“Wild Girl, it’s me.” There was a hint of laughter in his voice. “When the Captain sounded General Quarters and all the alarms were screaming that the launch doors had begun to open I rushed down here. Only one person could cause so much trouble in just a few moments.”
I was hearing things. That was the only plausible answer. I was living in a fairytale I’d written for myself to protect against the pain.
“It’s me.” Warm breath tickled my cheek and then softness as someone kissed it, so gently.
My eyes flickered open. His face was different and the same all at once. My eyes traced the chisel of his jaw - a little stronger than I’d remembered it - and the lines around his eyes, the thicker bulk of his arms under his uniform. The insignia marked him as a pilot first-class.
“Rusk?” My voice shook, and I stretched my free hand to his face, cradling his cheek. If this was a dream, then I wanted to keep dreaming it.
“Yes, Tylira. It’s me.”
Memories flooded me. I remembered dancing with him in Al’Karida and when he rode with me in the pannier after he rescued me with Graxx. I remembered waking up beside him in Jakinda’s old room and in my bunk on the Event Alura, and when we met the day that we arrived on the ship for the mission to Everturn …
Oh! I gasped as one memory rocked me after another. The first time he teased me while I was plotting the course under Captain Bhatia’s close eye. The time we snuck a kiss while we were changing out filters on the environmental deck - our first kiss. The day he put the ring on my finger in front of our friends and family as we said our vows. They came so quickly that I couldn’t quite catch my breath.
“It’s really you,” my voice broke at the end. It couldn’t be. I didn’t dare hope … and yet.
I clasped him around the waist, looking deep into his honey-brown eyes and something so electric filled me, that it made all our love in the past fade in comparison. I stretched up to him and kissed him as passionately and thoroughly as I could.
I felt him gasp and almost sob under the force of my kiss. His hot tears burned my cheeks and lips and then mine were mingling with them and we leaned on each other for support. His arms wrapped around me, and his kiss was a promise and a certainty all rolled into one.
It was a long time before I wanted to speak.
“At the end, all I had was love. Love for you.”
“In the end, it’s all any of us has.” He kissed my forehead right at the hairline. His kiss was reverent.
“Somehow you knew that we would see each other again. How?”
He laughed, and it felt actually real like his heart was light.
“I’ll always be there when you wake up, even from death.”
My eyes sparkled with tears of joy.
“I think,” I said, “that I might believe that.”
And with that, my last despair snapped and nothing was left but fullness and joy. He kissed me and sent sparks and lightning down my spine. I could remember all the kisses I ever had with the Prince of Hawks and I was beginning to remember the kisses I’d had with Rusk Hawkwing, pilot on the Event Alura and my very best friend. My lip began to tremble just a little as I realized that there were many more to come.
“Thank you for giving yourself for me, Wild Girl.” His whisper was husky. “You saved us all.”
“I did?”
He laughed. “There are some people who want to see you, if you’re ready.”
“There are other people here that I know?” my voice carried all my awe. His warm smile stabbed deep into my heart, warming me to the core.
“How much do you remember?” He stabbed at the datastream, and the boat bay doors closed, silencing the alarm.
“My memories are coming back slowly.”
“That’s to be expected,” he said, releasing the locking mechanism on my chair and offering me a hand. I followed him out of the Tooth. “You were the only one injured in the process, so you were in stasis for a lot longer than the rest of us. You were supposed to be out cold for another week. You surprised us all by waking so soon - but we should have known. Nothing - not even dying - can keep you down for long.”
Rusk led me across the boat bay, his warm hand surrounding mine. It was the most comforting feeling I could imagine.
“Was any of it real? My whole life …”
“It was all real,” Rusk said. “We’ve lived two lives, and it was all real.”
“I don’t understand. Are we in Ra’shara?”
“No.” He led me up to a lift and slid his fingers through the command codes in the data stream. “We’re before Ra’shara. I’d explain it all, but the Captain begged me to let her explain. I don’t think she’d ever let me fly again if I stole the honor from her.”
He smiled as he gently guided me to stand on the lift. I remembered what it was just before the ceiling above us opened, blue light filled my vision, and I soared upwards, slowing gently, and then stopping just before the floor reformed under my feet.
A transparent dome covered the broad deck so that it looked like I could step right off the edge of the floor and fall into the stars. They twinkled just outside my reach, the closer ones appearing to move in a trail of dust beside us. Ahead, a gem-like sphere loomed large: the planet I remembered. And all around it was a blue glowing haze wrapped in streams of interwoven symbols like the entire place was wrapped in its own ko.
My emotions chose that moment to burst like a dam flooding the plain below. I fell to my knees, clutching my face in my hands, letting the overwhelming sadness of all I’d been through and shock of this new place wash over me like waves on a shore. The world below was so beautiful, why did it feel like it was a part of me?
Rusk’s arms wrapped around me, and he held me tight, there on the deck, looking out across the stars and the glow of the planet.
“It’s going to be alright, Wild Girl. We’re safe, and things are better than you can even imagine.” He kissed my hair.
