The Fifth Season

10 you walk beside the beast

YOU THINK, MAYBE, YOU NEED to be someone else.

You’re not sure who. Previous yous have been stronger and colder, or warmer and weaker; either set of qualities is better suited to getting you through the mess you’re in. Right now you’re cold and weak, and that helps no one.

You could become someone new, maybe. You’ve done that before; it’s surprisingly easy. A new name, a new focus, then try on the sleeves and slacks of a new personality to find the perfect fit. A few days and you’ll feel like you’ve never been anyone else.

But. Only one you is Nassun’s mother. That’s what’s forestalled you so far, and ultimately it’s the deciding factor. At the end of all this, when Jija is dead and it’s finally safe to mourn your son… if she still lives, Nassun will need the mother she’s known all her life.

So you must stay Essun, and Essun will have to make do with the broken bits of herself that Jija has left behind. You’ll jigsaw them together however you can, caulk in the odd bits with willpower wherever they don’t quite fit, ignore the occasional sounds of grinding and cracking. As long as nothing important breaks, right? You’ll get by. You have no choice. Not as long as one of your children could be alive.

* * *

You wake to the sounds of battle.

You and the boy have camped at a roadhouse for the night, amid several hundred other people who clearly had the same idea. No one’s actually sleeping in the roadhouse — which in this case is little more than a windowless stone-walled shack with a well pump inside — because by unspoken agreement it is neutral territory. And likewise none of the several dozen camps of people arrayed around the roadhouse have made much effort to interact, because by unspoken agreement they are all terrified enough to stab first and ask questions later. The world has changed too quickly and too thoroughly. Stonelore might have tried to prepare everyone for the particulars, but the all-encompassing horror of the Season is still a shock that no one can cope with easily. After all, just a week ago, everything was normal.

You and Hoa settled down and built a fire for the night in a nearby clearing amid the plainsgrass. You have no choice but to split a watch with the child, even though you fear he’ll just fall asleep; with this many people around it’s too dangerous to be careless. Thieves are the greatest potential problem, since you’ve got a full runny-sack and the two of you are just a woman and a boy traveling alone. Fire’s a danger, too, with all these people who don’t know the business end of a matchflint spending the night in a field of dying grass. But you’re exhausted. It’s only been a week since you were living your own cushy, predictable life, and it’s going to take you a while to get back up to traveling condition. So you order the boy to wake you as soon as the peat block burns out. That should’ve given you four or five hours.

But it’s many hours later, almost dawn, when people start screaming on the far side of the makeshift camp. Shouts rise on this side as people around you cry alarm, and you struggle out of the bedroll and to your feet. You’re not sure who’s screaming. You’re not sure why. Doesn’t matter. You just grab the runny-sack with one hand and the boy with the other, and turn to run.

He jerks away before you can do so, and grabs his little rag bundle. Then he takes your hand again, his icewhite eyes very wide in the dimness.

Then you — all of you, everyone nearby as well as you and the boy — are running, running, farther into the plains and away from the road because that’s the direction the first screams came from, and because thieves or commless or militias or whoever is causing the trouble will probably use the road to leave when they’ve finished whatever they’re doing. In the ashy predawn half-light all the people around you are merely half-real shadows running in parallel. For a time, the boy and the sack and the ground under your feet are the only parts of the world that exist.

A long while later your strength gives out, and you finally stagger to a halt.

“What was that?” Hoa asks. He doesn’t sound out of breath at all. The resilience of children. Of course, you didn’t run the whole way; you’re too flabby and unfit for that. The bottom line was to keep moving, which you did do, walking when you couldn’t muster the breath to run.

“I didn’t see,” you reply. It doesn’t really matter what it was, anyway. You rub at a cramp in your side. Dehydration; you take out your canteen to drink. But when you do, you grimace at its near-empty slosh. Of course you didn’t take the chance to fill it while you were at the roadhouse. You’d been planning to do that come morning.

“I didn’t see, either,” says the boy, turning back and craning his neck as if he ought to be able to. “Everything was quiet and then…” He shrugs.

You eye him. “You didn’t fall asleep, did you?” You saw the fire before you fled. It was down to a smolder. He should’ve woken you hours ago.

“No.”

