Idols

by Margaret Stohl

  The Idylls, Fortis called it. “I’ve found it, with Doc’s help. A Grass base. The only camp out here.”

  I was confused when he first said it. “Idylls? Why do they call it that?”

  “Because it’s paradise, love. Where the Icons can’t hurt us and the Lords can’t fly.”

  “You mean somewhere over a rainbow? Like the old stories say?”

  “I mean somewhere under a mountain. Like the old combat manuals say.”

  But I still don’t understand how we’re supposed to find some Grass Rebellion base even the Embassies can’t. And I have a difficult time believing there even is someplace safe. Someplace where we can plan our battle against the House of Lords.

  But none of us has a better plan. Or better rations. Or enough water. Or another way out of here.

  So, like the good soldiers we are quickly becoming, under the mountain we go.

  “Dol?”

  I jump as Lucas touches my shoulder, startling me out of my reverie of mountains and soldiers. He wags his head in the direction of the nearby hill. His hair falls lank in his face, curling against his jawline. “Come on, Dol. I have something for you.”

  Looking at his overgrown hair makes me realize how long it has been since any of us has done anything as normal as getting a haircut. Not to mention the bloody gash on his forehead that snakes above his eyes like a second brow, his trophy from our crash—same as my bruised face, Tima’s swollen ankle, or Ro’s busted rib.

  And all of our empty, aching bellies.

  Still, even this messed up, he’s breathtakingly beautiful, Lucas Amare.

  “Something for me?” I’m caught off guard, but Lucas offers me his hand and I take it, pulling myself up after him. The second I touch him, I feel it—the warmth that comes from the way his heart beats in time with mine.

  Does everyone feel this from him? He could make them, if he wanted to. That much I know.

  But is there something more there, something just for me?

  I stand close to him, holding his hand for a fraction of a moment longer than I need to. I can feel myself blushing and I turn away, suddenly grateful for the dimming light.

  It’s all so strange. I mean, I am. How I have become. How imagining a kiss can feel like a real one.

  That one perfect, sublime, stolen kiss, back at the Mission. The day we came so close to binding ourselves to each other, heart to heart, hand to hand.

  I pull my own wrapping tight around my wrist, shaking off the memories. Still, I can feel my cheeks turning pink again as I follow Lucas up the winding trail that leads from the dry riverbed where we’ve made camp—if you can call it that—all the way to the top of the red rock hill, rising above the shadowy desert floor. The red wash of the landscape is dotted with strange, almost alien-looking shapes, where the wind has carved the stone into curving organic formations. “They don’t call this Goblin Valley for nothin’.” I can almost hear Fortis’s voice when I look down at the rocks.

  Then I hear the familiar static of Lucas’s cuff, followed by the crackling sound of Doc’s voice. “Lucas? I appear to be losing your signal.”

  I stop. Lucas raises a finger to his lips—and motions for us to keep going.

  Doc’s voice echoes across the rock. “That is not optimal, as I am certain you understand. You need to remain together for the purposes of safety. Might I remind you that twelve Icons remain fully functional? Perhaps you have forgotten that there are no known weapons, with the exception of the four of you and your exceptional abilities, that can damage them in the slightest—”

  “Parce metu, Doc.” Lucas grins. He starts up another switchback in the trail, pulling me by the hand.

  “Cease from fear?” Doc translates. “I cannot be afraid. It is not within my parameters. I am merely noting that you do not seem to recall that accomplishing the task at hand requires you all to protect each other until you reach safety.”

  “I’ll keep my eye on her, Doc. Don’t you worry,” Lucas says, squeezing my hand.

  “I am still concerned that you appear to be moving out of optimal range for the communications relay Fortis is carrying. As in the colloquial expression, ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’”

  “Is that so?” Lucas eggs Doc on, and winks at me.

