“Look at the plants.” Alma pants. She has crawled away from the water’s edge and sits shivering next to me. Animals continue to limp out of the jungle, collapsing at the river’s edge. Despite the nausea they all seem to be experiencing . . . they move toward the water. Not away.
I shift my eyes to the plants Alma indicates, the tall straw-like growths that had blown the lavender bubbles when we first arrived at the river’s edge. They appear to be drinking again, their tubular blades drawing purple water up from the river. Then, one by one, they straighten, pointing at the sky before releasing a series of shimmering, noxious bubbles that drift toward the jungle.
The roar of the dirixi fills my ears, and through the haze of sickness, I find myself still staring at all the animals on the bank. They don’t run, they don’t plunge into the water. They lie there in plain view, the terrifying cracking of trees announcing the arrival of Faloiv’s apex predator not enough to scare them into retreat. And even now, when I peek into the Artery, it is empty: every creature present has sealed themselves off. They all stare silently at the jungle with wide eyes and I turn my head to do the same.
The colossal head clears the tree line first, and I’m only twenty feet away. The one eye I can see is an inferno two feet across, with no eyelid to speak of. The teeth are more terrible up close than I could ever have imagined, red at the gums and yellow at the point, still carrying the last shred of a gray uniform. Its shoulders emerge next from the trees, and I take in the beginning of what looks like a crest of spikes down its back but on second glance I find to be trees: not big ones but solid-looking plant life that took up residence along the path of its spine. The dirixi is a planet all its own, a whole ecosystem of terror, and I swear that giant fiery eye lights up when it spots the collection of helpless animals there along the bank of the lavender river. It takes a lurching step forward, the ground shaking.
And then it stops.
The eye narrows, the black nostrils quivering. All along the edge of the water, the straw-like plants release the harmless-looking bubbles from their slender stems, and it might all be beautiful if the dirixi wasn’t standing there with its mouth partially open, its monstrous fangs on display. Out from between those teeth slithers the impossibly bright tongue, separated, I see, into three forks, which taste the air hesitantly.
The dirixi makes a sound like a grunt, erupting from the cavern of its long, scaled throat. It shifts the weight from one front leg to the other, giving it an appearance of indecision. The smell is as thick and horrid as ever; I breathe through my mouth but it’s almost worse—the stench seems to make the air thicker, and my lungs reject it. Some of the animals on the bank seem to have the same reaction, a variety of furred and scaled chests rising and falling quickly, panting. I feel light-headed, but I can’t take my eyes off the dirixi, who hulks there, half in and half out of the forest like an angry landform.
The stalks along the edge of the river release a fresh wave of lavender bubbles, and the only sound I can hear is the ragged grunt of the dirixi, erupting like thunder from its throat. It shambles backward a step or two, a movement that doesn’t appear to come naturally to it. The ground trembles, and several smaller trees are cracked in half by its bulk. Out of one of the damaged trees falls a blue-furred mammal I can’t identify, and the dirixi snaps it up eagerly, the blue fur gone as quickly as it had appeared. The reptile continues shuffling backward, its nostrils snorting heavily, trying to expel the stench. The rest of us lie there, weak and sick, but the reptile we’re all terrified of can’t seem to tolerate it: froth gathers at the corners of its hideous mouth, its scaled throat convulsing, fighting to keep down the animal it just devoured.
None of us moves, human or animal. The bubbles rise silently around us, shiny and innocuous. When the ground has ceased to shake and the rumble of the monster’s throat has faded from our ears, I finally lean sideways into the jungle and vomit.
Chapter 17
“Mutualism,” Alma says when we’ve recovered. The three nameless carnivores that had waded into the river have climbed out, unharmed. Their coats, still rugged and puffy, are now absent of all the pollen and debris from the jungle that had coated them prior to entering the river. “Their coats must collect stuff from the foliage, and when they go in the water, the microorganisms feed on it. That must produce the smell—a chemical reaction maybe? Whatever it is, the dirixi hates it. Fascinating.”
I’m pretending to examine the tall plants that still dip in and out of the river, blowing bubbles. I had thrown up partially on Rondo’s shoe, and he said he doesn’t care, but how could he not, and it feels so stupid to be embarrassed about something like that after we’d nearly been eaten alive, but I can’t help it. The plants go on releasing their transparent floating orbs, but they, like the rest of the air, seem to have lost their horrendous odor. One by one the animals that had sprawled, heaving, on the bank had righted themselves and returned to the jungle. The three web-footed carnivores return to the trees, and when the last of the creatures have gone, it’s just the three of us.
“So what happened to you two?” Rondo says, his sarcasm dulled by the fading nausea but still apparent. “Enjoy your little adventure?”
“We found a prison cell,” Alma says. “With Captain Williams’s skeleton in it.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Come again?”
“‘Only one will make it run. Three pieces to return,’” she recites. “That’s what we found scratched into the wall of her cell. Show him the pin, O.”
I withdraw the pin from my pocket and pass it to Rondo, who regards it with his eyes wide. “This is . . . a lot.”
