NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1)

by Theodora Taylor

  Oh, God! Oh, God! she thought, remembering all those alien invader romances Koko loved to read.

  “Female 7-133, calm yourself. There have always been two moons here. Once there were three. But two of the moons collided to create the bright one.”

  “No, no! There’s only one moon. One fucking moon! So why is there a second red moon? I don’t understand! Where am I? Who the hell are you?”

  “Female 7-133…”

  “MY NAME IS FENSA!” she screamed, her voice tearing across the double-mooned night. “FENSA! AND WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE TWO MOONS IN THE FUCKING SKY?”

  All sorts of scientific explanations started speeding through her mind. But there was only one that made any sense: Earth had caught a moon. An asteroid, like made of iron oxide, had fallen into the planet’s gravitational field.

  Which would explain the new ice age. And the new moon’s reddish tint. A new satellite would have fucked the planet for sure. Even caused a few of the manufactured satellites to come crashing down. She remembered a G20 Climate Conference she had once watched on the wall TV of her room at the facility. One of the speakers had raised concerns about the number of satellites now hovering above the planet like a second metal atmosphere. The speaker had stated for the record that only a few computer algorithms stood between an earth city being destroyed if any of those satellites fell from the sky.

  Things were bad before. But somehow, staring at two moons made it that much worse.

  The divorce spell dropped from her lips without warning. Another inheritance from her papa. One he’d never used, of course. Though ironically, in the end, it was her mother who’d cast their final divorce spell. With papers and lawyers, instead of magical incantations.

  But Fensa recited the Old Norse words now. Shouting them over and over and over.

  Nothing happened. Oh, God. Oh, Fenrir Wolf.

  Fensa didn’t realize she was trembling until the dragon’s face appeared in front of her. “Female 7-133, you burn extremely upset. Please, let me help you. Tell me how to cure this.”

  There was no cure. No cure for finding out your getaway car from this post-apocalyptic madness never showed up.

  “Hold me,” she whispered into his head.

  “Hold…?” he asked.

  And she instantly knew that like handjobs and kissing, hugging was another thing the dragon knew nothing about.

  “This,” she told him, wrapping her arms around his large body. “This is a hug. A form of holding someone close to give them comfort, love, or greeting.”

  “I know comfort and greeting. But the word…”

  Fensa closed her eyes. Her heart icing over with dismay, even as she pushed her face into the heat of his chest. Trying to get warm, even though it felt like the cold was a disease that went bone deep.

  “You don’t know the word ‘love’? Where you come from, they don’t even have the concept of mates being in love, do they?”

  “Again, I do not understand this question. This mind link offers no translation. Perhaps you could give me a picture?”

  The borderline-hysterical urge to laugh came over her. Here she was, hugging an alien under two moons in the post-apocalyptic world her planet had apparently become. Okay. Why not? Why not just go ahead and explain the concept of love to him, like they were reading a children’s picture book together?

  So clinging to a dragon man in the cold under the light of two moons, she showed him. All the acts of love she could recall: her hardcore grandfather taking off his motorcycle pack jacket to put Neosporin and a band-aid on her boo-boo… her parents smiling secretively at each other over their morning cups of coffee… Tu and Grady holding hands as they welcomed all the teenage Royals to their summer camp… Gena Rowlands and James Garner dying at the same time, in the same bed in The Notebook… her Aunt Alisha dancing to Michael Jackson with her triplet sons… her twin sister, Ola, pulling Fensa into her arms as facility workers rushed up the side of the mountain towards them, holding Fensa tight as she whispered the incantation that would bring her here… love… oh God, love…

  Something this man…shifter…serpent—as the Vikings had referred to his kind—had never heard of. Couldn’t even comprehend. Oh God, oh Fenrir Wolf…

  With a profound realization, Fensa thoroughly understood the meaning of a word she’d read but never experienced: wept. She wept against the dragon’s chest under the two moons of an ice planet she no longer recognized. Pushing the same questions over and over into his mind.

