Tonya R. Moore's Blog: Tonya R. Moore, page 20

Firecracker: Chapter 3

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Halfway House

The afternoon sun was warm on my face. Even hours later, I would remember this moment. I stood staring up at the sky, shielding my eyes against the brilliance. I would remember because I could hear birds singing all around me, idly basking in their dust-laden tranquility.

I would remember my heart lifting a little, as it always seemed to do these days. My gaze swept across the outer walls of the old house that had been bequeathed to me by some distant relative whose face I barely even remembered. It was starting to feel like, finally, there was a place in this world where even I might belong.

I took my time making my way up the paved pathway to the front door. I was making lists in my head of things that needed to be done. The roof was in desperate need of repairs. Better get it done now before the rainy season arrived. The ivy that crept up the latticed walls needed to be trimmed somehow. It was suffocating the walls, and I was sure that a lovely window or two had been covered up by the relentless greenery.

I would remember uneasiness suddenly sliding into my bones. My hand froze in mid-air as I reached for the knob to the front door. Oh yes, I shuddered. There was That. The reason my first night in this rambling old house was spent with my back to the wall and baseball bat poised for a fight. The reason why as soon as I mentioned where it was I was staying; the friendly people of this quaint little town promptly replaced their smiles with stony glares and made a wide berth around me, should any of them happen to cross paths with me on the street.

Screw that, I scoffed silently and shrugged. Being some backwater outcast didn’t really have a profound effect on me. How was that any different from anywhere I’d ever been?

The thing was though (I reached for the knob again tentatively); I never knew quite what to expect. I think that was the most daunting quality of this strange aspect to my new home. I actually had to summon the nerve to push the door open and cross the threshold. It took a bit longer to open my eyes, which had been squeezed shut-bracing myself against another disaster like the night before. The place had been wrecked, completely and utterly wrecked. My heart ached a little just thinking about it. It had taken me the early hours of morning though late morning to set the house back to right, after my previous “guest” had departed.

My nose crinkled. The air was thick with the scent of incense. That was what made me open my eyes, and I smiled in surprise. Everything was in order but fundamentally different, nonetheless.

It was dark inside, so shadowy that I forgot how brilliant it had been outside, only moments earlier. The ivy that clogged the walls kept the daylight out too. I ventured farther inside and turned the corner into the living room. My eyes widened. There was a row of tea lights along one wall, flames dancing jerkily although there was no breeze. Along the opposite wall the job was half done. A woman garbed in a deep red sari, was lining up more candles and lighting them one by one. She turned when I entered the room, bowed her head in polite greeting briefly before returning to her task.

“Hello,” I murmured lamely. What else was I supposed to say?

She lit another candle and turned towards me. Her veil fell away, and I got my first clear look at her face. She was beautiful. Not young. Her face had a weathered sort of serenity that reminded me of knobby trees that had fallen in the forest. The aged thickness carpeted by crackled bark that always hummed with a primal sort of energy, begging to be touched. She stared at me intently-not critically or with hostility. She had a sharp and interested gaze. My heart sank when her smile tilted curiously. She seemed so bewildered. So lost.

I was reaching deep inside my mind for some inkling of what to do, some way that I could be useful. My great-aunt that I never even knew had left me this house but no instructions on how to deal with the things that happened here. The only clue she had left behind had been a hesitantly scrawled note.

“Don’t desert them. Just use your heart.”

What the hell was that even supposed to mean?

Well, here I was, and something told me that any sensible person would have run away from that house screaming, never to return after that first one appeared in the dead of night. Yet, this place felt like home. My home. Even momentary bouts of panic and terror couldn’t usurp that feeling of belonging. I didn’t know what they wanted, and they seemed to always be gone by morning. This one though, was different. Lost though she may be, she didn’t seem as disoriented or demented as the rest.

“I can’t seem to remember how I got here.”

That last word ended on an expectant lilt. She was waiting, I realized, my spirits plummeting. I cursed lightly under my breath. “Well, do you know why you’re here?” It was a stupid question I know. I was stalling, OK?

“I do not,” she answered softly.

Not what I wanted to hear. Oh god, I thought. She doesn’t know. I’m going to have to tell her. This was the part I hated most. So far, it almost never ended well. She moved suddenly, surging upright, and I quailed inwardly with shame as I scrambled backwards a few steps. Inspiration struck.

“Do you remember your name?”

“Sarasvati.” When she said it, joy split across her face, as if she had reclaimed something precious that had been lost.

“Are you here to teach me something?”

Her eyes widened. “You?” Her hand went to her throat, exposing an intricate and achingly beautiful mehndi.

So much for that. I cleared my throat. “Or maybe, do you need something from me?”

She edged closer. So close that I could feel her breathing and smell the perfume on her skin, which was odd considering the present circumstances.

“I…” her voice fell to a helpless whisper.

“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure if I was apologizing for my ignorance or for what I was about to tell her.

She surprised me by smiling. “Not all who come to you will be ignorant.”

“Then you know?”

She nodded benignly, drawing closer. “It’s fairly obvious.” She looked around curiously, her eyes lingering on the weathered moldings and filigreed details of the hall mirror. “This place?”

I shrugged. “A transition point of some sort?”

She chuckled. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

It rankled. I scowled. “I just moved into this crazy house a week ago! And I never cared much for metaphysics anyway.”

My grumbled retort sounded lame and nonsensical even to my own ears. She turned away to face her handiwork. The soft glow of the candles she set out licked at the walls. There was something poignant about that simple gesture, lights set out in the darkness by the dead. She remained silent for a while. Just when I thought she must have forgotten I was even there she looked up.

“Souls are just travelers,” she murmured. “Yes?”

I smiled. “I’d like to think so.” Suddenly I knew exactly what I was supposed to say. I gestured toward the candles she had put out. “Tell me about the candles, Sarasvati. Tell me what you remember about your life.”