“I know,” Alma says excitedly. I’m still reeling from our near escape from both the Vagantur and the dirixi, but she’s already moved on in spite of the bump that has grown on her forehead. She rubs it absentmindedly, her eyes bright.
“We’ve been on Faloiv for forty years,” I say. “Now Albatur gets elected and there’s all this stuff about bones and kawa. It makes no sense.”
“Whatever this is, it’s not sudden,” Alma says, taking the pin from Rondo and examining it more closely. “Look at this situation with Captain Williams. I mean, no one has ever told us how she died. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard whitecoats say it was old age. That was obviously a lie, so what else have they lied about?”
She’s right, of course. I feel distracted. All this about the kawa . . . the looming shadow of war . . . it seems too large. As if I’ve been handed a single screw and have been asked to build a space shuttle.
“I lost my pack when the guard caught me,” Rondo says. He’s rubbing his wrists, and I know they’ll be bruised from the restraints. I reach out and take one of his hands in mine, rubbing my thumbs gently over the tender skin. “Including my canteen.”
He might have been about to say more, but he pauses, eyeing me as I rub his wrist. I almost drop his hand, embarrassed that twenty minutes ago I’d been angry at him for no reason. But his skin is a comfort. I don’t know what home is anymore, but maybe it’s here in his palm.
“Yeah,” I say. “And you guys need water.”
“So do you,” he says, frowning.
“Yeah, but not like you two. My suit helps me a lot. I wish I could have brought two more.”
Alma casts her eye enviously over my body.
“It is amazing,” she says. “Rondo, you should have seen her camouflage inside the Vagantur. Absolutely incredible.”
“I saw it when the dirixi was here,” he says. “She was almost invisible.”
“Really?” I look down, but my suit has returned to its usual grayish green color of the qalm. “I don’t even notice when it does stuff anymore.”
Alma withdraws two canteens from her pack and moves to hand one to me, but I pass it to Rondo. The sun on his face reminds me of the first morning I’d walked outside the Paw and found him standing there waiting for the Worm. Warm. Gold illuminating the rich brown of him. I almost can’t look.
“Drink.”
He hesitates, studying me, but eventually he takes it and drinks deeply. We’d been careful to drink as we walked through the night from N’Terra, but since we’d found the Vagantur it had been nothing but running and sweating. They’re out here because of me, and I refuse to allow anything to happen to either of them. I let my eyes wander into the jungle, still half expecting the dirixi to emerge. But I find only endless trees. Near the middle of one I spot a collection of twigs and moss, camouflaged in the crook of two branches. A nest.
“So I hate to ask,” Alma says, munching on a thin strip of zarum from her pack. “But . . .”
“But what are we going to do about the kawa,” I say, turning to her. “I know.”
She looks wary, as if prepared for a resurgence of my anger, but I ignore it.
“So I was thinking,” I say. “There is definitely more than one kawa on Faloiv. I thought maybe the one Adombukar had in the Zoo was the only one. But then I thought about the sorting room. Remember? On the first day of our internships? The egg Jaquot couldn’t touch but I could for some reason?”
“That makes sense.” Alma nods. “But it doesn’t help us think about where to find them. The finders roam all over; they could have found them anywhere. Although I don’t think they’ve ever been this far out.”
“And I don’t think they knew what they had,” Rondo says. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have even put them in the same holding area as actual eggs. It wasn’t until after your mom was arrested that your dad had the guards looking for the kawa inside N’Terra. So they must have learned something and have been looking since then.”
I still feel distracted. It’s like the Artery is full of voices, but none of them are decipherable. Noise from the jungle, quick and impossible to read like the qalm’s language.
“What’s wrong?” Alma says, pausing her nibbling.
“I don’t—nothing. I think throwing up just made me feel weird,” I say, avoiding Rondo’s eyes. “But we should start moving. Who knows if the guards at the Vagantur are going to sweep the jungle looking for us.”
“Not likely,” Rondo says. “They probably won’t leave the ship for hours after seeing the dirixi. But you’re right. Which way?”
This was the question I was hoping I would have an answer to before someone asked. I look beyond Rondo to avoid having to speak right away, and my eyes land on the river once more. The movement of the water holds my gaze, and something about it calls to me. Is this the sound that had filled my inner ear? Something about it is familiar. I find myself wandering to its edge.
“The dirixi is gone,” Alma calls, but without being able to explain why, I find myself kneeling by the water’s edge, and then dipping one hand down into it.
At first I think the buzzing sensation is just shock from how cold the water is—because it is shockingly cold. It seems hard to believe that on a planet as hot as Faloiv, anything could be this cold. But when the initial shock wears off, the buzz remains and I find myself smiling: it’s pleasant, like reuniting with a friend I haven’t seen in a long time.
“What’s so funny?” Alma says, moving toward me. She does it hesitantly, as if she can sense that something about what’s happening is odd.
“Shh,” I say, because just as she’s spoken, I hear another kind of voice. It’s low and soft, and half hidden by the language of the water. But the river seems to carry it along, bearing it up to my ears. I listen hard, harder than I’ve ever listened before.
And then I hear it.
Afua.
