An Ode to Hunt and Gather:

Our first diurnal as humans we hunted and we gathered – we worshipped you.

I will give you enough, you said to us.

Enough.

Do not turn to the plow, do not turn to the beast of burden.

Do not be like those who store and build and crush others in their storing and building.

Eat and drink that which is good, not that which is more.

More only leads to more only leads to more.

– excerpt from The Uro Table Chronicles

Written 250 years after the Crash Landing

Chapter 65:

Two diurnals after Lainla invited Mayah and Sukren to eat at the Jinkari meal bench, Mayah found herself hiding in the shadow of the Jinkari lodge. Sukren was helping Rajani clean out the firepit in the center of the meal bench; they were chatting in Xhom and the pidgin. But the other Jinkari Table members, slicing up meat and wildflower stems, were talking in Cursed.

Mayah was listening to them. There was something about the language of the Cursed that reminded her of ancient scrolls, of old museum exhibits, of the root language. Mayah knew how to read and write the root language well enough, but it was a new thing to hear it – or something quite like it – spoken aloud. It made even mundane things sound like proclamations from the Age of Royalty.

Most of the Jinkari Table members were talking about a concert they had attended earlier that Gather’s Day morning. Mayah picked out the words carefully. The singing was harsh, malevolent even. To the side, Lainla was talking to a woman whose name Mayah thought was Abha. “I think Rajani’s going to petition the moot soon,” she could hear Lainla saying. “I’m not sure she knows what she’s getting into, but you know Rajani.”

Mayah glanced at Rajani. If Mayah were Lainla, she would be afraid to talk like that with Rajani so nearby, but Rajani didn’t appear to have heard her. Rajani was still chatting with Sukren, in fact, and Sukren was even smiling at something she was saying.

Mayah scowled and turned away. Stay strong, she reminded herself. You’re not some little princess anymore, remember? Maybe Sukren thinks you are, but you’re not. You don’t have to look at him. You don’t have to want him to smile at you the way he’s smiling at Rajani. Come on, don’t you have any strength at all?

Apparently she didn’t. Every morning Mayah swore she wouldn’t let herself desire Sukren’s approval anymore, but she found herself breaking that promise a dozen times by every evening. Yesterday evening had been the worst of all, Sukren had been so angry with her and it had been terrible because she had deserved his anger, every bit of it…

It wasn’t until Lainla touched her shoulder and asked what was wrong that Mayah realized she was crying. “Nothing,” she tried to say, wiping her face with her sleeve. “Nothing, I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“I cry when I’m fine, too,” Lainla responded with a wry smile. Mayah couldn’t help but laugh at that. To hear humor expressed in a root language soundalike was both strange and funny.

With a single backward glance at Sukren, Mayah allowed Lainla to lead her into the Jinkari earth lodge. Once inside the orange-lit darkness she found her tears returning. Sukren hadn’t returned Mayah’s glance, he had been too busy talking to Rajani, as if Mayah were unimportant, as if Mayah were nothing at all!

“So what’s going on?” Lainla asked.

Mayah took off her glasses and placed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “I don’t mean anything to him,” she whispered. “If I did, he wouldn’t have hidden his entire life from me. If I did, he wouldn’t be lying to me still.”

“What is he lying to you about?”

Somehow it was easier to share in Cursed. The foreign words on Mayah’s tongue were like clothes hiding her nakedness. She could stumble through a sentence, she could pause to explain to Lainla what a stand-in root language word meant, she could have the focus be on the telling of the tale and not the tale itself.

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“About everything. He was part of the Free Serfs, and he never told me, and he won’t tell me why he never told me. And I think he’s lying about me, too. He said he didn’t know why I grew up in a serf village, but I think he does know, he just won’t tell me. And I… sorry.” Lainla was looking confused. “Inside the shelterbelt, the Rajas are the ones with the power,” Mayah explained. “They rule the serfs. I’m a Rajas, a princess, but I’m not like the other Rajas. I grew up in a serf village. I never did anything bad to a serf.”

If there was a word for serf in Cursed, Mayah didn’t know it. She used the root language word instead. Lainla still looked confused, though, so Mayah tried to find an explanation that would make sense to her. “You know the Xhota, Chenta and Eenta? They’re all serfs. The Xhota live in their own urb, they help trades happen. The Eenta are mostly soldiers. The Chenta are the lowest status, they do the dirty work. But all of them are serfs. Sukren… Sukren is a serf. A Chenta serf. He was assigned to raise me. I’ve always shared everything with him, but he’s a liar, he won’t share anything with me at all!”