Hybrid

Pony lay on her back in the tall grass in the clearing near the entrance to the derelict that was once The Kennedy Space Center’s main building. Keen on getting inside, she stared up at the bowl-shaped sky, counted her lucky stars, and waited for her chance. She’d managed to get the entire weekend off from the Aerospace Institute just for this little jaunt.

While she waited for the doors to open, Pony reveled in daydreams about her childhood and the distant past when rockets blasted off into space from this abandoned station. She’d heard stories about the cape from her Grandma June, whose father had once gotten an autographed photo of Buzz Aldrin, after meeting a descendant of the man himself in a Nevada coffeehouse.

“Pioneers they were,” Grandma June had said one day. “The early astronauts.”

Pony remembered how her grandmother’s wrinkled brow had crinkled, how her bespectacled eyes had lit up with pride, and how her shock of white hair had seemed to gleam in the light of the midday sun. They’d been seated on the steps of the old summer house. Pony had been seated one step lower so that Grandma June could plait her hair.

Grandma June’s fingers had been quick as she worked out the kinks and neatly gathered up a lock of Pony’s hair. Pony remembered listening intently and biting into a tart jimbilin star, her mouth puckering and eyes squeezing shut as the sour juice struck her taste buds with a vengeance.

Grandma June had chuckled. “Those guys an’ gals raced to the moon an’ Mars, strapped to one point five megaton bombs, Pony. You better believe it!”

It was a story she’d told Pony before, about the days long before the extraterritorial Nazca Two, that massive man-made island in the Pacific had become the new stage for the race to space.

“In the old days, though, there were no luxury liners hoppin’ an’ skippin’ back an’ forth from Jupiter to Nazca Two,” Grandma June had sighed, running her comb through Pony’s hair. “There was no colony on the moon either. Back then, Earth was just a lonely planet full of dreamers wantin’ to reach up an’ touch the stars.”

After that, Grandma June had read to Pony enough of Icarus and about men like Galileo Galilei and Leonardo da Vinci to fill her up with a heart-wrenching kind of understanding. It had made some quiet engine start somewhere deep down inside and Pony had started yearning for the stars. Pony had decided then, at ten-years-old that she was going to be an astronaut.

The sound of approaching footsteps stirring up the grass yanked the Astronautics major back to the here and now.

At nineteen, Pony had deep brown skin, full lips and the curves of a pin-up girl. She sported an awesome afro. She wore a tank top with retro pumpkin-legged shorts. She’d taken off her boots and shed her jacket.

Cape Canaveral’s self-declared caretaker stared down at Pony, unsmiling and unimpressed by her fashion forward getup.

“You’re back,” said the dark, skinny young man in the hooded shirt.

“Yup,” chirped Pony. “This time, I’m not leaving until you let me have a look around inside. I even got a permit. For the next forty-eight hours, at least.” Her head tilted cajolingly, “oh come on, let me in. What’s the harm?”

The toe of one worn-out sandal ground down into the dirt. He looked to be about four or five years older than Pony. He looked down at her. For a fraction of an instant, his eyes focused on Pony with a curious sort of intensity. Then he blinked and all that was left was annoyance.

“A permit huh? They don’t give those out to just anyone.” He bit down on his lower lip, considering. “Who exactly are you?” He finally asked.

“You can call me Pony,” she said, fully aware that her failure to fully explain her presence might piss him off.

Fallen into disrepair, the cape had been deemed off-limits to the public for over a century. Recently, legislation had changed and regular people were now allowed to explore the abandoned rocket launch complex, as long as they secured a permit.

Overrun by wildflowers, sweet grass, palmettos, and cabbage palms, Cape Canaveral was partially swallowed up by mangroves. There’d been a crack in the earth fifteen years earlier, Banana River and the ocean come pouring in. Now hordes of alligators lurked and pods of dolphins cavorted in the brackish water that submerged half of the old complex. Only hardcore astronautics geeks like Pony and the occasional ecologist would be interested in a swampy old relic like this.

Pony got to her feet. She slipped her boots back on, bent to tie her laces, then picked up and slipped on her heavy backpack with ease. The caretaker stepped back to give her space and his hood fell off, revealing a mess of knotty hair. The left side of his face was bruised. The bruise had turned that ugly black and blue color. She wondered if he’d recently been in a fight. His glower told her it was better not to ask.

She inclined her head toward the building before her. “So, are you living here or something?”

“Man,” he scowled. “What do I look like to you?” But he averted his gaze, which made Pony think that he’d likely crashed there before, more often than just once or twice. Somehow, he reminded her of a jumpy spider.

Pony pulled a set of maps of Cape Canaveral from back in its glory days out of her backpack. She’d shelled out the extra cash for a handful of them when she secured her permit to explore.

The caretaker’s breath hitched.

“What?” She demanded, wondering what the matter was now.

He seemed to mull it over for a while before deciding to speak. “You know,” he said quietly, inclining his head toward the maps. “You’re not going to find anything interesting by looking at those.”

Pony frowned. “Come again?”

He grunted. “I guess it depends on what you came here to see.”

He walked away without another word, making a beeline for the double doors ahead. She got the distinct impression that he expected her to follow. It was annoying, to say the least, but her curiosity was piqued. She trotted after him.

“Hey,” she called after him. “Your name? You have one, right? What do I call you?”

He stopped. “Hugh,” he answered after giving the matter some thought. “You?”

“I already told you,” her brows furrowed. “It’s Pony.”

“For real?” He chuckled. “I thought you were making that up.”

He was sort of sweet-looking when he smiled. Pony thought it best to keep that bit to herself. She didn’t want him getting all hostile on her again.

The doors to the building they entered had been secured with a chain at some point but the chain had been broken. The rust caking the broken links suggested that whatever it was had happened a long time ago. The doors swung shut behind them. It was dark inside. Pony rummaged around in her backpack for her flashlight and turned it on. Hugh just kept going with surefooted steps which suggested he’d been in this part of the complex many times before.

