Cold Falling White

by G. S. Prendergast

  Eighth, Sixth signs sharply. Follow!

  It’s raining and cold and approaching dark, and yet somehow I feel the warm sun on me and the tingle of my armor converting sunlight into energy. That can’t be right. I’m malfunctioning again. I put my feet into Sixth’s footprints, happy that Dandelion gets farther away from us with each step. Sixth would kill her, tear her limb from limb, if she knew, and care nothing for rules and directives.

  “What’s wrong with him? Should you take his armor off?”

  No, Dandelion. Stop speaking. Be quiet. Hide.

  “But I want to help him. I should be with him when he wakes up.”

  Is this a dream?

  Where are we going, Sixth?

  She turns and shoves me so hard, I stumble over a tree stump.

  You don’t need answers! Follow!

  I could try to kill her, but if I failed, she would search and find Dandelion and rip her to pieces.

  “What’s happening? Why is he shaking? You’re hurting him!”

  Her voice is getting farther away. I would touch her if I could. If she’s talking, she’s alive. She would be warm again. I think we’ve split into two worlds somehow. Or two times. Time is getting mixed up in my head.

  Sixth draws me on, my fingers curled around her shoulder. But I can’t feel anything. It’s as though we’re ghosts.

  Where are we going, Sixth?

  She turns back this time, slowly, fluidly. The soft twilight behind her like a halo soothes my troubled mind and seems to draw the gaping hole in time closed. I reach through it, not knowing which side is right. I can see Sixth’s silhouette outlined by the gray light as she answers.

  We’re going home, Eighth, she says. We’re going home.

  * * *

  My lungs fill so quickly, it’s like my spine is snapping and twisting me in half. The darkness is sucked away, bright light blinding me, and I’m wide-awake, staring up from where I lie on the floor.

  One of us is there, just a dark break in the light at first, but gradually he comes into focus as he helps me sit up.

  What is your rank? Part of his mask is missing, and his armor is covered in swirling designs, like eddies in rivers. He takes my wrists, moving my hands together in my lap.

  Rank? he repeats.

  Somehow I manage to move one finger enough to touch my other hand.

  Eighth is the sign, but when my mind speaks it, I hear August.

  August. What the girl called me.

  She swims in my thoughts in silver and gold, her hair like a crown made from clouds. I must be dreaming again.

  Breathe. Obey.

  The breath I take is like swallowing ice. I take another and another, and slowly I stop fighting. My mind searches for directives to follow, but there is nothing there but…

  The girl, protect the girl. Dandelion.

  Human girl? The signs are weak and sloppy, one-handed and vague.

  The human girl is safe, the other one says. I am Ash.

  Ashes? Are we dead? Why is his mask broken? Where am I? Where is my armor?

  Rank? I try.

  He sighs, and I see the eye visible through his broken mask crinkle into a smile. Eleventh, he signs. But call me Ash.

  My hips hurt. My back hurts. It takes all my concentration to roll over and lift myself to my knees to sit back on my heels.

  You need to eat, Eighth, Ash says.

  It seems I blink and the next thing that happens is that I’m cramming meat into my mouth and cracking open a large bone to slurp away the raw marrow and blood. My vision seems to expand as I eat. I’m in a stone cave or… no, a small stone hut, by a cold fireplace with a slaughtered sheep flayed open in front of me. My hands and arms are bloodied up to the elbows. A low growl forms in the back of my throat. I can’t seem to help it.

  There is another one of us here now. A female, not in her armor, her skin so white she glows. She stands over me.

  Summer King, she says. I don’t know what that means so I just nod.

  I am Sky.

  I nod again. I know where I am now. These are the Rogues, the defective Elevenths and Twelfths Sixth told me to avoid. I look around for her by habit, the fingers on my left hand twitching.

  But Sixth is dead.

  I’m sure of that now.

  Sky? I try. My hands are clumsy and sticky with blood and wool.

  Yes. She drops to one knee, placing a hand on my shoulder. You are with the Rogues now. Will you stay with us?

  Where is Dandelion?

