Chapter II

“Do you seek an audience with me, my Daughter?”

Mother’s voice felt empty, as if her larynx forbade her natural speech. Without moving an inch, her head swiveled backwards to witness me. I fell to my knees, just as I had been taught: quiet, swift, and diligent. I kept my head down, waiting for her permission. In my periphery, I could still see her eyes trained on me, head unmoving as her body twisted in tow. She sank her hulking mass low to the ground on folded legs, the crackling of her cartilage nearly making me flinch. But I swallowed my nerves so as to not disrespect her.

“Speak thy will, child.”

My heart leapt. It felt too apathetic, too perfunctory to be granted her attention so quickly. But what ran my blood cold was hearing her voice again. It was more vacant than I had realized. My ears were deprived of her polyphonic tone, no second voice echoing in harmony. And without the rhythmic clicks of her maxilla, the inflection of her words fell flat. I was left grasping to understand the intent beneath her monotonous timbre, wavering in the sliver of doubt between reluctance and bitterness. While my Sisters were born with the innate ability to speak and understand the mothertongue, I was damned to lack half of the proper anatomy. It was only through lunations of through embarrassing trial and error that I learned how to understand their intricate intronations and compound cadences. And yet, during most important exchange of my entire life, when understanding the complexities of the mothertongue mattered most, that knowledge was rendered useless.

I could feel soul splintering away from my body, so I took a deep breath to suck it back in. I cleared my throat, and looked up to meet her many eyes.

“Dear Mother, I know moribund is nigh. Your Daughters have all prepared themselves for pre-birthing… all but me,” my voice quivered, unable to mask my frailty. Mother’s eyes dilated, signaling for me to proceed.

“I am corrupted, a genetic deviant,” my brittle voice began to crack, all of my fears and faults tearing through my mind, “I cannot keep up with my Sisters, I was cursed with a singular, lone birth canal that may never bear fruit. I cannot even speak the mothertongue—”

“Because you do not possess the tongues!” Mother’s voice bellowed low through the forest, vibrating deep in my core. I instantly dropped my eyes to my lap, surrendering the discourse.

“You do not possess the body of our kin. Not our limbs, nor our faces. You may not even share our souls. But even with your few eyes, you comprehend your own disfigurement. Have I not already seen your visage at every angle, every perspective, contour and detail in ways you could only hope to perceive?”

Mother’s head slithered towards me, prolapsing from her body. She needed no second voice to express her ferocity. I scrambled to prostrate into the misty soil, praying that I had not defied my filial piety. With tremulous breath, I repented.

“Your wisdom is boundless, Mother. You know every fiber of my being better than I. This is why I’ve come to you, I seek the untold truth… for what intent have I not yet been purged? My form holds no promise to serve my purpose. Bountiful Mother, I beg, share with me your wisdom. Help me understand what I cannot see.”

Tension held in the air, thick as blood. Mother’s neck retracted back into her body as she repositioned herself, lying recumbent upon the soft moss. The change in demeanor confused me, but I continued to bow, the fragrant musk of Mother infusing itself into the mist caressing my face. She sighed heavily, hot breath wafting over me. Suddenly, her mandibles began creaking. Flexed the weak muscles, she began to again punctuate her words with maxillic trills. I was relieved for a moment, until I heard the slow, haunting thump of maxillary palp against her throat. I knew not what she would do next, but I braced for my blood to run cold.

“My child, ever since the birth of our Caretaker, I knew the fault of your disfigurement lay not within you, but within me.”

My blood didn’t run cold. It felt as though it didn’t run at all. My body tensed, every muscle fiber pulled taut. With all of Mother’s omniscience, how could she degrade herself so viciously to declare responsibility for my anomalous form? My breath blew gentle swirls into the vapor below me as words slipped from my lips.

“I cannot understand.”

Mother shifted her weight, then demanded,

“Recite the tenets of Motherhood.”

This invigorated me. It felt as though I had been preparing my entire life for such a moment, conditioned for a perfect recital at any time, anywhere.

“A Mother must feed her body to feed her womb,”

Mother nodded.

“A Mother that consumes more than she provides will doom a bloodline,”

She nodded again.

“We are what we eat and we eat what we are.”

Each line had been stitched into my mind since my awakening. Before ever climbing out of the caverns, we would hear the wispy echoes of her voice cascading down the catacombs. Deep and rumbling, ricocheting off every stone. Every lune, the tenets of Motherhood rang through my whole body and permeated my flesh. I can never forget them.

“You have learned well,” Mother cooed, but her mood soured quickly, “alas, the sins of my past will never be forgotten. Not by my mind, nor my lineage. You are not of our kind, because I ate not of our kind.”

I held my breath as though my soul would attempt another escape. The ambient trilling of night feeders evaporated, I could only hear the thumping of blood in my ears. Mother—my sublime, fruitful, divine Mother—had just confessed to committing the most abominable transgression. My mind protested, repelling every single word. Bursting out with a lungful of fear, I begged,

“Mother, say it is not so.”

It felt as though I were in a dream, with a glimmer of hope I’d awaken at any moment. I closed my eyes tightly, knowing that if I saw Mother before me she’d shatter any such delusion. I wasn’t ready to accept it. It wasn’t real.

“With great shame, I speak it true. Had I not, I would be dead.”

