Ashes and Rain: Sequel to Khe (The Ahsenthe Cycle Book 2) Read online

  I thought of Larta, and Azlii, and Pradat, of how much I wanted to see them and share in their lives, my good sisters, for more than just the time left before Commemoration Day; my best chance, to have what I’d given so much for, lay in the room beyond.

  I stepped across the threshold.

  Twenty

  The door whizzed closed behind me. The room was bare, since the lumani had no need for chairs or pillows. The air smelt different here, musty and stagnant like everywhere else in this cavern, but salty too — so salty I could taste it. The acrid scent of Weast and the other lumani, faint as a whisper, echoed from the air and soil. Of course it would smell like them here. The lumani came here, who knew how often? Often enough to have lived through generation after generation of soumyo.

  A shudder ran up my spine — remembering Weast, what he’d done to me. The sense of burning from the inside out as the unnatural egg it had grown in me slid down my channel. The relief when the egg fell onto the floor, a mass of nothing.

  I ran my hand over my scalp and flicked my wrist to throw the memory away.

  I walked through the room slowly, a step and a stop, another step and stop, trying to sense if any spot felt different from any other — if there was one special place I should stand.

  The room burst into light. Not the sort of light the wriggling creatures in the dirt provided. Not like the lights that brightened structures. More like Pradat’s healing lights — bright and sharp as the mid-year sun. I couldn’t see its source.

  The ugly smell of Weast and its kind smoldered in my nose. The salty air dried my mouth. The dirt seemed suddenly alive, sending shocks along the soles of my feet. My bones ached. The air grew heavy, then heavier, pressing, driving me to my knees. I hunched my shoulders and ducked my chin — as if that could protect me. The heavy air was everywhere, pushing on my head, my back, my face, my stomach, my shins. I fell to the dirt on my side, closed my eyes, and rolled into a tight ball, my arms wrapped across my chest, each hand holding tight to the opposite shoulder.

  The shocks that had started in my feet now ran along the length of my body. I twitched and turned, but couldn’t escape it. The air pressed, turned cold, turned freezing. My teeth chattered uncontrollably. I tried to unroll but couldn’t — as though my skin had melted to itself, impossible to pull apart. I pried my eyelids opened and looked down along my body, my pulse hammering in my head, terrified of what I might see.

  Not melted flesh. Not melted, but freezing, frozen — even if I couldn’t see it. I wanted to scream but the air pressed in too tight. My mouth wouldn’t open. I slammed my eyes shut again, felt my face crunched into tiny folds and creases, my muscles cramped. The piercing light stabbed through my closed eyelids. It seemed to take days to make my arms unfold from across my chest and force my hands up to cover my eyes.

  Had the lumani felt this? All those times, closed up in this chamber, had they been desperately cold and crushed this way? They’d lived through it. But I wasn’t lumani. Not like they were. I was still doumana, with a body never meant for this.

  The Expectation of Returning, the song we sing for doumanas reaching the end of their time, roared into my mind.

  Sweet and merciful creator, too long have I been gone from you.

  My heart cries out in longing to join again with the soul.

  Jonton was outside the door. Larta. No one could save me.

  Sweet and merciful creator, too long have I been gone from you.

  Freezing. Freezing. Shaking. Crushed.

  I wanted it to end. Anything to make it stop.

  The lights blinked out. I sensed it through my squeezed eyelids. The air pressure pushed a little less against my body. Slowly, slowly, the freezing lightened and became less painful though, even when it no longer hurt, I didn’t open my eyes. I lay curled tight, breathing — grateful for the small joy of air sliding in and out of my nose and lungs.

  Finally I forced my eyes open. The room looked no different from when I’d first stepped into it. It should have been wrecked, the walls crumbled, the floor full of cracks. I inched my hands to my scalp and rubbed gently with both hands.

