Anya must have realized that, for when she went on, her voice was clearer. “The star went west, and where it landed, no one knew. No one out here heard that it had landed for some time, and even then, no one knew what to make of it. Strange, garbled stories came out of Europe. Unearthly beings. Impossible powers. Massive storms that arose out of nowhere. Most of all, the command that we were not ever to leave the earth. None of it made any sense, and people tried to laugh it off. Every time, though, they kept wondering what exactly was happening to cause the strange reports. What had come to the Balkans? Would it, too, reach Khazakstan?
“It did, of course. It probably made it all over the world, but we don’t have any way of knowing. All we know is that They are here, and no one has come from outside in any attempt to overthrow Them. Probably no one can. People have tried, even here.” A shadow passed across her face, and Chaika saw it echoed on the girls’. “No one has succeeded. But I’m going out of order. That’s no way to tell a story, especially not a true one. Let me go back.
“Whatever had happened in the Balkans reached us. They reached us. It happened when a young man in a nearby village created a flying machine. I never saw it for myself, but apparently it was nothing beautiful. It was an ungainly, cobbled-together thing, but it could lift off from the ground and soar toward the sky. Not into it, but close enough. It was more than anything else that had been done here before. As far as everyone knew, it was more than anything else that had been done anywhere in the world. Man could fly, and it had first happened here.
“That was when They came. They swept in on a storm, bringing lightning that laid waste to all of Karaganda. People had to rebuild from scratch. Buildings, farms, livestock…all of it was wiped out in a moment. Even the flying machine was destroyed. The worst of it was what happened to the young man. He was killed by a blast of lightning that pierced right to his heart and left scars tracing all around his body.”
Chaika shuddered. She couldn’t help it; it was a horrendous story. “And have They been here all this time?” It was a proper name; she could hear it in Anya’s voice.
Anya nodded. “Here, to the west, all over the world. At least, as far as I know.”
“And Kogalym?”
Anya turned pale. “They’ve created a home for themselves there. I haven’t been there myself--all I know comes from hearsay and rumor--but it’s said to be a wasteland now. No human can go there and live.”
Chaika frowned. “But you thought I had come from there.”
“Do you?” Lizaveta asked. As every time before, Anya ignored her, though Chaika couldn’t help but look to the girl and catch how still she suddenly sat. Her spoon lay forgotten in her stew; her gaze was fixed on Chaika alone.
“Do you?” Olga echoed.
Her voice was low, but it still caught Anya’s attention, and her head snapped to her older daughter. “Enough,” she hissed, her voice low and dangerous. “We do not speak of that. You know why.”
Olga’s lower lip trembled, but only for a moment before she sucked in a breath and steeled herself. There was strength in her gaze, more than Chaika had thought there could be in a girl so small. She couldn’t imagine Lizaveta with that strength, but maybe someday she would grow into it. If she were her mother’s daughter, she surely would, just as Olga had. “You were the one who mentioned it at the first,” Olga said, but she said no more. She merely looked down at her stew and took a small bite, barely large enough to feed a bird.
With that, the topic was closed.
It should have been closed, anyway, but Anya would not take her gaze from Olga. She must have the last word, it seemed. “You will not mention Kogalym again,” she said. “You know why.”
Olga nodded once. It was a small, subtle movement. If Chaika had not been watching for it, she would not have recognized it at all. She kept her gaze firmly on her own dinner, only watching the family out of the corner of her eye. Something had happened in the background of their lives, something she was not privy to and should not be. If they wished to tell her what it was, she would not stop them, but she knew it was not her place to ask about it.
Secretly, she hoped they would not tell her. There were already so many secrets in this family, in this world. She didn’t want to delve any deeper than she had to. She only wanted to go home.
Going home might not be possible though. At least, not without somehow involving Them.
She was given the same bed she had rested in to sleep for that night. It was already a little comforting to lie there, in the most familiar room she had in this city. Chaika rested her head on the pillow, smelling of musty down and old cloth. The blanket was patched and thinning, and she ran her fingers over the stitches. They were clumsy, but beautiful even for that, and she wondered who had sewn them. Had it been Anya’s hands that fumbled over them? Olga’s, maybe? Was Lizaveta old enough to help with making a quilt?
Chaika lay curled under the blanket, one arm resting atop it, the other under her pillow, propping up her head. She stared at the wall, hidden from her in the complete darkness.
She could not sleep.
It was all too much. She knew this. What had happened to her, where she was…all of it was too great for her to wrap her head around. If she could only come to terms with it, she would be able to sleep, but her mind felt as though it had run into a brick wall. She didn’t even know how to start thinking about it. She wished she could doubt anything Anya said, but she didn’t know how to even start doing that. There was no way for her to start picking away at the madness of it all.
She wished the wind would stop. If only the wind would stop, she knew she would be able to sleep.
As though it had heard her thoughts, the wind picked up right at that moment. Suppressing a groan, Chaika rolled onto her other side, wrapping herself tighter in the thin quilt. If only she could wrap her head around what was happening, if only the wind would stop, if only she hadn’t slept before dinner, perhaps she might be able to sleep now.