I stood with his help, letting the tears stream from my eyes, mingling with the overpowering beauty of the world beyond the dome. I realized, then, that the blue patterns coming from that world led to our ship by a tiny ghost thread. I followed the thread with my eye to its source – a raised dais in the center of the deck. I didn’t remember this at all.
I drew close, stepping up on the dais. In the center was a pedestal and spinning so fast I could barely see the details of it, was the scintellex. I reached out, letting my fingers stop just inches away. I could feel the power, but I could also feel the connection to it. It unwove me once. Rusk put a hand on my arm, stopping me before I could touch it.
“It’s returning your memories to you bit by bit, even as it spins a new world into being. Remarkable, don’t you think?”
I spun, and there, stepping off the lift, was An’alepp. She was so much younger, in her late forties perhaps, and beautiful in her own way. Her uniform was topped with a peaked cap and she moved with the trained certainty that Jakinda had always moved with, like she knew how to use her body for deadly things.
“Well done, faithful daughter,” her smile was glassy with emotion.
My brow furrowed and then she embraced me with so much enthusiasm that I was knocked temporarily off my feet.
We broke apart and she grabbed my shoulders her face full of pride. I glanced at Rusk, but his grin was broad and he just shook his head indulgently.
“I was worried, I won’t lie. It looked almost unattainable before the end, and yet … here we are. You did it. A new world!”
I straightened my shoulders, wiping my eyes hastily. “I need to say ‘thank you,’ An’alepp – for your sacrifice, for your trust.”
“Of course, daughter.” Her face beamed with pride.
“And now,” I said, clearing my throat around the heavy lump that still filled it. “I think I’d like some answers.”
“Of course.”
She led me to a bench and we sat, facing the planet before us. Rusk hovered at my side, almost as i
f we were still chained together. It felt strange to have the tether gone. It had linked us for so long.
On the planet, wherever the blue weaving touched the surface subtle changes sprung up. I could see what it was doing, almost - if I crossed my eyes - but not quite.
“Who am I, really?” I had to start somewhere, and that seemed safest.
“You are Tylira Nyota, gifted astrophysicist, twenty-five years old and a member of the Event Alura crew. And a bit of a tough woman to lead, if you’ll forgive me saying so. Just like her mother.”
“You,” I realized.
She smiled.
“Why me?” I asked.
“All of you had the same goal, though none of you knew it. In the end, you were the one who succeeded.”
“The prophecies,” I said.
“Guideposts to show you the way. We couldn’t tell you outright or it wouldn’t work. Although you have a strong mind. It seems your conscious mind back here was communicating with your spirit despite being in stasis.”
The voice I heard directing me! That was one puzzle solved.
“What were we doing?”
“You were birthing a new world. A hope for us all.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand … don’t remember.”
She smiled and pointed to the planet before us. “We lived there in peace for thousands of years, but all things end, and we were … careless. An event … in your most recent life, you’d call it a cataclysm … destroyed our world. We fled to the Event Alura and her sister ships. Every living human is aboard them and they are monstrous in size – far bigger than the ones you encountered in your journey.
“Our dead planet hung in space like a corpse. We couldn’t flee anywhere else and arrive in a time frame that would keep the people fed and alive. Not overfilled like we are. But it was you who had another idea. It was you who found a way to tap dark energy – a spiritual energy. But we needed someone to direct it. What you experienced as a life on that world was you - and your team - building a new world through your minds.”
“So, all of it – the history I was taught, the cities I saw, the people I knew. They,” I choked, thinking of Jakinda, Kjexx, and Alsoon. “Weren’t real?”
“They were real and not real, both at once.”
I swallowed. “I don’t think I understand.”
An’alepp looked out to the stars. “You will in time, when your memories and education return. In time, all this will make sense to you, and when it does you’ll realize there was no other way.”
“It’s easy for you to say that.” I couldn’t keep the bitter note out of my voice.
“Easy?” Her gaze met mine, bitter to equal my own. “I watched you die, daughter. I was with you all along the way, feeling your hurt, tasting your pain. It was not easy.”
I bit my lip. Hadn’t I been willing to give anything to save my people? I just hadn’t realized who they were.
“It built us a world for all these people?” I asked.
“You birthed it with us, through pain and destruction, so that now others can live in peace.”
I nodded. It felt right, somehow, although I didn’t really understand it all yet. When my memories returned, I hoped I would be as confident as she was.
“And now?” I asked.
“The final touches are almost complete. Our best pilot will direct us into orbit and in a few days our first team will land on the surface to reclaim this planet for humanity.”
I looked out at the bright planet, letting myself really see it. Somehow, I’d birthed that through my pain. Somehow, I’d made something so beautiful. I’d thought my gift was to unweave, to destroy, but all along I’d been building something new and glorious. I felt torn between satisfaction and anguish. I reached out and took Rusk’s hand, gripping it tightly.
“And the people I knew in that life?” I didn’t look at her. My eyes were full of our future home.
“Some are with us.”
“And the others?”
“Give it time, and they will make sense, too.”
I swallowed the tears that threatened to take me. I’ll never forget you, Alsoon. I’d never forget any of them.
I turned from the glass to look hard into her eyes. The pride in them was overwhelming. It warmed my hollow heart.
