Hourglass

by Pauline C. Harris

  I nod, but feel frightened that they aren’t here yet. My mind skirts back to Prince on his knees by the edge of the cliff, cradling his broken hand, and I can almost feel the fury and rage leaking from him like a car engine about to explode. We need to leave fast. We need to leave now.

  As if on cue, Andrew walks into the hallway and we exchange a glance over the heads of everyone between us. I’m about to make my way to him when I feel an arm wrap around me and I glance over to see that Gregory has wrapped me in a hug.

  “Thank you,” he’s saying over and over again, and I can’t help but laugh. He steps back and almost trips, as if realizing that hugging the Captain might not be okay, but at the expression on my face, he relaxes. I feel a twinge in my stomach at what they all had to go through—Gregory is the youngest of all, and he spent days cooped up in the heart of the woods. Relief is coating my insides at the fact that we’re all back to the ship safe and sound.

  But not quite free yet.

  I cross the hallway to get to Andrew and he sends me a small smile. “I’m glad you made it back okay,” he tells me, looking around at the new members of my crew he hasn’t truly met yet. I get the feeling he feels lost in a sea of unfamiliarity. “Bella should be coming with the kids,” he tells me.

  My brows furrow ever so slightly. “You’re sure?”

  He shrugs. “I can hope. She seemed serious and she truly did talk to the kids—I saw that.”

  I bite my lip and sigh. All we can do is hope. And wait. At least for a little longer. Because with each passing second I’m aware that Prince could be plotting his revenge. Not for a second do I believe that I actually beat him back there at the cliff’s edge.

  Suddenly I see Andrew stumble next to me but catch himself on the wall. He glances in my direction, but his expression remains monotone. “We need to get out of here,” I declare, feeling panicked by not knowing how long Andrew has. “Where is Bella?”

  I walk out onto the ramp and scan the surrounding trees—no sign of life. I walk back inside. “Holden, Angelica, I want you in the engine room and I want to be ready to takeoff at a moment’s notice.” They both hurry off to their posts. “Jackson, Gregory, I want you on lookout for the children, and I want you watching them—I don’t have time to babysit. Sylvia...” I trail off, looking from her to Andrew. “Make sure he doesn’t die.” We both realize it’s a ridiculous order, but we’re so close—so close to getting off this planet with no problems, no casualties, everything back to normal, and I can’t stand the idea of being close but not close enough.

  I take off to the cockpit. The monitors and screens seem fine, everything looks operational, but I find myself checking everything over again and again because nothing, nothing can go wrong. We need a clean shot and this ship has to work perfectly. But then the monitor lights up and adrenaline bursts through my veins before I realize that the dozen or so heat spots on the screen can only be indicating the children. And Bella.

  I spring from my seat and back to the ramp where Jackson and Gregory are waiting with guns, just in case.

  “They’re coming,” I inform them and both look more alert. I can only hope that Prince isn’t nearby and that the children make it here in time. Just then I see a figure emerging from the woods and Bella’s blonde hair shines in the sunlight. “Bella!” I call, striding down the platform and she smiles slightly when she sees me. The children come out of the woods hesitantly at first, but then bolder once they see Bella walking right up to me.

  “They want to come,” she says, albeit a little begrudgingly. “They want to leave.”

  I scan the crowd for Win and when our eyes meet she smiles and runs forward, wrapping her arms around my waist. At the sight of this the children seem braver and they approach hesitantly, but with smiles. Jackson and Gregory’s guns are put aside as they greet the children and let the ones who want into Hourglass. Win eventually follows them inside, leaving Bella and I alone. There’s a pause.

  “I want to stay,” Bella announces. “Although I’m guessing you already knew that.”

  “I thought it was a possibility,” I admit, although I don’t understand why she’d chosen it. She knows who Prince truly is; she doesn’t even pretend to not see it. And yet, she loves him.

  “Won’t he be mad at you once he realizes you let the kids go?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “He’ll know it was you.”

