Chapter Thirty-Two: Nanda

Oceanus still smells new, though I have been here for months now. In my hometown I was used to the sound of the wind in trees, but wind on the water still wakes me up occasionally, and I am not yet used to how dry my lips get. I walk from my home to the shop where I work, and the planks beneath me creak and groan while the waves shake the city and rock everyone gently. When I first moved here I was ill for days, but now I do not feel it.

I think that if there were birds I would be more comfortable, but here the skies are empty except for shuttles and stars. Old Earth was full of birds, especially at night, and the ones on Kiran were larger, and prettier, with voices that felt almost fake to my ears, but here there is only silence. It makes me understand why being outside in the spring used to irritate Elene so much.

It had never occurred to me how lucky I was to move from Old Earth to Kiran until I left. My home planet was choked with green, and it was common on Kiran, but here there is only blue and grey. Newearth was grey and brown, dead, and Midbar brown and red, and so Oceanus seems more full of life, but I miss the trees. Nothing shields me from the sun now except awnings. Asha would hate how bright it is here.

I am on the docks to get away from her, though I have seen no word of her for days. It is habit by now to escape from the feed panels when I have time to myself. Sometimes it feels like I see more of Asha now that I am no longer with her. Ever since Seamus' seeding, she has been everywhere. Any time I walk by a feed panel, or my boss goes to check the news of the trial in his shop, all that is on the screen is her eyes. Her scar.

It is interesting watching people meet her for the first time. People will slow their strides and linger, and stare, but not like my friends stared when we found her. Even when she collapsed on her last day of questioning, weeks before Seamus' trial was thrown out, the reaction was sympathy and not fear. Here, she fits in, and I hate myself for how angry that still makes me.

The first time I saw her, I thought that she was dead. Blood-smell filled the air, and the cat she was pinned under was long cold. But when we moved the carcass, she stirred, and we were left wondering how she had managed to survive. We were so curious about her. People rarely traveled from village to village, and she was hardly old enough to be out on her own. We found her knife, and I skinned the cat with it so that she would have a reminder of the battle in case she came around.

She always has the pelt with her, but the cat gave her its own reminder. Those scars on her neck, which everyone here seems so fascinated by, always call up memories of her first few days with us. My mother washed and dressed the wounds as best she could, but we could not get her to eat or drink, and everyone believed that she would die despite our efforts.

Then she opened her eyes for the first time, and I felt everyone wish that she had.

My mother hated Asha, and she does not understand that this is why I love her. I felt the compassion draining from her, and it made me want to protect the blue-eyed misfit we'd brought to our village. Mother had not seen the way she was splayed out in the woods. She had not realized that the bruising we found on her face when we wiped the blood away could not have been caused by her battle with the cat. She had never been hit in the face. My little brother and I sparred all the time, so I knew. She needed someone to protect her, but no one in my village was willing to.

The Elder wanted to heal her and send her on her way, but I offered our house for her and argued that she was clearly a good hunter. When she had healed enough to begin taking care of herself, it also became obvious that she had better training to care for the sick than anyone in the village. Mother told me that if Father were still alive, I would be disappointing him with my decisions, but since he was not there to tell me no, I brought Asha into our lives.

I still wonder if this was the right choice for Asha. She hated my village, which did nothing to help her relationships with its inhabitants, since she thought so strongly that everyone could hear her. I did what I could to make it easier on her, spending time with her away from the others, hunting with her. When I found out that she played the flute, we used to practice together whenever we could. That was the only time the others could stand to be around her because the music silenced her mind. And she usually played with her eyes closed, so they could pretend that she was one of them.

My mother knew that I loved her before I did. Had she not confronted me, I might never have figured it out. If I had never figured it out, I might have stayed when she left, and I would not be on Oceanus. But she drew me closer to Asha again when she angrily asked me “how I could love someone like that.”

Too easily, I am sad to say. Asha may be difficult to handle, but she is incredibly easy to love. And because of that, I chose her over my own mother and asked the Elder for permission to marry her into our family.

Everyone was horrified. Most of all Asha, who did not let me do it, even though I had been given permission. I thought that this might increase the others' opinion of her, but instead whispers of her ingratitude and condescending attitude filled the village. She might have been cast out after all if the recruiter had not arrived.

I will never forget the look on his face when he first saw her. She wandered into the center of town, confused by all the high emotions but incapable of keeping herself from seeking their epicenter. His blue eyes, disturbingly bright against his pale skin, met hers the instant they were in sight of one another. We expected kinship. We expected happiness that he had found someone else familiar amidst the small sea of dark bodies surrounding him. But as his mouth fell open in horror, she began to cry.

He was the last person to react to her like that. At the University she was a curiosity, and then a fixture, though very few people were brave enough to call her a friend. On the feeds, she is “adorable.” The screen has taken something from her that made her seem alien to everyone and left a charm that I know she is capable of showing but rarely manages to express consistently. In the screen, her presence has no effect. They cannot feel her wrapping around them and absorbing them into her. And so her eyes are pretty, and her scar is a novelty, and the way she kicks her feet like a child becomes a pleasing mannerism instead of a sign of her distraction.

I find it hard to talk to her now that there is distance between us. Now that I cannot feel her, we cannot communicate properly. I wish I were better with messaging and letters, but they never mean what I want them to, and it is doubly painful for Asha to try to reply. And so we do not talk, but I see her on the feeds and think good thoughts and hope that Reid is taking care of her. Though I doubt it.

The ocean breeze picks up, and I am startled by the sound of footsteps on the dock. The boss' daughter is running toward me, hair flying behind her in the wind. It still startles me to see women with their hair loose, and it is worse on her than the Kiranese women because she looks more like a Native. If she kept it tied back I would have a much easier time speaking to her. She likes to practice speaking in Native with me, and so I am not surprised to hear her do it now out of pure habit.