I raised my head an inch, parting my eyelids only enough to see her as a smear through my dewy lashes. I dared not to open them any further, I had only been strong enough to perceive her as vague shapes in the colour of her moonpale skin. It wasn’t Mother. The amorphous blobs I reshaped between my tear-laiden lashes couldn’t have been Mother. I held onto my last gasping breath of hope that this was all but a nightmare infiltrating my slumber. Then I heard this spectre sigh, and speak in Mother’s voice. Her second voice was woven in as well, and both had sounded too grave and despondent. Too candid, too taboo. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be my Mother.

“We were being slaughtered. Another clan, fertile and strong, sought to expand their territory. I emerged as the lone survivor, a Daughter forced to grow up too soon. On the outskirts of what I once called home, I lay starving. Our colony, our heritage, was going to end with me. My death would have been righteous, to abide by the tenets. But the fervent drive to not yet leave this mortal coil disobeyed the sacred creed. And lo, in my time of need, a creature came stumbling through the fog. A creature that looked like you. It stood on hind legs, only four limbs, only two eyes,”

Without thought of ramification, my head thrust upward to behold her. My eyes shot open, tears flecking away. My fragile pretense of denial crumbled before me. Mother was corporeal indeed, not an illusion I could foolishly spurn any further. Still, she looked so unfamiliar in her state. I’d never seen her so crestfallen, a penitent look in each of her eyes. She croaked weakly before resuming her confession,

“Running frantically, it cried out just as a youngling mewls for its milk. My eyes had never lain upon such a spectre, but by its odor I knew it to be meat. On the cusp of extinction, I summoned enough strength to hunt it and eat of every morsel. My belly full after lunes of hunger, I collapsed. Digesting and gestating, I hoped beyond hope it had been enough, and against the odds, I birthed my own Caretaker. But when I noticed his visage was that of the alien, and not of us, I realized my moment of weakness had sullied the bloodline forever. So, I returned to the soil to languish, rescinding my life to atone for my selfishness.”

She paused, the air pregnant with apprehension. Creaky breath hissed through her mouth and spiracles alike, as if the words she spoke seared her flesh. A grimace twisted her face into a cluster of eyes and teeth, warped by her heretical admission. It was the first time—whilst kneeling as one does before their infallible god—that I had felt the scales level between us. The weight seemed to shift with an agonizing truth: I was the consequence for Mother’s sin. I hadn’t wanted to hear another word, but she pressed on,

“Yet, the Caretaker did all he could to forbear me from my grave. He braved the outskirts of the wartorn wasteland, scavenging carrion from our kin. From moonfed to moribund, I birthed more and more younglings that reflected my fallen colony. I had hoped that my transgressions had been forgiven… until you were born. In all my wisdom, I do not know how this affected you. Every moon has a dark side, where even I cannot see.”

A great, welling sadness defiled her features. A face so beautiful, disgraced with regret. Her eyes glistened and held onto mine with desperation. She continued.

“Despite his anomalous form—missing limbs, eyes, tongues—the Caretaker nursed me back to health. He proved his allegiance, proved his service. If he can fulfill his purpose, why not extend the same mercy to my Daughter?”

Her piteous tone pierced me like a thorn. I finally had my answer, but it was far more bitter than my tongue could’ve ever fathomed. There was hope for me yet, but it felt so illusory. A Caretaker only required enough limbs to cradle Mother’s young, and enough strength to carry vessels of her milk. My duties would be far greater and far less attainable due to my cursed anatomy. Only one final question perched upon my lips, fearful to fly just as a fledgling peering below the safety of its nest.

“What if I can’t fulfill my purpose?”

Mother paused, her maxillae tutting softly in deep thought. Some of her eyes looked to the dark sky; some eyes appeared glazed over with no specific focus; and some of her pupils moved rapidly back-and-forth as though in deep sleep. She was meditating on my words, and took her time, as if to ferment my question into something more palatable. Eventually deciding there was no less bitter a way to deliver her answer, she finally said,

“First, I must witness your potential for rebirth; if you can prove your worth to the colony and to our bloodline. I will deliberate in my stasis, and decree your fate at the dawn of nascent.”

I wished I hadn’t asked. I had longed for these answers for many a lune, tired of the questions that gnawed away at my mind. I had felt that I couldn’t bear to live without the answers to my existence anymore. But now, with my fate sealed yet unspoken, a new fear crawled up my spine and bore its way into my skull like a burrowfly. My time of judgment had been ordained, and all I could do was comply and wait. Swallowing the shudder in my throat, I said:

“Thy will be done, Mother.”

I arose from the ground, my joints aching from the bondage of prostration. Bowing my head one last time, I turned and trekked back to my chrysalis. My feet knew the soil to be true, but my mind dissented from this new reality. My eyes saw the trees emerging from the fog, but my mind’s eye was stained with Mother’s sordid gaze. It was a miracle I had even found our resting pods, let alone climbed the fibrous web in my stupor. My Sisters were already sealed in their cocoons, no doubt dreaming of the impending ritual.

Crawling inside my silken bed, my worries were assuaged for but a fleeting moment. It was warm and lubricous inside, the only illusion of safety I had after being ripped from the womb. I’d always hoped my cocoon would act as those of moths. They enter as a pulpous worm and emerge as a beautiful, winged beast, able to fly away as a vagabond with endless freedom. But it would never be so, just as I would never be pure from Mother’s sins. My Sisters, somehow born unafflicted—each born perfectly in Mother’s image—had both nascent and moonfed to cultivate their wombs. I had only one chance to stay in the colony, one single opportunity to prove myself useful. Peering down at my lone cloaca, I wondered if the ritual was even worth attending. But, I supposed it couldn’t hurt.

I was wrong.