Читать книгу Rise to the Rahz - Erik van Mechelen - Страница 10

The worker dreamed of slowly falling. Tumbling weightless through gray light. Shadows swarmed in violent rushes of air, their eyes yellow. But unlike in his toll visions, they didn’t attack. They simply watched him, as if preparing to lunge but biding their time. Waiting for his most vulnerable moment. The worker couldn’t escape this endless descent, and his anxiety increased. The eyes, the hexagonal scales lighting up, the swish and flick of their tails. Suddenly he wanted them to attack him. He wanted out. He wanted it to end. The gray light faded, but he fell further. Let it…end. Then he struck bottom, and liquid rushed him from all sides.

He woke breathing heavily, sweat streaming along his lizard-skin clothes. There was hard stone beneath him. I’m back in the workers quarters. His neck felt odd, though. There was something under it. A rolled mat.

No, I'm not in the workers quarters.

His eye throbbed. Dried blood on his cheek. The cloth wrapping the wound. He remembered.

I was saved from the Abyss. These people helped me. They wrapped my wounds.

The worker tiptoed down the hallway back to the main room centered by the large black-stone table.

“You get any shut-eye?” asked Kaydin, looking up from a bowl of soup. He, Ry, and Maryn sat around the obsidian table.

“Yes,” said the worker.

“We’ll solve that soon,” said Ry, gesturing to the bandage. “Mav is getting things ready as we speak—why don’t you eat something first?”

I am quite hungry. “Sure, that’d be good.”

He needed to thank them. Then he needed them to return him to Growing Room One. He was probably late for work by now. The turma plants needed to be tended.

Maryn hopped up and went into the adjoining room, and soon returned with a bowl for him. “You might recognize this,” she said, setting down the bowl of green goop.

The worker smile.

“What's so funny?”

“The last two times I was offered this I poured my bowl on the floor.”

Ry wrinkled his brow. “You did?”

“That’s pretty brave,” said Maryn, brushing her yellow hair back.

“I think this soup makes me sleepy,” said the worker.

“Not our version,” said Mav, entering the room from a second hallway.

“What’s the difference?” asked the worker.

“This one won’t make you forget,” said Kaydin.

“You may not have noticed,” said Ry, “but the same plant that keeps you alive keeps you asleep.”

“What do you mean?” asked the worker, even though he was starting to understand; he had to be sure.

“The turma plants that you tend to—or that you used to tend to—contain turma powder, or turma,” Kaydin explained. “We refer to their quantities in doses, or parts.”

Ry nodded. “The turma improves our senses. But the turma root dulls them. In proper doses the root removes sensory memories as early as the previous day.”

“Day?”

“Shifts.”

“I have started to remember things,” admitted the worker.

“Like what?”

“For example, I wanted to meet Kaydin again, but then you didn't show up until I was attacked.”

The group laughed, but the worker wasn't sure why.

“What else?” asked Ry.

“Memories from childhood.”

“You see?” said Ry, nodding approvingly. “Your mind is ridding itself of the root already.”

“That’s why,” said Kaydin, “as a worker, every day was exactly the same for you.”

“Not exactly the same,” said the worker. “I found the sixth bulb, didn’t I?”

“True,” said Kaydin, “there might be something different about you.” He eyed Ry when he said it.

Ry’s old face was calm. “We make the same soup as the workers eat, but we don’t add the root.”

“We grew up eating it,” said Mav, “so we’ve gotten used to the taste.”

“It doesn’t taste that good,” said the worker.

“How would you know?” said Ry, curious.

“I once had a seed, a purple seed, it was…sweet.”

“When?”

“It's strange. I've only just remembered, to be honest. As a young worker. One of the older workers gave it to me before sleep. He described it that way. He didn’t say where he got it.”

“Could be the nightshade seeds,” said Mav.

Kaydin nodded. “Gara and I found some of them in the lower caverns. Hard to find though.”

Maryn cleared her throat, a light pip of a noise, and tied her light hair behind her head with an obsidian pin, then held up a spoon of the goop. “Go on, eat up.”

He did.

Ry got his attention after a few bites. “Well, now that that’s out of the way, there’s something important to decide.”

Maryn and Kaydin looked up expectantly. Kaydin whistled toward the hallway. Soon Bel and Gara joined the group in the main room.

“Everyone here has a name,” said Ry.

A name?

“We are individuals,” said Ry after allowing Mav an extended explanation which the worker didn't follow. “And individuals have names.”

“I am a Growing Room One worker,” said the worker. “Maybe I am not an individual. Maybe I cannot have a name.”

“Well, I run this crew,” said Ry, smiling and sitting up, “and it looks to me like you're an individual. And every individual here must have a name.”

The worker felt the urge again to thank them. For what they'd done. To make them feel good about the help they thought they'd given him.

But then he had to tell them he couldn’t stay. That his business was back in the growing room, with the turma, as his training had taught him. But they had been so…friendly. They accepted him. And were intrigued by his story of the seeds and of the sixth bulb. He felt a glimmer of something he had not felt since…he slipped into a memory. He was being held, giant arms around him, holding him; great, long fingers like sturdy vines keeping him safe on her lap. His birthmother. That brown face and the smile welcoming him. He understood what he was feeling was like the feeling the birthmother had given him, and, so too, the earliest youth trainers. A connection. A connection between one and another. A connection between individuals.

“But I cannot…” he started to say. “I mean, how should I know what my name is?”

Kaydin leaned back smiling. There, again, the worker felt it. A glimpse of that feeling he’d understood as a connection.

Ry spoke up. “Many of us harbored a desire to go back into the system for a long time. There are moments I have dreams about the system. In the first moments I wake, I don’t know whether to call them dreams or nightmares. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” nodded the worker, remembering his long fall into the Abyss that seemed so real, but wasn't.

Ry leaned toward the worker from across the table. He didn’t smile quite as much. “Unfortunately, you cannot go back into the system. And that’s okay.”

“So,” said the worker, “you’re saying you will give me a name, like only you and the directors have?”

“No,” said Ry, taking the reins back from Kaydin, “you will decide your own name.”

“It’s the name that naturally comes to you mind,” said Kaydin. “You can change it later, like Mav did, but most of us have kept our original names.”

“Do you have it?” asked Ry. “The crew needs to get back to work, but we’d like to know your name first.”

The worker stared down at the table through one eye. Nothing came naturally. I guess I’ll have to disappoint them. Just like he had disappointed Director Dimah. Maybe it was a sign he wasn't meant to be with them, but instead be back at work. But then a thought entered his mind, like the distant echo of the first toll ringing through the Abyss.

“Abyl,” said the worker, quietly. Then, he lifted his head. “My name is Abyl.”

“Very well, Abyl,” said Ry. “Welcome to Haven.” He stood as he said it, standing before Abyl, extending his arm.

“Well, aren’t you going to shake my arm?” said Ry.

Abyl tentatively raised his arm as if peeking under the leaves of the turma plant in search of the sixth bulb.

Ry grasped Abyl’s forearm. Feeling the connection, Abyl closed his hand on Ry’s. Standing closer, Abyl now saw Ry did not have scars but rather indents and folds of skin that twisted around his eyes, nose, and forehead. He was just…old. Abyl wasn’t sure how he knew this, since he’d never seen an old person before. No one in the city matched his age, except perhaps the Rahz, who lived a very long time indeed.

“Abyl, there will be turma enough for you to tend here in Haven. Your skills will not be wasted.” The Haven crew stood in an arc around Abyl. Ry smiled again, then said: “Abyl, this is your family now.”