The Obelisk Gate

16 you meet an old friend, again

I WANT TO KEEP TELLING THIS as I have: in your mind, in your voice, telling you what to think and know. Do you find this rude? It is, I admit. Selfish. When I speak as just myself, it’s difficult to feel like part of you. It is lonelier. Please; let me continue a bit longer.

You stare at the stone eater that has burst forth from the chalcedony chrysalis. It stands hunched and perfectly still, watching you sidelong through the slight heat-waver of the air around the split geode. Its hair is as you remember from that half-real, half-dream moment within the garnet obelisk: a frozen splash, what happens to ashblow hair when a hard gust of wind lifts it up and back. Translucent white-ish opal now instead of simply white. But unlike the fleshly form that you grew to know, this stone eater’s “skin” is as black as the night sky once was before the Season. What you thought were cracks back then, you now realize are actually white and silver marbling veins. Even the elegant drape of pseudo-clothing wrapped around the body, a simple chiton that hangs off one shoulder, is marbled black. Only the eyes lack the marbling, the whites now matte smooth darkness. The irises are still icewhite. They stand out from the black face, stark and so atavistically disturbing that it actually takes you a moment to realize the face around it is still Hoa’s.

Hoa. He is older, you see at once; the face is that of a young man and not a boy. Still too wide, with too narrow a mouth, racially nonsensical. You can read anxiety in those frozen features, though, because you learned to read it on a face that was once softer and designed to elicit your compassion.

“Which was the lie?” you ask. It is the only thing you can think to ask.

“The lie?” The voice is a man’s now. The same voice, but in the tenor range. Coming from his chest somewhere.

You step into the room. It’s still unpleasantly hot, though cooling off quickly. You’re sweating anyway. “Your human shape, or this?”

“Both have been true at different times.”

“Ah, yes. Alabaster said all of you were human. Once, anyway.”

There is a moment of silence. “Are you human?”

At this, you cannot help but laugh once. “Officially? No.”

“Never mind what others think. What do you feel yourself to be?”

“Human.”

“Then so am I.”

He stands steaming between the halves of a giant rock from which he just hatched. “Uh, not anymore.”

“Should I take your word for that? Or listen to what I feel myself to be?”

You shake your head, walking as far as you can around the geode. Inside it there is nothing; it’s a thin stone shell bare of crystals or the usual precipitant lining. Probably doesn’t qualify as a geode, then. “How’d you end up in an obelisk?”

“Pissed off the wrong rogga.”

This surprises you into a laugh, which makes you stop and stare at him. It’s an uncomfortable laugh. He’s watching you the way he always used to, all eyes and hope. Should it really matter that the eyes are so strange now?

“I didn’t know that could be done,” you say. “Trapping a stone eater, I mean.”

“You could do it. It’s one of the only ways to stop one of us.”

“Not kill you, obviously.”

“No. There’s only one way to do that.”

“Which is?”

He flicks to face you. This seems instantaneous; suddenly the statue’s pose is completely different, serene and upright, with one hand raised in… invitation? Appeal? “Are you planning to kill me, Essun?”

You sigh and shake your head and extend a hand to touch one of the stone halves, out of curiosity.

“Don’t. It’s still too hot for your flesh.” He pauses. “This is how I get clean, without soap.”

A day along the side of the road, south of Tirimo. A boy who stared at a bar of soap in confusion, then delight. It’s still him. You can’t shake it off. So you sigh and also let go of the part of yourself that wants to treat him as something else, something frightening, something other. He’s Hoa. He wants to eat you, and he tried to help you find your daughter even though he failed. There’s an intimacy in these facts, however strange they are, that means something to you.

You fold your arms and pace slowly around the geode, and him. His eyes follow. “So who kicked your ass?” He has regenerated the eyes that were missing, and the lower jaw. The limbs that had been torn off are part of him again. There’s still blood in the living room, but whatever there had been in your bedroom is now gone, along with a layer of the floor and walls. Stone eaters are said to have control over the very smallest particles of matter. Simple enough to reappropriate one’s own detached substance, repurpose unused surplus material. You guess.

“A dozen or so of my kind. Then one in particular.”

“That many?”

“They were children to me. How many children would it take to overwhelm you?”

“You were a child.”

“I looked like a child.” His voice softens. “I only did that for you.”

There is a greater difference between this Hoa and that Hoa than their states of being. When adult Hoa says things like this, the words have an entirely different texture from when child Hoa said them. You’re not certain you like that texture.

