The Sorrow Anthology

by Helen Allan

  Sorrow held tight to his waist as Ib raced across the desert sands, back the way they had come towards the mountains, followed by about fifty of the resistance, also riding findailes. As they flew across the hot sand, the sound of the aircraft following them, lasers firing all around, Judgment shouted an order and elbowed Sorrow in the ribs, propelling her off the back of Ib.

  She hit the ground hard, gasping in pain from the blow to her side, as she watched Judgement and Ib spin around and race back the way they had come, towards the aircraft and the portals.

  “Judge, what the fuck?” Sorrow screamed, “what are you doing?”

  She rose on unsteady legs, prepared to run back, to follow Judgment, when she was tackled from behind around her thighs.

  “Get down,” a small voice said, as little arms wrapped firmly around her legs.

  Sorrow looked down to see Jury frantically plucking at her uniform with his small fingers and trying to pull her towards a nearby boulder. Glancing around, she noticed many other resistance leaders had laid down, using their findailes as living shields, except for Truth, who spun his findaile and raced after Judgement.

  “What is Judge doing?” she shouted to the boy. Amid the noise of the aircraft and the battle, she wondered if he would hear her, or even answer her.

  “What we need to do,” he said.

  Sorrow scowled and watched as Truth and Judgment made it, neck and neck, underneath the first of the aircraft. The hatch of the vessel opened, dropping out a round, white object the size of a bar fridge.

  She continued to hold her breath as Judge fired at those around, killing surprised Gharials one after the other, shielding Truth as he hefted the object onto his findaile and turned its head towards the nearest gate.

  Sorrow’s eyes widened when she saw that the gate was spilling out people. Humans. Men were pouring through in a long stream, most dressed in medieval-type garb, some even in full armour.

  “Earth,” she shouted, “that is the Earth gateway.”

  The boy next to her said nothing, but taking her hand, he rolled the boulder aside and motioned for her to jump into a deep hole the rock had previously concealed.

  “What? No,” Sorrow shook her head and tried to pull her hand away.

  “We go now,” Jury shouted, his small face showing his fear and worry that she would not do as he told her, “this tunnel leads back into the mountain. We must go.”

  “No,” Sorrow shook her head, moving back as resistance fighters and findaile began to crawl on their bellies past her and drop down into the hole.

  “You’ll die if you stay,” another soldier said to her as he followed his findaile down.

  Sorrow looked to where he had pointed and gasped.

  Truth was almost at the portal. He had fought his way through the gharials and past the incoming streams of humans who fell in droves to the lasers of the gharials and the shots from the aircraft, and Sorrow could see what he was going to do.

  “Oh no,” she breathed, as he and his findaile reached the shimmering portal. She watched, frozen, knowing there was nothing she could do to save the humans. It was clear Truth was going to sacrifice himself and his findaile to close this portal in the only way he could – the white object the aircraft had dropped was a bomb.

  She knew now why Judgment had questioned the staffing of the spacecraft; he must have a conspirator onboard, primed to release the bomb to the resistance at a specified time.

  As Truth’s findaile galloped through the gate, Sorrow stood transfixed, but suddenly shrieked as a large, dark shape smashed into her from the right, and she fell down the hole.

  Landing on her side, hard, besides her furry saviour, she didn’t have time to catch a breath as she stared up at the section of sky visible through the hole and saw everything turn bright blue as the ground shuddered, the portal blown in a massive explosion.

  She knew, having witnessed such an explosion on Heaven, that everything for a three-mile radius would be flattened.

  Still lying on her back, she turned her head and caught Judgment’s eye, watching silently as he pushed himself to his feet and he and Ib launched themselves back out of the hole, and into the chaos.

  The mood was sombre back in the mountain cavern, the resistance’ headquarters, and Sorrow was alone in the pools, bar one companion.

