Where She Fell

by Kaitlin Ward

  After some more gesturing, they come even closer. One plucks at the skin on Alice’s arm, and then does the same to mine. They start gesturing again, and I think they’re talking about the different shades of our skin.

  Are they going to eat us? I speculate. They might not see us as the same species. They might not think of it as cannibalism.

  Or they might not care.

  Maybe they wonder if there’s a taste difference between darker and lighter flesh. Maybe we look delicious compared to the limited selection they’re presented with regularly.

  I’m spiraling into the kind of panic I usually reserve for overwhelming social situations. My limbs have gone numb and I can’t tell if my heart is racing or not beating at all.

  The bioluminescents move away from Alice and me, observing the stubble on Grayson’s cheeks and tugging at the edges of his clothing. One starts plucking at my clothing, too, and I hold my breath. They’re not trying to remove our clothing, far as I can tell. They just seem baffled by it.

  They’re all fully naked. This warm, humid environment probably doesn’t lend itself to anyone deciding they have a need for clothing. I’m sure life’s easier if you don’t care about things like that.

  The silence gets to me. The way they make absolutely no sound even when I’m pretty sure they’re laughing. Sharp teeth bared and neck thrown back, eyes crinkled with delight. The accompanying silence itches my skin. It’s like looking at a face-swap photo. Everything seems kinda regular but something is just skin-crawlingly wrong about it.

  To stop myself from thinking about what it will feel like to be eaten, I think about the bioluminescent woman who gave me my glowing plant. The peace offering, according to Mary.

  My eyes sweep over the room, over the glowing plants on the ceiling and the floor. Actually, none of them are purple, like my plant. Have I seen any purple ones at all? I crane my neck, trying to see every corner of this cavern.

  There. I catch a tiny glimpse of purple. It’s in one of the pens, just a tiny patch, carefully cultivated.

  It’s not common, my plant, the peace offering. If we hadn’t attacked her, the gesture might have been successful. And now … now I could try the same tactic. What do I have to lose?

  I point with my toe to my backpack, wiggling my foot until they notice. One of them finally does, and cautiously approaches the backpack. I nod eagerly, hoping that means the same thing to them, or that it at least doesn’t mean something bad. If I had my hands, I could speak to them, at least explain the basics. That we’re not here to hurt them.

  The man fumbles with the zipper, startling when he tugs on it and it slides. Then he’s distracted, sliding it back a few times and gesturing with obvious amusement for the other two to try it as well. I swallow my impatience. This has to work.

  Finally, he opens the backpack and brings it to me. He frees my hands from their binds but holds a knifelike object toward me in an obvious gesture of threat. Moving slowly, I crouch before the backpack, rummage through until I find my plant.

  It’s harder than I expected to give it up. This plant, somehow, has become a source of comfort to me. But I hold it out in front of me, fingers trembling. I make eye contact and I don’t break it.

  The nearest bioluminescent man’s mouth falls open, his eyes widen. And then … he looks angry. Their gesturing becomes faster, harsher in motion. I catch a few things, like stolen and must have killed one of us.

  “No!” I say aloud, and then I gesture the same thing, which only seems to anger them more.

  They tie me back up, and one presses a knife to my throat. Grayson makes a small sound, but I can tell he and Alice both are trying to stay quiet so as not to anger them further.

  How do you know our language? another asks, gesturing slowly. Of course, I can’t answer.

  But I don’t have to, because suddenly, Mary’s here.

  Mary is here.

  She gestures wildly and frantically at the two who aren’t holding knives to my throat. Her back is to me, so I can’t tell what she’s saying. And the bioluminescents’ expressions are utterly still, so I don’t know how they’re taking it.

  After what feels like an eternity, they all seem to come to an understanding, and the knife leaves my throat. I swallow hard, trying not to imagine what might have happened if Mary hadn’t shown up.

