“You’re not a babbler,” she said. “What are you? Some doumana lost coming back from Resonance?”
She looked away. “Yes. This was a Resonance year. I do so miss feeling Resonance. They didn’t think I’d lose that, but I did. Made them angry, but it was their fault.”
The babbler looked back at me. “Who are you?” she shouted. “What is your community?”
I swallowed and made myself look into her rheumy eyes. “I am Khe. Once of Lunge commune.”
“Once of Lunge commune?” The babbler’s high-pitched laughter echoed in the cave. Her breath felt hot on my skin. Her voice turned harsh. “You’re no babbler. What are you, then? A reject? Another experiment gone wrong? Are you a mistake?”
I felt the colors glaring on my neck, blue-red, and fear gray, but the babbler didn’t seem to notice. Her body stiffened and her eyes rolled. Her eyelids fluttered and closed. I was afraid to touch her.
I pulled my cloak tight, as though that could keep me safe if she awoke from her trance and grabbed for me. On my knees, moving slowly, I began to gather my few things. If the snow had stopped, I’d try to make it to the kler. Even that fearsome place seemed better than staying here with her. All I had to do was get past her to the cave opening.
The babbler sighed deeply. I swung my head around to look at her. My hands were clenched into fists. Her eyes were open and clear. She stared as if waiting for me to do something she both dreaded and expected.
“The storm is full-fledge,” she said calmly. “It won’t stop for three days. You head out into it now, you will freeze to death.”
“I see mud on your foot casings. The snow probably turned to rain awhile ago.” I cocked my head and listened, but heard no telltale drip of water. “Has the rain stopped, too?”
The babbler picked at the mud on her casings. “I was hungry. The stream plants are delicious, but you get dirty fetching them out. I found that sled and those goods while I was out.” She tilted her head back and stared at the rocky ceiling. “You do remember that I was a weather-prophet. Long, long ago. Before—” Her emotion spots erupted brown-black with anger.
As quickly as it had come, the color vanished from her neck. When she spoke again, her voice had the flat cadence of weather-prophets on the vision stage. “The storm will rage three days, then lessen. On the fifth day, it will rain slightly. On the sixth day, the sun will warm the land and cloaks will not be needed.”
The fire had nearly died out. I fed it more branches and sat back. I stared at the babbler, trying to judge how much of what she said was true, how much was madness speaking—and how frightened of her I should be. Had she really been a weather-prophet? Could she still do it?
“The storm will be at its height tomorrow at mid-day,” she said. She waggled a long, pointed finger at me. “I wasn’t just a prophet, you know. I was First. I could always taste the weather before anyone else—better than anyone else.”
The emotion spots on her neck flared bright green, the color of pride. If she hadn’t really been a prophet, she certainly believed she had been.
Her mouth crinkled, spreading her lips over her teeth. “I’ll tell you a secret. Coming snow doesn’t taste cold at all.”
Best to let her talk and stay on her good side. If she were right about the storm, I’d be stuck in our shared shelter for several days.
“What does snow taste like?” I asked.
“Like blood—what did you think?” She laughed and hugged herself.
“I see by your clothes that you’re a country doumana,” the babbler said. “No doubt you stare up at the sky and watch the clouds, judge how the wind is blowing, see what colors circle the moon, and guess your weather that way. Then you consult the vision stage and let a weather-prophet tell you how close to right you’ve come. But if you’ve got the knowledge, you just open your mouth and taste. Rain is like sour fruit, makes my mouth pucker. Heat taste like dirt.” She patted my leg with her filthy hand. “There now, isn’t that a good gift I’ve given?”
She’d given me nothing, but I said, “Yes. Thank you.”
“Oh, the doumana thanks a babbler. That’s a pretty bunch of manners they taught you at Lunge commune.”
Before I could say more, her eyes rolled back in her head and she went rigid again. I couldn’t know how long this fit would last. I crept past her, out of the large chamber we shared, to the smaller front cave. Snow was falling hard and fast. I wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
The babbler’s voice came from behind me.
