Sam’s eyes burned, but he didn’t have a retort.
“What were the two of you talking about?” Dunne asked. “You and—what’s her name?”
“Kiva,” Matthew said. “She was telling me about how their society works. They’re called the Vagri. The village is led by the women—the Sisters, Kiva called them.”
“Interesting,” Dunne said. “A matriarchal society. It explains some things. I’d wondered why these men would be obeying the commands of a girl.”
“She’s not just any girl,” Matthew said. “She’s the leader of the village. They call her the Vagra.”
“So, a council of women leading the village. And a young girl as, what? Some kind of spiritual leader?”
Matthew nodded. “That’s right. She talked about someone called the Ancestors. I think the Ancestors are their gods. Kiva said the Ancestors show her things, that they help her read other people’s thoughts. She said they’re the ones who made it so we can understand each other. And that they healed me.”
Dunne made a noise in her throat. “Telepathy, supernatural healing rituals. I’d call it baseless superstition, except I saw her heal you with her blood. That much seems undeniable.”
“And Kiva and I can communicate with each other,” Matthew added.
Dunne nodded. “Yes.”
Matthew looked down the hill. The two girls had gone, and now Kiva stood waiting with her sister, the boy who’d put the arrow in his chest, and the two armed men.
“They’re waiting,” Matthew said. “Sam, if you’re so scared, you can head back to the ship. I’m going into the village.”
He walked down the hill. Dunne came after him, and after a moment, so did Sam.
“Welcome to our village,” Kiva said. “I know we’ve gotten off to a bad start.”
Matthew suppressed a chuckle. Sam had shot at two kids, and Matthew had nearly been killed by an arrow. Bad start was putting it mildly.
“But that’s behind us now,” Kiva said. “Now you’ll learn about us. We’ll learn about you. That way, our people can grow to respect one another, and we can live in peace.”
Matthew nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Good. That’s exactly what we want. We didn’t come here to fight. We came here to learn.”
Kiva’s eyes glanced over Matthew’s shoulder, and he turned to follow her gaze. She was looking at the bioscanner in Dunne’s hand.
“That … that thing,” Kiva said.
“A bioscanner. It’s a …” Matthew stopped. How to explain? “It’s technology—a machine that allows us to look inside the body and see how it works.”
“You want to use it to look inside our bodies?” Kiva said.
“That’s the idea.”
“And you’re sure it won’t hurt us?”
“I’m positive. You can trust me.”
Kiva took a step closer. “I’d better be the first one. To show my people there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Matthew looked around. “But there’s still no one here.”
“Oh, they’re here,” Kiva said. “They’re hiding in their huts, but they’re here. And they’re watching.”
Matthew explained to Dunne what Kiva wanted to do. Dunne went to Kiva and held the bioscanner up to her body. The men with spears moved closer, but Kiva waved them back.
“It’s fine,” she said. Then she spoke louder, nearly at a shout: “There’s nothing to be afraid of! The Strangers are merely here to learn! Please, come out of your huts!”
She glanced at Dunne and nodded. Dunne pressed a button on the bioscanner, and a horizontal line of light shot out from the end of it and scanned Kiva from head to toe. Dunne looked at the display, gave Kiva a look that wordlessly communicated thanks, and then stepped back.
Then they looked at the huts and waited. Soon, a man appeared in one of the doorways and walked slowly into the day. As soon as he’d left the hut, two children scampered out behind him, ran to a distance of some twenty paces away, and then stared at Matthew, Dunne, and Sam with their fingers hooked on their lower lips. Matthew looked at Dunne and smiled.
It was working.
Soon another man appeared, a baby slung on his hip; and another, an old man, walking with a cane.
Dunne walked toward them with her bioscanner and got to work.
Dunne scanned one Vagri person after another, gathering data about their biology.
“They’re anatomically similar to us,” Dunne told Matthew. “A few small differences, but their bodies and organs seem to work in the same way as ours.”
