Chapter 12 #4
“If that’s the case, you’re missing one.
I don’t know what my birth mother called me.
” And I never would, either, since Ingrid had been one of the adult cuckoos whose minds I wiped clean in order to protect my family.
Whatever name she might have called me by was gone forever, erased from her memory before she met her inevitable end at the fangs of the giant spiders who hunted where I’d left her to shamble and fade away.
Maybe I was a monster after all. Who but a monster could do that to her own mother without a moment of hesitation or regret? And sure, she’d tried to kill me first, but that didn’t make it normal for me to be able to do that to her so easily.
“Mm. Very few people do,” said the collective.
“Names are given by the hiring authority, not by the gestating parent. Allowing parents to involve themselves in naming would introduce too much sentiment into the process, and might result in familial bonds forming where they do not provide any social benefit.”
“What do you do with children after they’re born, if they aren’t allowed to stay with their parents long enough to form familial bonds?”
“Children are raised in creches,” said the collective.
“We group them according to age. Many will form sibling bonds during this time—we have found no way to stop the process, and attempts to interfere have only accelerated it past the point of tolerability. The current levels of sibling entanglement are acceptable to us. How were you raised?”
“By humans for the first years, and by a cuckoo and her Revenant husband for the rest. Surrounded by cousins and siblings and people who taught me how to be a person one day at a time.”
“And how did those lessons serve you when you turned on your own people?”
“About that.” I smiled, the sort of smile I’d had to learn by riding along inside my cousin Verity’s skull when she went to her dance competitions.
She wore her smiles like they were weapons when she went to face her peers, honing and sharpening them until they were as terrifying as they were attractive.
The woman with my face recoiled. We were inside the mind here, and she didn’t need to understand faces to understand what my expression really meant.
“You sit here, all comfortable and safe and sure of yourself in an environment you’re actually evolved to suit, and you judge me for not knowing your rules when I had to grow up in another dimension, with only the knowledge of your culture that you allowed my ancestors to retain?
I don’t think you have the right. I don’t see what in this world or any other justifies you thinking that you have the moral high ground here.
You have no right to judge me. You have no right to judge my cousin, either, who didn’t do anything wrong.
You’re going to give him back to me, and then you’re going to let us go home. ”
She smiled, less fiercely than I had, but still.
The fact that she was able to smile at all proved she was paying attention, and learning more from me than I was learning from her.
The math was tilted too far in her favor.
She was supported by the power of five people while I was supported by only one, myself, and that wasn’t fair.
Not that she cared. Not that any of these people cared about what they were doing to us.
“Ahh, but you see, that’s where you’re incorrect,” she said.
“Your cousin, as you call it, is not a person, therefore we cannot let it go anywhere. It can be removed from our keeping, if you’re brave enough to try, but we doubt you will be.
We have the measure of you now, Sarah Zellaby, and you’re no threat to us.
Come peacefully. Stand trial as we intended you to do.
Give up this idea that you can face us. We refuse it. ”
I raised an eyebrow, reaching out mentally as I tried to follow this projection back to its origins.
I hadn’t gone far before I encountered a junction, and realized this wasn’t a member of the collective, as I had been assuming: this was the entire collective, five queens braided together and presenting themselves to me through one impeccably designed persona, like the Wizard of Oz in a black jumpsuit with no Emerald City in sight.
“If you hurt him in any way, I will make you pay for it on a scale you have never even imagined,” I said, and mentally snipped one of the five ribbons of thought feeding into the braid that was “her.” The effect was immediate and electric.
She jerked like I’d jabbed her physically with a pin, eyes widening.
At the same time, her hair became a little less smooth, her jumpsuit a little less flawless.
Her projected perfection was a group project, and I had interfered with the group.
Oopsie.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Stop that right now.”
“Stop what?” I asked innocently, and broke the second thread. “I thought it was just the two of us in here, sizing each other up. Was I wrong about that?”
“We are not singular,” she said. “We are never singular. Even a … a cuckoo like yourself should understand that. We are the collective. We control this city and this territory, we are the voice of these people. Our desires are their desires, our dreams are their dreams. We speak with the voice of Johrlar.”
“Oops,” I said, snapping the third thread. This time, she staggered, looking almost like she was going to vomit. “Does that hurt? Why don’t you stop me?”
“We will,” she said, eyes wide with fear.
She began backing up, opening space between us.
It wasn’t real—distance was just a concept here, not a real thing that could extend between people—but when I reached out for her, she was farther away.
I couldn’t quite grasp the remainder of the braid. It was too far removed from me.
“We will stop you,” she said, terror in her voice.
“You think you can come here, to our place, our territory, and threaten us so? We will stop you. We will end you. And once we have destroyed everything you are, we will rewrite you, so that even in death, you answer only to a name you didn’t choose.
You are a threat too great to be endured, and we will not stand for it. ”
She vanished then, winking out like a computer program being disconnected.
The white went with her. I stared for a moment at the space where she’d been, then spun and looked behind me.
There was nothing there but true void, black and empty and endless.
I turned back to where the collective had been, and the blackness was there as well, consuming everything.
Frustrated, I sat down to wait for myself to wake up.