by J. J. Green
The first voice they heard was a young woman’s. It was tremulous. “Father?”
“Hello, Kiva. Where are you? Is everything all right?”
“No, it isn’t. I think I… I… ”
“What’s wrong? Are you still out hunting? We wondered what had happened to you. Come home now. It’s late.”
“Father, I think I might have accidentally shot a child. I don’t know what to do. Should I call for a medic?”
“A child? Don’t be ridiculous. How could you have done that? You must be mistaken.”
“I don’t think I am. It was twilight and I couldn’t see very well, only their moving shapes. There were four of them. They were running away. I shot at them, thinking they were game. Oh, Father. I hit one of them. I know I did. Pol saw it too. One of them fell down.”
Carina’s heart froze.
“I’m telling you you’re mistaken,” the man said sternly. “What would children have been doing in our hunting grounds? No Dirksen child has been shot. I would have heard about it.”
“I don’t think they were Dirksen children,” the woman said. “I think—”
“Then it doesn’t matter, does it? Come home immediately, Kiva, and never mention this again.”
The comm ended. Carina’s hand was over her mouth as she stared at the interface.
Reyes said, “I’m sorry. That might be them, right? It makes sense. If they’re from offplanet, they wouldn’t know it’s dangerous to enter woods unless they know who owns them. I seriously doubt any Ostillonian child would have been wandering through a Dirksen hunting forest.”
Carina struggled to reply. She could see visions of Darius lying dead on a forest floor. “Do you know where the comm originated?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Reyes replied. “I have the exact coordinates. It’s a hunting lodge on the outskirts of the forest by the spaceport. Strap in and I’ll take you there.”
Reyes’ star racer, as he called it, was a high-class spacecraft. Carina could barely feel or hear the engine as Reyes started it, and the ship’s motion was as smooth as silk as they flew up and away from the hospital roof. Carina guessed that the star racer’s drive included the hover technology that the Dirksens had brought to the planet.
As soon as they were high above the city Reyes accelerated. The force pushed Carina back into her seat.
“How long will it take to get there?” she asked.
“Not long. Ten or fifteen minutes,” he replied, checking the controls.
“This place is close by then?”
“No. It’s on the other side of the city. But up here we can fly direct and the star racer is fast.”
Carina was twisting her hands in her lap, trying to ignore the image in her mind of Darius dying. “So your relatives go hunting?”
“It’s a popular sport. They have forests all over the planet and hold competitions using ancient weaponry.” He glanced at her. “Sorry.”
“Do you go to them… These competitions?”
Reyes shook his head. “Not my kind of thing. Plus there’s the fact that Mother’s always there trying to partner me up with some girl or another.”
“What, other Dirksens? Do you marry your cousins?”
“Only distant ones. Don’t you?”
“No. I don’t think so anyway.” In fact, Carina had no idea how mages met each other and married. Nai Nai had never told her and during the brief time she’d spent with Ma the subject had never come up. Carina didn’t know how her parents had gotten to know each other.
“That’s another reason I want to leave the clan,” Reyes said. Mother’s obsessed with making a good match for me, as she puts it. Like I shouldn’t have any say in the matter.”
“You’re a bit young to be getting married.”
“That’s another objection of mine.”
“Do we have far to go now?” Carina asked. Perhaps they wouldn’t find anything at the hunting lodge. Perhaps the woman, Kiva, had been mistaken. Or if she hadn’t, perhaps the children weren’t Carina’s siblings.
“Nearly there.”
They continued the rest of the short journey in silence, Carina telling herself that it probably wasn’t one of her siblings who had been shot. Even if that had happened to any of them they would have Cast Heal.
The star racer slipped smoothly and quickly out of the sky. Its nose was tipped downward and the screen displayed a green expanse with a small clearing that was growing rapidly larger. At the center of the clearing a wooden building stood. The bare ground surrounding the lodge was empty.
“Wait,” said Carina. “Is there any point in landing here? If that woman did shoot a child in the forest, she probably didn’t do it right here. This is just where she was when she comm’d. And she won’t be here now. She would have gone home like her father told her to.”
“You’re right,” Reyes replied. “No one will be here at this time of day but it’s only clear space for kilometers around. If your sisters and brothers are nearby, they might have headed here.”
He brought the star racer down on the lot outside the hunting lodge and opened the hatch. The air that flooded in was fresh, cool, and scented with tree oils. Carina climbed out and scanned the surrounding trees but the space below their canopies was dark and silent.
“Hey,” she yelled. “Is anyone there? Are you hurt? We can help you.” No reply came.
Carina didn’t want to give away the names of her siblings. She’d been hoping that if they heard her they would recognize her voice, but her brothers and sisters might not reply to someone yelling Hey. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Parthenia,” she called. “Parthenia! Can you hear me?”
Her voice echoed through the trees but received no answer. Reyes strode to the edge of the clearing. “Parthenia,” he yelled. “Parthenia!”
