She blinked rapidly, and then rubbed her neck. “I remember this. I’m not making it up from madness.” She pulled her spine straight and glared at me.
At Lunge, Simanca had warned us never to talk to babblers because they lied and didn’t know it. Their disease made them do it, just as their disease took away their names and the will to live.
But Marnka was still alive. And she remembered her name. Or she’d made one up. Did it matter whether you called yourself the name you were given or one you chose yourself? A name was nothing but a sound others used to get your attention, or to mean you in their mind. Marnka served well for either purpose for us.
“I believe you,” I said.
The rigid stiffness in her back relaxed.
“How much do you know about Chimbalay kler?” she asked.
“Chimbalay is the Region Seat, where the best orindles and the Powers, those who set the quotas for all the country commune’s, the lawmakers, and the price-setters live.”
One spot on Marnka’s neck lit ochre with impatience. “You think you know about Chimbalay, but you don’t. Klers are walled for a reason. Walls keep the secrets inside. Do you know why all the weather-prophets live in klers?”
“To make sure they’re qualified,” I answered, glad that Tav had drilled us on this when we were hatchlings. “It used to be that each commune had its own prophet. When a commune’s prophet returned to the creator, the available hatchlings were tested and the one showing the most ability selected as the new foreteller. Some were good. Some weren’t. A bad prophet could mean doom.”
“At least you know a little something,” Marnka said.
I cleared my throat. “After a disastrous year when several prophets hadn’t seen a coming series of hail storms that wiped out most of the crops in the Harvest Belt, the Powers decreed that all prophets had to come to the closest kler for testing and certification. The good ones stayed in the klers where they could use the vision stage to reach all the communes in that section. The less able were assigned different work to do.”
She nodded, much the way Tav used to when I’d gotten a lesson right. “When did this happen?”
I searched my memory. The hailstorms were before Simanca emerged. I made a guess. “Thirty years ago.”
“Thirty-three,” Marnka said.
Her tone made me feel that the number was supposed to mean something.
“Thirty-three years, Khe. We live for thirty-five. All the certified weather-prophets that haven’t already Returned to the creator are marching rapidly toward the end.”
I still didn’t see what that had to do with anything.
“Where are they going to get new prophets?” Marnka asked.
“Don’t they still test the doumanas as they emerge, train the best prospects?”
“They do, but they have to test every newly emerged doumana to find just a few who show promise. It’s very expensive and slow. No, the Powers have another plan. They want to breed what they need.”
Shock made my spots flare gray-red. “That’s impossible. You can’t breed prophets.”
Or maybe not so impossible. I’d wondered if my offspring might have gotten the growing abilities from me, the way the offspring of preslets with the best feathers usually had good feathers too. If the Powers tracked the weather-prophets during Resonance and gathered their eggs, they’d have a good starting point for finding new foretellers. I told Marnka my idea, and she laughed.
“The Powers aren’t leaving it that much to chance. They can’t. The Powers realized long ago that they needed a reliable way of producing accurate foretellers. They set their best minds to the problem. Those thinkers declared that controlled breeding between certified prophets was the only solution.”
My head swam. “Even if they controlled the doumanas, how could they get the males to agree? The Powers don’t have authority over the males, do they?”
Marnka chuckled. “The males were happy enough to do it. They thought it was a good idea. At first, we all thought it was a good idea.”
“What happened that changed your mind?” I asked.
“Don’t rush the teller through her tale, Khe.”
Her voice turned bitter. “Guardians came to collect me and three of my prophet-sisters the day before Resonance was to begin. At the research center, the orindles said we were fortunate, we’d been blessed with special abilities, and now we could concentrate our talents in the new generation by selective breeding. They said they’d done it before and there were no bad effects.” Marnka looked away from me. “It wasn’t true.”
I held my breath.
Marnka said, “The orindles made me what I am.”
One of my spots lit blue-red with anxiety. Simanca had said that the creator made babblers insane, as punishment for their sins.