“So you’ve been off getting into fights all this time,” you say, adjusting the subject back toward comfort. “There was a stone eater at the Flat Top. A gray—”

“Yes.” You didn’t think it was possible for a stone eater to look disgruntled, but Hoa does. “That one isn’t a child. He was the one who defeated me, finally, though I managed to escape without too much damage.” You marvel for a moment that he thinks having all his limbs and jaw torn off is not much damage. But you’re a little glad, too. The gray stone eater hurt Hoa, and you hurt him back. Ephemeral revenge, maybe, but it makes you feel like you look out for your own.

Hoa still sounds defensive. “It was also… unwise for me to face him while clothed in human flesh.”

It’s too damned hot in the room. Mopping sweat from your face, you move into the living room, push aside and tie off the main-door curtain so cooler air will circulate in more easily, and sit down at the table. By the time you turn back, Hoa is in the door of your bedroom, framed beautifully by the arch of it: study of a youth in wary contemplation.

“Is that why you changed back? To face him?” You didn’t see the bit of rag that contained his rocks while you were in the bedroom. Maybe it caught fire and is just charred cloth amid the rest, purpose served.

“I changed back because it was time.” There’s that tone of resignation again. He sounded that way when you first realized what he was. Like he knows he’s lost something in your eyes, and he can’t get it back, and he has no choice but to accept that—but he doesn’t have to like it. “I could have kept that shape only for a limited time. I made a choice to decrease the time, and increase the chance you will survive.”

“Oh?”

Beyond him, in your room, you suddenly notice that the leftover shell of his, er, egg, is melting. Sort of. It is dissolving and lightening in color and merging back into the clear material of the crystal, parting around the detritus of your belongings as it rejoins its former substance and solidifies again. You stare at that instead of him for a moment, fascinated.

Until he says, “They want you dead, Essun.”

“They—” You blink. “Who?”

“Some of my kind. Some merely want to use you. I won’t let them.”

You frown. “Which? You won’t let them kill me, or you won’t let them use me?”

“Either.” The echoing voice grows sharp suddenly. You remember him crouching, baring his teeth like some feral beast. It occurs to you, with the suddenness of an epiphany, that you haven’t seen as many stone eaters around lately. Ruby Hair, Butter Marble, Ugly Dress, Toothshine, all the regulars; not a glimpse in months. Ykka even remarked on the sudden absence of “hers.”

“You ate her,” you blurt.

There is a pause. “I’ve eaten many,” Hoa says. It is inflectionless.

You remember him giggling and calling you weird. Curling against you to sleep. Earthfires, you can’t deal with this.

“Why me, Hoa?” You spread your hands. They are ordinary, middle-aged woman hands. A bit dry. You helped with the leather-tanning crew a few days ago, and the solution made your skin crack and peel. You’ve been rubbing them with some of the nuts you got in the previous week’s comm share, even though fat is precious and you should be eating it rather than using it for your vanity. In your right palm there is a small, white, thumbnail-shaped crescent. On cold days that hand’s bones ache. Ordinary woman hands.

“There’s nothing special about me,” you say. “There must be other orogenes with the potential to access the obelisks. Earthfires, Nassun—” No. “Why are you here?” You mean, why has he attached himself to you.

He is silent for a moment. Then: “You asked if I was all right.”

This makes no sense for a moment, and then it does. Allia. A beautiful sunny day, a looming disaster. As you hovered in agony amid the cracked, dissonant core of the garnet obelisk, you saw him for the first time. How long had he been in that thing? Long enough for it to be buried beneath Seasons’ worth of sediment and coral growth. Long enough to be forgotten, like all the dead civilizations of the world. And then you came along and asked how he was doing. Evil Earth, you thought you hallucinated that.

You take a deep breath and get up, going to the entrance of the apartment. The comm is quiet, as far as you can tell. Some people are going about their usual business, but there are fewer of them around than usual. The ones following routine are no proof of peace; people went about their business in Tirimo, too, right before they tried to kill you.

Tonkee didn’t come home again last night, but this time you’re not so sure that she’s with Hjarka or up in the green room. There is a catalyst alive in Castrima now, accelerating unseen chemical reactions, facilitating unexpected outcomes. Join us and live, the gray one had told them, but not with your roggas.

Will the people of Castrima stop to think that no Equatorial comm really wants a sudden influx of mongrel Midlatters, and at best will make slaves or meat of them? Your mothering instinct is alive with warning. Look after your own, it whispers in the back of your mind. Gather them close and guard them well. You know what happens when you turn your back for even a minute.

