Khe

by Razevich, Alexes

  Hwanta pushed her chair back and stood up. “I’m ready for another bowl. How about you, Khe? More?”

  I didn’t want more, but I stood up and followed Hwanta anyway.

  ***

  The morning light cut through the window like a knife. The three cots where Thedra, Jit, and Stoss slept were empty. My stomach rumbled in hunger. I bolted up into a sit and threw off the thin blanket I’d slept under. This wasn’t right, wasn’t possible.

  “Jit?” I called. “Stoss? Thedra?”

  My voice was shaky. I’d never woken in an empty room before. My stomach rumbled again.

  No one felt hungry once Resonance began. In the days before individual transportation vehicles, journeys to the nesting grounds were often long. Needing to stop for food was inefficient, and the creator had relieved us of the burden. When Resonance ended, hunger returned.

  But my hunger had not gone. And I felt no crazier than I had yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that. Felt no lust surging in my blood, no egg quickening in my sac. Saw no colors in the air to guide me anywhere.

  Broken.

  Impossible, I told myself. Desire would come. My own special color would shimmer in the air.

  I climbed off my cot, planted my feet on the warm stone floor, threw back my head and held my arms wide, waiting to feel the pull.

  Nothing.

  Only hunger.

  Broken. A drain on my species.

  What good was I?

  Chapter Two

  Praise your sisters who soon will be dust.

  From dust does rise the creator’s breath.

  --The Song of Returning

  The world had swung once around the sun since my commune-sisters had gone to Resonance and I had not. Everyone knew. They’d seen it in my emotion spots when they’d returned. No one spoke of it to me, not even Simanca.

  No one spoke to me about Resonance either. Of the tug, the journey, the joy. I heard plenty, though. Sisters in the field, in the commons—the first-year doumanas could hardly stop jabbering on. Until they caught sight of me. Then all was silence.

  I tried to ask Thedra about it.

  “There’s no point, Khe,” she’d said. “It would be like telling a grass eater what meat tastes like.”

  I’d asked Jit, too. She’d only crinkled her lips in a smile, hummed a bit, and said, “It’s wonderful.” Her eyes had opened up wide. “It’s not all that grand,” she’d said quickly. “You didn’t miss anything.” Then her eyes went all misty again.

  I didn’t bother asking Stoss.

  ***

  The fires were already lit and the kettles set on when we crossed over the pale-green brick threshold into Emergence House, all fifty-three doumanas of Lunge sikra fitting easily into the large room. Sweat trickled down my sides. No one liked the long, pale-green gowns that swaddled us throat to ankle and were too hot on a morning like this, but we didn’t complain. Not on Commemoration Day, the day our hatchlings would have their downy outer skin peeled away, allowing the fully developed doumana within to emerge—a ceremony everyone loved. It was also the time we celebrated Returning to the creator with the aged doumanas, which I didn’t like so well.

  In the windowless room, large cast-iron cauldrons filled with spice-scented water bubbled, filling the air with steam to help soften the hatchlings’ skins and make peeling easier. The scent made me woozy. I felt hot and prickly, as though I were a hatchling again, nervously waiting to withstand a rite everyone promised would be wonderful, but that I had my doubts about.

  The hatchlings who would emerge today were off-resonance young who hadn’t hatched in the year they’d been laid, but had grown more slowly, needing extra time to develop enough strength to break out of the egg. Off-Resonance hatchlings tended to be weak and often died before they could emerge as doumanas. Of course, they cost less, too. That we’d brought these three through in complete health made the prospect of seeing them emerge even better.

  “Praise now your second birth,” we chanted. Simanca seized a hatchling firmly, dug her bony fingers into the loose flesh behind the hatchling’s neck, and began peeling away long strips of yellow skin. The hatchling wriggled beneath Simanca’s hold, her eyes wide, her face set in a mix of excitement and fear.

  “Be still,” Simanca said, squeezing the hatchling’s shoulder—which only made her wriggle more.

  “Be still,” Simanca insisted, and the hatchling settled down.

