His expression was grave, his lips firm and his eyes wells of emotion. “I know.”
“I’m not ready. It’s taking everything from me.”
“Death does that.”
I tried to smile for his sake. “I think you promised you’d hold my hand.”
He took my other hand in his so he was gripping both of them and raised them to his lips. “I did.”
I couldn’t remember why he cared so much about me. But I knew he trusted me and I let that trust fill me.
Beside me, I heard Catane whispering frenetically. “Not done. Never done. No time to rest.”
I glanced at him and he reached for me, unweaving as he did so. Just as he was about to pull a thread loose he cried out and lost his grip. Beside him, Garedun froze suddenly, salt rushing up his body, leaving him a crystalline pillar.
“No!” Catane screamed, his tone almost as wrenching as when he lost Amandera. I felt tears prick my eyes. I slipped back to reality, my vision swimming.
“Are you back with me, Wild Girl?” Rusk asked. How long had I been out this time? “Can you try one more time to stop Catane? He’s stopped our advance.”
“Get me closer,” I whispered, and somehow he heard.
We swooped towards the earth, and before me, I saw Catane throwing lightning at a band of Eaglekin that had gathered back together and were chasing down fleeing Veen soldiers. How was he still fighting without the power of an ancestor to aid him?
And there it was. His tattoos glowed blue, and I watched as he sucked power from them to fight. He’d kept a backup plan on him all along. I pulled on the Common and unwove a thread right in front of his face. He countered it with his own lash, but then it faltered and he sank to his knees.
Below us, our troops surged forward, Veen fleeing before them. Cries of triumph filled the air and Rusk soared upwards to the heavens. I couldn’t remember any more why this battle had been so important, but I felt my heart soar all the same. We rose higher in a spiral and below me, I saw a man with golden tattoos fall upon the muddy ground, spreadeagled across it.
Relief washed over me, and I blinked back tears. Who was he? Why did I feel safe at the sight of him still and lifeless in the dirt?
“We did it, Wild Girl,” Rusk whispered. “But that tether of yours is sucking all the power from me. I don’t know…”
We dropped, suddenly, like a stone into a pond.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
RUSK THRUST HIS WINGS OUT, and our plummet slowed. Ra’shara overlaid my vision so that I was seeing both at once. I was falling with Rusk, I was lying on the ground. He had his arms wrapped round me, Kjexx held my hands.
“I’m scared,” I said, my voice trembling my lower lip shaking so badly that now I couldn’t stop the tears that blurred my vision and fell like rain.
“I’m here,” Kjexx and Rusk said together.
“I’m not strong enough,” I said.
“Don’t lose heart,” Kjexx said. “You’re more than strong enough. You just don’t remember. I’m here to help you remember.”
And then the pattern the scintellex had laid out over the world was complete. I knew it because flames engulfed everything. They must have been spiritual flames, because our troops were cheering in the distance, unaffected by the fire that burnt away the last impurities in Ra’shara and Everturn.
Kjexx’s hands gave mine one last squeeze, and then he froze, a salt statue where he had crouched beside me. I felt a stab of pain, gasped and sucked in a long trembling breath. I couldn’t remember who that statue was supposed to be of. Was he someone dear to me? Why couldn’t I remember? What did I have left? I was losing everything! Had I lost something?
We fell with a crash. Rusk’s wings were gone and only the gaze of his honey brown eyes was left to hold me. We lay side by side, dashed on the rocks, unable to stand, or even move.
He reached a hand for me and with the last of my strength, I took it.
“I love you.” My whisper was almost too faint to hear. I did love him. It was the only thing I could remember. The only thing I had left.
“It’s not over, Wild Girl. The best is yet to come.”
Tears filled my eyes. Was something else going to come? The fires rippled over us, feeding on my soul, unwinding and unweaving me in the terrible process of death.
“I believe with all my heart, that there is more.” His whisper was almost too faint to hear. “That our love doesn’t end here. That there is something that comes after that will be enough to have made all of this worth it.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” I gasped.
