Elvene

by P. P. Mealing

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you think they are spirits?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Myka replied, as spirits were a part of their world, but he also knew that they could be something animate in origin that he’d simply never seen before.

  At night he often watched them as Sendra slept, and he sometimes wondered if they were following him, but he set the thought aside as a fancy; there was no way of even knowing if they were the same from night to night.

  Over the accumulation of days, Myka had become more familiar with all parts of his environment and in particular his ability to read the weather. On this night it had started off relatively calm with clouds fanned out on the eastern horizon, opposite the setting sun, but Myka watched the clouds intently, aware that that was the direction he was heading. Would the clouds move around the horizon or would they become more dense? They went from rosy pink to a dark grey as the sun’s light slowly waned, but once the short twilight departed they just became a bank that blocked the stars in that part of the sky. Sendra went to sleep and Myka looked over the side to see if the underwater lights were there. He had come to think of them as a form of companionship in the long nights when he effectively sailed solo, and it gave him a sense of solace whenever he saw them. But he was also aware that this sense of familiarity could be misplaced, as they may well portend something dangerous, even fatal. Nevertheless he felt that that was not the case, whether it simply be an inherent optimism on his part, or just a sense of connection that he had experienced before when he was on land.

  Later in the night, the wind turned and strengthened from the east and he started to see lightning on the horizon. He looked for the lights below him but they had gone. He was forced to tack and when the waves became steeper, Sendra also awoke. Myka realised that both his abilities and the craft were about to be tested, and if either failed, he and Sendra would certainly die. Behind the wind came lashing rain, and eventually he took down his sail altogether and just let the craft run before the storm.

  Elvene felt rather chastened by her experience with the giant boars, as she called them, yet she could not let her optimism slip, otherwise she would surely perish. Up until this point, she told herself, she had been in control, and there was no reason why that should not continue. The incident was an aberration, part of the necessary learning experience in becoming acquainted with a new and dangerous environment. In spite of this self-induced assurance, she felt a sense of dread, as if her trials in this land were only just beginning. She couldn’t understand why she felt this way, but the following couple of nights after the encounter, she did not sleep well, and her sense of unease grew rather than diminished. Then this change in her mood coincided with a change in terrain.

  She had come to the end of the forest; it was an abrupt change, in much the same manner that it had started. This time, however, there was no clearing, but a sloping rocky hillside that rose abruptly in front of her. To left and right she saw the same terrain. She knew from the map provided by Alfa that she was at the edge of a mountain range, beyond which was an extensive grassy plain. She wondered, not for the first time, what did she hope to find there, but she seemed to be attracted to the country’s hinterland for no rational reason.

  She knew that by leaving the forest, she was probably also leaving behind her best source of food, but she also felt the need to move on as if she was a migrating animal locked into some biological need. Perhaps it was just that she couldn’t stand the idea of stagnation in any form, because stagnation must surely lead to death, whereas mobility gave a hope of finding solace or refuge, albeit a false hope. But false hopes were better than no hope at all, and moving on gave her a sense of self-determination that she badly needed to sustain.

  Elvene started the steep climb. The small flat stones under her feet would often slide over each other, making progress more difficult than she’d expected. When she reached the top she saw the mountain range in front of her. She could see snow, even though she knew it was summer in the southern hemisphere at this time of the planet’s cycle. She was relieved that it wasn’t winter, when conditions would have been much harsher. She hadn’t considered that in her choice of destination, although perhaps it had a subliminal influence that she wasn’t aware of. Certainly she would have been aware of large tracts of snow from Alfa’s maps.

  There was no sign of vegetation in her line of sight, so she could no longer sleep in trees. She knew that weather was often unpredictable in mountainous climes as well, but she had become resolute not to turn back. She wondered if she was becoming fatalistic, choosing a place to die rather than a place to survive, but she realised that now she only had her instincts to trust and her instinct told her to keep going.

  She crossed a broad valley before its shadow fell across her. She had found nothing to eat in her traverse so she resorted to her rations for the first time. On the western slope she looked for somewhere safe to sleep. She found an overhang and examined it for other inhabitants. She went to sleep with her laser-knife in her hand but the night passed without incident.

  In the morning a small furry animal came into the cave and she killed it before it could escape. It looked edible and she felt like a spider who had just trapped some unwary insect passing by. Elvene was aware that psychologically she was changing; a part of her was observing the change. She knew that under extreme conditions a person’s personality could split, whereby the old personality would watch the new personality evolve. It was how one coped with becoming someone who would have formerly repulsed them. It often happened in prisons where prisoners were forced to become the torturers of other prisoners who had once been their friends. She’d read about this and wondered if she was undergoing a similar transformation, where in order to survive, she had to become more animal than human. It was an observation rather than an emotional assessment.

