21: Star Children

First —- Previous —- Glossary —- Archive —- Next

“What in there?” Smon asks as she and Tyk walk away from the burrow.

“Just a fight,” Tyk says. She inspects her leg; exoskeleton and joint are intact, Ayan hadn’t split or torn anything. There’s barely even a mark.

“For Bette?”

“Yeah.” Tyk considers not explaining, but it’s not like the truth is a secret. Bette’s friends, presumably, know, and Tyk herself should have noticed, if she’d been paying attention. “Kebette’s dead.”

“Truebrother.”

“Yeah. Do your people have truebrothers?”

She rocks her head ‘no’. “Every Smon people, one person. But truesister and truebrother are…” she twists two tendrils of a claw together, like strips of grass being spun together into a thread. “Yes?”

“Yeah. Your truebrother is the most important person in your life.”

“Ketyk?”

“Not born yet.”

Smon mulls that over, and clearly considers asking further, but instead asks, “What Bette do? What people do when truebrother dead?”

“Well,” Tyk says, “it can happen quickly or slowly, but a lonewoman… tends not to recover. They go mad with grief. After a while, they stop participating in hive events, stop seeing their friends, stop taking care of themselves. They refuse help, and stop coming out in public at all. Eventually, when they’re off burrowing or whatever, they stop bothering to come home at night. There’s no reason to return to a world that men can inhabit, if there’s no truebrother there to meet. They stay down in the tunnels, wandering deeper and deeper, hunting or scavenging or stealing food until one day their body is found by tunnellers doing maintenance.”

“And men?”

“Same story. A loneman withdraws and stops bothering to come down from the tower. They’ll neglect themselves and starve eventually, not talking to anyone on the wingsong or in person. If the other men manage to keep them alive for long enough, eventually they’ll just fly away.”

“Fly to where?”

Tyk rolls her shoulders in an imitation of Smon’s uncertainty gesture. “Nowhere. Just in whatever direction takes their fancy, I guess. There are old, fanciful stories of them flying home to Tahku, their god, the sun god. But some of them are still coherent before they fly off, so we know that they don’t actually try to go anywhere, just away from the hive, and they never turn up alive anywhere. They fly around until they die of exhaustion or starvation or whatever, and if the hive is lucky, we find their body before the scavengers do.”

“Make self die.”

“Yeah.”

“Bette go with messenger to not go down tunnel.”

“Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking, I don’t think. Some lonewomen start withdrawing immediately, and sometimes it takes a while. Bette’s still showing up to work, still engaging; I hadn’t even noticed that Kebette had died. She’s nowhere near ready to go and lose herself underground. Far be it from me to try to analyse the mind of somebody marked by Arnu, but… I think it’s fear of her future that’s got Bette wanting to go on a journey. Wanting to get away from the tunnels. She’s really old, for a first time mother, and she’s probably terrified of leaving Ayan and Keyan alone. And Ayan thinks she’s withdrawing but being difficult and dramatic about it, and probably thinks she can save her if she stays home with Ayan and Keyan, so she wants to go along to stop Bette from wandering off into the wilderness or whatever she thinks she’s going to do, and Bette doesn’t want them along because it’s dangerous. I think that’s what’s happening. But I only heard half their argument.”

“Big not simple.”

“Very complicated, yeah.”

“And Tyk born but Ketyk not born?”

Radical change of subject, but okay, they’re talking about reproduction now. “Girls are born from their mothers. Boys are born from their truesisters.”

“Girl have father. But father is mother truebrother?”

“Yes.”

This seems to confuse Smon, for some reason, but after fumbling about with the echo stone for a while trying to find the right words to ask another question, she gives up. Instead she says, “One boy born from one girl.”

“Yes.”

“That is Keyan baby.”

It takes a bit to untangle that phrasing, but Tyk manages it. “That’s why Keyan is so much younger than Ayan, yes.”

“Tyk not so much younger than Ayan.”

“I’m almost Ayan’s age, that’s right.”

“Tyk no go with messenger! Ketyk!”

“Believe me, I’ve taken Ketyk into consideration. People don’t all develop at the same rate. Ketyk won’t be born for a while yet; not until well into the wet season, I don’t think. Since this whole mission needs to be completed well before the wet season, it’s fine.”

“Ketyk no danger.”

“No danger.”

“Good.”

They walk in silence for a little while, before Tyk asks, “You said your people don’t have truebrothers?”

“Yes. All baby born same.”

“So… what are your men like?” Or their women, Tyk realises too late; a stupid way to phrase the question, when she doesn’t know which one Smon is.

“Same,” Smon says with a shoulder roll. “Well… small difference. But big many same. Tyk people would not know difference. Many time, Smon people not know difference! Other time, Smon people do know. But, many same. Two arm, two leg, no wing. Man big maybe larger, small maybe not. Woman big maybe high-hum voice, small maybe not.”

“Like river crabs.” It was hard to tell male or female river crabs without dissecting them.

Smon rolls her shoulders again, which Tyk takes in context to mean that she doesn’t know enough about river crabs to answer the question.

“So… are you a woman or a man?”

Smon rocks her head ‘no’.

“You’re… neither? Or you won’t tell me?” Maybe, if their men and women are so similar, there’s some sort of taboo about revealing which one you are? That would explain Smon’s obsessive need to keep most of her body hidden under layers of coloured silk all the time.

