Aerovoyant

by P L Tavormina

  Myrta struggled and a sharp pain jabbed out from her forehead.

  “Too high,” Melville barked. He grabbed the blade and gouged straight into her temple and she screamed. Pain wrapped down her cheek and around to her ear. Nauseous, hot, she fell over Floyd’s arm, retching.

  “Stop!” Ephraim was pelting over with three steaders.

  Myrta struggled to stand and Floyd smacked her temple.

  Ephraim’s eyes were desperate, and he said to Melville, “Please, Myrta’s my daughter. Let her go. I’m asking you. By Autore, we’re friends.”

  Melville looked at her again. Something new lit in his eyes, a reckoning. His expression grew deadly serious as he turned to Ephraim. “You know the first lesson. My family, your family, a stranger’s—it makes no difference.”

  At those words, Ephraim lunged straight toward di Vaun’s stomach. Melville wrestled back easily, like someone half his age. He shoved Ephraim into a tent, toppling it. Ephraim pushed up, yanked a stake from the ground, and smashed it against Melville’s head. Melville went for Ephraim’s stomach with the knife.

  Myrta kept screaming. She wrangled her foot around Floyd’s ankle, and another steader was on his back. They all three fell and she twisted away, but Floyd still had her by the arm.

  More angry shouting came from the wagons. A heavily-muscled woman on horseback rode up with more steaders racing behind.

  The marshal slung off of her horse, it reared and raced to the tents, snorting. The marshal yanked Floyd’s arm back with a sort of strong grace, and citing regulations and codes of order, pulled a syringe from her holster and injected him. He sank and Myrta was free. She scrabbled away, then ran to Ephraim who was clutching his stomach. She tried to hold him. “Papa, Papa,” she cried. Blood was everywhere, soaking his shirt, the ground.

  Meanwhile a few others were on Melville, and the marshal settled him with a second dose of pacifon.

  Ephraim’s head lolled to the side. Myrta cradled him and tears streamed down her face. A few feet away, Jack was groaning.

  Two steaders transferred Ephraim onto a wide plank and carried him off toward the town clinic. Sobbing, Myrta followed. Jack too.

  A nurse at the clinic opened the door. She ran her eyes up and down Ephraim and said, “Put him in the first room.” She pulled supplies from a cupboard and sent one of the steaders for the doctor. Then she inserted a tube into Ephraim’s stomach and put some sort of medicine straight into the thing’s other end.

  Tears streamed down Myrta’s face, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away. “Is he going to die?”

  The nurse swabbed around the tube again and again. “Oh no, honey. He got a bad slice, but he’ll be fine.”

  She took Myrta by the chin, tipped her head, and cleaned the cut on her temple. “You’ll be fine too.”

  Someone pounded on the door. Jack left and came back with Ardelle.

  “Ephraim,” Ardelle cried, rushing to his side. “Cordelia, how bad?”

  “He’ll be fine. We’ll start regeneron as soon as Doctor orders it. Ephraim’s fine, honey. I promise.”

  Ardelle looked back and forth between Myrta and Jack. “What happened?”

  The anxiety in her mama’s voice pushed Myrta to panic again, and she choked out, “It was me. I was supposed to stay home. I thought it would be safe because there were so many people.”

  Then the other part came back. “Mama! Odile was there. The scouts took her. I tried to stop her—”

  “Calm down.” Jack was trying to put his arm around her, and she shrugged it off.

  It was unfathomable. “We have to help her. We have to go to Narona and find her.”

  Ardelle wiped Ephraim’s hair away from his forehead. “Cordelia. He’s going to pull through?”

  “Yes. He’ll need a few weeks.”

  The doctor arrived and ordered regeneron, and Ardelle helped Cordelia with the first dose. Seeing Ephraim treated was a new level of horror for Myrta. He writhed and screamed while the two women braced him against the bed.

  Quaking, Myrta backed against the wall, and for a moment, she stood outside the entirety of it all. Between village and city, tradition and modernization. As Ephraim’s cries faded, she saw her vision trait as one small piece of a much larger puzzle. She saw the other people, other issues, joining together or lining against one another. Ardelle and Ephraim. Odile. Everyone back at the stead. Even Renico.

