by Audrey Faye
My heart shuddered. I wasn’t naive. I knew that some things came at great cost. I’d left my home, paid a deep personal price to serve the greater good. But this mission had dragged me into a universe where the prices to be paid exceeded my ability to comprehend them.
Yesenia and the daughter she couldn’t claim.
Regalis, willing to consider the mental health of millions of people an acceptable loss.
And the nodes. He didn’t know them as the great mother, but even simply as nodes, they had immeasurable value. Which Regalis would know intimately—every Traveler assignment in the last three-quarters of a century had been issued from his desk.
I could feel every millimeter of me resisting as I met Elleni’s gaze. “He’s willing to let the nodes die. Something very bad must be linked to their existence.”
Elleni sat straight and tall and quivered like a leaf. “Or at least he believes that to be true.”
Something strong and true flowed into my spirit web. Wisdom, released with her words. “He could be wrong.” Then I caught myself. “No. He’s never wrong.” That was KarmaCorp dogma.
“There are shades of being right.” Elleni’s hands fluttered as if she wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. “Let’s assume he was right to talk to you today. That doesn’t mean he was right to grab you in the way he did, or to drug you. He assumed those things were necessary to his outcome.”
The strength flowing in me now grabbed those words. “It smacks of playing God.” No one from my home world would be so arrogant, so presumptuous. We made the hard choices—sometimes, the very hardest of hard. But we served.
Regalis… did something different.
“What did you feel from him?”
I stared at Elleni. “What?”
“You have great gifts, Raven, and you were in a room with him. We both know of his reputation. What did you learn of the man?”
I’d been drug-dazed, shattered, and furious—but she wasn’t wrong. I felt my Talent offering up words before I even thought them. “He’s lonely.” So lonely that his spirit web didn’t even whisper of such things, and every single other person I’d ever met had at least a hint or two. To be lonely is to be human. “The kind of towering loneliness that if acknowledged, would crack him.”
She frowned. “He heads the StarReaders.”
A cloistered elite, closeted in a tower. In many ways, not much different than a closed planet. I shook my head, trying to align my words with what I’d felt. “They aren’t a tribe. He stands alone.”
She breathed out slowly, and her eyes were full of grief. “Perhaps it is by choice.”
A man of no tribe.
I didn’t have it in me to feel sorry for him yet—not with my system still thrashing from what he’d done to it. But I was at least beginning to understand. He stood alone. He didn’t understand, at some very fundamental level, what it was to take care of those who stood with you in the world.
Which was the whole problem here. “He weighs the risks and the benefits, but he’s like the Epsi scientists. He’s blind to some of what should be on the scale.” Even if great evil was coming via the nodes, that had to be weighed against the great evil of losing them. Something a man with no tribe couldn’t possibly begin to understand.
I felt the strength flowing in me coalesce.
The stars said I needed to be here. A tribal child. One who knew at least something of the weight of the great mother on the scales of the universe.
Elleni studied me intently—and then she nodded slowly, her lips moving into a faint smile. “What will you do?”
The answer rose in me without thought. “Protect the nodes.”
“Good.” She smiled. “In that case, we have a shuttle to catch.”
I was already climbing to my feet. “I don’t know how to protect them.”
“You will.” She reached for her trunk, and then paused. “Will Regalis be watching?”
I assumed he never stopped. A Wanderer change of clothes wasn’t going to hide us this time. I didn’t know yet if he was my enemy, but I was quite certain he wasn’t my friend. “We shouldn’t take the public shuttles. Is there another way?”
“Of course.” She seemed entirely unperturbed. “I know one of the food-cart resuppliers. He’s a good man. We can catch a ride up in his flitter.”
I couldn’t stop my snicker. Or the belly-bubbling laughter that came on its heels. Flitters were tiny, and this one would be no doubt be jammed. I was about to flout the orders of one of the most powerful men in the galaxy, one who might be intentionally allowing harm to come to the great mother—and ride to her rescue wedged between boxes of hot dogs and fried onions.
22
Wanderers are flamboyant. Noisy, visually vibrant, loud people who know who they are in the universe and don’t try to hide it.
They’re also really good at sneaking when subtlety is required.
I brushed the grieving veil away from my face and looked around the dim tent. Delia and Imani sat patiently, a pot of tea in front of them, as Elleni and I discarded the layers that had brought us here. After the ride with the hot dogs, we’d been attached to a delivery of carpets headed for the market—as the grieving daughters of one of the merchants.
Nobody stops you for inspection when you’re wailing at the top of your lungs.
I folded my veil neatly. It was beautifully made, and likely belonged to someone who carried real grief.
Imani reached for the teacups and then looked at me sharply. “Your aura. It has been damaged.”
I shook my head, fury sparking again at her words. “It isn’t damage. It’s drug remnants.” I filled her in on my short kidnapping.
She said nothing, but her eyes got dark. When I tried to continue, she snapped up a hand. “They cut you off from your spirit, child. They did you harm. First, we heal that. Then we will go to the node.”