Pony followed him through the dark, descending deeper down with each turn but after the fifth or sixth corridor, her patience was starting to wear thin. They rounded yet another dark corner. She stopped in her tracks.

“Okay, you need to stop messing around,” she stated flatly. “Is there something down here or not?”

Hugh stopped and turned around. “There’s something here, alright.”

She dug her heels in. “Just tell me what it is.”

Hugh raised one hand, shielding his eyes from the glare of her flashlight. “There’s no point in me telling you. Besides, I wouldn’t even know what to say. This is something you have to see to believe.”

“Fine,” she grumbled. “I was the one who wanted to come down here in the first place.”

The building’s old bones creaked as they settled around the pair. The air vents breathed countless sighs through the empty hallways. The two explorers walked on in silence until they came upon an elevator shaft. The doors were missing. In fact, so was the entire car. A knotted rope hung from a bent metal column on the left side of the entrance. Pony inched closer to the edge and pointed her flashlight downward. The bottom was an awfully long way down.

Pony kicked at a knot in the makeshift rope ladder. “You made this?” She asked.

“Uh huh,” Hugh nodded.

She eyed the knots. They’d been made with the kind of efficiency you’d expect from someone who’d gone through some kind of military training.

She turned to him again, flashlight raised high. “Who are you, Hugh?”

He held up a hand to shield his eyes from the blinding onslaught of brilliance. “Would you stop that?”

“Answer my question,” Pony challenged.

“I’m just a guy searching for the truth,” he insisted.

“What truth?” She pressed.

He chewed on his bottom lip. After a while, he gave her a what-the-hell shrug. “Alright, you know how this complex was used as a research facility after it was decommissioned as a launch site?”

“Uh huh.” Where exactly was he going with this?

“Well, rumor has it that when they closed the labs down years ago, something got left behind.”

There was a timely clunk from somewhere deep in the belly of the darkness.

Pony shivered. “What rumors? Rumors from where?”

“The dark net and shit.”

Pony sneered at that crazy claim. “The dark net hasn’t even existed for the last seventy-five years.”

“That’s just what the government says. We both know that doesn’t mean much.” He grabbed on to the rope and swung his legs over the edge of the elevator shaft.

“You coming?” He demanded when Pony made no move to follow.

“I’m having second thoughts about trusting some “dark net” conspiracy whack job with my life down here.”

He chuckled and started his descent. “I’d only be a whack job if I hadn’t found something.” he vanished into the darkness. “Come on down!” He called out as he reached the bottom.

“Fine,” Pony grumbled.

She grabbed hold of the rope with one hand, turned her flashlight sideways, in order to clamp onto it with her teeth. Lord, it was unnerving, descending down into the dark. She swung her body over the edge and held on for dear life, inching her way down. Her heart threatened to thump right out of her chest. Her blood roared in her ears.

A sudden tug on the rope from below made her yelp.

“Relax,” Hugh’s voice came from just below. “There’s a piece of broken metal about two inches to the left. You’ll have one hell of a bruise if it gets you.”

“Wait,” she twisted around after her feet finally touched the ground. “You can see in the dark?”

“AGR contacts, baby.” He grinned.

“But those aren’t even on the market anymore,” she complained.

She knew. She’d looked into it thoroughly, in search of something more high-spec than her AGR spectacles but learned that the Augmented Reality contacts had been banned decades earlier because of a defect that resulted in severe ocular damage to some users.

“You managed to get hold of something like that.” Her envy knew no bounds. “Really, who are you?”

“Come on,” he deftly dodged her question again. “This way.”

Left of the elevators and two more corridors deeper down, they came upon another massive pair of doors. There was power down here for some reason. A fluorescent light flickered above the doorway. Hugh punched series of numbers into the keypad to the right. The doors slid open.

“A kindergartener could have hacked that,” Pony scoffed at his triumphant smile.

They crossed the threshold. The space widened into a massive warehouse. The first thing that Pony saw took her breath away. It had been dismantled, parts laid out like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle but Pony had pored over the specs of old rockets and probes often and long enough to recognize the reflector segments and the dented and pitted beryllium outer case anywhere. This was Voyager One. Supposedly, having breached the heliopause back in 2012, never to be heard from again. There was no way it should be there then. There was just no way.

Pony bent to touch the dust laden surface of a fuel assembly sphere laid bare. “This is impossible,” she murmured. “There’s no way this should be here.”

There were people who didn’t believe that the ancient craft had really managed to escape the solar system. Destroyed by cosmic debris, they said. Just a stupid publicity stunt, they said. People doubted that Voyager’s jaunt into the unknown had really happened much in the same way people had doubted that the first moon landing had really taken place back in the 21st Century. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d always hoped that lost probes like Voyager One and Pioneer were still out there floating across the cosmos. Pony had always believed, had always been stirred by this kind of dream.

Why was it here, all dented and busted up and laid out in pieces, in the dark, in some forgotten warehouse? Had the conspiracy nuts been right all along?

“Here’s the thing,” Hugh said. “This is nothing. Now I’m going to show you the really weird shit.”

Pony dug her heels in, curiosity be damned. “You can’t show me something like this and expect me to just move along like it’s nothing.”

“It’s worth seeing, Pony,” Hugh said. “What I have to show you.”

She suddenly remembered the old lesson about talking to strangers, let alone following a weird one into the bowels of some dark building. Still, Hugh didn’t seem to have any hostile intent. He shoved his hands into his pockets and regarded Pony owlishly.

“This is important,” he said. “And you strike me as a clever sort. I feel like if you understand my problem, you’ll know what to do.”

He went through the next set of doors. Pony followed. Her heart lurched when she entered the room. A sickening feeling twisted in her gut. The body was seated in a webbed chair, slumped over at a worktable. By now, she could easily recognize those old-fashioned cargo shorts, the hooded shirt, even the sandals housing the bones of his desiccated toes. She stood where she was, numb and rooted to the floor, staring down at the skeletal remains. Hugh was dead. Long dead. It made no sense.

