An Anatomy of Beasts

by Olivia A. Cole

  Your people are a risk, Kimbullettican says finally, turning back to me. The multukwu do not wish to carry you any farther. They are afraid.

  Are they going to leave us here? I say, panicked. We’ve already swum so far with their assistance. . . . I can’t imagine having to do it alone.

  I have convinced them to guide us to the next cavern. They will allow us to surface there and then make their departure.

  We didn’t know, I say. I try to communicate this to the multukwu as well as Kimbullettican, but the animals are reluctant to accept my intonations. They are confused, afraid. I get the feeling that we have been transformed into parasites in their eyes; they want to be rid of us, and fast.

  What if the qararac comes back? I ask Kimbullettican.

  I have explained the situation as best as I am able. The sooner we return to land, the better.

  I want them to know I’m sorry, I say. Do they understand that? That we’re sorry? We didn’t know.

  The outcome is the same, they say, and push off from the skull wall, returning to the vast deep blue of the underwater tunnel. The animals bearing me and my friends follow, the playfulness of before left behind in the bones. Their round bright eyes seem sunken now, and they avoid looking at us. They seal themselves off from me and carry us forward, more quickly than before. We continue on the route, Kimbullettican swimming steadily at the rear of the group, their anger still smoldering in the Artery.

  Chapter 22

  Land feels strange under my feet when we are returned to the surface. My body feels heavier and lighter at the same time, my limbs wobbly. When the mask of the suit withdraws from my face, allowing me to breathe air unassisted again, I have to be careful not to take in too much. Rondo makes himself dizzy breathing too deeply and he sits on a large stone, regaining his bearings as Kimbullettican pauses in the shallows, discussing with the multukwu. I stand nearby, my attention torn between their conversation and the sensation of the sun and my suit simultaneously drying me. It’s pleasant, and somehow reminds me of my mother—warm, comforting strokes drawing the chill of the water out of my skin. My shoes, on the other hand, are N’Terran material and feel clammy against my feet.

  “What did they say?” I pry when Kimbullettican turns back to land. Behind them, the multukwu sink quickly into the deep, the dense blue water obscuring their path. A single ring of ripples spreads and then it’s as if they were never there at all.

  “They are confused about what your people are. They are having trouble differentiating between you and your friends, as you are connected to the Artery and they are not.”

  “So what happened?” Alma says, appearing next to me. “Was that thing down there after them or us?”

  “One of you,” I say, turning on her. “Because one of you ate the zunile in N’Terra.”

  Her mouth falls open and snaps shut in almost one motion. Behind her, from the stone he rests on, Rondo says nothing, staring intensely.

  “It was me,” she says slowly. “I only had a couple pieces. Before I knew what it was. It was weird. Jaquot was the one who liked it. . . .”

  “Jaquot,” I say with a groan. “Kimbullettican, do they know he’s eaten it in Mbekenkanush?”

  “I do not know,” they say, and I sense their anger rising again in the tunnel. “If the qararac is sensing the carnivore in you, then it is entirely possible other predators will do the same.”

  “But we’re not carnivores,” Alma protests. “We had no idea it was flesh! We grew up eating plants.”

  “The outcome is the same,” Kimbullettican snaps, the same words I have heard multiple times from the Faloii.

  I turn away, a flood of tears building in my eyes. There’s no way around this. We do need to leave Faloiv, I think, and the idea of it feels like massive jaws closing around my chest. The multukwu were so beautiful, so wondrous . . . now they will likely never allow humans near their world again. It’s like Rondo said, about what our people brought with us from the Origin Planet. Had they brought nothing good? Had they carried only destruction across the galaxy?

  “What are we supposed to do?” Alma says. Her jaw is trembling, so I know she wants to cry too. Rondo sits with his hand covering his face.

