This Great Hemisphere
A Novel
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Chapter 1This time it would be perfect. Sweetmint knelt down, eye level with the crisscrossing of string that hovered above her stove. She plucked it and then clapped her hands together."Holy Father," she said, raising her closed eyes to the cabin's ceiling. "Please let this work." With the biogas turned on and everything in place, she grabbed a knife from the kitchen table, took two steps toward the door-carefully ducking under more sets of string-and, in one swift motion, tore through the first string, which ran from the doorknob to the network in front of her.A pitcher of sun-charged water ...
Chapter 1
This time it would be perfect. Sweetmint knelt down, eye level with the crisscrossing of string that hovered above her stove. She plucked it and then clapped her hands together.
"Holy Father," she said, raising her closed eyes to the cabin's ceiling. "Please let this work." With the biogas turned on and everything in place, she grabbed a knife from the kitchen table, took two steps toward the door-carefully ducking under more sets of string-and, in one swift motion, tore through the first string, which ran from the doorknob to the network in front of her.
A pitcher of sun-charged water dipped and poured into the open kettle on her stove, then a crudely carved wooden mallet swung from the ceiling and collided with the stove's red button, igniting the biogas. The weight of the mallet pulled on a group of interlocking strings, causing a spoon with a hole drilled into its handle to fall, dropping a pinch of needle leaf into a metal strainer that sat inside an herbcup. The cup, balanced by two thicker strings, soared toward the stove and stopped right as the kettle tilted and poured boiling water into it.
Sweetmint's nails were already chewed to nubs, but that didn't stop her from obliterating them even further. She turned off the biogas and counted out a full minute aloud. Then, holding the herbcup with one palm, snipped the two strings that held it in front of the stove, removed the strainer, and took a sip.
"PERFECTION!" she shouted, throwing a triumphant fist into the air. It was the perfect amount of water. The perfect amount of needle leaf. The perfect length of string. The perfect-size herbcup. She took another sip, then ran from her kitchen to the other side of her cabin, careful not to trip on sawed wood, twisted metal, and other inventions-in-progress. She played a beat on the steel trunk that sat between two mattresses her own unmade to the left, the other neat and untouched to the right.
Sweetmint shook her butt to the beat, but stopped when the sight of the untouched mattress sucked the joy out of her, as it always did. She threw herself on the couch, the sunlight from the window above warming her already warm skin.
"I did it. I did it. I did it," she said half-heartedly.
"Did what?" The voice came from the other side of her door.
"Good morning, Rusty," she said. "Come in."
"Sawukhoob, Sweetmint." The door opened, and his scentprint-rusted metal mixed with something more pleasing, like sweet potatoes roasted until the sap bursts through the skin-filled the cabin. Though she heard his footsteps, smelled his smell, and sensed his rumoya, or "cell spirit"-the life force flowing through all Invisibles, unique to each of them, influencing thought, feeling, and action-she couldn't see any physical manifestation of him. This made it impossible for him to hide the small box floating behind him.
"What's that?" she asked.
The old cushions sagged as he whistled and plopped his small but sturdy frame down next to her. She heard his locs swaying against the wall behind them, and watched as he placed the box, wrapped in rough brown canvas, on the trunk in front of them. "'Chunjani, Rusty?' 'Oh, mambonga for asking, Sweetmint. All is well. Freshpine and the little ones are healthy and happy. Glory, glory.'"
She threw her arm over his bare back, kissed his cheek. "I'm sorry. It's just, you know."
"I do. Your rumoya is nervous. But namruz is a big day. Maybe the biggest of your life."
"Exactly."
"Before I came in, I heard you say you did something? From the looks of the string and the cup of needle leaf on your table, I have a feeling you finally got your latest experiment to work."
"It's not an experiment. It's-"
"An invention." He let out a series of laughs that, to anyone else, would sound like a short burst of coughing. "I know, I'm just fooling with you. How many attempts did it take?"
She stretched her lower lip with her tongue, took a second. Then, "Twenty-seven. I could have probably done it in fewer if I'd drawn it out, but I wanted to see if I could do it entirely in my mind."
