Butler, Octavia - Imago

Jesusa grabbed TomÁs’s hand and stared at me with terror. TomÁs looked at her, touched his neck thoughtfully, and looked at her again. “So it isn’t true, what they say,” he whispered.

She gave him a look more forceful than a scream.

He drew back a little, touched his neck again, and said nothing else.

“I had thought

” Jesusa’s voice shook and she paused for a moment. When she began again, the quiver was gone. “I thought that all ooloi had four arms—two with bones and two without.”

“Strength arms and sensory arms,” I said. “Sensory arms come with maturity. I’m not old enough to have them yet.”

“You’re a child? A child as big as an adult?”

“I’m as big as I’ll get except for my sensory arms. But I still have to develop in other ways. I’m not exactly a child, though. Young children have no sex. They’re potentially any sex. I’m definitely ooloi—a subadult, or as my parents would say, an ooloi child.”

“Adolescent,” Jesusa decided.

“No. Human adolescents are sexually mature. They can reproduce. I can’t.” I said this to reassure them, but they didn’t seem to be reassured.

“How can you heal us if you’re just a kid?” TomÁs asked.

I smiled. “I’m old enough to do that.” My gaze seemed to confuse him, but it only annoyed her. She frowned at me. She would be the difficult one. I looked forward to touching her, learning her body, curing the disorder she never should have had. Some ooloi had wronged her and TomÁs more than I would have imagined was possible.

I changed the subject abruptly. “Tomorrow I’ll show you some of the things you can eat here in the forest. The tuber was one of many. If you keep moving, the forest will sustain you very comfortably.” I paused. “Can you see well enough to make pallets for yourselves or will you sleep on the bare ground?”

TomÁs sighed and looked around. “Bare ground, I suppose. We’ll do the local insects a good turn.” The pupil of his eye was large, but I doubted that he could see beyond the light of the fire. The moon had not yet risen, and starlight was useful to Humans only in boats on the rivers. Very little of it reached the forest understory.

I got up and stepped around the fire to them. “Let me have your machete for a few moments.”

Jesusa grabbed TomÁs’s arm to stop him, but he simply handed me the machete. I took it and went into the forest. Bamboo was plentiful in the area so I cut that and a few stalks from saplings. I would cover these with palm and wild banana leaves. I also took a stem of bananas. They could be cooked for breakfast. They weren’t ripe enough for Humans to eat raw. And there was a nut tree nearby—not to mention more tubers. All this so close, and yet TomÁs had been very hungry when I touched him.

“You haven’t cut anything for yourself,” Jesusa said as I handed back the machete. It meant a great deal to her to get the knife back and to get a comfortable pallet to sleep on. She was still wary, but less obviously on edge.

“I’m used to the ground,” I said. “No insect will bother me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t smell good to them. I would taste even worse.”

She thought for a moment. “That would protect you against biting insects, but what about those that sting?”

“Even those. I smell offensive and dangerous. Humans don’t notice my scent in any negative way, but insects always do.”

“Oh, I would be willing to stink if it would keep them off me,” TomÁs said. “Can you make me immune to them?”

Jesusa turned to frown at him.

I smiled to myself. “No, I can’t help you with that.” Not until they let me sleep between them. But insects would bother them less while I healed them. If someday they mated with an adult ooloi, insects would hardly bother them at all. There was time enough for them to learn that. I lay down again beside the dying fire.

Jesusa and TomÁs lay quietly, first awake, then drifting into sleep. I did not sleep, though I lay still, resting. The scent of the Humans was a mild torment to me because I could not touch them—would not touch them until they had learned to trust me. There was something strange about them—about TomÁs, anyway—something I didn’t yet understand. And my failure to understand was unusual. Normally if I touched someone to correct a flaw, I understood that person’s body completely. I had to get my hands on TomÁs again. And I had to touch Jesusa. But I wanted them to let me do it. Immature as I was, my scent must be working on them. And TomÁs’s healed neck must be working on him. He couldn’t possibly like his growing disabilities—and surely other Humans did not like the way he looked. Humans cared very much how other people looked. Even Jesusa must seem grotesquely ugly to them—though neither TomÁs nor Jesusa acted as though they cared how they looked. Very unusual. Perhaps it was because there were two of them. If they were siblings they had been together most of their lives. Perhaps they sustained one another.

6

They awoke just before dawn the next morning. Jesusa awoke first. She shook TomÁs awake, then put a hand over his mouth so that he would not speak. He took her hand from his mouth and sat up. How much could they see? It was still fairly dark.

Jesusa pointed downriver through the forest.

TomÁs shook his head, then glanced at me and shook his head again.

Jesusa pulled at him, both her face and her body language communicating pleading and terror.

He shook his head again, tried to take her arms. His manner was reassuring, but she evaded him. She stood up, looked down at him. He would not get up.

She sat down again, touching him, her mouth against his ear. It was more as though she breathed the words. I heard them, but I might not have if I hadn’t been listening for them.

“For the others!” she whispered. “For all of the others, we must go!”

He shut his eyes for a moment, as though the soft words hurt him.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry.”

He got up and followed her into the forest. He did not look at me again. When I couldn’t see them any longer, I got up. I was well rested and ready to track them—to stay out of sight and listen and learn. They were going downriver as I had to do to get home. That was convenient, though the truth was, I would have followed them anywhere. And when I spoke to them again, I would know the things they had not wanted me to know.

I followed them for most of the day. Whatever was driving them, it kept them from stopping for more than a few minutes to rest. They ate almost nothing until the end of the day when, with metal hooks they had not shown me, they managed to catch a few small fish. The smell of these cooking was disgusting, but the conversation, at least, was interesting.

“We should go back,” TomÁs said. “We should cross the river to avoid Jodahs, then we should go back.”

“I know,” Jesusa agreed. “Do you want to?”

“No.”

“It will rain soon. Let’s make a shelter.”

“Once we’re home, we’ll never be free again,” he said. “We’ll be watched all the time, probably shut up for a while.”

“I know. Cut leaves from that plant and that one. They’re big enough for good roofing.”

Silence. Sounds of a machete hacking. And sometime later, TomÁs’s voice, “I would rather stay here and be rained on every day and starve every other day.” There was a pause. “I would almost rather cut my own throat than go back.”

“We will go back,” Jesusa said softly.

“I know.” TomÁs sighed. “Who else would have us anyway—except Jodah’s people.”

Jesusa had nothing to say on that subject. They worked for a while in silence, probably erecting their shelter. I didn’t mind being rained on, so I stretched out silently and lay with most of my attention focused on the two Humans. If someone approached me from a different direction, I would notice, but if people or animals were simply moving around nearby, not coming in my direction, I would not be consciously aware of them.