Daywards

by Anthony Eaton

But with Jaran unconscious, there seemed little alternative.

  Carefully, Dara curled her toes into the cold, damp sand and sought out the traces of deep earthwarmth that she knew would be there somewhere. It wasn’t difficult. Perhaps because she’d been keeping such a tight rein on herself the tingling energy flooded into her and in seconds her fingertips and toes were abuzz with it.

  A couple of deep breaths and Dara let herself go, out, down, opening her senses until she could feel herself in every grain of sand around her ankles and in the cold rush of the water over the ground beside her and in the warm heat of the rotting seaweed above the tideline.

  And just as she’d feared, reaching didn’t feel right, now. It felt incomplete. The sky stayed obstinately distant and detached, the same as always. A little way up the beach from where she stood, a flock of seabirds – small, silver-winged creatures that she’d watched for hours the previous afternoon as they whipped across the wave surfaces – were roosting against the cold wind. Their life sparks were obvious. They were, after all, in contact with the earth, however insubstantial and fleeting that contact might be. But as was always the case with birds, there was something missing. Some part of them that dwelled not on damp sand but in warm currents of air and the twisting of wind across a headland; that part of them remained closed to her, no matter how hard she concentrated.

  There was nothing of the other night, when she’d felt as though she was reaching every bird, every bat and every flying insect within a thousand kilometres.

  Sighing inwardly, Dara turned her attention to the object. It gave off the same nothing emanation that so much Nightpeople equipment seemed to convey. It was more than half-buried, the vast bulk of it extending metres down, held in the concrete embrace of the sand forever, it seemed.

  There was nothing in it, though. No skyfire, no earthwarmth. Just cold emptiness, the same as everything she’d touched and felt during her time in the city.

  Dara pushed the object aside from her immediate consideration and relaxed. Now that the initial disappointment had passed, she realised how much she’d missed reaching. Even if it wasn’t the same connectedness that she’d felt with her brother, it was still comforting to let herself drift out into the land around her and enjoy the baking inland warmth and the cool rush of the subterranean streams and rivers and the unmoving patience of the stones and boulders.

  A brief focus of her attention back up the beach showed that everything in the camp was just as she’d left it: Eyna hunkered alone up the beach, keeping vigil over the waves, Ma crouched beside the fireplace watching Jaran, and Jaran himself …

  Dara hesitated. Since her brother was ‘burned’, as Ma called it, she’d been too frightened to reach for him. Too scared of what she might, or might not, find inside that husk-like body. She expected him to feel something like Nightpeople tech, like this metal shell half-buried in the sand beside her. Empty.

  That was how he looked, after all. Eyes like pinpricks, breathing shallow and laboured, arms and legs insensible.

  But now, as she pulled all her attention back from the wider earth and focused it on her brother’s body, she was startled to find something there. Not a lot, just a faint flutter of consciousness nearly lost against the background burble of life and movement on the beach. Still, there was something there which … tasted like Jaran.

  Excited, Dara pushed herself towards it, but the moment she did so the flutter vanished.

  A brief wave of panic flooded through her, and Dara cast her mind out, and felt both Ma and Eyna’s sudden awareness of her in the immediate flaring of their sparks.

  Dara? Ma’s enquiring thought probed towards her, but Dara ignored it, calming herself so that her sudden panic wouldn’t push her back into her own mind. She wasn’t ready for that, not yet.

  Again, she focused all her attention on her brother’s form, but this time there was nothing. No insubstantial moth-wing flutter against the edges of her awareness, no mind-wraith in her peripheral vision.

  You all right, child? There was a note of concern in Ma’s thought, now, and Dara couldn’t ignore it any longer.

  ‘Fine.’ She spoke the word aloud, even as she sent the thought back out into the Earthmother, and then returned quickly to the privacy of her own mind.

  He’d been there, she was certain. It was fleeting but it was definitely him, just as Ma Saria had suggested.

  It wasn’t much, but Dara found herself grinning. For the first time since Eyna had pushed her mind in to Jaran’s, Dara felt a spark of hope. He was still in there – or out there – somewhere.