“Nanda-ku! Nanda-ku!” She is not smiling, and her worry makes my heart race. I have never seen her not smiling. Part of this is because she has liked me since I arrived with her uncle, and part of this is because she is just that kind of person. I have never felt a negative emotion in her, which is why what I am feeling now makes my mouth go thick and dry.

“What is wrong?”

“Inside. Please, the feeds, you must see!” She grabs my hands in hers, and then we are running together. Similar scenes are occurring around the rest of the shops, and I feel panic begin to hang thick in the air.

She shoves me at the feed panel, and I see my boss staring at me, hands spread helplessly, as I take in the scene. I realize what I am staring at and feel my stomach twist.

The University is on fire. I did not know that stone could burn.

The screen is full of screaming students, struggling against uniformed, fully-fledged officers. Sometimes. Sometimes the officers are screaming with them, and I see Midbaran refugees in the mix.

“Your planet has lost its mind, Nanda-ku,” gasps my boss.

My planet? It must be so, because what I see has my heart pounding. When? When did I start caring? I fall to the floor where I can stare and worry at the same time.

The green-eyed feeder is there. What could have made him go there on purpose?

“Well, folks, as you can see, the trains aren't running, so I can't get out. This means you get a live feed of the riot for as long as my camera keeps working. You can thank me later.” He winks at the screen, but he is pale. Behind him, I think I see Caroline, face drawn. She is pulling him into a building. “The teachers are trying to re-establish control, but it is proving difficult, because the instructors appear to be rioting, as well.”

The panel flickers, and I see another feeder's channel. Another city, which I recognize from when Asha was there for the trial. The Capital.

“It is like that everywhere,” my boss sighs. “And....” Another flicker, and desert fills the screen, but the people are reacting the same way. But they are not empaths, because there are no empaths left on Midbar.

“What happened?” I shake my head and bury my fingers in my hair. There has been no warning. The feeders have been quiet for days about Reid and Asha and Seamus. How could it have gone from silence to this?

“Jaden Ahern interviewed Desmond Doyle and two of his students this morning. Asha and Reid never got off the train to the University. The students saw the feed and flooded the Capital, demanding that the police search for her. So the police did what police do to crowds, and the students back at campus felt it and got angry.”

I remember hearing about something like this happening on Newearth. We learned about it my first quarter. It had taken months for the planet to repair the damage.

“But Midbar?”

“Worried about their families trapped at the University. Wouldn't you be?”

It wasn't a question he needed me to answer.

The screen flickers again, and I see Jaden once more. A clip of the interview, I think, because I see Seamus, and Elene. Seamus is trying to explain what it was like while he was under, and Elene is clinging to him like he is the only solid object in the room. Behind them, Desmond, looking—

I have never seen him make that face. I shiver, and look back down. Still, it makes me glad that he is her uncle, after all. I would make that face if I had a younger generation to care for. Though when I have reached that time of my life I hope that I will not have the need.

“...Where is Asha?”

“No one knows, Nanda-ku,” my boss manages, but when I rise to my feet his arms are around me. “No, you stay here.”

“I have to find her!”

“If you go back there you will not be able to! Look at the screen!”

Animal faces look back at me, and I think of Asha trapped somewhere, curled around those feral minds. He feels my panic and begins to breathe heavily, but does not let go. “You see? You are in no frame of mind to handle this. She is too close to you.”

I try anyway, but the minute the riots started Oceanus cut off all transport to Kiran, and so I am forced to watch from a distance. I am surprised more than once by how bad the images make me feel. Perhaps I was happier there than I had wanted to believe. Maybe Asha hadn't been my only reason for living there, after all. I find myself worrying about Bastian, and Seamus, and Elene. Even Eric, my Teacher, is in my thoughts more than I expect him to be.

The fires burn for days. I feel like all I do is stare at the screen and watch buildings break and people scream and count the growing dead. But Asha does not surface, and I do not see Seamus, Elene, or Desmond again. I message Bastian, but there is no response. The planet has gone silent, which I am told by feeders from Oceanus is intentional, because they do not want the riots to spread. If no information gets out, the empaths in other areas will stay calm.

I hate that they are correct. Oceanus' air is easier to breathe once contact with Kiran is lost completely, and our own government begins to talk with less fear that we, too, will succumb to rioting. We are reminded that a large-scale riot has never broken out on this planet, and I am relieved until my boss tells me that is because they shoot seeders. It is too dangerous here, with our floating cities. The police are less lenient, and much more likely to kill early and prevent greater damage to all.

“Before we lost contact with Jaden we were told the government had decided to deactivate all wristbands and feed panels on the planet until the situation is back under control,” we are told. And so Kiran drifts blindly while the feeders turn to Midbar, where civil war has broken out. But Oceanus does not care about Midbar. They asked for this. Old blood, bad blood, keeps us all calm. It sickens me.

I force myself to be realistic. All of my friends are empaths, and all of them were at the University. The chances of them surviving are slim, even with Desmond and Caroline doing what they can to keep them safe. I wish that we would be told where Asha was. I believe, and the feeders do as well, that if she were found, the planet would fall back under control. That is the problem with empaths gaining a charismatic face. She wanted to do good when she went to help Seamus, but I think that had she not gone at all, this would not have happened. Seamus was a seeder, and so if he had been taken from us, we would have shaken our heads and moved on, because that is how it works. But Asha had done nothing wrong, and so we are outraged.

Rayland. I remember his walk and his eyes and his teeth and shudder. Did he do this? People are dying by the hundreds, but they are almost all empaths, so perhaps this is a good turn of events for him. I saw the feed of him with Asha in the courtroom. Had he tried to get to her before the planet went insane?

Had he succeeded before we lost contact?