  I’m suddenly so angry at them I can’t speak. I clench my fists and inside the tightness of my hand, the feeling of my mother’s fingers slipping away rises up. And I’m angry at her too. For her lies. For her silence. At the fact that she’s not here. I stare down at the qalm-grown suit, and at the bottom of it, my once-white N’Terran shoes. I glare at them, the only thing on my body still wet besides my hair, which, unbraided, has puffed in the humidity. These shoes. These stupid white shoes. N’Terra had stolen the animals’ secrets to make clothing like this: clothing that pales in comparison to that which it was stolen from.

  I find myself leaning against one of the many boulders at the edge of the water, tearing at my shoe with my still-pruny fingertips, my anger climbing and climbing.

  “Octavia,” I hear Alma say, but I ignore her, snatching at the fastenings that keep the shoe on my foot. When it’s off, I fling it away from me before starting on the other, my hands shaking with rage.

  I throw the other shoe after the first one, and stand there barefoot in the loamy soil, panting. I don’t look at Rondo, Alma, and Kimbullettican—I don’t know what their faces will say, and I don’t want to know. Everything in me feels sodden and inflamed all at once. I try to focus on the feeling of the soil finding its way between my toes, and this momentarily displaces my rage. Under the warm top layer, the dirt is cool and damp, the true form of my grief when it’s not stirred by helpless anger. I breathe deeply, sinking into this feeling, and my tears have just begun to prickle again when something else draws my attention, something almost inside me but not quite.

  It seems to have crept up into me through my feet, a tingling sensation that is half sharp and half soft. I’d be panicking about the possibility of parasites if my suit didn’t suddenly seem to wriggle with energy. I can only stare down at my feet, silently searching for a sign of what this means, while my skin seems to vibrate under the sudden joy of the suit. There’s no explanation I can discern: just my bare feet, half submerged in the deep green and black soil, my suit nearly throbbing.

  You feel it, Kimbullettican says. They’ve moved closer from the edge of the water, their spots floating in small circles as they study me with their serious, sparkling eyes.

  “What is that?” I whisper, looking back down at my suit. I still see nothing, but the vibrating sensation continues, and my skin feels bright underneath it.

  “Interesting,” Kimbullettican says. “I do not believe this is a common occurrence with humans.”

  “What is it?” Alma says, appearing beside them, Rondo a step behind her looking sad.

  “You are aware your suits are organic living material,” Kimbullettican says. “They gather energy and sustenance from our bodies as well as the sun. But also from the ground, when there is a proper conduit.”

  “Me,” I say. “I am the conduit?”

  “Yes. With your foot coverings, there has not been a connection. Or if there has, perhaps you were not paying suitable attention. The suit is grateful for it now.”

  “Why is it unusual for a human?” Rondo says.

  “Not unusual to be a conduit,” Kimbullettican says. “We are all channels of energy. But unusual for a human to detect the energy at all. One must be . . . highly sensitive.”

  I think back to the day my mother was arrested. She had just told me to remove my shoes when the graysuits had arrived. She had known, and that means my nana must too. Does she ever lose track of the lies she’s had to tell? Maybe when it had become too much was when she decided to fade into the jungle. After years of mourning her disappearance, I think I understand now. I feel the call of the green breath of Faloiv. I think it might be a relief to answer it.

  And then, like a storm that exists only in my bones, the calling of Faloiv abruptly gets louder. The cre
eping feeling that I had felt in the soles of my feet intensifies. I hear another voice that’s not a voice. I recognize it only vaguely at first: thrumming green energy, a rushing current of language and understanding that feels old and new at the same time. . . .

  It is the language of the qalm. Like the rest of the communication I experience in the Artery, it’s not words that I hear but a combination of instinct and emotion and understanding that swirls together in a rush of color and silent sound. It calls me. It feels me as a part of the Artery and tells me the same way it tells the rest of Faloiv:

  Danger. Humans are nearby.

  I’m running before I fully know why. The warning is not for me—it’s for the planet, for the animals and the people. But my feet fly down a path, the sound of Kimbullettican and my friends shrinking behind me. The green language guides me, a yellow glow of warning like a beacon ahead. Branches whip my cheeks, and my suit feeds me bursts of more oxygen as it senses my sudden panic. The fear is only dwarfed by the strangeness: I move toward other humans based only on the guides of Faloiv. I can sense the planet, but I can’t even sense my own people. Has the Isii decided something? Are humans in danger?

