Elder Quilqi led Silluka ever farther from the center of the Huaca, toward the very outskirts of the village.

“You’re taking me to the Allwiya?” Silluka guessed. “I thought you didn’t want me to be an undesirable.”

“How often have you spoken with one of the Allwiya, child?” Elder Quilqi didn’t pause as she walked.

“They can’t speak. They’re barely better than the trained Jakuas.” Silluka hadn’t crossed paths with the strange little creatures often—mostly they were seen scuttling across rooftops and through garbage piles near the edge of the Huaca, all eight limbs moving at once.

“Rolling earth, child! Just because you don’t know another being’s language doesn’t mean they can’t speak,” the elder sniffed. “They provide a steady supply of nails, screws, fabricated plates, and mechanical devices to the Huaca. Where do you think our water sills come from? Or the blinds for our windows? Have you ever seen a citizen making something like that? Of course not.”

“So they’re good at little trinkets. How does that help me become a citizen?” Silluka stomped along behind the taller elder. She had been hoping for some secret holdout or a hermit-like teacher in a cave that eschewed the elder’s teaching, not boneless little creatures.

“Perhaps if you pay attention, you will learn,” Quilqi said. “Ah. Here we are. Good behavior, now. We don’t want to offend.”

She stooped before a tiny door, only up to Silluka’s waist, and gave an odd rap with one hand, drumming the backs of her fingers in sequence against the wood. Silluka peered at her form in the near darkness. Was all this worth it? Elder Papaki and the others had to know what they were doing, didn’t they? But Quilqi behaved less and less like what Silluka thought of the elders—stuffy old bores so pent up with studying geological charts and old chayu descriptions that it might be days before anyone noticed one of them had keeled over.

She was about to speak when the little door opened enough to admit five tentacles, each as long as her forearm, which curled around the frame. Bright light shone from behind them. The tip of one wiggled at the elder, then another at Silluka. Three came off the door with a squelch and crossed in some sort of symbol.

“They say to come in.” Elder Quilqi got down on her knees, mud from the earlier rain pressing into the knees of her loose cloth pants, and crawled through the opening door.

Silluka stopped openmouthed at the door, then shrugged. “I guess this day can’t get any weirder.” She crawled through after the elder, trying to keep the mud off her pants, but failing. Her stump could keep her up, but wasn’t as long as her other arm, which meant she was lopsided.

Behind the little door was a workshop. Brilliant light spewed from a candle attached to the wall that hardly flickered at all. What kind of wax did they use to get such a flame? Silluka couldn’t even look straight at it, and it bathed the small room in enough light to easily see details.

Elder Quilqi straightened, her hands on her lower back. The ceiling here was high enough for them to stand straight, if barely. Her brother Ichu would have needed to duck, but the top of Elder Quilqi’s white hair just brushed the stone above them.

As she blinked her eyes to adjust to the brightness, Silluka saw Quilqi was twisting her fingers at lightning speed at an Allwiya, whose great goggle eyes stared up at her from near the floor. The creature was bright pink, standing on six of its eight tentacled legs, its body balanced in the air, only as high as the elder’s knees. The two other tentacles twisted into forms back at the elder.

“This is Muola,” the elder said, still wiggling her fingers. “Say hello.”

“Um. Hello,” Silluka said. Her eyes kept being drawn to the walls of the little room, where objects of all shapes and sizes hung. Finely detailed metal, lengths of wood, perfectly circular hoops of metal with bulky boxes strapped to one side, and gracefully curving arms with little blobs at the ends.

“Are these all the things you said the Allwiya made?” Silluka asked.

“Mountains erupt, child! Don’t interrupt Muola,” the elder said, but there was a hint of humor in her tone. Silluka looked back sharply to see Quilqi smiling and the top of Muola’s body shivering. It shifted through colors from pink, to green, to blue. A laugh?

The Allwiya raised two more tentacles and made a sequence of complex signs, then their body shivered again. Quilqi snorted a laugh.

“What?” Silluka tried not to sound indignant, but if the elder had dragged her across town just to laugh at her—

“Muola says you’re technically correct, that these are things the Allwiya made, but these are just their standard tools. The real inventions are in the other room.” Quilqi turned back to Muola, speaking as her fingers danced, this time. “Are they in today, Muola? I have a villager with some potential, I think, and I wanted to connect her with like-minded people. They might work well with each other.”

