by Sonya Writes
Ziyad moved into the bedroom to sleep and the spaceship closed with Dakarai inside. He strapped himself into the machine and pressed ‘Launch.’ The roof opened up and Dakarai looked up at the night sky. He was going there. It was dark out and he could see the two stars the spaceship would aim for. “You’ll fly between those two stars,” Ziyad had said when they were outside. “You should be able to see them for most of the journey because they’re very far off. Between there you’ll find Earth and Ayita.”
It was a peculiar and frightening experience as the spaceship shook violently, lifting off the ground, and then shooting upward into the sky.
I wonder, he thought, if I could go fast enough to see her in front of me.
Once he got used to the feel of the spaceship he lost the will to stay awake any longer. Dakarai took the journal and wrote in large letters on the front cover: “Remember BEFORE you read.” Then he lay down on the floor and closed his eyes.
18
Ayita yawned and stretched out her legs. Two weeks had passed since she left Adonia. That’s what she estimated, anyway. She had about ten weeks left to be alone in here. The first few days she was fearful that her spaceship would be redirected again, that she would crash on another unknown planet and maybe not survive this time, but nothing happened to indicate that anyone else was directing her course.
There wasn’t much to do out here. She didn’t experience this the first time when she traveled from home to Adonia, because it was such a very short trip and she didn’t have time to feel bored. But now, she’d been out here for weeks with nothing to entertain herself but her own thoughts. She’d wanted very much to take some of the books from Adonia along with her, but decided that they should remain where they had been for years. They belonged to the people of Adonia, and Ayita did not want to take that away from them.
She went to the back storage area and looked through the packages of food for something appetizing. None of it was. She realized this in the first two days, but it didn’t stop her from rechecking whenever she was hungry. She ate the food anyway and the disposal compartment slowly accumulated the plastic wrapping.
Ayita yawned and lay down on the floor of the spaceship. It was not very comfortable at all. It was a hard metal floor and though she had a thick, warm blanket, it did not help the situation much. I should have planned better, she thought. She wondered what it was like for Etana, spending most of her life traveling like this. Reading about it was one thing; experiencing it was another.
To compensate a little for the discomfort, she bundled up her dirty clothes to use as a pillow. She lay down with her eyes to the ceiling and stared as thoughts poured through her mind. She was closing her eyes, and then she felt something under her head. It was something hard, within the clothing. She sat up and sifted through it, and in the pocket of a dirtied skirt she found the small, wooden turtle which Dakarai had given her the night of the autumn dance. He didn’t even know what a turtle was. All he knew was that she once described one to him, and from a scrap of wood he carved this because turtles were on Earth and in books, and Ayita had neither.
She thought of him and for the first time since leaving Adonia, Ayita cried. Then her thoughts turned back to her life on Zozeis. She thought about the day that Aira told her parents about the book and she in turn lied to them. When she returned home, her father was waiting up for her. Looking back, she realized, he already knew there were more books. He knew she lied before she ever returned home, but he didn’t want her to tell him that she lied. He didn’t want her to admit to lying, because if she told him about the other books he would be obligated to destroy them. He didn’t want them to be destroyed any more than she did.
“We could have shared the secret together,” she whispered. “He could have let me tell him and he could have hugged me and told me he knew already. It could have been our secret.” Tears streamed down her cheek. “We could have shared the secret together. I didn’t have to feel so alone.” She held the turtle from Dakarai in her hand, but in her heart, she was holding the one her father gave her.
Her tears stopped for a moment as she considered her father’s actions.
No, I did have to feel alone, she thought, or I wouldn’t have left. I would have stayed, just like I would have stayed on Adonia if I thought Dakarai would love me forever. My dad knew that, so he waited until leaving was my only choice. Only then did he tell me that I wasn’t alone. Somehow he knew that I had to leave, that I wasn’t meant to spend the rest of my life on Zozeis, and he loved me enough to let me go.
She looked down at the turtle again.
“But did I love you enough, Dakarai? Did I really love you? Did I keep any of my promises to you?”
Ayita burst into tears.
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t keep my promises, Dakarai. It isn’t you who needs forgiving; it’s me.” She closed her eyes and held the turtle against her heart. “Forgive me, Dakarai. Forgive me.”
Dakarai woke from a long nap and jumped at the sight of his surroundings. He was in what seemed to be a large metal ball with a flat metal floor. There was a window at one end showing nothing but blackness and white specks. Along the sill there were many buttons and switches that Dakarai was afraid to touch, and a blank computer screen. Two cushioned chairs were there in front of it. He turned to look the other way and he found a journal. Across the front he read the words: Remember BEFORE you read.
“Remember,” he said to himself. “Remember.” He frowned. “Remember what?” He was tempted to open the journal but he stopped himself and thought about it more. He asked himself why he might wake up in a setting like this and where he might be going.
No memories came to him, as much as he tried, so he had to open the journal to know. What he read confused him at first, but by the time he reached the end of the written pages he had faint memories coming back to him, and his passion for finding her had revived. He stared out the window at the specks in the sky and smiled, knowing that soon he would see her again. He had to.
