Chapter 7: Parallel Botany, Part 1

The buffer planet was a wet world, as had been Venus. But on Venus, the great trees sprouted directly from vast shallow swamps that spanned the whole planet, sponging every drop of water into their massive trunks. Braches and leaves spanned so far the surface of the planet could go centuries without ever seeing sunlight. This strange new world, in contrast, stocked water in impossibly deep pools known as ‘oceans’, which were laid out in full bare nakedness. Oceans which, by some estimates, covered roughly 71% of the Buffer planet’s surface. HEG-2522, exhausted and fatally ill from its long extraterrestrial journey, was set to land right in the middle of the largest of these massive bodies of water. The hope being, of course, that she would plunge her virulent cargo into marine depths from which they could never escape. And yet, when the remaining passengers of HEG-2522 emerged from her desecrated corpse, it was not to a world of water, but of air. Against all odds, they had crash landed on the smallest dot of land in a vast blue abyss, and lived.

  Kib had, in spite of everything, granted her favor, and not even Madame Pereskia, the First and Greatest Chief Nun of Batavia, could say why. So for a time they dwelt on the island, but they could not protect their pristine sanctuary home from the illness that had cursed them all those millions of years before. Thus they decided once more it would be best if their miserable lives were snuffed out for good.

  Yet when the people of Batavia attempted to dash their bodies on Batavia’s crimson reefs, they were met with yet another miracle: a dead komodo, washed up on the ivory beach. It would have been one thing if it had simply been a corpse flotsamed by waves to their shore. After all, komodos, being gigantic, seafaring lizards, were quite common in the buffer planet’s oceans, but this specimen was quite peculiar even among its’ kin. The skin was pale as the sands of the beach it had stranded itself on, and upon those scales were etchings of a language the likes of which the Batavians had never before seen. Madame Pereskia, the First and Greatest Chief Nun of Batavia (to abridge would be an insult to her semi-divinity) saw the message true and clear: as Kib had granted Venusians the first tools to architect the genome, so too, she had, in her mercy, offered up one of her greatest treasures as a temple to the pursuit of LIFE, the finest art that was, is and would be. Thus from the dragon’s bones did the Batavians construct their Monastery, right atop HEG-2522’s main exit orifice.

Signs were everything. And everything happened for a reason.

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  Vera loved coral reefs. The moment they learned to swim, all their time was spent just paddling around, soaking up all the colors and business and life, far more packed into a single space than should have even been possible. It was while paddling along one such reef they sighted a young shark, which upon sighting the young Venusian in turn, immediately fled for the sandy seafloor. Curious Vera had followed it, only for their chase to be cut short when an enormous maw burst from the sand, inhaled the witless shark pup before it could so much as flick its’ fins, then vanished in a cloud of sand that forced Vera to retreat to the surface, far past where they’d promised their Dad they’d travel. Their Father had, unsurprisingly, used this as the base for yet another dumb life lesson: the strong consume the weak, and it in only in the consumption of the weak, in making it part of oneself, that one could grow strong. True, perhaps that was not exactly what he’d said, but Vera was certain it was close enough! But as much as the sand-thing’s guile and prowess awed them, sometimes they wondered how it must have felt, in those last few minutes, for the poor shark, minding its’ sharky business, to suddenly find itself sliding down some monster’s gullet to its doom.

  Probably not unlike how they felt as they trailed their Dad and the Creosote lady down the vast, spiraling stairwell into the bowels of the Monastery. Not helping their anxiety were the walls which, though solid, possessed odd creases and folds which suggested an organic character, as if the whole stairwell were the petrified remains of some great intestine. At even intervals, glass globes of fluorescent jellyfish and sea slugs had been hung. But if anything the way their light caught the wall’s creases, casting uncanny shadows, only made things worse. Moreover, the steps were quite steep and the ceiling so high Vera was certain that even if they could still sit on their Dad’s shoulders, they could not touch the top.

  To their relief, the stairwell eventually ejected them into a wide, dark corridor. Vera could not see the end of it, nor the celling, even with the green globes hung to the walls by spider silk. They could, however, hear little claws scraping at the lightless ceiling above.

“My apologies.” Said Creosote. She took a simple rod from her robes and dipped it into one of the globes. Several quick stirring motions later, it glowed with twice its’ original brightness. “We tend to keep the lanterns dim so the light doesn’t distract us from the Great Work.”

  Vera thought back to what Azul had told them in the garden, about how it would be immoral to balm her wounds. Did the Monastery have a similar taboo against light? While they were far from an expert on Kib, Vera felt certain she wouldn’t want her followers to live in squalor. But that was a question they decided to save for later.

  At some indeterminate point down the hallway, they arrived at a shoddy half-circle of umber wood, imperfectly fitted to its’ crooked half arch of a doorway. A doorway that, Creosote knew, once expanded and contracted to allow entry. But that was a very, very long time ago.

  Inside, Vera and Malagasy were greeted by a simple dining room. A long table- disproportionately so, given the Monastery’s relative lack of guests- took up the room’s center, lined by identical amber chairs. Abalone plates and utensils had already been set out. As with the Monastery, by a great green globe hung to the ceiling, and the scent of cinnamon wafted through the air, courtesy of a deceased Culex pipetta stuck in a vase at the table’s center. Pictures lined the walls.

  The trio sat down, Vera and Malagasy on one end, Creosote on the other. Vera couldn’t help but notice the adults staring at each other longingly, like a continent, not a table, separated them.

They sat in silence for a few seconds, which gradually stretched to awkward minutes. Vera was the first to break the silence.

