Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden

Author:Nicky Drayden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

My costume’s “fur” is shedding bits of red moss all over the place. My mask is stuffy inside, smells faintly of mildew, and the entirety of my vision is reduced to two jagged holes, but even through all these issues, I’ve never been so excited to wear anything in my entire life. The Hundredth Night Masquerade is more than I’d imagined, thousands of waifs dancing and swirling under twinkling ley lights made to resemble the pattern of stars that had shone over Mother Earth. There’s even a giant disk hanging above called Luna, or so Laisze tells me, the moon where their spirit mothers lived.

I shove a pastry into my mouth, so delicate that its flaky layers melt right on my tongue. And there are gall steaks, cut into little cubes, marinated in a deep red sauce that tastes both sour and sweet. And cheese cubes with the thorns pre-shucked! I pop three in my mouth and chew, savoring how smooth and creamy they are, nothing like the gritty ones Sonovan sometimes brought home from the market when they were in season.

Laisze’s dressed as a cow, a beast that produces milk. Malika is a snake. Kaieda is a tree with leaves made from copper foil. She makes a beautiful noise when she rustles. Sandris is some sort of eight-legged sea creature that everyone agrees must be mythological in nature.

Laisze moos at me. I raise a brow. “It’s what the cows said,” she explains.

“Ah,” I say with a nod. “And what does a fox—”

“Help! My legs are all tangled!” Sandris says. “How can anyone think this thing actually existed?”

Malika doesn’t have arms, and Kaieda is all tree limbs, so it’s up to Laisze and me to do the untangling. Grumpy and frustrated, Sandris starts complaining about a waif who’d accidentally dumped a pan of bone dust into the hole she’d bored this afternoon, but Laisze cuts her off with a hard stare.

“Talk bad about them any other time. Not tonight,” Laisze says.

I catch something odd in Laisze’s eyes. That don’t-play-by-the-rules look she’s always sporting has suddenly vanished. She notices me noticing, and then with that diligence she’d shown me last night as her knife pierced my skin, she’s untangling costume legs from one another, then boots Sandris in the ass when she’s done. Sandris goes off and grabs the first waif she sees, dressed in a sad excuse for a bird costume. Sandris tries dancing with her, but the waif breaks free. Spurned, but not dejected, she moves on to the next dance partner.

I stretch my neck, looking for signs of Parton, but it’s so crowded, it’s impossible to make out much of anything. So many faces obscured by the masks of Earth animals that seem more like fables than part of our history. If I do see her, I’ll apologize a thousand times for getting her sent to the doldrums. For some reason, Laisze makes sure all us boneworkers stick close, though, never venturing out of one another’s sight. Still, I look.

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