This happened many times, and after the first two months he was remembering most everything in the journal upon awaking. He was proud of himself and he hoped that Ayita would be too. He had nothing else to do out here, so he spent all of his time trying to memorize the words in the journal. Little by little, it was working. His focus was on nothing else.
It finally happened that when he woke he could see the blue and green planet in front of him, the one which Ayita so dreamed about: Earth. It was only a matter of minutes before he would be on Earth, with Ayita, where he was supposed to be.
The spaceship landed in a large building with a roof that opened and closed. Dakarai stepped out of the spaceship into a large room and he called for Ayita.
“Ayita! Are you here?”
He listened. Silence. He walked through the building and checked every room, but he was alone. There was one other spaceship here aside from his and an empty docking platform where a third could land. Ayita had to be outside somewhere.
The sun was high in the sky when he stepped outside, and he heard a strange chirping sound coming from somewhere. Tall, thick grasses growing as high as his waist surrounded the building, leaving only a small clearing in front of the door. Beyond the grass were rows and rows of trees. Dakarai walked slowly out into the grassy field and soon felt a stinging sensation on his arm. When he looked he saw a small black thing there and thought at first that it was some kind of thorn which had fallen on him. He moved his hand up to brush it away, but instead of falling it was flying. It wasn’t a thorn at all. Dakarai frowned and looked at his arm again. A small pink spot appeared where the bug had been. He continued walking. There was still that same chirping sound coming from somewhere, but Dakarai lost interest in trying to find its source.
“Ayita?” he called.
Still no response.
He stepped forward and started walking through the grass. The noise startled something to his right, and he watched as a blur of tan and white darted through th
e grass and into the forest. Dakarai stood still and waited. The only movement now was that of the grass gently swaying in the wind. Dakarai closed his eyes and listened more closely. He could hear water moving, somewhere. He walked slowly through the grass until he found it. There was a small stream here that flowed through the forest. Dakarai knew that if Ayita had found it also, she’d follow to keep from getting lost. He ran back into the building and filled a pouch full of food and his journal. He didn’t know how long Ayita had been here or how far he would have to walk to find her, so he planned for a long trip just in case. Once he felt ready, he went back outside and followed the stream.
Ayita sat beside the stream to rest. The day she arrived she’d been so excited that she followed the stream until nightfall, but she found no one. She realized the next day that she needed to go back and bring more food with her. She had no idea how far she would have to walk before she would find people. It might be a week-long journey. Maybe even more. So here she was, about half a day’s walk from the space center again, and her legs were too weary to go any further.
She washed her face and hands in the water and studied all the plants around her. If she could find some that were edible, the food in her sack would last longer, but none of the plants here were familiar to her. She sighed and leaned against a tree. She closed her eyes and breathed slowly, deeply.
When Ayita woke up from her nap, her legs didn’t feel any better. She walked very slowly, dragging her feet along the ground. “How far will I have to walk?” she asked. She laughed nervously. She’d already searched this place and found no one. It was an empty world as far as she could tell. There were plants and animals everywhere, but the only sign of human life that she found was the space center. She walked for a while and then sat down beside the stream again. She pulled a package of food from her bag and ate from it slowly.
“How do these things happen?” she asked herself. “There was something great here, once. I can feel it.” She sighed. “Now I’m alone…will I ever not be? Will I ever again be with someone who cares?”
A voice behind her answered, “Don’t ask. Do.”
Startled, she turned, and there stood Dakarai, wading toward her through the stream. “Dakarai! How…?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. He smiled brightly and ran quickly to her. Her first reaction was excitement as she stared into his eyes. He knelt beside her to kiss her, and for a moment she thought she could melt with him and cherish this forever, but in the back of her mind was Kesi’s face. And Panya’s. Then there was the look he had on his face when he didn’t recognize her anymore, when he told her he didn’t know who she was. Instead of love, now she felt afraid. Ayita pulled away from him.
“I don’t know,” she said.
He looked startled and confused. “What don’t you know?”
She tried to smile but she couldn’t. “I don’t know,” she said. She stared at him. She could feel the tears in her eyes. “It does matter. How are you here?”
“I came looking for you,” he said.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense.”
“But it should.”
Dakarai laughed. “Not everything must,” he said.
“You remember me.”
Dakarai nodded. “Not everything,” he told her. “But enough. Enough to know that I needed to find you, Ayita.”
She closed her eyes to stop the tears from falling. He remembered her name. “I must be dreaming,” she whispered.
Dakarai laughed again. “No, you’re not dreaming,” he told her. “I’m here.” He touched her cheek. “And you’re here.”
She wanted to smile, but she shook her head and put her hands over her face. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure about this.” In her mind, he was gone. In her mind, they were over. She would never see him again. She longed to, but she never would. Even if she could see him, he would never remember her. These were the thoughts in her head, and this surprise of him being here was too much for her mind to process.
