10: Redstone River Hive

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Explaining to Smon that she wants her to come on a small walk to see many people isn’t difficult. Smon dashes into her egg and returns almost immediately with a small bundle of silk containing… objects of some kind, Tyk supposes. She can’t see inside. She supposes that she’ll find out what Smon has when Smon uses it. Probably food. Smon takes the time to close up the hole in her egg and do something to the water tank before following Tyk off towards the Redstone River Hive.

The journey’s not a fast one. Smon can move surprisingly quickly and has more stamina than any larva that Tyk has ever seen, but she’s also easily distracted. Tyk’s fine with this; it is, after all, her first time seeing the world, and there’s something very charming about the way she dashes about looking at the most mundane things. They move at an angle slightly away from the river, and the moist soft grasses become longer and bristly ones as the soil beneath their feet dries; Smon stares at the different kinds in rapt fascination. She looks at different kinds of stones, rushing here and there to inspect things until Tyk (moving at a more steady and regular pace) passes her and then rushing to catch up. At one point, she spies a very small bug, smaller than her hand, and stops to watch it climb a bamboo stalk, a process that takes several minutes and is the first and only time that Tyk has to fully stop walking and wait for her. She lifts the magical stone attached to her mandible… arm… towards it and focuses intensely until it reaches the top of the stalk, then gives herself a little shake and moves on. (Hunting behaviour? Do stars eat bugs? If so, that’s a relief, in terms of finding her something to eat.) When the bamboo stalks change from bright red to brilliant blue and start growing in tight clumps instead of as sparse, lone stalks (changes dictated mostly by the soil and water available), she pulls up stalks of both colours and starts pulling them apart as she walks, comparing the insides. All the while, she gathers new words for the echo stone, to the point where even in this circumstance, Tyk is tiring of naming random objects.

Then the communication tower comes into view, and Tyk feels a thrill of smug pride as Smon stops and stares in what must be awe, because the Redstone River Hive’s tower is very impressive. The small amount of damage caused by the impacts has been repaired or cleared away for later repair, and it should look fully intact to someone who has never seen the now-removed damaged peripherals. Silks hang bright and neat, pillars stand strong and symmetrical, and men dart about bright and healthy.

“Tower,” Tyk tells her, for the echo stone. “Communication tower, for the Redstone River Hive.”

There’s a lot of activity around the hive, and as they approach, Smon slows cautiously, perhaps remembering her last altercation with people who weren’t Tyk. But the women hauling dirt out of the collapsed tunnels politely ignore her, pretending not to stare as they work, giving Smon and Tyk a reasonable berth with mandibles relaxed. Tyk suspects that Smon is doing her version of the same thing, keeping her head pointed towards Tyk (although her eyes still dart about, taking in everything and everyone), mandibles at her sides, walking in slow and measured steps instead of darting straight at whatever takes her fancy.

They’re being watched as they approached the entrance, of course, by absolutely everyone. A star is coming to the hive; who wouldn’t watch? But everyone is doing a surprisingly good job of pretending otherwise. (Tyk, noticing that there wasn’t nearly this much activity around the entrance the last time she was here, wonders if their arrival just so happens to coincide with the time that tunnels were being cleared, or if everybody suddenly found an excuse to be near the entrance once they heard that Smon was coming.)

Ayan is near the entrance, even though somebody with a freshly hatched truebrother isn’t expected to do any work. Even her venomous glare is remarkably subtle and aimed, to Tyk’s relief, at Tyk herself, not Smon. Tyk supposes that it would be difficult to hold a grudge against a baby or a god, let alone somebody who is both.

Smon stops walking just outside the entrance to the hive burrows to look at the walls. Which makes sense, given how wonderful the hive’s gems are and how intricate their decorations, except… she’s not paying all that much attention to such things, or at least, she’s not paying the kind of attention that Tyk expected. Rather than stand back to be awed by the effect of the gemstones sparkling in their majestic patterns, she leans in very closely to inspect a couple, then turns to Tyk.

“From where?”

“From us,” she says, indicating some of the workers around them. Workers set the stones.

Smon rocks her head in what Tyk has come to understand is a negative gesture – that’s not what she means. “Come from other. Come from where?”

“From Glittergem Hive.”

“Other hive.”

“Yes.”

“Redstone River Hive plus Glittergem Hive give thing take thing to from other hive. Equivalent thing.”

“Yes.”

The concept of trade seems to delight Smon, for some reason. She does a little bounce and strikes the ends of her mandibles together in a way that she only does when she’s really excited about something, causing everyone else to shrink back, unsure of what she’s doing. Tyk, though, has seen this before, and is unsurprised when she lifts a mandible to line up the magic stone stuck to it with a gem. Tyk hasn’t worked out what that particular stone does – it’s not the echo stone, that one’s over her eye – but she does like to hold it near objects.

Then she fiddles with it, and it does something that Tyk has never seen before. It starts to glow.

Not the whole thing. It shines a beam of light straight ahead, creating a little circle of brightness on the wall. The inside must be glowing through a hole drilled in it, like lighting a fire and blocking the light in all directions but one. But this is no mere firelight; it doesn’t flicker or falter, but shines directly, constantly, in an unmoving circle on the wall. Starlight. The baby star is emitting starlight. All subtlety abandoned, everyone within sight immediately stops what they’re doing to watch.