I shook my head. “There’s no time.”
“That’s your head speaking.” She was already moving, reaching for her drum. “Your heart knows better.”
Her words landed somewhere deep in my ribs that knew that time was not what the Federation made it out to be. I sighed and folded myself into something approximating Elleni’s meditation pose.
Imani snorted. “I saw you curl up on the earth by the node, and when you danced. I assume that’s how you heal best as well.”
It was how every Quixali joined the great mother—but out in the rest of the world, curling up on the ground in a fetal position was generally taken as a sign of abject weakness.
Imani simply beat a little harder on her small hand drum.
I exhaled and curled up on the floor of her tent. It felt strange—naked and vulnerable and immature. I breathed into feelings eleven-year-old Raven would have considered entirely foreign and tried to connect with the heartbeat in the drum. I couldn’t feel the node from here. Either it was too small or too shielded, or there was too much spaceport in the way. But Imani’s drum would call what I needed.
I’d done what healing of my spirit web I could from the inside, and I was well used to riding into battle a little frayed. But what she offered with the steady rhythm of her hands was more than healing. It was breath. It was a chance to remember who I was, deep down inside the oldest parts of my soul—the parts of me that had been born into the arms of the great mother and knew I would end my days there.
Comfort washed over me even as the beat changed, the rhythms getting more complex. I resisted—I wasn’t ready to let the comfort go. The drums laughed at me gently and slowed down again. More heartbeats. More easy breathing in and out to the count of a beat that knew who I was even when I forgot.
This time, when the rhythm accelerated, I joined it willingly. Let the beat pulse in my veins and in my soul and in the parts of my spirit web still bearing bruises from Regalis’s rough treatment. A demonstration, in the most personal of ways, of his lack of connection with the great mother. The Fixer in me could see his fierce ethics, his compas
s, his uncompromising dedication to the greater good.
But you did not tread on one flower to water the many. Not when you had other choices.
The man who had snatched me from a Galieus street had a weakness. He let go of other choices far too quickly. Anathema to a Shaman, especially one of Quixali birth. The grandmothers who raised me knew how to make hard choices, but they looked under every rock, in every tree burrow, in every drop of water and grain of sand to find the way that did the least harm in service of the greatest good.
Elleni was half right—and half wrong. Those of us who grew up tribal weren’t born with some kind of greater capacity to connect and join. But we were different. Different by our upbringing. Different in what we honored, what we valued, what small and beautiful and fragile parts of the tribe we were willing to make sure lived to serve the great mother.
Regalis was at least as dedicated as anyone I knew to serving the greater good—but I also knew how to serve the tribe. To carry the strength of the tribe as part of my service, and to protect it.
Regalis was willing to let the nodes poison and die so that galaxies and billions of people might thrive.
Tribes know that isn’t the way poison works.
I sat up, the thrumming inside me a living thing now. The nodes need to be protected, but I still didn’t know how. I shook my head, frustrated, trying to will something to fall into place.
Imani softened her drumming.
I looked at her, beseeching. “I don’t know what to do for the nodes. I have head talk, but the answer isn’t there.”
“Of course it isn’t.” Imani set aside her drum and began collecting small tools and objects of ritual. “Delia, have some of the youngers provide us with a distraction. One that will allow us to visit the node undisturbed.”
The Seer slipped out of the tent silently.
Imani switched her sharp gaze to me. “Do not lose hold of who you are, daughter of my sister clan. You were born touching a node, and just like a newborn baby, you will know what to do when you touch her again. We will help hold you while you do it.”
The noise inside my head crashed to a halt.
Of course.
I wasn’t Regalis.
I was Raven.
First, I would touch the mother.
Then I would know.
23
I was more prepared for the node this visit. Ready for the great mother to greet me here in this most unlikely warren of tunnels and pipes and space-station guts. This time I’d paid far less attention to my exterior surroundings on the way in and more to the readying in my own heart.
What I’d found there made me smile.
The shining square of the four—back in our earliest days. Four eleven-year-old girls, meeting for the first time, somehow reaching through our fear and immense differences and finding the very best of each other and holding it tight. A tribe by choice.
Kish, with her pugnacious, expansive heart. Tee’s generations-deep roots and instinctive generosity. Artistic, irrepressible Iggy, who shared laughter and water with me.
The day eleven-year-old Raven had been given exactly what she needed.
I needed to trust that this day would bring me exactly what I needed too. I carried the wisdom of my three closest friends, and stood in the wisdom of three more. I looked at Imani, Elleni, and Delia, who had taken up positions on the four compass points of the circle.
Again, I was part of four.
I smiled. Now we just had to figure out what to do. Everything in me screamed to serve. To protect.
And yet.
Here in this place of utter safety, held in the arms of the great mother, I finally breathed into that place in my ribs that was least comfortable. Let go of the sharp demands to protect, to serve, that had been breathed into me on the day I was born, and just listened. Listened to the still, quiet voice. The one that did not yet have a drumbeat. The one that tugged me back to a day on a grassy field on Stardust Prime when four brand-new Fixer trainees had laid eyes on each other for the very first time.
