Ancient stories indicated that over six thousand years ago, humanity’s home planet had become nearly uninhabitable due to wars and environmental destruction. The people of Earth had sent a colony ship into space. Thousands had begun the journey, but most of them had died at some point of their mysterious, interstellar odyssey. Only a few hundred colonists had settled on Anyari.
There were no written records from Earth; the colonists had lost such treasures on their tragic journey. They’d landed on Anyari with few supplies, but they’d managed to bring several dozen varieties of seeds.
They’d also brought their memories, though most of those had been lost through the years. However, a few traditions had survived the millennia—like religion and those dragon myths Trett loved so much.
“Hey.”
Ellin flinched and turned. “I didn’t hear you walk up.”
Trett pointed at the table in front of the bench where they’d been sitting. “The sandwiches are ready. Gray, don’t even think about it!”
The caynin, who’d been sneaking toward the plates, turned and ran across the yard, where he settled in the shade of another tree.
Ellin didn’t move toward the food, and neither did Trett. She held out the pear blossom. “I was thinking. Somehow a few hundred colonists survived on Anyari with almost no resources. How do you think they did it?”
“Our history teachers would say they rebuilt civilization through pure determination—and then they did their best to destroy it.”
“True.” Ellin continued to gaze at the blossom. From war to disease to environmental disasters, the Anyarians’ history was one of constant struggle—against themselves and their planet. “Those hard times are mostly over, though,” Ellin said. “So many diseases have been eradicated, and we actually take care of our environment now.” She turned and walked thoughtfully back to the bench, followed by Trett. Picking up her sandwich, which was stuffed with meat grown in a lab, she said, “We don’t even kill animals anymore.”
“All that’s true, but it’s not like humans have turned into a bunch of perfect angels,” Trett said.
“I know. I suppose selfish individuals will always exist, but as a society, we’ve gotten so many things right. Nobody’s hungry. There hasn’t been a big war in decades.”
Trett watched her thoughtfully, ignoring his sandwich. “What are you saying?”
Ellin took a bite and chewed. It was delicious. She swallowed and met Trett’s gaze. “I’m saying this doesn’t feel like a world on the verge of destruction.”
“I agree, but Rona’s never wrong. That’s why you were crying when you got here. I’ll probably do the same once her prophecy really sinks in.” Trett shook his head, letting out a confused laugh. “How are you even eating?”
Ellin responded by taking another bite and chewing slowly. An alternate explanation for the prophecy was brewing in her mind. It was a promising possibility—and a terrible one too.
“Ellin?” Trett leaned over and gently tapped her temple. “What’s going on in there?”
She ate a couple more bites before putting her sandwich down and saying, “You know, there is one reason seers get their prophecies wrong.” Seeing Trett’s furrowed brow, she took a deep breath and pressed forward. “What if Rona’s losing her mind?”
Trett raised an eyebrow. “You think she’s crazy?”
“You know I don’t like that term.” Ellin had given herself the crazy label after losing her parents. It had taken several years and lots of professional help for her to finally disavow the term—for herself or anyone else.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. Do you think Rona might be . . . losing touch with reality?”
“It seems a lot more believable than worldwide destruction.”
Trett nodded slowly.
“You agree?” Ellin asked.
“I agree it’s a possibility. But Rona’s never been wrong. We can’t ignore what she told you.”
“I know. And it’s not that I want Rona to lose her mind, it’s just . . .” She shook her head.
“It’s better than the alternative?”
“Exactly.”
Trett bit his lip, then asked, “How old is she?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Is that too young for a seer to lose her mind?”
Ellin gave him a helpless shrug. “That’s literally the most important question in the world.”
4
THURSDAY, QUARI 4, 6293
-65 DAYS
Ellin bent over the beverage maker, squinting to read the screen. Its voice activation features had fizzled out a couple of years earlier, and for the past few months, the screen had been gradually filling up with blank lines. She tried to punch in her coffee order. A tinny voice chided, “Try again, please.” She got it right the second time.
“Beverage ready,” the machine said less than a minute later. Ellin brought her cup to the kitchen table, took a sip, and savored it. She always drank her coffee with a splash of crem. The thick, white liquid, extruded from the milkplant, was native to Anyari. How had her ancestors on Earth ever tolerated coffee without crem?
Rona entered and sat heavily in a chair opposite Ellin.
“How are you feeling?” Ellin asked.
“Fine.”
Ellin knew better. It took a full day, sometimes longer, for her sister to recover from an intense vision. Rona’s eyes were bloodshot; she was slouching in her seat; and it looked like she could barely keep her head up and eyes open. Chunks of short, dark hair were sticking up all around her head. She’d never admit to being affected by what she’d seen, though.
Ellin stood. “I’ll get you some coffee.”
When they were both settled, Rona said, “I’m not working today. I told them I had a headache.”
“Good idea.” Ellin took a swallow of her coffee and watched her sister, whose sleepy eyes were gazing blankly across the room. Questions multiplied in Ellin’s mind. How are you really feeling this morning? Do you care how this is affecting me? Did you have nightmares too?
