Captain Williams leans in toward the camera.
“Our ship was built using energy from an egg from the Planet X,” she says, whispering fiercely. She’s standing now, about to shut down. “I have dismantled the ship’s power cell. And concealed it, split in three. One piece in each of three pods—I’m hoping they make it outside the atmosphere of Planet X: if they are reunited, they will bond again, giving the River Corp agents the power they need to exploit this new world. With what I have done, we will be trapped here, but that’s better than the alternative: two planets destroyed. We come with nothing. We have been robbed for so long by the people of River Corp. Now I’m hoping to steal us another chance.”
She pushes away from the desk, reaching beyond the lens she’d been staring into. Whatever she fiddles with makes echoey scratching sounds in the audio. Behind her, LaQuinta Farrow whispers something I can’t catch, and I’m leaning into the screen, straining my ears, when its surface goes black. The hissing carries on for another minute or so, and I crouch there frozen, poised for more, until it finally fades to nothing, returning the interior of the pod into a capsule of silence. I continue staring out through the grimy transparent walls of the pod, at the jungle beyond, at the bit of the sky I can see beyond that. Time bends along with the truth, past and future reshaping themselves before my eyes. But at the center of my mind, I only think of Captain Williams, her lonely skull in the gloomy cell of the Vagantur: how the woman who made an impossible choice ended up dying alone in the dark.
I push back from the dashboard and let my eyes wander over the few buttons and levers. She had sat on the Vagantur, her sweat gathering on her scalp and at the center of her palms, right before she released this very pod into the stars, hoping it would stay there. She had done the best she could, but the capsule had made its way here to Faloiv, the planet she then knew only as X. My gaze falls on the compartment beneath the dashboard, just a slim bit of a handle visible from where I sit. I don’t know what it was built to contain, but I know even before I open it what it contains now.
A violet eggshell. One of three. What Albatur wants so badly, I hold easily in my hand. The captain had thought that by removing the power cell, she would remove Albatur’s ability to harm Faloiv. She was wrong, and I wonder if she died knowing it, if when her eyes closed for the last time, she knew that some of us had come here looking for peace and still caused only pain.
I step back out into the ravine, clutching the piece of kawa, my palm stinging and my knuckle aching. But I barely notice the pain; the kawa feels warm and pleasant in my hand, and it draws my mind back to the first one I had ever held: Adombukar’s, far away in the main dome of the Mammalian Compound. I thought it was as simple as giving him energy, like the vitamin compound Alma had injected me with when we escaped the Zoo.
It’s so much more, and even the thought of Alma—of Rondo—isn’t enough to distract me from the thing that is growing larger in the Artery, a feeling of certainty that sprouts first roots and then branches.
The Isii has made a decision. And that means it’s time to choose.
I turn back toward the open shell of Vagantur Capsule 2, the ghost of Captain Williams invisible but present.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I know what you tried to do. But I have to undo it.”
The kawa in my palm seems to sense my intention, or perhaps I only imagine it vibrating at the prospect of being united with its other pieces. At my feet, the stream trickles on, and, kneeling, I slowly lower my aching palm to the water.
At first nothing. I don’t know how long I remain crouched there, waiting. Maybe it was a matter of the message finding me, or maybe it had taken the green language that long to decipher what I was searching for. But eventually I hear it. A message. Something my grandmother left for me.
Look to the sky.
I hesitate only a moment before I turn and race to the ravine’s edge, scrabbling up its bank to level ground before tearing through the jungle. This time it feels as if the trees give way, the branches that had torn at my hair and suit parting to allow me passage. Or maybe I am numb to their thorns. I break out of the jungle, cross the springy green ground, and arrive back at the clear green sea I had dragged myself out of less than an hour before. I see nothing but the wide expanse of water. I’m looking the wrong way, I sense. I need to be higher.
I return to the jungle, pocketing the piece of kawa, which thrums hot and alert against my skin. I stare at the trees, all too large to climb. But I don’t need to climb.
The springy ground beneath me comes to life.
I sway, then lurch sideways as what reveals itself to be a massive leaf rises into the air—what I had been walking on was not ground at all but a carpet of these mobile plants. All around me the leaves seem to seek the sun, their towering stalks shooting toward the sky, and I am carried up as well. I scream in spite of myself, the air rushing past my face. I fall to my knees, clinging to the plant that bears me up, and it’s not until my palms connect with its surface that I understand this is no coincidence.
