Reaping

by Makansi, K.

  THE REAPING

  Book Two of the Seeds Trilogy

  K. Makansi

  Layla Dog Press

  Saint Louis, MO

  Copyright © 2014 by K. Makansi

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Layla Dog Press.

  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this book

  may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without

  written permission from the publisher. For information, contact us through our

  webpage at http://www.theseedstrilogy.com.

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors' rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or

  persons, living or dead, is merely coincidental, and names, characters, places,

  and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination

  or are used fictitiously.

  Visit our website at www.theseedstrilogy.com to learn more.

  Cover by K. Makansi & Kevin Wietzel.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Print book's Library of Congress Control Number: 2014919559

  Print book's ISBN: 978-0-9898671-4-6

  For Kathy, valiant fighter of alien invaders

  PROLOGUE

  Brinn ALEXANDER

  Winter 2, Sector Annum 106, 21h45

  Gregorian Calendar: December 22

  Blue is the color now. The bruised halo of the moon’s light against the blackened winter sky. The cobalt flash of electric fire, a single strike as it hits the man across from us. The navy of his shirt against the brown dirt and pale grasses as red blood spills from his chest and mouth. The deepening blue of panic as I clutch Remy’s arm, pull her to me. The blue ice in Soren’s eyes as he screams, run.

  So soon a moment can change colors, so soon can it spoil, so soon can it wither.

  It doesn’t matter that I hardly knew the man. Darrin Squire was his name. Was. He had a name, he was a teammate, we had laughed together. Now he is dead. So quickly a life is extinguished, so fleeting our moments of joy. I clutch Remy’s arm tighter as we run, as Gabriel and I propel her along with our momentum. She seemed so tired, so done, and yet here we are, running. Again.

  It’s an inevitable experience for a doctor, watching lives fade to nothing. A daily tragedy to which we consign ourselves, hoping we can stave off death a while longer or, if not, at least alleviate the suffering. Some fade away, lingering too long, leaving relief and fatigue in their wake. Others burst like dying stars, an explosion of anger, bitterness, sadness at leaving this life too soon. The confusion, the shock, the agonizing awe of death’s absence has never dulled with exposure. Accepting death in a cosmic sense is all we can do to ease the pain of our patients’ passing.

  We all die. Whether we wilt slowly from old age or instantaneously from a knife to the heart, we cannot escape it. So small are our lives in the span of universal space, so quickly they pass in the span of universal time. So fleeting are our moments of joy.

  “Thank the fates you’re alive,” I’d said to Remy, just moments before, as relief washed over me, a river of joy. I was giddy at the sight of her, relieved as only a parent can be when you realize after days of worry and dread that your child is safe. I wrapped my arms around her and held her as though she was the only thing sustaining me, the only source of life. The color wasn’t blue then—it was blinding white. It was everything. It overcame me, overfilled me, spilling out into the world, my joy radiant and independent of me. Remy, safe! I felt like sunshine.

  I think of Tai, my oldest daughter, as I have every day since the first moment I put my hand on my belly and felt her kick. And I think, for the millionth time, I can’t lose Remy, too. My children, my everything, put in danger by this transcendent and terrifyingly beautiful world.

  It could have been different. Gabriel and I could have stayed in the Sector, stayed in safety. We could have closed our eyes, turned away from the truth. But we didn’t. We owed Tai the truth. So we brought Remy here, to the Resistance. If we had stayed, the Sector’s airships and soldiers wouldn’t be dropping down on us right now. If we had stayed, Remy wouldn’t have been taken prisoner by the Sector. If we had stayed, Remy wouldn’t be in danger.

  But if we had stayed, Remy wouldn’t know justice. She wouldn’t know sacrifice. She wouldn’t know there is pain on the path to renewal. To grow, we must be pruned, bits of ourselves flayed open, cut back. In those carved-out spaces, we grow stronger.

