An Anatomy of Beasts

by Olivia A. Cole

  “Octavia, what are you doing?” Alma screams. All our lives we’ve been told not to taste anything, touch anything, or get too close to anything without having identified it first. Right now the only identification I can rely on is the blue voice.

  I fight the cold that expands outward from my throat and grab another handful of the seeds, the red of them like a jewel in my eye. Rondo’s lips are already open but I have to squeeze his jaw to make room for the root’s guarded prize, and then drop them into his open mouth.

  “Sit him up,” I wheeze around the cold in my chest. “Sit him up.”

  Alma obeys, jaw hanging, helping me pull his supine form into a sitting position. I try not to notice how stiff his body feels, refusing to acknowledge the possibility that I’m too late and he’s already dead. Refusing to acknowledge that this plant wanted me to be part of that death. I massage his throat to help the seeds go down, but if they behave anything like they did in my body, they don’t need help: they slide and dissolve like balls of cold space.

  The seeds reach my stomach and my body stiffens like metal. My fingers go rigid and Rondo’s shoulder slips out of my grasp, held only by Alma. I stare at my hands, expecting them to transform into something else, into something hard and stony, as if I am about to watch myself become part of the ground I kneel upon. But a moment later I can’t see my hands at all: my vision goes orange, like the sun has exploded behind my eyelids. The cold that had been almost overwhelming a moment before seems to swallow itself, leaving behind a burst of heat that sends sweat fleeing from my skin. I sense my qalm suit working diligently to release the extra moisture, and it’s as if my very body is evaporating. Sweat flows freely down my face, my nose running, my eyes filling with tears I can’t see. The seeds, whatever they are, have done their work and now my body takes its turn in banishing the toxin from my skin.

  When the orange glare behind my eyes clears, I see two things. Rondo, his body dripping as if he had just emerged from the river running quietly alongside us. He stares up at the sky, blinking rapidly as what must be the same burst of internal sun clears itself from his vision. And beyond, stepping from the edge of the trees, is Kimbullettican, sitting astride a gwabi.

  Chapter 18

  “You,” I say when I find my voice. I’m still kneeling on the ground and don’t yet feel stable enough to stand. The gwabi greets me in the Artery—the gwabi I’ve come to think of as a friend—a smudge of concern for my condition that passes when she realizes the venom has been purged.

  Kimbullettican dismounts from the gwabi’s back. “You are all right now?” they say. They wear a woven sack on either shoulder, the straps crisscrossing over their narrow chest.

  “Y-yes,” I stammer, the last of the orange burst clearing from my eyes. “But what are you doing here?”

  “I have been following you since the wreckage of your people’s vessel,” they say, removing first one of the sacks and then the other. “I was forced to hide after the dirixi appeared. I am surprised you knew to approach the water.”

  “I smelled it,” I say. “Something told me I needed to get to it.”

  Kimbullettican pauses, leveling the endless blackness of their eyes at me. “Hamankush is correct—you are unusual.”

  Rondo coughs and I turn to where he’s attempting to rise. I want to help him up—my arm even jerks as if it’s going to do so on its own—but I’m afraid to touch him. I’m afraid that if I touch him again, the vile green voice will beckon to me once more, that something in me will start to see him as prey.

  “That was fun,” he says when he’s standing. He’s still blinking the invisible sun from his eyes. They land on Kimbullettican. “Oh. Hello.”

  “Anoo,” Kimbullettican says. “You are all right? Surviving vusabo venom is good but unpleasant.”

  “He’s all right now,” Alma interjects. “But is that all they need to do? Swallow those weird berries?”

  “Not berries,” Kimbullettican corrects. “The antivenin you both consumed is actually a collection of insect eggs that cluster in the root of the plant.”

  “Insect eggs,” Rondo repeats. He looks queasy. I stare down at the red stain the eggs had left on my fingers, which I had scooped so eagerly, thinking them seeds.

  “Nonviable, of course,” Kimbullettican goes on. “The shell of the root can only be cracked when the insects capable of survival have already left the nest.”

  “Wait,” I say. “So what if the eggs were viable? I wouldn’t have been able to open the nest?”

  “That is correct.”