Overnight, Ellin had reviewed all the reasons Rona’s prophecy couldn’t be true, and she’d become even more convinced her sister was losing touch with reality.
But everything was different in the light of morning. Sitting across from her prescient sister, Ellin’s midnight certainty fled. Images of colorless skin and bright blood seeped into her consciousness and settled there. What if she’s right?
After several silent minutes, Ellin asked, “Any more visions?”
“Nothing apocalyptic, if that’s what you mean.” Rona didn’t even look at her.
Ellin shook her head and took a gulp of coffee. It was nearly lukewarm. What’s wrong with us? She’s a seer predicting the end of the world; I’m the one who’s supposed to prevent it; and we can’t even have a normal conversation. Every second of silence added oxygen to the embers of Ellin’s frustration.
Finally, she pulled her flex off her arm and firmed it. She held it up so Rona could see the screen. “Look!” she said sharply, finally capturing her sister’s gaze. “See this countdown? Sixty-five days until the end of the world. You said I’m supposed to try to stop it, but you haven’t told me how!”
Rona sat up straight, despite her obvious exhaustion. “Don’t you think I’d tell you if I knew? Don’t you think I’m begging for more details so we can actually do something about it? I stayed up all night, hoping for a vision, but I don’t know any more than I did yesterday.”
Ellin felt tears forming. She blinked them away. “What do you expect me to do, then?”
Rona slumped back in her seat. “I don’t know. Go to school like usual. I’ll just be sleeping today, anyway. Who knows; I might get lucky and wake up with a vision.”
Maybe school was a good idea. If the prophecy was true, Ellin couldn’t do anything until she had more details. If it was false, she couldn’t afford to get behind on her studies.
She grabbed her flexscreen off the table, collapsed it, and laid i
t on her forearm. It wrapped against her skin, the warmth comforting her. After putting on her jacket, she exited the house.
Trett was just walking up. Ellin closed the door behind her and approached him. “You look as tired as I feel,” she said.
He gave her a quick kiss. “Long night?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”
They linked hands and started walking. School was only a few blocks away, and Ellin set a slow pace. As pedestrians, hovs, and solarcars passed them, she updated Trett on the conversation with Rona.
“She wants you to go on with your everyday life, waiting for more information?” Trett asked.
“Yes! This whole thing is just . . . surreal, Trett. When we talked yesterday, she was so insistent that I’m supposed to try to stop this this. But I can’t do anything if I don’t know anything!”
“Will you even be able to focus on schoolwork today?”
A small laugh cut through Ellin’s vexation. “Do I ever have a hard time focusing on schoolwork?”
“Good point.”
They walked a little longer, and Ellin said, “One thing I can do is keep a close eye on Rona, looking for anything that seems . . . off.”
“Not that she’s easy to read.”
“I know.” Aware of the pedestrians around them, Ellin tilted her chin up to speak softly in Trett’s ear. “She’s losing her mind. I know she is. I thought about this all night. How is almost everyone supposed to die on one day? Her vision sounded like some sort of plague, but illness doesn’t ever move that fast. Isn’t it a lot easier to believe that one person is losing touch with reality?”
Trett’s voice was gentle and just as quiet as hers. “If you’re convinced of that, why are you so upset that she hasn’t had any more visions?”
Her stupid, insistent tears returned. “I don’t know.”
They said goodbye outside the school, and Trett walked toward one of the smaller classroom buildings. Ellin entered the main building, and her shoulders immediately released tension she hadn’t known she was carrying. She loved this place; it felt more like home than her house did.
The lobby extended up the entire height of the three-story structure. Sunlight streamed through the high, glass ceiling. The wall to her right was covered in climbing plants, which had just sprouted blue flowers that week. Students sat at tables scattered around the large lobby, while others streamed toward the lifts at the back of the room and the wide staircase in the middle.
Mr. Karel, a tall, bearded math teacher, greeted her with a broad smile. Ellin returned the greeting, her own smile genuine and effortless. She always got along with her teachers, but he was one of her favorites.
She stopped in the bathroom, then continued to her public speaking class. It wouldn’t start for ten minutes, so she greeted the teacher and relaxed in her seat while other students arrived.
When she’d first started school, Ellin had been more than ready. Ever since she could remember, she’d been aware that her big sister was the most important person in their house. Rona went to school at home and made decisions for the whole family. Five-year-old Ellin didn’t know why Rona merited so much attention; she just knew she was sick of it.
School opened Ellin’s eyes to a glorious truth: she, too, was special. She’d taught herself to read when she was four, but she didn’t know that was abnormal until she saw her classmates struggling to sound out words. She soon discovered reading wasn’t the only thing she was good at. Advanced scientific concepts fascinated her, and numbers just made sense. In short, Ellin realized she was smart.
Her parents praised her for excelling, and Ellin soaked up their attention. She tried even harder—reading voraciously, puzzling through math problems for fun, and engaging her teachers in deep conversations that caught them off guard and delighted them. In fact, she usually related better to her instructors than her peers.
After her parents’ deaths, Ellin redoubled her efforts at school. Her home life was topsy-turvy, and school was the one thing that still made sense. She relished the absolute truth of facts and formulas and the measurable success of test scores and course grades. When anxiety threatened to take over completely, learning gave Ellin the gift of distraction. She pushed herself to even greater academic heights.