  Each with their own idea of right and wrong and which way to turn next. Her choice to go out that evening had hurt the people she loved, and worse, Renico now knew Ephraim was her papa. He’d been the one to admit it, but that admission traced back to her choice.

  She’d been so selfish, thinking she was the only one who mattered.

  Later, back at the inn, Myrta realized she wanted to claim her side in the fight. Holiest of heavens, she shouldn’t be hunted simply because of her genes, and the first order of business was to not put a single person in danger by her mere presence.

  With growing clarity, Myrta found her knife and a change of clothes. She wrote a note that she’d go back to the stead. Pressing her lips together, she wrote that she’d be safer with Terrence and Celeste.

  It didn’t need to be a lie, not necessarily. She might go back there someday.

  Myrta left the inn and stole back to the wagon grounds, quieter now. She climbed onto one of the de Terr wagons, worked between some sacks of grain, and fell asleep.

  * * *

  Bumping woke her at dawn. Wheels creaked and men shouted, as one by one the wagons filed out of town. With the motion, and the grain cocooning her, she slept again.

  When Myrta woke a second time, the bags were damp from her sweat and she pushed them away and peered over the rails.

  Nathan. She slumped back down. The wagon bumped along through grassy hillsides. One of the sacks jostled against her, and she pushed it back, worked the fastening loose, and took a handful of wheat berries.

  He’d better not tell her to walk back.

  After a few hours the bumping slowed and stopped. Nathan was climbing down, and he went to talk with the driver behind—Jack. Myrta took a deep breath and crawled out.

  A grin spread across Jack’s face.

  She climbed off and straightened her dress. Jack chuckled, like they’d pulled a prank. “Didn’t know you were coming.”

  Nathan stared at her. “You don’t belong here.”

  “Really, Nathan? You know what, I don’t belong anywhere.”

  “We’re working.”

  “I know how to work.”

  “I don’t want you here.”

  “I didn’t hop on the wagon for you.”

  He went to the side of the road, lowered his trousers, and relieved himself, dirt splattering onto his shoes. Jack put his arm around her shoulders and turned her away. “Caravan culture.”

  “Think I should join him?” She had a mind to.

  “Not if you want him to settle down.” He touched her temple. “How’s your head?”

  She felt at the scab, about a half inch long. “Everything still works. I’m okay.”

  Nathan stalked back, buttoning his trousers. “You going to cook?”

  She crossed her arms. “I didn’t plan any of that out after Jack got slugged and I got jabbed.”

  He took off his hat, thwacked it against his hand, and a cloud of dust puffed out. “Caravan’s business. Why’re you here?”

  “Nate, if you need me to cook, I’ll cook. If you need someone on the teams, fine. Put me to work.”

  He turned to Jack. “She’s riding with you.” He put his hat back on and left. Jack looked at her and rolled his eyes.

  Wagons spread along the roadway as far as Myrta could see, front and back. Lined up as they were, there was no end to them. Men and women were stretching their legs; oxen snorted.

  T
he de Reu group was behind them, with four wagons and extra hands. It looked like Fred was logging again. One of the other hands was limping up to Fred, and she squinted.

  It was the handyman from the inn.

  “Jack?”

  He was adjusting the bows on his team’s yoke. “What?” he said without looking up.

  She went to him and lowered her voice. “Who’s the man? On Mr. de Reu’s crew. The one with the limp.”

  “Is he limping? That’s Alphonse. I noticed him too.” Jack watched Alphonse as he went to one of Reuben’s lumber wagons.

  “I know him. I mean, I recognize him.”

  Alphonse had avoided her at the inn, at least it felt that way. He spent time with Odile, who said he was from the cities. A stab of suspicion hit Myrta. Why would anyone from the cities take work at a little inn, or in the belt for that matter? She quelled her paranoia. “Does he seem strange to you?”

  Jack frowned. “No. Why?”

