by Enid Titan
«Scared, jazad?»
«No,» she answered honestly, «Not when I’m with you.»
«Good. We’ll figure out what to do in the morning,» Castor said, «Until then, you’re not to worry.»
Poppy closed her eyes, fearing that tonight of all nights, she’d meet Queen Sibyl in her dreams again.
19
Long Winter Walk
Poppy woke, shivering. Her fingers were thickened lumps of immobile oatmeal beneath her cloak and the emergency blankets. Ajax’s body rested on top of hers, but the absence of a Devoran on the other side of her had been replaced with bitter cold.
“Where’s Jason?” She muttered.
“He’s out. Come on. You need to get warmer.”
Ajax pulled her closer to him and rubbed her cheeks until they lost a bit of their redness.
“We’d better get you outside by the fire.”
Poppy had only been asleep for an hour or so. Her watch had proceeded uneventfully despite the loud howling in the distance.
“We don’t have much to worry about in the day time, do we?” Poppy asked.
“We’ll have a hike ahead if we leave the pod and we’ll have to watch out for worms.”
Poppy knew before he explained himself that ‘worms’ were likely to be some fucked up, larger than life creature that she’d want nothing to do with.
“Dare I ask?”
“Nothing to be scared of. They’re only three feet long and they’ll only hurt you if they get hold of your bare toes.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
Poppy’s face grew ashen. Ajax shook his head.
“No. There’s a reason we avoid the tundra.”
“It’s a wonder Devorans survived here at all.”
“We leave the animals to the tundra and we live in our cities, close to the oceans and seas where we don’t bother them and we don’t bother us. At least the worms aren’t telepathic.”
Poppy didn’t dare ask which animals were telepathic. Leaving the tent, Castor and Lyric stood before the fire, feeding it silver logs and kindling. They argued over whether the pod should be abandoned. Antigone and Lyric wanted to stay, still believing rescue to be nigh.
“We’ve waited here overnight. They’re likely to think we’ve died already,” Jason grumbled.
“I didn’t see any creatures during my watch,” Antigone said, “Maybe the tundra beasts aren’t as dangerous as we thought.”
“You can put that to the test with your own flesh,” Jason shot back.
“I won’t take orders from a naive little first-year if that’s what you’re thinking,” Antigone snapped.
“No one’s speaking about taking orders. We need to survive out here and we’ll do much better if we stick together.”
“Jason’s right,” Lyric admitted.
“How far away from campus are we?” Antigone asked.
“You don’t know, do you. So we’re to walk North, following the shifting suns until we end up at the wall, and then what?”
“We can make it. We’re only 200 miles out from the city,” Castor said.
“How can you know that?”
“It’s a guess. We only had two days left and the pod moves slow, only about 100 miles a day.”
“We should have teleported,” Jason grumbled.
“Which would have been a massive waste of energy. Pods don’t crash!” Lyric said.
Poppy spoke up for the first time.
“Maybe someone crashed it.”
Lyric gave her a quizzical, disbelieving expression.
“Why would you say that?”
“We’re missing the others and there aren’t any footprints in the snow or signs of them. Oz left his things behind. He wouldn’t have done that if he ran off.”
“Maybe they were eaten,” Antigone offered morbidly, “Which was why there was nothing left of them, and why the beasts left us alone.”
“I don’t think packs of dogs get full,” Jason snarked.
“Cas is right,” Lyric admitted, “It’s smarter if we get out of here. If animals know where to find us, they’ll come eventually — whether or not anything happened to the others.”
Poppy followed Lyric and Jason back to the pod. They expended the remaining credits in the panel system, which was nearly falling from the circuitry’s exposure to the cold. They fixed as much food as possible to their bags. Ero and Ajax carried the tents. Janus carried the water and refused a weapon. The rest of them carried daggers. There were only enough credits for two atom-weapons. Castor and Jason carried those. Poppy removed her dagger from its fastening on the inside of her corset and fixed it to her hip.
She’d need to access it easily if what she heard of Devoran creatures proved true.
They marched together in a clump with the slowest, Poppy, setting the pace. The snow came up to the middle of her thighs and even covered head to toe in thick Devoran furs, she was starting to feel deeply chilled. Moving helped, but the heavy pack on her back and the jostling dagger at her side exhausted her quickly. Devorans two hearts came in handy for trudging through deep snow without reaching quick exhaustion.
«Are you tired?» Castor asked after they’d walked for about ten miles.
«Yes.»
There was no point lying to him. He could see her chest’s haggard movements and the way she stumbled through the thick powder towards the Northern sun.
«We’ll have to stop after twenty miles.»
«Do you really think we can make it in ten days, twenty miles a day?»
«Don’t you worry about that.»
The second winter had turned the tundra bitterly cold. After three more miles of walking, a loud howling noise stopped the group in their tracks.
“W-w-what was that?”
“Just a dog. We should keep walking,” Castor said, his face set in fierce determination.
A small thicket of trees around six miles in the distance offered some shelter for the night.
“We only need to make it to the trees.”