Like minded? Did the elder think she had the mind of a tiny boneless creature that crawled through garbage?

Muola signed something back, and this time Silluka watched closely. The creature had made the same gesture several times, and made it again.

“Then they’re available? Excellent. Please let them know we’d like to talk with them for a bit.” The elder turned to Silluka, crossing her fingers in a loop across her body. “This is ‘hello.’ You might want to try it out so you don’t sound so ungrateful.”

Silluka hesitantly brought her fingers across her body. She couldn’t do the full gesture—Quilqi had used both hands—but she used her right stump with the intent of doing the same thing.

“Close enough for our purposes,” Quilqi said with the ghost of a smile. “Lead on, Muola.”

The small creature leapt nimbly to a countertop, and grabbed a switch, pulling with all their weight. The far wall of the room, covered with the Allwiya’s tools, folded up like an accordion, revealing a passage lit by more of the brilliant candles.

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“After you.” Elder Quilqi gestured Silluka forward.

At the end of the hallway was another hatch like the front door and Quilqi knocked, then got down on her knees and crawled through the opening. She left a trail of mud.

Silluka followed, and had to blink back tears as she emerged into a room even brighter than the one before. The dazzling candles lit every wall, with two on the ceiling and one on the floor. Piles of garbage—mostly twisted metal and wood—were everywhere. She rubbed her eyes, trying to see the mysterious people the elder wanted her to meet.

“Say hello. Come on, child, like I taught you.” Quilqi voice was harsh, from the nearly blob of color she occupied. Silluka squinted, hunting for a shape. Something moved among piles of debris, and she faced that direction, making the same hand gesture.

Multiple arms waved back. Silluka blinked again. This Allwiya was a blotchy green and blue, and was tiny. Like they could fit in her hand. Or ride on her shoulder. They might have been the smallest one she’d ever seen, not that she’d seen that many.

They continued waving at Sillkua, making gestures too fast to follow, then scuttled across the wall, seeming to hang in the air as they did. They picked up pieces of metal, four arms fitting them together as the others propelled them closer.

“Meet Lugopo,” Elder Quilqi said. “They and Muola supply most of the contraptions for our village.”

The creature—Lugopo—skidded to a halt, hanging an arm’s reach from Silluka’s face, one tentacle curled around a strip of wire sticking out from the wall like a strange blue flower. They fiddled with the pieces of metal they’d gathered, three tentacles fitting them together with small, quick actions, while the other four kept gesticulating at Silluka. Large yellow eyes stared at her, unblinking.

“What—what are they saying?” she asked. The smell was starting to tickle her brain. It smelled like a garbage dump covered in seaweed.

“Ah…” The elder cleared her throat. “Welcome, hello, this is my workshop. I have many devices here to show you. If I can just get this one crammed? No, fitted? Stars fall! Slow down, Lugopo, I can’t keep up!”

Lugopo finally forced the metal wire—like a circlet with dangling curved filaments—down over the top of their body. It hovered a finger’s width above the top of their large eyes, and, with one tentacle still holding on to the supporting wire from the wall, another pressed a sequence of switches, while the remaining six frantically gestured.

“I have worked on this mechanism for the last half-year,” the elder translated, “and finally have a chance to show off?”—a tentacle waggle from Lugopo—“demonstrate this and I hope it works to—”

Suddenly another, metallic mechanical voice took over.

“—at last get an opportunity to bloviate! Greetings! So happy to visitors! This is lair of deathtraps!” Lugopo’s eyes crossed, staring upward, and they ripped the mechanism off their head and banged it against the wall, then put it back on.

“Excuse! This is my workshop! Translation circlet is rotten kelp” They took it off again. Smack. “Still under torture.” Smack. “Construction.”

The voice was tinny and small, like someone had given a chipmunk a cone to speak through and told to call an unfamiliar chayu.

“Ah. Greetings,” Silluka said, again making the gesture the elder had showed her.

“My parent does what with crabs?” Lugopo’s eyes bulged, then landed on Silluka’s stump. “Ah, your tentacle has been chewed off—” Smack. “Is missing. I can extrapolate the insult. Meaning. Greetings to you too.”

“Um.” Silluka grasped for something to say. She was tired and overwhelmed from the events of day. This morning she’d been trying to pick an old man’s pocket, and here she was, after failing the citizen’s test she never thought she’d take, taken under the wing of an elder unlike any elder, and talking to an Allwiya with actual piles of trash in their tiny room.