You shoulder the runny-sack that’s still in your hand. Keeping it with you isn’t even a question at this point. Then you turn to Hoa. “Come with me.”

Hoa’s suddenly smiling again. “I don’t walk anymore, Essun.”

Oh. Right. “I’m going to Ykka’s, then. Meet me there.”

He does not nod, simply vanishes. No wasted movement. Eh, you’ll get used to it.

People don’t look at you as you cross the bridges and walkways of the comm. The center of your back itches from their stares as you pass. You cannot help thinking of Tirimo again.

Ykka’s not in her apartment. You look around, follow the patterns of movement in the comm with your eyes, and finally head toward the Flat Top. She cannot still be there. You’ve gone home, watched a child turn into a stone eater, slept several hours. She can’t be.

She is. You see that only a few people are still on the Flat Top now—a gaggle of maybe twenty, sitting or pacing, looking angry and exasperated and troubled. For the twenty you see, there are surely another hundred gathering in apartments and the baths and the storage rooms, having the same conversation in hushed tones with small groups. But Ykka is here, sitting on one of the divans that someone has brought from her apartment, still talking. She’s hoarse, you realize as you draw close. Visibly exhausted. But still talking. Something about supply lines from one of the southern allied comms, which she’s directing at a man who is walking in circles with his arms folded, scoffing at everything she says. It’s fear; he’s not listening. Ykka’s trying to reason with him anyway. It’s ridiculous.

Look after your own.

You step around people—some of whom flinch away from you—and stop beside her. “I need to talk to you in private.”

Ykka stops midsentence and blinks up at you. Her eyes are red and sticky-dry. She hasn’t had any water for a while. “What about?”

“It’s important.” As a sop to courtesy you nod to the people sitting around her. “Sorry.”

She sighs and rubs her eyes, which just makes them redder. “Fine.” She gets up, then pauses to face the remaining people. “Vote’s tomorrow morning. If I haven’t convinced you… well. You know what to do, then.”

They watch in silence as you lead her away.

Back in her apartment, you pull the front curtain shut and open the one that leads into her private rooms. Not much to this space to indicate her status: She’s got two pallets and a lot of pillows, but her clothes are just in a basket, and the books and scrolls on one side of the room are just stacked on the floor. No bookcases, no dresser. The food from her comm share is stacked haphazardly against one wall, beside a familiar gourd that the Castrimans tend to use for storing drinking water. You snag the gourd with your elbow and pick from the food pile a dried orange, a stick of dry bean curd that Ykka’s been soaking with some mushrooms in a shallow pan, and a small slab of salt fish. It’s not exactly a meal, but it’s nutrition. “On the bed,” you say, gesturing with your chin and bringing the food to her. You hand her the gourd first.

Ykka, who has observed all this in increasing irritation, snaps, “You’re not my type. Is this why you dragged me here?”

“Not exactly. But while you’re here, you need to rest.” She looks mutinous. “You can’t convince anyone of anything—” Let alone people whose hate can’t be reasoned with. “—if you’re too exhausted to think straight.”

She grumbles, but it is a measure of how tired she is that she actually goes to the bed and sits down on its edge. You nod at the gourd, and she dutifully drinks—three quick swallows and down for now, as the lorists advise after dehydration. “I stink. I need a bath.”

“Should’ve thought of that before you decided to try to talk down a brewing lynch mob.” You take the gourd and push the dish of food into her hand. She sighs and starts grimly chewing.

“They’re not going to—” She doesn’t get far into that lie, though, before she flinches and stares at something beyond you. You know before you turn: Hoa. “Okay, no, not in my rusting room.”

“I told him to meet us here,” you say. “It’s Hoa.”

“You told—it’s—” Ykka swallows hard, stares a moment longer, then finally resumes eating the orange. She chews slowly, her gaze never leaving Hoa. “Got tired of playing the human, then? Not sure why you bothered; you were too weird to pass.”

You go over to the wall near the bedroom door and sit down against it, on the floor. The runny-sack has to come off for this, but you make sure to keep it near to hand. To Ykka you say, “You’ve talked to the other members of your council and half your comm, still and rogga and native and newcomer. The perspective you’re missing is theirs.” You nod at Hoa.

Ykka blinks, then eyes Hoa with new interest. “I did ask you to sit on my council once.”

“I can’t speak for my kind any more than you can for yours,” Hoa says. “And I had more important things to do.”

You see Ykka blink at his voice and blatantly stare at him. You wave a hand at Hoa wearily. Unlike Ykka, you’ve slept, but it wasn’t exactly quality sleep, while you sat in a sweltering apartment waiting for a geode to hatch. “Speaking what you know will help.” And then, prompted by some instinct, you add, “Please.”