  I give her one last long look before angling my body back up the ramp and saying, “Well, good luck.”

  “You too,” she says as she watches me head up and back into the ship. I enter the hallway that’s crowded with people—everyone on the ship, save Holden and Angelica, has somehow crammed themselves into this small space. I hit the button on the wall and the ramp slides up behind me.

  I scan the crowd. The faces are familiar, either from my days at camp, or from ten years ago as a child. And my crewmembers and Andrew are greeting them all, although somewhat awkwardly. I see Win a few feet away and relief floods me because a few buttons, and orders to the engine room is all we need to get off this planet for good.

  I smile down at the kids surrounding us all and am about to head to the cockpit when one child in particular catches my eye. She’s hunched against the farthest wall, set apart from the other children and the rest of the crew.

  “Hey,” I say, coming a little closer, wondering if maybe she’s just scared. The ship is large and new and all she’s known for hundreds of years is the forest and the children and Prince. “Are you okay?”

  She looks up at me, and her blue eyes are strangely blank, and as I notice her posture, I begin to wonder if she’s hurt. I glance at Sylvia, who begins to come my way, as I reach for the girl’s arm. My fingers brush against her hand and she jerks away with a cry of pain. I begin to apologize, to pull away, but then my muscles go rigid and my face forms a frown.

  Her hand is broken.

  I straighten up. But this is one of the children. She must have broken it while at the camp, or on the way here. She’s one of the children, she has to be. But then I remember what Bella told me about the girls on this planet—that Bella, Win, and I were the only ones. I glance at the floor, just to be sure, just to know that this little kid is nothing more than just that—a little kid. And my heart stops. I stumble backward, pulling the kids around her with me, and pushing them in the direction of the nearest doorway.

  No shadow. The little girl has no shadow. Andrew’s eyes meet mine over the crowd and seems to understand in exactly the right moment and pulls Sylvia away from the little girl, leaving her standing alone in the center of the hallway.

  “Nobody gets off this planet without playing by my rules,” the little girl says, her voice deceptively small and angelic, just before her eyes darken and turn black, her face morphs and suddenly Prince is standing before me, a grin stretching across his features and pouring fear into my soul.

  I dart toward the wall and Prince lunges after me, grabbing my arms and wrenching me away, but not before I have time to punch the button and hear the ramp groan as it drops open. I spin around, falling to the floor at the base of the ramp, bringing Prince with me as he keeps a tight hold on my arms. Andrew seems to get a sense of what I’m doing because he hurries to my side and pulls Prince away from me, pushing him farther down the ramp. I don’t even have to look at Prince to see that he’s furious—I can feel the heat like molten lava. This time he reaches for Andrew, punching him hard in the face, and I cringe as I hear his hand collide with Andrew’s jawbone. I’m shouting at him to get back on the ship, to get back to Sylvia, to stay alive, because we all know his time is limited here and getting in a fight isn’t going to do anything but hurt.

  But Prince is done dealing with Andrew now. He’s done with everyone getting in the way. Prince’s eyes are black and his movements sharp and fast as he comes toward me, I take an unsteady step backward, fumbling for the gun at my belt, my fingers shaking, my mind screaming, but before I can get a hold of it, Prince has reached me and his
hands shove my shoulders, jolting me backwards and I trip over the ramp. My head hits the metal with a loud crack and thump that echoes like a metallic drum, sending my ears ringing and my head spinning. Prince is a blurry image above me as I roll over onto my knees, trying desperately to get to my feet, but my head is screaming and yelling, punishing me for every move. I see something bright, shining, and silver-gray in Prince’s hands, something familiar, something that makes my stomach sick.

  “Prince!” I hear a voice call, clear but desperate, and I don’t have to turn my head to know that it’s Bella.

  He falters for a second, his head spinning in the opposite direction, but she doesn’t stop him, she doesn’t change his mind. His hands are lifted above his head and my brain hasn’t started working yet, hasn’t begun to allow me to move. I can barely make out the weapon, barely make out the bloodlust in his eyes.

