A Fortress of Pebbles

It was always hard to follow the Master of Life’s train of thought because it tended to stream out of several mouths at once. One of them, near Aissaba’s left ear, was gushing about how adorable she and Tassadu had been in their green robes once upon a time. “You were this big!” said another mouth, while two fingers at the end of tentacles demonstrated what two inches looked like.

“Pretty sure we were bigger than that,” said Aissaba, politely assisting several of the Master’s fingers out of her hair.

Six eyeballs at the ends of articulating eyestalks examined Aissaba toe to tip, point blank, as if sniffing. Twenty more, augmented with monocles and bifocals, regarded her from farther back. Aissaba palmed the eavesdropping pebble.

Fingers pinched her midriff through her robe. “You’ve lost weight!” exclaimed the Master of Life. “Life magic, or just good life choices?” The mouths that had just spoken and the eyeballs in their vicinity waited expectantly for an answer, but several other lips were already speaking. “Oh! Tassadu! I was talking with your dad the other day, and we both realized it’s been two years – two years! – since we put your honors thesis on pause.” Then, conspiratorially, a pair of lips said into his ear: “He said he might be willing to–”

Aissaba saw it coming a mile away. “He’s not my dad,” said Tassadu, stiffening.

All of Master of Life’s tentacles drooped at once. Eyeballs grew misty, lips quivered. “Ah, yes,” said a pair with purple lipstick. “I forgot.”

Aissaba didn’t believe she’d forgotten. She liked to come across as the discombobulated, nearsighted grandmotherly type – but you don’t become a Master by being dumb. Plus, no one would forget the scene Tassadu had made when he’d put his honors thesis “on pause.” It had involved some fire breathing, an explosion or two, and (Aissaba recalled it like it was yesterday) Tassadu’s announcement that he was, henceforth, no longer his father’s son.

Then again, perhaps Aissaba remembered it so clearly because, for weeks afterward, Tassadu had wallowed in his sleeping tub, bemoaning his use of the word “henceforth.” It was hard to tell sometimes what would bother Tassadu. Always something about himself. Never what you’d expect.

“How’s the tour going?” said the Master of Life, brightly, as if it had just occurred to her. Several of the eyestalks examined the bathroom door. “Nature calls in the Hall of Life! How appropriate.” Then, in her conspiratorial-grandmother voice, a mouth or two whispered, “I heard there might have been some sort of explosion in the Room of Sand. Everything okay?”

Um, what? Something was definitely up. The Masters never took this much interest in a recruitment tour. The fact that they were trying to seem casual about it was even weirder.

“Now that you mention it,” said Tassadu, “we did have some questions…”

Several eyeballs leaned in.

“About the, uh…” he looked at the bathroom door, expecting the twins to emerge at any moment.

All eyeballs blinked expectantly, a thousand irises warped behind horn rimmed glasses and bejeweled monocles.

“Apocalypse risk,” whispered Tassadu.

The Master of Life gasped, inhaling everywhere at once. “Oh, my goodness! Is that how they were labeled in the bios? They’re so dramatic up there. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Just a precaution, no doubt. And considering how good Aissaba is with kids, what’s to worry?”

She laughed with a million billion mouths. Everyone laughed. All good fun.

Aissaba pretended not to care that she was “good with kids” and “looking great these days,” and that Tassadu was no doubt “a once-great soul, dragged to mediocrity by a human-shaped anchor named Aissaba.” Hello! The decision to “henceforth, eff it” had been a mutual decision on both their parts. But no comment.

“Tassadu is good with kids, too, for the record,” Aissaba imagined herself announcing. Heck, if she was doing imaginary for-the-records, might as well shake the whole Spire of Masteries with: “I had a thesis, too – not that anyone cares!”

Outwardly, she just smiled. The way she smiled with kids when hung over. Cheeks cramping.

“So, you think it’s just a bureaucratic thing?” said Tassadu.

“Isn’t. It. Always?” sang three mouths, harmonizing. The Master of Life was about as good at acapella as you’d expect. Whenever she broke into song (which was about once a day) the Life Stone glowed bright green, embedded in the mound of biomass from which all her tentacles originated. She was a thousand-year-old “woman” who had long ago escaped the human body she had been born with – but legend had it that she’d been a singer and orator in Ancient Rome. Like the other Masters, she knew everything and could kill you with kindness.

It was hard to hate her – even when you tried. Even when she thought you were basically a tapeworm in one of Tassadu's stomachs.