“Ayita,” he said softly, “you need to stop running from your problems. You keep running, and running, and sooner or later you’ll run out of places to hide, and then what will you do? You left Zozeis, you left Adonia; now you even want to run from me.”
“So what do I do?”
“Face the problems in your life, Ayita. Face them head on until you can solve them.”
“And what if you are one of those problems?” she asked. She wasn’t trying to hurt his feelings, but she genuinely wanted to know. He didn’t say anything. Ayita sighed. “I love you Dakarai,” she said. She looked him in the eyes, now. “But I’m not sure that I can spend my life with someone who, 50 years after I’m gone, won’t even remember that I existed at all.”
He smiled a little. “I won’t be alive 50 years after you’re gone.”
“All the same,” she said. “What happens when we’ve grown old together and you forget—what then? What happens when you wake up one morning and have forgotten why you love me, why we love each other? You’ll leave me for someone else, and where will I be? Alone.”
“It seems to me that one of us has already forgotten,” he said. He reached out to her and touched her cheek. Then he sighed, looked away from her and closed his eyes. “Even long after I’ve forgotten who you are, I will know that I love you, Ayita.”
They sat in silence together for a long time. Dakarai started to toss pebbles into the stream. Finally, Ayita spoke. “Dakarai, I’m scared. I’m scared to trust my heart to you again.”
He turned to face her and gently placed his hand on her arm. “I’m here,” he told her. “You said you couldn’t be with someone who would not remember you after you’re gone, but you were gone, and I remembered. I forget almost everything, Ayita. I can’t help that; I can’t change it. But it makes the few things I do remember all the more meaningful, and when you left, I remembered you. I couldn’t get you out of my head.”
She looked into his eyes and saw that same trustworthiness she saw when she first met this man. She reached out and hugged him. She cried into his shoulder and they held each other. “I love you Dakarai. I love you and I’ve missed you so much,” she said. “I never thought I would see you again.”
He hugged her a little more tightly. “I love you too, Ayita.”
Their moment was interrupted by a bright light coming down from the sky and landing at the space center. Ayita didn’t notice when Dakarai arrived because of the sun’s position in the sky, but the sun was setting now and the sight of the spaceship was far more visible.
“What was that?” Dakarai asked.
“A spaceship,” she said. “Someone else is here.”
When they arrived at the space center, they were met by a very old man who walked with a cane. It took Ayita only a moment to figure out who it was.
“Dr. Timothy Azias, I presume?”
The man nodded and smiled. His smile was still quite charming, even in his old age. “And you are Ayita, and Dakarai.”
“Why are you here?” Ayita asked. Dakarai silently listened to the conversation; he didn’t understand what was going on yet. The man seemed to know him, but Dakarai didn’t have any idea at all of who this was they were talking to.
“I came to pass on my legacy,” he said. “I am getting too old for this, and it is time for me to join Etana in sleep. As for now, I have seen the results of my experiment and have documented them thoroughly in my memoir, which will be published here on Earth and on Azias after I am gone. My life work is over, and there is only one goal which I have not reached.”
“Published, here? So there are still people here?”
The man laughed. “Yes, yes. Of course. There are plenty of people. Skillful as you are, you chose to come to the space center Etana visited most frequently when she came here to Earth, but much time has passed since then, and this area is no longer as populated as it once was. Earth has changed quite a bit. You’ll
want to go to the space center in Alberta. That used to be my most remote location, but you will have no trouble finding people there now. In fact, they will be expecting you. They are fully aware that you have arrived here, and I told them to expect you there, shortly. I have told the people in Alberta that you are my representative and ambassador, and they will treat you as an honored guest.”
Ayita pondered this and wondered what he meant in calling her an ambassador. “You came to pass on your legacy,” she said. “What do you mean by that?”
He held out an object in his hand. It was a small and flat sort of computer without a keyboard. “I mean to say,” he said, “that I am giving it all to you.”
She took the object from him and studied it.
“Everything is there,” he said. “Everything you will ever need to know, and there are more in my home on Azias if for any reason that one breaks.”
“So this…”
“Controls everything,” he said. “It controls every spaceship of mine from every planet, and holds the history log from each planet, going back hundreds of years to the time that everyone first settled there. It also contains a copy of my book, if you ever care to read it.” He said this last sentence with a smile; he knew Ayita wouldn’t hesitate to read anything.
She studied his face contemplatively. “Then you’re the one who made me crash,” she said.
He laughed. “Yes, I am. It was not time for you to come here, Ayita. You needed to see that there were other worlds of mine out there, first. You needed to personally taste the lifestyle of people who were opposite of you. Only then could you truly know compassion.”
Ayita thought of all the things Etana had written and said about this man. “And what do you know of compassion?” she asked.
He smiled knowingly and winked at her. “Nothing, personally, I suppose. But I’ve seen that for others it is a great motivator. I hope you are motivated, Ayita.”
She nodded. “I am.”