  Just enough to know that I’m going to die.

  But then that voice again. Prince staggers to the side, her hand on his shoulder, just as his knife tumbles toward me. There’s a flash of blonde hair, a voice aching with pleading, and then that voice goes quiet, and Prince’s body stiffens like everything has been put on pause.

  My mind screams at me to get up, and this time I force my body out of the way, feet from Prince but still not far enough. And then I see her.

  She collapses to a sitting position on the ground, her hand on the knife jammed into her stomach, her eyes looking up at Prince, searching his for any sign, any reason why he would do this. His eyes are just as shocked, his legs stiff as they stumble backward, and I can almost hear the words in his head screaming, no, no, no. He glances from me to her, but barely registers me, like I don’t even matter, don’t even exist. Because he didn’t see Bella in time. Didn’t know what she was doing in order to stop his mistake.

  She begins to fall again, but Prince is there to brace her, dropping to his knees beside her and cradling her in his arms. He’s staring down at her, his eyes alive with horror and I see his hands shake as they brush the hair from her cheek. And for a moment my heart aches with him, for a moment I actually feel pity. Because for a few heartbeats it isn’t Prince kneeling on the ground, but a torn up human being—a broken child bending over and clinging to the last fragments of the one person he ever loved. Because for a second, even though I know he isn’t, he seems human.

  He’s talking to Bella, murmuring things that I can’t hear, and she’s saying something back, and then in the blink of an eye everything changes.

  I don’t know why you can tell when someone’s dead. I don’t know what it is inside your gut that knows the difference between sleeping, stillness, quiet, and death. Bella hasn’t been moving for the last few seconds as Prince had cradled her, and I still can’t see her face from where I’m sitting, but I just know. I know.

  Prince’s body contorts like he’s just been punched in the stomach and he seems to hold onto her tighter as if they will prevent her from actually leaving. And for one full moment I see the agony in his eyes because he knows the children are leaving, he knows that Bella is gone. And I realize what I’ve truly taken from him, and how I’ve left him with his worst fear—loneliness. But then the remorse is gone, the sadness is gone, the gut-wrenching sorrow. His head spins around and his gaze catches mine and pins it down. Rage entwines around his every muscle, every being, as he clings to Bella and glares at me like his gaze alone could burn me to ashes.

  Suddenly Andrew is beside me, pulling me up and helping me stumble up the ramp. I stagger into the ship as Andrew hits the button on the wall. And I turn around just in time to meet Prince’s scorching gaze before the ramp slides between our views and the metal seals around us.

  Growing Up and Growing Old

  “You know that place between sleeping and awake, that place where you can still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always think of you.”

  - J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

  Chapter Fifteen

  “We need to take off now,” I state, stumbling toward the cockpit, my hand on the wall to guide me.

  “Sylvia needs to check you out,” Andrew protests, following me.

  I press the communication link and Holden answers from the engine room. I smile at the sound of his voice—back where he belongs. “We’re taking off, Holden,” I tell him. “Be ready.”

  I slump into the chair and begin readying Hourglass for takeoff. Apparently realizing it’s no use to nag me, Andrew sits down in the chair beside mine and watches as the engine hums to life and I set a course.

  There’s nothing Prince can do to stop us now. I feel the metal shudder beneath me and with the flick of a switch the ship lurches and I feel it lifting off the ground. Andrew reaches for the control panel to steady himself, his eyes growing wider the farther up we go. I can see the ground below us from the screen on the panel and Andrew’s eyes are glued to it as Hourglass shoots up and up, picking up speed, hurtling through the air, and then suddenly...

  You feel it. Like weightlessness, only freer, because you have momentum and an engine and a ship to propel you. We’ve left the atmosphere. We’re in space.

  * * * *

  Andrew is adamant that I have Sylvia check out my head. Nothing’s bleeding, and after about ten minutes, I felt fine, but he glares at me until I agree and we both head to the medical lab. Sylvia’s there checking out all the children on board and with a jolt I remember that they’re all here. With fighting Prince, Bella dying, and taking off from the planet, I’d forgotten all about them. My heart lurches.