Tyk tries not to panic. She’s not worried about the hive, but about Smon – there might be some great social significance to what she’s doing, and Tyk has no idea what it is. Smon has several magic stones; her very egg seems to be a magic stone, with its strange geode-like protrusions inside and unknown capabilities. Her first attempts at communication with Tyk used stones for counting, and upon reaching the hive, her eyes were immediately drawn to the gemstones decorating it and she wanted to know where they were from. And now here she is, shining starlight itself from one of her stones into the stones of the cave. Does that mean anything? Will it affect the stones physically? Is it something social, some bond or blessing or contract with a god that they don’t understand?

But Smon quickly moves the light onto other parts of the wall, inspecting the intricate swirls and sharp lines moulded into the mortar, and following her eyes, Tyk realises that the truth is much simpler – Smon just can’t see very well in dim light. Many larvae can’t, until their eyes have matured.

The entrance is constructed of large blocks of fired mortar with nooks and protrusions shaped to perfectly fit into each other to create arches and domes, building a solid entrance able to last hundreds of years. Smon inspects the moulded grooves, inspects the near-invisible joins between the blocks, turns to Tyk. “From where?”

“From us.” She indicates some random people again, although the makers of these blocks are of course long dead. This time, Smon accepts that as an answer, bobbing her head in assent.

“From many day,” she says, flicking one mandible to indicate the question that the echo stone can’t indicate with tone in those words. “From many many many day.”

“Yes.”

Smon bobs her head in assent again, and heads further into the tunnel. Tyk goes to lead her into the entrance dome, but she stops at every storage chamber along the way to peek inside. The tunnel itself empties as Smon moves through it, everyone wary of crowding the god and causing another incident like the one that had gotten Keyarna injured – Tyk suspects they might be seriously impeding the activity of the hive by blocking the flow of workers in and out, but nevertheless waits patiently while Smon inspects bundles of two-person-tall bamboo stalks harvested from the North last winter and bags of highpollen collected from the tower and rolls of woven silks and the other various supplies made or regularly used on the surface with, in Tyk’s opinion, a lot more interest than the mundane goods really reserve.

Once Smon is satisfied, they move deeper, Smon’s beam of starlight dancing along the decorations on the tunnel walls as they move and occasionally dropping down to inspect the floor, where the undecorated fired mortar floorpieces stand flat except for the worn grooves of generations upon generations of feet. Soon, they’re walking into the entrance dome.

Smon douses her starlight and walks into the massive dome, eyes skipping from gemstones to glow pools to the various ramps and ledges leading to tunnel entrances, and then, finally, skipping between the people. The entrance dome always has people about, but today it’s especially populated, suspiciously so, just like outside the hive. The glimmering gems on the walls are interspersed with those on carapaces and with flashes of bright, colourful wings as a full quarter of the hive’s population watches the young god make her entrance.

Smon freezes. Her whole body goes rigid. She takes a shaky step back toward the tunnel.

Tyk rushes to her side, presses the edge of her horn to her to remind Smon of her presence. Smon briefly curls the tendrils on her mandible around Tyk’s horn, which Tyk assumes to be an affectionate gesture since it feels a little like a friend or relative perching on her. Smon relaxes with visible effort, lets Tyk go, and steps forward.

Somebody flies down from somewhere up above to land on a perch near the door. Keyarna, looking no worse for wear after his previous interaction with Smon, hums his wings welcomingly. Smon glances between Keyarna and Tyk.

“Keyarna,” Tyk says.

“Keyarna.” Smon makes an effort to pronounce it with her mouth, as she usually does with names. She indicates herself. “Smon.”

“Welcome to the Redstone River Hive, Smon,” Keyarna says.

Smon doesn’t have ‘welcome’ in her echo stone, but she seems to understand the greeting anyway, because she lifts both mandibles in a passable imitation of a greeting gesture. It’s a gesture more appropriate to welcoming a close friend or relative dropping in from the sky and certainly not quite relevant to the current situation, but Tyk is impressed that she knows that much; she must have been watching Yat and Keyat a lot more closely than Tyk had thought.

Keyarna, too, seems to understand her intent, and dips his wings in acknowledgement.

And then more people start to come forward, and Smon does her best to pronounce their names, although Tyk is sure she’ll forget most of them soon enough, and somebody gently takes Smon’s mandibles in her claws to move them into a more appropriate greeting gesture and Tyk prepares to chase everyone off if another altercation breaks out but they pull back when Smon does, giving her space, and when she backs up into the tunnel entrance, they let her.

Smon heads outside and begins to walk away from the hive, and Tyk hesitates. There’s no point in trying to herd Smon about too closely, since none of them really know what Smon needs, and she also doesn’t want to crowd her if she’s trying to be alone, but the last thing that Tyk wants is for Smon to wander off, get lost, and die out on the plains somewhere. She probably just needs some open sky (perhaps going underground overwhelmed her; it would make sense for stars to fear underground tunnels), but Tyk has no idea whether Smon wants to be alone or not.

She calls for help, and Kepol drops down.

“Could you please make sure somebody keeps eyes on Smon?” she asks. “In case she gets in trouble?”

He lands on her back to hum briefly to the egg inside her, then says, “I’ll organise it,” and takes off again. Tyk relaxes. It’s a little awkward, to have adults listen to her like that when she says that something needs to be done. Tyk’s never been in charge of something big like this before.

She should… do what? Check in with her family, probably. See if any decisions have been made about their departure date. Smon will want to know about that as soon as possible.

She turns back toward the hive entrance and almost runs right into Ayan.

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