“What did you say your name was?”
I made my way back into the large chamber.
“Khe,” I said, and suddenly very much wanted for her to have a name. When babblers were cast out of their communities, they left everything, even their names. Babblers didn’t mind, so they said. Insanity robbed them of the will to care. They said babblers didn’t even care about their own lives and died quickly once they’d departed. But the state of this babbler’s clothes and body made me think she’d been out of her kler for a long time.
“When did you leave your community?” I asked.
The babbler’s full lips curled back from her teeth. “Long ago. Two years? I’ve forgotten.” Her eyes lit with a sudden thought. “I was fourteen then. How old am I now?”
She licked her fingers to wet them, turned her left arm so the inside faced up, and smeared away the dirt covering her wrist. I leaned close to her arm, to see. We both stared at the cluster of small blue dots on her skin, two rows of seven and a third row with four.
“Eighteen!” She seemed delighted with the discovery.
I blew out a breath. She’d survived four years on her own. Maybe I could survive the Barren Season and into First Warmth.
“How old are you?” she asked.
My emotion spots flamed. I didn’t know how to answer her. I turned over my arm so she could see the dots on my wrists, four rows of seven and a fifth row of six.
“Thirty-four,” the babbler said and wiped her hands against her mud-splattered hip wrap. “One more year and you’ll return to the creator.” She stared at my neck. “Not too happy about that, are you?”
My heart clenched like a fist. To return to the creator was a joy, but not when almost two-thirds of my life had been stolen away, my span unnaturally shortened not by accident or illness, but by greed. Lifetime I wanted back.
I glanced away and took a deep breath, drawing the stale air of the cave into my lungs and holding it, then letting it out slowly, the way Tav had taught us to calm ourselves, back when we were hatchlings. Long before my defect was discovered. Before my abilities set Simanca’s eyes aglow.
“Put some wood on the fire,” the babbler said. “It’s almost out again.” She hugged her arms around her thin chest. “I haven’t had a fire for…who knows how long? No firestarter. Lucky for me to have found this sled with so many useful things packed on it. I’ve been cold.”
“It’s my sled,” I said. “I built it. Those are my things.”
“Hmm,” the babbler said. “Put some wood on the fire anyway.”
I fed small sticks to the embers, glad for the warmth. When they caught and flared, I added a few broken branches. We’d have to conserve, though, if the storm was really going to last as long as the babbler predicted.
“You can stay,” she said. “It never gets wet in here. And the wind doesn’t blow through.”
I rubbed my neck, comforted by the familiar touch of my own skin. “Thank you.”
The babbler bit the tips of her dirty fingers. “Are you going to stay?”
“Until the storm stops.”
“Are you going to pay?”
“What?” I asked.
“There’s a cost for hospitality.”
My stomach tightened and my neck itched.
The babbler hummed under her breath, a long low sound: arrumm, arrumm.
“I don’t have food to offer.” I said. “I only have what’s on the sled.”
“Arrumm. Arrumm.�
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“I could maybe spare one of the knives,” I said.
The babbler stopped humming and pointed one dirty finger at me. “All this time, I’ve been alone, without the sound of another’s voice.” She leaned close. “You must tell me your history as it happened, completely and in detail. Then you must listen to mine. That is the price I ask.”
Chapter Twelve
The trees all glitter with promises,
Broken, broken, and alone.
--The babbler’s song
The sun’s rays stabbed through the cave’s ragged opening, laying a too-bright line of white across the shadowed walls. I closed my eyes against the light and listened to the babbler moving about the cave.
I’d learned a great deal about her in the six days I’d been here. She often thought that what happened to others was directly linked to her.
I opened my eyes. The babbler was staring down at me.
“Is there more to your tale?” she asked.
I sat up in my makeshift bed. “There’s always more, but I’ve told you everything that matters.”
