by Audrey Faye
“Because it messes up how people connect with you.” Iggy rolled her eyes and bent into one of the contortions she called stretching. “So you give away valuable gunk for free even when most of your customers could happily afford to pay for it.”
It paid me, just not in credits. It was one of the ways I gave back to my tribe and made them stronger—and that, in so many very important ways, fed me. “Not everything is about money.”
She uncoiled and smiled. “I know, sweetie. I’m just riling you, and I’ll stop now.”
I grinned and repositioned her cider bottle where she could reach it. “You’ve picked up some of Raven’s protective instincts.” Probably hard to avoid if you slept with a thin wall between you and a Shaman’s vibes.
“I pick up lots of things.” Iggy’s fingers were on the move. Weaving, speaking of harmony, integration. “Raven’s mother-duck stuff. Your devotion. Kish’s tendency to bang her head into rock.”
I had to laugh at that. “She’s not doing much head banging at the moment.” Or if she was, it was probably Devan’s fault—our bedrooms weren’t designed for guys his size.
“She looks happy.”
She did. And that still worried me. There were too many ways for it to end with my roommate yanked around by the whims of the universe again. I kept quiet and sipped my cider.
“So.” In one of the mercurial mood shifts she was famous for, Iggy reached over and dumped her bag out on the coffee table. “You want flower tats again, or something a little sexier this time?”
Flowers could be plenty sexy. “I’m due up for assignment soon, so something that won’t make the natives blush.”
She grinned and wiggled her eyebrows. “Natives of where, exactly?”
Good point—some planets were definitely more open-minded than others. I pulled out the special powder I’d mixed for us. “Let’s stick with staid and boring on the stuff that’s going to be visible.” I crossed my arms and pulled off my warm shirt, leaving just a silk cami, and grinned at the woman who was already getting busy with her henna pots. “You can be more creative on the rest of me.”
“Yes.” Iggy dove for her brushes. “You totally have to seduce someone tonight, though, so they can admire my handiwork.”
“Wasn’t on my agenda,” I said dryly.
She snorted. “Sex is always on your agenda.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Like fried fish and gossip and free potions, sex was just another way I drank from the good energy in the universe—and put back out what I could.
“Nothing.” She grinned and kept stirring. “Even if some of us would be exhausted if we tried to keep up with you.”
Iggy traveled through the world totally differently than I did. “You dream. And wield sexy paintbrushes.” I handed over the tea kettle so she could add hot water to the henna.
The smell made my nose happy—earthy and a bit pungent and something I entirely associated with meandering afternoons and friendship. Kish thought it smelled like four-day-old sock rot, which is why we usually did our face decorating in Iggy and Raven’s pod. I reached for the pile of stencils. I could freehand simple stuff, but I didn’t have Iggy’s artistic skill. “You want sexy this time, or cool and sophisticated?”
“Right. Like I could pull either of those off.” She blew a red curl off her face. “Let’s try for vaguely mysterious—that’ll give me good cover for my lost-in-space routine.”
One that she spent too much time practicing. “You don’t give people much chance to take you seriously.” Another conversation we had fairly frequently.
“Says the woman who walks around with dirt on her face.” She dipped a skinny brush in the henna pot and tested it on one of the spare bowls sitting nearby.
I brushed at my cheeks just in case, and then held a hand out over the henna, testing the energy. Iggy was the artist, but I wanted what touched our skin to mesh with who we were. Augmentation of self, in the best possible way. Ethereal strength for her. I thought of Mundi’s worry and added an extra shot of rooting and healthy growing for me. The strength of here—just in case.
Iggy held out a brush toward my collarbone and sighed. “I can’t believe you’re going to hide most of this away under your clothes.”
I frowned. “I don’t hide.”
“You do so, at least when you’re on assignment. Prim and proper Tyra Lightbody, with her neatly coiffed hair and the face of a virgin queen.”
I tried not to laugh—it would screw with her painting. “There are good reasons for that.” When I turned my Talent on full, I exuded an energy that half the people on Stardust Prime thought was a mating signal. Which was fine if it didn’t interrupt my work. Out there in the rest of the world, I built connections more subtly, but no less implacably. It was how I did my best work.
“Virgin queen.” This time she whispered it under her breath.
I rolled my eyes—carefully, so as not to make my collarbones move.
She moved from my collarbone to my shoulder, tracing a curvy line, and I considered it safe to turn my head and contemplate her face. “What do you want?” I was in the mood to be creative.
She considered a moment. “Your choice. Something freehand.”
I had a love of freehand design, but not the skills. However, Iggy would survive if it was ugly—henna eventually washed off. I thought back to her earlier words. “Mysterious, huh? Like the mystic lady of the lake or the hot courtesan behind her fan?”
Her eyes sparkled. “Either could be fun—you pick.”
I stopped asking questions, knowing that she was plenty capable of being opinionated if she wanted to be. Today was either a mellow day or one where she’d been swamped with Fixer minutia. Either way, I’d just been granted artistic license.