Then she heard a sharp crack of thunder, followed by a scream.
Chaika bolted up from bed, scrambling out of the nest she’d made for herself. She moved without thinking, on some instinct that whoever was screaming--a girl, it was a young girl--needed to be protected. This world was a hard one, but that didn’t mean she would leave people to defend themselves. She too had come from a hard world, albeit one that was getting better. Surely she ought to make this one better for those who lived in it.
The screaming came from the next room over, and when Chaika burst in, she saw two shadowy forms on a lump that must have been the bed. One lay still, somehow sleeping through the distress of the other, sitting up in the bed, shrieking as though her cries could wake the dead.
Anya had not come yet. Chaika realized that in the back of her mind, but she couldn’t think what to do about it. She couldn’t think what to do about anything in this impossible world.
In the end, there was only one thing to do. She ran into the room and pulled the screaming girl into her arms, muffling her cries against her shoulder.
It was Olga.
“It’s all right,” she murmured, rocking the girl back and forth. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”
Chaika had never been a mother. Someday, she knew, she would be, since her womanhood made it inevitable, but she had not become one yet. All her experience with children came from others, those who did not belong to her and were not even related to her by blood. She didn’t know whether what she was doing was right or wrong. All she knew was that she had to try. She had to do the best she could.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “It’s all right.”
Olga squirmed against her chest. Her screaming had quieted into sobs, and now words broke through those. “Sasha,” she said. “Sasha, don’t go.”
Chaika’s heart tightened. Sasha, who had been fine for a few days, but then…what? Died, most likely. Of what, she didn’t know, but likely something horrible. Olga wouldn’t be so frantic other
wise.
“It’s all right,” she said again, trying to think of anything else there might be for her to say. “I’m going to be fine.”
“Don’t go,” Olga whimpered again. “Not in the storm.”
Another crack of thunder. Chaika shuddered. “I won’t go out,” she said. “I promise.” It was an easy promise to make. She wasn’t reckless enough to go out into a thunderstorm, especially not one that seemed connected to the horror stories Anya had told her.
Sasha had been though.
“I’m not Sasha.”
Would that be enough to convince the girl? She didn’t know. She didn’t know whether the girl was even awake or was trapped in some nightmare. She didn’t know what to do, and Anya wasn’t there to give her guidance or better yet, to take charge. All she wanted just then was for Anya to appear, gather Olga into her arms, and send Chaika back to bed.
When she did hear Anya’s voice, it didn’t provide the comfort she hoped. It came some minutes later, when Olga had mostly quieted, and was so soft Chaika had trouble making out the words. Once they settled in her mind, though, another chill ran through her.
“They want to see you.”
Chaika laid Olga down on the bed and draped the blanket over her. There was probably a better, more tender way to cover her, but she didn’t know how, and there wasn’t time. She wanted to get out of the bedroom as quickly as possible, so neither girl would overhear whatever else Anya had to say.
They met in the dark hallway, Anya’s hand resting on Chaika’s arm so they would each know where the other was. They had to speak between the rolls of thunder if they had any hope of being heard at all.
“Who?”
“They.”
Chaika’s breath caught in her throat. “Where are They?”
“Outside.”
Of course, they were. They would have come with the storm. Chaika let out a shaky breath.
“Did They say why?”
“No.”
Anya’s voice was small and faint. That, more than anything else, frightened Chaika in that moment.
She had been frightened before. It had never been like this, but she had always been able to face her fears and push through them to do what had to be done. She would do the same now. Even if she was terrified, she didn’t have to show it.
“I’ll go,” she said. “Keep the girls inside.”
“Of course.” Anya didn’t quite scoff, but the sentiment was there. “I’m not foolish enough to let them go, and they’re not foolish enough to want to.”
Anya took her hand from Chaika’s arm, but Chaika was quick and caught hold of her before she could vanish in the dark house. “What about Sasha?”
There was a long pause. Chaika held her breath until Anya spoke again.
“He was my son. He thought he could make a difference and change things. He never got much of a chance.”
“What happened to him?”
“They took him to Kogalym. No one knows what They did to him there. We only know that he came back looking just as well as he had before, but three days later, he was dead.”
She sounded weary, and Chaika couldn’t blame her. Three days later, with no apparent signs, and there likely wasn’t a proper doctor to be found. She would likely never know exactly what had happened to her son, and They were unlikely to tell her.
Chaika didn’t know what would happen to her at Their hands, either. It would end with her death--that much was certain--but she didn’t know what would come before then. She could only guess, and every possibility terrified her.
“If They let me go,” she said, thinking as she spoke what a distant possibility that must be, “I won’t come back here. I’ll go off somewhere else.” She wouldn’t make the girls watch her die.
Anya made no response that Chaika could see, but she imagined a nod, or a faint smile. Something that would give the two of them a hint of solidarity.
“Thank you.”
“And you won’t tell Olga what’s happened to me?”