“Good.” She stirred the dead ashes of the fire with a stick.
The snow had stopped falling on the third day. I could have left then, but I had promised to tell my complete story and didn’t want to break my word. And, in truth, the babbler’s strange company was better than being always by myself.
“We should look for food while the weather’s good,” I said. Last night we’d finished the last of the babbler’s stores. She’d been generous, sharing what she had and asking nothing in return but that I keep talking.
“Listen to this, Khe,” the babbler said. She opened her mouth and sang in a voice as deep and pure as a river.
“Birds of the northern lands, a shadow on the rise
New as the leaves I once twined round my brow.
Where are you going, your sharp eyes turned blind?
Tossed by the traitor wind
On these barren grounds?
The trees all glitter with promises
Broken, broken, and alone.
Hear how the snow is mourning,
Broken, broken, and alone.”
At Lunge we’d sung of Resonance, the joys of work, and praises to the creator. The babbler sang of herself, a song from the soul. I hadn’t known that was possible.
She thumped her chest. “I am more than a babbler, more than a First in weather prophecy. I am a songmaker, too. Better than your Thedra, I’d wager. I used to be called to sing for—” Her face clouded and she looked down at her feet. “That was a long time ago. I’m surprised I remember.”
I braced my elbows on my knees and asked, “Will you tell me your story now? How you came to be here?”
The babbler’s lips crinkled. “I thought you were hungry.”
I raised my shoulders in a small shrug.
“Sometimes, Khe, you act like a hatchling. Food and water always come first. Then shelter. Then fire. Stories can wait.”
Outside the cave, the air smelled clean and wholesome. The heat from the sun warmed my head, neck, and hands, the only parts of me exposed outside my cloak. I heard the schloosh, schloosh of the babbler’s steps through the slush. When she stopped, there was no sound at all. Was this what life was like inside the egg—white and silent?
The babbler disappeared around a small bend. I followed slowly, in thrall to the beauty of the land, the faint strains of a bird cheeping somewhere in the distance. Low-slung jipini bushes, their ripe yellow berries dusted with snow, grew near-by. In the leafless tree branches, drops of water hung from icicle tips as if holding their breaths, then fell. Water from the melting snow sheeted the canyon walls, darkening their natural pale-red color. The crystalline veins threading through the rocks acted as prisms, making tiny rainbows that slid across the stone.
The babbler’s wail tore the silence. I ran through the slush, the muddy snow sucking at my foot casings. I came around the bend and saw the babbler on her knees, her back humped, her face in the dirt. I wanted to call her name, to get her attention, but had no name to call her. I bent over her and folded my arms around her waist and tried to lift.
She shoved me away. “Can’t you see I’m eating?”
The babbler licked her mud-covered fingers, her eyes widening in concentration. Glancing around, she seemed to find what she was searching for and reached at something tucked between two stones. Grunting, she tugged and pulled, finally fell back, grinning, clutching feathery green stems.
“No,” I cried, diving for her hand, which was full of lenrels, a plant so toxic that one bite would kill her before the shadows had moved. I shoved her hand away just before she put the lenrels in her mouth.
“Mine. Mine,” she screamed and tried to pull her hand free, but I had a firm grip and wouldn’t let go.
“You’ve taken everything,” she said. “I don’t want to go. Please. Please.”
Still holding tight to her one hand, I slipped my free arm over her shoulders.
“You don’t have to go,” I said, keeping my voice as soothing as possible. “You can come back to the cave with me.”
The babbler stared at my face, but I could see she didn’t know who I was. “Is it time for the presentation?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s time. We have to go now or we’ll be late.”
“No,” she screamed, and beat against my chest with her fists. I threw my arms up to protect my face and neck, and stumbled back. She kept coming at me, pounding my crossed arms with the sides of her fists. She pushed me hard. My heel hit against a rock. I fell on the cold, hard ground, knocking the wind from my lungs.
