Hubward

  • 28 Aug - 03 Sep, 2021
  • Mag The Weekly
  • Fiction

"Maybe you'd better let Lightning," murmured Crystal.

"Not tired enough," Book muttered back, maneuvering to stand with his back to hers.

Crystal shuddered.

She didn't know how Book had given up that ability, in spite of everything – to fade back at any moment, instead of accumulating mental fatigue over sands and sands first.

She didn't want to fight a demon. If one appeared,

Holly would do it.

Tiag didn't bark again. She just clung to Crystal's shoulder and sniffed the air with her little black nose.

"False alarm?" Book said, after the still and red–lit forest dislodged no threats in their direction.

"Maybe," Crystal said.

They pressed on. Book used the spear as his new walking stick, since it was already grown.

**********************

–Thirteen harvests ago–

"Cloud?" Holly said.

"You need to walk Tiag yourself," Cloud said.

"Crystal did it. It's something else."

"Well, what is it – um – Book?" Cloud was not good at guessing. They had three different wristbands, now, but they faded in and out quickly enough that they sometimes didn't bother. Their black hair was too short to style differently depending on who was talking. They could always just tell people.

"No, I'm Holly, but it's about Book." Book himself was as deeply asleep as he could get. He did not want to have this conversation; he wanted Holly to do it for him, so she would.

"Why isn't your sister talking to me herself, then?" asked Cloud.

"That's the thing. Book is a boy."

Cloud blinked. "Holly, all three of you share a girl body, just like me and Chime share a woman body."

"Yes, I know, but Book doesn't like it." And it was getting worse as they grew older. Book went to sleep every time they needed a bath, and spent his hoarded suns on ugly androgynous clothes now, instead of the namesake books he used to collect.

"I suppose if I could adjust to there being three of you at all, I can start calling him your brother, then," said Cloud amiably.

"Book wants to move out,"

Holly said. "Into a boy."

"Oh." Cloud sat back.

"I – I don't know if that's doable. You aren't the same as everyone else."

"We know that," said Holly.

"But can you find someone who knows about it? And ask?"

"I suppose," Cloud said. "I'll let you know. I suppose if he wants to do that he'll have to find someone to move in with."

"I guess we have to go back under the dreamward, then," sighed Holly.

"Maybe you'll make some friends," said Cloud.

**********************

The red sun marched counterclockwise and no replacement was yet close enough to properly illuminate the forest. Holly climbed a tree, and spotted a swift green sun that was coming up behind them, high in the sky.

"Stop here for dinner?" asked Lightning. "Follow the green sun when it gets closer?"

"Yes," said Holly. "Do you need a mouse?"

"Yeah," Lightning said. "My feet are killing me."

He should have let me pick out better shoes for him, fussed Crystal.

Holly moved the mouse cage from her back to where she could reach it, and picked a gray–furred one up by the tail. Lightning took it from her hand, focused, and offered it back. Holly replaced it, and took a fresh one for her own aching knees and complaining heels, as well as accumulated fatigue. The discomfort drained away as soon as she focused on it, and herself, and the point of contact between her hand and the mouse's tail. The mouse yawned when she put it away.

"Rocks or tree bark?" Lightning asked.

"Rock's easier to troport," Holly said. "Tree bark makes for easier portion sizing. Your call, I can do either one. Didn't you go on Wilderness Survival?"

Lightning picked up a couple of meal–sized rocks and handed them to Holly, who rubbed dirt off them with the heel of her glove. "Yeah," he said. "We went rimward, though, along the canyon. There was fruit."

"You took a Wilderness Survival class that didn't cover troporting edibility," said Holly, staring.

"I told Crystal about it once."

He did, thought Crystal, last planting, in the butterfly garden.

"I'm not as asleep as you get, when she's in front. That doesn't mean I'm paying attention," Holly said. "Hand me a raisin, and one of whatever you want after I've done my rock."

Lightning unpacked a sticky, dehydrated grape. "Do you want your checklist?" he asked.

"Uh, lemme see if I remember everything on it," she said, closing her eyes. "Edibility. Large and small nutrition. Texture – in the case of the raisin, I have to open it up and touch the inside to not just get lots of solid peel. Taste."

"Smell," Lightning added.

Yes, you need your checklist, Crystal thought.

"Well, that one's not really necessary anyway," said Holly, but she let him hand over the checklist anyway. She set her rock on one knee, and touched it with one hand, and held the raisin between thumb and forefinger of the other and split it open with her nail. Carefully, she turned the rock into a decent facsimile of the raisin, and the raisin into a raisin–shaped pebble, as inedible and nutritionally worthless and hard and mineral–flavored as the rock.

"Is any of it necessary? I could just port sizes. I can do sizes, when it's just yea big," Lightning said.

She bit into her raisin, then tore off a raisin–sized piece of it and passed it to Lightning to be put away again. "Well, sure, you could just blow up a peanut or whatever, but it's got as much nutrition as a tiny one if you do it like that. People have starved to death filling up on giant food they made by shortcuts, you know. You're lucky you have me. What can I get you?" she asked.

Lightning passed her a crumb of the dry bread, and his sponge.

"Pampered house dweller," teased Holly. "You want nice bread."

"Can you make it or can't you?"

