Shadows of Empyriad (The Empyriad Series Book 1)

by Josi Russell

  Zyn’dri pushed the bowl away and took a bite of the bread. It was soft and sweet, not like the firm, salty Stracahn bread at all. It made Zyn’dri gag a little.

  “Shshaa,” her mother said in a low voice, “you must eat.”

  “I can’t!” Zyn’dri cried, and several of the others at the table glanced in their direction.

  “You must. We won’t have food until tomorrow morning. You will get too hungry in the night if you don’t eat.”

  “I won’t. I won’t ever be hungry again.” Zyn’dri dropped the bread into her bowl, where it soaked up the juice and lay sodden and dark.

  Her mother and father looked at her disapprovingly. Zyn’dri looked down the table and saw that everyone else was eating. She resented them for it. Surely they smelled the strange herbs; surely they recognized how wrong the food felt in their hands and how wrong it tasted on their tongues. But still, as Stracahn did, they set their emotions aside and gave their bodies nourishment. Zyn’dri couldn’t bring herself to do it. She stared ahead and sat stoically, sending a message to her parents that she would not eat it.

  At first, when she had stepped onto the ramp and saw the grasses in the valley and the sun overhead, this world had not seemed so different than her own. But after she touched it and felt its turmoil under her feet, after she breathed its air, the more foreign this place seemed. The wind that moaned outside seemed ominous. And whether they admitted it or not, the others were noticing too. The low voices of the Stracahn around her were laced with despair.

  Her mother had turned her attention away from Zyn’dri and was talking to a woman, Malra, from their home village. Malra had ridden on an earlier transport and had been on the ground for a week or two longer than they had. Zyn'dri's mother stroked her daughter's hair absentmindedly as she asked, "What do people do in the camp?"

  Malra shook her head, "You'll soon find it's a strange place. There's meals and sleeping. We do help wash up after the meals.”

  “Right.” Zyn’dri’s mother said, “Tahnek is on the schedule for that after this meal.”

  This was news to Zyn’dri. She looked at her father, and he nodded to confirm it.

  Malra continued. “But that's all. We don't have anything else to do. We can't leave the camp. I think we'll sit here forever." Her voice had the unfamiliar sound of bitterness.

  “Can’t we work?”

  “There is no work to do. Over in the Old Faithful Village, many have been helping to rebuild the building that will house the Avowed, the new Vault. But here there is nothing to be done.”

  Zyn'dri's mother leaned toward Malra. "Did you find him?"

  Zyn'dri glanced up in time to see Malra duck her head. She knew that meant that she had not found who she was looking for. Zyn'dri's mother reached an arm around Malra and gave her a quick hug.

  “Keep searching. There are still a few ships to unload. I’ll watch for him as well.”

  Zyn’dri tried to imagine what it would be like to be separated from the ones you loved. She remembered the first few hours on the ship, the feeling of panic when she didn’t know where her parents were. She looked around and saw that fear in the eyes of so many.

  A bell rang and a speaker blared that it was time for the Stracahn to return to their huts.

  Zyn'dri kept close to her mother, who spoke in hushed tones to Zyn’dri’s father as he moved to the kitchen to help wash up. Her mother and Malra began to speak again as they waited to leave the dining hut. Zyn’dri watched the other children and realized again how many were alone. It wasn't just Asvika and Adrik. So many children had come to this new planet without their parents. They looked scared and moved quietly. Collectively and individually, they carried a burden too heavy for their small shoulders. She saw the pain in their eyes, the loneliness, the uncertainty, and wondered what would happen to them in this strange new place.

  Zyn'dri’s earlier annoyance over the food had disappeared. It was swallowed up in the realization that her family was lucky. Her parents had gotten to come with her on the big ship. She didn't have to watch, like so many of these children had, as the people she loved got smaller and fainter on the gray surface of their home planet.

  She stumbled along, lost in her thoughts. She barely noticed the golden sun outside the dining hut. But as they walked, something strange caught her eye. On her periphery, she saw that the hills around the little village, which had been bright green when they went in, were dark now. Zyn'dri looked up to see huge, hairy animals moving over the valley. Her mother noticed them, too, and paused in her conversation with Malra to point them out to Zyn'dri.

