by R F Hurteau
Long moments passed, and the whistling returned, like someone blowing over the top of a bottle.
And then the cabin began to glow with a dim yellow light that made everyone’s face look pallid and gaunt.
Felix looked toward the cockpit, saw Ambrose hovering over Penelope’s seat, and glanced to the back where Tobias was standing up, looking battered but otherwise none the worse for wear.
It was only after this that he looked to the side, where a series of small holes dotted the hull in a neat line.
Thoris Wilks was leaning, limp, against the wall, clutching at his abdomen where a dark stain was blossoming across his green silk waistcoat.
The man said nothing, just stared at the odd blotch as it spread, undeterred by his meager efforts to staunch it.
He gazed up at Felix for a moment, confusion flashing in his eyes. Then he swayed dangerously and pitched forward.
Felix caught him before he hit the ground, laying him down the rest of the way with a gentle but shaking hand.
“Someone help!”
But there was no need. Ambrose was already beside him.
“Put pressure on it. Tobias, we’ll need your assistance over here. Fetch the medkit! In the back. Hurry!”
“Right,” Tobias confirmed in a shaky voice. “Medkit. Got it!”
Tobias brushed past them as more blood oozed up between Felix’s fingers. He pressed down hard on the wound, but it did not seem to be doing much to stem the bleeding. He let up a little, thinking he must be causing Wilks a great deal of unnecessary pain.
“No, don’t,” warned Ambrose. “You can’t let up. We don’t have any way to get that blood back inside him. He can’t afford to lose any more. I don’t care if it hurts, keep pressing.”
“Alright.” Felix gritted his teeth.
“That’s just the exit wound. You’ll need to find the entry point as well. Keep pressure on both.”
Felix’s free hand slipped beneath Wilks’ back, probing for only a short time before he found it. His searching fingers glided across the slick surface, one finger catching on the lip of the wound. He pressed his palm against it, feeling sick, and cast a glance at Thoris’ face, which seemed paler than it had just moments before.
Thoris’ mouth worked, but no words came out. A trickle of blood appeared at the corner of his lips, sliding down his cheek and leaving a dark trail behind it.
“Ambrose, what do I do?” Felix’s query was a mixture of anguish and panic. He’d never dealt with anything like this before. He had no idea what was needed. Did he just keep holding it? Bandages? Neither of the others offered further guidance. “Tobias!”
Felix turned to see that the young man had a queer look on his face. “Ambrose?” he pleaded, looking to the pilot, who stood still, the medkit Tobias had handed him unopened.
“It’s no use,” Ambrose said, his words quietly resigned.
“Nonsense, we didn’t even try! We can’t just give up and let him die!”
He looked down at his hands again, and he knew it wouldn’t take an expert to come to the same conclusion Ambrose had.
Despite the pressure, Thoris Wilks’ shirt was now soaked through, and he lay in a growing black puddle on the floor. Felix’s knees were coated in the warm, thick fluid.
He looked at Thoris’ face again. His eyes seemed to be searching for something, rolling back and forth, his mouth still working soundlessly.
Felix took one hand away from the wound and grabbed the back of Thoris’ head, lifting it as gently as he was able. The eyes stopped their frantic search and fixed on Felix, locking onto him as if he were a lifeline. They were full of terror, shock, disbelief.
Thoris Wilks had not expected to die like this.
“You hang in there,” Felix said. A wave of guilt swept over him. He should have been kinder to the man when he’d had the chance. Thoris had extended a hand of friendship, and Felix had treated him as an enemy. “You hang in there a little while longer. It’ll be okay.”
Thoris’ head jerked in an almost imperceptible nod. His body convulsed, and Felix jumped as a horrible gurgling sound escaped from the lips with which the doomed man had been unable to produce words. The terror in his eyes faded, and for a moment he seemed almost peaceful. His pupils went wide, as if grasping for light in the gathering darkness. Felix felt nauseous, and he fought to maintain his composure.