  The knife wielder cuts the three of us free, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “How did you find us?” I ask Mary in a hushed voice. “We were … If you hadn’t come, I don’t know what would have happened to us.”

  She shrugs nonchalantly. “I told you I was going to distract the others for you. I did. And then I joined them when they came out looking for you. Very miffed about losing my intern, you know.” She winks, and I crack a smile. “We were catching up to you. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when we did, but it turns out I didn’t need to worry because you got yourselves caught by a village of bioluminescents. Colleen and the rest hightailed it back in the direction of the colony, and I followed after you.”

  “They are not going to make it back to the colony,” Grayson says. “But I’m so glad you came down here.”

  “Oh, they’ll make it back.” Mary waves a hand.

  I don’t argue, but I’m with Grayson on this one. There’s no way they survive the trip back. Some of the places we dropped down into, I can’t imagine trying to get back up.

  “Maybe they’ll come to their senses and try for the exit instead,” I say.

  Mary laughs. “Sure.”

  One of the bioluminescents gestures for us to follow him, so we do. They’re much more relaxed now, though it probably also helps that they took all our weapons when they captured us, and that Mary gave hers over voluntarily.

  I’m still beyond terrified that they’re going to slice us open. That if we make one wrong move, we’ll be corpses.

  Alice squeezes my hand, lets out a relieved breath. I really hope this is a good thing and not a leading-us-to-be-eaten thing. My gut tells me we’re going to be okay, for now. My gut has been wrong a lot in the past, but I don’t know. I think I’m getting better at reading it, understanding what it’s actually telling me as opposed to what I think it’s supposed to be saying.

  We’re led down a short tunnel, decorated with vines in swirly patterns down the walls, and emerge into another cavern, slightly larger than the first. It’s filled with quite an array of things. Skins in various stages of tanning. Meats being carved from the flesh of slain beasts and stored. People sewing and weaving and cleaning and hanging around. There’s a steaming hot spring in one corner and it looks as though they are using this steam to cook things, which is brilliant, to be honest.

  One of the bioluminescents who led us here rattles a chain of bones that hangs down from the ceiling near the tunnel opening. Everyone stops what they’re doing and pays attention to him immediately. He’s using their same language of gestures, but with bigger movements, like he’s making sure everyone’s able to see what he’s saying. It occurs to me that communication must be really difficult for anyone here who can’t see—especially since it doesn’t appear these people have vocal cords at all, so I can’t even think what they’d use as an alternative. I do notice that some of the farther-away people are gesturing among themselves.

  By the time the man is done, everyone is gesturing among themselves. Grayson dips his head between mine and Alice’s and whispers, “I think we might be hot gossip.”

  Alice covers her mouth with her hand to stifle a giggle. I am not so successful. The nearest bioluminescents look at me like I’m an alien, and I suppose I am.

  A couple women come forward, and after a brief discussion with our guards, they take Mary, Alice, and me with them, leaving Grayson behind.

  I don’t like it.

  But when I hesitate, Grayson nods.

  So I go.

  They keep our weapons but give us back the rest of our things. We’re led through another short tunnel into a small alcove stuf
fed with several beds. The beds are made of woven plants and covered over with furs. They even have pillows, also made of furs.

  Through their language—but with slower movements so that Mary and I can catch everything and relay it to Alice—our hosts explain that this is where we’ll be sleeping. And then they start showing us different words in their language, based on our surroundings. I’m nervous about being separated from Grayson, though. It distracts me, and I have a hard time focusing. But I also want to be able to communicate well, so I try my best. Mary’s lessons have been helpful, but I still know very little.

  Mary, of course, is already pretty fluent, and I can tell they find her impressive. They take us on a cavern tour, pointing things out and showing us the gesture for them if we don’t already know. I scrawl everything down in my notebook. Memorization is a particular strength for me. I should be able to go through this later and be passable.

