Kiini Salaam - Ancient, Ancient

He turned to all gathered and proclaimed “Dub!” in a loud voice. The crowd, fools that they were, started clapping. They still believed Grandfather and his ferret avtandi would bring us home.

Grandfather redirected our aimless little bubble according to the new speed:direction:distance directives, then drifted away from the compass. He called his avtandi with low clicking noises, and I prepared to leave his side. Grandfather held a shaky hand in front of his solar plexus. It took a full minute for the sphere of flesh and organs to detach from his torso. Slowly, the five-inch globe gravitated toward his hand, leaving a circular hole straight through his body.

The sphere floated silently down to the floor as the ferret approached. The sphere undulated, and the ferret stepped into it. Rather than watch the remainder of the ritual, I fell to the floor, scattering my body into a thousand round molecules and rolling into a distant corner of the divining room. Even so dissolved, I heard the hiss of Grandfather’s sphere engulfing the ferret. I heard the whisper of Grandfather’s hand as he waved his sphere of flesh up from the floor and guided it back into his center.

A gnawing ugliness had begun to eat at my insides. I was certain the servants’ whispers were true: we were at the bitter end of our five-year supplies. Every day, as Grandfather paced the marble halls of our bubble, I struggled against terrible anger. The reality rested cold and hard inside me: Grandfather would soon decide who would feed and who would starve.

“Granddaughter!” grandfather yelled.

I gathered myself up, molecules sliding across the floor to re-form my tall lanky body. Grandfather stood in the middle of the divining room with his avtandi in his hand.

“I mean to consult the compass again,” Grandfather said.

The ferret looked at me with beady glimmering eyes.

“But Grandfather, you just checked it this morning.”

Grandfather paused and parted his beard obsessively. Then he repeated himself in a shaky voice.

“Yes, but I mean to consult the compass again.”

I lowered my head, but I could see Grandfather’s forearm struggling to hold the ferret steady. When the ferret’s claws started rattling, I watched its every move. After it sank its teeth into the blocks and the servant had hung them, Grandfather neared the compass. I followed a few steps behind. The crowd yelled “D!—U!—B!” with the enthusiasm of children, but grandfather made no grand announcement this time.

“They’re exactly the same, Grandfather,” I said.

Grandfather said nothing. His fingers returned to his chin to fondle his beard.

While watching his worried motions, something took over me. Even as I did it I did not know my reasons for my actions. When the ferret scampered away from the compass to return to its haven of grandfather flesh, I placed my hand in front of my belly and coaxed a sphere of my own flesh toward my palm. My sphere drifted to the ground, and the ferret halted, confused. Its beady eyes swung from my sphere to grandfather’s and back again.

The ferret crawled cautiously toward my grandfather’s flesh, then turned away to sniff at mine. Grandfather watched his avtandi’s confusion impassively. Not one of his bony fingers left his beard to alter the outcome. The ferret’s cautiousness deteriorated into panic as it scuttled back and forth between our spheres so rapidly, it became a blur. I took a deep breath and glanced at Grandfather. His face was marked by a dull resignation I could not stomach. I lifted my hand to retract the challenge, but before I could withdraw my flesh, the ferret veered sharply, and plunged into my sphere.

My flesh encircled Grandfather’s avtandi; a deep, ragged breath seeped from Grandfather’s lungs. Was that a slight smile creasing Grandfather’s lips? Fear, paranoia, and regret exploded in my chest. Why was it so hard to breathe? Grandfather’s voice cut through my hysteria.

“It is done,” he muttered.

Those grave words pushed me into action. I waved my hand over my sphere as if my muscles had performed the task a thousand times. My flesh drifted up from the floor, but Grandfather didn’t bother with his. He left his globe of organs discarded at his feet, preferring to watch me—eyes dark with anticipation—as my sphere refitted into my torso.

The moment the flesh rejoined my body an electric shock ripped through me. I yelled and fell to my knees. My palms and forehead were wet with sweat. The room receded from my eyesight as visions flashed before my eyes. I saw me begging my parents to let me go on a brief day trip in Grandfather’s bubble. My parents arguing about Grandfather’s incompetence. Grandfather intentionally setting the bubble on the wrong course. Grandfather taking this ferret, this same avtandi from his grandfather. Grandfather watching his grandfather die.

Terror welled in my throat, but my mind—making sense of the visions at a feverish pace—quelled my emotions. When I regained focus, I was staring at the marble floor. A palpable hush filled the divining room; everyone stared mutely. I heard a muffled groan behind me. When I twisted around on all fours, I saw Grandfather, shriveled into a tiny ball, dying just as his grandfather had. I looked into his eyes searching for a flicker of recognition, hatred, pain, but there was nothing there.

“You…” The condemnation burning in my lungs would not spring from my mouth. Could I blame Grandfather for attempting to escape extinction?

“I…” I started to claim ignorance for my actions, but the apology died on my lips.

“How…” I wanted to ask what alternative I’d had, but my need to be proclaimed innocent wilted just as quickly as it had sprouted. We passengers were the innocents here. He would starve us, before taking us home. Those visions did not lie.

I shook off the last remnants of concern I held for Grandfather and struggled to stand. The unfamiliar weight in my belly pulled me back toward the floor. I strained against the increased gravity and fought my way to my feet.

“Dub,” I whispered while forcing myself to forget Grandfather’s dying body. There was no time for mourning.

I shuffled forward, testing the new balance my avtandi-heavy body required. I neared the compass searching my subconscious for a vision of Grandfather navigating the bubble. I almost lost my breath when I mimicked Grandfather’s navigating stance. I bent over, momentarily disoriented. Then I straightened, took a big gulp of air, and set a course for home.

The seekers wait, hungrily, as K-Ush rises and hovers close to the ceiling of the dogra. Her large eye is closed, but she can feel them—the seekers—crouched on the dirt floor below. They send up shards of prayer, puncturing K-Ush’s trance. As their needs—hesitant, but insistent—hit her, a skull-splitting pain flashes across her forehead. Her large skeletal hands twitch. She hears the tiny, timid voice of a seeker plead for help. She’d like to drift down to the floor, wrap her bony fingers around the seeker’s neck, and squeeze.

“What is at the core of you?” K-Ush booms in a deep voice that is not her own.

As the seeker replies, K-Ush rotates her head back and forth. Light glints off the metal band curved around her shaved head. Her lips part, sharing the prophecy the seeker is begging to hear. A loud, raspy breath explodes in her ear; K-Ush’s eye flutters. She almost opens her eye and breaks her trance, but she clenches her fists and fights to hold on. She must not be distracted by Sheya’s dying breaths.

As K-Ush continues to prophesy, the sound of Sheya’s breathing disappears. She has even ceased to feel the seekers’ miserable expectant need. An unfamiliar dizziness blooms in her chest. Her eye flies open. She is no longer in the dogra. All around her, K-Ush feels the condensation of a gathering storm, but she sees nothing. She knows she should focus on the storm—obtain facts, ascertain dimensions, compile a projected duration—but she pushes it away. Sheya will complain. “It is a wero’s job to protect the village,” she will lecture, but K-Ush doesn’t care. Does not want to gather useful information for the survival of the seekers. Let them die , she thinks. Let them all die, so Wa-Sheya can finally be at rest .