by Nina Hoffman
Kachik-Vati stopped when they stood two feet from Maya. She looked up into Kachik’s eyes. He was two heads taller than she, and his face wasn’t very facelike.
“Greetings, small sibling,” Kachik said. This close, his voice sounded soft and furry, and seemed to come from somewhere in the middle of him. “I reach to you.” Vati curled into a tight spiral, then uncurled, slowly, the tentacles at his tip bunched tight into a spearhead. “Will you reach to me?” Kachik said. Vati paused about five inches from the shadow that was Rimi.
Rimi reached her shadow arm toward Vati’s tentacles. As Rimi’s edge touched the tips of Vati’s tentacles, Maya felt a jolt, a crackling shock that traveled from her chest out to the ends of her fingers and toes. Her hair rustled. The flow Maya had felt when Rimi and Kita touched came again, a caress, a flood of information like light, like heat, the flow going outward and coming in, sipping and sipped. She felt it dimly. Clearer was Rimi’s fireworks explosion of joy in the transfer. Oh, yes, tell me more. Oh! That opens worlds. Oh, that makes more sense than what I thought. Oh! Thank you!
Oh! Rimi’s voice vanished into a thrum, joined by another thrum in a different pitch, perfectly harmonizing, both of them ranging up and down but constantly matched. Some of the wonder of the harmonic overtones reached Maya, how the sounds wove into and out of each other, made a song from their mix that belonged to neither voice. Colors stroked parallel tracks across a wide, blank place in Maya’s mind, and she reached in with a mental finger to add another shade to the wash of color that wavered back and forth across the endless landscape, a clear yellow that contrasted with their exuberant stripes of green, gray, orange, coral, lilac. She zigged when they zigged and zagged when they zagged, and then their colors bled into hers, and a great humming, jingling, singing warmth swept her up. She heard songs, words, languages, saw images flashing of other places, people, planets.
Her fingertips sizzled. She so wanted paints and paper right now.
She reached out, felt her fingers lace with soft nests of wriggling things, like stroking her fingers through a bunch of warm, spineless snakes. The sensation was pleasant. The snakes wrapped gently around her hands, caging them in building warmth. She knew this was Kachik, that they were embracing now as their sissimi embraced. The connection magnified until she was riding a river of memories and information with Rimi, Vati, and Kachik. She couldn’t sort it and stopped trying after the initial confusion of the rush. She held on tight to Kachik’s tentacles and opened to the flood, trying to capture images to draw.
The song swelled and grew, and the colors spread out and mixed and formed images and shifted again into new shapes and shades.
A flicker of something else broke the flow, which parted around it and rejoined beyond it. Something like a red-tipped thorn. They tried to pause, to study it, but the conversation, the images, the music moved on, and the thorn vanished behind them.
After a short forever, the flow slowed.
Remember this and this and this, Vati whispered to Rimi.
Yes, yes, yes, oh so wide a yes, Rimi thought, and thanks thanks love thanks.
Release, thought Vati and Kachik, and Rimi and Maya untwined from the interweave/fusion with them, last touches stroking a promise of connection in the future.
TEN
Maya took a deep breath and opened her eyes to where she was. She blinked, turned her head.
Noona stood near her, hand resting on Maya’s shoulder, but mostly Maya was aware of Kachik, his hand tentacles meshing with her fingers and several of his arms wrapped around her so that she was pressed to his soft, fuzzy, nutmeg-smelling chest, his warmth and the sound of something like hearts beating inside him, a rhythm not human, with bumps bumping into each other, perhaps two things thumping simultaneously, and slightly out of sync with each other. “Are you in good condition, sib?” he asked, his voice a buzz against her cheek and a rumble in the air.
“Mm,” she said, blinking. She wasn’t sure. “I think.”
The dry, snaky embrace of his tentacle-hands loosened, supporting her, but easing her away from him. She swayed, then found her feet. She rubbed her cheek, still warm from being pressed against Kachik’s fur.
“Stable?” he asked. “I don’t know how, when you only have two points touched down, but it seems to work for many. Have you found the ground, small sib?”
