Page 68 of Butterfly Effects

“Ah.” The more I learned about the people I’d come from, the less I liked them. I fell quiet as we walked on, letting Ikko lead the way, little white flowers leaving a trail of vivid red behind us.

We reached a wall of dangling vines covered in more flowers, these ones yellow and shaped like trumpets. They closed as we brushed against them, furling upward and inward as they pulled away from the contact. Ikko swept them aside with great waves of her arms, and we walked through the curtain to the other side, entering what I knew at once had to be the Kairos village.

It was a surprisingly permanent-looking settlement, with clay walls and multi-storied abodes like something out of the American Southwest. And there were people everywhere, many of them wearing red in a variety of shades, like they wanted that little additional ounce of protection from their former captors. Being able to see it soothed something deep inside me. I was still me. I was still Sarah, still a cuckoo, and they hadn’t managed to pull me into harmony with their hive mind, no matter how much they might be trying.

A group of people with polearms pushed away from the building where they’d been lounging and approached us as Ikko led me down the center of the avenue that ran through the settlement. She waved, unperturbed by their approach.

“I found a friendly wasp,” she informed them, once they were close enough. “She was escaping their administration building, so I let her escape with me. She can work the doors.”

The figure at the front of their group waved a polearm at us, casually menacing. “Why should we trust this wasp?”

“The timing brought her to me, and I’ve brought her to you,” said Ikko, sounding smug. “I want to take her to the Eldest Living.”

“The Eldest Living has been tried deeply today,” said the guard. “We found other intruders wandering in the green, and brought them to speak with her. But they fled our hospitality before we could explain our true intentions, and now they wander lost to the world’s dangers.”

Ikko shrugged. “My intruder didn’t flee anything except the administration building, and it was on fire when we walked out of sight.”

“What do you say for yourself, wasp?” asked the guard, turning on me. The bident they were holding looked incredibly sharp, and I couldn’t aim myself at their mind well enough to tell whether or not they would use it against me. I couldn’t even pick up on their pronouns. So I decided to go with the safest option I had.

I decided to be honest. “I’m what the Johrlac call a cuckoo,” I said. “I’m outside their collective, and I don’t want to be inside it. I want to go back to the dimension I call home and never come here ever again. But there’s someone I have to find before I can do that. I can see the telltales change. Ikko says that means she knows I’m not a stinging wasp, so you should know it too. I can point out everything red in this whole street if it helps you believe me. I just want to find Arthur and go home. That’s all.”

“The Eldest will want to speak with you,” said the guard tightly.

“Then great, take me to your Eldest, and let’s get this over with,” I said. “I’m not trying to cause anyone problems. I just need to stay away from the queen collective. They’re sort of pissed at me.”

“Why?” asked the guard.

“The usual.” I shrugged. “Apparently I’m a criminal because I hurt some people who were trying to hurt me, and because I went and reached the final instar while being a cuckoo, which they do not like one little bit. They brought me here to stand trial. And then when they tried to take my measure, I shoved a few of them out of the collective to make them understand that they needed to stop screwing with me if they didn’t want to have a really lousy day, and now I’m pretty sure they want to erase my brain.”

“You … expelled a queen from their collective?” asked the guard.

I nodded. “Yes, I did,” I said. “They pulled me into a dream space so they could taunt me about being so easy for them to catch, and I smacked them for being so incredibly rude about things. I didn’t ask to come here, I didn’t give them permission to mess around inside my head, and I don’t think they understand that I’m not going to roll over and start letting them make the rules just because they brought me here.”

Ikko radiated pride. “I found a spicy nice wasp.”

“She certainly seems firm in her convictions,” allowed the guard. “Are you sure you want to take a cuckoo before the Eldest Living?”

“I’m sure I should,” she said, firmly.

The guards exchanged a look, some of them raising their bidents, others clearly struggling to keep them lowered. Finally, the one we had been speaking to turned back to us.

“Her time is not as long as we would have it be, but still she serves the timing,” they said. “If you promise you intend her no harm, you may see the Eldest. But understand that if you harm her, you will wish for the kindness of the queens.”

“Do they have any?”

“No. So choose with caution.”

I sighed. “I don’t really tend to mean anyone any harm unless they force me to,” I said. “I spent a lot of time sort of foggy because I was traveling through instars without anyone to guide me, but even then, I didn’t go around hurting people if I had any choice in the matter. My parents raised me better than that.”

The more I saw of Johrlar, the more I felt like there was nothing wrong with the place that couldn’t be fixed by letting Angela take it over. As a cuckoo, she was telepathically limited and often bemused by the more casually telepathic members of her own species. As a mother, she was top-notch.

That seemed to sell the guards on the idea. They stepped aside, waving Ikko onward. She squeezed my hand, then started down the street, pulling me along with her.

One of them stepped in front of her as she walked, stopping her again, and leaned in close. “Mom is going to be furious when she hears that you went to the administration building after being told not to,” they said. “Best hope the timing will protect you from her.”

They stepped aside again, and we resumed, Ikko paling at the thought of her mother’s wrath. I smiled down at her. Some things, it seemed, were truly universal.

“Sibling?” I asked.