Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Wattoha considered Kallie, and then turned to the queen. Kallie felt a probing from Wattoha. She was trying to ascertain the truth of Kallie’s claims, but as she’d suspected the Ohokwa queen was too weak to have any real understanding of Goheshdekana’s intent.

  With the room’s attention held, Paheka stood upright and pointed to Nilawi and the warriors holding her. Kallie felt Paheka’s fury wash over her. The cavern wailed with the rattle of dejda. A swarm of them overtook the two warriors. They released Nilawi in a vain attempt at self-defense.

  Nilawi launched herself at the mug and downed as much of the liquid as she could manage.

  The call of the dejda was like an explosion in Kallie’s mind. She fell to the ground, unable to mount even the feeblest of counters.

  Nilawi screamed. Kallie could only assume the same thing was happening to her.

  All around the cavern, beetles flew. Landed. Stung. The Ohokwa cried with surprise and pain and anger. The women fled, though most of them did so with a dozen dejda crawling over their bodies. The warriors attempted to counterattack, but most dropped to the ground moments later, writhing in pain.

  Paheka reared back and clapped, laughing shrilly as Wattoha and Iye crumpled to the ground. She pointed and smiled insanely at the carnage before her. The dejda swarmed everywhere, obscuring Kallie’s vision, but they were clearly leaving Paheka, Nilawi, and Kallie alone.

  An axe slipped free from a fallen warrior’s grasp and clattered to the ground near Kallie’s feet. She took it up immediately and charged. Paheka’s eyes widened and she laughed even more while pointing a crooked finger in Kallie’s direction.

  Kallie came down as hard as she could on the top of the queen’s head.

  A sickening crunch rose above the buzzing call of the beetles.

  Paheka collapsed, lifeless. The beetles fell to the ground, still moving, but most had ceased their high-pitched rattle.

  Kallie breathed heavily, ready to strike again, but the queen lay utterly still. Nilawi stared up at Kallie with wide eyes, crazed eyes, but then something behind Kallie captured Nilawi’s attention.

  Kallie spun around.

  The undulating form of the hatchling queen’s cocoon shivered. Glistening mandibles ripped at the casing, and it was then that Kallie realized her connection to the queen hadn’t been severed. It persisted. She stood confused for long moments, but understanding came as the new queen crawled from its birthing chamber and flexed her huge wing cases.

  Kallie had never been connected to Goheshdekana—at least, it hadn’t been completely so. It had been the growing mind of the new queen that had connected with her in the desert, that Kallie had nurtured with the thoughts and emotions of a settler.

  She took a step forward, brandishing the axe, but the young queen clicked her mandibles, and many of the warrior dejda whirred around Kallie. Kallie considered charging forward anyway, but at the mere thought, a half-dozen of them landed on her hair and chest and stomach. She dropped the axe and tried to shake them away, ineffectually. Only when she’d retreated to Nilawi’s side did they free themselves from her and return to their queen’s side.

  Even as the cries of dying Ohokwa echoed through the passageways behind them, the young queen stared on, jubilant.

  The queen didn’t have to use words for Kallie to know that she and Nilawi were being allowed to leave. Nilawi seemed not to care, however. She was on her knees, crying, caressing her mother’s cheek. Kallie tugged at her, gently at first, but then with force, until finally Nilawi stood and followed her out of the cavern.

  The last Kallie saw of the young queen was her moving to the dead queen’s body and biting into the gooey flesh of her engorged abdomen. Her brood quickly followed suit.

  The flatbed wagon rocked and jingled as it trekked eastward and the morning heat intensified. Kallie rode in the rear, watching the second wagon and the horses that followed.

  She coughed, once, knowing that her consumption had been cured—some small gift in payment for leading the queen to the plane of consciousness. She felt no relief, however, for the mind of the queen was still with her, crowding the back of her mind. She wanted to scrape it clean, to start over, but she knew the feeling would be with her until either she or the dejda queen was dead.

  Kallie regarded Nilawi, who met her gaze with a strange mixture of fear and defiance and apology. Kallie could feel Nilawi—their common link to the queen granted each a faint but clear empathy of the other. Kallie tried to smile, but was sure she’d failed miserably. Nilawi’s face hardened as she turned to study the cloud of beetles swarming above the gorge.