She nodded. “Yes. Thank you. You?”
“My base corners. The ground is solid.”
He retracted his arms, releasing her. Rimi and Vati lingered, connected still, and then Vati’s arm sagged and Rimi’s shadow-self moved back to stand beside Maya. Maya felt the loss of contact.
“There was something,” Kachik said. “Did you see it?”
“Yes,” said Maya, trying to think of what the thorny thing had looked like. She remembered it as a snag sticking up out of a river of color and music. Or was it a many-tipped spike, like a fork gone mad? It had had a different taste to it, too, like licking a penny. “What was that?”
“A puzzle. A disturbance. Something I have not sensed in any fusion before. Something we must explore, but not just now, I think.” He swayed. “This was a lovely fusion, and I need rest.”
“Me, too,” Maya said.
“Are you all right?” Noona asked Maya. “What happened?”
Maya’s mouth tasted like milk and cinnamon. She swallowed and realized she was thirsty and hungry. “A lot,” she said. “I’m not sure what.” Her stomach growled and her mouth felt like cotton had soaked up all the water in it. We’re hungry again? she asked Rimi.
Fusion takes a lot of energy, Rimi thought. Kachik-Vati is hungry, too.
“Nola, could we please get something to eat?” Maya asked Noona.
Noona stroked Maya’s back. “Surely,” she said. “Kachik-Vati, will you join us for food?”
“I do have need,” said Kachik. Vati’s arm curled and gestured in a way that looked like Yes! to Maya.
Noona took out a communicator, tapped its side, and spoke into it.
“Honored traveler. If you will allow us to restore the table,” Noona said.
“A yes yes,” said Kachik. He moved the table back into place.
“Maya, please sit,” said Noona.
Maya sagged to the floor. She propped her elbows on the table and cupped her cheeks in her hands.
Noona went to the wall and tapped a pattern on it. A panel opened and she brought out another table, smaller, with telescoping legs. She set it on top of the round table. It came halfway up Kachik-Vati’s side. Kachik smoothed two of his tentacle hands over its surface, and then Vati stroked it.
A couple of Janus House cousins came in, carrying trays. One set a tray in front of Maya: a wooden bowl of steaming soup, a mug of hot milk sprinkled with cinnamon, and a cut apple on its own small orange plate. The other cousin set the second tray on the taller table. The tray held a big pottery bowl of something steaming, that was all Maya could tell from below. It smelled a little like wet tennis shoes and damp dog.
Something complicated happened on the side of Kachik that faced her: a fuzzy trunk lifted from the fuzzy surface of his torso and lowered its tip into the bowl. Slurping sounds ensued.
Maya wrinkled her nose and decided she couldn’t be too picky about what Kachik-Vati liked to eat, not after how deeply they’d been enmeshed and how well they had worked together. She ate a spoonful of soup and tasted mushrooms, lemongrass, nuts, and the special traveler’s spice palta, which helped Janus House people adapt to whatever came through the portals. She ate and drank, feeling as though she’d never tasted anything so good before.
“Thanks, Teacher,” she said.
“Add my appreciation,” Kachik said. “This cloclo was prepared correctly, and with just the right amount of fass. Delicious.”
“You are gracious, Kachik-Vati. Our thanks.”
Kachik-Vati straightened, somehow looked taller and more remote. “We have learned many interesting things in the fusion,” he said, “some of which I will share with the fr
iendnet, yes, Maya-Rimi?”
“How many are in your friendnet when you go home?” Maya asked.
The skin around Kachik-Vati’s eyes crinkled in a smile. “Many many.”
“I don’t know, Kachik-Vati,” Maya said.
Vati sketched a sideways figure eight in the air. “Vati says it is already done,” Kachik said. “All know what one knows, sooner or later.”
Do we know everything Vati knows? Maya thought. Do we know everything Kita knew?
Not everything, Rimi thought, but much more than we did before. A warm golden satisfaction washed through her. So much Vati told me about sissimi. I have new things to try when we go to the woods.
Which I hope will be soon. Maya checked her watch. “I’m still learning,” she said to Kachik-Vati. “I think our friendnet is just you and Ara-Kita.”
