The Stars Are Legion(55)

*

At the end of the forest is a door.

I counted the steps through the forest, and it’s upward of fifty thousand. Now I’m struck not by how far the forest stretches but how strange a door looks here at the end of it.

The door is a broad, round metal thing, like a great eye sewn into the flesh of the world. We have traveled ever upward the last thirty thousand steps. This is, almost certainly, a door to the next level.

But that doesn’t please me as much as it should. I’m mostly just shocked and confused, because I know this door. I have seen it before. Not a door like it, but this door. I’ve gone through this door. But most importantly, I remember that I’ve left something important here. Something for myself.

“Zan?” Casamir says.

I’ve been looking at the door a long time. Casamir and Das Muni are both staring at me.

I approach the door cautiously, willing myself to remember. What is so important that I left here?

I crouch in front of the door. “You’re sure you’ve never met me before?” I ask.

“I’ve never seen you before,” Casamir says. “What are you going on about? We’re here! Aren’t you excited?”

“None of your people have seen me?”

“No, why would they? You’re the one who keeps saying you aren’t even from here!”

I run my hands over the seams of the door, the same way I had in my cell when Jayd first put me in it. And there, stuffed into one of the upper seams, I find a rolled-up piece of human skin.

I pull it out and unroll it. Casamir and Das Muni crowd around me.

There are markings on the parchment. I don’t understand them, but there’s something familiar about them. “Casamir, do you have something I can mark this with?”

“Sure,” she says. She pulls a charred stick from her tool belt. I marvel at the stick a moment. Where are all these plants? And then I make the same marks on the page, seeing if it prompts a memory.

I don’t remember anything new, but I’m startled to find that the marks I’m making exactly match those on parchment. I have the same handwriting.

“Can you read this, Casamir?” I say.

Casamir shakes her head. “I’ve never seen that language before. But it looks like you have.”

“I can read it,” Das Muni says. She takes it from me into her long fingers. Casamir holds the light closer.

“It says, ‘If you don’t have the arm and the world, you must start again.’?”

“That’s all?” I say.

“Yes.” She hands it back to me.

“How can you read this, Das Muni?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I know the language.”

“That’s an odd language for a mutant to know,” Casamir says. She snatches the parchment back from me and scrutinizes it. “I think she’s making this up.”

“I’m not,” Das Muni says.

“Das Muni,” I say, and wonder how I’ve failed to ask her this until now, until it is almost too late. “What world are you from? What is its exact name?”

“I’m from the Mokshi,” Das Muni says.





“BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRETEND TO BE. IT’S FAR TOO EASY TO BECOME WHAT YOU PRETEND.”

—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION





22


JAYD


You have been so melancholy,” Rasida says.

I lie in bed, resting my hands on my growing belly. I still get up sometimes, to eat and scroll through the story tablets, but my hair is unwashed. I could wash my clothes or have the girls wash them. I know these things but cannot make myself act on them.

Rasida crosses the room to me. She visits at least once every cycle. She sits beside me and takes my hand in hers. Her palms are rough and callused. I remember how lovely her fingers felt on me when I thought I had the power here, when I thought it was all going according to plan.

“I know it’s difficult,” she says. “It was so, for me, when I took my first world. Sometimes, the darkness comes. It obliterates our sense of the future. But you carry Bhavaja’s future, Jayd. You have worth.”

Worth, I think, and turn away from her. Worth only for what I carry, as if I’m just a vessel. But of course, this is what I wanted. I just didn’t want all of Katazyrna destroyed to get me here. I tell myself we will all die anyway if Zan and I aren’t able to make this plan work, but it’s little comfort. The Katazyrna dead in a generation is far different than the Katazyrna dead in my lifetime.

“I care very much for you, Jayd,” Rasida says. “I hope we can be true lovers.”

My eyes fill, and I keep my face turned away. Let her see me suffer. Let her feel sorry for me. I deserve it. I want her to suffer in turn.

“I have brought you a gift,” Rasida murmurs. “We have been eagerly getting Katazyrna ready for you, you understand. Now that I have the arm, our people here can move there. Some are not so happy about that, those who followed Aditva and the other sisters I had to slay, but they will fall in line. They will understand, as you do.”

I say nothing.

“Did you hear me?” she says softly. “This is my way of apologizing, love. I sometimes act very rashly. I feared for you. I feared my family would corrupt you. I see now that you would never have need to run from me. Let me make it up to you with a gift. I found one of your sisters, alive. I thought she could make a fine companion for you. Loneliness can be difficult, my mother tells me.”