There was something there I needed to see.
I let go of the drum I thought I was supposed to beat—and just listened.
To the wisdom I carried from the sisters of my eleven-year-old heart. The lessons they had brought back from the assignments that had changed them. Kish had learned to let the needs of her own heart stand heavier on the scales. Tee had built a lock that in the right circumstances would unlock itself. And my beautiful roommate had come back far more willing to churn things up, to step away from her first instincts and to shake things at their very foundations.
My head snapped up, full of locks and hearts and shaking and wonder. I could see my answer in all its pure, shining glory. The way we did this. The wisdom of my sisters, passing through my own soul.
Imani took one look at me and chuckled. “There. I knew you’d know.”
I nodded at the three who were with me now. “It is for the four of us to do.” It felt right. It felt holy.
“No.” Delia spoke with sadness—and with sureness. “I am not one of the four. I have Seen this. The other, she is not here. Her part is yet to come. But you carry her close to your heart.”
My fingers fumbled for my amulet pouch. “Tatiana?” No. I felt the spurting fear. Everything in me resisted this needing a thirteen-year-old girl.
“Yes.” Delia’s eyes permitted no doubt. “She is not required today. I will sit for her and hold room for what will come. For what we will start—and one day she will finish.”
I shuddered at the prophetic weight of her words. And at their resonance in my own soul.
-o0o-
I wrapped my fingers tighter around my amulet and exhaled. I could not fear for Tatiana. She was a sister, and a daughter of the great mother, and her life would unfold as it must.
I sank down into the presence underneath me, feeling the arms I had never known life without. My job wasn’t to protect the great mother today. It was to give this precious node clarity on who her tribe was. I needed to help the presence surrounding me know her true daughters so that she didn’t try to eat the polluted dust bunnies of a cosmic vacuum cleaner. And to do that, I was going to borrow a tool utterly foreign to any tribal child.
I blessed Tee and her sharp thinking, because a lock was exactly what we needed here.
I reached for the energies of the others. Imani, steady and fierce and tolerating no foolishness. Elleni, serene and dedicated and drenched in compassion. Delia, brave and sad and here for more reasons than as a placeholder. My heart knew that, even if her eyes did not. She was our witness. The one who would see, and know, and speak with utter conviction to those who must hear.
I gathered their energies, Imani’s incisive ones and Elleni’s turtle shell and Delia’s wisdom, and let them flow into my tribal heart, steep in my reverence for the great mother and all she held and fed and sheltered. I let them see me, feel me, know me as a daughter. The children of three tribes—Wanderers, Sisters, Quixali. Forming one knowing. One key.
And then I took this nugget of truth and offered it to the mother. Asked her to see us, to know us, to recognize us. I let the energy of true daughter coat the four of us and the amulet pouch on my chest.
The presence under my feet greeted us in deep welcome.
I felt the shock, the tears, the opening, and the wild joy of the three I brought with me. Three daughters who had not known the mother. Not like this. Not in the fullness of being entirely held, entirely seen, entirely nestled and wanted and loved.
I wept for my new sisters, and I rejoiced for them.
And then I told the mother, as clearly and simply as I could, that there were some things that were not daughters. Not to be nestled and cherished. She must lock herself against these false daughters, these false keys.
The node beneath me raged. Grieved.
I held firm—and the three who were now daughters in fullness held with me.
This is truth.
The moth
er shuddered, and somewhere, vaguely, I could hear alarms ringing all over the station.
This is truth. Tribe is not all. Tribe is sacred, tribe is holy, tribe is needed. But tribe is not all.
Tears. Rage. More tears.
Confusion.
I reached my heart deep into the mother—and held out the lock.
We are your daughters. We will help you know.
-o0o-
I smiled at Seraphina as she brought me what must be my fifth bowl of food. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
She grinned and plunked herself down on my lap.
I laughed and scooped up some of the ginger chutney that was her favorite. I snuggled into her warm head for a moment, soaking in the easy peace of tribe and food and belonging. I couldn’t allow it to last much longer. What I had done would change things on a much bigger scale than a clan of Wanderers or a single spaceport, and the first person who would want to swat at me for that might well be the head of the StarReaders himself.
I planned to toss myself on a shuttle before he got the chance.
I looked over as Elleni and Delia dropped gracefully to the ground beside me. There was one thing I needed to check. “Will we need to do the same for all the nodes?”
Elleni smiled gently. “No, that’s not necessary.”
That confirmed something my soul had already known. “The nodes are all one.”
She nodded. “The Sisters believe so. Small windows into something greater. The nodes are merely where we can touch presence, and I believe we touch it only dimly. Perhaps more so on your home world.”
That was a question of both urgency and importance, but I had tribe for that. Grandmothers, sisters, daughters who would work out how we best served the great mother in the fullness of this new knowledge.