  “Recovery is painful,” I told Remy three years ago, when we mourned Tai. “We will bleed, we will swell, we will scab. It’s the same with life. It wasn’t Tai’s time to die, but she was taken from us. She would want us to heal from her absence, to feel joy again. But we don’t truly understand joy until we have known sorrow.” Joy and sorrow. Light and shadow. Life and death.

  If we had stayed in Okaria, the three of us would have suffocated in the wake of Tai’s death, in the wake of our hypocrisy. Our silence would have killed us from the inside, like a cancer eating away at our bones. I was unable to protect Tai, but now, for Remy, I will do anything. Which is why, when the blue explosions of Bolt fire fill the air, Gabriel and I envelop her in our arms to shield her, even as we run.

  I’m almost unsurprised when the blue flame ignites inside me. It begins in my back, where just earlier that day Gabriel’s hand rested, comforting, as he whispered that Remy would return to us, that he, like me, would do anything to bring her home. From my back, the blue spreads like ink on wet paper to my knees as I fall forward, to my head as the pain screams its arrival, to my lungs as I struggle to breathe. I try to move. I push myself using arms that don’t work. I twist away even as the fire sears into my bones.

  Run, Remy! I try to tell her.

  I’m putting them both in danger by falling here, I know, where the color blue rains down on us like death.

  Tai, I think, distantly, as if I am speaking to myself from far away. Hush, child. I’m almost there. I’m almost there with you. Just a little longer. We all must die, after all. Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. It is our mortal curse and our mortal privilege that we are returned to earth. My transformation from Brinn to earth begins now. Even as a part of me hopes I might recover, that I could fight, that I could survive this, a bigger part knows it is over. My time as Brinn Alexander is over. I am ready to return to where I was made.

  The screams of my family and those around me hurt more than the pain. I am conscious now of more than mere sight and sound. Gabriel cradles me to him and I am filled with wonder at the joy I have known in his embrace. The skin of my daughter’s hands, her grip fierce on my fingers. I feel nothing but the two people I love most in the world.

  “You’ll die if you stay here,” I hear. Distantly I recognize the voice. Valerian Orleán. My brain functions just enough to register mild surprise that he is here with us. He is the enemy, a part of me says, but another part soothes and calms me. He will protect them. I watch through heavy lidded eyes as he looks at Remy. Her reaction is fierce, eyes narrowed, and she returns his gaze evenly.

  “I don’t care,” she whispers. Three words from her lips a thousand times more terrifying than death.

  Go, I try to speak. It’s my time, not yours. You will live.

  Gabriel nods at Vale, some unspoken communication I can’t fathom, and lifts me up. I watch the world from my love’s arms as he carries me away from the unguarded air. Vale runs alongside me for a moment and I thank him with as much strength as I can muster, words that I speak aloud and words that will not come, that could never fill this space. He nods, but his eyes are fixed on the skies, his weapon up, guarding me, protecting
my family.

  In the clarity of death, my surprise at Vale’s presence fades. How could I be surprised? Three years ago, Vale looked at Remy like she was a new world, infinite with delight and passion. He tried to hide it when I was around, his budding love, but a mother can sense these things. One who has loved can sense these things.

  Now, he looks at her like she is his salvation.

  Gabriel sets me down on the ground. Remy kneels over me. I grasp for her hand, lean into Gabriel, my love, my loves. The explosions in the distance become faint as I focus on Remy’s touch and Gabriel’s voice. The blue fades. White fills me up as all other colors and emotions combine and blur into emptiness. I see a face I recognize, but distantly, and I struggle to focus.

  Gabriel’s voice, the poetry, the resonance that vibrates in my chest: “I love you, I love you, I love you….”

  I close my eyes and see Tai, laughing, beckoning, and I take her hand and go.

  The Reaping

  by Gabriel Alexander

  Poet Laureate, Okarian Sector

  Brushstrokes from my daughter’s pen

  Carve nascent shadows in the dawn

  Carve dripping moonlight on a sea she’s never seen

  Carve little spaces where we may sleep at night

  Carve little spaces in me.