  She had said the same thing to me on my Emergence day and pinched me hard enough to leave a mark, but peeling tickled. It had been hard to stand motionless, as we had been told to. I’d wanted to please Simanca and to make my sisters proud. Instead I’d hopped around like a bird with both feet on hot coals.

  When Simanca finished with the hatchling, a much-changed being stood before us. Her body covering of yellow down was gone. Her skin glistened with sweat and moisture from the steam that nearly choked the air from the room. The newly emerged doumana stretched out one arm, admiring the lovely smoothness of her skin, her new light-red color, the single blue dot on her wrist.

  I sneaked another look at the new, third dot that had appeared that morning on the inside of my left wrist. A thrill ran through me, as though my dot showed real accomplishment, not just the passage of time.

  We weren’t like the beasts whose fur whitened with age or the birds whose feathers grew straggly over time. A doumana looked the same from the moment she left the hatchling state behind until she returned to the creator. To know how old a doumana was, you had to count the dots on her wrist.

  “I present to you,” Simanca said, “the doumana, Denil. Welcome your new sister.”

  To grow a happy heart, say The Rules, till well the fields of celebration.

  We all stomped our feet and shouted welcomes and praises. Our commune and our kind would continue.

  ***

  The paint on the murals lining the walls of our community hall was flaked and the colors had turned dull. The painted doumana harvesting kiiku had lost most of one hand and parts of her shoulders. I don’t know why I suddenly noticed; the mural must have looked the same all of my life.

  Once Lunge commune had thrived. Then the commune’s weather-prophet had failed to see the coming of a series of hailstorms that destroyed most of the harvest. That was in the days when each commune had its own weather-prophet, before the Powers started examinations and certification and centralized the prophets in the klers.

  Food production went down at Lunge in each of the next three years. With each decline, fewer hatchlings were assigned, making fewer doumanas to work in the fields, which meant production went down—a cruel circle that our community seemed unable to break.

  “Praise to the creator,” Simanca said, drawing my attention back to where we were and why. She stood on a riser at the front of the hall—the textbox belt around her waist, the embroidered shawl of leadership over her shoulders, her arms held out as if she could enfold us all in their embrace. Her unitmates, Tav, Gintok, and Min stood behind her.

  We rose from our seats, calling, “Praise to the creator who gives us life and plenty. Praise to the creator who will soon receive our sisters into its soul.”

  From the back of the room, the four Returning doumanas walked in a single line down the center aisle toward where Simanca and her unit stood. My unit sat in the front row. I couldn’t see the coming doumanas’ faces clearly over the heads of my commune-sisters sitting around us, but I knew who they were.

  Hwanta and the three other returning doumanas would be robed in scarlet, while the rest of us wore our pale-green Emergence gowns. Scarlet was the color of Returning, the color of the day-ending sky, the color of the creator. Only doumanas who had entered their thirty-fifth year were allowed to wear the color. It was a great honor, earned by survival. The life of a commune doumana was not an easy one.

  Once the Returnees came into view, I kept my eyes on Hwanta. She’d been the only one to seek me out after Resonance, bringing me a small pictu
re orb of Lunge that I knew she treasured. The orb showed Lunge as though seen from a cloud, looking down on the buildings and the full-blooming fields. It was beautiful.

  “Put this where you can see it every night before sleep and every morning when you wake,” she’d said. “Lunge is our heart. Some might even say you are blessed to never have to leave it.”

  I’d gazed at the orb every night and morning for a year now, but I’d never felt blessed.

  “The riser looks so lovely,” Jit said, and sighed.

  Thedra, who sat on the other side of me, nodded. “The flowers are nice. I’ll bet the unit that made them gets a special mention.”

  I looked at the riser, where four bunches of red fedephloc, green yawo, and white snowcrown waited to be presented to the Returning doumanas. Each bunch had thirty-five flowers, one for each year we live.

  The exact day of each doumana’s Returning was unknown. It could be today, tomorrow, or not until the year was nearly complete. The celebration on Commemoration Day was the only time the entire community could be certain of honoring them, and for sharing our happiness at their good fortune. We would praise their accomplishments with songs composed especially for them. There would be speeches and a feast.