“Thank you,” I said, managing a bittersweet smile for her.
An’alepp’s smile was unmixed joy.
“I want to watch us fly to orbit. Can I watch the pilot?” I asked. I glanced up at Rusk. It’s what would have fascinated Rusk the most about this – a flying ship so far up it was in the stars. Nothing would have made the Prince of Hawks more giddy than that.
“I thought you might want to,” Rusk said. “But before you do, I think there are a few people who want to be sure you made it out alive.”
I followed his gaze to where the lift was rising through the floor. Three people in uniforms identical to my own stepped out.
I knew the face of the first one. Jakinda.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry for everything,” I said, as soon as she was close enough.
“There’s no need for apologies, Tylira. We were … we were shadows of ourselves back there. And before your memories of your life on Everturn fade, I need you to know something.”
I swallowed hard before looking at her and squaring my shoulders. She had every right to throw my actions in my face if she wanted to. I’d been terrible and selfish and she’d died for me despite it all.
Jakinda smiled at my posture, and her expression seemed almost motherly. “It was a privilege to serve with you. Thank you.”
My eyes widened. I didn’t have time to feel the weight of the surprise in the following tide of relief and absolution. She’d forgiven me, despite it all. What kind of person can give so precious a gift?
Her smile broadened and she said, “Buhari told me to tell you that the same goes for him.”
Buhari! The smile I gave her was filled with shared joy. If I could have chosen people who deserved a better ending, Jakinda would have been at the top of my list. Right alongside the next face.
Kjexx stepped out from behind her, winking at me as if no time had passed since he was holding my hand and helping me die.
“Kjexx!”
“I should warn you.” He looked so odd without his ko shining above his head. “I’m not in love with you, and as flattering as that whole thing was, it was only our shadow selves.”
“Listen,” I said, “I know that with everything I did, that it’s going to be hard to forgive me. I don’t know why I was so …”
“...impulsive, headstrong and demanding?” Kjexx asked, but he winked again.
“Yes.” I looked at him if daring him to say he was done with me.
“Shadow self,” Kjexx said with a laugh. “You had to go through all of that to be who you are now. So did I. It was too important not to.”
He embraced me, brother-like and stepped aside as the third figure stepped forward. She, alone, had red-rimmed eyes from crying.
I gaped at her. I could remember laughing with her and running down the ship passageways with her beside me. She had none of her usual haughtiness.
“Do you remember me?” she asked.
“I remember High Tazminera Amandera Mubaru,” I said, but even as I said it a stream of memories of a perfect woman in a gorgeous sarette with piercing eyes, flooded my mind. Her face was cold, laced with something that made her eyes hard – disappointment? “And I remember something else…”
“Yes?” Her eyes widened, her words coming just a bit too quickly.
“Were we friends?”
“Yes,” her face crumpled as she said it and she rushed to hug me.
I gasped, and yet… it felt natural like we used to embrace before.
“You look like your heart is breaking,” I said to Amandera as she broke out of the embrace.
She choked on a sob, drew in a huge breath and then nodded. “ It’s just… I lost someone.”
“Catane,” I said.
She nodded and I hugged her again, feeling her shaking in my arms. To think that I was friends with Amandera! That I was hugging her because she’d lost Catane in a different life we had both shared. That all of us were alive and whole. I shook my head in wonder.
“There will be time for more reunions later,” An’alepp said - or should I be thinking of her as the Captain? Or as ‘Mother?’ “We need to enter orbit again, and Tylira would like to see that. The rest of us can wait to talk everything through with her after that.”
She led me to one side of the deck, slid her finger against a pad on a pedestal and the floor sunk into stairs that led down to a deck below. The same transparent screen wrapped around it, but there was a huge holographic array and a single pilot seat below.
“We asked our best pilot to do the honors,” An’alepp said with a smile.
Rusk took my hand and led me down the steps. I paused on the last one to look back at An’alepp over my shoulder. She smiled, and then as both my feet stepped on the floor she swiped a finger and the stairs and door disappeared.
I was left with Rusk on the flight deck with the view of the planet. He sat down in the seat and his hands worked with expert craftsmanship in the display, piloting our ship. In the display, I saw the icons of the rest of our fleet fanning out behind ours.
“So, you are our best pilot?” I asked, nervous suddenly.
“Well, I am the Prince of Hawks.” His grin was infectious.
On either side of us, out the windows, huge blue planes spread out from the ship. The astrophysicist in me remembered they were force fields used to catch solar winds, but the Tazminera in me thought they looked almost exactly like Rusk’s great blue spectral wings that had borne us safely down from the Rainbow Shrine.
I looked over his shoulder, enjoying the way his hands moved with their familiar grace, exactly the way they had when he piloted the shuttle that we landed on Axum. The ship slipped slightly to one side, and then a pattern appeared on the holographic display that I remembered meant we were locked now into autopilot, orbiting the planet. Satisfaction crept up to join the ache in my heart.
“It wasn’t a real job so much as an honorary one,” he said, standing again.
Thunder Rattles High (Unweaving Chronicles Book 3) Page 19