"And what actually goes on in your mind, when you're creating something?"
"Honestly," she said, looking up at the ceiling. "It's hard to say. It's like I go somewhere else, farther and deeper than anywhere I've been before, and when I'm there, I'm floating. I can view whatever problem I have as a puzzle. Then I begin to take it apart, piece by piece, and try to put it back together."
"Well," he said, his wide smile evident from his tone. "You truly have a gift given to you by the Holy Father himself. Glory, glory."
"Does this mean you'll let me try it out in your cabin?"
"Definitely not. You know Freshpine maintains total control over our khanaya. And the little ones would tear down those strings faster than you can say 'Chief Executive Rhitel.'"
"But what if I-"
He patted her knee. "Not this time, Sweetmint. But this"-he picked up the box, held it in front of her-"is for you."
She took it with both hands, slowly unwrapped the canvas, and found a mess of straw inside. "This better not be some sort of joke, Rusty. I don't have time for any of that today."
He was silent, but she knew he was smiling, waiting.
She pushed the straw aside, felt a warm piece of round metal. When she took it out, the wheat-colored device sat small in her large palm. A piece of metal with a ring attached jutted out of one side, and she pressed it, unlocking the lid and revealing the face of a compass something most Invisibles didn't own or have use for.
"Mambonga khulu, Rusty," she said, doing her best to sound more grateful than confused.
He laughed. "You're wondering why I would ever give you a compass when our every move is tracked. But it's what it symbolizes," he said, tapping the glass, causing the needle to tremble. "I had to go downcity for something and met a man who customizes them. I told him I worked for a dippy collector and had him set the coordinates to Forest Twenty-Six, so no matter where you go, you'll never forget where you come from."
"I don't know what's more ridiculous, you lying about your work or thinking that I, having spent the majority of my twenty-four years here, would ever forget this forest." She bumped his shoulder with her own. "But either way, thank you."
"Khawamu." He got up and rubbed her head. "Well, I'll let you gather yourself before Daily Prayer. I love you, Sweetmint."
The words left his mouth and traveled the short distance to her ears, but she wasn't sure she'd heard them right. "What?"
"I said I love you."
She looked down at the compass, rubbed its smooth glass face, already connected to it. "You've never said that before."
"But you've always felt it, right?"
Sweetmint clicked the compass closed and looked up at him. "Funny that you chose today of all days to say that. When, you know, I'm the feast of the forest. But don't worry, Rusty, I won't forget you when I'm the first Invisible inventor hired by the Northwestern State."
He walked to the door, opened it, and paused. "You know," he said. "He'd be proud of you."
This. These words. He was gone, and after three years, he wasn't coming back. She knew Rusty didn't mean to hurt her, but then why bring him up?
"Doubt that," she whispered. "Working with dippies wasn't exactly what he had planned for me. Plus, I don't even have the apprenticeship yet."
"He wanted you to have the world, Sweetmint."
"Oh yeah? Then why did he keep me from it?"
"Who's to say what shape love takes?" He closed the door behind him, leaving her at a loss. But she couldn't try to process this. Not now. She drained the rest of the needle leaf, felt it splash down her throat, widen her veins, and turn her heart into one of the thump-thump-thumping zaya drums the men in her forest played, then left.
The walk from her cabin in Donsee to the main square-a straight shot on Softstone Path through her dense forest-barely registered. She was so deep in her mind that she didn't even notice when Rusty's children called to her. Nor when the people who lived in the more clustered cabins of Nearsee stepped outside, many of them painted in various colors from head to toe, and stared at her.
She walked through the main square, passing the train platform, the men sitting on their two-wheeled carts, the women grilling their vegetables and tossing laughter and gossip back and forth, and the children playing games and whispering at her heels. A couple of fresh-faced hemispheric guards walked around, speaking with one another, but they were just scenery to her. She continued straight until she entered the church and, seeing that it was only moderately full, sat in a middle pew.