“Elder Quilqi wanted me to meet you?” she finally managed.

“And it has been accomplished! What other social conditions, no, compunctions must be met?” Lugopo swung closer, on the metal jutting from the wall, and Silluka’s eyes crossed as the tiny Allwiya touched her nose with a smooth tentacle. “The old biddy”—Smack—“The elder is an excellent judge of secret shame. Character. I welcome any student of hers to my lair. Workshop.”

“The elder says I can be a citizen, even with this.” Silluka raised her right arm.

Lugopo dropped from the metal wire to Silluka’s stump and she tensed, holding back a scream, not daring to move. The Allwiya’s skin was cold and smooth, and their limbs wrapped around her biceps and triceps like she had a floppy ball attached to her stump. They changed color to match her ochre skin, blending in seamlessly except for the metal circlet above their eyes.

“What are you doing?” Her voice didn’t quite come out in a yell.

“Islands crumble, child, don’t be so jumpy,” Elder Quilqi said. “Lugopo has a hobby of recording chayus.”

Several tentacles squelched off Silluka’s stump to wave around. “Is plotting of mine. Habit. Fascination. Huaca Aunts, Uncles, and Entles are source of power. Not like the Allwiya.”

“Recording Chayus? Like the elders’ records? What does that have to do with my stump?” Lugopo’s mechanical words caught up to her. “And where do the Allwiya get their power, then?”

“From own gods, naturally. Whirling Abyss. Crawling Dark of Squirming. Manylegs of Reaching.” Lugopo reached up with three tentacles and pressed buttons on their circlet. “Like Aunts, Uncles, and Entles…but different.”

“And your…gods…do what?”

“Fiery depths, child, they help the Allwiya invent, of course.” Elder Quilqi shook her head, signing at the same time. “What do they teach you these days? The Allwiya are not from our island. They came from the last one that arrived on this coast, several hundred years ago. Surely you know that?”

“I may have heard that somewhere,” Silluka said. She hadn’t ever really thought about it. The lands far up north, across a steep mountain range, were said to be the Allwiya’s home.

She flexed her arm just a bit when Lugopo tapped on her biceps, then her triceps. She was getting used to the strange feeling. The little Allwiya’s body wasn’t actually that cold, just colder than hers. The tentacles were strangely gentle, like having a massage from lots of tiny fingers.

“Just like the Huaca have Tiye Kwirpuyay, who gave us and the rest of their siblings our chayus at the beginning, the gods of the Allwiya inspire them to create and discover.” Elder Quiqli watched Lugopo’s movements with interest, as if she could see something Silluka couldn’t.

“Make many implements of destruction!” Lugopo smacked the circlet. “Creation!”

“That still doesn’t tell me how Lugopo’s going to help my chayu,” Silluka said. “Unless they’re going to build me a better arm.”

Five of Lugopo’s arms popped off Silluka’s arm, reaching for the ceiling. “Merely specify requirements! Would you like spikes? Flames? Hydraulic—”

“None of that, now,” Elder Quilqi broke in. “I think Silluka might benefit from your other inventions, though.”

Silluka couldn’t hold back any longer. Even with the excitement and bright lights, her jaw cracked in a yawn.

“Good denture,” Lugopo’s translator chirped.

“Ah yes, you young folk need sleep, don’t you. Cold moon! It must be after midnight. Lugopo, show her to your spare room and you and I can talk.” Her fingers kept wiggling for a few seconds after she finished speaking, and Silluka regarded her suspiciously. What was she trying to do?

“Certainly! Right here.” Lugopo leapt off Silluka’s stump and sprang across the wall, pulling levers. Another section unfolded into a human-sized nook, complete with a sleeping mat. How big was the inside of this building? It had seemed like just a shack when they approached, but it had been dark. “Used for visitors. Will provide wake attack—” Smack. “Wake-up call in the morning.”

Silluka yawned again, picking her way through the piles of garbage. “I probably won’t be able to sleep with you two yapping away,” she said, and laid down on the mattress. She’d been kicked out of the last several nooks and crannies in the Huaca she’d found. It was nice to have a soft bed and a roof over her head.

She watched Elder Quilqi and Lugopo trade signs, their fingers and tentacles a blur. She tried to pay attention to repeated symbols, but before she could get very far, she was asleep.