“Arabel,” she tried to cry out. But Lina only sputtered and coughed, and involuntarily, she squeezed down below. The fruit inside her was being crushed to pulp whether she wished it or not. It was being mixed with the water invading her body, the water that caused her to choke. And soon she knew, would be part of the waters filling her sex as the third winemaker pressed mercilessly inward—the force of her fingers rending the finished wine from her tender flesh and into the final winemaker’s vessel.
Through tear-shrouded eyes, Lina looked frantically for Arabel. She succeeded only in finding the queen, and try as she might, Lina could not unlock her gaze from the queen’s visage. The queen’s mouth appeared to be moving, and she was gesturing with her arms, but her message was lost in the constant hum of vibrating bodies clinging to the Great Tree, and the pulse of the music.
A cup was pressed to Lina’s lips. The heady aroma assaulting Lina’s nose let her know it was royal wine. She drank it in spite of herself. Lina’s focus began to change.
The writhing bodies surrounding her were no longer distinguishable as brightly-colored, individual diploids. They were now a mass of coordinated movement and color, with bio-luminescent designs marching from one woman’s skin to the next. Lina squeezed her eyes shut, but the procession of glowing tattoos continued as an after-image, painted over the inside of Lina’s lids. Her head began to ache. And as Lina screwed up her eyes tighter against the pain, and then the queen’s words suddenly began to make sense.
“My children…” she heard. And then a piercing ringing, followed by, “celebration.” Lina opened her eyes.
The queen and her court were bathed in an unnatural golden glow, the source of which Lina could not detect. The queen’s arms were raised. Lina could hear her quite clearly and distinctly now.
“Come to me my children and drink from this cup, our royal wine, in a celebration of my eternal reign.”
An explosion rocked the palace grounds, something that Lina would have blamed on the hallucinations of the tree flower and royal wine had it not been for the sunlight streaming in from a hole in the ceiling that did not exist moments before, and the cascade of falling rock crushing the bodies beneath it. The queen’s lips continued moving, but Lina’s time of clarity was cut off.
The driving beat of the music came crashing through, assaulting her ears along with the screams of the injured. The once beautiful dance of myriad tattooed bodies merging as one, gave way once again to the chaotic throng, clawing and crawling their way over the branches of the Great Tree—a tree that all at once looked impossibly gnarled and ancient, sickly even. As Lina looked up to the royal court, the queen’s mask began to slip, revealing a face, that much like the colony’s Great Tree, was impossibly old. Fear pheromones were in the air and quickly overtaking trance-like euphoria that existed before.
A small, tight knot of diploids was scrambling up to the upper bough of the Great Tree. From their tongues, they hurled harsh words against the queen. In their hands, they carried rocks, which Lina suspected she would soon see flying as the group rapidly closed the distance. But before that happened, several groups of diploid soldiers descended upon the mob, and with truncheons swinging, quickly turned them to a screaming, bloodied mass of broken bodies.
Lina felt a revulsion bubbling up from deep within her, the likes of which she had never felt. Her stomach knotted as the bile rose. She tore her eyes from the scene of violence erupting in front of her and began frantically searching for Arabel amid the confusion, screaming her name. Nearby, a truncheon connected with a skull in a sickening thud. Lina vomited and tumbled from the Tree. She passed out before she could determine where it was that she had landed.
Chapter 5: Island of the Missing
During the end of days, when the waters ran dry and the only clouds on the horizon were thick and choking, the Wise Queen gathered her people under the shelter of the Great Tree. There they remained, hands joined, encircling the broad trunk and looking ever skyward. And until the end, singing songs of hope to the young queens aloft, high above the gathering storm.
—Selected passages from The Book of the Origin by Bella Aurelius Nobilis, Modern Language Translation
* * * *
“Lina, you’ve got to get up. We have to go.”
Lina opened her eyes just a crack, and as a shadow in the center of the stabbing sunlight assaulting her, Lina saw the worried face of her mentor.
“Just a little longer. I can still get to school on time. Promise.” Lina closed her eyes.
“Lina! Get up!” Mentor had her by the shoulders.
Lina opened her eyes again and reality began to sink in—the dust and debris, the hole blown in the palace roof, the sound of jack boots marching on stone. Her mentor was there, pulling her arms, helping her up. Mentor wore a gray tunic, looking terribly out of place at the gala where everyone else was dressed so festively. There was blood on her sleeve and the scent of alarm in the surrounding air.
Behind her mentor, another diploid woman approached, her beautiful, glowing, inked face screwed up with worry. “Can she walk?” the woman asked.
Mentor nodded and dragged Lina to her feet despite her protests. Lina stared at the newcomer, with her painted face and gaily-colored glowing bracelets clattering together at both wrists, but it was not until she spied