  I needed to sit up. I knew it, wanted it, but couldn’t. Not yet. I lay a while longer, the dirt beneath me cool now, as comfortable and pleasant as lying in the fields with my sisters back at Lunge. I wouldn’t look at my left wrist. The dots could be the same, still thirty-five. That could mean nothing good had happened in this room. It could mean that the change took time. It could mean —

  Birds that weren’t birds chirped, twittered, and squawked somewhere around me. I levered up on one elbow and looked around, cocking my head different ways, trying to figure out where the sound had come from. The birds yammered again — below me, above me, from the walls.

  A soft voice, like the barest breeze, sounded not in my earholes but inside my head — like think-talking, but different. Not like hearing so much as knowing the words already the moment they sounded.

  Khe, the voice said, I have given you back your years. Look now. Look and see the truth of this.

  I sat up slowly, half afraid to look, half afraid I was making up voices to say what I wanted to hear. I scratched the side of my neck with my right hand — buying time. Slowly I turned my left arm over and looked at my wrist. The dots were still there, a field of blue stars on red skin.

  Not thirty-five.

  I held my breath and started to count. When I was done, I counted them again. The number was the same both times: thirteen. Exactly the number there should be.

  I sat a long time staring, delight singing in my blood, a grin as big as the wilderness stretched across my face.

  Khe, the voice said, your rightful years are my gift to you, a gift I have been waiting and hoping to give.

  My heartbeat sped. I glanced around the dirt room, wondering where the voice came from, if it were real or only something I imagined. Of course it was real — it was the same voice that had guided me through the cavern and brought me here.

  Where are you? I thought-talked. Can I see you? Can you be seen?

  I am here, the voice said — and the sound came from everywhere.

  I watched as all the little luminous creatures that had lit the walls began moving down toward the bottom of the wall. When they reached the bottom, they crawled under the dirt floor toward me. Was it the creatures that’d brought me here, given me back my life? They wriggled toward me, then began to turn, forming themselves into a glowing circle around me.

  Can you see clearly now? the voice asked.

  Yes, I sent back. It wasn’t the little creatures at all; it was the dirt, the planet itself, that fed me, that had given me physical energy. And now, its ultimate gift: my rightful years.

  How can I thank you? I thought. Can I offer you help? The shivering — I heard you sob.

  The ground rolled gently beneath me.

  The machine, the planet sent, brings me pain. I would be grateful if you destroyed it.

  The machine that made our world perfect. That brought the right weather for my sisters — and brothers — to thrive. Without the machine, what would happen to us?

  What did I owe the planet that had given me back my life?

  How could I choose between them?

  I don’t know how to destroy the machine, I thought, and hoped that would spare me from having to decide.

  I will help you when the time comes, the voice said. I will give you the strength.

  I slowly pulled myself to my feet. I gazed at the solid door set into the dirt.

  Can you open the door? I sent.

  I’m sorry. No. I cannot do that without harming you.

  A finger of fear raced up my chest. I didn’t know how to open it from this side; didn’t know if it could be opened from this side. But Jonton could open the door. And Larta had seen how she’d done it.

  “Larta.” My voice was little more than a rusty whisper.

  No answer came.

  “Larta!” I screamed, frightening myself with
the force of the sound.

  The door clicked and slid open. Larta and Jonton stood staring at me, the question in both their minds clear on their faces.

  I walked toward them, holding my left arm up, forearm turned their way, laughter rising in me, until it burst out and rang like chimes against the dirt walls.

  Jonton’s eyes grew wide. She shoved me aside and ran into the room. The door shut hard behind her. I stared after her. The room, the confluence of energy, had extended the lumani’s lives, and now mine. I supposed Jonton would get what she sought there as well.

  Larta rested an arm over my shoulder, her neck brightly lit crimson. “Now we have to wait for Jonton.”

  I nodded. I’d had no sense of time in the room, no way to figure how long we would be waiting.

  The voice whispered inside my head. Go now. I will guide you. Jonton will not be back.