  The home of the resistance was a network of caves and tunnels inside a mountain. Small, subterranean rivers pooled here and there in the network, some warm, and all bubbling a constant stream of pure oxygen into the air.

  For someone from Earth, the water seemed like a giant spa bath, the air invigorating and refreshing. It was one of these that Sorrow now bathed, soaking her tired and sore muscles. Apart from bruised ribs, courtesy of Judgment’s elbow, and a bruised arm, where she had landed after falling in the hole, she was unhurt.

  She was determined to give Judgment a piece of her mind for knocking her off Ib when he returned, but he had yet to come back from the mission. Another soldier had told her it would likely be a few days. He had to manage his troops, mop up some Gharial, and report to The Fist before he would be able to slip away.

  In the meantime, the resistance would re-group, tend their wounds and set about getting their preparations ready for the next portal battle – in twelve months. When, no doubt, Gharial security would be tightened even further around each gateway.

  This was also something Sorrow wanted to discuss with Judgment; she was sure there must be another way to close the portals without sacrificing good men and their findailes. And she wanted to put a stop to the armies leaving to invade new worlds. Just how she wasn’t sure yet – but she felt there must be a better way.

  She smiled now across at Jury as he sat at the edge of the pool staring at her.

  “Why don’t you come in? The water is warm; I don’t bite.”

  The boy said nothing, just continued to stare.

  “I know,” Sorrow sighed, “you have never seen a woman before. But we are just like you; we only look a little different on the outside.”

  The boy still said nothing, and Sorrow shook her head and continued to rinse out her suit. She only had the one, and she wanted to ensure she got out all the green gharial blood and red desert sand. All the rest of her supplies, her clothes from Earth, perfume, books, the special things her mother had taken the time to pack for her and throw through the portal, all were now in the hands of the Nãga who captured her when she first landed. She sighed, thinking how nice it would be to slip into fresh underwear and a comfortable tracksuit, even jeans and a t-shirt would be preferable to staying in her battle uniform. A bit of deodorant wouldn’t go astray either; she thought ruefully as she sniffed under her arms disdainfully.

  “If you throw me your suit, I will wash it for you,” she offered as she finished rinsing her own and put it in a crumped heap on the edge of the pond.

  The boy scurried away, returning a few minutes later wearing his ‘good’ suit, the red one he had worn to The Fist – his old suit, the one he had worn in battle, he handed to her, still saying nothing. It was dusty and torn, as she had noticed the first time she saw him, but it did not have any blood on it.

  “Thank you,” Sorrow smiled.

  She dipped the suit into the warm water and scrubbed it.

  “So,” she said as she scoured, “since you won’t talk to me, I’ll talk to you. I noticed each of the red soldiers has two or three little boys following them. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest you are either siblings or trainees. Judge only has you, so maybe leaders only have one trainee. Again, I’m just surmising here. You all seem to range in ages from four to twelve; I don’t see any younger or older. So again, just guessing, you come, train and then go somewhere else. I don’t know where you come from though…of course if you were to talk to me I could learn more, but, since you won’t….”

  “I have seen a woman,” the boy said, quietly.

  Sorrow smiled and continued to scrub, not wanting to frighten him by respond
ing or questioning him, waiting to see if he would say more.

  “I have seen a woman,” he said again.

  “Really?” Sorrow smiled, still looking down, “where?”

  “At The Finger.”

  Sorrow frowned. She knew The Finger was the other major city on this planet, headed by Shu, but she knew little else about it, other than it was a place Etienne would have found highly amusing, just for its name. Thinking of her French friend, she shook her head. She missed him already but hoped he was enjoying a well-earned rest on Avalona with a flock of feathered women to warm his bed. She hoped he found one who would appreciate his dirty sense of humour, as she did.

  “There are women there?” she asked Jury now, concentrating on his statement. “But Judgment said he had never seen a woman before me.”

  “They are not like you,” the boy muttered, plucking at his uniform and frowning.

  “Oh?”

