little girl doesn’t have to guess where Mother is, because she feels the sudden hardness of jointed limbs wrapping her body. She knows better than to move, and does not even cry out when her hair is tugged, painfully, by razor-sharp mouthparts.
“And on the eighth day,” whispers the darkness, “she emerged, gleaming in the light of the moons.”
The little girl mouths the words with cracked lips, because she knows that story. Shenya the Clever took eight days to emerge, Suukyu the Insane took eight days to emerge, everyone except for Sarya the Destroyer took eight days, she will take eight days, onetwothreefourfive—
“I am your birthplace,” recites the voice. “I am your proving ground. I am your siblings, who hunger for life. I am ravenous hunger, and I am killing thirst. I am Suffering herself. And I say to you who have been gifted life: do you deserve your gift?”
“No,” whispers the little girl.
“You who have been bestowed with consciousness: do you merit that which you have received?”
The little girl cannot make a sound, but she can move her lips. No, say her lips.
“You who possess these unearned gifts: do you wish to purchase them?”
The little girl is so exhausted, so far beyond anything in her experience that she can barely even think. Her greatest desire and her greatest fear are crushed together; she is wrapped in something that could be Mother and it is wrapped in darkness or maybe it is made of darkness or maybe it is the darkness. She doesn’t understand it, and she doesn’t understand her own reaction to it. She wants to scream at it, to kill it. She wants to bury herself in it, where no one can find her. She wants to run and hide, she wants to burn this monster in light and fire—but she doesn’t do any of these things. Instead, she does something she’s never done before. With confused fingers, she reaches out into the blackness and feels for a face. It is right there, even closer than she thought, and it does not prevent her from touching its hardness and sharp edges. It’s not at all like her own face.
“Yes,” she says to the face.
“Then these scars,” says the darkness, “will be your most precious possessions.”
And then there is light.
This is the first light the little girl has seen in days, and she hungers for it even as she slits her eyes against it. She can see the thing in the darkness now, because it has transformed from an invisible terror into a nightmare. Every hard line gleams with white light, every angle quivers in the twisting shadows on the walls. The little girl is trapped, held in the center of a whirling storm of light and shadow.
“Do you know what this is?” asks the nightmare.
After so long in the darkness, the little girl couldn’t look away from the light if she wanted to. She tries to swallow, then tries to say no, but nothing happens each time but pain.
“This is my past,” says the darkness. “And your future—and if not yours, then that of your people. These are the memories I created while in your world; I have cut them out and stored them. In this device is the only record of its location. Thousands of cultures would pay dearly for it.”
There are more words, but they are so chopped with violent clicks that the little girl cannot quite make them out, even with her ears centimeters from those quivering mandibles. They sounded like…my own most of all.
“And so we come to the final night of your trial,” says the darkness after an endless moment. “This is the night you fulfill your destiny, whether that be life or death. If you become my Daughter, I shall become the very definition of Motherhood. I shall love whom you love, and I shall kill whom you hate. I shall guard you with my life, and when the time comes to lay it down I shall do so laughing. For my life is mine; I have purchased it, and I may do with it as I please. And what is mine shall be yours, little hatchling, and what is yours shall be mine. Your people shall become my people, and mine yours. I shall relinquish my ancestral right to vengeance, and your future—and that of your people—shall rest on your blades, not mine.” A hiss rises, low and soft. “If you live.”