Beyond the Next Star

by Melody Johnson

  Instead, she was—well, she didn’t know where the hell she was, but she was cold and surrounded by ice and snow and spiny thorn bushes, the closest thing this planet seemed to come to vegetation. Presumably, she was somewhere on the Onik estate, but that was about as helpful as knowing she was somewhere on the planet Lorien. Her knowledge of local geography was too limited; she had no way of finding Torek or, preferably, escaping back to the castle.

  Or just escaping.

  Nostalgia choked her as sharp and radiating as a bee sting, and as potentially deadly. Delaney tipped her head back and breathed into the falling snow. The flakes were so thick that the white blanket of fluff high overhead might not even be clouds but the dense blur of cascading snowflakes. They melted on her face at first, then started to chill her cheeks and stick. If she ignored the tundra surrounding her—the ice sculptures and jagged landscape and spiny bushes attempting to pass as plants—and if she kept her gaze filled with snow and sky, she could almost pretend she was back in north Georgia, high up on the Appalachian Trail just outside Hiawassee in deep winter. There was even a section of trail that resembled this one, kind of, with its briars and the serene silence that snow and solitude gives any place.

  She’d hiked that trail dozens of times, content in its silent solitude, until that one January morning she’d been alone in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now she was here on Lorien, once again surrounded by snow and silence, but not content at all.

  She could escape the remainder of the run if she found her way back to the castle, but there was no permanent solution to her overall captivity. There was no more Hiawassee, no more Appalachian Trail, no more north Georgia in her world. There was no more Earth. She brushed off the snow and slush that had accumulated on her face and took in the tundra surrounding her.

  Granted, there were no more burgers to flip, and there was no rent to hustle for either. She snorted to herself. The positives didn’t outweigh the negatives, not by a long shot, but this was it. This planet and its furry inhabitants, Torek and his regimented schedule and doting baby coos, and the hovering guillotine of keeping her silence: this was her life. Dwelling on the past merely poisoned the future. No matter how impossible her present circumstances seemed, nothing was more impossible than returning to Earth.

  She’d thought she’d come to grips with her circumstances during the five-year space journey to Lorien and that her acceptance had been solidified by witnessing Keil’s murder. Funny how quickly a little fresh air and a brief, false taste of freedom could make her long for so much more. She’d been dealt a shit hand, no question, but crying about it didn’t change it. She’d have to play it through to the end.

  She had three choices: she could try to avoid more running by backtracking to the castle; she could attempt to catch up to Torek by following his trail; or she could stay put in the hope that Torek returned for her again.

  Delaney trudged forward in the wake of Torek’s footprints. The trail wound up a rocky incline, down into a spiny-bush-filled ravine, and meandered through another grove of ice sculptures. She paused to read one of the plaques—maybe they were directional signs—but they were just names and numbers. A field of statuary with plaques listing names with numbers.

  They weren’t plaques. They were grave markers.

  She was in a cemetery.

  Delaney accelerated her pace into a steady jog. Her thighs, screaming and rigidly stiff, were going to kill tomorrow morning. She focused on that pain and found a rhythm in her breathing to push back the panic. The grave markers and ice sculptures eventually transitioned back to wilderness. The air changed slightly, becoming not just cold but damp, and a dull rushing noise swelled in what was once silence. But she ignored her surroundings, keeping her eyes and mind tunneled forward as her aching legs carried her onward.

  An indeterminate amount of time passed, long enough that other lorienok were strolling the trail now, flying and walking—not running—their animal companions. They eyed her with surprise and concern, glancing about for her owner. Finding her alone, they proceeded to coax her to approach them. Delaney ignored their calls. She ducked her head, avoided eye contact, and trudged onward until she reached the mouth of a five-way crossroad.

  The snow had nearly completely leveled Torek’s tracks, so his weren’t the only ones anymore. All five trails had tracks now, some fresh, some filled in by the falling snow, but none of them obviously produced by Torek.

  Damn it, she should have stayed put.

