The last thing she said in the sky was, “Oh.”
She landed hard in a field, bumping her nose against her knee. Her parachute fluttered down around her, sunlight diffusing like liquid gold.
Her nose hurt. Her body shook. She’d been nauseous for the past three days.
But she was alive.
As she got unsteadily to her feet, her parachute fluttered to the ground around her. She could gather it up later. First, she had to determine where she was. She had contacted Korolev when she began her descent, but she couldn’t remember whether he had responded. She remembered…
She closed her eyes for a moment, swaying slightly. She remembered descending into the atmosphere. She remembered the air shaking her vessel. She remembered flames all around her, turning everything brilliant yellow-orange.
She remembered, too, the sensation of being watched and a voice whispering in her ear, but the words hadn’t sounded like Russian. When she’d asked who was there, there had been no answer.
There had been no answer but a great staring eye.
Her legs gave way beneath her, and it was all she could do to hastily unbuckle her parachute so she wouldn’t vomit all over it. Only bile came up, and for a while she knelt, spitting sour froth onto the grass.
When she looked up, a young girl was watching her.
She wiped her mouth with her sleeve, feeling a sudden flush of shame. This wasn’t how she wanted to be found coming back to Earth. She had hoped for a little more dignity.
She got to her feet, legs shaking, and through some miracle didn’t fall. “Hello,” she said.
The girl took a step closer. She was small, with stick-thin arms and a slim body wrapped up in a heavy dress. Her brown hair was braided behind her head, pulled tightly enough that it made her already wide eyes seem wider still. Her face looked older than her size made her seem; she could have been anywhere from eight to twelve.
She took another small step, then one more. After a moment of silent staring, she asked, “Did you come from the sky?”
She looked down at herself. For the first time, she thought of how she must look to a girl out in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps she had heard of the space program, but she might not have known anyone was due to come down soon. She couldn’t have expected anyone to appear right in front of her.
She looked up at the sky for a moment, letting its brilliant blue sear her eyes. “Yes,” she said with a smile. “I suppose I am.”
“Oh.” The girl’s eyes grew wider still, and she bit her lip.
“Where am I?” she asked.
The girl looked wary, but in the end she answered. “Near Karaganda.”
“How far is it to Karaganda?” she asked.
“Not far,” the girl said. “Do you think you can walk there?”
“I can if I must,” she said. “Would you help me gather up my parachute? I’ve never left one behind before, not if it saved my life.”
The girl’s eyes lit up, but she moved forward slowly at first. When she reached the parachute, she picked it up gingerly, as though she had never seen or touched one before. Every now and then, she would run her fingers over the fabric, her lips parted in wonder, and once she brought it to her nose to smell it.
They worked together to fold it, and once it was bundled up and in its pack, she asked the girl, “Would you like to carry it?” She could sling it over her own shoulder, even worn out as she was, but the girl looked so amazed that she had to at least make the offer.
The girl looked up, mouth wide, eyes wide. Her heart must have felt wide too. “You mean it?” she whispered. “I could?”
“Only until we get to the city.” She handed over the pack. “Be careful with it. I owe it my life.”
The girl took it as though it were a holy relic and held it close to her chest. After a moment, she slipped it on her shoulders. It was too big for her, and she stumbled a little, trying to balance its weight against hers.
All the while, the girl looked up at her, eyes wide, as though expecting to be scolded for her boldness.
She said nothing. She couldn’t imagine having been that sort of girl herself, but if a woman had fallen out of the sky by the Volga, she would have been just as amazed and thrilled. It was humbling and elevating all at once, and she couldn’t keep from smiling.
“Well,” she said, “let’s go.”
The girl nodded. If the word stirred anything in her, she didn’t show it. It was strange; surely all the way out here she should have heard about Yuri, about his word which had echoed around the world and would echo far into the future.
But then, it was a perfectly ordinary word. The only reason it felt at all special to her was that she had just now come down out of the sky, following in Yuri’s footsteps. She had even been found by a peasant girl in a field. Was this the fate of everyone who went up to the stars; to come to Earth in a humble place?
But it shouldn’t have been this humble. She had never been to Karaganda, but she knew it was a city in its own right. Surely she should have seen some sign of it by now.
The girl walked along as though nothing at all was strange, striding on her short legs. They hadn’t gone far before she looked up and asked, “What’s your name?”
Don’t say it!
She couldn’t have said where the warning came from or whether it was really a warning at all. It was only a prickling in the back of her mind that felt like it belonged to those words. She shook her head, trying to clear away the sensation.
The girl blinked up at her. “Are you alright?”
She shook her head again before she could stop herself. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just disoriented.”
“It must be hard to come down from the sky.” The girl stared up at her with wide, wondering eyes.
She nodded. It had been. Her heart was still pounding from the drop. It was a wonder she could walk around at all. As soon as they got to Karaganda, even before she got in touch with Moscow, she would sit down and ask for something good to eat and something strong to drink.
And there had been the eye, and the whisper. No one had warned her about those.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like to come out of the sky,” the girl went on. “I’ve thought about it, though. I suppose everyone does, though we never talk about it.” She blinked, staring up at her more intently still. “Do you really not remember your name?”