You give him the look that has cowed two of your own and several dozen other people’s children. He draws back from it, looking confused. “I didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you wake me when the peat burned down?”

“You needed to sleep. I wasn’t sleepy.”

Damnation. That means he will be sleepy later. Earth eat hardheaded children.

“Does your side hurt?” Hoa steps closer, looking anxious. “Are you hurt?”

“Just a stitch. It’ll go away eventually.” You look around, though visibility in the ashfall is iffy past twenty feet or so. There’s no sign that anyone else is nearby, and you can’t hear any other sounds from the area around the roadhouse. There’s no sound around you, in fact, but the very soft tipple of ash on the grass. Logically, the other people who were camped around the roadhouse can’t be that far away — but you feel completely alone, aside from Hoa. “We’re going to have to go back to the roadhouse.”

“For your things?”

“Yes. And water.” You squint in the direction of the roadhouse, useless as that is when the plain just fades into white-gray haze a short ways off. You can’t be sure the next roadhouse will be usable. It might have been taken over by would-be warlords, or destroyed by panicked mobs; it might be malfunctioning.

“You could go back.” You turn to the boy, who is sitting down on the grass — and to your surprise, he’s got something in his mouth. He didn’t have any food before… oh. He knots his rag bundle firmly shut and swallows before speaking again. “To the creek where you made me take a bath.”

That’s a possibility. The creek vanished underground again not far from where you used it; that’s only a day’s walk away. But it’s a day’s walk back the way you came, and…

And nothing. Going back to the stream is the safest option. Your reluctance to do this is stupid and wrong.

But Nassun is somewhere ahead.

“What is he doing to her?” you ask, softly. “He must know what she is, by now.”

The boy only watches. If he worries about you, he doesn’t let it show on his face.

Well, you’re about to give him more reason for concern. “We’ll go back to the roadhouse. It’s been long enough. Thieves or bandits or whatever would’ve taken what they wanted by now and moved on.”

Unless what they wanted was the roadhouse. Several of the Stillness’s oldest comms started as sources of water seized by the strongest group in a given area, and held against all comers until a Season ended. It’s the great hope of the commless in such times — that with no comm willing to take them in, they might forge their own. Still, few commless groups are organized enough, sociable enough, strong enough, to do it successfully.

And few have had to contend with an orogene who wanted the water more than they did.

“If they want to keep it,” you say, and you mean it, even though this is such a small thing, you just want water, but in that moment every obstacle looms large as a mountain and orogenes eat mountains for breakfast, “they’d better let me have some.”

The boy, whom you half-expect to run away screaming after this statement, merely gets to his feet. You purchased clothing for him at the last comm you passed, along with the peat. Now he’s got good sturdy walking boots and good thick socks, two full changes of clothing, and a jacket that’s remarkably similar to your own. Apart from his bizarre looks, the matching garb makes you look like you’re together. That sort of thing sends unspoken messages of organization, shared focus, group membership; it’s not much, but every little deterrent helps. Such a formidable pair we are, crazy woman and changeling child.

“Come on,” you say, and start walking. He follows.

It’s quiet as you approach the roadhouse. You can tell you’re close by the disturbances in the meadow: Here’s someone’s abandoned campsite, with still-smoldering fire; there’s someone’s torn runny-sack, trailed by supplies grabbed and dropped in flight. There’s a ring of pulled grass, campfire coals, and an abandoned bedroll that might’ve been yours. You scoop it up in passing and roll it up, jabbing it through the straps of your sack to tie properly later. And then, sooner than you were expecting, there is the roadhouse itself.

You think at first there’s no one here. You can’t hear anything but your own footsteps, and your breath. The boy is mostly silent, but his footsteps are oddly heavy against the asphalt when you step back onto the road. You glance at him, and he seems to realize it. He stops, looking intently at your feet as you keep walking. Watching how you roll from heel to toes, not so much planting a step as peeling your feet off the ground and carefully reapplying them. Then he begins doing the same thing, and if you didn’t need to pay attention to your surroundings — if you weren’t distracted by the racing of your own heart — you would laugh at the surprise on his little face when his own footfalls become silent. He’s almost cute.

But that’s when you step into the roadhouse, and realize you’re not alone.