Now she heard them all. The whispers flying in every direction around her. Her forestfolk were likely just as surprised as she was that she had received this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She, who had always kept to herself, choosing to study rather than play sports or crowd into another girl's home to watch the display. She, who was at least a head taller than everyone else in her forest, and who had decided to walk unpainted. She, whom they loved to call so many names-their favorite was "ghihambi," which in Northwestern directly translated to "visitor," but really meant "stranger." It was what they called the DP missionaries who visited their forest to assess conditions and make sure they were proficient in the word of the Holy Father. But today, in the whispers that surrounded her, she heard something new, the sound of awe.
The pews filled and the church's wooden door shut with its classic thud. A girl to Sweetmint's left and a boy to her right fought with each other across her lap before their respective mothers did something she couldn't see, probably a pinch of the thigh or a twist of the ear things she wished she had been able to experience. After a lifetime without parents, she'd learned that brief physical pains paled in comparison to emotional wounds.
Reverend Achte entered the church from a door behind the altar and slowly moved his old bones toward the wooden pulpit, his red-and-white-striped robe swishing with each step its tightly woven mesh reflecting a sheen as pure and soft as his soul. At the pulpit, he raised his hand, silencing the congregation, then belted out a hearty "Glory, glory!"
"Glory, glory!" the church responded. Sweetmint closed her eyes, allowed the Daily Prayer's collective joy to flow through her, replacing her rumoya's nervousness with divine serenity.
"Welcome, my children. And what a glorious day it is indeed," the reverend said, his entire being charged with an aura of warmth that never failed to inspire goodwill in her and her forestfolk. Reverend Achte was the Holy Father's messenger who had served Forest Twenty-Six for over seven decades-at ninety, the oldest person most of them had ever met-faithfully guiding, loving, and protecting them from the tragedies that he would vaguely reference were happening in other regions across the Northwestern Hemisphere, or even close to their own.
"But before I get to why today is so glorious, I'd like everyone to open up their Chief Executive Rhitel Bibles." He lifted his own glass tablet above his head. "And please swipe to Proverbs 16:3." Everyone removed the flat glass slabs from behind the pews in front of them, opened their illuminated Bibles, and swiped to the correct page. Then, "Let us read it together. One, two, three. 'Commit to the Holy Father whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.' A simple order, yes? Give yourself to the will of the Holy Father in all of life, and he will bring you success. Glory, glory."
"Glory, glory," said the church.
"I share this verse with you all today, because one of our own has undoubtedly devoted themselves to the Holy Father, despite having experienced a life of hardship, sorrow, and abandonment. And it is from this devotion that the Holy Father has set her on a path that only the chosen few can ever walk on. Candace, please rise."
It was only when he said her state name that she realized he was talking about her. The people to her left had to move out of the pew to make way, and, walking to the front of the church, she focused on the floor, her heart thump-thump-thumping all over again.
Reverend Achte extended his hands, searching for her in front of his pulpit. Once he made contact, he felt her arms and shoulders, cupped the back of her neck. "Raise your head, my child," he said. She brought her head back to meet his eyes she was tall for an Invisible, but he was severely tall, even for a DP. "Now, please face the congregation."
Sweetmint did as she was told, all five hundred of her forestfolk in front of her. The majority of them wore colored lenses and had the entirety of their skin painted in whatever colors conformed to their mood, the latest trends, or the longing to be something they were not. But others, like Sweetmint herself, opted to remain completely see-through-their distinct rumoyas emanating from the gaps in the pews-sitting there like missing teeth in a DP child's mouth.
"I am sure all of you know that in a few minutes, Candace will embark on a journey to Castle Tenmase, home of Mr. Croger Tenmase. For the younger ones," he said, nodding at the painted children in the pews, "Mr. Croger Tenmase, holding the official title of Director of Progress, is known by many names, such as 'The Chief Architect' and 'The Great Engineer,' because it was he, along with Chief Executive Rhitel, may the Holy Father bless his soul, who built the Northwestern Hemisphere into what it is today, revolutionizing all aspects of our great hemisphere when it was in utter disrepair.