  “Does it worry you that they trusted us so fast?” Alice asks as we pass from the cavern where we were held hostage into a third large cavern. “I feel like … they could turn on us just as fast.”

  I frown. “I agree. But I think we’re gonna have to go with it for now. Till they let us leave.”

  “If they let us leave,” Alice adds.

  I start to reply, but that’s when we step into the third cavern. And it’s beautiful, stunning beyond anything I’ve ever seen in my life or will ever see again even if I live to be one hundred. This cavern is smaller than the first two of the communal caverns, and I would bet anything its purpose is religious.

  A waterfall spills down from the back of the room, dropping through an abyss in the floor to somewhere far below. Somewhere so far that the roar of the water is muted enough that I could hear someone speak in a whisper. Something luminescent must exist behind the waterfall, because it glitters, a riot of color.

  The edges of the room are lined with enormous mushrooms, taller than me. They have that familiar mushroom shape, with bulbous stems topped by puffy half spheres. The undersides of the tops glow, sending light streaming down to the floor like spotlights. The rest of the floor is filled in with a chaotic assortment of plants and fungi, all bioluminescent, and all glowing the same shade of white blue. Thin stalactites—not bioluminescent—dangle from the ceiling at regular intervals, reaching almost to the floor. The only bare spot is a straight, narrow strip leading from the entrance to the waterfall. Or rather, to what looks like a shrine, built in front of the waterfall. The shrine is built of glowing stones, different from the ones we had in our village. The same stones encrust the ceiling of the cavern like a layer of coarse pink salt. Those making up the shrine have been cut and shaped into squares. The end result is a semicircle shape that radiates pink.

  I feel this room inside my chest. The beauty of it punches me in the sternum. It feels like I’ve found my true religion, deep in the bowels of the earth, and it’s whatever this room represents. Nature is just …

  A tear drops onto my cheek, startling me. I brush it away and tell myself to pull it together because this is a ridiculous overreaction to the existence of a glowing room in a cave. I’m still trapped. Still a prisoner to these bioluminescent humans who don’t speak our language and have clawed hands and sharp-toothed mouths.

  After the shrine or the church or whatever they call the place, we go down another couple tunnels, some of which are lined with beds, some of which are too narrow for that and have beds situated in an alcove like the place I guess I can now refer to as “our room.” We finally meet back up with Grayson in a storage alcove. It’s cooler in this alcove—definitely not refrigerator cool, but chilly in my short-sleeved shirt—and they use it for keeping meat.

  I resist the urge to run to Grayson, to cling and not let go.

  “Are you all right?” Mary asks when we approach him, placing a gentle hand on Grayson’s shoulder.

  “I’m fine,” Grayson answers. “They showed me … a bedroom, I guess?”

  “Us too,” says Alice.

  “They seem to be trusting Mary, at least, right?” Grayson asks.

  “I think so.” It still discomforts me. I want to be the one they trust. I want to feel secure.

  “Good. I think it’s going to be okay here. I think we’re going to be safe.”

  “Yeah.”

  I tell myself to relax. They’ve taken us in. They seem to be trusting us. And they haven’t killed us.

  Yet.

  Good morning, Eliza. A bioluminescent girl joins me where I stand beside the fence surrounding one of the insect pens. She speaks to me in their language of gestures.

  I reply the same way: Good morning, Ama.

  It’s been eight days since we arrived at the bioluminescents’ village. It’s almost as long as I spent in the colony. We’ve settled in here, and despite the language barrier, we’ve actually made friends.

  Everyone’s name has a gesture. Mary made up English-sounding names for us non-glowing humans to use, based on her best guess of the translation.

  Did you want to help me feed the insects again today? Ama asks.

  Yes, please.