Now here she was, set to graduate at the top of her class in a few months. She’d accepted a full university scholarship and was thoroughly dedicated to her goal of becoming a technisurgeon.
If Rona’s prophecy isn’t true.
Ellin pushed away the thought and sat up straight as her teacher started the class.
They’d been working on spontaneous speeches all week. The teacher provided a topic, and a student spoke on it for three minutes. Ellin looked around the room. Students tapped their feet, chewed their nails, and wiped sweaty palms on their clothes as they awaited their turns.
Ellin’s foot was tapping too, but her nerves were of the excited variety. When her turn came, the teacher told her to speak on water conservation.
Ellin strode to the front of the class. “Historically,” she began, “society’s water conservation efforts have come in waves.” She waited for the light laughter to die down, then continued.
Her classmates smiled at the right places and nodded in agreement. At the end, the other students applauded politely, and the teacher caught Ellin’s eye and smiled. Ellin smiled back. The end of the world couldn’t have felt farther away.
At lunchtime, Ellin went to the dining hall. She grabbed a nutritional drink and said a quick hello to Trett and a few other friends before heading to the library to drink her lunch and do research for an upcoming history paper.
The library was her favorite room in the school. The lighting was bright but soft; potted plants decorated the walls and floor; and there were plenty of comfortable seats for individuals and groups. A few tall shelves stood in the back, full of valuable paper books printed before everything had gone digital.
Ellin sat at a desk near the bookshelves and took a moment to breathe in the comforting scent of old paper and bindings. She turned on the deskscreen and delved into her research, getting so wrapped up in it that when her flex buzzed to alert her that lunch was over, she didn’t notice it for a solid two minutes.
By the end of the day, much of Ellin’s morning exhaustion had fled, replaced by the comfortable thrill of expending energy on things she excelled at. As she left her last class, she saw Trett approaching.
He took her hand. “Ready to go?”
She considered the question. At home, she’d just encounter her sister again. Surely if Rona had any further details on the supposed prophecy, she’d em Ellin. Until then, discussions like the one they’d had that morning were pointless.
Spending the evening with Trett was a much more attractive option, but Ellin’s history research was calling to her. She’d been halfway through a fascinating article when lunch ended. While she could continue her reading at Trett’s house, the library was more comfortable and promised fewer distractions.
She gave Trett an apologetic smile. “Would you be too bummed if I stayed here to study for a while?”
“That’s fine.” His expression was pleasant, but his lips twitched a little. She knew he was disappointed, though he’d never say it.
Ellin bit her lip, but the ache of guilt in her gut didn’t change the facts: the world outside the school doors had given her little but shock, anxiety, and sleeplessness since the day before. She wasn’t ready to go back to that.
She squeezed Trett’s hand, then let go of it and hurried to the library.
5
SATURDAY, QUARI 6, 6293
-63 DAYS
Rona stood in her tiny shower, glaring at the overhead water sprayers. Half of them had been broken for months. She had to perform awkward contortions to rinse off the left side of her body.
That wasn’t the primary source of her frustration, though. She bowed her head and stepped forward, placing her palms on the side shower wall an
d letting hot water spray the back of her head. It ran down her cheeks and forehead, some of it reaching her closed eyes, her nose, and her lips.
“Give me something, please,” she whispered.
It had been three days since the prophecy. She’d tried to resume working yesterday but ended up calling in sick again. Her severe fatigue made it impossible to focus on numbers. Now it was Saturday, and she had the whole weekend to obsess over the end of the world.
“You say my sister should try to stop this, and I should help her. I need details.”
The prayer didn’t seem to do any good. Rona smacked the shower control panel harder than was necessary, and the water stopped flowing. The body dryer turned on, and she held her arms up and rotated in a slow circle. Turning shouldn’t have been necessary, but some of the dryer nozzles were broken too.
Rona was still damp when the warm air stopped, but she didn’t bother to turn on the dryer again. She stepped out and turned away from the dirty mirror. She didn’t need to look at herself to know she had bloodshot eyes, lips pressed into a narrow line, and shoulders slumped in weariness.
When she reached her bed, she lay down with a heavy sigh. When you’re too tired to get dressed, you know it’s bad.
Turning onto her side, she spied her flex on the nightstand. Kizha. Rona needed to talk to her. She’d understand.
Except Kizha didn’t know about this vision, and she couldn’t.
I could talk to Ellin.
Rona almost laughed at the thought. What would Ellin think, after years of distance, if her big sister suddenly bared her tortured soul? Ellin seemed to doubt whether Rona had feelings at all. It was a little late to prove her wrong.
What had Ellin been up to the last couple of nights, anyway? She hadn’t gotten home on Thursday or Friday until Rona was already in her room, hours after dinner. Probably with Trett. Or maybe volunteering. Ellin was taking an Introduction to Medicine elective, and sometimes she went to a nearby senior recreation center to help in their clinic. Trett often went with her to spend time with the seniors.
The Seer’s Sister: Prequel to The Magic Eaters Trilogy Page 3