The group laughed, but the worker wasn't sure why.
“What else?” asked Ry.
“Memories from childhood.”
“You see?” said Ry, nodding approvingly. “Your mind is ridding itself of the root already.”
“That’s why,” said Kaydin, “as a worker, every day was exactly the same for you.”
“Not exactly the same,” said the worker. “I found the sixth bulb, didn’t I?”
“True,” said Kaydin, “there might be something different about you.” He eyed Ry when he said it.
Ry’s old face was calm. “We make the same soup as the workers eat, but we don’t add the root.”
“We grew up eating it,” said Mav, “so we’ve gotten used to the taste.”
“It doesn’t taste that good,” said the worker.
“How would you know?” said Ry, curious.
“I once had a seed, a purple seed, it was…sweet.”
“When?”
“It's strange. I've only just remembered, to be honest. As a young worker. One of the older workers gave it to me before sleep. He described it that way. He didn’t say where he got it.”
“Could be the nightshade seeds,” said Mav.
Kaydin nodded. “Gara and I found some of them in the lower caverns. Hard to find though.”
Maryn cleared her throat, a light pip of a noise, and tied her light hair behind her head with an obsidian pin, then held up a spoon of the goop. “Go on, eat up.”
He did.
Ry got his attention after a few bites. “Well, now that that’s out of the way, there’s something important to decide.”
Maryn and Kaydin looked up expectantly. Kaydin whistled toward the hallway. Soon Bel and Gara joined the group in the main room.
“Everyone here has a name,” said Ry.
A name?
“We are individuals,” said Ry after allowing Mav an extended explanation which the worker didn't follow. “And individuals have names.”
“I am a Growing Room One worker,” said the worker. “Maybe I am not an individual. Maybe I cannot have a name.”
“Well, I run this crew,” said Ry, smiling and sitting up, “and it looks to me like you're an individual. And every individual here must have a name.”
The worker felt the urge again to thank them. For what they'd done. To make them feel good about the help they thought they'd given him.
But then he had to tell them he couldn’t stay. That his business was back in the growing room, with the turma, as his training had taught him. But they had been so…friendly. They accepted him. And were intrigued by his story of the seeds and of the sixth bulb. He felt a glimmer of something he had not felt since…he slipped into a memory. He was being held, giant arms around him, holding him; great, long fingers like sturdy vines keeping him safe on her lap. His birthmother. That brown face and the smile welcoming him. He understood what he was feeling was like the feeling the birthmother had given him, and, so too, the earliest youth trainers. A connection. A connection between one and another. A connection between individuals.
“But I cannot…” he started to say. “I mean, how should I know what my name is?”
Kaydin leaned back smiling. There, again, the worker felt it. A glimpse of that feeling he’d understood as a connection.
Ry spoke up. “Many of us harbored a desire to go back into the system for a long time. There are moments I have dreams about the system. In the first moments I wake, I don’t know whether to call them dreams or nightmares. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” nodded the worker, remembering his long fall into the Abyss that seemed so real, but wasn't.
Ry leaned toward the worker from across the table. He didn’t smile quite as much. “Unfortunately, you cannot go back into the system. And that’s okay.”
“So,” said the worker, “you’re saying you will give me a name, like only you and the directors have?”
“No,” said Ry, taking the reins back from Kaydin, “you will decide your own name.”
“It’s the name that naturally comes to you mind,” said Kaydin. “You can change it later, like Mav did, but most of us have kept our original names.”
“Do you have it?” asked Ry. “The crew needs to get back to work, but we’d like to know your name first.”
The worker stared down at the table through one eye. Nothing came naturally. I guess I’ll have to disappoint them. Just like he had disappointed Director Dimah. Maybe it was a sign he wasn't meant to be with them, but instead be back at work. But then a thought entered his mind, like the distant echo of the first toll ringing through the Abyss.
“Abyl,” said the worker, quietly. Then, he lifted his head. “My name is Abyl.”
“Very well, Abyl,” said Ry. “Welcome to Haven.” He stood as he said it, standing before Abyl, extending his arm.
“Well, aren’t you going to shake my arm?” said Ry.
Abyl tentatively raised his arm as if peeking under the leaves of the turma plant in search of the sixth bulb.
Ry grasped Abyl’s forearm. Feeling the connection, Abyl closed his hand on Ry’s. Standing closer, Abyl now saw Ry did not have scars but rather indents and folds of skin that twisted around his eyes, nose, and forehead. He was just…old. Abyl wasn’t sure how he knew this, since he’d never seen an old person before. No one in the city matched his age, except perhaps the Rahz, who lived a very long time indeed.
“Abyl, there will be turma enough for you to tend here in Haven. Your skills will not be wasted.” The Haven crew stood in an arc around Abyl. Ry smiled again, then said: “Abyl, this is your family now.”
Chapter 11
Through the second hallway they found Mav in a small, oblong room. Mav was hunched over a table jutting from the stone wall, shuffling through several stone and clay containers, shoving a few back into cubbies in the stone. Abyl stood in awe of the smoothness of the walls.
Mav made a jerky sort of noise that Abyl decided was his mode of laughter. “Had Gara smooth them out,” said Mav. “My experiments may be chaotic, but I need some order in my space.”
“We’re ready,” said Maryn. She gently pushed Abyl into the room and his nostrils were tickled by turma lingering on the air. “Onto the table, now,” said Maryn cheerily. As Abyl climbed on Mav whispered a few phrases to the stone above his head, tapped its edges, and its green glow came fully to life.
“Time to get a look at you,” said Mav, handing a Abyl a half-finger thick sheet of stone. “Hold it up to your face.”
Abyl took the obsidian and saw himself for this first time. The obsidian mirror reflected a hairless head, eyebrow-less. His eyes were dark, but not like the Abyss. A dark brown, like Kaydin's.
“In our family, you’re an individual,” said Mav. “Time to get that pretty face cleaned up, eh Maryn?”
“You do have good features,” said Maryn, smiling.
Abyl kept looking at his face through the reflective glass. Three cuts, each about the length of his smallest finger, burned red, angling across his forehead next to his right eye.
Mav interrupted his thoughts. “Kaydin