I thought for a minute, and felt the beginnings of an idea float up from wherever that place is that creativity is born. KarmaCorp thinks it’s the solar plexus. Dad thinks it’s our roots. Iggy thinks it’s a belly full of chocolate.
I’m officially agnostic.
I shaped the design carefully in my head, knowing my freehand skills weren’t really up to the job, but wanting to do it anyhow. Three Kanji symbols, for long life, grace, and truth. No courtesans today. I wasn’t entirely sure I had the middle symbol right, but Kanji readers were pretty rare on Stardust Prime.
And then a simple doodled background, one that wouldn’t lean on my skills too hard. Repeating patterns, like the classic henna styles.
“Lean your head back and chill,” said Iggy, waving a brush in front of my eyes.
I smiled and followed orders, relaxing the muscles of my face as the paintbrush began to sneak up my neck. And submersed myself in the energies of beauty created by a friend.
4
I eyed the line-up of rubber boots and slid my feet into the most disreputable pair I could find. “Pick any that look like they’ll fit.”
The thirteen-year-old girl at my shoulder didn’t move a muscle.
I wondered if she’d ever seen dirt before. “They soaked the beds this morning and you’ll sink in up to your knees if you’re not careful.” And totally trash the faux-leather leggings she was wearing, and the shoes that probably cost more than I made in an entire rotation.
“I’m sorry.” She didn’t sound it. “I was told I was coming to watch you mix medical remedies. I understand that’s your specialty.”
The ice queen cometh. “It is my specialty, and it doesn’t start in the lab, although we might get there eventually.”
“Then I am inappropriately dressed.”
The quaver was so small I barely heard it. I looked up from fussing with my boots and caught the fleeting end of Tatiana Mayes recomposing her face.
She met my look with steady, cool eyes, anything else gone as if it had never been. “If you would be kind enough to give me a quarter hour, I can go change and be back and ready to assist you.”
Queens didn’t assist anyone, but I’d just seen something under the cool exterior that
said this one wasn’t royalty all the way down to her bones, even if she mostly believed it. I sighed and nodded back over my shoulder. “I’ve got a locker with spare stuff over this way—I can probably find you a pair of coveralls to use.”
A hint of gratitude snuck into the cool golden eyes. “I would appreciate it.”
Oh, nuts. “My first day of shadowing, I showed up in my gumboots and dirtiest overalls.” I’d wanted the Fixer I was following to respect my Lightbody lineage. “I thought I was going to be working with a Grower, but it turns out I’d been assigned to a Dancer.”
Tatiana permitted herself a small wince. “What happened?”
Yanica Muncy’s lips had twitched for a good ten minutes—and then she’d put me to work. “I spent eleven hours learning harmony dances.” Intricate, graceful circle work, or at least that was what they were meant to be. I paused, waiting to see if the girl had any sense of humor at all.
She tried to fight it, that much was very obvious. But anyone with eyes could have seen the giggle trying to escape. Ripples, disturbing her cool and getting choked back down. “Harmony dances? In gumboots?”
“Yup.” I moved my feet in the first steps of some long-abandoned and probably poorly remembered memory. “It went something like this.”
This time the giggle managed to bust loose, and when it did, I knew I was in deep trouble. Tatiana was right—my specialty was medical potions. But my true weakness, and the place where my Talent expressed itself best, was working with tough, lonely plants with prickly exteriors and treasure hidden underneath.
Kish had been my first of the human variety. I was pretty sure I’d just been handed another—and I had no idea what to do with the fact that it had been Yesenia Mayes who had done the handing. I looked at Tatiana and tried to keep my confused musings out of my eyes. “Grab a pair of boots and we’ll go find something to cover up the rest of your pretty self.”
It didn’t escape my notice that she plucked the most disreputable gumboots left.
Or that she smiled as she did it.
-o0o-
I looked over at Tatiana, trying to gauge her mood. I’d picked this work for us to do because it was simple—and because if she had even a smidgen of Grower Talent, she would find it grating on her last nerve.
It killed us to watch things die, even in a place as respectful of all green, growing things as a Lightbody garden patch.
I ran my hand briefly over the fuzzy tops of the baby pea shoots. “Our job today is to thin them—to take out the smaller, weaker, or more crowded ones and make room for the rest to grow.” Or if you were me and you had an irredeemable fondness for underdogs, to stream a little Talent at the weaklings and pull out the bullies.
“Okay.” My trainee looked puzzled. “How does this involve your Talent?”
I went with part of the truth. “It gives me a chance to touch the life cycle of things growing.” And dying. Twenty-six years and I still wasn’t able to roll easily with the energy of that part. “It sharpens our ability to sense the vibrations we need to work with.”
“You can’t just feel them?”
I reminded myself that she was a Dancer. “The resonances you work with tend to be less subtle.” Energy that required movement to manage it, or sound. Growers and Shamans got the other stuff—the tricky, small flows that were harder to reach, harder to hear. We talked to cells and DNA, not people. I watched Tatiana without making it obvious. Sometimes there were petty hierarchies that sprouted in the trainee classes, kids latching on to the mythology that bigger was better.
She caught me looking. “I’m not a snob. I know that what you do is very important.”
