Selp

So now we are coming to the end.

Finally, here it is at last: imagined vividly in various places and configurations on so many insomnia-ridden nights, discussed in low clipped practical voices among the elders at meetings, the core subject of every story intended to terrify children into good behavior. So many possibilities, envisioned and analyzed and mythologized, diminished now into a single sharpened instant. It could have happened so many ways, but then again, Selp supposes it really couldn’t have, after all. Iah furnished her soul knowing that He was to sling it on this trajectory. It has all led, inexorably, to this moment.

The Become who now walks toward her is a male, tall and strangely, vividly pale. He is young: probably less than a decade has passed since the end of his Becoming. No armaments are visible, and if any of Selp’s sisters were here they might have a chance, jointly, of taking him down. But Selp knows it is hopeless: she is unarmed and has not reached the age at which she can furnish armaments directly from pure terror. (Still a few years before she is a candidate for Becoming.)

The unearthly pale Become stares at her intently as he saunters forward. How long before he reaches her, snatches her, and all is lost? Thirty seconds? Twenty? There is little time for deliberation, but Selp does not need it anyway. She has prepared well for this moment.

Thoughts of the if-I-had and could-I-have genres of course flit through her mind, taking up a few of her remaining seconds. She had straggled behind the group, always the slow one, and assured the others that it was all right, that they were far from any settlement or facility. Of course that is no guarantee. Iah has His ways. And now Selp’s mind turns to more important things.

She has been pure. Iah will smile upon her in death. The Become’s face is flickering with uninterpretable expressions. Selp needs to make sure that neither terror nor blissful reverie will prevent her from performing this final, purely physical duty, and so she takes off her backpack—three seconds—and spends another four or five seconds fishing out the packet, familiarly nestled in the smallest and outermost pocket, containing only the familiar black lozenge.

Something terrible seizes Selp all at once: the thought that her sisters might never find her body.

There is no danger that the Become will take or damage it. Become have no use for desouled corpses. But when her sisters notice that she has not returned, will they take the risk of returning to the site of her disappearance? If more was known about this area, maybe. But she had been right when she said this was far from any known settlement or facility. If her sisters are sensible—and indeed they are, she thinks, now choking back a sob, dammit, this was all supposed to be so much more graceful—if her sisters are sensible they will realize that they cannot return to the site of a danger on whose fearfulness they cannot even place bounds. Iah has set down no rule pertaining to this precise situation, after all.

And so now the sobs flow freely, because what gets Selp is not the thought of death but the thought that she will not be useful in death. All the joy bound up in her mind with the thought of swallowing that little black lozenge has been intricately twined with the idea of her flesh and bones being taken and used by her sisters, as commanded by Iah—with the idea that new joys, even mere conveniences, will result from the desoulment of her body. Dignify your sibling’s corpse through use, says Iah. And now Selp’s corpse will most likely decompose without the dignity of use: a useless end to a useless life.

The Become is a few feet away. Selp is sobbing, curled up now. The lozenge lies on the ground and she is stomping it with her foot. It has been well made and will not break. A heretical thought runs through her: that the usefulness inherent in Becoming might be preferable to the uselessness of a death undignified.

Oh Iah, how can this be the way it was meant to happen?

The Become has stopped moving and is staring down at her. She does not look up. He says something, in some Become language she has never heard. There is a long pause. She shakes. She reaches for the still intact lozenge.

A ripple spreads through her consciousness, utterly unexpected yet smooth and inoffensive. The ripple solidifies into something resembling words. She hears animatic link and learns that this is a kind of pneumatech, but not a violent kind. She hears James, a strange thing with no meaning, just a sequence of sounds. James slides into her mind alongside Selp as the tokens of this new system rearrange themselves in her mind. Names? James is some kind of name?

She looks up at the Become. He is a strange thing. The shaggy black hair that rings his face is much shorter than the hair she’s seen on male Become roaming the fields. His clothing is loose and looks comfortable, much closer to something her sisters might wear than the rigid, ornate armor she’s used to seeing on Become. It is hard to look for much longer because another smooth wave of mind-fluid hits her, this time bearing something like speech:

“Hello. My name is James. Are you all right?”

Selp does not know how she would answer even if she could. She looks up at the Become and chokes back another sob. She does not know what is going on, but it has become clear that Iah has planned something stranger for her than what she’d first imagined.

“You can talk to me through the animatic link. Just try thinking at me.”

Selp doesn’t know quite what that means but does her best.

“My name is Selp—” and there the thought goes, slung from her mind, making a distinct impression on the face of the Become. He seems happy.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Selp.”

Is this some sort of cruel joke? But the Become are usually brutally efficient. Selp is now confused above all.

“I want food. That’s all. Do you have food?”

Selp now tries to choke back a laugh. The Become no longer need to eat! What could they want with food? And this is the point at which it becomes fully clear to her that Iah has something much more complicated planned for her than she had imagined at the moment she spotted a tall figure walking toward her across the plain.