"Candace is going to Castle Tenmase because she was selected, out of hundreds of applicants from recent Forestaeum Minor graduates, to be interviewed for a prestigious apprenticeship-the first of its kind, may I add-with Mr. Croger Tenmase. To study under him, learn about his hemisphere-changing inventions, and become a model Invisible for all in the hemisphere, not just Forest Twenty-Six or the Forest Region, to aspire toward."
This time it would be perfect. Sweetmint knelt down, eye level with the crisscrossing of string that hovered above her stove. She plucked it and then clapped her hands together.
"Holy Father," she said, raising her closed eyes to the cabin's ceiling. "Please let this work." With the biogas turned on and everything in place, she grabbed a knife from the kitchen table, took two steps toward the door-carefully ducking under more sets of string-and, in one swift motion, tore through the first string, which ran from the doorknob to the network in front of her.
A pitcher of sun-charged water dipped and poured into the open kettle on her stove, then a crudely carved wooden mallet swung from the ceiling and collided with the stove's red button, igniting the biogas. The weight of the mallet pulled on a group of interlocking strings, causing a spoon with a hole drilled into its handle to fall, dropping a pinch of needle leaf into a metal strainer that sat inside an herbcup. The cup, balanced by two thicker strings, soared toward the stove and stopped right as the kettle tilted and poured boiling water into it.
Sweetmint's nails were already chewed to nubs, but that didn't stop her from obliterating them even further. She turned off the biogas and counted out a full minute aloud. Then, holding the herbcup with one palm, snipped the two strings that held it in front of the stove, removed the strainer, and took a sip.
"PERFECTION!" she shouted, throwing a triumphant fist into the air. It was the perfect amount of water. The perfect amount of needle leaf. The perfect length of string. The perfect-size herbcup. She took another sip, then ran from her kitchen to the other side of her cabin, careful not to trip on sawed wood, twisted metal, and other inventions-in-progress. She played a beat on the steel trunk that sat between two mattresses her own unmade to the left, the other neat and untouched to the right.
Sweetmint shook her butt to the beat, but stopped when the sight of the untouched mattress sucked the joy out of her, as it always did. She threw herself on the couch, the sunlight from the window above warming her already warm skin.
"I did it. I did it. I did it," she said half-heartedly.
"Did what?" The voice came from the other side of her door.
"Good morning, Rusty," she said. "Come in."
"Sawukhoob, Sweetmint." The door opened, and his scentprint-rusted metal mixed with something more pleasing, like sweet potatoes roasted until the sap bursts through the skin-filled the cabin. Though she heard his footsteps, smelled his smell, and sensed his rumoya, or "cell spirit"-the life force flowing through all Invisibles, unique to each of them, influencing thought, feeling, and action-she couldn't see any physical manifestation of him. This made it impossible for him to hide the small box floating behind him.
"What's that?" she asked.
The old cushions sagged as he whistled and plopped his small but sturdy frame down next to her. She heard his locs swaying against the wall behind them, and watched as he placed the box, wrapped in rough brown canvas, on the trunk in front of them. "'Chunjani, Rusty?' 'Oh, mambonga for asking, Sweetmint. All is well. Freshpine and the little ones are healthy and happy. Glory, glory.'"
She threw her arm over his bare back, kissed his cheek. "I'm sorry. It's just, you know."
"I do. Your rumoya is nervous. But namruz is a big day. Maybe the biggest of your life."
"Exactly."
"Before I came in, I heard you say you did something? From the looks of the string and the cup of needle leaf on your table, I have a feeling you finally got your latest experiment to work."
"It's not an experiment. It's-"
"An invention." He let out a series of laughs that, to anyone else, would sound like a short burst of coughing. "I know, I'm just fooling with you. How many attempts did it take?"
She stretched her lower lip with her tongue, took a second. Then, "Twenty-seven. I could have probably done it in fewer if I'd drawn it out, but I wanted to see if I could do it entirely in my mind."
"And what actually goes on in your mind, when you're creating something?"
"Honestly," she said, looking up at the ceiling. "It's hard to say. It's like I go somewhere else, farther and deeper than anywhere I've been before, and when I'm there, I'm floating. I can view whatever problem I have as a puzzle. Then I begin to take it apart, piece by piece, and try to put it back together."