“I was just with him!” She whispered, mind reeling. “I was just…”

Hugh was wearing a webbed helmet with wires that trailed to the ground and across the room. Whatever the wires led to was hidden behind storm shutters. At each seat, on the table were flat black squares. Pre AGR tech, if she remembered correctly. The one in front of the corpse was open, somehow still connected to a power source. She read the words on the screen and frowned.

Open storm shutters? Y/N

Pony hesitated. She thought about leaving, but there was Hugh right before her and there was Voyager One in pieces in the next room. How long had his body been down here like this, waiting to be found? Just who had led her down into the belly of this building then? Pony didn’t believe in ghosts, after all. Her gaze shifted back to the skeleton, to the wires spilling from the helmet it was wearing to the shutters where they led. What was behind those shutters? She needed to know.

Pony leaned over and pressed the “Y” key on the flat device, then “Enter” and she waited. The shutters creaked as they slowly opened, revealing a wall of glass. It took her a few seconds to realize that she was looking inside a massive aquarium. There was a flurry of movement within the murky water. Pony drew closer. Something was alive inside!

A large shadow emerged from the murk. There was a loud thump, and then it pressed up against the glass.

The aquarium’s occupant was grayish blue with the blunt nose and freakishly wide, smiley mouth of a pilot whale. The body was human-like, down to the torso which narrowed into a snakelike coil, punctuated by a fluttery fish-like tail. Two of its eyes were bright green, irises red, the third eye’s sclera was golden, iris an inky black. A tangled mess of wires trailed out from the middle of the forehead, just above the third eye, and flowed out behind the creature. The creature stared down at Pony, like an elephant staring down at a mouse.

Pony wanted to run. She couldn’t. She couldn’t even fathom why she couldn’t. A weird sound whooshed out of her mouth. The creature’s enormous hands pressed up against the glass. Pony heard a crack. The glass splintered. Beads of water welled up into the cracks in the glass. There was another loud thud. The glass shattered. A deluge of cold water came spewing out, dousing Pony from head to toe. The creature’s tail writhed and twisted as it crept out of the broken enclosure. Pony retreated, backing up against the table as the creature drew near.

“You!” Pony’s voice reached a high note, trembled. “What are you?”

The creature leaned in closer. It studied Pony at length. Pony stared back, trapped within that gravid silence. Her eyes shifted to the corpse which had been knocked sideways and now lay partially submerged in the water.

“D-did you kill him?” She swallowed hard and tried again. “Why?”

Her questions were met with a long, icy stare.

“He was unsuitable,” the monster answered.

The creature didn’t actually speak, yet somehow, its words rattled around inside Pony’s skull. What was that? Telepathy?

Realization struck.

“You tricked me into coming down here,” Pony whispered.

Every instinct signaled that she needed to flee but Pony didn’t. She couldn’t. They stared at each other in frozen silence, Pony and the giant that could have easily been The Creature from the Black Lagoon. It bent forward. Wet, scaly palms cradled Pony’s cheeks. A hot barrage of images speared into the young woman’s mind.

She saw stars and the vast spaces between them. She saw galaxies upon galaxies, upon galaxies. She saw a massive green jewel of a planet. She saw swarms of ships escaping the orbit of an exploding star. She saw the familiar glimmer of a battered reflector. Dimly, Pony began to understand. Voyager One had gone out into deep space, had been found and returned. It hadn’t been sent back alone.

The creature that came back with Voyager One had been quarantined but attempts to communicate with it had failed. The creature had been abandoned. Years later, Hugh had come. Even though his attempt to use the device that he discovered had resulted in his untimely death, the creature had managed to capture his memories. It had then been able to project his appearance and behavior but the creature’s telepathic range was limited to just beyond ground level. Pony had simply gotten too close.

“Why can I hear you without the wires?” Pony wondered.

“You are suitable,” it simply said.

Somehow, Pony managed to slip out of the creature’s grasp. She twisted away, tripped over her own feet, and fell on her butt. Water sloshed everywhere as she desperately scrambled for the exit. Slim tendrils snaked out lashing around her neck. The creature dragged her up back onto her feet and leaned in closer, head tilted to the side as if considering. The pressure increased and kept increasing until Pony saw red.

“We are not so different,” the hollow words came spearing into Pony’s mind. “Your kind. My kind.”

It stank strongly of dirty fish water and somewhat of sulfur. The stench made Pony gag. She heard the sound of running water, the hiss of electrical wires shorting out, and the sound of the wind worming its way through the cavernous building. She felt the stab of something hard and sharp burrowing through the bone of her skull. She screamed. Through the haze of pain, she saw the creature’s mouth open, revealing double rows of long, spiky teeth.

Dr. Nestor Marley shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun. A slender Natty Dread, he wore a silver tunic and rode a gravity-defying disc across the brackish water. He made a beeline for the building partially swallowed up by the mangroves.

“You’re back,” called out a voice from the thick of the greenery.

“Yes, I’ve got questions,” the scientist answered, bringing the disc to an abrupt stop.

“I suppose I’ve got answers,” came the silvery voice again.

She didn’t look a day over twenty, the petite woman who sat in the canopy of the mangroves. She had deep brown skin, full lips and generous curves. Her hair fanned out, framing her head into twisted, black halo. Barefoot, she wore a faded tank top with old-fashioned pumpkin-legged shorts. Her feet, from her toes to the crooks of her knees and her hands, from her fingers to her shoulders were scaly and blue. Her sclerae were golden, irises an inky black.

“Let’s start with who you are and where you came from,” Nestor started but then he shook his head, “actually, let’s just start with your name.”

“You can call me Pony,” the hybrid leaned forward and grinned, revealing double rows of long, spiky teeth. “That used to be my name.”

