Sample chapter -- Child of a Wandering Star

You know the old saying – if your girls can’t diagnose and brace a cross-crystal vertical support beam fracture in a level three shaft by the time they hit adolescence, re-examine your hive’s education system.

The thing was, I could diagnose and brace a fracture, no problem. And so, though I hated to admit it, could Deg. We just couldn’t do it working together.

And we couldn’t do it working together, because Deg was a gemtranced little mudgrub who couldn’t keep her claws or her words to herself.

“It’s clearly a fracture through the North half of the beam, two thirds up,” Deg announced, like it was some expert opinion and not something I could see with my own two front eyes. “You should patch it.”

“Why don’t you patch it?” I asked, irritated. “I climbed up last time.”

“You’re so small. It’s an easier climb for you.”

I clicked my mandibles, irritated. I was perfectly average in size. Deg was just half a year older than me and unusually large. I was the best climber in the class, and she could have gone with that, but oh no.

There was no point arguing with her. If I pushed, she’d cause a scene, and nobody wanted that. The rest of the class were all bust with their practice beams, our instructor Tannor carefully examining the results of someone’s repair on the other side of the classroom, and we’d barely started. I got to climbing.

It wasn’t a long climb. The pillar was five sects high, about six times my body length, front eye to tail. The damage was exactly as we’d predicted. This kind of support structure was grown from long, straight red crystals, tightly packed like a bundle of long sticks tied together. They were very resistant to vertical force, but something heavy had hit the side of this one about two thirds of the way up. A rock, or a shift in the earth, or something. (Well, in this case, probably whichever instructor had set up these practice support beams). I could gum this and…

Wait. The crack wasn’t just halfway through the beam. It wasn’t clear from the ground, but there was a hairline fracture all the way through. A test weight of metal had been piled on top; the beam could collapse at any moment.

“Deg,” I called down, “I need a brace for this.”

“Are you stupid? It’s only halfway through! Just gum it up!”

“No, it isn’t. There’s a crack all the way. You can’t see – ”

“I can see just fine, Deg! It’s just a crack! Can you finish up so that we can go?”

“Hand me a brace and I will!”

“Why do you have to overcomplicate everything? Just – ”

The beam collapsed.

Under the stares of the rest of the class, Deg and I shook the dust off ourselves.

Deg clicked her mandibles and flicked a foreclaw in exasperation. “How,” she huffed, “did you manage to fuck up a simple starblind brace repair?”

Tannor cut in. “Perhaps the two of you should have been focusing on the project instead of standing around talking? I’ll see both of you tomorrow for a remedial attempt. Deg, you really need to pay more attention. You’re too close to your first hatching not to take your education seriously.”

She moved on, and Deg eyed me with fury, like I was somehow the one who’d embarrassed her. After a moment of cold silence, she dropped her strongest insult.

“It’s alright for you, I suppose,” she told me. “It’s not like you’ll even need to know how to maintain a nest, is it, wanderer?”

And then she simply sauntered off, while I wrestled down the overwhelming urge to leap forward and lock mandibles with her. Starting a fight with Deg was a stupid idea for several reasons – first, it was childish, and I’d been embarrassed enough for today. Second, Deg was a lot bigger than me. That wasn’t a fight that I was going to win. Third, Tannor was right; Deg was close to her first hatching. It would still be a season or so before the egg just starting to deform my carapace would be ready to lay, but Deg’s chest was swollen with hers and she could be peeling it free any day now. She might be my worst enemy, but doing anything that could endanger that egg was unthinkable.

So instead, I just waited for her to leave and then made my own way out of the classroom, trying not to look like I was sulking.

The tunnel leading to the classroom was fairly small, too small to need support beams. About my body length, so if I stood on my hindclaws alone I could almost touch my head to the roof, something that we’d all tried as littler kids to show off how tall we were getting. (The irony is that anyone big enough to pull it off has outgrown such silly games and just walks down the hall on all six legs like a normal person.) But it quickly widened as I moved toward the hive centre, wide enough to accommodate more traffic from the various tunnels feeding into it. I saw some women hauling loads of loose soil out of a side tunnel on their backs; must have been a minor collapse. I flicked my wings in greeting and stayed out of their way.

The tunnel widened to support width, and then further, until it opened up completely into the vast cavern that was the heart of the hive.

Even though this was the best lit location in the hive, the high mud walls of the dome dotted with cavern openings reached up higher than I could clearly see. The support beams in here were made not of crystal (they were far too long for that) but of wood; long, straight trees cut from the Groundsea and transported overland at great expense. Bright lights hung from them like artificial stars, arranged to form pleasing constellations and portents from different angles, and among them the men flitted, their large wings a blur of colours between the lights, talking and singing and adjusting the constellations. From the angle of my tunnel today, they’d spelled out a portent of good fortune. That lightened my mood considerably, as I headed home.

