There is a change in the light, but I don’t pay attention. I’m watching the news on mute while watching my phone on headphones. I’m not so much absorbing anything so much as I’m using it to prop up my mind.
Then something shakes the building, and so I jerk my eyes away from the screens. I hurry across our apartment and split the curtains to look below.
Something has landed at the intersection.
“That is a ship,” I mutter, surprised at the deadness in my own voice. “It’s a fucking ship.”
My boyfriend pulls off his headphones with a raised bushy eyebrow. He pauses the game on his phone and swallows a bite of pizza. “You okay? You look absolutely terrified.”
I glance at him. My mouth is open and I’m sure I look stoned out of my mind. I can’t even speak. I turn back to stare at the thing that’s landed on the road below our apartment. I can’t even urge myself to point. To gesture. To get his attention. I feel that I’m frozen in molasses. Everything feels slow and distant.
The ship, for it surely must be a ship, is partially translucent and crystalline. It looks like someone took one of those salt lamps, embiggened it a hundred times, then carved it into the shape of science fiction.
Marcus finally pursues his sluggish curiosity. He joins me at the window and immediately drops his phone. Then his pizza. “What. The. Shit.”
Somehow, his presence frees me of my mental prison. Slowly. I still barely nod. “Right?”
He tips his glasses so that they rest in his curly hair and digs the heels of his palms against his dark brown eyes. “Aidan. What. Do you see down there?”
I let out a bark of a laugh. “Well.” I have to swallow because suddenly my mouth feels like I’ve swallowed a desert. “I guess. It really looks like a space ship?”
“Yeah. Shit. Wow. That’s what I thought, but, hell. I wasn’t. I dunno. I didn’t trust myself.” He leans forward and takes another look. Squints. Blinking, he remembers his glasses and slips them back to his nose. His face does a slow-motion transformation into bewildering excitement. “Fucking awesome!”
My body is gradually dethawing, so I’m still in out-of-body observe-mode as the ship releases a sudden cloud of steam under one of its legs. The craft is resting on three highly-articulated limbs. They look like they could belong to an insect.
Marcus is the opposite; his reactions are going haywire with energy—a touchstone of our relationship. I, the curious one, never feel excited. He, lacking curiosity, really goes berserk when he finds something that catches his interest. Pulling on pants over his lounge-around shorts, he dances on his tiptoes. He pulls on a hoody, and then a coat. He’s slipping into socks by the time my brain finally connects actions to consequences.
“Hey, hey, hey. What are you doing?”
“Well, we gotta get down there! This is historic!”
“But, Marcus. What the hell do you think is going to happen? How do you know this is safe?” I’m feeling more nervous with each passing moment. I have an urge to start barricading our windows with plywood.
He understands my reluctance perfectly, and for that I get the stink-eye. “If you’re not going, then at least record from the window.”
“I’m not staying here alone while you go down there!”
Marcus rolls his eyes at me. “Will you make up your mind? This is either the start or the end of our future.”
I tilt my head at his statement. “Wow, how wise. So, everything we do next matters, or it doesn’t.”
His shoulders droop as he hangs his head. “Aidan.”
I grit my teeth and clench my fists. “Fine. Fine! Let’s go.” I start scrambling to find my shoes. They’re buried under some clothes maybe? We were having a long weekend and in complete lounge mode.
“Dude, dude, dude.” Marcus has his face pressed against the window. “They. Are. Coming. Out!”
My mind does a hiccup. “So, we better get this party started?”
Marcus guffaws. “Just, come on!”
We practically tumble out of the apartment while trying to use the door at the same time. I race down the stairs—still shoeless—on Marcus’ heel. My pulse is hammering. The world has decided to show the duality of time. Everything is sure as hell happening all at once and frozen in the moment. I hear a car alarm go off.
There are others in the street, but most aren’t as willing as us. Well, they aren’t as willing as Marcus. I’m just along for the ride. He leads me, holding my hand, straight to the opening spacecraft.
The opening looks like one of those hologram stickers I used to keep on a binder in school. It’s a hexagonal void that glitters and sparkles without having a surface that my mind accepts. There’s just a void in the side of the ship.
A lot of old space movies show a ramp, and some show an elevator, but this thing creates a whole damned escalator setup. It unfolds from a clump of black at the bottom of the doorway, and then there are moving stairs.
Two figures ride the escalator down to the street. They are not humanoid in any sense I understand. They look more like a combination of a camera tripod and a praying mantis—three buglike legs with probably-heads at the top.
