Gama and Hest: An Ahsenthe Cycle companion novella (The Ahsenthe Cycle)

by Razevich, Alexes

  Six

  The kin parted, stepping back and squeezing up against the soumyo next to them, to let Gama and Hest through.

  “It’s one more thing,” someone said low as Gama passed by.

  “Too many things,” said another — words that sounded as though they came from between clenched teeth.

  Gama’s neck burned and her heart beat hard. The carding house was gone? An entire structure? How could that be?

  “Join me at my dwelling,” Reln said quietly when they reached him. “We have much to discuss.” He looked out across the room and dismissed the assembled kin with a wave of his hand.

  Gama watched them go. They were like birds suddenly freed from the pen, she thought — some talking excitedly, some with their heads hung low, as if weighted, colors glowing on their necks — the signs of anxiety, concern, confusion, and shock. She felt her own spots light and change with her shifting emotions while they waited to hear what Reln would say. Hest touched her neck. Gama touched his neck in return — small offers of comfort.

  “Shouldn’t you go to the communiteria to answer questions?” Frarm asked, his voice quiet and shaky.

  Reln waited until nearly everyone had made their way out the door before stepping down from the dais and answering Frarm. “I’ll go as soon as I’ve spoken with you. We can go together after, if you like.”

  Gama felt her anxiety like a living thing that had come to dwell within her. She shifted from foot to foot. Reln walked slowly through the nearly empty room without speaking, his hands clasped together behind his back. The six of them followed behind — Hest, Iya, Vonti, Frarm, Prill, and Gama, an edgy procession. If it had been night, the intensity of the colors on their necks would have lit their way. Thought-grains moved through the room. She supposed Reln was think-talking to Hall but had chosen not to let them hear.

  Beneath the open sky, Hest sidled up next to Reln and asked the question Gama felt certain pounded through all their thoughts.

  “What happened to the carding house?”

  Reln gently put his finger to Hest’s lips. “Not right here.”

  Hest’s emotion spots flared blue-red with anxiety again, and brownish-pink with uncertainty.

  They walked without words — tight, nervous steps — past dwellings, two storage sheds, and a granary. The carding house lay in the other direction — or at least the place where it had stood — empty now, bare dirt, or maybe a hole. Even if she turned, she wouldn’t have been able to see anything, not with the way the paths of Reev twisted this way and that. She rubbed her throat to calm herself. She saw Frarm do the same.

  The group angled off the main path, taking the thin, winding lane that led to Reln’s dwelling. It swung its door open as they approached. Warmth and light flowed out from inside, and the vague scent of aromatics, musky yet sweet. Gama breathed in deeply, longing for the comfort being inside these walls had always brought. Reln’s dwelling never spoke much when she was there, but she felt a kindness and a caring from it that some other structures seemed to lack.

  Reln gestured for them to sit. His dwelling was large, considering that only he and Prill lived in it. The receiving room was generously sized even for a big dwelling and filled with comfortable, over-stuffed sit-pillows in soft colors that went harmoniously with the pale ocher walls. The six who’d gathered water together glanced at the pillows and one another, but no one sat. Clearly her sisters and brothers couldn’t bring themselves to sit and settle any more than she could. Reln remained standing as well.

  “Gama. Hest,” Reln said. “You know not everyone believed you about the beasts disappearing right before your eyes. Many corenta-kin doubted Frarm’s story even more — coming second as it did. No one doubts any of you now, least of all me.”

  Gama rubbed her hands on her thighs. She should have felt relief, but she didn’t. There was little comfort in being believed now only because a structure had disappeared — something everyone could see and no one deny. She didn’t want her kin to live with the fear that had shaken her since the first day of the shimmering sky.

  “You saw it happen?” she asked.

  Reln held his breath a moment, then nodded.

  She knew he was relieving the moment, the shock of it — the sense of helplessness. Best to get him talking, she thought. “Was it the same with Carding House — there one moment and gone the next?”