“It’s not bad enough that we’re on the tundra, we need to go beneath the trees! Have none of you heard the children’s stories?”
“They’re just children’s stories,” Lyric offered, doing her best to be soothing.
Jason and Castor kept their guns hoisted, suggesting that none of the Devorans believed that to be true.
20
The Dagger In Her Cloak
Ajax and Janus lit the fire while Cas and Penelope set up the tents. By the time they’d reached the trees, every muscle in Penelope’s body ached. Her shoulders wrapped themselves in knots and she knew once she crawled into the tent she’d sleep long and hard.
“I want first watch,” Poppy announced as her eyes drooped while she sat by the fire.
“I’ll watch with you, jazad.”
There was no protest from anyone else about who would take the first watch. Lyric’s hair had matted from being whipped in the wind. As they sat before the fire, Antigone pulled the tangles from Lyric’s hair and wrapped it in large braids around her head. That didn’t improve the usually chipper girl’s mood.
«She misses Poseidon,» Castor said, sidling next to Poppy as she sipped on warm soup.
«Do you really think a creature ate them?»
«We’ve seen no signs of it. Making assumptions won’t help.»
«I don’t think I’ll ever stop being cold.»
Castor wrapped his arm around her and kissed the top of her head.
«Jason will warm you up while you stand watch. I’ve got to come up with a plan.»
«You’re always so much of a leader, Castor.»
«I’d better get some rest. I’ll stand watch in the morning with Ajax and Janus.»
After supper, everyone except Jason and Penelope slipped into their tents, exhausted from a day’s worth of wading in the snow.
“Are you cold, jazad?”
“I don’t think I’ve been warm since I set foot on Devor. The tundra is worse
.”
“We’ll be back on foot tomorrow provided we survive the night.”
“You’re such a cynic,” Poppy chided, even if she’d been plagued by the same cynical thoughts.
“I thought that was why you loved me. My realism.”
Poppy hadn’t thought about love since she’d woken up on the pod.
“How’s your head?”
“Not bad. Aches a bit.”
“Concussion?”
“Probably. It would be a simple matter if we had a doctor.”
“Did you hear that?” Poppy’s heart jumped in her chest as a nearby growl came from the thicket of black woods.
“Grab the gun.”
Whoever stood watch held the atom weapon. Under normal circumstances, using school panels to produce weapons would have resulted in severe punishment. Out here in the woods, there was no one to punish them.
“What animal is that?”
“I don’t know, jazad.”
“Should we put out the fire,” Poppy whispered.
“No. It’s close. So it’s already seen us. You have to be careful. Most animals here are…”
Jason’s voice faded out. Poppy could feel a painful twisting in her mind, similar to the telepathic attack that Daphne committed the previous semester. Poppy’s hands trembled over the weapon’s trigger and her esophagus heaved violently.
«Poppy, focus on my voice. Don’t let it get to you.»
Every rational bone in her body wanted her to turn around and face the creature that she heard creeping up behind her. Her legs stiffened, stone against her will and her hands couldn’t grasp the gun which fell from her hand.
«I’ve got my weapon trained on it. It won’t jump but you need to get behind me.»
«I can’t…»
Jason moved to her left. The creature’s growling as so close that Poppy could feel a spray of its hot spitty breath on the back of her cloak. Ironic that the first time she’d feel warm that night would come on the hinges of her pending death. Jason fired. He mustn’t have hit the creature anywhere meaningful because it yelped and jumped back only a few feet. He’d distracted it just long enough that it lost its telepathic hold on Penelope.
Her hand reached for her Fengari dagger and she whipped around, regaining control of her limbs and remembering the training that Tarik drilled into her instinct. The creature was around the size of a bear, like a walrus with four brawny legs and tusks that could easily impale her. Poppy lunged forward the same time as the creature did and her knife slipped easily into the folds of its blubber. The creature roared and Jason fired again.
By then, Cas, Ajax, and Lyric were roused and amongst the shuffling sound of tents, Poppy lunged for the creature again, her dagger piercing its flesh. She realized the futility in stabbing at a creature whose anatomy she hadn’t the faintest clue about. The creature swung its large tail to the left and knocked Penelope off her feet. She kept her dagger clenched in a tight fist and dragged her butt backward in the snow as she struggled to regain her balance. The creature hurtled toward her until a loud blast from Jason’s weapon struck it between the eyes. The creature roared again. Castor leaped into the action and grabbed Poppy’s fallen gun, firing at the creature’s midsection. It gave another shuddering growl and sunk into the fallen snow.
«It’s dead,» Jason said.
«How can you tell?»
«It’s gone. Telepathically.»
The low level of background terror Poppy felt vanished.
“What was that? How could it control me like that?”
“It’s telepathic. Most creatures on Devor are.”
Poppy’s hands were shaking. It had been harder to pierce the creature’s flesh than to attack her practice dummies. Even if she hadn’t killed the thing herself, she didn’t exactly enjoy being party to drawing the life out of a creature.
“What are we going to do with it?” Lyric asked, bringing a more practical consideration to light.
