The Stars Are Legion(69)

Much of the task I’ve been given since I woke is sorting out the truth from the lies, the real from the rhetoric.

We camp for five sleeping periods before I finally smell the sea. The smell is brackish and rotten. A cool wind blows over us from the direction of the sea, and I wonder, again, about where the blasts of air are coming from. It’s like the whole world is breathing.

Above us, great stalactites hang from the ceiling, dripping salty moisture onto us. The formations are mottled red and orange, the colors swirling. They are met from below by stalagmites, great rearing teeth twice as tall as I am, which make navigating the sledge difficult.

We stop twice more to free the sledge from an entanglement. The deercats are impatient and tug hard. Arankadash yanks at their reins and whistles for obedience, but they have caught the smell of the sea.

We come over a low rise, and there it is. The sea is a flat viscous gray soup. Great blue lights glow and shift within it, roiling like living things. After a moment, I decide they are living things—it’s their heads and spines that glow. Each is long as the sledge. I climb to the top of an outcropping along the edge of the sea and gaze out. There are lights moving along the ceiling, too, a forest of green glowing fungi. I can see far enough across the sea to note a horizon, that place where the blue-shimmering sea meets the green sky. Dark shapes are flying over the sea and occasionally skim the water. They have black leathery wings wide as hands and bulbous bodies, but that’s all I can make out from this distance and in this light.

“I stood exactly there when I first saw the sea,” Arankadash says. “I did not believe such a thing could exist.”

“It’s extraordinary,” I say.

Casamir points to the flying beasts. “Can we eat those?”

“We can eat anything,” Arankadash says, “but I’ll tell you they are difficult to catch, and when they claw up your face, you will regret your decision to pursue them. They taste awful. Not worth the effort.”

Das Muni stands at the edge of the sea, silent, her cowl up.

I have not noticed a swell in her belly, but I can see it now on Arankadash as the wind blows against her body, pushing her long robe behind her and revealing her full outline. Doesn’t it terrify them all, I think, to have no control over when and what they give birth to? But it’s normal here, isn’t it? As normal as eating one’s companions and swimming across a viscous sea. I press my hands to my own belly. What am I meant to give birth to? Is this another reason my memory is stripped away, because the truth is too much for me?

“I don’t see a boat,” Casamir says.

I tear my gaze from the horizon and back to the shore. She is right. There is no boat, only a long beach made up of bits of calcified deposits and ground metal pieces. I hop off the crag and take up a fistful of the stuff. No doubt Casamir’s people will sift all the metal from this and make a fortune with it.

“Sometimes it’s farther down,” Arankadash says.

“When were you here last?” I ask her.

“When I left my child here and gave it to the light,” she says. “It was born wrong.”

I don’t know what to say to that.

Casamir heads farther down the shore.

“Das Muni and I will look the other way,” I say. Arankadash waves a hand at me.

I start in the opposite direction, but Das Muni isn’t following me. She is still staring at the sea.

“What is it?” I say. “Come on.”

“It’s so beautiful,” she says.

“The Mokshi doesn’t have seas?”

“It’s a very different place,” she says.

“You should tell me about it.”

“No. It was a long time ago. It’s better to forget.” She walks down the beach, head lowered.

“Is there a family in charge there?” I ask. “Like the Katazyrnas? Did you live below, like here?”

But she doesn’t answer, only toes the shoreline. I sigh and march out ahead of her, swinging my walking stick. My leg has been bothering me less. The compress from Casamir’s people fell out back in Arankadash’s settlement, leaving a scarred chunk in my leg. When I saw it, I laughed because it seemed like I had created a secret compartment within myself, some terrible living pocket for contraband. But it also had the desired effect. It reminded me of my promise to Casamir’s people.

We find many things along the shore, including a jellified animal that washed up there. It’s twice as long as I am, with a tangle of tentacles and transparent body. I suspect it’s one of the glowing blue things in the sea. I give it a wide berth.

Das Muni picks up little items as we walk; a metal square, a polished bone disk, a carved wooden ring tangled in slimy weeds.

But no boat.

The green fungus above begins to fade, and I realize it must be on another cycle, like the creatures down in the pits.

“We should get back to the others,” I say, and Das Muni nods.

Then it begins to rain.

The drops come soft at first, like the rain in Casamir’s city. Then it comes harder, big dirty drops smeared red. They soon coat our faces, and when I see Das Muni’s face, it’s as if she is crying blood.

Something thunks into the ground between us. A heavy stone hits my arm. Stone? Is that what it is? The hard little pellets are unfurling on the ground and wriggling away like snakes with legs. They rattle down around us, so fast and furious I raise my hands up over my head.