  Adrik and Asvika sat huddled in their hut as she passed. They must not have gone to dinner at all. Seeing them, she again felt a chill. What would it be like to be all alone? It was, she supposed, the thing she was most afraid of. Her “greatest fear,” as Asvika had said.

  On the journey here, Zyn'dri had thought she'd be glad to be off the big loud ship that had brought them across the galaxy. But even though the ground below her was secure now, this place was too different from home to be comforting. The smell of the hot grasses outside the little rows of huts, the strange food, and now the sounds of these hairy beasts snuffling all around the makeshift village: all combined to leave her feeling further and further from home. The only security was in the soft murmur of her mother's voice as she talked to Malra. At least her mother and father were the same. At least she still sounded like she had at home.

  When they reached Malra's hut, Zyn'dri's mother leaned down.

  "Wait here, Shshaa. I'll be right back out." She entered Malra's hut with her. Zyn'dri stood awkwardly on the path, watching the fingers of sunlight pulling back across the edge of it. She walked a few steps, adjusting the teal jumpsuit they had given her yesterday. It was teal because of its size. All the different sizes were different colors. But she liked that it matched exactly the color of her hair.

  The village was quiet. Nearly everyone had gone into their hut as directed. Zyn’dri walked along the little trail, lined with rocks, to the edge of the village. There, not far away, on a small rise in the land, a group of the beasts stood sleepily blinking at her. Without grasslands like these, there had been few large animals back on Empyriad. Zyn'dri was fascinated by the dark creatures that stood shaking their heads and humps and making clouds of dust in the afternoon light. Her fingers tingled, wondering if their fur would be soft or rough. Hesitantly, she took a step over the rocks at the edge of the trail and waded through the waist-high grass toward them.

  One of the animals turned its head sideways toward her. She angled for it, trying to get a sense of its intelligence. Each careful step brought her nearer the big creature. Its impossibly tiny eye held her reflection as she approached. It huffed a greeting as she crossed the grasslands.

  She was near now. Near enough to see the curling matted fur of its belly and the gleam of the morning sun on its single opaque horn. The other horn was broken off, ragged at its base. Some of the other beasts were getting nervous. One that was lying down rocked and heaved itself to its feet to wander a few steps away, to the far side of the herd. But the one with the broken horn stood firm, its head slightly tilted as if listening to her steps.

  Zyn'dri stopped within an arm's reach of the animal, peering into the depths of its round eye. The eye was pale and milky, with a black ring around it. She reached toward it, but the animal did nothing. It was blind. Slowly, she raised a hand and laid it on the creature's shoulder, feeling the rough coat under her fingers. The beast stood still, leaning slightly into her hand.

  Though the shaggy head hung low, near her, the rest of the massive animal towered above her. They stood in the warm sunlight, and Zyn'dri felt safer than she had since stepping onto this planet.

  From behind her, a shout rang through the evening air. The big animal flinched and swung its head toward her to find the source of the noise. She moved out of the way of the single sharp horn just in time.

  A Ranger came quickly through the gr
ass, calling to her.

  “Kid! Kid! Get over here!” He reached out and grabbed her by the arm, wrenching her away from the big animal and dragging her for several paces. She saw his nametag: Caldwell.

  "Get over here, you crazy kid!" Caldwell shouted. Zyn'dri rubbed her upper arm, feeling pain in her shoulder. Tears stung her eyes as she looked up at the tall, slim man.

  "Don't you know anything? You're supposed to stay on the trails. You're killing the grass and don't you know that those things," He gestured to the animal, which had trotted away and was huffing angrily, "can kill you?"

  She looked at him, trying to remember the right pieces of human language amidst the pain and fear she was feeling. She spoke hesitantly. "What are their names?" she asked carefully.

  "Names? They don't have names. They're not pets," he growled as the two walked back toward the village. "They're just bison."

  "Bison." Zyn'dri repeated, satisfied. "Bison."