  Brushstrokes from the reaper’s scythe

  Carve hollows in these golden fields

  Carve fruiting canes in the green vines

  Carve little spaces where we may find our seeds

  Carve little spaces in me.

  Brushstrokes from the butcher’s knife

  Carve canyons in the calf’s throat

  Carve life from the lamb’s heart

  Carve little spaces where we may sate our needs

  Carve little spaces in me.

  Brushstrokes from the wind in the trees

  Brushstrokes from the pen that’s never seen the sea

  Brushstrokes from the scythe whose scars give life

  Carve little spaces where we may plant our seeds

  Carve little spaces in me.

  1 - VALE

  Winter 27, Sector Annum 106, 08h45

  Gregorian Calendar: January 16

  My fingers press into the hare’s neck, and the animal whimpers and twitches, caught in the terror of death. I spare a moment to marvel at its silken fur, its taut, sinewy muscles, the delicate bones. I close my eyes and whisper my penitence.

  “I’m sorry.”

  With a wrench, I feel the sick crack as the spine breaks. I open my eyes. The whimpering stops, the hare’s breath cut short. The muscles twitch for a second, and then everything is still. I let out the breath that had ballooned inside my chest.

  Crunching leaves and stomping feet sound behind me. Firestone. I haven’t the slightest idea how he survived out in the Wilds all those months before the Resistance found him—he sounds like a wild boar rampaging through the underbrush. The idea of him creeping stealthily through the trees, hunting, or hiding, is laughable. It was his traps and seemingly endless knowledge of edible plants that saved him, I guess. I thought I had a good handle on all that with my Sector “wilderness” training, but I’d probably get pretty hungry out here without him. He’s been teaching the rest of us how to set the traps and forage for winter plants since we got to the safe house.

  “Got something?” he asks, his voice rough, his long black hair tangled and droopy against his forehead. He hasn’t slept much lately. None of us have.

  “Big, fat rabbit.”

  “Good. Mine was empty.”

  “The student becomes the master,” I say, bowing deeply as I stand to face him.

  “Master, yes. And don’t forget it.” He flashes a grin. “Your traps been getting better, true. Better than Soren’s, at least. For a pianist, his fingers don’t seem to work that well.”

  I smile. It’s not often I’m favorably compared to Soren. Kind words, these days are as welcome as a soaking rain on parched ground.

  “At least we’ll have something to eat with all that damned amaranth,” he says, glaring at the sky, which is awakening clear and so, so blue.

  I free the hare from the trap as Firestone holds out the small game bag he’s stitched together. I drop the rabbit in, and he slings the bag over his shoulder. Without another word, we start down the deer path back towards our hideaway. Morning sunlight flits through the boughs overhead like golden butterflies as we weave through the forest back to where the others wait.

  Outside the safe house, little more than an overgrown shed, Remy, Jahnu, and Kenzie are loading a few daypacks with bags of nuts, dried fruit, and smoked meat leftover from the Resistance base. Remy glances up when she hears us coming. Our eyes meet, and the familiar tremor ripples down my spine into my belly. I drop my eyes, but I can feel hers linger on me, watching our approach.

  “Got something good in that bag?” Jahnu asks.

  “Vale nabbed a lapin,” Firestone says, using the old French word. In Okaria, where most of us grew up, everyone speaks English, or something like it. But in the factory towns and Farms, like where Firestone is from, traces of the old language lingers. French Canadian words sneak into his speech every now and then. Bear will sometimes drop in whole sentences of the old French. He says it's comforting, that it reminds him of growing up.

  “That’ll go with the special breakfast Eli’s preparing,” Kenzie says with a smile. “You’ll never guess what it is.”

  “Strawberries with fresh creme and warm sourdough bread?” Firestone asks.

  “Even better, if you could believe it,” Kenzie chuckles, her bright red curls bouncing as she nods for us to keep guessing.

  “Potato fritters with maple syrup?” Jahnu says.