  She quickly made a feast of her catch, and hid its remains under some loose rocks nearby, then continued her journey westwards. She reminded herself that she had a time limit and eventually she would have to face the marauders. It was becoming increasingly likely that she would not be able to survive the challenge, nevertheless she persevered. She felt she was waiting for something, but she also believed that it was an illusion or delusion. Sixteen days had now passed, which was almost a week past the halfway point. As long as she could contact Alfa, it didn’t matter that it would take longer for her to return than it had for her to arrive where she was. But she had also created a deadline for herself that was approaching quickly. Eventually she would be forced to make a decision between challenging the marauders or being stranded on the planet with them.

  Myka could only see the waves when there were flashes of lightning and then they looked like hills looming ahead of him or behind him. Occasionally he found himself atop one and looking into a valley of water below him. The flashed image would be burned onto his retina and then the craft would descend into pure blackness like he was dropping into a hole. He preferred the blackness; the mountainous sea was less intimidating when he couldn’t see it, but his senses told him when he was on a crest and when he was climbing the next one, so the size of the waves could be measured by the consequential adjustments being made by his internal organs. Both he and Sendra had tied lines to their waists so that if one of them was washed overboard the other could retrieve him. Myka sat right at the stern with the rudder’s lever wedged under his arm, riding each wave like the wind-blown surf he had sometimes encountered back home. Sendra sat beside him, and though he said nothing, Myka could sense his fear. In one flash of lightning they caught each other’s eye, but it was too much like reading a mirror and Myka could find no words to reassure him so he didn’t. They had lashed everything down as best they could, including the prostrate mast and sail. If they lost that they would lose virtually all ability to control the craft when the storm subsided. They clung onto their craft like a snail hangs onto its shell. Their entire world now depended on its strength.

  The storm la
sted almost the entire night, but calm returned just before dawn when the wind and waves relented. Myka’s greatest concern was how much they had been blown off course, but there was too much cloud to tell. His fatigue after the storm was overwhelming and he slipped into sleep before the first glow of dawn. Sendra did the same and the sun rose on their prone bodies riding a mastless craft on a listless sea.

  Sendra woke first, and for a moment he was disoriented, thinking he had gone to sleep in the lagoon of his island home. Only when he saw Myka and the prostrate sail did he remember the nightmare of last night’s storm. He looked around him, but there was no sign of its passing, either in the sky or on the sea. By the sun’s height above the horizon he estimated it to be mid-morning; he awoke Myka by shaking his shoulders.

  ‘Myka, Myka, wake up.’

  Myka’s eyes squinted against the sun. He sat up and looked about him; then Sendra saw consciousness finally dawn in his face as he too remembered the previous night.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked.

  ‘You tell me,’ Sendra replied, unimpressed by the question.

  Myka instantly became alert and stood up. ‘We have to get the sail up, give me a hand.’

  Together they raised the stiff sail and its mast, but there was little wind; they were simply drifting with the ocean current. But it gave them steerage and Myka pointed his craft towards the east. He still had no idea how far off course they were, and he would not be able to make a judgement till nightfall, assuming he’d be able to see the stars. Intuitively he felt the storm had blown them backwards in a westerly direction and possibly southwards as well.

  His knowledge of etak, as Elvene had called it, and star navigation, had been gained second hand, unlike its culture of origin where it would have been passed on from generation to generation. This put him at a serious disadvantage in his current plight, as he had no experience of his own, and no one else’s experience to lean on.

  They were both ravenously hungry and there was little else to do, so they spent the morning fishing with limited success. They made a small fire in a hearth made of stones they carried for the purpose, and cooked their catch. It sated their hunger and gave them a sense of normalcy in an abnormal situation. The sun was now past its mid point, and whilst it gave them a rough direction, Myka could only guess how far off course they might be. He was impatient for the night when he could compare the stars with the map he had in his head.

  In the afternoon, Myka slept while Sendra made sure the craft maintained its bearing. There were some clouds but no sign of another storm, and the wind freshened only slightly as the sun turned red in its final descent. Myka woke when the temperature started to drop and he felt the wind pick up. He checked their direction with the setting sun behind them and was reasonably happy that they had not drifted far during the day.

  He looked to the east where he would see the first stars on the horizon, already imagining where they should appear. He was not disappointed and it gave him some confidence when they appeared pretty well as predicted.

  Soon after he noticed the lights under the water for the first time since they had been hit by the storm. This time he felt they were communicating with him. There was a line of them and they did a little dance. They moved to the front of his craft and then bore slightly to the north. They would move away and then come back; Myka had the distinct impression that they wanted him to follow them. In the end he changed tack and did just that.

  Considering her still recent encounter with the giant boars, Elvene felt some relief in leaving the forest, though she had never felt entirely safe anywhere on this planet except on the occasions when she had been with Myka on his island home. It was hard for her to imagine how anyone could become used to being surrounded by dangerous animals both day and night, yet obviously the Kiri had managed to do just that. On the other hand, she had to worry about marauders as well as exotic creatures who seemed determined to eat her.