“When’s dinner coming? I’m hungry!”

“Vera!” Hissed Malagasy, “Be patient! The cooks are probably working very hard to make this meal for us, so you’d better be-!”

“No, no, she’s right.” Creosote spoke up. “The burden of guilt is on Mesquite for her tardiness. You are our honored guests, and it is only right you should be treated with utmost respect.”

“Don’t encourage them!” Barked Malagasy.

  While the adults bickered about who owed who what, the point at which respect became self-flagellation, and several other boring things, Vera did their best to keep their mind off their growling stomach. It had been over two hours since they had last eaten, true, but over a month since they’d had a good meal. True, there were substantial offerings to be had on the open ocean- fish, cnidarians, the occasional turtle, sea going birds and barnacle drakes, not to mention plenty of delicious, delicious sunlight- but it wasn’t quite the same when one’s belly was perpetually wobbly from sea sickness, nor when the only thing to talk about was the coming of storms and the passing of niduses. There was a difference, they were certain, between the union bought about by the dinner bell, at a table alive with chatter, and just surviving. They vastly preferred the former.

  So they did their best to keep themselves distracted. First they gazed into the green world dangling above, counting as many jellyfish as they could. When that failed to amuse them, they stared at the pictures lining the walls. If they were anything to go by, Batavia was lacking in all but black ink, and in all canvas colors but white. Among the subjects of the pictures Vera recognized birds, squids, jellyfish, and many of the odd things they had seen in the garden, but also ornate geometric shapes that must have been Venusian life forms. However, one picture, at the edge of the dining hall, eluded them. It depicted a bald head tilted down, white eyes wide as moons, dark ink dribbling down the chin. The skull was cracked, as an egg, and from it emerged a thing drawn with thick, aggressive strokes implying an artist deep in the throes of rage. They wondered what it could possibly mean, and would have asked Creosote if she wasn’t so busy butting words with their Dad. A Dad who always knew best and never yielded to anything. Good thing on the open sea, not so good for dinner conversation.

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  But rather than distract, looking around only seemed to make them even more aware of the acute emptiness gnawing at their belly. A feeling that grew more intense with each passing moment. They clapped their thighs together, trying to focus on anything else.

  That’s when they remembered the book they’d pretended to read while their Dad and Creosote had chatted outside! Vera wasn’t too good at reading, but the particular book they’d picked out was a Florelian catalogue of local mollusk specimens, filled more with elaborate watercolor pictures than words.

  Quietly, they shuffled around their pockets. Where the little book should have been, they found only air.

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  In another part of the Monastery, children waited. They sat, hands clasped in prayer, eyes shut, on the sides of a long, long table in a chamber devoid of all decoration save for a massive chandelier whose glowing tentacles bathed them in pallid light. In front of each, an abalone bowl had been placed, half-filled with viscous, red fluid. A single round, black seed lay adrift at the center of each crimson ocean. They were, to the one sister-in-training who dared to crack her yellow eye open just the slightest bit, Batavia in miniature, repeated thirty four times over. Batavias that had waited far too long for their inevitable rapture and were growing cold.

“Psst!” she whispered to the girl on her left. “Where in Kib’s name is the Prodigy?!”

  It was bad enough supper was clotting, but, being at the edge of the table, Little Miss Perfect’s empty throne was right next to where she sat! She knew it was her fault for straggling, and so could not secure a seat farther away, but the permanent reminder of her inadequacy wasn’t making the wait easy.

“I said,” she hissed in a pitch so high as to be practically inaudible, “Where is-?”

“Quiet Salmiana, she’ll hear you!” Her reluctant neighbor whispered, subtly gesturing her shoulders to the figure seated at the other end of the table. As though Salmiana could miss her!

  Even sitting down, ‘she’ loomed almost impossibly tall over the children, a size supplemented by the shadow flowing behind her and the vast robes flowing off her body; a still form that appeared more mountain than living thing. Only a pair of glowing ivory eyes with yellow pupils betrayed her nature as a person. Salmiana wondered if she could do them all a favor and stay like that forever. Proper manners be da*ned, it wasn’t like Kib could control her thoughts!

  Not until an eternity passed did the children, at long last, hear footsteps clattering down the hall.

“I’m sorry I’m late!” Squeaked the little know-it-all as she practically slid into the room. “I-I was so occupied collecting pipettes that I-!”

Ms. Mountain spoke.

“Your fears are unfounded, my Prodigy. You did wonderful for your first time out alone. Whatever troubles you faced will surely be ironed out with future experience.”

The voice was calm, yet neutral. Lacking in praise, but also in malice or frustration.

  As the stupid ‘Prodigy’ sat down on her little throne, Salmiana inhaled softly, clasped hands clenching tight enough to draw blood. When she spilled a blot of ink on some stupid manuscript, she lost a hand and had to spend a week in the Confessional, but Miss Perfect showed up a few minutes late to the thing that happened only once a month, and she got an apology from Madame Saguaro?! Salmiana recalled the time she overheard one of Sister Barrel’s talks with the other nuns. She didn’t exactly like the nun, but she wondered if her raving about witchcraft was on to something.

The so-called ‘Prodigy’ spent hemmed and hawed before jittering down into her seat. Just as she was about to recite the Chanut of Kib-

“Madame Saguaro!” A nun screamed, rushing into the room. “Kib forgive my impudence, but it’s Sister Mesquite! She’s collapsed!”

In that moment, Salmiana wondered why Kib put her on this island just to suffer.

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