  Caldwell shoved her forward, back onto the trail. "Stay off the grass," he said, exaggerating every word as if she were stupid. "You're a guest here. You can't go wandering around like you own this place. Yellowstone is not your home."

  Tears burned in Zyn'dri's eyes, hotter and more stinging because the Stracahn found crying shameful. She turned away from him. He didn't have to tell her that. She knew this wasn't her home.

  The Ranger walked back up the path with long strides, grumbling under his breath. Zyn’dri pushed her knuckles into the corners of her eyes and tried to stop crying. When she looked back, the blind bison was ambling away over the hill.

  12

  The edges of the meadow were growing dark as Ranger Walt Bradley looked out from the window of his second-story apartment in the Grant Ranger Housing complex. The sun was setting, and he wondered when Sylvia, his wife, would make it back. He had been at Old Faithful all day, and she was working in the Hayden Valley Village. She was right in the middle of the arriving Stracahn, and it made Walt more than a little nervous.

  The Stracahn were, at the very least, alien. And some of the people who had worked with them on their planet had reported strange occurrences. Though Walt didn’t like to admit it, the thought of aliens with strange powers here in the park that was his home made him anxious.

  A flash of white at the edge of the meadow caught his eye. He watched with interest as the distinct white alpha female from the Grant wolf pack skirted the field and pounced on a rabbit. Her ebony mate and their pack: six younger members of their immediate family, gathered around the kill. The alphas feasted and the grown pups skulked around trying to sneak a bite.

  The Grant Pack had been fairly active lately, and he'd seen them a few times this week. They were a healthy pack, sleek and fat even after the long winter, and they seemed in good spirits today.

  He had nicknamed the female Snowflake, although the Rangers were supposed to refer to all animals in the park by their designated numbers, and the dark male he called Obsidian. Over the years, he'd learned better than to name pups, because just when he got attached to them, they would break off and join another pack.

  He watched as Snowflake and Obsidian grew bored of the rabbit and left the last of it to the snarling pups. The pair moved away and flopped down in a sunny spot in the meadow.

  Walt couldn't wait to tell Sylvia. She had seen them two days ago, on her day off, and said that Obsidian was limping. Walt didn't see any evidence of that now, which pleased him.

  He thought of pack behavior as he watched the rest of the pack nip and quarrel over the leavings. That's how the Rangers’ staff meetings were beginning to feel. Everyone had an opinion about the Stracahn being in the park. Everyone had a complaint about how the schedule was laid out. Everyone had a concern about the public outside the gates. It wore on him after a while.

  It felt too much like the attitudes years ago when he and Sylvia first came to the park. The Rangers had been angry and defensive all the time. Having the public on the public lands was a constant source of anxiety for them. It was the end of public access to the parks, although they didn't realize it then. The parks had gone from allowing visitors free range inside to restricting access, to allowing the public only when accompanied by a Ranger. Walt himself had guided the last group through Yellowstone more than twenty years ago. Only a few hundred had seen the park that year, but they still left their mark. Shoe prints, pocket lint, smudges of oil from their fingers. There was no way for them to interact with the park and not change it. The Terrene Park Service had decided it was too risky and closed the gates.

  That's when the hostilities increased. People didn't like having the park closed, even with the vast amounts of money that the TPS spent on creating incredible real-time virtual experiences to share on the web.

  The staff inside the park had shrunk then from over five hundred Rangers to less than 60. All the interpretive Rangers had been reassigned to Denver, Atlanta, New York, and San Francisco to help create those virtual tours, and support staff was laid off. Walt had been lucky. He was trained as both an Interpretive Ranger and a Law Enforcement Ranger, so when the park service had taken Interpretive Rangers out of Yellowstone, he got to stay. Fortunately, too, Sylvia was a Law Enforcement Ranger from the beginning, or they would have been assigned to different places.

  When the Park had closed to visitors, the public got really ugly for a while, and it was a good thing that plenty of Law Enforcement Rangers were stationed there. It only made sense that the Interpretive Rangers left, anyway, because without visitors there was no one to interpret the park for.