“You don’t believe me,” Marnka said. “You think no doumana would do this to another. You think that even if one might, it is not possible. But it can be done. Hush, I have remembered all day and I’ve got it right. I’d forgotten, they made sure of that, but they couldn’t keep my memories dark forever.”
I touched her neck gently. “I’m listening.”
Marnka brushed my hand away. “I don’t need encouragement. I’ve remembered now. I’d shout my tale to the rocks if you weren’t here.” She stopped and hung her head, a too-heavy flower on the thin stem of her neck. When she looked up, her spots showed the lavender of embarrassment.
“It was my name, you see. I’d found bits and pieces of my history over the years, but when I discovered I had name—when you gave me back my name—when I remembered, that was everything. Now I see backwards in time. Oh. It’s not all pretty to know.”
I sat quietly until she was ready to go on.
“A vehicle waited for us,” Marnka said, “even though the center wasn’t far and we could have walked. When we arrived, the orindle Seldid—she was First there—was standing outside on the white stone steps. Those stones gleamed so brightly. The air smelled like spice. Seldid didn’t say much to us, just greetings, and then brought us inside.
“My prophet-sisters and I followed her to a community room. When we’d all settled into our seats, Seldid explained about the breeding project. She told us that one hundred weather-prophets, both doumana and male, had been gathered at the center. When Resonance began, we’d stay at the center instead of going to our nesting sites. Each prophet could choose her own mate, as usual. Orindles and their helphands would note the pairings, watch the mating and tag each egg to track which pairs bred the most skilled foretellers. Those pairs would mate again in future Resonances. She thanked us all for volunteering.”
Marnka’s tale nearly stopped my breath. This program went against nature, against all that was right. We were free to pick any mate we wanted, limited only to the choices available at the mating site. It was the one true choice we had in our lives.
“But how could this make you a babbler?” I asked.
“The drugs,” she said, as if this were something I should have known.
Knowledge tickled at the back of my mind—drugs and babblers. Then I had it. “Did they use villisity?”
Marnka nodded. “Imagine how we felt. Our offspring would be more talented than we were, make fewer mistakes. They would free us all from hunger caused by unexpected draught or too much rain or unpredicted storms. We were proud to do this for all who would come after us. We gobbled our villisity and waited to feel the tug of Resonance.”
She fell silent. Her head dropped to her chest again. It seemed a terrible effort for her to drag it back up and look at me.
“One of my sisters started showing the effects first,” Marnka said. “She grew restless, pacing the large room where we were housed, touching things. She picked up a cup of water, and set it down without drinking. She picked it up again and threw it against the wall. The water ran down in a rush. She touched her face, arms, head, and neck, over and over. She ran her fingers over the edges of chairs, cots, and windows.
&nbs
p; “Another doumana, from a different kler, I didn’t know her name, joined my sister on her uneasy walk. I felt unsettled too, needing to move. I thought it was the start of Resonance, but I was so angry. I wanted to strike out at something, anything. It took all the control I could gather not to. I joined the pacing doumanas.
“My sister started screaming. Other doumanas began to scream and howl like beasts. Doumanas were banging on the door, calling for help. No one came. Some of us began to push and shove the others. Fights broke out. Vicious battles. Someone was killed, I think. She looked dead, her head smashed against a wall and her brains leaking out.”
Marnka said this in the same unconcerned way that she’d told me about breaking the orindle’s legs, as if nothing that happened during a spell mattered.
“I suspect,” Marnka said, “that the orindles watched us through hidden eyes or emotion paintings that weren’t what they seemed. I was angry that they wouldn’t come. I picked up a chair and hurled it against the wall. A doumana was in the way and she was hit. Blood pounded in my head. The pain was … I thought I would split in two. I heard myself laughing. The room filled with the scent of dead leaves and a harsh green fog.”