  I felt as though all the air had been sucked from the cavern in a great rushing plume. I couldn’t make myself move. Jonton had done evil things, Returned four doumanas, an act I couldn’t comprehend, but she deserved her life — and shunning — for a very long time. To be Returned herself would almost be a gift, a smaller pain than shunning would bring. But the planet had no use for the way doumanas thought. It had its own ways, its own punishments.

  “Jonton won’t be coming with us,” I told Larta. “Likely she won’t be coming back at all.”

  Larta gaped at me. Her neck showed the gray-red of shock and the soft-gray of sorrow, but she closed her mouth, nodded once, and we turned away.

  And here was one more change made in us — that we would walk away and leave a doumana, any doumana, in jeopardy

  In the last step of light before we re-entered the dark, tight passageway, I sneaked another look at the inside of my left arm. It felt wrong to be happy when Jonton faced misery, but I was happy. My rightful years were mine again.

  I led the way back, the planet whispering directions in my ear, taking a different, more direct route than the way we’d come. Energy poured through me. Once we were beyond the tight passage I walked so fast Larta huffed from trying to keep up. I didn’t slow until we came to the cavern beneath the machine room.

  Larta looked up at the dirt roof above our heads. “Now what?”

  I waited for help or instructions, but the voice was silent.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Coming all this way just to find ourselves stuck,” Larta said, running her hands over the walls, looking for a divot like the one Jonton had used to open the door at the heart.

  “There’s a way out,” I said. “Jonton would have used it.” My mind was spinning. Jonton had known the secret. She’d come and gone from the caverns enough times to know them well. Whatever the secret was, I couldn’t see it.

  I stood a moment, staring at the machine, wondering if it somehow controlled the way in and out. But Larta was likely more on track. Every door I’d seen in the Research Center had an eye or something that made it work. I slowly ran fingers that still ached from the heart room over the dirt wall, afraid I’d miss the spot.

  Larta laughed once. “Found it.”

  I spun around to face her.

  “Ready?” she asked

  A sudden fizz of nerves flashed through me, but I nodded.

  The flash was lightning-bright. I threw my hands up to cover my squeezed eyelids. An icy breeze blew past my legs. Then darkness.

  I opened my eyes slowly, cautiously. We were back in the machine room. The weather machine was quiet now. No water fell into its full-to-the-top cache. The Returned guardians still lay where they had fallen. My neck burned. Larta’s glowed bright with the soft-gray of sorrow and the black-red of rage.

  The bird noise sounded low in my earholes.

  It must be destroyed, Khe. You must help me.

  The weather machine. The source of the planet’s suffering.

  How?

  One last pain, the planet said. One last shake. You must loose the water and let it pour down. Tell your sisters to leave this place if they wish to live.

  Larta had gone to Justice House, leaving me in the machine room after I’d told her what needed to be done. I couldn’t look at the fallen guardians. I stood, staring at the machine — the face, metal the color of shadows, the only-for-show dials and levers — and wondered if it had consciousness. And if it did, was it happy or miserable at the use that had been made of it? And if it did, did I have the right to help in its destruction? The destruction, too, if I read the planet rightly, of the structure that housed it, with a consciousness of its own.

  I was glad when Larta returned with several guardians, enough to do the two jobs needed now. Every guardian stood, stunned at the sight of their fallen sisters, every neck showing the dark-purple of grief and the brown-black of anger. They’d brought rolling cots. Each Returned guardian was tenderly placed on one and taken away. Back to Justice House, I presumed, but didn’t know for sure.

  The remaining guardians fanned out through the research center, herding the few doumanas still in the structure out.

  Larta took hold of the elbow of the last guardian, and said, “I have a different assignment for you. Find Nez. Tell her we’ll be sending out word about the council and inviting the representatives to come. Nez will represent Chimbalay and be the Speaker. She needs to prepare her words well. Khe and I will meet her outside Presentation House.”

  The guardian nodded, and then only Larta and I were left in the room.