“Friendnet will be every sissimi one you encounter and fuse with, Maya-Rimi,” Kachik said.
Maya hugged herself, felt Rimi wrapping around her. “Is every sissimi a good person? What if there are others you don’t want to friend? What about the two who have been stolen?”
“Rimi was stolen, and is still perfect a one,” Kachik said. “Sissimi take much from the ones they are partnered with, but there is a core in them that comes from the motherplant and homeplace. They will not be bad.”
Maya thought about Rimi sneaking to another room to find out test questions. She liked that Rimi had the power to do this, but she wasn’t sure about the ethics of it. It made her so mad when Peter snooped through her stuff—how could she condone snooping? “We have powers,” she said slowly to Kachik. “How do you know we’ll always use them for good?”
Kachik’s eyes crinkled into a smile again. “Probability it will not always happen that way. You must explore. You must try. You must learn and make mistakes. We all do. All the way along this journey, through every portal you go, we meet you. Maybe you go astray some of the time. We all do. We meet you. We meet you now, we meet you later, we hope things go well, we help where we can, and sometimes we can’t. We friend you no matter where you are, Maya-Rimi. Know this.”
Maya stared up at him, and then she rounded the table and leaned against his front. His smell of Christmas spices, clove, nutmeg, a little peppermint, warmed her. His arms hugged her gently, Vati among them. Rimi stretched and settled inside the embrace as well. Maya felt safe.
Rimi thought in the quiet of Maya’s comfort, How can you know what is good?
It’s bad if it hurts someone else, Maya thought.
You can’t tell ahead of time, Rimi thought. It doesn’t always hurt right away. What if one of the others thinks a thing is good and we think it’s bad? What if I think it’s good and you think it’s bad?
I guess . . . we just keep talking about everything and try to figure it out, Maya thought.
Maya straightened and Kachik-Vati’s arms drew away from her, lifting in a pose like the petals of a flower, some kind of salute.
“Good get-together, good get-apart, small sibs,” Kachik said.
“You, too,” Maya said.
“I will tell the others about your puzzle, small sibs, and someones will come and help you solve it.” Kachik’s arms danced in a spiral and he moved or levitated back. “Farewell.”
“Farewell, big brothers.” She waved both hands in mirroring dance moves, and Rimi fluttered like a scarf in the wind.
Maya went back to where her pack rested on the floor. She pulled the straps over her shoulders and shifted to settle the pack on her back.
“Are you rested?” Noona murmured to Kachik-Vati. “Are you fed enough to travel?”
“Both,” Kachik said.
“Thank you for the graciousness and gift of your presence,” Noona said. She opened another door. It led into the Portal Chamber. Someone Maya didn’t know rose from a bench along the wall there and came forward. “These ones are ready to return to their home,” Noona told the other woman, who nodded and led Kachik-Vati away.
Noona shut the door, took Maya’s hand, and escorted her from the tea room.
ELEVEN
Noona shut the tea room door carefully and lifted her hands to gesture at the door wards. She sang. The colored spirals and whorls lit up, and the door clicked, lock engaged.
Maya checked her watch. It was four thirty. It felt much later.
They climbed up out of the world under the house and went through the door to the ground floor. Noona shut that door carefully as well, and Maya glanced back at it. A wide door with no knob on the outside.
They went toward the front door. Noona stopped in the hall outside Columba’s apartment. She touched Maya’s shoulder. “You handled yourself well and made a good connection for us, youngster. It is rare we get a visit from a mrudim , and, of course, this is only our second sissimi traveler, or third, if we count your Rimi. You do our family proud. Do you want to go home now?”
How about me ? How did I handle myself? How can I, when I don’t even have hands? Rimi wondered. I do count. I can do that even without fingers.
You can have hands whenever you want. And you’re wonderful, Maya thought, and smiled.
I know. You know. I guess that’s enough.
“Yeah, I guess I’d better head home,” Maya said aloud. “Did Travis leave already?”
“I don’t know. Columba will know.” Noona knocked on Columba’s door.