Firecracker: Chapter 2

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Harlequin

A clock-work doll sits atop a wobbly mountain of rubble. He has dry, empty sockets where his eyes should be. His smile is wide and full of teeth. A fat tear hangs in suspended animation, mid-dribble down one dirty cheek. The aging sun goes down on the distant horizon, casting its purple gaze across the broken remains of a barren metropolis.

There’s a tentative click, then the sound of slowly grinding gears. A sharp melody explodes into the air, a relentless one-man merry-go-round of a carnival. It’s that kind of song; the kind of song that spins you round and around in your nightmares before grabbing you by the throat and squeezing the breath out of your lungs.

How many times has he played this tune?

He has no one left to applaud his remarkable musical wit. No comrades. No culture.

The ones who built and broke this continent have long since been forgotten by the insects that buzz there. Even the scum clawing its way up out of the ocean knows little of its sordid origin. Nothing animal moves in this derelict town without first, listening intently for the distant sound of thunder.

The sky rumbles, heralding the flapping of many gargantuan wings. They arrive, hawkish cries drowning out the mechanical man’s tune. A seething cloud of arcuated eyes and rapacious beaks, they darken the sky. They descend in droves, adopting the military precision of the freight-trains and torpedoes of an era, long gone. In the heat of the hunt, they stir up chunks of history mingled with gritty particles from bones they already picked clean a hundred years ago.

One majestic crow swoops down upon a crumbling spire and regards his sagging kingdom from the dusty perch. His menacing gaze fixes upon the blind harlequin, the jerky motions of its wiry hands; the pneumatic, spinning mechanism lodged in its skeletal chest. His head tilts, one black eye reflecting the rising moon and the stirring stars. The crow contemplates the faint, alien sound threaded into the cacophony of winged beasts. It spreads its massive arms and dives down into the rising dark for the kill.

The earth shakes. The music stops. The massive bird takes flight once again. The doll’s iron bones stick in the crow’s craw. The red wetness raining from the sky goes unseen. Darkness has filled the whole, wide world. The great beast plummets awkwardly to the stony ground, a multitude of bones cracking.

The winged emperor knows he won’t live to see another ghostly dawn. He utters one long, mournful cry. The eager swarm hovers overhead, a pulsating mess of gleaming eyes and snapping beaks. They know no remorse, the voracious giants feasting on the flesh of their kin. They haven’t changed since they first dominated the earth millions of years ago. This world was made for these birds.

They’ve known that since the dawn of time.

 

 

Going Dark

Dran’s sphere flickered then steadily started to glow. Finally, the signal was strong enough for live-talk again. Frantic, he fumbled with it–fingers shaky.

“Wheela! What in the stars happened? Answer already!”

“Well, hello to you too, Dran.” Her voice was hoarse, irritated and it was obvious that talking took monumental effort but she was stubborn. He was banking on that because the thought of her going quiet on him again was maddening.

“You have any idea how worried I’ve been?”

“Dran…”

There must have been something manic in his voice that gave him away. He suffered a few moments of her astonished silence. Only to be expected, he supposed. He’d never…

They’d already plummeted, worlds apart before he’d even started falling for her.

How could he have told her? What would have been the point?

“What the hell,” she muttered, recovering somewhat. “Go ahead and yell all you want. It’s been a really shitty couple of days and I’m just glad to hear another human voice.”

His bushy brows arced but before he could say anything, she laughed weakly and corrected herself. “You’ll do, at any rate.”

The help that the Expeditionary Council had earnestly promised them was, apparently, still on the way. The way things were going, what good would that do? The medicinal brew sliding down Dran’s throat was bitter. The stinging at his eyes had little to do with the viscous liquor lining the bottom of his cup. The fawn’s eyes were wet now and the voice on the radio was tinny, both the signal and the human losing strength. Who knew drunken sunsets could be so gut-wrenching?

He was sitting by a feeble fire on a dangerously frigid evening, gazing out into the dusty horizon. The sheer beauty of the panorama stretched out before him was staggering. Where the earth met the sky, there loomed the ghostly shadow of a massive moon. E455B was the ominous, big sister of the rock on which he’d made landfall when his and Wheela’s escape pods got separated two years before.

Their ship had been blown to bits by the primitive, yet cleverly hostile denizens of the planet closest to the sun. It seemed so close like he could just reach out and touch it. The illusion only served to make him so much more cognizant of his utter uselessness. She was over there somewhere, his partner–on the ground, drenched in her own curdling blood and there was nothing he could do about it.

“What exactly happened?”

It was selfish. He knew it–wanting to keep her talking for as long as possible, no matter how much more painful it made her passing. She must have realized that but she didn’t complain.

“Tangled with a winged dyvik,” she muttered. “Can you believe it? They actually still exist! This one,” she drew in a long breath as her words became slower and more deliberate. “This lumbering, twin-tailed beast’s head came all the way up to my chest. Had coiled horns… like a fawn with really bad fashion sense–”

“Are you ever going to let me live that down?”

She giggled, uncharacteristically. The sound was smoky and girlish. It made his gut tingly

She sobered. “Listen Dran, remember this. They’re predatory and they seem to really like the smell of human blood. They’re clever and they hunt their prey en-mass, in groups comprised of several flocks. Their teeth are huge too and sharp. They cut into flesh and bone like fraggin’ lasers–”

A high-pitched wail pierced the air. It was a savage sound, full of triumph and anticipation.

“Wheela? What was that? It sounded really close.”

“It’s nothing.” She was lying. He knew it in his gut. “In any case, I got some really awesome footage.”

“You weren’t supposed to–”

“This moon is an ecological treasure trove. Did you really expect me just sit around twiddling my thumbs until that insanely overdue rescue ship arrives? Is that what you’ve been doing over there, all this time?”

“No, but–”

“Let me guess; it’s perfectly fine for you, oh massive and mighty specimen of a fawn and I’m just a dainty little–”

“Desert fairy,” he supplied with a grin.

