An Anatomy of Beasts Read online

  Hamankush leads me back down the softly glowing hall. She peels the layer of plant and lifts it, nodding for me to pass through. Outside, the heat is thick and wet with high noon humidity, and I notice the silence of the jungle just beyond the domed plant I’d just emerged from. The animals taking shelter from the heat, at rest and conserving their energy. Except the building, I sense: it seems alert in the tunnel, its too-fast-to-comprehend language humming on and on, energized by the sun. When I look at Hamankush, her ears have unfurled, collecting solar energy. My very skeleton seems to ache at the thought of what I’d uncovered with Alma in the depths of the Zoo: the Solossius, its vile blueprint, the tower at the center of the commune, Albatur’s intentions to use the bones of the Faloii in plain sight. . . .

  “What is it called?” I say to distract myself, nodding at the building housing the school.

  “The plant itself is called a qalandar. But when it is engaged in this task, acting as a structure, the structure is known as a qalm.”

  “A qalm,” I repeat. “Are there many?”

  “Yes. Every structure in Mbekenkanush is a qalm. We build nothing artificially.”

  She adds this last part in the tunnel and I understand the feeling she passes with it to mean that she is referring to N’Terra, the choices of my people.

  Most of us don’t know, I say. It’s the people in charge. They are doing this.

  This does not change the outcome, she says.

  I have nothing to say to this. I close my eyes in the sun, wishing it was giving me something. This place has always been my home, but its sun does not even love me as it could. I give nothing. I only breathe the air and eat the food. And yet my grandmother has lived here peacefully for many years. Has she found something to give?

  Is my grandmother all right?

  I do not know.

  Then why did you bring me out here?

  Because you were preparing to share information with the others that is not ready to be known.

  What information? You mean about what—what my people are doing?

  Yes.

  So they don’t know.

  Most do not. Our Elders have determined this is for the best at this moment.

  In the tunnel, the gwabi greets me from somewhere nearby. She is nesting in the shadows of the colossal trees, the trees that make everything in N’Terra look small and flimsy. Two cities. Mine, and this. Both with secrets, both deciding what to tell and what not to tell. If I had to choose where my allegiances lie . . . what would I choose?

  Were you here when we got here? When we landed?

  When the star people came from the sky? Yes, I was here. I did not see, but I felt the arrival. We all did. It was a very strange day.

  “All this time,” I say, mostly to myself. “I never knew some of us came to you.”

  “You refer to the Acclimates.”

  “Yes. They’ve been here this whole time.”

  She studies me, her eyes like galaxies shifting over my face. She studies me in the tunnel too, and I sense that even when I’m not actively communicating something, the Faloii can still get impressions, still understand things I have not made overt.

  “That is correct,” she says.

  “Why?” I say when she doesn’t continue. “We didn’t even know there were others. No one ever told us. Why didn’t you let them return to N’Terra?”

  “Let them? Does this mean allow them? You are mistaken. It was your people who would not allow them to return.”

  I have the feeling of standing on the edge of a crack in the ground, teetering. Hamankush’s face is unreadable, the spots on her forehead almost entirely still. I swallow. “Why not?”

  I’m afraid of what she might tell me. Disease? Is there something infectious about the Faloii that N’Terra knows would wipe out the settlement? Is that why they’ve tried so hard to keep us apart? I feel guilty for harboring this thought until finally Hamankush’s spots drift ever so slightly upward.

  “I will show you something,” she says. “Come.”

  She walks fast, her long legs passing over the land as if she has decided that what she wants to show me is urgent. I keep up as best as I can, jogging behind her back along the pink lake. I don’t know where she’s leading me, but when she ducks into the jungle I’m surprised. I was expecting her to take me somewhere where I might see records. She’s an archivist, Rasimbukar had said. I imagined her leading me to an ancient building like the Council’s dome, perhaps. At the very least a monument, some pillar to the past that might have answers to my questions. But she pushes deeper and deeper through the trees, our feet sometimes following a path and sometimes slipping through thick curtains of cascading leaves until we find another. I’m sweating, my palms dripping sweat onto the forest floor. My scalp pours a waterfall down the back of my neck, my skinsuit doing its best to ventilate my body heat.