  These insects aren’t like the ones we were eating back at the colony. They’re mint green in color and have the shape of a stinkbug. The flat, shield-shaped bodies and long antennae. They’re not bioluminescent, but the mint green is a bright enough color that I can forgive it. Fully grown, they’re about two feet wide and three feet long, though their bodies sit pretty low to the ground. And they secrete a honeydew-like substance that the bioluminescents collect and use to sweeten recipes. When the insects get old—which is a matter of about a year—they’re eaten. Seems like a pretty sweet way to live, if you ask me. Most insects don’t get treatment like this, with food and mates brought to them. It reminds me of the farm that borders my parents’ property. These insects are the underground version of livestock.

  Ama passes me the basket of grass she was holding. Well, I’m calling it grass. I don’t know what it is. It has a faint green luminescence to it, and it’s about the consistency of grass, so. Close enough. I carefully open the gate to the pen and slip inside, transferring the grass to the insects’ feeder. There are four creatures in each pen, and while they crowd me, excited for their breakfast, Ama checks for honeydew deposits. She gathers several, and then I help her clear out the small amount of insect manure that’s accumulated since yesterday.

  It’s eerie, really, how similar the bioluminescents are to us. Our environments are so fully different, but the way we form communities and relationships, so similar.

  After we’re done feeding the insects, she takes me to the library.

  They have a library.

  They write on dried-out, broad-leaf plants with an inky substance harvested from insects. I can’t begin to read their written language—scratches of lines and shapes and angles that mean nothing to me—but I love looking at it anyway.

  Grayson, on the other hand, also loves the books. In fact, he’s already in the library when we arrive. He’s been determined to figure it out and does seem to be making some headway.

  Ama’s grimace-like expression at the sight of him makes me laugh. He asks a lot of questions about language.

  “Eliza!” Grayson throws me one of his heart-melting grins. “I’ve gone full nerd and it’s awesome.”

  “Uh, yeah.” I sit beside him. “Looks like you have a new future career path as a linguist.”

  Grayson has been fully transformed by this village. He’s smart, and I think he knew that somewhere deep down, but he’s also strong and it seems like no one’s ever told him he could be both. That he can be the guy who goes bow hunting and also the guy who sits on a porch with a good book. His incessant questions might drive Ama nuts, but the way he wants to fully immerse himself in learning has made him more attractive to me than ever.

  I run my fingers over the brittle fibers of the paper in my hands. I wish I could take one, keep it as a souvenir.

  So you’ve never met others like us befor
e? I say to Ama.

  I’ve never, she gestures, but there is the legend of the plain-skinned man.

  “Grayson,” I say aloud. He glances up. “Listen to this.”

  Ama straightens her spine. The story is that he passed through here two generations ago. He had strange tools and wore strange body coverings—like you do—but he was friendly and he traded with our people and then he moved on. He was living with another village and he knew our language. Later, he returned, but only to scratch three lines into the wall. Then he disappeared forever.

  Grayson and I exchange a glance.

  Can we see the marks? I ask.

  Of course!

  Ama leads us to a tunnel not too far from the library and there it is. Our familiar three lines.

  “So we’re still on our route,” Grayson says to me.

  “Yeah. And Mary’s story about her grandfather … it has to be true.”

  I turn to Ama. What’s down this tunnel?

  She shrugs. We don’t go far down this one. Very dangerous creatures, plus another village who we have a bad relationship with.

  It’s not what I want to hear.

  But this conversation renews my faith in our plan.

  “Are we getting too comfortable here?” Grayson’s voice startles me. I close my journal, where I was scribbling down notes about different types of glowite.

  “I don’t think so.” But as I say it, I realize that I’m cozied up on my woven bed, knees up, back leaned against the wall while I write. The way I might sit on my bed at home—actual home.

  This place feels so much more like an actual home than the colony. It’s easy to forget that it’s not where I’m meant to be.

  “Maybe,” I amend. I set down my journal and stand up.

  Grayson looks worried and melancholy. I want to erase it, somehow. Wrap my arms around his waist and rest my head against his chest until he feels better. But I can’t bring myself to do it.