“If we’re headed the same way,” Zaja suggested, “then we should get moving now. We might reach Kana before it gets dark.”
“You afraid of the dark?” Jean mocked.
“Not the dark. Just the chill that comes with it.”
For all that rode upon the shoulders of four lesser Mystiks, it was Zaja whose strides were most decisive. Though the tunnels were well lit, the roads began to twist and wind once more, riding up and around, through the earth. Every so often they would reach another fork, and Zaja—better prepared than they could possibly have been—produced a map showing the way. At least a couple times, Flynn knew his internal compass would have compelled him to make a wrong turn, and they could have been lost for days.
Gusts snaked through the corridors, cutting to the bone whenever gaps in the stone allowed. After enduring such trying conditions these last few days, Flynn had begun to forget what real warmth felt like, and he suspected the others might be dragged down just the same. Yet it was Zaja, native of this world, who seemed brought the lowest. The right sort of breeze sheared whatever protection she had and staggered her, and it did so again and again.
Crippling though these icy winds were, Zaja never accepted any help or responded to any words of kindness. Invariably she would pull herself up and carry on as though she were alone, and Flynn learned quickly to spare her such platitudes, knowing she was gladder to help than be helped.
*
Whatever confidence a companion who knew her way inspired, it could not dissuade the fatigue of a protracted day’s journey. They had been on foot since before sunrise, and the adrenaline induced by Zaja’s promises of a safe haven had long since thinned. Flynn began looking for some hole they could curl up in and rest.
“Just a little farther,” Zaja urged more than once, keeping them moving when they showed signs of slowing. Begrudgingly, they carried on time and again; but as the day grew long, exhaustion won out. Even so, Zaja pleaded, “I know half the day still remains, but we can’t stay long. Night will be here before you all know it!”
“I don’t know about you, sister, but we’ve been hoofin’ it since before sun-up,” Jean replied, taking a seat carelessly atop a nest of vines.
At first it seemed as though Zaja didn’t understand, and would carry on without them. Turning her back, she took a few steps, only to resign just as quickly. With an air of nonchalance, she walked back over and took a seat. The air was still frostbitten, but the catacombs they now passed through were at least better covered, and no errant drafts happened by. Despite her admonishments, Zaja seemed relieved for the break, massaging her legs as best she could beneath the thick layers that kept her warm. A good amount of meat remained from hunts along the way, cooked and stowed as best as could be managed. They passed it around, along with whatever else they carried. Zaja, Flynn noticed, ate very little compared to the rest of them.
“So when’s this cold snap gonna pass?” Jean asked.
“It doesn’t,” Zaja replied between nibbles. “It won’t. There are just better days. This is one of them.”
“How long have things been this way?” Chari inquired.
“Lots of decades,” Zaja said. “You could just admit you’re all aliens, you know. I’m not going to freak out or anything.”
“Alright, you caught us,” Mack conceded.
“Let’s not change the subject—” Chari started.
Amid the chorus of “I knew it!” and “So the fuck what?” that followed, Flynn began to wonder if there was a correlation. The days on Oma were longer than anything he’d seen thus far, and it was not unthinkable that the years were as well. Decades on Oma could mean centuries on Earth, and it could be that this world’s discord was not unlike the proposed source of Earth’s or Sechal’s—the quarrels of fallen gods.
“Zaja?” Flynn cut in. “How old are you?”
“I’m in my third year,” she said, almost suspiciously. “Who knows if I’ll see my fourth.”
“Wait, we’re babysittin’ a fuckin’ three-year-old?!” Jean chortled.
“Forget the numbers,” Flynn said dismissively. “We’re from different worlds with different measurements of time. Everything we know is either wrong or irrelevant here.”
“Except for me,” Zaja pointed out.
“So why is a three-year-old girl—” Flynn began, still mentally estimating Zaja to be in her mid-teens, “—traveling by herself to a mining town?”