They waited in silence as the sun crept over the tree tops and lit up the roof of the hunting lodge. They called again, but it soon became clear that if Carina’s siblings were in the forest they weren’t within earshot.
“I don’t know what to do,” Carina said, her voice thick. She could tough out almost any situation, but the idea of one of her siblings lying injured somewhere was crippling her.
“I’m not sure either,” Reyes said. “We can fly across the forest to look for them but the canopy makes it hard to see anything except trees. Oh, wait. Maybe there is a way.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Yes,” Reyes exclaimed. “I do have a scanner.” He was at the controls of his star racer. “I wasn’t sure. I’ve never needed to use one.”
“Can it tell humans from other living things?” asked Carina. “This place must be full of animals.”
“Hmm… No, it can’t,” said Reyes. “Good point.”
“And it would take us forever to scan this place anyway. It must cover hundreds of square kilometers.”
“It does.” Reyes paused. “I’m sorry. I want to help. I feel responsible.”
“Well, you didn’t shoot anyone. Or did you?”
“No! I’ve never even fired a weapon. I hate the idea of hunting, and Mother always insisted that I work in the business side of the family, not the military. But these people are still my clan, and I don’t think you would be split up from your siblings if we hadn’t captured you.”
“I can’t deny that,” Carina replied. “But I’m not giving up yet. I’m going to continue looking until I find them.” She climbed out of the star racer into the lot once more. Her gaze searched the trees that brooded over the place. If I were lost in a forest, where would I go?
Reyes joined her. “Have you had an idea?”
“Just wondering how I might try to find my way out of here if I were on foot.”
“It would be hard if you didn’t know the place well. As soon as you’re in the trees you can’t see very far ahead, and all there is to follow are bridle paths and animal tracks.”
“What about streams?” Carina asked. “They might have followed a stream, thinkin
g it could lead them to a river and people.”
“I don’t recall any streams. Wait a minute and I’ll check.”
Carina wondered how Reyes remembered being in the forest when he’d said he didn’t like hunting.
He returned from the star racer. “No,” he said. “No streams. The land’s pretty dry around here.”
As they stood and thought a shuttle passed overhead. Carina looked up. “Where’s that going?”
“How would I know?” Reyes asked.
“You seem to know a lot of things. What I mean is, is it heading to the spaceport?”
“No. It’s heading away from it.”
“So shuttles fly over the forest when they take off from the spaceport?”
“Yes. Some do. Why?”
“Because if you were lost in a forest, a shuttle might be the only sign of civilization you could see. Come on. I have an idea.”
***
“But that’s about the only place I can’t fly,” Reyes protested.
They were nearing the spaceport and Carina had announced her idea of scanning along the forest edge. It was a long shot but it was somewhere to begin their search. Carina knew she would head in the same direction as a shuttle was flying if she were lost. “Why not? I thought the Dirksens could do anything.” She needed Reyes to do as she wanted. It would take hours to search the area on foot.
“Because it’s incredibly dangerous,” said Reyes. “I’d be flying right across shuttle flight paths.”
“I think as long as you keep low it shouldn’t be a problem. The shuttles must have to clear the trees by a wide margin as a safety precaution. If you fly just above the canopy, nothing will even come close to colliding with us.”
“But then I might hit a tree instead.”
“Really? I didn’t think you were that bad a pilot.”
“I’m not a… ” Reyes exclaimed. “Huh. Very clever. Okay. I’ll try. But don’t blame me if the military arrives to escort us away.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
Reyes turned the star racer and headed in the opposite direction to the flight of the shuttle they’d seen minutes earlier. Carina was hoping that her siblings had traveled toward the spaceport and not away from it. The departing shuttles were flying in different directions, which would mean her sisters and brothers could be anywhere if they’d followed one of those.
In truth, Carina didn’t hold out much hope for her idea but it was the best one she had. If her siblings weren’t near the spaceport, they would just have to search every square meter of the forest. And she would ask Reyes to continue searching the news and comms for any sign of them. They would have to turn up somewhere. Carina only hoped that when they did it wasn’t because they’d revealed their abilities to the world.
They were approaching the spaceport, and at the same time a shuttle was approaching them, rising at a steep angle. Carina turned on the star racer’s scanner, which registered heat from living bodies. Carina could already see the moving forms of animals beneath them, otherwise invisible beneath the canopy, but she couldn’t see anything that appeared even vaguely human.
Reyes tutted.
“What’s wrong?” Carina asked.
In answer, he spoke a voice command: “On speaker.”
“Star racer pilot,” said a voice, “your craft is not registered. Who are you? Please reverse your heading immediately.”
“Spaceport Traffic Control?” Carina asked.
“Yeah,” said Reyes. “Speaker off.” He slipped his headset off his head and let it rest on his shoulders. “They’re gonna get real mad at me soon. What can you see?” He glanced at the scanner display.
“Lots of animals,” Carina said. “No people.”
“We’re nearly at the spaceport. I’ll start at the northern end and fly south.”
