Sentience, page 26
part #1 of Farm Land Series
It can be quiet forever, I said. If you let me help you.
Can you stay?
I cannot stay forever, I said. But I could take you to a place where you could have a family once more. I could give you new people to love.
I cannot leave them. They are so alone. They are in pain. They need me.
They are already gone. The voices are all your own. When I listen to them, I hear you in each one. You have held yourself captive, Hathor, bound in misery, guilt and pain. Your people would have never wished this for you.
If I leave them, she said. They would hate me even more.
Your people do not hate you. Your people… your daughter… they loved you as you loved them. But they are gone, and you are still alive. Honour their memory by taking their stories to other people. Honour your daughter by coming with me. I will take you as my own mother, and your people will live again when you accept my child as part of your line.
I did not think of what I was saying, what I was offering before the words came from my lips, but it felt right. Some mothers come to us through bonds of blood and birth, and others may be adopted, as Bracken meant to adopt me, as Leaf and Ash had adopted Bay. And if Bay had two mothers, then could I not be the same? Choose two mothers, two women I respected above all others, to teach me lessons of the world, of myself?
Her core faltered. You would make me part of your family?
I would be honoured to call you mother, I said. In this world, we lose so much to the wants of others. But the family we choose is just as precious as that which is born. Become a part of my family and I will help you to silence the voices in your mind.
They will fight, she said. They are strong.
You are stronger than you know.
They will send me mad.
You will prevail.
There was silence for a moment. If I agree, she said, you will not throw me back to them just yet?
I can stay for a while, until you feel strong enough to be alone.
It has been so long since I have felt alone in here, she said. I forgot what a calm and quiet place it could be, with just my thoughts.
There was another pause. Thank you, she said quietly. For giving me a moment of peace.
Thank you, I said. For hiding me and feeding me.
My people believed in taking refugees in.
Then you have honoured them once more.
Perhaps you were brought to me, by them, she said.
Perhaps. I paused. She was not ready to accept that the voices in her mind were nothing but shades of her own self. Perhaps they thought it was time for you to go on.
I felt her mind sigh. Don’t leave me to them just yet. I have not heard peace for so long.
I will stay for as long as I can.
I settled over her mind. I could not stay for long; my body would need to eat, but I would give her peace for as long as I could. Sleep, I crooned to her, willing her to take up the peace I offered.
I understood something. Hathor was broken, fractured by grief, loss, and the guilt of her mind had brought forth ghosts to hunt her. But even as a shattered shard of her former self, or perhaps because of that, she was the strongest person I had ever met.
Chapter Forty-Two
Shared Friends
When finally I released my thoughts from Hathor’s mind, travelling back through the voices, now freed from my control, wailing in the fissures of her mind, I slumped into my body. I was tired and wan.
A long spell of Reaching didn’t seem to have any effect on my abilities when I was Reaching, but when I returned to my physical form, all the exertion was released into my body. I was weak.
As I struggled to open my eyes, I saw Hathor, too, was waking. “That was you in my head?” she asked, and I nodded. “Did you mean what you said?”
“I would like you to come with me,” I said. “To be a part of my family, of my life…and that of my child.”
She looked away, tears in her eyes. “You don’t know what you are asking, child.”
“I do.”
Her fingers pressed into her eyes, forcing little tears to emerge over the tops of her blunt, dirty nails. She sniffed. “You need food,” she said glancing at me, and then again, for longer. “You look terrible, child,” she said with concern. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I think, because I was gone so long, I have worn out my body.”
Hathor scowled with worry. She looked to the opening of the cave. Dusk was coming; light rain was pelting the beach. There was no sign of the ships. “You wait here. I’ll go get more tatoes.”
I struggled to rise but she shook her head, sending me back to my seat with a furious look. “No,” she said. “Listen to your body. You are tired, you rest. You are hungry, you eat. And there will be no more of this… Reaching until you are strong. You have someone else relying on you.”
“I couldn’t tell Skye I was with child,” I said.
“Skye is your mate?” she asked, and nodded. “Most likely that was for the best, child. He would worry about you.”
“That’s what I thought.” I shifted myself up to sit upright. My body was shaking, my hands trembled, and my head felt thick and stupid.
“I’ll be back soon.” Before I could say another word, she shifted silently and seamlessly through the vine curtain, into the gathering dusk.
I lay back and closed my eyes. I hoped I had done the right thing, but I felt guilty for not telling Skye he was to become a father.
I must have fallen asleep, as I awoke with a start as a dark shape bobbed through the opening of the cave. I fumbled for my club, before realizing it was Hathor. I sagged, wiping a sandy hand over my dry mouth. My eyes were thick with sleep and my body ached, but I felt better.