And then, without a scream, or a last word, or a reason why, Thoris Wilks slipped quietly away into death.
***
The reality of their situation still hadn’t quite set in as Felix struggled to find solutions to the host of problems that had now presented themselves.
When Thoris had at last gone still, Felix had rushed outside to relieve himself of his last meal. Then he and Tobias had brought the body out of the ship, covering it with a thin blanket.
Penelope had awoken to find them all covered in varying degrees of blood and promptly panicked, and she was now sitting against the trunk of a nearby tree, quivering as she attempted to process her thoughts.
Ambrose was trying to establish what had been damaged inside, but he was troubled. It had been only a few short years since his son-in-law had perished in the Grand Derby, and now Pluto was once again marred by the shadow of death.
Felix and Tobias were walking around the ship, inspecting the fuselage in the dim light of a waning moon.
Ambrose came out of the hatch, shaking his head. His words were somber, his eyes flitting subconsciously toward the blanket-covered body on the forest floor.
“The good news is, there isn’t any broken glass to contend with. If we can seal up those bullet holes, we’ll be pretty airtight. They missed all the windows, only punctured the hull.”
The hull, and Thoris Wilks, thought Felix, though he didn’t feel the need to point that out.
“Good,” he said instead. “What’s the bad news?”
“Well, she won’t start, first off. And it’s likely I won’t have much of an idea why until daylight.”
“And?”
“And,” Ambrose continued, “I’m not so sure where we are. When we got through the Gate, it was all I could do to put her down without tearing her apart. We sailed over some trees for a ways before she gave out and we ended up here.” He looked around. “Wherever here is. Whatever direction we went in, we coasted for at least a couple miles before she went down.”
Penelope had stood up, and she approached them now. Her hair shone in the moonlight, and her eyes glistened. An ugly bruise darkened her forehead. “What are we going to do about—about Mr. Wilks?”
Felix looked over at the figure outlined beneath the blanket. “We’re going to bury him,” he decided at once.
“Here? On Thera?”
“We can’t get him back to Earth, now can we? I imagine he’d have liked it. The first Minister of Pravacordia through Antiquity’s Gate. I’m certain he’d understand.” Felix paused, considering this with a pang of regret. “He seemed like an understanding kind of guy.”
She nodded. “Probably. It just feels wrong somehow. To have this be his final resting place. I didn’t know much about him. I don’t even know if he has any family.”
She sighed, looking up at the sky. “It’s so strange. It doesn’t feel that much different than Earth, does it?”
“That’s because it is Earth, technically speaking,” responded Tobias. “Or at least, a version of it. Antiquity’s Gate doesn’t lead to another world. Rather, an alternate one.”
Penelope looked at him, puzzled by this seemingly outlandish explanation. “What do you mean, an alternate one? An alternate Earth?”
Felix was surprised. Every child in Sanctuary had learned the history of the Thera-Earth connection. Thera and Earth were not two different planets, but rather, parallel realities that existed at the same time, in the same space, just on different planes. Antiquity’s Gate was the bridge that made travel between them possible.
He wasn’t sure how this had been determined. He hadn�
��t paid that much attention. But as far as he knew, it was a point of fact.
“You mean all this time, you had no idea where Antiquity’s Gate led?”
She shrugged, as if the revelation was inconsequential.
“A lot of knowledge was lost during the Sequencing. But that doesn’t make sense, does it? I mean, our Gate is near the south pole, but theirs is...I don’t know. Somewhere warm.”
Tobias frowned. “I had wondered that myself. But at this point the only thing we can state with certainty is that there are differences between the two realities. The Gate, I suppose, being one of them. Perhaps this version of Earth did not experience the same tectonic shift as our own? Or perhaps the spin of the planet is off by a fraction of an instant, causing the meteorite to have landed in an entirely different hemisphere. In any case, if the Therans are used to a more temperate climate than we are, it would explain a great deal.”