  “Where am I? When am I? Where is Ola? Where the fuck is Ola?!?!”

  16

  Where am I? When am I? Where is Ola?

  These were three questions Xenon could not answer for Female 7-133—Fensa. The memory of her screaming that name at him in the snow haunted him while she slept.

  Drakkon had names but only used them to refer to themselves. For example, Xenon often referred to himself as “Xenon” on his reports. However, it would never occur to him to call his uncle, or even his nearly same-aged cousin, by their given names. So her demand that he call her by this strange name, even though it seemed to be neither title nor label, continued to disturb him long after her voice gave way to the liquid streaming from her eyes.

  The Far Travelers also did not have a naming convention, and when they did, it was often along the lines of labeling. Whale Killer. Son of Big Fish Hunter. He thought briefly of one of the Far Travelers he’d killed to assert final claim on the female anomaly: King of Us.

  And he once more did not understand. The female was not merely an anomaly, but an impossibility. The images she had flashed into his head. Her talent for mating. Almost as if she had somehow made study of the practice beforehand, and rendered it into art.

  On his fire planet, mating served as a simple biological process. A necessary activity to implant a drakkon’s seed in a drakki’s womb. In fact, the operation was so distasteful to some drakkon, Xenon’s great-grandfather commissioned a task force of doctors and scientists to find a solution to the problem when his son’s male works refused to drop to mate the Queen.

  For this purpose was the fating portal created. Designed for perfect DNA matches that would almost guarantee a live birth. If a drakkon were lucky enough to be fated, or matched, intercourse was no longer required to attach his gametes to his fated mate’s egg. Xenon’s own parents were DNA matched. And though they had been lauded throughout their planet as the first king and queen to produce not one, but two male heirs in as many generations as could be remembered, he doubted his parents had ever touched one another for any reason beyond reverence.

  Fenrir’s experiments still had similar problems reproducing. The numbers weren’t as drastically low as on Drakkon, but with the brutal multi-male matings followed by an exceedingly long nine-month gestation period, less than half the Royal Geneticist’s experiments survived childbirth. Which was another reason the observation team would need to wait a thousand years to determine if Fenrir’s latest experimental groups of hybrids were viable.

  However, the images the female anomaly had pushed into his head had been mind-blowing. A lupin mother with dark skin who had not just one, but three children. Apparently, the female anomaly had a twin sister. They looked nothing alike, beyond their skin color and height, but had shared a womb together. Twins!

  Supposedly in early Drakkon history, such double births had occasionally occurred. But never in current times, and such layings had become the stuff of legends. As far as Xenon had read and seen, none of the Royal Geneticist’s experiments had produced more than one live birth at a time.

  Also, neither the lupins nor the anthros had exhibited behavior remotely resembling the images Fensa pushed into his mind. Much holding and pressing of lips. Intimacy without mating. For the seeming sake of intimacy itself. For this, Xenon had no frame of reference.

  Even more startling, the clothes these people wore in the female anomaly’s mind pictures did not seem to come from animals. They looked to be made from a fragile material, o
ne he had not heard tale of on this planet or on his own.

  The female anomaly was either delusional or had a history he could not fathom. Still, as he watched her sleep on the red examination table in his lab, he could not believe her delusional.

  She spoke at a level that was, if not exactly polite or formal, near the same complexity of thought and word to his own. She claimed to be a princess, which went with the monarchical instincts the Royal Geneticist had implanted in the core DNA of his new species. And of course, she had somehow gestated his baby.

  Then there was the other evidence…

  The way his male works continued to respond to her, despite the cessation of her mating fever. He could feel his hemipenis swell inside his lower pelvis. Aching with a pain so sweet, he had to turn away from her sleeping form for fear of what he might be compelled to do.

  This was the female anomaly’s strangest effect by far. The way she rendered him near incapable of controlling his shell.

  The wall started to scroll above her head. Her nutrient levels were again low. But tubing wasn’t advised for pregnant drakki, and Xenon was too scared of the effect it might have on the fragile hybrid fetus gestating inside her to attempt to use the tubes on his pregnant lupin.