  Sky looks confused. I don’t know who Dandelion is. Your Offside? One of us?

  I close my eyes, trying to think. It seems half my words are gone, and I have to search for her name. It comes to me at last.

  Raven. The human girl.

  Sky appears to think about it for a moment before answering. She is with the other humans.

  I don’t know what happens. I seem to drop out of time. The black gate opens and sucks me through.

  Put your armor back on, Sixth says. We are by the side of a burbling creek.

  No, I say. I don’t know where it is.

  She grabs me by the neck and flings me into the creek before I can fight back. The water is icy, cold as death.

  You don’t say no to me, stupid mud for brains! Your armor is right there!

  But my vision goes dark and I can’t see. All I can feel is the frigid stream flowing over me. Then a warm hand on my cheek. I open my eyes. The real world stacks up like the stone walls around me—the dead sheep, the fireplace, Sky.

  Summer King? Sky says. Why are you shivering?

  I flick my head away from her. I don’t know.

  Sky watches me, not moving, as though she is waiting for me to say something more.

  I didn’t mean to hurt her, I say at last, because I can’t help it.

  Was it you, then? she asks. You darted these humans? The two girls and the boy?

  I didn’t mean to. I was lost.

  Sky’s face tightens. Where is your Offside?

  Behind my closed eyes Sixth glares at me accusingly. I open them, fixing my gaze on the stone floor.

  Dead, I say.

  Sky huffs disapprovingly. It is a terrible failure to let your Offside die. I know this.

  The humans are better now, stronger. You didn’t harm them.

  It takes me a long time to find the words to say next.

  But they didn’t choose it, I say. They had no choice.

  No, Sky agrees with me. None of us had any choice. She touches my face. Rest now, Summer King. You are safe. You are with friends.

  RAVEN

  The leader of the Rogue Nahx, Sky, finds me on the steps of the large climber’s hut she and her followers have colonized up here in the clouds. Xander and Topher are inside, warmed by a blazing fire in the potbellied stove. Tucker and Mandy have been updating them on what happened to us and what we’ve learned, but I’ve been frozen in time and space, awaiting news of August, who Sky and some others spirited away soon after we arrived. Sky stopped me from following.

  He needs to rest, she signed sternly as they disappeared into the trees, dragging August up a steep path. That was hours ago. I’ve barely moved from this spot, despite occasional exhortations from Mandy and Blue. Now as Sky strides toward me, her long legs swishing away the powdery new snow, my chest tightens and all my muscles tense, as though I might need to flee. If the news is bad…

  I stand as Sky reaches the bottom of the steps. She doesn’t bother with polite greetings.

  He is strong, she signs. His heart is strong.

  “Is he awake? Should I come see him?”

  Sky sniffs and flicks her head back a few times. She towers over me and glistens in the sunlight like an ice sculpture. She’s not wearing her armor, and with her bald, nearly white head and sparkling silver eyes, she looks the least human of all the Rogue Nahx I’ve met so far, but her manner is measured and patient, almost motherly.

  He’s eating, she signs calmly, and I think she’s about to l
eave me, but instead she puts one hand on my shoulder, signing with the other.

  Summer King is strong, she says. Repeat strong.

  Summer King is the way she signs his name. In the minutes after we arrived I told her it was August and showed her the way he signed it, but it seems his sign was simply Eighth, his rank, and these Rogues disapprove of ranks. When we briefly explained what August means, Sky came up with Summer King. It suits August so well, I’m annoyed I didn’t think of it.

  Give Summer King time, Raven. His mind is in pieces.

  “Why? What happened to him?”

  Sky smiles at me. Most of her teeth are silver, some as though they were broken in a fight and grew back the missing pieces. It’s surprisingly beautiful.

  Don’t worry, Raven, she signs, studying me for a moment. We have other things to discuss. The humans cannot stay here.

  “I know.”

  You Snowflakes cannot stay here either.

  I edge backward, letting her hand fall from my shoulder. “Are you going to send us away?”

  She continues to watch me, her silver eyes thoughtful. You’re very strong too, she says after a moment.

