five seconds, absorbed in the difference between its crude weave and the coloured shells of the tiny creatures that wandered through it, as if through a forest.
Now supremely excited, David dropped the towel and held up a mirror. I looked away from it. I already knew the dimensions of my face and the pigment of my skin—a mild ashen cream with freckles on high cheekbones. My eyes are a deep green, like all female erta.
No, I was not at all interested in absorbing bouncing photons from polished glass. I was altogether more interested in the nine others like me, my siblings, who had also stepped from their tanks. Beyond us stood our mother, Kai, a member of the High Council. She watched us with interest, and we watched her back. Already, we knew our purpose.
Our births could not have been more different.
Your cry was now in full force. Having accepted Haralia’s advice that there was nothing unusual in this, I made the necessary checks. Orifices, eyes, fingers, toes. Confirming that you did indeed have the requisite number of each, I cleaned you and swaddled you in a blanket. Then I left the Halls of Gestation, carrying you in my arms.
You were born early one Spring morning within a mountain, where the Halls had been built five centuries before, overlooking the forest city of Ertanea and the sea beyond.
The sun was yet to rise and the pines stretched out beneath a veil of perfect white moonlight. There was a frost in the air so I tightened your blanket and pulled over my hood as I followed the wide steps down. Our galaxy arced above us. I spotted Jupiter close to the moon and a distant constellation I had not seen for some months. I made a note to examine it later, when I had more time.
I found Boron slumbering by the stone wall at the bottom of the steps and awoke him with a nudge of his nuzzle. Then, holding you in the crook of my arm, I climbed upon his back and let him carry us home.
It was dawn when we emerged from the forest and long shadows drew out across the brightening meadows. You had found peace beneath the canopies, but when the sunlight hit your face your eyes opened, rolling around. You began to cry again, and this time you had no intention of stopping.
The noise unnerved Boron, who snorted steam and scuffed his hooves, but I managed to settle him and we trotted on down the track.
When we arrived at my settlement, Fane, your cry had become a repetitive pulse. You knew nothing else, apparently. This was all you could do.
I released Boron into the paddock and walked across the stone square. Some of my fellow villagers were already awake and peering through their windows, no doubt wondering what the disturbance was. Jakob was at the well, filling his pail.
‘All is well, Ima?’ he said, spotting the bundle in my arm. ‘A success?’
I nodded back.
‘All is well,’ I said.
He watched me as I entered my dwelling, pail half full.
Inside I laid you on the bed and took the corner chair. Your screams filled my house, echoing from the timber and rattling the walls. I was tired, and for the first time I pondered the notion that this may have been a mistake.
— TWO —
202 DAYS BEFORE, I had been standing in the cool, stone chambers of the Halls of Reason, where the High Council met. One hundred of us formed a circle around our elders. These ten were our parents, the second generation of erta, born of Oonagh.
I have never met Oonagh. Few have. She was the first of our kind and now lives on her own in the mountains, for reasons I neither know nor need to know.
Kai, my mother, spoke.
‘Friends and children. Our purpose has been fulfilled.’
Her voice echoed from the high stone walls, into which the roots and branches of trees had been allowed to grow. The tongue click of the final ‘d’ hissed into silence, riding the sonorous vowels of its preceding word before a collection of dirt in the rafters dampened the final decibels of its reverberation. My five centuries spent stabilising this planet’s atmosphere have bred a fascination with the air and how things move through it. Sound is no exception, and I find speech of particular interest.
My mother continued.
‘The sea levels have been restored, the coastlines are clean, the forests are full. The atmosphere—’ she glanced in my direction, with