***
Night had fallen and Marnka kept talking. The fire threw thin shadows on the walls of the cave. The air smelled overly sweet from the burning jipini branches. I wanted to cover my ear holes and block out the rest of this tale.
“I woke up fine,” Marnka said cheerfully. “The green fog was medicinal. I was cured of that madness. All of us were. Seldid came to apologize for our discomfort. She told me that while I’d been in that altered state, I’d picked a mate and laid my egg. I went back to my unit and back to work, no different than before.”
I rubbed my neck. “Then how did you wind up here? Why do you have spells?”
Marnka shrugged. “The season passed. During Cooling of that year, my prophet-sister who’d been at the Research Center with me started acting strangely. She would be tasting for upcoming weather or talking or singing, and suddenly stop, as if turned to stone. A few moments later, she would pick up where she’d left off. One day, a guardian came and said my sister had been assigned elsewhere. Rumors started that she’d turned into a babbler.”
Marnka shifted position, folding her legs under herself. “By Barren Season, rumor was that six weather-prophets in other klers had turned into babblers. In Chimbalay, another prophet-sister started acting strangely. Suddenly, she was gone too. Then it was my turn.”
“I awoke in a blackened room.” Marnka’s voice was quiet. She stared at a spot above my head. “There were others there. I could hear them breathing in that slow way of the sleeping or the unconscious. I tried to move, but I’d been bound to the cot on my back with bands. The bands were tight. I couldn’t roll over. There was a voice in the room, a murmuring that never went away. I concentrated on the voice until I could make out the words. The voice said, ‘Calm. Calm.’ Sometimes it would say, ‘We are not at fault. You are guilty. You have failed.’ Sometimes it said, ‘You hate Chimbalay. The sight of a doumana sickens you. You may go.’”
The fire was dying down. I put on more wood. The flames flared high, sending a sudden brilliance into the chamber.
“They took me to another room, a smaller one,” Marnka said. “The orindle Seldid was there. No one spoke, but I had become used to silence and this didn’t bother me. My thoughts were on escape. I schemed for ways to overpower Seldid and her two helphands. I waited for my chance.
“Finally Seldid spoke. She said, ‘You have been seen by reliable witnesses losing consciousness and being unaware that you have done so. You have been heard cursing the creator. You are guilty of insanity. All of your goods and your position as a weather-prophet are forfeit. You will be taken to the gates and will leave Chimbalay and never return. You will forget everything that happened here.’
“Her words brought my anger back, but I hid it well. The helphands undid the straps that held me. I pulled myself slowly to my feet, testing my legs, wondering if the helphands would let me stand on my own. They did, and they let me walk across the small room toward Seldid. I gathered every bit of strength I had and pushed her through the window. She landed in the hard dirt two levels down. When I saw the leg bones sticking through her torn flesh and heard her screams, I laughed.”
My neck burned and my emotion spots burst into fear color. If the snow was still stopped tomorrow, I’d get away from Marnka before she hurt me like she had the orindle.
Marnka watched the color play across my neck, but said nothing.
“In some ways, I was lucky,” she said. “Chimbalay edges onto the wilderness. I didn’t have to pass any communes or other klers to get here. The madness I’d felt in Chimbalay passed quickly. I was able to find food and water, to find this cave.”
“Is Chimbalay the kler I saw across the plain?” My heart pounded. Chimbalay. Where the orindles who might save me lived.
Marnka nodded.
I leaned toward her. “You have to go back to the kler and tell the doumanas there what happened to you.”
Her face hardened like a fist. “What good would that do? Would it make me normal? Chase away my spells? Would it stop the orindles from making more secret experiments?”
“If no one speaks out,” I said, “the orindles can keep doing their awful work.”
Marnka laughed under her breath. “Who would believe such a tale from a babbler?”
But I could see that she was thinking it over.
“No,” she said. “They track me; they know where I am. I’d never get inside Chimbalay’s gate.”
“Marnka,” I said softly, “did you never think that perhaps in Chimbalay they’ve found a cure?”