His eyes flickered shut and then open, his breath growing shallow.
“Tylira,” he said. “I love you, heart of my heart.”
“I love you …” What was his name? I couldn’t remember. But the love I felt for him filled me, burning through me like the flames all around us, purifying me.
His eyes fluttered shut and his last breath shuddered out before his chest grew motionless. The flames around us stopped. What were they doing again? Whatever it was, they must have accomplished it.
A sadness deeper than anything I had ever felt before flooded me, and I let it wash over me, fighting with the fiery love until they become one. I closed my eyes, clinging to that fire until death took me.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Dead.
Awake.
Everything was darkness, great clouds of cloying darkness like billows of rams’ wool. A faint voice called in my mind. I tried to open my eyes, but they clenched a refusal. What if there was nothing when I opened them? I was dead, wasn’t I? Would I wake in Ra’shara, a ghost among ghosts never to live again? I needed time before that happened. I clung to the darkness, fear, and loss overflowing from me in every direction. It was long moments before I could find my center again.
I steeled my courage and opened my eyes, blinking despite the low light levels. I was in a thick mass of yellow gel, in a glass and metal cylinder with readouts and seals all around me. As I slowly rose from the mass, a light liquid sprayed me down, sluicing the gel away. I held my breath, drawing it in, in, in, ready to scream. Autostasis, my mind supplied, and I let out the breath in relief. It was like I’d always known the foreign word. I allowed the jets of water to wash me, snatching at my memories, only to come up with nothing. When all the gel was gone, I climbed, wet and slippery, out of the autostasis, shivering in the cool of the dark room.
Where was I? More importantly, who was I? I couldn’t seem to remember…
I stretched my aching muscles. My shoulder was sore and difficult to move. Had something happened to it? I rolled my neck, stretched my arms, arched my back. I was whole, just very sore like I’d been through some sort of trauma. I couldn’t remember anything, not how I got here or even where else I should be. All I knew for sure was that I was supposed to be dead. Didn’t memory loss happen to people after a trauma? I’d heard that somewhere.
The room I was in was mostly bare, containing only the autostasis, a single metal chair bolted to the floor with folded clothing on it, a door, and a few darkened windows. I opened the door just a crack and peered outside.
The room beyond was large and everything in it was white and shiny, but the lights were dim and the air cool. The graveyard shift, my mind supplied, and I knew it was true. How did I know that on a starship - for that was where I certainly was - they cooled and dimmed everything during the night? Why could I remember that, but not who I was? Anxiety filled me. Did I have a reason to feel so on edge?
I wrapped my arms around myself as if I could hold all my pieces together. Maybe I could if I tried hard enough. I bit my lip. Shouldn’t I be afraid of something? Shouldn’t I be fighting something? I just couldn’t remember what it was...
I struggled against the fog in my mind. Think, Tylira! Think!
I listened carefully through the crack in the door.
Thrum. Thrum.
I knew the steady sound was a starship’s propulsion drive. Wherever I was, I wouldn
’t find answers in this room. I grabbed the clothing off the chair, struggling into the skin-tight molded suit. It was made from a thick material that was light and dense at the same time and clung to every curve of my body. A skinsuit, my mind supplied. Really? It was nothing like a sarette. I had a flashing vision of filmy translucent cloth and sand and then it was gone, a vapor in the wind of my memory.
I slipped into the larger room, my feet bare and cold on the slick floor. Mounted on the door was a screen.
Tylira Nyota. No admittance.
I touched it in wonder at the clear lettering and brightness of the words. They glowed like they were fired from within. The display changed when I touched it and a medical chart appeared, with my name at the top.
Tylira Nyota
Dislocated shoulder
Internal bleeding
Dehydration
Exhaustion
Upon completion of stasis, subject to be transferred to reintegration center on Event Alura.
Well, that explained the shoulder. Why did that name - Event Alura - seem so familiar? It carried with it feelings of hope.