Because somehow, you think he’s reticent. His expression hasn’t changed. His posture is the one he showed you last, the young man in repose with one hand upraised; he’s changed his location, but not his position. Still.

The proof of his reticence comes when he says, “Very well.” It’s all in the tone. But fine, you can work with reticent.

“What does the gray stone eater want?” Because you’re pretty rusting sure he doesn’t really want Castrima to join some Equatorial comm. Human nation-state politics just wouldn’t mean much to them, unless it was in service to some other goal. The people of Rennanis are his pawns, not the other way around.

“There are many of us now,” Hoa replies. “Enough to be called a people in ourselves and not merely a mistake.”

At this apparent non sequitur, you exchange a look with Ykka, who looks back at you as if to say, He’s your mess, not mine. Maybe it’s relevant somehow. “Yes?” you prompt.

“There are those of my kind who believe this world can safely bear only one people.”

Oh, Evil Earth. This is what Alabaster talked about. How had he described it? Factions in an ancient war. The ones who wanted people… neutralized.

Like the stone eaters themselves, ’Baster had said.

“You want to wipe us out,” you say. Whisper. “Or… change us into stone? Like what’s happening to Alabaster?”

“Not all of us,” Hoa says softly. “And not all of you.”

A world of only stone people. The thought of it makes you shiver. You envision falling ash and skeletal trees and creepy statues everywhere, some of the latter moving. How? They are unstoppable, but until now they’ve only preyed on each other. (That you know of.) Can they turn all of you into stone, like Alabaster? And if they wanted to wipe humankind out, shouldn’t they have been able to manage it before now?

You shake your head. “This world has borne two people, for Seasons. Three, if you count orogenes; the stills do.”

“Not all of us are content with that.” His voice is very soft now. “Such a rare thing, the birth of a new one of our kind. We wear on endlessly, while you rise and spawn and wilt like mushrooms. It’s hard not to envy. Or covet.”

Ykka is shaking her head in confusion. Though her voice holds its usual unflappable attitude, you see a little frown of wonder between her brows. Her mouth pulls to one side, though, as if she cannot help but show at least a little disgust. “Fine,” she says. “So stone eaters used to be us, and now you want to kill us. Why should we trust you?”

“Not ‘stone eaters.’ Not all of us want the same thing. Some like things as they are. Some even want to make the world better… though not all agree on what that means.” Instantly his posture changes—hands out, palms up, shoulders lifted in a What can you do? gesture. “We’re people.”

“And what do you want?” you ask. Because he didn’t answer Ykka’s question, and you noticed.

Those silver irises flick over to you, stay. You think you see wistfulness in his still face. “The same thing I’ve always wanted, Essun. To help you. Only that.”

You think, Not everyone agrees on what “help” means.

“Well, this is touching,” Ykka says. She rubs her tired eyes. “But you’re not getting to the point. What does Castrima being destroyed have to do with… giving the world one people? What’s this gray man up to?”

“I don’t know.” Hoa’s still looking at you. It’s not as unnerving as it should be. “I tried to ask him. It didn’t go well.”

“Guess,” you say. Because you know full well there’s a reason he asked the gray man in the first place.

Hoa’s eyes shift down. Your distrust hurts. “He wants to make sure the Obelisk Gate is never opened again.”

“The what?” Ykka asks. But you’re leaning your head back against the wall, floored and horrified and wondering. Of course. Alabaster. What easier way to wipe out people who depend on food and sunlight to survive than to simply let this Season wear on until they are extinct? Leaving nothing but the stone eaters to inherit the darkening Earth. And to make sure it happens, kill the only person with the power to end it.

Only person besides you, you realize with a chill. But no. You can manipulate an obelisk, but you haven’t got a clue how to activate two hundred of the rusting things at once. And can Alabaster do it anymore? Every use of orogeny kills him slowly. Flaking rust—you’re the only one left who even has the potential to open the Gate. But if Gray Man’s pet army kills both of you, his purpose is served either way.

“It means Gray Man wants to wipe out orogenes in particular,” you say to Ykka. You’re abbreviating heavily, not lying. That’s what you tell yourself. That’s what you need to tell Ykka, so that she never learns that orogenes have the potential power to save the world, and so that she never attempts to access an obelisk herself. This is what Alabaster must have constantly had to do with you—telling you some of the truth because you deserve it, but not enough that you’ll skewer yourself on it. Then you think of another bone you can throw. “Hoa was trapped in an obelisk for a while. He said it’s the only thing that can stop them.”