The star racer turned again as another shuttle passed overhead, closer this time. Carina was certain that if the shuttle’s pilot had a warning klaxon, he would have blasted it.
They reached the northern boundary of the forest, which was a highway that also ran along the edge of the spaceport. Carina peered even more keenly at the scanner. “Go as slow as you can,” she told Reyes. “We’re so near the ground I can barely register what I’m seeing before we’re a long way past it.”
What she could see were the shadowy shapes of trees dotted with the moving green forms of warm objects. Some were only sparks on the image: birds, Carina guessed. Others were long, four-legged animals with even longer tails. Other figures were more human-shaped but they were moving rapidly through the trees in a non-human manner.
They were about halfway down the line of the fence when Carina saw them: three green shapes quite close together. They didn’t look very much like people but they also didn’t look like anything else she’d seen. “Wait. I might have something. Can you circle back?”
“Are you sure it’s worth it?” Reyes asked. “I don’t think Traffic Control is going to tolerate me here much longer.”
“Just circle back,” Carina snapped.
“Okay, okay,” Reyes said.
Carina felt the star racer turn. When they arrived at the spot where she’d seen the strange forms on the scanner, Reyes hovered above it. Two of the forms had changed position. They were moving, heading away from the third figure, which Carina now recognized as a person lying down.
“Land here,” Carina commanded.
“I can’t. There isn’t room.”
“There has to be. This thing is tiny.”
“There’s no space. The trees are growing right up to the fence.”
Carina cursed. She was sure that the forms she could see were people. If they were her siblings, she didn’t know why there were only three of them. But the story of one of them being shot tied in with the person lying on the ground, and if the two figures running away were her other siblings, it would make sense for them to leave at the approach of an unknown spacecraft.
“Open the back hatch,” she told Reyes.
“What? While we’re in flight? You’re crazy.”
“Open the hatch and I’ll jump into the canopy.”
“No. You’ll kill yourself. Let me find somewhere to land then we’ll walk back to this spot. There’s probably a clearing nearby.”
“Just do what I say. Don’t worry. I’ve done this loads of times before.” Carina had never done it before but she didn’t want to waste time. They might never find their way to the spot, or find the two children who were running away.
“If you’re sure,” Reyes said. He gave the command and the hatch opened. “Make sure you jump well away from the ship. The exhaust is hot.”
Now that Carina could see the tree canopy below, she wasn’t so sure about her plan anymore. So, before she had more time to think about it, she took three fast steps over to the open hatch and leapt out.
A heartbeat later, she hit leaves and branches, breaking them and falling through until she collided with a thick branch, which knocked the wind out of her. Carina wrapped her arms and legs around the branch but the force of her fall carried her around it to the other side. She found herself clinging on upside down and struggling to breathe. Her ribs seared with pain every breath she took. She’d broken at least one rib and probably more as far as she could tell.
But she was alive. Carina wriggled along the branch toward the trunk, each movement agony. By the time she reached her goal she could breath again. She tried to inhaled deeply but stopped and gasped at the feeling of knives piercing her lungs.
She tried again. “Parthenia,” she yelled. “Oriana! Don’t run. It’s me.”
Carina climbed onto the tree trunk and half-scrambled, half-fell down the tree, stopping only once to call out to her siblings again. She hit the forest floor, covered in bleeding gashes and her chest a mess of pain. “Parthenia,” she repeated, though she couldn’t muster much volume.
The forest was silent. Had she been wrong? Were the figures she’d seen not her siblings after all? Cari
na’s eyes filled with tears. Then she heard the noise of something running—something human, and perhaps more than one of them.
A little boy burst from the trees. Darius!
“Carina,” he shouted joyfully. “I knew you’d come. I knew it.” He barreled into her, causing her to cry out in pain.
Oriana was close behind him but she wasn’t so happy to see Carina. She looked distraught. “Have you got some elixir?” she blurted. “Please, give it to me. Ferne is dying.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ferne was lying on his back beneath a tree near the fence that bordered the spaceport. He was deathly pale and the forest floor all around him was stained reddish-brown. His eyes were closed.
“I didn’t want to do it,” Oriana protested, almost hysterical. “I didn’t want to do it, but when Parthenia didn’t come back he made me. He said it was the only way he could come with us. He said either pull it out or leave him there.”
Carina guessed her sister was referring to whatever it was that Ferne had been shot with.
“So I did it,” Oriana went on. “It was hard, and I really hurt him. Then when I finally got it out, blood started pouring out of his leg. I couldn’t stop it.”
Carina turned her unconscious brother over. The wound was on the back of his thigh and was still seeping blood. She pushed the heel of her hand deep into it. Still, Ferne didn’t stir. Carina guessed he probably didn’t have long to live. If she had elixir, she might save him, but she’d drunk all of hers when she removed the tracers. They had to make some more, fast. But how?
“You couldn’t make elixir?” Carina asked. “What are you missing? What do you need?”
“We only need fire,” Darius replied. His recent joy at being reunited with Carina had entirely dissipated.
“Did you look for firestones?” asked Carina.