I rubbed my temples, willing myself to remember as I looked around the rest of the room. There were six other doors, just like the one I just came out of. Each had a chart on it but they were all blank. So, I was alone in a sick bay - somehow that sounded right. I must be the only occupant or the other doors would have names and symptoms on them. Someone had brought me here to heal.
Quietly, I moved toward a bank of screens on the far wall. On one, a map displayed the technical blueprint for a starship - like a map. Probably, it was the one I was on right now. Another showed a planet; blue with long white strands streaming down to it and forming a pattern all around it. It was breathtakingly beautiful and my heart lurched at the sight of it. I placed my hands on the image and a name bubbled up from my memory. Everturn.
I gasped. I remembered something about flying through the air like a bird over a world that looked just like this. There had been wide, translucent wings and we - we? - were buoyed up on the air over a sparkling waterfall. My breath caught at the memory. Had I been on this planet? Was that why I was being healed? What had happened to me there?
I clutched my hands together, feeling somehow that I should be concerned for this place. I was so close to remembering … so close. Why did I feel a lingering sense of guilt when I tried to remember? Had I done something that caused everything to go wrong?
The next screen showed a phalanx of starships hanging in the darkness of space together as one herd. They were in the same group as the ship I was on. I was sure of it. I was on the Event Alura. I could see her name over one of the ships in the image. Flashes of memory were returning and in my mind’s eye, I saw the same ship mostly submerged under a lake. I’d gone inside...
It had been on that planet - my eyes tracked back to the screen showing the slowly rotating planet - Everturn. Home. A feeling of familiarity and longing washed over me at the thought.
There were others there with me. I could almost pull up their memories… an elephant. There had been an elephant. My memory of him was warm and sad. He was dead, wasn’t he? And he’d loved me. I could remember huge brown eyes and a trunk wrapped around me, but not how he died. Was it me? Had I caused his death? There was a hole in my heart from where he’d left me.
Wait, there’d been someone else. A stern woman, but watchful - Jakinda! I could see her slashing her sword and whirling in battle, sand flying up all around her and sparkling in the sun. She was dead, too. And so was my mother - I’d read that in a letter. Her large eyes, warm and safe sprung to mind. Another death.
Tears came unbidden to my eyes, flowing freely down my face. I wrapped my arms around myself, protectively. Remembering hurt too much. All I saw was a series of lost friends. I tried to keep them back, but they poured out of my memory one after another. Toure and Jakinda, Amandera, An’alepp, and Kjexx. I choked on a sob.
I had to stop remembering. I had to stop this, now! It was no use.
Rusk! His hard-planed face, his honey warm eyes, and the musky smell of him filled my memory. We stood on a cliff and his lips met mine. We lay in a bed our limbs intertwined. My heart lurched as the last image filled me. We were lying there together, broken on the ground, and he’d told me… he’d told me… oh, Sweet Penspray, he’d told me it wasn’t the end and then he’d died for me. He refused to leave me over and over again only to die right beside me.
I looked around the room - was it possible? - but the other sick bays were dark, their doors flung open, their screens blank. There was no one here but me. Was he dead, while I had survived?
I collapsed to my knees, first sobbing, and then wailing in the realization. He’d thought there would be something more, that ‘the best was yet to come’ and here I was alone and he was gone. His vibrant life just missing forever. It wasn’t right. Oh, gods above - it wasn’t right! My hands were empty, my heart churned with pain.
I couldn’t stop crying. I’d fallen to my hands and knees and I was coughing and choking on my own sobs.
All along I’d thought I was going to my death and I’d eventually accepted that, but I had never expected that he would die with me. I had never expected to have to live without him.
Rusk. Rusk. Rusk. My heart sang his name like a refrain that couldn’t stop. To escape the jaws of death should fill me with scalding joy too powerful to even hold. And yet, it wasn’t. It couldn’t be when he’d given all for me. This place could be perfection itself and never be enough without him here, too.