“So help me–if you put that on my tombstone, I will aggressively haunt you for all eternity.”

Dran heard the pop of yet another pod of anesthetic gum. He cringed. That much and the compound was going to deaden her tongue for good. Well, not that it mattered now. He leaned back in his rickety make-shift chair. His fist tightened around the orb.

“Hey, survivalist.”

“What the hell did you call me?” She squawked.

“Is it a bad word?”

She only grunted. He heard the staccato burst of weapons fire. If he asked about it, she was only going to lie to him again.

“What should I tell Elsa? If I ever make it back home, that is.”

Consideration was due–he supposed grudgingly, to Wheela’s bonded spouse of nearly two decades. He released a shuddering sigh. His conscience had just won a long, silent battle.

“That’s easy,” Wheela sniffled. “Tell her what I always tell her before I leave for a long mission.”

Be happy. Don’t forget me.

“Ah, the heroic stuff.” a tiny smiled tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I might be able to pull that off. Not quite as neatly as you, though.”

When she spoke again, a strangled sob had crawled into her throat and squatted there. “Dran… thanks for worrying about me.”

“We’re research partners. Of course, I’d worry.”

“You know what I mean.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. Don’t! He pleaded silently. Please don’t apologize.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “For not realizing.”

“Say,” he leaned forward, firmly changing the subject. “Tell me more about the sky you see.”

“Nothing to tell, really. Same old stars, doing the same old thing. But you know, it’s as clear as crystal. Quiet. Not even a cloud in sight. Isn’t that just preposterous? I’m a little insulted, actually.”

Dran’s agonized gaze drifted to the massive moon. Dread pooled into his gut. He heard another round of gunfire as the orb in his palm lost its shimmer. He flung it aside, biting back a sudden and unreasonable surge of ire.

Fawn don’t cry for humans and she was such an evil witch for making him feel this way. Twilight ended. Wheela’s hemisphere twisted too far away for radio transmission to be possible until it rolled back around again. That was a full planetary rotation away. When the moon went dark, so did Wheela.

This time, he knew–for good.

 

I Keep Vacillating

It wasn’t so long ago that I pulled my webserial, What the Bones Say, from my website and declared that I wasn’t going to post any more webfiction. Again. That left me, though, with the question of what to do with the unfinished story that I had already started posting online. I really want to finish it and it’s not as if I can ultimately submit it to an agent after posting the first three chapters online.

That said, I’ve decided to finish serializing What the Bones Say. Again. The first three chapters are back online. Chapter four will be up soon.

It will be a sort of long term project because I’ll just tell you now that updates will be sporadic. Much as I get a kick out of writing and posting this particular story, it’s a project that I will only be able to work on in my free time, and with school and work in the mix, free time is in short supply.

 

Chapter Three

Calamity was the oldest word in the language of Niara’s people. It was the word for their old world which had fallen to pieces. They used that word for falling down and for failing grace. They used it for the loss of life and for the leaving of love. Two and a half days away from her foster mother’s deathbed, Boabab’s prodigal daughter woke up shaken–from a strange dream and so she; despite her disdain for those who would rely on them; listened to the bones. The bones telegraphed that one word repeatedly and relentlessly. Calamity–they sang. Calamity had befallen Niara and would soon again and again and again. She, despite her disbelief, offered up a prayer the heavens and her dead as she put out her fire and dismantled her camp. Her anxiety made her careless. Like a rank amateur, a stupid child wielding her machete, she advanced, noisily tramping though the wood.

She’d been walking non-stop for several hours, preoccupied with the sweltering heat beating down on her back when a chill ran down her spine. She stopped in her tracks.She frowned, sweaty brow creasing. Something was off kilter. With dawning dread, she realized what it was. In these wild, twisting woods, there was only silence. Silence had swiftly fallen, every living thing in the bush gone rigid with fear. Niara’s breath quickened, became so amplified that beyond the stuttering of her heart, it was the only thing she could hear. Her eyes darted about unsteadily. Was it even in her field of vision, the beastly thing getting ready to pounce? Her nostrils flared. Her breath quickened. She swallowed hard. Nothing. She saw nothing but something was out here in the bush with her.

Bramble cracked. A low rumbling growl filled the air. Niara balked. Something big was coming straight for her. Her finger tightened around the handle of her only weapon, a makeshift machete made of of material torn from Boabab’s hull. She’d never known it before but somehow she recognized that raw, rancid taste sticking to the back of her throat as abject terror. The brush rustled and then beast loped out of the cover of the bush. It stood on four legs like a lion but Niara had never seen the likes of this creature before. It had a coat of gold with black stripes. Its eyes were fierce and golden. It opened its mouth and snarled. Niara caught a glimpse of large, sharp teeth. It was beautiful, powerful, and menacing. Niara’s last shred of common sense prevailed somehow.

Do. Not. Run. The last thing you want to do is run.

Niara forcibly swallowed her whimper.

The muscles in the beast’s back bunched . It sprang forward. It came in for the kill, closing the distance between them in the blink of an eye. Niara swung the machete forward with all the might she could muster but she knew it. She was doomed. The fatal blow she expected never came. Something hard and heavy knocked her sideways. She hit the ground so hard the wind got knocked out of her. A cacophony of yelling and animal howls exploded into the air.

She was suddenly surrounded by a wild-looking band of men and women. The massive feline lay on the ground, unmoving and bloody. The group cheered and hooted as one young man raised a broken spear to the sky and cried out in triumph. Overhead, something that looked like a massive, mechanical dragonfly hovered, making a whirring noise. At first, Niara simply sat there on the ground, dazed. Her brain couldn’t seem to catch up with the scene unfolding around her. She heard a groan and a low, feminine voice bit out a curse. Niara’s gaze swung around to the source of that voice. The heavy object that had crashed into her was a woman. She had a lithe, slightly muscular body. Her straw-colored tunic, if you could call it that, stuck to her like a second skin. The top ended at the woman’s midriff. The bottom was a matching pair of leggings which ended just below the calves. The seemingly coarsely woven material allowed for freedom of movement.

