by Tammy Walsh
It was a little musty, so I took it outside and hung it over the doorway of a neighboring hut. I found a solid stick that looked like some sort of sports racket and beat at the blanket. Clouds of dust broke free and made me cough. I didn’t stop until it was clean. Well, as clean as it could be.
I took it inside and placed it on the stone bed. Then I slowly and gently—no jumping this time—lay on it.
Much better!
I got up and stepped on something. I bent down to pick it up.
It was a small child’s toy. A coconut husk—or what passed for coconut husks in this part of the galaxy—had been painted with bright colors. Rain drained much of its vibrancy but I could still make out the front window and wings. A spaceship.
I dusted it off and placed it on a tabletop. Then I picked up some other items dotted in the dirt. Polished stones. They were pretty. And there, a series of silver and gold rings. Two of each. I added them to the tabletop, forming a little heap.
Fragments of a broken life. Whoever these people were, they were self-reliant. They probably hunted in the jungle and farmed some of the better fruits and vegetables too. Not dissimilar from humans long ago.
I glanced at the door. Nighteko had been gone for over an hour. Too long to be out collecting firewood. I stepped from the hut. A stiff breeze whispered over my arms, making the hairs stand on end. I folded them over my chest and rubbed some warmth into them. I was thankful we had a hut to sleep in tonight. It looked like it was going to be chilly.
I saw Nighteko on the other side of the village, crouching at the doorway to a hut similar to the one we would be staying in tonight. He held something in his hands. A stone tablet of some kind. He ran a finger over the inscription.
As I approached, he dropped it and immediately stood up. He didn’t turn to face me.
“Is everything okay?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Everything’s fine. I’ll get the firewood.”
He drifted off again, this time heading for the jungle’s edge. He began collecting scraps of fallen twigs, looking all the world like a lost soul.
I edged to the hut he’d crouched in front of and picked up the stone tablet he’d thumbed. It was etched with some unknown alien language. It took a moment for the translator strip on my neck to turn the language into something I could understand.
It said: HONOR. DUTY. FAMILY. THESE ARE THE TRAITS THAT WE, THE TITANS, HAVE LIVED BY SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME—”
That’s where it snapped off, but it was enough.
Titans? So this was a Titan village.
I gasped and my hand leaped to my mouth.
Mommy… Don’t go…
Father… Don’t leave me…
This wasn’t just any Titan village. It was Nighteko’s home.
He’d learned to fight, he said. And he discovered he possessed his father’s fighting skills. Had he been forced to fight against his will?
He’d been taken. Enslaved.
He wouldn’t trade child slaves because he had been a child slave himself.
He was taken from his parents, from his home.
From here.
I returned to the hut and waited. I would let him have as much time as he needed. It couldn’t have been easy coming face to face with your past.
He returned with an armload of dry wood and dumped them in the middle of the hut. He shifted a stone aside in the floor that twined the one in the roof where the smoke would go. No sooner had he bent down than the fire was lit. It added a great deal of warmth to the hut and made it feel cozy.
I wanted to talk with him about his past, but how did you broach such a subject? He could only talk with me about it once he was ready. Still, maybe he needed a little prod to get him going first.
It was easier to keep the ball rolling once it was already moving.
“This is a Titan village, isn’t it?” I said tentatively.
He paused in stripping the skin off a pair of lizards he’d found somewhere. It surprised me that the sight of dead animals didn’t cause me to doubletake.
“Yes,” he said.
He didn’t look at me and focused on preparing our meals. He fell silent again as he slid the lizards onto a pair of sticks and placed them over the fire.
“This is your home, isn’t it?” I said.
I hated pushing him but I was intrigued. I wanted to know everything I could about him. If he didn’t want to talk about it, then all he had to do was tell me.
He took a seat with his back to the door. “It hasn’t been my home for a long, long time.”
He picked up a stray stick and snapped it into tiny pieces.
And he still wouldn’t look at me.
Maybe he felt like he couldn’t tell me he didn’t want to talk about it. His body language didn’t exactly say he wanted to discuss this subject.
“I’m not going to ask about it anymore,” I said. “But I’m here if you want to talk. I know it can’t be easy. And it’s not my business unless you decide it is.”
He nodded but said nothing. We both watched as the lizards heated up, popping and squealing as the meat cooked. The juices rolled out of it.
“These lizards were always my favorite as a kid,” he said. “My parents knew that, so they refused to let me have it except on special occasions. I never understood that. They always said it’s better to keep something special so that when you had it, it would always feel that way. If you had it every day, you’d get bored of it. I regretted telling them it was my favorite. Maybe then I’d have gotten it more often.”
I smiled, reflecting his own. Then he turned sad.
“And now they’re gone,” he said. “And now that we’ll be eating lizards, I wonder if it’ll taste as good as it used to.”
As if in response, the meat popped and sizzled.
I got up and turned the lizards over. Instead of returning to my seat, I sat beside him and placed my hand on his.
