Butler, Octavia - Adulthood Rites

There was trash in the street. Dead weeds, food waste, scrap wood, cloth, and paper. Some of the houses were obviously vacant. A couple of them had been partially torn down. Others seemed ready to fall down.

Akin walked into town openly as he had always walked into resister settlements. He had been shot doing this only once. That once had been nothing more than a painful nuisance. A Human would have died. Akin had simply run away and healed himself. Lilith had warned him that he must not let resisters see how his body healed—that the sight of wounds healing before their eyes could frighten them. And Humans were most dangerous, most unpredictable when they were afraid.

There were rifles pointed at him as he walked down the street of Phoenix. So Phoenix was armed now. He could see guns and people through the windows, although it seemed the people were trying not to be seen. A few people working or loitering in the street stared at him. At least two were too drunk to notice him.

Hidden guns and open drunkenness.

Phoenix was dying. One of the drunken men was Macy Wilton, who had acted as father to Amma and Shkaht. The other was Stancio Roybal, husband of Neci, the woman who had wanted to amputate Amma’s and Shkaht’s sensory tentacles. And where were Kolina Wilton and Neci? How could they let their mates—their husbands—lie in the mud half-conscious or unconscious?

And where was Gabe?

He reached the house that he had shared with Tate and Gabe, and for a moment he was afraid to climb the stairs to the porch and rap his knuckles against the door Human-fashion. The house was shut and looked well-kept, but

who might live there now?

A man with a gun came out onto the porch and looked down. Gabe.

“You speak English?” he demanded, pointing his rifle at Akin.

“I always have, Gabe.” He paused, giving the man time to look at him. “I’m Akin.”

The man stood staring at him, peering first from one angle, then moving slightly to peer from another. Akin had changed after all, had grown up. Gabe looked the same.

“I worried that you would be in the hills or out at another village,” Akin said. “I never thought to worry that you might not recognize me. I’ve come back to keep a promise I made to Tate.”

Gabe said nothing.

Akin sighed and settled to wait. It was not likely that anyone would shoot him as long as he stood still, hands in sight, unthreatening.

Men gathered around Akin, waiting for some sign from Gabe.

“Check him,” Gabe said to one of them.

The man rubbed rough hands over Akin’s body. He was Gilbert Senn. He and his wife Anne had once stood with Neci, feeling that sensory tentacles should be removed. Akin did not speak to him. Instead, he waited, eyes on Gabe. Humans needed the steady, visible gaze of eyes. Males respected it. Females found it sexually interesting.

“He says he’s that kid we bought almost twenty years ago,” Gabe said to the men. “He says he’s Akin.”

The men stared at Akin with hostility and suspicion. Akin gave no indication that he saw this.

“No worms,” one man said. “Shouldn’t he have them by now?”

No one answered. Akin did not answer because he did not want to be told to be quiet. He wore only a pair of short pants as he had when these people knew him. Insects no longer bit him. He had learned to make his body unpalatable to them. He was a dark, even brown, small, but clearly not weak. And clearly not afraid.

“Are you an adult?” Gabe asked him.

“No,” he said softly.

“Why not?”

“I’m not old enough.”

“Why did you come here?”

“To see you and Tate. You were my parents for a while.”

The rifle wavered slightly. “Come closer.”

Akin obeyed.

“Show me your tongue.”

Akin smiled, then showed his tongue. It did not look any more Human now than it had when Gabe had first seen it.

Gabe drew back, then took a deep breath. He let the rifle point toward the ground. “So it is you.”

Almost shyly, Akin extended a hand. Human beings often shook one another’s hands. Several had refused to shake his.

Gabe took the hand and shook it, then seized Akin by both shoulders and hugged him. “I don’t believe it,” he kept saying. “I don’t fucking believe it.

“It’s okay,” he told the other men. “It’s really him!”

The men watched for a moment longer, then began to drift away. Watching them without turning, Akin got the impression that they were disappointed—that they would have preferred to beat him, perhaps kill him.

Gabe took Akin into the house, where everything looked the same—cool and dark and clean.

Tate lay on a long bench against a wall. She turned her head to look at him, and he read pain in her face. Of course, she did not recognize him.

“She took a fall,” Gabe said. There was deep pain in his voice. “Yori’s been taking care of her. You remember Yori?”

“I remember,” Akin said. “Yori once said she’d leave Phoenix if the people here made guns.”

Gabe gave him an odd look. “Guns are necessary. Raids taught everyone that.”

“Who

?” Tate asked. And then, amazingly, “Akin?”

He went to her, knelt beside her, and took her hand. He did not like the slightly sour smell of her or the lines around her eyes. How much harm had been done to her?

How much help would she and Gabe tolerate?

“Akin,” he echoed. “How did you fall? What happened?”

“You’re the same,” she said, touching his face. “I mean, you’re not grown up yet.”

“No. But I have kept my promise to you. I’ve found

I’ve found what may be the answer for your people. But tell me how you got hurt.”

He had forgotten nothing about her. Her quick mind, her tendency to treat him like a small adult, the feeling she projected of being not quite trustworthy—just unpredictable enough to make him uneasy. Yet he had accepted her, liked her from his first moments with her. It troubled him more than he could express that she seemed so changed now. She had lost weight, and her coloring, like her scent, had gone wrong. She was too pale. Almost gray. Her hair, too, seemed to be graying. It was much less yellow than it had been. And she was far too thin.

“I fell,” she said. Her eyes were the same. They examined his face, his body. She took one of his hands and looked at it. “My god,” she whispered.

“We were exploring,” Gabe said. “She lost her footing, fell down a hill. I carried her back to Salvage.” He paused. “The old camp’s a town itself now. People live there permanently. But they don’t have their own doctor. Some of them helped me bring her down to Yori. That was

That was bad. But she’s getting better now.” She was not. He knew she was not.

She had closed her eyes. She knew it as well as he did. She was dying.

Akin touched her face so that she would open her eyes. Humans seemed almost not to be there when they closed their eyes. They could close off all visual awareness and shut themselves too completely within their own flesh. “When did it happen?” he asked.

“God. Two, almost three months ago.”

She had suffered that long. Gabe had not found an ooloi to help her. Any ooloi would have done it at no cost to the Humans. Even some males and females could help. He believed he could. It was clear that she would die if nothing was done.

What was the etiquette of asking to save someone’s life in an unacceptable way? If Akin asked in the wrong way, Tate would die.

Best not to ask at all. Not yet. Perhaps not at all. “I came back to tell you I’d kept my promise to you,” he said. “I don’t know if you and the others can accept what I have to offer, but it would mean restored fertility and

a place of your own.”

Now her eyes were wide and intent on him. “What place?” she whispered. Gabe had come to stand near them and stare down.