  “You’re going to destroy the machine and the structure?” she asked.

  Not me — the planet, I wanted to say, but even Larta, who knew that there were more things in our world than most doumanas were aware of, might find it hard to understand who spoke to me inside my head. I nodded.

  “It’s a bit like the Energy Center all over again,” she said. “Here we are, destroying something needed by the doumanas of Chimbalay.”

  My neck went hot. I’d thought about that as well. “It’s not the same. There’s another research center in Chimbalay, a place for sick or hurt doumanas to find help,” I said. “If no research goes on for a while, that might be a good thing.”

  Larta laughed once, quietly. “You’re right about that. But what about the machine? We’ll go back to inconsistent weather. To lean years. To suffering. You’re the one who said it shouldn’t be destroyed.”

  “I know,” I said. “Things have changed. I’ll try to explain it later, when we have some time. For now — ”

  Larta cut me off. “Do whatever needs to be done. I’ll stand by your side.”

  I reached out and stroked her neck in gratitude just as the text box strapped on her forearm vibrated, the movement so small it would be easy not to see, but she would feel it.

  “We’re the only ones left in the research center,” she said. “The structures on either side and across the avenue have been emptied as well.”

  I drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then I began the feathery words and hand movements that would start the machine working. I knew how to make the water in the catch-tube dump down deep into the world. How to make it happen fast or slowly. I made the motion for fast, and watched out of the side of my eye as water rushed from the tube until it was empty.

  I felt a tiny shiver roll under my feet and then stop.

  “Larta, it’s time to go.”

  We stood across the wide avenue from the research center, our backs up against the three-level dwelling where the doumanas in charge of recreation lived — the structure empty now, the guardians having sent them to an outer ring for safety.

  When the shivering began, I set my feet wide apart, bent my knees, and braced to ride it out. Larta touched my shoulder once, gave a little shrug, and set her legs the same way. We waited together for whatever was to come.

  The shiver built, the planet grumbling beneath us, the ground buckling and rolling. I grabbed hold of a branch from one of the thick-trunked trees that flanked either side of the dwelling. The limb shoo
k in my hands, the rough bark scraping my palms. Larta seized a different branch, but held on just as hard. The tree seemed to jump as the ground swelled under it, rising up. I felt myself rise too, my balance failing. I held tight as we slammed back down, and the ground began to sway violently from side to side. The research center shook like a reed in a windstorm. Tiles fell from the roof, crashing against the stone streets and breaking into tiny pieces. The air stank of ozone.

  A roar tore the air. The ground shook back and forth beneath our feet. A jagged crack began crawling up the face of the structure. The crack widened, the wall splitting open like decaying fruit. The creak and screech as the skin of the structure broke apart rang loud in our earholes. I imagined other cracks on other walls we couldn’t see from where we stood.

  The research center groaned, and I listened, wondering if it were aware of the cracks splitting its sides, hoping it wasn’t. Chunks of plaster, large and small, fell into the street. The planet gave a mighty twist and the research center fell, the structure folding in on itself, sinking into the hole that had been the machine room.

  The shiver ended. A strange and total silence settled over Chimbalay.

  Twenty-One

  “Jonton told me her secret,” Larta said as we walked toward Presentation House. The rubble of Research Center Three lay behind us. Already doumanas had arrived with tools and vehicles and were clearing the remains away. The shock of what we’d seen was fading.

  “I asked,” Larta said, “and Jonton was so proud of herself she couldn’t keep from telling me how she knew what was said all over Chimbalay.”

  I had been thinking of Nez, wondering if I should tell her what I’d learned in the room of floating faces. I pulled my attention to Larta. “How did she do it?”

  “Jonton told me the lumani wanted to ‘study doumanas in their natural state’. They wanted to know what we did when we were alone with our sisters. She said that as fascinated as the lumani were with us, they didn’t like us much. They didn’t want to be near us physically if they didn’t have to be.”