“It was the Changelings that came,” Nighteko said. “Their thirst for power and money is unquenchable. They raided villages like mine and took our people as slaves. We were only miners. And the worst part is, you can’t be a smuggler without working with the Changelings. Over the years, I’ve worked with them, helping them do to other species what they did to mine. I won my freedom in the great fightings pits of Klaxxon but I never stopped being a slave. And I never will. Not until I get enough credits so I can leave that life behind for good.”
He’d been a slave his entire life, I realized. From when they took him, to when he fought in the pits, even after winning his freedom, he had few other options with his background and became a smuggler for slaves himself.
I massaged his arm. The wirelike hairs tickled my palms.
“What happened to your parents?” I said.
“They were taken, sold into slavery like everybody else,” he said. “To be honest, I never really knew what happened to them. It’s been so long. They’ll either be so old now that they could never remember me or they’re already dead. The warriors in my clan were recruited for wars and sent on the most dangerous missions. The chances of my father still being alive are… not good.”
“You never laid them to rest, did you?” I said. “You never let them go?”
He shook his head. “Not while they could still be out there.”
“Will you ever find them?” I said.
“Once you’re sold into slavery, it’s impossible.”
I turned to the table and brought down the items I found earlier. I held them in my hands and offered them to him.
His hands shook. He reached for the little toy and a smile curved his cheek. So happy, and yet, drenched with sorrow. Then he fingered the stones and gold and silver rings. He ran them between his fingers.
“The gold rings were mother’s,” he said. “The silver ones were my father’s.”
“Do you remember when we had the funeral for Maisie?” I said.
“When you put her in a box and sent her inside space?”
“Why?”
“As a way to say goodbye, and return them from where they came from. I was thinking maybe you could do the same thing for your parents. Let them go. Let them move on so you can move on too.”
“I’m not sure I can do that.” Tears shimmered in his eyes. It was the first time he didn’t feel embarrassed to show me his deepest emotions. His tenderness.
His weakness.
I placed a hand to his cheek and looked him in the eye. “You can do anything, Nighteko. You’re so strong. I know it’s difficult to let go. Once you do, most of the sadness eventually leaves. Then you’re left with the happy memories. And you’ve focused on the sadness for much too long.”
The sickness had every bit as much effect on him as his sadness. It poisoned his mind, his memories. Just as the sickness was leaving his body, so I would make this poison affecting his memories disappear too.
His history made my heart ache for him. I leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. Then I kissed him on the cheek. When he turned to me, he must have seen the lust in my eyes. I saw it reflected in his.
When Maisie died, I needed intimacy. I needed to be with someone. And now, I felt certain he needed it to.
He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me full on the lips. It was passionate and I returned it to him tenfold. He lifted me and carried me to the hard stone bed.
He laid me down and unbuttoned my shirt so my breasts hung free. He tasted them, licking, before pushing my pants down and sliding inside me.
I groaned as he filled me. He took his anger, his pain, and his sadness out on me.
And then I demanded more.
Nighteko
The boat ground to a halt and woke me up. Peering up at the sky, I saw the clouds weren’t moving very fast. Not like they usually did when I was in a boat. I peered over the side and noticed we’d come to a stop somewhere beside the jungle.
I peered up into my mother’s face. Her eyes were closed and she looked very pale. I reached up with my hands. I started back, confused.
Her skin was cold. It somehow felt wrong, even then as a young child. “Mom?” I said. “Mom?”
She slumped forward and I had to move quickly to keep her from falling on top of me. Sticking out of her back were two arrows. Her dress was red where they hit her.
“Mom?” I said, gently prodding her. “Get up.”
She didn’t move. Sometimes she was a heavy sleeper, so I shook her harder.
“Mom?” I said. “Get up.”
My tears were so hot they burned the back of my throat. She was never going to wake up. Even at that tender age, I knew that. And still, I refused to believe it. I needed to get help. If I was fast, maybe a doctor could save her.
I ran into the jungle and tripped on a pair of furrows that ran like train tracks along the ground. Ahead, a man crouched at a wheel of his cart. He spun a piece of wood, locking it in place.
“Excuse me!” I said, trotting up to him. “I need your help! My mom…”
He followed me to the boat and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” was all he said, before shoving the boat off the shore and letting the water take her.
“You’re going to come with me now,” the man said. “I don’t have much food so you’re going to have to pull your weight to earn it.”
I did everything he asked, from carrying buckets of water from distant wells to feeding his plants and jungle creatures he caught in traps.
And when we got to the city, he headed straight for the fighting pits and handed me over to them. I remembered he was angry at the price, grumbling about how much food I ate, but he accepted the money, turned, and never said another word to me.
My life only got worse from there.
Alice said I should choose somewhere I had happy memories. I chose a clearing on the outskirts of the Titan village, free of smashed huts and charred bones. The sun crested the jungle, its light glinting off the early morning dew. It was a field I often played when I was young.