  “Yes. Made that way. I wish I knew why.”

  A fight, she says. Repeat fight.

  “A battle? I figured that. With who?”

  I don’t know. But I know where.

  “Northeast of here, right?”

  North. East. South. West. Across the water. Across the mountains. Many battles.

  “Are you going to fight in these battles?”

  Her face hardens and becomes grim. No. The Rogues have chosen not to fight. She says it like it should be printed on T-shirts.

  “Could I do that? Just choose not to fight?”

  Sky tilts her head to the side, a little smile curling her lips up at the corners.

  We will speak in the future, she says, and abruptly turns and strides away. Before she disappears into the trees she is joined by her two companions—“Offside” seems to be the word they use—a male named Ash, whose broken helmet reveals burnt, mottled skin on one side of his face, and Thorn, a female who is missing one hand and has replaced it with a tangle of barbed wire.

  Ash and Thorn are what made me realize these Rogue Nahx name themselves, based on aspects of their lives or things they love. They choose mostly nature names, and of course only use the sign versions with each other.

  They have built a community, led by Sky and her Offsides, an enclave of rebels and deserters here in the remote mountains. If the Nahx who brought us here are anything to go by, this is not a secret community. Perhaps it’s more a tolerated one. There only seem to be a few hundred here, and what is a few hundred compared to the thousands, the millions that obediently took our world? Who would even notice if we joined them?

  When I can no longer hear Sky and her Offsides in the trees I turn and climb the stairs into the cabin.

  Sky’s cabin is a mountain climber’s refuge, with a large central hall flanked by two rooms, all three spaces heated by large woodstoves. Topher, Xander, Mandy, and Tucker sit on the floor in front of one, the files I took from the base spread around them. Xander looks up as I close the door behind me.

  “Is August okay?”

  “He’s alive.” I shrug. “Sky seems to think he’ll recover, but… I don’t think he’s ready to face…” I wave my hand around. “All this. All of us.”

  Tucker huffs, pointedly ignoring me, but I forge ahead.

  “Sky says you can’t stay here.”

  “Who can’t?” Mandy asks. I notice Blue hovering above her, near the beamed ceiling.

  “Topher and Xander, I guess. But us too.” I don’t like putting us into different categories; I especially don’t like putting Topher and Tucker into different categories, but those are the facts.

  Xander scoots aside as I join their circle.

  “Before we go anywhere, we need to figure out how to get back through the web,” he says.

  “Couldn’t Aurora take you back the way you came?” I ask.

  “Oh, so you’re ready to talk about this now? Now that your boyfriend is breathing again?”

  “Don’t be a dick, Tucker,” Mandy says.

  “I’m Topher.”

  She looks up, frowning.

  “How about none of us be dicks?” Xander says cheerfully. Both Tucker and Topher scowl at me but keep their pretty mouths shut.

  I look down at the papers and maps laid out on the floor. One of them is a plain sheet on which someone—Xander, I assume—has doodled a rough map of the world.

  “What’s this?” I note an X marking the map on the spot where Mandy, Tucker, and I were revived on the dunes.

  “I was telling Xander about the globe on the ship,” Mandy says.

  “And?”

  Xander brightens. “I noticed something weird.” He sketches on the map, adding a penciled outline the length of the Rocky Mountains as he talks. “So this is the border web, roughly. Apparently there are webs like it elsewhere in the world. Mandy says Nahx occupation areas were marked too, along with bright lights—maybe those were the giant ships like the one you were in.”

  “Okay…”

  Mandy points to the map, taking over. “When we first heard about the invasion, they listed Bogotá as one of the cities hit especially hard.” She puts her finger on the northwest corner of South America. “I remember it because it was one of the places I could have volunteered last year, before I decided on Nunavut.”

  “But we know why now,” I say. “The ground invasions were in high-elevation cities because the Nahx have trouble breathing at low elevation.” I have a sudden urge to tell Tenth’s story, in memory of everything he did for us, but I resist.