And she was pissed that I’d doubted her. Interesting. “Good. So is this work.” I laid my hands on the pea shoots again. Growers preferred direct contact, especially when they were apologizing to plants they were about to uproot.
I watched as Tatiana mimicked me. I sensed exactly zero Talent resonance in her, but her face softened.
I suddenly wondered whether this had been the best task to start with. It was a good, useful, productive one—but not necessarily an easy one for tender hearts. It hadn’t occurred to me that the golden child had one.
Which was just plain dumb. I should know better.
I crouched down beside her and tried to make amends. “This part can be hard—it still bothers me to pull them up sometimes.”
That little flush was back in her cheeks. “I was feeling silly for thinking that.”
I could have given her the speech about life cycles. Explained to her all the work we did with biodiversity and soil enhancement and the care we took in our deep partnership with green, growing things to truly honor and give back, and to make our choices with far more than only human considerations. Or I could have told her that the minerals in these plants came from the bones of generations of my ancestors—we, too, eventually became compost.
Instead, I laid my hand on the tops of the pea shoots beside hers, and spoke to the tender heart I had finally sensed. “It helps to thank them first.”
She bowed her head solemnly and said a few soundless words. I added mine to hers, very sure this wasn’t why she’d been sent to me, and not caring one whit. Yesenia might have handed her kid over to Stardust Prime’s strongest Grower—but she had also handed her over to a Lightbody. We didn’t tend to stick to other people’s agendas very well, especially when something—or someone—needed tending.
When Tatiana finally looked up again, her eyes were hazed and a little bemused. “This day is so different than I thought it was going to be.”
It most definitely was—and looking over her shoulder, I was pretty sure the strangeness wasn’t done yet. “Prepare for invasion.”
She blinked at me. “What?”
I pointed behind her. “Littles incoming.” Of the noisy, tumultuous variety. I grinned at them, knowing exactly why they were here. They had Auntie Tee radar, and they were headed our way hoping to convince me to procure them a few straggler strawberries. It took a ridiculous amount of Talent at this point in a rotation—the strawberry plants were very much done for the season.
Fortunately for them, I was a very soft touch.
I rolled my eyes as Rubio tumbled into the dirt headfirst long before he got to the pea shoots, taking out several rows of squash plantings as he landed. He glanced my direction, shamefaced, and then started repairing the damage. I was pleased when Tellie and June joined him. Learning the lessons of family while they played—we always had each other’s backs.
And squash would grow if they got the roots back anywhere near the dirt.
I smiled, and then turned to Tatiana to introduce our invading troops—and ran smack into the expression on her face instead.
I had expected polite patience, or possibly annoyance, or maybe even a return to the ice queen who clearly didn’t play in the dirt. Instead, I nearly drowned in the naked longing in her eyes and her Dancer hands. I’d lived around Iggy long enough not to need a translation.
A teenager who would give anything she owned to be Rubio Lightbody, even for a moment.
I got up off my knees, feeling my insides snapping, knowing I needed to change the scenery, and fast. The last thing in the universe I should be doing was spouting off about Yesenia Mayes, even in my head.
I didn’t like the boss lady, but like almost everyone on Stardust Prime, I deeply respected her. She was very hard, but she was fair, reasoned, and she got things done. When you came from a family of gardeners, those things mattered. There were others who could handle the tending, the nurturing—or so I’d always thought.
Half an hour in the company of a slim girl with golden eyes had shredded that pretty thoroughly.
I knew motherhood wasn’t universal—on some planets, children didn’t even live with their biological parents. But you can’t grow up a Lightbody and understand that. Family is bred into our DNA and watered every day of our lives. Connections, a wide and deep web of them. That Tatiana had a mother and
was clearly still this hungry offended every cell in my body, no matter what the Anthros had to say about human beings and our flexible cultural structures.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. But I knew someone who could, and we’d go find him.
Just as soon as I produced a few strawberries, and shook a layer or two off of my mad.
-o0o-
Dad was easy enough to find that I wondered if he had been waiting for us. Mundi wasn’t the only one in the family who sometimes read the ether in interesting ways.
Either that, or he’d just been plain spying. Plenty of those genes in the Lightbody family tree too.
He patted down one of his seedlings and then eyed me, and the girl beside me, with the kind of bland look that said we had his complete attention.
I didn’t say anything—he would know why I had come. Some Lightbodies were gardeners, some were chefs, some were parents, some were visionaries, some were the people who got things done. I was glue—someone who connected and tended and helped clan and tribe and community stick together and grow. It had made me a Fixer, and one day, it would make me an auntie.
Today, it just made me someone stirring up trouble where it probably shouldn’t be stirred. My father would know that and could make his own choices.
I stood quietly and held my breath until he did.
Dad winked at me and smiled at Tatiana. “Welcome. Gardening is art. Tyra tells me that Growing is a science, but she has not yet entirely convinced me.”
Golden eyes watched him carefully. “Perhaps it is both.”
He laughed. “Ah, a diplomat, are you? That’s a surprise, coming from Yesenia’s child.”
Tatiana froze, ice queen back and in full regalia.