  I hear them before I see them. The buzz of many voices, the sound of many feet. Finders? Graysuits from N’Terra scanning the jungle for kawa? I burst through the tree line, my chest heaving, taking in the scene before me without caution, and the first person I see is Jaquot.

  “Octavia?” he calls. He stands at the edge of what seems to be a campsite, the numbers of which are hidden by the coming of night. At his side is Joi, and one or two other human youths from the school in Mbekenkanush.

  “Jaquot?” I haven’t caught my breath and his name comes out like a wheeze. A heartbeat later I hear it shouted from behind me in Alma’s voice.

  “Jaquot!”

  She bursts from the tree line with Rondo and Kimbullettican carrying my shoes. We’re attracting stares now from other people in the campsite, but Alma ignores them all.

  “You’re alive,” she says to Jaquot, and then looks at me, her eyebrow raised. “But I am not kissing him.”

  Shortly after, we sit around a glowing orange flower with Jaquot, Joi, and the others. The flower is a mobile plant that generally grows in a drier part of Faloiv, I learn. Kimbullettican tells us it had been watered and thereby gives off heat, which it would ordinarily use to subdue prey. We use it to cook strips of zarum and chunks of hava.

  “So every human in Mbekenkanush is here?” I say. I can’t eat: I’m focused on the story Jaquot is telling.

  “Almost all,” he says, chewing. Nothing ever keeps him from enjoying his food. “Your grandparents and a few others stayed behind. Sorry. I know you were probably hoping to see them.”

  “I was when I saw you,” I admit. “But if they’re still in the city, that at least means the Faloii haven’t turned against humans entirely.”

  “Turned against?” Joi says. “Why would that be your assumption? They are taking us somewhere where we can be safe. From whatever conflict is to come between Mbekenkanush and N’Terra.”

  Her tone irks me, and I almost start to say what I know about the Isii, but Kimbullettican catches me in the Artery.

  Do not, they say. If they do not know, they do not need to know. Not now.

  I bite my tongue. I hate the secrets. Who keeps what from who is too complicated a maze to walk through and I’d rather us speak plainly.

  “Look,” I snap. “All I’m saying is with everything going on between the N’Terrans and the Faloii, it’s only a matter of time until the Faloii end up looking at humans as a problem that needs to be solved.”

  “N’Terrans,” Joi says. “Not humans.”

  I catch the look of agreement on Alma’s face as she roasts a strip of zarum, but she avoids my eyes. Embarrassment floods through me, but it takes me a moment to realize it’s not my own. I feel shame, but it’s for these people. My people. They don’t get it. I don’t know if they ever will.

  “So where are they taking you?” Rondo says. He, like me, hasn’t eaten a bite.

  “I’m not sure,” Jaquot says. “Somewhere far north. There are mountains there, I hear. They must be hiding us away.”

  I stare at the orange flower instead of speaking. Through the material of my suit, Captain Williams’s pin jabs my leg. The idea that the Faloii are hiding humans from a war their own people instigated make the shame burn even hotter in my stomach.

  “Is that why there are Faloii standing guard?” Alma says, and her tone makes me look up. There’s a question behind the question, but Jaquot doesn’t hear it. He glances around the encampment, around which Faloii stand here and there. They carry no weapons but there’s no mistaking their posture: vigilance. Caution.

  “It must be,” Joi says. “My mother said that the soulless animals the N’Terrans send are for us. To eradicate the humans that betrayed the ship.”

  “The soulless animals,” Alma repeats, but Joi misinterprets it as a question.

  “Yes, animals your people have cut off from the heart of Faloiv.” There’s judgment in her voice. “N’Terra sends them as weapons, first for Octavia’s grandparents and now for the rest of us.”