  I’m feeling faint by the time we stop. It can’t have been longer than ten minutes since we first plunged into the jungle, but my vision seems to be expanding and contracting, like the lens of a camera trying to adjust to shifting light. Hamankush turns to me abruptly in the small clearing where she has chosen to pause, her starry eyes sweeping over me in one long blink. Her arm swipes at and removes a bell-shaped white flower from a branch. She extends it to me.

  “Chew,” she says, “but do not swallow.”

  I obey. My only other experience with food in the jungle is the rhohedron Rasimbukar gave me, and part of me had ignorantly expected this to be similar, but it couldn’t be more different. The plant is crunchier than it felt in my hand, difficult to smash with my teeth.

  What is it called? I ask as I chew.

  It is called wahanile. Do not swallow.

  I know.

  It is very important that you do not swallow.

  I hadn’t been nervous before, but now anxiety makes my jaw slow. I chew carefully, methodically, not allowing even a drop of my own saliva to creep down my throat.

  Remove it now. Into your palm.

  It feels rude spitting in front of her, so I turn my head away just enough to be polite and deposit the small lump of the chewed remains of the flower into my palm. It resembles a thick white paste now, slightly sparkly, as if the flesh of the flower had contained tiny precious stones.

  Your remaining saliva, she says. Spit it there.

  She indicates the root of the tree bearing other white wahanile, and I obey.

  Now take what is in your palm and rub it here. And here.

  I mimic her motions, dipping my finger in the chewed-up paste and swiping it across my forehead and at my temples.

  Then here, and here.

  I use the rest of the paste to swipe a line under my chin on my throat and on the back of my neck.

  “Better,” she says, not as a question. She’s right. I feel cooler, as if the paste has sent a wave of shade through my skin. My sweat even feels pleasant, as if rather than salty water it has been replaced with a gentle rain.

  Drink, she says, and passes me a gourd-like vessel that she must have been carrying all along. When I obey she studies me again. Rasimbukar tells me you can smell the ogwe.

  This wasn’t what I expected to hear next, and I glance up at her, curious.

  Yes. Sometimes. When I need to relax.

  She looks at me for what seems like a long time, the spots on her forehead drifting as if deciding what to do next. When they eventually become still again, I know she has made up her mind.

  I will show you now.

  I expect her to immediately start showing me whatever it is her mind possesses, but instead she sits down, gesturing for me to do the same. I sink down next to her as she turns and places her long-fingered hand on the ground beside us. Her hand immediately takes on the rich black color of the soil, its depth seeping into her skin, green in places. I don’t see what she sees, but I feel a pulse of her energy in the tunnel: it’s as if her mind is filling up with some bright substance. She’s receiving something.

&
nbsp; What are you doing? I can’t help but ask.

  As you know, I am an archivist. But the archives are far from here. I am asking Faloiv to transfer the memory from there to here.

  You can’t access it in your own mind?

  It is not my memory.

  Her entire arm is now mottled black and green, an extension of the ground we sit on. It’s not camouflage, I think: not the way N’Terrans have been able to reproduce it. It’s another level of complexity that I can’t even begin to understand: it’s almost as if her arm is becoming soil. She seems to be focusing intensely now and the energy in her mind pulses again.

  Are you prepared?

  I think so. I’m nervous.

  Here. See.

  The memory that she passes into the tunnel surges in and brings with it the taste of dirt and plant matter. The memory smells like Faloiv; and even though it’s nonphysical, its intensity causes every sensory neuron to fire as the planet itself enters my brain. No wind blows in the air, but I feel a breeze across my skin as the black soil of Faloiv fills my veins. My head snaps backward without my permission; my bones feel as if they’re growing into wooden branches. It’s not painful—it’s almost pleasant—but it’s a feeling like being buried and unearthed simultaneously.