“Nicely done, Bait!” The woman sat up beside Niara and chuckled. Her voice went up a few decibels. “Even a toothless cow from Boabab can be useful in the hunt.”

The other hunters responded with hoots and a smattering of laughter.

“Bait?” Niara spluttered. “Toothless cow?”

“Got a death wish, do ya?” The woman turned her full gaze upon Niara.

Niara’s quick retort died in her throat. The woman’s eyes were golden, fierce and beautiful like the eyes of the beast her companions had just felled and she spoke in earnest.

“Even a babe knows better than to act like prey in the bush.”

Niara didn’t have a valid comeback for that. She sighed. “You’re right. I got careless. No death wish, though.”

“Good,” the woman’s face split into a smile. “Good!”

She sprang to her feet and extended a hand to help Niara to hers. “I am Wendi.”

“Niara,” the young priestess took the offered hand. “How do you know I came from Boabab?”

Wendi’s head tilted. “You have that look about you.”

“Seriously?”

“No,” Wendi grinned. “I recognize the tunic. How is Baba Gen these days?”

“Dead.”

“A pity,” Wendi murmured.

The mechanical dragonfly touched down a few feet away. The side opened and a man came out. He trotted over towards the two women. He was a blindingly handsome sort, fair and golden haired. His eyes were an intense and deep blue.

“Wendi? You alright?” He asked worriedly.

“Ethan, this is Niara.” Wendi responded with a brief nod. “Niara, this is Ethan, my second-in-command.”

Ethan dipped his head towards Niara. “Boabab?”

“Yes, how did you—”

He grinned. “You just have that look about you.”

Wendi erupted into laughter.

“I take it you’re not a hunter?” He probed.

“Nope. Priestess, more like.”

“All alone in the bush?”

Niara blinked. “Is it that strange?”

“It is,” Wendi declared firmly. “Why are you even in our territory?”

“Believe it or not,” Niara answered, rummaging around in her belongings for Baba Gen’s map. “I think I came here looking for you.”

She handed the note with the ancient writing to Wendi. “Do you know what it says?”

Wendi started down at the note. Her countenance darkened for an instant. When she looked back up at Niara. Her eyes were over-bright and strange. She handed the note to Ethan.

Ethan stared down at the note. “I’m not superstitious,” he muttered, “but isn’t this a sign?”

“It seems,”Wendi told Niara, “that we have much to talk about.”

“What does it say?” Niara prodded.

“It says,” Wendi answered, “that truth lies beyond the wall.”

Chapter Two

Night fell while Niara and Hati stood watch over the pyre. For the occasion, the Niara wore her best clothing, a handwoven organdy tunic and bush walker sandals with laces that climbed up her calves. Hati also wore her finest, the blood-orange-colored sarong that had been a gift from Niara for surviving her first hunt. Both glowing in the firelight, the pale hunter and the dark priestess watched their foster mother burn. Villagers had already come, sang their respects, and gone leaving the grieving sisters to tend to the corpse.

As Baba Gen’s body went up in flames, cicadas swelled the air with their tuneless song. The warm breath of the earth danced between the tongues of the flames and tugged at the hemline of Niara’s tunic. The moon was slow to rise but the firelight kept the thick blanket of darkness that enveloped the outskirts of the compound at bay. The lonesome pair silently endured the indescribably unnerving smells. Bubbling flesh. Burning sinew. Charring bone.

Niara inhaled sensi smoke from her pipe, remembered, and contemplated the inheritance Baba Gen had left behind; her bones, her pipe and the most enigmatic of all, a black, rectangular relic small enough to fit in the palm of Niara’s hand. The relic had been wrapped in a piece of parchment. On the parchment, Baba Gen had scrawled a crude map to the village east of Boabab with a message written in the script of their ancestors. Niara had no idea what the note said, since she couldn’t read the ancient text. Common sense suggested someone at the eastern village could.

“You’re thinking of going. Aren’t you?” Hati broke the silence, her voice low and filled with anxiety. “The village needs you. Let’s send someone else.”

Niara glanced sideways at her foster sister. She exhaled slowly, sensi smoke curling up into the air between them. The village had more pressing needs than a religious figurehead to bless the hunt and offer up prayers for the dead. Their water supply was dwindling and in the bush, predators far outnumbered the game. The village was on the verge of collapse. At this rate, her people would be lucky to last another year. No amount of belief in the bones was going to save Niara’s people but venturing east might. She didn’t know what answers were waiting out there. Her decision was based more on a gut feeling about Baba Gen’s clue than anything else.

“I’m going, Hati,” she declared at length. “It’s not as if my presence is necessary for the hunt and while I’m gone, someone else can shake the bones and burn the dead for a change.”

The elder sister’s mouth twisted as she gestured for Niara to hand over her pipe and share the sensi.

“You’ve never been much of a believer. I know that much. Never quite took you for a complete heretic though.”

Niara merely grunted and handed over the pipe.

As the fire died down, Niara closed her eyes. She offered up a final prayer for her dead mentor and she and Hati scraped up the hot ashes into a massive clay jar. When their work was done, they placed the cover on the jar and carried it to the burial mound nearby. They buried the jar before returning to the village.

They walked in silence. For Hati, it was a habit brought about by her vocation. Never a fan of useless chatter, Niara was quite comfortable with the silence between them though. Rather than talking, she preferred to think about what she would do next and how she would survive on her own in the bush. She’d joined the group hunt countless times but unlike Hati, Niara had never braved the wilderness alone. Plus, she knew there was more than the lions and the crocodiles to be feared. It was said that in the deeper heart of the bush, everything was trying to kill you, even the flowers. Everything was to be feared.