First you notice just the pump and the cement casing it’s set into; that’s really all the roadhouse is, a shelter for the pump. Then you see a woman, who is humming to herself as she pulls away one large canteen and sets another, empty and even larger, in its place beneath the spigot. She bustles around the casing to work the pump mechanism, busy as you please, and only sees you after she’s started working the lever again. Then she freezes, and you and she stare at each other.

She’s commless. No one who’s suffered only recent homelessness would be so filthy. (Except the boy, a part of your mind supplies, but there’s a difference between disaster filth and unwashed filth.) This woman’s hair is matted, not in clean, well-groomed locks like yours but from sheer neglect; it hangs in moldy, uneven clumps from her head. Her skin isn’t just covered in dirt; the dirt is ground in, a permanent fixture. There’s iron ore in some of it and it’s rusted from the moisture in her skin, tinting the pattern of her pores red. Some of her clothes are fresh — given how much you saw abandoned around the roadhouse, easy to guess where she got those — and the pack at her feet is one of three, each one fat with supplies and dangling an already-filled canteen. But her body odor is so high and ripe that you hope she’s taking all that water to use for a bath.

Her eyes flick over you and Hoa, assessing just as quickly and thoroughly, and then after a moment she shrugs a little and finishes pumping, filling the large canteen in two strokes. Then she takes it, caps it, attaches it again to one of the big packs at her feet, and — so deftly that you’re a little awed — scoops up all three and scuttles back. “Have at.”

You’ve seen commless before, of course; everyone has. In cities that want cheaper labor than Strongbacks — and where the Strongbacks’ union is weak — they live in shantytowns and beg on the streets. Everywhere else, they live in the spaces between comms, forests and the edges of deserts and such, where they survive by hunting game and building encampments out of scraps. The ones who don’t want trouble raid fields and silos on the outskirts of comm territories; the ones who like a fight raid small, poorly defended comms and attack travelers along the lesser quartent roads. Quartent governors don’t mind a little of this. Keeps everyone sharp, and reminds troublemakers of how they could end up. Too many thefts, though, or too violent an attack and militias get sent out to hunt the commless down.

None of that matters now. “We don’t want any trouble,” you say. “We’re just here for water, same as you.”

The woman, who’s been looking with curiosity at Hoa, flicks her gaze back to you. “Not like I’m starting any.” Rather deliberately she caps another canteen she’s filled. “Got more of these to fill, though, so.” She jerks her chin at your pack and the canteen dangling from it. “Yours won’t take long.”

Hers are truly huge. They’re also probably heavy as logs. “Are you waiting for others to come?”

“Nope.” The woman grins, flashing remarkably good teeth. If she’s commless now, she didn’t start out that way; those gums haven’t known much malnutrition. “Gonna kill me?”

You have to admit, you weren’t expecting that.

“She must have someplace nearby,” Hoa says. You’re pleased to see that he’s at the door, looking outward. Still on guard. Smart boy.

“Yep,” says the woman, cheerfully unperturbed that they have sussed out her ostensible secret. “Gonna follow me?”

“No,” you say, firmly. “We’re not interested in you. Leave us be and we’ll do the same.”

“Solid by me.”

You unsling your canteen and edge over to the pump. It’s awkward; the thing is meant to be worked by one person while another holds a container.

The woman puts a hand on the pump, silently offering. You nod, and she pumps for you. You drink your fill first, and then there’s tense silence while the canteen fills. Nerves make you break it. “You took a big risk coming here. Everyone else is probably coming back soon.”

“A few, and not soon. And you took the same big risk.”

“True.”

“So.” The woman nods toward her pile of filled canteens, and belatedly you see — what is that? Atop one of the canteens’ mouths is some kind of little contraption made of sticks, twisted leaves, and a piece of crooked wire. It clicks softly as you stare. “Running a test, anyway.”

“What?”

She shrugs, eyeing you, and you realize it then: This woman is no more an ordinary commless than you are a still.