  I am a tree. Or my mind is. I sway in the breeze and I am tall and thick and content. I see more of the world than I thought possible—every inch of me is an eye: porous, both open and closed to the world. From where I’m rooted, I oversee everything. The city of Mbekenkanush, its people.

  My people.

  There are humans here. The tree-sense that has taken up space in my consciousness like a copilot recognizes them warily, a new species whose intentions are disconnected from the tunnel where the creatures of Faloiv converge. Their minds are small and mysterious. And yet the human in me can sense these people’s joy: they are recently descended from outer space; they are on solid ground and safe; and they are happy about it. I can hear their voices, raised with laughter. They are learning about their new home. These are the Acclimates, come to Mbekenkanush.

  But something is coming.

  Suddenly my mind rushes with red and orange flames of pain. It blinds me—or the tree? Both of us—with its intensity. It’s as if the signal connecting me to the tree’s memory begins to short: I see only flares of what the tree remembers, everything else frayed and distorted. Three people come from beyond the tree line, people wearing yellow suits. I smell strangeness on them: the smell of synthetic materials. Of burning. The people that come from the jungle carry buzzguns. Maybe there are more than three. Humans from inside Mbekenkanush are running toward them, two women and a man. I recognize two of them.

  Somewhere inside the tree’s memory I whisper, “Nana.”

  And the man beside her is my grandfather. He waves his arms. He’s yelling. Everyone is yelling. The buzzguns zip. People fall. Inside me, the memory of the tree is quaking and my own horror builds alongside it, so huge and terrible that I’m afraid my skin might tear. My grandmother runs beside the other woman, both of them shouting. The buzzguns fire. My grandmother screams.

  The woman running with Nana has fallen. The world inside the memory is swirling as blood falls and spills, seeming to wash the whole city in its shocking redness. Then from the sky comes a buzzgun in the form of a bird: its body is all angles and edges, silver metal sharp and shining as it swoops down out of the clouds, raining violence and chaos upon the scene below.

  “A drone!” my grandfather’s voice thunders. “Take cover!”

  Hamankush’s voice is a sudden echo in my head from beyond the tree’s memory:

  This is war, she says.

  Who were those people in the trees? I ask. I’m breathless. I’ve never seen people kill each other. It’s staggering, almost too much to comprehend.

  Your people. N’Terrans.

  Why . . . why?

  Periods of blackness punctuate the memories of the tree I am able to see. It feels as if a rope is tied around my waist and I’m being forcibly dragged through dark water, the sun occasionally showing me my surroundings. On the same bloodstained ground, the Faloii and my grandparents—other humans gathered around—seem to argue. In the center stands a single cloaked figure, face obscured by the green shroud that wraps them. Their presence pulses with mystery, the conflict of the humans and the Faloii seeming to swirl around them. They feel ancient and otherworldly—I sense it from the way the tree regards them: fear and awe. They stand motionless in the midst of war.

  And this, Hamankush whispers from beyond the memory, is what they do not want you to see.

  Chapter 3

  The soil is leaking out of my veins, emptying me as the memory of the tree and my own consciousness split, becoming two again. My limbs lose their strong woodenness, the roots abandon the soles of my feet. As the last leaf shrinks from my mind, I feel small and brittle, my skin strangely exposed after the secure armor of bark.

  When I open my eyes, ready to ask Hamankush the many questions that are forming in my mind, I instead find Rasimbukar, towering above me and staring at Hamankush with what can only be described as a glare. The spots on her forehead are assembled in a low rigid line. I’m almost afraid to open the tunnel, but when I do I find that I am barred from whatever conversation it is that they are having. Hamankush’s fists are clenched, her own facial spots vibrating in small tight patterns. I lower my eyes, staring at the dark soil, a sensation of being wood still leaking out of me. When Rasimbukar finally turns her eyes on me, she looks like she’s about to speak when she lowers her gaze to my feet. Her spots drift higher on one side, losing some of their rigidity.