My mother was decently ranked, so our burrow was fairly low in the cavern wall. I only had to climb up three stories of concreted mud to reach the entrance. She was already home, repairing a weak spot in the back of the burrow that we’d been neglecting for far too long; as I entered, she spat out a mouthful of newly chewed mud, smoothed it into place, and rushed over to touch horns.

“Tyk! How was your day?”

“It was.. fine, Katin,” I said. “How was yours?”

She hesitated, obviously sensing the lie, but let it go. “Oh, great. We’ve reached a new crystal spar with the  new tunnel, so we’re going to have to set up a mine there which will play havoc with the cooling tunnel, but that’s an interesting puzzle in itself, don’t you think? You should help me plan the tunnel diversion. You could earn a crystal from the spar.”

I looked at my mother. She did have quite a few crystals of her own adhered to her body. I had none (it was pretty rare for someone my age to have earned any crystals), so I always looked kind of plain compared to her, with shards of red and pentagons of blue and, glued under each of her two side eyes, tiny spheres of violet. She was far from the most adorned woman in our hive, but decorated enough to be on the flashier end in your average crowd.

Really though, even if her carapace had been entirely plain, I’d still look plain next to Katin. She was just naturally attractive, in ways I was already pretty sure I wouldn’t inherit. Her mellow, sand-green carapace plates were shot with lines of ocean red like lightning portents written on her very exoskeleton. Her four back legs were all exactly the same size and ended with perfect climbing claws (which I did inherit), her forelegs longer but not long enough to be clumsy.  Parts of her were disproportionate, but always in a good way; her long mandibles appeared too thin and delicate to do the work she routinely put them to, and her tail was so small it barely existed, unlike the clunking flat shovel of a tail that I’d inherited from my alt-mother. Her neck was noticeably too short, barely the length of one of her back legs (less than one third of length of her body, shoulder to tail), but that was an advantage in the cramped new tunnels where she spent so much time. Her chest, even though she’d torn five eggs out of it over her life, was almost completely unscarred, the exoskeletal plates lining back up perfectly.

And of course she had the perfect horns. Mine were still small, being that I hadn’t hit adolescence yet, but already they’d grown a little unevenly, the one above my left front eye just a little lower than the one above my right. It was pretty common, and my alt-mother’s horns were the same. My mother, somehow, had lucked into perfect symmetry; her horns were dead straight as they swept horizontally out the side of her head and curled around behind her, their tips almost touching to make a perfect circle at the back.

“Tyk?”

Oh, right, I’d been asked a question. “Uh, no thanks. I’ve got things to do.” I didn’t want my first crystal to be a pity award gained by working with my mother.

“Well. Alright.” She touched her horns to mine again, and got back to her repairs. Wordlessly, I joined her, chewing clawfuls of dirt to mix them with my saliva and create a mud that would dry into soft stone. We were almost finished when my father flitted in.

“My girls!” he trilled, adding that little wing hum that men can do to express joy.

“Akatin,” my mother greeted him in a more normal tone, sedately flicking her (much more boring and useless) wings in response. “Good day?”

“Mmm.” His wings hummed excitement. He flew over to land on my mother’s horns. He was about the size of her head, and the bright stripes of colour on his wings contrasted with her more sedate carapace even in the quite dim light of the burrow. “Something unpredictable is happening in the stars.”

I spat out my dirt. “What do you mean, something unpredictable is happening in the stars? They’re the stars! What’s unpredictable?”

“Reports aren’t clear, so don’t go spreading it about, but… a new wanderer, we think.”

“A new wandering star?!”

“Not your star, love,” he said, predicting my thoughts. I had been born under the last wandering star, one that the astronomers knew about and had predicted. One that shouldn’t be back for another thirty years or so, ready to curse more poor kids with nomadic destinies. But a new one, one that took the men by surprise? Was that even possible?

“Is that possible?” my mother asked.

“It’s not completely without precedent. Two hundred and seventeen years ago, eighteen wanderers came from nowhere, lit up the sky for half of a night, and were never seen again. But this one was very faint. It might be a misreading.”

“It has to be a misreading,” my mother said.

“Six separate hives saw and recorded it.”

“What does it mean?”

“No idea!” He hummed his wings excitedly again. “Portents need prior knowledge to read, and this is new. It’s certainly exciting, though. It could mean great opportunity!”

“Or calamity.” My mother clicked her claws thoughtfully. “I’ll ask Nerun about the moss stores tomorrow and review the lower tunnel layout. We should prepare for the possibility of either flood or famine.”

“I’m going for a walk,” I announced suddenly, and left.

