by Elana Gomel
The first day of loneliness was bearable.
I stayed in the Tree shrine for an hour, conferring with the priests about the Hatching. They let me touch Gregor’s face before I left, and I felt nothing. This waxen mask was not the man I had loved. He was gone.
I went back to our den, feeling light-headed. I was listening to familiar sounds: the shuffling of many feet, as people were streaming through the bore-tunnels in the Trunk; the din of overlapping conversations; the susurrus of Grubs chewing their way through the warm flesh of the Tree. I had drifted away from my creche-mates since I met Gregor, spending all my free time with him. Now, perhaps, I could reconnect with them. It felt as if a layer of insulation was removed from between me and the world. I was as tender as a newly hatched aphid.
When I crawled into the den I had shared with Gregor, the warm wood touched me like his skin. Even though I was deep inside the Trunk, I could almost feel the tendrils of damp mist caressing the bark as the sky outside dimmed from dull silver to charcoal and then to black. I suddenly remembered how, in the creche, I would go to the edge of our Branch, studying the foggy gulf above and below, trying to imagine the Roots or the Top.
I unfolded my sleeping pallet and pressed myself against the grainy wall. I said good night to my lantern. Of course, I knew that the emerald-colored lantern-bug, humming to itself in its little cage, did not care for my words. It was trained to curl up its luminescent segmented tail and go to sleep when fed. Still, it was company. And so, I slept, the pain of losing Gregor retreating to the edges of my numbed mind.
Until I opened my eyes, woken by the lantern-bug’s flash, and realized I was alone. Gregor was gone. The hollow of the den closed around me like a fist. I started hyperventilating and rushed out into the bore-tunnel, almost colliding with somebody.
It took me a moment to realize why the big stocky woman was so familiar. Of course, she was my creche-mate Lia. We had been brought up together, part of the same clutch of babies. But since I had met Gregor, I had barely exchanged a word with her.
“Rosie?” Her bulging arms were crossed on her wide chest. I remembered she was an aphid-herder. These people had to be strong to maneuver their floppy mindless charges.
I nodded and tried to sidle away. Suddenly I could not bear to see a pretend compassion on her face, barely hiding a smug schadenfreude. Like the rest of my creche-mates, she had disapproved of my relationship with Gregor.
“What’s new?” she insisted, and I realized she knew. It would be better to let it out at once and escape.
“Gregor…he is dead.”
“Your?” she lifted one bushy eyebrow and I hated her for forcing me to say what was obvious.
Gregor was officially nothing to me. He was not my breeding partner; I had not bred with anybody yet, still waiting for the Tree Council to issue a permit. And of course, he was not my creche-mate, having been relocated to our Branch from the Crooked Branch below.
But he had been the most important person in my life, bar none. I had loved him; and he had loved me. I did not care that the Council frowned on romance, emphasizing how we together were all part of the Tree, how no life was more important than any other…blah, blah. He had been my world and now he was gone.
“My lover,” I said, challenging Lia’s disapproving frown.
She had the grace to look embarrassed.
“When is the Hatching?” she asked.
“Today,” I swallowed saliva, my throat feeling as scratchy as a dry leaf. “In two hours.”
“It’s a good day for that,” she said awkwardly. “No rain. May Gregor find his wings.”
“May Gregor find his wings,” I repeated dully, and the conventional formula suddenly hit me with a new surge of anguish, so much so that I almost staggered, as I suddenly realized what it really meant. There are words that are worn smooth by repetition until they are just comforting sounds. And then something happens, and their real meaning floods back into them like subtle poison.
“May they find their wings.” I had said it so many times, at the funerals of creche-mates, or councilmen, or strangers who happen to die on our Branch. But I never really thought what it meant.
They would take Gregor – the body that just a day ago had snuggled against mine in our den – and toss it off the Branch. It will fall through the mist, rotating in the humid air like a shed leaf. And then it would dive into the thickening roil of clouds that hid the Roots and vanish. Forever. The priests said that the virtuous ones would sprout wings and ascend to the Top, there to join the Flyers gamboling in perpetual light of the sky above the mist; while the wicked ones would drop into the Roots and become blind Larvae, patiently chewing their way back to the Top. But I had never believed it. I could only believe what I could see. And what I had seen were dead bodies disappearing into the mist.
I found myself shaken by uncontrollable sobs. When I lifted my tear-smeared face, Lia was gone.
I was still reliving Gregor’s last moments as I walked through the bore-tunnels into the communal bathhouse, head down to avoid curious glances. Fortunately, at this hour most people were at work. The lantern-bugs dimmed their emerald shine, so it felt like night, even though I knew the sky outside was glowing with midday brightness. When Gregor had been killed, it had really been late at night.
He and I had been staggering through the bore-tunnel, coming back to our den from an illegal bar. We had been drinking fermented vine-juice in the dark spherical hole, so recently formed that its wood was still rough and twiggy. It was fun, mingling with strangers, some perhaps travelers from other Branches, none of them a creche-mate. But now I realized that I had only enjoyed it because of Gregor’s presence by my side.
The bathhouse was almost empty. The pool of steaming water in the hollow of the tan floor held only a couple of women, one of them a breeder, visibly pregnant. I muttered something, picked up a young leaf filled with sap, and started lathering myself. I could feel their eyes on my body as vividly as if they were touching me. That was what my life was going to be: lonely but never alone. Would they even let me keep my den, or would they move me to a communal hole?