  Overhead, a pair of enormous seabirds whirled in the wind, screeching at the grey afternoon as Dara, feeling more hopeful than she had in days, set out back along the beach.

  She’d walked a lot further than she’d realised. By the time the dancing glimmer of their fire appeared up ahead, the light was fading and the sky was glowing an apocalyptic crimson as the sun, still hidden below the murk of cloud, refracted its last rays for the day down through the upper atmosphere.

  Eyna was now sprawled on the sand beside Ma Saria, who was still sitting exactly where Dara had left her hours earlier. Jaran hadn’t moved, not even a twitch, but somehow the sight of him didn’t bring with it the wave of despondency that it had previously.

  The other two looked up at Dara as she approached. Ma’s face was as unreadable as ever, and Eyna looked almost shy.

  ‘You all right, child?’ Ma raised an eyebrow enquiringly in Dara’s direction.

  ‘Jaman. I’m fine.’

  ‘What was all that rushing and pushing I felt you doin’ a while ago?’

  ‘I was looking for Jaran.’

  Ma nodded, as though it was the answer she’d been expecting.

  ‘You find him?’

  Dara hesitated, shooting a nervous glance at her cousin. Eyna was trying to keep her expression neutral, but Dara spotted the glimmer of hope there.

  ‘Dunno. I thought I felt something, but as soon as I went after it, it disappeared. It was tiny.’

  ‘Same thing I felt the other morning,’ Ma said, running a hand through her thick white shock of hair. ‘Just a flutter, eh? Right out at the very edges?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it exactly.’ Dara tried to contain her excitement. ‘You reckon he’s still in there somewhere?’

  The old woman held her gaze, refusing to buy into Dara’s excitement, and then turned and stared out into the ocean.

  ‘I really don’t know, child. It’s been a long time since I’ve been near someone burned out, and back then I wasn’t paying close attention. Wouldn’t have known how to even look, to be honest. So it’s hard to say. This one doesn’t quite feel like the times I did it, though, I’ll say that much.’

  An awkward silence fell over the three of them. In the days since the accident, Ma Saria, usually so forthright about everything, had been reluctant to furnish them with any details about the ‘burning’ apart from a few broad comments. Now, the obvious question hung in the air between them, and neither of the girls wanted to be the one to ask it.

  It was Dara who took the initiative. ‘When did you do it, Ma? What happened?’

  A clutch of tension seemed to settle around Ma Saria’s shoulders for a moment, and then release again. She let out a long breath, and when she started speaking she sounded old.

  ‘The two most terrible days of my life. No question about that. Once you’ve wedged yourself into someone’s mind so hard that there’s no room left inside there for them, you’re never the same again. Never. Doesn’t matter how hard you might try to be the person you were before, you’ll always have to live with the feelin’ that you’ve been somewhere people just aren’t s’posed to go.’

  She continued to stare out at the ocean. She was somewhere else. Someone else.

  ‘First time I did it was pure accident. Didn’t know my own power, and I was just a tiny thing – prob’ly younger than you, Eyna. Happened back in the Darklands, back before I got picked up and carried out,
and back when I was still just learnin’ to feel the Earthmother properly. Man by the name of Baanti – a Dreamer, actually, though not much of one – tried to burn me out, but I pushed back. Pushed back hard. Too hard.

  ‘Second time was when we were leaving the city. A Nightperson. Didn’t even know that one’s name until after, when Da Lari told me. Jenx. Sky, but he burned hard and angry, that man. Touching that mind was like getting slapped by thunderlight.

  ‘Both times, the one thing I remember – and most of the details you try to forget, but some stay with you – is the blackness, just at the end, just before there’s nothing left at all. There’s this moment when there’s only a flutter of them left, and that’s when you either push through or you pull back. Then there’s black, an’ nothing else but.’

  Dara threw a nervous glance at Eyna, searching the younger girl’s face for any signal of recognition, any indication that this was what she’d felt as she pushed herself into Jaran’s mind, but her cousin’s face was unreadable.

  With another sigh, Ma Saria climbed to her feet and looked down at the girls. The sky behind her was dark and blank, and the firelight danced in her age-mirrored eyes.

  ‘Now, if you two can watch Jaran for a while, I’m gonna take myself off for a stretch.’