  When the four scarlet-robed doumanas stepped up onto the riser, Simanca called out, “Stand and lift your voices for The Song of Returning.”

  The Song of Returning was one of my favorites—a cheerful song with a lively beat. As we sang, we clapped out the rhythm with cupped palms against our thighs, swaying in time to the music like rows of green saplings in a good wind. I wondered suddenly why we sang for Returning but chanted for Emergence? Was it habit, happenstance, or one of the Rules? It wasn’t the kind of question I could ask Simanca without getting a lecture on unseemly curiosity—and there was plenty in the Rules about that. Maybe Hwanta would know.

  When we’d finished, Simanca nodded to Thedra. The rest of us sat down, but Thedra walked chin-in-the-air to the riser. She’d been working on a new song for the Returning doumanas. For days we’d heard her humming snatches of the lilting tune she’d composed, but no one knew what words she had put to the music. I’d asked her to make some kind lines especially for Hwanta, but with Thedra, you never knew.

  Thedra began to sing.

  O this, O this,

  My Returning sister—

  O this, may this

  Be your Returning day.

  “No,” Hwanta screamed from her place on the riser—an anguished wail that seemed to pierce my skin all the way to the bone. "No.” Hwanta swayed on her feet and then crumpled in a heap. Tav ran over and kneeled down next to her. Hwanta's back arched like a bridge. An awful gurgling sounded in her throat.

  We all rushed forward, all of us near the front, crowding close around our injured sister. I knelt down to help hold Hwanta still, so she wouldn’t hurt herself.

  After a while the convulsions stopped and Hwanta opened her eyes. She rolled onto her side and lay there, panting hard. I stroked her neck. Her emotion spots were brown-black, the color of anger.

  “Are you all right?” I whispered to her.

  Hwanta’s breathing slowed, but stayed harsh and ragged. Wide eyed, she looked up at me. I didn’t know if she recognized who I was. Slowly she pulled herself to her feet. I stood up beside her. Hwanta leaned against my shoulder and stared blindly toward her sisters gathered around her. I felt a long shudder shake her body head to toe.

  “The creator is cruel,” she said, so low that I was sure I was the only one who heard her. “It cheats us all.”

  “No,” I whispered back. “The creator is kindness.”

  “The creator is jealous of our lives!” she screamed. “Why should it take us back when we are still healthy and filled with the desire for life?”

  My heart thudded in my chest. My emotion spots burned blue-red with anxiety for Hwanta’s soul, in fear for my own soul that I’d even heard these words.

  Someone said, “Hwanta’s gone insane.”

  “No,” some said, but more said, “Yes. Hwanta’s gone mad.”

  “Guilty of pride and punished before our eyes,” Gintok called out from her spot next to Simanca on the riser. “Turned into a babbler.”

  I felt my hands shaking, my emotion spots flaring an ugly rainbow as fear, disgust, and sorrow raced through me. A babbler had wandered into Lunge commune once. Simanca had already warned us about them—that they were not only insane, but vicious and would hurt any doumana or hatchling they got a hold of. We drove that babbler away with sticks and stones and shouted curses.

  A swarm of angry doumanas rushed toward the riser, yelling, “Babblers must be banished.” I stepped in front of Hwanta, wanting to protect her.

  "Babbler," my sisters were shouting. "Send her out. Babblers must be banished."

  “Stop,” Simanca commanded the swarm. She didn’t look or wait to see if her command was followed—she knew it would be. “Return to your dwellings. Now.”

  The rushing doumanas stopped as suddenly as if Simanca’s words were a wall. Others who’d been standing by their seats sat down, only to rise again immediately, to obey Simanca’s order. The sound of bare feet tramping across the wooden floor filled the hall. No one spoke.

  We filed out of Community House and headed toward our own dwellings. Jit walked with her head down and muttered under her breath. Colors blotched her neck—purple-gray concern, brown-black anger, soft-gray sorrow. I felt my spots fired with the orange-yellow of confusion and the dark purple of grief.