  “Mostly,” Reln said. “The air shimmered first, and when the structure disappeared there was a creaking sound. Not loud. The kind of sound you think maybe you heard, so you turn your head to look for the source.”

  “A creak?” Gama said. “Not a hum?”

  “I didn’t hear a hum.”

  Gama crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly chilled. “There wasn’t a shimmer or a creaking sound when the brez vanished.”

  “Maybe because Carding House is so big,” Hest said. “Whatever took it, maybe there was strain.”

  “Oh,” Frarm said. “I didn’t think of that — that something took what’s gone. I just thought they disappeared. I didn’t think of how that could happen.”

  Gama guessed Iya and Vonti hadn’t thought overmuch about the how or what either, since their throats were suddenly aflame with the orange-yellow of confusion and the muddy-brown of fear. How could they not wonder? Things don’t just disappear. What took them was the question that had to be answered. And why.

  “Could it take one of us?” Prill’s voice was almost a whisper.

  They snapped their gazes toward Reln.

  “I don’t know,” he said, the only answer he could give.

  Gama rubbed her thighs. Nothing was certain anymore, but logic said that anything that could make a structure vanish would likely have little trouble with one of them.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked, to turn her corenta-kin from worry to devising a plan to avoid losing more of their own.

  Reln sank onto a pillow, pulled his knees up to his chest, and sighed. “To protect Reev from something we can’t see or even name? I don’t know.”

  From something unknown, Gama thought. She dropped to her knees on a pillow next to him. “Is it just Reev? Are we in the wrong place at the moment these things happen?”

  “No,” Reln said. “We’ve been in touch with all the corentas close enough to think-talk with. Most say nothing unusual has happened, but two report that they’ve had odd occurrences. Kelroosh says all the water in its reservoir dried up in an instant. In Trontin, a female saw a complete orchard disappear. When they sent others to look, the ground was bare, as though no tree had ever stood in that place.”

  “Like what we saw in the empty field,” Hest said, voicing exactly what Gama was thinking. Likely everyone in the room was drawing the same comparison.

  “They’d been harvesting that orchard for two generations,” Reln said, as though length of time had anything to do with it.

  Hest hunkered down on the other side of Reln. “There has to be something we can do.”

  “We can’t stay here,” Frarm said. “Maybe it’s only in a few territories. We should go near the corentas where nothing has happened.”

  Reln nodded. “Yes. I’ve already decided that, and spoken with the other guides. We’ll leave this evening and link up with Kelroosh and Trontin in a place where nothing strange has happened. We’ll be safe there. You should go now and make ready. If you feel you need to talk more, you’re welcome to come to the communiteria with me now.”

  Hest sent, Communiteria or back to our dwelling?

  More talk is just more talk, Gama sent. It won’t answer anything. We might as well get ready to move.

  Hest offered a tiny smile, and Gama knew they’d been in harmony of thought as always — he’d only asked from courtesy.

  Iya, Vonti, and Frarm must have been think-talking among themselves, because Vonti had no doubt in his voice when he said, “We’ll go make ready.”

  They walked through Reev together until Iya and Vonti broke away to go to their own dwellin
gs. Their paths would take them past where Carding House had been. Gama didn’t envy them the sight and was glad the way to her dwelling led a different direction. Except she wanted to see the place, if only to prove to herself that Carding House was really gone. Funny how that worked — she believed Reln completely, yet still needed to see the proof of his words with her own eyes.

  Frarm remained with them until he reached his turn-off.

  “Do you want to stay with us again?” Hest asked.

  Frarm shook his head. “Everyone knows now that what I said was true. My dwelling and those I share it with want me back. I’d rather be there.”

  Frarm headed toward his dwelling, leaving Gama and Hest alone on the path. No one else was out. The sound of their feet crunching against Reev’s dry soil felt too loud — and lonely.

  A thought nagged at her as they made their way toward their dwelling, a thought she didn’t share with Hest or Home. If they hadn’t known the beasts, birds, and now Carding House would disappear, how could they be sure where it was safe to land?