“Like what?” Felix asked, running his hand against the rough bark of a tree.
“Like why Antarctica was such a stumbling block in their quest to conquer Earth,” Tobias suggested. “If they aren’t used to the extreme temperatures that Humans had explored for centuries prior to the Gate’s discovery, they would have a harder time adapting their technology to it. At least, that would be my hypothesis.”
Penelope shrugged again. “I don’t suppose it matters.”
Usually such an inquisitive spirit, it seemed clear to Felix that Penelope’s mind still hadn’t come to grips with the shock of their arrival here, and everything that had come with it.
Felix looked around at the trees. “I’m going to check out the area.”
“I’ll go with you!” Tobias offered enthusiastically, but Felix shook his head.
“Stay here. Find something to dig with. I’ll travel faster on my own. Don’t worry,” He lifted up his clenched fist, revealing the device he’d been holding. “I’ll take the radio.”
Felix set off, uncertain what he was looking for. His intention had been to find out how far they were from the Gate, but he couldn’t even be certain they’d travelled in a straight line.
In truth, he just wanted to be alone for a while. Wilks’ death had shaken him to the core. He needed some time and space to think.
The orientation of the ship was all he had to go by, so he started there. Long strides led him out of sight of his friends.
He hadn’t travelled far when light began peeking through the canopy of trees overhead, and the sounds of night creatures began to fade, replaced by the morning songs of unfamiliar birds.
Although confident that he could find his way back to the ship, after about thirty minutes Felix began to lose hope of stumbling upon the Gate. The one upside seemed to be that there was little risk of the Therans stumbling upon Pluto and her crew.
He could hear bubbling nearby and followed it to a small brook. Here he stooped, plunging his blood-crusted hands into the cool water. As he scrubbed at them a translucent red trail formed, streaming away.
He thought about Wilks, about how he’d gone out of his way to try to get to know him and Willow. Thinking back, he realized that he’d viewed the committee as a single, malevolent entity. He hadn’t seen individual faces up there on that dais, but rather one being holding their fate in a cold, dispassionate hand.
He tried to remember Thoris Wilks up there, just Wilks. Had he offered them a reassuring smile? Had he spoken up in their defense?
Felix washed his face and took a long drink. Standing back up he looked around, deciding to follow the brook for a bit. He snapped a small sapling in half, letting the leafy branches hang down into the clear water to mark the spot where he’d started.
The brook soon widened, and before long he came upon a small, rotting wooden bridge. A path led away in either direction, but it looked as though it hadn’t been used in quite some time. Weeds and small trees had taken it over, reclaiming it for the forest.
Still, it was something to go on. He followed it, walking more cautiously now.
The trees thinned, and Felix stepped off the path to conceal himself behind one of them to take inventory of the scene before him.
A small village lay in a large clearing. A few dozen houses lined the dirt road and its offshoots. Though not impressive in scale, they all looked well cared for, with carved stone walls and colorful wooden doors. Lovingly tended gardens bordered fences that housed sheep and pigs, the scent of manure rolling over him on a gentle breeze. Quaint, flower-lined walkways led up to the houses.
Elves strolled about in the early morning light, tending livestock and crops. Several children played on the path, drawing in the dirt with sticks while their wild, untamed hair fluttered around untroubled faces.
Felix looked down, inspecting his clothes with a critical eye. The brown cloth of his sleeves and the knees of his pants were covered in blood, but he’d been kneeling in the mud by the stream, and his sleeves were such a deep brown that he was almost certain that nobody would know the stains there were blood.
Not entirely certain, though. He could smell it, and he was only a Halfsie.
But perhaps it was just in his mind. Perhaps the stench of death that lingered with him was a figment of his imagination.
Felix looked back up at the picturesque village.
He doubted anyone in this place was on the Elder Council. It didn’t look grandiose enough to suit their tastes. It could be good practice to try passing himself off as an Elf here.