  She didn’t wait for a reply. She just turned and walked off slowly into the dusk, heading nightwards along the beach.

  In the middle of the white plain stands the gnarled tree. This close, Dara can make out every tiny detail – the flaking, scabby bark that clings to the trunk and branches, the silver-green, waxy sheen on the uppersides of the few cankered leaves, the tiny, porous fibres of the root base where it meets the hard white surface.

  ‘You back, girl?’

  The ancient voice is everywhere, from the tree, from the white earth. Dara tries to reply, but can’t.

  ‘No need to talk out loud here, girl. I know you now, just like I always did.’

  In the close background, in the foredistance, something else chatters and whispers and flickers around. Some other voice. Some other presence.

  ‘What’s that?’ Dara’s words form in her feet, resonate through the white. The tree smiled – how, Dara couldn’t say.

  ‘Don’t worry about him, girl. He’s just being what he is.’

  ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘Everyone’s scared, child. It’s part of being alive.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘You know that already, I reckon.’

  Something dry twists around Dara’s left ankle. The black snake. Red diamondback pattern curling sinuously, slides from the whiteness and twines itself upwards in tightly muscled curves around her calf, her thigh, her hips, her belly, her shoulder, her neck. There, its gleaming shard-chip eyes hover before her own. Its tongue flicks the white air, tasting.

  ‘Been a long time since anyone came to see me, child. Too long.’

  There’s love in the voice. Love in the black snake-eyed gaze. But also anger, fear and terrible, terrible loneliness.

  ‘I don’t think anyone could come before now.’

  ‘You hungry, girl?’

  There’s fruit on the tree, somehow. It wasn’t there before. A small, dry, brown bush-apple weighs one of the branches, pulling it almost to the ground. Dara reaches for it – the flesh is taut and it releases its grip on the rough-barked branch only reluctantly.

  ‘Eat.’

  The fruit is bitter, the flesh hard and fibrous and tough and sends a scant trickle of acidy liquid down the back of Dara’s dry throat. The snake ripples around her with pleasure, its contracting bands of muscle embracing her bare brown sun-skin.

  ‘Eat!’

  The second bite is more bitter than the first. Dara gags against the sourness, but forces the mouthful down. It sits inside her, heavy, filling.

  ‘Eat!’

  One more mouthful and the bush-apple is gone. She eats it all – stem, seeds and fibrous core.

  ‘Good girl.’

  The other voice is stronger now. Closer. Dara can feel it pushing at her, pulling at her. The snake holds her, though, coiling more and more of itself around her, somehow growing as it does so, until Dara is almost consumed by it, wrapped near head-to-toe in sinewy, sensuous muscle.

  ‘Here. He’s coming.’

  A black speck appears against the white sky, circling high and distant, a tiny reflection of darkness against the white vaultlight. Rapidly, it descends, a tight, spiralling, dizzying drop that sees it grow with alarming rapidity until it flares out, dropping the final few metres to alight atop the tree.

  It is a meatbird. Its glossy black feathers reflect the white earth and the white sky. And as its claws grip into the hard wood of the tree, Dara feels all of the white around her – earth and sky – tremble, and then the snake releases her, dropping away in coils so that she emerges from it as though from a cocoon.

  ‘Go. You have to go, now!’

  It is a command, not a request or a suggestion, and no longer just the voice of the tree, but now tinged with something else, too. Something that feels a lot like Jaran.

  And Dara woke.

  ‘Dara! Shi, girl! Wake up! We have to go!’

  Somebody was shaking her, hard. Ma Saria.

  ‘Ma?’

  ‘Skyfire, girl! I was starting to think we’d have to leave you here.’

  Dara sat up, disoriented. It was still dark. Heavy surf was crashing violently onto the sand, throwing up fine spray and filling the darkness with salty mist, which whirled and eddied in the wind. The fire was almost dead, and Ma Saria had already turned away, a fog-wreathed shadow hastily throwing her gear together.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nightpeople.’

  The answer cleared Dara’s head with shocking speed. She leapt to her feet.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Dunno, exactly. That way. Listen.’

