40: Sleepland Scavenging

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Tyk, Tama, and Sakeya all step forward, but there’s not a lot that they can do without knowing what’s going on. They watch on helplessly as Kana falls to the ground and all the sky people start shouting at once. Dem steps forward as if to hit Smon; Yotoru steps between them, trying to calm them down; Kana gets back up and joins in the yelling. Whatever they’re arguing about has something to do with the reservoir, which they all keep gesturing at, but it’s impossible to make sense of their shrill foreign chatter and learn what the issue is.

The talk becomes angrier and angrier, until Smon gestures to Tyk, Tama ans Sakeya and says something in a calm, low tone that Tyk hasn’t heard before. There’s a pause, and the other three immediately go from angry to conciliatory, all open claws and low voices and shoulder touching.

“Should we… go?” Sakeya asks. “Should we just go?”

Kana looks at her as in surprise, as if suddenly reminded that they have an audience, even though Smon had gestured to them mere moments ago. “Uh, yes, sorry,” she says with her echo stone. “We can finish up here and meet you back at the burrow.”

“Righto,” Sakeya says, turning around.

“Smon,” Tyk says. “Are you going to be alright?” She’s not certain of what’s happening, but everyone’s very angry, and Smon seems to have made some kind of threat that they’re all taking seriously. Tyk’s not sure that leaving her alone with these people is a great idea.

“I’ll be fine,” Smon assures her, nodding.

“Good,” Tyk says, levelling her mandibles at the others and making them flinch back. “I’ll be unbelievably upset if you aren’t.”

And then she turns to follow Sakeya and Tama.

“What was that about?” Tama asks as they head away from the scene.

“Some kind of star-sailor nonsense, probably,” Sakeya says. “C’mon; we should make an arc Northward if we want to find enough to fill our bellies this morning.”

Tama keeps sneaking curious glances at Tyk as they forage. Tyk can’t blame her; she’s just as curious about Tama.

“You’re really good at foraging,” she says awkwardly as the pair carefully pull nectar from honeyblooms.

“Thanks,” Tama says, equally as awkward. “It’s, um. Important for not dying.”

They work in silence for a bit.

Eventually, Tama asks, “So you don’t forage in your burrow, right? You guys dig for food underground?”

“In the hive? Yeah.” Tama doesn’t know first-hand how hives work? And Sakeya had seemed furious that anybody would exile someone as young as Tyk, when the much younger Tama is right here… “Did you hatch out here? In the sleeplands?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re just growing up out here?!” Who would to that to an innocent child?! “You don’t have to do that! Any hive would take you in! Come to Glittergem; I can petition for – ”

“No!” Tama nips her mandibles at Tyk. “You want me to abandon my burrow? My mum? Never!”

Right, right; Tama’s a child who’s never known any different. She doesn’t understand that life doesn’t have to be dangerous and hard and painful. It was ridiculous for Tyk to throw this at her, rather than speaking to the adults. “You’re right; I’m sorry.”

Tama calms down. “No, I – I’m sure your hive is great, for you.”

“Yeah.” Stars, does Tyk miss the taste of sweetroot. The sound of Kesan and Kedahm’s wings. The peaceful side of the Redstone River. “Who are your parents, anyway? Sakeya and Kekeya?”

Sakeya huffs at that, amused.

“My mother is Saima,” Tama says.

“Oh!” That’s good. Saima seems caring enough to make a good mother. But it’s also puzzling; would somebody kind like Saima really want to condemn her children to living out here? Wouldn’t she have taken her to a hive to be adopted as soon as she hatched?

Well, Saima was exiled for something. Maybe she’s crueller than she seems.

Tyk doesn’t say that, of course. She just says, “Your mother’s lovely. I haven’t met your father yet, but – ”

“Keima’s dead,” Tama says.

“Oh.” Saima’s a lonewoman. It’s only a matter of time before Tama, who’s not even close to hatching a truebrother yet, will be an orphan. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay. It happened before I hatched.”

Wait, what?

Two problems with that. First: does that mean that Keima died after courtship, but before his truesister laid Tama’s egg? That’s a pretty narrow window. And if not, if he’d died before that… how does courtship even work, for a lonewoman? It’s unlikely that she just so happened to meet an unusually grief-resilient loneman to court, but she couldn’t have courted normally, truesibling pair to truesibling pair. A lonewoman courting with a pair sounds… incredibly asymmetrical.

It must have been after courtship, before hatching. But that doesn’t solve the second problem – namely, that that would have been years ago. Just how is Saima holding on so long as a lonewoman? (Where do Hiveless lone siblings even go when the world gets too much? There’s no deep tunnels to wander into, no communication tower to take off from. Do they just wander out towards the horizon to starve?)

“Is everything alright?” Tama asks.

“The little hiveling is wondering why we haven’t driven your mother to her death yet,” Sakeya says.

“What?!” Tyk bristles. “I wouldn’t – I wasn’t implying – ”

“You weren’t wondering how she’s still alive?”

“I was, because lonewomen are killed by their grief! Nobody drives them to it!”