Still, Niara couldn’t let go of that gnawing feeling, the feeling that somewhere out there was a chance for her people to survive and perhaps even thrive. That feeling, that hope was stronger than her fear. Maybe even stronger than her trust in the sensi, which Niara believed in more than the bones. Baba Gen had clearly thought that chance for survival lay in the eastern village, so to the east Niara would go.

West of the burial grounds, the village seemed dormant. Boabab, the ancient craft that had brought Niara’s people to this world, jutted out center of the village. The top of the partially skeletonized monument pierced the sky, pointing to the place from which Niara’s people had come. The village constructed with parts of the cannibalized ship, splayed out in its shadow, surrounded by a metal enclosure meant to keep out predatory wildlife and human attackers. Haphazard wooden ramparts cradled the village’s creaky gate. Beyond the gate was the wilderness. Beyond the vast wilderness was the gigantic wall separating humans from the territory of the Doan, the original denizens of this world.

Over a hundred years had passed since the early landers brokered a deal with the Doan, ensuring humanity’s continued survival on the alien planet. Humans were welcome on the Doan planet as long as they remained within the confines of the wall. Every human child was taught that this world belonged to the Doan. The Doan didn’t interact with the humans. The ship’s records had been destroyed and Niara didn’t know of a single soul who even remembered what the Doan looked like. Still, no one questioned the Law. Inside this massive enclosure, humans were born, lived out their lives and died, never setting foot beyond the great barrier. It was the best a people without a world of their own could ask for. That was what Niara had been taught.

“When are you leaving?” Hati asked when they reached th entrance to Boabab.

“First light.”

“So soon?”

“The sooner the better,” Niara answered.

With a small wave, she retreated into the bowels of the broken down, vine-covered ship.

 

Chapter One

Woman, you see. The sensi. It’s a funny thing.

Niara inhaled just the right amount of the mystic herb and her brain went straight to mush. It sent her whooshing and spinning down some deep, dark dimensional hole. She saw things. Things that weren’t there. Things that happened. Things that hadn’t happened yet. Things that might have happened centuries before she was born. Hordes of okapi running circles around her. The slow procession of villagers ushering her into the priesthood. The rush of white water carrying her across a wild river. Falling from a place far beyond the sky.

Amid the whirlwind, she remembered. She was a hunter. She was hunting. So, she fought to focus, to tune the madness out. She heard a rumble. Indistinct at first but it grew louder and louder until she was floundering amid the thundering hooves of an okapi herd. Their black bellies glistened and their white-banded thighs blazed in the firelight. Her nostrils flared, filled with their furtive, animal scent. The frantic okapi ran circles around her like mad children on a merry-go-round. The herd shifted. The spectral beasts scattered, scampering one by one, west-south-west and into the dark. Her arm went up, pointed in the direction of the invisible animal trail.

“There,” she heard herself say. “That way.”

But the sensi, you see. It was a funny thing. It wasn’t done with her.

Niara squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, vertigo swooped down. She lost her balance and landed on her ass beside the fire. There was no wind but the edges of her tunic began to flap and flutter. The crocodile-teeth of her bangles clicked and clattered. The fabric of her leggings crawled across her thighs like centipede legs. It felt as if she’d grown eyes all over her skin. She tilted her head sideways but no matter what, the trees wouldn’t go right side up. The curved bowl of the earth undulated. Her belly churned and sensi flavored bile tickled the back of her throat.

Hunters came running. At first, Niara mistook them for her companions. She heard their footsteps drum-drum-drumming in her head. The hunters they came running, pale skins and dark skins covered in the red mud of the wilderness so that they were all one skin. They prostrated themselves before her. First, they offered up a bloody armband, then a freshly de-fleshed finger bone.

“Your mother,” the tallest and oldest hunter said, “was eaten by a lion.”

Before Niara could grieve again, before she could wallow, the memory was swept away. The trees were where the night sky was supposed to be, so she twisted her body to look backwards. The sky was spinning, spinning and she could hear it, the universe singing. It sang the same song as the cicadas and the breath of night. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She began to hum in tune with the strange night song.

Silence fell so abruptly Niara’s breath caught in her throat.

Baba Gen, the village’s elder priestess, appeared before the young priestess, her face lit up like the broken-toothed full moon. She was no longer the wrinkled old woman Niara knew. She was young and she was beautiful. Her dark skin glistened in the moonlight. Her dark eyes shimmered with unshed tears. Adorned like a blushing bride on her honeymoon night, Baba Gen wore a white, gold-lined veil. Niara watched the rising and falling of Baba Gen’s breath, the subtle shuddering of her heart in her chest. Baba Gen nodded solemnly.

Though she looked young, she sounded old when she spoke.

“I am dead, my daughter.”

Lying flat on her back, baking on the flat rock still hot from the afternoon sun, Niara stared up at the trees until her eyes filled up with tears. The tears. They kept coming in a stream, then a deluge, pooling into a river around her. The salty river swallowed her up and she was drowning. Drowning.

“What is it, Niara?”

A guttural male voice yanked the young priestess back to present, to the place and time where the stars looked down from above and the world was right side up. Chest heaving, she sat upright. Across from her, faces lit up by the firelight were the other members of her hunting party. They were waiting, she realized. They were patiently waiting for her to rattle the bag and tell them what the bones had to say.

Baba Gen’s voice bounced around in the young priestess’s head.

I am dead, my daughter.

Niara clutched the cloth bag tied to her waist and dutifully listened to the way the bones shook. Like her fellow hunters’ blind belief, she could still feel her necklace of wood and stone coiling around her neck, constricting like a hungry snake. She drew in a deep, shuddering breath before murmuring softly to the huntsmen and women.

“Kill the hunt. We need to go back to the village.”

“Why?” Hati, her foster sister, leaned forward, long, twisty ponytail swinging dangerously close to the fire.

“It’s Baba Gen,” Niara whispered into the swollen night air. “She’s dead.”