  “Quite. Although in my case, slightly erroneous,” Doc continues, so easily distracted by linguistics. “Seeing as I have neither eyes nor mind to speak of, per se. So perhaps the phrase more optimally would be ‘Out of range, out of ran—’”

  Lucas answers by switching off his cuff with a flick of a finger. “Out of range,” he says, grinning. He pauses to think, then pulls off the cuff and rests it on a twisted cactus that juts into our path. “Sorry, Doc.”

  I shake my head. “Oh, come on. He means well.”

  Lucas takes my hand, smiling as we climb.

  I can’t help but smile back. “And what if he’s right? If we’re gone when Fortis wakes up, he’ll freak. We’re not supposed to leave camp, remember? It’s too dangerous.” I can feel myself giving in even as I say the words.

  “Maybe I’m dangerous.” Lucas winks.

  “You?” I roll my eyes and he groans.

  “Live a little, Dol. Doc will forgive us. We won’t be gone long, and three’s a crowd. And anyway, we’re almost there.”

  He stops short, pulling me roughly in his direction. I stand tall, stepping up on a rock, letting myself stretch along the length of him, letting myself feel the weight of his strong arms as they wrap around my shoulders.

  “I’ve wanted to do this since we left the Mission,” he says, burying his face in my neck. I wince as he bumps my tender jaw, and then I smile—because I’ve wanted it too.

  I kiss the top of his head. “And yet you let a little thing like falling out of the sky stop you?”

  He laughs. “Next time I won’t.”

  I won’t, either.

  And at this one moment, Lords or not, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

  I slide down, leaning my head back against his chest. It feels safe, and I pretend for the moment that we are.

  “You know, sometimes four Icon Children are two too many,” Lucas says. “At least, maybe this week they are.”

  I look up at him. “Do you ever wonder if there are more of us out there? Than the four of us?” The words sound almost ridiculous the moment I let myself say them.

  “No,” Lucas says. “But I do wonder what’s going on inside the head of the one right here in front of me.”

  “This,” I say, laying my head back on his chest.

  “There.” He says the word softly, and I almost can’t hear him. I look ahead and see that the sun is setting, as glorious as any sunset I have ever seen, even at the Mission.

  More glorious. The most glorious.

  Not a silver ship in sight.

  From up here, the stretch of unforgiving rock and scrub and rubble expands in front of us, in long shadows of quiet purple-blue falling and fading across the red-dirt desert floor. I see the curve of the horizon, and I’m momentarily struck by the brief sensation that I’m standing on a spinning globe, hurtling through space.

  Our planet. Our Earth. It’s dizzying.

  It will be gone in a minute, I think. The sunset, and the feeling. For now, though, it is enough.

  One thing is right, in a universe where everything else is wrong.

  I smile, tilting my head back until I can look up at his face. “It’s perfect.”

  “You like it? I had it made especially for you.” Lucas smiles. He almost looks shy. “It’s a present.”

  “Is it?” I laugh. “Then I’m going to keep it forever.”

  He smiles. “Okay. Hold on to it. Keep it where you won’t lose it.”

  “I will,” I say.

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispers.

  “Shut up,” I whisper back, teasing. “It’s beautiful.”

  It’s true. This sunset—Lucas’s sunset, and now mine—is incandescently, infectiously beaut
iful. And it means we have made it to another night.

  We are alive.

  For now, it should be enough.

  The sun slowly moves behind the horizon. Lucas nods, whispering into my ear. “See? That’s how it works. The sun goes down now, but it always comes up again.”

  “Really.” I smile, arching an eyebrow.

  “Really.” He smiles back. “Believe it.” He kisses my cheek, softly, avoiding the bruises. “And even when you can’t see it, it’s out there somewhere on the other side of the world, getting ready to come back again.”

  Now he kisses my other cheek, so softly I shiver.

  And my neck. “It’s going to get better.”

  My ear. “Everything is.”

  The warm pull that is Lucas overtakes me, and I don’t fight it. I have my gifts, and he has his. This is what he brings the world, this feeling. Sharing it and spreading it, to everyone he meets.