After she scanned them, Dunne asked questions, Matthew and Kiva translating. They quickly discovered the basic facts about life in the Vagri village.
The outer huts were where the men and children lived. The outer village also had huts for bathing, for storing food, and multiple wells to supply the villagers with water. The men raised crops for the village in small gardens outside each of their huts, containing a few species of greens, a pungent onion-like plant, and a sugary tuber that reminded Matthew of sweet potatoes. The men also took care of the children, and one of the men—the one who’d come out with a baby on his hip—showed them how to squeeze sweet milk from the tuber into an infant’s mouth.
The only thing the men didn’t do, it seemed, was lead—that was a role for the women.
“Where do the Sisters live?” Matthew asked Kiva.
“In the center of the village,” she said. “I’ll show you.”
They began a slow trek to the middle of the village, winding their way between the huts. Kiva and Matthew led the way. Matthew glanced back to look at Dunne and Sam, at the armed men flanking them. He had someone guarding him, too—the same boy who’d put the arrow in his chest. He didn’t mind the escort—he understood why Kiva would want her people to see that she was protecting them—but he was getting more and more nervous about Sam. Sam’s agitation hadn’t decreased at all since they’d come into the village; if anything, he was looking jumpier and more afraid than ever. If Sam tried anything—made a grab for his gun or for the man’s spear—they’d all be dead in a matter of moments.
“You’re anxious,” Kiva said. “About that boy. Sam. You’re afraid he might do something foolish.”
Matthew gave her a sideways glance. “You forget—I can read your mind.”
“Of course,” Matthew said.
He’d have to be more careful around Kiva—it was impossible to hide anything from her.
They strolled for a few moments in silence.
“How old are you?” Matthew asked.
“Seventeen seasons.”
“Seasons. How long is that?”
“A season is three hundred and eighty days,” Kiva said.
“That’s not too different from our year,” Matthew said. “That’s how we measure time where I come from.”
“And how old are you?” Kiva asked. “How many years?”
“Six—no, seventeen,” Matthew said, correcting himself. He grimaced as he remembered that he’d turned a year older the moment he came out of the freeze. It was his birthday. “We’re the same age, basically. You’re so young to be leading this entire village.”
“Am I?” Kiva asked. “I could say the same about you. Aren’t you a little young to be flying through the stars to different worlds?”
Matthew sniffed a laugh. “I suppose I am.”
“Anyway, my age doesn’t matter. The Ancestors choose our leaders. They are the ones who chose me to be the Vagra.”
“Is that what I should call you? Vagra?”
“No,” she said. “You don’t have to call me Vagra. That’s what my people call me. But you can keep calling me Kiva.”
Kiva looked at him and smiled. Matthew felt a warmth spread through his chest. She was beautiful when she smiled. She was always beautiful, actually—but when she smiled, the skin at the corners of her eyes crinkled and her eyes seemed to sparkle. Matthew realized, suddenly, that she could probably sense him thinking these things—and for a moment the thought of her b
eauty shriveled inside him, shrunk to the back of his mind.
But no. He didn’t care if she could hear his thoughts. Let her hear. She should know that she was beautiful.
“Good,” Matthew said, and returned her smile. “It’s a pretty name. Kiva.”
Kiva dropped her gaze, showing Matthew her profile. Her fingers trembling, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ears. Her smile grew wider.
A thrill surged through Matthew’s body.
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Warmth rushed to Kiva’s cheeks. She angled away from Matthew so he couldn’t see her blush.
The interest she sensed from him wasn’t something new to her, of course. She’d felt the same thing from the young men of the village for many seasons now—felt the way their eyes wandered toward her as she walked through the village, felt their mingled desire and resentment as they wondered what it would be like if she might someday come to visit their hut in the night and slip into their bed. At moments like these, she thanked the Ancestors that the Sisters had control over who they mated with—and that the Vagra, who couldn’t be mated, didn’t have to worry about such things.