“They’re killed by grief?” Tama gasps, like this is the first she’s ever heard of it. Not surprising; her mother could be the only lonewoman she’s ever met.

“In the hives,” Sakeya explains with sudden gentleness in her tone, “when people lose a truesibling, they tend not to live very long afterwards.”

“Why not? Are they driven out?”

“They’re not driven out,” Tyk hastens to explain. “It’s just that your truesibling is your partner in life, the closest person to you, one half of a whole. Men are drawn to the skies and women to the deep; it’s contact with their truesibling that keeps them in the middle ground. When their other half is lost, they feel lost, and eventually… we lose them.”

“Mum seems fine,” Tama points out.

“Your mother, so far as I can tell as someone who barely knows her, seems to have the resilience of Tahku the sun-god herself, and an equally kind heart. That is certainly not typical. Lonewomen usually fall apart quickly.” Tyk remembers her grandmother, caught in the throes of grief but lurking in the hive’s meeting room, refusing to move on. Then she thinks of Bette, having lost Kebette but not advertising the fact, still working, still teaching, excited to learn about Smon and eager to volunteer for long journeys.

She’s right, right? They tend to fall apart quickly, right?

“Do they fall apart quickly?” Sakeya asks. “Or do they get so tired of being constantly treated like dead women walking and reminded of their dead brothers and doomed fates by everybody they know that they eventually cave in to people’s expectations and simply leave?”

“What? No!” No; the grief is real, the decline is real. It wouldn’t happen every single time if it wasn’t. Sakeya seems to be implying that the hives drive their lone members to their fates; which is utterly ridiculous – their loved ones do their best to care for and support them, dreading their eventual death, dreading…

Tyk’s loved ones have always done their best to care for and support her, even dreading the fate that her wandering star marked for her. They loved her enough to give her all sorts of extra freedom, to let her wander far and learn what she would need to leave the hive. They loved her with the expectation that she would eventually leave, and put that expectation on her every day.

And here she is, out in the sleeplands, far from home. So that means that the wandering star was right, right? That that’s what gave her the personality and the skills necessary for this. It’s hardly the hive’s fault.

Stupid logic. The same logic.

Tyk remembers Ayan harassing and fussing over Bette, refusing to hear that the old woman was fine. She remembers bringing food to her own grieving grandmother, dreading losing her, dreading the inevitable day that she’d wander off below and never be seen again… but at the same time, secretly embarrassed to see her in such a state, especially where the rest of the hive could see and make things awkward. Secretly sort of wishing that she’d just hurry up and get the inevitable over with, so everybody could stop dreading its approach and being awkward and inconvenienced by the wait.

No; that’s stupid. Tyk didn’t kill her grandmother; the Redstone River Hive didn’t kill her grandmother. They gave her the best help they could. People just don’t do well without their truesiblings; it’s a documented fact as old as the hives themselves. It’s as true as a man’s better hearing or a woman’s better low-light vision or the high-altitude pollen’s ability to ride the wingsong. It’s just a part of how people work, not some cruelty invented by the hives.

“And if Kekeya dies,” Tyk levels at Sakeya, “would you be okay? You don’t love him enough that your grief could kill you?”

It’s not until the last word is out that she remembers who she’s talking to, and has the sense to be frightened. An accusation like that would get her attacked by the most level-headed hivemate, and Sakeya radiates danger. But she doesn’t have the time to be frightened for long, because Sakeya rumbles boisterously in amusement and taps claws to Tyk like she’s a close friend who just made an extremely clever joke.

“I’d hope not!” she says. “If Kekeya died and I went off and did something stupid like die in response, he’d crawl his way from his grave to kick my horns off! And I’d do the same if he went and died just because I did. What kind of pressure is that, to bear the burden of two lives as precious as your own? To die, knowing in your last moments that the person most special to you in the world will die slowly and painfully as a result of your death? I can’t imagine a fate I’d wish on him less!” She tips her mandibles thoughtfully. “Huh. Y’know, I never really thought about it before, especially not at Glittergem. When we lived in the hive, before we met Saima, it just seemed obvious, right? When half of you dies, of course the other half follows. That did feel like a natural expression of love. Now it seems ridiculous; if Kekeya died now and a bunch of people stood around waiting for me to die in response, I’d start ripping their claws out until they stopped expecting me to be so stupid.”

“They’re not stupid,” Tyk snaps, angrily.

“What?”

“People who die of grief. The worst thing ever has happened to them, they’re half a person, and of course they eventually cave under it. That doesn’t make them weak, and it doesn’t make them stupid, like you just said. It’s a paint hat you haven’t experienced, no matter how much you joke about what you would do if you did. I bet if it really happened, you’d succumb, too. It doesn’t make them stupid.”

“N-no, I didn’t mean – I wasn’t saying they’re all stupid, I just mean that I’d feel stupid if I… I mean… ugh. You’re right, Tyk; I misspoke. I’m sorry.”

But Tyk gets the feeling that it’s the same sort of “you’re right” that she’d given Tama to placate her over her angry refusal to join a hive.

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