Her laughter turned as harsh as the Barren Season winds. “I told you, they know where I am. If they’d found a cure, they’d come for me. I am too valuable, my skills as a prophet too high, to let me rot in the wilderness if they could still use me.”
That made sense, if they really knew where she was.
“How do they track you?”
She looked around and then whispered, “They come in my dreams.”
I sighed. Was everything she’d told me only ravings after all?
Marnka’s dark eyes sharpened. “Why haven’t the Powers come for you? You have value—the Grower of Lunge Commune. I wonder why they let you go?”
“I don’t think anyone knows I’m gone,” I said. “Simanca was probably too ashamed to admit a doumana in her charge had run away. I doubt she told anyone.”
“Maybe,” Marnka said. “But I’d wager the orindle Pradat told the Powers about you. You’d be a good candidate for breeding. Oh, yes, they’d like to get a hold of you, I’m sure.”
“Too late for that,” I said with a bent sort of satisfaction. I might be forced to the fields or roosts for another season or two of growing, but the thirty-four dots on my wrist meant that my last Resonance was already past. Unless…
“Pftt,” Marnka said. “You’re a fool.”
She jumped to her feet and stalked over to where I sat. She loomed over me, a dark shape. “Who are you?”
I shrunk away from her. “You know the answer. I am Khe.”
“And what is that? A frightened runner? A timid doumana seeking only to cower in the hills until her time runs out? A sad soul longing for her commune and the comforts of ordinary life?”
I stared at her, and then hung my head. “Yes. All of those things.” I snapped my head up. “And no, none of those things. I left Lunge to find the orindles in Chimbalay. In hope that they might give me back my life.”
I felt Marnka’s breath on my skin. “The orindles have cures for many ills.”
My spots flared greenish blue, the color of hope.
“On the streets,” Marnka said quietly, “doumanas talk. If you listen, you hear things, learn things you’re not meant to know.” She picked up my hand, pressed it to her mouth, and set it down gently. “You must go to Chimbalay. It is your o
nly chance.”
***
When I woke in the morning, Marnka had gone. She’d fixed a meal of cold mélange for me. I could hardly eat it for the nervous twists and kinks in my stomach. She’s also heated melted snow water, which I used to clean up my clothing and myself as best I could. When I was done, I didn’t look nearly so raggedy.
I left my sled and most of my goods for her—keeping only the spear and one of the two dull knives. The rest I wouldn’t need in the kler, and she could use them. I lay the firestarter on top—my special gift to her.
I was foolish to hang my hopes on Marnka’s vague thought that the orindles could cure me. Still, I clutched her words to my heart as I walked the ice-patched wilderness toward Chimbalay. Perhaps I was mad as a babbler to believe her, but I’d convinced myself that she spoke the truth—the orindles could save my life. Believing is easy, if you want to badly enough.
A sharp whistle cut through the air and was answered by another a short distance away. My neck burned where my spots flared muddy gray with fear. Beasts. I looked over my shoulder. A pack had caught my scent. Three. Four of them, judging by the whistles. Maybe more were hidden behind the low hills. The beasts were far enough behind that I might make it if I ran fast. If I didn’t slip on the ice. If the gates of Chimbalay were open.
I ran as fast as I could, my eyes on Chimbalay’s gate. My heart pounded in my chest as if it might burst. I could hear the beasts calling to each other, making their plans to catch me. One sped past me and turned, trying to drive me back towards its companions.
A sudden wind seemed to rise, tearing across the plain. My cloak was nearly torn from my shoulders. Fearful, I glanced back and saw the walls and buildings of a corenta sliding across the icy plain. My heart beat faster. Corenta or beasts—which was more deadly?
The sound of the raging wind grew louder. The whistles of the beast changed, coming faster. The calls came so quickly together that they were almost a continuous sound—one voice springing from seven points, fighting to be heard over the wail of the rising wind in the still air.
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