  “Oh I know! Bacon and eggs, right?”

  “So close!”

  “Oh, right. It’s amaranth, isn’t it?” I say drily. We all already know the answer.

  “How’d you guess?” she asks, the hint of a wry smile on her lips.

  “For the twentieth day in a row. That’s some special amaranth,” Remy adds.

  The door bursts open and Soren stalks out.

  “You’re leaving in an hour,” he says, a sharp edge to his voice. “So if you want to eat,” he narrows his frigid blue eyes at me, “you should prep whatever’s in that bag sooner rather than later.”

  Eli announced yesterday what we all knew: that no one is coming to meet us here. That we’ve been waiting, anxious and idle, for something to happen, for someone from the Resistance to show up, or somehow get in touch with us, and it’s time to face the fact that it’s been too long to continue clinging to that hope. If anyone from the Resistance were able to contact us, they would have. My guess is that even the teams that made it to their designated outposts have opted for continued radio silence. It’s safer that way. But with our food rations dwindling and foraged food hard to come by in the dead of winter, we had to do something. So Eli decided it was time to go exploring, and Soren was none too happy when he’d made the announcement.

  “Vale, Kenzie, and Remy. We’re taking out the hover car tomorrow,” he’d said. “Going to try to—”

  “Are you joking?” Soren interrupted, his voice rising. “You’re going to take Vale out there? You trust him?”

  “I saw him shoot down Sector airships with my own eyes,” Eli responded. “You’re my second in command—”

  “Then I should come.”

  “No, you’re second in command which means you stay here. If we don’t make it back, you’re in charge.” Eli said, that dangerous, maddening calm in his eyes. Soren clamped his jaw shut and didn’t say another word until breakfast, when he viciously accused me of over-seasoning the amaranth.

  I am fairly certain he’ll never get used to me being around, seasoned grains or not.

  “Calm down, Soren,” Firestone says now, dragging the words out. “We’re all hungry. No need for hard words.”

  Remy puts her hand on Soren’s shoulder, and his expression
softens. A rush of anger runs through me as Soren reaches a hand up to take hers, and a rare smile graces her face as their eyes meet.

  What right do you have to wish you were in his shoes? I ask, trying to quell my jealousy. None at all, Vale. But the feeling doesn’t go away. I pull out my knife and turn away, busying myself with gutting and skinning the rabbit.

  Later, in the hovercar, I keep silent while Remy, Eli, and Kenzie rehash for the hundredth time what could have happened to Team Blue, the Resistance group that was supposed to meet us at our rendezvous point after Thermopylae was destroyed. We’re heading in the direction of Waterloo, the nearest Resistance base any of us know of. Remy’s in the seat next to me, ignoring me, as usual, while I fight the urge to reach out and touch her arm, trace my thumb down to where her pulse beats at the base of her wrist, twine my fingers with hers. I try to distract myself by counting off all the reasons I shouldn’t want to touch her, but it turns out there aren’t very many reasons so I sit on my hands and look out the window.

  Eli’s driving, searching for a clear path through the woods. Sometimes it seems we’re not moving much faster than we would be if we were on foot, but whenever he finds an opening, he guns it like we’re going for the finish line in one of the Sector’s hover raceways. He’s gunning it now and I rest my head against the seatback and feel the wind on my face.

  “There’s absolutely no way they got lost,” Kenzie says. “I’d bet my life on it. The Director drilled these escape routes and rendezvous points into our heads a thousand times. There’s no way they could have missed it.”

  “Something else, then,” Remy says, the desperation I’ve become all too familiar with creeping into her voice. “Their hover car broke, maybe. All our equipment is old, maybe theirs broke down and they’ve tried to make contact, but can’t.”

  “I get why they’d keep to radio silence, but someone should’ve been here or made contact by now. They would have kept going by foot even if their transports conked out,” Kenzie points out. “And there’s no way it would have taken a month, even on foot. We’re only two hundred kilometers outside the city.”