One of them is holding a box.
Marcus stops us at the base of the escalator. He beams up at the creatures. “Hello!” He waves his arms. “Welcome to Earth!”
The two tripods twist as if facing each other. “Grbl”, says one. A subtitle—floating just under the tripod’s head—types out the word, “Shit.”
“Grbl,” says the other. Subtitle included.
The left tripod twists to face us. “Urtio la eggnz?” The subtitle offers, “You said, Earth?”
I know that tone of voice. That look. Aliens be damned, some things are universal. After all, I work for the postal service. “Where were you trying to go?”
The right tripod makes a clacking sound. All three of their legs wobble like wet noodles. “Etyu pourz ntthg ajg uiet.” The subtitle helpfully annotates, “We have a scheduled delivery for a Gregory Nassan on Truken Five.”
“Oh,” mumbles Marcus. He glances at me. “Uh.”
I grin sheepishly. “Sorry, buddy. Not on any of our maps.”
Marcus raises his hand—actually raises it. His eyes are suddenly gleaming. “Ooh, I mean, we’ll sign for it! If that’d help.”
The tripods exchange a glance. They pirouette at each other. “Vfhsdru.” The subtitle taps out, “Sure. Whatever.” Tossing us the box, both turn around without even checking to see if we catch.
Ah geez, I really am supposed to eat before I jump. But I really don’t want anything here.
Honestly, I never did get used to your food. Your too-cold supermarkets and their rows-upon-rows of prepackaged grains. It was like eating dust. Like chewing on stale biscuits that had been flavor-scented.
Like, if it’s got a scent maybe you won’t notice how dry they are?
Yet, you gotta fit in. So I did. I shopped, bought, and ate the same stuff your kind did. To survive.
And that’s all I thought I’d do, survive. That is, until you.
I didn’t expect it. Love. How weird I must’ve been, but you still loved me.
But, standing in front of the frozen meat, trying to decide between boneless chicken and steak, some assholes from my kingdom ruined all that. So here I am. Trying to summarize eons of history, years of hidden parts of me, seconds before I leave.
And I told myself I’d never do any serious relationship on a voicemail. But I know. You’re asleep. Damned nightshift. Gods, I hope the damned signal is strong enough for this to send.
Sorry, I know. I’m rambling. And skirting the point.
I don’t know how to start. How do I tell you that everything about me is a lie? Obviously not the important things, but. Shit. I can’t begin at the beginning. That would take too long. Definitely don’t have time for David Copperfield’s stroll through memories.
Uhm. Well. My kind.
Jeez.
Look, everyone knows about dinosaurs, right? Except, we’re not, exactly? Not the ones your fossil records have. We disappeared, right, but they didn’t, so you have their records. And then we kind of pulled magic out of your realm, so that altered everything here. Just enough to be strange. For me, at least.
And, yeah, I’ve heard the jokes. The conspiracy theories that nobody believes? Lizard people. Ooh, right? Terrifying stuff. Terrifyingly bad, anyway.
Yet. There is some element of truth?
Though, honestly, I thought I was the only one. I didn’t think anyone else would even try to get over here. Until those knuckleheads tackled me in the grocery store. Tore my favorite pair of jeans. You know, the ones you bought? Because they’re a bit snug, you said. Because you like the way they hug my calves.
But, I guess they’d look out of place anyway, over in my realm. We never really got around to the whole pants thing. Which, weird, right? You’d think? Except we evolved differently. I mean, our species were already so different, it’s not really a surprise.
Then we went and split the whole universe. Just, sealed you guys over here without looking back.
It’s a wonder that a lack of pants is one of the biggest differences in how we dress.
We do like a good jacket though.
It’s the cold-blooded thing. I am so glad you like the apartment hot. Oh, but don’t worry, we don’t shut down like our remnants do, in the cold. We evolved specialized heat-distribution organs. Better layers of fat. Everything you’d expect to happen after a few million years.
So, nights when you turned up the air conditioning, I was okay. I mean, after all, I just scooted a little closer to you. You mammals have the hottest bodies. Well, yours especially. Gods, I’m gonna miss you.
Gods. Funny, I’m already reverting. My mind is going a million meters a minute, but here I am going through changes I’ll have to make. To prevent some weird faux paus. Can you imagine. Going back to dino-earth and talking nonsense about dino-christ?
Right. I’m getting off topic again. And, sirens. I think the police are almost here. Not that they could do anything, but when do they let that stop them?
Anyway. So, here’s the deal. I have to go.