The babbler turned and ran toward the cave.
I lay still, getting my breath back. My back hurt where I’d landed on it. When I could breathe again, I struggled to my feet to chase after her. I came through the entrance to the cave’s rear chamber and found the babbler sitting with my opened pack on her lap. When she looked up at me, her eyes were clear and bright.
“There you are,” she said cheerfully. “I was looking for the firestarter. We need warmth.”
“The wood is gone,” I said, keeping my voice conversational. “We used the end of it last night.”
Her cheerfulness faded. “You’ll have to go and find some.”
I stared at her a long moment. If she saw the brown-black anger spots on my neck, they didn’t concern her.
“You hit me,” I said.
“Did I?”
“You knocked me into the snow and mud.”
The babbler nodded. “Once, when I was newly insane, I pushed an orindle out a window. The fall broke both of her legs.” She shrugged as if all of this was of no consequence.
I sighed. There was no point in talking about what had happened. Crouching, I lifted the blanket holding my things off of her lap and set it on the ground. I fumbled through, found the firestarter, and handed it to her. “I’ll look for some wood.”
“Good,” she said. “And something for a meal. My last one was interrupted.”
“Do you—” I began and stopped. I wasn’t sure she could answer my question. “Do you remember what happens when a spell is on you?”
The babbler shook her head. “It’s like being awake one moment and awake the next. In between, things happen that I know nothing about.”
Another question nagged at me. “Do you remember your name?”
The babbler’s sides shook with contained laughter. “I have no name. I never had a name. I hatched as a babbler.”
I tsked my tongue on the roof of my mouth. “You said you were a weather-prophet. Was that a babbler’s lie?”
“Of course I was a prophet. I was First in Chimbalay.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Weather-prophets have names. I’ve seen them on the vision stage, and none was ever called Babbler.”
The brown-black of anger flared on a few spots on her neck. She pulled herself to her feet. “I was a weather-prophet. I still am. Didn’t I tell you about the s
now and the rain and the warm day that would follow?”
I shrugged. “Luck.”
“Skill!”
“Weather-prophets have names. Everybody has a name. Mine is Khe. What’s yours?”
“Marnka.” She spat the word at me, and fell silent. The spots on her neck glowed bright yellow with amazement.
“Marnka,” I said. “It’s a good name.”
“It is,” she said.
“I think your story must be good, too. I’d like to hear it.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s quite the tale. Fetch us food and firewood and I will tell you what they did to me.”
Chapter Thirteen
To uphold your responsibility to the new generations, choose your mate for strength and beauty, and with great care.
--The Rules of a Good Life
The fire was crackling, the smoke drawn up and out of fissures in the cave’s ceiling. Marnka had made a mélange of the jipini berries, tano, and denish that I’d found. It was scant, but delicious, the way any food is to the truly hungry.
“I have been trying to remember all day,” Marnka said, licking a last bit of mélange off her fingers. “All day trying and mostly failing. Some memories are there. I can recall my kler and how it looked—the walls and structures. Huge black buildings, rising into the sky.” A shiver trembled across her shoulders. Her voice fell to a whisper. “There were needles and drugs. There was a dark room and a voice saying the same thing over and over. There was agony. I remember screaming.”
A shiver ran through me as well. I remembered waking in Morvat Research Center, the overwhelming brightness of the colors, the unbearable noise. But I received something I wanted for my pain. I didn’t think it was the same for her.
Marnka drew up her knees to her chest and laid her forehead on them. Her back rose and fell with labored breathing. Finally, she looked up.
“There were seven weather-prophets in Chimbalay,” she said. “We shared a dwelling. From the window, I could see all the way to the central commons. I would sit there and watch how the seasons changed the kler, the light glancing off the glass walls of the buildings in First Warmth, the rivulets of soft rain in Bounty Season, the way my breath would sometimes cloud the windows during Cooling, the quilt of snow over the streets in Barren Season.”
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