“I remember it,” she said.
“Tell me, then.”
Val--
Don’t say it!
It wasn’t a prickle in the back of her mind that time. It was a slap, like a strike right across her face. She gasped a little, and the girl paused.
“Are you alright?” she asked. “Are you sick?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said again. “I just feel strange.”
The girl frowned. Somehow her eyes stayed wide. “Is it because you’re from the sky? Do you not know what to do on the ground?”
“I’m from the ground,” Valentina said. “I was born in…” But the name slipped from her tongue before she could say it, dropping to the earth, and she stepped over it, passing it by.
No. That wasn’t how names worked. They couldn’t fall away like a tooth. They were ideas. They could be forgotten, but they couldn’t be lost.
Even so, she turned as though she could see the name of her birthplace lying on the ground behind them. She knew it. She knew it; it was to the west, by the Volga. Every time she had passed over Russia, she had looked for it, and though she hadn’t ever been certain whether she had seen it, she had imagined she had. She had known exactly where it was, and if she could find that, she could find her village. She could find…
It wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere. The ground shifted under her feet, and she couldn’t find where she had come from. She couldn’t even find where she was.
The girl grabbed her arm and was pulling her down. She tried to push her aside, but the girl’s hands were too strong for her. The earth w
as too strong for her; it dragged her down as well, pulling her against it.
When she fell, it was into an embrace like a mother’s. The earth gave beneath her, and for just a moment, her head rested on it like a warm breast.
Then someone raised her head up and laid it on something that scraped her cheek and smelled of canvas. “I’ll be back soon,” a little voice said. “Don’t fly away, little bird.”
Then little feet flew away, and she was alone.
She woke tucked into a bed, with her head resting on a soft pillow and accented Russian coming from the other room. She couldn’t make out any of the words, but it sounded familiar, and it took her only a moment to realize it was the girl’s accent, and one of the voices belonged to her.
She opened her eyes and started to sit up. Her head spun, but she felt alert and after a few deep breaths, was almost ready to rise from the bed. The room was small and the door was close. She could get there, rest, and then move on through the rest of…wherever she was.
She grimaced. Where was she? Karaganda? Maybe. Kazakhstan? Probably. Somewhere near the Soviet Union, she hoped, so she could soon be back home.
Before she could get up, a little girl peeped through the door. She wasn’t the one who had found her, but she looked similar, close enough to be a younger sister. When the girl saw that she was sitting up, her blue eyes widened. “Mama!” she shouted into the other room. “Olga! She’s awake!”
She closed her eyes, grimacing against the girl’s shrill voice, so she didn’t see her turn and run off. She only opened her eyes and saw that she was gone.
A moment later, she heard footsteps and the older girl appeared in the doorway. For a moment, they only stared at one another.
She spoke first. “I’m all right,” she said. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
“I didn’t,” the girl said. “Mama did.” She took a little step into the room, then another. “Are you really alright? You’re not going to turn out like Sasha? He was all right, but a few days later --”
Before she could go on, if she would have at all, a woman burst into the room, followed by the younger girl. The woman was stout, and easily half again her age, but she had the same wide eyes as the two girls.
The woman looked her up and down, eyes narrowing a little. “So,” she said, “who are you?”
“I am--”
Don’t say it!
The prickle in her mind wasn’t as powerful as before, but she still had to squeeze her eyes shut against it. For just a moment, she thought she might faint, but the feeling passed quickly.
“I am Chaika,” she said. No part of her mind stopped her from saying that. “Your daughter--Olga, I think?--found me…”
“Yes, yes, she told us that. The woman who fell down with silk wings like a bird.” The woman glanced at Olga, who beamed for a moment before smothering her smile behind her hand. “I did not think you would prove to be a bird in truth.”
She smiled tightly. She didn’t know whether it reached her eyes. “When I was little, I always thought I would be one,” she said. “This is the closest I could come.” She forced herself to sit up a little higher, ignoring the pulsing behind her eyes. “My wings…my parachute, I mean. Did Olga bring that here as well?”
“She brought along a pack, saying it held your wings. She wouldn’t let any of us look in it.”
Olga flushed bright pink. “I’ll fetch it,” she said. “Are you going to fly again, lady?”
Valentina shook her head. “Not without an airplane. I hope I don’t have to walk to Moscow.” Maybe someone would send an airplane to fetch her. That would be a treat for Olga, and perhaps for the little girl as well, judging by how wide both their eyes grew.
Olga turned on her toe and was off at once, running for wherever she had stashed the pack. The woman set a hand on the younger girl’s shoulder, steering her firmly toward the door. “You go too, Lizaveta. Not with your sister, mind. You have your mending still to finish.”
Lizaveta bowed her head and murmured something that sounded like, “Yes, Mama.” Then she too was gone, as swift as her sister.
As soon as the two of them were alone, the woman crossed to the bed. She was shorter than Chaika but still seemed to tower as she glared down at her. “You told my daughter you’re from the sky,” she said.