  I stare at them, torn between numbness and anger. “So I dragged out the vusabo plant or whatever and got stabbed by its quills . . . and the antivenin may not even have been accessible?”

  “That is correct. The vusabo will reroot itself: do not worry.”

  “So we might have died. Both of us.”

  Kimbullettican blinks. “That is correct.”

  “Well, that’s lovely.” Alma sighs, exasperated. “Octavia, are you going to introduce us?”

  In the Artery, Kimbullettican assesses me, and I know right away that they sense whatever it was that had transpired between me and the vusabo. I feel their internal gaze pass over me with concerned interest, but they give away nothing about whether the subtle shifting I sensed within the plant was the result of Faloii intervention. Still, I close myself off abruptly.

  “This is Kimbullettican. They live in Mbekenkanush with Rasimbukar and my grandparents.” I pause, looking the Faloii youth up and down. “But what they’re doing here I couldn’t tell you.”

  Kimbullettican nods at Alma and Rondo in a friendly way, and then seems to catch the meaning of my words a beat later.

  “Doing here? You mean why am I here? I was sent by Rasimbukar.”

  My heart doesn’t know whether it wants to lift or sink. Rasimbukar has become a source of comfort, but I had left Mbekenkanush under the cover of night because I assumed Rasimbukar and her father—all the Faloii—had decided I was the enemy. If she sent Kimbullettican in pursuit of me, it seems I was correct.

  “So she . . . what? Sent you to take me back to Mbekenkanush?” I draw away from them toward Rondo and Alma, ready to flee, even if I don’t know how far we would get in this jungle that Kimbullettican knows so well.

  Kimbullettican tilts their head, the spots on their forehead clustering with puzzlement.

  “Back to Mbekenkanush?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No,” they say. “Rasimbukar knew you would return to your people’s settlement but could not be sure what you hoped to accomplish there. You were inside longer than she believed you would be, but I waited beyond the walls. When you emerged, I tracked you until you required assistance.”

  “So you’ve been spying on us?” Alma says, hands on hips.

  Kimbullettican’s forehead spots rise and disperse. “Spy? I have been spying you, correct. Is this what you mean?”

  “No, it’s not what I mean,” Alma says. Her voice is higher than is natural, and I recognize this veneer. Alma doesn’t do conflict. This is the tone that emerges when forced to debate in the Greenhouse. She’d rather disprove everyone through twenty pages of meticulous research.

  “Alma,” I say, and lay a hand on her shoulder. Rondo stands back, squinting at us all. He has retrieved a canteen from the ground and I’m relieved. I didn’t want to have to tell him to keep drinking and risk sounding like Manx, or worse, my father. “Take it easy. Kimbullettican, why did Rasimbukar send you after me?”

  “To help you,” they say simply.

  “To help me do what?”

  “She did not specify. But knowing my parent, I can hypothesize.”

  “Wait,” I say. “Rasimbukar is your mother?”

  “Yes. She parented both Revollettican and myself.”

  “I . . . oh. I didn’t know that.” I pause, afraid to ask. “Is . . . Revollettican okay?”

  “You are asking if they are alive?”

  “Yes.”


  “Revollettican lives. I would not be away from Mbekenkanush or my parent otherwise.”

  Relief opens like a flower in my chest.

  “Okay. Good. Well, if you could hypothesize, then, why did Rasimbukar send you after me?”

  “Rasimbukar loved your mother,” they say. “They were good friends. There are many in Mbekenkanush who do not see the good of your people, but my parent does.”

  “So she . . . sent you to help me do what?”

  “You are a person who does things, she said. I am here to ensure you do not do wrong things.”

  Alma makes a wide gesture. “Can we get some specifics? Is that an option? Or is there another secret involved?”

  “The Faloii have no secrets,” Kimbullettican says without emotion, and I realize for the first time that I may know some things they do not. “At least not from each other.”

  “This is all about power,” Alma says. “The people in N’Terra who are responsible for all this madness just want an energy source that will enable the Vagantur to leave Faloiv.”

  “The Elders of Mbekenkanush have told us that this energy source you seek is within our bones.”

  “Not us,” Alma corrects before I can interject about the Solossius. “Dr. Albatur.”

