Quince glanced up at him, giving him a knowing smile. “I imagine you have some questions.”
“You could say that.” Nothing but questions, in fact.
“Shoot. I’ll answer what I can.” She picked up another heart fungus and threw it on the fire. It caught fire with a blaze of light, then settled down to a nice golden glow.
The little hearts were smoke-free, as advertised, but they put up a terrible stink at first, like the stench of the swamplands back home that abutted his parents’ estate. Jameson wrinkled his nose. “Okay. I came here to investigate a pith shortage. At least, I thought that’s why I was here. I’d assumed I’d be meeting with someone from OberCorp. They run the planet, right?”
Quince frowned. “Yes and no. They run the mining operations, yes, and probably most of the government of Oberon City and the other cities along the coast. They do not ‘run the planet.’”
“So who does?”
“That’s a complicated question.” She took a sip of her own cafflite, staring into the fire.
Though she was a fair amount older than he was—how much he wasn’t really sure—she was beautiful. Ageless.
“Maybe I should start by telling you a story,” she said at last. “I’ve been on Oberon for twenty-five years now. But a long time ago, I lived in a different place. Not too far from here, but far enough….”
Quince looked around the House of the Stars one last time. She and Robyn had spent so much time here, the royal summer house, before she had been banished to Errian, the city along the Argent Sea.
She held little redheaded Lyrin in her arms. The babe was fast asleep. His mother had been dead now almost a week, and he had finally stopped crying constantly.
These were unusual times, and such times required difficult choices.
Quince stared at the doorway before her. Soon, she’d go through it, and everything would change. As the nimfeach had promised her that day in the woods outside her village.
She felt, rather than heard, the arrival of the other woman behind her.
She turned slowly to face Robyn, who held Davyn in her arms. Robyn’s black wings drooped, and her eyes were wet. “This child is more precious to me than gold. You must promise to look after him. In this world and the next.” She laid a hand on Quince’s shoulder. “Promise me.”
“I promise,” Quince said softly as she reached for the child. It had all the weight of a ritual.
“I can’t do it….” Robyn pulled the child back, her voice ragged with grief. The sound tore Quince’s heart in two.
Quince put her hand on Robyn’s shoulder. “You have to. This is what we agreed to. It’s the only way they will be safe.”
Davyn squealed, and Robyn laughed in spite of herself. “I suppose we must.” She held out the boy once again, and Quince took him, tucking the child into one of the slings strung over her shoulders.
Then Robyn embraced her, their children between them. Robyn kissed her, their lips sealing this agreement between them. Quince savored the moment. She was leaving behind more than just her home and her Kingdom, and she didn’t know if they would ever see each other again…. “It’s for the best, Daughter of the Moon.” Lyrin squirmed between them. How am I ever going to take care of two children?
“He must not come to harm,” Robyn said when they separated. Her dark wings were still wrapped around Quince and the children protectively.
“I will care for him like my own.”
“If there were another way….” Robyn’s voice trailed off.
“If wishes were rainbows,” Quince said sadly.
“Be strong, little one,” Robyn whispered. She gave Quince one of the round amalite keys to the waygate.
Quince stared at it. She had never seen one before. It was smooth and matte black, with no defining features. She held it up to the gateway, and it opened before her, revealing a room on the other side very much like this one, but in disrepair.
Robyn gave her one last wan smile and turned away, as if she didn’t want to see the act of departure.
Quince knew how much that must have cost her. In her arms, the two little boys began to cry.
She shushed them gently and stepped through the waygate.
Jameson blinked. For a moment, he’d become so entranced by the story that he’d forgotten he wasn’t witnessing it firsthand. Then the fog in his head dissipated.
Quince was staring at him intently. “What?”
“You felt it, didn’t you?”
“Felt what?”
“Like you were there with me.”
He frowned. This whole thing made no sense. “I just got caught up in the story, that’s all,” he said defensively.
Quince looked at him, really looked at him, as if she were seeing through his soul. “You were there with me.”
He absorbed that for a minute. “What, like some kind of time travel?”
She shook her head. “You were there with me at the time.” She put a hand on his cheek, searching his face. “I know it’s a lot to swallow, but one of those babies was you.”
“It couldn’t be.” It was nonsense, surely. How could he have been? “I was born on Beta Tau. My parents are Joseph and Angela Havercamp. I’ve never even been to Oberon before.” What was this crazy angel trying to pull over on him?
Her hand still rested against his cheek. It was warm and comforting.
“I brought you to Oberon, along with Davyn, who is now called Xander, almost twenty-five years ago. You were both children then, Xander a little older than you.” Her eyes had a distant look about them. “I carried you across the threshold, and then I found you both homes. Xander here, and you on another world.”
He jerked away from her touch as if he’d been burned. This wasn’t happening. She couldn’t be right. He was a Havercamp, born and bred. “Look, I don’t know what your angle is here, but I’m not who you think I am. I just came here to investigate the pith shortage, and now I’ve gotten mixed up in this crazy scheme of yours—”
“Your back itches, doesn’t it?”