  The landscape became more mountainous and vegetation scarcer. Occasionally she found trees that seemed to grow around the rocks themselves, so it was hard to tell where one started and the other finished, but there was no grass or anything like moss or lichen. She noticed that these trees sometimes seemed to have a fungus growing on them and they had no leaves that she could see. It was like the trunks were very thick vines growing over the rocks, so perhaps they weren’t trees at all. She wondered if they were carnivorous like the ones she had encountered in the forest.

  She often found herself surrounded by large rocks and there were numerous shallow caves. She was simply following a trail and she wondered what other animals used it. Hopefully, it was a migratory trail over the mountains, which is what she sought, but she couldn’t be sure. When the sun went down, she found herself anticipating the darkness with some trepidation. She appeared to be in a warren, and although she had seen no sign of life beyond the small creature she’d eaten for breakfast, she could not believe that such an environment had no inhabitants.

  As it got closer to nightfall she became increasingly nervous and she even thought of returning the way she had come, but she knew it was too late in the day for that. She could not explain her apprehension but perhaps it was the sense of exposure amongst the rocks. Unlike the forest, she was unsure where she would spend the night or even if she would get any sleep.

  She had eaten very little. She had to be disciplined with her provisions. Since the morning she had found nothing else to eat and that was another cause for anxiety. She searched for somewhere to spend the night, and found an overhanging rock that she hoped would give enough protection. She ate something from her rations knowing it would help her to find sleep. She curled up with her laser-knife in her hand and the exertions of the day allowed sleep to overcome whatever fears she may have held.

  During the night she had a dream that one of the tree-like vines had turned into a snake and coiled itself around her like a giant python. She found herself unable to struggle against it, as one often does in dreams. In her sleep she attempted to activate her laser-knife and when she succeeded in this, she awoke.

  It’s always a shock when a dream is actually a reflection of the real environment in which one is sleeping. Elvene had a childhood memory of once dreaming of a fire, complete with the smell of smoke, and then awaking to find that there really was a fire close by. This was a similar occurrence, only far more terrifying. A very thick vine was indeed wrapped around her torso and it had started dragging her across the ground in short jerky movements. She immediately used the laser-knife, but to her amazement it had little effect. Unlike the trees she had scarred in the forest, the wound simply healed itself over as soon as she made it. In all her experience, she had never seen any life-form capable of that. She was now being lifted off the ground which only added to her sense of helplessness. Where was it taking her? The plant was like a giant octopus drawing her into its maw, or at least that was what her imagination told her. She had gone to sleep in her full body armour with her visor down, so she had night vision, and she could see that she was being dragged towards a hole at the base of a rock. If she didn’t get free before it succeeded in pulling her underground, she was sure she would perish.

  She only had one last resort and that was her stun guns. She thought of the night render; using them while entangled in this manner may well result in injury or even death, but she felt she had no choice. She had an intuitive idea not to use the stun guns directly on the trunk wrapped around her body but to fire plasma bolts at the hole she was being dragged towards, which she envisaged as the creature’s mouth. Through the inbuilt night glasses of her visor she saw bolts of blue lightning fly from her wrist into the cavity, crackling with energy and suffusing ozone into the night air. She felt a convulsed tremor return through the vine and then it simply released her. Her foil had worked and she felt a sense of relief so great that for a moment she thought she was going to pee in her suit.

  But she now had a greater fear, and that was that the marauders may well h
ave sensed the plasma discharge. If one was orbiting overhead, it would be exactly the sort of unnatural phenomenon that it would be looking for.

  Perhaps it was just as well, she told herself, the showdown was long overdue, and now was as good a time and place as any she had encountered since leaving Alfa. She shouldered her gear and started to scamper through the rocks, though she had little idea where the path she was following would lead. She found herself running along a track at the base of a cliff. A maze of rocks, she told herself, was as good a place as any. Her first thought was simply to put distance between herself and the recent altercation with the snake-like vine. The marauders could possibly kill her from a distance but they would want to identify her first. Their mission would not be complete until identification could be confirmed. Destroying the evidence from afar would not achieve that. Besides they had many means of killing close range, the most widely used in an atmospheric environment being a form of sonic energy.

  And if they had picked something up, how long before they arrived? At this she could only guess, but if nothing arrived before sunrise, she would consider herself very lucky. On the other hand, she felt the sooner the better, as she’d prefer to know rather than live with the anxiety of wondering. She realised that it could be a long and wakeful night. She had stopped running now, realising there was little point. It had been a means to rid herself of nervous energy, she told herself, when she really needed to be conserving it. She was also watchful of snake-like vines, though she could not see any now, which was surprising, as they had seemed so prevalent before. She decided to keep moving as that was the best way to stay awake and alert.