I said I needed to be higher, and the green language heard.
I gaze around, my fear melding with my wonder in a handshake of emotions. The setting sun turns the ground—now far below—orange and gold, the colors of ripe fruit. There’s a disk of water ahead, maybe a mile, if this height allows any sense of distance: a lake. Its waters glisten pink and gentle in the dimming light, and for a moment my fear falls away like a shed skin.
And then I see the smoke.
Red. Redder than the sun. It crawls up into the air from its origin, obscured by the trees, but I don’t need to see to know where it came from. My nana’s message. The Faloii have chosen war.
Under me, around me, inside me, I feel the shift of the leaves that hold me. As always, their language is complex and multilayered, a thousand voices, woven together in dense green speech.
Rage.
Unlike the smoke, it is unseen, but I inhale it like oxygen: it fills me up, and with every bit of space it fills, it clears away the feeling of desolation, the pale helplessness that has bewitched my bones. I pull myself to stand, swaying a little on the platform the plant provides, staring intently at the smoke. It’s a sign of what has happened and what is to come.
I feel the plant understand that I’ve seen what it wants me to see. There are no animals here, but this is Faloiv in all its angry green vibrancy.
Do you know? it seems to say. Do you know what it is you must do?
I shield my eyes from the sun, spreading its darkening blood across the jungle far below. There will be war: the Isii has named humans as parasites. It is time to choose a side, but my choice has always been made. I don’t need to speak the green language to communicate what it is I wish to tell it.
Yes, I say. I choose Faloiv.
Acknowledgments
My deepest thanks to every reader of this series: every page you turn makes the world in my head feel more real. In that vein, eternal gratitude to Zoé Samudzi, who has believed in this world from the beginning—I continue to learn so much from you, and one day I hope to do for you what you have done for me just by existing.
Librarians everywhere, you are magical.
Eric Smith, you have allowed yourself to become a punchline in your support of this series. I will never, ever forget it.
Ashley Woodfolk, at the time of my writing this, we haven’t even met in person, and yet you get all my jokes and answer 11 p.m. texts. You are honest and vulnerable and your Parable of the Sower sh*t is real.
My editor, Ben Rosenthal . . . you believe in these books and I appreciate you for always trying to be a good partner, even when I’m the bull in your shop of breakable objects. Thank you for seeing Faloiv and understanding why it’s important.
My agent, Regina Brooks, thank you for your patience and for at least not sighing audibly when I ask the same thing for the millionth time. There are so many things happening in my head at once and I appreciate you trying to parse through them.<
br />
Minda Honey, Lucie Witt, and Kaitlyn Soligan Owens . . . the makings of Monday night mischief. Thank you for your tacos and your trash talk. Minda, thank you especially for your plants and your laugh. You gather people together in a unique way, and my life and my writing (and my writing life) have so vastly improved since I allowed myself to open up to you.
The Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, thank you for making a home for me and my vision, and the vision of so many young artists. And to my students . . . every summer you remind me of why I do what I do.
Amani and Monae, you always wear your promo shirts even when you haven’t read the book yet. I see you and appreciate you.
Caralanay Cameron and Dana Lynch, my best best besties: thank you for planning all my events and for knowing everything I’m not even aware of not knowing. You are in my blood the way not even family can be.
And finally, thank you to my daughter and my husband, my greatest inspiration. Earth is only worth it if you are here beside me.
About the Author
Photo by Jasmine Lopez
OLIVIA A. COLE is an author, blogger, and poet. Her other books include A Conspiracy of Stars, the adult novel Panther in the Hive, and its sequel, The Rooster’s Garden. Olivia was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and wandered to Chicago and Miami before going back home. You can visit her online at www.oliviaacole.com.
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Books by Olivia A. Cole
A Conspiracy of Stars
An Anatomy of Beasts
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Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
AN ANATOMY OF BEASTS. Copyright © 2019 by Olivia A. Cole. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2019 by Jeff Huang
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018941660
Digital Edition APRIL 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-264426-8
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-264424-4
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FIRST EDITION
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An Anatomy of Beasts Page 31