  Her muscles were shaking, not just with overuse, but with cold now too. She was lost. On an alien ice planet. Strangers were staring, and now that she’d stopped, they were starting to converge on her from all sides. She couldn’t ask for help because she wasn’t supposed to have the intelligence to speak. She didn’t want to be a pet. She didn’t want to be on this planet. She didn’t want this life!

  Someone touched her shoulder. The hand was gentle and warm. She looked up, nearly limp with relief. Torek had doubled back. Of course he had, why wouldn’t—

  The fur, arched ram horns, and muscled build were right, but the face and eyes were all wrong. The face was gentle and concerned, but it wasn’t scarred. His hair was cropped short on his head and chin. Both his eyes were brown. His muzzle was more pronounced. He was murmuring something about poor and dear and scared, but his lips were fuller, his voice smoother, and Delaney couldn’t help it: her heart rate spiked, and her body recoiled. She spun away and slammed back into someone else.

  At least five lorienok had surrounded her. As that first lor murmured sweet nothings to her, another lor reached for her collar. Delaney willed her heart to slow and tried to calm the adrenaline urging her to run. She didn’t particularly like how they had bullied around her, but they meant well. They were here to help. Considering Torek’s status in Onik, they must know she was his animal companion, and they’d return her to him.

  Despite her very logical reasoning, she couldn’t quite bring herself to allow them to take hold of her collar. She ducked their grabby hands, and as she spun out of reach, she noticed something metallic glint in the morning sun. A lor was approaching who wasn’t murmuring sweet nothings. His expression was intense instead of soothing. His gaze darted from her to the surrounding crowd and back to her, a little panicky himself.

  He shouldered through to the front of the crowd and approached her, but something was wrong with his arm. He was holding it immobile at his side and had angled his wrist to tuck whatever he was holding out of sight.

  She feigned left and lunged right, avoiding another pair of grasping hands, and spied what that lor was hiding.

  A knife.

  Delaney lost her battle against panicking. She let loose an ear-splitting scream, and as the surrounding lorienok recoiled in surprise, she leapt from the crowd and tore down one of the paths in a blind sprint.

  Her heart beat through her entire body, as if even her fingertips, ears, and scalp were contracting in rhythm. The panic drowned everything: the muscle fatigue, the sharp pain of the icy air in her throat, all thought and reason. Suddenly, none of it existed except for the honed singularity that she needed to escape.

  Footsteps pounded behind her. She risked a glance over her shoulder. Shit. The lor holding the knife wasn’t chasing her, but three others were, one of them only a few strides away. And behind him, the crowd was staring and pointing. Encouraging.

  It wouldn’t be enough. Even with the extra speed and strength that panic had lent her, she was still only a small human attempting to outrun a massive Sasquatch. She sensed more than felt him reaching for her—all of them reaching for her—and she lunged into the foliage.

  The spines on the bushes were needle sharp. Her onesie protected her arms and legs, but the fabric caught on the thorns, slowing her pace. She twisted and screamed, tearing and raging against the spines. She had to yank free of their grasping hands. She had to escape. Where was Torek? Where was she? Where the fuck was she?

  Something ripped. The resistance h
olding her back gave as she threw herself forward. The ground disappeared from beneath her feet, and she pitched ass over head down a ravine.

  The sky swapped with the snowy slope in a whirl of soft white, spine bushes, and jagged boulders. Her shoulder cracked on something hard. Her hip hit the ground with a jarring thud that stung both her side and her tongue as her teeth clacked together. Her momentum upended her forward into another somersault, and something stabbed into her rib. She rolled, ricocheted off a boulder, and pain exploded through her knee. Spiny bushes and more boulders blurred past. She clawed at them, trying to slow her fall, but the ground’s frozen slick beneath its serene, snowy surface shredded her palms without giving them purchase.

  She was midair, falling instead of sliding. Her vision became a kaleidoscope of a thousand magnified glimpses: the edge of a cliff, her trail down the ravine, the lorienok still watching, still chasing, the white slope blending into the white of the sky blurred with the white snowfall.