  He’d need to hunt to keep her well-nourished. And soon. But…

  He did not want to leave her alone while he hunted. He thought of the Far Travelers who’d tried to claim her…and of the hostile anthros who had somehow found their way to his glacier station. What if she woke before he returned? And wandered out again?

  Instead of leaving directly for the hunt, he reprogrammed the lab not to keep her confined inside for twelve hours. Only twelve, he’d decided, because the thought of her trapped inside a room filled with a large quantity of technical equipment longer than that did not sit well with him.

  Now he could go. But once again, he did not.

  There was a theory swirling inside his head. An implausible but perhaps not impossible explanation for the lupin. A single line from the Royal Geneticist’s court presentation echoed in Xenon’s head. “This species has the promise to evolve, to indeed develop a civilization as prominent as our own,” the old drakkon had told them. “Hunting them as game would deprive them and the universe of this opportunity.”

  And only then did Xenon finally understand what had unsettled him so about the “love” concept the female anomaly had pushed into his head. Civilization. Many, if not all, of those images had shown the unmistakable signs of a level of civilization this species was many thousands of years away from achieving.

  That’s when he decided to wall-hail the Mission Geneticist who was currently replicating the Royal Geneticist’s work in Zone 4. He kept the view screen off, of course, to avoid questions about his eye wound…or the pregnant lupin on his examination table in the background.

  “Prince of Drakkon.” The Team Geneticist’s voice answered Xenon’s hail in the way of their people: by title as opposed to name.

  “Geneticist,” Xenon answered in kind, thinking how much simpler this form of address was for all parties. Another reason he could not understand the female anomaly’s desire to have him address her as “Fensa” as opposed to her title: Female 7-133. “I have a theoretical question about our mission fertility gates that I require help to debone.”

  “Of course, Prince. I honor you here as I do on our home planet,” the Team Geneticist answered.

  Well, that was one thing this green drakkon did not have in common with his blue uncle, Xenon thought to himself darkly before continuing, “The mission’s fating portals, to my knowing, are the same ones we use throughout our planet. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, Prince, that is correct. Are you having problems with the codes on yours? I believed testing is not scheduled for another 50 solar rotations, but if you wish to begin your experiments now, I can fly there to help you—that is, if you’re willing to lift the Zone 7 restriction.”

  Xenon wondered then if he hadn’t created an unintentional challenge with his ban. It seemed a conversation did not pass where other drakkon did not find some way to ask him to lift his zone restrictions.

  “No, thank you,” he answered, trying to keep the edge out of his voice.

  “Truly, Prince of Drakkon, I would burn happy to help you with this endeavor.”

  To be a royal on this trip was apparently to be thought incapable in every way possible. First, his uncle doubted his results, and now the geneticist assumed he could not do something as simple as encode a portal. “I can handle the encoding, I assure you. As I said, my question is theoretical. The portal is designed for our kind, a species with a lengthy life span in comparison to the lupinhominids, a species which…”

  He searched for the right words. And the Geneticist offered, “Most likely won’t survive one-hundred years, much less the thousand we’re trying to achieve with the help of the fated gates.”

  “Yes…” he agreed, despite the distaste that now arose upon his tongue at the thought of the female anomaly’s species not surviving the 1000 years it would take to conduct their study. “But if we use this anti-matter technology with this species, could there be a possibility that a wolf from, say, another era might be a match with one of this era, no matter the time frame?”

  A thoughtful pause. “I have never considered this idea as this is the first time we’ve ever attempted to employ this technology with such a short-lived species, but yes…I suppose the fating portal could be turned into a sort of time mechanism, as it were, if the computers determined two individuals from two different time frames were a match. Would you like me to include this as a noted risk in the official report to the royal court?”

  “Ah, no, that won’t be necessary,” Xenon answered after a moment. “This was just bit of theory I was unknotting. No need to put such fanciful conjectures in the official report without a mission physicist to verify it.”