I raised my arms and struggled to catch my mother, who waved my favorite toys in front of me before tossing them to my father. He bellowed for me to come get it but before I could reach him, he tossed it back to my mother again. I giggled and screamed with joy…
I felt a little awkward as I bent down and dug at the soil with my hands. It was soft and gave way easily. Alice knelt beside me and handed me each item she’d found one by one. I took a moment to consider them before placing them in the damp soil. My old toy. One of my mother’s gold earrings and one of my father’s silver ones.
Alice handed me the two remaining rings and folded my hand over them. “Keep these for yourself so you always carry them with you.”
I tucked them in my pocket. They felt much heavier than they should have.
I covered the other items with dirt, forming a small bump. Then we stood solemnly for a moment.
Returning home felt strange. I always knew where it was, and though I often passed it, I never sought it out. One day, I always told myself. One day, I’ll visit.
But that day never came.
I guess I wanted to avoid it. The memories of this place still gave me nightmares. Even last night, my dreams were fitful and I found it difficult to sleep.
And when I tossed and turned, she was there to cup my head in her arms and run her fingers soothingly through my hair, easing me back to sleep, back to the depths of the nightmare once again—me as a child and my parents being ripped from my flabby arms.
Then an incredible thing happened. The fever broke and the nightmares faded. Flickering images still kept intruding, but they were easily dismissed as I rolled over and pursued an alternative avenue.
And once, Alice pressed her lips to mine, lulling me from sleep. She had that misty look in her eye and her warm body pressed against mine. I took her again in the middle of the night.
At last, the sickness had broken.
“Now all you need is to break this sadness you feel,” Alice said. “We should perform a funeral ceremony for your parents so you can let them go. But letting go doesn’t mean forgetting.”
My parents’ bodies were lost somewhere out there in the galaxy but this village was always where they’d existed spiritually. With my unconscious link to it, I supposed it was where I belonged too.
I was surprised when a deep rumble vibrated up from my throat. It grew in volume and shook my entire body. It echoed through the jungle which turned silent and solemn as if it were mourning the loss of my parents too. It was a deep and mournful song, not music or lyrics. No words could explain such deep and complex emotions that sounds echoing from a pained soul could.
Once I was done, Alice cradled my arm. “That was beautiful.”
“It’s part of my culture’s ancient death rites,” I said. “I didn’t remember it until now. I remember the whole village gathered around a grave and sang it, helping ease the passing of the departed’s soul from life into death.”
She clutched my arm even tighter. She felt so warm and soft—so fragile, and yet so strong.
Deep inside me, worrying like a worm in rotting flesh, something festered, something as dark and draining as the sickness and sadness had ever been.
A lie I had told her. A lie I still carried in my betrayer’s heart.
We hit the road and traveled toward Klaxxon. Now we didn’t have to slog through dense jungle, we traveled much faster. We carried our belongings in cloth rags torn from my mother’s laundry.
I gathered as many berries, nuts, and consumable plants I could find and divided them between our packs in case we became separated. Then I fashioned a couple of sticks and attached sharp blades dropped in battle by my fellow villagers. They would serve as walking aids and weapons in case someone set upon us.
We joined one of the main roads feeding the city. Traffic grew thicker, and modern vehicles zipped along at neck breaking speeds. Alice eyed eac
h of the alien species with trepidation. I had to remind myself she wasn’t only a stranger to my home planet, but a stranger to the entire galaxy. Her species hadn’t yet wet its toe in intergalactic travel.
She stuck close to me as we weaved between the heaped carts and whirring electronic vehicles. Then, like tiny flying ants, floating ships rose and fell to and from the city. Any of them could head to Rogiz 4 where I could rendezvous with my ship and mutinous crew.
Still, it wouldn’t be a direct journey. Even once I reached the planet, it would take time to locate which village they were pillaging. I would have to live and move among the inhabitants, getting into position for the next time they struck.
It could take months, maybe years, for that to happen.
If ever. The galaxy was filled with mysterious things happening every day. There was no telling if the ship would ever return.
I glanced at Alice out the corner of my eye. In truth, I didn’t like the idea of leaving her behind. The city was safe enough but she was a lone human female. There were far too many smugglers and other dangerous species that might take an interest in her.
We needed a new plan. A way to get my ship back—quickly—so I could return Alice home.
But what?
We entered the city limits. The streets bulged with creatures and sights and smells all too familiar to me.
Even as a child, I hated the city. It was smelly, noisy, and everyone hustled to get their tasks done. No one worked together—not if there was no profit in it.
Alice gaped at each sight, the same way I did as a small child. Trying to take everything in at once.
I took her hand. “Stay close.”
I paused as a pair of Enforcers brought a cart to a stop and began to search it. They were dressed in thick metal armor plate and carried powerful pulse rifles attached to their arms.
I curled my scarf into a hood to hide my features. The last thing I needed right now was to be identified.
“Down here,” I said, tugging on Alice’s arm and taking her down a side street.
I turned one corner after another and didn’t stop until I was certain the smugglers were out of sight. I found myself in a quieter street with carts loaded with books and other manuscripts.