  Bella’s death still stings fresh in my mind, as I’m sure it does with everyone. I knew she wasn’t coming, and although I’d hated Prince from the moment I’d left the planet ten years ago, I still feel bad for him. The way we left him huddled in the forest, alone. I know he lied to everyone, and I know he tried to kill me, and wouldn’t have hesitated in killing anyone else on my crew...but the look in his eyes still burns through my mind.

  Sylvia smiles at me and motions for us to sit down, so we do. While we’re waiting I strike up a few conversations with the children, learning their names and personalities, although it’s all achingly familiar. I knew these kids once. The little girl Prince impersonated pops into my head, and with a jolt I think that I might have left someone behind. But at the mention of it to the children, they say they’d never seen her before. The thought comforts me, but worries me at the same time. How many people—children—has Prince abducted over the years? How many kids have come and gone?

  Sylvia eventually gets to me and after much frowning and clucking her tongue, declares that I’m fine, but should take it easy for a while. I comply, realizing her diagnosis could’ve been much worse, and head for the door.

  The rest of the crew is waiting outside—Holden, Angelica, Jackson, and Gregory—brimming with questions and exclamations. I smile at them all, and ordinarily would’ve been irritated by their clinginess, but am so relieved to see them all together again, that I agree to have a long talk as we head to the diner.

  We spend nearly two hours in there, with canned and prepackaged dinners, but barely touch our food as we recount our last few days. The guys tell of what happened to them after Prince took them, Gregory explains how Prince pretended to be one of the crewmembers to lure him from the ship, Angelica talks about staying on the ship alone with Sylvia, and then completely by herself when we executed our plan to kidnap Bella, while I go over details of my encounters with Prince and Andrew. We know most of this stuff by now, having swapped bits and pieces in the few seconds of spare time we’ve shared over the past hours, but just the fact that we’re all here together, that we made it back on the ship, that we made if off the planet, and we’re all alive, makes sitting here together better than anything else I could imagine.

  Sylvia joins us eventually, filling us in on the children’s status. They all look good, especially being a few hundred years old, and she divided them up among the remaining crew quarters. It’s strange to think that all our rooms
are full again. It hasn’t been this way since Dad was Hourglass’s captain. Sylvia seems to read my mind and shoots me a look across the table. Everyone else seems deep into conversation, still trading stories. But they’re stories I’ve already heard so I glance at Sylvia and we both get up and discreetly exit the room.

  We walk slowly down the hallway in silence for a ways, not having a set destination, just trying to get away. I realize we haven’t had a moment alone in quite a long time. And when Sylvia is my “go to” girl for problems or anything I want to discuss, anything is a long time.

  “I said it before and I’ll say it again,” Sylvia says. “Landing on that planet was a stupid idea.” She glances at me with a smile in her eyes, to show me she’s just teasing, but at the same time I’ve been regretting that decision since the moment we landed.

  “I’m just glad we got out okay,” I mutter.

  Sylvia nods. “You know...this planet...maybe something pulled you back. I mean, what are the chances of you stumbling across the planet your Dad found you on as a child? The planet, he couldn’t remember the coordinates of?”

  I shrug, not ready to admit that that idea had been creeping up on me for a while. “And I wonder if we’ll forget it, too,” I add.

  Sylvia looks at me, startled, like she hadn’t considered the idea before, but slowly her expression calms. “Maybe,” she agrees. “And maybe that would be better.”

  I think of the time on the planet; the running through the woods, the fights with Prince, Bella dying, the fear, the anger, the hurt, and then leaving him there alone...and think that forgetting it all really would be a better ending.

  “And look on the bright side,” Sylvia adds. “You’ve just got eight more crewmembers.” She laughs and I join in. “And you don’t even have to pay them.” There’s a pause while our laughter dies down. “And your sister back.”