I’m from another realm. It’s literally right here, a hair’s width away from your realm. A micron. A proton’s distance from a neutron.
I ran away because they were going to kill me. There’s this whole clan of mages that wanted me dead, and I did sort of kill their sacred eddafae. Uhm, it’s a giant insect thing with potent poisonous secretions that- You know what, doesn’t matter.
I stole their shit, and they tried to kill me. It started a bit of war, and so I escaped to ape-earth. The spell was always theoretical, but also illegal, but I figured that I was already kind of toast as far the law was concerned. Let me tell you, the Eddafanian Society is deep in bed with law enforcement.
Now, I guess they sent people after me. You’ll probably see it on the news, huh? I wouldn’t be surprised. You’re gonna see some crazy video. There are at least six cameras on this aisle. So, they’ll get a good view of the siekel and nafaller that came to pick me up. I’m sure people will freak.
Oh, siekel are like, a moose-sized ape-earth human, except imagine they’re descended from a stegosaurus? And nafaller are tiny pipsqueaks, a meter tall at most, though honestly they can be traced back to the diplodocus so don’t ask me how that worked out. What it really means is that they’re not like me, they can’t pass for human. And they weren’t very good with their totems anyway.
Whatever, it was madness, pure madness. People just cleared out of here. So, I had a little bit of time. Which is why I wanted to record something. Send you something.
Before I leave. I mean.
Shit.
I don’t want to go. I love you, Collin.
It’s so stupid, I mean, not us. But this. This is so stupid.
I have to go though. If I don’t, they’ll send more bounty-hunters over here. I don’t know if they recreated my spell, or if someone else already had it, but now there’s bound to be more. I have to go put up a counter-ward to keep them from breaking through.
I can’t imagine what would happen if one of the arch-wizards comes through. With their blood-purity shit? No way.
Not letting that happen.
But, alright.
I really have to go now.
The portal is collapsing, and the cops are right outside.
I’m serious. I love you Collin.
And uh, I guess, my real name is Eylandris. Landon was close enough, right?
Which burned
worse: Sun or sand. A thousand pinpricks, sunburn and scrapes, or unending
thirst. We had no room in our pain to decide. So, we continued over the
desolate waste.
Something would
appear. A town. A village. A lone hut. We had to believe.
By day, we huddled
together in the cloth-shaded sled. Sleep was less a thing of rest than escape,
and dreams were broken between moments of being fitfully half-awake.
By night, we traded
at leaving footprints in the sand. The heat lingered, but it was cool by
contrast. Sweat still slithered down my skin.
“Water,”
gasped Lilou. She tugged the rope wrapped around my chest. “You,
water.”
Stopping was more
torturous than the heat, but she was right. I had ignored my turn for water,
and she had been too delirious to remind me. It was easier to walk, to lean
forward and ignore pain. Movement, every breath, was driven by my will.
Stopping threatened to break me.
“Nuette,
sit.”
I didn’t sit. I
collapsed into the covered sled. “Lilou, we have to move.”
“We will. I
will.” She handed me our canteen. It was nearly empty, but she struggled
as if it were filled with rock. “You rest. My turn.” Lilou took the
timer from my belt, flipped it over, and hung it from hers. Its black sands
renewed their constant journey. A mirror of ours. Unending and seemingly
without a true destination.
“But-“
“You. Need.
Rest.”
Every word took
effort. Her wheezing breath carried the dry pain. The skin on her knuckles was
cracked as if she’d grown impossibly old. Like mine, her clothes were baked
with sand and painfully stiff. Unlike me, she was smaller overall and had
always been little more than skin and bone. Nevertheless, she crawled onto the
searing sand.
I tried the canteen.
My arms wouldn’t work. Circulation tingled where the rope had pressed.
Weariness dragged at me, but I managed a sip. All that we could spare. Hardly
more than a drop.
It took twice as
long to screw the cap tight. To ensure that it was tight. To protect that last
gulp.
Sleep drugged me
with its release. I dreamt of home. The home I struggled to remember. Across
oceans of distance and time.
Later, a timeless
moment later, we were stopped. The change made me wake. I peered into the
moonless night with groggy worry. “Lilou?”
Outside, her body
was a shadowy lump on the ground.
I braced myself.
As agreed, my first step was to take another sip of water. It felt like every
drop melted into my cracked lips. I took a breath.
I crawled back
onto the burning grit. “Foolish,” I murmured in breathless words.
Speaking hurt my jaw. My throat.