  -=o=-

  The bright sun of day-half-gone lit the air when Reev set down in a wild valley full of tall, twisted, red stones — a place not on their usual route. Gama and Hest ran but weren’t the first to the gate. All of their kin wanting to see this new place — this fine land where they would be safe — and their new neighbors. Wall was much higher than any soumyo was tall, but some clever corenta-kin had hiked a brother or sister onto their shoulders so they could peek over.

  “Can you see them?” those on the ground asked. “What’s out there?”

  “Two corentas,” a female on her brother’s shoulders said. Her chin rested on the plastered top of Wall. “One about the same size as Reev, the other bigger by half.”

  An excited murmur streaked through the crowd. “I hope we get to visit,” someone said. “I’d like to see inside another corenta.”

  Gama rubbed her throat. Had everyone forgotten what had driven them there? Or had they resolved not to think about it — to stuff it away and enjoy these moments. She thought that was more the case, but Gama felt worry like a deep thrum under her kin’s every excited word and action.

  Reln strode up wearing all his marks of leadership at once — the embroidered shawl of many colors over his bare shoulders, the black hat like a bowl turned upside down and with a wide gold brim, the three thick bracelets on his left arm that represented their corenta — one bracelet for the females, one for the males, one for the structures. He wore a deep-blue hipwrap embroidered all over with crimson leaves — very different from the plain beige wrap Gama was used to seeing on him.

  “Their gates are opening,” someone called from her perch on a sister’s shoulders.

  Wall opened its main gate and the soumyo crowded inside the jambs to look, nudging their neighbors aside to get a better view. Hest pushed forward, but Gama hesitated. This linking up felt wrong to her. Each corenta had its own course, so that no orchard or meadow was over-plucked, no stream overused for plants or swimmers. Sometimes Gama thought the harmony of their lives depended on everyone conveniently staying out of everyone else’s way.

  Reln raised his voice to be heard over the excited chatter of the corenta-kin. “The guides are coming. Please make ready to greet them.”

  Little puffs of dust stirred where those who still rode on a sister’s or brother’s shoulders jumped down. Gama scrambled with the rest of her kin to form two lines. Guests from another corenta were uncommon, but everyone learned and practiced the traditional ways to greet visitors — ways that likely hadn’t changed since the first stones were set to form Wall, Gama thought. The Reev kin knew what to do now without being told.

  They’re almost here, Wall sent so that everyone heard it. Have you picked a welcoming song, Reln?

  One emotion spot on Reln’s neck lit orange with embarrassment. Gama guessed that with the strain of all that had been happening, their guide had forgotten this gesture of politeness.

  “Of course,” Reln said aloud. “The Song of Kinship.”

  It was a good choice. Normally they didn’t meet with outsiders except at mating sites during Resonance. The Song of Kinship declared that no matter what pairing produced the egg or in which corenta the hatchling wound up, it would be considered a full member of that kin. It made sense to sing now of kinship with Kelroosh and Trontin, since they all seemed to need each other, no different than how the members of Reev needed one another. She’d been silly before, to fear this new linking — a natural worry when change seemed quick and inevitable.

  Five soumyo came through Reev’s main gate, two wearing signs of rank — the guides — and three in plain hipwraps and foot casings. The Reev-kin sang as the outsiders came slowly through the lines formed on either side of the gate, the strangers taking time to look at each Reev-kin and acknowledge them with a flash of nurturing pink. Gama’s throat glowed with the dark-red-blue of curiosity.

  Gama, Hest, Frarm, Reln sent when the visitors had made it through the lines and the Reev-kin had finished singing, come with us.

  Hest glanced at her and she shrugged. The three fell in line behind the guides. Reln must have sent the message to all Reev’s corenta-kin since no one else tried to follow, though Gama knew her sisters and brothers must have been burning with curiosity.

  The guides walked side by side but no one spoke aloud.

  Reln swept them all inside his dwelling, gesturing with his chin. They settled onto pillows at his invitation. Gama’s stomach felt full of tiny, jumpy beastlets.

