Beneath the Floating City collection

by Donna Maree Hanson

  ‘Other?’ I asked, searching for a sign of it, as I always did, since the time it first spoke to me. In the beginning, I thought it was a delusion, but the auto-meds didn’t detect a chemical imbalance in my brain to explain it. So I stopped wondering after awhile and accepted it. The Other was either me, or it was something alien, an expression of a planet shocked into being by a catastrophic event that threatened its existence.

  The heaviness fractured, the presence fled. ‘Other!’ I called, suddenly chilled by that feeling of aloneness.

  In puzzlement I turned on the ship’s scanners, watching the telemetry readouts. They phased in and out. After I tapped the unit, the readout stabilised. I stared at the screen. I had never seen readings like those before. It took a while for my brain to calibrate, anticipate, extrapolate…

  ‘No…it can’t be.’ My voice was a thin trail of saliva trapped sound.

  I accelerated, leaving a moisture trail in the upper atmosphere as I zeroed in on the co-ordinates. I watched the readouts, like a countdown.

  ‘Other,’ I whispered, but there was only silence.

  As I neared my destination, I saw it, a tendril of purple, spreading out like an infection.

  It was a nightmare, a reoccurring dream. I’d seen its like before, in those frigid dreams of mine. The grasping hand of death as it spread through the mousolis. It couldn’t be real. I closed my tired old eye, trying to shut it out. If this was reality, then reality meant failure, failure meant meaninglessness and that meant a wasted life. My life.

  I flew over, counted them. Five interlopers, five who ignored the warning buoys, five who prospected for something of value within the crust of Halfen.

  I banked right, gaining altitude. Already the destruction had spread but that did not stop these beings. They couldn’t see it. Their greed led them on.

  I landed on a patch of desiccated ground, already darkening from their touch. I had never set foot on this continent before. I found that I couldn’t now.

  Fear and self-loathing held my foot immobile. Trembling, I had to tell myself over and over again that the damage was done, that my foot would not make a difference. But the impediment was there, the internal command to do no ill.

  I felt the thick, dense presence of Other strongly here, poised in outrage. I reacted as if it was storm raging, my breath shortening, my eyes dilating, my skin throbbing.

  ‘Other,’ I choked out in a raspy whisper. The sense of Other’s nearness splintered as my boot hit the ground.

  I took a step. How did this happen? Dry sobs stole up my throat. They shocked me, controlled me.

  Foot after foot I drew closer to the visitors. A terrible sound drifted close. At first, I thought my aural device was malfunctioning. I jiggled it, pulled at it, extracted it and shook it. Sliding it home, I heard it again. A drawn out wail that chilled the metal in my teeth implants, sending shredding vibrations into my head.

  Over the rise, I trod until I saw them. Eager hands reached out, contorted bodies writhed and grasping limbs struggled. I tumbled down the rest of the slope and landed close to one of the interlopers. They were human throats that made those sounds. I tried to take in their predicament. The man closest to me was half-submerged in the soil to around mid thigh. Terror gripped the man’s throat, an unending keening that made me think my own skin was being sloughed off by it.

  I crawled to the woman, helmet discarded, tears and snot trailing from her face. She had fallen sideways, the ground slicing across her hips and half her abdomen. I could only stare. She was so much like Sal, with brown hair, yellow skin and white teeth, that my body shook with recollection. I was seized by the memory of touching her with my hands and my lips. But the memory of Sal’s face smiled. It wasn’t stretched into that awful grimace.

  I dragged myself upright, my eyes taking in the intruders all in a similar state. I hadn’t sunk beneath the ground so I didn’t think that it was soil instability. But why were they screaming?

  I backed away, wishing that I couldn’t hear, wishing I was back on the Destratic continent with Other for company.

  ‘Other,’ I called out.

  No reply, but I felt its presence again, the denseness building to suffocating levels.

  I scanned the area. There was nothing there but these humans. I was human.

  The first man lifted his leg. I screamed, my voice joining with theirs.

  A half-eaten stump of the man’s leg, thumped the ground, and was sucked back in, dragging the man with it.

  Then I understood. I jumped backwards. ‘Other!’ I called, head searching, scanner pinpointing.

  ‘You?’ I felt Other’s bone crushing response.

  ‘What is happening? I’m afraid.’ My chest felt constricted. My heart felt ready to burst.

  ‘You.’ Other spoke to me, still and quiet from the centre of itself. I was conversing with the eye of a storm.

  ‘Yes. It’s me. Why are you killing them?’

  ‘Them?’ A squall of outrage buffeted me.

  ‘Yes, them.’

  I swivelled my head but there was no one else to be seen. No Other personified.

  The spreading blackness of the dying mousolis etched itself onto my mind. As it spread, so did the gnawing darkness inside of me. It was if that decay was me. It represented what I truly was. ‘You must not kill them,’ I called to Other.

  ‘Them?’

  ‘Them,’ I shouted, pointing towards the slowly sinking humans. The woman was chest deep, blood coughed through her pain-gripped lips.

  ‘Them…remember them.’ The heaviness roiled. I felt my head succumb to the pressure, felt my bones contract.

  ‘Them?’ I asked, though the understanding that I felt lurking chilled me.

  ‘Yes…remember them. Remember what they did.’

  I tried to back away from the dissolving humans. But my feet had sunk into the ground. I lifted a boot and the sole peeled away. The other foot sunk lower.

  ‘Other?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Stop. I am your friend.’

  ‘Friend? You?

  ‘Yes that’s right. Me.’

  ‘I remember them.’

  ‘Yes, you remember them. They are not the same them. But it’s the same me. Don’t do this to me.’ I was begging, fearing the death that I had so longed for.

  ‘You,’ Other called, its voice grating and deep.