  “Yes, better not to. But when we return to Drakkon, I will visit with a few physicists I know to discuss this possibility, and then might I provide assistance.”

  “You do honor me with your attention,” Xenon replied. Then as was customary, he made his farewells with a simple, “Geneticist.”

  “Prince,” the Mission Geneticist answered.

  Xenon stood at the wall for some time after the call had ended. Thinking about his current situation. Then about his uncle. After some thought, he sent another message. This one communicated by Drakkon text rather than a wall-hail. He cared not to answer any further questions from his uncle.

  “Do you ever sleep?”

  The female anomaly’s voice filled his mind, and he turned to find her sitting atop the examination table. Staring at him through eyes still hooded with sleep.

  “Yes, I do,” he answered. “For a very short time during daylight hours. After the baby is laid and has reached adulthood, I will hibernate for one thousand or so moons.”

  “Moons…? I think you mean months. That’s what they call it where I come from.”

  Xenon didn’t answer. Did not know how to without upsetting her. So he remained silent, only to be met with yet another difficult question.

  “Did you sedate me again? To get me to calm down?”

  “No,” he answered. “As I told you before, pregnant dra—” He paused, not knowing what to call her. Lupin seemed wrong on his mind’s tongue now, given the precious gift she carried inside her womb. But still, she was not drakki, not one of his kind.

  “Future mothers cannot be given drugs that might harm the young they carry. You—you released water that contained trace amounts of several biological compounds from your eyes. This eye water seemed to have some kind of sedation effect on you.”

  Confusion flitted across her face, followed by a very small upturning of her full lips. “Okay, I’m pretty sure you’re referring to my tears. You’re trying to say I cried myself to sleep?”

  “Tears,” he repeated, not liking the sound of the word, or the memory of them streaming down her fac
e. “They are a sedative, yes?”

  “More like a byproduct of extreme emotion. Anger, sadness, sometimes relief and happiness.”

  “But you were not relieved or happy to see your planet’s two moons.”

  “No, more like angry and frustrated.”

  He analyzed the heat coming off her body. Her flame remained neutral. Even though she spoke of past upset. He confessed, “I understand you not, Female 7-133.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” she answered with another slight upturn of her lips. “I think… I think we’re misunderstanding each other. You’re saying you don’t want to upset me, but I don’t think you realize the only thing that upsets me more than those two moons, is the not knowing. I have no idea what a female dragon is like, but for me the not knowing is worse than anything you could tell me.”

  Now he became quiet. “I find it very hard to believe the knowledge would prevent your upset, Female 7-133.”

  “And I find you very hard to believe.”

  To Fensa, these words were as good as a confession, akin to dropping a truth bomb into their conversation. But the dragon’s expression didn’t change as he said, “I understand you not, Female 7-133.” Again.

  No, of course he didn’t. How could he when he had no idea who she really was? Even though they were now technically mated through the child she now carried.

  She didn’t want to go there. Really didn’t want to go there. If you took out all the fear and crazy discovery and severe confusion, it had been nice not getting treated like a complete freak for a few days. But she had to tell him, didn’t she? Had to explain why she, of all people, couldn’t handle not knowing who he was or where she was or…all the rest.

  With a sigh, Fensa started pushing words into his head. Telling him a story she’d never told anyone, even when the therapist tried to extract it from her.

  “I have a twin sister. Her name is Ola. She’s named after my papa, who’s called Olafr. We both have the same coloring and brownish red hair, but other than that, we look nothing alike. She’s bold and gregarious, and I’m quiet and shy. She hated every moment of school, and I loved it to the point that I wanted to become a theoretical physicist. We’re complete opposites, but she is one of the best people I know. She’s the first person I remember. I hugged her in my crib, and we slept in the same bed until I was eighteen. She’s my best friend, and my main confidante. I tell her everything, and she knows everything about me. I couldn’t imagine my life without her. Until I was eighteen, we did everything together. Went everywhere together…I think you get it.”