Zaja’s cheer subsided, as though she wasn’t entirely comfortable discussing the matter. Still, she came to admit, “I’m trying to find work.”
“Work?”
“It must be so easy for all of you,” she said, bowing her head with a sad smile, “to not know a world as cold as this. But for us, those who don’t earn their share get nothing, and those who have nothing … well, I imagine the same thing would happen to any of you, if you went long enough without food.”
“So what brings you this way?” Mack asked.
“There wasn’t anything for me back home,” Zaja explained. “And I want to earn my keep. I want to make myself useful, as long as I can. I planned and prepped for months and when things were right, I slipped out. That was this morning. And now I’m here. With you.”
Flynn was tempted to dig deeper, haul out the vague answers and indecisive responses that Zaja was concealing. Beyond the satisfaction of knowing the four travelers were not from Oma, she had shown no zeal for learning more or finding a way out of this Cocytal Hell. Whatever work she believed she might find in Kana, it seemed more important to her than the prospect of leaving Oma for an easier life.
Reading someone like Inquisitor Thunau was different from reading Zaja DeSarah. She was, so far as he knew, innocent. If Flynn were to resort to the talents he never wanted to call upon again, it seemed in good taste to at least keep them to the brazenly wicked. Of course, there were always other ways to learn.
“Mind if I see your map?” he asked.
Taken aback by the abrupt question, Zaja agreed, handing over a weathered chart. It was frayed and marked conservatively in mixed handwriting to accommodate routes that had opened and closed along the way. Once it was unfolded, it proved to be from a bygone era; many of the towns and railways it showed were crossed out, likely either decommissioned or destroyed. Recalling the path they’d followed, wrong turns and all, Flynn traced his way back to the town from which they’d started.
He leaned in and tapped the map, unable to read the name of the town, which had been recently scratched from existence. Zaja identified it as “Bolni,” then asked, “Why?” with innocent curiosity. He told her there was no reason, and resumed his examination, locating the town that was most likely Kana, still apparently in operation. Process of elimination—based on proximity and the location of their first encounter with one of Oma’s natives—led Flynn to locate the town she’d most likely come from. “That’s Quema,” she told him, though the information was not eagerly offered.
Her hesitation spoke measures. Folding up the decades-old map, Flynn handed it back to its owner. Standing, he prompted the others to do the same. Zaja needed to get to Kana, and—if only for the moment—she was too useful to abandon.
*
Daytime was waning by the time they finally detoured to an abandoned checkpoint, better insulated than the winding tunnels. Zaja meant to carry on but had remained in reluctant tow, insisting on seeing them to safety though she was restless all the while. The checkpoint couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes from the beaten path, but every time there was an opening above, she checked the sky.
The weather remained hideous.
Chari recognized the checkpoint to be the same sort of brickwork she’d seen in Bolni, and though it was no warmer inside than out, the walls and locked doors of the station meant no one needed to take night’s watch. Much of the interior had been stripped away, save for furnishings too broken to bother with. The station had been abandoned years before, according to Zaja’s map.
&n
bsp; “I’m surprised,” Zaja observed. “You all seem so much better able to withstand the cold, yet you tire out so easily.”
“Yeah, well, fuck you sleep,” Jean slurred, shuffling off to curl up in a corner.
“You’ll be okay out there, Bluester?” Mack queried in concern.
“I’ll be fine. I just want you to be careful, okay? Especially if you happen by Kana—I don’t know how they’ll react to seeing you. But if you do make it, look me up.”
The door creaked and shut tightly, and just as suddenly as they’d met, Zaja was gone. Silence followed as all settled in for rest. Worn and weary, Chari cracked open a small book under the light of a torch she’d propped up in the soil of a long-dead potted plant, preferring privacy to the fire pit in the chamber’s center. She expected to fall asleep mid-chapter, and may well have done so had Flynn not shuffled by just as the narrative started to dull. Chari tried to ignore him and drift off, but found quickly enough that she couldn’t. Closing her book, she asked with a sigh, “What troubles you?”
