The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,73

museum. We cluster together in the big room at the front of the house, afraid to move, afraid to touch anything.

“Do you live here?” one of the others asks Kelenli.

“Occasionally,” she says. Her face is expressionless, but there is something in her voice that troubles me. “Follow me.”

She leads us through the house. A den of stunning comfort: every surface soft and sittable, even the floor. What strikes me is that nothing is white. The walls are green and in some places painted a deep, rich burgundy. In the next room, the beds are covered in blue and gold fabric in contrasting textures. Nothing is hard and nothing is bare and I have never thought before that the chamber I live in is a prison cell, but now for the first time, I do.

I have thought many new things this day, especially during our journey to this house. We walked the whole way, our feet aching with the unaccustomed use, and the whole way, people stared. Some whispered. One reached out to stroke my hair in passing, then giggled when I belatedly twitched away. At one point a man followed us. He was older, with short gray hair almost the same texture as ours, and he began to say angry things. Some of the words I did not know (“Niesbred” and “forktongue,” for example). Some I knew, but did not understand. (“Mistakes” and “We should have wiped you out,” which makes no sense because we were very carefully and intentionally made.) He accused us of lying, though none of us spoke to him, and of only pretending to be gone (somewhere). He said that his parents and his parents’ parents taught him the true horror, the true enemy, monsters like us were the enemy of all good people, and he was going to make sure we didn’t hurt anyone else.

Then he came closer, big fists balled up. As we stumbled along gawping, so confused that we did not even realize we were in danger, some of our unobtrusive guards abruptly became more obtrusive and pulled the man into a building alcove, where they held him while he shouted and struggled to get at us. Kelenli kept walking forward the whole time, her head high, not looking at the man. We followed, knowing nothing else to do, and after a while the man fell behind us, his words lost to the sounds of the city.

Later, Gaewha, shaking a little, asked Kelenli what was wrong with the angry man. Kelenli laughed softly and said, “He’s Sylanagistine.” Gaewha subsided into confusion. We all sent her quick pulses of reassurance that we are equally mystified; the problem was not her.

This is normal life in Syl Anagist, we understand, as we walk through it. Normal people on the normal streets. Normal touches that make us cringe or stiffen or back up quickly. Normal houses with normal furnishings. Normal gazes that avert or frown or ogle. With every glimpse of normalcy, the city teaches us just how abnormal we are. I have never minded before that we were merely constructs, genegineered by master biomagests and developed in capsids of nutrient slush, decanted fully grown so that we would need no nurturing. I have been … proud, until now, of what I am. I have been content. But now I see the way these normal people look at us, and my heart aches. I don’t understand why.

Perhaps all the walking has damaged me.

Now Kelenli leads us through the fancy house. We pass through a doorway, however, and find an enormous sprawling garden behind the house. Down the steps and around the dirt path, there are flower beds everywhere, their fragrance summoning us closer. These aren’t like the precisely cultivated, genegineered flower beds of the compound, with their color-coordinated winking flowers; what grows here is wild, and perhaps inferior, their stems haphazardly short or long and their petals frequently less than perfect. And yet … I like them. The carpet of lichens that covers the path invites closer study, so we confer in rapid pulse-waves as we crouch and try to understand why it feels so springy and pleasant beneath our feet. A pair of scissors dangling from a stake invites curiosity. I resist the urge to claim some of the pretty purple flowers for myself, though Gaewha tries the scissors and then clutches some flowers in her hand, tightly, fiercely. We have never been allowed possessions of our own.

I watch Kelenli surreptitiously, compulsively, while she watches us