“Don’t tell anyone about the wanderer yet!” my father called after me.

I flicked my wings in acknowledgement, even though my silence would be pointless. I wasn’t the only person in this hive with a chatty father. All around me burrows were probably filling with astronomers and friends of astronomers telling their families, “Don’t tell anyone, but…”

A new wanderer. I know one isn’t supposed to hate a god, but I hated wandering stars. I knew I was just on edge because of Deg, but… she’d been right. Most people grew up in their hive and stayed there, enjoying the company of their friends and family, contributing to the smooth running of their home for their whole lives. Some left eventually, to trade or travel or seek friends and mates in other hives, and that was their decision, even if it was baffling. But me? Everyone expected me to leave. The stars had determined it. That I’d take the hive’s food and education and, when I was grown, walk away and give nothing back. My mother had pulled five eggs from her body and for it she’d gotten one alter and one daughter. And everyone looked at us and knew that I’d leave, She looked at me and knew that I’d leave her.

I didn’t want to, of course. I was no traveller. But ‘oh, you’re a child, you’ll grow into it when you’re older’. ‘Perhaps it’s your alter who’ll want to travel, you’ll go with him’. ‘We love you. You’re going to leave us. But always remember that we still love you’.

We love you, but it’s okay if we don’t get too attached. It’s okay if you fail to brace support beams properly. It’s okay if you have unresolved negative relationships with your classmates. You’re going to leave.

Even this. I’d said that I was going for a walk, and I’d left, and my parents had to know that I was going to my favourite spot outside the hive. Any other girl who spent so much time alone outside the hive would be gently redirected to friendly hivemates to make sure she developed proper social connections, but for me, everyone turned a blind eye. Some even encouraged it. When I grew up and decided to leave, I’d need to know how to navigate the outside world, after all.

People were going about their usual business around the hive, hauling goods or adjusting lights or simply hanging around talking to friends. A small crowd was gathered around an adolescent girl and her alter, who was clearly just days old and had no colour at all in his wings yet, perched shakily on her horns. Some of the older men gently sang to him while an old woman inquired about her health. I skirted around the group and headed for the exit.

“Tyk!”

I knew that voice. I looked up to see the distinctive wing colour band pattern of my alt-father.

“Adenu,” I greeted him.

He hummed and dropped briefly onto my horns before landing in front of me instead. “Why so glum?”

“I’m not glum,” I protested, but I knew I couldn’t fool him. Adenu had always been great at reading my moods. Even though he was only my alt-father and he and Denu had three daughters of their own at home, he’d always been inordinately fond of me. Probably because he and my father were so incredibly close.

“You are,” he said. “What happened?”

Everything, and absolutely nothing. “Deg’s being a mudgrub again.”

“Ah. Well, she’ll have her first hatching soon, right?” He tilted his body to indicate the nearby girl with her new alter.

“Yeah. So?”

“So! She’ll be out of your class forever.”

“Ha! Good point.”

“You want to talk?”

“No, I’m… I’m just going to walk it off.”

“Stay safe.”

I watched him fly off, and then continued my journey. The guard at the door barely glanced at me, as usual. I flicked my wings at her in acknowledgement, and then I was outside.

The outside of the hive was at once more boring and more interesting than the inside. Just a hill covered in moss, under no dome but the vast dome of the sky. The only real interesting feature was the sky tower, reaching higher than any tree, where the astronomers and messengers were hard at work. It was particularly busy tonight; high above, men chatted excitedly and flashed lanterns in all directions. Probably talking about the new wanderer with distant hives.

I ignored them, and headed down the hill. To the North was the ocean, a brilliant red when the sun was out but invisible in the darkness for the moment, and to the South, nothing but trees – short trees, not the giants that were cut to support the hive heart or build the sky tower – and uneven land, and places to think alone.

I was halfway there when I glanced up and saw it for myself. The wandering star.

Akatin had said that it was subtle, but it certainly wasn’t now. It glowed bright and fiery as it streaked across the sky, shouting its presence in light, and it…

Wait.

Something was wrong. I was no astronomer, but something was wrong with… with the angle, or…

It wasn’t streaking across the dome. It was coming down. Whatever was going on, it had fallen, fallen from the dome of the sky!

I could hear the alarms behind me. The astronomers were dropping from the tower, heading for the safety of the hive. Taking what shelter they could, to wait out the impact of a god falling.

What safety did they expect to gain? How well did they expect mud and spit to hold against the fires of destiny? There had to be something that we could do! Well, there probably wasn’t. But hiding was guaranteed to be pointless!

I looked back at my home, where everyone I loved cowered and waited.

I looked forward, where the bright threat was still dropping from the sky.

I headed towards the falling star.