  She landed flat on something level but unforgiving. Her head whipped back. A crack split her skull, and all that white winked out into blackness.

  Eleven

  Torek was finally running. Really running. His legs ate the ground beneath him, pounding in rhythm with his breath and racing heart. The straining burn in his muscles was delicious, and he fed off that pain, gorged on it, pushing himself to the edge of exhaustion, driving his legs to move faster, stride longer, lunge harder. He delved deep into that pain, pinched it wide until it bled, and turned it into fuel, rocketing past all walls, all sanity and reason until he was nothing but his heart and legs and pumping arms. Finally!

  He slowed when he neared the path’s end, chest heaving, but his energy nowhere near depleted. The exhilaration of intense exercise was the only perk to staying in shape for combat and the sole reason he forced himself from bed horrendously early every morning. He glared at the height of the sun and shuffed through his flared nostrils.

  It was no longer early morning.

  A wave of frustration drowned his endorphin-induced high. He was grossly behind schedule. He should already have eaten breakfast and conferred with his guard. At this very moment, he should be meeting with the household staff. Considering the scant distance he’d managed to run, he may as well have stayed in bed and slept away the morning. At least if he’d done that, he’d be on schedule.

  He combed his fingers through the fur on his forehead, and some of the strands stuck upright, slick from his sweat. He needed to double back for Reshna.

  Another tide of frustration swelled, but he tamped it down this time. He should have known, considering her size and disposition, that including her on his morning runs wouldn’t work. She simply couldn’t keep up, and if the heat in her dagger-eyed expression was any indication, she had no desire to. He’d need to carve an extra hour out of his schedule and dedicate it to an exercise regimen appropriate for her. As if he had another hour of time to spare.

  He nearly shuffed again, but caught himself and swallowed it this time. She needed to build up her strength and stamina, same as any creature—just not exactly the same as him.

  Torek about-faced and doubled back over the path he’d just run, quickly reestablishing a vigorous pace. The entire morning was shot, anyway; he might as well enjoy the tail end of his run, since the beginning had been such a complete waste.

  He approached the waterfall, hiked its slope, and had reached the second ridge when he noticed the shape of another lor approaching. The lor—a boy, Torek realized as he drew closer—was sprinting, but where Torek was regimented and focused in his pounding strides, the boy looked desperate. His eyes were wide, his breaths were ragged and gasping. When recognition dawned on his face at the sight of Torek, the boy’s body nearly overran his legs. He was obviously shaken.

  The boy stumbled to a halt and immediately doubled over. He removed a hand from his knee in an attempt to genuflect and almost collapsed.

  Torek took him by the shoulders. “Steady.”

  “Torek Lore’Onik—” The boy inhaled in a long wheeze. “Weidnar Kenzo Lesh’—” He gasped noisily. “Aerai Renaar.”

  Torek reeled in his impatience. This was simply not his morning. “Yes?”

  “You have a new animal companion.” He straightened, still panting. “The newest, yes? Long, bare limbs, wearing custom fur coverings? About shoulder high and hair like an ice drill?”

  He tensed his grip on the boy’s shoulders. “Yes.”

  “She looked lost and scared. My father tried to catch her for you, to bring her back to the estate proper, but she ran away. She—” The boy’s ears, still too big for his adult body, lowered in distress.

  “Is she all right? She listens to commands. She can—”

  The boy shook his head. “She took off and fell down the ravine into the Zorelok River.”

  Torek leaned down into the boy’s face. “Into? Did she actually break through the ice and into—”

  The boy’s ears completely flattened against his head. “I don’t know! I didn’t see! Everyone said she fell, and then Father was running for her and telling me to run for you and—”

  “It’s all right. You’ve done well. You—”

  The boy was shaking his head, his eyes wide and frantic as they avoided Torek’s face.

  Torek shook him. “Look at me!”

  He did, his ears quivering against his skull.

  Torek reined in his emotions and forced a quiet calm into his voice when he spoke. “I need you to be strong just a little longer. You found me, like you told your father you would. Now, I need you to continue on to find someone else, yes?”