  Six Ohokwa children rode with them, all of them dazed, many staring with anxious eyes toward the gorge.

  God in Heaven, Kallie thought as she looked over the children, two wagons and four horses—nineteen Ohokwa tribesmen, all told. Nineteen from a village of, what, four hundred?

  The dejda could have killed them all, including Kallie. The young queen had granted some small amount of mercy. Either that or she wished word of her transcendence to travel as the Ohokwa survivors flew east to Shaukauna lands, unwilling heralds to the new power rising in the desert.

  It was clear the future of tribesmen and settlers alike had been forever changed, but Kallie tried to console herself—perhaps the dejda would be satisfied with owning the gorge, or perhaps just the desert.

  Kallie hugged her stomach tighter as memories flooded her mind. Please, God, let her be satisfied with the gorge.

  The fourth time I woke, I found myself.

  Mine eyes have opened, my children, and never shall they close again.

  Foretold

  Behind him, over the hiss of releasing steam, Maks heard the faint sound of snowshoes trudging through the drifts on the hill.

  The night was growing long. Clearly impatience had won out over Maks’s pleas to be left in peace, and now the kapitan was approaching to learn the results of the augury.

  It had been twelve days since they’d left Syktyvkar, and they had days lying ahead before they would reach the edge of the striking grounds. This was the first augury of the season and by far the most important to the Braga and her crew, so of course the kapitan would be anxious to hear the findings—pleas for solitude or not.

  Maks was sitting on a wide woolen blanket with his apprentice, Yevgeniy, close at hand. He had time before the kapitan crested the hill, so he quickly sighted through the telescope of his sextant, fixing it upon Uranus above the peaks of the Urals to the east. After completing his measurement, he passed the sextant to Yevgeniy and by the light of his whale oil lantern wrote down 13º 22’ in his journal. At the top of the page was the date—the 14th of December, 1889—followed by the measurements of the other bodies to which he had visibility: the moon, due south, waxing gibbous; Mars, seventeen degrees above the southeastern horizon; Saturn at thirty-eight.

  He turned to a leatherbound case sitting at the exact center of the blanket. After closing his eyes, he set back the lid to expose the brass face of his orrery. With practiced hands he adjusted the nine ivory dials along the top to account for the position of each of the primary heavenly bodies. Then he turned his attention to the six dials made of ebony. These were not turned based on precise locations, but on the small indications of fate that lay all around him—things unexpected, things lost, moods altered. It was an art, what he was about to do, and it was something he had, for whatever reason, been unable to pass down to Yevgeniy. It was also the very thing with which he’d had the most trouble since taking Yevgeniy on as his apprentice.

  But he couldn’t think about that now.

  He cleared his mind and adjusted the dials to account for the state of their journey, the number of men aboard, the pace at which the Braga had traveled that day. He took dozens of things into account, touching the dials just so, until at last he was satisfied. And then he turned his attention to the door at the lower-right corner. He lifted it to reveal the three Daimones—the minor deities that ruled the fate of this expedition
.

  A smile came over him.

  Epiphron, Plutus, and Bia...

  Epiphron meant prudence, and the kapitan and his handpicked crew were nothing if not prudent. The presence of Plutus—or wealth—clearly meant that they would have a good season. He couldn’t quite reconcile Bia, which meant force. He would have to think on that more, but he did know one thing: the kapitan could be nothing but pleased.

  Maks’s joy frayed just a little when he realized that Yevgeniy was still taking his first measurement. He shook his head, telling himself that at least his augury was complete, and there was nothing Yevgeniy could do to change it. His impatience heightened, however, when he noted that Yevgeniy was training the sextant too far to the north of Uranus.

  “Enough,” he said, “give me the sextant.”

  “Master, there is a comet.”

  Maks’s face burned at these words. The sound of footfalls in the snow behind him grew suddenly louder, though he knew the phenomenon was due more to his own embarrassment than anything else. He turned and found Kapitan Shimon, a bear of a man bundled as heavily as one, hiking through the snow toward them. His wide, scruffy face was lit in amber momentarily as he puffed on his cigar. Farther down the slope, the pale yellow lanterns of the walker shined as the crew shoveled snow into the sluice for the walker’s reservoir.

