Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“What difference if I have? Glizzee is the only thing keeping me sane. That has nothing to do with what I asked you. I asked you to give the hormone to me. For Taneff. He’s my child, Saleff. I can’t let him die.”

“Arbsen. You, of all people, should know the folly of that. Remember Kora? Kora and her son, Vorn. Remember them?”

“Taneff isn’t in the least like Vorn. I think Taneff’s a Talker. Vorn wasn’t.”

“No, Vorn wasn’t. And Taneff isn’t a Talker, either, Arbsen. I’ve been testing him myself, the last time just yesterday. Do you think I wouldn’t do that, carefully, with a member of our own family?”

“You made a mistake,” she wept. “I know you did. He’s a Talker. I just know it.”

“If he were, my dear, I would know it. Can’t you resign yourself, Arbsen? Go to Sterf. She’ll help you.”

“How could she help me! She never had this happen to her. She had a damn Talker. She had you!” The sound of wild weeping erupted into the quiet glade. In the houses, lights went on. Silence fell below.

Medoor Babji shut the window, hideously uncomfortable. There were things she felt she should remember, things she wanted to ask Burg on the morning.

And on the morning, she could not. Burg had gone to Jake’s for a time, she was told, taking his family with him. He would be back for her after Conjunction. There were only two human families left in Isle Point, neither of them with young people. Despite her affection for Saleff’s family, Medoor Babji felt abandoned.

The whole settlement seemed to be under emotional strain. There was a sense of communal anguish which kept her from asking Saleff any questions. Several times over the succeeding days, she met Taneff and Treemi in the woods or on the beach paths. Taneff scarcely seemed to know her. His voice was only a croak, though the rest of him was becoming glorious, frilled with feathers, flushed with rose. Always, Arbsen followed them at a distance. She had grown gaunt, almost skeletal. Almost every night there were dances somewhere nearby. Medoor Babji was not invited to attend, but no one could hide the sound of the drums.

And Arbsen was suddenly much in evidence, a hectic flush around her beak, very talkative. Both Saleff and Sterf watched her with a worried grimace, and Medoor Babji wondered if she should not absent herself from the Treeci house.

Which point was decisively answered by Sterf herself. “Mating time is difficult for us,” she said. “Emotionally, you understand. Some of our loved children are far away, and we worry whether they are treated well. You are self-effacing and sensitive, Medoor Babji, but being so tactful is hard on you and us. Burg’s house is empty. Would you mind using it for the next few days?”

To which Medoor Babji bowed and made appropriate expressions of sympathy and concern, all the while afire with curiosity. There were drums that night, a fever in the blood. There were drums the night following. And on the third night, Conjunction came. Mindful of the laws of hospitality, Medoor Babji kept herself strictly within the Burg house, whiling the long, sleepless hours away by reading books. Burg had more of them than Queen Babji had, and Queen Babji had a good many. The drums went on most of the night, trailing away into a sad emptiness a few hours before dawn.

She woke late in the morning. The village was still silent, empty as a sucked puncon peel. Away in the woods somewhere, smoke rose, a vast, purposeful burning. The reek of it made the hairs on Medoor Babji’s neck stand up—smoke, but more than smoke. Incense, too. And something else which the incense did not quite cover. There was a feeling of sadness, a smell of bittersweet horror. She sat on the porch with her book, drinking endless cups of tea, waiting for something to happen, half-afraid that something would.

What did happen was that Burg’ returned, with his family, grim-faced and white. Medoor walked down to meet him at the shore. “Have you seen anyone today, Medoor Babji?”