  Reln nodded toward Trontin’s guide, who stood and introduced himself as Bren and his companion as Joh. Bren was shorter than either Reln or Kelroosh’s guide, and stocky. Well-fed. His skin was as red as the day-ending sky and his eyes the color of fertile soil. His voice, when he spoke, had an edge to it, as though sand was grinding in his throat. Joh’s skin was so light-red she almost had no color. At Bren’s nod, Joh pulled two small boxes from the tools belt at the top of her hipwrap and handed them to her guide.

  “Corentas so rarely have the pleasure of meeting other kin along the way,” Bren said, his gaze sweeping over everyone in the room. “It’s a sorrowful state that has brought our three corentas together, but there still may be joy and new friendships in it. In our travels we pass an area in which the most marvelous stones lie. Please allow me to gift Reev and Kelroosh each with one, in hopes that these troubles will soon pass, we will go our separate ways again, and you will use the stone to be reminded of us, these times and how we triumphed.”

  He handed one of the small boxes to Reln, and one to Kelroosh’s guide. Gama watched, her curiosity rising as they opened the boxes and each drew out a stone about the size of a hatchling’s fist. She’d never seen anything like it — crimson, yet so clear she could see Reln’s hand through it. Floating inside were flecks of silver, blue, and green. Gama didn’t know why, but the stone made her feel happy — and there’d been little of that lately.

  Reln nodded toward the other corenta guide, a female with skin so dark-red it was almost brown, and she rose. She was tall, with long fingers on large hands. She wore an elaborately sewn shawl in every color Gama could imagine — her mark of rank. But her face was kind, and Gama immediately liked her.

  She straightened her shawl and said, “I am Kinto.” She swept her eyes across two males sitting side by side. “These are my brothers, Cra and Pret.”

  Cra and Pret looked much alike — same height and weight, same light-red skin, same dark-brown eyes. Gama was glad they didn’t wear matching hipwraps, or she wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart.

  What do you think? she sent to Hest and Frarm, sure that the others were sizing them up the same way they were them — and think-talking to their corenta-kin as well. Thought-grains flew back and forth across the room.

  The pinkish one looks nervous, Hest sent.

  Joh, from Trontin. She does look nervous. Any guesses why?

  Gama saw the obvious truth the moment she sen
t the question. These were soumyo who’d also seen things disappear. That’s why they’d come with their guides — to bring the witnesses together. She sent the thought to Hest and Frarm.

  Maybe no one believed her either, Frarm sent.

  Everyone believes us now, Hest sent.

  Gama thought of the carding house and worried again for it. Had it been frightened? Was it frightened still, wherever it was? What could snatch up an entire structure with no more effort than she lifted a bucket of water?

  Kinto held her stone in her outstretched palm. “We are touched, Bren, by your gift. The soumyo of Kelroosh will treasure it always.” She closed her long fingers around the stone and let her arms fall in front of her. “As Bren said, it is a sorrowful state that has brought us here together. There may be safety in this place, but safety is not guaranteed. We must find the source of the danger. We can’t defend against what we don’t know.”

  Gama’s gaze flitted between the two leaders. Bren had fine manners, but Kinto of Kelroosh seemed more likely to get things done. If Reln partnered with Kinto, Gama was sure the two of them could find a way past the fear festering in the corenta-kin now.

  “Hest and Gama,” Reln said, startling her from her thoughts. “I’ve told the guides about the carding house, which I witnessed, and a bit about what you saw. I’d like you to tell it in your own words.”

  They told the story again, the words no easier to say the second time than they’d been the first. Their guests listened with little expression on their faces but their emotions spots showed the purple-gray of concern and the blue-red of anxiety.

  “You were together?” Bren from Trontin asked.

  Gama nodded. “But Frarm was alone.”

  All eyes shifted to him. He told about the birds, his voice suddenly strong and confident. He didn’t hint that perhaps the birds had vanished into the clouds the way he had with Vonti. He knew what he’d seen as clearly as she and Hest did.