The Devoran tundra wasn’t just party to all manner of predators and hunters, but scavengers too.
“Where there are scavengers, there are more hunters,” Castor agreed.
Poppy realized that none of them would get much more sleep except the lucky few who hadn’t been awakened by the creature’s roars. Ajax and Lyric fed the fires and Castor brewed more tea with the needles from the surrounding blue trees. The hot, spicy tea settled neatly in Penelope’s stomach.
«You’re thinking of the Fengari queen,» Cas said, plopping down beside her.
«Everything she’s said has come true.»
«Don’t worry, Penelope. None of us is dead. We’ll make it back. I promise.»
Yet, Poppy thought, none of us is dead yet.
21
A Stolen Song
Ajax handled the beast. He stripped its tusks off and had Jason reluctantly help him skin the creature. Devorans ate meat, but they produced meat using recycled energy, essentially growing it without having to kill other living things. Sea creatures and fish were different, but to kill a mammal as large as the tusked beast was no small feat. Poppy sensed their guilt weighing on them, even if the creature would have attacked them all if given a chance.
“Does every animal out here eat flesh?”
“Nearly all of them,” Lyric admitted, “Not many herbivores do well on the tundra. There isn’t much to eat.”
“Even the deer drink blood,” Cas explained.
Poppy didn’t keep her dagger far after that. They cooked some of the animals and she noted how similar it tasted to elk meat. Not like she’d had elk meat much, but once Uncle Monty had taken her up into the Rockies to an off the grid farm and she’d tasted elk. And it tasted like this. She wondered if Uncle Monty knew where she was, if they believed her dead at the Academy and if word reached the Fengari.
Poppy’s brows knit together as she considered the Fengari were likely the only people who knew with certainty that she was alive. Queen Sibyl hadn’t bothered to enter her dreams anymore, not since Poppy actually needed her. They packed up and proceeded to trudge through the snow the next morning. With meat in her belly, Poppy’s stomach didn’t gnaw at her constantly and she had the energy to sort-of keep up with the others. She knew she slowed them down, being at least a foot shorter than the shortest one, with a much more slender frame, but nobody made any bother about it.
If Oz were here, he would have chided her probably, Poppy thought. It was strange that she missed his pestering. He’d been a nuisance at times, but not a bad person. She hoped that he’d survived the cold or perhaps had been rescued.
“How likely are we to see another pod out here?”
Poppy asked the question when they’d stopped around midday for a spicy tea, water and a bite to eat.
“I’m surprised we haven’t seen one yet,” Antigone answered.
The other Devorans solemnly agreed with her, that it was strange for no other pods to have crested the horizon and sailed across the tundra. She walked next to Ajax after lunch. She hadn’t seen him for hours and missed his upbeat attitude and his wild, adventurous spirit. He was the only one who seemed to be enjoying the unintended expedition.
“I can taste your worry.”
“I know,” Poppy replied, “I’m tired of being sorry for it.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. We’ll make it Penelope. I’ve been through worse.”
“With your parents?”
“I was shipwrecked off the Northern peninsula when I was ten. My father and I lived on a lifeboat for five weeks. We ate raw fish every day.”
“Ew!”
“It wasn’t so bad. Going to the bathroom was much much worse.”
Poppy shuddered to think. Ajax’s stories about his expeditions with his family of scientists at least boosted their moods and kept everyone distracted until the twin suns split apart on their journey beneath the horizon. Night was coming and with it, another watch and perhaps another beast.
At their new campsite, there was no large thicket
of trees to cover them and they were forced to make camp between a few sparse trees and fire with as many twigs as they could collect. Lyric cut off a handful of her hair for kindling and they sat with their rations, each one of them out of breath.
“I don’t know how you’re keeping up,” Lyric said, “You’re human. Only one heart, then?”
“I don’t know either,” Poppy responded.
It was her will to live perhaps, or strength she’d gained from the boys, or perhaps something happened to her when she lived with the Fengari. Lyric insisted on taking the first watch with Antigone. Poppy slithered into bed between Castor and Jason. Castor pulled her close into his embrace and Jason’s leg lolled over theirs. Ajax slept on his back, snoring, his scars heaving in and out of Poppy’s view. Creatures that could hurt Ajax like that lurked in the darkness.
She shuddered, but soon fell asleep, too tired from the day’s hike to protest her drooping eyelids. A sharp scream awakened her, then the electric sound of weapon fire. Poppy shot straight up out of bed. Jason and Ajax scrambled outside and she tied her cloak around her chin to follow them.
By the time they’d left the tent, a grim scene lay before them. Antigone stood wide-eyed, scanning the darkness past the fire with a glowing yellow gaze and her weapon cocked.
“We heard a voice. Lyric wandered out but she’s gone. I heard her scream, and then she vanished.”
“Wake the others,” Castor commanded, “She can’t have gone far. Do you think it was an animal?”
“No. A voice. I’m telling you. A Devoran voice.”
“Your mind might have played tricks on you,” Jason suggested.
“If you boys question me one more time, I’ll send you out towards it with a gun to your back.”