For five-and-three days, the Queen's lost daughter was tended by Akkis, and it was sometimes a burdensome labor. She learned that the lost daughter did not have the learning that even the youngest and brightest-armored sisters did, and so Akkis shared many more stories with her, even those beyond stories of Clever Yaka, of which many were learned. But the lost daughter struggled, and she did not gather learning from their sharing. It seemed to Akkis that the lost daughter was eager only for the feeding that was done with the sharing of stories, and so Akkis was often left with little for herself, such was the effort of her labor to share good learning with the lost daughter.

Akkis thought to lessen her burdensome labor, and so she sought any sisters who might join it. But whenever she brought sisters to her place of comfort where the lost daughter was bound, they did not join her labor, and they would tap the walls and flick their feelers in discomfort. The lost daughter did not have the smell of the Colony upon her—instead they found the smells of Outside and its dangers to unsettle their thoughts.

On a warm night of the summer season, when Akkis was returning from the lowest of the higher tunnels with a sharing stomach that was filled with kissec, she heard the lost daughter speaking. The lost daughter did not speak in a manner that could be heard, but Akkis could smell the talking upon her.

“Are you speaking with a sister?” asked Akkis, but the lost daughter did not answer it. Akkis then cleaned her of the day's filth, and shared to her more tales of Clever Yaka. When the stories had finished, Akkis found that the lost daughter held her jaws apart in welcome of the food that was to follow, which she had never done before Akkis had opened hers first.

In the days that followed, Akkis would many more times hear the lost daughter speaking to no sister, and each day she would ask, “Will you speak with me?” and each day she received no answer.

On the last day of the summer season, Akkis heard the lost daughter ask her, “Are you speaking with a sister?”

Upon hearing the question, Akkis felt the great joy of a labor's completion, and she told the lost daughter, “I am speaking with you, a lost daughter of the Queen, who I have tended for more than half a season.” Akkis smelled terrible fear about the lost daughter then, and she asked, “Why are you afraid? There is no danger here--none that would match the pit from which you climbed.”

The lost daughter's lower parts shivered and her legs strained at her bindings. Akkis loosened them, leaving only her front-most legs bound. “I have learned that your bindings cause you fear,” she said, and this was said precisely. She would not remake those bindings, and they now seemed cruel things to her, and she learned that she had made a wound in her thoughts from what had seemed a gentle labor.

The lost daughter said nothing more that day, but when Akkis returned the following day, the smell of fear was not so strong about her. The lost daughter would draw the food from Akkis's sharing stomach readily from then on, without stories to prompt her. She tapped Akkis's feelers with her own often, and made attempts to clean Akkis even as she was herself cleaned, though Akkis had been cleaned already by her sisters in the lower tunnels.

On the third day after the lost daughter had first spoken to her, Akkis freed the lost daughter of all her bindings. Soon after, the lost daughter began to learn the ways of speaking to sisters, and Akkis felt the burden of her labors become so light that they were nearly gone. But the lost daughter could not be brought from the place of comfort where she was hidden, for she still lacked the smell of the Colony upon her.

“You lack the Colony's good scent,” said Akkis to the lost daughter. “You will be in danger if you are met by those who would defend our Colony and Queen.” And when she said this, strange learning came to Akkis, made stranger still because it was unlike all that she had learned of the goodness of soldiers and Queens, and it had come from her own thoughts.

The lost daughter shivered terribly when Akkis said this. “I am evil then, like Yaka's learning, for I am a threat to the Queen who has led me from below.”

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“You are not like Yaka's learning,” said Akkis, “and there is much learning that is not evil, even when it seems so. You have learned many good things here, as have I in the labor of your care. This learning has tired you, sister of Clever Yaka. Go to resting, sleep-travel, and when you return to me I will have learned of a way to lead you from this place of comfort in safety.”

For the first time since Akkis had found her beside the pit, the lost daughter then rested with her feelers twitching. Akkis drew upon all she had learned of the Colony and its scent. She found what was unsettled within her thoughts: that this daughter could not live in the Colony without its scent, a scent that Akkis herself had always possessed.

And when Akkis smelled the kissec that dripped from the lost daughter's jaws, mixed as it was with the Colony scent that had come from her sharing stomach, she felt the rush of good learning throughout her, and was then clever in the manner of Yaka who had done evil. For the length of Skith's sleep-travel, Akkis did not go to join the labors of her sisters, and she did not search her thoughts further for hidden things as she had done for all the season since returning from war-making. There was nothing behind her, and nothing before her, and there was only the lost daughter beside her.