  Night has fallen. The flower is an orange smudge at the center of our small circle. I silently widen the Artery, trying to see what I can gather, if anything, from the Faloii standing guard. But the only person I find in the tunnel is Kimbullettican.

  You do not follow this theory, they say.

  Which one?

  That my people are protecting yours.

  I do. I think you’ve been protecting us for a long time. I just don’t think N’Terra is what you’re protecting us from.

  They don’t ask, but I say it anyway:

  The planet is shifting, I say. I can feel it.

  Perhaps, Kimbullettican says. But perhaps you too are shifting. What you hear has always been.

  Above, a sudden cacophony of birdcalls makes us all jump—everyone but Kimbullettican. They gaze, spots wide with pleasure, up into the trees, seeing something the rest of us can’t. I widen the Artery, and while I can see the crowds of birds clearly—a species I’m not familiar with who greet me excitedly—I can’t sense anything that should have caused the sudden screeching.

  “Are they afraid?” I ask Kimbullettican. “They don’t seem afraid.”

  “No, not afraid. They are arguing with the trees.”

  “Sorry?” Alma says.

  “It is a friendly argument,” Kimbullettican says. “A nightly one. They are asking the syca for light.”

  “For light?”

  “It is their ritual. During the day, the male ikya birds draw the syca’s prey to the treetops. In exchange, the syca provide light that they have gathered from the energy of their prey. The female ikya then use the light to hunt for their own prey at night.”

  “Symbiotic,” Joi says.

  “So, the birds and the trees are . . . both carnivores?” Alma says.

  “Yes. But they have very specific prey. You have nothing to be afraid of. Not here.”

  “We always thought it was a free-for-all,” Rondo says, looking up into the trees in awe. “That carnivores ate carnivores no matter what.”

  “An oversimplification,” Kimbullettican says. “Most predators, if pressed, will feed outside their small web. The only thing that is guaranteed is that herbivores are never prey.”

  “Except by the dirixi,” I say.

  “Yes. The great exception.”

  “Why don’t you kill it?” Jaquot says, still looking up into the trees.

  Kimbullettican snaps their head sideways to fix him with a sharp stare. Their forehead spots harden into a stiff line that I recognize from Rasimbukar. In the Artery, their anger and disgust is a sudden green blaze that sweeps down the tunnel. They’re not alone: even Joi and Jaquot’s friends within Mbekenkanush regard him with stony expressions.

  “You lack education,” Kimbullettican says, and I brace myself for what flame fal
ls out of their mouth next when the air is suddenly illuminated with pale pink light. Kimbullettican turns away, looking back up into the trees, many of which now glow.

  It’s the syca. The ikya have won their nightly argument and the trees have agreed to open the petals of their formerly slumbering blossoms, which now bathe the forest in light. It’s gentle, the same pale color as the last of sunset, and with this new glow we barely notice the rest of the darkening evening.

  “It’s so beautiful,” I say. So beautiful I almost forget to scan the remaining light for the red smoke my grandmother had warned me to watch for. There is nothing.

  Kimbullettican doesn’t look at me, continuing to stare up into the treetops. “Yes, it is. This is my most cherished thing.”

  Beyond the pink of the syca’s glow, I can make out the sound of many pairs of wings, the ikya taking flight, off into the rose-tinged night to find their own prey.

  “I wonder why they haven’t adapted better night vision,” Alma ponders, peering up into the trees.

  “The arrangement works for them,” Kimbullettican says. “Both plant and animal benefit.”

  “What if something happened to the syca?” Alma says, frowning. “What would the ikya do?”

  “This is why the Faloii are here,” Kimbullettican says.

  Another sound now joins the ikya’s calling, low at first and then stronger, a thrumming like rhythmic wind, but with a melody buried between measures. Rondo’s head snaps up.

  “Hey,” he says, and that’s all before he’s standing up and moving, walking quickly away from our huddle and weaving through the other small groups of Mbekenkanush’s humans. Alma and I exchange glances, hesitating only a moment before we’re on our feet and following him.