"Well," he said, his wide smile evident from his tone. "You truly have a gift given to you by the Holy Father himself. Glory, glory."
"Does this mean you'll let me try it out in your cabin?"
"Definitely not. You know Freshpine maintains total control over our khanaya. And the little ones would tear down those strings faster than you can say 'Chief Executive Rhitel.'"
"But what if I-"
He patted her knee. "Not this time, Sweetmint. But this"-he picked up the box, held it in front of her-"is for you."
She took it with both hands, slowly unwrapped the canvas, and found a mess of straw inside. "This better not be some sort of joke, Rusty. I don't have time for any of that today."
He was silent, but she knew he was smiling, waiting.
She pushed the straw aside, felt a warm piece of round metal. When she took it out, the wheat-colored device sat small in her large palm. A piece of metal with a ring attached jutted out of one side, and she pressed it, unlocking the lid and revealing the face of a compass something most Invisibles didn't own or have use for.
"Mambonga khulu, Rusty," she said, doing her best to sound more grateful than confused.
He laughed. "You're wondering why I would ever give you a compass when our every move is tracked. But it's what it symbolizes," he said, tapping the glass, causing the needle to tremble. "I had to go downcity for something and met a man who customizes them. I told him I worked for a dippy collector and had him set the coordinates to Forest Twenty-Six, so no matter where you go, you'll never forget where you come from."
"I don't know what's more ridiculous, you lying about your work or thinking that I, having spent the majority of my twenty-four years here, would ever forget this forest." She bumped his shoulder with her own. "But either way, thank you."
"Khawamu." He got up and rubbed her head. "Well, I'll let you gather yourself before Daily Prayer. I love you, Sweetmint."
The words left his mouth and traveled the short distance to her ears, but she wasn't sure she'd heard them right. "What?"
"I said I love you."
She looked down at the compass, rubbed its smooth glass face, already connected to it. "You've never said that before."
"But you've always felt it, right?"
Sweetmint clicked the compass closed and looked up at him. "Funny that you chose today of all days to say that. When, you know, I'm the feast of the forest. But don't worry, Rusty, I won't forget you when I'm the first Invisible inventor hired by the Northwestern State."
He walked to the door, opened it, and paused. "You know," he said. "He'd be proud of you."
This. These words. He was gone, and after three years, he wasn't coming back. She knew Rusty didn't mean to hurt her, but then why bring him up?
"Doubt that," she whispered. "Working with dippies wasn't exactly what he had planned for me. Plus, I don't even have the apprenticeship yet."
"He wanted you to have the world, Sweetmint."
"Oh yeah? Then why did he keep me from it?"
"Who's to say what shape love takes?" He closed the door behind him, leaving her at a loss. But she couldn't try to process this. Not now. She drained the rest of the needle leaf, felt it splash down her throat, widen her veins, and turn her heart into one of the thump-thump-thumping zaya drums the men in her forest played, then left.
The walk from her cabin in Donsee to the main square-a straight shot on Softstone Path through her dense forest-barely registered. She was so deep in her mind that she didn't even notice when Rusty's children called to her. Nor when the people who lived in the more clustered cabins of Nearsee stepped outside, many of them painted in various colors from head to toe, and stared at her.
She walked through the main square, passing the train platform, the men sitting on their two-wheeled carts, the women grilling their vegetables and tossing laughter and gossip back and forth, and the children playing games and whispering at her heels. A couple of fresh-faced hemispheric guards walked around, speaking with one another, but they were just scenery to her. She continued straight until she entered the church and, seeing that it was only moderately full, sat in a middle pew.
Now she heard them all. The whispers flying in every direction around her. Her forestfolk were likely just as surprised as she was that she had received this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She, who had always kept to herself, choosing to study rather than play sports or crowd into another girl's home to watch the display. She, who was at least a head taller than everyone else in her forest, and who had decided to walk unpainted. She, whom they loved to call so many names-their favorite was "ghihambi," which in Northwestern directly translated to "visitor," but really meant "stranger." It was what they called the DP missionaries who visited their forest to assess conditions and make sure they were proficient in the word of the Holy Father. But today, in the whispers that surrounded her, she heard something new, the sound of awe.