“What?” he asked, struck by the sudden change of subject.
Quince stared at him, fully present in the moment. “Does your back itch?” Her tone was deadly serious.
“Well, yes, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.” This was getting stranger and stranger, and he had nowhere to run. She’d made sure of that.
Quince got up and rummaged through her saddlebags, pulling out a mirror. “Take off your shirt.”
“Why? Are you going to hurt me?” He backed up toward the rope that surrounded the clearing.
Quince snorted. “With a mirror? Hardly. I just want to show you something. Then if you don’t want to believe me, I’ll let it go.”
Fair enough. He shucked his shirt, though it seemed tight coming off.
“Now turn around.”
He complied, and she held the mirror up so he could see his back. “What do you think those are?”
He looked and his face went cold. Protruding from his shoulder blades were two strange lumps, the skin over them looking red and bruised.
He reached around frantically to touch one of them. It was tender and warm. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph….” He spun around, trying to reach them. “What are they? What did you do to me?”
“Your wings are coming in. It’s something that happens to every one of us from the first-wave settlers of Oberon—we usually induce it at puberty with a special hormone. Yours were delayed, but you drank some of the ethilium in that water I gave you—”
Jameson’s breathing quickened, and he felt trapped in the small clearing beneath the alien trees. Everything was wrong. “I don’t know… I can’t…,” he rasped, unable to get enough air. What the hell is happening to me? He looked wildly back and forth, his heart racing and his mind struggling to follow.
She reached out to him, but he stumbled away from her touch. He didn’t want her to touch him again. He didn’t want to be here.
He turned a
nd ran blindly away, ducking under the rope and into the open forest. His panic carried him off into the darkness, ignoring Quince’s frantic calls to come back. He was blind to everything but the need to flee, to escape this strange trap that he could feel slowly closing its jaws around him.
Branches slapped at his face, stinging him. He stumbled and fell, but picked himself up again to keep running.
When he finally slowed down, breathing harshly, the campfire was a distant glow, and he was all alone in the darkness.
Jameson stopped then, his hands on his knees and his head down, and let his breathing slowly return to normal. He had to get a grip on himself. He was here, for good or ill. He was stuck with this woman, and something strange was happening to him. That much was clear.
There were two options—he could run from it, or he could turn around and face it. His career had been built on helping people deal with things they didn’t want to acknowledge. Now it was his turn.
He’d been stupid to run.
Jameson had just turned to start back toward the distant campfire when there was a rustling in the branches above. Just one of those stupid birds. He’d be back in the warm circle of firelight in a moment anyhow.
There was a loud flutter right behind him, and then he felt a sharp prick in his neck.
“Owww!” He put his hand up. It came down wet.
Around him there was a sound like a thousand little fans, and then he was surrounded by things flapping past him in the darkness. There was another peck on his arm and one on his leg, and he suddenly realized the danger he was in.
“Quince,” he shouted, and started to run, but the flock of wereveren followed him like an angry cloud, diving in to harass him and then flying away again, one after the other. He tried covering his face to protect his eyes, but then he couldn’t see. He stumbled forward, now bleeding in half a dozen places, hoping he was headed back toward the campfire.
He had no way to know without opening his eyes.
The attacks came faster. He was going to die out here, all alone, in an alien wood, fallen prey to a beast no bigger than his outstretched hand. All because he’d been a thick-headed idiot.
He fell down and curled up on the ground, trying to protect as much of himself as possible from the attacks. He felt weird—groggy, like he’d just awoken in the middle of the night.
A roar and a couple loud thumps startled him back to awareness. His assailants scattered momentarily, and a pulse rifle went off, twice. Then he was dragged up onto a seat.
Someone shouted “Hold on!” and he did as he was told, hugging her waist. Quince, he thought.
The cycle swung around and raced back toward the protection of the enclosure.
The wereveren returned, but in less force, and before they could take many more swipes at him, his savior had reached the firelit clearing. Quince guided the cycle under the deterrent rope, parked it, and eased him off the seat.
Jameson opened his eyes, but he couldn’t quite focus on her face. He was tired beyond imagining, and the campsite around him swam in and out of focus. The last thing he was aware of was being laid down to rest on a sleep sack. Warm hands touched his cheek, and he thought someone kissed his forehead.
Then he fell into a deep sleep and was aware of nothing else.
Chapter Seven: Morgan
XANDER DECIDED he was better off getting away from the road. Sure, travel would be slower, but he’d also be much harder to track.
He checked the map on his bike’s navigation system. Although he’d disconnected it from the grid, it still kept a rough track on his position. He was a bit east and north of the rendezvous point—a wide bend in the Theseus that was easy to spot on the map.
Xander clocked another hour heading east down the road first, taking advantage of the fact that it would take time for OberCorp to scramble another team to come after him. Then he dropped off the road into the forest and started looking for a suitable place to spend the night.