"Yeah, if I pour water over the sponge first." She held her raisin in her teeth and performed the necessary operations to trade the essential features of bread and stone, and then to move moisture from the sponge to the crustless loaf. She handed the dried sponge and the puff of bread over to Lightning.

He bit. "This is terrible," he said.

"I'm not a chef. It'll keep you going. There's a reason we don't eat food made of rocks when we don't have to carry everything we eat, anyway," said Holly. Her raisin tasted fine to her.

Maybe you forgot a step on the bread, Crystal thought.

I did not. He's just got a housedweller palate, that's all. "Don't forget to save a crumb of it, since you like it so much," she said.

The green sun began to shed appreciable light over them when Holly had finished her raisin and Lightning was through with his bread. They got up to chase it hubward.

**********************

–Twelve harvests ago–

That one, thought Book. I want to look like that.

You want to be a towhead with arms as long as some people's entire bodies? Holly thought.

Yes, thought Book firmly.

"Hello," Crystal said.

The blond boy looked up from his book. "Hi," he said.

"I'm Crystal."

"I've heard of you," he said.

Crystal sighed. "Everyone seems to have."

"It wasn't anything bad. Just odd. You're already cohabiting and you come to mixers anyway."

"What's your name?" Crystal asked.

"Lightning."

"I'm Crystal."

"I know. You said," says Lightning.

"Oh. Sorry," said Crystal, cheeks warming. "And my cohabitors are Holly and Book."

"That sounds familiar," said Lightning.

"We come to mixers because Book wants to move out," Crystal said.

"But you're a – you're girls," said Lightning.

"Book isn't."

"How's that meant to work?" Lightning asked.

Crystal shrugged. "It just happened, is all. So he wants to move out of us and into somebody like you."

Lightning looked at the little list of things to be concerned with that they always handed out at mixers. "Responsible, communicative, keeps promises, shares my risk tolerance?"

"Yes and yes and yes, and what's your risk tolerance?" Crystal asked.

"Heh, that's funny, he's got references already," mused Lightning under his breath. "I don't want to volunteer for the navy or anything. But... I don't know, I'd work it out with my cohabitor first, but I might want to do something a little dangerous someday. Go cloud walking, or sail to Marheen, or try for the Luin Sunstone. Who knows?"

Cloud walking has always looked like fun to me, Book thought.

Crystal nodded. "Book is about the same. He mostly studies things, but he pays attention in our knife classes, and he wants to learn spear fighting after he moves out. Cloud walking sounds like fun to him."

"Cool," said Lightning with a left–leaning smile.

Crystal liked his smile.

**********************

"What the longdark spitting–pit is that?" shrieked Holly, running as fast as she could. She had the mouse cage clutched to her chest and her arm thrust into it so they were all touching her, and she was pouring exhaustion into each in turn, because whatever it was, it wasn't slowing down. Tiag on her shoulder was barking and whining by turns, earsplitting, afraid.

"I don't know!" Book shouted back. He didn't have the mice with him, but he had better endurance; Holly could only hope that was enough, she didn't want to have to figure out a way to transfer the mouse cage to him midstride. "I didn't get a good look at it before I started running for my life!"

"It's too small to be a tuifnka…"

It didn't have wings, did it? Crystal thought.

No, thank all the luck – Holly responded.

"I told you I don't know what it is! Except that it's obviously a demon and it's got more armour on it than the entire Sixth Fleet! There – there – see – there's a…."

"I see," said Holly, and she veered right, towards a cracked–open tree that looked like lightning had struck it. From a distance it looked like it could hold them both in the trunk, and keep the demon out of reach.

"No good," she corrected after a closer look at the crevice, and she charged down the hill; they had a few pounds on the demon if she guessed right, and their speed would benefit from the slope more. Book didn't argue with her, just followed. "Do you think it can climb?"

"I don't know! I don't know what it is!"

He can't think straight when he's scared, ask him questions, make him answer you, urged Crystal.

"Think! What could it be? Can any of those things climb?" cried Holly.

Book either lacked the breath to reply or didn't see the point. He didn't need to; after they'd run for a few strides more he found a likely–looking tree and threw himself up into its branches. Holly was shorter, and had to skid–turn to get to the other side of the tree in search of a lower handhold. The first one she tried broke off in her hand and she scanned for a second choice, frozen in place.

"It's coming! Find another tree!" screamed Book, already halfway up his.

Holly bolted.

Book's tree acquired a new claw slash in its bark, right where she'd been standing. She poured more weariness into the mice, but she was running out of fresh ones; all but a handful were sleeping it off at the bottom of the cage. She ran anyway.

Finally she located a tree barely even shouting–distance from Book's that she thought she could get into. She went up: one body length, two, three, until she was well out of clawing range and short on higher branches that could hold her.

Tiag wasn't on her shoulder anymore, but Holly couldn't worry about that, couldn't think about anything except getting away from the demon and figuring out what it was and how to kill it...

She clipped the mouse cage closed, breathed deeply, and looked for the demon.

Holly had apparently gained on it while zigzagging through the woods in search of a tree. It caught up presently, though.

She had no idea what kind it was. There were a few hundred kinds of demons; she only knew the common ones, and this headless whiptailed thing, with its bladed forelimbs and caterpillar legs and segmented plates of armour all in black gloss, was not a common one.

- Anonymous

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