I know what Grandfather doesn’t want to hear. He doesn’t want to hear that I’ll pick up the razors and enter the Royale, he doesn’t want to hear that after decades of bondage, I will choose to squander my freedom by getting myself maimed in a fight.
I remember the freedom the Royale gave me, a freedom Grandfather will never understand: a freedom of feeling, a freedom of weightlessness, a freedom to be pure motion, to be more than I am. When I try to put my words together, I stumble, blinded by thoughts of you watching me dance, by my need to dazzle you again.
I look Grandfather in the eye, careful to strangle down all the hatred and anger that I have carried with me on my travels.
“I will obey my elders and love my friends,” I say. None of this is a lie.
Without another look at me, he grasps a glass beaker between his thumb and index finger and pushes it toward me.
Smoke wafts from the opening of the beaker.
“Drink,” he says.
A small dry chuckle falls from my mouth. This is the last of Grandfather’s potions that will ever pass my lips. As I raise the beaker to my mouth, he says, “May freedom be all that you wish it to be. May you be strong under the weight of its burden.”
I throw my head back and take a big gulp. The potion swells in my throat. I slam the beaker on the table and spit out the fluid that was in my mouth. As soon as I draw my hand away, Grandfather and the table are gone.
Traveling back home is like being smacked with a hundred small hands. There is nothing to see, but plenty of sound. After my skin has been slapped raw, I begin to tingle all over. An intense tickle starts at the crown of my head and splits my body, traveling right down to my pelvis. Heat spears up my throat and I jackknife forward, gagging.
When the vomit comes, I am back on the compo, my face a mess of mucus and tears. I force myself to my hands and knees and scramble off the compo. Then I look around me with wild, shifting uncertainty. Pain pulses through me like a mantra, but I cannot let it consume me.
All around me are the tools of Grandfather’s treachery. My skin bristles at remembering the scars, the mutilations, and the brutalities. I know he will dismiss the idea that I was ever in danger. He’ll crow over the power of his chemicals and insist that he was in complete control.
The urge to upend his worktable and shatter his beakers overtakes me, but I am too weak to stand. I hear Grandmother moving around in the kitchen overhead. I want to cry out, but I can’t squeeze sound out of my throat. I crawl over to the stairs. When I try to lift my hand to the doorknob, my limbs tremble violently. Hatred for Grandfather burns in my heart.
I ram my head against the door, blind to everything but the need to be seen, to be held. I bang the door with my head again and again, oblivious to the impact of the wood against my skull. Before blood breaks through my skin, exhaustion consumes me. In its wake, a blackout blankets my consciousness—and without knowing if any one has heard me, I collapse to the floor.
The ferret’s claws clicked echoes into the silence. I wanted to scream out. Instead I listened to the rasp of grandfather scratching his chin. Everyone’s gaze followed the ferret as it scurried around the compass, but I turned away. Without looking I knew the ferret would be running in dizzying circles. The dull thunk of ferret teeth sinking into wood rang out in the divining room. Grandfather’s robes rustled as he stood.
It was only compulsion—not faith, not hope—that pulled me toward the compass. I stood behind Grandfather as he leaned over the ferret’s inert body. He unfurled a long bony finger and stroked the ferret’s head. The ferret loosened its grip, and a servant removed the wood block from the ferret’s jaws. My breath caught in anticipation. I hated my body for that. I knew every movement of this divination was empty—useless—yet here were my cheeks, flushed, as the servant hung the block in the space for the speed directive.
“D,” the crowd yelled in a burst of noise. The servant turned back to the compass. They all watched the ferret begin circling the compass again, but I kept my eyes on the block. After years of use, the letter was almost obscured by teeth marks. I squinted, wanting to be certain the block did indeed have a “D” carved on its face. My scrutiny was aborted by the sound of the ferret sinking its teeth into another block. The servant lifted it and placed it in the space for the direction coordinates. By the time the crowd yelled out “U,” the ferret had already selected the last block: “B”—the distance directive.
“D—U—B,” my grandfather mumbled to himself as the ferret backed away from the compass.
He turned to all gathered and proclaimed “Dub!” in a loud voice. The crowd, fools that they were, started clapping. They still believed Grandfather and his ferret avtandi would bring us home.
Grandfather redirected our aimless little bubble according to the new speed:direction:distance directives, then drifted away from the compass. He called his avtandi with low clicking noises, and I prepared to leave his side. Grandfather held a shaky hand in front of his solar plexus. It took a full minute for the sphere of flesh and organs to detach from his torso. Slowly, the five-inch globe gravitated toward his hand, leaving a circular hole straight through his body.
The sphere floated silently down to the floor as the ferret approached. The sphere undulated, and the ferret stepped into it. Rather than watch the remainder of the ritual, I fell to the floor, scattering my body into a thousand round molecules and rolling into a distant corner of the divining room. Even so dissolved, I heard the hiss of Grandfather’s sphere engulfing the ferret. I heard the whisper of Grandfather’s hand as he waved his sphere of flesh up from the floor and guided it back into his center.
A gnawing ugliness had begun to eat at my insides. I was certain the servants’ whispers were true: we were at the bitter end of our five-year supplies. Every day, as Grandfather paced the marble halls of our bubble, I struggled against terrible anger. The reality rested cold and hard inside me: Grandfather would soon decide who would feed and who would starve.
“Granddaughter!” grandfather yelled.
I gathered myself up, molecules sliding across the floor to re-form my tall lanky body. Grandfather stood in the middle of the divining room with his avtandi in his hand.
“I mean to consult the compass again,” Grandfather said.
The ferret looked at me with beady glimmering eyes.
“But Grandfather, you just checked it this morning.”
Grandfather paused and parted his beard obsessively. Then he repeated himself in a shaky voice.
“Yes, but I mean to consult the compass again.”
I lowered my head, but I could see Grandfather’s forearm struggling to hold the ferret steady. When the ferret’s claws started rattling, I watched its every move. After it sank its teeth into the blocks and the servant had hung them, Grandfather neared the compass. I followed a few steps behind. The crowd yelled “D!—U!—B!” with the enthusiasm of children, but grandfather made no grand announcement this time.
“They’re exactly the same, Grandfather,” I said.
Grandfather said nothing. His fingers returned to his chin to fondle his beard.
While watching his worried motions, something took over me. Even as I did it I did not know my reasons for my actions. When the ferret scampered away from the compass to return to its haven of grandfather flesh, I placed my hand in front of my belly and coaxed a sphere of my own flesh toward my palm. My sphere drifted to the ground, and the ferret halted, confused. Its beady eyes swung from my sphere to grandfather’s and back again.
The ferret crawled cautiously toward my grandfather’s flesh, then turned away to sniff at mine. Grandfather watched his avtandi’s confusion impassively. Not one of his bony fingers left his beard to alter the outcome. The ferret’s cautiousness deteriorated into panic as it scuttled back and forth between our spheres so rapidly, it became a blur. I took a deep breath and glanced at Grandfather. His face was marked by a dull resignation I could