  “What is this?” she says.

  At my feet, a tangle of new vines has grown from the forest floor. I know for a fact that they weren’t there when we arrived at this place, and as proof, they grow before my eyes. They seem to circle me, green tendrils drifting closer to my ankles as if in curiosity. From one, a single black flower—delicate and lovely—blooms.

  “Interesting,” Rasimbukar says.

  “Yes, interesting,” Hamankush says, but there is something in her tone I can’t read, and Rasimbukar jerks her head to fix her with an icy stare. There is something else unspoken between them, something I don’t hear.

  “I have been looking for you,” she says. Hamankush turns and disappears into the trees without another word. “Your grandmother has awakened.”

  My grandmother is sitting up in bed, the blue mammals, which had roamed her skin when I saw her last, removed. She offers me a weak smile when I enter the room. My grandfather is gone.

  “Nana,” I say.

  “Afua,” she says, and beckons me with one of her plump hands.

  I approach her bedside slowly. She has been dead since I was eleven. Seeing her now, after so many years gazing out at the jungle and wondering what direction, under which tree, her body had become bones . . . it’s hard.

  “I owe you an apology, sweetness. Years of them,” she says.

  I sit on the low stool where I’d slouched earlier and study her hand to avoid her eyes. I don’t remember her fingers, her nails. After five years, the edges of her have blurred in my mind. Will my memories of my mother become the same? A flower torn from the branch, fading in the sun?

  “I can’t believe she’s dead,” I whisper.

  Her hand takes my chin and steers it upward so I finally look into her eyes. The grief there is bottomless—I think I should have known that my grandmother was still alive all these years because my mother’s eyes did not look like this. My mother’s sadness had carried the gray mist of loneliness. My nana’s carries more than clouds. This grief is a mountain in her heart.

  “Where is my grandfather?” I ask.

  “He has gone back to his work,” she says.

  “You talk like them,” I say softly. “Like the Faloii.”

  She smiles.

  “Yes, I suppose I do. After so many years, it is inevitable that the tongue learns new rhythms.”r />
  Neither of us speaks after that, the silence like a third person in the room, taking up too much space. She reaches out her hand, palm up, inviting me to take it. I can’t quite bring myself to do it, and the guilt is the invisible third person pinching the fat on my arm.

  “Have I been gone that long, baby?” she says.

  “No,” I say quickly. The memory of resting between her soft knees as she braided my hair, her wordless melody floating down to my ears, her and my mother’s voices darting back and forth across the ’wam in mock argument . . . it all feels close, as if I could reach out and cup it in my palm. “But, yes.”

  She sighs, and the sound fills the small dim qalm.

  “Of course,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’ve thought of you every day. Time passes so strangely. And now I get you here and I act like no time has passed at all. For me it doesn’t feel that way sometimes, but it can’t have been easy for you. N’Terra was hard enough to manage when I was there. Now . . . I can’t imagine.”

  “So it was always this bad?” I say, grabbing what feels like neutral conversation and clinging to it. “It’s like all this stuff was happening around me and I didn’t even notice.”

  “Youth will do that.” She smiles. “But, no, it wasn’t always this bad, although it’s never been good. I wandered back and forth for a while before I left: seeing Jamyle—your grandfather—but also giving my heart a rest from everything happening in that place. I missed you so much . . . but it was a relief to be away.”

  The possibility of neutral topics shrinks out of my grasp.

  “Mom knew you were alive,” I say. “And she never said anything.”

  At this, her fingers curl in on themselves, their tips rubbing together in thought.

  “That’s right,” she says. “It was hard for her, sweetness, believe that.”

  “I need to know why everything was so secretive,” I say. “I know Mom was at odds with the Council, but you weren’t. . . .”

  “It wasn’t just your mother,” she interjects. “For me to be gone and alive would mean I had to be somewhere safe. Albatur has been building toward what we’re seeing right now for a long time. Me being gone but not dead wasn’t going to play, baby.”