Columba opened the door. “Hey,” she said. “How’d it go?”
Noona laid her hand on Maya’s shoulder. “A successful meeting, it seemed.”
“Maya?” Columba asked.
“Good,” Maya said. “They were really nice to us.”
“We almost never see mrudim. Let alone sissimi. You guys got along okay?”
“Yeah,” Maya said. She wondered if there was some manual that told you how often various different kinds of people came through the portal. Maybe like a monster manual for D&D.
We did better than okay, thought Rimi. I have a lot of new things to try. Let’s go to the woods.
“Did Travis leave already?” Maya asked Columba.
“Yeah. Travis has left the building.” Columba smiled as she said it, as though that was a joke.
“But the other guys are still off on a field trip?”
“Estimated time of return from that one is around midnight,” Columba said.
“Jeez,” said Maya. “How do they manage to get their homework done and get any sleep when all that’s going on?”
“Sometimes they don’t,” Columba said.
“Huh.”
“Sometimes you won’t, either, once you start going on field trips. I hope your parents are relaxed about grades.”
“I thought all you guys got excellent grades.”
Columba frowned. “Yes, in general, the children seem to do well in school.” She shrugged. “They work very, very hard.”
“On that note,” said Maya, “guess I should go do some of my own homework. Thanks for the hospitality, Columba. Noona, thank you for your help.”
“You are welcome, Maya. Harper has been talking to the council about having a series of those with sissimi bonds visit and talk to you. We’ll let you know when the next one can come.”
“Thanks.” Maya stopped to dance on the exit mat. The trapped wind in it blew around her, collecting chikuvny, the golden dust generated by portal travel, evidence that she had been in contact with someone who had come through the portal.
I love this, Rimi said. Maya felt her stretching, dancing with the wind, twining in and out with it. It seemed to partner her, dancing back. In a shimmer of shadow, Maya stamped on the mat. When she’d had enough she stepped off and out through the double front doors.
Travis sat on the porch steps, his social studies textbook open on his knees. He was reading, marking the textbook with pencil taps. He had earbuds in, and his head bobbed to unheard music.
Maya touched his shoulder and he looked up, then smiled at her. He took out the earbuds and tucked them into his shirt pocke
t with his MP3 player. “How’d it go?”
“He was really nice, and his sissimi was—well, I’ll know more when Rimi and I get to talk. We’re going to the woods now.”
“Hah. I was wondering.” He stored the book in his backpack and stood up. “Can I come?”
She hesitated, then said, “Yeah.”
They walked toward the park together. They couldn’t talk to their families about things that happened at Janus House, but they could still talk to each other. They went to different training most of the time, so they liked having time when they could talk about what they were learning. Travis felt like a safe person for Maya to tell about her apprehensions. He even knew she was keeping some secrets about Rimi from Gwenda and Benjamin.
“I’ve only got twenty minutes,” Maya said.
“Me, too.”
“Oh, right,” she said. “Who’s timing?”
“I’ll watch the watch,” said Travis.
The park was a broad expanse of lawn, marshy now with the fall rains, with stations for Frisbee golf scattered here and there, and many different kinds of trees. Tall chainlink fence caged a set of four tennis courts along one edge, and a basketball court was at the far end. Concrete paths wandered around the edges and across the grass. The woods were toward the side bordered by the creek, a ragged-edged patch of overgrown land with a few trails winding through it and lots of oaks and maples and encroaching blackberry vines and other underbrush. They were very tame woods compared to some Maya had known in Idaho, but they were dense enough. Rimi had figured out how to tighten her shield down to nothing around blackberry canes and snip them off, so she and Maya had made a nest in the heart of a sticker forest, far enough from the path that no one could see or hear them. With Rimi acting as a shield, Maya could push through the blackberry vines to the hideout without a scratch.
Travis had come with them before on days when he and Maya didn’t have Janus House training after school. If he crouched and followed right behind Maya, Rimi’s shield spread enough to guard him from the vines, too.
When they had settled in the hideout sitting cross-legged and facing each other, Travis said, “So what really happened?”