Khe (3 page)

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 picture 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 strokes 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.”

And jealous. I felt the muddy green spots rise on my neck. I’d have given anything to feel the fine madness of Resonance, to have been in such a great rush to find a mate that I forgot to lock a door.

I ruffled the downy feathers on her head. She looked up at me and cooed.

“Are the feeders full in Hatchling House?” I asked. If my sisters had forgotten to lock the door, one could have forgotten to make sure the hatchings had food while they were gone.

Han nodded, then grinned. “Treats, too. Kiiku squares. My favorite.”

Usually the hatchlings ate with the doumanas. During Resonance, when no doumanas would be in the commune, food was provided in Hatchling House. Except that
I
was here. Next Resonance, I’d ask Simanca if the hatchlings could be left in my charge.

“And the water lines?” I asked. “Are they working?”

She nodded again. Then she hunkered down, thrust her butt out behind her and shook it.

“Look!” Han said, and began dancing in an erratic circle. “I’m a preslet!”

I had to laugh. Preslets are stupid, quarrelsome birds and I didn’t much like them. Han had their dance down perfectly.

I bent my knees, shoved my butt out, and wriggled around with her.

Han giggled.

“Ack! Ack! Ack!” I cried, still dancing.

”Ack!” Han squawked back in her thin, hatchling voice.

Han stopped dancing and sighed. “I wish you tended us instead of Gris and Freneel. They never laugh. Gris says Simanca won’t let you because you’re broken. I wish they’d fix you, so you could always be with us.”

I turned away so Han wouldn’t see how my spots had lit gray with sorrow and brown-green with shame. To turn away was no different than lying, but I couldn’t bear for Han to see my hurt.

When I felt my spots quiet, I turned back around to Han. She was watching me with wide eyes.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s gather those roots and I’ll make us a feast.”

When we walked outside, a soft rain was falling.

***

The fifty-three members of Lunge commune were gathered in Community Hall to hear the results of the season-end crop weighing. The doumana who’d left the door to Hatchling House open when she’d rushed off to Resonance stood alone, just inside the door, her head hung in shame, ignored even by her own unitmates. The planet would travel a full quarter around the sun before any of us would acknowledge or speak with her again. Resonance had taught me the horror of solitude. As we filed in, I brushed my fingers across her neck, to say that she was not forgotten.

Stoss, Thedra, Jit, and I took our places near the front on the left side. I’d been assigned a row-end seat. Did that seat mean I’d be coming to the riser to receive an award of merit? Simanca had seemed pleased when I showed her the extra crops I’d gathered while my community had been gone. “Good work,” she’d said and touched my throat, which was a great show of approval and affection from her.

At Simanca’s signal, we all stood and sang
Praises to the Creator
and then
The Song of Togetherness.
Thedra’s sweet, high voice sailed through the air. My own voice cracked and once I started on the wrong verse. A jab from Thedra’s sharp elbow told me of my mistake. Singing helped soothe my nerves and I felt calmer when we sat again.

But calm didn’t last. My eyes felt stuck on the small, wooden awards box near Simanca’s feet. The awards of merit—small glass orbs with the winner’s name, unit and accomplishment on a continuous holographic loop inside—were handed out to individuals who’d made special contributions to the commune. Lager prizes—bolts of cloth, vision stages, artwork—went to outstanding units. It wasn’t humble to
want
, but I’d worked hard for more than four years and won nothing. I wanted to win.