  ‘Yes…Other.’

  ‘I remember you.’

  ‘Me?’ I screamed as I was sucked further down. Then a memory that sharpened my dull senses sprung out of me, out of my fear. Me and Sal running through the plains of Tuemy, the first feet to touch the surface. We were so filled with joy, with the open space, that we had rolled around, stripping off our ship suits to press our flesh together. I tasted her sweet mouth, smelled her musky scent and while I sowed my seed, our presence had sown the seeds of death for Halfen. Beneath our naked skin, talons of decay spread out, fanning in all directions without end.

  It was me, in my haste; me, who soiled this planet with my presence. That is why I stayed. I had given myself to save the Sinastic Continent…and failed.

  Author Note

  This is one of my earlier stories and I can’t quite remember the genesis of it. I know I liked the idea of the planet being sentient and the idea of repentance and service. Obviously I liked the that that Devlin failed. It is symbolic I think about standing against change and not succeeding.

  Abandoned Time

  In abandoned time, leaves long bled of colour cling to clawed and blackened branches and those that have fallen lay among the bare roots, rotting but never deteriorating into humus to join once again with the circle of life. Shadows caught mid-crawl are frozen and stale, like shattered moments ripe with tears that have been thrust into the past and forgotten. There are echoes of echoes here, empty whispers where all meaning has floated away, gradually decayed by time until the once sharp thoughts become fragile and faint.r />
  I tread the land of abandoned time, at first as a tourist, though circumstance made me its prisoner. I pass under the trees with leaves frozen mid-flutter as if hushed by a small puff of God’s breath. The sky is always the same, the sun neither rising nor setting, its pallid hand like a dying man’s stretching grasping fingers over the horizon. Futile is the sun’s attempt to break the day or bind the night, it is caught in null time’s thrall.

  In between time worn sandstone pathways I walk in search of he who led and left me here. My heart is slowing and soon this time, this place, will cool my blood and make my mind forget to inhale the remnants of countless exhalations and sighs.

  The grove up ahead is like a fake floral arrangement left too long in the sun and whose petals are fading to sepia and turning up at the edges. It fascinates me and I hurry to it, though my breath burns in my throat. My heart is beating with a painful fractured drum.

  There among the crispy autumn leaves with the last vestiges of colour painted along their veins he lies. His face is pale in the moment of death, but I see that perhaps he is not dead at all, but hovering on the cusp of it, waiting for the one who loves him to forget the strong line of his jaw, the fond contours of his widow’s peak and the slightly crooked teeth which often graced his smile. Farther on, I see the dried bones of former travellers, who perhaps entered here long ago and the memory of them has passed out of existence as time elsewhere moved on.

  My gaze now is tinged with red. My time is ending, as the shunned memories of eons press against me. I lay down beside him, rest my head on his still chest and listen as my heart slows and my blood congeals, as the air whispers from my lungs never to return. And then as I am forgotten, as my deeds have been swept away by the gentle winds of time, I will decompose into the leaf mulch that never stirs in the wind, that never completely rots, but is abandoned and forgotten for all time.

  Author Note

  This idea for a flash fiction piece came to me listening to an Italian folk singer. He sings about il tempo abandnado – Abandoned Time-well that’s how I heard it and I thought about how this could be. A place where time has leaked away and I conceived it then of a place where time travellers can become trapped and as the universe forgets them they slowly fade as if they never were.

  Publication History

  ‘Beneath the Floating City’ was first published in Anywhere But Earth, 2011, coeur de lion.

  ‘Green, Green Grass of Homeworld’ was published in Belong, 2010, Ticonderoga.

  ‘Night of Masks and Spears, was published in Masques, 2009, CSFG Publishing.

  ‘Warning Buoy’ was published in Deep Space Terror, 2010, Static Movement.

  ‘Lake Absence’ has not been published previously.

  ‘Other’ was published in Elsewhere, 2003, CSFG Publishing.

  ‘Abandoned Time’ was published in Flashspec Vol 2, 2007, Equilibrium Books

  About Donna Maree Hanson

  Donna Maree Hanson is a traditionally and independently published author of fantasy, science fiction and horror. She also writes paranormal romance under the pseudonym of Dani Kristoff. Her dark fantasy series (which some reviewers have called ‘grim dark’), Dragon Wine, was published by Momentum Books (Pan Macmillan digital imprint). Part one: Shatterwing and Part two, Skywatcher are out now in digital and print on demand along with two new instalments, Deathwings, Part three and Bloodstorm, part four. The four Dragon Wine books are available in ebook and print.

  In April 2015, she was awarded the A. Bertram Chandler Award for ‘Outstanding Achievement in Australian Science Fiction’ for her work in running science fiction conventions, publishing and broader SF community contribution.

  Donna also writes young adult science fiction, with Rayessa and the Space Pirates and Rae and Essa’s Space Adventures out with Escape Publishing. Opi Battles the Space Pirates was published independently in 2017.

  Her first Indie published book, Argenterra, was published in late April 2016. Argenterra is the first in an epic fantasy series (the Silverlands) suitable for adult and young adult readers. Oathbound and Ungiven Land complete the series and these are available in ebook book and print.

  In 2016, Donna commenced her PhD candidature researching feminism in popular romance at the University of Canberra. Donna lives in Canberra with her partner and fellow writer Matthew Farrer.

  Donna Maree Hanson’s Books

  Love and Space Pirates series (science fiction romance)

  Rayessa and the Space Pirates

  Rae and Essa’s Space Adventures

  Opi Battles the Space Pirates

  Dragon Wine series (dark fantasy)

  Shatterwing

  Skywatcher

  Deathwings

  Bloodstorm

  Silverlands series (epic fantasy)

  Argenterra

  Oathbound

  Ungiven Land