“That shake from the north,” she says. “It was at least a niner — and that was just what we felt on the surface. It was deep, too.” She pauses abruptly, actually cocking her head away from you and frowning, as if she’s heard something startling, though there’s nothing there but the wall. “Never seen a shake like that. Weird wave pattern to it.” Then she focuses on you again, bird-quick. “Probably breached a lot of aquifers. They’ll repair themselves over time, of course, but in the short term, no telling what kinds of contaminants might be around here. I mean, this is perfect land for a city, right? Flat, ready access to water, nowhere near a fault. Means there probably was one here, at some point. You know what kinds of nasty things cities leave behind when they die?”

You’re staring at her now. Hoa is, too, but he stares at everyone like that. Then the thing in the canteen finishes clicking, and the commless woman bends over to pluck it free. It had been dangling a strip of something — tree bark? — into the water.

“Safe,” she proclaims, and then belatedly seems to notice you staring. She frowns a little and holds up the little strip. “It’s made from the same plant as safe. You know? The greeting tea? But I treated it with a little something extra, to catch those substances safe doesn’t catch.”

“There’s nothing,” you blurt, and then you fall silent, uneasy, when she focuses sharply on you. Now you have to finish. “I mean… there’s nothing safe misses that would hurt people.” That’s the only reason anyone drinks it, because it tastes like boiled ass.

Now the woman looks annoyed. “That’s not true. Where the rust did you learn that?” It’s something you used to teach in the Tirimo creche, but before you can say this she snaps, “Safe doesn’t work as well if it’s in a cold solution; everybody knows that. Needs to be room temperature or lukewarm. It also doesn’t catch things that kill you in a few months instead of a few minutes. Fat lot of good it’ll do you to survive today, only to come down with skinpeel next year!”

“You’re a geomest,” you blurt. It seems impossible. You’ve met geomests. They’re everything people think orogenes are when they’re feeling charitable: arcane, unfathomable, possessed of knowledge no mortal should have, disturbing. No one but a geomest would know so many useless facts, so thoroughly.

“I am not.” The woman draws herself up, almost swelling in her fury. “I know better than to pay attention to those fools at the University. I’m not stupid.”

You stare again, in utter confusion. Then your canteen overflows and you scramble to find the cap for it. She stops pumping, then tucks the little bark contraption into a pocket among her voluminous skirts and starts to disassemble one of the smaller packs at her feet, her movements brisk and efficient. She pulls free a canteen — the same size as yours — and tosses it aside, then when the small pack’s empty, she tosses that aside, too. Your eyes lock on to both items. It would be easier on you if the boy could carry his own supplies.

“You’d better grab, if you’re going to,” the woman says, and though she’s not looking at you, you realize she intentionally set the items out for you. “I’m not staying, and you shouldn’t, either.”

You edge over to take the canteen and the empty small pack. The woman stands again to help you fill the new canteen before resuming her rummaging through her own stuff. While you tie on your canteen and the bedroll you grabbed earlier, and transfer a few items from your pack into the smaller one for the boy, you say, “Do you know what happened? Who did what?” You gesture vaguely in the direction of the screams that woke you up.

“I doubt it was a ‘who,’” the woman says. She tosses away several packets of gone-off food, a child’s set of pants that might be big enough for Hoa, and books. Who puts books in a runny-sack? Though the woman glances at the title of each before throwing it aside. “People don’t react as quickly as nature to changes like this.”

You attach the second canteen to your own pack for now, since you know better than to make Hoa carry too much weight. He’s just a boy, and a poorly grown one at that. Since the commless woman clearly doesn’t want them, you also pick up the pants from the small pile of discards that’s growing beside her. She doesn’t seem to care.

You ask, “What, you mean that was some kind of animal attack?”

“Didn’t you see the body?”

“Didn’t know there was a body. People screamed and started running, so we did, too.”

The woman sighs. “That’s not unwise, but it does lose you… opportunities.” As if to illustrate her point she tosses aside another pack that she’s just emptied and stands, shouldering the two that remain. One of them is more worn and obviously comfortable than the other: her own. She’s used twine to lash the heavy canteens together so that they nestle against the small of her back, supported by the not-insubstantial curve of her ass, rather than hanging as most canteens do. Abruptly she glowers at you. “Don’t follow me.”

“Wasn’t planning to.” The small pack’s ready to be given to Hoa. You strap on your own, check to make sure everything’s secure and comfy.