Pulling her back
to the sled was draining. I shook her. “Water.”
Three nudges, two
slaps, and she woke. “Sorry.” Her face was covered in sand where
she’d fallen. Gently as possible, I brushed the grains from her skin. I tipped
the canteen to her mouth. Held my thumb between her lips to make sure water
made the important journey.
“Thanks,”
she mumbled, nearly unintelligible.
“Gonna pull
now,” I whispered. I took the timer and found the end of the rope. Wrapped
it around my waist. Looked ahead. Something glowed in the distance.
A city dimmed by
the days between us and its gates. But it was progress. We were heading toward
something.
For the first
moment in weeks, my thoughts reached beyond survival. We might still find her.
Wixie still had friends so long as we survived. With friends, she had hope too.
A want for speed
tingled in my mind, but I kept a steady pace. Lilou slept, and when the timer
ran out, I let her sleep. I did not collapse into the sled until dawn.
That next night,
we could see a skyline. I memorized the jagged edges of shadows against a
star-pricked canvas of blue-black. For the first time in weeks, the slimshine
rose in the west. Glowing purples and shimmering greens painted our desert in
treacherous beauty.
I watched from the
sled with half-lidded drowsiness. Sleep was harder to find because of a rising
expectation. Those ethereal lights were a sign of good luck. I chose to believe
that meaning.
Our sled jerked to
a stop. Lilou was motionless, arms limp. She was stuck, leaning forward, passed
out but held like a puppet.
I opened the
canteen and jiggled its contents. Enough to make noise, but not enough to feel
the weight.
The city was still
too far.
Purple-tinted
shadows misted and melted under Lilou’s feet. Sand shifted under one of her
feet. Her body tilted. She toppled to one side. Again, a lump on the dunes.
My glimmers of
hope vanished in a breath.
Every limb seemed
drawn to the earth like anchors. I had to roll from the sled, and even then, I
stayed on my back for long enough to forget the passing time. The sky loomed
over me and the swirling color drew me into a trance.
In that state, I
forgot my reservations. I forgot my terror at the powers I’d lost. The ability
I had forsaken. Spirit reached toward me and I remembered its grace.
Lilou’s presence
touched me first. She was a faint outline of power that trembled on the edge of
vision. She was a fading heartbeat of soul.
But the desert was
afire with power. There were lifelines pulsing just below the surface. I
shifted onto the mental plane and sank into the ground.
The pressing dark
was pushed back by creatures too small to see. A million tunnels and miniscule
chambers teemed with wriggling things. They were insects, vermin and
barbed-predators, and there were larger animals with naked skin and blind eyes.
Spirit was in all
things, and so the beasts added to the desert’s hidden light, but that did not
account for the greater sense of power from further below.
Curiosity pulled
me further into the depths of sand. I sank until the sand became stone. I sank
until the stone grew warm.
A great cavern
opened around me, and I floated above a ruined city. Toppled towers were strewn
across the rubble of crumbling homes. A market square was sunken into a pool of
water where a central well once stood.
Water.
I shot toward the
pool without thinking. My thirst ravaged me with an intensity that I had
forgotten. My spirit’s form ignored the water’s touch and I attempted to drink
without feeling cool refreshment.
And then I
remembered my physical body, far above on the desert surface, and suddenly I
was staring at the stars.
I was reaching up,
toward the undulating slimshine, and my wrist glowed from the tattooed band of
the Severed. Sisters of the Cylnai were connected to me, but I had not reached
out to them since leaving the sea.
‘Nuette?’
whispered some half-forgotten voice. It had hardly been a year, but the faces
of that great ship were already nearly-faded.
‘Sotin?’ I had to
strain to hear my old teacher, but I was sure it was her. The Embrahm sounded
distant, and I did not know if that was a product of weakness or separation
from the oceans. ‘I hope you are well.’
‘Nuette, what is
wrong? Why does your soul feel so broken?’
It was foolish,
but her words filled me with a fear beyond a death in the desert. Memories of a
terrifying island and the loss of my parents strangled me with sudden grief. I
snatched my mind away from the connection. I closed myself to the voices of
Severed Sisters.
The twin golden
bands ceased glowing around my wrist, and they were simple black tattoos once
more.
But the connection
had been a reminder of more than the failures in my past. I had remembered what
I could do with enough spirit in my veins. True, those powers were once driven
by the shard of a god, but perhaps I could reach beyond who I had been.