Hathor grinned. “Some use that would have been if I had not been me,” she said, nodding to my club.
She pulled a sack from her shoulder and squatted down at the fire. Tatoes thumped to the floor from the bag, and she handed me a bean skin filled with water. I drank greedily and gratefully.
With a sharpened rock, Hathor cut off the outer skin of the tatoes and washed them in sea water. She took a small dab of a white substance from another pouch and placed it in a clay pan. The cream melted and sizzled as she laid slices of tatoes into the frying mixture. There was a familiar smell about the melting substance.
“What is that?” I asked as the scent of frying tatoes made my stomach curl up in hunger.
“Fat,” she said. “From the beans those ants farm at the ridge. I traded tatoes with them for this last summer.”
“Ants?”
“You know…” she said. “Big, shiny, black creatures. They farm aphids on the soya beans at the top of the ridge.”
“You know the Farmers,” I said weakly.
“If that’s what you call them.” She sliced more tatoes into the pan.
“You came within a day of my village,” I said, hunger almost forgotten as I thought how close I had come to meeting Hathor, before I had even known she lived. I reached out and touched her hand. “Do you know how to get to the lands of the Farmers again?”
She nodded. “I go there each summer to trade.”
I frowned. “How is it you can talk to them?”
Hathor laughed. “I don’t talk to them, child. No one can do that. They don’t talk. There is a little ritual you have to do, to get them to see you are a friend. Then, I just push my basket at them and they push a bean back to me in return. It’s not like they’re stupid, they just don’t have mouths to talk, but they understand trade.” She paused. “My people used to trade with them regularly.”
Her face looked lost for a moment. I could almost hear the voices shrieking in her head. Then, she blinked, and continued slicing tatoes into the pan. They were browning with a golden deliciousness that made my mouth water.
“And your people didn’t mind you leaving, to go to the Farmers?” I asked.
“They didn’t mind because they knew I was coming back,” Hathor said.
“If you know the way to the Farmers,” I said. “Then you can help me find my home. You could stay with us, if you wanted to.”
Her face contorted. I could feel the voices within her screaming as she considered leaving this place for good.
“You said they didn’t mind you going before,” I said.
When she didn’t answer, I squeezed her hand. “Hathor,” I said. “I can help you. I can make the voices go quiet as we travel. Each night, I can Reach into you and give you a spell of peace. You are strong enough to do this. I can help you, if you will help me.”
She swallowed. “I can help you find your home, but nothing is decided on whether I leave here or not.” She looked at me; there was agony in her eyes. “I will take you to your people,” she said. “But I may still come back to mine when that is done.”
Her eyes screwed up and her lips pulled tight as though she was swallowing something sour. “Be quiet!” she shouted suddenly. “We have to help the girl. That would have always been our way, Aurora.” She shook her head and opened her eyes, staring at me with that dreadful intensity which made my heart run cold. “My people would have wanted me to help you,” she said, the other presence fading from her eyes like smoke. “And so I will.”
“Thank you.” I looked at the tatoes, now smoking slightly in the pan. Hathor flipped each one over with a sharpened stone and their raw sides started to sputter in the hot fat.
“My daughter would have helped you. She would have liked you.” Hathor’s voice held a reproach, but I knew it wasn’t directed at me. Clearly, her cousin Aurora was not happy with the idea of Hathor leaving. It’s not Aurora, I reminded myself. A part of Hathor doesn’t want to go.
I felt guilty, but I needed her. I might find the way myself, but she knew it. Hathor could take me on safer paths than the ones I would tread, and I might get home faster. And if I took her to the village, she might decide to stay. If she did, my people could help to heal her, banish these ghosts of her own making, help her to become well again. She might never be well, I told myself, but I knew, even if she could never be as other people were, I wanted her with me. Hathor was special, strong, courageous… she deserved another chance at happiness.
“No matter if you stay with me, or if you return here, I will consider you to be a mother to me, and to my child.”
She winced, but when she looked at me, her eyes were wide and childlike with pleasure. “Thank you,” she said. “I would be honoured to be considered as a mother to you, grandmother to your child.”
“Grandmother,” I repeated, feeling the new word take shape in my mouth.
Hathor smiled. “The mother of a mother is a grandmother,” she said. “But I guess there aren’t too many of those around these days.”
“There’s at least one now.” I smiled at her as she scraped the tatoes from the pan, making a pile on each clay plate.
“I will show you the way to the ants,” said Hathor as she started to eat, dipping hot, golden tatoes into a little pile of salt, dried from the sea. “And then we’ll see what comes next.”