  “The Elders are having difficulty distinguishing one N’Terran from all of N’Terra,” Kimbullettican says. “As there has been no measurable response against this person you speak of.”

  “We helped an entire laboratory of animals escape!” Alma says, indignant. “And Adombukar!”

  “But he and the animals should not have been there at all,” Kimbullettican says, as if puzzled by this argument.

  “Look,” I say, my hands spread out between them. “Kimbullettican. What about the people living in Mbekenkanush? People like my grandparents?”

  Kimbullettican turns their eyes on me, their darkness almost soothing under the bright light of the sun.

  “Humans,” they say. “A different kind from N’Terrans, the Elders believe. It is understood that humans like your grandparents have not contributed to the current state of things. But Faloiv is in a delicate state. Their safety is not guaranteed if the planet should shift and require rebalancing.”

  “Rebalancing,” Rondo says. “What does that mean exactly?”

  “I do not know,” Kimbullettican says. “I am not an Elder.”

  “Helpful,” Alma mutters, but I say nothing. I’m not an Elder either, but my grandparents both had warned me about the Faloii’s journey to the Isii. Does Kimbullettican really not know?

  In response to Alma’s sarcasm, Kimbullettican’s forehead spots drift in puzzlement once more, and I realize that our body language and ways of speaking are probably baffling to them. The humans they have become accustomed to sharing space with in Mbekenkanush have, for the most part, been raised among the Faloii. Their mannerisms have been molded by the people of Mbekenkanush.

  “So what’s in the bags?” I say.

  Kimbullettican’s spots rise, and they bare their teeth as they had in Mbekenkanush, the smile at least one thing they have inherited from humans. They turn to the bags they had placed at their feet, opening one, its material releasing a rich planty smell that prickles my nostrils.

  “Suits,” Kimbullettican says, and withdraws a gathering of gray-green material, slightly iridescent in the sun. “Qalm grown.”

  Alma brightens instantaneously. “For us?” she says quickly, peering.

  “Yes,” Kimbullettican says, their spots communicating that they are pleased. “And a third for you, Octavia. Rasimbukar wasn’t sure if you would be allowed to keep it upon your exit from N’Terra.”

  “I almost wasn’t,” I say, stroking the sleeve of my suit.

  “Thank you,” Alma says. She’s already accepted one of the suits from Kimbullettican’s paw-like hands and holds it up to the sun, admiring it. “This is amazing. What all is it capable of?”

  “It will hydrate you more efficiently than your home versions can. It will cool you. It will provide a measure of camouflage. These suits were harvested from a relatively old qalm, so they cannot do some of the things one harvested from a younger qalm might offer. But they will do.”

  Alma has stepped behind a tree trunk to change, her eagerness irrepressible. She calls from behind it: “What’s the difference?”

  “Many of the older qalms did not encounter human genes until they had reached maturity, some well after. Young qalms were introduced to people like Octavia’s grandmother early on in their life cycle, and therefore had absorbed the information necessary to bond with your biology.”

  “So my suit works for me because the qalm I was sleeping in was comfortable with human biology?” I ask. I extend another of the suits to Rondo, who has mostly been staring at Kimbullettican in awe. When he accepts it, he’s still so busy watching them that he begins to change out of his N’Terran suit without caring that he stands in plain sight. Just as his chest emerges from under his suit, the shape of the muscles there surprisingly square, I jerk my eyes away to hear Kimbullettican’s response.

  “That is correct. There are parts of Faloiv that have become accustomed to human presence and incorporated it into their being. There are other parts that have not.”

  It’s such a simple statement, but it contains shadows.

  Alma emerges from behind the syca wearing her new suit, her arms extended to either side. “What do you think? Octavia, this thing is amazing. It’s like it’s talking to my actual cells. I feel so much cooler. Does everyone in Mbekenkanush wear these?”

  “All the humans,” Kimbullettican says, then turns their eyes back on me. “I have also brought something from your grandfather.”

  They reach into the other bag and a second later withdraw what looks like a book: one of the bound books that Jaquot and the other human youth in Mbekenkanush were studying the day I entered their classroom. This one, however, doesn’t look as worn as the ones they had pored over, and its spine is much thinner. It, like the bag it had been withdrawn from, gives off a somewhat planty smell.