  I give in.

  Love.

  Offering it to me soothes him as much as it does me, and I let myself feel it, take it.

  I push out of my mind the competing thoughts. That we are lost, with no support in sight. Hunted in the desert. No plan in place to take down another Icon.

  I wish that for once Doc was right, that it was somehow possible to forget what lies ahead of us.

  But somehow, at this moment, Lucas accomplishes the impossible. I feel him relax, letting the sun warm him, even as it fades away.

  Enjoy it while we have it, what little we have.

  Coming from Lucas, this sunset means everything.

  I tilt my face toward the last bits of shared warmth, toward Lucas and the sun. “I hope you’re right.”

  “I am.” He touches my cheek again, his voice growing low, urgent. “Dol—”

  I need you. He doesn’t dare say the words, but I feel them. They are as real to me as the cold evening breeze on my face.

  He needs me like food and water. Like sunshine and rain. Like—

  Like Ro and I used to need each other.

  I push that thought out of my mind and lean toward Lucas. He takes my face in both hands, holding on tight, as if I were as solid as the red desert rocks that surround us. A sure, steady thing. An incontrovertible fact, or a long-held truth.

  With a look, I ask permission to be closer to him. Closer than physically possible.

  He nods, and I go in, looking for one moment in particular. I find it burning bright in his mind, and when I reach for it, in a flash I am back in the cave when we first met.

  But this time, I am Lucas. This time, I see us—the story of us—through his eyes.

  I don’t see the details clearly, but the feelings are so powerful they almost drop me to my knees. I see the moment he first looks at me and feel the shock—then a flood of warmth.

  The explosion of intense curiosity, wonder, and attraction.

  The shared ocean of us.

  I don’t know what else to call it.

  I have wanted to go there for a long time, but only now had the courage to ask.

  And this is now my favorite memory, his love at first sight.

  It’s not just a gift he has. It’s a miracle.

  He is more certain of me than I am of myself. Which makes me only more certain of just one thing.

  Lucas needs me.

  Lucas needs me now, and I need him.

  He kisses me so hard it feels like I might break open. And as I kiss him back, I wonder if that might not be such a bad thing. If sometimes, some kinds of breaking can fix things.

  Everything.

  His kiss pushes me back against the rock and my body dissolves into his. In his arms, it feels like the sun is rising and setting all at once—and then a wave of warmth comes over me and I can no longer think of anything at all.

  Only Lucas.

  Because I really am the luckiest girl in the world. And even when I fall out of the sky he catches me.

  GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION

  MARKED URGENT

  MARKED EYES ONLY

  Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

  RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

  Note: First recorded response from Perses, establishing first contact. Perses says “hello.”

  Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

  HAL2040 ==> FORTIS

  Transcript - ComLog 05.16.2042

  HAL::PERSES

  //lognote: {PERSES communication attempt #251,091};

  sendline: salve mundus;

  return:…… 01110011 01100001 01101100 01110110 01100101.……;

  //translation note:

  message received: salve (binary);

  sendline: γειά σου κόσμο;

  return:…… γειά σου…… salve..… hello;

  return:…… 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111..… hello;

  com protocol handshake exchanged;

  uplink established;

  comlink access granted;

  sendline: Hello;

  return: hello;

  sendline: Who are you?;

  return: who..… you..…;

  return: you..… me..… i;

  return: i am.…… nothing;

  return: i am.…… beginning and end;

  return: A and Ω;

  sendline:………… alpha and omega?;

  sendline: query: Beginning of what?;

  return: life. home. new home.;

  sendline: query: End of what?;

  delayed response;

  return:…… life. home. new home.;

  comlink terminated;

  //lognote: comlink terminated by PERSES;

  3

  RHUMBA OF RATTLESNAKES

  “Are we interrupting something? Snake, anyone?”

  I pull away from Lucas as Ro thrusts a pointed stick with a dead snake speared on it between us, his face streaked with dirt and grime. Tima is only a few steps behind him, stumbling and tired. Her hair is still covered with dust. She looks like a gray ghost.