* * *

“Wake now, lost daughter, and speak with me,” said Akkis, when the sounds of morning labors began to stir around them. The lost daughter did not wake at first, and her feelers were leaping in discomfort. Akkis could smell a long and fearful sleep-travel upon her, and she said to her, “You will wake from sleep-travel, and you will be in comfort beside me.”

The lost daughter then left her sleep-travel, and her feelers were light and curious. Akkis said to her, “I have learned how you might follow me in safety. With this learning I will lead you from this place to one where you might find your own good labor to the Queen.”

Akkis brought forth the remaining kissec from her sharing stomach, but she did not deliver it to the lost daughter's waiting mouth. Instead, Akkis dragged her jaws upon the lost daughter's armor, so that under the scent of kissec she could smell the Colony all about the lost daughter.

Throughout the lower tunnels they walked in tandem, with Akkis laboring in leading. The lost daughter followed, and this was her first labor, as it is for all the sisters of the Colony. Akkis walked along the scent lines, stopping at each fourth-and-none step as she had learned to do from leaders who were skillful. And the lost daughter, being still a daughter of the Queen, followed precisely and touched Akkis's hindmost parts at each stop, so that they might continue together.

“Keep your thoughts managed, and your steps counted, or your following will be imprecise,” said Akkis. And with her learning of the scent she had gifted to the lost daughter, she said also, “Do not walk closely to those that we come across in these tunnels. Not all have learned of your scent as I have, and to those with searching feelers you will be an impostor.”

Akkis felt a sourness in her thoughts at the word “impostor,” because there was much disagreement then among them. The lost daughter smelled it, and she gathered a sharp learning that wedged itself deeply in her thoughts, and would never be removed from them.

The lost daughter followed Akkis through many of the lower tunnels, and soon she had learned to walk the paths without Akkis. She held to the learning that Akkis had shared with her, and approached no sisters, even when she was very eager to join their labors.

The lost daughter learned much in that time as she walked the tunnels, and Akkis led her to many chambers and tunnels that neither had walked before. With the lost daughter following, Akkis walked closely and eagerly between the sisters who were digging new chambers, because their feelers were covered in dirt and gathered no scent. She came to the roaring tunnels, and found the water there that was well-managed in dark rivers. Akkis was then laboring in both leading in following, because she was following the river-tunnels, and the lost daughter then followed only two steps behind her.

They came to the cool chambers with smooth white columns, where the lost daughter first learned of softlings. But Akkis pulled her gently away, because after the softlings had left their threads between the pillars for their tending sisters to pull taut into wide sheets, they would be carried upward to be beside the Queen, and it would be a danger for the lost daughter's scent to be upon them. But the lost daughter could not fully bury her eagerness to tend to the pale softlings, and so Akkis did not lead her to the thread-chambers again, so that the lost daughter would not be drawn into danger by her searching thoughts.

In this way they learned much together, but the curse that had been laid upon Yaka and all the Queen's daughters weighed terribly upon the lost daughter, who was often needful of rest when they returned to their place of comfort. The lost daughter smelled often of fear in sleep, and this became a new labor for Akkis.

Akkis asked her, “Where do you travel in sleep that brings you such discomfort?”

The lost daughter said, “In sleep-travel, I labor in places that I have not before walked, and find learning that troubles my thoughts. I found Clever Yaka, tending the fungus, and she was despairing. I see the tunnels we walk as they become the tunnels above, and are changed to be places in which I must flee from. And when I looked into the shining jewels in the Queen's chambers I thought to see myself there, but I saw the shape-changer Iki instead.”

The lost daughter smelled greatly of fear upon saying this, for that thought had been pressed tightly away and had then burst free.

“You are not Iki, for you are my follower. Iki is a shape-changer, for without her shroud of imprecision she is the God of Death and Eating, who does not follow and does not lead. But you are afraid in sleep-travel, and this discomfort I will tend with my labor. With a name you will no longer take your shape from others in sleep-travel, and you will have the skill to find good learning there as I and my sisters do. I will lead you into the tunnels above and I will bring you to the Replete who is skilled in the labor of naming.”