The pews filled and the church's wooden door shut with its classic thud. A girl to Sweetmint's left and a boy to her right fought with each other across her lap before their respective mothers did something she couldn't see, probably a pinch of the thigh or a twist of the ear things she wished she had been able to experience. After a lifetime without parents, she'd learned that brief physical pains paled in comparison to emotional wounds.
Reverend Achte entered the church from a door behind the altar and slowly moved his old bones toward the wooden pulpit, his red-and-white-striped robe swishing with each step its tightly woven mesh reflecting a sheen as pure and soft as his soul. At the pulpit, he raised his hand, silencing the congregation, then belted out a hearty "Glory, glory!"
"Glory, glory!" the church responded. Sweetmint closed her eyes, allowed the Daily Prayer's collective joy to flow through her, replacing her rumoya's nervousness with divine serenity.
"Welcome, my children. And what a glorious day it is indeed," the reverend said, his entire being charged with an aura of warmth that never failed to inspire goodwill in her and her forestfolk. Reverend Achte was the Holy Father's messenger who had served Forest Twenty-Six for over seven decades-at ninety, the oldest person most of them had ever met-faithfully guiding, loving, and protecting them from the tragedies that he would vaguely reference were happening in other regions across the Northwestern Hemisphere, or even close to their own.
"But before I get to why today is so glorious, I'd like everyone to open up their Chief Executive Rhitel Bibles." He lifted his own glass tablet above his head. "And please swipe to Proverbs 16:3." Everyone removed the flat glass slabs from behind the pews in front of them, opened their illuminated Bibles, and swiped to the correct page. Then, "Let us read it together. One, two, three. 'Commit to the Holy Father whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.' A simple order, yes? Give yourself to the will of the Holy Father in all of life, and he will bring you success. Glory, glory."
"Glory, glory," said the church.
"I share this verse with you all today, because one of our own has undoubtedly devoted themselves to the Holy Father, despite having experienced a life of hardship, sorrow, and abandonment. And it is from this devotion that the Holy Father has set her on a path that only the chosen few can ever walk on. Candace, please rise."
It was only when he said her state name that she realized he was talking about her. The people to her left had to move out of the pew to make way, and, walking to the front of the church, she focused on the floor, her heart thump-thump-thumping all over again.
Reverend Achte extended his hands, searching for her in front of his pulpit. Once he made contact, he felt her arms and shoulders, cupped the back of her neck. "Raise your head, my child," he said. She brought her head back to meet his eyes she was tall for an Invisible, but he was severely tall, even for a DP. "Now, please face the congregation."
Sweetmint did as she was told, all five hundred of her forestfolk in front of her. The majority of them wore colored lenses and had the entirety of their skin painted in whatever colors conformed to their mood, the latest trends, or the longing to be something they were not. But others, like Sweetmint herself, opted to remain completely see-through-their distinct rumoyas emanating from the gaps in the pews-sitting there like missing teeth in a DP child's mouth.
"I am sure all of you know that in a few minutes, Candace will embark on a journey to Castle Tenmase, home of Mr. Croger Tenmase. For the younger ones," he said, nodding at the painted children in the pews, "Mr. Croger Tenmase, holding the official title of Director of Progress, is known by many names, such as 'The Chief Architect' and 'The Great Engineer,' because it was he, along with Chief Executive Rhitel, may the Holy Father bless his soul, who built the Northwestern Hemisphere into what it is today, revolutionizing all aspects of our great hemisphere when it was in utter disrepair.
"Candace is going to Castle Tenmase because she was selected, out of hundreds of applicants from recent Forestaeum Minor graduates, to be interviewed for a prestigious apprenticeship-the first of its kind, may I add-with Mr. Croger Tenmase. To study under him, learn about his hemisphere-changing inventions, and become a model Invisible for all in the hemisphere, not just Forest Twenty-Six or the Forest Region, to aspire toward."
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