My clouded mind cleared and everything went silent and motionless, my finger still polishing the edan. I smelled home, heard the desert wind blowing grains of sand over each other. My stomach fluttered as I dropped deeper in and my entire body felt sweet and pure and empty and light. The edan was heavy in my hands; so heavy that it would fall right through my flesh.
“Oh,” I breathed, realizing that there was now a tiny button in the center of the spiral. This was what I’d seen. It had always been there, but now it was as if it were in focus. I pushed it with my index finger. It depressed with a soft “click” and then the stone felt like warm wax and my world wavered. There was another loud knock at the door. Then through the clearest silence I’d ever experienced, so clear that the slightest sound would tear its fabric, I heard a solid oily low voice say, “Girl.”
I was catapulted out of my trance, my eyes wide, my mouth yawning in a silent scream.
“Girl,” I heard again. I hadn’t heard a human voice since the final screams of those killed by the Meduse, over seventy-two hours ago.
I looked around my room. I was alone. Slowly, I turned and looked out the window beside me. There was nothing out there for me but the blackness of space.
“Girl. You will die,” the voice said slowly. “Soon.” I heard more voices, but they were too low to understand. “Suffering is against the Way. Let us end you.”
I jumped up and the rush of blood made me nearly collapse and crash to the floor. Instead I fell painfully to my knees, still clutching the edan. There was another knock at the door. “Open this door,” the voice demanded.
My hands began to shake, but I didn’t drop my edan. It was warm and a brilliant blue light was glowing from within it now. A current was running through it so steadily that it made the muscles of my hand constrict. I couldn’t let go of it if I tried.
“I will not,” I said, through clenched teeth. “Rather die in here, on my terms.”
The knocking stopped. Then I heard several things at once. Scuffling at the door, not toward it, but away. Terrified moaning and wailing. More voices. Several of them.
“This is evil!”
“It carries shame,” another voice said. This was the first voice I heard that sounded high-pitched, almost female. “The shame she carries allows her to mimic speech.”
“No. It has to have sense for that,” another voice said.
“Evil! Let me deactivate the door and kill it.”
“Okwu, you will die if you . . .”
“I will kill it!” the one called Okwu growled. “Death will be my honor! We’re too close now, we can’t have . . .”
“Me!” I shouted suddenly. “O . . . Okwu!” Calling its name, addressing it so directly sounded strange on my lips. I pushed on. “Okwu, why don’t you talk to me?”
I looked at my cramped hands. From within it, from my edan, possibly the strongest current I’d ever produced streamed in jagged connected bright blue branches. It slowly etched and lurched through the closed door, a line of connected bright blue treelike branches that shifted in shape but never broke their connection. The current was touching the Meduse. Connecting them to me. And though I’d created it, I couldn’t control it now. I wanted to scream, revolted. But I had to save my life first. “I am speaking to you!” I said. “Me!”
Silence.
I slowly stood up, my heart pounding. I stumbled to the shut door on aching trembling legs. The door’s organic steel was so thin, but one of the strongest substances on my planet. Where the current touched it, tiny green leaves unfurled. I touched them, focusing on the leaves and not the fact that the door was covered with a sheet of gold, a super communication conducter. Nor the fact of the Meduse just beyond my door.
I heard a rustle and I used all my strength not to scuttle back. I flared my nostrils as I grasped the edan. The weight of my hair on my shoulders was assuring, my hair was heavy with otjize, and this was good luck and the strength of my people, even if my people were far far away.
The loud bang of something hard and powerful hitting the door made me yelp. I stayed where I was. “Evil thing,” I heard the one called Okwu say. Of all the voices, that one I could recognize. It was the angriest and scariest. The voice sounded spoken, not transmitted in my mind. I could hear the vibration of the “v” in “evil” and the hard breathy “th” in “thing.” Did they have mouths?
“I’m not evil,” I said.
I heard whispering and rustling behind the door. Then the more female voice said, “Open this door.”
“No!”
They muttered among themselves. Minutes passed. I sunk to the floor, leaning against the door. The blue current sunk with me, streaming through the door at my shoulder; more green leaves bloomed there, some fell down my shoulder onto my lap. I leaned my head against the door and stared down at them. Green tiny leaves of green tiny life when I was so close to death. I giggled and my empty belly rumbled and my sore abdominal muscles ached.
Then, quietly, calmly, “You are understanding us?” this was the growling voice that had been calling me evil. Okwu.
“Yes,” I said.
“Humans only understand violence.”
I closed my eyes and felt my weak body relax. I sighed and said, “The only thing I have killed are small animals for food, and only with swift grace and after prayer and thanking the beast for its sacrifice.” I was exhausted.
“I do not believe you.”
“Just as I do not believe you will not kill me if I open the door. All you do is kill.” I opened my eyes. Energy that I didn’t know I still had rippled through me and I was so angry that I couldn’t catch my breath. “Like . . . like you . . . killed my friends!” I coughed and slumped down, weakly. “My friends,” I whispered, tears welling in my eyes. “Oooh, my friends!”
“Humans must be killed before they kill us,” the voice said.
“You’re all stupid,” I spat, wiping my tears as they kept coming. I sobbed hard and then took a deep breath, trying to pull it together. I exhaled loudly, snot flying from my nose. As I wiped my face with my arm, there were more whispers. Then the higher pitched voice spoke.
“What is this blue ghost you have sent to help us communicate?”
“I don’t know,” I said, sniffing. I got up and walked to my bed. Moving away from the door instantly made me feel better. The blue current extended with me.
“Why do we understand you?” Okwu asked. I could still hear its voice perfectly from where I was.
“I . . . I don’t know,” I said, sitting on my bed and then lying back.
“No Meduse has ever spoken to a human . . . except long ago.”
“I don’t care,” I grunted.
“Open the door. We won’t harm you.”
“No.”
There was a long pause. So long that I must have fallen asleep. I was awakened by a sucking sound. At first I paid no mind to it, taking the moment to wipe off the caked snot on my face with my arm. The ship made all sorts of sounds, even before the Meduse attacked. It was a living thing and like any beast, its bowels gurgled and quaked every so often. Then I sat up straight as the sucking sound grew louder. The door trembled. It buckled a bit and then completely crumpled, the gold plating on the outside now visible. The stale air of my room whooshed out into the hallway and suddenly the air cooled and smelled fresher.