  It was probably nothing, but that man had grown up with mechanation every day of his life. And thinking back, Ardelle had told her to give him his space. Then he’d left, and that part hadn’t mattered anymore. Now he worked with Mr. de Reu, who did business directly with Renico.

  If he’d been friendlier at the inn she might feel less wary. Or, she thought wryly, if she hadn’t been attacked last night. “Well, he worked for Mama, and then he disappeared without saying goodbye. Why do you think he’s with Mr. de Reu?”

  “I don’t know. Lots of people move around.”

  She climbed up onto Jack’s wagon seat and stared at Alphonse. Odile was right. She needed to learn to read people.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  They stood in the midst of snow-covered huts. Pack animals filed past.

  “The rise of commerce.”

  Wearing layers of rags, Alphonse trudged next to one of the beasts. His fingertips were blackened with rot. He had hunger so great he felt only dull acceptance in the pit of his gut.

  A woman behind him led a string of animals piled high with furs. Around her neck hung coins. She yelled at him to move faster.

  With those coins he might buy fire. Food. Survival.

  Alphonse turned and grabbed her, wrapped his hands around her throat and throttled her. She choked, she fought back, but he forced her down. Desperate, he wrenched the necklace of coins from her throat, the chain drawing blood as it broke free.

  Stavo’s voice went almost unnoticed. “Money. These tokens. They come to underpin society itself.”

  * * *

  A few days into Caravan, Alphonse was pasturing the oxen when Reuben came up. “You might want a walk. You ain’t been since Collimais.”

  Alphonse had thought he wouldn’t have the opportunity. He’d assumed any solitude in the wilderness was over. A walk? Yes—certainly. Laughing, he grabbed Reuben by the arms and took him in a quick hug. Reuben pulled his head back, eyes wide, and Alphonse laughed again and thanked him. He found his line and hooks and told Manny he’d be back with supper.

  He hiked in, the scent of pine and sage welcoming him. Soon, Alphonse found a pristine mountain tarn tucked against dark granite walls. The lake was clear, and ripples slip-slapped on its shore.

  Two people, a slight girl and a bald man, dangled their feet in the near end. The man looked familiar. Alphonse had seen him with Nathan de Terr on Collimais’ wagon grounds. Alphonse went wide to avoid them, past a thicket of trees to a spot near a two-hundred-foot cliff face on the far edge.

  Light danced on the water. Alphonse smiled at the thought of a bath—but first, the stone. He hugged the cliff and with the warmth of it seeping into his chest, the months fell away. Caravan fell away. The botched kiss with Odile fell away. Even the weight of returning home fell away. He was home. He breathed in moss and sulfur.

  I am rock.

  Relaxed, he sat and dropped a line with fifteen baited hooks. The voices from those two steaders at the other end carried. The man said seeing air could be helpful to Nathan. Useful to the farm.

  The girl said something about water vapor being purple.

  Whatever they were talking about, it sounded like nonsense. Alphonse turned his attention to the mountains around him, ranging in grays and greens. A cloud drifted by.

  Studying the cliff again, he massaged his thigh and thought this wasn’t Tura, not by a long shot, but it was probably part of the same formation. He might not have another chance to climb, and so, deciding, he stood and took hold of a frag overhead. He found a toehold crack and stepped up, and his heart sprang open in joy.

  There were plenty of frags and none looked sharp. He found a finger hold and pulled. The rock was solid, as solid as the Prophets, and there were no anchors. Just good face. He was twenty feet off the ground, free climbing, his hands and feet fusing to the stone. Encouraging him. Begging him.

  Those two at the far end of the lake were still splashing, the girl going on about seeing everything in the air as colors. She sounded crazed, but neither of them seemed to notice him. They seemed more interested in splashing their feet.

  He splayed his hands around any good piece of rock. His legs were strong and loose. At eighty feet his biceps began their familiar burn; his right thigh, the regenerated one, did too.

  Testing you out, buddy.

  He pivoted and swung from grab to hold to crack, the rhythm, the zone, the focus, the harmony of flesh and rock.

  Halfway up, he stopped for a moment. A patch of green rippled below, and a memory tried to surface, something about time and chemistry and carbon, but he couldn’t place it. He found more frags and continued.

