it takes to choose a male to rut with or to go and trade at a market. She doesn't think of her nights in Tadeusz's apartment, only of the complications involved in sisters traveling to find Grażyna and the child.
The world is getting more complex, and many of the sisters have been refusing to go out into it at all, leaving the few market interactions required to the younger members of the tribe and choosing to forego sex with men altogether. Most of them are flexible when it comes to which gender to have relations with, unless breeding is the goal, but many are no longer choosing to breed at all. It's a concern, especially as the tribe is smaller than it was before Grażyna's defection, but the younger girls seem more than capable of moving back and forth between the two worlds. Human women have even gotten taller, on average, so the Dziwozony no longer stand out as much as they once did.
Bożena rises and walks away from the rest of the tribe, moving from the chatter toward the peaceful sounds of the lake water brushing against the shore. Even in the dark, her feet are sure on the path. She imagines Matka would lead her to the water this way even if she were blind.
She reaches the end of the path and walks into the water at the same steady pace, never hesitating or startling, even at the chill of the water. She walks until the water covers her head entirely, and the sounds of the night are blocked entirely and replaced with the sounds under the water, muted brushes of fish as they swim past her and her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.
This is her favorite place to organize her thoughts. Here, in the peaceful blackness under the lake, she closes her eyes and focuses on the steady pulsing of her heart and the matching thrum of the blood running through her.
They’ve waited so long for this day, and she knows the sisters will look to her, wondering when and how they will move. Every time they’ve been able to track Grażyna and the male, she’s been the one to lead them, sure of her task.
Only when she’s truly alone, which is rare with all these women, she wonders if the old ways are still the right ones. They lose more than they replace with young. The human world changes more and more, with machines doing so many things and the boxes everyone lives in and the clothing becoming stranger every year.
It once took no more than a night run into a settlement and borrowing of clothing from a drying line for the sisters to trade with humans. Now it takes days and even weeks of infiltration for them to discover changes in language and clothing styles and to learn the new types of machines and how they work.
Bożena is beginning to feel old. She thinks her lifespan is too long, perhaps. If the sisters lived as humans do, everything would be forgotten now, and everyone would be dead, and no one would care anymore that once a sister had a boy child she didn’t want to kill and ran off to be his mother instead of his executioner.
Here, in the silence of the lake, Bożena can think of her own males. Four, she thinks, four who had no names. She'd handed them over before they could utter their first cries, letting the others take them for Aniela and her poppies. Some of the sisters attend burials for their male young, but Bożena never had. Is Grażyna weaker than she is ,or had she been stronger when she ran?
Out of air, she rockets upward in the water, toward breath, toward air. She breaks the surface with a loud splash and shakes her long hair over her shoulder, flicking water from her face with her fingers.
She opens her eyes to see her sisters lined up on the shore, all waiting for her.
“When do we leave, sister? ” Edyta asks. “What is your plan?”
II: Awakening
13: Origin
It's after two in the morning when Vance drives the car back into the garage. Again, without thinking, he reconnects it to the charger, his muscle memory better than
The world is getting more complex, and many of the sisters have been refusing to go out into it at all, leaving the few market interactions required to the younger members of the tribe and choosing to forego sex with men altogether. Most of them are flexible when it comes to which gender to have relations with, unless breeding is the goal, but many are no longer choosing to breed at all. It's a concern, especially as the tribe is smaller than it was before Grażyna's defection, but the younger girls seem more than capable of moving back and forth between the two worlds. Human women have even gotten taller, on average, so the Dziwozony no longer stand out as much as they once did.
Bożena rises and walks away from the rest of the tribe, moving from the chatter toward the peaceful sounds of the lake water brushing against the shore. Even in the dark, her feet are sure on the path. She imagines Matka would lead her to the water this way even if she were blind.
She reaches the end of the path and walks into the water at the same steady pace, never hesitating or startling, even at the chill of the water. She walks until the water covers her head entirely, and the sounds of the night are blocked entirely and replaced with the sounds under the water, muted brushes of fish as they swim past her and her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.
This is her favorite place to organize her thoughts. Here, in the peaceful blackness under the lake, she closes her eyes and focuses on the steady pulsing of her heart and the matching thrum of the blood running through her.
They’ve waited so long for this day, and she knows the sisters will look to her, wondering when and how they will move. Every time they’ve been able to track Grażyna and the male, she’s been the one to lead them, sure of her task.
Only when she’s truly alone, which is rare with all these women, she wonders if the old ways are still the right ones. They lose more than they replace with young. The human world changes more and more, with machines doing so many things and the boxes everyone lives in and the clothing becoming stranger every year.
It once took no more than a night run into a settlement and borrowing of clothing from a drying line for the sisters to trade with humans. Now it takes days and even weeks of infiltration for them to discover changes in language and clothing styles and to learn the new types of machines and how they work.
Bożena is beginning to feel old. She thinks her lifespan is too long, perhaps. If the sisters lived as humans do, everything would be forgotten now, and everyone would be dead, and no one would care anymore that once a sister had a boy child she didn’t want to kill and ran off to be his mother instead of his executioner.
Here, in the silence of the lake, Bożena can think of her own males. Four, she thinks, four who had no names. She'd handed them over before they could utter their first cries, letting the others take them for Aniela and her poppies. Some of the sisters attend burials for their male young, but Bożena never had. Is Grażyna weaker than she is ,or had she been stronger when she ran?
Out of air, she rockets upward in the water, toward breath, toward air. She breaks the surface with a loud splash and shakes her long hair over her shoulder, flicking water from her face with her fingers.
She opens her eyes to see her sisters lined up on the shore, all waiting for her.
“When do we leave, sister? ” Edyta asks. “What is your plan?”
II: Awakening
13: Origin
It's after two in the morning when Vance drives the car back into the garage. Again, without thinking, he reconnects it to the charger, his muscle memory better than
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