Chapter 103:
Tomorrow we leave, Mayah thought. Tomorrow we go to Lost Technology Castle. Tomorrow the Free Serfs imprison me.
Mayah dumped the last bit of water from the spray-can onto a flowering coffee plant. Then she put the spray-can back in its spot next to the greenhouse wall and joined the Cursed by the grandmother huts. They were all marching from LakeCentral Quinter to Lost Technology Quinter the next day. Mayah had listened yesterday as Rajani explained to the Cursed that during the march they had to treat Mayah as one of their own. “My sister gave up her spot for her so that all of us could be freed from the Eenta. So don’t do anything to make the Eenta guards notice her.”
That Rajani wasn’t angry at Mayah had surprised her at first. She knew how close Lainla and Rajani were. Yet when Mayah tried to apologize, Rajani had refused to listen. “Lainla will join us. After we leave the greenhouse, she’ll escape the castle and come after us.”
Mayah hoped Rajani was right. It was hard for her to think about Lainla. She kept wondering whether Lainla had traded spots with Mayah solely because of Mayah’s political value. Just like Sukren had –
Mayah stopped herself mid-thought. Wait, wait, hold it in, don’t let yourself feel it, breathe, push it away, think about anything but him.
A cry went up. It was time to eat. Mayah joined the double line. When a vat of steaming food reached her, Mayah pulled her sleeves up over her hands and helped pass it down. Four more vats came by. After they were placed on the ground, the double line broke up into groups of a dozen or so around each vat.
Mayah held back a sigh. Mushroom grain, again. She dipped the ladle into the vat and choked down a tiny portion before handing it off. She hoped the Cursed would see her as unselfish rather than ungrateful.
Then she looked up – and saw Sukren.
Even without her glasses Mayah recognized him. He was coming down the path between the grandmother huts, his hand in the crook of Rajani’s elbow. A bandage was over his eyes. When Rajani saw Mayah, she stopped. Sukren stopped with her.
Mayah felt her legs propelling her forward. Her vision was blurred, yet she could clearly see him standing there, looming over her as he had her entire life. Then he was before her, and Rajani was pulling on Sukren, trying to jerk him out of the way, but it was too late, too late to stop Mayah’s clenched fist as it went up and struck Sukren across the face.
Mayah watched Sukren stagger backwards. She didn’t care. All the rage she had stuffed down inside was exploding out of her now into violence. She hit him again, and again, pummeling him with both hands. “I hate you! I hate you!” she screamed.
Out of nowhere, someone pulled back her right arm. Another someone grabbed her in a sideways embrace that pinned her left arm against her side. Mayah lunged forward, twisting against the people holding her back. Tears were streaming down her face. “You liar!” she screamed at Sukren. “You liar! You lied to me! You –”
A hand slapped over her mouth. Her chest heaving, Mayah watched as Sukren touched his mouth where she had hit him. He put his hand out and took an uneven step forward, then another, until his fingers reached her shoulder. Then he drew himself forward so that his face was in hers.
“You were not worth it,” he hissed.
A strangled cry emerged from Mayah’s throat. Her body shook. She was unable to resist the hands pulling her away from Sukren. They guided her into one of the grandmother huts; she was laid down on a straw mat. Curled up on her side, Mayah wept aloud, face in her hands, gasping for breath in between each sob.
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The pain in her heart was unbearable. To look back and realize that all her happiness had been a lie – to know that everything good that had ever happened to her had been because she was the Promised Daughter and not because she was Mayah – to realize that Sukren – that Sukren – her childhood –
The memory of her serf village was like an open wound. Mayah couldn’t let herself remember; neither could she turn away. He had betrayed her trust, the only trust she’d had in the whole world.
***
Somehow the night passed. Mayah slept some, and when she woke up, she sensed someone next to her mat. It was dark inside the hut. Her swollen eyes, without glasses, couldn’t make out the person’s face.
“Who is it?” Mayah croaked.
“Drink this.”
It was Rajani, with a bowl of water in her hand. Mayah sat up and drank. After the bowl was empty Mayah rested its rim against her closed eyes, first the left, then the right. The clay felt cool against her skin.
“Sukren wants to see you,” Rajani said after a moment.
For the first time Mayah considered the bandage across Sukren’s eyes. “What happened to him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why are his eyes covered?”
“Someone stabbed his eyes out during the raid on the Cursed.”
“Oh.”
“Listen, Mayah…” Rajani hesitated. “Mayah…”
“What?”
“This is just a test,” Rajani finally said. “The pain is a test. Even when you’re not treated like it, you still belong to Hunt’s Table. The pain doesn’t have to shape who you are. It doesn’t have to name you.”
“I’m not Cursed,” Mayah responded. “I don’t belong to Hunt’s Table. I never did.”
The agony was returning. Unwilling to bear it, Mayah closed her eyes and let herself once more go all the way back, all the way as far back as she could to the tallest-walled story she could hide behind: that of Rajas supremacy.
The serfs are nothing, she told herself. They aren’t special like the Rajas. Without us the bio-dome would die. Without us nobody could live on Chudami at all. What are serfs in comparison to princesses? Who is Sukren in comparison to me? He’s a serf. A serf who stole me from my childhood. A serf who lied to me. A worthless serf! Look at how they treat each other now. Look at the serf paradise they’ve created for one another. Hah!
Mayah got to her feet. The serfs have used me for the last time. From now on, I decide what happens to me.
You really think you have that much power? a voice inside her sneered, but Mayah ignored it. She forced her thoughts away from the reality of her own helplessness. She would forge a new path. She would remake herself. She would follow in the tradition of the Rajas, a tradition that had been denied her.
Oh, yes, Mayah would find her way back to Earth.
But damned if she was going to take a single serf with her.
***
I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I could see on the Tower’s silver surface the ring-shaped slit – if I reached my hand out – if I slipped the Ring in –
I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Promised Daughter though I may be, I cannot fulfill the prophecy. If I knew what was behind the door, if I knew what was behind the rise of the Prophetess Darshana, then maybe, maybe, but it’s all a mystery to me. Who knows what the Lake Tower holds?
For good or for ill, I will leave its opening to the next Promised Daughter. Whoever the next Rajas princess with the right nucleotide sequence is, I pray she knows more freedom and more courage than I.
– excerpt from The Journal of the Lost Princess, Part IV
Written 780 years after the Crash Landing