“I mean it.” She leans forward a little, her whole face almost feral in its fierceness. “You don’t know what I’m going back to. I could live in a walled compound with fifty other rusters just like me. We might have tooth-files and a ‘juicy stupid people’ recipe book.”

“Okay, okay.” You take a step back, which seems to mollify her. Now she goes from fierce to relaxed, and resumes settling her packs for comfort. You’ve got what you want, too, so it’s time to get out of here. The boy looks pleased by his new pack when you hand it to him; you help him put it on properly. As you do this, the commless woman passes you to leave, and some vestige of your old self makes you say, “Thanks, by the way.”

“Anytime,” she says airily, heading through the door — and abruptly she stops. She’s staring at something. The look on her face makes all the hairs on the back of your neck prickle. Quickly you go to the door as well, to see what she’s seeing.

It’s a kirkhusa — one of the long-bodied, furry creatures midlatters keep as pets instead of dogs, since dogs are too expensive for anyone except the most ostentatious Equatorials. Kirkhusa look more like big land-bound otters than canines. They’re trainable, cheap as anything because they eat only the leaves of low bushes and the insects that grow on them. And they’re even cuter than puppies when they’re small… but this kirkhusa isn’t cute. It’s big, a good hundred pounds of healthy, sleek-furred flesh. Someone’s loved it dearly, at least until lately: That’s a fine leather collar still round its neck. It’s growling, and as it slinks out of the grass and up onto the road, you see red blooms in the fur around its mouth and on its clawed, prehensile paws.

That’s the problem with kirkhusa, see. The reason everyone can afford them. They eat leaves — until they taste enough ash, which triggers some instinct within them that’s normally dormant. Then they change. Everything changes during a Season.

“Shit,” you whisper.

The commless woman hisses beside you, and you tense, feeling your awareness descend briefly into the earth. (You drag it back, out of habit. Not around other people. Not unless you have no other choice.) She’s moved to the edge of the asphalt, where she was probably about to bolt into the meadow and toward a distant stand of trees. But not far from the road, around the place where people screamed earlier, you see the grass moving violently and hear the soft houghs and squeals of other kirkhusa — how many, you can’t tell. They’re busy, though. Eating.

This one used to be a pet. Maybe it remembers its human master fondly. Maybe it hesitated when the others attacked, and failed to earn more than a taste of the meat that will be its new staple diet until the Season ends. Now it will go hungry if it doesn’t rethink its civilized ways. It pads back and forth on the asphalt, chittering to itself as if in indecision — but it doesn’t leave. It’s got you and Hoa and the commless woman boxed in while it wrestles with its conscience. Poor, poor thing.

You set your feet and murmur to Hoa — and the woman, if she feels like listening—“Don’t move.”

But before you can find something harmless to latch on to, a rock inclusion you can shift or a water source you can geyser that will give you an excuse to snatch the warmth from the air and the life from this overgrown squirrel, Hoa glances at you and steps forward.

“I said,” you begin, grabbing his shoulder to yank him back — but he doesn’t yank. It’s like trying to move a rock that’s wearing a jacket; your hand just slips off the leather. Underneath it, he doesn’t move at all.

The protest dies in your mouth as the boy continues to move forward. He’s not simply being disobedient, you realize; there’s too much purpose in his posture. You’re not sure he even noticed your attempt to stop him.

And then the boy is facing the creature, a few feet away. It’s stopped prowling, and stands tensed as if — wait. What? Not as if it’s going to attack. It lowers its head and twitches its stubby tail, once, uncertainly. Defensively.

The boy’s back is to you. You can’t see his face, but all at once his stocky little frame seems less little, and less harmless. He lifts a hand and extends it toward the kirkhusa, as if offering it to sniff. As if it’s still a pet.

The kirkhusa attacks.

It’s fast. They’re quick animals anyway, but you see the twitch of its muscles and then it’s five feet closer, its mouth is open, and its teeth have closed around the boy’s hand up to the middle of his forearm. And, oh Earth, you can’t watch this, a child dying in front of you as Uche did not, how could you let either happen, you are the worst person in the whole world.

But maybe — if you can concentrate, ice the animal and not the boy — you lower your gaze to try to concentrate as the commless woman gasps and the boy’s blood splatters the asphalt. Watching Hoa’s mauling will make it harder; what matters is saving his life, even if he loses the arm. But then—

Silence falls.

