Khe by Alexes Razevich

a babbler. I’d taken knives, but no whetstone. Rasp. Rasp. Rasp. Were simple mistakes like forgetting a whetstone going to be my undoing?
    The sun had dipped behind the hill and long shadows crept across the land by the time I’d shoved over the second trunk with my shoulder. The second rhantan held no blitters. I needed food.
    I hauled myself back up to the hilltop and peered over. No one tended the fields, which seemed odd. They were working so hard yesterday, into the night.
    Then I saw why—a corenta was perched on the open land behind me, to the north. The walls and buildings of the trading community hadn’t been there yesterday. It must have arrived in the night. Simanca always said that the corentas were dangerous, the buildings, beasts and doumanas in them without faith, and evil. That was why only she and Tav went to them. I gazed at the corenta, wishing I could see more than just rooftops beyond the high mud walls. The forbidden was always tantalizing.
    “Another time,” I told myself, and even as I said it, knew I would never see inside one.
    ***
    The runners for the sled lay next to where I sat cross-legged, peeling gooey, resinous fibers from the back of bark carefully stripped from the rhantan, and braiding them into rope to tie the runners to the sled. I never would have thought of this on my own. I’d seen it on a presentation on the vision stage about life in the old days. It’d looked easy in the presentation. My fingers fumbled at teasing the fibers from the bark. Most broke, but some came away long.
    Sweat prickled my scalp. My fingers, covered in rhantan sap, stuck to the fibers. The canteen sat next to me, empty. I put aside the work and hiked to a small spring I’d found some distance from my hillside camp.
    Next to the spring, a stand of purple-leafed bushes with small, brown-husked fruit grew. I’d seen birds peck away the fruit’s outer covering and eat the flesh and seeds inside, but was afraid to try them myself. Just because one species can eat something doesn’t mean it won’t hurt another. But I’d found nothing since the small, slimy blitters I’d eaten yesterday. My stomach rumbled. I had to give the fruit a try.
    I picked several and sliced through the outer shell with a dulled knife. The fruit came apart in two neat halves. Inside, the flesh was bluish-pink and creamy. Five small white seeds lay in a dead-center star pattern. I cut a chunk with the knife, lifted it to my mouth and chewed. It tasted sweet.
    I swallowed the bite, then slipped into the cool, running waters of the stream for a bath while I waited to see how my body took the food. After what seemed a reasonable time had passed and I didn’t get sick, I took another bite. I waited again. Nothing happened. I chuckled under my breath and cut a larger hunk, popped it into my mouth, chewed and swallowed. I felt a tingle in my ear holes and heard a ringing that grew louder and louder.
    A sharp pain stabbed through my belly. My stomach heaved. I retched and retched but nothing came out. Sweat covered the parts of my body not under water. My temperature soared, then plunged. I crawled out of the stream and lay on the dirt, shivering head to foot.
    My stomach heaved, but again nothing came up. The ringing inside my ear holes vibrated through my whole body. The air shimmered. A small, green-furred beastlet crawled onto my bare foot and stared at me with huge yellow eyes. I tried to shake it off—but there was no beastlet. My stomach heaved again.
    I began singing The Expectation of Returning , the song for the dying. The words stuck in my throat, but I made myself go on.
    “ Sweet and merciful creator, too long have I been gone from you.
    My heart cries out in longing to join again with the soul.”
    The words floated from my mouth, hanging in the air like text on the vision stage. My words came out in colors—blues, greens, yellows, and oranges. The wind picked them up like dry leaves, spun them around and carried them