  Ma Saria gestured inland and Dara cocked an ear. It was several seconds before she heard it, barely audible over the moan of the wind and the pounding of the waves, but in a brief lull the unmistakable hum of a flyer resonated through the darkness.

  ‘When did …’ she began, but Ma Saria shook her head and flung one of their gearbags at her.

  ‘Talk later. Grab your water and some food.’

  ‘We can’t leave.’

  ‘No choice.’

  ‘But Jaran …’

  At the mention of his name, Ma Saria stopped her packing, and taking hold of Dara’s shoulders looked her hard in the eyes.

  ‘He’s gone, girl. He won’t be bothered by them.’

  ‘No.’ Dara threw the old woman’s hands off. ‘No. That’s shi. As long as he’s still breathing …’

  ‘He isn’t, Dara.’ Eyna materialised from the night, wrapping her arms around her cousin in a gesture that felt eerily like the embrace of the snake in her dream. ‘He died. We tried to wake you.’

  ‘No!’ Dara struggled to get away, thrashing in the younger girl’s grip, but despite her smaller size Eyna clung to her resolutely.

  ‘Shhh. It’s okay, cuz.’

  ‘Shi! You’re lying. Where is he?’

  ‘Calm down, child.’ Ma Saria’s hand rested briefly against her neck, and Dara felt the distant tingle of earthwarmth that the old woman tried to send into her, but the touch was as insubstantial as that of a moth’s wings. She brushed it aside, and Ma Saria pulled her hand back protectively, gasping as though she’d been burnt.

  ‘Where is he?’ Dara demanded again, struggling against her cousin’s grasp with renewed vigour. Eyna pressed her face against Dara’s. Her cheeks were salt-wet, and her reply was whispered.

  ‘Shhh. I’ll take you. He’s just over here. But we don’t have much time, and you need to be calm. Be calm, Dara.’

  The panic subsided slightly, enough for Dara to stop thrashing and draw in several deep breaths. The thrumming of the flyer echoed through the night again, louder.

  ‘Here.’ Eyna’s hand, cold and clammy, took her own,
and Dara allowed herself to be led to where a dark shadow lay motionless on the sand.

  ‘Jaran?’

  There was no answer. There hadn’t been one for days. But there was something else missing now. Dara fell to her knees beside her brother’s still form.

  ‘Jaran!’

  His chest was motionless. No rise and fall of laboured breathing, no fluttering heartbeat. Nothing. Dara could feel her cousin standing behind her.

  ‘When did he go?’

  ‘Not long ago. Only a few minutes before we heard the flyer.’

  Inside Dara, something awful and enormous swelled, a driving buzz that came from somewhere in the deep channels of her mind, and which melded with the increasingly penetrating hum from the approaching flyer. Jaran was dead. Gone. Just like their father, just like Da Janil.

  ‘Jaran?’ Dara dropped her voice to a whisper. The lost question in her tone was whipped away by the building wind. In the darkness Jaran lay, completely empty. Already the wind was piling sand against him. Even in the darkness Dara could see the white flecks covering his face, clinging to his eyelashes, peppering his hair. In only a day or so, she knew, the wind-driven earth would cover him completely, if left to do so.

  ‘Dara, we have to go.’ Above her, Eyna hovered, jumpy and frightened.

  ‘I’m not leaving him.’

  ‘There’s nothing more we can do, Dara. Jaran wouldn’t want this.’ Eyna’s hand took her shoulder, drew her up, away from the body and, numb, Dara allowed herself to be led. At the firepit, Ma Saria shoved several shapeless bundles into her hands, slung a couple of gearbags around her shoulders and then kicked sand onto the last remaining embers.

  ‘This way.’

  And they stumbled storm-blind into the night, the sound of the flyer a constant, somewhere in the spray and darkness above.

  At sunset they stopped, as usual, and Eyna set about finding some wood and scavenging for anything edible to fill their bellies. There were coldbloods and hoppers everywhere out here in this dry, unforgiving emptiness, but neither she nor Ma Saria had the energy to hunt. Weeks of hard walking had made heavy demands on both of them, and all they wanted to do now was rest. Some nights they didn’t even bother with a fire, but simply slept where they fell, cheeks pressed to the cooling earth.