  “They do not have,” he pointed to Sorrow’s breasts, just visible under the waterline.

  “Breasts?”

  “Skin.”

  ‘No skin? What the fuck?’

  “Huh,” Sorrow frowned, considering how to phrase her next million questions, “how do you know they are women?”

  “One birthed me,” the boy said, frowning.

  “Your mother?”

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged, “but I was birthed.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Sorrow laughed. She was about to ask him more when they were interrupted.

  “Enough, Jury,” a deep voice said from the doorway.

  Sorrow looked up, surprised, to see another Earthborn standing in the doorway. He was nude and Sorrow immediately moved to cover her own nakedness, only partially hidden by the bubbly water, with the boy’s suit.

  “Go,” the man said to Jury, who nodded and scurried away, giving Sorrow a worried look as he left.

  “Ah, you can have the pool,” Sorrow smiled to the newcomer, “I was just leaving.”

  “Stay where you are,” he said, his dark eyes roaming her face, and lower as he sauntered closer and stared down at her.

  “Thanks, but I’m going to become a prune if I don’t get out.”

  “And this is what we fight for?” the man snorted, waving his hand at her body.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Judgment leads us in this revolution to free the planets, to overthrow the gods so that we can live as he says was intended, man and woman together. He tells us you are bountiful creatures, that you have feelings; empathy, love – things bred out of us. He tells us you are worth the battle – if this is so, show me.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sorrow frowned, rising from the water and reaching for her wet suit.

  She sighed as he casually pushed her suit back into the water with his foot.

  “Show me,” he said again.

  “What do you want to see?”

  “What it is that Judgment saw? What you did to him, or with him, that convinced him you are worth questioning everything.”

  “I fought beside Judgment for a year,” Sorrow said quietly, her voice firm, “I watched his back, he watched mine. We became friends. And you are misinformed if you think this revolution is for me or for womankind. You, Judgment, Truth, all of you are the very abominations you fight to destroy – you are half-god, half-human. Shu and Tefnut, your leaders, they lied to you when they said you were a superior race, and that those you destroy are lesser beings – they are all victims of the gods’ genetic experiments and cross-breeding – as are you, as am I.”

  As she said this, she noticed his body had stirred at the sight of her nakedness, and she quickly flicked her eyes away from his rigid member. His chest, like Judgment’s, was heavily muscled, perhaps a little more so that her former fighting partner’s, but just as deeply crisscrossed in scars, including the scar across his chest where his second heart had been removed. He had obviously fought in many battles. She wondered how long he had been part of the resistance, and if he was the only one questioning the reason behind it, now she had materialised. She realised she might have more hearts and minds to win over than the heart of a six-year-old boy.

  “Show me,” he said again, breaching the distance between them and reaching for her.

  She stood still as his hands gripped her shoulders, and he stared with lust-filled eyes at her face.

  “Do you even know what it is you want?” she asked quietly, seeing the confusion in his eyes. She knew Judgment had known nothing about women, or sex until that day by the stream on Avalona. The fact that this man was aroused meant he was attracted to her, clearly, but he obviously had no idea what to do with his bulging equipment.

  “I,” he shook his head, “show me.”

  Sorrow sighed.

  “I’m only going to say this once,” she said quietly, looking him in the eye. “You need to take your hands off me.”

  He moved his hands down, from her shoulders to her breasts, and squeezed them, hard.

  “Seriously?” Sorrow snorted, “what is it with you men and breasts?”

  “Show me,” he demanded.

  “Ok,” she sighed, bringing her knee up forcefully into his groin.

  He gasped and bent over, his hands going to his crotch, and she brought her knee up again, this time into his face. He bellowed and reeled back, and she knocked his feet out from under him with a well-timed sweep of her own. As he landed on the hard, rock edge of the pond, she kicked him once more, tipping him into the pool.

  She watched him moan, blood pouring from his nose, as he rolled in the water, clutching his bruised genitals.