I don’t know how long I cried, but when I finally shook myself, wiping my face with my hands, I was weak and wrung out like a rag.
I stood up, trying to clear my nose and eyes enough to see. The last screen drew my attention. It displayed a large room. Along the edge, were a group of cylinder shaped objects. They look so familiar. There was something important about them… The Teeth of the Gods! They could fly! They could take me down to the planet and back to home.
They were my only hope - that felt right! Maybe Rusk was down there. Maybe he survived just like me and maybe whoever had captured me and brought me here would have him, too. I could help him escape. We’d be together again.
I should be careful, but I couldn’t suppress the red hot longing in me, driving me towards the planet. I needed to find Rusk, and I needed to leave right now before anyone noticed I was awake and tried to stop me.
I scanned the map of the ship looking for the boat bay. There it was. Something twigged in my memory and I quickly plotted a course down corridors and ladders that would be empty during shipboard night. How did I know that? I didn’t care. I’d sort out my memory once I’d found Rusk again.
I slipped out of the sick bay and crept down the passages. The Event Alura felt so familiar, like an old glove I’d worn until it fit my hand perfectly. There must be more to my memory of her than I could remember just now. The ladders and passages were empty and I found my way easily through the ship until I eventually reached the boat bay in the bowels of the ship.
Deja vu hit me hard at my first glimpse of the boat bay. Rusk and I had entered a bay just like this. We’d climbed up the side of a Tooth, just as I was doing now. We’d slipped inside, and sat at these very controls. But I hadn’t been the one flying it, had I? I sat at the controls, my hands hovering over the holo screen. It lit up, data streaming in front of me, but I wasn’t sure what to do next. Rusk had flown the Tooth before. I had flickering images of him with his hands in the stream, twisting and flowing to control the movement of the Tooth.
Well, I wouldn’t learn anything unless I dug in. In the corner of the stream, the words “Launch Door Open” were displayed. Oh, perfect. I should open the doors. After all, I wouldn’t get very far if I just stayed in the boat bay. My fingers hesitated over the words. Something told me I should think this through, but what was there to think about? Rusk was either dead or down there. If he was down there, I needed to get to him. If he was dead… I
sucked in a sob.
He was probably dead. After all, I’d watched the life drain out of him, but if I didn’t at least try to find him, then I had nothing left. Despair was heavy in my chest like a massive rock. I had to try. I had to.
I flicked the words and they glowed red before fading out. Alarms sounded in the boat bay. I had minutes to launch this Tooth before it would be too late and I’d be caught. I remembered that much, at least.
I tried to imitate what Rusk had done to start the Tooth, flicking through the data stream just as he had. There were a series of bangs and a rumbling sensation as the Tooth prepared for freedom. This was it. I clung to my actions as if activity could replace hope, fighting against the sinking feeling that threatened to drag me under every time I remembered anything about Rusk. Hollowness roared through me as I pushed the button that molded the seat around me and settled my hands in the data stream. All it would take to launch was a tiny movement.
Tears pricked my eyes. Was there any point chasing after a dead man? I choked back a sob, refusing to let it out. No. This was all I had left. I didn’t dare let go of it, too. If you’re out there, Rusk, then I’m coming for you.
I pushed the throttle forward.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
MY HAND HADN’T MOVED MORE than a sliver when another hand covered it, warm and strong. It pulled my hand back, arresting the thrust before it even began.
“Maybe we’d better not try a full launch from inside the ship. It might tear half of it away – along with you and me. I’m not going to let that happen after everything we’ve been through.”
My breath caught in my throat. My vision swam, my head feeling light all of a sudden and my heart racing so fast I couldn’t catch it.
I turned to see a pair of honey-brown eyes looking at me in that bone-melting way that seared me right to the core. My eyes snapped shut.
“Tylira?”
That voice. It couldn’t be. He just had the same color of eyes, that was all.
Thunder Rattles High (Unweaving Chronicles Book 3) Page 18