  Without warning, his right thigh shuddered, sending his foot hammering against the cliff. “Don’t start.” He shook the leg out.

  The steaders were gone now. Alphonse was alone in the ranges, alone on all of Turaset—he had the world to himself and there was only this perfect cliff.

  At a hundred and fifty feet, his thigh spasmed harder.

  He anchored his thoughts into the rock again, into the eons within the mountain, within him.

  At a hundred and eighty feet, his right leg went off yet again. “Autore, miere!” The spasms pounded his leg, his knee, his hip into the cliff, over and over. He swore with each blow and waited as the regenerated muscle took hold of the entire lower half of his right side and slammed him into the rock like an accusation, that if he’d never sought Arel he wouldn’t be here now, hanging on a cliff with no line. He blocked any thought of Tura, any acknowledgment that his fall there would have been fatal without rope. Glancing down, he quelled his anxiety, focused on this moment, not that disaster so many months back. He breathed in actinomycetes and mosses. Good soil, the smell of time.

  There was another crack, he grabbed and pushed up. His right leg massively revolted. “It’s three more feet, you Autoremalde, piece of miere muscle!”

  Another foothold, another handhold, he gambled on luck and slung his arm over the top. He pushed up and threw his other arm over.

  Sucking in deep breaths and sobbing tears he didn’t know he had, Alphonse rolled away from the edge. He cried and choked. He opened his eyes, and his sobs transformed to laughter. He couldn’t stop—he laughed in relief, he laughed at success, he laughed on top of a cliff he’d climbed free without falling, on a muscle that had never trained for anything remotely like this.

  With tears flowing, the realization gave him hope that he might convince his mother to change course. He stood and screamed, victorious, until his chest ached.

  The cliff wasn’t Tura. It didn’t matter. He edged back to the lip and looked down to the lake below.

  “I love you,” he screamed out, to the lake, the cliff, the entire planet. It filled him, the euphoria and victory, it was all the same and it was love and it was this perfect moment, alone on a mountain.

  Then, still laughing, still crying, he sc
outed down the back of the cliff and picked his way back to the lake. He bathed, pulled in his line, and returned to the wagons with a dozen fat quiverfish, clean, content, and companionable.

  Fred helped filet, Manny started the fire, and Reuben complimented his haul. Alphonse sat, welcoming the fatigue deep in his thigh and watching the flames climb the wood like the perfect cliff.

  The de Terrs came over, including the bald man and the crazy girl from the lake. But the girl, she wasn’t really a girl, just very slight, with a guarded look, something in her eyes like a rabbit.

  Nathan said, “We boiled some wheat, happy to share. Reuben says you have extra fish.”

  “Help yourself.”

  The last four quivers sizzled in the pan, lost their orange, and began to flake.

  The bald man smiled in a forward way and said in a deep voice, “I’m Jack. This is Myrta. You had better luck than us.” Jack sat next to him.

  The girl, Myrta, sat on the opposite log. She had a scab above her cheekbone on the side and it was bruising. Whatever had cut her, she’d been lucky it missed her eye. She said, “Where did you go?”

  She sounded nervous and looked it too. He didn’t want to be around her, not after hearing what she’d said about air. He had enough on his mind. He certainly didn’t want her to know he’d overheard her bizarre claims, so he tipped his head opposite to where they’d all been.

  A funny thing happened. She looked where he pointed. She squinted, stared at the air above where he pointed. “Are you sure there’re lakes over there? I’ve never seen any.”

  Nathan sounded exasperated. “You’ve never been here.”

  “I’ve never heard of lakes over there. How far was it?”

  Warmth flushed through Alphonse. She thought he was lying, and he was. Somehow she was onto it. But what she’d said about seeing air was absurd. “Two, three miles.”

  “That’s far, there and back with so many fish.”

  She was right; it sounded ridiculous.

  Reuben walked over grinning. “Alphonse, that was real good. Nice treat.” The man sat next to Nathan. “Nate. I talked t’ the others. They’re goin’ in on the irrigation. Tell Terrence, get in now. Renico’ll haggle.”