The Stars Are Legion(80)

Arankadash folds her offspring into her arm. It settles in, pulsing softly. It’s red brown and laced in thick, ropy veins.

“What is it?” I ask, voice low.

“It’s a gift from the light,” she says.

“How do you get it . . . to the light?” I say.

She turns her sweaty face to me, and her expression contorts, as if I am mad. That gives me pause, because I don’t feel like the mad one. She and her pulsing gob of flesh look mad to me. So mad that I wonder if I should leave her and it here while we carry on. But no. I’m the outsider. I need to understand this.

“When it’s time, the light will come for it,” Arankadash says. She gazes lovingly at the mass in her arms. “I need to rest.” She holds out her arm to me.

I take her hand, averting my gaze from the thing in her arms again. I help her back to the circle. When I glance back at where she gave birth, I see a placenta and great gobs of afterbirth. We bleed, we birth, we bleed again.

Arankadash lies down with her new offspring and falls immediately to sleep.

I can’t help but think of the squirming basket of creatures Das Muni showed me.

Das Muni is watching me from a few paces away, chewing thoughtfully on a bit of rancid tuber left in our pack.

“What do you do with yours?” I ask Das Muni. “Why don’t you keep it like she does?”

“I’m not from this world,” Das Muni says. “They will only recycle what I make. It doesn’t need it. I give birth to things useful on some other world. But whatever she’s made, well. The world will need it eventually. Probably. Unless that part of it is dead now.”

And now I understand why they’ve taken Jayd. The Bhavajas needed something she had inside of her. I touch the scar on my belly. It is something I did not contain, so I cannot go in her place. But what does she give birth to? What do I have waiting in my own belly, and why have I yet to get pregnant like everyone else? Worse, then, is the idea that I will get pregnant at some point on this journey, and I am terrified of what it is I might nurture there. I resolve to cut it out long before it comes to fruition. Whatever it is, I don’t want it.

We rest for a few long periods there, until Arankadash is recovered. But the resting costs us. Our water runs low after five sleeping periods in the crystal forest, and tempers begin to run high. I suggest rationing, with extra for Arankadash. She does not listen to me when I suggest this, as she is cooing at her cog or wheel or organ or whatever it is.

I’m not surprised when Casamir and Das Muni begin bickering on the walk after that.

“If you washed half as much as the rest of us, you wouldn’t be crawling with vermin,” Casamir says.

Das Muni is still in the lead, picking her way across the crystals. She is agile. Though she, too, has no boots, her feet are splayed, callused things. She crouches atop a large crystal, scouting ahead. “Dead end this way,” she says.

“Of course!” Casamir yells, and takes off her pack. She throws it at her feet. “I’ve had enough!” she says. “You can’t really see anything up there! She’s leading us in circles! She’s going to eat us all in our sleep!”

Das Muni cocks her head at Casamir and bares her teeth. “You will ruin your food.”

“What do you care!” Casamir says. “You’re going to eat us! That was probably the plan all along. Are you going to call your little mutant friends and—”

“Stop yelling,” I say. Casamir’s voice is echoing. It’s made much louder as it reverberates among the crystals.

“And you!” Casamir says. “You delusional little psychotic! What was I thinking, coming all the way up here after you? The surface? Surface! Like the way a bubble has a surface? Let me tell you something. When you get through the skin of a bubble, it pops. Even if you can get us up there, then—”

“So, why don’t you turn around?” I say, knowing I should just let her yell it out but tired of her whining. “We’re all tired, Casamir.”

“I had everything back home!” Casamir says. “I had a great job! It isn’t so bad. And then I came here—”

“Stop shouting,” I say.

Arankadash has strapped her offspring to her chest. She raises her hands now to cover her ears.

“—and you!” Casamir says to Arankadash. “You fell for it too! All her important talk! Don’t pretend it’s not because she’s handsome. I see how you look at her. But she’s mad, I tell you. A perfect study in madness, because she’s drawn us all into her delusion, and now we’ll rot here, starving—”

Das Muni leaps.

I think she is leaping onto Casamir, but she overshoots Casamir and hurls herself into me, so fast I don’t have time to react. I fall hard onto the crystals behind me. Pain radiates up my ass. I twist my leg.

I hear the crack then. Not from my body, but from the crystals above us.

A huge hunk of crystal falls. It slides neatly and suddenly into Das Muni’s back. The crystal pierces her flesh. I feel the hard thump of it through her body pressed tight against mine.

I garble out something unintelligible.

Das Muni sighs. She grips me tight. A dribble of blood colors her mouth. She grins at me with crimson-stained teeth.

“No, no,” I say. I hold her in my arms. We are both of us pinned against the floor now. She by the crystal, me by her body. I don’t know what to do.