“I’m conflicted,” he confessed with reservation. “We have a purpose now, a mission. I would have been content doing smaller acts, where I could, but now that there’s a greater good to consider …”
Though he trailed off, Chari had a firm idea of his meaning. “This regards Zaja?”
Almost apologetically, Flynn looked into her eyes and said, “We let her go off alone. Into the cold.”
Chari cast her gaze down; privately, she agreed that something felt wrong. Whatever the reason was, Zaja’s health clearly staggered against chills that had merely given the rest of them pause.
“It was what she wished,” Chari countered, unconvinced by her own words.
“She won’t survive out there,” Flynn stated. “Yet taking the time to help her is time we take away from what we were sent to do. At what point does it become too dangerous to extend a hand?”
Though she had her concerns about Zaja, Chari still thought it reasonable that the girl could make it to her destination; yet Flynn spoke with such plain certainty of her fate, as he stood debating with himself on what to do. Smiling warmly, Chari prepared to give council—something she was long practiced in.
“What does your heart tell you?”
“It tells me to leave her to her own devices,” Flynn replied. “To let her wander and freeze to death if that’s what happens.”
Chari’s mood soured. Somehow she knew that’s what she should have expected, knowing what she did of Flynn’s past conduct. But to hear her savior speak it so candidly …
“Then I would ask,” she stated patiently, “had your path rearranged, had you met Airia before I, would you have waited for me still? The Inquisitor’s prisoner, suffering under her lash on my behalf?”
She felt her heart brace when he hesitated. It hurt to see, and she loved him a little less for it. When he found what to say, he conceded, “I don’t know what I would have done. You have your talents, something to contribute to the group, to the cause, so—”
Her ability to heal. How flattering to be regarded as a commodity of skill, she thought dryly. “Then Zaja DeSarah lacks any such value?” she asked him. “Are you so callous to the needs of other people?”
“I … kind of am,” he admitted. “I’m not sure how to explain why.”
“People have an intrinsic value, regardless of what they can or cannot do. The day might come when we must place our errand above the needs of another, but I would implore you to consider whether this is that day.” She was nearly content to stop there, but considered one more thing that needed saying. “If you can help another, is there better reason why you shall not?”
The consideration he gave to her words offered at least some consolation. Flynn’s heart was not the killing field she feared it to be, and that it might once have been. Nodding decisively, he turned and made for the door.
“Wait! I’ll come with you.”
He stopped and glanced back. “It’s alright. I’ll be faster on my own. It shouldn’t take too long to catch up with her.”
“If you’re certain,” Chari replied, smiling at him. She settled back in with her book, and hoped that all would be okay. Yet the door did not open and close as she was expecting, and she looked up to him still standing there, eyeing the text she now read.
“You carried that all the way from TseTsu?”
“I purloined it from Airia’s library,” Chari replied mischievously.
“You stole from a goddess?”
“Oh, really,” Chari rolled her eyes. “She is not a goddess.”
Flynn apparently knew better than to debate her in matters of tangibility versus divinity, and slipped out the door with that. Chari fell to slumber soon after, trembling only a little for the cold.
*
It was not unthinkable to forget the girl, even now. Flynn knew quite well the lies he could spin to appease Chari, claims of finding no trace of Zaja. The way the wild things of this tunnel eyed him as he hiked, there was no doubt that if she did not make it to Kana, there would be no trace of her by the next day but for the black bones she’d leave behind. The part of him that knew what was right rebelled against that thought. The part of him that did not care tried to put it aside, as it had successfully for so many years. In the end, though, if he were to sell the lie, he would still have to wait in the cold until enough time had passed for reasonable pursuit. In this, Flynn found purpose enough.
On a steep climb up a looming hill, he found her. The vicious path was only a short distance below the stone net cast above Oma’s wormlike terrain, and the coverage was terrible. She had made it more than halfway up before collapsing face down in the snow. One of the creatures in the tunnel had strayed from its pack and was picking at her body.