Anya scoffed again. “She hasn’t known you long enough to be attached. You’re fascinating. That’s all. Soon enough, she’ll realize how dangerous you would have been, and she’ll be glad you’re gone.”
Cold words, but somehow comforting. Chaika didn’t want Olga to worry over her any more than necessary. Lizaveta was in her thoughts as well, but it had been Olga who found her, Olga who ran to get help, Olga who had gathered up her parachute as though it were a wondrous thing in her hands and not something deadly. She shouldn’t have to be trapped in this world. She deserved one where she could reach toward the stars, if only she had the will and intelligence.
“Good,” she said, and walked to the door.
Outside lightning lit up the night to be as bright as day. Brilliant lines arced across the sky, burning themselves against Chaika’s retinas so that she saw an afterimage with every blink. They were random, but she couldn’t shake the sense that they were letters in some alien alphabet, spelling out words she could never understand.
Some yards away from Anya’s door, standing as still as any statue, was one of Them.
Chaika had never seen one of Them before, but she knew this was all the figure could be. They were vaguely humanoid: four limbs, a torso holding all together, a head on top. All the proportions, however, were ever so slightly wrong. They seemed too long and too short for the body at the same time, and looking at Them for too long made her head ache and her eyes burn.
There was nowhere else for her to look. The sky was too bright, as though the sun were streaking across it; the ground was intolerable. She would not lower her gaze for anything.
She could outlast the pain. If she could be shot up into space and survive the return, she could handle a little discomfort.
“You’ve come for me,” she said.
Thunder cut off her words, but They must have heard her still, for They bent Their head in a nod that sent shivers down her spine and made her stomach clench. She felt like she was going to be sick. She felt like she was going to die.
“Why?”
There was no answer. There wasn’t even a crack of thunder. They merely held out Their hand.
Chaika would be damned if she took that hand.
She walked forward, pausing only to make sure the door to Anya’s house was closed behind her. What would happen to the three inside, she didn’t know, but she didn’t dare beg for mercy from them. This was a hard world, shaped by hard beings. They likely had no mercy in Their hearts, if They had hearts at all. They might even be cruel enough that a request would only make things worse.
When she drew even with Them, They grabbed her arm. Lightning flashed, not just in the sky, but everywhere.
Then she was gone.
There were many things in that moment of traveling. The sun and the moon, not pursuing one another through the sky, but one orbiting an object orbiting the other, while that other itself orbited a small point of its own. Many suns, and many moons, all traveling in their own ellipses. A smell of smoke. The brush of a hand.
Nothingness. Not even she was there. Nothing was there at all.
Kogalym was, as Chaika had expected it to be, a wasteland. It was a vast emptiness in the taiga; a place where even the trees had been blasted away. It could have been the steppes were it not so far north; it could have been the tundra were there any snow.
It was cold enough for it. As soon as she was aware she was anywhere at all, Chaika was cold. She shivered, wrenching herself away from the one of Them who had brought her there.
She didn’t wrench herself too far, for there were more of Them everywhere she looked. She felt as though she could hardly look anywhere at all, for everywhere her head turned was another of Them, shaped wrongly against the world.
The sky was all over lightning. She couldn’t look up at that either.
“What am I doing here?” she asked, her breath coming out as flickering mist. “What do you want?”
“I want to know how it w
as you came here.”
Chaika blinked. It couldn’t be possible. That had been a human voice.
Then a man--a human man--stepped out from behind a cluster of Them, and her eyes latched onto him as though he were the only person in the world. He might as well be. He was the only thing about she could look at without feeling as though her eyes were pulsing under impossible pressures.
“Who are you?” she gasped.
The man opened his mouth, then paused, as though taken aback. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s been so long since I had any need of a name that I must have forgotten. It’s funny, isn’t it? Just a little.” He laughed.
Chaika didn’t. “What do They call you, then?” she asked.
“Them? Oh, They have no need for a name for me. I’m the only one of humanity They deign to speak to. The only one They can stand, really. They don’t have much need for a name for me. All they’ve ever called me is the Representative.” His eyes narrowed. “But what am I to call you?”
She didn’t need any sort of sixth sense to warn her not to say her real name. Whether it would mean anything to the Representative or not, she didn’t know, but she didn’t want to give any real part of herself to him. “I’m Chaika.”
“Chaika,” he repeated, as though searching his memory for the word. “Well, my lost seagull, welcome to Kogalym. It’s my home. It was, anyway. Now I don’t know that anyone could live here safely.” He shrugged. “Not that it matters.”
“You destroyed your own home.” The idea sounded so impossible that Chaika could hardly bear to say it aloud. Her lips felt numb.
He shrugged again. “It would have happened in time. Better I do it than someone else.” When he laughed, it didn’t sound demented. That was the worst part. He sounded perfectly calm, as though he’d just shared a particularly good joke. “That’s just how it goes, isn’t it? Either you have the nukes or someone else does, and if you have them, you’d better use them. You have to show what you’re willing to do before anyone else tries to do it to you.”
Space Bound: A Dragon Soul Press Anthology Page 33