  “How soon?” the kapitan called.

  “Soon.” Maks grabbed the sextant from Yevgeniy and scanned the eastern sky north of Uranus to find the dim tail of Menippe, a comet he hadn’t seen in nearly eight years. How could he have forgotten about its arrival, this night of all nights?

  “Is there a problem?” the kapitan asked.

  “None at all,” Maks lied. “Now leave me to my work, or we’ll never be done.”

  He could hear the kapitan’s heavy breathing, but Shimon had never been one for the cold, and in moments his heavy footsteps could be heard trudging back toward the walker.

  Stomach clenching, Maks turned to the orrery. He closed the door showing the Daimones and then carefully readjusted the six ebony dials to account not only for the presence of the comet but this sharp change in mood. Then he held out his shaking hand, ready to hinge the door open. Even with all of his years in augury, it was rare for him to be so certain of the outcome, but this night he was.

  He lifted the door.

  And stared.

  “You’re shaking, Master.”

  Nemesis, Dysnomia, and Moros.

  Indignation, lawlessness, and doom.

  Maks snapped the door shut and immediately secured the orrery’s leather case. It was the height of rudeness to refuse one’s apprentice a chance to view the results of an augury, but this was not something he could share with Yevgeniy.

  The confusion in Yevgeniy’s bright blue eyes was followed by cold understanding. He couldn’t possibly know what the orrery had revealed, but just then the possibility seemed so real that Maks stood and pushed him away.

  Yevgeniy stumbled back and fell into the deeper snow. “Master?”

  “Return to the walker,” Maks said, trying and failing to hide the shiver that ran down his frame.

  “Can I help with the—”

  “Go!”

  Yevgeniy bowed and complied. As the plodding sound of his snowshoes faded into the night, Maks turned and considered the silhouetted peaks of the Urals and the heavens beyond. He understood this reading like none other in his life. There would be tragedy on this journey, and betrayal, and the source could be none other than his young apprentice. He was tempted—as he had been many times on receipt of ill tidings—to urge the kapitan to head for the southern range instead of the northern, to return to Syktyvkar and seek guidance from the oracle, or even to simply wait a few weeks before continuing on, but he knew that such a thing was foolish. As far as the gods were concerned, this bit of history he and the crew were about to experience was already written, and running from it would only serve to anger them.

  Five days later the Braga stood upon a narrow ridge dividing two slender valleys from one another. The sky was dark, but the eastern horizon was beginning to brighten. Kapitan Shimon, a telescope pressed against his eye, was standing on deck directly over the ore chute hatch, while Maks sat at the base of the aft watchtower to the rear of the main deck, reading his journal by the light of a small lantern. Yevgeniy sat nearby with a lantern of his own, scribbling in his journal.

  Ever since the augury, a sinking feeling had settled into the pit of Maks’s stomach when he considered the role Yevgeniy would play in their coming misfortune. The meteorite strike Maks had predicted was late, and the feeling was stronger than ever, but Maks ignored it as best he could and used his sextant to sight Uranus to the west. There was always the chance he had missed a number here or there, but the three falling stars they’d spotted on their way here had confirmed his initial prediction. So what had gone wrong?

  The entire crew had waited up through the night. They were hoping that with a large strike—and a heavy amount of ore—they could disprove Maks’s initial reading. But this was not to be. By the time the sun was fully up, the heavens had remained closed and Shimon was furious.

  “You said before dawn.”

  “Kapitan, you know these things—”

  “Are never accurate, but I expect some accuracy, Maksim.” Maks knew that this was as much a show for the crew as it was for him. “What of Yevgeniy?” Shimon continued. “What does he have to say?”

  Yevgeniy, the wind tugging at his short blond hair, sat silently on the deck with his nose in his journal. He was either ignoring Shimon in deference to Maks or so absorbed in his scribblings that he truly didn’t comprehend what was happening around him. Maks was surprised to realize he didn’t know which it was.

  Refusing to let Shimon bully him, Maks stood and faced Shimon squarely. “Yevgeniy is an apprentice.”

  “And has been for nearly three years. You hold him back, Maks. Let him stand and say what he thinks.”

  Maks placed himself between Shimon and Yevgeniy. “He will do no such thing. He has not been properly trained.”