  The boy hesitated, his ears still flat, but his eyes were sharp and focused now. He nodded.

  “Do you have a daami?”

  “Not with me. We were visiting my forefather.”

  Torek unfastened the strap and buckled his daami to the boy’s wrist. “You’ll take mine. Run until you’re out of Graevlai and have clearance to use it. You don’t have far to go. Just down that last ridge and past the waterfall.”

  The boy stared at his wrist, his ears slowly perking.

  “Once you have clearance, contact Brinon Kore’Onik. Tell him what’s happened and help him however he requires.”

  The boy was still staring. The daami chirped a reminder, and the boy blinked.

  “That’s an order,” Torek said, but the boy still didn’t look up. Torek shook him by the shoulders again. “Repeat my order. What are you going to do?”

  “I—I’m to run out of Graevlai, where I’ll have clearance to call Brinon Kore’Onik,” he said, whispering Brinon’s name with a reverence usually reserved for the Lore’Lorien herself.

  Torek swallowed back the urge to growl, but even so, he could still feel his hackles rising. He hoped the boy was so distracted by his task that he didn’t notice. “Yes. Now, before you go, where is your father?”

  “Up the third ridge then across Viprok d’Orell. That’s where she slipped down—”

  “Viprok d’Orell?” Torek thundered. “Why would she—”

  “She ran! We tried to catch her, but—”

  “All right. You did well. Now go!” Torek squeezed his shoulder—in thanks and comfort, but the boy winced—and took off in the opposite direction.

  Viprok d’Orell. Had it been too much to expect Reshna to stay put after throwing herself into that fourth snowbank? As if her tantrums weren’t enough, delaying his schedule for hours, now she’d taken a stroll down the most dangerous, treacherous terrain in Onik.

  She looked lost and scared … tried to catch her … but she ran away.

  The boy’s words echoed in Torek’s mind, and his frustration soured in his gut. He sprinted up the second and third ridges, pounding over the terrain as hard and fast as his body could possibly be pushed. But each stride stabbed through his heart: Reshna lost. Reshna running scared. Reshna falling. Reshna broken. Reshna dying.

  He’d known this would happen. He’d known the moment the co
urt had mandated that he obtain an animal companion that both he and the poor animal would be doomed. And he’d been reminded of it again when he’d first glimpsed Reshna and her too-long, high-maintenance hair. And again when he’d begun reading her massive tome of a manual. He’d been consumed with keeping her clean and warm, avoiding all foods seasoned with ukok—which didn’t leave much variety in their diet—and attending to her well-being, which always seemed to be on the brink of being unwell. It was only recently, after having integrated Reshna into his schedule and achieved some success with her training, that he’d forgotten the inevitable: that he would kill her. The act of killing was inadvertent, but she would be just as dead—and he just as devastated—all the same.

  Any deep emotion is fuel, and Torek used the terror stealing over his mind to drive his body. He finished his sprint over the third ridge, made the sharp turn into Viprok d’Orell, and immediately halted to assess the scene before him.

  A line of several dozen lorienok were braced on the near-vertical slope, holding hands in a chain down the ravine. Several more lorienok were using the chain of bodies to painstakingly descend toward the frozen Zorelok River. They were a few people short of the river’s edge. Several yards downstream and adjacent to that last lor was a fifteen-foot drop, below which lay the object they were trying so diligently to reach: Reshna.

  She was lying on her back atop the ice in the middle of the river. Unmoving. From this distance, he couldn’t see much detail. She was shadowed by a mountainous overhang covering half the river, but he recognized her by her new fur-lined coverings and wild hair. Something was different about it, though. Darker. It was wet, and inky tendrils of something red expanded like a halo around her head.

  Blood.

  The realization was like a focusing lens to his perception. Everything was red: the soaked tuanok bush thorns, the spattered snow, a glistening branch, a dripping smear along the side of a boulder, twin tracks leading to the edge of the cliff. At the end of that gory path was Reshna, soaking in the expanding puddle of her own blood on the splintered ice.