We had almost reached our destination, Gregor and I, on that fateful night. I was giggling, tipsily clinging to his arm, when the curving wall exploded, chips of living wood flying, and a head the size of my entire body poked out. It was bright orange and lardy, glistening like oil on water. Below the eyeless brow-shield, sickle-like mandibles went back and forth with a terrible mechanical efficiency. And it was with the same efficiency that they cut through Gregor’s chest, drenching me in a sickeningly warm tide that looked black in the low lighting. And then the Larva plopped out onto the bloody floor, its segmented transparent body twitching and puffing as it crawled across his corpse and dove into the wood of the opposite wall. It did not want him—or me. Larvae do not eat humans. His death was a mistake, a stupid accident. Had we stayed a moment longer in the bar, or come back a moment sooner, he would still be by my side.
The hot soapy water in the bathhouse felt nauseatingly like Gregor’s blood. I swallowed a couple of times and climbed out of the pool, still keeping my head low, refusing to meet the mercilessly curious gazes of the other women.
And then it was time for the Hatching.
I exited the Trunk and walked along the main avenue of our Branch. The sky was warm on my face and neck; the misty dome glowing with silvery light, curls of mist dropping down onto the broad path of fissured bark studded with round indentations where twigs had been planed off. On both sides, the surface of the Branch curved down into the fog-filled abyss. Obeying some strange impulse, I deviated from the central path and came close to the edge, pushing aside the swollen fronds of moss that dripped moisture onto my head. I looked down.
On each level, five horizontal Branches stuck out from the Trunk, staggered and equidistant. I could only see the Branch immediately below ours: a long smear on the grey fog that curdled into the ever-deeper tints of charcoal and black below it. Nobody knew how many Branches the Tree had, or how far it was to the Top and to the Roots. Only the dead knew.
Recently, a new sect appeared that claimed that there were no Roots and no Top, and the Tree went on into infinity, both above and below. Gregor had been interested in their speculations, often talking about it as we lay curled up in our den. I had been neutral. It seemed to me that it made no difference one way or the other.
But now I stared into the gulf of coiling mist, straining my eyes as if I could really penetrate the layers of swollen clouds that slowly shifted beneath and above me, sending tentacles of vapor toward the Top where it condensed into the perpetual drizzle that nourished the Tree. Where would my love go? Up or down, into the eternal light of the Top or to be consumed by the dark Roots? Would Gregor Hatch as a Larva or a Flyer? If there were any justice in the world, the answer would be clear.
But if there were any justice in the world, Gregor would still be alive.
I made my way to the end of the Branch where a cluster of leaves spread out. Each leaf, its dark green spongy surface oozing large droplets of water, was covered with a flock of aphids. Their plump beige bodies quivered, filled with golden nectar. Out of respect for the ceremony, their herders maneuvered them further away from the intersection of leafstalks where a clutch of Tree Priests and a couple of mourners stood with their heads bowed. I increased my pace. Precisely because I had no official status, I wanted my presence to be obvious. I was wearing my best outfit, made of black-dyed Spider silk. Some of Gregor’s creche-mates who came up from his birth Branch gave me sour looks.
I looked around. None of my own creche-mates made an appearance. I was alone.
I came to the edge of the Branch where a gap between the leaves showed the bottomless gulf or white and grey. The aphid herders stared as they pushed their brainless charges away from the edge. Was Lia among them? Well, if she were, she did not want me to see her.
The Tree priest was an old man, his face as fissured and furrowed as the roughest bark, his hands trembling. He started a chant praying to the life-giving Tree to protect all its inhabitants – Worms, Larvae, Beetles, and Humans. He begged that the soul of the deceased be allowed to hatch as a Flyer and rise on iridescent wings to the Top, there to bask in the eternal skylight above the mist. His voice was trebly and wavering, and a couple of times he seemed to have forgotten the words. But I was not listening to him. I stared at the bundle lying at the edge of the Branch, covered with a loose shroud of Spider silk.
Gregor’s body.
I pushed closer to the priest, disregarding the muttered protests of the scant mourners. Suddenly I realized what was going to happen. The chant would end, the priest would push the body off, and it would go tumbling down into the mist, swallowed up by the vapors and clouds, and I would never see Gregor again. His soul may become a Larva and start its slow progress up the Tree; or it may become a Flyer and flutter away into the light; but it made no difference to me. I would never know. I would be still inside the Tree, with my indifferent creche-mates, and the stupid aphids, and the mindlessly chewing Larvae, part of the ecosystem that cared nothing for my loneliness and my grief.
I was about to kneel by Gregor’s body when somebody cried out and pointed to the sky-dome. I looked up.
Dancing just below the limits of visibility, a group of Flyers flitted around the Tree. Their four transparent wings beat the humid air, sparkling with a rare glint of focused light. Their shimmering bodies, twice as long as a grown man, twisted and bent, sending plumes of water droplets through the air. Their curved mandibles opened and closed with a hypnotic regularity, ready to clutch a flying prey. But it was their compound eyes, each the size of my head, faceted and glimmering with a hard impersonal light, that caught and held me.
“The Flyers!” the priest cried in a reedy voice. “Coming for the son of the Tree! May he find his wings and rise to the Top!”
The mourners whispered, glad of the good omen. But I heard nothing.
My face, multiplied hundreds of times, stared back at me from the Flyers’ insectoid masks. It was as if they were showing me my future. Alone, with myself. Surrounded by people who would never see me and would just cast back my own image reflected from their glazed eyes. Grubbing through the innards of the Tree along with the rest of its teeming denizens, not knowing what was below or above me. Trapped in my own ignorance; wrapped up in the mist of grief and confusion.
The priest quickly uncovered Gregor’s corpse, the gash in his chest still yawning. He prepared to push it off the edge.
I threw myself at the body, wrapped my arms around it, and as the priest tottered back, shocked, we were carried off into the misty gulf, accompanied by a flock of hungry Flyers. Going down—or maybe up.
Together.