  “Seen enough?” she asked blandly, leaning forward and fetching her suit from where it floated on the surface.

  “I think he has,” a deep voice said from the shadows.

  Sorrow looked up to see Judgment enter, Ib and Jury close on his heels.

  “Judge, I thought you would be busy at The Fist for days.”

  “A quick trip, just to ascertain what medical supplies I might need to procure for the resistance,” he murmured, looking from the man in the pond and back to Sorrow as she hastily donned her still-dripping suit.

  “I also wanted to ensure you were settling in. That all was well – and to tell you to stay hidden. The ruse to use you as bait worked, but there are still troops out looking for you since your body was not among those left strewn in front of the portals. I intend to kill them all so that no word of your existence leaks back to The Fist, but this mop-up may take a few days.”

  “Right. Well, everything is fine here. No worries,” Sorrow said ruefully, watching her victim roll in the water clutching himself, his face a mask of pain and anger.

  “Good,” Judgment sighed, “come, we have much to discuss. It is meal-time. Will you join me in my quarters?”

  Sorrow nodded but paused before leaving.

  “Wait,” she said.

  Turning, she walked back to the man in the pond and extended her hand to him.

  “Come on. You will need some plaster on that nose; I imagine it is broken.”

  The man gave her a deadly look and ignored her hand, but rose from the pool as bid.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” Sorrow said, cocking her head to one side and considering him.

  Brushing past her, he moved to the doorway where Judgment stood, blocking his exit.

  “Do we need to talk about this, Requiem?”

  “We do not.”

  “Your questions were answered?”

  “They were.”

  Judgment nodded and let the man leave.

  Sorrow watched him go, shaking her head.

  “I suppose that was to be expected,” she said quietly, “I guess I will need to prove myself to your resistance before they can see me as one of them.”

  “You will never be one of them,” Judgment murmured, “you are more than the sum of all of us combined.”

  As he said this, Ib turned big, black intelligent eyes on Sorrow.

  She s
hook her head.

  “We are partners, Judge, equals.”

  “You are a woman,” Jury said quietly.

  “Yes,” Sorrow laughed, “and a doctor – I need to fix that man’s nose.”

  Judgment nodded.

  “I’ll lead you to the infirmary.”

  She patted Jury on the head as she followed Judgment out; she didn’t attempt the same with Ib, something in his eyes told her, not yet.

  His quarters were really just a divided off section of the larger cavern, but the thick material walls afforded a rare moment of privacy away from curious eyes, as she sat alone with Judge and ate the rudimentary oat and berry biscuit provided.

  “He did not deserve your attention, medical or otherwise,” Judgment said, seeing Sorrow frown at some of the man’s blood on her newly cleaned uniform.

  “I hurt him. I needed to fix him,” she said, shrugging, “he didn’t really even know what he wanted.”

  “No,” he shook his head, “neither did I until that day by the stream. But I want it very much now. I think of it often.”

  “Judge,” Sorrow frowned, “we won’t be doing that again.”

  He smiled.

  “The portals are closed for another twelve months. We resume our guerrilla attacks on the establishment. But we have time now; the pressure is off for us to jump straight into battle. We have time.”

  “Judge, time or no, we won’t be having sex again,” she shook her head and threw her hands up in exasperation at his confused expression, “that, sex, it is a physical thing men and women do together, yes, and it is fun, yes, but it is also more than that – it involves feelings, emotions, it involves trust.”

  Even as she said this, Sorrow felt guilty. Because she had enjoyed sex with Khalili without any feelings being involved. She had wanted a physical release, an escape from the harsh way of life, a purely physical domination of her memories of Anhur. Telling Judgement that sex was other than this was, in some ways, simply not true. But he needed to hear it because she no longer wanted him that way.

  “I felt things,” he said, nodding, “I want to feel that again – I want you to trust me again. I will make it so.”