Not the only way, he’d said. But maybe Hoa’s giving you only the safe truths, too.

“Well, shit,” Ykka says, annoyed. “You can do obelisk stuff. Throw one at him.”

You groan. “That wouldn’t work.”

“What would, then?”

“I have no idea! That’s what I’ve been trying to learn from Alabaster all this time.” And failing, you don’t want to say. Ykka can guess it, anyway.

“Great.” Ykka abruptly seems to wilt. “You’re right; I need to sleep. I had Esni mobilize the Strongbacks to secure weapons in the comm. Ostensibly they’re making them ready for use if we have to fight off these Equatorials. In truth…” She shrugs, sighs, and you understand. People are frightened right now. Best not to tempt fate.

“You can’t trust the Strongbacks,” you say softly.

Ykka looks up at you. “Castrima isn’t wherever you came from.”

You want to smile, though you don’t because you know how ugly the smile will be. You’re from so many places. In every one of them you learned that roggas and stills can never live together. Ykka shifts a little at the look on your face anyway. She tries again: “Look, how many other comms would’ve let me live after learning what I was?”

You shake your head. “You were useful. That worked for the Imperial Orogenes, too.” But being useful to others is not the same thing as being equal.

“Fine, then I’m useful. We all are. Kill or exile the roggas and we lose Castrima-under. Then we’re at the mercy of a bunch of people who would as soon treat all of us like roggas, just because our ancestors couldn’t pick a race and stick to it—”

“You keep saying ‘we,’” you say. It is gentle. It bothers you to puncture her illusions.

She stops, and a muscle in her jaw flexes once or twice. “Stills learned to hate us. They can learn differently.”

“Now? With an enemy literally at the gate?” You’re so tired. So tired of all this shit. “Now is when we’ll see the worst of them.”

Ykka watches you for a long moment. Then she slumps—completely, her back bowing and her head hanging and her ashblow hair sliding off to the sides of her neck until it looks utterly ridiculous, a butterfly mane. It hides her face. But she draws in a long, weary breath, and it sounds almost like a sob. Or a laugh.

“No, Essun.” She rubs her face. “Just… no. Castrima is my home, same as theirs. I’ve worked for it. Fought for it. Castrima wouldn’t be here if not for me—and probably some of the other roggas who risked themselves to keep it all going, over the years. I’m not giving up.”

“It isn’t giving up to look out for yourself—”

“Yes. It is.” She lifts her head. It wasn’t a sob or a laugh. She’s furious. Just not at you. “You’re saying these people—my parents, my creche teachers, my friends, my lovers—You’re saying just leave them to their fate. You’re saying they’re nothing. That they’re not people at all, just beasts whose nature it is to kill. You’re saying roggas are nothing but, but prey and that’s all we’ll ever be! No! I won’t accept that.”

She sounds so determined. It makes your heart ache, because you felt the same way she did, once. It would be nice to still feel that way. To have some hope of a real future, a real community, a real life… but you have lost three children relying on stills’ better nature.

You grab the runny-sack and get up to leave, rubbing a hand over your locs. Hoa vanishes, reading your cue that the conversation is over. Later, then. When you’re almost at the curtain, though, Ykka stops you with what she says.

“Pass the word around,” she tells you. The emotion is gone from her voice. “No matter what happens, we can’t start anything.” Loaded into that delicate emphasis is an acknowledgment that orogenes are the we she means, this time. “We shouldn’t even finish it. Fighting back could set off a mob. Only talk to the others in small groups. Person to person’s best, if you can, so no one thinks we’re getting together to conspire. Make sure the children know all this. Make sure none of them are ever alone.”

Most of the orogene children do know how to defend themselves. The techniques you taught them work just as well for deterring or stopping attackers as for icing boilbug nests. But Ykka’s right: There are too few of you to fight back—not without destroying Castrima, a pyrrhic victory. It means that some orogenes are going to die. You’re going to let them die, even if you could save them. And you did not think Ykka cold enough to think this way.

Your surprise must show on your face. Ykka smiles. “I have hope,” she says, “but I’m not stupid. If you’re right, and things get hopeless, then we don’t go without a fight. We make them regret turning on us. But up to that point of no return… I hope you’re not right.”

You know you’re right. The belief that orogenes will never be anything but the world’s meat dances amid the cells of you, like magic. It isn’t fair. You just want your life to matter.

But you say: “I hope I’m not right, too.”