But there was something different this time. Something different about Matthew’s interest.
Or, perhaps, Kiva reflected, the difference was not in him, but in her. Her mind shifted from her perception of Matthew’s thoughts—God, she’s beautiful—and luxuriated for a few moments in her own awareness of Matthew’s body ambling slowly through the village beside her. She’d never been so aware of a boy before, so cognizant of his physical presence. Kiva raised her head and stole a glance at him. He wore a new, untorn shirt, but she still remembered the feeling of ripping through the old one with her hands, still remembered the sight of his bare chest exposed to the air.
Now his skin was covered again, but there was a place between his neck and the line of his collarbone. A curved place. Kiva hadn’t noticed it before—other boys had it too, she was sure. But on Matthew it was different, somehow. On Matthew, it reminded her of the place outside the village, the nestled hillock just past the rise where she’d had her first vision of the Strangers. On Matthew, it looked like a place she’d like to rest her head to breathe him in deeply. On Matthew, it looked like a place she wanted to live.
Matthew walked tight by her side. Their hands and the tops of their arms brushed together, so lightly that Kiva couldn’t be sure whether it was an accident, or which one of them was making it happen if it wasn’t. She could have reached out to Matthew’s mind to find out, but she decided not to—and she didn’t pull away, either. Instead, she briefly closed her eyes and leaned closer to Matthew, let herself luxuriate in the moment.
Matthew’s voice broke through her reverie.
“So, why are the Sisters in charge of the village? And why do they have to live in a separate camp?”
“The shape of our village mirrors the shape of life on Gle’ah.”
“Gle’ah,” Matthew repeated. “That’s what you call this planet?”
Kiva nodded and went on. “On this world, all things revolve around the Great Mother, the sun—just as the life of this village revolves around me, the Vagra. The Great Mother holds us, keeps us in her grip. The Three Sisters—Vale and Dalia and Ao. Perhaps you saw them in the night.”
“Your moons.”
“Yes. The Three Sisters stay near to the Great Mother, just as I have the Sisters around me, helping me. Further out live the men and the children, who work the land to bring food to us all.”
Matthew squinted. “But why?”
Kiva shrugged. “Because it has always been that way. The Ancestors have decreed it to be that way. They have chosen the Vagra and the Sisters to think on the higher things, the things of the sun and the moons and the stars. And the Ancestors have chosen the men to occupy themselves with the lower things—with the dirt and the plants and the raising of our children.”
“And fighting,” Matthew offered.
“No,” Kiva said, a firmness taking hold in her voice. “We are a peaceful people.”
“But these men—,” Matthew began, gesturing at Po and the two other Forsaken men.
“They are not of us,” Kiva said. “They are Forsaken from our village. It’s only when the Vagri are under threat that we go to them for protection.”
“Under threat,” Matthew repeated, frowning. “You mean us.”
Kiva nodded. “Yes. I foresaw your coming four seasons ago, in a vision. I thought you might be a threat. Most people in the village still do. But hopefully after today you can start proving to us that we have nothing to fear from you.”
Matthew didn’t say anything. They went on walking.
In the lazy, shapeless space between the two encampments, it could have been easy to forget that they were standing in the middle of a village. Kiva’s steps slowed and she dropped her gaze to look at the dusty ground only a few paces out ahead of her. For a moment, she wondered what it might be like if they were really just on a stroll together, what it might be like if she was not the Vagra but just another girl; if he was not a Stranger but just another boy. What it might be like to reach out and take hold of his hand and take him with her to her hut, the place where she lived and slept.
It was a pleasant daydream—but she couldn’t indulge it for long. As they came closer to the Sisters’ settlement, she felt voices begin to jostle in her mind and crowd out her own thoughts. Anxiety began to gnaw at her stomach. She lifted her head and saw, just beyond the first row of huts, Thruss and Rehal trying to speak over a chattering crowd, faces flushed with the difficulty of trying to get the Sisters to listen to them.