  The kapitan scoffed. “He is gifted, Maksim. When are you going to realize it?”

  “Gifted or not, I will be the one to decide when his time has come, not you, and not our circumstances.”

  “Circumstances you should have foreseen.”

  “I did!”

  Shimon’s eyes narrowed and he pulled his bearskin cloak around his frame. “So you did.”

  Maks felt himself tighten. Shimon was implying that the augury had been Maks’s fault. Shimon was smart enough to know that such a thing wasn’t true, but the crew would believe his words. It was a blatant attempt at applying pressure, but Maks would have none of it. He was about to order Yevgeniy belowdecks when Leonid cried above him, “Strike!”

  All eyes turned upward. Streaking through the pale sky was a trail of white. It flew overhead, less than a mile above them, and bit into the far side of the valley. Moments later, a boom shook the forest around them. Maks felt it not only on his scalp and on the hairs along the back of his neck, he felt it in his bones.

  The crew raised their arms to the sky, shouting their elation. But the kapitan did not. He stared at Maks, and Yevgeniy behind him. “We have work to do, and I’m thankful for that”—he nodded in Yevgeniy’s direction—“but from now on I’ll hear what your apprentice has to say.”

  Maks stood, his face burning, knowing it would be foolish to question the kapitan openly. He would wait instead and approach him when he was alone. Shimon was always more reasonable when alone.

  As the kapitan began bellowing orders, Maks turned to Yevgeniy. His apprentice did not look cowed, as Maks thought he might, or embarrassed. Instead there was a measure of sadness in his eyes—sadness, as if Maks were the one deserving pity.

  Maks snatched the journal and threw it to the deck at Yevgeniy’s feet. “Prepare yourself.”

  Upon a rise above the strike site, Maks hunkered within the closeness of a
dense thicket. He used his telescope to study the valley wall opposite him for any signs of pirates. Old mining trails could easily be seen, but it was not these that Max watched most closely. He looked for any sign of new trails, especially those that might lead to a copse of larch or pine that might be large enough to hide a walker.

  From the base of the valley, sounds from the Braga’s rock mill cracked and whined as the men continued to break down the meteorite. At times like this Maks was struck by how much of the world now revolved around meteorites that struck in only a bare handful of places around the world. The coarse powder now filling their holds would be refined in Saint Petersburg and sold to the Brits for their war over opium with China, or to the French for their never-ending war with Teotihuacan, or even to the Boers and their Dutch allies as they struggled to wrest South Africa back from the Zulu. The empire didn’t much care where the ore went as long as it expanded their coffers.

  A lucrative trade such as mining, however, always attracted scavengers. Pirates, with no equipment of their own, would wait for a walker to finish a mining run and then strike, taking what ore they could to sell in the black markets of Syktyvkar or Arkhangelsk or Chelyabinsk. It was rare for pirates to attack so early in the season, but some would risk it for that very reason—caution would be at its lowest, leaving some walkers easy prey. Shimon, however, always stationed four lookouts—expensive but necessary in his eyes, not just for the preservation of the haul, but for morale.

  Maks was too old for the laborious work going on down below—he could not fell trees for the furnaces or haul water for the boiler, nor could he handle the mill, so he was left to this, sitting and watching as the crew did their work. Which was fine with him. He had always loved the chill air of the northern climes, the silence when the walker was still, the balance he felt being so close to the heavens. He found it difficult, however, to attain any sense of balance after the exchange he’d had with Shimon. It was something he’d been thinking much about of late: the suitability, or lack thereof, of Yevgeniy. The young man had never been one to use the sextant or armillary with any great attention to detail, and too often he was unable to concentrate on the demanding requirements of the orrery. He was always sneaking time to write in his journal, to whisper to himself, to watch the nighttime sky as if it were the first time he had ever seen it. Despite Maks’s orders forbidding the practice, he sometimes spoke of the future as if he understood it. No doubt the crew had overheard some of his ramblings, and maybe one or two of these prophecies had come true. It was easy for simple men like Shimon and the crew to become absorbed in such things, and perhaps this was the root of the warning couched within the augury—lawlessness in the eyes of the gods for disobeying their strictures, indignation over Maks’s inability to reign Yevgeniy in. Doom in judgment.