Still lying on my
back, still staring up at the sky, I reached back into the ground’s wealth of
old power. Some civilization had left its ghosts far below, and I knew enough
of the dead to realize that they could be worthy allies.
The hollow of my
right eye gave a twinge of pain. I hadn’t felt anything beneath my eyepatch for
months, and the sudden renewed feeling did nothing to assure me that I was
choosing a path toward safety.
I ignored the pain
and dove into the sands. My spirit form sped through earth until I was back in
the ruined city. Steeling myself against voices of the city’s forgotten, I
pulled at the lingering spirit.
They flooded me
with their eager return to the living.
Dozens of minds
pressed against mine and I fought to keep my own voice. Theirs were mad and
disjointed. They had no knowledge of their age or mine. I experienced the last
flashes of their deaths. I saw great crowds of a purple-skinned people, and
they fought with four arms, two legs, and a powerful tail. The Xanali, that
long-extinct race, convulsed in their empire’s death.
Traps of lava were
released into chambers of councilors. A king, crown askew, tore at his own
tongue. A family, barricaded into their chambers, slashed their own throats
until the mother stood weeping and alone.
I could feel my
body convulsing like the buzz of a tiny insect. The annoying sensation of my
physical form was nothing compared to the madness of those old souls. I did not
think I would have the endurance to outlast their torment, but their spirit
also filled me with power.
Their combined
spirit was nothing compared to the wealth of a god, but the return was still a
too-sweet promise. I’d hardly hoped for such a return, for such freedom as
power could forge. I had thought myself severed from connections beyond myself,
but the dead were bringing my spiritual plane back to life.
My focus steadied
with the touch of those broken ghosts.
And as my focus
steadied, I remembered my purpose. I remembered that pool of water and its
promise of refreshment.
Reaching into my
new well of spirit energy, I pulled at the hidden lake and drew strands of life
back toward the surface.
It was slow going,
and my mind ached with the effort, but I could feel the closing distance. My
gambit was working.
A trickling well
was bubbling toward a lifeless desert.
I did not have the
control, by the end of it, to direct a steady flow of water. Had I been less
dehydrated, less hungry, I might’ve made an oasis of that unknown spot in the
dust. As it was, the most I could do was fill our canteen.
The water was
warm, and it smelled like sulfur, but it quenched my thirst.
I pulled myself to
Lilou’s side and propped her head in my lap. “Lilou, wake up.” My
voice was rough, my throat was still sore, but I felt alive with the great
gulps of water I had taken. It had taken all my will to keep from downing the
canteen into sickness.
Lilou stirred,
moaning with her aches, but she did not wake. I rested, doing little more than
brushing away sand from her fall, until I could finally pull us back to the
sled’s meager shelter. One drop at a time, I helped her drink away her stupor.
We dozed through
the day, but Lilou continued a feverish sleep through the night. She had not
been given the same breath of power as granted to me.
Reaching back
through the earth, I drew what I could from the remaining souls. Some fled from
my presence on that attempt, and I felt a growing unease at my abuse of their
spirits. Death was supposed to send the living toward new chances, but a
terrible end could bind souls to their place of death. I was freeing them from
their chains, but I did not know enough to understand what became of them next.
Was I lessening their torment, or increasing their pain?
Yet I justified my
actions because I was alive and they were dead. I had to save my friend, and to
do so I had to save myself. I took their lingering power and struck at the
creatures beneath the desert surface.
I drew insects and
rodents from the ground and killed them by the dozens. I broke parts from our
wooden sled and tore strips of cloth from my clothes. Fire rushed through the
dry shards, but it was enough to build a bed of meager coals.
Scraps of bugflesh made a glorious feast. I fed carefully-cut strips of desert shrew to Lilou as she shivered in the evening heat. We stayed there, in sight of that unknown city, until Lilou’s fever broke. Then, when she could open her eyes, when she wondered how we were still alive, we continued over the desolate waste.
Scraps of bugflesh made a glorious feast. I fed carefully-cut strips of desert shrew to Lilou as she shivered in the evening heat. We stayed there, in sight of that unknown city, until Lilou’s fever broke. Then, when she could open her eyes, when she wondered how we were still alive, we continued over the desolate waste.
And finally, after weeks of broken skin and parched throats, we stepped into the shadow of towering buildings.
Kuerati. Against all odds, we’d reached a destination that might be worth wandering across sun-baked sand. It was known as the City of Infinite Chances.
I helped Lilou from the sled. She was too light. Still too weak. But we stood together at the gates, and together we walked toward the hope of salvation.