I nodded and copied her. The tatoes were fluffy and rich and the salt on them made my tired tongue alive with its fire.
“It will be a long walk,” she said. “It’s not an easy trip through the forest.”
I nodded, my mouth burning as I shoved more tatoes into it. I was scalding my tongue, but I didn’t care. Filling my ravenous belly was my chief priority. “We’ll be careful,” I mumbled, through mouthfuls of tatoes.
Chapter Forty-Three
A Long Walk
She would not let me travel for days.
Although Hathor insisted that this was to give me time to recover and gather my strength, I began to suspect she delayed because she didn’t want to leave. She had left once, and her world had been destroyed. If she left again, what would happen?
I understood her fear, of course, but I couldn’t wait forever. I also had a troublesome thought that if I lingered too long, Hathor would make me stay.
“We must leave soon,” I said for about the thousandth time, as we sat by the fire one afternoon. I had talked to Skye that day and our conversation had only made my soul thirst more to be with him again. Hathor sat by the entrance, watching another long ship as it sailed through the waters. She sighed. My demands had grown more insistent as the days had passed.
She turned to me. “If it will keep you quiet, we will leave tonight.”
My heart leapt. “You mean it?”
Hathor grimaced. “I cannot stand to hear you asking one more time.” She frowned. “But it’s a long way, filled with many dangers.”
“You have said this over and over,” I said. “I will be fine to walk.”
She rose and stepped around the fire to me, reaching out with her hands to feel my belly. Two days ago, I had awoken to find my stomach had a little bulge. It was as though my child had heard Hathor, and risen up. She had been right after all. Life was growing within me.
On the same day, I had noticed that my small breasts had become slightly tender and my nose caught every single scent on the air. Although I didn’t like the pain in my breasts or the slight feeling of sickness before I ate, I was glad to know her predictions were correct.
I was going to be a mother.
“How long until the baby comes?” I asked as her hands explored the little curve of my belly.
She shrugged. “Since you don’t know when you got with child, it is hard to tell exactly, but the swelling comes, so I would say you have another four or five moons before you give birth. You will get a lot bigger than this and the changes will happen faster.”
“Then we need to leave before I’m too big to walk,” I said, slightly suspicious again.
I wondered if it had been her intention to prevent me leaving until I was too big to go at all. Part of her wanted to help me, but part of her wanted to stay and, I believed, also wanted to keep me here. If I stayed for the birth, I would have to travel with a new babe at my breast. From what I understood of babies, they cried and made noise. That would make travelling anywhere dangerous. I had to get back to the village before my child came.
Hathor sighed. “I know,” she said. “I know you must go. I should not deprive you of your people anymore.” She looked up from her examination of my body. “It’s just that having you here has been…” She trailed off and I saw tears in her eyes.
“You can keep my company.” I pressed a hand to hers. “You can keep my friendship. No matter what, you will always have it. But you can stay with me and my child. The choice is yours.”
She nodded, then scowled and shook herself. I knew the voices were whispering.
“You can stay with me,” I said.
“We leave tonight.” She was not talking to me, but insisting on it to the people within her. “We leave tonight.”
That afternoon we gathered up a blanket each, Hathor’s spear and my club. She gave me a knife made of stone and wood, and offered me a spear, which I took, tucking my club into a new belt she gave me, made of vines. We picked tatoes in the bronzed gloom of dusk from the hidden plantation near her holt. We took cooking utensils, a pot and two bean pods full of water. As darkness came stealing across daylight, we tied our little bundles to our backs and put out the fire in her cave.
We stepped out into the night air. The sky was growing dark; bright blue and slinking pink stretched across the horizon, melding into the crimson fire of the setting sun. The sea had turned a brilliant green, glinting in the half-light. As I looked at the beach, I remembered the first moment I had come here and seen the ocean. It felt like years ago, even though it was not more than ten or fifteen days. I looked at my guide, her dark eyes staring at me with that strange intensity I had grown wary of. I wondered which voice talked to her now, trying to persuade her to keep me here.
“Your people helped those who needed it,” I said gently. At my words she blinked and shook her head. It was as though she could shake off the influence of the voice urging her to keep me. I could see the battle within her.
“We should go… now.” She turned and walked towards the forest.
I took a last look at the beach and then, before she could change her mind, or any other could change it for her, I turned my feet and followed Hathor into the forest.
Chapter Forty-Four
A Little Bean in the Tree
Up, up, up…
My feet faltered with tiredness. All the way we had come, the land inclined upwards. Every step was up, every motion was up. Bent like a dried leaf, I plodded, leaning on my spear for support.