  I take it from Kimbullettican’s outstretched hand. I’m a little disappointed at the sight of it: A book? When Kimbullettican said they had a gift from my grandfather, my heart had swelled irrationally with a burst of sudden hope. For the briefest moment I had envisioned him sending me something that might explain it all, a disk filled with the information I need to overthrow Albatur, or even a weapon of some kind he’d been working painstakingly on at the black lake, capable of shutting down the Solossius for good—perhaps that’s what I had seen sinking beneath the water. Instead, the object in my hand is barely a book: it’s hardly the width of my smallest finger, and rather than being bound at the spine, I find that it’s merely a thick piece of material that has been folded and creased to stack like a book.

  “What is it?” I say. The outside bears no markings or words.

  “I do not know,” Kimbullettican says. “I merely agreed to bring it to you.”

  “Does Rasimbukar know he sent it with you?”

  “My parent was present when it was given to me. She agreed that you need it.”

  Rondo and Alma, both suited and appearing to be enjoying the benefits of their new suits, crowd in on either side of me.

  “What’s it made of?” Alma says, squinting. “Some type of pressed fiber.”

  “It smells like a plant,” I say, turning it over in my hands. “Some kind of weird paper.”

  Rondo reaches out to touch it and his fingers brush mine. I withdraw my hand immediately. The thought that had attempted to invade my head—the thought that saw Rondo as prey—still feels too present. It’s like some kind of venom has invaded my blood and some irrational part of my brain thinks that touching him will spread the poison.

  “It’s soft,” Rondo says. I can tell by the way he avoids my eyes that he noticed me pulling away. “The paper, I mean. I didn’t expect it to be soft.”

  I unfold it, gently at first until I start to get it
uncreased and realize the material is tougher than it appears. It has an oily quality to it, as if it’s been treated with a substance to make it more durable. Fully unfolded, it’s more than a foot wide, and blank, I think, until the sun comes out from behind a cloud and reveals the ghosts of lettering on the other side.

  I flip it over to find a panorama of intricate shapes and lettering, illustrations extending from one edge of the material to the other.

  “What is it?” Alma says, leaning in to get a better look. We’re quiet for a moment, taking it in. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. Images that look like trees almost cover the entire surface of the paper, uniform at first glance but imperfect: some taller, some shorter, the black lines that render them thicker in some places than others. In many places the trees are interrupted by other shapes. Here, an angular shape with hard-lined wings; nearby, many rounded shapes like a nest full of scattered eggs viewed from the sky. I rest a finger against one of these round shapes.

  “I think it’s a map,” I say. “I think . . . this is N’Terra.”

  “You’re right,” Rondo says. He’s pointing now too, at the angular shape with wings. “That’s the Vagantur. This is a map of Faloiv.”

  “All of it?” Alma breathes. She’s pulling the map toward her, her eyes darting back and forth across its surface, absorbing it all. “It’s . . . it’s huge.”

  Kimbullettican leans in now to look too, and I angle the map toward them.

  “We are a small planet, but you have only seen a corner of it. Like this, though, it looks massive.”

  In the Artery I feel Kimbullettican’s pleasure glowing like an open flame. The map in my hands is a vast stretch of unfamiliarity, overwhelming in its scope: mountains here to the north, what looks like an immense waterfall farther east. The trees go on and on, the black lines that make them smudged with age in some places, before they give way to other landmarks: what looks like a long stretch of bones north of Mbekenkanush, one huge tree taking up a clearing the size of the Vagantur’s farther north still. But to Kimbullettican, these illustrations must look very different: a map of adoration, representations of places they have lived among and loved for longer than I’ve been breathing. Every stone is a bone in their body, every tree rooted in their history. I look at the map in my hands. Kimbullettican feels comforted in the tunnel, as if the very sight of their planet laid out in any form is a great gift. I let my eye rest on the shape of the Vagantur and wonder if the sight of it is a pain in their heart: this foreign wreck immovable and ugly, a marker for all that has happened at the hands of N’Terrans.