He’d meant it when he’d warned Jameson about the predatory wildlife out here in the forest. He had a deterrent field with him, but he preferred to find something more secure for the night, if possible.
Xander rode under the silver canopy of the forest, weaving across the landscape to find the smoothest path that would take him on a southbound course toward the rendezvous point.
The last time he’d been in the Outland, it had been with Alix on a three-day camping trip. Alix had loved it out here. He’d always said he felt at home under the feather trees and silverbarks. Xander, for his part, was much more of a city boy, though he did like getting away from the scheming and politics that were a regular part of Oberon life.
He rode out from under the tree cover into a large clearing. From the even rows of earth, the square shape of the field, and the few trees that dotted the expanse, he guessed this had been an old homestead farm. A hundred years before, seeking to bleed off some of the excess population before the arcos had been built, OberCorp had offered citizens of Oberon City a deal—come out and homestead a patch of property, and you could make it your own.
The program had been successful until the homesteaders had realized how difficult life was out here, especially with the swarms of wereveren that infested these woods.
The homesteading program had finally collapsed, and more arcos had been built instead.
Sure enough, an old, abandoned farmhouse sat at the back of the field. It had once been a grand structure, two stories tall, with a wide porch and a peaked roof above the second floor.
Now it was in shambles. The front door was half off its hinges, and the roof had seen better days, having collapsed entirely on one end.
Xander pulled up his cycle alongside the dilapidated structure. He glanced at the sky; he probably had another two hours before the sun set. He slipped off the bike and climbed the stairs to the porch. Despite the way it looked, it was firm underfoot, solid enough to take his weight.
He stepped through the open front door.
It was dusty inside, but other than some weeds that had poked up through the floorboards, there was no sign of anyone or anything living there.
“Hello?” he said anyhow, just in case. His voice echoed through the house.
He searched each of the rooms on the ground floor—all were empty, the furniture and appliances likely having been stripped out when it was abandoned. There was a rope embedded in the walls all the way around. It looked like the place was wereveren-proof. That decided him.
He eyed the staircase, but it looked even less safe than the rotting front porch. He’d stay downstairs for the night.
Xander went back outside and pulled his cycle around the back, hiding it in the tall weeds and shadows so it would not be seen by casual inspection. Just to be safe, he took out his hunting knife and chopped down a few feather tree branches to cover it so that it wouldn’t be visible from the air. Then he grabbed his saddlebags and went back inside the old house, preparing himself a place to sleep for the night.
The kitchen was the most intact room in the house. It had just one window, looking out across the field in front of the home, which was miraculously still in one piece.
He found an old broom that had been left behind in the pantry and managed to sweep clean a patch of floor. He laid down his sleep sack there, and then placed and activated his own deterrent rope to keep the wereveren out, just in case.
Satisfied with his preparations, he sat down with his back against the old clapboard wall and pulled out an MRE.
He’d have to find some water soon—he’d brought enough for a couple days, certain that they would run across a freshwater stream on their journey, although pretty much any water source would do. He’d brought a purifier that should render even the most brackish water drinkable.
As he ate, he wondered how Quince and Jameson had fared, and if they were all going to make it to the rendezvous point in one piece. Jameson was a pain in the ass, but still… there was something about him.
He al
so wondered why OberCorp had suddenly developed such a keen interest in him.
The sun was falling behind the trees in the distance. Xander finished his meal, feeling exhausted as the events of the day caught up with him.
He closed his eyes, and in a moment he was fast asleep.
Xander dreamed of a world with a red sun, where the air was redolent with the smell of sugar blossoms and the land was full of life.
He ran through a field covered in blood flowers, chasing a butterfly. She soared on ahead of him, leading him on a merry chase. Then she flew up into the air and he leapt after her, his arm extended, but he was too slow.
He crashed to the ground and started to cry.
“There, there,” his mother called to him. In an instant she was at his side, soothing him with a soft cooing. “You can’t fly yet, my little angel,” she whispered, picking him up in her arms. “Poor little sparrow.”
She kissed him gently on the forehead, and he felt better, forgetting the pain in his scraped knee.
Then she hugged him fiercely, and when she held him out at arm’s length, there were tears in her eyes. “Remember always, my little sparrow, that I love you with all my heart.”
With that, she launched herself into the air with her son held tightly in her arms.
Xander awoke, and the dream melted away into the ether. Something had jarred him awake.
He picked up his hunting knife, and rose into a crouch quietly, wings pulled in tight behind him. He looked around the dark room. Hermia’s pink moonlight slanted in through the window, making a crosshatch pattern on the floor.
Xander stood, his wings spreading out behind him instinctively. He pulled them back and walked silently to the window. Something had awoken him, but he couldn’t quite figure out what. There were no wereveren about. He would have heard their bloodcurdling screeches.
The field outside was bathed in blue moonlight, but nothing moved. He held himself perfectly still and silent, waiting for whatever it had been to make itself known once again.
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