not stomach. I lifted my hand to retract the challenge, but before I could withdraw my flesh, the ferret veered sharply, and plunged into my sphere.
My flesh encircled Grandfather’s avtandi; a deep, ragged breath seeped from Grandfather’s lungs. Was that a slight smile creasing Grandfather’s lips? Fear, paranoia, and regret exploded in my chest. Why was it so hard to breathe? Grandfather’s voice cut through my hysteria.
“It is done,” he muttered.
Those grave words pushed me into action. I waved my hand over my sphere as if my muscles had performed the task a thousand times. My flesh drifted up from the floor, but Grandfather didn’t bother with his. He left his globe of organs discarded at his feet, preferring to watch me—eyes dark with anticipation—as my sphere refitted into my torso.
The moment the flesh rejoined my body an electric shock ripped through me. I yelled and fell to my knees. My palms and forehead were wet with sweat. The room receded from my eyesight as visions flashed before my eyes. I saw me begging my parents to let me go on a brief day trip in Grandfather’s bubble. My parents arguing about Grandfather’s incompetence. Grandfather intentionally setting the bubble on the wrong course. Grandfather taking this ferret, this same avtandi from his grandfather. Grandfather watching his grandfather die.
Terror welled in my throat, but my mind—making sense of the visions at a feverish pace—quelled my emotions. When I regained focus, I was staring at the marble floor. A palpable hush filled the divining room; everyone stared mutely. I heard a muffled groan behind me. When I twisted around on all fours, I saw Grandfather, shriveled into a tiny ball, dying just as his grandfather had. I looked into his eyes searching for a flicker of recognition, hatred, pain, but there was nothing there.
“You…” The condemnation burning in my lungs would not spring from my mouth. Could I blame Grandfather for attempting to escape extinction?
“I…” I started to claim ignorance for my actions, but the apology died on my lips.
“How…” I wanted to ask what alternative I’d had, but my need to be proclaimed innocent wilted just as quickly as it had sprouted. We passengers were the innocents here. He would starve us, before taking us home. Those visions did not lie.
I shook off the last remnants of concern I held for Grandfather and struggled to stand. The unfamiliar weight in my belly pulled me back toward the floor. I strained against the increased gravity and fought my way to my feet.
“Dub,” I whispered while forcing myself to forget Grandfather’s dying body. There was no time for mourning.
I shuffled forward, testing the new balance my avtandi-heavy body required. I neared the compass searching my subconscious for a vision of Grandfather navigating the bubble. I almost lost my breath when I mimicked Grandfather’s navigating stance. I bent over, momentarily disoriented. Then I straightened, took a big gulp of air, and set a course for home.
The seekers wait, hungrily, as K-Ush rises and hovers close to the ceiling of the dogra. Her large eye is closed, but she can feel them—the seekers—crouched on the dirt floor below. They send up shards of prayer, puncturing K-Ush’s trance. As their needs—hesitant, but insistent—hit her, a skull-splitting pain flashes across her forehead. Her large skeletal hands twitch. She hears the tiny, timid voice of a seeker plead for help. She’d like to drift down to the floor, wrap her bony fingers around the seeker’s neck, and squeeze.
“What is at the core of you?” K-Ush booms in a deep voice that is not her own.
As the seeker replies, K-Ush rotates her head back and forth. Light glints off the metal band curved around her shaved head. Her lips part, sharing the prophecy the seeker is begging to hear. A loud, raspy breath explodes in her ear; K-Ush’s eye flutters. She almost opens her eye and breaks her trance, but she clenches her fists and fights to hold on. She must not be distracted by Sheya’s dying breaths.
As K-Ush continues to prophesy, the sound of Sheya’s breathing disappears. She has even ceased to feel the seekers’ miserable expectant need. An unfamiliar dizziness blooms in her chest. Her eye flies open. She is no longer in the dogra. All around her, K-Ush feels the condensation of a gathering storm, but she sees nothing. She knows she should focus on the storm—obtain facts, ascertain dimensions, compile a projected duration—but she pushes it away. Sheya will complain. “It is a wero’s job to protect the village,” she will lecture, but K-Ush doesn’t care. Does not want to gather useful information for the survival of the seekers.
The air around K-Ush’s body starts to undulate. A warm wetness touches her at the base of her neck. She turns to look behind her and sees a flesh-colored body zip away. In the distance she sees another form, another wero it seems. The wero beckons, motioning for K-Ush to join her. K-Ush takes a step forward toward the wero, but the wetness returns and coaxes K-Ush to be still. It brushes from the nape of her neck down her spine.
“K-Ush! K-Ush!”
K-Ush hears her name being called faintly, as if from a distance. She ignores the call. Instead, she pushes herself against the wet warmth. She turns her head quickly, and again she sees the flesh-colored body zip away. This time she can discern that it is a tall, four-legged creature. She faces forward, now with a smile tugging at her lips. As she stares ahead, eye focused on the wero in the distance, the wet warmth picks up at the base of K-Ush’s spine. She turns her head slowly, keeping her body still. The flesh-colored creature stands behind her, its gaunt face lowered to her waist. Its teeth are bared as a long, green tongue hangs out of its mouth and strokes the back of K-Ush’s legs.
“K-Ush!”
K-Ush hears her name being called again. This time she leans away from the creature and allows herself to be pulled back to the dogra. When she opens her eye, Sheya is hovering before her.
“You need ho-resh-li,” Sheya says. Sheya lifts a hand, and four seekers rise to the ceiling. They pull K-Ush into a prone position and, without looking directly at her, hoist her onto their shoulders. Just as Sheya waves her hand to lower K-Ush and the seekers to the ground, K-Ush whispers, “Wa-Sheya, I saw another wero.”
Sheya dips down to K-Ush with a speed K-Ush did not know the old wero still possessed. Sheya hovers horizontally over K-Ush’s body.
“What did you say?” Sheya demands.
“I said I saw another wero.”
“You are the last wero,” Sheya replies.
“And a pale creature licked me, Wa-Sheya. It was wonderful…”
Sheya snaps her fingers, and the seekers thud to the ground. K-Ush pulls herself into a vertical hover, leaning away from Sheya.
“You saw the ki-ra-he?” croaks Sheya.
“Ki-ra-he?!?” K-Ush asks, trying to keep panic from creeping into her voice. “No, n-n-n-o-o-o, Wa- Sheya.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
K-Ush’s lips start to tremble.
“Speak out,” Sheya roars. “Do not behave as if you have never given prophecy…speak!”
“Something licked me. It wasn’t bad. It felt good.”
Sheya grasps one of K-Ush’s shoulders and drags her back up to the ceiling of the dogra. She seems not to notice that their heads bump against the wet ceiling.
“You were not yet born, so you do not know what blasphemy you speak,” Sheya says, her face close to K- Ush’s.
“But Wa-Sheya…”
Sheya lifts her chin and fixes a steely glare on K-Ush’s face. K-Ush silences herself and lowers her head respectfully.
“You know this story by heart child,” Sheya says, her voice wavering, this time with emotion, not old age. “You know the ki-ra-he decimated our villages twelve times over before we formed any protection, and you insist