I shoot my eyes over at Alma and Rondo, but I can tell by the mystified looks on their faces that they cannot hear what I hear. Somehow, in the river, I hear my grandmother’s voice.
Nana, where are you?
I am at the black lake with your grandfather, she says. Are you all right? We cannot speak long this way.
I’m okay, I . . .
You went to N’Terra?
I swallow. I wonder if she feels my guilt through this strange connection we have made.
Yes.
The fact that you have found me here tells me you did not find what you hoped to find there.
Her voice seems to travel up my arm. She’s too far to connect with in the Artery, but the water seems to act as a conductor. My grandfather’s words drift back to me: “Water carries words.”
No, I didn’t. I thought that if they just knew the truth . . .
But they were not interested in truth.
No. No, they weren’t.
“Octavia?” Rondo says, looking puzzled.
“Shh,” I say again.
Did you see your father?
Yes. He—he told me a lot of stuff. Stuff about Albatur and what they want. They’re trying to repair the Vagantur. They figured out what the kawa do, and my dad wants me to find one for Albatur. He says they only need one and then they can leave.
I didn’t think it was possible for the water to feel colder, but suddenly it does: it jolts up my arm, and it’s as if it has transformed into the icy hand of my grandmother herself, gripping me.
There is only one kawa they are allowed and it is the one they came with, Afua. Do not under any circumstances give them that which they did not earn.
For a moment, in her sudden anger, I can almost feel her next to me. But then just as quickly, she’s fading. The water seems to be carrying her presence downstream, away from me.
They have left for the Isii, she says, and the rest of the planet’s noise seems to strengthen, drowning her out. You must hurry.
She says something else, but I can’t make it out.
Nana, I say. And then out loud, just in case, “Nana.”
The sound of breath and water is all I hear for a moment and then one last word before the river returns to being only a river, my nana’s voice carried away: North.
I withdraw my hand from the water, shaking off its icy droplets, and turn back to Alma and Rondo, who stand watching me openmouthed.
“Were you . . . were you talking to your grandmother?” Alma says, her strip of zarum forgotten.
“Yes. She . . .” It’s too much to explain. “Yes.”
Alma stares at me for a moment, then seems to decide to let it go. “And did she . . . have any advice?”
“North,” I say. “She says we should go north.”
“North?” Rondo repeats. I can only nod.
Alma doesn’t look convinced, but she doesn’t have an alternative plan—yet—so she merely shrugs. I don’t tell her the rest of what my grandmother had said, about not giving N’Terra the kawa. I need to think about it myself for a while. This problem of the kawa—what Albatur wants and what Mbekenkanush might think—feels large and cloudy in my mind, like a fin just breaking the water, beneath which lurks a much larger beast, its anatomy a mystery.
“It would help if we knew the animal that laid the kawa,” Alma says. We walk along the river, headed north. We stay in the shade as much as we can. The sun is nearly at the top of the sky, and even in the qalm suit I can feel its intensity.
“I’m not even sure an animal lays them,” I say, ducking a branch with scary-looking yellow thorns. “They don’t feel like the other eggs. For all I know they come right out of the ground. Maybe there’s a cave or something where they can be mined.”
“Now there’s a hypothesis,” Alma says, taking a swig of water from her canteen. Rondo’s usually quiet, but he doesn’t even seem to be listening to our conversation.
“Drink, Rondo,” I say, and when he eventually looks ahead at me, it’s as if it takes him a moment to understand what I’ve said. He nods vaguely and takes a drink from the canteen that had originally been mine, not meeting my eyes again. I turn my head quickly in case the hurt registers on my face—is he still mad about my attitude at the ship? Maybe he’s regretting coming with me at all now. He’s done so much to help me—getting house arrest in N’Terra and risking his life out here in the jungle. I imagine reality sinking into him like the hush that falls over the trees at th
e approach of the dirixi, and without meaning to, I imagine myself as the beast. Am I the monster for dragging the two people closest to me out into this mess?
“If only we had a shell of the kawa to use as we go,” Alma continues, oblivious to the storm swirling in my head. “We could, at the very least, identify some properties of the shell and see if that helps us track down what kind of ecosystem might have supported it.”
“But we don’t,” I say under my breath. Alma’s leading our small group now, sweat making the back of her neck shine. She has no idea where she’s going and still she leads. Ordinarily I would smile: typical Alma. But the doubt born in my brain gnaws a path through everything ordinary and a worm of irritability crawls through. Does she think that if we find the kawa, I’m going to give it over to my father? To Albatur? The possibility of having to choose a side emerges again and it makes me sick.
The lavender of the river alongside us eventually fades, the purplish tint of the water getting paler every few minutes. Eventually it runs clear, and I wonder where it leads, what color it turns in two miles, in ten. The pink lake in Mbekenkanush comes to mind, the black lake where my grandfather spends his time . . . so much on this planet to love and cherish. I’d grown up wanting to see and know every part of it, only to find that Albatur has been plotting—maybe for years—to exploit it. Can a planet hold a grudge? I imagine the water making itself undrinkable, the plants we eat shrinking from our fingers.
“We should stop and refill the canteens,” Alma says.
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