  The Rules say, Value your sisters as you wish to be valued. Love as you wish to be loved. These doumanas, Hwanta’s sisters—how could they do that to her?

  Chapter Three

  The creator walks by day and night.

  Its will hidden from our sight.

  --Prayer Song

  All my commune-sisters had gone to what should have been my second Resonance. They’d left me behind, cast off from their thoughts and concerns as if I didn’t exist.

  I dragged my toes through the soft dirt in front of our dwelling, looking around, hoping for something to catch my eye, something I could do. We had two hatchlings, but they were locked into Hatchling House for safety. I couldn’t visit them. Something had gone wrong with the vision stage and it showed the same presentation over and over. There was no one to fix it. Everyone had gone to mate.

  It wasn’t fair that I was left behind. I worked hard, obeyed the rules. It wasn’t my fault that I was different.

  I kicked a pile of dirt into the air and headed out to the fields, just to not be standing there like … something useless.

  I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of this earlier, but plants don’t stop growing just because Resonance hits. Fruits that should have been picked when hand-sized had grown as long as my arm. Water-loving vegetables shriveled from neglect. Roots grew hard and woody under the ground. “The sin of waste,” Simanca often said, “is unforgiveable.” But that sin, at least, I could undo.

  A cooling breeze blew as I bent low, picking the tender new leaves of a glasme plant. Only a hand’s width or so above the soil, the best leaves jutted like a collar of stiff fingers around thick stalks. The leaves were used for everything from flavoring hard-sweets to making insect-bite balm. Harvesting them without machinery was muscle cramping, backbreaking work. It was exactly what I wanted.

  It felt strange to be in the fields without Jit, Stoss, and Thedra. Lonely. Too quiet. I longed for Jit’s laughter, a remark from Stoss, one of Thedra’s sudden bursts of song.

  I stood up and wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand. The harvest bag was nearly full again. The gathering I’d done pleased me, but I wasn’t looking forward to dragging the large, heavy bag back to the silo a fourth time. If I’d known how to run the harvester, I could have stripped the field of its crop in no time.

  If wishing made a thing so, I’d have gone to mating.

  The sun was sinking toward the horizon. The sky blazed with wide stroke
s of scarlet, thin trails of cerulean, arching sweeps of chartreuse. The air had grown crisp, chilling my sweat-drenched skin. I rubbed my arms and shoulders to warm them.

  Simanca would be pleased when she came back from Resonance and saw what I’d done. My unitmates and commune-sisters would be pleased because we’d all share in what the extra crops bought. Maybe Thedra would make up a song about what I’d done.

  A positive spirit lifts even the heaviest burden, Simanca often said. Maybe. Grabbing the heavy harvest bag by the towrope, I lugged the sack down to the silo and emptied the crops into the deep wooden bin that had been empty when I began, and which I had nearly filled. The Rules of a Good Life say that hard work well done makes an easy heart. I’d recited those words all of my life, but never truly understood them before. Sometimes, on dark days, I’d thought the saying was just a way to stop complaints. Standing in the silo, my legs, back, and arms sore but my sense of usefulness restored, I realized how much truth and wisdom were in those words.

  Hard work made a doumana hungry, too. I headed toward the bin to grab some root crops for my supper.

  “Can I have a root?”

  I jumped and twisted toward the sound. Han—one of our two hatchlings—stood in the doorway.

  “Please, doumana,” Han said. “We’re lonely. No one has come to play with us. Will you come? We like it when you come.”

  “What are you doing out here?” I asked, my voice harsher than I meant it to be. “You could get hurt.”

  Han lowered her down-covered head. “The door wasn’t locked.”

  Resonance madness. My sisters had been in such a hurry to mate, they hadn’t even secured the hatchlings. The hatchlings could have gotten out and broken a leg, or fallen in the well and drowned.

  “Did I make a mistake?” Han asked. “You’ve got a lot of brownish black spots right here.” She touched the front of my throat.

  I sighed. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Someone left your door open and you might have gotten hurt. I was worried about you, that’s all.”