“Not tell. Tyk know this, Tyk know less.”

“More information is less?” What?

“Tyk people man and woman big big different. Big many different. Do different, see and hear different, live different, think different. Smon people man and woman small small different, same to Tyk. But Tyk think different; Tyk think woman Smon one way, think man Smon another way, in deep inside normal think. Smon not Tyk people man, not Tyk people woman; to say man or woman, Tyk know wrong, know less. Better not say.”

That makes some level of sense, although Tyk’s not happy about the insinuation that she’s apparently stupid enough to make inaccurate assumptions about Smon based on such a thing when Smon’s already told her that her (his? Eh, whatever, her) men and women are very similar. But then, she has been making assumptions, hasn’t she? Based on Smon’s size and temperament and ‘egg’, then her dexterity and eyesight. So maybe Smon’s right. And if Tyk is smart enough not to make bad assumptions based on the information, then she’s smart enough not to be bothered by not knowing the information, since it doesn’t matter.

And Tyk’s perfectly smart. So she’s not going to be bothered. Yeah.

Take that, Smon.

“Tyk call Bette ‘marked by Arnu’,” Smon says after a bit more walking in silence.

“Yes.”

“What thing?”

“Arnu. The cloud god. She oversaw Bette’s hatching. She’s a god of rest and mystery and calm and hidden things. So Bette’s not an easy person to read.”

“Like when Tyk say, Tyk marked by wandering star.”

“… Yes.”

“What wandering star build Tyk like?”

“Not tell. Smon know this, Smon know less,” Tyk shoots back, which makes Smon give the most boisterous joyous vocalisation that Tyk has ever heard from her.

“All Tyk people marked by god?” Smon asks.

“Yes. A god oversees the hatching of everyone.” Well, except for the extremely rare girl who can survive being laid underground, but that’s more myth than reality. A buried egg is one already left for dead, and Tyk isn’t sure if the couple of survivors that show up in the old stories are even real. She suspects that they’re simply invented as suitably heroic origin stories for inspiring characters to come from nothing and, by virtue and strength, prove their place and value to a community. Great tales for little children, but probably not real. “Do the stars not watch over your Earth?”

Smon rocks her head ‘no’, then thinks for a moment and instead wobbles a claw in an uncertain sort of motion. (Smon’s people have a lot of gestures to indicate uncertainty.) “Some Smon people think yes, most Smon people think no. Not simple.”

“Yeah, our stargazers argue a lot, too. Mostly about the specific roles and temperaments of gods, I think, and their specific natures. Your people coming from another Earth and Tahku being a star are going to cause a lot of arguing when the wingsong stream is working again. You’re not marked by a god from your Earth?”

“No.”

“I suppose that makes you one of Tahku’s, then, since you came onto our Earth under her watch. She’s a good god; loving, protective. Women born under her tend to be very lucky, if they live long enough to grow up. The men too, I have to imagine, but since all men are born under her it’s a bit hard to really know.”

“Protection and lucky,” Smon says. “Both need now, Smon think. Stargazers are men, yes?”

“Mostly, yeah. I mean, everyone stargazes, but to really see the details you need a man’s eyes and you need to be able to fly up above the wingsong stream. There have been a few woman master stargazers in history, but they’re usually theorists – thinkers. The masters are usually men.”

“But all gods Smon say name, are women. All gods women?”

“Well, I guess we can’t really know with Arnu and Kellennin, the cloud and lightning gods, now that you mention it. But we know the stars are women because of their size. Presumably each star we see is a woman and a man, truesister and truebrother, working together. But since we only see one dot, and they’re very small, it’s generally assumed that we’re looking at a woman whose truebrother is simply too small to see at that distance. That’s another thing the stargazers will probably argue about, seeing that your people don’t have truebrothers.”

“Tahku not small.”

“Tahku is a lonewoman. She’s pulled away from her hive – she sits alone in the sky, not in clusters like the sedentary stars – but instead of succumbing to grief and wasting away, she adopts all of the men of the Earth, pouring her love of her lost brother into them instead. And some women, who are born too slowly and hatch into sunlight; they tend to be weak and sickly, and Tahku takes them into her care as well.

“You know, when you first came out of your boat into the sunlight, I was really worried. I didn’t know what your people looked like; it looked like you were being born at the wrong time, and you were really badly injured. I thought there was no chance that you’d survive.”

“I am well,” Smon says. “Smon did have lucky. Tahku lucky is right! Smon…” She touches a spot on her head, a spot that Tyk remembers used to be an open wound. “Big, heavy… head thing break. Smon people say, air not poison soon but air maybe poison later, rock poison, water poison, life poison. Smon people say, keep air separate, silks, magic stones, be safe and no poison. But no chance! Not enough silks, not enough magic stones, Smon other people dead from big heavy. Not enough people for not enough work. Air and water only choice, Smon think, any time will die. Any live time is lucky. Then see Tyk! Very very lucky! Other new people, Tyk Earth people… more lucky than any other thing! When die, still lucky. Try to live, but happy when any die.”

“You’re not going to die,” Tyk says firmly. “You’ve got Tahku’s luck. And you’ve got me.”

“Yes! No surprise poison in Earth is bigger than that!”

First —- Previous —- Glossary —- Archive —- Next