Chaika shook her head. “It was a joke. I’m from the west, near the Volga.” The name of the town was right on the tip of her tongue. If she just had a moment, she knew it would come to her.
The woman didn’t give her that moment. “You’re certain. You didn’t come from Kogalym?”
Chaika blinked. The name meant nothing to her.
Her silence must have been answer enough, for the woman sighed and relaxed a little. Chaika hadn’t realized just how tight her expression was until it eased, fading into its lines and wrinkles. “I suppose not,” she said, “but from the way you appeared, talking about airplanes…it would be enough to make anyone wonder.” Her eyes narrowed again, and her brow creased. “I believe you that you’re not from Kogalym, but I know you’re not from the Volga. Wherever you’re from, and whatever you’re doing here, I want you to know I won’t accept any danger to my children, from you or whoever might have sent you. As long as you are under my roof, near my family, there will be no talk of airplanes. Is that clear?”
It was clear that was what the woman wanted. What wasn’t clear was what had happened to Karaganda to make that intensity necessary.
And the woman was intense about it. She stared down at Chaika with her wide eyes, as though she could express that necessity on her with a gaze alone. It wasn’t just a piercing stare. Chaika had been on the other end of those before, and she knew she could face them. This was a stare that flayed and opened. Chaika felt as though the woman could see all her secrets if she wished to. It was all she could do not to tremble and cover herself with her hands as though she’d been caught in the bath. Instead, she had to sit perfectly still and take it, staring back up at the woman as though her own gaze could in any way match hers.
Maybe it could. On her better days, Chaika was sure of it. Today, though, she couldn’t be certain at all. She felt too small and uncertain of everything.
“It’s clear,” she said, “but I don’t understand why.”
The woman frowned. Her stare only seemed to grow sharper. “You mean it,” she said. “You really don’t understand.”
“I don’t,” Chaika said, “but I will try if you are willing to explain it to me.”
The woman looked at her for a moment longer, seeming to weigh her with her gaze. When she spoke, her voice was softer, more even and measured than it had been before. She sounded more like a mother than Chaika had expected she could. “Rest first,” she said. “I’ll tell you when you’re on your feet.”
She would be able to get no more out of her. Chaika sighed and lay back on the bed. Any other time, she would have fought, but now she was too weary. All she could do was rest her head on the pillow and drift back into unconsciousness.
The woman’s name, it turned out, was Anya. Her daughters were Olga and Lizaveta. There was no man in the house.
Chaika learned all that over dinner, which was a thick potato stew. Mostly it had been thickened by flour; she recognized the taste, and it was almost a comforting texture on her tongue. It reminded her a little of home.
What was her home like now? Did it even exist in this strange place where she had found herself?
Olga was a wide-eyed girl well on her way to being a woman. Chaika still couldn’t place her age, but she wasn’t a child any longer. Watching her sitting side by side with her sister was enough to make that clear. Lizaveta wiggled at the table, squirming and playing with her spoon, pushing chunks of potatoes around her plate as she chattered and asked questions that no one paid much mind to. She must have been used to being ignored, and she didn’t seem to mind it.
Olga, in contrast, sat still, despite the energy clearly bubbling through her. She didn’t
ask any questions, but Chaika could see them lurking behind her eyes. She probably couldn’t get away with asking things as openly as her sister did, and she was waiting for the best moment to spring one.
Or maybe she was waiting for her mother to give her a chance to slip into the conversation. If she only had one, she would have to take advantage of it as soon as it came to her.
Anya, so far, had dominated the conversation, but Chaika was the one who had begun it. At the start of the meal, as soon as she’d had a chance, she’d said, “Tell me what you meant to tell me before.”
Her tone was somewhere between a question and a demand. Anya didn’t seem taken aback by it at all. She might well have been expecting it. She didn’t even flinch from saying so in front of the children, but then, they likely knew the history of their world already. What they wouldn’t know--and what Lizaveta kept asking about--was why Chaika herself didn’t know.
“There was a war. It started in one of the Balkan states--I don’t know which one, and it doesn’t matter anymore--but it spread out all across the world. Maybe it would have consumed it in time. I don’t know. We never got a chance to find out.
“Before it did, They came.
“You have to understand, this was before I was born. I don’t remember any of this for myself. I only know what my mother told me, and if she was ever touched by the war, she never said so. She only ever told me once what it was like when They came, and I remembered it for the rest of my life.”
It was a long lead up. Chaika swallowed back her impatience. “What did she say?”
For a moment, Anya was silent, and Chaika thought perhaps she wouldn’t say after all. Then she spoke in a low voice, one that Chaika had to lean closer to hear.
“It was like a shooting star that had passed too close to the earth, she said. It lit up the sky for a moment like the rising sun, and then it was gone. My mother told me she could hear it, too, but I was never sure whether to believe her. No one else had brought up the screaming, and my mother was…fragile. She died young.”
There was a wealth of hidden horror in those statements. Chaika could feel it even without pressing. She would not press, at least not now. Anya’s family story was her own affair. It had nothing to do with Chaika.
Space Bound: A Dragon Soul Press Anthology Page 32