I say. “Why is this what you study?”
“Study,” he repeats with a smile. “I don’t study the black lake. I protect it.”
“Protect it? Protect it from what?”
“From who,” he says. “I protect it from myself: N’Terra. There is nothing on this planet that our people would not seek to exploit. Your grandmother now protects Mbekenkanush; I protect the black lake. Like everything else on this planet, it carries something.”
I cast my eyes back out to the black waters. “What does it carry?”
“Trees carry memory. Water carries words. Kawa carry everything.”
I eye my grandfather in the pale light, his skin taking on a bluish tint beneath it. I wonder silently if he’s not a little bit . . . off. He’s older than my grandmother, and after everything he’s been through, maybe something in his mind has loosened.
“I thought I saw something sinking out there,” I say. “Something huge. Is it a specimen? An animal, I mean?”
He turns away from the lake, his eyes on me again and the smile faded from his mouth. It’s strange finding pieces of my mother in the creases of this man’s face. Her worry is a gene, passed on from this jaw.
“This entire planet is an animal,” he says. “Which is why we must be very cautious about what happens next.”
“You mean with what the Faloii are planning?”
“Yes and no. The Faloii may pass along the fact that humans have become parasitic and Faloiv remains hospitable. But the planet and its creatures will always have their own ideas. The very plants we eat could turn against us.”
Beside me, the gwabi gives a low grumble in her throat. My grandfather isn’t able to speak Arterian, but I wonder if she understands his meaning nonetheless. As I’d walked through the jungle with her, the shadows had lost their sinister quality, but now they seem ominous again as I imagine the trees growing fangs and swallowing us whole. My grandfather moves toward me, and he seems to see the fear growing in my eyes.
“Courage isn’t the only thing that will help us survive,” he says. “But it is one thing. Going back to N’Terra will take courage. Especially if you fail.”
“I won’t,” I say, setting my jaw, against my fear and against his words. “People just need to know what’s going on. Albatur is running the show and keeping everyone in the dark. If people knew . . . this wouldn’t be happening.”
He studies me for a long moment, his expression so like my mother’s I almost wince. But when he speaks, it’s his voice, not hers, and the loneliness in what lies ahead of me swoops down from the sky like a night bird.
“I hope you’re right.”
Chapter 9
It’s well past dawn when I glimpse the red road through the trees. We’ve been walking all night and my limbs had begun to feel as if they’ve been replaced by pillars of stone, each countless step through the dense jungle more painful than the last. But when my eyes find the swirls of rosy dust rising in the wind, all the fatigue that had been building in my bones crumbles away. I find myself gripping the fur of the gwabi’s shoulder, energy pulsing through me. She growls gently to make me relax, but instead I pull her to a stop.
“You have to stay here,” I whisper, as if the ears of N’Terra reach this far. Maybe they do. “It’s not safe for you.”
She understands the shapes I pass her in the Artery, and her fear reflects back to me in a pulse of orange, the memory of the containment room still fresh. Still, she is worried for my well-being and butts me powerfully on the shoulder. I brace myself and cradle her massive head in my arms.
“I’ll be okay,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut. “Just stay far away. Don’t let anyone see you.”
I think of Manx and her group of finders, and the idea of them combing the jungle for the gwabi and any other escaped specimens sends a blaze of fury through me. I pass the gwabi a series of comforting messages and then step out onto the road.
I know immediately where I am. The branch arcing over the road curves the way it always has, marking the way to the Beak. I’m about halfway there from the Mammalian Compound. Somehow the branch looks too familiar. I’ve been gone less than a week, I tell myself. It shouldn’t look any different. But even if every leaf is the same, I know the world has changed.
I point my feet east down the road, trying not to think about the times I had traveled this very route with my father in one of N’Terra’s chariots. Slow down, Octavia, I hear him say in my head, the wind whipping past us carrying the colors and smells of Faloiv, things he was oblivious to. My previous fatigue returns to me, weighing down each step. The suit from the qalm keeps me miraculously cool, but suddenly sweat is pouring from my scalp and beading up on the bridge of my nose. My father. Will the news of war be exactly what he wants to hear? I make my way down the road, staying close to the tree line in case I need to dive in for cover. I’ve spent the last hours of walking with the gwabi mentally going over my plan, but even after all that, it’s not much of one.
I’m going to the Greenhouse first. More than anything I want to reunite with Alma and Rondo, but strolling in through the gates of one of the compounds doesn’t seem like an option. I need help, and with Dr. Espada gone, I think my best chance is with Dr. Yang. She taught me when I was a child, and had been kind to me the last time I’d seen her—the day my mother was arrested. I don’t know whether she’ll listen to me, but at least I’ll have access to the greencoats. Maybe Yaya and the others are back in the Greenhouse after the disaster in the Zoo. Maybe I can convince them too. I don’t know who else I can trust.
Every step on the road stirs up the powdery red dust, and I imagine this is what my blood must look like churning through my heart—so frenetic it disintegrates. By the time the school appears through the trees ahead, I’m panting, not from the heat but from my own anxiety. I swallow hard as I approach the front door, trying to remember the resolve I’d felt by the black lake and grip it like a weapon. I am here for a reason.
But as soon as I duck inside the Greenhouse I know that something is off. Dr. Yang’s classroom is closest to the door, and for as long as I can remember, the first thing one hears when entering the school is the sound of the kids chanting whatever song she had made up that week to help them remember their species classification charts.
Today there is silence.
Not thick silence—the kind where people are present but wordless, hushed with study. This is empty silence that encases the ear in solitude—the kind that lets you know you’re alone.
Dr. Yang’s door is open, as always, but when I peek my head around the corner to peer in, everything has changed. The colorful charts that had once covered the walls as learning aids have been stripped away, the illustrations of animals that I know Dr. Yang had lovingly sketched with her own hand are gone. And so are the children.
“Octavia?”
I jump hard. Dr. Yang emerges from the back of the room, the green glow from the windows, which had once been so calming, now creepy and damp.
“Dr. Yang,” I say. “Where is everyone? The kids?”
“They’ve been moved into the labs,” she says. She seems to float across the classroom, her face drawn. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here. Not alone.”
At first I think her worried expression is for my face: that the fear rising in her eyes is a reflection of what she thinks I have done, figments of whatever story the Council has woven about me. But as she gets closer, I find that her eyes look past me: they hover over my shoulder, eyeing the hall.
“The little kids are in the Zoo?” I say, entering the classroom. The green glow sweeps over my skin. “Why? For what?”
“Things are changing quickly,” she says. “The Council has decided to rethink the path of N’Terran education. Theory is out, they say. Hands-on is in.”
“They’re only, like, eight years old,” I say, incredulous. “They have them working in the labs?”
“Yes. A lot of it is watching and listening. Children do what they’re told.” She bites her lip. “Do you remember the drums?”
“The drums?”
“In the communes. When people would leave the labs, they would return to the communes and pick up drums?”
“Yes,” I say, baffled. “Of course.”
“Albatur has banned them. They are not what we should remember, he says. The Origin Planet he wants us to re-create has no music. Not that kind.”
“What does that even mean?”
“You shouldn’t have come back,” she says, shaking her head. “You may have been safer in the jungle.”
“It’s not about what’s safe,” I say. “It’s about what’s true. I need to get into the compounds. I need to talk to people!”
“That’s not a good idea,” Dr. Yang says. She steps past me toward the door, motioning for me to follow. “Come with me quickly. It’s better if we leave from the rear exit. I can escort you to the tree line but after that you must continue alone, I’m afraid.”
“No,” I say, remaining where I am. “I need to get inside before things get even worse.”
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