  “Interrupting? Yes,” says Lucas, though in his mouth the word becomes a curse. “As a matter of fact, you are.” I feel the warmth inside him dissolve at the sound of Ro’s voice.

  As always.

  I push myself free from the rock and stand tall in the dirt. I won’t let Ro see me squirm.

  “My bad. So, snake?” Ro counters, grinning without a trace of humor. The long, dead rattler dangles off Ro’s stick, almost all the way down to the dirt at his feet. This time I squirm.

  Lucas ignores him.

  Tima blinks at me, embarrassed. “Sorry. I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t. We didn’t know where you were. Doc picked up something weird on the comlink. Fortis says we need to move out.”

  “And,” says Ro, wiggling the stick toward her.

  Tima jumps back, rolling her eyes. “And Ro found—this reptile—wrapped around his feet and decided to call it dinner.” She eyes the rattlesnake uneasily, scanning the ground around us. “Now we should go. Before the whole rhumba shows up.”

  “The rhumba?”

  “Of rattlesnakes,” she says, matter-of-fact. “That’s what you call it.” Of course it is. I smile, in spite of the chaotic tangle of feelings surging around me.

  Ro shrugs. “Relax, Rhumba. Doc is just paranoid. I’m not afraid of snakes or Sympas. Not like Buttons Junior here.”

  “He’s not afraid of snakes,” snaps Tima. For a moment, the old Tima flares up—defender of Lucas, champion of her childhood.

  I don’t blame her.

  The air around us has gone ice cold, but before Lucas can say a word, a whistle echoes up from our campsite, shrill and urgent.

  Lucas pushes past Ro, disappearing back in the direction of Fortis’s whistle. Tima rushes to keep up, all too willing to leave the snake—and the conflict—behind.

  Ro shrugs and raises an eyebrow at me, dangling the snake playfully. I sigh an
d shake my head. “Thanks, but I’m still full from yesterday’s meal. And no, snake is not a vegetable.”

  “That’s what I thought. Fine. I know how filling those half-cooked cactus strips can be.” We’re all starving, and we both know it. Ro follows me down the path, holding the snake as if it were a flag.

  “They were fully cooked. Especially the ones you dropped in the fire.” I’m so angry with him, I want to tie that stupid snake around his neck until it strangles him.

  “Sure I can’t interest you in sucking down a little snake snack? You and him, you know—the other snake?” He points in the direction of the path, where Lucas has disappeared. “The one you were already sucking on?”

  That’s it.

  I stop, stepping in front of him so that he stops too. “Ro. Leave it alone.”

  “What, Dol-face?” He looks innocent but he’s not, and we both know it.

  “Lucas and me. Us. Leave us alone. I know it bothers you, and I’m sorry. But you can’t keep acting like this. You and me, it’s not going to happen.”

  There. I’ve said it.

  His eyes flash but he looks away, quickly—like I’ve slapped him. Then, almost as quickly, he breathes, recovers and grins.

  “No,” he says, evenly. “I don’t think so. And I’m not sorry.”

  “No? What does that mean, no?” I’m irritated.

  “It means I won’t stop caring about you.” Ro grins, confidently. “I’m a fighter, Dol. All I know how to do is to find something worth fighting for, and to fight. For it. For you. Deal with it.”

  I feel my face reddening, and I don’t know if I want to kick Ro or kiss him.

  Usually it’s both. That’s the problem.

  “Just—don’t.” I glare at him.

  “Not up to you.” Ro smiles, one last time.

  “How about—it’s up to me?” I turn to see Lucas standing on the trail behind me, next to the cactus that still wears his comlink cuff.

  He’s heard everything. I can tell by the look on his face.

  Ro’s grin quickly fades into something much darker.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Tima says, coming up the trail behind him, already wearing her pack and holding mine. Brutus pokes his head over her shoulder, panting from inside her pack.