“It sounds like Sukren’s really hurt you,” Lainla said quietly.

At that, Mayah began sobbing, the tears soaking the front of her village suit. Oh, if only Sukren would look at her and see not some little Rajas not worth including in his life, but herself, Mayah, fully converted to the cause. But he didn’t! And he never would! Meanwhile Mayah was so pathetic that she couldn’t stop from wanting him to. That was why she had stayed, wasn’t it, when she woke up from the drug-induced sleep Sukren had put her in? Instead of going back to Vek, she’d stayed on the Cursed side of the shelterbelt, she’d stayed, and that was how Pratap had been able to attack her at all, because she had been around to attack! Oh Sarana, Mayah was weak, weak was what she was. Her longing for Sukren to see her, to value her, to enjoy her existence, that was the problem.

“Last night I called him a Rajas tail,” Mayah finally managed to whisper. “I wanted to hurt him, I wanted to get back at him for thinking I wasn’t worth telling anything to. But I also meant it! I mean, why else would he spend his entire life caring for a princess if he weren’t a Rajas tail? That’s why he brought me here. He wanted to take me away from the Free Serfs because he’s not like those serfs who nobly suffer under Rajas rule, like the ones Vek told me about. He’s worse than those serfs. So if he doesn’t care enough about me to tell me the truth, that’s fine, it’s fine, it’s just fine!”

“Is it?”

The simplicity of Lainla’s question caught Mayah off guard. “No,” she cried out. “It’s not fine, it’s not!”

In her mind Mayah could hear her own voice calling out, taunting, mocking. Rajas tail! You’re a Rajas tail!

Oh Sarana, the way Sukren had looked at her! Cold as ice, cold as space. You do realize that without me begging for food, you would starve to death? That every scrap you put into your mouth comes from me?

She had wept then, harder than she was weeping now. It was as if he had spat in her face, as if he had sneered, of course you’re a little Rajas, and nothing more. Even here, on this side of the shelterbelt, even here I’m serving you because you can’t do it for yourself. And you expect me to tell you anything?

He won’t stop! He’ll never stop! He’ll never see me as anything but a little Rajas!

Finally Mayah lifted her tear-stained face to Lainla. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Lainla responded by taking Mayah’s hand. “I waited a long time for Rajani to start focusing on me as much as I focused on her,” she said softly. “Eventually I gave up. My sister dreams big; she experiences everyday life as an epic struggle between good and evil; she sees everything but me. That’s who she is. It’s not okay, but it is.”

“It is what?”

“It just is.”

Mayah still wasn’t sure she understood what Lainla was saying. It just is? It just… is.

Despair swept over her. “But I can’t keep going like this!” she cried out. “Maybe another day or two I could handle, but not the rest of my life!”

“I’m not saying this is your life now, so live it,” Lainla replied. “I’m saying this is your life today, and that you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

Mayah took in a ragged breath. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, she repeated to herself. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.

Strange. Mayah felt better. Comforted, almost. For it was true. Mayah didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow. In fact, there were several days she had gone to bed not knowing that the next morning would change her life. Like the day before Sukren had brought her over the shelterbelt. Or the day before Mayah had found the false butterfly on the balcony floor. Or even the day before she had left the serf village to go live in Lost Technology.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” Mayah repeated out loud.

“That’s right. And neither do I.”

“But that means tomorrow could be worse than today.”

“It could. Or it could be better. We don’t know.”

Mayah wiped her sticky face with her sleeve. “Well, if it’s worse at least it’ll be different.”

Lainla laughed. “I also remember getting tired of having the same fight with Rajani over and over again. She probably could have kept going – nobody has an appetite for conflict like my sister – but I got bored. Letting go of her attention was hard, but it wasn’t like I had had much of it anyway and letting go meant we could find a new dynamic at least.”

A new dynamic… Mayah liked the sound of that. That was what she wanted with Sukren, wasn’t it? A completely new dynamic.

“La-am, are you in here? Is the overbelter girl with you?”

Someone was opening the flap that covered the lodge entrance. “Yes, Mayah’s here with me,” Lainla called back.

“Well, you better come out with her. Her brother’s panicking.”

Mayah scrambled in the darkness for her glasses. Once she found them, she rose to her feet. Time to return to Sukren’s ever watchful, never seeing eye.

You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, she reminded herself. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.