The assault here was not like the gentle flurries from the terrestrial vents in the passages behind—it pelted, stinging flesh and blinding more than a raised forearm could help. Though the cold metal frames seared his skin, he donned his spectacles, for it was too difficult to see otherwise. As he neared the fallen girl, the wolf-like creature took notice and bared its teeth, growling. Disinterested, Flynn released his claws and swept the creature aside without a second thought; its body tumbled into the crag below.
Upon reaching Zaja, he knelt and brushed off the hoarfrost that had formed on her, shielding her from the cruelest zephyrs with his body. As he wrapped her shoulder, which was only barely bitten beneath the layers the creature had had to tear through, she stared up at him, saying nothing. It was not relief he saw in Zaja’s eyes.
I’ll hate you for saving me.
She’d have rather been found dead than like this. Sitting over her, Flynn was now unsure what to do. It still wounded him to remember the man he was, the one who wouldn’t save another even if they begged. Much less if they refused his charity. He’d have been content to walk away in the past, but what does one do when they want to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped?
Left alone, Zaja would die. Flynn couldn’t grasp her stubborn lack of self-preservation, more still when dying now would serve no one. The puzzle he had pieced together told that Zaja sought work, to make herself useful—and she’d left the home she knew, all alone, to find it. That suggested the want for life.
She would hate him for saving her. He knew that as he rolled her onto her back, slid his arms beneath her, and stood up with her, turning to carry her back to the checkpoint. He decided it better if she lived and hated than died and didn’t. For all the hate Flynn had brought upon himself, he expected he could shoulder at least a little bit more.
*
Mack sat over Zaja, peering closely at her. She slept, wrapped up tight as a bug in a rug. Well, less rug and more old sofa lining they had ripped apart before placing her close by the fire. It had been night for hours now, and the others were fast asleep. Flynn rested opposite, scavenged vines burning slowly in the embers between them. Mack reached over and touched Zaja’s forehead. Unsure of the results, he shuffle
d over and checked Jean for comparison, then went back to Zaja and checked her again.
“Kinda coldish,” he observed.
Her eyelids fluttered as she gradually awoke from deep sleep. She remained on her side, the muted fire pulsing in her eyes.
“Where am I?” she asked, sluggishly. But Mack didn’t need to answer. Even barely able to turn her head, she could see enough to let out a disappointed, “Oh.”
“You’re awake,” Mack observed, grinning.
“What time is it?”
“Dark o’clock.”
Zaja found no humor in his response. Casting her eyes at the ground, she murmured, “He shouldn’t have saved me. It would have been easier if he’d left me out there.”
“You … wanna die?”
Three-hundred-plus nights had Mack been lulled to uneasy sleep by the wails of those who wanted to die. Some would make a scene, act out during cell inspections, hoping a guard might strike too hard—for it used to be that only corpses left Civilis. Others grew deranged as sickness and hunger consumed them, untended by jailers who saw no sense in wasting the resources. Yet Mack had never heard someone sound so meekly as though she wanted to just give in.
“No, it’s … not that,” Zaja stifled a yawn. “If you don’t know, I don’t know how to explain.” She squinted a little, as though checking Mack for something. “Why aren’t you cold? You wear your clothes so loosely …”
“I just ain’t,” came Mack’s reply. “I run kinda hot … when I need to. Are you cold?”
“Mmm …” Zaja grunted, shifting a little deeper beneath her many layers. She drifted back to steady sleep, telling him, “I’m always cold.”
*
It was still hours until the Omati dawn, but the four off-worlders were ready to move. Yet when it came time to start, Zaja remain huddled close to the fire, wrapped up tight. More so than the day prior, she barely ate. Flynn asked what the matter was, certain only that her wounded ego wasn’t the source—she’d been too eager to reach Kana to hold back now.
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