  “Right,” Xander continues. “Except the bright lights denoting the ships aren’t all at high elevations. In fact, most of them aren’t. Mandy says there aren’t any in South America at all, for instance.”

  I can see the globe from the ship very clearly in my mind; I can even make it spin and slow it down or speed it up as though I’m operating it by remote control. And they’re right.

  “I didn’t get that good a look at it,” Mandy confesses. “I was mostly searching the crowd, looking for you and the others.”

  “I don’t see how this matters,” Tucker says.

  Mandy flicks him a look. “Remember before how Xander suggested not being a dick?”

  Tucker presses his lips together, crossing his arms like a sulking child. I ignore him. I don’t have time to deal with butt-hurt boys right now.

  Xander sighs like he’s a little tired of it too. He bends over his rough map, pencil in hand. “So where were the other bright lights? Raven?”

  I turn the globe in my mind, remembering the details as I point down to the map. “There were several in Russia… here and farther north, around here. And there were two in North Africa. Like in the Sahara or something. And some in Australia, here in the center and then to the west, like here.” I lean back and look at the places Xander is marking. “I think they’re just remote places, away from populated areas. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “Wait,” Xander says, holding up one hand while he finishes marking the map with the other. “There were some lights over the oceans, too, right?”

  “Yes. A bunch here, sort of, in the Pacific. Also there were some here. Is this India or China?”

  Xander marks the map without answering.

  “Okay,” he says, suddenly very grave. “I want you to think carefully. Were there any in Japan?”

  “Yes.”

  Xander takes a breath and pauses a second too long.

  “How many?”

  “Two.”

  Snatching another paper from the collection strewn in front of us, Xander flips it over and quickly sketches the distinct seahorse shape of Japan. He hesitates before sliding the paper and pencil over to me. I lean down and make two marks in southern Japan.

  The five of us stare at the map as though by making the m
arks I have cast some kind of freezing spell.

  “Oh God,” Mandy says.

  “Is that…?” Topher, suddenly interested, leans over to get a closer look.

  Xander taps the two new marks on the map, one after the other. “This is Hiroshima. And this is Nagasaki.”

  “Oh GOD.”

  “So these are all nuclear detonations?” Topher says, pointing at places on the first map. “This would be the first test in New Mexico. And these ones are the Bikini Atoll tests. What do the Nahx want with nuclear detonation sites?”

  “Maybe some kind of energy they can use?” Xander suggests. “The radiation?”

  “Wait.” Tucker puts his hands flat on the two maps as though to cover them. “This makes no sense. Where we were in Saskatchewan is not a nuclear detonation site. There has never been a nuclear bomb detonated in Canada.”

  “Unless…” Xander says.

  A silence follows, one infused with a vague sense that everything we were ever taught was a lie.

  “Well, shit,” I say.

  “Right?” Xander says. “If you were Canada during the Cold War, would you trust the Americans to protect us? And if you didn’t, and you wanted to test a nuclear device, wouldn’t you do it in a desert in remote Northern Saskatchewan, less than fifty miles away from Canada’s biggest uranium mine? And wouldn’t you keep it a big ol’ secret?”

  “I bet it was Trudeau,” Topher says.

  “Senior or Junior?”

  “Either. Both.”

  Xander and Topher snort with laughter, but Mandy, Tucker, and I lock eyes, exchanging a moment of shared dread. There aren’t just Nahx ships at these sites, there are “fissures” and a future battle none of us yet understand. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who doesn’t care for the added detail of nuclear radiation. Are we going to war with some kind of mutants? In a second, as though by telepathy, we three come to a silent consensus to not let Topher and Xander in on these details. Not now, anyway. I glance up at Blue, who flickers and seems somehow to agree with us.

  I’m about to say something to change the subject, but Sky does it for me, throwing open the door and striding in, flanked by her Offsides. It becomes immediately clear that she has called some kind of meeting, because soon the hall fills up with Rogues. Xander silently shuffles the papers into a bundle and he and Topher take seats by the fire. Mandy, Tucker, and I hop up and sit on the kitchen table.