She took a deep breath.
“Wait here,” she said to Matthew.
Kiva stepped forward and replaced Thruss and Rehal at the head of the crowd.
“Sisters, please!” she shouted. They quieted at once, but their faces were still flushed with fear and anger. “I understand your concern, but I swear to you—by the power of the Ancestors in my veins—that there’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ve spoken with one of the Strangers—the Ancestors allow us to understand each other. The Strangers won’t harm us. We have much to learn about each other, though, and that’s why I’ve brought them here. If we learn about each other instead of trying to kill each other, maybe we can live together in peace. Perhaps then we will no longer be so strange to each other—them to us, and us to them. Perhaps then the Strangers may become our friends.”
Kiva let this statement hang in the air. In the crowd, there were scattered mutters—some of dissatisfaction, some of begrudging agreement.
“Please, Sisters, go about your business as if they weren’t here,” Kiva said. “Return to your huts. Visit your friends, or your men and children in the main village. Whatever you do, let the Strangers pass in peace. The Forsaken are here to protect us with their weapons. But I’m confident that won’t be necessary.”
She glanced at Po, then at Sam, and hoped that she was right.
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Once again, Matthew hung back while Kiva moved forward to talk to the gathered crowd.
Kiva’s voice boomed as she spoke to them, but Matthew couldn’t hear what she was saying. He was distracted by something else.
He closed his eyes and held his breath.
“What is it?” came Dunne’s voice. “Are you okay?”
The pain that he’d felt by the ship, the blinding pain surging through his veins after Kiva had daubed her blood on his wound, had returned. It had grown as they walked nearer to the center of the village—and now it was practically unbearable.
As pain gripped Matthew’s body, voices crowded in his skull. He felt as though he were standing in the middle of a crowded room where everyone was speaking at once, in a language he couldn’t understand.
Matthew shook his head.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
Slowly, like a wave breaking on the shore and receding back into the ocean, the pain and the voices
subsided.
Matthew opened his eyes and forced himself to breathe.
Panting, he looked into the cluster of small huts to find that the women had largely dispersed while his eyes were closed. Now, they mulled about in groups of two or three, speaking to each other in hushed voices.
Kiva walked toward Matthew, Dunne, and Sam. “Please come in,” she said. “This is the Sisters’ camp. This is where the women live—the leaders of the Vagri.”
Matthew and Dunne moved into the camp. Once again, Dunne ranged back and forth, looking for women who’d allow her to use her bioscanner on them. Matthew cast a glance over his shoulder and saw that Sam was frozen by the edge of the Sisters’ camp. His face had a peculiar expression on it—Matthew wasn’t certain if it was anger, fear, or some combination that kept him from moving forward.
Odd. What was there to be afraid of?
Matthew put Sam out of his mind and turned to Kiva. “Is everything all right? The women didn’t seem very happy to see us.”
“The Sisters don’t think it’s right for you to be here. They’re angry with me for letting you in and showing you our ways. We’ve never had an outsider come this far into our village.”
Matthew glanced off to the side at a group of three women who were whispering to each other by the door of one of the huts. As he and Kiva passed, they stopped their whispering and stared at him and Kiva with dark expressions.
“They wish that you had just killed us,” Matthew said, thinking of the tone of the voices he’d heard in his head.
“Yes,” Kiva said. “Some of them do. How did you know?”
Matthew squinted. “I don’t know. Somehow I just …” He looked down, splayed his fingers wide at his sides. “I don’t know.”
“You can still feel them inside you, then.”
“Feel who?”
“The Ancestors.”
Matthew shrugged. “I don’t know. What do they feel like?”
“Pain,” Kiva said. “You’ll feel them in a pain that courses through your veins.”
Matthew laughed bitterly. “Then yes. If feeling the Ancestors means feeling pain, I can still feel the Ancestors. You feel this all the time, then? How can you bear it?”
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