  The law enforcement Rangers lived and worked there in four-year shifts, though many had stayed much longer. Walt and Sylvia had been there for eight and a half now. Walt pulled his gaze from the wolves and looked at his reflection in the window. He ran a hand through his silver hair. Sylvia would be home soon, and he always liked to look sharp for her.

  They had spent their lives here, together. Yellowstone had seen the birth and loss of their only child, Sean, and now it was seeing them through Sylvia's illness.

  Still, Walt liked people, always had, and missed them sometimes. And he didn’t actually agree that if people came to see it, the park would be irreparably damaged. It took a special kind of ego to really believe that, he thought. To really believe that humans had the power to destroy the park. He’d been here long enough to see this wild place recover from forest fires, from floods, even from a few earthquakes, and Yellowstone always survived. It changed, certainly, but stasis was not a natural state anyway. Wild places were meant to change and adapt. And humans were not so powerful, even in their carelessness, that they could presume the ability to overpower this wild place. The Rangers’ fear of the public in the park seemed to discount the most remarkable thing about this place: its adaptability. Yellowstone was constantly changing.

  In spite of his anxiety about having Sylvia out with the Stracahn, their arrival held excitement for Walt, though he wouldn't go broadcasting that to the other Rangers. Yellowstone was big and empty, and could be boring, even with the geysers and the wildlife. He looked forward to seeing how the aliens interacted with the park, and how it responded to them.

  The wolves outside the window looked up at him. He would have liked to believe they recognized him on some level, but he knew it was probably just the bison ribs he had in the oven that interested them.

  Walt left the window. He opened the refrigerator and moved aside two more wrapped packages of meat to get to the greenhouse-grown kale in the back. They usually kept four packages of meat in here. He'd have to pick up some more at headquarters tomorrow when he checked out.

  There was a good selection right now. The Rangers had culled several bison from the herd, and the meat was cured and ready to eat. Though the abundance of predators meant that the herd numbers stayed well under the 7,500 animals the park could handle, the curtailment of bison migration and hay feeding ensured that the numbers were, at any given time, only a few large breeding seasons away from overwhelming
the grazing land. The Rangers took some periodically to feed themselves and to keep the herd in check.

  Walt loved that about the park. It provided them with so much. They ate only what they grew here, in the greenhouses, and what the park grew on its own, and they ate very well.

  The Ranger housing, nearly two hundred years old now, was patched and rebuilt with native materials, and every indication was that it would stand a lot longer. Even the dilapidated Old Faithful Inn, which had been vacant for half a century, was being repaired and renewed by the Stracahn Avowed. Karson, the park director, had given them the use of it for their holy building, which they called “The Vault,” and they had thinned trees and restored the roof nearly to its original state.

  The park gave them—all of them—everything they needed to survive. But just as the thought came, an image flashed in Walt’s mind: the sterile hospital in Sunset. He realized it wasn't entirely accurate. There were some things that even the park couldn’t provide.

  He was pouring the sauce on the ribs when Sylvia came in. He kissed her for a long moment.

  "I'm worried about Caldwell." She said as she pulled away.

  "That's what you get out of my hello kiss?" He said, raising his eyebrows.

  Sylvia blushed, then swatted him on the arm. "Hello to you too, you old rascal." She snitched a piece of the meat and popped it in her mouth. "But I worked with him today, and I think he's getting worse."

  "Worse?"

  "He's just got so much . . . Anger. It's not constructive. I'm half afraid of what he's going to do."

  "‘Afraid’ we should tell the boss afraid or ‘afraid’ we should keep an eye on him afraid?" Walt moved the meat to the table, and they sat down and began to eat. He tried to focus on what she was saying, but the bison ribs tasted amazing, and he was a little distracted through the first few bites.

  "I already told Karson. He's angry about the Stracahn, too, so I don't think he sees Caldwell clearly." She hesitated a moment, and Walt knew her well enough to know that she was wondering if she should go on. But forty years of marriage hadn't taught them to keep secrets. "I see their point about the damage to the park, but, I don't know, Walt. I'm not sure if bringing them here is such a bad thing." She said it cautiously, quietly, tuning into his reaction.