You look up.

The kirkhusa has stopped moving. It’s still where it was, teeth locked on Hoa’s arm, its eyes wild with… something that is more fear than fury. It’s even shaking, faintly. You hear it make the most fleeting of aborted sounds, just a hollow squeal.

Then the kirkhusa’s fur starts to move. (What?) You frown, squint, but it’s easy to see, close as the beast is. Each individual hair of its fur waggles, seemingly in a different direction all at the same time. Then it shimmers. (What?) Stiffens. All at once you realize that not only are its muscles stiff, but the flesh that covers them is stiff, too. Not just stiff but… solid.

And then you notice: The whole kirkhusa is solid.

What.

You don’t understand what you’re seeing, so you keep staring, comprehending in pieces. Its eyes have become glass, its claws crystal, its teeth some sort of ocher filament. Where there was movement, now there is stillness; its muscles are rock-hard, and that is not a metaphor. Its fur was just the last part of its body to change, twisting about as the follicles underneath transformed into something else.

You and the commless woman both stare.

Wow.

Really. That’s what you’re thinking. You’ve got nothing better. Wow.

That’s enough to get you moving, at least. You edge forward until you can see the whole tableau from a better angle, but nothing really changes. The boy still seems fine, although his arm is still halfway down the thing’s gullet. The kirkhusa is still pretty damn dead. Well. Pretty, and damn dead.

Hoa glances at you, and all at once you realize how deeply unhappy he looks. Like he’s ashamed. Why? He’s saved all of your lives, even if the method was… You don’t know what this is.

“Did you do this?” you ask him.

He lowers his eyes. “I hadn’t meant for you to see this, yet.”

Okay. That’s… something to think about later. “What did you do?”

He presses his lips shut.

Now he decides to sulk. But then, maybe now’s not the time for this conversation, given that his arm is stuck in a glass monster’s teeth. The teeth have pierced his skin; there’s blood welling and dripping down its no-longer-flesh lower jaw. “Your arm. Let me…” You look around. “Let me find something to break you out.”

Hoa seems to remember his arm, belatedly. He glances at you again, plainly not liking that you’re watching, but then sighs a little in resignation. And he flexes his arm, before you can warn him not to do anything that might wound him further.

The kirkhusa’s head shatters. Great chunks of heavy stone thud to the ground; glittering dust sprays. The boy’s arm is bleeding more, but free. He flexes his fingers a little. They’re fine. He lowers the arm to his side.

You react to his wound, reaching for his arm because that is something you can comprehend and do something about. But he pulls away quickly, covering the marks with his other hand. “Hoa, let me—”

“I’m fine,” he says, quietly. “We should go, though.”

The other kirkhusa are still close, though they’re busy chewing on some poor fool in the plainsgrass. That meal won’t last them forever. Worse, it’s only a matter of time before other desperate people make the choice to brave the roadhouse again, hoping the bad things have gone.

One of the bad things is still right here, you think, looking at the kirkhusa’s topless lower jaw. You can see the rough nodules on the back of its tongue, now gleaming in crystal. Then you turn to Hoa, who is holding his bloody arm and looking miserable.

It’s the misery, finally, that pushes the fear back down inside you, replaces it with something more familiar. Did he do this because he didn’t know you could defend yourself? For some other, unfathomable reason? In the end, it doesn’t matter. You have no idea what to do with a monster who can turn living things into statuary, but you do know how to handle an unhappy child.

Also, you have a lot of experience with children who are secretly monsters.

So you offer your hand. Hoa looks surprised. He stares at it, then at you, and there is something in his gaze that is entirely human, and grateful for your acceptance in that moment. It makes you feel a little more human, too, amazingly.

He takes your hand. His grip seems no weaker despite his wounds, so you pull him along as you turn south and start walking again. The commless woman wordlessly follows, or maybe she’s walking in the same direction, or maybe she just thinks there’s strength in numbers. None of you say anything because there’s nothing to say.

Behind you, in the meadow, the kirkhusa keep eating.

* * *

Beware ground on loose rock. Beware hale strangers. Beware sudden silence.

— Tablet One, “On Survival,” verse three