And perhaps he could find some better clothes, though he felt a twinge of guilt at the idea of stealing from such an idyllic little village. They didn’t look well-to-do.
Still, he needed to consider his mission. He was a quick thinker in this kind of situation, and if he could bluff his way through a few encounters here, he might manage to make it back to his team with directions back to Antiquity’s Gate, or some other information that might be useful.
Felix decided that, given their circumstances, it was not only an acceptable risk, but a reasonable one. He took a deep breath before stepping back out on the path, then strode with casual confidence toward the homes.
Felix knew something was wrong almost at once. He locked eyes with a Theran man in front of the home closest to him, and the man stumbled backwards, eyes wide with fear. He turned and entered the home, slamming the door behind him in his haste.
No eye contact! Felix chastised himself. Damn. Okay, next time I’ll do better.
He kept walking, his gait more hesitant than before. A woman with a basket was kneeling in a small garden, and he approached her. He focused on her lips as he offered a small nod but looked up despite himself when they started to tremble. She, too, looked afraid. Her face turned toward the children in the street, and Felix followed her gaze. They had stopped playing and were openly staring at him.
All at once they scattered like a startled flock of birds, one turning to run down the path, disappearing around the bend. The others dispersed to nearby homes, a few walking backward, as if afraid to turn their backs on Felix. One child, no more than eight or nine years old, ran up beside the trembling woman and placed his hand in hers, guiding her to stand and leading her wordlessly to the house, looking over his shoulder at Felix the whole time, watching his feet as if afraid Felix would begin to chase them at any moment.
In all of this, no one had spoken a word.
Felix looked around and realized with a start that he was now alone. Only the pigs and sheep seemed unfazed by his presence, the former continuing to grunt and root, the latter lazily chewing their cud as though this were any other average day.
He stood for a few moments, uncertain what he should do now. Perhaps this was a sign that he ought to turn back, cut his losses. This had not gone according to plan. He looked down at his clothes again. It had to have been the blood. He’d thought he would pass for just being dirty, but checking again, with a deeper skepticism, he couldn’t be sure.
Movement caught his eye as the child who had raced away now came back i
nto sight, trailing behind a large man with broad shoulders and a furrowed brow. Felix found his appearance surprising, as most Therans were lithe, built tall and graceful. This man was tall, yes, but he was far from graceful. His boots hit the dirt path with a heavy tread as he stomped toward Felix. He had the look of a hardened soldier, rather than a farmer from a quaint little town. Felix felt himself tensing and forced his body to relax.
The man didn’t look Felix in the eye—he didn’t even look at his face. He stared instead at Felix’s boots as he offered a curt but insincere nod.
“I assure you, your Lordship, that whatever reason you have for coming here today, it’s unnecessary. She never leaves. She barely eats. She just tends her garden or sits and stares out the window. I promise you she’s not caused any trouble.”
A moment ago, Felix had thought it impossible to feel any more confused. Now he knew that wasn’t the case. Felix felt so unaware of what was happening that it was almost comical. Almost.
He let out an involuntary laugh that came out as an indignant-sounding huff as he tried to stifle it. The man flinched as if Felix had kicked him.
“You’d like to see for yourself, of course,” the man added, with more deference than before.
Felix mentally took stock of his options. He could turn around and leave now. From what he’d seen, he could outrun this guy, at least. And judging by the response of everyone else to his arrival, he was pretty certain no one would try to follow him.
Or, he could see how this played out. The man had called him lordship. The entire village must have mistaken him for someone important and, by their reaction, threatening.
He thought about Willow’s father, Nero, and his pompous arrogance. He channeled every ounce of will he had into making himself appear, and sound, like that.
“Of course I want to see for myself!” he spat. “I didn’t come all this way to stand in the street chatting with the likes of you.” T
he man’s bowed head dipped a little lower, and Felix felt rather pleased with himself.
Not bad, he found himself thinking. A little risky, but not bad at all.